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“Absolutely not.”
Leo glares sharply at the sheep yokai on the other side of the medbay and is met with a blank stare back. Of course he would be the first face he saw when he came to. As if today hadn’t already been a hellscape of previously unimaginable horrors.
To be honest, today wasn’t even really ‘today’ anymore. Today was about three days after ‘today’, give or take. After being dragged out of the prison dimension, half-dead, he’d passed out pretty quickly. Almost immediately after seeing that everyone else was safe. It had been in spite of himself, of course— he liked to think he was a good enough medic to know that taking a little nap when you’re that injured was a shit idea.
He supposed that was why Draxum was here at all. Because the local doctor was down and out.
If he had been awake, aside from occasional drugged-out or mind-numbingly agonizing bouts of consciousness, he would’ve fought against the very idea. Sure, he would’ve been overruled, but he would’ve liked to at least get a vote. Try as Mikey might to make everyone accept Draxum as a second dad, Leo had always been one to hold a grudge. And getting dropped off of Big Mama’s hotel by the guy was a perfectly justifiable reason to be holding that grudge still, in his opinion.
Which was exactly why he didn’t want his warrior scientist hands to be the ones dealing with his injuries.
He shakes his head, still pressed against the thin pillow of the makeshift hospital bed. It only serves to make him more dazed, more disoriented. He hopes that the vertigo wasn’t showing on his face, but he knows it was wishful thinking. Try as he might, he was an open book when it came to this shit.
“No way. You are not gonna be my nurse. I have rights as a patient, I demand a different M.D., pronto.”
“I do not have the time nor the energy for your petulance, child,” Draxum sighs. He refocuses his attention to the many different vials and instruments strewn about on the medical cart, breaking their impromptu staring contest— which meant that Leo won, and he was going to take that victory.
“Make time,” he grumbles without thinking to stop.
“As if I haven’t tried.”
Leo scoffs, at that, because of course that mad scientist of a man would.
“No one’s making you stay here. Wasting your oh-so-precious time.”
“Oh, but they are,” the yokai says, put-on smugness barely covering the pure exasperation in his tone. “And you need me here. You are extremely lucky I came when the rat called.”
All other thoughts left his mind as Leo felt his heart seize at the mention of his dad. His family. Oh god, his family. Were they safe? Were they okay, fuck, were they even alive? Where were they? He needed—
His attempt to push himself up onto his arms only achieves him an intense wave of pain and an unbidden cry wrenching itself from his chest. Every inch of him convulses, causing the torment to skyrocket even further.
“Stay still!” Draxum snaps, and if Leo didn’t know better, he’d think there was a note of alarm to his words.
He complies immediately— for his own sake and because he wanted to, he tells himself, not because he was ordered to. Draxum mumbles something about his morphine dosage, but he doesn’t really hear it, much less actually comprehend it. Pain ebbs over him and threatens to swallow him whole. Everything hurts like it was the first time he was feeling it again, and his chest was the absolute worst of it.
Not surprising. He remembers the way the Kraang had pressed him into stone, the way he had slammed metal fists against his plastron. Beating until he broke. He was feeling all of that and something more, something less physical.
“Dad,” Leo manages to get out. His tongue suddenly feels heavy and useless in his mouth. “My— my brothers, April, Case, where—“
“In the den. Sleeping, as you should be,” comes Draxum’s response after a pause that nearly went on for too long, and Leo’s panic quells just slightly.
They were safe. They were together. They were alive.
He was alive.
…that wasn’t really something he thought he’d be able to say.
“They nearly refused to leave the med bay, you know. I had to force them out so I could work,” Draxum informs him. “They didn’t want to leave your side, after that stunt you pulled.”
Leo bites back the urge to say ‘who asked’, although he doesn’t quite think he’d be able to get those words out, anyway. Then, he has half a mind to ask for them to come back, but he isn’t quite sure how to phrase it.
“Wasn’t— hah, wasn’t a stunt,” he wheezes sharply instead.
Maybe he doesn’t remember being rushed back to the lair in a very stolen van. Maybe he doesn’t remember nearly dying on the table underneath his twin’s shaking hands. Maybe he doesn’t remember the few long seconds of him flatlining.
