#ratdad

Splinter could feel his remaining sons’ ninpo stir and then surge together, and the sheer forceful brilliance of it staggered him from all the way over on the other side of the city. He knew better than to hope—but he also knew that nothing existed in this world or the next that could possibly outstubborn his children, or strong-arm them into abandoning each other, or quite frankly make them do any single thing they adamantly as a group did not want to do. 

“Guys,” April choked out. “Talk to me, what’s going on? Hello?”

Thudding footfalls announced Casey approaching at a run. He jumped over one of the pinned Krang’s flailing tentacles as if he dodged ballistic alien parts every day of his life and skidded to the ground beside them on armored knees.

“I felt it,” Blue’s child from another life gasped, face tacky with half-dried tears. “That’s Uncle Angie opening a door. No one else could do it but him.”

Casey had a familiar katana at his side, blue and gleaming. His fingers seemed like they wanted to linger on the hilt but he handed it over to Splinter agreeably enough. The lingering ninpo in the blade usually welcomed Splinter warmly, eager to be of use, a telling mirror of the way Leonardo himself was so anxious to please and be praised. But this time the tool that Splinter picked up was an innate, lifeless thing. 

He prodded tentatively with his own qi. The runes flickered once, half-hearted, in the manner of a dog waking at the sound of a key in the door, ascertaining the person there was not the one it belonged to, and laying its head back down to sleep. 

Splinter would not be able to follow the whims of his son’s ninpo to create a portal while it lay dormant. His own uselessness crushed him. 

“Raph mentioned Staten Island earlier,” April said, wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm and pushing herself to her feet, business-like and brisk because she couldn’t afford to be anything else. “I doubt the ferry’s running, and the bridge is going to be a gridlock nightmare, so it looks like we’re stealing a boat.”

“If your mother asks, I did not condone this,” Splinter said hoarsely. “That said, the marina is too far to run to, so first we are stealing a car.”

They were halfway across the river in a cruiser that probably wasn’t meant to sustain the sixty miles an hour April was pushing when that startling shout of their family’s ninpo finally started to fade into a soft-spoken susurrus. 

Before it was too quiet to make out clearly, he felt it: that achingly familiar mischievous blue energy, like a playful breeze flying above everything. Much smaller than usual, less spirited—giving more of the impression of a tiny tide pool creature hiding inside its shell than a smartmouthed sixteen year old boy with the whole world in his corner—but present. 

Alive. 

“Sensei,” Casey whispered. 

“They got him,” April said, a ferocious, not-to-be-trifled-with look in her eye, all but daring the universe to try to make her a liar. “They saved him somehow, I know it.”

They were both Hamato enough to feel it as certainly as Splinter did.

But the boys hadn’t thought to include anyone else in their immediate, hard-won victory—and in fact, the call Splinter, April and Casey finally received some ten minutes later was one of outright panic. 

“Dad, dad, are you there?” Orange’s voice warbled. He sounded all of fifteen years old and frightened in a way that set Splinter’s fur on edge instantly. “Dad, Leo’s hurt bad. He was awake a second ago, and talking even, but then he stopped making sense and just—just fell—”

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Purple added, high-strung and liable to start biting if one more thing went catastrophically wrong within a mile of his person. “I’m scanning him but I don’t—I’m not a doctor I don’t know—”

“Send the readouts to me,” Casey said quickly, pulling his mask down, its lenses glowing green as the interface came to life. “Sensei trained me in field medicine, I can help with anything short of an open-heart surgery.”

“You take after your father,” Donatello replied. “Irredeemable overachievers.”

That faint thread of gratitude in his voice would go unheard by anyone who didn’t know him, but Casey huffed a near-silent exhale, having heard it loud and clear.

What Future Boy had to share with them wasn’t great, but it wasn’t the worst it could have been, either. Leonardo had sustained a number of broken bones and soft tissue damage, the cartilage in his right knee was torn as if the joint had been viciously twisted, one of his cheekbones was fractured, and even his shell had suffered a few hairline cracks. Altogether, he was looking at a long recovery, not unlike what the survivor of a traumatic car accident might have had to look forward to—but he would recover. 

It wasn’t enough to prepare Splinter for actually seeing him. His Baby Blue, a tiny little thing in Raphael’s arms, with a face so beaten it was hard to make out the bright red stripe on one side. 

“Okay,” April said, voice thick with anger and hurt and love. “Okay. Everyone on the boat.”

And finally they were home, after the longest day in history. Casey confirmed his initial diagnosis, with the caveat that they would know more when Leonardo woke up. He insisted to an audience of grim faces that it was a very good sign Leonardo had been awake and coherent in the first place, however briefly. 

