I heard a faint knocking on my door in the night. I looked to the alarm clock that sat on my nightstand. 2:12am. I groan lightly, but not so much that the person on the other side of the door could hear. My fingers fumble for my black, rectangular, framed glasses. Once my fingers interlocked around them, I unfolded the ear pieces and placed them upon the ridge of my nose. I threw back the covers before placing my feet on the floor and making my way over to the door where the knocking was coming from. Groggily, I turned the handle of the door and allowed it to slowly creek open. My eyes widened when I noticed who the person was.
Mikey stood there, whimpering and crying, his baby blanket being hugged to his chest by his right arm.
My eyes softened at his defeated expression. I felt a heavy pang at my heart as it began to throb with sympathy and worry. I ushered him in with my right arm behind his back. "Mikey...Michelangelo, what's wrong?"
He only looked at me with teary eyes and shaking hands which caused his baby blanket to begin to tremble along with his hands. I picked him up in my arms, being mindful of the gash in his arm. I sat him down softly on my bed, continuing to hold him tightly within my arms. "Mikey, what's wrong?" Though, I already had a guess of what exactly what had been bothering the small boy of eight years. Yet, he stayed silent, not answering a single question I had asked. Aside from the occasional whimper, Mikey was completely silent. Usually when he had a nightmare, he would always tell me about them. So, of course, his silence sent off alarm bells, red flags, and all other assortment of signals off inside of my head to the point of where my head began to hurt.
I did not push the matter, figuring out that he was not going to answer me no matter what I tried to ask him. So instead of interrogating the poor child, I held in my arms instead, rubbing his back and letting him cry into my shoulder. I rocked him back and forth gently before the satisfying sound of his tiny snores filled the silence of the room. I felt a soft smile appear on my lips at the sweet sound.
"The kid calm yet?" Raph's now raspy voice rang out, startling me and causing me to nearly fall right out of the bed. I glared at him within the darkness that had surrounded our room, the shining, bright, moon being the only source of the light that peered in through the pale curtains.
"He's asleep," I answer roughly. I hear a sigh before Raph moves over and turns the nozzle on his lamp, a new found light that ran from electricity as opposed to the natural lighting of the moon began to flood the room. Normally, this would have angered me-especially if I had been asleep-but since I was not, and Mikey slept like the dead as did Raph, I was not angered by the action. But I was confused. "What's with you turning on the light?" I inquired.
Raph looked at me for a bit before sitting up in his bed, blankets still covering his waist and anything down. He crossed his arms and leaned them against the backboard of his bed, finally leaning his head against them. "Nate's still out there," He said solemnly, after a long moment of silence. "He's still out there, and he's looking for Mike."
"He's looking for you, too." I reminded him with a deadpanned look and a bit of anger from earlier that had never decided to simmer down.
"I couldn't care less if he was after me," He shot back, looking towards my way. "I don't care if he literally burns my voice out to the point where I can't even use it. I don't care if he cuts all of my limbs off or even if he tears my guts out with a knife. He can shoot me for all I care. But messing with my family is where I draw the line. And I most certainly will not let him hurt the baby of the family." Raph said, angrily. His emerald green eyes were burning with the fire of passion that described his entire personality flawlessly.
"Well, neither am I, and I highly doubt that Leo would let anything happen to Mikey. None of us would let anything happen to him," I said softly as I unconsciously began to stroke Mikey's light blonde hair. I looked at his pale face that was dotted with millions upon millions of freckles. Well, maybe not millions. They weren't aligned all over his face, just pretty much over the ridge of his nose and spilling subtly over his pale cheeks. For some reason, the kid was extremely pale. That wasn't anything new, but it always confused me why he was so pale. His complexion resembled that of a Californian surfer, though his voice was too high pitched yet to see if he had the correct accent for such a stereotype. Though, I highly doubted that he would have the accent. Sure, we all did spend two years of our lives in California, but other than that, Mikey had always lived in New York. He didn't have a New Yorker accent like Raph did. Honestly, Raph was the only one out of the four of us who did have a New York accent. Not even Mom or Dad had one. "He's the baby. And it's the big brothers' job to keep the baby safe."
