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Sunrise dawns bright and distant down in the sewers, and brings with it a clumsy sort of homecoming through the tunnels; crash, crash, bang, a half-swear, crash, bang, swear, repeat, echoing off the walls and practically funneled right to their doorstep. No subtlety whatsoever, Donnie thinks as he stares down a crack in the kitchen wall with the sort of shell-shocked fascination that can only be managed by a person who got up early in the morning and has not been able to jumpstart themselves since; no subtlety and no consideration, because while their curfew may be a remnant of a long-distant (as in two or so years) past, and while he may be an adult with autonomy and means and motive and something approaching experience, Raph never really did get a handle on not being a complete jerk sometimes.
A little unfair, maybe. Unfair enough that Donnie feels a twinge of regret as he drops a heavy, half-asleep hand on the cabinet and then just sort of stands there and stares at it for a minute, but in his defense: he’s awake. He’s been awake for a good long while. Sleep comes and goes in waves these days, has for all of them since they were fifteen or so, and even today, tonight, he’d heard Mikey moving until midnight, and then he’d heard him wandering the mildly confused path of a turtle on the tail end of a rude awakening again around two, but he’s been quiet since then and if past experience is anything to go by then Donnie won’t hear from him again until ten at least. He himself woke up at one after a meager three hours, and has not been able to get back to sleep since.
And as for Raph, Raph who is grumbling to himself as he works his way through the tunnels, scraping his sai along the wall and thundering, thundering, thundering his way near-
Well, Raph will come back (as Raph always does), and then he’ll sleep until evening, but it won’t be consecutive. At some point in the in-between, and in one way or another, he’ll make himself known; he'll work himself right into their perpetual off-balance with all the ease of a well-oiled machine.
It's funny, almost. Ironic. It also makes Donnie’s life very, very difficult as he musters up the will to drag his hand back towards himself and- wonder of wonders of very small mercies- manages to swing the cabinet open with it. Up goes his arm and down comes the cereal, everything sort of dragging along at the fuzzy, staticky rate of the early morning as the off-orange light from the lamp worms its way behind his eyes and the cardboard edge of the cereal box digs sharp into his hand. Master Splinter is asleep. Mikey is asleep. Donnie is painfully, woefully, wide, wide awake.
And Raph, Raph, Raph. Out in the tunnels, homing in. Crash, bang, grumble, mutter, scrape, scrape, scrape. Bowl down, cereal poured, thump, thump, thump, cereal box left haphazardly on the counter, scrape, scrape, shout. Fridge. Milk. The inside of Donnie’s head feels like slush. Thump, thump, thump. Never ending, as in: ending never. Crash, bang. Crash, crash, bang. Crash, crash, crash, bang. One very loud scrape. Something that sounds a little like nails on a chalkboard. Several creative swears. Several uncreative swears. A crash. Another crash, louder.
“Jesus,” Donnie says blithely and to no one at all right as Raph finally crash-bang-smashes through their door, chest heaving and looking like he’s gone ten rounds with an inanimate and frankly not that complicated sewer system. He blinks at Donnie and then scowls, stomping towards the kitchen in that very brash, what’re you gonna do about it sorta way, something that’s very normal for him and that somewhat ironically would not have raised any red flags at all were it not for the fact that he’s also been out all night but evidently has nothing to show for it.
No, no, no. That’s not right. Donnie spoke too soon, and so again: Raph is back, and he’s thumping around, and he’s been out all night with nothing to show for it but some unmistakable, bone-deep exhaustion, and then of course the bad mood to end all bad moods.
It really is unfortunate, Donnie thinks as he brings his bowl over to the table and Raph amuses himself by taking up the space he left in the kitchen as loudly and largely as possible. It really is unfortunate, because subtlety has never been a strong suit of any one of them and so it’s easy enough to sit down and go point number one: Raph’s been out late all night every night for the past few weeks, and point number two: several months ago, Leo was sent away, and point number three: lately, the news has been talking about the new player in town, the new guy on the block, the Nightwatcher they’ve been calling him, and point number four: that new guy looks awfully familiar, and from there everything could fall into place nice and easy and without a doubt explosive, because at the end of the day that would be nothing but pointing fingers, and they’re all on edge right now to the point where any finger-pointing may as well be a punch straight to the gut.
