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tori_angeli) wrote2007-12-25 06:24 pm
Halfway Point chapter 11
Raph did not drink the tea. He did not go back to sleep after Splinter left his room. He was calm, humiliated, and fully awake. He lay on his bed, facing the wall, using its neutral surface as a blank page for his thoughts. His stomach churned, his whole body rebelling against the vision of his brother seeing him at his weakest. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. His throat was dry, his mouth parched. This was worse than the stuttering. Leo would never see him as anything but a victim now.
I am so fucked up.
He swallowed the bitter taste of bile in his mouth. How long had it been since he had eaten? Had an appetite at all? Days, maybe over a week. There was no sense of time anymore. It had been at least since before he took House. He ate when he thought he could do so without losing it, but it had grown into a ritual purely to keep himself alive. Now, it was a ritual he would rather abandon. There was no purpose to it anymore.
His eyes slid closed. As far as the calendar went, it hadn’t been that long since he had lived a relatively satisfying life that he had taken completely for granted. It was barely remembered now, a strand of silk in his mind, a fragmented glimpse of someone else’s story. Years had not passed, although it felt otherwise, only their power to erode his memory and leave him stranded, precariously balanced on the halfway point between life and death. He was not dead, but he was far from alive, even further since he had stopped recognizing himself.
The shadows around him could have been from his own grave. He could still imagine the soft touch of earth, the peace of burying everything that was killing him. He couldn’t stand this anymore. He couldn’t live like this. Whatever it took to cure this cancer, he would do, even if it meant impaling his brain on his own sai. It was better than half-living. It was better than knowing the power his enemies held over him, and worse, the way his family saw him, emasculated, fragile, helpless.
The dream replayed itself behind his eyes, and he tried to retain the feeling of that freedom, that release. Letting go. It didn’t matter anymore, the pain, the anger, the humiliation. The hands, the asphalt, they had nothing to do with his life now. It was over. It was gone, buried, released, let go.
Let go.
I have to let him go.
His eyes slid open. For a split second, he couldn’t believe he had had that thought. But revenge had not worked, and leaving House bound a short walk from his home was driving him insane. He couldn’t stand to look at him anymore. He would let him go, and the consequences would be the consequences.
His brain spun with an almost giddy feeling, and he stripped the covers away and rolled out of bed. He was going to let House go. It was the one thing in the universe that he could control, the one aspect of this that he could physically let go, and it made strange sense.
I’m going to let him go. His mind used those words as a mantra, blocking out the rest of the world as he stumbled like a madman from his room and down the stairs. I’m going to let go or die.
Leo stood in the shadows, out of the fading light of the battery-powered lanterns, watching House drowse against the stone pillar. Alive in spite of the efforts of many, he thought ironically. He had strapped his swords to his back before leaving, but had not touched them since. He was not prepared to do anything to House until they had come to an understanding, and definitely not while the gangster was half-asleep. House deserved to see and fear the consequences of his actions.
A deliberate footstep, too loud to go unnoticed. House’s head snapped up, his eyes forced into focus, and his face smoothed out. A moment of silence settled over the room, and House grinned, glancing to the side and giving a slight wink.
“You always come back.”
Leo said nothing, did nothing, but remained where he was, covered in the shadows of the tunnel.
House laughed—a deep, lazy sound. “Won’t even come out and look me in the face anymore, bitch?”
At any other time, Leo would have gotten angry. This time, he didn’t bother. House was going to pay for that remark soon, and it wouldn’t matter. He quietly walked forward into the fading light, eyes half-lidded, narrowed at the gangster, face as even as a sheet of marble. “I’m no one’s bitch,” he said lowly.
House blinked, eyes lighting with sudden confusion, and his head snapped toward Leo, pale brows knit with sudden alarm. So the coward wasn’t so bold when he wasn’t kicking a bound prisoner. Leo kept his eyes on the man, casually striding about him in a lazy circle. “On the contrary,” he continued, “I’m the one you really have to be nervous about.”
There was a long pause from House. Leo was coming around behind him and couldn’t see his face, but he heard slight stops of breath, clicking noises, as though House was trying to decide what to say. Leo remained patient, smirking a little to himself as he came up front again. “I think you and the little whore got your lines from the same movies,” House said finally.
In one swift motion, Leo swept a knife, larger than a dagger but far smaller than one of his swords, from his belt. He toyed with it for a moment, as though contemplating what he was about to do; his eyes, however, remained lit with determination and a kind of interested ferocity. Deftly, but none-too swiftly, he made a straight line down House’s forehead, deep enough to scar him permanently should he walk from the room with his life. He paused, appraising. Two more lines, taking his time on the curve, almost gentle, artisan, perfecting his moves as with calligraphy.
