.:Author's Note:. This three-part story is set in an alternative AU timeline. The regular canon storyline has been drastically altered due to events early in the story. Though the story is technically set in the 2k3 universe, with 2k3 characters, the story could be from any universe. Feel free to picture any generation of turtles here! The story has not been beta'd, so feel free to point out any mistakes.
Disclaimer: The characters and rights of this story belong to Eastman and Laird and their respective copyright labels. This is purely a not-for-profit fan story.
Warnings: Tragic events, PTSD, neglect/abuse, foul language (mostly Raph, sorry), and violence
The Things We Carried
Part One
…
Things were different once.
We were a family. A true family. Mikey, the little ball of energy, always smiling and joking. He carried our hearts. Donatello, the brains of the bunch, with more smarts than anyone in the city, turtle or not. He carried our minds. Me, well, I was ever the trouble-maker, hot-headed and impulsive. I probably carried the spirit of this family. And Leo. Leo was the sage one, always listening to master Splinter, always working twice as hard as everyone else, doing twice as many katas. He looked out for us all, ever wise and vigilant. It's no wonder Splinter chose him as leader. Hell, I would've, even if I whined about it at first. Everyone wants to be a leader, but not everyone is born for it. Leo was. He carried us all.
But we were too young when it happened. A huge quake hit the lair. The Foot had found us, and bombed the supports. Everything was coming down, and when we tried to escape, they were everywhere. We were outnumbered twenty-to-one, but we fought like demons. Eventually, it was too much. Mikey was knocked out, and Donny nearly lost an eye. Splinter ordered us to flee, find somewhere safe deeper into the sewers. We didn't listen, of course. Leo – that must've been the first time he disobeyed a direct order from Splinter – just fought twice as hard. He tried to convince Splinter to come with us. But they were too many. The elites showed up, and then Shredder. It wasn't even fair. Splinter slapped Leo hard, and ordered us to leave again. He stuffed us into a pipeline in the walls and disappeared into a sea of black. The last thing I remember seeing was the Shredder's metal gauntlet, thrust victoriously in the air, dripping with red.
Then Leo pulled Mikey onto his back and ordered me to help Donny, and we escaped through the tunnels.
We wandered for what felt like days. Not resting for fear that they would find us. Not eating, because we had nothing. Finally, we found a place – some kind of abandoned tram station caved in except in two areas, both of which we patched with grate. Leo tirelessly tended to us, our wounds, our needs. He left us only twice to go topside for food, foraging from grocery dumpsters for expired sandwiches and dented cans of soup. Then, when everyone was taken care of, he disappeared into one of the rooms and didn't come out for days.
We figured it was his way of mourning. Leo and his responsibility-complex. He always feels this imperative need to shoulder all the fault, all the burden. If he'd just opened up to us, maybe things would have been different. Maybe he wouldn't have been driven so far into… well, it doesn't matter now.
At first, we tried to reach out to him. He wouldn't join us for meals, so we left the cold sandwiches and watery soup by his door. Come the next day, the plates would be empty, so we knew he was eating, but there was nothing else. Mikey and Donny and I mourned together. Mikey was hit hardest. He'd been out of it when Splinter had gone down, so all he could do was try to convince us that Splinter needed us, that we needed to go back and save him. But after a few days, it began to sink in. Splinter wasn't coming back. We were on our own. Donatello was stricken, in his own way. He was silent and listless. He occupied himself by building things from the junk around the sewers and the station. He was the first who began trying to create a new home for us, even if it was just a couple moldy carpets and a half-functioning toilet, and blankets sewn from patches of fabric picked up here and there to soften the floor.
After several days like this, Leo finally came back.
Well, he never really came back. Not entirely. I think something in him broke with Splinter's death. But maybe he was already broken, and he just couldn't put himself back together this time.
Leo refused to involve Casey or April at first – they were being closely monitored by the Foot, so aside from a letter of reassurance that we'd made it out safe, we lost communication for several months. April wasn't too happy about that. She wasn't too happy about Leo, either. I think she knew something was wrong.
Leo and I went topside several times. Only the two of us – he never allowed Donny and Mikey to leave the station at first. We scavenged dumpsters and landfills. We even broke into a few grocery stores after Donatello had gotten sick from a bad sandwich. That should have been the first sign that something was wrong. Stealing was always too dishonorable for my older brother, no matter the reason. But we were in a low place, and we had little choice, and I definitely wasn't going to complain when we had real food for the first time in weeks.
Then, we began training again. Leo woke us up every morning, and every morning we did our katas and sparred. Leo was very critical. Every time we made even a single mistake, we would have to execute the kata at least a dozen times perfectly, or we would not be dismissed.
