Chapter Text
Leo lets go. His tumultuous emotions; anger, frustration, fear, panic. They all leave him to be blown away by the shockwave from the technodrome exploding. His adrenaline fades and leaves him exhausted, but satisfied. Closing the portal was his last great act of defiance, his swan song. He can finally relax, it's all over for him now.
He opens his hand to reveal a crumpled and dirty photo. His family. The sight of their smiling faces pulls tears from him, from relief or sorrow he can't say. He’ll never see those faces again, never crack bad jokes and hear them groan. Never taste Mikey's food. Never spar with Raph. Never listen to one of Donnie’s unending explanations. He’ll never get to be there when April graduates, even his doomed future self had gotten that much.
But it’s better this way. They’re all safe now. Safe and far, far away from this nightmare.
“WIPE THAT GRIN OFF YOUR FACE!”
Leo doesn’t move to defend himself, he just lays there and lets himself be swept away by Krang’s ceaseless rage. The violent blast forces him to close his eyes as he’s sent careening out across empty space. He hugs his family one last time and resigns himself to his death.
But that death never comes.
Instead, Leo is thrown around like a ragdoll for what feels like hours. He can’t tell for sure, there’s no sun or moon to track time by. And his comm, with it’s attached watch, were destroyed in Krangs first assault.
He cries out with every new injury. And there are so many injuries.
Leo is the team medic, or was anyway. They’ll need a new medic now. He hopes it’s Mikey, he’s the only one who ever listened when Leo would try to explain basic first aid to the team.
Which is all to say that Leo knows a thing or two about injuries. And he knows, with absolute certainty, that at least 3 of these injuries should have been fatal by now. And that's not even counting blood loss.
And yet he remains stubbornly, regrettably, alive.
That first day, or what Leo counts as a day, is truly the worst. Not just due to Krang’s fury, which is at it’s peak. But because when Krang finally gets bored of the relentless, savage attacks against an unresponsive opponent, he simply leaves . Abandoning Leo to float through the debris riddled emptiness alone.
Leo learns to fear those times the most, the times he’s left with nothing but his thoughts.
Krang’s claws are knives, his tail a whip, and his tendrils the most gruesome of spears. Every part of him is designed for maximum efficiency in delivering pain and death. But the damage he’s able to inflict upon Leo physically pales in comparison to the agony Leo’s own mind subjects him to.
Regrets and what-if’s haunt his every thought. The apologies unsaid and the forgiveness ungranted become barbed wire wrapped around his heart, slicing into him with every pitiful beat.
He thinks back on that last day in the subway tunnels, when they went to go rescue Raph. Leo had dragged them all down into those tunnels, regardless of the dangers, repeatedly ignoring Donnie and Mikey in his single minded and selfish focus on being right. It almost got his brothers killed. It would have, if April and Pops hadn't shown up to rescue them. He wants so desperately to go back and apologize to them, to tell them he’s sorry and he’ll do better. That he’ll listen to them.
It's a moot point now but he wants to tell them anyway.
He remembers when he decided the only way to stop Krang was to trap him back in the prison dimension. Raph had pleaded with him through the comm, ‘please don't do this’ . And of all the stupid things Leo could have replied with, he had to make a stupid joke about being a hero. The very thing Raph had been telling him to be. He just knows Raph has taken that to heart and is using it to blame himself for Leo's actions.
He wishes he could talk to Raph one last time and explain himself. When he said ‘hero moves are totally your thing’ what he meant was that Raph is his hero, he always has been.
He wants to apologize to Casey. And thank him for setting him straight, for being tough and unyielding in the face of Leo’s immaturity and reminding him of what was at stake. Reminding him of what a leader should be.
Heh, he even wants to apologize to Draxum, of all people. The bastard might have thrown him off a roof but in the end it was Draxum that stayed with Splinter to fight the Shredder. It was Draxum that kept his Dad alive. Leo had kept meaning to thank him for that.
