neonleon: <user name="spaceconfessional"> (fight - preparing)
Leo(nardo) ([personal profile] neonleon) wrote2021-09-19 01:58 am

post movie

for [personal profile] supersmashbro

[The day has been exhausting.

That's the real word here. Exhausting. Physically, sure, but emotionally? Unparalleled exhaustion. April, Splinter, and Casey got a van from somewhere that they all quietly piled into, the brothers half carrying Leo in, and the ride back is quiet. Leo's a fucking mess of bruises, some broken bones, busted up face, who knows what else under the shell. Not that anyone else is in stellar shape, but it's enough when April has to take a sharper turn than expected, Leo ends up shifting against Raphael's shoulder while they ride.

He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't make any motion to move away either. He's too tired, too much in the feeling of 'oh god everything hurts make it stop' to try consciously moving himself.

It isn't until April pulls to a stop at one of the larger entrances to the sewer that Leo starts forcing himself to move, pain shooting up his nerves like fire. But he keeps one hand clenched on one of his katana that Casey had returned, the other out... somewhere. He'll find it eventually once he has the strength to portal himself to it again.

But he stops to make sure the others are coming along.]


Almost home, guys. [Maybe if he hopes and crosses fingers, that didn't sound as bad to them as it did to his own ears.]
supersmashbro: (que)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-30 12:31 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Forty-five seconds is practically a whole vacation. Apart from that quick stretch of time earlier, the uncomplicated little bubble that popped up where something big was over and he had all three brothers in his arms, it does Raph more good than pretty much anything else has so far. More than blanket quest, more than a normal non obsessive amount of headcounts.

Forty-five seconds to breathe is something that can be so personal.

Leo doesn't open on a question that he's expecting. Not that he guesses he was expecting any particular super specific questions, if he's honest, but.

It's kind of a big question.

Raph hesitates. Looks away for all of two more seconds. ]


The radio cut when the portal did.

[ Which is, of course, not strictly a direct answer to the question. ]
supersmashbro: (poor dad)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-30 03:00 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Of course he's relieved. Of course he is.

Who in their family wouldn't be, right? If they thought nothing got through. That at least their family didn't hear whatever awful stuff happened, at least they weren't there to see the worst. He knows the thought. He doesn't want Leo to know the thought. ]


You mean just worrying. [ Which is supposed to be Raph's job. Rude.

(He should've pushed back when Pops first put Leo in charge. He should've put his foot down, he should've asked him to wait for a while, because Leo is his kid brother, he's a kid, it's Raph's job to watch out for him, so he should've argued it, should've figured something out, a way to talk to Leo about this stuff that wasn't breathing down his neck, or trusted him more or trusted him less or should've, should've, should've--

It's not about him. It's not about him.)

Raph hauls himself closer with a grunt, solely for the sake of being closer to the brother consigned to his pillowy fate. He can't simply scoop Leo up and hug him until they're forced to separate, at least not without some medical safety risks? He's not totally sure. Better safe than sorry.

But he can sort of curl half-around the pillow pile and nudge Leo's dumb flopped-over hand, and press his forehead to one of the bottom-tier pillows like it's basically the same thing. ]


This whole operation falls apart without you in it.

[ He's gonna have to tell him. That it happened. The mind-meld stuff. Some wrenching desperate scramble for anything that managed to work. It's the responsible thing, and the fair thing, which means it kinda sucks to need to do it.

Can't outweigh the benefit of being able to tell Leo he can talk about it, though.

Just a matter of figuring out how to start. ]
supersmashbro: (baby boy. baby)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-09-30 11:40 pm (UTC)(link)
[ In hindsight, Raph will own that one. What if he didn't surprise the resident turtle who just nearly got beaten to death in the prison dimension, actually. File it away in worried big brother notes, some of the only notes that he's ever kept diligently.

All things considered, probably not personal. All things considered, probably not in a position to be offended if jerking away was a little bit personal. He doesn't have free space to spare for that anyway.

Leo's starting fumble to the question drags out a quiet amused noise in spite of everything. The question proper is both valid and hard to pin down an answer on. Raph vibes on it for a while.

To know that he's safe to be around long-term, that he ripped everything terrible out of himself or burned it away and it's not waiting to grow back. To know a hundred percent for sure that everyone is gonna be alright. To get April home safe.

To fill in some of the gaps he's working with.

Some floor time with Captain Cuddles, which Leo did already make an important contribution towards. For Leo to simply not be out of sight again until he's forty years old? Maybe.

A good cry. But that's for later.

Nothing he can't deal with. ]


I gotta talk to you.

