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Thick, grey clouds blanket low across the sky. Fine mist seems to hover in the air, the barest beginnings of rain before it can even turn to a drizzle. At his back, Morro can feel five sets of eyes on him, lined up to enjoy the show while they wait for their turn. Anticipation gathers almost as thick as the rising storm.
Unsteady, the ground rocks under Morro’s feet. Each wave that lands against the Bounty’s hull comes with a gust full of sea salt. Grounding himself in the rhythm of the ship, he feels the pull of the air, the current of it. One breath in, he lets his eyes slip shut, bending the breeze around his fingertips as it flows by. One breath out and his eyes snap open; he seizes hold of the wind and strikes first.
Across the deck, Jay is sizing him up just the way he had been eyeing Jay. The blast of wind, spun into a sharp arc, isn’t enough to take him by surprise. It whips harmlessly by as Jay leaps out of the way, brows furrowed in concentration. First move thrown and the fight officially begun, everything explodes into a flurry of light and sound. Air snaps and cracks as Morro shapes it to his will. Bundling its energy, directing its flow, he throws twisting cyclones and furious gusts across the deck. The wooden boards underfoot and the mast stretching high overhead both groan when he misses his mark, assaulted under the force of pure, condensed air pressure. He’s too sharp to miss too often, though. While Jay is nimble-footed enough to scramble away from some of the punching gusts, flipping up onto a railing or ducking behind a crate, he can’t dodge them all. A twister catches him unaware and sends him spinning across the deck, landing sprawled on his back.
Still, Jay is no pushover. And just as the wind heeds Morro, turning strong and stalwart in his hands, lightning answers Jay’s call. It crackles in his palms only an instant before it strikes out through the space between them. It’s hardly enough warning for Morro to dodge. The airs crackles and burns with the strikes, salty breezes turning bitter. And the blinding light sears branching slices across Morro’s vision, the afterimages sticking around long after he tries to blink them away.
Tension winds up hard in Morro’s chest, coiling a notch tighter with every beat of his heart. The longer he ducks and dodges, be it bursts of lightning or flips and kicks, the faster his pulse ticks. Retaliating in kind, he breathes hard and ragged, every exhale stirring air that can be used, turned into a brutal strike. With time, he puts more and more of himself into every gust, every gale. Sweat beads at his temples, drips down his jaw. The fight tests his strength, his endurance; he grits his teeth, holding tight to both.
The wind around them picks up higher with the brewing storm, the currents more chaotic as they whip by him. They tug at his hair, pull at his balance, encourage the waves into tall, powerful crests and ever-dropping troughs. The Bounty groans and creaks under the strain.
For a second, Morro loses his footing, the sway of the ship and the slick layer of settled mist on the deck enough to unsteady him. Alarm stings in his chest, a silver-edged slice, the second he realizes Jay sees it. All it takes is a quick turn for Jay to wind up into his spinjitsu, blazing across the deck in a sea of sparks to capitalize on the chance.
A kick catches Morro hard across the collar, his backwards stumble a moment too late to skim past the spinning rush. Pain flares bright for an instant before it dulls back to a blunt, muted ache, setting roots. Setting his jaw, he swallows back the growl rising in his throat and reaches out for the wind once more. The streams and currents in the air have a stronger will of their own, now, surging past and whipping back every direction. But Morro is a force of nature too. He breaks the gusts, bends them, pushes them across the ship to assault anywhere light flashes, anywhere sparks crackle.
He will not be beaten. He cannot afford to let that happen.
Quicker than a whip, lightning blazes straight for him, head-on. Time starts and stalls in shutter snaps. Brilliant blue with a white hot core burns his eyes between each blink.
When he moves, it’s purely twitch instinct, heart thundering loud in his chest. Then, the slippery stream of time goes straight again, kicks back into motion. The crack that follows the blinding bolt rings in Morro’s ears. All he can hear beneath that horrible sound is the frantic, raging beat of his heart. The slow, stunned exhale that forces its way out of his chest, breath clouding in the sudden, plunging cold coming with the head of the storm. For a second, everything seems quiet, hollow in the wake of the terrifying might of that electric shock. The acrid scent of charred wood drifts out to sea.
His cheek burns. The sting crackles through his nerves, sharp and fast as the lightning strike that brought it. Wide eyes start to water with the pain. Clouded by pooling moisture, dark and splotchy with the blinding remnants of the shock, his vision swims. It’s disorienting, the same as the rock of the ground underfoot and the chaotic racing of the wind.
Blood rushing, adrenaline rushing, Morro’s mind goes white. There’s a whispered warning he clings to: if he doesn’t fight now, with everything he has, he won’t live to fight another day.
Fear and fury boil in the pit of Morro’s stomach. The wind bites and tears, shrieking, howling at his side. But it will break. Where it flows through his fingers, he takes hold and twists, spinning the currents into a spiraling arrow. Hurling it at his opponent, he winds up one after the other, not even waiting to see if they hit their mark before another goes sailing. With the barrage, he drives the blurry, blue-clad figure back into a corner. But desperate frenzy isn’t helping his control. The gales cackle at him as they start to dip and weave beyond his grip.
A frustrated growl ripping up his throat, he throws all his force against the air, a powerful blast rippling out in every direction. If the elements won’t cave to him, he’ll handle this himself. Charging across the deck, he blinks some of the tears from his eyes, vision starting to clear. And by the time he reaches his opponent, pressed into a corner and struggling to get to their feet, the blistering burn on his cheek is nothing but fuel. Pain to make him stronger.
Shouts ring out somewhere behind him, clamor to join the blood pounding frenetically in his ears. The words he can’t make out don’t matter, drowned in his storm.
