#LOVE LETTER FOR ME BASICALLY | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

namisweatheria · 7 months ago

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One Piece means a lot to me as a disabled person, which I think would be pretty surprising to anyone who only has a surface understanding of it. The supposed central theme of "follow your dreams" would be pretty alienating to someone like me, right? It really, really would be, if that's what it was actually about.

However, that ignores that Luffy's dream is to be the most free person in the world. And to attain that goal, the first thing he does is find friends to live life with. Over and over again, from the very beginning, he takes on their burdens, all in the name of being the most free.

Do you see what that would mean to me, as someone who needs more help to get by than is considered culturally normal, to the point that it puts me in a whole socially manufactured category of "other"? Not to mention, because of the infantilization of me due to that category, because of being forced so squarely into the "cared for" role, taking care of other people is deeply meaningful and empowering for me. However, the myths of independence and universal natural ability often make it emotionally difficult for my loved ones to accept that care.

The fear of asking for help, the guilt of being cared for, the weight of someone you loved who could not be as free as you, the insecurity of not contributing enough, the fear that you were born wrong, the self-hatred that says you are not worth the effort, Nami Sanji Zoro Usopp Robin Chopper Franky Ace they all explore the painful obstacles to free connection. Through deeply impactful stories that weave beautifully into the larger one.

All centered around this one person who views loving them and living with them and carrying them as essential to his freedom. Who cannot, for countless reasons, live a normalized life of Structured Relations. Who views exploring and bickering and suffering and laughing with them as the ideal way to live. Who repeatedly puts his life and limbs on the line to do so.

To me, it is an ultimate privilege and freedom to carry other people's burdens. To care for them and live with them. This is central to my whole perspective, and is completely informed by my life experience as a disabled person. I rarely see it reflected back to me. Let alone as powerfully and beautifully as Luffy does.

Nor the other half of it, of wanting to create this life with people in ways that aren't socially normal or approved. Of creating many varied lifelong intimate relations among equals, rather than conforming to the expectation of choosing One Person to live life with and then Creating More.

The utter lack of roles and norms is just as integral and powerful to the exploration of freedom and connection! It is meaningful to me as a queer person, yes, but even this is deeply influenced by my disability. I could never be that One Person, despite everything I have to offer, there is logistically far too much that I cannot do to be someone's equal partner in this society that demands so much from all of us. However, even if I could, I wouldn't want to! It doesn't make any sense to me to only have two people navigate life together on such intimate terms. Can't the demands of society be more comfortably met in a group? Isn't life more fun that way?

We are taught that we can and must do everything ourselves, I just happen to be one of the people that never had a chance to buy into that lie. To learn very early not just the necessity of interdependence, but the joy in it. To learn that it is most comfortably lived with more people involved. To me, close relationships are, love is, a natural extension of that understanding. One Piece celebrates interdependence constantly from the start, while never pretending that it is always easy.

The obstacles to free connection that I mentioned before, they are interspersed throughout the story, and they are always met with "I do the things you can't do, and you do the things I can't do." With, "Of course I can't use swords you dumbass! And I can't cook either! I don't know a damn thing about navigation! And I can't lie! I know I can't live without help from a lot of people!"

These are intentionally impactful moments, and they define the series. I found it very fitting that the Fan Letter focused on a character who was empowered by Nami to feel free and live adventurously despite not being the most physically capable. The character is able by our definition, but the story is very affirming in a disability way, and it was extremely One Piece. I loved how it acknowledged this deep connection between One Piece and the lived reality of disability and celebrated it as integral as it is.

I also believe that absolutely none of this is intentional. It is simply an earnest exploration of human relationships, emotions, and behavior, and it naturally arrives at a radical and disability-affirming viewpoint. Because we are the monkey wrench in the deeply unhealthy (lol) and dominant line of thinking that independence is all. So naturally anything that also disputes that thinking has a disabled-perspective feel to it. The best part is how much it doesn't give a fuck! One Piece is aggressively against conformity in human relationships, in a way that is hard to find in our new world of self-conscious authors.

It's also, you know, the worst part, in terms of all the outrageous bigotry and offensive character design, but god damn it if it doesn't elevate the good parts to unbearable heights. Even the bad character designs can sometimes be more impactful for their intentional "ugliness", when those characters are inevitably taken seriously despite their appearance and the stereotypes they play on, it hits hard every time. I do have a simple hatred for many choices, there is no pay-off for much of the awful problems in numerous character designs and dialogue. But no matter how upset I can be by those things, in the end they can't succeed in pulling me away from One Piece. It's just so crazy and unique and great and terrible and beautiful and I LOVE IT.