So Blue was disinfected and splinted and bandaged and medicated and then tucked safely away in the infirmary bed. Everyone else was seen to in short order. It was an easier task than it usually was, since none of them were remotely willing to leave just yet. 

Splinter made a mental note to call Draxum to double-check that Michelangelo hadn’t pushed himself too far in creating a gateway—the glowing lines on his hands had faded, and beyond an occasional tremor, he promised his family up and down that he was actually fine. Donatello’s shell was a quiet source of concern, but the only person alive who could harass him into a checkup without getting maimed for his trouble was currently very much out of action. Raphael’s eye was definitely infected, and blood vessels had burst when he’d ripped the parasite away, coloring the sclera an alarming red. 

The rest of the clan watched in some unspoken, exhausted wonder as Casey unthinkingly maneuvered around Leonardo’s infirmary as if he’d spent part of every day of his life there, knowing which drawer to find compression gloves for Orange in, locating topical pain reliever for Purple that he could apply himself and medicated eyedrops for Red in quick succession, before ultimately offering a bottle of extra strength Tylenol to April, who accepted it gravely. 

“You’re a weird kid,” she said. From her, it was a declaration of approval. “You better plan on sticking around.”

“Oh,” Casey said at length, surprised. Clearly, he hadn’t thought ahead to what the after of his mission would be shaped like. His gaze lingered on Leo’s little bundled-up figure in the bed, so full of love and grief for a man who didn’t yet exist, and Splinter thought to hell with it. The kid was as good as his grandson if you squinted. 

“We’ll find a bed for you,” Splinter said, some tiny corner of his mind free from screaming worry and bone-deep exhaustion already plotting where to make room for another subway car. “In the meantime, the sofa is yours.”

With that, five out of six children had been packed off to sleep. It took April and Michelangelo combined to pry Donatello’s hand from Leonardo’s, and subsequently his entire person from the infirmary. Raphael pulled a chair up to Leonardo’s bed and Splinter didn’t try to argue him out, knowing when to pick his battles. 

Red had a familiar look on his face, an elephant in the room that often went unacknowledged for both their sakes. That look that said you’re his father but he’s my kid, too.

He had earned the right. No one could argue that. Late night vigils were his wheelhouse and had been ever since he was about nine years old. When Splinter didn’t have to be quite so present—when he started to let the tired gray encroach more and more, when he stopped getting out of bed right away at the sound of a child crying—Red quietly learned how to tend fevers and stomach bugs and bad dreams. 

Soon enough, the boys stopped calling for daddy when they were hurting and started calling for Raphie instead. And their Raphie always came when they called.   

Which was why it must have hurt like a blade piercing clean through his ribs when Leonardo finally stirred at something approaching two o’clock in the morning, blinked muddy gold eyes open slowly, looked up at the familiar shape of his biggest brother beside the bed, and flinched. 

The world hadn’t ended yesterday. It was happening now instead.

Splinter had thought he knew what pain was. But life did not seem to ever run out of brand new lessons to teach. 

“Leo,” Red whispered, heartbreak obvious in every inch of him. His hand was frozen in the air between them, arrested right in the middle of reaching out. 

“No,” Blue managed, twisting around like he would attempt an escape the second he figured out where his limbs were in relation to the bed, IV be damned. The lines on the heart rate monitor started to crest dramatically. 

“Leo it’s okay it’s—it’s me, I’m not—I’m not going to—I would never hurt—” 

His voice strangled itself into silence. After all, at least some of those grisly black and blue marks around Leonardo’s neck were from him. 

“Papa,” Leonardo cried out, the call reaching directly into Splinter’s heart with hooks and yanking him out of his chair. “I want papa, please, please—”

Clambering onto the bed, minding all the hardware, Splinter placed a careful hand on his second-youngest’s feverish head to soothe him. 

He felt like an imposter, especially with Red still frozen like a statue behind him, but that part of his heart that had been smothered once, allowing his children’s cries for him to go unanswered and someone else to pick up the slack, was the loudest part of him now. 

There was physically nothing else he could do but stroke that bruised forehead with the pad of his thumb and tell him, “Hush, Baby Blue, your papa is here. You are safe. You are home.” 

Leonardo turned his face into Splinter’s hand, hiding as much as he was capable of. Raphael took one staggering step back, then another, then turned on his heel and fled the way Splinter had no memory of him ever doing before, infirmary door crashing behind him. 

Torn completely in two, Splinter summoned conviction from those ancient spirits housed in his soul and forced himself at knife point to be strong for his family for once in his goddamn life. 

