Series: TMNT
Author: Zelgadis55
Rating: Overall story rated T for language, Raph will be Raph after all.
Disclaimer: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and all related characters belong to Nickelodeon.
Warnings: Overall little bit of foul language and mentions of past character death. Unbetaed.
Summary: Lost and alone in another reality, one turtle must try to find his way home. All while trying to forge a place amongst a family who lost one of their own under horrible circumstances and seemingly resents his very presence. No OC's. Set: 2k3 up until 'Good Genes'. 2k12 up until 'The Good, the Bad and Casey Jones'. Please Read & Review. ConCrit always welcomed.
A/N: For those that have read my other stories, one of the flashbacks contained within this chapter will be very familiar. For that, I apologise but it really did fit perfectly for what I needed to convey. However, the ending of that flashback is very different from the original ending. Also, due to the fact this chapter was over 5k words long and since a certain person keeps saying how evil I supposedly am, I felt it best to split this chapter into two parts.
And One to Grow On
Ch – 12
It was nights like this that Raphael wished he didn't need to hide behind a full face helmet. The buildings and pedestrians seemingly rushed past in a blur as Raph sped by, a little too fast, on his bike. He would have given anything right then to be able to feel the wind through his protective leathers or to have the visor up. It may have been early Autumn still but tonight was stifling and he wanted nothing more than to be able to lose himself in the moment.
If he had gone for a rooftop run instead, he could have gloried in the pure rush of wind in his face and nothing but air beneath his feet with the pavement far below as he catapulted from one building to the next. Unfortunately if he had done that instead, he would have had no excuse for ignoring the Shell-cell that was sure to soon be vibrating insistently in his belt.
Staring determinately ahead, Raphael spotted a sign for a turnoff to a nearby bridge leading out of the city. He clenched his jaw tightly, then angled his bike. Decision made, he rode out of the city.
Outside the city limits, Raph twisted the throttle, feeling the bike respond accordingly beneath him. The roar of the engine, the powerful thrum of the well-tuned bike, soothed his spirit as the sleek machine's vibrations ran up through his shell. Unerringly, he let instinct guide him along familiar back roads often travelled whenever he simply needed to get away for a few hours.
Smooth road surfaces soon gave way to rough, potholed tracks and Raph finally slowed down. After travelling a little longer, the turtle pulled to a stop, switching off his bike engine and pulling the Shellcycle behind some bushes and trees. From past experience no one really came this way but Raphael wasn't willing to take the chance of leaving his only transportation, his precious bike, in plain sight. All he wanted right now was a few hours of relative peace away from annoying brothers and that other Mikey.
"Probably wouldn't be so bad if he was at least still around..." Raph muttered sullenly as he sunk to the ground, leaning against a tree and looking up towards the stars. It seemed as though the multiverse was mocking them all.
Their fun, laughter and joy was gone...
- . - . -
Raph growled menacingly at his aggravating little brother but Mikey, as usual, either didn't take the hint or more likely refused to.
Mikey danced around Raph taunting him with every bounce, keeping just out of Raph's immediate lunging range.
"Aww, what's the matter? The big, bad Raphie too slow?" Mikey laughed raucously as he tossed the remote control from one three-fingered hand to the other.
"Give it back ya damn shell-for-brains, before I pound that stupid shell of yours into next week!" Raph's scowl deepened. Mikey didn't even want the damn T.V.! He'd just returned home with a stack of comics fresh from the week's new deliveries.
Mikey laughed again, using the loud, obnoxious laughter he deliberately saved for when trying to piss Raph off. "Shouldn't make threats you can't back up, Raphie," Mikey mocked in a teasing tone.
"Who says I can't back 'em up?" Raph snarled. Little turd was really trying his patience tonight and he didn't want to waste time with their whole stupid chase scene crap. He just wanted to watch the damn wrestling! Raphael smirked suddenly and Mikey stiffened, ready to bolt at the look but Raph quickly shifted his gaze to look behind and to the left of his too energetic brother. "Thank shell! Leo, just the turtle to help out, unless ya wanna be scrapin' bits of Mikey off the walls."
