TW: PTSD, mentions of blood/gore, serious illness (fantastical)

The cell in which Axon, one of the masters of the mind, rotted in, was located underground and deep within the impenetrable walls of Kryptarium Prison.

It was a labyrinth just to reach the cell itself - a journey of twists and turns, security checks and beeping card readers. The black, stone walls held no warmth, and Lloyd found himself on the verge of feeling claustrophobic as he ventured after Warden Noble through the underground tunnels. It was like the walls itself were attempting to wrangle the air from his lungs.
"Tight security," Lloyd had mentioned offhandedly as the team was squeezed through another metal doorway. He didn't miss how it was reinforced through with vengestone, and noted that if anything were to go awry, he nor his team would be able to rely on their powers for a quick offence.
Warden Noble turned back and sent Lloyd a giddy smile. His hands fidgeted with a large ring of keys. He was a fanboy, much to Lloyd's amusement, but it was not lost on him how if he took off his mask, chirpy, bubbly Warden Noble would not hesitate to throw the son of Lord Garmadon into his very own vengestone cell.
Probably.

"Only the best, since you requested it so!" Warden Noble gushed with stars in his eyes. "We'd never had an elemental master in custody before. He makes for charming conversation."
Lloyd thought back to all the times Axon declared how much he wanted Lloyd's head detached from his body. He lifted a gloved hand and rubbed his neck.
"I bet."
Zane was the only other ninja who was quietly observing his surroundings; Kai and Nya were bickering and Jay and Cole were having an in-depth conversation about who, out of those imprisoned in Kryptarium, was the worst villain that they had fought. The master of ice finally broke his silence.
"How long did it take for you to gather this much vengestone?"
Of course the vast quantity of it wouldn't have slipped past Zane. He was probably scanning each and every corridor, let alone every single speck of dust on the wall.

"Morro's not in Kryptarium, you buffoon!" Jay snipped from the background.

"Quite shorter than I thought it would be," Warden Noble confessed. He pushed one of the umpteenth keys into a lock of another set of doors and pressed his keycard to the reader. With a beep, the team was granted access. "There's quite the mine full of the stuff at the Caves of Despair."
Lloyd made a noncommittal hum, eyes flittering between the number of security cameras and making note. It wasn't that he didn't trust the security at the prison, but... he didn't trust the security at the prison.
"Here we are!" Warden Noble said cheerfully as they stopped outside a vengestone reinforced cell door. The dread that had been sitting deep within Lloyd's gut reared its head and made his arms feel weak and clammy. He pushed back the feeling with as much effort as he could.
A hand placed itself on his shoulder. He glanced back and found Kai's worried gaze. He would've been frowning too, if it weren't for his mask.
"You don't have to do this."
"I'm fine."
Kai's amber eyes stared at him scrutinisingly. He released his hold and sighed, though it was muffled. He probably worked out that Lloyd was too stubborn and proud to risk Axon seeing the rest of the team without its leader.

The door opened with a grating sound of metal against concrete, one that rattled through Lloyd's bones and tingled his teeth. The room beyond was illuminated a little too brightly to be comfortable - but then again, less change for Axon to be hiding something. He was certainly smart enough for it.
Pacing his cell like a caged tiger was the master of the mind himself. His white-blond hair was in a disarray and his yellow eyes jumped amongst the bars of the cell as if he were counting them.
At the sound of the door opening, Axon paused. Lloyd froze. A million memories rushed through him, debilitating him, but forever most prominent was the heinous act he inflicted on the villain's shoulder.
At the thought of it, his green eyes dropped to said shoulder, hidden underneath the swath of the beige prison jumpsuit he wore. It couldn't hide the precarious and strange dip the crook of his shoulder took.
He felt his stomach twist with queasiness. The taste of human blood still sat stuck between his teeth, the weight of flesh on his tongue.
Lloyd shivered in anxious disgust. Nya discreetly slipped her palm into his, shielded by their bodies. The team leader had never been more grateful for her small but effective act of grounding him.

