Thinking afterward won't change anything.
Reaction
By Lady Dementia
Maybe the world had been green once. Maybe there had been plants and life and water. Maybe there was an epic history behind the ruins and bones half-buried in the desert sands. Maybe the monsters preying on each other had been thinking beings once. Maybe there was a purpose to it all.
Maybe he didn't care.
Raphael stood in a cavern's mouth, but even here the sun had enough power to make shadows smoke. A sun like that could burn the thoughts out of anyone's head, fry brains in an instant. The problem was that the body didn't lie down and die afterward. It fed on food and water, the flesh and blood of other bodies if it had to, but it kept on going. Desperation, perhaps animal instinct drove it to claw another breath from air so dry it shriveled lungs. The senseless need to live kept beasts staggering long after they should have given up surviving such a burning Hell. It gave them the brutality survival demanded. They turned on their mothers, their brothers, their kin. They did not feel regret. They did not feel remorse. The ultimate form of selfishness condensed where liquid compassion and reason vaporized.
He stood in the shade and did not feel his skin blister. His hands were fisted, covered in rusted brown that might have once been fluid. It flaked to the hot rock under his feet as muscle groups tightened, relaxed. One followed after another, running up his forearms, through his biceps, straining the tendons in his neck like they would break, and suddenly releasing to leave him limp and trembling, swaying uncertainly on his feet as if he couldn't remember how to stand. Then his toes curled and the tremor of exhausted tension seized his thighs to hold him rigid as a statue. Skin robbed of its elasticity broke over swelled muscle. The cracks in his skin limned in crusted red as blood hit the air and instantly dried.
His mind ached, a mental sympathy for the physical pain he was beyond registering. It relived one moment in time. Blinded to the light, he didn't know how much time had passed. It felt like none at all. He'd turn around and finish the memory the way it should be, not the way he cut it off at. He'd fix it. He'd make things right and force the world around.
With each repetition, hopeless and helpless, every muscle tightened in a shuddering wave that coiled strength into a powerful form poised for action.
Always so strong, Raphael. But so weak. So very useless.
He could have, should have, might have, but didn't. Too late to change the past, yet he was unable to stop trying. If he stopped, he'd have to acknowledge that he couldn't change anything. That he couldn't reverse time and stop the story's end. He'd have to turn around and see what he wouldn't let himself know.
Something far too deep and frightening waited behind the action. When he paused, it loomed. Terror lurked in every cycle as he laid his brother down and forced air into unresponsive lungs, pounded on a chest that wouldn't move, and listened for a heart that didn't beat. Fresh scabs formed half-moons marching up his palms as his fists clenched progressively tighter, WILLING the moment to pass. This time, THIS time, Donatello would breath. THIS TIME, the eyes would blink open instead of glaze and dry. His own eyes squeezed shut, and he held his breath, body arching into itself in a spasm concentrating his body--the only thing he could depend on, the only thing he had left--throwing his body, mind, even his soul into a nebulous fight against reality itself.
This time, Donatello would live.
Raphael whirled and slammed his fists against the rock wall, a scream raging its way out of his gut.
Air split on the razor sound. There was something of horror in that scream, something of a wounded animal and a person holding on against agony so deep it threatened to drown him under grief. His throat rasped and gave out, turning the scream into a dreadful croak that sounded more like a sob than a shriek. Perhaps he did cry then, tears vapor before they could rinse his brother's blood and bile from his lips. His knees buckled, throwing him forward into the rock to scrape down it to the ground, forehead bruised and he didn't care, he didn't care.
He teetered, reeling on the edge of an abyss. No one would catch him. No one would see him fall. His other brothers were…were planets away. Worlds away. It didn't matter anyway. He had no hope of rescue, and no hope of return. No hope at all when he couldn't change the one thing that truly mattered. He knew that no one, least of all himself, would forgive this. He had no one and nothing, and there was nothing but the desiccated corpse steaming in the shadows to keep him here.
He couldn't look back. Sharp pebbles dug into his face as he turned his head to the searing beam of light spearing through the cavern mouth before him. Burning, devouring sunlight, harsh as wildfire, blazed only a step outside the stone shelter that had failed him. Out there, somewhere beyond the first blinding wave of pain and heat, something howled. To him, it sounded hungry. It sounded empty.
Maybe there had been a purpose to it all. Maybe nothing but a monster could survive here. Maybe regret--all the might have, could have, never would--maybe they swarmed with teeth of memories that tore minds to pieces and savaged whatever it was that killed a body before its time. Maybe it left the body empty of the past, and that's why it kept living.
Skin cracked, blood dried. He staggered upright.
Raphael fell forward, embracing the sun.
End (#2)
LD's Note: Thanks to Lady Venom for reading this and poking at sentences.