Author's Note: These two portions were supposed to be part of the next chapter… but it's just too long and I want to give the action in that chapter the attention it deserves, as well as the vague revelations in these sections room to breathe and ruminate. Next chapter up soon. And because I don't do it often enough, let me say thanks again to Kyt for reading EVERYTHING I write and giving me assistance every night—as well as Airy and Tri for their constant readership and feedback.
Leo's voice dimmed; Don kept his stern eyes averted for a moment, working on Michelangelo's knots to get him untied. Mikey watched, with a cutting glare that tingled the top of Donatello's dome head.
"You know what I'm talkin' about. The way sometimes things jus' feel wrong."
Donnie took a breath, steeling himself. "Here's what I know: I like having my brothers alive. We're a team. If those two have problems, they'll deal with them, and unfortunately it has nothing to do with you and me."
Mikey blinked, rubbing his wrists. "Hey—you… you saw somethin'. Ya see it, dude, just like me. How can you… I mean, can't ya tell me what really"—
Donnie shot him a distinctly dirty look. "To what point and purpose, little brother? You've already proven you can't handle what little evidence you actually have in a mature fashion—why would I provide you with more? Leo may be a control freak and Raphael may be emotionally self-indulgent, but they never go out of their way to hurt people. And sometimes in a family, Mikey, you've got to learn that honesty isn't always the best policy. All I see is someone who's about to get one of his brothers killed"—
"Oh, like you're one to talk"—
"I was trying to help"—
"Oh, sure, 'cause world genius Donatello has to have the answers and fix everybody—maybe Raph isn't the problem, ya ever think of that?"
Donatello stared at his little brother, seething, and trying not to show how hard he was breathing, trying to keep his rage in check.
"You are so goddamn naïve, Michelangelo. If… if you really knew, you'd regret every single word coming out of your mouth, and I couldn't even do that to you."
Mikey nearly spat in his face. "They're my family—I've got a right to know, it's not cool for you t' just decide"—
Surprisingly, Don smiled, slightly twisted in the vent's strange light. "You'd be amazed how little you know about your family and still manage to be happy, Mikey. Cherish it. You've got the rest of your life to be a bitter, cynical adult convinced there's no goodness left in the world." He began to crawl past, to catch up with Leo and Raph, but Mikey grabbed an arm.
"What'd Leo do to 'im?" Mikey was serious, his eyes almost desperate, thirsty to understand—Don held the key to everything, the Rosetta Stone to translate the strange language of their brothers, fit the pieces of their lives into a cohesive story, all points of view present and accounted for. Yet too often it seemed they had his own, a limited amount of Don's, the leader named Leo, and a canvas, a speakerphone, that stood in for Raph. He felt—could feel palpitating—under the surface of his three brothers a collective second world: Leo and Raph, two people under the leader and the mask, and the eyes that knew all collecting and storing their endless information, never to be unlocked, within Donatello. As though their family—the face he saw—was all an elaborate conspiracy, to keep himself innocent and Master Splinter assured of something else. Of their innocence, perhaps. Mikey narrowed his eyes. Don wrenched his arm away.
"I'd rather believe there was something off about Raph's mind, Mikey. Something he'll grow out of. If he lives that long."
And then Mikey glimpsed it—the desperate, haunted lie Donnie held viciously onto, flashes of their past, everything his older brothers had strove to protect him from, Don most of all, before it disappeared behind a practiced veil, cutting him off.
A world out in the sewers.
The snap of a pigeon's neck.
Raphael grasping a rotting bird, a maggot working away in the eye.
Words, innumerable, that could never be taken back.
Crazy, stupid, disturbed.
Mikey smiled disbelievingly. "Kids are jus'… cruel, y'know?"
Don's return smile was the most sardonic his brother had ever seen it, and it sent a chill of fear down his spine. "Then why do you still act like one?"
Young and cold and cruel and heartless—the glorious freedom of innocence hungry for knowledge capable of breaking even the strongest mind. Michelangelo felt he was walking in someone's prints sunk deep into snowdrifts.
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While Leo was gone, Raphael seldom made himself visible to his family; he was as he had been as a preteen, watchful and silent, a guardian spirit—appearing and reappearing around the den. But one day he found himself in the meditation room, standing in the doorway. He despised the new dust, collecting on the partially-burnt candles, and on Leo's lovingly-collected books. Master Splinter hardly ever stepped foot in here without his eldest son, as though it lost its ability to calm the mind when the presence that had once charged it had fallen off the face of the earth.
Raphael's own books were here as well—it was ideally the meditation room for all of them, but it was a place supplied for willing meditation—unlike the dojo, where they had to do it. He took down one of Leo's bound volumes of Japanese poetry, lightly swept off the dust, turned to a random page.
