Caution: Implied spoilers through seasons 1 to 6. No pairings.

Heights

At seven, Leonardo has already saved his brothers multiple times from threats ranging from swirling currents to hungry giant alligators. They nickname him 'Fearless'.

At seven, Leonardo had a crippling fear of heights.

His father feared for a time that for all his eldest's dedication and potential, he might never make the cut as a ninja with such a fear holding him back. He put aside time to work individually with Leo, concentrating on improving his balance and co-ordination.

Soon Leo had very little to rationally fear from heights – it took a great deal to knock him off-balance, and even when caught off-guard Leo could catch himself or break a fall reflexively. (Splinter begins to think that such commitment to self-improvement would take his son to great heights, if he could banish the fear.)

At seven, Leo had the best footwork by far of his brothers. He was also unusually adept at using the grappling hook and ninja spikes, for one so young. And he was still afraid.

Still unable to have his body obey him when attempting to climb upward; still incredibly adept at all his assigned exercises until he takes the blindfold off.

He watches worriedly and cringes as his brothers discover the joy of high leaps and tumbles. It makes him nauseous just watching them (even if they were clearly having a great deal of fun). Three young voices ring throughout the lair, loud with excitement and something like ecstasy – and so nobody hears him leave as he retreats to find a book.

Desperate, one day his father pretends to be in mortal danger, trapped upon a high metal beam. Leo steps up and delivers, forgetting the dizzying heights momentarily as he 'rescues' his father. He learns that necessity will take him where he knew he cannot.

It gets a little easier every time to focus on the task, to let need drive him on. To follow duty before any part of him can protest. (And his brothers think him fearless still.)

They reach the middle of their teenage years, and the paralyzing phobia is a faded discomfort he rarely notices. He even begins to believe his brothers, for awhile. He has little time to dreg up old blurring memories when he is busy fighting new and far more dangerous fears that reason cannot dissipate.

Leonardo sometimes feels that rational fears are the worst ones.

It is not only him who would fall now, if he gives in to fear. He loves his family far more than life itself; it scares him endlessly that it is up to him to keep them safe and happy. His fears escalate as the threats do, but he pushes them away. Though he hears the name 'Fearless' less often now, his brothers have begun to attach more than simple childish faith to that word.

He does his best, throwing his fears away like shuriken for focus and duty. (Somehow he never realized that he has taken it to an extreme, forgetting to see just exactly where his shuriken was hitting.)

Yet with fear came certainty. As he has once despaired of never reaching heights metaphorical and otherwise, he knew that he was not invincible. Not perfect. Not fearless. (But he needed to be, and duty will take him to where he dared not go, right?)

When his certainties are proven right, he wonders dully why just for once in his life he couldn't have been proven wrong. His denial disappears into blackness and despair. For someone who once feared heights so badly, it is instead the claustrophobic sensation of drowning that his realized fears most resemble.

But he is Leonardo, and he refuses to drown. Fury keeps him kicking, and it enrages him further when the ones he loves most judges him for it. He belatedly realizes he is the last one to understand why, when one of his frenzied strikes hurt the one he never expected he would.

He is sent away, and all his remorse and hurt would not change his sensei's mind. He wanted to return even before he has left. He considers drowning if it meant his fury would never hurt anyone else, but Splinter insists that there are new heights he needed to conquer.

(He obeys. He never really had any right to protest, and so he doesn't.)

His great-grandfather teaches him how, after he understands that his own way of struggling has only been making him sink faster. Leo opens himself whole-heartedly to the Ancient One's wisdom; and if he was to be honest with himself he could not have struggled for much longer before…succumbing.

He was breaking already, when he sees with the Ancient One's guidance that the slow grip that his fears trapped him in was more quicksand than liquid. He learns to stop kicking and to roll on his side to stand free.

He wonders if he remembers being free of that grip, cautiously testing his steps even as he begins to heal. But then his great-grandfather sends him back abruptly with great urgency, just as he was finding a little more confidence, just beginning to walk again. He leaves honorably and with deep gratitude.

(His second sensei was half his height, but to Leonardo the Ancient One is a colossal giant with the skies in his reach.)

The need to find his family drives him on, and he forgets to question the stability of his new steps. He proves them so with the speed and competence of his operations; something that was not fear or even duty has lent wings to his feet.

He suddenly realizes the towering heights he has been contemplating. (It seemed only a moment ago he was still drowning; yet an eternity later he finally stands in the sky.)

At sixteen, Leonardo flings himself off the Empire State building. In the midst of freefall his fears fall away to the stars.

Leo soars for the first time.

Epilogue

At seventeen, Leonardo defends Cody Jones almost too easily from the being that has broken him twice before. He is surprised to read something like fear in Oroku Saki's eyes, and would wonder later where his own have gone.

(They've simply…faded away, he thinks. While he was watching blurring perspective lines and bright citylights rush past him in freefall; and seeing his blue dragon spiral upward, cutting effortlessly through white columns of sunlight into the sky.)

He chooses to step away, leaving the Shredder free to break a younger Leo. It doesn't occur to him that the harrowing experience of facing a more experienced and skilled Leo would make Saki decide that Hamato Leonardo has to die. (He does not presume to think of himself in such superior terms.)

He walks away, heart incredibly (and perhaps inappropriately?) light; allowing himself to break, and then fall, so that one day he might – no, would – soar.