#cool bye

“Leo? Mikey?!” Raph stood over them, horror etched on his face. 

“Raph!” Leo’s voice cracked. He couldn’t break now. He still had so much work to do. “Raph…” He couldn’t seem to say anything else. He was just so relieved to see him, but still so scared. He could feel his baby brother bleeding out in his arms. “Raph. Raph, Raph–” 

Raph dropped to his knees. Both of his hands shot out, one to cradle Mikey’s head, and the other to rest on Leo’s shoulder. “I need you to focus, Leo,” he said in a deadly serious voice. “Tell me what happened later. Donnie is preppin’ the med bay but he can only do so much. Can you save Mikey?” 

Leo squeezed his eyes shut. He’d never done anything like this before. None of them had ever been in this sort of condition before. He didn’t have the experience, didn’t have the knowledge– 

“Leo.”

He wanted so badly to shove Mikey into Raph’s arms and pass out. But Mikey would die if Leo did that. He was the only one who could possibly save Mikey. 

Mikey let out a pitiful whine. With heavy-lidded, cloudy eyes, Leo wasn’t sure exactly how conscious he was anymore. All he knew was that Mikey was in severe pain. He stared down at Mikey, unable to move. 

“Leo!” Raph shook his shoulder. Mikey sobbed. “Leo, can Mikey count on you to save him?” 

Raph always knew exactly what Leo needed, and those were the right words to snap Leo out of his spiral and directly into action. He nodded. 

Leo tried to stand, he really did. But his legs were shaking too hard, and his arms were too busy clutching Mikey to himself. He couldn’t get up. “Raph,” his voice still trembled, “I need you to carry us there.” 

“Raph’s on it.” With impossibly gentle arms, Raph scooped them up and began sprinting to the med bay. 

Mikey screamed with each step. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Leo whispered. “I’m sorry, I know it hurts.” They weren’t supposed to move him like this. Not until he was stabilized. But there was nothing else Leo could think to do at that moment. 

Whether out of breath or out of time, Mikey’s screams faded into wheezing, ragged breaths. Leo panicked like he never had before. Whether from blood loss or pain, Mikey had passed out. But Leo could still feel Mikey’s faint heartbeat, fluttering like the hope he cradled almost as tightly as his brother. 

Raph ran faster. 

As the med bay doors came into view, Leo attempted to take a steadying breath. He didn’t know what exactly the next few hours of scrambling to save Mikey’s life would entail, but he knew that it was all on his shoulders. 

As Mikey was gently layed out on the cot, Leo allowed himself one moment to take in his injuries under the bright medbay light. 

His shoulder was a torn, bloody mess due to a horrifically ragged bullet exit wound. Mikey’s whole arm hung at an awkward, limp angle. The top right quarter of his shell was mangled: cracked from the impact, splintering apart, and some of it was simply gone. Dark blood had welled between the fissures. In fact, blood was everywhere. Staining Mikey’s hands from where he’d tried to stop the bleeding, spilling down his plastron, congealing on his head where the barrel had hit him. Grimy streaks of gunk from the disgusting floor of the alleyway only added to the horrifying picture. 

In fact, the only part of him that wasn’t splattered in some way were the tear tracks cutting down his cheeks. Leo wondered how much he’d cried when he’d left, believing that Leo must have abandoned him. 

If Leo hadn’t felt Mikey’s weak pulse with his own hands only seconds ago, he might have assumed the worst from looking at Mikey’s pained, pale face. 

He was shaking. 

Leo got to work. 

—

The edges of Leo’s vision were fuzzy as he pressed a damp rag to his baby brother’s clammy, warm forehead. Entirely honed in, nothing else in the world mattered except that Mikey kept breathing. 

Ragged, shallow, pained breaths, but breathing nonetheless. 

Mikey’s face was still scrunched in pain, as it had been for hours. A small whine that sounded far too much like a heart monitor in a flatline came from Mikey’s throat. 

“It’s okay,” Leo whispered, his voice hoarse from barking orders at his family. “I’ve got you. I promise.” 

It had been fourteen, maybe fifteen hours since Leo had portaled into the middle of the Lair, clutching a bleeding, broken brother. Everything still felt broken. Everything was still broken. 

If Leo had been asked to recount exactly what had happened in the many white-knuckled hours before, he would not have been able to recall very much. He didn’t even know what time it was anymore. 

