Chapter Text
So, Leo has finally upgraded from bedrest to couchrest to ‘can walk himself to the kitchen without breaking, like, five heartfelt promises’-rest.
With more energy to spare and more free time not spent knocked out or under constant supervision, he’ll admit the time away from normal ninja-ing business was really getting to him. Leo’s spent a lot of afternoons one-handed typing stuff like ‘hoq to help hand injury stretvhces’ and ‘excersises for chronic pain.’
As nebulous as his ‘role’ of family nurse already was before… everything, and the fact that it hasn’t exactly been at the top of his leaning pile of hats for a hot minute, it’s nice to be able to point to a relief to all the lingering aches and pains his family hasn’t known what to do with.
Hand pain, dearest little brother? Here’s a chart! And it’s even meant for artists, too!
Shoulder joints getting you down? Here’s something called a… Lawn-mower pull? Coool.
Not to mention Casey apparently had the low-down on all the tips and fixes he learned from his senseis, so. Yeah. Helpful.
Though assigning his family to do a little at-home improvised physical therapy means that he has to too.
Eh, es lo que es.
Totally unrelated to the ‘chronic pain’ thingy, Leo has an appointment to catch.
He carefully makes his way from his train car to the main lair, pausing, using safety railings and still-grimy walls to ease the strain. Leo’s grateful that his family’s gone today.
(Out of the lair, not gone. Busy. Not right here right now watching him fumble around.)
The only options besides the stairs are a service elevator- that'd he'd have to walk just about as far to get to- or the escalator, stuck still after the latest Incident tee em, and somewhere in the bottom 50 of Donnie's priorities right now.
Leo could probably through his 'poor little ol me' weight around to get it bumped up, but...
Hey, he can get up the normal stairs, and he should, and soon enough all of his 'should's and 'can's will match up perfectly and he won't even think about it anymore.
He starts on the stairs, one hand braced on the wall and another gripping the handrail, and tries to think about nothing else but one foot in front of the other.
It doesn't work, really. The ache keeps strong-arming its way to the front of his mind.
It aches like a chill- past the skin and muscle, right down to the bone. As a turtle, even a freaky mutant one, cold and him don't really mix.
Swimming too long in the fall and getting a lung full of sewer water is cold. Wind wrapping around and past and through you, even in the middle of the summer, is cold.
The vacuum of space is cold, too, but that's just because of all of the nothing leaves no room for anything else. No air, no heat.
It’s only cold here because it's winter and they’re all still working on re-insulating the lower levels. That’s it.
He runs the pads of his fingers along the cracked concrete of the walls.
Rust on the handrails flakes off with every push up the stairs.
His foot eventually comes down hard on empty air and not cracked concrete. He breathes in. He breathes out.
He waits hunched over at the top of the stairs for however long it takes for his lungs to get the memo that, hey buddy, look- oxygen is happening!
Once the feeling in his chest fades from 'danger danger' into 'background noise' he uncurls.
Easy. Just as easy as it should be.
He stumbles his way to the dojo.
Leo rests an arm on the doorway, super casually looking inside.
It's Casey. Of course. (Future boy, not 'intense not-quite-family but Hamato Clan, I guess?' Casey, which- what a funny coincidence?)
He's meditating. Though his mouth quirks upwards when Leo intentionally steps on a sqeaky floorboard as he lets himself inside. (Going against built-in ninja training to avoid spooking the hell out of each other had been a very necessary lesson the last few months.)
Seeing Casey out of his whole future-ninja apocalypse look was still a bit of a funny sight.
His initial selection of clothes were some of their old pajamas- which looked ridiculous due to the whole, y'know, being stretched out for years on their shells thing- and some of April's old numbers.
But it looks like they finally got the guy some real clothes of his own. Not to mention how absolutely infuriatingly curly his previously slicked back hair got with some proper TLC.
Still wore some trademarked pieces around the lair and preferred to be more armored up than not topside, but... progress.
