i drew this instead of sleeping

There was no exact science to it, but sometimes Leo could tell how far a dying star was from him. He hadn't exactly been blocking it out, but he was actively ignoring it in an attempt to lessen the pain. When the next one cried out - their agony a brief, abrupt thing - it finally clicked. They had all been quick, and now Leo could realize, in a linear path.

Something was consuming stars, and it was heading their way.

Which meant it was heading for Raph.

Whirling in the direction of Raph's gravitational pull, Leo pushed himself through the lingering burn of gaseous death toward home. If he moved fast enough, maybe he could head the threat off at the pass. He didn't know exactly what he would do when faced with the unknown threat, but as long as it didn't reach his brothers, it would be fine.

He didn't let himself think about what could happen if he wasn't fast enough.

Leo swung around Saturn's rings as he laid eyes on the culprit. A swirling, writing black hole was creeping ever closer to where Raph, Donnie, and Mikey were. Amidst the center of the swirling void, glowing yellow eyes peered out, lit with insatiable hunger. Tendrils of the vacuum reached out at the edges, grasping for anything that might cross the black hole's path.

Even from a far, Leo could feel the tug of gravity at his limbs, a threat and a promise.

"Hey!" Leo shouted through the empty volume of space, catching the black hole's attention. "This is private property, ugly. You must have missed the signs."

He had a half formed plan based on the ingrained knowledge that this thing could not be allowed anywhere near Raph. Leo also had no idea why he sounded infinitely more confident than he felt, but he always had been better at putting on show than his brothers.

"Mmm," the black hole hummed, the eyes at the center turning more fully toward Leo - away from Raph. The sickly yellow orbs flit over the glimmering spread of stars at Leo's fingertips before observing his face again. "Perhaps you will sustain me longer than that pitiful Sun."

In any other situation, Leo would have laughed in this thing's face for thinking Raph was anywhere near "pitiful". As it were, he found himself falling back on humor regardless of the knot of anxiety in his gut.

"Wow, I'm flattered," Leo crooned falsely, flipping the tails of his mask over his shoulder dramatically. A shower of stars tumbled off the ends and flickered away a few seconds later.

A daunting grin cracked through the inky blackness, a yawning maw of a vacuum that only strengthened the tug of gravity. Leo felt himself lurch forward and he strained to fight back.

"Hey now," Leo said, his bravado faltering. "Can't I at least get your name first?"

Despite his struggles, a grasping tail of darkness caught around Leo's ankle, tugging him closer. Letting out an instinctive yelp of surprise, Leo jerked forward suddenly with the pull of gravity, only allowing more of the darkness to wrap around him. He struggled, shoving the darkness back where he could, trying to burn it away with whatever power he could summon from nearby stars. It seemed to work for a bit, but the black hole learned his tricks and started to consume the energy first.

Leo's limbs grew sluggish, his attempts at freedom weakening.

"Know this, little pest," the black hole hissed as it drew Leo ever closer to the central maw. "Know that you have been defeated by Kraang, devourer of stars."

Leo opened his mouth to quip back, and found he barely had the strength to breathe. The edges of his vision began to fade out into darkness, or maybe that was the black hole consuming him.

He hated to leave his brothers like this. He wondered if all the stars in the universe would disappear with him. Would he return when a new one was inevitably born, or would a new entity take his place? Would they be better capable of protecting his brothers, protecting the stars?

"Hey, ugly!"

Donnie?

"Get away from my brother!"

Mikey, followed by the telltale icy burn of a comet streaking past Leo and impacting the black hole. It must not have been expecting the attack, because it was stunned for a moment before the comet was consumed.

It was startled long enough for Leo to be pulled free of it's grasp.

Warm hands, nearly burning actually, wrapped around Leo's biceps and yanked him away. One inescapable vector of gravity traded for another, this one warmer and infinitely more comforting.

"Leo?" Raph's frantic voice said above him, as Leo was held close, away from danger. "Leo, are you okay?"

Lethargic and trembling, feeling colder than he could ever remember being, Leo forced his eyes open. Raph's face hovered above him, blazing and familiar and creased with worry lines.

"'M good," Leo mumbled, fumbling to reach up and pat his brother's face.

Wait...was that his hand?

Suddenly far more aware than he had been before, Leo sat up unsteadily in Raph's hold and stared down at his arms. His hands shook as his breath caught in his throat, numb with disbelief. Where his limbs were normally covered in sparkling, shimmering stars, endlessly glittering - was nearly void. A few lone mites of light sparkled weakly near his elbows, and near his knees on his legs. But aside from those, his limbs were stripped bare of brilliance.

"No," Leo whispered, voice strained and cracking with grief. "No, no, no no no no!"

He twisted violently in Raph's arms, trying to pull the tails of his mask around to check them. When he found them only weakly illuminated, Leo feebly tried to lay eyes on his own shell.

"Leo, Leo, hey! What do you need, what is it?"

"They're gone!" Leo all but sobbed, fighting weakly against Raph's hands as his brother tried to steady him. "The stars, my stars, they're gone. What about my shell? I need to make sure they're okay, I need to know what happened!"

"I got you, little brother, hang on," Raph said, his voice low and soothing despite the quiet horror on his face. He turned Leo around, warm hands still burning against Leo's arms. He was quiet longer than Leo would have liked him to be.

"Raph," Leo all but begged into the silence between them. Mikey and Donnie were still holding their own against the Kraang, the sounds of fighting a hollow, distant ringing in Leo's ears.

"There are still some there, Leo," Raph said quietly, his voice unsteady. "But there's definitely less than usual."

Leo couldn't bear to think if that meant his stars out there in the universe had suffered because of him. Were they gone, too? Why couldn't he feel anything besides paralyzing numbness and a bone deep chill he couldn't shake? Had they perished because of his carelessness? Where the accompanying pain, the physical manifestation of his failure, of never-ending torture?

"Leo!" Raph's voice pulled him back, Leo blinking his brother's blazing face into focus. "We need to get rid of that thing. Can you fight or do you need to sit out?"

"I can fight," Leo rasped, curling his trembling hands into steadier fists. "I have to."