He felt numb. His constant friend and playmate was gone, replaced by a stranger he didn't know or even like very much.
He could barely follow the conversation. He snapped in Mike's face when the little twerp tried to feed him waffles. He felt like he hadn't quite come back to his body, like this world was even less real than the one he had just returned from.
The next thing he knew, Mike and Leo had left the kitchen, and David was prodding him gently in the plastron, trying to get his attention. "Hey," he was saying. "Raph, can you hear me? I want to show you something."
"I don't care," Raph said, swatting David's hand away with none of his usual strength. "Leave me alone."
"Then you don't mind taking stove baths for the next few weeks?" David asked.
"What?" Raph blinked and tried to focus. He and Leo had washed up in the kitchen sink after returning from their meditative journey, and he sure as hell was not going to keep doing that until whenever it started snowing in Northampton Outside The City.
"Come on," David said. "I'll show you how to fix the hot water heater," and it was so much like what Donnie would have said that Raph followed him.
The basement was dusty and grimy, the fluorescent light glaring off of decomposing cardboard boxes that looked like they hadn't been touched in decades. David didn't seem to mind; he hadn't even put the old boots on before heading down the minimalist but sturdy wooden-slat stairs.
"You really gonna touch this stuff?" Raph asked, smearing a finger across the sooty ductwork that surrounded the wood-burning furnace.
"I've cleaned up a lot of dog poop in my life," David said, squeezing through the narrow passage between the mechanicals. "This is nothing."
The hot water heater was wedged into the far corner. The kitchen and bathrooms were stacked on the floors above it, reducing the distance the pipes and their cargo needed to travel.
"Okay," said Raph, "so how come the kitchen got hot water and our bathroom don't?" They were right on the other side of the wall from each other, and the heater itself was working fine. The problem didn't make any sense to him.
"Because that," David said, and he pointed to a row of small oval knobs hidden just behind the edge of the ceiling tile.
Raph stared at the silver knobs. They all looked alike. He didn't want to sound like an idiot, but he couldn't see what was wrong with them.
"Yeah…?" he said guardedly.
"Turn the one on the left counterclockwise," David said.
Raph reached up and turned the knob. At least, he tried to. When it didn't budge, he adjusted his grip and tried harder. Still, it wouldn't move.
"Well, don't break it," said David. "Try the next one."
Raph grabbed the middle knob and hauled on it, but got nowhere.
"Maybe the third one," David said. A shit-eating grin was spreading across his face, and Raph had the red-tinted feeling that he was being set up. He considered throwing David against a wall - a real wall this time, not a metaphysical one - but attacked the knob first because he was not going to go down to a plumbing fixture without a fight.
The third knob turned so easily he almost sent himself flying. He spun the silver oval until it squeaked in protest and wouldn't go any further.
He looked at David incredulously. "What the hell?"
"I turned your hot water off," David said.
It was seriously tempting to punch him. "Why?"
"Because I'm passive-aggressive that way," David said.
Raph let go of the knob and gestured across the row of three. "How come you did it up here?"
"Because I enjoy being cruel to people in subtle ways," David explained.
"And how come I only tried to fix it over here?" Raph asked, pointing to the big, squatty water tank.
"Because you take a brute force approach to everything," David said, "and you overlook the details."
Raph narrowed his eyes at this strange new version of his brother, half familiar and half not. "How'd you turn it? Must've been completely stuck when you came down. Know you didn't do it with these skinny arms," he said, and he jabbed David in one nonexistent bicep.
"Gosh, it's called a wrench," David said, rubbing at the jabbed spot as if Raph had actually hurt him. Then he sighed. "Listen," he said, "I'm sorry I turned your hot water off. All of this has… not been the best start to our relationship. Do you think we can start over? I want to get to know you better."
Raph crossed his arms. "Here's what you gotta know about me," he said. "I'm a loser and a fuck-up. I'm good for nothing, okay? I'm so dumb and selfish I stopped you from absorbing whatever connection you're supposed to have to us. So don't waste your time. It ain't gonna happen."
"Yeah, you probably shouldn't have told our spiritual connection to fly away," David said mildly. "But maybe we can still get it back through old-fashioned sibling bonding."
"I don't do that girly crap," Raph said.
"Who said anything about girly crap?" David replied. "Now that we're both covered in some good, honest, manly grease, I want to talk to everyone."
Raph swiped his filthy hand across David's face, and David just laughed.
