#I just wrote a section of my next fic and it has me feeling things

[housederiva]

Ughhha there’s something so painful about the fact that Rook is just walking around with the dagger that killed Varric and they don’t even know. Does Harding look at it with sadness? Apathy? Disgust? Does Rook ever catch her looking and think the discomfort stems from what happened when she grabbed it and it connected her to the Stone?

And if Harding dies at the end, she does so without knowing that Rook didn’t know Varric was gone!! And Rook has to go on knowing that the two of them should have mourned together that their absence of grief will never be explained

[justarandompersononthehellsite]

So... @muffinlance wrote a really awesome story. I read a post from a point in time, though I truly do not remember when since it seems like I've been working on this project forever, saying that she gives blanket permission for people to print and bind the story into a book (I think there was an also addendum saying that they do not give permission to be sold, since selling fic is illegal). This fic has had total control over my whole brain since it was sent to me (@creatorofthemind I believe it was you, so thank you forever for tuning me into it) back during the days of like chapter six or seven.

So here I am now, sharing this amazing journey of my first ever bookbinding adventure. Further reading below.

So to give you an idea of what's going on, this is a fanfiction about Zuko (Avatar the Last Airbender) (animated show version, the LA show did not exist yet and we do not speak of the movie) being adopted by Hakoda, Father of Katara and Zuko. (This might have also been what kicked off the Give Zuko A Parent craze, but don't fact check me.)

Overall, the characters from the show stick very well to the cannon versions, but where MuffinLance really shines is in the rich backstories and fleshed out feeling of all the non cannon elements. Especially the background characters. I would argue that the writing in this peice of fanwork could easily rival the cannon show at many points of comparison.

Now that you have context, we can get into the actual process.

To start, I used this guide to figure out where to even begin, and fount the included resource list to also be quite helpful. I cannot for the LIFE OF ME figure out where I found the template I used for the front matter and such, but it must be somewhere and I will link to it when I inevitably come across it again.

Then I began to typeset. This step took... a long time. I worked in chunks from about September of 2022 to late March of 2024. I would get a big section done, sometimes even the entire thing, but then find I hated the way I had done it and give up for months at a time. Such is the life of ADHD and flitting interest in projects I suppose.

And then finally, step one was done, and I was left with pages on a word document that look like this. (And do please let me know if you want the link to the document. It was so much work, and I would love to not be the only one to use it.)

Next step was printing out this beast. Ended up being about eight pages of front matter, and about 630 pages of body text.

That I printed wrong.

Twice.

Before finally getting it right. And then not getting a picture of it, because I finished at 4 am and had work at 7, and am also an idiot.

Then I simply stitched along, putting everything together into a beautiful text block.

And came up with a design for the cover.

Yes the glue did end up lumpy. Ignore it.

Yes I did have to sketch out the design onto a scraped page several times before I figured out what I was doing. Ignore that too.

The cover design does wrap around the entire cover. No I did not get a picture before I glued the thing down. See again: I'm an idiot. And just... massively impatient.

Finally, we get to the stage of gluing. Behold, my bookpress.

Of course, topped with Madam MuffinLances own actual professional-people book, Fox's Tounge and Kirin's Bone. It is Excelent. Here is the LINK so you can go and support this amazing author with the real-monies as well as the internet-kudos.

Then, once everything is glued together, one must give the book its "gilt" edges.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

10 Jikook Fanfictions Part 1

I said I'd make a list before the end of the year and I kept my promise. Now, it's difficult to choose, especially when I have more than 300 bookmarks and unfortunately I also started doing that some year and a half ago. Safe to say, there's probably plenty of good fics I read that are now lost. Anyway, enough with the boring chit chat, here's 10 random jikook fics in no particular order and most likely, several other parts will follow, probably next year 😉

1. Dead in the Water

It's been a couple of years since I read this and honestly, I barely remember much, but what I do know it's that it had an impact on me. Usually fics that have death as a central theme end up resonating with me, but perhaps it's because I've always been attracted to more darker fiction. This one is gritty and there's a lot of pain and I must have cried a lot (those tend to stick in my head)

2. we're holding hands beneath the silver screen

I think this story is taking place in the 90s (you'll see that a lot of the fics I recommend are taking place in the past). I think I ended up reading everything ChimneyCricket wrote, but this one remained a favorite. Coming of age during a summer in Jeju in the 90s. Apart from the theme, it's the writing that made me stick with it.

I'm not the biggest fan of young adult stories. Or better yet, it's not something that I'd go to as a preference. When I do, it's more of an indulgence and thankfully, I found some writers (like this one) who can do a really good job with the genre.

3. Stockwell

Another writer that I've become a big fan of after reading one fic of theirs. And I think it might have been Stockwell that did it for me. I like that it's fanfiction with adult themes for an adult audience. And I also resonate with a lot of the cultural references and themes. I will also admit that this fic leaning into the enemies to lovers trope was a selling point because I'm a sucker for it. I can't help myself.

4. Burn for You

This is a complete self indulgence for me and I embrace it. Just like watching Bridgerton is a guilty pleasure for which I don't actually feel guilty (and the inspo for this fic). This story has everything and I must say the combination of lust, fear of revealing feelings, rumors, proper behavior and hidden romance is a lethal combination!

5. Light of a century

I might have recommended this story before, but it being inspired by Up on Poppy Hill is not just due to the plot, but the writing is able to evoke that studio Ghibli mood. This fic is to be read on a hot weekend afternoon.

6. Map of the Soul

This might be one of the most complex fanfictions I read due to the amount of research needed, but also in the depiction of political contexts and identity politics. Most of all, I like it because as much as relationships are a vital part of the story, there is an entire world surrounding the main characters. Events and other people that have also room to develop and not just remain props that advance the story.

7. Proceed with Caution

I don't know what snatchim did with this fic, but it's the only one I ever reread multiple times and I'll probably do it again in the future. I don't even reread books from my library, let alone fanfics. But Proceed with Caution did it for me. Perhaps it's because of the process of Jungkook inevitably falling for Jimin and even though it's a bad thing considering the context, it's so good. Maybe it's the image of Jimin with a bellybutton ring or maybe because the picture of hot Californian days in the 70s is so vivid, it feels like a nostalgic Paul Thomas Anderson movie.

8. Dishwater World They Said Was Lemonade

The description does not do this story justice because it's so much more than that. It's a canon compliant thriller with really complicated and complex characters and once again, a story meant for adults who understand that it's fiction. Unfortunately, judging by the comment section, a lot of people cannot distinguish betweem real people and characters. For those of you who might be fans of Korean thrillers, this story might be the one for you. It's also one of my favorite jikook fics as well.

9. souvlaki

Need I say more, considering the description? This is a self indulgence as well, but of a different kind. If I happily read tropey fics, I also like the ones that can sound like a uni course. Set during the 1997 FMI crisis in SK, any reader will get familiar with a socioeconomic and political perspective of that time through the eyes of the main characters. If you're only looking for romance, this one is not for you.

10. you wouldn't remember

I think littleflumes might be currently my favorite writer of canon compliant jikook. I think the author really captured their dynamic in its essence and the room left for fiction perfectly fills in the holes left in the last 2 years and up until the present. But what did it for me, not only with this story, but the others in the series as well, is that it's concentrated almost entirely on the two main characters, almost living in a bubble of their own in which their relationship can be explored.

