...
I stumble through the wreckage, rusted from the rain
There's nothing left to salvage, no one left to blame
Among the broken mirrors, I don't look the same
I'm rusted from the rain, I'm rusted from the rain
Dissect me 'til my blood runs down into the drain
My bitter heart is pumping oil into my veins
I'm nothing but a tin man, don't feel any pain
–"Rusted from the Rain," from Billy Talent
Author's note:This fic was on an unofficial hiatus while I was experimenting in other fandoms and trying some new things, and also taking care of real life drama. Happy to announce that the HIATUS IS OFFICIALLY OVER, this fic is once more going to be updated, and warning, this chapter is where we start to earn the M warning for violence. Enjoy and let me know if you are still around for this, I love you guys!
FIGHT OR FLIGHT
Inching carefully through the underbrush, Raphael paused at the end of the treeline that sheltered him, the Elite archer known as Gero at his side. Under the moonlit sky, a pale, L-shaped building stood out in stark relief in the darkness, situated in the middle of the clearing they bordered.
Recent Foot espionage had revealed this place to be a training centre for anyone with the coin and fortitude to endure the regiment. The catch was that new students had to be invited by those who had trained here previously, which was how they had managed to maintain their secrecy for so long. It was also very secluded, about a two hour hike from the nearest village. In that respect it reminded Raphael of the Elite training camp, except that had been a farm and this was clearly a training facility. The longer portion of the 'L' was living quarters and rooms, with the shorter portion being the dojo.
The head Sensei here was the last practicing Grand-Master of ninjutsu that remained of the disgraced Hamato Clan, having fled the Foot takeover fifteen years ago. Master Shredder's push to uncover whether there were any more Hamato loyalists left in Japan had been fruitful, and not only in this discovery. The Foot's long and frustrating investigation into who was responsible for churning out so many well-trained mercenaries with their eyes set on the Yakuza bounties against them suddenly made perfect sense. The more recent batches of pupils here were primarily those very assassins and Yakuza soldiers looking for specialized martial arts experience.
Fitting that a Hamato would be happy enough to benefit off of such a situation, preparing men to fight the Foot Clan for money while never getting directly involved in the crossfire. Raphael scowled. They were about to put an end to that right now.
Master Shredder had made his orders perfectly clear. No mercy. No survivors.
With painstakingly slow and deliberate movements, Gero and Raphael both shifted into an archer's crouch and notched an arrow into their bows. There were two men on guard outside of the building. Gero pointed at the sentry who sat on the red-shingled roof, his position partially obscured by the pointed apex. Raphael nodded infinitesimally in agreement, taking no offense to the more seasoned man taking the harder shot.
The other sentry was leisurely pacing the grassy perimeter of the building, and had disappeared around the far side not long ago. He was due to round the corner and come into sight once again any time now. Raphael and Gero pulled the arrows back, the strings of their bows taut and ready. Something in their careful movements still managed to draw the eye of the man perched on the roof, and he turned his head towards the blackened thicket where they hid.
The two Foot archers froze in place completely, relying on the shadows to keep them concealed and ignoring the pestering of the biting and buzzing insects that had plagued them all evening. The sentry on the ground finally turned the corner, signaling the release of their quivering arrows. They hit their marks within seconds of each another, one high, one low; two instant kills. The man on the roof slouched forward unnaturally, while Raphael's mark dropped to the ground with barely a sound. The chorus of frogs and crickets continued uninterrupted and the night remained calm.
Raphael and Gero both released a long breath, allowing themselves a moment to stand and stretch out their cramped muscles.
Gero moved along the edge of the trees and positioned himself so he could cover two of the three exit points in the building. The dojo had its own door to access the outside, and there was another at the inset of the 'L' shape that appeared to lead in and out of a kitchen area. The front entrance of the living quarters was off to the far right side, almost exactly where Raphael's arrow had felled the sentry.
Raphael set his bow down beside Gero. It would be unsuitable and cumbersome in close quarters.
"Are you ready?" Raphael asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Gero nodded. "I'll have a clear vantage if anyone tries to escape over here, as long as none of them get by you on the other side."
"No one is getting past me," Raphael assured darkly before turning away.
He crept up to and then along the faded white wall and crouched by the door, straining to hear anything on the other side. Nothing.
He drew his katana and slowly turned the latch on the door, his heartbeat speeding up in anticipation of some loud click, alarm, or attack, but there was nothing.
