Chapter Text
I'm dumb enough to storm the shores, yeah
There’s a red-light up ahead
I drive my car into it
I’m a little kid with a big death wish
- Baby Boy by Mother Mother
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It was quiet.
Leo didn't like the quiet.
Quiet was three AM. When he was the only one awake, the worst part of his insomnia because it would inherently create a pocket of time in the day when Leo was alone as everyone else was asleep. Except for Leo, who would lay in silence and convince himself that the quiet was just rest, it wasn't abandonment, it wasn't loneliness. It was needed. He hated it anyway.
Quiet was meditating. His least favourite training activity, where they sat still and silent and tried to centre their minds. Leo was not someone who was made to be left alone with their own thoughts, as they were often far more cruel than anything anyone had ever said to him. But still they would sit in the quiet and Leo would ache and ache to break it, and often would, because he couldn't stand the sound of his own head.
Quiet was the med bay. Even with the tick of a heart monitor, no one was ever cracking jokes or laughing if they had to be there. The med bay may have been his domain, the place he felt the most safe and the most comfortable, but that didn't mean it wasn't heart-breakingly quiet.
Leo was currently experiencing a very different kind of quiet. He didn't quite think he'd ever been in a quiet like it before, actually. A sheer absence of sound, a void, consuming and crushing.
The void. An endless space, like a prison dimension.
Terror managed to pierce the apathy. Was it the prison dimension? He had a shoddy memory of being pulled from it, but it was all blurred and there had been rather a lot of blood. But with the terrible quiet still surrounding him, sending a haunted chill down to his bones, Leo wondered if maybe he'd been imagining that rescue.
He was almost certain his brothers had managed to drag him home in one piece. Well, maybe not 'one piece'.
The panic, the need to know, was it real or fake? A distant beep shattered the fragile shroud. Repetitive. Changing one quiet for another.
The familiar hush of the med bay. Leo felt inside his body, the sensations of pain and heavy, leaden exhaustion. There was something on either side of him, warm and sturdy. Braced against his aching shell.
Leo needed to know. He wiggled his fingers. The left moved. The right did not.
It was funny, because that was relief. Definitely not the emotion most people felt at realizing they'd lost their right arm, but for Leo in that moment it meant that the rescue had been real, and the void was gone, and he was safe. Even as awareness filtered in more and the understanding that the strong, unwavering support surrounding him was his big brother.
Then the second thought hit. The 'oh I just lost my arm'. His breath hitched, true crawling terror pin-pricking up his spine, compounded with the real honest pain from blows he didn't want to think about.
"Hey, hey." Raph's voice came to him as if listening through a waterfall. Distant, muffled, and quiet. Too quiet. "You're okay, Raph's got you. You're fine. You with us? Leo?"
The panic intensified when Leo realized he couldn't actually respond. His eyes were sandbags, no matter how hard he struggled with his body it did not cooperate. No flicker or vibrations from his throat.
Raph curled closer, giving Leo's plastron a soft rub like he was still a kid vomiting in the night again, and a fond kiss to the top of his head. "Everything's gonna be okay."
The beeping was fading into white noise. The tone of Raph's voice disappearing into the quiet again. Leo tumbled back into the void, unable to escape.
The panic remained. He didn't want to be here. He wanted to reassure everyone, he wanted to see if they were okay. But the relentless wrenched horror of his missing arm and the Kraang and --
Oh. The quiet shifted. And the void wasn't like the prison dimension. It was more like 3AM. Alone, but with the promise of something else.
Leo desperately tried to grasp onto the feeling, but he was tired and weak. Instead his upset mind wailed for a while, letting his psyche become sore, because he didn't have the strength to try.
A pinch of real pain pulled Leo back into his aching body. Someone apologized, the gnawing feeling at the end of what remained of his right arm getting softly padded.
Leo realized, startled, that his eyes were actually open. They were focused on a blur in the middle distance, but he hadn't been asleep like he'd assumed. His eyes were open and he couldn't get them to cooperate, to focus.
