The creak of the floorboards outside his door told Leonardo everything he needed to know.

His visitor was light-footed and decisive, their preceding footsteps full of purpose but no particular urgency, and there was only a polite second's delay before the confident rapping of knuckles against wood.

"Perry," he acknowledged, uncrossing his legs and rising fluidly to his feet. "Come in." It wasn't like his attempts to find a peaceful centre within the four scored walls of his own mind had been a success anyway. In truth, any distraction from the frustrating effort of trying came as a welcome relief.

The door whispered open.

"One day," the intruder said, "I'm gonna find some high heels or platform shoes or something, and make you get it wrong."

Of Leonardo's trusted rebel cadre, Perry was his closest second. Ordinarily the man was focused and quiet - a personal quality Leonardo appreciated a lot, naturally - but they'd been working together for a while now, and he was comfortable letting his dry sense of humour slip free on occasion.

Leonardo let him have a generous half-smile. "Announcing your strategy to the enemy in advance? I taught you better than that."

Perry snorted, and those firm footfalls carried him into the room. "Night squad just got back from the O'Neil dead drop. All quiet, no problems." Subtle sound and the displacement of air around him made it easy for Leonardo to track the movement; his head followed attentively along in a way that always made his freshest recruits erupt into furtive whispers about whether his disability was just a ninja ruse.

"Nice work. Anything useful?"

"I'm getting the team ready to run through the intel right now. Cassie's decrypting the secure stuff. The Commander's tips are usually gold though. Came to ask you to join us, but first . . ."

A soft thump against the small table he kept in his digs.

"There were some personal missives for you."

Apprehension blared behind Leonardo's plastron, a foghorn's scream made physical. His face felt tight with it and he wondered just how much leaked out into his stoic expression. He made no move to approach the table.

" . . . Thanks. I'll be along in a minute."

A bootheel turned slowly against floorboards . . . but the ensuing steps paused unexpectedly in the doorway.

"More letters, right?" Perry's voice didn't wear hesitation well or often, but his second must have known he was violating an unspoken rule with this gambit. "I know I offered before, but I can still read them for you, if you want. The contents wouldn't leave this room." A pause. Then, more confidently: " . . . You can trust me, Leo."

The sincerity in the man's words only drove that crushing weight harder against his chest. Leonardo let out a slow, deep breath through his nose. "I know. That'll be all, Perry."

He waited for the door to close and for Perry's footsteps to recede from the corridor outside. Hard to tell if there was disappointment or hurt in that walk; Perry's movements were always so efficient and clipped at the best of times. Maybe it'd be better if there was. Wouldn't do for any of them to think too highly of him, or get too close. After six years of operating together, Leonardo and his team were a well-oiled machine, but that machine had a purpose, a focus. The mission came first now, always. Everything else was a dangerous distraction. They'd joined him because they understood that. Even if he respected each soldier, even if he cared about their safety and bonded with them through combat and struggle, they weren't . . . they could never be -

Family.

The package glared at him. Funny how he could feel that without looking at it. He moved closer until one slightly elevated hand closed neatly over the wooden edge of the tabletop. Took another deep breath before he reached for what Perry had left behind.

His fingers found and traced the rough edges of a slightly battered cardboard box. It was pretty small, and the tape sealing the top was easily parted with the point of a shuriken from his belt. He let his hands rest either side of the open parcel for a second, staring sightlessly down at the contents.

Excruciating as this was, there was no time to be delicate about it with Perry and the team waiting for him. Leonardo sighed, and plunged his hands into the container. Another flimsier, smaller box was the first thing he touched; when he lifted it out and gently shook it, there was a familiar soft, scrunchy rustle from within.

Leonardo forgot himself for a moment, a fond smile getting the better of his face. He squeezed the end of the box and drew the resulting gap in the cardboard closer to his nose, where the unmistakable sharp, grassy smell of green tea leaves hit him in a wave.

She knew him so well. Where had she even managed to find -

Guilt came crashing back down, guillotining his delight. He frowned as he set the tea box aside, wondering if the morass of shame in his gut would make it taste too bitter. Maybe if he shared it with his team, he wouldn't have to think too hard about where it came from.

