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The ocean air is cold, a breeze crawling its way up Lloyd's spine as he climbs down the rocks by the seaside. His feet almost catch on a few, and he mutters ows and ouches, regretting his decision to wear clothes this light on a stormy day.
Nya sits near the water line, her knees brought up halfway to her chest, a solitary cliff by the edge of the sea. Her sandals lay beside her, the cold water brushing her bare feet as the waves come and go. She doesn't turn when she hears Lloyd struggle his way to her, rocks scattering under his shoes. A little longer and she might as well become part of the beach, eyes unblinking, trained on a distant spot somewhere past the fog clouding the horizon.
Lloyd sits down beside her, ignoring the way the cold gets all the way through to his bones. He takes a breath, the salt burning his tongue.
They stay like that, for a while. The waves lap at their feet, small stones and rocks stumbling forward and backward at the pressure. The sky is gray and cold, and Lloyd lifts his face to watch the dark shapes of the clouds shift through and along the pale. They reflect on the surface of the ocean, its darkness almost menacing. It will swallow them both whole, if given the chance.
Lloyd's eyes move to Nya's legs, where the seafoam covers her for moments at a time, then backs away begrudgingly.
"Are you... Is it.. fine, when you're by the ocean?" he asks, tentative.
Nya blinks, snapped out of her trance, then looks down to her feet as well.
"Fine enough that I can sit here," she responds with a small laugh. The sound gets swallowed by the waves.
Lloyd mirrors a smile, but he's not quite convinced. Nya knows he isn't.
"I.. I don't know," she says then, a crack in her voice, more earnest and unsure. Her eyes darken as she watches the foam bubble over the rocks. A gust of briny wind brushes over the two of them. "It's not like anything weird has happened, but.. there's still this... tugging, or something, at the corner of my mind when I watch the water. I feel like I can still hear it sometimes... I don't know what to do about it."
Lloyd's eyes crinkle in sympathy as he watches the uncertainty in her face. He reaches out to put a comforting hand over hers. For a brief moment, the tenseness in her shoulders eases.
".. Sometimes I'm afraid one night I'll just wake up and waltz right back into the sea and never come back again," she mumbles, her eyes rising back to the horizon line, far and blurry behind all the blues and grays.
Lloyd squeezes her hand. The warmth is stark, almost burning after sitting out in the cold for so long.
"We won't let that happen, I promise." His voice is firm, with a note of urgency. He desperately wants to believe it himself. "Not after everything we did to bring you back in the first place." A light smile sneaks into his voice, even if forced.
".. Thanks," Nya smiles and squeezes back. She knows none of them would be able to stop her if Nya were to become one with the sea again, but the sentiment still leaves a warmth fluttering in her chest. "That means a lot to me."
The wind picks up. Waves crash against the rocks, a loud and unabashed splashing around the small little haven of a stone beach. Seagulls fly overhead, calling out, and Nya follows their path with her eyes.
"I know it's wrong, but I...despite the fear, it kind of comforts me sometimes, to watch the sea and imagine myself dissolving in it again," she says quietly. She speaks it like a secret. "Don't get me wrong -- I don't want to go back, it's just..."
"The call of the void, I think they call it," Lloyd finishes for her. A silence follows. Mouth still agape, he tries to fill it with something of value, "So it was... dissolving? That's what it was like being the ocean?"
"Ah, well..." Nya trails off, thinking for a moment. "Some of it, yes. When I gave up my body, it was the last thing on my mind, but it... the transformation, it was honestly rather violent. One second it was as if my entire body was being torn into pieces, and then I was much bigger, and everything was screaming; the cells in my body, the ocean surrounding me, what was left of my mind. I think in the moment I just didn't care, or it spurred me on."
She looks down at the exposed skin of her legs, a pattern of light scarring imprinted in repeating swirls of varying intensity, at points appearing almost scale-like. A permanent mark of having her physical body back, of having survived being broken down into cells and back again.
"I don't really even know how to describe it... it both felt like I was larger than life and like I was the smallest thing in an all encompassing fog. My mind wasn't really mine anymore, but there were these distant voices that sounded like mine. And I remember, I could sense everything. It was so loud and so overwhelming, all the time... Everything seems so quiet now, in comparison. I... I don't know. How do you describe being the literal ocean?"
Her fingers gently trace the bumps left from the scarring, eyebrows knit together. The ocean waves reflect in her eyes, and that distant part of her thoughts returns to the depths; the fleeting lights in the abyssopelagic, the song of the whales resounding for miles and miles, clicks and snaps and whistles everywhere and nowhere, the far off splash of an anchor dropping to the sea floor, moving on and on and back and forth forever and ever, a colossal organism breathing in and out, an endless blue deep. Nothing that could ever be captured by words, all somewhere in her head, stirring.
