Chapter Text
The door had been left ajar, and it gave a low creak as she edged it open, surprised to note the blue light saturating the air. It was a soft light, but it cut through the creature all the same, outlining the shape of the tiny bedroom. A high window, shuttered against the night. Weapons leaned clumsily against a rickety cabinet. An iron-framed single bed squished into the far corner. A second, thin mattress that had clearly been dragged from elsewhere in the house, the bottom end of which disappeared beneath the iron frame. Huddled on the thin mattress were the blue ninja and the girl, curled under a mound of blankets like a yin-yang. And there was Lloyd, propped upright by a dozen pillows on the actual bed, flicking tiredly through something on his phone.
In the harsh light, the shadows were thick beneath his eyes, but it didn't matter how tired he was. He was still a ninja. At the creak of the door, his eyes flicked away from his screen long enough to note her presence, encode it into his lagging mind, and promptly return his attention to the phone.
Well. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but blatant dismissal hadn't been it.
She bit her lip. "I can't sleep."
Lloyd glanced up at her again. In the blue light, the weariness was all too clear in every line of his face. "I know," he said shortly, and turned back to his screen.
Harumi swallowed, paralysed at the brink. Shadows at her back, blue light so tantalisingly close. But she could feel the cool breath of the creature behind her, those tendrils of darkness urging her back. It's not too late, the cobwebs seemed to say. You can still leave. The shadows will have you back. You can still reforge the stone. You can still reweave the web.
The dark cannot hurt you, Mimi, the creature whispered to her, a mantra so distorted by time and bitterness that she had nearly forgotten the second half of it.
And it won't dare to try with a ninja on your side.
Tentatively, she took a step. She could not recall doing anything tentatively in her life before now. "What are you doing?" she asked, if only to drown out the enraged hiss of the creature in the doorway.
Lloyd shrugged, winced, and took a breath that was no less ragged than the ones before. "I can't sleep either."
Harumi paced closer, utterly unaware she had done so until she was standing level with his elbow. "Broken ribs are no joke," she said quietly.
Lloyd made a tired sound of frustration. "Yeah. Because that's all that's keeping me up." He shook his head of the words the moment they were out, shifting his focus back to his phone and muttering something she couldn't quite make sense of.
She chose not to push it. "You didn't answer my question."
Lloyd glanced at her again. She couldn't hope to decipher the layers of thought through the exhaustion in his eyes, but he only tilted the phone enough for her to see the screen. She blinked the sudden brightness away. It took her a moment to recognise it as a social media feed. On screen, a short video was playing. It had been taken somewhere out in the rice fields, the outskirts of one of the smaller villages. Two village boys with a marked resemblance were exchanging conspiratorial looks, giggling as the camera panned to a third boy, who was shrieking, having just uprooted a rubber snake with an armful of paddy.
Harumi blinked. "You have Instabook?"
Lloyd managed a tiny shrug and scrolled to the next video. "The ninja think the tradeoff isn't worth it, but you'd be surprised just how many tip-offs I've received from scrolling this dumb app. I'm well aware of some of the shit that's out there about us, but I like to keep an eye on what's going on in and around the city. And since there's literally nothing else I can feasibly do right now without earning a mammoth scolding from Kai..." He indicated his pressure-bandaged ribs with a careless wave of his hand.
Harumi narrowed her eyes incredulously. "Are you really working right now? It's like two in the morning. You're meant to be sleeping, idiot."
"So are you," Lloyd shot back without even looking up.
"I'm not the one with broken ribs," Harumi said, always craving the last word.
Lloyd only rolled his eyes like a disgruntled teenager and scrolled to the next video. This one was set in some sort of studio, accented in shades of steel blue. Overstuffed plaid armchairs in shades of red were angled together, a splintered coffee table between them. In the first chair sat a systematically sympathetic reporter, in the other a hollow-eyed woman, timidly perched, hands gripping the arms of the chair and body visibly shuddering as she began to recount what was very clearly going to be a horror story.
