Disclaimer – Well, this is it as far as chapters. The next one will be the epi. I have it all written, but it needs a bit of tweaking. As always, I don't own the TMNT's or Bara. Once again, I borrowed this idea from Wendy Peabody's 'Rahab'. Go read it. Ziptango has it on her home page under Fan Fiction, and TurtleNinja has it on hers. There are differences between the two, probably because Wendy might have tweaked her story once, after someone already copied/pasted it onto their site. Either way, hope this chapter helps some of you to recover a bit.
Also, I've made some factual changes to chapter 5, based on how Wendy described Don's injury in Rahab. Chapter 13 of that book pointed out that there wasn't a cut along Don's chest. The only strike was to his upper arm, at the deltoid muscle. In the two versions of that story, though, there are different 'takes' as to what happened right after Bara tried to kill Don. One of them had Don waking just before the strike and trying to move out of harms way, only to have his shoulder – rather than his neck – catch the full brunt of the sword. In another version, he woke up after the fact, and then leaped out of bed. I chose the latter, since it says that Bara's love for him altered her original programming. Read if you must, but there's no encouragement from me to have anyone re-read chapter 5.
With Ziptango's laptop biting the proverbial 'dust', however, she was unable to beta read. So, whatever glitches you find, please excuse. One can read the same chapter just so many times. After a while, the words start running together! LOL
Also, due to the recent attacks on certain stories regarding a myriad of reasons, I am foregoing my usual 'thanks' to my faithful reviewers at the end of this chapter. However, I will list those who were kind enough to comment on the last update.
Be blessed.
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Chapter 6 – Post Season
The after-surgery pain was less this time, he had noticed. An 'improvement' was what the doctor had said. "Only a few more operations like this one, Mr. Tello, and your arm will be as good as new."
Don could only hope, of course, and he did recognize that there were positive changes in his arm's movement and sensation. It was a bit of good news from his doctor that seemed to please Don, which was a rare occurrence of late.
Yet, one thing would not change and that was the scar. With at least two more operations still to look forward to, there wasn't any way for plastic surgery to help in the matter. So long as he continued with the prescribed reconstructive process, his wound would never be able to heal properly enough to avoid scarring. With his right deltoid muscle bunched unnaturally, for as long as he lived it would remind Don Tello of how he had cheated death and how Bara, his wife, had tried to murder him.
Once again he sighed, something he had found himself doing for the past hour. The spells were like that, sporadic and assaulting his mind without warning. The doctor had initially advised counseling, but Don rejected the idea, stating almost indignantly, "I've been through worse than this, Dr. Williams, and I have never once had to indulge the psychiatrist's couch."
Of course, back then when he earned injuries of similar nature, even though this was probably worse by far, he and his brothers lived hidden under the streets of New York City. Had he attempted to take advantage of such help during those times, a psychiatrist's couch would have been the least of his worries.
Nevertheless, every so often when he was relaxed and not thinking of anything in particular, Don would see an after image of his dead wife's face. It showed the very expression she wore when she died alongside his bed. Yet, no matter how he tried to conjure up a different image, the one of her in death seemed permanently imprinted in his mind. It haunted and teased him into believing that, in some way, he was responsible for her fate. Had he originally not convince himself into believing the messages were nothing more than misdialed fax machines, he was confident that Bara would still be alive.
As it was, Don initially blamed his pampered and indulgent lifestyle. Believing that his and his family's war with their hated enemy had ended, it was what had given him a false sense of security that they were no longer in any danger from them. The only people he had had to worry about, since their emergence into society, had been technology thieves, men who tried to steal his ideas before they hit the market. Now, everything had changed and reverted to those days when he and his brothers had to fight to stay alive. It was only a matter, now, of waiting to see what else they might do to undermine the mutant family.
Yet, despite his current concerns for his clan's well being, Don could not stop thinking about how he could have thwarted Bara's untimely death. Had he devoted his energies to the strange recorded tones and had Don taken Thomas's concerns more seriously, he was positive that he would have eventually discerned the meaning behind the messages. Armed with that knowledge, then, Don believed that he could have taken Bara to Leo's ryu in Japan. There he would have incorporated his brother's assistance and either rehabilitate or reprogram his wife. At least, that was what Don believed, and it seemed to play continuously and without mercy in his mind.
Regardless, though, many weeks later after they had deciphered the message, Leo himself had remarked that such conditioning would have been difficult to undo.
