It took about a week of being out at the farm for Raphael to enter into the anger stage of the grieving process. He didn’t just get angry, he got violent. He would lash out anytime anyone came near him, it didn’t matter who it was.
Though he wasn’t strong enough to really hurt any of them, they didn’t want to risk him hurting himself. He stayed out in the barn by himself, spending most of his time exercising. Leonardo would often go out to check on Raph, staying in the shadows to keep from being discovered.
He worried about his brother and wanted to make sure that he was eating and didn’t hurt himself. He would watch Raph for hours while he dealt with his anger. Sometimes Raph would just sit and do nothing, others he would pace the room fuming. The hardest to watch was when he cried. It had been years since Leo had seen Raph cry. He had been told that Raph had cried a few years back when Leo was recovering from Shredder’s attack but Leo wasn’t awake to see that.
When Raph took his pain pills and went to sleep, Leo would enter the barn to clean up and leave food and water. He would leave notes for Raph to find, he didn’t know if they helped but he needed Raph to know that he was there for him.
Donny had said that it was hard to guess how long it would take for Raph to work his way through his anger. Everyone was different. He told Leo to listen for any form of bargaining like, ‘If I had only…’ or ‘I would do anything for….’
So far, the only things Leo heard were a slew of curse words.
Leo walked back into the house, carrying the trash he had collected from the barn. After sorting the trash he washed his hands at the kitchen sink. When he turned around Mikey was standing directly behind him, causing Leo to flinch.
“You’re getting good at that.”
“Or you’re starting to lose it,” Mikey teased back.
Leo let out a sarcastic laugh. “I’ve had a lot on my mind.” He sidestepped past Mikey and headed out of the kitchen. He wasn’t in any kind of mood to deal with his antics at the moment.
“You have Raph on your mind,” Mikey corrected, following Leo. They walked for a while in silence and Leo would look back every so often to see if his brother was still there. Mikey would simply grin at him and wave, annoying Leo even more.
Mikey was right, Raph had been on Leo’s mind a lot. Leo just didn’t like for Mikey to point it out and if he knew his brother then Mikey wasn’t going to leave it at that. The intuitive turtle had the tendency of bringing things out into the open.
Leo picked up his pace as he headed out of the house. Donny glanced up as the two turtles passed. Though he didn’t say anything, Leo knew what he was thinking. Donny was ready to back up Mikey in a heartbeat. They all knew Leo was troubled.
Mikey had no problems keeping up with Leo, he was the fastest turtle after all. Even though Leo couldn’t out pace him, he was hoping that Mikey would get the clue and leave him alone. The problem was, Mikey wasn’t the type to let something go.
They crossed the field and entered in to the surrounding forest. Despite the fact that he didn’t want to face his brother and that he knew what it was Mikey wanted, Leo rounded on Mikey, “What?”
“It’s not your fault, Leo,” Mikey said, keeping his distance.
“You’ve been stocking me just to say that?” Leo scoffed and turned away. “I failed Raph.”
“Raph doesn’t blame you for what happened. Nobody does. Why are you still blaming yourself?”
“I shouldn’t have argued with him.” Leo answered. “He may not blame me, but I know that I pushed him until he left. I wanted him to leave.”
“That may be true but you didn’t beat him up.” Mikey walked up and placed his hands on Leo’s shoulders. “You guys fought, you always fight. Raph ran off, he always did that. We had no idea at that time, the lengths Hun would go to. How dangerous it’s become.”
“That’s our fault too,” Leo pulled away from Mikey. “I can’t believe I’m saying this but we were safer when the Shredder was around.”
“You know that’s not true,” Mikey argued. “He was trying to wipe us out. All of us. Every single Turtle in the multiverse. Talk to Donny about a future where Shredder lived. He still has nightmares about it. We’re better off with him dead and we will find a way to defeat Hun too. At least this time we have Karai on our side.”
“Karai.” Leo shook his head as he tried to keep his composure. “If only I hadn’t talked to Raph about teaming up with Karai that night.”
“So you’re in stage three of the acceptance process.”
