1. Chapter 1 (1/2)
a/n: inspired by the film "three days". although, i never saw how it ends—and i can't find anyone that can tell me!
i am taking more than a few liberties with the order of the
others. do i care what's been officially said off the show? not really. i have little respect for authorial 'canon' outside of their works. if they didn't get it across in the show/book it didn't matter, and i am free to interpret as i will.
so stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
thanks a bunch to my wonderful beta amicitia. you were a huge help at getting this story to be much better than my original version.
disclaimer: all characters, settings, plot devices, and situations that you recognize are not my property. i'm just borrowing them to play with until such a time as i am self-disciplined enough to write my own stuff.
summary: when one of his
other's is killed in battle, raph is given a second chance to relive the last week they will spend together. the catch? at the end of that week, his
other still has to die. cgi movie/2k3 series mixed universe.
and i am not resignedby: reggie
i am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.so it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. crownedwith lilies and with laurel they go; but i am not resigned.
-- edna st. vincent millay, "dirge without music"
whatever it was that had toppled off the table when he slammed his hand down would probably be expensive to replace, either with actual money or with time spent helping donnie find the pieces to fix it. raph knew this, and on some level he inwardly cringed about it, but that sliver of caring was rapidly fading away the longer his twin
other refused to look up and meet his eyes.
another growl of frustration, and his hands clenched around the table. he would not physically attack one of his
others. he would not make that mistake again. a raised voice, instead, and blinding fury. "what the shell were you thinking, don?"
"i was thinking i needed to get out of the lair." don said. there was, as usual, no matching anger for raph to attack. mikey sometimes joked they were one turtle split in two, and that raph got all the emotions while don got all the
ains. it bothered raphael that this was probably a nearly accurate assessment. why couldn't don just get mad at him, for once? it would almost be a relief.
"but to a concert? there are thousands of people at a rock concert." he gestured around vaguely, trying to express the scale of the problem. why wasn't leo in here doing this? their older
other was surprisingly talented at making you feel guilty about something that seemed like no big deal at the time.
"hundreds of thousands, probably, and all of them watching the stage while april and i stood in the back." donnie did glance up then, but only
iefly, and raph couldn't help the feeling that he was being looked down on with that face. "and it wasn't a rock concert, it was country."
raph hadn't known april, or donnie for that matter, liked country, but that wasn't really the point here. "you were still out there were you coulda easily been seen, you moron."
a screwdriver clanged down beside raph's fingers as don stood up, leaning forward so they were almost beak to beak. "you are such a hypocrite! don't think i don't know about all those times you and casey went to bars while leo was away. did i ever call you on it? no. i assumed you could handle yourself."
"in a bar full of twenty sloshed guys? 'course i could." raph closed the distance between them even further, jabbing his
other in the plastron with one finger. "an' i could convince 'em that they're hallucinatin'. but what are the odds you could fight off hundreds of thousands of panicked adults,
ainiac?"
donatello opened his mouth, seeming to be grasping for a retort, but there wasn't one and raph knew it. this was probably the single stupidest thing his
illiant twin
other had ever done. and a country concert? at least a rock concert they could pass off with all the other weirdos in costume.
raph knew he'd probably won another battle, but this didn't make the red-banded turtle feel any better. they'd been fighting like this nearly every day for the last year.
it had all started with leo's leaving. the first month, his actual training period, don and raph had a kind of uneasy truce going. raph had been a little bitter that donnie, who was considered the younger of the two of them, had been chosen leader over him, but it hadn't seemed all that important. leo would be back soon enough.
then they realized their older
other had more or less fallen off the face of the earth. leo, his best friend, had abandoned raph. had left him behind.
the result had been that raph had caught himself more often taking his frustrations out on don. it didn't even really matter if it was his fault or not, because he knew his twin
other wasn't going anywhere.
they had always been together. master splinter had once been fond of telling anyone who would listen how the two of them had learned to talk at the same time, walk at the same time, and how you would never have found raphael without his nearly silent donatello shadow. this was why splinter had assigned them the same birthday, and everyone within the family knew them collectively as 'the twins'. they'd even been called that for a long time, until raph refused to answer to it anymore.
leo might leave, but donnie never would. it was safe for him to get mad at donnie.
