Chapter Text
His hands are shaking.
Leonardo grits his teeth, bowing his head. Meditation never came easily to him anymore. Not with the ache in his heart.
He should be better than this.
As a leader he should have an impassive countenance, he should be always calm no matter what storm winds rage around him. However, he’s not. He’s helplessly whipping harshly about like the snapping of a flag in the howling churning gales. He’s holding on, clinging tooth and nail onto a cliff that he feels like he is about to plummet from. As the oldest, he should know exactly what to do.
With their father gone, Leonardo needed to be the unyielding stone that the others could rely on, the moor in the harbor. He had to be the security in a world where there wasn’t any.
How could he when he was shattered and broken as he was?
The guilt was all-consuming, the shame like the heat of the sun beating down on his back relentlessly burning, peeling skin ripping like a constantly oozing wound. It pulsed and ached, but he didn’t know how to fix the necrotic damage worming its way toward his heart.
“I can’t do this without you, Master. They are all relying on me…but I can’t…”
He’s desperately tried to meditate to reach the Astral Plane, however, his Chi is painfully tied into knots. It refuses to flow, refuses to cooperate. The one way he might see his father again, to speak with him. Leonardo cannot do even that. He can’t find answers, he is spinning out of control in a rapid free fall, and he doesn’t know how to stop it.
Swallowing painfully, he takes a deep breath.
Suddenly, he hears a knock from the other side of the dojo’s door.
“Bro…It’s me. I uh- I know—” There is a long pause a shuddering breath as if the words had gotten clogged in his throat.
‘Michelangelo. His little brother is relying on him. They all are.’
He hears movement on the other side, he can imagine Mikey shuffling about like he always does whenever he’s genuinely anxious. It makes his heart ache, yet Leonardo’s bones feel as if they have been filled with molten lead. The oldest brother can’t move.
‘He needs him.’
There is a sigh. “I just—I brought you breakfast? If you want to come and get it? It’s soft fried eggs, like you like them…and some toast. Are you hungry, dude? I mean—I don’t ever see you come out to eat. Unless you do and I just don’t see it but-“ His brother rambles, and Leonardo bows his head deeper with every word. His voice is grating against his senses, he can’t possibly know what to say in response. “I just don’t want it to get cold, you know?”
Michelangelo’s voice cracks and Leonardo presses his hands to his face as if to try and hide the deep shame in his eyes.
He should be stronger.
“Can you just…open the door? Please, bro....”
–But he’s not.
“Please.” Mikey’s voice is small and frail. As if he struggles to push the words out, and Leo should be there. He shouldn’t allow his brother to sound so close to a sob. As the oldest, it was his responsibility to comfort him.
He can’t move.
He just…can’t.
There’s a soft sigh. “It’s okay, bro. No hard feelings—I get it. I’ll just…leave your food here outside your door, yeah? If you need anything, let me know.” There is the sound of a plate being set down, ceramic against concrete. “I mean it, Leo. I know… I know you like to do things on your own. You don’t have to though…not this time. We’re here. You just—need to open the door for someone.”
How, when the door is so impossibly far away?
Leonardo can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t move.
“I’ll be here when you need me, okay? Whenever you’re ready.” Came Michelangelo’s final words, and Leonardo gripped his head. Why can’t he say anything?
He’s failing them.
Failing his father.
Yet despite the fact, despite the way it settles into his bone like a brand from a hot iron—he still can’t do anything. He can’t pick himself up off the dojo floor.
Can’t. Can’t. CAN’T.
His mind remembers a haiku he had written before, back when he was still in the farmhouse and had woken up to a shattered knee and stitches in his throat. Leonardo wanted to do more, just like now. Yet he couldn’t. He had been physically incapable of it.
What was his excuse now?
Nothing.
Still, those words he had written still seemed applicable to everything. To every rise and fall of his turbulent emotions, to every time he opened his mouth, and no words came out. His feelings were strangling out the thoughts he tried to verbalize. He couldn’t speak past the bloody raw agony in his chest.
Thousands of words penned.
Yet my tongue stalls upon sound.
My voice is not mine.
He turns back to his father’s picture, haggard world-weary eyes bleary and unfocused as they land on the photograph. There were so many lessons he could have learned still from his father, so many questions he desperately needed answers to. Though he wasn’t here, he couldn’t help him anymore.
Golden signs of fall.
The tree has to be without.
The leaf leaves the branch.
