A/N: Well this is something a little different. I dunno, wanted to sort of step outside my usual genre I suppose.

Genre: Angst; Hurt/Comfort

As always, please enjoy.

It was supposed to be him, it was always supposed to be him. Everyone knew it, everyone expected it. He was Leonardo after all, the brother who would throw himself in front of an oncoming train if it meant keeping his brothers safe. And yet, somehow, that responsibility had fallen onto shoulders that were not his own.

Leonardo fought viciously against his bindings, though he may as well have been laying motionless for all the progress he was making. For the millionth time he tested the strength of the ropes around his wrists bound behind his back and ignored the burning pain of the fibers digging into skin. It wouldn't be long until they were bleeding, if they weren't already. On his left Donatello struggled just as hard, Raphael on his right, though his attempts were accompanied with angry snarls and vicious, muffled cursing.

Across the room there was a cry of pain, and the three bound brothers watched their fourth block a knife strike to the head with his forearm. Bright blood ran down his arm...dripped onto the cement. Where were his nunchaku?

Mikey! The name was muffled around the gag between his teeth and the bindings around his mouth. Cold, heavy fear gripped his throat with icy fingers and squeezed hard until it was difficult to breathe. His brothers were in danger and he couldn't do anything. And Michelangelo was fighting all alone. He sensed his horror mirrored in his brothers and they tried that much harder to get free. How had they even been caught? He couldn't remember. He didn't care. He was going to kill their attackers. As soon as he got out of this they were all dead. He was ashamed to admit he would take sick pleasure in sinking his blades deep into their rib cages. He saw the same sentiment echoed in Raphael's furious stare.

Why didn't they have their weapons? He couldn't recall anyone taking them. And then the familiar sight of the katana hilts jutting over his shoulders appeared in his peripheral. If he could just get to them...

Donatello was saying something, two syllables over and over again-his name he suddenly realized-with such insistence Leo paused long enough to turn wild eyes on him. Donatello jerked his chin, trying to communicate what he wanted without words. He jerked his head again and Leonardo nodded his undesrtanding and wriggled his way over to his brother.

Once they were in position, Donatello hooked his chin around the hilt of a katana, pinning the sword to his chest so that when Leonardo inched away they were able to slowly withdraw the sword from its scabbard. Leo wasted no time in feeding the long blade, now held steady under Donnie's jaw, through the loop of his bound arms so that he was able to saw away at the ropes around his wrist.

Suddenly Raphael roared through his gag, the sound so full of terror and fury that Leonardo's heart stopped. He glanced in time to see Michelangelo fall to his knees. His attacker jerked the sword out of Michelangelo's chest and wiped the blade on his sleeve.

Leonardo screamed, and the ropes around his wrists finally snapped. He snatched the second katana from his back, leaving the first with Donnie so he and Raph could free themselves, and sliced through the rest of his bindings. He didn't even stop to pull the gag from his mouth before he was sprinting, his eyes trained on the life's blood pooling at his little brother's knees. Don't die, don't die, don't die.

And just before he was able to leap for his brother's would be murderer, Leonardo slammed chest first to the ground, the weight of ten men suddenly on his back. His sword slid across the rooftop-rooftop? Had they always been outside? And then he realized there really were ten men holding him down.

"You are pathetic, Leonardo."

Leonardo looked up, never ceasing in his struggles, but he froze as he saw The Shredder walking toward Michelangelo with such ease, such grace, like he hadn't a care in the world. He stopped before the crumpled turtle and scoffed. Gripping the orange knot of Michelangelo's mask, Shredder yanked him up onto his knees, turning him to face his brother. Blood cascaded from the puncture in his chest, pooling in the natural grooves of his plastron and running down, down, down his thighs to the ground.

"I want you to see his face," Shredder began, placing the spikes of his gauntlet at Michelangelo's jugular, "so that I may view yours as you watch the light fade from his eyes."

No! No no no no no!

With a disgusting laugh, Shredder raked the spikes across Michelangelo's throat. Mikey's throat. Mikey gasped, the sound coming out more like a gurgle as the blood seeped up into his mouth and from his lips...down his neck and over his collar bones. He fell, the light indeed fading and then gone from his eyes. Then suddenly Donatello and Raphael were next to him, their throats just as slashed and their eyes just as empty.

Leonardo wailed--the gag was gone?-and the sound was so broken, so shattered. He couldn't recognize the sound of his own voice. He'd never felt such hopelessness before. He couldn't move, he couldn't think.

Wake up.

He couldn't breathe.

Wake up!

He couldn't breathe.

"Leo wake UP!"

