#maple leaf writes

Panthera felt the air escape his lungs at the mention of Germany.

Trying to think felt like walking through tar. Trying to bring himself back to the conversation was like swimming through it.

A presence gently probed the back of his brain. Panthera unstacked the brick-and-motor wall to make a small, Leonardo-shaped hole to let his gentlest master inside his mind.

Leonardo was met with a racing heart and body-freezing panic and claws gripping hard into the ground. 

Somebody mentioned Germany again. Images of trenchcoats and crowded streets and concrete buildings and red flags flashed through both of their minds.

Panthera shoved him out and rebuilt the brick-and-motor wall.

“Hey, guys?” Leonardo said, sounding very distant even though Panthera knew he parked himself not three feet away from the kitchen table. “Let's maybe stop talking about Germany.”

The kitchen went quiet. Panthera could not see the expressions on the faces of his master's brothers. Hushed questions flurried about — is he okay? Why are his ears like that? What's he got to do with Germany? — but the muscles in his jaw were too taught to relax and he could barely see through his own eyes anyways. There were no answers for him to give. No way to unclench his fists and relax his ears and put on his poker face and say that he was fine, and could he get his own dinner? And it’s after work hours, may he be dismissed, and — 

Chair grated on floor like steel doors on concrete floors and little children screaming.

No air greeted Panthera’s lungs when he tried to move his chest to breathe.

A gentle but calloused hand laid itself on Panthera’s fur. A gentle pull on his arm, trying to move him to a safer place, maybe, because this master was so gentle and so kind and Panthera would contentedly serve him for centuries to come.

An order washed over his brain. Panthera let it consume his body:

Come with me.

And suddenly his body wasn’t his own, and maybe it never was or never will be again, and Panthera followed his master wherever he was pulling him because he could not disobey even if he had his wits about him.

Panthera would later remember that there was a step down into the turtles’ makeshift living room. He would also scold himself for reacting so poorly to a simple name in front of an audience. But his master asked him to sit and to show him his hands, so Panthera’s legs sat him down on the bench they watched television on and his hands held themselves out in front of his body. One hand held onto a string of red glass beads, several of them crushed with their shards sticking out of his palm and golden blood pooling around them.

His master gave orders that were not directed at him and soon the stinging subsided. Soft fabric pressed into his wounds and wrapped around his hand with the expertise of someone who did this daily.