The Halfway Point, chapter 12

[tori_angeli]

In, out, in, out.

Leo would die before letting Raph get away.

He’s going to try something.  He’s going to try to hurt himself.

His cell rang.  He didn’t need this right now.

Pick up the phone.

“What is it?”

I don’t have time for this.

“Leo?”

Oh please.

“What?”

What the hell do you want, Mikey?

“April’s on the phone.  You’d better get back here.”

Shit.

 

“I dunno, I think I can just stop an’ get groceries in Northampton, April.”  Casey watched the dead road ahead of him as he drove, making use of the cell phone reception they had just outside the city—it was not going to last—to call April.  “Don’t think you needa come all the way out with us.  ‘Sides, this is kinda…guy stuff.”  He glanced at the person in the passenger seat.  Raph’s face was turned away, out the window.  He hadn’t moved since Casey had started driving.

“Don’t you dare leave him alone,” April said firmly, somehow retaining her calm, patient, and altogether infuriating “crisis tone.”  “You can’t leave him when he’s like this.  Not for a few minutes.  Make sure you know where he is at all times, and don’t let him have any access to ANYTHING he could use to hurt himself.”

Casey gritted his teeth, hand tightening around the cell phone until the plastic creaked beneath his fingers.  “I know, Ape,” he said, “we been over this.  I was just thinkin’ he could stay in the car while I get stuff.  He knows how ta hide.”  April would understand his odd choice of concerns—he couldn’t, himself, discuss Raph’s suicidal tendencies, which Don had made them well aware of, while Raph was sitting right next to him, staring like a statue out the glass, or at the glass.  “We’re gonna need food, Ape.”

“Then go through McDonald’s.  I’ll get there a couple hours after you, I’ll drop off the groceries, I’ll leave.  That sound okay?”

“Through the drive-thru?  Ape, they can see through the window.”

“Don’t you have a blanket, or a hat, or—“

“I have a toolbox, a half-eaten bag of chips…” he made a quick glance around the cabin, flicking at a bag of condiments from various fast food places, “uh…”

“What about your mask?”  April sounded less patient.

That clicked in Casey’s head as something he should have thought of himself, and he was suddenly aware of his own perceived stupidity.  “Yeah, that works.  Uh—I really better get off the phone.  Drivin’ an’ all.”

“Yeah.”  April sounded quieter.  “Sorry I was short.”

“Yeah, me too, babe.”  Casey felt his patience repairing itself, the shame abating.  “Gonna miss ya.”

“You too.  Love ya.”

“Love ya too.  And April?

“Yeah?”

“Don’t…don’t tell the others where we’re goin’.  Raph really needs ta take a break.”

“Yeah, I get that feeling.”

“So uh…bye.”

“Bye.”

With the phone tucked into his palm, Casey flipped it closed with two broad fingers and shifted in the seat, awkwardly cramming it into his back pocket as he sat, eyes on the road, trying not to let the car swerve.  It was less awkward when the job was done and he could settle back into the seat and drive like a sane person, but he was left, in lieu of April’s anxious tones, utter silence as thick and impenetrable as bulletproof glass, plugging his ears.

A fleeting glance at his passenger told him that Raph still had not moved, at least not perceivably.  For all Casey could tell, he had not breathed.  He made no sound at all.  His stiff posture remained frozen as though there was something before his eyes that he could not look away from.

“You okay?” Casey asked tentatively.

No response.  Of course not.  Just because Raph had asked Casey for help didn’t mean things were okay between them.  It just meant Raph had no one else to turn to.  And that, above anything else, made Casey Jones grieve the most.

 

When Leo burst into the lair, Donatello was standing in the middle of the living room and talking on the phone, his consonants over-enunciated and syllables rolling with urgency.  Mike was pacing furiously in front of him, and Splinter stood motionless nearby.  Leo strode to Mike, who glanced up as he approached.

“April’s saying Raph’s run off,” he said bitterly, “but Don’s not giving us anything else.  They’ve been talking for like ten minutes.”  He moved to start his pacing again, but Leo clamped a hand to his shoulder and forced him to maintain eye contact.

“Is he with her?” he asked sharply.

“Hell if I know.”

“I want to talk to her.”

There was a plastic click.  Leo glanced at Don, who had just hung up his phone.  Donatello closed his eyes and took a deep, slow breath, and Leo’s grip on Mikey’s shoulder tightened anxiously.  Three pairs of eyes fixed on Don as he turned to them and gave a weary sigh.

