Summary: Raphael finds himself alone and confused in a chamber of torture, forced to relive memories he repressed. OneShot.
Rating: Rated M for all sorts of fun stuff, as seen in the warning below.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
WARNING: Not for the fainthearted. Character death, excessive language, and gore.
Italics signify flashbacks.
The scent of disinfectant was sickening. It hung in the air in thick, invisible clouds. I could neither see nor hear anything, but my other senses were in disarray. My eyes danced, hoping to catch a glimpse of anything, but the shadows were overpowering. My lungs burned uncomfortably with each breath, as if I were inhaling the disinfectant directly, and the sickly taste clung to my tongue. The silence buzzed in my ears. I had never heard such silence. It was frightening.
I had been counting the seconds since I had awoken to this stillness. One hour. Two. Two and a half. The time passed slowly. I longed to move, but was restricted. Uncomfortable metal shackles wrapped around my wrists and ankles, and a cloth band clung to my chest, all securing me to the table I'd awoken on. Someone didn't want me moving, and their attempts to keep me still were admirable. I had stopped trying to break free after the first hour, exhausted and hopeless. I stared upward, at what I could assume to be the ceiling, and counted the time as it passed.
Ten-thousand, eight-hundred, twenty-three seconds. Three hours, I think. I was never any good at math. Something began clicking overhead while I tried to figure out. A fluorescent light came to life above me. I groaned painfully, snapping my eyes shut. The light was blinding after so much darkness.
I drew the courage to open my eyes a moment later, longing to know what hell I'd found myself in. I was alone, but unsure how to feel about it. The table I was bound to was made of steel, which glimmered beneath the lights. Thick metal locks held my restraints in place, though my attempts to escape had left their marks. My skin was rubbed raw on my wrists and ankles, and a brown line had appeared on my plastron where the leather had been worn against my shell. All efforts had been useless, as I had come no closer to escaping now than when I had first woken.
What frightened me more than my inability to move was the environment I'd entered. It was all so primped and proper. The white walls melted into the white tiles, while thin rows of long fluorescent lights cast a vivid light over it all. It looked like some second-rate hospital room. The simile was all the more fitting when I noticed a tray sitting on the opposite side of the room. Bladed instruments stared back at me, twinkling menacingly. I trashed blindly, no one was going to bring those things close to me. Not when I still had a breath of life in my body.
I stopped moving when I heard a hissing behind me. I craned my head back, straining my neck, and watched as a door slid open. The room went from being second-rate to technologically advanced in an instant. There were men waiting behind the door, two of them. They were dressed like surgeons, sea green from head to toe, with their mouths and noses covered by rectangular white masks.
'This is like some fucked up episode of ER,' I thought to myself.
"Where am I?" I voiced the first question to come to mind. My voice was shockingly meek. I cleared my throat, and repeated myself in a more confident tone. "Where the hell am I?"
The men ignored my questions. One was walking towards me, the other was heading towards the tray in the corner.
"Hey! I'm talkin' to you!" I roared. The questions were flowing through my mind now. "Why am I here? Where are my brothers? What are you doing? Let me off this fucking table!"
"Your brothers?" The doctor was peering down at me now. I didn't know what else to think of them as, doctor would suffice. His expression was hard to read because of the mask, but I took what I could from his eyes. He looked confused, and mildly frightened. I got that look enough to recognize it.
"Yes, my brothers," I growled, shaking the restraints around my wrists. The second man was pushing the tray towards me now. One wheel squeaked softly, taunting me with its approach.
"You don't remember?"
The man with the tray had reached us at last. The blades I had seen looked even worse from that distance. The doctor who had brought them closer took a brown, plastic, bottle into one hand, unscrewing it slowly. He pressed a cotton ball, which had been waiting readily on the tray, into the neck of the bottle and tipped it.
Though the container lacked a label, I recognized it. Lord knows I've used my fair share of it throughout my life. Hydrogen peroxide. Donnie always had some ready for me when I came home beaten and bruised. The man in the scrubs was running the cotton ball, moist with peroxide, along the edge of a scalpel. I dismissed it as a bluff.
"Remember what?" I'd play his games, for now. I didn't have much of a choice.
