True Forces Chapter 6
There had never been a worse time in Michelangelo's life.
He was terrified. Terrified for Leonardo. And he just couldn't seem to rationalize the guilt away.
He understood that he'd been outnumbered and outclassed. He understood that it had been a premeditated trap. He understood that he'd been damn lucky just to have gotten out nearly intact himself. He even understood that in spite of all that he'd managed to take down both Tatsu and Shredder all by himself - no small task that, and one he should have felt something positive about, but didn't.
And what Michelangelo thought about Melissa Marshall and what had happened to her only added to the burden. He could hardly even look at Megan, and it hadn't helped either that she had said it was okay - how could it possibly be okay? - and that it wasn't his fault, once he'd told the story.
Splinter had pried all the details from him as he and Megan had examined the wound on the back of his leg, cleaning out the double gash, stitching it up and dosing him with antibiotics - already, he'd thought miserably, already they were into the store of goods that Doctor Marshall had provided for them. That stuff had been meant for Leo...
The wound had helped to steady Megan, distracting her from what they told him they'd heard on the news. Michelangelo had watched the early morning news recap on the story with mixed horror and revulsion. They were trying to blame Leo. Leo, who at the time had been helpless and vulnerable himself and in no way capable of what the implied accusations were leaning toward.
Leo was still helpless and vulnerable.
And in Shredder's keeping now. Michelangelo hadn't been able to stop them.
The very thought made him shrink into his shell. He was having nightmares. He didn't want to eat and he didn't want to sleep.
He was getting tired of the speeches and the lectures and the advice from Splinter and from Donatello. He was tired of the unreadable looks that Raphael kept sending his way. Raphael had not said anything.
Raphael was upset.
None of it helped. None of it was going to help.
Shredder had Leonardo.
Melissa Marshall was dead.
The whole world knew about them now.
Michelangelo had been appalled when he'd seen the very first newscast, the one starring Allan Marshall.
That one paled to insignificance, compared to the ones that followed over the next couple of days and kept him inside his shell.
They didn't know how, and April hadn't found out, but Shredder had a hand in the media reports, one way or another. Shredder had obviously primed Allan Marshall with all the right things to say, the same night he had killed his wife. And somehow, somehow, the zoo's security system itself had been tampered with...
The police had descended on the zoo in short order, summoned by Allan Marshall himself. The media had been tipped off too, anonymous calls to every paper and television station in town, and that had to be the work of The Foot. Shredder had blown the whistle on them. Plain and simple. All material in the security archives at the zoo had been seized by the police, for further investigation.
That material had included one particularly damning videotape. It had been edited, doctored and spliced, because there should have been more to it than there was. It consisted of only a few seconds of footage and unfocused at that, footage of Michelangelo tearing across the dock of the building's service entrance and vanishing over the side. The gunfire wasn't there. The truck wasn't there. The Foot were not there.
Just him.
Just Michelangelo and a trail of his blood, enough to have been collected and analysed and to have been subsequently reported to the media as not being human in origin...
That report had killed the speculation, up to that point, that the events had been some sort of cover-up or elaborate hoax, revolving somehow around the homicide.
It had killed the speculation and given birth to a media sensation, the sort of thing that they had always hoped to avoid. The tabloids were full of it. There was video footage and actual physical evidence of some mysterious and obviously murderous non-human entity loose somewhere in the city's sewers - the trail of blood had pointed them in the right direction in that regard.
Allan Marshall was supporting the story too. The police had not granted the media access to the man again, but the statement they had released to the public had included a description of the creature that closely matched what the videotape had captured electronically.
The authorities were taking it seriously. Melissa Marshall's reputation had been impeccable. Those who knew her reported her to be down-to-earth, careful and methodical in her work, and if she had found something this highly unusual, it would have been in keeping with the quiet methodology to maintain the secrecy until she was sure of her findings. Even Allan Marshall had credentials. There was belief...
The city was taking action, assigning the Police and the Department of Public Works to investigate. The media was invited, on the condition that they would minimize the sensationalism, and there were also armed escorts, volunteers from the militia and the general populace.
Shredder had complicated their lives immeasurably.
They prepared for siege. Donatello and Casey took the initiative, scavenging old bricks and a bag of mortar, blocking up the entrance to the den and disguising the new masonry with a few buckets of sewer sludge, artistically sloshed. The entrance to the silt chamber received similar treatment, and they resorted to more circuitous crawl ways to come and go. It very nearly drove Casey mad, and he beat a hasty retreat topside as soon as the work was done, rather than remain entombed below the streets.
They had not lost their invisibility, not yet. They would go undetected. The city's underground was vast, and the searches that were being conducted were widespread but superficial. There were debates about the need, and the costs, and a whole plethora of related and unrelated social ailments that as many special interest groups thought took precedence. April was able to advise them of the general location of the sweeps being made. In fact, it was not official investigation that concerned them most...it was the investigations being made by members of the lunatic fringe that put the brickwork into place so quickly.
Their presence was being attributed to any number of interventions, ranging from the divine to the demonic, but most popularly, to extraterrestrial visitation. Those on the fringes not only believed, but came prepared, as heavily armed as the officials and likely to be a great deal less cautious and far more random in their searches.
Much of what appeared in the tabloids, under more normal circumstances, would have reduced the lot of them to gales of helpless laughter, if not outright hysteria.
But Leo wasn't there with them, and there was no hilarity in that. No more than there had been when they'd buried Melissa Marshall. The coroner's investigation had been simple and straightforward. No matter how complex the situation she'd been involved in, the manner of her death had been simplicity itself. The funeral was just as straightforward, a quiet, strictly family affair from which the media was excluded. The media did report from the sidelines, however, and was appealing to the public for assistance in locating the whereabouts of Doctor Marshall's daughter, missing since the incident and sought by the authorities for questioning, witnesses having said that she'd seen her mother that very day, if, in fact, she had not already met with a similar fate.
Megan had watched the reports, dry-eyed and grim, complaining only once about the quality of the photo that her stepfather had supplied to the authorities for public display and otherwise remaining silent on the matter of the burial. It was the demeanor she adopted, all silent, dry-eyed and grim, and Splinter was worrying about her, as were Donatello and Raphael. She had gotten her fair share of the consoling speeches, the well-meant advice and the unreadable looks too, and like Michelangelo, was tired of it all, retreating into the brass bed and sitting there with her arms wrapped around her knees and her gaze fixed absently on a stack of the mouldering paperbacks.
It was the state Michelangelo found her in, when he'd finally decided he couldn't stand it anymore, and gone to Don's room and put himself between the bed and the paperbacks, standing there, just waiting, until she had to look at him.
When she did, it was with another of the long and grim looks, one that he really thought he could have done without, and left him wondering why he'd bothered to come.
"It wasn't your fault," she said. "It wasn't, Mike." He looked around helplessly.
"But I should have-"
"No. You were doing what she said. Not your fault. That's the end of it Michelangelo."
He let his shoulders slump, and came and dropped down hard on the edge of the bed. "You don't understand either."
She found something to stare at on her thumbnail. "Yeah, Mike, I think I do. And it's more than misery loves company too." Megan reached out and touched him on the nose, contact with a fellow sufferer. "It's more than my mother. There just wasn't anything you could have done. It's Leo now."
He wasn't able to hold her eyes, grim, but compassionate in that moment. It was too true. He was consumed by thoughts of Leonardo. And there was as much or more guilt for his failure to stop Shredder as there was for the failure to protect Melissa Marshall. He opened his mouth, but her fingers were right there and she shut it again before he had the chance to gape wordlessly, because he didn't have anything to say.
"I understand Mikie," she whispered. "They can't hurt my mother anymore. Whatever else you want to say, it was quick. She probably never knew what hit her. But that can't be said for Leonardo. I don't know Leo. I don't even know if I'll ever get the chance to know him now - and that hurts. More than I thought it would. I can imagine what it must be doing to you guys..." her voice faded into a brief silence.
"You want to talk about fault? You want to play 'What If'?. What if I'd told my mom what Allan had been doing, he'd have never shown up there at the zoo when Leo was hurt. The marriage would have been over - quick divorce for sure. She'd have had her feelings hurt, but she'd be alive right now. Maybe. What if Shredder had gone right for her throat then? Or mine? Without Allan around, I probably wouldn't have come with you down here, there wouldn't have been a reason. I don't know. But Allan and the twins wouldn't even have come into it. My mother and I might not have come into it. Might have moved out of the country again, if there'd been a divorce. Should I keep going Mike? Could go on playing 'What If' until morning. What if my mother hadn't been there that night? What if the crocodiles had come in the next morning? What if there just hadn't been anyone there to help Leo out? He'd have been gone, a week and a half ago and none of this would have happened at all..."
