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He didn't know what he did, but he faced the consequences of it every day. Unmistakeable and not easily hidden, he faced the torture and harassment of his classmates every day. Slander of his character, slander of his father, slander of his mother, the accusations were truly disgusting. It ranged from petty insults to direct attacks, and although Lloyd did't ever provoke his classmates, they tried so hard to provoke him.
"Where's your daddy, Garmadork?"
"Lloyd Garmadon? More like 'wah look at me I'm so depressed my dad left me'! He screams pitiful, what a little bitch."
Lloyd was used to it, he was used to the foul language, he was used to the taunts in the halls and the taunts whispered to him during class. He had built up a wall, and he had shielded himself from the hurt of the words. The words just fueled his pent-up anger, and his destructive thoughts. He almost didn't care anymore. They didn't matter, they were going to be in his life as long as possible, unless his father was magically cleared of his crimes and was not guilty, but that would never happen.
"Your dad's a mass murderer, when are you gonna go snap like him?"
Lloyd's father was in prison for life after the incident Lloyd tried to avoid. His mother always described it as something snapping in his father's brain, something evil haunting him. His father spoke of an evil voice in his head, in what Lloyd had heard of as trying to plead insanity, whatever that meant. He couldn't wrap his mind around the trial, the trial he begged his mom to go to even though he was only thirteen. They dressed up fancy and watched his father's panicked eyes roam around, searching for them. When his father finally found them, the whole time he just stared at Lloyd's mother, and in the middle of the trial she had to leave, overwhelmed with emotion, as she said, and she dragged Lloyd with her. He never really found out the verdict until he read in the news the next day. He had narrowly escaped the death penalty, the reporters said. He was lucky, they said he was lucky. His mother refused to do any interviews, and she had holed herself up in their house, never coming out. She had their groceries delivered, only when she remembered to order them (otherwise Lloyd would do it).
"When are you gonna come and shoot up the school?"
"This school's so fucking boring, I almost wouldn't mind it."
Lloyd clenched his teeth and breathed slowly through his nose, in and out.
He truly was a hateful child (if fourteen counted as being a child still), and he felt so empty and so dead inside, their words didn't even matter. He would never prove them right, though, he could never be known as the kid taking after his father. He wanted to just end it, he wanted to be out of this hell he called his life, but his mother needed him. She had shut down after the trial, and she had grown frail and thin, only eating soup and drinking sake, staring at the television. Lloyd would have to walk her to bed, and he didn't even know if she slept. All she did was sip and drink and stare, sip and drink and stare.
Lloyd didn't resent his mother, no, he loved her, but he was so mad at her for disappearing on him. For leaving him. Lloyd wasn't sure if he would ever forgive his mother for basically making him become the man of the house. He had to grow up five times faster than everybody else, and sometimes Lloyd felt like an old man.
He missed his uncle, but his uncle Wu had disappeared on him forever ago, probably running away from the accusations and the trials and the hell that was his family. Lloyd would have done that too if he had a chance, so he didn't blame his uncle, but he still resented him for leaving the family. Leaving him, like everybody else did.
He could hear the footsteps, the all too familiar jeer, and he tried to turn out of the way, but it was too late, and the familiar feeling of being pulled up by his shirt and slammed against a locker brought Lloyd back to reality.
Chen, one of the cheerleaders who was ridiculously strong, hoisted Lloyd up with a sneer on his face and slammed him again into the locker. The familiar pain in his back made him hiss slightly, as the locker had touched on a particularly sore spot.
"Shouldn't you be used to this now, you fucking psycho? Shouldn't you be enjoying this, masochist creep?" Chen hissed, spittle flying. Lloyd winced.
"I think if anyone's the psycho here, it's you." Lloyd hissed back, his voice raw and unready for talking. This was the first time he had spoken to anyone besides his mother and delivery men in what seemed like weeks.
