Come out Come out 01

Leonardo sat down on his legs as he placed the tray of food outside of Donatello’s lab. He found it difficult to swallow in the oppressing silence. It had been some time since… since what had happened with April. At first, everything was going back to normal… but something had broken inside his gentle brother. Something that they had not seen; the tiny pencil line through Donnie’s heart. Each day it grew thicker and thicker. It had been a slow process, so slow that they had not seen it developing. Tiny steps were taken backwards, away from April, away from family. With each step his shoulders had slumped more and more, his arms raised higher and higher until he was holding onto himself in the darkness with only his tears to comfort him.

Less and less he ate. Less and less did he show his face. Less and less was he the Donatello that Leo had known and Leonardo had hated himself for that. He blamed himself for ever allowing any of this to happen. He should have been there for Donnie. He should have forbidden his brother from ever developing feelings beyond friendship for April! He should have seen it coming! He should have-

Leo closed his eyes so tight that his lids ached. He clenched his hands into white knuckled fists that rested on his thighs. Faced with the bleak emptiness of his home only made everything that much worse. He wasn’t blind to the facts; they were mutants. No one could relate to them besides other mutants. He could relate to Donnie for being in love with a human but… but now Karai was a mutant too…. April wasn’t. Betrayed by one’s love interest… Raph could relate but… Mona Lisa confessed her heart to their brother, all April seemed to do was pull Donnie along, unable to make a decision between the turtle and Casey Jones. But none of them- NONE of them- could relate to the fact that the person they loved the most in life had… had killed them and put them back together again. The sense of betrayal would be like no other. The hurt. The fear.

He hated himself for not seeing that before! He was the leader, the older brother, he should have seen it! He should have know! He should have protected!!

But this wasn’t about him. This was about Donnie. His sweet little brother, who had given everything up…

He swallowed. Took a few calming breaths before schooling his face into a smile. He raised up a fist and knocked on the lab door.

“Donnie?” He spoke softly. He had to repeat himself, louder, since he was certain his brother could not hear his first call through the door. “Donnie?”

When there was no reply he just talked, keeping his tone as light as he could keep it. “I brought you dinner. Sensei made fish and rice… i-it’s really good. You should eat it.”

He raised up his hands, a strange chill running through his body. Something was so very wrong.

Nestled in his palm was a wrinkled piece of purple fabric. His heart started to beat fast as he hurriedly placed it on the floor in front of him. His teeth clenched as he tried to desperately smooth out all the wrinkles.

He needed to preserve it. He needed to keep it nice. Donnie would want this back when he was better.

Leo’s fingers carefully pressed around the edges of the eye holes of the mask. No one had eyes like Donnie’s…

A smile forced itself onto the leader’s lips. He carefully picked up the mask. He tilted his head and looked through the holes as if he could see Donnie’s eyes looking right back at him.

Donnie.

“Hi Donnie.” Leo smiled a bit more despite the fact that it seemed a bit darker than usual.

A soft, slender hand touched his shoulder. Leonardo’s heart stopped. His thoughts halted as the darkness rushed forward to press against his skin.

“Leonardo?”

Leo jerked his attention to Splinter.

“What are you doing with this, my son?” Splinter leaned down, his hand reaching for the purple mask. Leo deftly watched as his father started to remove it from his grasp. “This should be in the family shrine with his picture.”

No.

“You should not carry this around with you, my son. If we are to preserve his memory-”

A flash of memory- Donnie’s picture right next to the one of Tang Shen, the mask folded and placed right in front of it as Splinter lit incense and candles for remembering the dead.

“NO!”

The turtle lunged forward, grabbing at the mask.

Everything fell away, no floor to catch his feet, no father in front of him to stop him. All there was to see was darkness and the mask. He clawed in the darkness to snatch up the mask. He clung onto it, held it to his heart as he curled up into a ball.