But he does remember the prison dimension, he does remember the torment he forced himself into, and he knows that even if he was completely out of his mind, that wasn’t just some stupid stunt he would pull.
Goatman has the absolute gall to laugh at this. It’s a bitter, almost angry sound.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“It wasn’t.”
He presses his head harder into the pillow, squeezing his eyes shut. What right did Draxum have to be angry at him? If anything, he should be the angry one here. And he was, he was angry, but that was beside the point.
The point was that he was currently feeling an immeasurable amount of pain right now, and he needed to be knocked out, like, yesterday.
“Hey, do you even know where everything is, or are you just here to antagonize me ‘til I pass out on my own?” Leo asks, forcing his voice to be somewhat steady. He tries to ignore the way the words waver when they reach back to his ears.
“You are insufferably impatient,” Draxum says in lieu of an actual reply.
“Just one of my many skills.”
Leo’s mind drifted hazily to the medbay cabinets he had painstakingly sorted and labeled for a potentially cataclysmic event like this. That was a lot of time and energy he’d never get back. The organization was no doubt entirely wrecked now, if the endless shuffling sounds were any indication. Ugh. He was going to have to go back through those as soon as he was able to think without being in excruciating pain. Probably would have to stock up on… everything. Maybe the Hidden City would come in handy and he’d be able to actually buy the medical supplies, rather than have to steal from a human hospital. Yokai medicine would probably work better on them, anyway.
That leads him to mulling over his injuries. Or, more accurately, trying to assume the big bad ones without giving himself a full onceover. Cracked plastron for sure… and carapace, by the feel of it. That’s gonna be a bitch to heal. Broken right arm, fucked up but maybe not broken left leg, broken ribs… ooh, orbital fracture, concussion? Strike the question, definitely a concussion. Ow. And his neck was super sore. At least now he had a base on what he was dealing with. He couldn’t really be sure about any of the rest without reading his charts. Assuming that anyone had been keeping his charts.
Ooh, if no one was keeping charts, he was really gonna kick everyone’s ass.
All shuffling had long since stopped, which meant it was the perfect time to antagonize Draxy about his medical capabilities and figure out a bit more about his… whole situation. Letting his head roll to the side, he cracks open an eye, and—
The world tilts beneath him.
Tilts and falls away until he’s hurtling through dead air and centuries-old debris, because there are pinkish-purple tendrils reaching towards him.
Reaching, lunging, chasing, shooting to kill.
The Kraang. The Kraang were back, they were back for him, for his family. Or maybe he was back with Kraang Prime, back in the prison dimension, trapped with that monster to face his wrath for an eternity. Maybe he never got out at all and the portal was just his mind’s last desperate attempt at comfort as his life faded from him, slipping from his fingers like the worn photograph had threatened to. He’s not sure what’s worse, he can’t think about what’s worse around the dread that floods his mind and body so quickly it feels like he’s drowning.
His fight or flight instinct finally kicks in as the tendrils seem to falter; a split second for his shot at escape. And yet, all he could manage to do was flinch up and against the wall, shoving himself into the corner as much as possible. Instincts tell him to curl into himself further, to brace himself for the inevitable blows coming his way. He does, and, fuck, he swears his vision goes white in the brief moment before he crosses his arms in front of his face and hides there. He just barely bites down a wail at the searing agony that shoots through his shell, his ribs, his lungs. It hurts to breathe. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, but he cannot stop the way the breaths come at an inconsistent pace, fluctuating between not breathing at all and hysterical, terrified wheezes that would only cause the pain to worsen.
Why was he so scared now? He had been scared, then, but he’d accepted it, made peace with it and swallowed his fear. Now it was swallowing him, and he hated it.
Well, his self-preservation instincts had to come back eventually.
A hand grasps his unbroken wrist and he chokes around a scream, flinching so hard he hits the back of his skull against the wall. The added layer of pain snaps him back to reality enough to register the sounds of a hushed curse and the frantic beeps of a heart monitor.
“Leonardo, you are going to injure yourself further,” the voice attached to the hand hisses, but Leo only continues to struggle against it.