Mikey's eyes immediately went wide and he darted his head around in panic to look where Raphael was addressing. Raph felt his smirk widen into a full wicked grin as he lunged forward, grabbing the suddenly squirming turtle by the back of his shell and throwing him hard to the ground.
"What? Leo's not even there!" Mikey cried out indignantly.
Raph snorted derisively, "'course he's not! Not like I even need Fearless to help me in dealin' with you!"
- . - . -
Their light was no more...
- . - . -
Yet another argument about the same old, same old. He was just tired of it and eventually he had left, just before finally socking Leo one. Trouble was, it was still daylight topside and would be for a few more hours yet. He couldn't go up and expend his angry energy in the best way he knew how. Instead, Raphael was trapped underground; so he ran. He ran until instinct guided him to a tunnel leading to a vast expanse over a long drop. A small waterfall poured from the other side of the yawning chasm and Raph stared. For a moment, he thought about turning and finding another path to run then realised he came here because it was right. It was what he needed. The rush of water may not have been a natural or even a pretty waterfall but if he closed his eyes... if he just listened, the sounds were just as soothing as if they were the real thing.
As Raphael settled down and sat there, soaking up the calming ambience, he felt a presence sidle up from behind. Raph turned his head, opening his eyes and glared fiercely at the unwelcome intruder, groaning inwardly as he realised it was Michelangelo. Mikey gave him a cheeky grin before sitting down beside him without a word, feet dangling loosely over the edge.
To Raph's immense relief the two brothers sat in companionable silence for close to an hour and it actually felt kind of nice. For the life of him though, Raph had no idea how the shell Mikey managed to keep that motor mouth of his shut for so long.
Mikey snickered suddenly and Raph felt a fresh flash of irritation surge through him.
"What?" he snapped, opening his eyes and glaring at the mischievous turtle beside him.
"Just thought of an awesome prank!" Mikey grinned, somehow completely ignoring the warning in Raph's tone.
"An' you're tellin' me this why?"
"You asked, bro!" Mikey laughed.
"Mikey..." Raph growled menacingly.
"Anyway, to pull this one off, I need help from a second turtle."
Raph continued to glare warningly.
"It'll be epic, dude!" Mikey exclaimed, eyes twinkling merrily in the small amount of available light. "Wanna help me prank Leo tonight?"
- . - . -
And he wasn't coming back. Ever...
- . - . -
Raphael paused mid-step in the doorway leading out of the lair. He turned his head to look behind him, perfectly balanced despite his foot half out the door and still in mid-air. Behind him on the couch knelt Michelangelo, staring over the back of the seat toward him, winning grin filling his features as if he had already won the battle.
"So will you?" The hopeful voice flowed over enthusiastically.
"Already got plans, Mikey. You know that."
Raph couldn't help but notice as Mikey's face fell. He groaned inwardly as Mikey's puppy eyes made their expected appearance.
"But you've been out bashing heads with Casey every night now for the last two and a half weeks, bro!" Mikey protested. Without breaking his gaze away from Raph's eyes, Mikey stretched his leg out to the side, snagging a game controller between his toes and pulling it in close enough to take with his hand. Mikey dangled it teasingly in the air in front of him. "We could play a game, your choice and I'll even let you win," he grinned cheekily.
"Oh you will, will you?" Raph smirked, trying and not quite succeeding in his effort to prevent his brother from seeing his amusement. He stepped around to face his brother properly and casually leaned his shell against the door frame. "Ever so generous of you, Mikey, considerin' you wouldn't stand a chance against me anyway."
For a moment, Raph actually felt bad as Mikey's eyes lit up in hope.
"So you'll stay, then?"
"Nope, Casey's waitin' for me, sorry." Raph shrugged, not letting the apology be heard in the tone of his voice. He knew if showed even a smidgen of weakness, Mikey would never leave him be. Raphael held up a hand in a nonchalant wave as he turned around again to get back on his way.
"Wait!" Mikey yelped frantically, stopping Raph in his tracks once more.
Raph sighed.
"What?" he grumped.
"How about something else then? I don't really care what we end up doing, so you can choose. I just want to hang out and spend time with my favourite bro for a change." Mikey pleaded. Raph could feel Mikey's eyes locked unwaveringly on the back of his head.
"We already hung together for hours earlier."
"Training doesn't count..." Mikey sulked.
