A/N: Hey, Sarr here. I apologize for the slow updates (like mega crazy apologize) but I've been insane busy between school, work, relationship, friends, health etc., but I am hoping to finish this story before its one year birthday (Feb 20) as it ends at chapter 30! And for those of you who have kept tabs on my author's notes since Chapter 1, you (and this story) as ran with me through the craziest times of my life, and you all have watched me have the best time of my life, the worst, and the biggest character development as both a writer and a person that I will ever go through, and I just wanted you all to know that I have been successful with recovery and happiness and I'm living the life as you may call it. Thank all of you for sticking around, it means the entire world to me.
And with that end note, back to the story!
The sickening crack of lightning that carried the voice of the ghastly man was a pang against the already broken bones in the souls of the broken family, staring with eyes that were less so in shock as in paralyzing fear; one of the only emotions that the remembered how to feel. Before a move could be made, his laughter echoed against the screaming walls, the kind of laughter that sneaks under the goosebumps in your skin and threatens to eat you whole. Still holding onto the bleeding bump on his head, he eyes the chaos and bloodied bodies with a canvas of something between lust, exhilaration and satisfaction, before turning to the eyes looking back at him with the same sort of aphotic cravings.
"Looks like old toothless over here made a bad move, now didn't he?" he cackled, casually leaning over a countertop. "You couldn't expect me to be so rude not to stop by when there's been a death in the family. Or deaths, shall I say."
"I cannot decide which you have more of, audacity or valor, by showing up here. Or perhaps, it's simply a black despondency since you have nothing left to eat off of," Splinter whispers dangerously, the poison of a scorpion whipping off his lips.
"That fate will always be non-existent, my sweet and dearest friend. Once a soul has been devoured, there will always be some left to satisfy my yearning. All of you are still here before me, are you not? Fresh prey to continue the thriving of my aptitude. I can see that the little one is still breathing; did your mother never teach you to always finish your meal?" he replies, and knocking out Kirby with a stroke of the pressure point as he sensed his presence behind him.
"Did your mother never teach you to not hunt the offspring of a rabid animal?" Splinter says, a tone of silent indifference that screamed danger louder than any of them had ever heard.
The Psychologist laughs, the tainted grin on his face only ripping wider and exposing more dirt and dried blood that harvested there. "Finally, after so long you have come to accept your identity: nothing but a filthy and docile beast."
A blur of blue slaps against the air as Leo pounces at him, moving faster than the wind with a hold stronger than gravity itself. His eyes look so far gone into insanity that he could even be considered unnerving to his loved ones, and most certainly to the enemy that lay until his bloodthirsty gaze.
"Now Leonardo, out of all of the players I had in this little puppet show of mine, your ending kismet may have been just about the most intriguing," the man mocks, cupping Leonardo's shivering cheek, "It is always a thrill to see someone so strong and so self- assured turn into scarred lunatic with a look that almost even makes me feel bad."
Donnie scoots up to leave a blood-stained hand on his oldest brother's shoulder, April on the other side and Splinter hovering over him. Leo's eyes began to twitch as he tightened his grip around his adversary's neck, a crack in the edge of his smile as he watches the pale skin began to fade of color.
"Not yet, my child," Splinter says, "Those who besiege with my children do not get such a merciful fate," slicing the blade with a move that was simultaneously graceful and powerful enough to amputate the man's hand clean off.
The Psychologist naturally screamed in pain, attempting to escape his imprisonment.
"The loss of a hand erases a spectrum of abilities – not only severing a limb but severing one's connection to every day capability. You would not want your final moments of living to be without no hands at all, would you?" Splinter whispers, his face close enough to feel his hot and fast paced breath.
April winces at the gore, and even with the hatred in her heart she longed for at least one second to shelter herself from violence. She decides to comfort Raph instead, who is longing to bust from his cords to participate.
"Every second that you do not confess will be another part you will lose, until you are nothing but soup of deranged body parts and no longer recognized as the despicable carcass that you are. Do you understand?"
"My superiority in the universe gives me great responsibility, the responsibility of keeping the weak fed on in order to enhance the strong. I have always been so fascinating by the brain of a psychopath, those who truly obtain this purpose. What was the best part of it, you may ask? The sport that comes with ripping a damaged mind apart. When my destiny told me of Donatello, I was more thrilled than one human can handle for an entire lifetime. The same old game gets old, and one with a twist could even bring my old bones back to life. However, a game with a twist always has a twist in the playing rules; a lot of the damage was done by the characters themselves," he smiles.
