Chapter Text
It was supposed to be a quick look.
The Purple Dragons had been backing a van up to the old Calloway mill three nights running. Don wanted serial numbers off whatever they were moving. Leo wanted eyes on the place without a fight, and he’d gone across town with Don to check Hun’s garage. That left Raph and Mikey on the rooftop across the street, watching the loading ramp.
At ten, the van pulled out. Raph counted six men climbing in. Then the street went dead quiet.
Mikey was on his toes before the taillights turned the corner.
“Nobody’s home, bro.” He waved his shell cell under Raph’s nose, grinning. “Five minutes. Pictures, serial numbers. Don cries happy tears.”
Raph stared at the dark windows. No lookouts. No lights. A padlocked ramp door and a rotten building that smelled like pigeons from forty feet away.
Leo’s rule was recon only. But the van only left once a night, and Don needed those numbers.
“Five minutes.” He jabbed a finger at Mikey’s chest. “Ya touch nothin’. I say go, we go.”
Mikey saluted. Raph rolled his eyes. It still made him feel better. Not that he'd ever say that out loud.
They went in through a broken window on the second floor.
The catwalk ran the length of the building, rusted iron bolted to brick, hanging over the main floor. Dead looms sat in rows below. Between them stood the crates. Rifles, mostly. Ammo cans. A few long green boxes Raph didn’t like the look of.
Mikey crouched at the rail and went to work, tongue between his teeth. Raph took the window at the far end and watched the street.
Four minutes. Five.
“Wrap it up, Mike.” He kept his voice low, eyes on the road.
“Almost got the last row-”
Headlights swept across the glass.
Raph’s stomach dropped. The van. Early. It rolled up to the ramp, the doors banged open, and the Dragons piled out.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
Three more than he’d counted leaving.
“Move.” He was already crossing the catwalk, hand closing around Mikey’s arm. “Now.”
They almost made the stairs. Two Dragons were already on the landing, and one of them looked up.
Nobody moved for a second.
Then a gun came up, and Raph was already moving.
He put a sai through the first man’s wrist and his boot into the second. Behind him, Mikey’s nunchaku whistled. A body hit iron. Somebody shouted. More boots on the stairs. More guns.
“Behind me!” He didn’t look back. “Stay behind me!”
“I am behind you!”
Nine Dragons, three down, the stairs almost clear. The rest had scattered behind the crates. All except one big guy with a shaved head who was backing along the catwalk, white in the face, with an open ammo can at his feet.
Raph saw his hand go into it.
Saw what came out.
“Grenade!”
The pin was already gone. The guy threw it blind. It bounced off the rail, skittered along the iron, and rolled under the catwalk toward the nearest support column.
Raph lunged. Got a sai under it and flicked it up and away. Not far enough.
The blast hit in the air, a flat white crack that slapped his ears numb. Shrapnel hissed across the floor. The column beneath them shuddered, a long, ugly, grinding shudder, and gave out.
The catwalk dropped.
Raph didn’t think. There wasn’t time. He saw Mikey, wide-eyed and falling, and above them the whole rotten roof starting to sag, and every other thought in his head went out.
Mikey.
He got a hand in his brother’s belt. Hauled him in. Twisted in the air and put his shell to the sky.
They hit.
The floor drove the air out of him. Then something punched up into his left side, low, under the edge of his shell. Hard and cold. He barely had time to register it before the roof came down.
A slab of timber and plaster and steel landed across his back. His arms started to fold. He locked them. Planted his palms either side of Mikey’s head, locked his elbows, and held.
Something cracked in his shell. He felt it go, a long grinding fracture from the top ridge halfway down his spine. The pain was so bright and flat it didn’t feel like pain yet.
Then the dust came down. The building groaned. Settled.
Somewhere outside, an engine roared and tires screamed. The Dragons, running.
Then nothing at all.
Raph didn’t move. He stayed where he was with his arms shaking and his teeth clamped shut, and waited for the building to finish falling.