He throws punch after punch, aiming for the face, wanting to bruise, to break. But when they get wise and throw their arms up to block, Morro hits hard bone. A finger catches wrong, pain lancing through the length of it. Swift and vengeful, Morro grabs for his opponent’s wrist and clamps it in an iron grip. With a savage kick, he sweeps their legs out from under them, a clean pull through the ankles. They tumble back down to the deck with a satisfying thump and a sharp breath through their teeth. With his hold still on their wrist locking their arm in place, he presses one boot to a bony elbow. Stepping hard enough to keep them in place, he revels in the pained yelp that cuts through the cacophony. Every inch of pain he carves into his enemies is one notch weaker they fall. The more they hurt, the less hurt they can dole back out on him.
His opponent pinned, they’re babbling, no doubt begging for mercy, but the words fall on deaf ears. No one showed him any mercy.
Throwing all his weight into it, Morro kicks them straight in the face, brutally efficient and accurate. A loud crunch breaks through the howling winds. Red streaks across ashen skin, over colorless lips, down through white teeth, viscerally, primally satisfying. That, broken skin and weeping crimson, looks like safety. The choked, pitchy cry sounds like safety.
Morro presses hard on the elbow under the sole of his boot until he feels the joint pop and give under his pressure.
The grin that takes over his face is wild. Something instinctive, deep, deep down in his chest, thrives amidst the gore. The beast inside rumbles and shakes, drinking in the sight of an enemy brought to helplessness. Set free, it will protect him, no matter the bloody price.
In an instant, Morro’s attention snaps back. Steely arms lock tight around his chest and yank. All the breath leaves his lungs. It’s all he can do to cough and choke as those chaining arms constrict tighter. Stumbling back with the solid chest he’s bound against, he fights for air.
All around him, a clamor of yelling and shouting rises louder and louder. The pound of his pulse in his ears is stronger than all of it. It’s nearly all he can hear, roaring like a tidal wave crash.
Thrashing to be set free gets him nowhere. Suddenly, panic winds tight around his throat, threatening to choke him. The nauseating feeling of being trapped spreads wicked fast, like venom towards his heart. Desperation grows and mounts, uncontainable and immovable. Kicking and fighting, Morro snarls, trying everything in his power to get free. But no matter how hard he snaps his skull back into the chin behind him, no matter how hard he drives his elbows back into curved ribs, no matter how hard he claws at their face, he can’t break their grip. The wind, still cruel and mocking, slides slippery past his nervy attempts at grabbing hold.
The breath in his lungs goes thin. He can’t grasp it back, every stilted inhale seeming more useless than the last. The voice at his ear is rough, heated, words jumbling before they can ever reach him, but they feel like a threat. They’re always a threat.
Fire leaps and bounds through his veins. Everything is alight, everything jittery and frantic. True, deep desperation wells up beneath it all, because Morro can’t get out. He’s trapped. And if he’s trapped, he’s dead. Gaze darting back and forth, he searches helplessly for something, anything, but the world is a rush of colored dots smeared against grey sky and angry sea. His heart lurches, pace racketing up a gear. Black static starts to crawl in the edges of his vision.
And still, he can’t breathe.
“Morro, enough!”
There’s only one voice that cuts above the rest. Silences the rest. Even the storm seems to calm, bowing respectfully.
Morro blinks. He takes a shaking breath to fill his lungs. And then murky dread bubbles up to quench the fires raging in him like sludge. He knows that voice deep in his heart, even before his head recognizes it. Angry, disappointed, disapproving. Wu.
The crack of a staff brought down on wooden planks drives away the fog in Morro’s head. Suddenly, everything is strikingly crisp and clear. At once, he stops fighting the hold he’s in. But then fresh horror comes flooding in when he realizes what he just did. Searching out the blue in the sea of colored gi, he locks onto Jay the moment he’s found him. Sitting hunched against the side of the ship, Jay’s cradling his arm close to his chest. Blood flows down from his nose, spilling over his mouth and dripping off his chin to dye the fabric of his pants a ruddy violet—crimson meeting blue in ugly splotches. The freckled face Morro has gotten accustomed to seeing in a warm and friendly smile is scarily pale, pinched with pain. The rims of his eyes are red, mouth twisted in a grimace. At either side of him, the other ninja crowd in to check on him, the earlier shouting dimmed to gentle, hushed tones.
All at once, Morro feels sick.
But, clearer-headed, he can hear Cole at his ear now. The iron hold barred around his chest loosens just a fraction. “Cooled off a little now?” Cole asks, but there’s something to his tone Morro doesn’t understand. It feels like he’s missing something. The anger he’s expecting is there, but smaller than he thought. More than anything, Cole just sounds tentative, confused. Like he’s not sure if Morro’s all there.
Still struggling for his breath, Morro tries a nod. “I’m fine,” he huffs, hoping it’ll suffice to say the things he can’t.
I don’t know what happened.
I’m not going attack you or your friends anymore.
I’m sorry.
Slowly, Cole lets him go. Still a little uneasy of being cornered and chained, Morro steps a few paces away, scrubbing his hands over his face. They’re shaking, he realizes—his hands. Bloodied and aching, too. Curling his fingers to fists, he clenches them at his side, willing his heart to slow. He knows he needs to go apologize, to say something to explain himself. Shaking the hair out of his eyes, he tips his face into the wind to steel himself, the breeze more subdued than it was moments ago. One breath in, one breath out.
He turns to face Jay. Sees a mess of split skin and blood and watery eyes.
Then, the Bounty rocks under his feet and Morro’s unsettled stomach lurches dangerously into his throat. In a flash, he turns his back on Jay, racing instead to brace hard on the railing, head hanging over the edge. Trying to swallow the acid creeping up the back of his throat, he stares down at the stormy sea, the relentless, churning waves, for a moment before it’s too much. He scrunches his eyes shut, breathing hard through his nose.
He can hear them talking between themselves, voices low.
“What even happened? Everything seemed normal and then…”
“Is Jay gonna be alright?”
“It’s like he totally snapped. That wasn’t sparring—he was going for the throat.”