[ Understatement is a vital ninja skill. ]
supersmashbro: (baby boy. baby)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-01 05:35 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Well, he doesn't sound not here for it. Awfully casual. But casual's always sorta been Leo's comfort zone. At a certain point, Raph needs to stop being surprised about it. Leo got mutant oozed and hogged all the face man.

It makes it hard to get a read on him. He knows him, he loves him, but they speak different languages sometimes. Usually about really important stuff. In other news, the sky is wet, the grass is blue. That's not right. Whatever. Raph knows what Raph meant to think.

There's a lot he wants to get into. Thinking about it. Like, he touched on the most important things, the "I love you" and "never do it again" and "it falls apart without you." It wouldn't hurt to really drill those in, though. He definitely needs to lay out that there was no hero move to what he did at all, just him being the most terrified he's maybe ever been in his life. Needs to-- not put off the Responsible Disclosure, because it'll be easier on Leo to know what they know, and everyone isn't gonna be busy in other rooms forever.

But first, maybe something he knows from experience is probably a Leo-need right now, not simply a want. ]


It was some big mystic portal energy thing. Mikey's arms. I mean, you probably picked up on that. But I guess he can just do that now? Rip through dimensions?

[ He never got the memo about it. Not that it was a bad thing to have suddenly on the table, at their lowest. ]

It kinda-- ate at him. Started to. So me and Donnie hitched up, took some of it on. Between Dee and Draxum, we'll probably know what the situation is pretty fast. What's gonna help him most. He can boss the rest of us around about bein' his hands for a while. Take it easy. [ And if Draxum has to go out and do some villain-adjacent activities to secure things that will be helpful, well, they're all on lair lockdown for the foreseeable future anyway, so they wouldn't know about it and wouldn't be looking if he did.

Raph idly scratches at the floor a little bit with his thumbnail. There's something meditative about it. About feeling it. If he's honest, there's also a tiny bit of a selfish comfort to laying out a status report. Like a mental checklist to ward off worst case imaginings, only saying it out loud. Another form of doing headcounts. ]


Donnie's banged up. Big hit. Rough landing. I think he's movin' alright, but he's kinda cagey, even for him. I dunno if it's a stress thing or what. So maybe don't poke the bear too hard when he's fixin' you up. [ Because 'fixing up' sounds better than 'assessing how much of a jigsaw puzzle you are right now.' ] Pops and April and Casey look way tired, but they seem solid. Nothin' a nap on the good cushions won't help. I mean, I'm guessin' with Casey, I don't really know him. I feel like a nap wouldn't hurt the guy.

[ Pops and April always have good cushions dibs. Casey can have third dibs because he's a guest. Or possibly lives here now? That's a later thing to figure out. For now, he can have some guest privileges as a treat. ]

We're all here. We're good. You did good.

[ Obviously apart from the stuff he yelled about already, which he was totally the most right about and not biased about at all! Source: he said so. Obviously. ]
supersmashbro: (baby boy. baby)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-03 06:15 am (UTC)(link)
April's probably got leads on how to reach 'em. Could start there.

[ Humans are supposed to be into family plans for disasters, aren't they? He hopes so. If they gotta ninja buddy system escort her home or to a meetup spot safely, so be it.

"Figure Casey's situation out tomorrow" is a good plan. In his opinion. A little bit because it's nice to know he didn't miss out on like, any "yeah of course you can stay here with us or whatever" developments.

Would've been a weird night if they got to that mid-alien-invasion, but you never know. ]


And we always got somethin'. Leftovers. Like a hundred boxes of noodles. [ Many already open and only half-full even though some are the exact same types of noodle, for reasons beyond Raph's comprehension. ] We can do food. It just won't be anything fancy.

[ But he doubts Leo's really fussed about comprehensive and fancy as much as doable. Two steps ahead thinking about stuff. Raph doesn't mind being those couple steps back, honestly.

He hesitates. ]


Anything else on your list, boss man?

[ Raph's ready to big brother, right-hand turtle do his best to round up whatever Leo needs rounded up, but also he knows he's kind of pushing off the hard topic. If he keeps on that, Leo might hear it from Mikey or Donnie, which could be... messy. Messier? Maybe be mad that Raph didn't tell him first even though he asked him about it more or less directly.

Raph's always had problems with that. The breaking not-exactly-great news. ]
supersmashbro: (u could all end up DEAD)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-03 06:41 pm (UTC)(link)
[ They'll have to rely on the non-turtle fam to make the noodle dream a reality. Or, pending nap status, Mikey can Ratatouille Raph around and simply force him to do better.

