Chapter Text
After the older, one-armed version of Mike had been revived by Old Don’s magic goo, Raphael pulled Dee out of the room and ducked into the shadows. He told himself that he didn't want to confuse them or freak them out—who knew what their mental condition would be like—but he knew deep down that it was because he was a bitter, angry coward. He couldn't stand around and watch a reunion that he wasn't apart of, that he should have been part of.
He debated taking Dee and portaling to a different dimension then and there, but the moment his hand rested on the portal stick he paused.
"Pops?" Dee asked, noticing the motion. "We leavin'?"
Raphael sighed and set his hand on his son's head. "I wanna. This is gonna hurt like shell fer me. But this is the closest turtle I'm gonna get to my bro, and we gotta see if he c'n fix our portal stick."
"Dat other Donatello couldn', an' he invented it," Dee said quietly.
"We gotta try, Shark Bite," Raphael murmured, pulling him close. "If there's a sliver of a chance this Don can help us, we gotta take it."
Dee nodded and fidgeted anxiously. "D'ya think Ol' Hob'll find us here?"
"I'd like to see him try," Raphael snorted, nodding back toward the other four turtles. "They might not be my bros, but I c'n tell ya already they'd teach that ol' cat a thing or two if he shows that ugly mug 'round here."
"There you are!"
Raphael and Dee turned and saw old, gray-haired April approaching them from the throne room with a tired smile. "You can‘t give me the slip that easily, Raphael," she teased, setting her hands on her hips.
Raphael paused, unsure how to talk to this April. He'd met plenty of other versions of his adopted older sister, but none he'd known so well, and yet so little.
He hoped she wouldn't ask him to go back inside. He wasn’t ready to face his not-brothers again, dead or alive.
Luckily, April seemed to catch on to his reluctance and her smiled turned more gentle. "When's the last time either of you ate?"
Raphael honestly couldn't remember. He looked to Dee, who answered, “Dis mornin’. 'Bout twelve hours ago fer us."
"Well then, I got just the thing for you," April said, waving for them to follow and starting out of the building. "Would I be wrong to assume you're a Donatello?"
"No," Dee said, sticking close to Raphael as they walked behind her, "but m'name's Dee."
"Well it's nice to meet you, Dee," April said. She looked searchingly at Raphael, and he grimaced at her unspoken questions, but again, she spared him the burden of answering. "I can't thank you two enough for bringing Don back to us. I still don't understand what he did or how he did it, but I can’t tell you how much it means to me that the guys’ll be okay."
They walked out of the building and April led them through a dizzying mill of people and ducked into a hastily set up tent, popping back out after a moment with an armful of ration bars and canteens.
"It's not exactly pizza, but what's ours is yours," she said.
"Thanks, April," Raphael said, taking the offered food. He noticed Dee pressing into him and threw a look around. There wasn’t any immediate threat, just… a lot of people. Dee didn't do so well in crowds. Raphael didn’t either, for that matter. Looking back to April, Raphael asked, "Any chance ya know a quiet spot we could disappear to?"
April’s expression was soft and understanding. "Of course. Here, this way."
The rations were dry and gritty, but Raphael had eaten far worse over the course of his life. Dee managed to choke one down, but he shoved the rest towards Raphael with a disgusted face.
"I know they ain't great, but they might not have much better," Raphael said, pushing them back.
Dee wrinkled his beak and reluctantly picked one up. He broke it in half and gnawed on the broken end, his face a picture of disgust, but he didn’t argue.
He hadn't really said much in the last several hours, Raphael realized. Only answered questions when directly asked.
"Hey," Raphael said, nudging Dee with his elbow. "Whatcha thinkin'?"
Dee scowled at the ration bar in his hand. "Dat dis is da worst thing I've ever tasted in my life."
"You clearly ain't ever had Donnie's cookin'" Raphael chuckled. "He c'n build a submarine outta junk but he’d burn a sandwich.”
Dee looked up with big eyes. "…Really?"
"What, I never toldja about that?"
Dee shook his head and leaned forward eagerly.
