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Donnie doesn't regret most things; he simply never really faults in much, and the mistakes he does make, he really doesn't feel need much of an apology. Every mistake contributes to future success. Being sorry by any means seems counterproductive.
So he's rarely sorry, and the word never rolls off the tongue quite right. But the way Leo's looking at him right now- like he might as well have
stabbed
his brother- it makes the word gush out from him quicker than Donnie could process.
“I shouldn't. Shouldn't’ve left you behind, I'm sorry.”
Leo hates the dark. Being just shy of 12 doesn't really change that. Everyone knows it. He hates falling asleep and worries about what would happen if he did, if his guard was down and someone got them. What would happen if he can't see his brothers.
“Dude.
Don,
relax…’s no big deal,” says Leo, in a rush and a smile that's too tight.
Only it was- a big deal. And maybe it's the unexplained power of twinhood that made Donnie just
know,
or that still strained look in Leo's eyes, like mild and stifled panic.
“Just don't...go where I can't see you,” Leo adds after a lapse of silence, finally letting go of Donnie's shoulder (he's not too fond of touch, but don lets his brother anyway), “Please, a'ight?”
And Donnie gives what he hopes is a reassuring smile, and nods.
Time goes by quick. They're suddenly 14 and nothing but everything's changed.
He tries hard to keep that promise, leaves his lab unlocked so Leo can slip in on the many (many, many, many) shared sleepless nights; not that Leo can't just portal his way in, but the last time he tried, he fell through the ceiling instead and fractured his wrist.
And Donnie made him
swear to god
that would never happen again.
So they both have promises to keep; Donnie stays in sight and Leo stops being a dumbass.
That gets a lot harder the more enemies they get stacked up against them, and the crazier a mission gets.
Like right now, just past midnight, in the frigid ice and rain.
“Please tell me you
have
a plan for this one, Dee?”
Leo skids across the rooftops like he's featherlight, and Donnie hovers a few feet above him because the roof was really weird against his feet when it was wet. Felt gross and grimey and made him want to stay in the shower for the rest of his life.
In the rush, Donnie lets a lot of thoughts clutter his brain and, suddenly, evaporate to pinpoint his focus on getting them
safe.
He's pretty sure Leo's doing the same thing, in his own way.
“I do not, thank you,” Donnie says, eyes narrowing on the ooze-squitos not too far ahead, infecting, probably, a shitton of people along the way.
And Leo barks a laugh, which- though Donnie won't quite admit it- is refreshing as hell, wild and fearless in the rain, his sword dragging behind him.
Leo's a
dork,
but he can be really, really cool, in the way he carried himself and his bravado.
“Dude, why the fuck would I
thank you?”
Donnie almost wishes he had it, but is pretty sure he'd also have to inhibit dumbassery too, in order to possess that.
“Because, Leo,” he says, with all his own certain kind of confidence, “I have a plan.”
The way Leo misses a half-step, slipping nearly off the ledge makes Don smirk and hate himself simultaneously, but still the played look Leo shoots at him is
so
worth it.
“You think you got jokes now?” Leo shouts, but he's wearing a sly smile, crooked and a lot like Dad's when he's being a dick.
Donnie shrugs, and refocuses on the bugs ahead, fixing his scanners on the individual ones and praying he’s making good judgement. He blinks, and presses the button on the side of his vest, two tiny pellets rocketing through the rain and fog, and in the distance, two bugs explode into green ooze and fire.
He tries to hold back his astonishment, tries not make it look like he
didn't
expect that to go right. And tries not to smile so hugely when he looks down at Leo's beaming grin and impossibly wide eyes, reflecting the aftermath of the explosions in them.
And Donnie's just about to smile back. Like a real one. Because it's pretty much
the best
when he can manage not to fuck up, and even better when he gets validation from his brothers.
Especially Leo.
But his smile is short lived, his breathy laugh caught in his throat as suddenly he’s ripped away from Leo, something dragging him back and further into the air, so quick it steals that laugh and his breath entirely.
He can't breathe. It's too high up, the wind rustling and bringing tears to his eyes, blurring his vision of Leo, who’s running now, the blue glow of his
ōdachi
rising up from the roof it scrapes across.
And Donnie- he does what comes instinctively. Tries to curl himself up, hands over his ears. He almost hopes Leo doesn’t hear him yell for him from up here.
It takes no more than three seconds for Leo to feel like his heart just
stops.
Three breaths to this silence. The deafening kind that makes the blood rushing through him
pound
and the rest of anything in his orbit evaporate.
Donnie's
here-
hovering annoyingly just above the ground, and probably six seconds away from a victory dance- and then he's not.
Yanked away from Leo before he could process it and about a hundred feet in the air by the time he could.