The letter R was now etched into the pale flesh on the left-hand side of his high forehead, written rather nicely, and without the crudeness of mere bestial revenge. Leonardo had thought this out long before, and had used the pause only to keep House in suspense. His victim sputtered, shocked, eyes flickering as he search his assailant, powerless. By the time the first curse made it past House’s lips, Leo had sheathed his knife. “Did you want to try that again?” Leo purred, face as smooth as before.
House gritted his teeth. “Self-righteous little bastard. Talk about how much better you are, and neither you nor your little circus have any problem with torture.”
“This isn’t torture, House,” Leo corrected him gently. “This is penance. Your penance. Since you won’t do it willingly, I’m forcing you to do it. Sometimes, it’s better to go ahead and see the light than have a real reason to be scared of the dark.”
A sharp laugh burst from House’s lungs. “Hyeah, talk about your movie lines. You’re pathetic.”
The dagger flashed out again, but this time Leo did not stand around thinking about it; his eyes glittered, as slowly, he dug the blade into the flesh of House’s forehead. He had rather obviously left it slightly dull—the time which it took to make each line was necessarily torturous, and drew jagged amounts of blood from unnecessarily torn flesh. Yet each of his strokes had the smoothness and effortless appeal of a master’s kanji scroll, precise yet flourishing. There was something of a personal style to it, when Leo backed away to survey his work. Beside the R lay now an A and a P.
“You’re running out of letters, House. I’ll tell you, from what I hear, they hate rapists in jail. It would be fitting for you to spend the rest of your life as someone’s bitch.” He watched House with a passive face, eyes half-lidded dangerously. “They’d make you grow your hair out.”
A rush of air hissed from House’s clenched teeth, his face flooding with red as he absorbed the pain. “Is that what you’re doing? Carving letters in my head? You gotta be more creative than that.”
“I’m not concerned with creativity,” Leo murmured, distracted, dagger point barely delving into the flesh beside the P and slowly drawing the I in a single line. House exhaled through his teeth again, then defiantly raised his eyes to Leo’s, attempting to stare him down. Leo didn’t concern himself with the petty behavior. “What you did to my brother was beyond anything I would do to my worst enemy, although I hope you experience it, so you can know the damage you caused.” Slowly, he drew the elegant curves of the S. “What you did to my family, I hope your family experiences, although I wish to the ancestors that I didn’t feel that way. You’ve turned me into a person I don’t recognize. Who knows what I’ll do next.” He hadn’t planned to draw the T yet, but there it was, done, and blood streamed down into House’s pale, defiant eyes. Leo wiped the tip of his blade on the gangster’s filthy shirt and sheathed it. He stepped back to admire his work. “It suits you,” he concluded.
“Fuck you,” snarled House. “The little fucker was asking for it, just like the rest of you. You all shoulda known what you were getting into when you started messing with us. Either makes him fucking stupid or fucking naïve.”
Leo snorted, coming around to the back of the chair. “In sixteen years of his life, you’d find it impossible to be either. You don’t know what we are, House.”
Silence lay on the room for a moment, then, House’s quiet voice touched it. “He’s sixteen?”
Leo turned suddenly, eyes narrow. “What the fuck does it matter to you? Surprised he has an age?” Upon turning, he got the briefest glimpse of House’s pale eyes tainted with doubt before they went cold again.
“Shut up,” growled the gangster. “You don’t know shit about me or anyone else that was there.”
“I know enough,” Leo murmured. “You’re rapists and murderers, all of you.”
“He’s just a kid,” House muttered at the same time, as if to himself.
Leo raised his eye ridges. “What?”
House glanced up at him, face darkening like a storm cloud. “I said he’s just a stupid kid,” he sneered, “and you should thank us for showing him how the world works.”
“It’s only your world that works that way,” Leo retorted darkly. “Down here, it’s our world. Down here, there is justice for us.”
“Justice?” House’s eyes glittered as they drifted far away. He slowly relaxed, a calm and contented look on his blood-streaked face. “I don’t know what the little slut told you about the men you murdered, but none of them were bad people.”
“Oh?” murmured Leo, taking a slow step toward the man.
“What, you think your boy was special or something? Rape happens all the time, freak, if you didn’t notice. It’s not special. Hell, it’s not even a big deal. We’ve all done it. Your little friend wasn’t the first bitch Jez did in an alley.”
Leo’s face darkened.
“Jez, I gotta tell ya—brilliant man. He could crack any one of us up without even thinkin’ about it. He was like a little kid, sometimes, in the best way. Kicked ass at Guitar Hero and Crash Bandicoot. Sucked at poker, though—you could always read his face, no matter how hard he tried. Always sang in the shower.” House’s lips quirked. “Never did a bitch the same way twice. Always had to throw something interesting in.”
