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He is walking.
To and fro, footsteps lilted and stuttering. There is a humming he can’t pinpoint. He can see, but he can’t. He can’t. It’s so blurry. All he knows is the way his body falls with each step, all he knows is the jolt of his weight shifting, all he knows is his pace. All he knows. Always.
There’s a heaviness to him that feels out of place. He’s… his body? It’s off-center. His steps keep him in line, but it won’t last. He’s not sure how he knows that. There’s… there’s something he has to do. A reason he was pacing. He squints through the dizzy fog, seeing a different shade of gray. He feels his body stop. The milky gray looms, turning to static, whisking him away. He can’t even feel his feet anymore, he doesn’t know why that’s important, he is floating.
Floating in space, the monochromes darkened and humming, an echo of something screamed to the stratosphere. There is nothing but gray. There is nothing but pain. There is nothing but— — -
…there is a humming he can’t pinpoint.
His arms are made of lead. Why are they lifted?
Right, he’s in the dojo training with his brothers. He’s stretching with them, moving in painful little circles. It crackles in his veins, coaxing his brain out from the back corner of his skull. He can see his brothers concentrating. He isn’t sure how long he’s been rotating his arms like this, so he stops. He isn’t sure whether he’s even done both sides, and his memory refuses to check. He stutters, unsure what to do next. He’s never stuck to one routine for training, so he isn’t sure what order he did warmup stretches in. He… he can’t…
There’s a gentle touch on his shoulder, and despite how much it shocks him he doesn’t react. He, he can’t feel his body anymore, his brain stuck between states of being. He can’t hear the muffled noise from the world, but he can vaguely see Raph in the center of his vision, speaking. The words are slow and clear, syllables articulated, but… he can’t…
Despite his failures, his brothers do not leave. He can always sense them, the colors are right there. They waver in his peripherals, his woozy vision unable to stabilize, but they’re there. He keeps trying to refocus, he knows he’s drifting, but… he can’t come back.
He sort of feels Raph guide him down to the floor, and he belatedly realizes he’s shaking. He hears a clatter in the far distance, a city of noise between them. Mikey squeaks out something, presumably an apology.
He manages to turn his head away from Raph’s gentle expression, staring between him and Mikey’s bent figure on the other end of the room. He’s moving by a pile of… things. That’s not supposed to be on the floor. Mikey turns to speak at someone and blinks at his half-turned gaze. He stops picking up the things and shuffles into his vision. Raph, on the other side, keeps a grip on his shoulder. They both try speaking, slow words he still can’t hear.
He wonders where Donnie is. But he can’t turn to look, so he stares at Raph.
Donnie’s by his side, soldering something. Countless parts are scattered on the desk. He wonders when he came into the lab.
He can’t comprehend what’s being made, but that’s normal. Usually his twin is telling him about his project, but he can’t tell whether that’s happening. He can’t hear very well right now.
He stares at the parts, trying to figure them out. A wrench. A piece of iron. An LED light. A flash of- oh, that’s Dee’s mystic tech. A blowtorch. What’s his twin making?
He reaches out to touch his brother’s shoulder, earning him a massive flinch and a hissed curse.
“Don’t-! Oh. Salutations, Nardo. Are you present?” Donnie moves into his gaze, holding a burning eye contact. His eyes slide away. His twin moves back to his center, reinstating the contact. His eyes slide away again, and Donnie sighs. Leo blinks, trying to comprehend the question. Present? Is… he?
Donnie waits, possibly the most patient he’s seen his twin. Something about it coaxes his brain forward, drifting down from the air vents to settle halfway in his body. Leo flexes his hand where it had stayed hovering, glancing down at his fingers. They look weird. He has his gloves on, and they’re damp with sweat.
“…off.” He twitches his hand, unsure how to move it to stop the uncomfortable feeling.
“You’re feeling off? Okay, we can work with that. Is there anything specific? Can you try to feel your body?” Donnie gently takes his hand, making the word bubble up his throat.
“Hand.” He repeats the thought dully, fingers still twitching and refusing to close around his twin’s. Donnie’s breath hitches, and he starts to pull his hand away. It’s not what he wants, it- no, Donnie’s leaving, he- he can’t-
“Okay, Leo, I’m here. We’re okay.” His twin correctly takes his stuttered breath as permission to keep holding on, gently squeezing in tandem with his reassurance. It feels weird. The weirdness is keeping him in his body, but… it’s wrong. He doesn’t want the fabric around him anymore. Fabric. Fabric. That’s how he can tell Donnie what’s wrong.
“Fabric.” The word repeats aloud, still that same dull lifelessness. He thinks if this texture is on him much longer, he’s going to push through and start screaming. How does Donnie deal with this all the time?
