Author's note: Now...my stories have prompted me to make videos. Got lots of ideas for videos. But this oneshot is a bit different. I made my video "Brother" (got the link posted in my profile if you're interested, or just look up Selfless Leolover on Youtube) and now this was stuck in my head. To be honest I had the idea before, even wrote it out way back during the Hun scene of "Realities Collide", but lost it when my computer crashed. Making the video brought it back to mind. So I figured I'd try to write it again.

Demons Vicky calls them. I never thought of thinking of them like that, but I guess the phrase does kind of fit. Snapping, snarling monsters inside of you that refuse to let you be. We all have our demons, things hidden away that we don't want others to see. You try to hide them, even from yourself. That is not always possible however.

I am seen as the leader of this family. The quick thinker, the planner, the one who comes up with the answers. I have dedicated my life to the task that has been given to me and I do try to do the best I can. But sometimes even I fail. Vicky sees me as her anchor, her strong support in her crazy life. Our crazy life. But I have had my own experiences that haunt me.

Time and time again I have thrown myself out there, calmly, for the most part, guiding my family through whatever obstacle we are currently facing. To most I seem cool, calm, collected. Not easily phased or shaken. I fear nothing.

That is not true.

I do fear and the largest one I have is the fear of failing. Because failure means I might lose someone I care deeply for. Not necessarily by them losing their life, though that fear is always in the forefront, but in any way.

I have met that head on, and I lost. Father had died. The most important individual to all of us, the glue that kept us together, was gone. And it tore us apart. Words can not describe the pain someone feels from losing a loved one, and he had been very loved by all of us. No matter how hard things got, he was always there with wise words, a calming influence and boundless love. He guided us, taught us and beated the concept of family and brotherhood so deep into us that it became who we were. I'm sure if Donnie looked hard enough at our DNA strands, he would find the scars from Father's walking stick engrained in there somewhere.

Now that the firm foundation we stood on wasn't there and we fell...hard.

Raph's temper flared out of control, to the point he was lashing blindly out at anyone who came too close to him. Many times for no reason at all. Mikey drew within himself and rarely came out of his room while Donnie hunkered down in the lab, furiously scanning over his computers, trying to find some kind of answer. There were none.

I also felt that loss heavily, mainly because it was now up to me alone to try and help them through this, and I couldn't even help myself. I was just as devastated as they were and couldn't clear it to help them, though I did try.

The pain I felt when I reached out to them, only to be pushed away just added to my grief. My attempts to draw Mikey out with anything I could think of, pizza, comic books, even his ridiculous video games all were met with sad, dead eyes before he would just roll back over onto his side and stare at the wall that had become his object of focus. Everytime I retreated from that I could feel the hole ripping open even more into my chest.

Donnie didn't even notice my attempts. Even as he huddled over his computers, researching anything he could get his hands on. He was furious that it had happened, and felt guilty that it did. He was our Mr. Fix It and our healer. The fact that he couldn't fix that last, final, ending to us all frustrated him to no end and he took it as a personal affront that it had happened. He refused to let it happen again and ignored everything around him as he tried to solve this unsolvable puzzle. He lost weight, didn't sleep and I couldn't tell you the last time he took a shower in those days. The only thing that concerned him was that Father had died...and death had slipped right by him. The hole grew again.

Raph. He has a reputation of not being able to feel. It's quite the opposite actually. He can feel, as I'm sure Cris can assure you, but he does it in wild extremes when he does. He can go from white hot anger to being moved to tears by a kiss on the cheek from his son. But his default emotion has always been anger. It was the one that came to him the quickest, and it was the one that came when we found out we were on our own.

Usually it was Father who calmed that unpredictable storm, and he wasn't here to do it this time. And I wasn't my Father. Raph took it hard, so hard that he began tearing up furniture and anything else that got in his way. Even an unsuspecting Mikey as he walked by. Of course I tried to stop it and actually did managed to get our little brother out of the way of that sai as it came down. But the blow that had been meant for the smallest ended up hitting me. I was able to deflect most of it but the weapon still opened up a large gash on my arm before he got another hit in and knocked me to the floor. The uncontrollable rage in his eyes actually scared me for the first time in my life as I laid there with his weapon over me.

He caught himself, eyes growing wide as he realized what he did, before he turned and stormed out of the lair...and didn't come back. The hole grew to the point that my heart broke. None of them...I couldn't help a single one of my brothers. I had failed them.

