Not because they wanted it to. Because bodies give out. Because hope has a shelf life, and theirs expired somewhere around a year.
April still remembers the exact moment she knew. Not suspected. Knew.
She was in the lair, helping Leo organize Raph's things—a task he couldn't do alone, wouldn't let Donnie do because Donnie would start analyzing, wouldn't let Mikey do because Mikey would just hold everything and cry. So Leo did it, methodical and hollow, and April sat with him in the silence.
It was Mikey who found it.
Over a year after Raph disappeared. Seven months of searching. Eleven months of nothing.
Mikey had taken to wandering. He'd roam the tunnels for hours, sometimes days, coming back with nothing but empty hands and red eyes. Donnie had long since stopped tracking him. What was the point? The worst had already happened. They were just living in the aftermath.
That afternoon, Mikey had gone exploring a section of the old tunnels they'd sealed off years ago. Pre-Kraang, pre-everything. Back when they were just four little turtles learning to fight in the dark. Splinter had walled it off after a collapse, deemed it unsafe, and they'd all forgotten about it.
Mikey didn't forget things. He just... tucked them away. Like he did with everything.
He pried open the rusted door. He crawled through the narrow passage. He followed the smell.
*^*^*^*^
April's phone rang at 3:47 AM.
She answered to silence. Then breathing. Then Mikey's voice, small and broken in a way she'd never heard before.
"April."
"Mikey? What's wrong? Where are you?"
"April, I—" A shuddering breath. "I found him."
Her heart stopped. Started again. Crashed against her ribs.
"What? Where? Is he—Mikey, is he okay?"
Long pause. Too long.
"Mikey?"
"April, he's—" A sound. A sob, strangled and horrible. "He's in the old tunnels. Behind the wall. He's—April, he's been here the whole time. He's been here and we didn't—we never—"
April was already moving. Grabbing her coat. Running.
"Don't move. Don't you move, Mikey. I'm coming. I'm coming."
^*^*^*^*
The old tunnels were dark. Colder than the rest of the lair. April's flashlight cut through the blackness, picking out Mikey's silhouette at the far end. He was on his knees, shoulders shaking, one hand reaching out toward—
Toward the wall.
No. Not the wall.
The floor.
April's light found him.
Raph.
He was curled on his side, knees tucked up, arms wrapped around himself. Like he'd gone to sleep and never woken up. His shell was pressed against the curved stone wall, fitting into a hollow that might as well have been made for him.
He was desiccated. Dried out. The humidity of the sewers hadn't reached this sealed-off space, had preserved him in something close to mummification. His skin was dark, leathery, pulled tight over bones that shouldn't be visible. His mask was still on—faded, brittle, but on. Like he'd put it on that morning and never taken it off.
There was a wound on his head. April's light caught it, and she wished it hadn't. A crack in his skull, just above his temple. Dried blood, dark as rust, matted in what remained of his skin.
He'd hit his head. Fallen, maybe. Gotten trapped when the old tunnel collapsed further in. And no one had known. No one had come.
He'd been here. Here. While they searched every borough, every rooftop, every abandoned warehouse. While Casey walked the streets for months, calling his name until his voice gave out. While Donnie built better trackers and Leo wore himself thin and Mikey cried himself to sleep every night.
He'd been here.
Forty feet from the dojo.
April's legs gave out. She hit the ground hard, her flashlight clattering, spinning, casting wild shadows across the walls.
"No."
Mikey didn't look at her. Couldn't. He just kept reaching, hand hovering inches from his brother's face, unable to touch, unable to stop touching.
"He's cold, April." His voice was a child's voice. Lost and confused and begging someone to explain. "He's so cold. Why is he so cold?"
April crawled forward. She reached for Mikey first, wrapped her arms around him, pulled him away from the body. He fought her, just for a second, then collapsed into her, shaking apart.
"We have to tell them," she whispered. "We have to tell Leo and Donnie. We have to—"
"No." Mikey's hands fisted in her jacket. "No, I can't—April, I can't tell them. I can't make them see this. I can't—"
But he didn't have to.
Footsteps in the tunnel. Leo's voice, calling out, having followed the same trail April had. And Donnie behind him, his tablet casting pale light, still running scans even now, even here, because that's what he did when he was scared.
They rounded the corner together.
Leo stopped first.
His sword clattered to the ground. The sound echoed forever.
Donnie kept moving, two more steps, three, until his light fell on the curled figure against the wall. His tablet slipped from his fingers, cracked against stone, screen going dark.
"Raph."
Donnie's voice was barely a whisper. Disbelieving. Wrong. This couldn't be right. His scanners would have picked up—he would have known—he would have—
"No."
Leo's voice. Broken open.