"That explains nothing," Donnie aggresses, threatening the swipe of a match towards the man's eye.
"My darling, you never did have the advantage with patience," he says. "Just because you knew how to light a fire didn't mean that I couldn't have the pleasure of spreading it. It didn't mean that I could not get the satisfaction of the taste to destroying an innocent soul, the power to bring individuals with such strength and potential to pathetic leftovers of their own demise. The baby Michelangelo is not an unintelligent child; only a fool do to his amount of love. If I would treat his death-ridden and outcast of a big brother, he would get better. Only with the simple cost of coming over afterwards to be my non-protesting under any circumstance little friend. It all makes sense, does it not? How incredibly easy it is to pull the string that unlaces the entire plot."
Donnie stares at the wall in front of him in horror, his red eyes swelling further and his veins crawling with the brand of guilt that burns you down to center of every cell in your body.
The horrible, unspeakably traumatizing violence that struck his baby brother was because of him.
"Not too long after this factor not only got me access inside but gave me the pathway to destroying one member of the family, I got the key to the pathway that would destroy all of the others. With a broken leg, Michelangelo would never be able to be identified as a rape victim and the plan would not come to a subtle termination. Raphael and his inability to think would get into more trouble on his own, jumping to violence at the first blame he would hear. Leonardo was mentally unhinged and so deep into his identity crisis that he was the easiest to manipulate, even though I was not the one who originally planted that weed. Drugs were the final factor to his destruction, and he was stupid enough to take the offer. Splinter, who is too pig-headed to think that any of his lesser have a voice, would always believe a professional other than some whining teenage brats who have had behavioral issues of late as it is. Out of you all, that frail little redhead was the biggest threat of all – because she has the exact same power as I do. She was to be rid of, and the little brat that watched it happen knew that the spilling of his mouth would be the brutal murder of his entire family," The Psychologist smirks.
"What do you mean by share the same abilities?" Raph whimpers, his voice shaking as April restrains him.
With a stroke of his head, the rays of his mind blew all of them straight off of himself, green flashing in his eyes.
"The power that lies within the mind," he says, pulling himself up and disappearing from the infirmary.
Splinter is instant to chase after him, Donnie and Leo behind his heels. April trembles in fright and yanks at her hair, deciding that her own need for vengeance would over power the child in her that begged for freedom. She kisses Raph on the cheek, who is starting to hyperventilate from the inability to chase as well.
"Raphie, you are not well enough to come along. You need to calm down and stay here with Mikey, alright? I'll be right back; I promise," April says, holding his cheek and throwing herself out of the bed.
She ran as fast as she possibly could, her adrenaline overpowering the weakness in her body. She knew where to follow by the path of blood from the severed limb, losing her sense of breathing and balancing and she forces herself to continue keeping her focus on the rate of her racing feet. She soon was met with the others, where The Psychologist was now unable to escape Splinter's grasp in the same part of the sewers where The Psychologist had kept his hold on her, once a time ago.
"For a man who is not of many words, I have never had more words to say than I must say to you," Splinter says, his claws so deep into the man's neck that it was punctured with new streaks of fresh blood. " You can do whatever you wish to me, my state is expendable and the fact of my inability to trust my loved ones is no one's fault but my own. Everyone is accountable for their own actions in a way, and I will not excuse what you have done to my other sons but what you did to my baby is the reason that I will not sleep again until I have the satisfaction of seeing you hang by your own intestines."
"Oh what, Michelangelo you speak of? For one that seems so useless in everyday life, he sure is one hell of a toy. Those big blues eyes looking at me so innocent and terrified and broken; just the thought alone can make me climax. He sure was fun to break, knowing that I caused that big innocent smile turn into nothing but another broken toy," he taunts, his voice raspy and spitting blood.
Splinter cuts into his abdomen in response, using the same blade that he had used to severe the hand. Natural human tears spore out of the evil eyes, but the core of obscenity in his pupils proved that no part of his soul could ever be human.
Before Splinter could stab him again, Leo shoved him viciously out of the way, swiping the knife and puncturing the man's shoulder.
As hard as he tried to speak, the only thing his body allowed me to do was continue to brutally stab the disgusting being, growing slightly more alert to himself as the blood squirted against his face. Splinter held back April and Donnie, knowing that even for them it would be dangerous to interfere.
