Author: Aubretia Lycania
Description: Raphael and Michelangelo have a difficult brother dynamic, and it's high-time they taught one another a lesson. Chibi fic, WTL verse; birthday fic for Winnychan.
Dare ga Naritai ka?
"Dare ga naritai ka?"
Japanese lessons. Getting strapped down by the Joker and getting lasered in the crotch and armpits couldn't be worse than the daily torture of Master Splinter setting them down and making them write "sakubun," or Japanese compositions, using the kanji of the week that he'd written on his little board at the front of the room. They knelt on the makeshift tatami mats with small, rickety tables in front of them, knee pads and tough skin protecting them from lines etched into their flesh, but not from the long-lasting ache of maintaining that one position, which was almost enough to distract even Leonardo from his penmanship. Still they knelt, trained by the ages of nine not to complain, show the pain, or make so much as a face against their training or their sensei, writing on composition paper divided into 400 boxes, each for one character. Today, they had to write about who they'd like to be most (these people taken chiefly from history and fictional works), and why. Simple enough in English, but trying to explain cause-and-effect relationships in Japanese was like pulling out toenails.
Mike gnawed at his much-chewed eraser, glancing at Raphi, who sat just beside him; they were both in the middle two desks so that Splinter could keep a closer eye on them and so they were both flanked by an elder brother, each of whom were studious and far more serious than either of them. Raphael hadn't gotten any further than himself, and was staring around the room hopelessly as though trying to find help or inspiration from the leaking walls, the rank sewer stench barely mollified by incense, tea and candles, or the cracks moving across the ceiling. Their father had etched some helpful vocabulary on the board along with the kanji he expected to see today, many of which Mike had already forgotten the readings to. Fudge-sicles.
Watashi wa…No. He knew from watching movies that watashi for "I" sounded girly. Boku wa… but we was supposed to know the kanji for boku and he didn't. Wasn't it the walking man with the working kanji? Walking man… going to work. Yeah. Now. To remember that.
No good. Why did he have to know this? He didn't want to go to Japan. It wasn't even in his top twenty of the places he'd like to see. Now, whatever language they spoke in California, sign him up. Or Jamaica! Warm sun, beaches, ocean, no sewers—they couldn't have sewers, sewers are cold, and Jamaica and California were decidedly NOT cold. He was tired of being cold. He couldn't remember being really warm anymore, not even in bed, because he and his brother had their own bunks now and he missed the way they'd once bunched together, he and Raphi in the middle like their desks, and collected an extra blanket of warmth between them. They used to make a fort above themselves and bury their heads under their pillows, trapping all the heat they could, and when their shuddering grew violent their father would join them, and his mammal, warm-blooded heart beat a throbbing heat under their blankets, and at last they could sleep. Once they had been separated into their own beds, he'd found a broken old space heater, and he and Donatello together had tinkered with it until it could be made to work again. Their room, small, with the chinks all filled-in save the ventilation, warmed up quickly to a livable temperature—but it was never warm, and in the winter, the four of them grew slower and sluggish—so their father trained them all the harder, to force heat through their bodies, to force them to live and acclimatize—and they did. They no longer complained. Like sitting in one position on the tatami mats, though the body may protest, it was overcome, and almost forgotten.
Still, Mike would kill to live in the Caribbean.
Dare ga naritai ka?
Doko ni sundeitai ka?
Who do you want to become? Where do you want to live?
Well, at this moment? He wanted to be a rich old Japanese man in the middle of a hot spring. Or an astronaut on Venus. A camel in the Sahara. A banana spider in the Amazon rainforest. Anywhere but—
Crack.
All four of them jumped as their sensei's walking stick hit the tatami mat between the two middle desks, between his youngest sons; glaring for a moment at their brothers, Leo and Don went back to their work, meticulous and both around three quarters of the way through.
"Michelangelo. Raphael. Perhaps we need to have a talk to un-stick your ideas? You seem to find the rest of the room more interesting than your assignment."
Raphael glared at the composition paper before him, and the sparse few lines of kanji and kana he'd managed to get down. He leaned his elbows on the desk and placed his cheeks between two fists, looking ahead miserably.
Mikey didn't want to hear the angry quips or mumblings of his frustrated brother; he instead worked to distract the conversation.
"I know what I wanna be! I wanna be Superman!"
This made Donnie perk up, gazing up from his sakubun, looking at Mikey.
"Thought Batman was your favorite."
Mikey folded his arms obstinately, grinning. "I like him, sure. But I want to be Superman."
Splinter appeared befuddled. "And you do not know how to say you want to be this Superman in your composition, Michelangelo?"
