'Hey, wanted to tell you something serious,' Casey Jones had began over a beer. 'If anything happens ta me–'

'–I bang your wife?' Raphael had grinned wide over his own drink and saluted. "Orders received!"

Casey had headlocked him and cussed him out, and Raphael had taken it and laughed. 'You'd look out for her, right? April.'

'I don't need *you* to tell me ta look out for mah own big sister, meathead!' Raphael had snickered as he'd pushed away and taken another swig.

'Promise me, though! Promise me you'd stick with her no matter how bad it gets. C'mon, she's already been captured once before!'

Raphael had blown him off, taunting him for being sentimental. He hadn't (and still didn't) liked thinking about anyone's mortality, and he had possessed the bigger death wish, so If either of them was going to die first, they had both known it was going to be Raphael.

Quick bit of trivia: When helicopters crashed or ran into things, they didn't actually explode the way they did in Hollywood movies. Raphael would know, he'd survived more than his fair share of helicopter (and vehicular) crashes. But if you managed to pierce the gas tanks or engine just right, with something flammable? Well, mind ya, that kind of explosion still wasn't quite as exciting as it looked in the movies, more of a quick orange 'POP!' than a tower of fire... but that didn't make it any less instantaneously lethal.

So back in the day, fighting against the Shredder, when they'd watched that missile fire straight for the battlecopter Casey was piloting?

Yeah.

'POP!' hadn't felt worthy of or dramatic enough to take from them what it had actually taken.

As it turned out, April hadn't been the one who'd needed someone to look out for her. April had placed her hand over her mouth, and her face had scrunched up as if she'd been about to scream out in shock and disbelief; but then a second later, she'd dropped her arm, turned back to her walky-talky and battle map, and resumed calling out very precise and level-headed orders. April had been fucking fine. She'd just lost her support pillar, her ever-loyal partner, her husband of eight years, and somehow she'd held her cool and soldiered on.

It had been Raphael who had fought ahead of their battle lines to tear apart the enemy artillery weapons with his naked sai; Raphael who'd been slicked in his own blood and screaming for vengeance; Raphael whom Leonardo and Michelangelo had needed help sedating, whom April had ordered dragged and carried back through their fighting retreat at the expense of several other peoples' lives. Lives he'd needed to pay back to her ten times over before he'd finally broken down and properly grieved.

The two of them had been searching for their eldest brother for over a week.

Despite the paper crane which Michelangelo kept insisting 'meant something,' Blue Turtle was nowhere to be found. But what did that mean? Leo could have been in trouble—could have been dead—or he could have been ghosting under the radar like some haughty, silent panther. Unless the Foot started parading around an empty turtle shell or broken katana, Raph had no new info. Neglecting to look for him felt irresponsible, but the sensation of being avoided by the smug bastard left Raphael wondering why he ought to bother.

"So," Orange Leader dragged out as he loaded fresh ammunition into that rifle he was enjoying way too much, "bro, serious opinion poll: Do you think we should just chill and look out for ourselves for a bit? Cause as much as I hate to admit it, by now he could be anywhere, and in retrospect he probably wasn't in a very conversant mood when he left. Maybe he wants space?"

Raphael cleaned off his sai and shook his head unknowingly. "Dunno, but what you said ta me about Karai rang true. Normally Leo could handle himself, 'xcept he can get damn stubborn when he's a point to prove, and on top of that we both know he ain't sleeping. Even assuming he even knows how to find us, he might not ask for help till it's too late."

Michelangelo thought about this. "We could try to seduce him out."

"We could what now?"

"Remember the last thing Leo asked for? A space heater. We could pick a new place for the winter, get it all set up and heated and comfortable... And then strategically place baby formula cans and diaper bags in a display outside the front door. 'No big, Leo, just if you happen to be keeping tabs on us...!'"

"We're not keepin' dat goddamn thing," Raphael muttered. "But the other bit sounds like a plan; Leo can't do electronics salvage on his own."

"Bro, seriously, what is it that you have against babies lately?" Raphael twisted to look at Mikey incredulously, and then gestured out at the city to indicate their blatantly missing brother who might or might not be dead. "Uh, dude, if you hadn't tried to kill his baby, Leo wouldn't be missing."

"It ain't his! I was trying ta keep us safe and focused!"

"Great job, it was highly effective, ten out of ten!"

"I effing-! Ya know what? I don't want ta talk about this shit."

"Then what do you want, yo?"

"Some more shit I can punch, ta get my mind off pandering ta someone who up n' ditched us." Raphael turned to him with a gleam in his eye. "Got an idea. You made contact with April the day he left, right? Well that means she's been waitin' on us over a week now. How about we don't stand the pretty lady up any longer'n we already have?"

Headquarters for their 'Rebel Leader' had moved and spread out since the fall of the Foot Regime, and even though Mikey and Ape supposedly had a solidly secure method of communicating, Raphael was super wary in approaching the designated coordinates. He'd kept tabs on the Resistance through rumors whispered in the streets, but there was a lot of disinformation rushing about right now, and he had a non-solid picture of exactly where they were going. Made him itch. Still, despite repeatedly holding sessions of democratic congress (in a way no older brother did, ever), Mikey was still holding onto the present leadership title for their group-of-two, and Raphael...

