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turtlecleric · 10 months ago

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Chapter 22 - ALL my notes for this chapter. This post is complete, now. I'm crying again. Good morning everyone.

I MISSED IT THE FIRST TIME BUT SHE CHANGED DONNIE'S CONTACT NAME FROM 💜🐢 TO donnie! Also, when they text here, Donnie always, always responds to her immediately, while for her there are several minutes between her receiving his texts and her responding. Also also, this text:

donnie (8:20 a.m.)

Did he send that by accident? It's so unlike him. Was that him starting to ask what happened again?

Spending eight hours in the practice rooms is hardly anything that’s unfamiliar or even uncommon to you, but by Thursday, you find yourself dragging, tired, tired, tired, so so tired. ... What happened? ... Your back hurts. You’re tired. You want to just collapse onto your couch and not move until you need to go back in tomorrow. What happened? You could always do this level of work before. This is what you always used to do. Yet it’s suddenly as if you don’t have the stamina for it. What happened?

Again, Vi being so affected by everything she's been through and not even really understanding... this mirrors her not realizing she was sick, not realizing/being surprised that she was so affected by almost being shot, etc.

Thinking of Leo’s disapproving face, you pick at some leftovers from the takeout left in your fridge for supper.

Once again. How is she going to fare now? Who is going to take care of her? No one knows about what happened between her and Leo. Even now, before she knows about Leo, she's struggling so much. Going through her day robotically, not eating enough, losing herself in practice and work. After this chapter... it's going to be so much worse.

When she's reflecting on the miscommunication, I agree with her. Neither she nor Donnie really did anything wrong.

Yeah. You’re going to be fine, you think with the tiniest glow of optimism

Oh honey. You got a big storm coming. (Let me hug her. I'm so sad. I'm so angry. I'm so worried. Sam confirmed that, at the very least, Vi isn't going to hurt herself (Thank God thank God thank God) but she still doesn't take care of herself very well.

I'm so glad she has Sinclair as a friend, too. Someone not involved with the fam.

When she's playing during the memorial concert and thinking about the fam... God. She loves so, so deeply. Then -> Even when the piece returns again to the main theme, it carries on its breath a beacon that reminds you, a little, of the picture in the front of your apartment. A reminder that darkness is only as frightening as you let it be, that hope is always a weapon against it. If there is a moment, after Leo's reveal, where she looks at that picture and feels the opposite, remembers the time Leo scared her and replaced the frame, loses hope even for a moment... I'm going to lose it. I'm going to absolutely lose my fucking mind with rage at Leo and sorrow for Vi.

God. She brings bread to Lou Jitsu night. Another twist of the knife for Leo, a reminder of how upset she is about Donnie (he knows that she bakes when she's stressed, she specifically told him that early on) AND of how good/thoughtful she is.

She doesn't even want to ask someone for help with the manhole cover. Already, she's withdrawing. Even before Leo... how bad is it going to be? How long until someone realizes?

Poor Donnie. He doesn't understand!!! He's done nothing wrong!!! The rejection from Vi, coming out of nowhere for him... I feel so bad for him.

Also:

Donnie looks down at where you’re cutting up the fruit. The back of his hand presses to his mouth, and he averts his gaze. ... Donnie absconds, leaving you to blink at his back, then down at your hands, wondering what he’d seen in your juice-stained hands to have sent him running like that.

Is this JUST him upset/anxious/confused over her dismissal of him? Or is there something else, with the fruit? I refuse to let anything go anymore.

[April talking] "I’m still shocked I didn’t have to fight to get them to publish my last bit on the bombing at the quartet workshop. I’ve never had it so easy getting stuff like that through, before"

Once again, I'm not letting anything go. Will this be important later?

you don’t return to your spot on the couch where Donnie’s still sitting, his eyes looking at you like he’s trying to calculate something

He's so confused :(

Yeah, right, you think fondly. You’re pretty sure no one is capable of doing anything to upset Mikey.

Just fucking WAIT until Mikey finds out what Leo did. Oh my god. Oh my GOD.