Inside, all was dark and silent, save for the light sound of snoring drifting down the hallway. The living area was surprisingly well furnished and modern, a far cry from the Spartan existence he had known at the farm.
His large feet padded silently towards the hall, where Raphael discovered two doorways on either side. The sliding door was partially open to the first one on the right, volunteering the unfortunate occupants sleeping inside to be the next to perish. The bedroom was split by two simple bamboo and silk dividers, creating three separate partitions with an occupied bedroll on the floor of each. The sleeping men wore only light pants in the still, balmy night, the tattoos on their arms and torsos exposing them as mobsters.
Raphael looked down on them impassively in the dark, steeling himself for his grim duty. He dispatched the first two without a sound, one critical hit to each vulnerable body and they were never to wake again. Truly, it was a cleaner death than they deserved.
The third man, however, seemed to have that sixth sense of imminent danger that some warriors possessed. He snapped awake as Raphael rounded the silk divider, his hand darting out and seizing a dagger on the floor by his bedroll. He lunged forward in an attempt to bury the dagger in Raphael's thigh. The turtle side-stepped it deftly, and with a flick of his wrist his blade slashed smoothly through the flesh of the man's throat.
Raphael grimaced as he was spattered with a fine mist of blood as his foe collapsed. He had prevented the man from calling out a warning to the others in his final moments, but the dagger clattered to the ground, breaking the silence with a seemingly unjustifiable cacophony.
He held his breath and cursed savagely in his head as he heard movement in another room.
Peeking carefully out of the doorway he was in, he confirmed that the hallway was still clear. Straining his already heightened senses, he could hear someone in the room directly across from him unsheathing a sword. The door started to slide open, and Raphael crossed the hall in two purposefully heavy footsteps.
He wanted to keep his advantage, counting on whoever was in that room not to charge out blindly into a confrontation with an unknown number of enemies. It was a gamble, but it paid off. The people inside had backed away from the door, preparing themselves to attack whoever dared to cross the threshold. The door had only slid open a few inches, and on opposite sides of the same wall, Raphael and the men he hunted remained out of sight from one another.
Raphael removed his black cloak and took a deep breath, knowing he could not hesitate once he sprung into action. He hung the hood of the cloak over the bloodied tip of his katana, holding it in his left hand. In his right, he clutched a tanto, the eight inch straight blade reversed to protect wrist and forearm. He squatted as low to the ground as possible before sliding the door open with a violent sweep of his foot, simultaneously thrusting his katana up and into the room. The cloak on the end of his weapon was impaled into the wall by another sword instantly.
"Intruders!" Two voices from within sounded the alarm.
The man who had attacked his decoy gasped in shock at the sight of Raphael crouched in the entrance, frantically trying to pull his katana from where it had embedded harmlessly into the wall and pinned the black cloak. The second man was waiting directly to the right, having been out of sight until Raphael ducked inside, still as low to the ground as possible. Raphael blocked the downward plunge of that man's katana with his own, then drove his tanto directly into the man's abdomen, jerking the blade up harshly towards his sternum before removing it. He fell to the ground with a horrible, gurgling groan, knocking a dimly lit oil lamp from a nightstand behind him on his way down. It shattered and the small puddle of oil ignited immediately.
The other man had managed to free his katana from the wall and swung it down towards the mutant, a deadly whisper through the air. Raphael crossed his katana and tanto above his head, catching the down-swoop of the man's sword as it pressed eagerly into the bloodied 'V' formed by Raphael's blades. His emerald eyes glittered coldly from behind his red mask as the point of the blade was stopped mere inches from his face, almost insulted that this human was still trying to push forward as if he thought he had any chance of overpowering him. Still trapped in the crossed weapons, Raphael swept the sword aside, surging to his full height and throwing all of his weight into shouldering his opponent's chest. The momentum combined with unyielding muscle and the jagged ridge of his shell crushed the man against the wall, a punishing force that drove the wind from the his lungs and cracked his ribcage. The sword clattered to the ground between them, and by the time the man had slid down the wall until he was seated on the floor, he was dead.
There was no time for reprieve, however, as the sounds of people whispering and arming themselves reached Raphael's ears and made him anxious about his position. He could not afford to have anyone slip by and escape through the front door, something that would be a very real possibility if he got tied up fighting in this room. Also, the fire in the corner had spread up the wall and onto the bedroll, filling the small space with acrid smoke.