Leo flops down ever-so-gracefully on the mat next to Casey's, and Casey graciously pretends that he isn't already out of breath.
Casey puts all of his intense attention right onto Leo, legs still folded in a pretty flawless butterfly stretch. “Are you ready?” Leo gives a weak thumbs up from the floor, and Case nods seriously like it was an actual answer. “Ok. Let’s start with the routine Master Splinter suggested this time.”
“Y’know, I won’t snitch if we skip the warm-ups one time,” Leo says, already slowly rolling to sit up.
“Stretching is important,” Casey says with all the gravitas of reciting a sacred tenet, “your body will thank you later.”
Leo snorts. “Even the stretching before the glorified stretching?”
Casey responds with a jut-out jaw and an expression that just screams ‘I wish I was rolling my eyes.’ “Warm-ups and cool downs are equally important to the main exercise.”
Leo could keep going. Could make a joke about how been such a stickler makes Casey sound like an old man- which he totally is, as an elderly seventeen to Leo’s young and spry sixteen-
But. He doesn’t. He lets the zinger go unzinged. It makes Leo’s chest burn just a little bit.
Because, like- does Leo have the right to?
Historically Leo doesn’t have the best track record of making sure his jokes don’t land on a sore spot. And he. He just doesn’t want to make a bad call with Casey.
Leo can make Casey laugh. It’s still accidental half the time, but he can. Leo just doesn’t know what their dynamic is supposed to be yet. He doesn’t think Case knows, either. They bounce back and forth- They startle each other like strangers. Leo says something that makes Case look at him all shiny-eyed and knowing. Case gets tired of Leo’s jokes like he’s heard it all before.
Leo isn’t… used to people knowing him better than he knows them. It’s…
Different.
So Leo lets the silence linger. And Casey doesn’t break it either.
1, 2. Leo counts in his head once Casey begins quietly running him through katas. It’s hard. And it’s hard that things that should be easy make his breath catch and his chest twinge.
He’s walked off so much before, but now even the strain of his arm just crossing over the front of his plastron hurts? He pulls harder, hissing as silently as he can.
It’s hard to breathe- it’s been hard to breathe- and it takes all of his focus to keep pushing through the feeling. And on counting. 3, 4.
Leo knows he needs to relax. 5, 6. The tension isn’t helping. He just needs to work through the burn-
“Master Michelangelo had hair.”
…
...?
“Whuh-huh?” Huh?
Leo sputters. “Wait, what? Was he cursed? Possessed? Haunted wig?!”
Casey smiles, a little self-assured thing. Leo can recognize he fell for the distraction hook line and sinker, but that bait was just too tempting to really care.
“I don’t know if it was a mystic side effect, or just natural…” Casey switches the arm he’s stretching, and Leo absentmindedly does the same. “But Donnie always said it could have been due to his box turtle DNA- apparently they can grow hair too!”
Leo lets out a startled laugh. He wants to keep it going, finally ask if there’s actually a shot he’ll grow his own beautiful ‘do…
But there’s something that’s been sticking out to him like a sore little thumb, and he’s not sure if he can keep himself from asking.
…Augh. Leo takes the plunge.
“...‘Donnie’?” He tries to sound a normal amount of curious.
“Hm?”
“Not ‘Master Donatello’?”
Casey blinks. “Oh. Well,” he says. His face is carefully neutral. Leo thinks- hopes- it’s out of genuine consideration of how to answer rather than because of his clumsy wording. Leo lets the question sit, even when his mouth wants to keep going.
They’ve worked through a couple more sets before Casey speaks again.
“Donnie had already…” A pause. “Passed. When I became your student, and Michaelangelo our head mystic, and before O’Neil became my Commander.”
Casey bends over his knee, curly hair obscuring his face. “So he was always Donnie.” But Leo can hear something of a smile, still. “I learned what he really did for the resistance as I grew up. You all told me.”
“I’d like to know.”
