Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fan Fiction ❯ Bad Places III: Ruin ❯ Chapter 8

Part 8

Raphael followed his brother for as long as he could, but not only did Leonardo have a headstart on him, he could also see in the nearly black water. When the flashlight Raphael struggled to follow veered wildly and blinked out as if his brother had turned a corner, he couldn't see anything. For a moment a sick jolt of panic went through him as he imagined demons swimming towards him, but then the rope in his hand jerked and he reluctantly turned back.

Nearly out of breath by the time he dragged himself up onto the floor of the lair, he took a few seconds to unwind from his hand the rope Donatello had had the foresight to throw to him. Leonardo's jump couldn't be a suicide attempt, he told himself. If his big brother was trying to kill himself, he never would have taken a flashlight.

"Did you find him?"

"Is he...?"

Raphael couldn't answer yet. He turned and looked between April, Michelangelo and Splinter, spotting Donatello standing a few feet away. "Don, can you track his communicator?"

"What? Oh, yeah, just a sec."

Shivering slightly, Raphael stood up and walked over to him, looking over his shoulder as he worked.

"Found his signal," Donatello said. "And...it's moving. I think he's above ground."

"Thank God," Raphael said under his breath. "Call him."

"You think he'll answer?"

"He damn well better."

The shellcell beeped for a few seconds, and then stopped as if someone had answered. The picture didn't come on, but they heard the high pitched shrieks of screamers in the distance and their brother's labored breath, as if he was running.

"Can this wait?" Leonardo's voice came. "I'm kinda busy at the moment."

"Where the hell are you?" Raphael demanded, snatching the communicator out of Donatello's hands. "What the hell was that stunt you just pulled? Were you trying to kill yourself?"

Far away in a deserted street, Leonardo winced and hoped that the rest of his family thought that was just hyperbole and didn't realize how close that last question cut. He turned a hard right into an alley and leaped up the fire escape, crashing through the nearest window and coming to a halt, waiting amidst broken glass and listening to the sound of monsters running in the street below. As the sounds passed by, he breathed out in relief. He'd lost them for now.

"I'm not sure where I am," he said. "Can't see with the sun up."

"What do you mean, you can't--wait. Wait, don't tell me you ain't wearing a mask?"

"Wouldn't matter if I was. I can't see in the light with them anymore. Doesn't matter. I'm all right blind."

"Leo...why did you jump? You couldn't have known you'd find a way out."

"But I did," Leonardo said, bending the truth a little. "The demons that attacked us had to come from somewhere. I just followed the claw marks up to a broken grate. It isn't too far."

"And that's the only reason?"

"Don said he couldn't find out where the signal's coming from. I can track these things back to their source."

A good enough answer, but not the answer to his question and they both knew it. Raphael almost curled his hands into fists, but stopped himself before he crushed the communicator. "You're doing it again, big brother. You're hiding the truth again."

"I..." Leonardo sighed and tilted his head back, resting against the wall. He knew Raphael had to be with everyone else. They were probably all huddled around the communicator, listening to every word. "Of course it wasn't the only reason. You know that."

"Leo, you can't stay out there. You have to come back." Raphael leaned against the raised floor of the living room.

"Raphael, I can't--"

"No, this isn't a choice. The national guard can't handle this. You think can do it all on your own?" He knew what Leonardo would answer before he finished asking.

"Of course. One person can slip through where an army can't. As long as I stay out of their reach, I'll be fine." As soon as he said it, Leonardo winced. Saying that was a slip, and he knew there was no way Raphael wouldn't notice.

"'Stay out of their reach'?" Raphael asked. He didn't like the sound of that. "Why?"

Leonardo sighed. Acting suicidal was one thing, but admitting he'd made a mistake stung his pride. "You remember where you left my swords?"

"Yeah," Raphael said, not understanding. He glanced at the open door to Donatello's lab where he'd left the swords after cleaning, and his eyes widened. They were still on the table. "You left them here?!"

