A/N
Dreams ahoy!
He's lying on the floor.
That's the first thing he realizes as he wearily pulls himself onto his knees and briefly scans the small, empty, and purely white room around him.
The second thing he notices is the open book lying in the center of his imprisoning room.
His head cocked in puzzlement, he shakily pulls himself onto his feet only to fall back down again as a rush a pain stabs through him.
"Ow ow ow, my head, geez," he murmurs to himself. Understanding that getting on his feet is no longer an option, he slowly crawls to the book. His baby blue irises flash in confusion.
It's pages are blank.
He quizzically flips through a few of them before giving up and further investigating the peculiar room.
There's nothing in the area with him except the empty book and a small light bulb that hangs from the ceiling. There's no door, no window. Just him.
And he nearly jumps out of his shell when the sound echoes throughout the room.
o-o-o
"Mikey!"
Raphael is by his brother's side with a swiftness Splinter wishes he displayed during training. As gently as he can, he carefully picks off the shattered pieces of the plate which fell on the unconscious turtle when the table flipped over. However, his drugged brother gives no indication of his presence, making the heartbeat of the red clad turtle pick up in speed. Cautiously, he pulls Mikey's head onto his lap and feels for a pulse. He sighs in relief as soft throbbing thrums underneath his fingertips.
"W-What's wrong with him?" Raphael nearly falls backwards at his older brother's voice. Leonardo hasn't spoken for days. Even if he has, the rest of the family wouldn't know because he stayed locked in his gloomy room all day. But instead of feeling relief that his brother is finally opening up, anger dangerously swells within the hothead. There's only one person who is guilty of this.
"Why don't we have the genius of the family explain?" Raph bitterly spits. He spins around to confront the suspect of the crime, but to his great surprise, Donatello is nowhere to be found. "Where the hell…"
His question dies in his throat as Splinter slides out of his chair at the table and kneels next to the youngest turtle. "Raphael," he begins, running a soft hand over Michelangelo's forehead. He frowns. "Bring him to his bedroom. We cannot leave him on the floor in this condition. I will find Donatello and have him come to tend to Michelangelo at once."
"Hai, Sensei." Raph easily scoops up his food-splattered brother and bolts out the kitchen. Along the way to Mikey's room, his narrowed eyes scan the lair before they land on the slightly-cracked lab door. It still softly creaks as if it was just recently shut. The hothead takes note of that fact before swinging open the bedroom door, storming across the cluttered floor, and gently laying his slumbering bundle on the bed. Mikey despairingly moans and his slack mouth faintly falls open.
Raphael anxiously nudges the turtle's side. "Mike," he softly demands, poking harder. "Wake up. Come on, wake up."
The only response he receives is a muffled groan and the closed eyelids squeezing together harder. His short patience deteriorating, the hothead takes hold of Michelangelo's limp shoulders and gently yet firmly shakes him harder.
"Come on. Get up," he commands without a hint of softness. Although his voice comes out cold, the overwhelming feelings of distress and fear twirl and mix inside his stomach. Trying to push it down as far as it can go, he gives another brief shake before reluctantly lying the body back down on the mattress. Silently, he studies his beloved brother with as much concern as he can muster up.
Mikey's face is harshly pale, contrasting nicely with the fluffy white pillow propping up his head. His breathing is rugged and uneven as if he had run a marathon while in reality, he just lifelessly dropped to the floor. His sudden dead weight even managed to tip the table, but luckily, no one was on the side it crashed on because two particular turtles were cleaning up Don's mess. Raph doesn't hold back the protective growl in his throat. "What the hell did he do to you, Mike…"
Suddenly, Raphael feels the presence of the new person in the room rather than sees it. At first, he only glances over his shoulder. Then, as he fully takes in who stands in the doorway, he whips around with a dangerous gleam in his eyes.
o-o-o
The book.
It's flipping it's own pages.
Mikey scrambles backwards, staring at the possessed object with wide, alarmed eyes.
Then, just as soon as it started – it stops. It's back to the first page that the book originally started on before the youngest turtle had flipped through it.
"What the shell?" he whispers, tightening his hands into fists and digging his nails into the palm of his hand.
It's the red marking on the page that finally catches his eye.
He knows he shouldn't look. He knows he shouldn't be moving closer to it. But he's drawn to it against his own will. He hardly tries to struggle against the abnormal force pushing him towards it.
And when he's finally reading the poorly etched words that reek of blood, he knows he should've fought back harder against the strange temptation.
DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU.
o-o-o
"Get the fuck out, Leo!"
"Raphael, he's my brother too. Besides, Sensei is talking to Donnie right now, so I have nowhere else to go even if I wanted to. Why are you –"
"Don't you dare ask why I'm bein' like this, Fearless!" Raph barks. He takes a threatening step towards the eldest, but Leonardo doesn't falter underneath his steely gaze. "You know damn well why I'm upset!"
Leo takes a step further into the room, challenging his brother without the presence of spoken words. "No, Raph, I don't. What is your problem?"
"My problem?" the hothead demands, jutting a sharp finger into his own plastron before directing it towards Leo. "Why don't you answer your own damn question? What the hell's been wrong with you?!"
Leonardo's eyes abruptly flicker with too many emotions to process at once. Raph grinds his teeth in irritation. "Nothing," the leader practically whispers although his gaze never leaves his brother's. "I've just been meditating more often recently."