Mikey attempted to appear serious. "Well, first, I don't know the katakana to write Superman. And I don't know how to say fly, or 'faster than a speeding bullet' or 'more powerful than a locomotive'. I don't know how to say laser eyes or x-ray vision or Krypton or anything. So… yeah. Can we put all that on the vocabulary, Master Splinter?"
In years to come, the old rat would be less forgiving to this kind of distraction; but as it was, his sons were young, and his youngest had a free-flowing and active imagination, and he felt a small indulgence for him in his heart.
"I am afraid I am not sure how to say these things either, Michelangelo. Perhaps you would like me to help you choose someone else?"
Michelangelo looked around with feigned arbitrariness. "How about Raphi? He's easy."
Raphael looked up, uncomfortable at the idea of himself being mentioned, and seemed as though he wanted to disappear. Splinter, however, smiled.
"Very well. I shall help you brainstorm for why you would like to be Raphael."
Mikey paused; he hadn't really meant it. Might as well go on, as he could have some fun with it and get help at the same time, and maybe make Leo and Donnie laugh along the way.
"Okay! I… wanna be Raphi because then I wouldn't have to think so much."
Donnie snorted beside him, and Splinter threw him a look.
"And why is it you think this, my son?"
The voice had an edge of danger to it, and Mikey sought to save himself slightly, with a charming, charismatic grin that won his eldest brothers over every time.
"Raphi doesn't sit around and think about stuff. He just does it."
Meanwhile, the turtle in question was sitting quietly on the mats, his hands balled into fists atop his desk, though he said nothing. Leo continued to write, as though he couldn't hear anything, while Donnie listened with interest.
Splinter's face was slightly closed, attempting to teach his son quite a different lesson from that of kanji.
"Do you not think that this is perhaps a trait you possess yourself, Michelangelo?"
Mikey's face fell. "I can think!"
Splinter was somber. "You can."
Mike had the rather intense feeling for half a second that his joke was working him into a kind of corner.
"If I were Raphi I could sit there and be quiet and you wouldn't be picking on me, even though he's just as far as I am and he's supposed to be older and know more of this stuff."
Splinter hid the smile that almost melted his stern expression. "You think I am being harsh on you, my son?"
Michelangelo knew it was dangerous to answer this question and kept it to himself. He didn't know what he thought.
The room felt even colder. Leo and Donnie stared down at their desks without writing. Splinter continued.
"You are not giving your words serious thought, Michelangelo, and it thus shows in your writing. You tell me these confused, fragmented ideas in English, which you have not thought through. This is why they will not translate to Japanese, why you cannot move them from your mind to your hands, and why your page is blank. It is a reflection of the confusion and lack of focus in your mind. If you can think, as you tell us that you can, think long and hard about what you have said to me. Look inward and understand yourself, so that you may then reach outward, to understand and feel for others."
Mikey sat silently, dumbfounded, and gazing at the messy symbols on his walking like chicken tracks over his composition paper, feeding off his thoughts. Splinter turned to Raphael, with a more gentle tone, moving to pick up his sakubun and look it over.
"And what is your difficulty, Raphael?"
The attention of the room thus turned, with a strangely hot glare, upon the second-youngest, and under the eyes of his family he suddenly stood and bolted from the room, leaving his composition behind.
Dare ga naritai ka.
Boku wa o-nii-san ga naritai desu. Nyu-yooku ga dai suki dakedo, chigau no machi ni zenzen sundeitakunai deshou. Demo, kono basho wa totemo samui desu. Boku wa atatakai naritai desu. Zenzen samui naritakunai desu.
The opening of the dojo door let in a nasty draft; as it pushed closed, yet another thrust its way into the relatively warm interior.
Splinter looked at his youngest for a few moments, unblinkingly.
"Now do you know what to write, my son?"
He never wanted to be cold again, but as he did every winter, he'd forgotten the alternative.
Leo looked on the cusp of standing and running after Raphael; Michelangelo, however, pushed up, bowed to his father, who nodded approvingly, and did so himself, letting yet another cold draft into the room.
Outside the warm pocket created by the lair, a small step off the door gave way to the cold wilds of the sewers, where half-melted slush and muddy run-off, frozen piles of urine and excrement, gathered and moved at a sluggish pace as a great snowy sludge, a layer of ice on its surface; Raphael sat with his back to the lair, staring down into the dark tunnels stretched away before him, upon this step, when Mikey joined him.
They were both silent for a long while, as Raphael stared determinately at a slimy wall before them, swathed in darkness, before Mike impetuously embarked upon a conversation.
"Why d'you always run like that?"
"Go away."
