Chapter 13 – Suspension

.:…:.

The door to his room creaked open when Raphael pushed on it. He stood in his doorway and looked in. It was untouched, as messy as he'd left it all those weeks ago. But he no longer felt a sense of ownership over the place. It was deserted, abandoned. He stepped inside.

The previous owner of the room had liked bikes; there were a few posters on the otherwise bare walls. Elbow and kneepads were strewn all over the floor, and a blanket was tossed haphazardly over the hammock. His hammock. He could sleep in it now, there was no reason to stay in Don's little hospital. And it would be a hell of a lot better than curling up in mouldy straw in the cold basement of some hellhole…

His presence in the room felt awkward, intrusive. He jumped when he heard a light tapping on the doorframe, feeling like he'd been caught red-handed in some place he shouldn't be. He spun around guiltily to see Mike, who was carrying something carefully, almost reverently, in two hands. He came forward into the room.

"Thought you might like these back."

It was his sai, and his mask. The sight of them jolted him painfully – familiar things seemed the hardest for him to bear right now. They reminded him of how far he'd fallen, and how fast. How could they have remained the same when he had been forced to change so much? Mike seemed to know that he couldn't take them for himself just yet, so he placed the bundle on the small table next to the hammock. Raph cleared his throat experimentally.

"How'd you get 'em?"

Mikey looked encouraged at the sound of his voice. "Found them in the storeroom of a warehouse on the docks. Must have been the place where they first nabbed you, I guess. They were how we knew we were in the right place to start looking, actually. First breadcrumb on the trail."

Raphael hadn't really thought about how his family had tracked him down. And with everything that had happened since, he'd almost forgotten that first night on the docks, and the man (he'd never even known his name) who'd bartered his life away to Darmonaz. Sold him, like cattle. That's where it had all started. He felt flushed with shame suddenly, and couldn't meet his brother's eyes.

Mike seemed to realise that he'd said something wrong, but he didn't know what else to do. He couldn't just talk to Raph as if nothing had happened. He'd seen all the places, searched through the stockrooms and abandoned buildings and dim basements, the dirty cages… he could hardly imagine how much worse it would have been to be kept there. He knew it must have been bad. (Especially because it was Raph). Pretending he was perfectly fine was not going to achieve anything. Mike knew Raph would try to bury it all, if he could.

His little brother didn't plan on letting him. He knew that method never worked.

"I know you don't wanna talk about it," he began, but Raph cut him off with a sharp movement of his hand.

"I don't wanna talk about anythin'." He turned his back on his brother and stared down at the steel of his sai, all tangled up in red cloth. He couldn't see it, but he could picture the small, hurt look that would be on Mikey's face right now. He couldn't give him the right words to take it away. (He'd never known the right words). So after a few seconds Mikey mumbled an excuse and left the room, quietly. Raph didn't turn around to watch him go.

Good on ya, he snarled at himself. They've been trackin' you fer over a month and yer not home two days before ya start hurting them. Brilliant.

His mind led him to the logical conclusion. They shoulda left me there.

He knew they'd yell at him if he mentioned that thought out loud, denying it and telling him firmly that he was being an idiot. Heck, maybe they'd be right.

So he wouldn't speak it out loud. He'd keep the words nestled inside, keep them close, keep them silent.

.:…:.

Splinter settled his robes more deeply around himself, then wrapped his hands around the warm comfort of his tea cup once more. Normally at this time of the morning his sons would be just beginning their training in the dojo. But normal life had not yet come out of suspension, and so Splinter would let his family sleep. However, when he heard the light tapping at his door, he was not entirely surprised.

"Come in, Leonardo."

Leo entered, the steam rising from his own early morning cup of tea.

"Good morning, Sensei," he murmured, moving to kneel before him on the mat. Splinter noted that his eldest's face did not wear its usual expression of calm focus. Something was bothering him, and it was not difficult to guess what.

"Have you slept, my son?"

"A little," Leo answered distractedly. His eyes were still weary, but Splinter supposed it would take more than one night to catch up on all the rest he'd skipped since his brother had gone missing. Leo turned the tea cup in his hands, staring into its depths as though searching for answers in there.

"I checked in on Raph when I woke up. He's sleeping in his room, even though I think Donnie still wanted him in the lab where he could keep an eye on him… He was a bit restless, so I sat with him for a while, but I left before he woke up, because… well, you know how Raph feels about people watching him sleep. I just… It doesn't seem real. That he's back, I mean. I was beginning to think… What if we'd lost him for good? What if they'd shipped him overseas, and we just never saw him again, never even knew what happened…"

Splinter waited until Leonardo had let all his fears out into the open, his voice winding down. Then, calmly, he pointed out: "They did not." He paused to let that statement settle.

"My son, you must not fixate on what could have been. You have found him, and thanks to your leadership, he is home. That is the most important thing."

Leo bowed his head. "Yes, Master. I know you're right." He let out a sigh. "I just wish that we could have found him sooner. What Casey described…" His hands balled into fists, resting on his knees. "Don said they must have done that to him almost every night. I don't… I don't know what to do, father."

