Chapter Text
One Year Post-Mutagen Bomb
Boy, did he love a good fight.
They were easy to come by these days. Any small disagreement was enough, brittle kindling that turned into a blazing bonfire after a few brief exchanges. An Argument. Fights and arguments, they were all the same to Raph, who willingly took any chance to blow off some steam. Physically. Verbally. Emotionally.
The Hamato clan in its dwindling numbers became a lawless shell of a “family” (assuming that word still applied). With no brother to mediate, nor one to criticize when they started shouting crazed insults at each other, any simple argument could easily spin out of control and become something much more severe. Fighting was easier than grieving. Whenever faced with a choice between the two, Raph picked the fight every time.
Besides, Donnie made it easy.
His knuckles were bloody. Pain and satisfaction came quicker when he didn’t wear gloves, so he’d taken them off before he started swinging. Each strike sent a jolt of sharp pain up through his arm and into his teeth, probably his body telling him he should chill the fuck out, but he didn’t stop. He loved it. He loved every second.
“Raph.”
Whack. Whack. Whack. He needed to feel something break under his fists.
“Raph.”
He needed the pain. It hurt in other places—the rope slowly tightening around his heart, the fervid sting of tears in his eyes, pain he didn’t fully understand—but this, the pain in his fists, he could control. If he wanted his fists to hurt, they would. If he wanted them to bleed, they would. He wasn’t done yet. He could go like this for hours.
But Donnie, apparently, was tired of his tantrum. “Raph. Stop.”
Panting, Raph dropped his arms and let them hang. His target, a young oak tree, had splintered only a little under the force of his hits. Prior to Raph’s breakdown, his brother wisely chose to wait by the highway guardrail. And he was still there, sitting on the galvanized beam with his elbows on his knees, calculating gaze fixed on Raph as he fought to get his breath back. He must’ve been going for fifteen minutes at least.
The sun was setting past Donnie’s shoulder, orange light glinting over the surface of the Shellraiser behind him. He didn’t have to say anything, not when Raph could read it so clearly on his face. Fifteen minutes was long enough. Too long, actually, to spend outside of the safety of their vehicle. If the M-Bomb killed the humans, what would it do to the trees? And if it killed the trees, what would it do to mutant turtles? Nothing good.
“Get in the Shellraiser, Raph.” And that was the extent of Donnie’s chastisement. Then he swung his legs over the guardrail and climbed back inside the vehicle without another word.
Raph blinked the sweat out of his eyes. Donnie’s attitude was…probably fair. He honestly couldn’t even remember what they’d been arguing about, but if it was bad enough for Donnie to allow him to leave the Shellraiser and go nuts on an oak tree, then he probably ought to apologize or something.
Ah, yes. Now he remembered. They’d been arguing about traffic laws. Donnie insisted they stick to the right side of the road, the normal way, even when the piled-up remains of abandoned vehicles slowed their progress.
Infrastructure is important, especially now, Donnie had argued. Once all the vegetation is gone, the roads will be the only thing left. The remnants of humanity will need something to follow, to rebuild.
Raph didn’t think rebuilding was anywhere on humanity’s to-do list. What remained of humanity, anyway. The odd assortment of mutants fighting their way across the East Coast wouldn’t care for traffic laws. His genius brother would be the last guy on earth using a turn signal.
Reflecting on it now, it was a stupid argument. Raph could squash Donnie’s big dreams to raise up a new society out of the carnage of the M-Bomb, but where did that get him? All it did was put them both in a bad mood.
So Raph got in the Shellraiser.
Not much had changed about the armored vehicle since the start of the apocalypse (at least, as far as Raph remembered). The interior felt a little smaller with all the food, weapons, and medical supplies they stored inside it. They piled blankets and couch cushions in the back, scavenged from abandoned houses they passed. Raph always fell asleep quickly to the hum of the engine under him, crowded on every side by a dozen different smells. Each item retained the distinct scent of whatever family it belonged to, until Raph could no longer remember what his own home had smelled like.
Probably smelled like shit, actually. Donnie claimed they lived in a sewer once.
