A/N: After forever, I've finally caught up on Nicktoon. The usual disclaimers, not mine, etc.

Inside Out

It's only a deer…

What a silly, stupid last thought to have. A turtle can't even go out to fetch firewood, thinking everything's fine and dandy, only to have freaking mutated swamp goop jump up and attack him.

Attack and demutate him, what the ever living fuck was his life.

("Dude, you got turned into a plant! ")

Jeez, thanks for reminding me, Mikey. Not the way Raphael ever thought he was going to go. If he was going to fall, he always thought it would happen in battle. Better him than one of his brothers. Or doing something cool, yeah, Raph could accept it if it was something stupid but looked awesome. Not getting reduced to freaking plant manure after being turned into some dumb plant beast. How the hell did he even come back from that…?

They liked to joke that Donnie could work miracles but today had been...had been...

Shit, let's just pretend today never happened.

"Raph…? Hey, um, you okay up there?"

Go to sleep, Donnie. Everyone else is in bed after all the excitement, you should be too. Especially after every-no, today never happened, let's not think about that. The roof of the farmhouse had long been claimed as Raph's brooding domain during the long three months they'd waited for Leo to wake up. Tonight, he's exercising his damn right to the place and everyone should know better than to bother him.

Except-

Except...well Donnie had seen him stripped down to literally nothing and somehow built him back up together again. Someone would say something about knocking down walls and letting people in and other dumb pop psychology gunk. That someone sounded a lot like Leo. Anyway, the point was. Well, if anyone else had any idea of how high the stakes had been today, no one would know it better than Donnie. Hell, Raph hadn't even been aware of what had happened to him for the most part. Donnie would have known, in his infinitely geeky manner, just how difficult it was to restore his brother to his dashing good looks and had the full weight of that responsibility dumped in his hands. And after looking after Leo's comatose butt for three months, Raph had been thoroughly educated in just how heavy that responsibility could be.

No one should have to carry it.

And yet, time and time again, they'd shoved it into Donnie's hands without a second thought.

Urgh, maybe Leo was right about those damn barriers being brought down. That still didn't change the fact that it was brooding hour out on the ranch and Don hadn't been invited to Raph's rooftop. Get your own damn roof, buddy. This one's taken.

Don, unfortunately, had not gifted Raph with the psychic ability to beam his thoughts directly into other people's minds. But even without being able to detect the (surely visible) vibe of go away for the love of whatever god watches over all the good little turtles which clearly stopped paying attention to their lives oh so long ago Raph was generating at him, Donnie did have the sense not to just barge out and join him.

Unlike SOME brothers who will forever remain nameless.

Mikey.

"I know you're out there. Just, you know, checking that you're alright, Raph."

(Just going out of my mind here, Leo throw me a bone.)

Wait, that had been Raph during the long months of Dead to the World Leo. Anyway. The point was that even though Don didn't really sound worried, Raph could almost hear the underlying notes of concern. Ish. Maybe. Or maybe it was all in his head.

It probably all was in his head.

Still.

He'd been desperate back then, to get a response. No one should be left hanging like that.

"Doing peachy, Don. Don't worry about me, I'm fine."

There, he'd done his part. With a much faster response time and everything.

(Three fucking months, for cripe's sakes Leo…)

Now if only Don would go to bed…

Except-

No reply. And no Don moving off to bed either, dammnit.

Of course Raph wasn't about to sleep any time soon, even though Don was probably just gathering up the nerve to try to strong-arm him to bed. Raph had thought they were safe out here, no Krang, no Foot Clan. Last refuge and all. But the forest has proven to be a danger to them. Someone had to keep watch.

...well. Not the forest really. Don's own damn medicine. And ain't that a mind screw and cause for alarm. Wonder how the brainiac's feeling about that. Leo had been forcing that stuff down his throat and they'd all seen what happened when Mikey decided he needed a bit of mutagenic sprucing.

Sometimes, Raph thought that Don had two brains inside that big head of his that were unable to operate at the same time. One with all the smarts, the sort that could say, allow him to glance at a seething rat plague and immediately deduce that someone is controlling the whole thing (even though it made NO logical sense whatsoever. "It totally made sense," his mental representation of Don quibbled. Shut up, Don. You were pulling a lot of bullshit out of your ass. What's crazy is that most of it happens to be correct bullshit). Don's second brain, on the other hand, seemed to operate at zero percent efficiency and tended to come surging up to the surface whenever April was near. That other part of him decided it was okay to turn military AIs into music players or derive medicine from the mutagen that had caused nothing but trouble since this whole mess had started.

Mikey had almost exploded that one time.

And yet Don had still gone ahead decided to play doctor with it.

It's the sort of decision that could keep a turtle up at night.

...

...

He should probably talk to Donnie. At some point. Maybe. After he's done stewing for a bit. Now would be better though. Drag his brother out of whatever thoughts were brewing in his head. Its what a good leader would do. But Leo's back, Raph can finally step off that podium and let Leo get back on the stage again. And if there's one thing that Raph's learnt after moving out here is that he can't handle someone else's problem properly when his mind is churning in turmoil two planets over.

...

Nope, the roof's still Raph's. Just wait a little longer bro. Need to work his own things out a little. Kinda hard to talk when Raph's still reeling from the magnitude of just. Everything. The not thinking about stuff. Which he'd failed to not think about. Had thought about. Blergh, now he was confusing himself.

Well, given that he hadn't even had a brain for a few hours, all in all Raph figured that a few cross-wired thoughts were a blessing all things considered.