"It was a-awful," the woman stuttered. "I saw it from the window. My baby girl was trying to look, but I c-couldn't let her. This hoard of- of those crystal zombies. They swarmed him. My Kevin- h-he turned and then- these neighbourhood boys came roaring up the road in a four wheel drive and -" Her voice broke off in a sob, hands trembling as she continued in a breathy whisper. "They called themselves the Crystal Capers. They had taken it upon themselves to rid our suburb of the crystal zombies. Th-they ploughed right through them all, a-all of them -" The woman could hold the tears back no longer, and she buried her face in manicured hands. The reporter reached out to her, but if they said anything further, Harumi did not hear it.
For a moment, there was no screen. There was no reporter. There was no Lloyd. She was back home, stretched across a patch of sunlight on the worn woolen carpet, feet kicked up idly and crayons sprawled around her. She was humming to herself, scratching green crayon across the page when a quiet sound caught her attention. She was trudging barefoot across the carpet, down the lamp-lit hall to investigate. She was pressing her eye to the gap in her parents' door, where her mother had her work-worn hands over her face and her father had his arms around her and his lips in her hair. She was letting her eyes adjust to the shadows drenching the room, holding her breath to hear her father's voice.
"We'll be okay," he had whispered and, ignorant to her presence, her mother had cried. Cried with the same fervour as that woman on the screen. Cried for reasons Harumi had been far too small to understand. Cried in the darkness that gave her no comfort, the creature that had seeped through the cracks in the wallpaper.
Something touched her shoulder. She flinched, startled, and barely caught herself from stepping backward, reorienting herself in just enough time to recall where she was.
"Careful," Lloyd said, yanking her firmly back to the present "I doubt Jay and Nya would take so kindly to such a rude awakening." His tone was dry, but she found that he was looking at her in abject surprise, his hand firmly on her shoulder as if he meant to ground her. She shrugged it harshly away, turning just enough to catch her breath.
Her mother's tear-stained face and trembling hands remained stamped across the backs of her eyelids. Hands that changed moment by moment, frame by frame. Her mother. The stranger. Callouses and bitten nails. Clear skin and acrylics. Tear-worn faces seemed to flicker like twin flames in her mind, lunging for the same inevitable kindling, twining closer and closer together until they were one and the same, smoke rising in a single stream to mar the air with a single accusation -
"It's not your fault, you know," Lloyd said. He had paused the video, and the eyes he had raised to hers reflected the blue light, knowing too much.
Harumi blinked. It was all the response she could muster, shocked to find that Lloyd had read and discarded the thought before it even had the chance to sink its teeth into whatever bones remained of the skeleton that was her conscience.
"Oh?" she sneered, but it was more derisive than bitter. In the blue-lit room, the creature had no real ground to stand on. "I can't wait to hear you try to explain your way through that one."
Lloyd set the phone slowly down across his lap, letting the blue light bounce against the ceiling and spread across the space. "I know what it's like," he said after a moment. "To be manipulated."
"I know," Harumi said with a touch of asperity. "I'm the one who manipulated you."
"Don't flatter yourself," Lloyd said with a bitter edge of his own. "You certainly weren't the first. It's a really long story, and I'm too bloody tired to go into it now. Look just... I was really young when it happened. I didn't have the capacity to know I was being manipulated until it was too late. But even if I had, I can't say how much I would have changed my actions. Because the thing was I didn't feel like I had any other choice. And even if I had known what he was doing... I think I would have been too afraid to go against him."
Well that was news to her.
"Who was manipulating you?"
At that, Lloyd glanced away. "That's not important. Harumi, I know I don't have to explain my point, because you already know where I'm going with this. He didn't just recruit you. He brought you back from the dead. You can tell yourself whatever you want to, but we both know that you didn't have a real choice in any of this Crystal Council shit. We both know that if you had refused him, you wouldn't be alive right now." He swallowed, raising his eyes to meet hers. His were dark with something she couldn't quite place. "It's not a crime to want to live."