He just doesn't see the need to evolve cooking skills past the complexity level of "I have sometimes in the past made grilled cheeses or boxed macaroni." For reasons only partly related to having hands so big he can palm their dad like a basketball, and the complications therein.

But. Okay. Rip the band-aid, Raph. That's your opening. It's as much of a brotherly duty as any other, aka a privilege not to be taken lightly.

Boss Brother absolutely gets a snort, though. Dork.

(He misses being a bunch of dorks. Sneaking into pools and gardens and arguing about stuff that doesn't even matter. He misses when being scared of what else they might lose if the next Shredder-sized thing cornered them again didn't take up so much space.

He doesn't know how a person works on balancing that, but maybe he should start trying harder. After this stuff starts settling down, anyway.) ]


There's, uh... there is somethin' you should know. And you're not gonna like it. [ Nailed it, nailing it, definitely the reigning champ of being good at giving his brothers news that they will almost certainly hate. ] I think it'd be worse not to tell you, though. So. I'm gonna offer you Captain Cuddles for emotional support first. If you want him.

[ Touching Leo unannounced seemed like a bad time. In general. It's no hardship to forewarn that he's about to hold a teddy bear up to the pillow pile. ]
supersmashbro: (its still a crisis)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-05 12:18 am (UTC)(link)
[ Not even differentiating of bears enough to be sure which one he handed over. Cruel and unjust. Well. It's not like Raph's not right here if Leo changes his mind about that.

In the meantime, oh Cap'n, we're really in it now. ]


Do you... remember a couple years ago? When we all got real gung-ho about traditional Hamato training for a minute?

[ Or what they all thought was traditional Hamato training but it was kinda a step to the left of the true heart of it, skewed by their dad's childhood trauma and perception, and everyone learned a valuable lesson about being who they really are. He guesses.

Which could happen to anyone trying to improve as ninjas, honestly. ]
supersmashbro: (baby boy. baby)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-05 06:17 pm (UTC)(link)
[ He drops an affirmative little mm-hmm in the middle there somewhere.

A guy really has to stop to think about how weird their lives are that this is where he's starting, sometimes. They were weird before all the heroism and ancient clan arts and aliens and saving the world, but like... man. ]


It turned out we could do that ninja mind meld thing, right? Reach each other?

[ What were you even worked up about, Raph. Easy. Straightforward. Next part's the big one, but you're the biggest brother, so just keep carrying. ]
supersmashbro: (u could all end up DEAD)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-06 08:55 am (UTC)(link)
[ Raphael, long-time master of the cautious lead-in technique. Of telling himself to rip off the band-aid but also telling himself to peel it off very slowly, and both are awful.

Big brothering is hard. Sometimes it feels like there's no good answer to any problem.

He can wallow in that whenever he wants. Not now. ]


The radio cut with the portal.

[ A repeat, in one of several patented gentle tones. ]

But we were still with you, Leo. We-- we reached.

[ He's normally prime "you are not alone" is always good material, good news, but.

It's complicated.

Sometimes something happens and the only relief is knowing that it's not touching anyone else. ]
supersmashbro: (did u just say womp womp)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-06 09:09 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Ah. Yeah. There it is. He doesn't need both eyes up to snuff to catch that.

He wonders how much of Leo refusing to take stuff seriously heading up the team was really just Leo being scared and doing double time to cover it up. How much closer should he have been looking? ]


Sorry. [ For many things, but at this specific point: ] Not a joke, bud.
supersmashbro: (u could all end up DEAD)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-07 12:24 pm (UTC)(link)
[ There's no real easy part to explain. Only sort of different parallel levels of hard. Not a lot of ways that seem simple, or at least not that Raph knows how to make come out simple, to turn into something safe, a reassurance. ]

We... felt how you took it. Got what you were thinking. If we got all of it. You were-- things went in and out, sometimes.

[ Sorry, little brother. We mind-melded with you kind of on accident, stepped in on you while you were getting slowly murdered.

We mind-melded with you and you frayed at the edges, like you couldn't reach back to us, your thoughts kept blipping in and out like whatever he was doing to you over there was breaking off pieces, and it was worse every time--

(You told yourself I'd take care of them, I couldn't even stand up.)

No. No easy or good parts at all.

He would've just assumed Leo knew if Leo hadn't asked. Knew and didn't wanna talk about it.

If Leo didn't know, then Leo didn't feel them. Hear them. Raph doesn't know for sure where the scales tip on the comfort of connection versus knowing his brothers had a backseat view. He has a hunch their scales are all pretty similar.

