The Halfway Point, chapter 3

[tori_angeli]

It's kind of funny things you think
at times like these
Like I haven't seen Barbados
So I must get out of this…

And do you know Carolina
Where the biscuits are soft and sweet
These things go through your head
When there's a man on your back
And you're pushed flat on your stomach
It's not a classic cadillac

Me and a gun
and a man
On my back
But I haven't seen Barbados
So I must get out of this

-Tori Amos, “Me and a Gun”

 

Raphael had been put on antibiotics and a sleep aid, both approved by Donatello.  What Don knew that Raph did not was precisely what the sleep aid did.  He knew how it increased the brain’s level of triptophyn.  He knew its use as a muscle relaxant.  He knew it prevented headaches.  He also knew all that was simply a side effect of a very common, but effective, anti-depressant.

Raph certainly did not know about that part.

And Don was not about to tell him.

The stuttering was bad enough without him learning that his brother was drugging him.

The stutter was what had made Raphael become completely silent.  The haunted look in his eyes told Don that his little brother had no dignity left but his silence, his refusal to sound like a simpleton when speaking.  The stuttering didn’t matter to Don, or to anyone else, but it mattered to Raph, and if silence made Raph feel better, Don was not going to argue with him.  Anything that kept him sane was a good thing right now.

At first, Leo had thought Raph was simply giving them the silent treatment after the incident with Casey.  When Splinter had quietly taken them aside and explained the situation, Leo had felt terrible, as evidenced by the shadowed look of embarrassment on his normally smooth face.  Not everyone could read that.  But when someone was as understated as Leo, those who knew him could detect any change.  And Leo had that look of embarrassment, concern, and responsibility.

“He started stuttering when we were arguing.  I thought it had just been momentary.”

In other words, Leo blamed himself for his brother’s sudden speech impediment.  That didn’t surprise Don.  It probably was Leo’s fault, if his judgment had sent Raph over the edge.  But it wasn’t just because of Leo.  Don had been the one to bathe Raph after his rescue.  He had a pretty good idea of what Raph had gone through.

Raph lay in the shower, still as death, with water dancing off his shell as Don frantically removed congealed blood from his body in order to assess the damage and clean any open wounds before they festered.  Don was having to constantly reassure himself that he was not going to throw up, as the water washed away curtains of filth and revealed the damage that had been done—bruises everywhere, loose teeth, the bullet wound in the thigh that Don was poised to attack with a pair of tweezers, but most horrifyingly, under Raph’s tail.  A turtle’s anus, unlike a human’s, is shaped like a slit.

Not anymore.

Don’s stomach took over again and he whirled to duck his head into the trash can.  He had emptied his stomach long ago, and tears milked into his eyes as his body spasmed with dry heaves.  Once they were over, the spasms changed into sobs, as he cried into the trash can in the bathroom, as helpless with grief as his brother was now.  The vomiting had stopped, but the nausea did not, and there was no cure for it.

Tears ran down his face, covered his eyes, salt water against his parched lips still flecked with dried bile.  He was a wreck.  No control, not over this, not over anything if he could not fix this.  Everything else was meaningless if he couldn’t keep his brother alive.

Breathe.

Deep breath.

He closed his eyes, knocking the last few tears down his cheeks.  Muscles tightening against tight muscles, he forced his hands to stop shaking, and picked up the tweezers.

Had to get the bullet out.  Had to do what he could to keep Raphael alive.

To keep himself from falling to pieces.

This wasn’t his brother.  It was a machine, just like any other body, and he could fix machines.

He could fix this.

With his mind thus detached from his heart in defense against this chaos, Donatello set to work.

“You’re not taking your meds,” Don said softly, sitting beside Raph on the couch.  He and Mike had been watching the second Die Hard movie, and Mike had gotten up to get a drink.

Raph grunted, refusing to take his eyes off the television screen.

Don sighed.  “Raph, you can’t hold off like this.  We live in a sewer.  Your leg getting infected isn’t a possibility, it’s a likelihood.”

That got no response.

“Fine,” snapped Don, at the end of his patience.  “I’ll say it.  If you don’t take the antibiotics, you’ll probably die.”  He watched Raph for a response.

There was none.

“Okay, I get it.  You’re being melodramatic and telling me you want to die.  I don’t care.  Take the meds.  We spent too much energy keeping you alive for you to kill yourself.”

This made Raph shoot an intense glare at Don, but he still said nothing.

Don folded his arms.  “Either contradict me and justify yourself, or take the meds.”  He held out a paper cup with the antibiotics and the amitriptyline, a red capsule and a blue tablet.

