A/n: Gack. Apologies for the long wait for this update. This was the chapter of DOOM. I pushed through it, but I'm not 100 happy with it. It feels both rushed and too long at the same time, but... I'm kind of sick of looking at it so here it is.

I'll stop complaining now before I talk you out of reading!

(Also - apologies in advance if there's a few more typos than usual, I'm trying to proof-read at 3:30am. Cause I'm smart like that).

Chapter 8 – Waking Up To Darkness

.:…:.

The next time Raph awoke, the shock and the adrenaline of the night before had well and truly worn off, and his body was stiff and aching. The thin layer of mangy straw hadn't done much to cushion the hard steel floor of the cage. It was still oppressively dark, and cold. As soon as he shifted his body he was reminded of the needle and tube sticking out of his arm.

He wondered if he should try and pull it out.

His stomach still felt achingly empty. He'd have to be pretty desperate to ever opt for a slow death by starvation, and anyway they probably wouldn't let him get that far. He put the idea aside.

The darkness was disorienting when his body told him he'd been asleep for hours. The quiet noises of the animals were the only sounds in the room. His wrists were still chained down near the floor of the cage.

He wondered if they were going to keep him on his knees.

It would be so easy to go crazy in this place.

So easy. Get a grip, Raphael. It was really goddamn hard to relax his breathing when he could only breathe through his nose. Stitched like a piece of meat. The stray thought made his stomach turn over. Slowly, he bent his face down to where his hands were chained, and felt awkwardly with his fingers. The plastic wire holding his mouth shut was thick and strong – strong enough to hold through all of his frenzied cries of pain last night. Touching it now reawakened the burning in his face.

He wondered if he could rip it out.

The problem was it'd probably take half his face with it. He had a sudden image of himself with his mouth ripped open, blood dripping from his torn flesh, like something out of one of Mikey's B-grade horror films. And he could imagine how Mikey would flinch away from him in fear, in disgust… He wished his brain would stop throwing these pictures at him. He needed to be coming up with some sort of plan of action, not psyching himself out.

But there was simply nothing to come up with. He was blind, silenced, and well and truly stuck. The room stayed dark for hours, and all he could do was simmer in his own frustration. And with nothing to distract it, his mind worked of its own accord. He wished he could switch it off. He wasn't the kind of turtle whose thoughts automatically turned to positive things – that was Mikey's job. Raph was more of a glass-half-empty kind of guy.

He wondered if he really would forget how to speak, if he was trapped here long enough.

He wondered, if it came to that, (if he was reduced to that), if his family would want him back.

Don't be ridiculous, snapped Don's voice in his head.

Yeah. He knew that. He knew they'd come, no matter what. But he really didn't want them to see him like this. And he couldn't figure out how in the hell they were going to find him, anyway. And he hated the fact that he was helpless in the mean time. He didn't like being rescued as if he was some stupid damsel in distress. But it wouldn't be the first time. Why do I always screw things up?

And so on, and so on; his thoughts grumbled mercilessly while he sat in the darkness. He was almost grateful when the harsh strip lights flickered on that evening, and the world had light and colour again.

He didn't stay grateful for very long. Max made sure of that. He'd come in with a couple of other men to feed the dogs and prepare for that night's entertainment. He paused on his way past Raph's cage, taking a step back to peer at him more closely. A slow smile spread across his face.

"Didja have fun last night, freak?" Max had a shaved head and a tiny little bit of fuzz under his bottom lip. Raph decided that he hated goatees.

"What, no smart-ass comments for me today? Not so smug now, are ya?"

How do you ignore someone, Raph thought, when you can't make it obvious you're ignoring them? Turning his face away would have looked too much like submission, so he settled for the good old death-glare. It didn't seem to be having much effect, however.

"You got nothin' to say to me?" Max's voice was getting louder.

Yep. It'd been too much to hope that this idiot would have forgotten his insults of the other day.

"Huh." He pushed his stupid goateed face right up against the bars. "I guess animals can't talk after all."

Raph could feel the unspoken words pooling inside his closed mouth. He wondered if he would choke on them, if it was possible to drown in words that he couldn't let out. Normally he'd pour them into his actions (more specifically, into his fists). Now he tried to put them into his eyes instead, and let them smoulder there.

"Hey Max," one of the other men whined, "you actually gonna help us here, or jus' stand around chatting?"

"Yeah, yeah." He gave Raph one last insufferable smirk and then moved away. Raph slowly let out the breath he'd been holding.

The dogs snapped and barked over their food. The bear growled at the hunk of meat thrown into its cage, and the tiger snarled.

Raphael was silent.

.:…:.

They put him out on display again that night. He couldn't decide if it was worse or better this time – the drug-induced haze was gone from his brain, which was a plus, but it made everything that much sharper, brighter, more horribly real. He was even more conscious of his own powerlessness as he was wheeled out into the spotlights. They'd let out the chain around his wrists, so at least he wasn't forced to stay on his knees. There's no sport if the animal's already down, he thought sourly.

