#ratdad

[goodlucktai]

hold the world to its best (2/?)

rottmnt word count: 2k pairing: raph & OC, raph & leo title borrowed from light by sleeping at last part of the archer au

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x

Raph doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until Draxum completes a cursory examination of the tiny turtle in Raph’s arms and says, “He’ll be fine.” Then it feels like Raph’s lungs unclench and let air in all at once. His knees even go a little wobbly.  

“It is a common spell that schoolchildren use for mischief,” Draxum goes on, watching Gio with an unreadable expression. “It will last about a week, and he probably won’t retain any memory of his time in this state. So when you inevitably drop him, or lose him, or traumatize him in some other third way, he will not retaliate later.”

Like clockwork, everyone in the room starts talking at once, vehemently denying the possibility of ever doing anything to even remotely upset this babyfied version of their eldest sibling. In part, Raph thinks it’s relief that causes the outpouring of emotion—relief that they can put their worry behind them and be offended instead—and Draxum knows them well enough to know exactly what he’s doing as he feeds into the commotion with an eye roll. 

Raph looks down at Gio and the little guy tilts his head back to look up at him neutrally, ladybug keychain clutched in his hands. Waiting to see what Raph is going to do. He doesn’t like the raised voices, dark eyes more cautious now than curious, but he still doesn’t seem outwardly afraid. Probably because no one is outright yelling, and none of it is aimed at him. 

Gio is so small at this age. It feels impossible that any of the rest of them could ever have been this small, even though there are entire albums full of baby pictures in Splinter’s room that would emphatically prove otherwise. 

He doesn’t seem afraid, but he doesn’t look like he knows how safe he is, either. 

“These guys are real silly, huh?” Raph says. “If they get too loud, you just let Raph know, and I’ll hush them right up. That’s what big brothers are for.” 

They’ve already broken down the situation to Gio as best they could, and Draxum was kind about using language little ears would understand during his assessment. It helps that Giorgio grew up in the Hidden City of some other dimension, surrounded by the magic that his siblings hadn’t discovered until they were teenagers—it was easier to explain to him that there was an entire life he’d lived that he’d just forgotten about than it would have been to explain the same thing to any of Raph’s other siblings at this age. 

And it certainly helps that four of the six people Gio has met so far have scales and shells much like his own. They match in a way that a child would pick up on instantly, that gives credit to the story they told him. It doesn’t matter in real life, but that sense of belonging is so important to children. 

Gio hasn’t expressed any disbelief—but he wouldn’t, would he? He hasn’t even asked a single question and Raph knows he must have them. He just watches everything carefully, paying very close attention when someone moves quickly or talks loudly. 

He’s so small, Raph keeps thinking. And so quiet. Donnie was nonverbal when they were children, but unless he was having a shutdown, he made himself heard in plenty of other ways. He wasn’t shy about using his teeth to make them listen. 

“Give it a week,” Draxum reiterates before leaving. He pauses in front of Raph, and his usual stern expression that only Mikey ever manages to melt doesn’t seem quite as severe as it usually does when he looks at the baby Raph’s holding. 

It occurs to him, abruptly, that Draxum only saw the turtles very briefly after their mutation, before Splinter stole them away to a kinder life. Gio is older now than he would have been back then, but not by much. Draxum thought of them as weapons at first, not children, but the last few years of coparenting unruly teenagers have informed his opinion. There’s something very complicated about the way he studies Gio. 

Raph understands Mikey’s affection for the old goat, and he understands Splinter’s grudging tolerance, and thinks he himself lands somewhere in the middle of the two. Raph will never be able to forgive him for Leo’s fear of heights. Raph will never be able to thank him for those tireless hours he spent healing Mikey’s hands. 

If he asked to hold Gio in this moment, Raph would probably let him. But it’s a relief when Draxum only nods to himself and heads for the door without another word. 

“Always a pleasure to have you in our home,” Donnie says loudly. 

“Isn’t it, though?” Mikey says, either not catching the sarcasm or electing to ignore it. 

“You guys are setting the worst example for our little guy,” April says, as if she wasn’t in the thick of the commotion all of five minutes ago. 

“Nuh-uh,” Mikey says maturely. “We’re the best role models in the greater Manhattan area, right, Georgino?”

Equally as surprising as when he put his arms out to be picked up back in the market, Gio opens his mouth as if he’s going to answer, and then quickly snaps it shut without speaking, like he suddenly remembered he wasn’t supposed to. He turns his head to tuck his face against Raph’s plastron, probably because everyone’s looking at him. 

“Hey,” Mikey says in a softer tone, some of the joy bleeding from him in favor of something with tender edges. But it only makes Gio press his face harder against Raph’s scutes, tiny shoulders creeping up to his ears. 

“Hey Georgie,” Leo singsongs abruptly, and waits until one big dark eye peeks out at him to go on, “wanna see another magic trick?”

Gio nods, maybe because he actually does want to see one, or maybe just to be polite, or maybe just because Leo’s the one asking. Leo shows Gio his empty hands and then reaches past his spotted cheek to pull a snack size Kit Kat out of thin air, like a street magician making a coin appear from behind someone’s ear. 

“How’d this get back there?” he says, playfully grandiose, unwrapping it perfunctorily and putting the prize in Gio’s tentative hand. 

Leo has never had a sweet tooth, but nowadays he always has at least a couple of Laffy Taffys in his pocket, so he can read the jokes on the wrapper and Gio can eat the candy. Raph is glad he has something that’s less of a choking hazard to offer the kid, that he thought that far ahead about even this. 

Gio takes a bite of chocolate wafer and his eyes get huge and round. He stares at Leo like he’s literally never tasted anything like it before and crams the second bite in his mouth before he’s quite finished with the first. 

“Woah, slow down,” Raph half-laughs. 

“Yeah, there’s plenty more where that came from, kitkat,” Leo says. 

“You’re gonna spoil his dinner,” Mikey complains, noticeably doing nothing to stop Leo from unwrapping another chocolate. His red eyes are studying the scene carefully, clued in to what Raph has largely guessed already, what Leo has probably figured out before any of the rest of them—that there is something here worth worrying about—but he smiles all big and scrunches his beak when Gio glances his way. 

From elsewhere in the lair, a door slams. Raph suddenly remembers that they had texted Splinter the bare details when they got home and then proceeded to completely forget about the group chat that has probably been blowing up ever since. 

“Heads up, boys,” April says grimly. Donnie takes three decisive steps backwards that put him solidly behind Raphael, and then, as an afterthought, a metal limb unfolds from his battle shell that draws Mikey back with him. Coward. 

Gio looks from Leo up to Raph, chocolate smudging against his fingers the longer he hesitates to eat his last bite of candy. He looks worried about whatever has made Donnie and Mikey hide, and doesn’t know April well enough to understand that her warning was half a joke, and doesn’t know why Raph and Leo haven’t reacted at all. He doesn’t know what cue to follow. He’s waiting to see what they’re going to do. 

“It’s okay,” Raph tells him gently. He’s rumbling, deep and low in his chest, and doesn’t know when he started doing that. “Remember we told you about our dad? That’s him. He might be loud at first, but not because he’s mad.”

“Sometimes you can have really big feelings that aren’t mad or sad, and it’s hard to make them come out quiet,” Mikey pipes up from behind them. Raph feels a familiar weight on his shell, slight and crawling upwards, a second before Mikey’s face pokes over his shoulder. He beams, and adds, “Like when you’re so happy you burst out laughing!” 

“You got lost once, and he was really worried,” Leo says. “He’s gonna be so happy to see you. He can’t wait, that’s why he’s running all the way here.”