He opted to spring out from the room, throwing a handful of shuriken to buy himself a few seconds to assess his situation. Five men had gathered in the hall, two of which yelped as metal shrapnel bit into their flesh. They were seasoned warriors who had been prepared for an attack, but nothing could have prepared them for him. Seeing the legendary Foot Enforcer, a burly mutant turtle that stood almost six feet tall, shocked them just long enough for Raphael to get his bearings.
He lunged forward with uncanny speed, swinging his katana and beheading the closest man outright. He spun on his heel and brought a sai into his left hand, blocking an overhand stroke from a sword with it and parrying another with his katana simultaneously. Raphael twisted his sai and yanked, disarming the man and swiftly striking his face with a forward elbow. He went down, nose broken and bleeding, only for another attacker with a naginata to take his place. Raphael narrowly avoided the thrust of its blade, while his katana clashed repeatedly with that of the man who was now slowly trying to flank him to the right.
Raphael growled loudly as a bald man took a swing at his side with a short sword, chipping out another painful notch from the unguarded ridge of his carapace on the left. He kicked the bald one sharply enough to slam him into the wall a few feet away, leaving only one swordsman and the naginata wielder to deal with directly. He got a fatal hit in on the swordsman, at the cost of a glancing slash from the naginata across his forearm.
The bald man and the one with the broken nose picked themselves up and fled towards the dojo. They would meet their end at one of Gero's arrows for their cowardice, no doubt, or they may have been alerting their Sensei, wherever he was. This left the man with the naginata alone and without any real hope of defeating Raphael one on one, and he was dispatched without hesitation.
Unable to catch his breath before moving on, Raphael left the three bodies in the smoky, blood-spattered hallway. The walls were blackened all along the left as the fire picked up momentum, and the scent of charred bamboo and burnt flesh stung his nostrils. Sword and sai in hand, he passed by the kitchen area, mind racing.
This type of hit would have normally required a three, maybe four person unit, but Master Shredder had been distracted and rushed. Raphael and Gero had been sent in on incomplete intel, with the expectation of six to eight students and their sensei, but already Raphael had encountered a dozen people, including the sentries that had been posted outside. The element of surprise was completely blown, and now he was going to have to fight a ninjutsu Master that was potentially as skilled as Shredder himself, alone and to the death.
The entrance to the dojo hung open in invitation, but he hesitated at the threshold, trying to listen over the pops and crackles behind him as the flames consumed the walls and spread across the hall. As far as he could tell, there was no one waiting to ambush him from either side of the doorway, and with white-knuckled grips on the hilts of his weapons, he peered inside.
The large rectangular room was lit with bright oil lamps, and set up as one would expect a classic and humble dojo to be. The entrance was more to the right, with an alter directly across the room from him and matted floor stretching off to the left. On that far end was the door that led outside, and it, too, was open, suggesting Gero had gotten some target practice after all. Sweeping his gaze to the right, he noticed a full partition that cordoned off what Raphael assumed to be more bedrooms. He regarded it suspiciously, wondering if there were any more people hiding in wait for him there, but didn't have time to dwell on it.
A lone figure stepped boldly out of the bouncing shadows and into the center of the dojo, an older man with thinning grey hair and a skinny beard that reached mid-chest. He sneered in contempt.
"Come, Demon," the man ordered. "Let me put your dishonorable soul to rest."
Raphael barked out a laugh, entering the dojo fully, eyes snapping to white once more. "Your students are mobsters and assassins," he spat, "and you want to talk to me about honor? Typical Hamato."
"It speaks," Master Hamato snickered condescendingly, sliding a chain slowly through his hands and bringing a sickle shaped blade into a ready stance. "I'm glad you have enough wits about you to understand why I'm killing you."
Growling through clenched teeth, Raphael advanced carefully, cursing himself internally as his heart thudded in his chest. It just had to be a Master wielding a kusarigama. Everything else about this mission had gone sideways, so why wouldn't he be up against the one weapon he had the weakest defense against? Just looking at one made the scar on his plastron heat up with shame, the result of a long ago punishment and the first mark of many that Master Shredder had inflicted upon him. He'd had an avoidance of training with them ever since, and now he might pay for that folly with his life.
