This is it. Karai knows it when the door of her cell is slammed closed.
She protests, cries out, reaches out, but it's useless. She knows that, and her father, no, Shredder knows it too.
But she has to do something. She needs to do something to forget that this is the end.
She betrayed Shredder and she knows what this means.
She had good reasons, yes, but no one cares, least of all the man she took for her father for all her life.
And those who care, they can't reach her down here.
She thinks of her real father, thinks of how he had let her into his life, how he had risked to give away their secret hideout just to get the chance to convince her of the truth.
But Splinter hasn't been the only one.
Leo has tried it, too, so persistently and against all odds, it had always made her internally laugh - or fueled the urge to break his pretty face. Or both.
Leo…
When she thinks of him now, she wants to cry, just huddle up there in a corner on the cold floor and let the tears flow.
Crying is doing something, too.
But she's too proud.
Yes, she has every reason to cry. Her whole life has been a lie, and it is over now.
She knows these dungeons well, well enough that there's no way out for her.
She feels the tears prickle in her eyes, but she blinks them away.
She is not going to cry.
Tears aren't going to help her.
But on the other hand, what is going to help her?
She is lost here, locked away from the world, locked away from her life - whatever that is right now.
She's alone.
She allows herself a moment of weakness sinks to her knees.
But no tears. She forces them down again although it makes her eyes burn and her throat tighten.
And then there's is this noise, a very low snick. Karai almost missed it, but her ears are too well trained to miss anything of importance.
She shifts a bit and finds this shard on the ground. It's metal and when she picks it up she realizes how sharp it is.
It almost makes her smile, but she fights this emotion down, too.
Smiling is not going to get her out of here.
This shard is.
She hears someone coming her way and quickly puts the shard into her mouth.
Xever appears in front of her cell.
He starts mocking her, but she turns her back to him - not because she cares about his mocking, of course, but because she can't reply, not with the shard in her mouth.
For a moment she regrets it because really, Xever is such an idiot and she wants to tell him exactly that, but then she stops.
She has this shard, that's the important thing.
Yes, her old life is gone forever, but now she can reach the new life waiting for her outside these. Because now, she can get out of this cell.
She has a chance now.
This is not the end.
It's just the beginning.
And this thought makes her smile just a little bit.