Maybe this was going to be okay after all.
"So tell me where we stand," Leo said, when they had all congregated in the living room. Mike had cleaned up the incense, but no one seemed to be in a hurry to put the furniture right-side-up, let alone back where it had been when they first arrived. "You've decided not to get the surgery?"
"This is what it comes down to," David said. "I can always get the surgery later. When I really think about it, I am not in any hurry to undergo an open-heart procedure. I want to try something else first."
"Anything you need," Leo said.
"Well, that's the question," David said. "What do I need? How do I be a Turtle?"
Leo set his jaw and narrowed his eyes, and then he laid out the plan. "Here's what we're going to do," he said. "You are not ready for ninjutsu, and maybe you never will be, but anyone can do tai chi - the thing I was practicing yesterday morning," he added, at David's blank look. "I'm going to teach you how. I'm also going to teach you the real way to meditate."
"Okay," said David, though he sounded a little nervous.
"Raph is going to take you hiking and swimming," Leo went on. "He'll teach you basic survival skills. You're in good hands with him."
"I know," said David, who hadn't bothered to wipe Raph's smudgy handprint off his face.
"And Mike will be responsible for your food and medicine," Leo concluded. "Eat whatever he tells you to."
"I have not been taking the brown stuff," David announced.
"We know," Leo said calmly, which was a total lie, and Mike gave the game away with his exaggerated expression of disappointment. "You're going to start." He regarded David with a level gaze. "How do you feel?"
"I don't think any of this is real," David replied. "I think I'm in a diabetic coma and I'm hallucinating people who understand me."
Leo smiled, warm and sad, and laid a hand over David's. "We're sorry we couldn't come sooner, otouto."
"You keep calling me that," David said.
"Hai," Leo said. "Japanese lessons start tomorrow."
"I absolutely suck at languages," David warned him.
"Everyone smile and nod," Leo said, in his most reassuring tone, and Raph did.
They ate dinner well before sundown, since no one had slept the night before, and they planned to go to bed early. But after the dishes were put away, they lingered in the kitchen, and took turns telling stories about their lives - some of them to fill in gaps around their present circumstances, others to share who they were and what was important to them.
David had just told a story about working in his mom's clinic, and Mike was gearing up for what probably would have been a self-glorifying tale full of half-truths and outrageous lies, when David put in a request.
"How did Donatello get his name?" he asked.
Leo and Mike looked puzzled. "You know," said Leo, "I have no idea." He turned to Raph. "Raph, do you remember?"
"Aw, that was a long time ago," Raph said. He looked off into the middle distance, reminiscing. "We were reading the name book -"
"The what?" David interrupted.
Raph refocused, looked at David for a moment, and then laughed. "Man, he don't know about the name book!"
"The name book!" Mike said excitedly. "Master Splinter -"
"Let Raph tell it," Leo put in quietly, and then all eyes were on him.
Raph gathered his thoughts for a moment, and then began. "When we were real little - I mean real little - Master Splinter found this book full of, y'know, famous art. And it had stories about the people who made the art. And so Splinter named us after the people who made his favorite pictures."
"So that's why you're all named after Renaissance artists," David said.
"I guess," said Raph, who had never learned anything about art history beyond what Splinter had told them about finding the book of pictures. He had never even read his own namesake's biography. It had been read to him, when he was young, but he hadn't understood and couldn't remember anything about it. "Anyway, one day I was playing with Donnie - he wasn't Donnie then, he was just the kid I played with - and Splinter wanted to know what his name was. So we read the name book. And when Master Splinter got to 'Donatello,' Donnie said 'That one,' and I told Master Splinter, cuz he could never hear Donnie, and so that was his name."
"But why that one?" David asked.
Raph shrugged, remembering the way Donnie had seemed so sure about his choice. "I guess he just liked it."
"Could have picked a worse one," Mike put in. "I mean, Pisanello? Baldovinetti? Yuck."
Leo raised a brow. "I didn't know you spent that much time reading the name book, Michelangelo," he joked gently. Then he turned back to David, realizing that something more important was happening.
"Maybe… maybe call me that," David said, without quite meeting anyone's eyes.
Raph glanced at his brothers. "You want us to call you Donnie?"
David grimaced. "Maybe start with 'Donatello,' and we'll see if we graduate to nicknames."
"I am so not good at not using nicknames," Mike said.
"We'll manage," Leo said. "And now it's your turn to tell a story… Donatello."