Title: Anger Haunting
Author: Borath
Disclaimer: I don't own the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I toy with them for no profit, merely my own twisted amusement.
Rating: Pg13
Warnings: Violence, a rather unsavoury 'incident' involving fire and some profanity. Don'tya love Raph?
A/Ns: You have CharcoalCat to thank for this being here at all. I didn't want to post this as anything other than a one-shot but have been utterly unable to finish it and had pretty much given up on it. However, she pointed out that perhaps some reviewer responses could give me some incentive to butcher up a second chapter. So, here it is, trembling in a bright light and waiting for the fury.
I'm not completely happy with this. It's more a writing experiment than anything else; ponderous, methodically and ridiculously dragged out. I mean, the main body of this fiction takes place within about 2 minutes, I reckon. (Looks at length) Yeah… So, be kind with this one. Say anything you want at the end of it, really. I encourage everything. I won't get pissy or chew out anyone who 'flames' me. I just want some honest criticism so I can do this right.
Anger Haunting
"Leo! Would you just calm down for one minute?" Donatello implored fruitlessly, standing a safe distance from his brother and, more importantly, the Katanas that were singing through the air at a ferocious speed. Rarely had the ninja been this wound up and when it did happen, it was usually Raphael who had the honour of taking care of it. He at least understood such feelings and had the stubbornness to be able to snap Leonardo out of it. But Raph was in a different part of the Lair tending to his own injuries with Michelangelo, leaving Don on his own with their leader.
Leo showed no signs of responding or calming down, his eyes narrowing further as the twin blades continued in a flurry of movement. He moved with them, his technique smooth and flawless. In his mind, it was the exact opposite to how the evening had gone.
"I know you're upset; we all are. But this isn't going to do any good," Don tried again, unconsciously taking a step forward. It wasn't one of his brightest ideas but he was still outside of Leo's circle, and perhaps proximity would help in this situation.
Clenching his right hand experimentally, he winced with a grimace as the ache in his palm flared to actual pain. He had turned and made a run for it just before the explosion, his unfeeling shell taking most of the damage but a piece of shrapnel he had fallen upon had still made an impressive gash through his palm. It was insignificant though and he could tend to it later. Raph's burns were far worse and Leo's arm didn't look too healthy.
There had been an accident earlier that evening when a carjacker had held up a van with a gun. A layer of ice and sleet already making the roads volatile, a school bus had overturned in an attempt to avoid a collision and had landed on its own door, trapping everyone inside when the next car ploughed into the back. They had all been topside anyway, scouting the rooftops under suspicion of Foot activity and had seen the entire thing.
At some point whilst they were running to the scene, the car that had impacted the back of the bus caught fire, steadily heating its own fuel tank and the bus's. Raph and Leo had climbed up onto the larger vehicle and set about smashing the windows, dragging the small children out as quickly as they could and dropping them down to the road. To try and buy their brothers more time, Mikey and Don had broke a fire hydrant open and tried to extinguish the flames rapidly building up at the back of the bus.
It hadn't been enough, and Don experienced the eerie feeling of impending doom just before the petrol tank of the car exploded, set to ignite the bus's significant amount of fuel as well. There was nothing he and Mikey could do but watch as the explosion finally kicked off, sending their brothers away from the crash with the force of it and killing anyone too close.
They'd managed to get half the kids out of the bus.
Half dragging, half carrying Leo and Raph away from the scene had been Hell. Raph was in a strange place between shock and fury, having looked into the victim's pleading eyes right before the fireball had erupted. He felt he had failed them, and Leo was feeling the same way. He outright refused to leave and it had taken all of Don's strength to wrestle the larger turtle back down into the sewers. There had been a lot of shouting then, most of it meaningless and raw before Leo had taken off back to the Lair and leaving Mikey and Don to help Raph back.
He had started the exercises about an hour after they got back. After Don was done checking that Raph's burns weren't too serious and instructing Mikey on how to treat them, he had gone out to see what he could do for his brother. So far he hadn't gotten very far.
The last few months had been hard on all of them, but this one event seemed to have pushed the boat out for Leo. With Splinter gone, he had seemingly taken it upon himself more than ever to be responsible for the rest of them. They had all let him, including Raph, after making a mutual agreement that it might provide some sort of stability for the ninja. Something to focus on whilst they were all dealing with the grief of loosing their beloved master. He had felt responsible for those kids too when he was getting them out, and now he felt responsible for their deaths.
"There wasn't anything you could have done. We tried, but it was out of our hands in the end," Don said more quietly, looking away to the side as he spoke. He wasn't feeling any better about the turn of the events than his leader, but he could grieve later. Right now, this needed attending to.
"They're dead. They burnt, and then they died."
This was the first thing Leo had said since he chewed them and himself out under the manhole they had all dropped down through. It came out clipped and in a tone alien in his voice. Don wasn't happy about it, but he considered it an improvement on his former silently fuming state.