"Well lemme tell ya ‘bout the time he made somethin' called Every Flavor Beans…."
Leonardo drifted into consciousness slowly. He was on his side on the ground except for his head, which was propped up on someone’s leg. There were voices murmuring quietly on the edge of his perception, but he wasn’t quite ready to focus on them yet. Instead, he struggled against the overwhelming stiffness of his body, each limb feeling like it weighed a metric ton. Even his eyelids were too heavy to hold open long enough to look around the room, and Leonardo grunted in frustration.
"Easy Leo, I gotcha bro."
Raphael. Raphael was holding him.
Leonardo hadn’t seen Raphael in years.
Wait no. He’d seen him yesterday. Because Donnie was here, back from the dead and full of the same fire and hope they’d all had as sixteen-year-olds.
Donnie had convinced them to try one last time to defeat the Shredder. Leonardo remembered the plan, remembered preparing for the mission, arriving at Shredder’s throne room via the Tunneler, but then…
Then…
Leonardo struggled again to open his eyes and craned his neck back to try and look at Raphael. "Wha… happ'nnd?"
Raphael snorted. "Don's a miracle worker, that's what happened. Speakn' of which—" Raphael looked up and called out in a stage whisper, "Yo Mike, mind lettin' the braniac go for half a second? Sleepin' Beauty finally woke up."
"LEO!" Mike shouted, and pain shot through Leonardo's head at the volume, causing him to groan and raise a hand to his forehead. At least it only felt like lifting a couple hundred pounds instead of thousands, but ow.
"Keep it down, shell fer brains!" Raphael hissed over his head.
Mike muttered under his breath in reply, but then he was there, pulling Leonardo up in a quick, tight hug before shuffling to the side and looking back over his shoulder, and there—
There was Don.
Not the young Donnie who had spurred them all into action and put together one last-ditch effort to defeat the Shredder. This Don was older, thinner, and wouldn’t make eye contact.
Don held back for a long moment. Raphael kept one hand splayed on Leonardo's plastron while he reached out with the other, yanking Don down to kneel at Leonardo's side, growling, "C'mon, ya idiot, he ain't gonna bite ya,"
"He sshhhh-shh-ould," Don stammered, eyes wet as he gingerly wrapped his arms around Leonardo's shell. "I-I shhh-shh-ould-n--shouldn't have l-l-left."
Leonardo froze, the implications of what Don was saying hitting him like a truck.
"Donnie?" he breathed, tightening his grip around his shell. "You're… our Donnie?"
"Yes," Don whispered, his voice rough and stilted and deeper than Leonardo remembered, but still him. "Y-yes, your Donnie."
Don pulled back and fumbled with something from his shoulder bag, and just as Leonardo drew breath to ask what he was doing, Don shoved a smooth, squishy thing in his mouth.
Leonardo tried to pull back, but Don clamped his hands over his beak and the object quickly burst in his mouth and a thick, earthy syrup coated his tongue and triggered another gag reflex.
Don’s grip was merciless. “S-swallow,” he commanded, and given little choice, Leonardo did so.
"Geeze Don, give a turtle some warning," Mike grunted, patting Leonardo's shell as he hacked and coughed as soon as he was released.
"Wh-what the shell Donnie?!" Leonardo gasped between coughs.
Don didn't answer beyond a hum, reaching over to Raphael and patting his shoulder instead.
"Yeah, yeah, I gotcha," Raphael huffed. He grabbed Leonardo's face in his hands and forced eye contact with a stern frown. "We died, Leo. We won, but we died fer like an hour. So Don's had ta give us this magic goo junk ta make sure all our insides start up again all proper." Raphael looked over Leonardo's head at Don. "Did I get it right?"
Leonardo was vaguely aware of Don humming an approving tone, but he was too busy reeling to articulate a response. Leonardo grabbed Raphael's wrist in one hand and grabbed blindly for Mike with the other, trying to stay grounded through the overwhelming rush of confusion-fear-panic-joy. Mike took his hand and held tight, and Leonardo took a shuddering breath.
