AN: Thanks for checking out another one of my stories! "Just Don't Leave..." comes in two chapters and is already finished, I'm just polishing it up a bit. So I'll upload the second part some time next week! As always, reviews are highly appreciated.
Warnings: Established slash relationship (Leo/Usagi). Mention of injury.
Summary: Leo and Usagi have been going out for a while. During a visit in Usagi's dimension, Leo gets hurt. In the aftermath he seeks refuge at April's apartment. / "He is going to leave me", Leo says with wild eyes, and April's heart breaks at the sight.
JUST DON'T LEAVE (BEFORE I SAY GOODBYE)
Chapter One: Fractured
"He's going to leave me," Leo says with wild eyes, and April's heart breaks at the sight.
This is Leo, after all, who so rarely shows his emotions around anyone who isn't Raphael, who is always so very confident and so very calm. Her little brother Leo, who tries so hard to be strong for all of them. There is no trace of calmness about him now, quite the contrary: He looks utterly wrecked, terrified and, most of all, so helpless that it is painful to look at. She wants nothing more than to hug him, but she doesn't need Donatello's genius to know it wouldn't be appreciated. And so she sits down on the sofa, pats the cushion next to her invitingly and folds her hands in her lap while she waits for him to calm down enough to settle down.
"Deep breaths, love. What makes you think that?"
She is honestly curious. From what she has seen of Leo and Usagi in the previous weeks, leaving each other seems to be the last thing on their minds. Leo, though, flinches as if she had just delivered a physical blow to his head and all but shrinks back into the cushions. April's concern is growing. Something is obviously wrong.
She forces herself to stay still and keeps her fingers clenched into the hem of his shirt. Leo looks like a frightened animal, and every instinct is telling her to reach out, to touch, but he is still a ninja and she values her hands. It seems to take him impossibly long to answer.
"I let him down," he finally whispers. He doesn't look at her.
The answer is as short as it is non-satisfying, and April wonders what really happened to make the boy in front of her so desperate. "I'm sure it wasn't that bad," she replies, but it's the wrong thing to say; his head snaps up, his dark eyes meeting her green ones for the first time this evening, and he clenches his jaw so hard that she fears for his teeth.
"How can you say that?" he demands through gritted teeth. Now he's angry, but it's a dark kind of anger, the kind he usually reserves solely for himself (but she is only starting to understand that now) and the backlash of which merely hits her by default. "I let him down. I allowed these bastards to get the better of me, and because of that I nearly got us all killed. I am a liability to him!" He breaks off, panting heavily, and she stares at him until he shrinks back again, suddenly timid once more. "He will leave me for sure," he whispers and buries his head against his knee pads.
It takes April a moment to process what he said, and when she finally does, she nearly laughs. Only her worry about him holds her back. "Oh, Leo," she says and tentatively reaches out to touch his arm; his skin is ice cold, always a bad sign, but it is all the more endearing to her. "Just so I understand," she says softly, "you are afraid that he will leave you because he got you hurt?"
"It wasn't his fault!" Leo snaps, suddenly agitated. "It was my own stupidity that got me into the mess in the first place!"
She looks at his arms that are crisscrossed with red and black lines and thinks that no amount of stupidity should amount to something like this. But she keeps quiet, listens instead, as he goes on, voice muffled by his knee pads. "I have never seen - he was so upset, April. It was terrible." He looks sick even at the memory, sick and miserable. "I feel terrible." His shoulders are shaking now, but his voice is terrifyingly calm and flat, and it raises the hair along her arms.
There are several steps she could take from here. The most obvious one would be to send him home to talk to Splinter, to Usagi, but it's not really her place to do that. Maybe she can call Splinter instead. Maybe she'll call Usagi, too, just to get both sides of the story straight. But right now she has a frightened teenager on her hands who is terrified of heartbreak, and how can she really be sure that things will not go as he predicts? She does not know Usagi all that well, has no idea of what the samurai code of honor demands. Maybe Leo is right. Maybe Usagi will leave. (No use in thinking that a partner who would do that is not one that Leo ought to stay with at all. Not her place, she reminds herself. Not her place.)
"What do you need?"
He looks up at the question, finally startled out of his thoughts, and then licks his lips. She waits while he struggles with the words, remembering how she felt when she was his age, in his situation. "Can I," he begins and then stops, takes a deep breath, tries again, "can I stay here for a while?"
He looks so worried that she will turn him down. Would she ever? Could she ever? No. Family means no-one gets left behind.
"Two days," she says. "That is what I can offer you. Two days to get yourself sorted out and wrap your head around things. I promise to try and keep the others out that long. But the day after tomorrow, I want you to go home and take care of this."
He looks at her with wide, thankful eyes, and she feels horrible with all the things that she did not say but feels she should have. Instead she gets her medical kit from the kitchen and dabs his wounds with antiseptics before she re-wraps them with neat, white bandages. He doesn't speak throughout the ordeal, barely even moves, and when she is done and leans back, his old mask is back in place. He is the lone wolf once more, the unfathomable warrior that she both depends on and pities so much.
"Sorry to dump all that on you," he says, obviously uncomfortable, and she thinks that no, she is sorry, but what she says is "don't mention it."
They don't talk about it again until the morning two days after when she leaves her room and finds him gone.