I stared blankly at the concrete as the two words Lloyd announced in a grim voice turned in my head.

"Wu's what?" I exclaimed, voice uncontrollably pitching at the beginnings of a sudden burst of hysteria. I clutched at my phone with two hands. They felt sweaty.
"He's missing," Lloyd repeated, and this time I caught the strain of stress in his voice, stretching it taught. He sounded on the verge of snapping from stress, and I could picture him grabbing at his hair until it was a rat's nest.
I opened and closed my mouth, at a loss. Kvasir glanced at me, yellow eyes staring, and his gaze was joined by Chen's. I turned my back to them.
"How do you LOSE an OLD MAN, LLOYD?" I shrilled at the wall.
"There was this battle with the Twins and Wu got sucked into a vortex-"
"Wu was in a battle?!" I echoed in horror. He could barely keep himself awake and he fought two elemental masters at a time?!
"Yes," Lloyd said impatiently. I staggered back a step out of shocked incredulousness. "The team's splitting up to scour the country for signs of him..."
I began to sober back from the forlorn twist his words made and just as fast as my shock arrived, a sudden loss of eloquence hit me. I opened my mouth to say something, to console him or do anything to break this silence, but I couldn't find a single scrap of a word. Helpless, my eyes darted across the bricks on the wall in front of me.

A hand on my shoulder left me startled, and then Kvasir gently took the phone from me. His hand remained in place as he held the phone to his head.
"Lloyd," he greeted stoically. I stared at him, worried wordlessly, unable to even wring my hands or worry my hair. Chen followed and crossed his arms, confused but swiftly noticing the seriousness.
"And you want usss to keep an eye out for him in Nom," Kvasir spoke up after a period of silence on our end. I could only guess what Lloyd had told him. "... will do."
Kvasir handed the phone back to me and stared through my fear. "We need to tell Seliel and Vali to keep an eye out for Wu on their patrols."
All I could manage in response was a single, shaky nod. Hastily, my phone returned to my ear.
"Y/n?"
"I- I'm here," I breathed joltily.
"We're taking the Bounty to do a sweep through the major cities of Ninjago." Lloyd wasted no time in returning to business. "I'm not sure when we'll return or when I'll be able to contact you again. It's going to be full on. Don't worry about me."

"Don't be stupid, stupid," I said with a dry sob that slipped without my consent. My chest was stinging. "Of course I'm going to worry about you."
Lloyd even managed a strained chuckle at my response. A tiny, minuscule flicker of relief sparked in my chest.
"Try."
"It won't work," I whispered. "Take care of yourself. Please."
"I will," he pledged. "I love you."
A vicious thickness found its way into my throat. I struggled through an inhale to steady the shakiness of my limbs before replying.
"I love you, too," I said. The line was ended.
I stared emptily at my phone, gazing at the reflection of my glazed-over eyes with a hollowness that frightened me. I hadn't felt this sick with anxiety for months, and it was not a welcomed return. Kvasir watched me warily, as if he were waiting for me to explode.
"What's going on?" Chen asked. I tore my eyes from my own. My hand dropped to my side and I sent him a watery grin - it was forced. So forced. I felt a sense of foreboding that it would not be the last fake smile I'd share for a long, long while.

"Absolutely nothing fucking good," I replied with a dry, wailing chuckle.

🍃🍂🍁🍂🍃

'As thought, the power that slides from fingertips, the crescendo of heartbeats and empty lungs, we watch in trepidation and a queer sense of intrigue; for he who sings not can fear nothing, but gained all Holy things with bloody knees and weeping prayers? To whom it may wonder, how thou the power was spared if He could be greater than God Himself?
Cared not for the surging elements, cared not for the enrichment of them, the cacophony of power was split and the shreds of sanity sent spiralling across the sky. He whom this passage concerns, whittled down from His perch-'

I shut the heavy book with a huff and a stressed massage of my fingertips to my temples. The hefty clunk the yellowed pages sounded as it made contact with their sisters echoed in the empty library, making the loneliness seem resoundingly more suffocating than it had before. The wooden seat neath me hadn't felt so uncomfortable in a long, long time.
Months ago (or was it as long as a year?), Lloyd had reassured me that dipping my feet into the aged journals of Elemental Masters was more than permitted for me. Despite the clear allowance, I held my curiosity back, afraid that Fate would strike me down where I stood for daring to grease these honoured pages with the oils of my fingers. After all, how much history did these books see? How many secrets did these pages hold?
But Lloyd and the team had been gone for weeks. Months. However long. I was worried sick, rendered physically ill from the silence that their new mission - finding Wu - demanded.