#WOOF. FINALLY FINISHED THIS POST.#I am basically always trying to articulate this. I've written so many long posts.#but fan letter got me to give it my best effort once more. ITS SO GOOD!!! YES THAT'S WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT!!!!#i love especially the meaning of it being USOPP who finds mimi (my headcanon name for nami's fangirl) and gives her directions.#he who most recently and directly struggled with his lack of ability. she doesn't even know about that.... ough....#YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE THE MOST CAPABLE TO GO ON ADVENTURES!!!!!!!!!!! GO MIMI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#my posts #one piece #op fan letter #opfl #one piece meta #op meta #one piece analysis #op analysis #i guess lol i hope this reaches some people despite you know. being. how i am.#(intense and clearly having gotten very deep into my particular perspective after endless verbalizing)#(POST JUST EDITED TO INCLUDE FRANKY and luffy's full arlong park quote!!!)#sorry franky for the late inclusion!!!!!

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klunkcat · 6 months ago

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Life is short, and I've shortened mine

rise of the tmnt gift fic for the T3 server november exchange, for the very lovely @remedyturtles

Sensei is a character that can actually be so life changing and brain consuming. Very grateful to have the opportunity to play in your sandbox, exploring their headspaces is actually incredible and also devastating.

Note: This is an offshoot from Rem’s “little kid with a big death wish” fic and will not make sense on its own I fear.

title from good bones by Maggie Smith

read on ao3

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He didn’t ask for this, is the crucial thing. He’d been— not relieved to be dead, because he hadn’t managed to make it yet to where his brothers were, because his kid was still out there fighting for tomorrow. Relieved was too gentle a word, but he’d been something.

Maybe less tired.

It was nice to think about, selfishly. He’s been carrying lead weights and anchors at the edges of himself since the moment the world fell, but there’d never been any other volunteers for the job. Somewhere quietly inside himself he’d thought the ending would mean a moment of reprieve. He should have known, though. They’d all been the universe's favorite chew toys for long enough, dying was too nice a bow to wrap around it.

He really hadn’t asked for this, no matter what the subconscious thoughts he’d hit to death with sticks in the back of his mind said about escaping. Stumbling across the kid— another him, a version of him he’d never gotten to be, that he thinks maybe distantly he shouldn’t have needed to be— he’d hoped he could silently wrap himself in that thick blanket of nothing and fade out at least. Not fuck things up for him worse, but, well.

Maybe the throughline to being Hamato Leonardo was fate-led curiosity; he’d never learned how to leave well enough alone in either direction. Of course Leo had scouted him out, of course he’d been compelled to try to help the kid float when he should have stayed put, of course. Of course.

And so, as the classics say, here they were.

“Can you give me a number, Leo?” Raph’s voice creeps in, all-over earnest and thoughtful in the way he intrinsically is—was. It’s a shard of glass to hear it at all, it’s everything he’s ever wanted. The kid fuzzes out a little and slips sideways a step; oops , Leo thinks. There’s a hard line around not transmitting too loud, he’s still trying to figure it out.

Could do without whatever that was ever again , the kid thinks, sharp and rattled under the surface.

Leo winces. Sorry, I’m all thumbs over here. Trying to keep quiet.

Psh, younger Leo rolls his eyes. You’re all one thumb .

The kid turns back to his brother, thrumming still between a one and zero now. He’s scrambling to ground still, to focus. He gives Raph a quick OK sign that there’s no way Raph doesn’t see through. It’s kind of funny to watch his force-fire white-knuckling deflection in technicolor from the outside like this, he’s not sure why he ever thought this worked.

“That’s okay, that’s fine. Can you give me a number, bud?” The pleading edge hurts to hear.

They hold up a shaky one, maybe overconfidently. Mikey and Don are in the room somewhere, he can hear them shuffling even with Leo’s eyes closed. The sudden memory of a thousand days where the only rest his littlest brother got was when he was locked in meditation, the way he walked like his bones and joints hurt right up until the end, nearly knocks them both back to a firm zero.

The kid glares at him, Leo holds his hand up apologetically and imagines zipping his non-existent lips shut.

They’d been doing better for the last few days. He’d started talking out loud, had been at a solid two a handful of times. He knows the kid’s frustrated and exhausted, he can feel it, especially seeing them slip all the way back. Leo feels a hot well of shame creep up his ethereal throat.

He knows it’s a push and pull game they’re playing. Wounded leading the wounded, and all.

It’s still a lot, to think of seeing his family that isn’t his family. Of them knowing he existed and talking to him. Points towards the ‘he should fuck off forever’ category, as soon as they figured out how to get rid of him.

(The kid talked about it like they’d miss him if he left, like there’d be some great love lost— they didn’t know him, though. He’d lived through twenty years of a war they’d never have to see. Leo was not the teen they were missing, the one they were trying to call home, because he’d given that up a long time ago.

Of course he had to leave, this kid had a life of his own to live now. Leo didn’t have anything.)

“ — he was for a moment, just give him time,” Raph’s saying. He forces the kid to take a purposeful long breath in, squeeze his fingers, twitch his toes. Keep him from tipping all the way over into the dark where he’d accidently shoved them.

“See, he’s back with us,” Raph continues, brightly. The kid groggily radiated all sorts of furious signals like a firecracker popping in several unplanned directions, all different fonts screaming exhaustion and hurt the only way he knew how. Leo’s heart aches for him. Beating himself down for daring to survive at all.

