Finally the click of the light switch, the door shutting deftly behind him, and Leo was standing there, his eyes discerning and, unlike Don's predictions, filled less with anger and more with concern. Donatello was silent, waiting for his brother's first word.
"Don—there's no point in pretending I don't know. This has been tough on you... Because it's not gonna get any better. Is it?"
Donnie was torn between telling Leo, in no uncertain terms, to mind those things he understood, and just flat-out screaming; he did neither.
"No. It might even get worse."
If Leo was surprised, he did not allow the emotion to flicker over his face for an instant. He made as to say something, then thought better of it; he stood silent for several moments, before breaching the barrier once more.
"This is tough because you don't know what it is Raph would've wanted you to do in this situation. He never bothered to understand what it was you planned on doing to him—he put the burden on you when he trusted in you blindly. He was no fool then, Don; he could've easily understood the risks if he'd tried. Neither of you ever tried."
Don's voice came out surprisingly harsh. "Don't talk about him that way—this was my mistake, Leo."
Leo would have scoffed if the situation were lighter. "I won't act like he's some dead venerated ancestor who's passed on, Donnie. That's the person that he was. He took pride in making people think he didn't care; he seemed to think he had to hide the fact that he was intelligent. He let other people think for him so he could run through life without giving a damn. He ran headlong into this and now he's paying the price. And he knows that—I can tell. No matter how limited his abilities are now, he enjoys every bit of life he can get his hands on, takes in every piece of information he can possibly remember. And he's trying to show us that, but he doesn't know how to communicate it."
"And how do you know all this?" Don hadn't meant to sound so spiteful, but it squeezed out anyways, hot and vicious.
Leo shook his head. "I knew him, Don. You two had very little to do with each other the last ten years—and I'm still not afraid to know him now. That's a boon and a burden. I know him. I also know what I'm missing."
"Oh please," Don whispered, unable to filter the bitter sarcasm, "you have to be loving this. No more questioning your orders. No more running up top to find Raph beat up or captured, or used as bait. The little brother you probably always wanted."
This time Leo did scoff. "What, you mean the little brother who would follow me everywhere if situation allowed, watch everything I do, change expression immediately when I walk into a room, rely on me to understand him and lose his mind with frustration if I don't? That little brother? I've always had that little brother, Donnie. His name is Raph. Except now his moods are actually stable, he's seldom depressed, it doesn't take much to make him happy, and he's content just to be with one of us. He's as fully alive as he can be, Don—you have to stop talking like he's dead."
Donatello stepped closer, bring their faces a couple inches apart. "Easy for you to say—you don't even miss him. You think what he's doing now is living?"
"Losing the ability to pursue intellectual pursuits doesn't make someone dead, Donatello," Leo said, evenly. "And what do you pretend to know about what I miss?"
"Oh sorry, Leo—I should've read your blatant avoidance of it as grief for Raphael's loss instead of you expressing your new freedom to devote yourself to training while I'm stuck here."
Leo snapped back, wincing slightly, as though stung; he quickly checked himself, however. "I'm not avoiding the situation, Don. Me and Mikey are doing what we have to do. That's the situation."
Don now realized he'd referred to Raphael, out loud, as it, and Leo had accordingly misunderstood him.
"Seems like what you and Mikey have to do is stay as far away from Raphael as you can—and I can't take doing this 24/7, Leo, I really can't. I've done it for a year and a half, being nursemaid to my brother and my father, and it's—you have no idea, Leo."
Leo grasped his shoulder. "Don, you know I help you and I'm available every moment I'm at home. If you ever want a break for a while—just say the word."
"And Mike?" Don said, rather aggressively.
Leo parsed his words for a few moments. "I don't think he'll do well taking care of Raph until he's able to accept what's happened. Don't you agree?"
Don almost snapped once more. "Mikey's mental health is the least of our worries right now."
Leo blinked a bit as in confusion. "I meant—well, he might not handle Raph very well. He's having trouble accepting this as reality."
Of all the people Don had once concerned himself with, it became strange to think what priority Mikey had once held for him; now he was mere nuisance, a person he shared a house with, whom he seldom spoke to and could not understand. A person who shirked the creature he had to deal with 24 hours a day—and it wasn't fair.
"It's not fair, Leo," Don whispered, his thoughts bubbling to the surface. "I need… I don't know. I feel like this punishment will never end. You and Mikey—living our lives for us—and me and Raph buried down here like dead people, I can't—I can't TAKE IT ANYMORE!"
