Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Raph is selfish. That is a fact.

He takes and he takes and he takes. That one toy Mikey really loved? The truck? It was Raph’s as soon as he was able to snatch it away. The last slice of pizza? His, not Leo’s even if he called dibs. The TV remote? Too bad so sad, Donnie, he got to it first! 

He’s selfish. He knows it. And a part of him sometimes feels bad about it. The glares, the huffs, the watery eyes that used to sprout when they were little — each a sign his brothers weren’t fond of his selfish tendencies that made his heart lurch. Immediately the guilt would take over and that was too vulnerable of a feeling so Raph would run. 

Not that the guilt tended to stop him.

So yeah, Raph’s a little selfish sometimes. He’s sure that at some points it has passed the line and edged over into Greed, because taking things was what he was good at, but normally he just took a thing or two because he wanted to. Greed is the want to want more and have more. Being selfish is just wanting.

He’s not sure where this “incident” would place him.

The clock in his hands grows warm before slowly growing colder, a cycle it restarts the moment the second hand reaches the number twelve at the top. It feels wrong in his green hands. The ticking rings in his ears as if echoing his thoughts that this is wrong… wrong… wrong…

It was easy to take it from Renet. She’s kind, naively so, and is rarely as aware of her surroundings as they are with their ninja training. Besides, they’ve given no reason for her not to trust them. It was easy to take a single clock she had left on the counter. She hadn’t even seemed to notice it had gone missing. She had left none the wiser.

He stares down at the clock’s golden rims, tracing the chains now wrapped around his right arm. He doesn’t dare jostle them; the anxiety he has is already through the roof just sitting in his room. If they make one sound, he’s sure his heart (or what’s left of it, Donnie would joke) would explode.

A single sound could clue any of his brothers into what he’s about to do. As much as it feels wrong to go off on a solo mission this grand, he’s not sure any of them would approve. 

Leo surely wouldn’t.

And Donnie and his science — he’d reason that messing with time is a fickle thing and that it shouldn’t be messed with! Which is stupid, in Raph’s opinion, as time is seemingly always messed with. Why else would Renet or Lord Simultaneous exist?

Plus Mikey… Mikey would be mad, for once. He’d take Raph’s place as the angry one the exact second he found out he even stole from Renet. His little brother has always been super protective over his friends, a trait Raph is always somehow surprised to see thrown back into his own face. No, Mikey wouldn’t approve of how he went about this whole thing. He would help if Raph was able to lie about how he got the clock, of course, but sometimes… sometimes Mikey is just too perceptive, as annoying as it is to admit.

So Raph must do this alone.

It won't be my first solo mission, he reasons to himself, shifting from his spot on his bedroom floor. The door behind him creaks and he grits his teeth at the sound.

And maybe, he supposes, he could take Casey. Maybe he could take April. After all, they were with him that night. On a mission of this scale, it might be nice to have a little bit of help.

But Raph’s selfish. Not only does he take physical possessions, he takes metaphorical ones. He takes this chance and hoards it all to himself.

This is his mission. This is his chance. Raph decides that it won’t be anyone else’s. 

And if it works out then… then maybe he’ll be able to pretend he wasn’t selfish in the first place.

The clock glows. Raph curls over it protectively, eyeing the crack between his door and the floor. No shadows pass. Nothing sounds from outside his room, as per normal. Except it wasn’t. This normal was uncanny and nothing like the normal he’s missed for the last three months.

He takes a deep breath in and looks back down at the clock that keeps tick-tick-ticking. That’s okay. He knows how to fix it.

How’d Renet say this thing works, again? Raph wonders, furrowing his eye ridges. He pokes the tiny little hands on the clock. Heart, right? And magic?

Bowing his head, Raph thinks back to the person he wants to see most and hopes the clock understands.

By the little flash of light and the shock he gets in return, it does.

All is quiet. It’s a Monday morning (or evening, if you’re a human) and the only sound in the lair was the gentle hum of Donnie’s homemade AC.

Leo breathes in the silence, relishing in it. It’s been too long since he’s had an uneventful morning. April, the Kraang, learning about the Foot Clan — everything has gone so topsy turvy within such a short amount of time. And to think, it was simply because they went to the surface a small while ago!

The surface was not what Leo had expected at all. The stories Sensei had told them seemed to echo within the shops of today, of course, but things were certainly a bit outdated. It was fun to watch Mikey rapidly ramble out each difference he had noticed with their father, and absolutely hilarious to watch Sensei’s eyebrows get ever higher. Seems like Leo wasn’t the only one surprised by the surface and what it brought.

Despite the hardships the surface brought ( leading, fighting with Raph, danger— ), he couldn’t help but feel a little excited for patrol later that night. Exploring the rooftops hasn’t gotten old yet and Leo is starting to be sure it never will. The air, the views, the moon, the stars, the sounds — all of it was a reminder that he’s alive. That there’s so much more out there than he could have ever imagined!

He’s sure his curiosity will never be satisfied.

“Leo?”

In an almost comical fashion, Leo jumps. He lets out a yelp and whips around, eyes wide as he stares at his younger brother in red who just snuck up on him. Raph, the literal bull in a china shop, just snuck up on him! What kind of game was this?!

“Wha— Raph?” Leo questions, narrowing his eyes and pulling his guard up. He slowly stands and brushes himself off as dignified as possible considering his… startle. “What are you doing? Why’d you sneak up on me like that?”

Raph, much to his surprise, doesn’t have a snarky retort to respond with. Leo watches as he looks around the dojo before locking eyes once again with Leo, seemingly… shocked? Perplexed? Leo’s not exactly sure.

Even if they have grown a bit farther apart with Leo being named leader, Raph has never been hard to read. They’re close. Leo and all his brothers are so close in different ways. So seeing Raph all closed off to the point even Leo himself can’t read him? Well, it’s concerning to say the least.

Plus, Raph is usually the last to wake up. And yet he’s here at… super early, considering even Mikey hasn’t started making breakfast. Normally, his youngest brother would pop his head in to ask Leo what he should try to make for breakfast that day before starting his own morning routine. Raph’s here before even that. Which says a lot of things.

At the lack of an answer, Leo decides to try again. He steps forward and tilts his head slightly. “Raph?” he asks, frowning.

Raph, for all he is good for, is not good at subtlety. He shakes his head as if it can snap him out of his funk and Leo frowns even harder at the poor attempt of a smile he receives after. The red banded turtle in front of him crosses his arms and smirks in such a Raph way and yet…

It feels wrong.

“I snuck up on you?” his red brother boasts, those green eyes too fragile for Leo’s liking. “Sounds like you’re getting rusty, Leo! All I did was walk in here like I normally do.”

Leo hums and purses his lips. He crosses his arms and tries to give Raph the Older Brother Stare™, the one that always works on his younger siblings. It’s the one that lets them know Leo is not messing around and is not buying whatever they’re trying to sell. Sure, maybe Raph’s escaped the stare’s hold once or twice, but that was mid battle. He could never escape it one on one like this.

And for a second, it works. Raph’s eye twitches and his face falls scarily neutral. He opens his mouth, Leo leans in, and—

“Where’s Sensei?”

And… that is not an explanation. Leo fights back his surprise. Alright, well… Leo thought Raph could never escape the stare. Turns out he was wrong. There was still a tentative trust in his response, if the way Raph was gripping his arms was to say anything, but nothing about it made sense!

Sensei? This early in the morning? Please! He’s about as bad as Donnie. Their father needs a cup of coffee practically hand delivered to him if they want to see him at breakfast. That, or Mikey’s puppy eyes. 

Papa is a sucker for Mikey’s puppy eyes.

“Uh… he’s probably asleep,” Leo answers slowly, casting a small glance towards the sliding doors that lead to Sensei’s room. “You know how he is in the morning.”

Raph tenses and Leo catches him looking at the room with a look he has never seen before — and, quite frankly, a look he never wants to see on his brother’s face again. 

He reaches a hand out, ready to ask if Raph is okay despite their near constant fighting nowadays, when Raph sidesteps his hand. Leo blinks at the rejection and tries to ignore its sting.

“Right,” Raph answers. One hand hovers over the pocket of his belt. 

Leo frowns at the action and takes to considering Raph’s face again, trying to read what he could be feeling before noticing… a scar, right above his temple. 

Since when does Raph have a scar there?

Raph catches his stare and immediately glares at him, backing away. “I’m going to wash up for breakfast,” he says, almost defensively as Leo takes another step forward. “Tell Mikey I’ll be there, yeah?”

Leo shakes his head. “Wait, Raph. Where’d you get that—“

And before he can finish, his brother in red is gone. 

He stares after Raph, eyes wide. He tries to shove down the hurt he feels at the sudden disappearance — the sudden distrust his brother had in him. Sure, they don’t get along much, but Raph knows Leo still cares for him, right? That Leo would do anything for him?

He sighs and sits down again to meditate, knowing running after Raph would probably make things worse. Nobody wants a fight this early in the morning.

If at breakfast Raph comes in yawning from his room, Leo doesn’t say anything. And he doesn’t think Raph will say anything about how critically he stares at Raph’s temple — or height, considering he feels smaller than he was an hour ago.

He dismisses the differences to it being so early in the morning. That he was shaken out of a deep meditation, so he must have seen things wrong.

Leo doesn’t need Mikey’s intuition to know that those “reasons” feel more like flimsy excuses than anything else.

Raph stumbles out the lair, checking over his shoulder every second. 

Leo doesn’t follow him.

Or, well, past Leo. That Leo was too bright eyed to be his own. Too trusting, too eager to fight, too concerned, not— not at all distant, like the Leo he knows now. Like the Leo that floats around the sewers as a ghost, barely recognizable to the boy Raph just ran from.

Let it be known that Raph is a coward. He kicks and bites and screams all because he’s scared. He can’t handle the feeling of being vulnerable — of his layers being pulled back slowly and painfully until all that’s left is the scared little kid he’s always been. He can’t handle it.

And that? Leo, meditating and yet happy and curious and so alive in a way his own never is anymore? Ha! Yeah, no. That was hitting too close to home.

So he ran. Like a coward. The coward he’s always been and probably always will be until emotions learn to not be so emotion-y. 

He hides behind a concrete pillar and breathes. Shakily, he pulls out the clock from his belt. It still ticks.

It worked.

Raph smiles down at the clock, letting out a breathy laugh. It worked! The clock had taken him back to the past. Back to the past where Sensei… Raph loses his smile and grips the clock tighter.

His father was right there. He was right behind those sliding doors. He was breathing and eating and sleeping and right there. But he couldn’t go in.

Like a coward.

He grits his teeth and convinces himself not to hurl the clock. That would be bad. It’s his only way home. He would be stuck here forever if he broke it so he can’t break it even if he wants to break something because he ran like a coward—

Raph takes another breath, though it sounds a bit more raggedy than the last. No. No, he’s not giving up yet. The clock, while it did work, didn’t take him where he wanted to go. He wanted Sensei and it took him to talk to Leo — the new Sensei of the Hamato clan. A rookie mistake. He should have been more specific.

So, instead, he tries to picture himself saving Sensei.

The clock glows.

It sparks.

Okay, so Mikey’s flipping around right? He’s zooming — going great and having fun and dodging the Foot ninjas that seem convinced he’s gonna slow down at some point which is completely and totally absolute bologna — he’s Mikey, duh, energy is his thing! — and then…

He gets pushed to the side.

Maybe the better term would be thrown to the side by two hands he’s pretty sure he’d recognize anywhere. Except those two hands should’ve been on a different roof. One about five roofs away from his current position.

Not that Mikey has much chance to think about it, no siree. He rolls and rolls and then has to prevent himself from rolling off the side because Raph, obviously , doesn’t know his own strength. Was his older brother trying to kill him?! ‘Cause that would be so rude. He apologized for the bedazzle prank he pulled earlier! And his sais were fine!

They actually looked gorgeous but Mikey had a feeling actually telling Raph that would earn him an early grave, so.

He finally flips back up and onto two feet. “Hey!” he calls, definitely offended until he sees all the Foot ninjas he was fighting on the ground. He blinks. “ Hey! ” he repeats for a whole different reason. “Those were my guys! I had them where I wanted them, dude!”

Raph looks over to Mikey, as if appalled by his audacity. Um?! Raph was the guy who stole his fight! Not Mikey! And he was having fun with it too…

“I just saved your shell and this is how you thank me?” Raph snaps, throwing his hands up in the air. He stomps around in a small circle and kicks a stray bō aside. He whirls around and points a finger. “You better say thank you. I didn’t have to do that!”

Mikey blows a raspberry at him. “Cheaters don’t get ‘thank you’s, bro. You were the one who started this whole competition in the first pla— hey! How’d you get here anyways?” Mikey starts to peer back towards the building Raph should be at. “Did you teleport?”

Before he can catch a glimpse of the building, Mikey finds himself twirled around at a dizzying speed. Raph stops him and grips his shoulders tightly. 

“Mikey,” he growls. It’s a warning.

Mikey is an expert at ignoring those! “ You did?! ” he whispers, it almost turns into an excited squeal. “How?!” He gasps, shaking off Raph’s hands and ignoring the steaming yet shocked look his brother gives him. “Did Donnie make a teleporter?! Casey’s gonna be so jealous—”

A sudden tug on his mask tails sends him windmilling, trying to gain his balance. He pouts at the tug and sends Raph a glare. 

“I did not teleport, idiot,” Raph snaps once again, crossing his arms. “I’m just… fast.”

Mikey blinks, deadpanning at Raph. “Fast,” he echoes, not believing his older brother for even a second.

Raph is… an okay liar. He’s not the worst. He could do better. Either way, Mikey is an expert lie detector when he’s knowledgeable on the subject and, well, fast is a subject he knows well. He’s the fastest of his brothers, after all! So, like, he can totally tell Raph is lying. His pants might as well be on fire and they don’t even wear pants!

It’s a surprising feat, if Mikey’s being completely honest.

So, finally, he forces himself to look at Raph. Raph, who seems a bit taller. Raph, with an extra scar or two. Raph, whose eyes are widening as he realizes Mikey is realizing a whole lot of realizations… and none of them are things he particularly likes.

“Raph…” he starts slowly, allowing himself to be a bit more serious for a moment. “What are you doing here?”

Raph shifts a bit and looks to the side, still keeping his head high. “Saving your shell. What else, Mikey?”

Mikey narrows his eyes and pokes Raph’s plastron, finding it to be covered in many more scratches than he remembers from earlier today. “Bro. Your pants are lit with the firiest fire on the entire planet. I’m not buying whatchu are selling and you know it,” he replies haughtily, slowly leaning back and crossing his own arms. “And you’re gonna tell me the truth.”

Raph snaps his head back to Mikey, eye twitching. “And why would I do that?”

Mikey smirks, both at the victory of getting Raph to admit he was lying and at the leverage he’s about to drop. “Or I’ll tell Sensei you snuck out when we were nine.”

His older brother pales and drops his arms. “Mikey…”

Mikey hums a small tune, slowly digging in his pockets for his T-Phone and making sure to take an extra long time finding it. Raph will break. He knows he will. He just has to drag this out long enough and—

“Alright, okay, fine! I hate you, you know that? Hate with a capital H!”

Bingo!

Mikey. Is. A Genius.

