Hamato Yoshi. Raphael felt his muscles growing taut as the other three Turtles fell silent, their eyes flitting to one another. Even Mikey was quiet and solemn, looking from Leo to Raphael and back again.

Then Leo turned back to Raphael, as if waiting for him to say something. Raphael frowned, not sure what Leo wanted him to do, until he realized that Leo's comment had been a sort of request rather than an announcement. He was waiting for Raphael to say that he agreed to speak to him… which was nice, he guessed. He wasn't really used to people getting his permission for… well, anything.

On the other hand… he shouldn't want to hear what Hamato Yoshi had to say. The rat was his master's enemy. He was trying to sway Raphael over to his side, and hadn't made any secret of it.

But then again… maybe he could get some answers for the things that had been plaguing him. Such as the questions about the enmity between Yoshi and Master Shredder, or how someone could come back from the dead. Raphael's face scrunched as warring impulses clashed inside his head, and it took him a minute or two to make up his mind.

"All right," he said warily.

Leo looked relieved, and quickly glanced back at the door. A dark figure appeared in it, behind Mikey, and stepped into the room.

"My sons…" Yoshi began to say, but stopped himself. After a moment of thought, he amended, "Leonardo, Donatello and Michelangelo… please leave the room. I wish to speak to Raphael alone."

The three of them glanced at each other, turning from face to face, and then silently marched out and down the stairs. "If you're still hungry, I'll bring you some more pizza later," Mikey called over his shoulder, before Donnie's arm snaked out and dragged him away.

Raphael paid no attention to the other turtles. His eyes were focused warily on the mutant rat, who looked so harmless and unassuming in his faded kimono, holding a walking stick. The very opposite of Master Shredder, who always looked imposing and larger-than life.

Yet there had to be more to Hamato Yoshi than met the eye — and not just all those cryptic comments about him having died, or the family he had lost. Raphael had never seen Master Shredder react so strongly to any person as he had to Yoshi — not once with such hatred and such determination. And despite his slightness and his harmless appearance, the rat had defeated dozens of Foot ninja with nothing more than a katana. He had defeated Raphael too, and without too much trouble.

Yoshi came closer, and seated himself beside Raphael. "Do you know who I am?" he said quietly.

"Hamato Yoshi," Raphael replied.

The rat smiled slightly. "Yes, that was my name in another life," he said. "Now I go by a simpler name, that of Splinter."

"Yeah. So?"

"And I ask you again, do you know who I am?"

More answers flew through Raphael's head: a mutant, a rat, an enemy, Master Shredder's enemy, somebody who acts like he knows me. He thought about flinging them out at Splinter, but eventually decided to just say, "No."

"To your brothers, I am their master," Splinter said. "To all four of you, I am your father."

Raphael narrowed his eyes. "Sounds pretty crazy. You're a rat, and I'm a turtle."

Splinter smiled. "I understand this is very confusing, and that there is a great deal you do not yet know — a great deal your brothers do not know either." His eyes softened. "Nevertheless, I am your father, Raphael. I cared for you and looked after you even before you mutated, when you were only an ordinary turtle hatchling."

"I don't remember back then," Raphael said.

Splinter rested one hand on Raphael's bicep. "Then tell me what you do remember. What your earliest memory is."

It was such an odd thing to say that Raphael just stared at him in bewilderment. For a moment he wondered if Splinter was trying to trap him or trick him — trying to get information on the Foot or Master Shredder through guile. But… no, there wouldn't be any harm in telling him something like that, something from so long ago. Something that only involved Raphael himself.

"I remember," he said slowly, "waking up in the lab just after I mutated. I broke the aquarium I was in, and there was screamin' and cryin'. Then Master Shredder came in, and… I don't remember what he said, but I remember he was lookin' at me and talking about me."

"I see," Splinter said, sadness creeping into his eyes. "So Oroku Saki was the very first person you saw."

"Yeah," Raphael said defiantly.

"And how did he treat you in the days that followed? Was he kind to you?"