It wouldn't be fair not to tell him, though. It wouldn't be fair to push it off for Donnie or Mikey to end up telling him later, either. ]
supersmashbro: (get your SHIT together)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-07 08:17 pm (UTC)(link)
[ What a Leo response. He doesn't know what else he expected, because it is Leo, but for some reason that's the thing that Raph gets caught up on thinking. What a Leo response.

Like if he doesn't look at things, they go away. Like if he doesn't try to hold something up, it makes it easier if it falls down. Like he didn't hear that and try to scrape together little walls of denial to hold against it, shaking while he went. ]


It's not all right! [ If he sounds offended by the very concept, it's only because he is. It's not all right. Maybe all of them will be all right, eventually, but what happened won't be.

Raph doesn't get it, honestly, how all the dodging helps Leo, what he gets out of it. He never has. There's stuff he doesn't get when it comes to any of his brothers, that he'll never get, because knowing and understanding are different. They do their own things, they still love each other. As much as they mess up with each other, they try to make space.

(Getting them turned secondary, somewhere, to watching out for them. Trying to keep them all safe.)

He wishes the two of them spoke the same language about some of this stuff, though. He doesn't want Leo to not be Leo, but if he could-- if he could just figure out how to translate to a middle ground somewhere.

Raph holds Captain Cuddles over his face for a few seconds like he is either heroically refraining from smothering his own brother, or hoping that this is the day he unlocks a secret teddy bear ninpo that will get rid of the headache he's been growing for the past few hours. Neither motive strictly true nor strictly false.

He inhales. Exhales. A nice controlled breath. He retracts... the protective bear-rier. ]


Leo. If you're not up to talk about it. I won't try to make you. [ Goodness knows it would be a knock-down drag-out tooth and nail scrape to try to make Leo have a real talk if he doesn't want one, and Raph's not sure anyone has the collective energy for that. Including Leo.

He is so calm actually. He has always been a very calm person. ]
But it's not. All right.

[ Dare he say, it's the chief reason he wishes it was possible to go back to his roots and simply bite Krang what's-his-face until he stopped twitching. Which is saying something. He's got a pile of reasons. ]
supersmashbro: (its still a crisis)

[personal profile] supersmashbro 2022-10-08 06:47 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Every day, a wish that looking out for little brothers came with some kind of a helpful guiding hand or official rule book. That every single weird, impossible, exhausting, horrible thing his family went through had a how-to-handle in the corner somewhere.

Raph never has seen much return on those wishes. But he guesses that not knowing what he's doing never stopped him from the doing part any other time. For his brothers, he'd dangle off the front of a train barely laying the tracks down in time for a million years.

Leo's silence makes the flip from guilt-inducing to "to be fair, he did give me a minute when I needed it" to a little worrying to regular worrying to just on the cusp of terrifying, and then he speaks up again.

Processing time isn't the kind of thing Leo usually needs. The content of the question, the low volume, makes the build-up make more sense. Private issue. Not for potential prying ears of brothers or sisters or dads or kids from the future who maybe heard Raph raise his voice and are trying to figure out if that's gonna escalate.

He pauses, because of course he does. This follow-up question, he's not sure he actually wants to answer. But he kinda brought it on himself. ]


You were scared. [ Quiet to match. Raph can do quiet. Deliberate pace, measured tone. Just another hard part to run at until it's over. ] You were glad we were safe. You wanted Pops. You thought I'd take care of everyone.

[ He would've, probably. Figured it out. There's not much of a budget for hope, pushing through to try to do that. To make sure that if he couldn't manage one of the things he's always worked for, if he couldn't keep all his brothers safe, he could at least not let Leo down after the fact.

There's not much budget for hope, when getting his hopes up before Mikey literally started ripping open the universe to get their brother back would make it impossible to scrape himself together a second time, if nothing happened.

So now he's the one who told Mikey to stop.

He'll always have to live with that. ]


You thought you were gonna die there.

[ Raphael doesn't expect that that one is much of a secret.

It isn't a wholly complete play-by-play, but it's a lot of the important ground covered. ]

(no subject)

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-10-09 13:37 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-10-10 14:18 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-10-11 13:11 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-10-12 20:00 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-10-16 23:55 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-10-17 12:22 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-10-19 18:20 (UTC) - Expand

1/2

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-10-22 16:58 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-10-22 17:18 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-10-27 11:22 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-10-31 20:51 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-11-02 17:42 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

[personal profile] supersmashbro - 2022-11-07 12:09 (UTC) - Expand