i_speak_softly | Seventy-Second Theory [Voice]

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Seventy-Second Theory [Voice]

[Don has been living in the tunnels since the beginning of the last experiment, and for that time he's been almost entirely absent from the journals as well. Today, he finally re-establishes contact with the outside world.]

Has anyone ever considered building another village elsewhere in the enclosure? [...] Don't we have an organization that's always looking for that kind of volunteer work? The "Blue Viscera"?

[The transmission ends there, but later in the day there's another one:]

If anyone is willing, I would be very honored to have a new sensei. I'm fourth-dan in bojutsu but I haven't been formally trained in two years.

[After dark, he seals up his lair and goes home. When he reaches House 55, he doesn't announce himself, but goes silently to the winter room and re-closes the door behind him.]

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[Don circles his arms around his partner, holding him close. As much as he tries to hide it, his fragile emotional state might be given away by the tears rolling off his snout and dripping onto Robert's lab coat.]

[Robert doesn't comment, but his softened expression when he looks up suggests he realizes what the sound was connected to. Lifting a delicate hand, he traces slender fingers across Don's pebbled cheek.]

[Busted. With the secret out, Don finds he no longer has the will to restrain himself from sobbing into Robert's shoulder.]

I miss... everything...

[The man clutches the Turtle against him in an embrace that suggests he fears the loss of Don as acutely as he feels the renewed loss of the Hamato family.

What can he possibly say? He misses them too. He's wept over Leo's bonsai, felt pain as he held Mikey's old comic books or stroked Carbon in memory of Klunk's presence, ached at the silence of Splinter's garden... even pausing in front of Raph's weapons case, more than once he has missed the Turtle who hated him the most.

He doesn't know what to do. Robert hoped he could help Don to bear the burden of being alone, as he always had, but evidently his strength is not enough.]

[Very, very softly:] I want to go home.

[Oh, Don.]

... I... I w-wish you could. [Even as he says that though, Robert's voice nearly breaks. The idea of Don going home, without him... and him forgetting Robert forever...]

[He's not even sure whether he meant for Robert to hear that.]

[He pulls himself together and sits back, sliding his hands to his knees and looking at the floor between them.]

I'm sorry. I'm tired and I'm not being rational.

... N-No. [Robert shakes his head with a surprising, albeit painful, firmness.] I... I th-thoroughly understand. You... would only realistically feel that way...

... I... I just... [In a voice nearly as small as Don's from earlier:] I w-wanted to be there with you...

[It's impossible, though, and he says it knowing its impossibility... an irrational plea with the universe from a rational scientist.]

[That would not have gone well. Still too ashamed to look up, Don asks:]

How's your nose?

[No, it wouldn't. And maybe Robert doesn't appreciate quite how poorly it would go, even if Don remembered... but he wants to hope. He wants to hope it would work, that it could work, that he could be in Don's life at home and give him what he never could have.

He would be leaving his family. His own life. His world...

And somehow it seems okay, to surrender all that for the chance at being with Don.

... He shakes the train of thought up, moving his fingers up to his own nose to trace its edges. How is his nose?]

... I... b-bled for the first two days, but... I believe I am... alright.

[... He didn't mean to hit him that hard.]

[Don looks up, out of the barest corner of his eye. Does Robert's nose look any different? It's hard for him to tell.]

And you brought me food anyway...

[Something approaching a smile:] I am... s-still a Terran. By default, many of us are... not exactly ph-physically resilient.

And... [More seriously:] You were... very a-afraid of me. All things considered, you... reacted quite well...

[The last part makes his expression grow sad, though he doesn't respond to it yet. Why wouldn't he?]

[Don warms a little at this reaction, and manages to look up a few more degrees.]

Let me see.

Of course. [Robert dips his head to allow the Turtle to see the shape of his nose better. Luckily for Robert, it isn't broken, though there's still light bruising at the edges of it. Robert's not self-conscious enough to cover said bruise.]

[Unconsciously echoing the way Robert touched him a few moments ago, Don runs his thumb down the human's nose. It doesn't feel any different.]

[He sits back, satisfied.]

Were you... surprised?

Highly. It... took me qu-quite some time before I understood there was an experiment...

[Don sits back a little, alarmed. What did Robert think was going on, that first morning?]

[That was the thing, he couldn't be sure.]

It... was my i-initial hypothesis, considering the... d-dramatic nature of the reaction. But... [Robert falters.] I was... u-uncertain if something I did might have... caused such a reaction...

[His shoulders slump a little, again. This is all-too-understandable.]

To be honest, I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner.

[Now it's Robert's turn to be surprised.] ... You felt it w-would...?

Well, yes. When I wake up from a nightmare, I've been known to punch my -- I'll punch anybody.

Ah... [Robert's expression softens with something between worry and relief. He hopes Don's nightmares don't plague him...]

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Seventy-Second Theory [Voice]

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