Harumi felt her throat dry up. The words felt raw, out in the open. They hung there, like the cobwebs in her soul, like the mist of a breath she had not allowed herself to take. Because it wasn't as if she hadn't thought it before. Fleetingly, on the rare occasions when the cobwebs wound around her throat and her lungs cried our for air. She had never allowed the notion to go any further than that. She hadn't dared to let herself believe it.
Just think, Lloyd's words came to her, echoing across time, across a city skyscraper in the midst of destruction. How many others will be made like you.
How many others had she consigned to the shadowed corners of an orphanage? How many others had she fed to that sprawling creature of blackness and cold? How many others had she snatched for the darkness, shrouded from the sunlight?
Maybe it wasn't a crime, to want to live. But maybe it was.
I know you don't want innocent people hurt, Lloyd's words rang in her head to the beat of a much tamer drum. Because he hadn't been wrong. Fucking saint that he was. He never had been wrong.
Damn him. Damn him to hell.
"You're cold," Lloyd said, snapping her back to the present for the second time in five minutes. She wanted to deny it, if only to prove that for once in his privileged existence, he was wrong about something. But with the words came her awareness of the way her entire body was trembling, the way the soles of her bare feet seemed to dredge up the chill from the floorboards, the way her toes were curling pitifully together to retain some sense of warmth.
"I'm not," she lied. By the First, why was she so determined for him to be wrong? Why was she so adamant to prove that he was just as fallible as anyone else, when every fucking thing he did only cemented how wrong she was?
Lloyd was looking at her again, eyebrows pinched as if he were trying to formulate the answer himself, to manifest some form of understanding in the senselessness of her sudden defiance over something so trivial. Still, Harumi stood her ground, even as a persistent shiver wracked her spine. Whoever had done the insulation on this house deserved to be shot.
"Yes, you are," Lloyd said and - was that smugness in the twitch of his lip?
"No, I'm not," Harumi said between her teeth. Mistake. That drew attention to the unfortunate fact that her teeth were chattering slightly together.
Lloyd tilted his head, the smugness of the gesture painfully clear. "Who's the idiot now?" he said, and caught her wrist before she had the chance to pull away.
She startled. Pain shot through her wrist, a cold wash radiating through the nerves in her arm, down the length of her spine. Fuck. She had been so distracted she had almost forgotten the state of her wrist, and she was helpless to stifle the quiet yelp that left her. Even as drained as he was, there was no way Lloyd hadn't heard it. Indeed, when she looked up, it was to find Lloyd staring at her incredulously, and not without exasperation.
"Are you hurt?" he demanded.
"Because you can talk," she shot back, lightning fast. His fingers were still around her wrist, though she did not immediately pull it away. She told herself that she just didn't have the energy. "Hypocrite."
"Okay, firstly, I didn't know I was injured until the adrenaline wore off. Secondly, I should like to point out the layers of hypocrisy in you calling me a hypocrite. And thirdly, there's bandages in the cabinet there, and I can't reach them."
Harumi let out her breath in a huff of annoyance. "I'm fine."
Her wrist was still in his hand. He turned it, seeming not to notice the flinch she gave in anticipation of the pain, but his touch was surprisingly practiced, impossibly gentle.
"Now I see why Kai and Cole get so fed up with me saying I'm fine when I'm so clearly not," Lloyd muttered. "Your wrist is broken in two places."
"And I'm fine," Harumi said, snatching her arm back, but unable to bite her lip on a cry when the action sent needles of agony shooting through her arm.
Behind her, sheets rustled and the blue ninja murmured something unintelligible, snuggling closer to the girl before settling down once again.
"I don't recommend waking them," Lloyd said tiredly, leaning back against the pillows gingerly with a wince of his own. "Nya will drag you out of the house by your ear."
"She'll try," Harumi muttered, but she was too tired to inject it with the level of malice that was generally expected of her. She clutched her arm to her chest, gnawing at her lip as the pain began to ebb. "Why can't you just accept that I'm fine?"
