#HAS he changed fundamentally? CAN he? he thought so but here he is again losing someone he can't save

[yahargulian]

I've gone so insane thinking about Leon keeping the lab key I'm writing fic about it

[ramblingautisticman]

Anyone else think about how Logan is in a new universe? That, while it's fundamentally the same, there are slight differences? How that affects him?

Things smell different, taste different, or feel different.

He notices that the grass is a slightly darker shade of green than his own universe as he walks Mary Puppins in the local park, deciding that maybe it was just the lighting or how it had grown. Until he notices it again when they are away on a mission and Logan doesn't quiet know why, but it makes his skin itch alittle.

He notices that the way apples taste is different, a bit more sour than what he is used to. He likes it- don't get him wrong- but it just takes him a minute to get over that. That this is another thing that's ever so slightly changed in this new world he is in. Something no one else would ever notice.

Wade gets a vanilla scented candle in an attempt to help the smell of wet dog (both from Logan and Mary) in the apartment because Al keeps complaining, and Logan can't help but feel slightly wierd when he takes a deep inhale and it smells different than to what he knows as vanilla. It's slightly sweeter, a little hint of wood from the wick, and it sends a wave of confusion over him because- why is this making him feel so strange? Why does it matter that things are a little different?

And it hits him one day as he gets a wiff of something that smells so similar and yet different again, that it's because it means he doesn't belong it. It's because, out of all of these differences, he is the real one. These things aren't slightly off here. This is exactly how everything is meant to be, and it's him that is not meant to be here.

Eventually, he has to say something to Wade because he feels like he is losing his mind. If it were big changes, massive ones that where more than smells and tastes and colours of grass, he thinks he would be more okay with it. That if it was more noticeable this place wasn't his own universe, it would be easier, but its so eerily similar and then suddenly its not, and it makes his stomach flip every time.

"It's stupid- I know it is- but everything feels the same, and then I smell something new or I...I see something that looks a little off..and I don't know why but it's just-just alittle hard, ya know? If it was completely different, if everything was new and different it would be easier, but it's things that have always been the same that have slightly changed, and it's.. it's abit jarring..it makes me more aware that I'm not really meant to be here." He explains to Wade one night when he can't sleep, staring at the TV, trying his best to not feel awkward about talking about this.

He feels stupid for letting it get to him. For letting it make him feel like this- but he can't help it. The idea that he is here and intruding on Wade's life and is going to ruin this universe is weighing on him, has been for so long, and he isn't sure how to fix it.

Wade nods a little, and leans against Logan's side, taking a deep breath before speaking. "I never even really thought of that...sorry- what does smell the same or taste the same? I can maybe make it smell better in here and we can get food you that doesn't taste off to you. Oh! I really hope that those Tacos we get don't taste bad, because they are so good and I don't know if I can stop eating them." He adds on, a small laugh escaping Logan has he listens.

There is a small silence over them for a second before Wade speaks again. "You do know that....you belong here, right? Even if things are a little different here. You aren't the bad change, if that makes sense. I like having you here. Alot. So does Al- I actually think she likes you more than me, which is rude- and Mary Puppins. Also Laura. And all of our friends. They are all glad you're here. Plus, the TVA kind of thought you belonged here, so you're stuck with me."

And Logan isn't really sure what to say, because he hadn't really thought of that. That there were people who thought he belonged here- or that the TVA thought he did too.

It makes him feel better. Alot better. And it makes him think he can get over these stupid changes alot easier than he could before.

"So....it's really your universe's fault for having wierd apples and different grass then." Logan says with a small smile, looking at Wade.

And naturally, that leads Wade to ask a million different question about what is different and what is the same, and Logan answers every single one before it makes him remeber that he does belong here. That just because things are different, doesn't mean he doesn't belong.

[miafeystits]

i’ve been revisting tgaa recently and i’m once again thinking about my most strongly held belief re: 2-4 and 2-5, which is that for all kazuma hid from ryuu and susato about why he was going to great britain and how he got that opportunity (and for all that ryuu & susato are within their rights to feel hurt by his omissions), kazuma’s actions also demonstrate that they are probably the two people that kazuma trusts most on this earth. he is also just dogshit at communicating this in a way that is emotionally legible to anyone but himself

like, should kazuma have told them what his real intentions were himself (rather than just letting it come out in court) at some point before everything really started to go down? yeah, probably—but that’s operating in a world in which kazuma is a wholly different person, with wholly different life experiences. by the time we meet him, kazuma feels with his whole heart and soul that he can’t tell anyone anything about his actual goals, and even if he wanted to i don’t think he would know how. looking at how kazuma himself talks about what brought him to britain after becoming an amnesiac:

“i can’t tell anyone about this” is SO fundamental to kazuma’s attitude towards this mission that it’s one of the few things he remembers even when he can’t remember his own name. and why would he have ever thought otherwise? in kazuma’s experience, what happened to his father is something that cannot be talked about. the only two people who had knowledge of genshin’s true fate lied to kazuma’s face about it:

& from later in that same convo:

even if kazuma understands their reasoning and doesn’t fault them for it, that doesn’t change the lesson he learned from these experiences: what happened to your father is something unspeakable, if not possibly dangerous and/or inadvisable TO speak about, and broaching the topic will get you nowhere; if you want to learn more, you have to go to the source and find out the truth yourself. the only solution is to go to great britain—therefore, you cannot act in any way that will prevent you from getting to great britain.

this is compounded by the fact that, in order to be allowed to go on the trip at all, kazuma has to agree to the assassin exchange, something that he also cannot tell anyone about or risk everything he’s worked for, making explicit his already existing assumption that he cannot ever speak about what’s going on with him

so of course he doesn’t tell ryuu or susato what’s really going on before they leave. why would he? it would put him in danger of losing his chance to discover what actually happened to his father and, furthermore, would put both ryuu and susato at risk were they discovered to be his co-conspirators.

we can see a similar logic in why kazuma decides to keep the knowledge of ryuu stowing away in his cabin from susato:

from his perspective, he’s not acting out of a lack of trust in susato here but out of a desire to protect her from the consequences of his actions. i argue that we can read kazuma’s decision to conceal his true motivations for coming to britain in a similar way—it’s not that he doesn’t trust ryuu or susato with that knowledge, rather he sees himself as protecting them from being overly involved in case something goes wrong; their lack of knowledge acts as something of a shield, allowing them to maintain their innocence even when kazuma can’t, or won’t, maintain his own

something that’s also notable about kazuma’s decision to conceal the truth in these situations is that in both cases, the information that kazuma is concealing will inevitably come out, and he knows this. in the case of ryuu stowing away, they can only really conceal this from susato until they get to great britain—there’s no sense from either of them that they intend to somehow hide this from her the whole trip, just until she’s out of danger of getting in trouble for their actions. similarly, although we can’t say exactly how kazuma intended to act when they were in britain had everything gone smoothly, i can’t imagine that he was ever operating under the assumption that susato and ryuu would never learn about his father or kazuma’s real intentions for coming to great britain in the first place. (i don’t think he ever would have told them about the assassin exchange thing unless he absolutely had to, though; it would put them both in too much danger.)

and that’s what i mean when i say that kazuma bringing ryuu and susato with him at all is a profound act of trust on his part—kazuma is going to great britain to confront the worst, most shameful thing that has ever happened to him and his family, to uncover a possibly ugly truth that he’s literally never spoken about to anyone, and he trusts ryuu and susato enough to be the ones by his side as he does it

this represents, from my point of view, both a deep trust in their abilities (knowledge of the legal system (in susato’s case)/english/talent as a lawyer (in ryuu’s case)—i’m not gonna argue ryuu’s potential to be a great defense attorney is completely absent from kazuma’s thought process here) but also an incredible trust in them as people, as his friends. he asks them along knowing they’re going to see him at his worst, and trusts that they’ll stay by his side anyway

of course, that doesn’t mean it feels like trust, from ryuu and susato’s perspective. and i don’t blame them for feeling otherwise! but from kazuma’s side of things, bringing susato and ryuu with him is basically the emotional equivalent of offering up his beating heart on a silver platter—it’s an act of profound vulnerability from a man who has spent his entire life incredibly guarded. it’s also not enough. & that’s the greatest tragedy of the whole thing to me

[klunkcat]

Forget-Me-Nots

rise of the tmnt tags: hurt/comfort, post movie word count: 18.8k characters: mikey & leo, minor leo & don

Leo’s maybe not as alright as he would like to believe. It’s just that he’s been misremembering a lot of things, small sections of his brain just smoothed over somehow, missing all of the regular information.

It also just keeps happening.

read on ao3 here

This is a fic I wrote basically entirely for @goodlucktai so thank you as always my sun and moon for your constant inspiration <3 Turtle brain rot lives within me permanently and will never die probably

____

At the center of it all, Mikey doesn’t regret it. He knows how angry his family would be, has actually watched from the outside how devastating it is to lose any one of them for a single second— the four minutes and seven seconds after the Krang ship exploded and before he cracked open himself to drag his own portal into existence were their own swan song. He felt the way the world coalesced into a singular black hole of grief that felt impossible to move underneath. He knows this changes all of his family in awful ways, that it'll rewrite them all fundamentally, and the thought makes him want to scream and apologize immediately after his choice solidifies in front of him, but he can’t possibly bring himself to pick anything else all the same. It's not that this is different, but it also is entirely. 

He thinks the problem is, at its core, the fact that he refuses to regret it at all. 

Getting Leo back is an impossibility— Mikey reached through and pulled the millionth of a million chance through and made it possible anyways, because it’s Leo. Because it’s his big, stupid, self sacrificing older brother who never even asked them how they’d feel before diving off on his own. Because a world without Leo and his whip crack jokes and larger than life energy is one he can’t stand to be in a second longer than he already has. Mikey makes it possible, because there’s no other option he will accept. 

He can see it later, all the words Donnie used to describe the choices and paths he burns right out of reality, bright and bold against his skin; there are branches, there are branches of branches. Each one of them splinters up his hands and arms until he can find the one where Leo makes it back. It hurts, and even with Donnie and Raph at his sides, it almost doesn’t happen at all— in fact, there’s many times it doesn’t. 

Mikey’s not supposed to be able to do this, not yet— he can see the years he spends honing this in Casey’s world, all the time and training and drain it puts right on that intangible ball of fire that makes up all of them. There are so many worlds where he can’t figure it out in time at all, but Mikey blazes through those anyways. If he can change things he will, and he will change them again and again until everyone he loves is safe and fine and home. It takes a lot of tries. Maybe that should have been the first warning sign. 

It starts with tingling in his fingertips. Fuzz, somewhere just at the end of himself that by day two, when Leo is conscious enough to hold a conversation in Donnie’s med bay, he almost misses when it gets worse. The shocky feeling is just the adrenaline, probably he thinks. It had been a really intense few days. By the next morning, attempting to text Cassandra and watching his phone fall from his hands for the second time, it hits him that he can’t feel anything in his hands at all.

By lunch, it’s at his elbows, dinner at his shoulders. He realizes that there are whole conversations skipping past; he’s awake and then he’s in bed, then he’s standing alone in the kitchen and he thinks he maybe hasn’t moved in entire days somehow without participating in any single moment of it. His family won’t look at him directly unless he speaks— he realizes what this is, what the burnt out remains of all those worlds had left him with. 

He still can’t pretend he regrets it, even then. 

He should tell Dee, or Leo, or Raph— Dad, Casey Jr., Barry, anyone at all— it’s been too late for a long time already, he thinks. A thousand other worlds where Mikey hits the redo all going 180 on the freeway and smashing into one at hyper speed. He has told everyone, he hasn’t told anyone, he’s redone it all twenty, forty, one hundred, two thousand times— there’s one world where Leo makes it back okay, there’s only one where nothing else goes wrong, and it’s the one where Mikey can’t. 

(There’s a part of him that’s scared, he can admit it. The idea of never getting morning breakfasts, excited team hi-fives, late night living room sleepovers; a million never's of an infinite number of days he’ll never know, it’s enough to cave in the whole of his heart. It’s worse to imagine all those mornings without his big brother, knowing he could have tried.

Besides, he’s Hamato Michelangelo. He’s got a whole house of brothers who taught him about being brave. He’s learned from the best.

When Mikey was younger, his favorite place in the entire world had been the hammock Leo strung up in their shared bedroom. It had been ratty in the way that made it feel extra soft, wide enough to fit all four of them if they curled up. Mikey would fall asleep half thrown across Raph’s shell, arm outstretched to wrap his hand around Leo’s wrist. Don breathing slow and soft on Leo’s other side to lull him to sleep. 

Whenever things were stressful he’d imagine that— the warm cocoon that held his favorite people. The way the light from the hallway as Dad said his goodnight's would bleed through the blue-gray cloth and turn it red and purple and orange, too. The way childhood took time and stretched it out long and infinite, it felt untouchable. 

It’s harder to remember now. The warmth feels like grains of sand he keeps letting slip through his hands, no matter how hard he fights to keep it. 

Another moment he’s supposed to have. Another, and another.

Maybe it’s easier now with the choice already made to feel scared but, he’s somewhere outside himself in a timeline that doesn’t exist anymore and he’s alone. He’s realizing, curled up on the asteroid, floating through expanses of nothing, flickering through a thousand branches of timelines that can’t happen anymore because he broke them, that he’s not sure he’s ever actually been alone.)

It’s fine, is the thing, really. There’s a difference between the slow slide of your family being ripped out right from the center, and this slow blink into something else. They don’t even notice it happen. 

____

“Come on, Raph! It’s just a quick little trip around the corner. What’s the big deal?” 

Raph levels him with a look, it’s the highly specific and patented ‘exasperated older brother stare’ he perfected and should have patented when they were five years old. Typically, the look spells a whole lecture on the importance of respect and believing in the team or something else equally as heartfelt and long winded. The Leonardo flavor to it lately means the chasm in Raph’s forehead is particularly darkened and wearied with concern, and the most he seems to be able to bring himself to do is sigh. 

Leo’s not a fan of the way this whole thing shook them all so deeply, if he’s honest. The tentative way his brothers all lurk nearby has him vaguely itchy with concern right back at them. Besides, he is feeling better, really. Don gave him the all clear this morning to get out of the pseudo hospital bed he’d set up, with stern orders to use a crutch to manage his busted knee as much as possible. He’s a pro with the crutches already, he’ll have them all know. Maybe his back flip up to the second floor had landed a little awry, but he hadn’t fallen over. On his face, anyways. 

No one had seen it happen.

“Leo, Donnie said you were allowed to hang out in the living room. The living room in our house.” 

Leo waves his hand in the air. “Eh. What’s the difference really?” 

“About fifteen point four miles, actually.” Don pipes in, peeking around the corner. “Fifteen point three of those you are not allowed to walk.” 

His family — you gotta love ‘em, but sheesh. Overprotective could be their new motto. So a guy gets teleported to a prison dimension and nearly doesn’t make it out, people have had crazier summer vacations. They’re all acting like if he moves around too much he’ll collapse into a pile of dust on the spot.

He flops backwards on the couch with an over dramatic groan. “It’s boring in here!” 

“So read a comic then,” Raph says, still frowning but in a more pleasantly annoyed kind of way. “Or… learn how to knit. I don’t know— you’re not moving, tough luck.”

“You want me dead,” he says, unthinkingly to the ceiling. To his credit, it doesn’t even take the awkward pause or the tell tale sign of his twin shuffling his lab door closed to make him realize he shouldn’t have said it at all. It’s the type of joke they always make, but Leo still catches the hollowed out look of pain in Raph’s eyes even as he glances away. 

“Sorry,” he tries, just to have at least said it.

Raph shakes his head, swallowing roughly. “It’s cool, just. You— you went through a lot, Leo. At least try to rest, okay?” 

Fine. He sighs, overly loud just to be a pain and re-shift the vibes back into some modicum of the correct orbit. “House arrest. Unjust, I want my lawyer.” 

Raph’s eyes brighten, something less haggard falling away as he turns towards the kitchen. Bingo. “Yeah, yeah. Tell it to the judge.” 

“Where’s Dr. Delicate Touch when you need him, think he’s got a law degree under that PhD?” 

Leo leans back, casually stretching himself farther onto the couch with as much feigned grouchiness as he can muster. A flash of orange catches the corner of his eye— “Ah, Ang! Tell Raph I can totally hang out at April’s. He wants me to steal all of your comics, you know. He said I should go into your room and take all of them while you weren’t looking. I heard him!”

He’s half expecting Mikey to gasp dramatically, or play into it by breaking down into an over dramatic eulogy and demand an apology from their oldest brother. Their usual bit involves a lot of Leo siccing Mikey onto the others like a particularly emotionally lecture filled chihuahua, something that Mikey gleefully falls into. The silence surprises him, mostly he realizes because it doesn’t. 

He peeks one eye over the back of the couch.  

“Oh,” Mikey says, blinking at him like he just realized Leo was speaking. “Ha— good one.” 

His baby brother seems lost in thought, which is typically not a good sign for anyone involved in the Hamato household. Leo’s heart shifts sideways and funny, instinctive reactions buried deep. “Hey, you wanna ditch out and join me here on lockdown? We can watch your favorite cup stacking videos, if you want.” It’s a momentous offer, Leo hates those videos. 

Mikey sort of just… stands there for a moment. Shakes his head, and seems to process Leo’s words in real time. “Oh— no, that's okay. Sorry, I said I’d help April with her art project.” 

Leo humphs loudly, crossing his arms— or at least halfway crossing them, the bad one shrieks at his boldness and he leaves it alone after a moment. The intent is there, probably. “Fine, sure whatever. I’ll just rot here then.” 

Another long awkward pause follows, Mikey staying still, staring just left of Leo’s head. There’s a very quiet feeling in the back of Leo’s mind he can’t place. “Angelo?” He hedges. 

Mikey blinks up at him, expression shifting too quickly for Leo to catch before his million watt grin is back. “Sorry, what?”

Leo squints. “Okay, change of plans. You. Me. Sitting here all night. Re-runs. I’m putting you on baby brother jail duty, it's a very serious role. You have to pretend to keep me in line, and then when the moment strikes, bust me out and go on a wild goose chase halfway across town to restore our former glory.” 

It earns him a tiny giggle from his baby brother at least. “Maybe it’s better you take it easy, Leo,” Mikey adds in, patting his head only semi-patronizingly, to his credit. “Raphie’s just worried about you.” 

Ugh. “Ugh,” Leo says, for emphasis. He tosses an arm across his eyes. “Fine, I’ll just wither away here on this couch all alone while you’re out having fun, whatever.” 

“Naw,” Mikey says. “Never have too much fun without you, bro.” 

Leo frowns at Mikey’s back, as he ambles off towards the half pipe sort of aimlessly. The sudden burst of earnestness is not unwelcome, really, or all that surprising. Mikey and Raph have always been his most emotional brothers. The way Mikey says it is despondent in a way he doesn’t enjoy, though. Like he’s tired. No, more than that— there’s something to Mikey that seems absolutely exhausted from Leo’s vantage spot from the couch. 

His shoulders slump downwards, lacking all of the usual flip switch energy and crowing enthusiasm their baby brother carries with him like a cape. It makes Leo feel— bad, he thinks. Nervous.

Maybe it’s one of those things Raph said that he needs to consider. Charging off into a death portal on his own with a tearful goodbye? Might have been a step too far into traumatic for his babiest brother. Maybe all of his brothers need to work through it on their own a little. He knows Dee has been spending more of his time in his labs than usual lately, that he’s working on a thousand and five back up plans for any scenario remotely like this ever again— as if they stumble across multi-dimensional horror show a-holes every week. Raph has been training extra hard, channelling as much of his focus into some theoretical improvement as he has been with hovering around Leo in case he keels over and perishes or something. 

Mikey has been— actually, he’s not sure what the guy’s been up to. Hopefully art, or skateboarding, although seeing him now, Leo’s not sure he’s been doing much of either. 

“Hey, Mike?” He calls, and Mikey pauses halfway through the door. The sight makes him worry, somehow. 

Mikey turns instantly, “Yeah, Leo? Did you need something?” Like he’d come back in a heartbeat if Leo really needed him, cancel all of his plans and stay glued to his side like Leo kind of wants, embarrassingly. Like he's just waiting for Leo to ask. Maybe they all need to work through a little bit of something. 

He swallows, pauses. “Nah, I’m good. Tell Ape I say hi, okay?” 

Mikey smiles, “Sure thing, bro.” 

____

The days after the incident in New York had everyone tense — news outlets are afraid to talk about it directly, hesitantly breaking news of clean ups and building reports. Their web of distant contacts begins poking through day by day— Leo got a fairly heartwarming message from Hueso that tells him that his family is also at least partially included in whatever footage was retained from everything. It seemed like most of New York has grouped them in the aliens category, and summarily proclaimed them all ‘returned home’, so there’s no immediate danger at least. 

Their usual ragtag crowd of other local mutants seem to know exactly what happened, more or less, which has granted them some pause in their usual problem-dealing. Something something local heroes, supposedly. Hueso even gives him a coupon. 

Casey finds his way down to the lair, then up to an apartment that April helps him set up with her mom and Cassandra after that, and learns how to text painfully and awkwardly with emojis, much to Leo’s horror. Leo’s bruises fade from angry black whorls to yellow queasy splotches, Raph’s eye gets a full all clear from Donnie, and the world keeps turning. Albeit, with a very intense and serious lecture from Dad about Leo taking it easy, slash being grounded for the next month to launch it all into a particularly odd spin. 