He twirls back around, batting his lashes as annoyingly as he can. Raph huffs at his display. “I’m listening!” he singsongs, yelping when Raph swats the back of his head.

Raph grumbles for a couple more seconds while Mikey rubs his head. The more seconds that pass by, the more nervous Mikey gets. Raph’s more a “pull off the bandaid” guy than a “let’s drown in silence” one. So this… is just a little bit concerning. Just a little.

“I’m… lost,” Raph finally answers, crossing his arms once again. 

Mikey, of course, hears the unsaid ending. He frowns and decides to add his guess. “In time…?”

It’s almost comical, the way Raph’s green eyes snap to him. His eye ridges furrow. “How did you—“

“I’m just that good, bro!” Mikey half-heartedly teases, gently shoving Raph’s shoulder before pointing to the scar above his temple. “And you have more scars. And you’re taller.” He shrugs as Raph gapes. “You made it sorta easy.”

Raph looks him up and down, as if judging him. Mikey tilts his head and gives an innocent smile. He’s not sure what Raph is looking for, but that doesn’t mean Mikey will make it easy for him. He knows how to play dumb. Some may say he likes to, even!

It’s fun catching people off guard, even if he didn’t expect to catch his own older (older older?) brother in a weak point too.

“Right,” Raph finally says, pinching the bridge of his nose. There’s a small silence before he drags his hand down his face. “I still hate you.”

Mikey giggles and jumps around Raph’s shoulders, nuzzling his cheek affectionately. “Aw, I love you too, Raphie!”

And, normally, he’d get a hand to the face for this. He’d be pushed off Raph’s shoulders and yelled at for even jumping on in the first place, igniting a race around the living room until Mikey decides that he’s bored of that and slows down enough to let Raph catch him, letting the real fun begin. 

None of that happens.

Instead, this Raph tenses. He tenses and then sighs in a way Mikey has only heard from Leo. His shoulders relax and, to Mikey, it looks like he takes a moment to enjoy the hold. It’s over as soon as Mikey settles in. Raph pats Mikey’s head and then gently pushes him off.

“I’ve gotta go,” he tells him, face back to neutral as if he didn’t just enjoy Mikey’s nuzzle-hug combo, leaving him absolutely confused and slightly devastated at its abrupt end. Raph pauses before leaving, giving him a stern finger shake. “And don’t you dare bedazzle my sais.”

Mikey grins as innocently as he can and, at the eye twitch he receives, he’s sure Raph sees right through it.

And then he’s gone, just as quick as he came.

Mikey looks around at the mess of unconscious ninjas and wonders if Raph would mind if Mikey takes the credit, considering future Raph wouldn’t win the prize of the last slice during tonight’s dinner. He idly counts each ninja (up to fifteen!) before leaving the roof behind, grinning to himself.

Surely he won.

When he makes it back to his brothers — his present brothers — Mikey boasts about his streak. He teases Leo’s score of nine (the lowest of the night) and cheers when he realizes he won. And of course, he says it’s all thanks to Raph and winks his way.

Nobody catches what that means, which is fine by Mikey. He’s not sure how he’d describe what happened tonight. Like, how was Raph even lost in time anywa— oh shell, he totally should’ve asked about that! This is why Donnie or Leo does the questioning.

He eyes his own Raph as they head home. Mikey nods to himself and flips off a water tower, whooping as he goes.

Maybe he forgot to ask about whatever the heck future Raph had gotten himself into, sure. But he can keep an eye on his present Raph.

Thankfully, he’s pretty good at keeping track of his brothers—

“Hey, that pigeon has a pizza in his beak!”

Wherever he lands next is dark. It’s dark, it’s cold, but most importantly… it’s quiet. Which is exactly what Raph needs right now.

He should have never intervened with Mikey. As in never . Never ever. As much as it pains him to say, Mikey was supposed to be stabbed that night. That’s just how time works. Donnie would probably have a heart attack knowing he did something to change it!

But, well, Raph’s never been the best at thinking things through. He’s impulsive — so much so that it’s generally what he’s known for. He jumps in. He doesn’t think. He goes for it. He just… does things and hopes they work out. 

Like the thing he’s doing now. Like when he shoved Mikey aside to save him from getting stabbed.

He huffs and slides to the floor, thinking over his mistake of talking to his ever perceptive youngest brother. Mikey, as lively as ever, had clocked him on the spot ( he is never letting Mikey know he punned here, either ). He found out he was lying and immediately tried to get answers… before forgetting the main answer he was looking for.

Raph’s at least a little grateful for Mikey’s forgetfulness. He wouldn’t have been able to explain. He wouldn’t. It would have destroyed this past Mikey like it’s slowly doing to his own, who can’t seem to smile as genuinely as he used to.

He’s at least partially at fault for that. He’s been avoiding his brothers as they’ve slowly become unrecognizable. Part of him thinks that… that maybe he’s somehow done the same and become a new person. But he can’t face those who wear his brothers’ faces and yet don’t act the same.

At least he was able to see Mikey’s genuine smile for the first time in weeks! At least he was able to joke around and be excited for something! It… it gave Raph something he hadn’t known he needed.

It gave him a spark of hope that everything would be ok.

But the clock still didn’t listen to him. Yes, it took him to an instance where he needed to save Mikey, but he needs to save Sensei. Everything was fine until he… they need him back. If he comes back, it’ll fix things. 

At least that’s what Raph is telling himself.

Raph pulls the clock out of his pocket by its chains once again, glaring at it. He jabs it in its center, ignoring how it seems to both freeze yet burn his finger to do so. “Let me save him,” he growls, ignoring the desperation that’s slowly growing with each trip he takes.

The clock grows brighter. This time, it burns.

For once, Raph lands haphazardly. His hand burns and he grits his teeth in an effort to stay quiet. He practically throws the clock back into his pocket, hissing when he can finally look at his hand again. 

There’s barely a mark. Experimentally, he pokes at it. No pain. He narrows his eyes at his hand before dropping it, deciding it’s a problem for later. He looks around and tries to place where he may have landed and finds… an eerily familiar staircase. An eerily familiar staircase with nowhere to hide.

Raph’s breath hitches and he quickly makes his way up the stairs, knowing that eventually there must be another door to some floor and there! He dashes inside, quietly closing the door behind himself and letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

He’s… here? He’s here. He’s here!  

All it took was saying it out loud. He sighs in relief and looks out the floor crack, wondering when exactly he appeared. He’s not sure if they had made it up the stairs yet. They as in his past self, Casey, April, Slash, and of course… 

A maroon robe flies past. It takes everything in him to not move an inch or make a single sound.

Sensei…

In a blur his past self races up followed by Slash, Casey and April lagging behind but making it up anyway. Well, that’s a clear answer if he’s ever seen one. The battle hasn’t begun. They don’t know Shredder is there, yet.

He goes to open the door before hesitating, staring at the metal bar. Time is a tricky thing. He remembers that much. What… what would happen if his past self saw his future self? Some paradox? Some world ending catastrophe? It’s a miracle the world didn’t end after he saved Mikey, if he’s being honest. With how dangerous Donnie and Renet have made time sound, part of him thought it would have.

He fights the urge to scream. Now he realizes he can’t impulsively just tell the group to stop? Now?! When he’s finally at the right destination — the right time and place — he realizes he’ll have to be even sneakier about it. He can’t mess up time more than he already has. 

But he couldn’t have realized this two trips ago?! 

Raph shakes his fists angrily at nothing but himself and his own stupidity. He pushes himself up and goes to grab the clock, only pausing when he hears a thump from the roof. His hand hovers over his pocket, which is now glowing for whatever reason, before he lowers it.

What if he lures Shredder away? What if his family never sees him? What if—

Those what if’s end up being all he needs. He barges open the door and rushes up, heart in his throat as he tries to force back the memories he is just about to relive. He skips a step or two but does not stumble. His determination to save and protect drives him forward. 

At the top, he throws open the door.

He goes unnoticed as Sensei gets stabbed for the first time ( or, for him, once again ). He watches from a new angle as his dad’s eyes widen in shock, sees his muzzle twitch, hears his choked intake of air and before he knows it—

His hand is on the clock again, taking him anywhere but here.

The pain doesn’t register until the split second before the glow of the clock overtakes his vision once again.

Donnie sighs, massaging his temple but avoiding the small burns on the sides of his head. The past day has been… a rollercoaster, for lack of a better word. He looks over the many half made inventions he has in the lab and frowns. 

Maybe Sensei was right. Maybe I should go take a nap, he silently muses, leaning back in his chair.

It was a suggestion his brothers, for once, did not fight. Even Mikey had trotted to his room, eager for some sleep after the day they all had. Or maybe “the twenty four hours they all had” would be more accurate, considering that they were all captured for more than just their night cycle.

Sensei had demanded each one of them receive medical care after what they went through. Raph with the heat room, Mikey with being strapped down as mutagen threatened to fall upon him, Leo and the katanas ready to blend him into tiny bits, and Donnie with the mental games he was forced to play. It took a while to make sure everyone, even April, was taken care of. No one had any complaints when Sensei had finally proposed resting a bit.

Except Donnie.

He had wanted to quickly look over the privacy shields of their T-Phones, just in case they were tricked once again but… his brain was, quite literally, fried. Unfortunately, he thinks he won’t be able to.

He sighs for the millionth time that day, pulling down his mask. He hates that it’s the conclusion he has come to. He hates that he can’t do more. 

Slowly, he stands up and stretches. He might as well go get some sleep now. If dinner happens to be on time today, he thinks he’ll be able to at least sleep for two hours if he heads to his room right away. It should be enough to allow him to clean out the T-Phones after dinner and let him go to bed at a normal time — something else that will be sorely needed. 

Besides, he has a headache coming on. He preferably wants to stop that before it starts.

A gasp and a thunk-clink-clink sounds from behind him, making Donnie whirl around with his fists at the ready. Is he perfect in hand to hand? Not really. However he is still a formidable foe without his bō!

He drops his stance when he sees Raph, though, holding his hand and in pain. “Raph?!” he exclaims, near panicking already.

How’d he get here? Wasn’t he supposed to be asleep?! What happened to his palm?! What—

Donnie shakes his head and sets those questions aside for a later date. He rushes forward and gently pries Raph’s left hand from his right wrist, trying to see what happened to his palm. A burn is what greets him. It’s not the worst he’s seen, but definitely painful. He tuts and starts to pull Raph towards his chair. 

As he does, he thinks he hears something skid across the floor. He pauses and turns to look for whatever must have fallen, but nothing greets his eye. He purses his lips and refocuses to his current task: Raph.

“Sit,” he instructs, tone harsher than he intends. He’s just a bit frustrated Raph didn’t mention this before, that's all. “And what happened?”

He walks around and gathers some burn cream, furrowing his eye ridges when he hears no response. He hurries his supply gathering. Surely he wasn’t in enough pain to have passed out, right?

As he turns around he finds that, no, Raph didn’t pass out. However he was somehow silently hyperventilating and that was somehow scarier than if he did choose to pass out. 

Donnie practically throws the medical supplies on his counter, making sure nothing rolls off before turning his attention to a glazey eyed Raph. “Raph?” he calls, watching for any twitch Raph might give.

He gains no response.

Donnie swears and then gently places a hand on Raph’s shoulder, making his brother jolt but finally look at him. He gives a shaky smile at his immediate older brother who is trembling, Pizza Supreme! He’s never seen Raph like this. Raph doesn’t go to anyone like this! He’s — he’s Raph! He doesn’t—

Chill, Donatello, he tells himself, taking a deep breath in and urging Raph to follow. Panicking while in front of a panicking brother is counterintuitive, you know that.

Gently, he leads Raph through slowing his breathing down to an acceptable rate. Raph follows along nicely, eyes finally looking more alive than glazed even if they somehow seem… duller than before. Even more intriguing, Raph doesn’t shake Donnie’s hand from his shoulder. He lets it stay.

When Donnie finally removes it, sure Raph is stable, he barely sees the disappointment that flashes in his red brother’s eyes. But barely is still barely and he notes it in the back of his mind. When Raph’s upset, he doesn’t mind a touch or two.

He reaches for the burn cream and holds out a hand. Raph swallows thickly ( and audibly, making Donnie shiver ) but complies, handing his hand over. As lightly as he can, he smooths the burn cream over his palm. Raph doesn’t wince.

“Why didn’t you mention this earlier?” Donnie murmurs quietly, the previous spark of anger at the hidden injury gone in the wake of Raph’s panic attack — the wake he himself is still processing.

Raph’s nose scrunches, as if he doesn’t remember what happened earlier. “What?” he rasps.

Donnie fights the urge to roll his eyes and decides to give Raph the benefit of the doubt, just this once. “You said you only had minor burns from that heat room, Raph. This isn’t minor and you didn’t mention it when we asked if you had any other injuries.”

Finally, a bit of recognition pops into Raph’s features. He ducks his head and shrugs. “It’s minor enough,” he grunts, more Raph-like than Donnie was really expecting after what he had just experienced.

Donnie huffs, dropping the hand gently before going to close the burn cream and wipe off his hands. “Minor enough,” Donnie mutters sarcastically. “Raph, you were halfway bent over in pain. But sure, that’s minor enough. ”

Raph shrugs again and doesn’t push back. Donnie frowns and looks over his shoulder, making sure Raph is still as stable as he thought he was. He still seemed to be shaking but… he seemed relatively fine. So why didn’t he argue? Why did he go quiet?

That’s not a Raph thing to do.

Before he can ask the clearly much needed question of “Are you okay?”, Raph asks him something instead.

“Could you get me some water? I think I’m still a bit dehydrated,” his red brother admits, making Donnie’s jaw drop.

Raph… admitting he needs something… Maybe Donnie needed sleep more than he thought! Or maybe Raph really felt that bad that he needed Donnie to get him some water. 

He sighs, again ( he’s getting tired of doing that ), and nods. “Fine, yes, but only if you promise to tell me how that burn happened. How you got past Sensei’s senses is beyond me.”

Raph rolls his eyes but nods back anyways. “Whatever you say, Brainiac.” He doesn’t stop shaking.

Donnie decides to ignore the trembling… for now. It could be because of his body readjusting to normal temperatures after being in such high ones for so long. Or it could be leftover nerves thanks to his panic attack. Hm. Maybe he can even wheedle out what made Raph panic when he returns.

Donnie quickly exits the room, leaving his burn creams on the counter and Raph in his chair. He opens his lab and starts towards the kitchen, rubbing his eyes idly because he really is tired and—

He pauses. He looks back towards his now open lab door… because he opened it. It wasn’t open before Donnie opened it because Sensei had politely closed it when everyone had left after being looked over. 

So… so how did Raph get into his lab in the first place? Donnie would have noticed if it opened and closed.

Shaking his head, he turns back around to look in his lab, confusion and curiosity overtaking the need to get his brother some water. He can wait a little longer. 

Donnie peeks back into his lab. His eyes nearly bulge out his head when he finds no one inside.

What the shell?!

He races into his lab, looking around for any sign Raph was actually here. He finds nothing except his chair, haphazardly tilted away from his desk. Even his burn creams are gone! 

Donnie rubs his eyes once again, blinking rapidly as if the bottles would just reappear. They don’t. He walks over and throws open the medical cabinet, finding no burn bottle in there either. He stares. And stares some more.

And then he snarls.

No way did Raph just steal from him!

