♉️

Raph 🍓

You came home one day, stomach aching like it never had before. You knew you dealt with intense cramps when this time of the month would roll around. But, this bad? These cramps were quite literally the equivalent of tiny little needles stabbing their way around your guts, aiming again and again and again as if they’d missed. 

Raph was supposed to come over that day. Instead of finding a typically happy, enthusiastic you, who was supposed to be cheerily waiting for him to arrive; he found an unusually depressed you, hunched over in half on your bed, your fetal position a clear indicator that something was very very very wrong. 

He has no idea what’s going on at first– he was in no way whatsoever attentive to the hot water bottle you had laying on your stomach, not to the chocolate, not to the old and tattered towel under you, not to the running shower water you had on in the background...

Raph immediately ran up to you as he noticed stains of… was that… blood on the towel? What in the world?!

“You're bleeding?! Who did this?! Does Raph need to hurt somebody?!” 

Well, that cheered you up a little bit. Oh, how he’s so willing to fight for you– but has such little idea about how the female body works. It made sense, a little bit. They were trained for war. Literally. If the biggest, most war-torn turtle saw blood on his partner– he was bound to give in to his protective instincts. 

You manage a weak, pained sound. Something of a laugh and groan, and you grab his wrist before he can move.

“Raph—no—no, it’s not—” you wince. “It’s just cramps.”

Well, now, why would you be folded in half for cramps this bad if you haven’t been, I don’t know, stabbed beforehand? The red-clad turtle was confused. Empathetic, but confused. 

It took a minute for you to register that your beloved mutant seriously, whole-heartedly, hadn’t the slightest clue what a period was. Oh, heavens. 

“…Raph,” you start, already tired. “Do you know what a period is?”

“Duh. Yeah, they go at the end of a sentence? Ain’t that obvious?” He puts his three fingered hand under his chin. 

It pained you to sit up, but you pat the spot next to you in hopes he comes to sit. Or, best case scenario, he gets behind you and puts those warm hands of his on your stomach. Yeah, that’s what you want. He initially sits next to you, but you flip over and push him down with a finger to get your way. 

You spend the next fifteen minutes explaining to him one of the most excruciating experiences of girlhood– how women spend around a week out of every month bleeding and aching whilst having no other option but to put up with the world around them. 

He did admit-- when you told him that bleeding every month was a normal thing, it made slight sense to him why there was a more metallic scent around the lair. He didn’t dare admit he could sense that to your face. 

Raph physically shakes his head to snap out of it. His giant feet swing around you, standing up– you nearly cry from disappointment that his oh-so-warm hands have left your abdomen. 

“Okay—okay, what helps? Meds? Water? Talk to me.” The snapping turtle leaves, making an absolute mess out in your kitchen from rummaging through your cabinets, and returns with wayyy too many items! A reheated water bottle, chocolate, blankets, pain meds, your favorite snacks. Big guy thought of it all. 💕

“Alright, I got stuff. I don’t know if it’s the right stuff, but Raph's got stuff.”

He looks way too proud of himself for someone who just tore through your kitchen like a hurricane. That mood settles when he sees your face peeking out from your blankets, sleepily. Cozily. More exhausted than he likes to see you be. He can fix that. 

He sets everything down a little too fast, then immediately slows himself, remembering you’re not exactly in the condition to deal with his usual energy.

Raph sets everything down on the nightstand next to you, ready to handle you like a fragile little baby. He places the reheated water bottle down on your stomach gently. Of course, it was gentle. He immediately notices a tiny little shift in your face. You liked that. Heat seemed to be a source of comfort for you. He can work with that, right? 

The turtle stands there for a few seconds… unsure of what he was supposed to do. Offer you words of comfort? Physical comfort? All of it? He’s down to do anything, obviously! He’s a snuggly reptile. He’ll cuddle you any chance he gets. 

Raphael sits down beside you, the bed sinking as he does so. He winces, but continues his route downwards to you. You shift closer into him, seeking nothing but warmth. His arm hovers awkwardly above you; but he eventually settles his hand around your waist, allowing the heat from his body to encase your own. 

Oh. That helps, you thought. 

You let out a slow breath, your forehead pressing lightly, backwards, against his plastron. It was silent for a little bit. Comfortably. You two could stay silent for hours in each others presence. 

“…You deal with this every month?” He mumbled. You nod against him; Raph sighs into your neck. His thumb starts circling around your waist. 

“Tell me if I’m makin’ it worse,” he adds. You nod again. 

That was the first time you’ve been able to fall asleep with no pain, in the last week. 

Donnie 🍇

Unlike Raph, Donnie has taken the liberty of teaching himself quite literally everything about the human body ever since he met April.

Periods are nothing new to him. Nothing scary, either. They’ve faced way worse. Kraang invasions, The Shredder, the Foot Clan. Blood is not a new concept. He is not scared of a little monthly hormonal dysfunction.

What Donnie was scared of was your emotional influx. Not April's. Not Cassandra's. He highly cared about the two, obviously, but you came first. Whether it be an increase in your sadness, anger, irritability, fatigue– he hated seeing you anything other than a perfectly happy state! So when you came into his lab, tears breaking through the corners of your eyes, begging for some sort of medicine— ibuprofen, tylenol, god, did he have any of it? Donnie was up and out of his chair immediately. 

Verbally, what was he supposed to say? His hands kind of wave around for a minute, confused as to what he was supposed to do. He was struggling. What did you need it for? Maybe he could find something more effective to help you? Talk to him? Please?!

“I—yes—obviously, I have pain relievers, that’s—hold on, give me two seconds, I have a system for this? Oh, Sweet Galileo, this is a lot,  what are your current symp-”

You take matters into your own hands, god forbid. You huff a breath of air and snatch a bottle of medicine out of his desk drawer, counting out your dosage like you’d done a million times before. 

In the midst of shoving the drawer shut with your foot, Donnie turns back around from his little ramble session. Oh, how you loved him, but those got tiring sometimes. Especially when all you wanted from him right now was his comfort. You softly take a step forward and place a hand over his mouth. “Sweetheart, please be quiet. I love you. And your rambles. But just for a second.” 

His drawn-on eyebrows furrow, confused. What? You didn’t want to hear him yap about whatever your symptoms could possibly mean? Ah, well. There was always next time. Donnie’s hands came down to fold above his plastron. What was going on with you? 

After a minute of digesting the situation, observing you solely based on your physical appearance, he made a guess; simply just a shot in the dark. You had a comfy blanket tossed over your shoulder, dark circles under your eyes that weren’t usually this prominent, and a giant red indented marking above your abdomen from where your shirt lifted up? Likely from a heat source, the softshell had thought. Ah. She’s on her period. 

Donnie pulls his workbench chair over to you with his foot, the rolling piece of furniture settling right under your legs. “Okay. You have Ibuprofen. Here’s some water. Sit. Please sit.” His voice is softer. Still analytically commanding, as he usually is, when he’s in this setting. His lab. You barely make it onto the edge of his chair before he’s pushing it closer to his workbench so you don’t have to move again. It didn’t take long for Donnie to go doctor mode on you. 

“Okie-dokes. Scale of one to ten,” he says quickly, crouching in front of you now, goggles pushed up onto his head. “Can you tell me your pain level?”

You chuckle, the pain ultimately causing you to wince a bit. “Nine.” You say, voice firm. 

Donnie does not like that number. 

He quickly grabs a pre-made heat pack from a drawer—the softshell always keeps extras in his lab for April, and occasionally, some of his brothers, when they get sick, or inevitably hurt themselves doing something stupid. He gently lifts your shirt up an inch to place the warmth directly over your cramping abdomen. You sink back into the chair, letting out a small sigh of relief. The material was softer, you noticed! Softer than the harsh, scratchy material your personal heating pad was made of. This felt like it was made from old fabrics. Encased in it, at least. 

"Good. Warmth. Now, tell me about other symptoms. Nausea? Headache? Fatigue?" He rattles off the list, already grabbing a small notebook and pen from his largest desk to document everything. 

Old habits die hard, even when he’s tending to his beloved.

You answer him in short, tired bursts. Headache, yes. Fatigue, absolutely. The pain was easing by the second with the makeshift heating pad. Maybe it was just talking to him that helped. 

You give him the benefit of the doubt, allowing him to help you like this. It was a win-win situation. You felt better. He got to nerd out about… menstruation. And helping his partner, of course. 

"Based on my immediate observational data and your self-reported symptoms," he announces, turning back to you, "the ibuprofen should take effect in approximately 20 to 30 minutes. In the interim, maintaining hydration is paramount, as is continued thermal regulation." In simpler terms, he wanted you to continue drinking water and applying heat to your body where you needed it. On your stomach. 

He hands you a bottle of water he pulled from a mini-fridge he keeps hidden in a panel.

You were far too busy slumping down in the chair and dozing off in comfort before you realized that Donnie has done something… unexpected, considering his typical behavior regarding having to aid with human emotions. Donnie does not go back to work. Donnie does not hide away in a deeper corner of his lab. Donnie does not ignore you entirely. (He would never do that in general. Not to you, at least. Maybe to Leo.) 

He pulls up a smaller, more ergonomic stool next to his workbench chair. He takes off his goggles and gloves, setting them aside. He turns his full attention to you, placing a gentle three-fingered hand on your forehead to check your temperature.

"I’ll put all of my current projects on hold," he says, his voice losing its clinical edge and gaining a soft, comforting tone. "You need to rest. Can’t say I’m a fan of how out of it you look right now, love."

Donnie starts to explain the whole shebang behind menstruation and reproductive processes in women. He knew distractions worked for you. If annoying the hell out of you with his ramblings is what worked, so be it. He would have done it anyway. 

Once he's satisfied you're sufficiently distracted and informed, he shifts his position slightly, leaning his plastron against your covered legs as he crouches down from his chair. He reaches out a hand, finding yours, and laces your fingers together.

"Just rest, darling," he murmurs, gently stroking your hand with his thumb. "Let the medication work. I’ll be right here.” 