He wasn’t here, and Leonardo wasn’t sure what to do anymore. The ache in his soul didn’t want to dissipate. Crushed underneath the weight, he could do nothing but buckle underneath it.
Leonardo Hamato was the oldest, the leader—it was his job to guide his brothers now. How, though—could the blind lead the blind? He was lost at sea cast adrift helplessly by the currents. The sky was dark and overcast above him, the storm swallowing up the stars and leaving him with no way to find himself.
Leonardo was supposed to be a leader.
He felt like a fraud.
During the period in which everyone was asleep, it was easier for the lead in Leonardo’s bones to retreat for long enough that he could lethargically summon the will to step out of the dojo.
Feeling guilt rises like bile in the back of his throat, he stepped over the plate of cold breakfast that had been left for him.
Searching through the kitchen for something easy to eat that he wouldn’t need to cook, he looked around and sifted through the various cabinets. Though they were more barren than usual. Maybe if Mikey was the one organizing the kitchen, he’d put things into random spots.
With that thought, he began looking in cabinets he normally wouldn’t on the off chance that his youngest brother had tucked something away where it didn’t belong. Reaching the cabinet under the sink, he furrowed his hairless brows when he saw something tucked behind the box of garbage bags and cleaning supplies is a carton of brown glass bottles.
Alcohol?
“What the fuck are you doing, Fearless?”
Leonardo doesn’t jerk at the sound. He should have heard him— should have been paying more attention instead of being stuck in his head.
The older brother doesn’t respond, instead pulling out the container of beer and setting it out on the table pointedly, the glass rattled together as he did. “What is this?”
“Stay the hell out of my stuff!” Raphael was never afraid, always questioning his authority at every turn. Did he not trust him, did he not understand that Leonardo only wanted the best for him? Yet despite that, he still had to rebel constantly. He was never happy that Leonardo was the leader, never accepted it.
He bared his teeth. “You shouldn’t even have this! Where did you get this? How long have you been poisoning yourself, huh?”
“It doesn’t matter!” The red-masked brother got up in his face, like always. They could never just have a conversation, they always had to scream because Raphael would never listen. Why wouldn’t he just listen to him for once? “Just leave it alone!”
“I won’t leave this alone!” He roars in return. Because how could he possibly? “Master Splinter wouldn’t want this-“
The punch he should have seen coming. He felt his jaw bloom in pain as he staggered back, his shell hitting the edge of the counter. “You don’t know what he would want because he’s dead! No matter how much you’d like to think you’re him, Leo—you aren’t! You’re just annoying, and pushy, and you stick your nose into things that don’t even involve you. So, stay out of it!”
Something in Leonardo snaps.
Suddenly they are fighting. His fist meets Raphael’s face in return, and he’s being shoved back. He snarls, a deep and feral sound in the back of his throat. He screams and screams, he doesn’t recognize his own voice. He thinks Raphael is shouting too, but he can’t tell. He’s lost in the motions of feeling his knuckles crack against flesh and bone. In that moment, he doesn’t see Raphael—his immediate younger brother…instead he sees every enemy he’s ever fought. He hears Shredder’s taunting voice in his head, and he feels the adrenaline roar in his system like a tidal wave. His mind is lost in the memories as it mixes with reality and creates a nightmarish landscape for the oldest brother.
It’s not practiced and methodical, Leonardo isn’t worried about his form or technique—he just wants to hurt.
How dare Shredder take his father, how dare he come back.
He doesn’t even recognize the distant sound of some distressed trills from down the hall. He doesn’t see Michelangelo hovering nearby, nor does he see Donatello’s door open.
They are on the floor; Shredder…no-- Raphael draws blood from biting Leonardo’s forearm- and he retaliates by slamming his head into the floor. The other looks dazed, some of the fight draining out of him—but Leonardo does it again, and again. Because he doesn’t see Raphael, he only sees his enemies, they dance and taunt his tired sleep-deprived mind and he doesn’t realize he’s roaring until his throat burns.
“STOP IT!” He feels someone try to pull him off, he catches Donatello’s temple with his elbow. He doesn’t recognize him in the moment, however—he’s so lost.
He can’t find his way home again.
He didn’t have any guidance anymore.
“YAME!”
On instinct built into each one of the turtles from years of hearing that single word to stop a spar in its tracks, they all freeze as if they were once again children. Though the voice wasn’t right, it wasn’t Master Splinter’s baritone, it was shrieked and desperate.