Splinter is mid-lecture by the time he makes it to the den. They could kind of hear it as he was making his way down the tunnel, mostly indistinguishable and bouncing around off the brickwork and creating an echo effect that only made it more distorted. The tone was loud and clear, though. Splinter was ticked off. 

“—all of my children have cellphones and for what? For what? They are lucky I do not pay for them because I would certainly stop paying for them now! Money down the drain!”

“Oh my god, we didn’t check our messages for like half an hour,” Leo mutters under his breath. 

“I heard that young man!” Splinter snaps as he finally rounds the corner. Talking right over Leo’s wounded “HOW?”, Splinter goes on, “You had me worried sick! What sort of message was that, hm? That my Gray was cursed by some miscreant in the Hidden City, and you called Baron Draxum before you called your own father, and then refused to—to—”

It’s glaringly obvious when he finally lays eyes on Giorgio. His mouth hangs open, then snaps shut, and Raph has that realization he had before with Draxum. Once upon a time, all the turtles were this small, but Draxum never got to hold any of them. Once upon a time, Gio lived when Splinter thought he had died, only he got lost and grew up somewhere out of his father’s sight. 

He must have grieved for this baby, Raph realizes. He must have mourned him. Even when Gio came home, there were memories and milestones Splinter would never get to have with him that he had with his other boys. 

“Oh, Gray,” Splinter murmurs. “My little baby Spot. Look at you, sweetheart.” 

Leo looks completely disarmed by the tone of voice, and Raph isn’t far behind him. He hasn’t heard that voice from dad in years, since he was a little turtle himself. It’s different even from the gentle way Splinter talks in the medbay when one of them is hurt, or at bedsides after bad dreams. 

And it’s not surprising when Gio drops the candy he was still holding onto and stretches out his arms again, more hopefully than when he wanted Raph to lift him, more urgently than when Leo offered him a treat. Parents are something that little orphans probably dream about. And here’s a parent, looking right at him, talking as if he loves him. Gio’s reaching insistently, even wriggling forward like he’ll tip out of Raph’s grip completely if he has to.

Splinter is in front of Raph in the blink of an eye, lifting Gio out of his arms and tucking him close. He makes it look so natural, as if his arms aren’t made to make movies or fight endless battles in the Nexus, actually, they’re meant to do exactly this. Hold little turtles and rock them slightly, sticky smudged fingers and all. 

His eyes are wet. Raph is eighteen, and definitely still not old enough that he can bear to watch his dad cry. He reaches blindly for a nearby sibling, finds Donnie, and curls an arm around him. Tellingly, Donnie allows the hug without so much as a token hiss. 

“Sweetheart,” Splinter says again, rubbing his furry cheek against the top of Gio’s head. Some ancient hurt inside him finally beginning to heal. “My little baby. I missed you when you were gone. I’m so glad you’re here.”

[ivyrosebeep]

#6 for the Lamb questions :3

Lilith was adopted as an infant by a certain rat and snake. She grew up loved and REALLY sheltered

[7-ferrets-in-a-coat]

why does the lamb wear their red coat like that 👁👁

Probably just a style quirk , im sure it's not that deep or a sweet doodle under the cuthey dont click on that

[takerfoxx]

Never has an AMV so perfectly encapsulated everything that a single character was all about.

[rabiesram]

new words!

[brightlotusmoon]

Drama queens.

Master Splinter arrived just in time to save Michelangelo from a Raphael pounding.

[paperlifted]

My favourite scene out of all season 5. He's so gentle with them ;_;

[cconfusedkat]

Warmup!! Mystic & Allure aftermath of their fight , few hours later returning from the underworld and allure is in perfect condition while mystic still has a hole in their stomach 😭

I realized making Mystic a follower was much better than killing them off for good. Cuz then i realized, oh yeah i think not only just having Allure kill both narinder and mystic in the same boss fight is important but also the fact i could also make them both follower forms

Anyways, narinder was killed first by allure and then scurried away back to the pentagram to teleport back to the cult and seek help from sozonius. Thennn it took like two hours for mystic and allure to fight,, allure uses a spear for the final hit and that's what kills mystic,, thus they become a follower and this happens LMAO- the quality is so ass

Additionally heres this as another warmup ,, theyd both probably be a bit awkward generally for quite some time due to the fact that the one who started the genocide (mystic) is now residing in a cult dedicated to the six [and dead] lambs mystic sworn to hate forever 😭 ik Archangelo and paloma are having a blast in the underworld together over mystic being a total loser now HAHA

And also allure has no idea what the mystique species are like. Theyre easily amused at the fact that mystiques are in fact shadows and why it explains their lanky figures, which is how mystic is built as a follower ,,, mystic IS the last of their own kind after all so. Karma? For starting a lamb genocide? Cuz now none of your shadows exist other than the witnesses i guess 😭

[endlesscolddreams]

Why don't you ship usuk?

Because there are many types of love, and I honestly think familial love applies much better here.

That is not to say I don’t understand why one ships them or that they don’t fit, because that would be a lie. They are similar and different in equal measures, which makes them a great pair, and the gloomy vs. sunshine trope is appealing, but I can’t really ship them because there is a certain unconditional love between them that’s familial and not romantic in my opinion.

Familial bonds are foundational, providing a sense of security, identity, and history. Romantic bonds are more fluid, passionate, and dynamic, built on mutual attraction and emotional connection. Romantic love can be fleeting, can come and go, can destroy you and resent someone so much you want to destroy them because of the risks of change and heartbreak, but only a familial bond is enduring and eternal despite conflict or distance.

Take it with a grain of salt because, and I will repeat, this is just my opinion, and I’m sure someone must have put this into better words before, but I never talked about it, and I feel like developing this question.

America is the boy who grew up admiring England, doing everything to please, and while England felt this huge unconditional love for him because he was his boy—the best thing that ever happened to him really—he is a messy person who has trouble opening up, and each time he tried he would say the wrong thing or just dismiss America entirely. He was a strong empire with bigger problems at home, many places to be from one corner of the world to the other, and his guilt was enormous because he could see that America was just like him: a small, unruly thing who was lonely and unprepared, which meant toughening him up. It was exactly what made him become what England became, but obviously the situation is much different, times are different, and America may have many similarities to him on the surface, but deep down he is a completely different person.

(Sidenote: I headcanon that his avoidant and anxious attachment style is more like Francis than like England's avoidant tsundere, which makes Arthur astonished and completely out of his depth. Another thing to take into account is that, just like Francis, America is his own person and much more resilient than England, something England doesn't fully understand. England is sensible, prone to hold onto traditions since they give him control, and his youth was such a mess he was never his own person and suffers from a chronic identity and woes. 

Not that England shows that side of him; like all nations, his mask was carefully built to make him look unfeeling and cold, a preventive measure that creates a distance that is very common between parents and children. It's very difficult to read old nations properly; they have a flair for theatrics and meticulous rules and etiquette that only they still follow. America doesn't understand it, but he's not interested in knowing it either since he willingly prefers to be seen as a fool, his own facade, and basically ignores it, which only increases that distance. 

France uses his dramatic nature to overexpose and act out emotions that blatantly hide his real feelings, and I get the feeling that sometimes Alfred does that just to infuriate England.)

Now, America indeed needed to get rid of England, not only for his country but because of Arthur himself.

Arthur, the person, was emotionally dependent on him. He controlled everything to fuel up that dependency, and Alfred was finally enlightened enough to see that while he loved his father figure he was being caged in. He is his own man; he is strong enough, and he aims higher than he’s allowed to, so there is only one solution: freedom.

France plays a huge part in this by telling him about the days of his own captivity, days spent locked in palaces, forced to be the ideal 'representative' his bosses dreamed of a nation like him when all he wanted was to be a pirate like Spain, a missionary travelling the world, maybe dress prettily like he always loved without being forced to forgo certain colours or fashion, and most important of all: mingle with his lovely humans instead of sitting in his gilded cage. France is petty, and his resentment fuelled his words, but at the same time he saw promise in America, even if that promise was mainly to undermine and distract England from his goals.

