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Yeah, sure, he had pushed Leo. Told him how unstable the building looked, that it might be a trap, that there was no way those upper floors would be able to hold all four of them. Leo should have listened, but probably, Raph should have pushed harder.
And he did push harder when he shoved Leo out the third floor window, through the glass, over the chipped sill and towards the ground below, followed closely by Mikey. He tries not to think about the terror in his little brother’s eyes, how Mikey gripped his bicep as Raph pushed him out, the sound of bending steel screeching in their ears. He really hopes the nearly 30 foot fall was a better option for his brothers than whatever fresh hell he and Donnie are currently in.
Donnie. He had grabbed him after shoving Mikey, but the floor beneath them gave out before Raph could drag him over to the window. The best he could do was tug Don into his plastron and wrap himself around his (much taller) brother, and pray to whatever god was listening that he would take the brunt of the damage.
He thinks he may have passed out upon hitting the floor ( which floor, he doesn’t know), because when he opens his eyes all that's left of the symphony of splintering steel is a quiet creaking. The dust has mostly settled, and Donnie is under him, curled tight into a ball.
“Donnie?” He gently pulls away from his brother, trying to get a bearing on his surroundings.
He’s incredibly grateful when Donnie coughs, “I’m good.”
They’re in a bit of a pocket, the rubble creating a sort of dome overhead. Upon inspection, Raph rules that none of his limbs are trapped. There’s a sort of burning pain in his leg, and his bicep feels like it's being repeatedly stabbed, but sorting that out can wait until he’s done a full check on Donnie. He leans over to his brother, puts a hand on his shoulder. He touches something warm and sticky, and he wrenches his hand back like it’s burned (and totally doesn’t whimper over the pain the movement causes).
“Donnie? Ya hurt anywhere?”
“I think I’m hurt a little bit of everywhere,” Donnie pushes himself to sitting, “we just fell through a building.”
“Yeah, but. I think there’s blood on my hand. Are ya bleedin’?” Raph’s never been very good at masking the panic in his voice, and Donnie can probably hear the way his breathing speeds up.
“Hey, Raph, calm down. It’s okay, let’s assess. Shit, it’s dark in here. You got your T-phone?”
Raph pats the pockets on his belt, finds his phone, and tries to turn it on. No luck. He shakes his head, realizes Donnie can’t see him, and mutters, “Broken.”
“It’s okay, mine is intact,” Donnie’s face lights up as he turns the screen on, then Raph is blinded for a moment as the flashlight turns on. He blinks away spots.
When he can finally see again, Donnie is staring at him in horror.
“What the fuck, D? Why are ya lookin’ at me like that?”
“Stay still,” Donnie orders, shifting closer to him.
Raph is too busy visually inspecting Donnie for injuries to entertain whatever the hell the nerd is on about. A few more seconds and he can finally breathe easier, satisfied with his assessment that if Donnie is bleeding, the cuts are small enough to probably clot on their own. He shifts his attention back to what Donnie is looking at and. oh. Oh, shit , fuck, that’s a piece of fuckin rebar impaled through his fuckin calf and all of a sudden he’s feeling really lightheaded and his mouth is filling with saliva and—
He twists his torso around and vomits. Donnie gently rubs his shell, patiently and silently supportive until Raph turns back, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand and looking anywhere but his leg.
“Ya think it’s bad?” He makes a halfhearted attempt at a joke.
Donnie doesn’t answer, because his phone starts ringing. He picks it up and puts it on speaker.
“Donnie? Donnie, can you hear me?” Leo’s voice crackles through the speaker, full of panic. Raph exhales slowly at the sound of his voice; the fall didn’t kill him.
“I gotcha, Leo. Raph’s here too. We’re… alright, all things considered.”
“Dude, the building totally fell apart! It’s like. A pile of dust, man!” Mikey’s voice is faint, as though he’s somewhere behind Leo. Raph assumes Leo’s phone isn’t on speaker.
“Am I on speaker?” Leo asks, and at Donnie’s hum of approval, he continues, “Raph, I’m sorry, I should have listened to you.” His voice cracks, panic seeping through. “I didn’t think that— I— I didn’t think , and now you’re somewhere in that mountain of rubble and I don’t know how we’re going to get you out —”
Raph cuts him off as he sobs. “Hey, Fearless, take a chill pill. D and I are good. None of our limbs are trapped, we can still breathe. Call in the reinforcements. Casey and April, the Mutanimals. You can handle this. We ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
On the other end of the line, Leo takes a deep breath. Then another. When he speaks again, his voice is more stable, “Right. I’ll have Mikey contact Leatherhead, and I’ll give April a call. Hang in there, guys, you’ll be out in no time.”