"Interesting," the doctor hummed. He drew a thin device from the pocket of his outfit. It must have been a tape recorder, because he started to talk into it. "Subject seems to lack long-term memory functions."
"Bullshit! When I was six, I sprained my finger when it got stuck in VCR. That long-term enough for you?"
The man seemed stunned by that. He shook his head in disbelief and pocketed the tape recorder, without noting what I had just told him.
The other doctor had set down the knife, and taken up a long syringe in its place. It was filled with a clear liquid that I could not identify. He looked to his partner, who nodded, and advanced towards me.
"We're giving you something to relax," he told me. It was the first he had spoken. His voice was quiet, but rough.
"Like hell you are!" I jerked at the shackles around my wrists, even though I knew the attempts were hopeless. "Get away from me!"
He ignored me, which I had expected him to do, and plunged the needle into my upper arm.
The affects were nearly instantaneous. My trashing slowed considerably when he drew back the empty syringe. I felt my concerns melting away, suddenly things did not seem so bad. The doctors looked like less of a threat, and light pouring over me was warm and inviting. Even so, I could not help but murmur, "Remember…what?" I was not awake long enough to hear the answer, as consciousness slowly slipped away.
&&&&&&&&
Donnie had been sick for awhile, and it wasn't looking good. We couldn't figure out what was wrong, and in the first few weeks even he had given diagnosing himself a shot. He wasn't too bad then; walking and talking normally. His deterioration had been slow and painful.
In the first two weeks we couldn't tell the difference, but we knew he could. He was functioning slowly, as if his mind were on a time delay. His intelligence still far exceeded our own, but what he could have discovered on a bad day a year ago was taking him twice as long now. I caught him a few times sitting in front of his computer, staring at the screen. He'd punch in a letter or two, when his fingers would normally fly over the keys.
A month passed, and he only got worse. He said he had given up on the computer entirely, but I knew he still logged on it sometimes, when he thought we weren't around. He tried to be normal, to write and break codes like he used to, but it was beyond him. Most of those times he ended up playing solitaire.
A month and a half had left him beaten. He could no longer compete mentally with any of us. Our technology-loving, geek of a brother was reduced to possessing the intellect of a child. His processes looked infantile when you compared them to his former self. We did our best to treat him the same, but our act was hard to keep up. Having Donnie around was like caring for a child. He left appliances turned on, let the stove burn when no one was around, wandered away and left us no clue as to where he was heading. We watched him the best we could, we wanted to keep him safe.
It wasn't long before he was incapable of doing even simple tasks. He laid on the couch, not daring to move. He relied on us to perform tasks for him. Bring him food, flick on the television for his entertainment, help him to the restroom. We didn't go on patrol anymore, we wouldn't dare leave him.
We knew his death was coming, it was clear. His body was deteriorating along with his mind. He had lost a significant amount of weight, and his skin had paled noticeably. He was no longer eating normally, we had to beg him to stomach things; a piece of toast, a cup of tea, all the foods he used to love. One day it must have all caught up to him.
I was practicing my high kick when I heard Mikey screaming our names. Glancing around my punching bag, I heard him frantically crying about Donatello. I raced to him in an instant. Leonardo arrived moments after.
I peered over the back of the couch at my brothers. Don appeared to be sleeping, but I knew it was more than that. He was not dead, his chest shuddered upwards and fell in hollow breaths. The expression on his face was contorted; his eyes were pinched shut, and his mouth twitched occasionally.
"He won't wake up," Michelangelo explained, his voice was little more than a whisper.
We sat in silence, watching. There was nothing we could do now, not when we had been helpless for two months.
His breathing became labored and irregular, until his chest just stopped raising. We watched the look on his face change, he looked comfortable now. For the first time in months, it almost looked like he was smiling.
"No," Mike whispered, gently nudging him. We all knew it was too late. Our youngest brother turned to Leo and I, a pleading look in his eyes. "He's… Is he… Is he gone?"
Leonardo placed a hand on Mike's shoulder, squeezing it comfortingly. "He's been gone for months, Mikey. It's over."
