Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

That motivational sticker is going to get tired of him.

The lair has learned how to be quiet.

Not the kind of quiet that belongs to safety or sleep, but the careful, deliberate hush that settles over a place after something has been broken inside it. Even the usual hums – Donnie’s machines idling, ventilation thrumming through the tunnels, the distant drip of water echoing through pipes – feel muted, as though the walls themselves are listening.

The training room no longer looks like its namesake.

The heavy bags are gone; the sparring circle has been dismantled. The scorch marks on the far wall have been scrubbed and sanded down until only ghosts of them remain, faint shadows where pretend battles once lived. What’s left feels provisional, temporary in the way hospital rooms always do – spaces designed for waiting, not living.

Foam mats cover the floor in a careful grid, their seams just slightly uneven where they meet. Parallel bars rise from the ground, bolted in place with ugly, functional welds. Resistance bands hang unused from the hooks along the wall. A folding chair sits nearby, just in case.

Leo stands at the center of it all.

Standing is not something he trusts anymore.

He is upright, technically. His feet are planted, shoulder-width apart, toes splayed unconsciously as though trying to grip the floor. The sensation of the mat beneath him is too vivid – he can feel its warmth, its give, the exact places where it compresses more under his weight. His body catalogs these details obsessively, feeding them into a system that no longer knows what to do with them.

Balance used to be silent.

It used to happen somewhere far beneath thought, an instinctive calculation performed without permission or effort. Now it demands attention like a wound that won’t stop bleeding.

His spine aches – not sharply, not dramatically, but persistently, like a low note humming through his entire body. The injury lives there, deep and watchful. Some days it flares, other days it recedes just enough to offer false hope. Today, it sits like a warning sign nailed directly into his bones.

Leo breathes in.

The breath catches halfway, ribs expanding unevenly. The movement sends a faint tug along his back, just enough to make his stomach knot. He exhales slowly, carefully, as if sudden motion might shatter him.

The parallel bars stand on either side of him, dull steel scarred from welding and stress-testing. Donnie measured their height three separate times before approving them. Raph tested them by slamming his full weight against them, again and again, until the metal sang and the bolts held. Mikey joked that they looked like something that astronauts used to practice walking on the moon.

Leo grips the bars now – though not gently.

His fingers curl tight around the cold metal, fingers biting faintly into his palms despite the bandages wrapped around them. The chill seeps into his skin, sharp and grounding. Cold means real; cold means now. He clings to the sensation like an anchor, letting it tether him to the present moment.

His arms are strong.

That much is undeniable. He can feel it clearly – the immediate response, the eager tension in muscle and tendon. There is no delay there, no uncertainty. His arms know what to do; they have always known.

It’s everything below his ribcage that feels like borrowed territory.

Raph stands directly in front of him.

He’s positioned himself carefully, feet planted wide, knees slightly bent, hands loose at his sides but ready. He’s close enough to catch Leo if he falls, and far enough away not to crowd him. The restraint in his posture is deliberate, practiced, and costly. Every instinct Raph has is screaming at him to hover, to brace, to hold Leo upright himself – but he doesn’t. He won’t.

Raph is trying to be a net, not a wall.

“Alright,” Raph says quietly, voice pitch low and steady. “Before we do anything–check in.”

Leo swallows; check in means inventory. It means acknowledging everything he would rather ignore.

His heartbeat is loud. Not racing yet, but present in a way that makes his chest feel too small to hold it. His shoulders tight, drawn up like he’s embracing for impact. His core feels locked, every muscle clenched in a defensive brace that never quite shuts off anymore.

“I’m here,” Leo says, voice distant.

Raph nods once. “Good. That’s all I need.”

To Leo’s right, Donnie stands with his tablet angled towards his chest, stylus poised but still. The screen reflects faintly off his goggles, lines and numbers scrolling in constant motion – heart rate, muscle engagement, neural response patterns mapped out in cold, clinical clarity.

Donnie hasn’t blinked in a while.

He adjusts his stance unconsciously, redistributing his weight as though his own balance might somehow compensate for Leo’s. His jaw is tight; the stylus trembles just slightly between his fingers, betraying how tightly he’s holding it.

“Baseline vitals are elevated,” Donnie says, voice carefully neutral. “But consistent. No abnormal spikes.”

Yet.

The word hangs there, unspoken but understood.

Mikey sits on the floor near the wall, legs crossed, hands clasped together so tightly his fingers have gone pale. He’s smiling – because he always is, because hope is easier to carry when it looks like confidence – but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

He hasn’t looked away from Leo once.

“You’re doing great already,” Mikey says softly, as if loud encouragement might break something. “Like… you’re literally standing. That’s huge.”

Leo huffs out a breath that might have been a laugh once.

The room feels small.

Not physically – the training space is wide, open – but emotionally, as if all the air has been pulled towards him, compressed around the fragile fact of his being upright. The walls seem closer; the ceiling feels heavier.

Leo closes his eyes, and immediately the prison dimension tries to come back. Though it doesn’t come back all at once, or even fully. It’s just an echo, a suggestion. Endless gray and muted colors pressing in from all sides, light without warmth, sound without source. The memory doesn’t announce itself – it creeps in through cracks like weeds that have managed to see the sun, slipping past his defenses like it always does.

He feels the wrongness of that place again; the way gravity felt optional unless he was being thrown against rocks in order to break his bones. The way time stretched and folded into itself, and how the Kraang leader’s presence filled the space, immense and precise and cruel.

The grip.

The pressure.

The moment something inside him gave; Leo’s fingers tightened on the bars. Cold metal, present moment. Here.

“Leo,” Raph says, “eyes open.”

He obeys.

The training room snaps back into focus: the mats, the bars. His brothers and the determination etched into each of their faces. That motivational sticker of two swords crisscrossing each other with the words don’t let yourself dull your own shine. Mikey had gotten into sticker making before this all went down, when all he had to worry about was beating Donnie’s record of carrying boxes of pizzas on his head up to the top of the city bridge. The swords were part of the Leo collection – making two or three sheets inspired by each brother. If Leo recalls correctly, his baby brother was currently working on the Donnie set.

“Alright,” Raph continues. “We’re not chasing distance today, we’re not chasing strength. We’re chasing control.”

Control.

The word feels like a dare.

Leo nods once.

“Weight shift only,” Raph reminds him. “Nothing else.”

Leo draws in a careful breath, and the air tastes faintly of disinfectant and metal and something warm – pizza, maybe, lingering from earlier and enticing him to make progress so it feels earned later. Ordinary smells, home smells. Leo lets them ground him.

Then – slowly, planned – he shifts his weight to the left. The reaction is immediate.

His body stiffens, surprised by the demand. His left leg accepts the load reluctantly, muscle engaging late, then all at once. The sensation is deeply wrong – like stepping onto a stair that isn’t where he expecting it to be, or even missing a step while on his way down. His knee wobbles; his ankle rolls inward a fraction before correcting itself.

