(4183 words)
Raphael wakes up to the sound of voices outside his door.
"I'm not gonna wake him up! The guy flipped out the last time I touched him!"
"Mikey, all you'd do is talk to him and maybe poke him, that'd probably wake him up, unless he sleeps like a tank."
"Leo why don't you do it?"
"Because, If I do it he might flip out on me, and we all know you're the most durable when it comes to this kind of stuff."
"Donnie! help me out here!"
"Leo's got a point Mikey."
Raph stands up, stretching, and walks over to his duffel, the teens on the other side of the door still arguing.
He reaches in and goes into one of the inside pockets, taking out a Swiss army knife and stashing it in his pocket. He throws on a hoodie with large pockets on the front and rolls up the sleeves.
"I'm sure you'll be fine, just watch out for-" Leo stops mid sentence.
Raphael opened the door, stopping the brothers in their tracks.
"Oh, hey. Um breakfasts ready." Leo says, trying to keep his face neutral.
Raph nods and brushes past them, leaving them to stand in front of his doorway.
"O-kay..." Mikey says.
"Don't be rude Mikey" Donny scowls, slapping his shoulder.
"What? It's not like he heard me or anything."
They all walks down the stairs, not sure how their first meal with the new guy would turn out. In the kitchen they all sit at their usual spots, looking at an extra chair across from Leo where Raph sat, waiting for them all to sit down before he started eating.
Yoshi comes into the kitchen and greets his sons and Raphael.
"Good morning, I hope you all had a good nights rest."
Everyone gives him a nod or a 'Yeah' while they all ate, some faster than others.
"Raphael, why so fast?" Yoshi asks, sipping a cup of tea.
"Uh..." Raph replies with his mouth full. "You are eating quite quickly, do you have somewhere to be?"
"Yeah Raphael, got a hot date?" Mikey leans over the table with a smug grin on his face, chewing on a piece of bacon that was half way sticking out of his mouth.
"No." Raph replies gruffly. "And don't call me Raphael, I hate that name." Leo gets a look on his face that only his brothers would know. It was the face he used for bullies at school. "Well-" He says, starting to get up.
"So then what should we call you?" Donnie says nicely, placing a hand on Leo's chest to stop him.
"Raph 's fine." He says not once looking up from his plate.
"Alright." Donnie says, the whole table going quiet.
Raph finishes his eggs before snatching the two pieces of bacon he had left and putting them quickly into his pocket. Leo narrows his eyes at him, thinking he saw something, but Raph doesn't notice, asking to be excused.
"Uh, can I be excused please?" He says nervously.
"Yes you may." Yoshi replies, granting him permission to get up and leave. "Oh, and Leonardo, Donatello and Michelangelo have training today at five this afternoon if you would like to come along and observe."
Raph stands up and awkwardly moves around his chair. "Uh yeah, maybe." He quickly leaves the table and rushes upstairs and into his room, closing, but not locking it.
He looks around the room, his hand hovering over his pocket.
"Where, where, where to hide it..." He mumbles, pulling out drawers and lifting up furniture.
He finally settles with stashing his two measly pieces of bacon under the bed in a old wooden box he found. As soon as he stood up from stashing his food his door gets swung open by none other than Leonardo himself.
"Don't you knock?" Raph says in what he hoped was an irritated sounding voice.
"Yeah, sometimes." He says smugly. "So, what are you doing standing in the middle of the room, and looking... Panicked?" He fakes a question before changing his face to what most people would see as a glare.
"I ain't doing anything." Raph says, crossing his arms in hopes of not seeming guilty.
"Oh yeah sure. Just like I'm not standing in the doorway right now." Leo says sarcastically, leaning up against the door-frame that he was very obviously standing in.
"I saw you take something and put it in your pocket, Raph. You might as well tell me what it was."
"I'm telling you," Raph says, getting closer to Leo. "I didn't. take. anything."
"Hey Leo, do you know where my new watch is?" Donnie comes up behind Leo, looking down at his phone.
He looks up to see Leo standing in the doorway, in an obvious offensive stance, while Raph stands tense in front of him.
"Um... Is this a bad time?"
Leo glares at Raph with all his might.
"Yeah, Don I'll be with you in a second." Leo steps out of his stance, still tense.
"Um, Kay..." Donnie walks away, not really wanting to be involved in the fight that was bound to go down.
Once Donnie was out of ear-shot Leo takes a couple steps closer to Raph. "You took the watch, didn't you?"
Raph rolls his eyes, for once sense he'd been confronted able to say something true. "Why would I want to take a stupid watch?"
"Well I don't know, maybe you'd go sell it, or give it to some pawn shop or something. I just know that I don't want to be giving you any ideas you haven't already thought of and done." Leo finishes, now convinced that he had stolen the watch.
"I didn't take the frickin' watch, 'kay? You just made that up on your own."
Leo sighs and folds his hands in front of himself. "Okay, I didn't want to do this, I thought that if you could've just be cooperative and give me back Don's watch I wouldn't have to play this card." Raph looks at Leo skeptically.
'Good luck finding a card I haven't seen before, Bucko' Raph thinks.
"But I'm sure once I tell my dad, and if you give the watch back right away, he won't tell foster care about this little incident, though I'm sure with your attitude this kind of thing has happened before."
"Nice try, but I don't have a watch to give back." Raph says, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
Leo flips his short blond hair and huffs. "Fine, if you want to be like that, go ahead, I'm sure this won't ruin your record more than it already is." Leo walks out of the room, not closing the door all the way.
Raph growls and closes the door.
"What an ass."
"That guy just rubs me the wrong way."
Leo paces the living-room, Donnie sitting on the couch trying to fix the T.V. remote.
"He just has this aura around him that practically screams at me 'F you!' It just ticks me off, and now he's saying he doesn't have your watch, even though I saw him take something and hide it in his pocket and almost right after that you said your watch was missing."
Leo rambles on and on, his speed picking up in both is voice and his pacing.
"Leo," Donnie interrupts "did you ever think to just believe him? That maybe he's telling the truth?" Leo stops his pacing for a moment as if to actually think about this but continues on anyways.
"Don, you don't know how he was acting. He was totally sketchy and he's a foster kid so that makes him even more untrustworthy so-" Leo stops, looking at Donnie who is almost glaring at Leo.
"Leo, just because someone is a foster kid doesn't mean they are untrustworthy."
Donnie sets down the broken remote and gives all his attention to his brother. "Don, I know, I know, but he's been in the system for almost his whole life, you heard what his social worker said, and..." Leo trails off, unsure how to continue. "It was different with you, we got you out of it pretty early, so it wasn't as bad..."
Donnie sighs and looks away from Leo. "Just... Give him a break. Maybe he didn't take it, I could have just lost it or something."
"Yeah, like you're the king of losing things." Leo says sarcastically.
"You never know..."
As the day went on, nobody saw much of Raphael. They had lunch, but Raphael claimed he wasn't hungry, only coming out of his room for dinner right before they left for training at their family's dojo a bit further into town.
The car ride was the most awkward any of them had ever had.
They all piled into their van, Leo opting to drive while Donnie sat in one of the middle seats so that Yoshi could have the passengers seat.
Raphael went automatically to the very back seat, hoping to be mostly separated for the the whole ride, but luck was not on his side as Mikey came straight to the back with him.
"Wouldn't you like to sit closer to your brothers?" Raph asked, trying to get him to move to the only other open middle seat.
"Na, I thought it'd be nice to sit back here with you." Mikey says joyfully. "Also, I kinda wanted to say sorry for that whole 'thing' last night..."
"Apology accepted." Raph says gruffly, scooting to the opposite end of the car.
They drove for exactly three minutes before Mikey claimed he was bored and unbuckled to get to the radio at the front of the van.
"Mikey sit down!" Leo says, hitting his shoulder gently to try and make him back off. "Mikey, you really shouldn't be standing in a moving vehicle." Donnie says from his spot in the middle. Raph doesn't say anything, not because he doesn't think it's dangerous but because the guy wasn't sitting next to him anymore.
