Raphael Hamato (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
othersdestructive) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ya_assemble2014-11-11 10:26 pm
othersdestructive) wrote in ya_assemble2014-11-11 10:26 pm
Entry tags:
[LN] [Locked to Mikey and Bunny]
"It wasn't a big deal. Everything worked out fine and I had an out so I don't see what the problem is. All of you are making into a bigger thing than it needs to be."
After storming off from the argument with Bunny over Raph running off to get Winchester's brother himself, he'd dragged Mikey into playing a video game. In reality, he'd have preferred to be alone but he could tell Mikey had been bothered by the fact he'd run off alone and gotten injured so he mostly just wanted to show him his arm was okay enough to play video games with it.
The problem was Mikey was still harping on what had happened out of concern.
Rather than being annoyed at Mikey, Raph was trying his best to put Mikey's concern to rest while channeling his annoyance into kicking his butt at Mario Kart.
After storming off from the argument with Bunny over Raph running off to get Winchester's brother himself, he'd dragged Mikey into playing a video game. In reality, he'd have preferred to be alone but he could tell Mikey had been bothered by the fact he'd run off alone and gotten injured so he mostly just wanted to show him his arm was okay enough to play video games with it.
The problem was Mikey was still harping on what had happened out of concern.
Rather than being annoyed at Mikey, Raph was trying his best to put Mikey's concern to rest while channeling his annoyance into kicking his butt at Mario Kart.
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"Elegant," she said, entirely unable to swallow her grin.
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He propped himself up just enough to reach out a hand, then poked her in the forehead with a single finger and just enough force to make he flop over.
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The abrupt move from the vertical to the horizontal also sent her feet out like some kind of counter-balance, but unless Raph was too pleased with his witty rejoinder to pay attention, he'd probably avoid getting kicked in the head.
"Ow!"
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Neener neener neener.
He went back to resting his head on his arms on the floor.
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They're at a turning point here. She can either stay silent and he'll either respond to her taunt with one of his own or also sit there silently until one of them gets bored. Or she can start up a new topic of conversation.
She dragged her fingernails along the floor again.
"So, you remember how I said I only got magical training a few days before I got dragged here?" she said, not quite daring to look him in the eye. "Well, it was mostly because my multiple-times-great-grandmother was an evil old hag."
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"What'd she do?" he asked softly.
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Nico tried to say it breezily, like it didn't bother her all that much. Like it was just another oh, my family's evil, there's a shock event in her life. It didn't come out that way of course; since she wouldn't have ducked questions from her friends about the Staff's new appearance if it had just been one of those. She tightened her grip on the blanket and made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"Plus you know, blah blah blah, I'm an embarrassment to the family name, a few tidbits about magic she never actually explained, and very little on what's apparently an ancestral weapon rather than just something the Gibborim gave my mom when she sold her soul to them."
She wasn't actually carrying the Staff of One with her, for once. She'd left it back in her room. She was suddenly seized by a powerful urge to go check on it, to make sure that Molly or one of the elves or Yeti hadn't wandered in and started poking at it. She raked her nails across the floor, focusing on the sound and the sensation of it to keep herself from up and fleeing immediately in pursuit of that urge. She might not be the best at dealing with her own vulnerability, but she knew an excuse when she felt one.
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He reached out his hand for hers, the one raking her nails against the floor. It was just a pat-pat. He didn't hold on long. Enough for that person-to-person solidity and intimacy while trying to make it not uncomfortable.
"I'm never gonna get that. People thinking they can treat other people like things, opening them up however which way they think they have a right to, making them vulnerable. That's what it comes down to. Making people feel vulnerable and just...taking that from them. Them feeling safe and having everything closed off inside themselves."
He'd been looking at the floor as he talked but finally looked up at her.
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She knew so little about that thing. It lived inside her chest back home, and she only knew maybe half a dozen things about it. She scratched at the floor again before curling her fingers into a fist.
"Some people are just evil," she said. "I hope I never understand it."
She really, really did.
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He needed to be gone.
"Sometimes I wish I could get enough of a handle on it all, to always know it'd be the right choice to take someone out. Like to clean up the world. Get rid of all the people like that. But it's gotta be all...complicated."
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"Maybe you can work something out," she said. "All things considered though, I don't think I should risk it."
She'd found out that the evil running through her family tree was at least a century old, after all. She just hadn't been let in on the family secret until someone else had caught on and set everything up for her to trip over.
"I can tell you that 'cleaning up the world' never ends well, though."
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Heck, he and his brothers hadn't even managed to take down the baddies when it was nice and black and white. The Kraang and Shredder's forces were too strong for them. What was he even talking about with wishing to take on the more subtle evils in the world?
"Why don't you think you should risk thinking about it?"
He wondered if she meant all the stuff with her family. Because that would've been strange, if she thought she was somehow more suspected to evil or something just because her family sucked.
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"Seems like it doesn't so much run in my family as gallop, wouldn't you say?" she asked rhetorically. "If you've got a family history of alcoholism, you might not want to go out and grab that first beer. I might just be predisposed to get things twisted in the morality department." She shrugged. "Seems better not to risk it if I don't have to."
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Not with how shaken up she'd been in that room in the lab with the...remains. That horrible, horrible room. He'd seen the look on her face.
That had required empathy and that meant she had it.
"Your parents raised you up different than them, right? You said you weren't even allowed to watch violent cartoons. And you have empathy. It's understandable you'd not want to think about it but not wanting to because it's not pleasant and feeling like you're at greater risk of being bad are two different things."
