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With three brothers, two best friends, and a partridge in a pear tree, alone time was something that Leo cherished.
His feet carried him out of the lair, down the subway tracks and out of the manhole. It was a path he knew well, one he’d taken hundreds of times over. Mission after mission, rescues, returns, hangouts.
He’d had a suspicious amount of alone time recently. Donnie had locked himself in his lab for the past few days, and Mikey stayed in his room all the time.
Raph at least came out to train, but he was always too busy beating on a punching bag to give Leo the time of day. He couldn’t say he blamed any of his brothers for their odd behavior. Leo had his own weird coping skills, and they had only gotten weirder since the death of their father.
For one, instead of holing himself up, he seemed to rarely be in the lair, preferring the sights and sounds of the city over the heavy silence that filled his home.
Silence was foreign to their family. Mikey provoked Raph, Raph yelled at Mikey, Donnie blew something up, and Leo stood tiredly in the middle of it all while their father waited for them to quiet down so they could start training.
He wished he could have the noise back.
Leo stood at the edge of a building, overlooking the street and the humans that never bothered to glance up above. It was bright, the warm glow of the shop windows, the fairy lights that curled around the lampposts in the winter. No one could argue, New York was beautiful, and he was responsible for keeping it safe.
Well, he used to be. The krang were gone, and Shredder was defeated, so besides people stealing purses and whatever “evil” schemes the purple dragons cooked up, the turtles were kind of out of a job.
It was nice though, the pause. There had hardly been any down time since they had turned 15, and two years and a lot of scars later, they were due for the chance to lay around, so maybe it was good that his brothers were not jumping at the chance to leave the lair again like Leo was. They deserved the rest.
Leo sighed, stepping back off the ledge and closing his eyes. For a while he simply listened to the noises of cars and people talking, focusing in on a single conversation every once in a while.
People talked a lot, but they hardly said anything. They talked about the weather, music they listened to, but never anything more.
He touched his mask, fingers drifting over the fabric. His nose burned in that familiar way it always did before he cried, like he’d been punched. Leo hadn’t cried since the night Splinter died. It wasn’t that the event didn’t weigh on his mind and body. It was just hard to feel anything more than empty. Feeling the tears push hard against the back of his eyes, yet never come, the pressure building in every limb until he felt he would pop.
And he did. Leo's chest ached and he clutched it, grazing the scars that ran deep across his plastron. He bit his lip to keep it from quivering, his hands drifting up to the knot that tied his mask on. It was too tight, it was too much.
He pulled hard on one of its tails, letting it slip loose and fall limply into his hands.
He stared at it through tears. The blue fabric, washed out and stained with dirt and blood that wouldn't come out no matter how many times he washed it. The right side of the mask was beginning to fray, a slice on the ends where a scar lay in the same spot across Leo's eye.
He remembered being young, watching as his father presented each of his siblings with their own mask. He remembered being so excited to look like a real ninja. Blue had always been his favorite color, so when he saw his, he was ecstatic, jumping in place and grabbing at it. He had spun around, holding the mask in his hands just like this.
He hadn’t been able to tie it on himself, Splinter making his way over a moment later to tie it on for him. It was almost too big at the time, the tails reaching down to his knees. He grew into it. Now that he was older, taller, it reached only half way down his shell, just long enough to dramatically flow in the breeze, how he liked it.
His grip on his mask tightened. He took a deep breath, raising his hands up and allowing the piece of fabric to be picked up by the wind. He watched as it fluttered away, his hands dropping to his sides. He grit his teeth, trying to stop the pain that ate at his body.
Eventually the mask was out of sight, leaving Leo staring off at nothing in particular.
It felt like his mind was on fire, flipping from one thought to the next, each idea soured and rotted somewhere in the back of his mind.
His mask, the one his father had given him, was gone. The mask he’d grown up with, worn every day, hardly seen himself without. He’d let it go.
Leo pressed his palms into his eyes, groaning. He watched the colors dance behind his eyelids. It took a moment for his vision to come back when he removed his hands, colors smearing as he fought not to cry again.