[e-rated-beardo]

2024 fic roundup

@cheeseplants created this ask/tag game, and I've been tagged by @addledmongoose and @harlotofupdog, here we gooo

What fandoms do you write in?

200% Good Omens. First proper fandom experience. First thing that forced (aye, forced) me to write a fanfic. Huge obsession.

If I were to write for anything else, it might be Our Flag Means Death, or Doctor Who, or perhaps House M.D. or some flavour of Star Trek. Or a crossover between one of those and GO. I'm a completely normal amount of obsessed with Aziraphale and Crowley.

How many words have you published in 2024?

*goes to ao3 stats page*

*hits "2024"*

...220,232 words

What the whole entire fuck!?

And there's another three chapters left on Scorn to go before New Year's, so we'll comfortably surpass 231k. How in the actual fuck is that possible.

What is your greatest achievement this year?

Getting this comment:

What are your favourite top three fics you wrote this year?

Not Single Spies (the third part of Nice And Ominous, which can be read on its own or with the two preceding parts); The Co-pilot; and I'm going to say Scorn and the Saint-Maker, although that's far from finished, because it's been the entirety of my past half-year.

Not Single Spies (part III of Nice And Ominous: a reluctant eschatology of the Second Attempt) Rated E; 61k words Second Coming/post-S2 fic; plot-driven

A man with pale hair turns up in Saint Peter's Square, naked and without memory, and Crowley's old sense of Aziraphale's location snaps like a twig. Heaven is down another Supreme Archangel—but the new Christ is already on Earth (in France, to be precise) and the Second Coming is well underway. And Crowley works for Hell now, but really, he works for the good of humanity; pulling on every friend he has to stop the end of the world.

There is some smut in this, but it's only three sections and they're all skippable. The rest of the story is rated T with no major warnings.

The Co-pilot Rated E; 4k words Human-ish AU; shameless smut

An un-English heatwave, a few open shirt buttons and the demonic entity possessing an innocent Londoner conspire to make long-time friends Az and Tony finally get over themselves and bone.

Scorn and the Saint-Maker Rated E; 97k words so far (WIP) Human not-actually-AU; sorta-post-S2; plot-driven, smutty, mathsy; four plots in a trench coat

Doctor Crowley has turned truancy into an art form, lecturing only under sufferance. Doctor Fell has signed up for his undergraduate course and has no plans to let him slack off. When a faculty member is found dead, our heroes start forming uneasy suspicions. What was the occult symbol drawn next to the body? Why does it feel like they’ve known each other forever? How is Crowley supposed to tell police that he thinks the murderer is a demon he summoned 35 years ago? And what about that statue that’s the spitting image of the victim?

They've been turned human. Now they're academics in Scotland. Romance, weirdness and (skippable!) smut ensue. The fic has some warnings, so check the tags.

What was your biggest pit of despair moment?

I had a nasty week in August, when I got depressive symptoms as a side effect of a necessary medication and spent ~10 days convinced everything I did was shit.

I'm also kind of in one at the moment, but without the pharmaceutical explanation/excuse. I'm just... urgh. Things are stuck. It's. It's a thing. Idk.

What have you learned?

You're expecting me to list everything I've learnt related to writing and fandom and fandom writing in less than an entire academic essay? Are you out of your entire mind!? (❤️)

Big things: I've learnt that I do have the capacity to finish big stories; that things I write are good enough that people want to read them and look forward to reading them and give me all these amazing compliments on them and go slightly feral sometimes; and that if I'm enthusiastic enough about maths, I can trick some folks who didn't even like maths into sort of liking maths.

Smaller things: A smattering of fancy vocabulary. How to paint with watercolour. How to draw Michael Sheen's nose and David Tennant's lower lip. The fact that I have a massive praise kink. More than I knew there was to know about em-dashes and en-rules. Heaps of random facts about the Bible, angels, demonology, poetry, Scotland Yard, Shakespeare, wine, dicks, queer identities I don't have, and queer identities I do have. And a bunch about how to watch/read/consume media with my eyes open and my brain switched on.

What fic did you want to do but never made it off the ground?

I still low-key want to continue The Co-pilot into... something. And That Berry Ice Cream from last December has been sort of asking for a follow-up, which just hasn't happened.

I had this idea, shortly after that week in November that the Americans don't like to think about, for something short, snappy, and a little cathartic; a fuck the system-type deal, both to that political shitshow and to all the sad crap fucking over the GO fandom lately, and I started to write it but got stuck not even a thousand words in. Maybe it just wasn't that good of an idea.

Did you beta any fics? Any favs you want to shout out?

I did my first toe-dipping of a beta read just the other month, for Easy Access by @ModernDayKlutz. I've not dared to jump into beta:ing properly for fear that my old flakiness will resurface and make me disappoint a person I've made a promise to, but this one seemed contained enough that I felt I could contribute. Especially with Kilt Knowledge™️.

What three fics have you read this year that you love?

THREE!??!?

All right, so I'm looking through my bookmarks, and, as it turns out, That Fic I Keep Recommending Basically All The Time was one I only read - or at least, finished reading - early this year!

Mint Tea by @copperplatebeech - 31.5k words; rated E - is one of those fics that half the fandom have heard about, right? I don't know if it happened to hit me at a formative point in my fandom life or if it's simply That Good, which is also very likely, but thirsty-well-hung-Dom!Crowley lives in my head for free and will not move out, it seems. It's scorching and funny and sweet, and when I say it gave me the idea to try some... things... which I hadn't tried before, in... certain parts of my life... 🔥🫠

Fanfic, uh... changes lives, y'all! Ahem, well then, onwards:

Come as you are by hiya_angel - 4k words, rated E - this gave me some of the experience reflected in that gorgeous comment above. The angst is minimal and the smut is gorgeous and wonderfully sweet and I adore this fandom for making me feel hope again and again for all this trans stuff that's still comparatively new to me.

Submitted for Your Consideration by @zehwulf - 19k words, rated E - contains possibly the most spectacular description of subspace I've read in... ever? And when it comes to bowling me over with porn, I could probably just pick anything by ZehWulf because whatever story I pick up it ends with me sitting there absolutely sweating. And feeling fuzzy inside. And maybe also crying for joy.

HERE'S A FOURTH ACTUALLY, YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME:

Lucid by @twilightcitysky - 35k words, rated E. It's unfinished and I barely even care at this point, because something about this fic changed me. It's So. Fucking. Good. It's one of those (rare? Not in this fandom! But a little rare, probably) stories where the smut is absolutely plot-crucial. It's also excruciatingly clever and angstier than I thought I would like (I was wrong! I LIKE IT) and the characters are great. And it's written just beautifully.

What ideas are percolating for next year?

More Scorn. (Don't trust the projected chapter count. Knowing myself, there'll be more of them. Or I might be done with less. It's a completely unqualified approximation.)

More Co-pilot, maybe? (I have Ideas.)

A slightly more fantastical fic that goes into a smut genre I haven't really explored at all before. And which has made me research goats' pupils.

Plus, I want to look into making podfics more. Maybe get better at it. Maybe even try out doing voice work for money? (I'm talking to a guy, it's completely wild, but damn it might be a thing I could do)

Who do you want to thank?