“I’m not interested,” growled Leo.
“I know. I bet you’re interested in nobody outside your freak show. In that case, I’ll tell you what happened to…” another smile twitched House’s lips, “….your brother, was it?”
Leo took another step forward, face as blank as paved ice.
House got a faraway look again. “You shoulda heard him scream when Jez started. His head snapped back. His eyes got huge. His jaw clenched to cut off the scream. He was practically kissing the pavement there, but we flipped him over after a bit to make him watch.” His eyes traced Leo’s face for a reaction. He got none. “Then he was trembling like a bitch in a movie from the forties. Like he was in shock before, and now he was shit scared. You could tell it hurt like hell, too. He screamed again after a minute or so and spat in Jez’s face.” Here, his voice acquired a note of bitterness. “So Jez made him suck off the flashlight.”
Leo took another step forward, more quickly, but froze at House’s next words.
“He started crying.”
Leo’s eyes narrowed in disbelief.
House smirked. “I don’t think he realized it. But he was crying. Like a little girl. Then he went limp as an old man and passed out. Wouldn’t wake up when we slapped him around, so Jimmy got up and took a piss on him.”
Leo stepped forward, and was now less than a yard from House. He whispered, voice shaking slightly, dark eyes narrowed to slits and burning like the sun.
“Do you want me to kill you?”
That forced a chuckle from House. “I know you types. You think you’re the antithesis of everything we are. You’re not the killing type.”
In response, Leo drew a sword and ran it through his heart.
A torrent of blood burst from House’s chest, showering Leo’s face and chest with warm crimson. House went limp, an almost comical look of surprise frozen onto his broad face. Leo yanked the sword from the gangster’s body and furiously wiped his eyes. Blood stung them, and involuntary tears hurried to wash them clean. Blinking, Leo pulled his cleaning rag from his belt. He wiped his eyes first, then his sword, and sheathed it.
He turned to go, only to find Raphael standing ten feet away, staring blankly at the body of House.
Leo froze. “Raph…”
“You k-killed him,” murmured Raph, eyes wide.
Leo stepped forward carefully, trying not to set off his brother’s temper. “This is our justice, Raph,” he said softly. “The justice the world won’t give us. He never would have paid for what he did if I hadn’t”—
“I was g-gonna let him g-go,” said Raph, a slight growl entering his voice.
“To what purpose?” Leo asked gently, but pointedly, his intense eyes focused on his brother. “So he could do it again?”
“FUCK YOU, LEO!” Raph suddenly exploded, looking two millimeters from breaking into a mad dash and beating his brother senseless. “You have NO IDEA what’s in my head, you have NO IDEA what I was thinking, AND I WISH YOU WOULD FUCKING STOP THINKING YOU DO!”
Before Leo could think of a response, Raph slammed his fist into a wall. “DAMMIT, LEO! Why’d you have to…FUCK!”
Leo stared at his brother, ribs cracking from the beat of his own heart, keeping a healthy distance. Raph’s voice had reached a strange, unstable pitch, and he thrashed about as if anxious by the lack of furniture to topple. When Raph was like this, he was likely to turn on anyone nearby, and Leo had never seen him this mental.
“People keep tellin’ me to let go of what happened, but I DON’T… KNOW WHAT PART I CAN LET GO OF. A lot of it—it’s part of me, it’s in my HEAD, and it ain’t gonna disappear. But THIS guy, I COULD LET GO. I could just let him disappear. I’m just…I’M SICK OF FEELIN’ LIKE THIS, I’M SICK OF BEIN’ UNABLE TO CONTROL ANYTHING, I’M SICK OF SEEIN’ HIS FACE. BUT I CAN’T LET HIM GO NOW, ‘CAUSE YOU FUCKING KILLED HIM!”
Leo blinked, somewhat unable to believe his eyes. Raph was crying. A mist of tears appeared in his eyes and hovered there, refusing to drop, even through his explosive ranting. “I got…I was RAPED, Leo. THEY FUCKED ME WITH A FLASHLIGHT AND CALLED ME A DIRTY WHORE, AND EVERY FUCKING TIME YOU FIGHT MY BATTLES FOR ME, IT HAPPENS OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER—“
He was hyperventilating. Leo grew concerned that he was having a panic attack. He moved forward cautiously, but was unsure how he could calm his brother when he was this frenzied. If he intervened, Raph might attack him. On the other hand, if he did not, Raph might actually have a stroke.
Leo raised his hands passively. “I’m sorry,” he said in soothing tones, “I didn’t know it meant that to you.” But his heart was already sinking. He might have destroyed his brother’s last chance at resolving his feelings about what had happened.
