Tori Angeli (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tori_angeli) wrote2007-08-24 10:59 pm
tori_angeli) wrote2007-08-24 10:59 pm
Entry tags:
The Halfway Point, chapter two
Summary: Mike thinks about things, Leo makes things worse, and Splinter talks to Raph.
Mike scanned over his collection of DVDs, fingers running over the spines, lips silently reading the titles aloud. He glanced over his shoulder at Raph, who was on the couch, waiting for him. He did not look long, just long enough to wonder at his brother’s position on the couch. Normally, Raph dominated the couch, sitting with both arms outstretched over the back and perhaps an ankle propped on the other knee. Now, he sat in one corner, feet together and planted on the floor. He was hunched over, as much as someone with a shell could hunch, shoulders drooped, his left arm hugging his chest, his right elbow on his knee, right hand propping his chin. Very closed off, and very unlike him.
His expression was uncomfortable as Mike glanced at him. His eyes narrowed. “What?”
Mike shrugged, turning back to his collection of movies. “Just lookin’ atcha.”
“Well, don’t.”
Those creeps hadn’t violated his brother. They had replaced him with someone else.
Mike swallowed and tried to ignore the burn in his gut. Raph was different. Humorless. Blank. Paranoid. Raph probably didn’t know how different he seemed. Didn’t realize how much he flinched when someone came too close. Didn’t feel how glazed his eyes were, how vacantly they stared into space even when Mike was doing his best to distract him. Didn’t know how much he still limped, both from the gunshot wound and from…something else.
Raph certainly didn’t know how many times Mike had woken up with him in the night, when he would hear his brother’s vocal shudders as he broke away from a nightmare. Least of all he knew how long it took Mike to get to sleep afterwards—at least as long as it took Raph, perhaps longer, as he sat up to keep vigil until he could hear the rhythmic breathing of sleep again.
Mike had his own nightmares, sometimes. He didn’t remember all of them, but he could clearly remember having one where Bishop had kidnapped Raph and replaced him with a robot, and Mike was the only one who could tell the difference. In his dream, he had cried out for his brother to be returned to him, only to be told, “This is your brother now!”
He hated having such literal dreams.
Sometimes Mike cried, alone, in his room, but he had never heard Raph cry. Not even in solitude. He didn’t even seem tempted to. Mike knew better than to expect Raph to break down into tears, but couldn’t help thinking he should. However, despite his brother’s shows of bravado, Mike knew how badly this had affected him. He knew because of how much Raph had changed.
He knew because of how much he had changed himself.
He knew because when those men had raped his brother, they had raped his entire family.
“Ya thinkin’ Die Hard?” Mike pulled the DVD halfway out of the stack to reveal half its title. The purpose of this exercise, he could hear Leo’s voice saying in its practical tone, is to distract Raph in the basest way possible—lots and lots of stuff blowing up.
Raph shrugged. “Sounds good.”
As Mike loaded the DVD into the player, he softly asked, “What’s wrong with looking at you?”
“Nothin’. Just the way you were lookin’.”
“How was I lookin’?”
“Like I was different.”
Mike didn’t answer.
“I’m not different, Mike. Nothin’s different. Nothin’s changed.”
Everything’s changed.
“I know,” Mike said with a forced note of cheer. It wasn’t false. It wasn’t fake, the cheer. He didn’t feel it, but it wasn’t fake. It was done to help his brother. Nothing like that could be fake.
That was Mike’s job now. To lift Raph up. To do what it took to get his brother on the right path, and stay with him along the way. To be his friend, like always. To postpone his own healing, which seemed somehow tied to Raph’s anyway. He would be fine. He wasn’t the one who had been…
“Raph?” Mike turned to see Don, the speaker, sitting by Raph on the couch. Raph didn’t look at him. “I compared your white blood cell count with mine, and there was nothing unusual, but just in case…” He held up two orange pill bottles. “Here’s some amoxicillin and a sleep aid. You’re going to want to take the antibiotics three times a day until they run out. No skipping. If you skip, the bacteria in your leg will only get stronger instead of being killed by it, and resist further treatments. The amitriptyline is just to help you get some sleep.”
“You gonna drug me?” muttered Raph.
“It’s not a sleeping pill,” protested Don, looking ever-so-slightly nervous, evidenced by the slight downward twitch of his eye ridges. “It doesn’t make you sleep, it helps you get to sleep. You could pull an all-nighter on this if you really wanted, although it’s not recommended.”
