Splinter did not know who to run to, who to worry for, who to comfort. He had known they would respond along these lines, that sanity and understanding and patience would be lost, but he had not prepared himself enough for it, for the agony of witnessing their pain, and on top of his own grievances. For a moment, it was all too overwhelming. He sank to his knees and cried with them, his own weeping completely drowned by the hysteria and rage of Raphael's voice, Raphael's tears. Michelangelo was motionless, lying across Leonardo's legs as Leonardo vomited into a helmet, tears dripping down his cheeks, soaking into his mask. It was utter chaos. Splinter almost could not bear it. But he knew he had to. He had already fought through the initial grief before coming to tell his sons the news; they needed to be cared for now. They needed to be brought to rational thinking, most specifically Raphael.

Splinter forced himself to his feet and gazed upon his eldest and youngest. Leonardo had joined his brother in lying weakly on the floor. He seemed only on the boarder of consciousness. His chest heaved, his breathing thin and shallow. Tears continued to spill out of his eyes, but his irises rolled around as though dazed and confused, as though looking for something, constantly blinking and only half open. He shook his head and mumbled, but Splinter could only catch the word failure. With a sinking heart he realized that his eldest son was doing the exact same thing that Splinter had done, which was to immediately blame it all on himself. As much as this broke Splinter's heart, he knew he had to tend to his second eldest first. Leonardo and Michelangelo would not go anywhere.

So he turned and made his way down the ladder. The lair was in ruins. The stuffing from Raphael's favorite punching bag was strewn all over the room. The coffee table had been reduced to mere slivers of wood. Glass from the television screen glittered on the floor. And Raphael was nowhere to be found. Splinter's stomach dropped. Eyes working double time, he caught a glimpse of Donatello's body still lying on the couch. Before Splinter had gone to break the hearts of his sons, he had taken the time to carefully clean Donatello's wounds and cover his body with an old sheet. Now, Donatello's head was uncovered, turned to the side as though Raphael had had to check for himself that Splinter was telling the truth about his death.

Sadly, heavily, Splinter took himself to the couch and gently turned Donatello's face back toward the ceiling before replacing the sheet over him. He closed his eyes for a moment, noticing the unbearable weight in his chest then opened his eyes again at the twitch of his ear. He hurried toward the sound of broken things and found Raphael tearing apart his room. He stood in the doorway for a moment, watching gravely as his most ill-tempered son released his grief the only way he knew how. He threw weights across the room, tore apart borrowed comic books, stabbed his bed with his sai, and was about to punch a hole in the brick wall when Splinter hurried in and stopped him, taking his son into his arms.

"Be calm my son," he soothed as Raphael wailed into his father's shoulder. But the young turtle was restless, his body trembling with anger and disbelief. It only took a moment for his rage to build up again, and he tore himself out of his father's arms.

"Those goddamned Foot with their goddamned weapons and shit," he shouted, his voice thick and an octave higher than normal. He launched a sai at the wall and it stuck in between two bricks. "Why do they do it? Why do they work for that goddamned Shredder? Why do they have to keep coming after us?!" He threw his other sai and it sank into the cement hardly an inch above the first.

He walked slowly up to the wall and slammed his fists against it before resting his forehead against the bricks and sobbing unashamedly. "Why Donnie?" he cried quietly. "Why couldn't it have been me?"

Splinter's stomach turned. "My son," he said shakily, resting a paw on Raphael's shell. "We cannot ask such questions. We would all rather take the place of Donatello, but what would that do for those remaining? If it had been you, your brother would be feeling this same pain, asking these same questions. We cannot alter our fate, nor when it chooses to take us away from those who love us."

"Fate?!" Raphael bellowed, throwing Splinter's arm away. "Fate didn't kill Donnie; those fucking Feet did! And I'm gonna kill every last one of them with my bare hands!"

"Raphael you mustn't be so rash," Splinter begged, clinging to his son's shell as Raphael yanked his sai out of the wall and began stomping away. "There are consequences for those who kill deliberately, but it is not for us to decide those consequences. Please my son, your brothers need you here. They need you safe…I need you." He broke down on these last words. Never in a million years had he imagined himself losing his composure in front of the one son that had no idea what composure meant. But it happened, and he cried and he begged his son to remain calm and rational even through his distraught tears.

For a moment Raphael just stared at his father with wide eyes, shocked into silence upon witnessing this kind of behavior from the one who had struggled all these years to teach him to control his emotions. But after a moment it became too much. He burst into tears again and threw his arms around his father.

"I'm sorry Sensei," he wailed. "I was supposed to protect Donnie, and I didn't even know he was gone!"

Splinter held his son tightly, as though this would somehow relieve him of the pain. "None of us did, my son," he said, patting his shell. "None of us did."