Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fan Fiction ❯ Bad Places ❯ 18 ( Chapter 18 )

Part 18

A week after being brought home, Leonardo lay on his own bed listening to water rush through the pipes around him. Mike complained they made him get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, but he found them comforting. They sounded a little like demons prowling distant hallways, but there was no threat beyond the occasional leak, so he could sit still and listen for hours without worrying about turning corners or hiding in small supply rooms.

He hadn't left the lair since he came home, not only because he didn't feel entirely up to it. His body was still a bit sore and he was still drowsy most of the time, but he could have joined Donatello if he wanted, moving new equipment from the warehouse to the lair. Mainly he didn't go because he didn't want to leave the lair and decide on the surface that he didn't want to come back. The urge to run was still strong, but he couldn't leave now, now when the weight was gone and all his pain was beginning to soothe.

He'd fallen into the habit of wanting to escape. Now that he didn't need to, he found the habit coming back anyway. In the middle of a game with Mike or a talk with Donatello, he found himself wanting to throw off the weight only to suddenly remember that the weight was gone.

A small pocket radio played next to head, turned low so no one else would hear it. Donatello had found several of them broken in one of the crates and put them back together, giving one to each of his siblings. Somehow it received down here, probably because of Donatello's reception array that took up a corner of his lab, his one experiment that had yet to explode. Old songs quietly whispered through the dark. He couldn't help a smile as Ozzy started singing "I'm coming home."

But what was home? Without the weight, what was he to the family? They had a genius, a child...he wondered if he could be the mental one but figured that no matter how much his brother matured, Raphael would always have that one taken. The artistic one? Or the one that liked to kill?

He turned off the radio and sat up. He'd been sleeping normal hours again but he still felt tired all the time. The lair was dark and everyone was still asleep, even Casey and April together on the couch downstairs. The lair was silent. Everyone was safe and sound, more or less. He sighed and closed his eyes.

Still, couldn't hurt to make sure.

He began his rounds, looking in on Mike first. With no need for light, he could enter without worrying that he'd wake him up. His little brother slept soundly on his bunk bed, one hand dangling off the edge. His room was its usual mess, but over the years Leo had figured out that Mike kept it that way to catch intruders in his private sanctuary. If you couldn't see in the dark, you'd have to turn on the lights or risk tripping and crashing into the wall. True, he'd started doing it at six years old and never stopped, but he now set the best traps of all of them, more effective than any of theirs out of their sheer simplicity.

Donatello's room next. Also asleep on his bunk bed, Don lay with one leg dangling off the side. The aquarium glowed in the background and the large computer hummed even when off, reminiscent of Stockman's own computer. He briefly wondered if they'd found his enemy's body but shrugged it off. Donatello knew the difference between alive and dead. If they hadn't found it, most likely he was crushed under tons of collapsed mortar and demon, and he had no urge to gloat over his kill.

Raphael wasn't in his room. Big surprise there.

He made his way downstairs and glanced at Splinter's door. They still hadn't spoken, and he didn't feel like risking his master being awake. He bypassed the door and glanced at Casey and April, fast asleep on the couch and looking exactly like his earlier sketch. For all her complaints about his manners and behavior, she could never get close enough when they slept.

Too tired to sleep and too restless to lay down, he walked onto the small bridge and leaned on the railing, watching the water flow. He wondered if anyone had ever done a woodblock print of a bridge crossed at night, and a river with highlights like knife edges beneath it. Probably not. He tilted his head and considered. It would probably make a good picture. He'd have to remember it.

"Just can't let it go, huh?" Raph asked in a low voice, coming out of the practice room, one arm immobilized in a cast. "Have to make sure they're all okay?"

Leo smiled and didn't look at him as he came near, leaning on the railing next to him. "Hard habit to break."

"...don't break it," Raph said softly. He lowered his head and breathed out, his shoulders drooping. "You know more about taking care of them than I do."

"Starting to feel the weight?" Leo asked.

"It's heavier than I expected," Raph said. "I mean, I got some of it while you were gone, but I was partly expecting you to come back, take over again and I'd go back to griping about you." He glanced at his brother. "I saw the sketches. We were kind of self-absorbed, huh?"

"A little."

"And...now?"

"The same." Leo smiled at Raph's crestfallen look. "Fifteen years, Raph, nothing that long changes that quick...no matter how long you stick me and Mike in the same room."

Raph had the grace to look embarrassed. "You guessed."

"Of course I guessed. Mike guessed," Leo said. "After the sixth day he realized why he was still in there and stopped complaining. Even if I hadn't noticed before, that alone would have tipped me off."

But not too embarrassed. "Did it work?"

"A little." Leo stared back at the water. "It'll never leave me, not completely. I'll probably always have a little of an urge to run. But...the two are kind of balanced now."

"Is that why you haven't tried to leave?"

Leo nodded. "I'm not sure I'll come back. A few more days, maybe a few weeks. I'll venture out again when I know I'll come home."

Raph grinned and put one hand on his brother's shoulder. "At least you're still honest."

