Author's Note: Hi there! Thank you for returning to my story! Here is chapter seven. Trigger warning for self harm - please don't read if this is something that you are struggling with. Please remember that you matter and that all wounds eventually heal with time. I am in no way an expert on mental health, but please seek help.

Please leave a review as your feedback keeps me writing. I hope you enjoy Chapter Seven!

Chapter Seven: One Final Choice

Pipes warped, their steel moaning in protest, as they were ripped apart and pulled towards Leo whilst he ran through the sewer, his feet splashing clumsily through algae ridden and blood chilling water.

A particularly large pipe to his left chose that moment to burst under the pressure of Leo's telekinesis and hot steam exploded in Leo's face, pulling another anguished scream from his throat as he billowed through the scorching cloud of vapour.

He just needed to get away.

Water ran up the walls of the sewer, fleeing from him, as again his telekinesis blew out yet another raw force field of power.

In the back of his mind, he could still hear the thoughts of his brothers.

Mikey was hurting in the Lair, desperate to help but unable to even stand. Guys, please find him…please find him…gah this hurts so much…

Donnie was already looking at Mikey, his thoughts muddled, as they entered Leo's mind. Okay. I can do this. So I need to reset the bone…this is fine. Everything is fine. Wait, who I am kidding? No, I can do this. Oh god…

Raphael's thoughts entered Leo's mind next, angry but aching. Why didn't you just tell us Leo?! Come on bro. Shit! Come on, don't do this…

Leo heard his name being called by Raphael, from somewhere behind him in the dark, his brother's voice panicked and pleading, echoing through the sewer but reaching him.

"LEO! COME BACK!"

Leo shook his head.

He couldn't go back.

He could never go back, ever again.

The wound in his shoulder pulsated and he glanced down to see the black poison spread further across his chest, filling his veins. He blinked back tears. He was going to die, but he had to do it alone.

There was a pull in his gut and bricks which were cemented into the sewer walls became projectiles, lunching themselves across the tunnel.

Leo scrunched his eyes.

He needed everything to stop.

He just needed to die.

He reached a ladder and felt the intricate bloom of mould underneath his fingers as he gripped the rusted metal. He began to climb and with each step, the ladder behind him folded in on itself, transforming into a mess of razor sharp steel, in order to prevent his family from following. Unable to climb any further due to reaching the ladder's end, Leo reached up and pushed the manhole cover aside and hauled himself onto the night shrouded street above.

"Goodbye Raphael," he whispered. "I'll miss you."

Without his wall, New York was overwhelming.

Leo ran faster across the rooftops of shops and apartments, sweat dripping from his head and into his shell. His muscles burned as he willed himself to run faster and harder and yet there was no escaping the thoughts which relentlessly invaded his mind.

It was too much.

Everything was too loud.

Thousands of scattered thoughts pounded in Leo's head, entering without permission and as he pelted past a water tank, his bandanna flapping behind him, he was unable to stop his telekinesis from reaching out and tearing the walls of the tank apart, exploding water across the roof.

Water lapped at his feet but Leo ignored it and prepared to jump over to the next building, increasing his speed and leaning forward.

His feet left the edge of the building.

And then his vision blurred.

Gravity pulled him towards the harsh ground below and with a yell Leo blindly reached out with his hands, only just catching the edge of the roof, his chest slamming into the side of the building.

The poisoned wound on his shoulder erupted in searing hot pain, as if his chest was on fire.

He felt the poison travel up his neck, causing his muscles to spasm.

A scream was torn from his throat and his telekinesis responded yet again, reaching out to the street below.

Powerlines sparked and disconnected, sling shotting across the street, becoming electrified lassos of death. Power poles cracked and began to fall, creating a domino effect as one after the other, they crashed to the ground, plummeting the street into darkness as the power grid short circuited.

Car alarms blasted and lights flashed

People began to walk out from their houses, gawking at the destruction and unknowingly filling Leo's head with their worried thoughts.

Oh my god…
Should we call 911?
What is happening?
Well that's just great...
Shit...

Leo clamped his eyes shut and hauled himself up onto the roof, only to collapse onto his shell, too tired and weak to continue. His muscles burned and his chest heaved as he tried to take in oxygen, his chest struggling to rise and fall with each ragged breath.

The night sky above him twinkled with the stars blinking at him sleepily from thousands of light years away. On any other night, it would have been peaceful.

Vaguely, Leo was aware that the fingers in his right hand were shuddering.