"Just... go pester Don or Leo, they're around!" With that, Raph hurriedly left, vaguely hearing Mikey whine about Leo being no fun and something about some supposedly important project as his loud voice faded into the distance the further Raph moved from the lair.
Thanks to Mikey distracting and delaying him, Raph was already running several minutes late but he wasn't overly worried. It wasn't as though his human friend was always on time himself. Raph unconsciously slowed as he ran through the sewers, heading for the manhole nearest to Casey's and his usual meeting place.
Major gang and Foot activity was down of recent and had been for a couple of months now, thanks largely to the efforts of his brothers and himself. However, because of this, the bottom feeders had become braver when they realised they no longer had the Purple Dragons, the Turks or the Foot to contend with. Bag snatchings, muggings and rapes by single individuals and small groups of two or three were slowly on the rise and neither Raph nor Casey were willing to stand by and allow it to happen just because all the bigger fish had been scared away.
As a result, Raph found himself spending less time at home and more time wandering the streets and rooftops with purpose. Even when Leo led a patrol of late, Raph took off with Casey instead. They really didn't need the full team for such small fry.
"... could play a game... I'll even let you win," Mikey's voice cajoled within Raph's memory as he ran through the tunnels. Raph growled slightly and roughly pushed the memory of his annoying brother's beseeching words out of his mind.
He had a life beyond that of just his family, dammit!
Even if the humans above didn't realise it and were nearly always ungrateful for the help they received, they needed him. They needed both Casey and him to stand up for them against the evils of the big city when they were unable to protect themselves; not to mention that Raph actually liked to be needed. He would never let on to his family he felt that way though, in case the sneaky trolls that were his brothers ever tried to use that knowledge against him.
And they would.
But he needed to help for other reasons too.
Helping to keep the dregs of society down gave Raph a much needed outlet. It gave him a way to deal with any pent up aggression he accumulated throughout the day, which meant he was less likely to take it out on someone who didn't actually deserve it.
Or Mikey.
Whoever happened to have the unfortunate timing to trigger his temper first.
Yes, Raph knew just how much he was needed and how much he needed to get out on a regular basis.
Mikey's eyes lit up in hope. "So you'll stay, then?"
Right at that moment, Raph really wished he had just kept going instead of lingering when his brother called out as he was leaving home for the evening.
Raph's gaze flicked ahead a few metres and he smirked when he noticed the familiar manhole coming up on him slowly. Raph frowned, suddenly realising he was only moving at a jog instead of his usual run, so he pushed himself forward again, picking up the pace as he reached the ladder leading upwards towards sanity.
Raphael listened carefully, extending all his trained senses before sliding the heavy metal cover off and climbing his way out the sewers into, relatively speaking, fresh air and took a deep breath. Even then, he still looked all around him before placing the cover securely back over the hole in the ground and darting towards the nearby fire escape.
"You're late." Casey's voice accused lightly as Raphael easily jumped from the top of the ladder onto the rooftop.
Shrugging indifferently, Raph commented, "An' you were late two nights ago, deal with it. Let's get goin'."
Casey paused a moment to stare at Raph in concern. "You okay?"
Raph gave Casey a weird look, "I'm fine. Come on, bonehead!"
Together, the two friends and partners began running across the rooftops, heading towards an area Raph knew was usually rife with crime, both violent and otherwise. He wished fleetingly and not for the first time, that he didn't have to slow down for his friend to keep up with him.
Oh, Casey tried hard, he knew, but it wasn't like he was actually trained or anything and Raph always had to wait at least a little for him to get from one rooftop to the next. His brothers would never even pause for those jumps unless it was a particularly large gap and even then, there was barely any time wasted as grappling hooks or the like were quickly utilised on sheer instinct.
"I just want to hang out..."
Raph closed his eyes in exasperation. Why couldn't that knucklehead just stay out of his head already? Somehow, Mikey always had this way of getting deep into their minds, even when he wasn't around.
Casey landed beside him with a thud. "I'm not puttin' ya to sleep or nothin' am I, shell-for-brains?"
Raph grunted, opening his eyes once more and looking mockingly at Casey, "I'm sure I saw a snail overtake you a few minutes back."
"Ha, ha."
