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alastair-1205 · 5 hours ago

Note

Hey i love your fics, even though they make me cry heh and i wanted to ask do you have a masterlist or would you ever make one for your fics on tumblr? if not thats totally cool, i was just wondering, have a great day!

ahhHH thank you so much!! <3 all my fics on tumblr are under the “my fic” tag, but I’ve been meaning to make a masterlist for ages so I guess this is the day, thank u for finally giving me the push to do this :’D

FIC MASTERLIST

Mult-Chapter Fics (FFN and AO3 now!)

Raising Hell + AO3

(my baby I’ll be writing for the rest of my life, essentially a massive fic covering Kai, Nya and Lloyd’s relationship throughout the seasons)

All I’m Asking For

(team-centric holidays-fic au following the aftermath of an Oni battle)

Down Comes the Night

(s9 au where Lloyd, Morro and Harumi have to work together that maN I need to update)

Those Left Behind

(post-s8 fic following Lloyd and Nya coping with the guys’ “deaths”, written before s9 premiered)

One Shots (tumblr)

(below the cut because there are. a lot.)

Skywalker Syndrome pt. I

Skywalker Syndrome pt. II

Skywalker Syndrome pt. III

(Lloyd loses an arm and a whole lot of aftermath, circa s8/9)

moats and boats and waterfalls

Post-Crystalized, the ninja rebuild their home with various levels of success.

salt

Post-Seabound, Kai angst with a heavy dash of Lloyd

any port in a storm

(Pixal and Lloyd and the evolving nature of friendship, as highlighted by the regular burning down of your city. Lloyd and Pixal bonding throughout s8/9)

Heirloom

(snapshots of Lloyd and his relationship with titles)

planetary go

(Lloyd attends Rachel ((oc)) and Brad’s field trip, and things blow up)

Wishful Thinking

(post s10 Lloyd and Garmadon angst)

Wishful Thinking part 2

(considerably less angsty oneshot where Garmadon attempts to understand Lloyd, in disguise)

the idiot’s guide to not despising your cousin

(au where Lloyd and Morro get to be cousins that’s so long it will crash your browser)

call the police and the fireman (alternative warning: fire hazard)

(Lloyd learns to breathe fire, and it goes as well as you’d expect)

There’s Insurance for That

(Five places the ninja are no longer allowed into, featuring Skylor)

a complicated profession

(mandalorian au with Kai and Nya as Mandalorians)

slipping

(Lloyd goes oni mode real quick and handles it Not So Well)

Sleepsong

(sad s5 aftermath, featuring Lloyd and Cole)

what stays and what fades away

(post s11 aftermath, with a focus on zangst)

and it is a shame

(s11 ice emperor speculation, featuring Lloyd, Akita and Zane)

in which the monastery almost burns down again

(the ninja try to throw Lloyd a surprise birthday party)

flicker

(Kai-centric fic dealing with his relationship with fire over seasons)

turned to smoke

(s1 Lloyd and Garmadon versus s8 Lloyd and Garmadon angst)

exposure therapy

(pre-s8, Lloyd tries living alone)

close for comfort

(Kai has nightmares after Chen’s staff in s4)

Kai possessed by Morro rambling

(not really a fic, but also sort of?? close enough)

hyacinth (in yellow)

(post-s7 Lloyd and Cole-centric angst, focusing on lost parents)

Fic for art where Kai takes a hit for Lloyd

(it’s. also angst.)

n stands for neutral

(Kai teaches Lloyd how to drive. Sort of.)

aftermaths

(post s10 Kai and Lloyd talking)

déjà vu

(Lloyd and Nya after Cole falls in s10)

two a.m. tea

(Pixal, Nya and Lloyd bonding over cheap tea, pre-s7 through s9)

snip, snip

(Kai gives kid Lloyd a new hairstyle)

it’s me (version 2.0)

(Show Lloyd and Movie Lloyd have a bad day thanks to dimension-jumping oni)

terrorize y’all’s neighborhood

(fluffy team halloween fic with kid Lloyd)

juxtaposition

(Lloyd and Garmadon, as seen in contrasting snapshots through seasons)

Survivor Ninja!