I guess that's when things really changed. Well, that's when I realized things would never be the same.
Leo would never be the same.
…
"Again, Mikey," Leo snapped. Michelangelo faltered in his high kick, glancing at me before returning to a defense position and repeating his set of blocks and high kicks.
"You're slowing down," Leo said. "And your kicks are too low."
Mikey repeated the kicks, and stumbled on the second. I could see the exhaustion plain on his face. Even though it had already been several weeks since the attack, no one slept very well, especially not Mikey. He stood there panting, and I could see his legs shake. Leo narrowed his eyes.
"Again, Mikey," he ordered. "Until you get it right."
Usually, I allowed Leo a bit of freedom in his instruction. I could see him struggling to take up Splinter's place, trying to find normalcy in routine. But Mikey was nearly in tears. He'd taken this too far.
"Hey, that's enough," I growled. Leo's eyes snapped up to meet mine. I shivered. That was something else that had changed since the attack. Leo's eyes had lost all their fire, all the passion and care that made him… Leo. All that was left was a cold, stark blueness that I couldn't read. It was unnerving, but I would never admit it.
"Finish your katas, Raph," Leo said, turning his attention back to Mikey. "I said again, Michelangelo. What are you waiting for?"
I flinched. Only master Splinter routinely used our full names.
"He's exhausted," I snapped back. "Give him a break, will you?"
Leo's eyes flashed. "A break? Will the Foot give him a break? If they attack again, do you feel strong enough to defeat them this time? What about the Shredder? Do you think you could beat him if he attacked now?"
"What? No but –"
"Then shut your mouth and finish your katas." Leo's voice sounded entirely foreign then. Cold and void of any care and compassion.
"You're being unreasonable," I yelled. "The Foot can't find us here – they lost their leads when they destroyed our lair."
"They found us once, they can find us again," Leo said calmly.
"Get your head together, Leo," I snarled. "You can't expect us to be able to defeat them immediately."
"No, but I expect Mikey to be able to do a simple double high-kick."
"Well maybe if you weren't driving us like goddamn slaves, we'd have the energy to do it!"
"The Shredder won't wait for us to be in peak shape to attack, Raphael," Leo snapped. "You must be able to fight no matter how exhausted you are."
"Well that didn't exactly help master Splinter, did it?" I retorted. "When you're outnumbered, you're outnumbered, Leo. It doesn't matter how much goddamn training you do! It won't change anything!"
Leo's eyes flashed, but the anger behind them was anything but fiery. "It will change everything." He hissed. "Readiness, discipline, and strength. This will keep us alive, Raphael. It will keep us all alive."
"To hell with your discipline, Leo," I snarled. "Don't throw your guilt-trip on the rest of us. You aren't Splinter!"
I turned away then, storming toward the entrance. All my frustration and anger, the guilt I was already drowning under, and Leo's high-and-mighty act of so-called responsibility – all of it combined was suffocating.
"Raph." Leo called after me. I ignored him. "Raphael, you stop immediately or there will be consequences."
"Stick your consequences down your fucking throat, fearless," I snapped. "I've had enough."
"Fine then," Leo said coolly. The chill to his voice stopped me dead in my tracks. "If you take one step out this station, Michelangelo does fifty flips. If you go topside, Donatello joins him."
I snarled, whirling around. Leo stood resolutely, eying me in challenge. Mikey bit his lip, pinching himself to keep from trembling, and Donatello glanced between Leo and I with trepidation and uncertainty.
"What'll it be, Raphael," Leo asked. I lunged.
Leo evaded me smoothly, and I rolled to my feet, whipping out my sai. I attacked, blinded by rage. Leo blocked and slipped each of my attacks with enraging ease and fluidity. He snapped his leg out and knocked the sai from my hands. Another kick to my plastron knocked the breath out of me, and a final kick to my legs swept me off my feet to land with a grunt on my back. Blinking away the stars and gasping for breath, I saw Leo standing over me, looking so far away I feared I could never touch him again.
"I know you don't care about discipline, Raph," he said. "But you care about your brothers. That's why the next time you decide to leave the lair without permission, Michelangelo will be doing katas until he collapses, you understand?"
I grit my teeth, rolling to my side and struggling to sit up. Leo kicked my shell, shoving me back onto my back.
"Do you understand?" he repeated.
Mikey was crying silently, Donatello planted firmly by his side and looking torn. I lowered my head and nodded.
"Say it."
I ground my teeth, but opened my mouth obligingly. "I understand."
Satisfied, Leo nodded his head. "Practice is done for today. We're all going on a foraging run tonight – all of us. Donatello I need a list of everything we need. Necessities only."