&&&&&&&&
I groaned, eyes flickering open. I was still in that room, still being watched. I remembered now, about Donnie. The pain was fresh, as if I had just lost him, but I remembered he died nearly three years ago. I didn't understand how I could have forgotten. I was tired… So tired. The medication still flowed through my body. I closed me eyes, wishing it would all go away.
&&&&&&&&
It took us awhile to get back into our normal routine. Without Donnie, it was just the three of us. We had lost Master Splinter while we were in our late teens, to natural causes. The loss of Casey followed barely six months later. His building had been the target of an arson attack . The newspaper took reports from people who had been helped from the burning complex by a mysterious man. We knew Casey died a hero.
April we had just lost touch with. She had always been closest with Donatello, without him, she did not have as strong a reason to hang around. She got herself a social life, and good for her. A boyfriend, maybe she has kids, I'm not sure. We talk occasionally, but it's not like it was before.
I miss how it used to be, more than anything. I miss my father and my brother, I miss my friends. Sometimes it overwhelms me, and I either break down in tears or express myself through violence. I never knew how to deal with things, it's probably why I was always considered the hotheaded one.
I was always thankful that I wasn't alone. I had Leo and I had Mike, I was always glad for that. Without them, I would have gotten myself killed. They kept me grounded.
Leonardo was the first to elect we go patrolling again. Donnie wouldn't have wanted us to have given up protecting the city just because he wasn't around. He had always genuinely cared about people. I had been unsure at first, but Mikey was convinced it would be a good idea to get out again, and I didn't feel like arguing with both of them. We traveled topside within the hour.
We were surprisingly clumsy, for ninjas. We hadn't been practicing as usually as he once had, and our reflexes were suffering. As we bound across the rooftops, playing an adult version of Follow-the-Leader, we regretted not keeping up with our studies. Michelangelo had stumbled twice while jumping the gap between buildings, catching himself before he could fall or relying on us to do it for him. Both times, he laughed it off and continued.
Leonardo was relishing the fresh air. Though he didn't say it aloud, I kept glancing at him to see him smiling and staring at the stars. Perhaps this was the distraction that brought forth that night's events.
He was a little too confident, fueled by the light of the moon and the twinkle of the stars. His stunts were intricate and risky, but we preformed them anyway, not wishing to be outdone. Even I was weary about some of the decisions he was making, but I hadn't been myself for awhile. With a grunt, he leapt from the edge of the building we ran across. The gap between it and the nearest roof was too far to make jumping, and halfway across he began to fall. It was all a part of his plan, as he snatched a clothesline expertly and used it to swing towards the second building. He never made it.
The string snapped where it attached to the bricks, unable to withstand the strain that had been placed on it. Leonardo screamed as he began to fall, reaching desperately for anything to grab onto. He was too far away from the fire escape, and too close to the ground to brace himself. He impacted the pavement with a sickly crack.
I flew over the edge of the building senselessly, snatching hold of the escape ladder and dropping down before I fell as Leonardo had. Mikey followed my example, as if we were still playing the game. We were at our fallen brother's side in an instant.
"Damnit!" I exclaimed. He looked terrible. He laid on his back, legs drawn up in an unnatural position, one arm was dislocated and twisted beneath his shell. I took his head in my hands. "Hold on, Leo, we'll get some help for you." I wanted to say that Donnie would fix him up, he had always been there for us when we were injured, but without him I was at a loss. I had a feeling Don would have been too, if he were there.
"Leo, man, you're bleeding," Mikey squeaked, thumbing a line of blood from the corners of his lips.
I hoped desperately that the blood was coming from his mouth, and not his lungs, but with each breath a bit more accumulated.
"I-i'm sorry," he gurgled, it sounded like there was water in his throat, I knew it was more serious than that. "T-that was s-stupid." He chuckled softly, spraying droplets of blood into the air.
"Yeah, it was. Just relax, don't talk," I begged him.
"I can't breathe," he complained. He shuddered and coughed, blood trickling in a steady flow down his jaw. He was drowning in his own blood, I realized. It terrified me. His coughing became violent moments later, until body shook feebly and he went still.
"No! Leo! Please!" Michelangelo was shaking his head, pinning his eyes shut against the world.
Hot, salty, tears rolled freely down my face.
