I could make it all disappear
you could feed me all of your fears
we could end all this pain right here
we could rewind all of those tears

-Angel Olsen

If it wasn't for everything that comes afterwards, it wouldn't even be all that memorable of a fight.

Three quarters of the way through their usual patrol, Leo turns right instead of left, leading them away from the neon billboards and ringing sirens of Manhattan's main arteries and towards the distant, salty glimmer of the docks. Raph shoots a knowing glance at Mikey, who grins and passes along the silent message to Don with a less than subtle shove to the shoulder. Don's even, mechanical pace falters for a handful of steps, but he recovers quickly, retaking his position in formation and repaying the roughhousing with interest.

Leo scowls briefly at the noise, but there's a hint of a smile lurking in the corners of his mouth that makes Raph ad an extra two turns to his flip as they leap across West 39th. But that's the point of this little side-trip, isn't it? It's been a long, boring night, productive only in thickening the calluses on their feet, and they've more than got energy to burn. Why not have a little fun for once?

"Okay!" Leo pauses on top of a water tower to peer at the peaks and valleys of the roofscape before them. "Let's make things interesting. Anything asphalt or gravel is out of bounds. That means no lily-padding rooftop to rooftop; we've done enough of that tonight. Ledges and rooftop structures are in, as is vegetation and any another type of rooftop if you can find one. First one to the water wins. Any questions?"

"Yeah!" Mikey calls, launching himself headlong over the edge of the roof. "How does it feel to eat my dust?!"

"The little cheat!" Raph snarls, craning his neck to follow his trajectory. Mikey lands on a far ledge with the grace of a cat, pausing just long enough to blow a raspberry over his shoulder before taking off again. "Didn't even wait for you to say—"

Rapid footsteps followed by a sudden rush of air behind him makes him duck instinctively, just in time to see Don pole-vault gracefully into the void.

"There's no cheating in ninjitsu!" he shouts as he alights on a far cluster of air conditioners before letting his momentum cartwheel him onto a clothesline billowing with sheets. "Thought you slowpokes knew that!"

Leo's laugh, like everything else about him, is short and to the point. "C'mon," he says, thumping Raph on the top of his shell. "Before they start feeling too cocky."

Raph follows after him with bared teeth and half-grumbled complaints, but it's all a show. All part of the game. Because that's what their lives boil down to, isn't it? One big, complicated cheat, open defiance of a world that says they shouldn't exist, that they shouldn't be laughing, shouldn't be running along the jagged spine of the city under the slivered moon while the stars look on, curious, at the four strong bodies that have escaped the bowels of the sewers and claimed this space far above as their own.

Raph's not as light on his feet as Mikey or Don, so he opts for a less flashy route. Leo falls half a step behind him—probably hanging back on purpose so he can criticize all their forms, the prick—and the two of them quickly catch up to their more acrobatic siblings. Mikey swears colorfully the moment they pop up in his peripheral vision, and Raph snaps his teeth in gleeful warning of the beat-down to come. If Mikey thinks he can win this on a false start alone then he's got—

The copse of Foot soldiers clustered around an open warehouse skylight comes as a complete surprise. It's no ambush, that much is evident by their half-rigged up climbing equipment and sheathed weapons that are quickly unsheathed as the one standing lookout sounds the alarm.

There's no time for strategy, no time to figure out what the hell the Foot are doing here and why.

Just the way Raph likes it.

His sais are in his hands before his feet touch the rooftop. Out, he thinks automatically as his toes dig into the hot gravel and launch him into a spinning side kick that connects meatily with the chest of the nearest Foot. Leo's right beside him, swords two bright slashes of moonlight, and from the familiar thud of wood against bone Don's working the far end of the pack. Still caught up in the game, Mikey actually overshoots the fight completely, yelping briefly in pain as he catches himself one-handed on an antenna and swings back around.

"You alright, Mike?" Raph grunts, elbow pushing through the bridge of a nose with a satisfying crunch.

"Peachy!" comes the slightly strained reply. There's an asymmetry in his nunchucks' usual whistle-song, one spinning slower than the other. Must have pulled a muscle doing that one eighty.

Raph grins, adrenalin high and his brother's hubris burning in him like a warm coal. "Ha! That's what you get for cheating, you—"

Motion. Up and left.

He jerks his head back before his eye finishes registering the white glitter of the knife's edge. Fast, but not fast enough. He howls as the blade slashes though the soft crest of his cheek, lashing out blindly with both sais until his palms thump with resistance. The Foot soldier crumples to his knees, gurgling around the center prong buried deep in his throat.

"Raph!"

"'M okay," he gasps, one hand pressed to his burning cheek in a futile attempt to slow the bleeding. Technically there's nothing in ninjitsu that says you can't kick a guy who just tried to kill you while he's down, so Raph does. He yanks his sai free, sneering lopsided at the blood that gushes from the wound in three quick pulses, and turns towards the few Foot still standing. "Now which one of you bastards is next?"

The fight wraps up too quickly for Raph's wounded pride. Leo sifts through the dead and incapacitated looking for the dagger while Don slaps a quick field dressing on Raph's still-bleeding cheek. It hurts, but not nearly enough to warrant the fuss Don is making, and when Leo comes back to present him with the responsible blade Raph's mood sinks all the lower.

"A pocket knife? Motherfucker came at me with a fucking pocket knife?!" It's not even a big one. Two inches, maybe. Red plastic handle stamped with a generic black and gold scorpion. The kind of knife stocked cheap at corner stores between the cigarettes and the scratch tickets.

"Almost had your eye out with it, too." Don's hands are steady as iron as they smooth down the edges of the bandage, but there's a wild, heavy drag to his breathing, eyes too round and grey pupils blown behind the film of his third eyelid. "We should head home. This is going to need stitches."

"I don't need no stitches!" Raph growls, face hot with embarrassment, but his brothers are hearing none of it and soon the three of them have him bullied onto the infirmary cot, Leo and Mikey standing guard on either side while Don threads the curved suture needle.

"You got lucky, Raph," he says for what feels like the thousandth time. "Really, really lucky."

Raph does his best not to flinch as the needle pierces his flesh. He's going to have a wicked-looking scar, from the feel of things, long enough to not be fully covered by his mask. He has to shove his hands beneath his thighs to keep from lashing out reflexively as the needle draws closer and closer to the thin skin of his eye socket. Mikey leaning over to ogle Don's progress with appreciative grunts of disgust certainly doesn't help.

Don must sense his growing urge to smack Mikey, or maybe all Raph's restless squirming has him on his last nerve. He flicks him lightly on the unwounded cheek.

"I'm serious, be more careful next time. Another half inch and—"

"I woulda lost the eye," Raph sighs. "I know. But I didn't. So I wish you'd stop bringing it up. Makes it sound like you're disappointed I didn't."

Don's expression goes oddly blank. He's silent as he ties off the last of the sutures and covers the wound with a fresh dressing.

"I'm going to put you on a general antibiotic," he says at length, tone distant, clinical. "No telling where that knife has been. Wouldn't be surprised if he picked his teeth with it. I want you to keep that eye under ice for the next few hours, and then a cold compress for at least another twelve after that. If you experience any changes in your vision, come tell me immediately. Got it?"

"Got it," Raph says, eager to escape the infirmary's harsh fluorescence and his brothers' concerned looming.

"And no alcohol," Don ads. "It'll increase the swelling and additional pressure on your optic nerve could—"

"Don't worry," Leo says. "I cleared out his stash while you were cleaning him up."

Indignity upon indignities. "Thanks, Leo," he spits, pushing himself off of the cot. The room sways slightly, but he fights to keep his frame and expression from wavering. "Really appreciate it."

Raph stalks off to his bedroom for some good old-fashioned sulking. His anger softens somewhat when he sees the tray of tea steaming on the wooden crate he uses as a night stand, his master's gentle concern warming the air with a wisp of ginger. He eases into his hammock with a grunt, joints stiff with unspent adrenaline and slightly lightheaded from the analgesic Don gave him before he started sewing.

There's a knock at the door, Mikey darting in just long enough to silently deliver a towel-wrapped baggie of ice. "Don't bother shutting the door behind you or nothing!" Raph calls as he beats a hasty retreat down the dimly lit hallway. "Not like I'd like a little privacy to lick my wounds!"

He listens irritably for an answer, but there's no returning patter of footsteps. Glaring indignantly at the still-open door also proves ineffective. With a sigh of defeat, Raph dutifully presses the ice to his face and starts stripping out of the rest of his gear. The ice stings worse than the initial cut, but he leaves it in place, the memory of Don's panicked eyes as he wiped away the blood to assess the damage enough to guilt him into reluctant compliance. As he's gotten older, he's starting to learn the value in picking his battles.

"A pocket knife," he grumbles into the dregs of his tea. His reflection glowers back at him from the bottom of the teacup, a puffy, one-eyed ghost of what might have been.

Sparing the cracked door one last, sullen glance, Raph sets aside the now empty cup, turns off his lamp, and settles back into the comforting swing of his hammock. The ice proves impossible to position lying down, so after a fitful fifteen minutes tossing and turning he finally casts it aside.

He sleeps, but not heavily, dreaming strange, fitful dreams. He startles awake an unknown length of time later, heart thumping in his chest and eyes instinctively scanning the room for the source of the nightmare just beyond his grasp. There's a shadow lurking at the edge of his open door, black and bodiless against the gold light of the hallway, and in his half-awake terror Raph's right hand closes tight around the handle of one sai before he finally recognizes it.

