Break down, tears fall to the ground
Tell myself: "Damnit, nothing can be found"
When you're a fighter
You're a fighter, fight on baby
- Sia, Black & Blue
Chapter 1
Black and Blue
I'd seen dark. If one could say they'd looked into the abyss, into the endless nothing, the obsidian trap where hate could swallow you whole and hold you captive, I'd faced that many times. That kind of darkness was no stranger to me. I'd looked it in the eye, and fought it with a vengeance, one that threatened to consume me along with it. But Leo'd always been there to pull me back, save me from the brink of any and everything, including myself.
During the Kraang invasion my mutation was a fresh hell, my life collapsing in upon itself as the world outside appeared to be doing the very same thing. Most nights in that time I'd spent coiled tight beneath a billboard, wishing the power might be restored that the giant bulbs should illuminate and warm me, lest I learn to self-regulate my serpent body heat. I wasn't sure I could- then I did.
This time was different. Not the body-heat part, I'd had many years to become one with my mutant side. It was the invasion that was different and it wasn't the Kraang.
I dropped to my belly, willing myself to transform enough that my tubular form permit me to slither along the dank, narrow passage. I halted as the last remnants of the sun's warmth faded from my tail, the darkness swallowing me whole as I looked back to the last slivers of a melancholy blue sky. How far we'd fallen, each and every one of us. My heart clenched. Perhaps it was because I'd spent so much time walking the grey line between black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, that when the Unnamed invaded, ripping apart the veil that separated the two worlds, black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, I remained unchanged. Because, I'd lived my life that way all along. That and whoever my otherworld counterpart had been, she was dead before they came.
But that blurry high wire I danced upon, that wasn't so for Leo or his brothers. They had boundaries they did not cross. At least they hadn't at the time.
Moisture seeped from the ground beneath, water dripping from the low ceiling above. I should hate tight spaces, but I'd been locked in a cell enough times that I was capable of shutting that part of me off. The fear of the walls crumbling, collapsing and closing the passage, trapping me along with it, what should be terror was merely a faint whimper inside me. The most prominent emotion I carried, I'd hesitated to name. It was what drove me forward, kept me searching... kept me breathing. No. The only fears I bore were either faced or yet to come. The first had been loving him, for in those moments of peace, true bliss, those fleeting moments we cannot keep and do not last, they leave a burn, something precious covered with the scar you wear after they've gone. The only thing I truly feared was losing him. But, in a sense, I'd lived through that too. Though I did not fearing dying at his hand, because I would die knowing I'd done all I could to save him.
"Don't do this, Karai. He ain't the same. If I can't save him, you can't."
I would've laughed at Raph's warning, were the scar skipping across his upper lip to dash his brow not still sutured, purple and hopefully not infected. The bruises on his body, black and splotchy, his arm in a sling, his ankle wrapped. He'd almost lost an eye, by his brother's doing. I might lose my life. But if I'm to die at the end of anyone's sword, let it be Leonardo's and I'll die heartbroken but honored.
"If he- kills you- and ever comes out of this—if he remembers, he'll never forgive himself." Donatello put his hand on my shoulder. "Think of how April feels, knowing they used her the way they did." He glanced toward the end of the hall, a full tray of food from the morning still outside the door. "Don't put this on him, Karai."
I squeezed deeper along the passage, my forked tongue tasting the air, searching for him. What had Donatello thought I would do? Not go for him? Not fight for him? The universe and the Unnamed knew his brother's had tried. We tried. One by one we'd saved all that remained from their brainwashing, from the spell they'd used April's mind to cast over us. One by one we'd died. Shini, Jones, and so many others... Strange how the two worked together, an alien sentient being possessing a psychic half alien human, to unlock a terrible door that left us twisted and broken, facing our polar opposites, left to destroy ourselves… or to struggle to get back to who we were.
Clumps of mud sprinkled my back like spit before a rain shower. I should be afraid. Fear should course through my tepid blood, chilling it with icy pinpricks. Thought I could not see, though I could feel the instability of the earth surrounding me, I feared nothing, not even the blade of my lover's sword—should I ever find him.