(post s2, the ninja get stranded at sea for the day — crack)

fears

(s2 bad end au, the single worst fic I’ve ever written, everyone dies and no one is happy)

heartbreak

(Wu-centric angst over Lloyd and Garmadon’s similarities)

nightmares

(Cole’s nightmares as a ghost are particularly dangerous)

lost on you (alt. ouroboros)

(Morro, Harumi, and Lloyd on loss and the color green)

ninjago incredibles au

(exactly what it says on the tin, incredibles 2-era inspired)

on gifts

(Edna and Jay growing up)

could have-beens

(harumi dies?? written during s9 not sure what this one is actually but it’s angst)

weathering

(post-s5, Kai finds Lloyd watching storms)

like a bad soap opera

(mid-s8 episode aftermath of harumi’s betrayal)

some other person’s destiny

(Lloyd and Harumi on the river mid-s8, I cannot believe this was the first fic I wrote for ninjago)

Kai runs into the son of Lord Garmadon for the first time (movie-verse)

Kai and Lloyd prank Chen, featuring grumpy cousin Morro (movie-verse)

Kai and Nya on leaving Lloyd behind in s5

The show ninja watch their movie

Grave Danger snippet with Lloyd in the river whooo

That ATLA au where Harumi’s a bloodbender

S5 snippet with Lloyd and Ronin vibing over possession

S9 au angst where Lloyd and Nya never found out the guys were alive

Halloween Jay and Lloyd fic Tumblr ate like three times

Angsty Jay and Cliff Gordon oneshot

Lloyd gets his ear pierced by Kai

#save tag #for later #im reading all of these brb i found a new writing style to obsess over

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alastair-1205 · 5 hours ago

Text

drywall

went to go work on raising hell and ended up missing Skylor, so!! I will always have so many emotions about s8/9 and the aftermath of it, here's another gallon of them.

Two months after they’ve taken back the city and the street lights are finally starting to work again, Lloyd shows up at the restaurant an hour past closing time, sporting a spectacularly bruise and enough blood across his gi to make the Ninjago City Blood Drive team’s day.

“Hi, Sky.” Lloyd waltzes — or attempts to, it’s more of a stumbling collapse — right in as if nothing’s amiss in the slightest. “Sorry, I’m, uh. Was in the neighborhood and I wasn’ sure…where else t’ go.”

Skylor, still frozen over a stained tabletop with her dishtowel in hand, stares at him.

All things considered, she should be fully prepared for something like this. It should practically be in her restaurant’s training manual, that at some point you’ll end up confronted with a bloody, half-dead ninja in your door. But given how slow the past few weeks have been, coupled with the sheer exhaustion of dealing with the lunch rush and the dinner rush and the late-night somewhat-inebriated people rush, her guard is apparently down enough to leave her reacting with a simple, useless, “Oh god.”

“Tha’s my grandfather,” Lloyd says. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth — coupled with the bruising, Skylor thinks (hopes) it’s simply from split skin or a bitten cheek, instead of crippling internal bleeding.

Crippling internal bleeding is enough of a concern to finally spur her into action, dropping her towel and rushing over to help Lloyd finish stumbling through the door. She spares a moment of thanks, that there’s even a door at all — repairs in the city have been slow, since Harumi’s brief reign of terror, and the insurance provider is still holding out on her.

But the door was a good thing to prioritize, she thinks, bolting it firmly behind them.

“Sorry, again,” Lloyd murmurs. His jaw is working in the tight way it does when he’s biting back pain, his bottom lip bruised and bleeding. Skylor’s stomach twists.

You’d think, after all she’s been through, she’d be more accustomed to seeing the people she cares about in pain. That she’d be desensitized enough, to fight back the aching nausea and the gnawing desire to look away.

Or maybe she’s just a coward. That would track, she thinks.

“Shush,” she says instead, maneuvering Lloyd further into one of the nicer booths, careful of the blood that’s…everywhere. “What did you do to yourself this time, huh?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Lloyd grumbles, his voice steadier now that he’s sitting down. Unfortunately, he’s only paler under the yellowy restaurant lights, and the blood looks about ten times worse. “I just…slipped. A bit.”

Slipped. Skylor could smack him, if he wasn’t already hurt.

