He climbed off the bike with a wince. The moment he put his foot on the floor his knee buckled.
Damn it.
He could hear Leo in his mind, telling him to be more careful.
He straightened, keeping his weight on his good leg.
Punks had gotten lucky that night. It wouldn't happen again.
He peeled off the heavy helmet and set it on the seat of the bike, rolling out his neck. "'Yeah, we heard there was some freak riding around trying to cut into our action.'" He snorted. "Freak. Me. Asshole's lucky he's not dead."
But he wasn't lucky. Not really. It had been a set up. An ambush. A bunch of thugs from around town all getting together to stop the Nightwatcher.
Raphael grinned to himself, tried to step forward.
"Shit!" His knee bent again.
He grabbed onto the bike to keep his balance.
He couldn't check it out. He had to get down to the lair before anyone woke up.
Couldn't let them see him. Not like this.
He started work unfastening the complicated armor he wore. Straps and buckles, and when he shrugged the top half off his shoulders, it felt like he'd lost about a hundred pounds.
He sucked in a breath and held it as he bent to unstrap the leg guards and peel off the boots. No easy task when he could hardly put his weight on one leg.
He leaned against the bike and jerked the torn pants off.
Ambush. Too many of them, and they were all packing guns. The Nightwatcher never ran from a fight, but that hadn't been a fight. That had been an execution.
So he drove. The bullets slapped into his bike. Flattened against the armor guarding his shell.
And got him a good, deep crease right in the fucking leg.
He straightened once the clothes were off. They could lay there until that night. No one knew about this place. No one would find it.
He made his way, slow and cursing, to the grate in the middle of the dusty floor.
The drop into the sewer was enough to make him sway. His vision went fuzzy and his teeth ground, and he had to fight to keep from touching the oozing blood coming down his leg.
Touch meant infection, though. Donnie would have told him that. He needed home and antibiotics and bandage and bed. In that order.
Mike made a face at him in his mind, telling him he could use a shower too.
Raph silently told him to shut up.
He limped slowly through the tunnels, trying to ignore how silent everything was.
In his mind at least he could feel his brothers around him. He knew Mike would be right there supporting him. Don would be hovering, worried about his leg. Leo would have their backs, making sure no one followed. Probably grousing about the ambush.
Leo hated it when the bad guys didn't fight fair.
Raph had to pause before making the step up onto a foot-high ledge. Mike and Don would have hauled him up.
But Mike and Don were home. Asleep. Not sending a single thought his way.
He sighed and gripped the side of the tunnel, stepping up with his good leg, swearing heatedly as his weight for a few seconds was on his bad one.
The ooze of blood down his leg was starting to get sickening.
Well, maybe you shouldn't be such a hothead, riding into God only knows what without backup.
Raph snorted. "Yeah? Who's gonna back me up, Leo? You?"
Leo didn't answer. Leo was gone.
He ground his teeth and faced forward, moving as quickly as he could. Splinter might be awake by then, making his tea, but he wouldn't check on Raph. No one ever looked in on Raph. He made it clear it wasn't welcome.
Because it wasn't. He didn't want them poking into his business. He didn't want...
He had to pause before starting down the sloping tunnel that took him down to the lair's deeper level.
Half an inch deeper and that bullet might've killed him. In his mind he imagined Donnie would be worried about that.
It could have severed an artery, Raph. You could bleed to death before we even got you home.
Mike would just think it was cool, escaping death so closely.
Raph shut his eyes, breathing in and out, trying to stay focused. He had to get home. Just a little first aid, a little sleep, and he'd be good as new.
To do it all again tomorrow night.
You're going to get yourself killed, Leo said inside his head.
He grimaced, annoyed, and started moving down.
The red was streaking down his leg, leaving spatters on the ground. It wasn't the first time he'd come back wounded. Maybe the first time it was this bad, but. He'd bled in the tunnels before.
If Don or Mike noticed it, they never asked questions.
He didn't think they noticed, though.
Leo would have.
He looked up when he turned a familiar corner, and let out a breath in relief.
The door. Home.
He limped his way to it, grasping the wall now and then for support. Muffling his curses the closer he got, until there was no sound coming from him.
Deception, Splinter had told them once, was always a dangerous thing. Even when it was used to confuse an enemy, it could overtake you easily. Once a mind thought in terms of deceit, it was difficult to remain an honest soul.
This wasn't deception. He wasn't lying to anyone. No one asked where he went, and he never told.
I ask you all the time, Mike protested.
Shut up, Raph ordered his mind angrily.
Just because he hardly heard his brothers talk anymore, just because they slept when he was up, and he only saw them a few hours late in the day lately, didn't give them the right to jump into his head.
We're only here because you need us to be, Donnie said to him gently.
No. Raph didn't need them. He was proving that night after night.
Leo was gone, and had been for months. Mike was being a circus clown or something, and Don spent his days staring at computer screens. Splinter walked around in a daze, meditating and acting like the world was taking a break before Leo wasn't there to bow and be perfect.
Raph didn't care. He didn't need them. He had put more guys away in the last few months than he did in a year with his brothers.
And if it stung when he moved into the lair and no one was there to say hi, or to see his wound and offer to help, that was just because Raph was weaker than usual.
He didn't care where Leo was. He didn't need Mike leaping around being excitable and making him smile. He didn't need Don's quiet, sharp-eyed concern. He didn't need Splinter making him tea and speaking in long metaphors that were supposed to somehow teach him lessons.
He was the Nightwatcher. He rode alone.
He shut the door to his bedroom, but cursed and grabbed a towel from over the rigged-up pipes he used as barbells. He moved back out, limping worse than ever, and gave a quick, messy cleaning job to the blood he'd trailed behind him.
Back in his room he shut the door and stared, baleful, at the first aid supplies he had stockpiled.
He might have died that night, and they wouldn't even have noticed him gone. Not for maybe days.
Didn't matter.
His hands shook so badly he spilled antiseptic on the ground. Eventually he stopped trying to soak a towel and just poured from the bottle onto his leg.
He was so used to muffling his reaction to that fiery sting he didn't even have to think about it.
Deception became reality quickly, Splinter had told him once, in a solemn talk right after Leo had left. A man could tell a lie so often that he eventually accepts it as truth.
But Raph shook that thought away as random and pointless. He wasn't self-deluded. He'd gone months deceiving his brothers and Splinter. Months he lived this life, but he wasn't caught up in it. He wasn't living some lie.
He really didn't care that they never saw what he did, and never helped when he needed it, and were never there to watch his back in an ambush.
He slumped into bed after haphazardly wrapping his leg.
He didn't need them. He didn't want them.
He didn't care that...
No, he still recognized those words as a lie.
Damn it.
But he would tell himself the same things the next day and the next. And eventually he would believe them.
Eventually he really wouldn't care.
Splinter had promised as much.