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It’d been almost a year since the Krang Invasion, and Leo’s life was finally starting to look up again. His injuries had healed as best as they were ever going to, and he was managing his persistent pains and newfound fatigue in stride.
Once he had become lucid enough for conversation, Raph, their father, and Junior all talked to Leo about that day and made it clear there was no remaining animosity, just in case it needed to be established. Mikey had been dutiful in his efforts to keep him cheered up when he was bedridden and Donnie was perfectly content to care for him when he couldn’t do it himself. Even April and Casey, who were occupying themselves aboveground with the city cleanup efforts via Casey’s brownie clan, made a point to call as often as they could, and Junior moved in with his mother the same week he found out she was in New York.
All had been going, relatively speaking, well.
Until it wasn't.
One night, when Leo had been staying up reading comics in bed, he could swear he heard Raph and Mikey whispering outside his room, and he heard his name being said. Curious, and filled with inexplicable anxiety about it, he quietly got up and listened in close to his bedroom door. He couldn't pick up anything distinct, but he was so, so sure, despite the lack of clear information, that it was about him and it was something horrible. He looked out the train car window, slow and careful, and saw nothing there besides the cool, echoey halls of the abandoned train station enveloped in shadows. He decided to just go ahead and try the door, despite his intense fear of being caught listening in. Yet when he opened the door, although he’d heard Raph and Mikey’s voices so distinctly, there was still absolutely nothing. The shadows stretched down the tunnels for miles and the only sound was a faint water drip coming from somewhere further south; a faint reminder of their old home. The metal floors were icy on his bare feet and the space felt far too exposed. Anyone could come from any direction, and that instilled him with so much dread that he felt almost compelled to turn back and hide in his room.
Looking around, it was still possible the sound was coming from Raph's room—Leo could see the faint red glow of his night-light through his car windows—but he got the distinct impression that perhaps he was just hearing things from lack of sleep, and resolved to just go back to bed and read his comics until he forgot about it and passed out.
This wasn't an isolated incident, however, and despite his best efforts to get enough sleep and water, it was still happening, and with increasing frequency and anxiety. He was so sure he heard his family's voices when they weren’t there, and they were always, always plotting to kill him. He never caught any distinct words, but he heard his name and an irritated tone and he could piece it together. It was happening during the day, too, and coming from anywhere in the lair: Outside his room, from Donnie's lab, from the living room, the kitchen, from anyone's bedrooms. Any room nearby was an option, usually happening once every few days.
He tried checking all the medications he took for his post-krang pains, but none of them had side effects that included hallucinations. He checked them again just to be sure.
The voices themselves weren't even as bad as the anxiety they engendered in him. He did his best not to engage with it, yet they sounded so real and he couldn't help but worry about any of the potential reasons his family could have for wanting him dead. Previously, he could never conceive of any, but now his brain was happy to provide him with several, and the reasoning only needed to make the flimsiest thread of sense. The voices kept getting louder, more distinct, more frequent. He was caught up between knowing what he was hearing must be a hallucination of some kind, and being unable to shake the fear of what if it isn't?
At one point, he looked up the symptoms of psychosis—despite already knowing them—and just reread it over and over. It described his experience perfectly, yet he couldn't help but feel like perhaps he was being dramatic about nothing, that perhaps everyone experienced this, actually, and just never talked about it. Surely, if this was psychosis, would it not be the Shredder’s voice echoing down the tunnels, or krang goo infiltrating the lair? Why would it be the voices of his family?
He began isolating himself in his room as much as he could without appearing suspicious, making himself as scarce as possible in his own home. He would rush past the shadowy areas of the lair and move to protect his neck if he was ever in a position where it'd be easy to get jumped, fearful of being strangled or having his throat slashed. He started wearing his hoodies at home, needing the extra comfort and protection a layer of fabric would provide, and slept facing his bedroom door with his swords on the floor by his bed where he could quickly grab them.