When Leonardo woke up he could feel his heart beating in his throat and his body was coated in sweat. He stared up at the emptiness above him in the dark room.

It was so dark.

It was so cold.

His eyes narrowed, tears forming at the edges. The tears rolled down his temples, becoming larger and larger as he felt something terrible clench his chest. His body began to tremble as once more he had to come and face the reality that his brother was gone, done in by the woman he had loved.

She had begged for their forgiveness. She had openly wept. The sound of her voice as she tried to apologize to Splinter,  on her hands and knees on the tatami mats of the dojo. It was so painful, but it was nothing compared to his own pain. April's emotions were only jetsam floating in the raging sea of chaos that happened afterwords. He could still hear Splinter's soft cries that he had tried to hide as he put a new picture to the family shrine that honored their dead. He heard Raphael's rage and sorrow as he broke anything that could be smashed. He heard Mikey's screams for Raph to calm down, begging him not to break anything in Donatello's room or his lab. The image of Raph's feral eyes washed with hot tears open wide with realization of the implications, it was burned into his memory. The way Mikey bared the door, expression broken and pained. Raph had pressed his hands to his face and screamed as he fell to his knees. Mikey rushed to him, throwing his little body over his brother's shell as if he could shield him from harsh reality.

It was all burned into him. Branded like a hot iron to the thigh.

He gasped for breath. It seemed difficult to exhale as the tears continued to fall and his body shook. He raised his hands above his face, barely able to see the blurred shapes. His fingers curled, nails biting into his palms as he pressed his fists against his eyes.

Silently he wept.

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Leonardo had no idea what time it was until he got out of bed. It was as if the act of crying had drained all the energy out of him forcing him to fall back to sleep. It took a lot of energy to get himself out of bed. He had not even tried to put on his gear. He had hesitated at his door, not sure if he had wanted to even leave his room or not. He knew what would be on the other side. Silence that nibbled away at his sanity. Darkness that forced his shoulders to hunch and his back to bend under its weight.

Still, he reached forward, turned the nob and exited.

As true to form Mikey was curled up in a ball on one of the sofas. His eyes stared at the TV that had such low sound it was better off muted. The sliding doors to the dojo were open and Raph was inside, trying to meditate with their Master. It was an odd turn of events but when Raph had caught their father crying late one night he had took it upon himself to try and encourage the rat. And while Leo had started to drift away from everyone, Raph seemed to have stepped forward and had taken his place as leader and rational thinker.  The only time that Leonardo got to see his brother's famous hot temper were on the rare occasions that Casey Jones would come to visit. He looked forward to those days, Casey was loud and pulled his brothers out of their shells. Mikey would be bubbly for as long as Casey stayed. Raph would tussle with their human friend and they would get into punching contests. Leo would sit with their father and watch as a tiny bit of normality pushed back the harshness of reality. Then... Casey would go. He would leave them and return to his home on the surface plunging them back into the darkness.

“You wanna watch some Space Heroes, Leo?” Mikey's voice was small, his eyes still glued to the tv in front of him.

Leonardo stopped for a moment. He looked at the static covered screen. It was still good enough to watch a tv show or a movie through the interference.

When his big brother had not answered Mikey continued to talk, “The picture is not the greatest... Can't seem to get good reception even when I mess with the antenna.”

It was a few moments before the leader finally spoke up, “It... it runs off of cable, Mikey. We don't have an antenna.”

“Well how am I supposed to know that!” Michelangelo snapped. He pulled his knees up to his chest and grumpily folded his arms over them. “I'm not the one that set this up! I don't know how to fix something like this! It just started up two weeks after Don-” The youngest turtle's eyes started to burn, tears welled up. His voice went back down to a whisper. “When... Donnie...”

Mikey buried his face into his crossed arms and started to cry. Leo held out a hand towards his baby brother for a moment before lowering it limply to his side. He slowly blinked. Turned and walked away. There was nothing he could do to comfort the orange clad turtle. Nothing at all.