Raph rolled his eyes. “Put ‘em on the table, I’ll take ‘em later.”
“I think you should take your first antibiotic now, just to get things started.”
“Later, Donny.”
Leo entered the room as Donatello silently gave in, rising with a sigh and drifting toward the kitchen. Mike met Leo’s eyes, and knew what Leo knew—that Raph could control this, if nothing else. He didn’t have to take Don’s medicine. He didn’t have to take care of himself.
What Mike did not know was that Leo also woke when Raph was frightened out of his nightmares, and would rise once his brother was asleep again and sit by him until it was nearly dawn. It was as though he had to protect his brother from nightmares, driving them away with his steely gaze as they floated overhead, lurking, taunting.
This was Leo’s duty—to protect Raph from further threats, in his mind and in the world outside. To come between his brother and harm, always. This was made difficult when Raph denied all hurt and harm, denied his need for protection and guidance. He didn’t seem to understand why his brothers were inclined to treat him delicately and resisted it like an enemy as monstrous as those who had attacked him.
“We’re here!” called the voice of April from the lair door. Leo glanced over to see her hoisting groceries, a grim, silent Casey behind her with a watermelon. Raph, still folded upon the couch, glanced up noncommittally, face blank, eyes fastening on Casey.
Leo tapped his shoulder briefly. “C’mon,” he murmured, pushing himself toward the door to help with the groceries. If Raph didn’t want special treatment, Leo would humor him. He motioned to Mike, who sat on his other side. Mike rose to help, but Raph remained motionless. Leo held his arms out to take the watermelon from Casey, and noted as the fruit was transferred that Casey’s eyes were fixed tightly on space, flickering only for the briefest of moments toward where Raph still sat on the couch.
“Raph, come help,” Leo said calmly.
Something struck him from behind, and he slammed forward into the floor with barely enough time to catch himself. A body—two bodies—crushed him from above. Rolling out from underneath them quickly, he clamped onto the top one—Raphael—and yanked him away from Casey. Raph’s hands gripped Casey too tightly for Leo to move him. One hand had Casey’s arm, the other his throat.
“MIKEY!” bellowed Leo, but Mike was already there, wrestling with his near-psychotic brother, wrenching him from his victim. Casey gasped as Raphael’s hand was torn from his throat. Leo dug his fingers into Raph’s right arm while his brother railed, flinging himself every which way in an attempt to break away, screaming unintelligible curses at Casey. Mike held Raph’s left arm and curled his own right arm around Raph’s neck from behind, gritting his teeth as his heels dragged against concrete from Raph’s raging.
“FUCK YOU!” Raph screamed, eyes vacant as vacuum. “FUCK YOU!”
“Get him out of here!” Leo shouted to April, who nodded and swiftly helped Casey pull himself to his feet.
When they were gone, Raph suddenly became dead weight in Leo’s arms, sinking to the floor in exhaustion. Leo’s grip tightened on his arm and yanked him upwards, countering the momentum pulling him to the floor and forcing him face-to-face. “What the hell was that?” he hissed.
Raph blinked, frowning, eyes wide and darting about. He suddenly jerked out of Leo’s grip and stumbled backward. “What…?”
“You almost killed him!”
“Killed—“
“Casey is an idiot. But he couldn’t have known what was going to happen to you.”
“What are you—“
“Dude!” Mike broke in sharply. “He doesn’t know what he did!”
“SHUT UP MIKEY!” shouted Raph, not looking at either of his brothers.
Leo folded his arms. “He knows exactly what he did. Listen, I know you judge Casey for not being there in time, but to take it this far—“
“SHUT UP!” bellowed Raph, covering his ears with his hands. “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! I d-d-don’t—“
“Leonardo! Raphael!”
Leo bit back his next comment and faced Splinter, who had entered the room with a frown on his face. “Leonardo, calm yourself. Raphael, come with me.”
“Sensei,” Raph protested, shaking his head softly as though unable to believe something.
“Raphael,” Splinter said gently but firmly, his tone forcing Raph’s eyes to meet his. Raph gritted his teeth, hands sliding from his ears to clench at his sides. Without a glance at his brothers, he followed his master into his room.
Raphael sank to his knees on the rug as Splinter sat down opposite him. Raphael was shaking so hard that his head was nodding back and forth. His eyes were unfocused, pupils constricted, hands twitching on his knees.
Splinter took a deep breath. “I have not brought you here to berate you, my son.”
“Y-y-you…” Raphael sucked his lips into his mouth and bit.
