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When Nya walked in, Lloyd was laying on the mattress, blank eyes fixed on the ceiling. The parts of his uniform were loose on the floor leaving his sleeves and pant legs loose. Even his belt was off, which, in tandem with all other laces, had sloppily been tied into nooses. Nya carefully noted that they were all way too small for… actual use. It was just some way of his to pass the time.
“Lloyd, we’re going.”
He didn’t move. A few moments passed.
“Lloyd—”
“Yeah.”
He continued to lay there for a couple more moments, until he silently got up and started rebuilding his outfit. Pieces of armor fell into place, laces were tightened and tied… Every time his finger slipped, he stopped, leaned on his hand with his eyes closed, and continued like normal.
When he was finished, he walked to and rummaged through the pile of trash in the corner, lifted boxes and bags. A whole lot of them. Nya was just about to ask him what he was doing, when he finally pulled out a sheathed knife and sword. He attached them to his belt.
Then he stared at Nya with glassy eyes, awaiting her to move or say something.
Ever since Lloyd had come on the ship at however old he had been, around eight probably, he’d been having a rough time. It hadn’t been difficult for Nya and Kai to see themselves in the boy, a thing which they still brought up in their conversations from time to time. However, lately Lloyd had been slipping away like sand in an hourglass.
The first time Nya had had a good look at Lloyd in a while had been at dinner after they thought they’d stopped the ceremony to revive Garmadon. His hair had still been wet from getting submerged multiple times just an hour prior, he had been eating with his non-dominant hand due to some unknown injury, and his expression had been stuck in that awful state. He had barely spoken or eaten, wanted to sleep in another room away from the others, and washed himself both before and after dinner, maybe even a third time. Despite the ship’s limited water supply, nobody had dared to comment on it.
He hadn’t cheered up the next couple of days, instead continuing to hide whenever possible. It was rare to make eye contact with him.
Then of course, they’d all found out about their failure to stop the resurrection and Lloyd had locked them in that room. He still didn’t know that his whole adventure had been displayed to everyone, and if it was up to Nya, he would never need to know. They’d all been half-certain that Lloyd would die that night.
It was hard to say whether hearing Lloyd’s fever-induced rambles and having to fight a delirious ninja to make sure he doesn’t bleed out was worse than when he’d gone completely quiet. On one hand, trying to keep a panicked boy with a martial arts background still while he was in a whole nother world was not only physically hard, but emotionally a hell too. On the other, when he’d laid on that bed, the creeping feeling that his coarse breathing could stop right about any second only got worse the closer they got to the city. It had been possible that he would never wake up again. That would’ve been it. The last thing in his mind would have been the face of his father’s corpse disowning him and whatever he had hallucinated on the ship.
Then, he’d seen most of his friends die right in front of him. Of course, they now knew they were alive, but that Lloyd didn’t. That Lloyd had landed on that boat at the river, sat down, hissed as if he was going to start crying, but in the end only sighed. Then he’d smiled.
Almost every morning and night that Nya had woken up, normally or from a nightmare, Lloyd had been awake or missing from his sleeping place. The first few nights he’d been sobbing and turning on the thin mattress, but soon he’d gone mostly blank and started disappearing at night. Nya had tried to find out where he was going but to no avail.
Today there were the knots. Everyone could see that he wouldn’t hold up much longer. He was simply ripping at the seams. Whether he would stop eating, stab himself on impulse or simply shut off in the middle of a fight, he was fading away right before Nya’s eyes.
She had been able to drown everything in work, and motivate herself to keep going, but it was clear that at this point, her encouragement to Lloyd went in from one ear and out the other.
It was time to go. Nya took a step back and turned to face the door. Lloyd took it as a signal to go and was going to walk past Nya.
But she stopped him at the doorway. She grabbed his shoulders and spun him around to face him.
“Can I hug you?” she said and looked him straight in the eye.
Lloyd avoided her gaze, but stayed extremely still. Only his eyes were moving slightly and blinking, communicating something like mulling it over in his head.
“...Alright,” he said in the way that a wary street cat approaches food that it’s deadly suspicious of, but in all its hunger can’t resist.
He almost stumbled over when she pulled him closer and wrapped her arms around him. Slowly and hesitantly, he raised his arms as well and squeezed Nya’s back.
He didn’t even care about the invisible layer of dirt that he imagined on Nya’s clothes that was getting on his face. The dirt felt a little more okay now. Instead of a creature spreading all over him and sinking into his skin, it was just the stuff he would dig worms out of as a child. He leaned closer in.
The silence had been killing Nya. Things felt a little too close now, like Lloyd was going to pierce the shield she’d carefully crafted for herself. His warmth gave way to the cold shadow that always loomed behind her — the thought that everything would get taken away from her if she didn’t constantly watch her back. She could only have one — numbness or this straining contrast between warmth and cold.
She couldn’t wait to drown her thoughts in the clanking of metal again, but right now she was doing something for someone else. Someone who needed her in that moment, and who made her feel guilty for not needing the same way. Or maybe she did need him all the same. She didn’t allow herself to figure it out.
Her ability to cope and tune things out was maybe a little too good sometimes, to the point that she was afraid she’d have forgetten her friends’ faces next time she woke up. But it kept her able to function, assured that she could keep protecting her loved ones and the world by taking away the paralyzing fear of failure.
At the same time, she simply hadn’t thought of what she would do if Lloyd were to go too. His presence was yet another distraction on her list. She tried to convince herself that she didn’t personally care if Lloyd died, just so she could keep herself from breaking under the pressure. But truthfully, the underlying need to at least keep Lloyd safe was one of the strongest motivations to keep her going.
She felt herself slipping back into her old habits — let go of it before it disappoints you, don’t care about it so it doesn’t hurt you. But people couldn’t be abandoned like the hard tasks she used to avoid. If she had managed to overcome that, she could overcome this. Still, the more severe the possible consequences were, the more tempting it was to run away. The grief of losing multiple incredibly close people at once and the weight of one boy’s life on the line were among the hardest things she’d ever had to face, but there was no way she would avert her eyes.
Nya slowly let go of Lloyd, who lingered for a few seconds still, before also backing away.
“Just know that I’ve got your back,” Nya said. “I won’t let you fall.”
Lloyd took a breath as if to say something, but nothing came out. He only sighed and smiled weakly.
They both headed out.