The dismembered Karai legion bot stared blankly back at him.
Leonardo had found the thing while he was out scavenging. He had hoped to find food, or water, but instead, he found the nonfunctional Foot Clan bot, lying amidst the ruins of one of the abandoned factories that he frequented on his supply runs. The factories, relics of when humans made things instead of simply destroying them, were not uncommon in the landscape that was once New York City. The turtle blinked behind the round black glasses that concealed his eyes.
It had seemed so sad, laying there. Lifeless. Its eyes just staring, like they were now. It had been so long, since he had seen anyone, much less an active legion bot. His father had taught him well. He only went out at night. He was never heard. Never seen.
He could not explain what had possessed him to bring it back with him. Maybe it was the eyes. Or how much it looked like her. Whatever it was, he had gathered the lifeless robot up in his arms, and returned to the warehouse. The thing was heavy, and awkward due to its sheer size, but it had made it home with him. Somehow it made him feel less alone, slumped against the wall in the corner. It had been so long since he had had company.
Such an occasion called for celebration. The cork slumped out of the neck of the bottle and fell to the floor with a thud. He wished there had been some sort of pop. The sort of celebratory pop that went off like a gunshot, like bottle of champagne being opened. But the cork just fell to the floor, with a completely unremarkable thud. He had traded the last of his shuriken for this particular bottle of moonshine, and he had been saving it - for a special occasion. But when you got to the end of the world, each new day was a special occasion. A fresh start into nothing, somewhere between oblivion and eternity.
Leonardo tipped the bottle back, and the clear liquor rushed down his throat. It tasted like nothing, but it burned going down. Outside, black smoke billowed against a gray sky. The work camps never stopped. The Shredder kept them running 24/7. He kept the people working eighteen hour days. All because Leonardo had failed. The turtle took another swig. It had been so long since he had felt anything. Tonight it felt good to burn.
He shrugged off his black jacket, and unbuckled the leather straps across his plastron. The moonshine had made him slow. He fumbled with the buckles, but eventually they fell away. The moonshine had made him clumsy. But that didn't matter now; he was alone. Or was he? His gaze drifted to the robot across the room.
"I miss you," he said, slowly, carefully, trying to keep his words from slurring together.
Guilt crept up inside him, like it did every night. He tried to wash it away with moonshine, under a night sky with no moon. Everything was gone, even the light pollution. Now it was just pollution. The workcamps had belched so much smoke that they drowned out the stars.
It had been years since he had seen the moon, or the stars, and even longer since he had seen his brothers. Donatello had disappeared decades ago. Leonardo had blinked, and he was gone. After Splinter had sacrificed himself for them, Raphael had disappeared, too. Michelangelo had informed him that Raph had lost an eye, when Casey lost his life. But even Michelangelo had stopped calling years ago. Probably because Leonardo had stopped picking up. But it was just as well. He was with April now. He was safe. As safe as anyone could be, under the watchful eye of the Shredder and his General. Leonardo's eyes drifted back to the Karai bot. He wished it was her.
The robot sat there. Lifeless. Suddenly, its likeness was too much. Its face, its lips, its hair. All hers. But its body lacked her shape. Karai had always concealed her shape well beneath her armor, so like the Shredder's, but he knew. He remembered. Leonardo tipped the jug back again, and the burning liquor dripped from the corners of the mouth he could no longer quite close.
Something flickered red across the room. The turtle peeled his glasses away from his face, blinking as his eyes adjusted. To his damaged eyes, even the darkness seemed bright without his glasses. It was nothing. His fingers tightened around the neck of the bottle. Of course it was nothing. He was drunk. It was late. He took another swig, and leaned back against the wall. His eyelids slumped behind his glasses, and everything faded away.
The sun was setting when he woke, a thick red bleeding through the black and gray that hung over the sky. Donatello had told him why the sky turned red, once. Or maybe it was some particular shade of pink. He shut his eyes, trying to remember. Particular matter? No. Particulate matter. When he opened his eyes, she was still staring.
The turtle's stomach lurched, its contents threatening to surge up his throat. She was still there, slumped against the wall. Staring. He thought he saw her eyes flicker in the fading light, but he knew better. He was still drunk.
