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mylifeisalieandididntknow · 11 hours ago

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could you please do prompt number one with the a team duo? (raph and leo!!!) i just think leo is in need of big brother love sometimes <3 prompt number one: "Shit. Shit, shit, shit, c'mere." (btw, ur writing is amazing im literally blown away every time!!! tysm for all the writing u do)

dialogue prompts

1. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit, c’mere.”

Something bad happened to Leo in the prison dimension. In the minutes—the minutes—between losing him and getting him back, something bad happened to him.

“This isn’t right,” Casey had said that first night in the medbay, staring at the X-rays on the illuminator as if he could change them by wanting it hard enough. “These breaks aren’t new. They can’t be.”

“He wasn’t running around with a spiral fracture in his tibia before the alien invasion,” Donnie replied tersely, more high strung with every second his twin remained limp and unresponsive on the infirmary bed.

Mikey was glued to Leo’s side like a miserable orange barnacle, Splinter rarely venturing more than two steps away at a time. April had been torn in two with worry for Leo and worry for her mom, and had only been convinced to leave when S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N pinkie-promised to feed live updates to her phone at the top of every minute.

If Leo had woken up even for just a minute back on Staten Island, it would have been a reassurance his family could stack all their hopes on. Instead, the brother they dragged out of the void had about as much life to his limbs as a ragdoll. His head lolled in Donnie’s hands like something out of a horror movie—and Mikey’s breaths started to shudder, and Raph thought for a fleeting, hysterical second that the world had ended, after all—and then Donnie found a heartbeat. He showed a weeping Mikey where to find it, their fingers pressed in the soft hollow of Leo’s throat where the carotid artery pulsed loud and clear. Raph kept his own hand there for the entire trip home. If that stubborn heart stopped he didn’t know what he would do. He didn’t know what he would do.

“But the bone has already formed a hard callus,” Casey said. “I know sensei and my uncles healed faster than mom and Aunt April did but still. Leo shouldn’t have reached this stage of healing for another week at least.”

Donnie’s face, already stormy, reached a level of dark anger Raph had never seen before. He studied the charts on the wall without speaking, memorizing them. Ninpo sparked around his fingers like he was only barely resisting committing violence, and only because the desired target was well beyond his reach.

“What does that mean?” Raph asked hoarsely. His hands were squeezed tight between his knees so no one would see if they started to shake.

“It means that either Nardo broke his bones in about eight different places a week ago and no one noticed,” Donnie said in a brittle deadpan, “or that monster put its hands on him in the prison dimension and Leo healed from it somehow.”

“But he was only in there for like, for like ten minutes,” Mikey warbled. He sounded heartsick and confused and too young to carry the weight of the world on his shell. “We got him right back out, we—we didn’t leave him in there long enough for all that.”

“I have a theory,” Donnie said, and then didn’t say anything else. He dragged a chair over to Leo’s bed with an unholy screeching sound, tucked his head against his twin’s at what couldn’t have been a comfortable angle, and started to tap around on his phone.

“Okay,” Casey said at length, recognizing an immovable object when he saw one. He turned to Raph instead, a child-sized soldier whose mission wasn’t quite finished yet. “Raphael, could I look at your eye?”

He had finished cleaning Raph’s eye and patching up his shoulder and moved onto wrapping Mikey’s hands when Donnie surged up from his chair so suddenly that everyone in the room jumped. His phone crunched into two distinct pieces in his hand, military-grade case and all, and he flung them away.

“Woah, hey,” Raph said, “Dee, are you—”

“I ran diagnostics on Leo’s gear,” Donnie said. It was his flat, toneless voice, the one that meant he was feeling so many things he had to shut something down to prevent a total systems failure. “The timestamps didn’t make any sense. So I ran them again. And again. And everything seems to be indicating that Leo was in the prison dimension for over three hundred hours.”

No, Raph thought. He stared at the shape of his little brother in that bed, at the vivid black and blue bruises on his face—noticing for the first time the faint yellows of much older ones around his neck.

Horror crept up Raph’s throat.

Please, no.

“What?” Mikey blurted, sounding as hysterical as Raph felt. “What? No, he couldn’t. He couldn’t have. It was only—”

“For us, thirteen minutes,” Donnie said bleakly. “For Leo, thirteen days.”