He’s been grounded before, he knows that’s not what this is. 

The protectiveness makes sense, even though it chafes at him and makes him grouchy the longer it goes on. April cancels said regular movie night at her apartment and forcefully shoves everyone into their lair so Leo doesn’t have to move, and Dad’s grounding conveniently doesn’t extend to April either. Mikey bakes all his favorite foods constantly, making the kitchen glow with warm spices and sugars. Raph carefully leaves pamphlets on proper stretches out on the coffee table, and Leo’s favorite blanket is always freshly laundered. Don, in his brusque way, finds excuses to sit near him at night so Leo can fall asleep being surrounded by people he cares about. He can’t fault them for it, really. Maybe underneath the bravado and the sheer amount of ‘not thinking about it’ that he’s doing there is a part of him that craves the intense levels of attachment everyone is giving him.

It’s fine like this, he doesn’t want to leave them either. He almost did anyway. 

Before the Krang, before Casey Jr., before the Shredder, the most harrowing experience they’d dealt with was hibernation instincts, learning how to cook food properly. Heat and avoiding illness. The beauty of having a brainiac twin and a dad that had navigated the world of finances and income before everything else, meant that they hit the ground running early. Maybe they’d all been a little bit sheltered, in hindsight. 

Something about growing up with yourself and your family and your whole world in your pocket.  Maybe you start thinking that maybe the world can’t touch you either.

If they’d asked Leo, he’d have said it didn’t matter— turtle luck, true to form and all that. Sure, things had gotten real apocalyptic bad end for a second there, but nothing permanent happened. They’d saved the day, Leo was fine, Mikey had cracked some insane magical connection no one else in the world could do and Raph came back. 

Bruised, sure. Scared, absolutely. Fine all the same. Or at least, he figures it should be fine.

He can see it in their eyes no matter how relaxed he made sure he looked, no matter how loud he talked. The what if, hovering over everyone, waiting to drown the whole room if they let it. Maybe a few degrees off from fine, but whole.

The photograph he carried everywhere now was starting to bend a little, just the hint of a crease where his thumb had pinched it too hard in the middle of the night. Leo figures he understands how they feel, even if he didn’t live through it. Somewhere out there was a Leo that had for a moment been entirely alone. They have time to fix it now though, he figures. The rest will fall into place.

“Whatcha got there?” April leans over the couch towards him. Raph is dozing to the quiet credits of whatever movie they’d been watching — the name of it escapes him, it hadn’t been very good.  They'd all jumped on it because it was something Casey said he’d seen a poster of once, which then started a whole conversation about how he’d never even seen a TV show, and how movies stopped existing because there'd been so little electricity to even play them on, and that had been so sad they’d all bundled him on the couch together to put it on immediately. 

Casey is tucked under Raph’s arm, chin tilted down and sleeping quietly himself; Leo itches for a camera. Don must have wandered off, his blankets still spread out by the foot of the couch— if he squints he can see the blue light of the lab filtering under the door. The light feeling in his chest sinks at the sight. 

Leo turns the photo towards April. “Just a bunch of weird looking mugs and some handsome bald guy, you know how it is.” 

April scrubs her hand across his head. “We should get that framed. It’s a good one.” 

It is, he thinks. It’s perfect. They have a lot of selfies from over the years, mostly silly ones. Blurry Leo’s diving away from angry Donnie’s or prank evidence, or the few Dad keeps in his special binder he thinks none of them know about from when they were younger. They have so many he usually doesn’t even think about any of them in particular. Sometimes the thought of that makes him want to lock this picture in a box somewhere, bolt the door shut and lie down very still. 

“You’re just saying that cause you’re in the middle,” Leo jokes. April winks back at him. 

Looking down at the photo again, there’s a well of warmth bubbling through him he can’t name. His family, all in one piece, grown one puzzle portion larger with Casey lately— he fits, too. Like a space they hadn’t realized was missing. Him and Sunita and Cassandra, and, begrudgingly if Leo has to play nice, Barry he supposes too and— 

Leo frowns. The photo looks… off. Too much space on one side. He doesn’t remember being in the middle, actually, he’s pretty sure he was on the side— Did he bend it too far? He squints, moving his thumb. No, it’s just, off somehow. Like one of those newspaper games, spot the difference, except there’s a pit in his gut like something important happened. April’s expression slow glides into confusion, but Leo can’t even say what it is that’s wrong, only that there’s a portion of him that is suddenly and abruptly convinced that the picture he carried to hell and back is wrong— 

“Did either of you want some popcorn?” Mikey’s voice cuts in, shoving a brimming bowl towards them. “Raphie fell asleep before he could eat his. Well. I kinda hid it from him.” 

“Oh, thanks, Mike,” April bends forward happily.

Leo blinks back— no, the picture is fine. It’s fine, there’s everyone’s faces smiling back at him, not a thing out of place. He is in the middle, oh. He’s maybe more tired than he thought, is all. Jeeze. It is late, he reasons, and the painkillers Don’s been aggressively-minus-the-passively implying he will be hunted down for ever missing make him drowsier than usual. It’s that residual nightmare problem he’s been having, too; night time makes him jumpier, like he’s on a time limit to prove things are really here. Maybe the sleep aid’s Dee mentioned would be a good idea, he’s just afraid of not being able to force himself awake when the dreams take a turn. 

“Want some, Leo?” Mikey’s eyes shine in the TV light, reflective and almost full white with it making him look almost the full alien New York is convinced they all are. “I put extra butter on it for you.” 

“Thanks, buddy.” 

____

The dreams always start out the same. He’s not in the other dimension, not yet — he’s on the ship with his brothers. He’s watching Donnie take a hit, and calculating in split seconds the likelihood that any of them will get out of this at all with dread so violent in his chest it feels like the world is cracking in half in front of him. He knows— he knows, he knows. There’s only ever one choice to make, and he makes it.

Then, sometimes, the earpiece crackles to life. It’s his voice, it’s the Krangs, it’s Draxum’s and Shredder’s and everyone’s tangled together. He’s saying goodbye, but they aren’t through the portal yet— he’s miscalculated the odds and there’s no one on the other side of the line. 

He’s alone even before he’s actually alone, there’s no one to even say goodbye to. 

Or, someone doesn’t leave. Raph stays behind and he’s so overwhelmed with relief and gratefulness he almost misses watching the Krang skewer him directly before his eyes again. Donnie can’t get a block up at all, and the hit launches him faster than Raph can catch up. April’s there and she takes the hit instead. Someone else takes his place, someone else figures it out first and makes him stay behind. 

Or, he never left. He goes through the wormhole and Casey closes it and no one ever finds him at all. Because he made it up, because he’s still there. 

One night he wakes up, and he doesn’t remember how they got him back in the first place. 

___

“Hey, Leo. You want to try running through some training today?” Raph leans across the hallway — Leo’s been itching to move, to do anything. His injuries have all but healed up, the concussion tucked nicely away; despite Donnie’s stern insistence otherwise, he’s got a clean bill of health. He practically leaps to his feet at the words and very aggressively ignores the immediate head rush that follows. He's been sitting around for far too long, honestly, he's determined not to lose an ounce of his usual pizzazz.

“So I can kick your butt, you mean?” 

Raph snorts. “That’s the kind of big talk I like to hear. Just easy ones today though, okay? Butt kicking is a next-month kind of goal.”

“Come on, Raph, I can wipe the floor with you any day.” 

“Uh-huh.” The silence that follows is biting, touché big brother. 

“I can! Few weeks off isn’t enough to unsizzle this sizzle.” 

“Another wholly scathing comment battle where we all remain interestingly unscathed, I see.” Don slinks from the kitchen to the living room, typing furiously at his wrist the whole time. 

Perfect, Leo thinks. Everyone together, the absolute ideal way to burn off the wildfire forming under his skin. Get two birds with one stone in making sure they’re all okay just the same way they’ll be nervously poking at him— turnabout is fair play and whatever, but he’s just as worried back. Everyone’s been… odd, since the Krang. He just wants it to feel right again for a few seconds.

“You too, Donnie. Get your gear, let's make this a full on Leo power hour special. My portalling is even better now; while I’ve been sitting around watching Jupiter Jim reruns I got some crazy ideas. I'll have you know it’s ripe with cosmic…. Idea making. Juice.” 

“Are we just making sounds? Is that what this is? These are just sounds you’re making.” 

“Oh come on, as if I can’t take both of you with one arm behind my back.” 

Don rolls his eyes, making a show of crossing his arms. It’s nice, actually. They’d all been too raw with nerves to be snarky or throw any barbs around. Sass from Donald is basically a gleaming thumbs up for ‘things are actually okay’, so maybe everyone will get the hint too. “Maybe I should check if you have a fever, you’re acting…. Oh that’s right, entirely delusional is a personality trait of yours.” 

“Hoo hoo! Fighting words, I see how it is, ‘Tello. Let’s make it a full bet then, three on one. Where is Micheal anyway—” 

He pauses— Mikey stares at him from the railing, kicking his feet happily from the ledge. Right, because he’d been there the whole time. Duh. No one else seems to blink either— maybe Mikey had done some practising while he was out of it. Really honing in on that mystic warrior side, kudos to him, really. 

“Hey, you wanna help me prove a point to these bozos?” 

He grins, the same way he always does. “Can I be on your team?”

Leo makes a show of rolling his eyes with a sigh. “Man, harshing my whole solo hero against all odds shtick there Michael, but yeah I guess.” As if he’d ever really been able to say no to those big green eyes. 

Leo shakes his head. Blue. Mikey’s eyes are blue. Of course they are— they’re gleaming and bright in the photograph he carries right over his heart, he’s looked at them nearly every day for his whole life. Silly. 

Maybe training today is not up there with one of his better ideas actually, but he’d rather volunteer to do Dad’s laundry than admit that now. 

“You sure you’re up for it?” Mikey asks, and Leo does not jump— he does not— but does feel his heart rocket directly into his teeth as his brother appears suddenly beside him. 

Leo clicks his tongue, playing his sudden jumpiness off and waving his hand dismissively. “Up for what? A nice easy warm up where we absolutely show these clowns up? Sure, afterwards we can get ice cream from that place you like, easy peasy.” 

“Ice cream?” Don cuts in with a snort. “You want to deal with that inevitable explosion, be my guest. More of a punishment than a reward, though, I’d say.” 

“Yeah, Leo,” Raph tilts his head, losing some of his easy playfulness. “Kind of cruel to throw that in his face.” 

“Huh?” He whirls towards them both. “Cruel? Me? What’s wrong with ice cream?” 

Mikey huffs. “You know I can’t have dairy.” 

What? No, Leo definitely wouldn’t have missed that big of a development, no matter how whacked out he’d been— Mike’s favorite place in the world outside of the pizza parlors was the ice cream shop by April’s that sold absolutely unhinged combinations of flavors. They went there all the time after practice, it was their together thing. Leo once chugged a whole twenty dollars worth of pickle flavored ice cream milkshake just to make Mikey laugh and— hadn’t he? Or….

Leo frowns to himself. “Right.” He shakes his head again, squinting at Mikey. “Doi, I was saying… Mikey’s shop, you know. The candy place you like. Jeeze. Can’t talk today.”

Mikey brightens up instantly, “Ooh, can we get the big jawbreaker this time?” 

“Course,” Leo nods, trying not to frown. “I’ll buy you the biggest one if you want.” 

He has the strangest feeling about this, like deja vu. Two of him walking in the same fun house mirror paths at once. Mikey skips ahead towards the training room and something— there’s something off— 

“You sure you’re up for it?” Raph interrupts, placing a hand on his shoulder as he approaches. The Raph Chasm is back, great. “You look a little pale, bro.” 

Don leans in also, tapping even more intensely on his wrist tablet. “Seems fine. Temperature is normal, no signs of reopened injury. Heart rate is a little elevated—” 

“Dude,” Leo gapes at him. “Did you— did you chip me again?”

___

His dreams get weirder as the days go on. He figures it’s something to do with his brain trying to settle in, like it’s run out of plausible events and has to start throwing weirder and weirder potentials in the mix just to be sure.

He’s in the prison dimension now when it starts. He’s there, and he’s holding onto his photo, and the Krang Leader is approaching with shockwave levels of thunderous rage. It always goes the same: 

Leo is cornered, he’s alone. He’s waiting for the next hit, the next punch. He can’t remember if this is real, he can’t remember if he leaves. He knows he’s alone, he thinks it might be forever. Then, the Krang vanishes— he looks around, and he’s on a rock in the dark, an unthinkable distance from home. 

No Krang, no family. Miles and miles of scrapyard wasteland space, and nothing but himself. It’s somehow worse, this way. 

Then, sometimes it shifts. His brothers are all there, god— his brothers are all here. Sometimes it’s Dad, and he’s trying to take all the hits himself. Once, Casey. It’s terrifying to be alone but he always hates those ones, the ones where he somehow drags everyone else down here with him. 

The worst one is when it’s Mikey. He must have taken the hit from the Krang himself, he’s banged up and barely moving— smiling at him behind a swollen eye. 

“It’s okay,” He says in this one, it’s the only one where anyone talks. “It’s going to be okay, Leo.” 

___

Leo’s maybe not as alright as he would like to believe. It’s hard to think of the shape of whatever it is, let alone admit directly; he’s forgetting things, is the sum of it. He forgot where Donny’s new second lab was the other day, unthinkingly walking directly in with a question he’d instantly forgotten and nearly set off the project Don was working on. He forgot that Raph has a new motorcycle, and that he drives it around most nights after dinner and that he doesn’t spend a lot of time at home. He forgot that really, he’s the only one that watches Jupiter Jim, and wrestling, and they haven’t gone topside together in ages.

It also just keeps happening. 

“Are you coming over?” He says, breathlessly into his cell propped up with his shoulder. The stack of pizza boxes he's carrying sway dangerously as he leaps down another sewer grate. 

“For what purpose?” Cassandra’s voice rings back. 

Leo shoves the latch for the lair with his foot. “You know, the big Re-re launch of the Luo Jitsu: Stars in Five Separate Dimensions, the game the movie the game the sequel. Duh.” 

“Do not ‘duh’ at me when you are speaking entire nonsense.” 

Leo laughs, rolling his eyes. Cassandra’s brand of humor has taken on a new thread with her division from the Foot. She’s apparently going to mechanic classes now, and sass lessons if these conversations have anything to say for it. “Nonsense, she says. Fifth biggest Lou Jistsu fan I know, and she’s pretending not to know about the largest night of the past two years. Sure.” 

The pause throws him off. He can hear her brain whirling across the line. “Are you referring to the biggest gaming night of the year when the new hockey immersive VR game becomes legal to play in four states? That’s next month.” 

“What— No,” he pulls his phone away from his face in disgust. Yes, it’s Cassandra’s icon, and her voice but honestly, this could be a bodysnatchers moment. He’s had weirder weekends.

“Then no, I do not know what you speak of. Should you like me to come over and resoundingly beat you into a pulp over video games, I accept.” 

“I—” Leo’s brain… skips. Resetting. Another thought lines up neatly in the space between. “Right. Yeah, I — man I don’t know what I’m talking about. Just come over and play Mario Kart or something fun. I have pizza.” 

“I don’t mean to alarm you, but you usually have pizza,” She says, because snark lessons are working over time apparently, and hangs up. 

He’s positive for a long moment that he’s dreaming— that’s what gets him. The line between the skipping do-over dreams and these blips of forgetting are getting more and more unclear. He’s in space and he’s alone, and then he’s awake and Donnie’s new invention is in the living room, and he remembers that they don’t use it for a whole lot these days anyways. He’s with the Krang and he hurts and then he’s awake and his brothers aren’t around and it hurts anyways. He doesn't remember home being so cold, but it is and it's real and maybe Leo's just losing his mind.

It’s just that he’s been misremembering a lot of things, small sections of his brain just smoothed over somehow, missing all of the regular information. He wants to tell Donnie, he should tell Don, it just— it seems like a much larger deal than he knows his genius twin could possibly actually deal with. He might be an honorary MENSA member, but he’s not a brain surgeon at the end of the day; it’s easier to go along with things when he can, until he can’t. 

It’s not even clear why he doesn’t remember, he didn’t get that bad of a concussion during the Krang events— most of the punching had been to his sides and chest actually. He’d been totally fine the first few weeks. It’s like a slow settling poison, whatever this is. He’s partially convinced himself it’s just a lack of sleep, or that he’s missing some sort of key vitamin; he really needs to start eating genuine meals instead of boxed things, honestly. He can’t tell Donnie, because if it is his brain he knows Donnie can’t fix it. He won’t do that to him until he has to. It’s his problem, anyways— it never seems to be about anything major at least. He’d caught himself nearly calling April over to the lair, as if she’d ever been over to their new place after the old one was destroyed. He remembers there wasn’t an old lair, April just hasn’t ever come over. He sets up too many chairs for game nights and no one shows up, because some part of him forgot that they hadn’t hosted a family night since he was six. 

Through it all, there’s a constant ever-lying thrum he can’t name.

“Hey, uh, Dad?” Leo calls, stepping into the living room. He’s shuffled the pizzas off into the kitchen, and remembered that it’ll really just be him and Cassandra probably. Again, evidently. Don is doing something in the lab, his old one downstairs, and made it clear after Leo’s last interruption he had to be invited first— a rule they’d never had before. Leo had always been able to tromp through his twins space as easy as breathing. Raph is out, as he is most nights. The lair is quieter, the thrumming so loud he can hardly think. 

“Hm, Blue? What is it— oh, did you want the TV for something?” 

Leo shakes his head, hovering awkwardly beside the couch and tapping his foot with anxious energy he doesn’t even understand why he feels. This is a bad idea, he thinks. The thrumming is prickling at him like knives pressed outwards, though, and if he doesn’t tell someone he thinks he might snap entirely down the center of himself anyways. It’s still a bad idea, it’s the only idea he has. 

“Can I talk to you, about ah— something?” 

He winces at his own words, and watches Splinter shift, expression dropping serious and worried all at once. He turns the TV off and pats the space beside him on the couch. “What is it, my son.” 

Shell, he hates this. Either Dad will think he’s insane or immediately tell Don anyways and none of it will matter. He bites his lip. “I just— I’m worried about Raph,” he ends up saying. 

Dad blinks, his face twitches into something more thoughtful. “I do not know what he does being out so late every night, but I’m sure he is safe.” 

Leo nods, pulling at loose thread on the blanket throw. “Course, yeah. I mean, that guy is the biggest worrywart I know, it’s just— do you, uh. Do you remember if he always… went out so late?” Leo doesn’t. Leo has been told it’s what Raph does and stared at as though he was the one out of touch until he found himself nervously playing along, but he doesn’t remember knowing any version of Raph that would leave so often. Any Raph that acted like couldn’t stand one more second of being around his family. 

Understanding flickers across Splinter’s face, his ears drop. For a moment, Leo’s overeager heart soars. 

“Ah, I see,” Splinter says, patting his hand. “You miss your big brother, is that it?” 

“I— well, yeah, sure, but—” Splinter clicks his tongue at him affectionately. 

“It is okay to miss Red, I miss him too. And Purple, when he’s locked away in his room. And you, when you’re too focused on your training.” 

He knows, he knows, it’s just that it doesn’t change even when they’re here in front of him. It’s like they don’t fit now, and he doesn’t understand why. 

“Blue, families can change and grow with time, sometimes the changing leads them to… wild new things like motorcycles and teenage rebellion,” Splinter continues, and Leo hears it, the softness he uses when he’s imparting parenting wisdom, and the brakes can’t be stopped so— “Red still loves you, he’s still your family.” He catches something in Leo’s face despite his own attempts to school it, and his dark eyes flicker for a moment. “Is this…about the Krang?” 

Crud. Leo twists his face up to stop from doing something stupid like sniffling. “No. That was so long ago now, pshaw. Anyways, I know, obviously, I’m Raph’s favorite. Nice to hear anyways, though.” 

Splinter chuckles, patting his hand again. “You know that he loves all of you the same. And so do I, Blue.” 

“I don’t— yeah, I know—” There’s no point, he can’t do it. Leo sighs. “I just— can you talk to him? About not staying out so much? We used to, yanno, have movie nights and stuff is all.” 

Splinter hums, tapping his chin. “Schedule your movie nights at April’s so I get the big TV and you have a deal.” 

Leo forces a laugh. Do they even hang out with April like that anymore? Imagining a world where they don’t is awful, inherently cold and empty in a way he immediately doesn’t care to allow. “Sure.” 

There’s a pause, the thrumming is still there— the moment’s passed though, he’d only make Splinter worry more. 

“You know, this place used to be filled with a lot more… laughter,” Splinter says, after a moment. “I will talk to your brother.” 

“Okay,” Leo says in a breath. There’s something there, almost. If Raph can spend more time at home, maybe they can drag Don out, too. Maybe it’ll feel right, and he can let it go and stop checking the front door, and maybe his brain will start working so he doesn’t have to put all that weight on his twin brother anyways.

The almost’s never seem to make it anymore, though.

___

It starts to really hit him a few days later. 

“--earned it from you, big bro.” 

