A/N: Hey guys! I finally finished this dang chapter! *sigh* college has sucked all the life from my soul. This is our last semester to prepare for our state license exams, so my brain has been too exhausted to even think about writing lately. Progress on this story has been slow for awhile now, and again, I apologize. It will get done eventually, when I'm not crying and taking tests all the time, haha. On the plus side, I've gotten to see some cool stuff in the hospital. Last week I sat in on a heart transplant. I was worried I might faint or throw up, 'cause you know, the smell of burning flesh ain't that great, but I didn't get grossed out at all! Yay! So that's my life right now. School and hospital and more school and then my bootiful husband haha.
Anywho, I hope all of my amazing peeps on here are having a good year so far! I made this chapter a bit longer, and I just finished it and I have to get up at 4 am tomorrow (so like...five hours from now lol) for my 13 hour shift so if anything sucks in here, please feel free to let me know. I don't have the patience for editing right now, heh.
Chapter Twenty-Four:
Torn
{Leo}
My heart is racing. Raph's definitely more pissed off at me than he was five minutes ago, and that's the exact opposite of what I need.
"The hell was that for?" he shouts, swinging his sai right over my head. I drop and roll and spring back up, grabbing the rungs on the wall and hoisting myself onto some pipes.
"You were going to kill Karai! What are you even doing down here with her?"
He bares his teeth at me from below.
"I was protecting our family—that's what I was doing! That little snake was wandering around down here, looking for you—"
"For me?"
My heart skips. I barely caught a glimpse of her earlier, so small and stiff beneath Raph's hulking form. But it was enough, enough to bring back a flood of confusion and pain and that familiar burn, so deep and slow and persistent. It was enough to make my head spin.
Raph's eyes narrow, burning in the dark.
"Really, Leo? She tried to kill you! And you're still holding onto some dumb schoolgirl crush?"
"She wasn't trying to—" I groan and rub my forehead. "It doesn't matter, Raph, okay? Just leave her alone."
He scoffs and throws a shuriken at me, narrowly missing my head.
"Leave her alone?"
Uh-oh.
"Why? So you two can run off and live happily ever after?"
"Raph, no—that's not—"
Another shuriken. I duck and almost slip from the pipe. It clangs against the wall to my left, ringing through the tunnel.
"Shut up, Leo!" His grip goes back to his sai and he jabs it in my direction. "You're such a liar, you know that? You can't sit there and act stupid when we all know a big reason you did this to yourself was for her! So don't you dare give me that whole 'Raph, that's not what I meant' crap again!"
My heart races alongside my thoughts. Again, I'm faced with the consequences, the questioning of my own decisions, my own motives. I mean, I know I thought an awful lot about her… But—but it wasn't just for her. It was for everything.
He scoffs at my failure to respond.
"You know what? Forget it. Forget this stupid conversation. Go chase her down—go do whatever you want, Leo."
My heart sinks. "Raph—"
"Clearly, you two are meant for each other." I notice his eyes blurring before he turns away from me. "You're both good at breaking things."
He starts walking off. My brain has fractured and I watch him go, scrambling for the words.
"Raph, wait."
He doesn't stop. I curse under my breath and slide down from the pipes, landing in the water with a splash. "Raph!"
I drop my daggers and run towards him. But when I reach out to stop him, he whirls around, grabbing my arm and punching me in the face. My head snaps to the side and my body follows. I tumble into the water and roll till I hit the curb of the walkway.
"I mean it, Leo!" he snarls. "Just leave me alone!"
My head spins. I blink away the splotches and everything comes rushing up all at once. In sheer desperation, my voice climbs and cracks as I cry after him.
"You wanna know why I did this?" I can feel my eyes burning, the stupid threat of tears gathering along the corners. I'm soaking wet and aching, inside and out. Everything hurts. "I did this because I'm tired, Raph! I'm tired of this life the universe decided to throw at us! A life of being granted enough humanity to separate us from animals—to make us feel and think and cry and hurt, but not enough to actually belong in the human world. We literally live in their crap!"
My words echo through the tunnel, reverberating back in waves that seem to penetrate my bones. I wipe the blood from my nose with the back of my hand. A broken laugh escapes me.
"You know what's even more stupid? It's like life is just out to get us. Like, 'Hey Leo! Here's a beautiful girl to fall in love with—but guess what? Not only is she the daughter of your enemy, not only are you doomed for a life of war with one another, but you're not even the same species as her! Those feelings you have? Psh, well you better forget you have them, because you're green and you have a shell!"
I'm becoming unhinged. All of it is seeping from me now, every pitiful thought, every selfish dream.
"I didn't just do this for her, Raph. I did it because I'm sick of not being able to have a semblance of a normal life. And the worst part—" The lump catches in my throat. I look away, chest heaving.
