Hi all you out there!
This is an old story of mine which I haven't been working on for quite some time. I can't remember why I stopped... But I will have a go on it again ^^

So as usual after so long there is no way I remember the original storyline as the document didn't say. So I will come up with a new one. But first I had to reread the story and hey guess what! I found plenty of things which didn't make sense, spelling errors, and so badly grammar and... yeah.. I think you know what I mean. So big changes will make but over all, it is still the same story.

Well... On to the story! ^^


Too Late

Chapter 1: Morning After


Two angry voices could be heard from behind the door to Master Splinter's private chamber. It was more muttering and growling sounds rather than clear words, yet once a while a shout loud enough for all in Brooklyn to hear, burst from behind it.

Raph, Mikey and I was sitting in the living room area in the middle of the lair, not that far away from the closed Japanese screen doors, listening to the muffled argument going on behind the door as good as we possibly could. The TV was on and the light from it flickered through the lair, making the large sewer chamber seem even more alive. Yet neither of us had paid it much as a glance once the argument had begun. With the volume so low you could barely hear it and the movie with the Avengers continued on unnoticeable.

Mikey was clutching the remote tightly in his hands as he sat with his head resting on the back of the couch, facing the screen door with piercing eyes, like with just the will of his mind, he would be able to see through it. His expression was more serious than I had seen in a very long time, it was something which was even more rarer than seeing a clear night sky while standing in the middle of Broadway Boulevard. The movie he so badly wanted to see was long forgotten along with the popcorn he so loved.

Raph occupied the only armchair we owned. Though he had not been interested in the movie, he had ended up there once he had been thrown out of the dojo when he had tried to use some weights behind my back by a quite grumpy - to put it mildly - Leonardo. That had not suited our hotheaded brother, yet once I got knowledge of that, I had banded him on the armchair. Though showing the tough-guy-act by having his arms crossed over his plastron in his classic defensive position whenever he was being told what to do, along with the no-caring-act as he faced the TV-screen, his eyes told a whole different story. He too was listening to the argument with sharp ears.

I was "sharing" the couch with Mikey, though with him lying spread all over it I don't think it actually gives the word justice. I had taken a break in further develop my hacking skills as the many, many codes had melted altogether in my head to shift to yet another screen. Though a movie about heroes didn't really require a high intellect to analyze the storyline, so I could just let it flow. Well, that was until the argument had begun and I too had turned to the screen door to see what was going on. But there was nothing I could do to really get a better inquiry of what was going on.

We had been watching for about half an hour or so when Master Splinter had exit his room and gone to the dojo where Leo had been during that time. Apparently he had taken another go on persuading Leo to come and talk to him, something which have been real hard lately. Leo who had not been watching the movie with the rest of us injured turtles with common sense to take advantage of the break we had "been given", well, that's just me, Raph and Mikey didn't have a choice as both suffered from either a very sore leg or shoulder, instead Leo had been in the dojo practicing. Despite of what I had told him, he had defied my doctor orders of needing to rest so the wounds would head properly as soon as it had left my mouth. Apparently the high and mighty Leonardo don't need to take a break like the rest of us. All that matter is that he is up and about to polish his precious moves and show that he's better than the rest of us. The perfect son must be number one at all times.

Yes, I am a bit annoyed at my oldest brother for the moment, hence using a classic Raph reference. For quite some time now he has been extremely angry and frustrated, not to mention the stubbornness which followed. Something which had Raphael competing for the position of being the hotheaded and the menace of the family, and I'm telling you, he really has Raph falling behind - big time!

Our dear older brother is doing a favorite in the replay, though now even more intense and no real explanation - as we know of at least. He would lose his temper at all times, without any hint of a warning, though fortunately for us it has not yet been pin pointed at us. Although furniture and other stuff lying around hasn't been as lucky. Only when confronted, asked, questioned or even the slight hint of it, you would get all hell break loose over your head and get the biggest shout out of your life, leaving you standing there afterwards not knowing what the hell you had done wrong and with a guilt you had no idea what had caused it and he would had run out of the lair before you could even blink.

So can you imagine to be stuck with not just one, but two hotheaded brothers? Isn't one more than enough? And Raph being who he is, isn't one to back down from questioning our leader and would fall victim more than once and they would break into the an extremely intense fight, ending with either one or two turtles running out of the lair. Though I am really happy that Raph had let it go this time around. Maybe there is some hope for his common sense after all.

Though this is the first time in a long time that he had not exploded upon us or anything else. Of course we had heard his grunting and angry muttering come from the dojo, but at least he had not left home. Whenever he had stormed off, he was gone for hours doing only god knows what and always come home with a new scar or injury. We had had no chance in following him as he out run us before we even had left the sewers and he had turned off his shell cell so there was no way of tracking him. Of course that had not stopped us from trying to find him. And later when confronted about it, well yeah, I think you get the picture. Not even Master Splinter could talk some sense inot him or make him tell what he was doing or the reason why.