He had just stared at her, listening to the hurt in her voice, a deep echo of what he was going through himself, her eyes a mirror of the suffering. She did understand. She did. He still couldn't find any words, none came, and for Michelangelo that was a strange experience. Her fingers were still resting there on his nose, and he let one hand come up to squeeze hers and then he reached out and gave her a hug, one that she returned, long and inconsolable on both sides. It didn't change anything. It just made him decide that there was an awful lot of truth in the old adage.
Misery really did love company.
~o~
Nothing. Still, there was nothing.
April O'Neil was not even sure exactly what she was waiting for. She was staring out the windows of her corner office, the one that Charles had promised her and delivered before he'd packed up and moved to a less hazardous town with Danny all bundled up and sent ahead of him, a month prior to last Christmas. She missed Charles, more than she had thought that she would, and wondered idly who it was he was hitting on for dates now that she was safely buried in his past. The Foot had scared Charles Pennington badly, once he'd learned the full extent of what she had uncovered and what Danny had barely extricated himself from...
Smart Chuckie, she could not help thinking then. Smarter than some of us...
She would have to write to Danny, would have to let him know what was going on, hoped that it would all resolve itself into a happy ending. Danny wrote to her on a semi-regular basis, and he always asked how the guys were. She was surprised she hadn't received a call from Danny about the video clip...he would have recognized the alien creature for one of the Turtles, unfocused though the clip had been. It had made national news. Danny never had been much for current events though, and Charles wouldn't make the connection. Neither she or Danny had told him about the Turtles.
They're not good Danny. Not at all good.
April was sick with worry for Leonardo, and hurting for the rest of them, all of her Turtles, and Splinter too, cut to the quick and bleeding for their brother, who was beyond their help, as long as Shredder maintained his silence. It was worse, in a lot of ways, than it had been last year, when it had been Splinter gone missing. Splinter had been preparing them for his eventual absence for some time, even then, but with Leo it was different.
The Turtles were not and never had been prepared to be without one of themselves.
She was maintaining a scrapbook and busied herself with scanning through today's load of published nonsense concerning the Alien-In-The-Sewers-Affair. It was all so silly, so ridiculous, all so pointless. But there was not a single thing to be done except bear with it, unless it was to expose the real truth, and her friends had enough to deal with at the moment without even broaching that subject. Still, she was considering it, had it all planned out in her mind, the headlines, the text, the video footage. There was nothing mercenary about it. Their secret was out, to some degree, and April would much have preferred the truth to all the patent rubbish.
Things could get worse yet. She wanted to leave a record of some sort, had been contemplating it ever since they'd learned that Shredder was on the prowl again.
April was a target too, and she knew it. She had composed notes, put them in envelopes and almost gotten as far as a safety deposit box with them. But she had always torn them up, burned them or simply dumped the files from her word processor. Such notes had, in the final analysis, come to seem too much like self-fulfilling prophecies...
Now she was wishing it done. She would talk to Splinter, that was all, get his opinion. The circumstances were changed, certain attitudes were going to have to change too, if things went any further downhill.
Splinter would see the sense in it, pragmatic, when it came to rock bottom.
There was a tap at the wide window beside her door. April glanced up, and her heart skipped a beat. It was the kid from the mailroom, and he had a small package in his hands. She motioned him in, her pulse aflutter, smiled and thanked him for the delivery as she ushered him out with a kind banality. The package wasn't heavy, wasn't any bigger than a box of business cards might have been. April closed the door and punched the lock. She half-shut the vertical blinds lining the wide window, so as not to arouse suspicion about what she might/might not have been up to behind the closed doors...there were busybodies she would just as soon not alert at the moment-
This has got to be it. April thought. It's just gotta be.
Had anyone told her a month ago she'd have been looking forward to receiving a gift from the Shredder she would have killed herself laughing. She slipped her letter-opener carefully along the edge, loosened the paper wrapping to reveal a plain white box. She peeled the lid back. Inside, there was a neatly folded red headband, its embroidered glyph centered on the fabric that the open box had presented.
This is it!
April's hands had gone sweaty. She picked out the headband, found a single sheet of folded paper under it.
She took that out too, hesitated for a moment before opening it to see just what it said. She drew in a deep breath, closed her eyes and said a silent prayer for Leo.
Then she leaned back in her seat with the note, and began to read.
~o~
It was a moment's pleasant sensation.
Splinter leaned his head into the hand that Megan McLaine had extended to scratch the sensitive spot behind his ear. He remembered Tang Shen, and times long ago, when such pleasantries had been a more common kind of occurrence. Tang Shen had been fond of him, and had, if he was quiet, sometimes allowed him to sit on her lap while Yoshi was out, and would pet him absently until Yoshi came home.
Things had been simple then. Yoshi and Shen and Splinter had been happy.
Oroku Saki had spoiled it all.
And thoughts of Oroku Saki spoiled it now, too.
Splinter let out a long sigh, and shook his head free of the idle and inattentive motions that Megan was still making with the fingers of one hand. It was another kind of commiseration for her, finding another suffering soul to sit near. Last night it had been Michelangelo, who had gone to her to apologize again - they had talked, and he had caught the gist of it because his ears were keen, but it had still had little effect on Michelangelo's dismal outlook. Michelangelo had stayed with her, drained and exhausted, until he'd fallen asleep. Splinter had gone to investigate that silence, and found Megan still there with him, sitting quietly with one hand laid on the Turtle's head and a deeply sorrowful expression in her eyes.
Splinter had retreated silently before she'd seen him and she had eventually slept too. He had told Donatello and Raphael to let them be...their brother needed the sleep and so did Megan McLaine. Raphael had nodded without expression and Donatello had shrugged...it was meaningless and they knew it. Ordinarily, discovery in such a state would have earned Michelangelo a merciless ribbing, but no one had even batted an eye when he'd later emerged, still disconsolate and extremely embarrassed and taken himself off to the silt chamber to sulk further.
Donatello had gone after him, and come back a bit later to shrug wordlessly at Raphael. Presently, those two were both digging, widening a crawl way, keeping themselves occupied.
Or that was what they had been doing.
He still heard well enough, around the scratching, and there had been shouting. He would keep an ear out, but otherwise let the Turtles settle it their own way.
"Mike isn't handling this very well," Megan said.
"No. He is not." Splinter sighed again. "Michelangelo has never been hurt like this before. He feels responsible. He feels he has failed. And he is very worried about Leonardo, just as Donatello and Raphael are. They are all hurt."
Her hand drifted up to his ear again. "The other two seem to be coping all right."
Splinter looked down, found himself leaning into her hand again. "You have qualified that statement correctly...the key phrase is 'seem to be'. They are hiding their pain better, that is all." The girl did not know the Turtles well enough to make such a judgement.
Donatello's frustrations had found an outlet in industry...the bricklaying had been distraction as much as necessity, and Donatello, looking for things to do after that, had started in on excavations that would widen the tunnel to the silt chamber for easier access now that they'd sealed up the sewer doorways. Donatello, always the rational one, knew there was nothing he could do to change the situation, so he went about doing something else. It was busywork though, all of it. And Raphael -
Raphael had gone all silent and unreadable and Splinter didn't like it. Raphael never bothered to hide his emotions. He never sat on them. If Raphael was happy, he smiled and laughed. If he wasn't, he frowned and growled. If enraged, he howled and stormed. Frustration he took out physically, on the punching bag or whichever of his brothers was willing to tangle with him. He was emotionally demonstrative, and would sometimes dish out hugs that later embarrassed him.
Splinter was not sure how to read Raphael's current impassive facade. It was frightening Michelangelo and confusing Donatello. He could not decide himself if it was a sign of an increased maturity or of a deep inability to deal with the situation at all. Splinter could well imagine the emotional warfare Raphael was going through. The rage and anger he was feeling for Shredder was up against the pervasive anguish and worry for Leonardo, the lesser but more immediate concerns for Michelangelo and to some degree, for Megan McLaine too.
Raphael was taking it all personally, and it was far too much for one lone and over-reactive Turtle to deal with.
"And what about Splinter? How's he holding up?" Megan asked him softly. "Who's taking care of Splinter?"
"Right now," Splinter responded. "You seem to be. Please, you must not mistake the Turtles, Megan, they are preoccupied. It is not that they do not care." It was another thing she could not guess at properly, as she did not know Leonardo.
The other three were presently lost and adrift...they had lost their compass -
"I didn't...that wasn't what I meant." The gentle scratching stopped. "They love you a lot. And Leo too."
"You are...perceptive."
"It's obvious." Megan shrugged the comment off. "I think...I think that's kinda nice to see," she added quietly, lowering her eyes and resuming the scratching again.