"Keep your voice down!" Leo whispered sternly, as to deliberately juxtapose with him. "Do you need a break?"
Don swallowed mastering himself again. "I can do this, Leo. I'm more than capable. But—I mean, the only person who is ever here for even 24 hours at a time is Master Splinter. You guys—you—judge me, for how I handle this. But you've never even lived this for 24 hours. I've been doing 24 hours—a year and a half's worth of 24 hours. It's endless, a march to nothingness, and I don't know who I despise more right now…"
Again, Leo almost willfully misunderstood him. "Don't hate us, Don. Raph—I mean, Mikey is the only one who's lost a big brother here—and to see him like this, Don. Mikey is trying to do so much good in the world, like he's carrying his brother's weight, and you don't see it. You're as disconnected from Mikey and he is from Raph. I have to deal with Mikey, who's been running into every form of trouble he can get his hands on—and you don't see that, anymore than he sees this. And if you think I do this every night, and don't miss Raphael—or you… you're crazy. Going from four to two is like torture. But we're all alive, and that's something to be thankful for—something Raph shows me, every time I see him. He loves us so much, and he's not afraid to show it now. You can't at least see some good in that?"
Don laughed. "Fine, you think that slobbering two-year-old is fun? Trade with me for a week, and we'll see how you feel."
Leo blinked, taken very much aback by Don's description. "Donnie, he's… he's Raph, don't say that. And besides, you couldn't handle Mikey the way he's become. He's out of control, and even I can barely restrain him. And I don't have the medical know-how to deal with Raph for a week, Donnie. Believe me… if I could switch with you, I would. If you ask me, you've got the better end of the bargain here." He sighed. "But I'll take Raph for a couple days, as long as you keep up on medical stuff—I think I can get Mikey to stay home or stay with Casey and April for that long at least. And you can have a break. You sound like you're cracking up a little. I never thought I'd hear you talk that way about your brother—and he's so innocent now. He just wants… I don't know, some encouragement. You can't expect him to be the old Raph anymore, it's not fair to him."
Donnie became aware of the look of disgust creeping onto his face, and tried to tame it, like a bad hair day. "Leo—you don't get it. My problem here is nothing like you dealing with a rebellious Michelangelo—you don't have to deal with the fact that you did it, that it's your fault, that at least one of your brothers hates you for it, even though he'll never say it, and you don't have to deal with a child. He's—a BABY, do you understand?! He's a huge, strong, slightly insane toddler, who knows he used to understand things, and remembers that fact, and it makes him angry, Leo! He's angry at me. He shows it—he defies me openly, and gives me false hope, like he's bent on making me pay!"
He realized his eyes were closed when a gentle touch on his shoulder made him jump; they flew open, to Leo, with a deep look of concern; he appeared ten years older suddenly, and a different feeling of shame gripped Donatello heard, around the heart.
"Don. I mean it. You're taking some R and R—starting tomorrow. You're beginning to scare me."
Don gently wrenched himself away, staring at his elder brother. "I don't WANT a break! A break means that after two days, you and Mikey get to leave me with this again and feel good about yourselves for doing your Raph duty for the next year, and everything goes back to the way it is! I need you guys here. I need Mikey to get over himself and for you to open your eyes and see what Raphael's become. You don't get to say how wonderful everything is, how great it is to have this new Raph, because you really don't live with it, Leo! I do! Master Splinter does, and it's—it's killing him. You think everything's wonderful? Things have to change! I don't want a band-aid, Leo; I want a cure!"
And there, finally, what Raphael could always do with such ease—a crack in Leo's perfect veneer, magma in the face of a porcelain mask. For a moment Leo stood, silent, on the brink, the slightest tremble wavering in his outline—then Don found himself dragged down the hallway, and forcibly jerked against a wall, staring into Leonardo's eyes—like his own, and like Raphael's, light brown, but always slightly topaz, glowing like a waiting tiger's in the brush.