@addledmongoose (quite unintentionally) brought me to Tumblr. (She wrote a review of Nice And Ominous, and it was so lovely, I wanted to go there and like it and respond to it properly, so I just had to create an account, you know? No other options.) I'm so glad I'm here.

@bakingcat made excitable comments about my linguistics-nerdery-snuck-into-sex-scene and made me realise you can actually make friends in fandom.

@klikandtuna wrote the fic which I was a completely normal amount of obsessed with this summer, and which led to (via an instance of fanwork of the fanwork) me being flooded with love from strangers one random Friday and getting put in contact with that voice work guy. We also had the most wonderfully grown-up conversation about a tricky thing, for which I am so very proud and grateful.

@harlotofupdog came straight over to read Scorn almost right when I started posting it - I can't quite remember now, but the timing isn't the important bit - and wrote some absolutely glorious comments. D'you know you're the first writer whose work I'd already been painfully obsessed with, who's also expressed obsession with mine? D'you know how bloody cool that is??

And finally the unhinged smutgoblins of The Beta Fishes The Big Fucks server - idk who to thank anymore because I can't recall who invited me (it was past 3am and I'd just watched Michael Sheen shirtless for an hour, you'll have to forgive a guy) but all of y'all are weirdos and I love to hang out with yous and draw dicks and discuss writing and scream about Rivals and definitely not put mustaches on anyone.

No-pressure tags (in addition to everyone tagged above - please feel free to consider yourselves tagged-tagged if you like) without checking who's already been tagged in this before, because that's A Lot of Work that I don't want to do:

@wiblywoblytimeywimey754 @brenna @majnoonathelibrarian annnnd @kiratastic, pretty sure this could be modified to work for an art perspective too? Right? (If you want)

[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. 

[fixfoxnox]

Okay, Luke's somewhat serious post time.

Okay, so recently I've been getting some comments on my Ao3 that have bothered me and I feel like we should talk about comment etiquette again along with some lines of comfort for me.

So first of all, this:

This is not how you ask for more of a fic that you like. I'm already beating myself up over how long its been since I've been able to update things, and having people comment stuff like this on my fics only makes me feel worse.

I am a real person. I have a job and I've been working hard on finishing some commissions that people have PAID me to write. Forgive me if I'm not making the things that I write for free for people in my free time my first priority right now.

I AM absolutely still working on these fics. I've been working on Pyre and some requests in my ask box, but since they aren't my main priority right now its going really slow. I could very easily abandon these fics, but I don't because I love them and I love you guys and writing for you guys. All that I ask in return is that you respect the time and effort that goes into writing these fics.

My 8k-10k fic chapters take like 8 hours to write AT THE LEAST. Like I can't just churn this out like crazy as much as I would like to.

I am fine with people asking if I'm still working on a fic, but not comments like this basically demanding an update.

The next thing:

These were all comments replying to one another on my fic. There are three people in this thread in total and of them, only one of them actually made a comment about my fic.

Two people commented on my fic to essentially have a completely unrelated conversation with someone in my comment section. This is extremely frustrating.

Listen to me, imagine being me and seeing a notification that I got a comment. I get super excited, only to click on it and see that it has nothing to do with the fic that I've written? Its disappointing and so unbelievably discouraging to me.

I don't mind if people don't comment, but I do mind when people do this. Authors comment sections aren't a place to just have a casual chat!!! Keep it about the fic please!

Last thing and for the love of God listen to me:

This is nothing against people with DID. My issue with this falls into 2 categories:

"My one issue is that I'm trans in this, personally would have swapped me and Johnny"

If you are a person with DID and fictives and you read fics with your fictives, you have to understand that I AM NOT WRITING ABOUT YOU.

I do not need your opinion on if I wrote "you" correctly because I am not writing you!! I'm writing the fictional character who I have my own thoughts and beliefs about. If it bothers you, click off. I do not want or need to hear how I got something wrong because its not fucking wrong when it comes to me. Again, extremely discouraging to read.

The second thing and this may sound mean but for the love of God I do not care or need to know if you are a system/have DID. Unless my fic features DID (none of mine do at all) then its just completely unnecessary to mention.

I especially don't need to know which of your alters is talking. Unless I know you, there is genuinely no point to it. It just takes up space and makes things about you rather than about the fic you're commenting on.

Also, in this case? As someone who has been cursed by online role-playing in comment sections, even though this isn't it just feels like role-playing and it makes me extremely uncomfortable.

Please just leave your comment and move on. Unless it has something to do with the fic, I don't need to know this stuff about you. I've had people tell me more personal things in the comment sections that I was fine with and even touched me, but its always about how they relate to the fic, not just random information they throw in.

Again, its just a comfort thing for me.

Okay, serious Luke post is over now.

[antimonyandthyme]

hellooo athy i love your words. could you maybe share with us how you got started writing fic and three things that you've learned along the way? thanking u

Anon you are very very sweet and very very kind! Thank you for this lovely ask. Kekekeke I'll let you in on a secret! I discovered fic because I found my sister's OC writing printed out and hidden in a drawer once and I was like woah what is this?? And she went oh NOOOOooOOOO and then she was like fine since you've already seen it lemme introduce you to the wonderful world of fic! It all started from there. The first thing I ever wrote was for Guilty Gear. Imagine that! Guilty Gear. It never got anywhere, just in my silly little notebook that I've long lost. And it was a little while before I dared put anything up. But I'm glad I did! It's been such a great time!

It isn't fancy by any means, but three things that I've learned:

Writing's a lot more fun when done with people! Prior to F1 I've never really interacted with fandom much, I just wrote my Naruto and Haikyuu!! stories and hoped people would read them. I lurked a little (a lot) before creating this tumblr when I got into F1. And then I started talking! With other writers! And readers! I got to chatficcing! And I got to improving. I had people around me who would suggest ideas for what I could add to my stories. Give me tips when I was stuck. Tell me what was good and what I could do better. Lend their expertise! Like when writing Shutter Speed and I had no idea what gallery shows were like and @sebrrari held my hand and gave me advice and was basically one of the greatest reasons I finished the fic. I'm so much more motivated to finish writing projects because I know I have a tiny group of people who will light me on fire (affectionately) after I publish something unhinged.

I struggled with writing length and to be honest I still do! I get distracted by new ideas constantly. If I can't finish something in <5k words I sometimes lose interest and the next shiniest thing takes over. There have been several things that have helped. One, forcing my sections in my writing to be a certain word count. It seems a little contrived, but it's made me linger where other times I would have just hopped off to the next bit. Two, forcing myself to split my writing over several days. Once again, lingering and adding meat because I've had time in the day to mull over details. Three, joining exchanges like the F1 Big Bang. Nothing like a word requirement to nudge you towards a longer journey.

I'll end with something a little silly heehee. I started off really going for synonyms when it came to expressing characters speaking. I mean really going for it. "I hate you," he intoned. "I like this," she gasped. "You're wrong," they yelled. This might be a preference thing, but "said" or "says" has evolved to be my favourite and most effective way of reading/writing a conversation. It feels a ton more natural, and it reads a lot smoother too. Mind you, this all goes out the window when I'm writing sex. Kekekeke. Because now he whined/he moaned/he sobbed sounds a lot hotter.

