Chapter Text
Leonardo was not new to unknowns or secrecy. He wasn't blind to the notifications in his phone banner, photos of rolling smoke, destroyed buildings. He was blind however, to the fact they were really gone.
He watched with glazed eyes as his father scrubbed grime from his palms, whispering affirmations that didn't quite reach his ears. At some point, the hospital had given them the okay to head home, and Splinter had to guide Leo through the tunnels of the sewer with a limp, broken words coming out of the eldest’s mouth. Broken words of “gone,” and “useless.” His father quickly denied each one. Leo ignored the extra feet shuffling behind them. They were not familiar.
“Why are you not mad at me?” Water sloshed around him, cause right, he was in a bathtub. He asked the question like it was gentle, like the wings of a moth or the fuzz of a bee. His voice an eerie calm, drained from hours of mental strain.
“I can not be mad at you. Never, mad at you.” his father took his cheek in his hand, setting the rag on the edge. This was the same bathtub he once shared with his brothers as tots, pushing, pulling, fighting over bubbles as his father scrubbed crayon off of them.
“You should be.” He leaned into the touch like it was a molten dagger, relishing within the sting like the glow of a night light. “Its my fault.”
“It never was.” His father pulled him into a hug despite how his wet face would get his clothes damp. Splinters arms pressed against the new cracks of his shell in a gentle agony, the staples buzzing under his carapace like wasps. Thumping of his heartbeat, followed by the dulling effect of painkillers.
He inhaled the scent of his father, like old dust and the comforting smell of rain. Like the aftermath of a storm when all the plants were greener.
Leo let his freshly scarred arms hang, not bothering to move them upwards. The words didn't quite hit him, and the hug wasn't as warm as he imagined it to be. Leo wondered if it would be this cold forever.
“I'm scared.” he admitted, because who would humble him if not Raph? Who would he geek out to shows with if not Donnie? Where would he learn the best recipes if not from Mikey? “I'm scared and alone.” he said, in a final cry for help. His father stayed silent.
Leo, for a second time, decided to bite down and swallow the tar on his tongue instead of saying it. His father didn't need to hear it.
-
His father gently lead him from the bathroom, and he avoided the looks of the new. Worried faces, tense air, Leo faintly remembered the promise he and his brothers made, offering shelter.
No one knew what to do, even splinter.
Tears itched his eyes, and he let go of his fathers hand, still feeling coppery blood underneath his nails that had long been washed away.
“I’m.” He tried, but failed. The itch in his eyes stopped, warmness traveling down his face. He couldn’t find the energy to be embarrassed.
He tried again, through stutters and a broken throat. “going.” And Leo turned towards the halls, his shell feeling like heavy armor.
-
The room was messy, just as they had left it. He tried to grasp the fact it was his room now, and not theirs.
Leo looked to Donnies computer, still open and blinking, off of its charger.
It’ll be dead before you get back to use it.
He thought in an echoing chamber of his mind before he could catch himself, realizing all over Donnie was gone; and he would never use that computer again.
Leo shut it.
-
They buried his brothers in September.
A family grave, one blank space next to the three, and above all was an unnamed indent in the stone for splinters.
Under each name was the number “2008-2023.”
Below all of the engravings, was a plaque, honoring their name, dubbing them the hero’s that fought that day.
He stepped past rows and rows of flowers, left by the entirety of New York City. Pieces of purple, red, and orange cloth wrapped around the stems. Pictures from news clips, newspapers announcing “Three strange saviors of New York dead.” but more importantly, frames he himself had placed.
The word still haunted them, even in death. Words of different, words of monster. Was it too much to ask for forgiveness? Forgiveness for their appearance none of them could control?
He sat on his knees then, on the cold concrete. He was wearing a familiar purple hoodie. It still clung to the scent of Donnie, and Leo wrapped it around himself like his brother hadn’t already faded.
Like clockwork, he brushed a thumb over the absent space. He was to be buried here, underneath layers of rock and soil, next to his brothers once more.
“I failed you guys.” His hands returned to his lap, cupping around each other pathetically. Gingerly, he placed his forehead on the tombstone. “I failed.”
It was his first sentence since the day they all were lost.
He moved his arms to cling to the cold stone. It had been ten days, and Leo had not cried. Instead, he stared like a ghost, his eyes withered, eyebags growing and streaking down his face like they belonged. In a form of rudimentary punishment, he had barely slept the first three days. Only when he heard laughter and mumbles did he succumb for just a few hours.
The world held its breath when he opened his mouth, or when he moved out of line. When he laid on floors, shuttering away from touch. Crawling into dark spaces until he had a brush with that inky blackness once more. It was only there did he let his mind wander off, never keen on grasping sleep nor staying fully cognizant.
Leo was present at the funeral a week prior, given time to speak, but he couldn’t find the scattered words enough to stitch them all together. He stood at a podium with no cards, staring into the abyss of crowds as thousands watched. He was finally seen, finally heard. But at what cost.
“What cost?” He had said into that microphone before stepping down mere moments later. His father did all the main speaking, while he sat off to the side. It wasn't an open casket, but he could feel his brother's presence under those layers of wood.
His father spoke of many things. He spoke of stories, intimate ones of playing and laughter, ones Leo had attempted to keep to himself, close to his empty chest. His father spoke of their training, then, he spoke of their desire to go to school and to be accepted.
Leo had left the corner of the stage then, crouching in a back alley blocks away and hacking up acids while his fathers voice echoed the very thing he had been avoiding.
He heard the gravelly footfalls from minutes away.
He remembered the burn on his tongue and throat, he remembered depending on it. And wasn’t that strange? A pain so intoxicating it felt good? Like the hollow thrum of a beating cancerous heart, or a flicker of a lone candle.
He watched the figure approach him.
And for the second time, he did not leave his brothers.
-
“Leo?” A flashlight was shown his way, and he didn’t flinch. He didn’t make a move at the sound of his name, too many already knew it for it to be truly important.
“Leo, everyone’s looking for you- you can’t-“ but she stopped when she locked eyes with him. It was like looking into the eyes of a corpse, all presence of who once was gone in a sickening rot.
You could see the outline of the staples through the fabric of the hoodie, boxy things, like they were the only thing pulling his limbs into movement. Leo rested like a slack puppet, cut from its strings. His otherworldly appearance only solidified that fact, green scales, ever paling. Black irises, like deep pools of water, gone was the shiny, bright futured kid who once wore them.
His face held unbridled rage in the calmest way possible.
Resentment, she saw it in the jerk of limbs, the refusal to eat. Self punishment, like he was the one to blame. How he flinched at the sound of ambulances, the glow of red.
She eyed the stone he was fruitlessly grasping, like a last dying breath.
It was time for him to exhale.
“Leo, let’s get you home, alright?”
Three sentences starting with the same word.
Leo
/ˈliː.oʊ/
- A leader.
“Leo was the leader of ( f̶o̶u̶r̶) one”
He unwound his fingers like balls of yarn, reaching, pulling, a desire to become something more than this.
She helped him up and he wobbled dangerously. Underneath the cloth she could feel his bone, could see the pull of his cheeks. How she wished she could take this away, the haunted look in his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in days, and perhaps he hadn’t.
Leo let the rumble of hunger subside into a slow burn, weighing down his stomach like a cold stone in a lake.
April hadn’t been eating much either, despite how little of a time she knew them. She held this broken thing in her arms, it’s sharp teeth and eyes aglow, like a monster. However, Leo was anything but. Paying the price of his everything for New York.
So why did she feel like he regretted it?