Chapter Text
When Lloyd met Morro, he was seven years old, and Morro was ten.
Lloyd had a family of three - him, his mom, and his uncle. And when he met Morro, Uncle Wu said they were a family of four.
Morro was strange at first - skittish and wide-eyed, and very quiet. But the years passed and he grew up, taking Lloyd under his proverbial wing like the big brother Lloyd never had.
It was a big, mean world out there - Morro told Lloyd that when he was nine and Morro was twelve. Lloyd believed him when the other kids called him names and took his stuff and ignored him like he wasn’t there. The world was huge, and full of people who didn’t love him; but his family, though small, had all the love Lloyd needed.
Uncle Wu and Morro were like Lloyd and his mom - a family of two, inside a family of four. When Lloyd got older, he knew Morro wasn’t Wu’s biological son; but the dark-haired teen was his uncle’s son, all the same. Morro and Wu were close, and they spent a lot of time together.
And they always seemed to get along great… until Lloyd was fourteen, and Morro was seventeen, and Morro disappeared.
Lloyd hadn’t heard from his cousin in a week - which wasn’t altogether uncommon. Morro was prone to passing down-moods, a hopeless tired depression that trailed him for reasons Lloyd didn’t know. Morro almost always had time for Lloyd; sometimes, he drew back into himself and needed space, but usually, Lloyd was able to buoy him up out of the upset.
So while it wasn’t completely out of the ordinary, a week was a little long, even for Morro. Lloyd was sitting at the kitchen table, painstakingly working his way through a math worksheet, when his mom shouldered through the door, in the act of hanging up on the phone. She huffed out a breathy sigh, and Lloyd glanced up.
“Your cousin… ran away,” she said, tone betraying the worry her face hid.
Lloyd froze. “W-what?” he stuttered. “ What?”
Koko set her phone on the table, then leaned on her hands and dropped her head. “A few days ago,” she said, voice rough. “Your uncle’s been looking for him, but he can’t find him. Has Morro talked to you at all?”
Lloyd shook his head. “Not since we had dinner last week,” he said, mind still processing the news.
His mom’s shoulders rounded as she slumped a little lower.
Six months later, Lloyd was home alone after school, missing his cousin and feeling lonely and maybe a little sorry for himself, when his phone lit up, with - of all people, Morro’s number.
Lloyd blinked before lunging for the slip of plastic, pressing the green icon and lifting the phone to his ear.
It was silent for a moment, before a sheepish, “Hey,” fitzed out over the speaker.
“Morro!” Lloyd, whose heart was suddenly racing, blurted.
“Hey,” Morro repeated, on an exhale.
“You’re okay!” Lloyd said happily. “Wait- are you okay? Where are you? What happened?!”
“I’m sorry,” Morro blurted, in that blunt way he had. “I’m fine, I’m not hurt, I just… needed space, I guess.”
Lloyd shifted, suddenly conscious of the undertone in Morro’s voice. “Are… you alright?” he asked, more softly.
Morro laughed, a little wry. “Yeah, green bean,” he said. “I’m ok now. I promise. Hey, look, I… I’m really sorry for leaving you like that, okay?”
Swallowing, Lloyd said, “I- I mean- I was fine, I mean I missed you, but-”
“I get it,” Morro said. “I’m sorry again.”
It was silent for an awkward moment.
“So… where are you?” Lloyd asked.
“A long way from there, actually,” Morro said. “All the way past the mountains. A little village called Jamanakai. I hitched a couple rides,” he added.
Lloyd’s eyes grew round. “What are you doing all the way out there? ” he demanded. “What happened? ”
Morro’s sigh was staticky over the phone. “Look, buddy,” he said, “it’s not important. I just… I had to go. I wasn’t in a good headspace, okay? I just needed… I don’t know, a change of pace. I didn’t mean to just walk out on you and your mom though.”
Lloyd didn’t answer for a moment.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked. “Last time, I promise, then I’m done asking.”
“Yeah, man,” Morro said, and Lloyd couldn’t make out the veracity of his tone. “But enough about me. How are you and Aunt Koko? You doing ok with classmates?”