He was on his knees suddenly, April didn't see him move, he was just there, on the ground, reaching for his brother's face with hands that shook too hard to be steady.
"Raph. Raph, hey. Hey, we're here. We're here now. You can—you can wake up now, okay? We found you. We're here."
His fingers touched Raph's cheek.
Leather. Cold. Unyielding.
Leo made a sound. April had heard Leo in pain before—sliced open, bleeding out, begging his brothers to leave him behind. She had never heard this sound. It was primal. It was something breaking that would never be fixed.
"No no no no no—"
Donnie was backing away, hitting the wall, sliding down it. His hands came up to his head, covering his ears, covering his eyes, trying to un-see, trying to un-know.
"He's been here." Donnie's voice was high, wrong, cracking. "He's been here the whole time. Three hundred and forty-seven days. He's been here for three hundred and forty-seven days and I didn't—my scans should have—I should have—"
"Donnie." April reached for him, but he flinched away.
"Don't. Don't touch me. I was supposed to be the smart one. I was supposed to find him. I walked past this wall every day. Every day, April. And he was here. He was here and I didn't—"
He broke. Just shattered, right there against the wall, his face crumpling, sounds tearing out of him that didn't sound human.
Mikey hadn't moved from April's arms. He was just staring, wide-eyed, at the body of his brother. At the mask he'd helped Raph pick out, years ago, when they were still small enough to share a bed.
"His mask is still on," Mikey whispered. "He put it on that morning. I remember. He said—he said it felt crooked and I fixed it for him. I fixed it." A sob. "I fixed his mask and then he went for a walk and he never came back and I fixed his mask and he never came back."
April held him tighter. There was nothing else to do.
In the center of it all, Leo was still touching Raph's face. Still stroking that cold, dry skin. Still whispering.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm the oldest. I'm supposed to protect you. I'm supposed to keep you safe. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
The words went on and on, a prayer to a god that wasn't listening, an apology to a brother who would never hear it.
^*^*^*^*
They couldn't move him.
Not then. Not like that. Donnie said something about forensics, about understanding what happened, about needing to know. Leo nodded, hollow, and gave permission for something that felt like desecration.
They documented everything. The wound on his head. The collapsed tunnel twenty feet further in, where the ceiling had given way and trapped him. The scratches on the walls—April saw them later, in the photos, and couldn't breathe. Scratches. Deep grooves in the stone. From his fingers. From his sais. From someone trying to dig their way out in the dark.
He'd been alive for a while. Trapped. Alone. In the dark. Forty feet from his family.
Had he called for them? Had he screamed? Had he lain there, listening to them move around in the lair, knowing they were right there and couldn't hear him?
The scratches told the story his body couldn't. He'd fought. He'd tried. He'd clawed at the walls until his fingers bled, until his sais broke, until there was nothing left to do but curl up and wait.
How long had he waited?
How long had he hoped?
^*^*^*^
Casey came three hours later.
April had called him. She'd had to. He was still searching, still walking the streets, still calling Raph's name into the wind. She couldn't let him keep doing that. Not now. Not knowing.
He arrived at the entrance to the old tunnels, and one look at her face told him everything.
"No."
"Casey—"
"No. No, you don't get to—where is he? Where is he, April?"
"He's in there. But Casey, you can't—you shouldn't—"
He was already moving. Pushing past her, into the dark. She followed, because she had to, because someone had to be there when he—
The scream.
She heard it from twenty feet away. A sound of pure, animal agony. The sound of someone's soul being ripped out through their throat.
When she reached him, he was on the ground next to Raph's body, but he wasn't touching him. He couldn't. His hands were hovering, shaking, reaching and pulling back, reaching and pulling back, like he was afraid that if he touched, it would become real.
"No no no no no no no—"
Casey rocked on his knees, forward and back, forward and back, his face a mess of tears and snot and the ugliest grief April had ever seen.
"You were supposed to come back. You promised. You didn't say it but you promised, you promised, you promised—"
He couldn't finish. His voice gave out, collapsed into sobs, into heaving, into something broken that would never quite heal.
April sank down behind him, wrapped her arms around his chest, held him as he fell apart. He fought her at first, then surrendered, collapsing back against her, his whole body shaking.
"He was here," Casey gasped. "He was here. I walked past this place. I walked past it a hundred times. I sat in the dojo and drank your coffee and watched Mikey paint and he was here—"
"I know." April's voice was steady because it had to be. "I know."
"How do we tell him?" Casey's voice was small. Terrified. "How do we tell Raph that we're sorry? He can't hear us. He'll never hear us."
April had no answer.
She just held on.
^*^*^*
They buried him in the same place. It seemed wrong to move him, somehow. Like he'd chosen this spot, this cold dark corner, and uprooting him would be another kind of violence.