Panic flares, sharp and instinctive.

His thigh begins to tremble.

At first it’s subtle – a fine vibration deep in the muscle – but Leo feels it instantly. It’s intimate, inescapable. The shaking spreads outward, his muscle fibers firing in erratic bursts that refuse to synchronize. Every instinct screams at him to clamp down, to force stillness, to lock his knee and hold.

“Easy,” Raph whispers, “don’t fight it. Let it shake.”

Leo swallows hard.

Letting it shake feels like letting go.

But he exhales slowly through his nose, counting in his head, resisting the urge to lock his joints. The tremor worsens for a moment, surging like a wave cresting and then settling into a steady, exhausting vibration.

His arms tense automatically, taking on more of his weight. His shoulders burn almost immediately, muscles screaming at the sudden work demand he wants from them. Sweat beads along his temples, trickles down the back of his neck, pooling beneath his shell.

Donnie’s stylus stills. “Engagement is present,” he says, careful to not skip over any information. “Delayed, but consistent.”

Consistent; the word lands like sand he so desperately wants to hold onto and not let slip through his fingers.

“Hold,” Raph says. “Five seconds.”

Leo breathes.

One.

His breath turns shallow.

Two.

The tremor creeps downward, into his calf. His foot presses harder into the mat, toes curling instinctively, scraping against the padding as though he’s dangling and desperately holding onto the side of a mountain that is about to crumble.

Three.

A sharp, electric flicker lances up his spine – brief, bright, terrifying. His vision blurs at the edges.

Four.

His arms begin to shake now too. His grip tightens painfully on the bars; his shoulders scream and his core feels like it might split apart under the strain.

Five.

“Back,” Raph says immediately.

Leo shifts his weight back towards center with excruciating slowness, every fraction of movement deliberate, brittle, careful – the relief is immediate and crushing. His leg nearly buckles anyway, offended by the retreat as though it's wondering why he’s leaving when it just got used to its new position. His hands slip slightly on the bars before he catches himself.

He sags, his chest heaving. His heart hammers too fast, too loud, echoing in his ears.

Mikey claps softly, forcing brightness into the sound. “Yes! That was awesome, five whole seconds!”

Leo nods slightly as the room waits. And somewhere deep in his chest, the fear coils tighter – because he knows that this was the easy part and the relief doesn’t last anyways; it never does.

It fades the way adrenaline always fades – slow at first, then all at once – leaving behind the raw echoing truth of what his body just endured. Leo remains standing between the bars, but the effort required to stay standing feels exponentially greater now, as though the first attempt has awakened something that refuses to be ignored, something that would attack if he provoked it too much before.

His left leg seems to still be catching its breath, containing a residual quiver that he cannot will away. The muscle is swollen and overstimulated, like it has been shouted at in a language it only half understands. His right leg compensates instinctively, taking on more of his weight, and the imbalance sends a warning ripple through his lower back.

Leo inhales.

The breath comes shallow, hitching in his chest before he forces it down, deeper, slower. He can feel his heart pounding – not wildly, at least not yet, but insistently, each beat reverberating through his ribs and into the fragile architecture of his spine.

The room is closer now; it isn’t smaller – closer. As if the walls have leaned in, curious, waiting to see what he will do next.

Raph does not rush him.

He straightens slightly, just enough to ease the intensity of his stance, but his eyes never leave Leo’s face. He’s reading the micro-signals – the tension at the corners of Leo’s mouth, the way his jaw keeps clenching and unclenching, the faint sheen of sweat that wasn’t there a minute ago, acting as a binding agent for his soul.

“Take a breath,” he says, “there’s no rush.”

Leo nods, though the movement sends a faint jolt through his neck and down to his spine. He steadies himself, pressing his palms more firmly against the bars, grounding himself in the cold unyielding metal.

Cold, present. Here. Constant as the stars above.

Donnie shifts beside him, the soft scuff of his foot against the mat barely audible. He doesn’t speak yet; he’s watching the data settle, tracking the way Leo’s vitals refuse to return to baseline as quickly as they should be doing.

“Heart rate’s still elevated,” he comments finally, not looking up. “Which is normal, given the exertion. But your recovery curve is… lagging.”

Lagging.

Leo grimaces. “That’s one way to put it, Don Ton.”

Donnie’s mouth tightens in an attempt not to smile from the nickname. “It doesn’t mean anything definitive. Neural fatigue accumulates quickly with spinal trauma.”

Spinal trauma.

The word sits heavy in the air like pollution that slowly kills the earth, clinical and precise and devastating in their simplicity.

Mikey clears his throat loudly, breaking the tension. “Okay, but also–science aside–Leo just did a thing he couldn’t do last week. So I’m calling that a win.”

Leo exhales, something fragile loosening in his chest at the sound of Mikey’s voice. “Thanks, Dr. Feelings.”

“Anytime,” Mikey says, his encouragement slipping a little. “I take my responsibilities very seriously.”

The moment stretches; this is the dangerous part.

And it’s not the attempt itself – but the space between attempts, when doubt creeps in and rewrites memory. When his body begins to catalog pain and fear and store them for later use. When his mind starts whispering that maybe stopping now would be smart, reasonable, safe.

Leo swallows.

He can feel the weight of the bars begin making marks in the palms of his hands, bandage wrappings be damned, and the sudden ache in his shoulders, the way his core is losing its hold on the threads that are keeping him stitched together. He can feel the injury in his spine more clearly now, no longer content to hum quietly in the background. It wants to be known, and it's willing to morph into a poisoned arrow to do that.

Raph tilts his head slightly. “Are you good for another?”

The question is careful; it’s not can you do another or you have to do another.

Just – are you good?

Leo hesitates, the answer that wants to come out is no.

No, he’s not good, no, his body feels wrong and unreliable. And no, the fear is louder now, pressing against his ribs like it wants to get out. But another answer rises up too – smaller, stubborn, aching with need.

“I want to try,” Leo says.

Raph nods immediately; there’s no hesitation or argument. “Okay.”

Donnie looks up sharply, as if the wrong thing was said. “Nardo–”

“I know,” Leo says quickly. “I know. Just one more.”

Donnie studies him for a long moment, then sighs softly and pulls up the readings. “I’m watching closely.”

Mikey gives him a thumbs-up, smile wobbling but sincere. “You got this. Or, you’ll almost got this. Which is still something.”

Leo closes his eyes; this time, he doesn’t let the gray in.

He focuses on sensation instead – on the warming of the bars, the faint stickiness of sweat on his skin that isn’t going away, the sound of his bones creaking like old wood in an abandoned house. He imagines the movement before he makes it this time, visualizing the shift, the alignment, the way his body needs to respond.

Once, that kind of mental rehearsal was always on autopilot; once, it always worked.

He shifts his weight again, but the reaction is harder this time.

