and now we get to the meat of the story :D
again, thank you guys so much for reading and following along!
The Other Side of the Wrong Door
Part 3: Day four.
Raph drags his hands over his face when Casey slips out of Donnie's room. "How's she doing?" he asks. Since they got back, bloodied and beaten and carrying the most precious thing they've found in years, the lair has been on alert, and all efforts to send Raph home have been put on hold. The Kraang are pissed.
Casey glances back towards April's temporary bedroom, and in a sharp, swift moment that goes as quickly as it arrives, Raph feels a thump of empathy in his shell for Donnie – his Donnie – when he sees the soft look on Casey's face as he thinks about someone else.
"She'll be okay," Casey says. "She's got us."
"Yeah, that didn't answer my question," Raph shoots back, back to form. "I said, how's she doing?"
"She's asleep, smart-ass." He sinks heavily into the couch, raking a hand through his hair. "Guess we'll find out when she wakes up."
Raph nods. When she wakes up is a better word than if she wakes up. He wasn't there when Casey found April, but he watched Casey haul her back, Donnie hovering while Leo and Mikey lead the rest of the escape, and he watched Casey pace for the past four hours while Donnie did his medic thing. Some things never change – Casey has always paced, long, loping strides while he marches past whatever's eating him.
"So, how are you doing?"
Casey hesitates. "I'm good," he says, instead of what he really wanted to say, and Raph shoots him a flat look. After half a week, he's sick of this, now, the way everybody blocks him, tempering what they say with careful, this isn't our Raph, this Raph's just a kid. Yeah, well Raph's just a kid who spent the last six months in the middle of an alien war. Even if they'd spent ten years mulching the hoards of the undead, he could handle it.
"Well, you look like crap. Seriously, man."
The dry look Casey gives him is the same one that his Casey gives him, the well duh face he knows so well. Of course Casey is going to look like crap after the night they've all just had. Raph's own muscles are aching, dull and tired from the fight. If this is the future, his brothers are in for hell when they get here. Raph's not a strategist – not like his Leo, or his Donnie – but he knows enough that there's things here he needs to take home with him, to warn the others about when he gets back.
If he gets back.
He shoves himself up off the couch. "I'm gonna go make coffee," he says. "You in?"
"Nah, I'm good."
The hell you are, Raph thinks, but doesn't say anything as he drags himself over to the kitchen. Once Donnie had given them a cursory all-clear, Leo and Mikey had both sacked out, leaving the base eerily silent compared to home; when Raph closes his eyes, he can't hear the subway humming through the tracks, or the burbling from the arcade machine out in the den. Instead, there's just the occasional shuffling of whoever's on watch, but Casey only seems to be watching one door in particular. Donnie's taken watch over April, and Raph doesn't have the heart to try to peel his older, younger brother away. So Casey's getting a damn coffee, whether he wants it or not.
He'll make one for Donnie, too. Just to remind the geek that a) he needs to put things in his body that aren't more anxiety, and b) Raph is still here, and loves him even if this Raph – the Raph that this version of his family has lost – isn't here anymore.
By the time he gets back from the kitchen balancing three mugs on a magazine, Casey's still sitting down, his long shaggy hair falling over his face as his breathing comes in long, even passes – asleep. Raph sets the coffee down on the other end of the table, too used to his Casey jerking awake like a dog that's just smelled food. This Casey doesn't even shift when Raph pads past.
Donnie's room is so obviously Donnie's that Raph still can't stop himself from rolling his eyes even after sleeping here for the better part of a week – a battered periodic table is pinned to one wall, and there are blueprints and plans scattered everywhere, hastily shoved aside along with Raph's own bedroll. Donnie's asleep too, sitting on a kick-stool next to his occupied bed, with his elbow propped on the bedside table. A sad little lamp is on in the corner – the only source of light in the room. If it wasn't for the lines around Donnie's mouth, the different shade of the replacement mask, the chips in the shell, Raph would almost think he was home. "Hey."
Donnie jolts in his seat, awake. "'m up," he slurs, his hand automatically darting to April's wrist. He squints blearily through the dark. "Raph?"
"Yeah." He hands the coffee over, then nods to the lump in Donnie's bed. "How's the patient?"
Donnie gives a little shrug, then buries his beak into the rim of the mug, breathing in before swallowing a mouthful.
"That good, huh?"
Donnie shrugs again, and Raph heaves a sigh. "Look," he says, "if you wanna go crash somewhere, I can stay with April."
"April thinks you're dead."
"Yeah, she probably thinks everyone's dead," Raph points out. "aside from the guy outside. Don't–" he starts, as Donnie shrugs again. "–shrug, dammit, Donnie, I was just saying."
