Disclaimer:All I own in this story is Anna. Nobody else.
A/N: I'd just like to say hey to all the people who reviewed! Nice to know you care! (hugs Chibi Rose Angel, Aaron Smiley, Aries Zodiac, Jessiy Landroz, Michan Starfire, Ramica, BubblyShell22, and pacphys) I didn't expect to receive so many comments for a romance! (sighs with downright gleefulness) Iwansi: "She's gone mad with power." Hey, you're not supposed to be in here!Get back into Dragon Moon, not here!Out, out, OUT! (pushes the yellow dragon out of the room) But anyway, in this chapter, I had to write purely on imagination, since I've no clue how abusive a drunk may get. I didn't mean for it to become angst, but it's transformed. Italics are thoughts and flashbacks.
2.
For the longest time, Mikey ran through the sewers. Every step spiked my anxiety a little more than the last. I longed to ask him what happened on the surface level, but I knew by the fire in his eyes I shouldn't. So I let him carry me. The darkness was beginning to scare me; so stifling and hot. Its dark tentacles quickly strangled the few streams of wan moonlight that struggled down through the drainage grates. Cars beeped and honked angrily, drivers yelled expletives at each other on the surface level. Rats skittered along the sides of the sewers, squeaking when Mike passed them by. I realized with a shudder, that those ebony blobs were cockroaches.
I looked back up at my carrier. He seemed frightened. And even though I'd only seen his real face once, it was enough to tell me when he was feeling downright uneasy. This was one of those times. His deep brown eyes had lost their mischievous glitter, now only staring dully ahead into sewer pipelines. Every now and then, those eyes would return my gaze and he'd venture a quick reassuring grin before becoming the emotionless machine I'd now come to hate.
He dipped in his running and I noticed we had entered a long tunnel, the sewer water flowing out of the opening he had come in. His trot slowed to a wade, as the current of the water forced him to shuffle his feet. "Mike, is everything…alright?" I finally ventured. The silence was enormous and I wanted to hear him speak again.
"Peachy, babe. But can you be quiet for a little while longer?"
This was vexing me! That time he met me on the bench in Central Park, he'd been the annoying little kid you find popping party crackers at inappropriate times during a wedding ceremony, or waving his brother's Care Bear boxers in the air at his graduation and screaming "Go get a girlfriend, Blaine, or these things are going to Rex!" But now…I hated this. I shifted myself in his arms as he nimbly hopped over a sluice. The stench took my mind off of Mike for a while, but soon enough, it was back to ruminating.
Suddenly, Mikey slowed down noticeably. We were coming to a wall. It didn't look too special; a dead end, pipes running from top to bottom across it, pressure gauges pushing their needles up and down, steam seeping out of the pipes. Like I said, nothing special. But then he repositioned me to his hip and let me stand on my own two feet so long as I held onto him for dear life. My leg muscles hadn't been used for a while.
He put his left hand on mine in reassurance before reaching out to a fuse box that looked quite mediocre. There was a battered combination lock on the door of it, which Mike quickly twisted around to the left and right until it clicked open with the squeak of old gears. He hooked it in his belt and proceeded to open the fuse box. What I saw was entirely different from my assumption. Inside was a keypad, its numbers glowing green and its screen blinking with the words: "Password:". Mikey grinned at me before punching the numbers faster than I could follow his finger. Different notes came out of the fuse box, and I realized it formed a song. A song is rather hard to describe in writing, so I'll just say it sounded like a cartoon's theme.
Mike finished with that, hurried to a pressure gauge, and yanked it down. Steam shot from the pipes in thin tendrils as he went to a third item, me following because I would have fallen down without his support. The turtle punched a brick that looked obscure enough, and to my surprise, it pushed inward. A low rumbling traveled up my legs and into my head, making me shiver. Mikey backed up a few feet, and before I could see why, I was blinded by light. As soon as I could see again, he had walked me forward, and the door (that's what the wall was) had shut behind us.