Leo jerked awake with a gasp. His heart thundered in his chest, and mindlessly he pressed a hand to it as he dragged in desperate breath after desperate breath into his greedy lungs. "Mikey!" He wheezed.

"Leo?"

That was Raphael's voice.

If his lungs had been greedy, then his eyes were ravenous as he turned to his brother and drank in the sight of him. Alive, he was alive. "Raph..." he breathed, his voice barely above a whisper. "You're okay."

"Yeah," Raph agreed gruffly, but not gruffly enough to hide his concern. He dropped a hand on Leo's shoulder and frowned at the racing pulse he could feel under his fingers. "Are you? You was screaming bloody murder."

"Was I?" Leonardo answered absentmindedly as he glanced around. He was in the dojo. He'd been meditating and must have dozed off. The memory of Donatello lecturing him to get a proper good night's rest came to mind. He hadn't been sleeping well this past week after... Leo's gaze zeroed in on the bandage wrapped around Raph's forearm. Under that gauze were eleven stitches.

"Hey!" Raph gave him a gentle jostle and tried not to notice how Leo was still shaking beneath his palm.

Leo's eyes jerked up, hesitating momentarily on Raph's busted lip, before zeroing in on his eyes.

"What happened." It wasn't a 'do you want to talk about it' and it wasn't a question. His tone of voice left no room for half truths.

Leonardo dragged a weary, still shaking hand over his face. With a deep breath, and some focus, he managed to will some calm into his limbs and the shaking stopped. "Nightmare."

"No shit, Sherlock," Raphael scoffed, but the hand on his brother's shoulder was comforting and more truthful than his sarcasm. He was scared too, Leo realized. He had scared him. Or more accurately, his scream had.

"The Shredder was there," Leo began slowly, turning to stare through the wall of the dojo rather than at it. He reached up, settling his hand over Raph's a his shoulder as he continued. "Mikey was injured...and then he...Shredder slit his throat and made me watch."

Raphael's breath hitched, and now Leo did look at him. There was horror in Raph's eyes as he imagined what Leo had, in a way, just witnessed.

"And then you and Don..." Leo shook his head, clearing the image away. And then he glared, his fists clenching angrily on top of his knees. "I couldn't do anything. I was powerless, trapped. Unable to do anything but watch. Where are they?"

"They're on their way home with dinner," Raph answered. "Don just called. They're okay. Master Splinter is with them. They're safe."

Leo nodded once.

"Listen, Leo. What happened last week ain't your fault."

"I should've been quicker," Leo disagreed, thinking back.

The trip topside had started out innocently enough, a simple errand to April's to pick up the groceries she'd gotten on their behalf. Not that it was a four-turtle chore, but they had all needed the fresh air. They hadn't even made it to April's before they found trouble. Well, trouble had found them in the form of a fight with The Foot at a construction site. Leo had ended up in a pit filled with drying cement, powerless to do anything but listen to the fight above until Don had fished him out with an excavator.

No one had escaped injury. Leo had ended up with a sprained ankle due to the fall, though the Foot Clan member that had tackled him into the pit had gotten a lot worse. Raphael had the gash to the arm that, had the blade cut him just a few millimeters to the left, would have left him with permanent nerve damage. Michelangelo had almost been strangled with wire and still sported the lingering marks around his neck. Donatello had escaped with nothing more serious than some really nasty bruises and scrapes along with some tender ribs.

"It wasn't your fault," Raph repeated again, more sternly this time, enunciating his words with another gentle shake. "And you need to stop blamin' yourself."

Leo glared at him. "And if you'd been the one stuck in a hole?"

"Oh I'd be pissed," Raphael said without hesitation. "Be mad if you wanna be mad, but quit shoulderin' the blame for every damn bad thing that happens. You're always yellin' at me to not let my temper get the best of me. Well now it's my turn. Knock it off. You're lettin' this guilt control you and mess with your head. Keep that up and something worse will happen and then what?"

Leo didn't reply for a long while. Raph was right, of course, but he wasn't about to tell him that. "All right."

Raph raised a brow. "Well that was easy. Too easy."

"I don't fancy a repeat of this particular nightmare," was all Leo had to say, and Raphael's eyes darkened with bleak understanding. He'd had similar nightmares before. They sucked.

"Hey..."

Leo looked at him again.

"We're okay," Raph began, and he reached for Leo's hand, placing it against the pulse point of his throat so Leo could feel his heart beating. "I'm okay, Donnie's okay, Mikey's okay. We're all okay."

For a moment Leo just left his hand there, counting Raphael's heartbeats one after another before he offered his sibling a hint of a smile. "Hey Raph?"

"What?"

"Thanks."

Raph returned the sort of smile. "Yeah yeah, just don't get used to it."