His right leg engages late – too late – and then overcorrects, muscles firing uncoordinated, as if some shot cannons without the captain's command and the others never broke protocol. It sends his knee wobbling dangerously, and the tremor returns immediately stronger than before, shaking his thigh as though an earthquake had sounded without his knowledge.

Leo’s next breath comes in a sharp gasp.

His ankle rolls inward again, copying his left one but going farther this time, and the sudden imbalance sends an unwanted spike of panic straight up his spine. His arms tense reflexively, shoulders jerking as they catch more boulders that come from the rockslide.

“Easy,” Raph says, turning into a watchdog briefly. “Slow it down.”

Leo tries; he really does.

He exhales, forces his knee to soften instead of locking, hoping to numb the blow, and tries to let the shaking happen without fighting it. But his body feels overwhelmed now, overworked and underdeveloped, signals crossing and coiling to confuse each other in ways he can no longer predict.

Donnie’s stylus pauses mid-air. “Engagement is inconsistent,” he says. “Response latency is increasing.”

Increasing, it should be decreasing. It echoes unpleasantly in his head, taunting him.

“Hold,” Raph says as though he’s about to start a triathlon. “Just hold.”

One.

Leo’s vision narrows as he tries to focus on something.

Two.

The tremor spreads downward, into his calf, his foot. It demands his attention, tempting him to look away, to prevent him from distracting himself.

Three.

Heat blooms along his spine, sudden and intense. His breath catches in his throat, a sound escaping him before he can stop it. Leo might as well be preparing to go underwater without scuba gear.

Four.

His arms begin to shake violently now, shoulders screaming and begging him to stop, to give them release. His grip slips a fraction on the bars, as though he’s been drenched in dish soap.

“Leo,” Donnie says sharply. “Your readings are spiking.”

“I’m okay,” Leo grits out, though the words feel thin and he knows that it was absolutely unconvincing for his twin brother.

Five.

He doesn’t make it.

The signal to move back – to retreat, to center himself – gets lost somewhere between his brain and body. His right foot drags instead of lifting, catching on the mat. His balance shifts too far, too fast.

Panic detonates as his hand slips.

The bars rattle violently, metal clanging against metal. For a second, there is nothing beneath him – no strength, no control, no ground. Like he’s jumped out of a plane without a parachute. Just the awful, weightless certainty of falling.

Raph moves instantly.

Strong arms hook under Leo’s arms, halting the collapse but not the pain. The sudden stop sends a brutal jolt through Leo’s spine, white-hot and blinding. A broken sound tears out of his chest before he can stop it.

“I’ve got you,” Raph says, fierce and comforting. “I’ve got you.”

Mikey scrambles to his feet, hands hovering uselessly, eyes wide. “Hey–hey–easy.”

Donnie silences the table’s alarm with shaking fingers.

Leo’s legs tremble uncontrollably now, muscles locked in useless spasm. His heart has started banging on his ribs like it’s a prisoner. The room swims, looking like the beginning of a flashback montage.

Raph lowers him carefully onto the mat, never letting go until he’s certain Leo won’t slip. When his back meets the floor, the pain dulls slightly – but the fear does not.

Leo stares at the ceiling, the lights blurring into white shapes as it begins to swim.

At first, Leo thinks it’s just the aftermath – the adrenaline dumping out of his system like toxic waste, the way his vision always smears when his body gives up before his mind does. White lights blend into halos above him, stretching and warping until they no longer look solid. His breaths come fast and shallow, each one scraping against his lungs like they’re too small to hold what his chest is trying to do.

Raph’s hands remain on him.

Firm. Grounding. One braced at Leo’s shoulder, the other hovering at his ribs like he’s afraid to let go too quickly. Leo can feel the pressure of that touch, the warmth of it, anchoring him to the mat beneath his shell.

“You’re down,” Raph says. “You’re safe.”

Safe.

Yeah, right. Sure. That is the most ridiculous thing that Leo has ever heard his brother say. He swallows hard, throat tight. His spine throbs now – not sharp or screaming, but deep and relentless, like a warning that refuses to be ignored. Each pulse feels like a ticking timebomb, sending ghostly echoes of sensation down his legs.

They feel wrong; heavy, uncooperative. Like they belong to someone else.

Mikey kneels by his side, trying to smile and failing. “Okay, that looked… dramatic. But also? You didn’t splat. Which is great.”

Leo lets out a shaky breath in an attempt to laugh. It comes out as a sigh.

Donnie crouches closer, his movements controlled but tight. He scans his brother’s face, eyes darting to the slight tremor in his hands, the way his pupils struggle to focus. “Leo,” he says, voice low and precise, “I need you to tell me what you’re feeling.”

Leo opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

The truth is too big, too tangled, pressing against his ribs like it’s up against an electric fence. He closes his eyes instead, teeth clenching as another wave of heat rolls through his entire nervous system.

Raph notices immediately. “Pain spike?”

Leo nods in a slow descent of defeat.

“Scale of one to ten?”

Leo hesitates. “Seven,” he says finally. Then, quieter, “maybe eight.”

Donnie exhales through his nose, already pulling the scanner back up so that he can use it. “Okay. That’s higher than your baseline. I’m going to run a quick check.”

The device hums as it comes to life and Donnie passes it over Leo’s lower back. The sound drills into Leo’s skull, each vibration setting his nerves on edge.

This is not how it’s supposed to go.

This was supposed to be progress.

He squeezes his eyes shut, fighting the urge to curl in on himself. His legs flinch faintly, responding to some internal signal he can’t decipher.

“Muscle fatigue is severe,” Donnie mutters, mostly to himself. “Neural feedback is… inconsistent.”

Inconsistent.

Again.

Leo laughs weakly, the sound breaking in the middle. “Guess my body’s just–freestyling now.”

Mikey’s smile falters completely. “Hey, no. Don’t joke like that.”

Raph’s jaw tightens. “Leo.”

Leo opens his eyes; all three of them are looking at him now. But not with disappointment or with  frustration. They’re looking at him with fear, and the realization hits harder than the fall did. He hates that look – hates that he’s the reason it’s there.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts, the words tumbling out before he can stop them. “I… I thought I could do it. I really did, I just–”

His voice cracks.

The sound echoes in the room, small and fragile and utterly unlike him as it bounces off each available surface. He turns his head away, staring at the far wall, at a crack in the concrete that looks vaguely like lightning.

Raph shifts, lowering himself fully to sit beside Leo. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

Leo shakes his head. “I do, though. I keep–” he swallows. “I keep trying, and it keeps going wrong, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

Donnie finishes the scan and sets the device aside. “Your spinal injury is still healing, need I remind you that you flirted with the idea of becoming paralyzed?” He asks gently. “Setbacks are statistically expected.”

“I know the statistics,” he snaps before he can stop himself. The sharpness in his tone surprises all of them – including himself.

Silence drops like a boulder off a cliff.

