Hello, and thank you for clicking on this story. This is the sequel to "The Pressing Future" and while it helps to read that story first, it is not necessary to understand this story (although it'd be lovely). There's no real set time this takes place in, expect early within the time the turtles are allowed on the surface. No pairings, just brotherly awesomeness and worry. Thank you for reading, reviewing, faving, etc. It means a lot.
Onward!
It is not until the light flickers for the fifty-fourth time that Donatello questions how late it is. His smaller workstation, pressed as far into the corner of the living room as possible and currently devoid of his projects, is instead littered with textbooks, journals, and leaflets of his own paper. Pens and pencils lay about, and his third med-kit, the 'heavy duty' one as calls it, is open for him to peruse.
Scalpels sit neatly toward the lower right hand corner, and gauze of all types are within every inch of the box. Sprays, disinfectants, trauma packs and medicine bottles, as well as a plethora of other supplies, lay within. Donatello still sits in wonder at how Splinter accumulated all of this for him, and notes to thank his father again. Assuming he remembers, with lack of sleep and all.
He knows, deep down, that this kit will never see the field. It is too bulky and would impede his every move and strike. Again, he wonders if he should simply relegate it to the 'ward' he has in his mind, knowing the lair still needs one. His mouth dries at the thought of asking Master Splinter for a sick room, fearing that reminding Splinter of what could happen to his sons on the surface could dissuade him from letting them go up at all.
And fifteen mutation days celebrated beneath the city was quite enough, even for him.
Shaking his head, he smiles slightly and pulls at the turtle diagram in front of him. The turtle sits belly up, and Don begins to recount the organs in the picture: the gray lung nestled in the top right, and the sky blue tubing of the ventral abdominal veins. The greenish lobes of the liver. The pink aorta and arteries. Soon the gentle scratching of his pencil is the only sound in the room-
"Sure you should still be up, brainiac?"
Don jumps hard, breath hitching as his hand sends a dark gray line shooting across the page. He whips around, glaring at Raphael who now stands behind Donatello, a smirk on his face. "I mean, I know how terribly interesting all this is, but you don't have a hope of keeping up with me on a good night's sleep, let alone a bad one."
Donatello snorts, turning away and erasing the line streaking across the text. "I'll have you know that I'm studying to keep all of you alive. This is important stuff, you know, and if we're really going to the surface..."
"It's not like you'll be performing surgery on day one, Don." Raph rolls his eyes and Don's mouth snaps shut. Raphael hardly seems to notice his brother's sudden silence, leaning over and pulling the medical kit towards him. "And I know you're not bringing this with you." Raphael's eyes linger on the scalpels, the corners of his mouth twitching before he moves to the turtle picture instead.
Raising an eye ridge, Raph says, "You really aren't performing surgery, Donnie. I don't think you need all of this."
"I might not be doing it on our first outing, but that doesn't mean it's never going to happen!" Donatello shakes his head, pulling the picture back to him to label the remaining organs. His neat writing becomes quick and scratchy, wanting to finish before Raphael can disturb him again.
Raphael leans on the edge of the table and watches as Don fills the page out, eyes unreadable. When Don finally pushes the paper away, reaching for one of the books for a quick refresh of CPR, Raphael asks, "Just what do you think is going to happen up there?"
Donatello freezes, hand rubbing the edge of the book, eyes still on the cover. He swallows, shrugging a bit and shifting his feet beneath the desk. "I-I don't know." Steeling his eyes, he flips the book open. "I mean, what does it matter? It's better to be prepared in case something comes up anyway, right? Sensei wants us all to be ready for the surface. I'm just showing him I am."
This half-truth is strange to Donatello, and the way his brother sighs makes him squirm. "Don't give me that crap, Don. You're a bad liar and you know it." Raphael grabs one of the books, ignoring Don's yelp as he opens it and absently flips through the pages.
"I've seen you with these things for years now. This ain't just about 'looking good' for sensei. Besides, Leo's more of a suck up than you."
"Raph..."
"What? It's true." Raph shrugs, grinning a bit when a smile flashes across Donatello's face. "I'm just saying...you're being awfully paranoid. I mean, come on, the only one of us you'd really have to watch out for is Mikey, and that's cause the freak has the attention span of a gnat. Maybe."
Donatello rolls his eyes, avoiding his brother's gaze. His heart tightens and he wants to walk away from the entire conversation. Something in the back of his mind starts scraping at the edge of his brain the longer he talks with Raph. An itch, a strange and persistent tick, forms in his skull.
Raphael seems to sense the sudden shift in Don, because he throws the book down, making Don jump from the thud that echoes through the room. "So quit hiding behind these things and actually train or something. We all know you need it, and then you might not need to rely on this so much."
