Chapter Text
Raph was always hungry.
It was something he’d known for as far back as he could remember. He learned early on to not eat everything in sight because one, it never helped the hunger much, and two, he had three younger brothers who also needed food, which he refused to take away from them. So, over the years, he just got used to it and learned when it was appropriate to eat from when his brothers got hungry or his hunger got extra strong. Raph found that chewing on extremely sturdy things like concrete were good at keeping him from biting out of pure hunger instinct, before they grew older and Donnie learned more about dentistry. The softshell went into a minor panic at learning the damage scraping one’s human-esque teeth against concrete could do and set out to make specialized, incredibly strong chew toys for him to use instead (though Raph never really told him why he was always chewing on things).
As they grew older and they could all help themselves and each other more, food became much more plentiful. With it, Raph had initially hoped that his hunger would finally be sated. It was not meant to be, however, as he would need to consume the entire meal Mikey had prepared for ALL of them to make a notable difference to his stomach. So he cut back again and waved off his brothers’ concern. He just told them he wasn’t as hungry as that one time, not that he was used to it and it was becoming an old friend.
Raph did, however, still need to eat at least three times a day regularly. With his body constantly convinced he was starving it, missing any scheduled sustenance had it rebelling and putting him in a really bad mood. One even worse than his years of anger management practice could handle.
He found himself in one such situation a few years after the invasion, stopping a gang of low-life crooks with his brothers. Raph’d gotten Mikey’s wonderful dinner, but because of errands running long earlier in the day, he’d missed lunch, and dinner wasn’t enough , his belly protesting even more than usual. The eldest brother tried not to think about it as they fought, able to distract himself briefly with the adrenaline, but the thugs clearly depended on their numbers for fear and weren’t prepared for real fighting like what the Mad Dogs brought.
Most of them had run off at the first sign of trouble and his brothers had split up to deal with the rest, leaving Raph with a guy that was definitely more bark than bite but just would not shut up regardless of that. Raph had tried to just scare him off, then pushed him a bit to make him leave without actually hurting him. But the bastard wouldn’t budge (well, he did when Raph pushed him, but that was besides the point). So when his stomach growled louder than the guy could drown out, Raph growled, too, his patience running thin.
“Aw, you hangry, you big freak?” the guy taunted, backing away but only enough to stay out of range of Raph’s swipes. “Is that why you’re pickin’ on me and my pals?”
“Shuddup,” Raph snarled, stepping forward again. “Get outta here before I do some real damage to you.”
“Like what? You’re too chicken to,” he jabbed, looking surprisingly unfazed for an average height human squaring up against a seven-plus-foot-tall mutant snapping turtle.
Raph bared his teeth and snapped them together, finding some subconscious satisfaction in feeling his fangs grind against each other. “I could break every bone in your body in an instant,” he uttered darkly. “But I prefer not to, since most humans don’t usually deserve it.”
“Oh, and I do? Golly, I feel so special.” He had backed into a dead-end alleyway and Raph was slowly cornering him. The slightest tremble had entered his voice and a deeply hidden part of Raph liked that.
“Last warning,” he rumbled, an almost inhuman sound as his self-control continued to slip. “Leave, and I’ll let you walk away with your legs intact.”
“Oh yeah? And what’re you gonna do if I don’t? Eat me?”
The last of Raph’s sanity evaporated as his stomach lurched again. His third eyelid slid over his eyes and he said, “Maybe I will.”
Everything after that was white.
~~
The next time Raph regained consciousness, he was surprised to find himself in the medbay at the lair. He sat up in the cot and took stock of himself quickly, confused to find he felt just fine, aside from a slight discomfort in his lower abdomen. No cuts or major bruises, not even a little scrape.
So… why was he in the medbay?
He thought back to his last memory and panicked a little at the gap he found. Oh no, had he seriously hurt that guy? Had his brothers needed to pull him away before he tore the man limb from limb?
…Had his brothers made it in time to stop him?
Raph was wrenched from his spiraling thoughts by something shifting in his guts and he grunted, pressing a hand to his plastron. He only had a second to wonder why he felt so bloated when a shocking realization hit him.
He wasn’t hungry anymore.
He had pretty much forgotten what it felt like to not be hungry, having grown so used to the perpetual gnawing in his stomach. It had become another fact of reality to him, like needing to breathe and walk. To be without hunger was almost unsettling. Almost.
It felt too good to finally be full for Raph to actually miss being hungry.
He slowly flopped back down onto the bed and started rubbing his belly, letting his fullness wash over him. A contented groan escaped his throat. When he realized his lower plastron was actually distended from whatever was making him full, a flash of… something shot through him, leaving him feeling oddly displaced from himself. Another concern entered his mind, however, as he wondered what was causing it. He didn’t remember eating enough to warrant this level of fullness, so it couldn’t have been food (or maybe it was, but Raph thought it was unlikely).