He remembered she had come from an almost intolerable domestic situation herself. There was a note of envy in the quiet tone, for something that she had lost, probably when her father had died, certainly when Melissa McLaine had remarried. Megan had gone to incredible lengths to preserve what she had left with her mother...
And lost that too.
Splinter reached up to take her hand, taking it from behind his ear to press it gently between his palms. "Your mother," he began. "Thought a great deal of you, Megan. She loved you. I do not think she had the chance to tell you that. That too, was obvious." Her eyes met his, clear and sane and steady.
"I know what you're trying to say...thank you. But we parted on good terms, and that might not have been obvious either, whatever the Turtles might have said about it. We had an understanding. Always did, I think. I don't have any regrets for things that either were or weren't said. That just wasn't the way we worked."
"Megan..." he said, with another earnest squeeze of his hands. "You must grieve for her, you must not hold it back."
Her eyes came to his again. Sane and steady. "It's not time yet. There's too much upset around here as it is." She stopped for a deep breath, looked away, toward the tunnel that Raphael and Donatello were working on. "When my father died, I had to be the strong one. My mother was a wreck. I had to be strong for the both of us. If I could do it then, I can do it now. Don't think I'm not upset. I just can't go to pieces right now. It's that simple. There's too many more important things to consider right now. You must know that Splinter. You must."
She saw clearly. She thought clearly.
A core of steel, he thought again, recalling what he had said to Raphael about her, that first day she'd come into their den.
The right thinking. The girl was gifted.
"Megan McLaine," he told her softly. "When you are ready, I am here. We will leave it at that."
She managed a wan smile and squeezed his hands in response. "Okay." Then she pulled her hands free and reached up to his ears again. It almost seemed to be a compulsive action with her, that need to touch. Things had gone quiet once more from the direction of the silt chamber, had been quiet for some time now, in fact. He was going to have to speak to Michelangelo again, and Raphael, if Raphael would listen. I must make them both listen, he thought, they must-
Splinter looked up, distracted all at once, as if he had heard a faint and distant noise. Then he knew, suddenly, what was going on in the silt chamber. It made his heart ache.
"Megan," he said, standing abruptly, shaking her off. "You must excuse me. The Turtles are-" it could not be explained, not easily, or quickly. "Excuse me, I must go to them." He bowed slightly, a courtesy he had learned from Master Yoshi, and did not neglect, even now, when he was in a hurry.
The Turtles were getting themselves straightened out. They needed their Master. And their Master, he wasn't at all ashamed to admit, needed them too...
~o~
He was angry, and getting angrier.
Physical exertion wasn't helping this time, and neither was the dirt that Raphael was getting in his eyes from all the digging.
"Don't do that Raph," Donatello cautioned. "Don't go so fast - you're gonna bring the roof down on us if you don't take it easy."
Raph paused, holding the swing he'd been about to make with the pick-axe at the dirt wall. He dropped it, and kicked it aside, stopping on the advice to shore up that part of the crawl way that he had dug out, bracing it with an old piece of timber. The timber was full of slivers, and he got one, painfully, into the palm of his hand as he shoved it into place.
"Son of a - " Raphael growled, spitting the invective. His mood hadn't improved any more than Mike's had. He moved nearer to the bare bulb hanging on the end of a long extension cord, the sole source of light that they were working by. It was hard to see the sliver, under the grime on his hands.
He didn't need the additional irritation.
Donatello tossed his own shovel away, kicked at the loose dirt under his feet and sat down hard, putting his shell to the concrete slab that they had unearthed and which they were using as the left-hand wall of the tunnel. They weren't sure what edifice it had originally belonged to, nor did they care...it was just buried, and at the moment, convenient for them.
It wasn't like Don to quit in the middle of something. Don was frustrated too -
"Why are we doing this?" Raph demanded, and he put a lot of the hostility he was feeling into the question. He was still trying to fish the bit of wood out of his hand. There was dirt under his fingernails though, and he swore again when he failed to snag the tiny end of it. "Gonna need tweezers," he muttered.
"I don't know, Raph." Donatello answered him sourly. "For the fun of it maybe?"
"It'd go faster if Mike was in here."
"He wants to be left alone."
"And since when does Mike get whatever Mike wants?" He gave up on the palm. It didn't hurt that much. Raphael looked over to where Donatello had planted himself, and moved to join him, sinking down next to his brother in the dirt, forcing himself into some semblance of congeniality. He was trying very hard not to give into the anger.
"What Mike wants is for the other night not to have happened. He wants Leonardo back. He wants Melissa Marshall to be alive instead of dead. Mike isn't getting much of anything that he wants right now Raph."
"Get serious Donnie! He can't have any of that - no more than we can."
"So we can let him alone, can't we?"
"Not doing him any favors by it."
"He'll come around," Don said. "Eventually. I've talked to him."
"Eventually?" Raph repeated. "Eventually? How long do we have to wait? He's - "
"He's feeling guilty."
"You think I don't know that?!" Raphael picked up and hurled a rock down the dark tunnel. "I know all about guilt!"
Don closed his eyes with a long sigh. There wasn't much to say.
Raphael understood about guilt. He'd gone through pretty much the same thing last year, when Splinter had gone missing.
Because Raphael had been the one that had unwittingly led The Foot Clan to the old den.
"No one said you didn't." Don said quietly. "But - "
"I didn't go catatonic!" Raphael had suffered from a severe inability to sit still for even five minutes. He remembered the ceaseless pacing around April's apartment, and fighting with Leo -
Leo... It hurt to the point of pain, when he thought about Leo. Raph was close to Leo, closer than he'd known, and Leo was gone, beyond his reach and help, trapped somewhere unknown and at the mercy of an enemy that possessed little, if any, of that quality at all.
"He's not catatonic, he's just - " Don's voice trailed off. There wasn't anything he could say that all of them weren't feeling to some degree. He heaved another sigh. "I'll talk to him again," he offered.
"It hasn't helped. Why bother?"
"Well, it's more than you've done!" Donatello picked up a stone of his own and whipped it after the one that Raph had tossed. "All you've done is scare him silly Raph, skulking around and staring at him! He thinks you're blaming him! Or didn't you think stop to think about what you were doing - "
"He ought to know better!" Raphael was startled, lost his civilized veneer and dropped his voice to a hissing whisper. "I'll get him straightened out." Raph rolled to his feet. "Right now!"
"He's upset Raph, don't - "
"I'm upset too!" It only took a few wide strides for Raph to disappear into the darkened part of the tunnel, to where it narrowed back down to a crawl way.
"Raph!"
He heard Donatello shouting after him as he went down onto his knees. Nobody had the monopoly on upset. He was upset, Don was upset. Of course Mike was upset, but so was Splinter, and Megan McLaine had more reason than all of them put together to be upset.
Raphael clenched his hand into a fist and pounded the dirt wall with frustration. He sucked air between his teeth in pain.
It hurt his hand, smacking the wall like that, because of the sliver in his palm. Raphael forced himself to relax, counted slowly until the anger receded and came under tighter control again. He did not want to lose his temper.
But he would, would let it go, if that was what it was going to take to put Michelangelo back into a proper frame of mind.
When Raphael reached the silt chamber, Michelangelo was still wallowing in his own little pool of misery and was showing no signs of snapping out of it. At least, they had tried. Mike had had every opportunity. But the initial speech from Splinter had only helped overnight. Don had tried the quiet, reasonable approach, to little avail. Meg had even talked to him. It was his turn now, and his approach certainly wasn't going to be a subtle one.
Mike had taken to sleeping with his head retracted inside his shell, something Raph hadn't seen him do for a long time and something that Raph himself considered a bad sign. It was that damned ostrich attitude again...Michelangelo didn't want to face up to reality.
He knew how to fix that.
Raphael knocked on Mike's back, rapping his knuckles on the upper carapace, right behind the spot that Mike's head would be occupying an inch on the other side. "Com'on out of there Mikie. And I mean right now. No foolin', dude."
For a moment there was no response, other than a tightening of the muscles across Mike's shoulders. He wasn't sleeping. "What for?" came the muffled reply.
"I'm gonna talk to you, that's what for."
Mike came out far enough to give him a tired stare. "Don already did." Mike told him. "There's nothing to talk about, Raph. Just go away. I want to be alone." He obviously considered that the end of the discussion, and retreated inside the shell again.
But he wasn't dealing with Donatello this time.
Raphael took two steps back, all the space he needed. "Dammit Mikie, I said come out of there!"
Raphael sent a solid roundhouse kick at Michelangelo, one that took his brother off the top of the old pine bench against the wall of their exercise area and left him sprawled on the floor. Of course, Mike hadn't seen it coming.