Mikey never paused at obstructions of this kind, however. He was heedless and shameless and perhaps even blind to the discomfort of others, or merely didn't care either way. What could Raphael's discomfort do to him? Could it make him colder? Could it make the world colder? Could it take anything from him or give him any real pain? Perhaps in sparing, but he was faster. Raphael had not yet fully learned how to make his anger into a weapon. He sat and simmered, while Michelangelo possessed his poison darts.
"What's your composition about, Raphi? Is it about Leo?"
"I told you to go away!"
A dart of slowly mounting rage in Raphael's eyes, yet he could never back it up. Michelangelo resented it—he wanted his older brother to have power over him, to make him respect him. But he was useless and blubbering, a crybaby who wandered around in Leo's shadow. It made him ill, more than he was aware of—and so he poked at the impotent mass of older brother, poked it until the day it finally got fed up, and became the brother he wanted him to be.
"It's about Leeeeo," Mikey said with a sing-song voice, before breaking out into a tune. "Raphi and Leo, sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I"—
"STOP IT!"
Before Mikey knew it, Raphi had catapulted him off the stoop and into a frozen puddle of sludge, though all he did was laugh when he got there. Unshakeable, he looked up and saw Raphael had torn off into the pipes to get away from him, but it was too rich to give up—and so he went in pursuit.
"Hey, Raphi—wait, I got more songs! C'mon!"
To him, this was sometimes the closest he got to playing with his older brother—after all, he made fun of Leo and Don all the time and it never bothered them. They laughed; they accepted him—he was funny, and therefore cool. But Raphi was a sourpuss, cried at the drop of a hat, and Mikey couldn't figure out for the life of him why Master Splinter didn't make him stand in a corner until he learned not to cry about everything. Really, what if Leo cried all the time? Or Don? The solution was clear—crying so much had to be a bad thing. Even Leo said so, all the time. He was the main man in charge of the "Make Raphi Stop Crying" committee! Master Splinter had long talks with Raphael, but he just seemed to cry more. Maybe it was some weird tear duck-or-whatever-Donnie-called-it disease. He lost sight of Raphi around a bend in the pipe; running was becoming harder, thoughts slower, the cold less pressing, his skin no longer biting and tight but numb around him. The wind was slightly exhilarating—as though he were slightly floating over the slushy ground.
He rounded the corner and something thick and long tripped him up, sending him sprawling face-first into the sludge.
"OW," he exclaimed as he plied his face free from the filth, to see Raphi's profile looming out of the darkness above him. "What was THAT for?"
Raphi kicked him in the side. "You're a brat! You deserved it—you never get what's comin' to you!"
Well, this was different. And pleasant. Raphi was actually MAD and he wasn't crying. Mikey decided to keep poking to repeat these propitious results.
"You're just mad cuz I was right! You draw a picture of Leo and practice on it, Raphi? Lemme show you!" He brought the back of his hand to his lips and made loud smooching sounds, prompting Raphi to spring a kick at his face.
They were both getting sluggish, but Mikey managed to dodge the kick easily enough. He landed from a handspring with legs spread and knees bent, ready to bounce away again.
"Whatsa matter, Raphi? Whatcha gonna do about it?"
Raphael's eyes stared at him with a fire that fought to escape but never could—neither in word nor in action. Perhaps it was this that made Mikey want to respect him—in some way, he knew there was someone in there worth all the poking. He danced away from an unfocused punch, their martial dance slowed as the cold crept in on them. The numbness, the sense of floating, lulled them both into a false sense of security. Raphi sputtered for a moment—finally, his mind settled on something he had once heard Leo say, and it was, ironically, in guttural Japanese.
"Ussendayo!"
THIS made Mikey stop—they both had a really good idea of what this meant when Splinter had sent Leo flying across the room the one and only time he'd ever said it. Mikey stood shocked for a moment, then laughed in utter disbelief.
"I'm telling! You're gonna be in SO much trouble!"
"NO you're not!" Raphi said, and this time he meant it—his fist came out, and Michelangelo went sprawling several feet, too sluggish to move fast enough. The sounds of feet running away through sludge met Mikey's ears, but this time he wasn't very interested in standing and following. His head hurt. It was really comfortable here.
He wasn't cold anymore.
In fact, he felt a little sleepy.
Time drifted off for a while… he wasn't sure how long. He dreamt a little, calm and soothing. It was nice not to be cold anymore—just what he'd wanted. Then someone was trying to disturb him, and shaking hands were pushing and pulling at him—someone whose warmth made uncomfortable pins and needles dart through his veins.
"Don't wanna…" he whispered, but couldn't raise his voice. He lost the thought mid-sentence.
"Come on, you fat sack of rice, we have to get back home—help me!"