Raph stared at them for a moment.  He picked the amoxicillin out of the cup and held it up before Don for a moment before swallowing it with a swig of water from his bottle.  He left the blue pill in the cup and turned back to the television.

Don hissed and stood up, turning away in frustration.  Let him act like a defiant child.  Don was only trying to help him.  If Raph didn’t want him to help, that was his loss.  The anti-depressants weren’t harmful, and Raph didn’t even know that was what they were.

Or did he?

No, of course he didn’t.

 

“How are you feeling?” Mike asked as he sat back down beside Raph, drinks in hand.

Everyone asked Raphael how he was feeling.  No one ever asked Raphael what he was thinking.  Contrary to what his brothers believed, Raphael did a lot of thinking.  He thought constantly.  But his thoughts came in the forms of sounds and shapes, feelings and images, and what he knew to be truth he could never explain.

Mike tilted his head slightly towards his brother, eyes still on the television.  “I know you won’t talk to me, it’s just…I wish you would.  I don’t care how you talk, you know that.  And…there are some things I have to know.  Like…I have to know if you’re okay.”

Raphael wasn’t okay.  Raphael’s body had once been sacred to him.  He never smoked, rarely drank, trained, exercised, ate right, and took care of himself when he was wounded.  Too much of his life had been spent maintaining his body to perfection for it to become public entertainment for a bunch of pee-ons.  But it had, and that was anything but okay.

“I mean, it must’ve been bad, for you to go all comatose for all that time.”

It had been the only way to escape.  Raph tried to focus on the television, but a veil passed over his vision, interposed over the screen.  It bore images of a Brazilian gangster, squealing with delight as a truncated scream burst from Raph’s throat.

“Look, he likes it!  Dirty little whore likes it!”

Too much.  Too far.

Raph spat at him.  Jezimar frowned suddenly, a strange expression on such a bright face, and wiped the spittle from his skin with a long, gaunt hand.  “Jimmy, hold his mouth open.”

Pain as his jaw was forced open by a forceful pair of hands, the third gangster slipping behind to hold his arms.  Strange relief as he felt the absence of intrusion and saw the bloody flashlight before his eyes.  Jezimar was grinning broadly again, tilting the object so it glinted in the dim street light.  Then, an explosion of pain in his teeth as the handle of the flashlight was forced between them, back, back, into his throat, and he choked on the instrument of his rape and his own blood, and nearly vomited.

“Swallow,” Jezimar ordered, a trickle of irrepressible glee entering his voice.

Too much.  He had to get out of this.

“Swallow!”  The command was more forceful, and the flashlight was shoved harder against his tongue.

Focus.

Splinter’s voice.

Focus, and empty your mind.

Raphael spat to clear his mouth of the filth, gagged, suppressed the urge to throw up.

Clear.

Focus.

Calm.

Nothing.

Pure relief.

Empty.

And for once, escape was that easy.

“Raph?”

For once, complete emptiness of mind, just like Splinter said.

“Raph?”

No better time.  No better place.

“Raph?”

Raph focused in hard on the television, unable to look at his brother.  He knew what Mike looked like.  He knew he looked afraid and concerned, his empathetic brother with his heart on his sleeve, and couldn’t bear to see that look directed at him.

“You got that look again.  Wanna pick out another movie?”

Had Mike discerned a way to tell when Raph was flashing back?  How typical of him.  He’d always had a way of tuning in to his brothers’ frequencies without them knowing how.  However uncomfortable Raph was with this uncanny ability, a movie sounded good.  Distraction sounded good.  He nodded.

“What do you want to watch?”

Making hand signals and body language was nearly as humiliating as stuttering.  Raph carefully got to his feet and made his way over to the DVD collection.  Something brainless, but not overly comic or cheery.  With lots of explosions.  Explosions were good.

Yes, explosions were good.

 

April had cut him off.  That sucked.

Casey stared drunkenly at the ceiling of his apartment, imagining a million ways that night could have gone differently.

Ideally, he would have turned right around and rescued Raph from those freaks.  Eighteen minutes.  They had given him eighteen minutes to complete a ransom.  It was freaking impossible.  And he’d known, on some level beneath thought, that the gangsters weren’t going to let Raph loose without coloring him.  But to rape him…that hadn’t entered Casey’s mind.  Not much had during those minutes.  He barely remembered any one of those minutes, except for a few instances that haunted every waking thought.

Spitting out a mouthful of sidewalk and looking up to find the kidney he’d been sent to steal splattered all over it.

Waiting for a walk sign to let him across the street.

Glancing over to see Raph on his knees, looking like hell warmed over, holding a gun after shooting the man who’d been trying to kill Casey.

Raph had done better that night as the hostage than Casey had as the rescuer.

