Chapter Seven

Cold Comfort

Raphael yawned and stretched, paying no attention to his popping shoulders. He had been up all night, unable to sleep, unable to lie down. Sometime around six-o'clock he had finally convinced himself to sit, but even that was done reluctantly. He'd long lost count of how many walls he had punched over the last few hours, but from the look of his bruised and scraped knuckles, he figured it must have been a lot.

Not that bruises and scrapes were an unusual sight this morning; he and his brothers--his two brothers, he reminded himself angrily--were covered with them, though the damage hadn't been apparent until after they had washed off the dirt and ashes. Mikey had a big lump on his head and a black eye, not to mention a big bruise on his shoulder from where he had hit the ground. Leo's arms and legs looked as if he had been scrubbing them with sandpaper -- another result of hitting the ground and, in his case, sliding across it. Raph knew he must have looked just as bad as they did, but he hadn't been able to force himself to look in a mirror. All he was sure of was his hands--his knuckles. And he had done that to himself.

Looking towards the kitchen, Raph could see that April was sleeping at the table, her head resting atop folded arms. She had come over as soon as they called her and had spent hours talking to them, trying to give them some kind of hope that Donny was still out there, still okay. But she hadn't been there to see the destruction; she hadn't seen the fire or the fallout. After a while she stopped trying, and that was when they realized, with great regret, that they had succeeded in convincing her of something that none of them really wanted to believe in the first place.

Raph fidgeted in the easy chair and looked over to the couch, where Leo and Mike had settled in a few hours before. They were also sleeping, though they were doing so sitting up and leaning against one another. Mike let out a little noise and Leo, though asleep himself, nudged him. Mike twitched a bit, then settled back down. Raph was sure that they were both caught up in bad dreams… dreams about Donny. That had been part of the reason Raphael had refused to let himself sleep: the fear of those dreams.

The other part was that Raph wanted nothing more than to go out and find the Foot--to go find Hun--and pay them back. Splinter and the others had stopped him from doing that for several hours, but now they were all asleep and he didn't have to try to explain himself if he left. He reached over and grabbed his sais out of the now-tattered chair arm, where he had repeatedly stabbed the upholstery in his anger. He stood and stretched again, then made his way across the room, stepping quietly and deliberately so he wouldn't wake the others.

Somebody's gotta to do something, Raph thought, trying to keep himself from throwing another punch at the already dented walls. And that's gonna be me.

He stepped to the door and rested his hand on the lever, but the sound of a clearing throat made him stop suddenly. He tightened his jaw and turned around, looking into Splinter's tired eyes.

"Were you leaving?" Splinter asked.

Raphael hated it when their sensei asked questions that he already knew the answers to. "I was just gonna go tell Case what happened," he said, tightening his grip on the lever.

It wasn't a complete lie. They had called Casey several times over the course of the evening, but the phone had gone unanswered. Raph hated Casey not knowing, if for no other reason than he needed someone else who was willing to take the pain and turn it into payback.

Splinter let out a breath and stepped up to his son, placing a hand on his tensed arm. "You are angry and hurt, Raphael," he said, lowering his eyes. "We all are angry and hurt. I cannot stop you from leaving, I can only ask that you think before you act, my son."

"Yeah, well… thinking ain't exactly my strong point, is it?" he eased away from his father's touch and pulled the lever, opening the door. "It was Donny's."

"You are… we are all in a darkness that cannot be easily overcome, but you must have faith that in time the light will return."

"How can you be so sure?"

There was a pause, then Splinter spoke up softly. "There has never been a sunset that was not followed by a sunrise."

Raph looked into his father's eyes, but could not make himself linger under his gaze for long. "I'll be back in a little while," he said, turning away.

"Please do not ask me or your brothers to endure another loss today, Raphael."

Raph tightened his fist. "You're not gonna lose anyone else, Master," he said, still facing the tunnel. "I'm gonna make sure of that."

He stood silently for a moment, then stepped through the door, into the sewers beyond their home. He knew as he made his way into the shadows that Splinter was watching him go; he felt old eyes on him, right up until the moment when he reached a corner and stepped around it, out of his father's line of sight.

oOoOoOo

Casey jumped and fell off the couch, bouncing off the coffee table on his way to the floor. He rubbed his head and sat up, unsure if he had just heard a knock or if his mind was still pounding from the mutual beatings he and some Purple Dragons had layered on each other the night before. The sound came again -- definitely a knock, and definitely from the vicinity of the door, not the inside of his skull.

"Who's there?" he asked, standing up and dusting himself off.

"Me, Case," A familiar voice came from the other side. "Open up."

Casey wobbled to the front of the room and pushed the latch aside, opening the door. "Woah, Raph," he said, stepping out of the way to let the Turtle in. "You look like somebody dropped a building on you."

Raphael glared at him. "You don't know the half of it," he said, leaning a shoulder against a wall.

Casey looked at Raphael, then at the door, then the Turtle again. "Hey, why didn't you use the fire escape?"

"It felt like a front door kinda' day."

"Day?" he looked out the window, squinting at the light. "Yeah, what're you doin' out in the daytime, anyway?"

"We were tryin' to call you all night. You turn your phone off?"

Casey scratched the top of his head and shrugged. "Naw, I left it home. Couldn't have it goin' off while I was out tendin' to business, y'know?" he said, chuckling. "Oh, yeah, that reminds me. I was out, you know, doing my thing, and there was this big ol' ball of fire got tossed up a couple blocks from the wharf. Made a heck of a big boom, nearly knocked me off my bike. You guys see it?"

Raph nodded stiffly and looked down at his knuckles. "Yeah, we saw it."

Casey tilted his head to the side. Raphael looked angry. Of course, Raphael was often angry, but this time he looked a kind of angry that Casey couldn't quite figure out. "What's wrong, Raph?"

Raphael stepped away from the wall and walked to the window, looking out at the city. "Something happened, Case," he said, then turned around and bounded across the room. "C'mon, we're leaving." He grabbed Casey's helmet off the coffee table and threw it to him.

Casey grabbed for the helmet, but ended up juggling it from hand-to-hand a few times before getting hold of it. "Where we goin'?"

"To where you saw the big boom," he said, heading for the door. "I'll explain when we get there."


Continued...