Leonardo sat alone in the den. It seemed like a totally different place. Three of their favorite games were gone, totally destroyed, and while Aunt Mei had footed the bill for a state-of-the-art television for them, it didn't feel right. Nothing could replace Donnie's homemade ham television.
So much had changed. In less than half a year, everything Leonardo had come to understand as normal had come tumbling down around them like an earthquake. He had always known that Shredder was a seriously bad dude, but the last few months had shed light into corners so dark that Leonardo wished he had never seen them. Somehow, Shredder's abrupt and violent death did not seem like enough justice had been done.
"Do you think that he's in hell?" Michelangelo had asked Splinter a few days ago.
"Hell is what we create for ourselves," Splinter replied.
"Then I'm pretty sure he's in hell," Raphael snarled. "And I hope he's having done to him what he spent his whole life doing to others."
Splinter did not make any comment in response. He had simply left the room without another word.
As he sat alone thinking, Leo wondered if Splinter was mourning Shredder's death. They had been really close as children. All through their teens and even some into adulthood. Splinter had said more than once that they were as close as brothers. Leo tried to imagine what Splinter was going through.
He had watched someone he loved turn into one of the worst monsters in the world.
Yes, justice had finally been served to Shredder in the form of a nine-millimeter bullet, but the pain that Shredder had caused them was far from being over. Everyone was still suffering.
Perhaps, most profoundly, the ones who had still loved Shredder up until the very end.
Leo took his phone and checked for text messages or missed calls. It had been over 36 hours since he had last heard from Karai. Eleven days ago, she had returned to the Foot in order to destroy them from the inside. It was a delicate balance for her to pretend that she was still loyal to everything Shredder stood for while actively seeking to destroy it. Leo worried sometimes whether she had really processed everything. At a time like this, she needed her real family more than ever.
He longed to send her a message, to check up on her. But he had promised to wait for her to contact him, and her last message had said "if you don't hear from me within 48 hours," so he still had twelve hours to wait.
"It's three in the morning, you dork," Raphael said, startling Leo.
Leo looked up from his phone to see Raph standing at the end of the hall that led to their rooms. "So what are you doing awake, then?"
"Nothing," Raph snapped, but then his expression grew sheepish. He held up one of his sai. "The spire isn't perfectly straight, and it's throwing the whole thing out of whack. It's been bothering me for a while, but since Donnie always maintained our weaponry...I was going to go into his lab to see if I could find something to help me figure out how to do it."
Leo frowned in confusion. "Splinter would know what to do. He's the one who taught Donnie."
Raph's face grew flushed.
Leo had noticed that Raph had been finding several excuses to go into Donnie's lab lately. "I think I understand, Raph. Come and sit down."
As if to prove how topsy-turvy everything had become, Raph walked over to the couch and sat down. "Any word from Karai?"
"Not yet. But it's a sensitive operation."
"I'm still not sure we should trust her."
Leo groaned internally. They had hashed over this topic more times than he cared to remember. But Leo figured that in light of how much had changed, Raph probably needed the skepticism as some kind of an anchor.
The two of them sat there silently for a while.
Suddenly, Raph started chuckling softly. "You remember that time that Donnie set up a spy-camera in your room?"
The question was completely unexpected, but Leo started laughing at the memory. "I think so. We were what...nine?"
"Yeah. Me, Donnie, and Mikey decided we wanted to be spies, and we were gonna spy on Splinter. But since you wouldn't play we spied on you instead."
"I was so mad!" Leo said, laughing. "You guys were such jerks."
"You deserved it. You thought you were so much more mature than us."
Leo's spirits sank slightly. He considered saying that it was because he was more mature than them, but decided against it. Someone needed to be mature. He poked at his phone again, just in case he had somehow missed a message from Karai.
Raph sighed. "You are, though."
Leo almost jumped. "Huh?"
"More mature than us. You've been able to keep it together this whole time, Leo...I just—I don't get it. How do you do it?"
Leo was astounded that this conversation was happening. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, Mikey disintegrated when we lost Donnie. I completely lost it. But you kept it together—kept all of us together."
"I just—someone had to lead. So I did. I guess I've always been that way."
Raph scoffed. "You're such a dork." His words seemed affectionate rather than derogatory.
"Raph, there's something else that I've been thinking about."
