Itsa Me’a...Mirio!

But that’s just in his stretch of imagination. The future he builds in his mind every time he hears the footfalls of his father’s enemies pooling in. He closes his eyes and gives that version of himself two seconds to live and be, before he tucks his dreams all away and pulls his katana from their holsters.

Fast and efficient like she is. Deadly and ice cold like she is. But not quite. There’s still a lack there. Because in her eyes are always this hatred and tenacity so chilling it makes Leo’s scales stiffen like the wind has grazed him sharply, and Leo can never find that same sentiment in the pits of his stomach.

He still looks at her and finds pity and inspiration simultaneously, instead of the burning indignation he ought to feel. And he’ll pull his punches for her to see truth, to complete his life’s mission. Because she’s not like him; she’s salvageable. He’s never hated her, even as her face turned to something he could no longer recognize and her eyes darkened.

But now her eyes are wide, overbright under the flickering light of a lamppost, in the orange glow of a building she’s set on fire, her mouth agape with a stuttering breath, and Leo twists the hilt of his katana until the alleyway is alight with her gagging scream, until there’s no hate left in her stare. Replaced by something that nearly falters Leo; she looks sad.

And the same look Leo wore as he watched her plunge her tanto into his brother’s broken body fades into Karai’s features now. And it- the look, the way her eyes bore into his- cries betrayal.

“Gah….h…just like…the rat- Monster,” she hisses in Japanese, reaching blindly to claw at the katana in her side, “Th- hat…” she spits, cocking her head to stare at Donnie writhing on pavement.

Leo takes in a shuddering breath and steels himself, pursing his lips and squeezing his eyes shut as he drives them both forward, away from where Donnie is, with a grunt until she’s pinned to the metal of the dumpster by his katana and by his hand pressing against her head. This close he feels her tremble, from pain, from fear- she’ll feel how he feels, she’ll be like Leo for once.

He holds her head in place, cutting off the words she tries hissing out.

“You…” eyes burning, he falters on his words, throat tightening around the syllable, “You don’t…touch him,” he whispers fiercely, and yanks his katana from her abdomen, letting her body drop as foot ninja file in, abruptly stopping at the sight and smell of carnage.

There’s only a few, Donnie’s explosives are hell on earth, working efficiently. Though the FDNY and this block of Chinatown will suffer for his frantic aim.

Leo pushes Karai to them with his foot. “Retreat-” He doesn’t know if they care enough for her to listen, but he hopes they’re afraid- of him, of Saki’s wrath at failure, it doesn’t matter. Donnie needs his brother now, and Leo needs them gone . He points his katana to Karai’s shoulder, and the blood from her trickles like after rain, into gravel under his trembling feet, “She’ll die if you don’t.”

He can’t see the eyes of her recruits, but feels them bore into him in stillness for several beats, before, in few swift motions, they disappear, her body clutched by several of them.

Leo releases the breath he’s been holding, feeling his legs weaken as he stumbles backwards, chest a chamber of gusts of breath he cannot catch, and it pounds in his head. There’s blood on his katana and on his hands and on his face and the tacky feeling against his skin, under the soles of his feet, finally register in his newly settled-into headspace.

He’s keeled over in the dumpster before he can stop himself, retching at every whiff of blood he gets till his throat burns and he chokes. He starts gasping when reality returns to the forefront of his consciousness, in the periphery of his sightline Donnie is desperately using his duffel bag to staunch the mess Karai’s kunai left of his shoulder.

He’ll ruin all those damn stickers on there that Leo’s salvaged every single mutation day.

Leo can feel sick and sorry when they’re home, when they’re safe in the medbay with Raph standing over them swearing and scolding, Mikey muttering prayers second nature as he shoves soup into their mouths.

Donnie’s trying to roll himself, to push himself up from the ground, his grip slipping on his own blood and broken pieces from his carapace. He hits the ground hard, and the condensation of his breath rises rapidly, rattling fast like the plumes of billowing smoke rising from the broken windows of Murakami-san’s shop.