“She says Raph and Casey took off somewhere together, but she won’t say where.”

Leo frowned sharply.  “Raph and Casey?”

“Why--?” began Mikey.

A sudden hand gesture from Splinter silenced them both.  “Tell everything, Donatello.”  The rat sensei stood like a statue, still, with restrained power and a cold, chiseled look of reserved judgment.

Don shook his head softly.  “I kept asking her questions, but that’s what it boils down to.  Everything else was just…her avoiding what I was asking her.  Apparently Raph showed up and asked Casey to drive him somewhere.  That’s it.”

“Is she with them?” asked Leo.

“No, they’re alone.”

“Does she know why?”

“I don’t know.”

Leo snatched the phone from Don’s hand, prepared to dial April’s number and ask her his own questions before he heard the massive crack of snapping wood.  His head snapped around.  Splinter was swinging his staff, cracked in half, at a vase on an end table.  The sound of shattering porcelain crackled through the air, and with a shove, Splinter knocked over the end table and walked briskly to his room.  Leo stared after his father, stunned, the phone lying forgotten in his hand.  There was a breathless moment when the air seemed to have been vacuumed from the room; then, quietly, Donatello moved in to pick up the table.

“I’ll start cleaning this up,” he volunteered softly.

 

The rest of the long drive to Northampton was silent.  Casey glanced towards Raph every once in a while.  The teen continued to stare out the window, shoulders tense in the posture he had when he didn’t want to talk, watching the sky lighten from black to grey-blue.  The pre-dawn light darkened his skin to a deep green-grey and reflected a glimmer of smoky blue in his dark eyes.  He never looked at Casey.

As soon as they arrived at the farmhouse, Raph opened his door and stepped out, slamming it behind him.  He headed straight for the barn.  Casey watched him, feeling a little displaced.  He was supposed to be at work.  Instead, he’d driven all night into the middle of nowhere.  Now he needed to keep an eye on Raph.  No time for sleep.  Not when he was being a pal.  He shuffled out of the truck and padded after Raph.

Raphael wouldn’t come to him unless he felt he had nowhere else to turn.  Things were probably bad at the lair.  Mike had said Raph wasn’t allowed out.  That would make Raph crazy, if nothing else did first, so Raph had sneaked out and come to the one place he could that wasn’t home, asking for a change of scenery.  This had nothing to do with Raph’s feelings about Casey.  Raph still hated him, and Casey didn’t blame him.  No, this was about Raph needing Casey.  No one else in the world, not even his brothers, could understand Raph as instinctively as Casey.  Raph simply couldn’t go to anyone else.  It wasn’t a choice.

Casey could hear grunts and dull thuds coming from the barn as he approached.  Inside the barn, Raph, red-eyed from sleep deprivation, pummeled the punching bag like it had hit his dog with its car on purpose.  The ninja huffed and puffed and gritted his teeth and growled and hit and hit and hit and kicked and punched and Casey could feel the blood singing through his own veins, knowing how it felt.

But Raph was frustrated.  He looked frustrated, and Casey would be frustrated if he were Raph.  The punching bag wasn’t a person.  It couldn’t feel, it couldn’t hurt, it couldn’t fight back.  Raph didn’t need to hit things.  Raph needed to fight.

“Think fast!” Casey barked, and with no other warning, launched himself at Raph.  The turtle whirled around and kicked him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him and sending him flying backwards.  Casey swung to his feet just in time to dodge a low kick and took a swing at Raph’s jaw.  They fought, their frustrations ebbing with the pain they dealt and the pain they took, brains twirling under the influence of endorphins and adrenaline.  Casey pulled few punches.  Raph pulled none.

The fight ended when Raph slammed Casey into a wooden post and doubled him over with a punch to the gut.  Casey dropped to his knees, breathless, one hand pressing to the dusty earth for support and the other raised in surrender.  To his surprise, Raph ceased immediately and sat on the ground, drawing his knees up and draping his arms over them, breathing heavily to cool his body.  Just by looking at him, Casey could tell that the fight had done him a world of good, and would probably continue to do so.  Part of Raph’s depression was undoubtedly due to an utter lack of exercise—why hadn’t Don thought of this?