"Because for someone who spent years masquerading as someone you're not, you're a really fucking bad liar," Lloyd said, remembering after a moment to lower his voice. He spared his friends a quick glance, breathing a quiet relief. Quieter, he added, "And I'm not as blind as you seem to think. You think I don't know why you didn't tell anyone you were hurt?" He blinked tiredly. "You don't deserve the pain, Rumi."
Harumi startled, turning to look at him incredulously. "Did you become a fucking mind reader in my absence?"
"Not exactly." His lip twitched a bit. "Just instinct. And experience."
"What experience?" Harumi said venomously. "What fucking experience could you possibly have to know -"
"What experience?" It was Lloyd's turn to look incredulous. "Try every single one of them." His tone had pitched up again. He didn't seem to care. "You- that day in the Oni temple, you made me out as naive. You made me out as Destiny's golden child, blind to the dark side of every fucking thing I had been through. Everything I had ever fought against, all the battles I had won. Did you really think I didn't know the awful price of victory? The ugly seam that always lies beneath the surface?"
Harumi blinked at the suddenness of the shift in tone. She had made him mad, and this time she hadn't even been trying. "I -"
"Because that's just the thing, Harumi. I do. I do know." He took a slow breath. "In the lead up to the first Final Battle, one by one, I watched my friends fall to darkness. Alone, at the top of that skyscraper, I watched the city fall to darkness. They were the price of my victory, that day. I didn't know if defeating the Overlord would purge the corruption from their veins. In Stiix, I know we couldn't have evacuated every last person in the town before we sent a tidal wave to drown the Preeminent. When the oni invaded, I saw just how many people had been caught up in the darkness. I walked past their frozen bodies, past the black vines draining their life force and I didn't know if they could be saved. I don't know if they all were."
Harumi took note of the lives he hadn't spotlighted. All of the guards that had been lost in the palace explosion, those innocents she had doomed to die by way of the insignia embroidered into their uniforms. The other inevitable residents of the apartment complex that had become her tomb. The ones who had shared that tomb with her.
He took a sharp breath. "It's a fucking hard lesson to learn, but there's nothing anyone can do to change it. When evil takes root, people die. It's as simple as that. It's impossible to face, but we just can't save everyone." His voice was rising again. He swallowed, fingers tapping agitated against the case of his phone. Inactivity had dimmed the screen so far she could barely make out the shape of his face in the dark. "You say I don't know what it's like to carry that guilt. And to that I say, I can't let myself carry it, because the weight of it would destroy me. It would destroy all of us. Just to think of all the casualties, all the lives that are lost year after year after fucking year."
"You said it yourself and you were right. How many lives have been lost because we couldn't save them. How many -" He cut himself off, heaving a breath. Even in the low light she saw the way he had dug his fingers into his palm, harshly enough to draw blood. She didn't think he even noticed. "Why do you think I let myself feel it all? Every injury. Every cut, every bruise, every sprained or broken bone. Why do you think I don't fucking tell anyone when I get hurt? Because they're all so eager to fix it before it has the chance to hurt. But what's a broken bone to a whole fucking life lost? What's a few dozen bruises to a lifetime of grief?" He was breathing unsteadily now, one hand pressed to his ribs in a way that was probably doing more harm than good, but showing no sign of how much it was hurting him to keep speaking like he was. "You think I don't understand? You think I don't fucking understand?"
"I'm sorry." She had no idea the words were on her tongue until they were in the open. They seemed pulled from the depths of her soul, almost by a will of their own. She couldn't help it. His mounting anger and distress and self-hatred were almost palpable. All these years. All this time. She had been tormenting him into succumbing to the emptiness that she had known for so long. She could never have guess that he already had.
Lloyd took another harsh breath and winced, blinking at her as if he were surprised by the strength of his own tirade. "I'm sorry that we couldn't save your parents all those years ago," he said quietly, slouching back as if drained from the conversation. "Don't ever think I'm not."