The only other item in the box was a crinkled envelope. Anticipatory dread had built to a climax by the time he pulled it out, but . . . this one didn't feel like another letter. There was weight to the packet, a solid lump sliding around inside the paper - and into his palm when he tore open the seal.

It was cold plastic, rectangular, and when he ran his thumb down the sides, a few chunky linear bumps jumped out against his skin. Buttons? Some kind of device? He wasn't exactly a tech guru, but it seemed simple enough. There was one large button on a long edge of the device, followed by a short gap, and then three in sequence that stabbed him with a long-forgotten memory of using a walkman. He punched the middle one of the three - play, right?

A spurt of white noise burst from tinny speakers he still hadn't quite expected to be there.

"Hey, Uncle Leo -"

He dropped it. It clattered against the table, skittered to the floorboards - and the ancient spirit of a voice kept talking throughout, though the words and their meanings couldn't penetrate Leonardo's sudden flood of startled panic. He stumbled down onto his knees and swept his hands over the ground, trying to find the damn thing with his ears even as he fought desperately hard not to listen.

He cracked his head against the table edge before his palm finally glanced across the unyielding plastic. Another age of fumbling at the side of the thing with digits so much larger than those of any intended human user, praying that the 'play' button was also the 'stop' button.

He pinched it viciously with his thumb.

Silence.

But the shock of it, and all the painful memories of his greatest personal failure, continued to ring through him like the resounding echoes of a bell tower.

He ran, of course. Gingerly left the device sitting on the table and backed out of the room, telling himself all the way that he should deal with this later, that his team was waiting for him. There was so much to do, and all of it always seemed so much more important than sitting and dwelling on the consequences of past decisions.

If his comrades had any opinions on the slightly breathless way he entered the strategy room, they kept them to themselves. He settled in quickly, anyway. It was all too easy to lose himself in the details of April's new intel. There were new patrols to waylay, good safehouse locations to scout out, potential supply lines to the Shredder that could be cut off, suspicious pockets of Foot activity in his immediate vicinity that needed eyes on it ASAP. The session was gruelling, intense, but he and his team emerged from it with several weeks' worth of action plans.

It was important work. It mattered. He could do something about it.

Unlike the recorder he could feel silently judging him when he returned alone to his room several hours later.

Leonardo was tired. They'd fought already today, a small enforcer skirmish on the outskirts of what his rebel cell nominally called 'their' territory, and strategising when you had to do all the work in your own head - consulting and updating extensive mental maps, paying extra close attention to the way things were described to you, and asking so many questions other people wouldn't need to - was no idle feat. But he'd never sleep unless he addressed the problem waiting for him on the table.

He made tea first. That was probably a mistake. When the crisp, fresh scent of brewed green tea swirled around his small room, a thousand treasured impressions of Master Splinter crystallised in his mind. The ache deep inside his ribcage was unbearable then, almost enough to make him turn tail and leave his digs entirely, but he waited it out. The intensity softened after an arduous second, its power eroded by so much time and distance. Grimacing, he took the hot cup and the device the short distance to his mattress.

The button to the left of the one he'd pressed first had to be rewind. Leonardo held it until the device clicked, braced himself . . . and hit play.

"Hey, Uncle Leo! It's me, Shadow. Look what I found! Well -"

Pause. Leonardo had almost forgotten the cheerful voice that sprang out of the device - hadn't heard it since he'd last set foot on the O'Neil resistance base. Naturally his niece sounded a little older now, a little more sure of herself . . . not that she'd ever been lacking in brash confidence. She'd be, what . . . fourteen? Fifteen now? As her voice washed over him it ignited vivid memories like beacons in his mind. The flash of intensely blue eyes in a head of dark hair. The warmth of a small hand grabbing his. The irrepressible life in a stream of childish laughter. The vivid energy of her animated form - lightning trapped in the shape of a girl.

What threw him the most was how she talked as if they'd only spoken last week. As if nothing had happened. As if he hadn't just . . . up and walked away.

He didn't deserve that.

Leonardo squeezed the cup until the hot water burned his fingers, and forced himself to continue.

"- technically Angel found it. She dug this thing out of a wrecked electronics store last week. Says it's called a dictaphone or something? She also said it was pretty ancient technology even before the war, so you'd probably love it."