The old man's eyes darted momentarily from Raphael's slow approach to focus behind him. No doubt the wall there was starting to darken and peel, and smoke was already pouring into the large dojo all around them. Raphael took the distraction as an opening to lunge forward, but a thick blade whistled by his face in warning, halting him. His cheek stung, warmth blooming as blood seeped lazily from a shallow scratch.
With another flick of his wrist, Master Hamato's weapon was back in hand. He tapped the grip of the kusari portion, splitting it into two thinner, customized sickles, one still attached to the chain and the other spinning briefly, free in his left hand.
When the chained blade swung out at him again, Raphael blocked it with the sai, trying to wrap the chain around it and haul it out of the man's grasp. His katana clashed with the other kusari as they spun and maneuvered in and out of each other's guards, until the tangle of sai and chain was resolved by Raphael's sai going skittering across the floor. He double handed the hilt of his katana in proper form, knowing that the human would not have the strength to break that grip and disarm him.
Regardless, it was soon clear that Raphael was in over his head. The old sensei was fast, and definitely almost as skilled as Master Shredder. Anytime he closed the gap between them, he was having to spin and duck away from the much longer reach of the kusari on the chain, plus the hand-held one once he did manage to get into range to use his sword. He had already felt their bite a few times, and blood was now flowing freely down his arms and one leg.
It was getting harder to breathe, and he panted in the smoke-filled dojo, a wall of flames behind him and Master Hamato purposefully keeping himself between Raphael and the exit to the outdoors. His only chance of backup was getting outside and drawing the man out into the open for Gero to shoot. Alternately, if he could just get the kusarigama away from him, Raphael would be able to crush him hand to hand.
Finally the kusarigama's chain wrapped around Raphael's katana, the bloodied sickle hanging limply below it, and the man tried to wrench the sword away from him. The metal of his blade whined as the chain tightened and threatened to snap the tempered steel. They were close to the exit now, the only place left in the dojo where the air was somewhat breathable as the smoke sucked the oxygen from the room, and although the old man could not pull the katana out of Raphael's grip, he was not losing his weapon so easily either. He hung on with both hands, onto the chain and his free kusari blade, which jutted out towards Raphael so that if the turtle pulled too hard, it would stab him in the face or shoulder.
It was a dangerous tug of war, and when a woman suddenly appeared from outside and flung a kunai in his direction, it was all Raphael could do to haul himself aside just enough to avoid having it plunge into him.
"I told you stay out of here," scolded Master Hamato, his voice hoarse.
Raphael used the moment of distraction to kick the old man away, leveling his sword and allowing the links of chain to drag down the blade and disengage. He growled through bared teeth in frustration as two people now blocked the only way out from the growing inferno.
The woman laughed without humor, drawing a katana and moving into position next to her Sensei. "I just couldn't miss the opportunity to meet the only...creature...to ever survive my poison."
Raphael's eyes widened behind his mask, and his next breath died in his throat. She was the source of the poison that had almost killed him, that had made him wish for death for days and had weakened him for months. He lowered his sword and stepped back, uncaring of the inferno behind him or the way the smoke stung tears from his eyes. A chill rippled up his spine despite the heat at his back at the certainty that the kunai which had so narrowly missed him had carried that very same poison.
His nostrils flared in panic as he regarded her katana suspiciously.
"That's right, Enforcer," she purred. "One nick from my blade is all it will take. I promise that you won't survive it this time, freak or not."
As the pair stepped further into the burning building, Raphael backed up another few steps. He squinted through smoke and tears, his heart hammering painfully in his chest. His breath came in ragged, insufficient drags, making his thoughts blacken around the edges until all that was left was the acute memory of waking up to his own screams as the fever had burned through his veins like molten lava.
Almost blindly and on pure instinct, he bolted towards the open door, willing to take any consequence to avoid another taste of her poison, and barreled through the old man. Raphael barely registered the grunt of pain the man let out on impact, or the sting of his kusari blades as they hooked into his shoulder. He kept going, pulling Master Hamato along as he all but flung himself out into the night and landed on all fours in the lush grass.
He tried to get up and keep moving, but his momentum was hindered and he found that he still couldn't breathe. While the old man couldn't overpower Raphael's desperate charge, he had managed to regain control of the situation. The chain was tightened around his throat and with a mighty tug, his arms were pinned to his sides. Forced to his knees, he was held in place by the man behind him. His foot was firmly planted onto one of Raphael's calves to keep him still, and the mutant wheezed pitifully through his panic attack as best he could, every muscle tight and his heart seizing.