Your eyes drift off to sleep. It’s comforting, knowing that he treated you like this; with such care for something that happens so painfully every month. His fingers stroked your hair as your breathing steadied, one hand massaging your scalp and one hand typing away at his computer; coding something, who knows. You didn’t care. 

Hm. He was really good at this. 

╰♥︎ ╮

someone tell me if the tiny subscript font is unreadable or if it sucks. i will change it if so hahaha. only plan on using that for headcanons, not actual fics, if y'all prefer it!

The digital clock on the bedside table flips.

12:00 AM.

Meet me at midnight, he had texted you earlier today, right in the middle of a chaotic board meeting at the towering glass-and-steel headquarters of Genius Built. My brothers are currently banned from the penthouse for a minimum of forty-eight hours due to Leo’s unforgivable misuse of my espresso machine. The premises are secure. Bring yourself.

And so you did. You always do.

Now, you are lying flat on your back, staring up at the ceiling with him.

The expansive ceiling of Donnie’s penthouse master bedroom is not a flat, boring expanse of drywall. It is a shifting, mapped projection of the cosmos, overlaid with complex, slowly rotating geometric algorithms that he insists help him relax. But tonight, he has dimmed the neon of his signature purple tech down to a soft, diffused glow.

The color bleeds into the dark space of the room, casting a velvet, violet light over the white sheets, over your skin, and over Donnie’s green scales. Beside you, Donnie shifts, his hand finding yours in the space between your bodies. His thumb, slightly calloused from hours of tinkering with micro-soldering irons and other machinery, brushes over your knuckles.

He doesn’t ask you what’s wrong. He never says too much when you get like this. You’ve always appreciated that about him.

With Donnie, there is a mutual understanding of boundaries and emotional bandwidth. He is a genius of unparalleled proportions, the mutant who brought New York City into a new age of technological advancement with Genius Built, a company that skyrocketed him to the status of a multi-millionaire tech mogul. He understands complex data, intricate workings, and mechanics.

But he also understands that sometimes, your brain just short-circuits. He doesn’t poke and prod, nor does he demand you verbalize the heavy, sinking weight in your chest. He doesn’t really read into your melancholia; he simply offers his presence as an anchor until the storm passes.

And lately, it has been a veritable hurricane.

You sigh.

“Your heart rate is currently elevated by twelve percent compared to your usual resting baseline,” he murmurs, his resonant voice breaking the silence. He doesn’t turn his head to look at you, his brows relaxed as he continues to stare at the constellations above. “I can only assume your mind is running on that horrific hamster wheel of anxiety again. Should I deploy the weighted blanket? Or perhaps initiate protocol ‘Distract with Mindless Reality Television’?”

A small, genuine smile tugs at the corner of your lips. “No. No weighted blanket tonight, Dee. I’m okay. Just … thinking.”

“Ah. Thinking. A dangerous pastime.” He squeezes your hand. “Particularly for you, considering the sheer volume of idiocy the general public has been hurling in your direction.”

He says it so casually, stating it as a simple fact rather than a tragedy, and that is exactly why you love him.

You have been under the most intense, suffocating scrutiny for the past six months. It started the day the paparazzi finally managed to capture a clear photograph of the two of you leaving a high-profile charity gala. Until then, Donatello Hamato was known as the eccentric, reclusive mutant CEO of Genius Built. He was a hero to the city, an enigma to the press, and notoriously private.

Then, suddenly, there you were. A human woman. Holding his hand. Wearing a dress that perfectly color-coordinated with his signature purple attire.

The world lost its collective mind.

All this is entirely new to you. You are not a celebrity, not a mutant hero who has saved the world from the Krang. You were just a normal woman living a normal life in New York until you bumped into the smartest, most arrogant, most incredibly endearing turtle on the planet. The transition from anonymity to being the focal point of a media frenzy has been nothing short of a nightmare.

The flash of the cameras blinding you as you try to enter your favorite coffee shop. The endless, invasive articles analyzing your body language, your clothing, your background. The vicious comments section of every blog post, dissecting your worthiness to stand beside someone as wealthy and influential as him.

But Donnie? Donnie handles it beautifully.

You vividly remember the scene just three days ago outside the Genius Built lobby. You had gone to bring him lunch, a naive mistake during peak tabloid hours. A swarm of reporters had descended upon you the moment your foot touched the pavement. They had shoved microphones into your face, their voices blending into a cacophony of demanding, invasive noise.

“Is it true you’re only with him for the Genius Built fortune?!”

“How do his brothers feel about you?!”

“Are you a PR stunt?!”

You had frozen, your breath catching in your throat, the panic rising hot and fast. But before the anxiety could fully consume you, the reinforced glass doors of the lobby had slid open, and there he was. Donnie had stepped out, flanked by his personal security drones, radiating an aura of absolute, unbothered superiority.

He hadn’t yelled. Hadn’t panicked. He had simply walked down the steps, his posture impeccable, wrapped an arm securely around your waist, and tapped a button on his wrist pad. A localized, shimmering purple forcefield had instantly snapped into existence around the two of you, silencing the barrage of questions into a dull, muffled hum.

He rolled his eyes as he guided you safely into the building, not sparing the press a single glance. He had looked only at you. “Are you unharmed, my dear? Their flash photography is entirely offensive to the retinas.”

He had completely ignored the scrutiny. He didn’t care what they said about him, and he genuinely couldn’t fathom why anyone would care what they said about you. Because he knew you, and to him, his assessment was the only one that mattered.

Lying here now, staring at the ceiling, you feel that same protective barrier around you, metaphorically speaking. “I’m fine, Donnie,” you whisper, finally turning your head to look at him. The lavender glow illuminates his striking profile. “Just … tired.”

“Understandable,” Donnie replies, finally turning his head to meet your gaze. His eyes are sharp, analytical, but infinitely soft when they land on you. “The sheer audacity of the media is exhausting. I could, if you wish, route all of their IP addresses to a server located in a remote research facility in Antarctica. It wouldn’t stop the print media, but it would certainly cripple their digital footprint for a solid week.”

You laugh softly, the sound bubbling up from the melancholia that had been threatening to drown you. “As tempting as that is, you can’t wage cyber warfare on TMZ and The Daily Mail, Dee.”

“I am the CEO of Genius Built. I can wage cyber warfare on whomever I please,” he counters smoothly, shifting onto his side to face you fully. He props his head up on one hand, his plastron pressing lightly against your side. “But I will refrain, simply because you asked. Though I reserve the right to deploy EMPs if they camp outside your apartment again.”

You reach out, tracing the edge of his purple mask. He leans into your touch instinctively, a stark contrast to the aloof, untouchable millionaire the world sees. The world doesn’t know this Donnie. The world doesn’t know how he hums songs under his breath when he’s focused, or how he physically cannot sleep unless he knows you are safe, or how his scales are surprisingly warm to the touch.

This life, this man—this giant, brilliant, mutant turtle—it all feels like a dream that you somehow stumbled into. And when you are in this room, locked away from the cameras and the microphones, you shouldn’t give a damn what people say. Because in this space, there is no deal to be made with the public.

There is only you and him.

But the outside world is loud, and the echoes of it still ring in your ears.

“It’s just …” you start, your voice faltering slightly. You pull your hand back, fidgeting with the edge of the duvet. “It’s the stuff they write. The narratives they try to force on us.”

Donnie frowns, the drawn-on lines above his eyes furrowing. “Narratives? You mean the baseless speculation regarding our relationship dynamic?”

“Yes.” You let out a frustrated breath. “It’s so archaic. It’s like they’re trying to force me into this 1950s box.”

It’s true.

The media has seemingly decided that there are only two possible roles for a woman dating a powerful, wealthy man, mutant or otherwise. All they keep asking you, all they keep shouting at you through the camera flashes, is if you’re going to be his bride. They analyze the ring finger on your left hand in every photograph. They run speculative polls on morning talk shows about when the “Genius Built Wedding” will be.

And on the flip side, the darker corners of the internet paint you as a gold-digger. A one-night stand that somehow managed to overstay her welcome. They insist you’re just a temporary distraction for the great Donatello, a fleeting human amusement.

The only kind of woman they see is a temporary fling or a wife. There is no nuance. There is no room for the reality: that you are simply two people (well, one human and one mutant turtle) deeply, madly in love, trying to navigate a partnership. You don’t want the pressure of a highly publicized, circus-like wedding. You don’t want to be reduced to a trophy.

You just want him.

“They want to neatly categorize you,” Donnie says, his tone dripping with disdain. “Because ambiguity terrifies the simple-minded. They cannot comprehend a partnership built on mutual respect and intellectual equality, so they default to outdated, heteronormative societal tropes. It is, frankly, embarrassing for them.”

“I find it dizzying,” you admit, closing your eyes. “I can’t open my phone without seeing my own face. And … and they’re bringing up my history.”

That was the part that had triggered tonight’s melancholia.

Earlier this evening, before you came to the penthouse, an article had gone viral. Some opportunistic tabloid had tracked down your ex-boyfriend from three years ago—a bitter, insecure guy who was more than happy to accept a paycheck to spin lies about you.

He had painted you as erratic, manipulative, and desperate for fame. They had dug up old, embarrassing photos from your college days. They had scrutinized your old retail jobs, your student debt, every minor mistake you had ever made, all to craft a narrative that you were unworthy of the Genius Built empire.

You feel a sudden spike of shame, remembering the cruel headlines. You look away from Donnie, staring at the glowing stars on the ceiling again. “They interviewed Simon. They published all this garbage about me. It’s everywhere. Millions of people are reading about my past and judging me for it.”

Donnie is quiet for a moment. Then, he shifts closer. The mattress dips under his weight, and suddenly, he is right there, his face mere inches from yours. “My dear,” he says, his voice low, steady, and commanding in a way that demands your full attention. “Look at me.”

You turn your head back to him.

“Do you honestly believe I care about what some mediocre, emotionally stunted ape from your past has to say?” he asks, his eyes locking onto yours. “I didn’t read the article. I didn’t care to. But I am aware it exists because my AI flags any mention of your name in the press.”