(Vi got to meet Pavarotti, that's so fucking cool)

Donnie keeps trying to talk to her, to touch her. And then:

“Can we—” he starts. You don’t let him stop before you twist away, putting your back to him and finding someone, anyone nearby. Leo meets your gaze where he’s leaning back against the wall, and you nearly weep with relief. You can feel Donnie’s tense posture behind you, but you ignore it, nearly swallowed with the nervous energy that threatens to drown you.

This must hurt him so much. Yeah, I can see why he thought Vi and Leo were together or something.

And Leo. Not being all there. Dreading the conversation that's to come, knowing it's all going to change after tonight.

“Right. Sorry to bother you,” you say genuinely [to Leo]

(How could you?)

[Vi talking about the memorial concert] this time, I got kinda caught up in my head. Thinking about you guys. What the event should mean. For you.”

Leo’s eyes soften, and his mouth gets a complicated twist that confuses you. His right hand tightens at his thigh before unfurling, a gesture so quick you almost miss it.

(How could you?)

Finally the conversation with Donnie. It hurts, how confused he is. How upset he is when she explains.

“I meant romantically,” you say, watching as his entire body freezes. Eyes wide, not moving an inch. You’d think him a statue, were it not for the way that his gaze is trembling a little.

“…I didn’t,” he says, his breath a little airy.

Do you think this is the catalyst for him starting to consider whether he really does like her romantically? It being said out loud like this, explicitly?

It really is a breath of fresh air for them to finally be on the same page, talking openly and explicitly. It's so nice. I'm so thankful for this conversation. Sam really did do an amazing job with it. I'm not going to paste anything in because literally the entire thing is phenomenal.

Donnie's so fucking distraught at the idea of not being near Vi, of not even talking to her.

“However you’ll let me have you.”

Desperate. God, it hurts. And when they talk, here, there's an emphasis on "just friends" - how will that affect Donnie if/when he realizes that he DOES like her romantically?

Donnie squints his eyes. “…I suppose Leo did make an odd face before when he learned that I recorded things,” he concedes.

Is this referring to when Leo finds this out in the show? Years and years ago, at this point in the fic? Or did Leo find out that Donnie recorded things with Vi and assumed that she had consented to it?

And finally we get to the conversation with Leo. I'll try my best not to paste in too much, but again the entire thing is so... it kills me.

“…It’s been almost ten years,” he says instead.

“Since Krang?”

“Since Donnie touched someone else.”

Yeah. I get it. I get why he did it. I really do. But that doesn't make it any less of a really shitty thing, it doesn't make it any less of a betrayal.

(Hearing more details on how affected Donnie was by the Technodrome fucking kills me and I love it. I hope we get even more insight as to how bad he was.)

"It was so obvious that he had feelings for you." ... "you tell me that you’re dating, that you like him, and—and I see it on his face. That he feels the same for you."

Leo is so good at reading people. This is another check in the 'Donnie loves her and doesn't realize' box.

“I stopped. Completely. After we talked in my room.”

The words are like a knife in your heart. You bark a demented laugh. “Oh, only then?!"

That was so recently. It hurts. It hurts so much.

“You weren’t part of the family!”

This. This is the worst, absolute WORST part. From day fucking ONE he knew. He knew she was lonely and wanted a family. He knows how important they are to her. I'm literally crying again reading this. It hurts. It hurts so much.

For the first time in your life, you feel your face go perfectly, completely blank.

Leo’s face crumples. “No. No, sweetheart, no—”

He knows how much that hurt her. He sees everything. He knows how absolutely earth-shattering this is for her. And it's all his fucking fault. And when he calls her "mi tesorito" after that and she tells him not to call her that... God. It's so fucking painful.

“Don’t—Don’t do this. Please. Please, don’t do this. Let me make it right. Come on, open the door. Talk to me. Please, please, talk to me. Don’t shut me out like this. I can—I can’t—” ... “Please, open the door. Open the door and talk to me. Please—” Leo sobs, the thud of his forehead hitting the barrier between you audible.

Desperate. Distraught. Destroyed. The regret is choking him. He fucked up, fucked up SO BADLY. AGAIN. It's ALL HIS FAULT. AGAIN. (How could you? How COULD YOU? HOW COULD YOU? HOW COULD YOU HOW COULD YOU HOW COULD YOU HOW-)

(Was it worth it?)

