Eldest

When he had hatched and lay exhausted he looked up into the face of another like him who had broken from his egg previously, one of four. Siblings, if a baby turtle could comprehend such a thing.

There was no age among them, only biggest and fiercest, but he had emerged from his egg last. His biggest brother would hiss and shrink into his shell when he came near, while another would climb over him constantly. Existence was hunger and the heat from an orange light above, and the World ended in four walls.

His memory of this time is hazey, warped by current emotions and concepts he did not have then, but the events are there, unmarred. Heat, eggshells scattered in sand, and those like him of the same clutch of eggs. Brothers, and he was the youngest.

Then the heat and the orange light was gone. He did not know when this happened as the animal he had been possessed no sense of time. Fresh, cold air and brilliancy beyond his then-limited ken flooded his senses and he retracted into the safety of his shell. His siblings vanished one by one, then he felt pressure on his spine and sides before the ground and World vanished. Dizzying, instinct screamed he escape. He risked emerging and used his little legs to press against the unyielding clasp that held him in vertigo, trying to push free.

His memories became chaos at this point, nothing but looped senses, loud noises and spinning images. A high-pitched renting of the air he knew now was a scream, the loss of sense in a fall, and the pain of a hard landing. Things shattered and flew about him, sending him reeling. He stopped on his back, wobbling. When shock faded and instinct returned he used his head to right himself, pushing off the floor until he was on all four legs again and scrabbled forward. He could smell his siblings near in the wet and the debree.

The biggest was still in his shell, but didn't move at all. Something was wrong, but the baby turtle had no concept beyond survival and moved on. In hindsight, he knew the other turtle's shell had cracked, the spine broken, and he was dead. Another sibling lay with limbs out, unmoving and eyes glassy. The baby turtle scurried past, sliding through liquid that was not water to drink.

The giant shapes above had been moving rapidly and making loud, indestinguishable noises, and then they descended upon him, wailing and shaking the ground with their nonsense. He thinks, now, that they were saying, "One's still alive!"

Again, he was clasped and the expanded world fell away. Dizziness assailed him as air and images spun by him faster than his animalistic mind could comprehend, and then it stopped and he was in the heat and the proper Small World again. But it was not his World; the smell was not familiar. Three elongated eggs sat in the center of the World, warm and ready to hatch.

His sentient mind thinks that he crawled to them then for comfort, but it was unlikely. The animal he had been knew no such thing, he is certain. But he did, and in thinking back on this memory mourned the loss of his then-brothers. But the baby turtle didn't know death and thought nothing.

In time that wasn't time the eggs began to shift and crack and soon he came face to face with another like him. He was acknowledged as Same by this new face, a part of the World and Sibling, if a turtle could think such a thing. He does remember he thought similar. He had been last, but the World changed and he was with now-brothers, and he was first.

The eldest who watched his brothers hatch in the aftermath of the loss of his first family that he knew only in smells and imagery. It meant nothing then.

It means everything now.

In an instant, in an event he cannot understand, he lost one family. It was an event of his previous life that holds no sorrow to him, but its meaning cuts him to the bone. One accident is all it takes, and he made a decision in light of it.

He sits by himself, sharpening his swords and listening to his brothers in the next room. Raphael snarls in annoyance about something. He can hear Donatello sigh as Michelangelo practically climbs all over him, a distraction of the worst kind. He watched them hatch.

His decision had been made by the vague memory of an animal, shaped by the projections of a new sentient being. There will be no more accidents, no more confusion, no more lost brothers.

Leonardo was the eldest of his brothers in more than just title, and he would do all in his power to protect them.

Note: Just a little AU idea I came up with somewhere and felt like posting. Thanks for reading.