[allwaswell16]

All the One Direction fics I read and enjoyed in June 2023. You can listen to my podcast to hear me talk about each of these fics as well as an overview of what was posted on ao3 including the fics on this month’s fic roundup which you can find here! Please let the writers know if you liked the fics by leaving kudos and comments! Happy reading!

Fanfictional Podcast #51 |  ko-fi | fic recs

—Louis/Harry—

🩷 Teach me how to love by @perfectdagger

(E, 70k, one night stand) The one in which Harry is bad at sex and Louis spreads it all over town and to make up for it, decides to help him with no agenda of getting anything from it, but in the end, he ends up getting more than he bargained for.

🩷 My Other Half Was You by @lululawrence

(NR, 35k, small town au) Four years, seven months, and sixteen days after the day that changed everything, Louis turns a corner and literally runs into the man who just might change it all again.

🩷 Bitter Ends Turn Sweet by @allwaswell16

(E, 30k, songfic) It had been four years since Harry first heard the song his ex wrote about him and far longer since they broke up. He forgave Louis long ago, and now his life was focused on his career, his family, and especially his son, Max. But Louis was back in Chicago, after all this time, and he’s not an easy man to ignore.

🩷 Cowboy Like Me by Rearviewdreamer / @all-these-larrythings

(M, 29k, thief au) Going legit and starting over in a small town was supposed to solve all of Harry’s problems. That was until a string of robberies in wealthy towns brings him face-to-face with his rogue ex-partner and their dicey, unresolved past.

🩷 Every Lover's Got A Little Dagger In Their Hand by ishiplouis / @pocketsunshineharry

(E, 22k, enemies to lovers) Does the attraction between two complete opposites really exist, or is it just a myth?

🩷 It Will Always Be You by @phdmama

(E, 15k, older Larry) If you had told Louis Tomlinson a year ago that he would be celebrating his birthday by kissing the man who is the love of his life on a Church Street park bench in Burlington VT as the snow drifted softly down, he would have told you that you were extremely imaginative. 

🩷 You Light Up the Path by QuickedWeen / @becomeawendybird

(T, 12k, mermaid au) Louis Tomlinson left his home in Doncaster as a young man with the intent of making enough money to send it back home to his family and support them however he could. Harry, or so he likes to be called, is the myth and legend himself known as the Staithes Mermaid. 

🩷 The Revelation by @creamcoffeelou

(E, 8k, cult au) Harry feels his edges start to unravel. He can’t find where he ends and where Louis begins.  Part 3 of The Risen

🩷 Lacy Little Secret by hazzahtomlinson / @itsnotreal

(E, 6k, bachelor party) Harry learned a very valuable lesson that day: always check to make sure it’s the right car before getting in.

🩷 the embers are new by @nouies

(NR, 3k, fantasy) Louis is a dragon vet whose life is changed after a long trip.

🩷 DIY Orgasm by red_PANdaaa28 / @red-pandaaa

(E, 3k, Grindr) Harry takes artsy nudes, Louis receives one and they both get to come.

🩷 Next in Line by @jaerie

(E, 3k, a/b/o)  It wasn’t fair that nobody was doing anything about such behaviour. Harry couldn’t ban all alphas from his shows, but he could make omega only sections.

🩷 Just a little taste by @lunarheslwt

(G, 3k, vampire au) Harry is a vampire that comes home one night, grappling with the darkness that comes with being one.

🩷 The Early Show by LadyLondonderry / @londonfoginacup

(G, 2k, uni radio show) The thing about Harry is that Louis has never been sure if he doesn’t like hybrids, or if he doesn’t like Louis. Either way, it’s unfortunate that they apparently are both equally late.

🩷 Ahead in the Count by @kingsofeverything

(E, 2k, baseball au) Louis’s been a catcher in the minor leagues for more than a decade and he’s never known a pitcher to touch his junk more often than he touches the baseball.

🩷 I Hear the Wind, It's Whispering My Name by Anonymous

(M, 2k, ghost fic) She’d also allowed herself to think of the woman every time she had a bit of me time over the next week. But then the woman had returned.

🩷 Imagination into Reality by @tommokat

(E, 1k, girl direction) It’s more than just physical, it’s years and years of attraction and pining and something that tastes like love. 

🩷 All This Time by @allwaswell16

(T, 1k, flower shop au) Louis Tomlinson had been best friends with flower shop owner Gemma Styles for years. It wasn't until she suggested he date her alpha brother that he ever thought of Harry that way. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea...

—Rare Pairs—

🩷 Pageant Material by LadyAJ_13 / @ladyaj-13

(G, 6k, Zayn/Louis) the Zouis teen beauty pageant AU.

🩷 Cool Kids Never Have The Time by wordsnnotes / @quelsentiment

(T, 6k, Zayn/Louis) Zayn auditions to join a band and makes a bad first impression on their bassist.

🩷 you wanna be on top? by @disgruntledkittenface

(NR, 6k, Zayn/Louis) Zayn’s experience as a contestant on America’s Next Top Model left her more than a little traumatized. She thinks she knows what to expect when she lets herself be talked into making an appearance on the show a couple of years later. Louis manages to surprise her.

[somestorythoughts]

Eldritch Echo Pt 8:

I'm pretty sure this is the longest section I've done for this fic. I'm not sure how that happened, one minute I was like "I'm kinda tried but I'll try to write a bit of this so I can say I wrote something today" and then next thing I know I'm in a writing groove. Not what I was thinking when I thought of Echo going feral earlier but I think it works.

Also, can someone who's seen more than a tiny bit of the Bad Batch confirm for me whether Crosshair sounds like Cad Bane? Cause I think he sounds like Bane.

@mezmatch , new part!

The Bad Batch’s mission doesn’t go well.

Hunter jerks awake in a cell to the sound of distant screams.

It’s not his brothers, he realizes. He can hear their heartbeats and see Tech in the opposite cell. Tech appears to still be unconscious and he can hear Wrecker grumbling to himself.

The screams stop.

“Wrecker?”

“Hunter! You alright?”

His head hurts and his ankle feels sprained, but that’s manageable. “Nothing too bad. You?”

“Bruises. Crosshair doesn’t look good, and I can’t see Tech or Echo.”

Echo Hunter realizes suddenly. Checking for the other three is habit, he’s still getting used to checking for four. “Tech’s unconscious. I can’t hear or see Echo, but someone was screaming earlier.”

“Do you think it was him?”

“No but they’re too far away to be sure. What the hell did they hit us with?”

“Nothing that would keep me down.” Is Wrecker’s grim response, meaning that whatever had been in that gas it wasn’t exceptionally strong. They called Tech and Crosshair’s names, trying to wake them up.

Four floors up, Echo is angry and working his way towards fully pissed off.

The Separatists who had caught them had brought him here to confirm that he was the trooper the Techno Union was hunting for and to get some information out of him. They had been straightforward about their plans to torture the rest of the squad for any useful information before killing or selling them, that detail was still being decided.

They had made two crucial mistakes. One of them was deciding this was a good idea in the first place.

The second was not asking the Techno Union exactly how they had managed to keep Echo down for so long.

The Techno Union got very, very lucky with Echo. He’d been in a state not too far from hibernation while his body recovered from the explosion, and then there were prosthetics and stasis chambers and things digging into his mind and one of the scientists had realized that they needed a very strong cocktail of drugs to keep him sedated. It had taken all of that to keep him under control, and even then he’d managed to cause trouble a couple times.

