To say that Raph feels uncomfortable is an understatement. He hasn't stepped foot inside Don's room since probably a week after the funeral. It hurt to see the rumpled duvet on the bed, still unmade from the last time Donnie slept there, and the textbooks spread across the desk, and the purple hoodie tossed over the back of the computer chair, this cluttered, comfortable, lived-in space that wasn't lived-in anymore. That wouldn't be lived-in ever again.
It still hurts. Even though things have moved since then— the books have been shuffled around, the bed is made, that purple hoodie is more Mikey's than Donnie's anymore— Raph feels like his chest is caught in a vice.
But Mikey is in front of him, face pale where it isn't blotchy from recent tears, that awful bruise stretching from chin to temple. He's shaken, as much as he tried to play it off for his friends' sakes. He's scared.
And that overrides everything else. Raph can power through this grief that's still raw and aching, that probably always will be.
"C'mere," he mutters, and puts out his hands, half-expecting Mikey to blow past him. He'd deserve that much at least. But the younger man doesn't hesitate. He steps out of the bathroom and right into Raph's open arms, as if it hasn't been months since the last time they fucking hugged.
They had different parents, they grew up in different houses, but this kid has always been his little brother.
He remembers back in junior high, how Don kept blowing them off when they'd invite him out. It wasn't that he was hanging out with anyone else, he always just had to go home. They were free to tag along to his house, to make plans to sleepover at his on the weekend or do homework with him on school nights, but he turned down every offer to go to the drive-in, or out to eat, or pile on Casey's stupid waterbed for a brain-dead afternoon of binge-watching Netflix.
April called him on it, in her gentle, implacable way, while Raph and Casey stood to one side and worried that smart, capable, indestructible Donatello was outgrowing them.
He wasn't. He rubbed the back of his head, apologetic for all that he didn't actually apologize. He told them, "I don't want Mikey coming home to an empty house."
Their dad died when they were young. Their mom started drinking not long after. This was common knowledge between the four of them, for all that Don didn't bring it up very often.
Mikey was a sun-bright fixture in all of their lives, and Raph had memories of holding his hands as he was learning how to walk, of crowing with six-year-old joy when the bright-eyed baby babbled his name.
In what universe would they have wanted Don to leave Mikey home alone? April and Casey looked equally as dumbfounded.
Casey blurted, "Why didn't you just say so? Bring him along. We're not going clubbing, we'll probably end up ordering pizza and playing UNO."
It was a wordless, unanimous agreement. They were family, no matter what their birth certificates said.
And Raph has really failed this kid. He's struggling to swallow the reality of just how badly he failed him. Some protector I am, he thinks bitterly.
Drawing back, he steers Mikey toward the bed, and sternly says, "Sit."
Mikey sits.
Raph drags the computer chair over in front of him. The first aid kit is sitting open on the nightstand already; he hauled it with him from the kitchen.
It's nothing like the cutesy little kits that come in a plastic tote for about twenty bucks at CVS, with a handful of bandaids and antiseptic wipes. This one is a well-stocked, heavy-duty toolbox organized to an engineering student's mathematical specifications.
Something in Raph's chest gives a heady pang to see this tiny, unthinking little bit of proof that Donnie is still around.
They sit in silence as Raph picks through the supplies. They've been here half a dozen times before, a younger Mikey and a much younger Raph, but it's never felt quite like this.
"Eyes up," Raph says. Obligingly, Mikey tilts his face, and winces at the bite of antiseptic on torn skin.
Beneath the impressive bruising he's wearing like a tasteless carnival mask, there's an irritated abrasion, like he was dragged against asphalt for a minute or two. It's on his palms, too, and crawling up his wrists to near his elbows.
When Raph's hand passes over the inside of Mikey's arm, pressing carefully to make sure nothing is twisted or broken, he can feel the kid's sickly-quick pulse rabbiting away.
