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Leonardo Hamato—Hamato Leonardo? Ehh either way, Leonardo Hamato has known, for a long time now, that there is something broken about him.
It’s deep, down in his essence of being—soul, I guess works—a crack, a fissure, or a crevasse.
And maybe if he just tried harder—pushed harder—maybe he could kintsugi himself back together before he was a complete waste of oxygen for this earth, and his family, and anyone else who had the oh-so amazing pleasure of knowing he is someone who exists.
But alas. He is Leonardo Hamato. There is something in his brain—maybe it’s been there from the start, who’s to say—that prevents him from just, trying harder.
If it doesn’t feed that burning flame in his chest—the common, poetic, terminology is probably heart, but it’s certainly felt in the chest, compressing and contracting and making you feel—he just doesn’t try as hard at it.
Unless something even more powerful usurps the throne of fiery, fuchsia passion—I’ve seen many say red is the color of passion, and that is not wrong, but this certain flame is absolutely fuchsia; the pinks means something the red doesn’t, I’ll have to think on what though. Give me time—that more powerful entity, that emotional force, being a dark crimson, twisted version of duty, Leonardo Hamato just doesn’t apply himself like he could.
He definitely wishes he could! And he understands everyone uses effort to apply themselves correctly, but when something dry and burnable appears in your field of view, and the night is dark and cold, and it takes way more effort to make a shelter of—what—bark and leaves, damp from the onslaught of freezing, and yet wet, water, you’re going to throw dry and burnable material into the fire, right? Right.
And that dark crimson,—the color of dry blood, I remember now—twisted version of duty is like, a lamp. A lamp with a battery that lasts days. A light so white it burns your retinas and you can basically hear and smell them sizzling but at least you can see now.
And that’s whatever this is to Leonardo Hamato. Being a leader was, at first, this mobile game-ad piston, trying to push him—or more accurate to both Leonardo and the mobile game ad, crush—into a stage in his life he didn’t want to be in. So he swipes in the specific directions he needs and he gets the ground made of small particles of something able to fall and there’s an exit somewhere lower and he gets Raph mad and he gets to his exit and he’s jumping back through a hole in his wall and that’s where the similarities end.
And that crimson and twisted duty is what has him jumping—well, teleporting—head first, blade, sparking with bright cerulean, stuck in the metal limb of a monster four-or-more times his size, into a portal he knows he’s not leaving.
And it’s that crimson and twisted duty—that same color in a brighter tint escaping his mouth as he gets tortured by an eldritch beast—that has him grasping to a photo of his beloved family, of everyone who had the oh-so amazing pleasure of knowing he is someone who exists.
But it’s someone else’s white lamp light—outskirts of the burn shining a summer, citrus orange—that drags him out of hell in more pieces than he started life with.
And Leonardo doesn’t remember what color those months in the med bay felt like.
But he hasn’t felt that fuchsia writhe in his chest in a long time.
He lays on his bed and he stares at a ceiling at 1:43 AM and—though he knew before—understands that he’s truly broken (a fear tears slip and a small sob scratches its way out of a closing throat despite Leo’s best efforts).
There’s something truly, deeply wrong with him. Down at the bottom his soul there’s a crack that runs down deeper past the floor to the core of himself and just barely touches it before finally ruining the entire body.
And there’s something so deeply, truly wrong about how much he craves to be cared by people he’s poisoning. He knows the longer he’s around the better the chance he’ll infect someone, because he is so wrong on the inside something will leak through that crack—physically, but not something physical, but something bad—and he could risk them cracking too. He wouldn’t do that to his brothers. He can’t hurt them again. So he’ll just stay as far as he can from them. And he won’t eat because he doesn’t deserve the food. And he’ll drink water to live because he deserves the pain of hunger. This is what he earned. It’s penance. It’s reward.
And one day he’s standing in the kitchen. He’s wearing a hoodie to keep out the cold (the thermostat is at 70° F), and to keep out the gaze that would otherwise land on a stomach that’s slightly, uncharacteristically flat for a boy who used to try his best to look like he was bigger than the world.
And one day, in that kitchen, Leo is staring at nothing while he washes a mug he drank water out of, and afterward attempts every other dish in the sink. Nothing but water. A protein bar every sixteen hours and water. For the past two days he’s managed a protein bar every sixteen hours and water. A small cramp jabs him somewhere from the inside, and he has a small, quiet but uninvited and immediately noticed thought that maybe one day I’ll have done enough, before he remembers again for the fifth time in two days that no amount of missed calories can bring back the people he killed the second he closed that portal around Raph’s red, ninpo-fist. And he remembers how evil he must be to think such a thing when people got hurt and the rest of them died. He remembers the crack in his soul. And he remembers there’s no kintsugi-ing it back together.