Your average sedative and some reinforced binders? Yeah, good luck with that.

Echo stands in a room with the remnants of five droids and three people. He walks to the terminal and turns on the security cameras with sticky red fingers. Blood drips from the knife at the end of his right arm and he narrows his eyes as the other Separatists hurry towards the cells where his squad is imprisoned, several droids with him. He taps another button.

“I would strongly suggest leaving my squad alone.”

He knows the way his voice sounds as it echoes, ha, through the intercom. Echo’s never called himself a sadist, but he won’t deny he relishes the way the Separatists jump out of their skin. He continues. “I’m coming for my squad. If you want to live, I suggest leaving now.”

He watches the screens just long enough to confirm his next actions, then turns and walks out the door.

He doesn’t have his armor or his blaster, but that’s alright. He’ll check for their location once he gets the others out, then he won’t have to try and carry everything. This trick Elevenses and Chomper had taught him and Fives during ARC training didn’t work with armor anyway.

In the cells, Hunter and Wrecker have managed to wake the other two up. Tech’s alright, but Crosshair has a concussion and a broken leg due to the sedative disorienting him as he was fleeing his compromised perch. They’d all been awake enough to hear Echo’s announcement and had almost immediately taken bets on whether the Seps would leave or not because some troopers would bet on anything, if only for the hell of it.

When the Seps arrive, they’re rushed. A minute later, the droids in the hall start blasting. There’s a sound like Wrecker ripping the hull off of a ship and the droids start yelling.

“Take him he’s the most injured.” The woman orders her companion, pointing at Crosshair. “I refuse to lose to a clone.”

“You certainly ran from him quickly.” Crosshair spat. He’s unsteady, but if he can get to the control panel for Wrecker’s cell…

He punches the man in front of him. There’s a shout, but Crosshair can only move so fast on a broken leg and finds a blaster leveled at his face, out of range. He puts his hands up and a stun baton hits his back.

He hears the others shouting as he goes down, tasting blood. They cuff him and drag him out of the cell and something on the ground catches his eyes. There’s too much light in the hallway between the cells for his shadow to be that dark, and he knows his shadow can’t grin.

“I told you to leave them alone.”

That’s Echo’s voice, if Echo was something massive and predatory speaking from the depths of a cavern too dark to see into. And those are Echo’s eyes, the violet golden color he’s grown familiar with. The handprint on his chest is Torrent blue, the 99 to the left of it in the same red the Batch uses. But the rest of him is black and white and something like armor. There’s a knife where his scomp should be, something shining on the ends of his fingers that could be claws and could be something else entirely. There’s too many teeth. Crosshair doesn’t have the words and doesn’t know how much of that is because of the concussion.

The woman keeps her blaster pointed at Crosshair’s head. The man points his at Echo, who sighs and raises his arms.

Something flashes. Someone yells. Something yanks Crosshair out of the way and he screams. When he stops, Echo has his teeth in the woman’s throat.

“Bleh. Never liked doing that.” Echo grumbles. He hurries to Crosshair, crouching down just out of arm’s reach with a face closer to what they’re used to. There are red lines over one eye much like Crosshair’s tattoo. “Are you alright?”

“When the fuck did you get a tail vod?” He croaks. Echo smiles, worry and relief plain as day even with the damn concussion. “Can we leave now?”

It doesn’t take too long to find their armor and weapons, even with Wrecker carrying Crosshair. Most of the droids had been in the hallway, and they clear out the remainder with ease as they get their stuff and swipe a speeder to get to the Marauder. Echo scomps into a terminal, he can practically hear Tech holding back questions when the blade changes smoothly back to a scomp, and retrieves the data they came for before they leave.

Crosshair’s gritting his teeth in pain by the time they get to the ship. While Tech and Wrecker are taking care of him, Hunter and Echo head straight for the controls. They don’t fully relax until they’re off the planet. Echo leans forward with a sigh, skin warping back into his usual shape.

“That could have gone worse.” Hunter groaned. Echo snorted. Something beeped.

“If that’s another mission we’re not here.” Echo grumbled. Hunter would have laughed if he hadn’t been so surprised. When his face is back under control, he answers the comm.

“Sir.”

“Hunter I’m glad I caught you.” The small blue form of Commander Cody says. “You boys alright? Is Echo there?”

He sounded stressed. “We just wrapped up the mission, only need to send in the data. Crosshair’s injured, he might be out of commission for a few days. Echo’s right here.” The ARC trooper waved one hand in range of the comm. “What’s wrong?”

Cody sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. “The Chancellor was a Sith, he’s now dead, and Fives was involved.”

Echo’s in front of the comm in a heartbeat. “Fives is on Coruscant?”

“The Chancellor’s a Sith?” Hunter asks because that also sounds important.

“It’s been a long day.” Cody replies. “I’ll give you the rundown but first, how soon can you get to Coruscant?”

“About two days if nothing goes wrong.” Echo replied. Hunter steps in.

“Would it be easier to send us a report? I assume you need to send one out anyway, and we can get the full details when we arrive.” Echo opens his mouth. “I’m not going to stop you getting details about your twin, but Cody looks exhausted and I know the others will have questions.”

“Fine.” Echo grumbles as Cody agrees. “You tell that idiot I’m going to wring his neck when I see him okay?”

Far away, an ARC trooper blinked and looked up. Something had pinged across his mind, resonating in his veins and resting on his back like a weight.

“Something wrong?” One of the Corries asked. Fives grinned, tired and relieved.

“Somewhere my twin is pissed at me.”

[toriafiction]

Lightning in his Eyes and Thunder in his Wings

Author's Note chapter 4

Introducing

Dick "I need to fry some bastards" Grayson

And

Jason "I'll break you if you touch him" Todd

I'm excited about having gotten this far. I personally feel like this is where things really start in a way. Chapters 1 and 2 are backstory, and chapter 3 is the transition, but chapter 4 is the start of what I think of as current time.

You might notice a change in pacing from here on. There won't be any big time skips, just brife mentions of a few weeks passing between point A and point B here and there, but nothing substantial. While the passage of time will be slower, events will pick up.

Years have passed between the events in Titans Tower in chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 4, and in that time Dick had created a new normal for himself, something that he believed was sustainable. Now, as promised in the story summary, Jason is back and, by merely existing in his space, has awakened something that is going to flip Dick’s world upside down.

Dick isn't human, and he has gotten to complacent with that fact.

This chapter introduces Jason into the story as an interactive character that we are finally getting to see, and I wanted him to come in with a big entrance that felt genuine to the story. This led me to writing my first ever fight scene. This was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. Dick’s sole fight was easy. I wanted to showcase how he used his abilities in a fight and him just being a badass fighter in general, so I just let him kick ass. No problem.

I had a problem after I brought Jason in. I really wanted to have them fighting together, not just in the sense of fighting back to back but actually playing off each other. Such as where Dick rolls across Jason’s back to defend him. I wanted to have more things like that, but I couldn't come up with anything. I even tried looking up fighting videos, and that was a huge bust. I hope I still got the point and the feelings across.

The next problem I had was even worse.

Talking.