(I will always hc that Francis dreamed of a world in his image and truly thought that having it all would bring peace and beauty for all these unfortunate souls who are less civilised.)

I digress here, but America looked up to France too because while England likes to trash talk his enemy, he respects him and even admires certain parts of him, which led to America's willingness to meet the blasted frog who makes England so angry he shakes like a flustered puppy.

This is to say that the fallout of the relationship between father and son was a mess because they wouldn't communicate. It doesn't mean the fallout wasn't needed—far from it. England was always too proud to back down, unwilling to conceive that he was not completely right and righteous in what he did for America because ultimately he was doing his best and loved him more than anything else.

But as soon as the war was over, they sat together and made new agreements that completely neglected all the others who helped America in the war. True story, it's like the kid who finally leaves home yet needs the parents help to make his new house presentable and functional. I imagine England would give him a proper trousseau, something he never gave anyone else because this was his heir and greatest hope/disappointment.

Still, there was a strain. Arthur was truly hurt, felt abandoned, and blamed everyone and himself for what happened, and Alfred was also hurt because all he wanted was Arthur’s support yet all he got was stiflement.

I think Alfred was always sure of Arthur’s love (unlike Matthew with Francis), but because Arthur can’t properly show it in a reasonable way (everyone has different needs and Alfred’s love languages are way different than Arthur’s in the end), their relationship was strained for that wretched century. It didn't’ help that Arthur was still trying to meddle in his business when he was growing and proving himself. Most of all, Alfred wanted to impress and show the world his valour, something Arthur didn’t think he needed to do because his worth was always very clear to him.

They only really begin speaking when they are forced together by the wars. The first one showed them how similar their interests and ways of working are, which opened them a little for proper communication, and the second really made them sit down and talk because enough is enough and America is a superpower in his own right and England is not as mighty as he once was, but he is still respected and finally begins to learn how to let Alfred go and trusts him to come back safe.

Nowadays, they're more in tune than not. England reluctantly let's America do his thing despite being the first to run across the world just to point out he warned him as he bakes him a treat (he's a lovely baker), and America, despite it all, keeps sneakily asking for England's advice because he's old and lived too long, and America secretly will always look up to him as an example and moral compass.

The thing with love and parents is that the relationship will never be easy.

You don't really communicate; the parents always see you as a small kid who keeps fucking up; you see them as obsolete fools who try to keep relevant despite the world being completely different, yet you still love each other and behave a lot like one another despite it all.

Alfred truly resembles Arthur in certain things (just ask Russia who will tell that he did the same thing during both the great game with England and the cold war with America, or maybe France, who has a certain fondness for America because he reminds him of the enemy across the channel. You can even ask China, who will tell his memory, sometimes mixes them both together, greedy children who can't play nice and enjoy disturbing his sleep. The only ones who refuse to see the semblance are indeed Arthur and Alfred, yet I think Alfred is more aware of it than Arthur, king of denial) and is almost a truly different version of England in others, but in the end it's pretty much clear that they’re related, or at least love each other unconditionally in a way a romantic love would destroy.

[daydreaming-jessi]

This is the Lamb. They do not remember any other name. They have an uncomfortably blotchy memory of their past before their execution. Their cult is their new Flock. They try to ignore the fact that they are the last lamb, and that they’re not really a lamb anymore. They are entirely devoted to The One Who Waits, who gave them a second chance. They despise the Bishops with a burning passion. They don’t like how angry this has made them. They fell in love, and learned how to let go. They do not fear death, but they’re terrified of being forgotten. They frequently visit Ratau and his friends, and sees them all as their family. They envy their past self. They want to learn how to give second chances.

[joffyworld]

LMAOOOOOOOOO PERFECT OMG

pov u just got a new immortal boyfriend

[goodlucktai]

a bigger heart grew back

rise of the tmnt post-movie characters: leo & splinter, raph & splinter word count: 5k title borrowed from no hell by cloud cult

read on ao3

x

Splinter thought he had lived through all of life’s worsts already.

Losing his mother, estranging himself from what was left of his family, moving to the States as an orphan of his own making, falling in what he thought was love and losing his freedom as a direct result—

Years spent underground where he was forced to fight like a dog, an unwanted mutation that guaranteed his exile from society, that first bleak night in the sewers with nothing but the clothes on his back and four infants who depended upon him entirely and the utter conviction that he was going to fail them—

The resurrection of the Shredder, the collapse of Splinter’s home and the exodus of his children, the fear he had become unfortunately intimate with in those fraught hours—that his boys would become orphans, too—

Raphael’s escape pod opening and Leonardo tumbling out, eyes glassy and chest heaving with panic—sweet, sensitive Red covered in a fleshy pink parasite and forced to attack the siblings he loved more than life itself, those little turtles he had fussed over and carried and kept safe since he was just a little turtle himself—

But nothing compared to hearing the voice of his second youngest child as he prepared to end his own life.  

His precious Blue, who could sell water to a fish, bravely trying to convince his siblings that it was right for him to go. Already pulling away, beginning the vanishing act, even as Raphael begged him not to do it. 

All for that tiresome, nebulous greater good. As if any happy ending could possibly exist with Leonardo removed from the narrative. 

Splinter had thought he knew what pain was, but his heart, patchwork, secondhand thing that it was, had never broken like this before. He crumpled to the ground, and listened to Blue’s line on the comms explode into a strange whine and then static and then nothing, and it was over. 

His Blue would never crawl into his armchair for late night Spanish telenovelas again, Splinter realized. Would never wheedle and bribe and coerce him into chess matches, because he didn’t seem to know he could just ask and Splinter would play as many matches with him as there was time in a day for. Would never run from a successfully antagonized sibling and fill the lair with his ringing, infectious laughter. Would never fall asleep at the kitchen table over a medical textbook he pretended to be too cool for in the daylight hours. Would never effortlessly argue his twin out of the lab for dinner, would never lift Orange up on his shoulders to get a hard-to-reach mixing bowl because teamwork makes the dream work, would never painstakingly stitch together a ripped teddy bear for the brother whose fingers were too big to handle needle and thread ever, ever again. 

There is not a word for a parent who has lost a child. There is not a word for that particular flavor of grief that carves you empty at the same time that it fills you to the last hopeless, drowning inch. 

April sobbed openly beside him, her small, strong shoulders shaking. She had always been exactly what Splinter would have wished for in a daughter, and so the Hamato curse didn’t spare her, either. It takes and it takes and it takes. 

And then Michelangelo turned his back on despair and handed his family a miracle. 

Splinter could feel his remaining sons’ ninpo stir and then surge together, and the sheer forceful brilliance of it staggered him from all the way over on the other side of the city. He knew better than to hope—but he also knew that nothing existed in this world or the next that could possibly outstubborn his children, or strong-arm them into abandoning each other, or quite frankly make them do any single thing they adamantly as a group did not want to do. 

“Guys,” April choked out. “Talk to me, what’s going on? Hello?”

Thudding footfalls announced Casey approaching at a run. He jumped over one of the pinned Krang’s flailing tentacles as if he dodged ballistic alien parts every day of his life and skidded to the ground beside them on armored knees.

“I felt it,” Blue’s child from another life gasped, face tacky with half-dried tears. “That’s Uncle Angie opening a door. No one else could do it but him.”

Casey had a familiar katana at his side, blue and gleaming. His fingers seemed like they wanted to linger on the hilt but he handed it over to Splinter agreeably enough. The lingering ninpo in the blade usually welcomed Splinter warmly, eager to be of use, a telling mirror of the way Leonardo himself was so anxious to please and be praised. But this time the tool that Splinter picked up was an innate, lifeless thing. 

