Day 26: Your Favourite Aspect Of TMNT – brotherhood despite differences
Do the cat thing! - Casey
Leonardo tried to practice while Splinter was asleep. His master cast worried looks his way, and Leonardo knew that his master was not easy with him trying any of the book's techniques. So only at night did Leonardo venture from his room and begin to scale the walls, finding new paths for himself. The way of wasuremono was comforting, quiet and above all...balanced.
He began to understand the chapter on the spider, perfectly still and patient in her web, watching the world move around her. And when one string vibrated, she darted out and her meal was pulled deeper into her web, her prey wrapped thoroughly in her trap.
So he learned to wait in the darkness, creep across the pipes and stone ledges thought too narrow or high. Deliberately place each hand and foot like the heron in the field, always certain of the next step, slipping into hiding spaces from which to plan a web.
Scar tissue on his hand and arm still pulled, made him more aware of one side of his body than the other. The more he stretched to reach pipes just out of reach, however, the less his scars bothered him. Pulling himself taut across the vast expanse of the main room beneath him, watching his brothers play video games not knowing he was above them, somehow hurt less than warm up stretches in the dojo.
One night, Leonardo lay up on the highest storm pipe, listening to the water rushing by him and watching Michelangelo try to raid the fridge. On his side, Leonardo balanced a shuriken on one point on his finger, counting the seconds for a new personal record. That one wrong breath would send him toppling two stories to the floor did not enter his mind.
Gold light spilled from Splinter's door. Leonardo caught the shuriken and watched with wide eyes. So far Splinter had never risen during the night. He held his breath as his master crossed the floor and yawned as his tail swept across the cement.
There was an audible smack and then Michelangelo darted out of the kitchen, still holding one ill-gotten gyoza as he raced back to his bedroom. Leonardo listened to the stove click on, listened to metallic and ceramic clinking. Heard the water run for a moment.
Splinter went through all the motions of preparing tea, finally taking his teacup with him back to his room. At the door, he paused and looked around, then looked up.
Leonardo made no movement. Didn't breathe or blink. And almost as an afterthought, remembering the moon in the bucket, willed himself to stop existing. To become as empty as water in a broken container.
Shaking his head at his own paranoia, Splinter went inside and closed the door.
From then, Leonardo practiced in any spare moment when no one watched him vanish. As Donatello grew stronger and they began venturing out into the city once more, Leonardo ran less beside his brothers and more along the ledges, under and behind the vents or structures that dotted the rooftops or alleys.
And if Raphael grew more and more accustomed to filling the emptiness left behind, telling his brothers which route to take, when to risk moving through patches of light, then so be it. Leonardo watched them from the shadows, taking comfort in how he would never see a row of shells again, never have to see their faces knot up in pity at him.
He felt like he could breathe against for the first time in months.
So the explosion of flames and heat across the roof felt like it stole that breath away.
A line of fire blocked their escape. A line of ninja blocked them going any farther. And coming up over the edge of the rooftop, Saki would prevent them from going anywhere ever again.
As before, Leonardo watched his brothers ambushed from the sidelines. Only this time, instead of feeling awe that no one could see him, he crept closer and determined that no one would see him at all.