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He’s supposed to be dead.
He’d felt his atoms get ripped apart by the Krang laser, the searing heat of a brutal end burning up whatever remains he might have left behind. He’d died and the release had been a wonder, a relief. He was finally going to see his family again and the first thing he’d do was apologize .
Yet, whatever he expected the Hamato afterlife to be, he does not think this is it.
Because he’s found himself in a cozy sewer lair with people who share his family’s names. (And an absolute truckload of other mutants but that’s beside the point).
He’s listened to his genius brother’s speeches on alternate and parallel universes enough times to realize what’s going on and he can just imagine how insufferably proud Donnie would have been to be proven right . For some reason, the multiverse has seen fit to deny him the gift of eternal rest and has tossed him into someone else’s story.
He stares at the four brothers. Young, fresh-faced, unscathed for the most part their shells were cracked, he can see where they’re still healing . Innocent, as far as he’s concerned. They talk over one another and smile so freely, so easily. It makes his heart hurt. He feels ill. He can hardly stand to see them.
When they ask him his name, he pauses before he answers in a hoarse rumble,
“...Lou. You can call me Lou.”
Their lair is noisy and crowded, packed to the brim with life and chatter and laughter and chaos.
He keeps himself detached from it, tucking himself into a tiny room as far from the rest of them as possible. The kids are rowdy and full of life, bouncing off one another as easily as brothers who have only had each other do. He can see his siblings in them, sometimes. They are not his family, of course; they never will be but every once in a while one of them will say or do something that reminds him so viscerally of his own brothers that he has to slink away to find a place to hide.
He won’t cry in front of them. He can’t. He stopped being able to show weakness in front of others a long time ago. It was a price he had to pay when he finally stepped up to be a leader.
These kids don’t need to know how dark the world can get.
“This is some seriously awesome tech! Like—like this is automail but for real!” Donnie—this world’s Donnie, the one that belongs here—is gushing over Lou’s prosthetic with an almost familiar eager gleam in his eyes. He’s got the prosthetic arm on a table and is peering into the inner workings, “We don’t have anything like this! Not this advanced, I mean! The nerve connections alone—!” The kid spins in his seat, eyes large behind his glasses, “Are you—I mean, do you promise you’re not an alien?”
Lou, who has been sitting quietly on the floor and absently turning the pages of a book he isn’t reading, just snorts, “Mutant. Hundred percent. Started on four legs, got dunked in ooze, grew up on two.”
“But you don’t know Superfly?”
“Noooope,” Lou pops the end of the word, casual as you please, and stares at the words without taking any of them in.
“You’re really weird.”
“I’ve been told.”
“Could you teach me how to build stuff like this?” He doesn’t look up but Lou can hear Donnie’s fingers tapping on the metal of the prosthetic. His heart twists.
“No.”
“Awww, come on, why—”
“I’m not the one who built it.” Lou gets to his feet, leaving the book on the floor, and crosses the room in two large strides. He reaches over Donnie’s head and picks up his arm, taking only a second to lodge it into place in his port before he turns away.
Donnie’s whines chase after him, but the boy doesn’t follow.
Lou retreats to his room, wraps his fake arm around himself, and pretends it belongs to someone else.
Most days are spent in a tired haze.
He rarely ventures beyond his closet-sized room and the small cot he sleeps on, even taking his meals away from the loud family. It just scrapes against a raw ache he can’t stand to feel.
Why did the multiverse dump him here? Why can’t he be with his family? He misses his brothers, his dad, his sisters. He doesn’t even have their photo anymore—the last gift he’d given to his protege had been to burden Casey with saving the world. Maybe that was a cruel thing to do. But Lou knew he wasn’t getting out of there alive, not this time. And besides, if anyone deserved a better future, it had been Casey Jones Junior.
He hopes with all his heart that the kid gets to live a normal life.
“Why’re you so tired all the time? Is that just what happens when you get old?” This Mikey is a curious sort, chatty and approachable and off-kilter, but without the wild and rambunctious energy Lou grew up with, “Is it ‘cause you’re a turtle? Are we gonna get all slow and tired when we get older?”
“I wanna know if we’re gonna get as big as you!” Raph, on the other hand, is a firecracker. He snaps and fizzles, spitting sparks and shaking fists at anything in his path. He’s missing a tooth and his grin is daredevil wildfire, challenging and brave, “Hey! Hey, Lou, how old are you? Are we gonna get that big?”