"Fucking hell, Don," he groans. "You scared the shit out of me."

The shadow is silent, still. Its white eyes stare at him accusingly.

"What are you... oh." Raph fumbles for the half-melted ice, slaps it roughly back in place. The cold bites harder than ever. He has to chew his tongue to suppress his shiver. "Happy now?"

The doorway is empty when he looks back. Raph waits, breath held, to see if Don returns, but when he doesn't reappear he lets the ice slip to the floor with a rattling slosh. He keeps the towel, though, its cool roughness a comforting compromise as he closes his eyes and slips back into his doze

And that, Raph thinks, teetering at last on the edge of real sleep, is the end of that.

"Again!"

There's no room for compromise in Master Splinter's commanding tone. There is, however, the faintest glint of disquiet in his gaze as he watches Raph push himself, gasping, to his feet.

"Sensei..." Don's worry is more obvious and therefore, infuriating. Raph's only recompense is that his sparring partner is almost as winded as he is, his olive skin slick and golden in the candlelight of the dojo. "Maybe it's time to let Leo and—"

"He said again," Raph growls, wiping roughly at the sweat dripping down his brow. His forearm prickles where it brushes against the stitches of his still-healing cheek. "Not later, genius. So c'mon. Again."

Don shrugs and takes his position. On the far side the sparring ring, Mikey leans over and says something quiet to Leo that makes their leader frown. Raph's whole body flushes with fresh heat. It's a struggle to set aside his embarrassment, to check his self-directed anger and quiet the little voice that wonders, with increasing vehemence, just what those two would dare to whisper behind his back, but if he splits his attention between his opponent and his audience then he's bound to lose with even less grace than he has the last three rounds.

They bow, the formality as automatic as breathing. The muscles at the base of Don's throat spasm as they straighten—he always wears his exhaustion in his neck and shoulders—but the rest of his body is loose, his grip on his bo deceptively casual. Raph's seen it too many times to be fooled. He rolls his wrists, teeth gritted against the surprising bloom of pain as the joints pop, and flips his sais to a handle-forward offensive grip.

"Hajime!"

Raph lunges forward, head and body mass low in a rush aimed squarely at his opponent's knees, but where Don was half a heartbeat before is now only empty space. Tucking his legs, he turns his lunge into a roll, just in time to feel the whoosh of air as Don's bo grazes his heels.

Don's own flip carries him well past Raph's original starting position, but with a long range weapon he's by no means at a disadvantage. Before Raph's momentum has him fully back on his feet, Don makes his second strike.

Clack!

The hit low to his shell doesn't hurt, but the sound of it echoes through the sparsely furnished dojo loud as a gunshot. Raph jumps—not intentionally, a startle reflex that makes him curse his own body even has he fights to suppress it—and doesn't see the blur of movement heading straight for his chest until far, far too late.

CrrrrACK!

"Come on, Raph." Don's smiling, but there's something off about the way he watches him. Something wary that makes his hands spin his bo half a tick faster as Raph pulls himself off of the floor with a threatening rumble. "Quit going easy on me."

"With pleasure," Raph spits. He lashes out with his left sai—twists the blade violently mid-air so the dim candlelight sparkles distractingly on its prongs as he leaps into the strike with what should be a devastating one-two roundhouse spinning back-kick follow up—but Don jumps nimbly out of the way again, vanishing silently into the vague blur of Raph's peripheral vision.

"Hold still, why doncha!" he snarls, sweeping blindly at a shadow that was Don half a moment before.

"Nah." Don leaps, cartwheels, flips, fucking pirouettes around him in a tight circle, close enough to land jab after jab with his bo through Raph's scattered defenses, too far away for Raph to retaliate in kind. "Seeing you chase your tail is way more fun."

Raph abruptly changes direction, dropping low and sweeping out with both legs in an attempt to catch his brother off-guard, but Don darts back out of sight just as quickly, a dark olive blur that drifts mockingly in and out of view like a midge on a hot summer's day.

Too many eyes are watching him, waiting for his next mistake. It's maddening to fight this way, always chasing after his opponent, never able to pin him into a direct confrontation, no less so because Don refuses to land a disqualifying blow, content to wind him up and up until...

There! He whips his head to the right, towards the low whooping whistle Don's bo makes as he flips it from one hand to the next, and—

There's no sound this time as the bo connects solidly with the just crusted-over jut of his left brow. No sound that Raph hears, anyway. The dojo is lost in a burst of white stars, and it's a long, thoughtless span of eternity before he manages to drag himself free of their nauseating grip.

"—my fault," a distinctly Don-shaped blur babbles, bent low so he floods what's left of Raph's vision. Calloused fingers pull back first one eyelid, then another. "I was aiming for his shoulder, didn't expect him to... Shell, what was I thinking giving him medical clearance for training, let alone patrol? If he's this unsteady on his feet then maybe—"

"I ain't," Raph growls. It takes nearly all his breath to give the protest the vehemence it needs to seem believable. "An' if you try and pull me from patrol, I swear I'll puke on you."

He might puke on him anyway—fuck but his head hurts!—but if there's one thing Master Splinter has taught them it's how to twist a weakness into a strength.

The Don-shape frowns, splits briefly into two. Opens both mouths to protest.

"It's my call whether you go on patrol or not," interjects a voice. Leo's head—just the one, thankfully—looms into view. "And right now my call is that you look too concussed to make it back to bed."

The strike just shy of Leo's groin is the kind of sucker punch he'd normally avoid, but it gets his point across. Same as Leo's retaliatory hit to his suprascapulary nerve. Uses his toes, too, the prissy little show-off.

"Enough!" Both Dons look up, merge back into one, and step back to make room for a grey, pointed snout, twitching equally in annoyance and concern. A strong hand seizes him by the chin and tilts his rapidly swelling face towards the light, sighs as Raph struggles against the urge to fight back against all the bodies touching and tsking and treating him like he's some kind of goddamn porcelain doll.

"My son, that is enough for today. You are excused for the remainder of the lesson. If you rest, perhaps you will be recovered enough to join your brothers in their outing. If you do not rest, then you may join me this evening for guided meditation on the distinction between seeing and knowing. Agreed?"

Raph wants to argue, but the universe tilts alarmingly as Don pulls him to his feet, so maybe, just maybe, they have a point. Pride and propriety force him to at least bow before leaving the sparring ring, even if it does end with him feeling like something's grabbed him by his toenails and turned him inside out. "Hai, sensei."

Once Master Splinter's back is turned, limping towards his seat and gesturing for Leo and Mikey to take their positions in the ring, Raph wrenches his arm free from Don's hold.

"Seriously? You gonna hold my hand all the way back to my room and tuck me into bed?" He sneers broadly, forcing himself to remain upright even as the room tilts alarmingly. "Bro, I don't need you nearly as much as you think I do."

Don's mouth twists, expression unreadable. His hands are iron hard and just as unbreakable as he seizes Raph by both arms and marches him, despite increasingly obscene protests, from the room.

"Uh-huh," he says darkly. "We'll just see about that."

"Dude. What the hell is your problem?"

Mikey's wearing his unhappiest face. Has been wearing less severe variations of it for the past few nights, ever since Raph made a fool of himself in the dojo chasing Don's shadow in ever dizzying circles. Raph's been watching Mike puff and grumble and glare himself into an increasingly sour mood for hours now, so the confrontation, when it happens, isn't exactly a surprise.

"Your ugly mug," Raph spits reflexively. Mikey doesn't even bother to roll his eyes, arms folded tight across his plastron and feet planted firmly in the way of Raph's jump, which means he might actually be serious for once. Raph sighs.

"Ain't got a problem." He steps to the side to realign his jump.

"Uh-huh." Mikey side-steps to block him again. The orange tails of his mask snap accusingly in the breeze. "Is that what you named the stick up your ass?"

Oh for the love of—

"Middle name. It's given name is Michelangelo."

Mikey is unphased. From the next rooftop over, Leo gestures for them to follow. "So Donnie beat you in practice. Not like it's the first time that's ever happened. He kicks my and Leo's asses, too. Then we kick his right back. That's just the way it goes. "

"I know that! Been trainin' with the guy twenty-some years now, wouldn't trust him to watch my back if I thought he didn't have the stuff."

Mikey tilts his head, one eye ridge raised in a half-decent impression of their sensei. "Then why are you treating him like shit stuck between your toes?"

"What? I ain't been—" Raph darts a glance across the alley, eyes searching automatically for a flash of purple. Don's out of sight, though, or tucked himself safely into a dark corner to wait for them to catch up. The building's rough brick facade is pockmarked with shadows, the few working security lights buzzing loud enough to be heard over the dirty wind and distant traffic. Raph shivers despite the warm air. "It's not Donnie."

"Sooo... What, then?"

Raph pauses, tries to put this nagging feeling he's had for days now into words, only to come up empty. "I dunno. But not that." Mikey doesn't get in his way this time when he crouches low on the edge of the rooftop, ready to spring. "C'mon. Before Fearless gets pissy."

Leo's impatience isn't quite at foot tapping level when they drop beside him, but it's close. He lets out a huff of breath through his nose, then signs for them to take their places at the rooftop's flanks. Don's already in his appointed position, feet dangling through the open skylight and eyes hidden behind a pair of night vision goggles. At Leo's signal, he spins onto his front and drops into the black hole of the building below, rappel line whipping behind him like a snake until it finally snaps taught.