"Yes, they did. But we can't do anything about it now."
Leo finally stopped, the blades hovering above the floor as sweat, blood and grime trickled down their handles off of the turtle's hands. He wasn't facing Don; his back to his brother, his gaze was directed forward on the tattered curtain blocking his view into the next room where Mikey and Raph were.
"Leo, there's some things that we just can't help. We couldn't have stopped that explosion and you and Raph couldn't have saved them all. We tried, and we couldn't have done any better than that," he said slowly, calmly, not sure of where his brother was going to take this and what he needed to hear. For now he was just taking it as it came.
"Yes, we could have! If we'd have gotten there sooner, been more organized, got that car away from them… We could have done more, but I didn't think. They were all so scared; of us, of what was happening."
"Alright. I've had it now," a new voice shouted, aggravation thick in its tone. Raph appeared through the doorway Leo had been staring at, a limp prominent in his step and bandages covering most of his legs and arms. He held his Sai up challengingly to Leo, approaching him slowly. Mikey watched anxiously through from doorway, choosing to remain quiet rather than stir up an already volatile situation.
Seeing what was going to happen, Don instantly moved forward so that he was directly behind Leo, ready to hold him back if Raph chose to incite him to the point of Leo doing something stupid. He was just about incensed enough to react to Raph's attitude at the moment.
"I am pissed off with having to listen to this crap. You're out here giving Donnie the cold shoulder while he tries to talk some sense into you, and when you do finally speak it's self-pitying bullshit! You feel bad. Fine, I get it. I'm not exactly happy with how things turned out up there either. Hell, if I find that guy who started all this off I'm gonna rip him a new one with my bare hands. But Donnie's right; we can't change what happened and we sure as Hell can't blame ourselves. We tried," Raph ranted forcefully, illustrating his point with a Sai as his spoke.
"Well we obviously didn't try hard enough, did we?"
"Leo-"
"That's it," Raph growled, cutting Don off with his expression as much as his words. "If you wanna gripe about this, fine, but let's do it productively. You're always bitching on that we should do more training, so why don't we sort out this little problem of yours right now?"
Raph was already stepping forward as Leo nodded. Katana raised, it was obvious to Don that this was going to be anything but training. Leo appeared to have completely lost his head through this whole thing, and there was going to be a serious accident if this wasn't stopped now. Raph was hardly in any position to fight but was too stubborn to acknowledge that, and Leo was pissed off, irrational, and holding swords that he was perfectly capable of using. It wasn't going to end well.
Expectedly, Raph initiated the first blow, his Sai catching and screeching down the length of Leo's left blade. Leo pulled the sword about, twisting Raph's grip and pulling at the burnt skin on his arm painfully. Rather than reacting to the pain and backing off, Raph seemed to react off it, the sensation inciting him and causing him to react with a violent movement to his brother's side.
Seeing that it was already getting out of hand and not really thinking past stopping this before it really escalated, Don stepped into the thick of it. Shouting for them to stop, he reached for Leo's shoulder to physically tell him that he was behind him and not to send the twin blades in his direction. Leo twisted abruptly to tell him to back off before he could manage to make contact, a Katana stabbing around as he incorporated the move into the fight itself, intending to pivot and then drive the blade up and back down towards Raph.
The shock of it stopped Don in his tracks more than the actual pain itself, and he had to resist the urge to look down to confirm that it had actually happened. He had discovered over time that injuries always seemed to hurt more if you looked at them. Instead, he watched Leo's face dissolve from rage into shock, his eyes widening as he realised what had happened.
The blade couldn't have gone in deep; there hadn't been enough force behind it. Just over an inch, perhaps two. It probably barely penetrated the breadth of Don's plastron at his abdomen, but it still hurt like Hell and was bleeding impressively. The shock of the blow combined with the pain already making him feel light-headed, Don reached out a hand for Leo's shoulder to support himself, his other hand going to where the metal and his body met to stop the blade from vibrating as he moved. It just being there hurt enough.
Rather than helping him stand Leo seemed intent on getting Don to the floor, steadily guiding them both down into a kneeling position as Raph appeared at Don's side to help. Although injured, he had at least managed to put a stop to the fight. It wasn't exactly a conventional method, but it had worked. That wasn't a lot of comfort to Don now though, sat on his heels and trying to decide whether it was safe to remove the blade without a compress readily available or if he could get it out and then worry about the blood flow afterwards. Sometimes removing a blade did more harm than good. The pain was distracting him though, and he couldn't think.
Leo was trying desperately to apologize, to say something, but he was finding it impossible. It rocked him to the core that he'd just put one of his blades into his brother, no matter how unintentional. He should have been more careful; shouldn't have been so stupid as to get into that situation in the first place to be sure.