“Mike.” His voice came out flat and far away. He coughed. Grit coated his tongue. “Ya alive down there?”
“Raph?” The scrape of fingers on stone. Plaster pattered somewhere to the right, and Mikey’s voice came thin and breathless under it. “Yeah. I think so. I can’t see anything. Everything’s kind of heavy.”
“Good.” Relief hit him so hard his arms nearly gave. He locked them again. “Don’t move.”
Okay. Mikey was okay.
He made himself do it the way Leo had drilled into all of them. Check the people you’re covering. Check yourself.
Mikey lay folded in the back corner of a pocket barely two feet high, curled under Raph’s chest and arms with his knees drawn up. Scared. Not hurt.
The slab sat across Raph’s shell at a slant, one end propped on something steel. A loom frame, maybe. It was carrying some of the weight. Not all. Enough that he wasn’t being crushed flat. Not enough that he could let go.
No light. No way out.
Then himself.
His shell. That crack ran down his back, and every breath dragged along it. Bad, but it held.
Then his side.
His hips had come down toward the open end of the pocket, where the floor had broken through. A length of rebar had come up out of the broken concrete and gone through the bridge on his left, just above his hip. Thick as his thumb. Seated in the floor. He couldn’t move off it, and when he breathed, it moved.
Don’t think about it.
Something warm slid down his flank. Slow and steady. It ran over his hip and pooled on the floor behind him, out past the end of the beam.
The floor sloped away from Mikey. Small mercies.
Raph closed his eyes.
Not good. Not good, not good, not good.
His shell cell was somewhere under him, crushed. Mikey’s had gone flying in the fall. No comms. No light. Don would track the signal to the mill, sure. How long that took was the question.
“You okay up there?” Mikey asked. His voice came up small, working hard to stay light.
Here was what he could say. No. I’ve got a steel rod through my side, I’m bleeding, and I don’t know how long I’ve got.
And then what?
Then Mikey would lie there in the dark with no light and no free hands and no way to do a single damn thing. He’d hear every breath Raph took. He’d count them. He’d spend however long they had left listening for the one that didn’t come.
And scared meant moving. Moving meant the slab.
That was the reason. Tactical. Smart. He held onto it.
“Me? I feel like a million bucks.” Raph kept his voice dry and flat, eyes on the concrete inches from his face. “Always wanted to be a ceilin’.”
A shaky laugh puffed against his plastron. “Your arms are shaking.”
“’Cause I’m holdin’ up a buildin’.” He locked his elbows again, feeling the tremor run up into his shoulders. “Ya wanna try?”
“Pass.”
“Thought so.”
Under his chest, Mikey’s breaths were coming quick and shallow. Too quick. Raph knew that sound. He’d heard it from Mikey before, in tight places, in the dark.
“Breathe, Mike.”
“I’m breathing.”
“Ya breathin’ like a squeaky toy.” He let the words come out rough and bored, and kept his gaze fixed on the wall. “In for four. Out for four. Like Leo’s always yappin’ about.”
A pause. Mikey’s chest pressed against his plastron, ragged at first, then slower. Then steady.
“Better,” Raph said.
“That’s the first time you’ve ever said Leo was right about anything.” Some of the wobble had gone out of Mikey’s voice. Raph felt the thumb on his arm ease.
“Don’t repeat it.”
“I’m writing it down.”
“Ya can’t see your hand.”
“I’ll remember it.”
Raph snorted. It hurt. He turned it into a cough and swallowed what came up with it.
Something wet hit Mikey’s forehead. He flinched hard, and Raph felt it go through his whole body.
“Ugh. Dude.”
“Water line.” Raph tilted his head toward the steady spatter somewhere above them. The air tasted of wet plaster and old rust. “Busted when the roof came in. Don’t drink it.”
“I wasn’t gonna!”
“Ya would.”
A beat. Then, sheepish, “...Yeah, I would.”
“Idiot.” He felt Mikey grin in the dark, felt the tension go out of the hand on his arm. Just a little.
Good. Keep going.