All he remembered was Mikey’s orange bandana stained a dark red. Shards of Mikey’s shell held loosely in his hands. Donnie’s frozen gaze that had forced Leo to yell at him to get moving several times as he’d scrambled to hook up monitors. Accidentally missing Raph’s vein the first try during the critically needed blood transfusion. Towels and rags becoming a deeper and deeper pink as wounds were cleaned. Mounting horror that rose with Mikey’s temperature as Leo realized that he had developed an infection. Worst of all, he remembered the way Mikey’s heartbeat faded in and out. 

Uneven. Unsteady. 

Until it had stopped altogether. 

Leo didn’t remember the chest compressions or the defibrillator or the medication or the frantic voices of his brothers or the weird blue sparks that had circled his shaking hands as his markings glowed. He only remembered being blinded by sharp, icy-white panic.

Whichever of the treatments actually worked, Leo didn’t remember through the relieved haze. 

He’d saved him. 

He’d gotten Mikey’s heart to beat again. But it still took everything to keep it that way. 

Hours after the stitches, the bandaging, the arduous process of the pitiful shell repair they managed to do, the antibiotics, the transfusion, and every other necessary procedure, Mikey was only slightly more stable. 

Even after everything he’d done, Leo’s world remained only a few heartbeats away from shattering forever. 

Leo re-wet the cloth and pressed it Mikey’s overheating head once more. His free hand clung to Mikey’s motionless one. A hand that always had paint or clay or glitter under the fingernails. A hand that had painted countless scenes of their family together. Hands that lovingly kneaded dough for delicious pizza. Hands that always tapped and twitched and booped and snapped and clapped and made every sort of happy noise. 

But now Mikey’s hands were perfectly still in Leo’s grip. Unnatural and upsetting. No matter how hard Leo squeezed, Mikey’s fingers didn’t so much as twitch. 

Distantly, someone made a sound that might have been Leo’s name. 

It took him a few seconds to register that someone else was there. Finally, Leo slowly raised his head, looking around. 

“Leo,” Raph said in a low voice, “let me watch over him for a while.” 

Leo shook his head. Immediately, he regretted doing so, as the world continued to sway even after he stopped. 

“Leo, please. You almost look as terrible as he does. Get some sleep.” 

“I can’t.” Leo’s voice was so scratchy it hardly even sounded like himself. It hurt to speak. “I need to be here in case something happens again.” 

“The worst is over. And even if somethin’ did happen, you wouldn’t be able to do anythin’ in this state. Mikey and I will be right here the whole time. Just… please rest.” Raph tugged the cloth out of Leo’s stiff fingers. 

He didn’t react. 

“Leo, you’ve been workin’ nonstop for almost sixteen hours now. You did it. He’s safe.” 

“We’re not safe,” Leo whispered, staring at nothing. “She’s still out there. She wants Donnie.” The woman’s cold face and the even colder glint off the barrel of the gun were burned into Leo’s mind. He doubted the Foot Clan had been able to stop her for long. Even if they had, there would still be consequences for tangling with… whoever she was. 

“Donnie’s upping security right now,” Raph continued in that same gentle voice. 

Of course. Someone should probably go make sure Donnie wasn’t blaming himself for what had transpired in the alley. Yes, the woman had been searching for him because of money he’d apparently stolen from her, but Donnie had no idea what he’d been getting into. Donnie never intended for any of this to happen. Donnie, who once set a table on fire because Mikey had stubbed his toe on it, wouldn’t rest until he was positive his baby brother was safe. Donnie may be blaming himself, but Leo knew who had fired the gun. And why. 

Leo hadn’t been able to rat Donnie out. And because of that, Mikey’s shoulder and surrounding shell had been blasted apart. 

The flash and immediate spray of red were branded onto Leo’s brain. But what was infinitely worse was the absolute shock and terror of Mikey’s face, and the way it crumpled into agony within a second. 

And then the fall. 

He had taken, it seemed, hours to fall forward. A slow arc downwards where he had crashed to the pavement. 

The bright white medbay and disgusting dark alleyway could not have been more different, but to Leo, everything was blurring together. It didn’t matter where he was, Mikey needed him. He needed to keep watching over him. 

It was the absolute least he could do. 

“Leo, please, you’re scarin’ me.” The Raph Chasm looked even more serious than usual. “Say somethin’, please.” 

Dozens of things he could– should– say flashed through Leo’s head. 

It’s my fault. 

You didn’t see his face when it happened, Raph. You don’t know. 

It was all so horrible. 

I can’t leave him. 