"Ah," Axon drawled, quickly falling from a look of frantic despair to a cocksure, languid smirk. It was a mask that he wore with ease. "My favourite fruit pies. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Warden Noble quickly snuck back out the door and shut it behind him. The heavy sound of the locks made Lloyd's spine stiffen - he would rather be anywhere else than be locked in a room with Axon.
Lloyd's tongue felt heavy in his mouth. The piercing, which he was usually so used to it that he could ignore, suddenly felt irritating.
"You know why we're here," Cole began, upon realising that Lloyd was still scrambling for words.
"Oh, please do enlighten me," Axon purred. He took a seat on the chair he had been provided with and sprawled his arms, as if he were royalty and not a prisoner stuck in the most secure cell in all of Ninjago.
"The Time Twins," Nya began, giving their hidden, joined hands a squeeze. Lloyd bit the tip of his tongue and tried to control his breathing. "Acronix and Krux. You helped them, didn't you? What's your plan?"
"What makes you think I have anything to do with this?" he said in a velvety sigh. "You all really are quick to point your fingers. Oh! Do you like my new digs? Pretty nice, right? I'd invite you in, but you know-" he gestured to the massive series of electronic locks on the door to his cell.

"We're not here for a chit chat," Kai snarled. "Tell us what you did! We know that this is all you. It's got your name written all over it."
"You truly do flatter me, flame boy," Axon said with a shrug of his good shoulder. "But I can't claim this as my idea. How could I? I've been stuck in this cell with nothing but four walls as scope for my imagination."
"So you know whose idea it was, then," Zane dissected.
"Did I say that?" he sweetly asked, then abruptly changed topic. "It truly is remarkable how useless you lot are - and you call yourselves the saviours of Ninjago? Please, you could barely protect a single girl! Isn't Y/n still under watch? I pity her, I truly do, to have to be relentlessly followed by a boy who looks more a pitiful puppy than man when he scowls-" he gestured to Jay. "An egotistic, cocky hag who's dumber than a brick-" this time to Kai. "A brutish thug with a personality no wider than a fingernail-" he stared directly at Cole. "A girl so proud that she thinks she's better than what she is, a robot so disconnected from himself that he believes he could ever truly be considered a human, and a boyfriend so complicated and full of resent about who he is. I'm sure that makes for such a fun relationship."
"What a prick," Jay muttered under his breath, but Axon wasn't close to being over. He had barely begun. He set his gleeful, poisonous yellow eyes on Lloyd, the target of his hate and harassment, the one he wanted to wittle down to a puddle of self-doubt and hate.

"Tell me, Lloyd," he continued wickedly. "Do you wail and sob about your inner turmoil every chance you get? Do you force Y/n to pat your back and dry your tears, time and time again? Do you cry about the monster inside of you when you make love to your poor girlfriend?"
Lloyd didn't realise he had even moved, but suddenly he had grabbed the front of Axon's shirt and slammed him into the bars. Axon winced, but instead of crying out or begging for release, a cruel smile curled over his lips. A growl threatened to release through Lloyd's teeth, one full of rage and the want to tear Axon to shreds.
"Disrespect her again and I'll finish what I started and rip your pathetic head off of your body with my teeth."
"Lloyd!" Jay called, shocked.
"Ah, yes," Axon goaded with a tilt of his head. "Give in to your rage, boy. Show your team just how much the monster inside of you controls you. Show them who their leader truly is."
Lloyd could feel himself trembling with fury, barely able to contain himself. Perhaps it was a good thing that he couldn't use his powers, because he was sure that if he did, he would've long ago crushed Axon's throat in his very palm.
"Lloyd," Nya called, softer. He huffed sharply through his nose.

