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It had been a long time since the four brothers had been together; Leonardo was finding it hard to believe that it was happening. It wasn't right - they weren't the same as before, they couldn't rewind the hands of time.
That was why he had to leave the others downstairs in the briefing room of the rebel base. He was half-sitting on the low wall, then ran across the roof with unseeing eyes turned towards the city.
He could smell the smog in the air and almost feel the destruction that stretched for miles across the city, but what he hated most was the silence. At night it was forbidden for the survivors to walk about the city, only the rebels ventured out at night, and even then sounds were rare.
The sound of footsteps suddenly started coming up the stairs to the roof entrance. The footsteps only started halfway up the stairs, meaning that they could only belong to one person.
All four brothers were trained to be silent when they needed to be; Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo had honed these skills to perfection during these last years, to the point that they didn't realise they were doing it.
Leonardo didn't realise how good they'd become, not until he lost his sight. Since then Raphael made an effort to break the habit around Leonardo, making it easier for him to picture his surroundings.
"You came alone?" Leonardo turned his head slightly, hearing his brother's footsteps approaching from behind.
"Yeah. Mike's watching over Don. Always did follo' him around like a lost puppy." Raph let himself give a small smile, knowing full well his brother couldn't see it.
"He knows it's not our Donnie, right?" Leo's voice was clipped and to-the-point as he turned his head to look back at the city.
"I don't think he cares. To be honest, I'm not sure myself." His voice was even and showed no emotion as he walked up next to Leo, leaning his shell heavily on the wall, head turned towards his brother.
"We don't even know this guy… Yet we're supposed to follow him into battle without question." Leo growled, he didn't know why he'd agreed to do this. He and Raph hadn't exactly been on speaking terms lately; he'd only come because Mike had asked him to.
"He's still Donatello. He may not be our Donnie, but there's no mistaking he's Donatello." Even without seeing his face, Leo could hear Raph's fond smile.
"It could be a trap."
"Leo…" Raph was irritated; he'd gone to snap at Leo but decided against it, taking deep breaths like Master Splinter used to make him do. "If you're so against this guy then why are ya still here?"
"Believe me, I keep asking myself the same question." Leo sounded like he wanted to leave, jump off the roof and be gone, another shadow in his never-ending world of darkness. But he stayed put, knuckles white as he grabbed onto the wall.
Another set of footsteps sounded on the stairs, almost too light to distinguish, years of training making him silent to the untrained ear.
"Mike's on his way up the stairs." Leo commented, sounding distracted by his thoughts.
"Huh?" Raph quickly snapped his head towards the stairs in time to see his youngest brother. It still scared him how much Mike had improved with his training, how much he'd changed.
Raph only had faint memories of growing up, his little brother had always been clumsy, slacking off his training, and laughing… How long had it been since he heard him laugh?
It was a wonder Donnie had recognised them at all.
"Don's plan seems pretty sound." Mike commented, leaning against the concrete structure of the roof entrance. "I need to know if you two are in or not."
"Course we are. You think we'd let you and Donnie go up against Shredder alone?" Raph scoffed, like hell he'd let them do something that dangerous. If Don hadn't shown up he'd have talked Mike out of it, but with Don back, it just felt right.
"Why not? You've let me do everything else on my own." Mike spat, he had every right to be bitter. His brothers had fought and gone their separate ways, leaving him on his own to deal with the pain.
He'd always been the baby of the family, never left alone and never given responsibility. He'd never realised how sheltered his life was until he'd been left to deal with it alone, with only April and the rebels for company.
"Yeah? From what I been hearing you've been doing just fine on yer own." Raph smirked, rolling his eye at Mikey. "You even bumped me off the Most Wanted list. We're so proud." His voice was laced with hidden emotion, sounding angry, worried and proud at his little brother's achievement.
Leo tilted his head slightly as he listened to his brothers. Something had changed over the last few hours - Raph's voice. It was only a slight difference, so slight that he probably wouldn't have noticed it before. Raphael sounded more like his old self, before the pain and the darkness had taken its toll on them all, and without his vision Leo could briefly imagine a younger, happier version of his brother standing beside him.
"Donnie's plan. Is there any chance of success?" Leo's voice was slightly distant as his mind was hazing over emotions from the past, the act of saying the name of his long-lost brother somehow making this whole thing not seem real to him.
"Seems okay, provided his and Stockman's tech can live up to expectations." Mike didn't sound confident. He put up a good front, but it was clear he didn't have much faith in the plan.
"Trust Donnie to come up with a high-tech plan." Raph smiled, memories of 'the good old days' washing him away into a false sense of security, of faith in his geeky brother.
"He needs to go back to the old lair to pick up some equipment first, though." Mike sounded uncomfortable; the idea of going back there was painful at best.
"I'll go with him." Leo slowly got to his feet, turning to face Michelangelo with a determined expression on his face, which he knew better than to mess with.
"Leo I don't think…" Raph started to get riled up, Leo seemed to have something against Donnie, and who knows what would happen if he was left alone with him.
"It'll be the first time I've gone back there since…" Leo let his words fade out, not needing to finish the sentence. All of them knew what he would have said.
"…Okay then, bro." Raph sighed, they may not be on best terms right now, but he couldn't deny him that right. "Me and Mikey'll watch yer back."
"Mike needs to stay here with the rebels, make sure April knows what's going on." Leo was clearly trying to make excuses to be alone with Donatello, and Mikey didn't object, he wanted an excuse to stay there anyway.
"Fine. But there's no way you're stopping me." Raph growled, pushing himself away from the wall and crossing his arms. "And when we finally do this, we do it together, as a family." His voice softened at that last word. This battle was the first time they would fight together in over thirty years; they needed to be a family again.
"Raph, we haven't been a family in almost thirty years." Mike's voice was emotionless as he turned and left, retreating back to the base below.