“Dee-” Leo’s feet move before he processes it, he’s at his brother’s side, turning him over onto his lap, “Hey…” he tries to greet him like they do after a fight, soft like an elbow or shoulder bump, when the battle-high and adrenaline dwindles. Dee returns the gentle greeting, face swollen, the whole left side, his bloody eye…he must feel Leo staring too long without words, and reaches a shaky hand to his face.

“Don’t- don’t Donnie- don’t move,” Leo says.

The breath Donnie takes in is sharp, his thumb sliding lazily over the deep cut on Leo’s chin.

“It’s- it’s fine…let me just…” Leo begins to assure him quietly, voice cracking on the edge of his words as his focus dwindles.

He can’t stop staring at Donnie’s shell, the pink and white tissue hanging from it, cut open and shredded by jagged, broken shell, “Let- let me just um…” His eyes trail to the arrow still in his brother’s leg, the one the now dead recruit shot into him, sending Dee dropping from the top of an office building sixteen stories down.

Donnie stares, blinking rapidly up at the hanging, damaged wires of Mosco Street sparks reflecting in his heavy eyes. “Think…I lost my…my glasses- and my bag’s…all...”

And Leo’s wide, owlish eyes are drawn unblinking, in the blank and stoney, far away look he gets that tends to freak people out; his fingers work faster than his mind, untying his own bandana and wrappings and pushing them into the hole in his brother’s shoulder. He feels like the wind has been knocked from him, his chest restricting him, his voice.

“‘S okay…it’s alright- we’ll- we can fix it.”

His legs feel shattered, television static coursing through as he pulls himself to his feet, body weighted and dizzying with the way he stumbles forward to drop down to the ground again in front of an already dead ninja. He rips his clothes off, cutting fabric loose with the sharpness of his nails and teeth.

Leo is a medic before he’s a soldier, because before gunshots and sliced open skin there were rolled ankles from skateboard crashes and embedded splinters from the wood that churned the fire when they didn’t discover stoves. Leo knows how to alleviate a pinched nerve in a pinch, to sew and stitch and staple nasty gashes that scar super cool. He knows how to reset Raph’s shoulder, still winces at the pop it makes, the gruntled scream Raph makes. He knows how to quell April’s cramps and her migraines, Casey’s busted chin and healing scars of their chest.

He heals like he gardens.

“Yeah…yeah. Sounds good…” Donnie says belatedly, dazedly, waving Leo off, a bit of amusement in the fringes of his hoarse voice, and sucks in breath like he’s diving under the bay. “What…what’s the damage…exactly? Weekend infirmary or- taking…a 3 month nap…”

Leo finds himself chuckling, wiping his running nose with his forearm and pulling Donnie onto his side, cringing at the bits of shell that come apart against his fingertips. “Your leg…’s got an arrow in it for one, and her-“ he exhales with shuddering, “She got your shoulder…and I’m short on bandaids,” Leo smiles wobbly, “No naps. Raph’s coming- called him when we were…retreating.”

Being hunted like damn animals, actually.

“Hell of a retreat…” Donnie laughs so quietly the sound of Leo’s own pounding heart almost takes it over, almost like he’s read Leo’s mind, “Murakami might need us t’- ah… ah, shit- Leo, my shell hurts like- is it, is it bad? ‘S cracked?”

There’s the million dollar question.

Leo doesn’t answer it directly. He slips his warm and bloody hand from under the soaked uwagi and places both his palms on both sides of his brother’s face, careful and delicately and not trying to appear so brave anymore. He’s done that and he’s worn from it. He doesn’t care that he shakes and that he’s crying, and Donnie is too, and Leo never lets his family cry alone.

“‘S not too bad,” he says, voice pinched tight as bone becomes visible to him through the shell, “I’m gonna use healing hands, you’ll get- you’ll get some bandages…Mikey will force soup down you till you explode and we’ll hide the key to your lab for a week tops.”

Donnie laughs around a moan, squeezing his hand tight around Leo’s.

