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i.
April told me that this helps. The writing. She mentioned something about it but I was more preoccupied with the tick above her right temple. A small thing, honestly. Small pulsations. It gets lost in the scar that travels from her eyebrow down to her ear. She said that it's punk. I wanted to place the pad of my finger right above the twitching and soothe the blood beneath the skin.
I didn't. The metal is cold against the flesh, I get it. Dee is still working on getting the central heating working again. He told me that the arm needs to be rewired and tailored again to fit my form. That felt wrong. If I can't fit into this then how can I fit into me? It's silly, I know, I know. He’ll probably tell me that I’ll look stupid gaining muscle only on one side of my body. I'll laugh and tell him to hit the gym with me if he wants to talk big. I'm hoping for a dictated exaggerated sigh.
It's comforting. The weight of it. The heaviness is grounding. And I will, at times, reach out and push my thumb into one of the metallic end points that jut out near my shoulder. A familiar sting will follow right after. A memory as well. Unbalanced, growing limbs and a tennis ball that found itself in the sewers was one hell of a mismatched combination.
You were still learning how to angle your body in a way that won't nick us.
I am still learning how to walk along the dim-lit hallways without swaying to the right. You knew how to be big and small. I just want you to be big now. Hey, what do you say, Raph? Will you take up space for me, one last time? Take up space so that there is less empty air.
ii.
Sometimes, I see dad in Mikey. That happens when I glimpse at him from my peripheral vision. In battle, in the dining hall. Or when he’s down on his knees, eye-level with one of the yokai children who have yet to get used to the way the ground shakes and the overhead lights flicker in return. I'll pass by the scene and find the familiar sight of the white hair. Grown and maintained in tufts on the lower half of his face. A half halo. Or a balding lion’s mane. Hah.
He doesn't talk about dad anymore. I don't press. He has grown overly cautious of Draxum’s health. I try to find more vitamins on our supply runs.
A couple of months after his death, he asked Donnie for a picture of dad - back when he still had a head-full of hair.
(I had this routine with him every two months where he would come into my room, lean against my legs on the floor and we would take turns listing what we missed for every single section of his hair that I twisted.
Kraft cheese. Fluorescent markers. Jupiter Jim Goes to the Moon: 84th limited edition. Herbal tea that dad used to brew after our training sessions.)
He came back from the bathroom half an hour later with half of his hair gone. I didn't press. Maybe it’s because I saw a phantom of dad.
iii.
You begin to tell us the threads of a plan but I tell you to relax. You do anything but. I jump off from the roof and gaze up at you, ant-like on the edge of the apartment complex. Have you always been this small? I can smell the exhaust in the air from the traffic, the ozone from my portals, Warrenstone’s hairspray. It is a good day for me, all things considered. The metallic taste in my mouth is less noticeable than the after-taste of Hueso’s pizza. The record is beaten. My quips land in all the right places. I managed to portal-chop. You. The key gets taken from the tendrils of your energy. You said you got it. I know, I know. You did. That’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it? You did.
iv.
Casey junior has picked up a habit from you. Being next to him feels like that itch that I get from my amputated arm sometimes. But, yeah, he growls! Like you used to do when Dee took the last serving of cake or Mikey will fail to show up to the patrols on time back when we were half of what we are now.
He clings to me often. He's lucky that he’s cute because he has learned to hug like you. I don't know how he did because of, well, the size difference. The first time he wrapped his arms around me I froze. That little guy is so perceptive that he didn’t hug me for a week afterwards. Maybe that’s why Mikey couldn’t fill in your shoes afterwards. It's too much.
v.
He caught a cold. I had to postpone the meeting that I had with the nearby yokai base. Can't even ask April how to take care of a child with a fever because she started spending most of her time on recon missions after Casey's funeral. He's currently sprawled on the top of my carapace; it must feel cool to the touch. I can't even tuck him into a proper bed. Feed him dad’s chicken soup that he made for Donnie so often. Mikey told me not to worry - that it happens.
The most that I can do now is sing him a lullaby that you made up on the spot when we were children and kiss his forehead to make sure that the temperature is going down.
vi.
It gets so tiring at times.
vii.
On days like this I selfishly hope that you and dad and Casey aren’t watching over me. I hope that you’ve moved onto brighter things and days where the sky is clear and the eye is nothing but the sun. Cradling your guys’ faces warmly, gently, for a long time.
viii.