Don blinks owlishly but now Raph avoids him, looking across the room. "Besides, Leo's not that bad a fighter. Not as good as me, of course, but still. And I can hold my own in a fight no problem, so quit...I don't know, quit being you!"
Raphael throws his arms in the air and turns away, bouncing his leg but not ready to leave Donatello alone. Don stands from the desk, the chair scraping noisily across the floor. He stares at Raph's shell, rubbing his arm.
"I know you can hold your own."
The itching sensation refuses to leave Donatello. It morphs into a throb and nests in the back of his brain, making it pound. His heart remains tight and he cannot explain why.
"Then quit freaking out."
"I can't."
Raphael finally faces him, tilting his head to the side. "Come on, I'm trying to-"
"I know what you're doing. I think." Donatello attempts to smile. Raphael trying to express his emotions can be like a cat trying to bark. "But, I can't just let this go."
Annoyance flashes in Raph's eyes. "Okay, I'll ask. Why?"
"I just...I can't." Donatello sighs, reaching for one of the books and holding it to his stomach. He reads and rereads the title, not quite taking in what it says.
The painful, hot throbbing spreads to the front of his skull.
"Someone has to worry about this stuff, Raph," he adds eventually.
"And that's you, I'm guessing." Don can't read the tone in Raph's voice. Torn? Annoyed? Worried?
Finally, the title clicks into place: A Catalogue of Ailments, Diseases, and Injuries, and Everything an Aspiring Doctor Needs to Treat Them.
"Yeah," Don says after a long minute. "That's me."
His mind had been warning him, he realizes. Ever since the other day, it sounded off the alarms, bells, whistles, and horns that accompanied the impending disaster of a loved one. But he had dismissed the itch in his hands and brain, which had only grown more severe and irritated as the days passed, as anticipation. His three-digit fingers had burned when he looked at his brothers talking excitedly about going topside, his own mind whispering who was most likely to be injured.
Most bets were on Leo or Raphael. Mikey, despite his over-zealousness and tendency to rush ahead, would have been guarded by the other two should anything come even close to happening. Donatello knows that even if those two failed to protect Mikey, he'd be next to jump in front of the ball of energy. His very core flinches at the idea of letting anything happen to him.
So it comes to no surprise or shock when Donatello finds himself leaning over Raphael in a dark, filthy New York alley, a large gash on his brother's leg and a crack to the skull.
The blood gushing from the head wound is what grabs Don's throat and squeezes.
"You idiot, you idiot, you idiot!" Donatello hovers over his brother, pointedly ignoring the roar Leonardo bellows and the clash and singing of metal that comes after. "You idiot!"
Raphael chuckles, eyes clouded and unfocused. "You're...usually more creative with your insults. Hardly-hardly understand you half the time." His voice fades in and out and Donatello's heart bounces to his throat, clogging his own whimpering.
"Just-just shut up." His shaking hands trace his brother's body, checking for more unseen wounds. Blood slicks his hands when he passes over Raphael's leg, and Donatello's stomach shrivels. Don't own internal noises from the past few days have ceased, leaving a dull silence that leaves him hollow.
Yet his hands work automatically, his body already working on his brother, even though Don cannot fully comprehend it.
Donatello grabs a few bricks in the alley he and his brothers are holed in and props Raphael's foot on top, elevating the injured appendage above the heart. There are a few smaller cuts and gashes, but he ignores them in favor of the head wound, which bleeds profusely but, on closer inspection, is not as deep as Donatello thought. He pulls a bottle of water from his belt and a roll of bandages, shushing Raph as he tries to speak.
"Just shut up, you idiot," he mumbles. It's all he can come up with, his mind still scrambling. He's still not sure what part of his brain has managed to function enough to operate, but he grasps it with all his might.
Tilting Raph's head to the right, he squirts the water into the wound and tears off part of the gauze, wiping dirt, gravel, and already dried blood away from the wound. Gritting his teeth once it's as clean as he can make it, he rolls Raphael's head in bandages, ignoring the hisses he receives for his efforts.
"C-come on, Don. Quit being weird. It ain't...that bad, you wuss." Raph's words are slow and slurred, and Don's chest clenches.
Probably a concussion. Keep him awake, keep him awake.
"Mikey won't let it go. He'll be making fun of you for going down like this." It's mean and he knows it, but Michelangelo can get a rise out of Raphael in his own special way and that's what Donatello needs. The way his brother's eyes search and find nothing scares him in a way nothing else can.
Don moves for the leg, repeating the process of cleaning the cut. It's deeper than the head wound but doesn't bleed like a fountain. There's more dirt though and Don knows when he gets home he'll need to stitch the skin together.
