the butterfly effect | l. garmadon

nineteen

  Lloyd's responding chuckle was dry and sympathetic, but he didn't say anything further. He wasn't talking much at all since my weird power dome thing, and it made me uneasy. He'd been serious around me before, fully immersing himself into his role as the Green Ninja - but even then he spoke more. His near-silence was unnerving.

  Worry pooled in my gut as a million and one different worries cascaded through my mind. Lloyd dealt with weird fate shit all the time, but what if this was even weirder? It was definitely dangerous. Anything could've happened to me on the streets while I was walking through them alone - though, I suppose I did have some kind of natural defence according to Cole. But it was the principle of the matter that still frightened me.

  And what about the migraine that was still peeling at my brain? Was it some kind of consequence from using my powers? Did I have to suffer in order for them to work? How did I even make them work in the first place? It was more like they controlled me rather than I knew how to use them, which was unhelpful in so many different ways. And painful. I could barely keep my eyes open.

No wonder why Lloyd was silent. This entire situation was a lot messier than either of us thought.

"You still keeping track of how many times you catch me nearly injuring myself?" I asked in a pitiful attempt to lighten the mood. The halls of the monastery, usually bustling with monks, was dead. Everyone was asleep. "Or does this count as me catching you in time?"

Lloyd huffed just slightly in amusement. He turned to the med-bay and set me down on a gurney, before quickly rifling through the supplies beneath the bench. It gave me the first opportunity to really take in his own damage from the fight and a startled fear wove its way up my throat. Was that amount of damage normal for him?

"Hey-"

Lloyd cut me off when he returned with a new pack of tissues, already frantically pulling them out for me to catch the blood with. I took them gratefully, though kept my eyes on him. He was limping slightly, his gi torn in places and stained darker with wet blood. I could smell it in the air - dry rust, sickeningly sweet. Or maybe that was my own blood in my nose.

"You started bleeding from your nose and ears," Lloyd noted. He turned back to a shelf and wrangled out some ointment which I presumed was for my injured feet.

"I know, but Lloyd-"

"That's not normal for you, right?" he continued. His voice was pitched a touch too high, words spoken so fast they slurred into one another. "You don't usually get nosebleeds? Do you have any other symptoms?"

I recognised his panic and reached forward to grab his shoulder. My migraine could wait. Or, at least, I forced it to wait. Migraines voluntarily waited for nobody.

"Lloyd." I said his name lowly, demanding and gentle. He stopped and caught my gaze and I softened. The poor guy looked so frazzled. "Have you seen yourself? I can wait. Patch yourself up first."

Lloyd looked down at himself and seemed to notice the damage for the first time. He exhaled through his nose and slowly placed the pot of ointment next to me on the gurney.

"Are you distracting yourself from what happened by trying to look after me?" Lloyd asked, a crooked half-smile in place.

"Are you?"