"I suspect that she was a kunoichi, Don. Whoever did this probably trained and programmed Bara since childhood," Leo had explained, "Because of that, she would still have residual traces of her conditioning. Bara would never be completely safe." Leo then whispered sadly to his brother as Don lay in the hospital bed, "And then…we would have to take 'care' of her."
Nevertheless, after the attack and while Don recuperated from his first round of surgeries, Mike had helped solve the mystery of the strange phone calls. It was too late for Bara, of course, but it did add one more twist in their war with their long-hated enemy. It was now apparent that their old antagonists were using programmed infiltration to beguile the mutant family and their need for companionship.
In any event, back when Thomas initially played the recordings to Mike, Don's brother had suggested their musical quality. "Maybe each note represents a letter of the alphabet?" Mike had wondered aloud.
Thomas was stunned; he hadn't even thought of that.
Considering that Mike owned a small growing recording business on the West Coast, he and the valet flew out to California with the messages and ran them through the studio's audio system. However, after taking the English alphabet and applying all twenty-six letters to the first twenty-six keys on the piano he had there, it didn't work out the way they had hoped.
"Well," Mike thought, "middle C is the traditional starting point. Let's begin there."
Unfortunately, even that didn't work out. No matter how they combined the letters, nothing seemed to make sense.
Finally, Mike had another epiphany, but he groaned at the same time, "What if they used…kanji?"
Thomas's eyes widened considerably and then stated almost in trepidation, "Mike, do you realize how many characters are in my native language?"
Nodding, Mike replied, "Yep, that's…why I groaned, dude. But, I think it's probably what they used, since the English alphabet would be too easy t'figure out. If they used all eighty-eight keys on a piano, then they'd have to apply specific kanji characters pertaining to Bara's assignment, otherwise it would be too complicated - even for them." Mike shook his head, "and, other than using what her final mission as a template, it's goin' t'be hard to figure out."
Despite the impossibility of the task, it was their only other option. Consequently, they threw themselves into their work, sifting through the hundreds of kanji characters that would command Bara to kill. Since they knew what the last message probably told her to do, they used that and, ever so slowly, began the process of unraveling the code. Working backwards from that last message, they toiled for hours, day after day, moving from her final command through the first three. At one point, they became so stymied and unable to progress any further, as a last resort they called Leo out from Japan to assist them.
Although he didn't care much for traveling, Leo's concern for his own welfare and that of Splinter's helped to motivate him to join Mike and Thomas in California. He was concerned that if someone affiliated with the Foot had successfully compromised Don's security back in New York, what were the chances that another 'Trojan horse' was in placement at the ryu? This became his greatest fear
After making sure that Splinter was safely ensconced in one of Don's safe houses in south Osaka and then had him surrounded by personally trained warriors dedicated to protecting the mutant family, Leo took one of Don's jets and had the pilot fly him out to California.
Then, once he arrived at Mike's Beverly Hills home, and then chauffeured on to Hollywood to the recording studio, he joined the tag-team effort of decoding the messages. By working in shifts non-stop, after what seemed like weeks, they finally figured out the basic meaning to all four messages. Initially, Leo had been impressed. He saw it as a brilliant method of pre-conditioning an assassin. Using specific Japanese kanji characters and applying them to particular musical tones, then playing the music over the telephone, the enemy's intent would be near impossible to recognize. Don's interpretation that they sounded just like a fax machine wasn't too far from the truth. Yet, it was obvious that the messages were anything so innocent. They were almost foolproof, except for the one so conditioned.
When they finally deciphered the first message, though, while Don had been in Europe with Raphael, all three de-coders held their breath in belated anxiety. The message said, 'Make sure you are alone. Be Ready, Seek Weaponry. Your Time is Soon.'
There were obvious gaps where missing characters should have been, but the gist of the message was perfectly clear.
Yet, the question persisted, though, as to why Bara could not recognize the order when Don had asked her about it. It only added one more mystery to their conundrum. After much thought, Leo finally understood why this was so. As he listened to the messages, he remarked that whatever programming the Foot forced upon Bara, it might have prepared her to feign ignorance without knowing she was doing so. As an afterthought, he commented to Mike and Thomas, "She had been trained to be an innocent, to be above suspicion. What background check you did on her, Thomas, the Foot obviously had something to do with it. Therefore, for Bara to readily know what the messages meant would have been impossible for her."
The second and third recordings that Don had intercepted were shorter, with no mention of a weapon. They were very simple commands - 'Be ready.'
