Chapter Text
Getting Comet back to school had been a whole process. One that Raphael barely understood.
First they had to contact the school, with Splinter posing as their grandfather and explaining why they hadn’t called earlier. Major disaster, death in the family, adjusting, all those sorts of excuses. Splinter did ask about the possibility of a transfer—to one that was closer and even had a few of the scouts in attendance—but that would involve a whole new set of problems. Comet would just have to finish out the year and transfer after the summer.
But the school wanted to meet Comet’s new guardian, and Splinter wasn’t allowed to go into the school in disguise despite his insistence that it would go fine. Instead they worked up the plan of Cassandra posing as Comet’s aunt, which truthfully took a lot of acting lessons.
Raphael adored Cassandra, but she was unbelievably bad at lying.
But finally, after three weeks of sorting through this and getting Comet to do their make up homework—another activity that would cause Raphael to pull his hair if he had any—their first day back at school would be tomorrow.
Not that it didn’t come with its own set of anxieties. Raphael had Donnie build a panic button for Comet to use. Because those gang members knew what Comet’s human disguise looked like, and he couldn’t stop fretting that they’d be low enough to corner them during the day. At least Casey promised to walk them to and from school. It was on route to April’s old high-school anyway.
At least some of his concerns melted when Donnie revealed another surprise that he’d been working on during all of this.
“Are you ready to be dazzled?” He asked, his hand resting on the door to the employee only room in the train car hallway. For the longest time they just used it for some extra storage.
Comet, who stood in front of Raph, just stared ahead. “Can see what you’re thinking.”
Donnie frowned. “Spoil sport.” He still pushed the door open.
The interior had been completely redone. It made use of the narrower space to make the room more vertical than horizontal. A small bed rested on a top shelf while lower ones held a reading nook and a whole bundle of plushes. The floor of the room was now carpeted, and had storage bins for various toys. The whole thing was decorated with pale purples, pinks and reds.
Comet clapped their hands and darted inside, greens already flooding through the spots. Some of it even drifted into the air. They opened the bins before floating up to each of the huge shelves.
“Comfy!” They announced.
“Of course.” Donnie smiled. “I know you usually sleep with Raph anyway, but I thought it would be good to make your own space in the lair in case you needed it.”
Raphael approached, leaning in through the doorway, but not entering it. “Kind of uh… colorful in here isn’t it?”
Donnie stuck up his nose. “Just because you insisted on making your room dark doesn’t make this bad.”
“And mostly purple.”
“Comet likes purple!”
The child giggled from their bed perch. “Favorite color is pink.”
“Well, good thing there’s plenty of that too.” Donnie kept pouting as he turned his head.
Raphael rolled his eyes. “It’s cool, but uh, they’re probably going to outgrow this.”
His brother shrugged. “We can work on making a new one down the road. This was just the quickest temporary solution.”
“Like it.” Comet jumped down and landed on Raph’s head. “Want TV.”
Donnie snapped his fingers. “I knew I was forgetting something. I’ll work on setting up a monitor in there.”
Raphael looked up at them. “Dare I ask what you’re going to watch.”
Their soft hands patted against his head. “Movies you like.”
He laughed and stepped away from the door. “Bad news, Muffin Top. All my favorites are super hero movies.”
“Know that.” They kept tapping. “Want to see anyway. Want to see movies that made you want to be hero that you are.”
Raphael blinked at that comment. He didn’t entirely understand what it meant, but it made something constrict in his chest regardless.
“Alright, come on.” He let out a breath and began to head for the stairs. “We need to make sure you’ve got everything ready for school tomorrow.”
Comet’s whine echoed in his skull. “School ick. Want more play. We are onto the dramatic village wedding ceremony.”
“Uh-huh.” Raphael shot Donnie a look as his little brother followed. “Well you two have been doing this saga most of the day. I think you could take some time to do some prep work.”
Another whine, this time followed by Comet lightly smacking him in the eye.
“Ow, hey, watch it!”
They quit complaining, but their frustration still itched at the back of his mind. He chose to leave it there.
He did convince Comet to at least make sure their backpack had everything it needed—they had to get new books from the school—and even lay out an outfit. With prep done, Raph let them scamper off to go play again. Although Donnie was busy, Shelldon wasn’t, and the droid had also come to adore the dramatic soap opera that Comet would make with their toys.
He watched them run toward the game room, sighing again.
“What’s on your mind this time?”
He jumped a bit at his father’s voice and turned to find the man standing not far behind him.
“Eh, just worrying about them.” He ran his hands down his face. “Do you ever stop worrying?”
Splinter’s whiskers twitched as he smiled and eyed Raphael with a knowing look. “No, you do not.”
“Great.” His shoulders slumped. “I just keep thinking I’m going to screw this up, or something. I don’t have any experience being a da—guardian, whatever.” He mumbled when he realized his slip up, feeling the heat in his cheeks.
Splinter chuckled this time. “What, do you think I had any when I decided to look after you boys?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well—”
“Come here, Raphael, I want to show you something.”
The snapper blinked but followed his father all the way to the living room. Splinter immediately went over to his trophy shelf, hopping up and clinging to the side as he looked for something.