Leo turned to look at them but then the muscles in his arm tightened before relaxing again and he watched in horror as his elbow locked, snapping straight.

Leo could feel his heart hammering in his chest, as if it was a bird trying to escape his rib cage and blood rushed in his ears, dulling everything.

His gut tightened.

The shattering of glass pierced the night as the windows of the apartment below blew out.

Screams erupted from the street below.

"Stop it," Leo pleaded to himself, his arm still contorting whilst he watched as the cross word puzzle of black poison spread down through his limb now. "Please…just…please. Stop it…"

Salty tears streamed down his face.

He didn't want to hurt anyone.

He had chosen to run from his home, from his brothers, in order to keep them safe but now, fleeing across New York with his walls down and telekinesis completely out of control, responding purely to his emotions, he was now putting additional lives at risk.

He couldn't stay, he knew that much.

Looking up at the night sky, Leo tried his best to wipe away his tears with his left hand.

"Please just tell me what to do," Leo pleaded the stars. "Please, just help me do one last good thing…"

A memory entered his mind then, of a refuge where Leo knew he would be able to slip away, without hurting his family or anyone ever again.

It was a place that he had vowed never to return to.

It was a place that he feared.

It was a place where he had taken a life.

And yet, looking up at the stars, Leo knew that it was where he was meant to go.

"Okay…okay…I can do this," Leo reassured himself, as he picked himself off from the rooftop's cold cement, his arm trembling and his legs shaking as he fought to stay upright.

He looked towards the downtown district and took his first unsteady steps towards where he knew the warehouse would be waiting.

The abandoned building stood as though it had been frozen in time, unchanged from when Leo has seen it last.

He ran towards the warehouse and made the final leap onto its tin roof, sliding down to the building's gutter, just as he had on that stormy fateful night one year ago.

Peering through the grime covered windows, Leo's breath hitched, as the inside the warehouse was just as he remembered it with the industrial shelves still occupying most of the space in neat rows whilst the forklift was still parked in the corner, dead for years. Dust dangled from the ceiling in stalactites and even more cobwebs had been cast over the walls and between the shelves of the few remaining unwanted goods.

Leo took a breath and pushed the window inwards.

But then he stopped as his eyes found a man lying in the middle of two shelves.

The dead man's mouth was ajar in a silent scream but hundreds of tiny cockroaches were crawling up from the depths of his throat to leave tracks of faeces across his ashen coloured face. His once kind eyes had sunken into his skull and his hair had decomposed, leaving only wisps of his once full beard. His hands were clasped at his stomach, where red blood stained his weathered jacket around where Leo's katana was embedded. Left in the warehouse to rot, the body had bloated and guts had spewed around the katana and onto the floor surrounding him.

Leo stifled a whimper, tearing his eyes away from the body.

He had called the authorities when he had killed the homeless man living in the warehouse.

He didn't understand.

Why was he still there?

It didn't make any sense.

Forcing himself to look back towards the aisle, Leo blinked in surprise as the aisle was empty. There was no body filled with cockroaches. There was no blood or gore. There was just…nothing.

Leo frowned and leaned forward into the warehouse. Looking between the aisles, Leo wrinkled his nose, as the smell of rotting flesh still lingered and wafted up from below him.

Leo looked down.

And then he came face to face with the dead man, who was clinging to the wall with one hand and reaching out with the other, his rotting flesh melting away from his bony finger. A cockroach crawled from his mouth as he opened his putrid green lips to speak.

"You're coming with me," he rasped.

He reached out and grabbed Leo's Katana strap which was around his chest. Leo flailed then, desperately swatting at the man's rotting arms, his own fingers pulling apart the man's skin as years of decay made his flesh like jelly.

"LET GO! LEAVE ME ALONE!" Leo yelled.

The man pulled and Leo tipped forward, unable to stop himself from falling from the window sill.

The ground rose up fast.

Leo's head smashed against the concrete.

And then he knew no more.

The throbbing in his head was the first sensation which came back to Leo.

In a daze, he reached up with his left hand and felt the back of his head, groaning when his hand touched a fresh wound, with his fingers coming away coated in sticky blood.

His eyes felt like they were glued shut with him struggling to open them, his eyes rolling in the darkness behind his closed lids. He felt the cold concrete under his plastron and tried grounding himself, pressing his hands against the ground in an attempt to ease his dizziness.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he peeled his eyes open and found himself laying on his stomach, disorientated and not quite remembering what had happened. His face was pressed against the concrete with puffs of dust billowing away from his mouth with each exhale.