Well, with his luck anyways.
Regardless. Simple as it may be to sit down and figure some things out, it’s also entirely too early to be putting two and two together. Too early, and too easy. There are things that you can’t rush, which is to say that there are situations where you can’t be careless in either the way of the early-morning or else the uninformed. They’re all already precarious, and for all that he is and all he ever has been, Donnie’s not stupid. He will not be the one to push them over the edge.
… or at the very least not entirely.
See while Donnie may be in possession of all the vague overtures of caution , he’s also a scientist, a strategist, and everything in-between, which really just means that he never could leave well enough alone. He likes to know things! He likes to figure things out, and frankly the thought of turning yet another blind eye as Raph finally comes on over to the table and makes himself at home in the chair across from Donnie’s is just the wrong side of intolerable.
And really, a little poking should be alright so long as he’s careful about it. A little poking and a little prodding and maybe Raph will even talk a bit of his own volition, because as it is he’s been sitting at the table for a solid few seconds now, and as it is Donnie’s just sort of been staring at him, and as it is there’s a very slow, low thrum of tension that’s already gone through the trouble of propping itself up beneath the both of them, and really it would be rude to let that go to waste, wouldn’t it?
Either way. The side of Raph’s head is very green and very round. His movements are getting jerkier and he’s been side-eyeing Donnie with increasingly annoyed fervor for the past minute, so if past experience is anything to go by than he should be reaching some sort of breaking point right about no-
“Take a picture,” Raph snaps, and Donnie starts because knowing that something is going to happen is really only helpful insofar as you can actually do something about it, but that’s fine. It’s fine, he’s fine. What’s a little anger when he’s got other things to occupy himself with, such as not being too confrontational or else not giving the game away, but even that pales in comparison to his own bowl of cereal, which loves him as deeply and dearly as a bowl of cereal really can, and which he turns to now with open arms. Stirs it a little. Watches the milk swirl, watches the shadows tucked beneath the spirals as it twists lazy and slow beneath the curve of his spoon.
“No need,” he says. His voice is meandering behind itself. “I see you every day.”
A pause, intentionally weighty.
“Or at least I used to,” he adds, and immediately Raph groans, dropping his own spoon on the table and tilting his head back in something approaching exasperation. There’s a small bruise on his forehead, blend-in green but just large enough to draw the eye, and god does he really think he’s being subtle?
“No, no, don’t do that,” he says, tugging himself forwards until he’s straight up and down again and then fixing Donnie with a side-eye as unimpressed as it is distantly, implicitly exhausted. “It’s fucking weird.”
Ah, niceties. Don’t you just love small talk?
“Don’t carry a conversation?” Donnie asks, dry as anything as he carefully scoops four cheerios onto his spoon in the shape of a clover. Endless entertainment naturally, and good enough for keeping himself occupied while Raph incomprehensibly splutters his way through frustration and to something halfway understandable.
“No, don’t act out a conversation,“ he finally settles on, that unimpressed look of his dropping right into frustration when that does nothing to get his point across, or at the very least nothing that Donnie’s willing to acknowledge. “You’re talkin’ like one of your stupid books again. Trying to get me to do- something. Say something. I dunno what but I know it’s something , and it’s not gonna work because I know all your tricks, Don. It’s not gonna fucking work.”
Alright. Okay. So every up has got its down. The flipside of knowing a person so well as to predict their breaking points is that they very likely will come to know you just as well in return, which is of course fascinating, fulfilling, etcetera on an interpersonal level, but also deeply annoying in terms of dramatics. Perhaps his preferred style of dialogue is lifted wholesale from a lifetime’s worth of pulpy fantasy novels and perhaps it isn’t, but either way how’s he supposed to lead Raph on the runaround like this?