"The rat speaks!" someone crowed, and Chen looked dumbfounded for a second and Lloyd fought off the urge to smirk. Despite the fact that he was still being shoved hard against a locker, he felt like the one in command for a few seconds.
Chen's confusion turned to anger and he stared up at Lloyd with an almost animalistic hatred to his eyes. Such passion, such emotion Lloyd had invoked within him. Lloyd was small, and he was silent, but he was powerful.
"What the fuck did you just call me?"
The two stared at each other for a pregnant pause, before Lloyd snarled back, "I called you psycho. Do you need hearing aids as well-?"
"You're dead, you hear me?!" Chen yelled, and pulled a helpless Lloyd back before shoving him, this time even harder, against the locker, and the impact was ridiculously hard, Lloyd only saw white.
-
"Ugh..."
Lloyd rolled over. He was lying down on his back, and he rolled over to a side, trying to block out the bright white light creeping into his vision. He blinked, and opened his eyes slowly.
The room was white and smelled sterile, and Lloyd immediately knew it was the nurse's office. He groaned, hoping school hadn't ended yet.
"Lloyd? Are you awake?" The calming voice of the school nurse piped up through the white noise of machines.
"Y-yeah." Lloyd croaked. He hoisted himself up into a sitting position and peered around the room. The nurse's office was a typical nurse's office, with posters advertising vaccines to prevent specific diseases, and cabinets holding bandages and pill bottles and first aid kits. Nothing that he didn't expect.
The nurse walked over to the cot Lloyd was lying on and crouched down so she wouldn't be towering over him.
"You've been unconscious for at least thirty minutes. We found you collapsed in the hallway by the lockers, alone. Can you tell me what happened?"
"I was feeling dizzy while I was walking to class, and then I saw white." Lloyd lied. "I can't remember any more besides that."
"Have you been eating enough?" The nurse asked, concern in her eyes.
As if on cue, Lloyd's stomach growled. He flushed pink in embarrassment and shrugged.
"What's your home life like?" she asked, not unkindly.
"You're not a counselor, why are you asking me this?" he replied defensively. This was the most Lloyd had said in what felt like an eternity.
"Please answer my question, it makes everything easier for everyone." the nurse said, firmly but kindly. Lloyd sighed but resigned to her question.
"The hell do you think it is?" Lloyd muttered bitterly. "My dad's fucking Garmadon."
The nurse didn't respond, and it seemed to Lloyd like she wanted to hear more, so he sighed. There was no one else there anyway, so he just let it all out.
"My mom's depressed, everyone else in my family abandoned us after what my dad did. He kept everything secret from me, and so did my mom, and I never knew anything about their lives. And now all my mom does is stare at the television, eat whatever I cook her, and drink sake. Sometimes I have to switch it for water so she doesn't die, because she needs me so much. I hate living like this, and all I'm going to be known as is the mass murderer's kid, and nobody's gonna trust me, and everybody's either gonna pity me or wait for me to go off the hinge and shoot up a school." Unknown to him, his voice grew louder and louder with each sentence. "All I am is bullied and harassed and beaten up and insulted but there's nothing I can do to stop it, I'm not better than any of them, I'm not more powerful than any of them, and I hate it. I hate them. I hate everything. I don't even feel anything anymore." he said, and to his embarrassment, felt hot tears flooding his eyes and dripping down his cheeks.
The nurse didn't speak for a while, and merely looked down at the ground, still crouching. Lloyd stared at her, waiting for a response, waiting for her to tilt her head up and talk to him, and it felt like ages before she did.
"I think you need to see a counsellor."
"No." Lloyd immediately said.
"Lloyd, listen to me."
"Counsellors are useless. All they do is listen to you whine, and we can't afford one anyway."
"There's one at school," the nurse argued.
"No way in hell. Somebody could see me." Lloyd protested. "I would get so much shit for that. They would never let me hear the end of it." he said, not even caring about the not-school-appropriate language he used.