His brother was already seated in the back in his usual station. Raph hit stuff when he was upset, but Donnie sulked. He was sulking now. Whatever. They didn’t need to talk to each other to get where they were going.
Raph started the engine and guided the Shellraiser back to the middle of the street. Begrudgingly, he stayed in between the lines.
~ ~ ~
Night fell and the world turned dark. Shadows of trees loomed on either side of the road, dashes of white and yellow reflective paint glowing through the blackness, the only sign that they were still on the highway. Raph could only see this through a video screen. So he felt separated, in a way, from the eerie emptiness of that Other Place. I-95.
They passed the occasional gas station. Most of these were husks, just black boxes against the blacker trees, but eventually they came across one with power. Red and yellow light cut through the hazy darkness and outlined the short, small building along with its color-coordinated canopy. It wasn’t comforting, it was ghostly, estranged from the rest of the world by the glowing halo that only illuminated a few yards of surrounding concrete. An island in the dark. Staring at it, Raph felt more lonely and empty than he had when he thought they were alone on the interstate.
He spun in his chair to meet Donnie’s eyes. “Probably an aid station.”
“Probably.”
“Worth it?”
“Probably,” Donnie said again, peering at one of his monitors.
There were two other vehicles parked under the canopy. Even if there hadn’t been, working lights almost always mean the building was occupied. As they got closer, Raph made out a tattered banner hanging over the edge of the canopy that read: First Aid, Batteries, Postal Services.
So as not to anger his travelling partner, he pulled in between the fading lines of an actual parking spot (infrastructure, Raphael), keeping a good distance between their Shellraiser and the other vehicles. He didn’t trust anyone these days…not that he trusted anyone before all this shit, but Raph could barely remember before anyway.
But he did trust Donatello. Always and forever, Raph trusted his brother.
Before they exited the vehicle, he caught Donnie by the arm to hold him in place. Donnie didn’t look at him.
“Sorry about earlier,” Raph said, because he wasn’t going to enter an unknown situation in an unknown gas station mini-mart without making amends first. Just in case.
Donnie looked uncomfortable. “You don’t have to apologize, I’m the one who riled you up. I shouldn’t have been so harsh.”
“It’s okay, man.”
“I just miss the normalcy of…of before,” Donnie said carefully. “I know you don’t remember, but I don’t want to lose—”
“Let’s not talk about that.” Raph shook off that feeling of uneasiness that rose in him whenever he tried to recall events from before. He should’ve been flooded by old memories of better times, by heavy sorrow, and by the overwhelming emptiness that at some point replaced the two brothers he once, allegedly, had. “Just…claws out, hackles up, all that. Be on your guard.”
“Always,” Donnie said as he reached for the door latch.
For the second time that day, they left the relative safety of the Shellraiser.
At first glance this place could’ve been a normal mini-mart. Lit by flickering fluorescent lights, the shelves and refrigerators were fully stocked. But instead of the usual candy bars and soda bottles, Raph saw medical supplies and piles of scavenged car parts. The fridges were stuffed with large lumps wrapped in paper and plastic—deer meat, Raph decided. They’d seen quite a few deer around the highway, though most of them were either dead or mutated beyond recognition. Those mutated ones were monstrous, just absolutely huge. Woulda made a great food source if that meat wasn’t poisoned with alien ooze.
Donnie entered first with Raph close behind him. A quick survey of the small building told him that the only other breathing thing here with them was the squirrel mutant standing behind the counter. Two other cars, though…there could be others in the bathroom or the employee breakroom or something.
Donnie didn’t give him any instructions. He didn’t have to. They were in tune with each other these days, even after a stupid argument. Donnie strolled towards the cashier’s counter while Raph wandered through an aisle, gaze flickering between the shelves, his brother, and the Shellraiser outside.
Hm. They really didn’t need much in the way of supplies. Donnie’s paranoia made sure their medical supplies were always fully stocked. Food was the biggest issue, and gasoline. He spotted a row of big red jugs on the back wall and moved a little closer to read the label.
“How much for postal services?” he heard Donnie say to the other mutant. The term “postal services” was pretty fucking off the mark, in Raph’s opinion. It wasn’t like the messages traveled anywhere. Raph said they ought to call it “missing persons services,” but Donnie told him that was too pessimistic for most people’s tastes.