A few days ago Master Splinter had finally had enough and had ordered us to follow Leo after a particular bad fight between or brother and father. The three of us had just returned from a movie night over at April and Casey's and we had stumbled in just in the right moment before Leo had shoved the door open, he had even had his hand on the lever. He had been to furious to be surprised, but he had stopped dead in his tracks for a second or so, giving Master Splinter enough time to exit his chamber as he was in the middle of a desperate try to stop him from leaving. Though Leo had violently pushed past us, not speaking a single word. Once Leo was running out of the lair and into the sewers, we had turned to our father and sensei, about to ask him what the hell had happened, when he had ordered us to follow him. He had not given us an explanation and the tone of his voice had been enough for us to do as we had been told. Whatever Leo was about to do, was scaring our sensei.

So the three of us had run after our brother, believing he was going to do something real stupid. A previous wound he had sustained during one of his mystery runs prevented him from being able to out run us that time, and he knew it. Though it didn't keep him from trying. More times than I cared to count did he try to shake us off his trail, but to no avail. Knowing we were more than determine to catch him and bring him home again, unconscious if needed be, he had suddenly stopped on a roof top until we arrived. Again we had tried to talk some sense into him, to reason with him, but he was beyond listening.

"Go home." He had said in a low, but threatening tone. Of course we had all told him that there was no chance in hell that we would. That was when he had pulled out his katanas and attacked us.

We had been shocked and surprised that our leader and brother who would do anything to protect us and would never ingeniously harm us, suddenly had broken that. Raph had been the first to break through the shock and respond to the attack, as he was more used to fight with our big brother than me and Mikey, yet never had been the one to draw his weapons last.

As our two older brothers had begun to fight, all Mikey and I could do at first was to watch. Even if Leo was the one who had first started the fight, he was not in it to hurt us. Not that we knew that then as we had no idea what was going through his mind at that point. But of course, the same could not be said about Raph, who was furious and that was visible in his strikes and punches. It even got to the point to when Raph sliced Leo's arm so badly that he had to loosen the grip of his swords and clutched at his wound to stop the bleeding. From there, the fury Raph had felt, had subsided within an instant. Shocked, he had tried to studded a sincere apology and stepped closer to Leo to get a better view of the damaged he had done. Leo, of course, had taken that to his advantage and kicked Raph out of the way and was about to hit him unconscious when Mikey and I had stepped in.

Our fight had not lasted as it was suddenly interrupted by a large number of Foot ninjas and we had all turned towards our new enemies. Though it was just common Foot soldiers, it had still been a challenge for us all. The fight with Leo had robbed us of much needed stamina to keep us from doing small mistakes, which resulted in the Foot managing to get in a few lucky punches, yet we defeated them as we always did. It wasn't until Hun and two Elite ninjas had shown up that we really began to kick the bucket. Between the four of us, Leo was the one who did the best, despite his wound. He had been the most determine to attack the three, almost with the intension to kill them.

Raph, Mikey and I was taken out of the fight rather quickly by really bad wounds and dislocated limbs. Not long after, Hun and the two Elites was chased away by our leader's lust for their bloods. He had given us a quick glance, but that was enough for us all to catch the guilt and hesitation in his eyes. Then he went after them, leaving us battled and wounded on the roof. There was no way that we could follow him with the injuries we had sustained. Not that we hadn't tried.

Defeated we had returned to our father with the words of our failure of stopping our brother and how he had gone after Hun and the Elites. Of course he had not been happy about that and had then asked why we had taken suck a defeat when in normal circumstances we would have them defeated more easily. So there was no way to avoid telling the truth. If you think he wasn't happy before, then you could imagine how unhappy he was then. I have never seen Master Splinter being so angry at Leo before that, yet the trace of worry was mixed within that anger.

Sometime later when he had calmed down a little, had we grabbed up our courage to ask him what the fight between them had been about. Or if he knew what Leo was about to do. He had stayed silent for quite some time with a thoughtful look on his face when he had said a simple "no" and then returned to his chamber with an extreme worried expression.

We had not been happy to being kept in the dark, though there was nothing we could do about it.

Two days later, Leo had returned exhausted and pale from blood lose. He had two nasty and deep cuts to his left side of his plastron, and a small concussion. The tree of us had been sitting where we're sitting right now, in the couch and armchair, looking at the news on the TV for any hint of where our older brother had gone. The door had opened, surprising us all, and Leo had stumbled in with heavy steps and a pained expression on his face. In the weak state he was in, he didn't even acknowledge our presence. With just a few steps in, he collapsed on the floor.