Somehow I pulled myself together enough to try again, and kept trying. Again I tried to pull Mikey out of his bed, Donnie out of his lab. I even went out almost every night to find the still missing Raph. And my luck was not with me during any of those attempts. I just couldn't reach the two at home and I couldn't even find Raph.

It had been a few weeks now, and I was once again out in the city rooftops. But I was at the end of my endurance, mentally and physically. I was scared of what was happening, worried for my brothers and I just couldn't deal with it anymore. The calm leader...broke.

I had just hit another rooftop, stumbled and hit the ground in a painful roll and with that misstep everything shut down. My will to keep doing this just vanished. I had lost hope that I would ever be able to find Raph, or be able to help Donnie and Mikey. And I was having this breakdown on my knees on a rooftop as I held back the tears.

I was in no condition to be out there, and someone took advantage of it. A net flew over me and in my own weakened state I couldn't fight it off. I was quickly restrained, disarmed and drug away. Even as this all went on, the only thing I could think of was how much I had failed. I wasn't worried about my life, I was worried about the lives my brothers were leading and how all of them needed me...and I could do nothing. Maybe they were better off without me, because I was a failure.

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Rage is the one thing most fear from me, those who are dumb enough to piss me off do anyway...except Mikey. Mikey just never learns...

I guess if you flip out as often as I do, the hothead label does fit. I wish sometimes, ok a lot, that I didn't blow my stack so much. That I could be calm like Leo, or happy go lucky like Mikey has crossed my mind many times. Yes...I want to be like Mikey, I admitted it, now shut the fuck up and quit laughing before I knock your teeth in.

I was used to these flare up and so was my family. It had become just as commonplace as Mikey's pranks or Leo's meditating. It was a small part of who we were as a whole. Over time I even managed to use my anger to help. Lost count how many times my temper gave me the strength to break in, out or through something. It was hard to control at times, yes, but I had found a way to use it to our advantage.

All of you know the young me. Thanks to those silly ass cartoons and movies you watch. Yeah...Vicky and Cris told us all about those. But surprisingly, they actually come close to the truth...if you were talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I did lose my cool quite a bit, I stormed off when I was pissed and I did smack Mikey a lot...still do that even as an Adult Mutant Ninja Turtle. By the time I reached Adulthood, Father had finally helped me find that place to where I could work around my anger, shut it out if it was in my way and use it if I needed it. I still got hot under the collar a lot, but it was easier for me to handle.

Until the day Father died. Everything we had spent years working on was thrown out the window with the realization that he was gone and he wasn't coming back. That anger came raging out of that closet I kept it in with a vengeance and it wanted to catch up on all the times it missed. Only way I can describe it really. I'm not exaggerating the slightest when I tell you that I was so blacked out from it that those first few days were...blurry to me. The first thing I do remember clearly was Leo lying on the floor, bleeding from his arm and Mikey lying not far away, both of them looking up at me with fear. It was about then I noticed the blood on my weapon.

I hated myself so much at that moment. I had lost everything Father had taught me to keep this from happening...and it happened.

I'm not stupid, despite what you think about the big muscles, small brain stereotype. But I know I'm big, I know if I don't control my temper I could serious hurt, or kill, someone. And that someone could very well be one of my brothers. The guilt I felt at losing the most important lesson my Father has ever tried to teach me hit hard as I looked upon why he was trying to teach it to me. Another emotion took hold then, fear. I was scared of myself, scared of what I could do to them.

I did the only other thing I knew how to do. Instead of facing the problem, I ran from it. I ran out of my home and didn't look back. In my eyes I had did something unforgivable and I couldn't stay there anymore, out of fear of doing it again. And I didn't come home this time once I calmed down. This time I had gone too far to go back.

The thing most don't see out of me was the thing that kept me from my home. Emotions. Anger caused it and fear kept me away. I was determined to stay away from them. I couldn't control myself any more and they would be the ones to suffer.

I knew my departure wasn't wanted by at least one individual, because I saw him more than a few times out looking for me. Almost every night he came out, desperately searching for me. But I wasn't going to go back home. I knew he was worried, just because I know Leo. I wanted so much to step out of the shadows to talk to him. To try and explain to him why I was doing this, but I was too scared I'd hurt him again if I did. So I just stayed away, quietly watching as he came out and started again.

