Brotherly Bonds

Deceived

Hello everybody! Sorry it took me so long to get back! I've been enjoying my first week and a half of school free-ness! Hopefully I'll now be updating more frequently, and not just this but all my stories!

(and yes, I am still working on the sequel to Picky Portals, but it is insanely complicated and will probably take a while longer.)

Also, now that I'm free, I plan to finish several of my other efforts over the break, including:

Silent Partner

Walk the Line

Sleeping Death (no it hasn't been abandoned!)

and 6738 Miles

I know, I know it's a lot, but I think I can do it. Plus I hope to get as many of these out as possible. I'm currently working on three right now that are at least a fourth of the way done. So hang in there, and bear with me!

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Raphael staggered forward, brokenly. His stomach tied itself into knots, his knees wobbled, and his voice shook. "Splinter dead, our home destroyed, and you expect me to pretend it never happened?!"

A hand gripped his shoulder softly and tugged him back around. Leo was cool and collected as ever. "It didn't happen, Raph. We turned it around."

"That doesn't change the fact that it happened the first time! Our father died in our arms, Leo! Our world got sucked into a black hole right in front of our eyes! We were powerless to stop it, Leo! Powerless!"

"But we did stop it, Raph, it's okay—"

"None of this is okay, Leo! None of it! Because the next time something like that happens we might not be lucky enough to have a second chance!"

And there it was, out in the open. Raphael's bad mood and insane efforts at overworking himself finally made sense. Leo's hand left his younger sibling's shoulder as he paused to assess the situation. This was never easy with Raphael. Donnie and Mikey's moods could usually be easily dealt with by a good swift whack on the head, but Raph was different. He was more emotional, and likely to dwell on things. After a week of watching Raph working himself into this apocalyptic funk, Leo had finally decided to approach the hothead. And, after being on the receiving end of his brother's insults for over an hour now, it looked like they'd finally gotten to the root of the problem.

Leo coughed, the intense shouting match earlier now coming back to bite him. That Raph managed to yell all the time and never lost his voice always amazed him.

He didn't reach out this time. Now that they were breaking very tender ground, any kind of physical contact could lead to deep cuts or broken bones, neither of which Leo wanted to deal with this late in at night.

"But we did have a second chance Raph, we fixed everything. It's alright now."

"Until it happens again."

"Don't think like that, Raph."

Raph turned on him and snarled. "The shell am I supposed to think, Leo? You think I want to think about this stuff? I wouldn't, but someone in this family has to!"

"Raph—"

"Shredder's still out there, Leo and he's gonna keep coming after Master Splinter! He's never going to stop trying to kill him!"

Leo's eyes flashed dangerously. "I know that, Raph. You really think that I haven't thought about that?"

"So you admit it! Everything's not alright, Leo! It might never be! We might run around in circles for years! Shredder, the Kraang, the Utrom, space missions and aliens and Foot clan and humans and sticking to the shadows and never being seen. It could go on forever! Until we kill Shredder, or he kills us, or we kill each other, or someone else finishes the job for us!"