"A cure? Wasn't that what you were gonna find? Every damn day, Mike brings up the same thing with me—you, Donnie, and how you could fuck Raph up so bad and not know how to fix it, and you think I know how to answer that? What's your problem with me trying to be positive about this, anyway? You want me to hate Raph? When he's—just—when he's so"—he stopped, rapidly losing full and utter control of himself. "He's like a little kid; how can I hate him? How can I blame him now? When I know he's suffering? He's the one making the best of it"—
Don could no longer control the wave of disgust; it washed out onto his face, abrasive, acidic. "Stop blubbering. He throws tantrums over spaghetti. He learns words but still refuses to read them in sentences. Stop pitying him and feeling bad that he can't be Raphi again and help me show some discipline. You popping in every once in a while—you're like some spoiling uncle, you know? It's just… a nuisance. You and Mike. You're both just annoyances right now. And I need some help, not nuisances!"
Leo closed his eyes, and backed away a step, leaving Don free. "I… I can't. Mikey will keep doing what he's been doing. And I can't just… leave him, to do it alone. I can't lose another brother, Don—I need you to do your end down here, while I cover mine up there. I'll do my best to help you as much as I can. Really."
Don squinted at him in the dark hallway. He had poured the contents of himself free upon his brother, and had met with almost willful misunderstanding and impotence. The issue was beyond both of their grasps—Don could not conceive of what Mikey could possibly be doing that was so important, nor could Leo see what was so terrible about being with Raphael all day, who did little else but watch cartoons and eat cereal. They spoke from two different continents, across intermittent channels, in two dissimilar languages; brothers, they shouted over a great divide.
"Whatever," Don whispered, and brushed angrily past his older brother. He could feel Leo's eyes, long after he had passed out of the hallway; they branded him, with something like a glimmer of understanding, a beam of light illuminating solitary objects in one large, darkened room.
-- -- --
Donatello's favorite and first toys as a child were circuit boards. They were his model towns, his toy trains, his books and manuals—radios, motherboards, RAM chips, CD-ROMs. Even long before he fully understood what they did, each circuit board, big and small, looked to him like a world of its own, a miniature city of the future. He saw silos and roads, city blocks and mega centers, high rises, water plants and refineries—each unique, vastly new and exciting, and peopled only with his imagination. As he grew, he came to understand that a world did indeed exist in each board—electricity, connections, sparks from node to node, memory and virtual existence, expressed upon monitors and mathematics—but unlike cities of the world, where the burning of a single house left the greater whole standing, a single error—a white spot where the board had singed—meant the end of an era.
The brain is less like cities of the world, and more like this structure, this alien amalgamation, but in a very grave sense, Donatello never truly made the connection. He knew the anatomy of it, of course—he knew that if he damaged the motor region, the subject would no longer be able to move, throughout the body or only on one side, as with a stroke. Damage the amygdale and the subject would be rendered incapable of regular emotion. The brain, once damaged, hides a world irretrievable, vanishing into an untraceable void.
His brother was just that now—a world irretrievable.
Donatello was chasing his brother through the motherboard city, along green pathways, silicon and metal gleaming, while electricity crashed over them in this uninhabited ghost town of the future, in wild cracks and whip snaps above his head. He could see Raphael, around corners occasionally, always just a few too many steps ahead, his face indistinguishable—and at times, it seemed that the green turned to gray, he sunk to his ankles, and he was instead pursuing his brother along the corridors of the brain, squelching through paths of gray matter. While he ran, the electric cracks of miniature lightning strikes would at times ring in his ears—and in that tinny, monotonous, maddening sound, he bethought he heard a voice, familiar, on the corner of his reckoning, like a face he had not seen in too long a time.
He had this dream by night, and awoke, to forget nearly every detail—it came again, the next night, during the few hours of fitful sleep Morpheus granted him, like a soup bone from the greater table where all the world dined upon long hours of rest, and he eating the scraps at its feet. After these sleep-deprived nights, he had moments, perhaps for thirty seconds in his waking life, where he had the most curious sensation. In these moments, he felt persuaded that, during that almost third of his existence where he dreamed, he was another person, and lived another life, only to forget when awoken. And in these thirty seconds, he was again returned to that person, and felt a maddening sense of déjà vu for the wave of images and patterns, and the reminder of the words held locked within a mysterious voice—this feeling would pass, and he would ask himself what he could have been thinking. Yet the feeling persisted, and he could never shake the apprehension of its reoccurrence. Patterns, and the disconnect from the world and people around him, and the sudden sympathy with another world which flitted over his third eye. He was not a spiritual person in Leonardo's way; he found that too supercilious, too self-indulgent, a way of looking at the world that persuaded one that by doing nothing they did everything. No, he was a thinker and a doer—he would affect, dissect, and establish, leave his mark upon an uncaring world. Why then, must the voice allude him? He began to wonder if the experience was something other than mere sleep-deprivation, but instead something paranormal, proof, a message, from some invisible Other.
