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“I can’t believe we’re seventeen.” Leo’s voice is hoarse, grating on the silence of the medbay, dark and fragile. Donnie looks up and sees his twin staring at the ceiling, with a glassiness to his eyes that seems like more than just The Good Shit being pumped through his IV right now.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Just…” Leo blinks slowly. “Just feels so old, y’know?”
Donnie makes a face. “Not really. It’s approximately—” some mental math, “—one-fifth of the average human lifespan. Give or take 0.7%.”
Leo hums. It’s a plaster-crackle hum, raspy, sick. For the millionth time tonight, Donnie glances at his brother’s vitals.
“One-fifth… of…” Still staring, Leo scrunches up his nose. A tear slips out quietly down his temple. He doesn’t notice. “Dude, I’m… way too high to do math right now.”
The tear reaches the pillowcase, absorbs into it, leaves a darkened little pockmark. Donnie clears his throat. He can’t tear his eyes away from it. “Eighty-two.”
“Eighty-two?” Leo asks the ceiling. “That’s… God.”
Silence. Donnie tries to interpret Leo’s tone and can’t. He glances at the screen again: 91 bpm—fine but could be lower—BP 86/50—fine but could be higher.
“Like.” Leo’s fingers twitch. The clip taking the very vitals Donnie keeps staring at twitches with them. “What else is there… y’know?”
Donnie goes very still.
“I don’t know, actually,” he says, and tries to keep his voice cool and steady. Because Leo probably isn’t saying what it sounds like he’s saying. Because Donnie probably won’t have to encase him in bubble wrap for the rest of their lives.
“Just kinda feel like I, like… did it all.” The syrup-heaviness of painkillers is starting to drag Leo’s voice down. He blinks slow and sleepy. Donnie’s heart is lodged in his throat, pulse drumming in his fingertips. “Like… ‘m done. Woooo. What else is… what else do I have to do?”
Donnie’s jaw ticks. His grip tightens on the tablet, corners digging into the soft flesh between his fingers. “I’m sorry,” he says, unable to mitigate the way his voice has gone tight and strained with stress, “are you really saying you’ve lived the full spectrum of human experiences in your very short lifetime?”
What he’s really asking is: are you really saying you’re ready to die, Leo? For real? Actually? Are you actually saying this to me right now, Leonardo?
“I just dunno what I would get out of… eighty-two more years. Or whatever eighty-two minus seventeen is, I’m so serious about not doing math.” Leo makes a vague face, then something that’s probably supposed to be a smile.
But Donnie’s seen Leo smile. And it isn’t like that. Leo smiles all the fucking time, every second of their lives, sad or happy or angry or what the fuck ever and Donnie’s never seen one like that.
There’s a jarring second of vertigo, suddenly, a tilt-shift dizziness, like Donnie’s been yanked and dropped into a different dimension, like a shapeshifting impostor is imitating his brother. Like Leo’s The Thing. Donnie gets the bizarre urge to press a hot copper wire to one of his blood samples.
“You’d get more time with us,” Donnie hears himself say, voice flat.
Leo looks at him, then. Finally looks at him. When Leo turns his head, another tear sneaks out, slides down across the bridge of his nose. His eyes are blurry and dim. The not-smile slips off his face.
“…Yeah,” he says finally. And then, “Sorry.”
Donnie shuts his eyes and hisses a sigh through his teeth. “For what , Leo.”
Leo says nothing. Donnie presses the heels of his hands into his eyelids until little stars and sparks appear in the darkness. Phosphenes. Hallucinations from stimulating photoreceptors inside the retina.
“It’s funny,” Donnie says to the phosphenes, instead of waiting for Leo’s answer. “You’re so scared of losing us, but it’s like you fail to realize that if you die, you also lose us.”
A hitch of breath, a little whimper, and—
Oh Curie, Donnie’s being unfair right now.
More tears are darkening the pillowcase now. Donnie zeroes in on them when he opens his eyes, to avoid looking at Leo’s dull, dull blue gaze, the miserable twist of his mouth, hurt, each little sob causing him more pain.
Nice. Great going, Donatello. Hawking, what the fuck is wrong with him? Did he really think now was the time to have this conversation? Now, when Leo’s struggling to even stay awake under the painkillers, still bruised and battered, plastron rent into lightning-bolt chunks?
“I’m sorry.”
Donnie recoils. “Leo—”
“No, no, I’m sorry, ‘Tello,” Leo chokes out, and it’s like a bucket of ice water dumped down Donnie’s shell.
It’s the one secret ace Donnie’s ever had on him—knowing that Leo only calls Donnie “Tello” when he’s upset, when he’s scared, when he needs to feel safe—and right now, for a blindingly selfish second, Donnie wishes he never connected the dots. Wishes he’d told Leo when Leo kept bragging about not having any tells a couple years back; he’d have surely stopped doing it.
And then Donnie wouldn’t have to know how scared Leo is. How vulnerable he feels right now.
Can you win the Worst Brother Ever award twice in one night? Asking for a friend.
“I’m just—I’m just tired, ‘Tello, I’m sorry.” Leo’s staring at the ceiling again. Miserable. Thoroughly exhausted. His voice is starting to slur, shoulders still jerking with suppressed sobs in a way that surely pangs through his broken ribs. “I d-didn’t mean to make you upset, I—I don’t know what I’m saying, I’m just…” A dry sob. Just one. Leo sucks in air through his teeth. “It hurts so bad.”
“What hurts?” Donnie’s voice comes out weak. His finger twitches on the morphine button. Leo’s like a wraith, thin and spectral in the light from the monitors.
“Just…” Leo brings up a wrist— not his casted one, so Donnie doesn’t have a heart attack about it, very much doesn’t—and scrubs at his eyes. Miserable. Gaunt. They almost lost him. Sometimes Donnie feels like he’s still losing him.
“…everything,” Leo says finally.
Standing on Staten Island. Horror of all horrors, watching colors bleed across the sky.
Leo’s still up there. And then the nonsensical words “we won,” someone said them in a broken voice or maybe no one did, maybe Donnie just thought them but either way it doesn’t compute, because how could they win if Leo’s not there? Where is he?
Blindly, Donnie finds he agrees with Leo.
Yes. Everything.