They stared at the water in quiet companionship, and then Leo put his hand on Raphael's back and shoved him headfirst over the railing and into the stream. Raph's startled squawk disappeared as he hit the water, and for a few moments Leonardo savored the silence. And then Raph broke the surface, flailing in the icy stream and cursing fluently.

Leo grinned and crossed his arms, leaning on the railing and looking at his brother. "Do you have any idea how long I've wanted to do that?"

Raphael tried to splash him but only splashed himself.

He couldn't stop himself. He started laughing, but this time there was no hysteria, no desperate edge to it. Even as Raphael climbed out and glared at him, stalking towards the bridge and leaving little puddles behind him, he laughed and easily dodged his brother's playful swipes. He spent the rest of the night baiting his sibling, and if Raphael noticed that this was a kind of lightweight exercise for his healing arm, he didn't mention it.

The early morning hours found him in his room, curled up beside his table. All of his sketches lay stacked on top of it, and after a thorough search he found that nothing had been removed. Even his poisons were in place. A show of trust? Respect? Or did they believe in him so much that they'd never considered he'd hurt them? He couldn't tell and focused instead on a new drawing, Raphael floundering in the water like a damned soul and Leonardo above him like Raphael's cherubs. He wondered if the irony would be lost on his sibling.

The tap of a cane outside his room made him look up. He froze. Splinter stood there, leaning on his cane, tail tip twitching. He looked up at his son almost shyly. "May I enter?"

For a moment Leo couldn't find his voice. Nothing less than a revelation, Splinter asking permission. Before he had simply entered, which was why Leo had developed the habit of drawing while facing the door, so he could hear his master's footsteps better, see him enter and hide his sketches before he came close, pretending to read a tactical manual. "Of course, master."

He moved to stand but Splinter waved him down, coming closer to him and kneeling before him. Leo couldn't help but match his posture. It was second nature and that at least Splinter didn't try to stop. Some things would never change, after all.

"You can see clearly?" Splinter asked, looking at the mask that now covered his son's eyes and always would.

"Yes, master. As if the lights weren't on."

Splinter nodded once and looked down at the newest sketch, but he didn't see it. "Donatello says he explained what I told your brothers."

"Yes, master. I am...grateful."

"Grateful..." Splinter shook his head. "No, you should not be grateful. You should be angry, indignant. You bore so much with so little complaint, yet the moment you ask for relief, I turn you aside like a selfish child."

"You didn't know--"

"Exactly," Splinter said, and there was anger in his own voice. "I am your master, yes, but more importantly, I am your father. I should have known."

"You couldn't have," Leo insisted, keeping his anger at them but now finding that anger turning on himself. "I hid it from you all. I have fifteen years of practice hiding myself. It was impossible for you to know. I never said anything before then."

He paused, repeating that in his mind. I never said anything. I hid it so well.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Splinter took a deep breath and looked back up. "Donatello also mentioned that you wondered if we hated you, if I was disappointed."

Leo half-smiled. "He set me straight pretty quick."

"Regardless, you should hear it from me." Splinter took his hand and met his eyes, at least as best he could, before going on. "I do not hate you. I could never hate you. Throughout all this, I was never afraid of you, only afraid for you. And for all you have borne, for protecting your brothers despite the pain, and for being able to let them begin to protect themselves, Leonardo, I have nothing but pride in you."

Now Leo was glad the mask covered his eyes. He'd never cried in front of his master. He couldn't have handled starting now. After a moment he managed to whisper "thank you."

A few minutes later Splinter left his room, leaving him sitting in the same position in semi-darkness. All the weight was gone, all of it, even the guilt now. Hard to believe, but he no longer felt it on his back and the lack of it both disturbed and relieved him. Similar to his fights, there was no gravity in the room. Air lost its volume and he felt light-headed.

He had never told them. He had never said anything. If they bore some of them blame for misusing him, he bore some for letting them. A sword did not care who it cut. A sword did not care who held it. But he was not a sword, he cared. On an impulse he grabbed his stack of old sketches and flipped through them, liberty, Donatello, Manhattan, Michelangelo, Raphael, Raphael, Splinter, his swords in their stand. He took out his self-portrait, thinking to rip it half, but as he held it up, studied the clean lines and the reverential presentment, he held it gently. He loved his family and took pride in protecting them. It was nothing to be ashamed of. It was just his fault for mishandling...himself.

He turned the sketch over and wrote #1 after the title. Self-Portrait #2 would be different.

"Hey, Leo!" Raphael yelled from downstairs. "Get down here before Mike finishes off the leftovers! I can't stop him one-handed!"

"Your fault for not asking for more sugar, right April? Raph, let go the chow mein!"

Leo smiled and put the sketch back with the others. "I'll be right there," he called, putting the stack away. Maybe in a day or two he'd visit April and ask if she had new supplies in. For now he stowed everything in the small table and stood up, looking around the room briefly. He didn't want to take down the weaponry displays, but there was plenty of free space along his walls. He could ask if she had confiscated any spray paint from the thugs she beat up.

"Ow!" Mike yelled. "Donatello, you traitor!"

"Hey, I want some chow mein, too!"

He glanced around his room once more, then turned out the light and joined his family.

To Be Concluded with an Epilogue