"Michelangelo it is not wise to be standing while the van is moving." Yoshi says, doing the thing where he's not explicitly saying to sit down but really he's telling you to go sit your butt down.
"Okay..." Mikey says, turning like he's going to sit back down. "But not before I get some tunes playin'!" At that moment they went over a pothole and Mikey went flying backwards, only to be caught by Raph.
"Whoa, thanks dude."
Raph just pushes him into the far seat, gesturing to the seat belt.
"Oh, yeah, thanks again." Mikey says as he starts buckling up again.
Leo turns on the radio and lets some random station play to satisfy Mikey's boredom but every one in the car stays silent the rest of the way to the dojo.
Luckily it was only fifteen minutes away in total so the awkward silence hadn't last for too long.
"Here we are! the fantastical, magnificent, amazing dojo of pure awesomeness!" Mikey shouts as they enter the doors. "Cool it Mikey." Donnie says, dropping off his gym bag in a corner.
"Start warming up, how about twenty laps around the dojo." Yoshi says.
The dojo wasn't very big, most likely around thirty by thirty feet, but twenty laps for anyone who wasn't fit as a fiddle would be their whole workout.
The trio of brothers start the worm up while Raph stands next to Yoshi, arms crossed and feeling completely out of place.
"Would you like to join in?"
Raph jumps at Yoshi's voice cutting through the silence.
"What?" He says.
"Would you like to join in?" Yoshi asks again, this time a bit slower.
"Um, I guess?" Raph says apprehensively.
"twenty laps then." Yoshi says, nodding his head towards the other three. "Oh, yeah, all right." Raph says, taking off his jacket and tossing it aside.
He waits for the rest of them to pass before joining their rotation, knowing they were a few laps ahead of him.
Yoshi watches as his sons and Raphael run their laps, Raph keeping up quite well. The first three finished their laps and started to stretch while discretely watching Raph finish his laps.
Surprisingly enough, when the other three finished running their laps, Raph sped up. He was now almost sprinting his last couple laps without getting anymore tired than he was before.
"Yeash Raph, you speed demon!" Mikey says, sitting in the splits.
"Ouch" Raph points to Mikey before he starts doing some stretches himself.
"If you think that's painful, just wait until you see him when we work on flexibility." Donnie says, sitting in a straddle.
"Hm" Raph grunts before doing a shoulder stretch.
Leo watches him silently, nobody noticing but his father. "Leonardo,"
Leo turns to look at Yoshi. "Come here for a moment." Leo stands up from his spot on the floor and walks over to his father. "Uh, yeah?" Yoshi leads Leonardo into a side room that would lead to the bathrooms.
"Is something bothering you my son?"
"Wh-"
"I can sense your animosity towards Raphael." Yoshi says in a calm and non-accusatory voice. "Is there something you want to tell me?"
Leo takes a step back, scratching his neck. "Well, uh... Dad, he stole Don's watch, y'know the one he just got. He stole it and now he won't admit it!"
Yoshi 'hmm's and 'haw's, stroking his short, thin beard. "Did you ever think that he might be telling the truth?"
Leo brings his hands up to his head in frustration, turning around so that he wasn't facing his father. "Ugh, that's just what Don said!"
"Maybe he had a good reason to say that."
"Or maybe he's just thinking up some reason for Raph to have not had done anything wrong just because he's very remotely like him!" Leo says, getting angrier and angrier as he went on.
"Leonardo, there is no need to get worked up at this moment. Go join your brothers and we will finish this talk later." Yoshi says, not realizing that he had opened a much bigger can of worms than he first thought.
Leo takes in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "Okay." He turns towards the dojo but stops for a second. "Just watch him, please. I just don't trust him..." Before he could leave Yoshi gives him some last words to think about.
"I believe you must learn to give your trust to him before he gives his trust to you."
Leo doges Donnie's attack with his staff, swinging his leg underneath the back of Donnie's legs, knocking him down.