The cloud hanging over Leonardo’s mind suddenly drifts away from him—and he gasps upon looking at Raphael’s bloody and bruised face. His little brother’s face.
His own hands were the ones that did that to him. His knuckles busted open and scabbing over, he lets out a sound in the back of his throat that he’s not sure how to describe. It’s something strangled, he thinks- as if he had a noose across his throat. As if was pulled so tight that he couldn’t inhale, he was gagging.
Recoiling, he flinches and scrambles back away from his younger brother who is still glaring through it all. Though Leonardo thinks that Raphael’s eyes hide something other than anger—it was fear, wasn’t it? He looks over in a panic towards who had shouted and…
Mikey is crying, fists clenched by his side as he stands ramrod straight at the entrance to the kitchen. Great heaving sobs are wracking his frame making his chest heave, his pupils are contracted into mere pinpricks from terror.
Finally, Leonardo looks at his purple-masked brother. The genius turtle is looking at him with a cold and calculating look, the same type of look that he’d seen him level at his opponents. As if his little brother was trying to pry him apart and find out what made him tick as if he could disassemble him if he needed to.
There was no trust in those brown eyes, only a vague sense of wariness as he shifted away from the oldest. Leonardo is trembling faintly; he can feel it everywhere as if it were to rattle him apart. The guilt is consuming him, the winds of the storm have peeled back his skin and left only exposed muscle and sinew in its wake. The thunder rolls, and electricity bursts behind his eyelids.
What’s wrong with him?
He’s become a monster.
“We can’t do this anymore.” Michelangelo like always is the first one to break the silence. His voice cracks at the word can’t, and it reminds Leonardo of all the things he feels like he physically can’t bring himself to do.
He can’t speak, the words settle in the hollow of his throat and press like an insistent pressure- though they don’t budge.
Leonardo leaves the room, a ghost of the person he used to be.
The dojo door clicks shut behind him, and the blue-masked brother lets out an exhausted sigh as he lets his head drop back on it.
His little brother is right.
They can’t do this anymore…they aren’t safe around him. He had hurt Raphael, he’d lost control. Not only of himself but everything else around him.
He can’t do this anymore.
Three days later, he has written out the words on paper that he can’t force himself to say out loud, not all of them (there weren’t enough words to adequately describe the sheer guilt and shame he felt for his actions), but enough to explain where he is going. They all deserve more than a note, they deserve a proper goodbye, but he knows if he does then he won’t have the resolve needed to stay true to his plan. Then they will keep going around in circles, and nothing will change. Leonardo is doing this for them. To help them heal—they don’t need a parasitic growth, killing them slowly. They don’t need him. At least, not how he is currently.
The oldest leaves the note folded up at the base of the tree. Ever so quietly like the barest of whispers, he finishes arranging his bag. He was packing light, bringing only the essentials with him for his journey. Though, he did bring one thing that was simply for sentimental purposes only.
At the bottom of the bag is a delicately preserved picture drawn on pink construction paper and covered in an obnoxious amount of glitter. On it is a picture of a crudely drawn picture of all the brothers with the words ‘Hapy Mutashon Day’ written in childish scrawl. In his mind’s eye, he remembers the four of them together.
“Brothers forever, brothers for always!”
“Always.”
Zipping up his bag, he takes on more look at the dojo. He lets out a trembling breath, gripping the strap of his bag in a pale-knuckled grip. This was for the best, they couldn’t heal with Leonardo there, he was like a cancer trying to kill everything it touched. He wasn’t the leader or the older brother that they needed him to be. He couldn’t come back until he found and became that person his brothers needed.
They’d be alright without him, they always stuck together.
Leonardo Hamato leaves his family home without even saying goodbye.
It’s Michelangelo who finds the note he left two weeks later, he doesn’t see the way the orange-masked turtle’s face contorts in agony as he reads the note. He doesn’t see the way it begins to fracture their family apart.
He doesn’t know, because he’s already halfway across the ocean hidden on a cargo ship heading for Japan.
Leonardo Hamato won’t know what will become of his family until it is nearly too late. Thinking that they will shun him unless he proves himself, he does not bother to text or call even though he has taken his T-Phone with him. Despite that, he checks every night before he goes to sleep, wondering if he should.
He wars with himself.
In his indecision, he had still chosen an action that had hurt his family.
Even if it was inaction, it was still a choice.
