ninjago imagines

tangled thoughts | lloyd g.

[Lloyd on the matter of being left behind, and the people who have done it.]

A/N: ...I still can't end stories properly

• • •

Lloyd knows what being left behind is like.

He's been abandoned by his family one, two, three, too many times to count. 

He's four and his dad is leaving the house, and his mother is screaming and crying at the same time. His dad doesn't look back as the door slams behind him, and Lloyd faintly wonders when he'll come back.

He's seven, and his mom is standing by the Darkley's door, gazing at him with a emotion he can't understand. Lloyd doesn't like it. Then she turns without taking his hand, and he understands what's going on. She's leaving him, just like his dad left him before, cold and angry, like the kids leave him in the playground dirty and alone.

(He listens to her make excuse after excuse, year after year of him being distant and cold, but the blame still stays, festering away at old memories.)

The principal brings him in, sobbing and screaming and kicking, and he cries for a long time. 

Then Lloyd's nine, and people in bright uniforms are leaving him grasping at wooden beams helplessly, and it's tall and he's scared but he's the son of Lord Garmadon and he isn't supposed to be this terrified. He spits bitter insults and threats to hide his rising terror, and watches them leave like everyone seems to do. 

He's nine and a half, and watching his dad come back and leave him again, eyes glinting a horrifying scarlet red. He hates how he's bad now, sporting weapons and henchmen, and his smiles don't reach his eyes. Then he leaves, with the Golden Weapons, and Lloyd wonders if they're more important than him. 

(Probably. His dad seemed to want to take a lot of measures to get rid of him, now.)

Zane sacrifices himself to defeat the Overlord, and Lloyd stands at his statue, watching it shine against the sky. He wishes he could've been the one to leave instead of the nindroid. His teammates follow Zane away, to different jobs and lives and times, all without him. 

(It's his fault. He should've been stronger, faster, smarter, figured out a way to defeat the Overlord without risking the lives of everyone else.)

He watches his uncle leave in a tornado of broken time and magic, and takes out his anger on searching for hope he'll come back. 

He's thirteen or fourteen or fifteen, and his dad is standing there, eyes sad and tired, and Sensei Wu is picking up a book that's all too familiar. He runs, leaving someone else alone for once, but returns to watch his dad leave because he knows it would be more painful to part without a goodbye. 

Afterward he cries, like he's seven and thrown into Darkley's again, and Kai hugs him tight and whispers quiet 'it's gonna be okay's' into his ears. Lloyd knows it's not going to be okay, though. It's sweet, empty promises and he's made his peace with that a long time ago. 

He's fourteen or fifteen or sixteen, and Harumi leaves him, throwing one last vengeful remark from under that violent mask before kicking out the wall. He hates her, and he hates how he still loves her, and he hates how everyone he loves leaves him. 

(He thinks some of him still does.)

She leaves him a second time, in a mess of burning bricks and glass, and he watches the building go down, silently crying. 

Nya holds him after they find her body in the rubble, and says nothing because she knows how it feels to have someone you love die before your eyes, and that nothing can really mend the pain.

He's waking up, head a hurricane of panic and fear and worry, and part of him still wonders if Garmadon is still there. Lloyd barely needs to glance around the courtyard to know he's left, and then wonders why he still hopes he'll stay, one day. 

Zane disappeared in a vortex of glowing purple and blue, and it's a long time of being alone until Lloyd finds him again, cold and changed in the Never Realm. He tries his best to bring him back, though, because he knows what it's like to lose your way. 

(He knows it, painfully well, learned after years of years of figuring out his own destiny.)

And after Nya leaves, bright water swirling from the last corners of Ninjago City, he leaves. 

Lloyd's too tired of being the one constantly left behind, abandoned without a thought. Making friends and eventually, family, just keeps leading to pain, and he guesses the only logical decision to make is... to stop. 

He's exhausted of being the responsible one. Of having to pull the team back together after uncountable tragedies, drag his family through catastrophe, one after another without end.    

If taking his own way is what it takes to get rid of the hurt and the pain that never seems to stop coming, he'll do it. 

(He can't help but feel like he's still left behind, though.)