He couldn’t ever tell his family about this; just the thought of it terrified him. He could no longer realistically envision how they would respond if he told them anything, and all he could think was how they might really be planning to kill him and would move the time frame up if he implied he knew anything. April, Draxum, and the Jones’ had started entering his hallucinations as well, so they were all also written off as options to talk about this with. He kind of wanted somebody to know, as he was starting to get worried about the possibility of losing track of what was and wasn’t real, but each potential confidant was being eliminated one by one.
He tried to logically think through the voices he was hearing, explaining to himself how it made no sense for them to verbally discuss their secret plan to kill him in the lair Leo lived in; of course he would hear that. He immediately realized, however, how bad of an idea that was, as his brain immediately conjured up several narratives to make it make sense that he was unable to disprove, which only made the problem worse.
This fear of being killed included a fear of being poisoned, and he had started getting weird about unattended coffee cups or any food his family prepared. This was the case now, as he picked at his breakfast Mikey had cooked under the flickering light in the dining room and tried very hard to not consider the many undetectable poisons Donnie could have easily synthesized in her lab.
Raph, to Leo’s left, gestured at the light and said, “That’s driving me nuts. Donnie—”
“I’ll do it after breakfast,” she replied. She sounded slightly irritated, but she wasn’t. That was just her voice in the morning.
“I was gonna say, I can do it. It’s just that all the light bulbs are in your lab.”
Donnie shook her head as she chewed, swallowed, then said, “There’s also some in the garage, but I don’t mind. It takes, like, thirty seconds.”
Leo was still struggling with his breakfast. It wasn’t just his fear of being poisoned, but stress in general was making it hard to eat anything as the nausea drilled away at his appetite. He managed some of it, but Mikey still took notice. “Leo, are you alright? Do you like it?”
Something about being asked about it made him more anxious. “Yeah,” he said, “It’s great, Mike, I’m just not that hungry.”
“I’ll have whatever you don’t,” Raph said to Leo, then to Mikey: “You did great, you gotta make this more often.”
Leo wordlessly pushed his plate over, feeling kind of stupid for worrying about being poisoned in the first place—obviously the food was fine if Raph could have his leftovers—although he was sure he’d have this fear all over again the next time Mikey cooked.
Only a few days later, as he was walking through the halls past Donnie’s lab, he heard her in there plotting to kill him again, this time with Junior. He knew it probably wasn’t real, and he generally tried to ignore it as best he could, but this time it sounded so clear that he just had to come up to the door and listen in, being very quiet and slow to hopefully keep the motion-activated cameras and lights from turning on, and with success. He was right up against the door, yet it never became more distinct than mumbles that somehow Leo just knew were about him.
“Nardo, what are you doing?” Leo jumped at his sister’s voice behind him and spun around, willing his racing heart to chill because he shouldn’t be freaking out over this.
He said the most normal thing he could think of: “I thought I heard something in there.”
Donnie raised an eyebrow. “You better not be able to hear anything in there. I spent months on the soundproofing. Have you been getting enough sleep?”
He had been. Strangely, despite the stress and trauma from the invasion, he had actually been getting the best sleep of his life since recovering from his injuries. If anything, the problem was sleeping too much, but he was happy to take the free excuse. “Yeah, that’s probably it.”
“I think Dad still has some of those Hidden City sleeping potions he got from Draxum if you wanna ask,” she replied as she unlocked her lab doors. There was nobody inside. She gestured in. “Otherwise, you can hang out in my lab if you don’t touch anything or lick anything or distract me.”
Leo ignored the pulse of fear he had at the thought of taking a potion from his dad without knowing exactly what was in it, as well as the fear of being in Donnie’s lab, where the only way out was controlled by her alone. He waved her off and made his escape, embarrassed that he was still hearing the voices in a room he already knew was soundproofed.
Later, Leo was lying on his bed when his father came by to wish everyone goodnight and check on all of them, as he'd been in the habit of doing for a while now. He heard the gentle knock at the door and instinctually said, “come in,” forgetting to first move his swords from their unsafe—yet comforting—spot right next to him on the floor. When Splinter opened the door, his eyes immediately gravitated to them and frowned.