The breath that Donnie gives out is long and exhausted – a different type of exhaustion than Raph is used to. His Donnie gets exhausted with little stuff, like explaining stuff (to Mikey), and fixing stuff (that Mikey broke). Sometimes he gives this big, world-weary sigh and shuts himself off in his lab and comes out an hour or two later to make coffee, and watch TV. But this one's wearier; Donnie sinks with it into his shell and doesn't come up for air.
Raph doesn't like it one bit.
"I know, Raph," Donnie says, resting his chin on the lip of his plastron.
Donnie always knows.
But it doesn't change the fact, that April was locked up in a Kraang tank for the past however-many years.
She might hate them.
She might be crazy.
They won't know until she wakes up, either way, and Raph knows Donatello enough to know that he's going sit there, going through every single possibility he can think of, and zeroing in on the worst ones, until she does. Usually, you have to give Donnie a distraction, but Raph can't see one in this room that won't earn him the stinkeye – hey, Donnie, tell me about this piece of robot lying on the floor while your girlfriend's in a coma right there. So he defaults to option #2 – to make Donnie feel awkward, instead.
He looks pointedly at where Donnie still has his thumb on April's wrist and clears his throat and, sure enough, Donnie jumps a little, then carefully sets April's hand back on the bed. Oh man, Donnie, Raph thinks. Because it's sad enough that his Donnie's got a thing for April, but his Donnie hasn't been blaming himself for letting the Kraang get their hands on her for twenty years.
It's not that Raph doesn't like April – far from it – but it's not hard to look at his family, and the choices they've had to make, and wonder what if.
Donnie clears his throat, and looks far too eager to change the subject. "Look, Raph, I– I know we need to get you home," he says, flexing his hands before clenching his fists and pressing them into his knees. "And I promise, tomorrow, I'll start working on it again."
"Tomorrow's fine. Besides," Raph says, and lifts a shoulder in a shrug. "If you're not, my Donnie is."
Donnie smiles. It's weak, but it's there. "No doubt."
Raph's Donnie will also, probably, be planning the lecture in Powerpoint form – each slide explaining, in detail, just how dumb Raph was, all of which Donnie will helpfully narrate in his snottiest voice.
For once, Raph thinks, he might just let him.
Casey takes over watch a couple hours later, and Donnie takes Casey's room, sacking out on top of the covers with his hand on Raph's carapace again. An hour or two later, Raph wakes up to the sound of screaming, and Donnie hurling himself out of the door.
April's awake.
Of course Raph follows.
The whole lair is up, all of the lights flaring, and Donnie slams into April's room at the same time Casey races across from the bathroom. Angel, the long purple streak in her hair mussed halfway around her head, yanks her door open.
"Jones, what the hell–" she starts, as Casey charges past.
"I just went to take a leak, she was fine, she was asleep!"
"Well she's sure as hell not now!"
Casey gives her an impatient look, before he slides into April's room as well, the door closing gently behind him.
Leo slips out of Angel's room behind her, grinding the heel of his hand into his eyes. He hasn't even bothered to put his mask on. "I take it she's awake?" he asks.
Raph raises an eyebrow. "What tipped you off? The screaming, or the Donnie Express?"
Leo gives him the shitlook. It's sharper than it used to be, and it has just about the same effect. "This isn't the first time this has happened, Raph," he says.
"Yeah, I saw that the night I got here," Raph shoots back. "You can stop talking to me like I'm your kid brother, Leo."
Mikey cuts Leo a look across Raph's head before he can point out the obvious. "It's not gonna be like May, Leo." He says it defensively, and Leo just shakes his head, his hand touching gently at the base of Angel's back. "We found April, this time; she didn't find us. That's gotta be worth something, right?"
Leo makes a frustrated noise in his throat.
"Right?" Mikey prompts again, and Leo's shoulders drop.
"Fine," he says, fatalistically. "Let's see how this goes."
"Leave them to it," Angel tells him. "Mikey's got a point," she adds, flashing Mikey a crooked smile.
Leo huffs at her. "Right. Like I said, let's see."
They all fall quiet, then. April's voice bleeds through the door, cutting through the soft tenor of Donnie's voice: "this isn't real this isn't real this isn't real this isn't real–" The lights dim, and then die; someone, probably Leo, claps twice and they switch back on.
"You wanna come away from this," Mikey says, tugging firmly on Raph's elbow. Instinctively, Raph looks down to jerk his arm away, and then has to look up. Mikey's taller now than his Donnie is – and the Donnie here is taller still. Raph is still a short-shit, and that's just another reason for him to not die or vanish anywhere, because he is not ending his life shorter than Mikey.