But Leo hardly relies on anything but instinct when he's got adrenaline, and he goes on autopilot, on that instinct and on fear, his feet pounding against the rooftop and his sword dragging behind to get momentum. He moves
fast-
when he's like this. But Donnie's getting further and further and he can't
get to him.
Grunting frustratedly, Leo hefts his sword off the ground and starts a portal, seeing in the moment before it opens, in his mind's eye, where exactly it should.
It’s one of Baron's henchmen.
Undoubtedly
, it’s gotta be one of Draxum’s guys, and, as Donnie struggles to
get a grip
, control his breathing with the growing altitude, the creature starts singing.
“Okay, okay. You're mad
,”
says the thing, dropping him for a millisecond to get a better hold on his prototype shell, “But, hey, buddy,
pal-
don't hurt the delivery guy….
or
be too shy to sing along!”
Donnie opens his mouth- to tell him to, honest to
god,
go to hell- nothing comes out.
Somewhere in this he knows he probably won’t die, that they need him (or just his tech, maybe. maybe they dont need him at
all,
actually) but it does nothing to settle the panic that swells in his chest when he can't even
see
Leo anymore.
He's not in control, and it gets harder to sort out a plan the more his anxiety grows, but Donnie would be damned if he let a bitch take his tech. Especially a bitch that
didn't even bother
to compliment him on it first.
A blip, like soft, circular lightning opens up in his sightline, and just as quick as it comes, stealing Donnie's attention momentarily from
how the hell he’s gonna get free
, it disappears.
But not before he hears a disgruntled ‘
fuck’
and green fingertips, just when the portal closes. And...he almost laughs, forgetting for a half-second that he was hundreds of feet up and, admittedly, being kidnapped.
Because Leo's here- somewhere in between planes of existence and maybe even dimensions, which Donnie, when he's not struggling for breath, will admit is
fucking astounding
- and he’s
trying
, and Donnie just has to….get to him.
Panicking is shitty and useless and as much as he wants to curl up and never ever move
again,
theoretically Donnie knows even if Leon can't reach him this high up, he could at least meet his brother halfway.
He calculates, because he almost always has to. The distance from the rooftop, where Leon might pop up next out of the void, how fast he'll fall- all in a second.
Hopes he's right, and if he isn't. Well, that at least the bastards won't have his freaking tech.
“- uck! Shit. Shit, shit, shit-”
The water is like ice, a little colder than the rain. It barely touches his skin before Leo creates another portal. Plunges through with a recklessness and really, really hopes he'll make it to wherever the hell Donnie is.
He doesn't take time to think, just lets his body rip through the weird currents of space over and over and
over-
Portal after portal
after portal-
Leo drops onto a roof sideways, barely getting time to process he's overlooking Flushing; the roof- it's slick with rain and he finds himself tumbling back, grappling with the paneling-
“Nng-!
C'mon!”
-and, finding a groove, he holds on tight, catching his breath in short gasps and just about a minute away from losing his shit.
Not that Leo's unaccustomed to really unlucky nights out. He's got that in spades really. But he can
handle it
at his own expense, he can take hits easy but-
His breaths puff out like frost above him, and doesn't slow up the longer Leo searches the sky for his brother.
“C’mon...c’mon, Donnie…” he mumbles, like maybe his twin could hear from all the way up somehow.
Seconds pass in near silence, just the rain hitting the building and someone's television a building and few floors down away.
No Donnie though.
Gritting his teeth, Leo closes his eyes again and makes another portal.
Donnie takes absolute pride in being all legs on days like this; it's good for long runs and far jumps and convenient when he needs to grab something in the lab that's out of arm's reach.
Or, in this particular case, practically yeeting a fucking villain's pet away with ‘em in one kick.
Admittedly it makes Donnie feel pretty cool, and he
plummets
.
“I bid thee...adieu,” he whispers to the enemy, gives a quick wave to the fucker as he does and hits the button on the side of his prototype shell to activate his jetpack.
There's a moment of warranted triumph, where Donnie feels like what he's sure his brothers carry with them every single day without prompting- and thinks of the look on Leo’s face when he gets back to him.
Donnie's in that thought, just halfway through it when something shifts. When he's not exactly flying anymore, and the rain barely registers with the strong current of wind rustling and stealing his oxygen all over again.
He sees a blur of black, diving for him, and Donnie tries to make the connection outside of his dread- that it's probably Draxum's henchman and he's
probably
gonna snatch him back up and that he's either got that as an option or
die
hitting the pavement or a rooftop.
The part of Donnie that's every bit his brother's twin, says he'll rather take the latter.
He fumbles with the strap on his prototype shell, fingers scrambling for the gun he keeps on his side, like maybe he can still be a good shot falling to his death.