"Leo!" a voice cried out vulnerably, and they turned around to see Raph panting and crawling towards them, dragging his injured legs behind him.
"Raph! I told you to stay behind!" April cries, Donnie running over to pick him up and make sure he is alright.
"Sorry sister, but if there is a God, even he couldn't stop me from watching this monster die," Raph says, and with a tremble in her lip and closing of her eyes she comes to an understanding.
Donnie looks at Raph with fond over-protectiveness and then at April with love, and the back at the monster with enough hatred to wipe out the entire course of humanity. With a nod of determination, he sets Raph down and begins to walk over.
"Leonardo," he says, holding his insane brother's shoulder and throwing him to the others. "You will not kill him."
"Donatello," Splinter says in horror, "How can you wish to spare one who has done such atrocities such as- "
"This is all of you guy's fight as much as it is mine, but it isn't your battle to complete. If I don't do this, I will never ever forgive myself. I'm the one who got us into this mess, and I will be the one to finish it," Donnie says, his cold expression void of any kind of emotion for the moment. His family, including Leo, nod back in understanding.
"Donatello," the lingering reprobate whispers hoarsely, "Is it you?"
"What do you think?" Donnie replies, playfully lacing the blood-soaked blade against the bruised and bloody neck.
"I think that you have finally found yourself," he whispers in return, "You have finally accepted responsibility for who you are. For what you caused."
"I have," Donnie says, "To the extent of reality. Most of us made choices that came back to bite us in the end. What happened to Mikey is a different story entirely."
"Deep down, you know you always were in love with the idea of being in control. You were always envious of Leonardo, and you know that deep down inside you are content with the fact that you had control of this situation," he mocks.
"The only thing I feel good about from all of this is that I've finally grown up as a person," Donnie answers coldly, "And now I'm grown enough to have the strength to remove a monster like you from our Earth."
"You're in love with it, aren't you? You feel the ecstasy chilling your veins at seeing me so weak and broken down and at your advantage, and your mind jumps at the thought of stealing the only bit of strength that I have left. You feel joy at the smell of my suffering and the biggest part of that is that you're destroying a mind powerful enough to pull all of this together, a mind even more powerful than yours. You enjoy this not only because you hate me, or because I hurt your loved ones. You enjoy this because you hate yourself and you are the one who hurt them in the end, and you know deep down that you are just like me," he spits.
Donnie trembles and slowly leans down to the deceasing foe, stopping his face just above his so that he swears he can even taste his breath. He was broken, and he was trying as hard as he could to not show that – but it was evident to anyone who looked at the cracked expression on his face that his action was purely a product of how broken he really was.
"Maybe you are a bit like me, in some ways," he whispers, so that no one other than his opponent could hear, "But I will never be like you."
With the last word spitted fiercely from his trembling bottom lip, he punctured the blade into the monster's evil heart, watching the life spill out of his eyes and seeing it as the end of their pain and of their suffering. He pulls the blade back out again, and finally, with the back roll of the eyes and limpness of the still existing hand, the body beneath him falls cold.
The Psychologist is dead.
Donatello still holds the gory weapon above the corpse, his entire body convulsing and severe jerking in his mouth and eye lids. Splinter hesitates as he steps towards his child, swiftly grabbing the skewer from his grasp and throwing it on the other side. In response, Donnie just jumps into his father's arms and sobs, curling up like an abused baby with no other protection to seek.
Splinter falls back with his child in his arms and cries with him, holding his lanky body the same way he would when he was a frail infant. Leo runs into his arms as well, finally cracking out of his psychopathic state and sobbing into the other side of his father's arms. Raph crawls over as well, and April hangs herself over his side, all of them finally getting the chance to grieve.
Not just to grieve over the loved ones that they lost, but to the pieces of themselves that they lost along the way too.
"Shh," Splinter soothes, trying to keep his own cool for the sake of the youngers, as he should have learned to do long ago. "It's okay, my babies. Everything is going to be okay."
"Daddy," Raph says, peaking up his tired emerald eyes and looking up with a look of vulnerability, "Are you mad at me?"
"Why would I be upset with you, kodomo-chan?" Splinter asks, stroking his son's tattered bandana.
"I-I killed the wrong person. I killed Fong, and he didn't do it to Mikey, it wasn't on him. I killed him father, I took his life," Raph whines tearfully.