The first month he spent stowed away, hidden in one of the shipping containers on a cargo ship. Leonardo was lucky that he hadn’t decided to leave during the heat of summer, or else the sun would have scorched the metal. The cool brisk autumn temperatures had kept the shipping container from becoming a heat trap for him, though only narrowly.
By the start of the second month, he had made landfall. He had waited until night before darting away from the harbor and away from the chaos of the city that reminded him too much of home. Deep in his bones, he felt a sense of relief as soon as he stepped onto the soil of his father’s birthplace.
Leonardo begins his spiritual journey in the third month, trying to find himself among all the noise in his own mind. He wonders every day if his footstep had ever touched the same spot where his father once walked, surely the statistical probability was low—but he still wondered all the same.
He meditates and trains in the fourth month, though he does not push himself as strongly as he might have if he had been back home If he still had people relying on him. Instead, he allows himself to lazily go through a kata. Still, he panics when he makes a mistake. It was simple, he hadn’t had the proper stance during a kick and had nearly slipped.
It was small…insignificant… then why did it make him hyperventilate and vomit at the base of the nearest tree?
Because mistakes could get someone killed.
There was no room for failure.
He felt a sense of overpowering dread that flooded his senses and made him scream at the sky. If he doesn’t find a way to become perfect, then he can never go home.
Leonardo starts intense training in the fifth month, and by the time month eight rolls around he is nearly dead on his feet. He misses his brothers, but he knows there is still something deeply and utterly wrong with him, pulsing in his soul like a vapid miasma—it dragged him down further and further.
He was supposed to be getting better.
He cries himself to sleep in the makeshift shelter he’d built in the forest.
In month nine, he stumbles across a small impoverished rural area in the mountains. He initially avoids it like the plague, though one day he sees the banner on the ramshackle home—and he sees the Hamato crest.
Hamato Hinata is an elderly woman who lives on the mountain. Her eyes are pale like a faint mist in the morning, and he recognizes the way she moves through the world because Mr. Murakami has done the same.
She was blind.
He introduced himself as Hamato Leonardo, son of Hamato Yoshi.
She had welcomed him with open arms.
In month ten he had fallen sick, Hinata said it was because his soul was weary. Leonardo though, wonders if he had perhaps pushed himself too hard during training the months before. The elderly woman with a deep hunch to her back brings him tea and broth and does not even flinch when their hands meet as she gives him his cup. She does not ask why Leonardo’s hands only have three fingers, or why he is covered in scales. Just smiles at him as he weakly drinks what she provides. He feels intense shame and he feels guilt slithering down the back of his throat with each moment he imposes on her hospitality. She chides him immediately, somehow not needing her sight to be able to still see into his soul. The woman tells him in a wizened voice tempered with age: “It is not shameful to need help. It is shameful to need help and to slap away the hands of those who extended them.”
By month eleven, he was helping weed her crops and tend to her animals. She still didn’t pry about the fact that his skin was that of a reptile and he only had three fingers. His thoughts are still violently tumultuous, but he begins to feel himself relax as he settles into life with one of the last members of the Hamato clan besides him and his brothers.
When a year has passed, he explains to her why he has come to Japan. She calls him foolish but still pulls him into a hug anyways, she pats his shell without any revulsion and only acceptance in her Chi—and he sobs into her arms. He hadn’t felt so safe since his father had died.
On the cusp of the new year, he checks his phone and debates if he should send a text message to his brothers. If he should tell them that he is still alive, ask how the rest of them are doing.
Though he remembers Raphael’s rage hiding his fear, remembers Donatello’s distrust and Mikey’s downright terror.
He puts his phone away, and he looks up at the stars and wonders if his brothers still think of him with fondness, or if all their memories of him were tainted by what he had become.
Leonardo goes to sleep with the hopes that maybe one day they might still welcome him home.
Slowly over the second year, he begins to find some semblance of balance again in his life. The edges of his wounds in his heart have begun to weave themselves closed; he thinks. The ache isn’t so pronounced now, and it only makes him gasp in pain when he is reminded of his loss suddenly. He even tells Hinata some about his father, in the vain hope that she might have known him back when he was still human and in return give some stories of her own. Unfortunately, she has nothing to offer him.
She had apparently been estranged from the Hamato clan for some time, not with the main group due to the ideological differences of her great grandparents who had split from the clan. They had built their own family away from the rest. However—that was before the Foot clan committed genocide against the Hamato clan. It didn’t matter if they had ideological differences or not, if they were Hamato then they were to die.