Maybe an allergic reaction? They already knew about his peanut allergy and Donnie said people with one allergy were likely to have more, so maybe something got in his system that was causing this. (But then why did it feel so good…? The unidentifiable feeling rocked him again.)
Thankfully (or maybe un-thankfully, since Raph had been kind of enjoying his alone time), Donnie and Leo came walking back into the bay, discussing something.
“...double- AND triple-checked all his vitals, like you asked,” Donnie was arguing, looking only at his twin. “I know it sounds insane, but you know I wouldn’t make a claim like that unless I was certain!”
“I know, I know, but god , did he really…?” Leo trailed off, looking troubled. They both stopped in their tracks when they realized Raph was awake, sitting up and staring at them.
Leo was the first to snap out of it. “Hey, big guy!” he greeted, clapping his hands together. “How do you feel? You left us kind of panicking after, uh…”
With a slight frown, Raph replied, “After… what? I don’t remember, uh… a whole lot.”
Something like fear flashed across his brothers’ faces before they schooled their expressions. “Well, what’s the last thing you do remember?” Leo asked, forcing his tone to stay light. “We can probably help fill in the gaps.” As he talked, Donnie silently excused himself to the medical equipment set up nearby, fiddling with something.
Raph scrunched up his face in thought, ignoring his now pounding heart. “I think… the last thing I remember is cornering some guy who wouldn’t shut up, despite me tryin’ to scare him off.” He sighed, running a hand down his face. “I didn’t wanna hurt the guy but I didn’t have lunch, and you know how I get when I miss a meal, and I just… lost my patience…” He could feel his cheeks heat from embarrassment.
Leo looked uncomfortable. “Ah. That’s the absolute last thing you remember?”
“I think so? He said something that pushed me over and everything’s just… fuzzy after that,” Raph admitted. “I didn’t… hurt the guy real bad, did I?” he asked quietly.
Leo and Donnie exchanged a look that Raph couldn’t decipher but certainly didn’t assure him. “That depends on your definition of ‘real bad’,” Donnie muttered before Leo smacked the back of his head, glaring. “What?!” Donnie snapped. “How else am I going to describe this?!”
Raph’s fear stink rapidly filled the limited space of the medbay. “Donnie? What do you mean by that?” When his brainiac brother didn’t respond, only turning back to his work, Raph’s anxiety spiked further. “What does he mean by that?!” he shrieked to Leo, working his hands worriedly.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay!” Leo soothed, striding over and carefully prying Raph’s hands apart to keep him from hurting himself. The slider rubbed soothing circles with his thumbs as he said, “Donnie’s just talking about what happened when you blanked out. You… did do something to the guy you cornered,” Leo admitted, but when Raph whined, high in the back of his throat, he was quick to continue, “but it’s not that bad! …Probably. Maybe…”
It was then that Raph learned the disadvantages of being full when the stress of the situation made him clench up, including his stomach. A sharp cramp cut through him and he reflexively curled over himself, groaning. He was no stranger to pain and had the tolerance to prove it but this was a new kind of pain that the snapper wasn’t sure how to deal with. Even more worrying, Leo and Donnie didn’t seem immediately concerned - more panicked than anything, like before.
“Guys, please,” Raph whimpered, from both the pain and his stress. “Just give it to me straight. I won’t be mad at you, I’d just rather know than be in the dark like this!”
After exchanging one more uncertain glance with Donnie, Leo let go of Raph’s hands, sighed, and said, “Okay. We’re sorry. We know you’re not mad, it’s just that this has never happened before, and we don’t really know how to-”
“You ate him,” Donnie deadpanned.
There was a beat of heavy silence before the room erupted in shouting.
“Could you have handled that any worse?!” Leo cried, throwing his arms up.
“He said give it to him straight!” Donnie shot back, looking incredibly tense.
“I FUCKING ATE SOMEONE?!” Raph screamed, clutching his head.
Raph’s very rare swear was enough to silence the twins again. “Uh… yeah,” Leo bit out, frame looking wound tight as could be.
A massive wave of nausea hit Raph all at once as his brain connected the dots and he gasped, “Oh, god,” before rolling to his side, dry heaving over the edge of the cot.
Leo and Donnie lurched into action, both shouting, “No, no, no, no, no!” as they ran over to him.
Raph could barely hear them over his own gagging and the ringing building in his ears but he managed to croak, “Wh- what’s wrong?”