He marches out of his lab and towards his red brother’s room. He doesn’t think about the when or how. He doesn’t think about how crazy of a ninja Raph must be to have snuck past him multiple times. Nope, he doesn’t think of any of that even if his logic is practically begging him to.

All Donnie knows is what he saw. And he saw Raph in his lab with his burn creams. And now both are missing!

Donnie throws Raph’s door open, glaring at the startled turtle on the bed. Well, look who’s not missing anymore!

“Wha—“ Raph sleepily mumbles, looking up at Donnie. “Don? What’s going on— hey! ”

Donnie steals his blankets off him and throws them on the ground. He finds Raph gearless, a surprising feat considering he saw him in full gear five seconds ago, but that’s no matter. “You stole my burn cream!”

Raph sits up, slower than normal thanks to what he’s been through. “What?” Raph asks, narrowing his eyes at Donnie with disbelief. “Donnie, I don’t have your burn cream. You and Sensei cleaned me up already!”

Scoffing, Donnie grabs Raph’s right hand and fights against Raph trying to pull it away. “Oh yeah? Then what’s this?”

He flips the hand over to find… nothing. Not a burn. Not a scratch. Not a single discoloration lies on Raph’s palm. Donnie blinks at it. Did he grab the wrong hand? He was sure it was Raph’s right…

“Wow, yeah, that’s my palm. Thanks, Donnie, for clearing things right up—“

“Oh shut up,” Donnie hisses, the gears in his brain finally whirring as he grabs Raph’s left hand, finding it to be spotless too. He gapes. “There’s no way… you just came into my lab and had a panic attack!”

Raph raises an eye ridge. “Really?” he asks, tone deadpan. “I came into your lab and had a panic attack? Me?”

“I know what I saw, Raph!” Donnie argues defensively, grabbing Raph’s right hand again and pointing to it. “You even had a big burn right there! And I cleaned it up and… and everything…”

Something in Raph softens. Donnie watches it happen. His shoulders go down and he sighs, pointing to his right hand with his left.

“There’s nothing there now, Don,” he reassures as carefully as Raph can. “You should go to bed like Sensei said.”

Donnie purses his lips. Raph isn’t calling him crazy. Far from that, actually. However he doesn’t believe him and it’s clear as day. And he has no proof to convince him.

He nods. “Yeah,” he mutters, leaning away from Raph as he gently reclaims his hand. “Maybe I should.”

Raph is stubborn. He knows that. His brothers know that. Everyone knows that!

So is it really a surprise that he would jump right back into battle after a panic attack?

The answer is no. Raph had stolen the medical supplies from Donnie the second he was able to before diving for the floor. He had reached for the clock and tugged it out from under a stray machine, the machine he had kicked it under to hide it from Donnie. It had burned at his touch but, well, that was a later problem. The second he had grabbed the clock he urged it to guide him forward in time.

And suddenly he was there.

He gasps as he lands outside the hotel of his father’s doom, new pain shooting up his right hand and interlacing with the old. He races for cover in the alley and drops to his knees, scooting the clock aside as he comes to inspect his poor hand.

Donnie was right. It wasn’t a major burn. He grits his teeth and slathers even more burn cream on, wrapping his palm with the extra band of bandages he was also able to snag. As he makes sure to wrap it nice and snug, he notes that he should remember to thank Donnie for all his medical knowledge too. It’s helping more than Raph hopes he’ll ever have to know.

He flexes his fingers and swallows down the pain that blooms from the movement. That won’t do if he’s to fight Shredder. He looks towards the clock and pokes it, surprised when he finds no heat coming off it. Instead he feels cold.  

Gently, he picks it up and wraps it around his forearm. Again, it doesn’t hurt. He takes the chains back off and shoves it back into his pocket. Maybe next time, he’ll wrap it around his arm. He needs his hands to fight and hold his sais, after all.

Raph pushes himself up, looking towards the exit of the alleyway. The more he uses the clock, the more painful it seems to get. He might as well use this chance to try and save Sensei. 

Slowly, he makes his way into the building and up the stairs. He pauses every flight or so, trying to listen and see if it’s his own paranoia that’s coming up the stairs or his past self. When no one appears, he moves again.

He’s not wasting this chance. However, he has a feeling it won’t be successful, so he starts thinking through the next. And the one after that. And, just in case, the one after that too. No matter how long it takes Raph is determined to get his father home. He’s stubborn and by shell he is finally gonna use that stubbornness for good for once. 

In the end, he’s too late once again. The door opens and he’s greeted with a panicking past self of his. Before the Raph before him can even react, he’s gone in a flash.

His fingertips freeze as he lands somewhere new. He shakes off the pain and only sends them a quick glance, knowing they’re fine when he sees only a little bit of discoloration. He feels the gravel under his feet and knows exactly where he’s at.

Raph sneaks down a hallway and picks up a stray pipe from the sewers. He swings it up and over his shoulder, taking deep breaths to prepare himself for what he’s about to do. 

His past self would understand, right? Like, he’s Raph! They’re literally the same turtle! Except… one has his dad and one doesn’t. And he’s trying to prevent this Raph from losing his! That’s gotta count for something, right?! Surely he won’t mind if Raph takes his place for the big fight…

He winces under his own thoughts. Oh, Raph would be furious if someone stole his chance to protect his dad. And yet here he is, being selfish enough to steal from himself. 

He… he wants his dad back. He wants his brothers back. He wants everything to go back to the way it was! The way it should be! With Leo laughing and Mikey smiling effortlessly and Donnie not locking himself in the lab every single day…

Raph hadn’t known how much he missed the Brainiac until he fixed up his hand. It’s almost like Donnie wanted to be forgotten.

Well, that’s not flying! They’re all gonna do what Raph wants because his broken family is breaking him and he can’t have that. He can’t. He… 

Three figures pass by. He knows them like the back of his hand. He tenses as the fourth and largest passes by before—

Thunk!

Raph throws his past self and the pipe behind the wall where he was and hurries to step forward. Even when doing his best to act normal, all four people ahead of him turn their heads. He tenses as they look at him, so he looks back too as if he wasn’t the cause of the sound. He looks back to the front.

“You guys heard that too, right?” Raph asks, jutting a finger behind him. Mikey plays dumb all the time. Hopefully it works now for Raph.

Slash huffs. “It’s nothing,” his voice gravels, turning around and continuing towards the Shellraiser.

The others nod and begin to move forward. Raph lets out an internal sigh of relief and joins them, trying to look as normal as possible despite being the clear outsider here. He watches as everyone hops in the Shellraiser… everyone except Sensei.

Oh, this is a problem, Raph’s brain alerts as if Raph didn’t already know that. 

He tries to act normal and bypass him to get into the van, he really does, but a gentle paw on his shoulder makes his heart stop. He freezes and looks up at his dad— the one that has been dead for three months and killed twice in front of his eyes. 

“My son, are you alright?” Papa quietly asks. He must remember how Raph hates answering that question honestly, especially around others.

And Raph… doesn’t know how to answer. He opens his mouth and tries to make a sound, finding it more difficult every second that passes. The clock ticks in the back of his brain, like a reminder of what is to come. He swallows his pride and turns his head to the floor.

“You know how Mikey gets those bad feelings?” Raph feels like a hypocrite, saying this. He knows how often he made fun of Mikey for those feelings and now… he’s using it as a cover up.  “Well, I don’t think this is gonna go well.”

Sensei squeezes his shoulder reassuringly. “Then we will be careful,” he tells him gently, lifting his chin and looking at him with a… such an invasive gaze.

Raph wonders if he’s been found out. He then decides he doesn’t care. He’ll stop what’s coming either way. He shrugs off his father’s paw and hops in the Shellraiser, hoping to get this over with so he can go home and breathe for the first time in hours.

Of course, this plan doesn’t work either.

His father dies again. 

This time, a freezer burn on his left forearm is what’s left of the clock’s usage.

The next time, he’s on the rooftop. He tries his best to hide in a place where no one would spot him. He tries his best to remember where Shredder had come from. He tries his best to place himself in between Shredder and his family.

Raph’s thrown off the roof for his efforts. His left fingertips turn blue but they still work. They still hold his sais. They still have function, despite the random throbs of pain. 

So he tries again. And again. And again.

One plan involves him switching himself with Leo. He knocks out his past self and ties him up and tries to not think about how weird that is. His face, staring back at him. Gives him the creeps. 

He spends the day with his family, preparing for the fight of their lives that they only have one chance at (while Raph has a billion). He hides the burns and pieces of frozen scales under his arm wraps. He gets questioned but he pushes them away, anger becoming his shield once again as he tries not to break down every time he is forced to spend more than a second with his father.

Eventually, the time comes and at the last second he convinces everyone that he should switch places with Leo. Leo should go to the hotel, not Raph. He tries not to beg but there must be some sort of desperation he shows because, as that group departs from Coney Island, Donnie and Mikey eye him carefully.

“Dude…” Mikey says cryptically. “What was that about?”

Raph’s shoulders tense. He thinks about the unknowns and anxieties he has doomed himself to by staying behind to fight different enemies. They don’t outweigh the weight in his gut saying Sensei won’t make it out of this plan, either.

“Just had a bad feeling,” he grunts out, shoulder checking Mikey as he pushes forward.

He’s not dense enough to miss the glance Donnie and Mikey send each other then, either. Leatherhead eyes him but ultimately leaves them alone as sounds start up ahead, making everyone unveil their weapons.

In the end, Raph was right. Sensei didn’t make it out of that plan. He hastily wraps the clock around his right forearm and nearly bites his tongue off in his efforts not to scream as the cold burns straight to his bone.

He tries the Leo plan one more time, but different. He convinces Leo to go with him to the hotel, saying that Slash should stay with Leatherhead and their brothers instead. Slash takes it personally but Raph can’t find it in himself to care — not if it saves their dad. 

That time, Leo dies. His ankle lights with fire.

Raph doesn’t replace himself with anyone again.

He tries everything. He goes from every angle. He starts at the beginning of the day and, in a desperate attempt, shows up in the middle of the fight despite the chance that his past self could see him. Nothing works. Nothing gets him even close to saving Sensei. Maybe the death itself has changed a couple times — from a snapped neck to a ripped off limb — but in the end it always ends up the same result: Sensei off the roof and everyone else alive.

He throws the clock around his neck and nearly passes out as he commands it to take him some time else. 

The place he lands is near pitch black. He drops to his knees and coughs, yanking the freezing cold chain off. Raph shakes and shivers, breathing over the concrete floor. Even he can tell he needs a break for some food and water.

One foot after another, he forces himself up. He doesn’t know when he landed but, if it’s this quiet, everyone is probably asleep. Good. He needs to go unquestioned. His first stop? Donnie’s lab for some well deserved pain killers. As he leaves, he begrudgingly picks up the clock and takes it with him. He’s stuck with it until he finally saves Sensei. Won’t be good for him to lose it now.

He hobbles in, turning on the light and flinching at its sudden assault. He blinks rapidly in hopes that his eyes will adjust faster before… completely freezing at what he finds. He rubs his eyes once again as he looks around the room.

Donnie’s lab… it’s so small. Not the room itself but — but there’s in nothing here! It reminds Raph of how it used to be a storage room when he was really, really young but he can’t be that far back… can he?

Raph shakes his head and decides it doesn’t matter. Even under all the reorganization Donnie put the room through, he kept the medkit in the same place. He walks over and opens it up, pausing at what little he finds.

Suddenly, he’s eight again. He’s eight and small and aware they have very little. He starts asking for less and less, just in case Papa is annoyed by the four needy boys he has. He knows Papa would assure him he could never think that of any of them, but… Raph tends to care too much.

He really, really tends to care too much.

He doesn’t know how to show it sometimes. It’s nearly impossible for him to say it. But he cares. Maybe he tends to care for himself more but he cares. He loves his brothers and his father more than anything else in the world. He would do anything for them.

Something in him breaks when he sees how empty the medkit is. He debates what he should take — if he even could take anything — and finds he can spare half a roll of bandages. He leaves the rest for the real emergencies. 

Raph finds a reflective surface in a metal pan that lies on a cardboard box. He’s not sure what the pan is used for, nor how old it is, nor what it will become… but he can see himself pretty clearly in its shiny surface. He sits down slowly, hissing at the pain the action brings before fully plopping down to the concrete floor. 

The turtle that looks back is one he doesn’t recognize. He stares, eyes wide at what must be his own reflection. His eyebags are what Mikey would call “Gucci bags” and he has 3/4ths of his arms covered in bandages. His neck looks patterned, with black splotches arching probably all the way around to the back where the chains of the clock used to lay. And, most concerningly, his eyes look bloodshot.

How… how long has he been at this? Hours, definitely. But it hasn’t been days! It couldn’t have been! Sure, Raph tried to save Sensei many times ( and failed ) but it wasn’t that many. He would have been dead thanks to exhaustion by now!

Unless…

He tosses a glance to the discarded clock, only three feet away. Unless the clock kept him going. He grimaces and looks away, reaching into his pocket for the burn cream. No. He refuses to entertain the thought he’d been doing this for days. It’s only been a day at most.

Raph takes out the burn cream and sets it on the floor. Slowly, he starts to peel the bandages off his hands. Those burns have been there the longest and burns aren’t normally supposed to be wrapped unless they’re very bad burns. He doesn’t think they crossed that line so he shouldn’t have necessarily bandaged them in the first place but… it was either that or be at a higher risk of infection thanks to fighting with open burns.

Plus, it made them easier to hide.

He glances back up to the pan. He’s not sure how he’ll hide his neck. He’s not sure if he will be able to. 

The bandages hurt like crazy as he peels them off. His hands throb as he finally lets them see the light of… Donnie’s future lab, he supposes. The bandages seem to even pull away some loose scales and that is how Raph knows he has royally messed up. Like, Donnie is going to kill him kind of messed up. Leo will never let him see the light of day and Mikey will actually get righteously angry for once. That’s the kind of messed up he’s gotten himself into.

And yet… he still hasn’t finished his mission. Here, in this darkness, maybe he’ll be able to plan something. Something that doesn’t involve getting himself hurt or found out before he’s ready.

Yeah, Casey had come out of nowhere once. Raph had barely had time to get out of that timeline before the guy knew what he was doing. And it was obvious Casey knew. There was a flash of recognition before Raph had disappeared.

Luckily, that made him think visiting the same event more than once meant it was like an undo button. Whatever he had tried previously seemed to have no effect on the new attempt, something he was very grateful for otherwise all of this would have been for nothing.

A dark part of him is starting to insist it will be.

He shoves that thought away violently. No. All this can’t have been for nothing. He’s tried too hard — done too much. There has to be a way! Time may seem to be protecting itself but there has to be a loophole somewhere! Raph just has to find it. And he will. He will find it and he will bring his dad back and everything will be fine.

A sharp inhale behind him makes him jump. He doesn’t have enough energy to expertly fly to his feet, so he settles for whipping his head around to find out who his intruder is now. His hand reaches for the clock, just in case.

But then he can’t find it in himself to move.

Standing before him is his Sensei. The mutant rat is very much shocked to find him in here, that much is clear from the pricked ears to the swooshing tail and the bulging eyes. However, Raph finds his own eye ridges rising as he looks at his dad’s muzzle and finds sprinkles of white fur instead of the patch he had grown used to.

