Work Text:
“What the hell are we gonna do about Leon?” Donnie says one day when both his older brother and his twin are gone from the lair on a two-man training run that is almost certainly going to end in disaster.
He doesn’t know why he says it. He certainly isn’t expecting any answer that isn’t just an annoyed groaning sound, because what other answer even is there?
But Mikey replies, “You mean how self-destructive he’s been lately?” and it puts Donnie fully on the back foot.
“What?” Donnie says blankly.
“Is that not what we’re talking about?”
“I mean—I guess—I wouldn’t have called it that,” Donnie says, but now that he’s saying it he’s not sure.
Mikey snorts. The sound is humorless. “What else would you call it? Running around throwing himself face-first at every bad guy we find without waiting for back-up, refusing to hang back and come up with a plan even though it used to be his favorite part of a mission, not listening to anybody about anything—it’s like he forgot what self-preservation even is.”
Donnie is thinking really hard and really fast, looking at the last few months through this new lens.
Leo’s their self-proclaimed face-man, but he’s also the idea guy. Donnie is an outright genius when it comes to science and engineering and everything in between, but his twin isn’t stupid. Leo is as clever and Machiavellian as any storybook trickster, and tactics come as easily to him as breathing.
He’s always been the one to suggest a plan, to guide his brothers back on track, to keep them from getting in over their heads. The only times he and Raph ever used to butt heads was when Leo had an idea more stealth than smash.
Donnie would never admit it out loud but Leo’s had those qualities since they were kids. He’s charismatic and charming, a theater kid at heart with the modified genetics of a super soldier and a mind every bit as bright as Donatello’s, even as it twists and turns down other avenues. It made sense that he’d be shoehorned into a leadership role as he got a little older. Leo is the type of person who would be thrilled to captain the crew.
So then why did Leo do a complete 180?
And Mikey made another point, too, whether or not he knows it. If Leo was just being a huge jerk outright, Dr. Delicate Touch would have made an appearance by now and shut that nonsense down hard. But the fact is, Dr. Feelings has taken point on this one—and if there’s one thing Donnie’s learned the hard way, it’s that Mikey in feelings mode is usually the right one to listen to.
Mikey is watching his pastries rise in the oven. Donnie can see his expression reflected in the glass door. It’s flattened out into plain worry.
“He never tells us any of the important stuff,” the youngest Hamato says, tone uncharacteristically bitter. “He just goes on and on about things that don’t matter until we’re distracted, and it works every stupid time.”
“Leo’s always been that way,” Donnie interjects half-heartedly. “You can’t come at him head-on about stuff or he clams up. You gotta go in a series of annoying, convoluted circles to get to the heart of the thing. He’s literally the creature in the middle of the labyrinth.”
Mikey points at Donnie, as if to say ‘you got me there.’ “And that’s exactly why I don’t think Raphie’s method is helping.”
It’s obviously something he doesn’t want to admit. Mikey is his brothers’ number one fan and cheerleader first, person second. He bites the inside of his lip and starts twisting his fingers in a manner that promises to be painful. Donnie digs into the pocket of his hoodie and shoves one of his own mesh and marble fidget toys across the table at him. It’s an obnoxious lime green color and it makes Mikey smile involuntarily. He twists the toy instead and Donnie falls back into his train of thought running at roughly mach ten.
Raph’s method of confronting anything is head-on. That’s just the type of guy he is—steady and solid and unflinching. And they all depend on him the way most other people probably depend on the sun to rise every morning. Donnie literally does not know how they would make it a single day without Raphael, and prefers not to think about it.
But that also means that Raph and Leo can be like oil and water. And suddenly, the ‘A Team’’s constant bickering and late-night shouting matches and cold shoulders make more sense.
“I don’t know what to do,” Mikey admits, this empathetic powerhouse with more emotional intelligence in one finger than Donnie has in his whole body. It’s incredibly disheartening to hear. “So for now I just want Leo to know that someone’s on his team.”
Whatever else he might have said is cut off by the familiar electric snap of a portal opening near the turnstiles, and then a second later Raph and Leo materialize in the lair, mid-roof-raising-argument.
Raph is carrying Leo carefully through the living room. There’s blood on his hands, enough to make Mikey suck in a breath from his station in front of the oven. Right away, the facts come together in Donnie’s brain: Leo got hurt.