“Lemme see, then.” She bends down to where she can tug the folds of his gi back, trying to trace the blood to a source. She finally finds it — an ugly wound in his left shoulder, several long gashes across his forearm. A knife, maybe. Possibly a sword, but it looks close-up and quick. It’d need to have been quick, for whoever was wielding it to land this many hits.

Or Lloyd would have to be sloppy.

Lloyd gives a stifled, shuddery exhale, a dangerous preamble to tears. Skylor pauses, just for a moment, and deliberates.

She’s got Nya’s number, carefully keyed into her phone ever since she and Kai started visiting the noodle house. There’s no doubt in her mind that she’d want to know about this — and there’s less doubt that Kai would want to know. if anything, she’s surprised he hasn’t burst through the restaurant doors already, summoned by whatever sixth sense he has that goes off when Lloyd’s in danger.

But Skylor also knows there’s got to be a reason that Lloyd came here, despite his claims. Just as there’s probably a reason he didn’t call Kai or Nya, or any of the others.

And perhaps she feels just a little proud, that Lloyd’s chosen her to come to.

It’s quickly lost in the blood that coats her hands as she begins patching the wound in his shoulder, but the feeling’s there nonetheless.

It’s a nice feeling, being relied on. Being trusted.

“Who got you this bad?”

She speaks up mostly to break the quiet. Lloyd isn’t quite like Kai, who likes talking simply to fill a space, but she knows he isn’t fond of silence, either. It’s one of the things they share in common.

“No one.” Lloyd sucks in a breath as she draws the bandage tight across his shoulder, wrapping it beneath his arm and back over. His eyes close briefly as she ties it off, forehead scrunching up, before he lets out another shuddery exhale. “Some guy, uh — guy on the way home, near the subway. I had answered a call earlier, and I guess — ow, hey—”

“Sorry,” Skylor winces, as she finishes dumping antiseptic across the slashes on his arm. “It hurts less if you aren’t expecting it.”

“That’s a lie,” Lloyd says, pointedly.

She shrugs. “So, random subway mugger?”

Lloyd looks away, his cheeks darkening. It’s a relief, to see any color in his face at all. “Sort of.”

He leaves it at that, lapsing back into silence. Skylor looks down, focusing on the butterfly stitches she’s placing across his arm. Were it anyone else, she’d have panicked for actual stitches, but Lloyd heals with an uncanny quickness. She remembers Nya complaining about it, back during the Resistance — how Lloyd threw a fit when his skin healed over the stitches, and they’d had to cut him open all over again.

She’d probably throw a fit of her own, to be fair.

“Well, if you see him,” she says, reaching for the roll of bandages. “Point him out. I could use a punching bag.”

Lloyd’s lips quirk, a ghost of a smile.

“Thank you.”

It’s quiet enough she might’ve missed it, if they were any further apart. Skylor doesn’t miss the meaning, either. She simply shakes her head, wrapping another layer around his arm.

“I’m just glad you came to someone,” she says. “Instead of half-assing it yourself.”

Lloyd’s fingers twitch. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Uh-huh.”

She can’t pretend she doesn’t understand. Her childhood is filled with fun little memories of patching herself together, hiding wounds from Clouse or her father in an attempt to convince them she was better than she was.

Not that the people Lloyd is hiding from are anything remotely like her father, of course, but there’s an overlap between people you fear and people you love, and trying to convince them you’re stronger than you are.

“That should do it,” she nods to herself, surveying her work. She feels unusually proud of herself — Skylor’s never really stayed with a team long enough to have many chances to patch people up. It’s rarer that people are so open to her touching them, once they’ve learned what her power is. The ninja are an exceedingly kind exception, but it still makes her feel warm, being given this kind of trust.

She glances up, eyeing her patient. Lloyd’s still pale, but it’s far better than the ashy color from earlier anymore. “Anywhere else?”

“No.” Lloyd stares at the strip of bandages across his arms, shoulders hunched over on himself.

“I have Nya on speed dial, you know—”

“Its just a few scrapes,” Lloyd rolls his eyes. “It’s nothing.”

Skylor sighs. “Lemme see.”

Lloyd grumbles, but he lets her grab his arm again, wincing as she dabs antiseptic over the smaller cuts. There’s nothing serious — just a few nicks and scratches, the kind you get from eating the ground mid-fight. He’s got one uglier scrape, but it’s about as nasty as a skinned knee, and easily eclipsed by the scar it bleeds through.