Ever since Raph almost lost his eye to a low-level grunt with bad taste in blades, they've been trying to figure out just what brought the Foot clan to that seemingly ordinary warehouse in the outskirts of the garment district. And a mini storage half a block from the Chinese embassy. And this nearly-condemned sweatshopwithin literal spitting distance of the first, if Don's analysis of the grainy security footage from a neighboring apartment block is to be believed. The Foot don't do breaking and entering for shits and giggles, not even the flunkies with more luck than skill to their fighting styles, but if it's new duds they're after then this upholstery fabric manufacturer is the wrong place to look.

Which begs the question: for what kind of loot is this the right place to look?

"I'm thinking custom couch couture for the whole crew," hisses a quiet voice in his ear. Mikey's tone is light, bouncy, like their discussion on the roof's edge never even happened. "Or maybe Karai's looking to expand into ready to wear. It's almost fashion week, y'know."

Raph flicks at the tiny plastic receiver of his comm in warning, hopes the sudden thump of static to the eardrum is enough to discourage further chatter from his youngest sibling. "You just want an excuse for us to stake out another goddamn fashion show."

"Legs, Raphie-boy, legs! I keep telling you—"

"Quiet. No chatter on the line." Mikey whines briefly in protest at Leo's clipped warning, but obeys. Raph spares their leader a quick thumbs up of gratitude over his shoulder before turning back to the surrounding huddle of gloomy buildings, eyes peeled for any suspicious movement.

The city is unnervingly dark beneath the shadow of the new moon. As dark as it ever gets, at least. Raph can just make out Scorpius through the blue haze of light pollution, Antares a distinct and comforting red amidst the scattering of pale stars. With the hissing drone of the empty comm in his ear—broken only by the occasional scratching and shuffling sounds as Don makes his way through the building—it's hard not to let his mind drift, to not let the city he loves wash over him like the waves of a stormy beach.

"Hey!" Mikey whispers. "What's that? Off your nine, seventh story."

Raph turns, eyes narrowed as he focuses in on the grimy apartment building. There's a dot of light deep in the shadows of a fire escape landing, too small for a phone, too dim for a candle. Maybe the end of a cigarette. The flare of a lighter certainly would have been enough to catch Mikey's attention.

"Dunno," he mutters. "Want me to take a look?"

"No," says Leo. "I see it. Mikey, take my place by the skylight. Raph, fall back to center line but maintain surveillance. Looks like somebody out for a smoke break, but we don't want to take any chances."

"Ain't your watchdog," he mumbles, too quiet for the comm to pick up, but does as ordered. His own irritation confuses him. It's not like watch isn't an important position or one he's been exempt from in the past. Raph knows what he's best at, knows his brute strength and ruthless technique are ill-suited for the technical detective work and unseen surveillance this mission requires. So why does it feel like he's being side-lined, forced to sit in the time-out corner until he's shown the appropriate amount of repentance?

"That's weird." Don's quiet musings interrupt his train of thought. Raph shifts his weight restlessly from one foot to the next.

"What's weird?"

Clack of a keyboard. Another bemused huff from their resident genius. "Well, the first break-in was almost definitely drug related. Those were green recruits we fought, either out on an initiation run or looking for a score of their own while off the clock. The second looked like a set-up for some future operation, maybe establishing a base they can use to monitor the embassy. I thought this third break-in might be enough to establish a pattern, but there's literally nothing. By the dust and office equipment I might be the first person in here since 1987. There's a disturbance on the floor right where I came in but nothing branching out from it. It's almost as if this whole thing was a—"

"Guys!" Leo's grunt of pain snaps Raph back to attention. A body tumbles off the fire escape, then another. The red dot has shifted position, clambering up away from the fight below. "Sniper!"

It's the only warning they get.

The first round grazes close enough along his left temple to tear a long hole in his mask.. The second pings harmlessly off of his shell as Raph tumbles backwards, hands instinctively going for his sais even as his brain screams that they'll do a fat lot of good against so distant an enemy. The third buries itself noiselessly into the asphalt next to his feet, but now that Raph knows about the sniper he can see the red dot racing back and forth along the rooftop well enough to keep one step ahead of it.

"Ambush!" he shouts. "It's a fucking ambush! Donnie—!"

"Pulling out," comes the clipped reply. "Hold the skylight for me."

Easier said than done.

A wave of Foot launch themselves over the edge of the roof, swift as sparrows, silent as stars. These are no novice henchmen, their uniforms creased with newness and vaguely ill-fitting. These are experienced assassins, well-disciplined and hands hardened by death.

Raph swears violently as he dodges another shot from above—of all the bullshit to complicate an already bullshit scenario!—but suddenly the red dot of the sniper's scope whips violently back across the rooftop, towards the line of advancing Foot. Three soldiers hit the roof in rapid succession. Raph lets out a feral whoop as he realizes why.

"Keep within 15 feet of the skylight," Leo says. "It's not like I've had a ton of practice with these things."

While a staunch traditionalist in most aspects of martial arts, their leader can also be grimly practical when the need arises.

Another three soldiers fall before the Foot realize that the sharpshooter is no longer on their side. A flank of the group veers off in the direction of the apartment building, leaving the rest to spread out to cover the roof. They're still vastly outnumbered, but that moment of regrouping is all Raph and Mikey need to clear their way through the first volley of attackers.

Raph's adrenaline has been through the roof ever since he barely missed having a fancy new hole punched through his head. He fights viciously and with little style, bodies building up at his feet like gory fortifications. His vision tunnels down to the slaughter in front of him and the open skylight at his left, and it's a struggle to keep track of Mikey's whirlwind on the other side of the roof, a fight to keep himself oriented in this bloody pocket of the universe.

When his eyes catch sight of a familiar, deadly shadow at the edge of the fight, muscled arm reaching over its back for the long weapon strapped there, Raph lets out a quick gasp of relief. The fight has been faster and fiercer than he expected, too frantic even for Mikey to grind out more than a handful of half-hearted quips, and the relief afforded by Don's long-reaching bo is more than welcome. He shifts his position to open up the battle formation, pushing out past Leo's 15 foot boundary to make space for a third, and starts looking around between parries and thrusts for an exit strategy. Leo's holdout on the fire escape won't last for long, and he and Mikey and Don will have to—

"Raph! Your left!"

He never actually sees the threat that makes Leo cry out with sudden alarm. A burly body slams into him from the right, warm and scaled and blurred orange near its eyes, knocking them to the ground and rolling them end over end across the rooftop. Something slams into the space they just vacated hard enough that the whole building seems to shake, or maybe that's just Raph's brain trying to right itself against the spinning horizon.

"Move!" Mikey shouts, his voice strangely doubled with the feedback of the comm. "Move move—!"

Ba-BOOOOOOOOOM!

The rooftop cracks, crumbles. Raph is falling, but Mikey is falling faster, limbs flailing for purchase in the void. Raph reaches out, fingers grasping in vain for Mikey's outstretched hand, as they drop into the dark like stones flung into a bottomless lake.

Donnie! Where's—?

"I'm only going to ask once." Leo's expression is stone, every muscle of his tense figure unearthly still, but he hasn't got full control of his tone. Murder drips from every hissed vowel and growled consonant. "How. Did this. Happen."

His eyes drift from one member of his team to the next: Mikey slumped heavily on the infirmary cot, a baroque of cuts and burns from where he fell hard into the rusted remnants of an industrial loom after the second explosion made the whole roof cave in; Don perched on the stool once again with needle and thread in hand, unhurt but face a roadmap of anxiety; Raph pawing restlessly through the medical supplies in an aimless search for something to make him feel useful, crumbs of drywall and plaster and brick mortar still dusted across his skin. From the way Leo's interrogating stare lingers on him for half a second longer than the others, however, Raph knows the question is aimed squarely at him.

"Don't remember you getting this into post game analysis the other night," he sneers defensively, snapping the cabinet full of plastic-wrapped flats of blood collection tubes shut with more force than strictly necessary. "Startin' to feel a little jealous."

"That was a street fight," Leo says. "Spontaneous. Reactive. The kind of fight you go into knowing anything can happen. This—" He points roughly at Mikey's scraped and battered everything. The long burn up his left arm quickly disappearing under a thick wrap of gauze. "Was a mission."

A mission they'd discussed in detail for what felt like hours before they even left the sewers. A mission heavy with tactics, with rules on who should do what when and where. A mission planned out in excruciating detail so that Leo could live with the delusion than shit like this couldn't happen.

A mission that was supposed to be simple.

Raph's heard it all before.

"Newsflash, piss for brains: stuff goes wrong on missions, too. Especially when that mission turns out to be a big, fat trap." This drawer holds only unused syringes, still sterile in their packaging, this one row after battered row of stolen boxes of band-aids.

"Not like this, it shouldn't. Not when you're exactly where you're supposed to be."

Raph knocks almost the drawer of scalpel blades off its tracks as he slams it shut. "Oh cut the crap and say what you really mean, Leo. Say that it's my fucking fault."