Yet, it was the final message that had chilled them to the bone initially, and brought to fruition all that the Foot had trained Bara to do. Short and to the point and then repeating itself in a loop, the coded musical command ordered, 'Your time is now! Kill and Die with Honor.'
"But, how would they know that she would intercept it and at that precise moment, though?" Mike asked, befuddled.
Thomas had quieted considerably, as if he, too, had given thought to what Mike had just voiced. Quietly, he replied, almost in trepidation, "They were watching for her. They had to be, where she was programmed so perfectly. The dreams she kept having, the nightmares Don told me about, were all part of her path towards destroying him and then herself." Thomas had sighed, "There are several skyscrapers in the area that would have a perfect view of Don's penthouse."
"But," Mike shook his head and chuckled nervously as he challenged that thought, "Don had all the windows tinted, it would have been impossible for them to see in."
Shrugging, the valet replied, "With the right kind of spy technology, they could compromise such measures." He looked at the two brothers and smiled sheepishly, his voice low, "I've done it myself with the Russian mafia."
Still, it was a sobering thought for all of them, and it only made their sense of security even less so. If Don's personally designed safety measures to ensure his own well being was not enough, then the threat to them only magnified the precarious place in the world that much more.
However, they kept such news from Don for as long as they could, where he was still recovering from not only the first series of surgeries, but trying to cope with the emotional aftermath of his loss. The doctor had prescribed mild sedatives in order to moderate his personal turmoil, yet, just as soon as he became clear-headed again and free from the affects of the drugs, Don began asking about what the family had learned. Knowing that he would persist until they told him, they finally shared what they had discovered about the calls.
When he heard about their findings, Don was livid. Yet, all that he said in response, though, had been, "She was conditioned!", and then he quickly quelled his rage as it became obvious to him that someone had set him up.
He knew, now, that someone had taken great measures and an even greater amount of time to undermine his heart. Grooming a young woman to undermine a known enemy and with beguiling charm as Bara had and whose eventual goal was murder, was an age-old formula for vanquishing an opponent. It was a typical kunoichi tactic, her ninjitsu lords willingly sacrificing her beauty and her life for the sake of victory. To think that his precious Bara, his beautiful mate, his love, had been one of these women, sickened him with a despair that nearly consumed him. However, he quickly dipped into his time-honored habit of meditating, with Don retreating into himself in order to try to deal with his grief.
As the days and weeks slipped by, though, Don became increasingly more aloof. Yet, he couldn't help but to wonder if Bara was actually aware of what she had done at the time. He would never forget the look of hate on her face when he initially saw her in the bedroom. Standing by his bed, the sword in the position of a completed down-strike, Bara had even growled at him. However, the moment their eyes locked, the instant her rage melted away and confused grief replaced it, in that moment Don believed that Bara had been fully aware of her actions. Whatever programming his wife had had, it was obviously not nearly strong enough to complete her mission.
Whatever she was thinking at the time, the fact that she had inflicted a wound so close to his head, suggested to Don that her original intent had been to decapitate him.
What bothered him more, though, was why she hadn't done so.
Maybe it was her love for him that deflected her mission. It was a thought that gave him a glimmer of hope for her innocence, but one that – as he continued to recall the fateful night – dimmed with each recollection.
In truth, he could not forget the last words that Bara had said to him that evening. The memory of it slowly and painfully whittled Don's grief down to a bitter nub, tearing away any residual love that he might have had for her. As hard as he tried, he just could not stop hearing her last, sob-choked words, "I'm sorry, I loved you."
Yet, in a strange way, another type of feeling consumed him. It threw his mind into haunting conflicts of thought. The simple fact was - Don missed her - and terribly so. However, after each operation, and as he struggled between grief and rage over what Bara had done, as the weeks and months slipped by, Don's longing gradually diminished.
Now, four months later, after another round of surgeries, he found himself recovering at his home in the Mojave Desert of southern California. He had already undergone three operations to repair the damage to his shoulder, with the resulting outlook showing almost complete recovery. Don had to credit the state of the art medical advancements that science had gained over recent years and the fact that he could afford the world's best doctors. In fact, it was only a matter of weeks before he could resume his work schedule once again.