Leo walked over to the kitchen, stood in the entrance for a bit. Long enough to hear Raphael's voice trying to calm Mikey down. He must have come running when he heard the sorrowful wails.

Deciding that he had lost his apatite, that is, if he even had one to begin with, Leo wondered into Donatello's lab. He left the door open, Mikey's sniffling was winding down, drifting farther away as Raph took their baby brother to the dojo. It left everything in silence once more. Except, with the door open he could barely hear the static filtered tv in the front room. It seemed to describe what he was seeing; a perfectly preserved lab that didn't seem real any more.

Things that showed that Donatello was around were slowly disappearing. No more cups full of coffee. No more new sketches taped onto boards, or new motor oil stains on the floor. No new projects. No old ones... only unfinished ones.

The tv started to get louder. He glanced over his shoulder to see that the rest of his family were huddled together on the sofa now, trying to watch something together. Trying to cheer Mikey up with the last reserves of cheer left in them.

Leo sighed heavily, his shoulder slumping forward a little. He dragged his feet across the cold floor, in the dark, dark room. There was a small cot where Donnie would sleep at times when too tired to get to his room. Leo laid down, carefully, pulling over himself the rumpled bedding until his head was covered and there was nothing but him and the darkness, leaving his family to watch their shows until they turned off the tv and went to bed.

Everything was soft, it was warm too. He could hear the sounds of the sea rolling. A breeze brushed against his face, he could smell the salty air. He opened his eyes seeing the ocean that stretched on for as far as his eyes could see. There was a soft sandy beach, craggy boulders littered the beach along with tall tufts of grass.

Down by the water was a tall figure staring out into the endless blue.

Leo's heart stopped. He couldn't even breathe before his legs started to move. He plunged forward, arms pinwheeling until he caught his balance.

“Donnie!! DONNIE!!!”

He ran as fast as he could to his brother. He reached out his hand to grab onto the olive turtle. For a moment he felt flesh before it gave, popping like a bubble, bursting the calm scenery away. Everything was violently thrust into a strange world of dark greens and blues.

Leo shuffled his feet, frantically turning around to see where Donatello had disappeared to.

“DONNIE!!!”

The only reply he got was the sound of twisting metal, groaning and squeaking above him. He took a step back, looking up. His eyes grew wide.

A boat? Ship?  What the hell was that over his head?!

There was a terrible scratching sound that arouse. A white noise that bleached out everything else around him. His hands flew up to his head, pressing his palms against his ear slits as hard as he could as the scratching screamed and blurred with static. The pain was so intense that it forced Leonardo onto his knees. Instead of sand he felt hard metal. Pressure from the sound itself crowded him, shoving hard, stealing his breath. He tried screaming to feel a break from the onslaught. When that brought no relief he tried hitting his head against the metallic floor. Over and over again he beat his head down, using his own hands to give him extra strength to clang his skull against the unforgiving surface.

Then, as soon as it had started, it had stopped, replaced with a soft static and strange beeps and clicks.

Leo collapsed onto his side, breathing hard, too hard to swallow as some saliva slipped from the corner of his mouth.

“....cho...... r-y...... p....p... ho....”

The turtle winced from the new sounds, bits and pieces of radio static coming together to make disjointed sounds. He let out a whimper from the back of his throat as it continued to make the strangest noise, like an animal trying to talk.

“....r....in....mike...........o......ember.......go....”

Mike... Mikey?

There was a blinding flash of light and for a brief moment he thought he saw something, towering, misshapen. Then that terrible sound came again. Harsh and hating, biting into his brain with cold teeth.

Leonardo woke up thrusting himself forward. His breath held in his throat he looked around.

He was in Donnie's bedroom... How did he get there?

He saw the glowing numbers of the clock on Donatello's bookshelf. The PM light was on as it showed him the time.

He felt a shiver run down his shell... when did he get there?