He prodded tentatively with his own qi. The runes flickered once, half-hearted, in the manner of a dog waking at the sound of a key in the door, ascertaining the person there was not the one it belonged to, and laying its head back down to sleep. 

Splinter would not be able to follow the whims of his son’s ninpo to create a portal while it lay dormant. His own uselessness crushed him. 

“Raph mentioned Staten Island earlier,” April said, wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm and pushing herself to her feet, business-like and brisk because she couldn’t afford to be anything else. “I doubt the ferry’s running, and the bridge is going to be a gridlock nightmare, so it looks like we’re stealing a boat.”

“If your mother asks, I did not condone this,” Splinter said hoarsely. “That said, the marina is too far to run to, so first we are stealing a car.”

They were halfway across the river in a cruiser that probably wasn’t meant to sustain the sixty miles an hour April was pushing when that startling shout of their family’s ninpo finally started to fade into a soft-spoken susurrus. 

Before it was too quiet to make out clearly, he felt it: that achingly familiar mischievous blue energy, like a playful breeze flying above everything. Much smaller than usual, less spirited—giving more of the impression of a tiny tide pool creature hiding inside its shell than a smartmouthed sixteen year old boy with the whole world in his corner—but present. 

Alive. 

“Sensei,” Casey whispered. 

“They got him,” April said, a ferocious, not-to-be-trifled-with look in her eye, all but daring the universe to try to make her a liar. “They saved him somehow, I know it.”

They were both Hamato enough to feel it as certainly as Splinter did.

But the boys hadn’t thought to include anyone else in their immediate, hard-won victory—and in fact, the call Splinter, April and Casey finally received some ten minutes later was one of outright panic. 

“Dad, dad, are you there?” Orange’s voice warbled. He sounded all of fifteen years old and frightened in a way that set Splinter’s fur on edge instantly. “Dad, Leo’s hurt bad. He was awake a second ago, and talking even, but then he stopped making sense and just—just fell—”

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Purple added, high-strung and liable to start biting if one more thing went catastrophically wrong within a mile of his person. “I’m scanning him but I don’t—I’m not a doctor I don’t know—”

“Send the readouts to me,” Casey said quickly, pulling his mask down, its lenses glowing green as the interface came to life. “Sensei trained me in field medicine, I can help with anything short of an open-heart surgery.”

“You take after your father,” Donatello replied. “Irredeemable overachievers.”

That faint thread of gratitude in his voice would go unheard by anyone who didn’t know him, but Casey huffed a near-silent exhale, having heard it loud and clear.

What Future Boy had to share with them wasn’t great, but it wasn’t the worst it could have been, either. Leonardo had sustained a number of broken bones and soft tissue damage, the cartilage in his right knee was torn as if the joint had been viciously twisted, one of his cheekbones was fractured, and even his shell had suffered a few hairline cracks. Altogether, he was looking at a long recovery, not unlike what the survivor of a traumatic car accident might have had to look forward to—but he would recover. 

It wasn’t enough to prepare Splinter for actually seeing him. His Baby Blue, a tiny little thing in Raphael’s arms, with a face so beaten it was hard to make out the bright red stripe on one side. 

“Okay,” April said, voice thick with anger and hurt and love. “Okay. Everyone on the boat.”

And finally they were home, after the longest day in history. Casey confirmed his initial diagnosis, with the caveat that they would know more when Leonardo woke up. He insisted to an audience of grim faces that it was a very good sign Leonardo had been awake and coherent in the first place, however briefly. 

So Blue was disinfected and splinted and bandaged and medicated and then tucked safely away in the infirmary bed. Everyone else was seen to in short order. It was an easier task than it usually was, since none of them were remotely willing to leave just yet. 

Splinter made a mental note to call Draxum to double-check that Michelangelo hadn’t pushed himself too far in creating a gateway—the glowing lines on his hands had faded, and beyond an occasional tremor, he promised his family up and down that he was actually fine. Donatello’s shell was a quiet source of concern, but the only person alive who could harass him into a checkup without getting maimed for his trouble was currently very much out of action. Raphael’s eye was definitely infected, and blood vessels had burst when he’d ripped the parasite away, coloring the sclera an alarming red. 

The rest of the clan watched in some unspoken, exhausted wonder as Casey unthinkingly maneuvered around Leonardo’s infirmary as if he’d spent part of every day of his life there, knowing which drawer to find compression gloves for Orange in, locating topical pain reliever for Purple that he could apply himself and medicated eyedrops for Red in quick succession, before ultimately offering a bottle of extra strength Tylenol to April, who accepted it gravely. 

“You’re a weird kid,” she said. From her, it was a declaration of approval. “You better plan on sticking around.”

“Oh,” Casey said at length, surprised. Clearly, he hadn’t thought ahead to what the after of his mission would be shaped like. His gaze lingered on Leo’s little bundled-up figure in the bed, so full of love and grief for a man who didn’t yet exist, and Splinter thought to hell with it. The kid was as good as his grandson if you squinted. 

“We’ll find a bed for you,” Splinter said, some tiny corner of his mind free from screaming worry and bone-deep exhaustion already plotting where to make room for another subway car. “In the meantime, the sofa is yours.”

With that, five out of six children had been packed off to sleep. It took April and Michelangelo combined to pry Donatello’s hand from Leonardo’s, and subsequently his entire person from the infirmary. Raphael pulled a chair up to Leonardo’s bed and Splinter didn’t try to argue him out, knowing when to pick his battles. 

Red had a familiar look on his face, an elephant in the room that often went unacknowledged for both their sakes. That look that said you’re his father but he’s my kid, too.

He had earned the right. No one could argue that. Late night vigils were his wheelhouse and had been ever since he was about nine years old. When Splinter didn’t have to be quite so present—when he started to let the tired gray encroach more and more, when he stopped getting out of bed right away at the sound of a child crying—Red quietly learned how to tend fevers and stomach bugs and bad dreams. 

Soon enough, the boys stopped calling for daddy when they were hurting and started calling for Raphie instead. And their Raphie always came when they called.   

Which was why it must have hurt like a blade piercing clean through his ribs when Leonardo finally stirred at something approaching two o’clock in the morning, blinked muddy gold eyes open slowly, looked up at the familiar shape of his biggest brother beside the bed, and flinched. 

The world hadn’t ended yesterday. It was happening now instead.

Splinter had thought he knew what pain was. But life did not seem to ever run out of brand new lessons to teach. 

“Leo,” Red whispered, heartbreak obvious in every inch of him. His hand was frozen in the air between them, arrested right in the middle of reaching out. 

“No,” Blue managed, twisting around like he would attempt an escape the second he figured out where his limbs were in relation to the bed, IV be damned. The lines on the heart rate monitor started to crest dramatically. 

“Leo it’s okay it’s—it’s me, I’m not—I’m not going to—I would never hurt—” 

His voice strangled itself into silence. After all, at least some of those grisly black and blue marks around Leonardo’s neck were from him. 

“Papa,” Leonardo cried out, the call reaching directly into Splinter’s heart with hooks and yanking him out of his chair. “I want papa, please, please—”

Clambering onto the bed, minding all the hardware, Splinter placed a careful hand on his second-youngest’s feverish head to soothe him. 

He felt like an imposter, especially with Red still frozen like a statue behind him, but that part of his heart that had been smothered once, allowing his children’s cries for him to go unanswered and someone else to pick up the slack, was the loudest part of him now. 

There was physically nothing else he could do but stroke that bruised forehead with the pad of his thumb and tell him, “Hush, Baby Blue, your papa is here. You are safe. You are home.” 

