Wow this chapter took forever... and its way too long to boot, but I hope it makes up for the wait
Thanks to Ming for reading this over and giving me some awesome feedback!
Enjoy!
Chapter 10: Copper Blood and Fever Dreams
Finally, it had been enough. Finally, the world had cut deep him enough for his soul to bleed right out of him, leaving him dead and desiccated in the midnight dark, grappling fruitlessly with the reasons why.
But slowly, as Leonardo tried to blink open his swollen eyes and see into the dark that made no difference, his fingers traced along cracked concrete, cracks that in his eternal black-soaked blindness, he could never hope to see. But he could feel the damage all too well, like a silent, desperate plea.
He was beginning to find his reasons.
He shut his eyes again and breathed, tried to let his shoulders fall and banish the flooding darkness from his head, find peace, collection, the inner balance that he cherished so well and hungered for so desperately. But all these things never came to him now, and his tired muscles quaked in fear.
Because things such as peace are afraid of the dark. Things such as reason, answers, permanence, hope did not exist.
The world had no reason. It had no life, no concept of honor, no soul. The world he had once held on to so stubbornly, had willed himself to see through the clouded eyes of innocence… it had withered and died within him years ago.
But still he traced along those cracks painfully slow, relishing the haunting twists like reliving every intangible nightmare dream of his cursed life, just staring empty into the darkness because he had not a tear left to shed.
All those years of hiding them- he had finally let them go.
They had left him so willingly, so eager to cut him deep and cause him pain, to betray everything he held so tightly within himself and birth it to the ugly world. Because his soul was bleeding; hemorrhaged out of him like arterial blood, leaving him echoing and hollow in cavernous walls as if every bit of passion he had ever possessed had leaked right out of him, like his very spark of life had been so hungrily leeched away.
Now, he was deaf, numb, unseeing and unwanted, forgotten, haunted by the ghost of his brother the blackness had not yet taken. The world around him now consisted of endless days and nights of blindness and the dark brought to poisoned, bloodshot eyes.
He was weak- so weak and so helpless upon his knees on the unforgiving concrete floor, feeling its harsh bite into his flesh, the warm sting of her mark upon his cheek, fighting with his own lungs for each struggling life-given breath.
He bit his tongue to fight back the humorless laugh that crept up his throat- he always did try to fight his brother's battles.
He screwed his eyes shut against his bitter revelation as if it mattered in the cloak of absolute dark, still tracing those sickening lines like the irreparable cracks in broken bones and heartstrings, listening to his breath combine with Raphael's teeth chattering and quivering exhales in rocking waves of his imagined cold.
He bowed his head made so heavy by the shame that weighed upon him, the weight of his own failure pressing heavy down upon his shoulders. It was like the world was ending all around him, its burden growing more unbearable as if to crush him down and kill him slowly- ever so slowly squeezing the life right out of him. It was like the dawning of the apocalypse and the world was burning to the ground. He could feel its kiss charring his bones as he sat, locked away under this cloak of sickly, hungry dark and hollowed eyes, only watching and waiting for the end to claim him too.
He blinked away the creeping hunger pains, that feral gnawing in his gut and was hit by a vision of the past, the future, another life itself. He was staring into a velvet field of one thousand blinking stars, blinded by the light of every bit of dying purity they held. He was staring into the headlights of an oncoming train, watching his world burn around him, extending his arms like a prayer, like beckoning a coming blessing, a miracle from heaven as he waited for the hungry hands of death to claim him and show his soul redemption.
There was nothing he could do, no brilliant plan to illuminate the darkness. In the shadows, in the dark, even in his own imagination, he couldn't see the colors anymore.
He blinked again and tried to clear his foggy mind, tried to trace his eyes through the black in search of nothing because the blinding light still burned like hellfire behind his retinas, an image of things yet to come still glowing horrible every time he closed his eyes.
But there was nothing left to see; only walls, damp, stark, and bleak as the future that was sure to come. No color in the shadows, no ghosts, no shapes, no trace of hope left in those cracks to give him comfort. Only black and ugly things existed now- hollow, cold, and eyeless- so startlingly terrible. He almost wished the dark things would just take him now, show him some last shred of bitter mercy, open wide their jaws and finally swallow him whole. It was his only dying wish that his life could be exchanged for the lives of his brothers and he could die in peace knowing he had somehow made a difference.