"You're such an awful fuckin' liar, ya know that?" Raph presses. He takes a step closer to his brother until their head to head, their eyes narrowing and hardening within the close vicinity of their faces. Without any sort of mercy, he jabs a calloused finger into Leonardo's hard plastron. "So tell me, what's really been making you such an asshole?"
"Stop now, Raphael," Leo growls.
Raph scoffs and lowers his finger. "News flash: you ain't Splinter. You can't tell me what to do."
"I am your leader, and as leader, I am tel –"
"See, that's where you're wrong," Raphael coldly spits. When his brother's eye ridge raises in subtle confusion, he continues; "You're leader out there." He juts the finger that he used to jab his older brother to the open doorway behind them. "In here, you're just like me: a fifteen year old teenage mutant who has the world continuously hunting his ass down and, if you haven't noticed, a younger brother who is layin' half dead right in front of you at the damn moment! I don't know about you, but I think that it's a pretty fuckin' big deal."
With that, Leo seems to back away a few inches. Giving a growl mixed with triumph and his everlasting anger, Raph turns around and once again tends to his baby brother.
"God dammit," the red-banded turtle growls mostly to himself after a few silent moments, reaching a large finger towards Mikey's neck to check for a pulse a second time. Even though he feels relief flood into him at his brother's soft heartbeat, the seething anger for all his pain-in-the-ass brothers overrides it. "First Mikey, then Donnie, and now you? Un-fucking-believable."
He hears Leo step closer to him. "Wait, what's wrong with you and Donnie?"
Raphael almost laughs out loud at the enraging question. "What isn't wrong with us, is probably a better question." Mikey suddenly shudders before Leonardo has a chance to respond and a strained noise escapes from his throat, making Raph inwardly cringe. "Shit… I had told the idiot to finish the medicine by today, but damn, I didn't think the heartless nitwit would actually... forcefully drug Mikey!"
"I didn't," a new, shaky voice breathes out. Raphael's body tenses. "If anything, this is your fault, Raph."
o-o-o
He reads the scrawled words three, four, five times over, and each time sends a dark shiver down his trembling spine.
He squeezes his eyes shut, blocking out the eerie, blood-red sentence.
But it floats behind his eyelids.
DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU.
DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU.
DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU.
"Stop it, stop!" he wails out, flinging his wild eyes back open. His petrified gaze lands on the book, and he gags on the fear in his throat. There's something new on the page.
DON'T LOOK AT HIM.
Heavy blood stains surround the sentence.
His heart pounding like a drum, he cradles his head in his hands and rocks back and forth on the cold ground.
There's no one here but him.
There's no one here but him.
There's no one he can look at.
He just won't look up.
It'll be easy. This is easy.
Then he hears it;
The staggering footsteps behind him.
His efforts to contain himself screech to a stop just like his heart.
"Mikey, Mikey, please, look at me. Help me, please."
Raph.
o-o-o
Emerald eyes swirl with a chocolate gaze with such intensity, Leonardo considers stepping between his brothers before something truly awful happens. But he's too late.
"Wait, could you put that by me again, dumbass?" Raph demands, his voice going from steely cold to uncontrollably shaky with unnamed emotions. "Let me just make sure I heard that right."
Donnie shuffles on his feet before standing tall again. "We both know it's true, Raph," he quietly states although his eyes hold as much stubbornness as the confused leader. "If you had actually tried to help Mikey, then I wouldn't have had to make that intensely strong, and if I even have to say it, unpredictable medication for him!"
"But guess who did make the medicine for him in the end, Donnie! Was it me?" Raph irritably waits for a response, but none comes. "Exactly. If you were really the angel during all of this, you wouldn't have slipped it into his drink!"
"Tell me what I was supposed to do, Raph!" Donatello cries out. "You threatened to let him suffer if I didn't do it, so what other option did I have?!"
Leonardo's hard gaze snaps to Raphael with the multiple questions and accusations swimming in the icy blue pools.
Raphael rolls his own eyes, biting the inside of his cheek to help wane some of the growing anger. It doesn't work. "First of all," he sharply snaps, "he isn't 'suffering', so stop bein' dramatic just to get Fearless on your side. Second of all, if you would've dropped out of that damn idiotic state you were in durin' breakfast, you probably could've thought things through!"
"Did it ever occur to you that you could be laying next to Mikey right now if it weren't for me?" Don counters, his line of eyesight lessening as his brown irises narrow. "For your information, dropping my glass wasn't exactly just a regular Donnie-Is-A-Fuck-Up move.."
Leo's sapphire eyes widens in utter shock. His intelligent sibling, stained with years of honor and peace, never dared to even whisper such an unpleasant word – until now, at least. However, as it causes Leo's breath to be stolen away from his own chest, it only adds fuel to the burning inferno inside Raphael. But that's not to say the red clad turtle is not completely thrown off as well.
Letting out a bitter and breathy chuckle in the heavy silence, Donnie crosses his arms lightly over his plastron, somewhat proud for knowing he has put his hotheaded brother in such a dumbfounded state. "Although, now that I think about it, it wouldn't have been so bad to let you have a taste of it. Maybe it would've made things a whole lot easier for the entire family, Raph."
And with that, Raphael steps closer and takes a swing.
A/N
So, all that waiting, and I give you this? I know, I'm disgusted with myself. But with my volleyball club season starting up and school being, well, school, it'll only get harder.
Anywho, I hoped you enjoyed this chapter in the end. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.
Reviews are welcomed(: