Almost Ten Minutes

By Kay

Disclaimer: I don't own TMNT. I give up. Fine. Go for it.

Author's Notes: Comicverse, specifically to Mirage's Volume One of the series. Probably takes place sometime after Return to New York, but before City at War. You don't necessarily have to read the comics to understand this fic, it just helps you to understand some of the minor references and characterization differences. Also, I know Leo's going to have many more consequences due to what he's done, but heck if I'm gonna write 'em. XD

Based off of the TMNT RPG book, which includes the turtles' stats. For some mysterious reason, Leo is the only turtle who does not have the ability to hold his breath underwater for ten minutes. It's probably a mistake, but the possibilities interested me. So here's Leo, and his inability to hold his breath for ten minutes underwater, and why we should care. Thank you for reading! It's so appreciated!

This is possibly a work in progress, as well. I might decide to change some things later. For now, though, it's going to have to stay as it is until I'm a little less busy.

i.

He's never seen the point of dictionaries. They teach you how to use a word properly, how to stumble over the syllables separated by tiny black dots and the flick of your tongue. But Leo believes if you want to learn what a word means, you read literature. This is similar, perhaps, to loving something. The key lesson is never so much about understanding as it is knowing.

Leo is good at knowing, but bad at understanding. Story of his life. His little brothers alternatively suffer and benefit from it. His father mistakes the difference.

He likes especially—

he did not dream of lions to mankind, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: 'wait' and 'hope' is no sign of a quick ear Why don't you put out your moon were not that Death had opened the doors of this house especially in the dark and not knowing what turns you have taken to tell the lie of things outside the old man said, I moved him then the blessing was from a young child's lips, but it was the first I'll fight them until I die and he never once forgot it

Leo knows each page number. He wishes he could share them with someone else. Mike also likes to read, but not stuff like this—he finds tragedy in the same place Leo discovers what's beautiful. He doesn't get it yet, that sometimes hurt feels good.

Give Leo a word and he will tell you about it.

ii.

Another disappointment, but he has no choice. Leo violently surfaces from the water, his mouth already open to gasp in oxygen. The air burns his esophagus. That doesn't bother him nearly as much as Raph's loud sigh in the darkness.

The click of a stopwatch. "Eight minutes and two seconds. Better."

But not by enough. Leo grasps onto the ladder that sways in the water, considering his next move. This imperfection will gnaw at him longer if he doesn't right it, but the night's almost gone and Raph's expression is moving from impatient to irritated. The difference is important, as are the tight wrinkles by his mouth. Without another word, Leo climbs back up onto the dock and out of the river.

He's dripping all over the wood. Soon, he's going to feel the temperature. For now, Leo closes his eyes and forces away the dizziness. "You gonna keep doin' this crap?" Raph asks him.

iii.

Leo's coping mechanism has never been to shy away from what would break him. Rather, in what may be even more twisted and selfish a method, he turns to face it head on, stubbornly coveting the burden of responsibility. It makes a strange sort of logic. He takes weight on to feel lighter. By being brave enough to fight his demons, he can pretend that makes it okay to have created them in the first place. A mistake is allowed, but only if followed by penance. But the truth is, penance does not absolve a crime. For that reason, Leo can never truly release his guilt—its ghosts shudder and weave about his shoulders, strangling his every intention.

It destroys any purpose in the ritual itself, of course. If Leo can't cope with his coping mechanism, there's no point to it. But despite this, there's comfort. He can breathe as he's being crushed.

The first time Leo kills someone, he dwells obsessively on it. Reasoning each side, brimming with harsh self-recrimination, ripping the act apart with philosophy and conditional society and religion and the self. He thinks, overly so, and broods, and when he's done there is a lashing quiet within him.

In the end, however, he can't absolve this the usual way. A life is life. There is a body, and a soul, and something he's stolen from the city, something that will be missed. These are the facts.

It can be equated to taking the morning paper when it doesn't belong to him on a Sunday morning. Things missed, for a day. Things missing, for a year. A damp circle on the table surface that he cannot smooth into nonexistence.

Somewhere, someone is crying over their coffee. Maybe.

iv.

There are some old enemies Leo can't get out of his head.

Oroku Saki, he expects. To be honest, if the Shredder ever left Leo's nightmares, he has the weirdest feeling he would actually miss it. Saki is a great act of vengeance. He had faced Leo honorably in the end. He is an enemy that Leo can keep, tucked away as if precious, always ready to warn Leo of the darker corners of mankind and to provide a sense of old kinship. That is to say, Saki is more friend than foe in his death. On the anniversary of their final battle, Leo goes to the site where he'd pushed off the burning platform into the lake and tells Saki he's forgiven him for that Christmas so many years ago. In some ways, Leo's grateful for it. The others would call him crazy, so he doesn't tell them, and such is his life.

