Burnout

The Funeral

Raph clenched his fist and slammed it into the ground, causing a noticeable dent in the ground, and yelled incoherently. "Raph, Raph, look at me! Look at me, hey." He looked at me as I started speaking slower and calmer for him. "I'm still here with you, even if I don't have a heartbeat. I'm a ghost, not your imagination, so I'm still here."

"Promise?" He looked me in the eyes with tears filling his own.

"I promise. Can you go get the paper off of the bedside table in my lab? I wrote something for everyone." He nodded and started walking off again.

"Raphael, where on earth are you going? You've been talking to yourself for quite a while now,  but none of what you've been saying makes sense. Speak with us." Sensei approached him.

"Donnie told me to go get a paper off his bedside table because he wrote something for everyone, so I'm gonna go get it for him. And I don't care if you don't believe me anymore." He got to my lab quicker than I expected and picked up the paper, reading everything. "Finally gonna tell April how you feel?" He teased me slightly, trying to lighten the mood.

"I mean, not technically since she can't see me. It's not as scary this way. I didn't even realize there was any form of afterlife, so I thought that those were going to be the last things I ever said. I know it's cheesy for those to be my last words, but y'know." He nodded and used some scissors to cut it up so everyone could only see their own note. "Oh, that's actually really smart, Raph, thank you."

"No problem." He handed everyone their slip of paper, then sat down with my body. 

"Raph, this is more than one paper." Leo looked at him. "Look, see? 'Donnie' was wrong."

"No, it was one until I cut it. He couldn't when he was dying, so I did it for him." He held his little slip of paper close to his chest while everyone else was reading their own. April read the paper, looked at my body, looked at the paper again, and then looked at my body again. I could see it on her face, she didn't feel the same way. My heart broke in two while she shoved it in her pocket and acted like she hadn't read it.

"Can you tell 'Donnie' that I'll read that later?" She smiled at Raph nervously, knowing he didn't notice her reading it.

"She already read it, Raph, she just doesn't feel the same way." I sighed.

"Don't lie to me, O'Neil, you read it already and just don't like him back. You don't gotta lie to him, just be honest! You yell at me for being mean to him when you're still being rude to him after he's dead!" He walked over to her and folded his arms tightly. 

"How'd you-?" She stopped. 

"Donnie told me." 

"Donnie's de-"

"Dead, I know! He's a ghost now and he says I'm the only one that can see him and he doesn't know why yet but he'll figure it out. I know you guys think I'm crazy and I'm fine with that as long as I get to keep seeing my little brother." 

"Hey, Raph? Your blood pressure's rising a little too high, you might want to go get some water, sit down, and calm down for a bit." I was concerned for him, this situation was stressing him out.

"I'm fine, Don, I don't need to calm down. I'm helping with your funeral." He smoothed out the hole in the ground with one of the shovels quickly before joining the rest of them.

"Raph, just for a moment, please? For me?"

"Ugh, fine." He looked at everyone else. "Donnie's worried about my blood pressure and won't stop nagging me so I'm gonna go sit down for a bit." He walked a little off to the distance and sat down, getting confused looks from everyone else. I stayed close by him to make sure everything was alright and because he was the only one who could see me.