“You … you knew about it?” you whisper.

“Of course I knew about it. I know everything,” he says, a hint of his usual arrogance bleeding through. “But you want to know what my reaction was?”

You swallow hard. “What?”

“I had my secondary servers scrub the more defamatory claims from the primary search engine algorithms, and then I instructed Shelldon to systematically flag the author’s personal email for high-volume spam relating to male pattern baldness.” Donnie smirks, a devious, satisfied little expression. “As for your ex? I wasn’t even listening to his pathetic attempts to remain relevant. I simply had his Wi-Fi throttled to dial-up speeds for the rest of his natural life. He will never stream a movie in HD again, let alone 4K.”

A surprised, watery laugh escapes your throat. “Donnie! You didn’t.”

“I absolutely did,” he replies, completely deadpan. “I consider it a measured and merciful response. The point is, my love, they are bringing up your history to a man who literally holds the future in his hands. Why would I look backward when I am standing right beside you?”

The words hit you right in the chest, warm and overwhelming. The anxiety that had been clawing at your throat all day begins to loosen its grip. “But the public—” you start.

He cuts you off by reaching out and gently taking your smartphone from the nightstand. He looks at it with deep disgust, as if it’s a piece of archaic, broken tech.

“Get it off my desk,” he says firmly.

“What?”

“It’s a metaphor,” Donnie says somewhat playfully, though his eyes remain serious. He tosses your phone onto a plush armchair across the room, out of sight and out of reach. “Let them talk their talk. Let them go viral. Let them trend on whatever mindless social media platform they prefer. It does not matter. The opinions of sheep do not concern the shepherd, nor do they concern the shepherd’s fiercely intelligent, incredibly beautiful partner.”

He reaches out, his large hands cupping your face. His thumbs brush away a stray tear you hadn’t realized had fallen. “I do not need their approval,” he continues, his voice softening into a tone he reserves only for you. “I just need this. You and I, in this penthouse, building our own world. Let them scream into the void. They cannot touch us here.”

You look into his eyes, illuminated by the purple ambient light, and you feel the last remnants of the outside world fall away. He is right. He is always right, but right now, he is right in the most important way possible.

The paparazzi, blogs, expectations, the demands for a wedding or a scandal—it’s all just noise. It’s a circus happening on a completely different planet. You don’t want to play their game. You don’t want to step out into the blinding, harsh flashbulbs of the paparazzi.

You just want to stay in this lavender haze.

“You’re right,” you breathe, leaning into his hands. “I know you’re right. It’s just hard to ignore it sometimes.”

“I am aware,” Donnie says softly. “Which is why I am here to serve as your highly effective, technologically advanced firewall. Against the media, against your exes, and against your own melancholia.”

He pulls you closer, and you go willingly, burying your face in the crook of his neck. He wraps his arms around you, his chin resting on the top of your head. The sheer size and strength of him is a physical barrier against the world. You can hear his steady heartbeat, a rhythmic, calming sound.

“I love you, Donnie,” you whisper into his skin.

You feel his arms tighten around you in a fierce, possessive hold. “And I love you. More than I love titanium plating. More than I love uranium-powered energy cores. It is, frankly, a statistical anomaly how much I love you.”

You smile, closing your eyes. That is the highest compliment Donatello Hamato could ever bestow upon a person.

The lights on the ceiling slowly rotate, casting soft, shifting shadows across the bed. The lavender haze is thick in the air, a surreal, insulating bubble. Out there, in the city below, people are likely still typing out angry comments. They are still debating your worth. They are still asking if you’re going to be his bride, or if you’re just a fling.

But you find that you truly, deeply, do not give a damn.

You aren’t playing their game. You aren’t giving them a statement, or a perfectly staged photo op, or a tearful interview. Let them talk. Let them go viral. Let them exhaust themselves trying to figure out the puzzle of your relationship. They will never understand it.

This space—this glowing, purple, midnight sanctuary—belongs only to you and him.

“Get some sleep, my dear,” Donnie murmurs, one of his hands gently stroking your hair. “The world will still be spinning on its axis tomorrow, and I will still be here to ignore it with you.”

“Okay,” you whisper, your body finally relaxing completely against him. The dizzying spin of the day has stopped. The history they tried to drag up feels like dust blowing away in the wind.

You watch the ambient violet light dance across the sheets. It’s surreal, this life you’ve chosen. It’s chaotic, heavily scrutinized, and terrifyingly public.

But as Donnie’s steady breathing lulls you into the edges of sleep, wrapped securely in his arms and hidden away in the highest tower in New York, you know one thing with absolute certainty.

You never want to leave Donatello Hamato’s side.

Above you, the sprawling, neon-lit grid of New York City is drowning in a torrential downpour. But down here, in the cramped, suffocating darkness of an abandoned boiler room beneath a forgotten Brooklyn warehouse, the storm is just a dull, echoing roar.

You press your back against the concrete wall, your chest heaving as you try to force air into your lungs. Your hands are shaking. You clench them into fists, squeezing your eyes shut, trying to banish the afterimages of the ambush that are still flashing behind your eyelids.

It was supposed to be a routine patrol. Just you, riding shotgun on the rooftops with the brothers, keeping eyes on a suspected Foot Clan smuggling route. But the remnants of Karai’s elite guard hadn’t just been smuggling tech; they had been waiting because they’d set a trap.

You remember the sudden, blinding flare of high-tech weaponry cutting through the dark. You remember the deafening crack of Donnie’s comms link instantly shattering into static in your earpiece. You remember the smoke, the smell of burning rain, and the collapsing steel scaffolding.

But mostly, you remember Leo.

When the perimeter blast went off, tearing the rooftop apart, he didn’t hesitate. His hypervigilant, tactical mind registered the fatal trajectory of the blast, and his massive frame moved with astonishing speed. He threw himself over you, a mountain of dense muscle and battle-scarred shell, completely enveloping you just as the world exploded into white-hot fire.

He became your shield—and he paid the price for it.

You turn your attention back to the center of the room. “Leo,” you breathe out, pushing yourself off the wall.

Leo is sitting on the floor, his back propped against a dead generator. Even stripped of his tactical harness and katanas, which you unceremoniously dropped by the rusted iron door, he takes up nearly the entire space. His size is usually a comfort, an imposing, unshakeable monument of strength. But right now, his chest heaves with shallow, ragged breaths.

“I’m fine,” he’d growled just a few minutes ago when you finally managed to drag him down the access ladder and into this hole.

It is his leader voice, the one he uses to keep his brothers in line. It’s the voice of the perfect soldier. The fearless commander. But you know him better than that. You see right through his acting, through this thin disguise he wears like a second armor. You hear the perfectly delivered lines he uses to convince the world that he feels no pain, that he feels no fear.

They don’t fool you. Not anymore.

You step closer to him, the soles of your boots splashing softly in a shallow puddle of rainwater and grime. The emergency glow stick you snapped earlier casts harsh, flickering green shadows across his face. His bandana is soaked and plastered to his skin; he squeezes his eyes shut in silent agony.

A deep, jagged gash cuts across his left shoulder and bites down into his bicep, courtesy of one of Karai’s specialized, electrified blades. It had pierced right into his shoulder and tore into the dense muscle beneath right before it had fried his localized comms. The temporary wraps you applied have already soaked through.

“Leo, sit still,” you murmur, dropping to your knees beside him. Your hands are still trembling, but you force them steady as you tear open a fresh pack of medical gauze from the emergency kit strapped to your thigh.

He doesn’t open his eyes. “I told you,” he murmurs, his voice cracking at the edges, “I’m fine. Save the supplies.”

“You’re not fine,” you snap, your voice fierce despite the panic clawing furiously at your throat. “You’re bleeding through the wraps, our comms are completely fried, and we haven’t heard from Donnie, Raph, or Mikey in three hours.”

You kneel directly between his legs, forcing your presence into his immediate space so he can’t ignore you. You reach out, gripping his clammy jaw, forcing him to open his eyes and look at you. “So for once in your life, Leo, shut up and let me fix it.”

His blue eyes, normally so hyper-focused, calculating, and distant, search your face. For a long, agonizing second, the stoic leader slowly fades. The walls he has built around himself—walls made of duty, honor, and self-sacrifice—waver. What is left behind is something exhausted and terrifyingly vulnerable.

“Okay,” he rumbles softly, the fight completely draining out of him. His head drops back against the generator with a thud.

You go to work, your jaw set in grim determination.

You pull out a pair of shears and carefully cut away the wraps and the shredded straps of his remaining armor. You toss the ruined gear aside, leaving his chest and left arm entirely bare. As you gently press an antiseptic-soaked cloth to the wound, a sharp tremor runs through his entire frame. It’s an involuntary reaction to the pain, but he bites back a groan, his jaw clenching so hard you can hear his teeth grinding.

Suddenly, his hand flies out, his fingers locking entirely around your wrist.

You freeze, your breath catching in your throat. He doesn’t squeeze—he knows his own strength perfectly, knows he could crush your fragile human bones into dust if he isn’t careful—but the heat radiating from his palm is staggering against your cold, rain-slicked skin.

You look up from his shoulder, meeting his gaze. The mask is slipping further. You can see it in his eyes: the heavy, suffocating truth he refuses to speak aloud.

He’s lonely. Has been for far too long.

He holds his head up, fights the fight, bears the scars, and does his time. He plays the role of the infallible older brother, the unyielding shield for his family. But beneath that impenetrable shell, he is drowning in the isolation of command. He carries the weight of everyone’s survival on his back, and it is crushing him.

“I shouldn’t have let you come,” Leo murmurs. His voice is dangerously low now, completely stripped of its authoritative cadence. It is thick, choked with an emotion that makes your own chest ache with sympathetic grief.

“Don’t do this right now,” you reply softly, trying to gently pry his fingers from your wrist so you can finish cleaning the wound. “We need to stop this bleeding before infection sets in.”

“No, look at you,” he interrupts. His grip on your wrist tightens just a fraction, pulling you slightly closer into his space. His eyes burn with a desperate intensity as they scan over you.

