Title: Validation
Summary: Never the perfect son or student or brother, Raphael does the unthinkable. Away from the lair and into an allegiance with Shredder, honor is replaced by his pronounced desire for validation.
Disclaimer: I have no ownership ties to the TMNT fandom or anything else I might reference. Credit to those who do.
SPECIAL THANKS TO! Bella13blue, my own personal Nemesis! (Because everybody needs one.) MY Nemesis has been a good friend; she's a great soundboard and has been kind enough to encourage and offer suggestions on my work for this fic.
Author's Notes: Please read the warning below.
WARNING: I don't consider this material to be triggering, but it does exemplify stress-induced psychosis. Psychosis is an unhealthy mental state usually handled with therapy and medication. The experience is different for everyone. It can be a simple as having an odd taste in your mouth, or as complicated as suffering delusions and hallucinations. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Questions or comments, submit via review or PM. Thank you.
...
CH 45
He had no idea how he got there, nor did he care. Such inquisitions mattered little to the scatterbrained and distressed turtle that struggled to stake a claim on coherency.
Bits and pieces of his journey flashed in his mind, fragments coming and going fast, like lightning. Flash photography, blinding. Elusive moments that should have been at the corefront of his mind at one point.
Thoughts. Images. A puzzle turned abstract.
Fragmented, pieces lost. Scattered. Forgotten. Unimportant.
A picture ripped from an album and misplaced.
Raphael could barely make out the cityscape, let alone anything stagnant.
The city... A series of walls and gaps. A prison of concrete. Cars and civilians. Noise, so much noise. And... sunlight. Bright and foreboding. Surreal.
A glowing light that cast warmth over everything it dared touch- and for once, that included Raphael.
This light, reminiscent of the glowing liquid he'd come to fear, left him almost paralyzed. Rooted to the spot.
Caught between being breathless and trying to vacuum in as much air as possible, his vision faded in and out. Through bleary eyes, he caught shapes and shadows, reflecting light far too abundant to be harnessed from the city's night-glow of neon.
'It's daylight...'
Panic gripped him.
His mind reached for solace, grasping straws in an attempt at reprieve.
But consolation of any sort remained lost to him.
His head pounded fiercely, angrily. His body felt too hot. Too wound up. Too explosive.
A reckless vessel of energy with no outlet.
The living incarnation of a bomb. -Detonation in: 5... 4... 3... 2...-
The figurative bullet was in the chamber, ready to blow. Ready to break the sound barrier.
The pressure was building... building... building. Ready to burst.
Self-destruction at its finest.
If he didn't burn that energy up...-
'Ain't gonna think like that. Gotta... just... go.'
And go, he did. Straight into the streets, among a throng of people, bumping shoulder-to-shoulder with five-fingered pedestrians. His carapace rubbed against their coats; his forearms nudged their purses and attache cases.
His own wide amber eyes met theirs, and he momentarily forgot how to breathe.
It was as if his life was a movie, and someone had pressed the pause button.
Everything seemed to freeze. Time stood still. For a small eternity, nothing existed except the mass of humans and the sound of Raph's own pounding heartbeat.
Caught up in the crowd, his internal panic flared. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. Eyes were one him. The world seemed to stop spinning and in his state of hysteria, everyone and everything seemed to tower over him, making him feel meager and helpless. Infantile and alone...
He wanted to run. But the damage had already been done.
Humans gasped in shock, jaws flapping and eyes bulging. Smartphones raised with camera apps open... - and those were the humans that took his presence on a high note of whispers and queries and excitement at seeing something new.
Others simply screamed and shouted, finding fear and hatred for what they could not understand or explain.
An elderly woman raised a cane and took a swing at Raphael, who caught the cane mid-swing and ripped it from the woman's grasp without a second thought. This removed the woman's physical stability and she crashed down onto her hands and knees. Her old and thin skin tore on contact with the pavement, bloodying her hands as tears welled up in her eyes. Looking up at the giant turtle, she let out a horrific scream before staggering back to sit on her heels. Her hands flew to her chest, clutching and smearing blood on the cotton fabric of her shirt that boldly read: I HEART MY GRANDKIDS. Her body jerked in an animated fashion, as if in pain.
Then, without further warning, she wholly collapsed.
Heart attack.
The old woman, in her mid-seventies, literally scared to death.
The crowd went wild with a roar of accusation and malice.