"I think he flinched." Raph said. He was nearby, though not surrounding like last time. He was on Leo's left.
"Could be a reflex." Donnie said, leaning into his line of sight from the right. Leo couldn't get his gaze to focus, leaving an indistinct purple blur. Donnie pulled out something from the pocket of his hoodie and used it to shine a light in Leo's eyes, flicking in and away.
Leo was freaked out that he couldn't open his mouth and tell Donnie to knock it off. The best he managed was a tiny flinch away from the light.
"A little awareness, at least." Donnie reported. "Hi Leon, you're okay. Can you try and focus on me?"
With no response, Donnie reached out and took Leo's hand, giving a tight squeeze. The feedback raced up his arm, but he couldn't manage to squeeze back.
Donnie gave a shaky breath. Raph said, hopeful, "Anything?"
"I don't think so." Donnie said, quietly. It was too freaking quiet.
The hands let go. The purple blur moved. Leo's hand felt cold. The encroaching void sat on the edge of his awareness and the more he noticed it, the closer it got, until his vision was swallowed on either side by darkness. Terrifying. Alone.
It was quiet. There was a ringing in his ears. Leo was alone in the void.
No. It was 3AM. It was metaphorical 3AM. He could feel in the void, the shroud, like sitting in the shade. There was--
His body prickled with goosebumps. Because he had a body. The horror, chilled and wormed into his marrow. He blinked slow, because his eyes were open again before he'd even sunk into his skin.
Still his med bay. The beeping, like listening through cotton. He was sitting up, but otherwise unmoving.
Donnie was taking notes, just barely in Leo's middle-distance stare. The beeping continued. Leo's lungs spasmed as he fought for control, as he tried to suck in a breath, and it stuttered.
The tapping paused. Donnie put down the tablet and touched Leo's knees as he stood in front of him.
"Leonardo." Donnie prompted, firm. "Are you with me?"
Leo's body only provided the automatic nervous system cycle of breathing and the thoughtless blink of his eyes. He couldn't push harder than that to break through. Donnie didn't move this time, staring searchingly. Leo managed to harness the blink a few times in succession, trying to clear the middle distance blur and focus on his twin.
It settled. Heart-wrenching worry was painted on Donnie's face, a miserable twist to his mouth, a darkness heavy over his expression, dread hot-mixed with concern. When Leo's eyes focused on him, his twin immediately caught the change.
"Hi Leon." Donnie tried again, swallowing hard. "You're okay. You've been experiencing some catatonic disassociation. I'm going to need you to work with me. Do you think you could do that?"
Leo would love to. That terror, however, clasped talons around his heart and yanked him back into the void so quickly it was as if he'd never surfaced at all, plunging head first into the shade. Like free fall.
The claws of fear pierced his armour, a mental shell encasing him. The darkness was not protection, it was a prison echoing with the thunder of his own heart. Lonely and scared. It was quiet. It was 3AM.
It was 3AM. Why was that important? Leo hung in the suspension, trapped and writhing, the loneliness physical and painful, more than the bruises and the cracked shell and broken ribs and missing arm. It was the quiet. But the thing about the quiet of 3AM was that he could always wake someone.
But who could he wake in here?
A squeeze, his left hand fingers crammed together so hard it pulsed his body into itself again. Ah right, his body, his damn stupid body. Broken and stupid. Stupid.
Something was wrong. Leo's eyes were closed so he opened them. Beside him was a spot of orange. Med bay. Mikey had his hand and he was crying.
That took longer to comprehend. The ringing in his ears cleared slow. The tremble of Mikey's indistinct shoulders, and that was wrong. That was so wrong, Mikey wasn't supposed to cry in earnest, with whole body sobs wracking his form and stealing his breath. And since he was clutching Leo's hand, it gave the uncomfortable knowledge that maybe he was crying over Leo. And Leo sure as hell couldn't have that.
He couldn't get his eyes to focus, he couldn't push his head up. It took every inch of willpower, but Leo curled his fingers. It was meant to be a squeeze, but it didn't quite get there.