“Let go of me!” He half-snarls, half-shrieks; all a desperate plea.
The hand doesn’t tighten, but refuses to loosen at the same time. It isn’t cold metal, or even a slimy limb, like he’d been expecting; it’s rough fur and claws. His eyes snap up, and it takes a long minute of staring through a panic-induced haze to realize that the hand belonged to Draxum. There was a wild, barely contained expression of horror on his face, his vines hovering around both of them with various medical supplies at the ready.
Vines.
Not tendrils.
Not the Kraang.
The realization makes Leo feel a little stupid, beneath the pounding in his head and against his plastron. The vines were more purple than pink, they were firm rather than the gummy texture he’d felt wrapping around his neck and squeezing. It wasn’t the Kraang. It should relieve him; it does, for a moment, until that gives way as well and he’s falling, being dropped off of a building.
Leo attempts to wrench his arm away again as the terror spikes up once more, and this time, Draxum lets him. His fist nearly rockets into his chest with the amount of force he used to pull back. It may have, actually, judging by the way his body spasms with hurt he could not decipher from every other sensation he was already feeling.
“Leonardo—”
“Don’t. Don’t,” he grits out between gasps, shaking his head so quickly it made him dizzy.
“You’ve aggravated your injuries, I need to—”
“No. Don’t, do not— not with those, do not fucking touch me with those,” Leo all but babbles. He’s trying so hard not to snap, not to start careening through space again. It takes everything in him not to return to hiding in his arms.
Mercifully, mercifully, after a long pause of hesitation, Draxum seems to understand what he means, alarm flickering in his eyes before the vines retract back into the ground. The air becomes thick with tension, and that almost makes it even harder for him to breathe.
“…Leonardo,” Draxum says again; slower, softer than before. “I… apologize. I didn’t consider how… I hadn’t considered what may trigger you, after the experiences you’ve had. It won’t happen again.”
Leo doesn’t respond, aside from the way his intakes of breath become a little more shuddery and less high-pitched struggling sounds. Each one still feels like needles in his airway, a knife through his shell.
“You’re in pain,” the yokai states, and wasn’t that just the simplest conclusion anyone could’ve ever drawn. “But I can’t just reinsert the IV and administer any sort of painkillers until you’ve calmed down… not in good conscience, at least.”
The last part was grumbled out; loud enough to still have been heard, but Leo had stopped listening, anyways. He blinks down at where there must’ve been an IV attached to his left arm, where he must’ve torn it from him in his panic, and where there was now only a small, steady stream of blood trickling out.
Huh.
Probably important that he gets that back in. He wasn’t super keen on suffering like this for any longer than he had to.
The slider desperately wracks his brain for one of the many cures Mikey had learned and tried to use on all of them at different times under the guise of Dr. Feelings; when Donnie would go through sensory overloads, when Raph would feel all of that pressure piling up on top of him, when he would think too hard about Gram Gram. He kept pulling blanks, aside from the way his youngest brother would offer grounding physical touch, and he was so not in the mood for that from their papa-by-proxy.
Somewhere in the medic part of his panic-addled mind, though, he finds the common sense that tells him staying curled up like this was one of the least helpful things he could do.
Between trying to breathe, untensing his entire body, and fighting back reflexive sounds of pain, he could really only do two of those. Unfortunately for him and his already very, very damaged pride, the first two took precedence. That doesn’t stop him from trying to ignore the whines that crawl up his throat and into the air as he shifts, straightening out his body and laying back down. His limbs feel heavy and numb, only made worse by the casts plastered on half of them.
“Good, that’s… that’s good. Just breathe.”
“Don’t… patronize me,” Leo hisses. The words lose their bite with the choked whimpering sound that follows as a result of moving his neck a little too quickly. He lets the front slip, then, for a second. “Trying, ‘m trying.”
The way Draxum’s expression flickers tells Leo that he’s completely and utterly at a loss for what to do with him. It’s not unlike the way his nose crinkles or his eyebrows furrow when Leo refuses to allow him even one second of peace. It’s like that, but sadder, he thinks.
