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“Okay,” Leo says with all the authority he can scrounge up, which isn’t much considering he’s A: lying face down on the couch, and B: he’s talking to himself. “It’s intervention time.”
It’s something he’s been considering doing for the past week- ever since he and his brothers had settled back into a sense of normalcy after the Kraang Invasion. Well…normalcy is a strong and not all that accurate word, but it’s the best one Leo can think of to summarise how things are at the moment.
Because things are certainly better but they’re still…odd.
For one thing, Leo is still recovering from getting the shit kicked out of him on multiple different occasions. He’s bruised and battered and kinda bloody through all the bandages, and it means he’s having to spend a lot of time lying around and doing nothing. He’s got a walking frame- which was a joke gift from April that she covered in stickers but joke’s on her because he actually likes it- but it still doesn’t afford him the kind of mobility he’s used to. He’s slightly better at sitting still than Mikey would be, but that’s not saying much.
Speaking of Mikey- he’s all chipper and cheery like he is want to be, but to Leo it just feels sort of forced. Like Mikey’s just doing it because he thinks that’s what everyone wants to see. And yes, Leo does want to see Mikey happy again, but he wants it to be for real. He doesn’t want it to be a forced performance for everybody’s benefit except Mikey’s.
And then there’s Raph. If Mikey is maybe putting on a show for their sakes, then Raph definitely is. Leo understands why Raph thinks he has to be so strong but that doesn’t mean he has to like it. He knows Raph is still hurting in so many different ways and he wishes Raph would just talk to him about it, because Leo gets it. He does this time. And if Raph would just stop telling Leo to think about himself for once and let Leo give his big dumb head a shake, then maybe they could actually sort this out.
But it’s not Mikey or Raph that Leo wants to hold an intervention for. At least, not the one he’s just loudly and unnecessarily declared. No, that is an honour reserved for Leo’s very own twin, Donnie.
Donnie- who has not come out of his lab since they returned to the lair. Not for food or sleep or even movie time.
It’s definitely a calculated move on his part- though that’s not saying much since everything Donnie does is a calculated move. Leo can just picture him sitting down and coming up with it, in much of the way that Donnie always sits and works things out. Nobody in the family can hound Donnie for looking like shit and having unhealthy coping methods if they can’t see him looking like shit and having unhealthy coping methods. Great plan, but not one Leo is personally a fan of.
(If Donnie was here, he might say Leo thinking about how everyone else is feeling and wanting to fix their problems instead of his was an equally unhealthy coping method, but Donnie had chosen to not be here, so blah blah blah)
Leo loves his brothers. He loves them so, so much- enough to accept an existence in a prison dimension at the mercy of a vengeful alien just so they could be safe. His witty quip when the glowing orange portal had opened had been nothing more than false bravado. He really hadn’t expected them to be able to come for him, and even if they had managed it then certainly not that soon. And by then, Leo would have most likely been long dead. But they had and he’s here now, except Donnie’s isn’t, and Leo isn’t going to let him shut himself away from them all. Not when they’d all fought so hard to get back to each other.
So he gets to his feet (slowly, painfully, and with a lot of grunting) and he grabs the sticker covered walking frame (slowly, painfully, and with a lot of grunting) and he makes his way towards the lab (slowly, painfully, and with a lot of grunting) and then he slumps against the door (quickly, painfully, and with a loud swear) and hopes Donnie will hear him over the sound of whatever invention he’s surely working on.
Oh…wait…the lab’s sound proofed isn’t it. But is that for sound getting in or sound getting out? Or does it just work both ways automatically, like you can’t have one without the other. Could you have a soundproof room that kept sound from getting in but let your sound get out? Or vice versa? Or-
Argh, this is why Donnie can get away with shutting himself up, because Leo gets stupidly distracted by stupid things like sound proofing on labs.
“Donnie!” he calls loudly. “You in there?”
Dumb again. Where else is Donnie gonna be? This all started because he’s being nowhere but the lab. Stupid, stupid Leo.
He starts banging his head against the door for lack of anything better to do. It’s probably (definitely) not something he should be doing considering he’s still recovering from a pretty serious concussion but he’s come all this way (slowly, painfully, and with a lot of grunting) and now Donnie probably can’t even hear him and so Leo is stuck.
Thud
Why won’t Donnie come out?
Thud
Why won’t Mikey let himself cry?
Thud
Why won’t Raph talk to him?
Thud
Why is Leo still the leader?