The squirrel’s reply was too quiet to hear over the buzz of whatever generator kept this place powered. But Raph could’ve picked out his brother’s shrill voice from a mile away.
“Yes, two. Michelangelo, for the first. And April O’Neil. With an I, not an A.”
Raph scoffed a little.
“No, no photos,” Donnie said to the squirrel clerk. Raph moved to another aisle and picked up a rusty hand axe. It was off-balance, lopsided. Cheap, probably.
“If they're found, we’ll take them. Preferably intact.”
Again, Raph scoffed. He knew this rodeo. Why Donnie wanted to keep the bodies of their dead family members was beyond him, but Raph learned a long time ago to never question Donatello—except when he wanted to obey traffic laws during an apocalypse.
“Yes, the facilities in Vermont are putting folks on ice—I know, it’s awful.” Donnie’s “friendly” voice was so very forced, and Raph had to resist a laugh. “Incredibly sad, yes, yes it is. We’d like them sent there if they’re found. I’d advise offering the option to others that come through.”
Raph made his way over to the wall of fridges. Those packages looked really menacing, simply by the sheer size of them. He leaned forward to get a closer look.
“Oh yes, I hope so.” He heard the jangle of coins. “We’ll do the message too. How much for fifteen words?”
Yep, this was almost definitely deer. Probably toxic beyond belief but some mutants were willing to risk it, knowing what was already in their system after the M-Bomb.
“Okay, ready? Alright: Followed Leatherhead…south to Miami…” Donnie paused as the squirrel jotted down the words. “Then northwest to New Mexico—yes, write the whole name out, please—Casey, Leo Dead.” Donnie paused again. “Love you.”
A steady silence followed as the mutant dutifully took down the message. Raph left the deer meat behind to rejoin his brother as the squirrel finished up the note, marking both of their names below it in black ink. Behind him, the wall of cigarettes was missing. In its place was a map of messages from other passerbys, all hoping that someday their family might pop into the mini-mart for a slab of mutant deer meat and a quick glance at the most depressing community bulletin board of all time.
Raph hooked one hand on his belt and pressed the other to Donnie’s shell. “Sign said you got batteries? Car batteries?”
“It’ll be fifty for one,” said the squirrel mutant as he pinned the message to the wall.
“How much for two?” Donnie asked.
“A hundred.”
“Eighty,” Raph bargained.
The squirrel’s eyes were sharp, harried. Raph didn’t like looking at squirrels, but he gave it the old college try because Donnie couldn’t haggle to save his life. “Ninety-five is as low as I go,” the mutant said.
“Eighty, and my brother here can fix that dud refrigerator in the back.”
Raph pointed to the fridge on the end of the row. It was dark and empty, clearly non-functional. The squirrel eyed it briefly, nose wrinkling, before nodding his consent. “Done.”
Donnie handed over the coins without argument. It was a pretty shitty currency system, in Raph’s opinion. Folks would take any type of coin as payment, from pennies to Chuck E. Cheese tokens. Donnie said it was the same as a paper bill. It represents something. The object itself holds no inherent value.
Sure, except it was only hospitals and shelters and aid stations like this, the ones trying their darndest to establish order in chaos, that actually accepted coins. Most random Joe-Schmos only bartered. Or killed.
“Batteries are in the ice chests out front,” said the squirrel, cupping his hands around the coins and dragging them to his side of the counter. Donnie thanked him hoarsely before they walked off.
“Oddly trusting little fella,” Donnie muttered as they headed back to the fridges. “Here’s hoping I can actually fix the damn thing.”
Yeah, well, folks were usually trusting at places like this. Nobody runs an aid station without a healthy dose of altruism. The squirrel wasn’t even watching them now. His bushy tail was turned to them as he dug around for something behind the counter.
“Think I should grab the batteries first?” Raph muttered back.
Donnie was already studying the fridge with that scary look: fractured light, a glittering intelligence that Raph could literally, physically see in his eyes. He knew Don would have it fixed in five minutes as long as the parts were available.