‘You can’t do this’ He threw himself forward but there was that flicker again, the sideways pull and he was alone on the rock where the Krang threw him except it was just him and— 

‘I have to, I’m sorry. You keep leaving,,’ and it sounded like a plea, like a cry for help disguised as a big brave step forward, and everything in him coalesced forwards like he’d only ever known how to do just that. Like he’d only always known how to bend and soften at that voice, like it broke every part of himself just to hear it wavering like this. 

He wakes up from a dream and he can’t remember it; there are tears pouring from his eyes and this big hiccuping sob lodged somewhere behind it, and he can feel it— the heart shaped puzzle piece that’s been scoured right out of his chest, an essential part, something he can’t be without, but he can’t even remember what it looked like. 

You don’t, he thinks. You don’t have to. Just let it be me, I chose it already anyways. You can’t take that away.

‘I can!’ it echoes off the nothing around them, off the something because they’re in the air again, and everyone else was pushed off but the two of them, and he’s holding the totem to lock the door and he’s listening to the broken comms on the other side. ‘Look at me, it’s okay. I’m the only one who can. And— and it’s okay. Because you’ll all just forget, so it’ll be okay. You won’t miss me—’

Of course I will. He’s angry, he’s furious and desperate, he’s not sure anything he says is reaching anything at all but he’s more certain of anything that it has to. I’ll miss you more than anything. 

‘I’ve already changed it, you can’t stop it. I just— I wanted to say—’ 

There should be alarms, he thinks distantly, panic and dread and grief white hot behind his teeth. Blaring red alert rolling alarms, because the world had ended and none of them were moving fast enough, and he was just going to forget again when he— 

“Oh god,” Leo gasps, throwing himself off his bed— catching his feet messily in the absolute tangle of sheets and crashing to the ground instead. His hands are trembling, there’s a pained animalistic noise tearing itself somewhere in his ribs because the thrumming has become a black hole in his gut. He’s nauseous in the same way he feels entirely gutted, devastated all the way through to his center and he needs to get to the bathroom, to Donnie, to anyone— 

He feels like the floor has just vacuumed itself through an airlock and there isn’t enough air anywhere at all in the world, and he can’t remember why. 

“--eo, what are you…? I swear to— Leo!” 

He has his hands pressed tight against his neck, he can feel his own heartbeat absolutely rabbitting underneath but it’s real. He can feel it and it’s real. He’s here, at least— if that matters. He can’t remember if it matters. The pain hasn’t gone anywhere even with Donnie in the room, like it usually does. Because there’s nowhere else for it to go, he thinks nonsensically. It’s gone, the place it goes is gone. 

“Dee,” he gasps out, pleading for…for nothing, really. For anything. 

“I got you, Nardo,” Donnie’s voice is closer, his hands are hovering nervously around the heaving galloping black hole that is all of Leo before settling on his shoulders. “Up we go, okay? Just, breathe. In and out, follow me.”  He pulls up a diagram, an unfolding square that refolds, breathing exaggeratedly along with it. Leo tries to wrangle himself into himself, feel around the pit of nothing in his chest, breathe long enough to chase away the gray in his vision at least. It feels pointless, breathing through a straw at the end of the world— he can’t possibly keep his heart beating one more second, but it does, and then it does again. 

“That’s it,” Donnie says, his hand rubbing circles against Leo’s neck. “Better, okay. Keep doing that.” He sounds anxious, tense in the ice cold–locked up way he gets. Leo’s chest aches. “You’re not running a fever, no proximity alarms were tripped so— bad dream?”

The cataclysm in his heart is stilling, like it’s being put to sleep more and more with every word. Every realignment of real and not real— part of him is terrified by this, like it wants to scramble it back. Leo shakes his head, still wheezing. Nods after a moment. Pauses, and embarrassingly bursts into tears again in spite of himself. 

“Woah! Woah, okay, okay. Got it, no questions. You’re fine, you don’t have to tell me.” 

He holds his hand out— it’s something they used to do, when they were little. Don had learned something about otters holding hands when they slept so they wouldn’t drift off, and Leo had gotten it in his head that since they were in a sewer, it was possible they’d float away at night too. He’d held Don’s hand every night until they all split off into their own separate rooms when they got older, palm to palm, holding onto Don’s wrist. Even after they had their own beds, Don would sneak in if he felt like Leo wasn’t sleeping good; they haven’t needed to in years. 

Leo latches himself onto his brother's hand like a lifeline. This is real too, he tells himself. It makes the horrified part of him wail with something like grief anyways.

“Okay, alright Leon. I’m not going anywhere, okay? Breathe.” 

Leo tries to hold each breath like water in his hands, imagine himself filling up that space inside him. The idea is so instantly horrendous, a murky swirling bog where something was— he doesn’t know why— it chokes him into another sobbing fit for a moment. “Sorry, jeez— jeeze. I’m sorry, ugh.” 

He can practically hear Don’s eye roll. “Can we get up off the floor now?” 

Leo nods, shakily. He grips Don’s wrist even harder, but lets himself be dragged back into bed. 

“Want some water?” Don asks; Leo stares down at their joined hands and feels a spike of panic in him. It must trip something on Don’s weird chip, he glances down at the screen. “Ohhkay. Nope, nixing that plan, sure. We can just dehydrate.” 

“Sorry,” Leo wheezes again. He knows Don is trying so hard right now, too, or he would have made some annoyed comment about hating unnecessary apologies. He stays silent, squeezing back just as hard. 

“Would you like to tell me what happened?” He asks, after a moment. 

Leo winces. 

“Or, I could invent some never before seen and heard of technology and just dive right into that awful little brain of yours and figure it out anyways, if you want.” 

Leo snorts. “You have that already. ‘S called being stuck with me.” 

“Hm. True. Doesn’t give me all the answers, though.” 

He wishes it would. Don’s brain could probably work out exactly what to do  in five seconds if he had the opportunity to mess around in Leo’s fuzzed out brain. Maybe that was the problem. Leo lets out a long breath, ducking his head to nudge against Don’s shoulder. 

“I think there’s something wrong with me,” he admits, to the space between them where their hands sit. 

“I will refrain from my default response of ‘beyond the usual’ or any other witty remark this one time, on the grounds that you’re kind of a mess right now. Know that I did think it for the record, though.” 

“Noted,” Leo smiles, waterlogged and wavering. 

Donnie shifts, pulling his free arm up around Leo’s shoulders. They fall silent for a second, just the wet and choked off sounds of Leo wrangling his own heart rate surrounding them. Don pulls him closer, a half hug. “You know. Whatever it is, I’ll fix it.” 

He squeezes his eyes shut, the ghost of that all consuming grief still wrapping itself around his throat. Donnie’s fixed everything since he was able to hold a screwdriver, his faith in his brother is as unshakeable as his understanding of cool action films, as his belief in his family. He knows his brother would try to fix it, and would get closer than anyone else possibly could. Maybe he’s not sure there is anything to fix.

“What if you can’t?” It comes out small. 

Donnie’s arm squeezes tighter, steel in his frame. “I will.” 

It’s nice, he thinks. To pretend like Don’s got all the answers. “I��m sorry I went through the wormhole,” He says instead. Sorry I almost left you, he says with the way he leans farther into Don’s side. 

Don lets out a sharp breath. “No, you’re not.”  He isn't wrong, Dee knows him best.

“I’m sorry that I’m not sorry, anyways.”

He can feel Don’s heart beating against his fingertips, can feel the sharp and bending curve of him at his side. Palm to palm so they don’t float apart— maybe Don’s grip is also tighter than usual. He can manage to feel bad about that, maybe, in spite of himself. 

“I’m used to it,” Don says, after another long moment. Subdued. As long as you come back. As long as you let me bring you back, he says with the squeeze of his hand, the way he won’t look at Leo at all. 

___

“Purple told me about your dream last night,” Dad says, looking worn and serious in a way that makes him look far older than Leo is comfortable with noticing. “Do you want to explain, Leonardo?”

They’re sitting around the kitchen table, and his head is in his hands staring down at the whorls in the wood. There’s a carving, he knows, just to his elbow that he and Raph had put there when they were kids, it’s just that for a moment he could have sworn that it wasn’t from Raph at all. He’d been lost staring at the cupboard for a moment with a dark, inkblot feeling around his throat until Dad had startled him out of it, looking at their old favorite mugs. He doesn’t remember his being any of these. He’s certain, for a moment, that his had been a hand painted one, lopsided by the handle. He can’t find it anywhere, though. 

He’d asked Dad when they’d thrown it out, and gotten a blank stare in return. 

‘The… the splotchy one,’ he’d said, panic lacing in behind his eyeballs with its intensity. ‘You know. I always drink tea from it with you.’ 

Splinter shakes his head slowly. ‘I am… sorry my son.’ 

A hysterical laugh frayed at his throat, he’d lost the fight in shoving it back down. ‘There’s a smiley face on the side by my thumb, you know. Don said it was ugly and we got into a big fight when we were like ten. I drink out of that mug every day, because it—’ He couldn’t remember where that sentence was going suddenly, like the words scooped themselves directly from his lungs. Evaporated. ‘I… I know it is. Where did you put it? Did— if Raph broke it, that’s okay, I can fix it.’ 

‘You’ve only ever used this mug, Blue,’ Dad had said, holding an Eeyore mug. Leo feels his mind snap in three places, reconnect. It’s slower this time, more painful. Maybe that’s him, breaking. 

‘Right,’ Leo laughed, squeaky and high. ‘Sorry.’ 

“They’re just dreams.” He says, like it burns on the way out. “I’m just not sleeping well.” 

“He’s been waking up every few hours,” Don throws in, because of course he’s been tracking that, too.

“Hey—” he tries, and catches Raph’s serious, unhappy face as he lifts his head. The way he looks frailer around the edges, exhausted the same way Leo is. Oh.

Raph sighs. “He’s jumpy. Confused. I thought…” He makes eye contact with Leo and looks away. “I thought maybe the Krang incident rattled him, was all. But it’s been months,” 

“My son,” Dad adds, before Leo can process any of that. “Why did you not tell me?” 

Shell, he thinks. Shit, for emphasis. “It’s just bad dreams,” he shrugs. “What’s there to tell?” 

Don snorts, crossing his arms. “Just bad dreams he says, as though regular disruption to your REM cycle bears no long term effects like, say, spacing out. Forgetting where my lab is. Dialing the wrong number when trying to reach me, your twin brother who literally programmed your phone.” Oh, right, yeah. He had done that. 

Burying his face in his arms seems like the best approach to all of this. The gnawing thrum is back, wilder like a firestorm in the back of his mind— it seems to get louder when he’s aware of it, he’s not sure what that means. 

“Leo,” Raph’s voice is tired, too. Why is everyone so tired? “You can talk to us, you know that right? We just want to make sure you’re okay.” 

“Stop being so,” Leo struggles to find a word in between burying his forehead father into his arms. “Reasonable. Ugh.” 

Splinter pats at his arm, comfortingly. He debates the merits of coming clean, then of feigning a sudden illness, or playing up some hidden head injury that miraculously resolves itself before Don can pull out any of his scarier tech. A wave of exhaustion pulls at him. “I’ll fix it,” Donnie had said. Maybe it’s embarrassing to want to believe anyone can fix this at all, but it’s his family, and this is the most he’s seen them in months and despite what everyone tells him, he doesn’t remember a time things were like this at all. He doesn’t remember a version of himself that would have been content to let it happen. 

There’s something there. An invisible wall he’s walking into while everyone else skirts around it. If only he didn’t keep forgetting what he was dreaming about— he lets out a long, long breath, dropping his head even lower until his brow presses into the wood directly. 

“I’m. Forgetting things.” He mumbles to it, shoulders high around his head. The silence that follows is long enough he almost thinks they didn’t hear him at all. 

Don clears his throat first. “Forgetting… what.” He sounds ominous, tight laced. Exactly what Leo was afraid of. He scrunches up his beak in response. 

“Everything. You, Raph— I don’t remember why April hasn’t visited. Or, or where your lab is. Cassandra doesn’t care about Lou Jitsu games, no one watches Jupiter Jim. It’s all— I don’t know.” 

Dad takes in a breath, Leo can hear him consciously making sure to keep it measured and slow.  “Is this because of the Krang?” 

Leo shakes his head, digging further into the grooves of the tabletop. “No, I — I don’t know. Maybe? Everything was fine, and then. It wasn’t. It’s like I’m—” Missing something. It’s like there’s a big glaring neon sign directly in front of him that he can’t see, some obvious clue like a protagonist in a horror film that the audience is throwing popcorn at. 

“Do you…. Do you ever imagine there’s like. A memory that you had, but something happened, and then you lost it. And you don’t remember enough about it to know what it was, but it’s like part of you knows that it's gone anyways?” He feels insane, he can’t look up at his brothers, he can only close his eyes and wish himself somewhere else where the black hole in him is quiet. “Sorry, that’s— I mean, maybe I am just tired. Just feels… different, lately. I keep looking at the front door like someone’s gunna walk in any second, isn’t that weird?” 

No one speaks, Leo sinks lower. 

What if whatever is wrong with him is contagious? What if saying it out loud is the thing that breaks this wide open on all of them. What if nothing happens at all, and it’s just Leo and his brain and some unknowable horrid thing wrong with him that makes him feel like half of himself is missing somewhere else. 

What if he’s right?

“You remember the other day, Raph? You said something about me reading comics, staying home from April’s and reading comics.”

“...Yeah.”

Leo digs his fingers into the back of his head. “I walked into Donnie’s lab because I couldn’t remember where the comics were, and it’s like I just, went through the door. Then— I mean, none of us own comics. Why did you say that?”

Raph starts, stops. “I… don’t remember.”

Don breathes, long and shaky. “I put a chip on you and Raph and Dad because I thought—” His voice is flat, quiet, and breaks neatly down the middle. Leo freezes, tenses on the spot. “I had this feeling. Like there was a problem I’d missed, like I hadn’t perfected something important. I drew all these schematics and they didn’t make sense— and I knew, they were for something specific, but I had no idea why or what. I have inventions I don’t remember making, too— I thought someone else left their things in my room but they all have my logo on them.”

“I asked April for tea,” Dad adds in, slow and confused. “Orange pekoe. I have never drank orange pekoe.” 

Don continues. “You told me you hate pro skateboarding the other day and I nearly vaporized you on the spot because I thought you were a clone. And then it was like, my brain just. Caught up. Remembered all these things that didn’t fit anymore.” 

Leo stares at the table, lifts his head up so sharply his vision swims, and stares at his brother. “Yeah. Yeah. Like, like you’re reading a new script.” 

Holy shit, he thinks. They all nod, slowly. 

“I thought it was me,” Leo says. 

Don shakes his head. “I’ve been doing tests. Measurements and scans— I can’t get a read on it so I haven’t brought it up yet.” He shrugs. “It’s… it’s weird, Leon. I don’t make measurement errors.” 

“But you have been,” Leo says, slowly. 

Don breathes out, heavily. 

“Your math,” Raph says, simply. Leo’s gaze shoots towards him; his big brother looks haggard, dark circles around his eyes that Leo hadn’t noticed before. “Donnie, your math. Why’s it always wrong?” He’s gripping the table top awfully tightly, Leo notices. White knuckled bone pressing upwards into the harsh kitchen lighting, like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. His big brother has always been unmovable, no matter what was thrown at them. He was okay, and would figure it out, and would help them brute force things back where they should be if they had to. He looks... small, suddenly. Just a kid.

“Woah, Raph, maybe you should take it easy for a second—” Leo starts. 

“Four,” Don cuts him off. He looks vaguely haunted as well now, eyes dark. “I keep dividing by four.” 

___

“I kept driving around at night to find someone, I was so sure they were in danger. Raph thought he was losing it,” Raph says, rubbing a hand across his eyes. 

“Me too,” Leo admits. “Thought Donnie was going to have to lobotomize me.” 

“Easy to do when you already are missing a brain,” Donnie mutters. They’ve moved down to the living room — invited Casey and Cassandra and April over, too. Draxum, despite Leo’s better judgment, is lurking somewhere in the kitchen area as well. Leo keeps holding Don’s hand, seemingly unable to stop now that the words are out there, and Don hasn’t asked him to let go yet either. 

Raph glances between them both, tense. “Stupid of me to not tell either of you. Should have known,” he offers with a weak smile. “We’re always in this together.” 

Leo shrugs, “Sounds like we all did the same thing. In my defense, I thought I was concussed.” 

“So,” April joins in, hesitantly. “You’ve all been… remembering things wrong, too? Because— I mean, you said that you were going to get Casey to guide me down here like I didn’t know the way, and then. I mean it was weird…” 

“Oh thank god,” Leo sags in relief. “You not having been here before was bothering me so much.” 

“And your dreams, Blue,” Dad cuts in, tucked up in his arm chair with a cup of steaming tea he hasn’t touched. He looks guilt ridden too, in a way Leo hates. “They’re not just about what happened?” 

“No, well. They are but. They… change? It’s like a hundred different versions of the same thing. Sometimes April’s there, or Casey, or no one is.” He shudders, a flash of some dream he had crossing his mind vaguely. “I can’t remember most of them anymore now, but it. I don’t know. I feel like. Something important happened, is that insane?” 

Casey looks at him searchingly, he always seems so heartbroken by all of their struggles in a way that makes Leo want to wrap him in bubble wrap until he’s 30. “Not more insane than anything else,” Casey says somberly. 

“Do we have, like, memory problems? In the future?”

Casey shakes his head. “Not that I know of. You all had stories about how things were that were pretty detailed. We had to memorize new map locations that came through pretty quickly, too.”

Everyone falls silent for a moment. April clears her throat. 

“And… and you think this is all happening, because…. Someone went missing.” 

Leo turns to look at Don— his brows are pulled so far down they’re basically a flat line, pinched in the middle as he works frantically on his laptop. It all looks like graphs and numbers to Leo. 

“I keep dividing by the wrong number.” He states, quietly. “There’s three of us, and yet I’m accounting for a fourth. It only happens when I’m not thinking about it, like—”

“Muscle memory,” Raph finishes. 

Leo looks out at everyone— there’s a reserved energy, like a thick fog of some kind of grief pulled down across them all. Maybe he’d expected someone to react like it was silly, make some kind of joke of things, maybe it would have helped make it feel less awful for it to be a big mass hallucination on their part. Leaky sewer pipe, or something. The severity is both aggravating and reassuring all in one. 

“I kept setting the table for five of us for dinner,” Leo says with a helpless shrug. 

Raph nods. “Our training sessions— we keep leaving our backs open, and I couldn’t figure out why. Like someone’s supposed to be there.” 

To imagine it is kind of devastating in pieces and wholes, Leo thinks. Someone so intrinsically a part of them, someone they worked around unthinkingly, just vanishing like that. Without even the courtesy of letting them mourn. Everyone stays silent for another long moment, that veil of grief is heavier— they don’t even know this person, someone that left a crater so large whatever bullshit vaporized their memory from all of their minds couldn’t even be lifted fully. Like the planet lost its axis without them, like they were constantly bumping into an outline of a person without even realizing. 

“How does that happen?” Leo’s own voice sneaks up on him, he hadn’t meant to speak. Or maybe he had. He’s angry, suddenly, like shakingly, virulently angry— big red neon light style. “No, seriously. How— they just get erased from our lives like that? Without anyone even seeing it?” How did we not notice, he thinks, desperately. “It was one of us, right?” Leo turns to Don, to Raph, to Dad. “Like, like a sibling? And we just… what, forgot them? How does that happen?” 

“Leo…” Raph tries, holding a hand out. There’s an anvil in Leo’s heart, it’s sinking so far down with every step further into this reality he’s forced to reconcile with. 

“No! I— Come on, we don’t even remember them. There’s nothing at all left behind, and yet, because whoever this was mattered so much we still felt it— and that just happens? How does that happen?” 

It shouldn’t, he thinks of forgetting any one of his family and feels like his atoms are misaligned. The idea that any one of them could just be stitched over, skipped like a video feed; his stomach churns dangerously.

A chair drags noisy across the tile, and everyone's attention snaps up. “There are legends,” Draxum starts. “Mystic connections to time and space itself.” He meets Leo’s eye levelly— there’s a catch in them, too, Leo realizes. He doesn’t know why Draxum is included in these events, he made them, sure but he’d also thrown Leo off a rooftop. He’d been antagonizing them for months, and he’d gotten defeated by the Shredder, and they’d all moved on. There’s a gap in his mind, between that Draxum and this one; no explanation for his place here today except for that he is. Because whoever this was that they lost, he mattered to Draxum too, didn’t he?

“If said person possessed enough power, they could feasibly stretch across both the folding dimensions, hypothetically.” 

Don gasps, an aborted noise. “Like… a hole in time.” 

Casey freezes, sitting up taller. 

Leo thinks about his dreams, about being trapped in the nothing and not believing he ever left. Not remembering what got him out at all. A voice telling him that everything would be okay.

“It would take a lot of power,” Draxum continues. “Possibly too much. To change one thread in the thousands like that, I imagine such a feat would be felt across the whole tapestry.” 

“Maybe it already has,” Leo says, detached. Thousands of possible realities, changing and pulling in a million different ways— Leo and the Krang standing on an asteroid, a hundred different outcomes flashing back and forth on a loop, over and over. Looking at his own front door and waiting for someone to come home, even with everyone he loves sitting directly in front of him.

