Work Text:
Lloyd heaved the laundry basket up into his arms, walking towards the kitchen. He set it down in front of the machine and began to load it. His arms trembled slightly, body complaining about the exertion. It had been a week. A week since the battle with the Preeminent, Lloyd was beginning to lose it.
The first few days, he spent mostly sleeping. Body battered and bruised and beyond exhausted after weeks of possession – though he had been less injured than he thought, only minor scrapes, bruises, dehydration, and exhaustion. Banned from training by Zane until he regained enough weight, he had only been fed enough during his capture to keep him alive, Lloyd quickly grew tired of being idle.
A lack of direction left him simply to think, and after discovering that his mind decided that was the best time to remind him of things he didn't want to remember, Lloyd was trying to keep busy. So, he was on his fifth random chore activity of the morning, desperate for anything to do, he just had to keep moving. Keep proving his body was his own, that he was in control again. He had to, or he would start to think about – well, him.
Pressing go on the machine, he turned, jumping ever so slightly at Kai standing in the kitchen behind him. How had he not heard him come in – he was a ninja FSM sake. Pushing his hair out his eyes, it needed cutting, but he couldn't be bothered. He stood tall, ignoring the slight tremble in his frame.
Another side effect of the malnourishment and possession, Lloyd was constantly freezing. He tried wearing more layers, but he seemed to never warm up. It had gotten ridiculous quickly, garnering strange looks from the other ninja, so Lloyd simply remained cold. It was better than everyone constantly noticing his presence.
Lloyd moved around the kitchen and began to fill the sink with hot water, adding dish soap. He ignored Kai who came to lean against the cupboards to his left. The only sound in the room was the running of the tap, sounding eerily familiar to the river in the First Spinjitzu Master's tomb, where both he and Kai almost drowned the day they finally rescued him.
He placed the first of the dishes in the hot water, relishing the warmth that bled up from his submerged hands. Water was safe, no ghosts could touch him while wet, and the heat was just an added bonus.
Still, Kai remained beside him, as Lloyd had found on multiple occasions recently. The red ninja seemed to always have an excuse to be in the same room as him – fetching something or performing some task that Lloyd was pretty sure he made up. The only time Lloyd could be found without him for an extended period was if he retreated to his room, but the solitude was somehow worse than the constant low-level irritation.
Kai shifted beside him, but he remained stubbornly washing the dishes. If Kai wanted to talk, he would have to start it. Lloyd pushed up the sleeve of the shirt he was wearing. Preventing it from dipping into the soapy water. It exposed the long pink sword scar on his forearm, freshly healed, from the fight in the courtyard when the ninja had first fought Morro, and by extension, him.
He could feel the master of fire's gaze lingering on him – more specifically on that scar – one that Kai himself had given him. There were others, hidden on his thin body, a collection he hoped would fade with time.
"Do they hurt?" Kai finally broke the silence, nodding vaguely at Lloyd's exposed arm.
"No."
That wasn't exactly true. His entire body hurt at a low level all the time, but there was nothing to do about that. He deserved it anyway, for hurting his friends, for failing as their leader, as the green ninja. The kitchen was silent again, Lloyd washing a few more plates and placing them out to dry.
"It wasn't your fault Lloyd, Morro—" Kai started, attempting this conversation for at least the fifth time in the last few days. Lloyd's hand slipped from the plate he was holding; it slid back under the water as he clenched his fist, trying to stop the shaking.
"Don't. I already know."
He did know. He did. He knew he fought as hard as he could; that possession is not something that you can simply stop, that it wasn't him who hurt his friends. But it had felt like him. He remembered it through his eyes, the movements he made, the looks on their faces.
Lloyd returned to the dishes, placing the last few on the rack to dry. His heartbeat wildly and his entire body felt like it might give out at any moment. But he couldn't stop. He couldn't. He needed to be anything except still, to make sure he didn't think about it anymore than he had to.
Kai placed a hand on his shoulder, and Lloyd froze. Part of him screamed to lash out, to fight, to get rid of any contact. Part of him longed to lean into the touch, the warmth that came with it, to fold into the older boy's arms and simply fall apart. Instead, he stood stock still, staring straight ahead as Kai spoke.
"Lloyd, I—we're here for you buddy okay, whenever you're ready, if-if you need to talk."
Kai dropped his hand and walked out of the kitchen. Something in Lloyd mourned the loss, aching void inside of him growing only bigger. He drained the sink, picked up the now empty laundry basket, and turned to the next mindless task - ignoring the pain that filled him, inside and out.