“You should really put those up somewhere where you can’t get hurt. What if you step on them in the middle of the night?” he asked, gesturing to them with his tail.
Leo tensed up and curled his feet at the thought. “I know, Dad,” he said, then decided to be a little brave. “I’m just… doing it to feel more safe.”
His father’s expression softened. “I promise, my son, I will never let the krang or any other great evil take my baby from me ever again, so there’s nothing you ever have to be afraid of… except stepping barefoot on a blade in the middle of the night when you get up to pee.” He spoke with so much affection and light in his voice that for a brief moment, Leo felt certain there was no way the voices he was hearing could ever be real, and he desperately wanted to curl up in his father’s warm, fuzzy arms and tell him everything.
Splinter said, “You are always welcome to come sleep in my bed if you’re scared, Blue.”
Leo almost wavered, but he didn’t. The certainty had left as quickly as it had come. He declined, insisted it was alright, and moved the swords to a safer location to make his father happy. He put them right back after he left.
Another night, Leo and his siblings were hanging out with April on the rooftops, mostly just to play with their weapons and catch up with her about how things were going on the surface. Leo’s portals had been abnormally abysmal lately, and he had absolutely no idea what to say when Raph questioned him about it. Now, they were standing pretty close to the edge of a taller building and Leo realized, with fear, how easy it would be to just push him off. He could still portal to safety, yes—he had his swords on him and although his portals sucked right now, they still worked good enough— but that did nothing to quench his fear. Someone still could have put an anti-mystic device on him.
He tried to just breathe steadily, and was starting to move away from the edge when April put the spotlight back on him. She said something about how she’d started taking an astronomy class at her university, both for distribution requirements and to hopefully spy on the suspicious activity in the science department, and how she thought he’d appreciate it if she shared her lab notes with him since he loved space stuff. He stumbled through some response along the lines of, “Yeah, I’d love that,” as his eyes kept darting between the steep drop down twenty-five stories and any sudden movement from anyone near him.
On another occasion, he was training with Casey in the dojo-slash-garage when she managed to get him pinned to the ground, knife up to his throat. Although she immediately smiled, pulled the knife away, and loosened the boot pressed into his plastron, the flash of fear he felt for just a moment was enough to send him scrambling backwards in the shadowy area behind the tank, not relaxing or slowing his breath rate until his shell hit a shelf full of Donnie’s tank repair tools.
Casey looked—understandably—surprised and concerned. She put the knife away and got down to his level. “Are you good?” she asked, “You know I wasn’t actually gonna hurt you, right? We’re just sparring.”
He swallowed his spit and took a deep breath. Time for damage control. He forced his shaking hands to still and said, “Yeah, sorry, just having an off day—krang stuff—I know everything’s fine.”
But apparently that wasn’t enough, because she just shook her head. “April’s been texting me, she says you’ve been really anxious like this for a while. Are you sure—”
Maybe this would come back to bite him later, if Casey decided to tell anyone else about this, but in the moment he decided his best course of action was to take off down the dark, echoey hall and not deal with this right now. Just the idea of his loved ones texting about him was filling him with so many dreadful thoughts along the lines of secret Leo murder plot group chat that he couldn’t stop or slow down. As he beelined back to the safety of his small, messy room, he could swear he heard Mikey and Draxum plotting to kill him coming from Mikey’s room.
That same night, Leo couldn't sleep. It was one of only a handful of bad nights he’d had since the invasion, and after two hours of tossing and turning he gave up altogether and slunk into the kitchen in pursuit of coffee. He had his hoodie on and his shoulders drawn up to protect his neck as he heard the voices again; all his siblings and his father coming from Splinter’s room, and he did his best to ignore it. This was happening more than once a day now, and he had no idea what to do. Talking to his family was absolutely out of the question, and yet he didn’t know how else to proceed. He was scared and so, so tired. He sipped his coffee in the kitchen and scrolled through his phone, trying to distract himself with some of his favorite music. He didn't notice Raph come in until his shadow passed over the faint light in the room and Leo jumped, his head and limbs partially curling into his shell.