Donnie didn’t answer him. Instead, he turned and strode down the back hallway and through the employee’s only door. Raph followed him, because wandering around in the dark windowless back rooms of a sketchy mini-mart was absolutely not a one man job.
Another door led them into a passageway with sheet metal flooring and yellowing walls. It was cold, cold enough that Raph could see his own breath and Donnie’s, whose exhales were quick and short. The backside of the fridges connected to this hallway, and now Raph could see just how much deer meat had been collected. It spilled into the hall in mounds. They had to step over piles of the stuff just to reach the opposite end.
Donnie chuckled under his breath.
“What?” Raph asked.
“Nothing. I thought that squirrel seemed a little nutty.” Donnie paused, eyebrows raised, but Raph did not give him the satisfaction of a laugh. “Uh, nevermind. The fridge works fine. It’s just the lightbulb that’s out.”
“Oh, great,” Raph said. “Give it a twist and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Mikey would’ve laughed.”
“I’m not Mikey.”
“No,” Donnie sighed. “You’re not.”
Raph wished he remembered enough about his youngest brother to understand all the nuanced layers of meaning in Donnie’s statement. But since he didn’t, Raph let it pass. He crossed his arms and rested his shell against the wall while Donnie reached for the broken bulb. A single twist didn’t fix it. “Well, fuck.”
“Cool, so it’s broke broke. Let’s just grab the batteries and make a break for it.”
Donnie gave him a flat glare. “No. We said we’d fix it, Raph. Look, there’s boxes here, maybe they’ve got a spare.”
Raph rolled his eyes as Donnie started picking through a few supply crates in the corner. He turned his attention back to the mountain of deer meat. He knelt to pick at the fraying edge of one poorly wrapped parcel. It didn’t smell, but it oozed pink and yellow juice that stuck to his fingers like honey. Or mucus. Nasty.
“Aha!” Donnie said behind him. “Spare bulb. When I’m right, I’m right.”
“Sure, Don.” Raph repositioned the package and peeled the paper back a few inches to get a look and—oh, god. That definitely wasn’t meat. At least, not deer meat. It was pink and fleshy like a brain. The longer he peeled, the more convinced he became that it was a brain, until finally he revealed a glassy, dead eye poking through the flesh. What was this, some sort of mutated human?
Donnie’s voice, sharp and panicked, startled him out of his thoughts. “Don’t touch that.”
“It’s dead,” Raph answered just as sharply. But he obeyed. “You see this thing? It’s like a fuckin’ brain mutant.”
“Yes, I see it. Don’t touch it.”
“Christ, relax. I heard you the first time.”
Donnie’s face had twisted into some indiscernible expression. He often looked this way when remembering something from before. Or when Raph couldn’t remember something from before. Usually the two events happened in tandem.
“You know what these are,” Raph said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.” Donnie reached down to nudge Raph’s hand away from the wrappings. Behind him, the bulb was replaced and glowing brighter than any of the rest. “And I don’t love the idea that someone around here is hunting the…them. I didn’t know there were any left on the planet.”
“Aliens?”
“We can talk about this once we get outta here.”
“Don—”
“Just—please?” Donnie pleaded. He was half-crouched, arms outstretched to Raph as if to help him up, though at the moment he looked too flustered to even try. “If there’s anything you don’t fight me on, let it be this. Please.”
Donnie, unfortunately, was the expert when it came to things from before. He was the expert in most things, actually. Raph pushed himself to his feet and took Donnie by the shoulders. His brother was shaking, skin dry and cold from spending only a few minutes in the refrigerator.
“Let’s get outta here, then,” Raph said.
They walked out together. Raph made Donnie go first, as if that might put more separation between him and the dead things that had spooked him so badly. He could only assume the brain things were dangerous. Most things were.
When they returned to the front of the gas station, the squirrel was no longer alone. A second mutant, a bear, had joined him. This one was covered in fur and large enough to touch the ceiling. At first he thought it was just a regular bear dressed in clothes, but when she turned to face them he saw a distinct intelligence on her face that only mutant-types had. She wore hunting gear: big leather boots, cargo pants, and a military vest with a rifle slung over one shoulder. Over the other shoulder was a sack dripping pink ooze. From the trail she left behind, it was clear she’d entered through the back door.