Her fingers falter. She knows this scar — she was there when Kai struggled to patch the wound it once was, back on her father’s island. It’s an ugly, jagged scar, a testament to how Kai’s hands had shook as he’d tried to be gentle.

In hindsight, it had been a terrible moment. Kai wasn’t sure if Lloyd had picked up the wound from the underground tunnels, Chen’s cultists, or his own brief slip into the madness of the staff. Lloyd wouldn’t say where it was from, even if either of them had been much for talking. And Skylor had been an awkward, purple-scaled fixture next to them, holding the medical kit while the others planned how to kill her father.

And yet, it was the lightest she’d ever felt.

Skylor bites her lip.

She’s never told Lloyd, what exactly he’d meant to her. He likely has no idea, what he’d represented when she’d first met him.

The son of one of Ninjago’s greatest villains — and people loved him.

Kai loved him.

If Lloyd could overcome the hurdle of his parentage and choose to live the way he wanted, if people could look past the dark stain of his legacy and love him anyways, then maybe—

He’d been hope, when she needed it most. And Kai had lived up to that hope, taking Skylor’s half-formed, frail dream and fueling it into a blaze.

Her eyes close, briefly, and she shivers.

“Are you okay?”

Blinking her eyes back open, she comes face to face with Lloyd’s concerned expression. She shakes her head, looking away.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Embarrassment pulls at her. “Just a bit of…aftershocks. You know.”

Lloyd frowns, clearly not knowing. “Aftershocks,” he repeats. “From…”

His eyes go wide, only for his expression to immediately crumple. “Oh.”

Skylor waves her hands. “It’s not bad,” she reassures him. “I can barely feel him — his power — anymore. Just pins and needles in my hands sometimes, that’s all. Totally…totally normal.”

She hopes. Garmadon’s power had burned, in the way bitter cold feels against your skin, so a bit of numbness is pretty decent tradeoff, if she says so herself.

Lloyd looks down, expression shadowed and hidden. Skylor could curse herself — she knows better, than to bring up—

“Here.” Lloyd’s suddenly holding his hand out, looking at her earnestly. It’s an almost childish expression of sincerity, one that makes him look much younger — a little more like the Lloyd she met on her father’s island, who beamed when his father ruffled his hair.

Her chest aches fiercely, and Skylor holds out her hand before she can hesitate. Lloyd takes it carefully in his own, and she watches in fascination as the low shimmer of green engulfs her fingers. Lloyd’s power is as gentle as he is — nothing like the ravaging purple storm that was his father’s.

“Oh,” she says. “That’s nice.”

Lloyd makes a humming noise. “I’ve been practicing. H-his power doesn’t get along with mine, that much. So it kinda…makes room. For whoever’s stronger, at the moment.”

Skylor fights back a shudder. Realistically, she knows she shouldn’t feel ashamed, that Garmadon overpowered her — he’s Garmadon. The reminder of how his power felt still stings, though.

It’s a reassurance, that Lloyd’s power is stronger now. His element, if you can even call it that, is probably the one she’s the least familiar with — she’s never tried to copy Lloyd’s power. She isn’t entirely sure if she could, or if she should. Dipping into Garmadon’s power was dangerous enough. Skylor isn’t stupid enough to pretend she has the willpower to meddle with the power of the FSM’s family much more than that.

“It feels like cheating, kinda,” she finally says. “That fighting fuels his power. How are you supposed to fight back?”

Lloyd shrugs, letting her hand go. “You don’t. You get really good at dodging.”

Skylor leans forward, propping her chin up in her palms. “That’s stupid.”

“Well,” Lloyd’s lips twitch, just the slightest bit. “That’s Garmadon, so.”

His expression immediately fractures, and Skylor can spot the battle in his eyes as he tries to grasp for composure. Her teeth worry at her lip.

She should really call Nya, now. Or try to track down Kai’s number. Or anyone else — it’s nearly two hours past closing, the kitchen’s still a mess, and Lloyd’s blood is all over her dishrags. Lloyd himself is hardly in better shape, the ghostly pale of his skin reminding her horribly of when she first saved them from the Sons of Garmadon, and Skylor is—

Not enough.

She ought to know that, by now.

But the fact still stands, that Lloyd came to her. A part of her clings to that, and another selfish, awful part of her, the part that festered on her father’s island for so many years, the part that still flinches beneath the weight of her last name — well.

Misery loves company, is probably the best way to put it.

“I should…I should probably get going,” Lloyd says, uncertainly. He doesn’t make any move to get up, though, still small and weary where he’s hunched up in her booth.

Skylor stares at him, and thinks of sitting for hours on the edge of her father’s island, staring at the sun on the water until her eyes ached.

“Hey,” she says, a bit breathless, twisting her fingers together. “Wanna go skip rocks?”

Quite fairly, Lloyd stares at her like she’s lost her mind.

They end up on the rickety end of one of Ninjago City’s abandoned docks anyways, a mismatched selection of somewhat flat rocks spilling out of a Chen’s to-go bag. Lloyd’s left arm is tied up in a mangled sort of sling they fashioned from Skylor’s old sweatshirt, leaving him to turn a rock over in his right hand awkwardly.

“So, funny thing,” he says. “I don’t, uh. I’m not very good at this.”

“That’s okay,” Skylor says, sifting through the rocks they’ve gathered. “I’m not, either.”

“Yeah?” Lloyd sounds hopeful. “I mean, you at least know the trick to it, right?”

“I don’t,” she shrugs. “I’ve never…I’ve never skipped rocks before.”

Lloyd stares at her.

“It’s not that weird,” she huffs, fighting back the urge to hide. “I mean, I never really had the chance, but I aways thought — I grew up near the ocean, and all these lakes, so I always thought it’d be fun to, y’know, skip rocks, since I didn’t really have…anyone else, to…”

The rest of the sentence is about to turn even more humiliating, so it’s a relief when Lloyd interrupts her.

“I haven’t either.”

He immediately flushes. “That’s why I’m not good at it.’Cause I’ve never actually skipped rocks.”

“Oh.” Skylor looks at their bag, then back up at him. “Well, cool. We’ll both suck, then.”

“How hard can it be, anyways?” Lloyd says, sorting through their rocks. “You just find a flat one, right?”

“Yeah,” Skylor says. “Then you sort of just, frisbee it. I think.”

“Hm.”

“You haven’t thrown a frisbee either, have you.”

“Oh, like you have.”

Skylor presses her lips together, snorting. “Was wondering when your snark was gonna show back up.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Do you not remember half the stuff that came out of your mouth, back at the tournament?”

“You would’ve been out of your mind too, if you had to herd the guys around then — also, bold words coming from you, ooh, how dare you call me a traitor, even though it’s totally dead-on—”

“That wasn’t even close to what I said, and also—” Skylor snatches a smooth rock before Lloyd can, hefting it up. “It’s not like I was gonna admit to you all I was a traitor. That defeats the whole purpose of betraying. Lying my way out of a corner was the smart choice.”

“You’d be surprised,” Lloyd mutters, as Skylor flings her rock across the water.

They both watch as it splashes sadly, sinking instantly like, well. A rock.

“Okay,” Skylor cringes. “That was a warm-up.”

Several warm-ups later, neither of them have made any progress whatsoever, save to torment whatever fish are hanging out on this side of Ninjago City’s harbor with relentless rock barrages.

“This is ridiculous,” Lloyd huffs, watching as his rock all but torpedoes into the water. “What’s wrong with us, that we can’t get one stupid rock to skip?”

“Maybe it’s in the wrist?” Skylor flexes her hand, angling it one way then another. She winds ups, throws the rock out, and — nope.

“I think we’re getting worse,” Lloyd remarks as Skylor sputters, wiping the seawater that splashed up from her face.

She can’t help but agree. They’re down to a few rocks left, and neither of them have made any progress, much less skipped a single rock. At some point, they give up altogether, seeing who can throw their rock out the furthest instead.

“This one’s going…” Lloyd raises his arm, closing one eye and squinting as he angles higher. He finally pauses with his hand pointing upwards toward Ninjago City. “Right through that weird oval thing on Borg Tower.”

“Don’t hit it too hard,” Skylor says. “They just got it back up last week.”

“I’m not hitting it, it’s going through it, weren’t you listening?”

“To you? Nah. I’ve heard you suck at public speaking.”