Again, Mike came out far enough just to glare at him balefully, this time with his eyes narrowed and a plain 'no fair' written across his brow. He swore once and rudely, and started stubbornly back to where he'd come from.
But Raph wasn't having any of that nonsense. One hand shot out to grip the upper rim of Mike's carapace, centered behind the neck, his knuckles wrapped there and interfering with Mike's withdrawal sufficiently to make his brother growl low in the back of his throat. The growl just raised Raph's own ire, and he hauled Mike to his feet with a jerk.
"I said to come out of there!" Raph was snarling now, truly angered by the reaction. "You're not gonna hide from this Mikie! We're going to get Leo and you're coming with us!"
"We don't even know where Leo is!" Mike belted his hand away from the shell, putting force into it.
"Doesn't matter. We'll find him."
"Oh. Will we? And just how the hell do you propose to do that?"
"Won't have to. Shredder's gonna tell us where he is. Shredder doesn't want just Leo - he wants all of us!"
"Wants us all dead!"
"We're going to get Leo back!"
"How?!" Mike was shouting now.
"I don't know and it doesn't matter! We'll get him!"
"Dead." Mike repeated. "Since when doesn't dead matter?"
Raphael hit Mike again, a quick punch to center-shell that put Mike's back against the wall beside the pine bench and pinned him there. He'd had enough of that sort of talk...Mike was not going to give Leo up like that, he was not.
"Dead?" Raph echoed in a low monotone. "You want dead, Mikie?" The monotone didn't last, his voice started to climb in volume toward a shout. "You don't snap out of this and I'm the one that's gonna take you apart and trade your useless carcass back to Shredder for Leo 'cause right now you're no damn good to me, and you're no damn good to Don and you sure as hell aren't any damn good to Leo!" Raphael dropped him in disgust, turned and got as far as three angry strides away.
Michelangelo hit him hard from behind, a fierce tackle that took him to the brick floor in a movement that also fell under the general heading of No Fair. At the moment, Raphael didn't care about fair - it was the most action he'd seen out of Michelangelo in three days. He reacted in kind, because he was angry, and he wanted Mikie to be angry too. Mike needed a little rage therapy. Raph understood angry, better than any of his brothers-but especially better than Mike, who didn't deal well with his own violent emotions because he just didn't experience them often enough. Mike loved a good fight, yeah, but he seldom took one personally. He just didn't involve much of himself in any fight. Battle was very much a challenging and usually fun game for Michelangelo and it always had been.
Up until the minute that Shredder had made Leonardo the stakes in the game, and Mikie had lost the throw...
It was suppressed rage and it was deep hurt and it was raw frustration. Raph scuffled with Mike, expending his own anger in a few careful manoeuvres that kept Mike busy while still being cautious of the half-healed injury that Shredder had given him. Raph knew how to think through the anger, knew how to dissipate it, and when needed, how to use the energy. Mike didn't, and he wasn't fighting at all well, pounding and flailing at him with a surprising lack of co-ordination-Raph could see that Mike knew it too. That was a further frustration and one that pushed Mike right to the breaking point. He had gone past the thinking part and was into just feeling now, an intense and painful place that Raph had been before. Mike's voice was rising, a guttural sound that was desperate wail as much as angry howl. He swung at Raph again, and Raph caught the arm to pull his brother into a headlock that fast became an expressive hug.
"Mikie," he whispered, close to Michelangelo's ear. "I didn't mean it, Mikie...you know that. Wouldn't trade you for the whole damn world, dude."
The fight went out of Mike so suddenly that the hug literally became support as his legs buckled. "Raph - " Mike's voice turned his name into a hoarse plea.
"It's okay, Mikie," Raph said quietly, rubbing the top of Mike's head, an action that was reassurance and acceptance and affection all at once. Mike buried his face into the crook of his elbow, wet with tears, his shoulders shaking and breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Raph - how are we gonna - "
"Told you already. Doesn't matter." Raphael interrupted. "But we need you, Mike. That matters. Can't get Leo back without you. Can't. You hear me Mikie? Leo needs you. And Don needs you. And so do I."
The shaking subsided slowly. "But - "
"Shut up." Raph cuffed him gently. "I don't want to hear it."
Raphael looked up, saw Donatello standing near the crawl way and couldn't guess how long he'd been there. Probably he'd heard the shouting, probably had been there nearly the whole time.
That didn't matter either.
Raph extended his other arm, and Donatello came, no less hurt and suffering than they were, and made it a three way embrace. It was too easy sometimes to forget about Don, who was always the quiet one, unobtrusive and rationalizing his emotions into his own idea of the proper perspective. It was easy to overlook Don because Don was always there. Donatello was their anchor in any storm, solid ground beneath their feet. You could lean on Don and never know it, Raph realized, and he'd been leaning heavily, needing that support.
They sank to the bricks, all three of them, into a tangled heap of limb and shell, drawing their heads together in a silent, mutually supportive huddle. No one spoke. It was all touch, all eye contact - they were beyond that need for words.
Raphael felt that understanding, recognized and drew on his brothers' strengths and forgave their weaknesses, just as they did his. Splinter had talked about this, about needs before, but it was one of the first times they'd ever had to put it into practice.
It hurt, without Leo there, but it helped immeasurably too.
Raphael lost all sense of time and didn't care. They would take as long as they needed.
They knew what had to be done next.
"Hey dudes," Mike whispered, after a long while.
"Let's concentrate," Don added quietly, a common thought at that moment.
"Leo." Raph breathed, finishing it.
The three Turtles focused, pooling all their skill and resources, and then went hunting for their lost brother in the only effective way they knew how...
~o~
The room was small. There were no windows and only one heavily barred door. The walls were old brick, a non-descript gray in color and they were still partially covered with crumbling plaster. There was no ceiling to speak of - it was open, all duct-work, wiring and pipes against a background of rafters darkened with age. The duct-work was a recent addition and it included a large vent that obviously belonged to the air conditioning system. A steady stream of cooled air had been blowing across Leonardo's shoulders ever since he'd regained enough lucidity to realize it and probably long before that too.
Leo felt sluggish. He still hurt, but the pain had become a deep, dull and distracting ache now, rather than the knifing fire he recalled from a few days back. That it had been a few days was purest speculation...he didn't know how long it had been because he had lost all track of time in the sleep and the haze of sedation. He didn't know if it was night or day and there were no clues to guess by in this place.
He wanted to sleep. The cold air made him want to hibernate. The chill environment didn't discomfort him the way it might have bothered a human, but it was an inconvenience and a potential hazard because it slowed his reflexes considerably. Not that his reflexes were worth a damn at the moment in any case...he wasn't fit to fight or to flee. He was weak. He was hungry. He was thirsty too. And in light of those conditions he decided that the cold was a blessing - the lower metabolic rate reduced his need for sustenance.
It was the only positive thought that had come to him.
Leo was frightened. To fight and/or to flee weren't even options because he was under chained restraint in spite of his physical state.
Shredder had taken him prisoner.
It was like a long, drawn out nightmare. He knew that he'd been drugged, heavily, in retrospect. On waking, he'd felt extremely strange, experiencing a neither here nor there suspension of rational thought and emotional response that had left him indifferent to his change in fortune for some time.
Shredder had come, and stood, just watching him, and at first, it hadn't bothered him at all. Tatsu had come and gone. Black Foot Clan dogi were the common uniform. He'd even been seeing double at one point, in some hallucinatory fashion, because the images he'd seen had moved independently.
He missed the heat lamps, and wondered whatever had happened to the nice lady Doctor and to Splinter and to his brothers. He wanted to know how he'd come to be in Shredder's possession at all. Leo was certain that he'd heard someone telling him that he was going to go home...
But he didn't know, and that made him more afraid. Shredder was involved, and that meant murder and mayhem. Death and destruction. As an enemy, Shredder was not subtle. Someone had been with him all the time. Someone that Shredder would have had to get past, somehow. And had.
And had -
Leo let his gaze wander across the ceiling again, trying to lose the fear in the maze of ducts and wiring and pipes, or at least to lose the thinking about it. The ventilators hummed monotonously and he concentrated on the steady, white noise of the air-conditioning. He focused on clearing his mind of the creeping despair that was threatening to overtake his thinking. Splinter would have advised it.
The pipes made him think of home.
Home and home and home-
It hit him like a hammer-blow when he realized why, and he concentrated all the harder.
Oh, it was Them! It was Mike and Don and Raph!
They were out there, all three of them, they were all okay and they were reaching for him and -
It hurt. Oh it hurt because he wasn't there with them. He could sense them, every one distinctly, each easy to identify. Don, solid as a brick wall. Mike, the free spirit among them. And Raph. Behind them both, Raphael, who was the powerhouse -
Leo squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing the hurt, willing himself to be elsewhere, needing what his three brothers were trying to send, feeding him strength and hope and -
Multiple bolts crashed and the door opened, a hammer-blow of a different sort that jerked his attention away and brought the fear back to haunt him. He lost contact and wanted to moan.
