Bricks shifted, grinding together as tons of weight tilted to one side. Tiny breaks appeared in the rubble and sunlight broke through in thin rays of light. Dust particles floated through the light, blowing in wild circles as he breathed.
Michelangelo watched the dust for several minutes. He lay where he'd woken up, askew and on top of his brother. His left side felt sore and throbbed in time with his heartbeat, and his whole body felt like lead.
Not until the ground rumbled again and something cool touched his side did he begin to stir. Mumbling his brother's name, he slowly sat up, feeling for anything broken. His whole left side felt like his skin had been sandblasted.
"Leo...wake up."
Michelangelo turned, nudging his brother's side. For a moment, panic gripped him. Leonardo didn't move, didn't seem to breathe. The coolness pooling beneath them was water seeping in from the sides. Michelangelo gathered it in one hand and splashed it over his brother's face, or where he thought his brother lay in the dark.
The low groan and sharp intake of breath made Michelangelo slump in relief.
"Don't scare me like that," he murmured.
"...what...?" Leonardo started to sit up, hissing as he moved. "What happened?"
"Don't know." Michelangelo pointed at the small rays of light. "C'mon. Bet we can get through there."
"Careful how you move," Leonardo said. "Everything feels real weak. Unstable."
"Yeah. Hey, you okay?"
Leonardo was silent a moment too long.
"Dude—"
"It's just my hand," Leonardo muttered. "Left one. I can't close it."
"You bleeding out?"
"I don't think so? It doesn't hurt."
That didn't reassure either of them, but it would have to wait until they could see. Pushing rubble out of the way brought in more water, and they wordlessly shifted to pulling the heavier brick and stone that was higher up. As soon as they made the opening wide enough, Michelangelo scrambled out, then turned and helped Leonardo free.
They emerged amid huge piles of brick and twisted steel that had once been the fire escape. Surrounded on both sides, they moved far enough from the rubble to be sure that it wouldn't fall on them, and then they turned their attention to their own injuries.
Michelangelo's left side had suffered burns from his hand to his shoulder, down his side and thigh. His face, pressed against Leonardo's plastron during the explosion, hadn't suffered so much, but his mask and armbands flaked away, leaving lighter marks on his skin.
"Not that bad," Michelangelo murmured, pressing the skin of his arm. "First degree."
"Still, need to find you some first aid supplies," Leonardo said. "But at least..."
His voice faded as he looked down.
"Oh. That's why I couldn't close it."
Michelangelo followed his brother's look and winced.
Leonardo's hand was impaled at several points by the wiring used to graft satellite antennas. In the fall, something had unraveled and simply found his hand in the way. Leonardo instinctively moved to grasp the ends, but Michelangelo touched his hand, shaking his head.
"Don't pull it out yet," he said. "Wait till we can stop the bleeding when we do."
Faced with the cold sensation of seeing such an injury, Leonardo nodded once and cradled it against himself.
The city was silent. Coming out from their shelter of rubble and stone, they climbed down several feet of broken asphalt and found themselves up to their knees in water. Michelangelo bent and gathered it in his hand.
Clear. The water held nothing dark, no pollutants, nothing. Just clear, clean water, probably from a broken water line. He washed it over his burns, then splashed it completely over himself. After a moment, he did the same for Leonardo, who couldn't cup the water as he did and had been lying in the dust beneath him.
"We should call home," Michelangelo said. But when he reached down to his belt, he found the communicator broken and missing the bottom half. He grimaced and saw that his brother's was also shattered.
"They know we were together," Leonardo said. "They'll know we'll stay together."
"But...what about them?" Michelangelo bit his lip. "Donny and Raph and—"
"Same deal. We know they were together. They're strong. We just have to stay alive and we'll find each other."
Leonardo put his hand on Michelangelo's shoulder, hoping he sounded as confident as his words. Because the horizon that he could see, and the horizon that opened up in front of them as they came out into what had once been a street, nearly sent him to his knees.