&&&&&&&&
The memory awoke me, though I looked at the world dreamily, still suffering the affects of the drugs. Leonardo had died a year ago, the anniversary of his death had passed last month. And what a stupid way to die! It was unlike my brother to be so reckless, his inexperience had been the end of him. Why I was remembering now was a mystery. My mind was free enough to retrieve the lost memories, maybe. I was still so tired. My eyes closed, and I gave a silent prayer that I would die in my sleep.
&&&&&&&&
"You awake?"
"Am now."
I opened my eyes, staring upwards at the turtle who hovered over me. Michelangelo was not himself, and I could see it immediately. A light in his eyes was gone. There was a hollowness in his expression that I had never seen before.
"Something's wrong."
I got up quickly, glancing around. We were on the rooftops, making rounds on a night that was unnaturally slow. I had laid down after two long hours of nothing. Patrols were less stressful now, we only confronted problems two people could handle with ease. I looked my brother over carefully. "What's up?"
"C'mere and look." He turned towards the edge of the building.
I followed him, peaking over the edge towards the alley beneath us. Two people were huddled together beneath us. Men, I assumed, but the angle was wrong to tell. "What about 'em?"
"Something just feels wrong," he said quietly. By the tone of his voice, I knew not to question him. I rarely heard my little brother so serious.
"Alright. We can't do anything until they… Until they start doin' things like that."
The men were yelling now. Snippets of their conversation wafted upwards, loud enough for us to hear them.
"You're out…fucking mind…I…What?…Put that….Stop!"
One man stepped back, holding his arms out in front of him. The other advanced.
I grinned despite myself. My fingers twitched readily around the butts of my weapons. I was itching for a fight. Michelangelo dropped off the side of the building, swinging down onto the fire escape. I followed him quickly.
We ricocheted off of the escape platform, falling to the ground expertly. My knees and ankles took the brunt of my decent, my joints cushioning the impact silently. Adrenaline pulsed through my veins as I straightened myself upwards, brandishing my swords.
My blood chilled when the sound of gunfire cut through the alleyway. The man who we had heard yelling stumbled backwards, mumbling and grunting something unintelligible. Blood was flowing in a thin stream down his shirt, once white and now stained crimson. Finally, he collapsed, and was silent.
I heard Mikey inhale raspingly. I guessed he had been holding his breath through it all. The gun-toting man spun to face us. Michelangelo reacted faster than I did, something amazing. He leapt foreword, cracking his nunchaku against the human's wrist with enviable speed. The steel weapon fell, clattering to the ground and spinning away across the pavement.
I intercepted the fight at that point. The man was unarmed and no longer a threat, dismissing him as a challenger would be simple. With my thoughts on maintaining my honor, I advanced. He was clearly untrained in the art of fighting, an average thug. He did nothing but raise his fists to protect himself -- perhaps he was too terrified to do anything else. I threw my leg up, a roundhouse kick to his midriff. He doubled over, the air forced from his lungs. I cracked the base of my sai against his skull, causing him to lose consciousness and drop the rest of the distance to the tarmac.
When I looked up, Mikey was grinning at me. The light that his eyes had lacked earlier was returning. "Good job," he applauded.
"You too." I glanced at the man at my feet, chewing my lower lip.
"What should we do with him?"
It was the same question I had been mulling over. "Leave 'im, and his friend. Somebody's probably called the cops by now."
"M'kay," he agreed. "Raphie, movie night! You up for it?" He wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close theatrically. He waved his free hand through the air, illustrating a visual point only he could see. "Sci-Fi channel's got an ode to the classics on tonight. What d'ya say?"
I parted my lips to give him his response, something sarcastic and witty. "Come on, knucklehead, can't you think of anything better to do with your time?"
I hope he knew it was a joke, I never had the chance to smile and tell him so.
From behind us, where the men had fallen, a shot pierced the silence of the night air. I felt something warm strike my face, slowly running down my chin. Michelangelo had become a limp weight at my side, my arm instinctively wrapping around his waist to catch him before he fell. I didn't want to move, the milliseconds I stood motionless seemed to last so much longer. I twitched my eyes sideways carefully.