"Wasn' your fault," Mikey slurs. There's a hole in his mouth where his left upper canine used to be. No matter which way he turns, Raph's eyes keep drifting back to it. "Wassa fault of th' guy witha goddamn bazoo—"

"It was my fault," Leo interjects. "As leader, it's my responsibility to see ahead, to know what can happen and plan how to deal with it. And I thought I knew where you were going to be, Raphael; well out of my line of sight when I went to pick-off the heavily-armed cavalry. So tell me, where did I go wrong?"

Every time Raph thinks Leo's grown out of the worst of his passive aggressiveness, he goes and throws a snit like this. Well, two can play at that game. He snorts and leans back against the cabinets, chin pointed upward in casual defiance.

"Whatever. Dunno why we were supposed to stick around just so you could get a few more pot shots in."

Leo frowns, brow furrowed. "Say that again?"

"You heard me." He jerks his thumb towards Don. "Maybe you didn't notice while you were up there playin' Annie Oakley, but our boy Braniac had already cleared the building long before things started getting slap happy with grenades."

Leo turns questioningly to Don. Don returns his look with a puzzled frown of his own. "I have no idea what he's talking about."

"Bullshit you don't. You were on the roof. South edge. Had to change up the formation so you wouldn't clonk me with that stupid stick of yours."

Don blinks at him in open befuddlement. Even Mikey, less conscious than not, turns to peer at him curiously.

"No, I wasn't. Remember? I was still climbing when the roof came down. I'm the one who caught you."

He does, now that he thinks about it. Remembers the faint shake of the rope in his peripheral vision as someone below began a hasty climb upward, remembers a hand grabbing him by the back of the shell, his stomach slamming hard against his plastron as he watched, horrified, as Mikey disappeared in the cloud of rubble. Just as clearly, he can see a dark silhouette against the glowing windows of a far apartment building, the body unmistakable even without the tell-tale jut of the bo staff strapped to its back.

"You were on the roof," he repeats. Doubt slowly edges its way into his voice. He pushes it out again. "I saw you."

Don and Leo exchange pointed glances.

"Maybe you should stick around for a bit," Don says slowly. "Let me take a look at your eye."

Raph's skin feels like it's on fire, hot pinpricks radiating down each limb to curl sweat-slick in the calloused cups of his palms and soles.

"Keep your focus on Mikey," he says, storming pointedly out of the room. "Not like he's got much room to spare in the looks department."

His feet carry him blindly through the darkened Lair, passing through one room to the next without rhyme or reason. Raph knows what he saw. He knows.

He just doesn't know how to make sense of it with everything else.

He stops in the main dome, halfway between the media lounge and Master Splinter's meditation pool. His heart is going a mile a minute in his chest, pumping hard enough to feel with his fingertips when he raises his hand to grope cautiously at the thin strip of ski beneath his collar bone.

His mouth twists in confusion. Where did this spike in anxiety come from? He's been in explosions before, never had this bad a reaction since that time they almost killed themselves on purpose trying to take down the Shredder. The main dome of the Lair is minimally lit, the ancient brick blue-green in the dim glow of the powered down computer and the faint, rippling light off the meditation pool. Same as any other night, and yet somehow...

Raph's been holding his breath without realizing it. He forces himself to exhale. Watches with distant incomprehension as his breath mists faintly around him, tapering into the dark like the smoke from a dying candle.

"I saw him," he whispers plaintively to no one. To nothing. "I saw—"

A change in his peripheral vision. A darkening where once there was light.

He spins around.

"You."

Don's dark outline watches him from the far edge of the water. Still. Silent.

"I told you," he growls. "I ain't gonna stick around for no fucking—"

The shape vanishes.

Raph stares uncomprehending at the empty doorway. Blinks his eyes, digs hard with one knuckle at the crust that tends to gather near his tear ducts until white stars burst across his vision. It's just as empty afterward.

Slowly, slowly, he creeps forward, careful to keep his footsteps soft and silent. As if he'll spook the thing that obviously, obviously isn't there. Swipes his hand through the air where he swears...

He swears...

"Raph?"

He does jump this time, sais brandished at the ready. At the other end of the dome, Don raises his hands in mock surrender. Raph can smell the blood dried to them beneath the burn of antibiotic soap.

How the fuck did he—?

"Look," Don sighs. He sounds tired. Ancient in his exhaustion. "Leo didn't—"

For once, Raph doesn't give a shit what Leo did or Leo didn't.

He bolts for his bedroom.

His fear feels ridiculous in the morning. There's no sunlight to chase it away, this far down, no twittering birds or honking chorus of rush hour commuters to banish the last shadowy uncertainties of night, but the whistle of Master Splinter's morning pot of tea and the smell of fresh sausage is a decent enough substitute, as is the cocoon of their morning katas and meditation sessions. As the hours buzz through him, each more placid and routine than the last, Raph finds himself growing more and more dubious that he saw... whatever it was he saw. Or thought he saw. Or thought he thought he—

Whatever it was. It obviously wasn't. Isn't. Couldn't ever be.

Mikey laughs too loudly at a quiet joke from Don, his face swollen and purple beneath its half-mask of bandages and arm loose in a sling. The gaps between his teeth are rimmed with blood from the still slowly-seeping socket. A chill rattles low along the curve of Raph's shell, and he glances guiltily at the still-empty spot where the shadow hadn't ever been.

Raph hasn't quite shaken the feeling by the time he lays down for a pre-patrol nap, and what little sleep he gets is fitful and plagued with half-formed dreams. A white marble rolling wet across his palm. The aisles April's antique shop stretching out on all sides in an endless, dusty labyrinth. A great, dark cat, eyeless and gaunt, crouched atop his chest, kneading into the soft flesh of his throat with knife like claws over and over and—

A brisk knock at his doorframe awakens him with a jerk. Leo's standing there, expression nonplussed as he watches Raph untangle himself from his hammock.

"Don's staying behind to keep Mikey company. Just you and me tonight."

"Great," says Raph dryly, rubbing absently at the faint sensation of pressure still lingering behind his plastron. "Let's go kick some ass."

They don't talk on their walk through the tunnels. Leo's never been much of a talker, something Raph has loathed and loved in him in turns. Tonight the silence uneases him, the familiar sewers flooded with a sense of unknowing he hasn't felt since childhood.

"Wait," he says at a junction. "You hear that?"

Leo's hands go automatically for his sword hilts. "Hear what?"

Raph strains, trying to find the sound again amidst the drip of pipes and the distant roar of a main culvert. "Footsteps, maybe."

Leo draws his swords. His expression is grim. "Don didn't say anything about meeting up with us."

They split up, vanishing into the tunnels with the practiced silence of a lifetime, but after ten minutes of searching they reconvene, empty handed. Leo sheathes his swords with a shrug.

"Just an echo," he says. "Acoustics must be funny here."

"Yeah," Raph agrees. Water laps dark green at his calves, too full of sediment and worse to see the bottom. He thinks he sees a third reflection in the water, black on black on black, but it's lost in a sloshing ripple as Leo sets off again at a determined pace. "Just an echo."

"Again!"

The fight isn't even a fight this time. Don's body moves like a ghost, his bo silent and swift as smoke. Raph goes down in less than a minute, teeth biting clean through the soft part of his cheek as he hits the mats. Mikey lets out a low whistle of sympathy from the sidelines, which only adds fuel to the fire of Raph's frustration.

"Christ," he coughs. Blood spatters across the floor like the first drops of a hard rain. He swipes it away quickly with the palm of his hand, and swallows thickly around the remaining evidence of his weakness. "You were fucking everywhere, Donnie."

Master Splinter's eyes narrow warningly at the curse, but Don's grin is unabashedly gleeful as he helps him to his feet.

"I am a master ninja, you know," he quips. With the last of Raph's stitches finally removed and Mikey's face and arm looking less and less like hamburger with each passing day he's starting to regain some of his old playfulness. "Try and keep both eyes on me this time, right?"

"Don't flatter yourself," Raph laughs, but the scales on the back of his neck still prickle as the dojo candles gutter in a stray sewer breeze.

In storefront windows, in oilslick puddles pooling on the sidewalks after a sudden rain, in pitch alleyways and sunless sewers, white eyes stare back at Raph.

"Jeeze!" Mikey's hands are up, his voice a mix of humor and alarm, as if almost being impaled by a reflexively-flung sai is something to joke about. Behind him, one of the ceiling lights shoots out a fizzle of sparks, electricity arcing between the points of the sai embedded deep in its guts. "What's got you spooked?"

Raph blinks, and blinks, and blinks. Can't see the shape he swears was there, half a moment before, stretched out along the rafters. Can't un-see it either, the after-image of two hollows in space, turning to follow wherever he goes.

Whenever the shadows in the Lair grow too long to be comfortable, the stone walls too close and its inhabitants too familiar, Raph knows he's always welcome at April and Casey's place. Their couch and dinner table are always open to the whole Hamato clan, but Raph prefers to visit on his own, if only so he doesn't have to share Shadow with the rest of his brothers. Raph makes it a rule each visit not to be separated from his niece for as long as physically possible, a rule Shadow seems content enough to oblige.

He's bouncing her in his arms, marveling for the thousandth time how something so small can feel so goddamn life-changing, while Casey and April linger over the remnants of dinner, laughing together at some private joke. April's bun is on its last legs, her face shiny with the oil of the day. Casey's not much better off, the bun he adopted after Shadow's grabbing fingers got strong enough to inflict serious pain equally limp, the shadows under his eyes dark as bruises, his stubble a thin, patchy embarrassment even after half a week without shaving.

