he'd love to come in snide, say i do with conviction and point out the moment leo chose to cut the string. truth is, raph isn't so sure he could scour back the years and find that first cut. the more he thinks about it, he's a little worried there was never a string in the first place, just a whole lot of shared dinner tables and childhood games that ran on into their teens. he stares hard at the floor between his feet, scuffing the wraps around his ankles absently. there's a defensivness to it, as there is with most things; he wants both to insist that he didn't know leo at all (purely to spite leo himself) and that of course he knew leo, better than anyone, better than himself. his big brother, his first best friend, his first worst enemy, his first idol and cautionary tale and pride and shame. who did he know, if not leo?
the world races on below them. hard to imagine this place just a couple of months ago, or even further back, a blip on a blip in the vast expanse of space, another hole they all almost died in. raph sucks in a breath, holds it tight in his chest, shakes the image of running water and smooth pebbles from his head to replace it with something that works. "think it was always that way, man," he says. gentle, somewhat. more so than before. "like... i don't know. like that's how you were supposed to be."
all raph knows is what that did to him, to be second but so far in second that placements never really mattered anyway. to be older than the babies but a baby all the same, talked about in hushed whispers by father and brother both, a problem to be solved even as he reared the other two. to sit awake at night listening to the murmurs in the dojo, worried stiff and sick both that everything was wrong and he was to blame. now, he looks at leo and sees the age in him, too. they were little boys and men and mutants all at once, and unable to share the weight of any of it. "how we were supposed to be."