Donnie sealed the tunnel properly this time. Built a door that wouldn't collapse. Installed a light that would never go out.
Leo stood at the entrance for hours, sometimes days, just staring at the wall. He didn't speak. Didn't eat. Just stood there, the perfect leader, the one who'd failed the most important mission of all.
Mikey painted a mural on the door. Raph, of course. Raph laughing, Raph fighting, Raph with his arm around each of them. Raph alive. Raph here. Because if he painted him enough times, maybe it would become true.
Donnie built a sensor array that covered every inch of the lair. Every tunnel, every corner, every forgotten space. No one would ever be lost again. No one would ever be alone in the dark. He ran the diagnostics obsessively, checking and rechecking, because if he stopped, he'd have to think about why he'd started.
Casey stayed.
He moved into the lair eventually, into the space that had been Raph's. Leo didn't argue. None of them did. They needed him there, this strange human who'd loved their brother, who carried Raph's memory like a wound that wouldn't close.
At night, sometimes, Casey would sit outside the sealed tunnel and talk.
"I got a new hockey stick today. You'd hate it. Too flashy. You'd say I was gonna break it in five minutes." Pause. "You'd be right."
"I saved a kid from a mugging yesterday. Did the whole thing, WHAM, right in the kneecaps. Thought of you the whole time. Thought of you telling me I was an idiot. Thought of you smiling at me like—" His voice cracked. "Like I was something worth smiling at."
"I miss you. That's stupid to say, right? Like you don't know. Like you can't feel it from in there. But I miss you. I miss you so much it's like breathing underwater. Like everything's heavy and nothing works right."
"I loved you. I never said it enough. I don't think I said it at all, not like that. But I did. I loved you. I love you. I'm gonna love you forever, and you're never gonna know, and that's—"
He'd stop there. Sometimes he'd cry. Sometimes he'd just sit in silence, hand pressed to the cold stone, waiting for an answer that would never come.
^*^*^*
April visited less often. It hurt too much. The lair felt haunted now, not by ghosts but by absence. By all the spaces Raph should have filled.
But she came, sometimes. Sat with Casey. Sat with the brothers. Sat in the silence and remembered.
She remembered the pantry. The shove. The kiss that had changed everything, for a little while.
She remembered the morning after, pancakes and flour on Casey's cheek and Raph's soft eyes.
She remembered thinking: Some things are worth a little shove.
She hadn't known, then, how little time they'd have. How the thing she'd helped start would end here, in the dark, forty feet from where it began.
^*^*^*
On the one-year anniversary of finding him, they opened the door.
Just once. Just to see him.
He was the same. Preserved by the dry air, by the darkness, by something that felt almost like mercy. Still curled on his side. Still wearing his mask. Still waiting, in some terrible way, to be found.
Casey knelt beside him. Touched his face. Cold. Still cold.
"Hey," he whispered. "I'm still here. I'm always gonna be here. Right outside that door. Waiting."
No answer. There would never be an answer.
Casey leaned down, pressed his forehead to Raph's, closed his eyes.
"I love you," he breathed. "I hope you knew. I hope somewhere, in the dark, you knew."
When he stood up, his face was wet. But his hands were steady.
He closed the door behind him.
^*^*^*
The lair is quiet now. Quieter than it ever was before.
They move through it like ghosts, these four people who loved one turtle too much. They talk about him sometimes. Other times they don't. The silence says everything.
And forty feet away, in the dark, behind a painted door that never opens anymore, Raph waits.
In Arc 3: Rebirth, the turtles must fight for their lives as well as the lives of all humanity when Triceratones descend upon Earth. Battle Nexus - where the fate of the Earth is decided, the turtles only have 4 chances but now the last chance is in Len's hands
When will people acknowledge that you can personally consider a TMNT iteration the 'best' without that iteration actually being so.
Guys... you can have a favourite, there's no shame in that, but that doesn't automatically mean your favourite is factual best in all areas.
2012 is my favourite iteration because it entertains me the most, but if you were to ask me what TMNT series had the best writing, I'd say TMNT 2003 100%.
Ones hands can tell the story of how they’ve lived… and how far they have come.
I’m a sucker for Good Dad Splinter ever since I watched TMNT ‘03. That rat was gifted sapience and his immediate instinct was kindness. I love that for him.
Rise Splinter lived a rollercoaster of a life, but as a Hollywood star he remembered the names of all his stunt guys and coworkers, and as a prisoner he cared for the rat that shared his cell. His sons are very close and physically affectionate, I think that says something about how he cares? That’s just how I like to headcanon him :)
It’s interesting to explore the idea that a seemingly monstrous transformation is what pushed him to be a kinder human
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