I caved to the curiosity, if only to ease the worry. To feed my brain something new to ponder on.

However, I was naive, and found the flowery language of ages past, even after thoroughly translating on one of Borg's far-too-advanced apps, difficult to understand. It took thrice as much brain power I had spare to even comprehend a single paragraph.
It was as if that generation had purposefully made their literature confusing for us modern folk.
I leant back in my chair and dragged my hands through my hair. It was tangled and in dire need of a wash - a testimony just to how the library had become my small world. I'd seen more faded, ink-scrawled words than I had the backs of my eyelids.
"Giving up?"
My eyes peeled open at the intrusion. But, of course, who else would be in the library at this ungodly hour of the morning?
"Hey, Ambrose."
"Hey, peachy-keen," he greeted with a yawn. His hands leant on the top of my chair and, beyond weary, I rested the back of my head against his chest.
"What are you doing here?"
"Couldn't sleep and you're less boring than my ceiling," Ambrose replied. He inclined further, peering at the journals. "What number book are you on to now?"

I casted a careless glance across my loaded table.
"Three."
He sent a low whistle. It swept past my ear and had me scrunching my eyes in irritation at the sharp sound. My head was pounding.
"And how much of it do you actually understand?"
"'Bout five sentences."
Ambrose laughed. "Yeah, that fits. These guys were off their rockers, for sure."
A small smile pulled at my lips. "They sound like a cult."
Ambrose's face brightened in over-amused delight. His laugh was resounding, this time, bouncing off the spines of the books that sat in their hardwood shelving and curling back towards us.
"They do!" he agreed enthusiastically. "Especially with the whole 'He who is greater than us.' Like, stop brown-nosing, fool."
I snickered. My stare at the books turned somber and grim.

"I haven't found anything," I mumbled with a shake of my head. "It's all just praise for Uchū and about how he'd protect Ninjago from the darkness. Stuff like describing his 'miracles.' I don't get it."
Ambrose, sobered into thoughtfulness, eased himself into the seat bedside me.
"Well, what is it that you're looking out for?"
I plonked my elbow onto the table and rested my cheek onto my palm with a sniff. My free hand raised in tired disbelief before dropping back to my lap.
"Black magic," I began listing helplessly, staring with dry eyes at the worn leather cover. "Spells. Enchantments. Magical items. Anything that could pose a threat to the elemental masters. Lloyd said that these books would have them."
"But there's nothing," Ambrose figured.
"Nothing," I answered with a disbelieving echo. My eyes slid to him. "Which either means that we still haven't found them, or..."
Ambrose's blue eyes darkened at the implication I was heading towards. His mouth set into a thin line, as if resisting his finishing words, but he managed to push through.
"Or Axon already has them."

Our stern gazes slowly drifted back to the books. It seemed that my attempt at de-stressing only served to make me all the more stressed.
"What do we do then?" Ambrose asked in the silence of the empty library. My fingers scratched against my scalp as my head slid through my palm.
"I don't know," I whispered.
"It would be the end of the world."
"I know."
Ambrose leant back in his chair and crossed his arms. I'd never seen him look so downtrodden and serious. But, then again, this kind of situation certainly was a kerfuffle.
"Would this kind of stuff make, say, an old man disappear off the face of the earth?" Ambrose piped up. "'Cause this is ridiculous, even for the ninja. There has to be something more than just Acronix and Krux at play here. I met them. They're total wet towels."
More than just Acronix and Krux? I hadn't personally met them, unlike Ambrose, or managed to get up close and personal through conflict, unlike the ninja. But what I did know was the style of execution.
"Who else uses elemental masters to fight one another to make a dig at the ninja?" I said with a humourless smile and a dark, twisting feeling in my stomach. I turned to Ambrose. "First, it was Morro with Lloyd. Now, it was the time twins with Wu. Axon was behind it."