Since then, Raph has learned a lot more about temporal differentials and post-captivity recovery than he ever wanted to know. Donnie made four different PowerPoint presentations that the entire family was forced to sit through. All of them are budding experts on several subjects that they might otherwise not have been, studying as feverishly as undergrad students cramming for a final, desperate to be helpful.

So this is Raph’s fault. He knew better.

If he’d taken even a second to think before following the unmistakable sound of a turtle falling out of bed into Leo’s room, before lunging over to the crumpled-up form of his little brother on the floor, he would have recognized the blackout for what it was. He, of all people, should have seen it.

The episodes are few and far between, but only because Leo is rarely left alone when he’s awake, and sleeps even less than he did before. It’s easier for him to keep his head straight when he’s ensconced in a turtle pile, or curled up in Splinter’s lap for reruns of really bad soap operas that he mumbles along to in Spanish, or keeping Mikey company in the kitchen, taste-testing everything that gets pushed his way (handily supplementing all the meals he only picks at, Michelangelo is a genius for discovering that work-around).

It’s when he’s asleep and the nightmares come knocking that they have to worry. If Raph had known he was in here taking a nap, he would have made sure Leo had company. He probably would have curled up around the slider himself, giving Leo’s highly strung subconscious a hand, soothing him back to sleep before the bad dream could dig its hooks into him and yank him awake.

But the sleepiness probably hit him in a sudden burst, the messy pile of pillows and stolen purple blanket too tempting to resist. He must have curled up to rest his eyes and drifted off.

And he woke up alone, in the dark. The shape of someone much bigger than him looming above everything else. Raph knew better. He did. Of course a cornered animal was going to bite.

“Fuck,” he breaths out, white hot pain shooting up his arm from where Leo had buried his teeth a moment ago. It hurt, but it had nothing on the way his heart was breaking.

He’d seen Donnie lash out like this a few times before, overstimulated and fully ready to bite whoever was stupid enough to put their hands on him, but not since they were kids. Mikey handled all fits of temper by hiding in his shell and closing the little hinge to keep everyone else firmly out, grumbling ticked-off turtle noises until he was left alone.

Leo wanted attention when he was feeling bad, wanted to be picked up and held and would cry and pout until he got his way. Whether he was feeling upset or angry or scared, the solution was always more or less the same.

There’s no recognition in his eyes now. Leo has never looked at Raph this way before, even when Raph was the Krang’s puppet, even when Raph had him dangling by a strangling grip on his throat—even then, Leo didn’t look at him like he was a stranger.

He had to fight like this in the prison dimension, didn’t he? He had to tear survival out of that place piece by bloody piece.

Raph hates that he had to do that and loves him for it in equal measure.

“It’s okay, Leo,” Raph murmurs. “You did just right, okay? You stayed alive. However you have to do that is okay. You got mixed up just now, but it’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have scared you. Raph’s so sorry.”

Leo is staring at him, eyes wide and glassy. All the gold in them is edged out to black, pupil swallowing iris whole. There’s blood on the corner of his mouth. He smacks his tongue, tasting it. Like the worst version of giving him ice cubes to hold or peppermint to smell, it grounds him, bringing him back to the present moment.

Raph watches Leo realize where he is and what he’s doing, sitting on the floor in the corner of the room with blood in his mouth.

“Raph?” he says, small and scared and sixteen years old.

“It’s me, I’m here,” Raph says, too fast, “you’re safe, Leon.”

Leo’s eyes drift lower. He clocks the teeth marks in Raph’s arm and starts to cry.

“Shit,” Raph says, scrambling forward frantically on hands and knees. “Shit, shit, shit, c’mere.”

Leo spills willingly into his hug, like it’s ten years ago and he’s had his heart broken by an argument with his twin and nothing on earth could possibly console him but he was willing to let Raphie try.

Except Raphie knew all the tricks. Raphie knew that tearful little turtles just needed to be squeezed tight and rumbled at and snuffled until they couldn’t help but giggle.

It isn’t such an easy fix this time. Leo’s shoulders shake like he’ll never stop crying, his wet sticky face smearing salt and blood where he has it crammed in the crook of Raph’s neck. He clings as if he’s half-afraid something or someone is going to wrench him away.

Not in this lifetime. Never again.

“I’ve got you,” Raph tells him. Heart settling now that his little star is in his arms, safe and sound. They could come back from anything as long as they had this much. “Raph’s always got you. Don’t be scared. Don’t be sorry. We’re okay.”

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