ninjago imagines

someday, i will lose you to the stars and the moon (pt. 3) | harumi

a/n: includes heavy Harumi and Lloyd friendship interactions, don't read it if you don't like that and/or feel strongly against any type of Harumi+Lloyd friendship. follows the last episode of crystallized, mostly canon compliant until the end of that episode.

tw: death, blood, malnourishment, hospitalized scenes, mind control, ptsd [flashbacks].

p.s: final chapter you guys. it took so long but i'm happy with it :)

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Harumi is bleeding.

She's used to it, but this time is... different. She's reading, at least she's trying to, (the words are blurring in her vision and she can't think, can't concentrate), and her throat burns as something drips down her face. She sighs. Red blotches down the page, smearing the ink and dragging it down onto the bedsheets. Red, not purple.

Harumi reaches up, blood coating her fingers and flowing down her wrist, but it's crimson red tearing across her skin, not... not tinged with alluring violet or glowing with a hint of sickly iron.

Oh. She can't breath (that's a daily occurrence by now, but razor sharp relief wraps around her lungs and delicately cuts into her throat and she can't. Breath.)

The Overlord's power on her is gone. Gone, after days weeks months almost a year of being trapped in his cage, vomiting purple and watching her own blood, her own blood being owned by his sickeningly vivid power, curling around her heart.

But life is a double edged sword and Harumi knows what this means, because it's been a ticking time bomb sitting on her chest, a weight down on her mind every time she wonders about the future.

She's going to die, soon, sooner than she thinks and she's not ready, even though she pretends she is every time she thinks about it. She's. Not. Ready. (she's not ready to slip into the darkness because, well, what is she going to see when she wakes up dead? Last time wasn't a treat and she can't go through that again, she can't.)

She's fumbling for her phone, finger's dragging wine red streaks through her blankets as tears blind her vision, and Lloyd's number is flashing on the screen before she can reel back her thoughts. She stares at it, dots running through the screen over and over, and swipes the call shut before she can stop herself. He... doesn't deserve this (doesn't deserve to be dragged away from family that actually loves him, just to watch another friend die.)

So... she doesn't. She throws the phone into a dark corner of the room, sending it clattering across the floor to skid against the wall.

Harumi stares at her fingers, a layer of blood already drying over it, smeared over paper white sheets and pale skin. (steady, Lloyd's voice is echoing in her head, but she can't breath and her heart won't stop stammering away in her chest.)

Purple is flashing in her vision, the Overlord's gravelling voice is drowning out Lloyd's contrasting calm, and for a breath taking moment (not that she has any), she wonders if this is how she dies. Not the Overlord's power influencing her, not a tragic accident or a revenge fueled payback, just a bad mix of asthma and a panic attack.

That single thought is enough to send her spiraling back into reality, stupid calming methods snapping in automatically, and Harumi is all too suddenly blinking away the burning tears at the corner of her eyes, scrubbing her cheeks with the already stained blankets. The tears soak into the fabric, pooling with blood, and a new trail of scarlet is painting towards the ground.

Harumi smiles. Blood and tears, she thinks. If she wasn't so tired she'd find some sort of poetic irony in that, something with blood sweat tears, the sour sweet finality of death weighing down on her chest.

She is tired, though, so when the rain starts to thunder down against the windows, drumming into a steady beat to lull her mind, she's already turned down the lights, burying her face in the pillows.

If Death comes tonight, she hopes it will be gentle (memories float to her mind as she lingers on the edge of unconsciousness, and it's her dad carrying her to bed. she's seven again, the world is simple before her eyes, it's warm arms steady around her and soft sleepy covers, her mother already whispering good-night as the door closes.)

Harumi Jade passes in the middle of the night, when the thunderstorm outside is raging too loud for the flatline to matter, the rain too soft, too steady, too right to take her body from the bed just then.

(The world is not cruel, not yet all hard edges and razor blades, so Lloyd Garmadon arrives two hours after they clear the room, landing . The realization hits him hard in the stomach like a brick of regret, but he hopes in some other place, she is opening her eyes and smiling.) 

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