It was Shredder. Accompanied this time by a man with an icy stare and a professional detachment about him that was another kind of scary again. That one began to unpack the kit he'd dropped from over one shoulder, the nature of which he realized when he saw the syringes and the vials and the assortment of small glass tubes...
Leo swore inwardly, even as he began to fortify his will against whatever the oncoming assault was going to entail.
Shredder was scrutinizing him, watching his eyes carefully.
Leonardo met the gaze, and didn't flinch. He held it for some time, damned if he would lose a staring match...
Shredder approached him slowly, his arms folded and one finger tapping the side of a razor-edged spine on the opposite forearm guard. The staring bout endured, even when Shredder stopped the tapping and stretched out the long blades of that particular gauntlet to position them over the damaged area of his shell. The tips of the blades touched lightly, without pressure. Leo still refused to break the eye lock, even when the pressure began to climb gently, sharpening the dull ache and rekindling the fire in his gut.
Oh damn it all to hell, doesn't the bastard ever blink? Leo kept his expression impassive, and took another tack.
"What do you want, Shredder?"
One of Shredder's eyebrows went up, and then he did blink, moderately surprised or maybe amused by the directness of the question. It ended the eye lock and the pressure ceased as Shredder turned to pace around the table to which he was so very well secured.
"Why, mutant," Shredder said mildly. "I have come to inquire as to your comfort. Is there anything I can get for you?"
Oh, sure. Leo thought, knowing much, much better than that. "Pizza'd go down kinda nice," he responded amiably.
The eyes went quizzical, only for an instant, as if Shredder couldn't decide if he was serious or not. The pacing continued. Then Shredder went on, as if the first question had never been posed.
"Leonardo," he addressed him again, very softly.
He knows my name! A chill went through Leonardo. How!? He had too many questions lacking answers, and he did not want to ask, did not want Shredder to know just how desperate he really was to know...
"As to what I want, mutant," Shredder stated, and paused, meeting his eyes again. "I want a great many things. Most of them you will give to me, one way or another. And not the least of those things is information."
Leo's only response was to clamp his mouth shut tightly.
The action made Shredder smile behind the mask - his eyes showed it, humour there in their dark brown depths. "The information I seek now," Shredder told him, "I doubt that you possess. I doubt it very much. Nevertheless," he continued, making another circuit of the table. "I will have answers, mutant, and you will supply the raw materials for the research that will provide them."
Research! Leo understood then just why that other man was there, waiting patiently over in the corner with his kit in hand.
Shredder was limping.
Leo thought again of his brothers, wondered what exactly had happened and which of them had been with him. He knew now that they were all right, all of them, and that they were together. The knowledge had removed one of the bigger fears - that perhaps Shredder had taken more than one of them captive. Raw material. Leo did not like the sound of that. No, not at all...
"As to the information you do possess," Shredder went on casually. "You can put your mind at rest. I am not going to trouble you with questions about where your friends might be found. I have no need of such answers."
Shredder paused, waiting, but Leo did not rise to the bait, did not ask why Shredder did not want to know.
"Another thing, mutant, that I want, is to re-unite you with your companions. I should think that you would like that."
He's limping. And he was trying hard to disguise the limp too. He should quit pacing around if he doesn't want it to be so obvious, Leo thought.
"Leg hurt, Shredder?"
The pacing stopped abruptly, fire springing into the eyes. Rage, in fact. Oh yes, that was a sore spot for sure.
One of his brothers had been responsible for the limp then, beyond question. Leo struggled to recall who had been with him, but it was all such a blur. Who? Who had it been? Dammit, Leo, think!
Mike. It had been Mike. Mike came immediately to mind - Leo adjusted his expression to one of mock sympathy. "Took a 'chuk, huh?" he commented. "Yeah, that would hurt - lucky you didn't break someth - "
Shredder's fist came down hard on his chest, not over the damaged plate directly, but with force enough to send his whole system into shock. The previous gentle pressure had brought fire - the solid thump that Shredder treated him to now was enough to trigger a violent explosion of pain that sent his mind reeling into transient darkness. Then there were lights and colors, dancing and glinting off of the metallic surfaces of the helmet and the faceplate looming close over Leo's face.
"Do not be flippant with me, mutant!" Shredder hissed at him, dangerous and low. "I have already extended an invitation to your friends to meet with me, to affect an exchange. An exchange of your precious self for other, more desirable commodities which they have appropriated. Do not provoke me, mutant! Otherwise they will come to find only a corpse for their troubles - or does the term vivisection hold no meaning for you?!"
It did. And Leo had difficulty suppressing the shudder that went through the nausea and the dizziness. It was not bluff. Shredder meant it. Such threats were valid, here in this place.
"You won't trap them!" Leo managed to gasp. He was having trouble drawing air in. The knives were back again, stabbing at him. "You won't Shredder! They'll never trust you enough to - "
"It is not a matter of trust!" Shredder interrupted him in a tone that cut like sharp ice. "Trust and honour are not even going to enter into it! They will come, and they will bring all that I have asked. And then, mutant, then I will have everything." The mask came very close to his snout, the eyes boring holes in him. "Everything, Leonardo," Shredder added, very softly. "And you will not have to die all alone..."
Shredder straightened, to look down at him from what seemed a very great height. It was not possible to keep the fear out. Leo went cold and sick with it, knowing that Shredder meant every word. It was true. His brothers, Splinter, Casey and even - oh, hell - even April, would come. Every one of them, would come, would try anything to redeem him...
He would have, for any one of them.
Shredder knew it. Shredder turned, leaving him to think about it, leaving the room as the professional with the kit closed on him, backed up by two large and burly Foot in their black dogis.
He clung to the knowledge that his friends would know it as well, and take precautions, but there was a certain hopelessness in that too. The one and only effective precaution would be not to come at all.
And that, Leo knew, was the one thing they would not do...
~o~
"No - dammit!" Raphael wanted to wail aloud. They had found and then lost Leonardo, found him and then -
"He's okay." Donatello said. "He's still okay." His voice was weak with relief, quiet like Don usually was but there was a tremor in the tone that wasn't normally there. Okay was a relative concept right now, under the circumstances.
"He's scared," Mike added. They had all felt that. "Leo's scared!" It wasn't an easy thought.
Leonardo and scared together in the same sentence was a contradiction in terms.
"I - " another voice began from behind them. "I would be even more worried if Leonardo was not frightened - "
Raph looked up. Splinter was approaching their huddle with slow, almost hesitant steps, as if he didn't want to intrude.
"Master..." Raph whispered, and they made room for him, opening their tight little circle to include Splinter, who was suddenly looking old and frail and as badly in need of support as they all were. Suffering too, Raph thought. Why do we always expect Splinter to be so immune to it all? "Master, we found him, we found Leo, but - "
The huddle closed again. Splinter touched them, was hugged and touched in return. "My sons," he whispered. "Ah, my sons, you surpass me...you have done what I have feared even to try, in seeking Leonardo like this - "
Michelangelo was gripping one of Splinter's hands tightly. "No, Master - don't even say that! You're not afraid of anything, Master Splinter!"
It was something else that Mike didn't really want to face up to, that Splinter wasn't so young anymore, not what he used to be...there was gray in the whiskers, more than even Raph had realized. That was not an easy thought either. He blinked once himself, forced another look at Master Splinter and saw age there. It was more than the winter and the working over that Splinter had gotten from The Foot. It was mortality slapping him in the face again.
"Michelangelo - " Splinter murmured Mike's name softly, returning the pressure in the hand that was squeezing his own. "Michelangelo, you overestimate me. I have been in Shredder's keeping. All our fears for Leonardo are warranted and I am afraid - "
"We're gonna get him back!" Raphael hissed, interrupting Splinter, which was something he never did. "We'll get Leo out of there!"
"We'll bring Leo home." Donatello repeated the intent, quietly again, but with conviction. "Shredder's not gonna keep him."
Splinter let out breath. "My sons, we do not know - "
"Doesn't matter!" Michelangelo burst out, startling Raphael with the force he put into the denial. Raph wanted to hug him. "We'll find him. We will, Master."
There was pain in the soft brown eyes. Splinter's gaze went around the tight circle, blinking back moisture at all of them. "I am coming with you," he said.
A hundred objections leapt to the fore of Raph's mind, a hundred different and every last one of them valid reasons why Splinter should not come, but they were all wiped out by a single, overriding thought.