Leonardo turned his face into Splinter’s hand, hiding as much as he was capable of. Raphael took one staggering step back, then another, then turned on his heel and fled the way Splinter had no memory of him ever doing before, infirmary door crashing behind him. 

Torn completely in two, Splinter summoned conviction from those ancient spirits housed in his soul and forced himself at knife point to be strong for his family for once in his goddamn life. 

“What are these tears for, silly turtle?” he murmured, the same way he had when Leonardo still mostly fit in the palm of one hand. Back then, all Leonardo wanted was to be held. He wondered if that was still true. “You are the safest little turtle who ever lived. There is no one left in this world who is stronger than the people who love you, don’t you know that? Your baby brother pulled down the stars for you. Your twin did not let go of your hand even once. And your big brother carried you home. You are safe. You are so loved.”

It was a nonsense litany for the most part, all true things said to someone who clearly was only absorbing every third word or so. But Blue stopped hiding his face at some point, eyes wet with tears he is even now too stubborn to let fall. 

Splinter felt as though he was looking at a childhood memory of himself, trying to be strong when it would have been better—kinder—to allow himself a much-needed moment of weakness. 

“You think you’re too grown-up to cry in front of this old man?” he said, gently pinching Blue’s cheek on the side of his face that hadn’t been crushed beneath a monster’s fist. “Try again in about a hundred years.”

Blue blew a tired raspberry at him. Splinter laughed, surprised at the show of spirit, his heart doing cartwheels at this proof of his irrepressible little boy unchanged by the close brush with tragedy. Winning a laugh from his father was enough to coax the ghost of a smile across Blue’s face. 

“How are you feeling? We have some water for you here. No, don’t sit up. Let me help.”

He really ought to let everyone know Blue was awake, but they had just gone to sleep. His other kids needed their rest, too. It had been a truly terrible day. 

And now that Red was out of the room—that thought dripped with oily, unpleasant guilt—Blue seemed to be in a more solid state of mind. He had winced as he tried to sit up for water, but if he didn’t have whiplash after a psychotic alien flung him around like a terrier would its chew toy, Splinter would eat his tail. There were none of the red flags Casey had warned him to be on the lookout for. The only thing Draxum had done right in his life was develop a mutagen that made these boys all but indestructible. Splinter would have to find the mental fortitude to choke out a thank you to him for that. 

“It has been a long time since a sick little turtle has called for me,” Splinter murmured, stroking Blue’s forehead around the bandages. “Normally you are all ready to fight each other to the death to monopolize Red’s attention.” 

It was only partly a joke. Leonardo gazed up at him, eyes glassy. It was hard to gauge how much of their conversation was sticking the landing and how much was somersaulting straight over his sluggish head. 

Then Leonardo said, “He hates me.”

“Pardon?” Splinter said stupidly. 

His son blinked, and finally fat tears rolled down his cheeks, soaking into bandages on one side, unchecked on the other. 

“He hates me,” Blue insisted. “He’s right. It was my fault.”

“No one hates you,” Splinter said, reeling. He’d been right here the whole time and yet somehow he was suddenly flailing about two miles behind. 

“You didn’t see his face. You didn’t see—and his eye—all because I—I couldn’t—” He sobbed, an awful sound, and turned to press his face into his pillow. Once he started crying he couldn’t seem to stop. The rest of his words stumbled out thick and choked and terribly sincere. “I couldn’t just—be what I was supposed to be. And he—and it was all my fault.”

There were few things Splinter regretted more than his fumbling of the leadership role. He had always known that Blue was too clever for his own good, that he had a head for strategy—as evidenced by his early mastering of chess, entirely outpacing Splinter’s own skill level by the age of eleven. 

Acknowledging that in theory and learning to trust it in practice were two separate beasts, but watching from the front row as his baby outsmarted Big Mama of all people left little room for doubt. 

On the other hand, Red was as solid and dependable as they came, the foundation his siblings built their whole lives on. As far as they were concerned, the sun only rose in the morning because Raphael hung it up there. 

But Splinter’s eldest son was prone to anxiety that tended to fall on him like a guillotine, a kill switch to his rational thought. The twins floated terms like ‘panic disorder’ and the entire family was well-versed in helping him through his episodes, but if even an ounce of the burden on his shoulders could be reduced, that could only help. 

Red would be happier and function better in a support role, where his top priorities would be to protect his little brothers the way he always had protected them, and to smash whatever Leonardo pointed him at. 

Splinter should have sat them both down and explained it. He shouldn’t have left Red to feel as though he had done something wrong, that he had failed somehow. And he shouldn’t have let Blue believe he would be shoved into the deep end and left to sink or swim.

His boys were little gremlins who thrived in chaos and learned best on the fly. Splinter had thought the surprise announcement would have been an utter shock at first and the new normal by dinnertime. They were always so much on the same page, so in tune with one another, that he couldn’t have guessed it would turn into the tangled mess of hurt and frustration and miscommunication and blame that it did. 

He should have stepped in the first time Red punched through a wall in a fit of anger and Blue laughed as though his biggest brother’s good opinion of him didn’t matter in the slightest. Instead he was a coward, unable to face them and admit his wrongs. He left his children to resolve it themselves and suffer in the meantime. 

He should have done better. Maybe one day he would learn. 

For now Splinter held Blue’s face in one hand and wiped it clean with a cloth in the other, patient with every new flood of tears. The last time he had seen Blue cry was the night the Shredder destroyed their home and killed Karai. There had been no time to comfort him then. 

He takes after his Gram-gram, Splinter thought, and tried not to resent her for it. 

“No one hates my sweet Baby Blue,” he said, willing the stubborn child to hear him. “Especially not my other sweet baby Red. You are a very confused turtle, that’s all. You will see. No one hates you.”

“You don’t,” Leonardo mumbled. “You’re not allowed to. You’re my dad. You don’t have to like me, but you’re not allowed to hate me. S’in the—the contract. You signed it. Legally binding. No arbi-arbi—”

“Arbitration. I would like to study your mind under a microscope. Maybe then I will have a hope of understanding these twists and turns it takes.” 

Splinter’s voice sounded nothing but fond even to his own ears. 

His children were all incredible people worth knowing, worth living for, and it was a very special joy to still be surprised after all these years by how much more he loved them today than he did the day before. To think about how much more he would love them tomorrow, even though it felt impossible to love anyone more than he loved them right now. 

“You are so important, Leonardo,” Splinter said gently. “To me, and to your siblings, and to your friends. We would miss you so much if you weren’t here. We all want to see you get well.”

“It’s not about me,” Blue said, wobbly and miserable and matter-of-fact. “I know it’s not. I have to make up for it. I’ll prove—prove—”

“You have nothing to prove. It was not your fault.” Splinter pressed Leonardo’s chin gently to close his mouth when he inevitably opened it to argue. “Hush. You did not steal the key. You did not open the door. It was not even your responsibility to stop either of those things from happening. You are a child. It cannot be any one person’s duty to save this planet on their own. That doesn’t even make sense.” 

Blue’s expression was becoming thunderous, which was silly and endearing, because his cheeks were still tacky with the remnants of his tears and half of his face was a swathe of bandages and without his mask he looked years younger than he already was. Splinter felt affection unfold in his heart like one of those absurdly big tropical flowers with petals the size of dinner plates, taking up more room than it was allowed and spilling out the sides and going on forever. 

“Can I tell you something else? Your brothers aren’t allowed to hate you either. It’s in the contract as well.”

“They do,” Blue said tearfully, face still screwed up beneath Splinter’s hand. But his eyes drifted in the direction of the door, and the wanting in them was plain to see. Splinter took matters into his own hands. 

“If I’m right, you must finish watching The Strange Return of Diana Salazar with me.”