“You two travelling south?” she asked. Her voice was feminine but deep, quiet but gruff.
Donnie spoke first, like always. “Yes, ma’am. On the interstate.”
“My advice?” She hoisted the bag higher on her shoulder. “Pull off before you reach the state border. Somethin’ set up a base in the middle of the highway. Some sorta mutants or aliens. Most folks don’t get through.”
“We’ll do that,” Donnie replied weakly.
“And watch out for the bastards elsewhere too. They’re all over, ‘specially once you get close to the bigger cities. Here, take a look—”
She dropped the sack and let it fall open. Donnie spun away at once, dry-heaving, arms wrapped tightly around his plastron. But Raph stepped forward to get a better look.
Sure enough, it was those pink brain things. They slid onto the tile in one slimy heap. Now he could see that they weren’t just brains, but brains with faces—two eyes, two lips, and two rows of little sharp teeth. Six tentacles stuck out from each creature, though some had been chopped off or tied in knots with each other. And every single one of them was dead.
“We’ll be sure to steer clear,” Raph said flatly.
~ ~ ~
Kraang, Donnie called them. And without any further explanation, he adjusted their route to a byway of curvier, narrower roads that would carry them further west. He didn’t confer with Raph. He didn’t make a case for the adjustment. And Raph didn’t argue.
They caused this, he’d said, The M-Bomb, all the destruction in New York. Leo and Mikey. This was them, Raph. The Kraang.
Then he’d said, Don’t you remember?
And Raph didn’t. So he didn’t answer. He kept his eyes on the road to avoid the sorrowful look he knew Donnie was giving him. Donnie may have, at one point, felt pity over his memory loss. But Raph knew he pitied himself more now. He was, after all, the only one who carried all the memories of Leo and Mikey and April and Casey and their father.
Raph had once called him “the Last Hamato.” Of course, that led to another argument that brought both of them to tears eventually. Donnie had sulked and Raph ended up punching a hole in one of the Shellraiser’s reinforced steel walls.
So instead of turning this whole “Kraang” thing into another argument, Raph passed the wheel over to Don and headed to the back for a few hours of sleep.
These days, Raphael’s dreams were never pleasant. He fell asleep quickly to the hum of the Shellraiser and the homey smells of the couch cushions, but his subconscious was plagued with screams and monsters and memories that no longer belonged to him. He saw hairless mutant squirrels with spiked tails and snake tongues. He saw man-sized spiders. He saw Donnie and other turtles—strangers—tumbling through a dark empty void alongside him.
He washed up in a silent, hazy memory. He couldn’t hear, smell, or feel. He was on his back under a familiar ceiling that he couldn’t quite place. His eyes tracked the blurry figure that moved in and out of his line of sight rapidly. On each pass, the figure carried something different. A blanket. A monitor. A hunk of gray and yellow scrap metal.
The memory faded, replaced with a new one. Now he couldn’t see at all, but he could hear a rhythmic splashing, wheezing breath, and sobbing.
Hold on. Not much further. Hold on, Raph. H-hold on.
Raph wanted to comfort the person, but he couldn’t move. The memory faded again and this time, when he opened his eyes, he was back in the Shellraiser.
~ ~ ~
They’d stopped in the driveway of an empty townhouse for a few hours. Still disoriented from his dreams, Raph finally managed to convince his brother that a breath of fresh air was an absolute necessity. They’d gone into the house to check for supplies, and on their way out Donnie noticed the sky.
Stars. They cut through the moonless night like glittering diamonds. Raph couldn’t recall ever seeing so many stars in the sky at once, and Donnie confirmed that he hadn’t. Ever.
And that’s how they ended up laying on their backs on the roof of the Shellraiser. Somehow, with Donnie by his side, it was more comfortable to lay here than on the cushions and blankets in the vehicle below.
“Do you remember the other turtles, Raph?”
The question was rhetorical, of course. But Raph answered anyway. “Nope.”
“Our trans-dimensional counterparts? The portal gun? And the prime turtles?”