"We don't have time for this," Lloyd managed to bite out. He wrangled his hand from Axon's shirt and took a step back, praying that his wobbly knees weren't too noticeable. "How long is your sentence again? Life, isn't it? Don't you want to do something other than sit here, pathetically twiddling your thumbs and waiting for someone to visit just so you can weave your insults through careful sentences?"
"Oh, I've been doing much more than twiddling my thumbs," Axon promised with a glint in his eyes. "No, it wasn't my idea to release the time twins on Ninjago, but I do wish that it was. How genius. What a woman, truly astounding."
"Woman?" Cole echoed. "Who?"
Axon sent a dull look Cole's way. "And here I thought the red one was meant to be dense. Why would I tell you?"
"You do not have much of a choice," Zane said carefully. "Where else are you to go?"
"True, very true," Axon said with a nod. His sharp gaze found Lloyd. "But that doesn't mean I have to speak. What are you to do, beloved green saviour? Torture me for what I know? Go on, show your friends just how much of a son of Garmadon you really are."
"He's useless to us," Lloyd spat. He turned back to his team and began to stalk to the exit. "He's not going to speak."

"How's your Sensei?"

Lloyd paused.
"He took quite the punch, didn't he?" Axon continued silkily. "Curious how fickle age can make you become. He did good for a thousand years, but what of two thousand? Three? Give it a week, boy, and your precious uncle will be reduced to nothing but the dust of his bones. Even a son of the First Spinjitzu Master is powerless when it comes to battling time."
Lloyd was still frozen. His blood was charged, calling at him to leap, to scream, to reduce Axon himself to a pile of dust. But he did nothing. He couldn't move.
"How?" Kai breathed. "How do you even know that?"
"It really is amusing to think that a bunch of children can outsmart a master of the mind," Axon purled. "I'm not even only one step ahead, I'm a whole yard. While you have devoted your lives to protecting this pathetic excuse of a world, I have devoted my life to outsmarting, outplanning and outwitting those who put my mother on the path of death."
"How many times do we have to tell you that your mother was a warrior by choice!" Nya snapped. "Nobody forced her to pick up a sword, yet she did anyway! Of her own accord. How do you think she'd react, seeing her own son betray the very cause she laid down her life for?"

Axon had steadily been growing more red, inhaling shorter and shorter breaths during her speech. At Nya's last quip, he exploded.
"YOU DON'T GET TO SPEAK OF MY MOTHER!" he roared, slamming his hands on the bars of his cell. His face was one of pure, unadulterated fury, eyeing Nya like a fox would a bunny - death in his vision. She stared back, unaffected and cool. "You don't get to speak of her as if you knew her!"
Nya glanced at Lloyd.
"You're right," she said collectedly. "He is useless."
Axon let out a scream of fury as Nya turned away with a triumphant swish. Then, just as abruptly he'd gone feral, Axon managed to calm himself with a snide snicker.
"You don't know, do you, Lloyd?" he called. "You don't know the truth about Y/n's powers. They haven't told you what she really is. What's inside of her."

"Give it up, man," Cole groaned. He roughly gripped Lloyd by the shoulder and began pulling him out of the room.
"What are you talking about?" Lloyd asked, risking a glance over his shoulder. "Who's 'they'?"
Axon only smiled. It didn't reach the coldness in his eyes.
It unsettled Lloyd enough to shudder. That was no man in the cell. That was a monstrous, violent, bloodthirsty freak.

The door shut behind the team, and Lloyd could do nothing but pray that time didn't jump again, less he found himself back in that horrid room.

🍃🍂🍁🍂🍃

It'd been a week since the time continuity had been disrupted, and each day was littered with some form of wacky temporal anomaly.

I found myself more often scouring social media about it. My textbooks laid untouched on my desk, dejected and gathering dust - then again, I wasn't doing much different than the rest of the entire campus. Even professors found themselves more interested in following along with this weird global event than teaching us students the course material.
I couldn't blame them. I couldn't even blame myself for my negligence in attention. How often does it happen that time splits in on itself? Jumps? Rewinds? I couldn't count the times I found myself repeating words, choking on a double-breath, tripping over a stair I thought I had already stepped. It was dangerous.
And what was more dangerous was the fact that people were starting to degrade the ninja for it.
They questioned whether or not they were doing their job right. People were getting seriously injured, and the team seemed to be in shambles, or from what people could see and posted online.
It was disheartening, seeing all this trash talk. Couldn't they see that the team was trying their best? Didn't they take into account the number of times the team had saved the world from unimaginable peril?