Hinata finally opens up about her own tragedy during the first month of summer, she rocks gently in her rocking chair as she folds her weathered and calloused hands together, knobbed with arthritis and dotted with age spots. She tells the story of how her family had died during the massacre to completely eradicate the clan. She has tears in her pale eyes that don’t fall.
“Does it ever get easier to bear?” He asks her, desperately hoping for an answer that he can live with. Leonardo needs to know at some point the loss won’t be quite as crushing. That one day he may be healed enough that he can return to his brothers.
She smiles, and it looks somber. “Yes and no. The burden of the heart is only at its lightest when you share that burden with others.” Hinata responds in the same sort of vague wisdom that his father had once used to tell him whenever he needed guidance.
His father knew…had known that Leonardo didn’t want a straightforward answer, he wanted to contemplate but come to the conclusion on his own. So, instead of simply telling him what to do, the little tidbits of wisdom would help to show him the way.
Leonardo, for the first time since those awful days at the farmhouse—had decided to write something. Poetry was something his late father had appreciated, and it always helped the turtle to understand his own inner thoughts better.
Try to show the path.
So, they may walk alone.
Guiding light now gone.
He’d need to find the path without the light….
Eventually, it would carry him home.
The mountains were beautiful. A lovely shade of subdued deep blue, sturdy yet delicate as it was pointed with bright powder white snowcapped peaks. Verdant trees and pale grass stretched across the hills, and the branches bobbed in the breeze as if they were dancing to a tune of nature’s call.
He hears distant birdcalls carried by the wind, the rustle of the swaying grass, and the delicate babble of the nearby cyan stream. It was all so tranquil.
Yet a part of him missed the chaos of his brothers. It wasn’t until he was gone that Leonardo realized just how quiet it was to live away from them. Though the realizations don’t stop for the turtle, because he remembers how quiet home had been during those last few months after their father’s death truly set in.
Before Michelangelo was playing video games at a high volume, Donnie tinkering with his machines but taking the time to yell at Michelangelo to ‘Turn that TV down or I swear I’ll-‘. Then Raph on his punching bag, the steady sound of his fists hitting it was a near constant. Either that or his angry yell and Michelangelo’s playful shriek whenever ‘Dr. Prankenstein strikes again’.
Yet all that life and energy had drained out of them, and Leonardo hadn’t even noticed.
He hoped they were getting along better without him, surely if they needed him—they would have called him, wouldn’t they? In his note, he had tried to let them know that while he was leaving, he would return because they were his brothers after all. The last family that they had.
Leonardo just couldn’t afford to be a danger to the rest of them. He could never live with himself if anything ever happened to them because he had been enveloped by that dark fog once again. He couldn’t lose them…especially not by his own hands.
He wonders idly if Raphael hates him; if Donnie would ever trust him again…if Michelangelo would go still with fear the moment he comes back.
Swallowing, he looks away from the mountains and focuses back on his task. Lifting the bucket yoke, he sets it over his shoulders and begins to walk the well-worn path from the brook to Hinata’s hut. Life had changed for them both, a new shack was being built in the clearing just across from Hinata’s. A family of four who had also been a part of the Hamato clan who had been hiding in the country. Leonardo had been trying to put back together the broken pieces left scattered around Japan, while broken from the Foot clan…clan Hamato was far stronger than Shredder ever gave them credit for.
They had survived, and now they were rebuilding.
Leonardo likes to think it is practice for when he goes home, for when he finally gets the chance to rebuild his life and relationships with his brothers.
Maybe he could even bring them back to Japan, they could all visit Hinata together and enjoy the burgeoning village that not only tolerated their differences but accepted them because they were Hamato….they were family.
The bucket yoke rests on his back just near where the swell of his shell began. His mask was pulled down around his neck like a scarf, and it billowed slightly in the delicate breeze as it snapped playfully at the fabric like an old friend. As he continues to walk the trail, he makes a small noise in the back of his throat in greeting as he sees Hinata come into view. The elderly woman taps her walking stick against the ground as she settles into a slow pace beside him, and Leonardo shortens his strides so the woman can keep up. “It is good to have someone young around again to help with all the heavy lifting.”
Leonardo can’t help but give the woman a small genuine smile. The breeze shifted around him, and it was so subtle he almost didn’t notice. Distantly, he felt a warmth trickle against his skin like the rays of the setting sun. He suddenly feels more at ease, as if something missing suddenly slotted back into place. He’s not sure where the feeling came from, though for now, he was in a good enough mood not to question it.
