Chapter 5

Karai shifted. She groaned and rubbed her forehead with a finger and thumb. Her opposite wrist was red and chafed where it had strained against the metal of the handcuff. She had kicked the blanket from her body that the rat had covered her with and now it lay on the floor in a wrinkled heap. It was the most defiant act she could manage in her state. The cuff allowed her to sit up if she wanted to and she had tried to contort her body in every possible direction to reach anything that might possibly help her get out of there. All her efforts were wasted and now she lay, exhausted, sore and pissed at everyone alive.

Time ticked on, minute after mind-numbingly boring minute, but it served to temper her earlier fury, eventually leaving her with a dull seething in the pit of her heart. There was nothing else to do but brood on the situation she found herself in. She could hear the voices of her captors in the other room but couldn't make out the context of their mutterings. Her keen mind worked over the past few weeks, trying to decipher if she had done something wrong to deserve such a punishment by her father. Nothing came to mind. Nothing. Nothing had changed. Despite her loyalty, her sacrifice and her love . . . no, she shook her head. Love wasn't important. Love was for the weak.

How many times had the ideas of empathy, sympathy and caring been sneered at by her father? How many lessons were driven home that emotions other than hatred for your enemy, the desire to vanquish your foes and seize your spoils, belonged only to the weak. Weak minds, weak wills. The world was full of lambs. Lambs that bleat in the night, that claim the virtues of kindness and love should be admired. The Oroku Clan were the wolves destined to devour them. She huffed as her heart constricted painfully.

A thought took shape. One that seemed implausible and yet, her world as she had known it had been swept out from under her feet in a matter of hours. What couldn't make sense, seemed all the more real, now.

Is that why he turned me away? Because I loved him?

But her thoughts were interrupted as a shadow fell over the doorway. Someone lingered just inside the frame. She nestled deeper into the soft mattress; folding one arm over her torso, she waited. A gentle tapped at the wooden frame made her roll her eyes.

"What do you want?" she spat.

Into the room crept the orange clad turtle. She scanned her memory for him as an enemy but could only recall him in the background of her battles with his brothers. Come to think of it, he and the purple clad brother never seemed too enthused to fight her or her men. She decided he was a coward. That was the reason. Her father had told her that these freaks did not understand honor, or loyalty or fealty to one's own clan. She shifted slightly where she lay. All her memories of her father's teachings had suddenly become . . . jaded by the events of the past twenty-four hours. She wondered if things would ever go back to how they were. Something told her it wouldn't. Not after this. This betrayal cut too deep.

Her eyes dropped. In his hands was a tray. On the tray, a bowl of something that steamed and two pieces of toast. The smell of strawberry jam had her mouth watering. She hadn't eaten the day before and her stomach was a mess of knots the day before that. Now that she had spent a night of restlessly being forced to relax, she found she was very hungry. She turned her lip up in feigned disgust and faced the wall without comment.

"Master Splinter wanted me to bring you some breakfast. It's pretty hot right now, though, you might want to wait a bit before you eat any."

He cast around and then using his foot, hooked the leg of a chair from the work table propped up against the far wall and dragged it across the room to the cot. It made a long screech as it scratched its way along the hard surface.

Karai's face snapped back to glare at him for the racket he was making. Mikey shrugged and chuckled softly. The humor did not quite meet his eyes. Now that she was looking closer at him, it appeared that he had not slept. There were dark circles under his eyes and his lids were red-rimmed and tired looking. He plopped down on the chair and offered her the tray. She eyed it warily. The bowl was full of oatmeal. It glistened with a hefty dose of sugar where it melted into a glaze from the heat of the warm oats. She shot him a suspicious look.

"It's not poisoned. C'mon, do you really think we'd go through all this trouble just to, uh, kill you," his sentence lost strength as he spoke it and Karai saw his face go several shades of dusty green before it settled on a faintly blanched color. She felt a pang of something then for him. Sympathy, maybe. Angrily she pushed the offending emotion away. She grabbed the edge of the plastic tray and slammed it down on her lap. The bowl jumped and slid to one side and toppled, spilling hot oatmeal onto her stomach. She hissed in pain.