He must be staring— he swears that it wasn’t intentional, and he really didn’t feel like he was, what with the way his vision was tunneled and pinholed— because the alchemist looks away and focuses on the needle in his hand. For some reason, that makes getting air into his lungs a little easier. His chest rises and falls more steadily, rather than the frantic heaving he’d nearly gotten used to. The incoherent noises stop falling from his beak without permission. He can feel the panic ebbing away, little by little, until all that’s left is the shaking.
But, fuck, everything still hurts like hell.
“I know, Blue,” Draxum attempts to sympathize, still not looking directly at him, and Leo wonders briefly if he’s been voicing his thoughts out loud.
He doesn’t want to dwell on that idea.
Instead, he exhales hard through his nose and extends his left arm towards Draxum.
“Swear to god, if you experiment on me, I’m gonna…” Leo trails off. His face scrunches up as he tries to think, breathing forcefully again… and then just gives up. “I dunno, I’ll tell Mikes something about you that’ll break his heart. I’ll come up with something.”
There’s that quick expression flicker again, and this time, it’s almost the exact way he’s familiar with. But, because he’s (allegedly) a smart man who can realize that the open invitation to start treating him would not come again any time soon or ever, he gets to work with reinserting the IV before making any sort of comment.
“You think so lowly of me.”
“You threw me off a roof,” Leo shoots back, almost muscle memory by now.
Draxum stiffens for a beat— which makes Leo stiffen up a bit, too— and lets out a long, annoyed huff. He’s expecting a lecture about letting go of old grudges or how he’s reformed and is a changed man, now.
In any case, the simple, “Yes. I did,” was not the response he was anticipating.
He looks up at Draxum and blinks, waiting for him to continue, to elaborate. This had to be a lead in to some big apologetic speech, right?
“I’m in no way sorry about it, if that’s what you’re expecting me to say.”
“What?!” Leo outright squawks, and he can hear the way his heart rate spikes from the monitor beside him. He wants to wriggle away again, suddenly, and he doesn’t really understand why he’s trembling harder, but the yokai maintains his gentle, but firm, grip on his forearm.
“Would you please stop moving, it’s like you prefer to be in pain—”
“Uh, I think I’ll ta-ake my chances, bud, knowing there’s not even an ounce of guilt over nearly killing me in that sheep heart of yours,” he scoffs. The front was all the way back up again.
Even as he says it, Draxum hooks the bag of morphine onto the IV pole Donnie had jury-rigged years ago, and he could not be more grateful. Not that he was going to vocalize that. He thinks that the way feels himself relax, jaw unclenching and eye ridges smoothing out, before the drug even hits probably shows outwardly, anyways. That would have to be thanks enough.
Leo shifts to stare up at the ceiling as the hurt begins to stutter to a stand-still. The medbay lapses into slightly uncomfortable silence, the energy toeing the line of uneasiness. And then he closes his eyes, deciding that he would rather fall back asleep and wake up later with his actual family at his side.
“I never said I didn’t feel guilty.”
He was wide awake again, and he tilts his head to look back at Draxum.
“What?”
“I never said that I feel no guilt for what I’ve done,” Draxum repeats, ridiculously soft. The tone doesn’t sound quite right in his gruff voice. “I am, unequivocally, guilty.”
Okay.
What did that even mean?
His expression is unreadable. It is, once again, an expression Leo knows very well— only this time, it’s one he knows has been seen time and time again on his own face.
That’s probably not the one he’s wearing now, though. The gears in his head are turning a lot slower than they normally do. He supposes that’s what happens when you get drugged up.
“I’m not following.”
Draxum rubs a hand down his face and through his hair, glancing down at a chair near the bedside. One of many, actually, presumably dragged from all across the lair by his brothers. Hesitantly, he sits, and looks at Leo with so much gravity.
“I need you to hear me, Leonardo. There are many things I am guilty of. Reprehensible things. Aiding the Foot Clan in summoning the Shredder, attempting to end humanity as we know it—”
“Throwing me off a roof,” Leo supplies, very, very helpfully. He shoots what he hopes is an award-winning grin as his head lists to the side more.
“…yes. That too,” Draxum deadpans.
He shuts his eyes for a long beat before continuing.
