Slumber's Torture: C2: Where Am I

  “It was just a nightmare,” Donnie repeated.  Oh, how he prayed it was just that.  Just an insane figment of his insane imagination.  It had too be.  It was.  It was just a nightmare.

  Mikey ran up and squeezed him tight with both arms. Both of them.  “It’s okay bro,” His voice sounded so young...so young and innocent.  He had no clue what his brother had seen or experienced.  But it was just a dream.  It wasn’t true.  “I have nightmares too.  Usually about birthday parties,” Mikey shuddered, but there was humor in his voice.  It made him seem complete and whole.

  Raph crossed his arms, a position he seemed to always take.  Donatello had long suspected that it was more a defense position than just adding to his tough guy act.  He was defending himself, which only reminded Donnie of his older brother’s death.  He had died defending himself, along with his family.  “That wasn’t an ordinary nightmare,” He huffed.

  “You’re really shaken up Donnie,” Leo finally spoke. He was the protector, but he was also a lot like Donnie.  They both would step back and assess a situation before responding.  It made Donnie feel that much closer to him.  “Do you want to talk about it?”  The sincerity in it, and the concern, it reverberated from him.  Anything that ever wanted to harm his brothers had to go through Leo first.  And go through it it had- and it had cost Leo the ultimate price- his life.  He had died...but no, Donnie had to remind himself that Leo was standing here, live and trying to help him.  All his brothers were.

  “I-” Donnie tried to will himself to speak.  But how could he?  How could he tell them he witnessed their very own deaths before his eyes?  How?  “I-” They were staring at him, waiting patiently.  Even Mikey, despite his short attention span.  His short attention span...it wouldn’t last long...he would be forced to learn...

  “Donnie?” Leo asked again.  It sent a shock through Donnie’s system.  Leo laying there...on the ground...bleeding to death...calling out for him...his voice barely reaching his ears...he needed him and he wasn’t there!  He wasn’t there for his brothers when they needed him most!  His heart clenched, tightening in his chest, and his head became dizzy.  He felt sick, like he was going to vomit.  He was frozen in place, as if suspended in time, motionless.  His mind was blank, and he could feel himself falling, as if the ground had given way underneath him, and gravity had latched itself onto his ankles, pulling him down.  He gasped as he watched Mikey hovering over him, calling out his name.  It was the last thing he heard.

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  “Donnie,” Mikey’s hoarse voice snapped Donatello back into reality.  “You okay bro?” His words seemed to far away for Donnie to comprehend them, like when he had wandered off to far in the sewer. They would echo, but you couldn’t understand what was being said.

  “It’sjustanightmare. It’sjustanightmare. It’sjustanightmare,” Donnie whispered to himself quickly.  It had to be.  That’s all it was.  It was just a nightmare.

  “We stopped telling ourselves that years ago,” Raph growled.  He held no remorse for the tears that had started dripping down Donnie’s cheeks, and Donnie knew this.

  “Raph!” Leo barked.  He still stood at still as a statue, his expression hardly changing.  It wasn’t his fault though.  

  “What Fearless?! He’s gotta learn, and he’s gotta learn quickly!  This isn’t like when we were kids!”  Their argument quickly faded into the background of Donatello’s thoughts.  What his brothers had just told him couldn’t possibly true.  It just couldn’t be.  He didn’t want it to be.  It was was to cruel- to inhumane.  And with his imagination- his accursed imagination- he could see every detail they told him.  He could reflect what they said, and turn it into reality.

  He vaguely looked up at Mikey.  His missing arm was just a testament of one of the many tortures he had been subjected to by Shredder.  It was like a slap in the face.  Donatello hadn’t been there to protect his younger brother when nobody else could, or even would.  

  He turned his gaze over to Raph.  He was in Leo’s face, yelling, shouting out all kinds of things.  Donnie couldn’t even grasp the situation.  All he saw was the scars that were engraved onto his body, scars of great battles, and scars of not so great ones.  Old scars, new scars, tokens and symbols that were stamped and tattooed upon his body, making an impression and indication of all that he had been through.  But that wasn’t the worst of it.  His left eye was gone- obliterated.  He wasn’t just blind in it, it had been wrenched out of his body, leaving him with half of his vision.  Shredder thought it would have made him half as dangerous- but he was wrong.

  Leo, perhaps, was worse off than any of Donnie’s brothers.  He had completely lost his eyesight, and worse yet, it wasn’t from Shredder.  Of all the things, it was his own brother that had done this to him.  In one of their many fights, Raphael himself had lashed out, forever marring Leonardo.  Their friendship, and brotherhood, was no more thereafter.

  The one thing that Donnie was grateful for, was that at least he hadn’t lost any of his brothers.  He, unfortunately, couldn’t say the same for his father and Sensei, Hamato Yoshi.  His hero was gone- dead for many of a many years.  And that was his fault.  All his fault.  Just like Mikey’s arm, Raph’s eye, and Leo’s sight.

  Michelangelo had told Donatello their story, their brothers intervening only occasionally, and Raph twice as much than Leo, because he was always contradicting what Leo was saying on top of what he had to add.  But the story Mikey, or Mike as he went by now, was so depressing and traumatic, that Donnie was still trying to wrap his mind around it.  As Mikey had said, it had started thirty years ago when something had happened to Donatello.  

