I have no defense for the little Raphie speech impediment. I just find it cute. Sorry for the awkward cutoff and cliffhanger, but the chapter was getting a little long and needed a drop off point. Don't worry, I'm halfway through the last part.

"I've always wondered how long it takes to make a feral animal go docile. To take all the fight out of it. You know, wear it down until it's in total submission. How long do you think that takes? Seven, eight days?"

Raph didn't answer. His mind wasn't working fast enough to come up with a witty reply. He was always about one comment off and so he just laid there in the dark, listening.

"Hungry?"

His stomach was caving in.

"No. I wanted to go on a diet anyway." He'd gotten one in.

"You haven't been moving that much lately. Except when you're asleep. I hope you're not having bad dreams."

He'd been having good dreams and that was the problem. Dreaming about Christmas and the time he'd eaten his first cookie and the time that Mikey painted on his shell when he was asleep. Then he woke up to find himself an inch deep in his own filth. His skin burned all the time, all over. But some of the cuts throbbed. They were the ones oozing with puss. And he was so hot and light headed. He couldn't focus on what Scott was saying half of the time.

"What?" He'd already forgotten.

"Dreams? Are you having bad dreams?"

"No, they're good dreams." Why did he say that? He shouldn't say anything to him.

"Ever dream about that redheaded April?"

He dreamed about April sometimes, but not as much as his brothers and father. Sometimes they were a little risqué, but it wasn't anything he was terribly embarrassed about. She was the only girl he knew, after all. April would just laugh about it anyway.

"My dreams are just memory stuff lately. I'm too tired to dream anything decent. I was dreaming about when we made s'mores on her stove and set her kitchen towel on fire. That was funny." More talking. Why was he talking to this guy? He should shut the thing off.

"You know, I asked those gang guys to find me the biggest, most vicious animal available. And they brought you. What do you think of that? You're just a beast that happens to talk."

"I'm not…" His train of thought clouded as a muscle in his leg involuntarily contracted. He tried to stretch it out, but it cramped anyway.

Scott wasn't sounding like his normal chatty self. He sounded harder. More impatient with him. "Listen up or I'll stop talking to you? Do you want that?"

Raph didn't answer.

"I'm going to dig you up in a few days when you can't move. I have some other stuff to try out. But you can't move. I don't want to give you drugs either. That'll ruin it. You have to be awake."

"Fuck you," Raph manage to gasp out between muscle spasms. He had pulled many muscles in his lifetime. Torn tendons and ligaments, but he'd always been too healthy for a cramp. Now he wouldn't make fun of April when she complained about them.

"Your Leo didn't call so many times today. Your April called about five times. So, you ever screwed around with her?"

He didn't even hear him now. He just spouted garbage most of the time, but he was compelled to listen, just to hear a voice.

"Maybe you're more into this Leo that you won't talk about."

"You shut up."

He clicked off the walkie-talkie and continued uselessly stretching his leg.

It rained heavily. He could see the dark clouds and the thunder shook so hard that he had to cover his ears. He'd never done that before. He'd always called his brothers sissies for covering their ears outdoors during thunderstorms. But now his head rang like his brain was vibrating against his skull.

And water was pouring in through his breathing pipe. He pushed himself up at an awkward angle to keep his mouth and nose out of the water. At least the water would be diluted and smell less. He hoped.

It would be harder to sleep. He might sink back down and his head might loll to the side. The warrior Hamato Raphael might just drown in two inches of water.

Donny had dropped his cookie in the toilet. Well, it wasn't a proper toilet. It was really a bucket that they called a toilet. They didn't have indoor plumbing until Don was old enough to figure out how to install such luxuries and then they had the extreme good fortune to find working bathroom fixtures on dump runs.

He remembered Don sitting on the floor next to the bucket crying. They'd never had cookies before. They'd never even seen a cookie. Master Splinter had given them each one after dinner, telling them, "You will only get one tonight. I do not want you making yourselves sick." He glanced significantly at Mikey, who was pulling on the hem of his robe, eager to get at his dessert.

Leo called Raph to him and pointed in the door. "Don dropped his in the bucket. Now he won't get one." Leo was munching insensitively on his own cookie as he related his tale of compassion. Raph thought it was awfully mean to eat a cookie in front of a man who had none.

He went to Splinter's room and waited in the doorway for him to notice his presence. He'd been afraid of Master Splinter's room as a child. It seemed a lot bigger when he small. That and he was usually paddled in that room. He was paddled almost as much as Mikey.

"Sensei?" he asked.

"Yes, Raphael?"

"Donny lost his cookie. Can I's give him mine?" He didn't talk right for some reason as a kid. Mikey used to make fun of it until he was big enough to beat him up.

"Yes, you may."

The rest of his brothers had followed him and were all listening. Don wiped his eyes as he took his new cookie. Mikey helpfully crammed his cookie into his mouth whole before he was forced into a similar act of charity against his will. Leo had already eaten his.

Leo said, "I should have gaven him mine."

"That's okay," Don said, sniffing. "I don't want it anyway. Cookies. Gross."

They all knew he was lying. Raph insisted and forced it back into his hand.