The sobbing stopped so quick that Leo was afraid Mikey wasn't breathing. Then his baby brother raised his head slow, eyes red, and stared at Leo. He gave a trembling, "Leo?"
Leo wanted to reply. An impossible weight crushing his chest wouldn't allow him to inflate his lungs enough to push anything past his lips.
"Are you there?" Mikey leaned forward, bottom lip trembling, glancing between Leo's unresponsive face and his fingers. "Can you focus on my voice? Don said we've got to ground you, I did a bunch of reading--"
Then Mikey's voice broke, it shattered, and he turned away to sob into his hands, hiding his face. The miserable sound became wails, "You're not there! I'm just making it up, I'm--"
Leo wished he was there. He really, really did. Instead, the shade returned. The backslide was sudden and fast, plummeting and launched out of physical sensations at top speed.
Fine. Whatever. He could stay here. Like sitting alone underneath a large tree. Branches swaying, casting uneven shadows. It was quiet. It was 3AM. Someone else was awake.
... what?
Leo's mind rebelled against the sensation. The heaviness burst into awareness, body, limbs, lungs, blinking. The middle distance he'd apparently been staring in focused. Leo was awake. Leo was aware. Leo was alive.
Being alive wasn't something he thought he'd be. It was maybe hard to cope with. But right now, he didn't want to sink back into the void, he wanted to know why he was sitting across from his dad.
Leo was on the floor, cross legged. Splinter was in front of him, mirrored position. He narrated, in a calm measured voice like he'd been speaking for a while, "Deep breath in, Blue. Hold it. Think about it. Then we release, slowly. Let your thoughts brush away. You are in control."
That was a cute thought. Leo let his eyes shut. He listened to Splinter talk, and with enough slow care, he convinced his lungs to follow the pattern his father was setting.
After a minute of Leo following, Splinter asked, "Are you listening, my sweet baby blue? Inhale deep, from the bottom of your lungs."
Leo inhaled deep from the bottom of his lungs.
"Oh." Splinter said, voice wobbling a little. "It is good to have you back, Leonardo. Exhale, with purpose. Keep your pace steady."
Leo exhaled, steady.
"Good boy. Your brothers will be happy to hear you have found a small amount of purchase. Inhale again, keep it slow and hold."
Inhale. Hold.
"Exhale, careful, and try to open your eyes for me, my son."
Leo exhaled. He didn't let himself think, eyes flickering open, starting with the middle distance but focusing on his dad after a second.
Splinter's eyes were wet. "I am relieved to see you. We are going to take things slow right now, okay? Let's inhale together."
They inhaled. Splinter's was very shaky. He kept steady eye contact, like Leo might vanish.
He might. Leo didn't know how to feel. The calm instructions were a tether but it was undeniably precarious, as if he was standing on the very lip of the shade, toes inside, waiting for any slip to hurtle him back into the protective walls.
"You are fine and you are safe. You have nothing to fear. We are taking care of you and we are taking care of each other." Splinter told him, incredibly precise, everything in his posture screaming grave. Nothing like his silly dad. Leo would give him a hard time if he could move.
"Inhale. Keep it slow, remain calm. There is no rush. We have lots of time. Feel the dojo under your heels. Keep looking at me. Exhale."
Dad didn't think there was any danger. Leo tried to take solace, tried to let the edge creep away.
"I am so incredibly proud of you." Splinter said, and that made everything wobble in a different way. "You are so strong. You are my sweet baby blue. You can get through this like you get through everything, with resilience and tenacity. You survived."
Leo fell.
The shade took him back. It did not hesitate, it enveloped him immediate and fast, all progress gone immediately. It was discouraging and painful.
The void was cold and quiet. There was a thick emotion swimming in it, like grief. It consumed and made everything sludge. The shade was muck and contaminated.