“In my defense, this one’s not so much a trick as a means to an end. More a template or guideline than anything,” Donnie says, which is not only true but also a momentary concession. Lose the battle, win the war, live and die by nothing but the virtue of your sleep-deprived wit. He leans into the table lightly, slightly, feels the press of the wood against his sternum as he twirls his spoon nice and lazy in his hand. “And it’s not that I’m trying to get you to say something specific so much as there are really only so many things that you can say. Think determinism. Like a flowchart, if you will.”
This does not seem to go over all that well. Donnie cannot for the life of him figure out why.
“No, I won’t,” Raph- who is continuing the conversation anyways, because he’s usually down to play along provided that he gets to play difficult- grumbles, shaking his head. “A flowchart, he says. A fucking flowchart. Here’s an idea, here’s a thought, have you ever tried maybe just talking? Y’know, like a normal fucking person?”
Donnie leans forwards. Donnie leans back. Donnie gets bored of all that and puts down his spoon then picks up his spoon and takes a bite of cereal as he mulls over Raph’s words for all of three seconds before he admits to himself that no, he has not in fact thought about that. An oversight, maybe, but in his defense: he’s been busy, busy, busy as a bee. He’s been otherwise occupied. Those computers aren’t gonna turn themselves off and back on again, understand- someone’s gotta walk the greater population through the finer points of pressing a button. Someone’s gotta keep the world spinning ‘round.
But regardless.
“Look, cut me a little slack,” Donnie says, half-dropping the act and conceding the point, all in one very efficient, very effective go. “It’s been a long few weeks.”
The vague reference to personal dissatisfaction- and then, of course, the ambiguous common enemy- is apparently enough to tip him back over into Raph’s good graces, effective to the point that he even shoots Donnie a sardonic half-smile before going and digging into his own cereal.
“Hey, fair enough,” he says, perfectly genial now as he talks around a spoonful of said cereal. “Still can’t believe that Fearless up and ran out on us like that. After all that big talk about “responsibility” and shit too- never could put his money where his mouth is. Asshole.”
There we go. Right there. Ignoring the atrocious table manners, this is Donnie’s in; the scene is set, the room is ready, so on, so forth, etcetera. He’s got his upper hand, and he’s got Raph in a relatively good mood, and he’s got the quiet of the early morning laid like a weight across the world at large and then his own inquisitive itch, helpful largely in that it won’t let him leave this alone. For as small an emotion as irritation is, really can be quite the motivator when it really comes down to it.
And so:
“To be fair-“ Donnie starts, delicate as anything, and immediately Raph scoffs sharp enough to cut right through the shell and to the heart of it. Lateral thinking baby, and also very audible, very visible, very obvious proof of his failure. Already the precarious camaraderie is fading, and Donnie can see Raph’s hackles rising right back up to which is his bad, whoops, etcetera etcetera but life moves on regardless and so take two, from the top:
“I mean if you think about it-“ Donnie tries again, careful as a turtle in a china shop this time through, and immediately Raph groans.
“I’m not gonna think about it,” he says, short and severe and very, very final.
“That’s a bit irresponsible,” Donnie informs him- as is his civic duty- and Raph gives him a look like he’s something he’s scraped off the sewer floor.
“You wanna talk irresponsible?” he asks, leaning forwards, and Donnie senses that he may have made a bit of a misstep here. A faux pas, if you will. A colossal fucking fuckup. “You know he left one of the training dummies unstuffed? Packed up and hauled ass out and left it right there in the fucking corner . Didn’t even apologize or nothin’, just- left it there. You tripped over it, don’t you remember that? When you were creepin’ around back there. Fell on your fucking face.”
He considers a moment. “That was pretty funny, actually. Maybe he was onto something there.”
He was not. Onto something there, that is. And sure, Leo almost certainly left that dummy there out of some out-of-sight, out-of-mind forgetfulness rather than the malice Raph is implying, but that doesn’t mean Donnie’s just gotta sit there and let Raph laugh at him.
“I don’t remember that,” he lies to that end, very convincing as always. The heel of his hand thinks nervously against the tabletop; betrayal of the highest order, and not unnoticed either. Raph tilts his head towards it with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes, you do,” he says, unimpressed and unfooled as the humor creeps out of his voice and annoyance comes flooding back in. He shoots Donnie a capital-L
Look.