He goes to slam his head again but there is suddenly nothing to slam it against and he falls forward into space. He instinctively braces himself to hit the floor because he knows he can’t catch himself in time, but then suddenly he’s not falling anymore and there are cold arms holding him.
“Leo,” a flat, unamused voice makes it perfectly clear who is saviour is. “Do you want another concussion?”
“Donnie!” Leo grins up at his twin with probably too much relief in his voice to sound normal. “Guess the lab isn’t sound proofed after all.”
The strange conversation starter is seemingly enough to make Donnie momentarily forget that he’s trying to go for the record of longest amount of time spent locked in a room without talking, because he gets that familiar ‘I am about to start explaining something you should already know’ look on his face. “Actually, it is, obviously, hence why you guys never hear my explosions, but I have sensors that pick up vibrations and your head was making some pretty noticeable ones.”
“You trying to tell me I have a thick skull?”
“Yes, making up for the severe lack of brain cells bouncing around inside. Knock your head anymore and you’ll lose precious resources you can’t afford to.”
It is so good to hear Donnie’s dry voice that Leo doesn’t even care (mostly) that he’s being insulted. He pauses to drink it in, and that’s when Donnie finally decides to remember he’s cosplaying as a dramatic shut in and starts to try and drape Leo uncomfortably over his walker.
“Nuh uh,” Leo says, clinging tighter. “I’m staying.”
“Go away, ‘Nardo, I’m busy.”
“Busy being a jerk, maybe.”
Donnie shoots him a look, allowing Leo to see up close and personal how bloodshot his eyes look. “Busy doing important work.”
“Movie nights are important work.”
“Keeping us safe is more important.”
“That’s what you’re doing right now? Keeping us safe?”
Donnie bites back a curse and rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t keep trying to push Leo away. He also doesn’t try to help him into the lab though, so there’s still a fifty percent chance that Leo isn’t going to get his way and have some brotherly bonding. Leo makes the decision that he’s more likely to get inside the lab if he’s not all up in Donnie’s space, and so he grabs onto the walker and uses it to support himself while still keeping close enough to Donnie that if he wanted to shut the door on him, he’d end up crushing Leo in the process.
Leo looks Donnie up and down as subtly as he can. He and Donnie have always seen eye to eye- as in they’re the same height- but now Donnie seems to be slightly shorter. He’s hunched over in a way that makes Leo’s bruised shoulders and shell ache in synchronised sympathy. It only takes one more look to realise this is because Donnie is wearing his heavy-duty battle shell- the one that offers way more physical protection than some of his others do. Donnie had one explained the differences between all his shells in more specifics, but Leo had absolutely tuned that particular lecture out. He just knows that it’s stronger, and therefor heavier.
He knows that Donnie shouldn’t be wearing it for more than an hour or two, and certainly not at home where it’s not needed.
“Dee,” Leo says, trying to keep his voice light. “Dee, buddy, what’s up with the shell?”
Donnie sighs. “Well, Leo, maybe it’s the concussion scrambling your brain, but we’re turtles, and turtles have shells.”
“Hah hah, very funny,” Leo isn’t in the mood to play along. “Come on, Donnie, you know what I mean.”
Donnie rarely plays obtuse, because he likes to know everything and he likes for everyone to know he knows everything, and so it’s frustrating to see him blink in false innocence as he waits for Leo to be the one to say it.
“I always wear my battle shells,” he says.
“Not this one,” Leo gestures. “That’s the heavy-duty one, right? The really heavy one.”
Donnie shrugs- or rather he tries to shrug but the weight of the shell drags it back down and he just ends up looking like he’s shivering. “So what if it is?”
“So what-so what?” Leo strikes out with the walker, pushing his way past Donnie and into the lab which-woah, there’s way more going on in here than Leo can ever remember seeing before. Whatever, not the time, right now it’s all about the fact that Donnie is hurting himself. “That shell’s dangerous and you know it!”
“I don’t need you to tell me how my tech works, Leonardo.” Donnie’s voice is icy and cold but Leo is burning hot right now.
“Apparently you do, since that thing is literally altering your centre of gravity! And don’t try to change the subject by going ‘blah blah oh Leo, I didn’t know you knew what a centre of gravity was blah blah’ cause it’s not gonna work.”
“I didn’t know you knew what a centre of gravity was,” Donatello deadpans. Leo clenches his fingers around the walking frame, hoping to feel it crack beneath him as a way to starve off his anger, only his bruised fingers give out before the cheap plastic can and he’s forced to lessen his grip.