Wu is sick.
At least, that's what Jay had texted me. I couldn't get ahold of any of them beyond that three-worded text. Even Garmadon and Misako had gone radio silent on me. So, it was serious. Very serious.
I spent my nights tossing and turning, unable to rest. I'd find myself staring at the clock, watching as time would jump. Five minutes back. An hour forward. Two minutes rewound. Half an hour fast-forwarded.
Was Lloyd okay? Were the others? The team was scrambling for order, but what did that mean? Did Lloyd finally start leading the team of his own accord, without the input of his Sensei? Did Lloyd finally graduate, out of sheer necessity, to Sensei Lloyd, finally the true leader of the Secret Ninja Force?
It was what he'd wanted. It was what he was training for. But did that change under the circumstance? Did he berate himself for wanting to be a Sensei so viscerally that he blamed himself of 'manifesting' it like this? Like he always did, always blamed himself.

I wanted to call him. I kept ending up in voicemail.

It's okay. I'd been here before. Waiting on the outskirts while the ninja battled their way through their enemies to victory and safety for the people. It was normal that they'd be hard to get ahold of. I couldn't get in the way of saving the world.
But this was different, a voice inside of me argued. Wu was sick; in a way that I wasn't even sure of. Was it just a cold that had taken a turn? What if it was something far worse? It sounded bad.
The ceiling of my bedroom became my new fascination. I would stare at it as the night wore on, thinking too much about the what if's and the what could be's. I'd stare and stare and stare while my head spun and spun and spun.
And then, one day, after another long, long week of temporal fluctuations and dead silence - a text.

pew pew watergirl 🔫
im picking you up in an hour
Sent 8.43am

Before I could respond and ask why (not that I was complaining; I was beyond ecstatic to see Nya), she answered my unspoken question;

pew pew watergirl 🔫
wu wants to see you
Sent 8.43am

My heart leapt into my throat. Somehow, this felt far worse than the radio silence. Why else would Wu want to see me, other than him possibly dying?
Nya had greeted me with a watery, weary smile and a quiet 'hi.' She was oddly silent during the flight. It heightened my worry tenfold.
It was lunchtime when we arrived, but I was too nauseas with anxiety to have an appetite. The mood within the monastery was somber, with the monks acting like what monks would normally considered to act like - quiet and dutiful. But our monks were usually rambunctious and fun, and it made the air feel thick with misery. I stopped in a hallway and pressed my forehead to the wall. I could barely breathe.
"Y/n."
For the second time that day, my heart found itself in my throat. I turned at my name and found a dismal, tired-looking Misako.
"H- hey." I winced at the catch in my throat. She looked downtrodden right to desperation - her hair was limp, bags hung under her eyes, her face was pale.
I was brought into a delicate hug. We didn't say much else.

Nya led me to Wu's room, just as quiet. The silence of the monastery unnerved me. It had never been this quiet before, so much so that I could hear my own heartbeat and each inhale I took. I hated it.
Wu's room was dark, illuminated only by the sun peeking through crack in the heavy drapes and the softly glowing candles that had been dotted around his furniture. The strong smell of incense threw me off as soon as I stepped into the room, scent so strong that it felt like walking into a wall.
"It's a concoction Mistaké made," Nya murmured when she noticed my expression. "It's supposed to... supposed to help him."
Him in question, being the old man lying in the bed. My breath caught in my throat when my eyes finally adjusted.
Wu was always unusually strong for a man who looked his age. He always had this unflickering flame of life and fierceness - like a wise lion watching over his pride. I respected him tremendously.
Seeing him as he was, lying in bed like a corpse, had my stomach falling to my feet. Each step toward the bed felt as if I was trudging through thick mud. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be there.