“I feel no remorse about any of these things. In fact, I would do them all over again if I were forced back in time.”
(And Leo’s skin prickles a bit, at this, because hadn’t he dealt with enough time travel talk and the very poor decisions that came with it, recently? The caprid seems to notice this error; he moves on quickly.)
“What I’m… trying to say, is that I am conscious of my wrongdoings, of my errant intentions behind them. The blatant efforts at human genocide, harming your family at many turns, sending out oozesquitos by the thousands. I hold myself accountable for all of it. But, I won’t apologize for them. There would be no truth behind those apologies.”
There’s a hand resting atop of his, suddenly. It’s the first touch of any kind that hadn’t been a near vice grip in what feels like a long time.
“I don’t regret fighting against you, rather than beside you. I don’t regret creating you for all of the wrong reasons,” Draxum murmurs. “…because… I will never regret creating you, or your brothers, Leonardo. Never. Doing that is… perhaps, the one good thing I’ve done in my life.”
Oh.
Leo sees more than he feels the tears welling up in his eyes, the edges of his vision blurring as he just stares at the yokai sitting at his side. A very big emotion moves through him like sludge— it’s positive, but it feels impossible to process all the same. Maybe it’s because being told that he’s not a screw-up, not even a little, by the one guy who had every right to think he was a screw-up was a lot to comprehend, especially while a little bit high. His mouth opens and closes several times over before he blinks hard and manages to string his jumbled thoughts into something that looks like words.
“If this is your attempt at getting me to call you ‘dad’ now,” Leo says, his voice wobbly under the threat of pealing off into ugly sobs, “it’s not gonna work that easily.”
For the third time since he’d woken up, Draxum’s face twists, falling humorously flat. Or flat with an undertone of humor. Both, somehow, if that was possible.
“My last evil scheme, ruined,” Draxum drawls dryly. He sounds so serious that it takes several seconds passing before a startled smile grows on Leo’s face, and he sputters out a laugh.
“Was that a joke? Hold on, did the Baron Draxum just make a joke?”
“Obviously. Was that not obvious? I make jokes all the time.”
This elicits another laugh from the slider, one that causes a dull ache in his ribs that he ignores, because no, it really wasn’t at all clear. Still wasn’t. Either he’d missed all the times Draxum tried his hand at humor, or he was just plain bad at it— and he was leaning towards the second explanation.
“Please,” the yokai sighs, though there’s a bit of a quirk at the corner of his mouth, “do not get yourself worked up over a subpar wisecrack. You do that enough with your own.”
The immediate instinct to snap back with a defense of his brilliant sense of humor disappears about as quickly as it comes on. Honestly, he himself isn’t sure why, for a moment, until the whole ‘not getting himself worked up’ comment loops back around in his thoughts.
Well, he realizes numbly, it was a bit late for that already, wasn’t it? Probably just a handful of minutes ago, a few plants had triggered him out of his mind and left him reeling.
His eyes drift to where Draxum’s hand is still laid on top of his, and he winces— it reminds him of the way his father would take his hand in both of his more than once after a less than ideal mission that led to the medbay, like this. Maybe it’s the warmth of the fur or the awkward, somewhat absent paternal energy. Either way, it sends a pang through his heart. He looks back up at him, then, and fights the urge to shut down entirely.
“…man, ‘m sorry,” Leo groans. “Sorry for freaking out on you like that. You were just helping—”
“It can’t be helped,” Draxum cuts him off, almost quicker than he can think to stop talking.
As equally shocking and refreshing as it is to hear something other than ‘it’s okay’ or ‘don’t apologize’, Leo is Leo. Beyond stubborn and hates being interrupted, especially when he’s actually attempting to be sincere; so, he tries again.
“But still, that’s like, your thing, and I—”
“And we will adjust accordingly.”
Draxum being Draxum, almost equally as stubborn as Leo is, decidedly gets the last word on this, shooting him a sharp look that softens as soon as it’s received.
“It can’t be helped,” he repeats in a hum. “Not now, at least. We do not have the luxury of picking and choosing our triggers, do we? That’s something for me to keep in mind, as well as you.”
Leo blinks up at him for a long few seconds before rolling his eyes, because, jeez, this guy really has been spending a lot of time with Mikey.
