Chapter Text
Draxum wasn't the least bit pleased with the unannounced visit. Leo was certain that as soon as he saw the portal, he'd already been telling them to turn around and go through it again, but any comment died on his lips as he lowered his gaze to Jotaro. His face paled, his eyes widened in almost comical horror, and for a second, he looked as if all his nightmares had come back to haunt him at once.
“Well, nice to see you, too,” Leo said, leaning on his sword. It was just to look cool, not because his knee still hurt.
Draxum flinched, looked at him, at the child, at Usagi, and back at Jotaro, pursed his lips, and turned his back to them with an expression as if he were using all his willpower not to run away.
“No,” he said over his shoulder.
Leo rolled his eyes.
“I haven't asked for anything yet.”
“You don't have to. The answer is no.” He grabbed the nearest stack of documents and began leafing through them, pretending to be busy as convincingly as Splinter pretended to be a good father. Perhaps even less so. “I don't want to know how Donatello did it. I don't care. You're not going to drag me into this.” He paused for a moment, cleared his throat, and casually added, “But tell him to send me the blueprints later.“
Leo just stared at his back for a few seconds, analyzing it intensely.
“You think Donnie made him? Like some cloning thing, or what?” he snorted. But then he thought again and, less confidently, asked, “Could he actually do that? Like, in theory?”
He supposedly knew they themselves had been created in an unnatural and even less ethical way, but somehow it never occurred to him that Donnie, too, had strange and crazy ideas. Especially after three sleepless nights and ten coffees.
Draxum didn't respond. He just sighed loudly and dramatically, turned away, and crossed his arms over his chest.
“What do you want?”
Under other circumstances, Leo would have teased him a bit, saying that this was a very rude way to start a conversation, especially since Mikey had just generously allowed him to finally rebuild the lab. Well, a year ago, but still.
But now they had no time for pleasures, and they had come here for a reason, so he gestured at Usagi, then moved his hand lower, to Jotaro.
“I need you to check if they are related.”
Barry grimaced, as if this was exactly the last thing he wanted to do, but then he finally gave in, his gaze moving from one to the other.
“They are,” he said.
Leo glanced back to make sure that the DNA test results hadn't magically fallen into Usagi's hands.
“How do you know?”
“Well, I have eyes. They look alike.”
“Because they are both rabbits.”
“You think all rabbits are alike?” Draxum raised an eyebrow. “Huh. And they call me racist.”
Leo, being a man of honor, was able to accept defeat when necessary, so he mentally awarded him one small point for that. And he promised himself to make up for the loss at the first opportunity.
It took him a moment to explain why they were currently babysitting and what they needed, while Usagi tried in vain to keep Jotaro away from the machines and test tubes with suspicious contents. The boy was determined to see and touch everything, and it was more than certain that if he got the chance, he would lick or drink everything too. Draxum watched him out of the corner of his eye, purple vines repeatedly pushing through the cracked concrete of the floor to push little fingers away from the buttons that, if pressed, would probably blow them all up. He listened with half an ear and probably understood every other sentence, but he agreed to help, insisting that he was only doing it so they would finally leave.
He pulled two packaged swabs out of the drawer, tossed one to Usagi, and then nodded at Jotaro and gestured for him to sit on a low stool.
“Open your mouth,” he muttered, then winced when the child responded with a loud 'aaa...' “But you don't have to make sounds while you do it. Seriously, as if I didn't have more important things to do...”
Usagi tried to lean out to see what he should do, so Leo simply took the swab from him, put it in his mouth, and ran it across the inside of both cheeks.
As soon as he withdrew his hand, Usagi wrinkled his nose.
“Ugh,” he said, and from somewhere behind Leo, he heard Jotaro make the same sound.
They say hope dies last. Leo felt like he'd been trying to resuscitate the cold corpse for a while now, but he didn't dare to stop.
“At least he doesn't bite,” Draxum muttered, wiping his hands on his apron. “Six years, healthy, surprisingly clean. You'll have to wait a while for the rest.”
He grabbed both swabs, walked over to the side counter, and inserted both into one of the many machines.
Leo watched him closely, intrigued.
“How do you know he's six?”
“By his teeth. He's just lost his baby ones.” He closed the lid of the device and typed something on the illuminated tabletop. “Usagi was so gap-toothed around that age.”
He waved them off, signaling that they should let him concentrate, but a smile had already appeared on Usagi's face, wide and not at all gap-toothed.
“Oooh, and you remember it, boss?”
Draxum froze, realizing he had made a grave mistake.
“Of course not,” he huffed, which came out very unconvincingly. “I've been making records of your progress. To better guide your training.”
Usagi's smile turned into something slightly more mischievous.
“And you're still keeping them?”
Barry didn't answer. Luckily, he didn't have to, because a long beep sounded, the screen of one of the machines flashed red, and Leo glanced down just in time to see Jotaro hastily withdraw his hands from the keyboard and hide them behind his back. Then he dove headfirst, ducking behind Usagi as Draxum moved toward them.
“Can you control this child? This isn't a playground!” He silenced the device with a few clicks but stood there for a moment, staring at the fading screen. As Leo walked by, he leaned in slightly and whispered, “Don't repeat my mistakes.”
Leo was more than sure it was too late for that.
The next fifteen minutes dragged on, the silence growing more awkward with each passing minute, the atmosphere heavy, but Leo had the distinct impression that neither Usagi nor Jotaro was aware of any of this. Usagi leaned sideways against one of the large, humming machines, pressed his ear to it, and closed his eyes, seeming to savor its vibrations. Jotaro, on the other hand, became fixated on a rack of test tubes full of colorful liquids, trying to reach it so many times and with such determination that Draxum finally wrapped his vines around both of his arms, holding them rigidly in place. Even then, the boy didn't seem to mind. In fact, he seemed to treat it as a challenge, slowly but steadily gnawing at the vines behind his back.
