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Misako knew it would be their child before anyone else did— before he was even born.
She and Garmadon had always been so careful, mostly at Garmadon’s insistence. She had never particularly wanted children, she could be content either way, but her husband? He always insisted he despised children, never wanted to be responsible for one, never even wanted to be in the same room as one.
Misako saw through all those excuses, knew that his childfree desires came from fear rather than hatred. She knew that he was petrified of the idea of the evil coursing through his veins worsening, causing him to hurt any children he might have. Or the fear that the very evil in him could be passed on, to curse a would-be-innocent soul with the same disease that cursed him.
Despite their efforts, a child was conceived. It was the first sign Misako knew, the first sign she felt. They could try as hard as they might, but they couldn’t fight fate. It was merely a hunch at first, the three of them— Wu, Garmadon, and her— knew the prophecy. A chosen one. The green ninja.
She was sure they hadn’t pieced it together, hell, she was fairly sure she was being ridiculous herself. Slip ups happened, no form of birth control was ever one-hundred percent effective. It didn’t have to mean it was fate.
When she told Garmadon, she expected the reaction, the fear presenting itself as anger as it so often did these days. She stopped recognizing him in these moments, the fits of rage and hatred. Years before when it was less common, she would only feel sadness at these episodes. Now, she could admit she felt fear, fear for herself, fear for their unborn child. Garmadon’s violent outburst ended only when he turned around from flipping over their dresser to turn around to find her expression fearful as she laid in bed, her hand resting over her stomach.
Garmadon felt dread crawl angrily up his chest, clawing and seething, attacking angrily at his throat. He swallowed it down.
Thankfully he calmed down after first being told. He tried to make up for the outburst, but Misako spent much of her time in her office. She did so before, but she did it much more often after the pregnancy. He wondered if that was an excuse to stay away from him.
It wasn’t, Misako was shutting herself in her office, in the library, in the Adventure’s Club, desperately looking for answers. Ways to stop Garmadon’s descent into madness. It was no longer just her husband she would lose, no longer just Wu’s brother, but a child’s father. If she couldn’t save Garmadon for his own sake, surely the world would let her save him for their child?
The second sign she felt was when she really started looking into the prophecy. At first she brushed the kicks and squirms inside her as coincidences. She was researching general stuff about pregnancy as well. Some babies were just wriggly. She couldn’t help but notice the child inside her was particularly active whenever she was near a certain Monastery, a certain scroll.
She knew it, deep down, she did. She pushed it away, heart breaking at the thought of her family being ripped apart before it even truly formed.
Eight months, two weeks, four days— approximately. She’d done the math for when the most likely date of conception had been, and that’s how long she’d been pregnant for. It was nothing to worry about when it came to health matters, but the baby came earlier than expected. She hoped that wasn’t another sign.
Garmadon was the most himself Misako had seen him for.. years. Holding the little green bundle. She hated looking at that color around him, around her son, but it was one of the hospital’s baby blankets. She questioned it to the staff, Wasn’t blue or something a more traditional color for a boy? She had asked, trying not to sound like she was being nit-picky about it. We weren’t expecting this today, the green is all we had, the nurse had answered.
Garmadon teased her, and she had to come up with an excuse on why she cared. She wasn’t being picky on the baby blues or pinks, but why did it have to be green? She’d be happier with the hospital white everything else seemed to come in.
She held him to her chest again, finally getting a good look at him now that she wasn’t exhausted. She thought he was beautiful, and she said so.
I think he’s a little… bald. And ugly. Garmadon had said, Misako sent a powerful glare before giving a playful slap to his arm, she was not in the mood for his jokes or playful insults to their newborn son.
She bounced him slightly, waiting patiently as he opened his big, curious eyes.
It was then she really resigned herself to the truth.
Bright, beautiful green eyes that stared fuzzily at their father. He barely looked at Misako.
…Is he looking at me? Her husband had whispered, full of wonder. She couldn’t hold back her laugh, Where else would he be looking at?
She let him hold the boy for as much as he liked, even if she had to admit, the urge to tug the baby to her bare chest and keep him there for hours was stronger than anything she had felt.. she wanted to give the two of them this before things broke apart.
What should we name him? We never decided
…Lloyd.