Donatello looked uneasy, but said nothing. I repressed the urge to punch Leo in the throat and stormed out of the cold, moist room that had become our new dojo.
…
The scavenge was successful and without incident. We stayed to the shadows, sifting through dumps and scrapheaps like aimless rats. It would have been demeaning, but it was all we had. Leo didn't speak except to give short orders. Look there, Look here. What's under that pile. Pay attention to your surroundings. Be quiet.
We recovered a number of the miscellaneous pieces of machinery Donatello had requested, and acquiesced a dingy white van from the junkyard missing a wheel and two windows. We dragged and pushed it into a non-assuming alleyway until Donny could work his magic and fix it up for use a few weeks later. Over time we gathered abandoned furniture, three-legged coffee tables and moldy couches, frayed carpets and even a refrigerator Donny managed to start up again. Most of the rest was rebuilt from scratch by our resident genius. The rest of us would help when we could, if we could. Well, most of us.
…
It took a while for things to return to normal. They never returned to normal, not really. But we rebuilt the lair. The station, hollow and haunting and as inhospitable as any other shithole in the sewers, had become home for us. We littered it with the worn furniture, all showing some form of Donatello's attentive handiwork. We got a television again, and Donny even stitched me up a new punching bag for my room. I needed it badly since I was no longer allowed to leave the lair. It was becoming harder and harder, though. Leo hadn't changed. Somewhere, I think all of us were hoping this was just his way of coping, and soon enough we'd have our big brother back. But weeks, months, a year went by and things were just the same. Wake up, do katas, meditate, patrol, come home, sleep. Repeat.
I think Leo realized it, because he gave me one day a week to go out on patrol on my own. But I had to go with Casey, and I had to be back by three, and I always had to have my shell cell on me. The way he offered it, it was like he was granting me some unfathomable gift. I would have thrown it back down his throat if I didn't need it so bad. It was my one time away from the lair, where I could get away from my brothers, get away from Leo, and take out all my frustrations on the scum of New York City. It wasn't that I hated my brothers or anything, far from it. But Donny spent all his time in his lab, hammering up some new gadget and hardly speaking to any of us except during practice. Mikey lost a lot of his original cheeriness after Splinter's death, but after a few weeks he took it upon himself to be as obnoxious as possible, coming up with new pranks to deal with his boredom, whining about all the comics he couldn't get, cooking up disasters in the kitchen. But even though they acted normal, the tension within the lair never left. Thick and ripe and hot, clinging to our skin like a humid heat, it festered no matter how we acted. Leo locked himself in his room whenever we weren't training or patrolling, and half the time he wouldn't even eat with us, not that meals were much of a social opportunity anyway. And everyone else just went about, pretending everything was fine and dandy and ignoring the holes missing in our family and the steadily increasing discomfort of being there. I became more snappish, growling at Mikey's antics and hissing at every one of Donatello's offers to fix something of mine, even though I knew all he wanted to do was fix everything, fix this.
So Leo granted me a day a week with Casey. It wasn't enough – not nearly enough, not when Leo's orders and distant attitude ground on my nerves every day – but it was something, and I could laugh at Mikey's jokes and consider Donny's suggestions again. I could be a brother again.
In fact, I became the older brother. Leo wasn't there anymore – he wasn't there for anyone. Not for Mikey or Donny, let alone me. When Mikey had a nightmare, or Donny had a breakdown, they came to me now. We even threw a king-sized mattress in the corner of my room even though I really didn't have the space for it, and covered it in quilts, and more often than not we'd all camp out and sleep there. We didn't talk much, except when someone needed to let out their fears or frustrations, but it was always in hushed voices, as if we feared being overheard. Though there was only one person who would overhear, and I was sure he didn't care what we were up to anyway, so long as we made it to practice on time.
So time went by this way. We grew up, more or less. We fought Purple Dragons and Foot, a variety of mutants and aliens and other assholes with domination complexes. We even defeated the Shredder, finally, through a series of brutal and gruesome battles. Leo lopped his head right off – Leo, our leader who always swore by non-lethal combat. Watching the blood seeping through the carpet did little to settle my unease that night, but Karai's anguished shriek and the scattering Foot and our various states of injury demanded a hasty retreat, and we did just that. We healed, and we got over it. Karai was still out there with the remaining Foot at her command, but we saw suspiciously little of them for a long while.
So time went on.
…
"Raph?"
I paused, steadying the heavybag with a hand, and glanced up. April was standing hesitantly at the edge of the lair, two large canvas bags full of groceries at her feet. When she met my eyes I nodded her over, grabbing a towel off the bench and wiping at a thin layer of sweat on my face and neck.