“Understood, Doctor Draxum,” he says, his voice dropping into a low tone that should be used for serious moments and is mostly only used for pretending-to-be-serious moments, like this. The sound of bandages against slightly scratchy bedsheets becomes amplified, almost obnoxiously, as he wiggles his hand free to present the scientist with a lazy mock salute. The arm almost instantly gives, flopping down and draping itself over his eyes.
He makes no real effort to fix this. Instead, he takes it as an opportunity to just breathe. Really breathe, not the frenzied deep breaths he forced himself to take to come back from the panic attack— which, he guessed that was going to be a part of his vernacular and daily regimen, now. Not really a fan of that, but again, not really his choice.
There was going to have to be a long recovery period for all of this. Physically, that is. He’d probably be bedridden for a bit longer, and then the physical therapy was going to be a bitch to deal with. As for the processing of everything that happened, that would probably take even longer. If he was lucky, the Kraang tendrils and vines confusion would be the worst of it. But, even for him, that would take a lot of luck.
Anyways. He could think about that later. He just wanted to breathe right now.
His plastron rose and fell slowly, the gentle whooshing sound filling the air of the medbay.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Draxum tells him, and Leo feels the urge to rattle off the ways falling asleep would probably be better for his recovery, especially seeing as he was already on painkillers and he’d already done the big fuck-up of passing out while concussed back on Staten Island and…
Wait. Draxum definitely knew that, considering that he’d more likely than not been the one to deal with the consequences of that big fuck-up. Which made the whole thing a lot more confusing.
Leo dragged his arm down his face, jolting a bit when he saw that Draxum was standing once again. He huffed, glancing around and then glancing back. “And that’s because…?”
“Because, I am going to notify your family that you’re waking up.”
A rush of emotions that he felt too tired to differentiate flooded him all at once; the ones he could really pick out, though, were a warm sort of love and another heap of confusion. He shifted the best he could fully pushing himself up, opting for craning his neck slightly instead.
“Wake-‘ing’? I’ve been awake,” Leo points out.
Draxum laughs, like, actually laughs. Good to know he was still funny even when he wasn’t meaning to be…? It didn’t aid much in the complete lack of clarity here, though.
“You know how your family is. They would be up in arms if they knew you’ve been awake this long and I hadn’t fetched them,” he responds with a shrug.
It’s true.
It’s not the whole truth, though.
Understanding hits him suddenly, knocking a tiny gasp out of his lungs. Of course Draxum was doing this for his family, there was no denying that, but he was also doing it for him. For Leo. So that he could have the proper reunion he wanted without them pitying him more than they already were going to, without them knowing that he’d gone through hell and came back with new trauma before he was fully ready to tell them. That little white lie was for him.
Ugh, all of this was making it super hard for Leo to keep hating him.
“...I won’t tell if you won’t,” he smirks, only slightly unsteady.
Draxum gives him a look that is knowing and warm, and a little unsure. The yokai gently brushes his hand across Leo’s forehead after a beat of hesitation, and he nearly bursts out laughing at how incredibly awkward he is with it. The contact lasts longer than he would’ve expected from him, but he pulls away and begins to cross the room to leave.
He stops by the doorframe.
“Rest, my son. You’ve earned it,” Draxum murmurs, without looking over his shoulder, and exits the medbay.
“Got it,” Leo barely whispers back, suddenly feeling a little choked. That was an emotion he’d file away for later. “Will do.”
He stares at the doors of the medbay long after they’ve slid shut and Draxum has disappeared out of view. It was startlingly quiet, even with his heart monitor and his breathing. Whether it’s seconds or minutes that pass, he can’t really be sure. He just knows that the two of them had a very rocky road ahead of them, and he files that away in the same cabinet as that unnameable emotion.
Holding up his end of the deal, he shuffles into the sheets further, his eyes slipping shut. As nice as it would be to actually give in to sleep right now, he refuses, a slight smile tugging on his lips. Knowing that he would see his family again— Draxum included, even— kept Leo there and present.
And judging by the beautiful symphony of noise building and crescendoing elsewhere in the lair, they would be here soon.