Chapter Text
Legacy
Chapter 1
It really amounted to nothing. Less than nothing. Well, Donatello corrected himself, not less than nothing. It did require five of Raph's neat stitches to close the slash on Donnie's tricep, but it really was not large enough to be in any way remarkable. No range of motion issues. It barely pulled, even with the over-the-head bo techniques.
Admittedly, Donnie should have been paying more attention to the purple dragon buffoon behind him, but he had been thinking about a recent police report of a hacker targeting the post-industrial technology footings underpinning most of New York's analog telephone system and he had unfortunately let his mind wander.
"Where the hell were you, Raph?" Leo screamed from the living room. Donnie and Mikey had both fled the large space after Raph had finished patching up Donnie's arm. The glares Leo had sent Raph the entire trip home gave them enough clues that they would need to vacate the area as soon as possible. Raph still sat on the couch, stiffly gathering up the gauze and other materials from the first aid supplies. He had known Leo would blow his top as well. It wasn't hard to predict nowadays, especially when it came to Raph.
"You know damn well where I was, Leo. I was on my way! If you had just waited ten lousy minutes and not jumped in like that -- "
Mike and Don exchanged a look from the safe confines of the lab.
Leonardo's answering laugh was short and derisive. "Oh, please Raphael. You have no right to lecture me about jumping in before it's time. You should have been there by the time we engaged!"
Michelangelo sighed at the deliberately inciting phrase. Donnie had hoped those two would have grown out of these stupid screaming matches since Splinter’s death, but clearly that had been too much to ask.
Splinter's death four years ago had at first united the brothers in their mutual grief, a closeness among the four of them that Donnie hadn't remembered feeling since they were tots. But as Leonardo took on the mantle of head of the family, with all of the additional responsibility it required, the friction between Leo and Raphael had begun to chafe. Raphael's independence conflicted with Leonardo's desire to keep the family close, especially since they had lost such an important member of it. Mikey, who could always interpret his brothers' mood swings a lot better than Donnie, thought that Leo's protectiveness went into overdrive and served the opposite of its intended effect, as Raph took every opportunity to fly the coop, especially after Mona Lisa settled on Earth and became such an important member of the Mighty Mutanimals. Slash, especially, was thrilled to have her battle prowess on their team. While Donnie thought it was nice as it was to see Raphael happy, Leo had not approved.
"Get over yourself, Fearless! I'm not the reason Donnie got hurt! It's barely more than a scratch, anyway!"
"Not your fault? It wouldn't have happened if you were there like you were supposed to be!"
The voices of the eldest brothers echoed off the vaulted ceilings of the lair. Mikey and Don rolled their eyes at each other.
These arguments had grown predictable a long time ago. The what-ifs would devolve into increasingly pointed comments about the other's fitness for leadership, independence, temper, or, when it got particularly nasty, about brotherhood and family. About that time, a younger brother would have to step in before the two of them came to blows or drew weapons. Until that point, though, they could do little. So, by mutual agreement, they had decided to at least get some entertainment out of the situation.
Mike reached between Donatello's desk and a bookcase, pulling out a well-used whiteboard and two markers: one blue and one red. They had developed a simple game with simple rules. When either older brother made a good point in their argument, they got a tic mark. When either said something monumentally stupid, they had one erased. Whoever had the most marks at the end, won. Donnie dragged his forearm across the face of the white board, erasing the existing marks from the previous argument. Leo had won that one in a landslide.
Donatello sat down at his workbench, scrambling to remove components of his latest experiment, as Mikey hopped up to sit on top of the tabletop. They heard a crash above the raised voices and Mikey sighed. "How long do you think this one will last?"
Donnie picked up the flying camera prototype he had cobbled together from spare television parts before Michelangelo could crush it with his leg. He twirled a screwdriver in his hand. "Not long. Raph's already throwing things." Another crash sounded from the living room. Mikey sighed again, looking pained as he kicked his heels against the side of the workbench.
"Like I already said, Leo, it's not my fault Donnie got cut! I was less than a minute away - four freaking rooftops! That's it! I got there with plenty of time to take them out and make sure the wound was nothing serious!"
Michelangelo uncapped the red marker with a squeak and made a mark. Donatello made a face.
"You should have been there from the start! You shouldn't have been late! Where the hell were you?" Donnie raised an eyebrow and added a blue tic mark.
