Chapter Text
Raphael Hamato had barely enough time to fully grasp his role within his family. As a springy five-year-old, he was always the one to haul his brothers up in a piggyback ride, always offering to and grinning that snaggletooth when they praised his strength. As a bittersweet nine-year-old, he gained a horrifying understanding of his own strength and vowed to always expend it on protecting his brothers. As a stressed out twelve-year-old, he had enough time to know that his feelings were not going to be subjected.
He was the eldest.
He was the biggest.
He was to protect his family, no matter what.
Even if it meant his own emotions were to be brushed aside to accomplish that. He would do it.
And as the same guilty realisation reconvenes, fifteen-year-old Raphael knows that because he was good at being a peacemaker, a leader, and their rock– he doesn’t exactly want to be. Exhaustion creeps up on lonelier nights, the silence of the lair lending to his brief release. There’s a humourless laugh that almost escapes him when he thinks about that ‘Raph Chasm’ as so kindly put by Leo. Sometimes he thinks about if he was as unchained as the rest of his brothers– if that chasm would still be there if anyone else was his big brother.
Despite it, he knows he wouldn’t trade anything else in the world. He would suffer every day if it meant they were safe.
Sometimes, when they’re in those situations with so little in their favour– Raph truly wishes that he was able to solve them with the same painful determination he shouldn’t have harboured at his age. Grasps onto the same childish optimism that– that if he was just a little stronger, a little bigger, and a lot more, they would be okay.
Sometimes he wishes pure instinct was enough.
…But it isn't.
And seventeen-year-old Raph cages his baby brother, who's cradling the key in his arms and staring at back at him in horror. The appendage points directly between Leo’s eyes, twitching against the perforation it impaled at Raph’s carapace, slicing his shoulder and cracking through his plastron. Shards of his shell trickle next to him. The pain is unbearable, rumbling through his body as he fends off the animalistic urge to tend to it, his entire form shaking.
Leo’s voice is small as he looks up at him. “…Raph?”
He can’t afford to think about himself. Leo was still here, and in his grasp was their final escape pod. Raph does the only thing he knows.
Protect.
He struggles, his strength waning as it fights the impalement– and he presses the gadget against his brother’s plastron. He watches it configure itself around his brother’s body as he desperately voices his pleas, helpless as it muffles against the pod and eventually distances. And it flees, evading the danger in front of him and abandoning smoke in its wake.
Abandoning Raph.
There’s pause as relief floods through him.
They’re safe.
They're safe, and okay, and he’s done his job.
And a frightening thought emerges as he’s only able to pay attention to his blood drip onto the tiles below him, thick and red as it weeps, trailing his shoulder and streaming down his plastron.
He might fucking die.
These aliens were ready to kill without any mercy. The makeshift blade between his brother’s eyes was enough to recognise it. And it was only instinct as he thought– protect, protect, protect, rushing in impossibly fast between the danger and Leo. The only thing he knew.
Raph was prepared to shield his baby brother again, barely cognisant of what it would do to him. Had he moved a fraction, or had they aimed lower, there isn't a shadow of doubt in the snapper that he would be dead. And there’s something primal that shifts in him when the perpetrator’s appendage softens, retracting from his body and leaving more fragments of his shell to fall to the ground.
Raph hates it– hates that alongside the relief comes dread. And he’s so– he hates that he’s ambivalent about it. Hates that there are his own pleas echoing in his mind, equally desperate as Leo’s.
‘Please don’t leave me…’ And he almost sobs, thickening in his throat. ‘Please don’t go.’
“How fascinating.” The Krang behind him muses. His voice is louder as he nears.
And Raph…
Raph wants to fight. Despite the tortuous sting in his shoulder and shell, despite the worry and desperation aching in his chest, he does the only thing he can. Channel it all into fury. Allows it to billow inside him, heaving as he crouches, twisting around to face them.
He’ll die fighting. He’ll die protecting his brothers.
He grunts, rage and adrenaline fuelling his body as he lifts his leg, giving way to a kick that lands– but he’s useless against it all as they apprehend him, suspending him in the air like he weighed nothing. But he doesn't care, doesn’t care that his neck is being squeezed– he flails, and fights and struggles as he digs his fingers into the new tentacles coiling around him. And it grips his limbs, twitching against his strength.
“All alone and you continue to persist, I see.” The leader observes.
And he growls, crying out as they squeeze at his wound.
“And this is what has become of those who overcame us?” He almost cackles. “A weak martyr,” he points out, shaking the snapper, “With weaker comrades.” A cruel laugh escapes him, and Raph sneers. He’d defend those bozos in his last breath.
“And this is the Krang?” He barely bites at the snarl reaching his face. “Just some bugly wads o’ gum with nasty feet?”
The grip on his neck tightens, and Raph tries to clutch at a breath. “You have quite a mouth on you.”
Despite the air not reaching him, he coughs out whatever he can. “I got the bite to go with it, too,”
Literally. Raph, for once, is grateful for his spikes and jagged teeth as he digs them into the invasion, grinning slightly at his perpetrator’s brief seizing. Was he buying his brothers more time to figure things out?
God, he hoped so. He could endure more if it meant his brothers could be safe, just for a bit.
“You think you can resist the Krang?”
“I got teeth and brothers that can kick your asses,” Raph spits out the disgusting fluid that leaked into his maw after puncturing their tendril.
“Is that so?” The voices laugh, and Raph almost forgot the other two accompanying his assailant. “You can’t even defeat us without exo suits. How could you possibly assume those amateurs are capable of doing so once we take control of the Technodrome?”
Those were a lot of words. Lots of words and not enough fighting, or smashing.
“I don't think you believe yourself.” And it strikes through him, and he curses himself for wearing his emotions as they grin. “Why, ordering them to flee at the expense of your life.” Raph strains– did they not care that he was littered in spikes and edges that could prick them? Why was he squeezing so hard–
“This one was rather protective of the others,” the other muses.
And he pulls him close, examining him. Scrutinising him. “You have such little faith in them… shielding them from danger. Sacrificing yourself for the argumentative one.” Raph doesn't stop the rumbling growl reverberating his throat in spite of the pressure. “Such fervour, too.”
He snarls, twisting against the vice-like grip.
“I think we’ll find great use within this. Not your pathetic moral mission, of course.” And Raph wishes looks could kill. Wishes he’d lose all consciousness and just allow every single animalistic impulse to clobber every threat in sight. He was alone, wasn’t he? Frustration boils at the thought, why wasn’t he– “Withstanding a blow from us… hmm.”
“Enslaving you will prove to be a generous decision.”
He’s eye to eye with him, able to register the disgusting veins creeping up the alien, its teeth bared in a wicked grin. And Raph spits in its face, and against his agony, indulges in the way he scowls at him.
“Enough wasting time.”
Raph loses his final piece of autonomy when a tentacle coils around his mouth, effectively gagging him. And he thrashes, viciously writhing in their hold as he tries biting again, clamping his jaws at the vile intrusion. There’s no reaction as he’s lobbed to the wall, leaving dents and blackening the snapper’s vision.
And it repeats, blood continuing to seep from his mask at each collision.
The final thing he hears before he’s gone under is the– god– the amused laughter of his assailants.
There’s nothing to hold onto as he loses his grip with consciousness.