"I—" Raphael started to reply, before the words caught in his throat. Was this some kind of trap? "He didn't see me much after that. He gave me to Toshiro-sensei to train right after that. But when he did see me, he watched me practice fightin'."

"So Saki wished for you to become a ninja," Splinter said slowly. "Did he ever give you a choice in what you were to become?"

Raphael blinked. "I don't remember." His eyes blazed. "Are you tryin' to confuse me?"

"No, Raphael, I am trying to understand you."

"I don't need you to understand. I don't need anything from you, 'specially since you ain't exactly giving me choices now." He clenched his fists against the chains. "Master Shredder wanted me to be a ninja, and so I wanted it too."

"To please him," Splinter said. "Did you ever wish to be a ninja for your own sake?"

Raphael turned his head away again, feeling frustration rising in his chest. Why did the rat keep asking these bizarre questions, keep trying to overcomplicate what was a perfectly simple situation? And with every annoying question there came a little shiver of doubt, another question nagging at him with no answers.

"I did later. So they wouldn't see me as a freak," he finally blurted out. He immediately regretted saying it — it made him sound so pathetic.

Splinter did not answer right away, but his head bowed slightly and his eyes filled with a strange pitying look. "You must have been terribly lonely," he said quietly, placing his hand on Raphael's forehead and gently stroking it.

For a moment, a memory of another hand caressing him flashed through Raphael's mind — Mother, when he had confided in her his fears about not being good enough for the Foot. She had wrapped him in her arms and murmured that he would always be good enough because of who he was, her strong brave boy, and he had felt her hand stroking his face.

Mother. He felt a piercing ache in his chest as he wondered why she was gone — why she had left him. He needed her more than ever now, when he was trapped and confused, far from his home. She was the only thing that had kept his loneliness at bay — without her, he felt like he was drowning in it, like quicksand.

"I s'pose you're gonna tell me that I wouldn't be lonely here, huh?" he said roughly.

Splinter smiled. "I did not say that. You did." The smile faded slightly. "Did you have no friendships in the Foot?"

Only two people came into Raphael's mind — the Foot ninja who guarded his bedroom door, and Toshiro-sensei. Neither was exactly a friend, as the turtle understood it — one was his sensei, and the other simply the only person who would talk to him without apprehension or revulsion.

"I didn't need friends," he said sullenly, shifting uncomfortably in his chains.

"If that is what you say," Splinter said patiently, but that sorrowful, pitying look had come into his eyes once again.

He bowed his head again, and Raphael waited for him to say something more — some other question probing him, trying to separate him from the Foot and Master Shredder. He was ready for whatever Splinter had to say. He could take it.

"Your form was very impressive when we fought, Raphael," Splinter said at last. "Who taught you?"

"Toshiro-sensei," Raphael said before he could think of whether or not to answer.

"Ah, and this Toshiro, he taught you everything you know?"

"He made me a ninja faster than anyone else in the history of the Foot," Raphael said with fierce pride.

"That is indeed an achievement," Splinter said. "Were the other ninja impressed by your accomplishment?"

Raphael's pride melted away like ice in the summer sun, leaving him with the sensation of having been lightly punched in the stomach. "No," he said at last. "They weren't."

He remembered his naive hopes that finishing his training would make them all see that he was like them, a ninja worthy to stand alongside the best of the Foot Clan. Then he had hoped that succeeding on missions would make them realize that he was a true Foot ninja. Those dreams had been whittled away little by little, until at last he knew the painful truth.

That knowledge seemed to stab through him as he admitted it to himself once again, starkly and without pretense. He wasn't one of them, and never had been… and without a miracle, he never would be. He was a part of the Foot, but not truly one of the Foot's ninja — he was Master Shredder's weapon and nothing more, as far as they were concerned. His stomach twisted as he turned his face away from Splinter, wanting nothing more than to be left alone with his misery.

Splinter seemed to sense this. He placed his hand atop Raphael's chained one, and said quietly, "That is enough conversation for one day, my son. I will send your brothers to attend on you in a little while, when you have gathered your thoughts."

He walked out of the room silently, as only a ninja could move, and Raphael closed his eyes.