A huff of startled laughter irritated his lungs. He took a sip of tea to calm the resultant annoying cough.

"Isn't this great, though!? I felt bad sending you letters when I know you can't read 'em by yourself. Maybe this will work better? So uh, how are you? I hope you're doing okay." Her self-deprecating laugh bubbled over the audio. "Wow, this sounds terrible. It's way harder than writing. Maybe I should write up some notes next time so I'm not just all blah blah gibbering at you and stuff. But I guess I'm just gonna tell you what's been going on with me! You know I'm not allowed to say much about resistance stuff, but I've been on five more missions since my last letter. I'm practically a hardened pro now! Well, I haven't seen a whole lot of combat so far. After what happened on my first assignment I . . ."

Shadow's voice ambled on, too bright and full of vigour - and with every oblivious reference to a past event he didn't know about, one thing became painfully clear:

She assumed he'd found a way to read every letter.

Truth was, he'd never read a single one.

Leonardo had been able to read for himself the enthusiastic child's scrawl of his name on the very first envelope that arrived, but his decision to quit April's base, to extract himself from his family like removing poison from an infected wound, had still been too raw back then. He'd stowed the letter away in his belongings, promising himself and Shadow that he'd read it when he didn't feel like the words therein would be acid thrown against his resolve.

The letters were relentless, though. A routine shiv of guilt and mortification hitting him every handful of months. Each time he would carefully store it with the others, waiting for that moment when maybe it wouldn't hurt so much to be reminded of everything he'd abandoned. It would come - it had to, right? But the fear in the pit of his stomach returned after every mission, every gunfight, every strategy session, every deadly day and merciless night until -

Darkness. Permanent, unforgiving darkness.

Leonardo had lost his chance. And while his burned lungs remembered how to breathe properly and he learned to live with the vague flickers of light against nothing that passed for his new visual normal, the influx of letters stopped. It was the only break in his niece's passionate barrage of communication he'd ever known, and it had to be permanent.

He deserved for it to be permanent.

But he'd been back on active duty maybe a week before Perry handed him yet another rumpled envelope. Had it been held back by his own troops until he was well enough to deal with it? Or had Shadow decided to give him space during his recovery, then jumped on the fact that he was back in the fight? Leonardo didn't know the answer. He just remembered standing there blankly, the texture of the crinkled paper an intense burst of sensation between his fingers, when Perry offered to read it for him.

His 'no' had been firmer the second time, and Perry hadn't asked a third. Not until today, at least. Leonardo didn't know what was so special about today. It was like any other miserable day in post-invasion New York. He didn't know what about it had made him try pouring the tea, or giving the message on the dictaphone a chance.

He did know he missed his family much more than he could ever miss his sight. Listening to the ghost on the recording wasn't so much a knife in the heart as a hand jostling the one already buried there. Agony . . . but there was a bittersweet relief there, too. As if some part of him knew that having a hand on the hilt at all was the first step toward pulling the blade clean out.

So he soaked it in, gradually draining his tea. Shadow talked mostly about her own exploits and experiences with a breathless enthusiasm that wore him out just listening to it, but occasionally her mother and Michelangelo would make the cut. Tiny, innocuous mentions of them that made the guilt sweep over him anew, but Leonardo stuck it out until her voice finally lapsed into a thoughtful pause.

" . . . I think . . . that's all I can think of. Never a dull day here, huh, Uncle Leo? Uh, so I wanna do another one of these for you next time, but um . . ."

Another pause, this one pensive. Hesitant.

"Well, I guess there's this teeny tiny catch? This is the only dictaphone I've got. And right now you have it. So . . . if you wanna keep getting messages from me? You're gonna have to send it back when you're done, so I can record new ones. Does that sound okay? I mean, I know you're really busy, so . . . whenever you have time is totally fine? No rush, no rush."

The brassy confidence in her voice had hollowed out, a threadbare veil over sudden vulnerable hesitation - and an incredibly fragile hope that brought a lump to his throat and a stinging to his eyes. Letters were passive - she could assume he read them even if he never replied. But she was genuinely afraid he wouldn't return the recorder. Afraid that it would prove all of her efforts to reach out to him over the years had just been screaming into the void.