"Lloyd, please-" the nurse said, reaching out and touching his arm. Instinctively, he jerked it back and hissed at the sudden sharp pain darting up his arm.
"Don't touch me there!" Lloyd yelled.
The nurse's eyes widened, and she stared at him in silence for a long moment, before getting up and heading to the door.
"Where are you going?" Lloyd demanded, eyes wildly searching the room.
"I-I can't break protocol, Lloyd. I'm sorry." She stood at the phone, dialed a number, and said into the phone, "Hi, it's Shari. Can you come to my office, please? Thanks. Bye-bye."
"What are you doing? Who are you calling?" Lloyd shouted at her, frantically looking for a form of escape. But there was none.
The nurse merely shook her head. "I'm sorry."
-
The counsellor arrived not long later, and he was a short, stout man with a benign face, but Lloyd thought all counsellors had benign faces, a facade of trustworthiness, ready for you to spill your darkest secrets to them, your problems, your fears, your pain. So Lloyd stayed guarded, staring warily at the counsellor.
"Hello, Lloyd. My name is Paul. Can you walk me through what just happened?" the counsellor said.
"Why should I?" Lloyd asked, trying to stay defensive, but his voice wavered.
"You want to." the counsellor said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
Lloyd shook his head almost too fast in response. "No. I don't."
"Well, I'm here until you do."
A few minutes passed by of uncomfortable silence, Lloyd and Paul staring at each other, daring the other to respond first. Lloyd awkwardly cleared his throat, and thought, Fuck it. If this is what gets me out, it's what gets me out.
"I was feeling dizzy in the hallway." he said shortly. "And I guess I collapsed, because I woke up here. I guess I'm not eating enough or something, that's what she said." He pointed toward the nurse, and she nodded to confirm. "Then I started complaining to her, it was really stupid and useless. That's kind of it, can I go now?"
"But that's not why I called you here." the nurse spoke up. "I called you here because I'm afraid Lloyd is self-harming."
"What? That's stupid." Lloyd said defensively, crossing his arms. "You don't have any evidence to back that up, anyway."
Paul sighed. "Lloyd, can you show me your arm?"
Lloyd shook his head. "No thanks. It's cold in here."
"Lloyd, please." the nurse said. "You said earlier that your mother needs you, and we can't legally let you leave until we get closure. So the faster you cooperate, the better."
Lloyd clenched his teeth and hugged his arms to his skinny body. "Please. Don't make me."
Neither the nurse nor Paul answered, yet looked at him pleadingly, and after what seemed like forever, Lloyd relented and let his arms drop. Shaking, he slowly pulled up the sleeve of his hoodie to reveal his forearm, and the lines of cuts, almost like tally marks, striping down it. The higher the cuts were, the fresher they looked, but they were haphazard, hardly neat and accurate, no, they were done in moments of rage or dark impulse, not when Lloyd was right in the head.
The nurse gasped quietly in the background.
"Lloyd, what brings you to do this?" Paul asked, his voice calm and imploring.
Lloyd let his sleeve drop back down, wincing at the fabric's impact with the fresher cuts. "I don't know. I just get really mad, or really sad, or really apathetic. She can tell you why."
Bullying and bad home life, the nurse mouthed, and Paul nodded. Lloyd didn't understand how he was so good at reading lips.
"Why are you letting them win?" Paul asked. "When you do this to yourself, you let the bully affect you. And, Lloyd, think of your mother. Without you, she wouldn't survive. You can't do this to yourself."
"Don't you think I know that?!" Lloyd snapped. "I'm not going to kill myself. That'd basically be killing her, too." His words were said with such emotion and power that the nurse's eyes widened, and Paul nodded only slightly.
"Lloyd. I need to trust that you aren't going to do this again when you get home." he said methodically.
"I won't." Lloyd responded. "I promise." His words were empty, but he forced them to sound not like it. Hell, Lloyd didn't really know if he meant it or not, but that was what he was saying. Anything to get out of there.
There was a pregnant pause as Paul thought, constantly pushing his glasses up his nose.