Leo’s chest tightens; he presses his palms into the mat, grounding himself in the texture, the faint grit beneath his fingers. “I know,” he repeats, quieter. “I know what you’re going to say: time, patience. Slow progress. I get it, I just…”

He trails off, because here it is; the thing he hasn’t said out loud yet. He squeezes his eyes shut again, and when he speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper. “I can’t feel myself anymore.”

Mikey inhales sharply, Raph stills, and Donnie’s hands curl slowly into fists at his sides.

Leo continues, the words spilling now that the dam has cracked. “It’s like… like my body doesn’t trust me. Like every time I tell it to do something, it hesitates. Or it does the wrong thing, or it just… gives up.”

He laughs again, hollow like rotten wood. “I don’t recognize it.”

The room feels unbearably quiet, so Leo opens his eyes to finally look at them so the room might gain some kind of noise soon. “I used to know exactly where I was in space,” he says. “I could fight in the dark, I could jump without looking. I could move without thinking about it. But now I have to concentrate to even stand, and even then–”

His voice breaks completely this time.

“Even then I fail.”

Mikey’s eyes shine, unshed tears pooling at the corners. He reaches out, gripping Leo’s hand tightly. “You didn’t fail,” he says fiercely. “You stood. You tried.”

Leo squeezes Mikey’s hand to feel a pressure that is comforting instead of painful. “That’s not enough.”

The words feel poisonous the moment they leave his mouth – but they’re true.

Raph exhales slowly, one heavy breath. “You think this is about strength?”

Leo doesn’t answer.

His brother continues anyway. “It’s not, it’s about trust. And right now? You don’t trust your body. I don’t blame you, in all honesty.”

Leo’s throat tightens painfully. “I don’t trust my mind, either. Every time I try, I keep thinking about the prison dimension, about falling , and how I’m not getting back up.”

The memory flashes unbidden – endless gray space, weightlessness, pain, the terrifying certainty that he was going to die there. He shudders because of it.

“I keep thinking… what if this is it?” Leo whispers. “What if this is as good as it gets?”

Mikey shakes his head violently. “No, nope. Absolutely not.”

Donnie settles down from his knees, bringing himself level with Leo’s gaze. His voice is steady, but there’s an undercurrent of something raw beneath it. “You survived catastrophic trauma,” he says. “Neurological recovery is nonlinear, and the plateaus do not indicate permanent loss.”

Leo looks at him, eyes burning. “But what if they do?”

And that makes Donnie falter just for a second, but it’s enough.

Leo lets out a broken sound, half-laugh, half-sob. “See? You don’t even know.”

Raph reaches for him then, pulling Leo carefully into a seated position, bracing him securely; Leo doesn’t resist. He leans into the support, his forehead dropping briefly against his older brother’s shoulder.

“I’m tired,” Leo admits. “I’m so tired of trying and failing.”

The words hang like bullets about to be fired out of a gun.

Raph tightens his grip. “You don’t have to decide anything right now.”

Leo pulls back just enough to look at him. “I can’t do this,” he says, his voice flat and final. “Not today, and definitely not here.”

Mikey’s grip tightens on his hand. “Leo…”

“I’m done,” Leo says, reaffirming his stance. “I can’t keep doing this when I can’t even get a hold of myself.”

Silence, as though the room is holding its breath, or it has stopped breathing altogether. And for the first time since he escaped the prison dimension, Leo lets himself believe the thought he’s been fighting since the beginning: that maybe he’s never going to get better.

The mat becomes akin to a frozen lake beneath him.

Even after all the years of training, even after a lifetime spent in motion, it feels unfamiliar. Unforgiving. As if the world itself has shifted while he was away, leaving him stranded between two realities: the body he had known, quick and reliable, and this new, fragile vessel that trembles even under the most gentle winds.

Leo exhales, shallow, uneven. His arms ache from supporting him, wrists humming with the residual strain from the failed therapy. He flexes his fingers, feeling the sting where the metal of the parallel bars bit into his palms. The sensation grounds him, painfully real, proof that he is alive and painfully human.

He glances to the corner of the room where his crutches lean against the wall, two slender, clinical extensions of mobility he had not wanted to admit he would need. They look alien, as though they do not belong to him. They are not weapons; they are not swords or shields but tools, and tools mean dependence.

Leo swallows hard, and his throat feels sore.

Standing is like rising from hell with shackles tied to his limbs; his bones creak, the fire burns in warning that his nervous system still has healing to do – he shouldn’t be moving right now, not after he exerted so much energy trying to shift his weight. But he needs to succeed at something, needs to show his brothers – and himself – that this injury hasn’t stolen everything that makes him normal.

So he rises from the mat without precaution or help, shaky, unsure, becoming the source of his family’s anxiety for as long as he flirts with the idea of losing his balance and falling off the ledge back to level zero. Or even level negative one hundred. He’s prepared to argue with Donnie that there’s no such thing, but when it’s his body on the line, then his twin can decide what levels do and do not exist.

He makes it, but at the cost of his nerves wanting him dead.

The first step is always the hardest. It isn’t the motion itself, but the acceptance that he has to walk like he is in total darkness with a blindfold over his eyes. That each movement must be calculated, measured, planned out in advance.

He leans forward slightly, bending at the elbows, pressing weight into his palms. His spine protests immediately – if it couldn’t stop him from standing, maybe it’ll be able to stop him from doing this. A dull, deep ache radiates down his vertebrae, as though it is getting each bone to rally in protest against the movement that’s being demanded. His legs tremble, calf muscles quivering as if they want to bend to gravity’s will and go into release.

The crutches are there, they beckon. Cold, indifferent. He reaches for one, then the other, hands brushing the rubber grips. The touch is grounding, but the anticipation to shift his entire weight into them makes his chest tighten.

He sits on it for a moment longer, staring at the crutches. The room is silent except for the faint hum of ventilation. Even the sounds of the lair – the distant drip of water, the creak of metal pipes – seem muted, reverent, waiting. Waiting for him to decide, waiting to see if he can walk again.

Leo’s gaze drifts to the wall; posters he had once ignored – New York City skylines, sketches of ninja forms, maps of the sewers – blur into abstraction. They remind him of freedom, of motion, of speed. And yet, he cannot move the way he used to. Not fully, not yet.

He exhales.

“Okay,” he says, voice small, rough. It isn’t to anyone – just to himself. “You can do this.”

The crutches scrape faintly against the mat as he slides one hand onto each grip completely, flexing his arms until the muscles are awake. Then, slowly, excruciatingly so, he leans forward, pressing weight onto the crutches.

Pain blooms immediately in his back, coming for a rematch with a sharp flare and a persistent dull ache that threatens to unravel him from the inside out. His turn into shifting tectonic plates under the sudden redistribution of weight. His core burns with the effort of holding himself upright.

He stumbles slightly, reflexively gripping the crutches tighter, knuckles whitening against the rubber. Sweat prickles his forehead; he grits his teeth. The room tilts. The walls breathe.

And still, his foot shuffles forward.

A fraction of an inch at a time.

