Work Text:
When they return to the Monastery after finally, finally, finding Lloyd and bringing him home. The choice is made silently and unanimously. Nya takes Jay into another room to help him with tending to his injuries while the others take — more like drag — Lloyd into the med bay. This way the med bay won’t be too crowded and will allow Zane to deal with Lloyd's injuries.
As the Kunoichi wraps a length of bandage around Jay’s arm, she breaks the silence.
“Next time we see that…lady-” They both know what choice word she would have used but getting angry wouldn’t help anyone so Nya’s got to keep a lid on that anger for a bit longer. “-I’m gonna kill her and no one, not even you nor the others can stop me,” she adds.
“No one’s going to try and stop you, I know that I’m gonna help you — the others too,” Jay tells her. Before either of them have the chance to say anything more, Cole appears in the doorway. His face is grim.
“I’ve come for the medical restraints,” he tells them, crossing the room to the cabinet where the restraints are kept.
The confirmation of what he’s come for makes something heavy settle in the pit of their stomachs. They’d known that it might come to this, but they had all hoped that it wouldn’t.
With the restraints in hand, Cole leaves for the med bay. They watch him go. Once he’s gone they get back to what they had been doing before his arrival. It’s found that they are both patched up enough that none of the wounds will get infected or drop blood on anything so they relocate to the kitchen and start putting together dinner.
Officially, it’s Zane’s turn to cook tonight but he’s a little hung up at the moment so the couple helps out so that they all can eat dinner before nine o'clock rolls around.
Barely a minute after they’ve started preparing dinner, Kai emerges from the hallway. He’s as white as a sheet which most likely has something to do with how Lloyd’s screams are still sounding out at an ear-ringing volume from the med bay down the hallway.
Kai joins them in the kitchen, chopping up a carrot with more ferocity than the task deserves despite how much his hands shake. Guilt is clear on his face, he’s blaming himself again for how it took them two weeks to find where She was holding Lloyd.
“It’s not your fault, Kai, it’s Harumi’s fault, all of it,” Nya tells him, not looking away from the pot of boiling water she’s just put a block of noodles into.
“But it took us-” This time it’s Jay who interrupts. He abandons what he is doing and turns to face his brother.
“Stop,” the lightning ninja’s tone is so serious, so different from how it usually is, “I get it — we all do. It took us fifteen days to find Lloyd and we’ll all feel bad for that, and She drugged him to all hell but we got him back, he’s not okay but he is safe now,” Jay says. “You helped with that,” he adds, to finally drive his point home.
Kai…doesn’t have anything to say that could dispute that. And also, despite Jay’s tendency to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, he’s managed to say exactly the right thing this time.
“Jay’s right, you know. And watch what you’re doing with that knife,” Nya interjects.
By then, Lloyd’s screaming has died down. Kai joins in their (murder) pact to unalive a certain former jade princess. During that conversation, a part of the bench acts as a substitute for his anger towards Harumi and gets scorched. When they finish dinner and have just dished it up, Zane, Cole and, surprisingly, Lloyd appear in the doorway.
That night, for the first time in over two weeks, all six of them are seated around the table. The usual chatter and noise that comes with full team dinners are absent (in consideration for Lloyd) but it’s no less cheerful. Things are different, it (and Lloyd) won’t ever be the same as they were before this whole ordeal but with them all together again, it’ll be alright.