"Is it always like this?" Raph asks gruffly. Suddenly he can't bring himself to look Mikey in the face. He thinks of how clumsy Mikey was when he was little, how Donnie always despaired of him coming home with scrapes and bruises, or the occasional sprain.
He thinks of that sunny December morning in Mikey's hospital room, telling him that Donnie was gone, and the incomprehension that flitted through Mikey's bright brown eyes. "He was just here," the kid had said, too out of it to be anything other than painfully transparent, drugged to the gills and concussed and wanting his big brother back, "I saw him."
He thinks of the tense car ride away from a burning farmhouse, the footprint of an overheated cellphone lingering on Raph's palm, Mikey sitting in the backseat by himself but not really alone.
There's a brief silence. Klunk jumps onto the bed and flops down, a long orange loaf pressed against the length of Mikey's thigh. Out of Raph's periphery, he watches Mikey's free hand gravitate over automatically to pet her.
"No," Mikey finally says. His voice is hoarse. "That's never happened before."
Raph looks up at him. "Is that the truth?"
It's like watching a door slam closed. Mikey's face shuts down. He's right in front of Raph, warm and whole beneath his hands, but he might as well be a hundred miles away.
Fuck. He's already fucking this up.
Growing up, Mikey never told them a lie. But they never believed him so eventually he just… stopped telling the truth. "A ghost pushed me down the stairs" became "I fell down the stairs" and his older siblings were all happier for it. About time Mikey grew up.
He learned how to tell them what they needed to hear, but that's not on him. And if Raph wants to— to fix this, to be his brother again, he can't start with accusations. In fact, there's one big, huge, obvious, glowing neon fucking sign pointing at where he ought to start. And now that he's already put his foot in his mouth, it's easier to take a step back and try again.
"Sorry," Raph mutters. He sits back, the chair squeaking a little. It's the loudest thing in the room. "I'm sorry, kid. Mike."
Mikey blinks once, and then twice, and looks as though he has absolutely no idea what the protocol is for accepting an apology from Raphael. His eyes slide sideways, to a point above and behind Raph's head. Raph wonders if Donnie is in the room, watching his pathetic excuse of a best friend do even more to hurt and alienate his precious little brother.
"It's okay," Mikey says, even though it clearly isn't. He's doing that thing he does, that he's always done, where he pushes everything far away so he doesn't have to feel it. "I know it's… hard to believe."
Leo believes you, Raph thinks but doesn't say. Woodrow believes you. I've known you your whole life, and where the hell was I?
He remembers a twelve-year-old Michelangelo blinking through tears as April and her brand-new learner's permit drove them to the hospital at well over the speed limit, and Raph tried to hold his broken arm steady in the backseat.
"What the hell happened? You were supposed to go straight home," Casey had shouted from the passenger seat, all noisy and sharp in his caring in a way that Raph fundamentally understood. He had only winced a little when Donnie leaned up from Mikey's other side and socked him hard in the shoulder for raising his voice.
"Waiting on an answer, Mikey," April had said, eyes darting anxious glances into the rearview.
And Mikey had bit his lip and shuddered with pain when the car bounced over a pothole, but he hadn't answered right away. There was nowhere to run from four worried, expectant big siblings crammed into a speeding car with him. Donnie's face was pinched and pale, but even he didn't swoop in to save Mikey that time.
They had driven nearly a full mile before Mikey finally said, "It was an accident. I didn't mean to. I just… I fell."
That was probably the first time he'd ever lied. Raph wishes he could go back in time to that moment and ask what really happened. What really hurt him. How long it took him to feel safe again after that. If he ever did.
"I'll listen this time," Raph blurts. It causes Mikey to jump a little, his eyes round. "I know I'm like fifteen years too late, but if you— if you want— if you'll give me another chance, I'll do better from now on. I'll be here for you."
Don, if you're listening, he thinks wildly, not for the first time and not for the last, I'm trying. I'm really trying. I don't know if I can try any harder.
"Raph," Mikey says. He sounds bewildered. Even though he has ninety-nine things to be angry or bitter about, he says, "You've been here the whole time."