And his Dad.. there’s so much Leo wants to tell him. More than he can ever articulate. All the words he can think of pale in comparison to the size and complexity of his emotions for him. Really, he just wants to be near him again. To have his Pop hold him close and tell him everything will be all right.
But Leo can't do any of that, or the million other little things his brain torments him with.
And that’s how his time goes, on and on. Physical pain broken up by periods of mental anguish.
After a while Leo develops a time keeping system of sorts. Whenever he gets tired enough to fall asleep, he adds another tally to his count of how many days have passed. Donnie would chastise him for being so wildly unscientific and therefore completely inaccurate, but at least it’s something to do.
So sometimes he sleeps, or is beaten unconscious, it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. Other times he just floats. On rare occasions Krang lets him stay on solid ground when he’s finished battering him.
Once or twice Leo tries to draw his family in the dust and dirt of the little floating islands he finds himself on. He’s no artist, not like Mikey, but having something to look at that’s even vaguely a comforting shape helps a little. But Krang uses the scratches and scribbles to torment him, the same way he had done with Leo’s family picture when he found it. So Leo stops drawing.
He stops doing much of anything really. He even stops breathing sometimes, just to see how long he can.
Just to see if that can kill him.
He counts out the seconds in his head when he does, and is mildly surprised to find out he can go upwards of 10 minutes before his body forces him to breathe again. He grips the feeling of surprise like a lifeline, using it to force down the disappointment.
“Get up, pest! ”
Leo is sprawled out on a floating island when the red light of Krang's mech washes over him, making his green skin look black and briefly camouflaging all the blood, both old and new. It's funny, Krang goes through so much trouble to make him bleed, only to have his own search light go and betray him, hiding all his hard work. Leo almost laughs, but maybe it isn't that funny.
“I said get UP!” The sharp mechanical foot collides with his torso, scratching new lines across his plastron and reigniting the sharp ache of his broken ribs. Leo suspects the only reason the broken bones have punctured a lung is due to his plastron holding them in place. He really wishes he’d asked Donnie to make him and x-ray machine so he could have figured out how their unique bodies are put together.
The force of Krangs kick sends him bouncing across the desolate landscape until he crashes against the side of some derelict ship. Pain rips through his body, igniting every nerve. Leo just flops over, boneless and tired.
“You're boring me, you useless vermin!” Another kick, this time he hits a hard and jagged boulder, shell first.
Repeat fractures finally succumb to the onslaught and pain cracks across his shell, bringing an entirely new dimension to his agony. Leo might have screamed this time, if he had anything left to scream with. But he has nothing left.
Nothing.
There really was nothing left. His kit, his photo, his swords, his mask, all of them had been ripped away from him. All that’s left of Leo is just a broken shell, probably literally he thinks wryly, that has used up the last of its usefulness in saving his family. At least he managed that much.
Krang is still talking but Leo isn't listening. His voice is all fuzzy right now anyway so even if Leo wants to listen he can’t. Not that he’s going to bother telling bubblegum bitch that. Heh, that’s a good one. He'll have to remember that one for… He'll just have to remember it.
Leo sees the hand come for him a split second before it wraps around his neck.
“LISTEN TO ME WHEN I AM SPEAKING, YOU UNGRATEFUL PEST!”
Leo struggles weakly in Krang’s grasp, feet dangling uselessly off the ground. Somehow, he manages to muster up some tiny bit of energy from long empty reserves. He turns his head to look Krang dead in his beady little eyes, and spits.
Or tries to anyway. He's pretty sure he just dribbles. Regardless, the point is made.
With a wordless scream of rage Krang launches Leo off into empty space, the claws of his mech carving deep gashes across his throat. Leo looks on blankly as the tails of his own mask, tied around Krang’s bicep, wave through the air like a banner. And then Leo’s alone again, watching the red searchlight fade off into the distance.
He floats for a while, leaving a thick and lazy trail of blood drifting along behind him. He wonders, again, if he can ever die in here. If he could have then he certainly would have already. But it doesn't stop him from hoping.
He closes his eyes and wishes desperately for this to end.