“Same way you know that Mikey ended up bein’ the one who had to sew it back together.”
“He does a good job,” Donnie admits. He creeps a hand around his bowl, lets his eyes fall towards the table. “He always has. What’s your point?”
“Alright, debate team,” Raph snorts, and when that (mildly amusing at best) jab doesn’t elicit any sort of response he just sort of huffs through his nose. “Fine. Be boring. My point is that it’s just like Leo, don’t you think? To not pick up after himself? It’s just like him to leave us a fucking mess, and now you’re sittin’ there defending him because what, you’re trying to be fair? What’s fair about that? C’mon, Don. Have a little self-respect.”
Well. A catastrophic failure on several conversational fronts, but the nice thing about Raph is that even his deflection is very straightforward once you get a handle on it, and all of that was projection clear as day. Projection through and through and through, and yeah it might be bit of a dangerous game to psychoanalyze your conversational partners on the fly but a turtle’s gotta do what a turtle’s gotta do, and what a turtle’s gotta do is think things through, alright, a turtle’s gotta examine the facts from every possible angle and contextualize those facts and take those facts and turn them on their head and turn them forwards and backwards and sideways and one single slide to the left and-
“What? Nothing to say?” Raph demands, and Donnie starts. Blinks at him. Realizes that perhaps he might have gotten a little bit carried away there. “You’ve always got somethin’ to say. What is it, somethin’ in the water? Leo leaves, you start acting weird, so what’s it gonna be next? Is Mikey gonna get his degree in astro-fucking-physics?”
Hm. Okay. Donnie shifts in his chair and it creaks, sends a thrill of shock down his spine, and he does not say anything at all but Raph is on the warpath and when Raph is on the warpath anything and everything is some manner of cannon fodder, and really Donnie would be a little madder about that were he able to muster the will to be anything beyond mild irritation- and what good irritation it is, what perfect irri tation ! Soft, subtle frustration. Constant, unending frustration. Seriously, doesn’t he ever get tired?
“Unless you’re not sayin’ anything because you think this is a good thing,” Raph- tireless, awake, alive- continues, to that end. Lashing out, digging in. “Wake up, Donnie. Does this look any kinda good to you?”
He gestures nice and sharp towards the kitchen then, which looks just fine. That’s right; Donnie’s turn, now. Obstinance is like most things in that it can be a two player game provided that someone is willing to use the off-brand controller, and as it is Donnie can mimic with the best of them and for that matter, he doesn’t particularly appreciate having words put in his mouth. For all that Raph can be quite smart when he wants to be, sometimes he’s so shortsighted as to not be able to see what’s right in front of him.
Take, for example:
He’s literally been having most of this conversation with himself. What is he going on about.
“I never said I thought it was a good thing,” Donnie says, pressing his elbow into the smooth wood of the tabletop. It, of course, burns like nothing and no one else. There’s something wet pressing into his forearm. Surely that’s milk. Blood, maybe. Surely that’s blood. Who gives a shit?
“So you think it’s bad, then,” Raph asks like someone who’s caught up in the whirlwind romantics of dichotomy, and Donnie taps his spoon against the rim of his bowl. Watches it vibrate with the force of it. His head is ringing like a bell.
“Nuance,” he says, after a moment. Down goes the spoon, up comes the cereal. The shape of the world becomes mildly insulting in the in-between, and thus the spoon goes right back down again without so much as a second thought for silly things such as sustenance and acting something approaching normal. “I think that there’s nuance.”
Admittedly unimpressive. Raph is admittedly unimpressed.
“Coward,” he says, eyes narrowed to slits. Donnie does not reply, and his scowl deepens.
“Centrist,” he adds after a moment, and Donnie blinks as some sort of insult stirs deep in his stomach. He just about manages an unimpressed look of his own, doing his damndest to bring himself right down to Raph’s level.