Saki had understood Leo, while his brothers have known him. The difference is, as always, a vital thing.

Likewise, there are others who haunt his thoughts. Self-inflicted, no doubt. Leo doesn't understand his own psyche sometimes. He keeps those who would hurt him closer than those who would help; a valuable lesson in life, but not nearly so practical when applied spiritually.

This enemy is the worst, though. He still fights it—in fact, it has become his personal vendetta in the past month, so frustrating an opponent that he's enlisted Raph's dubious help. Raph may not want to help, but he kind of thinks it's funny, Leo being pathetic about it all. That, and Raph knows Leo would just try to do it on his own regardless of the potential dangers. There can be no way out of it, however, because Leo hates the idea he's failed at something his entire life that comes so easily to his brothers. (He also sometimes wonders if Raph had wanted to share this thing between them, too; they both can face these demons on a similar platform.)

"Eight minutes and two seconds ain't bad," says Raph on the way home. Leo frowns, flicking droplets of water away from his hands.

"Hmm."

"You honestly think two damn minutes more makes a difference?"

Of course, Leo hasn't told him about the time he almost drowned.

v.

Cold, terrible and blessed, comes over New York as a motherly embrace in the winter. He's never sure if he wants to fall into it or shrug it away. On one hand, Leo is a creature of warmth if you ask his instincts—his body knows the heat of stones baking in the sun, the lazy luxuriating of the natural world where all is in its place and pleased to be there. But Leo's mind is like November, clear and calm and sharp, a well of silence tucked lover-tight into white walls. Uncomfortable, watched. He settles best in snow because he can hear himself in the stillness.

How does anyone explain it? Leo lets himself be empty in the winter. For a moment—maybe on a mission, maybe a last minute and thoroughly unneeded patrol—just standing, being, crystal.

People might be afraid to open themselves to hollow everything out. Leo isn't. Any part of the world could creep in while he's distant: clutter and clamor, monster tracks, disbelievers, the anger, a sense of displacement so profound it erases his brothers from their bloodplaceveinslovestringshere. But he's very tidy about it, very efficient, and he never leaves himself gaping wide for very long. The soul needs rearranging, sometimes. He understands this as fundamentally as he does closing his eyes to stop the burn of frustrated tears.

The question is, does Leo let go of things too easily or never at all? There is no answer. He drinks tea because it fills him and that, too, is an entirely different way of falling out of line.

vi.

Splinter had never given up on Leo until he was eleven. At that point, his father clicked the stopwatch a final time, sighed with his soul, and said, "We must never do this again, my son."

"B-but I'm so c-close—"

"No." And the wiry hand on Leo's head did nothing to quell his tremors, nor his dismay. "It does not matter. Some limitations we must accept, Leonardo, otherwise we destroy ourselves chasing the impossible."

And he'd taken Leo home, wrapped him in towels, and never spoke of it again. Satisfied that his sons could survive underwater for an acceptable amount of time (more than acceptable, it was impressive), Splinter hadn't bothered to repeat the exercises. Especially understanding that if he had, Leonardo would become an object of ridicule—however fondly or pointlessly—amongst his brothers. A mere three minutes difference, but to Leo at eleven it had seemed a divide so great that he felt it split him apart from the others. An embarrassment, one even Splinter could not train out of him.

His brothers could hold their breath underwater for ten minutes. There should have been no difference between them, but there was. Leo could not understand it, but he knew the humiliation keenly. He still does.

Such a stupid, little thing.

It drives him mad.

vii.

He knows his brothers, but doesn't understand them. Their gap's as frustrating as their closeness, which makes it even more difficult to connect. There are times when Leo feels like he understands and suddenly doesn't want to. His father tells him, once, that all families are like this. His father's only been a part of one family. There's a crinkle of truth in most things his father says, but faith is only so strong of a binder to the rest. Maybe it's so. Maybe it's not.

Don worries Leo. Not because of his intelligence—that's admirable, that the sort of stuff Leo can barely grasp becomes silly putty in his brother's hands. Don is his lieutenant. His right hand. When Leo turns, he expects to see a quiet and calculating gaze staring straight back at him. Levelheaded, assessing, compassionate—he could have been Leo's twin if it weren't for the lack of certain faults (and additions of new ones).