Lou stares at them over a bowl of soggy cereal he doesn’t really feel like eating. He can probably pawn it off on one of the other mutants, “I’m thirty...six?”
“You don’t know how old you are?” Leo frowns, tilting his head. The kid’s a bundle of nerves, his leadership a wet blanket that his brothers tease him over. But he’s got a good heart.
“Why are you guys wearing clothes?” Lou throws back because he doesn’t really want to get into the nitty gritty over breakfast. Or ever.
“Uuuhh, it’s a school day? Duh?” Donnie rolls his eyes and Lou feels a twinge of...something. An old, rusted part of him wants to bite back, poke and tease just like he used to.
“...school.” Lou repeats instead, “You...go to school.”
“I think we said something about it,” Mikey taps his chin, scrunching up his snout as he thinks, “I mean, I’m pretty sure we did…”
“Like...a normal school? A normal, human school? Full of humans?”
“Dude, did you listen to our epic backstory at all?” Raph complains, “Humans accepted us ‘cause we saved New York from Superfly! And now we get to go to school! And be in wrestling club! It’s awesome!”
Lou stares at the four of them as they pile on each other, shouting about homework and complaining about classes. If he closed his eyes, it would just sound like four normal teenagers.
He’d never really been interested—videos and journals had been enough for him—but Donatello had always dreamed of going to school. Had sneaked into April’s high school more than once. School had never been an option for them.
He abruptly stands from the table and leaves.
Avoiding the rat is...difficult.
Lou can’t bear to think of him as Splinter. They don’t look the same, they hardly act the same, but being near the rat mutant makes Lou’s heart ache for his own father. He misses him and every time he thinks of his family it picks at the wound in his chest, peeling away a little bit more.
The hole inside him is going to swallow him up.
Maybe he should let it.
Old habits die hard.
Habits ingrained because they mean life or death will never fade.
“Could you teach me some of that?”
Lou stops practicing his sword movements to look around at the door of the ramshackle room that could loosely be considered a dojo. Leo is hovering on the threshold, glancing at him and then away again, his twin katana strapped to his shell.
No, Lou wants to spit acid and snarl and show his teeth, No, shut up and go away, just leave me alone!
“Show me what you know already,” He finds himself saying.
Leo lights up and scrambles to stand next to him, drawing his swords. He beams eagerly up at Lou, excited to learn, admiration in his eyes. The same look Casey wore, looking up to his sensei.
Lou shifts his weight and lifts his oversized odachi,
“Let me see how fast you can dodge.”
Sometimes he sits on a rooftop and looks out a New York City that doesn’t belong to him.
It’s so similar and so different that it makes his stomach hurt.
So he sits on the edge of a roof and waits for the dizzying nausea to tip him over it.
He wants to go home.
A steaming mug is set in front of him, startling him from his spiraling thoughts, and he looks up to see the rat taking a seat at the table across from him.
He locks up. He wants to flee. But something keeps him pinned to the chair, legs refusing to move, stomach hollowed out as it drops out of his gut. He does not want to speak to this facsimile of his father.
“The boys are very fond of you,” Splinter hums with a small smile on his large snout, “When they dragged you home that night, I didn’t know what to think. Now I think it was a good thing. For everyone.” He twitches an ear and gestures with his own cup, “Drink your tea, it’s good for you.”
Lou absently curls his fingers around the mug. The warmth that seeps into his palms feels distant, as if there is a layer of ice between him and the heat. Like he can never truly be warm again. He stares down into the liquid and wonders if it will taste just like his dad used to make. He wonders what this Splinter did before he was mutated.
“You avoid me,” The rat says carefully after a moment, “Did I do something to make you mad?”
“...you remind me of someone.” Lou replies and it comes out in a raspy, choked whisper, trembling on his breath.
Splinter doesn’t ask, just gives an acknowledging hum and drinks his tea. Lou keeps staring into his. He doesn’t know if he can do this. Maybe it would be better if he just—
“Why’d you let me stay?” Lou finds himself asking, “I’m a stranger.”
“The boys have never seen anyone like them before,” The answer is full of compassion and a father’s love and it makes Lou’s heart wrench and crack. The hole inside him expands with an icy, burning edge, “And you were in need of help. I think you still are, actually. You live like a rat that is waiting to die.”