“Now you’re definitely pulling my leg,” Raph said, tucking one hand behind his head as he used the other to trace a constellation. He couldn’t remember what it was called, but Donnie probably did. “Hey, what’s that one again?”
“Ursa Major,” Donnie said offhandedly. “I told you we used to fight brain-shaped aliens earlier today and you believed that. Now I tell you the multiverse is real and you think I’m kidding?”
Raph sighed, rolling to face him. “Okay, our trans-dimensional counterparts. Yeah. ‘Cause obviously I know what that means.”
“They were us from a different universe. Four other turtles.” His expression became wistful. “They told us that they’d met versions of us across the multiverse. The multiverse, Raph. Can you imagine? Can you imagine getting the chance to travel through space and time like that? To other worlds? We saw a small fraction, a fragment of what’s out there.”
“Yeah,” Raph grunted. He pointed again. “What’s that one there with the four stars?”
“Corvus,” Donnie sighed, though his mind was clearly elsewhere. “The crow. I thought you’d be more surprised by that story.”
“Nothing really surprises me anymore. The only thing that does surprise me is that you’re thinking about trans-dimensional turtles all of a sudden.”
“I’m thinking about the apocalypse.”
“Wow. What a shocker.”
Donnie slapped his arm lightly. “I’m serious. I just…well, I wondered whether they ever dealt with something like this.”
“An apocalypse?”
“Yeah,” Donnie said. “Some things are multiversal constants, like our mutation. And Master Splinter finding us. I just wondered whether…whether those other universes had to survive the end of the world. That’s what this is, right? The end of the world.”
Raph grunted. “I’d say so.”
“Do you think…do you think they lost people too?”
Raph didn’t really like that question. What did it matter if other turtles from other universes lost their brothers? He could hardly remember the names of his own brothers, let alone those from other worlds. He figured this was another one of Donnie’s brain spirals, the kind that made him shiver and struggle to breathe, something Raph really wasn't interested in experiencing. Ever.
He rolled back onto his shell and studied the sky. He knew there were many more stars beyond those immediately visible to him. Like his memories. Raph raised an arm to trace out the shape of a small collection of stars. He knew the path, but not the name. “What’s this one?”
Donnie was silent for a long time. He did that occasionally, eyes glazing over and mind wandering to deeper and more complex places Raph could never hope to reach. But Raph always waited him out. He wondered if he’d been a patient person before the M-Bomb.
“The lion,” Donnie murmured finally. “Leo.”
Leo…
What remained of Leo in his mind was a fragment, a single shard of something that Raph couldn’t fully grasp without sparking a killer headache. In his mind, Leo was represented somewhat poetically by two children on a precarious see-saw. Calmness and bitterness. When Raph thought of Leo, he felt both in equal measure and he didn’t understand why.
“Raph,” Don said quietly. “You probably won’t understand this, but…I’m glad it was me and you who made it.”
Raph glanced at him.
“Not that I don’t wish it was all four of us!” he corrected quickly. “I just mean, if there was a universe out there where they made it, I…I wouldn’t wish this life on them. On Mikey.”
“I think I can understand that.”
“Do you?”
Raph reached up to rub a knuckle into his brother’s skull. “I think I remember what it’s like to have an annoying baby brother who won’t shut up.”
Donnie slapped him away with a laugh, leaving Raph oddly satisfied. It wasn’t so easy to get Donnie to laugh anymore. Or maybe Donnie didn’t really laugh before either, maybe Raph just couldn’t remember. That was one of the things that bothered him most about the memory loss—that he couldn’t even properly define what his relationship with his brother had been like in the pre-apocalypse days.
“Mikey woulda complained his way through the apocalypse,” Raph said with certainty. He looked at Donnie for confirmation.
His brother nodded slowly. “You’re not wrong. If he’s out there now, he’s probably talking the ear off of some giant freaky mutant he made friends with. Or maybe he found the frogs again.”
Frogs? “Yeah, maybe.”
“Him and Napoleon could bring the Kraang down themselves if they wanted to,” Donnie said wearily. “Instead, I bet they’re trying to find the best way to put mutant deer on pizza.”
“And April?”
“April…can hold her own.”
