Fun fact: this chapter at one point contained a rape scene. Guess where it happened.
"Execute him."
It took a moment for the words to sink into Raphael's mind, making sense of them, and another moment as he slowly looked over at Marino, and then down at the sai in his hand. He began walking slowly towards Marino, clutching the weapon tightly. But for some reason, his legs were reluctant to move, as if he were dragging heavy weights behind him.
Marino was struggling more than ever, blood trickling from his hands as he tore at the cord. Raphael could see fear blooming in his eyes as the turtle pointed the sai at his throat. The sharp tip broke the man's skin, and a scarlet drop trickled down the length of the sai.
But he couldn't make his hand move any further. This… this didn't feel right. He had killed for the Foot before — that very night, in fact. It was one of the things he had been taught. But those deaths were in battle, against people who were trying to kill him in return. They had a chance to defend themselves, to fight back, to kill Raphael themselves if they had the skill.
This… this was a man bound and immobile. Helpless.
The sai trembled in Raphael's hand as he withdrew it, stepping away from Marino in confusion. He slowly turned to face Master Shredder, and said quietly, "I… I can't."
Master Shredder said nothing, and his masked face betrayed nothing of his thoughts. Raphael felt a wrench in his chest as he realized he had failed this test — that he had disappointed his master. He looked down at the sai still clutched in his shaking hand, and felt fear rising inside him like smoke from a newly-kindled fire.
And then Master Shredder was standing beside him, his masked face still impassive, still mysterious. Raphael took a step backwards reflexively, confusion crossing his face as he watched his master's eyes for some hint of what to say, what to do. This had never happened to him before, and he could feel the confusion deepening into panic.
"M-Master…" he said faintly. "I just—"
He didn't see Shredder's fist coming until it was too late. The jonin's strike in the center of his chest crashed him off his feet, sending him tumbling backwards across the floor. He finally stopped just in front of the wall, landing heavily on his right shoulder, his legs scrabbling at the concrete floor.
For a second he panicked, feeling as though his lungs had collapsed in on themselves. Tears poured from his eyes as he struggled to breathe, struggled past the throbbing pain in his chest. If he had been human, the strike might have killed him; as it was, his tough plastron had protected him from some of the impact.
His fingers clawed at the floor as he tried desperately to get to his knees, to face Master Shredder, to try to explain why he couldn't do it…
"Let me be clear," Shredder said in a low voice. "I was not asking you."
A bladed hand snaked under Raphael's torso, seizing the front of his belt and twisting him up to face his master's eyes. They were blazing with white-hot rage, a fury more potent and hateful than any Raphael had seen before. It terrified him — all the more so because he knew there was no one in the Foot Clan who would dare to come to his aid. They would let him die rather than incur Shredder's wrath.
Suddenly the hand wrenched Raphael's belt against his body. He was thrown backwards, hammered into the wall behind him. His shell made a sickening crunching sound as the concrete behind him crumbled, and he felt the painful impact rattle through his entire skeleton. For a horrible moment, he thought that Master Shredder had broken his shell, but realized he could still feel his legs.
Slowly he sank back to the ground on his hands and knees, gray dust settling around him. "M-Master," he whispered. "P-please…"
"Your disobedience comes with a price," Shredder said tightly.
Another blow, this one a blindingly-painful strike in the side, sending white-hot fingers of pain through Raphael's guts. As he writhed in the dust, he felt Master Shredder slip his remaining sai out of his belt, and weigh it in his hand thoughtfully. Fear roiled through him, a fear more piercing than the terror he had felt before.
Master Shredder was going to kill him with his own sai.
But as he struggled back to his hands and knees, Shredder tossed the sai across the room to join the first. "You have forgotten your place, Raphael," he said, his fist striking the turtle in the stomach, causing him to curl in on himself, gasping desperately for breath. "You have forgotten that you are mine completely. Body and soul."