The last dreams, the ones he doesn’t remember— waking up feeling like someone died in front of him. 

He stands up, sudden and sharp— wrenching his hand from Don’s without thinking. “How do we stop it. How do— how do we change it back.” 

Draxum meets his intensity with a cool stare, holding a teacup in his hands carefully. “There may not be. I’ve never heard of such a way.” 

Bullshit, Leo thinks— “If they brought Casey here, they did it again. To get me back. That’s two times, that shouldn’t be possible either, from what you’re saying. So— so just do it again.” He clenches his fist so hard it hurts. “No one remembers how I got out. I should have died in there, with the Krang, right? We closed the portal, so—  But I’m back, because whoever this is brought me back. That shouldn’t have been possible. So we punch a hole through time again.” No one moves, Cassandra keeps his stare levelly, gravely.  “If it takes more power, we have the strongest team the world’s ever seen right here, don’t we?”

Draxum arches a brow. “A lot of effort for someone you cannot recall, is it not? It might put you all at risk as well.” 

It doesn’t matter, Leo wants to say. They did it for me first. He doesn’t care if it’s painful or dangerous or anything else. All he knows is that there’s a gaping maw inside him that he can see now reflected in all of his family where this person is supposed to be. Someone who changed their three to four, someone that made them have half-memories about movie nights and laughter in the lair and someone he misses so badly without knowing that his entire soul feels like it’s hollowed out without them. 

“Maybe this person wanted to go,” Draxum, crosses his arms. “You’d give up so much for someone you don’t remember?”

‘I just— I wanted to say—’

“He’s my son,” Splinter speaks up fiercely, protectively. Everyone falls silent. Splinter falls backwards a step, having leapt to his full height out of seemingly instinctive rage. He looks surprised with himself, then— quietly grief stricken, the same time as Leo’s concaving chest collapses like a burnt out star. 

“Muscle memory,” Raph whispers, agonizingly. 

It echoes around the still room. The hallways seem more expansive in the face of it— a ghost exiting the stage with a rush of air, or one finally being noticed. 

He’s lived in these halls for his whole life, packed in with his three most favorite people in the world to get by the way only their family could. There’s a scuff on the stone just at knee height by the entrance from when he tried to land a backflip on skateboard and broke his arm, theres lines reaching up to just barely five feet around the corner from it. Three sets: red, purple, and blue. 

Maybe now, when he looks around, he’s starting to notice all the empty places. Leo feels like his heart is squeezing through his ribcage with how hard it aches.

Leo squares his shoulders, turns towards his family— there are tears in Casey’s eyes, Donnie has stopped typing frantically and seems to be staring at nothing on the floor. The realization is rocking through all of them in differing stages of devastation. 

“My brother,” He wavers, choking back a well of emotion. “My brother is out there. We’re getting him home.” 

___

“Your dreams are crucial for this to work,” Draxum says. “We’re going to use them as a door.” 

Leo takes the tea Dad makes for him and wills his hands not to shake. 

“Everyone else will focus on Leonardo, follow that thought to where he leads you.”

His last dream is only remnants in his mind, but he’s not sure he could go through it again anyways. Good thing they’re changing it this time then, he supposes. Raph sits cross legged in front of him, closing his eyes with a deep breath. Leo’s hit with the horrible thought of losing any of them the same way, waking up and forgetting they’d ever been here to begin with. His palms itch. 

“Hope we have enough juice in us to pull him back,” Leo jokes, weakly. 

Casey sits beside him, spine straight. He leans a little towards Leo, bumping their shoulders. “I… I don’t remember him, but he must have been there. There’s…. There’s holes if I think too hard. If he was anything like the rest of you, he’ll be fighting just as hard to get back.”

The idea of some vague outline of his brother, an amalgamation of the two beside him, running himself to pieces lost in the dark is hard to swallow also. Raph clears his throat. “Maybe he just needs a bit of a boost.” 

April nods, plopping beside Raph fixedly. “And that’s what we’re going to do.” 

Leo looks at Dad, who’s been quiet ever since the revelation hit them all. Dad shifts, placing a paw on Leo’s shoulder— he looks tired, pinched, like someone closed their eyes and drew him with wobbling outlines. Leo knows how he feels, it aches all the same. He puts his hand on top of Dad’s. 

“Yeah, we got this.” 

Leo drinks the tea and breathes out. It hits him fast — at first, he’s floating in the dark; the difference hits him funny, he doesn’t exactly remember any of the dreams but he knows they start before the fight ends. He knows they never begin with him being by himself. 

It reminds him of a time when they were younger, when Dad had to go scavenge for food and scraps alone and leave them behind with stern orders to stay put. They never really did, of course. 

There was a day where it had been storming up top, he remembers the way the pipes groaned and rushed with the rain like growling monsters in the stone walls, warped by all the empty tunnels and spaces in the shadows. Dad had left to grab food for the next few days, in case any of the pipes did burst as the storm went on or a tunnel threatened to collapse. He remembers that Dad hadn’t wanted to leave them at all, he’d been nervous and anxious and promised to be back in an hour at most. They’d all felt it, staying bundled up for the most part instead of ambling off their creaking furniture or stealing the two markers that were half dried up with use. 

Don had been hungry, he’d had a mild fever, Leo thinks— Don had caught every bug that meandered through the grates in those days, before he figured out which vitamins they were missing and how much sunlight they needed. He remembers the way Don shivered, tucked in at his side. Leo had decided he would be the one to make Donnie soup, despite Raph’s protests. He’d squirmed his way out of the blankets, and taken a few steps towards their makeshift kitchen before the thunder rocked miles above and rattled through every part of New York.

He remembers the way that the generator they siphoned had cut out when he made it through the doorway. 

It’s silly now, maybe— his brothers had been a few feet away, he was still in his house. He could hear Raph calling for him, the sound of his big brother fighting the blankets and Dee’s dazed mumbles and complaints with it. He knew even then that he wasn’t really in danger. It was just that Donnie had just showed him the otter videos, and the pipes were roaring at him, and he’d never actually been anywhere he felt scared at all before. 

There’d been approximately fifteen seconds before Raph crashed into him, another thirty minutes before Dad burst back into the lair and brought the flashlights out from the side drawer, and lit candles for them. Fifteen seconds for Leo to imagine that he was completely alone. 

A much older Leo, then, riding the adrenaline off saving the day— holding a photograph close to his chest, comms fizzling in his ear— 

He’s on the asteroid, ah. This is familiar. 

He’s always here in his mind— the Krang stalking towards him, the light of the ship's explosion dancing like fireworks in the distance. He holds the photograph in his hand, because he’s alone, he’s so alone, but it was worth it. The Krang approaches, tail flicking as it practically curves over him in rage. He’s okay with all of this, really, if it means— 

“Get away from him!” Raph yells, and suddenly there’s a streak of red crashing into the Krang, knocking it through the rock. A flash of purple, and Don’s battle shell appears beside him.

“Could you imagine something more relaxing next time? Like I dunno, a boiling pit of lava? This isn’t nearly terrifying enough.” Don’s hand hovers over his shoulder, like he’s not sure where to put it for a second. Leo grabs at his wrist, overcome by relief for a moment before the words hit. Right, imagine. Because he got out, he didn’t bring his brothers here, they brought themselves. 

“I’m dreaming,” He reminds himself. 

“You are, which is good. My tech can’t really do anything special when we’re in a mystical mental plane, so. Do your, yanno, ‘thing’.” 

“We got the big guy for you!” April crows, he can see her backflipping off the Krang’s head, Casey swinging in to kick at its knees. 

Right. He was here, and something got him out— when he dreams this, there’s always things changing, always things that happen differently. He’s usually here alone, facing down the inevitable reality that there’s no more doors; it was his plan, to do anything to get rid of the threat, no matter what that meant but living it was different. It didn’t happen like this, he knows, but he made it out anyways.

He can feel his family around him, just like the kitchen and the dark. There’s fifteen seconds before Raph crashes into him. Fifteen seconds of him in the dark and— there was someone else there, wasn’t there? 

Leo hadn’t decided to make Donnie soup alone. He’d gone with someone, because… because his brother knew how to heat the soup up the way Dad did, and he was older so he could open the cans. He’d been holding someone’s hand as the room went dark. 

He remembers distantly in all of his dreams here, there’s always someone he’s arguing with. Someone he’s losing. Whoever his brother is, he’s been here with him all along.

“You know, you’re really not supposed to be able to be here,” A voice speaks up. It’s choked in that desperately sad and relieved way all in one that he knows, he knows because it’s— 

Leo’s eyes snap open. His brother’s are fighting the Krang with April and Casey and Dad and Cassandra, and he’s sitting at the rock with the photograph, except he’s above it. He’s looking at the dark, and there’s someone holding his hand. 

He blinks. Blue eyes meet his, teary and bright as always. “Mikey—” he breathes, instinctive, like the name is pulled from the very core of himself. 

His brother smiles a heartbreakingly grateful smile. “You’re really not supposed to be able to do that, either.” 

Leo whirls towards him, grabbing immediately for his brother as some unnamable panic crests over him. His hands sink right through thin air, but he can see him— god, he can see Mikey. 

There’s a light hovering orange around his brother’s form emitting a low glow, like he’s a stick on star. They put those in their bedroom, he remembers suddenly. They had them on the ceiling because Mikey had been afraid of the dark, Leo had carefully climbed all the way up on top of the rickety bunk bed and glued them all on without asking Dad, just to make sure Mikey wasn’t scared. He could still see the outlines of them years later. 

“How— Mikey, what happened, I— oh my god, I forgot you—” How did he let that happen, how could he? His only baby brother, their Angelo. “I’m so sorry.” 

Mikey shakes his head, he’s still smiling even though there’s a pinch to his face that Leo immediately can’t stand. “You didn’t, I made you forget. It’s okay Leo.” 

“It’s not! I— it was so messed up without you, I— Raph keeps ditching us and Dad’s tired and, and nobody reads comics anymore!”

Mikey laughs, wet and sad, and it’s still the best thing Leo’s ever heard. He can’t believe he went months without remembering it. When they get back, he’s going to put on all of Mikey’s favorite stupid videos and listen to him laugh for hours just to make sure he remembers it exactly right every day for the rest of their lives. 

Leo barrels forward, still trying to grab any part of his brother; he’s like sand, he’s like water, the pieces of him are streaming through Leo’s finger tips. “It’ll be okay now though, we— Raph will stay in if you’re here, and Don’s stuff’s in your room, but we can move it. He’ll make you a bigger room if you want, you know he will—” 

“Leo,” Mikey cuts in, carefully. Hedging. Leo’s heart crashes through into nothing, he swallows roughly. 

“No,” He tries for a laugh, he remembers this now. He knows what Mikey is going to say. “You’re wrong, stop it. You said— you told me that it was the only way, that we’d all forget.” 

Mikey’s shoulders lift and drop, slow and tired. “You did. It’s okay.” 

“It’s as far away from okay as it can possibly be! You said we wouldn’t miss you, but I did, Mike. I did anyways, we all did. We knew— there was this giant hole right in the middle of us. It shouldn’t be possible, you said it yourself— that means something, I know it does. So— stop trying to tell me to leave or, or whatever else you’re thinking. I’m not going anywhere without you, right now.” 

“I missed you,” Mikey’s crying now which activates every ounce of dread left in him. He looks exhausted, pale and drawn out even with the strange glow.  “Leo, I’ve been trying, you have to believe me.”

Leo shakes his head, furious with heartbreak. “Try harder, then!” His fists clench. He’s not having this same conversation again, he’s not waking up one more time feeling like the world just ended in front of him. He’s not doing this without Mikey, it’s not happening. “I’ll just keep coming back, you know I will. You see that down there?” He gestures at their family, fighting the Krang that isn’t even here anymore, just so Leo won’t have to face it by himself. “They’re not giving up on you. I’m not giving up. I won’t ever, Ang. Don’t ask me to.” 

“Leo—” He says with a sigh, like the decisions already been made. 

“Mikey, stop,” He practically growls, panicking; something crashes behind him, down below where the fights going, he doesn’t look. He refuses to take his eyes off Mikey for a second in case he decides to fade away again. There has to be something there. There’s something to this, he knows there is. Since Leo was small, there’s been a constant he’s held close. It’s proven itself over and over again; when Raph fought through the Krang control, when their Dad gave up the world to save them and they saved it too, every time his brothers pulled through the impossible. Together, they’re stronger than anything— he knows this, he knows it. Mikey put a hole in the world to keep Leo safe. The universe rewrote itself because he made it change, and it only took them a month or two to see the threads anyways. The thrum in him is louder again, but it feels tethered somehow here. Like he could wrap himself around the line of it in his chest and pull. 

“We’ll keep remembering, as long as it takes, you know we will. It doesn’t matter how many times we forget, we’ll always remember you I swear—  Michelangelo, you’re my only baby brother, you think something as stupid as the universe can take you from me?” 

The waterlogged smile he gets could power the sun, he’s sure of it. He leans his head forward, where their foreheads would touch if he could. 

“You have to come back. I don’t care what we have to fight, we’re getting our little brother home.” 

“I want to, Leo, I just— I don’t know how. Not without losing you.”

He wants to say he’d do it, he’d jump right into the black hole to switch places but he remembers how this always went. Mikey learned it from him, from Raph, from their Dad, after all. It wouldn’t fix anything to lose himself either— maybe that’s the lesson at the core here. Leo was never alone on the asteroid, because his baby brother was breaking through space to get to him. And Mikey should never be alone here.

“It’s okay, Angelo, I—” He swallows again, Mikey looks so, so tired. He’s been here for months, Leo realizes, watching them all skip over him and time rewrite without him—  He has an idea, maybe it’ll break everything but he would. For Mikey, he would. “When have we ever played by the rules, hey? Mad Dogs make our own path, right?” 

He'd do anything for his little brother, including break the universe back. Without hesitating, watching Mikey's expression shift from sad to confused, and just that touch of hopeful, he grabs that thread in him, the one that’s been bright and loud and constant for months, and he pulls. 

___

There’s a thunderstorm somewhere far enough— Mikey can hear it in the pipes, in the walls. He’d only seen the sky when it was like this once, rolling gray and dark with thick bolts of lightning scattering apart; through the sewer grates it had looked almost like TV static, far away and strange. It’s loud up there and down here, the water rushing past all the chunks of stone that make up their home and away. 

Leo doesn’t like it, Mikey knows. Every time it storms, his eyes get more white than dark. All big and round and alert, and he jumps at everything. He thinks Mikey doesn’t notice. 

Raphie says it's okay to be afraid of things, like going up top because it's dangerous and they can’t run away or hide good enough yet to be safe. Raph’s afraid of the little dolls that they sometimes find washed up at the bottom of tunnels, he says they have empty eyes and it makes him uneasy; Donnie says Raphie watched a movie on TV that he shouldn’t have. Mikey thinks he’s probably afraid of the monsters in the tunnels, even though Donnie says they aren’t real— he’s heard them, though. He’s sure of it. Donnie also says that people think his brothers are the monsters, which is silly. 

Donnie’s afraid of a big word Mikey never remembers— he says the sun will burn out one day like it runs out of juice and everything will freeze like an icicle forever. He says this like its obvious, but he spends a lot of time reading about it anyways like he can make it go forever if he tries. Mikey thinks he could, Dee made their TV work so it’s probably possible he can do anything. 

Mikey’s not sure what Leo’s afraid of. He knows the water is loud and sounds like the monsters are just outside the doors sometimes, and that they had to leave their old house because there was a pipe that was too old in a wall and it made all their food wet. Leo says he’s not afraid of water, though, and he cannonballs in as big and bright as Raphie whenever they swim in the big water spot down the way. Leo also says monsters aren’t real, and that he’d chase all of them off for Mikey if they were, and he doesn’t think Leo could do any of that if he was scared of them. 

He’s still jumpy when it’s stormy out, though, and never wants to go too far from their room when Dad leaves to find food or things they need. It sure seems like Leo is afraid of something, but Mikey knows his brothers and he knows that Leo is brave and funny and sometimes sneaks cookies from the top shelf for him even when he’s not supposed to. Leo’s not afraid, because it’s Mikey who’s always afraid. 

When Mikey was convinced there was a monster in their bathroom and had been too terrified to run and get Dad, Leo was the one who’d picked up his practice katana and charged in yelling. When Mikey and Leo had gotten stuck in the closet while they’d been playing hide and seek, Leo was the one who started telling him a big dramatic story so it would stop feeling so small. 

It is okay to be scared, but Leo never is. 

“Leo?” He calls— he’s too small to grab the big light, the one Dad says they should only use in emergencies, but it’s dark and Dad went to grab something outside, and Donnie’s been sick so he can’t fix it like he usually does. He thinks this is maybe an emergency. 

Mikey wasn’t supposed to even be away from his brothers when Dad went outside, but Leo had said he’d be right back before the lights went out and Raphie had asked him to check on him. The water is loud in the walls. 

“Leo? I— Raphie says to come back,” He tries again. His voice only wavers a little, and he’s pretty proud because he thinks he might actually be very scared standing in the dark by himself. He doesn’t remember their living room being so big, or the kitchen being so far away, but it feels like miles and miles. It’s cold out here, too. 

Something rattles around the corner near the kitchen. Mikey jumps before realizing it’s probably Leo— sometimes he plays pranks like that, hiding around a corner to jump out. He thinks it’s funny how loud Raph and Mikey will yell, but it’s not. Mikey made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t scream anymore so Leo would stop doing it— he squares his shoulders, and balls up his fists as best as he can. “It’s okay to be afraid,” Mikey tells himself softly.  

Donnie says being scared of the dark is natural, that it’s some behind the brain thought that means other turtles survived longer. Being nervous was helpful, once. Him and his brothers are going to be ninjas soon though, and ninjas weren’t scared or nervous, they were careful. Dad always says that, to be careful and sure. Mikey tries to walk more slowly, quietly— not because there are ghosts waiting for him, but because his stinky older brother that likes to scare him might be. And Mikey isn’t scared, because he’s like Leo. 

The kitchen is strange in the dark, it’s wide and tall, and Mikey doesn’t think he’s ever noticed how high the ceiling goes. There’s an extra splotch of darkness at the very top, he imagines as a big bug waiting for him, and swallows nervously. 

He manages a whisper. “Leo…?” 

He imagines a different time, coming through the dark kitchen. Maybe he’d help Leo with the soup because Mikey wasn’t old enough to use the can opener or reach all the pans, but he watched Dad make it real close, and he knows you have to turn the stove handle to the right dot to make it heat up best. Maybe Leo would be here, and he’d jump out at Mikey and he’d be brave enough to not flinch, and Leo would ruffle him on the head the way he does. 

“Um,” He swallows again, willing himself not to cry as he takes in the empty room around him. The pots and pans look menacing hanging above him like this, like teeth waiting to fall, and the splotch on the ceiling is moving he’s sure of it. The rush of the water seems louder, too, like it knows Mikey’s here and his brothers can’t find him because it’s too dark, and Dad isn’t home to fix it. “This isn’t funny, Leo.” 

Maybe none of them happen, because Mikey is in the kitchen in the dark, and he’s waiting for Leo and he’s scared, and there’s no Leo at all. He turns to look for the door, to go back and wait with his brothers— it’s too dark, suddenly, to see where the door is at all. A pipe groans, or maybe a monster growls, and he squeaks, throwing himself at the nearest wall. He tucks himself in small, holding his knees close. After a moment, nothing moves— another moment, another nothing. 

The room is darker now, he can’t even see the splotch on the ceiling. He’s not sure he’s in the kitchen at all. 

“I’m lost,” He says to his knees, and presses his face into them to hold himself smaller. 

Dad will be home, and he’ll turn the lights on, and everyone will make fun of Mikey for being so scared, and Leo will pop out of the corner he’s hiding in and maybe Mikey will even cry. It’s okay if they make fun of him, as long as it's not dark anymore. As long as he stops being alone. 

He thinks he’s maybe been alone for a long time. 

“--key! Mikey, hold on!” 

Mikey blinks up, around— that sounded like— 

“Mikey, is that you?” 

He jumps, the kitchen— he can see it again— it’s still dark, but if he squints, he thinks he can see a figure on the other side, by the table. 

“...Leo?” 

The figure moves, uncurling itself from underneath the chair legs and shakily standing up. Mikey manages a brave shuffle closer as his eyes try to adjust— it is Leo, rubbing at his eyes fiercely and clearing his throat. “Jeeze, Mike. Way to sneak up on a guy.” 

Mikey almost doesn’t move for a second, feeling strangely out of place. “Mike?” Leo says, nervously, and all of the neurons in him rewire with a sharp burst in his chest as he scrambles forwards, throwing himself into his brother's arms. 

“It was dark! And— I couldn’t find you!” 

Leo’s hand comes up to hold the back of Mikey’s head, like he always does. “Hey— shh. Angie, it’s okay, hey? I've got you, always got you.” 

Mikey leans back, and scrubs at his eyes, trying to glare as fiercely as he can at his big brother in spite of the tears. “I was calling for you, and— and you couldn’t hear me!” Leo winces, something sheepish lacing across his face. There’s something else too, Mikey can’t read it so it doesn’t matter he figures. Leo always tells him, he always listens. 

“I heard you, I promise,” He holds Mikey closer for a second. “Sorry it took me a while— I always heard you.” 

