Homecoming Child
By Kay
Author's Notes: I know everyone and their mother has done this theme, but I decided I needed to do it, too, apparently. XD Just a small ficlet. Implied character deaths, though not in an awful way. (I actually don't believe Leo would be the last turtle, either. I will write one of these days my preferred version, in which Mikey lives to be old and fat on some mountain, with a garden and Leo's leftover tea, and making dumb jokes, taking his time because he's the little brother and his brothers won't begrudge him a little more lazing about before he joines 'em.) But for now, you just get tragic!Leo. Zomg.
Enjoy.
It was a cold, empty lair that Leo returned to, that late day in the summer.
The streets had been quiet. Familiarity led his callused feet here, a walk that had been almost strange in its comfort. Looking at it now, Leo didn't see the cobwebs that had taken over the corners, the dust gathered over the sofa now eaten through by mice for nests, or even the mold lushly clinging to the walls on which he'd once hung photographs. It seemed, instead, exactly the same. Raph's punching bag was resting, abandoned, against the floor, its sand spilled in a crusted fan against the floor. Donny's chair—he picked it up and gently set it on its wheels, fingers running across the computer monitor and streaking grime over its face. He had wondered, briefly, bizarrely, if Mikey's PS2 was still working, but the wires were chewed so he merely set it back on the entertainment center reverently.
His father's doors were open. Leo did not enter them, but closed them softly; the click was pervading in the stillness. The room inside had been dark, and old, and intimate.
His ninjaken were dragging, deadweights scraping on the floor. He went into his room and put them away. The stands were still there, though toppled. Afterwards, he folded the cloak—it still carried, cloyingly, the scent of copper blood and sweat, and the desert, too, red dirt crushed into its creases—and put it into his drawer. It felt good. It was an odd feeling to be covered so completely in his own home. His belt sagged at his waist and Leo removed it, too, after a moment. The wound healing on his shoulder chafed from the leather strap rubbing it and here, he had no need of its efficiency. His wrists soon bare, his knees peeling skin where the guard had cut into them, Leo padded naked into the living area. (His mask, long ago, somewhere in Tibet likely, adorned the neck of a buried child and he felt no need to replace it. The grave had been his own, in a way, as well.)
He lit candles that night. Sat, breath heaving as his bones ached with the motion, and listened.
It was different, somehow, than the rest of the world.
Leo couldn't cry anymore for loneliness—years had dulled his yearnings, longing wasting into hollow thought—but tonight, he felt himself smile. Only just a little. Only just so warm.
"Is it time yet?" he murmured, straining to hear Mikey's laughter. Donny's chiding. Raph's gruff sigh. Perhaps, even though he barely recalled the sound, his father's kind chuckle.
But he heard nothing and finally, drifting, shell to the wall behind him, Leo felt sleep come. He dreamt that, when he woke, someone might be saying his name.
The End