What looks like all the bandages from the medkit on his waist are wrapped around his arm. Whatever happened, it was bad enough to push out those stress lines around Raph’s eyes and mouth, bad enough that he still hasn’t set Leo on his own two feet, like he might be able to undo all the pain if he just keeps holding him. But Leo is doing what Leo always does, hiding whatever he’s actually feeling behind a smarmy grin and a smart-ass attitude, and Raph’s fear and worry and love have coalesced into something huge and ferocious that sounds a lot like anger.
Now Donnie knows what to look for.
“—what happens when you don’t listen!” Raph snaps furiously. “God, Leo, it’s like you don’t even care!”
“Why should I? Look where it’s gotten you!”
Something darts through Mikey’s eyes that makes Don want to snap at something.
“Leo,” he says, his flat tone cutting through the fight like a souped-up soldering iron through the cheap components of a certain rat’s ancient CRT TV (not that he would know), “you’re still bleeding.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then Raph and Leo both look down at the slider’s arm. Red is blooming across the crisp white gauze. Mikey makes a wounded noise. Right away, Leo clambers out of Raph’s arms with a joke to make their youngest feel better—“It’s okay, Miguel, you should see the other guy!”—and Raph’s getting heated again at the apparent flippancy, and god, it never fucking ends, does it?
Leo is retreating further and further into this new character that doesn’t care about himself or anybody else, and it’s happening right before Donnie’s eyes. He’s already slinking away, out of the warmth and light of the kitchen, away from his family.
Donnie realizes abruptly that there is a non-zero chance he might lose his twin brother. That one day he might wake up and not know Leo anymore.
He stands up, chair screeching behind him.
“Lesser twin, with me.”
Leo opens his mouth to try to get out of it, but that’s not going to happen. Donnie’s not having it. With the way their bodies work—ninpo and genetic modifications and yokai-isms, oh my—if it’s still bleeding, it needs stitches. And Leo, self-made team medic, ought to know that.
He gives Leo a look that says Remember when Taylor Swift’s Folklore album came out and you performed the entire thing in my lab and I swore I didn’t record you? I one-thousand-percent recorded you.
Leo’s look back succinctly says You motherfucker.
But he falls in next to Donnie without another word, a move that probably bewilders their brothers into next year. He definitely isn’t happy about it. He’s still prickly and defensive. It seems like he’s waiting to get ganged up on.
Raph starts to follow them and Donnie says, “I got it.” He shoves Leo a step ahead of him, putting his own body between him and Raph like a wall. It doesn’t feel good to do it. He chooses cowardice and doesn’t look back at whatever Raph’s expression looks like as a result.
Behind them, ever-reliable Mikey jumps in immediately with a bright, “You can help me with the cupcakes, Raph! We’re doing cream-filled red velvet!”
In the infirmary, Donnie points Leo toward a cot. Leo rolls his eyes and hops up to sit on the edge of it. He starts unwinding the gauze from around his arm agreeably enough, wincing a bit when the final layer sticks and comes away with a painful pull.
Don’s stomach swoops unpleasantly at the sight of the torn skin. It’s definitely not the worst he’s seen—they’ve taken worse damage flubbing skateboarding moves on the half-pipe—but it’s still not nice to look at. He takes a moment to swallow hard, then asks, “What happened?”
“Typical oozesquito shenanigans,” Leo says off-handedly. “Alley cat? Adorable. Mutated yokai alley cat? Not as much.”
Donnie grimaces sympathetically. “Claws or teeth?”
“Teeth. Hey, do you think we can get rabies?”
“I can’t wait to find out.” Putting rabies vaccinations at the top of his mental to-do list, Donnie gestures with a sweep of his arm at the infirmary. “This is your domain, Nerdo. Where’s the stuff I need?”
“You know I don’t actually need an assist. Like you said, my domain.”
“Wow that’s a super interesting non-answer to my question.”
With a dramatic, put-upon sigh, Donnie’s little brother points him in the right direction and says, “Steri-strips are in the top left cabinet.”
Don’s immensely grateful he wasn’t directed towards the suture needles or the skin stapler, because as willing as he is to help it really doesn’t take much for Vomitello to make a guest appearance. The softshell rummages through Leo’s meticulously organized industrial-tool-chest-turned-medical-supply-cabinet, triumphantly coming up with a pack of adhesive bandages and some antiseptic wipes after a moment.
He pushes the wheeled stool over with his foot and it bounces gently off Leo’s knee, shuddering to a stop just in front of him. Leo tries to kick it as Donnie sits down and nearly succeeds, giggling like a menace when Donnie staggers and almost eats it face-first on the floor.
“Okay,” Don says loudly, not actually as annoyed as he’s trying to sound. “Arm.”