"What's that, chief?"
"We're going to do everything in our power to get Donnie back. But there's a chance we might fail. A good chance."
Raph tensed up.
"At some point, we might just have to accept that he's gone."
Raph buried his face in his hands. "I know," he muttered. Lifting his head again, he smacked his fists against his legs. "I know, Leo." He sighed heavily. "Just don't tell that to Mikey."
Leo frowned as he remembered Mikey's catastrophic meltdown. "Or April."
Raph scoffed. "April?" He folded his arms. "She's so optimistic nowadays that it's sickening. I don't get it—she went from so depressed she tried to kill herself to bright and happy ray of sunshine."
"It's not that simple, Raph," Leo said. He sighed. He hadn't been able to talk to April very much in the last few days, but she was so feverishly involved in the research for a cure for Donnie that it was practically all she talked about. "Yeah, she's happy. She has her dad back, Shredder's gone...but when it comes to Donnie – right now her hope is all she has. Let her have it."
Raph nodded and pulled out one his sai. He fidgeted with it, occasionally trying to spin it, but shaking his head the more he tried. Leo glanced at the presumably defective sai in Raph's hand. It looked fine to him – but he also knew that the intimacy between a ninja and his weapon made even minor flaws hugely noticeable.
After a few minutes of silence, Raph put the sai away. "Any news about Aunt Mei?"
"Not since Tuesday when we all brought her flowers." Leo raised a brow. "You know, three days ago."
Raph nodded imperceptibly and stared at the floor.
"I miss her too."
Raph scowled and opened his mouth as if to contradict Leo's assessment of the situation, but then he sighed and shook his head.
Aunt Mei had become such a huge part of their lives in such a short amount of time. For the first time in his life, Leo finally began to truly understand what having a mother might be like, and he knew for a fact that his brothers felt the same way. They had grown accustomed to her soft footsteps and the sound of her voice, to the way that she devoted time and attention to them, to the obvious change in Splinter's outlook on things. Up until Donnie's un-mutation, Leo couldn't remember a time that Splinter had been happier.
Donnie. His un-mutation had changed everything. Within seventy-two hours of the incident, Kirby had been un-mutated, Shredder had been killed, Karai had become their ally, and Aunt Mei had been grievously injured. All of them had been permanently affected.
Was it really only seventeen days ago?
"Six to nine weeks," Raph muttered. "Six to nine weeks she'll be stuck in that wheelchair!" He punched the couch.
"Only four to seven, now," Leo said, in what he hoped was an encouraging voice. He knew it was a mistake the minute the words left his mouth.
"That's not the point! A broken pelvis. A broken pelvis, Leo! Like it wasn't bad enough that he practically broke every other bone in her body. Nobody said how that happened. I don't even want to know how that happened…" He buried his face in his hands.
"But you have an idea anyway. Nobody had to say anything," Leo said softly. He laid a hand on Raph's shoulder. "We all do. Even Mikey."
"The one thing I don't get is that we all know why it happened, and we've all decided to sweep it under the rug."
Leo frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"You know what I'm talking about."
Anger flared up inside of Leo. Raph didn't just distrust Karai. "How can you blame Karai for this?"
"How can you not?"
"Everything she did was because of Shredder!"
"It wasn't like she was a robot! She could have chosen to listen to Aunt Mei before the Shredder raped and beat her within an inch of her life."
"If anyone has the right to be mad about that, it's Aunt Mei, and she forgave Karai. If she did, then none of us have any right to hold a grudge."
"Whatever," Raph snapped. He got up. "I'm going to bed." He gestured to Leo's t-phone. "Let me know if you need any backup."
"Thanks," Leo said curtly.
With that, Raph stomped back to his room.
Leo sighed. He knew that Raph still distrusted Karai, but he didn't realize that Raph actually blamed Karai for Aunt Mei's injuries.
It was probably the only thing that Raph and Karai had in common at this point.
But both of them were wrong. If it was Karai's fault, then it was Aunt Mei's fault for letting herself be captured. That would make it Leo's fault for letting Aunt Mei go alone. The fault would stretch on and on and on, all while overlooking the real culprit: Oroku Saki. But none of this mattered. This wasn't about blame anymore. It was about healing.
And given Raph's willingness to provide backup for Karai in spite of everything, perhaps the healing was already beginning.