“Wow, after you forced me into the live broadcast and everything—”

As if to emphasize his distress, Lloyd takes a running start, hurling the rock forward. They watch as it arcs across the skyline, before plummeting somewhere in the harbor.

“So close,” Skylor murmurs.

Lloyd flops on the ground with a dull thump, legs sprawling in front of him as he leans back on his elbows. Skylor’s makeshift sling isn’t doing much at all anymore, though it looks like he doesn’t need it to.

That, or he’s hiding pain stupidly well. Which wouldn’t be surprising, if disappointing.

“Defeated,” he mourns. “Overthrown by rocks.”

Skylor dusts gingerly at the ground before sitting next to him. “They sure got the best of us, this time.”

“Maybe it’s a learning curve,” he says. “That or we missed, like, the optimal rock-skipping development time.”

“Mmh. Maybe we need to recruit a teacher who actually had a decent childhood.”

“If you find someone, lemme know.”

They both laugh, breathless and hollow, because they’re not much else they can say, to that.

Lloyd sits up suddenly, pulling his knees to his chest. His arms wrap tightly around them, eyes glued forward. Instead of asking, Skylor follows his gaze to the skyline of Ninjago City, the darkened scars left behind by Garmadon and Harumi painfully pronounced this late at night.

It couldn’t have been longer than two weeks, could it? Their rule over the city?

It feels like years.

She can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for the others — can’t imagine what it was like, ending it.

It pains her, but Skylor doesn’t remember much of Garmadon’s defeat. She’d thrown everything she had into controlling his power, and when it had snapped back on her, ravaging through her like a cloying poison, everything had gone dark and hazy.

It kind of sucks, because she’d done all that just to miss the most important parts, but…it is what it is.

What she does remember, besides Nya’s steady voice and Dareth’s panicked yelling, is the blazing warmth that was Lloyd carrying her.

That and his painfully bony shoulder digging into her stomach.

“I was trying not to get us crushed,” Lloyd mutters, cheeks turning pink. “Sorry my shoulder wasn’t up to cushion-y standards.”

“And I’m trying to say thank you,” Skylor sighs. “But seriously. Put something on those bones.”

“Meh meh meh,” Lloyd mocks. There’s a lack of his usual energy in the action, the dullness to his eyes only made worse by the bruise-like circles beneath them. But it’s still very Lloyd — a flash of the friend she knows.

“I really do mean it,” she says. “Thank you. For carrying me out of there. For saving me.”

Lloyd stares at her with dark eyes. Not as dark as they were, back when he’d lost his power, but the glow is almost entirely absent.

“You shouldn’t—” he bites off, frustrated. He tosses the rock he’s holding, up and down. “It was never a question.”

He glances at her. “Besides,” and there’s the closest she’s seen to a real smile. “You saved us first.”

Not nearly soon enough, she thinks.

She should’ve told him, should have asked — should have let him know how it felt to watch her father fall deeper into madness, told him what it felt like to lose hope — what it meant, to move on.

To cut ties, before they strangled you.

“How are you,” she says, as gently as she can. Then, because gentle doesn’t always get you through the walls they build— “For real. Not how people want to hear you’re doing, or the answer you think they want. How are you.”

Lloyd stiffens. There’s a flicker of fear in his expression, his mouth moving on instinct.

“I’m doing okay.”

Tremors lace through his hand where he holds the rock, shuddering fingers tracing over the rough surface.

“Okay as I can be.” He looks down, the rock slipping from his fingers as his arms wrap around himself. “I know that isn’t the answer you want, but I don’t…”

He looks back up, the lights of Ninjago City misty in his eyes.

“I don’t know what people want me to say,” he whispers.

Skylor wishes he’d screamed it. Wishes he’d snap, wishes he’d find the anger where it simmers inside him and turn it outwards against the world, rather than violently projecting it inwards like a masochistic missile all the time. Anything at all, instead of this hollow brokenness.

It reminds Skylor a bit too much of—

Well.

“I know I — things are—” Lloyd swallows. He pauses, raising his hand to scrub at an already-bloodshot eye. “Everything happened so fast. It was like — like getting hit with a bus, then another bus, then she — put the bus in reverse and ran me back over, and I never really had the chance to…to…”

“To get back up?”