He wasn’t a talker. He never had been. That was Mikey’s job. Mikey and his running commentary on everything from pizza toppings to the pigeons outside his window. Raph was the one who hit things and grunted and left.
But the silence was going to eat them both alive.
He couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Not one.
“Say somethin’.”
“Like what?” Mikey’s thumb stopped on his arm.
“I dunno. Ya got a mouth.” Raph kept his eyes on the wall. “Use it.”
“Wow. Okay. Rude.” There was a smile in it, small and shaky. A pause while Mikey dug around for something. “I’ve been working on a thing. For the weekend.”
Raph huffed. It pulled at his side, and he swallowed the sound down. “Fine. What is it?”
“Ribs.” Mikey’s voice perked up the way it always did when he got going. “But a real rub, like, from scratch. Smoked paprika, brown sugar, a little cinnamon-”
“Cinnamon.”
“A little.”
“On ribs.”
“It’s a thing, Raph. People do it.” Mikey sounded offended.
“People do a lotta stuff.”
“It makes it sweet, but deep. Warm.” The words were tumbling now, tripping over each other. “You can’t taste it exactly, you just know it’s there. And then a little cayenne at the back so it sneaks up on you-”
Raph’s mouth twitched. He pressed it flat against his arm before it could turn into anything.
“How long’s it take?” he asked.
“Five hours. Low and slow. You can’t rush ribs.” He felt the tiniest shift of Mikey's weight, “You gotta wrap them halfway or they dry out.”
The cold came slowly.
Raph noticed it the way you noticed a sound that had been going on for a while and stopped. It crawled up from his hips into his back. His hands had stopped feeling like hands. Every few seconds he had to check that his elbows were still locked, because he couldn’t feel them to tell.
The warm trickle down his flank had slowed. He knew what that meant. He didn’t finish the thought.
“...so then you glaze them at the end, right, with the sauce, and you put them back for like ten minutes-” Mikey was saying, and Raph tried to answer, and found the words weren’t there.
He tried again. His tongue felt too big for his mouth. The dark had gone thick and grey at the edges, swimming. A thin tinny ringing had started in his ears. He bit the inside of his cheek, hard enough to taste copper, and dragged his head back into the room.
“Go on,” he managed. “Glaze.”
“Raph?” Mikey stopped. The thumb on his arm stilled. “You okay?”
“Holdin’ up a buildin’.” It came out slow and rough. “Ya think it’s easy? Quit stallin’.”
“You sound tired.”
“’Cause I’m tired. Ya wanna swap?”
“I told you. Pass.” A little huff. Then he started talking again, relieved, or maybe just stubborn. “Okay. The glaze.”
Raph pressed his forehead to the concrete and listened. He didn’t follow all of it. He didn’t need to. He just needed the voice. Bright and breathless and going too fast, running through the steps like he’d done them a hundred times, the way he did when he was happy. Raph followed the shape of it instead, grunting in the right places, and every time he did, the voice went on. Mikey kept talking, which meant Mikey's mind wasn't on the situation in front of them.
“You’d eat them, right?” Mikey said, quieter. The talking had slowed. “Like, actually eat them. Not just say they’re fine.”
“If ya make ’em, I’ll eat ’em.”
“Promise?”
“I said so, didn’t I?”
“Say it again.”
Raph closed his eyes, “I’ll eat the damn ribs, Mike.”
“Okay.” Mikey let out a long, shaky breath. The thumb went back and forth, back and forth. “Okay. Good.”
Raph turned it over in the dark, the way you’d test a loose tooth. A promise about ribs. If this went wrong, it was the last thing his brother would ever hear out of him. He’d never broken a promise to Mikey. Not one that mattered. He decided he wasn’t going to start now.
The sound reached them first.
Scraping, faint, from far away. Stone on stone. Then an engine, low and rough. Raph knew that engine.
“That’s the Battle Shell.” Mikey’s whole body went tight under him. “Raph, that’s-”
Raph dragged in as much air as he could and bellowed.
