Chapter Text
There was a squelching, crunching sound as Kai felt his sword spear through something. Something made of flesh and bone. Behind him, Nya made a sound that was half-gasp, half scream.
Kai opened his eyes, his heart beating a terribly painful tattoo against his ribcage. More terrified than he’d ever been in his entire life – including the prior few seconds when he’d thought his sister’s life would be brutally snuffed out – Kai relented to the sight he knew would greet him; that of Lloyd, his little brother, the one he'd promised to look after, caught on the blade of his sword like a shish kebab.
Lloyd’s mouth contorted into a devilish, bloody grin. “Atta boy,” taunted Morro.
Then he coughed up more blood, and suddenly Lloyd’s face went slack, the dark shadows around his eyes fading away, quickly replaced by a double stream of tears that spilled silently from their corners. His hair brightened back to its usual blonde in almost the same instant. For a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, Nya and Kai could see complete awareness in Lloyd’s face as he stared down at them, their first time seeing his own true gaze in weeks. It was him – the way he was looking at them both, the unreserved love underlying the pain and sorrow in his eyes, was in such stark contrast to the leering malice that had plagued them all this time.
Then his head slumped forward, his body keeled backward, and with a sickeningly slick sound, he slid off Kai’s sword and crumpled to the ground.
“LLOYD!” screamed Nya. She pushed past Kai and fell to her knees beside Lloyd, shoving her hands against the gaping wound in his stomach. “No no no no no!”
Kai, still gripping his sword, staring at the blood staining the blade – Lloyd’s blood, this went through Lloyd, I stabbed LLOYD – broke through his shock enough to reach up to the com in his ear. “Zane!” he shouted – partly out of fear, partly to drown out Nya’s desperate cries for Lloyd to stay with her, stay with her, to keep his eyes open and look at her. “Zane, call an ambulance to our location NOW! Lloyd’s down, he’s-” He swallowed. “He needs help NOW, do you understand?”
“Affirmative,” came Zane’s voice in his ear, and though it was low and composed, Kai could hear the grimness underneath.
He was still holding the sword. He flung it to the floor. Then he stumbled over to Nya and dropped down on all fours beside Lloyd’s head. Lloyd’s eyes were open, albeit dull and heavily lidded, and they found Kai’s face as he bent over him.
“Lloyd, Lloyd please,” Kai muttered frantically, taking Lloyd’s face in his hands. “Please please please hang on… help is coming, okay? You just have to hang on.”
Nya was sobbing beside him, but her hands never slackened in their press against Lloyd’s stomach, her tears spilling onto them and mixing with his blood. “Lloyd, please,” she bawled.
Lloyd’s faraway gaze slid aside, unseeing and fuzzy. His breath wheezed from his bleeding mouth, and his eyelids started to droop closed. Kai shook Lloyd’s head between his hands. “NO Lloyd! Stay awake, stay awake!” His vision blurred as his own tears welled up, obscuring the sight of Lloyd’s eyes shutting completely. He swiped the hair from his face, his hands slicking the blood from Lloyd’s chin across his cheeks. “Lloyd please, please don’t die, don’t die, please, no-”
“Kai! Nya!”
Neither of them looked up as Zane came barreling towards them, followed closely by Cole and Jay. All three stopped short when they saw Lloyd on the floor.
“Lloyd…” choked out Cole.
“Where’s the ambulance, Zane?!” Kai yelled, still holding Lloyd’s head, not taking his eyes off of him. He’s not breathing, he’s stopped breathing, why isn’t he breathing??-
“It’s on its way, Kai,” Zane answered, putting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing it tightly.
No sooner had he spoken than they could hear the unmistakable sound of a warbling siren in the distance, rapidly increasing in volume.
“Lloyd… Lloyd.” Kai was a complete mess by this point, his breath uneven, his cheeks damp. Distantly he felt another pair of hands gently but firmly take his wrists, pulling his own hands from Lloyd’s head. Yet a third pair gripped him by his shoulders and dragged him back, away from the boy on the floor, as some figures in white came into view, crouching by Lloyd and speaking to Nya in urgent voices.
Kai was engulfed on all sides by the arms of his brothers, both comforting him and restraining him from reaching back towards the youngest of them. He watched helplessly, through a haze of mist, as the paramedics worked over Lloyd, cutting him open (his clothes, just his clothes, thought Kai dully, it’s too bad about that green gi…), attaching things to him, needles connected to tubes and wires connected to a machine, which made a whirring sound like a camera about to snap a shot, and when the shot came Lloyd’s chest jolted upward and sank back down, his head lolling to the side, his eyes still closed.
“Please, no…” Kai sobbed. Jay hugged his arm even tighter.
The machine whirred again, and Lloyd once more spasmed against the floor as electricity passed through him.
One of the paramedics bent his ear against Lloyd’s mouth. “Still nothing,” he said.
“Oh Lloyd, please,” choked Nya. She’d been pulled back by another paramedic. Her palms were strikingly scarlet in the ambulance’s headlights.
Abruptly, Jay let go of Kai and disappeared from his side. He half ran, half crawled towards Lloyd, and before anyone could stop him, brought both fists down onto Lloyd’s chest. The crackle of electricity bursting from his hands was clearly audible, and Lloyd was even illuminated briefly in the moment of impact.
His eyes flew open as he gasped. Then he sank back down as though dead once more.
The paramedic at his side bent over him again. “He’s breathing.”
“We've got a pulse as well,” said another, crouched by Lloyd's abdomen, where she’d covered his wound and already stuck an IV needle in his wrist. “But he's lost a lot of blood. Any of you a match?” She directed the question at the ninja, all of whom were in various states of shellshock.
Nya recovered first. “Me,” she said. She pulled away from the paramedic that had been holding her. “Take as much as he needs. Please just… save him.”
“We’ll do our best,” said the woman gently. “You're coming with us. Looks like you might need some medical attention yourself,” she added, gesturing to Nya’s face, which still sported the large bruise that Lloyd – Morro – had given her when he'd knocked her out.
As the other medics loaded Lloyd into the ambulance, Nya ran back to Kai and hugged him tightly, dislodging Cole and Zane. “It's not your fault,” she whispered. “Please don't blame yourself.”
Before Kai could think of what to say or even return the hug, she’d let him go and run back to the ambulance.
“I will ask them which hospital they're taking him to,” said Zane quietly, hurrying after her before the doors closed. As he passed by Jay, who hadn't moved from his place on the floor since he'd shocked Lloyd’s heart back to life, he patted the back of his head. Jay put his face in his hands.
Cole was now the only one left with Kai, holding him around the shoulders, practically keeping him sitting upright, as Kai had entirely lost all energy in his body. He sank into Cole's hold, clasping his hands together to stop them shaking.
Cole rubbed his arms, as though trying to warm him up. “He’ll make it, Kai,” he murmured. “He'll be fine.”
Kai shook his head. “How… How could I…”
“What?”
He couldn't say it out loud. He couldn't put what should've been the impossible into words. He couldn't bear what the others would think if he confessed this most terrible thing.
Zane returned to them, tugging Jay along by the sleeve. “We should go tell Master Wu and Misako, quickly,” he said. “Then we can all go together.”
Cole helped Kai to his feet, then darted to pick up his discarded sword. As he lifted it up to the moonlight his hand slowed, giving him, and Zane and Jay, time to process the fact that it was coated practically to the hilt in dark blood.
Wordlessly he slipped it into its sheath on Kai’s back.
“Come on, Kai,” he said quietly, squeezing his shoulders. “Let’s get out of here.”
No one spoke again the entire way back to the tea shop.