... Well Raphael didn't actually want that back yet. So he made disgusted noises about Mikey's 'carelessness' in the back of his throat, but followed close on his tail, hyper-vigilant, hyper-alert, ready to dive his little brother out of the way of danger at the slightest hint of danger.

Then Mikey actually recognized some of the guards by name and face.

The two of them were waved and pointed deeper and deeper into the pretty impressive compound, past medics, soldiers, rough guerrilla fighters, grease monkeys, hackers, counter-propagandists, and in general a much broader selection of skilled laymen then Raphael had ever seen one of their bases manage to support in the past. Bothered him, somehow, but not in that itchy paranoid way. The frenzied, hopeful energy of the whole place was right. Always felt that way around April, like she carried around a storm of it.

April wasn't in a debriefing room for once; Nevertheless, they did find her sending off a unit of well-equipped men and women in black who looked to be a little special ops group. April was never not working. Mikey waited in the doorway for—as he quickly explained to an annoyed Raphael—the 'right moment,' and then proceeded to dispense of all his normal respect for the woman with a holler of 'Mama Bear!' as he leaped across the room to bury her in a hug. Raphael squinted after him in dismay, but then shrugged.

"Mikey!" April laughed, catching the spirited hug and returning it with a warm one, before pushing him out to arm's length and looking at him very seriously. "Tell me you still have Raphael?"

"Yo," Red greeted as he padded forward with his hands in his pockets. "Why me, specifically?"

"Because it's not like you to miss a date," she scolded with visible relief. "You keep me in the dark for a year and then leave me worried a whole week!?" She held out her arms to insist that no amount of hands-in-pockets would prevent her from getting that hug. He scoffed but then dutifully submitted himself. And hugged her back, tightly and a little longer than he strictly had to.

"Good ta see ya, Ape," Raphael pulled back and gave her a once-over. She looked healthy, like she was eating right, all of her clothing but the purple headband was fresh and clean, and the dark circles that had been hanging under her eyes forever were almost gone. She was even wearing a yellow jacket. She'd just turned forty-one, but she looked ten years younger than she had when he'd last seen her. He smirked. "We're bored and out of work. Got anythin' for us?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. We've tracked down one of the last big mutagen factories and could use a sturdy spearhead to help capture it." April looked between them. "Leo?" she prompted an explanation.

"Oh yeah! Say, Raphael," Mikey asked snidely, rhetorically, "where is Leo, again?"

Tch. "Who the hell knows?"

"Oh, you're fighting. Of course you're fighting," April muttered in (relieved) exasperation (because at least no one new was dead). Then she tilted her head near Raphael to say, "You walk on Mikey again, I'll shell you." Raphael huffed in agreement/understanding. She almost laughed. "What was it about this time, dare I ask?"

Fuck, that would get Mikey going. "It's nothin,'" Raphael answered gruffly, glaring at his brother.

"Nothing?" wondered Mikey with exaggerated awe and wonderment. "Wow...! Ya know, I really thought it had something to do with how someone tried to kill the baby!"

"Baby?" blurted April.

Mikey pointed accusingly up at Raphael (with a stump) as if tattling on him. "He put cyanide in her bottle! She could have died!"

"He did what to what!?" April looked baffled between them, likely off-balance by how juvenile Michelangelo was behaving.

Raphael looked irritably away and snarled through grit teeth, "Leo found this half-dead kid what some hooker shat out in a dumpster," so Mikey wouldn't info-dump any more wastes of time. "Thing was gonna die anyway."

April turned to look back up at him and didn't immediately say anything, and Raphael didn't add anything, so Mikey tried to embellish. April lifted a hand to silence Orange. "Wait. Let me see if I understand this," she pieced together with a heavy sigh of martyrdom. "Leonardo—our Leonardo—is missing today because he has mistaken himself for a nursemaid and is out there singlehandedly attempting to feed, diaper, and shelter an infant?"

"Like he's lost his fucking mind," Raphael looked back to her. Mikey tried to talk again. April's eyelids tightened slightly and her mouth thinned in a not-very-convincing smile.

Then she socked Raphael across the jaw, hard enough that he actually stumbled and had to shake his head to clear it of stars. Wow. She hadn't clocked him like that in... how long? Nice right hook, girl, you still got it. Raphael looked back as she shook out her hand, grabbed his shoulders, steadied him, and held his stare.

"That was courtesy of Case. Now: What exactly did you do?" she asked him, brows furrowed like she genuinely wanted to understand something. "And why?"

"That thing was Not. Our. Problem." Anger boiled up that she—of all people—didn't understand, when she was constantly called on to make hard decisions; Anger (wounded anger) she'd take Leo's side over his, when Leo wasn't even there, when she barely knew Leo.

April released him and leaned back, eyes heavy lidded. After a moment, she said, "I'm sorry. A year apart and I guess I forget your unusual circumstances: You're a mutant in an unfriendly city, an enemy of the Foot; you have a lot of problems already, and you need to look after your own. Obviously, unwanted babies drowning in human waste in the gutters of the city aren't actually a turtle's problem." She paused. "Weren't a rat's problem either, come to think of it."

Red Turtle's brows furrowed down at her. What?

"Raphael..." Concern for him—not concern for Leo, not concern for any babies, not condemnation—wrinkled at the corners of her eyes. "Once upon a time, that was you. You and your brothers. The motherless baby in the garbage was you."