heh :) 3.4k words yeehaw.
After what felt like an eternity of blessed dark nothingness, Raph cracked one eye open, grimacing slightly at the lights above him.
There was a voice murmuring quietly nearby, and while the words slipped from his mind like a greased-up rat, the tone was familiar enough that Raph felt himself relax again.
The voice moved somewhere to his right, and he blearily tried to remember where he was-
"If this is it, I want you to know I finally understand…and I'm sorry."
"Hero moves are totally your style."
"Ewww, is this Staten Island?!"
Like something had gotten into his body and scooped out everything that made him Raph, thrown it in a blender cranked up to high, then unceremoniously plopped it all back in without caring about getting his Raph-ness back in the right spots.
He hadn't thought he could still remember big words like that.
There came a minute twitch from the bed to Raph's left, and he twisted his head slightly to get a look at the other occupant of the medbay.
(Oh. Huh. How'd he get to the medbay?)
Leo's face was scrunched up slightly, but it quickly smoothed back out into the same serene, high-on-painkillers half-smile he'd had ever since they'd gotten him hooked up to the IV.
(When had that been, again?)
Raph's memories were a bit fuzzy, and he knew at least some of it had to have been from his own IV drip.
Raph watched dully as Donnie walked into his line of sight and peered down at Leo for a moment, murmuring to himself. "He doesn't seem to be waking up yet. With his current dosage of painkillers, I doubt he's feeling anything physical…"
"A nightmare, then," Raph croaked.
Donnie blinked in surprise, glancing over at Raph. "You came back to lucidity fairly fast."
Raph just offered a weak grin. "How long was I out?"
"Well, you were presumably dissociating for a while before we caught on and put you to bed," Donnie said, walking closer to Raph's bed and inspecting what was probably a nearby monitor- Raph didn't have the strength to look over and check. "It's been approximately 18 hours since the end of the invasion, and you were out of it for the majority of that time, in a bed for nearly all of that. I only just lowered your dose of sedatives ten or so minutes ago."
"Feels like Raph got hit by the Turtle Tank," he groaned. "Multiple times."
"The physical ramifications of your injuries do bear a startling similarity to the effects of being run over, yes," Donnie admitted. He drew up a chair and sat down to continue speaking. "However, so long as no other armageddons come crawling out of the woodwork in the next few weeks, you ought to make a full recovery. The worst of it was in your right eye and the surrounding area, but we've got a patch on it for now, and you shouldn't end up losing it or your vision in it."
Raph swallowed, his gaze drifting back over to… "…and Leo?"
"Severely injured from his brief time in the prison dimension, but he came out of critical condition a few hours ago and has made no moves to return," said Donnie.
"Good. That's…that's good," Raph said truthfully, even as his eyes locked onto the ugly bruising around Leo's neck and refused to move.
"…I know that look," Donnie said. "Pizza Supreme above knows I'm not good at emotions, but even I know that look."
"…I strangled him, Donnie," he managed. "Raph strangled him."
"The Krang strangled him using you as a puppet because they were cruel, heartless bastards who sought to cause as much anguish as physically possible," Donnie stated darkly.
"Don't let Mikey hear you talking like that," said Raph, definitely keeping his priorities straight.
Mikey's voice came from the blind spot on Raph's right, startling him. "Raph, I love you, but I've said plenty worse about the Krang in the past several hours, all of it deserved. I can handle hearing the word 'bastard.'"
Raph jolted and whipped his head around to get Mikey in his field of view, only to groan again as his head decided it was the perfect time to pretend to be a bowling ball.
"Careful, you haven't recovered all the way yet!" Mikey spluttered, pushing himself from the table he'd been sitting at and rushing over to Raph's bedside.
Raph just sat up and gave Mikey a quick once-over; band-aids littered his skin and covered several small-ish cuts, but the most in-depth bandaging seemed localized to his hands and forearms. Considering Raph had been there for those particular injuries, (and may have received some of his own- his left hand was in a bit more pain than his right, now that he thought about it,) Mikey was as unscathed as could be expected.
(Raph distinctly remembered feeling his body throw Mikey aside like nothing but a brother-shaped ragdoll, mere moments before everything had turned into a fuzzy, blobby mess in his head.)
In his moment of distraction, Raph found himself pushed back down to the bed as Mikey clambered up next to him, curling into his side. "I'm glad you're awake, Raphie."
