Mags Is A Drag

Leonardo really had wanted to let the incident roll off his shell like water. He had tried, not just for the sake of team peace but his own. Considering everything had been put back to normal, that meant it had been put to rights. Put behind him. His personality and priorities were back in working order. He could think straight again, clean and clear of the relentless, hyperactive itch to find the fun, fun, fun, fun, fun! in everything.

The personality modifier would leave no lingering effects, Donatello reported. Leonardo was fine.

So he should be feeling fine anytime now. All well and good. Even after Raphael pulled a 180° on a dime and asked Donatello if there was a chance the modifier was still working. He didn’t have to pick the question apart or misconstrue it as anything more than it was. It was just a joke. (Right? So why did it feel like a threat?) Contrary to popular belief, he did know how to take a joke, even when he was just…regular ol’ Leonardo.

The regular ol’ stick in the mud, bossy, no fun, lame-o Leonardo. When Splinter spoke up for him with a timely reminder about appreciating everyone for their differences, it came as a balm to that lingering twinge of tension in his chest…

But what if, the pointing finger of doubt ever scratching at the back of his brain nagged, Sensei’s intervention only further proved the point in the others’ minds that Leonardo was the teacher’s pet? The most successful suck-up? Of course Splinter would stand up for him and his way of life as another up-and-coming “fuddy-duddy.”

Shame flushed his face and neck, not for the first time. The modifier may have messed with his temperament but unfortunately not his memory. Leonardo was still struggling to process the fact that he had really said that about his beloved master at all, much less in front of the others. What a terrible example to set, what a cruel thought to put forth into their heads.

Worse, he had to wonder: had that been something within his real subconscious talking? He loved Master Splinter, he valued his teaching immensely! He wouldn’t know what to do or…who he would be…without it. How could he have disrespected Splinter that way behind his back after he trusted him to be in charge? He could only hope the others hadn’t told their sensei that part when he returned home and they filled him in on what he had done.

(What they had done to him. What Raphael would apparently be willing to do again, if his “joke” actually held any water. Leonardo’s heart clenched.)

He should be fine. He had no right to make a big deal out of it now that it was already said and done. They had realized what they did was wrong and they had fixed it…eventually, when they needed him to get them out of the jam with Cleff and save the city. When his cutting edge proved useful.

(Was that what he was to them? Useful, not valuable?)

Now he was just being silly. Of course they cared about him beyond his usefulness. They just…hadn’t shown it very well this time around.

Come to think of it, even when he was supposedly the much more fun, interesting, playful pal they had always wanted, they hadn’t met him in the middle. Raphael didn’t strike up some witty banter or watch TV with him. Michelangelo didn’t play around or prepare pizza dough with him. Instead he got to make himself useful by coming when they called—not for him but for their dinner.

At the time he was so immersed in perfecting his prank turkey and his frivolous French chef act, it hadn’t really occurred to him how grating it was when Raphael whistled for him, like a servant or a dog.

(Was that all they really wanted?)

After fifteen years he was pretty used to picking up some of their slack and their flak. Seventy percent of the time, he didn’t even mind. He wanted to help; he enjoyed helping the people around him. That’s just…who he was. Another fifteen percent of the time, he sucked it up and did it anyway. Was the other fifteen percent where he pushed them to do more, do better, really so glaringly overbearing that they had to turn the whole turtle topsy-turvy? Throw the bud out with the bathwater?

What did that say about him, that they would rather shoot him than spend more time with him and the stick up his shell?

Were he and his straight laces really so…insufferable when they weren’t of good use? So when was that? On the field, naturally, when his apparent bossiness had a justifiable context to be interpreted as firm, solid leadership. That’s why he was their “numero uno dude” but…when else? What else? What else could he give them? Where was that elusive, perfect balance between fun and firm?

Not here, apparently. Not in him. Why else would they have resorted to such drastic, dangerous measures from the get-go to shift the balance themselves? They must have figured out that the real Leonardo, such as he was, couldn’t measure up.

He was spiraling, he knew, blowing it all out of proportion. He wasn’t being rational. Feelings were rarely ever rational, Master Splinter would probably say. They just were—and what they were right now amounted to a squeezing, burning sensation in his eyes and throat and ribs that would undoubtedly make his deep breathing exercises close to impossible, much less the workout to follow.

The last thing he wanted was to falter in one of the solid, steady (useful) skills he had to his name. He didn’t want to disappoint Splinter too…any more than he already must have by becoming so unruly in his absence.

Not by choice.

Which would disappoint him more, fumbling in class or failing to be there? Which would be more embarrassing?