Casey blinks at him. It’s fair, because Leo’s surprised he said it too. “About Donnie?”
“No. I mean, yea,” Leo waves a limp hand from the ground. “But also about, uh, ha…Whatever you can tell me.” Leo swallows around the dryness in his mouth. “Anything you can tell me.”
Casey looks at him.
(And it- he doesn’t want to say it weirds him out when Casey does that, because that’s kind of messed up. All he’s doing is just looking, and telling Casey to not even look at him is one hundred percent not a normal thing to ask somebody.
It’s just that Casey’s eyes are so wide and dark and Leo can’t tell what he sees anymore. Not ‘greatest ninja in the world’, obviously- but that was totally doomed from the start.)
And Casey talks. Leo listens, for once.
…
The ache in his limbs distracts from the stabs of pain. The ache in his chest distracts from the trembling in his arms.
It hurts. It’s hurt to even think about, let alone know.
Leo leans into the pain.
He needs to hear it.
(He needs to know that worst-case scenario, the freak accidents, the failed plans...)
(It can’t happen like that again.)
It’s obviously a very carefully curated highlights reel of what happened in those twenty-four years. Disjointed snapshots alongside a loose timeline, all up until the big blaze of glory end.
(But it wasn’t a blaze of glory, really- it was them all dying separate, scattered, desperate.)
(They lost.)
Leo can’t imagine it. Can’t imagine being in the place to let his littlest brother go all heroic like that. It’s one thing if it’s a time crunch- whole apocalypse or notcalypse, end of the very world type sitch, evil alien staring you down and only one way to fix it…
Which. Well. It sounds like that was the sitch in question. But there’s differences. Many.
And Leo’s well aware of what Mikey’s willing to do if he’s asked.
At a certain point, Leo’s muscles shake too much for him to continue without pulling something.
He and Casey stop going through the motions and sit in the middle of the training room.
Leo, collapsed but trying really hard to seem like he’s just chilling and Casey crouched in a way that Leo knows only seems casual- still poised to jump up at any time.
Casey keeps going. Quiet, but unwavering. “He was looking at it. Right before he gave it to me, that whole run, he kept looking at it.”
Casey takes something out of a hemmed inner pocket on his cloak. It’s…
It’s a photo. Leo briefly sees the picture itself before only the plain white back faces him.
It’s startlingly clean. Colors still bright and untouched.
“...And after looking at the photo, I realized that I needed to get you guys for help. And then...” Casey’s hand makes vague circles in the air. “I wish I had something... to show. Physically. How they looked when I knew you. Digitally, I know Donnie said something about backing things up when I gave him my mask last, but... I don’t know how much he was able to get.”
“But April gave me this, and showed me some of the pol-” Casey slows down, eyebrows scrunching. “Uh, ‘Polaroids’? That she’s taken of you guys.”
“I didn’t know it originally came from her. You-” And it’s the first time in the conversation Casey’s made the slip up so directly, so Leo takes extra care not to react to it. Casey takes a moment to reconfigure, and continues on. “Sensei always had it with him.”
A pause.
“...Do you still have it?” Casey asks, dark eyes still on the copy in his hand. Leo watches as Casey’s index finger slowly traces an hourglass pattern into the back of the photo.
Leo briefly considers a very common solution to his problems- outright lying and getting up and claiming to look for it in another room.
He reaches into his fanny pack and pulls out the photo.
It was worn soft.
Leo had barely remembered the picture when Casey first appeared with it, but he’s had… a lot of free time to think on it since.
It was right after April got accepted into Eastlaird. She had waited to open the decision with them, even before her parents.
Raph talked on and on about how ‘no matter what happens yadda yadda yadda’, while Donnie threatened to find out who was responsible if she got rejected, and Mikey shook the poor envelope around until he deemed it too heavy to be anything else but an acceptance.
…Leonardo said something funny and relevant, probably.