He tried to remember what had happened.

Groaning, he recalled that there had been a fire in the Lair and that he had hurt his brothers and been forced to run.

Because…he was…dying. Poisoned.

Leo pushed himself upright and placed his shell against the wall.

He looked up at the windows high above him in the warehouse.

He had fallen from up there?

Leo scrunched his eyes closed, trying to remember why he had lost his balance.

And then it all came back to him.

He hurriedly found his feet, his head throbbing with the movement but he ignored the sensation, as he wildly scanned the warehouse for the decaying corpse.

And yet again, there was nothing.

There had always been nothing.

Leo shook his head, trying to make sense of the hallucination. He shrunk back down to the ground, not caring that his shell scratched against the wall in his decent.

Against the wall however, he smiled. His telekinesis had eased, finally dormant again and although unwanted thoughts still entered his mind, they were muffled and not quite forming sentences.

Leo knew enough about first aid from what Donnie had taught him, to tell that he had a concussion and maybe it was the fact that his head was so scrambled, which aided in keeping the thoughts at least on low volume.

Whatever it was, Leo was grateful, finally just resting in the serenity of the empty warehouse, focussing on his breathing.

Breath in.

And out.

Breath in.

And out.

Leo steadied his mind.

He knew what he had to do.

He refused to die from poison, grovelling in the dirt and choking on his own blood until his heart stopped.

He could do this one final thing and die by his own hand.

With as much grace that he could muster, Leo reached up and unsheathed one of his Katana blades.

He held the gleaming weapon in his hands, his face reflected in the metal back up at him.

He barely recognised himself.

His skin was a pale green and almost transparent. Dark crimson blood ran down the side of his face. The black poison had reached his fingertips in his right arm, numbing them, whilst it also stretched across his chest, covering his plastron in black spindling lines.

He closed his eyes and thought of his brothers and family.

"I'm so sorry guys," Leo said in the dark, as if his brothers could hear him. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I just wanted to protect you…"

Leo inhaled deeply, preparing himself and trying to relish in the sensation of oxygen filling his lungs.

This was the only way and strangely, Leo wasn't scared.

He was simply at peace, knowing what had to be done to keep everyone he loved safe.

Opening his eyes, Leo raised his Katana so that it was directly in line with his heart.

He drew his last breath but steadied himself, accepting his fate.

"I'M SORRY!" he screamed.

And then he thrusted the Katana blade towards his chest to deliver the fatal blow which would end everything.

Except he couldn't.

The blade's tip was in his chest, stinging and drawing blood from his plastron, but his arms wouldn't drive the blade any further, held back by a physical force working against him.

"NOOOO!" Leo screamed.

Again, he tried to plummet the blade into his chest with more resolve, but there was that same awful pull in his gut and his hands simply shook against the force that was being emitted from within him.

"COME ON!" Leo cried in anguish. "LET ME FUCKING DO THIS!"

He gripped the hilt of his Katana with both hands now and pushed against the force with all the strength that he could muster. The Katana embedded itself further into his chest, slicing through and then-

Raw power exploded from his stomach, expanding outwards, ripping his Katana blade from his hand and sending the weapon clattering to the floor. The industrial shelves around him tipped simultaneously, the goods on their shelves sliding to the ground before one by one, the mammoth shelves fell, billowing dust all around in giant clouds of grey.

Leo sat with his head to his chest, defeated.

A cough was what made him raise his head, as he wetly hacked into the crook of his arm, his eyes widening at the blood which was left there once the coughing fit had subsided.

And then, in the eerie silence of the warehouse, panic began to envelop him.

He was going to die, alone and afraid and in pain.

He was unable to do the one thing that he thought he still had control over but even the ability to take his own life had been stolen from him, with his telekinesis clinging onto the one tiny part of him that wanted to live.

The muscles in his neck contorted involuntarily, pushing his head to the side, and his spine arched in agony against the hard wall behind him.

Tears began to stream down his face then as the muscles throughout his body began to spasm. He listed sideways and crashed into the floor, unable to use his locked up arms to cushion the fall.

And there, on the cold hard floor of the warehouse where he had killed, Leo finally gave in to everything, his crying turning into uncontrollable sobs as his body occasionally seized with the poison spreading.

And there he waited for the darkness of death to consume him.

To be Continued…

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