“Don’t throw up!” Leo shouted, waving his hands in front of him. “We have no idea what kind of damage that could cause!”
As Raph swallowed the high influx of saliva accumulating, he panted, “D-damage?”
Leo hesitated again so Donnie unfortunately jumped in with a very high-pitched, “Well, biologically speaking, skin, muscle, and organs digest much quicker than skeletal pieces in organisms that consume their prey whole, and given the amount of time it’s been since supposed consumption, we can only assume the bones have yet to completely break down-”
“I can’t throw up ‘cuz I could hurt myself on his bones?” Raph whispered, deadly quiet.
“...Y-yeah… pretty much?”
Raph dry heaved over the bed again.
~~
It took quite some time and a lot of convincing to get Raph calmed down again, but they got to the point where he only felt nauseous if he thought too hard about his situation. “You’re absolutely certain?” he found himself rasping to Leo and Donnie as they ran a few non-invasive tests on him. “I really… ate the guy?”
Donnie huffed through his nose but didn’t stop working. “I ran a couple x-rays,” he said, sounding snippy in a way that Raph knew just meant he was stressed. “There was definitely a skel-” He stopped when he saw how pale Raph’s face was. “It was pretty obvious,” he settled for instead, turning away. “I guess I could show you the x-rays if you want-”
“We are not showing him the x-rays!” Leo snapped, finishing wrapping the site on Raph’s arm where he’d drawn a bit of blood. “Now or ever, he does not need that kind of stress.”
Another uncomfortable silence hung above them until Raph inhaled shakily and asked, “What now?”
That gave the twins pause. “Now… we continue life as usual,” Donnie said slowly.
Fear and panic turned into rage in a split second. “Life as usual?! Like nothing happened ?! I killed someone!” Raph snapped, then froze. “Oh god, I’m a murderer,” he whispered.
“Hey, no! No, no, no,” Leo immediately soothed, running a hand up the snapper’s spiky arm. “That’s my big brother you’re accusing there,” he tried to joke, though it fell flat. “You didn’t mean to do it, that’s not murder-”
“Then what do you call it?!” Raph interrupted shrilly. “He’s dead and I’m to blame, how is that not-?!”
“There is a legal difference between intentional killing and unintentional killing,” Donnie cut in, voice flat. “Murder versus manslaughter. Think of someone willingly taking a gun to shoot someone versus a drunk driver hitting someone on the road.”
Raph paused for a moment as he thought about it, Leo continuing to rub his arm. “I did mean it, though,” he whispered, tears welling up in his eyes. “He made me so angry and I was so hungry, it just…” He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.
“But you said it yourself, you weren’t conscious after that,” Leo pointed out, ever the tactician. “You weren’t in complete control of your facilities. It’s just like Donnie said, it was an accident. An unfortunate side effect of your condition at the time, but an accident nonetheless. Just like how the drunk driver could have been a perfectly nice and normal person who would never kill otherwise but accidentally hit someone while inebriated on the road. It wasn’t your fault.”
Raph looked away, tears rolling silently down his cheeks.
Leo gently took Raph’s jaw in his hands to make the snapper look at him again. “You hear me? It wasn’t your fault ,” Leo reiterated slowly.
“The guy was a nobody, anyway,” Donnie added casually. “No life outside of that gang, no family or friends-”
“ Not helping ,” Leo hissed when Raph’s tears fell harder. “Let’s maybe not remind big red that the guy was human?”
“But he was,” Raph sobbed, curling into a ball as best he could around the lump from - oh, nope, not finishing that thought . “I swore I’d protect them, we swore we’d protect them from crazies like Draxum and Big Mama, and here I am, treating them like nothing more than meat-! ”
“Raphael, look at me.”
Raph glanced back at Leo in surprise at both his full name and Leo’s dead serious tone.
“You’re going to repeat after me, all right?” When Raph slowly and uncertainly nodded, Leo said, firm as could be, “It was not your fault.”
Raph opened his mouth and closed it. “Leo, that-”
“Repeat after me, Raphael. It was not your fault.”
The tears came back but for a new reason. “It wasn’t my fault,” he whispered, barely audible.
“It was not your fault.”
“It was not my fault.”
“It was not your fault.”
“...It wasn’t my fault.”
“There you go,” Leo said softly, relaxing his grip and stroking Raph’s wet cheek with his thumb. “Just keep telling yourself that when it makes you upset, okay? Nobody here blames you. Nobody here is angry at you. We still love and support you, no matter what. And we don’t want you to beat yourself up over it, all right?” Donnie nodded in agreement from behind Leo. “We’ll help you through this. It’s going to be okay.”
Raph took a deep, shaky breath and tried for a smile. “It’ll be okay.”