As he sat under one of the acacia trees on his patio and while he lounged in his chair, Don looked out across the vast desert landscape that lay just beyond the perimeter wall. In similarity, it seemed as vacant and as dry as his heart. He then absentmindedly and gingerly fingered the slightly swollen scar along his deltoid, watching as the sun approached the western horizon. The rainbow of warm hues slowly gave way to the cool blues and purples of night, with the most eastern part of the sky revealing its first faint star for the evening. Don sighed and closed his eyes. He felt a rarified moment of thankfulness. With sunset was still a good thirty minutes away, there was still plenty of warmth left to enjoy. For the moment, he felt a bit of rarified contentment.
Although his body was mending and doing better than anyone had expected, Don's knew that his mental state might take longer. As it was, he continued to suffer from the trauma of losing Bara and in the way that he did. As a result, his outward countenance became aloof and detached.
As he sat in his chair, Don listened impassively to his younger brother talk. Mike had been regaling him about his growing music business, and about the party that he was going to have in a couple of weeks.
"Yeah, dude, I mean every big-name artist is going t'be here. It's gonna probably last the entire weekend if not the whole week!" Mike chortled happily. "You might want to be somewhere else, Donnie-boy, maybe spend some time in Croton, give Mindy a call? I don't think my clients'll be your kind of crowd!"
Don just stared straight ahead, absentmindedly nodding every so often in detached agreementt. With Mike's mention, he briefly thought of Mindy, thought of calling her, but then quickly dismissed the idea. He wasn't quite ready to explain to her what had happened to him and Bara, not just yet, anyway.
"Oh, and Raph may be coming by in a month, to see ya." Mike went on to say, "He's still dealing with that Russian mafia issue that he and Thomas took over for ya, but they're close to finish'n it."
"That's good to hear, Mike. Thank them for me." Don said softly, not turning his attention away from the desert panorama.
"Hey, ya can thank them yourself when you see 'em. Raph said he's gonna stop by the Croton house, before coming here to rest up." Mike said, "Croton might be a good place for ya, keep ya close to the bus'ness in New York."
"Hmm mmm…" Don muttered quietly. He thought that having a bunch of music industry people to deal with would not be a good thing for him right now. He sighed at the idea and silently agreed with Mike that moving back to the house in New York would be better.
Mike then glanced at his brother and sighed. He could see by Don's vacant expression that he had lost interest in the one-sided conversation again. The past several weeks had been awkward at best in trying to socialize with his stricken brother. It was often hard to know what to talk to him about. Mostly, everyone in the family tried to avoid the one topic that seemed to consume all of them, yet it was very much like having an elephant in the room. It was hard to ignore. So, Mike decided to shut up for a while. Instead, he relaxed in his own chair, leaning back with his arms behind his head, as he tried to take in the last offering of warmth from the sun. The only disturbance was the occasional call from wild birds as they called out one last time before night fell upon the desert.
As Don studied the waterfall burbling over the rocks, he tried to mediate a little. As the shadows deepened around the yard, one by one the automated lighting switched on. He watched as the water, now backlit with the artificial illumination, cascaded in gentle rivulets down into the larger pond below. The cheerful sound of splashing conflicted oddly with the dry desert landscape that surrounded the compound. He watched as the multitude of koi fish swam within the pool, their variegated colors adding a jeweled quality to the waterscape. They played among the shadows that rock and manmade luminance created, moving in among the underwater foliage like phantoms. Their gold and creamy white hues created a striking contrast against the darker recesses of the pond. For Don, they were mesmerizing and, for a moment, the decorative fish allowed him a bit of respite from his concerns. He let his mind relax, then, and wander for a moment.
However, as the silence grew deeper between them, Mike fidgeted. Sighing and unable to ignore the obvious, he turned solemnly towards his brother. He carefully laid a gentle hand along Don's knee so as not to startle him. Mike then said softly, "I'm – sorry, bro, about – well – you know."
With his trance-like state now interrupted and the pond no longer his focus, Don blinked at Mike's question. He then turned a hardened face to him. He looked at his brother full on as he asked, his tone devoid of emotion, "Did Thomas find out who Bara really was?"
Taken aback by Don's impassive tone, Mike sighed and then shrugged. Gone now was his surfer accent, his voice taking on a more formal tone, as he replied, "Not yet. They only know that she was part of the Foot, a kunoichi, trained from childhood to infiltrate and assassinate targets – and you were her target, Don."
Again, silence interrupted their conversation. After a moment, Don nodded and said evenly as he looked over at the pond again, "She wasn't very good, if she was trained to kill me." He then glanced back to his brother, "I'm certain that if Bara's hadn't become distracted by her feelings for me, I would have been decapitated."
