Lloyd uses his hands to measure the years. It's easy to look in the mirror and miss the lines spreading across his forehead, or the crow's feet growing larger around his eyes, but he sees his hands every day. They gnarl with age, like the branches of a withered blue oak, so, like a tree, Lloyd will count the rings.

Kai is different. He uses his hair, though Lloyd can't say that it is the most accurate way of doing so. Grey hair comes from more than time; it comes from stress, fear, choices of lifestyle. By Kai's measurements, he was elderly by age fifty.

Given their line of work, hair is inaccurate. In fact, Kai found his first grey hair at age twenty-seven. Lloyd still remembers the day.

Kai was hysterical.

"Lloyd!" he yelled over the fierce laughter of Cole and Jay, who were clutching their stomachs and, in Jay's case, rolling on the floor, "This is your fault!"

Lloyd couldn't see it at the time. "What's wrong?" he said through a grin that made his cheeks ache.

It was a single hair, not long enough even to match the length of the rest of his head, but Kai cradled it in his hands like it was a nesting bird having fallen from a tree. "You've done it now, Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon," Kai wailed, "You've done worn me out! It's the beginning of the end!"

Not really, thought Lloyd, thinks Lloyd. Kai's always worried about his hair, but it's a pitiful measurement, more of a ballpark of age than anything. For the ninja, it's a better guess of stress levels.

All his friends (except Zane, of course) went grey, and Lloyd can thankfully say (and adamantly insist) that not every strand could be attributed to him and his self-sacrificing tendencies. Ninjago's perils never ceased, but time granted Lloyd students of his own, so the weight of the world was eventually shared with far more capable shoulders.

Lloyd thanks the ninja for his hair, white as snow and silver at the roots, because if it weren't for them, he doubts he would have made it past ten. He thanks them for his life, his students, his possessions, and especially his hands.

Lloyd thanks them all, but he finds himself thanking Kai a lot more these days, as he spends more time reflecting how far he's come. It's one thing to have a family to run to when he skins his knee, it's another to have someone yanking him by the collar out of harm's way every time he winds up in a precarious situation.

Turns out, that happened a lot. A descendent of a god, a dragon, an oni and whatever else his Uncle Wu forgot to mention is not in this world for peace.

And neither is Kai, who was there for him time and time again, like a mother hen following her idiot child as he fumbles his way through the thrills of life. Lloyd's tried returning the favor, but he just can't catch up. Some debts can't be paid, anyway.

In the end, it doesn't matter, and it never did. Lloyd walks the temple grounds, staff clicking steadily against ancient stones as he searches for his friend.

A crooked old man, Kai's spent the past year alone among company, wandering the grounds with his head tilted towards the skies, his gaze stretching further. Lloyd used to believe that grief made him this way, but it's something else, too.

The threat of death was one they all were familiar with, but it still struck them by surprise.

Cole died six months ago, the night before the dogwoods bloomed. He spent his last year tired and unable to walk. Being both the strongman and heavy hitter of the group had not served him well, and he was never quite the same after his fall off the Bounty. He passed in his sleep, face set like stone. Jay exclaimed the next morning (with tears in his eyes that no one would comment on) that it was all that cake that did his friend in, but Lloyd knows the answer is simpler than that. Like all living things, Cole simply ran out of heartbeats.

Four months later, Jay passed in his bed, holding Nya's hand. He made her promise to shoot fireworks at his funeral, wanting to go out with a bang, he said. It's a dream he's spoken of since seventeen (minus the part where they send his body off a cliff at the wheel of a baby blue convertible), so they felt obligated to honor the request. The night of his funeral, fireworks flew throughout Ninjago as the world remembered a hero.

The deaths hit hard, and Kai's been especially distant since then. He doesn't laugh like he once did, doesn't make snarky comments about how great he is anymore. When they sit down for dinner, Lloyd feels like he's talking to Kai from across a long suspension bridge, rather than just the length of the table.

Once a bonfire blazing in a firepit, Kai's spirit now is more akin to a candle, burning low in a forgotten corner. Lloyd tries to help, reaching out whenever he can. It hurts him that his friend is like this; with all the times Kai's saved him marked on a list Lloyd keeps in his head, the most and least he can do is return the favor, if just once.