“What?”
“You know,” Mikey shrugged. “Donny went over the process with us so we would know what to expect from Raph. You are in the bargaining phase, full of ‘if onlys’ and ‘I should’ves’.”
Leo couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You think I’m going through the grieving process?”
“We all are,” Mikey said as a matter of fact. “In a way. It’s just affecting you and Raph more since you’re more directly involved. It took me a while to get over what I saw. It still makes my stomach churn when I think about it. There were times that I wish we had run faster, gotten there before Hun did all those awful things to him. Or maybe if I had gone out with him. It wouldn’t have been the first time I ran off after him. Maybe if I was with him, he wouldn’t have gotten hurt. But then I realized that, I didn’t do anything wrong and neither did you.”
“I didn’t know,” Leo said in a gruff voice as tears streamed down his cheeks.
Mikey opened his arms, “You don’t have to go through this alone, Leo. You just gotta let it go.”
“Don’t you dare start singing,” Leo warned, looking Mikey in the eye.
“Who? Me?” Mikey grinned. “I wasn’t even thinking about it.” When Leo lifted an eye ridge Mikey sighed. “Okay, I was… about to… start singing.”
With a slight chuckle Leo moved in to accept Mikey’s hug. The smaller turtle wrapped his arms around Leo and held him tight. It felt good and Leo started to feel a little better. Mikey had that effect on people.
“It’s not your fault, Leo.”
“Thanks, Mikey.”
**
As Raph came out of his drug induced slumber he heard the soft foot falls of someone pacing back and forth. He suspected that it was Leo finally coming out of the shadows to confront him. Either that or he got a late start with cleaning. Whoever it was, he just wanted them to go away but then he heard the happy coo and knew it was Donny with Snow.
Donny waited in silence as Raph came to. Snow was the only one making noise as she cooed and squeaked, at least she sounded happy. He hadn’t seen Snow in almost two months. Babies progressed quickly in the first year of life, or so he was told, so he wondered how much she had changed.
It took a while for Raph’s mind and body to work together so that he could sit up. He felt numb. He hated it but it was better than the pain. “What do you want, Don?” Raph’s voice was still gruff from sleep and his words still slurred a little but at least he had worked through the stuttering. He would occasionally stumble over his words, especially when he was angry.
“I thought you might want to see Snow,” Donny said, kneeling down in front of Raph. “She’s more than doubled in weight thanks to April and Mrs. Jones. They’re spoiling her.”
“The only reason you brought her was to keep me from yelling at you.”
Donny shrugged, “It worked.”
Raph grunted in response but didn’t say anything more. Donny scooted closer, angling Snow so Raph could see her better. She had plumped up and she was more alert. Her blue eyes stayed fixed on Donny as she cooed to get his attention.
When Don looked down at her a smiled spread across her face and she squealed, her hands trembling in excitement. It didn’t take much to make her happy. She kept cooing as if she was trying to prompt Donny to say something to her.
“I really did bring her so you could see her. Do you wanna hold her?” Donny offered.
Raph nodded and Donny moved around so that he was sitting next to Raph. As he passed Snow over to Raph, her eyes sifted up to look up at him. He half expected her to cry at the sight of him. She held still while she studied his face with her mouth in the shape of an ‘O’.
Bending his knees, Raph cradled her in his lap so he could look down at her. Raph smiled and she smiled back, her hand reaching up to touch his face. He moved his head forward so she could reach then kissed her tiny hand.
It was warm enough that she didn’t need to be swaddled. The only things that she was wearing were a diaper and shirt. The diaper had to have been custom made by someone to accommodate her tail. It was cloth with a reusable plastic covering. Raph figured it would be easier than making a bunch of disposable diapers.
Her chubby legs kicked and her arms flailed for no other reason than to move. She went back to cooing, this time trying to get Raph to talk to her.
Though she looked nothing like him, Raph couldn’t help but melt for her. Donny said that she was his and Raph believed him. She was the only child he was ever going to have. It wasn’t like there was any chance of them having children before but Raph’s chances were less than his brothers due to the fact that the knives the Dragons rammed in Raph’s sides destroyed one testicle and preformed a vasectomy with the other.