He was driving himself in the ground, even I could see that. I never saw the other two...but he was out almost like clockwork. It dawned on me the others didn't come out because they were unable too for some reason which meant they were still in their own pits of hell they had slipped into. So...not only was he out here looking for me, he was obviously still trying to deal with the other two. I almost broke at that point. Almost.

I turned away instead, even as I noticed he was stumbling more that night, out of pure exhaustion. I couldn't watch anymore, something about that sight hitting me hard in the gut, and turned away.

Leo didn't come out the next night. Or the night after that. It was about then I went looking for him. I needed those glimpses of him. I hate to admit it...but I missed my brothers and he was the only one I could lay eyes on, even if it was for short times and from a distance.

It grew later and still no sign of him. I crisscrossed those rooftops I don't know how many times. Worry gnawing on my heels to drive me on. Anger rising up in me that he seemed to just fucking give up on me and quit looking. But it was the fear that broke through when I finally, after hours of searching, found his weapons dumped carelessly on the rooftop.

As soon as I saw them, I knew something was wrong. Leo would never just leave them there like that. It went against everything that was him. He was always prepared and never would leave them if he had a choice in the matter. Which meant he didn't.

I carefully knelt down to look them over and they looked like they had been lying up here for awhile if the dirt and dust that had settled on them was any indication. More than likely the night I had turned away from him was the night he had needed me the most.

Anger, the emotion that started this whole mess for me, was coming up again. This happened because of me. If I hadn't lashed out at him, if I hadn't run off and hid like a damn coward he wouldn't be out here. He had been fighting his own pain, his own grief and yet he had tried so hard for the rest of us. I saw the attempts clearly now in my head as he tried to get Mikey to come out of his room, tried to snap Donnie out of his despair, tried to find me and bring me home. He was in the condition he had been in because he was trying to keep us together and we all pushed him away. And I knew somehow it was because he was so run down that he had been caught. Because that was the only explanation I could think of for his weapons to be lying here.

So yes, the anger came again. But this time I let it as I picked up those katanas. I needed it to push past everything else. Father's lessons came back to me in a flood and I was in full control of it as I turned and headed back to my home. I would use it, and I would use it to get my brother back.

.

.

I couldn't understand it. I just could not understand how this could have happened. Father had been as far as I could tell in perfect health...and then he was just gone. And I missed it. Somehow I had missed something and let him slip away from us.

The fact that he was old and slipped quietly away in his sleep refused to settle in my head. I firmly believed I should have seen something, anything, in the days leading up to his death. That I had missed some obvious sign that he was about to go. In other words...I refused to accept that nature had outwitted me and helped Father take that last step.

Death is a hard thing for someone like me to deal with. I spent my life fixing my brothers, spent countless hours researching so I could keep them alive if those rare situations happened where they got seriously hurt. I've learned to patch anything up from papercuts to life threatening injuries. And I prided myself on the fact that I had beaten everything that had been thrown in front of me. Until that morning Father didn't wake up.

There isn't much I can't fix, but one of the few things is death. I knew it would happen one day, we all did, but to be taken by surprise by it made it sting so much more to me. I didn't even have a warning that it was even coming.

Looking back now, I think that was the thing that bothered me the most, that it snuck in behind me and had carried Father off to the plains unknown. I refused to accept it.

My lab became my prison and my own need for answers was the jailor. I sat in that chair for days, only getting up for trips to the bathroom. My attention fully focused on what I was working on. I had pulled up Father's charts and was pouring through them, trying to find something I knew I had to have missed. Even went so far as to compare his information with others, to see if something in the human world maybe could help me figure out what happened. Why did Father die?

I knew Leo came in, brought me food and tried to pull me away. I could hear his reassurances that this wasn't my fault, this happens. I refused to listen. It was my fault and this shouldn't have happened! I missed something, and he died. That's how my grief filled mind handled it, and that's the thinking Leo was trying to break through. He never gave up, he would come in, take the old untouched food out and place a fresh plate down, try to talk to me, which I ignored, then he would sigh and leave.

I didn't even notice that Leo hadn't even come in to check on me as I sat mumbling in anger over my computer. My mind was still refusing to accept the fact that it was just Father's time to go. There was only one thing that snapped me out of it.