He takes in the dirt streaked across your face; the dark bruises forming on your collarbone from the fall; your soaked clothes. And then he looks at your hands.

“Look at your hands,” he says, his voice breaking. “You’re covered in my blood. You’re shivering. Karai’s goons nearly took your head off tonight, and the only reason you were even on that rooftop is because of me.”

“I chose to be there,” you say firmly, holding his gaze. “You didn’t force me. I wanted to watch your back.”

“You don’t get it!” he suddenly snaps.

It’s a rare, explosive burst of raw emotion, crashing through his lifelong discipline. He lets go of your wrist as if your skin burns him, his hand balling into a fist and slamming into the floor beside him. A dull boom echoes in the small room, shaking the puddles of water.

He looks away from you, staring into the dark corner of the boiler room. The muscles in his neck strain tightly against his skin. His chest heaves, but this time it isn’t from the pain of his wound. “I am the leader,” he says. “My job is to protect my brothers. My job is to protect this city. But above all of that, my job is to keep you safe.”

He closes his eyes, swallowing hard. “And instead, I dragged you into a sewer. Wrapped you up in a fight that has nothing to do with you. And now we’re trapped in a dark, freezing hole under the city, waiting for the Foot to find us, because I wasn’t fast enough to block the blast.”

The crushing weight of his guilt hangs in the air.

He’s carrying the universe on his shoulders, completely blind to the fact that he doesn’t have to carry it alone. He looks at himself and sees a monster, a mutated weapon forged in the shadows, inherently dangerous to anything soft or beautiful that dares to come near him.

You stare at the sharp, heartbroken lines of his profile. See the deep grooves of stress bracketing his mouth. You see the agonizing loneliness of a man who believes he has to bleed in silence so that others can live in the light.

It takes one to know one.

You know what it feels like to be isolated, to hide behind a smile, to pretend everything is fine when your world is falling apart. Like a mirror, you reflect his silent pain. You recognize the walls he has built around his heart, impenetrable fortresses of duty and self-loathing.

And right now, you’re going to light a match and burn them down.

You don’t argue with him. Don’t offer empty platitudes or tell him it isn’t his fault, because his tactical mind will just reject it. Instead, you lean forward. You close the distance between his frame and yours, invading his space. You reach up, placing both of your hands flat against his cheeks.

Startled, he flinches slightly, his eyes snapping open as you physically force his face back toward you.

“Leonardo, listen to me,” you say. Your voice is no longer shaking.

He stares down at you, mesmerized, his breath catching in his throat.

“You did not drag me anywhere,” you tell him, your thumbs gently stroking the skin beneath his mask. “I’m here because I want to be. I’m here because I chose you. You spend every single day of your life being everyone’s shield, bleeding for this city, bleeding for your brothers. But right now? In this room?”

You lean in closer, until you can feel his ragged breath washing over your face, until there is nothing in the world but the two of you, reduced to your most basic, fundamental truths.

“You don’t have to be the fearless leader,” you whisper fiercely. “You don’t have to carry it all. You just have to let me be yours. Let me take care of you.”

He freezes.

The hyper-vigilant, relentlessly turning gears of Leo’s mind completely stall out. He stares down at you as if he has never truly seen you before. His chest rises and falls with a shuddering breath. His eyes drop to your lips for a fleeting second before locking desperately back onto your eyes.

The absolute, devastating reverence in his expression is enough to make your heart physically ache.

“You want to take care of me?” he whispers, and his words falter on his tongue as if they were a language he had never learned to speak. “Even like this?”

Slowly, he raises his uninjured right hand, gesturing vaguely to himself. To his massive, heavily muscled form. To the green skin, the thick shell, the blood steadily weeping from his shoulder. To the bleakness of the room and the deadly life he leads.

“Even with all of … this?” he asks, his voice thick with a vulnerability that breaks your heart into a thousand pieces.

You don’t hesitate. Don’t even blink.

“Especially like this,” you reply softly, the truth ringing clear in the dark.

The last of his defenses don’t just fall; they shatter.

A breathless sound escapes the back of Leo’s throat. He reaches out, moving with a desperate, overwhelming need. His hand slides through your hair, gently cupping the back of your neck. His thumb sweeps across your cheekbone, wiping away a smudge of soot and dust with a reverence reserved for holy things.

He pulls you forward, and you meet him halfway.

When his lips crush against yours, the entire world outside ceases to exist. His lips are surprisingly soft, moving with a frantic, starved urgency that betrays just how long he has denied himself this—denied himself the right to be loved, to be held, to simply be.

You let out a soft gasp against his mouth.

In response, his right arm winds securely around your waist. His bicep flexes, lifting you slightly off your knees and pulling you flush against his incredibly broad, solid plastron. He anchors you against his body, enveloping you entirely. You wrap your arms around his neck, tangling your fingers into the trailing ends of his bandana, holding him just as fiercely as he is holding you.

You kiss him back with everything you have, pouring every ounce of your devotion, your understanding, and your shared loneliness into him. You are dancing in the flames of the walls you just burned down around him, turning his guilt, fear, and self-loathing into ashes.

A low, deep rumble vibrates through his chest. He deepens the kiss, angling his head, pouring all his pent-up terror from the rooftop ambush into the way his mouth moves over yours. He kisses you as if you are the only real thing in a world made of shadows and war.

For a few perfect, suspended minutes, the storm above doesn’t matter. The blood doesn’t matter. There is only the intoxicating heat of him, the steady, rhythmic thud of his heart against your chest, and the promise being sealed in the dark between you.

When his lungs finally demand air, he slowly pulls back, breaking the kiss with a reluctant sigh. But he doesn’t let you go, refusing to put distance between you again.

Instead, he rests his forehead against yours. Keeps his eyes closed, his breathing still labored. But the tense, agonizing wire he always walks has finally, miraculously, gone slack. The tight lines of stress around his eyes have smoothed out. He just breathes you in, his chest rising and falling in time with your own.

You keep your hands gently resting on his neck, your thumbs softly tracing his skin. “Better?” you whisper into the space between you, a soft, breathless smile tugging at the corners of your lips.

A tiny huff of a laugh escapes him. His grip around your waist tightens, ensuring you aren’t going anywhere. “Yeah,” he murmurs against your skin, the gravel in his voice now rich and warm, stripped of its harshness. “Yeah. Better.”

He opens his eyes, and for the first time tonight, they are completely clear. The shadows of guilt have receded, chased away by the radiant warmth of the connection you just forged. He looks at you not as a burden he failed to protect, but as an equal. As his partner. His sanctuary.

“We need to finish wrapping that shoulder,” you murmur gently, reluctantly trying to pull back just a fraction to reach for the gauze.

“Wait,” he says. His hand gently presses against the small of your back, keeping you flush against his chest for just a moment longer. He closes his eyes again, simply relishing the feeling of your heartbeat syncing with his. “Just … give me one more minute. Just like this.”

You melt against him, resting your cheek against the expanse of his plastron, right over his heart. “Okay,” you whisper softly. “I’m right here, Leo.”

“Donnie’s gonna find us,” he murmurs quietly, his chin resting gently on the top of your head. “Once the storm breaks, he’ll re-route the local cell towers to bypass Karai’s jammer. They’ll ping my trackers. Raph is probably tearing the city apart looking for us right now.”

“I know,” you say, closing your eyes and letting the resonance of his voice soothe your frayed nerves.

“But until he does …” Leo’s hand moves slowly up your back, his fingers threading gently into your hair before planting a soft kiss to the crown of your head. “… I’m not going anywhere.”

You smile into the dark, the words echoing in your heart. You listen to the rain above, the steady, rhythmic drumbeat of the storm battering the streets of New York. Let the storm rage. Let the Foot Clan search. Because you’ve found your anchor.

And you know that no matter what battles are waiting for you up on the surface, you will never let Leo face them alone again.

LEO

Leo is the easiest to get to watch something with you, but the hardest to actually keep quiet during it. If it’s your comfort media, he takes it upon himself to become its biggest fan just to share that connection with you (and to have new material to tease you with).

He sits incredibly close to you, probably draped over your shoulders or with his chin resting on your head.

If it’s a live-action show, he’s immediately analyzing the dialogue. If a character makes a dramatic entrance, he’s taking notes. “Oh, okay, see how he did that? The pause. The smirk. The unnecessary cape flourish. That’s confidence. Charisma. Art.”

Once he figures out your favorite scenes or quotes, he will randomly drop them into everyday conversation or mid-battle just to see you smile. If you’re having a bad day, he’ll dramatically reenact a scene from the show in the middle of the lair kitchen just to cheer you up.

RAPH

Raph loves that you want to share something you like so much with him. He takes the responsibility of being a good audience member very seriously. He will literally threaten his brothers to keep them quiet so you can enjoy your show.

He’ll sit holding a bowl of popcorn, looking intensely at the screen.

He wears his heart on his sleeve. If your comfort media has high stakes, tension, or sad moments, he’s a goner. He will loudly gasp and yell warnings at the screen (“Don’t go in there! Look behind you!”) and actively try to blink away tears during the emotional climaxes.

If you look over at him during a sweet or nostalgic part, you’ll catch him looking at you instead of the screen with the softest smile on his face. He just loves seeing you happy and relaxed. He’ll buy you merch of your favorite character the very next day.

DONNIE

Donnie is initially very resistant. He’ll make a big show of sighing and crossing his arms. “I suppose I can spare forty-three minutes to study the psychological appeal of whatever has you this emotionally attached.”

He will sit on the opposite end of the couch, staring at his wrist-tech … for all of about five minutes.

The second a plot hole, bad CGI, or scientifically impossible event happens, he’ll enter critique mode. “Excuse me? Did she just hack a mainframe using HTML? That is technologically offensive!” He will spend the first half of the movie angrily debunking the logic.

But he gets totally sucked in.

Eventually, he’s leaning forward with wide eyes. If a character hurts your favorite character, he genuinely gets offended on your behalf. “Hold on, I’m looking up the writers of this show. I have notes.” He’ll even secretly download the soundtrack to listen to in his lab.