Raph swallowed, then nodded carefully and put his arm around Mikey. "Glad to be awake, big man."
"Try not to move around too much," Donnie instructed. "You will make a full recovery, but I would not be surprised if you feel like roadkill for a while longer."
"Yeah, I can see that," Raph admitted.
Leo made a quiet noise in his sleep, drawing Raph's attention back over to him.
The bruising around his neck extended all the way to his shoulders and even up his chin a bit. There were cracks in his plastron visible underneath the mountain of gauze and bandages wrapping around him like a mummy, and one of his legs was elevated in a cast. His eyes were swollen, with at least one of them potentially swollen shut.
And that was just what could be seen. Who even knew what sort of internal injuries he had? Certainly not Raph.
"He'll be okay," said Mikey quietly, shifting slightly and pillowing his head on Raph's right shoulder. "Promise."
Raph just dropped his gaze to his own body, taking in the dressings on his left shoulder in detail.
After a long moment, Mikey chuckled tiredly. "You shoulda seen him out there, Raph. We were losing hope bad, but then it's like he channeled his inner you or something! Gave this whole heroic speech and got our butts in gear!"
"He did, did he?" Raph smiled thickly.
"That he did," confirmed Donnie, scooting his seat closer and tapping at the panel on his left wrist with a bandaged hand to match Mikey's. "Actually…I do believe I have a recording of it. One moment."
Raph straightened as he heard the recording of Mikey's voice. "What do we do now?"
"I fear we are lost," said Splinter's voice grimly.
Donnie flicked his fingers along his screen, and a larger one appeared at a better angle for Raph to watch.
The camera seemed to be positioned just over Donnie's shoulder, and Raph watched as the Leo on-screen fell to his knees off to one side. Mikey seemed to be right by Donnie and mostly out of frame, but Splinter, April, and Casey were more-or-less centered.
Everyone was looking to something far to the camera's left in horror.
"The Krang are too powerful," Splinter continued.
"Maybe we can change the future s-some other way!" the recorded Mikey tried.
Raph swallowed as Casey spoke up, his mask flipping up mid-sentence to show his defeated expression. "Guys, it's time to face facts: we can't change the future."
Mikey spoke over his recording and reached up to point at the image of Leo on-screen. "See, he's already got a plan rattling around in there."
Sure enough, as Donnie's recorded self rattled off a bunch of phrases that stank of science and the word "paradox," Leo's posture shifted from beaten-down to something with a little more fight left in it.
"Look, I didn't want it to be true, but…" Donnie's past self insisted, even as Mikey's recorded face dropped from indignance to defeat, "…science."
The Donnie of the present lifted an eyebrow with a small smirk, catching Raph's eye.
Then the recorded Leo leapt to his feet excitedly and pointed a finger at his Donnie. "That's it! DONNIE'S WRONG!"
The camera shifted to get Leo centered in the frame, and Donnie's voice snarked, "The world is ending, yet the barbs continue."
"Here we go," said Mikey, audibly smiling.
"Don't you remember?" asked the recorded Leo. "We already did change the future."
He turned to Casey. "Raph never got kidnapped and turned into a Krang zombie in your time, right, Casey?"
"…no, he didn't," Casey realized.
"That means we did change the future! We're just in a different, uh," Leo began, stuttering over the words for a moment before Donnie took pity on him.
"Bifurcated time branch?"
"Yes, yes, yesyesyes, that nerd thing!" Leo declared. "Y'know what that means, right?"
"You still had hope," Raph breathed, his good eye tearing up as a proud smile grew on his face.
"We still have hope!" Leo's recorded self agreed at the same time, beaming.
Donnie's smirk grew behind the screen, and Mikey shifted more into the crook of Raph's shoulder.
"A ninja's greatest weapon!" Casey gasped.
"Hey, I like that!" Leo's smile quickly turned determined as he looked each of them in the eye. "Look, I'm done thinking I have all the answers. I dunno how to beat the Krang, but I do know our future isn't written until we write it. As a team."
Raph sniffled and hugged Mikey a little tighter, meeting Donnie's proud half-smile with one of his own.
"So, what do we got?" asked Leo, the tails of his mask billowing in the wind.
There was a moment of silence, then April shifted at the edge of the screen. "Maybe…maybe! We don't have to beat them! Can't we just send 'em back to the prison dimension?"