"We won?" Leonardo whispered. "We—ugh," he grunted as a sour-bitter-earthy aftertaste rolled over his tongue from the slimy substance Don had force-fed him. "Don, what was that stuff?"
Raphael and Mike chuckled at the face he must be pulling, but Don was there in an instant, pulling Leonardo back into his arms and resting his chin on top of Leonardo’s head. After a moment, Don started rocking back and forth, and, too stunned to do anything else, Leonardo let himself be held.
He'd get up in a minute and take charge of the situation—get the whole story from Don, look over Raphael and Mike, figure out where April and Young Donnie were—but for now, Don was here. Don had him.
For now, Leonardo would let Don be the older brother.
Don didn't get far in explaining his story to his brothers before he got frustrated by his limited vocabulary. He found April hanging outside the room and stammered for Dee. She pointed him to an inconspicuous box truck with a tarp hung over the back, and he paused just outside, listening to Raphael telling Dee stories about one of his more memorable cooking fails. Don couldn't help but stand there and listen for a few seconds, noting how calm and gentle Raphael's voice was. He hadn't heard him use that tone often, but Don felt sure down to his bones that this kid had heard it all his life, and he was glad.
Reluctant though he was to interrupt the moment, Don had left his three brothers waiting for him, so he knocked softly on the side of the truck,
"N-need De," he rasped, and winced at the roughness of his own voice. He wasn't surprised—he'd spoken more today than he had in twenty years.
Raphael pulled back the tarp with a familiar exasperated look. "Geeze Don, y' sound like you've been garglin' sandpaper."
Don nodded sheepishly. His own Raphael had told him the exact same thing. "N-need De," he repeated.
Dee slid out from under the tarp with a flask in hand. He had a remarkably similar expression to Raphael as he shoved it into Don's chest. "Canteen, flask, bottle," Dee said, enunciating each word carefully. "Drink some water."
"W-water," Don laughed, fighting back tears. Real earth water. He accepted the canteen, mentally thanking Dee for the word as well as the gift, and forced himself not to guzzle it however much he wanted to.
Raphael was staring at him in confusion, but Dee looked fascinated and asked, "You didn' have water? How’dja survive?"
Don paused as he parsed out Dee's accent—he felt terrible about it, but it was one thing to hear it from his brother in the same voice he'd heard throughout his life and another to hear it in a child he'd only just met.
"H-had water," he rasped. "But n-not…" His hands curled reflexively in the shape, but he shook his head in frustration and stamped his foot repeatedly against the ground.
"Not earth water," Dee translated, and Don nodded, taking another long sip.
It was amazing, really, that Dee was able to understand him so well. He was truly a prodigy. Old Don wondered why he was here with Raphael instead of his own brothers in his own universe, but it was obviously going to be a long story, and Don was already overwhelmed by the idea of telling his own. He quickly finished his water break and beckoned insistently towards Shredder’s compound. Dee and Raphael followed him together, and Don wished he had the words to thank them properly.
All in good time.
By the time Raphael, Dee, and Old Don got back to his brothers in Shredder’s demolished throne room, Old Don’s voice had fully given out. Raphael was able to repeat an abbreviated version of the story Old Don had told them back in his hut while Dee worked with Old Don on creating a new sign language that combined Turtle Sign with some of the gestures Old Don was more accustomed to. Finger spelling was useless since Old Don hadn’t read or written in English in decades, but they were able to get by for the time being with key words and phrases.
The next several hours were spent huddled together on boxes while Dee helped Old Don answer questions from his brothers and ask his own.
Raphael sat on the sidelines with his jaw clenched and arms crossed stiffly over his plastron as these haunting versions of his brothers had a full tearful reunion talk. Dee was indispensable as a translator, and Raphael couldn’t be prouder—he knew his kid was smart, but seeing on full display under the appreciative eye of his brothers—
But these weren’t his brothers.
Raphael had to remind himself over and over again, had to stare at the ground to avoid giving his own alternate self a death glare because he would give anything to be in his shoes. It wasn’t fair, they were so close to home, and yet while Raphael watched four brothers get reacquainted with each other, he felt further than ever from his own.