Something panicky starts to slither up Morro’s spine again. A hissing constrictor, winding tight. He keeps a white-knuckled grip on the railing.
“Come on, Jay. I want to look you over inside, out of the weather.”
“Remind me not to get on Morro’s bad side.”
“Everyone, give Jay some space, please.”
“I don’t like the look of all that blood.”
“Hey, where’d Morro go?”
Ice threads through Morro’s veins. Raking his hands back through his hair, he tries to settle his stomach and his nerves. But his breath hitches in his chest.
He needs to turn around. He needs to walk across the deck. He needs to say something. But in the end, a single set of footsteps sounds across the wood, and they aren’t his.
The instant a hand touches his shoulder, Morro just about jumps out of his skin. He can’t do this. Not right now. Summoning his dragon, he takes off in a single leap, soaring out over the waves. Just once, he takes a deep breath and holds it close before plunging into the surf. The dark, cold water is a shock to the system, tripping up his heart and setting all of his nerves alight. When he breaks the surface on the other side, water rolling off his skin, it’s with stinging sinuses full of sea salt and drenched hair clinging to his face.
He’s not sure if it’s the system reset he needs, but at least for a moment, all his focus is on the frigid cold and nothing else.
“Morro!” He hears someone shout behind him. The wind in his face drowns and buffets the sound, but he thinks it might be Lloyd. He heard that voice enough in his head to recognize the pitch and timbre of it.
He can’t turn back around, though. Instead, he only presses his dragon faster, the flap of leathery wings growing stronger. His heart still feels out of rhythm, out of pace, and he can feel the press of the grey clouds looming in on him. Even out in the open sky, the world feels claustrophobic, waves rising to swallow him while the storm sinks low to crush him. Maybe it’s worse out here, with nothing but sea and sky to close in on him.
Squinting against the spitting rain that starts up, he spots a cluster of rocky islands jutting up from the ocean. They aren’t large, hardly bigger than the Bounty, but anything is better than going back.
The rest of the ride passes in a blur of fraying nerves, the pressure clinging to his chest making every breath more of a challenge than it should be. All the while, the craggy black rock grows closer and closer, something for Morro to lock onto.
Finally, he lands, massive talons clicking against the rock as his dragon grabs hold and folds powerful wings down low. Some strange sense of relief loosens the tension rooted in his chest a fraction. Not a remedy for the cause of it, but something to ease the symptom. He jumps down, a jolt reverberating up through his legs when he hits solid stone. In a shimmer of green light, his dragon disappears to lie in wait until he calls for it again.
Half a bitter laugh starts and dies in his throat when his legs wobble under him without the support of his dragon keeping him upright. This is all it takes to cripple the Master of Wind, he thinks dryly, pressing a palm to the wet stone for support. Drenched to the bone in freezing saltwater, he’s starting to shiver. Like his weak knees and trembling hands weren’t already enough. He must make quite the sight, not far off from a drowned rat.
Careful of his footing, he makes his way inland just enough to spot a small alcove in the outcrop. There, he presses his back to the rock and slides down to sit, mostly out of the rain and elements. The wind still finds its way to him, in wisps and drafts. It doesn’t feel quite so hostile anymore, whispering through the gaps in the stone. Breathing comes a little easier, too. Pulling his knees to his chest, he folds his arms and props them on top to bury his face in damp black fabric. Vision limited to dark thread, nothing to hear but his own breath and the pulse of the waves, he turns inward.
Thoughts rush through his head faster than he can catch them, half-formed wonderings and wailing alarms all kicked up into a frenzy. But no matter what strand of consciousness he chases after, they all lead round and round back to the same spot. A dark stain at his very center, his core. Now, they’ve all seen it. They all know the way he acted back when they first met, a vicious fiend commanded by the smoke-mouthed monster curled tight around his heart, doesn’t go away. He can play at being one of them, laugh with them over hot meals, train with them like he’s worthy of it, sleep warm and safe in a spare bunk in their home, but it doesn’t change who he is. What he has lurking inside. At the end of the day, he’s still the curled horns, bared fangs, bloodied claws, and razored scales of the monster dwelling in the murky shadow of all his pits and depths. And now, every one of them knows it.
There’s no way he’ll be allowed back after this. Even if the ninja were naive enough to believe this was only a fluke, a one time thing, Wu knows better. Wu has always seen what he is, all the way back to the day when he refused to give Morro the fated green gi he had always been striving for. He didn’t care that Morro trained until his knuckles bled, didn’t care that he drove himself into the ground just to be worthy of taking up the mantle of the honored green ninja. The golden weapons didn’t want him, because they knew what Morro was: a dirty creature from the streets who did whatever it took to survive. And that day, Wu saw the dark stains on him too.
The disapproval in his voice back on the deck sounded just the same as it did all those years ago. And now, still ringing in his ears, it wears his heart raw. Wu will throw him out for this; he’s sure of it. Even after climbing his way out of hell itself, fighting tooth and nail to earn back a body to call his own, escaping the jaws of death after rotting behind its ribs, he’ll be abandoned again. Just a rat on the streets, nothing to his name but his own festering rot.
Funny, how the notion stings, pressing at all the soft spots in a bruised heart. Once upon a time, when he was a cursed and vengeful spirit, he would have forsaken the world, callous to everything that might hurt him. But now, the thought of losing the warm spot in his life aches. For the first time in a long time, he has something he can’t bear to lose. And this time, it isn’t his own ambitions, a symbol of his strength spelled out in green, fluttering just out of reach.
It’s his friends. His home. His sensei.
“If it wasn’t for the green streak in your hair, I would have walked right past you.”
Morro jerks his head up, suddenly all too aware of the damp tracks spilled down his face. He wishes he could blame them on the rain.
“With your head down, you totally blend right in with the rocks,” Lloyd says, too light and casual. But the stitch furrowing his brow says what his tone doesn’t.