They’re both frozen for a very long time. Raph’s brain screams at him to move — to get away to another time and try to save the man in front of him again but… but his heart longs for one more second of his dad’s presence. So he stays. Just for one more—

“Raphael?” Sensei asks, stretching out a paw before hesitating and pulling it back. His ear flicks. “Is that you, my son?”

And Raph… he thinks of all the times he’s seen the man in front of him die. He thinks of all the times he’s come so close to saving him and thinks of all the times he wasn’t able to and grits his teeth, bowing his head and looking away.

Hamato Raphael is a failure, he decides. So what has he done to deserve the title son?

Sensei carefully walks over. Raph feels himself tremble. He watches his hand shake in the air as it hovers for the clock, making half the distance but no more than that as if he put his decision on pause. Carefully, he hears Sensei sit down next to him.

He doesn’t do anything else. Sensei sits next to him and probably looks over the cream and bandages and wounds, but he doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t lift a paw. All he does is sits and waits and breathes.

Ultimately, that’s what breaks him.

Raph lunges forward and wraps his arms around his father’s raggedy robe, ignoring the pain that sprouts at the action. He snuggles his face deep into his chest and tries so hard not to cry. He tries. He tries so hard but… it’s never enough. The tears start to fall.

Sensei, who must have been quite shocked at the sudden hug, slowly wraps his arms around Raph shell. He pulls him practically all the way into his lap ( like he used to when Raph was little ) and he rocks him back and forth, gently rubbing his shell while tucking his head over Raph’s protectively.

It’s enough to make Raph sob. He sobs into his papa’s robe, hands finally falling as the pain seeps in enough to make him lose his strength. He lets his papa hold him, rock him, and makes a silent vow to never give up trying to get this back. Because he needs this. His brothers need this. And nothing in the world has ever stopped him from giving everything up for his family if it meant protecting their wellbeing.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps through the tears, trying to hiccup in another breath to explain but failing that, too. “I’m s-so sorry.”

Papa hugs him tighter. Raph doesn’t mind if it aggravates his wounds. “Do not be,” he says gently. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Raph shakes his head and keeps sobbing. That’s wrong. It’s so wrong! He has so much to be sorry for. Crying right now, not saving him the first time, not being strong enough, being selfish, being a coward, being— being him, even! He knows he wasn’t the easiest child to deal with! He’s sorry for that too!

But all he’s able to get out is another, “I’m sorry, Papa.”

The rat says nothing. He continues to try and soothe Raph. Despite the back of his mind screaming at how embarrassing this really is, he finds it working. He is soothed.

Slowly, the tears stop. He remembers how to breathe properly. He knows he could find the words to explain everything if he really tried but… he’s so tired. Just a couple more minutes in his papa’s hold would make his whole universe, so he stays and tries to gain that much.

But of course, nothing lasts forever. Gently but forcefully, Sensei pulls him upright by his mask tails. He takes Raph’s arms with a featherlight touch before tutting and reaching for the burn cream. Raph lets him.

The cream is cold as Sensei redresses his wounds. He finds he doesn’t mind that his feet are still in his father’s lap, even if he would have three months ago. 

Part of him whispers that he should bring this Sensei back. Another part of him beats that dark part up, insisting that he couldn’t leave his younger self and other brothers to die without a proper adult. That’s sick. That’s psychotic, even!

He ignores that he’s been trying nearly the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result. He ignores that this mission of his has him nearing insanity. He’s stronger than that. He won’t let himself slip down that hole.

Raph watches Sensei work, still sniffling from when he cried. If he wasn’t dehydrated before, he certainly was now. His eye twitches at the thought. How much longer can he go on like this? How much longer until all this really is for nothing?

“While I do not mind the surprise visit,” Sensei starts, oh so carefully and oh so quietly as if Raph was a feral animal that could be scared away. “I would like to know what happened to my future son,” he finishes, looking up with a small, soft smile.

Raph swallows. Sensei switches to his other arm as he tries to find the words to respond. Then again, he’s never been as elegant as Donnie with his speech.

“You’re dead,” he says, his voice not even sounding like his own. 

Sensei freezes. Raph watches as his father takes a deep breath in and out, ear flicking. He does not say anything to that. He just… keeps on patching up Raph’s arm.

“You’re dead,” Raph repeats, just in case he hadn’t heard. “And I’m trying to save you.”

“I see,” Sensei says, still not looking up. He gently dabs more burn cream on his forearm. “Quite the predicament.”

And… and it’s so frustratingly Sensei to say that! Like “Oh? I’m dead? How troublesome!”! It makes Raph smile even as his frustration sparks. He shakes his head.

“A predicament?” he repeats, not believing his own words. “Yeah, sure! We can call it that! A predicament. You’re dead and you call it a predicament. What—“

“Breathe, Raphael,” Papa gently instructs, cupping his cheek haphazardly as there’s still burn ointment on his pointer and middle finger. 

Raph nods, only now realizing he’s started to cry again. How embarrassing. He looks away from Sensei and tugs his head out his hand, glaring at the floor. His arm shakes, even with his father’s hold.

Sensei sighs once again and Raph thinks back to all the times he’s heard him say that him and his brothers were the reason he had gray furs at such an early age. He blinks again to fight back the tears.

“I would not want you to sacrifice yourself for me, Raphael.”

Raph’s head snaps up at that. He scowls. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

Sensei raises a single eyebrow, tail twitching on the floor. “Then how do you explain these burns?”

Raph scowls harder but makes no move to answer. He’s not sacrificing himself. He’s not. It’s just the price he has to pay to save his father— oh.  

“I am worried for you, my son,” Sensei continues quietly when it’s clear Raph won’t answer. “Please. I would want you to save yourself. You mean more to me than my life ever could.”

He glares at the floor as Sensei reaches for the bandages. He does not ask why Raph has his burns bandaged, even though Raph is sure his father knows better than to reseal them in their white clothy prison.

Raph chooses not to say anything else. Sensei either doesn’t feel the need to or, for once, doesn’t know what to say under the circumstances Raph has put him in because he also doesn’t break their silence. Fair. Raph’s not sure he would know what to do either.

By the time Sensei is done making him into a mummy — neck and all — it’s been an hour. An hour of wasted potential, Raph realizes as the rat stands up and holds a paw out to him to help him up as well. His eyes bulge and he snatches the clock up, accepting the paw with his other hand. He stands and pretends not to notice his father marveling at his height.

He nods a thanks, suddenly feeling as awkward as he felt after he cried and turns. He turns and… and he pauses. Spinning on his heel, he opens his mouth and blurts out, “How old am I?”

Sensei’s ears perk at the question. Idly, he rubs what Raph thinks is the start of his wispy beard. “Why, you just turned nine,” he tells him, smiling softly. “Nearly caused Leonardo a heart attack just the other day, having knocked out your loose tooth while skateboarding.”

Raph nods at that, shifting the clock in his hand. “I… almost forgot about that,” he murmurs.

“Time is a fickle thing,” his dad says, inclining his head with a pointed look to the clock.

Raph huffs and nods again, twisting the clock’s golden chains around his right forearm once again. “You sound like Donnie.”

He turns, some part of him ready to leave and some part of him not. But if he’s ever to see the Sensei that remembers everything he does again, he has to go forward. He knows it. And he’ll save him.

“Do not trade yourself for me.”

Raph hesitates. It was a plea. That was a plea for him to not trade himself, to not give in, to not die— and yet… that’s what Time itself has wanted this whole time, hasn’t it? A trade.

Someone has to die that night. The only time Sensei made it out alive was when Leo died. And there’s no way Raph is letting that happen again.

He turns and looks over his shoulder as the clock starts to glow. He smiles, one of his rare soft smiles, and says, “I love you, Papa.”

The rat reaches for him. He does not make it.

The only things his paws catch are golden flakes of dust.

Chapter Text

Raph collides into the wall. He gasps at the sudden contact to what feels like brick before falling to his knees, scrambling to get the burning clock off his arm. 

The bandages protected him from most of the damage but it was still hot. He’s pretty sure it still burned through a layer or two. He is so dead when Donnie sees him, having burn on top of burn on top of freezer burn on top of— yeah. He’s in for a rough time.

He looks at the clock with disdain, before morphing it into something like panic as he finally listens to the ticking it makes.

tick… tick-tick… tick… tick-tick-tick… tick… tick

It’s dying. It’s time has run out and therefore, so has his. He looks up the stairs ( of course he landed at the bottom ) and narrows his eyes up at the top. He has one chance. He has one more chance to do this because, if the clock is still ticking, that must mean it has enough power to get him back to his own time.

He’ll take that chance.

Shoving the clock into his belt pocket for hopefully the last time, he finds the leather hanging on by mere threads. Oh, great. Another thing for Donnie to yell at him for! These utility belts were not easy to come by nor fix. 

Raph shakes his head and focuses on going up the stairs. His body throbs in pain with each step, reminding him that he shouldn’t be doing much of anything in this state. But Raph’s Raph. Since when has he ever let his injuries stop him?

Even if he’s doing this for himself, to get his dad back and his brothers back, he hopes that they’ll be grateful for all the effort he put in. Sure, they’ll be mad. Everyone will be really mad at him for doing this on his own and not stopping the second the pain started to get dangerous. But he knows that they want Sensei back just as much as he does. So maybe after all the yelling he’ll get a simple “thanks”, even if he might not entirely deserve it.

As he makes his way up the stairs, he rethinks his decision of not bringing a helping hand. He still would have hoarded the clock to himself, of course, but having Leo by his side would’ve been nice. His older brother, taking some of his weight to help him up the stairs… he’d like that a lot right now.

Actually — and don’t let Mikey ever know Raph so much as thought this — even his youngest brother’s jokes wouldn’t go unappreciated. It’d give Raph something to focus on that wasn’t all encompassing pain as his adrenaline has completely faded by now, leaving behind a bone deep tiredness he feels in his soul. 

Maybe even Donnie and his worry would be cool. Just… just for some company, even if the taller turtle would eventually force him to sit down to be medically evaluated or whatever. 

Raph huffs as he gets to the top of the stairs. He opens the rooftop door and goes to hide behind some generator box thing of a sort — only Donnie would know what it really is. He plops down and takes deep breaths, trying to calm his racing heart.

Right. New and final plan.

Past Raph is gonna come around this corner. He’ll knock the poor guy out and switch places. His family is bound to notice his quick change thanks to the newer bandages that cover almost all of his arms and his neck and his left ankle ( that was a stupid place to put the clock, Raph’ll admit ), but hopefully in the heat of the fight they won’t have time to do much about it. And, if Raph plays his part right, he can gaslight them into thinking he’s literally the same guy as before.

Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss!

The corners of his lips twitch up. April is gonna be so happy when he tells her he remembered her stupid little meme. Well… she might kill him first. But then she’ll be happy he remembered something so insignificant at a time like this. 

Something in the air shifts, making Raph lose his already fragile smile. His heart begins to beat faster and he pushes himself into a position where he’ll easily be able to take his other self out. At the change in the atmosphere, the pain in his arms lessened.

Adrenaline, Raph’s absolute most beloved. 

He rolls his shoulders and waits. Any second now, the door will burst open. Any second now, the fight of their lives will begin for what feels like the millionth time. Any second now, he might see his dad for the last time ever.

He’ll take his past self out. He’ll jump into the fight. He’ll do things different and then he’ll save Sensei. That’s how this is going to go and Raph is taking no other options. He won’t accept any so, for once, the universe better listen to him or else he might challenge it to a fistfight next.

The door bursts open. He hears it. Despite his initial urge to go out and fight, he stays put. He has a plan. He’s got this. He just has to stay patient, as frustrating as that is. He’s more of a “jump in” guy than a “wait patiently” guy — that’s Leo’s expertise.

Too caught up in his thoughts, he almost misses his chance to swap. Almost.

His hands wrap around his sais and then he bashes the ends of their handles into his past self’s temple, watching him drop to the ground unceremoniously. Yup, he’s so having nightmares about that. About all of this, actually.

Gently, he drags his own body to the side and checks the pulse. He lets out a sigh of relief when he finds it. Oh he is so glad he didn’t kill himself. That would have really sucked. 

After that, he wasted no time jumping into the battle he’s fought a hundred times over. He hasn’t memorized everyone’s every move, no, but he has a vague sense of deja vu as he throws a punch towards his father’s murderer. As long as he plays to the script for now, he won’t have to worry about anything new catching him off guard.

Raph hopes he remembers the script.

And then, when the time is right, he changes the script. The hit that nearly killed him last time comes his way, but this time he knows it’s coming. He dodges and flips away, much to the Super Shredder’s surprise. He spins his sais as they lock eyes.

Yeah. Raph’s a bit different today. Shredder knows it, if his narrowed eyes are to go by but he doesn’t say anything because Sensei doesn’t give him the chance to. A kick sends Shredder skidding back and Raph grins, if a little nervously.

Time for the new stuff.

He jumps in again, deciding to fight side by side with his dad instead of going to protect Casey or April like he usually does. He wants to go to his human friends. Some part of him screams that he’s not doing his job as the protector, leaving them to land hits all on their own, but he knows they survive. Only Leo has died in this sick game of his — his plastron torn to shreds and shell caving in. No, April and Casey stay alive if not a little hurt. He knows they can take care of themselves.

However, he’s hoping Sensei doesn’t think the same. He’s hoping he underestimates them.

The fight lasts longer than Raph remembers and he realizes that Sensei still hasn’t thrown Shredder off the hotel yet. It’s not a big deal, if not a little worrying. It’s a change he’s seen at least twice now when he’s hopped into battle so he’s not too scared by it. Just… a little apprehensive. It means he’ll have to look for the finishing blow instead of the secret attack he’s grown used to. 

The time comes out of nowhere. April screams and Sensei’s ears prick up. He looks at Raph and Raph glares at him.

“Go! I got this!” he shouts, ignoring the bewildered and… and angry look he gets his way. Almost as if his father just realized Raph looks a little different.

April’s fine. Sensei shouldn’t be angry at him. Yes, Raph’s the protector and he should have been by her side but — but he’s protecting someone from dying right now! So what if people get a bit scratched up?! What matters more — an injury or a life itself?!

Unfortunately, Raph had to choose. And that meant he couldn’t protect April from the scar she was ultimately going to get today. However, it’s allowing him to protect his dad.

Part of him says it still wasn’t a fair trade.

He ignores that part as Shredder charges at him. Raph growls and prepares for the onslaught of attacks that are about to come his way.

Shredder laughs as he swings his claws, something booming. It chills Raph right down to his core as it intertwines with all the new memories he has of the same laugh. He blocks the sharp punches thrown his way and grunts when a kick to his plastron has him stumbling back.

When he looks up, Shredder’s gone. 

Raph feels himself pale. No. No! It was too quick! He had his attention! Raph had Shredder’s attention so — so where is he?! He’s right here! Raph is right here and in the open! He’s the easy target, so where—?!

There’s a slight breeze behind him. His eyes widen and he whirls around, a fatal mistake. Shredder raises his claws and swings, aiming for Raph’s side.

The fatal blow, Raph realizes. He’s terrified out of his mind. The hit for his father isn’t his father’s anymore. 

It’s Raph’s.

And despite the terror… there’s a small bit of relief too. The plan worked.

Now, he just had to stay alive long enough to send Sensei back to the present without him.

