To Sit With Demons
Heading for a Spin
It's somewhere around the sixth beer when he realizes he might've had a bit too much. The world's taken on a dim, hazy sort of quality, and he's not entirely sure he can even stand at the moment, let alone make it off the roof in one piece.
To test his theory, he takes out a sai and attempts to spin it over his hand. It promptly drops to the concrete with a loud clang. Yup. Definitely drunk.
Raphael gives a half-shrug and cracks open another can.
Of course Leo's probably pacing a trench in the lair right about now, gearing up to launch another one of his diatribes the moment Raph so much as steps through the door.
A sullen coal of resentment kindles in his chest, and he takes another long swig.
It's a familiar enough routine, these little war games, and Raph plays his part well. But even he can't deny things've gotten worse between them these last few months.
Ever since Splinter…
The thought prompts a tendril of grief to unfurl in his gut, but he irritably shoves it back down. To drink is to forget, he muses, reaching for another can, though he still can't seem to drown out the memory of his father's last, shuddering breath.
The cold beer sloshes agreeably in his stomach, and he takes another sip, while a dying summer's breeze plays with the tails of his bandana.
Leo can wait.
Guided by the Wrong Hand
He wanders aimlessly through the midnight hour, holding to the dripping shadows that hug the city's edges. Heedless of October's ghosts and goblins prowling the streets, his mind continues to work against itself in silent, bitter rumination.
On the corner of Fifth and Thirty-eighth he sees her.
She's propped up against the wall of a gray cinderblock bar, bleary-eyed and half-stoned, a cigarette clamped between her teeth. Her eyes twitch restlessly in their sockets. They settle briefly upon him before sliding off again, marking him for one of the costumed revelers. She sucks angrily on her cigarette, then sniffs and gestures vaguely to the door beside her. "Fuckin cheatin asshole," she slurs in Raphael's direction, then scrubs absently at her mouth with a shaky hand. "Sticks his dick in any cunt he can get." She laughs then, a low and cynical sound.
The shadows are calling for Raphael again, and he almost abides, but then she's stumbling towards him on flesh-heeled spikes, a junkie marionette on a broken string. He lets her pull him into the dark recesses of the alleyway, where she pins him in place with her painted mouth and grinds invitingly against his hips. Her cheap perfume mixes with the spoiled-meat and diaper smell of rotting garbage. The absurdity of it all almost makes him laugh; instead, he guides his hand up her thigh to explore the wet mound beneath her skirt. She responds with a low moan in the back of her throat and bucks against his fingers.
And when he takes her from behind in short, wild thrusts, his hands grip the soft flesh of her thighs hard enough to bruise.
Later, just before she presses the needle into his vein, an image of his father swirls unbidden behind his eyes. Splinter's back is turned against him in wordless disapproval, his shimmering form receding farther and farther. Raphael desperately wants to call out to him, to kneel before him in repentance and beg for forgiveness. But then the vision fades, and, for a moment's time, Raphael drifts through Lethe's spring.
Morning Rides a Dark Horse
The cold fire that burns through his veins sets his mind ablaze. His body heaves and shudders as if tortured by some unseen hand. Pain lances through his limbs with each staggered breath, and the world doubles and slides around before his hollowed eyes. He's curled up on a bed of twisted nails, his stomach knotting up inside, his mind screaming, begging, pleading for one more hit. Just one more—and then he'll stop for sure this time.
He dreams with eyes wide open now: nightmare images of dead rat eyes—condemnation leaking like black tears on matted fur.
Raphael's screams reverberate through the lair.
Somewhere in the maze of misery that makes up the half-dim recesses of his consciousness, he can sense his older brother's presence, like an ever constant shadow, lingering beside him. The days are counted by Leonardo's silhouette on the doorway; the seconds by the soft ticking of the radiator in the far corner, the feeble heat pushing weakly against winter's throttling grip.
Leonardo presses a damp cloth to Raphael's head, mopping at the sweat and flakes of dried vomit that line his mouth.
And sill the wrath burns within. In those twisting, turning moments—when the rage spirals up and out of him—it's all Raphael can think about: to bash his brother's head in, to tear at him, to rend and stab and rip him into a multitude of fragments just like himself. He wants his brother to hurt as much as he does, to make him bleed pain and turmoil.
And when he finds his voice again, he rails against his sibling with words of hate; piercing him with the harshness of syllables meant to hurt, to flay the soul open. With each verbal assault, he digs at old scars and salts the wounds of bitter memories. And he smiles with vicious satisfaction when his brother flinches and casts his eyes aside.
Leonardo never says a word of anger in return, never twists the blade back on him the way Raphael desperately needs him to. His unshakable silence only feeds Raph's fury, and when his strength returns, he attacks his brother anew with clenched fists, catching his sibling by surprise and smashing his lips against his teeth. Raphael is savagely glad when his brother's mouth bleeds red.
But suddenly Leo's pulling him into a smothering embrace, pinning Raph against his chest, who cries out and thrashes wildly in confused outrage. Still his brother won't let go, and eventually Raphael's struggles grow weaker against the suffocating comfort. His throat constricts, eyes glisten—and now he's pushing against Leonardo with one hand while clutching at him tightly with the other.
In stilled silence, Leonardo holds him to his center.
To Sit with Demons
He's not sure what compels him to follow Leo into their father's room. It's no different from any of the other times his brother went in there to meditate alone. If Leonardo feels his presence, though, a second shadow trailing behind his own, he gives no indication and walks in without a backwards glance.
Raphael hangs back at the doorway, watching with hooded eyes as his brother lights the candles, then settles onto a tatami mat. Shadows leap and dance across the walls of Splinter's room, still papered with family photos and faded lines of poetry. Everything remains as it was, untouched and unsullied—a sanctuary. In the center of it all sits Leonardo.
Raphael studies his sibling as if seeing him for the first time. Burning flames of light and shadow highlight the drawn, haggard look on his brother's face and the dark smudges of exhaustion under his eyes.
But then Leonardo seems to settle into himself, and Raphael watches in mild wonderment as his brother's face smoothes out, and the tension slowly drains from his shoulders.
A part of him wants to join his brother's side, but Raphael fears the demons that await for him behind closed eyes. To turn inward…to face the self, grown vile and monstrous. To face his father. No, he couldn't. He hasn't his brother's strength.
Raphael can still smell the lingering aura of Splinter's favorite incense. It reminds him of an earlier time, a time when they were still whole, when the family had not fractured into so many pieces – when Don didn't lock himself in his room for days on end, and Mike's smiles were not forced shadows of themselves. When he and Leo were something more than the enemies they've become.
Standing there, hopeless and forlorn, he can feel the familiar stain of despair washing over him again in slow, undulating waves. And for the first time in months, the urge to reach for the needle comes on him again—stronger, almost, than when he was thrashing out the bitter poison on sweat-soaked bedsheets.
But then Leonardo's eyes open again, twin orbs gazing back at him.
They silently consider each other from across the room—and from an even greater span of time and distance, a cavernous gap, decades in the making. Then Leo's head gives a small, questioning tilt. The spell is broken. Raphael hesitates and looks away, held back by the dark shrouds of loss and despair.
But when he looks into his brother's eyes again, he sees something else, something more. He sees himself.
Raphael steps in and closes the door.