“Feel better?” Casey asked as he regained his breath.  It was a little risky, venturing a conversational question, but Raph obviously didn’t want to kill him anymore.  At least, he was resisting if he did.

No response from the turtle.  Raph simply stared ahead, eyes less glazed than before, but still haunted.

Casey shrugged.  “Well.  Maybe we should do that more often.  I mean, if not, I’m cool with that.”

Still no response.

The vigilante watched the turtle for a moment, weighing his next words carefully.  He was not used to walking on eggshells, especially not with Raph.  But not only were he and Raphael not on the best of terms, but Raphael was on the verge of plunging off the deep end.  He would have to learn tact quickly.  “Uh.  April’s gonna be bringin’ up some of our beer.  Be here in a few hours.  Whatcha say you go get some sleep, an’ tonight, we’ll drink ourselves under the table?”

Raph frowned a little, a spark of anger lighting in his eyes.  A tiny whirl of hope flared in Casey’s chest.  Anger was an improvement.  Anger was better than numbness.  If Raph was indignant that Casey was being too familiar too soon, Casey was okay with that.  “No thanks,” the ninja said hoarsely, the first words he’d spoken since they had left the apartment.

Casey shrugged again.  “Well, the beer’s always open.  But I dunno ‘bout you, but I’m zonkin’ out right here.”  He pushed himself to his feet and stretched, yawning hugely.  “I’m goin’ ta bed.  You comin’?”

The turtle hesitated, then pushed down on his knees, rising to his feet.

When they arrived at the house, Raph brushed past Casey and made straight for the master bedroom, where he slammed the door behind him.  Casey sank onto the couch, well in sight of the bedroom door, and stretched out over it.  Learning to walk on eggshells would be hard enough.  As his eyelids drooped, he wondered if he could learn to sleep lightly as well.

When Leo called April the first time, she said no more than she had told Don.  When he called a little later, unable to keep his anxious hands from dialing her number, her phone rang once before going to her voice mail.  An hour later, he was still sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the phone in his hands, waiting for the moment when he would give in to his worry and call her again.  He turned the phone in his hands, using its surface design as a feeble distraction.  It was only a matter of time before the temptation became too great, even though he knew that April would answer no more questions than before.

More distracting than the surface of the cell phone was the presence of Mike, who had been leaning against a cabinet and staring at him for the past few minutes, obviously trying to work himself up to saying something.  The occasional glance at his youngest brother revealed a dark face, that strained look of anger Mike had when he was desperate to say something scathing and couldn’t think of anything sufficient.

Go ahead, Mikey, Leo thought, staring at his phone.  I know what you want to say.  It doesn’t matter.  Saying it out loud won’t change anything.  I’m just glad you’re finally getting mad.

Mike finally broke the silence.  “What did you do?”

Not the scathing remark Leo was expecting, but he wasn’t surprised that Mike finally decided to reserve some judgment until he had some of the story.  “I killed House.”

“Where?”

“In the sewers.  Raph was holding him captive not too far from here.”

“Was Raph there?”

“I didn’t realize it until after, but yes.”

“So he flipped out and left.”  There was more than a note of bitterness in Mike’s voice now.

Leo’s focus on his phone broke briefly when his eyes flickered up to Mike’s.  “Yes, Mikey.  He flipped out and left.”

The darkness on Mike’s face deepened.  “So it’s your fault,” he accused.

Leo leaned back in his chair, relaxing into as casual a pose as possible.  It was his way of dealing with inevitable arguments—acting like the argument meant little to him was absolutely infuriating to the rest of his brothers, and made them more likely to slip up and lose, especially in cases like this, when Leo knew there was no other way for him to win.  “I think this has been coming for a long time, Mikey.  Raph’s only been getting more and more frustrated since the attack”—

“Shut up, Leo,” snarled Mike.  “If it weren’t for you and Don smothering him, this wouldn’t a’ happened.”

Leo’s focus on Mike intensified.  “What about your pitying and babying?  ‘Oh Raph, so sorry you were attacked.  Here, let’s watch The Princess Bride!’”

“Fuck you, Leo,” snapped Mike, turning to leave.  “You know I’m right.”  Before Leo could say another word, Mike was bounding across the living room and up the stairs.

A flare of anger caused Leo’s mouth to drop open, and he snapped it shut.  Yes, I know you’re right.  But I know I’m right, too, Michelangelo.  We’ve all killed Raphael.