She got in. They partied all day and took that photo with the little free folder that came with the letter. April had said she applied because of how famous the place was- something about student clubs, political intrigue, and being right in the heart of the city- and Leo believes that was at least 66 percent true. But mostly, he remembers thinking, he was just relieved she was staying close.
He thinks he can still see the stress of that potential goodbye on his face- on all of their faces- in that photo. But it was a kind of pressure that sprouted into a bone-deep manic relief.
Their family was staying together. They had survived.
A sign that regular life would keep marching on and on and on. Back when they thought the worst was over.
He runs a thumb over a crease.
There's spots of mysterious stains, the lines from a thousand gentle folds. And… holes. From Leo’s deathgrip on the poor thing back when they first came back home.
Oh. Right. Casey has had to watch him stare at his hands for the last… however long it’s been. He got lost in his own thoughts while talking again. Oops.
Leo pulls his expression into a light smile, because he isn’t sure when it stopped being one.
“It’s safe to have these in the same place, right? Them being in the same spot won’t cause any paradoxes? I think that’s how that works. Temporal casualties and all that.”
“Causality, actually, I think…” Casey mutters, turning his head slightly away from Leo. A moment later his mouth twists and he shoots Leo an unsure look.
Leo doesn’t even have to put on the reassuring grin he gives him. In fact, it’d be hard to stop it. He keeps his arm out towards Casey, waggling the old photo at him.
Casey tentatively grabs the older photo in their funny little trade. Leo would have to guess he spots something in that photo that makes him gradually bring the picture right up to his face to see it better.
Causality. Huh. From his reaction, Leo still can’t quite tell if mixing up words is something that Casey’s Master Leonardo still did or if he’s already accepted it as one of Leo’s many endearing character traits.
It reminds him of how Donnie used to mutter his corrections before he got confident enough to yell them right in Leo’s face, even though the hypocrite always messed up pronunciations instead, and he thinks about how the terrible influence that Don surely had on Casey as a kid, and then suddenly he’s thinking about the fact that Casey was a little kid once, and then they die, everybody dies-
He grits his teeth, grinding them as he tries to hold back that incoming flood. He turns away towards a poster to school his expression back to normal before Casey looks up again. Stop thinking about it. It isn’t the time. He keeps his breathing normal. He blinks and blinks, and he does not cry.
Oh, man, look. That movie. What a great movie. Lou Jitsu’s Space-fu 2: Comet Kick Boogaloo? Claaasic.
“We have got to get you into some good Lou Jitsu.” Leo refuses to acknowledge that holding back that swell of emotion makes him sound downright congested. He gives Case a big ol’ faux-indulgent smile. “Did you know? We know him in real life,” Leo stage whispers.
It at least gets a snort from Casey, which is a win. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure between you and my mom I know the plots of all his movies as bedtime stories.” He leveled a flat look at Leo. “And that you both tried to tell me that he was real or you came up with him yourself.”
Huh. Casey’s mom had good taste.
Leo’s about to start razzing him for not following a sacred Hamato tradition- but then Casey fidgets with his gloves in a way that Leo’s starting to recognize means he isn’t done talking, so Leo shuts up. “I might not be a, uh… Action movie person.” He admits with an endearingly high level of shame. “I like what April has been showing me.” Casey shrugs stiffly. “Hospital dramas. Strange crime fiction.” Casey looks back down at the photo in his hand.
Leo waffles on whether or not he should admit he’s watched a medical drama or two (or ten) before he sees Casey’s mouth twists miserably.
“I can’t believe I almost…” Casey mumbles to the floor. “During that mission…”
Oh no. (Oh no no no this feels like it’s approaching exactly what Leo’s been trying to dodge for the past month.)
“I was so mad,” (at you), “but throwing this away so carelessly…?” Casey glares down at the photo, running a tense thumb over it again and again. “The last thing he gave me, and I…”
Leo doesn’t want to be here. He wishes literally anyone else was, someone who wasn’t the lamer echo of Casey’s mentor-dad?-teacher, and who was the sole reason Casey even threw away the thing in frustration to start with.