Careful to stay out of his personal space, Lloyd ducks in beneath the overhang to get out of the rain, still just barely a dreary drizzle. He can’t help but wonder if Lloyd is afraid of him now, keeping his distance like that. Honestly, he probably should be. Seeing what Morro did to Jay, totally unprovoked, must be eye opening.
For a handful of moments, they just sit like that in silence with only the sound of the weather and waves to disturb the quiet. Morro hunched over himself, face blanched and splotchy, soaked to the bone. Lloyd standing back with his head bowed just enough to keep the top of his skull from scraping the rocky ceiling overhead. In the empty space, voices come to Morro with wonderings and musings. Whispers of whether this is Lloyd telling him not to bother coming back. Hisses that he’ll get what he deserves, the scorn of the green ninja he once so admired, as well as that of his entire team.
“Hey, um, are you… doing okay?” Lloyd eventually asks, a little awkward but wholly genuine. “You had me kind of worried there.”
It’s the one thing Morro never would have expected. Hate, disgust, righteous anger, he could have taken in stride. Even sorrow to be losing his trust in a teammate this way. But not this. His heart throbs funny in his chest. It still feels out of place, has ever since he opened his eyes and saw what he did, like someone drove a rod between his ribs and pushed. And for some reason he doesn’t understand, Lloyd’s words chase the breath from his lungs again.
They should be a relief, but yet…
What is he possibly supposed to say to that?
He bites his lower lip hard enough to feel it sting, forcing an inhale through his nose. The air feels too big, too full in his lungs, and he has no choice but to let it go again. Bloody fingers twine through his hair, getting down close to the root and fisting tight. He grits his teeth, grinding back molars until they ache. Everything but the impossibility of this small kindness deserts him. He hasn’t earned an inch of concern from Lloyd—Morro should have miles of his contempt instead—yet now it’s staring him in the face, green eyes wide and swimming with worry. Lloyd is here because he wants to be. Because he’s worried about him. The weight of it hits him like a boulder to the chest, crushingly intense and far kinder than he deserves.
“Morro?” Lloyd questions, something anxious creeping into his tone. Tentatively, he reaches out a hand, then seems to think better of it. He pulls back out of Morro’s space, but crouches down to his level.
There’s a pang in Morro’s chest. Lloyd is afraid of him, then. Still keeping his distance. He can’t say he didn’t earn it, but it still hurts.
“Is it alright if I touch you?” The words comes soft and low. “Last time I tried you just about jumped overboard, so I wanted to make sure,” Lloyd says, scratching sheepishly at a temple.
Eyeing him sideways, Morro tries to come up with words, an answer. But everything he might say barbs and catches, somewhere in his chest or up the length of his throat. He chokes over the sentiments, all trapped behind his teeth. Finally, he just settles for a stiff nod instead.
It gets the job done well enough. Lloyd shuffles a little closer, adjusts out of his bent crouch so that he’s sitting properly beside Morro. Even with permission to touch, he still leaves a small gap between them. But, he does reach up for one of Morro’s hands where it’s clenched ruthlessly tight around matted black hair. The tendons in his fingers ache, one in particular throbbing more sharply than the rest. Quiet and patient, Lloyd slowly tries to coax his grip loose. For a stretch of time, Morro’s reluctant to let go. That hold, twisted up in tangled strands, feels like a lifeline, solid even when his heart, his lungs, his stomach, waver.
Still, Lloyd rubs gentle yet firm at the taut lines of his wrist. A thumb runs methodically over the back of his hand, tracking the valleys between fine bones that stand against his skin in harsh relief. Grounding pressure kneads into his palm. And, eventually, he lets go. Lets Lloyd take that shaky, bloody hand into his lap. Slowly, one tendon at a time, he can feel the tension start to bleed from his hand as Lloyd continues to work over it in a soothing rhythm. He only skips over raw, angry knuckles, and the ring finger that aches worse than the rest. Focusing on that anchoring touch, that sensation, everything else in Morro’s body starts to quiet a bit.
“You know, I get sort of like this sometimes too,” Lloyd says gently, keeping his gaze down on Morro’s hand. “My chest hurts, and I can’t breathe, and it feels like the whole world is crashing down around me. It was really scary the first couple of times. I was sure I was dying.”
Dying doesn’t feel nice; Morro would know. And yet, he understands where Lloyd is coming from. This, whatever has been cresting then retreating over him since he beat Jay bloody, doesn’t quite have the soul-snuffing crush of death. But, that same sense of doom and dread reels him in, keeps him hanging on its thread.
“It’s easier if you have someone that can help you.” He nods down at Morro’s pale hand in his. “Kai always does this for me. He likes hugs, too, but you don’t exactly strike me as much of a hugger.” He’s right in that estimation. Morro can’t remember the last time anyone has even made an attempt to hug him, much less the last time he would have allowed it without threatening to break their spine.
“Anyway, he runs really hot, so his hands are always nice and warm. Sorry, mine are probably all clammy,” Lloyd says, just the edges of a laugh lightening his tone.
His hands are kind of clammy, damp from the rain and chilled from the cold, but Morro finds he doesn’t mind. The fingers knitted at the back of his hand, the thumbs pressing into his palm, they keep him here. In his body instead of his head. In increments, the jittery prickle sticking under his skin starts to dissipate. Of his own accord, he untangles his other hand from his hair, rests his arm back overtop of his knees again. He lets Lloyd keep the one he’s holding, though, still grateful for the pressure and slow, methodical rhythm.
Letting a breath out from the depths of his lungs, simply because he finally feels like he can, Morro buries his nose in his sleeve. With this gradual slant down into calm and relief, his words eventually dislodge from where they stuck and clogged in his throat. But now that he has them at his disposal, he isn’t sure what to say. It’s all he can do to pick some and hope they’re the right ones.
He gets a false start, coughing once to clear his throat. And when he does get the words out, they’re muffled behind his legs. “Thanks,” he says, a little hoarse, tipping his head just slightly towards their hands, “this… really helps.”