After a morning of searching, Lloyd spots his dear friend bent over in the temple gardens, pulling at weeds and things from beneath the large leaves of acorn squash and sunburst pumpkins. He's a wide-brimmed hat on his head, and it makes him look like a farmer you'd find smiling on the front of some commercial product.

Lloyd has to laugh at the image that makes in his head, knowing Kai would rather be caught dead.

Absorbed in his own world, Kai doesn't see Lloyd approach until his sneakers are right in his line of vision. He squints up at him with drooping, squishy eyes, like an old dog's.

"You're out early," he says, though it's mid-morning and well after when Lloyd usually wakes, "Your students have the day off or something?"

"I have them washing the training grounds," replies Lloyd, "Top to bottom, nothing but a mop and a scrub brush. Should keep them out of trouble for fifteen minutes."

Kai huffs a chuckle that's halfway a wheeze, and Lloyd smiles wryly. Not until Lloyd had students of his own did he realize how much his uncle had to put up with, and his respect for Wu grows with each passing day.

"What brings you out here?" says Kai, stooping to thump a pumpkin; the best way to tell if they're ripe, he always said.

"You do," dope, he thinks, "I want to speak with you."

"You didn't have to come out here to do that," says Kai, standing and moving to a row of okra, where foot long pods hang split open in the sun. When Kai touches them, the seeds inside rattle.

"I don't know how else I would, Kai," Lloyd cocks his gaze as he watches Kai work. Some days, he's sure his friend has gone senile, but he's never sure, since the stuff Kai says isn't all too different from what he did in his youth.

"Something is bothering you," he continues, direct in a way that his uncle never was, "I want to help."

Kai continues examining the okra, not really doing anything but looking at them and touching with withered old hands, speckled like a toad, as Jay used to say.

"You can't help me," Kay says, so quiet Lloyd isn't sure if he spoke to him or the okra, "I appreciate the concern. Just go on back to your students."

Lloyd frowns and grinds his staff into the dirt, making a deep, round hole. "No."

He hopes his stubbornness will goad Kai into participating in one of their back-and-forths, but Kai just looks at him before lifting his hat to rub at his hair. He still styles it at this age, though a lot less wildly. He should look ridiculous (Lloyd tells him as much), but Lloyd would be lying if he said he wasn't envious of his brother for looking so cool in old age.

Some things only Kai can pull off.

"Just tell me what's on your mind," says Lloyd, "You've been off, and you know it," a beat, then, "You can't spend all your time thinking of nothing."

Despite the mood he's in, Kai smiles, "That is a lot of time with an empty head."

They chuckle together, and Kai looks down as he repeats, "Time."

Lloyd watches.

Kai stares at the dirt, toeing a path through the rich umber dust. When he looks up, he's donned a worried frown, "You'll remember me when I die, won't you?"

The question catches him by surprise, almost a shock, "What?"

Kai stares, mouth set in an expression Lloyd and his tasteless brain can only describe as dead serious, so Lloyd continues, "You spend all this time thinking about your death?"

Kai shrugs.

"That's morbid!"

"Well," Kai casts him a side eyed stare that used to kill back in the day, "I have to, don't I?" he moves to a row of trellises, fallen over from the weight of dying lima vines, "After all, it's not like I have much left."

"Much?"

"Time."

"Don't be silly," a shot of fear fires through his heart, the way it always does when Lloyd entertains the idea of living on without any one of his friends, "Is this because of Cole and Jay?"

Cole and Jay, he's learned to live without; after all, his friends aren't really gone, but he doesn't know if he could do the same with Kai. As he stands, he thinks of all the mornings he'd wake to find Kai standing at a window towards the temple's east wing. From it, you can overlook the temple's grounds, as well as a special garden where they planted flowers in honor of their fallen friends. Had Kai been thinking of his flowers, too?

"It's because of me, just me," Kai's eyes slide empty again as he looks at the shriveled limas; seeds long shed, the shells hang spread like wings, "Think about the logic, here. Zane's a nindroid with eons left in his system; you and Nya have several years if you stay out of trouble, and me…" Kai closes his eyes and shakes his head, "It was either going to be me, Cole, or Jay, and with the two of them gone, I'm right up at the head of the line."

