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Raph first realizes his memories are fuzzy when he’s retelling a childhood story.
He is telling it as if it happened yesterday, but he cannot place when it truly happened. It feels like it’s being pulled from behind a cloudy curtain, surfaced only to fade into inky darkness once he’s done. April is listening intently, always happy to hear anecdotes of their life she hasn’t heard before. His brothers are all smiling nostalgically, relaxed and happy. He barely hears himself telling it at this point, too wrapped up in how he doesn’t remember how old he was or where they were and how scary that is.
Nobody notices his plight. He barely shows it, after all. His concern is for him alone, and he will not think about it any longer. He listens as Leo takes over, telling of a tale apparently days after his, using all the expressions and movements he is unable to make.
The next time he realizes this is when he is asked by Mikey.
He is assisting his little brother in cooking (read: he is fetching the ingredients and not touching anything else) and his brother asks if he remembers the time they tried baking a cake all together for pops’ birthday one year. He blinks, then does a double-take as he realizes he has absolutely no memory of this happening. He’s left with a jarring choice; either worry his brother by saying he doesn’t, or pretend he remembers and risk getting caught. Raph knows he’s not the best liar, but that’s looking like the better option for him.
So he laughs, pretending to know exactly what his brother is talking about. He knows his dad well enough to take an educated guess on the fallout. As they speak, some faded parts of the event trickle back, and he swears he feels something else in his mind providing them. Something foreign, not him. He shakes his head, telling Mikey that he was too deep into the memory and would rather not die of embarrassment, and pretends he didn’t feel anything.
It happens again when Leo talks with him after he was apparently booted from the leader position.
It frankly scares him that he cannot remember this big change, but he knows his brother wouldn’t lie about something as vital as their team positions. Especially not when he brings out the vulnerability and sincerity. He hears his brother speak about how distant he’s been, how he must be so angry and upset and how he didn’t want this either. In reality, he had sensed a change and backed off to let it happen. So he wouldn’t screw it up. But he screwed up by using his usual method, which really wasn’t ideal for his muddled mind. He tells himself it won’t happen again, and he tells his brother he is sorry.
Ironically, it is Donnie who first catches on to his mental disconnect.
Usually the softshell is terrible at catching lies surrounding mental instability and emotional distress. But this time, Raph screws up big time by stumbling heavily in a simple sentence and his genius brother catches on quickly. He is cornered soon after, threatened lightly, and he caves. He tells his brother about his memory gaps, but advises him not to push it. Donnie merely nods, promises not to tell, and they both go on their way. He knows his little brother can keep a secret.
Apparently, however, it becomes bad enough for Splinter to catch on.
It is after the invasion, which he also has a hard time remembering. His pops asks him what is wrong, and says he is here for him. That he won’t let things get bad ever again. He smiles, nods, and tells him it is nothing. His eye is merely bothering him, a thing that cannot be fixed. He goes back to his vigil at Leo’s bedside, too tired to move even if he wished to.
When, months later, he is enjoying a movie night with his entire family, he slips up for good.
They are chatting about childhood memories again, opting not to think about recent ones. Cass is cackling at Michael, who is laughing along. Donnie is smiling as he shows April his latest advancement. Leo is grinning tiredly next to Splinter and Casey, hands held between them and unrhythmically squeezing. He is sitting with Sunita, both holding festive drinks. He hears his name, hears one last fond word, and he caves. He hides his head, trying to quiet his sudden sobs, but he’s too weak to stop it now. His lack of memory is scaring him, and it isn’t going away. He yearns to recall what his brothers can easily speak of, begs to just know what happened to him to make him this fragile.
He does not feel like himself.
His mind is a mess, and he cannot stop crying. At this point, his entire family surrounds him, touching hands and comforting words and literally anything he could ask for, but he doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t know himself, and isn’t that a different kind of unnerving? He knows what his family likes in these situations, but he has not a clue what he is comfortable with. He knows everything about them, but he is realizing he barely remembers his own name. He shakes at the thought, shakes his head, his arms, his mask flailing with his strength. He feels shattered. Like a being beyond repair, one that was never even supposed to crack. He hears concerned voices, shouting, chaos. He doesn’t like it. There is enough of that hidden in his mind; a fact peeled up from the sticky mess of his hidden memories. Yanked up and revealed like the magician behind the curtain, retreating like the tricks are over. He wonders what set him off, and calms himself.
Something other than him wipes his eyes, but it is his own arm he sees doing it. His family seems so, so worried, and whoever is controlling him (no, no, not again-) seems to realize there is no way out. He feels himself speaking to his family, but he is losing grip. He knows he is not alone, physically or mentally. That’s not something he had ever wanted to repeat, not after… oh. Now he remembers what happened to him.
He will have to be content to grip onto what he can, lest he make things worse. He knows his body is explaining things to his family, but anything beyond that is a mystery. He will float. He will forget. He barely sees the colors of the world.
When Raph blinks back into existence, he is all alone. He is in his room, the next day on the calendar crossed off in a different marker. Nearby lays an open notebook, full of the scribbles of one hasty to convey what they know.