#eeheee

meteor shower (quick, take cover)

The worst part about it was that Raph had seen it coming. 

They were all jumpy. Trigger-sad and still pulling themselves back together. The crashing of pots as they spilled out of the cupboard, and everyone in the kitchen jumped out of their skin. Leo flinched a second time as Raph landed from his (admittedly embarrassing) hop. His little brother's breath hitched and hitched and he ducked his head to the floor, staring staring staring. His cane clattered to the floor. 

“Oh buddy…” Raph dropped his voice soft. Leo's eyes locked onto him. He stumbled, arm reaching blindly behind to find its grip on the counter. He fell, frame shaking. His eyes didn't leave Raph's, Raph's right eye, droning up and down his arm. Hitch, hitch, hitch hitch hitch. 

Raph took a step forward. And Leo-

Leo

Leo raised his arms, taking himself to the floor without the support. He ducked his head, limbs already starting to retreat into his shell. And Leo looked up at him, eyes big and shaking and welled up tears and and and

Beside him, Mikey unfroze, bounding forward before Raph could stop him. 

“Mike, I don't think-” He trailed off as Leo peaked up, reaching for Mikey with unrestrained sobs. He held his little brother close, only looking up to watch Raph. Again, their eyes locked. 

Terror. Panic. Horror. Fear. The hitch hitch hitch when Raph raised a hand. So he stepped back instead. Back and back and back until he was running out of their kitchen, glancing over his shoulder in time to see Leo relax, just a little. Just enough. 

Raph punched his wall. His wall, this time. Not Leo's or Leo or anything else. He breathed, hard eyes roaming and landing on a pile of stuffies by his pillow. 

He'd like to say he did anything else, but Raph fell into bed, held a stuffed cat tight to his chest, and cried. 

The plushie's name was Kitty-Kitty. Once, when they were really little, Leo tore her arm off in a fit of rage and safety scissors. Raph cried and then Leo cried and then Mikey cried, overwhelmed with it all. Leo sewed the arm back on and even added a little heart on her sleeve. The clumsy stitches had long since fallen out, but Raph had sewn them back year after year and kept it and held it close, tight to his chest as he cried like a child. He cried and he cried. It seemed the world was constantly finding new and creative ways to break his heart. (Or maybe not so creative because)

(Well)

(He'd seen it all coming)

Raph let himself drown, let himself toss and turn and wallow in the salty leftovers on his cheeks. Like a beached whale, he let himself wallow, just a bit.

Donnie once said that dead whales could explode. Maybe Raph would explode. He wished he would, just a little, if only so he wouldn't have to get back up and see that look in Leo's eyes ever again. Ever, ever again. 

But he would, wouldn't he? The next panic attack, the next mission gone awry, the next the next the next… It kept going and going. The next… what if Raph got weird again? Leo had always been the best at calming him down, bringing him back. What if Leo couldn't do it? Got too scared, was hurt too bad? Decided that it just. Wasn't worth it. 

Raoh let another wave of tears wash over him. Usually after a good cry he felt cleaned out, hollowed chest and burning nostrils, insides sanded and painted with white wash, fresh and new. Maybe it was just a bad cry, because he still felt all stuffed and overwhelmed and big and heavy and gross, insides all slime and goo and and and

Raph picked up that train of thought, dragged it through his mind palace, and threw it in the moat. 

He took stock. 

Raph was tired. His nostrils burned and any emotion was still a messy, unnamable blarehorn, though his eyes had nothing left to produce but the liquid ache that flowed like a lava lamp behind them. 

Knock-knock-knock-knock-knock

That was Leo's knock. Raph tensed. Leo's knock was usually accompanied by a greeting or a yell or the sound of something breaking. It was odd to just…hear the knocks, all hesitant and lonely. 

“You there, big guy?” There it was. Leo's voice was still gravelly from earlier, still a little quiet. Raph's heart clenched. He stacked his courage and spoke,

“Hi.” Wow. Nice one, Raphie. 

“Hey.” Leo was close to the door. Raph could imagine him, shell against the wall, his arms crossed and head tilted back so he could speak without having to face the quiet subway car, a new dent on its side. 

Maybe he had his forehead up against the cold metal of the sliding door, condensation decorating its surface, staring at the floor. Staring, staring, just a little. 

Or maybe he was just standing there like normal. Raph doubted it, somehow. 

“Listen, Raph, I..” His voice broke, a lightning strike down the middle. Lightning actually does hit the same place twice, Raph remembered Donnie explaining, more likely to, even. “I'm so sorry.” 

“‘s not your fault.” His voice was a twin wobble. Leo chuckled, 

“Heh, snot…” Raph felt his mouth twitch up. 

“...do you wanna come in?” He asked, trying to keep his voice from being all nervous and weird. Like Raph was anything but nervous and weird. Super weird. 

Leo didn't answer, but Raph heard the jerk of the handle and the door slid open. And…

Post-panic attack Leo always made Raph want to scoop his brother up in his arms and never let him go. With red eyes, shaky and distant, quiet breaths before a quick deep one, like he suddenly remembered how. Everything about him was… dialed down. Like he was too tired to keep his brightness up all the way. 

It's not that he wanted Leo to pretend he was okay, but reminders that he wasn't hurt too. And Raph couldn't scoop his brother up and never let him go. Besides the obvious impracticality, he would just make everything worse. 