Raph looked at him, with mild confusion at first, and then something seemed to click and it morphed into sadness. “Leo?” he said, squirming as if he were trying to make himself smaller, “Are you… afraid of me?” He sounded like he wanted to cry at the thought.
This was exactly the situation Leo hoped he wouldn't get himself into. Raph looked so hurt by the notion any of his siblings could be afraid of him, and Leo noticed how his eyes were locked in on the way Leo’s neck was almost entirely in his shell. He was pretty sure Raph was thinking about when he was possessed by the krang and almost choked Leo out.
Leo desperately wanted to explain that it's not Raph, he’s just afraid of everyone. He couldn’t say that, though, as just the thought of giving anything away was almost enough to send him into a panic. Instead, he said, “Of course not, Raph, I know you’d never hurt me,” and was hit with so much guilt over the fact that it was a lie.
He decided he didn’t want to be here anymore. He took his coffee and retreated back to his room—stepping carefully over his swords—and sat on his bed with his knees up to his chest. He felt horrible for making Raph feel bad. The misery and stress manifested the way it always did, as he heard Raph talking to Splinter about how they were going to deal with this, and he heard the train car door open, but everytime he looked there was nothing there. This continued on for a couple hours, his heart racing, glancing back at the train car door every time he was sure he heard it opening. He thought he saw a face in the car window too, although it wasn’t the face of anyone he knew, as it smiled unnaturally wide and stared intently at him. He had no idea what that had to do with any of this, but it just made things more complicated as he had to look at the train car door every time he heard it open to confirm it wasn’t real, only to then immediately turn away from the windows in fear of some new thing he knew for sure wasn’t real. Probably.
He spent that night anxiously curled up in bed in complete silence until exhaustion finally won out. When he woke up late the next day, he realized this was the point at which he had to tell somebody. This was too unbearable to keep to himself.
Leo settled on Hueso’s, deciding it must be safe to talk to him since Hueso had never shown up in his hallucinations before. He was also the first person he could think of that might have useful advice. The restaurant hadn’t officially opened for the day, but it would soon, and Leo knew from experience that Hueso would be in his office around now. The space was brightly lit in appealing warm lights, clean and inviting and basically empty at this time. Leo followed the red decorative wallpaper, covered in pictures and memorabilia, to Hueso’s office and knocked on the black cherry door.
“Who is it?”
Leo opened the door and Hueso frowned at him. “I didn’t say, ‘come in,’ pepino.”
Leo gave him a big, warm smile, mostly to calm his own nerves. “Aw, come on, Señor, you know you could never turn me away.”
Señor Hueso sighed. “This better not be another adventure that throws off my whole day. I do have a business to run.”
“It won’t be, Señor, it’s just… I need advice.”
Once Hueso directed him to go on, he explained his whole situation, stumbling over his words a bit and with far more embarrassment than he anticipated, keeping his eye contact directly to the floors rather than on him.
When he finished, there was a moment of silence before Hueso replied, surprise evident in his tone, “That sounds horrible, pepino, but it does make sense with everything you’ve been through.”
“Does it?” Leo asked, finally looking up to meet his hollow face. “My family has never tried to kill me before—at least not seriously and not on purpose—why wouldn’t it be the krang or the Shredder; something I could talk to them about?”
Hueso shrugged. “The mind is a very strange thing. Have you been spending time with them? That would help you to see them more as they truly are.”
Leo sighed. “No, I haven’t.”
“Start there,” Hueso said with a small smile, “And since the restaurant will be opening soon, could I send you home with a few extra-larges? A good way to start bonding with them again, I think.”
Leo accepted, and gave Hueso thanks and a hug before he left. He was grateful to have at least one person he felt safe talking to about this, even if the advice given felt strangely daunting. “Spend time with your family,” should have been easy, but not so much when it sounded just like, “Spend time with the people who are planning to kill you.”