Michelangelo was dead weight, his skin very cold under Raphael's hands; finally Mikey seemed to hear him and fumbled a bit, helping a little more than hindering, and at last settled on Raphi's shoulder. They began a halting progress to the den, while Raph ran his hands rapidly up and down Mikey's arms, trying to warm him.
"I thought you'd grow a brain and go home after that, not lie around in the sludge like an idiot." His voice had little conviction behind it—they were both too cold for that.
Mikey didn't answer; he kept his eyes forward, convinced he was seeing things—in the darkness, a light was bobbing and reflecting drunkenly off the walls.
"Raphi…"
Raphael had already seen it, however; they both ducked into another pipe, vanishing in shadow—Mikey's body began shivering again; he could hear his teeth clacking together like a death rattle in his skull. Raphael's hand came out, encompassing Mikey's jaw and making it still.
"Raphi… I'm cold again."
"I know. That's good."
"Huh?"
"Shhh."
A voice drifted over sheets of slush and offal towards them, bouncing like light over slick walls.
"My sons!"
Mikey could feel the relief rippling through his elder brother's body, as they both stumbled ineptly to their feet, a confusion of limbs trying to assist one another, both growing numb again from no movement. Mikey remained on his brother's warmer shoulder, and a small layer of heat gathered between them—they appeared in the beam of their father's light. Raphi's voice above him,
"Master Splinter…"
The searing hot bath felt like torture for the first few minutes, burning and tingling against freezing skin, sending needles through their circulatory systems; they both settled in inch-by-inch, gasping in pain. It was a small basin their father had emptied near-boiling water into, which barely fit the pair of them, but which allowed a small amount of water to fill the gaps between his sons and give them its warmth. They faced away from one another, sitting in their until Master Splinter told them they could get out, while Leo and Don sniggered at a small distance and Mikey made faces at them.
Their father bustled about making the rice for that night, then set Leonardo and Donatello to cutting vegetables.
"Let us see idle hands and laughing mouths be put to better use, shall we?" he asked them, and Leo and Don skulked off, whispering together. Then their father was before his two youngest, kneeling before the basin, and setting to work scrubbing the muck off of Michelangelo's head.
"Why did you stay outside of the den for so long, my sons?"
Before Raphael could answer, Mike piped up, speaking without thinking.
"It stopped feeling so cold. I thought I got used to it."
Raphi ducked his beak under the water, only his eyes showing, warming his face.
"Michelangelo—feeling the cold is good."
"How come?"
"Because it means you have not gone numb, my son. It may be uncomfortable, but feeling the cold is both a warning sign and a reassuring sign. It means you are going to be safe. When the cold vanishes, it is then that you are in the most danger. Do you understand me?"
Raphael's words in the pipe suddenly made sense: That's good. The contradiction confused him terribly.
It was at this moment that he could tell his father that Raphael had cursed at him in Japanese—yet he also became slightly aware that he could also tell him that Raphi had made him get up and might have saved him—or at least had the intention of saving him. He weighed the options. Would telling his father either of these make him any colder? No. Mikey smiled.
"Understood, a-okay." He gave his father a thumbs-up. Raphi gave him a suspicious look and blew bubbles. In some perverse Michelangelo way, he could see it was a thank-you, for doing… well, what older brothers are supposed to do, right? Cursing at younger brothers and then saving them from hypothermia. All-in-all, Mike was glad he wasn't a big brother… but at least now he had a super awesome story for his sakubun.
Splinter maintained a silence, watching the glance pass between his sons, resisting the smile that vied for presence on his mouth.
They were cruel to one another, and he could not deny it—yet the instinct they had nursed within them still caused a small amount of pride within him. And whom he wanted them to become, whom he was shaping them into, made small appearances in young eyes, behind veils of hurt and hurting and outright malice. He could not force them there with an iron grip, but watch as they slowly, even sluggishly, shepherded one another towards some far-off goal.
Dare ga naritai ka.
He could ask them if they cared about one another. The English lie and fragmented thoughts would tell him a whimsical truth, as they slowly formed that brotherhood out of childish brutality. Less about who they wanted to be, and who they needed to be. But the world was cold. Better that they never become numb just through the language of needs.
End
Japanese notes:
Dare ga naritai ka: Literally, "who do you want to become?"
Doko ni sundeitai ka: "Where do you want to live?"
Ussendayo: Roughly, "shut the f-- up."
Raphael's sakubun is basic Japanese, and flawed, but more or less says:
"I want to be big brother. I like New York, and I don't want to live in a different city. But this place is cold. I want to be warm. I never want to be cold again." Obviously, he and Mikey have alike feelings here. XD