There’s something lodged in between my ribs closest to my heart that grows every single time a new clan forms an alliance with us. I remember joining you on your night patrol shift and we talked about it. Or in my classic fashion, talked around it.
I asked you if you started speaking in the yokai dialect. Laughter followed you as you shook your head in lieu of an answer.
Then you glanced at me, maybe saw something there, and shot a question of your own.
“You would think that you would love them for someone who used to sneak out to the Hidden City so often.”
Never have liked it when you do that thing.
“What thing?”
Don’t thing me.
“The thing will continue thinging if you don’t surrender to it, Nardo.”
You were always good at doing that thing, by the way. Guess it’s already in your blood as a prerequisite for being the oldest.
I do like them. I just think that it was easier to think of myself as some kind of a permanent tourist when I was there.
“A permanent tourist can always become a resident.”
A smile.
If only there is still a place left to have residency in.
“We can make a place, Leo. We’ve always done so.”
A beat.
Thanks, Raph.
A raised eyebrow.
You know. For making places feel like they’re worth planting your roots in.
“Don’t thank me. Dee’s garden is doing half of the job for me.”
ix.
Winters have always been the hardest. We’re low on clothes again. I turned the scarf that April knitted for me on our first snowfall into a makeshift sweater for Casey (he is starting to outgrow all of his clothes). She draped it over my head, blocking my vision momentarily, and when I asked why, she shrugged, and told me to have something that is nice to keep, for the sake of niceness. Mikey offered to cut up his robe as an outer layer for the kid. I gave him what I hope passed off as your eldest brother's look of disapproval.
Sometimes, when they aren’t looking, I’ll divide my portion into quarters. Dee will look at me after he gets his serving, like he knows. As if five more baked beans make a difference! He still eats it all, like he knows. That I don’t feel hunger anymore.
I used to hoard food, at the very beginning. Hid it under my bed as an insurance. The stench was noticeable after a week. You didn’t say anything when you knelt down and started scrubbing the floors with diluted vinegar. You also knew.
x.
The four of us are moving in sync from roof to roof. You lay your plan out to us and I don’t interrupt but I still cover the gaps in your thinking during the chase. We intercept them, you get the key. Its cylindrical shape looks small and inconsequential in your grip. Maybe we call Draxum and ask for his advice. He takes it out of our hands. The Foot loose the trail. It could be easy. It could have been easy.
xi.
He’s at the age where he asks a lot of questions and I try my best to answer. No, the sky doesn’t taste like tomatoes. Yes I have plenty of scars but not all of them are from battle. No, the Kraang aren’t born from dead people’s brains. Yes, Uncle Tello is the only green idiot on Earth who has tattooed eyebrows. Yes, your mom was able to lift me like it was nothing. Hey, now why would we want to move above ground when we are having so much fun here? Yes, you are my favorite.
I’m sorry. I don’t know why he doesn’t ask about you.
xii.
On the day we heard the news the ground was covered in snow for the first time since the past six years. Which was pretty fucking mean of the weatherman to do so. At least the blood wasn’t previously noticeable against the dirt and aggregated soil. Yours seeped into the white. Outlining the silhouette of whatever was left of your carapace. By the time we started moving your body the snow melted and whatever was with it returned to the ground.
I held Mikey thinking that I was doing it for him when it was more for myself. When his cries stopped reverberating through my veins and the vice-like pressure on my wrist subsided as his hand went limp, I found myself in Donnie’s lab.
I half expected him to be hunched over your body. Bringing you back, somehow. Hah. He could do almost anything out of nothing.
The room instead welcomed me with the quiet hum of the monitors. In retrospect, I should’ve known that he would be in the greenhouse instead. It was you who started collecting packaged seeds to begin with. I found him sitting on the floor next to the rows of budding strawberries.
“He really wanted to try them.”
I joined him on the floor and looked at the stem closest to us. It was barely anything, but it was still something. At least the roots have taken hold.
The strawberries?
“Yeah.”
I stretched my legs flat against the ground and he, in return, laid his head on them.
“If I knew - If I had known, I would have made them grow faster.”
I untied the mask that was clinging to his face with moisture and he raised his head a little to help me take it off fully.
We can still eat them. Once they grow.
When met with silence, I looked down and found him curled up and fast asleep. I stayed there for the entire night. Watching the plants grow and matching my breathing with Dee’s like I used to do after a bad nightmare.
Raph, I hope that something will grow where you last laid. Maybe we’ll plant a tree there after all this ends. But until then I’ve saved a space to miss you.