“Is he?” Don’s voice cuts in haughtily. Leo makes them blink their eyes open, caught out despite the kid’s anger.

They’re looking for you, bud. Rise and shine.

I don’t care, the kid hisses. Fuck off.

Okay. Well. Less than ideal.

“Which one are we dealing with,” Don’s voice hovers closer, half lodged in icy suspicion. He wouldn’t be this closed off for his Leo, obviously. Leo— Sensei smothers a sigh.

“He’s trying not to answer the phone right now. So, just me. Sorry.”

“Is he okay?” Raph asks, concern evident in the dark shadow of his brow. Sensei can’t look at it directly, it’s not for him to feel all the reminiscent grief of a brother that isn’t even his. How he feels about any of this never helps anything.

“He’s….” He prods the kid and gets an indistinguishable slew of curses and general hypothetical middle fingers back. “He’s taking a break, he’s okay.”

Don arches a brow back. “I don’t care that we’re forced to take your word for this, just to be clear.”

“Fair enough. He says, and I quote, bite me, so I think that’s where we’re at.”

“Ah,” Raph hums. “Well, if you can tell him I’ll be back in ten minutes with tea, I’d love to check in on him then.”

Sensei nods, relays the message with a garbled hiss as a response. Expected.

Don stares at him, impassive. Arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Feral cat radiating protective instincts three counties wide, like always.

It’s… an ache under the skin, to be left alone with Don. He hasn’t forgotten the way Dee’s face would shift in a scowl, he never could, but seeing it played out on a younger face scratches something in him regardless.

“I want to speak with my brother, if it’s all the same,” Don says, blunt.

“I’ve been trying to ring him, I promise. Bad morning.”

Don arches a brow with a twitch to his jaw Sensei knows means he’s attempting to fight off a full on annoyed pout and failing. It hits him sideways to see, funny in the chest. A thousand sense memories, a different Donnie and a different place, coalescing all into one. His Don had gotten really good at not emoting at all near the end, he’d almost forgotten.

Hey, the kid grouses. Who’s flying this plane?

Right, thumbs again, Not-his-Don hovers closer when he blinks back to the front. A frown touches the middle of his maskless forehead.

He makes himself walk through a few quick grounding steps and breathe in as deep as he can before speaking. “Back, sorry. Uh, Sensei, that is. Leo’s listening though.”

Don’s still frowning, but he leans back a touch. “He’s making it harder for you to stay here too, isn’t he?”

He doesn’t think the phrasing of that is fair, but. “Was all me that time, if I’m honest. We’re at a one now though, I’m good.”

“Is he ?” Don tilts his head.

Sensei considers. The kid’s not sinking back there just… Curled up, pill-bugging. Radiating furious hurt energy like a solar system all on his own. He’s present enough to tell Sensei to fuck off and focus on Don at least.

“Think so, yeah. He’s just…” He mimes a snapping maw with his good hand.

Don sighs and rolls his eyes, there’s an edge of anxiety there Sensei can still read as bright as anything. Isn’t that a thought. Twenty years without and this younger Donnie is still under his skin like a part of himself.

He needs you bud, Sensei tries again, nudging his younger self.

I’m tired of this , the kid growls back, not-voice cracking all the way through in a way that makes Sensei ache for him.

Sensei sighs, patting his shell. I know.

Don shifts his weight in front of them, frown deepening as he moves to tap on his wrist guard. Probably texting the family about the general Bad Leo Day, he imagines. He knows how this would go with his Don— the way it would itch at him being unable to instantly resolve whatever problems his brother had. He never dealt well with any mystic issues affecting Mike for the same reasons either.

There’d always been a thrumming line between them, some unspoken thing; Sensei carried it with him even now, even with the end gone dark. He knows Don’s having a hard time reconciling all the ways ‘Sensei’ is his Leo and is someone entirely different. Managing the fear that his Leo will go somewhere far away inside himself and he’ll only be left with someone he doesn’t know. That he’ll be left alone.

The worst part about being a twin is when you aren’t one anymore, after all.

Bad thought. Shit. The pull in the back of his mind grows louder. He holds up a shakier zero. Don’s sharp eyes narrow, tapping something harder on his guard before shifting closer. “Leo?”

Can you stop being horribly sad for five minutes while looking at my brother? It’s so not helping.

He shakes his head. “Still me,” the words come out soupy. The kid jabs him angrily somewhere in the back of his brain, uncurled with annoyed concern, which is maybe an unintentional win.

“Is it— can you ground him?”

He’s trying; his brain fires unhelpful flashes of the days after. Of the months of searching desperately, of the moment he woke up in the middle of the night with sudden certainty that wherever the other half of himself went, he couldn’t get back on his own. Shit.

Shit , the kid echoes, less angry with the barely concealed concern. Sensei can feel the dark pit creeping at his arms even as he blinks furiously to stay present.

“Not him, it’s— sorry, all me again. Don’t think I can stick around.” He squeezes his fist, forces himself to breathe deeper, but it catches somewhere around the middle. The kid slides forward with a flurry of aggrieved panic that sparks through him and sends him back down several flights. There goes that plan.