His son took a moment to digest that, slower on the uptake than usual. Finally, he asked, “Don’t we have like a hundred episodes left?”

“I said what I said,” Splinter said sagely, then patted his cheek and hopped down from the bed. 

He found Raphael exactly where he expected to find him, sitting just outside the cracked infirmary door, a hunched over shape that seemed unwilling to take up a single unnecessary inch of space. 

Red stared up at him, unbandaged eye wide. 

“I don’t hate him,” he blurted. “I could never—I wouldn’t even know how.”

“I know, my dear.”

“Even if he’d done it on purpose,” Red went on. “Even if he stole the key and took it to the Foot and opened the door with his own two hands, I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently.”

Splinter had worried when the turtles were very young that Raphael would frighten one of his siblings accidentally. He was so much bigger than them and toddlers were not well known for their self control or emotional regulation. It was a lingering fear that Red would say or do something he did not mean in the heat of the moment, and alienate himself. That something would happen in a split second that would cause his brothers to grow up wary of him. 

It was an unfounded worry. Raphael was a quiet little boy, the last of the four to start talking, and as sweet as an American dessert. Splinter’s little apple pie. Even as he got older and started playing rougher, testing his strength and raising his voice, he never forgot when he needed to be gentle. 

His brothers never ran from him unless they were avoiding bedtime or a well-deserved grounding or really did not want to go watch wrestling, Raph, it was boring. Otherwise he was their North star. 

Even now, Leonardo would rather hide himself away than face a world in which he no longer had a Raphael to run to. 

“How could he think that?” Red asked desperately. “He was going to die back there and he thought that’s what I wanted.”

Splinter cupped Red’s face in his hands and told him, “Blue was trying to do what his hero would have done. All of my children are so quick to sacrifice for each other. It is a wonderful thing to love someone so much, but consider the example you are setting.” Red’s good eye filled with tears, and Splinter was powerless to do anything but kiss him firmly on the forehead. “As empty as our lives would have been without him, they would have been just as empty without you. You are fundamental to us. Please remember that.”

“I know, pops,” Raphael whispered. “I’ll remember.”

“It is not always possible to win without losing but we must fight tooth and nail anyway. Abandon honor and heroism. Do what it takes to bring yourself and your brothers home. I would much sooner tell the great Hamato clan where they can stick it then let you join them before your time.”

It coaxed a shy smile from his eldest son, the barest exhale of a laugh. Still his sweet apple pie, no matter how big he got. 

“I’m gonna go see him,” Red said bravely. “I’m missing out on premium Leo time while the gremlins are asleep.”

“Very wise,” Splinter said, patting his cheeks in approval.

Leonardo had managed to drag the blanket up over his head while no one was around to stop him, and only one golden eye peered out at them from his makeshift shell. 

Raphael snorted and leaned over to peel it back down, heedless of his smaller brother’s protests. He let one hand linger on Leonardo’s scuffed plastron, and the other cupped the back of his bruised head. 

“You’re so dumb,” Red said. “I love you more than anything. If you ever try to go anywhere without me ever again, I’ll make your life a living hell. Capiche?”

Blue stared up at him. It’s very possible he didn’t understand every word of that. But the tone seemed to get through. 

His hand drifted up slowly, as if it weighed a thousand pounds, to cover the one planted on his chest. When the world didn’t end and his big brother continued to smile down at him like nothing between the two of them was any different than it used to be, Blue risked a smile back. 

“I capiche.”

“You’re not alone, okay?” Red went on, playfulness gentling into sincerity. “We’ll figure it out. I’m in your corner, right where I’ve always been. But for now let’s get some sleep, big man.”

He didn’t move his hands even after Leonardo had dozed off. He just hooked his foot around the leg of his chair and scooted it closer to the bed before sinking into it. 

Splinter joined him, and felt both aged by the last hour and rejuvenated. He needed a good pair of running shoes to keep up with these kids.     

“He never asks to play chess with anyone else you know,” Red said suddenly. 

Thrown by the non sequitur, Splinter could only offer an intelligent, “Huh?”

“Leo only learned how to play because of a comment you made once about—I don’t even remember what you said. But it stuck with him. He wanted to impress you. And he started learning Spanish because of those weird soaps you guys watch. He drove us crazy practicing every day but he never let up.

“I know that it seems like he does whatever he wants without rhyme or reason, but I think he just tries really hard to make it seem that way. Otherwise we’d all clue in to the fact that every single thing he does is just—him trying to get closer to us somehow. And then his cool guy cover would be blown. And god forbid that.” 

Raphael brushed his thumb over the crown of Leonardo’s head, much like the way Splinter had earlier. 

“He doesn’t love you for no reason, pops,” Red went on, not looking at him. “None of us do. Even when getting out of bed was the hardest thing in the world, you came running when I needed you. Every time I needed you. I learned all my moves from the best.”

Splinter had seen the worst of the world. He was no stranger to pain. 

It was only occurring to him now that the opposite was also true. 

His life was so full of impossibly good, underserved things; every day a little brighter, every night a little richer. 

Four little creatures tumbled into his world by chance and then filled it to the brim with mayhem and color and laughter and pride, and he would not take a second of it back. He would not change a single painful part. 

If only he had known as a young man where he would end up someday. It would have made those earlier years so much easier to survive. 

Pretending his own eyes weren’t wet, Splinter said, “It will be hell on earth in the morning when Orange discovers we let him sleep through Blue waking up. You had better rest while you can.”

Smiling to himself, Red folded his arms on the side of the bed and rested his head in them, tilted so that his brother was within line of sight of his good eye. He had capitulated to the changing of the guard without complaint, but he was still tense. Primed for danger. Anxiety no doubt at play. 

But Splinter was not without his tricks. He stroked Red’s carapace between the spikes, humming an old TV theme song under his breath. He did this for upwards of an hour once, back when Red was still small enough to be held in his lap, fussy and clingy after a bad dream. 

Sure enough, with a great, shuddering sigh, Raphael’s shoulders went slack, and his breathing evened out—asleep within moments after the day he’d had.  

“I’ve still got it,” Splinter murmured, and let himself have the win, as small as it was. If nothing else, he could give his children a safe place to rest. 

And that really was no small thing at all. 

[7-ferrets-in-a-coat]

Finally getting around to drawing some ACTUAL Interactions instead of one-offs :3

Nepotism Au my beloved,,,

I'm gnna draw more of ratdad and ludo on the same page, ill leave em to messy sketches tho bcs I am SO gnna ruin it if i try and lineart and color <3

[paperlifted]

There will always be the softest of spots in my heart for 2003 Splinter, who managed to raise as stable a family as he did despite starting life as just a regular ol' street rat. Which isn't to say I don't like Splinters who were human first - that origin usually brings fun narrative hooks and baggage, and is also, obviously, more logical than “this random rat learned master-level ninjutsu through [checks notes] entirely unexplained powers of observation".

But who cares about logic! Because the emotional story of 2003 is so compelling! He was just a rat!! Assuming he had a rat’s natural lifespan, he was something like two years old when the change occurred, and suddenly he has this new, mature body and mature mind with two years’ of animal cognizance bouncing hazily around a space that’s now a hundred times too big for it, and at the same time there are these four strange creatures who have just imprinted on him like a quartet of mutant ducklings.

He doesn’t even know the turtles are intelligent at first. He does, perhaps, understand in retrospect what it was that Tang Shen felt when she looked at something small and hungry and knew she had the power to change its circumstances. What she felt when the creature came to trust her touch, to desire her company, to seek her comfort when hurt or afraid. The turtles, then, are… pets, yes? It is worth the small difficulties of finding them food and shelter to not be alone. Rats are social animals. He is otherwise so very alone.

