Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or associated characters. They remain in part the property of Mirage Studios and Nickelodeon (Viacom). I make no financial gain from this fiction

Raphael

Damned Worthy

I am watching, waiting. Your skin glistens and shimmers with each shift movement, your breath escapes ragged as you push yourself harder, further until you're past the point you've reached before. Determined to cross the unseen line visible to your eyes only. What for? For honour, perfection?

For family. Or for your own self gratification. Again and again, so locked up in your own self importance, bound so tight that you cannot see, feel anything, anyone.

What makes you so damned worthy, better then any of us, all of us? Better then me? Your strength, poise and balance, both physical and mental? Your unwavering loyalty, the confidence that you have what it takes to decide the fate of another, of any other in a breath, a heartbeat? The blink of an eye?

Or your unique ability to suck up and kiss ass? You don't know me, you never have, never will. You think that you know all that I am thinking, feeling. You know nothing.

You don't know the dark places I have travelled, the sinister recesses of my mind, the sharp fingers that claw and reach to taint my soul. The things I must do to quell the foul demons and silence the shrill cries that echo through the very fibre of my being. You have no understanding of the burdens that I must shoulder and carry to keep you safe.

The rage, the anger and frustration that bubbles close to the surface, hissing, cracking to seep out. The acrid burn that I must swallow. It seems that I am sinking, slowly slipping beneath the cloying, thick black surface of the twisting hatred I feel for everything that denies us our existence.

Why were you the chosen one, why not me? Everything you are now I could be, if only I had been given the chance, the chance to prove myself, the chance to show that I, I was damned worthy.

You don't know me, brother.