There’s no time to block Shredder’s swing. Raph turns his face away, squeezes his eyes shut, and prepares for the worst. He knows this is it. He knows that there’s no way he makes it out unscathed. He knows—

Nothing.

The air leaves his lungs as he’s tackled to the side. He gasps for air as his savior gets off him and he nearly cries when he sees who it is. It’s Sensei. Because of course it is.

Raph pushes himself upright as Sensei stands protectively in front of Raph, tail swishing like an angry cat. His ears are pinned back and Raph’s pretty sure he hears him snarling at the Shredder, who wastes no time attacking him.

Terror? What he felt before wasn’t terror. This is terror. Watching his dad fight his murderer is what causes terror.

“Raph?” Casey calls, voice utterly confused and laced with suspicion.

Raph grits his teeth and ignores him. No! He’s not losing Sensei! He has to protect him! He has to!

But how could he have forgotten that he had to learn that protective trait from somewhere? From someone? How could he have forgotten that Sensei was the family’s original protector?

He growls to himself and flings himself up, ignoring his aching everything. He forces himself forward and starts to fight with his dad. And together, they finally push Shredder back.

Then Casey joins the fray, yelling “Goongala!” as he pops up next to Raph. The boy only has eyes for Shredder but Raph knows his best friend. He knows when he’s been found out — even if Casey might not know what exactly he’s discovered yet. He hopes that Casey keeps quiet long enough to not reveal him anymore than his own bandages already have.

Shredder roars at the sudden intrusion to the fight. He tries to gain more ground back but, ultimately, he can’t. Something in Raph’s heart soars as he watches the monster struggle. It feels like hope.

Tires screech down below, making Raph lose his footing. The Shellraiser has finally arrived on scene which means… which means they’re almost overdue for a death. His breathing picks up as he fixes his stance, starting to nudge Casey back because he doesn’t want to see his best friend die and he keeps a close eye on whatever Sensei’s doing and—

Where’s April?!

There’s a scream and Shredder goes flying off the roof. Raph pauses. He stares. He blinks.

Looking over his shoulder, he finds April collapsing to her knees as her hair stops floating. 

“Red!” Casey shouts, rushing over to her side. He skids on his knees and grabs her shoulder, trying to take a look at her face and see if she’s okay.

Raph looks around. Slash is under rubble. April has a sliced arm. Casey is… Casey is probably unscathed somehow, the lucky bastard, and Sensei is… breathing. He’s breathing and standing right next to Raph as he apprehensively watches over April and Casey.

Before anything can jinx his win, Raph pushes the clock against his thigh. He takes Sensei’s paw and, before he can even question what Raph is doing or even wrap his fingers around Raph’s own, there’s a flash of gold from his pocket.

And that timeline ceases to exist, just like the rest of them.

Donnie likes to think of himself as someone who is prepared for anything. He’s the medic, the inventor, the fixer — when anything goes wrong, he’s quick to think up a solution. He’s the thinker of the group, even if the title of planner goes to Leo.

However, he is sorely unprepared for the scream of pain that comes from Raph’s room.

He’s up and out of his lab before he can even think. In his rush, he forgets the medkit. All he can focus on is getting to Raph because he’s never heard him like that before. Never in his life has he ever thought Raph could make that sound.

It’s horrifying. 

He meets Leo in the hallway. His blue eyes are as terrified as Donnie feels. From the direction his oldest brother came from, he can guess he was in the dojo. Like he always is nowadays. 

They practically race to Raph’s room, not at all eager to see what the shell happened to their brother in red only to end up nearly toppling over Mikey. 

Immediately annoyed, Donnie starts to shout. “Mikey, what—?!”

“Donatello.”

His mouth clicks shut. He looks towards the floor to see Raph — a bandaged, pale Raph — lying halfway in Sensei’s lap, breathing raggedly. His brain freezes when he redirects his attention to the rat on the floor. The… the giant mutant rat… the one that should be dead.

Donnie prides himself on being prepared. But, oh boy, is he so not prepared for this.

“Donatello,” his dead father repeats, a bit more stern than the last. “There’s no time. Prepare the lab, please.”

And Donnie… he looks between his dad who’s holding his right paw at an awkward angle and then to his immediate older brother who is twitching, clearly in an amount of extreme pain and he… he nods. He keeps nodding as he takes a step back, eyes not leaving the scene because he’s scared that if they do everything in front of him will disappear.

He takes one final glance and runs to his lab. 

What does he need? What are Raph’s injuries? Is Sensei injured? What happened to his paw? What should he get? Does he need an IV? Tools for a blood transfusion? Should he prepare himself to do surgery?!

His breathing picks up as he makes it to his destination. His head swivels around the entire room, trying to decide what he might need and yet coming up with nothing as his worries focus on the fact that his dead father is holding his maybe dying brother and that is not okay. None of this is okay!

In the end, he doesn’t choose to do much. He throws on some gloves, clears the medical bed, and tries to calm his breathing.

It’s enough.

Sensei runs in, even though Donnie’s mind rings with the logic that he should be dead, and places Raph on the bed. Donnie shakes his head to clear it before marching over, gently grabbing one of Raph’s thoroughly bandaged arms. 

“What happened?” Donnie demands as Leo runs in, bottles of water in hand. 

Good thinking on Leo’s part. He might need those to clean the wounds or for an IV drip or— or many things because he doesn’t know what the heck even happened!

Sensei shakes his head. “I do not know. He came to me like this. However, I know his side is burned and that is what is causing him the most pain.”

Donnie frowns at the lack of information his ( dead ) father is able to give him, but decides he can definitely work with that. He scrambles to take off the utility belt and is perplexed yet horrified to find one of the pockets practically melted. He looks towards Raph’s thigh and finds a star like burn, not as bad as Donnie was expecting. 

He turns and goes towards the medkit on the wall, looking for the burn cream. Over his shoulder, he asks, “Do you know what was in that pocket?”

There’s a familiar hum behind him — so familiar it aches. “A clock, I believe.”

Donnie nearly fumbles the tub of burn cream. He looks up in shock before looking at Leo, trying to confirm what he just heard. Leo blinks between him and Sensei, as if trying to do the same. 

A clock? Like, Renet’s clock?

Suddenly, Sensei being alive makes a lot more sense. He swallows and walks over to the bed, uncapping the ointment and scooping some onto his fingers. 

No one knows what to say. The implications that Raph stole Renet’s clock… pairing that with the fact Sensei is here… Donnie’s mouth goes dry.

Raph was hurting a lot more than he thought. Then again, Donnie did hole himself off after… It makes sense he didn’t notice. Guilt still bubbles up anyway.

He gently puts the ointment on Raph’s burn, ignoring how his brother’s face twitches in pain. He tries to make his touch even lighter but… even that seems to not work. It makes him nervous, how much pain Raph is in but it’s also a good thing. It means his nerves aren’t fried from the burn. That would take a lot longer to heal… if it even healed at all.

A small clunk sounds from in front of him. Donnie pauses his work and snaps his head up, looking at the metal rolling table he got for medical emergencies. On it lies a clock; one that is cracked and rusted and no longer ticking. It was clearly one of Renet’s perfect golden clocks at some point, but now…

“It was in Raph’s room,” Mikey mumbles, staring down at the clock he dropped. 

It’s a confirmation for what they already know. He swallows thickly and nods. He’s the only one able to give a response to Mikey.

In the end, it’s Sensei who puts Leo and Mikey to work. They help slowly unwrap the literal mummy that is Raph, cringing at the burns and… and bits of hypothermia they reveal. The first time Donnie sees the black scales he nearly screams because that is not possible, no matter what anyone says! How is he supposed to treat hypothermia that is surrounded by literal burns?! Huh?!

Fuming, he wipes the burn cream Raph had put on himself off. The idiot should know by now that the cream works better if you don’t reapply it. Oh, and he should know not to wrap the burns in the first place! That’s so stupid! 

But, then again, he supposes he can’t be too mad about reapplying the bandages. It kept them somewhat clean and burns are notorious for their infections… Still. Donnie will yell at him.

By the looks Leo and Mikey give their unconscious brother, he’s sure he won’t be alone in that. How the turn tables, he bitterly thinks. The one who yells will be yelled at. I’m sure Raph will love that.

They do what they can for the many wounds Raph sports. Donnie ends up giving him an IV, too, sure that his stubborn brother forgot to get water during any point of his little trip. Raph hates needles and it feels like some part of Donnie is vindicated when he sticks it in his vein. Another part of him feels sad he has to do so in the first place.

With the IV done, he leans back and sighs. He fights the urge to rub his tired eyes and scream in frustration at the surprises of today. There is no way any of this just happened. None. At all.

He looks up to see Sensei staring at him from the other side of the bed. Donnie narrows his eyes at him and fights to keep his hands from shaking.

“You’re dead,” he tells him, ignoring the sharp inhales of his other two brothers at the end of the bed. 

Sensei looks down at himself and then back up to Donnie, his ear flicking. “I think… Raphael might have changed that.”

Donnie snorts before shaking his head. “No, he didn’t. He stole you from some time else, didn’t he? You were on top of Wolf Hotel and then you showed up here, yeah? He stole you and—“

“Time doesn’t work that way,” Mikey interrupts, giving a cold glare Donnie’s way. “I’ve asked Renet about the clocks, like, a bajillion times, dude. The time Raph visited ceases to exist if he moves on because he doesn’t remember it originally happening that way unless he makes a new memory himself.”

Donnie blinks, outstanded by Mikey’s thorough explanation and by his audacity to prove Donnie wrong. Which he is, if they were to trust Mikey and he… unfortunately does, in this case. Mikey is the closest to Renet out of them all. Of course he’d know more about the clocks and time then Donnie ever could.

“Besides,” Mikey adds, looking towards Raph. “Time… protects itself, I think. If Papa’s really here then…”

“I’m here to stay,” Sensei finishes, giving Mikey a proud smile. 

Donnie opens his mouth to say something — anything — and finds no words to use. He looks around his lab as if that will bring an idea of what to say to the forefront of his mind and finds nothing does. His lip quivers and he turns his gaze to the floor.

Sensei moves. He hears him do so. His robes swish as he walks to the end of the bed and pauses. Donnie’s curiousity gets the best of him and he peeks up, watching his father open his arms wide.

Mikey cracks first. He wastes no time. He crashes into Sensei’s chest and immediately starts sobbing, crushing him in too tight of a hug if Sensei’s bulging eyes are to go by. And yet, he smiles fondly down at Mikey. He puts one gentle hand on his head before looking up, locking eyes with Donnie.

His breath hitches. Before he knows it, he’s in Sensei’s awaiting arms as well. He doesn’t sob like Mikey but his tears definitely come in an infinite downpour. Almost immediately he’s sniffling, ducking his head so he doesn’t get snot on Sensei’s robe but snuggling as much as he can into him otherwise.

He smells horrible. He smells sweaty and dirty and horrible. But underneath all that there’s the smell of home Donnie has missed so much — the random incense Sensei sometimes lights and the smell of fresh cheese, as funny as that is. But it’s home. That’s what matters.

He doesn’t catch what Sensei does to break Leo. He’s too busy burying himself into Sensei’s chest, clutching his robe like he’s five again. And yet there’s a sudden warmth behind him as Leo wedges himself into the middle of their hug, Mikey chuckling as he does before sobbing again.

Leo, for as long as Donnie has known him, has always been a silent crier. Today, he hiccups and breaks down, starting to cry as nearly as loudly as Mikey. Donnie says nothing. He shifts and makes it so one of his arms wrap around Leo, too, his fingertips just brushing Mikey’s shoulder.

He doesn’t know how long they cry together. He doesn’t know how long Sensei holds them. All he knows is that his papa is home and that… that is all he has ever wanted for the past three months. That is what he’s been unable to fix — unable to face.

Despite how unfathomably pissed he is at Raph, Donnie can’t help but be grateful for the chance to have more time with his father again.

Sensei lets out a deep sigh. Donnie forces himself to let go of his father, rubbing his face. He knows that sigh. He’s about to say something they won’t like.

Mikey and Leo don’t let go. He smiles at them and tries not to cry again. They all missed him so much.

“Go get some rest, my sons,” Sensei says, gently playing with Mikey’s mask tails. “I can take over from here.”

Donnie blinks at that. There is no way Sensei is getting him out of his lab. No way. None at all. Raph was hurt and he should make sure he stays put because Raph is stupid and loves to get up and aggravate his injuries when he really shouldn’t. He crosses his arms and gives a pointed look at Sensei, who seems amused at his gaze.

It’s Leo that surprises them all though. He steps back and glares at their father ( that’s a first! ). “No.”

Sensei’s ears go forward. His eye twitches. “Leonardo?” he questions, as if they all didn’t hear that right.

Mikey slips away from the fight that’s about to happen, still sniffling when he finally pops up near Donnie’s side. He leans into Donnie’s shoulder and Donnie raises his arm to put it around his little brother’s shoulders, slightly eager to watch what is about to go down.

“I said no,” Leo repeats, lifting his chin up and holding his head high. “You just fought Super Shredder. I remember how tiring that day was and then you get zapped here. You’re exhausted and we haven’t done anything today. You should go rest. We can handle Raph.”

Donnie fights back a snort. Well dang! About time, Leo! The oldest has rarely ever back talked and, Donnie’s got to say, he wishes he recorded it. Raph would’ve been so proud. 

Under his arm, Mikey gapes. Sensei blinks, properly startled at the tone Leo used with him. Donnie decides to take this opportunity to create a once in a lifetime event.

“Leo’s right, Sensei,” Donnie adds. His tone is almost idle, but his smug smirk probably gives it away. “You should get some rest.”

Mikey, thankfully, catches on without Donnie having to pinch his shoulder. He nods. “Yeah, Papa! And you need a shower, too. No offense.”

Donnie flicks Mikey lightly for the smell comment ( how rude! ) but still nods along to what Mikey said. It’s true. Sensei does need a shower.

Sensei looks between all three of his awake sons, clearly baffled. Donnie tries not to laugh, really, but ends up finding his shoulders shaking anyway. Mikey starts chuckling too, elbowing Donnie as if he controls Mikey’s laughter. 

“You know, I bet Raph would agree too if he were awake.” Yes! Leo finally adds the final nail to the coffin. He watches as the fight leaves his Sensei’s eyes. “Not that Raph will be making decisions or advising anyone of anything for a while, but still,” Leo adds, definitely not bitter at all.

Sensei lets out a defeated huff, ears drooping ever so slightly. “I suppose you are right,” he surmises, sending a quick glance to Raph. “But do come get me if anything happens, yes?”

On instinct, Donnie and his brothers answer, “Hai, Sensei!”

It’s… been a while since he’s said that.

Sensei nods and goes to turn. Mikey tenses under his arm and then takes a couple quick steps forward. “Wait!”

Donnie watches Mikey with interest as Leo whirls towards Mikey, almost panicking at the sudden shout. Sensei turns his head, giving Mikey his whole attention. Mikey, who fidgets and then…

“Love you, Papa,” he says sternly, looking directly into Sensei’s eyes.

Sensei smiles. “I love you too, my sons.” Then he bows his head and leaves.

Donnie stares at the spot where his father once was. He stares and debates how likely a group hallucination of this exact scenario would be. Not likely, if he’s being honest with himself. A dream then? But it’s been so horrific…

Mikey laughs and turns to Leo, tears once again falling down his face. “Dude!” he exclaims, wrapping his arms around Leo’s shoulders and spinning him around excitedly. “Did you see his face?”