Leonardo stares at nothing, deliberately trying to keep as far away from the physical plane as he can. If he stays in his mind, up here, where nothing but him and his thoughts—that won’t let him forget his mistakes—reside, he can make it another sixteen hours just fine.
A gruff voice asks from beside him: “You okay, Leo?”
He turns his head swiftly to reply. “Hm- what?”
“You okay?”
A tattered and drenched voice slips out of his mouth. “Oh- yeah, I’m just kinda zoned out today.”
He doesn’t smile and he doesn’t joke. He’s leaving that behind him. He’s going to get better. And one day he’s going to relearn how to hide the cracks and moisture that want so badly to seep into his voice, at any chance he gets at answering something with real, vulnerable honestly. In the time you took to read this paragraph it was silent, beyond a replying hum from Raph the second this sentence ends.
And Raph asks his next query with the voice of someone trying not to scare away a stray animal that, if they played their cards right, would come a bit closer—the word is concern, but the above is what it felt like—“Are you sure?”
Leonardo’s voice is a normal amount of dry now, finally. “Yeah, why?”
“Because you look on the verge of tears.”
Leo’s face is stone. Tears fall off of that verge, the suicide of a water droplet, that hits and cracks Leo’s ego on impact, occurs. His face never changes.
“I’m probably just a bit down. (“Yeah?” Raph inquires) Yeah. It’ll go away eventually.” As it always used to. He’s been like this for a while now, though.
Raph looks at him and his brows are just slightly furrowed. He stares for a good few seconds before asking his next question. And Leonardo—at least not for a time—won’t get why Raph would ever ask such a thing to someone like him.
“Do you think…doin’ somethin’ fun instead will cheer you up?”
Leonardo just keeps that stone stare into nothing on his face, but without tears, the emotion has to leave somehow, and it travels on the waves of Leonardo’s wavering voice, wavering from the weight of the emotion lying on it.
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Like what?”
And still that stone face. “Maybe like…hanging out with Mikey.” He’s just saying something to have an answer.
Raph starts to gesture Leo away from the sink. “Raph can take care of this. Go hang out with Mikey.”
“Oh- uh okay. Thanks.” Raph hums back in response and Leonardo backs away from the sink, and as he walks through the lair to find Mikey he keeps thinking about that crack. The fissure. The crevasse. And he stops in his tracks. He realizes he can’t risk it. No matter how fun hanging with Mikey sounds—or how much he desperately wants to feel the warmth of someone’s love—he can’t risk infecting him like that. Or anyone for that matter.
Leonardo spins on his heel and returns to his room. He never lets himself forget how broken he is. How deep the crack goes. How unfixable he is. He reaches his bed and falls onto it backwards to go back to staring at the ceiling. His stomach twists with a growl and he basks in the feeling—though it’s quite painful— because he knows he deserves it. And he deserves not to be near anyone else for as long as possible—hopefully, the rest of his life—and he deserved the prison dimension and why did they have to save him?
Leonardo’s internal clock ticks and he tracks the minutes since Raph told him to leave. He checks the time and estimates it’s been five-seven minutes. For five-seven minutes he’s been staring at the ceiling and desperately gripping on to a string of thoughts as to not lose his way: I’m broken. I’m unfixable. I deserve this pain. I can’t let myself infect anyone else. I won’t let myself hurt anyone else.
He’s sure if he just tries hard enough he can be better. Better than this. He just has to not eat. He just has to stay away from people susceptible to him. He’s getting better—though, it’s obvious, even to Leonardo, in the back of his mind, that he’s getting so much worse—and one day he’ll be perfect and make up for everything he’s ever done (or for coming into existence).
He starts thinking about the way Raph talked to him. That soft, caring voice. Like he was some stray animal that would run away if he didn’t use it. He loved it. It was unnerving to say the least. Leonardo hasn’t heard that voice in a long time. Not since the med-bay. He didn’t want to hear it ever again. In fact, he’s been trying to avoid it as much as possible. And he’s sure if he had just tried harder—put up a bit more of a performance—maybe he could’ve gotten away with it (not even he knows what it is. He knows that getting caught is bad). But he was too tired to keep it up today. Sure, he’s trying to give up the whole unserious joke guy thing up, but he could’ve at least acted cheerful. Like he wanted to be there. Like he liked his brother (And he loves his brother. That’s why he’s doing this).
And he lays like that for another thirty minutes, before he hears footsteps larger than anything his brain can say, getting louder and louder as they progress. But Leonardo tries anyway to keep gripping on the string.