Leonardo ran his hand down his face, his fingers lingering over the scars that were permanently etched across his brow. The scars shot down his eye, over his mouth, disfiguring his face. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of himself in a broken window, or in a murky puddle, and he had no idea who, or what was staring back at him. He barely recognized himself, now. He wondered if she would.
The turtle held his hand over his mouth, trying to keep himself from puking. But what did it matter if he puked or not? The days of keeping up appearances had been gone so long, he could barely remember them. Once he might have cared what his brothers thought. But what did that matter now. They were gone. Their father was gone. It was just him, now. Him and his moonshine. He hung his head between his knees and swallowed, stifling the acrid taste of bile.
"Euch," he sputtered, wiping spit from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
There was still moonshine. His fingers shook, curling around the neck of the bottle. Might as well finish it. There was no knowing what tomorrow might bring. Another glorious day at the end of the world, stretching on into nothing. Leonardo's eyes rested on the thing they had manufactured to look like her face.
"I always loved you, you know," he said slowly, sadly.
"You were always a fool, you know," a voice curled out of the darkness, twisting the air like smoke.
Leonardo's eyes widened behind his glasses. He pushed himself back with his feet, and his shell clattered against the wall. He groped for the katana that was still strapped across his shell, but the truth was, he didn't have it in him to fight. He was too drunk. Too tired. It had been too long. How fitting that she would come, now, at the end of another wasted day in the twilight of his life.
Karai emerged from the shadows behind her mechanical doppelganger. The Foot Clan ninja was just as tall and svelte as he remembered she was. Her figure cast a sharp shadow across the layer of dust on the warehouse floor. Jet black hair had faded to silver, but her eyes were the same fierce jade green. They were both old and battered, now, but she was still beautiful.
"All these years," she said, almost in disbelief. "I thought -"
"Thought I was dead?" he laughed bitterly. "Wouldn't that be convenient."
Leonardo struggled to stand, pulling himself up by the ledge of the window. It was stupid, of course, to sit under a window. The line of sight was so obvious that it pained him, thinking of how Splinter would have admonished him for giving himself away. But she hadn't needed the window to see him. He had done all the work for her, bringing the bot home. Those blank eyes had been watching all along.
"Was it a plant?" he spat. He bent slightly, slowly, then jerked as he slung his jacket over his shoulders.
"Why would it be a plant?" Her cold eyes fell over him with a measuring glance. "You said it yourself, Leonardo. I thought you were dead."
The turtle's fingers were twitching for the katana he was in no shape to wield. His back was against the wall. It was yet another mistake in a series of poor tactical decisions, but it was the only thing that kept him from collapsing.
As she took a step forward, his arms shot over his shell, wrenching his katana from its scabbard. The blade cut through the air between them, singing its biting song. Leonardo had almost forgotten how beautiful that sound was. His mouth turned up into something that might have been a smile, if it had not been for the scars, but he could feel his hands shaking. He could draw his weapon, but holding it steady was another matter entirely.
"What do you want from me," the turtle snapped, teetering forward slightly. It wasn't a question, really. He had nothing left to give, and she knew it. Now that she had what he had become, she knew.
Karai shifted her weight slightly, her hand not straying far from her own short sword. She met his gaze, but she did not hold it, unable to reconcile what he was, and what he had been. Her eyes darted across his face, but her expression did not change.
"This is all very…sloppy," she said, her voice somehow curt and condescending all at once.
He laughed then. A loud, unruly laugh that made his head tilt back, and his entire body sway as he struggled to keep his balance. In the fading light at the end of the world, that was all she had to say to him. Leonardo hadn't survived all these years by being sloppy. But maybe he was tired of surviving. Maybe that was why he had brought the bot back with him, even though he should have known better.
"What did you expect, Karai?" he sneered, still laughing, still drunk. "That I would be the same? That I would still be that perfect bushido prince you thought you knew?" He shook his head trying not to think about what could have been, and the room titled, and his stomach lurched. "After all the years and all the loss, you thought I would be the same?"
Behind his small, dark glasses he strained to keep his eyes on her. She was swaying into the shadows. Or maybe that was just his vision. Either way, he could blink and she could be gone. So much had crumbled into dust before his eyes, yet, her face was still the same. As he watched her, her fierce green eyes became gentle, and suddenly they were just as sad as the eyes of the lifeless legion bot. Her eyes said what she could not bring herself to say.
