an AU where 2012!Raph goes to a version of SAINW, where he was missing instead of Donnie.
His brothers did not do well without him.
information not found
Raph crashed in Donnie's room, the first night.
His face still ached from the succession of deckings he got — first Casey, then Leo, then Donnie and even Mikey gave him; the "where the hell/the fuck/in God's name have you been"s were ringing in his ears. His shoulder still crawled from the snot and tears from Mikey sobbing all over him.
Mikey, aged thirty-five, and a thumbwidth away from six foot.
They hauled him into a tiny little side-room, half the size of his bedroom back at his lair, asking question after question: where was he, what did he remember, whose bedroom was next door to his, when did he break his shell. Leo had watched, cold and quiet and alert, until whatever Raph had said was enough.
A few hours later, when Mikey had come back from the surface with a satchel of stolen food, Raph asked their story — what happened to Splinter, what happened to the lair? Where was April?
A look had been shared that Raph wasn't allowed to be part of, and then Casey had taken the hint, scrubbing the heel of his palm into the coarse stubble on his chin. "Kraang have been doing some evil shit lately," he said.
Raph had scoffed. "They're the Kraang. All they do is evil shit."
Mikey pulled off the yellow scrap he wore around his left bicep and waved it sadly. Raph looked from brother to brother; they were all wearing it. "Ah jeez," he'd said heavily. Leo, Mikey, Donnie — they all had these yellow ribbons tied on. Raph felt his heart sink, glancing between the bleak exhaustion on Donnie's face, and the grim set to his best friend's jaw. He let the subject drop, and taken the hint: April was gone, and April was a figurehead. The heart of the rebellion.
When Leo and Mikey moved out for patrol, Donnie stayed back to guard the base (to guard Raph). He'd dragged together a beaten old mattress and blankets for Raph to sleep on, he'd asked more questions, and then when it got late, passed out, his hand hanging out of his bed and resting on the slope and peak of Raph's carapace. And Raph had stayed awake.
Something (everything) was wrong.
Splinter, dead. The Foot, torn apart and left in the street after Karai tried to play one too many games. April, gone. He tried to place himself in this whole mess — was there something that, if he'd been here, he could have stopped?
Someone knocked, three times, and Donnie sprung awake, jolting out of his bed. He swung his legs over, and tripped on Raph's bedroll when he hauled himself to the door, pulling it open.
"ow damnit— Casey?"
Casey fidgeted, then looked square at Donnie. "Code yellow."
Donnie made a low, mournful sound. "Now?"
"Yeah. They're heading in now."
Out in the hideout, Raph could hear more voices.
"Leo?" Casey asked.
Donnie shook his head. "He and Mikey are on patrol tonight." His eyes narrowed, and he looked to where Raph was shoving himself up and reaching for his sai. "Stay here," he warned. "It's not an attack."
"Yeah, you called it a Code - I can help."
"No, you really can't."
Outside, a girl cried out: "Hey, let me go!"
Raph wrenched himself in the direction of the voice. "Is that—" He looked at Casey. "You said—"
Gently, Casey rested a hand on Raph's unsplit shoulder. "You don't wanna see this," he told him, turning away. "Stay here, we'll be right back. C'mon, Donnie. It's your turn."
Raph turned back to his brother. Donnie looked even older, all of a sudden, and at the same time so impossibly young, his face exhausted and devastated, his posture melting down into misery. He patted down his utility belt, fingers curling around a pouch on the left, before he, too, moved out towards the voice.
Raph followed, of course. The art of the ninja afforded him the ability to be sneaky, and he trailed Donnie and Casey to a small side-corridor, part med-bay, part storage facility. A woman bustled past, leaving Donnie, Casey and the Code alone.
Raph recognised her instantly.
April — his April. The April who not a few hours ago was sitting in the lair, throwing pepperoni at Mikey's head and cracking a joke about Casey's face. The April who was his age. "What the–?" he started.
Casey didn't even sigh. "You shouldn't be here, Raph."
"What the fuck."
"They get out, every so often," Donnie said softly. "That or they're test runs. Hey, there." He moved closer, reaching over to gently smooth April's hair out of her face. "You remember me?"
Her face smoothed into an imitation of April's smile. It missed her eyes by a fraction, and there was a little bit too much teeth — and if Raph could tell that, from this distance, Donnie must have been hyper-aware. "Donatello," she said, with a rush of what must be an attempt at relief. "I thought I'd never find you!"
Donnie's cheeks bunched as he forced a smile. "Yeah," he breathed. "We were worried. How'd you get out?"
"I escaped — I wanted to come home."
Donnie nodded; it was the distant sort of nod that Donnie always did when he was pretending he was listening. Raph watched him do it to Mikey all the time — sometimes it pissed him off, most of the time he understood it. "Tell me about your family."
"Checking, right?" she said, and took a breath. "My name is April O'Neil. I'm from New York. My father is Dr. Kirby O'Neil. My mother is—" She listed the whole family tree - everybody who, if Kurtzman wasn't lying through his teeth, would have been a guest of the Kraang Fertility Clinic. She reeled them off, because she'd learned it by rote. The more she said, the more Raph could see each word weigh on Donnie's shoulders, and Casey's, burdening them both down.