MIKEY

Mikey doesn’t just watch your comfort media; he absorbs it into his soul. To him, your comfort media is a window into your mind, and he wants to celebrate it with creative output.

He will wrap himself in blankets right next to you, vibrating with excitement, holding a sketchbook or an iPad.

He becomes instantly obsessed with the aesthetic, the colors, and the character designs. Every time a cool outfit or background appears, he’s gasping, “Oh my gosh, the color theory in this scene is immaculate! Look at the lighting on their hair!”

The rain beating against your living room window feels less like a storm and more like the bars of a closing cage.

You sit on the edge of your couch, numb, staring at the cardboard box resting on your coffee table. It holds the pathetic, finite remnants of your entire career: a coffee mug, a handful of framed photos, a dead succulent, and a formal termination letter printed on fancy cardstock.

You check your vital signs, placing a trembling hand over your chest, trying to feel the rhythm inside. But all you feel is a hollow, aching void.

Your ex-colleagues—people you trusted, people you ate lunch with, people you called friends—had executed a flawless, systematic character assassination. The company hadn’t just fired you; your former friends had drawn their battle lines in the dark, fabricating a paper trail that pinned their own missing department funds entirely on you.

You were called into HR this afternoon, completely blindsided, and escorted out of the glass-paneled high-rise by security like a criminal. Your professional reputation in this city is entirely shattered. You are effectively blacklisted.

You drop your head into your hands, the first tears of exhausted defeat finally slipping through your fingers. You’ve struggled for years to get to this point, fighting through doubts you always tried to hide, and now, it’s all gone in the blink of an eye.

A heavy, deliberate double-tap rattles the glass of your fire escape door.

You don’t even look up as the lock clicks open from the outside. Only one person in all of New York City makes the floorboards of your cramped apartment groan quite like that. Leo is quiet, Donnie is precise, and Mikey is light on his feet. But Raph is like an earthquake.

He steps into the apartment. He stands a towering six-foot-five, a heavily muscled mountain of green skin and battle scars, his broad shoulders easily filling the width of your narrow hallway. “Hey.” His deep, gravelly voice is unusually soft, laced with a gentle concern that is reserved exclusively for you. “April said you weren’t pickin’ up your phone, so I—”

He stops dead in his tracks.

The silence that follows is deafening. You finally look up through your tears to see his green eyes locked onto the cardboard box. His gaze tracks the termination letter resting on top of the pile, and then slowly moves over to your hunched, trembling form.

The air in the room instantly shifts, dropping ten degrees into absolute, suffocating tension. The gentle giant vanishes, and the feral brawler takes his place.

“Who did it?” he asks.

“It doesn’t matter, Raph,” you whisper, your voice cracking under the weight of your despair. “They … they built a paper trail. They told the board that I was embezzling from the charity fund. My reputation is ruined. I’m completely blacklisted.”

Raph doesn’t speak. He closes the distance between the door and the coffee table in two large strides. His hand reaches out, snatching the termination letter from the box. As his eyes scan the signatures at the bottom of the page, a low growl starts deep in his chest. His grip tightens on the cardstock until it tears.

He reaches down to his belt, his thick fingers wrapping tightly around the hilt of his twin sais before he turns toward the door.

“Raph, stop!”

You scramble off the couch, ignoring the exhaustion in your bones, and throw yourself directly into his path. You slam both of your hands flat against his plastron, though it’s like trying to stop a runaway freight train. He keeps moving forward for one more second, his momentum dragging you along, before your pleading eyes finally anchor him in place.

He stares down at you, his chest heaving with deep, ragged breaths of pure fury. “You’re losing your job,” he roars, “because of their damn lies?!”

“Raph, please—”

“Give me names!” he demands, his eyes blazing with a protective fire that makes your heart skip a beat. “Give me addresses! I don’t care if they’re humans, I’m gonna break their—”

“No! You can’t!” you yell back, your hands gripping the straps of his harness. “You can’t go there! You can’t just break into a corporate high-rise and threaten them!”

“They hurt you,” he snarls, the heartbreak in his voice bleeding through the anger. He hates seeing you like this, hates the tears on your cheeks. “They sat in their stupid leather chairs, in their stupid suits, and they decided to ruin your life just because they could? No. Absolutely not. I’m gonna go down there, and I’m gonna introduce their faces to the concrete until they write a retraction. I will tear that place down to the studs!”

“And then what?!” you plead, leaning your forehead against his chest, feeling the powerful thud of his heart beneath. “They’ll call the police. And it will only make me look guilty! If a giant mutant ninja attacks them, they’ll just say I hired a thug. It makes everything worse!”

He freezes. The logic hits him, but he despises it.

“I just … I have to be patient,” you whisper, your tears soaking into his red bandana where it drapes over his plastron. “I just have to wait. I believe in karma, Raph. I have to wait for karma to catch up to them.”

He looks down at you, his jaw clenching. Carefully, he places his hands over your wrists. He handles you with startling gentleness, easily easing your hands off his chest. The violent storm in his eyes doesn’t fade, but it suddenly focuses. Shifts into something sharp, calculating, and incredibly dangerous.

“Karma’s too slow,” he murmurs, his voice dropping low. “And it don’t hit hard enough.”

He steps back. Promises you, with a heavy sigh and a gentle press of his forehead against yours, that he won’t go down there and crack their skulls. He promises he won’t lay a finger on them.

If he can’t use his fists, he is going to go to war a different way.

Over the next three days, your cramped apartment undergoes a transformation. It stops being a place of mourning and becomes a tactical war room.

Raph doesn’t leave to break windows or shatter bones. Instead, he sits on your floor, pulls out April’s burner phone, and makes three calls.

He tells you that you are not alone in this. He tells you that you don’t have to face the doubts you hide by yourself anymore.

The first to arrive at your apartment is April. When Raph briefs her on what happened to you, April’s eyes go dark. As an investigative reporter, she detests corporate corruption more than anything. And as your friend, she is out for blood.

The second is Casey Jones. He has connections with the NYPD and law enforcement that Raph assures you will come in handy. The third is Donnie, who patches in via a secure, encrypted video feed on your computer.

You sit on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, watching in awe as this underground alliance takes form.

“Alright, listen up,” Raph commands, stepping into the center of the room and crossing his arms over his chest. “They think they’re untouchable ’cause they got money and fancy titles. They think they can crush her and just walk away. But they forgot they share a city with us.”

“What’s the play, big guy?” Casey asks, leaning against the wall. “You want me to tail ’em? Find out where they sleep?”

“I want you to find out where they hide their secrets,” Raph corrects, his eyes narrowing. “Nobody’s that clean. The people who made up a lie about embezzlement to get her fired? I guarantee you they’re covering their own tracks. Jones, you hit the streets. Follow ’em after work. Dig into their garbage, their cars, their private clubs. Find the dirt.”

“I’m on it,” Casey smirks.

“Donnie,” Raph calls out to the screen.

“Already running a decryption algorithm on their corporate servers,” Donnie’s voice filters through the speakers, accompanied by the clacking of a keyboard. “If they fabricated a paper trail to frame her, they had to alter the original ledgers. I’ll find the digital footprints. I’ll trace every single deleted email and off-shore wire transfer they ever authorized.”

“Good.” Raph nods, before turning to April. “When we get the pieces, can you build the bomb?”

April opens her laptop. “If Donnie and Casey get me the raw data, I won’t just build a bomb. I’ll make sure it detonates on prime-time television. I’ll make sure their reputations are so decimated they won’t even be able to get a job flipping burgers.”

You watch all of this unfold, completely breathless. Raph is orchestrating a flawless counter-intel operation. He is supervising from the shadows, his mind working with a razor-sharp brilliance the world never gives him credit for. He isn’t just a brawler; he is a protector.

For the next two weeks, the operation runs around the clock.

You try to help, pointing out which executives had access to which files and drawing out the hierarchy of the company on a whiteboard. Every time you start to feel the creeping panic of your situation—the fear that this won’t work, that you really are ruined forever—Raph is there.

He cuts out all the noise. Whenever you stare at the wall, lost in your anxieties, his huge hand envelops yours.

“Don’t give in to your fears,” he says to you late one night. He’s sitting on the floor beside the couch, leaning his back against the cushions while you lie above him. Reaching down, you thread your fingers through the loose tails of his bandana. “You were born for this. You’re a fighter. You just let us do the heavy lifting for a minute, okay?”

You never lose your hope—because he refuses to let you.

Casey’s street-level detective work pays off in spades. He spends his nights in the shadows of the financial district’s parking garages, intercepting phone conversations and photographing secret meetings between your ex-bosses and shady contractors.

Donnie breaks through the corporate firewall on day nine. He finds the motherlode: a sprawling, intricate web of nepotism, illicit affairs, toxic hiring practices, and a massive embezzlement ring that makes the charity fund they pinned on you look like pocket change. They’d been stealing millions and funneling it into offshore accounts. And when the auditors started sniffing around, they chose you as the perfect, innocent scapegoat.

April takes all of it. Every photograph, every decrypted ledger, every recorded conversation. She spends three days straight meticulously weaving the evidence into an airtight, devastating exposé.

It happens on a Tuesday night. It’s raining again, mirroring the night everything fell apart, but this time, the atmosphere in your apartment is full of anticipation.

You’re sitting on the couch, a mug of tea in your hands. Raph is sitting on the floor nearby, his legs stretched out in front of him. The television is playing the evening news in the background. You aren’t really paying attention until the anchor’s tone suddenly shifts, dropping into the serious cadence reserved for breaking scandals.

“We interrupt our regular programming for breaking news tonight out of the financial district,” the anchor announces. “A massive, anonymous data leak has exposed a multi-million-dollar fraud ring within the executive board of—”

Your breath hitches and you freeze, the mug pausing halfway to your mouth. The screen cuts away from the studio to live, shaky camera footage outside your old office building. Flashlights blind the lens. The red and blue strobes of a dozen police cruisers reflect off the slick, rain-soaked pavement.