Lloyd breathes a full-body sigh of relief; Morro can see it in the swell and fall of his chest, the droop of his shoulders, even the relaxed dip of his head. Morro isn’t sure if it’s because of what he said, or just the fact that he said something at all, but something warms in his chest just watching.
“Do you feel any better now?” Lloyd asks, and it’s funny. Even after spending a decent chunk of time with the ninja, Morro still isn’t used to people asking after how he feels. He isn’t even used to knowing how he feels. Before, he’d lived his whole life, and afterlife, pushing everything down, swift and efficient so that no matter what came his way, he could keep moving forward without doubts or regrets. It…didn’t exactly work out so well.
But, breathing in sea air and doing his best to step past the dark, nasty things snapping at his heels, he does feel better. The nausea and the crushing pressure are gone. And more reassuring than anything is that there’s still someone by his side. He hasn’t been abandoned or thrown aside, even if he deserves it. Swallowing his apprehension, he nods. “Not one-hundred percent, but better.”
A grin quirks up across Lloyd’s lips. “That’s good,” he says, and he genuinely sounds like he means it. “If you’re anything like me, it might be a little bit until you’re totally feeling back to normal. I always get really tired. But, it’s the only time I’m allowed to skip training and take a nap in the middle of the day, so there is a silver lining I guess.”
Leave it to Lloyd to find a bright spot in feeling so miserable. Morro chuckles a little—that’s just like him. Morro has found that, despite Jay’s occasional bouts of enthusiasm for positive thinking, it’s Lloyd that always seems to cheer the team on in a hopeless situation, casting light amongst the shadow. It makes sense now, with more perspective, why fate and destiny chose him to be the green ninja. Morro can’t hold a candle to him.
It’s quiet for a beat before Lloyd stills. Taking it slow, he leaves plenty of time for Morro to tell him off before he slides over to close the gap between them. Now, they’re sitting shoulder to shoulder, the warmth of Lloyd’s skin faint through the layers of fabric but welcome nonetheless. At the time it seemed like a good idea, but he’s starting to regret taking a splash beneath the waves. While Lloyd is only a little damp from his flight through the rain and mist, Morro only recently stopped dripping, still soggy and shivering.
“Do you mind if I ask what happened?” Lloyd questions. There’s no pressure hidden behind his voice, no demand in his tone. “I mean, why did you go after Jay like that?”
A wave of something dark and cold rises up from the pit of Morro’s stomach, robbing him of the ease settled over him just a minute ago. It scatters like a flock of birds, only taking a pebble thrown in their direction to fracture off and flee. “I really beat the shit out of him, didn’t I?” he asks, shame crawling hot up the back of his neck. It seems like a pointless thing to ask; of course he hurt Jay. He saw the blood streaming from his nose, saw the arm held gingerly to his chest. Worse, it was wholly on purpose, not a training slip-up or accident. And by the end, Jay wasn’t even fighting back. Morro just hit and broke and bloodied unimpeded.
Lloyd shrugs a little, but Morro’s pretty sure it’s just to spare his feelings. “Nya was still looking him over when I left. Usually, Jay’s sort of our self-appointed medic, but she fills in sometimes. Either way, they’re both pretty sure you broke his nose. Nya was worried about his elbow too, but I didn’t get to hear much about that before I left.” He sounds apologetic, like he really doesn’t want to be delivering bad news, and at least for that, Morro is grateful. “Cole was bleeding too,” he tacks on apprehensively.
Running a hand down his face, Morro turns over the all injuries in his head. It’s not too tough to link them back to an instant, an impact reverberating up through his limbs. A nose crunching under the force of a kick. An arm wrenched back and pinned in place. Skin raked up under his nails. He can still feel the phantom force behind every blow, shaking through him. But with a breath, he tries to turn time back to the start. To remember when things turned from a competitive but friendly spar into an all out attack where Morro was certain the penalty for failure would be death.
Carefully, he reaches up to ghost his fingertips along the lightning branch burn seared shallow across his cheek. It never even bled, cauterized on impact. It stings, though, when he touches it.
Then, it all starts to come back to him. The moment things shifted. The moment genuine fear seized his heart and took control.
“He hurt me,” Morro says under his breath, struck with the realization. Agitation had worked under his skin before that moment. There was something that felt off in him, stuck in behind his ribs, the harder they both fought. But, it was easy enough to ignore, to lose himself in the adrenaline and the familiar routine of moving his body, moving the wind.
That all changed when lightning tore across his cheek. Shock and the very real anxiety of losing shut him down and woke up the monster coiled inside.
“What, so that’s a good enough reason to hurt him back?” Lloyd asks, a curious tilt to his head. Still, there’s something suspicious in his tone, like he doesn’t quite believe it.
“It’s not like that.” It comes out snappier than Morro intended, which definitely isn’t helping his case. “It’s not,” he says again, a little more even this time.
Pulling his hand back from Lloyd, he scrubs them both over his face, trying to get himself together. Even just remembering the flash searing his eyes, the slow, stunned horror bleeding into his veins, puts him back on edge. Not the panic of before, but an uncomfortable prickle rising at the back of his neck.
“I mean, I don’t—“ he tries, stopping short with a frustrated noise low in his throat. He isn’t good at feelings—especially not the complicated ones. Deciphering the jumbled mess he tangled up for years and buried down in his chest is hard enough on a good day. But picking apart the strands and explaining them to someone else, figuring why he did what he did, seems near impossible. And considering he was a nasty cocktail of competitiveness, adrenaline, and wired nerves at the time, it makes the job all the harder.
“Hey, I was just asking,” Lloyd says casually, holding his hands up in placating surrender. “You can take your time.”
Huffing a breath, Morro tries again. Reminds himself Lloyd didn’t mean to accuse or point blame; he’s too good-hearted for that. And it really does seem like he wants to understand.
