soulmate au
reincarnation au

y/n and lloyd are the reincarnation of two
legends from the greatest love story of all
time

the ninjas identities r a secret

set in crystallised

Harumi's dagger stabbed Lloyd's gut.

A few miles away, a girl with h/c hair and e/c eyes felt a stab in her stomach.

The world wobbled, blurred and Lloyd saw black.

The girl fainted.

Y/n woke up to the scent of jasmine and her bedroom ceiling. She was lying in bed and when her gaze travelled eastwards, she was met with a pair of e/c eyes so identical to hers except the skin near her eyes had a permanent wrinkle. It was her mother sitting in a chair, the worry in her eyes seeping the moment her daughter's eyes fluttered open, the frown on her lips morphing into a relieved smile, a breathy laugh escaping her lips, one laced with relief. She leaned forward, towards Y/n.

"You're awake." A hint of concern remained in her eyes. "I was worried sick." Before Y/n had a chance to respond, a pair of warm arms engulfed her in a very warm hug, the older woman's worry evident in how tightly, how desperately she held the younger girl, her daughter. Her only daughter. When they tore away from each other, Y/n saw tears pooling in her eyes, the calm mask she put on slowly tumbling. 

"Don't cry. I'm fine," Y/n reassured, squeezing her mother's hand, a smile on her face, one that didn't quite reach her eyes. Her eyes didn't crinkle like they usually did when she smiled. The second 'fine' left her lips, pain pierced through her skull. The room swayed. Her vision blurred. She blinked over and over again. 

She wanted to throw up.

It lasted a few seconds and then she was fine.

Fine as if she didn't just faint out of the blue. But she wasn't fine emotionally. Something felt wrong. Something. She didn't know what. She had no clue. There was a heavy feeling in her heart -- her heart that was pounding in panicked patters. She was... worried? For who? 

It was as if someone was in trouble. Somewhere. Right now.

But who?

"Are you okay?" her mum asked, not bothering to hide her worry this time. 

There was a few beats of silence before Y/n answered. "I don't know."

Her mum simply looked at her, silently telling her to elaborate. She did.

"I don't know." Y/n was deep in thought for a while, thinking about how she was feeling, thinking about how to put it into words, how to describe the complex wave of emotions surging through her. Worry. Fear. And a bunch of other things she couldn't place. "I'm... afraid. Worried. I'm not sure why. I just am."

Her mum kept silent. She took that as a sign to keep talking.

"I don't know. It feels like someone's in deep trouble. Someone I care about. Someone I... love. I'm not sure who. I just know it's someone I have a deep connection with. But that doesn't make sense at all. Nothing makes sense!" 

Y/n's mum nodded. It was her turn to squeeze her daughter's hand.

"Nothing makes sense," Y/n whispered. In a normal voice, a bit bitter, with a faint smirk, she said, "you probably think I'm crazy."

The older woman shook her head, her eyes wide as if horrified at the assumption of her considering her daughter's emotions as anything but valid. "No. It's not crazy." As if to emphasise her point, she squeezed the teen's hand and caressed the back of her hand with her thumb. "You're not crazy." 

The anger was gone from Y/n's eyes. The tears remained. She looked so lost. So so lost as if someone had tossed her into a maze without giving her a map. "Yeah?"

Her mother pulled her into a tight hug. Her daughter's cheek sat on top of her shoulder and her chin was plopped on top of her daughter's head as her hand stroked the girl's h/c hair, an action which never failed to make Y/n feel better. 

The woman pulled away slightly, taking Y/n's face into her hands. She planted a kiss to the teen's forehead. "Yeah," she whispered against it. 

A few miles away, a boy with blonde hair and green eyes awoke in a cell, underground. The sight that greeted him: a mask staring into his soul. A white mask with an angry face and some blue. Those bright yellow eyes gave chills down Lloyd's back. Her voice, made his heart race, not in excitement, not in that flutter he used to feel when around her. No. That childish crush was gone. Long gone. 