Of course, he soon finds they can understand the words he has been speaking mostly for his own sake; they can think and learn and begin to speak back to him. They might be the only other creatures like him in the entire world, and it is a trembling relief, an overpowering fear. Their minds are growing, their needs are growing, and still they look to him with blind trust that he will provide for them without fail. He was just a rat, and then he was more; and now he needs to define what more will be.

I’ve seen folks who prefer versions where the turtles have a more openly familial relationship with Splinter (calling him father/dad more regularly, leaning less into the Stern Sensei behaviour), but I am very fond of it as it is because it’s so clearly something the five of them have built for themselves. What does a rat know of fatherhood? What does a rat know of kin? Yoshi never looked upon the rodent as anything more than an inherited pet, kept and cared for in memory of the one he had truly loved, but Splinter examines those memories and names him father because it’s the only model he has. What does a rat understand of family? The sharing of warmth and resources, and the awareness that there are forces who will take these things from you with cruel indifference and leave you lost and alone and starving.

What does a rat understand of grief? Too much, now.

They are children, and then they are his children, and then they are his sons because somewhere along the line he learns that these are the words for what he feels. And to them he is master and sensei because these are the words for The One Who Teaches and The One Who Protects and The One Who Provides. Perhaps he expects too much of them too soon, but there are no parenting lessons for a rat in a sewer and no one else for him to ask to share in his burdens and responsibilities. Perhaps it is unfair to press them all into a martial lifestyle, but the danger is too real and it’s one of the few skills he has mastered. Hierarchy and discipline are well-known to rats and ninja alike, and his children need structure, routine, defenses. It is the best pathway that he knows. He always does - he can only do - the best he knows.

One day his sons will bring home a human woman, and for the first time they will be truly seen and judged in their home: four brothers and their teacher-father-protector-guide. He is seventeen years old. There has been no one to knowingly teach him. He was just a rat, and then he was more, and through endless trial and error he has pulled together the scraps of his experiences and built a family and taught them love.

It counts for something, he hopes.

[joffyworld]

I love that you read the bible story about why snakes don't have arms or legs and said "yea nah fuck that lmao"

Flinky doodles

[goodlucktai]

hold the world to its best (5/?)

rottmnt word count: 2k pairing: raph & OC title borrowed from light by sleeping at last part of the archer au

(prev) (next)

x

Gio is by no means a chatterbox. 

His pattern of speech is the same as when he’s nineteen years old, littered with careful pauses, slow to string words together. He tacks on ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ at the end of everything like someone is waiting around the corner to grade him on his manners. He visibly overthinks it every time he opens his mouth to say anything at all. 

If Raph had a dollar for every time Gio looked up at him to make sure it was okay for him to speak, he’d have enough money to buy the state of New York by the end of the week. And he can’t think about why that is, because then anger and hurt and a wailing sense of unfairness that feels like a little kid stomping their feet shouting ‘no no no!’ will swell inside him until he has to do something with all of it, like break a wall. And he can’t break a wall because that would scare the baby. So he can’t think about it. 

But Gio doesn’t need any prompting or encouragement when Splinter comes home from a last-minute run to Stop & Shop. There’s supposed to be a storm tonight, and traveling through flooded tunnels is no one’s idea of a good time, especially not with groceries for a family of eight. 

“Someone needs to go unpack the car so all of you must roshambo for it,” Splinter announces by way of hello. 

Everyone else groans but Gio perks right up. He squirms down from the sofa and runs to greet dad with uppy arms and a hopeful, “Papa.” 

A direct hit. The old rat has to take a knee. Not even the Shredder was enough to defeat the former Battle Nexus champion, but a two foot tall baby turtle is another story. 

“Hello my little one,” Splinter chokes out, scooping the spotted turtle right up. “Ah, I have not been welcomed home like this in many years. It’s enough to make an old man nostalgic. Thank you, Gray.”

“Appliance store commercials make you nostalgic,” Donnie says without looking up from his phone. 

“If you tried to pick one of us up like that you’d pull something,” Leo adds. 

“And thank you my obnoxious blueberries,” Splinter says, still in his baby-turtle-voice but with a narrow look over Gio’s head at the peanut gallery that implies they’d both get whacked with his tail if they were within reach. 

Pops must be feeling nostalgic if he’s breaking out that childhood nickname for the twins. Leo was the blue and Donnie was the berry from the ages of zero to about nine, when they had decided they’d outgrown it. Now Donnie looks incredulous and Leo looks deeply embarrassed, like a couple of kids whose mom is blowing kisses at them out the car window in front of all their friends. It has the additional effect of shutting them right up, which might have been what Splinter intended in the first place. Raph is adding that to his arsenal for a rainy day. 

Gio is too well-mannered to demand dad’s attention back like all the rest of his spoiled siblings would have done, but his eyes are big and lamp-like, and he’s wringing his hands against his plastron like someone five times his age, and it gives him away anyway. 

“What’s up, buttercup?” Mikey chirps, swinging around to hang off Splinter’s back and hook his chin over the rat’s shoulder. 

“Gray,” Gio says carefully. Then he points to himself, and does the question-mark wiggle with his pointer finger. Me?

“Yes, you!” Mikey leans over even further to poke Gio’s beak playfully. Splinter is fully supporting the weight of two of his kids at this point, one significantly heavier than the other. “It’s a nickname! We all have them. You’re Spot, and Gray, and Georgie. And Georgathan and Gregory and Jorge and—”

“Point made, Michael,” Donnie says flatly, because he really will just keep going. 

Mirror neurons in full-effect, Gio smiles at Mikey’s smile. Then he fingerspells C-L-E-M and points to himself again. 

“‘Clem’?” Mikey sounds it aloud. “Is that you?”

Gio nods with his fist, and what little expression they’ve coaxed out of him over the last couple of days is evaporating by the second, leaving behind that neutral-faced toddler they first met. Mikey clocks it and straightens, bracing his hands on Splinter’s shoulder to glance over his head at Raph, brow wrinkling beneath his mask. 

Raph, for his part, is marveling at the fact that it has literally never occurred to him to wonder about where the name “Giorgio” came from. Gio told them that he didn’t grow up with them in the future—that he spent the bulk of his childhood in another dimension before making his way back to the one he belonged in. What are the odds that Gio had a matching name before he knew he was part of a set? Obviously he must have been called something else before. 

Donnie is frowning thunderously. When he shoots a sideways look at Leo and raises his eyebrows, Leo only grimaces back in answer, both of them clearly on the same page and not loving what they’ve found there.

“Share with the class, you two,” Raph says for the millionth time in his life, stamping down an ancient annoyance. They claim not to have twin telepathy and then have entire conversations without saying a word. Who are they trying to fool?

“Ugh,” Donnie says. He looks and sounds disgruntled, like he hasn’t decided how upset he needs to be yet but he’s leaning towards ‘very.’ “Clem—I said it earlier, didn’t I? Clemmys guttata. The scientific name for spotted turtles. It’s like if my name was Apa, short for Apalone spinifera. No individuality, no character, no dynamism.”

Splinter’s tail lashes, agitated. “You all had tags on your shells when you were just babies. I kept them because it was the closest thing to a birth certificate I was likely to ever have. They included information such as your weights and sizes, your approximate time of hatching, as well as your genus and species. I still have them in a shoebox somewhere.”

So whoever found baby Georgie after the portal separated him from his family must have seen that tag. They must not have realized that it was the classification of what, not who, he was. 

Raph kind of hates that, actually. Even pets are given names. 

But he also hates the way Gio is getting nervous, making himself smaller where he’s tucked in the crook of Splinter’s arm, like he did something wrong by bringing it up. 

So he steps over and crouches down the way he’s gotten in the habit of doing with his baby-fied older brother. Splinter helps him out by turning slightly so that Gio and Raph are face to face. 