Kai is speaking from a perspective Lloyd won't know for years, if he even knows it at all, and all his knowledge as a sensei can't help him understand. He tries, "It scares you that you're next?"

Kai looks to the sky again. He's looking at everything but at Lloyd. "I'm not scared," he says, voice quiet, "I know death enough to not be scared...but," he hangs long on the 'but', "I thought I'd have more time. Even when I was sure we were going to die, I thought I'd have more time."

Lloyd understands as much. He still goes to bed at night expecting to get up the next day.

"I don't know how to explain it," Kai snaps back into the moment as he scratches his chin, "I've never had to look at my life backwards, before."

Lloyd blinks, "So that's what you've been thinking about?"

Kai shrugs again, "I've got a lot of life behind me. A lot more than in front. Who knew I'd live this long, huh?" for the first time, he laughs as he says, "Especially after all those years of you running me into the ground!"

Lloyd smiles through the wave of apprehension that's washed over him, "Well, it's your own fault if you expected me to go easy on you."

Kai laughs again, really laughs, and Lloyd forgets his fear.

"I'm surprised I never suffered a heart attack," Kai rubs his chest as he says it, before turning serious once more, "But you'll remember me, won't you?"

"Oh Kai," Lloyd huffs, "I couldn't forget you if I tried."

He's almost offended that Kai would even wonder, but Kai continues, "No, no. It's easy to not forget somebody. I'm talking remembering."

"Of course, I will," aghast, Lloyd looks his friend over. He's old. Different, but in many ways, the same Kai who'd make faces at him from across the supper table, who'd slip him chocolate when no one was looking, who'd sing along to dumb songs while mopping the Bounty's deck.

He always ended up chasing Lloyd across it, grinning like a maniac while Lloyd slipped and slid across the wet wood. Often barefoot, Lloyd usually skinned himself or wound up with a heel full of splinters, but it was okay, because Kai helped him clean it up. He had the best band-aids, the kinds with Fritz Donnegan or cool colors on the front.

Lloyd smiles at the sky, "Of course I'll remember you. Every day. You gave me a home, a family," he points to himself, "I'm your bratty little brother, remember? Of course I'll remember."

At this, Kai blinks. An odd expression flickers through his eyes, as though he's recalling some distant thought.

Lloyd isn't sure what to make of it, so he continues, "I'll remember everything; all the times you saved my sorry behind, the things you tell me," he pauses to laugh, "You say a lot of dumb stuff, you know that, right?"

"Of course," Kai scoffs, softened by the kind words and perhaps even the jest, "but unlike you, I didn't become a sensei to pass my idiocy as profound wisdom."

Lloyd sneers, a comeback already up his sleeve, "You just became a crazy old man."

"Perhaps," Kai grins, "but so did you."

Lloyd lets him win this round, and he follows his friend throughout the rest of the garden, through crops and orchards and eventually bushes of flowers. The quiet feels better than it did when Lloyd arrived.

When they reach the end of the garden, Kai rolls his shoulders and puts his hands on his hips. "I think that does it," he says, though Lloyd isn't sure what he's done, "Thanks for seeing me, Lloyd. You might want to see your students now, assuming they haven't torn each other apart."

Lloyd grimaces, having forgotten of his students quite completely, blaming Kai. Before he can express as much to his friend, Kai turns and walks off, a thoughtful look on his face. Something has changed since he arrived, and though Lloyd can't say what it is, he thinks it's something good, because Kai turns around to wave.

The following month is better in many ways. Though Kai is still a candle, he dances instead of flickers, smiling more and even participating in some of Lloyd's classes now and again. Lloyd still catches him staring out over the flowers in the morning, but he's usually gone by the time the last of the fog dissipates with the sunshine, and his mind is spent with far more pleasant subjects.

A month after the conversation, Kai interrupts a meditation session and drags him down to his room, a small nook at the end of a hall, next to the bathroom. Lloyd doesn't mean to complain throughout the path there, but meditation is the only peace and quiet he gets in a day, so he's sure to tell Kai as much.

"Relax," says his friend, unusually cheerful, "I've got something for you. You remember that talk we had a while back?"

Lloyd does, mostly what Kai said about not having much time left, but Kai seems on another subject entirely. Kai leads him over to the bed, where he starts digging through his nightstand. When he stands back up, he's a blacksmith's hammer in his hands, muscles taut under the weight of the object.