“Donald, seriously, I got it.”
“Leonard, seriously, I will upload that T Swift footage today.”
Leo mimics him with all the maturity of a three-year-old but ultimately surrenders his arm. He looks tense and uncomfortable the whole time, like he’s forgotten how to let someone this close.
And Donnie thinks about what Mikey said in the kitchen, about wanting Leo to know he had someone on his team. He thinks about how things were a year ago, when that would have gone without saying.
It doesn’t take long to wipe down Leo’s arm and press the steri-strips over the wound. Then Donnie sits next to him on the cot. Neither of them speak up right away. They can both tell this is going to be a Moment, and Donnie, for one, is bracing himself. He gets the feeling that he really, truly, can’t fuck this one up.
“I know something’s percolating in that abstruse brain of yours,” he finally says. “So talk. But do me a favor and skip over all the posturing and trying to convince me nothing’s going on and lying right to my face, okay? I don’t know how much time we have before Mikey kicks the door in and drags us to a TED talk.”
It’s as much of a threat as it needs to be. Grudgingly, like he’s prying each word up out of the mud, Leo mutters, “I want dad to take it back.”
Donnie wants more than anything to shake Leo until all of his secrets fall out of his mouth and Donnie can sweep them away to a safer place. Like an encrypted folder on his computer. But he can’t do that, so he has to settle for—ughh, patience.
It pays off. Leo admits, in the safe, familiar space of his infirmary, that he doesn’t want to be team leader. He doesn’t want things to change. His crooked, cooked-up scheme is to just—fuck up over and over again until papa decides Leo can’t be trusted with that mantle that rightfully belongs to Raph.
Donnie understands him. Of course he does. He hates change, too. It makes him feel itchy and restless. He likes knowing what to expect. He likes when everything is in the same place he left it.
If Leo wanted to be the leader, he’d be good at it. As long as he doesn’t want to, he won’t be. So it’s a scheme—Donnie can get behind that. He knows whose side he’s on. It’s the side he’s always been on, since the day he read the definition of “twin” out of a water-logged dictionary. It’s his job to be here. Leo’s kind of an idiot for expecting him to be anywhere else.
“Not a bad hypothesis,” Donnie says, pressing their shoulders together. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Leo’s face split in an honest smile. “It’d probably work a lot better for you if you’d let Raph in on it, you know.”
“Please, are you kidding?” Leo scoffs. “As if he’d ever play along. Half the time I think he must hate me. I stole his job and now I’m not even doing it right.”
Are we talking about the same person? Donnie wants to demand. Raphael, the guy who carried you home not even twenty minutes ago? The guy who’s always carried you?
He doesn’t say that. Instead, he says, “Let me handle Raph.”
Back in the kitchen, the cupcakes are filled and in the process of being frosted. Mikey’s going all out, piping bag in hand, an assortment of edible decorations spread across the counter. Raph is gamely assisting to the best of his ability, even though his big fingers make it more of a task than it rightly should be. They both glance up when Donnie and Leo come in.
“Hey, your timing is as suspiciously convenient as always,” Mikey says cheerfully. “I need to take some pics for my Insta but after that you better come eat some of these.”
“Everything good?” Raph asks gruffly.
“Todo esta bien, hermano,” Leo says, breezing inside like he hadn’t just spent the last ten minutes unloading his fear of failure and inadequacy, as well as his certainty that the big brother he admires so much doesn’t like him anymore. “It smells like magic in here! Michael, we gotta get you a sponsor or something. The world needs to experience this.”
Mikey laughs and passes Leo a piping bag. “Raphie’s working on a rainbow sprinkle unicorn cupcake over there, and you’ll never guess who that one’s for.”
The surprise that darts across Leo’s face hurts to look at. His eyes drop down to the lopsided multi-colored creation taking shape under Raph’s clumsy hands. He looks more vulnerable in that moment than he has since the day dad unceremoniously turned everything they knew upside down.
“Raph, I need to talk to you,” Donnie says loudly because he’s about to get mad and do something he’ll probably regret, like put his fist through the projector in the TV room. “Chop-chop. The sprinkles can wait.”
“The sprinkles cannot,” Mikey and Leo chorus at the same time in exactly the same tone like the freaks of nature they are. Raph makes the right choice and escapes their company, following Don down the tunnel toward his corner of the lair.
“Okay, focus up,” Donnie says the second the reinforced door is closed behind them. “We’re getting your old job back.”