He doesn’t know what that means but it appeases something in him anyways, he squeezes his brother as hard as he can. “Don’t go off on your own ever again,” Mikey tells him, muffled into his chest. “You gotta take me with you, too.” 

Leo doesn’t say anything for a long moment, humming quietly as he rubs Mikey’s shell. “I’m here now, hey? Not going anywhere, you’re not getting rid of me.” 

That’s good, he thinks. That’s where he should be. Here and nowhere else. Mikey’s not brave enough to be alone without him. 

He feels embarrassment wring through him. “I was scared,” He confesses, apologetic. Leo will probably tease him for it, when it’s light again. He’ll probably tell Raph like its a joke, but then stick more glow stars on the ceiling for him anyways. 

“Me too,” Leo says, quietly. “I was. I was really scared.”

Oh, Mikey blinks, rewires his thoughts. “Don’t have to be scared,” He tells Leo, because it’s what Dad says to him, too. “I can be brave and we can take turns.”

Leo laughs, gentle and quiet, his hug gets so tight Mikey debates telling him to let go, but— he’s shaking, a little, like he’s breathing all funny. He doesn’t want to tell Leo to stop if it helps. 

“Okay, little brother.” 

Mikey leans back, and takes Leo’s hand in his. He looks around the kitchen— it seems smaller, now.

“We can go now,” He says, and he’s not sure why. Leo’s mouth is flat and terse like it is when he’s really sad, but he manages a small smile anyways. 

It’s not as many steps to cross the room, and the splotch on the ceiling is just a shadow, really. He pulls Leo along behind him, squaring himself as bravely as he can. It’s easy, with Leo’s hand in his. It’s just a silly room, they make cereal bowls in the morning and sometimes Dad lets them put salt in the pot for spaghetti, and Leo makes silly faces when they clean dishes to make it fun. It’s a room in his house, and he’s safe here even when the pipes are loud and it’s dark. It's a room and Leo's here, and they're safe together.

He thinks about Donnie, waiting for soup. About Raph and his big worried bros, and the way he lets Mikey climb up on his shoulders to see up higher. He thinks about a hallway, and the twelve and a half steps to the stairs and the ten steps up to their floor, and the ten more steps to their bedroom. There’s something warm in his fingertips, in his chest, like he’s just had soup, or been bundled up in his favorite spot in their hammock between his brothers, and Dad is in the hallway turning off the light. 

The yellow through their ratty blue blanket always turns red and orange at the side, purple at the bottom. 

He can see the door to the hallway now— it’s not far to where his brothers are, and Dad said he’d be home soon. Mikey thinks he might be tired, though. He thinks he’s been tired for a long time. 

“I want to go home,” He tells Leo, from some place outside himself. His hands tingle funny, he thinks he’d like to rest, but the door is right there and he made it, and it’s glowing bright as anything— 

Leo’s hand is firm and warm and squeezes back, and he can take another step. 

____

Mikey wakes up warm. 

He stretches, reaches as high up as he can to touch the wall behind his headboard, same as he always does. He feels the grooves of the stone under his fingers, and the light vibration of the pipes behind it. He feels the stiffness in his spine loosen, uncurl, like he’s been tucked into his shell for too long.

It’s quiet, he realizes; his home is a ripcord of motion normally. Raph always gets up early and makes tea, and sits with Dad for a little while before Mikey ambles down to get breakfast going. He can usually hear music already, or Don’s electronics whirring if he’d pulled another all nighter, or the thrum of a TV. There’s none of that now. If he focuses, he can hear soft puffs of breath somewhere beside him. 

The realization doesn’t hit him for a long moment. He opens his eyes and sees his room, the outlines of plastic stuck on stars on the ceiling, the pile of comics tucked carefully onto his bookshelf, and — Leo. Sleeping with his head on his hand, leaning half onto Mikey’s bed from the floor. 

He blinks and— 

He’s standing on an asteroid, the one he lost Leo on. Some unthinkable distance away from home, caught high up in the air and all alone. The Krang is missing, because Mikey did it right this time, finally. He found the branch within all the branches that would get Leo home— the one where Mikey never existed to begin with. The only branch where Leo grew up being the baby of the family where his overprotective brothers never allowed him to even venture into self-sacrificial acts of heroism. The only one where Leo figures out a different plan.

They’re happy here, he knows. They will be happy here, even if Leo doesn’t believe him. 

His brother is all highlighter outrage and heartbreak, a full study in devastation in technicolor, and all Mikey can think of is that he loves him. That he’s glad he’s safe. That if this is the only gift he can ever give any of them again, a way to skip grieving at all, then he’s glad. He’s only sorry to be the one leaving first. 

“What are you talking about?” Leo’s voice shakes, his eyes are wild. He’s not supposed to even know what’s happening, not supposed to be able to talk to Mikey like this, but his brothers have always had a way of doing the impossible. “You’re not going anywhere, stop it.” 

“Leo, it’s too late. I’m– I’m not going anywhere, not really. You’ll see.” 

Leo’s expression twists further, it hurts to look at, it does, but Mikey makes himself memorize all of it just in case. 

“You think I’ll let that happen?”

“You don’t have a choice—”

“I don’t care, Michael. I don’t— what. My baby brother is badass enough to change space and time just because he decided to, and you think I’m going to let that one up me? If you can change the timeline, then so can I.”

Mikey smiles, despite himself. He wonders how it’s possible to be so afraid and full of love all at once, he doesn’t know how there’s room. "Leo, you have to let me go. It's okay."

His big brother is so, so sad. It aches and hollows him out to see it, he's never seen Leo like this before. Like the sun just burnt itself out right in the sky. “If I let you go, I'll lose you." He says, simply, horrifically. 

"Maybe that's how it's s'pposed to go," Mikey shrugs, hiccuping on a sob.

Leo's expression shifts, firm lines pouring in between. He leans close and pokes him in the chest, eyes flashing fierce. "It's not. It can't be, I won't let it. You’re not going anywhere, baby brother. I’m not doing any of this without you.” 

The world unravels apart in front of him and Leo’s eyes never leave his. 

“You awake?” 

Mikey jumps, hands curled tight into his comforter so hard it hurts. Leo’s staring at him now, expression entirely unreadable. 

“Leo, I—” 

He holds up a hand, swiping at Mikey’s chin gently. “Great to see you up. Worried we weren’t going to be able to wake you for a bit there. How are your hands?” 

His hands? Mikey blinks down at himself. His hands are a network of glowing lines, worse than before. Last time they’d opened up like fissures, pure gold creeping through before settling into paler scars against his scales. Now, it looks like his hands are barely holding back straight sunlight, more cracked lines than not. It doesn’t… hurt, though. 

“Okay,” He says, his voice is croaky and small. Leo smiles at him, rubs the top of his head in a smooth motion before standing. 

“I’ll let Don know you’re awake, he wanted to check in on all of that.” 

Leo hasn’t actually looked him in the eyes, Mikey realizes with a pang— instinctively, desperately, he grabs Leo’s hand before he can walk away. Some part of him terrified abruptly that Leo’s so furious with him it’ll be like this forever, never quite looking at him but too scared to leave. Like magnets constantly repelling each other. Leo's his best friend, just like Donnie and Raph, but he's always wanted to be as brave as Leo was his whole life. He can't be mad at him for doing what Leo would have done, did do a thousand times over, he can't.

“Don’t— um. Don’t go?” 

Leo’s shoulders hitch high, he’s staring at the doorway flatly. Tense. Mikey has an insane urge to apologize, desperately, but he’s not even really sorry. If Leo’s here then he did it right, it was worth it. If Leo’s here then Mikey made the correct choice, no matter what Leo thinks.

They stay like that for a long second, Mikey holding Leo’s wrist with both hands, Leo facing away. He can feel Leo’s pulse under his thumb, it’s settling some terrified white noise in his head, in spite of himself. He can breathe knowing Leo's here.

Actually, he’s breathing a lot— big heaving breaths that tear through him all at once. He can feel Leo’s heartbeat and he’s alive, and Mikey’s here, and he can see him and— he was so tired of being alone, of trying to be brave. Maybe he always believed Leo would find him, maybe that wasn’t fair of him at all. He just doesn’t want Leo to hate him for it. 

“I— I…” He tries, the sentences evaporating into nothing before him. 

Leo turns instantly, switching their hands so he’s holding onto Mikey’s wrist just as tightly. His eyes are wet, Mikey realizes. 

“Angelo—” 

“Leo—” Mikey stops, bites his lip. Leo doesn’t look angry, not really, but he’s not sure. “I’m. I’m just happy to see you.”

Something crashes across the flat dark of his eyes, splintering it apart like a lightning storm, all motion and sparked urgency. 

“I missed you so much,” Leo says, and pulls him into a hug. 

Mikey gasps, tears falling from wide eyes. “I thought… I thought you’d be mad.” 

“I am,” Leo sniffs, choking on a breath as he bundles Mikey closer. “I’m so fucking mad at you, but I love you and you were missing. Don’t ever do that to me again.” 

“You jumped first,” Mikey manages, some backwards anger from a reality that no longer matters leeching forwards. 

Leo shakes his head, hooks his chin on top of Mikey’s forehead. “Big brothers are supposed to do stuff like that. I knew you’d save my shell.” 

“No you didn’t,” Mikey argues, balling his fists up to push at Leo’s chest. “You didn’t, because I didn’t even know. You were going to leave me behind.” 

There’s a fraction of a space between them as Leo lifts his head, and it’s horrible. His eyes are swollen red, tears still streaming from them; he looks just as heartbroken as before, but Mikey’s fine. Leo shouldn't look like he's still losing Mikey when they're here together, that's silly, that hurts in a way Mikey doesn't know how to make better. He puts both hands on Leo's cheeks anyways, to keep him in one piece all together.

“Never,” Leo swears wetly. “I’ll always come back for you, you hear me? Nowhere you can go I can’t annoy you back where you belong.”

“Same for you,” Mikey insists, it sounds like begging. “I’m a badass mystic warrior now. I’ll just drag you back home.” 

Leo lets out a shaking breath, and Mikey sniffles too.

"I was trying to tell you that I loved you," Mikey offers, wobbling all the way down to the core of himself. "Did you hear me?"

His big brother's face twists, crashes to pieces and his shoulders shake, leaning all his weight forwards into Mikey's hands and closing his eyes. "Course I did," He says, as easy as anything. "Of course I did."

____

Leo has another dream. 

It’s softer— it’s not on the asteroid, there’s no Krang or portal or giant ship. He’s younger, skipping through the sewers after his Dad and his brothers. Dad has Raph’s hand in his, and Raph’s holding onto Donnie’s sleeve to make sure he doesn’t stray too far either. He gets distracted sometimes, by the details that pile up in his head. Raphie keeps an eye on Donnie though. 

Leo’s supposed to be doing something, he thinks. 

The tunnels are tall and wide, and there’s hints of lights through the grates high up above that make spackled golden dots on the stone. He peers closely at a puddle, the way the light seems to absorb it all in. When he looks up, his family is trailing farther away. Faint outlines in the murky distance— he needs to catch up, he thinks. Or when the rain comes we’ll get separated. 

Dad��s watching out for Raph, who’s watching out for Donnie, though, so they’ll be okay. It’s Leo’s job to make sure they don’t get separated. 

The tunnels are still light, but they’re long and the splotches of light look like sun through the tree leaves, and his family turns a corner. Leo’s alone. 

He wakes up, standing in a tunnel. 

It’s dark. Of course it’s dark— for a disorienting moment, Leo’s not sure he’s actually awake. The jumpcut between his last memories of ambling off to bed to now don’t seem to fit in any way he can make sense of, but the stone under his feet is cold and solid anyways. He knows this tunnel, probably. He knows all of the offshoot tunnels by their home like the back of his hand— he’s not lost. He isn’t. 

He is alone, though. 

The dream is still floating through his mind, a cloud that hasn’t fully let up and drifted off as it weighs thick and heady. A thundercloud, dropping low with all its gray and heavy lightning. They didn’t wander off without him, he knows— except. It’s just that they could have, couldn’t they? Any one of them could be cut clean through again. 

He knows the memory his mind had latched onto. His heart beats frantic and loud for a moment as he realizes. He’d been there with Mikey, it was his job to watch his baby brother; he’d been there with Mikey, but he’d forgotten again. How could he have forgotten, again? What if he hadn’t fixed it, not really, and any one of them could fade out of the forefront without him noticing? 

The tunnel is dark, and he’s alone— he knows this tunnel, his home is a few steps around the corner, and he must have slept walked all the way out but he can go back. He knows his brothers: Donnie, Raph, Mikey. He hasn’t forgotten them, he hasn’t. 

There were fifteen seconds that he was alone in the dark when the power went out. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Raph’s voice bounces off the stone around them— Leo whirls around before his mind catches fully up, and Raph sweeps him up further into a bear hug with it. “Pretty sure you’re still grounded.” 

Leo blinks frantically, feeling the slight tremble of Raph’s arms around him. Donnie peeks his head over Raph’s shoulder. “So, turns out I didn’t remove the trackers on all of you that I said I did, go figure.” 

“Which I’ll allow this one time, on account of bozo activity.” Raph says. “But we will be revisiting at a later time, with Dad.” 

“What—” Leo turns his head. Donnie’s pretending to type on his wrist guard, but his eyes keep flickering up at Leo and away. Raph’s smile is tense at the edges. They’re here, they’re real, he hasn’t forgotten them, but then— 

Raph continues, he’s herding Leo forward and beginning the walk back home as he talks. “Maybe we give up the whole sleeping in separate rooms thing tonight and do a sleepover instead. We can put your favorite on.”

“I won’t even argue on which film is the best, this one time only,” Donnie says, magnanimously.  

Oh, Leo manages a shaky smile back. The ball of nervousness bubbles in his chest, he tries to swallow it down. “Better not be Punch Chowder then, because—”

“That’s only for criminals,” Mikey chirps in, patting Leo on the arm as they’re bustled forward. The knot in Leo’s chest relaxes. Everyone’s here, he didn’t forget them. The gratitude is nearly overwhelming, his knees nearly give out before Mikey swoops in under his arm, wrapping his own firmly around Leo’s shell. 

“Movie night sounds good,” He manages. His family, all where he can see them, can be sure he won’t wake up without any one of them. It sounds perfect. 

The lights are on, the tunnel is bright. He’s watching over Mikey and he’s holding onto all of them, and his hand is in Don’s. 

Yeah, he thinks. Everything where it’s supposed to be. 

[classic-maya]

I really loved your view on when did Brian fall in love with Justin and I saw how happy you were about a qaf ask, so here I am:

when do you think britin reunited after the finale, specifically how long do you think they lived apart for AND how do you they reunited? (I couldn't bring myself to watch that episode because this is gonna break my heart) OR do you think they are not together?

I love this fandom and I love you. I’ve been wanting to write some more fic for them for a while and haven’t had the motivation, but this might spur me along.

In the meantime…I’ll start with the last episode and why I have an unpopular opinion about how it ended and then get into how I envision their reunion. 

Finale

I know there is a lot of hate for S5 finale, but I honestly love the “It’s only time” speech that Brian gives and it’s so so special to me. I feel like it is one of the most romantic lines in the show because in Brian Kinney-speak “It’s only time” is "I will always love you. I will love you just as much tomorrow as I love you today and the next day and the next and the next. I will die loving you. I will love you if you come back to me and I will love you if you never come back to me because time doesn't matter, you are the person I love and that will never change.” 

Not joking, QaF fundamentally altered my view on romantic love. I previously only thought that familial love could be unconditional, but it was such a believable representation of unconditional romantic love that it shifted my perspective. They both truly just want what is best for the other, even if that means they cannot physically be together or at times are not in a relationship. It took my breath away.

All that being said, I definitely do not think of their last scenes together in S5 as a break-up, maybe just a break. They needed to exist separately and apart from each other for a little bit. I think Brian is fairly conscious of their age gap and he never wants to hold Justin back from anything because of their relationship. We see him struggle with this throughout the series, remember him encouraging Justin to make some friends his own age, “Enjoy your youth…I sure have ;)” as well as his many attempts to get Justin to go to and finish college. Even when Justin was with Ethan, of course Brian was hurt because of the cheating, but he also didn’t hold it against Justin because he ultimately wants him to have everything he wants and desires and Brian recognized that he couldn’t give Justin that at the time (let’s Brian’s struggles with low self-esteem aside for the purpose of this conversation). On the other side, Justin loves Brian exactly how he is, and I think Brian’s sudden change of heart (i.e. declaring his love, proposing marriage, turning down opportunities to hook up with tricks etc.) scared Justin.

The two of them went through yet another extraordinary trauma with the attack on Babylon and I think the rush to get married was an extension of that, but I don’t know if either of them were actually ready for marriage. In the same way Brian is afraid Justin will wind up resenting him and their relationship if it were to keep Justin from reaching his full potential as an artist, I think Justin is afraid that if they do get married, Brian will later resent it because he was only caught up in the fear of once again losing the love of his life. But no matter what, something big did shift in a very real way for both of them and made Brian feel freer to express his love for Justin. Reunion

I think Justin moves to New York and has the exact experience he was looking for. He struggles for a bit and he hides it from Brian and his family because he wants to prove to himself that he can do it, that he can take care of himself and Brian lets him. He supports and loves his independence. I think they see each other frequently and are madly, passionately, exuberantly in love even though they live in different cities. I think Brian flies to New York every few weeks and Justin takes the bus to the Pitts every chance he gets.

The first time Brian visits, Justin picks him up from the airport and they can’t stand another moment not touching each other, so they don’t even make it home and end up having a quickie in the airport bathroom. Then Brian takes them to a hotel because he is not sleeping on Justin’s ratty second-hand mattress and letting his roommate hear them fuck their brains out for the next 48 hours.

Eventually, Justin’s art starts selling and he stops struggling. He makes a name for himself and is being flown across the country for different shows and speaking engagements. Meanwhile, Kinnetic becomes the top ad agency in Pennsylvania and begins to gain clients throughout the northeast and in New York to the extent that developing a satellite office in the city only makes sense. Brian moves to New York, not because he is following Justin, but because it has always been his dream. He sells Britin and swaps it for a penthouse in Manhattan that he puts in both their names. Justin moves in without either of them talking about it.

I see them getting married about 7 or 8 years after we last see them in the show, and this time it feels right. They go back to Pittsburgh and their chosen family, the gang and some new friends, are all there to celebrate them. I do not think they will ever choose to have a monogamous relationship. It is not what either of them want nor do they see it as a way to show their devotion to each other. Their non-monogamy looks a lot different than it did when they were younger though. They are both more intentional about the partners they choose and it’s more like the trick of the month vs the trick of the night (or even hour if you’re Brian Kinney). More often than not they wind up in threesomes or moresomes together rather than seeing someone separately. They allow the exchange of names and numbers because they feel more secure in their relationship with each other. The prohibition on kissing anyone else remains.

They don’t have kids together, but they both are in and out of Toronto with enough regularity that Gus sees them as de facto parents who helped his moms raise him. Gus often goes to New York to spend long weekends with them and in high school and college he will spend entire summers in New York with Brian and Justin.

They are the consummate New York power couple; they help each other’s business and are always attending each other’s events. They travel separately for work but always make time to leave the country and vacation together a few times a year. Eventually, they move from the penthouse to a beautiful Brooklyn brownstone and at some point, they (cover Brian’s ears) grow old together.

[oshiawaseni]

“Are you alright? Can you stand up?” The day Katsuki upheaved the status quo!

These panels of Katsuki learning Izuku was the only person still unconscious and fighting through pain and restraint to see him are honestly among my favourite Katsuki scenes and it was probably right here when I first realised how deeply he cared for Izuku and when the reality of this ship really hit me. 

Something so fundamental had changed in him. It was like he had fully accepted Izuku into his heart, accepted his feelings for him and no longer wanted to leave his side anymore. These hospital scenes perfectly encapsulate how much he now loved and valued Izuku. 

Ever since the moment he thought he might lose Izuku, Katsuki became overwhelmed with urgency to be by his side and to apologise for everything but Izuku was in a coma and so Katsuki had no outlet for those feelings. He expressed his worry for Izuku with anger and feral rage, it didn’t take much to look past that. All I could see was his love. It truly was the birth of a new Katsuki. Except rather than new, it felt more like something long buried was waking inside Katsuki that had simply always been there. 

Sadly, these renewed feelings towards Izuku he was finally embracing were only met with Izuku running away from own feelings towards Katsuki, leaving them behind in a bid to not bring Kacchan more pain from getting involved in his fated fight against AFO. When actually... it was far more painful for him that Izuku left him behind... 

Bkdk’s feelings for each other, that should be bringing them closer together, sadly have a tendency to tear them apart. It’s a recurring dynamic of theirs. AFO using Izuku and Katsuki’s feelings of closeness with one another to punish them and physically ripping them apart as a result of those feelings is another huge example of this. And then there is the river incident.

There is kinda an uncanny parallel that can be found between this scene and Katsuki’s hospital scenes when he finds out Izuku can’t stand up. Izuku responds to Katsuki’s distress with kindness, and Katsuki responds to Izuku’s distress with anger... but what’s at the very core of both reactions is unmistakeably the same...