“DOWN HERE!”
It tore something loose in his side. Black spots exploded across his vision. He kept going.
“NORTHEAST CORNER! UNDER THE ROOF!”
“Raph!” Leo, hoarse and close. Closer than he’d thought. “We hear you. Stay put.”
“Ain’t goin’ anywhere.” He let his forehead drop against the concrete for a second, pulling air through his teeth.
Then Don, directly above them, clipped down to nothing. “Raph. Describe your position.”
“Pocket, two feet high. Roof’s sittin’ on a steel frame at an angle. Mostly stable. Mikey’s in the corner under me.”
“Is he hurt?”
“No.”
“Are you?”
Raph stared at the pitted concrete in front of him. A faint grey light had started to leak through a seam in the rubble.
“Bit banged up.”
“Raph.” A warning. Don had gone very quiet.
“Couple scrapes. That’s it.”
A long pause. “Noted.” Flat. Too flat.
Above them, the winch whined. Cable rattled. A long shriek of steel dragged across the pile, and dust sifted down in sheets. Leo’s hands were digging somewhere close. Raph could hear his brother breathing hard.
“Cribbing’s going in on the north side,” Don called. “I’m opening a gap at the head end. Mikey, when I say, crawl toward my voice. Head first. Don’t turn around. Don’t touch anything.”
“What about Raph?”
“Raph’s next.”
“I’m not going without-”
“Ya blockin’ the way out, numbnuts.” Raph didn’t look down. He kept his eyes on the wall and put every ounce of bite he had left into it. “Don can’t get to me till ya move.”
“Raph-”
“I ain’t goin’ anywhere. Where am I gonna go?” He rolled his jaw. “Move.”
A hiss. A groan of metal. A sliver of grey light opened at the head of the pocket and widened by inches. The weight on Raph’s shell eased a little, and white sparks crawled across his vision. Mikey still hadn’t moved. His hand was clamped on Raph’s forearm.
“Mikey.” The word cracked straight down the middle. Raph swallowed and tried again. “Go.”
Something in his voice must have gotten through. The hand let go. He felt his brother wriggle out from under his chest. Felt the space beneath his plastron go empty. Felt him crawl, slow and shaky, toward the light.
Raph turned his face to the wall. He didn’t look. He didn’t have to. He could hear every bit of it. The scrape of Mikey’s knees. The creak of his gear. A cough, and Don’s voice, low and fast, and Mikey’s shaky laugh as somebody hauled him out into the open air.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Mikey’s voice, breathless, craning. “Where’s Raph, is he-”
“Right behind you.” Leo said it too evenly. “Stay here.”
The grey light shifted. A flashlight beam swept across the concrete, across Raph’s face, and down.
It found the rod. It found the dark pool spreading past the end of the beam. And Raph heard Leo’s breath stop. Just for a second.
He turned his head. He couldn’t help it. Leo was crouched at the head of the gap, flashlight in hand, absolutely still. His face hadn’t changed. Leo’s face never changed. But his eyes had gone wide and bright, fixed on the blood, and for half a heartbeat he looked at Raph like he’d never seen him before. Then it was gone. Locked away. Leo’s jaw set.
“Don.” Very calm. “In here. Now.” He didn’t take his eyes off Raph. “Mikey, stay with the Battle Shell.”
“Leo?” Mikey, outside. His voice had gone high. “Why are you saying it like that? What’s wrong? Raph?”
“Ain’t nothin’, Mike.” It came out thinner than he wanted. Raph pressed his forehead back to the wall.
“That’s not-”
“Mikey.” Leo, sharp as a blade. “Stay.”
Footsteps scuffed away. Reluctant. Raph shut his eyes. Leo went down on his belly and crawled in. He didn’t ask. He came in at Raph’s shoulder, wedging himself into the gap between the slab and the floor, and got his own shoulder under the edge of it. Raph felt the slab shift. Felt a sliver of the load come off his back and settle on something else.
“Leo.” He blinked. “Don’t.”