But life just didn't work that way, and nothing ever made a difference.
In the dark, the flaws began to finally show, and he could see the cracks as his own delusions fell away, exposing something terrible. And in his mind's eye as the pieces fell away, Leo knew with a steady gaze and whispers in his heart that he was seeing the broken world.
This was the world Raphael had come to know. It was the only world he had ever seen.
It had been so long since he even remembered being innocent. All those fleeting memories, locked away behind the misty haze of his imagination, none of it seemed to ever have been true. It was as if in that great yawning void, there was nothing left but a shell of who he once had been, as if the soul inside had one day decided to die and turn to dust within, left to rot and fester in side of him until its great release.
Those days within the hopeless dark, his sanity scattered out upon the wind.
Blind eyes cast to the shadows, he never looked away. He just couldn't tear them from those blaring black truth headlights of the oncoming train.
In the dawn of his greatest failure creeping past dark horizons, everything about the world, about his past, about anything he could have ever even tried to remember seemed devoid of light. So he sat, head hung low in shame and mourning, still running those same two trembling fingers down those ever winding cracks, loosing his grip to release the clinging fragments of his tattered soul and imagined reality to be consumed there by the hungry shadows and lost to him forever more.
He hated feeling hopeless. He hated sitting there, naked and exposed and doing nothing to stop the world from ending all around him. He just couldn't sit there and let her take him, let her take them all down to the gates of hell as a part of her sick and twisted plot for her father's undeserved revenge.
He breathed deeply and let his shoulders fall, dried his eyes quickly on his forearm and dared himself to stand on weakened knees.
He swayed but would not waver, braced himself with one palm pressed against the damp concrete. He refused to let the darkness claim him now, not when he still had so many reasons left to stay. He had to make a plan. He had to find some hope in that awful, putrid world of broken souls.
Twenty hours. Don and Mike must have noticed they were gone by now. It was only a matter of time before Karai would find them too, especially if they had left the Lair to look.
He almost wished that they hadn't.
--
Something wasn't right… something… about this place was too damn dark, and way too fucking cold to be anything good. It was like the days had blended together into one long, eternal night, and its hungry eyes would never seem to leave him alone.
Sometimes, he would wake; feel the cool concrete pressing hard against his cheek. He'd shiver, watch the colors swim and blend together the different shades of black, combine and become whole again.
Sometimes, he could have sworn the night had eyes, and in that watching dark… he would search for any fleeting sign.
And his heart would leap within his chest when he would find nothing.
Sometimes… he would be there like a wraith in the belly of the darkest corners of hell, leaning there against the dripping wall, defeated.
The air smelled like death those days…
…or hours….
…or years.
He couldn't even remember time in that forever stretching blackness as his consciousness faded in and out between the worlds of living and the dead. The fragile edges of reality blurred together too much to tell.
All he knew was that something wasn't right. Whether it was the world, the dark, something crawling deep inside of him, he didn't know. But the room smelt like blood and death and grief, mourning, failure, tears, a funeral, hell… and he was having fever dreams.
Like snapshots of reality, black and white photographs of things forgotten and memories reborn.
Summer morning's cool underground as the sun shone through the sewer grates, he remembered. Children, all wide-eyed and innocence chasing shadows through the filtered light, the dancing golden beams of sky that danced alive with specks of dust like hazy floating dreams.
Three smiling, three happy, three innocent and free. But one lagging behind the rest like a shadow until his padding feet came to a trot, the sound of splashing sewer water finding a new and steady rhythm as his footsteps slowed and halted and the three faded away.
A sad, stubborn frown tugged at the corners of his lips as he watched in silent envy as the others ran ahead, leaving him behind with only their mindless, innocent laughter ringing down the sewer caverns. He froze and watched them fade into the winding roads and twisting avenues of their narrow world.
The laughter faded and he was alone, listening to the run off trickle down from the street above, that eerie echoing drip that sent satisfying shivers down his spine. A small smile tugged at his lips in the half-light as watched the sunbeams dance upon the walls like golden swimming freckles glittering on the grey carved stone.