They would go to get Leonardo back, him and his brothers. Nothing, nothing, would prevent them, unless it was the thought that perhaps none of them might come back and thereby leave Splinter alone. That was there, in their Master's eyes, that the attempt might well prove suicidal, impossible, for all their willingness and conviction to succeed. It was Shredder they were dealing with, dangerous at the best of times, but surely lethal, when in a position with a winning advantage from the start. Splinter hardly wanted to lose them all...
No, Splinter was not immune to the suffering, not at all, but was torn with anguish between sacrificing Leonardo or sacrificing the lot of them for little more than the slimmest of hopes that they might win Leonardo back.
But still, he was going to let them go, because to stop them would only be to give them a long life of agonizing doubt - they would not have tried -
I am coming with you.
It was the only thing Splinter could have said, and it had been heartfelt and deep. For him to stay behind would just have been a different and much slower kind of suicide.
Don was the first to lean forward and throw his arms around the old Rat, burying his snout in the relatively thick fur at the back of Splinter's neck. Mike's head butted into their Master's chest and Raph had to settle for flinging his arms around the whole lot. They would get Leonardo back, all of them.
Or they would die trying, that was all there was to it.
He was not sure just how long it lasted. Forever, and yet not long enough. Only until there was noise from the direction of the crawlway. Raphael looked up, having the best vantage, there on the outside of the huddle.
April had come, was just standing up, brushing loose dirt from her jeans. Meg was behind her, glancing uneasily toward their group, worried about intruding, from the look on her face. There was another someone he was going to have to talk to, he thought, but the grim set of April's face pulled his attention that way. She had something in her hand. A small package, and a red headband.
Raphael nudged the huddle apart with his heart beating furiously.
Shredder had finally broken his silence. April had the message, the one that Raphael had told Michelangelo they could expect. They were ready now, for whatever Shredder had in mind.
"Where?" Raph asked from across the brick floor, cold and steady, in spite of his racing pulse. "When?"
"Quarantine building, back at the zoo. Saturday night." April answered, her own voice set and determined,
Raph glanced once around the loosening huddle, met all the other eyes there as the information was digested. When he spoke, it was for the entire group.
"He's got himself a date."
~o~
Even tweezers didn't suffice.
Raphael frowned and swore tamely, the mild invective a reflection of his improved mood. The day had proven highly cathartic for just about everyone. But the sliver of wood was still embedded in his hand and it had worked its way more deeply into the center of his palm. It was bigger than he'd thought once he'd rinsed the dirt away, and the palm was starting to throb around it. He shouldn't have left it for so long, but there had been too much happening to worry about an inconsequence like a sliver...
He knew better than to ignore it though. Trivialities, in the sewers, could sometimes have very serious consequences. He hadn't forgotten the time that Leo had managed to get a tiny piece of metallic shrapnel into his heel and had left it too long before bringing it to anyone's attention. They'd only been eight, and Leo hadn't thought that it was important. The foot had festered and swollen and he'd given himself a nasty case of blood poisoning. Leo had been real sick with it, and Raph still remembered the lecture that they'd collectively received from Splinter on the subject.
Raphael wanted the sliver out. It was going to interfere with the way he handled his sai and he was going to need every bit of skill he possessed, come Saturday night. Splinter had already gone to bed though and he didn't want to wake him - Splinter was just as emotionally drained as everyone else, and he felt it more these days. Splinter would need the rest, especially if he wanted to -
What's the matter with me? Splinter's not the only one that can handle this.
And he wanted to talk to Meg anyway.
He found her in the brass bed, mulling over printouts again. At the moment, Don was bunking in with Mike, and both of them were asleep. Michelangelo needed it - he'd missed far too much sleep over the past few days. Don had been sleeping badly too, and he hadn't been alone in that. Raph was tired. He wanted to get the sliver taken care of and hit the sack himself.
She looked up from the printouts when he appeared there beside the privacy screen, gave him a tiny smile in greeting. "Hi," she said. "What's up, Raph?"
He looked down at his palm. "Got a sliver I can't get out," he began. "I thought that maybe - "
Megan abandoned the paper and came to see, taking his hand and pulling him nearer to one of Don's reading lamps. She angled the palm up to examine it. "I'll say. That's a serious sliver. When'd you get it?"
"This afternoon. Haven't had a chance to dig it out." Fighting with Mike probably hadn't helped, other than to drive the thing in further.
"Looks more like you've been trying hard to do just that - " she murmured. "Put any antiseptic on it?"
"Not yet."
"Com'on." Meg kept a hold on the hand, and took him back to the bathroom. She found the tweezers he'd left lying in the sink and twirled them at him in silent admonition. She guessed, correctly too, that he hadn't sterilized them.
He shrugged. "I never claimed to be a surgeon."
"Hmmm. Neither have I." She rummaged into two of the boxes her mother had sent, came up with everything she needed. She swabbed the palm with alcohol, and made him hold a clean piece of gauze over it as she took a minute to sterilize the tweezers and the small object she identified for him as a lancet when he asked her what it was. She pulled him into the best light when she was ready, and told him to hold still.
He did, as she carefully nicked the skin over the sliver and just as carefully extracted the bit of wood. She swabbed it again, doubled-checking to see that she'd gotten all of it. Then she applied a small blob of antiseptic ointment that was covered with another bit of gauze and a band-aid.
"Let me know if it still feels swollen by morning," she said, finishing up. "It should just scab over. If it doesn't, you might need an antibiotic."
"Okay." Raph looked at her, smiled a bit. "Thanks."
"Hey, no charge." She shrugged it off and lapsed into silence as she picked up the bits of cotton and gauze and paper wrapping from the band-aid for disposal.
"Meg." Raph had no idea just what it was that he wanted to say, only that he wanted to straighten her out, like Mikie.
She stopped, with her hand halfway to the garbage pail, hearing the suddenly serious tone that he'd used. She hesitated to look at him, finished tossing the stuff out.
Her eyes came up to his. "Yeah?" she said. "What?"
"I just - " he failed for words. Her gaze was steady, and so was her voice. He wondered what he thought he was going to tell her...she was handling the whole thing just fine on her own. "I'm...sorry about your mother. We all are."
Meg flinched. She always did, at any mention of her mother.
"Yeah. I know. I know that, thanks, Raph. I'm sorry too." She shrugged, then took a deep breath. "I appreciate it," she added, because she seemed to think he was waiting for her to say something.
She was uncomfortable, and turned to leave, to escape whatever he was going to say next, but Raphael caught her by the hand and didn't let go, even when she tried to pull out of it.
"Meg." He repeated her name. "Meg...are you...okay?"
She knew exactly what he was getting at. Her back stiffened, and she drew air in again, only there was a shudder in it this time. "No," she admitted. "No, I'm not okay. And I'm not gonna be, not for a long while." She turned to face him. "Let me go, Raph."
Her eyes were still dry. But her voice had gone shaky and so had her hands.
"Megan, you can't-"
"Yes, I can!" She squeezed her eyes shut and hissed at him through clenched teeth. "Don't. Don't push me, Raph. It's hard enough and I've gone through this with Splinter once already."
"But, Meg-"
"Let go!"
It was only a harsh whisper, but she put force enough into it that it sounded like a shout. He loosened his grip, let her fingers slide from his as she moved for the doorway again.
He was realizing that she wasn't like Michelangelo, had not been blocking the situation at all, but had been dealing with it in her own quiet and probably effective way. He recalled what Splinter had said about her, how Allan Marshall hadn't ever broken through the steel, how she had that wisdom beyond her years. She'd lost a parent once before, had likely learned something about how to cope with such a loss.
It all came back, and he felt like an idiot, had been working at her with a can opener and thrown into disarray something that she had already put in proper order.
Who the hell do I think I am?
He wanted to apologize, but 'sorry' seemed so pitifully inadequate. And so he said nothing, wishing that he hadn't at all.
She stopped in the doorway, paused there uncertainly for a moment. He looked down at the floor, and didn't see it when she turned, but heard her as she came back toward him, looked up only when she picked up his hands again.
This time there were tears there.
Now I've done it.....he moaned inwardly. Now I've-
"Meg...it's okay, Meg..." he whispered. Her hands were still shaking. She tried to blink back the wetness, tried to look elsewhere -
She pulled her hands out of his again. But this time she didn't bolt for the door. Instead she reached up and put her arms around his neck to hug him hard and bury her face in the space between his shoulder and carapace. "Raph - " she sniffed loudly.
"Yeah. What?" he asked back, keeping his own voice steady, trying to be the solid rock that she needed him to be.
"I've -I've changed my mind," she said, with her voice quavering. "Don't let go..."