Mikey doesn't let go, though, and leads Raph away from April's room ("no, you're not Casey; you would have come back for me by now, this isn't real" she says, and Raph just feels cold), out into the rest of the lair.
Part of Raph's indignant – he's not a kid, they don't need to keep babying him all the time considering he's the reason they were even able to get April back in the first place. But when all Raph can hear when he strains to listen is his brother – both of them – quiet and hushed and trying to cement April in the here-and-now, he's glad that the door is shut, and gladder still that Mikey's hauling him away.
This isn't the first time.
Like it had happened before – keeping an April around, instead of just offing her on sight. Mikey tugs him over by the air-hockey table, something they must have brought with them when the last lair fell, and leans up against it, dragging a hand over his face. "What a mess," he says, with a thread of humour.
"That's an understatement," Raph says, and Mikey quirks a smile.
"Donnie'll get you home soon enough."
"It's okay," Raph says hurriedly. Because yeah, he wants to go home, but at the same time, things are so messed up here, that leaving feels wrong. Feels like abandonment. No turtle left behind, that was their rule, so how could he even consider leaving three? "What's another couple of days, right? There are worse places to be."
Mikey's smile twists, all the way into Raph's gut. "Yeah, I guess."
"Look," Raph starts, then has to shake himself, because it's so weird to ask Mikey something, when at home he can just tell Mikey to do something. Mikey's all grown up right now, and Raph's not. "What's the deal with the clones?"
"Yeaaaaah, Leo didn't want you to know, but I was waiting for you to ask. See, we tried to be nice to them? The clones, I mean. But they just kinda… break."
"Break how?"
Mikey taps a knuckle to the side of his head. "They just break. No comprende. Keine Ahnung. They'd start talking funny, and acting funny. One of 'em tried to pull a knife on Casey, once – that was fun."
"So now you just…"
Mikey shrugs. "Leo said something about dignity. Better to let them die then let them turn into that. I think he said it more for Donnie than anything else - it was killing him. I mean, it still is, but what can we do? We had to bring them in, just in case–"
"In case one of them was the real April," Raph fills in, his stomach chilling. He'd dodged a bullet.
"Right," Mikey says gently. "Which is the reason we didn't just blow the place up from the outside. In case April was still in there… or our you. At least now we know."
"So what happened in May?"
Mikey's smile drops to the floor so fast Raph can hear it break. "May was the one we kept the longest. We thought we could fix her."
"You called her May?" Raph asks. Mikey narrows a glare at him.
"We weren't gonna call her April, were we?"
Raph folds his arms.
"And she was okay with that."
"She had to be. No way Donnie would have called her April. Casey, too. Nobody would. She wasn't like the others."
Raph doesn't think about what he saw the other night.
I know. Go to sleep, April.
Mikey turns away, punching the button to start up the air-hockey table, and Raph recognises it as Mikey's way of shutting the conversation. The table shudders to life with a motorised buzz, and Mikey slides a mallet along the table.
"You really wanna play air-hockey when April's screaming in there?" Raph asks, archly.
"I really want to sit here not thinking about it until she's okay to come out," Mikey replies. He hunches his shoulders, like he's got water trapped in his shell. "Besides, don't you feel that? That's April."
Raph scrunches his face. "I don't feel anything." He concentrates, but no – nothing feels different at all. A little cold, maybe, but no more than home, before they turn the space heaters on in the fall.
"Huh," Mikey says. "Does your April not have the thing?"
"The thing?"
"The brain thing."
Raph shrugs. "She knocked out a bunch of Kraang once, if that's what you mean."
"Mm-hm." Mikey slings the puck along the table. "You're first up. And I guess that'll come later."
The way Mikey says it turns Raph's stomach into a pit, snakes coiling in his gut. It's not even a change-of-subject, it's something's coming and welp have fun with that. They've all been really, really careful to not mention events from their past besides the obvious – April, and the clones, and the Kraang; the things they can't hide. Raph doesn't know what's coming, though – hell, he doesn't even know what April is, none of them do, aside from somebody the Kraang decided to have genetic LEGO fun-time with before she was born. She can blast Kraang, and track mutants who are feeling sad.
So what else is there about April that they don't know about?
"Raph," Mikey prompts, tapping his mallet on the side of the table. "Stop thinking about it. It's not gonna do you no good, not right now."
Shhh. It'll be over soon.
part 4 soon! this fic is basically finished and is just getting tweaks before going up, so!