“You know,” he began as he looked. “I have many many awards in here. I have some martial art awards from my childhood, a few trophies from high school sports, a bunch from my movie career of course—”
“Dad.” Raphael interrupted. His hand shot out to catch one trophy that got bumped off during the search. “Not that I don’t enjoy your life stories, but what’s the point?” He carefully put the trophy back into place.
“The point is, I have all of these awards.” He finally plucked some kind of medal into his hands and hopped down. “But this is the one I cherish the most.”
He held it out, and only now did Raphael see how rough it looked. Like someone packed together a bunch of aluminum foil and then covered it in gold leaf. As he took it, he realized that’s exactly what they did. He and his brothers had, in fact. Donnie thought of the foil trick, Mikey painted the letters on the front, Leo picked out the strap and Raph carefully glued it together.
By now the paint on the front—that spelled out the word Hero in big letters—was incredibly chipped and faded. If Raphael didn’t know what it was meant to say, he wouldn’t be able to read it.
He frowned and looked up at his dad again. “Uh… I don’t think I get it.”
Splinter’s whiskers twitched again as he tucked his hands behind his back. “At the start of all this, you were questioning your goal. Questioning if you could live up to the hero title you sought after.” He gestured to the shelf with one hand. “I earned a lot of rewards, a lot of fame, I won many battles in the Nexus, but at no point during that did I think I really feel like I accomplished my goal.”
Splinter stepped around Raph to jump up on his shoulders. “I did not feel like I did until you boys gave me that.”
Raphael stared at the fake medal in his hand. It looked so much smaller than he remembered. “So, what? Is this some lesson on how fatherhood is the most fulfilling experience?”
His father laughed in his ear. “No Raphael, though I suppose you can think of it that way. The lesson is how sometimes, being a hero is more about the protection and guidance of a few individuals rather than the masses. If at least one person sees you as their hero, that is enough, don’t you think?”
Raphael nodded, but then sighed. “That still doesn’t help me with potential parenthood.”
Another laugh as Splinter jumped down. “You will figure it out. And I am here to give you advice if you need it.”
“Uh-huh.” Raphael eyed him up and down as he handed the medal back to him. “Because you would know how to make a stubborn kid go to school.”
His father’s ears immediately went back. “Well…”
Then he cracked a smile and shook his head. “Just messing with you, Pops. Thanks though.”
Mikey’s frantic shout interrupted the pair of them. Raphael immediately headed up the stairs and out of the living room. But he didn’t see his little brother.
“Mikey?” He shouted. “What’s up?”
Rather than a direct answer, Mikey just shouted again. “Shelldon! Shelldon no, you can’t fly Comet around the lair that fast. Stop!”
Raphael saw a blur of purple shoot past him. Comet’s laughter popped into his mind for a brief second.
He immediately joined Mikey in shouting, “Shelldon!”
“Okay, got all of your books?”
“Yes.”
“Pencils, pens, notebooks, folders?”
“Yes.”
“And you got your lunchbox and your panic button and your—”
“Raph.” Comet interrupted, puffing out their cheeks. It looked so silly in their human disguise. “Am ready. Have done this before.”
Raphael sighed and rubbed his head. “I know. I know.”
He was currently kneeling on the ground in front of the kid near the exit. Casey stood by the stairs, more than ready to go, and the rest of his family stood behind him to send them off.
“Will be fine. Call for help if need it.”
Raphael nodded, but scooped them off the floor and held them close. “Try and have fun for me, yeah?”
Comet hummed and hugged his face while bonking their heads together. “Worry too much.”
“I know, I just…” He searched for the words for a second, but his brain kept looping back to the same ones. “I love you.”
Another hum. A few bubbles of light popped into the air as they squeezed tighter. “Love you too, Dad.”
Raphael froze. He heard the gasps and giggles from behind him. The bits of light vanished in an instant as Comet’s eyes went wide.
“Sorry!” They let go and tugged their hat over their eyes. “Slip up.”
Raphael smiled. “Nah, don’t worry about it. Feels like I’m too young to be a dad but uh, you can think of me however you want to.” He cleared his throat and gently put them down. “Now go on, or you’re going to be late.”
Comet fixed their hat before darting over to Casey’s side. They turned a bit to wave. “Bye bye!”
“Bye, Comet.” Mikey was the one to call back. “Have fun.”
Raphael watched them head up the stairs and eventually disappear. Anxiety still churned in his chest, but at the same time he felt relieved.
Well, at least until he could feel all of his siblings sliding up next to him. He could already picture the smirks on their faces.
“Do not.” He said.
“Raph’s a dad now.” Leo mocked him anyway.
He immediately twisted around and jerked the slider into a headlock. “Oh yeah? Even if I am, it’s not going to stop me from making you eat dirt during training later.”
Leo tried to wiggle free, and when it failed to work his entire body became translucent as he used his ninpo to simply slip through Raph’s arm. The second he was free he solidified and sprinted off, laughing.
“Getting you a dad mug for the holidays.” He continued to taunt as he went.
Raphael growled, but also grinned as he took off after his brother.
Just what he needed to blow this stress away.