"Master of manipulation would be a better title for him," Ambrose grumbled. "And no one's looking out for Ninjago City..."
"Garmadon is," I corrected. "Along with the monks from the monastery. Those that can fight, that is. And we have elemental masters on call."
Ambrose sighed through his nose.
"That's good, at least... what do you think happened to Wu?"
I shook my head. "I don't like to think about it."
"That bad?"
"Maybe."
The master of physics beside me shifted in his seat. He stared at me, dead on, eyes unwavering. I stared back.
"Be serious. Do you think Wu's going to come back?"
Caught in Ambrose's piercing stare, I found myself unable to even muster a positive lie just to make myself feel better. The crushing weight of what I was expecting, but not wanting, had my stomach sinking.

"I don't think so."

🍃🍂🍁🍂🍃

It had been two months since I got that call from Lloyd.

It felt as if two decades had passed instead.

I had taken obsessively to my usual habit whenever the ninja went on missions that carried on for days - or, more recently within these past two years, weeks - at a time; scouring Twitter. As usual, the team was trending. As usual, biting remarks about the Green Ninja's fiancée still managed to filter through, despite me having the words fiancée, wife, husband and partner blocked.
There hadn't been many updates. Not many for the amount of time they'd been gone, so I deduced that they were undercover, walking around as their everyday aliases; just a bunch of twenty-year-olds scouring the land, investigating the disappearance of their uncle.
Unfortunately, Lloyd Garmadon didn't have stan accounts who went to Twitter every time he breathed.

Until one day, when I got a notification during the middle of studying in the library:

News for you:
Green Ninja spotted in Nom City.

I felt myself perk up with a burst of unbridled excitement as I read and re-read the notification with growing anticipation. I couldn't believe my own eyes - it just seemed far too good to be true.
I leapt to my feet with a franticness that would've stuck the label 'crazy' right on my forehead, shoving my things into my bag with a speed unparalleled. Ignoring the looks from the other patrons of the library, I dashed from the building. I could barely breathe through the clogging excitement of my chest.
"Sorry!" I squeaked as I emerged into the dying winter sunlight and barrelled straight into an unsuspecting person's chest. I slipped from the scramble without a glance, intent on making it to the meadow as fast as I could.

A chuckle from the person behind me.
"I thought all this time spent studying would've made you more observant."
I stopped in my tracks.
"Should've known better," Lloyd said in amusement. "Once you get set on something, everything else disappears, doesn't it?"
I turned around so fast that my bag was flung to the ground, but it was barely worth noticing when he stood before me, enrapturing my attention in all that I held.
Exhausted, weary, tired - they couldn't begin to describe the way Lloyd looked as he cocked his head to the side and offered a crookedly warm smile. But beautiful, ethereal, here. He's here. He's here.
Through the pale skin and eye bags, Lloyd's calm smile seeped through a sunshine light so enticing and blinding that I found myself as nothing more than a moth to a flame. The world titled as I threw myself toward him, and rightened only when his arms caught my self-imposed, eager fall.

I stared at the cobblestones, wide eyed, as I clutched at the front of his jacket. I felt in shock, like the world had turned on its axis and thrown me through a loop while it was at it, and I was still reeling from having my centre of gravity so very twisted around then put back together. I'd spent so long without Lloyd that it didn't feel real.
A fantasy creature, a beautiful lie, a wonderful deception.
But it was his arms held my weight and hugged me back. It was his fingers that sculpted the locks of my hair, it was the warmth of his palm that held the back of my head. His touch grounded me.
"Where have you been?" I found myself blurting as I pulled back to stare him in the eyes. My vision was beginning to blur. My fingers twisted in the front of his jacket. "I- I know that you've been busy, but a single text-"
My choking words were swallowed by Lloyd pressing his lips to mine in a kiss that immediately had my focus swapping priorities. I swung my arms around his neck and pressed myself into him as hard as I could, just to make up for all this lost time. It was butterfly wings flapping, tornados twisting, earthquakes rumbling. It's all craning necks and desperation and wet cheeks, tangled limbs and beating hearts and choked breaths.