I'm in Hell

SPOILERS FOR SYMPHONY CHAPTER 22 - THIS POST IS LONG YOU'VE BEEN WARNED

I'm so Unwell. I have never had any misunderstandings like the thing with Donnie, but I have been betrayed by someone who was my best friend for years, so this chapter... it's hitting me really, really hard.

---

When Leo first met Vi, he was studying her a lot. Remember the near-physical weight his scrutiny had felt like? You feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. ... like a pinned rabbit ... you see an obsidian edge beneath his smile that feels a little sharp as you lean into it.

And then later in her apartment:

[Leo talking] “…You know what really got me interested in talking to you?”

“What?” you ask, tilting your head.

“Donnie came back from talking with April and he was talking about you."

This is literally Vi and Leo's first time meeting - I don't think Leo started to really hate her until after she started coming to the Lair and he saw how Donnie reacted to her presence, but he mentions that Donnie talked about her already. It's framed within Vi's mind as him being careful with his family. He's the leader, he's careful around new people, he wants to make sure she isn't a threat, etc. But even though this is before the touch thing started, there could've been the seed of hatred already there depending on how Donnie spoke about Vi to Leo.

---

He [Leo] peers at you like he can read your life story where it’s written on your soul. ... “…You don’t have a lot of friends, do you?” he asks, his voice soft and yet cutting you all the same.

and this:

[Vi talking] “I had a lot of fun tonight. I’d… like to have more nights like this one. To. To have a family. If I can.” “You can,” he [Leo] says

He knew from the first fucking time he met her that she was lonely. That she wanted friends, wanted a family, wanted to belong. He knew that better than anyone else in the family, not only because of her saying this to him but also because of how well he reads people and how much time he spent with her. He's the only one who has seen her in her apartment, too, caught her in those few vulnerable moments in her home. I'm so fucking angry.

There are so many times in the fic that... I can't even articulate... here's some quotes early on -> "you hate how much you like this guy [Leo]" and "you smile when you see [the text notification is from] Leo" and when Vi is sick in the store she says "I miss Leo" and on and on. And that whole fucking time! He was!! UGH!!!

---

When Vi agrees to make Leo some bread so that maybe he can get some of Donnie's apology cookies he texts her "ttyl i gotta go rub this in donnie’s face" and yeah that's him being a little shit as always, but it's ALSO proof of him using EVEN THEIR PRIVATE TEXT CONVERSATIONS as ammunition rile up Donnie.

---

Hey look! Bits that hit different/hint at more going on/might be Leo's mask slipping!

“How long do we hafta wait before she ain’t a guest anymore?” Raph asks, causing you to snort a laugh.

“That’s up to Donnie,” Leo says, voice heavy with an undercurrent of meaning you’re not picking up on, causing you to look at him with a raised eyebrow. He smirks, reaching over to poke your cheek with his finger. “Y’know. He’s the one who met you first, and all that.”

…Something tells you it’s more than that, but he’s good enough at hiding it that you don’t feel comfortable calling him on it in front of the others.

...

you have no idea how you fit in [to the family], and Leo had all but told you that the space is here, ready and emblazoned with your name on it. You don’t quite see it yet, even if he apparently does.

...

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. It’s complicated,” Leo says easily, and it’s only just, but you pick out the thread of iron bars in his tone, ready to come crashing down if you push even a little too hard. So, you don’t.

“Okay,” you say easily, causing him to get that piercing look he gets sometimes, the one when he feels more like a ninja than a funny turtle man who tries to see how many cookies he can shove into his mouth at once and sends you pizza rat memes at four in the morning. “…Dude, we’ve been friends for like, a week. It’s cool that you aren’t ready to spill your guts yet, you know that, right?”

His eyes go sharp, but then he hums and smiles. You feel like you did the night you first met him, like there’s a test here and it’s in a language you don’t understand. It’s a bit uncomfortable, prompting you to grab your own drink and swallow a healthy bit of it just to have something to do.

...

[Vi talking] “…He [Donnie] seems lonely.”

Leo hums under his breath, cutting a portal that feels a little like home. “Well, lucky he has you, then.”

...

“Uh, I met her first,” Donnie says, scowling, while Leo just gives him a smug look.

...