The line goes dead, presumably so Leo can call April and Casey, and Donnie turns his attention back to Raph.
“That rebar goes all the way through, you probably won’t be able to walk on that for a bit.”
Raph laughs weakly, “Wanna bet? I’ll be carryin’ you outta here.”
Donnie offers a small smile, then chases the rebar with his flashlight, and. Well, fuck. This situation just got a whole lot worse.
“Is that rebar…” Donnie trails off, face pale.
“Still attached to the wall? Yeah,” Raph supplies, suppressing another wave of nausea. “So to get out, we’ll either have’ta unimpale me or cut the thing down.”
Donnie grimaces, shaking his head. “I don’t like either of those options.”
“At least you ain’t the one livin’ through it,” Raph teases, but backpedals at the look Donnie gives him. “Hey, man, relax, I’m gonna be fine.”
Donnie sighs through his nose, turning the light back towards Raph. “Did you know there’s glass in your arm?”
Raph looks down at his burning bicep, and sure enough, it's a grotesque cacophony of blood and flesh and glass. He hasn’t missed the way Donnie keeps shifting around, a ball of nervous energy. He’s clearly concerned for his brother.
Raph throws another grin at Don, “Man, that’s gonna leave a sick as hell scar, huh?”
Donnie seems to settle a bit, and Raph pretends he can’t feel the blood oozing out of his leg, slowly building into a puddle beneath them. He leans back from his sitting position, being careful not to jostle his leg, until he’s laying down. He lets his eyes slip shut as Donnie’s phone rings again.
The conversation Donnie and Leo are having sounds garbled and underwater, and Raph distantly thinks it could be the bloodloss fucking with him, but the thought is pulled away in the current before anything really comes of it. God, he’s tired .
He doesn’t realize that consciousness is slipping from his grasp until Donnie shakes his shoulder harshly and he slams back into awakeness.
“Ow, D, what the fuck?” He’s gearing up for an argument, but fizzles out when he sees how scared Donnie looks.
“You gotta stay awake, Raph. Please .”
Donnie’s hands are shaking slightly, and Raph realizes that if he falls asleep, he could die, and then Donnie would be stuck under the rubble for who knows how long with his corpse . He doesn’t want that for his brother. So he reaches out, grabs one of those shaky hands, and squeezes.
“Right, sorry, I’m here. I’m with ya.”
Donnie’s exhale is as shaky as his hands, and he turns back to his phone, “We’re hanging in, but I’m not sure how much longer we’ve got. Raph isn’t looking so good.”
“Hey, fuck you, I look great,” Raph argues weakly. Donnie is still holding his hand.
On the other end of the line, Leo sighs. “Well, we need you to hold on a little bit longer. The Mutanimals just got here, we’re gonna game plan. I’ll call you back.”
“Thanks, Leo,” Donnie mutters to the dead air.
He starts twisting his hands all around in that way he did when they were younger, when he was nervous and restless and all tensed up like a spring. Not that he’d ever admit it, but Raph is nervous too. He can feel exhaustion pulling at his mind like the tide, and he’s starting to shiver. He squeezes Donnie’s hand.
“Wanna play a game?” Donnie blurts out.
…
Outside, Leo, Mikey, April and Casey, and the Mutanimals are huddled in a circle. Rockwell brought the plan for the building, and they’re all trying to make sense of it. Every so often, Mikey looks over his shoulder at the mountain of rubble that used to be the building. Leo looks at him carefully, trying to be subtle. There’s a crack in Mikey’s shell from where he hit the ground, and he’s got a few light bruises that will certainly darken up soon, but at least he isn’t trapped under a collapsed building and running out of oxygen, or impaled through the leg and slowly bleeding out. He huffs another sigh, runs a hand over his head.
He had landed in a roll after Raph shoved him out, but he twisted his ankle a bit, and it’s feeling a little unsteady. He ignores it, though. If he’d just listened to his brother, maybe they’d all be safe. But he didn’t, and now he was going to fix the problem if it killed him.
Better him than his brothers, he doesn’t think.
Mikey nudges him, pulling his attention from self-deprecating thoughts to whatever Leatherhead is saying.