He liked the quiet. He liked being alone. Alone he didn't have to worry about what to say, about what they'd make fun of him for and what they wouldn't, about looking tough or acting cool or strange or crazy or anything other than just Raphael.
He was trying hard to change it, but it was really hard trying to be someone you weren't.
Kicking at the filthy sewer water sloshing around his ankles, he frowned thoughtfully. They used to be the same, all of them, all the same. Donny knew things, Mikey was loud and funny, Leo was always trying to be first in line. Raphie- he had always been, well, Raphie. He was fine being serious, fine not knowing things he thought didn't matter, and sometimes, he didn't even care that much about being first.
He didn't know where he fit into things now, but he knew that once, they had been the same.
That is, until a month ago when everything changed- when Master Splinter bought that crazy TV.
It was the first time any of them had ever seen a human so close up, and all four of them had watched in silent, misty-eyed awe for hours and days on end until the novelty wore off. Or it did, at least, for Raphie.
Donny and Leo and Mikey could still sit there and gawk at it for hours like it was the best thing ever put on planet earth until Master Splinter told them to go outside and play. They didn't even care about what they watched- cartoons, movies, soaps, news, infomercials, everything was amazing. But Raphie didn't like it so much.
The humans on TV were boring. All they did was fake. Fake teeth, fake hair, big, clean fake houses with fake smiles on their faces. Even fake laughter in the background of sitcoms that could never happen in real life, even when none of it was really ever funny. On that stupid TV, life was filled with rich people with houses and money and cars. Spoiled kids with toys and a warm place to go in the winter and food three times in the same day. Every day.
But most of all- they were human.
That wasn't the world. All of it was fake. All of it was lies. The world Raphie saw through sewer grates, the life he lived every day below them wasn't like that starched-white stuff he saw on television. In the real world, there were ugly people without rows and rows of snow white teeth and hair that didn't move when people turned their heads. In the real world, people were poor like his family with no food most nights, having Master Splinter pretend he didn't steal their dinner because that was supposed to be wrong. No money for toys. He and his brothers really didn't have any save for what their sensei found for them in the junkyards or dumpsters or wherever else he found these things. They didn't even have heat in the winter. They couldn't even come out from underground because Sensei said that if they were seen, people wouldn't understand them.
To Raphael, that translated into if they were seen, people would kill them.
That was the world he knew. That was the world that was real, and he just couldn't understand why his brothers were so in love with staring at that little screen and acting like the people they saw.
It was like overnight they all had changed. Mike was getting all these crazy jokes from cartoons that Donny and Leo found hilarious. Raphie didn't get them.
Donny would sit for hours and watch things that nobody understood and soak it all in like a sponge, prattling things off for days on end like he had memorized the whole thing. He could follow Master Splinter around rattling off facts about giant squids or the fall of Rome, the rings of Saturn or haunted Irish castles, the old rat beaming all the while.
Sensei would laugh at Mikey's jokes too, but Raphie still just didn't get them, and even if he did, he'd be too embarrassed to laugh because he just didn't feel like he was a part of it, like it wasn't even his place to be laughing.
Around then Leo got his katana. He wasn't allowed to take them out of the dojo, but he would spend hours showing them off during practice, talking about how cool they were, how much better they were than the practice swords and bo they all were learning to use.
Donny and Mikey thought he was the coolest thing on earth, and Splinter smiled while he practiced, gave him private lessons whenever he wanted. Raphie, he just looked in from the sidelines, feeling a little pang of jealously every time his brothers got that look from Sensei, that look that he himself never felt he got. Ever.
Because they all had changed, and he never did.
His whole life had become one giant battle to be like humans, to be cool, and he was failing miserably.
Instead of chasing after his brothers' splashes and eerie laughter trailing further down the tunnel, he veered left and found a drier route where he could hear the rumble of cars, the sound of voices over head.
That's where the humans were. Maybe it was time to see what was so special about them.
He found the little sliver of light pouring down from a rain gutter where the sound of car horns, shouts, exhaust fumes, footsteps, voices echoed down to the sewer below. With a devious little smile, Raphie's heart leapt up when he heard the conversation so close to where he stood.