He curls his knees a little tighter to his chest. “I got confused,” he says, even though that probably isn’t quite on the dot. It’s the best he has right now. “It’s like… I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know who Jay was. All I knew was that he was hurting me, and I wasn’t about to roll over and take it. Not without a hell of a fight.”
Absently, Morro rubs at the blooming bruise over his collarbone. It’s tender under his hand, but he doesn’t pull back.
“You were protecting yourself?” Lloyd offers up after a stretch of quiet.
“I was enjoying it,” Morro counters. The intense rush of satisfaction that boiled over from the depths of his gut at seeing blood run through Jay’s teeth haunts him. Even now, he can feel it just as viscerally as he had then, the heat, the smoke, the pleasure at triumphing over anyone who would stand in his way. Reveling in his own strength. Proud to be rid of the little boy who was bullied and beaten away from the trash he needed to survive, long since having shed him off like an old skin.
“I know you don’t mean that.” Where Lloyd gets his striking conviction, the sparks of it blazing in his eyes, Morro won’t understand. No one should ever be that sure about something they’re wrong in believing.
Setting his shoulders, Morro sits up a little straighter. “I’ve hurt your friends before,” he reminds. “I used your body to do it, so I know you saw it. You felt what I felt, and I wanted them gone. Why should now be any different?” The words are bitter on Morro’s tongue, come sharp off the points of his teeth.
Lloyd stops, takes a breath, and turns so he’s wholly facing Morro. “I know that who you were back then wouldn’t feel guilty enough to run just because he hurt someone. You’re not that person anymore, Morro.” He reaches out, sets a grounding hand on Morro’s shoulder. It’s embarrassing how much it helps soothe the static starting to buzz through Morro’s nerves. “Besides, didn’t you just say you couldn’t tell it was Jay you were fighting?”
Letting the words wash over him, trying to see the truth rooted in them, Morro just nods. “Everything was all fuzzy.”
“So maybe it felt good to get rid of a threat,” Lloyd suggests. “Maybe you liked getting revenge on someone who hurt you. It might not be the most heroic thing, but it’s not the same as enjoying hurting your friend.”
As much as Morro hates to concede it, Lloyd does make a good point. The realization that he was responsible for the hurt and rattled palor draining the color from Jay’s face was enough to drive him out here, sick to his stomach and horrified with himself. Horrified of what he’d allowed himself to do. Back in the days when he had taken Lloyd’s body and worn it like armor, even his allies were expendable at best, tools to keep close only as long as they were useful. He wouldn’t think twice about teaching a cruel lesson where it was needed.
Heaving a sigh, he brushes stringy, wet hair back from his eyes. “Too bad I’m totally screwed once your sensei gets his hands on me,” he says regretfully. Even with Lloyd’s forgiveness at his side, he’s sure the others won’t be so easy to sway. Especially Wu, who has seen Morro fall back on old habits too many times. Nya and Cole, too, since they’re always especially protective over Jay. Not to mention Jay himself. Morro wouldn’t be surprised if Jay never wants to see his face again.
“I don’t know, you might be surprised,” Lloyd replies, decidedly way too optimistic.
“You’re crazy,” Morro remarks. But, he can’t deny that those words plant a tiny seed of hope. That maybe things will work out okay. After all, he’s already gotten their forgiveness once, and after doing much, much worse—or at least intending to. But, all the same, he has already been offered their forgiveness once, so does he really deserve to have it again? Especially now that he’s betrayed that trust slowly building up, brick by brick, between them all.
Unfortunately, that’s not something he can answer sitting here in the cold and mist, protected by black stone.
“Maybe you’re right,” Lloyd chuckles. But still, he gets to his feet and ducks out from under the rocky alcove. The storm is still hanging on the brink, stirring up but not quite started in full force yet. Just as it had for the last who knows how long, the sky drizzles down slight rain, catching on Lloyd’s hair, his clothes. He offers up a hand.
“Ready to go back?” he asks.
Morro wants to tell him no. He wants to sit here, shivering on his own, so he doesn’t have to face who he is and what he did and the people he hurt.
He takes Lloyd’s hand. “Probably not,” he replies, but lets Lloyd pull him up from the ground anyway. He’s stiff from sitting with his knees bent up for so long, and the wet clothes are past the point of getting uncomfortable. But he shoves all that aside the best he can.
“Well, if it means anything, I’m proud of you for going back anyway.” Lloyd smiles, something small but real. Morro just shoulders into him in reply, careful to keep light on the force he puts into it.
“I don’t need your pride, green bean,” he says as they make their way back to the edge of the island. Still, an ember of something warms and glows in his chest. And maybe it’s kind of nice, to have someone see something good in him, even when they’ve already witnessed the bad. Already taken the monster head on and still, Lloyd sees something worth it all in him.
Side by side, they make their way through the weather and back to the Bounty. It’s companionable silence the whole flight, just the rush of the wind and the waves rising to greet them. It’s almost peaceful, if in a dreary sort of way.
Though, a small knot of dread starts in Morro’s stomach when the sturdy ship rocking on the sea comes into view. His grip tightens on his dragon’s reins, but he doesn’t falter.
In what feels like a blink, they’re landing on the ship’s deck. Lloyd goes first, Morro following just behind. And when he does, he’s relieved to see everyone has retreated inside. That gives him just a minute longer to breathe, to think.
“I see you found him.”
Make that all but one person. Wu stands on the upper portion of the deck, stepping out from behind the cover of a mast with rain dripping from the edges of his hat. Attention drawn over that direction, Lloyd just nods in reply.
Morro stands, stares, not sure what the right things to do or say would be. So, he crosses his arms over his chest and holds his ground, waiting for something he can answer to. Ever so slowly, his heart sinks in his chest.
“Morro,” Wu says, serious and even. But then, the strangest thing happens. Any hard, flinty edges soften and melt away, his gaze going gentle all the same. “Welcome home.”