Two and half days later, he had woken up, ignoring us all. When he was strong enough to stand, he had disappeared into the dojo and began to practice. And there is where he had been ever since.

It came as a surprise to all of us when Leo had followed actually Master Splinter into his room just moments ago without any objections. Normally, Master Splinter had always been the one to be able to reason with our oldest brother, but ever since the fight between them a week ago, Leo had out right pretended that he didn't exist. That told us that this situation with our brother was deadly serious, yet there was no way for us to help, as there was no one who wanted to tell us what was going on. Whenever Master Splinter had tried to confront our brother since he had woken up, Leo had narrowed his eyes in pure fury and you could see the sparkling fire in his eyes before he silently but swiftly left the room, a look I have never seen Leo give our father before.

"DON'T YOU THINK I TRIED THAT?!" Leo's angry and strong voiced suddenly screamed through the lair, making us all jump of surprise.

"YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR BROTHERS WELL BEING AND SAFY!" Master Splinter's harsh and angry voice yelled just as loud as Leo's.

"Duds, I think Leo's about to snap..." Mikey said with a low and withdrawn tone. "I don't think I've ever heard him yell at sensei like this before..."

An angry grump came from the armchair, followed by Raph's blunt and irritated voice; "Leo's gone mental, tha's for sure. Or he has a death wish or somethin'." Though Raph was angry about the fight on the roof and the throw out of the dojo, he still felt guilty for the slice on Leo's arm. He had tried to apologies again, but Leo had brushed him off before he had even gotten to the apology part.

Whatever was going on with Leonardo, I hoped that our father could get through to him and let us help. At first I had thought it was because of our continuing failure these past few weeks that was getting to my oldest brother and leader. The pressure of not being able to stop neither the Foot nor the Purple Dragons from their break-ins and strange meetings we had interrupted but not get any information on it to stop their plans, was a constant stress to us all. We knew they were up to something, but we had no idea what it was. Yet after this, there was clearly something else that was going on with him.

"Leonardo." Splinter's harsh and firm voice spoke up loud enough for us to hear.

When the screen door was forcefully slide open, all our eyes was locked on it. We wasn't surprised to see Leo step out of it, but when he cast a dark and menacing glance towards us, neither of us couldn't help from yelping and cringe away from it. Then he outright turn on his heels and went for the door to the lair.

"Leo, where ta hell do ya think yar goin'?" Raph shouted after him, yet Leo ignored him and continued to storming out. "Hey! I'm talkin' ta ya!" He continued to shout after our brother as he was standing up to go after him.

A cold feeling washed over me as I watched Leo leaving the lair.

"LEONARDO!"

Master Splinter emerged from his room in his furious and hasty chase after our brother, yet his old body was preventing him from ever catching up to him as the door was closing behind him. Once the door closed, he stopped dead on his heels and just watched the door for a minute or so. At first his body was tense and his shoulders high, when suddenly he gave a grievance and wearily sigh and his shoulders slumped in defeat. When he turned around, he seemed to have aged at least ten years.

He gave us each a sad glance, then he turned back to go back to his room. "I will be in my room meditating," he said with a tired voice, yet there was still some traces of the anger.

"Should we go after 'im?" Mikey asked worried once the door had been slide shut. "What if he get 'imself in trouble again?"

I was seriously considering it, but I knew that there was no way we could with the injuries we had. The brother in me wanted nothing more than to follow Leo and make sure that nothing happened to him, yet the doctor in me told me not to. Though I knew that regardless of which state of mind Leo was in, I knew that he was in no condition to fight. And I prayed to whatever high and might power there was out there, that Leo knew it too and was only out to take some time and space to cool down.

"Nah, let Fearless cool off some," Raph said, clearly thinking the same as me. He grabbed the remote out of Mikey's hand and turned up the volume once again.

"Isn't that your job?" Mikey teased only half-hearted, a classic Mikey move whenever he was uncomfortable. Yet knowing that, it didn't prevent Raph from responding accordingly. "Ouch!" He looked at Raph who put his arm back on the backrest of the couch, a small grin crawling up his mouth.


Some rather rough shakes to my arm woke me up from my deep sleep along with the annoyance of my name being repeated over and over again. It took me a while for to clear away the heavy cloud of sleep from my head, but once my mind was aware enough of the rude wake up, the first though that crossed my mind was; If this is Mikey again and he's going to complain about how his shoulder is preventing him from sleeping properly then I'm going to sedate him after I've strapped him to his bed!

So to explain it simply; Mikey hasn't been able to sleep since his injuries and have woken me up almost every night to complain about it. I would have to give him some more pain killer and still he wouldn't sleep. It was only until the early morning hours that he finally couldn't keep his eyes open and he would fall asleep and woke up a few hours later when the pain killers had been wearing off. It was at these times that I regretted being the family doctor.