Mikey jumped up and scooped the hot cereal into his palm, scraping it free from the thin material of her top with his fingers, rescuing her flesh from further pain. Then he quickly looked around for somewhere to throw it, doing a little hopping dance on the balls of his feet, before finally popping it into his mouth. He pinched his eyes closed and then swallowed with a grimace. When he opened his eyes, they watered severely.

Karai heard a strange sound. A bubbling almost tinkling sound. It wasn't unpleasant as much as shocking. She pressed her free hand to her mouth, realizing the sound she just heard had come from her body. She stared with wide eyes into the middle of the room. Had she just . . . just . . . no. There was no way. There was no way that Oroku Karai had just giggled. The kunoichi had never giggled in her life, at least, not in living memory. And yet. Her eyes darted to the mutant boy as he slowly sat back down in the chair. He was smiling at her, but his sky-blue eyes remained sad.

"Told ya it was hot," he said with a forced chuckle.

Karai dropped her hand from her mouth. She gave a nod to the room, but kept her eyes averted.

Just then Donatello strode into the room. He stopped suddenly behind where Michelangelo was sitting. The look on his face was surprise and momentary confusion as though he had forgotten that she was being held there. Michelangelo twisted around to face him.

Donatello fidgeted then stepped sideways towards the table where Mikey had retrieved the chair from. He stretched his long body up onto tip toe and pulled a first aid kit from a cabinet above the table. Then he looked around, opening and closing cabinet doors until he finally just stood with his head lowered as if he was deep in thought over the small box in front of him. His shoulders were hunched.

Karai glanced at Michelangelo who sat watching his brother in silence. But his body nearly thrummed with some emotion that she couldn't place. Anxiety or . . . worry . . . fear? She picked up her spoon and dragged it through the thick oats before her eyes rose again to see Donatello still standing there. The sound of him sniffing was quickly replaced with him clearing his throat. Mikey was out of his seat in a blur of movement. He crossed the room in scurried strides and immediately put his arm around his brother's shell. He was much shorter than the purple clad turtle, so the taller one twisted and crouched down to receive the comfort his younger brother was giving him.

Karai sat in stunned silence as she watched Michelangelo murmur to his brother and pat his shell reassuringly. The taller one embraced him and she heard him mutter something back with a shake of his head. She just caught Mikey saying something about Leonardo being okay.

A knot of something that felt suspiciously like guilt tied itself into a bundle in the pit of her stomach. She stabbed the spoon into the center of the thick oatmeal. It remained upright. As rigid and unfeeling as her father stood when she had pleaded and begged for him to reconsider what he was about to do. Karai chewed her lip and found she could not tear her eyes away from the two brothers who were supposed to know nothing about family or loyalty or trust.

Master Splinter paced between the candles, staring blankly at one then the other. He turned and set his gaze upon the building schematics once more; going over in his mind the details of their rescue. His claw tapped unconsciously on the spot that he felt strongest that Leonardo would be held. He was under no delusion that his son would be treated with the same dignity that the other soldiers within the clan were; being given access to the compound's dormitory floors. No. His son would most likely be held in what consisted of a long hallway set off on either side by rooms not much bigger than a broom closet: the detention floor. He clenched and unclenched his jaw.

He will kill him.

Karai's words echoed with chilling effect through his mind. He could not succumb to the fear. He had to be strong. For Leonardo and for the rest of them. He had to remain calm and confident. He had to trust that his son had behaved properly and wisely under the circumstances. That he did nothing foolish to draw any further unwanted attention to himself. Again, he regretted not giving him some indication of what was expected. He had adhered to that part of the bargain in steely honor-bound resolve. He wanted to prove that he had his honor intact. And now he bitterly regretted his arrogance and damned pride. What did it matter to a man like Saki if he maintained his humanity, his nobility, even after being turned into a rodent? In one swift movement, Splinter sent the map, the pens and papers flying from the table. They fluttered to the ground without much of a noise. A soft sound alerted him that he was not alone. He spun.