Gravity feels like it shifts it’s pull on Morro, and it isn’t just the rocking of the ship. His whole world pitches to the side ever so slightly, robbing him of steady ground to stand on. And all he can think is how this doesn’t fit into his picture of the puzzle. This kindness he keeps being handed, by Lloyd, by Wu, isn’t a piece he’s supposed to have. This isn’t how the world is supposed to work. And yet, here he is, home.
Slowly, carefully, he starts to correct his view of reality’s pieces. A few of the cruel truths, the ugly facts, fall away to be replaced by warmer things. Disgust and anger, always seeking him out with a venomous strike, are resolutely set aside with a resounding clack. Forgiveness and understanding take their place, offered up by the very people who should have the most to gain from his demise.
“I—“ Morro starts, a little addled, a little awed. “I need to go find Jay,” he says, because it’s the only thing that seems sure, seems solid and right.
Wu offers up a nod, the edges of a smile just touching his mouth. “A wise choice.”
“Last I saw, he was at the bridge with Nya. She said they get the best light in there,” Lloyd pitches in helpfully.
Letting out a steadying breath, Morro bows his head once in Wu’s direction before heading off. The dread that had eased with Wu’s warm, simple welcome tightens back up as he makes the short walk to the bridge. So far, he has two relationships salvaged, but there’s still a lot left to handle. And handling people and emotions isn’t exactly his strong suit. Neither is apologizing, but all he can do is try. Another step in the road of trying to be a better person. Another step out of the pit he spent his entire existence digging himself into.
He can try.
Sure enough, Nya and Jay are both still at the bridge, sheltered from the rain and illuminated in the strong lights and tech screen glow. Since Lloyd left, Cole must have joined them too, the three of them clustered close together. Jay sits perched on a control terminal with the other two standing on either side.
Jay… definitely looks worse for wear, which isn’t surprising, but Morro still isn’t all too pleased to see it. The worst of the blood has been scrubbed from his skin, but dark bruises are already starting to set in. His nose, puffy and bandaged, is turning a nasty violet, and one of his eyes looks warm and tender too, skin reddened. He still looks almost worryingly pale, but then again, Jay has never had much color to his face, so it isn’t a drastic difference. What Morro really doesn’t like, though, is the sling cradling his arm, keeping it in place at his chest.
They haven’t noticed him yet, though, and at least it’s reassuring to see Jay is chatting Nya’s ear off about something like normal. The hurt, rattled demeanor clinging about him out on the deck has blown off with the wind.
Taking one final moment to steel himself, Morro heads across the room, announcing himself with louder steps. Three heads turn in his direction, and while a myriad of emotions flicker and smoke across their faces, none of them look outright hostile, which Morro figures is a good enough place to start.
It’s Nya who moves first, reaching behind Jay for a discarded towel sitting in a heap at his back. Meeting Morro the rest of the way, she presses the towel into his hands with a worried pinch between her brows. The material is a little damp in places, but it’s better than nothing. Still very wet and shivering, Morro wraps it around his shoulders, grateful.
“Honestly, what were you thinking?” Nya sighs. And Morro’s sure. This is where he’s going to get the earful he deserves. “You’re going to catch a cold walking around like that! Your little dip in the ocean would probably be enough on its own, not to mention how long you’ve been sitting out in the rain,” she huffs. And somehow, she’s upset about entirely the wrong thing.
Morro will never understand these people.
Taking a relatively dry corner of the towel, he wipes off his face while he listens, pushing back the bangs plastered to his forehead and hanging in his eyes. “That doesn’t matter,” Morro replies, pulling the towel snug around his shoulders. Genuinely, he doesn’t care if he gets sick right now. He might care later when he feels like shit, but it’s definitely not even remotely on his radar in the moment.
“Dude, your hands,” Cole puts in, inching forward from his spot leaning against the console next to Jay.
“They’re fine,” Morro huffs. Moving quick, he tucks his split, bloodied knuckles back where he can hide them behind the towel. Besides, only some of the blood is even his. He’s fairly sure some of it came from Jay’s nose.
“Come on, don’t be stubborn about it. Let me see,” Nya insists. She steps up closer again, holding out an expectant hand.
It isn’t quite irritation that starts to work into the tick of Morro’s pulse, but it’s a close enough estimation of it. Keeping his hands stubbornly hidden, he backs a pace. Takes Nya out of his space. She eyes him with something he can’t quite pick apart swirling in sharp irises. Slowly, he feels unease start to buoy up from the pit of his stomach.
He didn’t come in here to be worried over.
Jay still hasn’t said a word.
“I know what I’m doing, if that’s what you’re worried about. I may not be a professional, but my first aid gets tested plenty around here. And I’ve got years of practice. Kai mixed with blacksmithing was pretty much an accident waiting to happen.” She’s trying to be helpful, Morro knows. It’s meant to be a reassurance.
But.
“Isn’t anyone mad about the fact that I just beat the crap out of one of your team?” His gaze strays from Nya to Cole and back again. “Your boyfriend.” It all comes out too loud, ringing tinny in the enclosed space. The words are sharp, jagged, too, but he meant that, felt their edges scratching at the back of his throat, catching on his teeth. Breathing just a little too hard, he turns to look right at Jay. To look at that bruised, broken face. His stupid, big, understanding eyes.
He needs to apologize.
“Why aren’t you mad at me?”
Decidedly not an apology. For a moment, everything in the room goes quiet, save for the soft hum and whir of all the tech and the patter of light rain overhead. And all at once, Morro feels like he’s been dropped in the middle of an ocean on a shoddy raft without a map. Lost, and entirely out of his depth.
“I mean, who said I’m not a little mad?” Jay asks, but there’s goodnatured humor in his tone. He tucks a curling piece of hair away from his face and back behind his ear, a little half smile just barely touching his lips before it falls away. Something more serious takes it’s place, the slant of his brows leveling out.