His heart raced, not because of some silly crush this time. 

It was terror. Horror. 

Because that voice belonged to the monster who had consumed him in pain he had never felt before.

The voice of her. 

She took off her mask. There she was, in so much glee, that creepy smirk which haunted him in his nightmares haunting him in daylight. He hated her. He hated her for everything she had done, he hated her for making him feel so vulnerable, he hated her for making him feel scared. Terrified. 

He hated her for-- everything.

Harumi. Her name used to sound nice, feel nice on his tongue. Now it tasted like bile. 

"Hello Lloyd," she said sweetly.

He hated himself for ever loving someone as cruel and heartless as her. He hated himself for allowing her to steal his heart in the past. "What do you want?" Lloyd snapped, exhausted. Exhausted of the pain, exhausted of being hurt by her. 

Exhausted of her.

"Aww, Lloyd, don't cry," she cooed in that mocking tone of hers. 

Lloyd's nails dug deeper into his palm. "What do you want?" he asked again with the same bitterness.

"You know what I want," she simply replied. 

She was right. He did know what she wanted. Pain and suffering. That was what she had told him, what she had demonstrated. Lloyd's breath grew heavy, ragged. "Are you going to kill me?" he asked, genuinely curious. 

"No."

Silence. And her creepy smile. 

"Why not?"

"I would never kill you, Lloyd," she said with a saccharine tone and a saccharine smile. There was no sarcasm. It seemed genuine. It was genuine. She meant it. 

She would never kill him.

She would let him barely live. Hanging on the edge of living, nearly dead but not quite dead. Alive but barely. She wanted him to suffer. She never wanted him dead. Pain and suffering -- that's what she sought for. Death was never it.

And that was so much worse. 

"I would never kill you, Lloyd."

The days that followed were normal but the feeling in Y/n's chest hadn't disappeared, that feeling of anxiety, as if a warning of looming danger. The days were normal before she saw a glimpse of a masked man, the blur of a whack, pain, then darkness. An hour passed before she awoke in a dingy room -- a flickering bulb on the ceiling dimly lighting up the room, the air cold and dry. Bars stood before her.

She was in a cell.

Beyond the bars, a mask's burning amber gaze pierced through her. "Hello," the masked person said. A man, she noted from how deep voice was. 

Y/n's hands curled around the bars. "Who are you?" she demanded, her features contorted in fury as she shook the bars as if they'd budge. "What do you want from me?"

A mocking laughter was her only reply for a minute straight. Y/n's eyes glared daggers at the mask. "Save your strength," he said, voice full of amusement, and Y/n could practically see the glint in his eyes behind the mask. "Your prison mate learned that the hard way." His eyes drifted to the cage to her left.  

That was when Y/n realised there was another prisoner in the dungeon, her neighbour, who was fast asleep in another cell, sprawled on the hard cold floor. He was around her age. His dirty blonde hair was a bird's nest on top of his head, a tattered curtain over his brown lashes. He wasn't tall nor short -- average height. 

There was something familiar about the boy, as if she knew him, as if they knew each other in other life. As if they were more than strangers, more than friends, more than... It felt like she had seen him before. It felt like they had memories together before they got taken away from them. As if they had spent their past lives together. 

Y/n's brows were creased as she tried to recall a reality which never existed. 

"You two are so alike." There was something knowing in his tone. Y/n didn't like it.

"What do you want?" she waited for an answer. It didn't come. "Let me go! Release me this instant!"

His cold laughter rang in the room, making the air even colder than before. There was silence afterwards. Him staring at her. Her staring at him. She tried to be brave beneath his gaze but she couldn't help but squirm slightly, goosebumps on every inch of her skin. "No."

Y/n took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a few seconds, imagining sunshine and beaches and walking along the shoreline. The breeze and the heat mingling together in harmony. The sound of waves crashing against the shore. Squawking seagulls and merry laughter.

Her eyes peeled open.

"What do you want?" Unlike before, her tone was calm. Collected. 

