Sorry for being MIA for a little while, we've actually been moving house! All the way to… the other side of the street, wow! No really, we did, this house is much bigger than the other one was. But yeah, we've been kinda busy a lot, especially because we had to renovate our new place. But now I've got my new room and my computer all set up so hey, let's get back to writing again!

Chapter 21: younger

"Hey Raph, wanna talk?"

There are a lot of things I had expected my older brother would say. It's been a couple of days and the only ones I've talked with have been Donnie and Master Splinter. Master Splinter not so much though. He tires pretty quickly and sleeps through most of the day. He's grown so very old. I'm not sure if it is because that's what happens with time, I haven't seen him for over three years after all, or just because his heart has been broken.

I haven't seen Mikey ever since that first fall-out of his. He needs his space, Don told me. Just like Leo needs time to adjust to the idea of the family being complete again. It's weird. I've been on my own for three years and it never bothered me. But being here… it sort of kept playing in the back of my head that the moment I got rid of all the Foot on this godforsaken planet, that I could come back home and be with my brothers. Not that I should've expected them to be standing there to accept me with open arms, but strangely enough I did.

"How are you doing?"

It's crazy. Leo comes over, casually sitting in the chair next to my bed. He looks comfortable but I know he's here for a reason. If Mike can't forgive me, than sure as hell Leo won't be able to do it. I've given him too much shit to deal with in his life already. And Leo isn't really the forgiving type either. He says he is, but he's got the memory of an elephant.

"I'm fine. Don says if my side keeps healing like this I can be out of bed within the next couple of days."

He looks me over, his gaze lingering on my face. I wonder if it looks weird to see me without the eye. I'm sure it looks different but with the patch still on it shouldn't be that horrifying to look at. Maybe it isn't even my eye that caught his attention. Maybe he's looking at all the other differences in my face. The markings not inflicted by others. I've seen it before, with Donnie and also with Splinter. Their features have changed. Not by much but there are creases and discolourations that weren't there before. They're distinct, hard to notice, but when you haven't seen the people you know better than the back of your hand for so long, they can stand out like neon lights.

"That's good."

He's silent for a while and I'm not about to speak up either. I like the quiet, especially when it's a comfortable silence like this one. Maybe Leo and I butt heads often, it doesn't mean that we don't like having each other around for a bit. And hey, most of our fights start when Leo pulls open his big mouth and tries to order me around like a dog. This way neither of us will start a shouting-match, which is probably for the better since I want him to let me stay here.

I've been worrying about that a lot lately. Sure, Splinter is our father and master but he isn't in charge anymore. Leonardo is. If he won't forgive me, or trust me again, it doesn't matter how badly the others want me to stay. It'll probably get ugly too, if Donnie doesn't agree with him, but who should he trust? The brother who has taken care of him, his aging father and disfigured brother, or the black sheep of the family who he only saw once a week and who murdered in his spare time. To be frank, I'm starting to wonder why none of my brothers have smothered me with a pillow yet while I was asleep. I sure as shell deserved it.

"Hey Raph do you mind if I… Oh. Hey Leo."

Donnie stands in the doorway of the lab a little awkwardly. Leo gives him a gentle smile but keeps seated, throwing little glances everywhere except me.

"Did I interrupt something?" Don asks carefully, watching the both of us with curiosity and suspicion. I can't really blame the guy. I haven't spoken to Leo normally for a very long time. Even our patrols were not as casual as they used to be before I left home. The only reason Leo didn't try to pick fights when I wasn't living at home was because he was afraid he'd be losing me. He knew Donnie wouldn't be able to take that and I don't think he could live with losing a brother like that either.

But this is a whole new playing field for me. Leo is trying to stay calm and measured while we all know that deeply inside his fire is roaring with controlled anger. A Leonardo trying to keep his cool, is an awkward and overly-polite Leonardo, which isn't any easier to deal with than a stick-up-the-butt Fearless Leader. And Donnie knows that too. That's probably why he hesitates a little because he thinks we'll be ripping each other's throats out within the next few minutes.