And then Megan McLaine wept, letting the grief out while he patted her back and tried to make it better. It should have been April she was crying on, April or Splinter, somebody, anybody, but some big, stupid Turtle who'd asked for it without any comprehension what he'd been getting into - he hadn't been at all prepared for this-
He heard himself murmuring sympathetic nonsense, couldn't even recall afterwards what he'd said, and thought that whatever it had been, he'd probably said it badly.
But he didn't let go.
~o~
It was Leo's war room.
Donatello was sitting in it, staring at the chalkboard that they'd found in a junk yard in two large and roughly triangular pieces and which he and Leo had re-framed in plywood and mounted against the brick wall at the distant end of the silt chamber. A motley assortment of old kitchen chairs were scattered around the immediate area of the 'table' which was another piece of scavenged plywood balanced atop a pair of rusted, two-drawer file cabinets that had come from the same junk yard. Leonardo had filled them with a raft of city maps and sewer schematics that April had provided over a period of months and after several trips to the Public Library and/or the City Clerk's Office. Leo guarded them carefully, knowing the time and trouble April had gone to in order to get them.
Donatello had raided one of the other drawers, hunted up a box of chalk and spent the last hour carefully drawing up a schematic of the quarantine building from memory, sketching both bird's eye and cutaway views of the place that Shredder had dictated as a rendezvous point. He had his feet up on the table, and was drumming his fingers idly on one kneecap as he studied his handiwork in the solitude of the early morning. Everyone else had been asleep when he'd gotten up himself, even Mikie, which had been a pleasant change. Raph had gotten Mike straightened out yesterday, had gotten the lot of them turned around and it was time to do something constructive, now that they knew what Shredder wanted.
He did not expect the solitude to last, and it didn't. Michelangelo came drifting in with a half bag of apples in hand, and pulled up a chair too. "Mornin'." He muttered with a yawn. "What's up Donnie?" Mike asked, between apples.
Donatello helped himself to one. It was so good to see Mike eating again, and behaving in a more or less normal fashion. "Plannin'," he replied, with his own mouth full. "Gotta have a plan."
"No we don't."
Don looked around. Raphael was up and had just put in an appearance too. Raph still looked tired, looked almost as if he hadn't slept yet. His tone was a bit sour.
"We don't need a plan." Raph repeated.
Mike threw an apple at him. Raph caught it with deft expertise.
"Raph," Don began patiently. Raph had a grouch on for sure. "We need a plan."
"Okay." Raphael bit the apple. "You want a plan? I'll give you a plan." He walked over to the chalkboard.
"Don't you dare erase that!"
But Raphael did anyway, very much to his consternation. Raph picked up a scrap of chalk, scrawled a few words in bold print.
GET LEO. GET OUT.
Raphael tossed the chalk away and pulled up a chair at the table to finish the apple and lay claim to another one out of the bag before Mike ate them all.
"That," he announced, "Is the plan."
"This does not fit my definition of a plan." Don said drily, still annoyed by the loss of the diagrams. But it was by far more typical behavior from Raphael, and that was as good to see as it was coming from Michelangelo. He wasn't going to start a fight over it.
"So tell me what you want to plan for. We know where we have to be, when we have to be there and what we're supposed to bring. It's all planned already, Don."
"Shredder's gonna be there."
"Yep. Him and every available ninja in town and probably a few that he'll import. Told ya, it's planned already. That," he thumbed a gesture at the words on the chalkboard behind him. "Is all we've got to do."
"Dare I say it?" Donatello heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes back. "You can go ahead and call that a plan if you want to Raph, but that--" he thumbed a gesture of his own at the chalkboard, "Is much easier said than done."
"Did I say it would be easy?" Raph retorted. "Mikie, did you hear me say that this would be easy?" He got up again, began to pace the floor area between the table and chalk board. Something was eating him.
Michelangelo's eyes slid from Raph to him and then back. "Nope."
"Okay. You didn't say it would be easy. But-"
Raphael threw the apple core at him. "You want details?"
"A few would be kinda nice, yeah. I'd like details." Everything that Raph had just said was true. but Don still didn't want to do this thing Raph-Style, which was to forge ahead recklessly, bold beyond belief, and improvise as he went. It didn't always work.
Don had heard the story, from Casey's point of view, just how things had gone in the park the night that Raph had encountered him - and it hadn't been in Raph's favor.
"Okay, so we're all going. You, me, Mikie, for starters. Splinter and Casey and probably even April."
"And me." Megan said as she arrived. "Don't forget about me."
Raph had still been pacing, and stopped to turn and look at her when he heard her voice. "You can't come, Meg." He shook his head emphatically, "It'll be too dangerous."
Don turned around too. Megan just stared at Raphael for a second, then looked past him to the chalk board. She looked as tired as Raph did, and a bit puffy around the eyes. Finally did some crying, Don guessed. Her features were still grim. "Mornin' Meg," he said, and took his feet off the table, because it wasn't a very polite place for them to be. "Want an apple?" There was still one left in the bag.
"Huh?" She looked at him, as if she hadn't been listening. "Thanks, no. Not too hungry right now." Then her gaze went right back to Raphael. "April's going, isn't she?" She didn't sit down.
"April," Raph told her flatly. "Is Leo's friend. It's too dangerous. No."
Donatello winced. What a thing to say, Raph! Probably he didn't realize just how that had come across. I'll kick his butt for that...
Megan blinked. Her shoulders fell. But she let the comment go, no doubt considering the source. She was a reasonable judge of character, had them mostly figured out by now. "You might want a medical opinion. I'd like to come." Megan insisted.
She had bulldozed through her mother and into the sewers and was obviously intent on bulldozing her way back to the quarantine building. Don thought that was a valid point.
"Might just," Mike said. "We don't know what kind of shape Leo'll be in, Raph. I think - "
"No!"
Mike shut his mouth, but cast a questioning glance his direction. Don was just opening his mouth, but Megan beat him to it.
"April's going," she repeated. "If it's so dangerous, why's April going?"
"I just told you Meg, April's our friend. Forget it."
He might as well have thrown a sai at her. Donatello got to his feet slowly, getting angry. Michelangelo already was, and had moved an awful lot faster, like Raph, insofar as he didn't always stop to think about what he was going to do.
"Raph!" Mike was on that side of the table and it only took one wide step for him to grab Raphael by the arm and jerk him hard around. "I think I liked you a whole lot better when you were keeping your mouth shut!"
Don's attention had gone the same direction that Mike's had...he had only noticed Meg's reaction peripherally. She had stiffened, and stared, wordlessly. He didn't even hear himself. Again! he thought, angrily. He was mad now. We'll apologize! He'll apologize for that one! Donatello was aghast and embarrassed, and he hadn't said a single word.
To Raph's credit, Don saw that he was startled by Mike's reaction. It said that Raph really hadn't been listening to himself and really didn't know what he'd just said to the girl.
April was their friend and Megan wasn't. That was what he'd just told her, and in terms that had been plain enough too...
He was realizing it now. Raph's face had gone blank and he'd squeezed his eyes shut in mute self-recrimination even before Don got close enough to shout something angry of his own.
Raph knew what he'd done. "Oh, dammit...tell me I didn't just say that!" he moaned.
"You did!" Don hissed at him. He had more to add, more to say, but wasn't sure he wanted to say it in front of Megan and decided all at once that he would save it for later. He spun. "Meg, he didn't - " But Megan wasn't there anymore. Don swore. She must have run to have vanished that quickly.
Raphael shoved them both aside. "Get out of my way!"
"You'd better get that fixed Raph!" Mike's tone was threatening. "Don't come back until you do either!"
"Make sure." Don added. "And do it right!" He wasn't sure that Raph had even heard the last of it...Raph had left them, running himself. "Gonna peel his shell off..." he mumbled.
"We," Michelangelo corrected him. "Are gonna peel his shell off." He let out an exasperated sigh. "If," he added, as an afterthought, "If she leaves any of it intact."
Don withheld comment. That was a little too optimistic. He suspected that there was more hurt there than anger. Something of both, yeah, but anger wouldn't have left her running like that. Hurt wasn't something that Meg needed any more of.
"Damn," he murmured.
~o~
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it just wasn't fair!
Megan did not remember turning to bolt, did not recall the sprint that she'd made as far as the crawlway and afterwards had only a vague memory of throwing herself into the darkened tunnel before her vision went all blurry with the tears that had sprung into her eyes. It was dark, it didn't matter. She just moved, and she moved faster when she heard Raphael shouting after her from the tunnel's end a few seconds later.
She did not want to talk to Raphael.
She didn't stop and she didn't answer him. There was a lump in her throat, one that she was having a hard time swallowing.
I'm too touchy, that's all, that's all it is, that's - dammit it's not fair! He can't tell me what to do!