Lloyd let the redirection go, too happy to simply hear his cousin’s voice to try and worry the full story out of him. He fell into a familiar rhythm, one he hadn’t had for a while. He told Morro about his day, and some of the highlights from the last six months, and Morro made sarcastic commentary or dry observations as the situation demanded. Although Lloyd tried to subtly trick more details out of his cousin, Morro had always been too smart for that, and Lloyd didn’t learn anything else about his cousin’s situation.
They’d been on the phone for almost an hour when Morro sighed. “I’ve got to go,” he said regretfully. “But I’m gonna be in touch from here - I promise.”
“You’re… not coming home?” Lloyd asked, voice very small.
Morro was quiet for a long, charged minute. “Not yet,” he said, voice only a little strained. “But I’ll call you,” he promised.
“Okay,” Lloyd said. It wasn’t as good as Morro, home, safe where Lloyd could see him, but it was better than the aching loneliness of the last few months.
“And- don’t, don’t tell your mom, just yet?” Morro asked.
“But- but she’s worried about you too,” Lloyd interrupted him, a little indignantly.
“I know,” he said. “I’m going to call her and talk to her. Soon. Just not yet.”
Lloyd bit his lip. After a moment, he acquiesced, “Alright.”
“Thanks,” Morro exhaled. “I’ll… talk to you soon. I love you, Lloyd.”
Morro did call his mom, a few weeks later. Lloyd knew because when he got home from school, he heard the tail end of the conversation.
“... glad you’re alright,” she was saying, a small but relieved smile easing the lines of her features. “I worry about you, you know?”
Silence for a minute, presumably Morro apologizing again.
“It’s okay, honey,” his mom said. “I wish you would call your father, but…” More silence, and Lloyd knew his mother’s disapproving face when he saw it, but Koko let it go. “Okay. Okay. I love you, Morro, be safe.” She lowered the phone from her ear, smiling at Lloyd.
“Your cousin’s okay,” she said, and Lloyd grinned. “He said he called you a few weeks ago?”
“Yeah,” Lloyd said, a little sheepishly. “He asked me not to tell you, but he promised he’d call soon.”
“Well,” Koko said. “I can’t say I’m happy about it, but… I suppose it’s worked out.”
“He doesn’t want Uncle Wu to know where he is?” Lloyd guessed.
Surprisingly, his mom frowned at the mention of his uncle. “No,” she said, tone a little sour. “But I find his reasoning behind that understandable, and I’ll leave it for him to decide.”
So Morro had told his mom something he hadn’t told Lloyd - Lloyd wanted to press for details, but knew his mother wouldn’t budge.
For now, it was what it was. Lloyd could be okay with it.
Over the next nine months, Morro did keep in touch. His calls were sporadic - sometimes he called twice a week, and sometimes a fortnight would pass with no news. He said he passed in and out of the range of cell service; apparently he was making an in-depth tour of the more remote parts of Ninjago. Lloyd suspected he was living rough; no way was Morro holding a job, moving around from village to village, and the number he called from always changed, after that first call, so he was clearly always using a different phone. But his cousin was adamant, when Lloyd asked, that he was doing what he wanted to - for a kid who’d spent his entire life in Ninjago City, Morro seemed to be widening his horizons with a vengeance.
Morro called Lloyd’s mom, too - less often than he called Lloyd, and Lloyd suspected it was because sometimes Morro wanted to talk about whyever it was he jumped ship so unexpectedly. Morro could be prickly and private at the best of times; Lloyd knew better than to nose around in his cousin’s business, even if he was curious.
School still sucked - and it was only getting worse. The older kids got, the more creatively they could be cruel, it seemed, and if privately Lloyd missed Morro’s tight hugs and seeing the sharp smile on his face, at least he still got to talk to his cousin. Lloyd was lonelier than he used to be, but he remembered vividly the six months when he hadn’t even known if Morro was alive - and hey, this wasn’t so bad in comparison.