Another possibility was for him to have remembered his cell phone.  He could have called the guys.  They could have come in and ambushed the punks that ambushed him and Raph.  See how they felt.

He could have kept a better eye out for Raph.  He could have taken that bullet for him, the careless bullet that had forced Casey to fulfill the ransom when they had originally wanted the ninja.  Raph wouldn’t have let them do anything.  Raph would have done the right thing instead of fooling around, trying to meet their impossible demands.

Maybe he could have even explained things to the police.  They could have let him through with the kidney and followed him after he escaped with Raph.

Millions of possibilities, and he had chosen the worst one.

He had tried to do exactly what they had told him to do.

And because of that, Raph’s life had been jeopardized.  Not just his life.  Raph probably would have preferred to die over this.

Yes, of all the possible outcomes of those few minutes, this was the worst.

That was why Casey was lying alone in his apartment, staring drunkenly at the ceiling.

This worst possible outcome was, without doubt or contest, all his fault.

 

“Raph, can I talk to you?”

Raph glanced over the back of the couch at Leo, who stood with his arms folded and what was probably a very stony expression on his face.  He had been told he looked dead when he was delivering bad news.

He watched as his brother slowly rose from the couch and limped around it.  He leaned against the back of it, folded his arms, and waited.

Deep breath.  Raph wasn’t going to like this.  “Master Splinter and I have been talking, and…”  He looked Raph straight in the eye.  “Until you can talk, you’re forbidden to go topside.”

The wide-eyed look of indignation from Raph needed no words.  The temperamental turtle’s lips drew back, revealing teeth.  Leo could tell that there was something he wanted to say that he wouldn’t speak aloud and physically could not perform with his number of fingers.

“You can’t become a liability, Raph.  If you can’t call for help, you can’t go topside.”

Raph’s throat was working, the pulse in his carotid artery clearly visible as the veins in his neck popped out from rage.

“It’s not my order, it’s Splinter’s.  So don’t get mad at me.”

“In other words,” Raph muttered through gritted teeth, “if you c-c-c-can’t p-put your thumb on me from here, I c-c-can’t g-go there.  Fuck you, Leo.”  A look of great relief passed over his face as he discovered the one sentence he could utter without embarrassment, and a slight smile touched his mouth.

Leo’s eyes narrowed.  He was not at all thrilled with his brother’s discovery.  “Fuck you, Raph,” he shot back.  “You know why we’re doing this.”

“Y-you think I’m some fucking invalid.  I’m sick of your c-c-crap.”  A frustrated look crossed Raph’s face with the last word.

“You’re still having flashbacks, Raph!” snapped Leo.  “Nothing in particular seems to cause them, besides invading your personal bubble, and if we’re out fighting, or if you’re out fighting alone, it could literally paralyze you.  Where the heck would you go, anyway?  It’s not like you’re hanging around Casey anymore.”

“I g-g-g-got to g-get out!” Raph cried, almost as though a part of him had broken a little.  His lips were still drawn back in a sneer, eyes sparking fire, and Leo thought he could lift the shadow over his face like a veil.  “I c-c-can’t stand this p-place, not with you fuckin’ mothering me!  I’m g-gonna die here, I’m gonna go c-c-c--”  He stopped suddenly and turned away, sighing out the last of his word in a huff of breath and storming toward the couch, where Mikey sat with his video game on pause.

“Raph,” Leo said, mustering the last of his patience, “I can see why you feel that way—“

“D-d-“

“--but you have got to stay alive.  Do you…can you even understand what it was like for us?”

“For YOU?”

“You almost died, Raph.  We almost lost you.  I can’t…you…”  Leo hissed a frustrated sigh.  “Listen, if it had happened to me, I know you guys would be worried.  But it didn’t happen to me.  It happened to you, and…”  His voice shook, and he forced it to steady.  “If I could, I’d take it on myself.  If I could, it would have happened to me instead.  But I can’t do that.  The only thing I can do is protect you, and you have to let me do that.”

Mike, who had been pretending not to hear, had turned his head and was listening now.  Raph stood by the couch, his back turned toward Leo, frozen and silent.  Leo could hear nothing but the movement within the pipes above their heads, and his own slow breathing.

“You c-c-can’t even d-do that, Leo,” murmured Raph.  He slid down to sit by Mike.

That was it.  Leo had to leave or embarrass himself.  Sucking in a deep breath, he quickly trotted up the stairs and into his room, closing the door swiftly but softly behind him.  Sinking onto his bed, he allowed his tears to seep from his eyes, but not to spill.

When he tried to empty his mind, his mind was left with himself, hands tied, as helpless as his brother had been on the asphalt.