’Lloyd.’ ‘Gray-haired?’ But he’s bald.
She resisted the urge to slap him again.
For a moment in time, Misako held out the hope that this was it. The final battle was a stupid metaphor, Lloyd’s birth itself being the very thing that could dissolve the evil left by the Great Devourer. Of course, it was an empty wish, Garmadon got worse, way worse. His rage became too often for her to justify sticking around— so, in the middle of the night, she scooped up their two month old son, shushing him as she held back her own tears as she fled.
She knew that her leaving would push him over the edge, finally tip over the last bits of good that kept the darkness in him back, but it was either leave now, or risk the wellbeing of Lloyd. At the end of the day, it was a hard ask, but an easy choice.
She threw herself into studying, hearing of Garmadon being banished, she held vague contact with Wu. Desperately searching for ways to stop all of this, to help her husband and son.
She left Lloyd home most days, a babysitter, a nanny, Mystake more often than not, though, she pulled away from that option when she began teasing about the baby’s sharp canines when he started teething. Misako couldn’t take another reminder that her baby had been doomed since before his birth.
She could notice the signs of his inhuman heritage. Nothing obvious, nothing no one else would notice, but if she was looking, she could see what Mystake was saying about his teeth, and his little ears pointed a bit more than average.
It was easy to keep up with his studies when he was little. When he slept through most of the day or when he was entertained by a mat and a few rattling toys on the floor. When he started crawling and later walking was when she found it hard to split her time. Being a single mother was a full time job already, but she was spending every waking moment she could researching, digging for ways to stop what she knew was inevitable.
She spent nights soothing him while sobbing, rocking him back and forth in her arms as she tried to read scrolls through her tears. She realized, on the morning after his third birthday, that she couldn’t do this.
He was in the living room, eating breakfast, while she stood in front of the calendar in the kitchen, looking at the day marked in bright red. ‘Lloyd’s birthday.’ She had forgotten.
Of course, Lloyd was only three, none the wiser, he’d started speaking in half sentences only recently. But it crushed her to know she had been so focused on her research that she had forgotten the day he was born.
She knew what had to be done. She knew that she could either stop her efforts in learning everything about this prophecy, or she could give him the attention he deserved. She couldn’t have both.
But maybe.. maybe it didn’t have to be her to give him what he needed. It was an idea she spun around in her mind for a few months before gathering up the courage to do it. It was a hard ask, and it was a hard choice.
She searched for a while for places that might be able to take him in, boarding schools that kept children year round, maybe schools she would be able to visit— though she knew that her travels would likely make that impossible, and maybe after a while.. he wouldn’t even want to see her.
Darkley’s. On one hand, it seemed like the worst possible option. However, the more she looked into it, the more she felt.. drawn to it. He was a good kid, he really, really was, but he didn’t often get on well with other kids his age. She was hoping that, at the very least, his father’s name would give him a leg up here, rather than drag behind him in a dark cloud. The school curriculum was.. publicly good, who knew if they actually followed them or not, but she didn’t have many other options, did she?
She packed him up late at night, making sure he had all his clothes in a nice bag, dressing him up that morning. She wrote him a letter, explaining— not everything, but a child friendly version of events that didn’t reveal too much that she knew, and tucked it into his bag. She brushed out his hair and helped him into his jacket, letting him carry his own bag after he begged to, only to carry it again two minutes later because it’s too heavy.
She stopped at the gate of the school, crouching down to his level, readjusting his jacket. She had written another note, this one for the staff. She had explained everything to Lloyd as best she could, and her hope was that he could tell the staff himself, but he was both three and not the best with strangers. He only spoke in half sentences to her, and around strangers it was odd for him to speak a single word.
“You go up there and knock on that door, okay? And you hold out this paper for whoever answers, okay?”
He nodded, his childlike innocence so very excited to do as he was asked. She stood up as he clumsily sprinted up to that door, knocking eagerly. She slipped away once she confirmed the door had been answered.
The staff at Darkly’s would take Lloyd in, look through his bag, and toss any items or notes they deemed unimportant.
Lloyd would meet his classmates, spend a good few hours outside on campus looking for his mom, before being led to bed where he was then bitten by a nest of fire ants. Only one of those things was easy for him to remember as he grew up.