“Well there’s no need for that sort of language,” he says, and Raph snorts in something approaching amusement before going back to systematically obliterating his bowl of cereal.
“Maybe not if you had an actual fucking opinion,” he says, mouth still full. “You’re an adult. Should really learn to think for yourself one of these days.”
Well that wasn’t very nice. Donnie looks inwards to see if he takes offense, realizes that he does not particularly care, and moves on with his life, all in the span of three (deeply uninteresting) seconds. The world feels like it’s sticking to the inside of his eyelids and god , what does a turtle have to do to wake up around here?
“Maybe you should learn a bit of complexity,” he shoots back anyways, ignoring his little diversions. Click-click-click goes his spoon on his bowl. Click-click-click goes the clock on the wall. “Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad, but it happened anyways. It happened, and it’s going to keep happening for exactly as long as it’s supposed to, no matter how much you yell about it. No point in getting all torn up when there’s work to do.”
Raph shoots him a look. A strange, sideways look like: so what’s this guy on about?
“Playing the field again?” he asks, dry but not entirely unamused. “Fine, Don. We’ll try it your way. Good, bad, whatever, it’s still fucking stupid. ”
“Well then you can be the one to tell Master Splinter that,” Donnie tells him, losing patience and also very blatantly ignoring the fact that if Raph gets riled up enough, then he might do just that.
“I tried, ” Raph huffs and in doing so provides a neat example for Donnie’s point, which is very nice of him actually. He raises an eyebrow anyways, because conversation’s conversation and it would be rude to just let things drop right here, now wouldn’t it?
“Not in so many words, I hope,” he says, dry, and Raph scowls at him.
“You’re talkin’ weird again. Dragging me into your weird roleplay shit,” he grumbles, and Donnie lets his spoon clatter against the side of his bowl.
“Alright,” he says. Annoyance jolts whip-smart from head to toe. “While we’re on the subject of roleplay, have you watched the news lately? What are your thoughts on that Nightwatcher guy?”
It does the job, at least. Raph stares at him wide-eyed and caught off guard for a moment as the weight of implication sits between them, unspoken but heavy as a stone and Donnie’s spoon sits conspicuously still in his hand. It’s silent. Silent as a stone. Raph is sitting still as a stone. His eyes are wide.
“Fine,” he snaps after a moment. He winds a hand up through the ends of his mask, a little high-stress movement that he’s engaged with more these past few months than the past few years combined. “Leo.”
A truce. A temporary white flag. Fine. The world tilts and sways and settles. Fine.
“Leo,” Donnie agrees, and relaxes back into his chair. “I wonder how he’s doing.”
The silence that follows is strange and off-kilter, heightened into something sharp as it Raph taps his spoon against his bowl and Donnie watches a muscle in his jaw jump and jump and jump, watches him tap his foot and flex his hand and so obviously struggle so much with staying quiet that Donnie just about puts him out of his misery right then and there.
“He never should’ve left ,” he finally bursts out in one big breath, and Donnie- two steps ahead, of course- waves his spoon with as much nonchalance as he can muster.
“He’ll learn something I’m sure, and some of that something will be worthwhile if by no means other than dumb luck,” he says which is true enough, and which in turn is fine. Fine!
“Okay great, good for him, but what about us ?” Raph shoots back like a raw nerve or a live wire, and it’s too early for this, does he understand that? Donnie’s heartbeat is thrumming in his ears, one-two, one-two-three, and everything is going close and quiet and close and loud and irritation is hooked to the back half of his heartbeat and irritation is starting to look a little more like anger with every passing second, and-
Dammit. What was he doing here again?
“It’ll be good for us, too,” Donnie says, half on autopilot, and then looks around at the gray-brown walls and the red-orange lamp and the halfhearted scene laid out by- well, by him by and large, because Donnie started this conversation, didn’t he? Donnie pushed and pried and pulled even though Raph didn’t want to speak, because Donnie never did figure out when enough was enough. Hubris is what they called that, once upon a time. These days it's just a dick move.
Oh well. Either way. You make your bed, you lie in it, and as it is that doesn’t seem all that bad an idea at the moment, so without thinking about it too much he adds: “Eventually.”