The clearing of a throat and stifled giggles of a passing group of students had me hauling myself away in a flurry of mistimed steps, cheeks blushing and flustered. I was so enthralled by Lloyd's surprise visit that I had forgotten where we were - outside the library, in the middle of one of the University's courtyards, exceeding public.
Lloyd, unabashed, stepped up and pressed his lips to my temple. His fingertips glided down my arm. His fingers landed amongst the limbs of my own.
"Let's go back to your dorm," he offered in a murmur. The warm honey of his low voice made my heart stammer.
He pulled me across the cobblestones and scooped up my forgotten bag along the way. I stared at our intricate tangle of fingers, a hold that was reserved only for those with a connection that runs deeper than blood; of lovers or the best of friends, of guardians and children.
The connection brought tears to my eyes. It had been so long since I'd been held like this, even in a platonic sense. I didn't realise how much I began to rely on such a wonderful hold until I lost the privilege of it.

In the privacy of the closed door to my dorm, I allowed myself to rest my head against his chest and let the peaceful tears flow. I heard Lloyd swallow, felt his strong hands delicately cup the curve of my shoulders. His cheek rested in my hair, sinking. We were sinking.
Sinking into his touch, and him mine. Sinking into his warmth, and him mine. Sinking into his smell, and him mine. His heartbeat, his breathing, his strength and fragilities.
Finally, after months of a constant, dull buzz of panic; tranquility. He was right, all those years ago - we really were like a drug to one another.
"Where were you?" I whispered hoarsely, resuming my selfish yearning for knowledge. His fingers tightened. "You've never gone that long before without calling or- or even texting. I was- I was so scared."
My confession caught in a hiccup. Lloyd inhaled through his nose, guiltily most like, and I felt my own guilt rise up like a geyser inside me - had I not predicted this when I first realised how much I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him? Had I not tried to prepare myself for the long missions, the recurring injuries, the nail-biting anxieties about whether he'd return? We all knew as soon as he graduated from college that he'd focus more on his duties in both being the team leader and the successor of sensei, so why was I so torn?

"I'm sorry." Lloyd's lips glided against the skin of my cheek as he talked. His arms relocated to around my torso, pulling me closer against him. "Zane detected that we were being tracked. Had to ditch our phones outside Ignacia."
"Tracked?" I echoed.
"The team's at... a vulnerable position," Lloyd managed to mutter. Eyes downcast, he stepped back to lean against the wall. His hands held my own. "Wu's disappearance rocked the boat, and... I'm not the Sensei my father thought I would be." His voice grew small. "I'm letting everyone down."
I felt my heart shatter at his despondent words. They ricocheted within the chamber of my heart and struck me down further with each hit. My hand crept up to cup his cheek in an attempt of reassurance.
"You're every bit the leader your team needs, Lloyd," I said in quiet sureness. His green eyes found mine. "You're capable, strong, and most importantly, you're kind. You're good, Lloyd, with every intention of the word. But the only way they're going to trust you is if you trust yourself."
Lloyd fell into such a soft smile that I was sure we had landed in a room of marshmallows and pillows. His fingers traced my temple to my chin and brushed the skin under my lips.

"You're right," Lloyd agreed, but I could see the hesitance in his eyes despite that. "You always know just what to say."
I shrugged. "Spend a week pouring over old journals and you pick up on a bit of wisdom. So... did you escape from the others or what?"
Lloyd exhaled through a smile. "More like forced to take a break."
"Nya?"
He nodded. "Yep."
"Thank god for Nya," I hummed, brushing my fingertips across the bag of an eye. "You need to rest, Lloyd. Weren't you the one who always berated me about taking care of myself?"
"Oh, boy, my own advice used against me."
"Who on earth could have seen this coming?" I snickered. "Seriously, Lloyd, have a nap."
His lips twisted into a frown. His fingers tightened slightly - reluctance, I could tell. He was almost pouting and it was practically shaving down my resistance in fell swoops.
"I just got here," Lloyd complained. "I wanted to spend time with you."
I clasped his hands and brought them between us. Lowering my chin just to show how serious I was being, I frowned. No words had to even be said before Lloyd was sighing in acceptance.

"Fine," he groaned, and allowed me to lead him to bed.