She didn't even bother to suggest he record a message back. All she wanted was the bare minimum from him, the most basic evidence that he existed and was still giving her the time of day, and she wasn't even sure he would manage that much.

That she was so right to question it hurt the most.

Did she write letters to Raphael, too? He knew his tempest of a brother had left the O'Neil base some time after him, and if Shadow could treat her Uncle Leo with affectionate impunity then surely that extended to Uncle Raphie. Raph had never been one for words, though, and the idea of the surly turtle writing replies back to her couldn't find any kind of sensible fit in his thoughts.

That left Leonardo with a heartbreaking image of her growing up, desperately scrawling out messages to her unreachable uncles, never getting any kind of response . . .

But continuing to try anyway.

"Love you, Uncle Leo," Shadow wistfully finished. "Stay safe out there. Shadow out."

Leonardo stopped the recording, and spent a solid minute blackly hating his own cowardly guts. He couldn't pretend there wasn't a part of him wanting to keep the dictaphone here - or outright destroy it. That would be a decisive end to it all, wouldn't it? An end to the wallowing, to the anchor of his family still dragging at his heart no matter how much distance he fought to put between them. An end to the distractions.

The plastic felt brittle in his hand. He could crush it in his palm, no problem.

It would only cost his niece's broken heart.

"Come oooon, Commander!"

April's groan worked in tandem with an eyeroll that almost made a three-sixty degree tour of her sockets.

"Don't 'Commander' me, Shadow." The rebel leader took the dead drop box from her obstinate daughter and set it on the table.

"I'm being professional."

"No, you're just trying to make a point." April kept one eye on the girl - all folded arms and impatient scowl - as she tore open the package and began to sort through the contents. "You're doing really well. I know you think you're being given dud assignments, but they're still important ones. It's not all about big firefights and taking down enemy strongholds. The resistance couldn't function at all without all these small, critical tasks being done well. You're helping, making a difference. You should be proud of yourself, sweetie."

The veneer of budding, fearless rebel cracked a little and the child beneath shone through, blue eyes gleaming at the praise. A short-lived reprieve, however - she soon tucked that vulnerability away again where nobody but her mother could see it.

"But, Mom, you know you can't keep wasting Mike on babysitting me through baby missions that are for babies," Shadow pouted. "You need him for more important stuff! Angel said she'd take on me and Josie for training in her squad as long as we -"

"I know what Angel said, Shadow," April laughed lightly. "Believe it or not, she asked me before she told you, because she reports to me and she respects my decisions, even when she doesn't like them. Unlike a certain pain-in-the-butt who shall remain nameless."

Her daughter sighed. "So the answer's no?"

She wasn't wrong about Mike. The only time April felt even vaguely safe letting Shadow out on rebel business was when her uncle was there with her, watching her back . . . but Michelangelo was her most skilled and competent personnel asset in the uprising against Ch'rell. She couldn't focus him in the right places if he was spending too much time training Shadow. Something had to give.

"My answer is that I'm going to consider it very fairly, and talk to Josie's mom about it, and I'll let you know as soon as I've made my decision, okay?"

A dejected murmur of "fine" was the only response Shadow issued. The teenager turned to leave, stuffing her hands in the pockets of her hoodie, and had almost reached the door when April called back to her.

"Wait - there's something here for you, Shadow."

She whirled, jogging back to the table. April heard the sharp intake of breath when she dangled the envelope in front of Shadow's widening eyes; the girl's name was on the front, in the very careful, well-spaced lettering of someone who can't see what they're writing.

The envelope was weighed down at the bottom by a rectangular lump. Shadow opened it reverently, careful not to tear it as she deposited its contents into her palm. The look on her face wasn't one April got to see very often these days - unguarded childish wonder, a soft delight reserved for those times mother and daughter got to spend any real quality time together, or when she caught the girl bonding with Michelangelo.

Or when Raphael broke his silence and sent her those rare, sporadic gifts of his.

Shadow clutched the old dictaphone to her chest in both hands and beamed.

"He's listening."

A/N:

I borrowed Flynne's rebel character, Perry, for this, and the premise builds on Flynne's SAINW fic and RP scenarios we've worked with previously. So, essentially, it's all Flynne's fault.

You can visit Flynne at AO3 or here at , which is where the turtles are :3 but all Flynne fic is good fic 3