We were standing at the entrance to a cavernous inhabitation, full of doodads and little touches that made it more of a home than a cave. Intricately carved pillars of stone held up the second floor, which was about twenty feet higher than the floor. To the far side, I saw a sign that had apparently been vigorously pounded into the wall by a hammer. It read "Sewer Sweet Sewer" and I could almost agree. This was probably better living than I had had in my younger days as a child.
"So, what's your first impression, Anna?" Mike asked, inhaling deeply a scent of incense and pizza.
I looked around a bit more. It was clear they'd been here a long time. "I think you live comfortably enough, Mikey," I teased, pointing to the wall of TVs to the right.
"Aw, those are my babies! Daddy missed you, babies!" I giggled as he put me down on the floor and ran to caress the monitors and kiss his DVDs with the tenderness of a father to his daughter. He gave the remote a long drawn out lip-locker, then proceeded to make out with each TV. That makes twelve Mikey lip marks on the screens. I pity the person who has to spray those puppies with Windex.
"Mikey, what in heaven's name are you doing?" In the blink of an eye, he had me in his arms again. Without a second thought, he paraded out into the center of the Lair and held me up as if I were his trophy for giving the most hideous kisses to electronics. "Mike, for the love of Pete, put her down before you break her in half!" Another turtle, similar to Mike in species and form, yet shorter and wearing a purple bandanna, trotted out of a subway car with an oily rag in one hand and a screwdriver in his belt.
"Aw, c'mon Donnie, I'm being chivalrous!" This is the Mikey I know and love, I thought with a squeal as he threw me into the air and caught me again.
Donnie huffed as he lowered me down. "Women aren't toys, Mike, don't treat them as such," he muttered. "And since when do you know the meaning of chivalrous?"
"Since I snuck onto your computer and went to the dictionary! It was the word of the day!"
"It's sneaked, Mike, not snuck, and I have a password on my computer."
Mike had to put me down for his next action. "No secret of yours is safe in this Lair so long as I, Michelangelo, Agent 008, continue to thwart your evil plans for world conquer!" He struck a comical pose that looked like a copy of the man who had been the first to scale Mt. Everest.
Don sighed and threw up his hands. "That's it, no more comics or Mission Impossible for you, Mikey!" To prove his cunning, Mike started humming the theme from Mission Impossible and began slinking sleazily away toward another room. "Raph's not feeling very happy with you, Mike, you'd better leave – Ah, I rest my case," the turtle mumbled into his palm, which he had just slapped onto his face.
The reason he'd cut himself off was simple: a brown bullet, Mikey presumably, since he hadn't taken off his trench coat, dashed out of the room he'd just entered. In hot pursuit was a different turtle, darker in skin tone, wearing a red bandanna, and looking royally ticked off.
"Mikey, you get back here!" Raph bellowed. "I'll teach you to put a cockroach over my bed!" Mikey was obviously having fun taunting his brother. He was running backwards, making faces under his fedora. Suddenly, he tripped over a crack in the floor and fell back onto a skateboard lying prone on the bricks. He rolled away, yelling fit to summon a S.W.A.T. team, and rolled up a ramp, crashing through a paper door crisscrossed with brown wood.
Don turned pale and groaned. "Uh-oh, Mikey, you're in trouble now…" Mike hopped out of the room, no longer in his topside outfit, and looking as if he was being chased by the devil himself. I soon found out why he had run at such a scalding pace. Out of the wrecked door there came an old gray rat, about four feet tall and looking quite (sorry, pardon the pun) cheesed off with Michelangelo. I wasn't expecting this and jumped in surprise.
"Sorry Master Splinter!" he called back as Raph once again took up chase. Master Splinter lashed his tail back and forth, sighing.
"Michelangelo, Raphael, cease!" he commanded, just loud enough to be heard over the ruckus they were causing. They both halted, Mikey ready to fall flat on his face and Raph, who had been in a precarious position to begin with, on the floor because his balance had been skewed and he landed unceremoniously on his rear. "I would have thought that at twenty years of age, you would have discontinued these childish ways!"
