Darkness

Pain exploded in Raph's head as he awoke. His eyes were on fire and head seemed to pulsate with every breath he took. The last thing he remembered was...was...

"Damn..."

He ran his hand through his brown hair and shook his head slightly. He tried opening his eyes but snapped them shut again with a sharp hiss.
Breathing harshly and holding back stinging tears with forced palms digging into his eyes, he tried listening for familiar sounds. Raph heaved a ragged breath, pushing the pain to the side and sat up. His hands felt the cool, damp cement under him. The place definitely smelled awful. That was an understatement.

He worked his fingers through his tangled mat of hair and pulled out clumps of something or other, he wasn't too sure.

"Well, lookie here. A brat in our home?"

"Who's there!"

Raph jumped to his feet, his breath coming laboriously to him.

"Heeey, the brat's hurt."

The voice echoed, and Raph suddenly felt extremely vulnerable. He forced his eyes open and saw a red shadow of a tall man through squinted eyes. He forced them shut again and slapped his hands over them again, retreating against the cool wall behind him. God, why did it hurt?

"What's your name, brat?"

"Piss off."

"Well, Piss Off, how 'bout getting you help?"

"Shove off, get out of here!"

"You sure you wanna do that, Piss Off? Have you any idea where you are?"

Raph's jaw clenched tight. Of course he wanted to know, but this guy seemed like a slimeball. Perhaps minutes passed before the voice belted out a resigned chortle.

"Fine. Rot. I'll be back." Raph let out a snort and shrugged, too proud for his own good. "Whatever you say."

Clumsily, Raph's numb feet stumbled over forgotten rusted cans and chip bags. He was as blind as a bat without echolocation. Did a day in his life even exist where he could see at all? Maybe it was all hopeful thinking and he was always blind...

"Augh, damn it!"

A sudden step had caused him to stumble forwards out on the cold ground before him. Breathing heavily, he succumbed to his exhaustion and pressed his forehead to the damp cement, trying to even out his breathing. Everything hurt. To add insult to injury, he immensely regretted not accepting help from the man he had previously encountered. He wasn't even sure how long ago it was, but it felt like eons. Without light, time had no meaning.

His stomach gave an unpleasant lurch as the stench of someone's evacuated bowels began to overtake him. Vertigo had threatened to make him throw up, but he held it back and crawled onto flat ground once again. Draping his arm over his eyes, he clutched his stomach and tried swallowing back the vomit that was quickly rising in the back of his throat and the tears that threatened to spill over his eyes. He had to face the fact that potentially no one would be looking for him. His gut told him otherwise. It was easy to lose hope when you didn't even know where you were.

Blaming hunger and thirst, he pushed the thought as far back in his head as he could. There was no use thinking about something like that. Whether someone was looking for him or not, he still had to find out how to escape his prison.
Feeling blood trickle from the scrapes on his hands and knees, he scraped together meager strength and continued on. Someone would be upset if he didn't choose that course of action. Unable to pinpoint whom, he dusted himself off and put one foot in front of the other. It really was the only way to forge ahead.

A steel bar flaked with rust ran beneath his fingers. Strangely enough, he was getting accustomed to his darkness. Yeah, it sucked at first, but if he made a game of it, it didn't seem so bad. It was kind of like one of those games you played as a kid where you blindfolded yourself and tried to navigate through your house. Except it was your house and no one could resist peeking under the blindfold to make sure you wouldn't stub your toes into any furniture or walls.
There was no cheating here. The worst of it was that he felt comfortable enough being alone, it was the loss of a sense that had begun to brew the panic in his stomach. Swallowing it back like the first shot of an undesirable whiskey, he shivered once and tried to regain some sense of control over himself.

"This sucks." He said with a single forced chuckle.

Raph could feel his mouth grow thick with saliva. It was uncomfortable; and he felt weak with each passing moment. He definitely ventured away from where he initially woke up, desperately trying to find an exit, people, or just an escape from his own damned mind. Despair replaced fear. He was unable to see, or even open his eyes properly for that matter, since he found himself wherever he was. He was dizzy, always dizzy, whenever he would move. Dehydration had quickly taken hold of him, and he desperately wished that someone he knew would find him and wondered if they were even looking. Were they looking? The same idea had quickly festered in the darkest corner of his brain and latched onto it like a parasite.

Despair washed over him like a tidal wave. Who, exactly, would be looking for him?

"Hey, Piss Off found us!"

Raph recognized the voice. Wanting to return the insult, he opened his mouth and was caught by a violent bout of coughs; sparking up the pain in his head. As the coughs passed, he suddenly became aware that hands were holding him up and something wet beneath his lips.

"You stupid pissant, you should have taken my help when I offered it."

"Piss..." He coughed, "off."

"Yeah, yeah, you're tough. Take the damn water and come sit. You didn't drink any of this sewer shit, did you? That's actual sewer shit water."

Raph would have gagged, but he greedily drank the bottled water that was shoved in his mouth and promptly felt his energy beginning to return to him.

"Hey, Petey, get this kid to a bed and shove pills in his mouth."

"Yes boss, right away boss."

"So, Piss Off, you gonna tell me your name or am I gonna have to keep calling you that?"

Raph felt his shoulders slouch further and further down, the man grunting as he struggled to keep him up.

"Hey! Don't you dare-pass out..."

He sighed and dragged Raph off to a moth-eaten mattress in the lair with Pete. He scowled and looked over the kid, seeing blood caked in his hair on the back.

"What the hell did you get yourself into..." He sighed and turned to Pete, "get Gecko to bring by some bandages and peroxide."

"Yes boss, right away boss."

"And stop that."

"Yes boss, right away boss." He rolled his eye, the other one patched up, and pulled out a cigarette. Lighting it up expertly, he exhaled an irritated cloud of smoke.

"Fuckin' useless..."

AN: Hope you enjoyed chapter 1!