“-Ask them what the ground looks like, then perhaps we will be able to discern where in the building they are.”
“That’s an interesting idea,” Slash says, grip tightening around his mace, “or we can just start digging and get them out of there .”
Leo doesn’t miss the way Slash’s knuckles whiten as he shifts his grip on his mace again. For all that they’ve fought, he obviously cares about Raph quite a bit.
Casey is nodding, “Sounds good to me. Who’s got shovels?”
“Slow down, guys,” Leo says, “I appreciate you wanting to rush in, but we don’t want the building collapsing any more. We can’t risk them getting more hurt. So, here’s the plan.”
…
“I spy with my little eye… something green.”
“Is it me?”
“Yeah, it’s you, how did you know?”
“It’s been me the last three times it’s been your turn, Raph.”
Raph giggles, maybe a little deliriously. His head is in Donnie’s lap, and he thinks he’s shivering, but he can’t really feel anything. The thought is hilarious to him, and he giggles harder. Donnie, for some reason, has this weird look on his face as he looks down at him, like Raph is sick or something. Raph reaches up and smooths out Donnie’s eye ridges. Donnie frowns.
“What’s your issue, D? I thought we were having fun. It’s been forever since I’ve gotten to cuddle with any’a ya,” Raph is pouting, and he feels like maybe he should care or be embarrassed, but he’s not sure why. After all, he loves his brothers.
“Yeah, Raph, this is nice. I’m just a little anxious.”
Raph matches Donnie’s frown, “You’ve always been an anxious guy. I worry about ya, yknow?” He thinks for a moment. “Hey, where are Leo and Mike?”
Starting to panic, he presses himself towards sitting. Donnie shoves him back down, and there’s this weird feeling in his leg, like something is itching his bone. He looks down and his leg and—
“Holy fuck !”
“Raph, breathe,” Donnie is holding him down as Raph struggles against him. He gasps as he shifts his leg, and the rebar he’s impaled with definitely scrapes against his bone. His head spins, and he whimpers.
Donnie is speaking to him, but between the panic and the ringing in his ears and the blinding, white-hot pain, he can’t actually hear it.
“STOP MOVING!” Donnie shouts at him, and he finally stops twisting around.
He vaguely registers tears on his face, and he’s gasping, and everything hurts and he’s so fucking tired… He closes his eyes.
Donnie’s hands are so hot on his face that it feels like he’s burning. His eyes snap open and he yanks the hands away with a curt, “what the fuck?”
“You’ve gotta stay awake, man,” Donnie’s hands clench into fists, “you gotta stay awake.”
Something drops onto his face, and he realizes, oh. Donnie is crying too. That isn’t right, he must be hurt somewhere.
“What’s wrong? Where are you hurt?” Raph asks, pulling Donnie’s arm into his field of vision.
Don yanks it back, “I’m not hurt , Raph, I’m scared . I’m scared you’re gonna fall asleep and that you’re never gonna wake up and I don’t think I can live without you, man,” Donnie is sniffling, he pulls his hands away from Raph and buries his face in them like he can hide his tears.
Raph pauses, tries to think of how to handle this. He feels like his brain is leaking from his ears in time with the blood leaking from his leg. But it’s Donnie, and he’s crying, so Raph has to do something .
He sets his hand on the side of Donnie’s head, looks up at him with wide, toxic green eyes. “I’m here, man. I gotcha, and ya got me, and we’re both gonna be fine, got it?”
Donnie sobs.
“When’s the last time ya talked to Leo? Ya think you should call him again?”
He shakes his head, scrubbing at his face as he leans into Raph’s hand. “Nah, I. No. Not like this.”
“Don, you know he loves you, right? We all do. You don’t have to—”
He’s cut off by the sound of debris moving, and he grits his teeth as plaster dust falls into his open wounds.
“Donatello? Raphael?” Leatherhead’s voice rings into their little cave, and off to the side, a bit of light starts to show through.
Raph helps Donnie wipe the rest of his tears away, “We’re here!” he calls, giving Don a moment to collect himself.
Leatherhead’s fist comes through the wall, startling Raph and Donnie into a sort of stunned silence, until Leo is climbing through the resulting hole, headlamp strapped to his forehead. He turns toward Raph’s leg and freezes, headlamp illuminating the nauseating image of a piece of rebar impaled through Raph’s calf. Raph groans and tips his head back into Donnie’s lap, looking up and watching the ceiling swim above him. He barely registers light sliding over the rest of him and towards Donnie, can’t muster enough energy to focus on what his brothers are saying. He thinks maybe Casey leans over him at some point, but he might just be hallucinating. Wouldn’t be the first time.