Class, definitely. After all of his fruitless nagging and needling at the others for their lack of discipline and determination, he wasn’t about to let them see him so far off his game. (Though they’d probably get a good laugh out of it. Was that what they wanted?) If anyone came looking for him to explain his absence, he would cite a stomachache. It was true enough.

The shadow of doubt scoffed, swatted a stinging, dismissive hand at the back of his head. Why would they come looking? They’d be all too happy to shrug it off, skip out of the empty dojo and return to their shows. They’d be happier without him.

More power to them. He wasn’t his brothers’ keeper. He shouldn’t be, at least. (They didn’t want him to be.) They were Master Splinter’s problem, Master Splinter’s to keep in line and in class and in check—until the next time he decided to go on sabbatical.

And then what?

Donatello wasn’t one to discard any of his inventions willy-nilly.

“Donatello, is that personality modifier still working?”

It took less than a day for Raphael to ask. So soon to forget. So quick to turn on him.

They had seen the fallout; they wouldn’t dare do it again, Leonardo assured himself viciously, all the way down the hall to his room, all the way under his covers. They didn’t want to hurt him.

They just didn’t want him.

Nope, nope, nope. No, thanks. He wasn’t about to touch an intrusive thought like that.

But the fact that it had any reason to slip through the cracks to reach him at all…The fact that there was a chance, however slim, for them to cave to their impulse and simple annoyance and do it again was…disconcerting. More so than he wanted to admit.

So he wouldn’t. He would curl deeper into his pillow, dig his nails into the blankets and stay there until he was fine with them and with himself.

He’d make it fine. Somehow. If anyone could use some overbearing right now to get back in shipshape, it was him. He was the one still making it a problem. He was the problem.

Maybe he had been all along.

He wasn’t sure how long he had been in bed before Master Splinter loomed over him but it wasn’t long enough to be fine. A warm paw brushed his shoulder.

“Leonardo? Are you alright?”

“Ah, me? Alright? I never felt better in my life!”

He was trying and failing to muster the will to roll over and face Splinter while he spoke to him. That would be the polite thing to do but he didn’t want him to see the stupid, superfluous tears pricking his eyes.

“It is unlike you to be late to class, much less miss it entirely,” Splinter remarked, as if he needed the reminder. “You were missed.”

By you, maybe. “…Just a stomachache,” he muttered, at least turning his head a little further toward him. “But it’s…it doesn’t matter. I’ll get over it.”

Splinter hummed pensively, thumbing at a knot of tension in Leonardo’s shoulder that he hadn’t realized was there. “I take it you will not be joining us for dinner then either?”

“Probably not. Wouldn’t want to spoil everyone else’s appetites.” He bit the inside of his cheek in self-reproach. Did he sound too bitter? Don’t start. Don’t be such a downer. “…By worrying anyone, I mean. Nobody has to worry, I’ll be fine. I’m sorry.”

“Feeling unwell is nothing to apologize for,” Splinter said after a pregnant pause. Leonardo almost wished he had rolled over so he could analyze his expression, get a feel for whatever he might be thinking. “If there is anything your fellow turtles or I can do to help, please do not hesitate to ask.”

“Okay.”

Splinter wasn’t stupid. With a keen sense of every one of his students and excellent hearing besides, he could tell it was just a token “Okay” to brush the offer away but there was something else too, a sorrow that would be nigh imperceptible if Leonardo were up to the challenge of actively trying to mask it.

Donatello had denied the possibility of any lasting side effects from the modifier but this wouldn’t be the first time one of his inventions defied his expectations. Leonardo was a special case. He may be having some trouble settling back to normal after such a stark shift in his character. After the Musketeer incident he had suffered a number of headaches while he adjusted back to reality; this was not the first time his true sense of self had been forcibly displaced.

This did, however, mark the first time it had happened by his fellow turtles’ hands.

Leonardo had been out skateboarding when they confessed what they had done to their master. He hadn’t been witness to the chastising they received for their lack of care and forethought. Had they actually apologized to Leonardo yet as Splinter instructed or had they assumed coming back together to defeat Cleff would do all the talking for them?

Wordlessly he tightened his grip on Leonardo’s shoulder, stifling a sigh and a sinking heart when he felt him struggling to suppress how it shook. His students faced every clash in the city with courage. Conflict on their home field, however, could not be resolved by the same methods. How must it feel to receive no consideration or consolation for what came before, only a cursory pat once he had contributed to their victory?

When he broached that subject at the dinner table, it was clear Leonardo need not be present for them to lose their appetites. Donatello’s eyes flicked nervously toward the bedrooms. Raphael picked restlessly at a piece of pepperoni. Michelangelo squirmed.