"Excellent question."

She didn't let the man get under her skin. "Why am I here?"

He just stared. She stared back. 

"Where am I?"

He turned around and walked out the door. 

That was when she realised that she had been holding her breath the whole time. 

The blond boy was asleep for a very long time, and if he didn't roll around and shift in his sleep, Y/n would assume he had been beaten to death by their kidnapper. Hours which felt like years passed, before the boy groggily sat up, rubbing the last traces of sleep from his eyes. His hands dropped. 

Green eyes met e/c eyes.

Like two opposite poles attracting. She was tranced by his gaze, pulled to it by an invisible force, and it took all her effort for her to pull away from his emerald eyes. They looked awfully familiar, as if she had stared into those eyes a million times. They were curious. She swore that she saw a flicker of recognition in them before they were shadowed with confusion. 

His face was smeared with grime and blood. There was a slash across his left cheek, healing; it must be new. Even with it and the sorrow in his eyes, he shone. It was that shine in the face of a warrior who had fought many battles and came out with many scars, but somehow, war hadn't blackened their heart. They shone with light -- good. Even when the world was cruel, he was good.

How she knew that? She didn't know. 

"Hey," he smiled. It warmed her heart which ached for his pain. 

"Hey." She smiled back. "I'm Y/n." 

"I'm," he hesitated, "Lloyd. Nice to meet you." He reached out to shake her hand between the gaps of the bar. 

Her hand grasped his rough one with a small squeeze. "Nice to meet you too," she replied, their hands tearing away from each other afterwards. "What landed you in here?" If she wasn't getting answers from the masked bastard, she was going to be collecting bits and pieces of them from other people. She was no quitter. 

"It's... a long story," Lloyd answered.

"Well, I'm not going anywhere." She placed her chin on top of her palms, looking at the blond boy with a faint smile expectantly. 

His reluctance was obvious from the way he avoided her gaze and rubbed the nape of his neck. He was obviously expecting her to save him from having to tell her his 'long story.' At the realisation that she was adamant on getting answers, he hummed, "umm."

"Yes?" Y/n quirked a brow. 

"It's... not something I wanna talk about," he said. She could barely hear him mutter, "ever." 

She felt sorry, felt ashamed for forcing him. Her eyes fell to the ground. "I'm sorry. You don't have to tell me." A few seconds of silence. Their eyes met. "I'm sorry. I hope everything gets better for you."

A bitter chuckle left his lips. "Yeah."

"I hope we can get out of here." Her eyes wandered around the room. She wasn't able to take in a lot of details due to the lack of light in the room. "Alive," she added as an afterthought. It was possible that the authorities would find them but it was too late. She couldn't bear the image that had popped in her head: her mother in a pool of tears, crying for her to come back. To come back to her. Her mum had suffered enough.

His eyes looked through her as if she wasn't there. "Sometimes, I think it's better to die."

She didn't know what to answer to that. His words took her off-guard. She could see the truth in his words, however. She remembered her father; him smashing a bottle of alcohol on her head whilst drunk out of his wits, him using her as a punching bag when stressed, him apologising to her once he realised what he had done, once he was sober. She hated and loved him at the same time. It wasn't his fault he was raised in an abusive household but he had the power to break the cycle. He tried. He did. But it was hard.

"I understand," she finally said.   

His eyes grew larger, surprised. 

She smiled a sad smile.

He didn't smile back.

The next day, Y/n watched the masked man taunt Lloyd. "I hope you didn't tell your roomie--" Anger flashed in his green eyes. A flicker of scorching red. "-- my identity. You know how much I hate tattletales."

Y/n wanted to scream at Lloyd, ask him who the heck was behind that stupid mask, but she suppressed the urge. Perhaps if she remained calm and obedient, her captives would let her go. So, she sat still, legs crisscrossed, questions swirling in her head, shock and disappointment striking through her as the exchange between Lloyd and the kidnapper went on.  

She thought she knew Lloyd. 

She thought wrong. 