Misako marched in after us, making me jump in shock. She flung back the curtains and shoved open the window, and the increased lighting just made Wu look all the worse. He was gaunt, fragile-looking. It seemed as if he'd shrunken in on himself and started shrinking on top of that.
"Wu." Misako bent down bedside his head and gently shook his shoulder. "Y/n's here and it's time for lunch. Wake up."
Wu blearily blinked open his eyes. They looked foggy, and I feared that he was going blind on top of everything else. He had to be assisted to sit up.
It was heartbreaking to see him like this. While, naturally, I was closer with his brother; I still had a soft spot for the Sensei. He'd protected me, believed in me, supported me for the almost three years I'd known him. Now that he was showing his age, I didn't know what to think. My mind was stunned and pulling up blank.
"Y/n," he croaked. His unfocused eyes found mine, and I was relieved to find the determination that had always been set in his brow was still there. Even like this, he was fighting.
"Hey, Wu," I said, conscious of how loud my voice was. He seemed to hear me just fine. "Getting the five star treatment?"
He wheezily chuckled, which slipped into a hacking cough. A shaking hand covered his mouth. His beard was tangled - he never allowed his beard to get tangled before.

"I wanted to speak with you."
"So I heard."
The wrinkles in his face deepened as he gently smiled. Misako returned to the room with a cup of tea in her hand. I was so caught up in taking in Wu that I hadn't even noticed her leaving.
"I fear that I may not have long until I join with my father," he began wearily, staring at the tea in his hands. "I have many things I wish I could tell you, but only fate is allowed to reveal them. You already know this. I am sorry that I could not find a loophole."
There were far more pressing concerns that had me worried, but I nodded for the sake of humouring him.
"I know, it's okay. Fate's annoying like that."
Another shallow chuckle.
"I did find one, however useless it might be. A loophole. I did not want to resort to this, but it may be your only warning."
I cocked my head to the side, alert and listening. My heart rate picked up. Nya shifted beside me.
"There is a book in the scroll room," he began. "An ancient one. It is Uchū's old journal. I would like for you to read it."
I blinked. "What for?"
Wu eyed me, but it seemed as though he couldn't quite focus on my face. Instead of looking at me, he was just staring into the ether. A small huff escaped his lips.

"It had his journals from when he first ever arrived in Ninjago, back when it was just a dark land ruled by night," he said. "It should interest you greatly."
He was right, I was intrigued. But surely he couldn't have asked me to come all this way just to read a book?
"It also had an interaction between him and the ancestry of your powers."
I stilled. Nya froze. Misako sucked in a breath. It was silent for the longest time, it was almost as if you could hear a pin drop.
"Whu... what?" I exhaled in disbelief.
"Fate has a plan and it likes to be strict," Wu continued, lying back down to rest once more. "It likes to dole out punishments to those who step out of the order of time. You know this too well."
I hummed, thinking back to when Lloyd thought the vision of our daughter had disappeared, thus ending our future together.
"Do not read this book just yet," Wu tiredly warned. "It is far too soon. But you will feel it. You will feel when you are ready. It may not answer all of your questions, but it can give you a better idea of who you are."
I went to thank him, but found the old Sensei already fast asleep once more. Numbly, I stood, sent one last pitiful look at the proud old man, withering away in his bed, before leaving the room.

"What happened to him?" I asked once Nya had shut the door behind her. Misako had stayed to keep watch over her brother-in-law. "And where is everyone else?"
Nya sighed. It was one of complete and unmasked exhaustion and she slumped her chin onto my shoulder.
"It's called a 'Time Punch,'" she answered. "You know how time's been acting crazy? These two brothers - masters of time, Acronix and Krux - have the ability to mess around with the temporal strands. Wu got hit during the middle of a fight, and now he's ageing at an unprecedented rate."
My wide eyes bulged further.
"What?" was all I could gasp.
"That's not all," Nya said with a tone of forced glee. "You know the red snakes that's been terrorising Ninjago City? The Vermillion?"
"Yeah?" I'd seen photos of them pop up all over social media.
"They have armour... armour that has Kai and my parent's insignia of craftsmanship."
I stared at her, bewildered. I had to shift through all the information she had dumped on me in an attempt to get it to make even a like of sense.
"But I thought your parents..." were dead.
"I know," Nya said and it seemed as if she were the one ageing unnaturally fast. "But Kai's convinced that they're out there, somewhere. He's looking into it with Zane at the moment. I needed to take a break."
"Oh." I didn't know what else to say. I glanced at the side of her face and found her expression pinched and sour - it didn't look like she was expecting or wanting advice. She didn't ask, either.