Harumi didn't know what to say. It was as simple as that. In the span of a few minutes, her entire long-standing perception of the green ninja had been contested, and blurred, and reassembled into something she did not recognise, and had no idea how to reconcile. He was breathing hard now, each rasping in his throat and causing his hand clutching his ribs to tighten. He had tipped his head back against the pillows, sweat beading at his temples and agony written across his face.
Fuck. Had he worsened the break somehow? Had his broken ribs grated against some vital organ? Should she wake one of the ninja? Not Kai, he'd probably burn her alive for daring to enter Lloyd's space at all. Skylor would source the blowtorch for him. Nya wouldn't be much kinder. Jay might be tamer, but there was no way to wake him without rousing Nya. Cole would probably be on much the same page as Kai and Nya, but maybe Zane -
"Rumi," Lloyd wheezed as if he could see the intentions behind her half step toward the door. She turned back, shocked to realise the pain had taken such hold that there were tears brimming in his eyes. "Don't," he murmured, reaching weakly out in her direction. "Please. Rumi." He wasn't looking at her. His eyes were on the screen of his phone, on the video, paused on the image of the woman's face in agony. "Please. Just let me feel the pain."
Harumi hesitated, struck speechless once again. This was a side of Lloyd that she had never known - a side that she had never imagined existed. The pain was her penance. Never had she considered that it might have been his, too.
Slowly, she stepped back toward him. The blue light had dimmed considerably, allowing that creature of blackness and cold the reprieve to reach out. Those too-familiar tentacles crept over the floorboards, keeping pace with her heels, vying for her ankles just as she reached for the phone in Lloyd's hand. A spark buzzed through her nerves when her cold fingers brushed against his. She barely took notice when the creature flinched back from her, stunned, as she slowly flipped the phone screen-down, smothering the light. But she let her hand rest on top of his long enough to sap some of his warmth for herself. He shuddered, but made no move to push her away.
"You're freezing," he whispered. She tried to ignore the wince that he couldn't contain even at those small words, because he had asked it of her, and it was as familiar as it was damaging. But shoe couldn't help but hold her breath when he tipped his hand over beneath hers, threading their fingers together and tugging it toward him in a clear beckoning gesture. "I'd move over, but I don't think I can. You don't deserve to freeze, Rumi."
"Hypocrite," she murmured. But the cold air was wearing down whatever was left of her careless defenses. She allowed Lloyd enough of a hesitation to change his mind, but he only tugged at her hand again. With a breath that was far more ragged than she had hoped, Harumi climbed onto the bed, taking great care not to put any pressure on his chest as she climbed over him. Lloyd pushed the blankets far enough back and she slid beneath them, almost amazed at the shock of warmth that overcame her. She hadn't realised just how cold she had been.
Lloyd managed to push a few pillows to the ground and shift around just enough to face her. Harumi held her breath. The bed was small, and clearly designed for a single person, and now their legs pressed together, faces only inches away, though all she could see was the glint of his eyes on hers in the dark.
"Your feet are freezing," Lloyd murmured, and closed his eyes. With them went the last of the light from the room but for the first time in a long time, Harumi felt indifferent to the dark. She knew the dark now, knew the comfort and the pain, the reassurance and the deception. She knew what truly ran beneath the skin of that creature she had wrapped around herself for so very long. But here, she did not feel the static weight of those tendrils in the darkness.
"Your friends are going to murder me," Harumi whispered back, but couldn't help but inch closer to him. He was so warm.
Lloyd murmured something unintelligible and the next thing she knew, his arm was around her, her head securely on his shoulder, and he was asleep.
Harumi watched him breathe softly for a moment before closing her own eyes. The warmth between them was like the first flicker of a campfire in an icy desert, and she couldn't help but marvel at the strange rightness of it all. This was the kind of warmth she had only ever known in her mother's arms. In her father's knowing smile. In the mint green walls of her childhood bedroom. This was the warmth that had been buried alongside the casket of her innocence. This was the warmth she had long given up trying to find.
And to think after all these years, all this time, she had been so blindly trying to destroy it.
Because she had never thought she would find it in him.