Raphael's mind was spinning as he crouched before the jonin, fragments of thoughts whirling through the confusion of his oxygen-starved brain. He saw the kick coming this time, but was powerless to avoid it — it crashed into his abdomen and sent him rolling back against the ruined wall. Bits of broken concrete dug into his face as he scrabbled to rise again.
Then a foot slammed down on his carapace, pressing him face-down. Raphael groaned and strained against it, pushing his hands against the floor with all his strength, but he was too dazed, too breathless for it to make any impact. He felt as though his body was going to break, or his shell going to crack under the pressure. His lungs felt like they were going to collapse again… black dots were swimming in front of his eyes…
"Everything you are — everything you have ever been — was because I willed it," Shredder said grimly. "You belong to me."
His hand seized Raphael's throat, tilting his head back. Raphael's eyes darted to Shredder's face as the jonin said ominously, "In every way."
Suddenly the weight was gone from his shell, and Raphael was able to suck in another breath, coughing and gasping as if he had been drowning.
Then he was suddenly yanked back, with his aching carapace pressed against a wall. There was a flash of steel as Shredder's hand darted towards his face, and Raphael felt two lines of fire suddenly blaze on his cheek, drawing another gasp from him. Something warm and wet trickled down his face.
"Disobedience is death, Raphael," Shredder said sternly.
The jonin pressed the tips of his blades, still stained with Raphael's blood, to the soft skin directly under the turtle's eye. Raphael froze in place, his breath coming in hitched gasps, as the blades traced along the eyelid, as if Master Shredder was considering whether to stab him there. Instead he felt the blades slipping down to his throat, brushing the thin skin that covered his jugular vein.
"But I will be merciful," Shredder said.
Raphael was acutely aware of his heartbeat, pulsing against the blades that touched his throat. If Master Shredder even nicked him there, he would be dead — even if he didn't bleed out too quickly for medical help, which he probably would, no one would save him. No one would give aid to someone their master had condemned to death.
Then suddenly the blades were pulled away from his throat, and Shredder rose to his feet. "I will give you another chance. Execute him, or share his fate immediately. Choose," he rumbled.
Raphael stared at him blankly for a moment, as if he hadn't heard correctly. Then he slowly climbed to his feet, his knees shaking after the beating he had suffered, and made his way to where his sai had been thrown. As he stooped down to pick them up, he heard Marino's muffled voice screaming against the rag in his mouth, saw him thrashing against his bonds as best he could.
He slipped one of the sai into his belt, and gripped the other one in white-knuckled fingers. Slowly he turned towards Marino, with the grim finality of what he had to do to survive ringing in his heart.
Raphael raised the sai over his head, and brought it down.
It made a horrible squishing, meaty sound that he had never noticed, probably because there had been noise and confusion when he had killed with his sai before. Marino's body crashed sideways to the ground, going limp, and a puddle of scarlet blood began to spread over the concrete floor, soaking into his soiled suit and disheveled hair. His eyes stared mindlessly into space, but Raphael had the unnerving feeling that they were staring at him.
He felt numb. Like something had ripped the nerves from his chest, leaving him hollow and deadened inside. Slowly he knelt beside the body, and wiped the blood staining his sai on its jacket sleeve, not noticing that the blood had spattered his plastron and his face.
He heard Master Shredder pass behind him, his cape rustling softly as he moved. He was displeased, Raphael could tell, but not so much that he was willing to kill over it any longer.
Raphael looked down at the corpse, and something began to stoke inside his chest, something he had never felt for his master before. Rage. He felt it burning in his eyes as he looked up at Shredder, felt it seething under his plastron, felt it blazing in his blood and skin and bones. It took all of his self-control to slip the sai back into his belt, rather than flinging it.
"That is the fire I wish to see in you," Shredder said, sounding satisfied. His eyes gleamed in the dark, almost covetous. "You will not hesitate to kill again." It wasn't a question, but a command.