Katsuki fell in the river and was so moved and intimidated by Izuku’s kindness, he didn’t know how to process that feeling. Take this exact scene they had, but place it in another manga. It’s actually what should be the beginning of falling in love with someone, not pushing that person away. I think that is why Katsuki’s mind often goes back to this scene. 

While he is regretting his actions from this point on in their history, I think he also came to realise that his love for Izuku started right there, in that river. It was the moment Katsuki acknowledged Izuku’s kindness and strength that is different from his own… though cherishing Izuku and his caring, gentle heart only really caught up to him when they made it into high school together, somewhat cleared up his misunderstandings and grew close again.

This is a major reason why I think these two will be the canon couple. It’s clear as day that they both love each other to pieces, but the way they’ve handled this love for each other has been so repeatedly bad. Even fate doesn’t allow them to discover how much they both affect each other. It has me believing in the day their feelings will connect and this pattern of running away from what’s right in front of them will at long last come to an end. That they’ll open their hearts to one another, feel what they each want to give and accept it completely.

[coconutcordiale]

In honor of How To Lose a Guy In Ten Days and Matthew McConaughey: “Great Answer.” “Good Question.” With Hangman

make my motor run

pairing- finnegan (everybody wants some!!) x afab reader

synopsis- everyone thinks finn is so sweet. you're not convinced.

warnings- 18+ minors and glen powell - you are not welcome here. protected piv, oral (f receiving), slight dumbification/degradation, praise kink. reader has ethically not great motives around sleeping with finn but do we honestly think finn cares? no

length- 2.1k

an- not hangman, but it's still glen so...close enough? this is the crossover literally not one person asked for - how to lose a guy in 10 days (if you squint a little) & everybody wants some

idk y'all, i don't have it in me to be ashamed anymore. this is just smut with some bants. idk if anyone even wants to read this but the glen powell brain rot is real so it had to be done so it'd stop rattling around in my mind. blame glen and his stupidly handsome face and the fact that he steals every scene he's in

title from my sharona - the knack

tagging some finn peeps - @sebsxphia / @iguana-braces / @justalonelyslytherin

It’s Saturday night. Against your better judgment, you’re at the rickety baseball houses, silently debating if you’ll have time to get a tetanus shot before your study group tomorrow morning.

Finn twirls his pipe between his fingers, leaning against the porch railing in a ridiculous paisley button-up. “Aside from how to take my breath away, what do you study here, ladies?”

“Does that ever actually work on real, human women?” You ask, ignoring the elbow to your ribs that Sophia digs into your side, presumably to get you to shut up.

The blond tilts his head, processing. He eventually grins. “Take no prisoners kinda gal, aren’t ya? I like that.” 

You hold back a grunt when Sophia elbows you again, answering the question before you can snark him any further. “We’re both journalism majors.” 

Going to take a sip of your drink, something you’ll surely need to swallow whatever faux-enlightened comment he has about that little piece of information; you furrow your brows when you realize it’s empty.

“I’ll grab you another drink, try not to miss me too much.” Finn winks, the bastard. What a ham. 

Your eye roll is barely contained when Sophia gives you a knowing look. 

“Oh, come on, he’s sweet,” she insists. 

“You’ve seen him with other girls, right? Everything out of his mouth is a line, Soph. It’s all bullshit. He’s pandering to us, so he seems better, different than his asshole teammates. It’s insulting.”

“Then why haven’t you told him to fuck off?”

“I think he’d be a good subject for my article.”

Her eyes widen. “About benevolent misogyny?”

“That’s the one.”

“How far are you gonna take this? Sleep with him to prove a point about how far a chauvinistic male will go for sex?”

You shrug. You hadn’t really thought it through, honestly. It’s not like it’d be a chore, he is pretty hot when he keeps his mouth shut.

She takes your silence as confirmation. “That’s kind of fucked up.” 

“Can’t be worse than changing your entire personality every other night just to get laid.” 

+ 

You find yourself sitting on the roof with Finn, having already shown up his mediocre golf swing. You’d never admit it to Soph, but your article is the furthest thing from your mind right now.

“True or false: all fundamental beliefs are reasonable.” You’re so taken aback by his pop quiz you almost don’t notice him sitting down behind you, pulling you into the space between his legs.

Smooth. You roll your eyes, but don’t move away. “False.” 

You can hear the smile in his voice. “I see someone’s already taken Philosophy 101 with Roberts.” 

“Yes, but that’s irrelevant. That’s an insane statement regardless.” 

When you turn to catch a glimpse of him you see him opening his mouth, ostensibly to argue, but you shake your head. “My turn. True or false: all’s fair in love and war.” 

“True.”

You can’t help the smirk that tugs at your lips. “Great answer.” 

Finn positively beams. “Good question!” His hands drift up from your hips, working their way under your flimsy tank before he brings his lips to your ear, murmuring, “True or false: you’re gonna let me take you inside so I can take you apart.” 

Your breath hitches. “True.” 

He turns your head to him, mouth pressing against yours, mustache tickling you, soft and sweet for just a moment, before he slides his tongue into your mouth filthily. “Let’s go then, honey.”

Your tiny denim shorts and little tank get lost on the floor of his bedroom almost immediately, skin ablaze as he pushes you back onto his bed, on soft forest green sheets that smell like him – warm and spicy and earthy. He stays standing as he makes quick work of his own clothes, raking his eyes across your naked form.

You try not to shy away from his gaze, meeting his eyes defiantly as you feel slick pooling between your thighs. You’re barely keeping yourself from rubbing them together, words laced with an edge you don’t feel. “Thought you were working on a degree in cunnilingus. Put that mouth to good use, Finn.”

There’s a sparkle in those green eyes that you catch just before he braces himself above you, arms bracketing your head. His words are muffled against your skin as he kisses his way down your body. “Overheard that, did you? Knew you were paying special attention to me.”

You roll your eyes, mouth open to respond, but he drags his lips across your collarbone before his mouth closes around a nipple, effectively driving any wit from you.

He pushes your legs open wide, settling himself between them. His chest presses into the mattress as his arms wrap around your thighs where he’s busy putting them over his shoulders. When his mustache brushes against your thigh's sensitive skin, it sends shivers racketing through you and you feel his smirk only centimeters away from where you want it. 

He licks his lips as your resolve crumbles with every passing second.

“C’mon, Finn, please,” you whine, threading your hands through his shaggy hair, trying in vain to pull him closer to your cunt.

“Impatient,” he tsks. You lean up to fix him with a glare, but it only makes him chuckle. “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll take care of you.”

He finally, finally licks a stripe up your slit, and despite it being exactly what you asked for, you tug on hard on the blond hair between your fingers in surprise. He groans long and low, vibrations rolling through your body from your center where his lips are busy fixing themselves to your clit. 

His buries his face in you, moaning against your cunt as his tongue laps at you like a starved man. “Could spend hours drowning in this pussy, tastes so fucking good.”

The sound that leaves you in answer to that is pathetic – high and whiny – hips bucking. His big hands are gripping you so tight you’re sure there’ll be bruises high on your legs tomorrow. He stiffens his tongue to fuck it in and out of you, nose bumping your clit and making you shake, your eyes rolling back into your head.

Any sense of shame, any idea that you should keep yourself quiet in this house full of strangers has left you – your existence narrowed down to your hands in his hair, his lips on your cunt, the moans tearing their way from your throat, unbidden.

Your legs dig into his back, urging him in, hurtling towards the point of no return so fast all you can think of is needing more. He moves his lips back to your clit, hand loosening his death grip enough to slide a finger into the wet mess you’ve become at the same time he curls his lips and sucks.

“Don’t stop, please, Finn I -” You’re begging now, grinding against his face as much as you can in the vice-like grip he still has on you. He doubles his efforts, tongue working over your clit harder, finger inside you curling as you burn with the intensity of it, electricity bursting beneath your skin as the tension finally bursts, his name falling from your lips like a prayer.

Your legs feel like jelly. You let go of his blond locks belatedly, resigning yourself to your new existence as a puddle, a melted version of your former self. 

He looks up from between your legs and grins. 

You grab for his arms where they’re still flexed around your thighs, bringing him up face to face with you. He smiles, dropping sweet kisses to your parted lips and warm cheeks. Whining, you wrap your legs around his waist, wordlessly trying to pull him to you, get him inside of you, greedy for him.

“Don’t tell me a smart girl like you doesn’t know how to use her words,” Finn goads, laughter curling in his words, and you’re torn between wanting to smack him and beg like your life depends on it. You’re so distracted you barely notice him shifting his weight to his knees so he can reach for a condom, tear it open with his teeth, and roll it on.

You try to glare but he braces himself over you again, rubbing his cock between your folds, catching your oversensitive clit and a truly embarrassing whimper comes out, eyes blurring with a mix of pain and pleasure instead. “Finnegan.” 

“Yeah, baby?”

Taking a deep breath, you try to get your last functioning brain cell to cooperate. “Get inside me right now or so help me –”

You can still feel the amusement on his lips as he ducks his head down to slot your mouths together to cut you off, swallowing your moan as he pushes into you, slow and steady. 

When you flex your legs around his waist impatiently, he chuckles before setting a relentless pace, grinding his cock into you hard with each push. It’s too much, it’s not enough, it sets your skin on fire, it rackets the headboard against the wall – if his teammates didn’t know what was happening before, they certainly have a good idea now.

Your head lolls to the side as he hits that spot inside you on every thrust, nerves overloaded as you grip the nape of his neck, just trying to hold on.

“Fuck,” he groans, looking down at the glazed expression taking over your features. “Not gonna last long.” 

The thought that he’s already so close from having his mouth on you has your eyes crossing, cunt clenching around his thick length. His face crumples, mouth parting like you’ve just knocked the wind out of him. “Trying to kill me, honey?”

He lifts one of your legs to his shoulders, leaning down towards you and bending you in half – pushing limits to flexibility you didn’t even know you had.

“Wanna feel you come on my cock, you can do that for me, can’t you?” Finn asks, panting against your cheek, deft fingers moving down to circle your clit.

The sparks shooting through you as he presses into your center border on pain but you’re nodding, head bobbing up and down of its own accord, nails scratching red along his shoulders as you get closer and closer.

“Good girl,” he grunts and you keen, his words hurtling you towards the edge again. “So good for me…look at you, smart ass, brilliant girl fucked dumb on my cock.”

He’s pulling almost all the way out of you on every thrust now, slamming back in, and your back arches against him, a string of unintelligible noises leaving you that you’re just barely aware of, mewling filling the air in the room as your release snaps through you, ears ringing.

When you come to, still shaking and clenching around him, he’s running his mouth still, a litany of praise and groans of fuck honey, perfect for me, spilling from his bitten, red lips. His hips tear forward without rhythm as he pumps into you one last time, filling the condom before dropping your leg and collapsing next to you, strings holding him up suddenly cut.

Finn rolls to the side, and you stare at the cracks in the ceiling, wondering if you’ll ever be able to move again. You think he’s talking, but you can’t even begin to register what he’s saying. 

“Did I fuck all the brains out of the mouthy girl I brought up here?” Finn asks, amused when you don’t respond.

“Just surprised you wanted audience participation for your post-sex speech,” you snark, trying not to belay how difficult it is to form words currently.

“Well, I think Joanna Russ would disparage of me if I were indifferent to your thoughts and opinions immediately after getting off.”

 You raise an eyebrow. “You know who Joanna Russ is?”

 “The Female Man is a cornerstone of feminist literature. I read it be—”

 You can’t help but interrupt, brain quickly coming back online. “Because you thought it was going to be about the ideal woman through a man’s eyes.”

 He even has the gall to look offended. “Of course not, everyone knows Russ is a feminist writer.”

“Then you read it so more women would sleep with you after hearing that you’d read it.” He presses his lips together to hold back a smile and you snort. “I knew it.”

“Honey, don’t get mad at me just because it works.”

“Incorrigible.” 

You lay your head on his chest, trying not to purr like a kitten as his hands tangle in your hair.

“I enjoy Jack Kerouac too if you really want to round out your article. Paint a full picture.”

Your eyes widen, trying desperately to keep in the surprised squeak when you look up to meet jade eyes and see them filled with mischief.

“Just a thought,” he murmurs, hands resuming their movements on your scalp, lulling you toward sleep.

full disclosure i haven't actually read the female man but i'm pretty sure it was published in the 70s which seemed fitting for ews being set in the 80s. thanks for reading!

[disruptivevoib]

I’m not good with questions but

Could you possibly talk about Viscera? I don’t have anything specific but I love the concept that he’s a Whole in a Soul’s place

-🛩️

VISCERA.

Very long ramble under the cut

He is really my most under-spoken-on character here...which is odd because he is by far one of my favorite / more complex ones!

Vis is in his concept, Whole in Soul's place. I think in the album now, he reflects Soul very well in the idea of being the shell. Though this is mainly because Whole isn't really a character and Soul is the implied shell of what we think of as Whole in concept.. The casing, the iron maiden for Mind and Heart to be held within!!! (there is a reason his name was almost Body ig.. thank god CJ reconsidered tho. Body is kinda an awkward name/title.)

Anyways.

Vis is a hollowed out husk of what is supposed to be somebody. Soul is some form of throughline to Mind and Heart. A connector, an adaptor. Viscera is simply not this. He is a vacancy because he is fundamentally nothing. Meant to be someone, torn from his purpose and placed promptly in the spot of what would typically be his identity.

Sooo Viscera struggles to be much of anybody. In this, and through the hundreds of loops he endures due to Astray (Soul as Whole) and his inability to really, of course, be a person when he is meant to just be one facet of someone, Vis remembers everything.

It was a commonly shared idea that Soul is able to choose to remember or forget during loops. Swap Au explores this concept in that Astray explicitly is the reason Judge (Heart as Mind) and Ennui (Mind as Heart) forget alongside himself. Vis, as Whole yet not knowing it, remembers all of this context (though from his own point of view. So he does not know Astray /well/ really. But he feels for him in terms of knowing the panic that comes with having split down to three again.)

Vis is kind and gentle and cares very very much for his thirds, or rather his ids and his Whole as he sees them. He reminds Ennui and Judge of their names and his own every loop, and though things change during loops, and no timeline is entirely consistent, there are throughlines and thus predictability. So he can navigate it just as well.

Viscera is interesting in juxtaposition to Eleutheromania Soul who remembers his loops though Mind and Heart forget just the same. Yet their reactions and handling of the situations are fundamentally different. Though this is due to their roles and the treatment they get in their respective Psyche and by their respective versions of a Whole or Soul.

... But yes. Vis is. deeply longing to be complete in some way. He is unsure always of his emptiness and what might fill it, but never loses this inkling that being Whole is.. what he needs. And in some way, it is and is not that!

He also speaks in intense amounts of prose and roundabout allegories, symbolism, and metaphors. It was more a quirk of his character to make him distinct from how my other's spoke, but I think it also calls to the deeper idea of the way fragmented thoughts put together can be a little outlandish and nonsensical but.. make perfect sense to you in some way. Or something like that.

He also, moves very slowly and takes a lot of time to do things. Like an old window's computer. He needs time to process information!! And I attribute this also to his emptiness and lack of anything but memory as it is all he has in the moment to base what should be his feelings and thoughts on.

^ Though despite that sounding like he cannot feel or think or anything, it is more like trying to make sure he feels like himself? even though realistically Viscera very deeply struggles with that idea. Not that he'd say it ever. Vis is incredibly genuine, though. He does what he can to ensure the safety of others including his ids and they in turn do the same to him.

The Swap Au really makes for a VERY interesting person to look at due to characterization. Someone who is unstable but trying, and through all their struggles remains loving and warm. That is who Astray could be, who Vis essentially is and what Judge and Ennui contribute too.

Also he smells perpetually like citrus. I do not know why but I made it canonical that all four of them have distinct smells to them and the things they summon. Perhaps they are all just very scent oriented.

Also-Also in terms of my other Aus and Sources as a concept for HMS. Of which I can elaborate on ig? if need be! Viscera has no source...................... it is a black voided little pit or hole there instead.

If Soul's source is a star, then Viscera's became a sort of blackhole. I suppose.

[autisticbokutoenthusiast]

pit babe ep 12 stray thoughts

- kentapeteway here we goooo. oh OH??? i need so much more of them you dont understand

- peteway really hitting like pete just wants to help them get out 😕

- this sad ass guitar plucking

- PETE CAN READ MINDS HIM AND WAY ARE LIKE FUCJING FOILS

- peteway really hitting might have to pop over to ao3

- WHO IS TONY GONNA SELL

- jeff’s “aww you’re not too old to give it your all” mdmdjentjrj

- does x hunter have no money cause alan lives alone in a mansion, be honest

- the way north looks at sonic makes me want to eat my computer. he’s constantly shooting his shot good for him

- these absolute clowns. throwing apples at him then bringing up charlie like do you want him to be miserable lmao

- babe’s having kitty thoughts rn isn’t he

- kim being dragged around like the distant cousin who came to see is taking me out i love this lil group NOT THE CHASE

- i’m obsessed with the piano track playing during this conversation does anyone know if they released which instrumentals they use in the soundtrack

- jeff getting kidnapped AGAIN is wild

- idk how i feel about the zipper on kenta’s outfit it looks uncomfy. oh is he having a change of heart? kenta growth moment?? oh no tony saw. his desperate ass is calling winner isnt he....

- pete and way trying their hardest to convince babe kenta can change vs kenta walking in and vowing not to change lol

- will not be commenting on kenta and how he was raised or the cycle or the way he looks at tony or or or or

- he got kenta on the floor crying TONY YOU WILL CRUMBLE

- not the “i’ve never seen you as a son i raised you as a dog” ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

- winners cringe ass is here, someone needed to show him kindness or maybe have gay sex with him and let him have control in a safe environment idk i just know he’s not gonna make it more than a few hours god it’s getting desperate for these guys

- i’m really loving way after losing everything, like this man has changed at a fundamental level i dont know what he'll do next i dont know if he knows what he'll do next he has lost himself he has found the person he thought was gone forever....

- DID WINNER MAKE YHR NOISE OF THE CAR DOOR OPENING HELPP DJEJDJJKEKSK

- and he’s a bulls fan ekejjrjriekek

- why is way just standing there watching babe get his ass kicked go mind control

- kim off to the side sadly staring in space while everyone else talks is so funny to me

- babe and pete in sweats for their heist vs way in his fashion jacket

- winner shut up tony is gonna throttle you

- babe rotting from the inside over missing charlie:

way and his loafers: what are we

- i love tony’s little baby hairs im sorry but they’re kinda hot….

- if Pete and way try hard enough can they explode tony with their minds, like if they work as a team

- babe always getting his head smashed like he should just wear his raceing helmet all the time

ahhhh things are going down next ep!!!!!

[blackjackkent]

Might as well go in and have our talk with Jaheira first (Hector missed it bc he went to Isobel first, lol). Going into Last Light is... depressing.

Rakha did not keep Rolan and his siblings at the Grove. Consequently, they were not around to help save people during the tieflings' trip through the Shadowlands.

And therefore Mattis is not here. None of the children besides Mol are, in fact. Neither is Alfira. :( :( :( :( This is upsetting! Way to go, Rakha.

Jaheira has been watching Rakha closely since she came in the door of the inn. "Please. Be welcome," she says, with a smile that does not quite reach her eyes. "Have a drink." She gestures with the wine glass in her hand at another, full of deep red liquid, on the table in front of her. "To your very good health."

Rakha picks up the glass and eyes it skeptically. She is familiar with wine, of course; they have had more than one bottle of it in their supplies from time to time, often scavenged from the crates of various enemies. This, she suspects, is a higher-quality brew, if it came from the inn's stocks.

She also knows, however, the effect that it has - blurred thoughts and unsteady movement, a tendency towards poor judgment and loose speech. (She remembers the teeth-lings, drunk and hectic and happy in camp, the gushing thanks for what she did for them...) It has never made her comfortable, and this is not a place where she can be safe in such things.

"I'm not thirsty," she says flatly.

"Indulge me," Jaheira says, equally flat, raising one eyebrow.

Rakha doesn't answer, just gives a short, sharp shake of her head and sets the glass back down.

Decline to drink.

Jaheira snorts softly, then shrugs. "You don't know what you're missing," she says, and takes a casual sip from her own glass before setting it down as well. "Well over a century old, and yet it hasn't lost a hint of flavor."

She squints at Rakha thoughtfully. "Still not quite so sure about you, though. People tend to lose more than just flavor when illithids get their hands on them. I speak from experience. There's an air about you - something alien." She leans her knuckles on the table and her lips draw into a tight line. "Answer me true and do not lie - the parasite is changing you, isn't it?"

(A/N: Interesting set of options here. There are three possible responses: "Yes, it's changing me for the better," "It's trying but I'm resisting," and a flat "No, it has no influence whatsoever." Interestingly, the middle one is marked as a deception check (at disadvantage because Rakha has been using the worms for [ILLITHID] checks), but both the first and third aren't even though they're directly contradictory.

Rakha doesn't tend to lie - she is always direct about the actual state of things and lets the other person decide if it's something they have a problem with. The question here is really what she even thinks about her own use of the tadpoles. Fundamentally, her use of them has been driven by the guardian's behavior - her insistence that Rakha must learn to wield the tadpole's power (without transforming to it) in order to be strong enough to fight the Absolute. So ultimately that is what drives her answer here I think.)