Morro carefully pressed the old buttons, each number sticking as he dialed Lloyd’s number.
It was pouring, rain drumming steadily against the dirty plastic walls of the ancient payphone he’d found. Morro suspected the entire setup was from last century; however, the machine accepted his money and rang complacently, while Morro shivered wetly and noted absently that the rain, at least, wasn’t so loud he wouldn’t be able to hear his cousin.
It’d been a week’s walk here from the last village; he’d expected it to be shorter, but he got side tracked following a map that had ended up being wrong, to a wet, tiny cave under a creek.
Lloyd picked up after three rings, greeting, “Hey, Morro,” in the tone his cousin had grown to know meant Lloyd was being fake-cheerful.
“Hey, cuz,” Morro responded. “How’s it going?”
Lloyd sniffed. “Fine,” he said, like a liar.
“Uh huh,” Morro said. Quickly, he weighed his options - press Lloyd for the details and talk him through it to reassure him, or distract him. He settled on the latter; it was usually the better way to calm his cousin down. “Hey, guess what,” he said, leaning back against the cold plastic. “I found a huge waterfall two days ago.” He began describing everything he’d seen along the river he followed - and if he exaggerated some things to get a few wet laughs out of Lloyd, well, nobody needed to know. There technically had been a huge waterfall - it had sure felt that way when it rushed down the stone, nearly taking Morro with it.
“Where are you now, then?” Lloyd asked, sounding better than when he’d picked up, at least.
“Well…” Morro said, shifting to look outside the fogged-up phone booth. “I’m actually not totally sure… I got pretty turned around. I’m going to find someone in the morning to ask for directions.”
Lloyd snickered at that. Morro smiled, closing his eyes and trying to picture his cousin’s sunny grin. The memory was fuzzy; it’d been too long.
“Try not to get too lost,” Lloyd was saying. “Your luck’s gonna run out one of these days.”
Morro snorted. “Nah.” He looked outside again; the rain was starting to come down harder, drumming louder and louder on the plastic. “I gotta go soon,” he said apologetically. He still needed to find somewhere to sleep tonight. “Are you doing okay?”
“Yeah,” Lloyd said softly. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
Morro suspected his cousin was generalizing, as per usual, but he didn’t push it. “Okay,” he said. “That’s good. I love you, okay?
“Yeah, I love you too,” Lloyd said. “Bye.”
“Bye,” Morro said, setting the phone back in its spot slowly.
The thought of going back - back to the city, with the noise and the crowds and all, well… Morro didn’t want to. It’d been over a year, and his search hadn’t seen any success yet. He was loath to give it up without any real hints.
But September was rapidly approaching, and he’d learned quickly last year that winter was a good time to be at the base of the mountains, not the top where he’d been exploring and listening to the wind sing. Besides, he’d missed Lloyd’s birthday last year, what with the angst and the hot determination that had dogged him since he stormed out of his father’s home.
Morro refused to admit he was scared of anything. Maybe it was time he headed south and visited the city, just for a bit. Just enough to see his cousin again, so he could refresh his memories of the kid’s smile.
Lloyd’s sixteenth birthday ended up being eventful.
He and his mom celebrated, even though, as usual, she refused to let him skip school. It was a particularly bad day, and it left Lloyd feeling drained, but his mom made his favorite for dinner and was in such a good mood, rarer and rarer these days as cares pressed down on her, it was impossible to stay down. They played board games until late, since it wasn’t a school night and his mom had the next day off; something they hadn’t done in a long time.
The next day, Lloyd’s uncle met them for lunch. Uncle Wu had changed, some, after Morro left - he was by turns quieter and more contemplative, and then kookier than ever, spouting weird nonsense wisdom (?) that Lloyd couldn’t make heads or tails of. He was still Lloyd’s uncle, even if he was a bit weirder, though, so he enjoyed seeing him again. Uncle Wu had been gone more often than not lately - he claimed otherwise, but Lloyd thought his ‘meditation retreats’ were actually long searches for his missing son.