“It’s not fair!” Was all he could bring himself to say.
Fair was something Leo had been trained out of. It was a strange concept to grasp in the first place when you were a mutant turtle who lived in the sewers, your only contact with humanity being a vigilante, a secret alien, and your father’s ex-brother who kind of wanted you dead.
Oftentimes Leo longed for the chance to be among the humans, to be fascinated by the things they were, to not be burdened by saving the world they lived so carelessly in for once. Yeah, fair wasn’t a word Leo liked, yet it was the only word that flooded his brain, over and over.
It’s not fair. It’s not fair.
There was a boiling feeling in his gut as he thought, he needed to move, do something, make it stop-
He spun around, kicking at whatever was in his immediate vicinity, which happened to be an empty trashcan. It made a loud clang as it crashed to the ground, Leo shortly after it, the force of the kick throwing him off balance.
He landed hard, catching himself on his hands. They burned, yet he simply stared at the concrete ground. He didn’t have the energy to get up, instead leaning back and pulling his knees up to his chest. Leo's head thunked against his knees, but didn’t get the chance to stay there, as he heard footsteps approaching fast, pounding loudly against the ground.
“Leo! We’ve been looking for you all morning!” April dropped to her knees in front of Leo, looking him over for any injuries.
“What?” He responded intelligently, rubbing his eyes. He leaned forward to stand up. “How did you even know I was gone? All of you were supposed to be asleep.”
“Mikey went to check on you a few hours ago, and alerted everyone when he couldn't find you anywhere.” April looked down at the floor, tracing her finger along the concrete as she explained. “You really scared the guys.”
“You can always count on Mikey, right?”
“Leo.”
“Yeah, I know.” He batted at the air, clearing it of his half hearted joke. He stood up, offering his hand to April, though she got up on her own anyway, pulling out her phone. He watched her dial a number before the phone began to ring.
“April? Did you find him?” The panic in Donnies voice made Leo's chest hurt all over again, and he shifted uncomfortably.
“Yeah, I’ve got him, we’ll meet you back at the lair.” She clicked off the call, cutting off whatever question Donnie was going to ask. If you started answering him, you’d never stop.
April nodded once at Leo, beginning to walk. Leo followed behind, dragging his feet. Did the peace always have to end so soon?
They walked for a while, longer than Leo was sure they had to, though he wasn’t the best at keeping track of time in this state, any moment could be a second or an hour.
April, like Leo, was quiet. She could appreciate the night without telling you she appreciated the night. Walking with April was pleasant, though he could almost sense that she was bursting with questions. She only asked one.
“What happened to your mask?” She didn’t look up at him. Leo didn’t answer immediately. He looked around, hoping she’d forget she asked, but April's memory was concerningly good, and Leo's ability to ignore her was concerningly bad. Relationships and communication, or something like that.
“I lost it.”
“How?” She kicked a rock, watching it bounce a few feet away.
“Can we talk about something else?” He crossed his arms over his chest, glancing at her. April paused, looking like she was going to argue, but thankfully, after a moment, she nodded.
April pulled her hair over her shoulder. It had started to get longer, enough to where she could do that. Leo instinctively reached for his mask tails, cursing at himself when his hand phased right through where they should have been.
“Are you okay?” She finally asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“I mean really, Leo. It’s okay to not be okay. We’ve been through a lot.”
Leo admired April, truthfully. She was calm under pressure, strong, witty. She was easy to talk to. He felt safe with April, the way he hoped others felt safe with him, like things might actually turn out okay.
Was he okay? No, not really. April was right, as she usually was. They had been through a lot, and it had obviously done its rounds on Leo's psyche. Even he, as dense as he could be about his own feelings, could tell that much.
He had been quiet for a long time, too long.
April stopped walking, turning to him and opening her arms.
“Do you need a hug?” She offered. Leo made his way towards her, thumping his head against her shoulder. She laughed, pulling him in.
The two stood for a minute before Leo reciprocated, giving in to the tears that, for the third time tonight, pressed at his eyes.
“Your shoulder is wet.” He groaned. April laughed.
“Worth it.”