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Raph rubs in vain at his aching eye, his mask hanging around his neck. He dangles his legs idly over the side of his bunk, watching below him in case any of the others decide they need to come back to the room for something.
Today’s a bad day. Back home, bad days had an easy solution. Ibuprofen and eye drops, neither of which were stolen from April of course not that’s stealing and Raph doesn’t steal from anybody ever haha.
But in space, Raph no longer has that luxury. Bad days get bad, his vision will get blurry and then everything else will decide that the bad day of all days is the one to just pile and pile. And not in the way they usually do, it’s not just noise, it’s his random onset hatred of being warm and his scars that he can usually ignore feeling too noticeable on his skin.
And more, and more, and more. Maybe he’s going a bit insane, here.
He doesn’t want to leave the barracks quite yet. It’s the most low-tech area on their ship, and thus it’s the coldest. And also the privatest, which has been something he’s been desperately missing since they first stepped onto this damn spaceship.
White spots dance in his vision.
Raph sighs, flopping down onto his mattress. The knot of his mask digs into the back of his neck, but he doesn’t bother adjusting it. Above him, white spots dance.
And then the door slides open.
“Raph, bro?”
Within a second, he’s swinging his legs up to fully be inside the nook, frantically slamming down the curtain. Through the soundproofing, he can’t tell what Mikey does next, but he does scramble a few feet up his mattress, getting as close to privacy he can get on this stupid fucking spaceship—
Mikey knocks, right on the curtain. Raph’s not sure how the soundproofing here is supposed to work, but he feels like it’s not like that.
Either way, Mikey takes his silence as permission (even though it isn’t, this little shit–) and unhatches the curtain, lifting it up and staring at Raph from where he stands on the top of the ladder. Morning monster that Mikey is, his mask is already on. He looks Raph over, probably in (eugh) concern, and whatever he finds is enough to crawl into the nook without Raph’s permission.
“Mikey—”
“You look like crap, bro.”
“Shut up.”
Mikey does shut up, but that’s the only thing he actually listens to. He continues staring at Raph, tilting his head a bit. Raph tries to stare back, but his eye is begging to be closed and making it near impossible to keep up the silent contest.
“You still look like crap,” he decides. “And not the woke up on the wrong side of the bed kind of crap, before you say that.”
He wasn’t.
This is stupid.
“It’s nothing,” he tells his brother, reaching for his mask. He unfurls the knot, the fabric falling into his hands. With nothing else to do, he begins rolling it around his wrists and then unrolling it. It keeps him moving, and it keeps him from looking at Mikey. Win-win.
He can hear the crossed arms as Mikey speaks. “You saying that makes it officially not nothing, bro. You can’t get me out of here anymore.”
Raph finishes tying the mask around his right hand, and then looks back up. Mikey spots the competition a moment too late, and in the cramped space Raph manages to surge forward, launch up the curtain, and then in a spin he hooks on Mikey’s belt and yanks him forward. Unfortunately, he takes the tumble before Mikey, hand scrambling to get a grip on the ladder before he hits the ground. He nearly misses, too, he’s barely a foot above the ground by the time he gets a solid grip.
Mikey’s head pokes out, and while it’s a bit hard to tell Raph’s pretty sure he’s holding in giggles. He doesn’t even mock Raph for the failure, instead saying “You know I’m here if you need to talk, bro.”
He shouldn’t be.
A growl rises in Raph’s throat before he can stop it, and he releases his hold on the ladder, stomping away and out of the room, ignoring the way his head spins.
⠀
⠀
Stretch marks on green skin look a lot like permanent bruises, and by god do they drive Raph insane. It’s been long enough since his secondary mutation that they’re finally faded somewhat, but they haven’t gone away yet and considering that they’re pretty much the only scars of his that he thinks can, the lack of progress just serves to piss him off pretty much constantly.
He barely remembers that day, anyways. He remembers the aftermath, hooked up to a crude IV rewriting his already rewritten DNA in ways that he’ll never really understand, and of course the neverending pit of guilt stirring in his stomach.
At least he didn’t kill anyone, though, right?
Raph’s probably thought that sentence a few too many times to be called okay. And said it at least twice. But to be fair, with the life they’re all living, who among them can’t?
Anyways, the current situation: they’re doing one of the stupid diplomatic missions of Fugitoid’s, the ones where they have to act all polite so that the Professor can get enough cash to keep them going for the next few days/weeks. That means putting back on one of those stupid collar air filters, and squeezing into fancy clothes just for the sake of keeping up appearances.
Raph’s stuck staring at his reflection in the mirror, a weird feeling rolling in his gut. There are mirrors and cameras back in the lair, sure, but they were always easier to ignore, and usually pretty grimy or fogged over. The longer he stares at his body, the more the recent changes begin to sink in, and even though he really needs to look away the thought is instantly rejected by his stupid brain.
Yeesh. He’s fucked up, isn’t he?
He looks over at today’s clothes, thankfully a suit this time around. Hard to worm into, sure, but the last time he and his brothers were forced to cram into dresses he’d felt close to suffocating without even a reason.
Heck will covering himself up even do? Underneath, he’s still a heavily scarred warrior, an alien, a monster. No matter how hidden some stupid clothes make him, it won’t distract from the fact he never quite managed to pick up on the purpose of manners, the fact that he’s been seconds from killing tens of people, maybe even hundreds.
Focus, Raph, goddammit. You’ve got to be out of here in thirty minutes.
⠀
⠀
He’s burning (burning, burning).
The world is underneath lava, pinning Raph’s body to the wall and his head to his knees.