Framed by firelight, the woman approached them, hardly tall enough to look down at Raphael.
"I can't," he gasped frantically as she lifted her poisoned katana casually. I can't die like this. I can't, I won't, his mind raged.
"Nothing but an animal after all," she sniffed, flicking her blade towards him.
Focusing whatever strength he had left into this final movement, Raphael spun his upper body to the side as violently as he could manage, throwing the man behind him off balance and into the path of the blade. As she had said, it only took a scratch. Raphael scrambled back and shook off the hands that clawed at his shell until the man thumped stiffly to the ground. The metal chains, now slackened, slid easily over Raphael's bloodied skin and coiled into the grass at his feet.
The woman was on her knees, keening and shaking the body of her Master, trying to rouse him pointlessly from the deadly poison she took so much pride in. She was so shaken with grief that it took her too long to get a hold of herself and rearm; Raphael picked up the kusari blade from the dewy grass and plunged it right into her chest with a savage roar.
He took up her katana with the intention of throwing it into the blazing building, back into hell where it belonged, when one last figure rushed him with an enraged cry of his own. Raphael snarled, feral and half blind with rage, then turned and ran him through.
"Mother...grandfather…" he whispered into Raphael's bloody shoulder.
Raphael watched the light go out the boy's eyes in disbelief, the heat and panic of the battle instantly dying with him. He was just a kid, maybe thirteen.
"No, no no no," Raphael chanted to himself, sinking down into the damp grass beside him in horror.
This kid wasn't so different from him, raised as a soldier into a feud he'd had no part in. He had never had much of a choice, but Raphael had just made sure that any possibility of one had been taken from him, irrevocably.
Tears blurred his vision and he gasped back a sob. He couldn't do this right now. The dizziness from not being able to breathe properly for so long was clearing, and he had to make sure no one was left.
The thought of any more killing made him feel heavy, burdened in a spiritual sense. He walked out towards where he had left Gero, knowing what he would find. It was almost a relief when Raphael found the two bodies of the men who had fled the dojo earlier on. They had indeed met their ends by Gero's arrows, but the smoke from the fire had obscured the other ninja's vision enough for someone to get the drop on him, probably the boy. When Raphael found Gero, he was curled into a ghastly, twisted position in the bushes, a poison dart sticking out of his arm.
Half the dojo had already burned down to support beams and embers, and the rest was still ablaze. Raphael trudged around the perimeter of the clearing, checking for the scent of anyone who might have tried to escape into the woods. There were none. He had completed his mission; every last one of them was dead.
He was cold, numb to the core as he retraced his and Gero's steps through the thick forest alone, but he embraced it. His wounds, failures, guilt, doubts, shame and anger would all be waiting for him when the shock wore off, but for now all he could do was put one foot in front of the other until his world finally went black.
ooooooooooooooooooo
Karai hadn't known it was possible to feel so much relief and so much dread simultaneously. Alerted by the ruckus of ninjas scrambling around the expansive foyer and the orders they barked at each other, she had run from the dining room, abandoning her lone place at the dinner table. The sight of Raphael standing just inside the front door, covered from head to toe in dirt and blood, stopped her cold in her tracks.
An unmasked Foot Soldier brushed past her swiftly, apparently the appointed messenger to her Father.
"Raph!" she called out, closing the distance between them quickly and gesturing everyone else away with a wave of her hand. "I knew it, I knew you weren't dead," she whispered vehemently, grabbing one of his huge hands in her own and squeezing as if to make sure he was real.
Raphael showed no sign of having heard her, his gaze fixed over her shoulder, and Karai faltered. Releasing his hand, she backed up a few steps so she could take a more critical look at him, but he was so filthy that it was impossible to assess his condition. She bit her lip worriedly, hating the tense silence that he had imposed between them and wondering how much of the dried blood that clung to him was actually his.
He remained eerily still until her father came into view. Stiffly, Raphael stepped forward before kneeling and bowing his head respectfully.
"It is done, Master," he rumbled.
"I've heard," Saki replied tersely, "and while I am pleased that you completed this mission, I had to waste extra resources when you failed to show up for your rendezvous driver days ago. Care to explain yourself?"
"I was wounded and blacked out in the forest on my way there. It had rained a lot by the time I woke up, and I knew no one would be able to track me so I found my own way home."
Saki raised an eyebrow and regarded him coldly. "So I see. Is there anything else I should know?"
