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senseigrace · 5 months

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More than a Monster

Lloyd shows up on Garmadon's doorstep covered in injuries and with nowhere else to go.

Unable to turn the boy away, Garmadon decides to take care of him.

But there are demons and memories to face when your fractured soul can't love your own son.

(3.6k word fanfiction.)

Garmadon had gotten used to his new reality. A reality where he could be nothing more than a monster.

In fact, it was the reality that he had spent most of his life being a monster, an evil being with no redeemable qualities.

It was no different from any of those other times, but sometimes he couldn’t help but mourn what he had once been.

In the very back of his mind, he could see the memories. A happy old man with a child, a young man enjoying the company of his wife…

But it was like looking through a window. He wasn’t that man anymore. He didn’t even feel attachment to those people the way he once had.

In fact, he’d almost killed them multiple times.

But he had gotten away from them. He lived in New Ninjago City, far away from Wu’s monastery and his ninja.

He didn’t have to deal with Lloyd’s judgemental glare and words anymore. The boy would never understand everything that he had been through, and he didn’t expect him to.

How could he? The boy was young, naive, and weak.

Garmadon looked at the TV, then at the leftover pizza from dinner. A part of him knew that this shouldn’t be the life he was living, that he should be up and around, not sitting around and being lazy.

Whatever thoughts he had going through his mind were interrupted by the sound of knocking on the door.

He groaned in annoyance, then stood up. If he was lucky, it would be someone that he could easily scare off. If it wasn’t… Well, he probably shouldn’t threaten people…

Garmadon opened the door, then froze in shock at what he saw.

In front of him was Lloyd. His face covered in bruises and blood, his body barely being able to support itself as he leaned against a wall.

“I’m sorry,” Lloyd whispered as he wiped at his nose, blood staining his dirty green gi. “I.. I didn’t know who else to go to.”

Garmadon swallowed. He knew how to do first aid, but he hadn’t been expecting to see the Green Ninja so beat up.

Before he could decide to slam the door in Lloyd’s face, Garmadon grabbed him by the arm and gently led him inside.

Not that it made any sense to do so. He didn’t care about the boy.

Deep down he knew he should. Lloyd was his son, his heir. Any trip down memory lane would show that he was supposed to love him more than life itself. He was supposed to give up oaths of peace for the boy, decide to follow him to Chen’s island to protect him…

And yet, it was like watching a movie he didn’t like. He knew that he should love the boy unconditionally, but he couldn’t.

“What happened?” Garmadon asked him as Lloyd sat down on the sofa.

Lloyd looked up at him, his green glowing eyes glazed over. “I dunno,” he said. “I was on my way home, and…”

Garmadon sighed. It wasn’t surprising that he didn’t know what had happened to him, but it was inconvenient.

“Where all are you hurt?” he asked.

Lloyd tried to shrug, but winced before his arm was all the way up.

“Alright then,” Garmadon said. “Don’t move. I’m going to get the first aid kit.”

As he walked towards the bathroom, Garmadon found himself once again traveling down memory lane.

This time though, his mind settled on one memory.

Garmadon was only a little older than Wu’s ninja.

He had been meditating. On what he can’t remember anymore, but that wasn’t the important part.

The important part was the cry that brought him out of his meditative state. The way it had sent his heart into a frenzied panic as he stood up and ran to what had made the sound.

“Lloyd? Are you alright?” he had asked as he picked up his son and wiped the tears from his eyes.

Lloyd buried his face in his shoulder, his soft, duckling blond hair rubbing against Garmadon’s neck and jaw.

He pressed a gentle kiss to the side of Lloyd’s head. “It’s okay,” he had said. “I’ve got you. You’re okay, Little One.”

The memory was one that had been completely forgotten over the years. It was nothing that Garmadon truly needed to remember.

There was no lesson there, there was nothing important that had happened. Lloyd had tripped over his own feet and started crying.

The boy had always been clumsy. Perhaps he should have tried to train it out of him when he was a child instead of coddling him.

It didn’t matter anymore though. That time was gone, and this version of him was no father.

He grabbed the first aid kit from the bathroom, but he caught himself looking at his reflection in the mirror.

What had happened to the man who had been here before him? The eldest son of the First Spinjitzu Master, the dark-haired man who had won the heart of Misako Montgomery?

When he looked in the mirror, he saw nothing but a shell.

