Try

To Hold It Together

The green hand hovers just over the shoji screen door, three fingers in a perfect fist as he wills the contact to be made, tree leaves rustling as a breezes sneaks through the grate above.

A shiver runs down the motionless body and the fist tightens, the most movement it's experienced in several minutes. A held breath is let out; the anxiety in his bones leaving him a statue molded to the floor.

He doesn't understand why he can't knock. He's been working up to this all evening, but now that he's here, now that the slow film that is his life is coming to the crucial scene that it's been building up to- he can't do it.

Leo lowers his hand to his side and soundlessly exits the dojo.

Someone screams on the tv as he heads to the kitchen. He plops onto a stool, head falling into his hands as his entire body slumps in defeat. It isn't supposed to be this hard. He needs to get a grip.

Sensei had been the one to fight his brainwashed daughter and throw her down a sewer pipe. The same daughter that he thought died in a fire years ago and then found out was being raised by a psychopath out to kill them. The same daughter that they thought had been lost to her snake mutation.

His father is hurting and he needs to be there for him.

He lowers his hands to the table, staring down at them with fresh betrayal. 

So why couldn't he bring himself to knock?

It's a dumb question. He knows why. The truth just leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

He's talking like she's gone.

They're all talking like she's gone.

Hadn't they gone through this almost a year ago? Under the impression that they'd lost a family member after seeing him chucked into the depths of the sewers?

Not Leo personally. He never knew how blessed he was to not have been there. Hearing the news after waking up from a coma had been bad enough. .

He learned the hard way that witnessing it was an entirely different batch of horrors. Watching your father almost dive in afterward is somehow even worse.

Leo couldn't- wouldn't- lose hope as long as there was a chance. They had seen her fall, but then she'd disappeared. If she was still under Shredder's control then it would make sense that she wouldn't return to them. She'd be returning to a losing battle.

They need to find her again, but he knows that he should talk to Splinter before they begin any new missions. She's his daughter. She's family.

Splinter deserves to know that they haven't given up hope.

Leo sends a sharp look in the direction of the main room as a feminine shriek sounds.

Mouth drawn in a thin line of contemplation, he decides that it can't hurt to come up with some sort of plan first. Get the team on board and prove to their father that they are ready and willing to do whatever it takes.

He rises and makes his way into the main room.

Mikey is sitting far to close to the television as he absently rocks back and forth, hands tucked under his legs to keep him balanced. Raph has a comic, legs crossed and sprawled across the couch with his arm supporting his head. They're in the same positions that they'd been in the last time he'd passed through, acting as if they don't have a care in the world.

He has several choice words for both of them, but he forces himself to breathe.

Neither brother acknowledges his presence, so he addresses them. "Anyone seen Donnie?"