They're so in love that it hurts to linger too long in their radiance, so Raph paces, Shadow in tow, up and down the apartment, just far enough away that their fire warms instead of burns. The apartment feels pink with their happiness, a happiness he should be pink with, too, but his feet keep carrying him back to the far window and the black New York skyline hidden behind the curtain.

He tries not to make it obvious, but April is far from stupid. Her laughter fades as she catches him twitching back the curtain to peer out at the night, worry drawing itself over her features with an ease that wasn't there when they first met all those years ago.

"What is it?"

Shadow squirms in protest as Raph's grip slowly tightens. "Dunno," he says. "Just feels like we're being watched."

Casey's chair scrapes loudly as he pushes back from the table. He's got a cricket bat in hand before Raph can hitch the restless toddler higher up his hip, his expression grim as he grabs his mask off of a coat rack and unbolts the apartment door.

"I'll go check," he says, knuckles cracking as they tighten around the bat. "Back in fifteen."

Raph's never been one to let someone else waltz into danger on his own behalf, but with the rosy lamplight and warm weight of Shadow's soft, dark curls against his shoulder it's hard to take his own nervousness seriously, even as the loud thump of the front door and sudden disappearance of her father draws a hitching, fretful sob from the tiny body.

"Overprotective, much?" he laughs. Shadow reaches again for the space where Casey once was, mouth and fingers jerking with want as fat tears creep down both cheeks. Raph catches her tiny hand in his and kisses her softly on the crown. "Guy's gonna assault half the civvies on the block before she even hits kindergarten."

April sees through his poor attempt at deflection. "Raph, I hate to say it, but you've been acting a little..." She lifts her hand vaguely into the air, drops it heavily back into her lap. "Is there anything you want to talk about?"

Raph turns back to the window. There's a gap in the curtains. Barely an inch of black glaring between the lacy mauve. He twitches them shut again with a deft flick of one wrist.

"Nah," he says, shifting the shaking, red-faced toddler from one arm to the other. His own shadow looms monstrous and too many on the wall, an inhuman shape in an all-too human world. He turns his shell to it, rocking and rocking until finally her crying softens, and hushes.

When he starts seeing the shape in the safe harbor of his own eyelids while dreaming, he finally breaks and does the thing he should have done in the first place.

He tells Don.

Not the whole truth, obviously. Beause the whole truth sounds crazy. Is crazy. Which he definitely isn't, so why go and give Don any ideas?

"Hmm..." Don nearly blinds him with that puny penlight of his. "And how long have you been seeing these dark spots?"

"Since that night where Mikey... y'know," Raph confesses, struggling to hold still as Don leans further and further into his personal space. For half a moment, when Don switches the pen light from the left eye to the right, he could swear that his brother's shadow on the infirmary's far wall splits into two, the second copy darting just beyond the range of his peripheral vision. "And it's just the one."

"Mm-hmm." Don flicks the penlight away, then back again. "About how big is it? Relative to other objects in the same plane, I mean."

Here, it's harder to lie convincingly. "I dunno. Biggish? Like a person, almost."

"Always in the same spot?"

"No." Don finally puts the penlight away, leaving Raph with a cascade of blue and black floaters drifting across his vision, settling into the corners of the lab like snow. "It uh... Moves around."

"Any numbness? Tingling sensations? Headaches?"

"You're givin' me a hell of ne right now," he snipes. At Don's stern glare, he grows more contrite. "No. And none of that other stuff, either."

There's seemingly no end to Don's increasingly pointed questions. Does it hurt when he moves his eyes. Has he noticed any changes in his color vision. Has he noticed halos or other visual distortions when looking at light sources.

Raph tries to answer as honestly as he can, but he's half-distracted by an uneasy sense of something rustling around in the lab clutter just out of sight. After nearly a quarter hour of increasingly alarming interrogation, Don sits back with a weary sigh.

"Well, I don't think you've had a stroke. Which is good news. But I can't rule out retinal detachment, which isn't great news because even if you'd come to me right away, like I told you to, there's not much I could do to reverse it. Personally my fingers are crossed for glaucoma. Maybe optic neuritis, but from your symptoms it's sounding more like glaucoma."

Raph chews on his lower lip. "And glaucoma is good?"

"Glaucoma sucks, but it's the kind of suck that can sometimes be treated with eye drops. Thus..." Don holds up his hands. Crossing your fingers doesn't quite have the same visual when you only have six to work with, but Raph gets the picture.

Raph has never been fond of eye exams, especially the part where Don puts shit in his eyes to make his pupils dilate. He insists his differential diagnosis can't go any further without it, however, so Raph grits his teeth and bares it, forcing his third eyelids to stay retracted as his eyes water under the assault of the stinging solution. It always feels like crying, a sensation not helped by the excess liquid dripping down his cheeks in long, yellow tears.

At least Don had the presence of mind to flip out the lights beforehand. Darkness has been a comfort most of Raph's life, a thing of safety, of reassurance, but now it sets him on edge. For the first time in a long time, he's not so certain he's the worst thing he could bump into in the depths of the shadows.

"Hold still," Don commands, flicking on the light of his opthalmoscope. Raph remembers too well the day they'd found it in the medical waste yard, rusted but otherwise functional, Don's uncontainable joy as he forced one brother after another to submit to its magnification. Raph's had enough annual vision tests since then that he's all but memorized the drill, looking forward, then up, then down, left then right.

"Right eye looks good." Don shuffles his stool sideways to better inspect the left. For some reason the light burns harsher than it had on the right, seeming to pierce beyond the back of his eye and down his optic nerve, straight to the base of his brain. He squirms uncomfortably.

"I really need you to hold still, Raph."

"'M trying. This shit really fucking stings, y'know."

Don doesn't answer, too busy fiddling with the settings on his opthalmoscope. Raph lets his mind start to wander, feet kicking out restlessly.

Strong fingers grab a hold of his jaw, locking him into place.

"Stop it."

Raph grunts, surprised by the strength of Don's grip. "All right, all right! No need to get rough."

Don's fingers only dig in harder.

"Stop... Ssssstop it. You haaave... You have to..."

It hurts, Don's machine-torn nails digging deep, deep into the soft flesh of his cheeks. Raph struggles, but Don's strength is inhuman, and with the opthalmoscope still pressed almost flush against his eye he doesn't have much room to thrash without seriously injuring himself. His right eye sees only darkness, his left a starburst of white surrounded by electric blues and pulses of blood pink.

"Stop it!" The rough, rasping voice grows louder, crisper. "Stop it stop it stop it Raphael you HAVE TO—"

If Raph is one thing, it's predictable in his reactions.

He hits Donatello. A hard right hook, swung with all the force he can muster given the tight space. Pain radiates down his arm as his knuckles find the hard curve of his brother's skull.

Don's grip goes slack. Raph doesn't waste any time making his escape. The glass jars lining the infirmary counter rattle as he slams into the cabinets, scrambling for the safety of a corner.

On the floor, Don blinks up at him in confusion. "Raph?"

"Stay away," he pants. His sais are out. He doesn't remember drawing them. "You stay the goddamn hell away from me!"

"Raph, what...?" Don's hand drifts from his temple to his beak. Blood oozes brightly from one nostril. "You hit me?"

"I—" His eyes dart around the room, looking in vain for the foe that can't be fought. He struggles to find an answer that doesn't sound monstrous in the wake of Don's dazed bewilderment. "Why would I do that?"

"I don't..." Don's stare drifts, uncomprehending, from his bloodied hand, to Raph, to the dropped opthalmoscope, and back to Raph again. "Was I giving you an eye exam?"

"Nnn—yeah," he says. "20/20, same as always." He spins on one heel, trying for nonchalance, but the effect is ruined by his hands' steadfast refusal to tuck his sais back into his belt. "Same time next year, right?"

And, like a coward, he runs.

The lab isn't safe. The main dome isn't safe. Up top has never been safe, not for a freak like him, and the slow crocodile corner of his brain that lies low in the water, observing, thinking, whispers that his bedroom isn't the sanctuary he wants to think it is.

At least the bathroom has a lock.

Water bursts from the tap dirty yellow and cold as death, slowly clearing and warming as the reserve from Don's precious hot water heater forces its way through the ancient pipes. Raph catches it in his hands (shaking, shaking, why are they—?), splashes it roughly across his face, up the stiff length of his arms. Stands there, scrubbing, until his hands grow numb to the now-scalding heat, until the mirror fogs with steam and the electric imprints left behind by Don's vice-like grip feel rawer, more blurred. Everything is too bright, his still-dilated pupils unable to filter against the flood of visual stimulae, but if he closes his eyes then—

"Raph?" A sharp knock at the door. Mikey's signature triplet tap. "You all right in there? Don said you—"

Looking up, Raph catches a glimpse of his reflection in the cracked mirror, but the face there isn't his own, the color of the mask dulled by the steam.

"You're not my brother," he whispers. In the sink, the water runs ice cold again. "You're not!"

The face in the mirror cracks. Crumples. Raph shuts his eyes tight, as if braced for a blow.

He knows too well what hurt looks like carved onto those careworn features.

Going to Master Splinter for help feels like an acknowledgment that things are as bad as they seem, that he's lost control of this situation.

Fortunately, he has another option.

Unfortunately, that option is Leo.