But weeks and months went by, and still the voice did not make sense, run as fast as he might to understand it.
If you love a bird, set it free.
This was Don's epistolary, written in the steam of the shower, in mist on glass walls, over and over, one layer of mist and words eclipsing the next. He pondered his own handwriting—Raph once said he should have been a doctor, looking at the all-caps indistinguishable, functional scrawl, more accustomed to numbers than letters. Too lethargic from the steaming hot water to attempt the ceiling, he wrote the words on the tile at his feet, and quicker than he could form the Roman symbols, cascades of water washed them deftly down into the void—into the drains, deeper than even they, where in the deep Raphael wandered, a hungry ghost.
Set it free.
Set it free.
Set it free.
SET. IT. FREE.
All in caps like the words of Owen Meany, like the text of Jesus, like an inward, permanent scream.
Steam formed and reformed, an eerie phantasmagoria, forms and faces in clouds. Raphael seven, Raphael nine, Raphael twelve, morph and alter as in an Ovid tale, from a smiling child to a slavering beast, and Don's eyes blurred, before logic reined again. He was wasting the water, and he had to get to breakfast. No time for thought. The days continue, inexorable, marching to an inevitable end.
Just as he turned the nozzle to end the sound of water pouring down, Don heard raised voices, and froze, listening to the hallway outside the bathroom intently.
"Leo, you can't seriously think it takes three people to take care of Raphael for two days, d'you? You wanna give him a break, it's fine by me, but I got stuff to take care of!"
That had been Michelangelo, using dorsal tones Donnie didn't often hear out of him. Leo returned, rather calmer.
"Your 'stuff' as you call it never changes night to night and never will, Michelangelo! And rather than let you go two nights in danger, I'd rather you stay here. I don't need another crisis on my hands, thanks very much, and no one wants to come out to rescue you while I'm looking after Raphael and Donnie's getting some rest from all this."
Don knocked his head plaintively on the shower nozzle.
Leo.
Leo hadn't listened to a damn word while he'd spoken, and now that he was on the warpath and planning and making lists, there was no convincing him otherwise. Don slowly grabbed his towel.
"I can go to the surface without a babysitter, Leo, but thanks. I know you got all this pent up nagging energy with Raph out of commission"—
"Auld MacDawnald had a faahm, ee-ai-ee-ai-yo!"
Mikey started again, sounding remarkably more irritated. "God, can't you make him stop?! Where's Don?"
Don grinned unexpectedly; Leo sounded exasperated. "Donnie's in the shower, and if you want Raph to stop so much, you ask him to quit—don't expect me to do all the brothering for you."
"He doesn't listen to me!"
"You hardly say a word to him, Michelangelo, and if he annoys you, you wander off and expect me or Don to do it. What the hell is up with you? You're well beyond the time you should have needed to get the reality of this through your head! You keep telling me you don't need a babysitter? Then stop acting like a child!"
"Dude, you wanna talk about acting like people're kids around here? I am not gonna treat my older brother like a three-year-old, Leo! So screw off!"
Some stomping; a slammed door—the hallmarks of an angry teenager, though Mikey wouldn't be able to use that excuse for very much longer. Don toweled of—nothing like getting your daily household digest by listening through the bathroom wall.
He proceeded from the bathroom to see Leonardo, trying with some difficulty to reclaim control over his breathing. It was a moment before he noticed Don standing in the doorway, on the cusp of grinning an I-told-you-so grin, though he quelled it, knowing that to some degree Leo had also been right about Michelangelo's behavior. Splinter and Raphael sat before the TV, which their father had only just turned on, to stop his son from belting out renditions of "Old McDonald" again, which even Splinter was getting very tired of by this junction. Their father called back to them, gently.
"I think it is time Raphael had some lunch, my sons."
Don noticed nothing amiss in this—Leo had probably fed Raph even though that was something their sensei normally did. Leo, however, frowned.
"Master Splinter—you already gave him lunch today. I saw it when I was coming in."
The old rat appeared confused, but did not argue. "Yes, you're right. For some reason, I had believed it was yesterday. I must have given him the same lunch both days."
Leonardo nodded, letting this pass, but sent Donatello a meaningful look, and strode forward to grab his arm and lead him into the dojo.