"I can't give up on him, Donatello. He never gave up on me, and I'll go for him again and again until I either bring him home or die trying." I adjusted the strap on my backpack, stepped out onto the rickety front porch, paint peeling beneath my boots, waved to Raph and left the Hampton's house. Without a radio. Without a phone. Without back up. Because there was no power in this hell. Because there was no one to spare that was not needed elsewhere. April was a complete mental case, Donatello's hands full just trying to keep her from starving to death as she recounted all she'd been used to destroy. This left Raphael working to be sure Donatello ate, and that the unconscious Michelangelo didn't fade away.
The mouth of the tunnel widened as I flicked the air, tasting sediment, mold, something metallic….steel!
Steel and— my heart fluttered— sandalwood!
My body transformed, the starving mouths of my hands dissolving into the curling fingers of my palms. He was near, I could taste him. He was near and soon I would look into those hard blue eyes and search for the soul I loved inside him.
A cold laugh carried along the tunnel running vertical to mine. A chilling, shrill sound that hurt like a blade to the gut. Because it was his, and yet it wasn't. "You back again? I thought you would've learned."
I didn't need to close my eyes for the darkness enveloping me, not to see, to recall the last time I'd heard this sound…
It, the sentient leader of the Unnamed, possessed April, much like that ancient Aeon bitch. Only this creature didn't need her for long, using her like a key to unlock the veil between two worlds, us and our polar opposites. Only not all of us had them. Or if they'd existed there, in that other world, they were already dead.
A white bolt split the sky, one half a brilliant summer blue, the sun bright and shining, though it was muggy and hot, nothing was perfect. The other a starless, moonless black, with crumbling buildings that looked as though they'd dissolve to ash if one touched them. And the split remained, even after the battle, two halves seeming both lost and never-ending.
The people from the Night, that's what we'd called the dark side, wanted to live in the Day, our side. And the war began. The problem was when Light destroyed Dark or the Dark murdered the Light, the soul left without a vessel was absorbed into the surviving body. Leo was the first to make that mistake. We lost him first. He'd been gone the longest. And what he'd become was—
Steel cut the air before me and I flinched back into my tunnel. Transforming again, I coiled as tight as I could in the narrow space then sprung forward launching myself at him, returning to my human form as I wrapped my arms and legs around his body.
I'd tasted the fibers of the rope he dangled from. Knew he held it, supporting his body with one hand. It was nothing for him to add me to that burden, but it was unexpected and he flailed. Though he did not complain. There was no cry of surprise, not in pain, nor distress. He made no sound at all. And that terrified me.
Rather than struggle to be rid of me, he wrestled an arm free and began climbing.
"What- what are you doing?" I managed, though it was stupid for me to speak to him unprepared.
"Climbing." His voice was a cool, detached thing, lacking the warmth-dashed-with-arrogance that I enjoyed. I longed for the smooth tone he used to tease me with when we sparred. A flash of steel, a bead of sweat glistening his brow, or beading on the bridge of my nose, his reflection and mine blurred and stretched in the cross of our blades. He'd back me into a wall. I'd drop him to the floor. A roll. A twist. A thrust. My match.
As we ascended my mind caught up to the present, to the scent that was still him, clung to his skin and oozed from his pores, that he could not wash off and I was glad of it. Though the warm, spicy aroma seeping from his flesh stirred my insides it also brought pressure to my chest for I missed the touch that had always accompanied it. Right now he was rough as he drove his free hand into the soft tissue surrounding my shoulder blade. "Gah! Leo, stop! Please, stop!" My arm went numb, dropped limp and useless to my side.
"You came back." He clucked his tongue as if I'd asked for the pain. He clipped something to my belt. Oh no. I struggled with my one arm, desperate to remove the metal binding, though I couldn't see to understand how the clasp worked. Then he released my shoulder, thrust a hand into my chest, at the same time he lifted his knee and drove his foot out sending me flying into the wall. I bounced off, tumbling down the shaft, clumps of dirt and loose soil falling into my eyes. I met the end of the rope, bouncing and dangling beneath him as he hauled us both up.
There was no point talking to him now. Not until we were on solid ground. I took a deep breath, clearing my mind on the exhale. I'd planned to find him. Step one complete. I'd planned to convince him to take me in. Step two… in progress.