It took too long to realize the grief made no sense, because no one was dead. Almost as if the grief belonged to someone else. A feeling of being watched, like glancing out a dark window and spotting a person-shape looming. Leo panicked. He woke up.
He was in his own bed. A fan was buzzing in the corner. All his brothers knew the song and dance for the local insomniac to drift off: the night light that Donnie graciously pretended wasn't a night light when he made it for him, the perfect temperature mitigated by the fan in the corner providing both a breeze and white noise, three blankets, one over his feet and two stacked over each other, skincare routine, face mask, fifty pillows approximately --
Someone had put Leo in his exact specifications and let him sleep. The only thing different was a finger clip, just the smallest pinch. It looked like a heartbeat monitor, but small, wireless, and purple.
Leo didn't like the pinch, so he took it off, turning his finger into his palm and tugging. That was the extent of his movement capabilities, laying on his side and staring at the purple in the palm of his hand to try and figure out what it was.
Only when his door burst open did his slow brain connect that perhaps it was a heartbeat monitor, and Leo had just taken it off.
Donnie had an enormous red hoodie on, almost past his bare knees. He was breathing hard and said in a strangled voice, "If you're dead I'm actually going to kill you."
His twin crossed the room in two strides and immediately stumbled when he saw Leo's face. "Oh shit, you're awake. Did you take the monitor off yourself?"
After a moment of no reply, Donnie crouched beside Leo's bed and with surprising gentleness took the monitor from his palm. "Thanks for the heart attack. Do you mind keeping this on? It's letting me know you're alive."
The clip was carefully placed back on his finger. There was a long pause. Leo hated the quiet.
"Are you with me, Leon?" Donnie said, and the worst part was that there was absolutely no hope in the question. Donnie must've asked a hundred times and gotten no response to sound so defeated.
Donnie rubbed his face hard and gave a deep sigh. "You must've taken it off. There's no other logical explanation. I feel so stupid to try when I don't think you can actually hear me, but Dad said he got really far doing grounding with you. So let's try? Hi Leon. It's three forty-two AM. You are safe at home, in your bed room, wrapped in your blankets. You are here with your twin brother Donnie. I'm not going anywhere. You can breathe. Okay? Let's breathe. Inhale with me. Hold. Exhale. Slow. I hate this, for the record. Inhale. Hold. Exhale."
Leo breathed. Something lit in Donnie's eyes. He gave an awful smile. "Oh. Hi. You're actually here."
Leo inhaled. Without thinking too hard, he took the monitor off into the palm of his hand again.
"I... hate you." Donnie said, but his eyes were sparkling. "Why is that the first thing you do? Do you exist to annoy me?"
That wasn't it. Leo knew the reason he was doing it, but couldn't articulate. He stared at the purple in the palm of his hand.
"We're exhaling." Donnie said, doing it too. "Hold. Inhale. You don't need me to tell you that we all love you very much, I trust you're smart enough to know that. Exhale. Do you think you could answer a question or two? It's really important."
Hm. That sounded hard. He didn't know how he'd manage, when he was barely a fingertip above the dark water of the void.
"Leon, look at me." Donnie reached out and held his face with his palm, eyes intent and serious. "Are you in any pain?"
Pain.
"You're okay, hey, keep looking at me, keep looking at me." Donnie had never sounded so gentle in his entire life. It was putting Leo on pins and needles. Precarious tenterhooks in his body, keeping him there.
"Right now, is there any pain? Focus on the feeling."
Feeling. Leo hated that. He knew Donnie did too. Donnie was only asking because it was important. And Donnie kind of looked like he might cry, and if Mikey crying was bad then Donnie crying was apocalyptic, end of the world. He couldn't have that. Leo let himself feel his body.
It was pretty sore. But in an old way, like it'd been healing for a few days and he hadn't been there for it. Bruised, through muscle and bone. Burning lines of pain, running up and down his nerves if he focused too long, especially around the missing arm. It was all fuzzy, like he wasn't really sitting in it properly.
Leo dropped the clip in his hand and raised his fingers in an 'ok'.
