"I'm sorry, what?" Lloyd asked before I broke the eye contact and looked to the other side of the room. "He really thinks that?" I nodded. "He thinks that about Lloyd or the Green Ninja?"
"Lloyd," I answered "He wants you to be his general number one."
"Why? He doesn't even know that I can already fight. And plus, I can't even defend myself against bullies as Lloyd Garmadon. So why?"
I turned my eyes towards him. "I don't know, why don't you ask him that?"
He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. "And how would I do that?"
"Just call him, I know you have his number."
"Oh, come on," he said, "He doesn't even know my birthday, so why would he want me around?"
"Maybe you were the best choice after he figure out that I'm not qualified to become a general, even after I trained my whole life for that."
He blinked. "How could he do that to you without caring about how you'd feel about it?"
I straight up answered, "If he thought I wasn't good enough then why not just tell me that? It's better to him than making me his general and seeing me fail anyway."
Lloyd didn't speak and neither did I. So I turned my gaze to the ceiling. But to be honest, I wasn't looking at the ceiling, I wasn't looking at anything in particular. I was just avoiding facing Lloyd. I didn't want any pity, especially from him.
"Did you argue with him about it?" he asked.
"I did."
"And what did he say?"
"He didn't care. So I told him that I could find the ninjas' identities to prove myself."
He didn't reply, so I looked at him and we made eye contact before he asked "And now that you succeeded, will you tell him?" I didn't respond and we stared at each other for a few seconds.
"I see then," he said before looking away and asked "When you tell him, can you not make it public? Please?"
I gulped and said "I'm not going to tell him." He looked at me. "At least not now." I admitted, "I don't know what to do anymore. You have helped me many times, and I...owe you a lot."
"You don't owe me anything."
"But I do. You warned me before the explosion that burned my arm and then came to help me. You saved me from falling off of the bridge. You saved my life in the woods and brought me here before I could die." My voice quietened down. "So yes, I owe you. And not telling Garmadon about who you are is the least I can do."
After a short pause, he asked "If you're not happy working with him, then why don't you leave?"
"I have no choice."
"How?"
I took a deep breath before responding, "Because if I left, I would have nowhere to go."
"Don't you have a family?"
I rolled my eyes. "If I did, I wouldn't work for Garmadon." I stared at the ceiling, again. "I don't know where my parents are, and I highly suspect they're already dead. Garmadon raised me since I was a child and I don't think he'd appreciate it if I told him I want to stop working with him...Especially after he spent a lot of money and time on me."
"I'm sorry about your parents."
"It's fine, I gave up on searching for them already."
He asked after looking at me for a while "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," I hardly let the words out. I felt my chest tightening up, as if there was no air for me to breath. My lips curled into a frown. I whispered, "Maybe he's right. Maybe I'm not good enough."
"Don't say that."
"It's the truth, I'm too stupid and weak. I always get myself in danger, and I can't get out of it on my own." My vision started to blur as the tears ran down my face, my mask, and fell off near my chin. God, I'm so pathetic.
"It's okay, we all need help sometimes."
"But it's not sometimes in my case. I always get myself in danger. I always see that look of disappointed on Garmadon's face." Garmadon's disappointed face was clear in my mind as I saw it too many times. "I'm always a disappointment."
I turned my head away from Lloyd and lifted my right hand to cover my eyes so he wouldn't see me cry anymore. "I'm sorry you had to listen to me rant, you can go if you want."
Lloyd didn't move. "If it makes you feel better," he started, "I also felt like that when I joined the team."
I listened, still covering my eyes and not facing him.
"I was inexperienced, I couldn't do anything correctly, I got tired after minutes of training and still couldn't do any move right, and I made up excuses all the time to avoid training. I hated every moment of the ninja life even before it started. I hated being the Green Ninja."
I didn't interrupt, so he continued speaking "The others were tired of seeing me fail and give up right away. But they didn't let me go, they didn't give up on me. They tried their best to make me feel better every time I doubted myself."
He gently grabbed my hand away from my face and gave me a smile as I faced him. "And I'm sure there's somebody out there who won't give up on you."
Brandon, my mind said, Brandon won't give up on me. He's always been on my side. He's always been helping me when I needed him.
"There is somebody," I said.
He smiled again and let go of my hand. "If they have faith in you, then you should also have faith in yourself." He added "Sometimes we become too scared of failure so we start ignoring our achievements."
I wiped my tears and giggled. "You should think about becoming a therapist."
"So you're feeling better?"
"What do you think?"
"Your sarcasm is back so...I'm guessing you feel great."
"You should be careful who you give advice to though, I might decide to kill you last minute."
"I'd like to see you try," he smirked then changed the subject. "About the hospital bill-"
"Don't worry about it, Garmadon will pay it."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, it's better than him hearing that the Green Ninja helped me. I don't want to know what would happen if he knew how many times you had to save me, including this therapist lecture."
He said "He wouldn't react well."
"Yeah, he'd fire me out of his volcano like his old generals." Lloyd's horrified face made me add "Probably."
"That doesn't make it better."
Silence followed. Lloyd's gaze was on the ground. He seemed to be thinking. And god, this room was boiling
I finally asked, "Can you turn on the air conditioner?"
He lifted his head. "Sure." He stood and took the AC's remote then turned it on.
"Why didn't you turn it on before?" I asked.
"I...forgot it existed." Just like when you forgot that cars existed before we went to the arcade.
He walked to me but didn't sit down. He glanced at the door and wore his mask then looked back at me. "I'll go now. My mom must be looking for me."
"What time is it?" The clock was above me and I couldn't see the time.
"Two-thirty in the morning. It's Tuesday, in case you were wondering."
"So you stayed here all night?"
He rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah." He said, "I couldn't bring myself to leave without checking on you."
I stopped him when he walked to the door, "I'm sorry."
He turned around. "About what?"
"The spider web incident."
He chuckled. "It's fine. I don't really care about it anymore." He said, "Goodbye, S/n. I'll leave you to rest."
He walked out of the door and shut it behind him.
After a few minutes, a nurse came to check on me and asked if I was hungry. Of course, I said yes.