But sometimes Don gets too quiet, and too calculating, and that's when Leo worries. Don has bourn the weight of their father's fixation on spirituality. Leo uses it for practical applications, but Don already has ways of handling the practical. So he struggles to come up with more, and fails, and falls into himself. There things in the dark—beyond the edge—deep in the water.

Leo has reason to be afraid for him.

Raph. Raphael is their baby, almost as much as Mike. But the wound in him is old, far too old for a child to handle, and so Raph is alternatively much too aged and much too tender. Leo is never sure which aspect is more troublesome. The truth is—and he keeps it close, a private matter—he understands Raph more than he knows him, sometimes, and that's what makes things harder between them. To feel things, Leo has been cruel to him. To love him, Leo has been wrong.

Raph is his own shadow, and his own light. Leo can't save Raph anymore than he can save himself, though, and what keeps his head straight is knowing that Raph will come out of this okay. Raph's strong. Raph's very human. To keep that safe, Leo has encouraged it in the only ways he knows how, even when it earns him hate, even when he hates himself. He doesn't expect others to comprehend.

Some days, all it takes is the smallest gesture and Leo thinks, 'I'm so proud of you.'

And Mike. Of all of them, Mike is the one Leo needs.

So angry inside when his brothers are hurt. So full of life and creative energy. So naturally talented, and wise, and foolish, and gentle, and bold. Mike is a splinter in your finger on some weeks and the only pinpoint of light in a cavern on others. He shakes apart foundations and lifts the bodies out of the water. He's terrifying in his potential. He's gratifying because he talks to Leo long after no one else will, knowing and understanding and loving as effortlessly as breathing.

Leo will keep him littered in comics and television because if greatness touches him, if Mike can see all he can do, they'll never be able to keep him down.

Together, they come under the roof of the heavens above New York City. They watch for rain, and they are protected because so few do.

viii.

Raph sets the stack of towels down on the dock, peering over the edge into the flat black of the water. "Looks cold."

Leo imagines it is. "We won't be long."

He doesn't know when this became routine. Two months ago? Three? The evenings they share are spaced out on the calendar, here and there, frequent and then barren. They have it down to an art, a science. He's improved his record by another minute and a half. That's half of the way. That's half of the way.

There's a part of the brain that dreads jumping into cold water—any water—because the body understands the immediate dangers. The shock alone is jarring to the skeleton; the muscles tense in anticipation of pain. The lungs speed their movements, disrupting the flow of the blood, bringing about an unbalance in the core. Leo has jumped into this river so many times he doesn't think twice anymore. The plunge comes as a step.

Raph likes to tell him, "It's damned eerie to watch."

They'll do it over and over. Timing every dive. Leo hovers beneath the surface, and then further down as temptation proves too great when he needs air, and then he finds himself immersed in the muck of the river bottom. He clenches his toes in the freezing mud and cuts them on rocks. He finds, as never with any meditation exercise before, a sense of calm purpose that descends throughout his every nerve. Eventually, when he can't feel anymore, when his teeth clatter too hard to breathe properly for a decent inhale, when everything burns—

Raph will stare at him grimly, thumb cocked on the stopwatch. He'll shove a towel over Leo's shoulders, and harshly inform him that the ride's over, the park is closed, it's time to go—

Leo surfaces.

"Eight minutes and twenty-two seconds," says Raph.

(He likes to think Raph gets it. But maybe this is punishment for them both.)

ix.

Leo still thinks about that Christmas.

The bite isn't as painful as it used to be. Leo can smile when he remembers it, at this point, because in many ways he can recognize the division between child and adult. In many ways, he's passed that line because of the Foot's actions that night. Because of his own, as well. And he recalls each strike, every jolt of agony, and all the sensations that still wake him up after a restless night of bad, groggy-sweet dreams.

He remembers the snow as a flick of discomfort, the cold-wet-slide against his shins and cheeks. He hadn't been able to feel his feet. The chains closed around his wrists dug into his flesh and he'd bled, though not terribly, but even worse was the sludge. It had gotten into his eyes, into his bandana, into his scabbard—filthy and damaging, slowing his reactions. But Leo doesn't fool himself anymore. If it'd been a sunny, warm day, he would have lost just the same. Perhaps more.

Oddly enough, as time continues to meander by them, Leo finds clarity in the memories. The sweep of windows above him that were lit aglow with Christmas tree lights and ornaments. Snow globes with their glitter lazily spinning that sat in the shop displays. The scent of cinnamon, and rotting cabbage in the alleys.