He was told that he was lucky that he still had the one. Being castrated on top of everything else would have been worse. ‘Try to focus on what is good instead of what is bad’, Splinter often told him. He was trying, it was easier before he remembered all that was bad.
Having Snow there did help to ease his anger but he was contemplating pushing Donny out and keeping her for a while. At the same time he was debating on opening up to him. There were things that he wanted to talk about but opening up wasn’t one of Raph’s strong points. The only emotion he openly shared was his anger. In the end, he decided that he was ready to get it out.
“I’ve remembered more of what had happened,” Raph confessed, keeping his eyes on Snow. “I… remember all of it actually. At one point I heard Hun order them to leave my head alone so that I could remember everything. He wanted me to live.
“He said he was paying me back for mutating him and that he was going to break me. He wanted to hear me cry. I held back for as long as I could. When I didn’t give him what he wanted, he shoved that bat inside of me then started to move it around. He got what he wanted.”
“We heard your screams,” Donny’s voice was low. “If we had gotten there sooner, by just a few minutes.”
“Don’t you start,” Raph chided, looking over at Don. “You got there, that’s all that matters.”
They sat in silence for a while in order to get their emotions under control and Raph debated on if he wanted to continue. He trusted Donny and knew that he could confide in his brother. He just wasn’t sure if he wanted the answer to his question.
“The bat damaged more than just my intestines.”
“I know.”
Raph took a deep breath then cleared his throat. “I don’t even know if it works.”
Donny pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on them. “Have you tried…?”
“Yeah,” Raph nodded. “Once in the hospital. That’s how I discovered the damage. When I saw it, I lost the desire to.”
“Have you woken up with an erection?” Donny asked turning his head to look at Raph.
Raph nodded. There had been a few mornings that he had woken up with an erection. The pale scars that littered the surface were a standing reminder of what had happened.
Donny placed his hand on Raph’s shoulder, “If you can achieve an erection that is a good sign.” Sifting his position, Donny got up on his knees to retrieve Snow and placed her on the nearby pallet on the floor, where Raph usually slept.
“Do you want me to look at it?” Donny offered.
Raph looked up at the ceiling as he thought it over. Without a word, Raph parted his legs and dropped his tail. A turtle doesn’t need to be aroused in order for their penis to emerge. They tend to do it often in a display if dominance. So there was no effort, beyond overcoming his own nerves to show Donny his penis.
“Is it alright if I touch it?” Donny asked.
“Do what you gotta do.”
He felt Donny’s hand lift his penis so that he could examine the tip. Using his thumbs, Donny parted the petal like cap to expose the tender spikes inside. He dropped one thumb down to run it over the spikes, causing Raph to gasp, and he immediately moved his thumb away.
“It looks like the damage was purely cosmetic.” Donny reassured him. “Judging by your reaction, I think it’s safe to assume that you can still achieve orgasm.”
Raph retracted his penis and tucked his tail, keeping his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Thanks. I just don’t know if I’m gonna want to any time soon. Just the sight of it is enough to kill the mood.”
“Give it some more time,” Donny said as he stood and walked over to a wash basin to clean his hands of the sticky substance that helps lubricate the passage of the penis out of the tail. After drying his hands, Donny picked up Snow and sat next to Raph. “Are you okay?”
“I refuse to let Hun win,” Raph said. The small victory of making him scream was all Hun was going to get. Raph was not going to let what had happened break him. He was going to recover, get his strength back and go back to fighting the Purple Dragons. Above all else, Hun was going to die.
Tears filled Raph’s eyes. “I’m not gonna let him win.”
His throat closed up on him and his chest felt heavy. Images of the attack flooded his mind accompanied by the sound of laughter. They had humiliated him and mutilated his body in an attempt to rob him of what little freedom and joy he had in life. He thought back to how much he had just wanted to die.
“Why didn’t I just go to Casey’s that night?” he sobbed.