The scene was gruesome. My brother's head was tilted downwards, but his wound was painfully clear. The bullet had dove into the base of his neck, entering from behind. The exit wound was nauseating. Flesh was torn back around the jagged, circular, hole. Blood poured freely from it, drawn by the force of gravity into a dark pool at our feet. He was gone.
I spun my head around. My mind was clouded, I could not think or feel. The man in the white shirt was standing now, staring at me over the barrel of his gun. The blood on his clothing seemed superficial next to Mikey's. But this man was alive. Very alive.
He smiled sickly, and lowered his arm. I wanted to charge at him, and I probably should have, but I couldn't bring myself to drop the body. I'd never let my baby brother go.
Something crashed against the back of my skull. Darkness engulfed me. As I dropped, I noticed the unconscious man was no longer where he had fallen.
&&&&&&&&
"You!"
The scream brought me to my senses. For a long moment, I didn't realize it was my voice. When I did, the wave of once repressed memories flooded me.
"Is he…Is he gone?"
"Leo!…Hold on…Please..."
"Come on, knucklehead…"
And what about me? Hotheaded Raphael, the first into the fight and the last to leave it. The least likely to see his golden years. I'm alive. It never felt so terrible to be alive.
My eyes were slow to focus, I had medications pulsing through my veins that fought to keep me sleeping, but my will was overpowering. "You sick bastards. You. You did this!" I stared at the faces that hovered over me. They were painfully familiar now, the same that I had seen that fateful night in the alleyway. "Why?" I moaned. "Why would you do this? Damn you! My brothers!" I pulled weakly at the restraints, doing little more than causing them to clatter.
"What are you?" One of them asked, it was the same man who had administered the needle. He was holding the scalpel he had dropped earlier. I wasn't so convinced it was a bluff anymore.
"Turtle," I grunted. I threw my bodyweight to the side, straining the lock around my wrist. It held strong.
"Where did you come from?"
"Probably another turtle," I said through gritted teeth. I watched him turn the blade between his gloved fingers.
"Subject grasps basic sarcastic functions." The second man was talking into his tape recorder again.
"Where did you come from?" The doctor with the scalpel asked.
"You want the Who, What, When's, and Where's?" I barked. "Fine. Name's Raphael, big friggin' turtle, twenty-eight, New Yorker born and bred."
"Where did you come from?"
"New York, damnit! I just told you!" I was exasperated with his games. I shook the restraints.
"Calm down," he said emotionlessly.
"I'll calm down when you let me off this fucking table and tell me what the hell is going on!" Despite my argument, I remained still. Fighting was doing nothing but draining my energy. "When's my turn to play 20-Q, jackass? How 'bout now. Who are you working for?"
"We are part of a governmental organization to restrict alien activity on the planet Earth," he replied darkly. His partner looked concerned, as though he weren't suppose to be giving me this information.
"I'm not an alien," I groaned. Leave it to the government. They would never know we were working to protect the same people, and they probably wouldn't care even if they did.
"What are you?"
"A fucking turtle!"
"What are you really?"
I closed my eyes tightly and ground my teeth. "I told you."
"We're not playing your games."
I chuckled at the irony. They had the nerve to go on a little interrogation-vacation with me and don't believe my answers. Mikey always said we were unbelievable. "I'm not playin' any games."
"Administer anesthetics," said the doctor with the knife, he was done trying to reason with me.
His partner had a needle ready, which I had not noticed him draw. I trashed madly, yelling inarticulate curses at the pair. I felt their arms on me, pinning me down, and the pinch of the needle as it was forced into my arm, narrowly missing the same puncture wound I had received earlier. I experienced the familiar warming sensation, but fought to stay awake.
Though I did my best, I danced the line that divided the conscious and dream worlds. It was hard to tell what was real and what was not, until I realized my reality was as strange as a dream. It made things even harder.
I looked beyond the blackness, returning to the room, my prison. The scalpel was being drawn slowly down my plastron, the tip disappearing beneath my shell. Blood oozed from the gap. They were dissecting me alive. My eyes fluttered closed. Darkness.
"It seems wrong."
"Don't get a conscience now."
"Does it have to be alive?"
"Yes."
"What if it feels it?"
"It can't feel anything."
The voices floated through my mind, disturbing the blackness. They were wrong. I felt it. I felt everything.