It’s not easy being the leader.
Sure I try to make it look easy to everyone else, but it’s really hard for me to pretend.
My leadership makes me slightly more detached from my brothers. I’m still close with them, but I can’t let loose and goof off the same way they can. Most of my spare time is spent training or meditating because I need to be the best I can be for them.
Every time I give an order during a fight I’m painfully aware that if anything goes wrong then it’s my fault. Every time one of my brothers gets injured I feel guilty for not being able to stop it, so far no one’s got hurt too badly, but our lives are so dangerous now that one wrong move could cost us our lives.
I never tell my family how difficult I find it being the leader; it wouldn’t be fair to them. Master Splinter would feel guilty for giving me the position, and my brothers would either challenge me more or try to take some of my burden onto themselves.
Raph stopped challenging my leadership years ago; even he realized that the pressure was too much for him to take. I let him believe that I can handle it easily: I’ve never said a word to him about my insecurities, though he knows I don’t like it when he goes out with Casey. I don’t like the fact that I haven’t got his back during the fights the two of them find on the surface.
Surprisingly Mikey pointed out to me that it must be hard to lead them, he’d read enough comic books about superheroes having similar apprehensions to at least partly understand what I was going through. I didn’t say much to him, Mikey may be the most childish out of all of us, but he’s also the most emotional. He’d worry about me if he knew the full picture.
Sure, Mikey can be annoying as hell sometimes, but I think we all secretly agree that his never-ending energy and mirth can be a welcome distraction from our isolated lives underground.
Master Splinter has helped me a lot, but even he doesn’t know how bad I suffer with this burden. He pulls me aside for extra training and to take tea in his room. We talk and I sometimes let him see the tip of the iceberg: he knows that it’s hard to keep my brothers in line, but I don’t let him know how difficult it is for me.
Donnie is the only person I can trust to keep this to himself and not be too badly affected by it. Our family relies on our resident genius and doctor as much as our team relies on their leader. Donnie has always been into science and machinery, and I honestly don’t know if we’d still be here without him.
Growing up we hadn’t had anything but the sewers and each other. I don’t know how Donnie learned to do it, but somehow he’d managed to fix and old heater we’d found in the dump, tapping straight into the cities electricity. After that he became our life line, keeping the heater working and managing to find a way to patch up the broken bulbs so we weren’t in total darkness anymore.
I usually went with our father to scavenge to food, and because of that I picked up the best ways to avoid being seen quicker than my brothers; maybe that was why I was chosen to be the leader?
As soon as I got the position I started training myself harder, making sure that I was good enough to live up to the title.
Part of me still misses those days; being leader was easier back then. We never went to the surface unless we needed to hunt for food, and then we came straight back down. We weren’t in any life threatening situations, or any real danger of being seen.
I’d briefly joked about my stress once to Donnie, an off-hand comment about “You should try keeping Raph in line” or something like that, I can’t really remember it clearly.
Donnie just smiled and said that he wouldn’t be able to do that, he’d told me that he was amazed that I could deal with the stress so easily.
That was all I needed for the floodgates to open, I poured my heart out onto Donnie, and he just absorbed everything in that calm clinical way of his. He only said anything if I asked him a direct question, and then it was just what he needed to say before encouraging me to continue, gently questioning me to make sure I wasn’t holding back.
I felt guilty for telling him everything, but the fact that he stayed calm, with that surprisingly comforting sympathetic smile of his helped a lot.
When I was done he asked if I felt better, and I was embarrassed to admit that I did. If he noticed my embarrassment he didn’t say anything, just told me that he was always there if I needed to talk to someone.
Only he wasn’t.
Whenever he starts a new project he becomes so engrossed in it that he doesn’t even realize that his family is in the same room as him, he doesn’t say a word to us, just isolates himself on his computer.
If I feel like I need to talk to him I have to wait until he decides to take a break, or manage to get to him in between his projects and training.
During our brief chats he lets slip his own fears and insecurities; who would keep everything running if something happened to him? What would happen if he was the one to be badly hurt and unable to give his brothers the medical attention that they needed? We all have a basic understanding of first-aid, but only Donnie is able to fix the more serious injuries.
I listen to everything he say and tried to help him out the best I can.
Our mutual counseling sessions help a lot, but I still can’t reach him unless he comes to me.
I started leaving my mask next to his computer, when he finally saw it was there he’d come to me to return it and I could grab him for a quick chat. The other started noticing this though, and Donnie and I silently agreed to keep our meetings to ourselves, the others wouldn’t understand how important they were for us.
On my way to the kitchen I slip a paper crane that I’d made onto the side of his desk. Ever since Master Splinter taught us as children I’ve found the simple origami figure peaceful, Raphael stopped making comments about it when he saw the paper figures that I use to decorate my room. It’s one of the few hobbies I let myself indulge in.
I sense someone watching me as I grab a water bottle out of the fridge, turning around I instantly look towards Donatello’s work station.
The frustrated look that he usually wore while working on a difficult project was gone. He smiled softly at the paper crane that he held in his hand, eye’s flicking up to meet mine with an understanding gaze. With a quick nod he signals that he’s understood my message.
He puts the crane back on the desk as his attention turns back to his computer, no longer looking quite as frustrated as he did before.
I casually make my way to the dojo, glad that my crane could give Donnie some form of peace, and wait for my genius brother to meet me for our usual chat.