“I am just steadying it until Don gets here with the equipment.” Leo’s voice was tight. His shoulder was already trembling against the concrete. A lie.
“Ya shoulder’ll crack.”
“Then it cracks.” Leo shifted, got his legs braced against the floor. “Keep your arms where they are. I’ve got the edge.”
It was the voice he used when the argument was over. Raph had heard it a thousand times and hated it every one. His elbows stopped shaking. Not by much. Enough that he noticed.
“I’ve got you. Look at me.”
Raph turned his head.
Leo’s face was a few inches away, grey with dust, one shoulder jammed under the edge of a slab that weighed more than the Battle Shell. His arm trembled. His eyes were too bright with effort. But his voice stayed level. Quiet.
“Ya look like shit,” Raph mumbled.
“So do you.” Something that wasn’t quite a laugh caught in Leo’s throat. “Stay awake. Tell me about the Dragons. How many did you drop?”
“Three.” His tongue felt thick. “Four, with the grenade guy.”
“Four. Good.”
“Ya askin’ for the report or somethin’?”
“I always do."
Beside them, Don crawled in. He didn’t say a word as he looked at the wound. Raph heard it in the way his breath caught. Then the clinical voice came down over it like a lid.
“Left side, above the hip. Through the bridge, seated in the floor.” Short. Flat. Don’s fingers pressed gently around the entry point, and Raph hissed. “Through the muscle wall. Nothing else I can see. It’s plugging itself, which is the only reason you’re still talking.”
“Good news?”
“Don’t talk.”
“Ya started it.” Raph snorted, keeping his voice steady, and felt the rod grind against bone.
“Raph.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Don’s hands were moving. Packing. Cold gauze pressed in around the rod, hard enough that Raph bit down on a sound.
“Jack’s seated,” Don said to Leo, not to him. “Lifting on three. Hold the edge steady. Don’t let it twist.”
“Holding.”
“One. Two.”
The slab rose off Raph’s shell.
All of it, at once, and every muscle he owned wanted to fold. The steel took the load. The dust fell in sheets. Raph’s arms gave out, and Leo’s hand slid to his shoulder and caught him before his chest hit the concrete. Leo’s own shoulder jerked as the slab rocked against it. He grunted and held it.
“Easy. Easy. The jack’s got it.”
He eased out from under, slow, careful. One hand never left Raph.
“Cutters on the rod,” Don said. “Leo, brace his hips. Don’t let him twist.”
“Got it.”
Leo moved down. Both hands closed on Raph’s hips, firm and gentle, steadying him. Raph felt his brother’s whole body go tense. Raph turned his head. Leo was still there, near the rod, still looking at him.
“Don?”
“Cutting. One.”
Metal bit through iron with a shriek that went through Raph’s teeth. The rod jumped inside him, and every nerve he had lit up white. He didn’t remember the sound he made. He just knew it was there. Arms under his. A violent, sickening drag. Concrete scraping across his shell. The world went white at the edges, then grey.
The last thing he heard was Leo’s voice, rough and close and shaking.
“I’ve got you.”
The infirmary smelled like antiseptic and burnt coffee.
He came up slowly, in pieces. His side first, a huge dull ache under a haze of whatever Don had pumped into him. Then the tight press of dressings. Then a rigid band across his shell where something held the crack closed. Don stood at his side with two fingers on his wrist. His eyes were red-rimmed.
“Don’t move.”
“’m not.” His voice came out a croak.
“Good.” Don let go. He didn’t step back. “It’s out. The rod went through the bridge on your left and stopped against the pelvis. It missed the kidney. It missed the bowel. It missed everything that mattered.” His voice was flat, clinical, the words clipped like he was reading a chart. “You lost too much blood. You’ve got torn muscle, a cracked shell, and you’re staying in that bed until I say.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Don’t wanna hear the rest.”
Don’s hands were shaking. He saw Raph see it. He turned away and picked up the clipboard, and held it a little too hard.