Raphael stood, fists at his sides. The expression on his face was one of knowing. And condemnation. He did not need his son's silent judgment. He carried enough of his own in his heart.

"What is it?"

"You said we could leave at ten."

Splinter's weary eyes shot to the clock on the wall. The wall that held the salvaged bookcase where his few and treasured items from a previous life mingled with trinkets from the life he endured. He moved as if in a dream across the room. His eyes skipped over the painted rock that Donatello had given him one year for Father's Day, the bunched feathers tied with a yellow ribbon that Michelangelo had gathered, collected and presented to him, the crude but lovingly made clay figure that Raphael had worked on to represent a child and father sitting together. They rested on the small cardboard sword that Leonardo had carefully cut out and painted; along the blade in meticulously inked calligraphy was the word 'Honor'. He knew on the other side was inked 'Father'. His throat tightened. It was propped next to the framed photo of his original family; the beautiful Tang Shen cradling a swaddled Miwa on her lap. His eyes burned. He braced two hands on the shelf for support as the edges of his vision turned to swirling black circles.

"Can we go?"

Splinter glanced up at the clock. Nearly twenty-four hours had passed. The time he knew he would need to plan and organize his sons. To wait until the time was most advantageous for an attempt at infiltrating the building with the lowest amount of risk. It was time. He looked over his shoulder at his son, fidgeting impatiently where he stood. Hands now resting on the hilts of his sais.

"Yes."

He lost track of time at one point. Lost consciousness at another. Was pulled from the blissful nothingness back into the world of nightmares made real. A soft frown puckered his sweat soaked brow, crusted with blood and other fluids. Sticky and thick. Tried to remember who he was, who he used to be. But the thought was too painful so instead he tried to piece together and list in his mind the atrocities that he'd endured. Craving some kind of lucidity for some pathetic sense comfort. But it was difficult. For he blanked out part of the night. He couldn't help it. His mind simply decided to cut that which was too much for him to handle with any sort of rational composure. Couldn't remember what happened in any sequential order.

The long hours between his delivery to his new master until the dawn stretched out and twisted into an everlasting spiral of immeasurable terror and hurt. He recalled fighting. He remembered his severed arm being cruelly twisted, fingers digging into the end until he screamed himself hoarse. But he struggled. Despite his terror ice cold in his gut, he did his best to withstand the assault. He remembered that. Elbows and knees striking pale scarred flesh. Fists and fingers driving against unyielding muscle and sinew, hard bone withstanding blows without a flinch. Pulling at hair, shoving at shoulders, futile, exhaustive effort met by peals of laughter; throaty and rich. A howl that may or may not have come from his own throat as he was forced down; legs pried apart.

A tremor went through him. It had hurt. So much. He thought he'd go mad from it. It was hurting now. Every part of his body shared in the agony. Nothing was left intact. Nothing except his eyes. The Shredder liked his eyes, wanted to look into them, so he was careful not to batter them into swelling shut. Forced him to meet his gaze time and again during . . . His flesh lay in ribbons, crimson and oozing, the edges black with bruising.

Now that he'd tried to recall what had been done to him, he wanted it to stop. His chest heaved and every breath was a separate isolated agony. Please stop. But the images continued to flash through his mind's eye. He remembered falling, being thrown down, trying to crawl with only one arm, being caught by the ankle, kicking. Growling. Snarling like a cornered animal. Biting. He ran his swollen tongue slowly against the back of his teeth. He could still taste the blood. It only served as yet another way his master had infiltrated his body.

His red-rimmed eyes had no more tears left to shed. So he lay there in the filth that his body was immersed in. In the Shredder's private chamber. On his master's bed. Unable to stop the visions of his torment from filling his mind. The shameful sound of his voice calling him Father and the Shredder's gleeful laughter echoing in his ears.

A/N: *whispers* my Leo . . .