"Leo, for fuck's sake! It's none of your damn business, but I was on my way from Mona's!"
"Uh-oh," Mikey muttered while Donatello shook his head at the sudden, sharp silence in the lair. He shook his head at Raph's admissions. He hadn't told Leo he was going to Mona's before patrol. The tension in the air grew suffocating. Donatello could picture Leo's narrowed, furious eyes.
"You were at Y'Gthba's?" Leo exploded. "That's why you weren't there?"
"You called. I showed up. Like every other fucking time!" Mikey added a red tick mark.
"When will you learn, Raphael, that your family should be your only priority!"
"It is! And she is part of my family!"
"Oh, please, Raph. How many times does she have to betray you before you figure it out? Splinter figured it out at once. When will you finally wise up?"
"Not good, Leo. Don't go there," Mikey muttered, eyeing the doorway and getting ready to move.
"You called! I showed up! You went in before I got there! I saw you look at me from across the rooftops!"
"Not good enough Raph! Not nearly good enough! Donnie got hurt because instead of being there with your brothers, you were thinking with your -"
Donatello gasped, blood going cold.
"Not good not good not good," Mike repeated. A solemn green hand reached up and erased a blue tic mark.
"Don't you DARE, Leo!" Raph roared, a throat-tearing bellow. "Don't you dare disrespect her like that. I will beat you into the ground!”
“Why are you so loyal to her, of all people! She betrayed you to Lord Dregg!”
“That was years ago, Leo! It was a mistake, and she apologized. Something you should be doing right now, Mr. Fucking Perfect.”
“She disappeared for a month, Raph! Back to Salamandria! No word, no nothing! You wouldn’t come out of your room for a week!”
Donnie went to mark down a blue tic mark, but Mikey’s hand snapped out to stop him. He shook his head but looked askance when Donatello’s furrowed his brows in a question. Raph’s anger snapped Donatello’s attention back to the living room.
“Shut your mouth, Leo! I’m warning you!”
“She’s a distraction, Raphael! She takes too much of your time and too much of your focus. Every time she betrays you, you are suddenly nowhere to be found! What happens the next time, huh? And it will happen again, if it hasn’t already. Splinter could see it from just one meeting!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about Leo. You forgave Karai real quick she threw a goddamn knife at your head!”
Donnie grabbed the red marker from Michelangelo and put a tic mark.
“That’s not what happened and you know it, Raph! That was completely different. She’s family.”
“Family? Having a crush on your sister ain’t a good look, Leo.”
“I didn’t have a crush on Karai!” Leo yelled, but his voice just barely cracked at the end, which usually meant his face had reddened dramatically.
“Oh, he totally had a crush on her,” Michelangelo giggled under his breath.
Raph’s bark of laughter echoed against the vaulted ceilings. “You keep on telling yourself that, Leo. Whatever makes you feel better.”
“Karai is different than Mona. She’s our sister. Master Splinter always said there is nothing more important than family, but you spend more time with Y’Gthba than you do here!”
Donnie put a blue tic mark despite Mikey’s look. “What? He’s not wrong, really. Raph does spend more time with Y’Gthba than here.”
“Yeah, because Leo won’t let her stay more than twenty minutes in the lair.” He reached over and erased half of it. “At least when he knows she’s over.”
Donatello huffed at the truncated blue mark. “How can we have objective measurements in order to determine the winner if we now have half-points. It’s not part of the rules and –”
Another crash in the living room ended their exchange.
“Don’t give me that tired line, Leo. Mona Lisa has been around long enough for you to accept that she isn’t going anywhere.” A red tic mark went on the board. “Mike and Don actually have actually accepted her, why can’t you?!”
From his lab, Donnie shook his head while Mikey marked down a red tic mark. “No?” the youngest asked.
“No, it’s fine. It’s a good point. I just wish Raph would keep us out of it.”
“Keep Mikey and Don out of this!” Leo screamed. Donatello grinned and more blue went on the board. “Remember, Raph, you don’t get to decide who is part of this family. I do. Splinter passed the mantle to me.” The unspoken “not you” hung heavily in the suddenly silent air.
Mikey and Don winced in unison. Donatello reached up and erased a blue tic. Their eldest brother was clearly spoiling for a fight.