"Can you leave us alone for a little while, Donnie? Raph and I need to talk about something," Leo says gently, his voice soft like silk but his face unwavering and stern all the same. It's this typical 'Leader face' that says: "no one mess with me now." I don't even dare to argue when he pulls out that face. It surprises me that he even uses it right now. Donnie isn't one to refuse a request anyways. Not even when it means he can't get into his own lab.

For some reason I want Don to stay here though. Leo is so nice to me all of the sudden. A little too nice. What if he's only trying to butter me up? If he wants to send me out, he surely doesn't want Donnie to be present when he delivers the news. I'm already the jackass of the family. I've got nothing to lose. But if Donnie finds out it that Leo is the reason for my possible disappearance, there'll be hell to pay for our big bro. I'm not sure if I want that to happen.

Also, there's enough bad blood within this family already. I'm not letting my brothers finish what I've started. They've done a pretty good job of staying together, I'm not letting them screw that up. If Leo wants me gone, I'll go quietly and make everyone believe that it was my own choice, not his. It'll be easier that way.

So when Leo takes a seat next to me again, I keep my eyes locked with his, ready to face everything he's going to throw at me without so much as blinking.

"What I wanted to know from you is, are you alright?" he asks, actually sounding concerned. "And I don't mean your wounds, I know Don has been taking good care of you. I want to know how you are mentally."

The question comes so sudden and unexpected that for a moment I am so busy ordering my thoughts that there's hardly room to be insulted. What does he mean 'mentally'? I'm just fine, ain't I? I'm just me, the idiot who can face seas of enemies straight on without blinking but is afraid of conversations with his own family. So yeah, maybe I'm a little messed-up right now, but not insane.

"I don't know what you're thinking, Fearless but from my point of view there's a hell of a lot more wrong with your noggin if you think that-"

"Alright, alright, stop the insults already," he interrupts with annoyance on his face. I scowl just as hard to show him I don't like being shut up. "I'm not here to offend you, I'm just worried. Raph, the last time something big happened in your life you left for three years going on a rampage through the city and you refused to see any of us if it wasn't on your own conditions."

"You have no idea what that did to us, how much it scared Donnie and Mikey to see you that way. It doesn't matter to me what you've done in the past. You're my brother and I won't leave any brothers of mine hanging. But I need to know that you're sane enough to be around our little brothers again because if there's one thing I won't allow, it is that my family will get hurt more than it already is."

I'm speechless. And seriously, it's pretty hard to get me to be speechless. Here I thought Leo would kick me out of the house the moment I had healed enough for his conscience to allow it. And yes, we're speaking of Leo, the big brother who never leaves our side even when we push him away, but we all know that even Leo has his standards, lines that should never be crossed. I thought me killing so many people was definitely crossing a line. It probably would have been for anyone else.

"You think I was crazy?"

Because I'm pretty sure I was not. I was just angry. Angry and over-protective. Maybe a little paranoid as well. But not crazy.

"Come on, Raph. If you would've been human and got caught, you would've spent the rest of your life in a mental asylum after your jail time. If they wouldn't just have locked you away for life, that is. When you did what you did, you weren't in your right mind. A person doesn't murder like that when knows what he's doing. What you did, that wasn't the Raphael I've grown up with."

"Oh yeah?" I feel anger sparking again. He's not right. I was confident in what I was doing. I never felt more alive and justified. "And how do you know that wasn't me, huh? Wasn't it sensei who kept nagging about my anger-issues? Maybe you don't know me as well as you think."

I feel smug smile come onto my face when Leo's own calm resolve breaks. Who does he think he is? I know what I did is wrong and I feel a bad about some of it, sure. But he's got to know that I don't regret anything that happened out there for a second. I was in full control, I was aware of what I was doing and the reason of why I was there. I'm sorry Leo, but to hell with Bushido. If you want to win the war, keep the people you care about safe, honour has nothing to do with it. You fight, you eliminate the threats, no matter what the stakes are. You strengthen your mind and deal with the problem. But that doesn't necessarily make me crazy.

"I know you better than you think. I was sure that you had finally lost it. I was ready to give up on you. But then we couldn't find you that night. Never before had you promised to meet up with us and weren't there."

He sighs, like he's very tired. My mind still tries to wrap around the fact that he cares so much. That even though I had fought with him a week before, he was worried when I didn't show up that night. That even though he has a lot of reasons for it, he doesn't try to get rid of me. That even though he called me a mental-case, he still wants me to stay by my family's side and maybe, one day, he'll even trust me again.