In the space between the road and the sidewalk where the runoff grate sat, he could see two pairs of human legs dangling from where their owners sat upon the curb eating ice cream in the midday heat. Two boys, maybe five years older than he, maybe thirteen, sat watching traffic and licking the sticky driblets that trailed down their dark fingers.
Raphael's smile grew wider when he heard them talk, when he saw their dark bare legs with heels of tattered sneakers planted on the pavement. Now this- this was real.
"I dunno. Maybe he's gotta job 'r somethin'.'"
"Huh, yeah" the other snorted "'an im tha king a France. Yanno he's gotta be bangin' with tha gangs now. Sergio's been tryin' ta join tha Dragons too. I bet that's where he got all tha money."
"Ya think he's robbin' places?" the other gasped in awe.
"Prob'ly" his friend grunted matter-of-factly. "Tha fucker's gunna have a juvie record before he even gets ta high school."
"Sergio does."
Intent on listening, Raphael's mind still wandered to a spider crawling up the wall. He smiled as he watched it creep, the size of his flat palm. He snatched it from the wall and grinned.
"Yeah, so does Trey. 'm surprised us two ain't got one yet."
The other kid snorted as Raphael, never losing his grin, prodded the spider in his hand, bringing it close to his bright eyes with a grin.
"That's cause none a us 've ever got caught."
The two faceless kids were laughing now as Raphael grinned and took hold of his spider. Slowly, he plucked the legs off and watched them twitch mindlessly in his other palm. He knew if he could hear it scream, it would be screeching horridly.
He liked those accents. He liked those kids. Kids like those were tough. They sounded tough, talked tough. He was sure nobody ever picked on them. They were cool.
Watching the maimed spider twitch legless in his hand, its dismembered appendages in the other, he giggled for the first time in a long time.
If he couldn't be smart, couldn't be funny, couldn't practice on the katana, couldn't be perfect, he could at least be real. He could at least do this.
He looked up cautiously into the grate and saw the legs were gone, glanced down the drainage tunnel and saw no shadows on the wall.
His smile grew wider as he watched the spider struggle and whispered under his breath.
"Uh, yeah" he said slowly, testing the sound on his tongue. It felt good. He gave himself a satisfied little smile. "An' I'm the king a France."
That one made him giggle. He didn't get the joke, but the tone made him flutter all electric inside. He liked it. A lot.
"I dunno. Maybe he's… got… a new job… 'r somethin' ." He rambled, his voice growing stronger even as he stumbled to make the words sound right.
He poked the now still body of the spider, a new spark of concentration alight in his eyes. It rolled over in his palm as he spoke again, even louder this time, the accent stronger than ever before.
"Prob'ly. Tha fucker's gunna have a juvie record…"
His eyes grew wide in realization as he snapped his mouth shut and snatched his palm around the mutilated spider, hiding it quickly behind his back.
Mikey was standing wide-eyed and slack jawed in the opening of Raphie's little tunnel that let out to the main line.
"Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeo!" he called over his shoulder in a sing-song voice. Raphael narrowed his eyes. "Raphie said a bad word!"
Two twin splashing footsteps grew louder before Leo and Donny appeared behind Mikey in the opening.
"What did he say?" asked Donny, eyes ablaze with curiosity.
"A bad word" Mikey gasped, squirming "the one we heard on the news the one time they forgot to beep it out" he smiled sheepishly at Leo, shrugging. "And he was talking funny."
"Like what?" Leo chimed in, his own eyes growing wider as he peered into the darkened tunnel where Raphael was cowering, a guilty expression on his face with his hands clamped firmly behind his back.
"Like the traffic guy on the breakfast time news."
"That's how a lot of humans talk in New York City, Mikey. It's a New York accent. Bronx, probably" Donny added. The brothers were starting to get used to the walking, talking encyclopedia that was Donatello, each nodding thoughtfully.
"That's weird" Mikey chimed "you're weird, Raphie. Why can't you be normal?"
The question made Raphie's face grow hot with embarrassment. Nervously, he had backed into the wall, his hands still behind his back, but was for some reason, unable to let the dead spider go. He was focusing too hard on what to do, what to say. He had absolutely no idea.
Simply, he shrugged, walking foreword as he tried to push past his wall of curious brothers and run home before the real teasing began.