But the page wasn't random. They were twins. The pages fell open, and Raphael, from long years watching his brother finger the book, knew where the find the most important poem. He could see the oils from Leo's hands most prominently here, glossing the paper, occasionally smearing the ink. Blotches from sewer run-off, green and black.
Basho.
"Wandering traveler,
Never settled long in one place—
Like a portable fire."
It made him sick to miss his brother, sick with something beyond simple pride or jealousy. Pride and jealousy were thin veils that something deeper, hiding sometimes even from himself, sat behind, in wait. But Raph knew he missed him. Knew Leo couldn't miss him back.
It was such a wide world, that Raph ached to be part of. How could Leo resist feeling the same?
They were twins, after all. If he could live somewhere else, he'd go too.
He would join Leo, and reside in another place. But he was tied to all those voices, the beat of his city, the roar of the subway, light through gratings, some distant, dreamlike memory. The scent of the street, sometimes unpleasant but made wonderful with the tingle of nostalgia that needed no thought, only feeling.
"Raphael—my son, what are you doing in here?"
Raph snapped the book closed, startled, and hurriedly tried to replace it, stammering. Like a child caught masturbating, a toddler with his hand in the cookie jar. There was no explanation that could logically make it go away, no alternative. It felt bad, somehow. Like an accusation.
Leo is off on a mission of great import. You should be happy for o-nii-san, not grieving his absence. Someday, your father will be transformed by death—you must rejoice in it, for traveling to new places is a cause for celebration. And then o-nii-san will be prepared to keep things going in father's stead.
Raph didn't want to celebrate. He wanted to throw the book against the walls of his thin imprisonment, that black glass cage, woven and melted with shadows. He instead ran a hand along the book's binding, after failing to fit it into the bookshelf.
"I'll get out—sorry, sensei"—
Then felt a clawed hand on his shoulder, laced with comfort, and shuddered, shaking off the dread.
"It is okay, Raphael. Do not be ashamed of missing him. We are all aware that this is hardest for you—but it is necessary for both of you to grow into new people." His eyes fell on the book in Raphael's hands. "You know Leonardo's favorites, without ever having read them. You know their meanings, without knowing all the kanji. You know why they are important, and when he is thinking of them, even when he is half a world away. Tell me what poem haunts him now, my son."
The dusty candles were still unlit, and would remain so, until Leonardo's late return. Raphael opened the book, distractedly, to the page he'd had before, but stumbled to his feet—leaving it open on the tatami mats.
"I—I can't, sensei. I'm sorry. I'll get out."
And hurried from the room, without looking back. Gazing through the years at his brother, at his incomplete books, at his damaged, well-loved volumes, at his search for truth, all ending in such strange words. The traveler, a fire carried from place to place. Two flames, twins, one burning forever ensconced, while the other flitted around the world, proton and neutron.
Several hours later, Raphael passed the room again on his way to prowling the streets, and paused. Master Splinter was still within, gazing meditatively at the page he'd left open, as though he may channel his son through its power. The candles were lit. Like a moth around a flame, Raph remained in the hallway, sunk against the wall and sitting on the ground. That night he was not the Nightwatcher.
It was Leonardo's seventeenth birthday. And more than eleven months after he was supposed to return.
Raphael fell into a fitful doze in the hallway; when he awoke, he was lying on the floor in the meditation room. Leo's letters—the ones he had written to Splinter while he had still been doing so—were spread out over the floor. Master Splinter had a steady gaze on his second youngest.
"You have been my steady hawk over the mail, Raphael. Did he write today?"
Raph shook his head, glaring at the mats. He realized he was resting in the fetal position, but felt a strange fatigue melting the control over his heavy limbs. Leo was probably ecstatic wherever he was. No little brothers to look after. No sewers to hide in. No bastard New Yorkers who didn't give a crap about anyone. Splinter seemed to read his son's thoughts.
"Leonardo would never be happy without his younger brothers. Nor without you, Raphael, in particular. You know him better than this." There was compassion, and even pity, in the old rat's eyes. "But believing he is happy wherever he is must make it easier to deal with his persisting absence."
"I hope he never comes back." Raphael meant it when he said it. Leo would have come back if he missed them—either he was dead, or he didn't want to be watching three ridiculous little brothers and take their father's place. He'd taken the first sane step he could, and escaped them. Raph had never known Leo was capable of doing something for himself, for his own sanity, for breaking the yoke over his shoulders.
He just supposed he'd always thought Leo would take him with him.
"Denial is the forerunner of a deep love, my son."
It was morning already. Morning on Leonardo's birthday. The second one he had spent away from home… why celebrate another year of life, though, when you don't even know if they're still alive?
