A Brother's Intuition

Long Shadows

It had been close to a year since the turtles had defeated Shredder and things were going well. At least...most things were. For some reason, things had changed between the brothers after Raphael's confession last year when they had supposedly been 'about to die.' The hothead still treated them the same, but it was the way they treated him that held a subtle change. It was barely noticeable at first. In fact, Raphael himself hadn't even realized that things had changed until a couple weeks ago, yet upon thinking back he realized that the difference had been gradually growing over time. The change was extremely subtle, but it did exist. Each of his brothers was acting a little differently towards him.

For example, Donatello was much more laid back with his criticisms of Raph's shortcomings in mental capacity.

Mikey was goofy, that hadn't changed, but it did seem as though he was trying a lot harder to spend time with Raphael. Of course, they had always been rather close and spent a lot of time together, but it seemed to Raph that now Mikey was going out of his way to hang out with him.

And then, there was Leonardo. Fucking big brother Leonardo. God, Raphael was so fed up with big brother Leo and his stupid-ass questions that were so hard to answer. Questions Raph was absolutely sick and tired of hearing. Questions like: Are you okay?

What the shell was that supposed to mean? Did it look like there was something wrong with him? And what was up with Leo's other new favorite phrase: Wanna train? We could do some one-on-one.

Perhaps Leo was also just trying to spend more time with his hotheaded sibling, but the problem was that Raph needed to separate himself from his brothers. He really didn't like it when they got too close to him. And this strange shift had really put him out of his comfort zone.

Raph had gone through life believing that his brothers were far better and had greater potential than he himself did, and he had accepted that. For years he had feared that one day they would no longer need his sorry ass around and that he would become more of a burden than a brother. As such, he had made up his mind long ago that as soon as that day came, he would leave. That was why he couldn't let them get too close. Because the closer they got the harder it would be for him when that moment finally came.

Raphael pulled out of his thoughts as a figure approached him. His green eyes glanced at the feet in front of him and moved slowly upward until he was staring directly into a contemplative blue gaze. "What do you want, Fearless?" He asked.

Leo glared at the nickname and Raphael smirked. Raph motioned his brother to sit beside him on the couch. Leo didn't answer the question and Raphael didn't prod him any further. They sat in silence for a few moments. Then, a familiar feeling washed over Raph and somehow he knew exactly what words were about to come out of his older brother's mouth. Wanna train? We could do some one-on-one.

"Wanna train? We could do some one-on-one."

Totally called it, Raph thought. He growled slightly at Leo's proposal, but the hurt that flashed in Leo's eyes made Raph cave to the pressure.

"Fine." He stated, pushing himself up off the couch.

Just as he was about to start walking towards the dojo a hand caught his wrist, making him tense. Raph wasn't really a hands-on type of guy, but he did his best to put up with his brothers' constant bouts of physical contact. Raph's eyes shifted to Leo as he turned back around. The older turtle's expression was guarded and unreadable.

"We don't have to if you don't want to. I'm not trying to force you into it." Leo said flatly.

Raph mulled that statement over for a moment. Truth was, Raphael loved training. Problem was, he didn't like training with Leo, and especially not one-on-one. Sure, he liked contending against his older brother, sibling rivalry and all that, but that wasn't really the issue here. See, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how good he was, Leo always made him feel like shit. Not that Leo meant to...well sometimes he meant to, but most of the time he didn't mean to. But it was times like these, the casual one-on-one sparring matches, where it really hurt the most. Times when Leo wasn't even trying to be better than him, but he just was. These times burned through Raph's thick outer skin and straight into his heart. Moments like that made him feel even more inferior than he already was. So as long as Leonardo wasn't insistent, Raphael was more than happy to decline his older brother's offer.