Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Even though his eyes glared at the road ahead of him with undying fire, his mind could barely register that he was indeed driving along the Brooklyn bridge. His mind was too far gone, swirling with thoughts of locations where you could be. Every inch of this broken city was left searched. After the shredder took over, it was hardly a place you could call a city, New York had long gone down with its tall buildings, now rubble. Make shift homes for mutants and humans surviving every day with whatever they could trade and find in trash bins. It was shredders paradise, a kingdom he could finally rule.
Raphael snapped out of his thoughts as the end of the bridge grew meters away. The motorbike’s engine lowered its hum as the alley way came in sight, with every second that past more guilt and dread drowned him, the ground opened up, creating a run way down into the sewers. And just like that, Raph was already walking up to the turtles hide out.
His whole body froze, hidden in the hall way leading up to the open space ‘living room’. He didn’t want to walk in empty handed again. How many times his mind dreamed of walking home with you by his side, his father following behind, or at least a slither of a clue to where you and master splinter where. Had the fight between him and his brothers against the shredder had succeeded, New York wouldn’t be in an apocalyptic state, and you and his father would be home safe probably all eating pizza together.
His whole body grew more heavy, created by his dread and also the exhaustion of searching all day. It had been a year since the fight happened, since you and master splinter were taken, and life hasn’t never been ever further from what life used to be. Raph’s shell hit the wall, his head raising up to look at the ceiling before lighting a cigarette. The soft red glow of the end of the cigarette lit up the shadow he stood in. The snake like smoke twisted around the air as if it was it’s prey, finally finding its place inside his lungs. For a moment there was a moment of peace, a moment that melted as fast as it came.
“You’re home late” his older brother’s voice called. Without Raph’s eyes moving from the ceiling that suddenly became so interesting, a sigh left him.
“Yeah what’s new.” Raph felt his brother near.
The leader in blue gave a sad smile towards his hotheaded brother knowing there’s not any new leads. He waited for a moment, letting the heavy silence fill in the open space. Leo had always seen you as their little sister. You were part of their family and they could never imagine life without you, but since last year they were now living that nightmare.
“Food is on the table,” Leo chirped, fully knowing Raph hadn’t eaten that night. Whilst the Red turtle nodded, the last puff of smoke left his lips and the orange glow of the cigarette fell. Landing by his feet, he treaded on it killing its life.
Making their way into the living room they heard their youngest brother Mikey, the turtle in orange, skating around that same old lair, seeming to try and distract himself. But the wheels came to a immediate stop, scraping the concrete, his eyes growing immediately hopefully as he saw his older brother had returned hopefully with news about you and master splinter. But that didn’t last long since he caught the side eye look Leo and Raph both gave him. Almost as if they both were apologetic for not finding anything.
The cardboard box was opened slowly, inside were the rations for the week. The box had been given at the trade market, the only place left for surviving people and mutants to trade their valuables for food. The whole trade market was a mess, make shift stalls made with ripped old cloth. A lot of people now took refuge there in make shift tents. Donnie couldn’t rip his eyes away from looking at the box, anger filling his heavy heart, he hated thinking this is what life had come to for everyone. Surviving off of out of date tin cans of soup, people living in fear from the foot soldiers taking their loved ones away or their lives, he couldn’t help but just partly blame himself for not doing better when the city needed them.
“Donnie. You’re doing it again.”
“Hm?” The purple turtle looked up seeing his brothers come into the kitchen.
“You shouldn’t keep blaming yourself for what has happened. Right now we need to keep focus on our plans.” The leader spoke up as he walked closer to Donnie before placing his hand onto his shoulder.
“Right sorry. I was just wrapped up in thought.” The tall turtle lumped down into a chair feeling almost exhausted from thinking about everything.
Raphael stuck his hand into the worn out box, pulling out a damaged but still good can of cold tomato soup, he shoved it between his belt and shell, keeping it place so his hands would be free. He was starving after another day of searching, his muscles aching from climbing so much. After grabbing the can he turned on his heels to walk to his room but stopped mid way as he heard his name get called by his older brother Leo.