"Better not, or I'll kick his shell," Raph growls. A brief pause, and then Raphael says in a sort of awed voice, "Think of what this would have done to him."
I'd rather not, thanks.
"I'll show him, though. I'm still..." He trails off, groaning, and Don glances at him, then the leg. He pulls out a small bottle of anti-bacterial spray, sending a curtain of it on the wound. Raphael hisses and tries to pull his arm away, snapping at Donatello when he holds it firmly in place.
"I'm sorry, Raph." The panic in his mind quickly recedes and he meets his brother's eyes, not quite seeing him. "I'm sorry. I need to do this. The wound will get infected." And he's putting the bandages around Raph's leg, noting the slowing blood. The ripped green skin. The sweat beading on every inch of his brother's body.
"Watch it, brainiac. Your hands are shaking." Raphael's voice is far away, but Don steadies his hands and apologizes again. Raphael snorts, blinking hard and finding Donatello's gaze again. "I'll let Spike kick your butt if you mess this up."
Donatello tightens the last of the gauze, tying it off. His eyes linger on the blood still oozing through the white before returning to Raph's head, checking once more for any injuries while trying to smile. His hand strays to the leg wound and he presses down, willing the bleeding to stop. "I'm sure he'd take me down hard."
"Better believe...it. Learned from the best..." Raph's voice fades in and out again and Don panics, slapping him across the face before he can even think about it. Raphael's eyes snap open, a snarl on his lips. "The shell!" He even makes to move, but Donatello pushes him back down, ignoring his brother's growl. In the corner of his eye, he spots Leo and Mikey running toward them, a pile of Kraang pushed into the far end of the alley.
"I'm so gonna get you when we get back, you hear me?" Raph says, voice low. His fight rapidly leaves his eyes though, hand going for the gash at the back of his head.
Above them, Mikey says with a shaky voice, "Glad to hear Raph's okay after all."
Leo kneels beside Raph and catches Don's eyes. Taking a deep breath, Don mouths, "We need to get him home" and Leo nods in agreement.
"Okay then, Raph. Who do you want to carry you home?" Leo asks, Donatello nodding at his words. Again, Raph's eyes flash and he swears.
"I don't need to be carried! I can get home fine on my own! Just you watch." He puts his hands to the ground and starts pushing up, but Don grabs him and hauls his arm over his shoulder, growling at him.
"Not on that leg, you're not. One of us is taking you and that's that. And if you don't stop, we'll let it be Mikey."
"Hey!"
Raphael just groans, leaning into Donatello. "Might as well be you then," he mutters. "That way you can mother hen the entire way back. And I thought I only had to worry about Leo doing that."
"Yeah, sure, talk smack to the turtle that just saved your butt."
But he shifts Raphael so the injured leg hardly, if ever, touches the ground. Raphael's weight digs into his side and leaves his muscles aching when they start winding through the alleys and down into the sewers, but he is able to watch Raphael the whole trek back. Jostle him when he gets too quiet and check the leg for extra bleeding, the bandages for tearing, and any other things that could possibly go wrong.
His worry for his brother lets him escape his pounding, terrified heart.
The first time Raphael awakens, he's in a fog. Colors swirl around him and dinner churns in choppy waves, gurgling in his stomach. Familiar voices and a flash of light is all he's aware of.
"Okay, Raph. You can sleep now. We'll wake-"
His eyes slide closed and he's gone.
The second time, he's more aware. He recognizes Donnie's lab, the lights dimmed and many off. A hand on his shoulder draws his attention, his eyes focusing on the brown of his brother's irises. Raphael's head aches and throbs and Donnie sees it Raph's eyes, shaking his head and turning away. Seconds later, Don thrusts a glass of water and aspirin into his hands, easing Raph up and waiting until he takes the medicine. Raph bites his cheek, holding back the protest of being babied and settling on a glare.
"Oh, don't look at me like that. Humor me, okay?" Raph rolls his eyes, blinking at soft snoring coming from the right side of his cot. He looks around, tilting his head at a sleeping Michelangelo. His little brother has folded himself in a plastic chair, hands wrapped awkwardly around his middle and drool dribbling from his mouth.
"He's been here for the last few hours. He wouldn't leave, even though I said you'd be fine. Even made him sit through a detailed explanation as to how you'd be just fine. So I made him promise not to touch anything while he was in here," Don explains before Raph can ask. "He even watched while I did your stitches. It was kind of creepy."
"I've got stitches?" Their the first words Raph's said in hours and his throat burns for the effort. Donnie points down to his leg and sure enough, there's a line of neatly knitted, black stitching spanning the length of his thigh. He feels an odd sort of pride for it but doesn't want it to show on his face. Raph can already feel a lecture from Donatello coming, and he doesn't want to make it worse.