"You can keep telling me that you don't care about yourself but when we found you on that rooftop, only seconds away from being stabbed… you were different then. We've seen you in those bouts of rages. We've seen the results even more often. When you lay there, you looked like my brother again. You were very afraid, Raphael."

Of course I was afraid, I was fringing' terrified! Can you blame me, I thought I was a goner. But maybe he is right as well. I know what he's talking about. The difference between me then and when I was so angry. It's about that red haze that kept captivating my mind. It wasn't there when I was on the brink of death. It wasn't there then to keep me safe and take the pain away. My brothers where though.

Also, if I would still be as angry as I was a week ago, I would've torn Leo's head off by now. But here he is, lecturing me about my own stupidities like nothing ever changed and not even a single mark on him. I guess that me just laying here and taking all that from him, counts as having changed, even if it's only for a little bit.

"I guess when I saw you there, when you figured out what had just happened to you, that I understood. I thought you were a selfish bastard who couldn't control himself. But you did it for us, didn't you? When you were about to die, you did it all for us?"

I shrug. I don't know anymore. It sounds like what I told Splinter but he already said that it wasn't true. I like Leo's version though. It sounds nice. It would explain a lot about me too, I guess. But that's Leo for you. Even though Donnie is the mastermind, looking for answers everywhere, it is Leo who can convince you of practically everything, no matter how impossible it sounds to you afterwards. He could make a tiger become a vegetarian if he wanted to. And just how many times has Mikey quipped that our oldest brother should run for president?

"I was ready to die," I eventually say, the bitter taste of self-disgust on my tongue when the answer forms in my brain. "But it was out of guilt, not because I care so much. I didn't feel like I protected you guys by dying. I just felt like the worst asshole for leaving in the first place. I deserved that death and to me nothing else mattered much anymore. Going back to you didn't matter and that whole fucking mission meant next to nothing at that moment. All that mattered was that I stopped caring about anything but who I had killed and the families I had destructed in the process. Ours to start with. It wasn't out of love Leo, it was out of guilt."

He smiles, the first real Leo-smile I've possibly seen in years. There is this knowing look in his eyes too and I swear he steals it from Splinter. But as much as it has annoyed me over the years, I kind of like it right now.

"You can't feel that much guilt without love, brother."

He stands up and walks off towards the door.

"Think about this for a little while. I was serious when I said that we need you to get better both physically and mentally before we can get back to being a family again. Donnie seems to be fine around you but Mikey needs a lot of more work, trust me."

Before he has the chance to leave the lab, I call out his name.

"Leo?"

He turns around, giving me that gentle smile he usually reserves for only Mikey and occasionally for Donnie when he acts young enough. It's kind of parental I guess, because Splinter can also look exactly like this whenever we do something stupid or something he approves of very much. For me it's a first to have it directed from Leo towards me. I sort of like it.

"I do, I mean, I do trust you. I trust all of you guys with my life. Heh, duh, you saved my life," I feel like I want to sink through the floor all of the sudden. I'm so bad at this crap. "What I mean to say is that uh… You can trust me. I ain't going nowhere. I'm here to stay and fix things with you."

For a moment Leo seems as surprised as I've been the whole time during our conversation. But then his eyes kind of light up, the way Mikey's used to. And with that smile on his face and the rest of his posture all relaxed, he finally looks like a nineteen-year-old again.

"I know," he says before he shuts the door.

Not too long but I still thought it was sweet. D'aww… I love big brother Leo! I just couldn't imagine Leo being very angry with Raph or wanting to throw him out and all. He's too good of a big brother for that. And to forgiving.

I gotta say though, this story is nearing its end. I've tried to prolong it a bit here and there but hey, it was all about Raphie's story in this one and he's almost there at the moment. So yeah, a couple of more chapters, three at the max, but I think only two, and then we're done. Feels weird though, I've never finished a story before… I wonder if this is the feeling you get when your child leaves the house or something.

Please tell me what you think! And yes, when you tell me what you think it's very important to do that in a review. It would be very hard for me to hear all the way overhere in the Netherlands. So just get it over with already XD

See ya guys!