“Raph... we need to talk. Donnie and I have been talking recently about the plan.” He spoke with solidarity, keeping his eyes locked on his brother’s shell, his eyes glazing over all the scar like scrapes from all their missions over the years of their lives.
With a small nod from Raph, it was enough to understand that he wanted Leo to keep talking.
“We are leaving in 2 weeks...”
“What!” The room didn’t have a chance to catch silence as Leo spoke up once more.
“We need to get to April’s cabin as soon as we can. We can barely hold up in this place anymore. Once we make a plan on how we are going to take down shredder for good then we will return. But we can’t wait any longer.”
“So fearless leader in blue thinks fleeing this shit hole is going to solve our problems! You think sitting in a van and sneaking out of the state is going to help Master splinter and ghosty?!” A fire flared up in his eyes as he turned to face the two brothers, not realising Mikey had slowly entered the room hearing the new plan.
“Raph. Sitting here in this place isn’t helping them either. We will be prepared and stronger when we have a proper plan created. We need to get there because every single day that passes the sewers become less home, and more dangerous. We become more vulnerable to shredders foot men.” The gap between the red and blue turtle slowly became smaller as it was quite clear they were ready to settle this argument like how they always have, by fighting.
Mikey held up his hands onto Raphael’s chest whilst Donnie pulled on Leo’s arms, trying their best to keep the two from inching closer to rip each other’s throats out.
“I’ll take on every last fucking one of them! Fearless leader my ass, you’re more of a coward then you ever have been before! I’m fucking staying till we find them because unlike some asshole I actually give a shit about finding them! You’re always about ‘never leaving family behind’! So what the fuck are they to you!”
“Thats enough Ralph!” Donnie called growing worry in his voice as Raph Pushed on some sensitive nerves.
“I actually go out there! Every single fucking day searching my shell off to find them both! Even a fucking clue to where they could be whilst you sit on your ass all day with your head in the clouds!” The growl in his voice grew louder as he ignored Donnie’s plead.
“I probably care way more about them then you ever fucking have! You always had to be dramatic and always start petty fights! Staying in your room whilst we all trained, when we hung out, when we all ate together. You missed every chance to spend time with them and now because your hotheaded ass feels guilty you want us to look bad by saying we don’t do anything! How can we fucking find them if we are dead!” Leo yelled matching the loud volume of his brother. For a moment Raph didn't bark back, instead he pushed Mikey away, enough to get him off.
“I rather try to find them till my last breath then run away.” And with those words, Raph walked away, just like Leo predicted. Even though they all were forced to mentally mature, he still saw how immature his younger brother could be.
The door of his room slammed shut showing a clear sign to everyone that he was not going to come out for a while. Tonight was going to be a long one.
A hour or two hour had past since the heated argument had ended. Raph had passed out on his bed, his leg hanging off the edge. On his nightstand stood the can of soup he had taken, one of his weapons stuck inside the now open container, he had used it to open the soup can.
He didn’t want to admit it, but he had fallen asleep knowing his brother was right, who would keep searching for you if he was dead or captured. Plus he wasn’t really that selfish to put his brothers in danger by staying here fully knowing that foot were very much closing in on them every day. Loud snoring was never nothing new, he had always snored until you would come by and ask him in the middle of the night to quite down
Raph missed the way you would knock on his door, but after being too lazy to get up to answer the door, you still would walk in his room and ask him to quite down. He missed how tired your eyes would look from waking up, how the small annoyed look would remain on your face till he gave you a signal that he would silence down. Yes he would be tired from freshly waking up but he wouldn’t forget that face you would make after it happened like that almost every single night.
But in all honesty, he promised himself, if-when you would be found, he promised he wouldn’t snore. He wouldn’t dare to ruin your sleep once you were finally found and were actually in a safe place where you would be protected with his whole life. But for now, he kept his loud snores to trick himself into thinking you’ll come and knock on his door again.