"Mikey, get some bandages!" Raph shouted from Don's side as his younger brother approached them. Mikey wasted no time in rushing into the kitchen where they kept a first-aid box, grabbing it and bringing it out to them at a run before digging through it for a bandage.
Leo had dropped one Katana when he'd realised what had happened, and was no longer holding the hilt of the one impaled in his brother. He held it now by the blade so that his clenched fingers touched Don's. "Donnie, I-"
"Leo, it's alright. I don't think it's in deep," Don cut him off, not really wanting an apology at the moment. He associated talking with moving and moving hurt a lot just then. Keeping as still as possible until he had a compress in his hand was his priority at this exact moment.
"It's in deep enough! Don, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have-"
"Really Leo, I don't want to hear it right now," he bit out between gritted teeth. He idly wondered what was taking Mikey so long with the bandage, feeling more fluid ooze out between his fingers about the blade. The metal was holding back most of the blood flow, but it wasn't holding it all back and it still had electrical contact with his raw nerves.
Feeling cloth being shoved into his waiting hand, Don brought it to his plastron and set his jaw for what was undoubtedly to be a very painful action. Raph put a hand on his shoulder to hold him still as Mikey did the same. Not sure if he could do this himself, Don released the blade so that only Leo was holding it, silently asking him to do it for him.
Immediately Leo withdrew the blade with one sharp tug, dropping the Katana and pressing his hand's over Don's, which now held the bundled-up bandage against the wound. He had believed that pulling the weapon out rapidly would do less damage and hurt far less than to ease it out slowly. He had had a steady hand as he did so meaning that the blade hadn't cut a significant additional amount as it was withdrawn. That would have been the last thing they needed.
Don had still given a hard grunt and jerked inside his brothers' grips, dismayed to note that the level of pain increased drastically with the blade now gone. The wound didn't seem to be life threatening though. His plastron prevented a lot of damage, but it would take some time to heal properly. It was also in quite an awkward area, meaning that most katas would likely be excruciating as well as damaging for quite some time.
"Is there anything we can do?" Leo asked, guilt having already begun to augment in his mind as he pressed down firmly on Don's hand. He took small comfort in the fact that it wasn't a serious wound and that Don wasn't in any real danger from it. He still couldn't believe that he had done it though.
"Not really. If I could I'd get one of you guys to stitch it up, but that's not going to work. I'm just going to have to wait for it to clot and then try to move as little as possible for a few days." Whilst probably saving his life, his plastron had also raised that problem for Don. Tough and durable, proper stitches would be impossible to apply and butterfly stitches wouldn't have any impact. Cauterising was an option, but not really one he wanted to consider if he didn't have to. If the bleeding stopped in the next half hour he'd take his chances with just letting his body heal naturally.
"Alright. We should get you lying down then, yeah?" Raph asked gruffly, caught between feeling a degree of guilt for what had happened and wanted to send his fist into Leo's head. He quashed both though, deciding to dwell on such things when he knew that Don would be okay.
"That'd be good."
Nodding to each other, Mikey and Raph put an arm around Don's waist, leaving him to hold the compress to himself with both hands. Standing slowly, they slowly left the room to get the injured turtle into bed, leaving Leo standing alone.
Picking up the Katanas, he stared at the bloodied tip of one with gritted teeth, debating whether or not to clean it. Deciding to leave it for now, he slid both swords back into their sheaths on his shell and stalked in the opposite direction to his brothers. He needed to get away for a bit and think. He could apologise properly to Don later when he felt he could face him again. Right now, he needed to sort out his own feelings out.
,,,,,,
Raph had left the Lair to seek Leo out when the one-hour mark had been passed. It was an unwritten rule between them since Splinter had died; if one of them left without saying where for more than an hour, they'd be sought out because there was obviously something wrong that needed sorting out.
They couldn't afford to hold animosity between each other now that they were without a master, without a father figure, and it was even more important that they stick together and support each other. Raph was something of an exception to this rule; his 'mark' was three hours for various reasons, namely being that he needed a lot longer than the others did to calm down, and that anyone infringing on that time would likely get their head cleaved.
Generally, it was Mikey that sought out the missing turtle, disarming a dour mood in a way that only he could and almost cajoling his brother back to the Lair. Tonight though, the youngest turtle had opted to stay with Don. He partially blamed Raph for what had happened an hour ago, but he mainly blamed the long-standing rivalry between the largest turtles for the accident. It had been an accident, so he didn't blame either Leo or Raph for Don's injury directly. However, they had both been idiotic in his eyes to start on each other when neither of them was in the condition for it, and thus didn't want that much contact with either of them just yet. Surprisingly, Raph had left on his own accord to find Leo.
,,,,,,,,
And that's how far I've got. This is everything. Please jot at least something in a review as I seriously need to break this 'first fic in a new fandom is an mpreg' curse, because it's one of the things that's been holding this one back for so long. Another thanks to CharcoalCat, and I hope you've at least found this fic interesting.