Chapter Text
Almost six years ago, Leo came out to her family. She remembered the day for all of the horrid feelings she had been choking on as she sat at the old rotting table with her family eating day-old pizza for dinner. It was about halfway through the meal when she opened her big mouth:
“I’m transgender,” Leo blurted out. She didn’t say it loud enough, because her brothers continued talking and laughing, with only Dad glancing at Leo curiously. She gulped and pressed her tongue to the back of her teeth to keep the bile from escaping. She tried again, “I’m transgender.”
This time, they heard her. Mikey was sitting next to her. He set his slice down and turned in his seat to face Leo. Donnie leaned forward a bit over the circular table. Raph had stopped chewing. For a minute, no one said anything.
“What’s that?” Dad’s nose twitched, and he looked at Leo with such kind, patient eyes, that she almost burst into tears on the spot. Instead, Leo wiped at the sweat that had built up on her forehead and answered her father.
——
The dregs of unconsciousness were finally dissipating when something poked at her side. Of course it had to be on the side that was still bruised from the other night. Leo curled away from the pain, causing the shackles to clink against the cement beneath her.
Wait. Shackles?
Leo couldn’t have opened her eyes fast enough. It didn’t do much, as instead of the blindness behind her eyelids, Leo was instead met by the white light of naked bulbs looking back at her. She squeezed her eyes shut for just a moment until-
“You are awake,” a deep, soothing voice flowed past her. Leo spun around to the origin of the voice and latched onto a pair of dark, dark eyes. Those dark eyes were attached to dark, dark armor that glinted in the light. Leo was immediately struck with the familiarity of the apparel. She had gone down a Japanese armor rabbit hole a few months ago and the towering samurai above her was like one of those articles brought into the modern day. It was traditional yoroi armor, but the pieces of metal were connected by steel cord, and the shoulders had been ornamented by massive spikes jutting up and out. The mask over the person’s face was demonic. Large overlapping teeth and an intricately detailed snarl. The Kabuto incorporated a rare shock of red with horn shaped maedate stabbing the sky. It looked like the light above the samurai was bleeding.
“… Yeah,” Leo didn’t exactly know what else to say. This guy was a classic villain-type, she was sure they would give some sort of monologue.
They didn’t respond.
Leo, ever a creature of habit, sought to ease the tension, “Uh, do I know you?” Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
“No, but you should. I am called the Shredder, and I have been made aware that you and your family have been wreaking havoc on humanity.” He spoke with such an air of confidence, Leo barely caught the attack on her family.
“What?! We’ve been protecting humanity! Or, protecting New York, I guess, but we—“ Leo was abruptly cut off with the agonizing sting of metal striking her face. She collapsed to the ground, but she couldn’t find it in herself to cry out in pain. It hurt, but Leo was more in shock than anything else. The Shredder leaned down and stared into Leo.
“Your delusions are of no interest to me. I have no sympathy for you creatures. You are weapons, nothing else,” a claw was pressed into Leo’s throat lightly, “and I have no issue with dismantling you if you pose too much of a risk.”
“We aren’t a risk,” Leo wheezed, but the Shredder was already turning to go. As he turned away, Leo caught a glimpse of the hand that held a blade far too close to her jugular. The samurai’s entire hand was made of metal. As the Shredder exited, Leo threw out a “You won’t win!” to get a final dig into the samurai’s psyche. She wasn’t quite sure that it worked. The steel door slammed shut, and then she was alone. Leo took a moment to get a better look at her surroundings. Two naked light bulbs dangled from the ceiling, rattling from the force of the door. Leo was sitting on a slab of concrete that stretched across the ten foot by ten foot room. It was cracked through the middle, splintering pieces leaving a gap too wide to be OSHA approved. The chain Leo was attached to hung loosely from the wall about a foot from the ground. She tested the give and delighted in discovering Leo could stand up and take two steps before the chain went taut. She carefully stepped over her connected wrists to get even further into the center of the room, toward the broken cement. Leo stretched as far as she could while ignoring the scraping on her carapace and the strain on her shoulders. Leo jammed her foot into the crevice in the concrete and tucked her toes under a loose piece, flexing to keep the cement chunk balanced on the top of her foot. Leo felt like she was in the middle of some terrible game of twister that she couldn’t possibly lose to, because hell if she was going to let Mikey win AGAIN.