"There's an idea! Donnie, what do those big, beautiful eyebrows have to say?" Leo turned to the camera with a grin.
"If we got control of their ship, we could send it back through the portal," said Donnie with a bit more energy than before.
"Yehehes, yes, now we're cookin'! Who else?"
"And if someone on the ground can get to that key-!" Casey started.
"We can close the doorway!" exclaimed Splinter.
"And then bye-bye Krang forever, baby!" said both Mikeys, crowing loudly in the recording and chuckling quietly next to Raph.
"Exactly," said Leo, smirking at the camera. "Whaddya say, Donnie? You ready to fly a spaceship?"
The camera blurred for a second as the Donnie of the past presumably stood ramrod-straight. "Literally the greatest question I have ever been asked."
"Alright, team, looks like we have a plan! Let's go save the world," Leo declared, grinning encouragingly at the others.
Mikey stepped cautiously forward and into the camera's view. "Wait. But what about Raph?"
And oh, Raph had almost forgotten the reason why he wasn't there to hear Leo's heroic speech the first time around.
The camera slumped down slightly for a long moment, and Raph gave Mikey a light squeeze as the recorded version of his littlest brother shrank in on himself.
Then Leo's hand dropped on the recorded Mikey's shoulder as a particularly bright light flared somewhere in the distance. "That big jerk may be covered in goo and half-alien, but he's still our brother, and I'm not giving up on him. I'm not leaving him behind."
Raph watched as Leo took his hand back and swung his katanas out, turning back to face whatever-it-was that was off-camera on the left-
The camera turned, and Raph got his first and only good look at the way NYC had burned during the invasion.
…he could see how their hopes were hanging on by a thread before Leo's rousing speech, now.
Leo's past self stood there for a moment, then nodded, glancing over his shoulder and gesturing out at the destruction with his swords as he spoke. "Alright. April, Dad, Casey, you're our ground team. The key's gotta still be at Metro Tower. Get to the tower and be ready to pull the plug on my signal. Donnie, Mikey, let's see how good we are at apocalyptic sky parkour!"
"Roger that!" Casey declared, the three of them darting to the edge of whatever roof they were on and leaping down.
"Here goes," Donnie muttered, the camera charging forward to stand next to Leo-
Raph sniffled and brought his free hand up (gingerly- his shoulder was still not happy with him) to wipe his left eye dry. "He really did it."
"He really did it," confirmed Donnie, dispelling the screen with the slightest gesture.
"Y'know, he actually stayed awake a bit longer than you did," Mikey said. "Refused to let us put him under until he knew you were gonna be okay."
Raph pressed his beak together and shot one more glance over at where Leo lay.
Leo murmured something quietly, shifting ever-so-slightly deeper into the bed with a tiny, blissful smile on his face.
"Can-?" Raph tried, only for his voice to crack and force him to start over. "Can we move the beds together? Raph…really needs a turtle pile with everybody, he thinks."
"I don't see why not," Mikey said, shimmying off the bed and out of Raph's sight.
Donnie nodded and stepped out from between the beds, bringing his seat with him. "As long as we're careful not to jostle either of your IVs or Leo's leg during the combining of the beds."
Raph felt his own bed start moving, and only a few seconds later, the beds gently bumped each other.
"Bam," Mikey said, climbing back into Raph's side. "Let the turtle pile commence!"
"That means you, too, Donnie," Raph pointed out.
Donnie gave Raph another nod, then carefully dragged his chair around to the outer edge of Raph's bed, pushed himself onto the mattress, and curled up against Raph's legs. After a moment more, he gingerly took off his battle shell and set it on the ground, probably leaning against the side of one of the beds.
With his two awake brothers settled in, Raph reached over to Leo and carefully lay his hand against Leo's arm.
Leo blinked his less-swollen eye open at the touch- though only barely- and beamed widely, wrapping his arms around Raph's like a teddy bear and clinging onto it as his eye fluttered shut again. "I goootscha, Big Raphieee, nooooo takesy-backsies…!"
Mikey giggled, Raph snorted, and even Donnie managed a small grin.
The medbay doors opened, and Raph turned his own smile towards the newcomers. "Hey, guys."
April, Casey, and Splinter all sagged from their initial weary expressions into matching faces of relief, and the three of them gathered around the combined beds. Splinter sat in the chair Donnie'd left to the side and took one of Raph's fingers in his hands. "How are you feeling, Red?"
