A/N: Parts of this multi-chapter was written and published on Tumblr for Leorai week a while back. I've decided to flesh this out into a more cohesive story, so there will certainly be new material coming.
There was no measure of time to be found in the dark isolation of the underground tunnels. Morning into night, days into weeks; one part of the sewer looked just like the other. Karai could tell the passing of time only by the fact that when one disorienting nightmare ended, another would begin. Faces, some human and some not, all of them telling lies. The lines of love and hate, loyalty and betrayal, would intersect in her dreams. What was truth, and what were just figments of a battered mind and broken psyche? She no longer had the luxury of certainty.
The Shredder did this to her. Oroku Saki. Her Sensei. Her Father.
A lifetime of love and devotion, the likes of which only a child can deliver. A heart turned callous and bitter, both by the demands of her father's business and by the poison he would whisper into her ear. Where other fathers would tell bedtime stories, Karai had been visited only by one repeating tale: her mother's death at the hands of a jealous and vengeful Hamato Yoshi. A young lifetime of hate and obligation had been turned on its side and then shaken. Her mind and spirit felt like a snow globe that had been dropped, cracked, then picked up and thrashed so that all the sharp, jagged pieces would fly about cutting into everything that was left.
Her body was filthy and malnourished as she wandered the darkness. There were no homes and no reasons. Even light itself seemed inappropriate to her. She would stagger until she could move no more, then collapse into fitful sleep until the terrors would wake her again.
How much of her shattered world was true? Hamato Yoshi was in truth her father, if she could believe the memory of that tearful reunion in his home. But if the Hamato clan were her true family, then she had betrayed them to the very man who killed her mother.
Karai stumbled, jolting a sharp agony through her muscles like lightning. Her joints ached as she landed hard to her knees on the grimy concrete. The pain that wracked her body paled to the torment of her feverish thoughts.
So close. She had been so close to killing those four turtles. Worse yet, she had made a spectacle of their pain. Even if they could believe that she had been somehow mind controlled, they had seen her deep ugliness. The manipulation, the creativity of torture, and the sadistic glee had all been bared for them to witness. Her mind had been filled with falsehoods and her focus was being forced upon whatever task he ordered, but the remaining parts were still her. They all saw what lied behind her skilled control and natural cockiness: A core of appalling spite. A vengeful heart and a sadistic nature.
Finally, the daughter that Saki had wanted.
Karai's fingers curled with inescapable self loathing, the tips of her nails scraping and breaking against the rough concrete. The sting was sharp, but it wasn't enough. It would never be enough.
She had lost her first family as nothing but a baby, her world ripped away from her in fire. Her childhood had been spent with a clan that was not her own, where she had been merely used to further an evil man's selfish agenda.
With fingers now bloody and raw, squeezed tight into fists, she beat at the ground and screamed out her fury. Her loss. She screamed and screamed until her lungs worked soundlessly and the echoes faded.
Just as she had allowed herself to believe that maybe, just maybe, her twisted, convoluted life could be salvaged...she was used again and manipulated into showing her vile character.
Her lips parted into a snarl, the delicate points of her fangs exposed in the semi-darkness.
It was perhaps fitting, she thought, to be endowed with scales that slither low to the ground and fangs filled with venom. The mutation was there, beneath her skin and in her blood. It had become a part of her, subdued but always swimming somewhere between instinct and comprehension. Like a low hiss that whispered across her skin, reminding her that she had lost even her humanity.
She touched her forehead to the tunnel floor, taking some small relief in the contact of the cold against her fevered skin.
There was a memory, held resilient only by the sheer necessity of her to have something to hold on to for comfort. Even if it had only been the fabrication of a brutalized mind, Karai held the moment dear. Coney Island. Leonardo. Those kind eyes never flinching as she hissed her displeasure of a deteriorating mind. She had been so frightened, but his eyes had been so sure as his hand remained steady. In her state of confusion and hopelessness, he had risked life and limb to comfort her.
She felt the tears slide down her face as she tried to wrap the memory around her. His hand, calloused from training and from battle, had been so tender against her skin. His expression had been so vulnerable. Leonardo showed her all the things that she had been taught a ninja could not be, yet it had been exactly what she needed. Blue eyes scanning her own, imploring them to belong to someone that he still knew.
'Well,' she thought to herself, 'he knows me now.' She had smiled, smiled as a whirlwind of blades descended upon him within the torture chamber. She had mocked him, humiliated him, and had been damn close to killing his brothers along with him.
Her body shuddered from hunger and exhaustion. Her frame trembled constantly, mind swaying between bitterness, sorrow, and a burning self disgust. She was strong once, highly ranking and widely respected. Confident. There had been a time, not too long ago, that her identity had been like a mountain. Strong and proud, with jagged edges that could sweep away lesser men and women like an avalanche.
She gasped in pain as the muscles of her stomach clenched in a threatening demand. She had been barely surviving on the findings of small animals and refuse, but her resolve to survive had been dwindling as time slipped by in solitude. She pressed a shaking hand against her abdomen, willing the pressure to subdue the pain.
She would much rather wrap herself within that false comfort again. With her palm shoved roughly against her stomach, she squeezed her eyes shut and visited Coney Island. The night air that carried the scent of stale popcorn and gear oil and turtles. The concern in his eyes. The three-fingered hand that had held so much hope and promise, reaching out to her. The strength of his arms as they wrapped around her shoulders.
Her body gave a start, barely noticeable through the shaking. She had visited the memory countless times in her wandering, and never had he wrapped his arms around her. It was new, but not unwelcome. She felt her body sag against the strength of it, expecting to meet the concrete and be jarred from her semi-consciousness.
"Karai."
She could hear his voice, so real. A name that he must no doubt curse at this point. She cringed, trying desperately to return to her daydreaming attempt at contentment. To push out the pain and anger and confusion.
"Karai. Come on, wake up."
No. How dare he? Even her memories betrayed her, rejecting her bid for solace. Something touched against her forehead and bewildered as she was, she couldn't remember if she was still resting her head against the ground. She felt as if she were propped up, but couldn't remember rising to that position. There were noises, like a constant string if words that she could only catch pieces of.
"It's Leonardo."
Her eyes blinked open, perplexed and not completely coherent. Eyes wide in a mix of excitement and worrisome anxiety stared at her, framed in blue. His mouth was moving, and she had to concentrate to understand.
"...Heard you scream...been looking...have a fever…"
It was too much to process, so she closed her eyes against the uncertainty of his presence. So focused on remembering him, she was certain that her mind had finally dissolved the line between reality and illusion. Conceding to defeat, she slumped bonelessly into those arms that felt so secure around her. Before succumbing to unconsciousness, she was shifted to press more fully against his firm plastron and lifted into a carry.
It wasn't the illusion that she had been trying to wrap around herself, but it was a damn good one to slip away to.