"Hey, Don," Mike said in defense, "maybe her programming tanked…just before…I mean," Mike's voice became whisper soft, afraid to speak any louder, almost in reverence, "I saw the way Bara looked at you in Japan at the wedding, the way she said her vows. Man, Don, that girl loved you." Shaking his head, Mike glanced away, his own face hardening, "Better we find the people who did this to her…who did this to you…than to dirty Bara's name any more than it needs to be." He sighed, then, depressed and sad for what his brother had gone through and for what Bara's death had done to the whole family.
However, a sudden shift in Don's mood caught Mike's attention, forcing him to face his brother once again. Donatello now looked over at his sibling, a seething gaze emanating from his eyes. It almost seemed capable of filleting the skin right off Mike's face, resulting in causing the poor turtle to almost pale in response.
He then heard Don exclaim; his brother's words edged with razor sharp precision, "Bara was trained to love me, MIKE! She paid . her . price . for betraying me I know what she said to me just before committing seppuku, and it was not love, Mike, it was regret." Don looked away, now, almost exhausted, yet his expression remained as hard as steel. The muscles in his jaws contracted and then clenched as he recalled, "She kept telling me, over and over, 'I'm sorry I loved you'." Shaking his head and sighing deeply, Don remarked, "No, Bara might have been programmed, but she knew what she was doing the moment she raised that katana. I have no doubt about that, now."
Mike could shake his head, his own heart aching for his brother's loss. He knew that Don was hurting and in more ways than any of them ever had. Yet, Mike could not believe for a single moment that Bara knew what she was doing when she had tried to kill her husband. Maybe it was Mike's own way of coping, where his usually cheerful self and positive outlook on life tried to see past the negative. In any event, he held his tongue, knowing that whatever opinion Don had of Bara, there wasn't any way of dissuading him from it. Regardless, Mike knew that, for Don, he would have to come to terms with it, no matter what the outcome.
As Don continued to sit there in the garden with his brother, the night that had changed his life forever continued to play out in his mind. Despite his own opinion that Bara had been fully aware of her actions, Don still could not forget the look of confusion on her face. It seemed to contradict the sneer she first gave. Waking to find his shoulder barely adhered to his body and then with Bara's contrasting expression, the remembrance eventually caused Don to second-guess his final assessment. He ended up wondering long afterwards if she really did understand what she had tried to do to him.
Still, she did say what she said and he would never forget her words for as long as he lived.
Worse still, however, his pain-distorted memory had also edged the mental picture of her features, as if mocking her beauty. He would always recall how her face screwed up with guilt and shame, contrasting her hateful and vengeful eyes that had stared into his own only seconds before. In his mind, he could still see the trickle of the one single tear tracing its solo journey down her right cheek, a red tear representing his spilled blood. He would forever evoke her last words to him, words choked with emotion and sadness. 'I'm sorry I loved you'. They were words that clashed with her hateful hiss from beforehand, challenging the sincerity of her sudden suck of air, as if shocked by the sight of his injury.
Don could only picture the sword in her hand with the sword in her body, with both becoming one in his scarred mind. Had he killed her, or had she killed herself? In all honestly, he could not remember, since the impact of his injury had impaired his memory. What made it frustrating for him was that Thomas could not say what had actually happened, since he had come into the room after the fact. Nevertheless, the word 'seppuku' became part of Don's recollections over his wife's demise.
In either event, none of it mattered anymore; his wife was dead and, as far as Don was concerned, so was his need for love. He knew beyond any doubt that those last few seconds of Bara's life would haunt him for the remainder of his. Consequently, a subtle hardness crept into his heart and his very being, keeping at bay any grief he might have had for her. It didn't take long for Don to decide to never again find himself compromised, or caught off guard, in the way that he had been with Bara.
As he mulled over his thoughts and as he sat there on his patio, the last lingering vestiges of light faded along the western horizon. With the encroaching night only minutes away, the stars winked on in the east, one at a time, as they followed the dimming glow of the sun. The full glory of the Milky Way now slowly drew across the sky above like a transparent curtain, chasing the celestial golden orb as it circumvented the earth in its westerly arc. Don stared up into the darkening expanse, his thoughts on only one thing. He knew that his body would eventually recover. He also knew that he would heal emotionally, too, yet he was fully aware that he would never again trust another woman.
In a moment of clarity that was almost painful, Don made up his mind that, for as long as he lived, he would make every effort to keep himself safe from their charms and from their beguiling ways.
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Be blessed!