"Go. Before I change my mind." Paul finally said. "School's over anyway."
Lloyd's eyes widened and he grabbed the backpack beside his bed and bolted out of the nurse's office without a second word.
-
"I'm sorry I'm late, I had to talk to a teacher after school and the bus was slow." Lloyd lied as he rushed into his apartment. Misako didn't respond. She never did, but Lloyd still talked to her. "Do you want me to start dinner?" Silence. "Okay. Thanks. I will."
Lloyd started preheating the oven and took out his math homework. He might do it for the hell of it, Misako's crappy 80s game show television network was just showing reruns. He stared at the numbers until they didn't make any sense in his head, and his head hurt, so he quickly stuffed it back in his backpack, and by then, the beep of the oven signaled that it was preheated. Lloyd looked in the fridge and pulled out a chicken parmesan microwave meal. Those could always be made in the oven. He skimmed through the instructions and sped through the directions, putting the food in the oven and setting the timer.
"The food is cooking." he said. "I'll be in the bathroom." And with that he sped off and slammed the bathroom door behind him.
Lloyd sat on the closed toilet, staring at his father's razor, his heart beating in his chest. It was easy, he had done it many times. So why was he hesitant to do it now? Had the shitty counselor's shitty words made an impact of sorts? No, it wasn't determination to overcome his struggles, it was fear. Fear of the razor, fear of his father's presence inside their house. Lloyd hadn't visited him since the first time, and it had been almost two years since then. He was too scared to confront his demons, he was too scared to admit he needed help, because nobody would help him anyway. They would see him as the murderer's child, fucked up like his father. God, fuck everything. It wouldn't work. He could just end it there. He should just end it there. He was useless anyway. Nobody cared about Lloyd. He was expendable. They would forget about him like they forgot all the others kids that killed themselves, like Tessa Horowitz who jumped off the building, or Lewis Grant who shot himself with his dad's pistol, or Hana Kageyama who hanged herself with her little sister's bright pink belt. These were all different years ago, forgotten by most, remembered by Lloyd.
He didn't realize how quickly he was breathing, and he didn't realize how his hands were trembling. Lloyd closed his eyes and tried to breathe in through his nose only, before sighing. This wouldn't work. He turned slightly and put the razor back. Another time, another day. He had to check on the dinner and his mother. Lloyd got up and, still trembling slightly, walked back to the kitchen just as the timer went off.
"I'm going to let it cool for fifteen minutes after taking it out," Lloyd said as his oven mitted hands took out the cooked meal. He snorted to himself. He could be a cooking show host, or God forbid, a vlogger. The previous events were still on his mind, but Lloyd forced himself to put the feelings out of his mind. He would deal with it later.
-
He and Misako sat next to each other on the couch, staring blankly at the television, eating their own small shared portions of the microwave meal. Nothing accompanied the meal besides water, and in Misako's case, sake. Lloyd hated these game shows repeatedly being shown on television, and he was sick of his mother never doing anything but eating, drinking, and sleeping. Sure, she would occasionally bathe herself and get dressed, but that was roughly once a week. And Lloyd was sick of it. So sick of it, he reached toward the table, grabbed the remote, and turned the television off, before putting the remote back down and lying back down.
Misako turned her head slightly, a confused expression on her face. She looked at the television, and back at Lloyd, and back at the television, asking him to turn it back on.