“What are these tears for, silly turtle?” he murmured, the same way he had when Leonardo still mostly fit in the palm of one hand. Back then, all Leonardo wanted was to be held. He wondered if that was still true. “You are the safest little turtle who ever lived. There is no one left in this world who is stronger than the people who love you, don’t you know that? Your baby brother pulled down the stars for you. Your twin did not let go of your hand even once. And your big brother carried you home. You are safe. You are so loved.”

It was a nonsense litany for the most part, all true things said to someone who clearly was only absorbing every third word or so. But Blue stopped hiding his face at some point, eyes wet with tears he is even now too stubborn to let fall. 

Splinter felt as though he was looking at a childhood memory of himself, trying to be strong when it would have been better—kinder—to allow himself a much-needed moment of weakness. 

“You think you’re too grown-up to cry in front of this old man?” he said, gently pinching Blue’s cheek on the side of his face that hadn’t been crushed beneath a monster’s fist. “Try again in about a hundred years.”

Blue blew a tired raspberry at him. Splinter laughed, surprised at the show of spirit, his heart doing cartwheels at this proof of his irrepressible little boy unchanged by the close brush with tragedy. Winning a laugh from his father was enough to coax the ghost of a smile across Blue’s face. 

“How are you feeling? We have some water for you here. No, don’t sit up. Let me help.”

He really ought to let everyone know Blue was awake, but they had just gone to sleep. His other kids needed their rest, too. It had been a truly terrible day. 

And now that Red was out of the room—that thought dripped with oily, unpleasant guilt—Blue seemed to be in a more solid state of mind. He had winced as he tried to sit up for water, but if he didn’t have whiplash after a psychotic alien flung him around like a terrier would its chew toy, Splinter would eat his tail. There were none of the red flags Casey had warned him to be on the lookout for. The only thing Draxum had done right in his life was develop a mutagen that made these boys all but indestructible. Splinter would have to find the mental fortitude to choke out a thank you to him for that. 

“It has been a long time since a sick little turtle has called for me,” Splinter murmured, stroking Blue’s forehead around the bandages. “Normally you are all ready to fight each other to the death to monopolize Red’s attention.” 

It was only partly a joke. Leonardo gazed up at him, eyes glassy. It was hard to gauge how much of their conversation was sticking the landing and how much was somersaulting straight over his sluggish head. 

Then Leonardo said, “He hates me.”

“Pardon?” Splinter said stupidly. 

His son blinked, and finally fat tears rolled down his cheeks, soaking into bandages on one side, unchecked on the other. 

“He hates me,” Blue insisted. “He’s right. It was my fault.”

“No one hates you,” Splinter said, reeling. He’d been right here the whole time and yet somehow he was suddenly flailing about two miles behind. 

“You didn’t see his face. You didn’t see—and his eye—all because I—I couldn’t—” He sobbed, an awful sound, and turned to press his face into his pillow. Once he started crying he couldn’t seem to stop. The rest of his words stumbled out thick and choked and terribly sincere. “I couldn’t just—be what I was supposed to be. And he—and it was all my fault.”

There were few things Splinter regretted more than his fumbling of the leadership role. He had always known that Blue was too clever for his own good, that he had a head for strategy—as evidenced by his early mastering of chess, entirely outpacing Splinter’s own skill level by the age of eleven. 

Acknowledging that in theory and learning to trust it in practice were two separate beasts, but watching from the front row as his baby outsmarted Big Mama of all people left little room for doubt. 

On the other hand, Red was as solid and dependable as they came, the foundation his siblings built their whole lives on. As far as they were concerned, the sun only rose in the morning because Raphael hung it up there. 

But Splinter’s eldest son was prone to anxiety that tended to fall on him like a guillotine, a kill switch to his rational thought. The twins floated terms like ‘panic disorder’ and the entire family was well-versed in helping him through his episodes, but if even an ounce of the burden on his shoulders could be reduced, that could only help. 

Red would be happier and function better in a support role, where his top priorities would be to protect his little brothers the way he always had protected them, and to smash whatever Leonardo pointed him at. 

Splinter should have sat them both down and explained it. He shouldn’t have left Red to feel as though he had done something wrong, that he had failed somehow. And he shouldn’t have let Blue believe he would be shoved into the deep end and left to sink or swim.

His boys were little gremlins who thrived in chaos and learned best on the fly. Splinter had thought the surprise announcement would have been an utter shock at first and the new normal by dinnertime. They were always so much on the same page, so in tune with one another, that he couldn’t have guessed it would turn into the tangled mess of hurt and frustration and miscommunication and blame that it did. 