“I have brought you here to calm you.” Splinter caught his son’s eyes, holding his gaze gently but steadfastly. “You have suffered a great deal, Raphael. Many would break from it, and you have not.”
A bitter laugh escaped Raphael’s lips. “Th-th-th-that’s easy for y-you t’ s-s-say.”
Splinter resisted the temptation to reach out and touch his son’s face as he normally would have done, hand curling into a fist at his side. “Raphael. I have seen men break for less. One of your greatest enemies was a broken man, broken when his cruel-hearted brother was killed for beating a woman.”
A spark lit in Raphael’s eyes, and he stared at his master in silence.
“We are broken, Raphael, when we allow ourselves to become subservient to our experiences. Oroku Saki was a broken man, and in his brokenness, devoted his life to the purpose of vengeance. Those whose lives are shaped by misfortune…they are broken.”
Splinter almost felt outside of his own body, listening to his own words, and while he spoke the name of his enemy, he knew he was not speaking of him.
“But you, my son…”
“M-my life’s so n-n-n-normal,” sneered Raphael.
“You have attempted to move on and live as you normally would. But I fear that, in doing this, you will never accept what has happened to you.” Splinter did reach out now, gently brushing Raphael’s cheek with his fingers. For once, Raphael did not flinch or look away, but all his muscles seemed to unwind at once, and his eyes closed. “Accepting what has happened is not the same thing as breaking, my son. In fact, it may be the only way to remain whole.”
“B- but…” Raphael’s eyelids fluttered as though in a preemptive strike against threatening tears. “I…” He swallowed. “Wh-what’s to accept? I-It…if I a-a-a-accept…what’ll hap—“ He looked frustrated, a grimace creasing his face. “Damn, I can’t t-t-talk anymore.”
“I understand more than your words, my son.” Splinter’s thumb gently pressed reassuringly into Raphael’s cheek. “You may not be ready to accept this terrible thing, and that I can understand. But in the future, it must become a part of your life, or it will take over your life. You must either let it become a part of you, or let it become all of you. There is no other choice.” Slowly, so that Raphael would have time to pull away if he felt the need, he leaned forward to plant a soft kiss on his son’s forehead. Raphael’s head bowed as Splinter’s lips touched his skin briefly, then drew away, hand moving to cup his son’s face. “I know it will not be easy, but I also know your strength, and I believe you will overcome this.”
Raphael remained silent, and did not meet his father’s eyes.
Mike scanned over his collection of DVDs, fingers running over the spines, lips silently reading the titles aloud. He glanced over his shoulder at Raph, who was on the couch, waiting for him. He did not look long, just long enough to wonder at his brother’s position on the couch. Normally, Raph dominated the couch, sitting with both arms outstretched over the back and perhaps an ankle propped on the other knee. Now, he sat in one corner, feet together and planted on the floor. He was hunched over, as much as someone with a shell could hunch, shoulders drooped, his left arm hugging his chest, his right elbow on his knee, right hand propping his chin. Very closed off, and very unlike him.
His expression was uncomfortable as Mike glanced at him. His eyes narrowed. “What?”
Mike shrugged, turning back to his collection of movies. “Just lookin’ atcha.”
“Well, don’t.”
Those creeps hadn’t violated his brother. They had replaced him with someone else.
Mike swallowed and tried to ignore the burn in his gut. Raph was different. Humorless. Blank. Paranoid. Raph probably didn’t know how different he seemed. Didn’t realize how much he flinched when someone came too close. Didn’t feel how glazed his eyes were, how vacantly they stared into space even when Mike was doing his best to distract him. Didn’t know how much he still limped, both from the gunshot wound and from…something else.
Raph certainly didn’t know how many times Mike had woken up with him in the night, when he would hear his brother’s vocal shudders as he broke away from a nightmare. Least of all he knew how long it took Mike to get to sleep afterwards—at least as long as it took Raph, perhaps longer, as he sat up to keep vigil until he could hear the rhythmic breathing of sleep again.
Mike had his own nightmares, sometimes. He didn’t remember all of them, but he could clearly remember having one where Bishop had kidnapped Raph and replaced him with a robot, and Mike was the only one who could tell the difference. In his dream, he had cried out for his brother to be returned to him, only to be told, “This is your brother now!”
He hated having such literal dreams.
Sometimes Mike cried, alone, in his room, but he had never heard Raph cry. Not even in solitude. He didn’t even seem tempted to. Mike knew better than to expect Raph to break down into tears, but couldn’t help thinking he should. However, despite his brother’s shows of bravado, Mike knew how badly this had affected him. He knew because of how much Raph had changed.