This is what Raph feels like, all the time. Fear for his brothers manifesting as anger. Leo had never understood it, but he does now and it makes him feel even more afraid. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do about this, he’s just a kid. All there is- all he can do- is what he’s always done, and that’s try.
“Donnie,” he pleads. “Talk to me, please. You know this isn’t healthy. I know you do. You know everything.”
“Your point being?”
“That you have to stop!”
“That’s just so typical of you, trying to butt into our lives instead of working on your own. Pot meet kettle and have a fucking baby of emotional issues while you’re at it.”
“What, I’m the bad guy for wanting to make sure you’re okay?”
“Maybe, if it means you’re not alright in the process.”
“At least I’m acknowledging I’m not okay, unlike you!”
“Seriously, you think you’re doing that? Bullshit, ‘Nardo, that’s bullshit.”
“For shit’s sake Donnie, stop pushing me away and let me help you!” his voice catches on a sob and when Leo meets Donnie’s eyes once more, it’s with tears falling from his own. “I-I could’ve lost you. I could’ve lost all of you, and now you’re making it worse because I can’t see you and know that you’re okay.”
Donatello deflates all at once, crumpling under the weight of his battle shell and collapsing into a stray chair. He’s not crying himself, because Donatello never cries, but his eyes look suspiciously wet.
“We could’ve lost you too,” he croaks. “In fact, we did lose you. So don’t act like you’re the only one who feels this way, because you’re not.”
“I never said that,” Leo says cautiously. His blood still boils but it’s not anger born of fear aimed at Donatello, but rather fury directed at the aliens that have made his brothers feel like this in the first place.
“Urgh, I know,” Donnie rubs at his face. “This is all so stupid.”
“This?”
“Emotions.”
“Telling you for like the bajillionth time, emotions are completely normal, Dee.”
“They completely suck,”
“Donnie,” Leo whines, because Donnie is subtly trying to change the subject like he always does when things get ‘mushy’. “Dude, please, take the shell off. It’s making me hurt and I’m not even wearing it.”
“No,” Donnie says. It’s all he says, soft and quiet and oh so final.
“Alright,” Leo says. It’s the most honest Donnie’s been with him. “Uh…why?”
Silence.
“Is it cause your other ones got wrecked?” Leo asks- a question he already knows the answer too (Donnie always has backups of backups of backups) but maybe one that will actually get Donnie to say something.
It doesn’t.
“Donnie, come on, why won’t you take it off?”
“I need it, alright?” Donnie all but yells at him, accelerating the conversation right back to where it had been in the heat of the moment.
“Donnie, that’s not-”
“Don’t say it’s not true, because it is. I need it to cover up this absolute failure of a shell that I’m stuck with.”
“Dee…” Leo’s hands are shaking. “Is that how you feel about it?”
“Duh, obviously,” Donnie snarls. “It’s a part of me that doesn’t work the way everything else does. It’s like- it’s a shell. It’s meant to protect me. Yours protect you and then mine just sits there like a reminder that on a biologic level, I’m weak. I’m weak and I’m defective and I have to work even harder than everyone else to make sure it doesn’t become a problem that gets us all killed!”
“Donnie-”
“I nearly got us all killed, Leo,” he’s back to being that awful kind of quiet now, the one that speaks to insecurity and lack of confidence. The one that sounds awfully like the voice in Leo’s heads on his very bad days.
“No you didn’t,” Leo says. He tries to match Donnie’s level of volume, unwilling to start the yelling again. “That was me, remember?”
“I kept screwing everything up because of my shell,” Donnie doesn’t seem to hear him. “I got Mikey stuck in the tank, I couldn’t get control of the ship, I-”
“We all made mistakes,” Leo cuts him off. “And none of them were to do with physicality or shells or anything like that. They were just mistakes- accidents. Trust me.”
“I-I don’t feel safe anymore.”
And no, no that’s not what Leo wants to hear at all. He can’t have his brothers be like him, even if he knows that deep down they are, family through and through to the end of everything. They’re all afraid of things and these fears manifest as anger, sarcasm, humour, over confidence, anything and everything that can distract from what they’re really, truly feeling.
“You’re safe here,” Leo says, because that’s all he can say. “Safe here with us. We’ll protect you, and you’ll protect us. Come on, we fought the Kraang and we won! We’re badasses and that proves it. You don’t gotta be scared. And if you do have to have a shell on then it can be one of your lighter ones. Seriously, Donnie, that thing is breaking your back.”
“I need it,” Donnie repeats. “Just in case.”
“You don’t,” Leo shoots back. “Not that one. Not here, not now.”