Lloyd nods. He picks absently at a bloodstained patch on the leg of his gi. “And I know that’s just a stupid metaphor, but getting back up is…it’s really—”

Lloyd’s pulling threads loose now, tugging hard enough that he’s likely to start unraveling holes in his gi.

“Can I tell you something? Something that’s not…not so good.”

“Hey, you know me.” Skylor elbows him. “I’m an expert at not-good.”

Lloyd’s eyes are a little too knowing. “You’re really not.”

And she’d turn a mirror on him, if she could. “What is it, then?”

Lloyd looks away, one unusually-sharp tooth gnawing at his lip.

“I know my dad — my dad I used to have — he loved me. I know he did.” Lloyd sounds, rather devastatingly, like he’s trying to convince himself. “But now that he’s…now that he’s like this, and after everything that happened, I almost wish — I almost—”

He cuts off, covering his face with his hands. “Never mind.”

Skylor stays still, her gaze fixed ahead on a dark spot in the city skyline. If it were her, she’d want—

Lloyd’s voice is a muffled whisper. “I wish he’d never loved me at all.”

Skylor lets out a long, shaky breath.

Lloyd gives a dry, horrible kind of laugh. “That’s terrible, isn’t it? It’s so selfish, it’s — I’m a horrible person, for thinking that way. But it — it hurts now, to think that — that maybe, now that I’m different — and her — that even my dad—”

“It hurts,” she murmurs. “To lose it. To think that it’s your fault.”

Lloyd brings his arms over his head, the bandages on his left arm a stark white in the dimness as he buries his face in his knees. Curling up, as if he can make himself small enough the world will finally forget he exists.

Skylor’s…familiar.

But then again, is she?

She swallows. Her father was one thing, but if — if he came back now, after she’s worked so hard to move on — at the height of his madness, what would she do?

She’s out of her depth, as she’s always been.

But there was a reason she answered the call so fervently, a reason she followed Lloyd without hesitation. Skylor doesn’t put much stock in the Green Ninja, doesn’t put much in any kind of prophecy. But she does care, very much, about Lloyd, and she thinks that’ll take her a bit farther.

“You know.” She looks down, running her finger over their last rock. “You were one of the first people that gave me any hope that I could change. That, uh, someone could love me.”

Lloyd startles, emerging just enough that she can see the green of an eye. “Huh? Me?”

She nods. “Back on my father’s island, during the tournament. I was convinced that…that after everything I’d done, with who I was, there wasn’t a chance I’d find someone who loved me.”

Lloyd frowns, lowering his arms so he can look at her fully. “But I didn’t — Kai was the one who reached out to you. He was the one that saw you. I didn’t…I didn’t really do anything.”

“Yeah. He did. But he reached out to you, first.”

Lloyd stares at her, eyes wide. Skylor smiles at him. “You were good. No matter how bad your family had been. And it…it had been okay, for you.”

The mistiness returns to Lloyd’s eyes as he looks back to the skyline, his lip caught tightly between his teeth.

“We’re doing okay, right?” Skylor pulls her own knees up to her chest. “You and me. I mean, we helped, a lot. We fought back for the city. You did a lot more than me, obviously, but—”

“Don’t say that,” Lloyd sounds pained. “Don’t compare it, like I’m — I do a lot more harm than good, sometimes.”

“You don’t say that,” Skylor snaps.

Lloyd flinches. She bows her head, staring down at her feet.

“We’re good,” she says, hating the way her voice wobbles. “We’re different.”

It’s occurring to her, how cold it is out here on the water. She hopes Lloyd doesn’t get home with a cold, on top of everything else.

“We’re different,” Lloyd echoes.

“Yeah.” Skylor swallows. “That has to count for something, right?”

Lloyd makes a small noise, but it isn’t one of disagreement. There’s a rustling as he reaches for the bag, then holds out their final, sad rock.

“Wanna give it the last try?” He gives her a crooked, half smile. “Make it count?”

Her fingers close over the rough surface, cold against the warmth of his hand.

The brightness of the sun against water on her father’s island in her eyes, Skylor flings the rock as hard as she can, far enough that it’s swallowed entirely by the harbor darkness.

If she tries, she can imagine it skipping, just once, across the freezing waters.

She tells herself, it counts anyways.

#everybody read this right fucking now #im crying at 4am help

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