He understands why the infirmary gave Leo the courage to talk. His lab does the same for him. It’s like Mikey’s kitchen, Raph’s dojo—they each have a place that makes them feel their best.
“Wait, what?” Raph looks bewildered. “What are you talking about?”
“The leader schtick, Raphala, keep up please. Leo’s going to keep sabotaging himself at full-speed until papa sees the light and demotes him. I’d like to see that happen before he breaks all of the bones in his body.”
Raph’s brow furrows beneath his mask. “Hang on, is that what he’s doing? I thought he just—didn’t care.”
Donnie gives that remark the deeply unimpressed look it deserves. “Right. Leonardo Hamato, the guy who started teaching himself field medicine when he was eight years old after you sprained your ankle and he cried for two hours because he didn’t know how to fix it, doesn’t care.”
He kind of feels bad for dumping this on Raph the way he has, but honestly. They’ve been stuck in place for months now, and Mikey’s been on edge constantly with all the fighting, and Leo’s going to get himself killed trying to prove something no one else believes, and Donnie can feel something toothed and tender coming alive inside his chest, trying to bite and claw and fight its way out.
Leo’s afraid you hate him, he doesn’t say, but he wants to. Leo’s scared all the time now. Of course he’s been acting like an asshole, when’s the last time he actually told somebody he was scared?
Donnie’s the fixer. He wants to fix this. If Raph would just get on board, maybe he’ll be able to.
“If Leo wanted to be the leader, we would have heard about it one million times every single day since he was four, ” Donnie says plainly. “The fact is, we haven’t. Draw your own conclusion.”
“But he’d be good at it,” Raph says, his tone blank with surprise and a total lack of comprehension. “That’s why dad gave him that role in the first place. I was always supposed to be the placeholder while Leo grew up. And now if he’d just put in the effort—if he’d try—he’d be amazing.”
“Okay, and I’d be good at domestic terrorism, but somehow I think you’d frown upon me reaching my full potential there.”
“Donnie!” Raph looks scandalized, like the NSA might be listening in. Puh-lease.
“Look,” Donnie says. He has no idea why he’s the one fielding these feelings talks, but he gives it his best shot. It’s probably not fair to shovel it onto Mikey’s shoulders all the time anyway. “You’re not a placeholder anything. Don’t say that. You’re our leader. We’ve always followed you. If we didn’t want to, we wouldn’t. Especially Leo. He’s a nightmare person. He’s never done a single thing he didn’t want to do. He was happy being your right-hand man.”
The snapper stares at him. His eyes are all dewy, and Donatello prays to any imaginary higher power that might be listening that he won’t cry, because Donnie becomes absolutely useless in all directions the second his siblings cry.
Miraculously, Raph smiles instead.
“Okay,” he says. “Raph’s listening. Loop me in.”
Actually talking about stuff changes everything—who knew?
It’s like they’ve been stuck in a boarded up room for weeks and someone finally wrestled a window open and let in a fresh breeze. All the stagnant air got swept out and they could finally breathe again.
They’re all playing along now. There are multiple levels to this deception happening all at the same time. Raph and Leo still bicker where papa can hear it, but they’re as thick as thieves at all other times. Raph is the one who makes the final call on a mission, but he makes it a point to hash things out with Leo first, so it’s really their final call. Donnie watches as Leo learns the ropes without realizing he’s learning the ropes. As Raph teaches the way he probably would have liked for someone to have taught him. They meet in the middle, on each other’s team, where they belong.
If Raph is the foundation they build their lives on, Leo is the sky they reach for. Gravity was all out of whack with the two of them at odds. Donnie never wants them to fall out of orbit ever again.
They still lost the key, but it wasn’t anybody’s fault in particular. They were all playing keep-away with it to tick off Hypno and what’s-his-name, and Mikey shouted, “Go long!” and Donnie flubbed the catch. Raph called out, “I got it, I got it!” and Leo took that as a challenge because of course he did and neither of them got it. They were all laughing about it. They had no idea what that stupid key was, how were they supposed to know it was going to end the world?
Casey Jones still came back from a broken future, and Raph still got captured by the Krang, and Leo still stepped up in a big way, accepting the responsibility he never wanted and leading his family forward into certain danger because he had nowhere else to lead them.
And Leo, who knew how to stack the deck in his favor, who had never done a single thing in his life that he didn’t want to do, looked death right in the eye and told it, “I missed on purpose.”
It’s a good thing Mikey came up with that Hail Mary pass in the form of a sunlight-golden portal, because Donnie’s mind went cold. Donnie’s mind went straight back to the plans for a particle accelerator that he’d abandoned when he was thirteen years old. Donnie was fully ready to rip this goddamn universe apart to get his twin brother back.