A scream burst out from below, interrupting their good natured ribbing and Raph and Casey ran quickly to the edge of the roof. They looked down into the lit street and analysed the situation almost instantly. Just a purse snatcher, Raph realised, nothing too dangerous.
Pleading puppy dog eyes drifted across Raph's vision as Casey took off across the rooftop in the direction the hapless snatcher had run in.
"What are ya doin', Raph?" Casey yelled out, half in annoyance, half in concern.
Raph blinked back the phantom image, automatically pushing his body to catch up with his best friend. He palmed a pair of shuriken from his belt pouch as he ran and threw both with unerring accuracy. The first snagged hold of the criminal master-mind's jacket, pinning it deftly to the nearby lamp-pole that he was running past hard enough that it caused the moron to swing half around it as he was yanked harshly in place. He slammed the side of his head solidly into it, making him somewhat wobbly on his feet. The second caught the handbag the idiot was carrying, ripping it out of the guy's hand and affixing it firmly to the ground.
Casey half slid, half ran down the ladder on the side of the building to make sure the thief didn't recover fast enough to get away again while Raph watched from above, knowing he couldn't go down into the well lit, semi crowded street below. As he waited, Raph found himself uncharacteristically fidgety; an uncomfortable, vaguely... guilty feeling creeping across his mind and body; a feeling, he realised upon reflection, that he had been carrying since he left the lair. Before now however, he was too busy moving to really notice.
Several minutes later, Casey was back by Raph's side. "Sure ya not comin' down with somethin'? Ya head's not in the game tonight, Raph."
Raph stared at Casey for a moment with his intense, golden gaze. "Actually, sorry Case. I think I'm just gonna go home. Got somethin' I gotta take care of."
"More important than this?" Casey asked, tilting his hockey mask up on his head with one hand while waving out over the street below with the other.
"Yeah," Raph smiled tightly. "I'll catch up wi..."
Another terrified scream ripped through the night, immediately chilling Raph to the bone. Neither he nor Casey wasted any time; they tore off in the direction of the shrill shrieks.
- . - . -
A little over four hours later, Raphael crept silently into the lair, thoroughly exhausted. The quiet night had quickly turned into a rough one, erupting into bloody violence. A couple nearly died, beaten half to death by a group of drunk teens by the time he and Casey managed to get to them. The paramedics who eventually turned up had blamed that and many more incidents on the full moon, according to Casey.
Mikey was still on the lounge where Raph had left him nearly five hours previously and he was obviously asleep, hanging awkwardly off the couch with remnants of a lonely expression filling his usually jubilant features. For a few minutes, Raph stood a short distance behind, just watching. He glanced tiredly up at the television screen where Mikey's character was floating on the spot, long dead. By the look of it, Mikey hadn't even made much progress into the game and his snacks were almost untouched on the table in front. Raph felt a flash of guilt over not coming home afterall but he quickly quashed it. Things had been messy on the surface that night and if he and Casey hadn't been there... Raph vigorously shook his head, dismissing the memories of what they had seen and made up his mind to make it up to Mikey.
There was always tomorrow night.
- . - . -
Only tomorrow night had never come... That was the day of the latest invasion of their city, their planet and not everyone had made it home...
- . - . -
Raphael violently shook his genius brother, desperate to get his attention. "Donatello! Don! Come on! Don!" He and Leo had raced frantically into the room, following the gut wrenching screams they heard from a few corridors away only to find Donatello out of control, wild emotion taut throughout his body and firing one of the alien guns he didn't even know Donnie had. There hadn't even been anything left alive in the room by the time they'd arrived.
Finally, Donatello limply dropped the energy weapon and trepidatiously raised his eyes to meet his younger brother's, his now only younger brother, barely noticing an anxious Leo hovering just behind Raph.
"What happened? Where's Mikey?" Raph pressed fiercely, trying to hide the sudden terror he felt rippling through him.
Donatello didn't respond at first. His mouth moved silently like a gaping goldfish's as he shook uncontrollably; his breathing fast and shallow. Donnie's eyes slowly strayed to the side and down to rest on the remaining belongings of their youngest brother on the ground nearby.
"Don?" Leo prodded apprehensively.
"... my fault... it's all my fault..."
- . - . -
To be continued