"Child," Splinter sighs, "I would never be upset with you for protecting your family."
They are quiet for a moment, eyeing the butchered corpse that continued to bleed in front of them.
"Dad, do you think that we are evil?" Leo asks. "You taught us that we should never cause harm to another living thing, that we shall not kill."
"No, Leonardo. I said that the most important rule of being a ninja is to do no harm, unless you intend to do harm. By that I mean not to disrupt the harmony of the universe, not to interfere with the course of fate and life. When someone has come to destroy you, you shall always fight back. Both physically and psychologically, that man had come to destroy us, and that is an instance where killing is justified. After what he did to our baby, and the precious lives that he has stolen from us all, the retribution was justified," Splinter says. "Evil must be repelled."
"But what defines evil, exactly?" Raph says. "Where does the line cross?"
"That is a definition that cannot be explained in words, but by soul. A soul, of any type, knows how to recognize evil just by feeling it," Splinter explains.
"Raph, do you remember when we helped Casey kill his father because he killed his sister?" Donnie says hoarsely, "That was a time that killing was justified. That was a time that we recognized evil. A-And what we did right now, that was justified too. No matter how scary it is to feel ourselves in that kind of place."
April holds her hand to her mouth in horror of the whole situation, silent tears slipping down her freckled cheeks. "We just have to promise each other something, all of us. To reassure that something like this can never happen again."
"What is it, little sister?" Leo asks.
"No matter what happens and in any turn of events, we all have to trust each other. We all must keep communication open, and understanding to what someone is going through even if it isn't something you would imagine happening to them. Most importantly, we can never turn our backs on each other. The only way that something has the power to break us down is when we are not united," she says.
They all close their eyes in thought, lightly stroking her delicate fingertips. "I promise," Donnie says, holding the hand of his greatest love snuggly.
"I promise," Raph says in return, followed by Leo and Splinter despite their behavior ever since the storm had first begun.
"Now, we must rid of this body so that we can be past what has happened here," Splinter says, "And then we can finally have time to grieve."
The crowd of distressed teenagers looks back at him, the overlay of their pupils fading from the undefeatable tasting for vengeance into a vulnerable child who has lost their life without physically dying. They nod back at him with bloodshot eyes, almost as if they were zombies psychologically created to convince Splinter that he was not, once as years ago, completely alone.
However, the drops of blood splashing ruthlessly off their tremoring fingertips and onto the terrain of the sewer tunnel of horrors was not an illusion whatsoever.
They circle around the corpse for a moment, the most demented sort of relief tugging at their hearts at every hint that confirmed the non-existence of the heinous soul that had previously occupied it.
"Master Splinter," April murmurs, her voice meager and fragmented, "What are we going to do with it? It isn't like we can just ditch him in the sewage for the humans to find or bury him where there is no soil."
"Like every actual psychopath does; burning the evidence. Seems fitting to have a finalizing fate that he has a burial from the culture he came from, does it not?" Donnie articulates, monotonal.
If Raphael did not feel as if every fiber of his soul had been eradicated from the battered body that had housed it, he would have make a comment about how interesting it was that Donnie would know such facts.
"There is a pit a bit down south where we can start a fire. It may take longer than it would have with proper tools, but we have no time to stop home. We must leave at once," Splinter declares.
"April and Raph are in no shape to be taking excursions," Donnie protests, "Now that the immediate threat is terminated, they need to make sure they take it easy before we lose even more. I'm going to carry our cadaver over there, because that is simply my responsibility to do. You two need to take care of April and Raph."
"Donatello, I really do not wish for you to be- "
"With all due respect father, it is not up for debate," Donnie interrupts, the transparency of his expression lacking any evidence of feeling whatsoever. "Leo," he says, turning towards his oldest brother.
Leo turns back to him, his torn bandana uneven and blocking the enmity for existence in his glance.
"You've been incredibly brave tonight, braver than I would have been in a thousand different dimensions if I was in your place. I'm just asking if you could stay brave a little longer and help Raphie and carry him until we get him back to the infirmary safely. Do you think that you could do that?" Donnie requests in the most tender fashion that existed in him.
Leo looks back to Raph, unable to express emotion as the others but his sense of brotherly overprotectiveness immune to his emotional outburst. He nods, cradling Raph and carefully lifting him onto his shoulders.
