To @tja---7. This is a little something I wrote for you in a flurry of inspiration after seeing your amazing Ninjago x monkey kid crossover art. It’s a bit rushed, and unfortunately, I don’t know the lore behind those pictures aside from what information I could glean from the captions. Sorry if this isn’t accurate to your AU. (Also, sorry it’s so short, though it did double in size during editing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
Um . . . Here you go?
<~>
The blade slid home.
Everything froze. Two sets of wide eyes stared at each other in surprise and disbelief. They hung there. Brothers. Enemies. Suspended in crystal clarity for one fleeting, infinite moment. Then Kai’s weapons clattered to the ground, slipping from suddenly limp fingers, and he looked down. With a rattling breath, he sank to his knees, hand coming up to brush against the hilt of the sword embedded in his sternum. Lloyd’s sword. The dao blade that Kai himself had forged for him so, so long ago.
Lloyd followed him down, gently easing his once-brother into his arms. In a daze, his own hand moved to touch the sword, but Kai smacked it aside.
“Leave it,” he hissed, teeth gritted in pain. “Not like it matters now, anyway.”
Lloyd swallowed. Something hollow yawned inside him as he watched a dark-red flower bloom across the front of Kai’s tunic. Warmth seeped into the fabric of his pants, and he knew a similar flower was blooming across his brother’s back, as well. His voice was barely a whisper. “Why did it have to come to this?”
“It was always coming to this,” Kai growled out. He bit back a grunt as his body shuddered. “Though I suppose, if I was the one who took you down, we’d be having a very different conversation.”
Lloyd did not believe that. Wouldn’t believe it. He knew his own reaction—had Kai succeeded in striking him down, and Lloyd was the one dying on the floor—would have been exactly the same as it was now. No anger. No resentment. Just overwhelming heartache. Because watching a loved one fall so far that they were willing to destroy you felt exactly like the loss of death. And if their places were swapped, he couldn’t imagine the man who had once been his brother looking on callously as Lloyd drowned in his own blood. Couldn’t imagine Kai not feeling any remorse or grief. Not when the remorse and grief were, at that very moment, choking him as surely as the blood was choking Kai.
There could be no happy ending, here. No matter who had won.
“It wouldn’t have been so different,” he murmured, shaking his head.
Kai scoffed. “Yeah, well . . . ” A hacking cough rasped its way out of his lungs, and viscous red bubbled from the corners of his mouth. His back arched. “You always did have too much faith in people.”