“I was going to talk to him,” Donatello ventured. “When I had a good opportunity. I was going to tell him I plan on dismantling the modifier.”

“And was there no opportunity on the drive home, when you were all together?” Splinter countered pointedly. “No opportunity before taking the time to heat up your pizza, gather on the couch and watch Ms. O’Neil’s news report? As Leonardo pointed out, you could have seen it in reruns and instead made use of that valuable time for amends.”

“Well…um…”

“Does it really need saying, Sensei?” Raphael agitatedly flicked the pepperoni back onto his plate. “Leonardo knows we care about him and all. Why else would we have gone to all that trouble to get him back to normal?”

“It does not ring as particularly reassuring or sincere when ‘all that trouble’ was to recant on a decision you made for him, about him, without his consent and without considering the consequences. This is one of those consequences. And if you care about him as much as you claim—” Splinter was glad to see Raphael bristle at the “if”. He should take issue with there ever being cause for an “if”. “—surely it would be worth any trouble to remind him just how much.”

“He’s right, amigos. He usually is…It was mondo uncool. Leonardo deserves to know we know that,” Michelangelo admitted reluctantly, pushing his chair back to grab another plate for one of the spare slices. “The least we can do is bring him some comfort food for that convo.”

The pizza did not prove comforting. It wasn’t even given a chance; the plate was pushed onto the nightstand with a grating scrape as soon as Leonardo sat up in his bed.

“Thanks but no, thanks. I’m not hungry. If I had wanted my dinner brought to me, I would’ve whistled for it.”

Raphael tried not to cringe, rather unsuccessfully. “Okay, yeah, I deserve that. It was dumb. The whole thing was dumb but we’re real sorry and all, Leonardo. You know that, right? We weren’t trying to…We just wanted you to…”

“Lighten up? Take my sworn duty of caring for our home and our team and our health and fitness less seriously?”

“We didn’t get it before…but we’re gonna do better, bud, about appreciating everything you do around here,” Michelangelo assured earnestly. “It wouldn’t get done without you, the real you.”

“And what exactly is the ‘real me’ to you guys?” he challenged. “The nag? The stick in the mud? The wet blanket?”

“Our leader. Our pal.”

“Really? Because good pals…good teammates don’t do what you guys did.” Leonardo shook his head, frustration and helplessness at war in his face. “You fight beside me, you train with me—when you feel like it, at least. You eat with me, you live with me, but do you…do you like me or are you just putting up with me?”

Michelangelo sputtered, aghast. “What kind of question is that? We love you, dude!”

“Do you? The real me, warts and all? The one you wanted so badly to be free of? Rid of? I get exasperated all the time with your bad habits: Michelangelo skipping out on practice, Donatello neglecting self-care and lab safety, Raphael cracking a joke in the wrong place at the wrong time. But even when I pester you about it, even when I push you to improve—even when I push too hard, because I know sometimes I do—I would never, never go so far as to shoot you with some untested personality destabilizer doohickey as some magical quick fix! You say you were against it, Donatello, but the fact that you have one in the first place says a lot.”

“I won’t after today,” Donatello insisted firmly. “I’m scrapping it.”

Leonardo sighed, though there wasn’t as much relief in it as Donatello would have expected or hoped. “Sure. Because if you didn’t, who’s to say someone wouldn’t eagerly ask after it again the next time I’m a little too bossy for their tastes?” His eyes flitted to Raphael, the sharpness in them blunted by a telltale shine. Raphael swallowed hard, rolled his shoulders uncomfortably.

“Look, I-I wasn’t—It was just—”

“A joke,” Leonardo finished for him, tiredly, dejectedly, slumping back into his pillows. “Well, it wasn’t funny. None of this was funny. Living with the time I spent as a—a parody, to heck with all of the rules and values I’ve built my whole life around for good reason and common sense. Being forced to live with the memory of that guy going against everything I believe in, just brushing off the lives of everyone in ‘one measly city’ so he could go surfing? That’s not funny. It’s never gonna be funny. But that’s my problem to deal with, isn’t it? That’s me, your numero uno dude, just rolling with the punches, learning how to live with myself. It’s hard. And the only reason I’m so good at it is because I take it seriously. All of me. My…unfunny, un-fun, unlikeable…unwanted self.”

“Leonardo!”

“That’s not true!”

“We never said you weren’t wanted!”

“Well, what do you want?!” His voice and composure cracked as he threw up shaking hands. “What did I do to make you think you couldn’t just talk to me, that there was no other way? Anything but that? What did I do to deserve you jumping the literal gun and reducing me to that? Y-You’re my best friends! How could you do that to me?!”