Leo chuckles along with him, clinging onto the arms around his neck as if it’s a lifeline. “I don’t think we’ve ever ganged up on him like that before,” he says with a beaming smile before looking Donnie’s way.

Donnie nods under the sudden attention. “Yeah. Don’t think we have…”

His brother in blue frowns at his tone and Mikey stops laughing. He hops off of Leo’s back and peeks around him, looking at Donnie. 

“This is real, right?” he whispers, as if anything louder will break whatever spell they’ve come under.

Leo smiles sadly. He walks over and stands in front of Donnie, gently cupping his face and bringing him down to his level. He places their foreheads together, taking a deep breath in and out. It reminds Donnie to breathe, even as his tears threaten to start up again.

“It’s real, Donnie. It’s real.”

Raph gasps. First it’s in fear and then in pain as he shoots upright, doubling over his knees as his arms and neck and ankle and thigh scream at him. He breathes in and out, trying to let his brain restart enough to get his logic working again and nearly has another heart attack when he remembers why he’s hurting.

The clock, he realizes, staring at the end of the medical bed he’s on. The clock — where’s the clock?! 

His head whips up as he starts to look around, only to find the thing nowhere. His heart picks up and then — he pauses. He pauses as more memories float in; both the good, the bad, and the ugly. Most importantly, he remembers he won. Sensei is back.

He frowns as he looks around Donnie’s lab again. At least, Sensei should be back. He should be alive. And they should be in the right time but he also remembered that the clock had really hurt last time he used it and when he’s in pain he finds it harder to tell the clock when to go, so…

Raph grits his teeth and looks down at himself. His burns are free and breathing, meaning he was at least in a time where Donnie was knowledgeable in burns. That hadn’t been a concern until the Kraang upgraded their blasters to something really lethal, so that’s something. 

And then he spots the IV… in his arm.

He glares at the metal needle. Really?! Really?! Raph was wondering why no one was in the lab with him. Normally, he is always watched to make sure he won’t go do something impulsive and mess up his injuries again. They literally take shifts for him and he would feel bad about it… but Leo needs the shifts too, so who cares. However — needles?! Raph hates needles! 

Therefore he is stuck. He is not pulling that thing out of him, nuh uh. No way! He's fine being trapped for now! 

Raph grumbles and fluffs his pillows, ignoring the tightness in his hands to do so. He gently leans back against them and fights the urge to cross his arms. That would make them hurt even more. 

And thus begins his waiting game. He debates whether or not he should fall asleep again before vetoing that idea. Is he tired? Sorta. Does he want to wake up in terror again? Not really. Besides, his main worry is finding out when he dropped them and finding out where the shell Sensei is. There’s no way he’s passing out before then.

He’s ignoring the fact that he already passed out before. He was in pain. Sue him!

Raph tries to pass time by looking at his burns instead. They haven’t visibly healed, so he couldn’t have been out for long. Maybe a couple hours at most. He’s grateful for that. Now that he’s awake and not fighting for his life, his body is aware that he’s starving. His hands shake and he’s pretty sure it’s cause he needs food and not because of the pain he’s in… or it’s both. 

Could be both.

He sighs and throws his head back, considering if he should yell for one of his brothers to their shell in here. He’s awake, he’s in pain, would love to get the IV out of him, would love some food, and would love some answers. Actually, he’s sure they would as well! And Raph’s got plenty of them!

So where are they?!

Muttering to himself, he grabs the IV stand. It makes the IV chord swing and he can feel that in his arm ( gross gross gross— ), but he ignores it in favor of investigating. His gut is saying something is wrong and maybe it’s right. Maybe he’s just being paranoid. 

But he also sorta just brought someone back from the dead in a sense and that virtually never ends well in movies.

Oh shell, Mikey’s invaded his brain with his movie propaganda. Someone kill Raph now. He can’t live like this!

Shakily, he pushes himself off the bed and nearly teeters over. Thankfully, he’s a ninja. He fights himself and pretends the world doesn’t spin before him every time he so much as twitches his arms. Gently, he half cups the metal IV stand and rolls it over to the lab door. He uses it as a crutch, just in case that dizzy spell comes back which really hurts his hand but whatever. Not like he cares about that at the moment.

Raph wants answers, painkillers, and food. In that order.

Actually, no. Not in that order. Painkillers before food might make him throw up. Food then painkillers and — wow, okay, maybe he’s more tired than he thought. Or it could be the pain he’s in? Would that affect his line of thinking?

He doesn’t know and chooses not to care. Problems for future Raph ( ha ).

Raph pauses in front of the lab door. Right. Doors. He glares at it and notices the bottom is half open. Okay, he might be able to work with that. Maybe he can use his knee to push it higher? And use the back of his left hand ( it has no burns! ) to push it the rest of the way up?

So busy considering his dilemma, he doesn’t even notice it seems to solve itself for him until Donnie’s standing right in front of him. 

“Raph?!” Donnie yelps, jumping back as if he had a right to be jumpscared.

Then again… if there’s two Raph’s around here… it would be a proper response if he’s only been here for a couple hours.

“Yeah, who else?” Raph decides to answer, raising an eye ridge. Did he make it back to the right time?

Donnie’s face goes through five different emotions before he finally scowls. “What are you doing up?!” he shouts, waving a hand. “You should be in bed!”

Raph blinks under the wake of Donnie’s wrath. He’s faced this many times. He rolls his eyes, unaffected. “I’m hungry, duh. And in pain. And would like some answers, so if you could help me to the table…”

Donnie sputters at his response. “Wha— no, I will not help you to the table! Your only destination is the medical bed! Right now!”

“What about the bathroom?” Raph tries because, now that he’s standing, he does actually need to go. 

He almost laughs as Donnie visibly shakes from rage. This is normal. This is what he’s used to. Him, trying to “escape” medical care, and Donnie, trying to corral him. He loses that laughter the second Donnie grips his arm, presumably to take the IV out.

He hisses and yanks his arm away, taking a step back as his burns sting from the touch. He curls over and hovers a shaky hand over the wounds, waiting for the pain to subside.

“Shoot, Raph — I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—“

Raph glares at him, effectively shutting Donnie up. He heaves in a couple deep breaths and slowly straightens, holding his arm out to Donnie again. He doesn’t look at his little brother and chooses to keep his eyes shut as Donnie reaches for the IV once again. Carefully, Donnie removes it. As soon as he feels it leave, it peels his eyes back open.

“That was rude,” he grumbles as he eyes the spot where the needle used to be.

Donnie doesn’t say anything in response. Instead, a gentle hand behind his shell pushes him towards the bathroom. Raph rolls his eyes but complies.

As he exits the lab fully, he eyes the living room. It looks the same as he remembers. The newer video games, cushions strewn about, the blanket now dubbed Casey’s haphazardly folded on the edge of the couch… it’s all there.

But that doesn’t mean he made it. He could be a couple days off. Maybe a couple months off. Maybe even a year off. Everything looks fine and Donnie is acting fine but what if he’s in the wrong time anyway?

Donnie pushes him into the bathroom, not looking him in the eye. “Five minutes or else I’m barging in and dragging you back to bed, done or not,” he threatens before slamming the door for Raph.

Huh. His guess was right. Donnie is mad at him.

A problem for later, Raph decides as he turns towards the toilet. His gaze purposely avoids the mirror, knowing he probably won’t like what he sees.

He’s never been a vain turtle. Scars have always been cool to him, acting as stories untold. They’re signs that they’re alive and have grown stronger from whatever injury or attack they’ve faced. They’re symbols of strength! 

The burns spread across his body might send a different message. 

He uses the restroom quickly. He washes his hands and tries once again to avoid the mirror’s piercing presence. This time he’s unsuccessful. He catches a glimpse of the myriad of wounds on his body and flinches away from the sink counter. 

Raph’s nearly unrecognizable. 

For once, he hopes an injury or two won’t scar.

Mikey throws the plate on the table, barely glancing to see if it lands. Wow, a ham and cheese sandwich! So simple, so wonderful! So nutritious for Raph!

He grabs the ham packet angrily and starts a new sandwich. No point in making a sandwich for only one of his brothers. Might as well make four! Or… or five, even, considering they finally have their fifth member back…

Shaking his head, Mikey wills himself to get a grip. Is he mad at Raph? Yup! Just a little! The guy stole from his friend — what of it? He feels like he’s allowed to be a little upset!

Then again… he also can’t help but feel glad Raph did what he did. Mikey missed his papa so much that it physically hurt sometimes to get up and see an empty kitchen. No rat dad to help him cook, share some funny jokes with, or help him make a stellar batch of tea (even if that is more Leo’s thing). So having him back… Mikey will never be able to express how happy it makes him.

But that doesn’t excuse him hurting himself for it! That also makes Mikey mad! The burns and — and the black marks that absolutely covered Raph was horrific to unwrap! 

Sure, Mikey wanted Sensei back, but he has a feeling he almost lost Raph in doing so. And… and as painful as it is to say… Raph is a part of him. They’ve rarely ever been separated. Him, Leo, Donnie, and Raph are all one. One team, one unit, an entire pair. If they came in a box, the label on the outside would be “Do Not Separate!”. And Sensei, while he is also a part of Mikey, he’s more like… the guy who made him.

Okay, just hang on. Follow him here: Sensei is a clay maker. He made a pot. He painted it blue, red, purple, and orange. He used gold to outline it and painted green little leaves off that gold, like they were vines keeping the colors intertwined. And then… the pot broke. That doesn’t mean Sensei’s touch wasn’t still on its fragments, no. The pot was made by Sensei. His fingerprints are ingrained in the clay.

But those fragments? They are the same with different colors painted over them. They are one.

Mikey could barely handle losing Sensei. He doesn’t think he could handle losing Raph or any of his brothers.

So he’s a bit mad at Raph for being so careless, too. He’s a priceless artifact. A priceless pizza, in fact! One aged with jellybeans and pineapple on top! One of a kind!

Okay, he’s done with the metaphors. They’re getting weird.

He glares down at the sandwich in front of him. He purses his lips and then throws it at the table too, knowing Leo has been behind his shell the whole time. He’s been sitting there, probably processing his own thoughts ever since they all left the lab. Mikey, to eat. Donnie, to grab a drink before heading right back to the lab. Leo, to think.

If Mikey has to guess, Leo didn’t want to be alone. Or he didn’t trust another one of his brothers to be alone after the stunt Raph pulled. Either way, he’s grateful for his brother’s silent presence. It’s reassuring. It’s comforting. He’s missed it.

The plate slides across the table. He hears Leo stop it as he starts working on a third sandwich.

“You think we should check on them?” Leo asks quietly, always the worrier.

Mikey huffs and pauses his sandwich making. He knows what Leo is talking about. It took all his strength to not go run over and smack Raph upside the head the second Donnie started yelling, but if he was up and about it was probably because he needed something. 

Besides, they quieted down pretty quickly. That’s not a great sign in Mikey’s book. He’s preparing himself for the worst but also planning his hate speech too. He’s allowed to do both!

“Nah,” he answers, his mask tails bobbing as he shakes his head. “I bet they’ll be over here soon for, like, water or something.”

Leo gives him a wry smile. “You really think Donnie will let him come all the way to the kitchen?”

Mikey snorts and places his hands on his hips. “Nope! But bro… when has that ever stopped Raph before?”

His big brother in blue chuckles, making Mikey smile. His mood feels lifted too! He turns back around and decides to hurry up with the sandwiches. 

Sure enough, as soon as he finishes the sandwiches there’s the sound of footsteps rounding the corner. He sends a wink over his shoulder to Leo, who looks at him like he has two heads.

Called it!

And then only Donnie rounds the corner, looking as frustrated as ever.

Mikey holds back a whine. Dang it! He thought he was right this time! But Raph doesn’t follow Donnie meaning his brother in purple somehow got him back in bed. 

Magic, Mikey thinks as he picks up two plates with sandwiches on them. Donnie is magic.

“Everything okay?” Leo asks as Donnie turns for the cupboards. 

Mikey watches him rummage through his kitchen, raising an eyebrow at the noise he makes. He better not mess anything up. This is Mikey’s place!

In the end, all Donnie grabs is a plastic cup. Red, probably for Raph. He holds it under the sink and sighs, running his other hand down his face. “Raph’s being Raph,” he grumbles as the cup begins to fill with water.

Leo chuckles, a nervous thing. He decides to grab two plates as well and starts to stand. “Well, I suppose that’s a good thing considering how beat up he is.”

“And it means I can yell at him,” Mikey adds, smiling innocently when Leo gives him an exasperated look. 

What? They all had to lecture him at some point! Might as well let Mikey have the first go!

The sink turns off and Donnie turns around. Mikey squints his eyes at him. Hey, he knows that look! Donnie, biting his lip and looking to the ground — he’s trying not to say something! Mikey sends Leo a pointed look. Thankfully, his oldest brother seems to understand.

“Donnie…” Leo drawls, raising an eye ridge.

Mikey almost laughs. Almost. The look on Leo’s face? That’s one Mikey would recognize anywhere! It’s his Oldest Brother Stare™!! Man, it’s been so long since he’s seen it in action! Usually it’s just been the Leader Glare but…

This is the first time his brothers have hung out all together in a while. These past hours… it’s the most Mikey has seen them since the first week Sensei died. It hurts if he focuses on it too much. Instead he chooses to focus on the fact that they’re here.  

That’s what matters, right?

Donnie shifts uncomfortably under Leo’s gaze before sighing again. As Donnie always does. “He’s tired,” he slowly says, as if putting his thoughts together. “And… I don’t know. There’s something else there he isn’t telling me. I mean, not that I’ve asked yet, but…” He turns his attention to Mikey. “Yell at him but don’t scare him off.”

His nose scrunches at Donnie’s words. He shakes his head and tries for a smile. “Pfft, dude! Who are we talking about here? It’s Raph. There’s nothing I could do to scare him off,” Mikey tells him with an easy roll of his eyes.

Seriously! Has Donnie gone crazy? It’s Raph, duh! He’s the strongest turtle Mikey knows… actually, he’s sorta tied with Donnie and Leo for that but shhh don’t ever tell Raph that. He’d get mad. All his brothers are crazy strong, okay? But Raph wouldn’t run away. Nope! No way!

“Just… be gentle, okay?” Donnie requests, pushing his weight off the counter.

Mikey scoffs but does not respond when Leo shoots him a pointed look. Really? Leo too?! It’s not like Leo won’t be having a word with Raph! Genuinely, Mikey sorta wants to see that screaming match. It’ll be funny. But Mikey can’t have a say?

As he follows his brothers to the lab, his anger sparks once again. No. He’ll have a say alright. But maybe he’ll watch Raph a bit more closely than he was planning to… just in case.

Just in case.

Raph looks around Donnie’s lab, frowning to himself. He had been told to stay on the medical bed and, genuinely, he didn’t feel like arguing thanks to how much pain he was in, but that didn’t mean he’d not do anything productive.

With his uncertainty about if he actually made it back to his present, he needs to know where the clock is. Nonegotiable. He doesn’t care if it’s broken, he needs to see it as a reminder that he can find his way back if need be. He could always take another clock.