He shook his head. None of that mattered right now. What mattered was that Lloyd didn’t bleed out on his couch.

Not because he cared about the boy, but because he really didn’t want to have to figure out how to wash all of that blood out of his couch.

“You had better not be sleeping,” Garmadon warned Lloyd when he walked in.

The boy’s dull eyes fluttered open and he lazily shook his head. “Not sleeping…”

Before he could even try to counter the boy’s words, he found himself plagued by another memory.

Garmadon scooped Lloyd’s tiny body into his arms.

“And just what, exactly, are you still doing awake, young man?” He asked as he began to tickle the young child in his arms.

Lloyd squealed as he squirmed away from his touch. “Mama said I could wait up for you!” he said, though his eyes were foggy with exhaustion.

Garmadon raised an eyebrow. “Did she now?” he asked.

Lloyd hesitated for a second, then smiled. The smile was one that Garmadon recognized as the smile of a troublemaker. Someone who had been caught in a lie. “Uhhh…”

In that moment, Garmadon had known that he should have scolded the boy for staying up so late, but he didn’t. Instead, he laughed.

“Are you tired now?” he asked. “It is quite late for you, my little one.”

Lloyd nodded, his blond hair falling in front of his eyes. It was time for another haircut. “Will you tell me a bedtime story?” he asked. “One about ninjas?”

Garmadon smiled. “Of course,” he said. “Anything for you, my son.”

Garmadon swallowed nervously as he looked at the boy in front of him. As much as he didn’t care about him, he knew that if he fell asleep, he might not wake back up.

“You need to stay awake,” he told Lloyd. “No falling asleep yet.”

Lloyd looked straight at him, but Garmadon wasn’t sure that he was taking in any of the words that he was saying.

He sighed, then opened up the first aid kit. “Where are you the most injured?”

Those words seemed to click because Lloyd actually answered. “I think I have a couple busted ribs. Um… there’s a cut on my arm,” he said. “My face really hurts, and I think I hit my head.”

Garmadon nodded. He wasn’t the least bit surprised that the boy had a head injury. In fact, all of the symptoms were there.

He reached out and felt the back of Lloyd’s head.

As soon as he did, another memory popped up.

“Misako, he’s perfect.”

Garmadon looked down at the tiny baby in his arms. His heart bleeding with pride and joy as he took in every little feature of his young son.

The baby’s eyes were shut peacefully, too tired and young to keep them open for more than a few moments at a time.

His pink skin was so soft and ever so slightly fuzzy.

He was swaddled tightly so that he didn’t startle, but Garmadon had caught a quick glance of his fingers and toes. They were so small, so precious.

“What do you want to name him?”

Garmadon cupped the back of his son’s head, the blond hair was so soft under his hand.

For this one moment in his life, he had never been happier.

He was a father. A father to the most precious boy in all of the sixteen realms.

“Lloyd,” he said. “Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon.”

Unsurprisingly, there was a lump on the back of Lloyd’s head. A clear and obvious sign that the boy was most likely concussed.

He probably needed a hospital. Or at least someone with more equipment than a simple first aid kit.

However, Lloyd had come to him. And he wasn’t about to call an ambulance to come pick the boy up at his own home.

He didn’t want to end up in prison again.

“You have a concussion,” he told Lloyd.

Lloyd nodded. “Makes sense,” he whispered.

Garmadon sighed, then picked up one of the alcohol wipes and began cleaning the cut above Lloyd’s left eye.

“You know, for being the Green Ninja, they really did a number on you,” Garmadon remarked.

Lloyd winced, and Garmadon wasn’t sure if it was because of what he said or if it was because of the stinging from the alcohol.

For a second, Garmadon wanted to stop what he was doing and make sure that he wasn’t hurting him.

But then he remembered what he was doing. He was patching up the kid’s wounds. It was going to hurt and there was nothing that he could do to fix it.

Besides, he didn’t care about Lloyd.

Right?

“That boy makes you weak,” the Overlord rasped in his ear. “All it would take is one blade to end him, and you could become the strongest being in all of Ninjago.”

Garmadon’s heart pounded in his ears. In the back of his mind, the venom agreed with him. There were so many ways to do it too.

It would be so easy. Hide the blade in his hand, then hug his son. As soon as his arms were wrapped about the boy, he could slide the knife into Lloyd’s side.

No… NO.

What was he thinking???