Lou flinches.
“When I was just a rat,” Splinter continues,” Everyone hated me. Humans...other rats...no one wanted me around. Then I found four baby turtles. They were the first creatures that were kind to me.” Lou can feel the rat’s eyes on him and it makes him want to hide in his shell, “When the world has been cruel to us, it is easy to forget that there are kind things. Like the boys. And tea.” A pause, “You should drink yours before it gets too cold.”
He takes a sip.
The warmth floods the gaping wound in his chest.
Mikey is in Lou’s room when he comes back.
The kid is standing next to the odachi that’s almost as big as he is, frowning as he rubs the tails of a faded red between his fingers. He looks up when Lou’s shadow falls over him.
“This is Raph’s mask.”
“No.” Lou says.
Mikey drops the red and plucks at the purple, “And this is Donnie’s.”
“No.” Lou repeats.
“Where’s mine?”
His stomach roils and his eyes burn. He hadn’t expected Mikey to be the one to finally put the pieces together.
“Where’s yours…?”
It’s hidden under his pillow next to the clasp that had been on his belt, the distress signal that his brother had built when they were kids.
“What happened to you…?” It sounds small and frightened. Fear for himself and for his brothers. Lou presses his hand over his eyes and tries to breathe because he knows what question is coming next.
“...what happened to us?”
“I can’t—” Lou chokes, “Don’t...don’t ask me right now. I can’t...I’m not…”
“Oh, sorry,” Mikey fumbles, awkward teenager, just a child who hasn’t watched the world end, “Um...sorry, uh...do you...do you, um, like, wanna play some Mario Kart? Or...or something?”
The question tumbles so clumsily into the heavy atmosphere of the room that Lou almost laughs.
And then he goes to play Mario Kart for the first time in over a decade.
He walks the boys to school one day.
Not because they need it. But Donnie had called Lou a “shriveled old hermit with a raisin face and no rizz” and Lou might not know what what “rizz” means, but he sure as hell knows an insult when he hears one.
So he follows them to school, easily keeping pace even when they try to lose him. He’s only wearing sweatpants and flip-flops and he waves goodbye to them from the sidewalk with a cheeky grin that almost fits into place. The rest of the student body (and some of the adults) are staring at him. He towers over them all is this how Raphie felt all the time , a giant old turtle with a mechanical arm and too many scars.
He’s making a scene and he knows it.
And it kind of feels...nice.
Leo tries to lift the huge odachi and almost topples over. His brothers laugh at him.
Raph tries to pick it up next, throwing his body weight into it. He heaves it off the ground and manages to get it over his shoulder, but the weight tips him backwards and he falls on his shell with a frustrated shout. His brothers howl.
Lou barks out a short laugh.
The hole feels a little bit smaller.
He arm wrestles Rocksteady and breaks the kitchen table.
Both of them stand shame-faced while Splinter lays into them and complains about having to find a new table.
He’s having a bad day.
The grief is overpowering.
Everything one of the boys does reminds him of his lost family. He wants to scream. He wants to tear the universe apart and ask it why him? Why couldn’t he be with his family? Why is he still here?
Nothing lasts. Nothing good in this world stays. Eventually it all gets torn away and it just leaves the hurt behind. It’s not fair. It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not—
Leo brings him a cup of coco and a granola bar.
The world is cruel.
But...maybe it’s the little things that make it bearable.
He walks the boys to school wearing socks with sandals, cargo shorts, and a horrendous flower-print button up over a white shirt.
The kids hate it .
He feels like a million bucks.
The first time Donnie calls him “Grunkle Lou” to his face, it makes him freeze.
The whole room freezes. Everyone stares at him.
He’s trying to process what that means. He prods the hole in his heart, asking it for answers, for permission. It gives nothing back except its usual bitter chill and aching loneliness.
“Wow,” He croaks out, “How old do you think I am, squirt?”
“Old as balls.” Raph shoots back and Leo squeaks at him.
Lou throws back his head and laughs.
The name Cynthia Utrom means nothing to him.
The company called T.C.R.I means nothing to him.
But when he hears “Shredder” whispered in the dark, it makes his pulse race.
Oh, He thinks as he puts himself between the kids and a danger they cannot possibly fathom,
This is why I’m here.