Splinter closed his eyes for a moment, hiding his own pain behind them. When he opened them again, they were clear, and he spoke calmly. "I see you already fear that your brother will take his experiences to heart, as he has always done. Do you think he will wish to speak of them?"

"I think that's even less likely than it usually is, with Raph. Don said it might take him a while to be comfortable with using his voice again."

"As I thought." Splinter nodded, as if coming to a decision. "We must not let him be controlled by what has been done to him. We must try to draw the poison from the wound, before the infection sets in."

Leonardo looked at him sceptically.

"I know," Splinter acknowledged, "that it will not be an easy task. But we must try. Raphael is too quick to believe the worst of himself. And with the lies that I suspect he has been force-fed during his captivity…"

Leo watched as his father's voice trailed off and his face darkened, almost frighteningly.

"… Master Splinter?"

His father's shining black eyes blinked once, then seemed to refocus on his face.

"I am sorry, Leonardo."

"… You don't have to apologise for being angry," Leo said, with a sudden certainty that surprised the both of them. How nice it was to be sure about this one thing, at least. "Raph wouldn't."

Splinter gave him a grim half-smile. "You are certainly right about that."

.:…:.

It was Donatello who next heard the quiet rap of knuckles against his door.

"Come in," he called softly, "I'm awake."

Leo pushed the door open with his shell, his hands busy with another cup of tea and a freshly-brewed mug of coffee for Don. He handed the latter over to his brother, who murmured an appreciative "Mmm, thanks," and settled back in the swivel chair in front of his computer. Leo sat on the edge of Don's unmade bed, leaning his forearms on his knees with a weariness that was not altogether physical.

"You don't stop, do you, Don?" he commented, eyeing the multiple windows and applications already open and running on the toolbar of the computer.

"I couldn't." Don rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "There were things that I needed to know. And I think that I've found the answers to some of them, at least."

Leo lifted his head, hopefully. Don caught his expression, and warned, "They're not exactly good things. I think it's just going to piss you off, really."

Leo set his jaw. "I want to know. Sock it to me, whatever it is."

"… Well, I'm pretty sure I know how Darmonaz was keeping undercover." Don swung his chair around to face his computer screen, not wanting to see his brother's face when he told him. "Animal charities. The World Wildlife Fund, the RSPCA, shell, even Greenpeace. He's on all the donation lists. He's got a reputation as a campaigner for animal rights. And apparently that's allowed him to avoid any questioning about his own activities."

Animal rights, Leo's mind repeated numbly. Behind his closed eyes he saw again the empty auditorium, the tiny, dark room where Raph's stitched face and battered body crouched behind the bars. Cold. Half-starved. Animal rights? Animal rights?

Something tugged at his fingers, and he realised that Don was rescuing the delicate tea cup from his death-grip on it. Don placed the cup carefully on his bedside table, then sat beside Leo on the edge of the bed.

"That's… unbelievable." Leo managed after a while.

"I know," Don said grimly. "There's got to be more to it, as well. I mean, I'm sure he'd be guilty of about ten types of fraud and forgery. He was hard enough to track down. All his donations just kept him in touch with the right people." His mouth twisted bitterly. "No one ever suspects the charitable man." He turned his head to meet Leo's hard stare.

"We'll make him pay," Leo promised. "We'll make him regret he ever laid eyes on Raphael."

Don nodded, hearing the cold steel in his brother's voice, and allowing it to anchor him.

This man would no longer go unpunished. They would make sure of that.

.:…:.

Raph spent his first couple of days at home becoming intimately acquainted with the toilet bowl, as his digestive system re-learned how to function. Despite the worried looks his brothers gave him, they knew better than to try and aid him whenever he disappeared suddenly into the bathroom, and pretended not to hear his muffled retching noises. Just when Don was beginning to consider putting him back on an IV (or trying to, at least – there's no way he'd let one of those things be stuck in his arm again), something in his guts seemed to settle enough to let him keep light food down.

He spent most of his time on the couch in front of the television, not really watching, but unwilling to lock himself away in his room. He was half-aware of a having a brother or a father with him at all times, but as long as he didn't catch them staring at him, he didn't have the energy to chase them off. He was also subconsciously aware of the discussions going on behind the closed door of Don's lab, or in the kitchen when they thought he wasn't listening. He didn't care. If they wanted to know something, they would ask him. And then he'd probably refuse to answer. That was how it usually went.

What was there to tell, anyway? So he got a few bruises, a few extra ugly scars to add to the collection. So what? He hadn't even been significantly injured. It was nothing. He'd been through worse before.

In a lot of ways it would have been better if he'd been taken by the Foot. He was almost appalled at himself at the thought. To the Foot, he was a hated enemy. He would have been treated with dishonour, almost certainly. But in a twisted way (a really, really twisted way, he amended), the Foot's methods of dishonour were almost a sign of respect. To them, he was somebody worth hating in his own right.

In Darmonaz's little circus, the whole concept of honour had been completely wiped off the slate. It couldn't be measured in terms of material wealth, so it simply did not exist. In that world, Raphael was just an object with a price tag attached, a means to an end.

That was why he couldn't explain to his brothers what it had been like. They wouldn't understand. In the world of the circus, Raphael hadn't been a defeated warrior, hadn't been an enemy…

He'd been nothing.

.:…:.