"How do you feel? Remember much? How badly does your head hurt? I need to know before the meds start working." Donnie ticks of the questions and Raphael snorts, looking away.
"I feel fine. I only remember a little bit. I've had worse." Donatello scowls at him but Raphael pretends not to notice, looking around the lab instead. In truth, his stomach has begun twisting oddly whenever he meets his brother's eyes. It feels too much like being in trouble with Splinter and Raph hates it; he wants nothing more than to get out of Don's lab and into his own bed, but as he makes to move, Don swoops over him and pushes him back to the cot.
"No, you don't. You're here for the rest of the night, like it or not."
"But Don, I said I'm-"
"A concussion is not fine, Raph. Passing out before we get to the lab also isn't fine. Needing stitches up your leg and on your skull isn't fine!" Raph's eyes widen at this and he touches the back of his head. He feels bumps and the skin is tight and rough to his fingers. An extra presses makes him wince-it's tender too.
Donnie swats Raph's hand away, hissing. "Don't touch them!"
Mikey shifts in his chair but otherwise remains asleep. Both brothers watch him with apprehension, Donnie's shoulders slumping when he realizes Mikey's still out.
"Where's Leo?" Raph asks, brushing his fingers over his skull when Donatello turns away.
"I sent him to bed a half hour ago. It's hard enough to work in here with three bodies. I didn't need another. Besides, he looked like he needed some sleep." Donnie shudders at the anger he had seen in Leo's face, even after the Kraang had been sliced by his swords.
Don faces Raphael again, his eyes still hard. "But that's not what I'm talking about. You got hurt, Raph. Bad. But you're acting like nothing happened and it's-"
"What! You want me to be freaked out then?" Raph glances at Mikey when he hears his own voice echoing loudly in the lab, whipping back to Donatello and growling low.
"No, I don't want you freaked out. I just need you to realize how important it is for you to answer my questions accurately. I need to make sure you're better, and that's hard to do when you're trying to act like a tough guy," Don manages in an angry whisper. Donatello's eyes are bright with a different kind of anger and Raphael has to push down the instinct to bite back.
Silence falls between them and Raphael watches Donatello work, bringing more bandages, band-aids, and medical tape out to replace the ones for his less serious wounds. As he studies his brother, he can see the way Don's hands tremble slightly as he sticks another band-aid on Raph's knee. Donatello's headband is also slipping off his head, the knot loose. The circles Raph spots under Donatello's eyes leave a pit in Raph's stomach and he bites back a groan.
What am I supposed to say to that?
But Donatello can't seem to take the silence either. "I mean...you really just-Mikey wouldn't keep his mouth shut. He kept talking about how it was his fault it happened and how you were going to wind up with brain damage or something." Raphael's chest chills at Don's words, but Don quickly adds, "Not that it was happening. And I explained that to him. But it didn't stop him from hovering over everything I did."
Don's voice is tight and Raph's stomach curls into a smaller ball. He narrows his eyes at his lap, Don continuing absently. "And Leo kept saying how much harder we'd have to train and make sure this never happened again. And-I mean, it's going to. It's unavoidable, right? We're ninjas, we're going to get into fights and we're going to get hurt. But I'll fix us up!"
The last few words seem more to Donatello than Raph, but he listens hard, face blanking. "This was what all of those late nights with those med books were about. I'll get better at this. I mean, I think the stitching won't leave a scar. I tried to do it neatly. But Leo is right. We need to be more careful. And that includes you. Okay?"
Donnie sighs before Raphael can answer, standing up and rubbing his face. His shoulders slump and there's stumble to his walk. Donatello's exhaustion is painfully clear and Raphael realizes that he's been Don's first real patient. Shell...Donnie, what do you want from me?
Raphael stares at his brother's shell, Don flopping into a computer chair and pulling his laptop over. "You should get some sleep," Don says, dimming the monitor and lightly tapping the keys. "I'll wake you up in another few hours."
Donatello doesn't expect Raph to say anything, but the need to do so only intensifies. Raph fists his hands and looks toward the ceiling, squinting his eyes at the light. Eventually he closes his eyes and lies back down, turning away so Donnie can't see him.
"Thanks, brainiac." Raph curls a bit, closing his eyes. "I appreciate it."
The claking of the keys stop and Raphael forces himself to breathe normally. He pictures Donnie holding his breath, his eyes wide, and must push down the urge to look. A full minute passes before a sigh leaves Donnie, and Raph's chest clenches.
"Of course." A pause, and Donnie adds with a small smile. "I'll always be here to patch you up."
Raphael grunts. His body relaxes. Soon he drifts back to sleep feeling like he's done something important, but isn't entirely sure what it is.
Donnie's hands stop shaking for the first time in hours.