That was his son. The only thing in all of Ninjago worth protecting.

Lloyd was his sunshine, his starlight, his entire galaxy.

How could he even consider such an idea?

“Lloyd is not the problem,” he told the Overlord. “It is those pesky ninja. They are the ones that we need to get rid of.”

He couldn’t care about Lloyd. Not in this state. He wasn’t the man he had been before and he could never be that man again…

He couldn’t care about Lloyd and he didn’t care about Lloyd.

“Does it need stitches?” Lloyd asked.

Garmadon shook his head. “I do not believe so,” he said. “However, I don’t recommend doing whatever caused this cut again.”

The boy let out a soft chuckle, though it was weak as well. “Believe me, I don’t plan on it.”

Garmadon reached down and grabbed the wet washcloth that he had gotten when he was in the bathroom. With it, he began to clean Lloyd’s bloodied nose.

“You sure have a knack for finding trouble, don’t you?”

As soon as he said those words, Lloyd froze.

Garmadon frowned. The words didn’t have any hidden meaning, he wasn’t being unnecessarily cruel… But Lloyd’s reaction was unusual.

“What?” he asked.

Lloyd looked at him for a second, his dulled green eyes searching his own. For a second, Garmadon felt like the young boy was peering into his soul.

“You’ve said that to me before,” he said. “Well, not you, but…”

He was older now, much older.

And so was his son.

Lloyd sat on the edge of the vehicle they had taken from the Samurai X’s cave.

Garmadon pressed a wet washcloth to his son’s broken lip. The boy didn’t look at him as they sat there in silence.

“You sure have a knack for finding trouble,” he said, breaking the quiet between them.

It had been a nindroid who had found them. One who had immediately responded by attacking Lloyd.

By the time Garmadon had gotten over there to stop it from overtaking the boy, it had already landed quite a good punch against his son’s mouth.

“I know,” Lloyd said, though he still didn’t look his father in the eye. “That’s why destiny chose me.”

Garmadon had tried to figure out a good response to that, but he couldn’t. It was true. Lloyd was quite the mangent to trouble…

Some things never changed apparently.

“I guess I did…” Garmadon said. “And I still stand by it.”

Lloyd bowed his head.

“What?” Garmadon asked again.

“Nothing…” he whispered.

Of course the child would try that. He would look all sad and miserable and then say that nothing was wrong.

It was all a tactic to get him to care, to pretend to be something that he wasn’t. He couldn’t make himself care about Lloyd, and he wouldn’t pretend that he did either.

“Fine,” Garmadon said, then began to clean the cut on Lloyd’s arm. This one probably did need stitches, but he wasn’t even remotely qualified to do that.

His precious ninja team could stitch him up after he sent him back to them. If they really cared that much, they shouldn’t have left him out alone to get mugged in the first place.

“Do you remember everything?” Lloyd asked.

Garmadon gritted his teeth, then nodded. “I do,” he said.

He remembered everything. From playing with Wu at the lake to this very moment. He remembered all of the moments with Lloyd, he remembered flirting with Misako, he remembered succumbing to the evil of the venom.

But it was like he was looking in on them. They didn’t feel like they were his. Instead, when he thought back on them, he felt nothing.

It didn’t matter how much he tried to bring himself to care about Lloyd, he couldn’t.

The boy was his son, his own flesh and blood.

But that meant nothing to him.

Garmadon looked at his son. The boy had grown so much, and he was so proud of the man he was becoming.

However, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to see any more of his son’s growth.

This was the end.

“I yearned to make the world in my image. I never realized I already had, in you,” he told Lloyd.

Lloyd’s green eyes sparkled with tears, and Garmadon tried so hard to memorize the face he knew he would never see again.

No matter what happened next, he would always love his son.

Except… That part of him had been wrong.

Garmadon looked at the boy in front of him, the boy that was his son.

And he felt nothing.

That pride that he knew he had once felt, that love…

It was gone.

“I’m going to go call your mother,” he said as he stood up. Suddenly, he couldn’t stand to be around the boy any longer.

The boy he wanted to love, but couldn’t.

Damn Harumi…

The girl might have brought him back, but not the him that he wanted to be.

He made his way to where the wired phone was hanging up, then hesitated.

He had a chance to try to change, to try to find some form of love in his heart to give to Lloyd.

But he knew that it would only lead to more heartbreak. It didn’t matter what he tried. He could never be the perfect father, even his past self had failed at that.