To no one’s surprise Michelangelo was the first to dart over, scramble onto the bed and drag him into a hug. Leonardo only resisted for a moment or two, just long enough to give him a spiteful shove to the plastron before his anger caved to grief and he crumpled, burying his tearstained face against him. Donatello approached more gingerly, resting a tentative hand on his shell. Raphael kept his head down as he scooted slowly to perch on the end of the bed, close but not touching.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, barely loud enough to be heard over Leonardo’s sniffles. “It was wrong. It was stupid and selfish and shortsighted and…mean.” What kind of example was that to set for the kids? “We didn’t know how drastic the change was gonna be when we went looking for the modifier but that’s no excuse. This team’s a four-way street. We should’ve put in the work to walk the walk and talk it out with you but it was just…easier to pull a fast one out of Donatello’s box of tricks.”

A lot easier than it should have been for them to put someone they cared about at risk.

“It shouldn’t have been in my box of tricks in the first place. I knew it could be dangerous when I first drafted the blueprints. I went through with building it because I…I just wanted to find out if I could.” Donatello’s voice was small. “I guess now we know. I sincerely wish we didn’t. Messing with people’s minds and emotions, that’s not ethical science…That’s more up Shredder and Krang’s alley.” The sooner he disassembled the thing the better. If those two were ever to get their hands on it…Donatello didn’t want to consider. “I’m really sorry, Leonardo. I knew better and you deserved better.”

“I’m so sorry, man.” Even muffled with his face tucked against the crown of Leonardo’s head, Michelangelo’s words squeaked with emotion. Crying in front of him was always contagious. “I meant what I said before, a-about you being our number one. I thought that would be enough. I was…yeah, okay, I’ll say it, I was slacking off again, hoping to get out of a mondo serioso talk like this. Master Splinter already gave us an earful but when you got snapped out of it and you were all business as usual, I thought…well, maybe that was just the end of it and we were cool. Easy peasy. I should’ve known better too.”

“I didn’t want a big blowout like this either,” Leonardo choked out. “I t-tried to be cool about it but…”

“But it wasn’t cool,” Michelangelo mumbled mournfully. “Here I am, the ‘feel your big feelings, ride ’em all the way out’ kinda guy and I didn’t want to give you the chance to.”

“…That wasn’t all on you. I was already trying not to feel them the second I was myself again.” Leonardo heaved another, shakier sigh. “I guess it wasn’t fair of me to expect any of you to realize it was still bothering me…You’re not mind readers.”

“But we’re your friends. We should’ve known. We know you, Leonardo.”

That stirred another tremulous sob that he barely bit back. Donatello offered a well-timed pat to the shell to shake it out properly. Once the first broke free, there was no stopping the rest. Michelangelo rode it out with him, whispering soothing nothings—and everythings.

“We like you, okay? I promise. You’re our best bud too…I’m sorry we weren’t the best to you. We do like you; we like you all for you. All for one and one for all, remember? We’d be such a mess without you—and we were. Three’s not an even number; you keep us even, you keep us going and…we don’t always make it fun for you. But that other guy was really no fun at all, for anyone. We missed you. We didn’t just need you back, we wanted you. All the Swiss cheese I’ve been having on my pizza must’ve put some holes in my head; I don’t know how else I could’ve forgot we want you. And I’m not gonna let you forget it either.”

“Seconded,” Donatello said softly.

“At the end of the day, a wet blanket is still a blanket.” Raphael finally dared to reach, put a hand on his nearest knee. “Our blanket.”

Their security blanket, warm and welcoming…and worn down, frayed at the nerves.

Everything else Leonardo was besides a wagging finger—the thoughtful second opinion and keen eye when Donatello couldn’t pinpoint where the problem was in his project, the stoic front presenting a challenge, a worthy opponent against whom Raphael could properly test his wisecracks, the voice pushing Michelangelo to reach within himself beyond raw talent to refined ninja skills because he believed in him and his potential to do so—they could have unraveled him and lost it all. On a whim. Donatello had told them the modifier wasn’t perfected yet. What if they couldn’t have brought him back?

They really hadn’t thought this through. Michelangelo suppressed a shudder, tucking him closer. “Y’know what, I never would’ve tried to skip out on this talk if I knew it meant big hugs like this too. You give primo hugs. Yes, even when you’re blubbering all over me. C’mon, how many times have you been my shoulder to cry on? I owe you one or two…dozen, give or take. You sit tight as long as you want, compadre; it’s high time I give and you take.”