He sways; his left leg quivers beneath him. His right knee shakes. Each step forward is a battle between will and body, between desire and doubt. For the first time, the realization settles fully in his chest: this is not just physical, this is mental. Emotional. Every microsecond is a negotiation with fear, with the memory of what he has lost, with the anticipation of failure.

The crutches dig into his palms, his arms scream. His spine hums its relentless protest. The mat beneath his feet presses uncomfortably, a reminder of every misstep that could happen.

And yet, inch by inch, he moves.

Leo shifts his weight forward, then back, balancing, measuring, recalibrating. He falters – a foot slides slightly on the mat. Panic surges with a hot spike  of adrenaline burning his chest. He closes his eyes. Breathes. Reminds himself of the present: I am here. I am alive. I am moving.

The world is quiet.

No one is here – there is no encouragement, and no expectations. It’s just him, the crutches, and the echo of the room’s walls.

He takes another step. Then another. Each movement offers a new kind of pain that motion never thought existed before. Muscles fire in sequences they have long forgotten and are trying to brush up on again. Nerves twitch unpredictably. His spine wants to curve in on itself.

But still, he moves.

Pain and fear mingle in his chest; triumph flares briefly, tentative and fragile. He lets out a breath to feel his chest release some of that tension. The crutches have made it off the mat and are now rubbing against the concrete floor with each careful placement. Sweat pools on his shell now and his breath is ragged.

The world remains silent except for the sound of his effort – the tiny, ever-present noises of survival.

He pauses at the door. Staring down at the floor, at the slow, careful placement of his crutches, at the trembling of his legs and the bandages wrapped around them, at the stubborn, defiant thrum of his heart. And he thinks that maybe it would have just been better if he rotted in the prison dimension instead of coming back.

The tunnels are quiet.

The kind of quiet that presses against the ears, amplifying every breath, every heartbeat, every scrape of rubber against stone. Leo shifts his weight differently while on the crutches, the rubber tips slipping slightly against the cold concrete floor. Each step remains a negotiation, every motion isn’t guessed, every muscle is awake and every nerve on alert.

The first few feet are the hardest. Gravity feels heavier here, though nothing has changed. The crutches wobble slightly under him, tilting unpredictably with every uneven crack in the floor. His back muscles burn immediately, deltoids and biceps screaming, ribs trembling like they’re out in the freezing cold with no coat on. Warning signs in every facet of his body telling him that if he doesn’t stop soon, he won’t make it to his bedroom.

He inhales through his nose, slow, methodical. He imagines the motion before he makes it: left crutch forward, right leg follows, right crutch forward, left leg follows. Over and over, step by step, until it becomes a rhythm. A rhythm that feels almost familiar.

Almost.

The lair is not kind to the rhythm; the floors act like sand rather than concrete. Small pits of concrete, rough edges where April chipped a tooth when she tripped on something while running, slight ridges that jut up like tiny hurdles. Leo navigates them with painstaking care, his foot placement precise, measuring the give of the ground beneath each step.

The crutches scrape. Rubber squeals faintly against stone. Metal joints click softly; Leo’s own breath is loud. His chest rises and falls in uneven bursts, plastron rattling lightly with each inhalation.

Around him, the shadows stretch long and strange. The fluorescent lights overhead flicker intermittently, casting erratic patterns that make the walls seem alive. Sometimes, in the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees motion – an echo of the prison dimension, the lingering memory of getting thrown against rocks until he was bleeding by the Kraang leader. He blinks hard and forces himself forward.

Pain blooms in his legs. His calves want to give up. His knees want to expire. His hips feel unsteady, like they will betray him at any moment. Every step requires more effort than the last, every shift of weight is an argument between being dormant and wanting to take refuge in his room.

A low groan escapes him.

Leo pauses, leans heavily on the crutches, presses them deeper into the concrete, lets his arms bear more of the weight than his legs want to. His hips argue this time, a flare that runs from his sides all the way up to his arms and then to his shoulder blades. He exhales slowly, forcing the discomfort down, refusing to let it define the movement.

The corridors twist and narrow. One section of the tunnel slopes slightly upward – not a stair, but a ramp that stretches what feels like forever. He places his crutches carefully, leaning forward to compensate, muscles quivering with the demand. Each inch is a battle, every step forward cannot be done blindly, but with attention and patience.

His mind wanders; memories filter in and out: training in the sewers as a kid, Donnie lecturing about physics of motion, Raph pushing him to limits he once thought unassailable. Mikey’s endless chatter echoing in his ears. And the Kraang… always the Kraang.

Leo shakes his head, blinking rapidly. Focus. Step. One. Two. Shift weight. Don’t fall.

The ramp ends; he exhales with relief, though the ache in his shoulders and spine do not lessen. He forces himself to continue.

Narrow passageways follow – cramped, low ceilings brushing against his shell, forcing him to duck slightly, bending at the spine that makes his lower back throb. It’s a delicate rush where every misstep could send him sprawling, body colliding painfully with stone. He wouldn’t just be flirting with paralysis, he’d be married to it by then.

Leo thinks about stopping; about sitting down and letting the world pass him by for a few minutes. But he knows if he does, rising again will be harder without those parallel bars or one of his brothers to hold onto. Momentum matters now, even if it is agonizingly slow.

He breathes through it. One crutch forward, then the other. The left leg moves, then the right leg follows.

A kink in the tunnel forces him to pivot sharply. He sets one crutch, rotates, then the other. His foot scrapes against a rough patch and a jolt runs through his knee and hip. He hisses through his teeth, arms shaking from the effort.

Almost there, he tells himself. Almost.

The path is familiar but transformed by his limitations. He has traversed these tunnels countless of times – swift, precise, moving like water through them. Now each step is a hesitation with a ruler at his side for precision. Every sound echoes, every shadow looms larger. Even the faint sound of his dad’s television off somewhere else demands his attention, a rhythm his ears now track as if it were a hazard to be avoided.

The lair twists again; a low wall juts out ahead, forcing him to squeeze his shoulders, tilt his crutches, angle his body. The pain flares everywhere, sharp and insistent. He bites back a groan; his arms tremble. His legs feel like jelly and the crutches creak as if they’re about to break on him.

But he moves.

Forward.

Step. Step. Step.

Each movement is a victory – a tiny reclaiming of himself. A defiance against the weakness he feels pressing in from every angle. Now if only he could apply this without the aid of his crutches.

At last, he sees the doorway.

His bedroom.

The doorway might as well be a finish line.

Leo pauses there, just inside the threshold of his room, the crutches beneath his arms, digging into his armpits, his weight sagging into them as if the effort of crossing that final inch has drained whatever was left in him. His chest rises and falls in shallow, uneven bursts. Sweat cools rapidly against his skin, leaving him faintly chilled. His shoulders ache in the afterglow, deep and persistent, the kind of ache that promises to linger long after the pain in his legs fades.

The room smells the same as it always has.