"Like somebody turned my brain into a smoothie and poured it back into my head," Raph said with a weak chuckle.
"Got room for one more in there?" asked April, gesturing to the space between Leo and Raph, ripe for the nestling.
"Just don't bump Leo too badly," mumbled Donnie into Raph's leg.
Mikey's only response was a content little snore.
To her credit, April was exceedingly careful as she wiggled her way into the open spot, quickly mirroring Mikey against Raph's side. Leo's right hand twitched under Raph's arm as she settled in, but Leo seemed content to loosely grab at the shoulder of April's jacket for the time being.
Oh, wait, no, he was blearily looking at the others with his brow furrowing slightly.
"What's up, Leo?" asked Raph quietly.
Leo mumbled something unintelligible as he squinted at them, nodding slightly as he 'spoke,' but if Raph's hunch was right, it sounded like he was counting something under his breath. One, two, three, four, five…
Leo frowned and started looking around, then broke out in a wide, beaming grin when his eyes landed on- "Caseyyyyy! I'ssa turl pile! C'mooon!"
Casey's eyes grew big and wet, and he did one of those half-laugh half-sob things that they'd all done a few of in the past day or so. "Leo, I don't think I'll fit."
"Gimm' y'r arm," insisted Leo, lifting his left arm (the least-injured part of him, it seemed) and flailing it vaguely in Casey's direction. "Gotta be in th' turl pile!"
"You heard the man," chuckled Raph. "Better grab a chair, I don't think we're going anywhere for a bit."
Casey sniffled, but grinned and nodded before doing exactly that, letting Leo drag his arm over Raph's and entrap it there with his own.
Leo giggled loopily and snuggled the two arms and April's jacket shoulder to his chest, quickly sinking back into unconsciousness and clinging to the three of them like a content leech.
"We'd best get some rest," Donnie murmured. "My tech is monitoring vitals for both Leo and Raph, so if something goes wrong that doesn't immediately wake us up, the alarms will take care of getting us moving. At present, however, we're all stable, and we should remain so."
If even Donnie was resigning himself to rest, he must have been exhausted like Raph had rarely ever seen.
"I can get behind that," Raph agreed quietly, letting himself relax against the bed and allowing the knowledge that his family was all in arm's reach to wash over him.
Splinter gave Raph's finger a squeeze. "I do not believe I will be able to sleep for some time yet, but I will stay right here. I promise."
"M'kay," Raph mumbled, closing his eyes.
When he opened them again, the others had shifted slightly, nearly all of them asleep. Mikey had retracted into his shell and gotten comfy in the crook of Raph's elbow, Donnie was laying with his shell against the thin blankets on Raph's leg and his limbs splayed out, April had sprawled her legs over Raph's chest, her jacket still in Leo's grip, Splinter was snoring lightly from his seat, and Casey-
Raph watched sleepily as Casey's head drooped, then jumped back up again before repeating the cycle.
Casey blinked at his voice, then managed a small smile. "Hi, Raphael."
"Please." Raph grinned. "Just call me Raph. You did good out there, Casey. We all did."
Casey's eyes watered slightly. "…thanks, Raph."
"…You didn't know me that great in the future, did you?" asked Raph on a hunch.
Casey just pressed his lips together and looked down, giving his head a minute shake.
With Leo still gripping both Raph's and Casey's arms like a pair of long teddy bears, it was a bit of an awkward maneuver, but Raph managed to work Leo's grip up his arm until his forearm was free. With his newly-regained range of motion, Raph twisted his arm back and gave Casey's arm a pat. "Hey, Raph don't need to know the details if you don't wanna give 'em. It's been a long few days."
Casey nodded, swallowing thickly. "…'kay."
"Get some rest. Donnie's alarms'll make sure we wake up if we gotta," Raph told him, shooting him his patented Reassuring Biggest Brother Grin. "We made it."
Casey just gave Raph a wobbly smile, then leaned over the remaining clear space on Leo's bed, pillowing his head on his free arm.
Raph wasn't always smart, but he knew Casey probably wasn't going to manage going to sleep that quickly.
Still, he was making an effort.
Raph let out a breath, some of the remaining tension in his body draining away, and he let his eye fall closed again.
Mikey and April next to him, Donnie against his legs, Splinter still holding one of his fingers, Leo hugging his and Casey's arms, the Krang invasion successfully stopped…
Raph would have to tell him he was proud of him sometime soon.