You watch as the exact colleagues who had slandered you—the ones who smiled while they ruined your life—are led out of the lobby in handcuffs. Detectives are pushing them into the back of squad cars. The executives have their expensive coats thrown over their heads, desperately trying to hide their faces from the swarm of paparazzi and local news cameras.

“The FBI raided the corporate headquarters just an hour ago,” the reporter on the scene continues. “This comes after investigative journalist April O’Neil published a scathing exposé earlier this evening, detailing years of embezzlement, wire fraud, and extreme corporate corruption.”

The camera cuts to April standing at a press podium. She looks professional, staring directly into the lens.

“Furthermore,” her voice rings out from your television speakers, “the documents provided to me explicitly exonerate a former employee who was recently terminated. The data proves that the executive board wrongfully framed this employee to cover up their own crimes. Thanks to this whistleblower’s bravery in coming forward, this corruption has finally been stopped.”

They didn’t just clear your name. They framed you as the hero of the story, made you the whistleblower. Your reputation isn’t just restored; it is elevated to a level of unimpeachable integrity. Every company in the city will be fighting to hire you now.

Your ex-friends are completely ruined. Their reputations are shattered beyond repair. They’re facing federal prison, gigantic legal fallout, and public humiliation. Karma came back around—and it hit with the force of a damn wrecking ball.

Slowly, you turn your head.

Raph is still sitting on the floor; he’s entirely too casual. You set your tea down on the table and stand up. You cross your arms, walking over to stand right in front of him. Obviously, you knew they were cracking things wide open, but it has taken you totally by surprise them portraying you as the hero.

“You told me not to touch ‘em. I didn’t lay a single finger on ’em. Didn’t break a single bone.”

“Raphael.”

He sighs and looks at you. The cocky brawler exterior melts away, and his expression softens into something so profoundly tender and devoted it makes your chest ache.

“Look,” Raph starts, “you told me you believed in karma.” He shrugs his shoulders, entirely unrepentant. “I just gave karma a little push.”

You stand there for a moment, looking down at him.

He is a creature of the shadows, a warrior shaped by violence and brawls. Yet he has stepped completely out of his comfort zone. Swallowed his rage and suppressed his instinct to fight with his fists, instead conspiring with a reporter, a hacker, and a vigilante to wage a bloodless, psychological war—all just to protect your honor.

The overwhelming realization of his love crashes over you like a tidal wave.

You smile, a tear of pure relief slipping down your cheek, and shake your head. “You know,” you whisper, your voice thick with emotion, “that information would have come out eventually, anyway. Corruption like that … it can never stay buried forever.”

“Yeah,” he rumbles, standing up. He steps into your space and looks down at you, his eyes intense, burning with a fire that is solely meant for you. “But I didn’t want you waitin’ forever for it.”

The depth of his devotion breaks the dam.

You don’t care about the corporate rules anymore. Don’t care about the rain outside, the critics, or the mistakes of the past. You only care about the man standing in front of you.

You launch yourself at him.

Raph barely has a fraction of a second to brace himself before you close the distance. You reach up, grabbing the fabric of his bandana, pulling his head down just enough so you can reach him. You press a firm, loving, deeply grateful kiss right to his beak.

He freezes, completely caught off guard by the sudden, intense affection—before he coils his arms around your waist. His biceps flex, and with effortless strength, he lifts you right off your feet. You gasp into the kiss as your toes leave the floor.

He holds you flush against his chest, his hands splaying wide over your back, pulling you flush against his solid frame. He kisses you back with fierce, hungry desperation, pouring every ounce of his protective energy, his loyalty, and his love into the embrace. You wrap your arms around his neck, anchoring yourself to him as the world spins around you.

When he finally pulls back, you are both breathless. He doesn’t set you down. Instead, he keeps you suspended against his chest, his eyes locked onto yours. The cocky smirk has returned to his face, but undeniable love softens it.

He leans in, his thumb gently wiping the tear of relief off your cheek. “Nobody touches what’s mine,” Raph whispers, his voice vibrating straight through your soul. “Remember that.”

You smile, wrapping your arms tighter around his neck, burying your face in the crook of his shoulder. The justice on the television screen is sweet.

But you realize that having Raph by your side is even sweeter.

On paper, everything is perfect.

The fairy lights strung across Leo’s room cast a soft, ethereal glow over the walls. Mina is sitting on the edge of his bed, humming a quiet tune as the heavy, oversized fabric of his favorite blue hoodie rests across her lap. She is meticulously reinforcing the frayed cuffs, her needle darting in and out of the soft cotton.

When she ties the knot, she reaches over and finds his hand where it rests bare on the mattress beside her. She gives his knuckles a reassuring squeeze. She is gentle. Kind. Doesn’t ask him to be the fearless leader, and she doesn’t demand that he open up about the nightmares that still make him wake up in a cold sweat.

With Mina, it’s safe.

Quiet.

“Good as new,” she says softly, setting the hoodie aside and offering him a warm, uncomplicated smile. “You’ve been pushing yourself hard in training lately. You deserve a break.”

“Hey, what can I say? The world doesn’t save itself, hermosa,” Leo replies, his lips automatically curving into his signature smirk. He leans back against his pillows, throwing an arm over his head in a display of practiced, easygoing bravado. He then pulls her close, wrapping his hand around her waist.

But as his fingers settle against her hip, an icy jolt shoots up his spine.

His muscle memory plays a cruel trick on him—because his hand remembers a different waist. Another laugh. A love that didn’t sit quietly on the edge of a mattress, but one that demanded all of him, a raging hurricane that used to leave him breathless.

Leo kisses the top of Mina’s head. But as she rests her cheek against his plastron—right over the jagged scar left by the Krang—he just stares at the ceiling, feeling an overwhelming wave of guilt. She’s taking the world off his shoulders, but he is completely somewhere else …

It’s Friday night and Run of the Mill Pizza is a roar of clinking glasses, shouting yokai, and the rich scent of brick-oven cheese.

Leo sits across from Mina in the back booth. He’s leaning forward, his elbows on the table, his hands moving in wide, dramatic gestures as he narrates a story about the time he tried to teach Splinter how to use social media. The lesson ended with Splinter accidentally livestreaming himself napping for three hours and somehow gaining a hundred followers.

He’s laughing, his red face-stripes crinkling, playing the leading role of the happy, attentive boyfriend to absolute perfection. Then, Mina reaches across the table and takes his hand, weaving her fingers through his. Leo’s voice falters. He looks down at their joined hands, and the bustling noise of the restaurant fades into a dull, underwater hum.

His eyes drift past Mina’s shoulder, involuntarily zeroing in on the empty corner booth across the room. That was your booth. The place where you and Leo used to sit, hiding behind a menu while he stole toppings off your late and made terrible puns into your ear until you laughed so hard you cried.

“Leo?” Mina’s soft voice pulls him back to reality. She’s looking at him, her pretty, kind eyes clouded with a dawning sadness. “You went away again.”

“What? No way, I’m right here!” Leo forces a booming, energetic laugh, instantly squeezing her hand and flashing his brightest, most dazzling smile. “Just thinking about … uh, Hueso’s ridiculous tie. Truly, a fashion crime.”

Mina doesn’t laugh. She just looks at him, and the weight of his own deception makes Leo’s chest ache. He is matching silhouettes in the dark, trying to force Mina into a shape she doesn’t belong in, desperately trying to convince himself that he has moved on.

The rain has stopped by the time they walk into the park, leaving the air crisp and smelling of damp earth. The pathways gleam under the moonlight, reflecting the twisting branches of the trees above.

As Leo walks, his eyes shift restlessly toward the tree line. Every time a twig snaps, his combat instincts flare—but it’s not a villain he’s looking for. His eyes are searching the shadows for a dark hoodie, for a tear-stained face, for the ghost that has been haunting his steps for months.

Mina stops walking. “She’s not here,” she says, her voice steady but incredibly quiet.

He freezes and turns to look at her, his throat suddenly dry. “What do you mean?”

She steps closer to him and raises her hand, placing it gently against his cheek. It is a beautiful, loving gesture.

But as Leo looks down into her eyes, he isn’t seeing Mina. He’s looking right through her. His mind is frantically sprinting backward into the past, agonizingly trapped in the memory of the way it used to be. He’s searching Mina’s face for a glimpse of the person he left behind on this very grass.

“You’re looking at me,” she whispers, a single tear slipping down her cheek, “but you’re searching for her.”

“Mina, no, that’s not—” Leo starts. He takes a half-step back, ready to deflect, spin a lie, ready to say he’s fine and that he’s completely over it.

“Don’t,” she cuts him off gently. She drops her hand from his cheek, creating a sudden, freezing distance between them. “Don’t lie to me, Leo. And stop lying to yourself. You told me I made your mind quiet. But you’re just using my quiet to drown out the noise of how much you miss her.”

His breath hitches, the words hitting him like a punch, stripping away his bravado and leaving him entirely exposed.

“You left a piece of your own heart out here with her,” Mina says, her voice trembling with a mixture of sadness and quiet dignity. “Go find it, Leo. Because I deserve someone who is actually in the room when I hold their hand.” She leans up, presses a soft, final kiss to his cheek, and turns away.

Leo watches her walk down the illuminated park path until her silhouette disappears into the city lights. He’s left alone, standing by the fountain.

For the first time in months, the quiet in his head cracks open. The artificial peace shatters, and the chaotic, beautiful memory of your love floods back into his mind. He stands trembling, finally admitting the truth to the empty night: he never wanted the quiet. He was just a coward, running from how much it hurt to love someone that completely.

Weeks pass.

Leo doesn’t jump into another distraction. Doesn’t go to Run of the Mill Pizza, and he doesn’t crack jokes to deflect his brothers’ worried glances. He sits in his room and finally allows himself to feel the grief he had been running from.

And then, on a cool Thursday evening, a ring of neon-blue appears in the alleyway near your apartment.

Leo steps through the portal. He walks down the alley, looking up at the metal fire escape of the dark apartment. He doesn’t use his ninpo to teleport inside, nor does he make a grand entrance. After climbing the stairs, he arrives at the bedroom window and proceeds to tap lightly on the glass.