Sensei cracks an eye back open and catches a familiar flash in Donnie’s eyes, and yeah— sorry, kid. Lights out.

The last conversation he remembers having with Don had been about Casey. He was getting to the age where he was asking to follow them out on missions more and more, curious about everything Uncle Tello was up to. He wanted to help, desperately. Itching with the need to be useful in a way they all understood.

It was different with Casey, though. He knew why it was different.

“We let Mike do this stuff when he was his age,” Leo had said with a sigh. “It’s hard to find good reasons to say no that aren’t just three rounds of my own loud clamoring panic. He should go, he’s trained plenty.”

Don clicked his goggles, focusing on a project in front of him with a hum. “Mike wasn’t dealing with an apocalypse. He was, at worst, trying to find a new place to tag at Casey Jr’s age, so.”

“Exactly,” Leo smooths his hand across his head. “But also…”

Don looks at him, eyes gone big with the layers of lenses so he gets hyper close up patented ‘Tello Eye Roll in high definition. “But also, you’re a mother hen, and he’s talented, and he’ll just sneak out anyways if we keep making him hang back.”

“Points for you,” Leo sighs again. “Want to make that a daily double?”

“You remember how Micheal was about being babied,” Don sighs. “So, I don’t know. Let him go on a supply run, something small. A practice version,” Don shrugs, turns back to his work. “There’s that lower activity quadrant we got a ping on last week. I can take him and go get that part we need to fix up the generator.”

Leo lets out a long breath. “Yeah, that— huh. That could work. He’s always saying he wants to learn more about how to keep things running around here, he’ll be over the moon. Kid asked me last week if I could show him how to do stitches.”

Don snorts. “Great, soon there’ll be two of you.”

Leo steps forward, leaning his elbow on Don’s chair to peer over at his desk. There’s a mess of wires in front of him, a plate he’s meticulously soldering ends together on. “Eh, there’s already two of me.”

“Excuse you,” Don nudges him back with a shoulder. “As the funnier twin, I resent that remark.”

He laughs, lets out a breath. The thrum of Don’s room sometimes settles him, like it’s echoing the place in him where his ninpo sat before. Constant hums of his family flitting through open rooms.

“You don’t think I’m being paranoid, do you?” Leo has to ask. The variables tripped around each other in hyperspeed in his mind at all times, racing down to the ends of his fingers. Casey’s only thirteen, they’re down too many runners, there’s never any right choices and only Leo to make them.

Don pauses for a second. He flips up his goggles before Leo can wrench the question back into himself, not that it had ever worked before.

“I’ll keep him safe,” Don says, slowly. “It’s a good call, he’s earned it.”

“You’re just saying that because it was half your idea.” Leo glances away, embarrassed on some fundamental level that Don had even needed to give him the reassurance. He sighs, squeezes Don’s shoulder quickly as a thank you. Don hums with a smirk.

“Well? Are you going to teach him? Don’t think we have any oranges to practice on.” The implication rings loudly enough, Casey stitching up real wounds is a foray they haven’t dared make.

Leo waves his hand. “Might be a good idea for the kid to have some medical information in between all the supercomputer nerd things.”

“Avoiding the question is a bold move.”

Leo deflates, winces. “Yeah. Thought it might make him worry less.” If he could help without leaving the base at all, maybe they’d both relax. A quieter thought, under that: maybe Leo would, if he knew Casey could take care of himself without him.

Don squints. “It might. Here’s a better thought, his Sensei letting someone else take on the riskier missions for once, hm?”

Ah, well.

Leo feigns a wide grin anyways, shrugging. “What can I say, the Krang love me.”

The arched eyebrow he receives is scathing. He is scathed. He waves his good hand Don’s direction with a huff. “Don’t look at me like that, this is about the kid. Table the psychoanalysis for Mike to take over.”

“You want Michael to get in on this?”

Good point. He sighs again, shuffling over to a side table and crossing his arms. This is an old argument, the circles of it are worn through and practically scripted. If dear Tello insists, he purses his lips. Round and round they go.

“I’m faster.”

“Other people are fast enough.”

“Enough isn’t safe.”

“Letting the Krang learn all your moves is?”

“Come on, I’ve been fine.”

The scathing meter ramps up as Don’s eyes pointedly flick to Leo’s robotic arm. “They blast you with enough of their power? How long is that going to be true.”

“I know how they work.”

“For fucks sake Leo, the rest of us grew up in the apocalypse too.”

The rest of you aren’t responsible for it, though , he thinks with all forty old years of packed self directed venom. There’s no point to this conversation, he finds the way out Don wants.

“Fine. I’ll stay back for the next few, okay? You and Case can do the supply run. April’s been saying she wants to get back out, I can send her with Angel.”

Don’s steely gaze doesn’t shift, his jaw tense. Usually, this is where the conversation stalls and dies out. World like theirs is lacking in many things, including fuel to burn with.

“I’m sick of watching you do this,” he spits out, sharp and barbed. It stops Leo up short.