He's glad they celebrate Christmas. He's glad they gave it one more try, because every year, Leo is the first to count his blessings.

(He remembers sinking into the puddle and Oroku Saki swinging his fist down from above, and how it hurt, and how he'd cried for help.)

x.

"I've never had to hold my breath ten minutes," Raph tells him.

Leo swings his leg over the edge of the dock, clambering onto the surface. He crouches there, taking long and slow breaths, and thinks about that. "But you can," he finally says. He shakes off his hands.

Raph's face tightens, a sneer on the verge of forming. "So? Can't stand havin' someone out there better than you at anything, is that it?"

That's not it. That's exactly it. Leo rubs his temple and sighs. "What if it makes all the difference, even once?"

"Why would it?"

"You should always be prepared."

"You can learn all the crap you want to be prepared," Raph says. "But it's always gonna be that one you didn't that comes back to screw you."

Leo agrees, "That's exactly why I'm doing this."

"It's exactly why you shouldn't."

xi.

One night, Leo woke up and found himself in the bathroom.

He doesn't sleepwalk as a general rule. And with this, Leo isn't sure if it's so much sleepwalking as his body trying to tell his soul something. The problem is, Leo's body is often more confused than his mind. He has trouble relying on either. That's why, it's safest to follow their father or, barring that, wait until the moment when everything aligns and he can see the answer in his brother's faces.

If all else fails, remember you love them.

But here, Leo opens his eyes and he's staring into the sink, filled to the brim. The water trembles with the echoes of a long-passed subway train from above. Under the weak yellow light, the pool seems sallow, stale, and warm.

Leo's fingers clenching the sink are the only things reminding him not to dunk his head under. They say: barrier.

It's bad, it's so bad—and he gets that, he understands, but Leo still grabs Raph's arm after practice and says, "Let's do it tonight."

xii.

It can't be his willpower. Leo wants this so bad he can taste it, the flavor of river lingering between his gums and overpowering their dinners. It's not a condition, because his lungs are fine and if he slips into a meditative state, he can control and hold his breathing as long as his father. It must be some particular code in his psyche—a locked room, one of many he's found when exploring the corners of his mental state, one of the many barred or boarded up or vanished—that controls his actions.

He hovers in a state inexplicable in its peace, listening to the silence and the steady click of seconds in his head. There is no panic he'll run out of air. Inevitably, however—unexplainably—he falls short.

Something ingrained in Leo says you can't stay here.

Something in Leo says if he goes too far, he'll leave Raph waiting there on the docks, watching the clock hands, frowning in the dark.

xiii.

"I can't," mutters Raph, and his fist slams into the punching back with an audible crunch.

Leo considers that. "Why not?"

"'Cause." And Leo's long given up on Raph giving him solid answers, or even looking at him when speaking, but even that single, drawn out word is strangled into existence. Raph grits his teeth and steps back, shaking out his hand. His knuckles look swollen. "Not tonight."

Leo would scold him for getting too into it, but there's no point. Instead, he assesses the damage silently. Later, he'll put the necessary creams and cooling packets by the kitchen sink. He says, "All right." There's no point in pushing something Raph doesn't want to do and it was a favor in the beginning, anyway.

As Leo is leaving, Raph adds to his back, "If you really wanted to do it again, you'd ask why. Y'know?"

xiv.

It'd be easier alone, but Leo's been down that road. He almost came back dead. It's not worth that.

xv.

Out of all the alien worlds he's been to, Leo has far found his own to be the oddest. The universe outside of their own remains comprehensible. Within the walls of his home, Leo loses his way all too often.

Once, Professor Honeycomb had patted his shoulder. "I can't thank you enough," he'd said. Leo hadn't had it within himself to explain their own motives.

"If you were us, it'd be the same," he answered.

"But how would you know that? How would I know that?" the Professor had inquired, eyes glowing soft-like under the unfamiliar set of stars. Leo found himself drawn into that world like a cipher to the truth. "Why should we ever deal with 'what-if' and 'perhaps,' when obviously there is nothing there. Possibility does not equal existence. That me that would help you—he's been dead before living."

Leo felt, in that moment, as though they'd never make it home to their father. His heart quivered. "But if that's true," he'd whispered, "then where does hope factor in?"

The Professor might have smiled had his body been better equipped for it. "At the bottom, I believe. Where you build from."

xvi.

August 25th, late in the evening, is the last time Leo makes a timed dive.

