Chapter 4

August 28th; 5:02 a.m.

The morning was creeping closer, yet the darkness still remained. Of course, it was always dark down in the sewers, but this kind of darkness was different. Because I was used to darkness. I'm ninja, I take advantage of the darkness and hide in the shadows. However, this time I felt like the darkness was taking advantage of me.

Never before had I felt so lonely in the darkness, so abandoned.

I sat in my chair in the corner of Splinter's carriage, obsessively biting on one of the fingernails on my right hand, staring aimlessly at the lifeless body that laid on the bed. My brothers left the room hours ago, each in a different state. And it wasn't long after that that the candle burned out; leaving me in pitch-black darkness.

The only source of light was the one that came in through the open subcar door, from the platform outside. There wasn't anyone out there, but someone must have left a faint light on. Just enough for me to make out the silhouette of my father's frozen features on the bed, his closed eyes facing upwards. He wore his hands on his chest, one upon the other, and Donnie had put on him his covers again. There was no need to keep him cold anymore. I guess there wasn't any need to keep him warm either, it just seemed like the humane thing to do.

I don't know for how long I'd been sitting there. After his heart stopped and Don declared him dead, Mikey completely lost it and burst into tears, throwing himself on top of the corpse. Donnie cried too, but his goodbye was a little more civilized than Mike's, not that I hold it against him. Everyone has a right to have a reaction. Raph, however, he didn't seem very comfortable with me sitting there, so he just left the room. No goodbye, no nothing. He just left me there, in the chair where I still sat, never once taking my eyes off of his body.

I could hear their voices from the living room, Don's murmuring words trying to bring Michelangelo comfort. I think Raph just locked himself inside his room. But as the hours passed, the voices eventually faded out, leaving me utterly alone with my thoughts.

And what thoughts they were...

I had lost so much in just that one night. My father, a sibling I didn't know about and my self-respect. How could I ever do what my master did? How could I choose? Then again, if I didn't, what kind of a leader would I be? Leaving all my brothers to die, when that one choice could help me save at least two of them - like Splinter saved us, all those years ago.

A part of me wondered why I even bothered to think about it. Who's to say such a situation would ever happen? Maybe I was just torturing myself for no reason. But on the other hand, if it did happen - could I honestly handle the pressure and make that choice? Could I really be the leader my master shaped me out to be?

I wasn't sure anymore - and that scared me. Although, I wasn't sure on what scared me the most. Failing as a leader and leaving all of them to die, or failing as a brother and choosing between them.

No matter what I did... I'd still lose.

"You're still up?"

I looked up at the entrance, startled by the my brother's sudden voice. I must have been in pretty deep thought, because no one rarely caught me off guard, least of all my brothers. We usually picked up on one another's presence. It came with the bond we shared as brothers.

"...yeah," I answered, for a moment meeting Donatello's concerned eyes across the room. Without another word said, I turned back to stare at the bed, like I had done the entire night.

Don glanced at the floor as he placed his left hand on the door frame, leaning slightly on it. "I thought maybe you'd fallen asleep.." he mumbled, his eyes magnetically drawn to the fallen body tucked in on the bed.

I looked at him, realizing he visited me in my state of loneliness in search of some company. I lowered my hand as I studied him, deciding I had done enough fingernail chewing for one night. "I'm not really tired," I answered, causing him to look back at me.

"You sure?" he asked, a broken smile pulling at his mouth. "I'm exhausted. I just can't sleep."

I faintly returned the smile, understanding we weren't that different after all. He then broke the eye contact as his eyes travelled back to the bed, and I couldn't help but do the same. The body hadn't moved an inch since the last breath passed his lips, which , oddly enough surprised me a little. Because he looked like he was just sleeping. Although, he looked more peaceful than what he'd done the last few weeks, this kind of slumber being much deeper than any other. He wasn't in any pain anymore, so I guess at least that was a good thing.

Not that it mattered so much at the time.

"I uh, I came to see if maybe you wanted some tea?" Donnie murmured, carefully glancing at me with one eye, nervously tapping on the door frame.

I thought about the proposal, about leaving the safety of room - and everything it represented. I was a little surprised to find my brother's proposition appealing to me. Up until that moment, I hadn't even thought about leaving the carriage. "Um... sure," I replied, slowly nodding to myself.

Don confirmed by answering with a nod before he turned and left, apparently a little relived to leave the shell of our sensei. Donatello had always been the one to stitch us up whenever we got hurt. The thought of him reacting like this to a dead body had never occurred to me. I guess the body being our father made the situation different. Still, it surprised me a little. I guess we looked at him like a doctor in these kind of situations, instead of the person he was.

I shot one last look at the bed before I rose from the chair, discovering that both of my legs had fallen asleep. They stung like a thousand needles and it was hard to straighten them out properly, nevertheless I made it out of bedroom without further trouble.

The living room was a mess. The only source of light was the yellow, old lamp on top of the television set, apart from the light that came from the kitchen. There were crumpled balls of toilet paper lying on the coffee table and on the cushions of the couch. I could only assume they belonged to Mikey, who, from what I could tell, must have gone to bed. The morbid feeling which had poisoned the air of our home the last couple of weeks, had been replaced with a sense of death. No matter where you turned or what you did, the feeling still followed you; hanging over your shoulder like a bad smell.