“Bit banged up.” Don said it flat, to the clipboard. Not quite a laugh. “Nice try.”
“Didn't wanna scare Mikey.” He said after a beat of silence.
“Yeah.” Don’s jaw worked. He set the clipboard down with exaggerated care. “I heard what you were doing down there.”
“Figured ya would.”
“That was the right call. You're damn lucky you're alive.” He scrubbed the heel of his hand across his eye, quick, like he thought no one was looking.
“Where’s Mike?”
“Outside with Leo. Leo’s had him since we got back.” Don’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “Leo's had his work cut out for him on that front. I’ll send Mikey in now.”
He went out. The door shut behind him. Raph heard voices in the hall, low and indistinct. Leo’s, steady. Don’s, shorter. Then footsteps, quick and uneven, going the other way, and a faraway door, and water running in a sink for a very long time.
He stared at the ceiling and said nothing. Then the door opened and Mikey stood in the doorway.
Still in his gear. Dust ground into every crease. A smear of grey across his cheek that someone had tried to wipe off and missed. His eyes were swollen. He stood there for a long time like he wasn’t sure he was allowed in.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
Mikey crossed the room slowly. Sat in the chair beside the cot. His eyes went to the dressing along Raph’s side, the gauze packed thick and white, the rigid band across his shell. His hands twisted in his lap.
“That’s a lot of gauze.”
“Don likes gauze.”
A small, wet laugh. Mikey pressed the back of his wrist to his nose and sniffed hard.
“I saw them carry you out.” His voice was rough. “To the Battle Shell.” He swallowed. “I knew you’d cover me. I knew the second the roof came down.” He sniffed again. “I just didn’t know it was that. You were asking me about cinnamon.”
“Ya brought it up.”
“You said you’d eat them.” His voice cracked on the last word, and then his face went.
Raph watched it happen.
The corners first. Then the eyes. Then all of it at once, falling wide open the way it always did. No lid. No mask. Mikey’s face was a thing that didn’t know how to hide, and it was aimed right at him, wet and wrecked and a few feet from the wall he’d stared at for an hour. Raph didn’t turn away.
“Hey.” Rough. Low. “C’mere.”
Mikey folded over the edge of the cot, careful of the lines, and pressed his forehead to Raph’s good shoulder. His whole body shook. Raph got a hand up. It took longer than it should have. He set it on the back of his brother’s head.
“Next time I’m holdin’ the roof,” Mikey mumbled into the blanket.
“No.”
“You’re being a dick.” Muffled. Thick.
“I’m bein' right.”
Mikey laughed, soggy and half broken. Then he was crying again, and Raph held onto him, and neither of them said anything for a long time. Eventually, his brother’s breathing evened out. His weight went slack. Asleep. Raph stayed where he was.
You kept him calm.
That was how it would be told. Leo would say it. Don would say it. The tactical call. The big brother who held it together so the baby didn’t fall apart. They’d tell it that way for years, and they wouldn’t be wrong.
But they wouldn’t be right either.
He knew it now, lying here with a hole in his side and his brother’s face finally in front of him. The truth sat in his gut like a stone.
He’d turned his face to the wall. Even when the light came. Even when Don kept asking. Even when Mikey was crawling out and Raph knew what he’d hear in Leo’s voice, what his own brother’s face would do. He’d stared at that grey pitted concrete and kept talking, and kept joking, and filled the dark with noise so nobody had to look at anything.
Not just for the slab.
Because Leo’s face shut. Don’s went numbers and procedures. But Mikey’s didn’t have a lid. When something hurt him, it fell. All of it, wide open, and whoever caused it had to stand there and watch.
Raph could take the rod. The cold. The weight. The blood going out of him an inch at a time.
He couldn’t take that.
Selfish.
The word sat in his throat and wouldn’t go down. His hand stayed where it was, steady on the back of Mikey’s head. Mikey’s breath was warm against his shoulder.
He'd do whatever it took to stop Mikey from looking brokenhearted on his account.
And if that made him selfish? Then so be it.