"More importantly, I'm better than you."
Leo can’t allow himself to think logically about his time away, because he realizes that if he does, he’s fucked. He’s just gotta keep plugging away, hoping enlightenment eventually comes. He can’t allow himself to want the enlightenment, really, because wanting that doesn’t make him a Leader; it makes him who he’s always been. It doesn’t change him in any meaningful way to give into those feelings, the loneliness and sense of abandonment.
And I think by the time April finds him, the tether to his sanity is so weathered that it just… snaps, and he snatches the opportunity he’s been waiting for to Come Back Home, even though he’s mentally still in the same place he was 3 months ago, 5 months ago, 24 months ago. Nothing’s changed. He’s just for one single solitary second allowed himself to give into a Want.
And then when he does come back, Splinter immediately enables the behavior and gives him the congratulations he’d been trying to earn alone across the world for fucking? Who knows how long? And it confuses the hell out of him, because he doesn’t feel like he’s really done anything, but it emboldens him just enough to where he feel comfortable continuing this maladaptive pattern of convincing himself of the things he thinks need to be true in order to help him lead his family.
So, Splinter says: you are much stronger; you have learned a great deal; you are honored as the leader of the clan. And Leo has to believe him because… Splinter isn’t wrong. Splinter’s never wrong about stuff like this. Maybe he sees something in Leo that Leo doesn’t see in himself yet. And even though Leo isn’t convinced, he has to get his brothers to see it, too.
But Mikey and Don don’t need to be convinced. They’re both just happy he’s back; they barely cared about his personal growth, or his mission, or whatever it was he was doing out there. And they know it was important, of course (of course!), but they just wanted him back. They just missed him as a person, as a brother.
Raph is the only brother who wants to know what the fuck he was doing out there, and Leo never answers him because??? Leo doesn’t have an answer! So, instead of finding an answer, Leo just lays out orders, projects all of that failure he feels onto Raph instead. He doesn’t mean to do this, but he is still too confused about his time away and he doesn’t understand why this isn’t a lot easier for him. He has to believe that he’s special, because that’s how he’s treated by Splinter, and Splinter is his church, basically; he’s the source of Leo’s entire belief system.
His brothers have spent the last two odd years piddling around like they’re stuck in some dream world, seemingly doing whatever they want, and one of them is running around Breaking Rules. And Leo doesn’t break the rules. Leo always follows the rules—except for that entire time when he wasn’t (but that was different, right? That was because he was on a mission for something he never really found), so that has to mean that Leo is Right and Raph is Wrong.
Leo can break rules, but Raph can’t. Splinter said so. And Splinter isn’t doing anything about the Raph Situation, which means it’s up to Leo to convince Raph to stop, to parent him, to be that guide for him (even though Leo can barely guide himself).
Of course, it doesn’t matter how good at strategy Leo is; he cannot navigate them out of the struggles of young adulthood, because Leo himself has not grown the way he needed to. But, well, he’s still better suited for this than any of them. It’s obvious. Because what were they all doing while he was gone? Raph is going rogue, for chrissakes, and he hasn’t taken the time or done all the crazy amount of work that Leo has had to put in to accomplish that.
Raph’s not ready to try and change shit around the city, and, okay, Leo isn’t prepared to claim that he is either—but if Leo isn’t ready, then certainly Raph isn’t, right? Raph can’t be any more ready than Leo isn’t.
Leo is better at this than Raph. He’s better than Raph at everything. Leo is just better—