"Where are the others?" That was a safe topic to traverse.
"The rest of the team are looking into cures for Wu with Garm and Mistaké."
"Do you know when they'll be back?"
"No."
The afternoon continued slowly, sombrely and silently into night. The others had yet to return and Misako looked completely run into the ground, so I tackled on the effort of making dinner for the monastery with Dimitri and Hiyori. Nya would hover, obviously not wanting to be alone, but too lost in her thoughts to contribute. She sat listlessly at the bench. I couldn't blame her.
I had never felt so utterly alone, standing at the breadth of the entrance to Lloyd's bedroom. The room was dark, as was the moonless night that saturated the outside world in an inky cover, and it seemed so much larger and the shadows more eerie than they had ever been before.
I curled into a ball under the sheets and hugged my knees.
I woke from a fitful sleep when a hand gently placed itself on my shoulder and the mattress dipped beneath the weight of another. I blearily blinked, still half-stuck in the recesses of a dream of rapidly ageing elemental masters and red snakes.

"Y/n?" Lloyd's whisper in the dark had my drowsiness sharpening. His voice was melodic, a brush of honey-coated syllables and chocolate for the ears. Nobody could say my name prettier than he. "What are you doing here?"
I rolled over with a small groan and a sigh through my nose, staring up at the elemental master kneeling over me with a confounded look on his pretty face. His palm found my cheek and brushed a lock of hair aside with his thumb.
"Wu wanted to talk," I mumbled with my face still smooshed into the pillow. Blinking was difficult. "Power stuff."
Lloyd exhaled and settled beside me. I stared at his face - even shrouded in darkness, I could see the same look of exhaustion that Misako and Nya shared earlier. He dropped his arms over his stomach and closed his eyes.
"Are you okay?" I couldn't help but whisper. My voice was meek, barely audible, but Lloyd would be able to hear me as clear as day, anyway. "You didn't reply to any of my texts. I was worried. I am worried."
Lloyd turned his head to face me, staring at me with a weary apologetic gaze. He lifted his hand and delicately brushed the back of his fingers over my lips.
"Sorry, love," he murmured. "Things have been hectic. This is the first time I've been able to lay down in two weeks."

I eyed him worriedly. I pecked his fingers and wound my hand through his.
"I won't keep you up, then."
Lloyd only smiled and hauled me into his chest, wrapping his arms tightly around me. I immediately and joyfully sunk into his embrace, glad to finally be in his hold again. He pressed a kiss to the crown of my head and nuzzled his nose through my hair. Clearly his exhaustion didn't have any effects on his high level of affection.
I happily embraced him back, carding my fingers through his unkempt hair and watching over him as he quickly fell into a deep slumber.
I woke up again to Disturbance Via Lloyd. It felt as if I had only just closed my eyes.

"Hey," he whispered as he brushed his finger tips around the curve of my cheek. "Hey. I have to go. I didn't want to leave without saying goodbye."
My groan was strangled by the pillow. I peeked one disgruntled eye out at my boyfriend.
"What time is it?"
"Around ten to five."
I didn't even know what time he got home the night before, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to be able to tell that he certainly didn't get enough sleep. I reached up an arm and looped it around his neck.
"Five more minutes," I demanded. It was selfish, I knew, but I couldn't help it. "The world can wait five more minutes."
Lloyd hesitated, as if about to dissuade my attempt at getting more quality time with him. He caved, however, and instead dove back into my arms with a jostle of the bed.
"The world can wait five more minutes," Lloyd echoed in a sigh.
"Rest is healthy," I pointed out as I dug my fingers through his hair.
"Rest is healthy," he agreed.
"Kisses are also healthy."
He stilled. I squinted an eye open to take in his expression, but Lloyd didn't even bother echoing me, instead putting his energy into suddenly submerging me with a multitude of kisses along my neck and shoulder. I screeched in surprised delight before falling into a volley of giggles as his fluttery pecks tickled my skin.