Raph stood frozen for a moment, staring at nothing, then his shaking hands found the chair he had sat in during his days with House. Leo leapt backwards, but Raph swung the chair upward and brought it down on House’s still body with a crack. Again. Again. Again. Wood beat against dead flesh, bone was crushed, and cries rent the air with chords of lunatic rage. The chair flew across the room and splintered against the wall, and Raphael swung a fist at his brother.
Leo caught the fist easily, but was shocked by the force behind it. He blocked the next strike, and another, and Raph suddenly seized forward and grasped with both hands at his throat. Leo swerved to the side. Using Raph’s momentum against him, he propelled his brother forward until he stumbled and dropped to his knees. Then Leo stepped back and waited.
Raph knelt on the cold floor, panting, gasping, clutching at his chest as though trying to force it to expand with his own hands.
“Breathe,” Leo said softly, taking a few cautious steps in Raph’s direction.
“Can’t,” panted Raph.
“In through the nose,” Leo said, hoping his terror did not communicate. Raph had never been like this. “Out through the mouth.”
“C’breathe.”
“Slowly.” Leo knelt by Raph and helped him into a sitting position. “Head between your knees.”
“C’breathe.”
“All the way, below your heart.” Leo’s own heart pounded.
“C…h…”
“Slowly…”
Raph’s breathing slowed a little. “Can’ breathe in here,” he gasped.
“Shhhh…”
“No air…”
“Don’t talk. Just breathe. Slowly.”
“I didn’t cry,” Raph whispered, breath shuddering.
“What?”
“I didn’t cry when they did it. He was lying. I didn’t…”
“I know. I believe you.”
“No you don’t.”
Leo’s hand gently stroked Raph’s carapace. “Why would I believe him over you?”
“You asked him, didn’t ya?”
Leo frowned suddenly, nervous again. “What?”
Raph shoved him away and started struggling to his feet. “You asked him for the whole story,” he said bitterly, voice rising in volume gradually, “’cause ya didn’t know enough already, ya couldn’t leave FUCKING WELL ALONE.”
“I didn’t ask him,” Leo said calmly, raising his hands in a placating manner, rising at the same time to his feet.
Raph shook his head back and forth slowly, backing away. “I…gotta go,” he said, voice breaking. He started forward at a brisk walk that turned first into a jog, then a sprint.
“Raph!” Leo called, jolting into a jog to follow his brother. Raph was maniacal. Leo didn’t want to think about what he might do now.
“Don’t follow me!” Raph bellowed back at him before disappearing down the tunnel, voice bouncing off the walls. By the time Leo made it out to the hallway, Raph was nowhere in sight.
In through the nose, out through the mouth.
He had lost Leo somewhere back there, but he wasn’t going to risk being found. He tried to lose himself in the sewers, but it was impossible. He knew them too well, as much as he wanted to forget them. He’d hated these tunnels all his life, these cramped, damp veins of filth and dark, stagnant air. Catacombs crawling with insects and rats, his enforced home, his prison. The life he’d been sentenced to since coming into an existence he had never chosen. Everything bad in his life had been because of what he was. Couldn’t he have been either a turtle or a human, and not some sick mockery of both? If he could, he would have carved out his turtle DNA long ago and walked among the humans. He could at least carve himself out of all of this.
He fell painfully to his knees and yanked one sai from his belt with a shaking hand. If he worked quickly, it wouldn’t matter how fast Leo ran. He flipped the sai and held the point to his eye. Through the eye, into the brain, and by the time Leo found him, it wouldn’t matter.
An image of Leo carrying his body back to the lair with a sai still sticking out of his eye flashed through his mind, and his gut wrenched. Mike would probably be watching a movie or playing some game. He would be the first to see Leo standing at the doorway with Raph’s body. At the sight, he would drop the game controller or the remote and rush toward him, some remote hope deceiving him into thinking his brother might still be alive. Mike would start screaming something incoherent. Splinter would be the first to arrive then, and the shocked, grieved look on his sensei’s face was more than Raph could bear. Don would see them from upstairs as he came out of his room to see what was going on…
Raph doubled over and vomited onto the sewer floor, the sai clanking against the concrete as his hands slapped against its cool surface. For several moments, there was nothing but the heaving and the beads of perspiration blossoming on his heated skin. Then, he stared at the filth, the mess on the sewer floor.
He hated this place.
This wasn’t going to be the last thing he ever saw—this sewer, these images in his head.
If I’m going to die, it damn well won’t be here.
But he couldn’t die on the surface, in the crowded city, for anyone to find. He had to get out.
Casey Jones responded to a knock on his front door to find, to his shock, Raphael standing there.
“I needa get out,” the turtle said hoarsely.