Raph chuckled slightly, his eyes directed towards the ceiling. "We're Hamato's," he reminded me, "it's what we do. Not saying that not every brother does it for the younger one's...but seeing us not stick up for each other would be like Mikey turning down pizza."
It was my turn to chuckle after that statement. It was true. Seeing Mikey turn down pizza would pretty much mean that the apocalypse had begun. Kind of like that one show Raph likes to watch, The Walking Dead. I watched one episode after Raph had told me not to. I had thrown up within the first forty-six minutes that the episode had begun. It was just so graphic, which was probably why Raph enjoyed the show so much. Things like that doesn't bother him that much. Me on the other hand...I should have heeded to his warning. "That's true. The kid wouldn't turn down pizza even if he had the flu. And he's always at his worse when he's ill." Mikey's stomach always upset him when he was sick. No matter what it was that he had, his stomach would always upset him, even if it was just an ear infection. "Yeah, that's true, Raph."
He shook his head, a smile illuminated upon his bruised and cut face. "I'm going back to sleep." He said as he reached over and turned the nozzle on the lamp, plummeting the room back into darkness without asking for my permission to do so. I sat in the darkness for a moment, blinking to get my vision used to the new found darkness. After a moment, I lied back down next to Mikey. I watched the clock on our wall tick for a bit before speaking. "I love you, bonehead."
There's a moment of silence, and I'm almost positive that Raph was already asleep before he speaks back. "Love you, too, nerd."
OoOoOoO
Watching Raph sit on the porch while the rain fell steadily from the dark clouds that floated overhead was a setting that wasn't really common for the hothead who often enjoyed wearing red. He was sitting on the steps that led up to the porch and to the front door, so he was not protected from the rain that continued to fall steadily. This was a bit concerning towards the red cast that surrounded his arm, for the rain was coming down nearly as hard as water that protruded from a shower head, if not harder. I looked to the umbrella holder next to the front door, grabbing one out for the two of us to share. I open the front door and open the umbrella, sitting next to Raph, and keeping the umbrella over the both of us.
He looked to me for a moment before staring back out at the pouring rain. "Go inside, brainiac, you're going to get sick again."
I only shrugged. I wasn't too afraid of getting terribly ill. Not when my brother was outside, in jeopardy of getting sick, himself. So I sat there next to him, holding the umbrella over both of our heads to prevent us from getting soaked, and staring out at the street while the rain continued to pour. I watched him wince every so often when a drop of rain fell upon his skin and into one of the many cuts that were littered upon his skin, some being held together with stitches, others with staples, and some were left alone, able to heal themselves. I frowned each time he winced, unsure of what to do for him.
So we sat there in silence for the better half of what had surely been ten minutes before he finally decided to break it. "Do you think...that Mom and Dad are still angry at me?" He asked quietly. So quietly that I nearly didn't hear it. I looked at him with my maroon eyes. He did not look back at me, however. His eyes continued to stay glued to the rain that continued to relentlessly try to drown the street, wafting the distinctive scent of wet pavement within the air. The last time Raph had seen Mom and Dad, they had been dreadfully angry at him. He had been missing some assignments that was costing him his grades and lowering them quickly to an F. Education had always been very important within our family. Mother and Father always accepted your grade if you were really trying your hardest, but missing assignments and half-assed work was never acceptable. They had been absolutely livid at Raphael when they had noticed his latest grade card. So livid that they took Raph to the school to have him apologize as well as finding ways to ensure that he got his work done on time and that it was his fullest effort.
Obviously, the trek back sealed Mother and Father's fate, leaving Raph alone to face the demons of being a failure as a son in his own head. Of course, Leo, Mikey, and I all knew that he was far from a failure. He was the best brother ever, and by far one of the best children anyone could ever have. I pursed my lips together tightly. "I don't think that they are anymore."
