~ Sometimes when you lose your way, you find yourself. ~
-Mandy Hale
The littered concrete beneath my coiled, smooth belly was hard, cold, solid. The park was silent, save for the rustle of trash that flittered and skipped across the ground like tumbleweeds and the creak of the Ferris wheel cars swinging on rusty hinges. It was a bitter wind, one that left my lukewarm breaths hanging in soft white clouds before my slits of a nose. I hissed involuntarily, and the sensation served to soothe the primal beast slowly claiming me, while making my stomach turn, for I knew the response was inhuman, wrong.
Everything about me was wrong. The way I slithered on my stomach, how my hands were gone and in their place were serpent heads, hissing and biting at me when they got hungry. Hunger. In my beastlike state I craved fur, flesh, and muscle, feet, and tail. Rats. Clawing and shrieking on their way down my throat. To my pure repulsion, they tasted good. They satisfied me. And I wanted to vomit at the same time I swallowed them whole. Human. Beast. Human. Monster. What had I become, and why was my humanity drifting away too? Because it was, slipping away like a boat freed from its anchor. My soul screamed, pounding against my insides, pleading to be free of this cage, this vessel. This trap. Because that's what I was, trapped.
With every passing sunset, sunrise, sunset again, I drifted further, losing hope, gradually surrendering to my new form and its basic desires. And I thought, with the moonrise of one particular night, how alone I was. But then in so many ways, I always had been. A motherless child, tutored, trained, taught to be ruthless and deadly. Shredder's lecture had been brief, in response to my pleading for a pet, something to love and care for: "Don't be ridiculous. A kunoichi cannot afford emotions; they leave you open, vulnerable. Close that door Karai. Be one with what you are." When I scoffed at the irony of that memory, a hiss spilled from my throat and tears slipped down my scaled cheeks, the truth was; I didn't know who I was before, so there wasn't much of me to lose now.
That liar. My heart ached, that damned thief. He'd stolen me from my birth father, robbed me of my childhood. And every word he'd fed me, he believed; all he'd told me, he truly believed. It was all a lie.
Lies. My entire life was a nest of lies, not one feather of truth among the fractured walls, the twigs once packed tight slowly snapping apart, making way for the truth. A truth that could do little for me. It would seem Shredder had won.
I was a beast, the very creature that would hunt my birth father in his mutant rat state, for food. I cringed and my tail rattled. I'd become the perfect predator. Wouldn't Shredder bask in the glow of such a victory? He'd relish it like fine caviar if I took my own father out because of him. The stones, that were most likely pieces of my bones, shook in my tail and I quickly wove the tip among the other coils of my length. My head drooped, coming to rest over my body, as heavy to hold up as my heart to beat.
There was one thing that brought me comfort on those cold, solitary nights. Thoughts of a turtle boy with courage in his heart, nobility and honor abound. He'd saved me, several times. Even seeing me in such a state he'd wanted to help me. Who does that? Who cares that much, becomes that devoted? And why? I'd done little on his behalf; if anything I'd stirred up more trouble for him. Yet the foolish boy never stopped trying, never gave up. Did he not see? What I'd become? What I was to begin with? Nothing. A damned void, a shell of a being. A shell of a being. A shell…
An empty shell as opposed to one whose strength, agility, and passion runneth over. There was enough volume to Leonardo to fill his heart to the brim, and enough naivety to let me close enough to fracture it. Because that's what I'd do. I'd destroy him, along with what was left of me in the process.
Yet I fixated on memories of him to keep me company, to bring me solace, that while my life was inevitably over, someone had cared for me in it. However strange and inhuman he was. He cared. He believed. He had hope. I gazed at the unusually clear night, the moon a paper-white full circle hanging bare in the sky, no stars to be found. It was strange seeing the city truly dark at night, for since the invasion there'd been no power. The city that never slept lay in an unsettling slumber; dark silhouettes of skyscrapers were barely visible in the pitch. The sound of the ocean lapping the shore in a steady rhythm helped quiet the voices in my head, and I could just picture him.
Emerald green skin, lightly pebbled with what would've been scales prior to his mutation, taut around each well defined muscle. His shell nicked and scarred in places, slightly grooved, like ridges, in a rich honey brown that I wanted to run my fingers over. Those piercing cobalt blue eyes draped in a royal blue mask, and I wondered what it was made of, that mask, the worn, threadbare scrap of fabric. His voice would echo in my head, repeating things that he'd said to me.
"There's goodness in you, Karai. I know it."
And my heart would swell in the rigid muscle of my deformed body, a lump would rise in my tube-like throat, and human tears would drip onto the earth below. That ghost of a voice was a wretched melody in my head, one that provoked my will to fight, to prove Shredder wrong. While at the same time it fueled my desire for Leonardo, because he believed in me. He always had, and I wanted to search him, to explore what was between us, to know what it meant and why he made me feel anything at all. No one else had ever given me a second thought. No one wanted better for me, no one cared for me, all that I knew was lies, and I'd been used, was being used right then. I was a deathtrap. I was a tool, a weapon, like a sword wielded in the most skilled of hands. I was dangerous.
But somewhere deep inside, perhaps in my shriveling, dying soul, was this inkling of hope, that Leo could wield me like his weapon, into something better. And I drifted off to sleep at night, heart aching, clinging onto the tiny fading light that was my humanity, hoping for a miracle.
One that actually came.
In so many ways he was my white knight, well green. He came for me, again, and again, and amidst failure he found strength and courage to rally and try yet again. He would not give up, even when I wanted to. Then he succeeded. Pulled me from the cell Shredder had trapped me in, ripped me free of that liar's mind control, and immersed me in his brother's care. I was transformed. I was me, human, again.
One would think that I would be overjoyed, jubilant, celebrating. But nightmare after flashback, flashback after nightmare, I was crumbling. Unable to wrap my mind around the mess of my life, from its twisted beginning, I gained no ground, to its beast shaped memories. I could find nothing to explain to my body what it had been through and what it now was. As I lay in bed at night, clinging to sweat soaked sheets, shivering beneath the chill of the lair, screaming into the dark, he came, he held me, and I crumbled. I was broken. I. Am. Broken. And I knew, even if we both wanted, we could never be, because I would not let my fate be his.
Then Splinter, my father- Oh my head. Father. Father, the thief liar, or father, the honorable man whose child was stolen from him? The latter. These thoughts are of the latter. He decided we needed to leave the city for a while, to help me readjust.
And I found myself weaving my way through the tall grass, after my third day there of nonstop sleep, letting the seeds at the tips of the blades sift through my fingers. While an odd breeze stirred the otherwise stagnant summer air, I heard a faint whisper, felt it in my heart, despite my resolve…
You belong with him Karai.
A/N: So I'm not sure if I want to pursue this as a full out Leorai story or just leave it as a one-shot. What do you think?