Overall, it was a good weekend. Sunday was quiet and peaceful, Lloyd working through his homework while his mom was at work. His mind was on Morro, hoping his cousin would call, but his phone never lit up.
Around four, someone knocked on the door of their apartment. His mom wasn’t due from work for hours, and she had a key anyways; it must be his uncle, Lloyd decided, as he dropped his pencil and headed for the door. “One second,” he called as he walked.
Lloyd opened the door and froze - standing in the hallway, hands in his pockets like he hadn’t been gone for over a year, stood Morro, bag slung over one shoulder in his haphazard way.
“Morro!” Lloyd gasped, a smile splitting his face as he dove for his cousin.
Morro laughed as he caught Lloyd, squeezing his shoulders in a tight hug. “Hey, Lloydie,” he said, voice just as raspy fond as Lloyd remembered.
Beaming, Lloyd stepped back, letting Morro in the door and closing it behind him.
“Happy birthday,” Morro said, catching Lloyd around the shoulder with one hand and digging his knuckles into his hair with the other. Lloyd laughed even as he wiggled to get loose; to no avail, as usual. “Dang, you didn’t get bigger at all,” he said snidely, pushing away a little to hold Lloyd at arm’s length and look him over.
Lloyd scoffed, looking his cousin over for himself. Morro was taller, and his hair was a lot longer too. Before he’d worn it clipped short, about to his chin, but now it was in a messy braid thrown over one shoulder. His cousin was thinner, too, more angular in his features, (if possible.) But he was smiling, and Lloyd hugged him again, laughing for the sheer happiness of it.
“I can’t believe you came back!” he said. “Are you staying?”
“Hmm,” Morro hummed, glancing away. “Only for today. I’m not…” his voice trailed off.
Lloyd swallowed. “It’s okay,” he said into Morro’s chest. “I’m just happy to see you.”
His cousin relaxed again, which Lloyd counted as a success. “Here,” he said, sliding the battered bag off his shoulder and onto the table. Morro dug through it for a moment, then produced a bag. “Happy birthday,” he grinned. “That’s homemade candy from the top of Mount Gnaji, towards the middle of the range? Last time I’ll be up there for the winter, but I got these for you.”
Lloyd beamed, opening up the bag. It was fabric, not plastic - even that looked homemade, somehow. Wild. Inside were dozens of small, hard droplets, orange and brown in color. “Thanks!” Lloyd said. “Are they spicy?”
“No,” Morro rolled his eyes. “Geez, play a prank one time and lose your trust forever.”
Lloyd elbowed him and tried one. It was delicious , with a weird kind of pop to the flavor unlike anything he’d ever tasted before. “These are awesome,” Lloyd said fervently.
Morro laughed, and hugged Lloyd again.
Eventually they settled on the couch, Lloyd positively bursting with happiness as Morro looped a long arm around his shoulders. They hung out and cuddled (though Morro refused to admit the latter) until Lloyd’s mom got home - they’d decided jointly to surprise her - and to Morro’s evident embarrassment she had burst into tears and hugged him for a solid five minutes.
They passed the evening well - staying up way longer than was wise, but, well… Lloyd and his mom were both happy to spend as much time with their errant family member as possible. Morro admitted he meant to leave in the morning, and flatly denied their offer to call his father.
It was sometime after midnight. Lloyd was dozing, half on his cousin’s lap. His mind cycled back to awareness for a few moments as he noticed the soft, hushed tones of his mother and Morro having a conversation. Maybe talking about whyever it was Morro had left; the reasoning that Lloyd wasn’t to know.
In his state of half-sleep, Lloyd was unable to bring himself to wake up enough to pay attention. Morro was fiddling with a loop of his hair, coiling it around a finger over and over again, and it was putting Lloyd back to sleep like magic.
But as he drifted, listening to the soothing lull of his family's voices, something occurred to Lloyd.
Morro wasn’t just wandering aimlessly around the mountainside. His cousin never did anything without a reason; he was smart , and although he wasn’t prone to rash choices, once he set his sights on something he could be relentless. And whatever it was, his cousin wouldn’t come home until he’d succeeded.