Don and Mikey were moving around outside the closed door; desperate not to let his brothers see him lying down, Raph hauled himself into a sitting position, still staring at the mess of letters… the envelopes with Leo's neat, controlled print, more beautiful when writing hiragana than roman symbols.
Splinter was watching Raphael, his expression clearly showing that he knew what his sons did not: his second youngest was deeply depressed, and living in a broken household, which existed on a thread, its members confident Leonardo was either dead or not coming back. No one held this knowledge so closely and so near to the front of his mind than Raphael. The others worked to keep their minds off it—each had reachable dreams and aspirations and goals. But this one was a fighter, a survivor. He was surviving for his brother's return, subsisting on grains of hope, drops of optimism. His realistic, pragmatic son who saw the today and the actual, and acted. Who was rapidly losing to the overwhelming evidence that his twin was lost, with very little to save him from the fall.
Donnie burst in, ducking his head inside the door, with the actions of one who doesn't expect to find what he's looking for in a room but checks anyways, for form's sake. He seemed surprised to see his father and brother within, but concealed it quickly.
"Master Splinter? Your tea's ready, and Gilmore Girls is almost on."
His light brown eyes fell on Raphael, and narrowed.
"So you are home. Mikey thought you hadn't made it back. Make sure you do the dishes before you go to sleep again." His voice had a ring of disgust in it, but carried the tone of an older brother, now getting used to being in charge. "If you're going to act like a bum, you can at least do your kitchen duties."
Raph's voice was quiet but biting. "Whatever, Don."
"Hey!" Donnie cut back, as though expecting it. "We're all aware of your attitude, Raph. You didn't respect Leo and you don't respect me, fine—but you know what's expected of you."
"Donatello!" Master Splinter's voice rang out. "Respect is earned, not demanded. You hold a position because you are now the eldest, but be careful how you view this power. Remember that it is fortified by ties of family and compassion, not of duty or force. Your brother is not working to disappoint you."
Donnie sent a biting glare at Raph. " My brother isn't working at all. Maybe he'd stop feeling like a violent Neanderthal with lethargic slumps if he had some purpose. Leo isn't the center of the universe. This house can't just stop because he's gone."
"Everyone adjusts to new realities in their own way. Perhaps Raphael has accepted a different reality than you, Donatello."
Donnie squinted at his brother, who was picking up and turning over repeatedly one of Leo's letters to Splinter. He didn't seem to care that his father and brother were speaking about him as though he wasn't in the room.
"That shouldn't surprise me," Donnie mused, then cocked his head at Raphael. "Raph—if Leo was dead—well, you'd know, wouldn't you?"
No eye contact, but he'd been heard. "How would I know that, Don? 'm not some sorta Ouija board." Of course. Realistic Raphael, rearing his ugly head.
Donatello sighed, sure he wouldn't get anything more out of his opaque, impossible little brother. "Okay, whatever. Don't forget the dishes."
"Heard ya the first time, brainiac. Doesn't take a genius t' do the dishes."
Don narrowed his eyes, stared hard at his younger brother for a few moments. He could accuse Raphael for opaqueness, but he'd be in the center of a pot and kettle moment. The key to being a middle brother was constant compromise—and since you always had to be so many things at once, sometimes it felt best to distance others from your real self. Always in flux, metamorphosing—invisible, in the lime light, little brother, big brother, walking on eggshells.
But Leo had always been enough big brother for all of them. Raph had been allowed to never see Don as an elder; he could go through a day without answering anything to Donatello aside from what kind of pizza he wanted. Changing things now felt impossible. And Don didn't want to deal with that pool of issues and tangle of trouble that was Raphael. It wasn't his job to unknot his little brother and figure out what was wrong with him… but if Don wanted to be honest, if he looked closely, he wouldn't have to search long. Not seeing it now was more a work of denial than ignorance. And he had pride and feelings too. Maybe he wanted Raph to come to him.
But maybe Raph had learned that too much pain comes of trusting in your older brother.
Master Splinter sighed, and Donnie slipped away, aware of his sibling's insecurity. Their father stood, as Raphael gazed at the letters.
"I encourage you to read them. Perhaps you will have some idea of where he has gone, my son, and what he is experiencing. I wish to speak with Donatello."
Raphael nodded slightly, grimly, in a slight daze. His father swept out. He picked up a letter, and saw that Leo had written it in Japanese.