"They were so angry at me, Donatello," He confided. "So so angry. They kept telling me how disappointed they were in me. They kept comparing me to Leo, Mikey, and you. Am I a failure of a son? Of a brother?" Raph so very rarely ever released deep emotions like this. This side of him at the moment was horrifying to me. I couldn't tell if the streaks that began to soak his cheeks was from droplets of rain being flecked up by the wind and over onto his face or if he was crying. I believed it to be the latter as opposed to the former, however. My hands began to tremble, honestly. They shook violently in confusion. In helplessness. In uselessness. I was unsure of what to say. But I couldn't let Raphael believe all of these false accusations that he was throwing at himself.
What was I supposed to say?
"Well...what about the time I let Mikey fall down the stairs? Were Mom and Dad still angry at me?" I inquired, still looking at him.
While I continued to stare at him, he continued to stare out at the rain that was not finished drowning the street, much like his guilt and self anger was drowning himself. "Of course not. That was a long time ago. Mikey's six now. That was five years ago."
I shrugged. "So. That was still horrifying. I nearly..." I almost choked on my words, taking a five second moment to recollect what I was going to say, "I nearly killed our little brother. Mom and Dad were angry at me, too, for a long time. Several months if not that entire year. You just got a bad report card. You didn't nearly become a murderer." My speech had become much more weak by the end than what it had started off as. At first, I had thought that I had a great point, but near the end I had begun to remember how sensitive the topic was to me.
Raph seemed frustrated. "Mom and Dad's last feeling towards you wasn't anger, Donatello!" He yelled, standing upright and facing me. "They were proud of you! You know that they're proud of you! You know that they still loved you when they died! They're last words to you were, 'I love you'! To me, they said that they were disappointed in me! You don't know what that's like, Donatello!" Raph yelled at me, anger ablaze in his emerald green eyes. And at that moment, I realized that the streaks on his face weren't from the rain.
They were tears.
OoOoOoO
I looked around the school hallway, instinctively waiting for Fang to arrive. When I remembered that she wasn't going to, I continued to stand there. I wasn't waiting on anyone else. I just stood there, wanting to watch her round the corner just to see her pale face and blue hair pulled up into a pony tail by her red scrunchie. I wanted to kiss her lips again like I did that one time.
But she was gone.
I didn't move until I felt a hand on my shoulder causing me to jump. My eyes widened, my head turning violently to face whoever owned the hand that continued to touch my shoulder. I felt myself begin to relax when I realized that it was just Cody. He smiled softly. "Miss her?"
I looked at him and nodded slightly. "Yeah." If you asked past me, I would have said no. I wouldn't have believed that I would ever love her like I had begun to. But I did. I missed her terribly. And everyone who knew me was beginning to see how much I did like her.
Cody nodded slightly, smiling sadly. "C'mon," He said, clapping my shoulder, "go get your books. Before we go to my house to study, I'll take you to get ice cream. My treat."
I smiled slightly, letting my bottom lip come out slightly in a pout. "With sprinkles?"
Cody chuckled and shook his head, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me to my locker. "Only if you're good, mister!"
I laughed slightly, pushing my glasses up with my free hand and adjusting my backpack better. But on our way to my locker, I heard someone else in the hallway. Someone that wasn't in any assortment of academic activity. "Wait," I said hastily. "Something's not right." And so Cody and I slunk our way towards the unknown people. I began to realize that the people were at Raphael's locker. They were cackling and laughing in awful manners and ways.
"The goon's sure gonna get in trouble for this!"
"For what? The weed or the magazines?"
"Would you two chuckleheads keep it down?! A teacher might overhear!"
"You idiot! All of the teachers are in their rooms! They're not going to hear us!"
I looked at Cody, signaling for him to stay before I continued to weave in and out between lockers. When I came close to Raph's locker, I peeked my head around to see who it was.
My eyes widened.
It was two other kids along with Nate.
