I Am

BY: Willowfly

A/N: This is a oneshot that just struck me at one in the morning while thinking about the Nightwatcher… It's Raph's POV, but he's using some language you may find out of place for his character. To me, Raph is far deeper than he lets on, and this expands on that notion.

To be alone after eighteen years of constant bickering, laughter, all those annoying little quirks that just make you want to smack someone upside the head because you've lived way too close for days and months and years, you would think it would be bliss, like a breath of fresh air after being locked somewhere stale for too long. But no… so little of the world below could coexist with what lives up here, in the real world. This city… this throbbing, pulsing city that bleeds again like paper cuts ain't for the faint of heart, ain't for the optimistic or the people who see the world in color instead of black and white.

Because it can leech all the optimism right out of you, it can suck you dry until all you can see is black, white, the fine lines in between, and the bitterness that put them there. Even in the eyes of the street kids, the kids of whores and gangsters killing themselves for nothing, there's no color, no light. It's like the world never even gave them a chance to be innocent.

At night, I've seen the reasons why.

Because in this city, you can't have grey areas, you can't just sit around and think about what will happen next, because while you're thinking, before you even know it, you can wind up dead or bleeding all over some disgusting alleyway, your eyes just as hollow as those filthy little kids', just as hungry as you stare out in the dark, lookin' out for light you'll never find.

It changes you, what you can see from rooftops at night, the lives of humans playing out like they're on a stage lit up by lamplight, moonlight, that ugly brown the light turns the sky. It takes you, reaches inside and holds onto your guts for a while, fucks with them, blackens them with hate, with rage and bitterness until that's all that's left of you, until you've turned into something even your own reflection can't stand.

I can't even look at my reflection when it follows me, staring back from some darkened window when I stop to catch my breath. I know its there, daring me to look, daring me to see what I've become. But I can't remember the last time I even dared to look, because I don't need some damn window to tell me that after all the hell this life's put me through, I don't look like myself anymore.

I think the day I turned eighteen was the last time I remember feeling at least a little like who I'm supposed to be. At least then I wasn't afraid of my own reflection. But that day, it wasn't a birthday, it was just… eighteen and that's it.

I don't remember when my family fell apart the way it did, even if Don says he's holding it together, even if Mike can pretend like nothing's wrong. Ever since Leo left, nothing's been the same. Even now I hate to admit it, standing here, looking at the city lights like the entire weight of it is strapped down on my shoulders. Leo leaving was no doubt what wedged us apart like a railroad spike, so heavy and solid no one, even smartass Don or disillusioned Mike, can break it.

But it's easy to blame Leo… always was, always will be. That is, if he ever comes back.

He wasn't supposed to be gone this long, he was supposed to be there for eighteen. He was supposed to be there when Don freaking lost a screw, when Mikey begged him to take a break. I can remember the look in that poor kid's eyes when Don finally snapped, saying he was on some call or whatever, and of course, I couldn't help at all. I was too bent on being myself -whoever that is- and just brooding, sleeping the day away like I've got nothing better to do but ignore them, pretend it was the same, pretend I was the only one with issues here and Leo would still be there to put us back together.

Eighteen. I wish I could forget. But I've learned real quick that life don't work that way.

Don… he just spent the whole day on his damn computer, talking to people who don't even know how to press the power button, who have no idea who they're actually talking to… because somehow, I don't think even I know anymore.

A big part of it has to do with Don, so bent on the budget, his stupid IT thing, ignoring us like he's god of all things, thinking that just because Leo's gone, that makes him leader, that gives him the right to act like an even bigger jackass than Leo ever did.

I don't remember Don. I don't recognize this guy who's been crawling around in his skin, because the Don I once knew was quiet, didn't judge, didn't flounce around his smarts just because he can, just because he's that much better than the rest of us, just because he believes that without Leo, we can't take care of ourselves.

Maybe the city's gotten to him too. Maybe its contagious, maybe I infected him when he touched my blood all those nights, the cuts he'd stitched up almost every night until it felt like it was the only thing that held me together- fishing line.

