Chapter Text
It was a warm September night; Raph was only 8. that didn't matter though, those details matter a lot less when your only parent is unavailable and your youngest brother is sick.
Raph, to say the least was scared.
Donnie the intelligent germaphobe would not go anywhere near the sick Mikey of course making him even more miserable because the poor six-year-old just couldn't understand why his older brother wouldn't go near him.
Leo tried to help by taking Donnie with him to go see if their dad would get up and tell them what to do, he hadn't appointed himself as medic at this stage but wanted to help all the same.
The intent was pure, but it didn't help, their dad didn't move at all staying exactly where he was motionless in bed, silently facing the wall. The twins stood at his bedside for an hour trying desperately to get their dad out, begging that they needed his help, that mikey was really sick but they still only heard silence in return.
It's still debateable whether he was asleep or not, but it left both twins in an emotional mess of worry for their sick younger brother, and an uncomfortable mix of other emotions at their dad not even looking at them.
Raph remembers the look on Leo and Donnies faces when they came out of their pops' room like it was yesterday, Leo's face crinkled with barely contained tears and Donnie's dead quiet blank expression as he wrung his hands and tapped his tiny foot.
Since he could remember Raph took the role of raising his siblings in their father's absence and even looking back, he just can't fully blame splinter, they were all daddies' boys no matter how absent splinter was for the first half of their lives.
But it was in that very moment that he knew, their dad wasn't coming to help them.
It was a painful fact, but a fact, nonetheless.
He held them in the hallway too-short arms not quite completely wrapping around them, reassuring then that it'd be okay, and Mikey was going to get better, that it was just the flu.
There was no guarantee that he was right, but he told it to them anyway, because he had to make it better.
He is the oldest and he'll hold his brothers till his dying breath.
Mikeys flu didn't get worse, but it didn't get better either, Raph was scared. He was way out of his depth here, not knowing much besides how to give basic care.
Donnie being desperate to fix what was happening gave Raph about enough information to build a library, but it was no use if he just couldn't wrap his small head around it.
Mikey eventually did start getting better, his immune system thankfully being enough to overcome whatever caused the sickness in the first place. Back then there was no "go get medicine topside" just what was in the lair.
It was a little less than a year later they started going topside and met April.
Raph still thinks about that week from time to time, how they could have lost Mikey, how their dad didn't even turn to look at Leo and Don when they came begging for help, how angry and scared and stressed Raph was. Mikeys cries of fever, vomiting and thought pain that Raph could not soothe.
He was stuck helping but his help not being enough to take away his baby brother's pain, it hurt more than it should have.
He was so angry at their father, he still is.
Raph loves his dad and he understands now how depressed he was and how hard he's trying now to make up for his absence but that only makes him feel worse.
Because how is he still so angry, he doesn't want to be angry anymore he wants to just be happy that he has this good, present father now but where was he when they needed him so badly when they were young.
Where was he when Raph just needed to be a child.
Not a parent, not a carer, not a protecter.
A child.