“And right now?” Raph asks right away- none of that waffling bullshit. None of that off-the-rails thinking, none of those overwrought, overwrung, stupid, stupid, stupid lines of thought. The air is wire-thin. He’s leaned forward in his chair, watching Donnie with an unwarranted intensity, but that’s no matter and that’s no mind, because Donnie is doing something very important; Donnie is scooping up cheerios and dropping them back in the bowl, over and over and over again.
“Right now won’t last forever,” he says, very reasonable for all that he is in effect admitting defeat, but in Donnie’s defense: a turtle’s gotta do what a turtle’s gotta do, and that turtle doesn’t necessarily have to believe what he’s saying either. Of course it’s odd enough that he is saying it then, but that’s none of his business. One of those back-of-the-brain runaround problems he could never quite grasp. One of those just out of reach snatches of emotion that don’t matter until they matter, and right now it doesn’t matter because when it gets down to it most of life is just getting yourself from one day to the next, and learning as quick as you can along the way that there’s no use crying over spilled milk.
Speaking of:
“Oh my fucking GOD-“ Raph snaps, and right away his voice gets a little too loud to bear, and right away the world grows a little too big for Donnie in turn. Raph slams a hand on the table- for emphasis and emotional overflow and everything in between- and all that irritation and aching and exhaustion that Donnie’s been fielding for the past ten minutes come snapping down all at once. The world goes hard and fast and bright, and while Raph draws in a breath to start on with the same old shit as always, Donnie snaps his head up. Looks him dead in the eye.
Immediately Raph snatches his hand back from the table like it's been burned, worry shuttering over his expression for half a second before cooling down to something more neutral. Something better controlled, even as the weight of the sound sticks in Donnie’s head and he rubs a palm against it, tries to push the feeling away.
“I don’t,” Raph says as Donnie stares him down. “I didn’t mean - “
“I know,” Donnie cuts him off. “You never do.”
He tears his eyes away then, goes back to stirring his cereal, slow and even as the world keeps firecracker-snapping at his shoulders and he breathes in deep, breathes in slow. Brings himself back down. “You’re a jerk, Raphael, but you’re not an asshole .”
Raph blinks at him from across the table, and for someone who’s all feeling all the time, he really doesn't seem to know how to deal with somebody expressing themselves to the same end- though, Donnie supposes with a grim twist of humor, that’s the issue here isn’t it?
“You really should look into mittens or something, though,” Donnie adds after a moment, and Raph growls low in his throat before pushing his chair back with a clatter and standing up, gnawing visibly at the inside of his mouth.
“I don’t need to put up with this,” he announces, eyes bright. Late-night, early-morning impatience. Exhaustion. “I don’t need to put up with you. I’m going to sleep. I don’t care what’s happening, I don’t care if the damn president comes asking for me, I don’t care if the world fucking ends, I don’t care if Leo decides to drag his sorry ass back home- don’t wake me up.”
Then he’s up and out and gone, but he doesn’t slam the door behind him because Donnie has hit his limit and Raph doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. Not like him, Donnie thinks absently as he continues to stir his milk, not like him as in himself, but that’s a different can of worms entirely now isn’t it?
Not one he’s gonna open. Not something he’s going to try and deal with; not here, not now, not when they’re right in the thick of it and there’s no end in sight and the world is eating itself day in and day out, because why bother with reconstruction in the way Raph seems to want to when it’s not going to last? No, no better to adapt and overcome. Better to buckle down and get through, in one way or another, better to-
Hm. Raph left his bowl on the table. The spoon is slowly sinking, the bowl itself tilted precariously towards the edge of the table, and it’s all a little heavy-handed, a little obvious, and as always a little more like Leo than he’s willing to deal with. No, for as good as he was in the field, Leo never did quite get around to figuring out the dishwasher. Always struggled a little more than he would’ve liked with picking up his messes. Would forget, would get preoccupied- no better than the rest of them, there. No better than them at all.