“I just don’t understand how you could put your family below that —"
They knew that tone and Mikey’s chest clenched when he heard it. Whiteboard abandoned, Michelangelo and Donatello moved simultaneously, even as they heard the subtle but unmistakable sound of metal prongs sliding out of their leather keepers. “Go ahead, Leo. Finish that sentence. I will grind your ass so far into the concrete, you’ll be shitting teeth. She’s done nothing to you.”
Leonardo drew both katanas from behind his shell. Donatello’s arms pumped by his side and he and Mikey sprinted to get there in time before one or both of them got seriously hurt. “Go ahead and try, Hothead. I’ve always been better than you. And I will always be there to make up for your mistakes.”
The younger brothers only got to the heavy door of Donnie’s lab before the metal weapons clashed noisily, the brothers leaping over couches and furniture in an effort to force the other into an indefensible position. Attempts at ninja silence abandoned, their feet slapped against the concrete floor. By the time they reached the feuding brothers, their eyes were white, blood dripped from Leo’s cheek and Raphael had lost a sai. They leapt between them, Michelangelo locking elbows with Raph from behind while Donnie’s leg sweep distracted Leo long enough to get him to hold his next strike.
“Stop it, you idiots!” Donatello often functioned as the voice of reason as he wedged himself between the squabbling brothers. “What is wrong with you?”
“You’re brothers!” Mikey chimed in. “Act like brothers!”
Leonardo dropped his guard and sheathed his katanas. “You hear that Raph!” His point stabbed the air. “Act like a brother! Brothers show up!”
“Shut up, Leo!” Raph yelled back, struggling against his little brother’s hold.
Donatello pushed him on the shoulder. “Seriously, Leo, knock it off.”
Raphael nodded at Mikey’s questioning glance, and the younger released him. “Y’know what, Leo?” Raph huffed around heavy breath. “Fuck you. You have no clue about what me and Mona have together, and you never will. And here I thought I was the only green eye monster in this place.” He dismissed Leo with a wave. “I’m out of here.” He pivoted around Mikey, grabbed his errant sai, and strode to the turnstiles of the entrance.
Leo couldn’t leave well enough alone. “Where are you going, Raph?”
Raphael didn’t turn around and didn’t break stride. Derision dripped from his voice. “Where do you think, Fearless?” He strode to the entrance, sheathing his sais and slamming his t-phone down on the top of one of the concrete pinions of the turnstiles. Donnie winced at the sound of cracking glass and components.
Mikey ran up to catch him. “C’mon Raph. Don’t go, not like this. At least take your t-phone so we can get ahold of you.”
“Need some cool off time, Little Brother. You know Mona’s number. Call her if you need me.” He put his hand on Mikey’s shoulder. “I’ll always come running. You know that.” Raphael glanced at Leonardo, who still fumed behind Donatello. Raphael glared back.
“Mona never makes me choose, Mikey.” Donatello could just hear the conversation, Raph’s voice pitched low.
Michelangelo winced. “I know, Raph. But we don’t either.”
“Big Brother over there does. Like Splinter used to.”
“He doesn’t mean it, Raph. He just worries.”
Raphael looked past Mikey to match Leonardo’s scowl. Don looked over his shoulder to his oldest brother, his blue eyes shining in anger and determination behind the matching mask. “That’s the thing, Mikey,” Raph responded, never breaking Leo’s gaze. “I think he does mean it. He means every word.” Donnie searched Leo’s face as Raph turned to leave.
Based on Leo’s expression alone, Don knew that Raph was right.
*****
The minute the echo of Raphael’s stomping footsteps faded into the high ceilings, Leonardo wrenched away from Donatello’s grip and stalked into the dojo. Both remaining brothers watched him go, exchanging exasperated looks when they heard the sound of precise impacts on the sparring dummy parked in the corner of the sparring mats. Michelangelo shrugged, eyes resigned and retreated into his room and his comic books. Donatello sighed, watching the entrance to the dojo. It sounded like Leo was taking apart that dummy piece by piece, focused strike by focused strike.
Great, Donatello thought. Something else for me to fix. He didn’t know which dummy he was referring to, his brother or his brother’s inanimate sparring partner. At this point, they both may be brainless.