Paper. Old ink. A faint metallic tang from the nearby pipes. Something familiar and grounding settles in his chest at the scent, easing the tight coil of tension just enough that he can breathe a little easier.

He nudges the door closed with his heel. The soft click of it latching echoes louder than it should.

Alone.

The word drapes itself over him like a weighted blanket – heavy, but welcome.

He shifts his crutches, carefully positioning them beside the bed. His movements are slow now, cautious, as though any sudden motion might unravel him completely. He reaches back with one hand, feeling for the mattress behind him, fingers sinking into the familiar fabric.

Lowering himself is harder than standing.

His arms tremble violently as he bends at the knees, lowering inch by inch. His spine protests immediately, sending a hot flare of pain through his lower back. He grits his teeth, breath hitching, and forces himself to keep going.

When he finally lands on the bed, it’s not graceful.

It never is anymore.

He exhales sharply, shoulders slumping forward, arms falling limp at his sides. For a moment, he just sits there, staring at the floor, watching the slight tremor in his hands gradually subside.

The room is quiet; it isn't the oppressive silence of the tunnels – but a softer one. A lived-in quiet. The kind that hums with memory.

His gaze drifts upward.

The walls are cluttered with fragments of himself; posters half-curled at the edges. Old training schedules pinned up and forgotten by Raph’s request. A faded New York skyline, the buildings sketched in bold, confident lines by Mikey so he could look at the city even when they didn’t go topside. There are dings in the concrete from stray shuriken, marks left behind by years of practice, of movement, of life lived at full speed.

And then there are the comics.

Stacks of them, everywhere. Neatly arranged in some places, carelessly piled in others – dog-eared, worn, loved. Jupiter Jim, front and center.

Leo reaches for the nearest stack, fingers brushing the glossy cover of the top issue. The familiar image greets him immediately – Jupiter Jim standing tall against a star-splashed backdrop, jetpack flaring, expression determined and unwavering.

The sight does something to his chest.

He exhales slowly, easing himself back against the headboard. The movement sends a dull ache through his spine, but he adjusts, shifting carefully, until he finds a position that doesn’t feel like is actively punishing him.

He opens the comic.

The paper crackles softly beneath his fingers; the sound is comforting. The smell of ink and old paper drifts upward, more present, wrapping around him like a hug.

The first panel blooms to life: Jupiter Jim soaring through space, stars streaking past him in brilliant arcs. His movements are fluid, effortless. Confident. Free.

Leo swallows.

He lets himself sink into the pages, his eyes tracing the familiar lines, the bold colors. The dialogue boxes float past, words he’s read dozens of times before, maybe hundreds. He knows what happens next. Knows every twist, every joke, every dramatic pause.

It doesn’t matter.

Reading isn’t about surprise; it’s about grounding – about returning to something that exists unchanged, no matter how much everything else has shifted.

As the pages turn, Leo feels his breathing slow. The tension in his shoulders eases fractionally.  His mind drifts away from the ache in his spine, from the instability in his legs, from the fear that’s been gnawing at him all day.

In this world, Jupiter Jim always gets back up.

There’s a panel where Jim takes a hard hit – knocked sprawling by an enemy’s blast. He lies there for a moment, stars spinning around his head, helmet cracked, suit scorched. The next panel shows him pushing himself back to his feet, jaw set, determination blazing.

Leo’s fingers tighten slightly on the page.

He lingers there longer than usual, eyes tracing the lines of Jim’s posture, the way his body moves with certainty. With trust in itself.

Must be nice, Leo thinks, and the bitterness surprises him.

He turns the page quickly, as if moving past it will quiet the thought.

Minutes slip by, maybe longer. Time is strange like this – elastic, malleable. His body aches constantly, a low steady hum beneath the surface, but it fades into the background as the story pulls him in.

Another issue. Another story. Another moment where Jim stands at the edge of something impossible and leaps anyway.

Leo’s throat tightens.

He closes the comic, resting it on his lap. His gaze drifts to the far wall, unfocused. The room feels smaller now – not claustrophobic, just intimate. Like it’s holding him.

He leans his head back, staring at the ceiling.

“Wish it was that easy,” he whispers into the air.

The words disappear into the quiet.

He reaches for another comic, more out of habit than desire. His fingers fumble slightly, grip unsteady, but he manages. He opens it, letting the pages fill his vision again.

This time, the comfort comes slower.

An ache in his spine flares; his legs twitch faintly, sending an unpleasant reminder of their unpredictability and the predicament that he is in. His thoughts drift despite his best efforts, circling back to the training room and the therapy, to the moment his body had given out beneath him.

Leo exhales, frustrated, and flips the page harder than necessary.

That’s when the knock comes.

Soft. Hesitant.

Three gentle taps against the door.

Leo freezes.

His heart stutters, then accelerates. His fingers curl around the edge of the comic, knuckles whitening. For a second, he considers pretending he didn’t hear it – letting the person on the other side assume he’s asleep or busy or gone.

The knock comes again; same rhythm, careful, familiar.

“Sensei?” Casey’s voice filters in through the door. It’s quiet, uncertain. “Are you in there?”

Leo swallows hard; he glances at the door, then back at the comic in his hands. Jupiter Jim stares back at him, frozen mid-heroic pose. He closes the comic gently and sets it aside.

“Yeah,” he calls, voice rough. “You can come in.”

The handle turns, and the door opens slowly.

But not with the careless confidence Casey Jones usually carries, but with a quiet hesitation, as if he’s bracing himself for something he doesn’t know quite how to face. The hinge gives a soft creak as it swings inward, and the hallway light spills briefly across the floor before the door clicks shut beside him.

Casey stands there for a second too long.

He takes Leo all in at once – sitting on the bed instead of pacing or dancing, crutches leaned awkwardly against the frame, shoulders slumped in a way that makes him look smaller somehow. Still Leo, always Leo. But not untouchable anymore.

Casey swallows.

“Hey,” he says, voice gentle in a way that feels foreign on his tongue. “Um, hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

Leo snorts faintly, gesturing weakly to the comics stacked beside him. “Yeah, actually. A very intense meeting with Jupiter Jim.”

Casey smiles, relief flickering across his face at the joke. “Man, I knew that guy was bad news.”

He crosses the room slowly, careful not to crowd him, and perches on the edge of the bed. The mattress dips under his weight, sending a faint ripple through the fabric. Leo adjusts instinctively, shifting his posture, the movement tugging painfully at his spine.

Casey notices, and he stills immediately. “Sorry. I can–”

“It’s fine,” Leo says. “I promise.”

The lie slides out easier than the truth ever does.

They sit there for a moment together, neither of them quite sure where to look. Casey fidgets with the hem of his cape, glancing around the room, taking in the posters, the stacks of comics, the familiar clutter.

“You always keep this place the same,” Casey says. “Like… exactly the same.”

Leo shrugs. “The world changes enough without me rearranging it.”

Casey lets out a small huff of a laugh, but it fades almost as soon as it appears. He shifts again, turning slightly so he’s facing Leo more directly. There’s something in his eyes now, something tight and wound too close to the surface.