He waited as the phone rang, and another memory came to mind.

Garmadon stood over Lloyd’s crib, the tiny child sleeping peacefully as the night went on.

In the back of his mind, he could hear the golden weapons whispering to him, begging to be taken and used to create his own version of Ninjago.

A version where there were no evil overlords, no hateful fathers, no perfect brothers who ruined everything… A perfect world for him and his son.

He reached down and stroked the tiny child’s hair. Selfishly, he hoped that his son’s blond curls would one day turn dark brown like his.

“I’ll make the world a better place for you, my son,” he said. “I’ll make a world worth living in. One where you can never be judged for your past. You’ll be a prince, royalty amongst men.”

He didn’t know if it was the words he had spoken or if it was because of the soothing touch, but Lloyd leaned against his hand.

“I’ll be back, Little One,” he said. “And the world will be a better place.”

Then he left to go find the Golden Weapons of Spinjitzu.

He didn’t realize that nothing would ever be the same again.

Finally, someone picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Misako,” Garmadon said.

“Why are you calling us?” she demanded. “What is going on?”

“Trust me when I say I’d rather not be calling this number at all,” he told her. “Your son showed up on my doorstep. He’d been jumped and needed someone to bandage his wounds. No idea why he came to me of all people, but he is patched up and ready for one of you to come get him.”

“We’ll be right over.”

Garmadon hung up the phone, then walked back into the living room.

Lloyd was laying on the couch, looking smaller than ever before. His eyes were shut and Garmadon couldn’t help but guess that the boy was probably sleeping.

So he sat down in the armchair and watched the boy he really couldn’t care less about.

He didn’t care about him, right?

He wasn’t able to love.

First it had been from the venom of the Great Devourer, and now it was from the Oni blood that coursed within him.

Destiny had torn his family apart time and time again. There was nothing he could do about that. It was a fact of life, a cruel part of a game he wanted to be done with.

“Dad..?”

The soft voice caught Garmadon’s attention the way it had so many times in the past.

“What is it, Lloyd?” he asked. It was harsh, but none of the words he had used in the past seemed to fit.

He couldn’t love the boy, no matter how hard he tried.

No matter how hard he wanted to.

Lloyd didn’t say anything for a long moment, instead he just looked into the distance.

“Just making sure you’re still there…”

Garmadon swallowed. He could say something to bridge the gap, to cling onto some fake idea of love and what it meant.

But he wouldn’t do that to Lloyd. He couldn’t lie to him.

Not after everything else he had done to him.

He wished life was easier. He wished that he could just pull Lloyd into his arms and tell him that everything would be okay, and that he loved him.

But it wasn’t true.

And it could never be true.

He didn’t know how to love. He was incapable of loving.

Garmadon looked at the boy in front of him and his heart broke. Not because he loved him, but because he wanted to.

He had all of the memories, he knew all of the right words, he could pretend to play the part of a loving father.

But it would never be real.

He didn’t feel anything like what he remembered feeling when he looked at the boy in front of him.

His fractured soul meant that Lloyd couldn’t be a part of his life the same way he had been in the past.

He couldn’t pick him up and twirl him around. He couldn’t look at his son with pride and boast about him to everyone. He couldn’t follow the boy around on missions. He couldn’t teach Lloyd the things that Wu didn’t.

Because he was a monster, an abomination.

He should have stayed dead. Death was a kinder fate than this one.

Garmadon wiped the tears out of his eyes. He wasn’t crying, it was just too late for him to still be up.

He wasn’t sure how long he watched Lloyd for before the car pulled up in front of the building and he heard a knock on his door.

Garmadon stood, then walked over to Lloyd and gently shook his shoulder.

When Lloyd woke up, he startled. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Your team is here to pick you up,” he said. “They’re at the door.”

Lloyd nodded, then stood up. Slowly, he limped and stumbled to the door.

Unsurprisingly, it was the red ninja who was at the door.

Instantly, the boy in red was checking him over and making sure that he was okay.

They left without saying a word.

Garmadon knew that he should go to bed, but instead, he found himself drawn to the window.

He watched as the two of them got into the car, and Lloyd walked out of his life once again. For a moment, there was a lump in his throat.

But what did it matter?

He didn’t care.

Garmadon was an Oni, a fractured soul of a man who should be dead…

How could he love when he was nothing more than a monster?

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