Raph pushed himself into a sitting position. Was it torture for Donnie, forcing himself to think through every possible outcome? He only ever told Raph a select few of them: Mikey was probably with Mondo when the bomb hit. April’s a mutant too, she probably survived. Mikey probably sensed it coming and found cover. Probably probably probably…
Raph never got to hear the other “probably” scenarios, but he knew they were bouncing around somewhere in that big brain too: They probably didn’t make it through the fallout. They probably didn’t make it out of New York. They’re probably dead.
Even now, a dark shadow passed across Don’s face as he tracked the constellations one by one. For a spring night, it was cold. Donnie was already shivering and Raph knew he’d start too if he stayed out any longer. He gripped his brother’s shoulder to help him sit up. “C’mon, man. Let’s get back inside. It’s my turn to drive.”
~ ~ ~
Donnie’s tongue poked out from the corner of his mouth as he worked, eyebrows furrowed in intense concentration. This expression, Raph thought, was familiar. It tugged some distant memory up from the depths of his mind, though the memory never broke the surface and Raph watched it sink back down into the murky darkness.
“Whatcha doin’ there, Donnie?”
“I’m sketching...” Donnie answered slowly. He worked for a few more seconds before spinning the notebook towards him. Raph only took his eyes off the road for a moment, but it was long enough to catch a glimpse of the round, smiling face roughed out on the paper. When he turned back to the video feed, the sketch remained in his mind, lines sharpening as it flooded with color—green, orange, and baby blue. “Mikey.”
“That’s right,” Donnie said softly. “I never did get around to sketching them. It’ll make it easier for the postal service to search for them. At least, once it’s up and running.”
Yeah, Raph highly doubted that would happen anytime soon. His hope that they’d find Mikey was dwindling, if it’d ever been there in the first place.
“Looks just like him,” Raph grunted, not wanting to spoil Don’s good mood with his pessimistic thoughts. “You’re pretty good at drawing.”
“Years of practice will do that. But I can really only draw what I see. Or…or saw.”
Raph pulled onto the highway, following the navigation screen on his left. “You’ll have to teach me how to do that sometime.”
Donnie was sitting on the floor beside the driver’s chair. He looked up at Raph, notebook falling loosely in his lap as he frowned. “Raph…you’re an excellent artist.”
“I am?”
“Yes, you—uh, nevermind. I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to talk about that, but I just—”
“Don, it’s fine.”
Donnie rubbed uncomfortably at a spot on his upper plastron. He’d been doing that a lot lately. “Sorry.”
“I said it’s fine. I guess I—I guess I’ll just have to try my hand at it again.”
Donnie got to his feet. They were both unsteady these days with so little food and water to sustain them, but Donnie swayed heavily with Shellraiser as it swerved between piled up cars and fallen trees. “I can switch with you now. It’s been a few hours.”
Raph thought about it. Part of him wanted to stay behind the wheel forever. At least it was something he could control in this hellscape.
Donnie tried again: “You liked to paint. Spray paint. You used to decorate the walls back home and—and you were really good at making up images with only your imagination.” He tapped the inner wall of the Shellraiser with one finger. “You painted this thing a few times over, actually.”
“I don’t remember how to draw Mikey,” Raph answered, gripping the wheel tightly.
“Don’t draw Mikey, then. Draw whatever you feel like.”
Eventually Raph consented. Donnie rested one steadying hand on his shoulder as he brought the Shellraiser to a stop. When they switched, Donnie passed off the notebook and pencil and dropped heavily into the driver’s seat.
He spent some time flipping through the other sketches first. Donnie had practiced drawing Mikey several times before, along with a few other people that Raph had trouble recognizing. Each of these he pointed out to Donnie, who named them in a carefully neutral tone without taking his eyes off the road. Leatherhead. Kirby. Pete. Casey Jones. Raph had no doubt that these illustrations were picture-perfect. The drawing style was angular and precise, contrasting the sloppy scrawl of his handwriting. Raph tried his best to decipher the notes written in the margins, but none of it was legible enough to make out.
Finally, having stalled for at least half an hour, Raph put pencil to paper and tried to draw. They passed the border to South Carolina before he had anything substantial to show his brother: a few stray scribbles, an unfinished sketch of his own boot, and a half-hearted attempt to render Donatello’s face.