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Maybe it had already happened. She wrapped her blanket more tightly around herself.
"It's my head. I get to choose what risks I take with it."
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He didn't like that she seemed to think she was a time bomb.
"That way of thinking about it sounds like something that has to be hard to live with. Thinking you're a time bomb waiting to go off. It sounds like it has to be scary."
He peered over at her.
"Even if you do always stay away from thinking about that stuff to be safe - which is fine, it's understandable if it makes you feel safer - it'd be good to see it for what it is. Evil's a choice. It's a bunch of choices. And darkness is something that's in everybody, so at the very least, don't think you're somehow at a bigger risk than anyone else. It almost sounds like you think there's a part of you that's already rotten and that's not how it works."
He shrugged.
"Just look at me."
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Nico cocked her head to the side, frowning at him.
"Just look at you how?"
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It wasn't really giving away anything she hadn't already seen.
"Good upbringing by a really good father, right? And from when I was little, I was this little tiny ball of rage. Always picking fights with my brothers, always getting really vicious. I still sometimes let my temper go completely out of control. One time I kicked my brother in the back of the head when he wasn't looking just 'cause he beat me in training. And we're not talking when we were kids or anything, this happened a few months ago. Another time I lost my cool and almost -"
He paused.
"I almost put a sai through the head of the guy who's now, like, my best friend, I guess. Because I got mad at him during a fight the first time I met him. And that's all when I shouldn't be that way. I got hugs when I was a kid, I had a dad who loved me and taught me right from wrong, who was always trying to help me with that anger and it just...I don't know. It comes from nowhere and I don't know why. I might never figure out why, but one thing I do know is that I might need just the right kind of bad day, too."
He went on, "Because that's how everyone is. For everyone, all it might take is one bad day. That's a scary thing and everyone has to deal with it the way that's best for them, but you're not like some bomb waiting to go off either. Or...well, if you are, it's not different from how lots of people are."
He looked at the floor now, not really wanting to look her in the eye. "If someone raised in a good way by someone good can turn out like me, then it isn't just where you come from or how you were raised. Or from genetics - all my human DNA comes from Splinter and none of my brothers are like this. Anyone can be bad and anyone can be good."
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She didn't think having evil parents meant you had to be evil. Her friends weren't evil; Molly was sweet and would never do the kinds of things her parents had done, Karolina and Xavin tried to stop a war their parents had started, Victor was doing everything he could to make sure he wouldn't become Victorious, and Chase had proven that the only life he was willing to sacrifice -- even to bring Gert back -- was his own. Gert hadn't been evil either, she'd been all too eager to shine a light on all of the evil already in the world.
Really, it was just her. There was something wrong with her.
"Well," she said finally, "if it's something you're worried about, maybe we can look out for each other. While we're here."
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He stopped and had to hold that pause for a moment in the way someone did when the reality of loss set in, when they went through life and found each and every new way that there was a hole there where something important had once been.
Sensei'd always helped him with his anger, whether it was with stern, well-deserved reproach, calm wisdom, or listening with that Look.
He'd always had that look of understanding - and love. It was the kind of thing someone could feel like a monster over, but Raph had always known that his father had never seen him that way. He'd always just seen him as a son, struggling, and never once had Raph felt like anything he said or did came from anyplace other than a place of love.
He kept looking at the floor, eyes going glassy.
"Uh." His voice was a little thick but he cleared his throat. "My brother Leo's good about calling me on it, too, but he's not here. And Mikey's always been a little too forgiving."
His voice had been steady there, right? Steady enough.
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"I miss my friends too," she said softly, because this was she could talk about. She couldn't talk about what she'd done, and she couldn't speak to having lost a parent who was actually a good person who helped their children grow and improve, but she could talk about missing family.
"Time's passing a lot slower in my home reality than here, if Molly's experience going back is any indication. It's probably the same in your universe. Your brother won't have to worry."
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"Well if Leo's gonna be there waiting to kick my butt if I'm out of line when I get back, I need to make sure I stay in line until I get there, right? And if a lot more time passes here than there, there's a lot more trouble we can get into before we ever get back. So I'll watch your back, you watch mine, how's that sound?"
He gave her hand a squeeze. "Because I'm definitely sensing friend material here, and at this point, I know I'd at least trust you in an invasion of killer clowns, which I think really says a lot about a person. You clearly have a level heard on your shoulders: you know not to poke around the big tent that fell from space, not to eat the acid cream pies, and to outrun the popcorn gun. Also, you can basically set things on fire with a magic stick and your mind. I just feel like you're well qualified to watch my back. Anyone you could probably survive a horror movie with is someone you can probably trust to help you out."
The smirk he shot at her was indeed a smirk but it was still somehow warm and genuine and kind, like his way of beaming out kindness was always through smirks and smartass expressions. That was because the brunt of the smile was all in his eyes, green and sharp and twinkling with a sort of mirth and sincerity all at once.
"And I know all that stuff, too, plus I'm a ninja, so I feel I'm equally qualified to do the watching your back thing."
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She was trying not to be flattered by all of that, but it was pretty difficult in the face of that sincerity.
"Sounds like a plan to me," she said, squeezing his hand back. Her return smirk was about as warm as her face felt, too. "I can already tell that I'm going to be safe if my going evil involves robots."
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His hand loosened around hers but he let her decide when she wanted to pull away.
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