“It is good to be here, the mountain air is refreshing.” He returns in a tranquil tone.
Her lined face twists up into a smile that makes the corner of her eyes squint. “It is even better to have another one of the Hamato clan back in the valley, it has been empty here for far too long.” The older woman sighs fondly and turns to look at Leonardo. “Will you be alright while you’re off training for the week on your own?”
He responds without a moment of hesitation. “Of course. I always come back.”
Abruptly he feels a sharp sting of his Chi, it nearly makes him stumble. The force of it is so strong that he has to pause his next step so as not to fall flat on his face. The air ripples, and the heat behind him grows tenfold like gasoline on a bonfire.
“N̴̥̘̍̽̄͒͝ö̴̟͇́,̸̩̪̏̽̓̑ ̶̼̈̀͋̆́y̴̫͉̪̞̤̆̍̏̇̕͝o̵̩̗̾̎u̸͇̇̀̈́̋̐͝ ̴̛̮̲̰̻͚͝d̴̮̼̀́͊͆͗̉ȍ̸̠͌̓͝n̷͔̜̱̦̫̍̓'̶̧͚̦͇̯̟͐̂̈́t̷͉͒͠!̸̧̙͎̽̉̆̌̿̓”
The words sound like they are covered in a distant layer of grainy static, and he turns quickly—eyes wide. Because he recognizes that voice…everything seems to slow, and he sees a blur of orange in his peripheral vision.
“Mikey?”
The air behind him is devoid of anything orange, there is nothing there except the empty path leading up the hill to the brook.
Hinata from beside him puts a hand on his shoulder, and he jolts slightly. “Are you alright?”
“Yes…I just—thought I heard someone. That’s all.” He responds, his voice not sounding as even as normal. It comes out a bit pressed, his lips drawn tight into a frown.
“Perhaps you are sun sick, and your mind is playing tricks on you. Come, I’ll make you some tea.” The woman continues along the foot-worn trail to her home, and silently…Leonardo follows.
When night falls, he tosses and turns on his futon on the floor in Hinata’s home—still thinking about what he had seen and felt. Though, perhaps Hinata was right…maybe his mind was simply playing tricks on him. Michelangelo had never been able to connect well with his spiritual side, let alone astral project his soul halfway across the world. His little brother had many talents, but Leo didn’t think that spirituality was one of them.
Still, he pulled out his T-Phone anyway, looking at the image of his youngest brother that he had set up for his contact. It was a photo of his youngest brother with one of his bright trademark grins, Raphael had told a joke and Leonardo had snapped the picture while Michelangelo was mid-laugh.
He smiles sadly, tracing his thumb across the photo. He then exits out and clicks on his photo album on the device, there he pulls up various images of himself and his brothers. Tears gently trail from his eyes as he scrolls through the album, and he lets out a small breathless noise as he turns off his phone and shoves it back under his pillow.
Leonardo misses them…but he needs to stay away from them. It’s for their own safety. At least until he is who they need him to be.
He needs to be the best he can be, for them.
“You’re doing well for yourself, brother.” A voice says, and Leonardo turns to glance over his shoulder towards Karai…or Miwa as she had been calling herself in honor of her late father, her true father—the one that had helped name her along with her mother. Leonardo smiles at her; it is something soft but genuine and candid. His arms are crossed over his plastron as he stands on the hill above the blooming village, listening to the sounds of children laughing as they play down below.
Miwa had come from across the mountains with the remnants of the Foot clan, she wanted to unite the two nearly eradicated clans into something stronger than what it used to be. Hinata had immediately been distrustful, though after a few thoughtful and pensive days of silence, she had sighed heavily and had allowed them to set up their tents on her land.
The Hamato clan was growing, and Leonardo was working on gathering up those lost to the outreaches and bringing them back. The village was nearly fifty strong, and construction on more houses had been underway to complete before the winter rolled around.
To Leonardo’s surprise, the humans continued to accept him despite his difference in appearance. They did not ask questions and simply acknowledged him (and his brothers whom he spoke about frequently) as always being welcome members of the Hamato family.
He nods once towards his sister and gestures to the tents in the distance, which were slowly being disassembled as more houses were built in the village for their people. “You are as well.” He acknowledges.