Mother of fuck-

Yanno, the thing that disturbed Raph most, since this whole mess with the Krang had started, has been the lack of control he's had over his own body. It had already been hard enough before that, trying to keep his infamous temper in check. That volatile combination of his overblown pride, fierce competitiveness and almost infinite depths of anger. Every time the red haze lifted for Raph, he'd come out of it hoping, desperately, that he hadn't hurt a brother.

These days, he gets to contend with mutant wasps that steal his will, squirrels that use his body as a fucking incubator ("We were hosts, actually," corrects internal Donnie. We're never talking about this again, mental Don. Also, tell real Don to hold his horses. I'm getting there. Slowly. "Actually, I don't think we are." Nobody asked you for an opinion, geekasaurus). The hallucinogenic mushrooms that had brought his worst fears surging to life. Then there had been that twerpy nerd bird who'd no qualms about commanding his damn reality so thoroughly that even when he knew it had been a mind screw, he hadn't been able to shake said mind screw.

Oh, and the Krang device that had stolen his mind right out of his body. Let's not forget that one. For the longest hours of his life, his own body had been under the control of the enemy and he'd only had the flimsiest of hopes that he was ever going to get it back.

But the thing was though, even after all of that, Raph had never hit the point where he'd lost all semblance of well, him. His self. Even as a wasp zombie drone, Raph had been there, buried underneath the compulsion. For the egg to be protected, it needed his knowledge of the lair and his ninjutsu skills. A brainless drone wouldn't have those, it had needed him to be able to think. (And hadn't that been the real violation, turning the focus of his core instincts to protect his family onto something else).

But today...today he'd been…

Nothing.

No, not nothing. Nothing had come after. Before was-

Easy Raph, try to remember.

We're your brothers.

You can come home with us and live in the attic.

I'll give you gross sticks and swamp water every single day, I swear.

The words are distant and muffled. The memories heavily distorted and tinted leaf green. He remembers - vaguely. ("A rudimentary brain would have had limited cognition," murmurs Doctor Mindstrong. "I wouldn't put much stock in cartoon science," scoffs internal Don. So says the turtle who never fails to pull out the correct scientific technobabble for every random moment of their lives. I'm onto you, buddy. "Space Heroes is a great show and Doctor Mindstrong knows what he's talking about," Captain Lamenardo protests. Look Leo, if you're going to be in here, the fanboying stays out. Put away the alien, bro. "But-" Now. "Fine." Thanks.)

Whatever he'd been then (half-plant, half-turtle, all beast?), he'd been no better than an animal. ("Come on, you know what you were. Call it what it was, Raph. Be brave. I believe in you. You can do it." Shut up Mikey. Who invited you to this party? "The Mikester never need an invitation to party!")

Ugh, fine. He'd been a 'plant-turtle-dog, no, wait a platurtog!' as Mikey had gleefully dubbed it. Raph's had a few lows these last couple of months but he didn't think that there was anything lower than being turned into a dumb plant mutt.

("It was wicked awesome!")

Only to a bonehead like you, Casey, maybe. Upon waking up, there had been nothing but a blank hole in Raph's memories. With nothing to recall, it was easy to be unbothered when confronted by yet another weird blip in their daily lives. But, thanks each excited recital, as Casey and Mikey had seen fit to fill Raph in on what he'd missed out, bit by bit the lost pieces had come trickling back to him.

Those were a few moments of his life he could have done without.

Geez, thanks guys.

("You're welcome!")

Assholes.

Hit a little too close to home for his liking. There are things Raph figured out a long, long time ago. Back around when he started to understand just how different his family was from the rest of the world. As mutants and ninja, for their very survival, they were never going to leave a trace behind them. Their lives would amount to nothing at all.

Who had he been then, when his body had been reduced down to almost nothing? Where had he gone then, in those moments?

How had Don given him a new life, a new body with the bare scraps they'd found scrounging around this dump?

You know what, he didn't actually want to know. Don could give him all the technobabble in the world but Raph had a feeling it wouldn't come close to answering what he wanted to so desperately know. Maybe there were no answers to be found, sitting out on April's stupid shitty roof. Everything about this place was falling apart. Ugh, just looking around while sitting up here had added five more items on his needs-to-be-repaired list. Time to get his ass into gear and stop worrying over whatever.

"Don, you can stop stalking me and get your shell out here."

"I-I'm not stalking! Geez, Raph excuse me for being concerned!"

"I know you are, brainiac. Now, you coming or what?"

Don muttered something low under his breath but climbed out and joined him. Raph is perched right up on the edge of the roof, keeping watch over the forest. He doesn't turn his head at Don's approach, instead he listened to his brother's feet as he treads carefully over the worn shingles.

Donni paused, only a few feet away. Raph could feel the weight of his gaze pinned on his shell. He doesn't wonder what Donnie's thinking. He stopped trying to follow his brother's thought processes a long time ago.

But in this moment, here and now, after months of Leo's life resting in his hands, it probably wouldn't be too hard to figure out where Don's head is right now.

"Take a picture, Don, it'll last longer."

Ouch. Did Don flinch beside him or was that just in Raph's head? Little too soon for that. In the morning, this incident will have been swept under the rug as just another part of the insanity that was their lives now. For now, there are no words. Just the quiet ambience of the forest and the moonlight and two turtles with far too much on their brains to be getting any decent sleep.

He says thank you, eventually.

Donatello doesn't ask what for.

(A couple of weeks later, April's Not Mother absorbs almost all of them together into one single shared consciousness.

They all join Raph on the roof that night.)