"See you in ten minutes," he says to Raph, and it's no longer a qualifier for a joke. Raph grunts and sets the watch. He doesn't look at Leo. These days, he doesn't look at Leo, anyway.

Leo steps.

The cold hits and smothers him. Rather than his heart rate increasing, it immediately slows, caught up somewhere safe and beyond all aid.

xvii.

When he'd been thirteen, Leo asked Don for a stopwatch.

No one had known what he did with it, and the matter was quickly forgotten. Sometimes Leo came home shivering, but he'd called it training, and with the temperature drop in the sewers during the fall, nothing seemed out of place. Even Splinter hadn't questioned—years later, Leo wonders if he'd somehow known. The thought is a barb.

One day, Leo trudged into the lair. His brothers were watching a movie; the white glare of the screen cast shadows against the bricks. He'd nodded to them, and been ignored, and then to his father, who merely nodded back. Then he dragged himself to his bedroom and crawled into bed and pulled the blanket over his head.

His throat burned. He couldn't stop shaking. He thought, 'I almost died.' He thought, 'I should have.'

The nights are few and far in between when Leo wakes up, vocal chords taken by spasms, unable to move because he feels as weighty as lead. But he remembers that feeling and takes it to heart. Years later, he'll open the tiny box hidden underneath his bed and take out the stopwatch again, and ask his brother, in uncertain tones, for help. And he'll spend many nights like before—burrowed in comforters, his toes swollen, his lungs tired.

But he'll never forget that feeling—sprawled on stone, eyes blurred to the dark ceiling of the sewer pipe, so close to death that it lingered inside of him like a stone. It was like making a knot that everyone could untie.

xviii.

There is no real way to count. Twenty seconds longer? He can't see the world above him, so completely has the water swallowed him. Leo watches where the surface must be, knowing it intimately as a scattering of light in the black, and recites words.

He prays as Homer and screams at the great whale, finding solace only in music and gentle eyes over a window, and men with swords that cleave nations, like dreams of lions on a beach and a bone knife, the cage of rats surrounding him filling him his mouth his world his two words—

—he jerks, panic stabbing him, and reaches—

—twists his fingers and holds fast.

xix.

"Because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold," read Splinter, nearly inaudible above the wheezy snores of his small children, "for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast."

"Nothing exists in itself," finished Leo.

Splinter glanced up, whiskers flaring in surprise. "I've read this too many times," he said after a pause, closing Moby Dick with finality.

"No, please." Leo touched his knee. "Again?"

"Do you even understand it, my son?"

No. "I know it," answered Leo, something fluttering inside of him. "I feel it."

A brief, troubled expression found his father's features. Then it was gone. "All the more reason," he gently told his son, "for me to find something new."

xx.

Someone holds his hand.

Leo isn't happy. Truly, Leo isn't happy. Maybe that's why. Maybe if he's cold enough—maybe if he sleeps in the grave of his enemies—maybe if he's overly strict and mean and punishes even himself, especially himself—

Really, it's so much easier to just let yourself cry.

xxi.

"No more," Raph says, somewhere above his face. "No more, Leo, never again, you hear me? Fuck!"

His eyelids are like stone. Leo is coughing, though, weak but there it is again, shaking his entire body. His mouth is damp and his chest burns. He recognizes Raph's less than delicate touch, there. After a second, he bats Raph's hands away from his face, but they only replace themselves again. He doesn't have the energy to make the effort another time.

He can't remember exactly what has happened—but then he does, he does, and Leo struggles to open his eyes and catches sight of the raw terror in Raph just before it crawls frantically back beneath its veneer of anger. There's no easing it now that it's hidden again. Leo inhales raggedly and throws his arm around Raph's neck, clutching his brother to him, hoping to reach it anyhow.

"No more," repeats Raph, holding him fast. "Forget this shit. It don't matter. It really don't matter."

It does, to Leo. But Raph hasn't hugged him for years. In fact, the last time they were this close, Raph threw Leo through a wall. So this is more important—or perhaps, in a way, the bigger failure. The better answer.

xxii.

If he wants, Leo can compare this moment to any number of words he's read in his favorite books. But the truth is, this is only Leo, and this is only Raph, and this is the both of them being stupid and sprawled wet all over the abandoned warehouse docks. There are no words written for how Leo feels. What he does. Who he is. He'd be hard-pressed to find them, if asked. Living, to be honest, is what invokes what cannot be understood, only known.

The world is always new. This is similar, perhaps, to loving something. The brother Leo looks up at is not the one he'd left behind after submerging, just the one he loves—just the one he loves.