"You're right," Lloyd said with a stroke of my throat with his knuckles while he dotted kisses along my collarbone. "Kisses are healthy."
I eagerly tilted my head to the side, allowing him more ease of access while he nipped at my neck. This was worth it - the silence for the past two weeks was worth it, if it all meant that it lead to me being here, unexpectedly finding myself in Lloyd's bed, breaths growing shorter and more uncontrolled, while he paid specific and unruly attention to that sweet spot on my neck that had my back arching out of the mattress and into his chest.
My hands reached up to tangle through his hair in an attempt to ground myself from this airy, light feeling that swirled through my senses. My heart pounded, my lips parted, my head rushed.
I turned to place a kiss against his cheek while he worked mercilessly, wanting to switch tactics. He obliged, turning his attention from my neck to my bottom lip as he engulfed me in true kiss that had a sweet flame lick through my veins. Something within me sparked, as if I had been electrocuted or filled with too much energy, overflowing. Everything felt like it was on the brim of overflowing, the verge of madness, the edge of an oblivion.
Lloyd took my plush bottom lip and sunk his teeth into me and my eyes near rolled into the back of my head. It was like lightning stroke up my spine with a feather duster and settled in my head - I couldn't think straight, it was all just a fluffy, electric mess.

"I have to go," Lloyd whispered against my lips. I brought him back into a kiss. His decadent touch stroked from my ribs to my hips and left a trail of spiking heat in its wake. "I have to go."
"Five more minutes," I breathed to his cheek.
"It's already been ten, doll."
In one last desperate attempt to get him to stay even only a second longer, I pressed an open mouthed kiss against him and pushed my tongue past his lips. The responding groan he gave was melodious, vibrating through my mouth and to the very core of my body. My heart rate fluctuated. My stomach fluttered something wild.
His hand gripped my hip as he returned the affection with vigour, gasping breaths catching and warmth cascading and all things sweet and untamed. My skin felt as if it was tingling, my limbs trembled.
Lloyd pulled away and I dropped my head back onto the pillow, both gulping air. He stared and I stared back, red eyes in the dark shadows, the only colour in that monochrome morning.
He brought his hand up to stroke the side of my face. I nuzzled my flushed cheek into his palm.
"I love you," he murmured.
"I love you," I responded with a kiss to the top his wrist.

His hand slipped from me as he stepped back, moving out the door with one last glance at me, sprawled in the covers of his bed.

🍃🍂🍁🍂🍃

It had been three days since I returned to university.

I may as well have just stayed at the monastery for what good it would've done. Physically, I was in Nom. Mentally, I was still in Ninjago City, worrying after Wu and the team.
The temporal fluctuations continued. I had a couple of nicks and bruises to moment the occasions of accidents caused by time jumps. Seliel and Vali were working nonstop around the city, helping out those who needed it and doing patrol every time there was a jump. Our training sessions had been put on hold - there were more important things at stake.
I got a C- on a test on the history of technology. I threw the report into the bin.
My parents had been calling regularly, and usually after a time jump. They were worried, it was clear to tell; missions didn't usually take this long, and I was losing sleep from the stress of it all. I wasn't even in the fighting force. It was still radio silence from their end.
I didn't bother trying to get in contact with the team or Lloyd's parents anymore - it was clear that they were too occupied to even check their phones. Dimitri was kind enough to keep me up to date with things at the monastery, but not much happened other than Wu's steady decline in health.

I kept Chen and Ambrose up as much as I was, and they shared my concerns. Aisling and Dylan's band were more so confused than anything, but they offered sympathy and moral support, which was nice of them.
Kvasir was strangely quiet.
"The sssituation feelsss familiar," he had mentioned one day when I asked him what was wrong. I didn't get the time to request further elaboration, as my phone began to ring, blaringly loud and demanding my attention.
"Hold that thought," I said as I fished the device from my pocket and walked backwards to somewhere more private.
My heart skipped a beat. It was Lloyd.
"Hey?" I answered tentatively, because then dread began to set in. When a mission was over, I'd usually get a message from Nya and a spam of them from Jay, too. The silence from the rest of the team put me on edge.

I had a right to be wary.

"Wu's missing."