You do, however, lean in while the others are occupied, whispering to Donnie, “So, ten dollars, which one of them tops?” and laughing when he chokes. You catch Leo’s eyes and give him a devious grin, spying him look to Donnie with a curiously blank look before shifting to a catty smile of his own when he looks back to you

...

“One portal home for a lovely lady,” Leo says as he steps through, his face going a little flat when he looks over your shoulder to Donnie behind you.

...

Leo is… astonishingly quiet for a moment, his face blank of anything for you to read as he stares at the piece hard. Then he looks up at you, and you see an unusually capable person that doesn’t feel like your best friend, even as much as it feels like the real Leonardo, here for the first time for you to see.

...

[Vi talking] “I don’t… I don’t like keeping secrets. Or lying. Not from people I care about.”

The weight of Leo’s eyes is almost physical. It makes you remember that he’s asked you to keep secrets, and your eyes snap to his, wondering if that’s the reason why he’s gone still like this. “I—I haven’t told anyone. About the ninja thing, or the Krang thing. I’d never—”

“I know,” Leo interrupts, threading his hand through your hair so he can cup your nape and press your forehead to his own. “I trust you.” You release a sigh of relief, nodding. “I’m just… thinking it might be time for us to repay that back.”

You blink, gaze darting between his eyes. “I don’t… what do you mean?”

“We’re a pretty close-knit family. There’s a lot of… baggage. A lot of history. A lot of stuff we haven’t told you. And it’s… it’s starting to feel a little disrespectful,” he says, looking a bit displeased. “You’re one of us. It’s only fair.”

---

We all know about the constant comments Leo makes about being Vi's "favorite turtle" and "best friend" in front of the others/in the group chat. He talks in Chapter 22 about purposefully draping himself across her and pulling her close, hugging her, scenting her, touching her in front of Donnie to piss Donnie off. But there's all these other little things that seemed so innocent at the time and now I'm losing my mind wondering about each of them, wondering - is that something he did with malicious intent? How many nice things were ONLY done to piss off Donnie? There are so many times that he compliments her - for example:

“What? I can’t compliment my bestie and her fine legs?” Leo coos, reaching over and flicking your nose gently.

“Leonardo,” Donnie warns, folding his arms.

And I remember, during my second read through after I finished Chapter 20, being so happy and grateful that Leo was pretty consistently giving her compliments, because she deserves to be complimented and taken care of and loved, because she deserves good friends who hype her up, and this WHOLE TIME-

(Side note - that time that Leo complains she smells like Donnie's lab, he shoves her away and she falls to the floor. First read, it's just Leo being playful. Second read, I wonder... is that a little bit of his frustration getting out of him in a physical way? He shoved her to the fucking floor, and then, once Donnie shows up, Leo pats the cushion next to him for Vi to sit by him. Then he wraps his arm around her and pulls her in close to smell her. But that's only after Donnie shows up.)

When Mikey takes Vi's So-Shell profile picture -> “Wha—?” you start, only to feel Leo leaning in to smoosh his cheek against yours, the distinct feeling of bunny ears brushing the back of your skull. Once again, this is in front of Donnie. Plus it's for her profile picture, so that means every time Donnie sees her So-Shell profile he'll see Leo in the picture, too. Leo was also famously the first like on her first So-Shell post and gets her to always leave nice comments/emojis on his thirst traps.

When she comes to the Lair to practice with her viola, Leo offers up HIS room first, and only once she declines does he -> “Ugh, fine, you are so boring,” he says, and removing his arm, he shoves at your shoulders hard and pushes you through the portal. (Pushing her onto the floor, pushing her through the portal... he's kind of rough with her in the beginning, and I figured it was just because he's haha silly funny turtle man, physical comedy, joking around whatever but... again I wonder. Is he letting himself be a little rough as a way to express his true feelings?)

God, all these little things that... might have an ulterior motive and might not.

It's around the time Vi gets bruised up by that guy at the coffee shop that Leo seems to start actually acting like a real friend, in my opinion. “…You don’t even get how incredible you are, do you?” he asks, causing you to roll your eyes. “You seriously don’t see it.”