“Honestly, you just kind of scared me. And not in a ‘I’m about to get my teeth kicked in’ sort of way. Well, maybe a little bit that way too. That’s not the important part though.” Jay stops, takes a breath, refocuses. “When we were sparring and you started to freak, I tried talking to, you know? But it was like you couldn’t even hear me. You seemed totally out of your head. Then you ran off like that and… Well, I’m just glad to see you’re acting more like your normal self.” His smile is so genuine it makes Morro’s chest hurt.
He also feels a little like someone cracked his ribs open to pry inside and prod at his heart. The vulnerable exposure brings his hackles up.
“Same thing here,” Cole adds. He doesn’t look nearly as roughed up as Jay, but Morro still left a nasty mark on him. His chin has an angry welt over the curve of the bone, matching to the dull ache in the back of Morro’s skull. Scratched in along his cheek, there’s a row of four shallow nail marks scabbing over. And though Morro can’t see it, he can take his bets that there’s a hell of a lot of bruising taking root over his ribs.
“You were really out of it. And let me tell you, you did not like me one bit until you chilled out a little,” Cole says.
Morro remembers that just fine, the blind panic racing through his veins, the horrible acid burn of looming death dripping down his shoulders. He takes a short breath through his nose, teeth gritted.
“Yeah, yeah, we all saw my total freakout,” Morro huffs, shame breathing hot down his neck. Hunching over a little, he keeps his hold on the wet towel in his hands, pulling it as tight as he can get over his shoulders. There’s a childish whisper in the back of his mind that he should just pull it over his head and disappear. Get out of having to deal with any of this. But it wouldn’t work the way he used to think at five years old. He’d still be here. His problems would still be here. There’s no easy way out.
He does give into the impulses a little, though, keeping his gaze squarely on the floor instead of up into the eyes of the people he should be facing.
“Morro, it’s okay,” Nya says, imbuing the few words with more meaning than Morro could ever fully understand. He can feel the depth of it, though.
Cole clears his throat, a little of the tension and stuffy, clinging atmosphere dispelling with it. “Point is, it’s not like you have it out for Jay or anything, right?”
Feeling a little stunned, Morro glances up. “Of course I don’t,” he says, brows furrowed in.
“Then we’re all good,” Jay chimes, way too amiable for his own good. “Well, I’m not gonna pretend like you didn’t still break my nose and screw up my arm. So, buy me an ice cream next time we hit a town, then we’ll be even.”
“Oh, and I want cake,” Cole adds.
“You didn’t even let me say sorry,” Morro remarks. It isn’t exactly like he didn’t have any chances, but still.
Jay quirks his head in a remarkable impression of a puppy. “Do you want to?”
And isn’t that the question. Honestly, he doesn’t. An apology sticks and catches in his chest, clinging on with hooks of old, stubborn habit. But all the same, he did something he very much is not proud of. And Jay deserves to know that. He deserves Morro’s humility.
One more step towards being a better person and all that.
“I am sorry, for what it’s worth,” Morro says, quiet and low but no less earnest for it. “What I did was still shitty, even if I didn’t really do it on purpose. I’ll… work on that.”
Split lip and all, Jay just grins at him. “Apology accepted,” he says with a resolute nod. And really, it almost feels that easy to just put it all behind them. It’s a foreign thing, to have mistakes trickle away, rather than come kicking hard and swift with their consequences. But, it is welcome. That’s how things always seem to wind up here with the ninja, Morro thinks. Strange, but better for it in the end.
“You know, it’s a relief you’re on our side now. You totally fight like a beast! Even with my super strength, it was hard to keep a hold on you,” Cole says.
Jay nods in agreement. “I knew you hit hard, but it’s different when you’re just sparring. Is it weird that I kind of feel safer now? This was like, a reminder of how crazy strong our team is. Ninjago’s next bad guy better watch out!”
For a moment, Morro just stands and stares, a little baffled. But, he’s learned to roll with it the best he can. And even if they’re only fluffy words meant to make him feel better—it’s hard to tell sometimes—they work. Some of the weight lifts from his chest, and he feels so much lighter for it. Still wet, sore, and tired, but endlessly better nonetheless. Lloyd’s idea of a nap actually sounds pretty good right now. With the relief of knowing he hasn’t ruined the relationships he’s worked so hard to build, the stress and adrenaline have started to fade.
“I can’t believe I’m the one that has to say this, but let’s hope there is no next bad guy,” Morro says. The relative peace they’ve got now is a pleasant change from the constant chaos and turmoil of the Cursed Realm. Not fighting for his life is nice, even if it’s a bit of a hard habit to break. Still, after a beat, he gives a small shake of his head. “Who am I kidding? It’s Ninjago.”
“Right?” Jay says in agreement. “We can’t go more than a year without something totally crazy happening.”
Then, Jay and Cole are off, chatting about the many adventures Morro wasn’t around to see. Some of them, he’s heard mention of before from one of the ninja or another, but others are brand new, raising eyebrows.
While they talk, Nya slips over to his side. There’s something understanding in the slight curve of her smile, even if he knows the look in her eyes above it. There’s that determined tidal wave, the sort that gives Kai headaches and makes Jay all starry eyed. In Morro’s estimation, the best you can do is be ready to dig your heals in and fight the current, or dive right in headfirst.
“You’re not getting out of a med check that easy,” Nya says, nudging him with an elbow.
If that’s all he has to contend with, Morro will take it. So, he leans back against the console behind with a yawn, letting Nya check him over. She wraps his bloodied knuckles and splints his finger, which apparently is broken. And all the while, Cole and Jay swap stories, with the occasional interjection from Nya to correct some cloudy details. The weave of the conversation is warm, drifting around Morro. Truly, it feels like the home he’s never had. Not just the space, but the people in it.
He’s still adjusting, and he probably will be for a long time. Some habits are rooted deep and are hard to grow out of. But he has to admit, even if it might soften the edges his image, he has some wonderful friends to help him along.