Also, it gave him something to do other than guess at who would yell at him first. Donnie? He held back his true lecture so maybe he’d get scolded as he ate whatever was made for him. Leo? If Raph pulled a Mikey and tried to look pathetic, he might be able to evade his speech until he’s done with his meal. Mikey? 

…there’s no escaping Mikey, is there?

He sighs and leans his head back on the pillows behind him. His nose scrunches as the action makes his neck sting a bit, but it’s ultimately a bit more comfortable than just sitting on the bed in such perfect posture. 

Maybe his brothers will be nice. Maybe they’ll give him food, some painkillers, and then let him sleep. Laying here with his head back like this, his burns determined to make themselves known, he thinks sleep would do him good. But without any pain relief, he doubts he’d be able to even get comfortable enough to do so.

How long has it been since he passed out, anyway? A couple hours? A day? His finger twitches at the thought. Hopefully, Sensei is doing okay. Hopefully he wasn’t hurt too.

Where is his papa, anyway?

Footsteps from the door make his eyes fly open. He picks his head up and looks towards the door, bracing himself for whatever his brothers might bring.

He is sorely unprepared for the first face he sees to be Leo’s.

After his older brother had… died… thanks to Raph’s convoluted plans, he had actively avoided past Leo at all costs. It was suspicious, he knows. He gained a couple of looks for it when he was running through the past trying to save Sensei but he couldn’t face him.

Not only was he not able to save Sensei on the rooftop that fateful day, he had killed Leo through a half-baked plan. Even if that timeline doesn’t exist anymore, Leo’s mangled body remains in Raph’s memory.

So as soon as he sees Leo, he whips his head to the side and purses his lips. He tries to keep his head on straight. They don’t need Raph breaking down. That’d be weird. He doesn’t do that. He’s not gonna start now just because his mission took a small toll on him. Nuh uh.

Leo pauses. He hears it. He knows his brothers well enough to tell their footsteps apart. Donnie continues in and Mikey follows but Leo doesn’t. Raph feels him stop and stare.

For a fleeting moment, he wishes he had the bandages back on again, as uncomfortable as they were. 

The moment vanishes when Donnie hands him a cup of water, Mikey placing a plate with what looks to be a ham and cheese sandwich on the side table. He’s forced to look back to Donnie and grab the water, mumbling a “Thanks,” his way.

“You’re welcome,” Donnie replies, walking over towards the cabinet he keeps all the painkillers in. “You should finish the sandwich before swallowing these, but I’ll put them on the table for you,” he adds as he grabs a pill bottle and shakes some tablets out onto his hand. 

Raph rolls his eyes and gently places the cup of water on the table, swapping it in favor of his plate. “Yeah, yeah. Sandwich first. I got it, Don,” he grumbles half-heartedly, picking up the sandwich.

Mikey pulls up Donnie’s chair and pushes it forward. He too has a sandwich, making Raph’s eye ridges furrow before he has the realization that they’re probably all gonna talk right now.

Great. No sleep for Raph. How wonderful.

Donnie flicks Mikey for stealing his chair before going to grab a stool, making Mikey swat away his hand. His youngest brother sticks his tongue out at Donnie, not that the genius notices. Raph fights back a smile at the scene.

Already, home feels more homey.

“It’s good to see you awake,” Leo says suddenly from his right. Raph blinks over at him, wondering when the heck he was able to pull up a chair without Raph noticing.

Looking at Leo is a mistake. A huge one. He feels himself pale as he looks at his older brother and grips his poor paper plate so tight it probably crinkles in efforts to keep his emotions under wraps.

“Stinks on my end,” Raph spits, hurriedly looking away before stuffing the sandwich in his mouth and taking a bite. 

Not subtle. Not subtle at all.

He's referencing his pain, of course. Not the dilemma of his nosy brothers.

He doesn’t miss the glance Leo and Donnie give each other. It makes his shoulders hunch up and he puts another bite into his mouth, hoping to not have to answer any of the questions they may ask. He can’t tell them about Leo on the concrete, blood pooling out from under him with his face forever frozen in fear and—

“What is wrong with you?!”

Raph jolts at the sudden shout. He looks up and swallows his food, surprised to see Mikey standing up and shaking. Right. Okay. Nothing is wrong with Raph. What the shell is Mikey going on about now?!

“You’re having an attitude with us?” Mikey snaps, throwing his hands out. “Dude! We only knew something was wrong because you screamed in pain! We came into your room and found our dead dad hovering over you! We found out you stole from Renet and traveled through time and we had to dress your wounds and — and you have an attitude with us?! With Leo?!”

The thing is, Raph doesn’t want to have an attitude. He doesn’t. He’s just scared! He doesn’t want to tell them everything he’s been through and he doesn’t want them to pry. Something will give and Raph will end up saying something he doesn’t want to, and that will hurt his brothers even more. He can’t do it.

He’s not angry with them. He’s relishing in the fact that they’re all finally in the same room, even if part of him is missing the normal dynamics they usually have. He’s here with his present brothers — not the past ones. That’s what matters most.

But that doesn’t mean Raph can say any of that. 

“I had to steal from Renet, Mikey!” Raph snaps back, narrowing his eyes at his youngest brother. “How else would I have gotten Sensei back?!”

Mikey scoffs and crosses his arms. “You still owe her an apology, bro. And us, too! What were you thinking, huh?! Did you ever stop once and look at yourself and take the time to think ‘Hey, maybe I should call it quits?’?! Because you looked like a mummy when we found you! A mummy, Raph, a mummy! ”

Raph flinches at the reminder of his current state before scowling. “Quit?! Mikey, what are you talking about? Of course I couldn’t quit! This is Sensei we’re talking about — I would never quit on him!”

“But you wouldn’t quit for yourself?” Mikey asks, voice as sharp and cold as deadly as a weapon. Raph’s eyes widen as he realizes what Mikey’s getting at. “If the clock didn’t break, would you have kept going? If the clock didn’t force you to stop, would you have even come back at all?! Would we have lost you too?!”

He clenches his fists and shakes his head. “But that didn’t happen,” he retorts, looking away from Mikey. “I got him back.”

I almost didn’t, his mind adds. He purses his lips at the thought. It’s true. He almost didn’t get Sensei back. He himself almost didn’t make it back. He was ready to make that trade. He was ready to die to fix his mistakes. 

Mikey’s right. He probably wouldn’t have come back. 

Donnie somehow puts together what he doesn’t say. He takes a sharp inhale, making Raph’s head snap back up. “You almost didn’t make it back, did you?”

Mikey doesn’t move from his spot at the end of Raph’s bed. He keeps glaring a hole through Raph’s soul. Raph doesn’t look to see Leo’s reaction. He wouldn’t be able to handle it.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says with a shrug. “I made it back with Sensei.”

Mikey makes a noise of unbelief. “Doesn’t matter—?”

“Where is Sensei, anyways?” Raph interrupts, picking up his sandwich and pretending it is something of interest. “And the clock?”

“ You don’t need the clock! ”

“Mikey!” Leo cuts off. 

There’s an aggravated huff and then silence. Raph fights the urge to look up and see whatever his brothers are doing. He’ll just… ignore them. Yeah. Raph’s never been good at that before but there’s a first time for everything!

Besides, if he says why he needs the clock, he won’t get it. He knows that much. 

Leo sighs. Raph guesses it’s because of him. It normally is, nowadays. It’s a sound he’s grown used to.

“Sensei’s resting,” Leo tells him gently, scooting closer to the bed. “He looked pretty tired after we patched you up. We were able to convince him to sleep and recover from… everything.”

Raph blinks at that. He fights the urge to look at Leo as he asks, “Recover? He was hurt?”

Donnie huffs and that makes him finally look up. He catches the small amused smile on Donnie’s face, even if the frustration from before seems to linger. “Just scratches and bruises,” he tells him, crossing his arms. “You should’ve seen Leo, though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him talk back to Sensei like that.”

Raph squints at that information as the corners of his lips quirk up. He sends a glance to Mikey, who stares at him in such an invasive way he’s forced to look away again, before finally gaining the courage to look towards Leo. “Really?” he asks.

Leo rolls his eyes — his blue eyes that still have that shine of life . “That is not the first time I’ve talked back to him, Donnie. I’ve done that plenty of times.”

Donnie probably says something in return. He probably chooses to argue with Leo because Raph watches the way Leo fights back a smile, turning his nose in the air and pretending to be offended. His mouth moves but Raph must be underwater. He hears none of it.

Instead, he hears ticking. He hears ticking and if he looks close enough he can see the slashes Shredded left on Leo’s plastron, see the blood dripping down his front. Raph tries not to focus on it and focuses instead on the Leo that is alive and right in front of him, but… he’s almost lost Leo so many times. 

Actually losing him… he had actually lost him… it… Raph can’t…

“ -aph! Raph! Hey!”

There’s a snap right in front of his face. He startles and pushes himself back, surprised to find his eyes watery. He heaves in a breath of air he didn’t know he needed and stares at the worried faces around him as Leo slowly drops his hand.

“Raph, you with us?” his older brother asks gently, like he would run away if he could.

Well, he’s right. Raph would run if he could. This is too much. All of this is too much.

He nods in response to Leo, swallowing back his bushes tears. “Yeah,” he rasps after a moment. 

There’s a silence after everyone lets out a sigh of relief. Raph shifts, knowing it’s meant to give him an opportunity to explain without them poking and prodding but… he can’t. He can’t do that to them. He can’t tell Leo he saw him die — that Raph’s the cause of his death in a timeline that doesn’t exist anymore. He can’t.

What would they think of him? What would they think if they found out he had killed a brother in an attempt to save their father? Would they hate him? Would they leave him?

Raph would die if they left him. He wouldn’t know what to do. His family is his lifeline. They’re his and he is theirs. That’s how it works. 

He can’t. He can’t tell them.

Donnie’s the one who decides to ask. It’s not a surprise he breaks the silence first. However, his voice sends a jolt of panic through Raph and, as desperate as he is, he doesn’t care for subtlety.

“What was tha—“

“What day is it?” he blurts, ignoring the surprised looks thrown his way. He leaves his sandwich forgotten on his lap. 

His brothers share another look, as frustrating as that is. 

“It’s Thursday, bro,” Mikey chooses to reply, looking between Raph and Leo as if he has figured it all out.

And, shell, maybe he has! Past Mikey found him out when he accidentally showed his face — why would his Mikey not put the puzzle pieces together?! His heart beats faster and he tries to stay level headed.

Thursday is good. He left Thursday. Thursday is the correct day. He did it. 

The knowledge of his victory leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

There’s a small hand on his shoulder. He flinches, whipping his head towards Leo as he desperately tries ( and fails ) to keep his breathing under control.

“You made it,” he tells him with a small smile that doesn’t hide the worry in his eyes. Surely, his older brother can feel his trembles. “You’re home, Raph, okay? You made it.”

And Raph… Raph’s not much of a crier. He hates the mess it leaves, the physical feeling of ugh that lingers on his face after he’s done. Maybe he feels better emotionally but he’s never considered that pro to outweigh the con of crying itself.

But he’s tired. He’s in a lot of pain. Part of him still doesn’t believe he’s made it home and another part rewatches all the deaths he’s experienced constantly, as if stuck in a loop. 

So, under the hand of his older brother and surrounded by his two younger brothers, he breaks. A tear falls and then another. He puts no stop to it.

Immediately, the atmosphere shifts. If Raph wasn’t so down in the dumps, he probably would have laughed at the panic that sprouts up as tears finally make way down his cheeks. But he’s exhausted. He ends up not caring.

Leo’s the first to react. He gently shoves Raph over on his bed and scoots in to share, not caring his butt ends up halfway off the mattress. He places Raph under his chin and hugs him as gently as he can, probably scared to aggravate his wounds.

Raph lets himself be maneuvered and ignores the bits of pain that flare up as he does so. He leans into Leo’s hold and finds himself unsurprised to find Mikey climbing onto the end of his bed, carefully avoiding his injured ankle. He ends up sprawled across Leo’s lap as his hand gently brushes Raph’s fingertips, just to let him know he’s there.

And Donnie scoots his stool ever closer. He picks up the forgotten sandwich on Raph’s lap and puts it on the metal table. He gets as close as he can before laying a hand on Raph’s shoulder, gently rubbing it in an attempt to soothe him.

Raph sniffles and turns his face into Leo’s plastron. He does not sob. He does not whimper. He cries almost silently, besides a few shuddering breaths here and there.

When he finds his eyes beginning to close despite the fact that he should probably eat more, drink more, and get some meds in him… Raph decides not to protest against his body’s needs. His eyes slip closed as the last of his tears fall.

All Raph needs is one more second surrounded by his brothers.

Just one more.

Leo’s scared to break the silence.

He’s not comfortable. His legs have fallen asleep and his arm throbs as it curls around Raph’s shell at such an unnatural angle and, of course, he’s hanging halfway off the bed. He’s not at all comfortable. However, he doesn’t dare move an inch.

Raph had cried himself to sleep in Leo’s arms. That… that has never happened before. He’s cried in front Leo, of course, but not in years. Crying himself to sleep is another story, though. Leo’s given up trying to search through his memories for instances like this one. There’s none. This is the first time.

His younger brother twitches in his hold, lips drawn into a frown. Leo fights the urge to hold him tighter and make his nightmares go away like he used to do for Mikey, sure that the touch would only end up hurting Raph and waking him once more. He’s obviously exhausted. He needs the sleep.

All the anger from beforehand has left Leo, not that there was much of it to start with. He had been mad, sure, about being left behind and in the dark. He had been mad that Raph had hurt himself so much. He had been mad that Raph had stolen from Renet. And yet all of that felt like nothing more than an ember of anger compared to his waves of worry.

Now, he was drowning. Leo’s not blind, no matter what his brothers say. He saw the look Raph sent him when he first walked in — the absolute terror that flashed in his green eyes that he couldn’t conceal. He had watched as Raph could hardly stand to look at him and when he did… he froze. 

Leo doesn’t know what happened to Raph during his trip to the past, but he’s starting to have a feeling that some time and some when… his past self didn’t make it out unscathed. 

He hopes he’s wrong. He really, really hopes he’s wrong. 

And there were so many other things to worry about! Why did Raph not consider stopping when the clock first burned him? When did he find the time to dress his wounds? How long was he trying to save their father? It was clearly long enough that he thought to dress his burns, at least. Raph hates stopping mid battle to do that. So how long—?

“I can hear you worrying from here, Leo,” the reason his legs are asleep murmurs from his lap. Mikey shifts and looks up towards him, sending static through his limbs. 

Leo huffs gently, scared that the air would brush Raph’s head and he’d wake up. “There’s a lot to worry about,” he replies in a whisper, frowning all the while.

“You saw how he asked about what day it was, right?” Donnie adds, hugging himself tightly as his eyes scan their sleeping brother. “He… he was scared. Raph was scared.”

He swallows. That’s… exactly what Raph was. Scared: an emotion Raph rarely lets reach the surface. His heart breaks.

“Is it bad I don’t feel… bad about yelling at him?” Mikey slowly asks, ducking his head. “I didn’t mean to freak him out but, like, he freaked us out. I was scared too.”

Leo sighs, freezing the second Raph twitches once again. He slowly untenses when a couple seconds go by and Raph ends up not moving. “No, Mikey. If you hadn’t yelled, I’m pretty sure Donnie would have,” he gently teases, glancing Donnie’s way.