They had been working on sparring each other while one was weaponless.
Mikey sat next to Raph on the edge of the dojo, watching Leo and Donnie spar.
"So you guys do this like all the time?" Raph asks, shifting an ice pack on his shoulder. "Yeah, four days a week, four hours a day." Mikey replies, swinging his nunchuck around in circles.
"Yikes." Raph turns his attention to the two sparing teens. "So, you guys are like ninjas or something?"
"Uh... yeah, something like that."
They watch the eldest spar until Yoshi calls them off.
"Raphael would you like to try and spar with Leonardo?" Yoshi offers, motioning to his oldest son. "Uh, sure. I don't have all the fancy training you guys have though."
Leo looks at him smirking "Oh, don't worry I'll go easy on you." He says, his tone of voice saying 'Like hell I'm going easy on you.'
The two of them stand at the ready and Yoshi sets them off with a word.
"Hajime!"
Leo starts circling Raph and Raph does the same, never letting Leo get to his back.
Raph tries to take a couple jabs at Leo but he doges them, not as easily as he would have wanted.
Leo moves swiftly and carefully, only taking his chance at a blow when Raph has a lapse in concentration. He punches without realizing where he was hitting.
"Ah!" Raph gasps, grabbing his hurt shoulder. "What was that for?!"
Leo crosses his arms and watches as Raph holds his shoulder tightly. "In the heat of battle people aren't going to baby you just because you're already hurt, in fact, I'm pretty sure whoever it was would take advantage of that."
"Yeah, I know. I'm also pretty sure I know what this whole thing is about too. You still think I took the watch don't you?" Raph says, taking a few steps closer to Leo. "Now, I know I told you this before but I'ma just say it one more time to get it through your thick skull"
Yoshi inadvertently goes tense, ready just in case Raphael did anything.
"I didn't. steal. anything. Now leave me alone." Raph finishes, whipping around and grabbing his jacket. He walks out of the main doors, storming off down the street.
"Uh dad, shouldn't we go after him?" Donnie asks when Yoshi stays standing still in the dojo. "I believe he just needs a bit of time to 'cool off' as you say, as does Leonardo."
"What?! Why me?" Leo exclaimed.
"Because dude, you totally hit his bad shoulder on purpose, and then made up some lame excuse for doing it!" Mikey says, a little annoyed.
"Yeah Leo you do kinda need to chill out a sec." Donnie says, standing up from the floor.
Yoshi quickly glances at the clock and almost grimaces at the time. "Although, If Raphael doesn't come back withing the next twenty minutes or so we may need to go find him." Yoshi somehow mad even that sound calm and collected.
They went on with training, doing a couple more rounds of sparing before Yoshi called his three sons over to him.
"It is getting late so we will skip the work-out today so go find Raphael. I thought he would have been sensible enough to come back but I must have been mistaken." Yoshi turns to Leo first. "Leonardo, I wish for you to let go of your anger towards Raphael. Do not bring up this watch again."
Leo nods his head quickly and bows. Yoshi next turns to Donnie. "Donatello, I know it was your watch so if you wish, I will buy you a new one."
"You don't have to do that, I could make something just as good if not better with the scraps i have at home." Donnie says, but bows anyways.
Lastly he turns to Mikey who at this point is completely spaced out. "Michelangelo... Michelangelo!""
"Wha- Yeah?" Mikey says, snapping out of it.
"I need you to... Give me the watch."
"Okay..." Mikey says glumly, taking a broken watch out of his pocket. "I didn't mean to break it, I swear. It just kinda happened." He holds out the watch for everyone to see. Leo stares at it wide eyed.
"WHAT!?" Leo yells "HE HAD IT THE WHOLE TIME?! AND YOU KNEW!?"
"I only knew once I saw this-" Yoshi holds up a tiny clock hand. "Laying on the floor after Michelangelo spared with Donatello."
Leo, flabbergasted, looks up at his father. "But I know I saw him take something earlier and put it in his pocket, and right after that he asked if he could go!" Yoshi waves him off and turns back to his youngest son.
