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Years ago, Oroku Saki, as Shredder was called then, had been my friend.
Leonardo had looked at Yoshi, eyes wide and trusting, as he told the story of the death of his wife. Of the rise of the Shredder.
The boys knew of his life, Before. It had never even crossed his mind to hide his past; they knew of Tang Shen, and Miwa. He'd told them of his father, his strictness and his moments of warmth. They had listened with rapt attention as he described clear rivers running through endless forests, the vibrant pink of the sakura blossoms and the crispness of the mountain air. Of the beauty of the sky, so different from the claustrophobic sewers that were all his sons had ever known.
Lighthearted stories that made his sons giggle. Stories of his regrets, of his successes. They mourned his late wife and daughter together, tended to their shrine with him and celebrated Obon every July.
Yoshi was not one to avoid stories that made him look bad. It was human to make mistakes, and the only shame was in pretending you were above it. That wasn't a value he wanted to instill in his children.
Friend, he’d called Saki.
He told them about Tang Shen, and he told them about how she had died. About who had killed her, and why.
He called his brother my friend, and pretended it was not a lie by omission. Pretended the word did not curdle and sour on his tongue.
When his sons came back from their first encounter with the Shredder, beaten and bloody and scared, he thought about telling them. They deserved to know why Saki was targeting them so severely, why he would beat teenagers to a pulp just to get Yoshi’s location.
He didn't. Like a coward, he swallowed down the confession and focused on his sons. He forbade them from leaving the lair, doubled down on their training even as they complained, because he can't let Saki take his family from him. Not again.
April was the one who discovered the plot to take out the entire sewer system, and Yoshi had no choice but to let his children go with her to stop it. At least that way they weren't in the sewers.
Anxiety wrapped around his throat as he told them to be careful. When he was sure they were gone, he bellowed, fury and heartache and terror coalesced into a single sound that bounced off the concrete walls and came back as a sob.
Again, Saki intended to destroy his home. His family. His life. Fifteen years apart, where Yoshi had built a new life and no doubt Saki had as well. And it didn't matter. Nothing had changed.
“You were never my brother,” Yoshi had spat, and the words were a lie but the hurt on Saki’s face was not.
Like a brother to me, he admitted later. He figured his sons could understand that. They had friends now, and they had each other, and when he said Saki had been like a brother they could comprehend the closeness he implied. And they had nodded, had looked mournful or angry on his behalf, but they didn't really get it.
It had been closer, but it still wasn't the truth. It didn't hold the weight of meals scarfed down so they could hurry back to their game. Of waking up before the sun rose to help each other practice a new kata one of them was struggling with. Of hours spent whispering across their room in the dead of night, their ears straining for any sign that their father knew they were awake.
“Your father!” Saki had snarled, and the genuine hatred in his eyes left Yoshi floundering. Lost. They had fought before, but never— never like this. “My father is dead, and it is all Hamato Yuuta’s fault!”
“Saki-chan,” Yoshi managed, and any pretense of not caring was gone—his eyes were wide and panicked, a hand outstretched—because he may be mad at him about Tang Shen, and they may have grown mean in the dojo, sarcastic and bitter outside of it, but Saki was his little brother. He would always be his little brother, and Yoshi couldn't stand to see him now, baring his teeth like he longed to rip out Yoshi's throat.
“Don't call me that!” Saki roared, slashing his tekkō-kagi between them. It came nowhere near catching flesh, but Yoshi still flinched away. “You don't deserve to call me that! All these years—”
“I didn't know!” Yoshi insisted. “Do you really think otou-san would have told me? Do you really believe I would keep that from you?”
“Why wouldn't I?” Saki's voice had gone cold, devoid of the earlier rage, and that was almost worse. “Everything else has been a lie.”
The Technodrome was destroyed. The Kraang defeated, for now, at least. The boys celebrated, as they deserved.
Saki had Miwa.
She was alive. She hated Yoshi, but she was alive.
Yoshi was ecstatic.
Yoshi was in agony.
He couldn’t keep the melancholy from his expression, even as he smiled and praised his sons, and they noticed. Of course they did. His sons had known no one but him and each other for the first fifteen years of their lives, and they could read him like a book.
Once April had returned to her aunt's, Leonardo cornered him in the kitchen, the others not far behind.
“What's wrong, Sensei?”
And Yoshi never could resist those eyes.
He explained where he had gone while they fought the Kraang: April’s abduction, Saki’s deception, their fight.
He didn't tell them about Miwa. Not yet, with the discovery so fresh and the knowledge so painful.
When he finished, all but one turtle seemed satisfied by his explanation. The one was looking at him with frustration written in every taut line of his body.
“Why does he care so much, Sensei?” Donatello questioned, a tinge of desperation to his tone. Yoshi knew it was driving his son crazy that he couldn't understand why Oroku Saki would drop everything to chase Hamato Yoshi to New York. Why he would burn an entire village to the ground, decimate a lineage, over a woman. He had told them the story, but never the whole story. Of course it was—he was trying to put together a puzzle, unknowingly missing the most essential pieces.
Yoshi felt his whiskers drooping as he mulled over his words. Leonardo spoke up for him, with that clear-headed straightforwardness he had always admired in his oldest son. That leadership quality he recognized early on.
“He was jealous of Master Splinter because Tang Shen chose him,” he said simply, even and trusting of what his father had told them. Yoshi felt guilt.
“But that doesn't make sense!” Donatello protested, voice rising with his blood pressure. “It's been at least fifteen years, Tang Shen is— gone. Now he's kidnapping April? That can't be it! The reaction is— it's disproportionate!”