Donnie tried to encourage him to practice more, but Raph didn’t give him the chance. He tossed the notebook to the side and forced his way back into the driver’s seat.
“You don’t have to lie to me about what I was like before,” he snapped as Donnie stumbled away from him. “I was never a fucking artist.”
Donnie didn’t speak again for a long time.
~ ~ ~
They never made it to Miami.
The Shellraiser stalled out on the edge of Savannah. They covered it in underbrush and hiked the last two miles into the city hoping to find another aid station with supplies. Sprawled across the beach, the smattering of short buildings lay dark and abandoned. Signs of life were few and far between. Raph counted two, maybe three mutants on foot and only one functioning vehicle. The driver, a crab mutant, bartered with them for car parts before asking if they were heading north.
“South, actually,” Donnie told him. “We’ve got a friend who was visiting Miami when the M-Bomb hit New York, so we’re hoping to meet up with him there.”
“Better steer clear of Florida,” the other mutant warned.
“Why?”
M-Bombs. Plural. They dropped a week ago, apparently, and now most of the East Coast was evacuating to the Midwest.
Miami was gone.
Donnie seemed…stressed about that. While Raph didn’t remember Leatherhead, he figured his brother was less worried for their friend and more worried about their original plan to travel west. If more bombs dropped along the western borders of the continent, they might end up land-locked with the unlivable atmosphere closing around them on all sides. The earth had been heating up before everything started, and now the entire planet was poisoned and dying slowly, succumbing to some sort of invasive Kraang-related disease that Raph didn’t fully understand.
By that point, Donnie was panicking, gasping for air as they staggered back to the Shellraiser’s hiding spot. Raph didn’t like the wheeze that rattled in his chest with each breath. The poisoned air would kill them too, eventually. Raph would’ve welcomed it, had he been travelling alone.
But he wasn’t.
Raph grabbed Donnie by the shoulder and pulled him under the cover of a rainbow umbrella that shaded a metal table, still set with dishes from an abandoned meal. The sun glowed ferociously through the colorful fabric. Shaded by one of the red panels, Donnie’s green face looked gray.
“Listen to me,” Raph said tonelessly. “Listen. Me and you, we take it one day at a time.”
“Take what? This is hell, Raph! Or it will be!” Donnie choked on air and doubled over, gripping the back of a chair with both hands as he fought for breath. “There’s nothing we can do, genuinely nothing, they’ll just keep dropping their bombs one after another until the whole planet wastes away and we can’t stop it!”
“Don—”
“If we’d done things right, we would’ve stopped it before it ever started!” Donnie shouted. He shoved the chair to the side in a momentarily shocking display of raw anger. “We would’ve seen it coming and stopped it! And if we failed, Leo would’ve—he would’ve known what to—”
Donnie reached for the next chair and sent it flying. This one crashed into a nearby table, toppling the whole thing. Ceramic plates and half-empty glasses shattered against the sidewalk. Then Donnie dropped to a crouch with his head between his knees, heaving, fists clenching and unclenching empty air. Above him, Raph stood frozen.
“You don’t understand,” Donnie said hoarsely. “Leo would’ve known exactly what to do.”
Raph took a breath. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, but—”
“You have no idea what he—”
“BUT,” Raph interrupted harshly before Donnie could correct him, “he’s not here right now. I may not remember him too good, but I do know you. And I know that if it had been possible to see this coming, you would’ve. It’s not your fault.”
Donnie’s voice was thick with tears. “Raph, you don’t get it, I can’t fix this—”
“It’s not. Your. Fault,” Raph repeated. He got on his knees and pulled Donnie’s hands tightly to his own plastron. He didn’t know whether this was something he would’ve done before, but he did it now because Donnie needed it. “It’s not your fault, Donnie.”
“I don’t…I don’t know what should happen next.” Donnie lifted his gaze, eyes shiny and bloodshot and rimmed with dark grey circles of exhaustion that never seemed to go away no matter how long he slept. “What do we do next?”
“We make do,” Raph said. “Like always. We make do.”