Work Text:
Bathed in the dying fragments of aureate splendor, Leo breathes: a choked-off, sawing chain of wheezes, each more rasping than the last. His eyelids slip to half-mast without permission, fluttering between three hovering silhouettes and the black wisps of smoke still misting the horizon. Iron wells in the cavity of his sinuses.
"Hey," he says— coughs, baring cracked porcelain to his audience in a winning rictus. It punches right out of his chest, a convulsion of tangled, numb meat clutched loose in his mouth.
"Leo." Raph's hands quake as they frame his cheekbones. "Leo."
Bracingly: "Just hold on."
Leo does.|