His breath hitches in his throat, the air tasting bitter against his tongue.
Someone’s talking to him, he can’t quite place the voice – a girl? (Goddammit, Karai, shut up, I don’t want to hate you I swear please stop trying to make me hate you—)
Tears drip down his cheeks, somehow even warmer than the heat that surrounds him. For a second he mistakes them for precious, oh-so-important water, but the salt leaves even more of a burning on his tongue than before, but he can’t clamp his mouth shut because without it he wouldn’t even be breathing.
Please, please. He doesn’t want to die. He doesn't want anyone to die.
Someone places a five-fingered hand on his shoulder, and it’s too warm and too small and the pins and needles spread from the contact, he needs to get them off—
⠀
⠀
“Raph, please. I need you to name 5 things you can see for me, okay?”
He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. The lights are burning his eyes and looking won’t fix anything, won’t change his situation, he’s surrounded on all sides and he’s going to die here.
Raph is going to die.
“No, dumbass- you’re no—”
“Donnie!” Casey hisses. “Not helping!”
“Neither are you!” Mikey argues.
How are they here? They’re so far away, aren’t they? Far away. They can’t be close. They need to be far, far away. Please.
The heat around Raph shifts, and then big, three fingered hands hesitantly grab his own. He doesn’t fight the movement from his brother, allowing himself to be moved until his hands are resting over a nicked and scratched plastron. “Just focus on my heartbeat, bro,” Mikey mumbles.
Mikey’s heart is still beating, because Mikey is out of the trap and with Raph and he’s so, so blessedly cool. He’s not been stabbed, he’s not been double mutated, he’s safe and here and he still cares about Raph even though he’s fucked up so badly so many times.
Idiot.
“We don’t gotta do the full countdown,” Mikey continues, still in an uncharacteristically quiet tone. “What are four things you can feel, Raph?”
He swallows, a bubble clogging his throat. The static of his heavy breathing fights his thoughts at every turn, but eventually he finds what hole his voice fell into and draws it back out. “Plastron,” he forces out. “Fabric. Hot. It’s really f–fucking hot.” That’s not two different things, shit. Something else, what’s something else? “Eye.” Yeah, that works, doesn’t it?
Mikey lets out a small shuddering breath, but he covers it up quickly. “Good job. Three things you can hear?”
Hear, hear, hear.
He heard Karai, earlier, didn’t he? But no, he couldn’t have, she’s dead, possessed, insane, back on earth.
“You. Me.” It’s so quiet all of a sudden. Is anyone else there? Where did they all go? Did they– no, shut up. Open your eyes, dumbass, everything’s fine—
“Third?”
“No.”
“Two things you can smell?”
“Chemicals, and more chemicals.”
With a more hopeful lilt, Mikey finishes, “And one thing you can taste?”
“More chemicals,” Raph says. He thinks he’s supposed to snap, but his voice continues to escape him as a weak and small thing.
⠀
⠀
“He passed right the hell out,” Casey reports, stepping back into the ‘cockpit’ of the Ulixes. “Mikey’s trying to get the clothes off him.”
April leans against the wall, hugging her knees. “Have any of you guys seen him like that before? So…”
“Un Raph-like?” Donnie prompts hesitantly.
“Scared.”
They give a lot of crap to Leo for being ‘fearless,’ Donnie can admit that. But now that he thinks about it, hearing any sort of raw panic even just in Raph’s voice only happens every so often, and it doesn’t usually stay for long. Raph’s got a good habit of shaking off bad situations faster than most of them.
Well. Or so they thought, apparently.
Leo sucks in a deep breath that fails to properly fill the silence. “Are you okay, April?”
The girl offers a small shrug. “A lot of bad emotions are in the air right now. Making it a bit,” she clears her throat, “hard to think.”
Ah, yes. Understandable.
There has to be some logical explanation for why Raph locked up, right? He’s the hothead, he jumps to anger first, Donnie’s the one who goes into panic mode. What could have caused such a negative reaction?
“Could it have been…” Donnie says, trailing off back into the momentary escape of his rushing brain. “The elevated temperature on the planet? I noticed that it was warmer than I’d initially anticipated, but I didn’t think it was that strong.”
“Heck does that have to do with anything?” Casey asks. He throws his suit jacket onto the floor, before lying down and using it as a pillow.
Whatever floats his boat, Donnie supposes.
“The uh…” Leo says lamely.
“Karai,” Donnie offers.
“Thing.”
“Real eloquent,” Casey snarks. “Thanks guys.”
“I didn’t know you know the word eloquent,” Donnie snarks right back.
Leo sighs again. “Not the time, guys.”
At that moment the doors leading into the main area reopen, and Mikey steps inside the room with an uncharacteristic slowness holding him down. Donnie watches as his little brother approaches his station, hopping onto the bench and leaning onto Donnie’s side. Donnie doesn’t fight him, just adjusts so that the edge of his carapace isn’t digging into his arm.
“He’s not gonna wanna talk about it,” Mikey mumbles.
Donnie knows, of course he does. Raph’s his brother as much as he is Mikey’s, and Donnie is already well adjusted to his tactics of punching or flat-out ignoring his problems.
He sighs, leaning more into Mikey. “I think we just have to give him space.”
“It’s his feelings to talk about,” Leo agrees. He steps away from his own station, cramming awkwardly in on Donnie’s other side. And we’re all going to be nice about it, okay?”
Mikey swallows heavily, eyes shutting tightly. He struggles for a long moment, allowing the silence to recapture its grip on the room. “Okay.”