"Yes," she admits, still carefully calm and matter-of-fact. "The parasite is giving me powers I never had before. It's changing me for the better."

She suspects Jaheira won't like this answer, and she is correct.

The Harper's hand snaps up again, that same golden glow shimmering around her fingers that she held out in the courtyard, just before locking Rakha's feet to the ground with vines. For a moment, anger flares across her expression, and Rakha's hand settles on one of the quarterstaves at her back as she feels the Weave strain and spasm at the surge of energy.

But then the moment eases. Jaheira scowls, lets her hand fall to her side again. The glow fades, the Weave settles.

"Look around you," Jaheira mutters. "Good men, good women, stranded here - two feet in the grave. If we're to survive, I have no choice but to trust you. Can I?"

A valid question, and Rakha considers it in silence for a moment as the magic fades out from around them.

She remembers the moment Astarion tried to bite her, some weeks ago now. He has asked her then whether she trusted him, despite the danger he posed, the uncertainty of his motivations. And she said she did - because their enemies were the same, both externally and within their own minds.

This is the same question in reverse. And Rakha's answer is the same - because again, they share a common enemy. And Rakha has learned - from Wyll, from Lae'zel - to focus her ire on those she can kill with purpose.

It does not matter, perhaps, that she has little interest in whether Jaheira survives or not. What matters is that she will not be the one to kill her. "You can trust me," she says.

"Good," Jaheira says bluntly, "because I'll cross your heart myself if you break it." But she has relaxed a little, her stance loosening from its battle-ready hunch. "I have every reason to be cautious," she goes on. "I've tracked people like you, people with parasites in their brains, all the way here from Baldur's Gate. The cult of the Absolute is spreading through the city - quietly, quickly, and with unsettling deliberation. We tracked them to this ancient village, only to be faced with a man we killed and buried over a century ago."

Rakha tilts her head, her expression focusing in abruptly. This is new information, potential answers. "Who was - is - he?" she asks.

"General Ketheric Thorm." Jaheira growls the name out like a curse. "Remember that name. He's the leader of the Absolutists. He was a Sharran once - took to building an army of Dark Justiciars beneath this very village. Alongside the local druids, we made it our business to see him deposed - dead and buried."

Rakha nods slightly. This correlates with what Halsin has told her of this place. The name Thorm is familiar from Halsin's stories; he is the one responsible for the shadow curse and its corruption of the Weave here.

"But he's returned," Jaheira goes on. "Not only does General Ketheric Thorm live again, it seems he is no longer mortal. He has become, in fact, invincible. We met him on the road here - commanding an army of the Absolute, intent on destroying Baldur's Gate. I put an arrow through his eye myself, only to watch him pluck it out like a splinter." She scowls bitterly. "He healed right in front of me and chased us into the shadows. Things looked hopeless, but experience has taught me that no matter how bleak things look, there's always hope."

She looks at Rakha unblinkingly. "You are that hope."

Rakha says nothing for a moment. Then, low, "It's rare people look at me and see 'hope'."

She feels as unbalanced by it as she did by Mol's assertions out in the courtyard. I'd pretty much trust her with my life. It feels strange and uncomfortable to be an object of optimism. She is a broken killer, unmoored and dangerous...

Perhaps Jaheira sees something of the thoughts behind this statement, because she quirks an eyebrow up again and smiles faintly. "The light is rather dim, out here in the shadowlands. The point remains - protected by your artifact, you can infiltrate his forces at Moonrise Towers, posing as a True Soul. Find out what it is that makes him invincible so we can strip him of his advantage." Her eyes narrow with sudden fierce determination. "Once Ketheric is without his shield, the sword - together we assault his tower and put a final end to this blight."

It is hard to gauge to what extent she actually approves of Rakha, or if she simply sees her as a means to an end. Rakha doesn't really care. This is the information she needs, the direct guidance she has hoped to obtain from this cautious alliance.

The man at the center of the cult, the man on whom she needs to wreak her vengeance, has a name.

"Ketheric's days are numbered," she says, and the growl of the beast resonates under the words. "I'll make sure of it."

Jaheira considers her thoughtfully. "Without a cure for your infection, your days are numbered too. Yet you selflessly offer to spend them fighting alongside us." She nods suddenly, as if coming to a decision. "I like you. I promise I will do everything I can to make sure you survive this."

Rakha says nothing. She feels a strange urge to flinch away from these words, as if they are an attack, as if they hurt. Jaheira does not understand her, does not know anything about her. She does not know that Rakha's willingness to help comes from a wellspring of rage and pain. She does not know the beast's hunger for blood.

Well, she will know soon enough. Until then... Rakha will not dissuade her.

Jaheira herself seems somewhat uncomfortable with the momentary dip into sentimentality, for she goes on more brusquely at once. "Any cure starts with understanding the disease. Whatever magic Ketheric's using to control these tadpoles, it must be at Moonrise."

Rakha relaxes, relieved by the shift to more practical matters. "How do I reach him? The Towers are surrounded by shadows."

"You're not our only secret weapon," Jaheira answers. "Isobel - a faithful cleric of Selune and a light in the darkness. She cast the moon shield around the inn; it's the only reason we're still alive. She's upstairs in her chambers. Tell her I sent you, and she'll see you through the shadows safely."

[aimbutmiss]

Saw this post of yours: https://www.tumblr.com/aimbutmiss/740229617026220032/maybe-this-is-just-me-projecting-on-buggy-because

and I have to say I love it sm?? yk what it makes me think of? The song I can’t help but wonder from epic the musical, where Telemachus and Odysseus (a father/son duo who haven’t seen each other in TWENTY years) finally meet again. And it’s like, giving Buggy and the ghost of Roger or smth.

https://youtu.be/gUAQvlCFm-g?si=4UJpB9jABhOMLMAI

First of all, thank you so much!! I'm glad you enjoyed it 😁 and oh boy this one's got a kick... You shouldn't have brought up greek mythology AND buggy like I won't shut up ever after this.

I actually cried listening to the song while thinking about Buggy and Roger. It just fits too well. I want to point out a few lyrics that I thought fit like a glove:

"for twenty years, I never could outgrow you" I think its safe to say that Roger's death in Loguetown affected Buggy on a fundamental level. No one could handle watching their father's neck get sliced live. Something like that could never not change you. From the 20+ years that have passed since then, at least part of Buggy is still that 16 year old standing in that crowd, crying. He never fully outgrew Loguetown, and for the record I don't think Shanks did either (I couldn't not bring him up I'm sorry) The main difference is that they experienced very different Loguetowns... Buggy still had hope that Roger would somehow dodge death like he always had, because unlike Shanks he didn't understand why Roger would willingly go to his own death. However, as the one who left, Buggy suffered a lot less after their fight. That's not to say it wasn't hard to leave, or he wasn't sad about it (he cried a lot as he ran away from Shanks) But Shanks suffered a different way, from the whiplash he had from seeing Roger die AND losing his best friend on top of each other. He only expected one of those, and we know which one that was.

"i can't help but wonder (...) if I have your strength in me." Buggy has always been a character with deep self esteem issues. A part of that certainly comes from having Roger's legacy behind him. Roger was strong and smart beyond words, and Buggy definitely felt insufficient, like he couldn't reach that ideal. That's why there's a deep rooted jealousy in him towards Shanks, because he sees so much of Roger in him. This also mirrors Odysseus and Telemachus perfectly, because the son never reached his father's level of intelligence and strength by the end of the Odyssey. However, it is implied that he is on his way there, getting better and better as the story progressed. We see this with Buggy too, with his amazing talent of failing upwards. (I have to say, I don't think all of it can be accidental. Buggy is actually quite clever in his own way) Roger's soul must be watching with pride, but not surprise. I have no doubt in my mind that Roger truly believed Buggy would make it big one day. The kind of trust only a parent could have in their children.

"used to say I'd capture wind and sky for you" Not much to say here but Roger would definitely say something like this. There's not a single thing that man wouldn't have done for his boys. I'm so normal about them haha 😅 ...Also more on the Roger and Odysseus parallels, there's just something so beautiful about a man who chooses his family over and over again, no matter how many good options keep presenting themselves. Like, nothing in the world could get in the way of him and his child no matter what. The similarity just hurts. And even though Roger couldn't live to do that for Ace, at least he experienced fatherhood with Shanks and Buggy.

[tbookblurbs]

Jade War - Fonda Lee

5/5 - More ambitious than the first, expands on international geopolitics, characters really start coming into their own

SPOILERS!

We jump back into the Green Bone saga to find time passing as it should. It jumps around a little bit more in this book, skipping months at a time instead of weeks, as in the first, but this makes sense for the type of conflict developing. The two clans, realizing they can't continue their battle in the streets without losing their civilian base, start fighting in other ways (propaganda, influence on national politics, (il)legal operations to increase their funding). This fundamentally changes how the book operates. I struggled with the change a bit at first because it's so much more cerebral and it plays out kind of like a chess game (I have never been good at chess). Thankfully though, the other characters also struggle to change their ways of thinking and prepare for all eventualities. All actions have consequences, including actions the characters took years in the past. Every detail still matters.

Meanwhile, we see Anden get sent to Espenia because he refuses to become a Green Bone. As he is one of my two favorite characters, the fact that he's depressed for a lot of this book made me quite sad. But the way he handles himself, developing relationships with the Port Massey Green Bones and fostering a relationship with the Pillar's son, are critical to his character development. From the beginning, there's this underlying current asking if Anden can really step out/away from clan life. Will he be independent? Does he want to be outside of the family in that way? And when he finally answers no, it's like the natural conclusion of what happens and all the more satisfying because he's really thought about it and considered all his options.

Shae's plotlines made me really proud of her and also really sad for her. She struggles with finding love and connection as the Weatherman of the clan and, on some level, as a woman who is more accomplished and smarter than most of the men that she interacts with. Her past with Espenia comes back to bite her, but you have to be proud of how she handles herself. She lost the duel (barely) but retains her dignity.

Hilo, on the other hand, has never been my favorite character and his actions in this book cemented that status for me. All of his actions are in character, but they're also infuriating. The ending of the story, with Wen near death and Anden putting on jade again, was thrilling in the extreme. Again, Hilo's response is completely in character, but again, infuriating. More on that in the next book because that's where this one ends.

The international geopolitics that Lee writes in here are just fabulous. the fact that it's a world undergoing globalization is integral to the plot, and the national politics of Kekon are of direct interest and have power over the main characters and antagonists. I strongly disliked Espenia for a lot of the book, but it's a former colonial power so what did I expect, really. I know that technically the Mountain is an antagonist because they are in opposition to our protagonists' goals, but its hard to dislike an entity when you know they're also trying to do what's right for their people. I might not agree with their methods but I can respect and understand their motivations.

An ideal sequel that might surpass the first book in my eyes. It's got everything the first delivers and more.

[thisbuildinghasfeelings]

I've seen a lot of worry (not quite as much here, but especially on Twitter) about what Carlos is going to be like in season 5 based on things that Rafa has said since the finale, like that Carlos is changed forever and a part of him died along with Gabriel. In my opinion, it's WAY too early to start worrying about season 5 seeing as we have 8 months minimum to wait. But reading so many people's concerns about this got me thinking about it, and I came to the conclusion that even if it WAS an appropriate time to worry, I wouldn't actually be worried.

Anything Rafa is saying now is not based on what's actually going to happen in season 5. Nothing has been written yet. I'm betting even Tim has at most only a vague idea of what might happen in season 5. Also, we know Rafa loves the drama. This is the man who thought their house burning down was romantic and suggested a potential wedding scenario that had Carlos dying on the way there. I don't think we can assume that his personal speculation about what might happen is going to be accurate.

So many traumatic things have happened to characters on this show--things that would completely alter the lives of the people they happened to if this were real life--yet I can't think of a single example of an immense trauma having a significant long-term effect on a character, at least not to the extent that it's fundamentally changed who the character is. Realistic trauma response wouldn't be feasible on a show where trauma happens in basically every single episode. Usually there's no long-term effect from trauma at all. Even if trauma does noticeably change a character, it tends to be more subtle and only comes back up in specific and relevant situations. I'm sure at least part of Carlos' arc next season will be solving his father's murder, so it will clearly be relevant at times. And I'm sure that Carlos will be affected by Gabriel's death--it wouldn't make sense for him not to be. But nothing about this show makes me think it's going to fundamentally alter who he is. It's just not how this show operates.

Changes in Carlos might be more apparent to Rafa in the way he approaches the character but might not be something that we always notice on screen. I remember around the time of 4x04, Rafa talked in interviews about how being held captive by a serial killer deeply affected Carlos. We never saw much (if any) evidence of that on screen, but I bet it informed the way Rafa thought about Carlos and his mindset, at least a little bit.

Something can change a character forever without completely changing who they are. I would argue that Gwyn's death changed TK forever, but it's not something that fundamentally altered who TK is as a person. With time, I would bet changes in Carlos from Gabriel's death will be more similar to this.

The Carlos we know and love was definitely present at the wedding. It would make no sense for Carlos to spiral in his grief and anger throughout episode 18 to the point where he loses himself for a bit, then he comes back to himself just long enough to get married, but then he completely and irreversibly changes going forward and we never see the kind, compassionate, loving Carlos again.

Basically, I think any fears that Carlos is going to become permanently cold and closed off or that his personality will completely change and never change back are unfounded. Any big change in Carlos will probably last for the relevant arc (perhaps as long as it takes to solve Gabriel's murder) and then be resolved. Once we get past that, the effect Gabriel's death has on Carlos will likely be revisited in more subtle ways at times when it's relevant rather than manifest as a permanent and all-encompassing change in his character. I'm honestly really excited to see where they go with Carlos in season 5. If it's done right, it could be really, really good! And whatever direction they go in, we know Rafa is going to act the hell out of it!

[liketwoswansinbalance]

Why Rafal Might Still Be a Never and Rhian Might Still Be an Ever

Alternate title: Fall Could Have a Double Plot Twist and Here’s Why

I consider this to be my ultimate thematic theory, but really it’s nothing that new or revolutionary. Except, the Old in disguise. I don’t blame Rafal for his major trust issues. I really don’t. Because, so much is environmental and conditional. That is the backbone of this post.

First, could the cover of Rise have been a red-herring, intentionally misleading? (With Rafal on Good’s side and Rhian on Evil’s. Their helmets are not swapped however.) What if all along their swapping sides was a double plot twist?

Side note: The cover of Rise could be unlike the cover of book 1. The opposite in fact, as book 1’s cover revealed the truth. Sophie was on Evil’s side, Agatha on Good’s.

Plus, the helmets are more directly tied to their heads, their selves, their souls. However, the castles are settings. They are situational, circumstantial, environmental, conditional. A person being there (at their designated School) is dependent on circumstance and their nature, yes, but locations can change. Rafal changed his location by traveling. Rhian changed his by shaping it with his architectural projects. They are not in the same place they once were in. Helmets could also change, but helmets are more intrinsically personal. They are personal belongings, and are still more directly tied to, and physically close to a person’s head and thoughts. Also, armorers do specifically make custom helmets sometimes.

Maybe, Soman only intended to make us believe:

Rafal = Good

Rhian = Evil

Only to double-subvert it. I wouldn’t put it past Soman because he likes sowing seeds of confusion.

Also, unless it’s for a really intentional juxtaposition: would Soman really use the same, old Sophie and Agatha plot again but with a tragic ending? I think he tends to favor novelty to keep his storytelling fresh, even if there are often parallels. I know Fall wouldn’t have the exact same plot, but Rise comes close. Functionally, this duology could have the same plot as The School Years, even if the individual events, pivotal points, and pacing are different. But still. Why would Soman repeat himself if instead, he could double-subvert it? Why not? His plots are always clever. Or, is that too predictable?

Then, there’s this:

"It's not who we are. It's what we do."

If I have misquoted this, please correct me. This line has been said by Lady Lesso (who opposed Rafal’s New Evil) in TLEA and toward the end of Rise, by Rafal himself. Yet, we have to keep in mind that Rafal said it first, in the prequel. So, actually, he could have changed and turned cynical over time. He could have lost sight of his own original Balanced perspective, turned extremist, as seems to be the case in TLEA when it’s compared to his characterization in Rise. Assuming it is actually him in TLEA and not someone else. So, it boils down to this. He lost sight of his own philosophy. And, I think I have an idea as to why. Because, in TLEA, he tends to put more weight on who they are, the students' and Sophie's souls, than what they do.

And, losing sight of his own philosophy could easily be explained by any measure of trauma, loss, the other effects of war on his psyche, the passage of time, the anticipated effects of Neverland and its politics, constant betrayal, or other interpersonal human experiences, with people, to change his outlook on what human beings are. And, to change his outlook on what their souls are fundamentally determined by. I say this because the one change we haven’t yet seen in SGE is a true conversion from one side to another. Thus, a change in philosophy is more grounded and internally consistent with the series as a whole than introducing new magical rules. (Hook breathing Rafal’s soul could contradict this.) Throughout it all, actions could change alignments, but souls never did. No matter how hard Sophie tried, she couldn’t be Good; she could only do Good.

In other words, too many bad experiences could make Rafal see some people as inherently bad or as traitors because he’s too overwhelmed by all the new information bombarding him in the tireless paroxysms of the plot to be able to separate individuals from their individual actions. He’s no longer seeing clearly. He is forced to double down and trust his judgment more than ever over other people because he can’t trust others. And, Rhian is no longer even a trustworthy sounding-board. Not that he ever really was. Rafal was always Rhian’s sounding-board.

If the only feedback you ever get is your own, then your thinking will become twisted because there’s nothing external to moderate it, or to tell you you are going crazy in a self-imposed echo chamber. I bet Rafal will absolutely refuse to listen to anyone ever again, with a few minor exceptions of Rhian, until it's too late, and he’s gone over the edge of sanity. It’s all his fault for not communicating. But, it’s the plot keeping him from doing so in the first place. The fog of an impending war could be getting in the way of the clarity of his vision. And, the prophecy only goes further to muddle it up because of its inevitability. People are not consistent, and he’s only seen the part of themselves they’ve presented to him. But, he can’t realize that now. Because, he’s flooded with more and more on his plate.

Categorizing people automatically rather than being able to separate all individuals from their actions is also easier, faster, and more efficient in that it spares you more pain that way, than to weigh every action or what they do.

Thus, I believe Rafal is still Evil in nature, but has done Good and is capable of Good, under certain conditions or in certain circumstances. And, this could be thematically significant. That the brothers always have a choice, in what they choose to do.

And, even though Sophie is firmly Evil, she has done genuine Good deeds. She's capable of Good deeds, especially in regards to Agatha, so who's to say the same logic doesn't apply to Rafal in regards to Rhian and Rhian only. Aside from when James Hook reminded Rafal of Rhian. That’s a whole other kettle of fish. Thank you to @eatgan for sparking the idea.

Rhian could bring out the best in Rafal, considering he's a (supposedly) Good influence. He loves his brother, and love can cause someone to act out-of-character.

And, Rhian's "love" (read: infatuations) could have easily done the same to him. People will do anything for love or perceived love. “The most dangerous person in a fairy tale is willing to do anything for love.” And, this time around, in what will be the TLEA/full-blown war of this duology, that person is him. Rhian is dangerous in how he's inconstant and (emotionally) unstable but not because he's inherently Evil, like Sophie was. He only has the potential to do Evil for love. Then, there's the factor of love driving people insane. Rhian could be Good, and still be the murderer. Being Good doesn’t absolve him from all suspicion. Fratricide and Evil are not mutually exclusive in this context. Rhian did almost kill Fala. This possibility of Rhian being the murderer might be almost as likely as Rafal being the murderer. Rhian doesn’t have to be Evil to do it.

Love brings out the worst in Rhian, but that's natural or at least common. Because apparently, the not-100%-pure-Good-but-still-Evers Evergirls were absolutely brutal as first-years in book 1. And, I bet Good became vain and egotistical because of Rhian's lasting influence. The Evergirls didn't uphold all of Good's standards until it really came down to it. Until a test. The test of war. So, maybe, the Great War will bring out the brothers' original, assumed, or true natures. If they are indeed what we assumed them to be, and not swapped.

Thematically, this would all be consistent with TLEA and not contradict Soman's earlier messaging, or so I think.

Sophie’s Good deed wasn't erased for all the Evil she's done, as Agatha says in her mirror-twin-souls speech at the climax of TLEA. It still remains, and it will never change, that singular act of befriending Agatha when Agatha was alone. Again, Rafal doesn't need to be an Ever to do Good deeds. The same applies to Rhian. He doesn't need to be a Never to do Evil. The morality of the series was always intended to be grey after all.

Rhian always seemed Good-intentioned, and I still believe he is an Ever. I just think he was led astray from his true nature. Because, if Evil is capable of Good, then Good is capable of doing Evil. Even if Good doesn't become Evil, even if Good isn't being Evil, it can do Evil. Especially, in the name of Good. Especially, if it prioritizes Good results over Evil-leaning actions. Rhian could have accidentally fallen into a “The ends justify the means” mindset.

So, basically, Rhian and Rafal's Good and Evil statuses don't have to change. They can be the same as they always were. How they once were and assumed themselves to be. It wouldn't be contradictory. It would make sense.