—————————————————————
Leo leaves the kitchen and Raph watches him stroll out, with no no flair to his gait and no grin that—in retrospect, maybe they never did, but got just close enough to trick the naked eye—reached his eyes. He watched him leave, with a face of concern, until Leo rounds the corner. Then he turns to the sink and washes the dishes and thinks about how he doesn’t see his baby brother much anymore. He sees Leonardo a lot, but he hasn’t seen his brother is ages. It feels like years. And he doesn’t care if Leo’s technically the oldest, that’s his baby brother. And he misses him. And when he finishes the dishes he goes to find Mikey and Leo.
Raph looks through the entire lair, in the main room, the dining room, and then Mikey’s bedroom. And Mikey is there. And Leo is not there.
”Hey Mike?”
Mikey’s head turns to his voice and he smiles.
”Oh hey Raph!”
”Did Leo come to hang out with you today?”
Mikey turns his head downwards and his fingers grasp his chin in thought. ”I don’t remember him coming to me. I actually haven’t seen him at all today.”
Well. Ok then.
”Oh- ok. Thanks anyway Mike.” Raph turns to leave. He thinks he knows where Leo is.
”Anytime Raph!” Mikey goes back to his doodles.
—————————————————————
Leonardo is staring at his ceiling and gripping on to that string as tight as he can. The sound of steps stop at his door. It’s silent for a few seconds.
”Lee, are you okay?”
It’s that damn stray animal voice again.
Leonardo turns his head to him with that face of stone. He manages a dry throat and dry face.
”Yeah, why?”
”Because you didn’t go hang out with Mikey, and unless you did somethin’ fun sometime in the past thirty-five minutes that had you end up like this,” he gestures to Leo, ”then I don’t think you’re okay.”
Damn you, Mikey, little rat (Leo didn’t tell Mikey there was anything not to say. On account of his contagion).
”Raph, I’m fine.”
”I don’t think so.”
”Well you’ll have to prove it.”
”I’m lookin’ at my evidence.”
Its silent again for a bit. Then Leonardo’s stomach growls, and Leonardo turns on his side to look at the wall instead. Still laying in his bed. If he can’t see Raph, maybe Raph can’t see him (he knows this is stupid. He’s very desperate).
”Are you hungry?” Raph inquires.
”No.” Leonardo lies.
”Oh for the love of- Lee, c’mon. I’ll get Mikey to start on dinner.”
”I’m not hungry.”
”But you are.”
”But I said I’m not.”
”But you’re lyin’ to my face. Please, Leo. Tell me what’s wrong.”
And it’s just silent. Because Leonardo would do anything to keep this crack away from his brother. This interaction is dangerous enough.
Leonardo hears Raph walk closer to his bed. He hears him sit on the floor, his head basically next to the back of Leonardo’s.
”You’re too stubborn for your own good.”
Leo doesn’t reply.
And then his stomach growls again.
”Ok- Lee, when was the last time you ate?”
Leonardo doesn’t reply for a moment. Then he does something reckless. He says something so dangerous and he knows there’s no coming back. Maybe he can compensate later. His stomach hurts so much.
”Yesterday.”
”Yester- Leo!” Raph’s voice is—kinda obviously—panicked.
Leo is really tired. He thinks about taking a nap. His eyes are already closed when he replies to Raph. ”M’fine Raph, I’m not that hungry.” It’s a really poor attempt at salvaging what he just gave up.
Lee hears Raph say something in a much more definite tone. ”Ok, that’s it.” Lee feels himself get lifted. Raph is walking somewhere, Leo in his arms. It’s warmer than on the bed, where he hadn’t gotten under his blankets. He didn’t deserve this. He curls into it. He immediately regrets it. He doesn’t uncurl. He keeps his eyes closed. Raph’s wasting his time. Leo keeps letting him wasting it.
They stop. Raph asks something. ”Hey Mikey, could we start dinner?”
”Sure thing! Oh hey, Leo!” Lee hears Mikey say. He pretends to be asleep. He hears Mikey make a small gasp. ”Is he actually asleep? Like, unconscious, right now, getting Z’s?”
”Maybe,” They start walking to the kitchen. He hears Mikey’s steps too this time. ”he seemed sleepy when I picked him up. He could be awake though.” Raph is talking about him like he’s not there. Raph hopes on the chance that Leo is awake, he can hear the great things he has to say about him. Raph hopes the same amount on the chance that Leo is actually getting some sleep. Poor guy has bad insomnia.
”Y’know, when we were little, Lee used to always pretend to be asleep to get carried.” Raph reminisces.
”Aaaw,” Lee hears Mikey coo.
”Yeah, he was a great kid. Crazy, but great.” And Leonardo knows that’s not true. Maybe Raph believes it but he remembers being a pain in the shell. He wasn’t a great kid, not even good; He’s probably always been broken. Leonardo is doing a good job so far at being silent, even keeping some tears down (that no doubt would’ve come with some pathetic-sounding noise).