In the infirmary Leo is happy to see everyone crammed into the room and camped around his bed, and distressingly honest, though that part is largely thanks to the morphine. Donnie puts a firm kibosh on personal questions, as tempting as it is to grill him when he’s all loopy and his constant guard is non-existent.
“I love this song,” Leo mumbles out of nowhere at two o’clock in the morning, two days after the almost-end of the world.
Mikey’s dead to the world and sprawled on Leo’s plastron, because they’ve discovered through trial and error that the immediate weight and warmth of a sibling nearby keeps the panic at bay when Leo wakes up in the dark and doesn’t know where he is right away. Casey is asleep on the other side of the bed, his head pillowed on his arms. Raph and April are in a pile on the other bed, dozing fitfully.
Donnie’s tablet is in his lap but the screen went dark with inactivity an hour ago. He’s been watching his twin sleep, deep in thought. After dinner, he’d asked S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. to play one of Leo’s favorite albums through the speakers, low enough not to wake anyone in the infirmary on its own.
Now, he says, “Yeah, I know, Nardo. I’m going to end up on the DJ blacklist right next to you with all the Taylor Swift music I’ve been forcing everyone else to endure for your benefit.”
Leo smiles. With the deep bruising on his face and neck, it looks more daring than it should, here in his little corner of the world. “Admit it, Tello. You’re a Swiftie.”
“No one will ever believe you,” Donnie says, some weight in his heart beginning to lift the longer Leo looks back at him and sounds like his old self. “How are you feeling?”
“Like hell,” Leo replies frankly. “Physical therapy is gonna be a B-word.”
“Thank you for unnecessarily censoring a word we’ve both heard a million times, I appreciate that.” Donnie leans forward, placing his tablet out of the way on a nearby overbed table, and says, “I have a question for you, now that you’re no longer lost in the sauce.”
“I bet it’s gonna suck,” Leo mutters.
“Do you still not want to lead us?” Donnie asks bluntly. “You saved the world, you know. I think it’s fair to say you’ve earned your stripes.”
Leo doesn’t answer right away. He’s drawing idle patterns on Mikey’s carapace with his good hand, staring up at the ceiling with hooded eyes.
“I learned my lesson,” he finally says. “I’ll do whatever I have to.”
Whatever he has to. Donnie relives the moment that portal closed, the moment Leo took his own life in his hands to protect his family, the moment everything that Donnie knew was ripped apart in front of his eyes, and thinks, That’s a dangerous precedent.
“Not what I asked,” Don tells him.
“It’s not about me,” Leo replies tiredly. He’s Donnie’s little brother and he sounds ancient, like he’s lived too much life already.
“I don’t know what the hell that means, but fine,” Donnie snaps. “Then it’s about me. It’s about Raph and Mikey and April and Papa. Junior, even. Everyone who loves you more than life itself. It’s about us.” He stares Leo down, daring him to break eye contact, to make light or make a joke. Donnie will climb into that bed and strangle him and no jury on earth would convict him for it. “And you’re one of us. You’re our family. So it’s about you.”
For once in his life, Leonardo is speechless. He swallows a few times, tightens his grip around Mikey, and darts a guilty look toward Raph.
“I don’t want to do it alone,” Leo admits quietly. “I don’t know if I can.”
“You’re my other half, dum-dum,” Donnie tells him in no uncertain terms. “You could do any crazy, stupid, impossible thing you put your mind to. But,” he adds, because this is important, and it’s something all of his siblings could stand to hear at least a dozen more times until it’s successfully been drilled into their stubborn brains, “you don’t have to. You don’t have to do anything. You’re a kid, Leo. We all are. This never should have been our problem to solve.”
Then, because he can’t bear the way his younger twin’s eyes get full and wet, he adds, “Next time a warmongering alien race tries to take over the world, I’ll just do it first.”
Leo laughs out loud, like it was surprised out of him. Raph is stirred awake by the sound, and when he sees Leo’s up, he tries to lunge out of bed so fast that April ends up on the floor. Within minutes, everyone in the room is wide awake and talking over each other and the music is drowned out by all the noise. Not even a full forty-eight hours ago, Leo was trapped in a cold, dark place, where a monster held him down and hurt him—but now he’s here and he’s safe and he can still laugh. It’s a hoarse, wheezy sound, and it’s the best thing Donnie’s heard in days.
He’s got a good feeling about tomorrow.