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[othellovonryan]

"Yello yello, you're conversing with Donatello, inventor extraordinaire. Leave a message after the beep and I'll be with you soon enough."

Username: Bootyyyshaker9000

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[bluediligence]

You're bullying me when I can't run away. Rude.

[ SHE

wobbles briefly, the relief of no more stabbing hitting hard ]

[othellovonryan]

That is what I do.

[Time to clean the other wound.]

Its what I do. I'm selfish, but I help people.

[bluediligence]

[ by this point the ache and the tension are easing their way into a full body thing, like a non-specific blanket of pins and needles. her wings droop and so does her head. ]

I'm pretty damn selfish, too, y'know.

[othellovonryan]

Are you? How do you figure?

[Cleaning cleaning and wrapping. Sorry for the stinging disinfectant.]

[bluediligence]

[ Disinfectant is not fun, ow. There's a flinch, but it's relatively faint after all of everything else. ]

Well, it's. Kind of a whole mess of complicated feelings on my end. But I know my stubbornness and my morals have caused problems.

[othellovonryan]

Ah, yes, the selfish selflessness of an inherently good person.

[bluediligence]

"Inherently good," he says ...

[othellovonryan]

Yes.

You're an inherently good person. That doesn't mean you haven't done bad things, the inherent part is what is in your base nature.

Even if you do something bad, it doesn't make that goodness go away, and that's evidenced by your guilt and all the nasty things you say to yourself.

There are some people who are inherently good and inherently bad. That doesn't mean they're incapable of doing the other actions, its just they usually have strong outside motivators to do those things and are usually conflicted about it.

[bluediligence]

... [ hey, donnie?

put the steel chair down, donnie. ]

[ because oof ]

[ she's quiet for a time after he says his piece ]

I never used to want to hurt anyone. Anyone. Not really. These days ... [ Ha. Ahahaha. ] ... I still don't wanna, for the most part. With a few exceptions. But I'm willing to do what if I have to, when I have to. [ ... ] One of the biggest hurdles to get over was ... I was so stubborn it, I found it hard to budge even when my choices could've, would've, did hurt the people I should've been looking out for.

[othellovonryan]

[Never.]

That makes sense for your character and how you react to things now.

My brothers are the same way. For all Raph loves a solution that can be solved by punching it, he doesn't want to cause permanent harm. Leo can easily do bad things if he sees a need for it, but he's also the kind to hate himself for it for eternity.

I'm not sure how Mikey would react, but hopefully he never has to answer that question. That's why he has all of us. In a perfect world, Leo and Raph wouldn't have answers to those questions either.

Sometimes life forces you to make hard choices you don't want to make. Sometimes you don't change when you need to, because it goes against everything that you are. That's-

Its not a good or bad things. Its a cost benefit thing. What do you lose, what you do gain, the two choices have pros and cons. You weren't wrong to be stubborn. You weren't wrong to change. You were just deciding what cost you were willing to pay for the benefit you got.

[bluediligence]

[ another long, quiet moment to consider, before, ]

Mm. I'm ... Yeah. You're not wrong. [ a soft breath that could almost have been a laugh. ] Or at least ... What you're saying doesn't sound wrong to me right here, right now.

You mentioned your brothers. What about you? [ She has a feeling she might know the answer, but still. It's ask, and to listen. ]

[othellovonryan]

I'm not inherently a good person. Not sure I would go as far as bad, but the argument could be made.

But I love inherently good people, and I do like helping people. So I'm a good person by making the choice to be so.

So upon seeing how much my brothers struggle with things I simply don't? I'm fairly confident in my perspective.

[bluediligence]

[ A quiet hum ]

... There's a lot of meaning in that, I think. Making the conscious decision to do good. To be kind.

[othellovonryan]

I know there is. It's not a decision I take likely. If anything, it's extremely difficult to choose to be kind.

It would be easier to be cutthroat, ruthless, to not care beyond mine entirely.

But it makes things better for all of us that I try for more.

[bluediligence]

It's... honestly kinda funny, how familiar this sounds.

[othellovonryan]

It does?

[bluediligence]

Mm. My brother is ...

I don't wanna say too much when you haven't even met him yet. But he knows what his priorities are, always. [ Family. ]

And I know that many of his decisions are tempered by me and by the rest of his family.

[othellovonryan]

Good.

Inherently good people deserve someone who will selfishly love them.

Helps temper the martyrdom a bit.

[bluediligence]

Mutual leash-holding. It all balances out.

[ most of the time. ]

[othellovonryan]

Usually, at least.

You don't have to worry about me having a morality or self esteem crisis. My only concern is one day I may have to bite the bullet and do something my brothers can't and it might change their view of me.

I know they wouldn't abandon me, Draxum proves that, but change is a scary thing.

[bluediligence]

Mm.

[ sometimes not so much. but she tries to live on the bright side ]

... It really can be. But if you've got them and they've got you, you'd figure things out. In my experience, it's when you're - and that's a general you - alone that things get dicey.

[othellovonryan]

Oh definitely. If I didn't have my brothers, there was a ninety-five chance I would become at minimum a scientific ethics villain if not outright supervillainy.

Looking at the higher wounds. [Time to case out her arms.]

[bluediligence]

Supervillain Donnie-kun ...

[ Aside from the slash across her shoulderblade — nd the gash on her bicep that he'd already tended — the rest of her wounds are minor! Bruises, scrapes, a few shallow cuts that'll heal fine without stitches. ]

You'd still be cute, I think … but probably a little terrifying. [ "a little" ]

[ She finally lifts up her head, blinking a few times to get rid of the gross, gummy feeling that lingers after you nearly cry. There's a faint milkiness to both her irises and her pupils. ]

[othellovonryan]

I would be incredibly terrifying. [Not even calling him cute can fluster Medic Donnie.]

[Still tending to her minor wounds.]

Do I still need to hold your wings?

[bluediligence]

I, on the other hand, would make a terrible supervillain. I'd go to jail for the puns alone.

[ aforementioned wings wiggle faintly ]

Should be okay to let go now, if the worst is over with.