Leonardo considered explaining that he'd been too busy thinking of how to escape, but he didn't think that would mollify his brother. "It won't happen again?" he offered, half-smiling. Strange. It wasn't funny, but he wanted to laugh.

"Leo, come home."

"I can't do that, Raph."

"Either you come home or we're coming up after you."

"No!" Leonardo opened his eyes in surprise and cried out as the light burned them. It would be a few more minutes before night completely covered New York, and the fading light felt like staring into the sun at noon. "Raph, you can't. Those things might be heading into the water, and even if you managed to get out, they're all over the streets."

"We'll avoid that grate you mentioned and just come up from the ocean," Raphael told him. As much as he wanted to throttle him, he didn't want Leonardo to worry too much.

"I don't care where you come up, you can't get through so many--"

"And neither can you!"

Leonardo took a deep breath. "Even if you're right, this is for the best."

He still wouldn't come out and say it, Raphael thought, not when he knew everyone was listening. Squashing any sympathy he felt, he pulled his trump card. "If you don't come home, I can't keep your secrets anymore."

Leonardo froze. The communicator fell from Leonardo's hand and hit the floor, but the sound startled him from his shock and he went to his knees, feeling blindly until his hand brushed it. Hoping it was still on, he brought it back up.

"No, you-you can't, you said you wouldn't--"

"That was before you ran away. Again. You'd think you'd learn that running away only makes things worse. If you don't come back, I have to tell them why you're acting so weird."

"Raphael..."

"It's your choice."

Long seconds passed. Raphael could just barely make out the sound of his brother's breathing, panicked and rushed. He wanted to reach out, hold him, reassure him that it would be all right in the end. He even held out a thin hope that Leonardo would agree and come back. When he heard his brother again, though, he knew he'd failed.

"I'm sorry, Raphael," Leonardo answered, all hesitation gone from his voice. "Don't try to find me."

Static screeched out of the communicator for a second, then cut off. Growling, Raphael handed the shellcell back to Donatello and sank to the floor, leaning back against the wall. He knew what the noise was. He would have destroyed the communicator if he didn't want to be found, too.

"I'd better get the submersible--" Donatello started.

Raphael quieted him with a wave. "He'll be fine for awhile. He's probably gonna sit and wait for the coast to clear, then start hunting. We've got a few minutes."

Splinter sat down in front of him. "What is it that you have kept secret with your brother?"

Raphael sighed and lowered his head. "A lot of things. I didn't tell anyone at first because it only would've made things harder for him. Then later on I kept quiet because he was getting better. And he really was getting better. If it hadn't been for whatever noise he's hearing now..."

"Then this all has to do with his experiences in Stockman's pocket dimension?" Donatello asked, sitting beside them. Michelangelo did the same, and when he motioned at her, April joined them.

"Mostly," Raphael said. He decided he would still keep quiet on how Leonardo and Felix had avoided starvation in the game since that was too sensitive and ultimately didn't matter much. What did matter, though, hurt just to think about. "You already know that when he left for the first time, before he got trapped in Stockman's game, that he was running away. What you don't know is that he wasn't planning on living very long after that. Stockman probably did us a favor by forcing him to stay alive for three months."

"Whoa," Michelangelo said, holding a hand up. "I was in that game, Raph. Stockman didn't put anyone in there to force 'em to live."

"No, but Leo was in there with two other people. He felt obligated to fight beside them. When they finally got out, he didn't come home 'cause he wanted to. He did it by accident. He wasn't thinking about it, he was just hurting and home is where you come when you're hurting."

"You implied that he was going to kill himself before becoming trapped," Splinter said. "But he stayed his hand after escaping."

"Well, he wasn't here too long before he met Felix again and ran off to kill Stockman."

"And then we all got zapped to Stockman's weird dimension," Mike said. "But nothing happened. I mean, a lot of monsters died, but Leo didn't try anything."