  At that point, Donnie had noted that Raph had shot Mikey a glare that told Mikey he wasn’t to go there, and Leo had cleared his throat.  Even now it made him wonder what had truly occurred.  But Mikey had continued, simply saying that ‘Don’ was gone.  With Don gone, their entire family had fallen apart.  Which was why it was all his fault.  He was Don, Donnie, Donatello, it didn’t matter what his name was, he was gone, and by the way his brothers acted, he no doubt abandoned them for some reason.  But he would never...ever...leave his family for any reason unless...unless he had to protect them.  But protect them from what?

  With the family torn, Mikey went on saying that the fights between Leo and Raph had escalated to something they could have never imagined.  Blame was being put on each other by the other brother, although what that blame was, Donnie didn’t know.  It had something to do with him though.  And the fight the erupted from it was a bloody one, leaving one brother forever handicapped.

  Donnie could visually see it.  It had started like any other fight, with something wrong about Raph’s attitude, or Leo being the perfectionist.  From there, the name calling had begun, and Raph lunged at Leo, like he had no doubt done before.  But this time he was holding a sai- his favorite weapon- and slashed Leo straight across the face.  Leo’s agonizingly tormented scream echoed through the sewer halls, causing Master Splinter and Mikey to come running.  Blood would be everywhere, dripping profusely from Leo’s face, and he would be curled up on the ground, sobbing from the pain.  Raph would be rocking back and forth in a corner in shock, clutching his sai so tightly his knuckles were pale white, with hot tears building up in his eyes.  Leo’s blood would also be on him, and the life sustenance would, in an ever so pathetic way, mingle with the salty liquid erupting from Raph, causing a light stain on the floor below him.  They would, in fact, never be able to get that stain out, because it was cleaned up much later, soaking into the concrete.

  Master Splinter and Michelangelo would attend to Leonardo wounds, none of them realizing how deep Raphael had cut.  Leo would never see again due to Sensei and Mikey not knowing to properly treat him- a job that Donatello knew better than all of his family combined.  With Raph always running out, he need to know everything in case something had happened.  But again, he wasn’t there, he wasn’t there to prevent it, or to treat his big brother.  He wasn’t there, and Leo paid for it.  But why wasn’t he there?

  Raph had tried to apologize.  Donnie knew this- he could see the unforgiveness etched in Leo’s face.  Leo had turned him down- something Leo would have never done unless he was extremely torn.  Torn by fault in himself, torn by the loss of his brother, and torn that Raph would go so far.  He could never bring himself to forgive.  Never.  And with that, Raphael’s anger only increased.  If Leo couldn’t forgive him, then he couldn’t forgive himself.  With that merciless belief, Raph no longer followed the rules, and drifted apart from the rest of his family.  Mikey could no longer make him smile, Sensei could no longer talk him through a situation.  He was his own person- and nobody else’s.  He cared for no one, and believed no one cared for him.  After all, since he was the one who stole Leo’s sight, then he was probably also the one who did deserve the blame.  He was the troublemaker, the hothead.  It was all his fault.  And so, at the tender age of seventeen, he left them.  He was all on his own, disowning himself from those he held dear.

  Splinter’s heart couldn’t handle it.  After losing a son, then having to cope with two others’ conflict, leaving one blinded, and the other gone, well, he was broken.  He was to weak when the Shredder attacked, and although he fought bravely, he was in no state to face his arch nemesis.  He barely survived the initial attack, and couldn’t even save Michelangelo from being taken by their enemy.  Leonardo was the only one there when he passed on, and he held his father’s hand for hours afterwards, to afraid to move with his new blindness.

  Mikey had discovered that Raphael had also been captured by the Foot Clan, though at the time he believed his brother near death.  Raphael no doubt was very cold and bloody, his eye already pulled out.  Since he refused to reveal where the lair was, Oroku Saki himself slowly sawed his eye out, just as Samson in the Bible.  He remained strong though, and even tried not to pass out.  That didn’t work though, as the blood loss left him exhausted.  And that was how Mikey found him.  The two, once Raph awoke, held each other until Shredder had come for the youngest brother, and although they both put up a fight, Raph most of all, he overcame them, dragging Mikey off to his torture room.  He had no need to do what he did next- he already found their lair and unbeknownst to them, killed their father- but he felt the sickening need to put the most innocent of them all in the worst of circumstances.  He broke Mikey’s spirit, and, amongst a variety of other injuries, also broke his arm.  With that, Raph found a way of escape, although when Mikey told that part of the story, all their faces hardened, and Donnie could have sworn that he saw Raph’s eye look downcast, and he mouthed the word ‘Don’.  Had he helped them?  Did he come through?  But Mikey had continued, not hinting to Donnie at all.  His arm had become infected, and Raph had been forced to make a choice- lose his brother, or have him lose his arm.  He chose the latter.  

  At that time, April had brought Leo to her apartment and had helped him bury Master Splinter.  Since she was eighteen, it wasn’t so hard to hide him, but with Shredder now able to take over the world, it was more difficult than had it been before.  He hadn’t found Leonardo at his raid of the lair, and as thus hadn’t felt like he had exacted his revenge.  And now with his two victims gone, it only made him search harder.  But Raph and Mikey too headed to April, only to face the horrifying truth that their father was gone.  It didn’t take much time after that for Raph to take off again, and although Leo stayed with April and Mikey physically, mentally he was lost to them.  He learned to cope with his disability, and turned it into his strength, and left them once and for all.

  And that’s where Donnie was.  He only had one question for them.  “Guys...” They all looked at him, surprised that he voiced anything.  “Where am I?”