"Go on. Eat it."

And he watched him eat the whole thing.

Where was he? Still in the box?

He stared at the metal in front of his face for a second in absolute shock. He was still there. It had been over a week. He was sure of it. It was absurd. How was that even possible?

And he was crying. His chest erupted in painful sobs and his quickened breathing made his sick head flutter. He bit down on the wails that were threatening to make themselves heard and his throat filled as he swallowed over and over.

But he couldn't stop the tears. He wiped his face over and over as they pooled up on his jaw line.

Just as he felt that he would be strangled from sobbing so hard, he heard Scott's voice. "Do you miss Leo?"

"I want to go home," he said. He couldn't believe the childlike hopelessness in his voice. It was almost like he was listening to someone next to him. "Why did they leave me here?"

"Maybe he doesn't want you back." Scott sounded bored. "Who is this guy?"

"My brother." The words were barely recognizable though the mucus in his throat. The suppressed wailing made its way out and rang through the box. He took a lungful of air and let it back out, somehow relieved by the release of despair. "They're dead!" He wailed to himself, not caring that Scott could hear him. "They're dead and I wasn't there!"

Scott's breathing filled the small space. It sounded like he was holding his walkie-talkie very close to his face. "You're scared."

Raph knew he was enjoying it. Scott could see him and hear him and thoroughly revel in his misery. Well, he would put an end to that. He turned off the walkie-talkie and opened up the back panel pulling out the batteries. He threw them into the water and let the walkie-talkie land next to it for good measure. Then he did what he had been too stupid to do before. He looked for the camera.

He could barely see through the steady flow of tears, but at least his crying would be private now. He ran his hands along the metal as far as he could and then ran his legs against the sides of the box where his hands wouldn't reach.

But he didn't feel it anywhere. He covered his eyes, and felt his lungs heaving with sobs. He wouldn't let Scott have this. It was private.

How could he even see in there anyway? It had to be near his face or else he couldn't work the camera at an angle to see him. The hole had to have been very small or he would have seen it by now. It was directly overhead. He opened his eyes and there it was. Right in front of his face the whole time. The paint was scratched around the area to disguise the slight inconsistency in color.

There was no way to cover that spot. But there had to be a way. His hands fell into the putrefying water and he felt a slight amount of silt settled at the bottom. He rubbed in his fingertips and waved dramatically at the camera hole. Goodbye, Scott. Raph reached up and smeared the sediment over the lens until it was thoroughly covered.

The sobbing quieted down almost immediately, although the tears never fully quit before he fell asleep again.

There was a flashlight in his face and a blast of fresh air hit him, burning his throat. Through the disorientation he saw someone straddling over the box, holding a flashlight in their hand. How had he not noticed that the box was being dug up? He should have heard it.

"Leo?"

"Sorry, turtle," Scott said. His hands reached under Raph's arms and he felt himself being lifted out of the water.

He decided to let himself be heaved out of the water, like deadweight. He had no energy to do it himself. Why do the work himself? All of his energy was precious at this point.

And then he was lying on the damp grass in the fresh air, on his side. The wet grass felt like ice and he shivered convulsively. Slowly, his mind worked to the decision that he needed to do something to Scott so he could get away. It was an agonizing new experience, to lie there with an enemy a few feet away, too mentally evaporated to react quickly enough to save himself.

He could force him down and smother him. Put his hand over his mouth. He would have shuddered if he wasn't already convulsing. That was the lowest form of killing, but he had to save himself somehow. Nobody would do it for him.

But his eyes were shutting down and he realized that Scott had injected him before he'd even woken up. He wanted to say something defiant, but no words formed in time.

There was a pair of dead animal eyes looking back at him. Raph wanted to turn his head or at least look away, but he couldn't move. It was dry here. Indoors.

"I wanted to do this a different way, but you had to go ruin it. So now I'm going to take your shell off."

Take off his shell? Why didn't he just take off his head?

The animal was moved away from him. It must have been large because Scott heaved as he dragged it away. It was beige and had thin legs.

A deer.

There were some extra parts left on the floor where it had been.

Scott's voice echoed in clearer focus. "I didn't finish breaking you."

He grabbed Raph by the face and forced him to look into his eyes. "I'll have to do it the hard way."

Nothing he said processed in his mind. Scott was going to break something. Too hot and tired to care anymore. He didn't feel it right away. The pain burst into his side after the impact. Raph reached his hand to the source of the pain, crying out in a belated roar. There was an ice pick in his side, about an inch deep. Scott pulled it out and Raph felt a warmth that he knew was blood. He had to do something. His body was willing to react, but his mind needed to give him a heading and nothing was happening. Scott was going to pry off his shell with the ice pick while he still alive. "Why?" Raph gasped. "Just leave me alone, you bastard."

"I want to see how it works. And I like doing it up close anyway. Don't you like it better that way? From one killer to another. Isn't it better? It's more intimate?"

When he bent down to stick him again, he would grab him by the throat. He was still stronger than Scott. He just needed to work up the strength to move his arms to use them.

There was a voice nearby, but he didn't know what it said right away.

"Put it down!" it said.