Donnie gave a full body shudder. His head fell against Leo's shoulder, quivering a little, and didn't speak. After a long moment, Leo pushed his head into his twin. Just enough that he could feel the intent.
"Okay." Donnie whispered, and pulled away, immediately wiping at his eyes with the long red sleeve of his borrowed hoodie and destroying any evidence of tears. "You're okay. I'm okay. We're all okay."
Leo felt bad for making him cry. He reached out and grabbed the edge of Donnie's sleeve, giving just a little tug.
Donnie froze, midway through the scrub of his face with over-long sleeve, turning to see Leo holding the other side.
Leo tugged again.
"You are metaphorically breaking my heart right now, I hope you know that." Donnie said, sitting back down and scooting closer. When Donnie blinked, the statement was proven by the single tear that escaped down his cheek. "I'm right here. Everything's okay. I know it's a big ask, but if you need something, could you let me know? I've been trying to anticipate everything you might need but, I'm flying a little blind without your input. Anything feel weird? Are we missing anything?"
Leo ran the rambled sentences through his mind a couple times, still clutching the too-long sleeve. Donnie always looked smaller when he wore Raph's clothes, all his lithe lines cut into shapeless, little brother in his big brother's clothes.
Nothing was uncomfortable. All the hurts seemed tended to. If Donnie said he was okay, he would've made sure of it. He let go so he could raise the 'ok' symbol again.
Donnie gave a reluctant nod. "I'd like to discuss grounding, if that's okay. Our research suggests developing a system. They tend to use a one-to-five scale, since the human bias of five fingers, but I think we can adapt three fingers if we use zero to get four levels."
Leo had no idea what Donnie was talking about and the familiarity of it almost made him smile.
"We want to know how grounded you feel in a given moment." Donnie explained, holding up his hand in a fist in example. "A zero is not very grounded at all, very close to losing grip again."
Numbers. Of course Donnie wanted to introduce numbers into his crisis. The line of determination in Donnie's brow provided Leo more bemusement. His twin was taking this very seriously.
"One finger." Donnie raised his first finger in show. "Somewhat stable. Two fingers. Aware and capable but not completely present. Three digits -- " Donnie raised his thumb for a full hand. "You are completely present and aware. Understand?"
Even Leo could count to four. He raised the 'ok' symbol again.
"For this moment, can I have a number on the scale?" Donnie prompted.
Leo considered it. He would not give himself even remotely stable. His closed the 'ok' into a fist.
Donnie visibly chewed his lip, then offered an uneasy grimace that maybe was meant to be a smile if Donnie was someone else. "Gotcha. Thank you for working with me. Can we try and get that up to a one, maybe? I can talk you through some more breathing exercises."
It was so much effort to try and communicate, but Donnie was worth it. Leo raised his open hand underneath his chin, pulling to the side and closing his fingers. Dull.
Donnie laughed brokenly. "Yeah, I bet. Can't say you've been doing anything too exciting lately. I'd be..."
Whatever Donnie was saying disappeared, as the racehorse of Leo's thought galloped ahead of him and fuzzed his hearing. His mind signalled panic, and it was stupid, but his thoughts went so fast. He hadn't done anything exciting lately because he'd been in pain and alone and he shouldn't have let himself think because thinking was bad.
The shade returned, bringing quiet. Stuck. Rock and a hard place. The shade swallowed him, wrapped around his throat, crushing his chest.
Leo was relatively sure that the shade was no longer the metaphorical 3AM, where Leo was alone because everyone else was sleep. It felt more like the quiet of meditating. Leo was alone because everyone else was quiet.
The oppressive quiet was just as hard to cope with as when he was actually conscious. But he could no longer deny the sensation as he sat in the flickering shade. It was as if there was someone sitting silently in there with him.
'Who's there?' Leo asked, scared.
There was no reply. The void was as nothing as it always was. Not even a flutter of change, no acknowledgement.
Leo didn't ask again. He didn't like the feeling that he was losing his mind. It was unsettling.