He nearly says ‘do what’, but he knows his twin. They haven’t gone into any of this since— well, since Raph. Since the mantle of the Resistance became something heavier and lodged in him with anchor weights. Since everyone started looking at him like his plans were god. Since his fuck up ruined everything.

No time for heart to hearts, really.

“Come on, Dee,” he swallows roughly, carefully. “I’m careful. This isn’t about that.”

“Isn’t it? Isn’t everything you do about that?”

Leo works his jaw. “It isn’t.”

“When will you stop acting like you have to make up for it, then?”

Ouch. Leo redirects. “We’re going to win this. It’ll work out, you know it will. I’m not going anywhere without you.”

Winning the war hasn’t been a tangible thought in his mind in years either; he’s not sure he knows how to do anything but follow the script anymore, though. He hopes he’s putting up a strong enough act.

Don’s hand clenches around his soldering gun, relaxes. “There’s only one you,” he practically growls out, and Leo’s chest squeezes. “If he goes somewhere he takes me with him. Do you get that?”

He swallows again. “Course I do. I’m not— this isn’t about me, Don. Strategically, until they start catching up to me we have to make them believe I’m their only concern. Promise, that’s all this is.”

You swear? He almost hears a younger Donnie ask, crouched up in their hideout over Donnie’s gameboy.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, with as much sincerity as he carries with him. He wouldn’t, there’s nowhere else in the world for him to go when everything that matters is right here.

“You aren’t allowed to pull anything. I’d know if you were,” Don glares. “We need you.” He says it funny, emphasis on both the need and the you all at once, like one of those endless staircase paintings that look different the longer you try to make sense of it. Leo holds up his hands helplessly.

His twin’s stare pins Leo through for a long moment. He takes the whole half a second of pause to step closer. “Hey, that whole thing— back at you. Obviously.”

Don lets out a long breath, expression flat and assessing. For a moment, Leo thinks he might say more, but he turns his chair around to continue soldering.

“Obviously.”

They’d let the conversation fall lighter, moving to charitable waters. And Leo had let Don take Case out for an easy supply run.

The last thing his twin ever said to him was lost somewhere behind the distress beacon and the noise of the Krang leveling an entire building on him. He thinks there was a sorry in there, or a be right back to the scared kid he was giving up the world for.

The part that’s always stung, a burr against his core, is that they never find any sign of where Donnie went. There’s his ninpo, and his bo staff with his fucking mask tied around a bleeding wound on Casey’s arm, the hum of electricity somewhere down the corridors of his mind, and Casey safely bundled and shaking in a propped up section of rubble. His kid is so terrified, asks for Uncle Tello in a quiet whine like he knows.

He doesn’t remember the mad scramble to get there, the fact that he’d reached so far down into his struggling well of ninpo he’d felt something entirely shatter apart in his hands. The way Mikey had put his own hands over Leo’s, and brought the two of them together all at once. He only remembers the wake of whatever devastation cracks through him once it’s clear they were too late.

The recording he’d left that Leo couldn’t bring himself to listen to for weeks.

Leo would know if he died. He would. The light never goes out, but Don never comes home. It’s a loss he can’t name all the same.

It’s impossible to regather whatever off the cuff words he’d said last, before Don left. Had he said be safe? Had he said he’d loved him? They’d never needed to say it before, but the lack still haunts him. He hadn’t gotten to say goodbye.

‘Be right back’ is a shitty thing to lie about, he thinks wryly.

It’s the first promise he’s ever broken.

The ache never leaves but there’s no time for grief. He steps outside of himself and into whatever he needs to be, and he chases the corridors in his mind to that safe space Donnie’s ninpo has always rested. The door is closed, but it’s still humming. He doesn’t know what that means.

“God, stop ,” the kid groans at him. Leo– Sensei blinks back into himself, or— to the place between what constitutes as himself these days. The spot by the tree with just the two of them. “It sucks when it’s you somehow even more than when it’s me.”

The sludge is still there, distantly. Tugging at him in ebbs and flows. Sensei makes himself breathe out, take a look at the kid. Take stock, soldier. Focus on the problem at hand, deal with your shit somewhere else.

“Or, here’s a thought: you could deal with your shit at all. Call me crazy, but this ‘shoving all my old man pain in a box and burying it deep down’ thing seems like it’s fucking us both over.” The kid whines, leaning his head back. The irony does not escape either of them, he knows. The Uno reverse is unspoken.

Magnanimously, Sensei lets it slide.

The kid’s problem is more complicated and knotted somewhere inside himself than he likes to acknowledge, at least Sensei’s is all obvious lines of too-long-losing-wars and grief. It’s all outside. The problem has always been that it’s outside.

Sensei settles beside him, hand on his knees and head tilted up to the still sky. They don’t speak for a long moment, instinctively mimicking the long drawn out grounding breaths in sync. He wonders if it’ll ever stop feeling so strange. Seeing himself from the outside like this, entirely encased in different baggage. It’s hard to think about anything other than ‘he’s so small’, loudly. On repeat. It’s not a helpful thought.

