Different As It Always Will Be
Phase I:
Chapter Four: The Cornerstone of Fear
Peering back into the hole, he watched his brother beginning to crumple. He reached through, grasping ahold of his leg, and yanked him down to the ground. He did not care for one second that he was going to hurt Mikey as he dragged him over metal and gravel, because he knew that the Kraang would do far worse things to him if they could get their tentacles on him. He had seen it with his own eyes. There had been so many, with so few coming out alive. If he turned around, he would see the latest damage done to his family.
Pulling his brother up sharply, Raphael wrapped Mikey's arm around his neck, practically dragging him behind Leonardo. Swinging his little brother into the van, he nodded at Casey while he revved up the engine. They were breaking the speed limit before he even had the door closed. They were streaking down the streets, but he knew they were being followed. As much as he had tinkered with this old rust bucket, he knew it could not outrun alien technology.
Adrenalin was coursing through his veins with such a ferocity that he didn't realize he was grinding his teeth until his jaw popped. All he wanted to do was place his head between his knees and try not to vomit, but he had more important priorities. His first prerogative, as simple and stupid as it seemed, was to stabilize Mikey. He couldn't do much for his other brother, laying there stone cold. The first aid kit that he was so fluent with, even in helping the others before him, was useless yet again. He had seen worse- that was for sure. But many of those in better condition than this had died, and there was nothing he could do about. As much of a brute he was, he had become fluent in medical care, much like his family. In this profession, it was necessary. All the heavy equipment was back home in the medical bay. He couldn't count how many bodies he had seen seize up like the one in front of him, or how many first stage mutants literally just fell apart into the same jelly that Timothy was made of. They couldn't handle it. The bleeding, butchered carcasses of the Kraang's experimentation. The ones that starved while they were feeding them because they were so malnourished, or the ones that ate themselves to death. So few had even lived, and even then, he questioned some of their sanity. There was nothing left of their home but a refuge for the strange, odd, quirky, or dejected. The battered and broken. It was so hard to think that merely a year and a half ago all he knew were his three brothers and his father. Now they were a sanctuary to mutants and humans alike.
As cruel as it was though, he would trade them all for the being in front of him. It was his fault that his beloved brother had been taken months ago, and it was his fault that the words to describe Donatello were simply indescribable. It was horrifying, but he forced himself to stare as he rubbed the electric shock from Mikey's leg. Leonardo plucked the tracker from him, and as the van slowed- or rather braked several times abruptly- he held onto Mikey to keep him from falling. If only they knew his grief, the blame he put on himself. But his pain was none as what his little brother Donnie must have gone through. Although he had always towered over him, Raphael still looked down at him, in the best brotherly way possible. And now he was nothing but skin and bones. Or bones...because what was left of anything else was melting away. His cheeks were so hollow, his eyes so sunken, his skin so tattered. Raphael may have seen this before, but it was different. Ever since they had found the first mutant that had truly been tortured- Jason, they had realized that they had to become numb, because rattled ninjas were not effective ninjas. Timothy and Garson had been pretty easy to deal with, simply because they were just not that humanoid anymore. But Jason? Jason was just a kid, but the obvious torment was toxic. The kid still had nightmares.
Their finding of him had...shaken them up pretty badly, to say the least. What they hadn't known at the time though, was that it was going to prepare them for everything else. But this? This was unbearable. This was their brother. More importantly, this was his brother.
Casey jumped out the van as April opened the van, no doubt prepared to take care of their injuries, or another mutated freak. They always brought someone back, dead or alive. But the sound she made...oh God...Casey barely caught her before she dropped to the floor. She and Donnie had always been close, but their flirtationship had been cut short. Out of the four of them, he had been her best friend, crushes aside. Splinter was there, ready with Dr. Rockwell. The look in his father's face was odd though- he had known. He had known that Donatello would be with them. He had known that he was going to be this mangled, this...hacked apart. And he was ready. All those years of meditation must have actually done something, for him to know today. For him to have, in Raphael's opinion, wasted time meditating the months while they had been looking for him, and for him to be prepared right now. He knew. He had probably always known.
Donatello was shivering, and as Raphael helped carry him, he knew that his brother did not have long. He was as ice, even in the warmth of the sewer. He didn't even seem to fit in his own shell, which seemed dead from undernourishment. His shell seemed...dead. That concept just swung like a pendulum in Raphael's mind, his throat choking up as he watched the good doctor struggle to even find a vein for an IV. All that he could think was maybe they should just let Donnie go.