Plus, then there's also the point that the brothers are having a particularly abnormal year, given the Storian’s behavior and the unusual case of Aladdin, so their responses could follow suit, and would be reasonably abnormal to match their fraught times. Or, out-of-character from what they're usually like.

To recap, there's still a chance that Rafal is a Never, and Rhian is an Ever, and that it’s only their actions, their deeds, their behaviors, that have betrayed themselves. They could still be their originally-assumed true selves, exactly how the Woods conceived them, and exactly how they thought themselves to be.

[shoujomangathoughts]

Chihayafuru Thoughts - Chihaya and Taichi in Ch.93 -139 (S3 events)

This is part one of a series where I plan to talk about Taichi and Chihaya. Here’s a spoiler warning for this section and some light spoilers about chapters after this point.

The stretch of chapters covered in season 3 feels like a fundamental shift in the series and by the end of this part it’s clear that the series will be quite different moving forward. 

In regards to Taichi and Chihaya, this section of the series is where things start changing for them and I wanted to go over some moments that stuck out to me. A consistent plotline here is that Chihaya is actively trying to understand more about Taichi because she starts to feel anxious about their relationship. She actually admits “I don’t know anything yet, not even about Taichi”. We already know how Taichi feels about Chihaya, and there are actually many instances of him trying to grow and change on his own in this part.

This statement from Retro seems to rattle her because in her mind, she knows Taichi and his skills well. When she plays Taichi at the Fujisaki camp, she refers to him as “feeling like a stranger”, something she notes again at Yoshino. Yoshino in general is an important match for both of them (that others have analyzed more in depth than I ever could so check those out!). While Chihaya truly “saw” and acknowledged Taichi in this match, Taichi’s frustration over losing is directly opposite her enjoyment of the match. I feel like the difference in these feelings is why Chihaya is so confused by Taichi’s decision to skip the class trip for the Meijin qualifiers. Taichi, losing after working so hard on a strategy tailored to go against Chihaya, still sees himself as inadequate, and understanding the time he has left (as Desktomu tries to explain to Chihaya), pours himself into karuta more than before. After Kana’s explanation about “competing to stir hearts”, Chihaya seems to gain an inkling about the fact that Taichi may have left their match feeling somewhat unsatisfied and frustrated in contrast to how she left with both the satisfaction of winning and enjoying a match with someone who she has worked so hard with and values.

After Taichi is unsuccessful at the qualifiers and returns, there’s a moment when Chihaya regains her composure (after hearing the challengers were Harada and Arata) where she looks up and sees that Taichi isn’t in the hallway anymore. It’s a small moment but the look on her face suggests to me that she realizes she didn’t ask Taichi about his matches or why he went, let alone seeing if he seemed upset. It also becomes apparent to her that she doesn’t necessarily know how to comfort him and she starts noticing distance between them.

After this, when they practice in the clubroom, it becomes clear to Chihaya (and everyone else) that Taichi is in a slump after losing both Yoshino and the Meijin qualifiers, and the only thing Chihaya can think to do is continue to play him seriously out of fear he might quit. She once again starts feeling anxious that Taichi might be burning out and give up on karuta. She even seems to take his feelings into account when Porky brings up calling and congratulating Arata. She holds her phone up and Taichi is shown directly in the background, and she decides to call him later, as if she wants to be careful about congratulating Arata on accomplishing the very thing Taichi is dejected about (Taichi is right next to her when she calls him later, but the point is Chihaya is starting to be more aware of people and their emotions, not to mention that Dr. Harada fired them up a bit before). She notices Taichi’s apprehension about seeing Dr. Harada as well.

Arata’s confession also rattles her and she spends some time after in a daze. Taichi is too sharp and can read Chihaya too well to not essentially piece together what happened (confirming his suspicion later in his match with Arata). This puts Taichi in a tough position since he still doesn’t know how or when to tell Chihaya how he feels, most likely out of fear that their relationship will change.

When Taichi stays behind again and Chihaya gets visibly upset, Kana urges her to think about why he is acting the way he is. The whole “Why is Taichi always going off on his own?” thing has always been interesting to me (and I feel like I always overthink this or maybe I just don’t get it). The answer isn’t simply because he loves Chihaya. When he skips the class trip, it seems as though he wants to win as a result of his frustration over his loss at Yoshino. His loss against Chihaya, despite so much preparation probably made him think that he’s still not good enough to stand as Chihaya’s (and Arata’s) equal, so he pours himself into another tournament. Taichi even asks himself what he wants to be so bad that he’d miss his school trip, and that’s where a problem arises with his motivation. Among other reasons, it feels like part of why Taichi is trying so hard in karuta is to grow/find himself and change parts of himself that he isn’t satisfied with. However, that’s a vague benchmark and it’s hard to tell when you feel you’ve grown “enough”. Would he have been entirely satisfied had he won against Chihaya, even if they had played each other in an earlier round than the final? It’s hard to say, but maybe he needs the tangible proof that he’s grown because otherwise he may not believe he has (his victory over Arata later and his reaction makes this seem to be the case, if only partially). Taichi staying behind the second time specifically in hopes to play against Arata is also something he wouldn’t want Chihaya to know. Beyond more or less asking Arata about his confession, Taichi doing this feels like he’s trying to face Arata (a person who Taichi compares himself to, to a fault) and try to overcome his own insecurities - “How do I fight? Against Arata? Against myself?”. Despite his private nature and him not typically relying on others, to me there seems to be many reasons he can’t confide in Chihaya, one of which being that he loves her and that is often a part of why he feels insecure because he doesn't see the value in himself enough, so he isolates himself to try and find himself on his own (?). If anyone has a better read on this and its implications please tell me lol it feels pretty open to interpretation to me.

After losing to Arata, it’s incredibly clear that Taichi is feeling dejected and unmotivated in regards to karuta. At this point, Taichi has been on the way down; losing to both Chihaya and Arata, losing at the Meijin qualifiers, not having the drive to challenge Suou like Arata, and knowing Arata confessed despite Taichi not having the courage to be honest with Chihaya about his own feelings yet. The anxiety Chihaya feels about the distance between them and the fact that Taichi appears to be suffering is enough for her to break down. I’d consider this growth for Chihaya; she at times gets tunnel vision for her own goals or doesn’t notice people’s feelings because she herself is having fun. Yet here she so viscerally reacts to the fact that he is struggling, and very purely wishes for him to smile and enjoy the time with everyone like she has been. This desire is how the Taichi cup is born, which results in Taichi thinking about whether he feels he’s grown or not since the last genpei match they played as kids. It’s also sweet of Chihaya to pick genpei matches in part due to appealing to one of Taichi’s greatest assets in karuta, his memorization.

After Taichi confesses, the dynamic between them is different. We’re shown a montage of several days that follow, where they don’t seem to speak and while Taichi seems to be faking smiles, Chihaya can’t even seem to look at him. Whether or not she flatly turned him down isn’t known but there’s also no communication to erase any misunderstanding either.

Once the realization that Taichi is leaving the club fully hits Chihaya, that anxiousness about him slipping away is now a fear being realized, hence her act of desperation to bring him back. It comes across as a bit selfish and unintentionally cruel, that she doesn’t seem to recognize that while she’s been confused and trying to get her thoughts straight (or just waiting and hoping they go back to normal), he’s been suffocating in the atmosphere created after he spilled his most vulnerable feelings. I know the kiss rubs some people the wrong way, and while it may not have been the best option, it effectively translated Taichi’s heartbrokenness to Chihaya and made her understand him more clearly. The other thing that made his feelings clear was the karuta reference - that all 100 cards look pitch black to him. Virtually all of his karuta career has had Chihaya involved in some way, which combined with his dejection after all those losses, makes sense why he has no desire at all to continue. Not long after, he’s convinced that he doesn’t like karuta at all, which isn’t really true. The truth seems to be more along the lines of he was never playing because he liked it. He was playing to meet team expectations, help Chihaya achieve her dream, gain acknowledgement and battle his own issues, possibly even to reject the ideals his mother instilled in him, etc. and he eventually was crushed by that weight. He needs the space and time away from Chihaya and the club, even if it’d be considered selfish for him to do so.

//Sidenote// I always find it interesting when people compare Chihaya’s reaction to Arata’s confession to Taichi’s because the context and her actual relationships with each of them are inherently different. Chihaya has spent a good amount of time trying to figure out Taichi (and in general just knows him better) and for her to miss something so huge obviously stuns her, not to mention she starts feeling guilt that she may have been unintentionally causing some of the suffering she so desperately wanted to dissolve. She also doesn’t seem to know how she herself feels yet, hence the “I’m sorry” which feels pointed to other things rather than a flat out rejection (despite Taichi feeling completely rejected). She also recalls his confession and it depicts Taichi in a very pure and gentle way, which I’d interpret as being remembered in a positive way (even if she also remembers how broken down he was shortly after), and later refers to his words as being like a poem.

I also see people complain about Taichi’s timing in leaving the club. Honestly, it feels like the best time he could, rather than wait until there are new members to help and tournaments to worry about, and then just dip out. Was is it somewhat unfair that they weren’t told face to face (apart from Nishida and Komano)? Sure, but realistically it wouldn’t have gone over well any way it happened and I think Taichi just didn’t have any fight left to give. Apart from Chihaya (at first), everyone seems stunned but seem like they understand that he wouldn’t leave without reason. It’s been obvious that he cares a great deal about the club and its members.

Anyway, I’ll be making more of these that talk about these two after these events up to the end of the series soon. If you read this far, thanks and feel free to add your thoughts!

[neonseperatedau]

25k Celebration - Short Story

NEON Short Fluff Fic: “Eavesdropping”

Hey guys, to celebrate my fic NEON – A Separated Sibling AU reaching 25k hits, I wrote a short fluff story that puts you in the shoes of the rat-man himself and shows you how he has been feeling about the newest addition to the fam. You don’t need much pre-knowledge to enjoy this story. Basically, this plays after the events of ‘Shadows of Evil’ (or chapter 20 of my fic) and sees a Leo who grew up with Draxum losing his odachi, learning about the Hamato clan and slowly adapting to his new life in the lair. (Thank you to my twin @leonrose55 for suggesting this prompt! This wouldn’t exist without you!) A million thanks to everyone who has been supporting this fic, you guys are the best, and I hope you enjoy this respite! ;)

For every parent comes the day when they must admit to themselves after they believed to know everything about their children that this simply wasn’t true anymore. Ever since my three sons started to act and think and say things, I couldn’t anticipate I had to accept that they were on their road to becoming their own independent…well…turtle mutants. I found it curious that for the newcomer to our lair, it was quite the opposite. From the beginning, I had no idea what to make of Leonardo, and each action he took only unsettled me more. I was never completely at ease when he was around, anticipating him to be a mere extension of one of Baron Draxum’s plots when all he in fact did was eat and nap and sometimes crack some worryingly violent jokes. Routine can change many things. As we started our training so he could learn how to wield two katanas, Hamato style, I had plenty of time to not only study his movements but also his subtle reactions. What face did he make when he had been close to winning? How would he react when he was exhausted and continued the workout anyway? I didn’t unlearn his patterns like with my sons, I learned them from its fundaments, and I got the sense I was far off from knowing even the basics. And all of this I noticed because, on this particular day, his focus had been off, and I was quite taken aback by myself because I could immediately tell. I swiped him off his feet, swords clanking to the ground. “Shit, not again,” Leo grumbled, getting up and grabbing for his weapons. The way he complained non-stop yet never actually stopped with his training reminded me so much of myself. (Admittedly, I hadn’t been the best of students.) “Your stance is off,” I pointed at his left foot, “and are you aware that you’re holding one sword with its backside up?” The turtle blinked and stared down at his hands. “Oh,” he mumbled and quickly corrected himself. I sighed. Some days simply be like this. “How about we do something different for today’s training?” I suggested and Leo’s eyes widened behind his black bandana. “No, it’s fine, we can keep going,” he insisted. Sheesh, I thought Purple could be ambitious about his projects at times. This one was on a whole other level. It was like failing wasn’t supposed to be part of his dictionary. “I’m not saying we will stop training. We are only changing up the pace…Have you seen my amazing Lou Jitsu adventures where I use dual sword fighting? Jell-O Jell-O Rush 1, 2, and 3?” I puffed up my chest. Leo blinked at me with an unchanged expression. “Uuuuh, no?” Stroking my whiskers I made my way to the tv room. “I know you have your reservation about how efficient it is to learn from the source materials, but I assure you these are worth your time! I also think Raph never finished his pack of wasabi peanuts yesterday and it’s lying around here somewhere.” I anticipated him to complain, at least try a counteroffer, or make a snarky comment about my acting career. All of those things had happened before… That’s probably why I needed a moment to process that Leo immediately picked up one of the big cushions, snatched the snack packs I mentioned, and settled down in front of the projector. Were the therapy sessions with Orange showing their effect? Or did Donatello do some brain-altering experiments on him? (I wouldn’t put it above him to mess with our ‘guest’ like that.) He noticed I kept standing at the entrance of the room and threw a glance back at me stating: “Hey, I learned my lesson about human movies and how they can teach you cool moves to fuck shit up a while back, I ain’t complaining.” I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that and since that was usually the case with Leo, I shrugged and accepted this as a rare instance where the fates seemed to have pity on me. “Plus,” he threw two brightly green-coated peanuts into his mouth, “stolen snacks taste the best.” The almost childish-mischievous gleam in his eyes oddly enough made him look more like his age and so I couldn’t bring myself to chide him for such comments. There were too many other moments where he visibly locked up and the iron-clad harshness in his demeanor made me believe that he had seen and experienced things, a teenager shouldn’t have. I made my way to my precious chair that had just the right dent from years of sitting in the same spot and selected the first installment of the ‘Jell-O Jell-O’ saga.   For the first half an hour or so, Leo was looking at the screen and it couldn’t have been more obvious that he wasn’t focusing on what was going on in front of him. But once my previous incredible human Self picked up the swords and hacked through the multi-colored jelly, Leo got transfixed to the projector. He took in those combat movements like a cake sponge that was soaked in cocoa. (Memo to myself: stock up on sponge cake) By the time we had moved on to the second part, the turtle was hooked just like the other three would be invested in their favorite Lou Jitsu moving picture. (I loved their debates on what movie they preferred and why especially before I revealed my identity.) “The way Lou Jitsu used the swords like a twirling staff,” Leo mused out loud, “that’s brilliant! So effective against backstabbers! I hate backstabbing except if it’s done by myself.” Yeah, sometimes I just plain-out worry about this kid… “That’s a technique from Yagyu Shinkage-ryu. A style that focuses on disarming your opponent and getting the upper hand, rather than killing them,” I explained and surprised myself by remembering the official name. Seemed like some things my grandpa taught me stuck with me even after all these years. “Huh, never heard of it. Doesn’t sound very useful…in the movie, it looked really strong though,” Leo popped the last peanuts into his mouth before adding: “Can you show me some more of it in the next training session?” This was, without a doubt, the first time he had ever directly asked me a favor. I needed a heartbeat or two during which I said nothing, and he apparently also realized what he had done. He hectically crumpled up the empty pack and went on without any pause between the words: “I mean, it’s whatever. You don’t have to do that.” I couldn’t help but return with a smug smile, “I’m not sure if you’re ready for such advanced techniques, still! Let’s see what we can do.” “Fuck, I shouldn’t have asked,” Leo grumbled drawing his legs closer to his torso, “just start the next movie already.” “Sure,” I snickered. I must admit that as we had filmed this final part of the epic Jell-O saga we had run out of ideas for the plot and so I wasn’t even offended when I heard low reverberating snores and saw Leo leaning against the leg of my couch, mouth half-open and drooling in his sleep. “Do you intend to watch the rest of the movie from beyond the door, dear son?” I called out and my fine hearing made out familiar steps approaching me from behind. “Sorry,” Raph apologized in a hushed voice, “I was looking for the snacks that I left here yesterday and then I saw you both talking, and I didn’t want to intrude and then I…” I waved my hand at him to signal that it was all good. “We tried something else for training,” I explained, and with a glance to the ground to my right I added, “he seemed a bit out of it. Did anything happen recently?” The big turtle shrugged even if his eyes had a very slight nervous twitch. He had developed that habit after I had told them all about the Hamato, which made me wonder if that had really been such a good idea. “He is more focused,” Raph began, occasionally pausing between words, “in a good way, I think. Since he lost his odachi he’s forced to stay at the lair much more. Because…no portals.” Even if he wasn’t the most eloquent of the bunch, which was Purple no doubt, he was often on point. “Oh,” Red appeared to remember something else and told me: “We talked about going out for pizza for April’s birthday tomorrow. He wanted to come with us but commented on how he didn’t understand human birthday traditions and after we explained a few things to him, I guess, he wanted to say something else about that and then didn’t. Left to train with you before we could ask him. Maybe he wanted to comment on how yokai birthdays worked?” “Perhaps,” I mused, “even during my years in the hidden city, I never learned much about their cultures. I assume he knows a lot more than I do.” In the background, a giant Jell-O monster exploded on screen. The special effects budget had been tight for this production, so looking back at it was a bit jarring. “Did you hear that?” I questioned my oldest, “how he asked me to show him more of that fighting style? I’ve never seen him interested in anything except for what Mikey cooks for dinner.” Raph cocked his head a bit and returned, “yeah, well, he keeps catching us off-guard whenever he listens to anything we say. Wish it would be the other way around, though.” The credits rolled, and we both regarded the red-eared slider. His bandana slipped off on one side a bit and slightly covered his eye. It was quite a silly sight to behold. I wondered, not for the first nor for the last time, how things would have been if I would have left with four instead of three small turtles that fateful day. How differently he would have turned out if he would have grown up amongst those who had been mutated along with him? Would he have then no scars and know fewer cuss words? Maybe he wouldn’t always carry several hidden blades around with him because he feared he would be ambushed and killed. And maybe he would have more time to grow up. Imagining such a different reality, I mourned for the loss of something that had never existed. A special kind of melancholy was reserved for those who tend to dwell on the ‘what-ifs’. “What do we do with him? Should we leave him here?” Raph asked and tore me away from the thoughts that I had slowly sunk into like quicksand.   “I wanted to watch a show at 10, it’s the semi-final of the Great British Bake Off.” I wasn’t keen on missing that and I wasn’t sure Leo would appreciate waking up to see humans baking cakes in the most stressful ways possible. “I think if he keeps leaning against your chair like that, he will wake up with a stiff neck and then he will curse a lot more and there are words I don’t want Mikey to know about yet,” Red considered, showing so naturally concern for his younger siblings, it made my heart brimming with pride. “How about you try to carry him to his room?” I offered. “I guess Raph could do that,” he said slowly, walking around to bend down and scoop him up. Awkwardly he extended his arms and readjusted his position before he got one arm under Leo’s knees and kept his back upright with the other. That whole scene reminded me of when Raph attempted to approach the various cats that would sometimes sneak into the lair. For some reason, they didn’t like the snapping turtle. Leo kept snoring and I followed both out and to the troublemaker’s room. We dimmed the lights and once the big guy had settled the smaller turtle into his bed, I put his blanket over him with deliberate and ever-so-careful motions. “Wow, he’s really out of it,” Raph whispered to me as I moved a step backward. “Guess it shows that he’s making an effort, to train and go on your missions and be a part of our little group. Not that he would ever admit it,” I returned. “Nope, never,” Red grinned. We sneaked out of the room, and I wished my oldest son a good night. Returning to my tv room, I hummed a pop song from my youth to myself and thought about my worries that we couldn’t read Leo at all. Based on my conversation with Raph, it seemed like we could tell what was going on with our newcomer quite well already.

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…Eight…Nine…Ten. I opened my eyes as their footsteps grew more distant. I dared to breathe deeply and unevenly and drew my blanket up. What the hell just happened??? I had dozed off during the last movie and when I woke up, I heard Raph and Splinter talking. And not only that. Their topic of the day had been el yo. It felt like awful timing to be like: ‘Hey I’m awake now. No, I have no idea you guys been chatting.’ I was sure they would have believed I had faked it from the beginning. But still, I wouldn’t have expected things to escalate, and for Raph to pick me up and carry me to bed. I almost blew it at this point. Feeling all the blood in my body rush to my head I flopped around to lie on my belly and press my face into my pillow. Gotta be honest with you guys. I had seen my opportunity to catch them red-handed. I’m mean things like talking shit about me, complaining about me, or admitting to eating my secret cookie stash. (SOMEONE seemed to know about it, whomever that fucker was.) Instead, they only said nice things. What a bunch of weirdos. Perhaps they were testing me? Seeing how long I could keep up the act? I turned my head to the right to get some air since my pillow was slowly suffocating me. From my toes up to my nose, everything was kinda tingly and the corners of my mouth moved up without me actively wanting to. This had been a great birthday, after all. Their talk about April’s celebration coming up made me unsure of what to expect of such a day. At my old place, this date merely meant I would get a yearly examination of my vitals and another entry in my experiment file. On the surface, it sounded like such a hassle to organize and execute and ‘something you should look forward to.’ That last point was Mikey’s words, not mine. After what happened today, I think I knew what he meant. Birthdays, even if nobody knew about them, could be days where you get to just sit down and watch action movies and get to steal snacks and didn’t even have to walk and sleep as much as you like. I could get used to this. Feeling my smile expanding and with Splinter’s and Raph’s words resounding in my head, I huddled deeper into my soft bed.