“You scared me,” he says quietly.

The words land harder than any accusation could have.

Leo blinks. “Casey–”

“I’m serious,” Casey cuts in, voice steady but strained. “I thought… I really thought we lost you.”

The room suddenly feels smaller.

Leo’s gaze drops to his hands, resting uselessly in his lap. His fingers twitch faintly, betraying him. “I’m here,” he says.

Casey nods, jaw clenched. “Yeah, you are. But for a while there? You weren’t, and I didn’t know if you were coming back.” He exhales sharply, dragging a hand through his hair. “I don’t ever want to feel that again.”

Leo’s chest tightens; he remembers the prison dimension – the endless gray, the sense of falling without ever hitting the ground. The certainty that this was it. That this was how it ended.

“I didn’t mean to–” he starts, then stops. There’s no version of that sentence that feels honest. “I didn’t think I had a choice.”

Casey studies him for a long time. “You always think that.”

Leo winces. “That’s not–”

“It kind of is, though.” He counters. “You carry everything like it’s yours alone to deal with now that you’re the leader. Like if you don’t, the whole thing falls apart.”

Leo lets out a shaky breath. “Someone has to.”

Casey shakes his head. “No, someone doesn’t. That’s the whole point, and even then, Raph usually carries those heavy loads so you don’t have to.”

Silence stretches between them.

Leo stares at the floor, jaw tight. “I don’t like being… like this,” he admits to him. “I don’t like needing help, and I don’t like not trusting my own body.”

Casey’s gaze flicks briefly to the crutches, then back to Leo’s face. “You’re still you,” he says, “you know that, right?”

Leo laughs softly, bitter. “Yeah? Doesn’t feel like it.”

Casey leans forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees. “You’re the guy who jumped into another dimension without knowing if you’d make it back. The guy who cracked jokes while bleeding out. The guy who–”

“Who can’t walk without assistance,” Leo says, and the words hang there, sharp and ugly.

Casey winces. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” Leo says, his voice is flat now. Tired. “But it’s what I hear.”

He looks up at Casey then, eyes glassy but determined. “I don’t feel heroic. I feel… broken.”

Casey’s throat works; he nods slowly, as if absorbing the weight of that word. “Okay, then let me say this part and you can hate it if you want.”

Leo raises an eyebrow faintly.

“You don’t get to decide that your life is worth less now,” Casey says. “Not to me, and not ever.”

Leo’s breath catches.

Casey continues, voice shaking just slightly now. “You don’t get to scare the hell out of me and then tell me it doesn’t matter because you’re ‘not the same anymore’.”

Leo looks away, eyes burning.

“I need you here,” he keeps going. “I don’t need you to be perfect or fearless. Just… here.”

Another silence settles between them, thick and heavy and achingly honest.

Leo wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand, scoffing weakly. “Wow, you’re really bad at pep talks.”

Casey snorts. “Yeah, well, emotional vulnerability was not in my training montage. I have you and Uncle Tello to thank for that.”

That gets a real laugh out of Leo; short, breathless, but real. “Thanks,” he says quietly.

Casey smiles, softer now. “Anytime.”

They sit there for a while longer, not talking and just sharing the space. The quiet feels different now – not empty but full. Eventually, Casey glances towards the door. His expression shifts, something knowing flickering across his face.

“Hey,” he says, standing slowly. “I should probably… go.”

Leo frowns. “What? Why?”

Casey hesitates, then shrugs. “Just a feeling.”

He steps closer, hesitates again, then pulls Leo into a careful, brief hug. Leo stiffens for a split second before relaxing into it, grateful despite himself.

“Don’t disappear on me again,” Casey whispers.

Leo swallows. “I’ll try.”

Casey steps back, offering one last smile before turning and slipping out the door, leaving behind a room that feels quieter – but not emptier.

At least he knows he’s done one thing right because of the Kraang invasion. Leo never set out or even thought to become a sensei before Casey arrived. Maybe it was because he never thought he’d be good for something like that. After all, Raph was the leader, the comforter. The fire burning during the winter. Leo was the speed, the laughter. The lightning strike one only likes to see because it looks cool during a rainstorm.

But Casey chose the lightning over the fire. For once, Leo was the first choice for something – and when he knew of the boy’s existence, he wanted nothing more than to prove himself. To reaffirm to Casey that he made the right decision by having Leo be his sensei.

That’s the kind of reassurance no injury will ever take away from him.

The knock this time is not hesitant.

It is firm, deliberate – three solid raps against the door that carry weight and certainty with them. Leo feels it before he hears it, a subtle tightening in his chest, the instinctive sense that something has shifted. He doesn’t answer right away; he sits there on the bed, hands resting uselessly in his lap, eyes fixed on the place where the door meets the wall. He knows who this is – he always does. The door opens anyway, slowly but without waiting for permission, and his brothers fill the doorway in a way that makes the room feel smaller and safer all at once.

Raph enters first, broad shoulders nearly brushing the frame, his presence grounding and solid as ever. He doesn’t say anything at first – just steps inside and plants his feet like he’s anchoring himself to the floor.

Donnie follows close behind, tablet tucked under one arm out of habit rather than necessity, eyes sharp but tired, scanning Leo with a mixture of concern and calculation he can’t quite turn off.

Mikey brings up the rear, peeking around them both before slipping in fully, his expression softer than usual, smile tentative and carefully held together.

Leo straightens instinctively, a reflex from years of command and confidence, though the movement costs him. His spine protests quietly; he ignores it.

“What’s up?” He asks, aiming for casualness and landing somewhere just short of it.

Raph exhales through his nose, arms crossing over his chest. “We need to talk,” he says, voice low and steady, the way it always is when he’s bracing for impact.

Leo’s jaw tightens. “That usually means something bad.”

Donnie steps forward, stopping a few feet away, careful not to crowd him just like Casey was. “Not bad,” he says, brushing off his arm. “Necessary.”

“That’s worse,” Leo snorts.

Mikey winces a little at that but pushes through, stepping closer and perching on the beanbag chair that is in the room near the bed. “Okay, first of all, rude,” he says. “Second of all… yeah. We’re talking.”

Silence stretches. Leo waits; he’s good at waiting, he’s grown to be good at it during the invasion. It’s the uncertainty that eats at him, the way his mind starts racing ahead, filling in gaps with worse-case scenarios. His fingers curl slightly against his thigh.

Raph finally speaks again. “You’re not getting better here.”

The words are blunt, stripped of softness, and they hit exactly where they’re meant to. Leo flinches despite himself, breath catching for half a second before he schools his expression back into something neutral.

“I am,” he says automatically. “It’s just slow.”

Donnie shakes his head. “It’s not just slow,” he says, “it’s stalled. Your physical recovery is being actively hindered by environmental stressors. Noise, memories. Constant reminders of everything.”

“And,” Mikey adds on, “you’re miserable.”