He slides his eyes shut, trying to hold on to the sound of his brothers talking, if not the words, until.
Mikey is slipping a towel between his teeth, and then Don and Mike are holding down his shoulders. He doesn’t really have the wherewithal to struggle against their grip until the agonizing, blazing pain shoots up his leg and into his lungs, which seize as he fights to get air in. He whines, high and keening, into the ether, as his whole skeleton seemingly vibrates with the circular saw cutting down the rebar. He thinks he screams, and he hopes everyone here will be nice enough to never ever bring it up again. Mikey shoves the towel back between his teeth and he bites down hard, narrowly avoiding Mikey’s fingers. And then it’s over, seemingly as suddenly as it began, and his leg drops a bit now that it isn’t attached to the rubble around them. He can’t really see , whether from the pain or someone covering his eyes he’s not really sure. He feels a hand slip into his and squeezes, pretends he can’t feel his hands shaking.
“Get ‘im out?” Slash is saying as Raph’s ears gradually stop ringing.
“We’re going to have to carry him to the Shellraiser,” Leo mutters, so low that Raph can barely hear it. Who are they talking about? Donnie?”
“Nah, man, what the hell?” Casey spits, “Did’ja not see how he reacted to that fuckin’ saw? Ya really think he’ll be able to handle being jostled like that?”
Ah, they’re talking about him. “Hey,” he pipes up, and feels, more than sees, everyone turn to him. “I’m good. I got it. Do whatcha gotta do.”
Donnie’s hand is on his forehead, wiping away some of the sweat that had gathered there. “You heard him. Now can we please get out of here?”
Mikey settles the towel back in between Raph’s teeth as Leo takes a steeling breath. “Right. Slash, Leatherhead, if you could please?”
Raph’s vision whites out as he’s lifted, and it takes everything in him not to scream again. Leo is hovering, concern lighting up his blue, blue eyes, and Raph decides anything he can do to make this easier for Leo, he’ll do it. So he clenches his jaw around the towel, breathes carefully through his nose, and (metaphorically) grabs consciousness with both hands, wrenching it down and refusing to let it go. Donnie is still holding onto him, and he squeezes his hand hard. Fuck, Donnie just held him down and watched him cry over that piece of fuckin metal, he doesn’t have the energy to be embarrassed now. He thinks he’s holding on pretty well, even though everything is back to sounding underwater. But then his leg bangs against a stray piece of debris, his consciousness rips itself free, and he’s lost to the black.
…
The first thing he hears as he’s dragging himself back into consciousness is an engine firing up. He feels the floor start to hum beneath him, and determines that he’s in the Shellraiser. Peeling his eyes open feels like a monumental task, but he manages it as Donnie throws a shock blanket around his shoulders.
“Since when did we have one’a these?” he murmurs, settling into it a bit. He’s freezing .
“April picked one up on her way here,” Donnie says, and seeing Don up on his feet and moving around, entirely uninjured, soothes away what’s left of Raph’s anxiety.
The pain spikes again as Donnie kneels by Raph’s knee, and he fights the urge to kick.
“Hey, what the hell?” he snaps, but he can’t muster any venom. There’s a small lurch as the Shellraiser starts moving.
“Sorry, sorry. You’re losing a lot of blood, I’m making a tourniquet.”
“Oh. Cool,” Raph stares up as he hears the Shellraiser switch gears, watching the ceiling spin overhead. “‘M dizzy. ‘N tired.”
“Try to stay awake if you can,” Donnie says, sitting next to his head, “but you should be okay to fall asleep now.”
“Nah, almost home.”
Donnie hums, “Alright. When we get back, we’re gonna have to get you straight to the med bay. I know you hate medical equipment, but it’s necessary, so I’ll give you the rundown.” Donnie looks for Raph’s nod of approval, then continues. “First thing is gonna be a blood pressure cuff and a heart monitor. The cuff will come off once we have a base reading, but the heart monitor will stay on through the whole operation.”
Raph nods absently as Donnie keeps talking, zoning out to the comforting sound of technobabble and medical terminology. This is fine, he decides, pretending not to notice Leo watching him in the rearview mirror. He’s got his brothers, and everything is going to be fine.