The very next chapter he gets a glimpse of her being anxious over not being able to play, while she notices that he looks tired, invites him to listen to music and lets him sleep on her back, and in that chapter it says: you sit, quiet, letting him use you. My second read through, this line hit me hard because I KEPT noticing that she really does nothing but GIVE and I feel like she's constantly doing things to be useful to others. And now, as I'm skimming through a third time, it turns out that... yeah. Yeah. He was fucking using her. In Chapter 22, Leo says "then you reach out and touch me in a way no one has. You’ve helped me, even though I was just using you" and I'm thinking this is the moment that that really started. When she first let him sleep on her. And that's also the first time he churrs with her. After that, he gets her really nice sushi, and she thinks he's guilty for drooling all over for her, but I think maybe he was guilty because he's starting to realize how nice she is and how shitty it is that he's using her like that, even though he does continue those manipulative behaviors.

---

He sighs, his face going openly affectionate. “…You’re so…”

What he thinks you are, you don’t know, as he chooses instead to pull you into a hug. You go easily, seeking the comfort of his embrace, hoping he can feel in your arms that you truly do mean what you said.

“You know, instead of sorry, you should say—” Leo says, though as his face gets close to your throat, his mouth snaps shut and he goes still in a manner that reminds you a little of Donnie.

“…Leo?” you ask, going to pull back from the hug to look into his face only to feel his hands go tight on your back, holding you close while he dips his beak to your skin and inhales. When he does pull back, he’s got a look of shock on his face that he quickly schools into something more neutral, but barely.

This is where he smells Donnie on you for the first time, and the guilt he was starting to feel, the actual genuine affection he was developing for her, may have then been interrupted/overshadowed by his anger.

Vi was right to say she isn't gonna go back and examine every detail, because it's so fucking MUDDY! There are glimpses of true softness from him sprinkled throughout with him ALSO still hanging over her and doing shit that pisses Donnie off on purpose. And then of course the scene with Leo in the kitchen when he scares her, where we get the first big glimpse into his true anger about the whole situation, where we see him being sharp and cutting and dismissive and- I'm not going to paste in that whole scene, but he's so, so, SO angry. When she has that visceral, terrified reaction, he feels so bad (I do think he was genuinely, truly horrified that he scared her), but then he finds out that Vi and Donnie are (as far as Vi is aware) dating, followed by her telling him that Donnie misses touching his brothers, misses hugs, followed by Leo deciding to tell Vi about all the family secrets... so he's wrestling with this rage and jealousy, but he's also starting to really accept her as family (I think, since he shared the info about the Krang, about Lou Jitsu, about Casey, since he asked for her help)...

It kills me that, after that, he saw her trying so hard to help, like when she went to the library and got books on PTSD and fell asleep taking notes and she wakes up with a blanket covering her and a little blue heart on a note - he saw her doing that, on top of everything else she CONSTANTLY does for other people, for his family, and HE STILL, EVEN AFTER THAT, DOES SHIT THAT'S MANIPULATIVE. THE 4TH OF JULY PARTY, FOR EXAMPLE. “What she said,” Leo purrs, his fingers fluttering on your stomach as his eyes cut off to the side. He has a sharp look to his features that you’re a bit too drunk to dissect, so you just ignore it. He HAS to be looking at Donnie, here.

(Side note - we still don't know what Leo was doing when Vi was in the shower getting ready for the party... if anything. Maybe he really was eating cookies.)

It's at the end of the party that he smells sex on Vi, I think, for the first time. And the following chapter is when he starts avoiding Vi, and she goes to confront him and he says he's "Thinking about things. About what I want.” And THAT'S when he finally stops his bullshit. Ch 22 - "I stopped. Completely. After we talked in my room.”

---

I'm still working on fully re-reading Chapters 17+ until I make it back up to 22 and putting more thoughts into that post, but. Dear God. Sam is a genius and I'm so angry at myself. I had been so confused and angry with Donnie, when in reality he truly DID NOT KNOW about the misunderstanding between him and Vi. Meanwhile, as I'm fawning over Leo and so happy Vi has him and so grateful he's been such a good friend to her... he was the one using her, this whole time. I cannot believe it. I'm SICK with rage. I can't imagine how Vi could possibly... I can't... FUCK dude

#symphony #turtlecleric ramblings #okay okay I'm done sorry everyone

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