They have been discussing clan politics, trying to find out the best way to merge the two clans in a way that makes things as compatible as possible. Hinata, while being the oldest of the remnants of the Hamato family, deferred to Leonardo’s judgment because he had been the one to track down the other survivors and bring them to the village.
While he and Miwa loved each other, they were both strong-minded individuals that had their own thoughts on how to run things. There were more than a few…disagreements over what would be best for the clans. Ultimately, they had come to an accord.
The Foot had wrongfully committed a terrible act of near genocide on the Hamato people, and so they would be absorbed into the Hamato clan. The Foot’s culture would not be erased, however—but simply adjusted into something less inherently violent. Miwa would still act as the head of the once Foot clan, but only as an ambassador to promote their own interests as they found their footing. While Leonardo and Hinata would be ambassadors for clan Hamato’s needs. However, they were technically all the same clan now.
It hadn’t been easy, and there was still tension—generations of trauma didn’t disappear overnight.
Though, Leonardo felt that everything would be alright, in the end.
Miwa gives a simple hum in return, and they stand together as they watch the sunset. They didn’t need words, the amicable silence between them was simply enough.
However, as the orange and pink hues began to fade into navy blue, a dark feeling overwhelmed him. It was as if all light had been siphoned from the world at that moment. He gasped in agony and crumpled to his knees. Distantly, he heard Miwa shout his name.
He’s drowning.
He’s dying.
Wailing, not even bubbles escape. He has no air left. The water above is illuminated by what must be another burst of lightning dancing in the dark sky.
The world around the turtle begins to fade as if he is being crushed underwater on all sides, and Leonardo’s stricken cry haunts the hills for miles as he feels the sun fade from New York.
When he comes back to consciousness, it is to Miwa checking his pulse. “Mikey.” He croaks. “I felt him…and—now I don’t. I don’t…” He picks himself up, and his older sister steadies him as he nearly collapses again. His Chi feels raw like he had burns and salt had been rubbed into the wounds. “I need to get to him!”
“You need to rest—you just collapsed.” She tries to restrain him, and he pulls out of her grip as he hobbles towards Hinata’s house…to where his bag was. “Leo-“
He looks at her with a look that freezes her in her tracks from the intensity of it. “I know what I felt. I…I have to get home—the fastest cargo ship will take a whole month to get there. I-“ He shakes his head. He needed to get back to his brothers…they could be in trouble.
Hinata is sitting in her rocking chair on her porch and greets him with a smile—though it turns into a pinched frown as Leonardo comes rocketing up the steps. “Are you alright?”
“No, Hinata-San. I’m not. My brothers are in trouble…I need to go.” He had warned her from the beginning that he wouldn’t be able to stay for good, that he would have to go home eventually.
She nodded. “Go then. We will be fine…come find us whenever you need. We are your family too. Your sister and I will handle it from here.”
Miwa squinted, likely in worry for her other siblings as well. Though she knew she would be needed. “Let me know if you need me.”
Leonardo gives her a short hug after grabbing his bag, and then…he runs.
He can only hope that he’s not too late.
The rocking of the ship is his only company for so long. Leonardo wonders if he should call if they would even answer him. He desperately wants to check on them, but there is the potential that he will be rebuffed. Or, what if the worst had happened? What if his brothers were gone? It was as if by not calling them, it was Schrodinger’s cat… There was still the hope that they were alive until he finally checked—and then only one reality would be the truth.
He tried to meditate to feel for Mikey’s Chi, but he was too roiling with emotions to focus inwards for long enough to do so. Instead, he paced like a wild animal trapped in the confines of a small cage, he paced and paced because nothing calmed his racing thoughts.
The turtle was desperately counting the days at sea, and finally when he was almost home—that was when he read the news on the internet as he had been looking for information on his T-Phone about New York.
‘Massive Sewer Collapse In New York, Gas Explosion- Experts Say’ The headline taunts him. The picture of the destruction burns itself into his retinas and he can still see it when he closes his eyes.
He knows that street…it was the one right above their home.
Leonardo doesn’t care anymore if his brothers still can’t forgive him, he doesn’t care if he still wasn’t what his brothers needed as a leader, he doesn’t care for anything except knowing they are safe. Just as he opens up his contacts, he gets an incoming group call from Donatello and Raphael. He answers it without thinking, and terror is rushing through him.
“Have you heard from Mikey?” Is Donatello’s immediate question.
Leonardo’s heart stammers in his chest.
The conversation dissolves from there.