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The first thing Leo expected to see when he opened his eyes was Gram Gram.
After receiving that final, damning metal fist directly to his mid stomach, shattering his plastron along the growing spider web of cracks, Leo knew that was it. He was dying, if not already dead. He’d felt his ribs shatter fully as the shards that used to be his shell gave way, and pain where his lungs should be. His first thought after the pulsing agony stopped was
“Finally.”
Which... may or may not have been a bit worrying without context, but Krang had certainly kept true to his promise. From the moment Casey had closed the portal and blown the technodrome apart, Krang had come for him. The beating had been absolutely relentless and rabid, and he was genuinely lucky to have kept a hold of that precious photo until this point. Even if he was tossed out of view and given precious seconds of reprieve, Krang would hunt him down relentlessly. Nowhere Leo hid was safe for long. Krang knew every nook and cranny in this fucking nightmare realm, every crack in every stone and every cavity in every destroyed ship hull. He would be on him within the next hour.
He really wished he could have a moment to himself, but true to form for a creep who looks like a giant wad of bubble gum, the guy was waayyyy too clingy. Leo’s entire body was a canvas of bruises, gashes, and cracks from being tossed around from one hunk of junk into another. The pain from his continued torment was white hot and constant and he often begged to be beaten unconscious–never out loud, of course, he’d never give Krang the satisfaction. But Leo quickly discovered that unconsciousness, let alone true sleep, was not an option in the prison dimension.
He thought it was the adrenaline the first couple days, but soon realized he wasn’t hungry, either. He missed Mikey's overly fancy cooking, he missed the way Raph could reheat pizza to perfection, he missed Donnie’s home brewed coffee, he missed his Dad’s miso soup… but he never felt like he, ya know, needed it. The feeling was more grief less hunger. And that train of thought hurt worse than any hunger pains would, so he promptly shoved the idea aside.
After however many hours--days, weeks--he’d spent being used as a stress toy, Leo was certain that he’d agreed to a worse fate than he had initially understood. Don't get him wrong, Leo would do the exact same thing all over again if it meant fixing his impulsive series of mistakes. If locking himself in here with a homicidal squid was the only way to save the world–to save his family–he’d commit to it again in a heartbeat even knowing what was coming. He had no regrets. But a bit of forewarning about what the prison dimension was actually like would have been nice. Some kinda pamphlet, or a giant billboard on the way in, or… something. Because it truly was a prison in every sense of the word.
So after cosplaying as the world's most punchable baseball with no escape and no distraction for a length of time he very much did not want to think about, yeah. He really thought he had a family reunion in his immediate future.
All this to say, he did NOT, in fact, see Gram Gram upon opening his eyes. Leo thought he had hallucinated everything for a split second after the pain suddenly cut from pure agony to a hot ache. It felt like no time at all had passed, so his body couldn't have healed between the span of a single blink. But when he opened his eyes to see the floating scraps of metal, rock, and debris he’d grown accustomed to, his breath hitched. He wasn’t sure whether or not to move, scared of… everything. That this was real, that Krang was right behind him, that he was having one of those moments where your life flashes before your eyes and he’d be forced to live through every single mistake he’d made all over again–
but nothing happened.
Leo floated. He floated for a long, long time, trying to register if he was real or not. Eventually, he took silent stock of his body. Nothing… well, everything hurt, but nothing hurt as bad as it should. As bad as it did. Maybe he… dreamed it? Maybe Krang had knocked him unconscious after that first hit and left him alone.
He brought his should-be-broken hand up to his should-be-shattered plastron and his heart sputtered. His fingers delicately traced the odd, webbing sensation of cracks on his chest that spread from edge to edge across his stomach. His neck craned down at a snail's pace to see his front–he had to see, maybe he was imagining it, maybe it wasn't real– only to be met with the image of his mostly healed plastron. The shards had fused together, a whisper of pink, blue, and black mist evaporating from the cracks and leaking through his fingers. When he looked closer, Leo realized his entire body was enveloped by the quickly dissipating mist. His bruises yellowed, gashes scabbed, and bones refused.
Leo stared. He gaped, jaw slack, and stared. Every blow he’d suffered, every panic stricken second he’d laid in fear waiting to be discovered again, every moment he’d spent believing he would either be blessedly saved by his family or give his life as a final punishment and then be done and get to rest–
Comprehension struck him like a semi. It sent him barreling through the wall in his mind he had erected to keep himself sane. Panic swelled in his lungs, his eyes blurred into the middle distance, and his entire body shook with wretched sobs. Leo heaved air in and out, unable to hold the breath in his lungs or a thought in his head beyond one condemning, agonizing realization.
He couldn’t die. He would never die. There was no “out” for him. This was it.
He clutched the photo into his chest and grieved.