Before the masked man, or should she say, woman, left, the masked monster blew Lloyd a sarcastic morning kiss. "I hope you're enjoying your stay, Lloyd. You'll be here for a very long time." Her voice was sweeter than sugar and laced with venom. She placed her hand on Lloyd's cheek, gripped it. Lloyd winced. Their faces were an inch apart. In a soft, almost affectionate voice, she said, barely above a whisper, "I would never kill you, Lloyd."

Something told Y/n that what she said wasn't as pleasant as it sounded, that instead of a promise to a forbidden lover, it was a promise to make his life a living nightmare. A promise of eternal torment. A promise of a life of regret, anger and misery. 

 A promise of a life worse than death. 

For some reason, Lloyd didn't wrench his face away from her hand. His eyes were squeezed shut.

"Look at me, Lloyd," she said softly. He obeyed. "I would never kill you."

Then, she left, the door closing behind her with a click. 

"I wish you would."

"What was that all about?" Y/n demanded. 

Lloyd was silent for a few seconds. She thought he hadn't heard her and was about to repeat her question, when he finally responded, "nothing."

A lie. A big fat lie. 

"Right." She rolled her eyes. Lloyd just looked at her emotionlessly, not bothering to convince her that his lie was the truth. It infuriated her. "Nothing. You guys totally don't have some sort of history." She scoffed. "Is she your ex-girlfriend?"

"How'd you know she's a girl?" His face was apathetic, but his voice betrayed him. He couldn't hide his surprise.

She smirked. "I put two and two together. Is she?"

"No."

"That's not the full truth, is it?" Y/n didn't know why she was furious at him. It was probably because she couldn't thrash the masked girl, so she took her anger out on the poor broken boy. It wasn't fair, but she didn't care. She was getting a headache. Lloyd had all the answers but refused to share them with her because of some 'trauma' or something. He was selfish, so that gave her the right to be selfish.

Right?

She felt a sudden rush of regret. It wasn't his fault. "I'm sorry."

He was staring at the ground. 

"I'm just scared and... I'm angry, and I feel powerless. One moment I'm taking a stroll in Ninjago City and the next, I'm thrown into a dungeon without an explanation. I miss my mum, my friends... Cooties..."

"Who's Cooties?"

"My dog. I trained him to run away from the male species because they have cooties. Thus, the name Cooties." A grin crept to her lips, her anger and shame quickly forgotten. Only for a moment though, because she returned to her apology immediately after. "I'm sorry I took out my anger on you. It's unfair. None of this is your fault. You're the victim as much as I am."

"It's fine," he shrugged, forcing a smile onto his lips which looked a lot like a grimace. 

"It's not," she said firmly, grasping the bar on the side that faced him. 

They fell into silence. 

Y/n wanted nothing more than to shower him with a bunch of questions, but she held them back for his sake. The masked girl was a touchy topic and all her questions revolved around her. Maybe she could ask him tomorrow, or later, when he was feeling better. 

"It's... not something I wanna talk about," he said. She could barely hear him mutter, "ever." 

Curiosity kills the cat. But she had learned during her stay that dying was sometimes better than living, so she didn't care. She would not die ignorant, oblivious. She would find each and every one of her answers if that was the last thing she did. She would return to her mum. 

"Just so you know, I don't know why you're here. I admit, I do know why I'm here and I do know what she wants from me, but I have no idea why you were kidnapped and put here." His features, which were usually soft, were twisted into a serious expression that looked so dangerous, and he was no longer a feeble boy with an unlucky fate. He was a determined man with a goal. "We'll figure it out. Together."

It sounded so intimate. 

She buried the thought to the back of her mind.

"Together." She smiled, no sadness, only drive and determination. "My deceased grandmother always said we stand strong when we're together."

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine. She lived a great life. I'm sure she's happy wherever she is right now." 

This time, Lloyd smiled back. 

No sadness, only drive and determination. 

a/n - pt 2 coming soon maybe 

written in aug 2022