Leo’s gaze snaps to him. “I’m fine.”

Mikey meets his eyes without flinching. “You’re not.”

Raph shifts his weight, uncrossing his arms. “We’ve been watching you,” he says. “You push until you crash, you shut down. Then you do it again in an endless cycle. That’s not healing, that’s punishment.”

Leo laughs, sharp and brittle. “So what, this is an intervention?”

“This is us making a decision,” Donnie exhales slowly.

There it is.

Leo’s chest tightens. “About me?”

Raph nods once. “About you.”

Leo’s voice drops. “You don’t get to decide my life for me.”

Mikey slides off from the beanbag and steps closer, hands raised slightly like he’s approaching a skittish animal. “We’re not deciding your life,” he does his best to reassure, “we’re deciding how to help you keep it.”

Donnie stepped in then, words careful but firm. “There’s a farmhouse. Quiet, remote. Minimal sensory overload. Space to recover without constant stimulation or pressure. You’ll still have training, therapy, and support. It’ll just be… somewhere else.”

Leo stares at them. “You’re sending me away?”

“For a while,” Raph says. “Not forever.”

“I just got back,” Leo protests, voice cracking despite his best efforts. “I finally made it home.”

Mikey’s expression softens painfully. “Home isn’t a place,” he says. “It’s us. And we’re not going anywhere.”

Leo looks away, blinking hard. “You’re doing this because you think I can’t be fixed.”

“No,” Donnie says immediately. “We’re doing this because you’re hurt; and because you won’t stop pretending you’re not.”

The room feels too small, too tight. Leo’s breath comes shallow. “I don’t want to go,” he says. “I don’t want to leave New York. I don’t want to be… the one who gets sent away.”

Raph hums, placing a heavy hand on the bed near Leo’s knee – not touching him, but close enough to be felt. “This isn’t exile,” he says. “This is recovery.”

Silence falls again, thick and heavy and unavoidable.

Mikey breaks it by fumbling suddenly with something he takes out behind his back – Leo never noticed his hands were hiding there. “Okay,” he says, voice wibbling with a hint of something hopeful. “Before you spiral any harder, I have… a thing.”

Leo blinks. “A thing?”

Mikey grins weakly and pulls out a brightly colored sticker sheet, holding it up like a mix between an offering and a trophy. It’s covered in tiny drawings – Leo in exaggerated hero poses, katanas crossed over each other by the blade, a coffee cup that had his sleep hat on the lid, a cool logo that incorporated the design that is on his shell. There is even a tiny Jupiter Jim-style Leo flying through space with a cheesy grin.

“I made these,” Mikey says. “For the trip. You can put them on your crutches, or your bag. Or literally anything. They’re emotional support stickers.”

Leo stares at the sheet, something in his chest giving way.

He takes it carefully, fingers brushing the glossy surface, eyes tracing the familiar shapes, the love packed into every ridiculous detail. His throat tightens.

“These are… really dumb,” he comments but laughs a little.

Mikey beams. “Thank you, that’s high praise.”

Raph looks away, jaw tight while Donnie dusts off his arm again, expression unreadable.

Leo exhales slowly, shoulders sagging. “I don’t like this,” he tells them. “I don’t like not having a choice.”

Raph meets his gaze this time. “Sometimes healing requires you to step outside your comfort zone. Even if it hurts for a while, you'll carve out a new comfort zone. I’m sure of it.”

Leo nods faintly, staring down at the sticker, at the version of himself frozen there – brave, ridiculous, loved. “...Okay.”

Packing happens fast in the way things do when everyone is trying very hard not to think too much.

Leo sits on the edge of his bed while the room shifts around him, objects lifted and folded and stacked with quiet efficiency. His crutches are moved to lean against the mattress for easy reach, their familiar weight a reminder that standing still requires preparation now. 

He watches hands move – Raph’s large and careful as he folds pajamas, Donnie’s precise as he checks medical supplies and braces and chargers twice over, Mikey’s nimble as he scoops up scattered odds and ends like they might wander off if left unattended. 

No one asks Leo what he wants to bring; they already know. They pack the things that matter without needing to say why: his favorite jacket, worn soft at the cuffs; the stack of Jupiter Jim comics, corners bent and loved. The spare katana wrap Donnie insists he’ll need even if Leo doesn’t plan on training much. Everything is placed into the duffel bag like it belongs there, like it has always been meant to travel.

Leo feels strangely detached, like he’s watching someone else’s life be folded into neat rectangles. The room looks different as it empties – wider somehow, echoing in a way it never has before. The posters on the walls seem louder now, the city in the painted skyline pressing closer, as if New York itself knows he’s leaving and doesn’t approve. He swallows against the lump in his throat and focuses on breathing, on staying present, on not unraveling when he’s already agreed.

Mikey crouches in front of him at one point, pointing to the sticker sheet that he is holding, like it’ll vanish if he lets go. “They work best when you miss us.”

Leo huffs out a weak laugh. “So… constantly.”

Mikey grins, eyes bright and a little too shiny. “Exactly.”

When the bags are packed, when the room feels too clean and too bare, Donnie steps back and nods once, satisfied. “The portal’s ready when you are,” he says.

The words send a jolt through Leo’s spine sharper than any pain. He grips his crutches, knuckles whitening, and pushes himself to stand. The movement is slow and deliberate, muscles trembling with the effort, but no one rushes him. Raph positions himself nearby – not touching or hovering, just there in case Leo needed the extra support for balance. Leo steadies, breath hitching, then takes one careful step forward.

In the end, he does use Raph as a replacement for those parallel bars in the training room. He leans against him and lets go of one of the crutches, resting it against his side as he takes out one of his katanas and creates the portal, watching as the blue illuminates the room.

The portal hums to life in the center of the room, space folding in on itself with a familiar shimmer that still makes Leo’s stomach twist with excitement. He stares at it, at the way it glows softly, edges rippling like water. Beyond it waits somewhere quiet. Somewhere green. Somewhere unfamiliar.

“I’ll come back,” Leo says suddenly, putting his entire weight back on the crutches. The words spill out before he can stop them.

Raph nods. “We know.”

Donnie gives a small, tight smile. “This isn’t goodbye, it’s just maintenance.”

Mikey steps forward and slaps a sticker right onto Leo’s crutch – one of the dramatic posing Leos, chin tipped up heroically. “For luck,” he says. “And because it looks cool.”

Leo laughs, real this time, and the sound cracks something open in his chest. He looks at each of them in turn, memorizing the lines of their faces, the way they stand, the way they are still here. Home, even when he’s not.

He takes a breath and then steps forward, through the portal, the light swallowing him gently, carrying him away as someone not being abandoned but cared for. 

And as he is engulfed by the portal, his injury isn’t on his mind for the first time. He’s going to be staying at a farmhouse, and there’s only one question that’s staining his mind as of right now – and that’s if he is going to have to wear a cowboy hat.

That wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He loves cowboy hats.