“Sorry,” Sensei breathes as the sludge lessens minutely along his back. “Should be used to that by now.”

The kid shrugs. “Is there a way to be used to it?”

He knows he’s asking for them both. The truest answer feels the most bleak, so he opts for something gentler.

“I think there has to be a way to think around it at least? Make the brain box bigger. Less likely for the shit in it to hit things.”

There’s a long sigh beside him. “Sounds exhausting.”

A long pause. “Would it… help? To talk about it?”

Man, this little blue. Sensei can’t help the smile that tilts across his heart; he’s so tentative and determined all in one. Still stretching a hand out even though he knows whatever Sensei’s going to say might bowl him right over again.

He shakes his head. “Nah. I tried once, with my Mike. It’s an old scar anyways.”

The conversation hadn’t gone anywhere helpful, even with Mikey’s ability to see right inside his brain. They’d both been too tired to argue.

“I don’t think I could do it,” the kid says, sullenly. Tiredly. He rolls his head to the side to make eye contact with Sensei. “Live without any of them.”

Yeah , he thinks. He doesn’t say that there hadn’t been much living at all. “You know it's the same for them about you, right?”

The kid scowls, turns away. “Saying things you don’t mean about yourself seems kinda useless, old man.”

I mean it about you, though , he thinks. Something twitches in the kid's face. “I had twenty years as the last resort,” Sensei offers. “Changes your perspectives on things.” Or your priorities, really. Whether or not they needed him didn’t change that he was responsible for keeping them alive.

Or that he’d failed.

It’s obvious math with the kid anyways. He can see the way the kids brother’s hover, checking in and creeping forward and patiently holding his hand, working constantly to make him feel safe. Twenty years and mires of grief isn’t enough to drown out all the big and small ways he can see how his family loves.

“What was he like,” the kid turns with a sharper look in his eyes. “Your Don.”

He sighs, lets it roll through him. “Tired.”

He closes his eyes.

“He was really tired.”

He’d barely slept, all the way up until the end. Too many defense algorithms to scrub through footage of, supposedly— he wonders now if he should have checked in more. If he should have asked.

“Yeah,” the kid says, quietly like he doesn’t expect Sensei to hear. “You feel tired a lot, too.”

Oh . He supposes that’s fair.

Sensei swallows and imagines the fractured pieces of his heart settling back into their ruins. “It’s funny, he made all the systems in our base use his voice. Had to hear him anytime someone tried to use the microwave. Technically his last words to me were ‘front door compromised’.”

“Yeah. Funny. You ever thought about therapy?”

He doesn’t want to talk about this, it never helps. The rioting part of his core that is four parts missing and agony and one part instinctive need to move forward writhes anytime he lets himself remember any of it at all. As if he does anything other than remember it.

“Kid—” He exhales.

The kid turns to face him, frowning with that divot above his brow and his dead set determined set to his beak that screams stubbornness in neon colors. “Listen. I know how— I do the same thing, with my Ang, right? You know, where he doesn’t need all of my… me-ness on top of everything. So tell me the real version, get it out of that slow cooker of a brain so you can stop freaking out every time Don breathes our direction.”

He’s having a weird brain schism, he realizes. The divides between where this kid went and where he himself had walked are so different, sometimes past him feels like a different turtle entirely. A younger one, boiling entirely over with how little he sees himself at all.

I see you , he thinks, tragically. Pointlessly.

Sensei breathes out. “There’s not much—” his voice breaks, he clenches his hand around the inexorable pull of that dark space at his edges. The kid sees all of it anyways, doesn’t he? Dancing around it only makes it more his problem, less Sensei’s alone. His throat burns with some memory of tears, it feels silly but the words crawl out of him anyways. “I just. I never got to say goodbye. We never found out if he—”

But he had to have. It’s so much worse to imagine he had been alive and trapped, that Leo had left him there in that awful world. He had to have been dead because his twin would have broken apart the planet itself to get back to them if he could have.

His shoulders round forward and he squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. “I just, I should have gotten to say goodbye.”

The kid is silent. A long moment passes.

Sensei feels a small hand carefully land on his knee. “Sorry.”

He puts his larger one over the kids, squeezes it. “Nothing for you to be sorry for, kid.” Nothing in this whole wide world. “Whatever my Don was doing, I have to believe he’s with everyone else now.” It makes it manageable, at least. Widens the box in his brain so he can think around it.

The kid hums thoughtfully. “Can we… I mean, dad talks to our ancestors and things, in the mystic plane, right? He could maybe—”

Panic wrings through him, ice cold and visceral. Sensei feels the shudder crack through both of them and their tree side hang out waver into darkness. “--right, okay.” The kid gasps. “Bad plan, got it. Noted.”

“Sorry,” Sensei manages. “I just…” He doesn’t want to know what they think of him. What any of them would say about the world he broke. He knows them, he knows, but he’d been tired for so long before that, and he doesn’t want to know that Don went slowly or painfully. That he’d been waiting for Leo to find him.

Maybe he deserves to know how much he let him down.