Then, waves crash against rock, and everything is quiet again.
"..I think I understand, at least somewhat," Lloyd says hesitantly, brushing hair out of his face when the wind dies down. He's watching the sea now as well. "I've had a similar experience, or something like that."
Nya turns to him and tilts her head, confused. She thinks for a second, then her eyebrows raise.
"Is Oni form like that for you?" she asks. She hesitates before speaking and there's something wary, tentative to her tone; she's aware it's a sensitive topic.
Lloyd blinks in surprise.
"Oh, uh, that, too, but I was mostly thinking about something else."
He pauses, and Nya folds her hands together, waiting for him to continue. The sea waits, too, the waves receding as the wind remains quiet, listening to them.
"I was just thinking, the way you described it sort of reminded me of when I drank tomorrow's tea," he starts. There's a salty taste in his mouth. "That constant lack of agency, your body changing rapidly with no control over it, suddenly feeling both like a small thing inside a big space and like you're much bigger than before, your mind seeming like something's wrong with it, like it's not yours anymore..."
He puts out one of his hands and turns it, closing it into a fist and opening it again, watching the skin shift and crease, almost mesmerized by the sight. Thinking, about when these hands were smaller and messier, when every movement was clumsy, when he hadn't been in the world for long enough to know how to hide it. Nya watches him; the ocean didn't have hands, they turned to seafoam along with everything else. Still, her eyes linger, both curious and empathetic.
"I.. I'm not gonna go into details or anything, but transforming like that was painful for me, too," he smiles sympathetically, his face contorted slightly in pain at the memory. Something passes over him as he turns his arm again, watching the skin move. Memories of flesh and bone stretching that he tries not to think about. Thinking about it won't do any good.
"I see," Nya responds. She watches Lloyd's face, then looks down at his hand, almost... apologetic? "I never would've guessed that's what you were going through at the time."
"Oh, no, no, it's fine!" he rushes to wave it off, turning his face to Nya. "I-I kinda hid it all at the time, since I was meant to be the green ninja and all, so it's not your fault. No one knew! Except maybe Wu, but you know how he is."
Nya cracks a smile at that. She nods, her eyes back on the sea.
"I guess that's another thing we have in common, then," she says, and her tone grows soft, fond even. Lloyd finds himself smiling along at the sight, even if just a little. The quiet that they sink back into feels just a smidge warmer than before.
The wind picks up again, waves crashing against the land, no longer content with listening to them. A seagull calls out far in the misty sky, and another seagull joins, disappearing somewhere in the gray. Lloyd watches, before eventually pulling his legs close to his chest and inspecting the rock beach beneath his body. Letting his thoughts drift into the ambience, he picks up rock by rock, absentmindedly trying to find something of note while they sit in silence.
He wonders, as he picks at stones, arm folding, if transforming for Nya was the same it was for him.
Nya watches a distant movement in the sea, something shining dully on the surface of the murky waters.
"Caterpillars, when they're ready to pupate, will essentially eat themselves from the inside out, becoming unrecognizable in days. Is it as terrifying for them as it was for us? To not know what is happening to your body, to have it be changed so drastically it barely feels like you anymore," she says quietly.
Lloyd glances at her, captivated for some reason by the description. It paints a visceral image in his mind, and yet that image somehow offers comfort. No words come to him; he stays silent.
"Say, if you could do it all over again, would you have chosen to drink the tomorrow's tea?" Nya turns to him, her eyes clear as she studies his reaction.
Her eyes, they used to be a warm brown, like her brother's, before she sacrificed herself. The color still remains, but now it leaves a cold feeling in one's gut. Blue specks circle the iris, almost glowing when caught by the light. There's something inhuman about it, the way she watches, a tense focus in her stare.
It doesn't help Lloyd think, but the question doesn't phase him as much as he thought it would. His eyes drift downwards, the thought of the past bringing back that longing pull at the far corner of his psyche.
Before he can stop it, his mind trails that path again; he feels the soft tissue of the muscles stretch and twist, a numbness spreading throughout the limbs. Bones shift, trying to find a place, sometimes accompanied by loud cracks that surely mean nothing good. Every inch of body pulses with searing pain, and Lloyd writhes, trying to hold onto anything at all. The world turning into a bright white nothingness as all the air leaves his lungs for a minute.
And still.
"I would," he responds, returning his gaze back to Nya when he's ready. There isn't much space to waver; it's a train of thought that's been going on and around for years and years.
"Even though you could get a chance to have a proper childhood?" Nya asks. There is no harshness to her voice, only curiosity.
"I.." Lloyd stops, but the words find him before he has a chance to think. "Any chance for me to have a proper childhood disappeared as soon as it turned out I was the green ninja. As soon as I was born as Garmadon's son, really."
