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“Ewww are we on Staten island?!” Leo exclaimed, looking at his surroundings and throwing his head back, not the best idea when he just came back from getting the living daylight beat out of him with possible head trauma, but he’ll ignore the pain for now in favor of the warmth that surrounded him in the form of his brothers.
Definitely worth the ass beating.
“Leo how are you feeling? Ok? Semi ok? Thinking that your actions were stupid and will never do it again?” Donnie asked, sliding his goggles down to examine his bruised brother. “I’m fiiiine,” Leo said, “look see-” wiggling his way out of his brothers hold and tried getting up before searing pain overtook his battered body and his legs gave out under him. “Leo!” Raph and Mikey exclaimed, the older quick to catch his brother who winced at the subsequent catch, “ok, maybe not very okay.” Leo gasped, the sensation of pins and needles probing his skin didn’t help one bit.
Donnie deflated at seeing the scene and information his goggles provided of his bruised brother but he didn’t let that deter him, Leo would live and that was all he needed to have a sense of comfort.
He can fix this, he has to.
A flash of light appeared in the sky before it vanished as quickly as it came.
Like a comet, a being was hurled out of the light and came crashing down, creating a crater where it landed.
A groan erupted from the being, blurry eyes adjusting to light as pain filled their system.
The figure grunted as he got up, clenching his teeth as a hand immediately went to clutch his bleeding side.
Leonardo expected the dead to not feel pain but guess that wasn’t the case for him.
He looked around, expecting to see everything in ruin but instead was face to face with a bleeding sunset and buildings that still stood strong and tall. Leonardo wondered if he was in shock even when dead, he stood up on wobbly legs and grunted as his shoulder collided with the brick wall, yup, definitely alive.
Thoughts scrambled through Leonardo’s mind on the numerous but also minimal situations that can cause his current predicament.
His train of thought came to halt when he noticed an eerily pink substance on one of the walls, he shivered and walked quietly through the alley, letting his feet drag him closer to the source of krang matter.
He held in his breath to witness a horror and while what was partially true he breathed a sigh of relief to see that the metro tower was not completely overtaken and that more than half of the krang ship was destroyed. Casey really did it, he stopped the krang.
Leonardo quickly made his way to one of Donnie’s secret passageways, he knew he couldn’t manage to climb down a manhole with his injury so that was his next best option.
Although his memory of his childhood home was hazy he did his best to recall the route.
“Sensei?” Leonardo flinched, he knew that voice. He practically raised the voice.
Leonardo raised his head to see his student, Casey Jones jr, staring at him in disbelief. Leonardo could hardly believe his own eyes, vision flicking to familiar yet starkly younger faces he thought he’d never see again.
However his reminiscing came to a screeching halt when his eyes landed on a far to familiar face.
He could feel his heart pounding, blood flowing into his ears as every noise was dulled out, his vision narrowed as the many years of self loathing welled up in chest, his hand unconsciously went to grab his sword.
Before he knew it he was standing before his younger self, he wanted to say so many things to him, tell him stop goofing around all the time, tell him to take the roll of leader seriously, that it’s more important than he’d ever imagined, that he should have done better, he he was stupid, that he was an idiot, that he didn’t deserve any happiness.
But he didn’t.
He only had to say 3 words.
“I hate you.”
Leo could only stare at his older counterpart, before looking down at his chest, a dribble of blood escaped from the corner of his mouth as the sword was swiftly pulled out from his chest. A shaky hand clumsily touched his chest, while the other covered his mouth. The simple act of trying to breathe was enough to send him in a fit of coughing, pulling back his hand with a raspy breath caused a sea of gasps as blood trickled through the gaps of his fingers and covered his teeth.
“Oh…”
Leonardo watched as his younger counterpart’s body swayed to the side and collapsed. He could faintly hear the sound of screaming and crying over the buzzing in his ears, the cloudy visuals of people moving in swarms as he simply stood and watched as that stupid smirk remained plastered on his younger self’s face.
he hardly paid any mind to the amount of weapons drawn towards him, his focus solely remained on that stupid cocky grin on the younger’s face as even more static filled his ears.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
Opening them brought him back to where it all started.
The alleyway where he first woke up.