"Thank you, Oni-san. I knew there would never be a mission too hard for you," Donnie reassures.
Although hearing such phrases typically made the leader thrive, hearing the words triggered the self-deprecation more intensely than he had ever felt it before. And frankly, that's saying something.
He begins walking ahead of the others, not bothering to turn and look behind him.
"April, baby," Donnie says, leaning down and breaking even more when she winces at the stroke of his bloody hand, "You know I would give anything to take care of you right now. But this is something I must do, and I'm going to have to leave you with Sensei for now. You understand, right Princess?" he says, shuddering in a melancholic surge of nostalgia by the old nickname.
"Of course, I understand," she replies simply, giving a tiny nod of reassurance and pushing the dirty tangled hair out of her face.
Splinter hoists the frail girl over his old hold, making sure that Donnie is okay before he lifts the bloody corpse. Despite his tendencies to be emotional, he looked completely un-phased by carrying the body and following along.
"Are you sure you are emotionally stable enough for this, my son?" Splinter whispers nervously.
"We just need to get it over with, there's no one or two thoughts into it," he replies, all of them silently following the trail to the place of disposure.
The silence followed as Splinter ignited the flames using the emergency kit that was stored in his robe, uncomfortably wrapping itself tensely into the atmosphere and nesting into their spirits. The fire took agonizingly gradual to expand, dancing to the song of liberation in the reflection of their faded irises and appeasing the chill in their hearts with the heat that reflected upon their skin.
Donnie angrily slammed the corpse into the simmer, lacking the stomach to cater it any longer. The smell of scorching flesh told him that the haunting was finally on its way to non-existence, and the thought alone was almost comforting enough to even make him smile.
Time became nothing more than an illusion, distorted amongst the smoke that blanketed them and stretched to a point of invisibility. In the shelter of the darkness, the sky could not rely on its light to reveal itself, as length was measured by nothing other than the time it took for the blaze to swallow the corpse within its loins. Sadistically enough, the heat of the fire was a good thing, and it made them feel like maybe, finally, this whole thing could be over.
But with those they had loss, the world truly will never have as much color, no matter what.
"Donatello, I think it is time to- "
"NO," Donnie snaps back far too aggressively, a sociopathic tone that makes his father's skin crawl. "You guys need to head home. Raph and April need to rest and we left Mikey all alone, and Casey and Karai can't just lay there. Get out of here and I'll be home soon."
"My child, I do not feel comfortable leaving you here by yourself," Splinter says, his voice cracking and finally surrendering to his emotional torture.
Donatello turns back to face him, a hint of fondness lingering in his storm. "Dad, I promise that I will be fine. This is just something that I need to do if I ever want to be okay again. Take them home."
As a father, he wanted to refuse and coddle his child to a place of safety. As a teacher, he knew that his boy was becoming a man and must make amends with his demons if he wanted to be truly a warrior.
With hesitation, he nodded.
Donatello held his hand within the smoke, watching the gas flow freely through the gaps in his fingers. It symbolized the feeling of freedom flowing through his veins, freedom of the demons who had intoxicated his blood and freedom of the confines that had prevented him from knowing the feeling of being alive. With the heat reflecting against his cheeks he knew that overbearing pain was a necessity to understand being alive at all, necessary to kill the past self that is small and unprepared and free the true soul he was meant to be, to liberate the warrior inside of him. He knew that Casey would be so proud, and that everyone else will be proud of him too. He knew that all this pain is what it took to fix him, and now it was his turn to fix those who got caught into it so they could be better of themselves too.
Most of all, he knew that as The Psychologist died that night, so did he. Not in the way that a part of him died when he lost his best friend, because that part of him had died too. The difference stood between the lines of the fact that every part of him that he had hated, every part of him that constantly battled, and every part of him that was tearing him apart had burned that furnace with the monster who had fueled them.
He and his family were free.
Casting the sewer water into the flames he destroyed their simmering, assuring that it would not spread to destroy his home. The remains of the monster were nothing but ashes, promising him that he would truly never return.
Despite how unsanitary it was, he splashed the sewer water onto his own self, desperate to wash away the blood and craving the feeling of anything refreshing to relieve the heat in his skin.
He finally started to cry.