“…fabric.” Donnie echoes it back, staring into his face, trying to figure out the problem. Maybe he thinks it’s his mask. Which… it isn’t. Not yet. His mask tails are typically a comfort when they brush against his shell. But his gloves, they-
“Oh. Your wraps, Nardo? Would you like me to take them off?” Yes, yes, that’s it, he needs them off. He manages a nod, and Donnie makes quick work of his gloves. He sets them on his desk right along with all his tools, and that sparks some sort of feeling within him. He can’t tell what it is, but it’s something. Donnie turns back to him, gaze still focused and serious. “I’m going to let go now to take off your leg wraps. Is that okay with you, Leon?”
Hm. Although they hadn’t been a problem, Leo wouldn’t mind having those taken off too. He nods, a little less forced, and then his twin is bending down to lift one of his legs. He’d feel bad about making him do this if he could feel much of anything. Now that the itchy wrongness of the gloves is gone, he’s sort of fading back into the distant encasing.
“Okay. Are you able to lift your arm slightly? I would like to get your belt sash off as well. Why did you have them on, anyway? Training was hours ago.” Hm. He wasn’t sure he could answer that. He wasn’t sure he could remember both instructions. He thinks one of them was to lift his arms, so he does so. His twin laughs. “I didn’t mean that high, you dum-dum. Now I really can’t get it off.”
Leo obeys the hidden command, lowering his arms. He thinks he might’ve been able to pull a smile. His belt soon joins the folded pile on his brother’s desk. He wonders what he’d put in his pack.
“Alright. Is your mask bothering you too, or should we leave that on?” He takes a moment. The mask is safe. He shakes his head, and Donnie nods. “We’re leaving it on?” He waits a moment before barreling ahead. “Cool. How about we move to the living room for a movie marathon? We can steal first pick from Mikey. How about it?”
Leo hesitates a few minutes too long. Moving at all sounds incredibly terrifying. For all he knows, he’s been here in this room forever. No reason to leave when he was safe here. But Donnie would have to leave eventually, and he hated being alone. Even the thought had his vision shimmering.
“We don’t have to, of course. We can also stay here. Perhaps I may interest you in a rant about circuitry? However, if your hesitance is for another reason, I promise I can and will take care of it.” Donnie didn’t make promises lightly. It heated the fragile, cracked ice around Leo’s heart enough to continue pushing through, to beat his own thoughts to let him speak.
“Stuck.” Leo shifted his legs as much as he could, sliding them back and forward to gently kick his twin.
“You feel stuck? I can carry you out if you cannot walk, Leo. Would you like me to carry you?” He would. That’s easy. Free hugs from Donnie sounded wonderful right about now. He nodded, eyes downcast. He felt…
Before he could articulate it, his brother had wrapped his arms under him and lifted him up. He vacated the lab, walking swiftly towards the coveted projector.
Predictably, when the rest of the family joins them later, Mikey gets upset over losing his first pick. Leo laughs, loud and full, and whacks him with a pillow.
Leo blinks.
He thinks about the motion, and it stops being automatic. A shame. He hates thinking. His brothers joke that he doesn't have a brain. He wonders if they’re serious. Not that they do it anymore. They haven’t in a long time.
Not since he really lost his.
He thinks about that sometimes. They can tell, they all can. He hates that, without being told, they’ve started to tell when he’s spacing out. They don’t yell at him like they should. They don’t laugh like they should, don’t use the words he thinks they should. He’s a space cadet. Really wants to be Jupiter Jim.
He thinks about losing his mind. In the process, he drops it again.
There's a lilted sound, something that’s supposed to be engaging.
He blinks. Blinks again. Tries to pinpoint the noise. It’s… it’s a voice. He loves this voice. It’s one he could listen to forever.
It’s enough to draw his vision out. He sees dark curls, a green sweater and a plethora of papers. This is his sister. She talks, her back turned. He can’t make out most of the words, but they’re vibrant. Like she’s not talking to the equivalent of the wall. The surroundings shimmer as she turns.
“Oh! Hey, Leo. Glad to see ya.” April grins at him, full force but unexpectant, before launching back into the story she’d apparently been telling. He doesn’t have enough context to really follow, and he’s still on edge. Vignette on his vision, static where feeling should be.
He looks at all the papers. April’s scribbling on one of them, jotting notes of some kind. He recognizes her college’s logo on the top of another. She’s doing her homework here.
She didn’t used to do homework with him. He always distracted her. The careless distribution he sees now means she’s been here for awhile. She’d gotten comfortable. Gotten stuff done. Been here… without his input.
Because he’s-
Swallowed by the darkness, a relentless terror on what that means.
Noise.
Noise, noise, noise. It’s all he knows. It’s all he is. Static and noise shoved in wrappings. Loud shouts and laughs and clinks and squelches and air and pitter patters and crashes and songs and-
He is noise itself, so it’s unsurprising when he drinks in a familiar one. A sigh, a clink, an approach. Someone. He- he can’t tell who this is, only familiar, but- is- are they safe? There’s air, rapid air, and humming static. The static brings touch, brings smell. It’s overwhelming, his senses are everywhere- there’s taste, there’s saliva in his mouth-
Sight.