Hey, maybe if he’s fast enough he can hobble away and get somebody else? Literally, literally anybody else?
…
…No.
No, right, no. He’s trying to be better. And better means keeping his brothers from waltzing down the same path he did, and keeping his family from working themselves into the dirt to fix things, and… And having capital-D Discussions about stuff.
“And- And what I said to you. Mom and Master Leonardo always said ‘it was better to hurt feelings rather than end up with hurt people’, but, you-” Casey grit his teeth tight enough that Leo could swear he heard his jaw creaking. “Then you-”
“Hey, hey, Casey.” He places a light hand on his shoulder, trying not to freak him out any more than he already has. Leo tries to get Case’s focus back on him before he starts this half-baked pep talk, but after a moment of quiet gasps decides to just jump in.
“Thank you.” Casey snaps to attention. Leo gives him a smile. “I needed the wake-up call, man. If I had kept going like I had been?” Leo does a full-body shiver for comedic effect. (But he really does feel super nauseous even joking about it.) “You, giving me that photo? Reminded me of what was really important. What was still the most important thing to your sensei.”
Leo squeezes Casey’s shoulder, just for a moment. “And when it came down to it, all-or-nothing? You trusted in me. Even when you knew that I wasn’t exactly the greatest ninja in the world, ha… Thanks.” I don’t know if anybody else would have done it, he doesn’t say. Maybe he could have convinced Raph if he really leaned on how important it was, but he doesn’t know if he would have had the time to spare.
He’s not proud that he put Casey in that spot twice in the same 24 hours. But Leo’s glad- he’s glad there was somebody that wasn’t so attached to him. That he could ask from Casey what he knew would be impossible for any other member of his family.
Because Casey might not like him, and Leo will never be the guy he knew, but he trusted Leo. Had faith in him to make the right call. Even if it wasn't a nice call.
Casey mouth twists and eyebrows bunch up into a conflicted look, but it's closer to a ‘serious thinking’ face over a grieving one.
Leo lets the silence sit. But not too long.
“Did you ever see any other photos?” Leo asks. Casey looks back up to him, blinking blankly. “Like, growing up. Did we show you any old family photos?”
Casey hesitates for a beat, thinking, before shaking his head. “No, not really. Donnie had a serious data leak when I was younger that we never fully recovered from... and most of April’s pictures only have a couple of you guys in one frame.” He pauses. “So that’s the only photo I’ve seen of you guys all together. I think.”
It hurts, but. Leo knows that so many of their old family photos were lost. Torn, burned, flooded.
He can’t pull out their old album to show him, or all of the chunky square tapes Dad used to record them on.
But. Buuut he happens to have a brother that is obsessed with having digital copies of basically everything.
“You,” he says as he pats Casey on the shoulder, “are going to be so, so thankful for Donnie’s scrapbooking obsession in a minute.”
“...Scrapbooking...?”
Leo stands. Well, tries to stand and Casey scrambles up to be a good armrest. Leo makes wordless grabby hands to a single spade hanging on a rack on the wall, which Casey generously provides with only a little bit of shuffling. He digs through his fanny pack to pull out a gel pen with a goofy rubber topper that Mikey gave him during one of their arts-n-craft nights.
(A few weeks back, far back enough to when his memory was so touch-and-go, Leo couldn’t really tell you when exactly this happened…
Casey had approached him, wide-eyed and silent and still not even a little bit integrated into the present, and handed him the sword he’d swapped places with.
And when he thought of the one he left behind still in there and having its other half right in the dead center of his family and his home
He grabbed what mystic connection he could and snapped it right over his knee.
Figuratively. Magically.
Unmanifested the thing back into only a dinky little garden spade sitting in his lap.
That was a bad play. Didn’t really think that one through, huh Leon? It freaked people out. And there’s no proof that the swords were even tied together anymore. No proof he couldn’t have made another partner without all the fuss.