When I'd come to him, in the early days, with cuts from knives and pavement burns, getting bashed up against walls or smacked with smiley chains, getting the crap kicked out of me on a daily basis, he used to give me these looks, these Leo looks that made my gut turn inside out, made me squirm even more than the needle he'd just stuck in my skin. He used to try to lecture me about it, about how I should give it up and act my age, how I contribute nothing to this family, how Casey's rubbing off on me, how I can't save the world from itself.

And in my mind, all those looks, those words, the way he made my blood boil, he became just like Leo. He became the reason for all this damage, for all these cracks in the stuff that used to hold us together, back when all we had was each other. Back when we were kids- eight, not ten years later, three, eighteen and miserable, we were four, the same, same ages, no leader shit to mess around with, just stupid kids having fun. Back then, all we knew about this city was the world below it, places where even the city itself had no idea existed. And that was all the world we needed. That was everything, just the four of us and Master Splinter teaching us ninjitsu. That's it.

Ignorance is bliss.

Maybe when we made the change, when Sensei told us we had to stop living like animals, that we were sentient now, that our little burrow hole in the wall we all used to huddle up in on winter nights was below us, 'cause we were like humans now, we needed to live like humans now. Maybe that was when it started.

Maybe when we figured Donny was smart, that he'd taught himself to read and knew how to tap the lights and fix things from the junkyard that Sensei brought us back, maybe that's when we got poisoned.

Maybe when Splinter brought the tv home, that old black and white set you had to do a little dance with the antenna just to make the static bearable, those endless hours all four of us would sit and stare at that flashing screen, making our own world out of what that tv gave us, that fuzzy, static world that just seemed so right. Maybe that's what made us sick.

And Leo leaving was just the tipping point, like having him here kept us from feeling it, from being too different from one another, from learning way too much about the human world, that city up above our heads. Maybe Leo had a cure, something that would snap us out of this stupid rut, clear our minds enough to remind us that we're brothers, that we were all the same snot-nosed kids once upon a time, so scared of humans and their world we knew so little about that we'd have nightmares and wake up in the morning all in the same bed.

Leo's bed.

But that was empty now. The whole damn place was empty now.

His practice katana… he must have been training the night before he left, the most sleepless night of all of our lives, and forgot to put them back. It was weird to see them there, abandoned, collecting dust on the dojo floor like we needed something else to remind us that he's gone, won't be touching them any time soon, won't be here to put them back.

But Leo never forgets to put his swords away. Never. Not once. It was like he'd left them there on purpose, to remind us he'd be coming back for them, for us.

But that was getting harder to believe.

Still, no one had the heart to move them.

Maybe he'd put them there on purpose, like a promise, but we… we left them there, like a plea.

Those swords have sat there gathering dust for over a year and a half, through the early days when we had it all together, when we used to train as three, every morning, just like Leo used to have us do, but no one dared to look in that corner where his swords sat because secretly, that was how we felt. That was who we were- abandoned.

Those same swords still sat there through it all... when things started getting tense, when Donny started cracking under the pressure, when Sensei started shutting himself away in his room more than usual, when even Mike buckled down and got a job and our training started getting rarer, because it wasn't the swords we were afraid of looking at now, we were afraid of looking at each other.

It's scary how much a person can change over a year and a half. Even scarier how someone can change after eighteen.

It's scary to see how even Mike looks older now.

And me… I don't even want to know what Ilook like anymore.

All I know is that I'm bigger now, from lifting weights like mad in the early days, trying to get that edge on the city scum when I'm off playing vigilante, or so that's what I told myself back then. Just a little longer… just push a little longer a little harder, and that would make it better, that would stop 'em dead.

It only took three months for me to get sick of getting my shell waxed, just three months of Leo gone to earn a reputation, just three months of ass kicking and practically killing myself without consequences got my shell so scarred up I didn't even want to see the gouges, the cuts, the places where the plates were missing. Don had handed me a mirror once and told me to take a long, hard look. But I never did. I just put that stupid mirror down and walked away. The way Mikey's eyes glazed over, or stared off into something else whenever I walked by… that was proof enough for me. It was ugly, and that's all I needed to know.