"I've been doing a lot of thinking," Kai explains, "and talking—with Nya, that is. She agreed with me."

He hands Lloyd the hammer. It's heavy, tarnished with scars of use and streaks of black, not really much to look at.

"This is for you," he says, "It's an heirloom; dates back three generations. Some families pass down diaries or wedding dresses, but my family passes down this hammer."

He chuckles, and Lloyd just stares at the object, the weight of Kai's words hitting late and stunning him into silence.

"Kai," he breathes.

"I've been thinking about what you said, and you're right! You're our bratty little brother," says Kai, words spilling over each other, "Which means you've earned heirloom rights. It's in good condition; I'll admit I mostly used it as a paperweight, but that's not all I wanted to give you."

He stoops back to the nightstand, and Lloyd struggles not to cry.

"I also wanted to give you this," he places a small object into Lloyd's palm, forcing his fingers to curl around it, since Lloyd's lost the ability to move, "It's my most prized possession."

Lloyd looks at the object through blurred eyes. It's a bottle of hair gel, half used.

Despite the roar of emotions flooding his senses, Lloyd's enough sense to say, "Um…"

"I can't exactly give you my hair, can I?" Kai gives him a pointed look, "Especially since it's all gone."

"You still have all your hair," Lloyd says, voice growing smaller with each word, like it does when he's about to cry.

"Grey hair. Grey and thin," Kai shakes his head, "Look, Lloyd. The point of this isn't the hair gel. It's not the hammer. I just wanted to let you know that," he pauses to swallow, and Lloyd realizes he isn't the only one struggling with emotion, "I wanted to tell you—that you mean so much to me. I never wanted a brother as a kid," Kai looks at him, "because I thought a sister was more than enough, but along you came, and you've been good to me. Always have."

Kai gives him a pat on the shoulder, "So, what I'm trying to say is, thank you. For all these years, thank you. Thanks for giving me a chance."

Lloyd blinks. He always thought it was the other way around. Kai gave him the chance to be a good brother, a friend, and as he looks at the objects in his hands, he thinks he must have succeeded somewhere along the line. Kai must've, too.

Kai still has his hand on his shoulder, "You alright?"

Lloyd nods. He tries to say thank you, but what he's thanking is too big for such little words. "I'll be fine."

"Yeah you will," Kai grins and pulls him into a hug, "You're going to be just fine."

He's not just talking about now, and Lloyd smiles.

"Well," Kai sighs as he pulls away, "I was thinking of going to the creamery on the corner for a milkshake. Wanna join? Triple chocolate mint, on me!"

Lloyd sputters out a laugh as he pulls himself together. Kai switches through subjects so fast, they risk whiplash. Lloyd's stomach growls, and more importantly, his heart leaps at the idea, but, "I've got to return to my students."

"You don't have to," Kai replies easily, "They won't miss you for another hour, at least."

"I can't skip classes!"

"Sure, you can!"

"I'm the teacher!" Lloyd feels himself getting convinced, anyway, reminded of the many times he and Kai would do this to Uncle Wu or his father.

"What are they going to do?" Kai smirks at him—the same old Kai, indeed, "It's not like they can punish you."

That's an excellent point, but Lloyd has a feeling he'll pay, regardless. But Kai sweetens the deal with the promise of rainbow sprinkles and maybe even a trip to the arcade, afterwards, the kind that still plays all his favorite games, 'oldies', now. Lloyd feels obliged to go. After all, Kai's burning brighter, and they've only so many more times to do this.

The afternoon is bright and blue that day, and Lloyd spends it with Kai, his best friend, his family.

Lloyd will say to anyone who asks that he doesn't have a favorite ninja, but he does, and it's Kai.

The chapter has been the Headcanon Express; thank you for riding.

And thank you all for reading! This story has been a pleasure to write, and your support has truly been wonderful. Thank you all for reading, reviewing, and following (thanks as well to Anonymous fan, Mikey, JBomb217, and other Guests, who I cannot thank privately)! You guys rock!

As usual with these vignette based stories, please feel free to tell me which chapter you liked best (I get curious), and have a fantastic day! Thank you again!