Out of the blue, two katanas came down in front of my face and slammed onto the keyboard in front of me, narrowly missing my fingers. They were so out of place there that I had to stop and lean back in my chair as I stared at those weapons.

"Leo is missing." Raph growled at me as his glare further shook me out of my stupor. "Find him. You won't look up anything unless it directly has something to do with where he is at."

"What?" My eyes blinked as I struggled to take this information in.

"You heard me. Now get your head out of your ass and find our brother!" Then he turned and stomped out of the lab.

It fully hit me as I moved the katanas out of the way so I could work, and almost knocked over the plate Leo had left for me god only knows how long ago. Even as I stubbornly refused to acknowledge him, he still came back. Still worried, still cared. And now he was missing and I hadn't even noticed...

Without another thought I cleared everything that had to do with Father off of my screens. Again determination set in to find answers, but this time I was asking another question. Where was my brother? That answer I was going to find out. I owed it to him.

.

.

Never had I felt such grief, pain, hurt. It felt like someone had taken my heart and ripped it out of my chest. He was gone...Father was gone...

I didn't want to live anymore to be honest. It hurt to much.

I didn't find comfort in anything that used to bring a smile to my face. Nothing brought me joy, nothing could stop the ache that just wouldn't go away. My video games remained untouched, as did the comic books. My cool as fuck skateboard was leaned into the corner of my messy room. Once it had been a fun past time, now it was forgotten about.

Even pizza didn't rouse me from this pain filled hole I found myself in. And Leo tried that a few times. He would come into my room, that gentle smile on his face as he held the box. And I just rolled over, staring at the wall that seemed to have my attention the most in those days. I never even noticed the soft click of the door as it closed behind him as he left.

My focus was on trying to figure out how in the world I was going to move on without the person I loved the most. Never did figure that answer out, because I never tried too. All I could come up with was that I just wanted to die so I could be with him.

I didn't leave my room much. Didn't want too. All I wanted to do was lay there on that bed, holding my misery around me like a blanket. It got to the point where even the thought of getting up filled me with exhaustion. I just couldn't face what was on the other side of that door. He wouldn't be there, would never be there ever again. Never again would he train us, eat meals with us. Never would I get put in the hashi because of some outrageous prank gone wrong. Wouldn't ever get a scolding, a hug or even a smile from him. He was gone.

Seemed like the only thing I did have the strength to do was cry. And that was becoming harder to do as the days drug on and I barely moved. I didn't eat, slept all the time and just didn't care about anything over all. The happy go lucky Mikey was gone. He had died to be replaced with this empty shell.

Because of that state I was in, I lost track of the days. I hadn't seen Leo for a while, but that didn't concern me enough to get up. He probably came in while I was taking one of my depression fueled naps. As quick as he came into my mind, he was gone. Replaced by the grieving self pity that filled me now.

That was stunned out of me as the door didn't open with a gentle knock and a soft call for pizza, but with a slam as it was kicked open hard enough to send the door flying across the room.

"Mikey! Get your ass up! Now!"

I jumped about five feet in the air before turning to see Raph standing in the door way. I blinked a bit in shock, last I knew he had run off. He had been gone for a couple of weeks by that point.

"Why should I?" Was my self pity filled mumble as I rolled back over.

The next sound I heard was the sound of his feet stomping across the room, then he yanked me up out of the bed with enough force to give me whiplash.

"Because Leo is missing, and it's our damn fault he is!" Raph snapped, his face inches away from mine at that point. "And we are going to go find him!"

I blinked stupidly at him a moment, then nodded and he promptly dropped me on my ass in the middle of the room before he left again.

I slowly got back to my feet as I took in what he just said. Leo was missing... My big brother... Now I knew why he didn't come in the room lately and I felt like shit. I was so caught up in my own self misery that I had taken all of his attempts to cheer me up and threw them back into his face. But he was always there. Never gave up as he tried and tried again to coax me out.

A tear slipped out of my eye at that moment. I had lost my Father yes, but there was another here who loved me just as much as he did, and I had refused to see it. I wiped that tear away and took a deep breath to calm myself, my eyes falling onto my skateboard as I did.

For the first time in a while a grin found it's way onto my face as I went to go pick it up. It was time to put this baby to use. I easily flipped it over and clipped it to my back, then I ran out the door, firmly leaving my misery behind me. Father would understand. I loved him and missed him very much, but I couldn't grieve for him anymore, not when Leo needed me.

