Author's Note: Hey guys. Things take a dark turn in this chapter. This is where I feel the mature rating really kicks in. If you are a child, please *please* do not continue reading this, I'm begging you here. To those who reviewed last chapter, thank you so much for your thoughtful, amazing comments. They really touched me.

.

.


Chapter Nine: Humiliation


Well so much for that brilliant idea!

Karai jumped from rooftop to rooftop, infuriated, trying to blow off steam. What good was video surveillance when you couldn't do anything about what you saw?

Not that she'd known what had happened to Donatello, until after. Karai had relaxed her surveillance after a day or two, only checking up on her phone once or twice each night, and rarely during the day at all. It would be hard to explain if someone happened to notice his image on her phone, so she hadn't been keen to make it a habitually accessed app. Habits were dangerous to form; it made you prone to thoughtless mistakes.

So when Karai pulled up the app on her phone around ten that evening, she had gotten a shock.

Donatello had gone from having a bandaged leg, to having a bandaged everything. What skin was left to see, was bruised. Red dotted a new swath of medical gauze, which covered his entire upper chest, along with a second area on his lower abdomen. Donatello's leg, the one that had been injured by Bradford when he first became their prisoner, now sported another wound on the thigh, where three distinct blotches of red had come through the medical gauze there. His other leg looked pretty good by comparison, if you didn't count the bruise which ran practically its entire length.

It looked like someone had slammed him into a wall, repeatedly, then used him as a pin cushion.

The infuriating thing about it was...it had to have been Bradford and Xever. That was the only explanation for why he'd been patched up so early in the night after the assault. And that meant there probably wasn't one thing in hell Karai could've done to stop it. They would've kicked her out, and been within their rights to do so, despite her place in the clan.

Donatello wasn't her prisoner, after all.

Karai executed a particularly long leap, twisting through the air into a forward somersault as she dropped from a higher roof to a lower one. She flowed into a front roll as she landed, following up with a few handsprings to take the edge off her momentum, before finally coming to a complete halt.

She bent forward, allowing her hands to rest on her knees for a few moments as she caught her breath. Karai scowled down at the rough asphalt of the roof's flat surface, as her mind continued to turn over the image she'd seen in her phone a short while before, unable to shake it.

It was so stupid! How did they expect him to do anything for them, if they beat his brains out first! Or, maybe Donatello was the stupid one, and had been pretending to cooperate, stringing them along with busy work?

She had warned him, hadn't she?

Karai lunged forward again, continuing her sprint between rooftops, unsheathing her katana as she ran. Stopping a few rooftops further down, she moved fluidly into a kata, working through the familiar movements with angry slashes and jabs.

She paused as a sudden urge to check on Donatello in person struck her, but she pushed it away. That would look weird. She couldn't show up in the middle of the night, just to go stare at their prisoner. And it was a twenty minute drive to get there even in the middle of the night, anyway.

Karai compromised with herself by pulling out her phone again, and bringing up the app. There he was, still asleep- or, more likely, passed out. No one was there with him, or at least they weren't in his space.

Karai's hand faltered, and she forced herself to pocket the phone again. She sighed, bowing her head, and closed her eyes in resignation.

The truth was, she hadn't been there, and for all she really knew, she could've done something for the brainiac.

She was going to have to keep a closer eye.


When they came to unshackle him the next morning, Donnie didn't try to get up.

He didn't move at all, except to pull his arms in closer to his body, for warmth. When the doctor from the night before showed up again, and took his vitals to be sure he wasn't getting a fever or an infection, Donnie hardly reacted.

Being moved was less easy to ignore, especially when the doctor declared that Donatello needed a shower, and the guards came over, lifting him up. Before Donnie had fully absorbed what was happening, he was being carried out of the room, while the doctor led the way.

They ended up in a bathroom with a full shower, as the building apparently had at least one. One of the guards stood in the shower door, silently observing, after Donnie was set down, with a wash cloth and soap nearby.

The doctor commented to him, from a little further off. "This is your chance, mutant. Get the grime off."

As the guard leaned in to turn on the tap, the doctor commented again, talking to the guard. "Be sure it's warm. I don't want him going into shock."

Slowly and painfully, Donnie picked up the shower head, which dangled in front of him, and awkwardly maneuvered it to wet down the washcloth, and lather it up with soap. Then he did the only thing he could do, and pretended the guard wasn't standing right there.

When it came time to clean his private areas, Donnie turned slightly away, blocking the guard's view as best he could. Not that it really mattered. Silent tears streamed down his face, as he cleaned away the dried urine.

They'd forced him to expose himself last night.

"Do it, or I will cut my way into you to have a look."

Jan had been there. She'd been the ring leader. She'd started cutting into his plastron again, until he couldn't stand it any more.

"Give us a show, freak..." A feral grin, and glinting, excited eyes.

Donatello picked the shower head up again, gently rinsing his private parts down after lathering up. He slipped himself back up and in, under the protection of his plastron, and shifted to wash the rest of his body down as best he could. Tears continued to drip silently down his cheeks, as he pulled off his bandanna, to lather it up.

Once he'd broken down and exposed himself, she'd grabbed him, down there. They'd all had something to say about how it looked. The color, the shape. Then Jan had used the taser, to get an idea about what it would look like if he was...if he had been...

Donnie's cheeks colored in the deepest shame, as he wrung out the bandanna.

She'd used the taser too much. He'd ended up wetting himself. They'd laughed at that too.

They had laughed at how he looked, guffawing at what it would be like to have sex with him, speculating about what girl would ever want such a freak. Then they'd laughed when he had sullied himself. The tasering had made it so he couldn't pull himself back in, and when they'd left, he was still exposed, stinking and in pain. It had taken nearly twenty minutes until enough control had returned to hide himself away again.

When Donatello finished tying the bandanna back around his head, the guard leaned forward and hefted him up to a standing position. At some point, the doctor had come over, and now he reached over to grab the shower head.

"Put your hands on the wall."

The doctor started rinsing down his shell, taking another washcloth, and rubbing it down perfunctorily. He also wiped down the back of his head and neck, apparently thinking Donnie might have missed that spot. After a minute or so, he stopped, and turned off the tap. The other guard stepped in, taking the doctor's place, and Donatello was carried a short ways out of the shower stall.

Then the doctor stepped in again, while the guards held Donnie upright, and quickly toweled him down, careful about the various open wounds. Several were bleeding, leaving red marks on the white towel, which was tossed to the floor a few moments later.

After that, Donatello was carried back to the lab, where the doctor dressed his wounds for the second time in twelve hours. Donnie noticed the smell of rubbing alcohol; the lab table which served as his bed had been disinfected during his absence.

Once the doctor was done making sure he'd taken his antibiotics, along with a few bites of the food that kept them down, Donnie was finally left alone again, or as alone as he ever got.

He curled up on his side, on the cold lab table, facing away from the guards, and tried to forget.

.

.


AN: Would really appreciate your feedback on this, guys. And I know it might sound crazy, but I honestly feel TERRIBLE about what's happening to Donnie. *pats Donnie on the back* We'll get through this, dude, I promise.