He should have stepped in the first time Red punched through a wall in a fit of anger and Blue laughed as though his biggest brother’s good opinion of him didn’t matter in the slightest. Instead he was a coward, unable to face them and admit his wrongs. He left his children to resolve it themselves and suffer in the meantime. 

He should have done better. Maybe one day he would learn. 

For now Splinter held Blue’s face in one hand and wiped it clean with a cloth in the other, patient with every new flood of tears. The last time he had seen Blue cry was the night the Shredder destroyed their home and killed Karai. There had been no time to comfort him then. 

He takes after his Gram-gram, Splinter thought, and tried not to resent her for it. 

“No one hates my sweet Baby Blue,” he said, willing the stubborn child to hear him. “Especially not my other sweet baby Red. You are a very confused turtle, that’s all. You will see. No one hates you.”

“You don’t,” Leonardo mumbled. “You’re not allowed to. You’re my dad. You don’t have to like me, but you’re not allowed to hate me. S’in the—the contract. You signed it. Legally binding. No arbi-arbi—”

“Arbitration. I would like to study your mind under a microscope. Maybe then I will have a hope of understanding these twists and turns it takes.” 

Splinter’s voice sounded nothing but fond even to his own ears. 

His children were all incredible people worth knowing, worth living for, and it was a very special joy to still be surprised after all these years by how much more he loved them today than he did the day before. To think about how much more he would love them tomorrow, even though it felt impossible to love anyone more than he loved them right now. 

“You are so important, Leonardo,” Splinter said gently. “To me, and to your siblings, and to your friends. We would miss you so much if you weren’t here. We all want to see you get well.”

“It’s not about me,” Blue said, wobbly and miserable and matter-of-fact. “I know it’s not. I have to make up for it. I’ll prove—prove—”

“You have nothing to prove. It was not your fault.” Splinter pressed Leonardo’s chin gently to close his mouth when he inevitably opened it to argue. “Hush. You did not steal the key. You did not open the door. It was not even your responsibility to stop either of those things from happening. You are a child. It cannot be any one person’s duty to save this planet on their own. That doesn’t even make sense.” 

Blue’s expression was becoming thunderous, which was silly and endearing, because his cheeks were still tacky with the remnants of his tears and half of his face was a swathe of bandages and without his mask he looked years younger than he already was. Splinter felt affection unfold in his heart like one of those absurdly big tropical flowers with petals the size of dinner plates, taking up more room than it was allowed and spilling out the sides and going on forever. 

“Can I tell you something else? Your brothers aren’t allowed to hate you either. It’s in the contract as well.”

“They do,” Blue said tearfully, face still screwed up beneath Splinter’s hand. But his eyes drifted in the direction of the door, and the wanting in them was plain to see. Splinter took matters into his own hands. 

“If I’m right, you must finish watching The Strange Return of Diana Salazar with me.”

His son took a moment to digest that, slower on the uptake than usual. Finally, he asked, “Don’t we have like a hundred episodes left?”

“I said what I said,” Splinter said sagely, then patted his cheek and hopped down from the bed. 

He found Raphael exactly where he expected to find him, sitting just outside the cracked infirmary door, a hunched over shape that seemed unwilling to take up a single unnecessary inch of space. 

Red stared up at him, unbandaged eye wide. 

“I don’t hate him,” he blurted. “I could never—I wouldn’t even know how.”

“I know, my dear.”

“Even if he’d done it on purpose,” Red went on. “Even if he stole the key and took it to the Foot and opened the door with his own two hands, I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently.”

Splinter had worried when the turtles were very young that Raphael would frighten one of his siblings accidentally. He was so much bigger than them and toddlers were not well known for their self control or emotional regulation. It was a lingering fear that Red would say or do something he did not mean in the heat of the moment, and alienate himself. That something would happen in a split second that would cause his brothers to grow up wary of him. 

It was an unfounded worry. Raphael was a quiet little boy, the last of the four to start talking, and as sweet as an American dessert. Splinter’s little apple pie. Even as he got older and started playing rougher, testing his strength and raising his voice, he never forgot when he needed to be gentle. 

His brothers never ran from him unless they were avoiding bedtime or a well-deserved grounding or really did not want to go watch wrestling, Raph, it was boring. Otherwise he was their North star. 

Even now, Leonardo would rather hide himself away than face a world in which he no longer had a Raphael to run to. 

“How could he think that?” Red asked desperately. “He was going to die back there and he thought that’s what I wanted.”