Fine. Fine. Irresponsible of Raph but not Donnie’s mess, so it’s fine. So they’ve all been stressed, so they’ve all been tired, so what? So it’s been a long few weeks. So what ? So it’s been a discordant mess of sensation and emotion all taking place somewhere he can’t quite seem to access, but as it is life moves on regardless, and regardless life moves on, so Donnie ignores the bowl and heaves a sigh through his nose instead. Lets his eyes drift towards the hell-and-back scratched wood of their cabinets. Lets his mind wander.
His eyes go next, naturally, drifting towards the dust motes as shift through the light of the lamp, artificial orange in the too-rich light. Leo’s tea- the kind only he could ever stomach- is still tucked in a box in in the corner of the counter, green and blue and a soft mountain scene gathering a thin layer of dust that leaves the whole thing muted. Everything’s a little strange, and everything’s a little off, and this is a way to live alright. Not empty, never empty, god forbid- Mikey’s much too present for that, and even Raph never quite learned the fine art of picking up after himself- but the absence is palpable. Nightmare in motion. Stupid.
Then of course there’s the tangentially related sense that something very bad is happening to him, or else has already happened or will happen or somehow all three at once, some sort of to-the-left, distant panic layered over every move that he makes, from morning ‘til night, in his room or the living room or the dojo or the kitchen- an intense flash of discomfort when he pulls the cereal from the cabinet and is tugged back for a moment to the rush of rain against a gutter pipe, hand half-slipped against the brick wall of some deep dark alleyway exactly like tens of hundreds of other deep dark alleyways, all torn up and tangled into each other until one bleeds into another bleeds into another and everything becomes such a part of everything else so as to hardly exist at all.
Flat, dulled-edge panic. Like when Shredder first started impressing himself onto their lives, and he’d found himself prodding at every shadow that came his way before he’d so much as realized that he’d moved. Like when something had bit into his leg on an otherwise routine patrol and he’d healed just fine within the week and then felt it for months and months and months afterwards. Like when he’d nearly fallen off of a building, like when Mikey had nearly fallen off of a building, like when Raph had nearly fallen off of a building, though that one had turned out to be a dream. It gets hard to tell.
And Leo is distant enough now that Donnie can’t help but wonder every now and then if he wasn’t a dream too- and if it weren’t for Mikey’s constant little missteps or for Raph’s bright and incandescent and- thank god- grounding anger, he’s not entirely sure that he would’ve been able to convince himself otherwise. For that matter, he’s not even sure that he would have bothered.
Oh well, oh well. It is what it is at the end of the day, and it is what it is at the start of the day, and it is what it is in all those strange and fuzzy moments in the in-between when he can’t quite keep his eyes open and can’t quite get to sleep and everything’s gone gray and soft and hard to keep together. Hard to tell apart. It is what it is, and what it is is him in his chair, alone, the lair silent around him and Raph long gone and Mikey maybe asleep and maybe awake and tension like a live-wire, like a knife all around; tension pulled through the center of his awareness and tugging at his eyelids even as he stirs his cereal once, twice, three more times. It’s nearly empty now. It’s nearly empty, and nighttime has long since ticked over into morning but there’s no rush; there’s nowhere to be but work, and work is right there with him forever and always, until the very end.
Fine. Okay. Time to get ready then, and time to go. Donnie stands up, and he takes his bowl to the sink. Flinches at shadows. Flinches at light. Lets irritation flow sharp and harsh and constant, constant, constant through the back of his head. Pours the last of the milk down the drain, washes the bowl and dries the bowl and puts the bowl away and goes on and on and on with his life, and within two minutes flat it’s like he was never even there at all.
Raph’s bowl he resolves to leave alone. Maybe Mikey will clean it up and maybe he won’t, but that’s not Donnie’s problem- no, the only problem Donnie’s got now is the age-old, the classic, the one great equalizer above and beyond and including everything on earth, every dog and cat and dust mote and box of tea, every brother and sister and turtle to ever find themselves awake in the morning, awake and alive and as real as a person who’s present can be:
If he goes to sleep now, right now exactly , then just how long will he have before he’s gotta be up again?