"What now?" Don asked, impatiently. "He's forgotten stuff before."
Leo's eyes were severe. "You cannot leave Raphael alone with our father anymore like that, alright? If he's forgetting stuff"—
Don cringed. "He forgets something maybe once every two weeks, and it's never huge. Just something he does everyday, he'll confuse—like what time you and Mikey came home. It's nothing serious. You're freaking out over nothing."
Leo stood back thoughtfully, gazing at a scroll on the far wall; this was once a place of peace—and was now vastly underused.
"I was thinking of maybe asking April to come in a couple days a week, lend a hand… it hurts to ask her, but I'm really not sure how else to relieve the pressure on you…"
Don scoffed. "You can tell Michelangelo to stop acting like a petulant child and help"—
"Or you could tell him so—ever think of that, genius?" Leo prompted, sounding for a moment like a brother that they had been long missing. Donatello laughed.
"Ha! If Raphael is my responsibility, then Mikey gets to be yours—since he's so conveniently your excuse"—
"Oh, am I?"
Leo and Don both whirled; Mike had appeared in the dojo door, their shouting having masked his rather loud approach, so they only had themselves to blame for his overhearing. His eyes gleamed blue murder, dark and hooded from long nights and too little sleep, deeply juxtaposed against the bright orange of his bandana. He approached them, and the pop of his knuckles cracked audibly close to their ears.
"I'm no one's responsibility—so you guys stop worrying about what I'm doing and find a plan for fixing Raph, because this stupid waiting around is making me nuts. I don't care if we have to sell our souls or suck up to some stupid tycoon—but we gotta do something! What the heck is wrong with you two?"
This was quite enough for Don's already paper-thin rope; before Leo could respond or even prevent it, Donatello had dragged Mike inside the dojo, slammed the door shut, and spun his brother around until he was pinned, plastron down, on the tatami mats, with Donnie's foot pressed into his carapace.
"Alright then, shell-for-brains, let me explain this to you in a way you can understand. There—is—no—cure—for—this! You think if there was a way out, I wouldn't have tried it? Huh? You think I like taking care of an idiotic, drooling, tantrum-throwing little child, like I know of all these miraculous cures but instead I've been waiting around on my ass so they can grow on me? Is that what you think?!"
Both of them getting over their shock, Leo sprang forward to pull Don away just as Mikey spun around, to get back up to his feet. His face, quite unlike Donatello's, held very steady, eyes unwavering. He no longer raised his voice; Leonardo, knowing they both needed to have it out, kept his silence.
"You don't wanna know what I think, Don. So let's cut the bull and just agree to keep not talking about it." He tried to stride proudly out, but Don would have none of it, grabbing the edge of his carapace none-too-gently.
"Oh yeah? Well maybe I'd like to know what's so important, that you'd go up top and forget Raph and I are down here, and that maybe I could use a little help? You ever think that maybe the idea of doing this for the rest of my life might—I don't know what I'm saying"—
Mike's voice was quiet and poisonous. "You're the genius. If you could mess him up this bad, you can figure out a way to fix it, if you hate watching him that much. There're important things I have to do too, Donnie. There are worse things you could be doing, ya know, than taking care of a toddler."
Donatello laughed in his face. "You talk big for someone who's never done it, Michelangelo. And it's not like he's just my brother—he's yours too, and he'd probably do much better with you being with him sometimes. I'm not asking you to be here 24/7—just take a shift every third day or so, be the one to get him something when he's upset once in a while instead of looking at me to make him shut-up! Own him like he's your brother"—
Mike's eyes flashed with anger. "Ya know what, Don—if Raph were himself right now—he'd hate me for treating him the way you do! When we have him back—if I were to tell him I'd tried to teach him his ABC—I can't do that to him!"
Don made a feral sound of exasperation. "He's not coming back! You mean you can't do that to yourself, you can't bear to accept it like it's real, so you'll keep running until he's back to normal, and he never will be—and I really don't know what his last wishes would've been. I don't even know if he would have wanted to live like this"—
"Of course he wouldn't!" Mike retoured, unthinking. "He could barely take being injured, or being, like, so weak we had to haul him away from a battle—he wouldn't just hate us, he'd hate himself"—
"That's enough!" Leo's voice cut between them, slicing them apart, and his younger brothers both turned to gaze at him in wonder, as though forgetting he was there. "Stop talking about him like he's dead!" With this, he whirled, and stalked from the dojo; the moment he opened the door, however, he found Raphael in the entrance way, attracted to their voices—Splinter having dozed off before the television unwittingly, thinking Raphael had done so as well. He waved rather cheerfully at Michelangelo, who's carapace was still in the grips of Don.