Raphael sighed and looked away. "Yeah, he did. He just waited until everyone was safe and back in the real world. You remember it took us a little while to come through the gate?"

"You had to help him through," April said, remembering it clearly. "He was walking pretty slowly."

"That's because I had to fight him to stop him from staying behind." Raphael nodded as their eyes widened in realization. "He didn't wanna come back. Nothing had changed. He was still expected to be the perfect son, fearless leader, taking care of everyone. He thought it'd be better if he went back inside and kept killing things until they finally killed him."

"And...you fought him?" Donatello asked. "And won?"

The disbelieving tone irritated him, but he didn't snap. "Yes, I won. Of course he was pretty tired at the end, but I was stronger and pulled him with me."

"Is that why he ran off after killing the monster that came through?" Michelangelo asked. "After the bazooka went off, remember? Man, that was awesome..."

Raphael looked down. The memory of that night felt as cold as the rain. "I found him too weak to fight, just walking away. He said he had to leave or else he'd lose himself."

"Wait," Donatello said slowly, "was he running away or planning to kill himself?"

"It's the same thing to him. Better a quick death than being crushed under all that weight." Raphael shrugged. "Anyway, I got him home, and he slowly started getting better. He didn't leave the lair for a long time, though. He said he was worried that if he left for any reason, he might not come back."

No one spoke for a few seconds. None of them had known how frayed Leonardo's bond with his family had become.

"He told me once that he used to wonder if he was still in the game. That maybe he'd really fallen back into the well and was just dreaming all this."

"And now?" Splinter asked. "Am I correct in assuming that Leonardo is still suicidal?"

A nod. "I think I stopped him from drowning himself last night." He ignored Splinter's demanding questions and his brothers' furious accusations of hiding something so important and talked over them.

"Enough already! This is exactly why we never told you. Yelling at him to explain or stop being crazy won't do anything except make it worse."

"Letting him hide from everything didn't help, either."

"I didn't let him hide. When things got bad, we talked." He narrowed his eyes at their disbelieving expressions. "Yeah, we could talk without killing each other, okay?"

"If he is suicidal," Splinter said, "how can you say he was improving?"

"Because he wasn't thinking about killing himself until all this crap happened. If this--" he waved his hand at the dead body against the door "--hadn't happened, he'd still be here. He'd be eating normally and bossing us around and practicing. He..."

Raphael sighed and shook his head. "This isn't his fault. He just doesn't know how to handle it." He almost laughed. If this had happened to anyone else, any of his brothers, to himself even, Leonardo probably would've known how to react. But no one had ever taught Leonardo how to take care of himself.

Above the ground, the sun finally set. Most of the street lights were broken and the lights that would have been on in the windows now stayed dark as the humans hid. By starlight, Leonardo opened his eyes and saw the remains of his communicator crushed between his hand and the wall. Tiny bits of plastic, screws and wires slipped to the floor, and in a fit of frustration he flung the useless thing out the window, listening as it hit the far wall and clattered to the pavement far below.

By now they all knew. Raphael would waste no time in making good on his threat. His whole family knew the extent of his failure, choosing death over them so many times. He would have thrown up if there'd been anything in his stomach.

Slowly he stood up and went back to the broken window, looking through the jagged glass at the world of shadows and moonlit silhouettes. A few screamers and feeders lingered by dead bodies on the sidewalks and streets, but they were nothing he couldn't avoid. Something large and heavy passed by overhead, leaping between the two buildings. Leonardo nodded once in recognition. The smaller creatures held the streets and the demons controlled the rooftops.

Raphael's betrayal made no difference. His job was to find out where these creatures came from, destroy their source, and then destroy himself. Knowing he would die soon made the weight of his responsibilities disappear and for he first time since he could remember, he felt like he could stand up straight without the threat of being crushed.

He took a deep breath and smiled, then climbed over the glass and began to search, following the thin line of stragglers through the streets and deeper into Manhattan.

TBC...