Splinter cupped Red’s face in his hands and told him, “Blue was trying to do what his hero would have done. All of my children are so quick to sacrifice for each other. It is a wonderful thing to love someone so much, but consider the example you are setting.” Red’s good eye filled with tears, and Splinter was powerless to do anything but kiss him firmly on the forehead. “As empty as our lives would have been without him, they would have been just as empty without you. You are fundamental to us. Please remember that.”

“I know, pops,” Raphael whispered. “I’ll remember.”

“It is not always possible to win without losing but we must fight tooth and nail anyway. Abandon honor and heroism. Do what it takes to bring yourself and your brothers home. I would much sooner tell the great Hamato clan where they can stick it then let you join them before your time.”

It coaxed a shy smile from his eldest son, the barest exhale of a laugh. Still his sweet apple pie, no matter how big he got. 

“I’m gonna go see him,” Red said bravely. “I’m missing out on premium Leo time while the gremlins are asleep.”

“Very wise,” Splinter said, patting his cheeks in approval.

Leonardo had managed to drag the blanket up over his head while no one was around to stop him, and only one golden eye peered out at them from his makeshift shell. 

Raphael snorted and leaned over to peel it back down, heedless of his smaller brother’s protests. He let one hand linger on Leonardo’s scuffed plastron, and the other cupped the back of his bruised head. 

“You’re so dumb,” Red said. “I love you more than anything. If you ever try to go anywhere without me ever again, I’ll make your life a living hell. Capiche?”

Blue stared up at him. It’s very possible he didn’t understand every word of that. But the tone seemed to get through. 

His hand drifted up slowly, as if it weighed a thousand pounds, to cover the one planted on his chest. When the world didn’t end and his big brother continued to smile down at him like nothing between the two of them was any different than it used to be, Blue risked a smile back. 

“I capiche.”

“You’re not alone, okay?” Red went on, playfulness gentling into sincerity. “We’ll figure it out. I’m in your corner, right where I’ve always been. But for now let’s get some sleep, big man.”

He didn’t move his hands even after Leonardo had dozed off. He just hooked his foot around the leg of his chair and scooted it closer to the bed before sinking into it. 

Splinter joined him, and felt both aged by the last hour and rejuvenated. He needed a good pair of running shoes to keep up with these kids.     

“He never asks to play chess with anyone else you know,” Red said suddenly. 

Thrown by the non sequitur, Splinter could only offer an intelligent, “Huh?”

“Leo only learned how to play because of a comment you made once about—I don’t even remember what you said. But it stuck with him. He wanted to impress you. And he started learning Spanish because of those weird soaps you guys watch. He drove us crazy practicing every day but he never let up.

“I know that it seems like he does whatever he wants without rhyme or reason, but I think he just tries really hard to make it seem that way. Otherwise we’d all clue in to the fact that every single thing he does is just—him trying to get closer to us somehow. And then his cool guy cover would be blown. And god forbid that.” 

Raphael brushed his thumb over the crown of Leonardo’s head, much like the way Splinter had earlier. 

“He doesn’t love you for no reason, pops,” Red went on, not looking at him. “None of us do. Even when getting out of bed was the hardest thing in the world, you came running when I needed you. Every time I needed you. I learned all my moves from the best.”

Splinter had seen the worst of the world. He was no stranger to pain. 

It was only occurring to him now that the opposite was also true. 

His life was so full of impossibly good, underserved things; every day a little brighter, every night a little richer. 

Four little creatures tumbled into his world by chance and then filled it to the brim with mayhem and color and laughter and pride, and he would not take a second of it back. He would not change a single painful part. 

If only he had known as a young man where he would end up someday. It would have made those earlier years so much easier to survive. 

Pretending his own eyes weren’t wet, Splinter said, “It will be hell on earth in the morning when Orange discovers we let him sleep through Blue waking up. You had better rest while you can.”

Smiling to himself, Red folded his arms on the side of the bed and rested his head in them, tilted so that his brother was within line of sight of his good eye. He had capitulated to the changing of the guard without complaint, but he was still tense. Primed for danger. Anxiety no doubt at play. 

But Splinter was not without his tricks. He stroked Red’s carapace between the spikes, humming an old TV theme song under his breath. He did this for upwards of an hour once, back when Red was still small enough to be held in his lap, fussy and clingy after a bad dream. 

Sure enough, with a great, shuddering sigh, Raphael’s shoulders went slack, and his breathing evened out—asleep within moments after the day he’d had.  

“I’ve still got it,” Splinter murmured, and let himself have the win, as small as it was. If nothing else, he could give his children a safe place to rest.