"I never thought you were one for sentiment," Leonardo said, sourly. He inhaled deeply. "But if you wanted things to stay the same, you should have chosen me," he said, his voice stained with anguish. "You could have chosen me."
Karai shifted her weight again, and the dust on the floor slid beneath her boots, scraping in the silence of the warehouse. But she said nothing more.
His scarred brow creased in anger. "If you think you being here, now, changes any of that, then that makes us both fools," he seethed through gritted teeth.
And then it dawned on him, like a dark new day under the blood red sun. Maybe she did not need to say anything. She was here now, and that was all that mattered. If she had wanted to kill him, she would have sent a legion. Instead, it was her. Just her. After all these years, she remembered.
Leonardo grinned. "There is this one kata… you might like it." The moonshine had made him clumsy, and slow, but it had also made him brazen. "I'm a little rusty, of course, but I could still show you."
"That won't be necessary."
Leonardo watched as she crossed her hands behind her back, gingerly. His face crumpled as her posture shifted out of the defensive position. She did not consider him a threat. Not anymore.
"No, no. You came all this way," he snapped, his katana shaking in his hands. "I insist."
Leonardo lunged forward, thrusting his katana before him. The Falling Rain kata. He swallowed. It had been so long since it had rained. Karai sidestepped his blade effortlessly. His father's words echoed in his memory as his legs faltered. The mind, body, spirit and weapon working in harmony. The turtle stumbled, and his katana clattered on the floor.Balance is all.
The turtle laid there in a heap on the floor, the room spinning around him. His brothers, his father, his balance; all gone. It had just been him for so long, but now, it was the two of them, at the end of the world. Somehow he had always known it would come to this. If ever he had thought any different, it was only because he had been young, blinded by hope. Hope for the future that almost was. Of all the ways he had thought it might end, this seemed the most fitting.
"Do me a favor, Karai -" he spat, unable to right himself. The turtle looked up at her, from under his scars, over the edge of his small, dark glasses. "Finish what you started, "
The wind had crept in through the broken window. He had patched that window with cardboard and duct tape months ago. Or was it weeks ago? He could not remember. But it must have fallen away, like everything else did at the end of the world. Everything was slurring together now, but he knew that the wind had swept into the room when they were not watching. It was entwining them; aching, and plaintive and lonely as he was.
"As you wish," she said.
Those words were beautiful and fleeting, like cherry blossoms. He had waited so long for her, it hardly mattered what she said. She was here, now. Leonardo hung his head. It could all be over. The guilt. The agony. The sleepless, moonless nights. She was here, now, and it could all be over.
The sound of swiftly drawn metal sang in the cold night air.
"Close your eyes, Leonardo," she said, softly.
Leonardo closed his eyes.
He felt cold metal on the back of his neck, his skin hot and clammy and stifled by sweat. It rested there, if only for a moment. An executioner's mark, drawn over his scars. This time, he knew she would not miss.
The metal of her blade cut through the air, but it was not his neck that it fell upon. Leonardo's eyes widened behind his glasses. Her short sword clattered to the floor, lost, like his katana. Karai fell to her knees, and the leather of his jacket crumpled in her hands as she pulled him into her arms.
Tears ran down his face then, spilling out from under the glasses he so desperately needed to see. Those tears, hot and wet like blood, ran down his face, over his scars, and his entire body heaved with each ragged breath as he sobbed.
"Was it worth it?" he gasped. "My father's death. My brothers' lives. Was it worth it - to be the heir to all this ruin?" His voice shook. "Was it worth it? P-please," he heaved, "tell me it was worth it."
She sat there with him, on the floor of the warehouse, stroking his carapace beneath that black leather jacket. "It was worth almost everything I sacrificed," she said, softly, her hand still trailing down the curve of his shell. "Almost everything."
When he awoke the next night, he was alone. The bottle of moonshine had tipped over. Whatever was left had leaked onto the floor, parting the dust that had collected there like a burning sea. The legion bot was gone. She was gone. Leonardo wondered if it was a dream, until he saw the blood red lipstick on the neck of the bottle that had been abandoned on the floor. His disfigured face turned up in some semblance of a smile.
At the end of the world, she was the only thing left that was still worth dreaming about.