"Next time my son, do not keep the evidence in your pocket." He chuckles.
"Raph!" Donnie yells for the millionth time. "Raph!" They had been searching for hours. He didn't answer his phone. There was no way to trace it. And they had no idea where he would've gone.
"Raph!" Donnie yells again, passing by a bar. He looks inside, discussed. There were drunk people all over the place, throwing up on the floor and then slipping on it. "Eww..."
He rushes past after that, looking down each and every ally and yelling for the rouge teen. "Raph!" He yells again, coming up on the police station. He looks around before spotting two figures sitting on a bench in front of the station.
He starts to approach the figures, if anything he could ask if they'd seen Raph.
As soon as he gets close enough he could tell that one of the figures was a police officer and one was-
"Raph!"
Donnie runs the rest of the way to the bench. "Raph, we've been looking all over for you!" Donnie says, almost out of breath. "'corse you were." He says sarcastically, his face barely illuminated by the street lamps.
"We were! It's been three hours!" Donnie almost complained about how sore his legs were but he thought he'd better keep that to him self for now. The police officer stands up and faces Donnie. "Do you know this kid?" He asks.
"Yeah, he's my brother." Donnie says without hesitation.
"Okay, is there something going on? I asked him if he was okay and he said no. Should I call your parents?"
"No, that's okay, I'll call my dad and he'll come pick us up." Donnie says.
"Alright..." The police officer says, starting back towards the building. "But if you need anything before he gets here I'll be right inside."
"Okay, thank you!" Donnie calls after him.
He turns back to Raph and sits down next to him. Before he did anything he sent a quick group text.
'Found him. Police station'
"You know, I never thought you stole it."
Raph whips his head around, shocked. "What?" Donnie looks at Raph and sighs. "Yeah, Leo's just a bit high strung, especially about new things. Or new people."
"I know what it's like."
"Sure you do, and I'm the queen of England." Raph says, sarcasm just dripping from his voice. "Well then I should be bowing down then." Donnie says with a laugh. "I do know, really."
"I was a foster kid too." Raph looks surprised.
"Heh heh, yeah. I got sent to my dad when I was five and I could tell Leo didn't like me at first. Granted he was six, but still." Donnie continues, Raph listening intently. "He tried almost every trick in the book to get me out of there. It was't until I was probably around six and a half when he finally stopped. Mikey had, for some reason, stayed by my side constantly. He was four when I got there but he was the cutest little kid i'd ever seen." Donnie seemed to get caught up in his memories for a moment before he snaps back to reality.
"Um, anyways, My point is, even if we were eleven years younger than we are now, it felt the same and Leo has always been weary of new people. So don't take it too personally. Besides, we found out what happened to the watch."
Raph cocks his head to the side. "What happened to it?"
"Mikey took it and broke it, but he swears 'it just kinda happened'" Donnie finishes with a bad impression of his little brother.
"By the way, Leo said he definitely saw you take something and hide it in your pocket, now we know it wasn't the watch, but what was it?" Donnie asks.
"It- it's stupid." Raph stutters.
"I'm sure what ever it is I'll understand." Donnie says in a calm voice.
"..."
"What was that?"
"Bacon..." He said quietly.
Donnie has to stifle a laugh. "Why did you need to steal bacon?"
"I didn't know how your place worked." Raph says quietly.
"What?"
"How about I ask you a question."Raph says a bit louder, trying to change the subject. "How come you lied to that officer? I'm not your brother."
Donnie's eyes soften "Yeah you are, you're my foster brother and that's good enough for me." He smiles.
"... You do know that's still technically lying."
"Yeah, I know but my point still stands."
I don't mean to piss you off with things I might say
But when I try to shut my mouth they come out anyway
When I speak my mind, that's when we connect
But that's not politically correct
Politically Correct
SR-71
Hello! thank you all for reading! give this a review and tell me what you think!
(I was this close to having a sappy ending but then my brain went "NA")