“Go away,” Donnie says. Ah, so they’re back to this again. Avoid and evade. Classic Donnie tactic.
Classic Leo tactic.
Deny it all he likes, Donnie and Leo are twins and always will be.
“Not until you take that stupid piece of gravity altering tech off,” Leo says. He’s not going away. Not this time and never again. He’ll the same words over and over until Donnie finally listens.
“So, you want to make a deal?” Donnie raises his head slightly. There’s a flicker of interest in his eyes, one that makes Leo nervous.
“Sure, that,” he says, because at least Donnie’s starting to lose that awful gut-wrenching agony in his voice.
“I take the shell off, if-”
He’s going to make Leo leave him alone. He’s going to get Leo to piss off back to the couch where he has to lie in stillness, miserable and alone. And Leo…Leo won’t be able to do that.
So then the deal won’t happen and Donnie will slowly be crushed under the weight of his own fears and internalised hatred, and Leo will just have to watch. Watch the same way he had to watch Raph hover over him- impaled and in pain and still strong enough to shove Leo away and back to safety. Watch the same way he had to watch Mikey get hurt time and time over because Leo wanted to look cool and be the main guy.
“-if you talk to me.”
Huh?
Leo’s thoughts skid to a halt and he almost hears his brain play a record scratch as he registers Donnie’s words.
“What?” he says.
“Urgh, don’t make me say it again,” Donnie groans. “I know you heard me.”
“Yeah, but I think I heard wrong,” Leo says. “Did you just say you wanted to talk? Is it about machines? Do I have to talk about machines?”
“Now who’s doing the pushing away,” Donnie says. Leo hadn’t even realised that’s what he’d been doing which…huh…maybe Donnie didn’t realise it either when he was doing it. “Do you want to make the deal or not?”
“Seriously though, what do I have to talk about?” Leo asks suspiciously.
“Something, anything! Just stop acting like you have to be all martyr like and keep everything inside. I know, I know, pot meets kettle, disaster twins, whatever. Just agree that we’re both like this, and start saying what you’re feeling instead of pretending you’re not feeling anything.”
“I…I’m…it’s…”
It’s Mikey who’s doing the pretending. It’s Raph. It’s Donnie. It’s not Leo.
Leo knows he’s not alright and he understands that it’s okay that he’s not, and so-so…
And so what? He’s still not doing anything about it.
They’re all the same.
“I…” Leo’s fingers twitch. “I can’t…”
He can’t what? Talk? That’s new.
“See,” Donnie says, pulling Leo’s eyes to him. “I-I’m taking it off.”
With quivering fingers of his own, Donnie releases the catches that keep the battle shell stuck to him. There is a whoosh of air and then it slips off to clang against the ground. The sudden loss of weight has Donnie tipping forward in the chair, but he rights himself with the grace of a ninja and blinks expectantly at Leo.
“We never made the deal,” is all Leo can think to say.
“Consider this payment in advance,” Donnie says.
“I’m not, it’s-”
“You’re not ready, I know. But you will be, right?”
Leo hesitates, then nods.
“Then I guess I’ll be here when you are,” Donnie says.
“Without the heavy-duty battle shell?”
“Without the heavy-duty battle shell.”
It’s all Leo wanted in this moment, and now he has it. Donnie wants something in return, of course, but he’s made it clear that he’s willing to wait.
What now?
“Uh,” he articulates, clearing his voice. “Movie night?”
“Sure,” Donnie shrugs, and this time it actually works. How can you love so simple a movement? When it is one you nearly lost, that’s how. “Movie night.”
He gets up, and Leo follows. Slowly, painfully.
“But nothing sci-fi,” Donnie says. “I’m feeling a romcom tonight.”
Donnie doesn’t like romcoms. It’s Leo and Mikey and Raph who do. And Donnie likes Leo and Mikey and Raph, so maybe he does like romcoms.
“Thanks,” Leo says. “For taking it off.”
“I’m not saying thank you,” Donnie says. “Not until you actually talk to me.”
“Okay.”
“But when you do, then I will. I’ll say thank you.”
It’s not perfect. It really isn’t, because it’s been a week and it’s too soon and there’s no normalcy to be found. It is something though, and it’s a something that’s getting better.
Slowly, painfully.
“Hey guys!” Leo opens his mouth and yells through the halls of their lair. “Movie night!”
He gets resounding cheers, and when he laughs, it feels like seeing that glowing orange portal all over again, beckoning him over to where his brothers are waiting.
He goes.