Raphael hadn't meant any harm, but he couldn't explain himself nor his actions; these humans wouldn't have listened, even if he'd tried. When he'd seen the woman raise her cane, the item registered in Raph's mind as a weapon. He didn't see the woman as a panicking elderly trying to defend herself; he'd looked at her and saw an attacker, armed and taking a swing, aiming for his head.
Instinct had urged him to stop the attempted assault. But this small act had worsened the situation in ways he'd never imagined.
A couple humans bravely shoved passed Raph to check on the woman, one claiming to be a nurse and shouting for someone to call an ambulance.
Other humans began to stir about in a flurry of activity. They focused on Raphael rather than the fallen woman; they pointed and jeered, cursed at him. Called him a demon and a freak. A monster. An alien. A beast. Many gave wordless shrieks or simply ran from him, as if he carried the plague.
In Raphael's stricken state of mind, he was ill-equipped to be offended or fix his error. The only thing that fully processed in his head, was the overwhelming urge to make himself scarce.
Ignoring the wild pedestrians as much as possible, he bolted. Ran. Legs moving faster than he remembered they could. He continued to move through the streets and into an alley, away from the sun and towards a small, comforting pool of darkness. A shadowed oasis between two buildings.
His heart started to beat a little more calmly once he found himself alone.
His breath came at more even intervals.
The throbbing headache began to subside.
The sounds of the city around him turned to deafening white noise, until all that remained was his thoughts. And even that much was becoming difficult to focus on.
For a moment, he felt cold. His ears felt plugged, as if he'd been submerged underwater. Everything seemed to go in slow motion. Bright light filtered into his vision and further distorted the world around him.
Everything seemed so close and so far away at the same time. As if he could reach out and touch reality personified... only for it to vanish on contact. Or lose tangibility.
Unable to fully comprehend his own inner-workings, he sought familiarity.
He sought escape from this whole new brand of hell he'd found himself in.
He sought peace he didn't believe himself to be worthy of.
Closing his eyes tightly, breathing deeply, he fought to find his center. He tried desperately to quell the storm that raged inside.
He felt so cold. A shiver racked his frame, but in the light of day and the added warmth of his radioactive belt, he knew that the weather had nothing to do with the chill that cut him bone-deep.
The freezing sensation that settled over him came from something internal that he did not know how to combat.
Slowly easing his eyes open, his vision was gone completely. A psychosomatic affair. His surroundings were newly lost to his eyes, replaced by a whole new impossibility.
Instead of the the brick wall he pressed himself against, fingers scraping against the coarse and grainy surface, he saw words. Eyes wide open to the world and staring at nothing, the words were as plain and visible as the neon lights that lit up the skylines from dusk til dawn. The words he saw, written bright and bold, seared into his brain and begging his attention...
Impossible words.
Heroes...
Victims...
Ethics and Glory...
Words Raphael knew would haunt his dreams to come. Words he didn't understand. Words he wished would go away.
He found no understanding in them. He didn't want to think. He didn't want to do anything except get the words to leave him alone.
With a cry of frustration, he fell to his knees and pressed the heels of his hands to his closed eyelids, pressing hard, daring the force behind his clutch to push away his troubles.
"I didn't want this..." he ground out through clenched teeth.
He rubbed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes, hard enough for the pressure to hurt. He imagined, if he pressed a little harder, his eyeballs might comically pop back into his skull- though he doubted the genuine probability.
This might happen in a cartoon, but cartoons were foolish and tended to bend the rules for the sake of entertainment.
In a last ditch effort to free himself of the haunt, Raph removed his hands, only to bring them both down hard on his head, hitting himself with harsh jaunty motions, as if literally trying to knock sense into himself.
When this failed, he sat back and turned to lean his carapace against a cool cement wall. Knees drawn up, he rested his head forward and concentrated on breathing.
In... and out.
Out... and in.
In... and... out.
He repeated the process for what felt like forever, and then he continued it.
In. Out.
He continued. Until he felt light-headed. Until his mind was clear, empty, and completely unfocused. A blank slate.
The words in his head... gone... fading. Leaving him to his own quiet demise.
Then, and only then did he find momentary bliss.
Because, for the moment, he was fine. He was alone. And as far as he knew, it was better that way.
He wasn't hurting anyone. And no one could hurt him. No one could see him for this thing he'd become.
This monster. This freak. This failure.
This psycho.
...
[Next chapter: In-Progress. It's 3/4 written and needs an edit before posting.]