The kid's hand twists, squeezing his back as hard as he can. “Forget it, shit. Grounding, let’s um. Let’s do that and not whatever this is. I hate this, fuck. ”

They walk through a few start and stop steps, the kids hand tight in his the whole time as they both dig their heels in to stay. It hurts, and Sensei wants to give in. The hand in his keeps him pushing through, cracks through him enough to speak.

“He, uh,” he clears his non-corporeal throat. “He kept a section of his database specifically for chess games for me. To run on my wrist guard when I couldn’t sleep.” Which was most of the time. Sensei shakes his head. “Kept a file for Mario Party cheat codes, too.”

The kid stares at the side of his face. Breathing steadier. He can feel it like a brand. “I knew he cheated. Asshole! I knew it.”

Sensei shrugs, a laugh surprising him as choked off and wobbly as it is. “He rigged up a giant screen once. Told me he was going to come for my crown once and for all, right in front of the entire base. Raph ended up winning.”

The stare gets more intense. “No.”

“Swear on my life,” he says. Pauses. “Or, well. My ghost possession afterlife? Don was furious.”

“Raph never wins at Mario,” he can hear the cogs in the kids' heads freezing in place. Hell has rained ice, pigs have started flying. Raphael, chronically confused at Mario Party mini game rules to a truly fascinating degree, won a video game.

“It’s true,” Sensei laughs.

“Was it the pity stars?”

“It was the pity stars.”

“Ah.”

He remembers how hard Mike had laughed at that, just absolute shrieking peels of delight as the rest of his family stared in complete silence. April had needed to drag a completely feral Donnie back to his quarters because Leo ended up crying laughing with him.

There weren't a lot of those good days after they lost dad. It’s important he holds onto them. It’s important he doesn’t let himself forget even when it’s hard to think about.

“That’s a relief,” the kid says, leaning back again. “Was starting to think everything about the future was completely and morbidly depressing. Least you had Mario Party.”

At least they had Mario Party.

The kid wakes up on his own, Sensei tucked carefully somewhere in the background. There’s a flurry of commotion somewhere out in the hall that sounds a lot like Mikey and Raph, but it’s still and quiet in the med bay.

Shit, the kid thinks, looking at the clock. It’s definitely been more than a few hours since they fell under. Sensei can see the medical clip on the kid's finger is back in place before he wiggles it off.

“Number?” Don’s voice cuts in, stern. Flat. Standing with his arms crossed in the corner of the room by his desk.

They hold up a two after a long moment. “I’m fine,” the kid says. Don’s expression doesn’t change.

“Who am I talking to?”

The kid groans. “Don’t be like that, Tello. He didn’t mean to. Half of it was me, anyways.”

Don looks squarely unimpressed, but something eases in the line of his shoulders. Relieved not to be talking with the body snatcher, probably, he gets it.

“He said he dragged you under, it’s been twelve hours. Am I not supposed to think your parasite is making it worse?”

He’s not wrong either.

The kid radiates frustration at both of them. “He’s not�� Dee. He’s been through a lot. Leave off him, alright? I was pissed off, he got his flip switched. I wasn’t making it easier. I’m doing good, I don’t want to be mad, okay?”

Don’s expression flickers, faltering as it always does around their particular brand of pleading honesty. “Fine, I’m not done talking about this but. Tabled, for now. What do you need.”

The kid thinks for a minute. Water would be good, Sensei nudges him.

“Would you talk to him?” The kid says instead, startling both Don and Leo.

Don recovers first, eyes narrowing. “Why.”

The kid’s brain is a mess of picture show slides, a strange warped retelling of Sensei’s own memories. It makes him wince, guilt rising thick in his chest. He’s gotta get better at locking that down.

“Look he— he misses his own Don. It’s not the same thing, but he had a rough night. Just shut up and talk to him.”

“Oxymoron,” Don and Sensei say in sync. The kid glares.

Kid, Sensei tries.

No. Not up for debate. You won’t let me tell Casey? Fine, this is my compromise. I’m tired of playing referee.

Sensei hates the pang of panic that still lights up in his mind at the thought. The kid lets out a frustrated growl.

Stop trying to leave! I’m sick of it. What if I— what if I don’t want them to pry you out of here. What then? You gonna sit here in this pissing contest stand off with my Don until we die?

There’s. A lot to unpack there, and not enough of the kid standing firm enough to do it— the conversations knocked them both back swiftly to a one that’s tenuous at best. Sensei didn’t make it so long as a general without knowing how to pick his battles, anyways.

If this is what you need from me, okay, he relents.

The kid’s glare is still hot, assessing. He turns back to himself, to the med room.

Don’s fussing with his tablet, brows twitching and his hand firmly in Leo’s good one. “‘M here, sorry.” The kid squeezes his twin's hand for them. “Just having a conversation, hard to be both places at once.”

Don’s jaw shifts. “I will refrain from the comments I desperately want to make.”

“Noted, file that under an IOU.”

Don rolls his eyes. “Scoff. As if I don’t have a mountain of those already.”

The affection in the kid is warm and strong as anything. He clears his throat. “What if I… what if I asked him to stay. Sensei. Would you be mad?”