“I mean, I don't get the impression he's a super stable guy, man,” Raphael interjected, arms over his chest and brow furrowed.
The agitation on Donatello's face mounted, and Yoshi finally found his voice again. “No,” he said softly, and four green faces turned to him, varying levels of confusion splayed across them. “Donatello is right. There is… more to the story than I have told you.”
Vindication flooded Donatello's eyes. Hurt filled Leonardo's. Yoshi bowed his head to avoid them both.
“Tang Shen was… perhaps the final straw, for Saki, but he had been growing to hate me for years before that. Me, and our clan.”
When he looked up again, the boys were looking at him expectantly, curious about a new story. Excited, even.
Only Donatello had narrowed his eyes contemplatively, and Yoshi knew his brainiest son had noticed the phrasing.
Our clan.
Yoshi sighed. “The Oroku clan had been decimated years before by my father. Saki had been only an infant, and he was the only one spared.”
He felt more than saw the ripple of surprise that went through his sons. This was another story he had not shared—he hadn't wanted them to have something so horrific in their minds when they were so young. Nor, selfishly, had he wanted their opinion of their family to be tarnished. Not when they were the only ones left.
Raphael’s face scrunched up with confusion. “When he was a baby? Why would he ever be your friend in the first place if your family killed his family?”
“Well…”
“Did he not know, and he turned on you when he figured it out?” Leonardo questioned.
“Yes, that's part of it—”
“You said he was ‘like a brother to you,’ once,” Donatello interrupted, sharp as ever, and Yoshi was so proud.
The enormity of Yoshi's grief threatened to crush him as he smiled fondly at his son. “I did, didn't I?”
“I'm starting to think you didn't mean that metaphorically.”
“No, not exactly.”
“Wait—” Leonardo paled. “You mean…”
“My father raised Saki as his own. My little brother. Neither of us remember a life before the other, and we were men when we learned the truth. Though he and I had already had our issues over the years... that knowledge shattered our relationship entirely.”
Yoshi’s fingers gripped at his arms beneath the sleeves of his kimono. His heart sat like a rock in his chest.
His sons’ eyes were brands against his skin.
“I’m sorry, my sons. I should have told you sooner.”
Raphael was the first to speak. “So… he's not actually your brother then, right? You just thought he was. Doesn't really change anything.” He finished the sentence with a brusque shrug, as if his words hadn't felt like a knife in his chest.
“I am not your brother, Hamato Yoshi,” Saki had growled, low and deadly. “I was merely deceived into believing I was.” And fury roared in Yoshi’s chest, an inferno that hid how much the statement had hurt.
Yoshi hummed. “So, if you learned tomorrow that you did not come from the same turtles as your brothers, they would no longer matter to you?”
“Wh— no, of course not!” Raphael spluttered, immediately straightening up with indignation.
“I mean, odds are we aren't,” Donatello chimed in, his need to share information stronger than his surprise.
“But you are brothers nonetheless,” Yoshi finished.
“None of us are murderous maniacs covered in knives,” his most passionate son insisted, a stubborn set to his jaw that Yoshi knew well.
A wistful smile twisted Yoshi’s lips. “I think it would be much harder to stop caring for your brothers than you believe, even if they were to do something unforgivable. But perhaps not. Hopefully we will never find out. As for Saki and myself, he will always be my otōto, and the hatred he feels for me, and the Hamato clan… I do not think it is likely to burn out.”
“So the Shredder’s our uncle?!” Michelangelo screeched, a rather belated reaction, and Yoshi almost laughed at the exasperated looks the others skewered him with.
“He is,” Yoshi confirmed with a fond tilt of the head.
His youngest’s eyes sharpened, which was always a concerning sight, as he turned a knowing grin to his oldest. “Y'know, that makes Karai our cousin, Leo.”
Yoshi missed the way Leonardo straightened up, eyes wide, and the way the other two turtles joined in on Michelangelo’s leering.
Karai. Miwa. They need to know—
Not yet.
He tuned back in when Leonardo stormed off, followed by a laughing Raphael and a bouncing Michelangelo poking at his carapace. He knew he would have to figure out what all that was about at some point, but for now—
Donatello was still peering at him thoughtfully. “Why didn't you just tell us, Sensei? It explains a lot about the whole… situation. And it's not like any of it’s your fault.”
“I suppose it was simply painful to acknowledge,” Yoshi admitted, his fingers stroking his beard. “It was easier to just… not. I truly am sorry to have drawn you boys into this.”
“I'm sorry you lost your brother, Sensei.” His son gave him a small smile. “You'll always have us, though.”
Yoshi couldn't help but smile back, reaching out to press his palm against Donatello's cool cheek. His thumb brushed against the jut of his son's cheekbone, and Donatello let out a soft chirp. “That I will. Something I am grateful for every day.” After a long moment, Yoshi pulled away, giving his son a conspiratorial look. “But I think you should check on your brothers. I did not trust the look in Michelangelo's eyes.”
Donatello winced. “Yeah, you probably shouldn't. Thank you for telling us, Sensei.” With a bob of the head, his last son was off, leaving Yoshi alone with his thoughts.
“Ugh, oniisan!” Saki had whined, trying and failing to shove a laughing Yoshi off of him. He had been practicing his kanji, nose scrunched and tongue stuck out in concentration. Now there was ink smeared across his cheek, as well as Yoshi’s arm. “You're the worst brother ever!”
“Too bad!” Yoshi teased, dead weight across his little brother's back. “You're stuck with me!”