it hadn't taken long before don started pushing back, and only weeks after that they'd taken to avoiding each other rather than fight. this was fine with raph. donatello knew him better than anyone, even leo, and could find and hit the buttons that really hurt.
when leo had come back, and they'd defeated winters' monsters, raph had assumed things would go back to the way they had always been. that wasn't what happened. while raphael was more than willing to try to be friends again, don had seemed far less so. he kept locking himself in his lab; refusing raph's help with the vehicles…he wouldn't even spend any significant length of time in a room with raphael if he could avoid it.
that was almost worse than leo's little disappearing act, and raph had had enough of it. things had really started escalating this week, when everything donnie did seemed to make raphael more and more angry. he knew that don was just about at his
eaking point, as well. this is what raph wanted, because whatever the fallout might be, anything was better than the treatment he was receiving now.
"i can't believe," don finally said, sitting back down, "that you have the audacity to think that i'm so stupid that i couldn't hide myself in a packed room."
"i'm not sayin' you're stupid. i'm sayin' you're that bad of a ninja." it was a low blow, and raph didn't need the fury that suddenly sprang to don's eyes to tell him that.
donnie wasn't a good fighter, they all knew that. if he and a moderately trained foot soldier were put in a blank white space and told to fight, don would lose. his strength came from making plans and plots involving his opponents' weaknesses and the area around.
if any of them could survive an attack in a stadium of people, it would be donnie. that didn't make what he'd done any less stupid. he shouldn't have gone with just april. that was ridiculous. how many times in the past month had raph saved his
other's shell? ten? at least? he needed back-up in case something went wrong.
there was mutiny lurking just behind don's eyes, but he never got a chance to put whatever he'd opened his mouth to say into words as mikey chose that moment to peer around the doorframe. "hey, dudes, casey just called. he needs back-up, stat. some purple dragons are closing in on him."
"idiot," raph growled, not even sure himself whether he meant casey or his baby
other. he pointed a finger at don, and half expected the other turtle to bite it off. "we're not done with this yet, donnie. not by a long shot."
don said nothing; he just reached mechanically for his bo and his duffle bag full of magic tricks. they left the lab together, meeting leo and mikey in the main room. their leader barely nodded to acknowledge their presence before speeding towards the door.
it took only minutes, ten at most, for them to reach casey. he must have been running for their lair, hoping to get close enough for them to be able to help him.
he was crouched down on the wide rooftop of a warehouse—one of those long low buildings with lots of roof space. his weapons were all missing, probably lost somewhere on the chase, and there were several dark
uises forming already. raph growled under his
eath as he looked his friend over. seems like don wasn't the only one who would need a reminder on taking back-up.
leo shot ahead, using his sword to block the pipe that had been swung down at their friend as they arrived. "sorry," the oldest turtle muttered with a cocky grin as his
others landed behind him, "but if you want to beat casey for his stupidity, you're just going to have to get in line. we've got first dibs."
"actually, i think that honor belongs to april," mikey piped up.
"guys!" casey sounded so relieved; raph thought it was probably somewhat disgusting. of course, considering that there were probably thirty young thugs on the roof, staring them down, the red-banded turtle thought he could overlook it this one time.
"you okay, casey?" he heard don ask as leo pushed back on the attacker hard enough to send the kid stumbling.
"yeah, i'm good. i just figured raph here could use some butt-kicking action since he stopped being my sidekick."
"how many times do i have to tell ya, case? you'll always be the sidekick." raph couldn't help the corners of his mouth twitching up into a smile. leave it to casey jones to downplay getting himself in this much trouble. he still sounded winded, and raph had no doubt at least one of his friend's bones had been
oken. he hung out with a pretty rough crowd, and didn't have the benefit of a protective shell.
raph didn't recognize the leader of the group, some new guy with long blue and purple striped hair. he didn't seem to be in the mood for any more chatting. "purple dragons, take down those freaks!"
"he's calling us freaks?" mikey scoffed, nunchucks already whirling. "this guy needs to check a mirror more often. he's the one with the neon hair."
raph grunted a little as he blocked one of the thugs, catching the kid's long knife between his sai. "you're just jealous he has hair, mike."
"are you kidding? i've seen how many hours a day casey wastes taking care of his. i don't have time for that kind of upkeep."