He was catching up, could move a whole hell of a lot faster than she could and knew the turf better too...the lump grew, she felt something like panic, was going to have to have a fight that she didn't want -
"Wait up Meg, I'm sorry!" he shouted after her "I didn't mean that! I didn't mean-"
Megan yelled incoherently when his hand closed on her ankle, and kicked to free it. "Not fair!" They were the first words to get past the lump. "Don't touch me!" She had wanted to scream, but only squeaked. She didn't seem to have enough air to scream the way she wanted to. Those tears were still there. She was dangerously close to weeping again, and didn't want that. Not even after last night, which had been Raph's fault too...
"I didn't mean it Meg!"
"Let me go!" It was a shout that time, she'd found that much air. "You said it twice! Twice, Raph! And I'm not deaf!" He was still hanging onto the ankle. She kept kicking, futilely, because he was still built like Conan. "It's not fair!"
"Meg!" Raphael's voice rose, hit a strained note. "Where do think you're going, Meg?"
"Who the hell wants to know? Take your hands off of me!" He finally let go. She scrambled forward, brushed her eyes clear and found that she'd made it as far as the passage that forked to the left and went outside, eventually. "I'm just leaving! You won't have to worry about me anymore!" She took that left-hand step, but the tears all came back and so did the lump.
"You can't just leave, Megan! You can't!"
"Says who?!" She finally spun on him, and he stepped back when her hand came up in a fist and pounded his shell. "Who says I can't?!"
"But..." the blow hadn't hurt him a bit. "But that's not fair," he told her in a hurt tone. "You haven't said goodbye and they - "
"You can tell them."
He looked over his shoulder. "They don't deserve that. I do maybe, but not them...it wasn't their fault."
She had taken a couple of angry strides, and stopped. He sounded very penitent. She pulled in a deep breath.
"You don't even have your stuff, Meg."
"I'll manage without it."
"Meg...that's just - silly. That's not any kind of sense. And you...you don't have to go anywhere."
"Don't I?" Megan swung around again. He would miss it, miss entirely the point that she was trying to make.
"No!" Raphael stepped toward her. "I said I was sorry-"
"You're impossible!" She turned again, stalked away. "Don't you talk to me about sense!"
"It's not sense to - "
"I'm going to be there! I know the way and you can't stop me!"
"Meg!" That really seemed to bother him. "Meg, no!" She didn't respond, just kept going.
There was desperation in his voice as he followed her. He got another grip on her arm. "You can't, Meg! We're talking about Shredder! Shredder! You don't know what - "
"Don't know what that means!" She completed the sentence for him, trying to jerk her arm free. "Don't I?"
Finding out had only cost her everything. Her home, her job, her future, her mother...the authorities were even looking for her, so what good would her ID be? There wasn't even enough cash in her bag to make going back for it worthwhile.
Raphael's hand slid from her arm. He sank into dejection, backing away a pace to sit down hard in the dirt. "Where - " he asked quietly, " - are you going to go?"
"I don't know." She didn't have anywhere to go, no close friends that she trusted, no one that wouldn't know she was in trouble and wanted for questioning, no where that Allan or the twins wouldn't think of and no one that she wanted to endanger anyway. The lump came back. She really hadn't thought any further than just going...
"Well, you can't go now...it's not really a safe neighbourhood up there. Wait till later. I'll take you. Anywhere you want. Train station or someplace. Whatever. Where do you want to go?"
She swallowed the lump. "I want to go to the zoo."
He pulled his knees up and folded his arms across them to rest his chin there. "I don't want you to get hurt."
"I'm already hurt."
"Meg..." he went to pleading. "No." But he was asking now, asking her not to go and not telling her.
Her shoulders slumped. She looked up at the ceiling, blinking because tears were threatening again, for no apparent reason. "How - " she turned the tables. "How are you going to get Leo out of there? I want to know."
"Doesn't matter!" His tone went sharp again. "We'll - "
"Impossible!" He was utterly impossible! Megan slapped him on the snout and then sat down hard beside him. "That's not an answer!"
"It's - " He opened his mouth again -
"Shut up!" She swatted his nose one more time. "Just shut up and we'll talk about sense!"
Megan pulled her own knees up to hug them close to her chest. Raphael raised a hand to rub his snout, but for once he didn't say anything. Brash. That was Raphael. She wondered if he ever listened to anybody. She took a deep breath, not even sure what she was going to say, now that she had slowed down enough to consider it.
"I don't think sense is going to enter into this much. Shredder wants you back at the zoo. No sense at all in that, not that I can see, but-"
"Rub our noses in it." Raph interrupted to supply. "That's why."
"So you're gonna get your noses rubbed. No avoiding it. Assuming, and you'd better make sure you've got it clear that assuming is all you can do, assuming that he even brings Leo and puts him back where he found him, you've still gotta get him out. Assuming, of course that's he's in any condition to be moved. I'm assuming that's not very likely. He wasn't ready to be moved when they took him, and God alone knows what kind of care he's had since then, assuming he's had any at all. You'd better be assuming that he's not gonna be on his feet. Who's gonna carry him, Raph? What about all those ninja you were talking about? What are they gonna be doing? Not standing around holding the doors for you guys to go."
"We'll take care of 'em."
"We'll assume, just for the sake of argument that you will, you three and Splinter and Casey Jones. Leaves April to carry Leo around - I guesstimate you guys at about two hundred pounds apiece. She might be pushing a hundred and ten. Are you hearing me, Raph? How are you gonna pull this thing off? I want to know!"
"I didn't say..." he began slowly, "..didn't say it would be easy. I know it won't be easy, but we've still gotta try."
Megan buried her face in her arms and sighed. "I understand that. But Don is right. You still have to have a plan and it's gotta be more than what you had on the blackboard. Between us, April and I could probably manage Leonardo, even unconscious. And my mother sent stuff that'll take care of that too, if we really need it, stuff that'll put Leo on his feet in an emergency. And that's what it'll be. Start to finish."
"You can show Splinter what to do." It was an incredibly lame suggestion. "And I only said that maybe April was going to come. Just maybe."
"Splinter's the only one I'd trust. And as far as that maybe goes, don't you think you're gonna want every advantage you can get?"
"I don't want her to get hurt either!"
"Think that'll stop her? She's Leo's friend, remember?" She caught herself sniffing, and buried her face again. Too damn touchy! She cursed herself. The tears were brimming again. What'd I have to say that for?
"I said I was sorry about that. I didn't mean it, not the way it sounded. You're our friend too Meg." He laid one hand, very tentatively on her shoulder.
She resisted an impulse to jerk her shoulder away. It would only make him feel worse, and that would have been petty, even though it had hurt. "I don't usually forgive inexcusable behavior."
"I'm sorry," he repeated again.
"And I never forget it either."
"Meg - " It was frustration now.
"I'm going!" She raised her head to look at him.
Raphael narrowed his eyes. His snout twitched, a fleeting tension. "Friends?" he asked.
"All right, you're forgiven," she said and watched the relief light up his eyes. "But I'm still going."
He shifted uncomfortably, taking the one arm that was still hugging his knees from them and rolling up to his feet. He used the hand that had been resting on her shoulder to pull her up. He shrugged non-committally. "We'll talk about it."
A finger came to wipe at the wet track on her check, the second time in less than twelve hours that he'd dried her tears.
It was as good as a yes, in her books. She squeezed the hand that had drawn her to her feet. "Okay." She accepted it. "And stop getting mud all over my face! I'm enough of a mess already. I suppose you're in trouble now, aren't you?"
"Me? Oh. Yeah. I'm nearly always in trouble - "
"That doesn't surprise me." Megan looked up, raised a disapproving eyebrow at him. "I suppose I'll have to bail you out now too."
"Hmmm, well - " He cast an uncomfortable look back down the tunnel. "You don't have to do anything, but - " when he turned back, he was wearing what had to be his very best wounded puppy expression " - it would be nice." He sounded hopeful.
She frowned, making an exasperated noise. "Why do you have to have such nice eyes?!" Megan shook her hand out of his and pounded his shell one more time. "You're gonna get us all killed!"
He shrugged without denying it and shuffled. If he'd had pockets, she thought he might have shoved his hands into them.
"Just impossible!" She muttered, shaking her head and closing her eyes. "I'm sorry I yelled at you."
"S 'okay," he said softly. "Someone had to."
Megan unrolled her fist to wipe at the dirt mark she'd left on his shell. "You're trouble, Raph." She poked an accusing finger at his nose.
One of his hands came up to wrap itself around the gesturing digit, enclosing her whole hand because it was so much smaller than his. "Splinter says it's not polite to point."
"Trouble..." she repeated, and then let out a long sigh. "Raph?"
"Yeah? What?"
"Don't ever change..." Megan pulled his nose down to hers, kissed him once. For luck, she told herself.
Just for luck....
~o~