He headed to his lab, picking up Raphael’s t-phone on his way. The screen had shattered and something ominous rattled inside the slim casing. He sighed. Replacing screens was simply but a pain, and with four martial artists in the lair, at least one with a wicked temper, he had to do it quite a bit. He wouldn’t be able to fix this overnight. He had an extra screen or five tucked away in a bin in his lab for just such an occasion, but he had run low on internal component parts since the nearest Radio Shack closed and took all of their sweet “outdated” component part trash with them. Shame. He’d have to travel to the one in Brooklyn, which presented many different challenges with a river in the way. Once he got those components, though, it would take a couple days to pop this sucker open to see what damage Raph had done. Oh Raph, he thought. Why do you have to be such a hothead?
A crash from the dojo broke his concentration. He put the phone aside and rolled his eyes. Speaking of martial artists with a temper, he should go see what another brother just broke so he could go fix that, too. Donatello dragged himself from his lab to the dojo. Another crash echoed through the still air.
He poked his head into the room. His oldest brother’s katanas lay in their sheaths on the tatami mat while the blue-masked turtle landed precise strikes on the sparring dummy, its wooden arms spinning in a blur. Leo struck, blocked, kicked, and avoided the spinning wood. One strike would have the center dowel go spinning to the right, and a subsequent block would send it back in the other direction. A sharp, low front kick sent the lowest set of dowels whirling in the opposite direction. Leonardo’s pace was frenetic, sweat already covering his forehead, his breath hissing into the incensed air. His eyes showed a consistent white. Three dowels already lay on the ground.
Donatello sighed as he moved into Leo’s line of sight while staying outside of his strike range, spinning his bow in his right hand. He had no doubt that Leonardo had heard him when he entered the room, but it was harder to ignore someone when they stood directly in the line of sight.
One always had to be careful with how they approached Leonardo when he trained alone in the dojo. The room had undergone absolutely no modifications since Splinter’s death. The tree maybe had a few more leaves reaching up to the skylight, the sparring mats showed maybe a little more wear, but Leo had refused any and all changes, except to allow a framed picture of their sensei as they knew him: stately and whiskered, staring regally back at them from behind the glass frame.
There had always been a barrier between their sensei and them as he supposed there had to be given the circumstances of a lone father, newly mutated, attempting to raise four small children of a separate species. Now, that barrier was glass. It was far more transparent now than when their sometimes inscrutable father was alive.
Don glanced over to the sliding doors that separated the dojo from Splinter’s bedroom. Leonardo had not allowed them to touch Splinter’s room at all, even though taking that room from himself as leader of the clan would have been his right and the expectation. The doors remained closed and the room had remained in the exact same state it had been left in since the day Saki had killed their father.
Leonardo acknowledged Don’s presence with a flicker of eye contact as he spun on his left heel. His high roundhouse kick to the dummy launched a dowel from the top spinner. It flipped end over end until it hit the wall and fell to the floor with a rattle.
The bo master knew better than to interrupt Leo’s “sparring” session. He had noticed that each of his brothers had a different way of dealing with Leo when he got like this, when his mind would just not let something go. Mikey would beg, plead, and sometimes literally stand on his head until Leo finally cracked a smile. Raph, when he hadn’t caused Leo’s mood to begin with, would position himself on the opposite side of the dummy and send the dowels flying back at Leo until something got past his guard and hit him hard. The resulting pain would shake loose whatever was plaguing the eldest. Donatello’s approach was different. Using the patience the other two brothers had in too short supply, he would simply stand and watch, occasionally throwing in a couple of critiques, until Leo’s physical exhaustion affected the stuck parts of Leo’s brain.
All three brothers, though, knew to avoid the dojo if Leo was meditating in front of the family shrine, where pictures of their father as both Splinter and Hamato Yoshi stood, along with pictures of Tang Shen and Karai as an infant in Tang Shen’s arms. They knew Leo preferred that time to process or to speak through things with the memory of their father, a pseudo-ritual that Raph had coined Leo’s “What Would Splinter Do” moments. Donnie just wondered when Leo would stop trying to be Splinter, Sensei and Head of the Family, and would start figuring out how to be Leonardo, Sensei and Head of the Family.
Donatello switched his bo to his left hand, twirling it a couple of times to warm up his wrist and feel any pull on his newly-stitched wound. Leo continued to dismantle the dummy piece by piece. Gripping the bo evenly with both hands, he slid into his favorite kata: a complicated series that showed off both his weapon’s devastating reach as well as its power through momentum.