I had no idea how to have them interact or what to have them say to each other. I knew the emotions and what the ultimate outcome of the interaction was supposed to be, but I agonized over this tiny little part for weeks. I even wrote around it until I hit the exact same problem with the next chapter.

I was stuck, and at that point, I stepped away from this work for quite a while, and it sat collecting dust in my docs for some time. When I came back, I still didn't know how to write the scene, but I wanted to keep my focus on this story, so this is the point that I started naming chapters. I also changed the name of the fic at this point. I was using a temporary name of "Lightning Strikes Twice." I knew that it wasn't a title I wanted to keep, and while I sometimes worry that my current title may be too long, I am much happier with it.

I finally got over my writer's block with this section while I was at work one day. I was hit with the idea of Dick’s line about Jason being snake bitten, and it seemed to shake everything loose. During my break, I made a rough outline of the scene and jotted down a few ideas for the next, and finally, I was able to move forward again. Yay!

Previous notes- 1st, 2nd, 3rd,

[liminalmemories21]

18 (because I know you keep things and I love seeing the bts things) and 23 please Lim!

Thank you!

Okay, doing this in reverse order.

#23 - pick three keywords that describe your writing

hmm, okay, this is hard. Introspective? Funny (I hope)? Kind (I really hope)?

#18 - if you keep them, share a deleted sentence or paragraph from a published fic

Do I ever keep things. So, there was a whole section I wrote for We were in screaming color where they went to New York for Passover, and I really loved it and had to cut it when it turned out they'd apparently never been to New York (!?!). Anyway, this is a small part of it.

Enzo has classes on Monday, but they're not leaving until Tuesday morning, and they take the time to go out to Gwen's grave.  They take Jonah with them, and Carlos keeps an eye on him as he toddles around the cemetery while TK folds himself down next to the temporary marker.  The unveiling will be in late July, and Carlos has already put in for vacation time to come up for it.

He takes a few steps away to give TK privacy to talk to Gwen, and crouches to take the stick that Jonah solemnly hands him.  He turns at TK's voice, raised just loud enough to carry.

"Hey, Jonah, come say hi to Mom."

He takes Jonah's hand to help guide him over to the grave, and then lets TK settle Jonah on his lap.  Jonah squirms a little, and doesn't really understand what they're doing here, but he catches enough of TK's mood to settle for long enough to obediently say hello to Gwen and Carlos feels his heart clench when Jonah offers TK a small rock he has clenched in his fist.  He can see the tears on TK's lashes, but his voice is somehow steady when he tells Jonah, "That's perfect, honey.  Do you want to put it on her grave?"

Jonah looks a little dubious, but puts it on the marker and then looks at TK for approval.  TK kisses the top of his head.  "It's a way for us to remember her," he explains to Jonah.  He scrubs surreptitiously at his eyes and pushes himself up.  He looks at Carlos.  "You want to talk to her?"

He nods, and squeezes TK's hand as TK stoops to pick Jonah up and walks a little bit away for them to look at the buds on the fruit tree nearby.  He sits on the ground in front of the grave, in the same place TK had.  He's never really done this before, never really had anyone that close to him who's died.  He feels a little awkward, but, "Hi Gwen.  Your son asked me to marry him, and it was the best day of my life.  I know I screwed it up a little after that, but he's got more patience than most people give him credit for, and he's got so much patience with me even when I don't think I deserve it."  He puts a hand on the ground.  "I promise you, I am going to love him for the rest of my life, and I am going to try every single day to make him happy."  His voice catches in his throat.  "I wish you could be there, to dance at our wedding, and tell me you told me so, and make him laugh.  But, even if you aren't there in person, I know that you will be there in TK, and in Jonah, and in the memory of every person you met and loved, and through me for him.  And, I am so grateful for that.  I don't think I have words for how grateful I am for him, and that you trusted me with him.  I won't let you down, I promise.."

When he looks up, TK's watching him with a small tired smile.  They go to lunch afterwards at the tiny dim sum shop on Spring Street, and they cut up a dumpling into little pieces and let Jonah gum at them.  The owner remembers TK, and looks sincerely upset when he tells her that Gwen passed, and brings them out a plate of bao they hadn't ordered, and when TK says thank you Carlos can hear the tears in his voice.  "They were her favorite," TK says when they're alone.  "I can't believe she remembered that."

When Carlos suggests they just go home after lunch TK only makes a token objection.  "I was going to show you Manhattan." 

He nudges TK towards the subway, and hopes he's remembered the right one.  "We'll be up here a lot more times, you have years to show me New York.  Right now I think we all need naps, and he nods at Jonah who's already conked out in his stroller.

TK's mouth twists with amusement.  "I think I envy him a little."

They're playing blocks with Jonah when Enzo gets home that afternoon, and he makes a face as he sits down on the carpet with them.  "I am too old for this."  He points a finger at them, "Let this be a lesson, have your children when you're young.  Or," he reaches out to cup the back of TK's neck, "acquire them when they're past the age of crawling on the carpet."  TK grins and ducks his head, and offers Enzo a hand to lever him up off the carpet. 

TK gets quieter the later in the evening it is, but it isn't until after they've put Jonah to bed that he says, "I really miss Mom."

Carlos curves a hand across his knee, anchoring him, and Enzo reaches out a hand to TK and holds it firm when TK takes it.  "I know, kid.  Me too.  Every day."

[meraki-yao]

1 💕

8 for Can I Have This Dance

2 Which scene was your favorite to write in I Need Comfort (But I Hate Being Comfortable)

Thank you for the ask dear!

1. Of the fics you’ve written, which is your favourite and why?

Honestly the fic I'm the proudest of is not an RWRB fic, it's a shadowhunters/malec song fic: Achilles Come Down

My best works and best creativities come from me projecting myself and putting my actual feelings into the fic. What happened with this fic is I had a really shitty day, went out for a run while listening to Achilles Come Down, thought of the fic and proceeded to dump all my feelings, spend the next entire day writing the fic, finishing it within 24 hours. Till this day I think it's the best thing I've ever written, ever.

But for RWRB, I'm gonna say I’d Hang the Moon for It to Shine on Him Sleeping. It's also partially me venting through both Henry and Catherine, but there's also this part where I wish we could see more or less what I wrote on screen, hopefully in the sequel. Writing in Catherine's pov was really fun. I'm really proud of that one.

2. Which scene was your favourite to write in I Need Comfort (But I Hate Being Comfortable)?

Oh, this was pure vent and very raw. I was going through a depressive episode those couple of days, so I kind of wrote down what I did for Henry and copied a couple of lines from my own diary for Henry's inner monologue. So my favourite scene to write was actually taking what's my own feelings and reframing it to fit Henry's narrative. So this part:

He’s kind of frustrated at himself. He’s in a much better place than he was in the past: he’s away from the palace, he’s writing his own book, he has a boyfriend who he loves and who loves him. It’s what he always wanted, he’s what he thought he would never get. The constant fear and despair of hiding his sexuality for his entire life, the thought of pretending to be straight and getting married to some noblewoman, the feeling that he doesn’t fit in the space, the dread that sticks to his skin and dyes his blood a dull shade of black like some toxic, viscous tar, that’s truly gone for good.

I'm kind of happy something so negative inside me can be translated into some sort of creative outlet.