”He’s great now too.” Leonardo hears Mikey say and—god—do they know he’s awake? Are they lying right in front of him for fun? To see if they can break him?
”Yeah.” Raph is silent for a moment. ”Mike, I’m starting to think he’s not in the greatest mental spot right now.” Oh. So this is where it all ends. They reminisce on a time he was better (he realizes that they must just think that, because he was never good at all), and now they’re finally deciding to get rid of him. Take the dead weight of the team. Leonardo doesn’t know how they’ll do it but he hopes they’re kind about it (he remembers he doesn’t deserve that). ”I mean, it’s not like any of us are at our peak, but I think Leo’s not doing very well.”
Mikey replied with concern and somber in his voice. ”Oh no, poor Leo. Has anything bad happened?” And here it comes. The moment Leonardo will be ratted out as the failure he is (he doesn’t know what not eating is a failure of, but it’s a failure), and they’ll give up on him.
Raph answers. ”He said he hasn’t eaten since yesterday,” Mikey takes a small gasp, ”He feels slightly lighter too.” Raph is saying it like it’s a bad thing, ”I- I don’t know if he’s doing it on purpose, I’m just glad I found out before it’s been too long, but either way,” he pauses.
Leonardo mentally braces himself for the words that’ll come out of his mouth next.
”He needs help. We need to help him.” What?
Mikey responds with concern and determination somehow interlaced in the same tone. ”Oh yeah, absolutely. Does he still like blueberry pancakes? I’ll make breakfast for dinner.”
That’s Leo’s favorite dinner. And his favorite pancake flavor. This isn’t real. He’s dreaming. He’s going to wake up soon, back in his bed without blankets and this isn’t real.
”I don’t know, I’ll ask him.” Leonardo hears a chair get pulled out from their dining table and he’s let down into it by Raph. He pretends to just be waking up.
”Mm- Raph?”
”Hey Lee, we’re making breakfast for dinner.” So, he must’ve thought he actually fell asleep. Maybe Leonardo was getting better acting again. ”Do you still like blueberry pancakes?”
”Yeah, they’re my fave,” Leonardo’s trying to perform a bit better than 40 minutes ago in the kitchen. ”But I told you I’m not hungry, you can just save me a plate.” He tries getting up from the chair but Raph grabs him by the arm.
”Leo, eat. Please.”
Leo looks at him in the eyes. ”Can—can I not?”
Raph’s tone isn’t angry, or anything near it, but grave. ”Why?”
”I-”
”And you can’t you’re not hungry.” Well damn.
Leo looks at him in the eyes for a little longer. And then gives up (it shows in his face when he does). He sits down. Because why did he think he could get better.
Donnie comes in shortly afterward, staring at his phone and tapping away. ”Micheal, do we have bananas?” Mikey must’ve texted him that dinner’s being made.
”Yup!” Mikey replies, then slaps on some accent that makes him sound fancy, ”And don’t worry, dear brother Donatello, as always I will make sure they are nearly obliterated. They shall not appear in the texture of your flat cake made in a pan whatsoever!”
”Thanks Micheal you’re a real one.” Still staring at his phone, he finds a seat without bumping into anything, as if it was muscle memory.
Raph finally leaves his seat, presumably to go help Mikey cook the sides of egg and bacon. Leo is trying to keep his grip on the string as much as possible. He can’t lose it, especially now that he’s around all 3 of his brothers. If he forgets something bad could happen.
After a while, the food is done and everyone is eating. Except Leo. Leo is moving stuff around with a fork. It smells really, really good. Because it’s his favorite. And Mikey made it. Because that’s who his brothers are. Smart, Strong, Creative, but seemingly blind the second it’s their own brother they should despising. If Leo had himself as a brother he would hate him. He sure hates himself now.
Raph interrupts his thoughts. Leo is hanging on to the string with all of his might. “You gonna eat, Lee?”
“Yeah, I will.”
Raph keeps looking at him. Eventually he turns his head away to respond to something Mikey said.
Leo knew he shouldn’t have said anything. He shouldn’t have said he hadn’t eaten. Because now he’s here.
One bite can’t hurt, right?
And Lee, for the first time in around 16 hours, ate something. And the inside of his pancake is spotted blue, his favorite color.
And one day, shortly after, Lee asks Raph if he can talk about something.
And one day, shortly after, he sees himself in his blue mask, his favorite color. And for the first time, in a very long time, there’s a very small, quiet spark of fuchsia in his chest. Because blue is his favorite color. Blue, the most Leo color out there.
And one day, a long time after, he thinks about what happened. And he realizes he was trying his best. And he’s improved since, and he’ll keep improving.