He knew because of how much he had changed himself.
He knew because when those men had raped his brother, they had raped his entire family.
“Ya thinkin’ Die Hard?” Mike pulled the DVD halfway out of the stack to reveal half its title. The purpose of this exercise, he could hear Leo’s voice saying in its practical tone, is to distract Raph in the basest way possible—lots and lots of stuff blowing up.
Raph shrugged. “Sounds good.”
As Mike loaded the DVD into the player, he softly asked, “What’s wrong with looking at you?”
“Nothin’. Just the way you were lookin’.”
“How was I lookin’?”
“Like I was different.”
Mike didn’t answer.
“I’m not different, Mike. Nothin’s different. Nothin’s changed.”
Everything’s changed.
“I know,” Mike said with a forced note of cheer. It wasn’t false. It wasn’t fake, the cheer. He didn’t feel it, but it wasn’t fake. It was done to help his brother. Nothing like that could be fake.
That was Mike’s job now. To lift Raph up. To do what it took to get his brother on the right path, and stay with him along the way. To be his friend, like always. To postpone his own healing, which seemed somehow tied to Raph’s anyway. He would be fine. He wasn’t the one who had been…
“Raph?” Mike turned to see Don, the speaker, sitting by Raph on the couch. Raph didn’t look at him. “I compared your white blood cell count with mine, and there was nothing unusual, but just in case…” He held up two orange pill bottles. “Here’s some amoxicillin and a sleep aid. You’re going to want to take the antibiotics three times a day until they run out. No skipping. If you skip, the bacteria in your leg will only get stronger instead of being killed by it, and resist further treatments. The amitriptyline is just to help you get some sleep.”
“You gonna drug me?” muttered Raph.
“It’s not a sleeping pill,” protested Don, looking ever-so-slightly nervous, evidenced by the slight downward twitch of his eye ridges. “It doesn’t make you sleep, it helps you get to sleep. You could pull an all-nighter on this if you really wanted, although it’s not recommended.”
Raph rolled his eyes. “Put ‘em on the table, I’ll take ‘em later.”
“I think you should take your first antibiotic now, just to get things started.”
“Later, Donny.”
Leo entered the room as Donatello silently gave in, rising with a sigh and drifting toward the kitchen. Mike met Leo’s eyes, and knew what Leo knew—that Raph could control this, if nothing else. He didn’t have to take Don’s medicine. He didn’t have to take care of himself.
What Mike did not know was that Leo also woke when Raph was frightened out of his nightmares, and would rise once his brother was asleep again and sit by him until it was nearly dawn. It was as though he had to protect his brother from nightmares, driving them away with his steely gaze as they floated overhead, lurking, taunting.
This was Leo’s duty—to protect Raph from further threats, in his mind and in the world outside. To come between his brother and harm, always. This was made difficult when Raph denied all hurt and harm, denied his need for protection and guidance. He didn’t seem to understand why his brothers were inclined to treat him delicately and resisted it like an enemy as monstrous as those who had attacked him.
“We’re here!” called the voice of April from the lair door. Leo glanced over to see her hoisting groceries, a grim, silent Casey behind her with a watermelon. Raph, still folded upon the couch, glanced up noncommittally, face blank, eyes fastening on Casey.
Leo tapped his shoulder briefly. “C’mon,” he murmured, pushing himself toward the door to help with the groceries. If Raph didn’t want special treatment, Leo would humor him. He motioned to Mike, who sat on his other side. Mike rose to help, but Raph remained motionless. Leo held his arms out to take the watermelon from Casey, and noted as the fruit was transferred that Casey’s eyes were fixed tightly on space, flickering only for the briefest of moments toward where Raph still sat on the couch.
“Raph, come help,” Leo said calmly.
Something struck him from behind, and he slammed forward into the floor with barely enough time to catch himself. A body—two bodies—crushed him from above. Rolling out from underneath them quickly, he clamped onto the top one—Raphael—and yanked him away from Casey. Raph’s hands gripped Casey too tightly for Leo to move him. One hand had Casey’s arm, the other his throat.
“MIKEY!” bellowed Leo, but Mike was already there, wrestling with his near-psychotic brother, wrenching him from his victim. Casey gasped as Raphael’s hand was torn from his throat. Leo dug his fingers into Raph’s right arm while his brother railed, flinging himself every which way in an attempt to break away, screaming unintelligible curses at Casey. Mike held Raph’s left arm and curled his own right arm around Raph’s neck from behind, gritting his teeth as his heels dragged against concrete from Raph’s raging.