8. Which scenes did you cut, and which were added in Can I Have This Dance?

I'm not sure if this counts as cutting because I didn't actually write it, but I considered putting the Paris scene for the first section instead of DNC night, but 1, I ended up deciding I wanted actual dancing, in the traditional sense of the word 2, I wasn't really ready to write smut at the time and felt like Paris was too heavy for me just to stuff it as a quarter of a fic. So I wrote DNC instead.

As for what scene was added, Alex and Henry dancing to their playlist was a later decision. I initially kind of just thought of them slow dancing in the kitchen or something, but then I remembered that playlist exist and added it in.

[illmetkismet]

for the ask game, i'll give Ashley! <3

YESSSSSSSSS thank you for giving me Ashley!!! I'm holding her gently in the palm of my hand...

How I feel about this character: Full disclaimer is that I dressed up as Ashley last halloween, i have an Ashley sticker on my water bottle, I wrote fic with Ashley in it so um, I love her. They nailed her character design - she's so fucking cute - and the way she grows throughout re4r is so gradual that you almost don't notice it's happening until you blink and she's suddenly knocking down a wall with a wrecking ball and you're like, "Wait...." She starts off so miserable and scared, and little by little she finds the courage to make it through her ordeal. The sections where she's with you in the game were so stressful because I was so worried for her, but I love her commentary and just having her there with you makes it feel less lonely. One day I will unlock the armour for her and then my heart will be at peace... Playing as her was even worse, worry-wise, but honestly, it just made me realize how brave she really is.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: Sowwy, no one.... Well, actually, I do love that she has this sweet crush on Leon, and I do want her to get to be with him cause she's so into it, but I just don't see it happening. So I do love fanfic or fanart of them together, especially when it feels like maybe it's one of her daydreams/fantasies lol That's the only way it makes sense in my head.

My non-romantic OTP for this character: Oh, but her and Leon are so great together platonically! Their scene where he tells her she can keep going, but warn him before stabbing him next time.... Uuuuugh that was so sweet, I love them!! I love how committed Leon is to saving her, and how much she comes to trust him. That they start to like each other, to joke with each other, to encourage each other. Their sunrise ending scene makes me tear up every time.

My unpopular opinion about this character: It feels like just liking Ashley is an unpopular opinion in and of itself, but I'll try for less of a low hanging fruit... Hm, let's see... Well, I guess it's a popular refrain, and I feel like I've said it myself before, but the more I think about it the less I like the whole, 'give Ashley a gun!' thing. Actually, I love that she didn't get a gun. I love that she got through the game - even the section where she had to run around with the fucking Armaduras on her ass - without a weapon (wrecking ball doesn't count lol). I don't want her to be a warrior badass, I want her to stay her sweet goofy self.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I wish she wasn't a one-off, or that at the very least we got a cameo or some kinda in-game document with a little update as to what became of her. Seems like she and Leon didn't keep in touch, and I've talked about what a shame I think that is before. Basically, more Ashley please!! But I'm not holding my breath.... She's so important to me, but I guess in the grand Capcom scheme of things she's just a side character who appeared in one single game and was never heard of again 😞

[rosekasa]

HELLO PERSON WHO DEFINITELY DIDNT REBLOG THAT ASK GAME JUST BECAUSE I WANTED TO ASK QUESTIONS HAHAHA NO DEFINITELY THAT WAS NOT ABOUT ME

💖 Which of your fics is your pride and joy? (is this like asking you which is your favorite child)

🎭What genre of writing comes easiest to you? (hee hee it doesnt just have to be about fanfiction either !!)

🙌What's a line or paragraph of yours that you're proud of? (your writing is so beautiful if someone else already asked you this PLEASE still answer it again with another line or paragraph 🥺 I'm begging)

🍎What's something you learned while researching for a fic? (I KNOW you look up and learn lots of things while writing)

⏳If you could go back in time and tell your younger writer self something, what would it be? (🥺🥺 you always have such insight)

HI PERSON I DEFINITELY DIDNT REBLOG THIS FOR I LOVE YOU AHDJSJS

💖 Which of your fics is your pride and joy?

like poles of a magnet for SURE. i adore that fic. im not really sure why im so attached to it but it's really my baby. i love it so much

🎭What genre of writing comes easiest to you?

oh youre gonna think im so lame. it's essay writing. ahdjsjdkaksk. i think i told you before but i write book reviews for every book i read and my writing feels so Natural then because it's like. every line has a purpose to prove my point about the book. whenever im feeling rusty with narrative writing i find myself telling myself 'okay pretend this is an essay and this whole story is trying to prove your thesis about the characters' ahdjsj

🙌What's a line or paragraph of yours that you're proud of?

bren 🥹 ily. my hanahaki wip is really fun and i feel like has a lot of good writing because it really demands a lot of descriptiveness. i have this section when adrien sees gabriel for the first time in a while that i kept scrolling up and rereading

He knows, logically, that this is his father. You can't forget a face like that, the face you searched for in vain at every fencing tournament, piano recital, fashion gala that you knew full well he hadn’t attended but you were tired and wanted an adult to hold your hand and guide you around the crowds. 

It is that face. But a mimicry of it, like a portrait with the wrong proportions.

He’s gaunt — it’s the first word that comes to mind. His eyes sit deep in their sockets beneath his glasses, jaw a sharp trapezoid attached to his cheeks. It’s not just a matter of losing weight over the months — which, even if it was, would be a surprising deviation from the seventy-five kilos he had not shifted a decimal of a gram from in thirty years. It’s everything else, the biology hidden behind the layers of perfectly-tailored clothing, and well-combed hair, and skin, although pristine, textured like paper over the canvas of his skull. 

🍎What's something you learned while researching for a fic?

did i ever tell you about how when i went to paris last year i literally knew where everything was by arrondissements because ive searched them up so many times for ml fics. i think it was even specifically rue lepic that i remember the most because i once wrote about ladynoir patrolling around there and it turned out to be the road right next to my hotel (yes, we got a hotel in pigalle, my paris knowledge did not supply me with what exactly pigalle is known for,)

⏳If you could go back in time and tell your younger writer self something, what would it be?

literally not to lose that unwarranted confidence i had. at age eleven i was pounding out 50k+ word multichapter fics for my first fandom and like. the plots are so questionable. but when i reread them now im genuinely impressed at the quality of writing i had at that age. i think as i hit 13/14 i went through that phase where i was like ohhh my god i was sooo embarrassing when i was a kid and that insecurity really hindered my writing progress! i think creativity needs you to be unapologetic and cringe. that's when the best stuff is made because it's Real

i love you bren!!!

[owlf45]

Hi Owl, did owl, did you ever hate your own writing? Like thinking its so bad to the point that you want to delete it? Because i just upload my first ever fanfic and keep overthinking about the fic, its just everytime i read it its feels worst than before 😭. Did you have advice about how to deal with this feeling?

Absolutely I did! Almost every author's note in all of my old fics has a section with me expressing how much I hated my own writing.

The beginning stage of writing is hard. It's okay if what you wrote wasn't exactly what you had in your head, but if you're having fun with the process, the end product doesn't have to be perfect (it never is). It doesn't matter. You'll only get better at writing as you go.