But his vision switches in and out with tears in them not only from the whipping wind, and he’s running out of time. Out of time to measure and pinpoint and so Donnie shoots regardless, into the sky and space above him.
The rocket shoots out and, barreling through the rain and, up and up into clouds, it bursts.Donnie gets to let out one barking laugh before the pressure hits against his plastron and knocks him into the static of temporal oblivion.
Leo smells smoke and fire when his portal opens up, and Donnie flies right through, drops out of it charred and
wrong
in how he falls, straight through the awning of Lou Mike Tony's.
And doesn't get back up.
It sends something through Leo, a chill he's not really all that used to and one that only really creeps up on him in his own imagination. Keeps him up all night.
It seizes him up almost completely as he jumps from the siding of the highrise and onto the street, losing his balance and scrambling to his feet to where Donnie is, and the center of him, deep, deep in his chest, Leo feels the sensation of god awful
dread.
The feeling is sticky and he’s out of touch with himself as he goes to pat his brother's face, damp and slick with the rain, little pieces of gravel stuck to his cheek.
“Donnie...c'mon,” he says, giving his brother a quick once over, “You, you hafta
not
do this right now, bud
.
”
The way his words catch in his throat, Leo hates incredibly. But Donnie starts something like a whine, a quiet wheeze that Leo also hates the sound of, but tolerates it for the sake of it being a
something-
and not the really….really terrible quiet of
nothing.
Still it's shock when Donnie's eyes shoot open and with a strangled gasp he starts reaching blindly for something Leo's got no clue about, nearly hitting Leo in the jaw.
Grabbing his wrist, Leo tries to ground him steady, but his brother's got a shitton more upper body strength than him, and apparently falling through a portal from above the high rises doesn't really change that.
“Damnit. Okay,
Donnie-”
Leo grunts, reaching instead to clasp Dee's face, locking eyes with him the best he can. “Focus on me, man. You're
good.
Leon's gotcha.”
It works, miraculously. Donnie drops his arms back against the pavement, closes his eyes and nods. Takes a few breaths.
“Hey there, buddy…”
Leo half-sings, in a way that he knows calms and annoys his brother simultaneously, but he figures he'd give it a try for good measure
It's worth it, anyway; Donnie relaxes, unclenching his fist.
“Hey…” Donnie greets him back, voice light as he looks around, “I don't think. That I…”
He trails off and stares into a plane Leo can't quite see, and that's...it's unfamiliar- weird seeing Donnie
not
with it.
Leo laughs though, without really meaning to, and doesn't let go of Donnie's face (by now his brother should be pushing him off; they have this thing where-)
There's a sharp hiss below him that makes Leo pull instinctively closer, curving himself protectively over Donatello, and ready to absolutely
kill
someone.
He fights instinct, keeps his pupils from disappearing, and softens in spite of everything his body is telling him to do.
“Yeah...yeah I know,” he says, brow ridge furrowing for the moment he looks closely at Don's cracked prototype shell before he turns attention back to keeping eye contact, “I'm gonna get you
so
far from here, in a second so just…”
He needs to think
. Which is hard to do right now actually. He's not sure what the protocol is for these kinds of things and nothing in the universe could pretty much prepare Leo for it even if he tried to be ready, he thinks, as he contemplates the empty midnight street they're on.
And maybe this is why Donnie gave them literal
hell
over shit like this, like falls and sprained ankles and how to make them better.
And maybe….Leo was really fucking stupid for thinking cuts and sprained ankles were always bound to be the very worst of it all.
From below him, Donnie plucks his wrist, which really doesn't hurt much, just catches Leo by surprise and jolts him out of his offtrack thoughts. When he looks down at him, though, Leo almost wishes he hadn't.
Because he already knows. Donnie looks guilty in the way he does when he's hating how right he is.
“You...you should probably-”
“Shut up,” he mumbles to Donnie because
he knows
(call it a twin thing, maybe, but leo knows when don doesn't want him to stick around)
,
but Dee's stubborn, and doesn't settle into silence.
“...don't be a dumbass...Leo,” Donnie says, strained and a little bit weird, but still
Donnie.
“I can't move...or feel shit anywhere below. Below somewhere...so. It's meant to be...”
Leo presses his lips tight, not much in the mood for his brother's theatricality, ready to lose it a little because he
can't just-
“I’m the dumbass?”
He turns Donnie on his side, just enough to take the broken pieces of his prototype from underneath him, fingers coming back a little tainted.
He's bleeding, which...Leo isn't sure why he wouldn't figure that. Probably concussed too.
“You shot that guy and your own ass- clear outta the sky.”
“Which, alas,” Donnie coughs, trying to flex his fingers, “I don't regret…”
“Yeah, of course you don't. And now you wanna
break a promise-”
“What prom- oh, come on that's...not...really applicable...right now.”