Crap. Her brothers.
Leo jerked the small piece of concrete back toward her. Her arms burned and her fingers twitched, and Leo was relatively sure one of her shoulder joints was nearly dislocated. Finding the right angle to strike at the chain took more than a few tries, particularly while maintaining the metal’s tension, but Leo was ceaseless in her attacks. Each strike sent hot sparks flying. She put every training session, every workout, every kata into forming the perfect weak link. She didn’t have to go all the way– just enough to break free. The metal was soft, denting and bending to the strike of cement. Leo tugged at the chain again and again between strikes. Again, and again, and again and again. It felt like hours, although it had likely only been thirty minutes at most before one of Leo’s pulls sent her flying backwards into the opposite wall. Her shell ached. Slowly, Leo rose from the floor and leaned back onto the wall to catch her breath. She glanced down at her still shackled wrists. The metal casing her wrists were thick and sturdy. She couldn’t put any more energy into her restraints. Leo looked over the heavy metal door that separated her from the outside world. Leo pressed her face close to the crack between the door and its frame. There were three separate locks in her way now. The first, a security chain, would have to be dealt with last. Below that was a deadbolt and a knob lock. If she had anything thin, she could push through the knob lock, but the deadbolt would be much harder. Donnie had been the real locksmith of the family. Sure, each one of the turtles knew how to pick locks in order to break into convenience stores and the like when they were still in hiding, but Leo had forgotten much of what she’d learned in favor of acting as leader and defense with Raph if things ever went awry. She could try to kick the door down, but it would more likely alert her captors that she was loose than break. Or… maybe she should alert her captors?
She looked back at everything she had. The rest of the chain hung loosely from the wall. Leo could feasibly use it to suffocate her attackers if she needed to. The cement pieces on the floor would be great blunt objects. Her positioning to the door too would be important. She needed to be on the side that opens, so that her opponents would be forced to enter the room to deal with her. Her father had trained her and her brothers for this all the time. April would train with her on weekends on self defense in preparation for TCRI investigations they would do. She wished she could tell her how she felt… No, she would tell her how she felt!
She would get back to her family. She would kiss April. No matter what.
No matter what.
——
April had been fighting back nausea since she left her apartment. She was riding beside the pizza van the turtles had stolen during the Superfly attack on their way to where Raph had seen the people who took Leo.
In between shipping containers Raph and Casey had noticed suspicious looking shadows boarding a boat off the coast of the shipyard. He said that he had thought it was odd how the group clearly didn’t want to get caught, but moved slower than they should, as if they were being weighed down by something. At the time, Raphael didn’t think anything of it. It was just a bunch of weird humans doing weird human things.
April couldn’t help the smaller, more resentful part of herself that wished that Raph had just gone after the group to see if they really were the ones who had taken Leo. They didn’t even know if they were on the right path to begin with! It all felt like a wild goose chase– one that led to all the turtles being kidnapped.
She twisted the accelerator forward a little more.
A thought crossed her mind that nearly sent her off the bike. She and Leo had been discovering the remains of TCRI’s failed test subjects in abandoned warehouses and empty apartment buildings. A snail with its shell caved in, a gooey hand stretched out on the floor in one final act of desperation. A squirrel with a bullet hole through its swollen skull, spine torqued in the center as if to imply that the ooze they used ceased its work halfway. A turtle, who through their mutation suffocated in their own shell, which didn’t grow to accommodate the rest of their body. April hated how her mind replaced all of these poor animals with Leo. Leo, shell crushed as she reaches out for help. Leo, with a bullet hole between those big blue eyes. Leo, an ashen bluish tone to her skin with the purpling of a handprint around her neck, heartbeat long gone.
April really did have to come to a stop in the road after that thought. She leaned over and retched onto the concrete. Her skin was hot and her throat burned, but it didn’t taste nearly as awful as knowing that she still hadn’t told Leo she loved her.
April wiped any of the remaining sick off her lips before accelerating again to catch back up with the pizza van. She didn’t care if she had to search all of New York, and she didn’t care how many TCRI hideouts she would have to raid. April would save Leo, no matter what.
No matter what.