"You want me to what?"

Raph doesn't know which is worse, Leo's surprise or Leo's amusement. Both are quickly shuttered away, replaced with the bland non-expression he uses when his instincts run counter to what he considers a proper reaction for a leader to have. But Raph knows. Raph saw.

"Teach me how to meditate."

" You know how to meditate. We've been meditating since we were two."

"Yeah, but—" Admitting feels like pulling his own teeth. And he's done that, to Don's great chagrin. "You see shit when you meditate. Go on 'dream walks' and stuff."

Leo tilts his head, considers him for a long, awkward moment. "If you think there's some secret tea that Splinter and I drink that can open up your third eye in thirty minutes or less, then I'm sorry to disappoint you."

Raph can feel his face flushing traitorously. "Forget it," he scowls, and stalks off into the Lair in search of something to hit or lift or stab until the too-tight feeling of his skin goes away.

He's six bench presses in to his third set of twenty when Leo casually strolls into the gym. Raph grits his teeth, braced for further ribbing, but Leo passes him with barely a nod, settling himself into a far corner and unhooking his scabbards.

Raph watches him out of the corner of his eye, pulse thumping in anticipation of one Leo's infamous sword-polishing lectures, but his brother pulls the blades from their sheathes and sets them carefully aside before laying the empty scabbard at his feet. Next come his knee and elbow pads, then his belt, and just when Raph is starting to wonder why the hell Fearless picked here and now of all places to strip Leo pulls out a jar of conditioning oil from one pocket and slowly, methodically starts to work it into the leather.

"Once," he says slowly, not once looking up as he works, "in a distant desert, there lived a spirit—terrible in form, pitiful in existence—who could drink only tears. An old man and wife had the great misfortune to encounter this spirit as they crossed the desert to seek a new life, and the wife, sobbing in fear, was consumed."

Raph rolls his eyes. Story time Leo isn't quite as bad as sword polish lecture Leo, but he's not exactly Raph's first choice of entertainment. Still, despite himself, his arms pump slower and slower, each rep dragging out to fit Leo's slow, measured cadence.

"The old man was distraught at the loss of his love. He cried so loudly and so long that the spirit was able to drink its fill with tears to spare. It had been a long time since it had been so satiated, and it sought to repay this kindness. 'If you would so like,' it said graciously, 'Stay with me in this desert, and I will show you the riches of its soils and teach you the secrets of its stones. I will take the form of your love, so that every time you look on me you may cry in joy or sorrow. But you must cry, and let me drink deeply of your salt, or I will kill you and seek another.'

"The old man, fearing death and longing for his wife equally, agreed, and in this way they lived more or less happily for many, many moons."

"This is a weird fuckin' story, Leo," Raph interrupts. "It got a point to it?"

Leo smiles thinly, head cocked in a silent entreaty for patience. It's an eerily good copy of Master Splinter's own gesture.

"Eventually, there came across the desert three travelers. The first was a friend of the old man, who had known he and his wife in their youth, courting her briefly in the time before he was called away to sea. The second knew only of the old man and his wife through the first traveler's tales, which he had heard time and time again over the years of their friendship. The third was a stranger from a far land, logical and clear of mind, who knew nothing of the man, his wife, or the customs of their people.

"When the first traveler greeted the man and his spirit wife, he was struck with awe at the vision before him. He saw the spirit as the woman he had once loved, lovely and gold with youth, and praised her with elegant soliloquies on the resilience of her beauty. The second traveler, who knew her only through stories, saw the spirit as a woman gracious with age, and wondered curiously at the first traveler's flattery. Only the third traveler, who knew nothing of the woman as she was or how she should be, saw the spirit for what it was, and by his horror did save his companions from a gruesome and untimely death."

Somewhere, Raph isn't sure where, he went from pretending to ignore the eldest turtle to listening to him rapturously. Now that the story has trailed off into silence he struggles to regain his facade of disinterest, fussing with the rack settings and adding more weight to the bar.

"The point," Leo says vaguely to one kneepad, "is that I can't tell you how to see without also telling you what to see. And that what may be my truth, but it wouldn't be yours, or even the truth at all. Understand?"

"Yeah." Maybe. He'll have to think on it for a bit. No need to tell Leo that, though. Not when he's shooting coy glances at Raph like a teacher spying on an unruly pupil. Raph rubs at his hands, fits them back into place along the bar, and goes back to his reps. "Where'd you get that story from, anyway? Don't think I've ever heard Sensei tell it."

Leo's careful neutrality cracks. His eyes glint with an all-too-familiar smugness. "Season one, episode one of Star Trek: The Original Series. 'The Man Trap.'"

Raph almost drops the weights onto his chest. He gapes, open-mouthed, at his brother.

Leo's smirk stretches into a rare, toothy grin. "I'm not completely socially illiterate, you know."

Raph closes his mouth with a click. Slowly, slowly, lets Leo's smile stretch across his own face.

"You're a nerd, is what you are."

Leo sticks out his tongue, gathering up his swords and resheathing them with a flourish and loud scrape of leather against steel, but for once in their long, cramped, argumentative lives, he doesn't correct him.

The Lair is unusually quiet around him as Raph pads silently through its darkened halls, not sneaking out but not drawing attention to himself and the shadow following in his wake, either. It's late—well past midnight even by their time—and for once Don has been successfully bullied into bed, the light from under his lab door a subdued screensaver green. Mikey might be awake, but he's tucked away in his bedroom with a late night movie marathon playing at a low volume. Leo's room is dark, as is Master Splinter's, but that's no indication of safety. He holds his breath until he's almost at the front door, would still his own heartbeat if he knew how, convinced that any second he'll be betrayed by its tell-tale thumping.

No one hears him. No one stops him.

At the threshold of the sewers he pauses, hands braced against the rim of the doorway.

"You're not stuck here, right? You can move around?" He doesn't turn around to see if the shape answers. Feels its affirmation nevertheless, a prickle of electric ice that crashes against his shell like a wave against the shore.

It's a long, echoing run through the tunnels to reach his goal, made all the longer by the splashes that aren't splashes between his own footsteps. Topside, the night air is shimmery with radiated heat, the rooftops and sidewalks slowly surrendering the warmth baked into them by a relentless September sun. Summer seems reluctant to release the city from its jaws, its hunger hot even through the wrappings of his hands as Raph climbs rung over rickety rung up the narrow, rusted fire escape of a tenement building pressed tight against the Hudson.

Over a dozen stories later, Raph catches the first whimper of cooing that signals the end of his climb. He quashes the instinctive rush of anticipation, knowing too well how far the deceptive wind can carry a sound as soft as crying. It's another four stories before he finally heaves his bulk over the ledge of the roof, limbs pulsing with the rhythmic exercise.

The door to the pigeon coop is locked, as always, and just as easily unlocked again. He tucks the tiny twist of wire back into his belt, breath held in reverence as he steps over the threshold and into a world of feathers and soft music.

It's stifling in the little shed, the gaps between the weatherworn wood and sheets of corrugated metal barely providing enough moonlight to see by as he turns sideways to fit his shell through the narrow gaps between the perches. He does his best to keep his tread light, but every footstep raises a cloud of down and fine particles of hay. He tosses a peace offering of fresh feed to the assembled troops.

"Don't laugh," he says as the birds shuffle excitedly around him. Raph is far from a stranger in their midst. "Just wait'll you see the view."

The far wall of the coop is a trapezoid of chicken wire, the roughly-framed picture window overlooking a sleepy huddle of darkened skyscrapers to the east. Raph clears spot on floor with his foot and settles into a lotus pose.

"Yeah, it's hot as Hades and covered in bird shit. Guy who built it 's gettin' on in years, y'know? Practically blind, don't clean it as often as he should, only manages all the stairs maybe twice a week, tops. But it's private, and almost quiet, and if you time it just right—"

Dawn bursts over the crisp black silhouette of New York's skyline swift and red as a forest fire. Raph's heart swells reflexively, able to forget, for a moment, all the pain the city he loves has brought him, all the loss and sorrow and disappointment, in favor of this one, rippling moment, the scarlet quickly tempered into gold, then the soft pink of morning.

"That," he whispers. "You can see that."

A common grey lands on his left shoulder, a piebald on his head. They scatter with a panic of fluttering as something else settles over the top of Raphael, something that makes him feel light and heavy at the same time, bones like iron, lungs tight as hot air balloons.

"Donnie." The name drifts across the dawn in a thin puff of ice. "Donnie..."

He closes his eyes.

In the dark, dark, dark, there is a shape. Familiar and alien, known and yet unknowable. It crawls, four-legged, animal, closer and closer, closer and closer.

In the shape, there is a mouth.

In the mouth, there are words.

It says: You have to stop it.

It says: It's up to you.

It says: Watch, watch, it's coming.

It says...

"Raph? Raph!"

Hands on his shoulders, tight enough to bruise. Shaking him. Holding him upright.

It's a struggle to open his eyes, to crack open the thick crust of sweat mixed with dust coating his eyelids. He does it, but at great cost. The low sun is blinding orange where it reflects off of the glass of the distant skyscrapers. He squints at it, aware distantly that something isn't right, something is off from the way it should be, but his view is soon blocked by a round, freckled smudge, green except where it's broken by a band of duller orange.

"Hang on, dude. We're going to get you out of here," it whispers, before turning to shout over his shoulder. "Guys! He's here! I found him, he's—!"