Secondly, the more you read something repeatedly, the more you hate it. Forbid yourself from reading your fic for the next few months. Some of the writing I hated the most, I went back to read it years later and it was funny, charming, or downright amazing. If you read it too often, you become so entangled with it that you forget that a reader is absorbing everything you wrote for the first time— and they'll probably love it. Leave it alone until you can look at it with fresh eyes. Stop reading it! Don't obsess over it.

Also, it's straightforward as an author to point out what you think are 'flaws' in your work. But guess what? Readers... probably won't even notice. In fact, some of the things you think suck, your readers will find meaning in. When I was younger and a bit more nihilistic, I thought Imaginary was always too fluffy to be that rich in complexity compared to some of my darker works. However, readers pointed out how the fact that the characters choose kindness and silliness—repeatedly, despite their own history—is refreshing, optimistic, and genuinely joyful. Your readers can find so many valuables in your writing that you never even comprehended while writing it. So you can hate your work, but really, you only hate your perception of it.

(I can never give a concise response, so the rest is under the cut:)

I have deleted plenty of my old works because I hated them. There are about ten that will never see the light of day again. And while I don't regret taking them down, I GREATLY regret not saving backups. My recommendation: keep your fic up (for now) until you've written a couple more. You learn a shitton of writing skills within those first few fics, and if you keep backtracking rather than moving forward, you might feel stuck. Once you get more comfortable with the writing process and you have a bigger pool of writing to compare with, then start thinking about what you want public and what you don't. (And save everything as a backup). I caution you against obsessing over a perfect profile/discography, however, and deleting everything as soon as you don't like it anymore. It's very easy to compare your works and your stats with this invisible standard you've set for yourself, or with other creators. Don't.

My relationship with my writing improved the most when I started posting more, and when I kept the silly stuff on my profile. When I only had 3 works (and two were long-form WIPs), I felt super self-conscious about posting anything new. But then I did Fic Fight and posted like 12 works in a month, and most of them are not that significant. But they were fun to write. Suddenly I gained a much healthier respect for my writing. It doesn't have to be perfect, I just have to enjoy writing and sharing it with others. I think all writers who put a lot of stock into their writing have to internalize that at some point.

If you really enjoyed writing your first fic, and you really want to share it with others, then keep doing it. There may come a time down the line, maybe a few years later, when you can look back at this fic and recognize how you would write it differently. But that comes with time and experience. So keep writing for fun and for yourself! (And if you're stuck, stop re-reading your writing, and ask a friend to beta your work for you!)

Hell, I will give a perfect example right now. For all I appreciate my own writing, I still get a little weird about Imaginary. So I asked a few of my readers, whenever I'm done with the next chapter, to read it before I post it and vibe-check it. I've been doing this since chapter 3. I've been doing it for five years, basically. And literally every time I've gotten nothing but kindness, and I still, irrationally, freak out every time I have to update again. Does that stop me? No, though it does take me forever to update! So you should do the same! Keep going! Even if it takes you a while.

So yes. There's my forever-long lecture. I fail always to be concise. I hope this helps.

[mvshortcut]

AO3 Tag Game!

Starting a new post because the old one was getting a bit long!! I was tagged by @mahpotatoequeen <3333

How many works do you have on AO3? 21! Mostly oneshots and one long(ish) fic.

What’s your total AO3 word count? 137,409

How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they? One! Two if you count the book and the show as separate fandoms. But it's always been The Mysterious Benedict Society so far. I'd love to write for other fandoms someday, probably Good Omens, but this is where I feel comfortable with for now, both in terms of knowing the characters/story and the tight-knit fandom :D

Top five fics by kudos:

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Epistolary Bullying Campaign (because of course it is. this was my first crack fic and I wrote it at 1AM when I had an exam the next day. sigh)

5PM Every Evening, On the Dot

46 Fairview St. Apartment 2A, Stonetown

Thank the Stars Above

Time and a Half

Do you respond to comments?

In theory. I love chatting with people about fics - best way to make friends honestly - and I love when authors reply to my comments on their works! In practice I haven't replied in a while, which upsets me but it's more of a time/spoons thing. If I have time and energy I'd rather spend that commenting on one of my friends' fics rather than replying to comments on one of my own fics.

What’s the fic with the angstiest ending you’ve ever written?

I really don't do angsty endings! They're not always happy, but they tend to be bittersweet or open rather than angsty, and even if everything isn't resolved, I usually try to get across that the fic is ending in the middle of a situation and that everything will be okay later (like this snippet). I think the three that come closest are Let Steep Ten Minutes, Keeping Time with Curtain's +1 section, and 46 Fairview St. where it's kind of left open whether SQ will ever go back to visit his father. But again, those don't really feel angsty, just somewhat bittersweet with the hope that things will grow and get better.

Do you write crossovers? I haven't yet, but I'd be open to it! I think it's really challenging to write a good and cohesive crossover and I'm not sure where I'd start.

Have you ever gotten hate on a fic?

Nope! Perks of being in a small fandom. I imagine it does happen but I know y'all would have my back

Do you write smut?

Definitely not for mbs. I'd be open for other fandoms but it's not really what interests me the most.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of! I suppose someone might have fed a fic of mine into an AI writing generator which I'd personally consider a form of stealing, but I haven't heard of that happening. Please don't do that :)

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No! I've thought of trying to translate some of my own for funsies, but I'm definitely not at that level yet! Although the lovely @sophieswundergarten has made a few amazing podfics of both my fics and some other excellent fics in the mbs fandom, which I'd consider translation of a sort!

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

For mbs I'm more interested in platonic/familial connections, but I suppose I'd say Milligan/Moocho if I had to pick one? I really don't care if they're romantic or not though, I just like them together in any form that takes. For all-time I suppose I'd say Aziraphale and Crowley, though again I'm really not too picky about the nature of that, romantic or otherwise. Perks of being aroace spectrum baybe

What’s a WIP that you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

Never say never! But I do have a longer Curtain Wins AU buzzing around in my brain where Reynie and Sticky "join" him at the end of Book/Season 1 and then work to bring him down from the inside, without getting caught up in his manipulations. That might end up being comparable to Time and a Half in length, so maybe someday when I have an abundance of free time.

What are your writing strengths?

I think I write some banger first sentences :D especially in crack/funny fics

What are your writing weaknesses?

Too many adverbs! Also I get very easily stuck on exposition/beginning/ending/filler parts. I tend to write down the most tense/exciting moments for the fic and then the writing process stalls for the next three months.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fics?

For a real language, I think it can be a great opportunity to showcase a character's backstory/culture. It can also be immersive for the audience - if a character is in a foreign country where they don't speak the language, including pieces of dialogue in that language can help the audience understand how lost they're feeling (assuming the audience doesn't speak that language either)! If you're using a translation source though it can make for some pretty hilarious errors and mistranslations.

I think made-up languages absolutely fuck but I could never include one in my fic because I'd nerd out creating an entire writing, grammar, and vocab system and forget to write the actual fic.

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

take a wild guess

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written so far?

absolutely not. top 5:

Time and a Half

46 Fairview St

And Without It One Cannot Start Over

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Epistolary Bullying Campaign

Keeping Time

Tagging: @binnudacademy (consider this a tag for your main, sorry about the shadowban. free molly 2k24) @ragecndybars @bi-demon-ium @trentcrimminallybeautiful (you pick which <3) @oflightningandstars and anyone else that wants to!!