Gio tucks his chin slightly, and it would be easy to mistake the gesture for timid, but Raph knows better. For a second, Gio’s older self shines through. 

The kid isn’t even wringing his hands anymore, just clasping them so tightly it’s causing his dark gray-green skin to blanch. He’s watching his biggest brother with those archer eyes that miss absolutely nothing. He’s prepared for Raph to be angry with him, even though all he’s done is ask a simple question, even though Raph hasn’t so much as frowned at him once. 

Raph cannot break a wall, he reminds himself sternly. 

“Hey, big guy,” Raph says, smiling his biggest and warmest smile. “I’m sorry, it must have been pretty confusing, all of us calling you by some name you didn’t know. Do you want us to call you Clem instead?”

None of them would like doing it, but Gio’s comfort is more important than how the rest of them feel about a name he used to go by. It’s temporary, and Raph’s bratty little brothers will do as they’re told for once, or he’s putting them in air jail. All of them, air jail. 

But Gio shakes his head fast. He signs ‘no,’ too, touching his fingers to his thumb. 

“No, please,” he adds for good measure. “I want to be Gio.”

“Gio it is,” Raph says firmly. 

Mikey plants both his hands on Raph’s left shoulder and pushes with all his might. Raph doesn’t move, but Splinter is propelled a step backwards. Mikey uses the space he created to flip over dad and land nimbly in front of him and scoop the baby out of his arms. 

Gio doesn’t react beyond an initial widening of his eyes. A few days of constant exposure to Michelangelo has acclimated even the most cautious child in the world to his whimsy and enthusiasm. When Mikey smushes their cheeks together, Gio even smiles. 

“Do you like bananas?” Mikey asks solemnly. 

“Yes,” Gio says. 

“Do you like cake?”

“Yes,” their resident sweet-addict says unremarkably, like that isn’t the understatement of all time. Leo makes an incredulous scoffing noise, a laugh that’s trying not to start. He’s probably thinking of the same thing Raph is, which is the time Gio ate six red velvet cupcakes in one sitting and called it breakfast with a straight face. 

“Did you know I made a banana split cake for dessert?” Mikey whispers conspiratorially. “It’s almost ready to eat—I just need someone to help me add all the sprinkles on top.”

“I can help,” Gio says earnestly, leaning away to look up at Mikey with big brown eyes. Every person in the room would give him anything he wants, no exceptions, but probably the only thing he wants now in the whole entire world is to help with the sprinkles. 

“Aw, Georgie, I knew I could count on you! Helper gets first dibs, so let’s go make sure you get the best piece!”

Raph drags Leo with him to go haul in the groceries. Leo complains about it while in earshot of everyone else, but he doesn’t actually hate one-on-one time with his second-oldest brother. He loves it, actually. He just has to put on a show for no one’s benefit but his own for reasons that are a mystery to everyone but himself. If Raph would have remembered that in those tumultuous months leading up to the invasion, he would have saved himself a lot of grief. 

For now it’s enough to trip Leo and then run ahead of him, hearing the initial startled squawk melt into a competitive cackle and bracing for the weight of a little brother that lands on Raph’s shell moments later. 

Even with the ability to portal back and forth, it makes sense to two teenagers to precariously amass all the shopping bags at once and make a single trip. There’s a paper produce bag of tomatoes that almost doesn’t make it, and would have tipped out all over the kitchen floor if not for the quick save of Mikey’s sunshine-golden magic catch. 

“You boys are too silly for your own good,” Splinter grumps without heat, but he pats Raphael’s arm fondly before elbowing his way through the kitchen toward the fridge. 

Gio is sitting on the edge of the counter, kicking his feet idly and eating maraschino cherries out of the jar that Mikey left unattended. Donnie is leaning against the island beside him, pretending to be absorbed with his phone, but coincidentally within reach if a certain toddler were to slip and fall or start choking. 

Donnie is also, as far as Gio is concerned, the answers guy. He reaches out one pink-stained hand and pats Donnie’s arm very gently. Donnie, who would have no less than twenty things to say to anyone else who dared touch him with cherry fingers, each more scalding than the last, simply says, “Yes, George?”

“What is he like?” Gio asks. 

“Who?”

“Gio,” he says. 

Donnie blinks and sets his phone down. “What are you like? Oh—your older self, you mean?” Gio hesitates, but ultimately nods, and Donnie hums thoughtfully. “How best to describe Hamato Giorgio. A conundrum.”

“He’s so cool,” Mikey pipes up, with a smug glance at Leo. They have newly reached a point in their lives where it’s tentatively okay to make jokes about certain aspects of the day the world almost ended, depending on the joke. Leo’s early-onset hero worship of the long-lost Kraang-killing brother who’d brought him home that day is always okay to joke about, because Leo isn’t teased until he’s red in the face and sinking into his shell nearly enough. 

Leo scowls and shoves a carton of eggs at Mikey for him to put away, but noticeably does not refute the statement. 

“He’s a tank,” Raph adds, smiling automatically when Gio’s big dark eyes find him. “Steady as a rock, rolls with the punches. When he gets knocked down, he doesn’t stay down for long.”

“Proficient at his chosen craft,” Donnie says. “The tool he uses requires precision, focus, and hand-eye coordination, often in the middle of confusing or frenetic situations. But he never misses.”

“And he’s nice,” Mikey says, exchanging the jar of cherries in Gio’s hand for a can of cool whip. Gio holds it and has no idea what to do with it, so Mikey forms his fingers around the nozzle and presses, giggling at Gio’s surprised jump. He directs the baby turtle to the dessert dish, and as meticulous as he usually is with his cooking, he lets Gio apply the whipped topping the way he lets his brothers add color to his spray paint murals—as if each clumsy pass and crooked line is a worthwhile addition to his art. He beams every time Gio glances up to make sure he’s doing it right, so warm and bright and indulgent that it’s almost hard to believe he’s been the baby of the family all along. “He always has time for us, day and night. If we need something, he’ll get it. No questions asked,” Mikey goes on.

“Even if maybe a question or two should be asked,” Splinter mutters, likely having a flashback of the absurdly big tuna fish Gio had once brought home after Mikey made a passing remark about wishing he had the means to make sushi for lunch. They had nowhere to put it. They ate sushi for days. But Mikey had squealed with delight when he saw it, which made every single thing anyone else had to say about it a moot point to Giorgio.

“He’s our big brother, and he’s the best,” Leo says, folding his arms on the counter. “Hey, can I get some of that?” He leans over and opens his mouth, and Gio blinks at him, and then down at the can in his hands, and then attempts to apply whipped cream to Leo’s face. Some of it makes it into his mouth, but most doesn’t. Leo laughs, silly and sweet, before it even occurs to Gio to worry that he’ll get scolded, and wipes the errant cream into his mouth with his thumb. “We love him to pieces, and he loves us, too. It’s a good deal all around. Everybody wins.”

Gio gazes up at him, searching his face for something. He nods, and smiles back, and then giggles when Leo scoops some whipped cream out of the dish and smears it onto his nose—at which point Mikey declares Leo banned from dessert prep and Leo says, “Oh, big words from Mr. Eats-Peanut-Butter-With-His-Fingers,” and Donnie picks up both Gio and the discarded cherry jar and relocates the three of them to the other side of the island, out of the line of fire. 

Gio opts to stay in Donnie’s lap rather than return to his seat on the counter. Donnie looks down at the top of his head, but if he’s surprised he doesn’t show it. As all big turtles are wont to do with smaller ones, Donnie will hold him for as long as he wants to be held. 

From the way Gio’s sticky hands clutch Donnie’s arm, as if he might lose it if he doesn’t hold on, that’s one universal truth he hasn’t learned yet.