Raphael felt a tremor pass through his body, and he didn't know if it was rage or fear — the two seemed to be warring inside him, and he didn't know which was going to win. Karai looked down on him with hooded eyes and a small, twisted smile on her lips. She had known, Raphael realized — perhaps she had even come up with the idea, just to see what he would do.
He turned and blindly walked from the throne room, feeling a loud rushing in his ears that blotted out every sound. He was barely aware of other ninja scuttling out of his way, seeing his vacant stare and the blood staining his body. All he could think of was the savage beating he had just endured — the feel of blades against his throat — the terrifying knowledge that if he didn't kill Marino, his master would kill him.
He plunged past his guards into his room, shaking like a leaf with mingled rage and distress. One of them spoke to him, but he couldn't understand what the man had said before the door slammed shut behind him.
Raphael sank onto his bed and crouched down, wrapping his arms around his middle. His body was still ringing with the shock of Shredder's attack, and he vaguely realized that he was lucky he hadn't been stabbed by those bladed gauntlets when Shredder was punching him. Lucky. If he could be called that.
Everything you are — everything you have ever been — was because I willed it. You belong to me.
He had been wrong. He had spent so long trying to prove that he was more than a pet, more than a material possession. That he was not a thing to be owned. He had believed that one day he would be able to convince others that he was more than that — that he was his own person, that his being a mutant did not mean he was less than the others.
But he had just been deceiving himself.
All along, no one around him — including his master — had seen him as anything more than a thing to be possessed. He was a tool to them, a weapon, like the swords that the ninja carried into battle — a sword had no mind of its own, cutting and slashing wherever its master wished for it to. And when he had refused to draw blood one time, he had nearly been broken, discarded as a useless blade.
All his dedication to the Foot Clan, his unwavering loyalty to Master Shredder, his desperation to be of service… none of it had counted for anything. Was this what Toshiro-sensei had tried to warn him of? And Mother too?
"Mother," he whispered brokenly. "Mother…"
He rested his forehead against the floor, desperately wishing that she were here for him now. The aimless rage inside him, the bone-deep pain… he needed her voice, her eyes.
And now that the initial shock was wearing off, he could feel all the injuries that Master Shredder had left him with — the two burning slashes on his face, the ugly bruises rising on his green skin, the painful spots on his plastron where he had been struck and kicked, the cuts and scrapes from broken concrete biting into his skin, the dull ache in his shell where he had been smashed into a concrete wall. The beating had taken its toll on his body, and he was trembling so hard now that he could barely creep into his bed.
He briefly thought about going to the clinic to have his wounds tended to, but decided against it. They probably wouldn't treat someone who had so obviously been disciplined by the jonin.
Instead he curled himself on his futon, still trembling, and closed his eyes. His mind was still in turmoil, awash with grief and rage, and the pain from his beating was too fresh for his body to relax. For a long time he lay silently in the darkened room, aching for the smell of camellias and the song of birds. Mother…
"My son."
He didn't realize he was dreaming until he heard Mother's voice, smelled the grass and flowers all around him. But somehow, this time was different from the times he had seen Mother during his training — he still felt every ache and pain from the beating.
She was bending over him, her cheeks wet with tears and her eyes bright and anguished. Her soft hands gently cupped Raphael's face, tracing the fresh slashes Shredder had made in his face. He flinched, his breath catching at a fresh blast of pain, but didn't pull away.
"My baby," she whispered. "My poor precious child…"
"He—he hurt me, Mother," Raphael whispered. His rage had faded, and there was only grief in him now.
She rested her face against his, and he could feel her tears trickling down, mingling with his own as they poured over the gashes in his cheek. But instead of burning as he expected them to, Mother's tears seemed to cause the pain to fade. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, and she gently stroked his head and his shell, embracing him as if he were a little child.
"I cannot take away any more of your pain," she whispered. "All I can give you is my love… and the promise that this night, as dark as it is, is not the end for you. You are lost and lonely, but you will find your way."
"How?" Raphael whispered.
"By enduring, and having faith. Faith in those who will truly care for you."