"On-cou'ter-Mikly." I mumbled and turned away from him, hoping he would get the point and leave me to my sleep.

"DONATELLO!" The familiar snap from my oldest brother was enough to bring back the awareness and had me flying up to a sitting position almost fully alert.

"Wht?" I asked, my head looked around my room, wildly tying to see where his voice had come from. Once my eyes stopped scattering through it and fell upon the form of my brother, my eyes widened once I saw the blood covering practically every inch of him. Sleep now completely forgotten, I quickly got out of bed and my eyes began to scan him for the source of the wounds. "Leo what the shell happened to you?"

The panic in my voice did nothing to help give me an actual explanation for what had happened to my older brother, who I had though knew better than to get into yet another fight while being injured. Clearly Leo was so badly out of it to not know when enough was enough.

Instead of giving me the explanation I wanted, he ignored it completely and snapped out the obvious; "I need you to redo the stitches." I guess he was still angry.

Though knowing that he would chew my tongue off for asking the forbidden question, I still could not help myself from worrying about him. And the doctor within me needed to know the true extend of the damage done to his body and not what he chose to tell me. Missing anything could have crucial consequences and some wounds could end up infected. "What did you do?" I asked as I scanned his body from any hidden wounds.

As expected he did take it exactly as I had expected. With a Raph-like growl escaping his lips and his brows tightening to a matching expression, he snapped; "Would you just do it already?" His patience was fading fast.

Meeting his eyes, I couldn't help but to cringe away a little from the dark gaze he gave me. Yet, I was proud of myself as I managed to snap back a; "Fine."

He leaded the way over to my lab/ infirmary. I really need to separate the two. I still hadn't gotten a room for it, yet much to my disappointment. You should try working on some really sensitive chemicals while having a brother or two complaining next to you how boring it was to just lie in a bed all day long. And with our line of work, it happened a lot. During the way to the lab/infirmary, I seriously debated whether I should just leave him to do the stitches himself as clearly he did not care enough of his well being as the rest of us or not.

But the doctor persona as my brothers calls it, would never let that happen. "Take a seat," I ordered, referring to one of the beds while I walked over to the cabinet where I stored all the necessary medical equipments.

However, having my doctor attitude hasn't done much difference in Leo listening to my instructions of rest and recuperation. So you could imagine my surprise when he actually took a seat on the bed.

Despite the fact that I knew Leo hated needles with almost the same passion as Raph hating bugs, he had taken a seat without any cold remark. But he knew better than to oppose me when there was stitches involved. Normally I was gentle when I was tending to my injured brothers, but there was times when I felt it necessary for them to know their attitudes had consequences and I was intentionally a bit rougher than usually. Which meant, if I was angry with them for some reason, then there would be pain. Not enough for them to scream or further injure them or anything, of course. Just to tell them; be nice to Donny.

Unfortunately for my dear big brother, I was quite annoyed at him at the moment to put it mildly.

Once I had all the necessary equipment, I walked back to the bed and sat myself down on the stool which I next to it. Again I gazed him over with the scanning eyes of the doctor. Under the light, his blood covered form looked like it was taken straight out of one of Mikey's slasher movies. Most of it had dried though, leaving only the deepest cuts to still bleed. Underneath it there was a few new minor cuts to add to his list of scars, though a simple patch would do the trick for those. But the cut to the side of his neck, close to his left shoulder would need stitching. Then I would have to check the previous stitches to his arm and side which was hidden under the bandages and of course apply some new bandages.

"The blood isn't mine. At least not all of it," he said in a scowl like he had just read my mind. Knowing Leo, he actually had. He always knew what we were going to say before we had spoken it.

"So whose is it?"

I didn't expect him to answer, but to my big surprise, he did; . "Some punks'." By the amount of blood covering him, I wasn't sure to hope that the said punk had not been killed by him. "I didn't kill him, he did it just fine by himself," he answered the question which I had yet again been able to ask out loud.

I was waiting for him to continue, but apparently he thought that was enough of an explanation. Sure I was dead curious, not to mention again, worried. But I should be glad that he at least told me this much. I didn't push for more as I was too tired to get into a fight with him over this and by the looks of it, he seemed exhausted too. He was beginning to nod off in the middle of the stitching. And that is saying something!

If it wasn't for the jolts of pain then he would've fallen asleep right there on the bed. I finished up the stitching and rewrapping the bandages before I gave him a few pain killers and a sleeping pill along with them before sending him to bed.

I could just hope that whatever had happened, that Leo had not gone out to find someone to fight and accidentally kill. Leo had always seen killing as the very last resort. But as of lately, you couldn't be so sure about that.


So there we had the first chapter which is changed. Hoped you liked it and leave a comment of what you think of it.

To be continued...