"Erm, obviously not," Mike ventured lamely, falling forward with a loud yell as Raph yanked his legs out from under him.
"Both of you! Katas in the dojo! I shall inform you when you may stop!"
"Hai, sensei," both sighed as they got up. Raph glared at Mikey with a fire almost similar to what I'd seen in only one other person. My vision began going blurry and my mind was unreasonably paralyzed with fear. That glare was the same look my father gave me. The room swam before me as I began having flashbacks I could have lived without.
"Anna, get back here!"
I crawled into the closet and yanked the door shut, hardly daring to breathe in my terror. Daddy was mad with me, but the reason I didn't know. I just came home, he held up a piece of paper and started yelling at me. He must've been drinking that nasty brown stuff.
"Anna, you open thish door!" he roared, speech slurred from the beer. He rammed it with his side and it took all my willpower not to unlock it and repent. I hadn't done anything to deserve this! Why was he so mad? He said a few bad words that mommy told me never to say and pulled on the doorknob. "You shtupid kid, come outta there and take your medicine!"
"No, daddy!" I cried. "You'll hurt me!"
"I ain't gonna do nothin' to you, now get your butt out here!" I knew this was wrong, I knew he would hurt me, but I cringed and unlocked the door. He pulled it open, and I saw that his face was red. He growled and grabbed me by the neck.
"Daddy, please," I gasped, struggling in his grip.
"You needa be punished for thish, you good for nothing kid!" he snarled, throwing me roughly on the ground. I whimpered when my arm almost shattered because of the impact. Then I saw him take out the knife. I screamed as he stabbed into my neck with it, digging it into my skin, causing blood to flow…
"No, please, not again!" I sobbed, curling into a little ball. "It hurts, stop it!"
"Mommy, why's daddy so mean and grumpy?"
She sighed and smiled sadly at me. "Anna, I should've known from the start he wouldn't make a good father for you. Daddy gets mad because of the stuff he drinks."
"You mean that gross brown bottle?"
"Yes, beer. Let me ask you something, Anna," she said, lifting me onto her lap. "Do you think daddy still loves you?"
I looked at the floor. "No, I don't," I admitted.
"Honey, love isn't just food, and providing for someone. It's hugging when they're sad, laughing when they're happy, helping them when they fall and can't get up. There's one such person that will be meant for you, dear."
"What's his name?" I asked.
She smiled down at me. "Mothers don't know these things," she explained gently. "You'll be the only one who does when you see him. Your heart will jump when he looks at you."
My mom faded away into blackness that formed the angry man who was my dad. "Get away! Leave me alone!" I whispered.
"Let me go, Shophia, she needs a leshon in reshpect!" dad snarled. My mom grabbed him on the arm and tried to hold him back while I inched backwards from him.
"No, leave her be!" He wrenched his arm out of her grasp and hurled her into the wall. She groaned and slumped to the floor, her beautiful blond hair in disarray.
"Mommy," I whimpered, cowering in the corner.
"Just shut up and lishen!" dad roared angrily, advancing on me. "You're no good, you'll never be! You're ushlesh, Anna! Ushlesh and ash good ash dead! If you were more like your brother," he growled, pointing at Jarod. He smirked at me. "I wouldn't have to punish you!"
"But dad, all he does is bad stuff," I pointed out, cringing at the look dad gave me.
"Stop talking!" Dad ran towards me and as I ducked, he punched a hole in the wall. Drywall and plaster rained down on me in flakes as he pulled back his fist again. "Hold still!" The next time, I wasn't able to move quickly enough and he brought his hand down on my head, knocking me into the wall and cracking my skull. I cried as he did it again…
The flashbacks faded as I lost consciousness.
What did I do wrong?
(shakes her head) Now, don't you people get all worked up because of what her dad did to her. You may want to kill him, but refrain from doing to. Please review!
Ashite Imasu,
LN