Chapter Text
It all happened so fast. One second, Leo was with them, and the four brothers were fighting against the Krang. The next, Donnie, Mikey, and Raph had been thrown off of the ship, but Leo wasn’t with them.
Donnie’s eyes were wide. He looked around the debris surrounding them, but there was no sign of his twin brother anywhere. Where was Leo?
He was about to ask Raph, or Mikey, but the sound of their strained voices stopped him. The coms were going off, voices were desperate, and it didn’t take long to put the pieces together.
Leo was sacrificing himself.
Donnie scrambled to his feet, almost tripping as he fumbled to press the button on his com to speak to him. “Leo, Leo! Please, no! Don’t do this- we’ll figure out another way!” His voice was desperate, cracking, and he almost didn’t recognize it as his own.
“Donnie, you and I both know there’s no other solution..” Leos voice was calm despite the chaos surrounding them. “I’m sorry, little brother.”
Donnie couldn’t believe this. The selfless idiot- he was going to argue, but Leo had already given Casey an order. Close the portal.
No, no, no, no, no-
“Leo! Leo! please don’t-!” Donnie cried out, but the ship in the sky exploded, cutting him off. The deafening roar filled the air, and debris raining down as the portal snapped shut with a blinding flash of light. The coms went dead, plunging everything into an eerie silence that felt wrong—too still, too quiet.
Donnie’s chest tightened, his breath coming in ragged gasps as bile rose in his throat. He… Leo was gone. He was actually gone.
The reality hit him like a freight train, knocking the wind out of him. Leo… his twin, their brother, wasn’t coming back.
Donnie could barely hear Mikey and Raph’s cries through his own. Raph had collapsed to his knees, fists clenched, face twisted in a mask of heartbreak, his shoulders heaving with the weight of his grief, and Mikey was next to him, frantically trying to summon his mystic powers, tears streaming down his face as he desperately attempted to open a portal. But it was no use. The magic sputtered and faded, being as unreachable as Leo was now that he was locked away, stuck in the prison dimension.
They were too late. Leo had saved the world, saved them all… but at what cost? Himself?
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The family headed home that night in silence. Nobody dared to utter a word… Leo was usually the one to break the silence anyway, and it felt wrong to take his place.
The three brothers sat in the living room when they got back to the lair, exhaustion plaguing them both physically and mentally, but none of them could fall asleep. Not after what they just experienced… not after what they had just lost. The memories of the battle played on a loop in Donnie’s mind… Leo’s last look, his final words. He kept hoping, praying, that he’d hear Leo’s voice again, that somehow his older brother would walk through the door like it was all a bad dream or a horrible prank.
It felt like forever as they sat there unmoving, not saying a word. The living room, which once felt safe and familiar, now felt cold and daunting. Mikey was curled up into himself, arms wrapped tightly around his knees, his face hidden… and Raph sat rigid, his fists clenched, the tension in his muscles betraying the storm raging inside of him as he struggled not to break down. Donnie’s eyes were locked on the floor, his thoughts racing as he tried to find a way to fix all of this, but he came up blank every time.
Then, Splinter walked into the room, a box in hand. Donnie looked up, a tinge of curiosity momentarily breaking through the haze of grief, but as his father moved closer, he felt his chest tighten. It didn’t take long for him to realize what Splinter was doing.
Splinter quietly, and reluctantly, began to set up a memorial on the mantel. His movements were slow and deliberate, his face etched with sorrow but still steady as if he had prepared for this moment in some way. Donnie’s throat constricted as he watched pictures of Leo at different stages of his life appear on the mantel, staring back at them with bittersweet familiarity.
One photo was from when Leo was a baby, with his huge red markings and round features, his tiny hands reaching out for the camera. Another from their early childhood, Leo with his oversized bandana tied too tight, a gap-toothed smile spread across his face, his eyes gleaming with mischief. The last picture, though, was the hardest to look at. It was from just a few months before, Leo standing tall, that same smile still there, except now, it felt haunting. The image of Leo that had always been a source of strength now seemed unbearably distant.
Donnie felt sick. The room blurred as tears welled in his eyes, his body refusing to let him look away from the memorial. It was too real. Too final. Leo wasn’t coming back, and that realization came crashing down on his shoulders like a wave on the shore.
Mikey was the first to break, small, broken sobs slipping from his mouth and shaking his whole body. He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders trembling as he cried. Donnie’s heart clenched at the sound—Mikey never cried like this.
Raph moved closer to Mikey, his large frame shifting as he wrapped an arm around their younger brother. His own face was twisted in anguish, but he was holding it back, trying to stay strong for Mikey. The room was filled with the sound of quiet sobs, the rawness of their pain hanging in the air like a weight no one could lift.
Donnie sat frozen, his hands gripping the fabric of the couch until his knuckles turned white. He wanted to say something, anything to ease the suffocating silence, to take away even a fraction of the pain. But he couldn’t. Every word he thought of felt empty, meaningless in the face of what they had lost. His brother… their brother… was gone.
Splinter stood in silence after setting up the memorial, his back to them as he looked at the pictures of Leo. His shoulders sagged, the weight of his grief visible in the way he stood. Donnie could feel the ache radiating from his father, the loss cutting through all of them like a jagged blade.
The quiet stretched on, and Donnie felt like he was drowning in it. He glanced back at the mantel, at Leo’s familiar smile staring back at him from the photo. His chest tightened, and for the first time since the explosion, he let himself break. A single tear slid down his cheek, then another, and before he knew it, his body was shaking with silent sobs.
They had fought so many battles together, faced the worst the world had to offer, but this… this was something they couldn’t fight. There was no enemy to punch, no problem to solve. Leo was gone, and there was no bringing him back.
For the first time in his life, Donnie didn’t know how to fix something.