Chapter Text
There’s a photograph in his pocket. It’s the heaviest thing he has ever carried.
When he was a kid his oldest brother fell and broke his leg. They were skateboarding, recreating stunts they saw on T.V. and pointedly ignoring the warnings the exact same show gave about replicating cool things they saw from professionals.
At the time it made sense, if those people could do it with no sweat, surely they with all of their ninja training and mutant pain tolerance could handle a little fall here and there.
At the time, carrying Raph was the hardest thing Leonardo had ever done. He was easily twice his body mass, possibly more if he were a math geek like Donnie. But his brother was hurt, he needed help, he was depending on him and Leonardo wasn’t going to let him down.
(He didn’t want to let him down. It was naive, he knew it was, but he didn’t want to let his big brother down. That hole was confirmation, acceptance. He’d rather carry him for the rest of his life than let him down, ever.)
….Anyway, the photograph. There’s a photograph in his pocket.
The subjects in the picture are all so young.
Leonardo has wrinkles now. His body’s changed so much, most of it prompted by how the world changed first.
He always feels so heavy, so weighed down, but it must be because of the photograph.
Photographs are relics now. The eternal life of the internet, full of snapshots and selfies had been long-since eradicated from existence, so survivors had to cling to archaic, physical forms of preserving memories.
Leonardo misses the internet. It wasn’t nearly as hard to hang onto memories then, than they are now. Was he really that short back then?
It’s weird. Leonardo can’t help but feel a strange sense of detachment from himself when looking at his teenage image and yet, that’s his big brother right next to him.
After Raph broke his leg, he spent the next week simply healing and feeling guilty. Leonardo was sore for days, his poor muscles pushed to exhaustion in order to carry his big brother all the way home from the skate park. Again, at the time, it was the hardest thing Leonardo had ever done.
(Raphael only got heavier.)
It occurs to him now, Leonardo is past 30 now. There is a photograph of teenagers in his pocket. It’s the most recent photo of his family he has, one of the last times they were all together for a picture. His big brother is in it, but how long has Leonardo been older than him?
He never stopped being his big brother.
Leonardo stumbles, this photograph is really heavy, but he refuses to drop it.
His family was never heavy, not like this picture was. He never knew what real weight felt like until he carried Raph. Until he carried Donnie, older than Raph but still so, so young to be sleeping in so late.
He wants to say he hopes he’ll never have to carry Mikey, but that’s a double edged sword.
He technically never had to carry April, nor Cassandra, nor his father.
And yet, he somehow carried all of them. He wasn’t going to let them down.
(They deserved to be carried. They all deserved a place to sleep.)
As he looked down at his bloodied hand, he briefly allowed himself to miss the times before this whole Situation. Back when he didn’t have to worry about carrying anyone other than himself and his swords. Back when he didn’t have to wonder if there would be anyone left to lay him down, too.
But it wasn’t about him.
He kept his grip on the photograph, no longer in his pocket, but just as heavy as before. For now, Casey Jones shouldered his weight.
Please, don’t let him let down Casey Jr, too. He was barely younger than Raph.
Casey Jones, the baby of their resistance, was barely younger than his big brother. Huh. When did that happen?
When the news sinks in, the realization that they lost , for good this time, Leonardo swears he feels the photograph get heavier.
Mikey hasn’t needed to be carried since he learned how to levitate. As he vanishes into flecks of pure sunlight, Leonardo feels that double edged blade rip through him.
Leonardo’s bleeding out, both metaphorically and literally. He won’t make it much farther, but he’ll carry Mikey–all of them–for as long as he is able.
There’s a photograph in one hand, and a teenager in the other. That kid would fit right in, in the real New York, with the family in the photograph. There’s a drawing on the back of the picture, a spark of hope.
But not for him.
The photograph goes into Casey’s hands, and Leonardo spends a second to whisper an apology for the weight he has just placed onto a teenager–a child.
He knows what it’s like.
Casey is thrown into the portal, out of this doomed timeline and into the timeline where he might have a chance to be a kid when this is all over.
Raph would’ve loved this kid.
(Raph is going to love this kid.)
So this is how the world ends:
There’s a drawing that can save the world on the back of the photograph of his family, in the hands of his best friend’s kid. There’s a child born in war that is now seeing time square for the first time, holding onto a responsibility he should’ve been spared from.
And when the portal closes, there’s nothing left to be saved in this world.
Leonardo has never felt lighter.