"Hi, Maikay. Come ta pray?"
Mike blinked, looking very unsure what to do, having been addressed—he was rather good with kids, but he still could not adapt himself to treating Raph like one of the number.
"Uhh… pray? Pray in the dojo?" He searched Don and Leo's eyes for answers, hopefully. Don scowled at him and said nothing, prompting Leo to answer, gently.
"Play, Mike. He means play."
Asking to go to the Oscars with Cindy Crawford couldn't have made Michelangelo appear more awkward. After a moment of silence, looking anywhere but at his brother, he finally began to raise his eyes.
"Umm… not now, Raph—maybe some other"—here he stopped, inexplicably, his face turned from Don and Leo, and looking fully into Raphael's, as though studying it. His eyes moved again, taking in the wasting form of a brother he had barely glanced at for over a year, seeing it anew, as for the first time. He murmured under his breath, almost so Leonardo couldn't hear him.
"Bruises."
It was at that moment that Donatello noticed just how filthy the dojo was.
"MASTER SPLINTER!" Michelangelo yelled a second later, marching both himself and Raphael down the hallway—Leonardo, however, knowing exactly which bruises his brother was seeing and the cause, ran after to prevent him from worrying their father, pausing in the door. Don frowned at him, but continued inspecting the dojo.
"We really need to clean this place before the mats start degenerating," he said, off-hand; it was this very uncaring, which should have set off bells in Leo's head, that signified to him Donatello's innocence, as he wasn't in the least defensive; looking relieved, Leo continued back on his mission, leaving Don behind to his musings.
Splinter was half-way across the den to Michelangelo's shouts by the time Mike had marched in with a laughing and befuddled Raphael in tow, convinced they were now "praying." He waved at Splinter, enthusiastically.
"Hi, Dah—Maikay an' me're prayin'."
Splinter exhibited a tight-lipped, concerned smile at his son, who hadn't the foggiest what was going on, and turned to Mike, who contritely held up Raphael's arm for inspection, his face stormy. Their father was silent for a moment; in this time, Raphael's expression changed to bored.
"Do'ter? Hate da do'ter. Maikay, Dohnay prays da do'tor, n-noh you."
Splinter smiled more gently at him this time, tracing the bruise, and Leo had by now caught up to them; before the eldest could speak, Splinter answered his fears.
"I have already seen this, Michelangelo. I am surprised it has not faded, but Raphael's immunities are not as they once were." His ears lifted off his head, crisis averted. "Had you been among us more often, my son, you might know that on occasion our Raphael still shows his physical strength and gets himself into scrapes. Donatello looks after him, however."
Leonardo's previous concern could not win out against the feeling of relief and renewed hope at his younger brother's reaction to seeing bruises on Raph; rather than address it and embarrass him, however, he spoke to Raphael, who still appeared bored.
"I know you get the doctor visits a lot, Raph, but Mike was just checking on you. Wanna play with the Scrabble letters?"
"Lettahs? T-taeech meh uh new wahd?"
Leonardo grinned, feeling his father and brother's eyes. "Sure—animal, vegetable, or mineral?"
Michelangelo remained silent, watching them, the slightest line of a frown between his eyes, and Splinter interjected.
"His sentences are very good, Leonardo. You should be proud of your teaching skills."
Leo's smile at this appeared pained; when he guided Raph away, he found Mike following them.
"What?" Mikey asked him, when Raphael had hold of the Scrabble letters and was sorting through them for the right word. "You just pissy cuz Raph can't do more right now?"
Leo shook his head. "No—it's not that at all. It's just… Master Splinter has said the same thing to me ten times now."
If Michelangelo grasped the meaning of this, he didn't say; he stood by watching for a few minutes, before Leo spoke to him again.
"You can go out for a few hours tonight—I want you back by 2 AM though, so you can be alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic for a shift in the morning."
He expected a complaint in response, or something biting; he received neither. Had he not been a ninja, Leonardo would never have perceived the way in which his brother ghosted from his side—as unreal and ethereal as Raphael was a sitting, cold slab of reality, spelling words proudly.
RAFHEL.
LIONADOH.
MASSER DAH.