None of them left his tight throat. He didn’t know what to say to Raph. He didn’t know what he would say to Mikey if– when he woke up. 

All he could think about was being dragged away from Mikey’s prone figure, slumped in a growing pool of blood. Leo had screamed and kicked and fought with everything in him to get back to his brother. And nothing had worked. 

Leo had left him there. 

Entirely alone. 

Mikey had literally bled out in darkness, surrounded by grime and garbage. 

“I’m not leaving him again,” Leo whispered. 

Raph drew breath, like he could possibly say something to change Leo’s mind. 

“They forced me to leave him, Raph. Dragged me away. I’m not going to do that again. He needed me and I wasn’t there. I’m not going to do it again. I’m not going to– I’m not–” 

“I didn’t say you should leave the medbay,” Raph said calmly, carefully avoiding making eye contact with Leo. He’d taken over the work of gently caressing Mikey’s forehead with the rag he’d taken from Leo (When had he done that?). It was honestly amazing how levelheaded Raph had managed to remain while his littlest brother hung in the balance. Leo supposed it was a defense mechanism so he didn’t freak out and make things worse. “Go grab pillows or something. You can stay, you just have to sleep. Got that?” 

Leo conceded.

“I’ll be right back,” he whispered, squeezing Mikey’s motionless hand. Letting go was harder than it should have been. He forced his fingers to loosen and pull away. 

The echo of a gunshot flashed through Leo’s mind, Mikey’s terrified eyes reflecting distant streetlights– 

A screaming flatline– 

“NO!”

Lurching forward, Leo’s hands latched onto Mikey’s wrist, instantly relieved to feel a pulse underneath. His ears rang. He couldn’t breathe. Over and over and over again, he saw and heard and smelled– 

“Leo!” Raph’s steady hand gripped Leo’s bicep. “Hey, it’s over, okay? I promise that Mikey is safe. It’s all thanks to you. It’s okay.” 

“It’s because of me,” Leo whispered. 

“Yes, it’s because of you that he’s home safe.” 

“No–” 

“Yes, it’s because of you his little heart is still beating.” 

“No–” 

“Yes. Leo. Look at me.” 

Tearing his eyes away from Mikey’s slowly rising and falling chest was almost impossible, but he managed to meet Raph’s eyes. Leo was shocked to see his own fear and guilt reflected back. 

“I’m scared too. You saw how much I panicked when you two dropped in covered in blood. You saw how I could barely sit still during the transfusion.” Leo’s gaze dropped to the gauze around Raph’s inner elbow. Had that only been a few hours ago? “If you go to sleep, it’ll seem like he’ll wake up faster, won’t it?” 

Leo had gone back to staring down at Mikey’s pinched face. “I know all that. I just… can’t leave.” 

Raph sighed. “Raph’s too soft with you guys. I’ll go get pillows and stuff with the understandin’ that you will attempt to sleep once they’re in here. Got that?” 

“Yeah.” 

Raph left. 

For the millionth time in the past however many hours, Leo checked over Mikey’s vitals again. They hadn’t changed much; he still wasn’t doing great. High fever, shallow breathing, and a heart rate that still hadn’t stabilized. He didn’t know what else he could do. It didn’t feel safe giving him any more antibiotics, and moving him to change bandages again was going to require more hands. Leo didn’t want to think about long term shell repair. He didn’t want to look at the cracks, at the splintered shell, any longer than he had to. 

“I’m back! It is now officially Raph’s-Turn-O’Clock.” 

“He’s not stable yet,” Leo protested. 

“Leo, we had a deal.” 

“What if something else happens? If his blood pressure–” 

Raph dumped mounds of pillows and blankets at Leo’s feet. “I’ll wake you up if something changes. I swear on Pizza Supreme.” 

The moment the pile fwump’ed at his feet and Leo felt soft fabric against his shins, his legs all but gave out. With one final squeeze of Mikey’s hand, Leo sank to the floor. It felt so wrong not to be holding onto Mikey anymore. Surely, Raph had tricked him! Sedated him without him knowing! Something other than just being in the presence of pillows had to be going on. 

“How are you… so calm about this?” Leo muttered, fighting off sleep for as long as he could. 

“Oh believe me, Raph’s not. Once Raph knows everythin’ is okay then he’ll probably have an epic breakdown. Delayed stress response, n’ stuff. You’re not the only one who almost lost their little brother, Leo.” 

“Hmmm,” Leo managed. His limbs were heavy and his mind was filled with fuzz.