It's the truth, despite how grim it may be. He knows it. He has known it for a long while, maybe even his entire life, he just hasn't put it to words until now.
A somber expression appears on his face. Knowing did not help at all. Saying it out loud did not make his guts stop tying themselves together. There's a giant pit in his stomach from when the body forced it open trying to make the child into an adult.
Lloyd swallows back something bitter.
Did his parents know? What they were doing, deciding to bring someone so mismatched into the world? Is that why they left him at that school's doorstep? Because they didn't want to deal with what raising him would bring? Does the caterpillar know it will turn into a butterfly? Another voice calls out, -- that's not the case, he knows that circumstances forced them to, and yet... Even if they didn't know he'd end up having to save the world, surely they must've realized he would be at least inevitably tied to its fate. Surely they... surely someone could have taken better care of that little kid.
A hand lands on his shoulder, and Lloyd snaps out of it. Nya looks at him with sympathy; whatever it is that she saw in his face, she understands.
"I know a thing or two about growing up too fast," she smiles sadly. "Not physically, of course, but still... Kai was the most affected, considering he had to help raise me. Nothing felt stable except the two of us, together, so we just… held onto each other while trying to take care of ourselves. We're lucky to now have a family with the ninja that feels like home, though I still find myself acting all high strung now and again. I guess being born with elemental master parents guaranteed us an atypical childhood," there's light laughter in her voice. She's made her peace with it, even if it remains a wound, healed over but never fully gone.
"It's like.. I love my parents, and they've changed now, they're here for us, but..." she trails off. A gust of wind blows over them, seagulls calling above the horizon.
"I wish they'd taken care of me when it mattered most," Lloyd finishes instead. Nya's eyes move to him, slightly widened, and after a moment of surprise she nods.
"Yeah," she says, then nods again, taking it in. Briny air fills her lungs. "Yeah, that's it."
There's a bitter smile on her lips. It would be nice if it were a wound easily healed, but knowing that they share it makes it easier to bear. She keeps her hand firm on Lloyd's shoulder, and she keeps it on the shoulder of that little boy, swarmed in a black hoodie he modified by himself to look like a father he's only ever met in dreams. He leans into the touch, and he leans into the side of a young girl, her eyebrows knitted in a frown modeled after her brother, as if that could make her look as adult as he forces himself to be.
With every coming of the waves the kids drift further and further away.
"If you could do it over again, would you still have chosen to merge with the sea?" Lloyd asks the girl. He watches the blue specks in her eyes flicker, reflecting the ocean.
"Is that even a question?" she laughs, leaning forward. The wind curls her hair, blowing it away, and she brushes some strands behind her ear. "Sure, there may have been another way to stop Wojira that we could've come up with somehow, but at the time, every second mattered. I'd give myself away every time if it meant the safety of everyone."
Lloyd rests his head against her shoulder, closing his eyes. Her words sound distant then, a stray pebble caught between the waves. An almost suffocating feeling pulses inside, like an organ, in response to her. It's a raw, unpolished feeling of kinship, empathy, between two people messed and tousled with by the world. The knowledge that, no matter what, when it comes to it, when the world comes crashing down, they're the ones that will soften the landing, because that's what they're supposed to do, because that's what they've been doing ever since they've been children parading around as adults.
The wind feels much colder then. There's a brief flash of light where the darkening clouds weave together far away.
"I guess... I guess that's another thing we have in common," Lloyd says quietly and glances up at Nya's face, where her smile has faded into a worn out visage. He presses his head into her shoulder, not sure what else to do with this sudden affection aching in his chest. He hopes it gets his feelings across. She presses back, and smiles slightly again, sighing.
"Alright, let's get back to the monastery, it's probably gonna storm soon," she says.
"Ah, true."
Nya props herself up on the rocks and gets up. She stretches, limbs cracking quietly, getting used to life flowing through them again as she lets out a big breath. Lloyd follows suit. Rocks scatter under their feet. A breeze picks up, as if following alongside them, getting ready to go as well.
"Oh, and, Lloyd," Nya stops for a moment. Her eyes trail downwards. Then, she smiles at Lloyd, earnest. "Thanks for chatting with me. I feel somewhat better now."
"Oh, um," he stumbles, caught off guard. Though the air grows colder, his face then feels warm.
He smiles back, fangs peeking out. "Of course, no problem!"
Then, he takes her hand in his.
The ocean grows darker, reflecting the storm clouds hanging low. A distant rumbling in the distance promises to wash the world away in the coming hours. Two seagulls race across the sky, and dive down to the surface of the water, their wings tearing ripples through the blue.
Despite the growing darkness, the water shimmers from afar.
Light catching on their feathers, the seagulls call out, laughing together.