But then he could be certain of it.
And now, he knows that lingering anxiety-fear-nausea is not worth being so far behind strategically. So far away and cut off from his family.)
Leo pulls at his ninpo like plucking a string, making doubly-triply sure it’s still in tune.
He becomes passively aware that Donnie’s in the lair and Raph isn’t. Mikey must have been practicing his mystics because his call back is immediate and incredibly bright.
Leo lifts up both arms as high above his head as his shoulders and aching shell allow, and swings firmly down- and readjusts his grip on a new pair of katanas while he’s at it.
(Casey stares openly, and Leo thinks about how little he said about Master Leonardo’s abilities-
This is something he can still surprise Casey with. It’s a cool feeling.)
Mystic mojo is a muscle that needs stretching, too.
He swiftly cuts open a portal to Donnie’s lab, dragging Casey along with him. “Hello, Tello. Hand over the goods.”
Donnie jolts, spinning around in his chair to face him mid conversation.
“Ah, yes, surprised chuckle-” Donnie visibly grinds his teeth, “-my favorite brother who I definitely wanted to see right now and who definitely couldn’t have interrupted anything important!”
Leo knows just as well as him that if he really was doing something big, he wouldn’t have been able to portal in here at all. “Aw, you really do love me!” He croons anyway.
He does take a glance around to make sure he wasn’t actually interrupting anything, only seeing Donnie, a hastily shut off computer screen, and… Dad? Whuh?
It’s not that he’s surprised to see his Dad in his own home, or anything, it’s just… Not the place he usually sees him.
Splinter smiles up at Leo. “Leonardo,” he starts, and- Yeah. That’s the whole thing with Dad recently.
Leonardo, Leonardo, Leonardo. When Leo was in the med bay. When he runs into Leo in the kitchen. When Leo was staying in the living room, always checking on him at night, poking his furry head out of his subway car door.
(It keeps making Leo’s hackles rise like he got caught. What happened to ‘Blue’? Blue’s adorable! Blue’s him!)
“Did you already finish your exercise? You know, I once played a yoga instructor…” Splinter opens his mouth to tell him all about what must be Downwards Dog, Upwards Uppercut but Leo cuts him off before they all get off track.
“Fittle as a fiddle, Pops-”
“Fit,” Donnie bites out.
“-All physical’d out. Hey, by the by,” he waves his katana in a lazy circle at Donnie’s computer and smoothly transitions, “what say we get into that photo collection of yours?”
“What collection of photos.” Donnie bluffs with incredible speed. Leo just looks at him.
“There may be a scant few moments of our lives I may have compiled footage of. To archive it.” A pause. “For my archives,” he clarifies to Casey, who nods along like ‘of course, of course.’
“Oh, just a scant? Well, I guess that’ll have to do,” Leo sighs dramatically. “I just wanted to show Casey some precious childhood memories is all.”
Donnie squirms just a bit underneath the weight of emotional blackmail. (Those Dr. Feelings lessons really have so many benefits!)
Casey pipes up. “Sensei told me how he won all the Lair Games you guys ever did-”
“Oh that revisionist bastard,” Donnie hisses. It’s probably the most negative thing any of them have said about the future him yet, and Leo glances over to see how Case takes it-
But he just laughs. Wheezy but giddy.
Donnie begins rapidly typing away, no doubt bringing up all his own footage alongside the official O’Neil documentary.
“I’m sure I was just such a good sport that I didn’t wanna tell him how badly you got played,” Leo sing-songs. “Seems like a lot of our more embarrassing stories got some heavy editing during postproduction.”
Splinter’s ears prick up. “We’re talking about embarrassing stories?” Oh no. No no no no. “Well, Junior, little Blue once had an obsession with-”
“Raph,” Leo desperately calls as the man of the hour thankfully pokes his head in the door. “Wow so glad you’re back home and can interrupt this conversation, big guy!”