Father—
I couldn't sleep. I will be meeting with the Ninja Council tomorrow, and the Ancient One has already had a talk with me (Raph noted Leo used "Watashi" form, even when half asleep… what a straight-nosed kiss-up… his kegon polite speech was immaculate) and I am feeling nervous. If you ever send my younger brothers (here it was just "otouto," and since Japanese has no plural nouns, Raph had to assume that Leo meant all of them), my warning will be to watch words with the Ancient One. He can perceive a weakness the moment one opens their mouth. I hope you are well. My training is drawing near its end, and I miss home. I enjoyed the letters when I got here—they fortified me against what is soon coming. Despite writing to you, I have had little opportunity to receive letters back, and it was a great gift.
My brothers will be expecting messages.
For Don: Hold it together, keep training, and keep an eye on Mikey. I know you have a great leader in your spirit; let it grow while I am gone and I will look to you for strength when I return. Don't let your technology obsess you, or the budget. We have always pulled through before.
For Mikey: Your letter made me laugh in the middle of the night at the Ancient One's home, but it was the first time in months. I cannot thank you in the proper words for that. Keep your smile, and don't annoy Raph too much.
There was a gigantic ink blot on the portion meant for Raphael. Mistakes, erased, scrawled out, kanji and hiragana, all jumbled. Below this, was English, plain and burning.
Raphi: I don't even know what language to write you in. But… Ore te (savois) comprends, otouto. Stay alive. Stay out of trouble. (Anata) kimi ni ai suru.
Raphael blinked at it. When Master Splinter had come to them to pass on Leonardo's messages, he had evidently not known what to make of Leo's note to Raph. He boiled it down to a sentence, with a hand on his son's shoulder, as for comfort.
"Your brother loves you, and reminds you to stay out of trouble." To which Raph had nodded, concealing that he cared. Don's had been word-for-word, translated into English, and Splinter had read between the lines to embellish on Mikey's. Raph suspected Splinter knew something lay in Leo's message, and it was meant to be read, not heard. It could not be translated, lying outside of language. It fed the blood, made hair stand on end. Intensity of feeling lay in the hurried, mother-language scrawl. Leo thought in English, no matter how proficient his Japanese—this bastardized, in-between language carried the essence of what they were, of what Raph and Leo were, of a world outside their father's grasp.
But Raphael knew that every word choice had particular meaning. "Ore" for familiarity, different from the Watashi in the rest of the letter; the French comprendre because it was a verb that denoted its difference from another that meant "to know." Comprendre, to know as one knows a person, not a fact. Otouto, with no honorific, for the respect and affection in the title. Then English, to strike him and let there me no room for compromise or misunderstanding. A cryptic "I love you," with a meaning so easily changed given the pronoun choice. Raphael found his mouth moving, looking for the message's sound. It had flowed better with savois. Perhaps Leo had known it too. But could he be known like a fact? Perhaps there was some formula, some equation.
There was a greater message in the sound and choice of each language—the stress-free flow of Japanese, the leaping lilt of interspersed French, the harsh, mumbling and familiar sound of English, contrasting strangely against the others.
Stay alive. Stay out of trouble. It was his big brother talking, that voice and all its quirks speaking in Raphael's ear—sharp commands, expectations, filled with worry and responsibility and duty.
The rest came from another Leonardo, another voice—a heart voice, someone younger, the echo from deep within, as spoken inside a tunnel, the metallic thrill, a forgotten song.
Raphael put the paper down abruptly, suddenly confused. He felt a flush crawling upon his neck and up his face. The letter was dated nearly a year ago. Raph gazed at the others. Only one dated after it, also sent from the Ancient One's; and of the rest—fifteen months ago, thirteen months ago, several from sixteen months past, when Leo had been gone three weeks or so—when they didn't need his letters. Confusion. His brother could be anywhere, why were they looking to Raph to figure out what was going through Leo's head? Whatever it was, and if he wasn't dead, it was probably some kind of demon.
Raphael hoped his brother discovered it, and destroyed it, and then found out it was best to stay away from home, and be his own person, instead of the Great and Powerful Leonardo, the bearer of all burdens, master masochist and elite older brother. Perhaps he'd found that person, in another language, through another voice.
Raph shook his head, confusion deepening, and shifting slowly into anger, fans of frustration. He shouldn't want Leo to come back. It was selfish, and weak, and cowardly, and… god, as emotional and needy as his brothers always wanted him to be and that he always ended up showing, despite himself at his best. It even seemed crazy to want him back, when all evidence said that it would be better for Leo to stay away. He knew that in some ways he still needed his older brother… but needing had nothing to do with wanting, and he wanted Leo back. Confusion.
But the magic of his anger was its power to invert. He warped those feelings and tucked them inside, to be used against some criminal that night, and the next, and the next—he would bash heads against trashcans with the power of his wanting and the fury at himself until blood and the cold night air had stripped him raw.
Ore te savois, o-nii-san. Anata ni ai suru. It flowed better that way… a puzzle of sound waiting to be completed.
Now…
Bury it.