I think that's when it started to change, 'round the same time Don's IT thing really kicked off, and so did Mikey's sob story 'party business', and Master Splinter's 'meditations' got longer and longer, when training full out stopped. When Leo didn't come back, that's when all the pretty little veneer started to crack and fall away. That's when I decided it was better to sleep all day and avoid it than to suffer through and watch my family fall apart. That's when instead of lectures and dirty looks when I'd come home bleeding, there was just silence. That's when I started building the armor.

Six months it took me, six months to build that suit… this cage, this thing I have become. That's how long it took for everything to fall apart for good, for all of us to start secretly believing he was never coming back, that this is what our lives would be like forever.

The night I finally finished it that I decided he was probably dead. Six months, two weeks, and three days since he promised he'd be back. The day we turned eighteen.

That was the day I strapped on that metal abomination for the first time, and didn't want to know what I looked like, but knew exactly how it felt… like the whole world was pressing down on me, a feeling I've gotten to know so well finally turned physical, tangible, real. That was the day I took off on the Shell Cycle, the bike Don built me a while ago, the bike that I'd painted black… black because it felt right, because red was who I used to be… and rode through the city without any fear or consequence because behind that metal cage, I was safe.

Even if I wasn't... I ain't afraid of dying.

That night, I found a scum bag way too easily, a rapist in the ally caught in the act with some poor girl's skirt hiked up past her hips, just pounding away like some filthy, heartless animal, pale in the headlights of the bike, but never stopping 'til I pulled out those manriki chains. Manriki chains because the sai let people in too close, because they were too frail for the Nightwatcher's hands, because those heavy chains just felt right smashing against that pervert's skull, half his brains splattered out onto the concrete wall. Then I knew there was no denying I'd changed. I didn't even fight like me anymore, left my sai abandoned, hung up on the wall in the dojo one night, on the wall above Leo's dead katana, and never looked back again.

So now, that's all that's left of me, this armor, these chains that make me feel like a monster, so different from that kid I remember, that wide-eyed softened thing that stared forever at the tv screen, three perfect copies of himself sitting together on old couch, all the same. Innocent, ignorant... gone.

But now I know everything. I don't have nightmares about the unknown anymore, because I feel like I've seen every evil in the world, because I'm still in that nightmare even when I'm awake.

Looking at the moon from this god forsaken rooftop ledge, the weight of two hundred pounds of forged scrap metal hanging on my back, my arms, everywhere, I wonder what would happen if Leo came back and saw me the way I was now. I could almost see the look of disgust on his face.

I don't know if he would recognize me. Maybe he would be afraid.

I know I am.

The police radar in my helmet beeps, that sweet serenade that wakes me up just long enough to clear my mind, to feel like I'm making a difference, to feel like I'm alive. Its just another bad excuse for needing something better than my punching bag to take it out on, another way to try and feel a little more than useless, a way to try and remember exactly who I am.

The voice gives the info, the street and the address. They call it in a ten-twenty four, a drug deal in action, and I scale down the fire escape best I can, slowly, weighted, but not scared of nothing because under all this scrap, they can't see the real me, the freak that pulls the strings beneath this overgrown garbage can, the demon of a druggie's nightmares. The sound of heavy footsteps and rattling manriki chains that keep them up at night, that can clear the streets in a second and strike fear in their filthy, blood-shot eyes.

The cops won't bother to come, and I see his fear already. I've learned to smell it from so far away, I can see his white eyes blazing, no color as his client ducks down and takes off running down the street. I let him go. He's just some punk kid looking for a fix. He's still got a chance.

But this guy, this guy's the problem- he's the source, he's the reason some kids out here don't have a mom or dad 'cause they got killed over drug money. This guy's why so many people are throwing their lives away, slowly killing themselves, or killing innocent people because they think they're god, and they're invincible when they're high, that they can pull the trigger and the guy they point it at won't bleed to death on the pavement.

I see the guy's fear, smell it, and let the chains fall from my hand, hear their heavy clink on the pavement, watch him shudder, hear him pray, pull them back and swing…

Then its over. Done, gone… what I have to do.

Because I am vengeance, I am justice.

I am anger made incarnate.

I am the Nightwatcher, and I am nothing more.