“FUCK YOU!” Raph screamed, eyes vacant as vacuum. “FUCK YOU!”
“Get him out of here!” Leo shouted to April, who nodded and swiftly helped Casey pull himself to his feet.
When they were gone, Raph suddenly became dead weight in Leo’s arms, sinking to the floor in exhaustion. Leo’s grip tightened on his arm and yanked him upwards, countering the momentum pulling him to the floor and forcing him face-to-face. “What the hell was that?” he hissed.
Raph blinked, frowning, eyes wide and darting about. He suddenly jerked out of Leo’s grip and stumbled backward. “What…?”
“You almost killed him!”
“Killed—“
“Casey is an idiot. But he couldn’t have known what was going to happen to you.”
“What are you—“
“Dude!” Mike broke in sharply. “He doesn’t know what he did!”
“SHUT UP MIKEY!” shouted Raph, not looking at either of his brothers.
Leo folded his arms. “He knows exactly what he did. Listen, I know you judge Casey for not being there in time, but to take it this far—“
“SHUT UP!” bellowed Raph, covering his ears with his hands. “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! I d-d-don’t—“
“Leonardo! Raphael!”
Leo bit back his next comment and faced Splinter, who had entered the room with a frown on his face. “Leonardo, calm yourself. Raphael, come with me.”
“Sensei,” Raph protested, shaking his head softly as though unable to believe something.
“Raphael,” Splinter said gently but firmly, his tone forcing Raph’s eyes to meet his. Raph gritted his teeth, hands sliding from his ears to clench at his sides. Without a glance at his brothers, he followed his master into his room.
Raphael sank to his knees on the rug as Splinter sat down opposite him. Raphael was shaking so hard that his head was nodding back and forth. His eyes were unfocused, pupils constricted, hands twitching on his knees.
Splinter took a deep breath. “I have not brought you here to berate you, my son.”
“Y-y-you…” Raphael sucked his lips into his mouth and bit.
“I have brought you here to calm you.” Splinter caught his son’s eyes, holding his gaze gently but steadfastly. “You have suffered a great deal, Raphael. Many would break from it, and you have not.”
A bitter laugh escaped Raphael’s lips. “Th-th-th-that’s easy for y-you t’ s-s-say.”
Splinter resisted the temptation to reach out and touch his son’s face as he normally would have done, hand curling into a fist at his side. “Raphael. I have seen men break for less. One of your greatest enemies was a broken man, broken when his cruel-hearted brother was killed for beating a woman.”
A spark lit in Raphael’s eyes, and he stared at his master in silence.
“We are broken, Raphael, when we allow ourselves to become subservient to our experiences. Oroku Saki was a broken man, and in his brokenness, devoted his life to the purpose of vengeance. Those whose lives are shaped by misfortune…they are broken.”
Splinter almost felt outside of his own body, listening to his own words, and while he spoke the name of his enemy, he knew he was not speaking of him.
“But you, my son…”
“M-my life’s so n-n-n-normal,” sneered Raphael.
“You have attempted to move on and live as you normally would. But I fear that, in doing this, you will never accept what has happened to you.” Splinter did reach out now, gently brushing Raphael’s cheek with his fingers. For once, Raphael did not flinch or look away, but all his muscles seemed to unwind at once, and his eyes closed. “Accepting what has happened is not the same thing as breaking, my son. In fact, it may be the only way to remain whole.”
“B- but…” Raphael’s eyelids fluttered as though in a preemptive strike against threatening tears. “I…” He swallowed. “Wh-what’s to accept? I-It…if I a-a-a-accept…what’ll hap—“ He looked frustrated, a grimace creasing his face. “Damn, I can’t t-t-talk anymore.”
“I understand more than your words, my son.” Splinter’s thumb gently pressed reassuringly into Raphael’s cheek. “You may not be ready to accept this terrible thing, and that I can understand. But in the future, it must become a part of your life, or it will take over your life. You must either let it become a part of you, or let it become all of you. There is no other choice.” Slowly, so that Raphael would have time to pull away if he felt the need, he leaned forward to plant a soft kiss on his son’s forehead. Raphael’s head bowed as Splinter’s lips touched his skin briefly, then drew away, hand moving to cup his son’s face. “I know it will not be easy, but I also know your strength, and I believe you will overcome this.”
Raphael remained silent, and did not meet his father’s eyes.