Hey, guys! This was inspired by a very special reader of mine :). I'm not gonna display her name, because honestly I don't know if she's cool with that, but she will know who she is and that is enough for me! Also, heavy influence drawn from the song by Three Days Grace.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, but I hope you will enjoy my artistic interpretation.
Side Note: You could appropriate this drabble as pre-Lead Me Down, if you want to plug it in to my other stories, but it can stand on its own. Please read, unless you get majorly creeped out by suicidal themes.
The strangling shadows of a room just below the surface of the earth were held at bay by the light of a solitary candle, barely enough light to see by. The darkness suited Leonardo just fine; for the activity he was currently engaged in, he would prefer his family thought him asleep.
It felt wrong for him to be ashamed of it. For all the intent behind his new hobby, Leo should have been flaunting it in Splinter's face. He would have, if he had any sense of self-preservation. He chuckled, a low gurgling sound that only just emerged from the shadows, but carried no further than his solid door. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt that sense.
Red drops trickled to the floor, precious rubies he would have to clean up later. Leo used his own blade for his homemade cure-he raked the skin along his elbows and knees, deep enough to leave behind scars later, not that anyone would ever see them. He had made sure his pads would cover them up perfectly.
Leo hissed as he sliced a new trail of red down his arm. He made this one longer than the rest. He liked the fact that he could control the blade in his sure and steady hands. He chose how long, how deep the cuts would be. He could make them squiggly or he could make them straight. He could even draw shapes, if he wished (though he didn't, because he found that idea too morbid).
Raph would be a pain in the butt again tomorrow, refusing to listen. Leo would rebuke him, but it would just turn into a big fight that Splinter would have to break up. Leo didn't think he could handle one more disappointed look from his sole father figure. He couldn't bear the thought of his sensei shaking his head and walking away from him.
Leo wanted to be perfect-he desperately wished for it in a way that his other brothers could never understand. Being second place constituted as a failure, playing second fiddle to a lesser talent, even worse. Leo understood it was a strain he placed upon himself, but he couldn't stop now.
It had become addictive. His habit had begun after the first year of South America-now that he had returned, the need intensified. His blood screamed to him: this is your penance.
He had considered delving deeper into himself before. One time, after a particularly bad fight with Raph, Leo had cut more than usual. Thought about severing an important artery, or something. He was all in the bathroom tub and ready to go, and then...
Leo only hit a single capillary before he had chickened out. The images that had filled his head of his family finding his body were just too much. He couldn't do that to them. He would try to do better.
"Why isn't it working?" Leo whispered to his candle, his eyes alive but dead at the same time as more red flowed down. The cutting wasn't making him feel better tonight. Something was horribly wrong.
Faintly, Leo recalled something some ambiguous leader had said in the past. Someone had said it helped occasionally to... Write about your feelings. Yeah, that was it.
Well, if that was what it took, Leo would most certainly do it. He was the leader, damn it, and he would pull himself together. His arms and legs still dripping, Leo fished out a couple of sheets of wrinkled paper and a pen from a drawer near his bed.
For a minute, he just sat there staring at it. He picked up the pen, and before he knew it, the words flew from his mind down to the page.
It starts as a feeling of haziness. There isn't much of a difference from your normal life-you simply seem to be cloaked in a fog, and everything else around you appears blurred at the edges.
There's something missing in this place, you begin to think, befuddled. But what? That is when some skewed version of self-analysis sets in. "What am I missing?" quickly evolves into "What is wrong with me?" and by that time, your primary mindset is really NOT okay.
It scarcely matters at what period in your life these thoughts begin to manifest themselves (some studies show they are more prevalent in teenagers, whose wounds, torn open afresh from the scar tissue of growing pains and tough lessons learned, have ample time to fester with the infection that is self-loathing). They are toxic parasites that hatch themselves in the back of the mind only to wind themselves through the sensory tunnels to deep within the heart. There they may gorge themselves on your emotions, until you feel so lifeless and empty inside you just want it all to end.
However, this is just the early stage of the cancer that so plagues individuals today. Outside forces are at work here; devils, who in churning up your insides can also feast upon the stabs of pain, the gut-wrenching screams in the night, the bitter tears that fall when you are alone. They prod you and strike out as if you were a spiritual pinata, but they come off as something much more subtle-roaring voices in your head, deafening.
For once one thing is wrong with you, other things must follow on that same line of thinking. Your hair, your clothes, the pimples on your face. The way you walk, your laugh, your lack of athletic ability. In some strange, pulsating sphere of thought, you don't measure up.
A while after this facet is discovered, a human can be content with this. No one is perfect, after all. You still have a tiny increment of time during which you can improve. Time passes much too quickly for some, too slow for others.
The turning point, the true Saratoga of the mind, arrives when a shift in thinking from "I'm no good right now" to "I will never be good enough" occurs. The devils laugh and dance around, mocking your existence, simply because that shining goal to which you once aspired is now considered "unattainable." Winning attitudes and bright encouragements are thrown off as mere hogwash.
Ever in the background, barely distinguishable in the smoldering haze of the great fog, are others like you. People-those who are lost, who are hurting, who don't believe, and those who are blazing a trail toward some fantastical sight never yet seen, bumble around. How one reacts to this scene is totally dependent on one's personality. However, of that group of which I am speaking, the end result is hardly deviant.
Isolation. Water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. You wish you could count on these fallible creatures to protect you-but alas, the folk are too well caught in the webs of their own desires, the illusions of their own smoke, to truly see. If you occasionally hear something meaningful come from those sharp tongues, 'twas only a blunder.
In this solid pit of despair, real or imagined, you suddenly think to pick up the gun, or the pills, or the noose. You may spy a ledge and question inwardly whether you should simply pitch yourself off and be done. No worries.
Many times, base animal instinct can draw you back from the brink. But where are you drawing back to? Not reality. What is sure to befall you, should you choose either option? Misery, you are certain. To what degree? No one knows.
Hamlet was wise when he said, "...to be or not to be: that is the question." To which I ask, be what? What is our purpose on this earth? Ah... Hamlet hath no reply.
Truly I tell you, the only real reason I can come up with to condone the struggles of human life is miraculous purpose. This electricity is a youthful faucet that trickles down the limbs, relieving stiffness, brushing away dust.
Clearing the fog is imperative. There is too much depending on us, too much at stake. I think of my family, my friends, my world without me in it, and I shudder to the depths of my bones.
I offer myself wholly to the purpose of making the world a brighter paradise, so that strangers who are indifferent may one day learn to love. So those that hate me do not have to fear for themselves, and will one day undergo revelation.
I reserve myself FOR myself.
These are the words of Leonardo.
His hands shook now, like they never had before. He had finally found it. He had found his reason.
Standing to face the day, as morning was already fast approaching, Leonardo washed himself and donned his pads. He wound his blue bandana tightly around his head, and sighed in contentment.
He left his letter (titled Letter to the Unbreakable Heart, appropriately) to burn, to provide the last fuel for his candle. He felt rejuvenated, like he had just snapped himself out of a downward spiral. With a joyous leap in his chest, Leo suddenly realized that he had the power to do that. He could just change his mind, in the blink of an eye, and no one would be the wiser.
Except Leo himself, of course, but that was all that really mattered.
I love Leonardo. So very much. He's my second-favorite, next to Raphael, just in case that wasn't obvious from my previous fics... Yeah. Anyway, please review! I'd love to hear from you!
-DauntlessAdrenaline