Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT
Words: 988
Rated: T
Please enjoy, read, and review! I would love feedback for improvement on my writing;)
NULLITY
"…Three months ago. Give me one reason why I should care now."
"Raphael, I think you're missing the point of these discussions."
"What, of these weekly everlasting discussions? I'd be much more willing if this was at most a biannual celebration," Raphael snarks.
Raphael leans his head back against the saturated, concrete wall in exahustion. Although he can't see his brother through the perpetual blackness, Raphael knows he is close. Honestly, one cannot get far in a six by eight foot room.
Even the term "room" is an overstatement. Seemingly two floors below ground level, the cell, and what lies beyond the steel crisscross formation, is simply an inky void. In the far right corner of the cell, droplets of an unidentified wetness seeps through a crack in the concrete ceiling, hitting the floor every other second. His brother said the first week the droplets didn't seem safe to drink. Depriving of water, the safe and easy way of wiping a species out.
There are some points in time when the six by eight restriction, the unfiltered water droplets, the same four damn walls bearing down upon two turtles, is more than enough. Even through the timeless void Raphael can still make out those walls inching closer with every thud of a falling droplet. And he is so immersed in Hell's fingers reaching out of that darkness, wrapping around his neck, cutting off his oxygen supply––Raphael never realises the finite screaming somewhere in his line of hearing.
It happened today, during what Raphael believes was the afternoon: first always comes the breakdown, which is a highly original term to describe hyperventilating.
"Raphael..?" His brother breathed questioningly hours earlier today. Raphael started heavily breathing subconsciously, like the damned being he was. But before he could've assured it was nothing, his brother was by his side. Raphael only saw a twitch of movement from the adjacent wall, and he curses himself now for getting him worried, especially in the mental state his brother has been in.
"I'm..." Fine, is what he should've said. And in any other situation, fine is what he would have said. But after being in the subzero's on the scale of fineness, it only brought him to––
Darkness. Because for the past three months that's how he's been greeted. The world is a boundless void of energy with glistening gems and supernovas, and society is only a metaphor. We, us, are entrapped, suffocating. Methane to the atmosphere, carbon monoxide to the environment. Within a nanosecond claustrophobia leashes and drags one in, the terror to a horror story. It is the greatest fear of all.
Somewhere in the distance, someone was screaming. Hoarse, rough, partly from lack of water mainly from the pure dread of it all. Six by eight, a restriction from reaching the full limit of nothingness, and it was in that moment when that hoarse, unfamiliar sound was him screaming.
A conflict, turtle v.s inner mindset. It was enough mental pain to make his untreated stab wound gush freely.
The bleeding, in fact, is new variable. And that is where the weekly discussions come in, the latest ones gradually becoming more and more urgent.
"Raph, please, let me help you." Somewhere in the sea of black, his brother takes a deep breath. Everything has been so very difficult since they were blindly captured by God-knows-who, and Raphael has a feeling his brother silently blames himself. It definitely sounds like a thing he would do: the silent blames, the flashes of self-loathing, the fact that he is restricted down to chained hands.
"I...I think you may have internal bleeding or…" In that sea of black, Hell waits patiently below the surface watching. "I just want to check to see; you're injured pretty badly." Mother Hen has officially awoken.
"Just drop it, alright ?" Raphael shifts uncomfortably with his acquired injuries. Dislocated left shoulder, stab wound in the right leg, broken left knee. Dirty bandages are wrapped carelessly around only the stab wound by the guards, the rest left exposed and vulnerable.
"Raph––"
"Shut the goddamn up already! You're chained, I can barely move, all of this is useless!" Raphael immediately regrets lashing out, after the silence that overcomes the cell. Even with the stiffness in the cool air, Raphael can barely make out what the banded turtle says next.
"Or you can at least tell me where you go every night when those men come to get you." His arm brushes up against Raphael's knee as his brother repositions, and Raph swears he can feel the broken pain run through his body. Before his brother has the chance to open his mouth to protest Raph's abnormal stiffness, a voice rings through the silence.
Light sears into the cell, instantaneously blinding Raphael. A sea of blackness, a valley of light. Raphael is brought up roughly to his feet by two men right away, sending a wave of dizzying pain straight to his head. He can barely open up his eyes with the level of brightness shining all around him, yet it is only a LED flashlight being handled.
He is pushed out of the cell and into the corridor, falling onto his one "okay" knee.
A spitting whisper comes to the side of Raph's head as he is jerked back up again, one of the guards pushing him through the now lit corridor. "'Your brother is chained, you can barely move,' you are both nothing but useless freaks."
Yet Raphael is barely listening, because behind him is an illusion. An illusion with a flash of blue before his valley of light dramatically changes to the sea of darkness
R&R!