Inside, the blinds move. A moment later, the window slides open, and you step out onto the fire escape. You look tired, but the frantic, hysterical edge from your last encounter is gone. Instead, you look guarded. Cautious.

Leo looks at you—really looks at you, and the last remnants of his ego completely dissolve. “Hey,” he says, his voice soft, entirely stripped of his flashy persona. “Can we … talk?”

You hesitate, staring at him, before silently sitting down on the metal platform, your knees pulled to your chest. He sinks down beside you, leaving a careful few inches of space between the two of you.

“Mina and I broke up,” he confesses quietly, keeping his eyes on the glittering New York skyline. “She was right. I tried to force myself to be fine because the way we loved each other … it scared me. I was so broken after the invasion. I thought the noise of our relationship would destroy me, so I ran to something safe. Something quiet.”

You let out a slow, shaky breath, your eyes fixed on the horizon. “And now?”

“Now I know that the noise wasn’t the problem. I just needed to learn how to breathe through it,” Leo says. He turns his head, his eyes full of sincere vulnerability. Slowly, he extends his hand, palm up, resting it on the metal between you—leaving the choice of reciprocation entirely up to you. “I don’t want to rush. I don’t want to tear open the wounds we just spent months trying to stitch back together. But I’m done running.”

You look at his open palm: the familiar green scales, the calluses from his swords. Although the silence stretches between you, it isn’t empty or forced. You place your hand in his. Your fingers weave together with a gentle, cautious hold.

Leo closes his eyes, letting out a breath he feels like he’s been holding for a lifetime. For a long moment, neither of you says anything. There’s a distant siren. The rumble of traffic. Still, neither of you lets go.

“I hurt you.”

You stare ahead at the skyline. “Yeah.”

His jaw tightens. “I know saying sorry doesn’t fix it.”

“No.”

“I know I don’t deserve another chance just because I finally figured my own stuff out.”

You glance sideways at him; his eyes remain fixed on the city. For once, he’s not trying to charm his way out of the truth.

“I was angry,” you admit, a humorless laugh escaping you. “Actually, that’s not true. Angry would’ve been easier.”

He swallows.

“I was devastated.” Your confession hangs in the air.

His eyes close. “I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you.”

You stare at him, and he finally turns to meet your eyes. The vulnerability there almost hurts to look at.

“After the Krang … after everything that happened …” A shaky breath leaves him as his hand unconsciously drifts toward the scar on his plastron. “I couldn’t handle losing one more thing.”

A sad smile pulls at your mouth. “And how’d that work out for you?”

Leo lets out a broken laugh. “Spectacularly.”

You both laugh then, not because it’s funny. But because sometimes pain becomes so absurd that’s all you can do. The tension between you eases by a fraction. Just enough to breathe, just enough to remember.

The late-night patrols. Stolen pizza slices. Arguments that lasted fifteen minutes before turning into make-out sessions. The way he’d always reached for your hand without thinking. The way he’d looked at you when he thought nobody was watching.

And judging by the softness entering his expression now, he’s remembering too.

“I missed you,” he says.

Three words, no dramatic speech, no grand gesture.

Just the truth.

Something inside your chest aches. “I missed you too.”

Leo’s breath catches, and the city suddenly feels very far away—and the distance between you feels tiny. He looks down at your joined hands and smiles. “I can do slow,” he says quietly.

You raise an eyebrow. “The guy who once tried to speed-run a relationship?”

“Okay, rude.”

“The guy who said, ‘I love you’ after three weeks.”

“In my defense, I was correct.”

You roll your eyes.

He grins. But it fades after a moment, replaced by sincerity. “I mean it.” His thumb brushes gently across your knuckles. “I just … I’d like the chance to earn my way back into your life.”

The vulnerability in his voice makes your chest tighten. You lean your shoulder against his. He freezes, as if afraid he’ll scare the moment away. Then his shoulder gently presses back.

Below you, New York continues moving. Above you, the stars peek through the clouds. And somewhere between the hurt of what happened and the hope of what might come next, the two of you sit together on the fire escape.

Leo looks at you and finally understands that some storms aren’t meant to be survived.

They’re meant to be shared.

The glow of your phone screen is the only light in your dark apartment. It casts a harsh, blue tint over your face, illuminating the dried tear tracks on your cheeks and the dark circles bruising the skin beneath your eyes. Your thumb hovers over the screen, trembling slightly, before swiping to the next photo. And the next. And the next.

It’s April’s private social media account.

You shouldn’t be looking at it. You know you shouldn’t. Everyone has told you—April, Donnie, even Mikey with his soft, empathetic eyes—that you need to stop. That you need to let him go. But how can you? How are you supposed to just pack up months of memories, late-night rooftop runs, and whispered promises in the dark, and lock them away?

The photo on your screen features the whole Hamato clan crammed into a booth at Run of the Mill Pizza. Raph is in the back, laughing around a massive slice. Mikey is making bunny ears behind Donnie’s head. And there, in the corner of the booth, is Leo.

Your Leo.

Except he isn’t yours anymore.

He is smiling that brilliant, cocky, effortless smile that used to make your heart hammer against your ribs. The red stripes over his eyes crinkle with genuine joy. But he isn’t looking at the camera. He’s looking down at her.

The new girl.

She has her head thrown back in a laugh, her hand resting casually on his plastron, right over the faint, jagged scar left behind from the Krang invasion. It’s a spot he used to let only you touch. You remember the way his breath would hitch when you traced those raised, pale lines, the way he would lean into your palm and close his eyes.

Now, this stranger is touching him like she owns him.

Like she earned the right to be there.

You zoom in on the picture. Your chest caves in, a sickening, hollow ache radiating through your ribs as your eyes lock onto Leo’s hand—which is resting firmly, possessively, on her waist.

Now she’s the one with your hands on her waist, and I’m left with memories I can’t erase.

You drop the phone onto your mattress as if it burned you. The device lands with a dull thud, the screen timing out and plunging you into darkness. You pull your knees up to your chest, burying your face in your arms, trying to block out the image. But it’s burned into the backs of your eyelids.

You know the exact weight of that hand. You know the texture of his scales, and the comforting warmth that radiated from him despite his cold-blooded mutation. You know how those calloused fingers felt when they wrapped around your own, how his thumb would gently stroke your hipbone when you lay together in his messy subway car bedroom.

Does she get lost in your touch like I do?

The thought is a poisonous whisper in your mind, wrapping around your brain like thorny vines. Does this new girl understand the privilege of his touch? Does she feel the electric jolt of his ninpo sparking beneath his skin when he pulls her close? Does she close her eyes and let the rest of the world melt away, utterly consumed by the sensation of him?

Does she love the way it feels?

You push yourself off the bed. The silence of your apartment is suffocating. The air is stagnant, heavy with the ghosts of your past. He used to portal into this very room. A flash of blinding blue light, and he would step out of it with a confident smirk. “Hey, hermosa,” he would say, his voice smooth. “Miss me?”

You pace the length of your bedroom. The urge to see him is a physical itch beneath your skin, a withdrawal symptom that makes your hands shake and your stomach turn. It’s Friday night. You know exactly where they are. You shouldn’t go. It’s a violation of the unspoken boundary drawn the day he quietly and gently broke your heart. But the obsession is a living thing inside you, steering your body when your rational mind begs you to stop.

You throw on a dark hoodie, pull the strings tight, and head out into the streets of New York City.

The mystic doorway to the restaurant is located in an alley that smells of old garbage. You press your hand against the shimmering brickwork covered in graffiti, then step through. The air instantly shifts, becoming laced with the scent of pizza.

You can’t risk Señor Hueso spotting you and making a scene. Instead, you slip behind one of the booths. It’s pathetic. You know it’s pathetic. You are creeping through the shadows, a desperate ghost haunting the life of a man who doesn’t want you anymore. But you can’t stop yourself.

The restaurant is bustling with yokai of all shapes and sizes, but your eyes zero in on the booth in the back.

There they are.

It’s just the two of them now. The brothers must have left. Leo is leaning across the table, his elbows resting on the wood. He is talking, his hands moving in those sweeping, dramatic gestures you know so well. The lights of the restaurant catch the blue fabric of his mask, highlighting the sharp, mature line of his jaw. He looks so handsome it physically hurts.

And then he looks at her.

He stops talking. His arrogant, playful demeanor melts away in a fraction of a second, replaced by a look of such profound, tender sincerity that you have to bite your lip to keep from crying out. His eyes are soft, filled with a quiet, undeniable adoration.

And does she know when she looks in your eyes that you’re the one for real?

When you were together, he looked at you like that. Not often—Leo was always hiding behind jokes and bravado—but in the quiet moments, when the world stopped spinning, he would look at you like you were the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth. You knew, in those moments, that he was the one. You felt it in the very marrow of your bones. Does she know?

Does this girl sitting across from him realize that beneath the jokes and the flashy portals, there is a warrior with a heart so vast and fiercely loyal it could swallow her whole?

You watch as the girl smiles, reaching across the table to take his hand. She weaves her fingers through his three green ones.

Leo’s face breaks into a soft, breathtaking smile.

You scramble back, your chest heaving as if you’ve run a marathon. The air is suddenly too thick to breathe.

You leave as discreetly as you can, heading back through the entry portal and bursting into the cool night air of the New York alley. You lean against the wall, chest heaving.

You are drowning in the past, choked by the memories you can’t erase.

You remember the night you broke up.

He had looked so tired, the weight of his newfound leadership and his lingering trauma was fracturing the foundation of your relationship. “I can’t give you what you need right now,” he had whispered, his voice cracking. “I’m broken, and I keep cutting you on my sharp edges. I have to let you go.”

You didn’t want to let go. You would have bled for him. You did bleed for him. But he had already made up his mind, slipping away from you like water through a sieve.

Suddenly, the brickwork shimmers. You bolt around the corner into the shadows just as Leo and Mina step through. Ducking out of sight, you listen to the low murmur of their conversation as they pass—they’re heading to the nearby park for a walk. A romantic, late-night stroll.

