The One Minute You’re Not By My Side
An ROTMNT FanFic
Summary:
For as long as he can remember, Donnie always had Leo beside him. Through every illness and injury, daydream and nightmare, Leo had been at Donnie's side; it was all he had ever known.
And then the impossible happens for one minute: Donnie was alone for one minute.
Leo doesn't understand why Donnie was so strung up after the Krang invasion, chalking it up to him being protective over everyone and shutting himself off for some reason or other. When confronting him, Leo learns why his twin had been distancing himself from him
I had published this on my ao3 a few years ago intending to put it here on tumblr but I haven’t gotten around to it, but it’s here now. This is for all you angst-loving disaster twins fans!
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“No Leo!” Donnie yelled. The battle shell he was working on forgotten about as he tried to hold back his tears. “I’m not talking about when we lost you in that krang dimension!”
“Then why are you so upset?!” With a huff, Leo dropped onto the bed. His leg had been healed enough to walk him from the med room to Donnie’s lab, that’s for sure, but he couldn’t stand there for that long. Not yet at least, with the way Donnie said his knee cap was fractured. “I don’t get it. I don’t get why you’re so adamant about this!”
“‘Cause, you don’t understand!” Donnie replied.
“Then tell me! I can’t read your mind-!”
“You died!” He snapped. Donnie turned around from the table, tears flowing freely now in the purple LED lights.
Leo sat there stunned. The breath in his lungs held itself in his throat and the words on his tongue died like Donnie said he had. “What?” His voice was barely above a whisper.
“You died. I’m not talking about when we lost you in the other dimension. No. Your heart stopped beating for one minute on the way back to the lair.” Donnie turned back to the haphazard piles of wires and metal on the table.“For one minute—for seventy-four seconds—you were dead and for the first time in our existence…I was alone.”
He couldn’t look at his twin the same anymore.
They thought Leo was stable enough to move to the lair, and while he needed the most medical attention out of the group, everyone believes he was good enough to move through the subway tunnels toward home. He had been doing fine, up until the station on sixteenth and broadway when he had gone quiet and limp. Leo had started slipping out of April and Donnie’s grip, his legs unmoving and his head hanging against his chest. April was the one to notice first, not liking the way Leo’s hand wasn’t gripping onto hers anymore.
When they laid him, Leo’s eyes had glazed over, a ghostly sheen that spread over his irises and left him staring ahead at whatever victim was in its path. And Donnie was right next to him.
Donnie couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. The world below him disappeared and he was falling through into nothingness as he stared at his twin brother’s dead eyes. Around him, fuzzy figures went to work trying their best to reanimate the dead turtle. He saw red and orange were the first to the scene, their hands following the steps from the CPR training a few years ago. Yellow was next to him, trying to shake him out of his stupor. Grey was somewhere, Donnie couldn’t see where because it didn’t matter at that point. Donnie was now alone in this world.
Everything zeroed in on Donnie as the realization hit him: Leo broke his promise.
A flash of a memory, a ghost of a forgotten time when the twin was just under six years old, hiding beneath their shared blanket in the middle of the night. Bright eyes staring at each other as they giggled about everything and anything.
“Hey ‘tello?” The blue-dressed turtle said.
“Yeah ‘nardo?” The purple one replied.
“You’re never going to leave me right? You’ll always be with me?”
“Of course!” The child’s voice beamed. “But only if you promise to never leave me alone, m’kay?”
“I promise! I’ll always be right by your side!” The blue turtle held out his third finger. “I pinkie promise!”
“But we don’t have pinkies!”
“Doesn’t matter! You have to promise to, okay?”
“Okay,” the purple turtle wrapped his third finger around his brothers, eyes half closed as sleep was rushing over them both. “I promise.”
Donnie didn’t know what to do in those few seconds, that moment when his whole world crumbled to the ground. And then he heard a gasp and yelled of relief. He saw black gloves twitch off the ground and a blue bandanna spring to life before reading on the cold concrete of the subway station. And while everyone else had expressed their concerns and double-checked if Leo was okay to move again, Donnie had still stayed frozen in place, his eyes staring at where Leo’s dead ones looked back at him.
“Donnie,” Leo said breaking the silence.
“No! No! Don’t ‘Donnie’ me!” The older twin yelled, angry tears replaced the sad ones, but they were tears nonetheless. “I had to lose you twice! Twice! I had to watch you break your promise twice, Leo! You said you’d always be by my side, you promised we’d be twins forever, and then you had to do your dumb-dumb self-sacrifice to save our dumb-dumb lives without thinking of how that would affect me!!”