Raph looks tired but unharmed, and as he steps in Leo can see Mikey perched happily on his older brother’s spiked shoulder. Donnie rests his giant forehead on his desk at more uninvited guests. “Everythin’ ok in here? Anybody hurt?”
“Going down memory lane big brother,” He dramatically motions to the screen of photos behind him and the future boy next to him. “Care to join?”
Mikey looks ecstatic to see him, and Leo doesn’t have to be a mind reader to see all the questions he wants to ask about Leo briefly dipping his toe back into the mystic side of things. Leo puts up a finger to buy himself more time and nudges Casey.
“Actually, you know? I think Case has had some things he’s wanted to ask you.” Leo nudges Casey’s now stock-still frame again, lowering his voice. “C’mon, man, he doesn’t bite! …Us, anyway.”
Casey takes a deep, deep breath. “Is it really true that you could eat anything and walk it off? Sensei used to say you could just eat rocks for dinner and be perfectly fine, but I don’t know if he was exaggerating… But! Even pre-Invasion, I once heard you ate your phone to save a mission and it didn’t even phase you!” The sheer difference between Casey’s entirely sincere curiosity and Raph’s sputtering embarrassment is hi-larious.
“Wh- Hey! Leo, did you tell him about that?!” Raph’s head whip towards Leo, and Leo can’t even really be that offended.
Casey’s eyebrows furrow as he goes to respond, but Leo sticks a tongue out and beats him to it. “Aw, did I? Oops!”
Leo’s gut turns with relief when Raph’s expression lightens instead of growing stormier at the teasing. He huffs, readjusting Mikey on his shoulder when he slips down his arm. “I’m tellin’ him about when you stuck a rock up your nose. For a month.”
“Gasp,” Leo gasps. “Betrayal!”
Mikey scrambles forward on Raph’s shoulder, talking excitedly. “Oooh, or we could tell him about the time Raph ate a bunch of Dad’s-” A wrapped hand hurriedly covered his entire face.
“Wait, what?”
“Michael, we are legally bound to never mention that incident, especially around Pápá!”
“What? Wait, is this about my limited edition Lou Jitsu men’s leisure footwear collection going missing-?!”
“Donnie, this isn’t helping-!”
Leo breathes a sigh of relief, and the ache he felt down to his lungs eases.
There we go.
It’s been a while since Leo’s seen so much of his family all at once- his life has been feeling segmented, like visitation hours and rotating guard shifts more than spending time with each other.
It’s important.
(“We did karaoke nights, too. Even when things got worse. Sensei was able to drag almost everyone out for it, even if a lot of us could only stay in shifts.” Casey had said, hugging his padded knees close to his chest. “He said it was important that we never forgot about fun. For when the war finally did end.”)
That’s what Case’s Master Leonardo did. Kept up morale. Kept them together.
And even that Leonardo had messed up. Had messed up a thousand times over, if the world had ended and his brothers were dead. However cool, smart, and funny Leo was and how powerful, brave, and mature Leonardo was- and they were all of those things- it hadn’t been enough.
Because Leo and Leo alone just can’t do it. He needs people that trust him. Trusts his judgment, trust his plans, trust him enough to tell him to get his head out of his shell. Leo keeps his family together. His family keeps him in line.
Leo slowly pulls away, pretending to mess with some of Don’s knicknacks as he leans on desks and shelves, laughing along and ooh’ing and boo’ing at all the right times.
Leo lets his body sink into the beanbag by the far wall. If he’s honest… he’s exhausted. If he’s even more honest… well. He’s not sure if he has any more of that left in him.
He smiles every time eyes flick over to him. He puts his weight on his good arm’s elbow so he doesn’t tilt over while pulling out his phone. He tilts the camera to try to get everyone in the frame. April’s missing, but it's close.
They’re really gonna need a new family photo.
“Hey, guys! How ‘bout we get Casey in on some pizza?”