His purple brother rolls his eyes. “Yes, well, he needed to hear at least some of what Mikey said… though I have a feeling we’ll need to reiterate it in a much calmer manner.”

Mikey huffs before relaxing once again. Leo watches as his youngest brother stares at Raph’s hand. “Shell-for-brains,” he mutters bitterly, expression darkening when there’s no retort.

Leo smiles sadly at him. Slowly, he shifts to hold a hand out for Mikey to take. He does and Leo lets him nuzzle into it and hide his newfound tears.

“I don’t understand him,” Donnie murmurs. “I don’t get why he would do this. I mean, I know why. To get Sensei back. But…” he trails off and Leo sees the moment Donnie loses the words. He gives a bitter laugh and shakes his head but does not continue.

“We’ll ask him,” Leo reassures, his own curiosity being morbidly piqued as well. 

As it is, it doesn’t make sense. Raph’s avoided them these past three months, barely seeming to stand more than an hour with any one of them, and then he goes and does this. Did he really take losing Sensei that hard? That he needed to find a solution?

Not that Leo didn’t want Sensei back. No… no, he really, really wanted him back. He couldn’t understand why their father had to be taken away from them. They only had so much, and now life takes him too? After everything they’ve already lost?!

Sensei’s death had very much left him broken. He was angry at everything and everyone. If he wasn’t angry, then he was too numb to be anything else. He had joked with himself that he finally knew Raph’s default state. But, eventually, he had started to pick up some of his pieces. Very, very slowly, he was putting himself back together. Just this past week, Leo had been able to get himself out of the dojo and talk to Mikey more. It was slow progress but it was progress.

And Raph had to undo all that. 

He had hoped his other brothers were starting to heal as well. He was talking to Mikey and encouraging him to cry, resulting in many long dinners until his already low social battery ran out and he returned to the dojo or his room. He was hoping Donnie would eventually open his lab door when Leo knocked next. He had hoped that Raph leaving the lair was because he was hanging out with Casey and having someone to lean on.

His hopes were wrong, if this was to say anything.

Something alerts him to Sensei’s presence outside the lab. Leo looks up and has to hold back tears as he sees him standing there, a plate with a ham and cheese sandwich on top. He looks to Raph and then back to Sensei, hoping his papa will get the message.

He does. He walks into the room without any sound at all. He sits on Donnie’s chair, where Mikey used to be, and slowly starts to eat. Leo watches as Mikey’s eyes light up and he smiles — something small but genuine and true. 

Leo tries to make no sound as Mikey crawls off him, biting his lip as the blood rushes back to his legs. Raph shifts but doesn’t wake, letting Leo send a heatless glare Mikey’s way. His youngest brother doesn’t notice as he quickly yet quietly grabs his own sandwich.

Donnie chuckles softly and pokes Leo’s arm, carefully handing him his own sandwich. Leo rolls his eyes but takes it and expertly maneuvers around Raph, surprised when all this activity doesn’t wake the hothead.

So exhausted, Leo thinks, giving a small frown Raph’s way. 

Slowly, they all eat their sandwiches. Mikey beams as they do, leaning gently on Sensei’s shoulder. “Family dinner!” he hisses excitedly before his eyes meet Raph’s sleeping form and his expression drops.

Donnie sees it and straightens. He looks around before pointing to Raph’s barely touched sandwich. “He was impatient and ate before us,” he jokes, giving Mikey a fragile smile.

Mikey snorts before clapping a hand over his mouth, sending a panicked look to Raph who… does not wake. Everyone lets out a relieved sigh.

They continue eating, sending thankful nods Mikey’s way. Mikey waves off the praise, fully content to be near Sensei and not asking for any more. Leo huffs at the display and sends a look to Donnie.

Little brothers, it says. Donnie returns the sentiment with an eye roll of his own.

The peace continues as they eat. Even Leo finds himself dawning a smile, happy to be surrounded by his family. All of his family, as impossible as it may seem. April and Casey are the only two missing— oh shell.

Something must give in his face. Donnie blinks over at him, raising an eye ridge questionably. It catches the attention of Mikey and Sensei, who straighten and look at Raph with worried expressions.

Leo swallows his food. “We forgot to tell April and Casey,” he whispers, looking pointedly towards Sensei. The corners of his lips quirk up. “They’re gonna be so mad.”

“Furious,” Donnie echoes, digging in his belt for his T-Phone.

“Dudes,” Mikey giggles, hiding his mouth behind his hand. “We’re so dead!” 

The entire room tenses under the word — except Raph, of course. Mikey immediately deflates and rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Uh, nevermind,” he squeaks, sending an apologetic look to everyone.

Leo snorts, despite it all. It shouldn’t be funny. None of this should be funny! They’re all so — so traumatized in every way. He was literally in a coma! He’s almost died multiple times! But he’s sort of tired of moping around. He’s been moping around for three months, Pizza Supreme.

“That should not be funny,” he mumbles, turning his head up to look at the ceiling because part of him feels like he might cry, too.

Sensei hums, making Leo snap his head back down because he’d be crazy to miss anything his Sensei does now after knowing what it’s like to lose him. “Humor is relative and circumstantial. It could bring up feelings that have been long buried.”

Donnie chokes on his sandwich, eyes bulging out. “Sensei!” he hisses, the look on the face suggesting he’s debating whether or not he should laugh or cry as well.

Mikey decides both works. He laughs and his tears flow, not fighting the hug Sensei pulls him into. Even their father looks a bit teary eyed. Leo chuckles and wipes his own eyes, sure a tear or two has escaped.

“You’re all sick,” Donnie whispers. Nothing can hide the laugh that interrupts his words, making his syllables choppy. He blinks rapidly at the ceiling and Leo knows he’s fighting tears too.

Slowly, the laughter and tears subside. One by one, they finish their sandwiches. Raph continues to twitch the entire time, making Leo finally bite the bullet and rub his shoulder. His face relaxes and Leo lets out a breath he didn’t know he was even holding.

Donnie’s the first to move. He gets up and begins to work on some random project — something quiet and on his computer. He mentions that they should probably text April and Casey in a couple hours, after they talk to Raph. Begrudgingly, they all agree.

Mikey’s the next to leave, hopping up only after Donnie does. He gathers the plates and heads to the kitchen, promising to be back in a couple minutes. 

Last is Sensei. He stands up and takes the stool Donnie was on. He gently rubs Leo’s head, peering even closer at a sleeping Raph. He gives Leo’s red brother such a sad smile that it feels private, so Leo makes sure to look away.

It’s a lot. Raph, Sensei, finally being around his brothers. Leo shifts and wonders if Raph would mind if he joined him in dreamland, considering he’s exhausted too. It’s starting to get late ( not very late, not yet ) but Leo’s already exhausted. Emotionally, he’s done. He wants to check out for the night.

Carefully, he lays his head on Raph’s and debates whether he should close his eyes or not. Donnie is still working and Mikey’s not back from cleaning his kitchen yet. Leo wants to be there for them. He has to be. He—

“Go to sleep, my son,” Papa’s voice murmurs, gently closing his already heavy eyes.

And Leo has no other choice but to obey.

Chapter Text

Raph wakes up with a jolt, scream lodged in his throat as he reaches for Sensei and— and gets a fist full of air. He blinks at the end of the medical bed, confusion slowly leaving him as he fully awakes. 

Right. He made it. He’s in the lab. Sensei’s here and he’s all good. He cried a bit. He got some sleep. He— Raph tenses, his memories catching up to him. Oh, great. He had a breakdown in front of his brothers. Surely that won’t come back to haunt him later.

He grumbles and rubs his eyes, his head starting to pound as a reminder that he’s thoroughly dehydrated. It hurts his arm to move that much but Raph is nothing but determined. He will rub his own face if he wants to! 

“Raph?” 

He jolts once again at Leo’s sleepy but concerned voice. Leo’s voice that comes from behind him. He whirls around (as best as he can, anyway) and finds Leo on the medical bed with him. His jaw drops.

“Leo?!” he exclaims, looking down to his side and finding Leo’s legs right next to his own. His face heats up as he realizes he was sleeping on his older brother.

What.

The.

Shell.

“What are you doing on my bed?!” Raph sputters. He tries to sound angry — he really does — but his voice falls flat. It comes off more confused and embarrassed than angry.

From a different spot in the room, there’s a tired sigh. Raph ignores the dark faced Leo (good to know he’s as embarrassed as Raph is) to look who else is in the lab, half surprised anyone else is even in here, and finds Donnie, clearly asleep at his desk.

“You both needed some rest.”

Make that formerly asleep at his desk.

Donnie stretches before spinning his chair around, giving a glare in Raph’s direction. “I also needed some rest. Don’t question why I’m in here, for Pizza Supreme’s sake,” he says, tapping his cheeks to wake himself up.

Raph squints, about to retort that he won’t do that because that would be stupid of him to do considering it’s Donnie’s lab when someone beats him to saying something.

“‘m ‘ere too,” Mikey mumbles from… the floor?

Raph furrows his eye ridges and scoots towards the end of the bed, ignoring the lightning that shoots up his arms as he does. He peers over the edge of the bed to find Mikey on his plastron, hugging a pillow in a nest of blankets. He stares.

Raph tilts his head at his youngest brother. “That cannot be comfortable,” he comments dryly.

Mikey looks up and sends him an evil grin. Slowly, he unveils his hand. Mikey flips him off.

He tries to do the same but finds his hands hurt too much to do so. Instead, he settles on stealing Mikey’s signature move. Raph sticks his tongue out at his little brother, ignoring the delighted laugh that follows. 

“You hungry?” Leo asks as Mikey’s giggles slowly teeter off.

Raph hums and tries to shrug, only to wince at the action. Ouch. “Not really, but Imma need something to help me keep the pills down,” he mutters over his shoulder.

There’s some shifting from behind him and then Leo is walking around the bed and towards the metal table that’s further away than Raph remembers it being. His blue brother rolls the table closer, gesturing for Raph to scoot back so he can lean his shell against the stacked pillows again. He rolls his eyes but does as told. Leo’s such a mother-hen.

As Leo hands him his sandwich, Raph purposely ignores his memories of how he fell asleep. Embarrassment tries to sneak up on him, sure, but he’d rather not think about it right now. His stomach is wishy washy already even without the emotional turmoil. He’ll choose to not think the event over.

Raph slowly eats the sandwich. Leo plops down on the stool Donnie was on and the lab grows quiet. It’s clearly pretty late, or else Mikey would probably be bouncing off the walls and demanding answers. Raph finds he doesn’t mind. He likes his brothers’ presence. It’s comforting, in a weird way.

Idly, he looks up every now and then. Donnie stays in his chair, staring at the ceiling in thought. His posture is slumped and it looks sorta funny, but Raph won’t comment on it. Leo looks almost ready to nod off again, making Raph feel a little guilty about basically kicking him off but his cheeks still feel a bit dusted from finding out they were practically cuddling in the first place. They haven’t done that in a while. He’s not brave enough to offer Leo his place on the bed back.

It doesn’t take him long to finish the sandwich. It’s easy to shove the pills into his mouth and chug the rest of the water after. He’s not surprised to find himself still somewhat thirsty after the cup of water, considering… well, everything. Yet he doesn’t feel inclined to ask for more.

Raph places the cup back on the metal table and leans back, tilting his head back too before closing his eyes. He doesn’t fall back to sleep. He rests, listening to his brothers breathe.

“We’re not gonna talk about it right now,” Donnie mumbles from where he sits.

Huffing, Raph smiles and peeks one eye open. Donnie still hasn’t moved. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

Leo rolls his eyes but matches Raph with a fragile smile. “You do know we’re going to eventually though, right?”

His smile falls as flashes of everything fly through his mind. He closes his eyes again and takes a deep breath in and out. “Figured,” he grunts, not entirely happy about being reminded of his future.

The silence envelops them once again. Despite the fact he probably should be more nervous about talking later, he finds himself… mildly anxious at best (Leo’s default state). He’s still tired. He doesn’t really have the energy to be too worried about what he may have to reveal. 

As his eyes slowly grow heavier, he wonders how he is so tired even after sleeping for hours. Is it emotional exhaustion? Physical exhaustion thanks to his wounds? Or…

His eye twitches. “Donnie?”

“Hm?”

“Are these the pills that make us sleepy?” he grumbles, opening both his eyes again to glare at the ceiling. He knows the answer. Donnie definitely drugged him.

“Your eyebags have eyebags, my dearest Raph,” Donnie drawls without remorse.

Mikey giggles from the floor, the first sign in ages that he’s awake. “Gucci eyebags…”

Raph lifts his head and finds Donnie staring at him with a smug smirk. “Die,” he tells him, fighting back a smile as Mikey starts cackling.

Leo groans from his stool, rubbing his face. “I’m too tired for this,” he tells no one in particular as Donnie flips Raph off.

By his triumphant grin, he had noticed Raph couldn’t return the favor. He narrows his eyes, suddenly locked in a stare off with Donnie. Neither dare move. Donnie is just as stubborn as Raph at times and it seems this time is one of them. But Raph wants to win too. 

Unfortunately, his eyes weigh too much. He blinks and Donnie lets out a startled laugh, probably surprised to have won. It makes Raph chuckle too, allowing Donnie to double over. Together, their laughter breaks down Mikey and Leo. Their other two brothers join them as they laugh.

The silence that follows feels wonderful. Raph smiles genuinely and leans back on the pillows. He gets himself situated once more, hearing Mikey do the same. Soon, his youngest brother’s snores start up, making him huff fondly.

A minute passes. Then two. His finger twitches as he thinks. He considers. Before he can regret the decision he comes to, he scoots over and pats the side.

When Leo doesn’t immediately hop on, Raph peeks an eye open again. He sees his older brother looking at him with his jaw agape. Raph smirks at him.

“Donnie drugged me,” he reasons with a shrug, ignoring the squeak of protest from the other side of the room. “Anything I say or do cannot be held against me.”

“I didn’t give you the good stuff, Raph, you can’t use the drugs as an excuse for the fact you love us.”

“Shut it, Donnie.”

Leo chuckles but hops onto the bed, allowing Raph to maneuver himself to something more comfortable as they slowly get situated. “He didn’t refute,” Leo tells Donnie, voice far too happy for Raph’s liking.

Raph snaps at him, unable to elbow him like he normally would. Leo snorts but does not say anything else as he sinks down near Raph’s side. He throws the sheet Raph had kicked towards his feet over their legs, smoothing it out as gently as possible.

“You’re such a mother-hen,” Raph mumbles as his head falls towards Leo’s. They bonk heads, both using the other to keep themselves upright.

Leo hums as Donnie’s whistley snores join Mikey’s soft ones. “You’ve done the same for Mikey,” he argues softly.

“Touché.”

His eyes slowly slip closed. He doesn’t fall asleep right away, even as the pain throughout his body lessens so it’s barely there. He listens to the snores of his family, lips quirking up whenever Mikey lets out a particularly loud one. 

Soon enough, Leo’s breaths even out. He doesn’t snore like their brothers, no, but Raph can hear his near silent huffs from how close he is. He swallows.

“I’ve missed you guys,” he whispers, cringing under the volume of his own voice.

No one answers him. Raph doesn’t need them to. Their presence is enough of a promise — a promise that it’ll all be okay.