It's…kind of a different style than I'm used to writing in.
Disclaimer: Uhm. Yada-Yada, not belonging to me, not making a profit, etc.
He enters the dojo with soundless steps and wavering intent, pausing momentarily in the doorway as though expecting himself to suddenly change his mind. When the moment passes and he finds he can't turn back, the next logical course of action is for him to move forward. It's harder to do than he'd initially thought, but with each new step he gains momentum- gains something like confidence, gains resolve.
It makes every step almost easier to take than the one before it. Raphael is inwardly grateful.
As he gets nearer his intended goal he feels as though he is observing this event from outside his own body: the lack of expression on his face, the flat, cold force behind his eyes. His hands, curled into tense fists at his sides while he moves in jerking footsteps.
All of it seems distant to him.
Yet even as he muses on the sensation, Raphael finds he is more connected to his senses than he can remember being in many months. The dojo smells stale, underused, air stagnant though it had only been hours since last he'd seen it. Maybe his reason for entering is tainting the experience. Maybe his reason for entering the last time he'd come in after hours is doing so.
In acknowledgement, colors grow muted before him, grainy like a scene from one of Michelangelo's ancient movies. Snatches of memory play on the edges of his vision, some darting too quickly to follow while others stand, moments frozen in time. He watches himself kneel with a bowed head, watches his father face him- one of the few beings in the world who didn't fear him.
Or rather he'd been one of the few beings in the world who hadn't feared him. Raphael has been too afraid to approach and ask the finality-riddled question, for reasons he is sure his entire family can guess.
Trying to taunt him, his voice drifts out a corner, distant and whispering: "I really messed up big this time."
In the memory, his father's head bows in grief.
He ignores it. It is impossible to change the past and he hadn't come to try.
The voice falls away, leaving him to listen to the sounds of Donatello typing, Michelangelo singing in the shower and the volume of the television being raised as a result.
Somewhere in his home, a clock is ticking over everything, loud and final. It is counting down to something he isn't sure he can recall knowing about. He's heard it for days now, waited for the inevitable to happen while it has gotten louder and louder.
Or maybe he's been wrong. There is nothing in the dojo: the room carries with it the feel of silence.
It's been too long. His time ran out the day Leonardo arrived. He'd accepted it on the day his brother had come home. Yes; there had been a difference between the two.
The difference had been a rooftop.
It was now one of many memories he carried like a heavy burden: the loss of control. His brother, nearly dead because of his foolishness and spite.
The world grows heavier on his shoulders. He will never shake it off.
Stored in its rightful place on the weapons shelves, the manriki looks harmless. But as Raphael pulls it free, the weight is morbid and all too dangerous in his hands. The links are pulled across his fingers, solid and cold- they had been the only things to tie him to reality, not long ago.
It bears as many battle marks as he does: an unwitting partner in a long-lasting rampage. He'd carried it proudly. Familiarity had once been carried with the two of them as well, but now it feels somewhat strange to him.
He awkwardly hefts it and the clock ticks more loudly. It's been too long.
This realization is a mistake he vows to rectify.
The rehearsal starts slowly: a few cautious spins, the occasional grunt of exertion accompanying a precisely timed strike. Hadn't this been more natural, once? He goes gradually until he feels the comforting sensation of overriding instinct settling beneath his skin. This weapon belongs to him alone. This battle is his to wage.
As the metal cuts through the air it makes a low-pitched whistle, carries the promise of pain and destruction to its immediate surroundings. Raphael turns, swings, brings down an imaginary foe. The man would be writhing in agony, clutching a shattered knee, and he would feel no sympathy for him.
In most cases, pain is temporary. He had done, would do, far worse things in his lifetime than shatter a bone.
Remorse is for the foolish.
The chain is no longer cold in his hands, comfortably warm as it speeds past his fingers like a poisonous snake, striking his foes with the accuracy come of peerless dedication.
The feeling of a cracking skull travels up the length of the manriki, sets his spine tingling with adrenaline and he breathes it in- relishes it, revels in it. A jaw shatters pathetically and a grown man wails like an infant. Beneath his strikes, he is fueled by the fire of bloodlust, the hatred born of perceived abandonment and the desperate cry for help of a child seeking to end its loneliness by any means possible.
The deaths it uses to attempt to fill the void are not the deaths it truly seeks.
Leonardo. Raphael.
If his brother is dead, he will die as well.
He only has one best friend, after all.
Blow by blow, enemy by enemy, the walls of the dojo crack and peel away, joining together and clinging to him in an impenetrable layer of shadow. An emotionless smirk cuts across his face while he stares through it and faces the city; faces humanity: an enemy he'd overcome nearly a month after his brother stopped writing.