Raphael hesitated, his voice quiet and monotonous as he answered. "It was as you said it would be, Yakuza and mercenaries under a Master wearing the Hamato crest, except there were many more men training there than we originally thought." He paused before continuing in the same dead voice that was raising the hairs on the back of Karai's neck. "The Master's daughter was also a skilled kunoichi, the one responsible for creating the poison that has been used against us in the past."
"Excellent," Saki said. "Our eradication is complete, and the Foot Clan is stronger than ever. No one will be foolish enough to antagonize our people while we are overseas." He shifted his attention. "Karai," he barked, "see to it that Raphael is cleaned up and bandaged immediately. I need you both ready for the flight to America tomorrow evening. Understood?"
"Yes, Master," they said in unison.
"Very well." With that, he turned on his heel and retreated to whatever business he had been interrupted from.
Raphael got to his feet, putting his hand out to ward Karai off before she even moved. Her voice caught on the inhale of her breath, her lips parted to speak, desperate to ask him if he was alright as he resumed his stilted gait and walked away from her. That type of doting had always driven him crazy. Nevertheless, her father had tasked her with making sure the stubborn mutant tended his wounds properly, which, if left to his own devices, he surely would not.
She trailed after him slowly, keeping a large gap between them so he wouldn't feel crowded. With each step his shoulders gradually began to slump and his feet to drag, swaying slightly until finally he leaned against a wall at a standstill.
This time she couldn't stop herself. "Are you okay?" left her mouth before she could quell it as she flew to his side, her hand gingerly touching his arm. She waited for the outburst of anger but it didn't come.
He just kept staring up the hall, eyes empty, and muttered. "Isn't that pretty obvious?"
She wanted to make a quip, the usual type of banter they used to distract one another from pain, but she couldn't get over the wrongness of him. He was too cold, too distant; possibly still in some state of shock from trauma or blood loss or both.
"Locker room showers," Karai said firmly. "The space is large and no one will be in there at this time. We have to clean you up so I can see how bad it is, alright?"
She tugged at his arm, encouraging him to put it over her shoulders, then regretted it almost immediately when hundreds of pounds of turtle shifted his weight against her side. He managed to find more of a balance and they shuffled awkwardly down the hall towards the private dojos. By the time they reached the nearest locker room, Raphael was leaning on her as heavily as he could without sending her crashing to the ground, they were both panting with exertion, and Karai felt her shoulders protesting painfully every step of the way.
She heaved him off as gently as possible, and he braced himself against the tile wall under one of the shower heads. He hadn't spoken the entire way here, hadn't responded to Karai's gasping words of encouragement, and he didn't answer her now when she asked about the water temperature as she adjusted it. Sighing, she decided a hot shower might warm up his core temperature, and if it was too much he could adjust it himself.
Dried mud had flaked off of Raphael and all over her, and she was sweaty from the Herculean effort of helping him get there. Wincing, she turned the water pressure on a neighboring shower head up to the highest setting and simply stepped under it fully clothed, letting the hot water beat down on her sore shoulders. It probably would have been wiser to call on some Foot Soldiers to help her out, but she knew Raphael would be opposed to having anyone else seeing him this vulnerable, so she had persevered.
She looked over at Raphael, who had tucked his face against his forearms still rested on the wall. It seemed as if layer after layer of grime ran down him and to his feet, leaving an appalling amount of grit around the drain. The water was almost black at first, then tinted brownish red as the last of the dirt, ash and blood washed away. His wounds were slowly revealed, some of which appeared quite gruesome and wept fresh blood, and Karai realized with a pang how close she had come to losing to him.
"Raph..." she said, her voice soft but urgent. "I was going to hide away tonight. Father's been so driven lately, I knew he wouldn't delay his trip to America for me if I bailed. I planned to go find you as soon as that plane took off. Their search for you was rushed and hampered by the rain and the need for discretion, but you have to know that I wasn't leaving here without finding you."
She reached out through the water and steam to rest a hand on his bicep and his whole body tensed.
"Please just go," he mumbled, barely audible above the spattering of the water.
She huffed, turning off her shower and wringing the excess water out of her short hair. "I still need to dress your wounds," she reminded him as she eyed the cuts and gouges adorning his body. It was a wonder he hadn't bled out, mutant healing abilities or not. "Is that a burn?" she asked, her hand drifting back to him as she noticed a few damaged scutes on his shell.