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Three days I hung there. Three days of being poked, prodded and looked at like some kind of circus freak. Things had been done that I'm not even going to describe here. All I will tell you is that I got my first taste of Bishop, because he was the one who managed to catch me. Not only did I have my grief to contend with, both for my Father and for my brothers who likely would be next if I didn't get out of here, but I found the first doubts fill me. Why do I insist on helping a race who allows things like this to happen to those who are different? This was something Father had already known, and the reason behind our training. He knew it, and now I understood it.

I was close to giving up. So close to just wanting Bishop to be done with me. I knew it was going to come, there had been discussions about it. The way things were going right now, when I left this room I would end up on his dissecting table.

Loneliness was something I had never felt before, but I felt it now as I hung there, shackled to the wall. It hit me hard. I wanted nothing more than to hear one of Mikey's stupid jokes, and hear Raph tell him to shut the hell up as Donnie came racing out of the lab to show us his newest gizmo. Heck, I'd even be happy to break up a fight, listen to Raph's constant grumbling, even chuckle amused at Donnie's snorts when he gets a good laugh in. I wanted to go home...

By the evening of the third day, I was so weak by that point I couldn't even lift my head up. My arms were beyond hurting, as were my legs from not having been allowed to move. I also hurt from all the tests Bishop did, and he did quite a few of them. Still, even with every inch of me screaming to be released from this torment, my eyes snapped open as I clearly felt the building shudder around me even as the muffled boom hit my ears. Something was going on.

I strained to listen, but the sounds of the alarms in that hallway was drowning everything else out. I felt something build in me as the racket continued, a feeling I had come very close to giving up on. Still, I wasn't going to let that hope build, it may be something completely different going on than what I was suspecting.

Until I heard something that made my tired head snap up, even if it was only for a moment. "Leo!" Raph's voice came from the other side of the door. "Are you in there!"

"Raph..." My voice choked out, barely audible to me and strained from days of no water, pain and the exhaustion I felt. There was no way he could hear me. I struggled weakly against my restraints as I found it in me somewhere to try fighting again.

I may not have been heard, but they knew. That door slammed open and Raph was the one who was standing there. His amber eyes were filled with anger and worry that quickly turned to relief when he caught sight of me. It was nothing compared to what I felt, especially when the other two walked in right behind him.

They were here, and they were all fully functioning. None of them showed the struggles they had been dealing with as they crowded around me and began to unhook me. I was so confused. How did they manage? When I last saw them I was sure they were so far gone that nothing short of a miracle would bring them back.

"You're...here..." Stumbled out of my mouth as I took them all in, the shock evident on my face over the fact apparently because they all reached out an arm to comfort me, even as I collapsed from the last shackle being opened and those holds of comfort became ones of support.

"We gotcha Leo." Raph held me up so Donnie and Mikey could slip under my arms.

"Yeah bro." Mikey quietly said. "Lean on us. It's time we carried your weight."

"Past time." Donnie added as we made our way out of that room.

I still didn't fully grasp what was happening, was still trying to figure it out. They must have caught my confused look, and it really wasn't to hard to figure out. The last I knew, one was locked in his room, one was glued to a mission he'd never find the answer for and the third had walked out...what had happened?

"Leo, we may have been fucked up in the head there for a bit." Raph said as we kept moving. "But nothing will change the fact that we are brothers."

"We'll always be there for you." Donnie told me.

"Just like you're always there for us bro. We're family."

Tears sprang to my eyes as I realised that I did get through to them, just not in the way I had expected too. I had reached them, I just didn't notice it at the time. I wasn't a failure...I was a brother and it was that bond that brought them together to come here. It was that bond that pulled them from their depths, and now pulled me from mine as their presence there brought the hope back along with the will to keep fighting.

We still miss our father. That is something we probably will do until it is our time to leave this world. But in his passing he had taught us one more valuable lesson. Just because he was gone, didn't mean we didn't have another strength to fall back on. It just took us a little to figure it out. We were our greatest strength. We got on each other's nerves, pissed each other off and had more than a few of petty squabbles over the years, but once we join forces there wasn't a soul out there who could break that bond. Believe me, they have tried. And they have failed. As far as we are concerned, they will keep failing. We have all met our demons, faced them and beat them, these guys don't stand a chance