He presses on where the bleeding is, and
that
Donnie does tense up to; at least his shoulders do, breath hitching slightly.
Leo's not sure if he should be really impressed or concerned at how well his brother's gotten at masking pain, and doesn't have all that much time to figure it out.
“It is
so
applicable right now,” he says, untying his mask with his free hand, “If I go, you're where I can't see you,
hurt-”
“‘M not-”
“You are. And I'm not leaving you so just….”
He hates the look Donnie gives him. Like doubt and pleading and resignation all at the same time.
“They're gonna come back,” he says, too even-toned, “You promised, too. Promised not...to be a dumbass. Dumbass things…. include
staying…here
-”
He tries to jab his finger into Leo's chest. Makes it just halfway up his stomach-
“I can't walk and
you...
can't carry me.”
“I
know-
”
“Then...you shou-”
“You deadass wouldn't leave
any
of us bleeding out on the goddamn pavement, don't bullshit me, Donnie.”
Donnie's eyes widen, just slightly. “I'm not-”
He sits up. Tries to, anyway, eventually settling for just reaching across his right shoulder to touch where Leo's hand is. And it kinda sets into Leo that his brother is probably not even
aware
right now- for as much as he could give Leo a good fight back- at least not enough to figure he's losing a shitton of blood right now between Leon's tightly pressed fingers.
“Shit
,
wow. That's…that is blood,” Dee whispers, like
oh shit yeah, my bad, but wow would ya look at that,
processing and reevaluating.
And Leo doesn't let up on his hold on Donnie, watching him cautiously and closely for some sort of realization to sink in.
“Okay...okay. Okay,” Donnie breathes, and it hitches a little like a hiccup, “Okay...mm so pressure- is, is there any pressure? Your hand- it's still there?”
Nodding, Leon tries ignoring...a lot of things that really dont sit right, right now.
“Yeah, yeah-” he swallows back his own anxieties, “-yeah, I gotcha buddy, but...I gotta make a portal. I
can-
I just need ya to breathe and think of really cool shit for the next five minutes.”
“‘Kay,” Don mumbles, wiping ash and rain from his cheek, “You...you should call Raph...I don't- don’t think I can um...really walk-”
“It's okay.”
It's really, really not. And the longer Leo holds his brother's shell, and the hole busted open in it, the harder it gets to focus.
He knows Raph would be better. At this. He always was. At literally
everything
sometimes; he said the right things and was the only one to really memorize wound care. Plus he could lift better.
But Raph's not picking up and Leo can't...do this alone.
Because Donnie's probably got minutes before the whole shock thing settles fully in, and only a little bit more than that before he loses too much blood.
Maybe less if Draxum's birds find them.
Home comes to mind instinctively, because that's
safe.
Because Leo knows it and he knows
nothing,
nothing could touch them there. But-
Donnie blinks sluggishly, up almost entirely past Leo.
His brother doesn't just need safe, he...
Leo closes his eyes, feels in his mind and deep, deep into his chest, where he buried his promise, and his brother's, and creates a portal, Donnie's blood coating the handle of his Ōdachi.
Donnie is...a
lot
heavier than he looks. And Leo lets himself go on autopilot and gathers strength he really doesn't have as he drags his brother through the portal.
Lets himself drop to his knees to the carpet and tries so hard not to break the fuck down.
He looks up at her; she's in her second skin, stooping low with a smile too wide and that says she's already known his intent before his arrival, lifting Leo's head by the chin.
She takes in the scent- Donnie's blood- and grins.
“Can you afford it?” she asks, a cheerfulness signing the ends of her words.
She knows he
will.
In the little time they've been acquainted, Leo's sure she's got the message of what exactly him and his brothers are. What they do for each other.
Leo steels himself, doesn't trust himself to speak. He doesn't know why he expected Big Mama to be merciful in this.
All he knows is keeping his brother
alive.
And Leo can't...he can't look at Donnie right now.
“Just. Help him,” he says to her, rolling his eyes and hoping to
god
she can't see the tears in them.
Big Mama laughs. And laughs and laughs and
laughs,
her skin falling away and her body changing. She strokes Leo's face with one of her legs, with an affection he can't place.
And she gathers up his brother, webbing him and leans in close to Leo, a strange clicking in her throat.
“I hope...you're worth it,”
she almost sings, all her eyes searching maybe deeper than Leo can process and pushes him to his knees.
“Just have oodles of
fun
, and bring me a win-”
She taps his forehead, and sends Leo spiraling into a different consciousness, of colors and blurring kaleidoscopes.
As he drifts, falling back, her laugh seems almost sweet.
“-champion.”