But Leo had shifted front of him, that focused look in his eyes that told his younger brother there was no way he was making it through any time soon.
"What are you hiding?" he asked simply, a spark of smug curiosity plastered across his young face.
"N-Nothing" he said quickly. He hated it when he stuttered, bringing on a whole wave of embarrassment.
"What? What? We can't hear you, Raphie!" Michelangelo hooted with his hand perched dramatically behind his 'ear.' "You're stuttering! You don't make any sense!"
"You sound like a baby when you stutter" Leo reprimanded smugly with his arms crossed over his plastron, grinning a wry, crooked smile as his younger brother shouldered past him. Leonardo reached out and grabbed Raphie's arm, pulling him around and prying his little fist open in one deft movement.
When he saw the mutilated spider's body, he just froze, hand still clamped around his brother's wrist as he looked into his eyes.
Raphie could see the quick twitch of his lips as he fought back a curious smile, an odd look of fascination in his eyes, but then he let it fall into a look of pure disgust.
"What is that?"
"S-S-Spider" he said shakily, tears welling in his eyes as he revealed Leo the contents of his other palm: eight twitching whisker-thin legs.
Maybe not a spider anymore.
Leo took a step back, eye wide as he let Raphie's wrist go. But still, it hovered there, frozen and exposed. "What did you do to it?" he exclaimed as Mike and Donny rushed over to see.
"That's so gross!" Mikey whined with his hand clamped over his mouth.
"Why would you do that, Raphie?" Donny gasped, looking his brother woefully in the eye as if his brother had just dismembered his closest friend. "What's wrong with you? He didn't do anything to you!"
"He's crazy! I knew it!" Michelangelo exclaimed, hiding behind Leonardo, pretending he was scared.
Finally, Raphael let his little fists uncoil, releasing the dismembered spider into the pooling sewer water at his feet as his fiery brown eyes met his oldest brother's, stubborn determination, defiance, hurt, and hidden wounds behind the brimming tears. His voice was miserably shaky when he spoke.
"Y-you usta be my friend, Leo" he whispered weakly, a heart-breaking sob. But immediately, he bit back the tears and pressed his lips together till they paled.
He knew those boys on the surface wouldn't cry like that, and he bet their brothers never made fun of them either. No, they wouldn't cry, they'd just get mad, and so would he.
Leonardo's eyes were still round and wide with shock as they stared, two pairs of brown eyes identical at first, but now one bright and filled with flecks of amber gold and wonder, the other dull, dark, and made opaque so early in his few young years.
When Raphie breathed, he shuddered at the pressure building in his chest like a little corked bottle ready to explode. He could already feel the unshed tears turning sour in his stomach as he slowly lost the battle to forbid them to fall. But before he could give in, he managed to push past his brothers and run as fast as his little legs could go, far away from their echoing jeers.
But a pang of bottled anger suddenly busted inside him like hot ammunition, tearing him to shreds. He halted in his tracks before he could get too far, spun on his heels and faced their stupid taunts, two tight little fists clenched tightly at his sides.
"I… I AIN'T crazy!" he screamed as low as his little voice could manage.
There was a pause where all three of his brothers just stopped in their tracks, wide-eyed and stunned. Even Mikey was rendered speechless.
That is, until Donny stifled a snigger then broke the painful silence.
"That's 'AM NOT' crazy! Bad language doesn't make you sound tough, Raphie!"
Now all three of them were laughing again and Raphie had to turn and run, no longer able to hold back the maddening tears that streamed down his cheeks the whole way home.
But before he could escape them, before he could grow deaf to their lethal poison-barbed words,he could hear Mikey calling after him, laughing all the while "Run, Forest, run! See, he IS crazy!"
Laughter chasing him through sewer pipes, hot tears sliding down his face, a spider floating dead in stagnant water.
Maybe he is crazy.
His eyes fluttered against the pull of sleep and dragged him back to stark reality, his brain begging him to end the pounding, the burning ache in his lungs as he struggled for breath. He could hear the horrid wheeze echo against the hollow walls. Beads of cold sweat dribbled down his cheek as his eyes searched wildly in the dark, still bombarded with the frantic bursts of electric adrenaline sparked through his bloodstream by the echoes of his twisting nightmares.