Your legs move on their own. You follow them, keeping your distance, darting from cover to cover. You are a shadow. A stalker in the night. They walk close together, their arms brushing. When you reach the park, the girl trips over an exposed root, losing her footing. She stumbles forward with a gasp.

Instantly, Leo’s arm shoots out, catching her around the waist before she can hit the ground. He pulls her flush against his plastron, his reflexes impossibly fast. She lets out a startled, breathless laugh, her hands gripping his muscular arms.

“I’ve gotcha,” Leo murmurs, his voice low with that protective edge you used to crave.

“Leo!” she gasps, her voice a mix of surprise and delight. She looks up at him, her eyes wide, entirely captivated by his strength and proximity. She says his name like a prayer. Like a lifeline.

Does she make you forget where you are when she’s screaming out your name?

The memory hits you with the force of a freight train. A memory so intimate, so intensely private, that you have to squeeze your eyes shut to bear it.

The night in his subway car. The blue fairy lights cast an ethereal glow over tangled sheets. The feeling of his body moving with yours, his hands holding you down, his breath hot against your neck. You remember the way you moaned his name, your voice breaking, completely lost in the overwhelming tide of his touch. In those moments, the world didn’t exist.

There was no Krang, no Foot Clan, no impending doom.

Just you and him, perfectly synchronized.

You open your eyes, tears blurring your vision. Leo is still holding her. He leans down, burying his face in the crook of her neck. You can’t hear what he’s saying, but you can see the way her eyes flutter shut, the way a soft, ecstatic smile spreads across her lips.

Do you still whisper the same words to her, or did you save those just for me?

What is he telling her? Is he calling her his princesa? Is he telling her that her eyes are brighter than the mystic lights of his portals? Is he whispering the secret, terrified insecurities he used to confess to you in the dead of night?

The thought that he is recycling the words that once felt so exclusively, sacredly yours makes bile rise in your throat. You want to scream. You want to run out from behind the tree, grab her by the shoulders, and violently shake her.

So how’s she supposed to know that I love you?

You look at this girl, this oblivious, happy girl. She doesn’t know you exist, or if she does, you are just a footnote in Leo’s history. The ex. A bump in the road leading up to her. Every time Leo smiles at her, every time he pulls her close and says, “I love you,” you lose another piece of your soul. It’s a competition she doesn’t even know she’s winning, and you are being slaughtered on the battlefield.

‘Cause every time you say you love her, I lose.

Your foot shifts. The heel of your sneaker snaps a brittle, fallen branch.

The sound echoes in the quiet park like a gunshot.

Leo freezes. His head snaps up, his combat instincts instantly overriding his romantic haze. His eyes scan the treeline, narrowing with razor-sharp precision. He pushes the girl slightly behind him, his hand instinctively reaching for the hilts of his katanas strapped to his back.

“Who’s there?” he demands, his voice hard and authoritative. The voice of a leader.

Panic seizes your chest. You shrink back, pressing your spine against the trunk of the tree, holding your breath until your lungs burn. Please, you pray to whatever gods are listening. Please don’t let him see me.

“Leo? What is it?” the girl asks, her voice trembling slightly.

“Stay here,” he orders quietly.

You hear the soft, deliberate crunch of his footsteps approaching your hiding spot. You have nowhere to run. The park is too open, and a portal would catch you before you could make it half a dozen feet.

His footsteps stop right on the other side of the tree.

“I know you’re there,” Leo says. His voice is quieter now, but it carries a strange, tight tension. “Step out.”

You close your eyes. Humiliation burns hot and bright in your cheeks. Slowly, with trembling limbs, you step out from the shadows of the tree.

Leo stands ten feet away. He relaxes his grip, letting the half-drawn blade slide back into its sheath with a soft click. The fierce, protective scowl on his face evaporates, replaced by a look of pure shock, his eyes widening. He murmurs your name. The sound of it on his lips is a punch to the gut.

It has been months since you heard him say it.

“Hi, Leo,” you whisper, your voice hoarse. You wrap your arms around your torso, trying to make yourself as small as possible.

The girl steps out from behind him, peering around his broad shoulder. She has pretty, kind eyes and a soft face. She looks confused, her gaze darting between your tear-stained face and Leo’s rigid posture. “Leo? Who is this?”

How’s she supposed to know how much I do? ‘Cause I would do anything to be in her shoes.

You stare at the girl’s shoes. Cute, stylish little boots. You would trade everything—your dignity, your sanity, your life—to step into those boots, to be the one standing behind him, protected by him, loved by him.

Leo turns his head slightly, his expression softening as he looks at the girl. “Hey, Mina,” he says gently. “Can you … can you give us a second? Just wait by the fountain?”

Mina looks at you again, a dawning realization flashing in her eyes. “Oh. Okay. Sure.” She gives Leo a quick, reassuring squeeze on the arm before walking away, leaving the two of you alone.

He turns back to you. The silence stretches between you, thick and agonizing. He doesn’t look angry. If he looked angry, it would be easier. You could fight him. You could scream at him. But he doesn’t look angry.

He looks overwhelmingly, unbearably sad.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper. The pity in his eyes is a knife twisting in your gut.

“I don’t know,” you choke out, tears finally spilling over your lashes. “I don’t know, Leo. I couldn’t … I just couldn’t stay in my apartment.”

He lets out a long, shuddering sigh. “You’re following us.” He rubs a hand over his face, looking suddenly exhausted. “You’ve been following us since Run of the Mill, haven’t you?”

You don’t answer. You just stare at the crack in his plastron, the one you used to trace with your lips.

“You have to stop doing this to yourself,” he pleads, taking a half-step forward before stopping himself. The fact that he stops, that he deliberately restricts himself from closing the distance, breaks you entirely. He won’t even comfort you. He belongs to someone else.

“How do you do it?” you sob, the dam finally breaking. The words tear from your throat, raw and jagged. “How do you just walk away? How do you look at her like that, when just a few months ago, you were looking at me?”

Leo flinches as if you struck him.

“Do you say the same things to her?” you demand, stepping toward him, fueled by a hysterical, desperate energy. “Do you call her the same names? Do you touch her the way you touched me?”

“Stop,” he says, his voice cracking. He holds a hand up, a barrier between you. “Please, don’t do this.”

“How does it feel to let go?!” you scream. “Tell me, Leo! Tell me how it feels, because I don’t think I’ll ever know! I’m dying inside, and you are just … you’re just fine!”

Leo closes the distance then, grabbing your shoulders. His large hands grip you tightly, grounding you as you shake and sob. The contact sends a violent shockwave through your nervous system. His hands. His beautiful, strong hands are on you again, but it’s entirely wrong. There is no passion. Only desperation and pity.

“Listen to me,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. He ducks his head to force you to meet his eyes. “I am not ‘fine’. Breaking up with you broke my heart. But we were destroying each other. You know we were. You were giving me everything, and I had nothing left to give back. It wasn’t fair to you.”

“I don’t care about fair!” you cry, trying to bury your face in his chest, but he holds you back at arm’s length. “I just want you! I want your hands around my waist. I want to wake up next to you. I want to erase her from your life.”

Leo’s eyes harden slightly, a flash of protectiveness for Mina cutting through his grief. And that micro-expression is the most devastating thing you’ve seen all night. “You don’t mean that. Mina has nothing to do with this. She’s a good person. And she makes me … she makes me feel quiet. Inside my head. It’s quiet with her.”

You stare at him, the breath knocked out of you.

With you, it was loud. That’s the unspoken sentence hanging in the air between you. Your love was obsessive, intense, a raging hurricane of emotion that demanded all of him. And Leo, broken, traumatized, exhausted Leo, didn’t need a hurricane. He needed a gentle breeze.

He needed Mina.

“How is she supposed to know?” you whisper, your voice cracking into nothingness. You look past his shoulder, toward the fountain where Mina is waiting patiently, scrolling on her phone. “How is she supposed to know that I still love you? How is she supposed to know that every time you tell her you love her, I lose everything all over again?”

Leo’s grip on your shoulders softens. His thumbs brush against your collarbones, a phantom echo of the tenderness he used to give you so freely. “She doesn’t need to know,” he says softly. “Because this isn’t about her. This is about you. You have to let me go. You have to find someone who gives you the quiet you deserve, too.”

“I don’t want quiet,” you whisper, tears tracking steadily down your cheeks. “I want you.”

He drops his hands from your shoulders. The sudden loss of his touch leaves you freezing cold. You shiver, wrapping your arms around yourself.

“I have to go,” Leo says quietly. Then he gives you one last, lingering look—a look filled with sorrow, guilt, and a final sense of closure. At least for him. “Don’t follow us. Please. For your own sake.”

He slices his swords in a wide arc, and the air tears open with a flash of blue light. He steps backward toward the fountain where Mina is waiting. You watch as she looks up, flashing him a bright, uncomplicated smile. She takes his hand again. Leo doesn’t look back at you as they step through the portal together.

It shrinks and collapses.

You are entirely alone.

You sink to the ground, the damp grass soaking through your jeans. The silence of the park is deafening, just like your apartment. You pull your knees to your chest, resting your forehead against them. The memories are rushing in, a relentless, suffocating tide.

You remember the way his blue mask tails would flutter in the wind when you stood on the edge of a skyscraper. You remember the rumble of his chest when he laughed at his own terrible joke. You remember the exact, precise pressure of his hands resting on your waist, pulling you into him.

And does she love the way it feels?

Does Mina know the treasure she holds in her hands? When she lies next to him tonight, when he whispers her name into the dark, will she understand the miracle of his love?

You press your hands over your ears, trying to block out the voices in your head, trying to erase the images of them together. But it’s impossible. The obsession is a parasite, feeding on your grief, keeping him alive in your mind even as he walks away in reality.

How does it feel to let go?

You look up at the canopy of the tree above you, the tears finally stopping, leaving behind a hollow ache in your chest that you know will never leave.

I don’t think I’ll ever know.