I wordlessly followed my brother into the kitchen, where he stood by the stove, pouring the hot water into a porcelain mug. My eyes travelled to the wooden kitchen table, where no one had dined for days. Whenever someone got something to eat, they did it in secret, as if it was a sin to live on with your life while someone else's was running out. I walked up to the table and pulled out a chair, silently sitting myself down, face turned to the stove.

Donatello turned around with the mug in his hands. He grabbed the tea carton on the counter and went over to me; placing the two things in front of me. I hesitantly reached for a tea-bag as Don turned back to the counter to grab a mug for himself. He sat down in the seat in front of me, glancing at me for a moment before he lifted the teapot to poor the steaming liquid into his mug. I listened intently as the hot jet of water filled up the porcelain mug, the soothing sound filling up the entire kitchen with an eerie sense of calm that couldn't last long.

I caught him glance at me and I quickly turned to lower the bag of tea into my mug, carefully dipping it in the water, very much aware of his watchful eyes. I didn't want to meet his eyes, as if fearing he could read my thoughts if he did.

I felt ashamed.

Ashamed of the thoughts I'd been thinking the entire night - and still was. Thoughts our dead father had placed in my head just before he passed on. Thoughts I didn't want him to know about, or any of my brothers for that matter. It was better that they didn't know. I wasn't sure on what to do with the information. However I did know that I didn't want either of my brothers to be any part of it. Splinter had told me and me only. I suppose a part of me was keeping it a secret in respect to my father, but the main reason for me keeping quiet was of course to protect my brothers.

What would this knowledge do for them? Would there come anything good out of it? Perhaps it wasn't up to me to decide.. Or perhaps it was? No matter how I tossed or turned on the situation, the endless list of questions wouldn't stop coming. I was cornered.

"It's not your fault, you know."

Once again his voice startled me. "What?" I asked, looking up at the purple masked turtle sitting across from me. The lamp hanging above us caused the shadows to mask his eyes, subduing whatever feeling hiding there. I felt like he had taken a peek at my thoughts, and maybe caught just a glimpse of them.

I felt naked.

"Master Splinter," Don explained, slowly stirring the spoon in his cup, almost soundlessly as he looked at me. "That last attack was just too severe to recover from. There wasn't anything either of us could've done to prevent the inevitable," he whispered, glancing down at his cup of tea, as if meeting his own reflection on the surface. "You sitting there with him when it happened... that was just a coincident," he finished, looking back at me, offering comfort with his dark, kind eyes.

"Coincident?" I repeated, my voice barely audible as I caught his gaze with my own, yet rejected his comfort.

"Bad luck, misfortunate, I dunno," he shrugged, shaking his head in a way that made him look just as lost as I felt. "Call it whatever you want," he continued, boring his eyes into mine a second time. "Just... just don't blame yourself, okay?" He furrowed his eye ridges, waiting for a reaction on my emotionless face.

"What makes you think I'm blaming myself?" I asked bitterly, not sure why I even bothered to do so. I knew the answer to that question. It was almost as if I wanted to hear him say it - like a pep-talk.

"I know you, Leo," he replied, his voice lacking the harsh irony mine held. "You blamed yourself when he got sick. You blamed yourself when the Foot got to Raph. Heck, you even blamed yourself when we were eight and Mikey broke his leg," he added, a faint smile lightening up the sorrowful kitchen.

"He left me in charge to watch you," I explained, recalling the horrible can't-touch-the-ground accident in the living room all those years ago. Sensei had as usual left me to watch over my brothers and one thing had led to another as the four of us got carried away in the game.

"That's not the point, Leo," Don firmly interrupted, letting go of the spoon in his cup, placing his hand on the surface of the table with his palm down. "You always blame yourself. You always have. Mikey falling off the back of the couch was no one's fault but his own clumsiness. You have to stop piling so much responsibility on yourself. Some mistakes aren't yours, you know."

I opened my mouth to speak but he quickly stole away the chance,

"Just..." he said, his quiet voice trailing off in the room. He broke our eye contact with an exasperated sigh when he couldn't find the proper words. After staring at the corner of the table for a short second, his eyes turned back to mine with a sudden determination that almost overwhelmed me. "It's not your fault," he said, no more - no less.

I held his eyes for a while, thinking of how his words sounded, what effect they had on me. I realized it had always been about responsibilities with me. Every single action of mine had been motivated by a simple 'can' or 'cannot do'. Splinter had always trusted me with the responsibilities and I felt honored for that. Yet...

There was a small part of me that wished I could be like Raph, a suppressed part. I sometimes wished I could just act and worry about the consequences later. There were times where I wanted to do things for myself, not worrying about the effect it would have on anyone else. I wanted to be careless, act on instinct.

I wanted the chance and the courage to be impulsive.

But there I was, worn down with even more responsibilities. And they didn't feel anything like an honor to me. They felt like a burden. A burden suited for someone stronger than myself to carry. The suppressed part of me felt it was unfair of my father to dump this on me, using the state of my feelings in an emotional moment that was his very last. But then there was still this other part of me, the self-condemning part, that felt like a failure for not being able to live up to the leader he expected me to be. He expected me to be strong enough to make that choice, he expected me to carry the obligation in his place.

I felt like I was torn right by the middle. And that feeling in itself was dishonorable to my father, because in all my life as his son, I had never done anything that didn't reach up to his expectations.