Approximately 73% of the way through Shushi no Kon, the last dowel hit the ground and Leonardo, breathing heavily and dripping sweat, dropped his guard. He shook out his fatigued arms and legs. He closed his eyes and attempted to calm his heart rate. The genius could tell he was not fully successful.
Leonardo opened his eyes again and he appeared more centered than he had in the living room with Raph. He hadn’t told Donatello off yet, though, so the purple-masked turtle finished the last portion of his kata under Leo’s watchful eyes, then straightened. Don’s offer of a friendly spar session was declined, though, so he leaned against his bo and waited.
Grabbing a clean towel from the waiting pile in the corner, Leonardo wiped himself down. He readjusted his pads and his mask and, ultimately, strapping his scabbards back to his shell, positioning them for ease of accustomed access. He drew his katanas smoothly with barely a hiss and, apparently satisfied with the angle, re-sheathed them. He finally looked up, narrowed blue eyes meeting waiting brown. “Why does he have to be like that?” he spat.
Donatello waited a beat before replying. “Like what?” He didn’t bother asking “who”.
“Like … like Raph!”
“Raph’s always been like that. Admittedly annoying, but that’s how he works.”
“Exactly! I do x, he does y! I work and plan to make life livable, to keep us safe, and he screws that up! I try to keep us together, he takes off! When is he going to realize family comes first!”
“What do you mean? Raph’s always put the family first, especially when the chips are down. I can’t tell you the number of times he’s saved my tail. Not that we have tails, mind you, which is odd given that non-mutant turtles do have tails. Our tails must have disappeared as an artifact of our mutation in favor of our human DNA …” His voice trailed off as he met Leonardo’s gaze, a single brow ridge raised incredulously. “Sorry. Raphael’s a jerk. Got it. Back to you.”
“You know what I mean, Donnie. He’s so distracted lately. Not focused on the team. He disappears at odd hours, refuses to come out of his room –”
“That just sounds like Raph. He hasn’t blown up at anyone recently.” Leonardo shot him a look. “Well, recent events not included.”
“He’s late to morning practice! He doesn’t show up for patrol!” Leo gestured to the bandage covering a part of Don’s tricep.
The younger turtle sighed. “Yeah, fine. He’s been late for a few things lately. He’s been spending a lot of time over with Mona, though, and you know how he feels about her.”
Leo’s expression darkened even further at the mention of her name. Something clicked in Donatello’s head. He swung his bo onto his shell, observing his older brother with his head cocked analytically. “Oh my God, Leo. Raph is right.”
Leo snorted. “Not likely.” He considered. “But what about, do you think?”
“You do want Mona out of the picture. You do want him to choose!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Donnie! It’s not a choice! We are his family! She is his …” he trailed off, tossing his hands in the air. “His I-don’t-know-what!”
“His girlfriend? Partner? I’ve heard the term ‘Beloved’ crop up since she got back from her month in Salamandria. They love each other – no, Leo, don’t wince at that. They’ve been very open about that for a long time.”
“I don’t want him to choose,” he repeated. “I want him to realize that his first priority is this clan. Everything – and everyone else – comes second. I try to get that through his thick skull, but he just blows me off every time!”
“Well, yeah!” Don blurted, Leo making a dismissive gesture. “Since when does Raph listen to lectures?”
“He listened to Splinter’s!”
Don tossed his hands in the air. “No he didn’t!” The eldest rolled his eyes. “Look, Leo, she makes him happy. The last few years, with her around, he’s been happier than he’s been since we were kids. That has to mean something.”
Leo shifted his weight from foot to foot, suddenly fidgety under his taller brother’s gaze. “She’s going to betray him. Again. She’s already done it twice and look what happened both times! The first time Dregg almost killed us all. The second time, this trip to Salamandria. How do we know she wasn’t planning on staying there?”
Leo grasped at straws, but Donnie didn’t think his brother realized that yet. “She came back,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, but when she was gone, Raph completely shut down! Wouldn’t come out of his room at all!”
Donatello had to concede that point, at least. Raph had shut down entirely both times. Donnie could see the effect that had on Leo, the disorientation and fear in seeing his always-game brother be completely passive because of something Leo could not control. He was no Mikey, but even he could see it.
“I am just trying to protect this family!”
“One thing is for sure, Leo. Don’t try to force Raph to choose. You may not like the answer.” Donatello turned on his heel and strode through the doorway, leaving his older brother standing alone in front of the doors to Master Splinter’s empty room.