Metal flashes menacingly to his right and he strikes. The shadow stretches with him, watches a gun fall from a useless five-fingered hand and applauds his transformation.
He is no longer Raphael. That feeling, that identity- he pushes it into the grave alongside the brother he'd once had.
They will become ghosts together, then. In the end he finds that things become easier when neither of them exist.
The footsteps approaching him from behind- quiet and steady and physically real- travel to his ears with a threatening jolt, reconstructing the walls around him, the ground beneath his feet. He turns with instantaneous precision and lets one end of the weapon fly.
It lands with a heart-stopping crack in the wall next to Leonardo's face and time chooses to freeze the moment for as long as possible. His heart is pounding in his ears, his breaths coming in quiet panting gasps as he watches the crack in the wall spread outward from the point of impact.
Raphael's brother is staring at him with a look that is disturbingly identical to the one he'd given him on the rooftop that night; a desperate search for something, anything familiar to him. Anything about his little brother that he can still manage to reach.
How sad, he thinks, that Leonardo cannot find anything.
How sad that he doesn't know his own family anymore.
How sad that he didn't realize he'd been dragging one of them down with him all along:
Raphael can't remember Michelangelo's favorite movie, either.
It leaves him feeling oddly dead inside.
Time resumes its normal pacing: the end of the manriki slides, falls, hits the ground with a definitive thunk. The rest of the chain follows suit, pooling on the floor in a dully shimmering line leading from Raphael to Leonardo. Connecting them as they were always connected. How ironic.
He follows it with his gaze and doesn't move otherwise.
His brother stares at him with something approaching caution and he pushes back a twinge of remorse for bringing about the need for it.
If he'd had more self-control months ago, none of this heaviness would be here. If he had more self-control in this moment, he would be lowering his arm, releasing his weapon.
But the Nightwatcher never lets his guard down.
The clock ticks. Maybe it hasn't been too long after all.
Leonardo takes a breath- swallows almost nervously and takes another step forward. Raphael's instincts scream at him: dangerous. Fight or flight.
But Raphael does not acknowledge them.
His brother casts that searching gaze upon him again, more urgent, more concerned. He doesn't blame him for it: he's beginning to think he really is losing his mind.
What a way to go.
"Raph?" The single word emerges almost silently, more question than command. If Leonardo is trying to sound confident in the knowledge that his little brother won't harm him, he's failing miserably. He seems to notice it because he takes a deep breath and tries again. "Raph. You can put your arm down now."
Raphael blinks, looking at his limb as though seeing it for the first time and clumsily relinquishing his grip. His breaths come more easily, his heart slows down: he takes a step backwards and lowers his arm with a shaky sigh.
Too close. It had been too close, again.
This is the third time he's tried to kill a brother; rather than getting easier to deal with it seems to get more difficult every time.
The knowledge doesn't help him. He is busy thinking of the crack spreading across the wall, wide and deep, informing him that if he'd hit his mark- if Leonardo hadn't moved or if his aim hadn't been off- he would have easily taken his brother's life.
Raphael wonders what is wrong with him.
Leonardo begins the process of collecting the fallen weapon, breathing his own sigh, though it comes of a relief far more reassuring than Raphael's own. He puts it back on the shelf and looks back at his brother, who has taken up a sitting position against the nearest wall. There is no hesitation in his movements- he sits down next to him.
"I watched for a while," he says as casually as possible. "You're really good with it."
"I…practiced a lot." What kind of practice goes without saying.
"Why did you choose the manriki?" What for goes without saying in turn.
Raphael shrugs one shoulder. "It's easier to deal with when you can't really see their faces."
"So it was for the better range."
"You could say that."
They sit for a few minutes in the closest thing to companionable silence either of them can remember having in years. After the time passes, Raphael glances at his brother again.
"…sorry I almost killed you." Twice. He lets the thought remain just that while the implication echoes in the small room.
Leonardo can't help a slightly amused grin. "It's fine. I probably shouldn't have been silently lurking in the background while you were so…absorbed." The grin fades as he remembers the sight of feral bloodlust.
He doesn't like seeing it in his younger brother.
Leonardo thinks he may have been gone too long- and maybe if he had come home sooner, he wouldn't have to watch his sibling struggle to dig himself out of that blood-filled tomb.
He had been the last one to leave it and the memory is enough to make him shudder.
"Don't think I'm ready to go back to the manriki yet," Raphael comments emotionlessly, staring at the weapon in question. "Hasn't been long enough."
He doesn't tell Leonardo that he thinks he will never be ready.
Leonardo doesn't tell him that he is thinking the same thing.
The clock will never stop ticking. A mindset is a trap in itself.