The discussion lasted hours. Old Leo was the one who finally asked Raphael and Dee about their own story, but Dee jumped to answer him before Raphael could even draw breath.
“Pops comes from a time branch in your past, and his Don made interdimensional portal sticks. Some things happened and our stick got knocked around, and we can’t get home.”
Dee looked to Old Don in an unspoken question, and Old Don gestured for the stick. Raphael passed it over to him, and Old Don turned it over in his hands while Dee explained about where he came from, Old Hob, and some highlights of the last ten years. Raphael listened with one ear as he watched Old Don examine the device, waiting to catch that spark of curiosity that would fan into an unstoppable drive to solve the problem in front of him.
Instead, Old Don handed it back with a pensive expression and curled his hands in a gesture that Raphael recognized after seeing it so many times in the last few hours.
I don’t know.
Raphael felt like he’d been caught flatfooted. “Whaddya mean, Don? You got questions?”
Old Don grimaced and raised a hand, slowly lowering his first finger and thumb down together. No.
He looked to Dee, who was staring hard at him, and threw a few more signs and gestures his way.
Dee took a breath to translate, but then paused.
Old Don repeated the signs slower and with more emphasis, and Dee nodded. “He says he ain’t touched Earth tech in ages. ‘S scared he’ll break it or somethin’ and den we’d be stuck here fer ferever. Like he was.”
Raphael scoffed. “You won’t break it, Don, an’ even if ya did, there’d be worse places to get stuck.”
Old Don’s face darkened with an emotion Raphael rarely got to see on his nerd brother—fury. He bared his teeth a little while he signed emphatically at Raphael, and Dee hurried to translate.
“He says yer Don is lookin’ fer ya, an’ even if the stick ain’t got us home yet, it might someday, an’ he ain’t gonna risk that chance fer us.”
“I’m literally askin' ya to, Don,” Raphael countered, his own blood getting hot as Old Don started shaking his head. “I’m beggin’ ya, bro. Yer my best chance at getting home!”
Old Don’s lip lifted in a snarl, his signs sharp, repetitive, and long, and Dee’s translation was even more hesitant than before.
“He’s not yer Don. Yer Don… already gave ya yer best chance.”
Raphael looked at Dee—he knew there was more to Old Don’s gestures than that—but Dee wouldn’t meet his gaze, eyes flickering around him instead. His shoulders were hunched, hands rubbing his arms, and Raphael realized his kid was incredibly overstimulated and trying to push through it.
Raphael took a deep breath and hooked the portal stick back onto his belt. “Alright, Don, it’s alright. Look, can we wrap this up? It’s been a long day, an’ I need to talk to my kid.”
Dee snapped up to stare at Raphael, and Raphael returned the look along with a couple tight signs for Break time, which always meant something more like time to be done when Raphael used it like this.
Raphael knew he’d made the right call when Dee didn’t fight him, just wilted and nodded before he stepped over and wriggled onto a corner of the box Raphael was sitting on until Raphael scooched over to make room for him, looping his arm around Dee’s shoulders and cupping his hand over one ear of his goggles to help tighten their seal. Dee sagged and leaned his head on Raphael’s plastron, but he still watched closely as the others all got up and thronged Old Don again.
Interestingly, though perhaps predictably, Old Leo took the initiative to approach Raphael and Dee, reaching out a hand for Raphael to shake. “While I’m sorry for the circumstances that brought you here, I’m very glad you’re both here.”
Raphael’s right hand was busy holding Dee, so he offered his left, and Old Leo was quick to adjust, using both hands to clasp Raphael’s.
It was such a Leo thing to do. Raphael had met many a Leo in the past ten years, but none whose hands felt so much like his own.
Raphael swallowed and forced himself to speak past the lump in his throat. “Well, can’t say I was glad t’ see ya all cut up before, but… it’s great to see you, Leo.”
If Old Leo noticed the catch in Raphael’s voice, he didn’t give any indication. “Are you keeping out of trouble?”
“Do I ever?” Raphael snorted.
Old Leo huffed a laugh and shook his head. “No. I thought maybe parenthood would force you to pump the brakes a little, but a kid that smart must’ve given you a run for your money, huh Dee?”