Leo had a great view of him, and that little bit of entertainment was the only thing keeping him in his chair.
“Was Usagi like that too?” he asked when Jotaro finally bit through one of the vines and discovered that a new one had immediately grown in its place.
Barry, hunched over some papers, didn't even look up, but surprisingly, he responded.
“No. Now that I have someone to compare him to, I have to admit he was surprisingly well-mannered.” He paused, shuffled a few pages, and put down his pen. “Are you planning on keeping him?”
He still wasn't looking in his direction, for which Leo was grateful. At least he didn't have to wonder what his expression was like or whether it gave too much away.
“It's complicated,” he muttered.
That's exactly how he felt: as if his simple, orderly life had suddenly twisted into some inextricable knot, and everyone around him was pretending they didn't see the problem.
If Jotaro was indeed related to Usagi - and so far everything pointed to that - putting him back on the farm was out of the question. Leo had done a lot of morally gray things in his life, but he wasn't planning on adding child abuse to the list. Not to mention, Usagi would never forgive him for it.
Mikey talked a lot, but no one would trust him with a child for more than an hour, Donnie wouldn't agree even under torture, and Splinter... Splinter had already proven himself unfit for the role, at least in Leo's eyes. Raph might agree, but only for a moment, definitely not as a forever home, and only to prevent a family crisis. Besides, forcing him into this role after he practically raised them all seemed cruel and beyond wrong.
There was basically one possible option left, the one Leo feared the most and the one he would really rather avoid.
He wasn't lying when he said he wanted to have children someday. Especially—and perhaps only if—Usagi was also included in the picture. But he was thinking more about the distant future, five, maybe ten years from now? When he'd matured, felt stable, and grown a little bored with the peace and carefreeness. And maybe, just maybe, when he'd finally sorted out his feelings for his own father. Although he wasn't particularly counting on the latter.
Barry was one of the last people he wanted to talk to about any of these topics, and he must have been well aware of it himself, because he didn't try to push the issue and went back to his notes.
“I did keep those records,” he added after a moment, seemingly casually. “I can look up for them if that may help.”
Leo wasn't sure how or if he should react at all, so to be safe he left it unanswered.
When the machine finally emitted a short, high-pitched beep, he was the first to jump up and practically hovered over it, tapping his feet impatiently. Barry typed something into the screen, not half as fast as he should have, waited until the machine spat out a long strip of narrow paper, and squinted, analyzing the results.
“Congratulations, you're an uncle,” he said to Usagi, thrusting the paper into Leo's hands and heading towards the lab exit. “If that's all, feel free to leave without saying goodbye.”
The electric door slid open and then closed behind him with a soft hiss, and for a moment it was the only sound in the room except for Jotaro's efforts to pull the vines out by the roots.
Usagi stared at Leo for a moment, as if trying to guess his reaction, then walked over, rested his temple on his shoulder, and took the results from his hand, replacing them with his own palm.
“I told you,” he concluded, and indeed, there was no denying him that one. And Leo, deep down, had known from the very beginning that he was right. He just desperately wanted him to be wrong.
He rubbed his hand against the back of his neck, trying to gather his thoughts.
“That still doesn't mean we can just take him in.”
“I told you, that's how it works in my family.”
“That's not how it works in mine.”
Usagi straightened up, moving away a bit.
“You want to make him go back?” he asked. He didn't let go of Leo's hand, but his tone meant this was a huge leap of faith on his part.
Leo shook his head.
“No, of course not,” he corrected quickly. “You know I don't. It's just...”
The door opened and Barry returned, a mug of coffee in one hand and a plate of sandwiches in the other. He paused for a moment and gave them a reproachful look.
“Why are you still here?”
Leo ignored him, just as he had once ignored the fact that throwing someone off a roof wouldn't buy him respect or sympathy in the future.
“We should at least tell them. His parents, I mean.”
Usagi raised an eyebrow, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly.
“Tell them we're stealing their child?”
“Well, since it's supposedly nothing special and everyone does it...”
Draxum placed his mug on the desk with exceptional loudness.
“Could you please take this conversation somewhere else?”
Usagi bit the inside of his cheek. He didn't look convinced, but the fact that he was even considering the idea was a good sign.
“I don't want to go there,” he confessed, in a much quieter, less confident voice.
He looked away and wrapped his arms around himself, and Leo immediately pulled him closer. He ran a hand over his low-dropped ears, pretending not to feel Barry's piercing gaze.
“You don't have to. I'll handle it myself,” he promised. “I'll talk to them, explain what's going on, and I'll sort it out. And then we'll figure out what to do next. Okay?”
He felt breath on his neck, a silent sigh. When Usagi pulled back, slowly easing out of the embrace, he looked calmer, though definitely not entirely satisfied.
“I don't understand why you're so stubborn. But okay.”
Leo sighed with relief, took his face in his hands, and would have kissed him, no matter how much Draxum might have been outraged, if at that very moment there had not been a bang that made him jump.
Jotaro finally got the idea to try and reach the rack with his foot, and now he stared at the liquids and broken glass spilling onto the floor.
Draxum buried his face in his hands. Leo decided not to wait until he had gathered enough strength to actually react.
“Oh, look at the time!” He grabbed Usagi's hand, reaching for his sword with the other. “We have to go! That was nice, let's never do that again. Byeee~!”
With one slash, he freed Jotaro from the vines, scooped him up under his arm, and jumped into the portal as fast as he could.