But the pain shook the haunting echo from his head as he bit his tongue and tried not to moan aloud in agony and disdain.
He almost liked the fever dreams better, already starting to miss the painless fog of his harshest living memories after his fall back to stark reality and all the pain he had forgotten.
But that shape, his brother, that terrible wraith behind the darkness crushed down by the hellhounds in the wake of their defeat. Even in the swaying shadows of his spinning fevered world, he couldn't peel his eyes away no matter how hard tortured sleep would pull.
The great Leonardo with his back against the wall looking blank, defeated, dead.
He could barely believe his eyes as thick, pounding dread settled miserably in his stomach.
Those flickering moments lived on within his dreams well beyond the fleeting moments of his clouded consciousness- his cool touch in the darkness, the imagined sound of silent tears, the sound of metal grating against stone and light, the scent of drying blood.
They huddled close together in those nights- shared their nightmares and their sorrows side-by-side like a disease, touching, but only barely- never daring to hold but simply be like all the past had been forgiven staring so close into the hungry eyes of death.
Leonardo's shoulder was pressed against his plastron, and his head rested by the crook of his neck. But Raphael knew he had been sleeping- for the first time in ages, Leo was finally sleeping.
He cracked his heavy eyelids open and watched the darkness swim, raising up one shaking hand to wipe the rivulets of sweat pouring down his brow- only to find himself stripped and maskless, a realization that dared to fill him with silent, coursing rage. He coughed violently and shivered instead; surprised he couldn't see his breath in the painful cold.
He couldn't comprehend the world around him and chase away the fog like ghosts within his mind. But he knew this wasn't good. Something disturbing in the air told him things were more than bad.
He winced and grit his teeth as he shifted there upon the stone, trying to find some comfort where none ever could be found. He tried not to think about the throb that pounded madly upward from the break, the sick sensation of grating bone against bone, the tender, swollen heat and bruises there. Making a tight fist, he prayed for sleep to take him and half wished the dark would let him die.
And that was when it struck him- Leonardo hadn't moved. He could still feel his brother's shuddering breath against his plastron, but never did he stir. Raphael had to wrench his eyes open slowly and run them over his brother's silent figure just inches away on the concrete.
His voice was weak and foreign when he spoke, barely recognizable to his own ears. "L-Leo?"
He grit his teeth. Stuttering again like some idiot child in his nightmares.
But Leo didn't make an attempt to move. Instead he whispered, faintly like the murky sound of ghosts.
"Go back to sleep Raph." He swallowed thickly, painfully, tears within his voice but none swimming in his eyes. "You don't want to be here."
Unable to speak, Raphael reached out with trembling fingers, touched his brother's cool shoulder lightly, as if willing his voice to strengthen, to be his anchor into consciousness. Leo was supposed to be strong one, nothing like the strangled whispers that sailed through the imposed synthetic night of their cursed concrete prison.
But something on his fingers made his heart stop, made him pull away quicker than the haze of fever would have ever allowed. Something warm and sticky on his fingertips, growing cold in the eternal midnight air.
Immediately, he knew what it was.
"Leo" he breathed, rolling painfully onto his back as the pull of sleep grew stronger. At least his shell gave some protection from the concrete. "You're… bleedin.'"
"Don't move" Leonardo admonished, his voice taking hold a more familiar tone "your leg is never going to heal."
Raphael's eyes were heavy now like lead weighed down upon his eyelids but still, they grew wide in terror, shining black and wild. He traced his brother's solemn form, now sitting before him beneath the cloak of darkness.
"W… what did they do ta you?" he whispered faintly, his heart pounding in his ears despite the nearly primal urge to sleep.
Leonardo only stared back steadily, eyes solemn even in the night, even drenched in all that drying blood. He reached out to touch his brother lightly on the arm as his hooded eyes demanded sleep.
Despite the rotting fear, the terror, the cuts, his brother's living blood smeared on his fingertips and plastron like the bond that held them entwined together- their brotherhood made tangible, he finally gave into the heavy pull.
And the smell of warm and sickly copper became his lullaby dreams, bringing him closer every day upon the twisted current of his nightmares to the seducing beckon of eternal sleep.
It all had to be a dream.