But his palms turned up without him meaning too, and Leo stumbled forward and wrapped his arms around Raph's neck. Not too tight, just there. Secure. Raph's hand hovered over his brother's shell, not daring to brush the cracks, almost trembling at the thought of falling anywhere near Leo's throat. So small. Leo was larger than life, but Raph's little brother was so, so small. 

“This is lame,” Leo whined, “Hug me!” 

“You sure?” He asked. Whispered. Leo grumbled, tucking further into Raph's chest. 

“It was the Krang, not you.” Raph took a breath, a little shudder, 

“Then it was your brain juice, and not you.” Leo didn't answer for one beat, two, three,

“Then hug me, stupid.” 

“Aye, watch it!” But Leo didn't so much as flinch as Raph's arms wrapped around him, held him close. They breathed for a bit. It was the Krang, not you. Not you. Not Raph. 

Raph pressed his head down, tension whirlpooling down the drain. It was a little odd, wasn't it? Because, well,

The cave bursts to life. Across the stone walls, there is a shifting expanse of black handprints-- from the marks sprawls a strange oozing dust. They move as if they are crawling, flowing in and out of the rock, dribbling to the floor and reappearing elsewhere. 

There are figures at the edge of his vision. They stand in his periphery and dissipate when he turns his helmet to look at them.

To anyone else, the sight of a room clamoring with ghosts might initiate the instinct to run. He does consider it, for a second-- but he doesn’t, because Mandalorians look death in the eye. He’s seen a great many strange things as of late, and he figures he may as well get used to it. 

Sitting straighter, he folds his hands more firmly around the hilt of the saber and says; “What do you want?” 

“That’s not the question you want an answer to,” whispers a melodic voice from behind him. 

“Maybe not number one on the list, but I have a few,” he mutters, and chooses a better place to start. “What are you?”

The walls of the cave bend around him; the gap in the stone where he entered through transforms into a mirror. The only solid figure he can discern in the room is the sight of himself. Cross-legged, helmeted, tense. 

From all around, he can hear a steadily intermingling throng of voices. You don’t deserve it, says one, good on you for showing that Imperial scum what our folk are made of, says another. Zealot, zealot. He cranes his neck, but the half-remembered ghosts flicker out of sight. 

Where is your heart, a soft voice murmurs, you keep your heart in a bag on your hip or on the crook of your arm. 

“We wielded the saber, we died by it, we live by it.”  A woman’s voice, deep, sincere. “Ask your question.” 

Images blink across the cave walls. Paintings of mythosaurs, spears, dead civilians, razed villages-- great herds of beasts cascade over the stone. The handprints divide and scatter, oozing together into black sludge that smears strange markings across the walls. Words in Mando’a, in Aurebesh, in alphabets he has never seen before. Stories he will never understand. The ghosts whisper now, ask us, speak, we are listening...  

“I have brought Grogu to the Jedi. I completed my quest.” 

Unsatisfied. Discontent. Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad, ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad. Wind rushes through the cave; the ocean laps against the rocks. 

A deeper voice emerges from the hum. “Every Jedi is a child his family decided they could live without.”

“That’s--” Din pauses, swallowing his retort. He watches as the air burbles, a geometric miasma scattering out from the cave-paintings. “I want him to be safe. With or without me.” 

“Every time you have left him with another, it has gone afoul.” The ghosts blacken and flicker. He feels a firm hand on his shoulder-- one he can feel but cannot see. “It should be you.”

"What if I do it wrong. I'm not- I’m not a Jedi. I do not understand the force." he cuts himself shorts and sighs. "I'm afraid."

There is a metallic taste on his tongue. The air stinks of ozone. He feels the phantom weight of Grogu in his arms, and he can't help but instinctually cradle that empty space.

“You think your buirs were not afraid?” A rustle, the sound of bells, the sound of a hammer in a forge. Ner’ad, we will take care of you- 

“Will you-- as long as I have this saber, will you help me? Tell me what to do?” 

“We will not always be with you,” says one. “You have lived without us very long, and did well even then.”

“Hm,” he murmurs, unconvinced.

“You know what to do. You will not be alone.”  Buirkan, responsibility, whisper the ghosts. You are like a father to him- be afraid, and do it anyway. 

Named and nameless, real as they are not, the souls who belong to the darksaber touch him. They press their palms into his shoulder, brush where his kneecap transitions into thigh, flutter at the base of his neck, squeeze his shoulders, lay their weight against his back.

“It must be you. It has to be you.” 

“I will try,” he says, and watches as all the strange forms in the cave retract into the black bar of the saber. He sheathes it, holding it in the palms of his hands. “I will try.” 

                                                         •

Din is thirty-eight, and still afraid.

The strange planet that Luke Skywalker chose to build his temple upon is lush and green. The humidity crawls between the gaps in his armor. Moss covers the earth; his footsteps feel light as he sinks into that softness. 

Overhead, strange birds called out. A ziggurat rears its head overtop the dense treeline. The darksaber weighs heavy on his hip. Sweat cloys in his helmet; Din swallows, watching silently as a silhouette clad in black emerges from the greenery, cape billowing about him. 

They meet in the middle. Luke Skywalker's smile is as reassuring as it is gentle. "I’m glad you came," says the Jedi. "He asked for you every day."

From a bag on the man's hip, the child reaches for him. 

Din's fragmented heart clicks back into place, whole and trembling. 

He plucks the child from the pouch and cradles him against his armored chest. The ghosts linger about him, press their thumbs into his shoulders, touch his back and murmur kindly. He taps his helmet against the child's forehead; the baby gurgles, pressing his claws into the concave slope of Beskar.