Raph's lids slip closed again. He drifts. Half a moment, half a millennium passes. He can't be sure.

What did it...?

What...

Strong arms drag him out of the void and into a rough standing position. His legs buckle beneath him, weak as water.

It said...

"Jeeze you're heavy! You better not die on me, because I'm making you give me all the piggy back rides I want for like, at least a month. Maybe two."

It said he had to...

The world tilts nauseatingly on its axis as he's lifted into a fireman's carry. Raph heaves, but nothing comes up, not even spit.

"Yeah, two months for sure. It's only fair. Right, birdies?"

To...

Dredging up the last of his energy, Raph manages a final glimpse of the pigeon coop. The perches lining the walls are empty, the air still but for the faint drift of feathers and dust kicked up by his bearer. It's not until he's lifted through the door, passed from one firm grip to another, that he spots them: a hundred thin, feathered bodies huddled in a far corner of the coop, wings tucked, black eyes unblinking as they watch him pass, jeweled throats silent in terror.

"Raph," says a voice. Loud. Panicked. "Raph, you have to—"

Darkness.

What? he says. What's coming?

The thing wearing his brother's face sits back on its hauches, hands draped loosely across its knees. Considers him for a long, too-stilll moment. It's thinner than the Donatello he knows. Younger, yet somehow older, the greytone skin unblemished with the scars of their most recent battles but black eyes sunken and unquestionably ancient.

There are constants in the universe, it says at length. Things that must and always. Markers that reality uses to orient itself in time and space. Like survey marks across a landscape, or the origin at the intersect of x and y. Zero zero, beginning and end. All paths defined based on their proximity thereto.

Raph can't see the edges of himself here, his body not forgotten, merely set aside. The thing in front of him is neither meat nor shadow, substance nor absence. It flickers as he stares at it. Grows more solid as he looks away.

It isn't always like this, it says. Isn't always kind. Sometimes it's fire. Sometimes it's fingers. Sometimes it's friends. Countless variations. But the one thing it is, always and always, is inevitable.

I don't know what you want, Raph confesses. What you want me to stop?

The thing narrows its eyes. Donnie's eyes. Donnie's eyes Donnie's face Donnie's neck and shoulders and hard-boned limbs but not Donnie, not Donnie, not Donnie. Liar.

I ain't a fucking—! He bites his tongue, the objection absurdly childish and petty in this place between places, but the thing cocks its head, the ghost of a ghost of a grin curled faintly in one corner of its mouth.

Liar, it repeats, faintly sing-song. Liar. Fighter. Weaver, watcher, rider, ember. You have to stop it, Raphael. You have to have to.

What? he pleads. What what what? Donnie, I can't stop it if you don't—

Somewhere in the non-where, just beyond the space where the thing is but isn't, nothing shifts itself into the vaguest of somethings. Three figures, maybe, their bodies twisted and gnarled as barren trees: one shrouded, one lop-sided, one eerily like looking into a mirror.

Raph squints. A foolish, earthly instinct, but the figures grow no clearer. I don't understand.

The center cannot hold. The falcon seeks the falconer. In the abhorrence of the vacuum, the arc of the universe bends back and back, breaking. Balance is sought. Direction restored. It spreads its arms. Smiles the most horrible of smiles. If not one way, then another.

A forgotten nightmare, round and white, rolls through his fingers. Wet, wet.

What are you? he says. Please. Just tell me—

The thing rocks forward.

Digs both clawed hands into the cracked earth.

Leans.

Closer and closer.

Closer and closer.

Raphael, it says. I'm gone.

I'm gone I'm gone I'm GONE I'M—

He wakes up in the infirmary, needle in his arm, a half-empty bag of saline glittering above him in the harsh fluorescent lighting. There's a hand holding his, palm calloused but warm, long, bony fingers ending in carefully sharpened claws. Master Splinter. It takes a moment longer to place the cool weight pressed tight against his limbs. He stares at the thick, oversized blue fabric cuffs studded with clear tubes in quiet bafflement for a long time until his brain finally makes sense of the lettering curved across the top of his right thigh:

HYDRO-CHILL EMERGENCY THERMO-REGULATION WRAP.

"Raph? You awake?" Somebody snaps their fingers in front of his beak. "Hey. Blink twice if you're awake."

He blinks. Once. Twice.

"Donnie! He's awake!"

"Yeah, I saw." Hands on his face, peeling back his eyelids to shine an even harsher light directly into one eye, then the other. "Pupil reaction is normal," says Don, his features doubled and hazy as his eyes struggle back from pinpoint. Raph tries to tell him where he can stick that stupid penlight of his, but all that comes out is a low, guttural rumble. Don's lips thin in what might once have been a smile. "Raph reaction is also normal."

"Is he with it enough to talk?" Mikey asks. "Note that I didn't specify whether it had to be coherent. Don't want to set the bar too—"

"M'key," Raph gruffs. It comes out fainter than me meant, weaker. He tries again, pulling as much air as he can into his chest. "Shu' up, willya?"

Mikey bends down into his field of vision, face glowing with delight. "There you are! Not gonna lie, we were starting to get worried."

"Yeah, bro. Maybe leave a note or something next time." That sounds like Casey. What the hell is he doing—?

Turning his head is an effort, especially with the cooling cuff closed loosely around his neck, but eventually he's able to take a full survey of the room. Master Splinter is seated on the edge of the bed, Raph's thick green hand clasped gently between his own skeletal paws. He's flanked by April and a goofily grinning Casey, Shadow babbling restlessly on his hip. Don is perched opposite of Sensei, his hands in constant motion as he checks all of Raph's vitals, while Mikey hovers behind him, seemingly unsure of where to stand to get the best view without getting in his brother's way. Leo takes longer to place, but eventually he spots him propped up against the supply cabinets, separate from the little melodrama but still within arm's reach. He meets Raph's questioning gaze with a short, silent nod.

Everyone looks tired but happy to see him, pinched expressions softening under the glow of relief.

Everyone, that is, but Don.

"You idiot," he spits. "Were you trying to die of heat stroke? Because you did a damn near job of it if you weren't."

"Donnie," April sooths, brow creased with fresh worry. She reaches out to him with a sympathetic, upturned palm. "You said we needed to—"

"I know what I said!" he snaps, twisting away from her touch. He looks wild, his carefully curated control crumbling at the panting edges.

Raph watches him, fascinated. It's been a long, long time since he's seen Don this angry.

His curiosity doesn't go unnoticed. "And you! Don't you—"

"My son." His sensei's voice descends over room with the quiet power of the eye of a hurricane. "Calmly."

Raph recognizes Don's hastily executed breathing exercise as one of the first Master Splinter taught him when his anger grew too much for his small frame to bear. It's strange to see it in another body, especially one so alike and yet unalike his own. Don's execution still needs work, he notes idly, his lungs unused to bearing the brunt of his emotions.

"What," he tries again once most of his shaking has stilled, "were you thinking? You know the rules. It's only sheer dumb luck that we ever found you at all, much less when we did."

"'M sorry," Raph mumbles. His tongue is like wood in his mouth, and as he talks he can feel his lips split and ooze slow trickles of blood. "Was jus' tryn'a... clear my head. Lost track a time. Meant t' be back inna couple hours. Diddin mean... t' be gone th' whole day."

The assembled croud exchanges uneasy glances.

"What?" Raph asks. Louder, when no one will meet his eyes. "What?"

"Dude," says Mikey hesitatingly. "It's been days."

No. Yes. He shakes his head. That can't be—

"Three days," says Don. His round eyes burn right through him, like staring up into the noonday sun. "Three, Raph."

Shadow starts fussing louder, disquieted by all the raised voices and the late hour. As Casey steps out to sooth her, April pushes forward just long enough to squeeze Raph's wrist comfortingly.

"Sleep," she says. "We'll visit again when you're a little more with it. Whatever's going on, we'll figure it out, okay?"

Raph nods mutely, thoughts still locked up on the gap in his memory. The furrow between her eyebrows deepens, but she smiles as she bends down and plants a kiss on his forehead, her lips like a brand against his too-tight flesh. She leaves, Mikey drifting after her, shooting spooked glances back over his shoulder even as he babbles about a forgotten present for Shadow. Splinter lingers longer, watching attentively as Don checks all of Raph's vitals twice over, adjusting the flow of his IV and pinching his exposed skin over and over until he's finally satisfied with the recoil time. However long Raph was out on that roof, Don looks like he's been awake for three years longer, and it's no surprise when eventually Splinter coaxes him off to his own bed, assuring him in even tones that he will look after Raphael for the rest of the night.

Only Leo lingers, forgotten in his corner.

His steps are slow, calculated as he crosses the infirmary. He leans over the cot, expression cool, distant, and far, far too knowing.

"Well?" he says lowly. "What did you see?"

There are no shadows but the ones under Leo's eyes in this over-lit room. No places to hide. To lurk, hidden.

No place but the dark behind his own eyelids.

The sheets whisper traitorously as Raph settles, movements soft and slow as if in sleep. He lies there, pretending, until eventually he doesn't have to.

Eventually, Don lets him out of the infirmary.

Eventually, Master Splinter lets him rejoin practices, then patrols.