"The worst part is we've never had a choice… Our whole life has been drawn out for us." I swallow, wishing I could melt into the water and be gone and let this awful weight simply wash away. "But then…then Donnie showed me it was possible…for us to have something. For us to have a real life, a real future with real choices and dreams we could actually believe in. And I want that…I want that more than anything…"
I finally look up at him; I meet the wavering green and see an expression that isn't angry or void of empathy. I see a reflection of the pain that ripples through me, down to my soul. Our unspoken lament that is our life, ironic and cruel and empty. We were given enough to see what we could never have—enough to understand that the rest of our lives will simply be us looking at the world we wish to belong to through a dirtied window.
And it sucks.
"But I was selfish." The last of the torrent washes from my chest, leaving me strangled and vulnerable. "And…I was wrong… I was wrong to think that I was the only one who felt that way—I was wrong to hide it all from you and Mikey…and from Splinter. I was just…afraid…that someone would tell me no. That Splinter would hear of it and try to convince us that all we really need is family, and we're okay living like animals underground, and that we can be happy if we just choose to be so." I shake my head and scoff. "I didn't want anyone in the way."
The tunnel is taut with emotion, with the sea of ache that I've released. We wade in it now, feeling every bit of it around us. There is nothing left to shield me from my pain—it surrounds me.
"I'm sorry, Raph… I really am…" I blink back the tears gathering in my eyes. "You're right, though… I should just forget it. It's not like this is going to work out anyway, not at the rate things are going… Splinter will want us to turn back soon—"
"I know how you feel, Leo." His gaze is so intense, fueled by the burden I've unleashed. "And I know you're sorry. You and Donnie, even Mikey…you guys all want the same thing, and I get it. I just…" He sighs, shoulders slumping. "I don't. I've never cared about the human world—not in that way. I like how we are. I like the secrecy, the clash between human and mutant… I always have. I mean, we have purpose…you know?"
He shakes his head and looks up at the ceiling of the tunnel, as if to see beyond the layers of pipe and concrete.
"Their lives are boring. We've seen them, going about their day, the same routine, same stress, same nothing. What's so great about school and a boring office job in a dirty, crowded city full of dirty, mean people?" He laughs. "I feel bad for them."
He takes a sai from his belt and gives it a twirl, his eyes gleaming at the fluid motion of the weapon. "But we're so much more. I mean, sure, we're ugly green turtle people, but we can fight and do things they only see in movies. We're actual heroes, Leo. We save people all the time, we've done crazy, incredible things that no one would believe. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
Silence moves between us, lifting the torrent of pain from moments before. A spark of a connection has been made.
"It does," I respond, slow ad quiet. My mind shifts through the hundreds of frames of our adventures. The explosions, the car chases, the alleyway scraps and big rooftop battles. He's right—we've seen and done enough for ten lifetimes.
"But I've had my fill." I sigh. "Or I'm worried it won't end, and I'll never have the chance to do anything normal. That we'll just die in a fight somewhere and no one will ever know we existed, let alone how much we sacrificed for their safety. We give so much…but then we get nothing back. We just lose pieces, and I'm worried that soon there will be nothing left."
His brow furrows. "Yeah, I get that too, but come on Leo—don't you feel like you're just running away? Giving up? I mean who's gonna fight in our place?"
"We can still fight—we can still be us, Raph. But at least as humans there will be hope for a future somewhere."
He scoffs and rolls his eyes. "Dude, we can't fight as humans. I can throw you clear across this tunnel right now and you'd probably die instantly. You're weaker, more vulnerable—how is that going to help us?"
"We can learn," I press. "I just have to get used to it—"
"You can't have it both ways, Leo. You've seen the movies; the hero has to choose between his purpose and his life. And whenever they try to walk the line, they always fail." He swallows and looks away for a moment. I know he's trying to empathize with me, but his own reality is mounting the frustration inside him. We can understand one another to an extent, but our wants are too different.
"Maybe…maybe it just isn't meant to be, Leo," he says softly. "Sometimes it doesn't matter how much you want something… Sometimes you're just not meant to have it."
"I know that, but this—this isn't that, okay? We can do this, I know we can—"
"There is no 'we' in this situation," he snaps. "I don't want to change. I don't even think Splinter wants to change! 'Cause we both get that we're better now, even though we're different. This is our life, Leo—this is what we're supposed to do."
I shake my head, feeling the desperation return. "But I don't want to, I never chose this!"
"Well then, what are you gonna give up?" His eyes narrow on me. "'Cause you know that's what it's coming down to: What is Leo going to choose? You can't have both."
He must see the frustration building behind my expression, because he rolls his eyes again. "But you know, go ahead and try, Leo. Try to walk that line. You're too stubborn to listen to anyone but yourself anyway." He turns around again and starts walking off. His words carry my fear through the tunnel.
"Just don't come crying to me when this all blows up in your face."
A/N: I know a big fight was expected in this chapter, but these guys write themselves sometimes and it just turned into a tense but honest conversation...hopefully it was entertaining? I felt it was time these two address their issues, and Raph has been angry for like this whole story so he had to have a little calm-time here, haha.
But alas, some turbulence lies ahead, my fellow turtles.