He gave it a fair shot, however, and started by asking Mikey if they could make dinner together, which Mikey was enthusiastic about. They settled on a simple stir fry—something Leo probably wouldn’t burn—and he pushed past the fear when Mikey grabbed a knife, making himself focus instead on how genuinely happy his little brother seemed to be that Leo was cooking with him.
Then he tried asking Donnie to hang out in her lab. She was always saying guests were welcome if they didn’t touch anything or distract her, and he nervously decided to take her up on it. When he knocked and asked, his sister immediately lit up. “Actually,” she said, “If you don’t mind being more involved, I could use a lab assistant.”
Wanting to overcome his paranoia and actually spend some time with his twin, he took a deep breath and agreed. He felt like persevering was definitely worth it three hours later, when Donnie smiled wide and bright and thanked him for being a great assistant.
Splinter came to Leo’s room that same night, when apparently neither of them could sleep, and offered to show Leo the Jupiter Jim x Lou Jitsu crossover episode of the Jupiter Jim TV show and give Leo the full behind-the-scenes lore. He accepted—the offer sounded really fun and he wasn’t doing anything particularly enriching on his own—and despite the fear of being out in the open, vulnerable, easy to kill, he still managed to fall asleep out there, wrapped in warm blankets and comforted by the hum of the projector as his father continued to explain the lore.
April invited Leo over to her university on another occasion, as her class was using the telescopes for a research assignment and she figured he might enjoy that. He came over to the observatory, which was located in the woods just outside city limits, alongside a small auxiliary building that seemed to be used for a lot of environmental classes and projects. It was just the two of them, alone in the forest and he actually didn’t have his swords this time, but he shoved down his fears and managed to still have fun, enchanted by the beauty of outer space and happy to make his dear friend’s project a little more fun with his company.
He also gave training with Casey another shot, and he managed to pin her down, despite how intensely afraid he was of her potentially turning the fight serious the whole time. She congratulated him on defeating her, and he said he got the winning move from a specific Lou Jitsu movie she never knew about. He offered to show it to her next time she was over, and she happily agreed. For a brief moment, he considered how there's no way someone so joyful about hanging out with him would want to kill him.
On another sleepless night, one where the voices were so loud and so many and it sounded so convincing, he had to get up and listen to his music to try and drown it out. He had a big cup of coffee, his music going in his ears, and his hoodie zipped all the way up to protect his neck, just sort of pacing back and forth across the living room and trying to keep the fear at bay. Once again, he was jumpscared by Raph suddenly manifesting in the doorway.
“Leo? What are you do—” he cut himself off when Leo jumped, and he got that sad look in his eye again.
Leo didn't want to make him sad again, and he didn't want to lie again. There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence as Leo took his earbuds out as slowly as possible and considered what to say and how to say it that wouldn't trigger himself too badly.
He settled on, “Sorry I keep flinching, Raph. It's genuinely not you that's wrong. It's— I don't want to talk about it so don't ask me to, but I’ve just been scared of everyone lately. It's really not you.”
Raph considered this for a moment and sighed, softening his expression and posture. “Well, I’m sorry you're feeling afraid of everyone. I think I felt something kinda similar before, and it really sucks, doesn't it?” He opened up his arms in an offering for a hug.
Nervously, Leo accepted the hug. It felt as warm and protective as all Raph hugs felt, but he still had to ignore an intense fear he had about Raph potentially taking advantage of the vulnerable moment to kill him. He was aware, on some level, that wasn't going to happen, and he really did want a Raph hug. He squeezed his brother, sighed, and said, “Yeah. It really does.”
Although he wasn't comfortable telling Raph exactly what was going on, he did still feel comforted having explained the very loose strokes of it, and he realized Hueso was absolutely right about spending time with his family. The hallucinations and unrelenting fear were still everpresent, but the hold on him had gotten noticeably weaker with more recent positive interactions to contradict it. His family would never kill him, no matter how hard it was to keep convincing himself of it. Maybe someday he could tell them, but for now, he thought the comfort of just being with them was helpful enough.