"No. I won't turn it on." Lloyd said. "You're ruining yourself. You haven't gone outside in months. I do everything for you. When was my childhood? I never got a childhood because of you! I thought middle school was going to be easy, but Dad was constantly running and hiding, and you didn't tell me shit! You condoned his behavior, you let it slide, and now you think you have the right to sit here and be depressed while I take care of you and baby you and pretend like nothing ever happens? You don't say anything, you just let me feed you, you just drink yourself to sleep, and I always, always am the one to clean up your mess! I fucking hate it. I'm tormented and harassed at school but I don't have any friends to confide in, and I sure as hell can't confide in you! Fuck you." he heaved, tears moistening his face. "Fuck you, and fuck what you're doing to me. You haven't let me talk to Dad, because I'm afraid to leave you alone. All I want is a reason why! But you won't even give that to me. You won't even talk. I just want the chance to talk to Dad without you silently judging me behind my back." And it was with this, Lloyd broke, and started sobbing into his hands. "I hate you. I want Dad back. I want the old you back. I don't want to be the kid of a murderer. I don't want this all. I wish I didn't exist." he sniffled. "I want to visit Dad."
"Okay."
Lloyd's head whipped around, and Misako was staring at him somberly, tears welling up in her eyes. "Okay." she repeated, and a tear slipped out of the corner of her eye.
"Okay?" Lloyd asked, and his voice was high and childlike again, and he felt like a little kid.
"Okay." Misako repeated.
Lloyd smiled tearfully at his mom, guilt prickling at his stomach, but he shoved that down.
"Okay."
-
Lloyd stared up at the dark, imposing words of the Ninjago City High-Security Prison sign. He gulped, knowing he was going to be in a building surrounded by murderers and rapists and serious thieves.
He didn't really know if he was scared or not, but he knew he had to do this. Misako did not come with him this trip, she had said maybe the next one, but the important thing was that she had said it. His father would understand.
Lloyd inhaled deeply and pushed open the doors.
The amount of security was insane, but understandable. He shakily walked to the front desk and cleared his throat to get the receptionist's attention. When she turned to look at Lloyd, her brow furrowed.
"What are you doing here, kid?" she asked.
"I'm...here to see my father." Lloyd said slowly. "Do you need identification for me to confirm I'm his son?" He took out his school ID and showed it to the woman, just in case.
"You're Garmadon's first visitor." she said.
Lloyd's heart sank. Not even Wu had visited him.
"He'll be glad to see you." the receptionist said. "You'll have a guard accompany you at all time, and of course, it'll be the phone chat."
"I know. Thank you." Lloyd said politely, and the receptionist called a guard over and started talking to them. Lloyd waited, slightly uncomfortably. He could tell that the prison didn't get many visits.
"Follow me." the guard said. They were intimidating, imposing, scary. Lloyd gulped, but followed the guard nonetheless into the visiting room.
Nobody was in there, and Lloyd sat down awkwardly in one of the seats, waiting for his father's arrival. The guard stood behind him, talking on a walkie talkie, and Lloyd increasingly grew anxious as time passed by. His left leg jittered up and down, up and down. Lloyd wondered if his father would look different. Maybe he'd have a beard, like Wu. But prisons usually kept the prisoners clean shaved so they couldn't hide stuff in their hair, so Lloyd began imaging what bald Garmadon would look like. Probably ridiculous. Lloyd almost snorted thinking of it.
School had progressed as normally, and Lloyd just grew more wary of Chen and the cheerleaders, and not long after Chen had accidentally yelled 'fuck' in class and had gotten suspended for a few strangely peaceful days. Lloyd started doing his homework, determined to make a life for himself and not rely on reputations and self-pity. It didn't always work, no, but it did work sometimes. He was not seeing the counsellor, however. The interaction just left a bad taste in Lloyd's mouth.
A door opened, and Lloyd's heartbeat doubled its speed, and he clenched the chair handles with his hands. A guard entered...
..and Garmadon followed.
At first, Lloyd was taken aback by how much older his father looked. Stress really did age a person. With one hand, Lloyd reached up toward the phone, and he nervously breathed in. He was ready. He was going to tell his father everything instead of forcing the stress and sucky shit within himself. He waited for Garmadon to pick up the phone before him, before taking a deep breath and picking the phone up after his father.
"Hi, Dad." Lloyd said. "Boy, do I have a story for you. I hope you're comfortable in those chains and that jumpsuit, because this is going to be a long one."
And a long one it was.