The Lost World
By Kay
Disclaimer: Yes, I am Peter Laird. I live in ur basement. Writing about ur turtles.
Author's Notes: The new Movieverse, just a drabble from Leo's POV. I felt like spitting out some angst in second person, present tense format. Yay for experimenting with writing point of views. FEEL YOUR BRAIN IMPLODE.
I actually have been writing tons of fic, just messing with different ideas about things Leo did in the jungle, different ideas that ran through his head. This is Version #3, which is a great deal less harsh than Versions 1 and 2, hah.
'Tengo sed.' - Spanish for "I am thirsty."
You wake and there's nothing but the sound of the jungle, the taste of sweat and blood dried in your gums. The sky above you is as alien as it is familiar; different stars, the same blackness. When you were little, you used to think sleeping under the moon would be a beautiful experience, but instead your entire body aches from the roots digging into your shell and the sweltering heat. This is reality. Lessons sooner forgot. Funny how it's so hard to remember when it's all that's there anymore.
You miss your family. Pizza. Books. English. Your words, when they come, become ghosts of the softness of Spanish, the inflection changing your voice's highs and lows. And waking in the dark, you think about speaking but can't bear to hear it. It seems like all your nights are filled with longing. Training becomes routine, the life of the daylight, the work until your bones groan and the marrow trembles, like you can't possibly get any better but you'll be damned if you don't keep trying. You're here for a reason.
You're still failing something, but don't know what.
And that's what keeps you going under the sun. The thought that maybe you can still reach it, even if late, that plateau. Some degree of excellence that has never been yours to begin with. That maybe when you return home—and how you want it, curled in your belly with the sour berries and burnt fish for supper, want home and the scent of incense and the thump of a punching bag and the beep of a video game and someone smiling at you again—things won't be bad anymore. You will have found the answers. You'll find a way to save them all.
You have to find a way to save them all.
The first night, you were terrified because without them, you might as well be nothing. But then you realize that even this, all alone, the wake to the sky and the shadows, is still about them. Still part of your duty. You can still live for them even thousands of miles away.
Under the canopy of trees, you wake and this is what you think about. About duty. Home. Love. Fear. The taste of metallic blood pooling in your mouth, the wound that festers and seeps. Your body is a mess of scars and strain. You don't know how much longer your heart can take this. 'Tengo sed,' comes out against the stillness; is discarded as inconsequential.
'Tengo sed.'
This, and then sleep comes again, silent and swift, as the jungle closes in around you like the blade to a throat that doesn't know it's been cut.
The End