And Leo knows he can call upon spirits to do what the physical can’t. He’s learning, his father teaches him even now, laying down under their tree. And Leo’s always patient and he always understands.

He can’t understand this. The other side of the building, the street lines with FDNY and NYPD, the rounding flashes of their lights cutting through the tendrils of smoke surrounding the back alley.

“Deal…” Donnie mumbles, and he looks so tired, “Hey…Is…where’s Murakami?”

“He’ll be okay…Hold onto me,” Leo says hushedly. He places Donnie’s hand onto his forearm, patting it for good measure.

“Mm…dad’s coming…?” Donnie asks soft and muted, blinking sluggishly at the growing smoke that blots out the dark blue above.

Quickly retucking the torn uwagi against his shell where most of his blood flows from, Leo purses his lips shut to trap in a gasping, snotting exhale, and only Donnie’s writhing groans and the crackle of hot fire echo in the back alley. Donnie’s fingers twitch and loosen, slipping back to his plastron.

“No- hey, you just said ‘deal’.” Leo rolls him back down, and gently taps at his face, absentmindedly brushing loose gravel from his swelling cheek as he speaks rapid fire, “Can you hear me? I know- I’m like- I’m- I’m being…you’ll say ‘this is hypocritical, Leo you asshole’ because I sucked at this part but you- have to stay awake.”

Leo has little recollection of the long, long drive to Fulton County, Northampton, but he knows he felt hands holding his face, fierce whispers of threats to not leave them, their hearts beating fast in his eardrums, willing him to live.

He feels his brother’s heart beat like his own now, and it feels like it’s choking him, out of rhythm with Leo’s in small skips separated by short gasps. Donnie is nodding to each word Leo shoots out like every inch of his trust is on Leo and his magic hands and his stubborn heart. But Leo isn’t magic, and no one on any plane of metaphysical existence is helping him. His ancestors are always so quiet, and suddenly the notion of coming from nowhere but a mystery cuts into him deep.

He’s not really Hamato is he, and his father is an orphan; maybe there’s no one out there coming to revitalize his essence.

No one ever helps his family.

But Leo settles into himself, calming his mind, desperately reaching Sha.

“Healing of oneself, Healing of others…” he whispers to himself, cringing at the crashing of old wooden beams coming down from within the shop.

“I’m gonna heal you, you just have to…just talk to me.”

“I can’t hear …Murakami…” Donnie breathes, air escaping staccato.

Leo nods, like he's done the past several times Donnie’s told him about Murakami-san, lips twitching against the tightly sealed press he keeps them in, and he exhales sharply through his nostrils.

“Mm-hm- okay…okay, I know,” Vocals pinched and wavering in his tightening throat, he blinks away the blur in his vision and quickly undoes the wrappings on his arms. “Dee, ‘m gonna need you to- like you have to stay still, really still, okay?”

He doesn’t hear Murakami-san either, he can't even hear the crackle of wood burning to ash against stone. He lets his mind float and drift to the primordial surface of his soul, the beginning mind of his purity, when he first became conscious in childhood, and he dips himself into the warmth of it. He and his brothers are simply in the warmth of the sun, on rocky banks of the water. He’s warm, they’re safe.

Leo’s hands become alight with blue luminosity. Celestial soldiers, descend and arrange yourselves in front of me. His mind dribbles with the prayers he’s so used to reciting with his brothers in tow, during abhiṣeka. May all those who preside over warriors be my vanguard!

The glow of his right hand increases with gusto, blue glittering dancing around, falling onto Donnie’s plastron and sinking down into his body, glowing in the reflection of his slitted eyes- a soft woah escaping his lips.

Leo laughs wetly in amazement, his heart spurned in triumph. He pushes his right hand down firmer over Donnie’s heart, and Donnie places his hand over Leo’s, returning a bewildered chuckle. Like they’re two kids discovering magic for the first time, like they’re 7 watching parades through the sewer grates, dazzling fireworks and raining confetti sparkling in their curious eyes.

Leo closes his eyes and lets himself slip down further into the layers of consciousness, opening the doors for his soul to pass into.