Sensei shoves his own festering pile of guilt and doubt aside as hard as he can. Don’s expression flattens. “Why would you want to do that.”

It’s your life, Sensei whispers.

The kid shakes his head. “Casey needs him.”

There’s another need underneath it, neither him or the kid acknowledge it directly.

Don sighs, eyes squinting in the vague pained way of his. “I’m supposed to be okay with someone that is not you, taking you away from us when—” He cuts himself off, breathes out sharply.

The kid stays silent.

“Fine. Tabled. Get him out here.”

Sensei slides forwards, patting the kid on the arm distantly and ignoring his grumble about it. He’s bracing himself— he knows how Dee is, in any version of them. Getting his head chewed off would be the easiest way out.

“For the record,” Sensei starts, with a faint curve to his mouth. “I agree with you.”

The kid glares.

Don arches a brow, crossing his arms. “I don’t…. Like you, being here. I’m not convinced you aren’t impacting him in ways that are halting his progress.”

Sensei manages a shrug. “You’re probably right. I try really hard to stay out of his way where I can, but. You saw yesterday.”

Don’s jaw works, terse in every line of his body. Sensei remembers how his Don was before Raph. The way he’d gone along with all of Leo’s plans just inherently trusting that his goal was always to get everyone back out above anything else. The way he’d shifted. Their last conversation had been a lot of sharp lines like this; something adjacent to doubt. It still burns, funnily enough, even from a sixteen year old version of his twin who doesn’t know subtlety at all.

“If I told you I had figured out how to rip you out of him without injuring Leo at all, would you fight me?”

Sensei nearly laughs, I’d thank you, he tries not to think. “No,” he says with a stronger lilting smile. “I’d just ask that you do it before Case realizes I’m here. He doesn’t need that.”

Something in Don’s face shifts. “When Leo says you’ve been through a lot, what does that mean.”

“Ah,” Sensei huffs. “Maybe not a conversation for right now—” He can feel the daggers of the kid’s ire, nonetheless. Sighs. “Krang won where I’m from, Case probably mentioned.”

“And that means?”

He winces. “A lot of things that are hard to remember, mostly.”

Don’s gaze is assessing. He types something onto his wrist guard. “Any triggers I should know about?”

You. Raph. Dad. He breathes out. Shakes his head.

“Fine. Bring him back, please.”

The kid’s eye roll is something fierce internally, externally it’s too much effort to muster. “Dee. That was barely anything.”

Don shrugs. “I talked to him, didn’t I?”

It’s fine , Sensei reassures him. He means that it wouldn’t help, not with the hole that’s been carved in him for years.

There’s nothing at all in the world for what he’s missing. He should just be better at it. The missing.

Something stubborn lights up in the kid, a spark he doesn’t think he’s seen in the younger turtle since they crash landed together. Fuck this.

“Can I ask you something and have you promise you won’t get mad?”

Don’s brow twitches. “I’m not promising shit.”

A pause. “Say it anyways.”

“If you went somewhere,” the kid starts, and his voice shakes like a nervous glance over his shoulder. Sensei tenses immediately. “If you went somewhere, and you didn’t know how to come back. What would you do?”

Don’t , Sensei thinks, helplessly.

“Wouldn’t happen,” Don says. Not a moment of hesitation. “I wouldn’t let it happen.”

“What if you didn’t have a choice?” The kid asks.

He has to imagine his Don didn’t have a choice either, clings to it with everything in him. He didn’t know the kid had seen that, the wilful refusal to believe in any world where the other half of himself would walk away on purpose.

He doesn’t know the expression on Don’s face. He’s seen it before, at the planning table. After missions. He’s never known what it meant. “I’d come back,” Don says, like it’s obvious.

This younger version of his brother, some spun off worried and sideways Donnie, leans forward and pokes the kid as carefully as he can in the center of his chest.

“If I still exist, in any universe, I’d be coming back.”

Sensei swallows. He remembers this; that simple constant of trust, of knowing half himself sat between his ribs and the other behind a desk with a computer screen. He remembers believing it, too.

There’s a hallway in his mind that he goes to, where his ninpo once lived and breathed. A living room where he kept all the lights on. There’d been a time where all the rooms and all the doors had been flung wide open. They’ve been shut for years now.

“If you didn’t?” The kid asks, voice small.

Sensei walks through the empty room, hand trailing against the wall of his mind. He hasn’t visited this door, hasn’t been able to think about it around the hurt in him. He presses his forehead to the wood of it, now.

“If I’m gone, it would never be forever. You’d just have to wait longer.”

In his dreams, or at least where he goes when the kid is sleeping, the door is warm.

He sits himself against it, and pretends it's the same as the door being open. To feel his brother existing here at all.

Sometimes he thinks he can almost hear someone knocking back.

#my fic #rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rise leo #rottmnt leo #i still dont know how to tag death wish content help #rem makes me want to like absorb their words and spontaneously combust while also thinking more about descriptions and pauses so #thats what this is basically a love letter to peepaw

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