"Don't." He turned his head as he bit out the warning, his eyes flashing feral and white.
"Don't what?" she snapped back. She was too tired to play this game with him right now, to let him keep himself shut down within some flawed notion of self preservation. "Help? Care about you? Worry?"
"Don't make me feel anything!" he snarled, turning on her, his voice echoing shockingly in the shower room.
Karai took a clumsy, squelching step back in surprise, her eyes narrowing. "What the hell happened to you?" she yelled back. Finally she had begun to crack his emotionless facade, and rage was exactly what she had expected to seep through first.
"Just leave me alone!" he roared.
"No!"
He growled savagely and cocked back a fist, but she would not be intimidated by this seemingly mindless display. Karai tensed, but stared him dead in the eye as his fist swooshed past her face like a wrecking ball and thudded into the tile behind her. His knuckles stayed in contact with the cracked porcelain for a few moments and he looked down at her, his breaths coming in shallow pants once again. When he blinked away the white over his eyes, the familiar emerald left behind was full of shame.
"No," Karai repeated, softly this time. "I told you I wasn't going to leave you. Talk to me, Raph."
A few more minutes of silence went by, Raphael's gaze averted but no longer glazed over. He winced in pain and gritted his teeth. "There were too many of them, okay?" he spat. "It was practically a suicide mission."
"Father wouldn't have sent only the two of you if he had known."
Raphael didn't look convinced. "He didn't know and he sent me anyway," he said, and the hint of betrayal in his tone sent an icy finger up her spine.
He bowed his head and sighed as the numbing state of shock he must have been in for the past few days wore off, and he crumbled a little more, slowly sinking to his knees on the unforgiving floor. "By the time I got to the Master of the dojo, I was tired and he was ready for me. Him and his daughter. Her sword was covered in that poison."
Raphael's whole body shuddered violently, and Karai carefully placed an encouraging hand on his shoulder. He didn't talk about the incident with the poison, but she had heard secondhand that he'd been in agony for days, and she knew for a fact that it had taken months for him to recover physically.
"The dojo was burning down all around us and I was losing. I panicked like a cornered animal," he said bitterly. "It was a fluke that I defeated them at all." His hand came up to rest on her back, a warm weight to contrast the now cold, soaked shirt that hung heavily on her frame, and pulled her closer to hide his face against her belly. "She had a son."
Unconsciously, Karai squeezed him a bit tighter as her stomach dropped. She didn't want to hear the rest, but she had been the one to make him open up in the first place and she braced herself for what was next.
His voice broke into a heaving sob. "He rushed me and I just...reacted. I murdered his whole family right in front of him. I killed a kid," he wheezed.
"Our age never stopped them from trying to kill us, for years!" Karai replied angrily, thinking of her isolated childhood, the loses they had suffered, and the assassination attempts, three of which she had taken care of herself. Surely no one had ever mourned for their lost innocence. "I hate everything about this mission and how it went down for you, Raph, but you made it home and we are safer now."
"Then why don't I feel any better?" he asked darkly.
"Because it was still a horrible thing that you had to do."
Karai had heard from the scouts who had looked for Raphael that the remains of at least a dozen people had been at the scene of the burnt out dojo, not including Gero. There was no pussyfooting around that it had been a massacre at her father's orders, and despite the criminality of those who perished, that kind of carnage would have been difficult for even a veteran to handle.
"You had no choice," she said gently, hoping to offer him some comfort.
"Neither did he," Raphael whispered shakily. "He was just like us, just like you, and I killed him."
"Shhhh," she soothed, feeling his struggle to rein back his tears.
"Stay close to me in New York," he said fiercely.
"Of course."
"I mean it," he growled hoarsely, looking up at her and giving her a small shake by her hips for emphasis.
His eyes were wild now, scared, even. "Master Shredder is not himself. I know how much you want to find Hamato Yoshi, but don't let your father make you a pawn..."
"Don't let anyone else hear you talking like that," she said, cutting him off.
She didn't think that her father would make the same mistake twice, especially if her or Raph were a part of it. Regardless, she shivered in her waterlogged clothes on the outskirts of the shower spray as one of the most feared assassins in Japan continued to cling to her, bloody and broken, and tugged his face back to rest on her midriff.
"We'll watch each others backs, okay?" she whispered after reaching out and turning off the cooling water. "Now let me get you patched up so you don't die on the way there, you stubborn ass."