Eventually, Leo quits shadowing him as he makes his way to April and Casey's. Mikey learns to whistle through the gap in his teeth, then spit, then whistle and spit at the same time to the delight of no one. Everyone relaxes from their guard, falling back into old habits, older roles, oblivious to or content to ignore the way Raph startles at too-quick motions just out of view, how he refuses to sit with his shell to the dark, how during meditation he sits silent, eyes open and unblinking, and carefully, carefully, never turns his head.

Eventually, summer finally gives way to fall, and Raph manages to convince himself that the ghost in his breath is just the change in the season, his vision the same as it ever was, the void lingering always just at the edge of awareness no more alarming or extraordinary than the grim, inevitable certainty of death.

Eventually...

He wakes up one morning with a dark shape curled heavily on his chest.

It doesn't say anything.

It doesn't have to.

It spends the day wrapped around his shoulders, looming over him, whispering wordlessly into his ear. Leo catches a glimpse of it, maybe. Right at the end of meditation. His eyes open and he turns to Raph, mouth soft around the first syllables of an unknown sentence that vanishes as his eyes flick upward briefly in alarm. Raph's shoulders spasm as thick claws dig tight into his muscles to curl warningly around his collarbones, but just as quickly Leo's shaking his head, beak crumpled and eyes blinking rapidly in confusion.

They rise for their final bow. Master Splinter acknowledges each of them in turn. His gaze is clear when it meets Raphael's, his tone calm and untroubled, but his ears fold flat against his skull as he sniffs the air. When they leave for patrol, he gestures for Raph to remain. Just for a moment, he insists pleasantly, dismissing the others with a careless wave. Nobody notices, nobody questions, and as soon as they've disappeared, laughing, into the tunnels, Splinter seizes him by the wrists and pulls him tight.

"My son," he says. Close like this, there's no ignoring the hard bones of the aging body hidden carefully beneath thick robes. Tight around his throat, the dark shape trembles, trembles. "My son."

With a shake of his head, he lets go, and says nothing more.

"What was that all about?" Don asks, bo hooked casually over his shoulders. He's smiling, relaxed. He's got his latest invention tucked into his belt, some sort of tracker he's been itching for an opportunity to test, and tonight's planned scouting of mob informants is just the time to do it. His eyes are open, clear, happy. Unclouded by suspicion.

Don't, says the shape, the first recognizable thing it's said in days. Weeks. Eons, maybe. Can't.

He wants to. Oh, he wants to. It lodges in his throat, hard, fearful. He swallows, and swallows, and swallows, until eventually he can speak again.

"Nothing," he says. His pulse pounds in resigned anticipation, hard enough to feel in his eyeballs. He tries, in the few moments he has left before Don realizes, to memorize everything he can about that face, about this moment. To not only see, but to know.

The shape hooks its thumbs around his carotids, directs his body like a puppeteer with a marionette. Raph slaps Don across the shell and grins his best liar's grin.

"Not a goddamn thing."

By the time they hit topside, he knows what he has to do.

No, it says. Knew always. Since the first of firsts. Since time of shared bed and little food, since cold sand and scattered glass and the green, green glow that burned and bent. Are you not your brother's keeper?

The night is eerily soundless, the relentless, animal grinding of the city swallowed whole by the rush of blood in Raph's ears. Leo catches his eye, tilts his head inquisitively, shapes his lips around a question Raph can't hear. Body language and long familiarity lets Raph guess as the gist of it, however, and he answers well enough that Leo nods and turns back to their patrol with no further prodding.

His feet pound hard against the rooftops, shooting rhythmic, electric sparks up his bones. New York seems to know what's coming, the city buoying his leaden body along like the crowd at a concert, righting him again whenever he trips or stumbles. His eyes are too busy watching Don to keep track of his own footing, watching the pale yellow flashes of the bottom of his feet as he runs, the flawless coordination of bone and muscle and sinew propelling him through the air, the way his path wanders—not as erratic as Mikey's—in and out of the edges of their formation. Sometimes close—a complex, thrumming engine, radiating warmth, drawing them together—sometimes far—a guardian, a cornerstone, a promise of care and healing no matter the damage.

They're nothing without him. Nothing.

The shape scuttles along his shell, claws dug into the grooves for purchase.

Look, it says, pointing.

There.

She crests the horizon like the moon, her shape human and yet distinctly not. Raph can't tell, from this distance, whether the slate-colored body is skin or armor, the long, segmented curve of her barbed tail mutation or mechanism. It's deadliness is without question, as is her expertise in its use. She looks up from her work—face flat and sharp as a spade, red eyes immense and bug-like—and Raph dully notes the straight-forward practicality of her tactical vest and shorts, the array of tools and weapons spread before her, perfectly suited for torturing compliance from man and machine alike.

Thief, assassin, ally? Beyond this moment, he does not know. Beyond this moment, it does not matter.

She is unhappy with the interruption.

There is a fight. There is always a fight. They are soldiers in a world too full of wars, and any respite from violence is inherently fleeting.

His eyes track the scorpion sway of her tail like a snake charmed.

Watch.

She seizes one of Leo's swords. Twists the blade ruthlessly into Mikey's nunchaku, stilling it's motion. Sweeps out hard with her deadly tail, catching them both full in the chest, forcing them back halfway across the rooftop.

Watch.

Raph swings at her with one sai, a perfunctory blow. Leo's sword catches between the prongs. He manages to wrench it from her grip, but she uses his momentum against him, slamming him hard into the rough concrete. He tastes blood in his mouth. Spits it out in a long, sticky stream.

It's coming.

She turns to Don, the last of them standing. He glares at her, confidence unwavered, even as her tail raises, raises, point glittered with poison.

It's...

The shadow of her tail falls across Don's face.

Slowly, slowly. His toes dig into the rooftop. His fingers. He pushes. Up. Forward. His muscles scream. Don's skin is fire under his hands, the burning, unmoving center of the universe. Raph draws up every ounce of strength he's ever held, every howl and every heartache and every doubt and fear and daydream and hope and shoves, hard as he can.

The shadow passes from Don. Drifts, slowly, slowly, to him.

The black point of the scorpion's sting draws closer, closer, until it fills his vision, blocking out the rest of the night.

Raph watches it come.

There is no fear, no regret, just the grim, unflinching satisfaction of a bad job well done.

Closer.

Closer.

Until—

There's no fussing this time as Don sews, no gentle scolding as he traces the wound over his brow, across the now-empty socket, and down the curve of his right cheek, leaving a line of bristling sutures in his wake. The infirmary is quiet but for the snip of his scissors as he trims each suture, the distant hum of his computers, the shuffle clink of Mikey cleaning up empty bottles of anti-venom and bloodied surgical instruments, the ringing echo of his one hollow attempt at a pirate joke, the faint murmur of low voices as Leo explains to Master Splinter how everything went so horribly, horribly wrong, the guilt radiating off of Don like heat shimmers after a summer storm.

It's okay, Raph wants to tell him. It had to be this way.

Instead, he reaches out, hand heavy from the last of Zodi's poison and the sedation Don had to give him so he could finish the job her sting had so roughly started, and pats Don awkwardly on the knee.

"Gonna hafta... go easy on me, for awile," he drawls. "Only have the one eye to watch you while we spar."

Don chokes on a sob, suture needle trembling as he draws the thread tight. Too tight. The filament snaps, Don's hand slips, and the needle sinks back into his skin, deeper than Don intended. It should hurt. It does hurt. Raph doesn't mind. It's fine. Everything is just...

Closing his eye, he lets himself drift back into the warm blanket of sedation, rocked into dreaming by the sound of his brother's grief—raw, wet, and alive.

Don wants to keep him in the infirmary overnight for observation. He plays along for a little while, the damp streaks still darkening the bottom of Don's mask more than enough to guilt him into temporary compliance, but as soon as he nods off in his chair, arms folded tight across his plastron and head slumped forward so his bruised, swollen eyes are hidden by the shadow of his brow, Raph makes his escape.

It's harder than he anticipated. The vertigo he was expecting, the harsh reality of life without depth perception he was not. He stubs his toe painfully against a stray stack of books, hipchecks the sofa hard enough to bruise, has to cling tight to the hand railing of the stairs to keep from falling as he climbs. He drifts right as he walks, head overbalanced by the thick layer of gauze taped over the still-seeping hollow that was his eye, the heaviness an odd contrast against the unnoticed, everyday weight of his mask.

Raph wonders how long it will take him to forget he's wearing an eye patch.

By the time he's made it up to the bedroom level, one hand braced against the wall to keep him oriented, he's exhausted and faintly seasick. He'll get used to this, right? He has to get used to this. They've been trained to fight blind, so surely he can—

His room is disturbingly alien, shadow on shadow on shadow, every object within familiar, yet unfamiliar, their once-solid orientation within the universe now an uncertainty. Raph shuffles slowly towards his hammock, arms outspread, allows himself exactly one curse of frustration as his fingers swipe through the air once, twice, before finally closing on the familiar canvas of his bed.

At least, eye open or eye closed, the hammock still feels the same, sounds the same. The ropes creak as he settles his weight, one foot kicking off the cold stone floor in a practiced motion that sets the musty cradle rocking in a slow, familiar rhythm. Raph stares up at the black void of the ceiling as he settles, waiting patiently as, one by one, each of his tense muscles trembles and relaxes.

"Was that it?" he asks the darkness. "Was that enough?"

The answer, if it comes, is too quiet to hear, a whisper from a thing that never was, and never will be.