Dee’s beak curled up in a reluctant smile that he ducked his head, which only made him look cuter—probably not what he was going for, but Raphael took a second to enjoy it before he came to his rescue. “Yeah, well, brainiacs gotta eat, too. You got any food ‘sides those ration bars?”
“We’ll see what we can do,” Old Leo nodded, stepping back. “Would you like to wait here, or come with?”
Raphael looked down to Dee, who didn’t say anything or look up at him, just pressed himself more firmly into his side. “I think we’ll stay put, if y’don’t mind. Fer a few minutes, anyway.”
“Of course,” Old Leo nodded with a soft smile that made the burn scars on his face stretch and crease. Raphael watched him herd the others out, leaving Raphael holding Dee in relative quiet among the ruins of the Shredder’s throne room. Dee still didn’t say anything, but he pushed Raphael’s arm up out of the way so he could hug him tight around his middle, stretching his thin arms as far across his shell as he could and squeezing hard.
Raphael returned the embrace, and for a few minutes they just sat there processing everything until Dee’s shoulder’s slumped and he eased up on his death grip, signaling that he was okay.
It was then, and only then, that it all slammed into Raphael, everything, all at once.
He’d found his brothers, but they weren’t his.
They were dead, and now they weren’t.
He’d found the turtle that his brother Don had been so desperate to find, had gotten him home, and now Old Don wouldn’t help them.
Raphael took in a long shuddering breath and released it as slowly as he could, willing his emotions to stay down beneath his shell.
Aside from a few silent tears, he mostly succeeded.
“Knock, knock.”
Raphael blinked hard to clear his eyes and turned to see Old Mike walking in with two plates balanced on his one arm, both full of steaming rice.
“Hey Mike,” Raphael said, getting up and taking the plates from him. “Thanks.”
“Yer s’posed t’ say ‘Who’s dere’, Pops,” Dee scolded, as if Raphael didn’t know how a knock-knock joke worked. He turned to Old Mike and solemnly asked, “Who’s dere?”
Old Mike blinked in surprise—he obviously hadn’t meant it as a joke starter—but after a half-beat of silence he said, “Nobel.”
“Nobel who?” Dee asked.
“Nobel… that’s why I knocked,” Old Mike finished with barely a shift in expression.
Right.
That was something Don had said after he finally opened up about this universe. Their Mikey was missing an arm, and he never smiled.
Raphael felt something twist in his gut, but it was broken up when Dee burst into giggles.
“What, you ain’t heard that one?” Raphael snorted, unable to hide the crack in his voice so he took a big bite of his rice to cover it up.
“No!” Dee scoffed, giving him an unimpressed look. “You only tell th’ one about bananas.” He set his plate down on the closest crate and turned back to Mike. “Gimme another one.”
Mike’s eyes lit up and his jaw made a tiny twitch upward, as if he truly hadn’t used those muscles in ages. “Knock-knock.”
“Who’s dere?” Dee asked, already grinning.
“Chickens.”
“Chickens who?”
“Nah kid, those are owls.”
Dee collapsed into giggles. “’Nother one!”
Old Mike glanced hesitantly at Raphael, who was hunched over his plate and doing his best to breathe through his emotions, and continued. “Knock-knock.”
“Who’s dere?” Dee grinned.
“Deja.”
“Deja who?”
Dee started laughing as soon as he said it, but he laughed harder when Old Mike finished with, “Knock-knock!”
Taking it a step further, Dee treated it as the start of a new joke. “Who’s dere?”
Mike was properly warmed up now, so he didn’t even pause to think before he said, “A little old lady.”
“A little old lady who?” Dee gasped between giggles.
“Hey, I didn’t know you could yodel!”
That one got a snort out of Raphael, but that seemed to dislodge all the emotions he’d been holding tight in his chest, and he gasped as his lungs spasmed with a sob. The next thing he knew, Old Mike was easing the plate out of his hand and Dee and Old Mike converged on him without a word, wrapping him in their arms and anchoring him through the storm.