Flowers || Rottmnt!Leo

Five || Dream

One day

Another month and a half. You hadn't seen Leo in over three months. Match after match you fought and took punches and won. If only he could see you now. How pissed he would be you were committing a crime with the skills he had helped you cultivate.

Big Mama had taken a liking to you. The dirty looks from competitors and lavish setting of your penthouse suite made that obvious. But she also offered you advice, brushed off your shoulders when you had a little rubble on them, and took you to bookstores and coffee shops when you both had the time. She'd become sort of a stenage mother figure in Gladius' absence.

What would Gladius think of where you were now?

You hand't had much time to ask yourself how your mom would have reacted to this place. To your life here. You'd been thrown into an apocalypse as soon as you arrived. The thought of Gladius made your heart ache and your mind crawl. Was this what she would have wanted for you?

You growl, anger swelling within your being, sending a nice heel kick to your opponent. Who cared what they thought? They're dead.

When they were down, you pounced on top of them, jamming their head into the ground. Who cared what Leo thinks? He didn't even have the decency to tell you that he hated you, much less hint at it. He just stopped.

Only when arms pried you off of the lifeless body had you realized what you'd done. It happened frequently now. More bodies, everyday, full of life, and leaving lifeless and crumpled inside one another.

Crowds loved it, Big Mama loved it, something inside you wants to love it. But you know it's just suffocation, the feeling of your anger crowding around every thought, clouding each sense you owned until there was nothing left but an animal tearing and ripping at anything it could get its hands on.

You smeared blood off your hands onto your jumpsuit, carefully avoiding the jacket around your shoulders. Gripping the charm around your neck to try and calm your breathing. It's over.

The match is over.

You stalk out of the arena, flinging the doors open and walking down flight after flight of stairs. The Yōkai world blending and giving way to your world. Everything felt simpler here. In the worlds where mystic powers didn't exist and everything had an explanation. There was always an answer, never an equation without a solid answer. No unpredictable power you had to try to clock, you know people.

You didn't know Yōkai, and they weren't anything like humans.

You let out an indignated scream. Life here had just gotten harder since you took this job. But it was something you had to do. Otherwise you were just dead weight on a team that didn't even need you. You're dead weight to everyone. Just another pawn in a game of chess instead of the king.

Not even the king, instead of the fucking rook.

You climb a fireescape and scale another, much smaller roof, staring out over the skyline of New York. You used to dream of looking over this skyline with everyone. Laughing and joking. A dream that had helped you through a year of universe after universe that wasn't this one. Hopelessly and endlessly trying to arrive here. To apologize. To make things right again.

Now it seems you never will.

You pull your knees up to your chest and wrap your arms around them. You wish tears would come, wish they would fall and hit the roof and bloom into realization. But they never left. They wouldn't fall.

You rest your forehead on your knees, trying to bring yourself some sort of comfort, some semblance of balance. But no matter how haggard your breath was, no matter how much you tried to bring thoughts to the surface worth crying over, no tears came.

You tried imagining anyone, anybody other than Leo there to comfort you. But you couldn't. You couldn't imagine anyone else there to comfort you.

"Didn't expect to see you here."

A monotonous voice says. A voice you haven't heard in months. You lift your head, looking back at him. Your eyes cold and your voice stony.

"Didn't expect you to seek me out."

You hear his feet shift, nothing, not even the screaming of cars below you could drown out every movement he made. It was soobvious to you now.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

You stand and turn, pushing past him.

"Figure it the fuck out, Leonardo."

He grabs your wrist and you flip him over, hearing the satisfying crack of his shell against the concrete below your feet. His eyes are wide, and it's obvious he's in pain, but you could care less. You crouch down beside him.

"Why did you come back?" You mock, releasing his arm and walking away, going back to the hotel. He lays there on the floor for a moment before standing, clutching his shoulder and trying to block out the pain on his probably now cracked shell.

Why did you come back?

Why did you come back?

He watches after your shadow as you drop from the roof. He rushes to the ledge, looking down, but you'd vanished. You're gone.

You're the leader, Leo. you can't go off an be irrational, because if you go down? We all go down with you.

He may be the face man, the guy who calls the shots, the one in the chair driving the tank. But there wasn't a way in hell he was the leader. He'd never been the leader. When you're a team there isn't one particular leader. There is someone who looks after everyone else, more than those around you care to admit.

He can't help but wonder if you're still watching over them now, and if you are... why are you lying about it?