April smiled as she met me half-way, the gesture tired but genuine.
"I've brought this week's groceries," she said.
"Thanks again, Ape," I said, grabbing the bags and depositing them in the kitchen. I threw the frozen vegetables and instant lunches in the freezer and left the rest by the fridge. Leo would throw a fit, but Mikey would pull everything out anyway just to rearrange it all in his own fashion.
April was standing at the edge of the kitchen, glancing around, when I turned back to face her.
"It's quiet," she commented.
"Leo took Mikey out for a dumpster run, and Donny's where Donny always is," I said.
She exhaled a soft laugh and adjusted her stance, eyes straying.
"How is he?"
"Donny?"
"Leo."
I tensed, and shrugged. "Same as always," I muttered. "Things don't change a lot around here."
April frowned, shoulders sagging. "I still don't understand," she said softly. "I've tried talking to him, but he doesn't say much."
I snorted. "Yeah, that's nothing new. The day fearless opens up is the day I dye my shell pink."
April frowned, and I could tell she disapproved of my cutting remarks. "I'm just scared for him," she admitted. "This isn't healthy. He's a sixteen year old boy. He should be gentle and careless."
"Not a whole lot of room for carelessness now," I bit. "Not in our lives."
April flinched, and leaned against the wall. "I understand why it was necessary when the Shredder and the Foot were terrorizing New York and all, but that threat is gone now. Things have calmed down a lot. Leo should see that."
"I don't think Leo's seeing much of anything now," I said bitterly. "As far as he can tell, things are just as they've been the past three years."
"But doesn't that worry you?" she asked, her voice lowering and her eyes flitting over her shoulder, as if afraid of being overheard. "Knowing Leo, it's likely he's taken on the responsibility of trying to take over Spli- your father's role."
"Well he's done a bang-up job of that," I snarled, "except master Splinter wasn't a control-freak or a tyrant. Whatever's come over Leo, it ain't a sense of fatherliness, I can tell you that."
April bit her lip, and leaned forward. "He doesn't… he isn't… abusive, is he?" she asked hesitantly.
I shrugged. "Depends what you mean by abusive. He hasn't hit anyone, if that's what you mean, besides our usual sparring sessions." Yet.
April sighed. "I just wish there was something I could do. You boys are like the younger brothers I never had. It hurts to see you all so… disconnected."
"We're fine," I assured her. "Aside from Leo, but if he doesn't want anything to do with the family, than that's his business. As far as I can tell, we're just a bunch of pawns to play around with. Frankly I don't even know why he bothers to stick around."
"Raphael!" April hissed, eyes wide.
I shot her a look, but before I could say anything, we were alerted by the sound of approaching footsteps and the crank of the Lair grate opening. Leo and Mikey stepped out, each hauling a backpack brimming with various bits of scrap. Mikey was gripping onto a cracked computer monitor and glowing more than I'd seen him do so in months. He lit up even more when he caught sight of April and I.
"April!" the youngest exclaimed, "did you bring groceries? Awesome! You got those chocolate mints I asked for, right? I can't make those mint-choco-walnut-cinnamon cookies without them! Look at this computer monitor I found! Isn't it cool? Donny's building me a new computer, with way more memory or whatever, so I can play games on it and stuff!"
April chuckled as the turtle droned on. "That's wonderful Mikey. Once your computer is set, you'll have to let me know. Your first PC game is on me."
Mikey's eyes grew wide and I nudged her gently. "Don't spoil him," I growled.
She grinned, but the gesture faltered slightly when she met Leonardo's eyes. My older brother nodded in greeting, polite as always.
"April," he said. "Thank you for bringing the food. Donatello should be able to reimburse you for this month by the end of the week."
"No problem," April said, forcing a smile.
"Can April stay a while?" Mikey asked Leo over his shoulder as he moseyed the monitor on the kitchen table and dropped the pack of scrap, which hit the ground with a sharp clang. "I need to show you this new game I got on the Nintendo," the turtle moaned. "It's awesome. You play as a ninja and you have all these powers like instant teleportation and walking on walls and stuff –"
"Ms. O'Neil can stay as long as her time permits, but training starts at seven tomorrow," Leo said curtly before turning on his heel and heading to his room without a word. April frowned, and I could tell she was mostly preoccupied by the informal address. While he usually used our full names, he still addressed Casey and April by their first names, though occasionally he would lapse back into formality. The gesture was particularly disconcerting to April, even though I paid it little mind. It was just Leo pushing us all away again. While April's remarks and concerns were valid, it didn't matter much to me anymore.
I'd stopped guessing why he did what he did a long time ago.
…