X
The previous ear wrenching chaos that had haunted the infirmary had been sucked into a still silence, coated softer than the silence suffocating the fireplace but still melancholy enough to drain color of all that was trapped beneath it. Michelangelo had not moved or changed state whatsoever since they had seen him last, Kirby remained asleep, April and Raph had involuntarily passed out due to exhaustion from the adrenaline and physical activity from their strained bodies. Leo had moved to tuck Casey and Karai's bodies securely under a blanket, silent tears accompanying his heavy breathing as he kisses his lover's blanched face goodnight. Watching his son brought Splinter a kind of pain he had not felt for years, a pain that he had not known since he had lost his love himself.
Even if she had a history with his enemy Saki and even if she birthed his child, Shen was the only true love that he will ever know. No pain had ever been greater than losing her, the image of her lifeless body and of the weapon slicing through her delicate and precious body forever engraved into his mind.
The irony of the situation, and probably why it had hurt him so bad, was that somehow years later he was watching his baby boy undergo the exact same thing with the loss of Shen's baby girl, the love of his life. The child who had secretly been so much more like her mother than like her father, and the child who Splinter had judged and misunderstood. The child who had saved his own child, the child who had the same amber eyes that her mother had, the child who he had degraded just by knowledge of her upbringing, the child that is gone forever.
The way he had treated her would haunt him forever, and he just wishes that both Shen and Leonardo as well as Karai herself could forgive him for it.
He decided to walk forward and rest a paw on his son's shoulder, feeling him jump beneath his touch. When his baby's eyes turn back towards his, he feels a tear slide down his own cheek, flashing back to the familiar anguish and even stronger knowing that the hell he had went through had cast itself upon his Leonardo.
"She is proud of you, Leonardo," he tells him.
Leo is silent for a moment, battling the urge to give into himself. "There is nothing to be proud of."
Splinter sighs, forcing his son to sit down with him. "You saved her, Leonardo. You may think you have done the opposite, but that is not at all true. You were the one to help her understand herself, and in the end, that is everything. She was ready to move past this dimension and because of you, she understands. She knows that you are strong enough to look after the Earth while she is gone, and then you will one day join her to move on through eternity, as true lovers do. Losing a soulmate is more painful than anything you could possibly encounter, baby. Of course, the pain you are feeling is unbearable just from losing a friend, as you have lost one of your best friends as well. The scar from that is deep and it always will be; but by losing her, you feel as if you lost a part of yourself."
Leo begins to tremble, his father stroking his skin tenderly with affection.
"It feels as if you are never going to recover, as if life itself now seizes to exist. You have forgotten the taste of color and of light, and your care for the world no longer exists. You know that the gaping hole in your heart is too deep to survive, and that you will fade away into the darkness, as she was your reason to live. You feel as if the moment she lost her life, you have lost any trace of yours."
Leo is crying now, a pathetic squeak that depicted how emotionally lost he is, unconsciously pushing himself deeper into his father's chest.
"However, you will learn that you have not. It will take a while, and it will be the hardest test that you could ever undergo. You will always have that piece of you missing and you will never be free of the pulsing anguish in your soul, until the fateful day that you are reunited once against. Yet, other things will grow on top of that anguish, and you will remember what it is to feel other things. Color will slowly return into your world, light granted in the most randomized blessings, gifts brought to you by her spirit in the clouds above you. You will know that her one wish was for you to be happy, and that your one wish was to do the same for her. You will learn that you must keep your commitment and make her happy by making yourself happy, and you will find out what it is to live again. You will feel pain, it will always be there, but you will also be happy and very much alive, and she will be holding your hand the entire way through. You are going to make it through this Leonardo, you are going to survive. And the way that you four were my light after the blow of losing my love, you will find a light to guide you through the way. The hole still exists in me, but I also have the joy of being alive, of being happy. And whether it seems that way or not, right now, I understand you more than anyone in the world, my son."
Leo finally sobs and clings onto his father, allowing himself to be coddled for hours on end. Donnie had come home and the room had stirred, but his focus was locked on his father's words and on his protective arms comforting him.
Splinter looked at his children with fondness, looking at the roof and knowing that Tang Shen was with him through this time. Knowing that she was given light of being returned her baby girl, and how they would catch up on how alike they are, and all the antics that Yoshi and Leo share. He knew that the same way Shen held light upon him, Karai held light for Leo, and maybe his child even wandered upon the thought that he was going to be okay.
It would be the hardest mission they will ever have, but with the help of each other and of the light above them, they all were going to get through this.