Donnie shot Casey a pleading look, and as Casey took over, he busied himself with a nearby cabinet.
Casey looked exhausted and angry and like shit. "Who's Irma?" he asked.
April blinked, her head pulling back slightly. "Information not found."
Raph's heart plummeted through his gut and into his feet.
Casey pressed on. "Irma Langinstein. What high school did you go to?"
"Information not found. Casey, why is this important?" she asked. "I already told you—"
While she spoke, Donnie sat back up, holding what looked like an over-teched waterpistol. Lightning-quick, he pressed it against the girl's throat and her eyes widened with fright. "What—" she started, and Donnie pulled the trigger.
"Shhh-shhh-shhh. This might sting a little, but it'll be over soon."
"Over? Donnie— Donnie, no, it's me, it's April—! Ask Leo— Leo? Leo, Mikey!" She hissed, then, her nails clawing at her neck. "Donnie, it— ow, this—it burns, please, it's me!"
Donnie looked at her with the saddest expression Raph has ever seen. "Our April's been gone almost twenty years. She wouldn't look like you anymore."
Her eyes welled with tears - and these, at least, were real. "I'm insufficient?" she asked weakly. Donnie just nodded, easing her back down to the bed as her strength gave way to whatever it was the hypospray just shot into her bloodstream.
"You are," he agreed. Raph's stomach flopped. Donnie smoothed her bangs away from her face, thumb gently cherishing her temple. Casey, too, stepped up, a rough, calloused hand picking up one of her smaller ones and rubbing the backs of her fingers as they started to twitch. "You always will be. All of you."
"I just wanted—"
"I know. Go to sleep, April."
She was not April. She never would be. But she thought she was, and Donnie was kind, and Casey was kind.
Naming her was kind.
When this not-April was quiet, Casey silently lifted her head, pulled out her hair-tie, and stretched it around his wrist. There were six on his left arm alone. More on his right. Some on his belt-loops, too, and the coldness in Raph's stomach turned to ice, and acid.
How many times had they done this?
"Case," Raph started, but didn't know how to finish that.
He didn't get the chance. Casey turned on his heel and punched a locker. His fist left a dent, and the sound echoed dully through the hideout. "Where the fuck is Leo?" he snarled. "Why haven't we found her yet?"
Donnie didn't say anything, still turned towards the little body. It hadn't splattered, like the clones Raph remembered; instead, it looked almost real, like the April he knew. She looked like she was sleeping.
"Don't think I can keep doin' this," Casey continued. "I just– I can't, man."
"At least, if the clones are still imperfect, they'll still have the original," Donnie said, dully. His hand still lingered at the clone's temple. It was a private moment, one that Raph didn't want to watch. He followed the trail of noise Casey left in his wake out into the main part of the base towards the kitchen, where Casey had stopped, his hands in the sink and his head pressed into a cupboard door. His entire being screamed get the fuck away from me, but Raph knew Casey almost as much as he knew himself, and he knew that underneath all of that, Casey didn't want to be alone.
"Casey," he said quietly, stepping closer. "What happened?"
"You were gone, man." Casey dragged his wet hands over his face, and looked three inches away from the bottom of a bottle. "Me and Red, we were out, I got cocky—"
Raph could imagine the rest. Casey, always keen to show off, never more so than when he was with April, always keen to rush straight into the heart of danger — and April had never been very good at holding him back, making him think, making him back down. They would have barrelled straight into the heart of the Kraang, and numbers would have beaten them down.
"Jesus." The word left his body on a sick rush of air.
"Second one this week. I think the Kraang just like to fuck with us."
Raph didn't answer that. The Kraang were monsters. "Move," he said instead, shoving Casey out of the way of the sink with a gentle hip-check, and started to fill the kettle, something to busy his hands instead of letting him try to ask every single question and getting more and more pissed off with answers that didn't make sense. "You're not gonna be sleeping for a while."
"Nope," Casey said, and shuffled over to the piecemeal table, dropping bodily into a seat.
He didn't talk, except for when Raph went rooting for the sugar, when he told Raph to make sure there was enough for three, and sure enough, a few seconds later, Donnie slipped into the kitchen. "I'm sorry you had to see that." He pulled out a chair and sat silently. "We wanted to try to send you home before the next one showed up."
Raph didn't answer, his head too full of the girl begging again.
A look of something flashed between Casey and his brother, but it was gone before Raph could read it properly. It wasn't hate. It wasn't anger. It was something worse than both — a bleak, blank despair, the type that settled in the muscles and rotted through to the bones.
Raph wasn't Mikey. Raph wasn't sensei. He didn't know how to handle this. Hell, he could barely make tea. Raph fought monsters, slayed dragons, and smashed through walls. He never saved the girl, he didn't fix broken hearts.
"What are you gonna do with the body?" he asked instead.
Casey and Donnie both stiffened, Donnie's hands curling into fists at his sides. Raph shuddered when their voices replied in unison, cold and lost: "Burn it."
[a/n] the sequel for this is already written and if people like this I can start posting it here in the next few days :D