His chest heaved, every ounce of anger and grief pouring in his words. Donnie had been fighting a war against his emotions since the invasion, trying to keep his head level and not think about those few moments where his other half had been gone, and right now he was losing. Donnie wiped a few tears from his face, his cheeks feeling dry and crusted over from the salt, “I…I don’t know how to live if you’re not there, ‘nardo, because you’ve always been there.”
“It’s always been us, always been you and me.” Leo looked away from his brother, his own tears creeping up on him. “And then it was just me…I-I don’t know what that’s like, and I don’t ever want to find out again.”
That’s how it had always been, since they were toddlers, Leo and Donnie were practically glued at the hip. Wherever one went, the other would follow. When one got sick, the other was right next to them. Even if they fought or argued, they never strayed far from the other. The blue and purple turtles had a bond so very different than the rest.
When they were older, shortly after reforming Draxum from villainy to lord of the lunchroom, they found blueprints of Draxum’s lab. Original ones at that.
In the design for the center spire, the one that housed the oozequitoes and the cage where their father was trapped, there was no separation wall between Leo and Donnie’s embedded mutation bobble. They had been floating in shared goop when they were mutated by the ooze and Lou Jitsu’s DNA. No wonder they had been so close—they were practically reborn as twins when they were mutated!
Whether it was a coincidence or not, Leo and Donnie had grown up as them against the world, and for a few moments, it was just Donnie.
Leo grunted, his voice bringing Donnie’s attention to him, his non-existent eyebrows were furrowed as he stood up from the bed. There were no arm rests to help him up and his walker was too far away to grab, but that didn’t stop him. And slowly, oh so slowly he made his way to his twin, weak and recovering arms wrapping around his brother and the bandages that covered Donnie’s injuries.
“Leo, wha—?” Donnie began, startled by the unannounced touch.
“I’m sorry, ‘tello.”
Donnie cried again for the second time that day as he wrapped his around his brother’s cracked shell, burying his sobs in his neck as the two of them hugged. And for the first time since the end of the invasion, Donnie didn’t feel alone anymore, not when he had his twin by his side.
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If you decide to read my other works, you’ll notice that this fic isn’t as…refined as what my most recent stuff is like. It doesn’t matter though, this was like my first serious work and I’m proud of it.
You should be too >:|
<3 hanahaki
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Promises never made
[A/n: I hurt my own feelings writing this. But I'm having fun though]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the brief precious seconds before the slim needle pointed claws of his savior pierced through his flesh, before his blood would splatter warm and wet against already stained concrete, Catnap wondered.
He wondered, ‘What if it didn't?’
In his final moments the traitor pondered with his life flashing before his eyes ‘What if I didn't die here?’
‘What if I lived?’
‘What if… What if I found a new savior?’
Catnap was ready to accept his fate. If this is what the Prototype, his God willed then he was helpless but to obey. With open arms he waited, breath stilling in his chest as the soft orange glow haloed around that beckoning hand.
This was right.
This was what was meant to happen.
He had failed and this was his only way to atone.
Yet as he readied himself to accept what must be done a single insignificant rock flew through the air. It felt as if time had slowed. He watched in a daze as the stone made contact with The Prototype. Their hand recoiled, fingers turned to talons as an enraged gurgling cry echoed from above.
Catnap did not know what to do. He did not understand what had just happened. How it could happen.
But as he faltered, unsure, someone else took action.
You, the heretic.
You grabbed him, your grip insistent. Pulling at him as vitriol spills from your cracked lips.
“No!” You shout.
“I won't let you have another one!” You scream.
“He doesn't deserve this!” You defend.
Catnap does not understand and in his stupor he does not resist. It is clumsy and you keep turning back to spew more vile words in the direction of the one he thinks of as God.
You, Poppy’s angel.
With every utterance of disdain there is a whisper of comfort.
“I won't let you die.” You say.
“You’re going to be okay.” You assure
“I won't lose another one.” You pause.
“I won't lose you.” You promise.
You, his angel.
The one who pulled him from death. From a fate he thought he had to accept. The one who said he did not deserve to die, that promised you wouldn't lose him. Catnap follows you.
Everything is different.
He does not understand.
But you promised and right now he makes a promise too.
He won't lose you.
He won't die.
You watch in silent horror as Catnap is lifted into the air. His blood drips down his suspended corpse, its color so vibrant as it mingles with old stains.
A pit opens in your stomach as he finally disappears.
Another one down.
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