Someone familiar in front of him. Whites and grays, made of… bone? Bone man. Wait, Boneman, he knows him! Hueso catches the way his eyes have cleared, and just barely smiles.
“Pepino, there you are. Come with me.” His tío gently grasps him, tapping his limp hand and pulling. He goes, stumbling over all the sounds. It’s blaring. It’s a siren in the already-cacophonous sea. A world of pain, stabbing his head.
He can’t handle it all. He’s walking into a storm. The world swims, the volume bracing his head in thick fog. He can’t tell where he is. He can’t… what’s…?
“Keep going, we’re almost there.” A very quiet murmur pierces the void, poking a pinhole through his static vision. It gives him direction, a light to follow. He does so, guided by a solid hand in his.
Something about the atmosphere changes. There’s less noise in his skull. Still too much, far too much, but… it makes something give way. A small click muffles a sudden crash, and the foggy sea gives way a little.
“Here, sit with me. We’ll breathe together.” He thinks he feels his hands being swept up in a firm grip. One planted on an uneven surface, one held tight. The surface moves, inflates, then falls back. Swells and shrinks in even turns. His other hand is being squeezed in turn, even counts. …Hueso is breathing for him. Helping him keep steady. It’s a jarring thought.
His hands lay slack on his tío’s bones. It’s undoubtedly a tether, but he doesn’t have the capacity to fight his way through the rest of the fog. They sit there, breathing.
He’s.
Staring. At the task. It’s daunting. He has to do it. He’ll be a disappointment if he doesn’t. He’s worthless without this. Them. Their love. They want him to do this. They won’t love him anymore. If he doesn’t. He. He can’t move. He’s staring. It’s daunting. It’s humongous. It swallows the room. The walls. The floor. Him. He’s, he’s staring.
It’s daunting.
There’s something brushing against his legs. He blinks, looks down. He’s standing in something dark. The whole area is dark. He doesn’t remember where this is. Or how he got here. He blinks, looks up. Blinks, looks to the side. Blinks, looks at his hands. They’re trembling. He breathes, looks through the shadows. He breathes, shuts his eyes. Gasps, wrenches them open. The world is swaying. He’s dizzy.
“Leo!”
There’s… something. Out there. It’s desperate, scared, warbling. He flinches back, hesitant. He doesn’t know what it’s calling. It sounds again, crackling, terrified. He steps back, shrinking away. It… he’s not sure what’s out there. The unknown is scary.
A loud, echoed chirp and a rush of where family love find please resounds. He lurches forward, called to it. His hands splash in the dark liquid and he tumbles down. The chirp, he has to find it. It needed help. He finds it in himself to click back, his own who hurt what here shrilly piercing the space.
Sudden splashed footsteps come from the distance, and he’s scrambling, sitting back in the liquid and breathing hard. There’s a figure half-hidden in shadow, but he can see the whites of their eye. Terror turned relief meets him.
“Leo, ohmigosh, there you are! You scared us!” The figure reaches, and he whips an arm to shield his face. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t protect himself, he won’t be able to protect the chirped voice, he- who is this?
“Sorry, sorry! It’s okay, we’re safe. We’re still here, you just wandered off again.” …………again? He…… this… is normal.
The figure knows him.
A shuddered breath wracks his body, and his arm trembles where it’s kept up. His whole body quakes. It’s a harsh feeling and it hurts.
“We’re okay. You are here with me, Mikey, in the sewers by our home. Nothing is out here but us, we are safe.” …Mikey? That’s… that’s a safe name. The figure… this… something’s not right.
This figure is orange. Their voice is familiar. This…
This is Mikey.
The thought sends a piercing, powerful relief. It lurches him forward, sending his arms down into the water. They buckle, sending him face-first to a mouthful of sewage. He sputters and shivers, trying to work his limbs under him. He can’t. He can’t. He’s drowning, he’s choking, he’s-
Mikey hoists him up, wrapping his arms tight around him. They’re shaking together. His little brother holds him, bears the weight of his moving body. Little chirps slip from him, the sentiments lost to him even as they come. But the way his little brother’s face falls further… he clutches him as close as he can, trying to make his shuddering body work.
“You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re okay, Leo, you’re safe.” Mikey buries his head into his shoulder, squeezing tight. He won’t tell him how grounding it is. Sitting in the sewers, shaking beyond belief, hugged by his distraught little brother. He hasn’t felt this settled in his body in a long time. He’s not sure how long it’ll last, but… he squeezes back, holding on.
“C’mon. Let’s head back home.” Mikey pulls back, slipping his hands down to grasp his own, and he smiles. It’s full of warm sunshine and rainbows; the color after this long storm. With something as bright as that, he finds he has enough strength to smile back. Between the both of them, they find enough strength to stand up. To face the residual rain.