If he was being honest with himself, he'd admit that the audience frightened him. They seemed somehow inhuman – in the gleam of their eyes as they stared up at him in disgusted fascination, the way their fingers tightened around their beer bottles, their rough voices.

He'd been called an animal before. He'd lost count of the number of times in his life he'd been called a freak. But he'd never had it demonstrated quite like this. Name-calling he could handle, but this… they were turning him into what they expected him to be. And it was so easy. It shouldn't be so easy. He should have more of himself to hold on to. But it all happened so fast, once the crowd was there. The black energy in the stuffy air built up like a tidal wave, and crashed against Raphael. Nothing he could do could hold it back or fend it off.

On one side of his cage there was a gaggle of underage girls giggling to each other and pointing at him, their faces glowing with their own daring at being in this place. Raph wanted to tell them to go home to their daddies, and stop wasting time in this lowlife dump. When he shook his head at them slightly, they shrieked and nudged one another. He turned his back on them.

But on the other side of his cage there was a small group of men in suits. And, okay, at least they weren't giggling and pointing… but they were still laughing at him, sharing comments and observations. Raph couldn't see what was supposed to be so funny. He was not amused. He was just getting more pissed off by the minute.

Anger was good. Anger was the fuel that kept him burning. If he could stay angry, then he could stay Raphael.

When the crowd was at its fullest, Darmonaz appeared to give the same hate-speech from yesterday. Some of the phrases he repeated word-for-word, but he was versatile, playing off his audience. Quite the Ringmaster, Raph sneered to himself. Darmonaz knew when to make an emphatic gesture, a dramatic pause, when to lower his voice conspiratorially and when to bellow his poisonous words over the agitated sounds of the crowd. He played them – used Raph to manipulate them.

It was worse this time, Raph decided, because this time he knew how it was going to end. He had a pretty high pain tolerance, for sure – but to know it was coming, and to know there was no escape from it –

Yes, there was the taser, and there was the fire in his nerve-endings, and there was the roar of the crowd. His yells stayed locked inside of him for the most part, but the stitching couldn't hold them back completely.

"We'll teach it not to mess with us!"

He tried to dodge as it came for him again, but –

"Mmrrrgh!" – couldn't. Couldn't stop his own desperate-sounding cries straining in the back of his throat, or the heave of his chest, or the way he pulled convulsively on the chain that connected his wrists to the floor. If he could only bring them up he could try to protect himself, but –

"Grrrrrgh!" – couldn't. Not for the last time, he felt a sudden, intense flash of hatred; not just for the man holding the taser, but for the people in the crowd who thought it was a great source of entertainment.

He knew Darmonaz could hear the muffled noises he was making, and he hated that even more.

Godamnit. Just let this be over already.

And eventually, it was. But only for the night.

.:…:.

After the show closed, he discovered a new complication: apparently this gig was a travelling circus.

The men wheeled his cage out to the back room and straight into the back of the waiting truck. They pushed it into one corner with a metallic clang, and one of them bent down and fiddled with something on the bottom of the cage – probably locking the wheels in place. The other animal cages were pushed on soon after, and crammed together tightly. Raph could hear Darmonaz's voice giving out orders somewhere, but the dog cages were being stacked one on top of the other just inside the back doors of the truck, blocking his vision.

The tiger's cage was pressed right up against his, and (remembering the fight that got him into this mess), he made sure to stay right back in the far corner of his cage. But Tigger seemed to be as sapped of energy as Raph felt. When the steel doors of the truck slammed shut and he heard the bolts slide into place, Raph allowed himself to sink down and rest on his knees, and let his head hang low.

The dogs' barking ricocheted and echoed in the small space, leaving him with a pounding headache. A bird shrieked every ten seconds or so, which didn't help. The tiger was a silent, still presence close by. Raph felt like it was watching him in the pitch blackness, even as the truck's engine shuddered to life, causing a new cacophony of animal noises.

He was being transported as livestock. He wrinkled his nose in disgust, and then winced as the movement pulled at the stitching painfully. He exhaled a frustrated sigh, and slumped back against the bars.

Raph could still feel the tiger watching him as the rumbling, swaying movement of the truck and his own aching body lulled him to a strange place between sleeping and waking.

Leo was there. It was raining. Raph was crouched on all fours, and he couldn't speak. Slowly, deliberately, he advanced on his brother, his striped tail lashing from side to side.

"Raph… what are you doing?!"

The words were meaningless in his ears. He only snarled viciously, and pounced. Leo fell beneath him, Raph's sai held at his throat. The rain fell all around them. Leo's bewildered eyes looked up into his face, while his breath hissed sharply through his fangs. He raised an arm, preparing to strike. With the strange foresight that sometimes comes in dreams, he knew what he was about to do - and if he could only speak, then he could prevent it. He forced his stitched mouth open and tried to order himself to stop…

He had no voice. His mouth gaped open silently. His sai descended towards Leo's throat –

- The truck lurched to a stop, jolting him abruptly out of the dream. His eyes flew open.

He was getting really sick of waking up to darkness.

.:…:.