The Dark Half (2/20)
Disclaimer: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were created by Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird and are owned by Viacom. Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, Psychological horror, Character death Rating: T Summary: For years Leonardo has vowed to protect his family, but how is one supposed to protect their family from something that no one can see? And how can you tell whether or not the worst danger to your family is yourself? [TMNT 2k3]
A/N: So back forever ago when I rewrote the first chapter of this fic I wanted to state it was kind of a side activity, for me, to rewrite story at all. Something to work with on the backburner because it’s already complete and available on my ffn account. But if it wasn’t obvious by the amount of time between updates, this is not a super high priority for me and, worse than that, rewriting something I did when I was 12, as it turns out, takes a LOT more effort and work than I initially thought it would. But good lord lol
Like most people, I have some unexpected time on my hands recently, so that gave me time for a new swing at chapter 2 and I had a decently good time working on it, so here it is in its glory.
[[Original Author’s Notes circa 2005] Turtlefreak121: Ah...the smell of a new story fresh out of the oven - gives me that calming sense of accomplishment...like a banana split on Christmas Eve. (crowd looks strangely at TF) Ahem...alright, maybe it's not that big of a deal, but this is my first 'pure' turtle story. Heh heh...nice to lay out the facts. I may sound a little jumpy - that's because I'm probably going to get mauled by an angry reader of Baby Bro for leaving them on such a sour note... (shrugs) What can ya do? Anyway, back to the present!Thanks to: coldsunshin, Scottenkainen, Lunar-ninja, jaunt, and kinguofdoragons.]
Chapter Two: Restless Night
When they made it home, Master Splinter was awake and waiting for them. In some ways, it felt infantilizing, but in other ways, the ways Leonardo usually chose to examine these things, there was a genuine comfort in their father’s persistent guidance.
Usually, anyway.
That night, Leonardo led the explanation of the night’s events with inserted commentary from his brothers which ran the usual gambit from helpful to utterly unhelpful. But the concern for the incident didn’t seem to go anywhere.
“It sounds as though you have done everything within your power to do what is good and correct, my sons,” Splinter had said. “You deserve to rest.”
And that is exactly the advice that everyone followed.
Leonardo had watched as his brothers and even his father packed up and moved to the bed. Everyone in the entire lair other than him.
He tried to follow their leads eventually. There was, after all, nothing from his nighttime routine left. His swords were cleaned and purified. His body was loosened with his warm down exercises. He drank water to hydrate, his alarm was set, his sheets were turned down.
But his aura, it seemed to him, was weakened and unsettled. Unfocused. Unnerved.
There was something more to the night than what had happened even in the playbacks of his mind. Something off and unnatural to the events which haunted him without making themselves so obvious as to be known.
He paced his room, he went through his sleeping routine a second time, and he made a point of checking the lair, just to settle his nerves with the reminded security of their home.
When his head hit his pillow, however, Leonardo was left starring at his brick ceiling once more.
Giving in to the sinking feeling in his stomach, Leo got up again and headed for the stairs.
There was only one person in the family he knew for certain would keep the curious and, quite frankly, embarrassing feelings Leonardo had quiet.
Each step Leonardo took seemed to stretch the walk to Master Splinter’s room even more. It was like trying to reach the light at the end of a never-ending tunnel.
He could always see the light and could almost reach out and touch it, but Leonardo could never quite get there.
After a few moments of dragging his feet, Leonardo stood in the rare silence of his home and put a hand to his head. He screwed his eyes closed and thought to himself, wondering, what exactly it was he was wanting to discuss with his father? What was it that he wanted to accomplish? What was keeping him up late at night?
Compared to so many strange and unusual things in their lives, this was nothing. This was completely useless. A waste of time.
He was upset by the death of two men who had meant less than nothing to him before. Whose lives were arguably not worth the thought, all things considering. At most, they would be footnotes in a territory grab between other fractions in the city.
That aspect was worrisome, especially when the city had been in an all-out war not terribly long before, but it was manageable. It wasn’t something that would affect Leonardo’s family directly soon.
But he was sickened all the same. He just couldn’t figure out why.
Leonardo wasn’t sure what to do when he heard rustling from Splinter’s room. Through the paper walls, he could see a light come on and be carried from one side to the next.
Mind racing, Leo tried to think of a concise explanation to his father why he was standing in the dark, staring at his door, but it was too late by the time Splinter opened his sliding door.
The old rat stood at the entrance of his room, holding a single candle as he looked through the darkness and at Leo directly.
Then, so very peculiarly, Splinter looked from left to right, checking the area. He swung his candle in each direction, never stopping directly on Leonardo again.
Leo couldn’t help himself, he blinked and opened his mouth, but no words came out.
When Splinter stopped his check and faced forward toward Leonardo again, his eyes did not focus on anything in particular. Let alone on Leo. More clearly than ever before, Leo could see that his father had been looking through him somehow before.
It was as if there was no Leo there. Only the darkness of the lair.
Uncertain of how to process the information, Leonardo shuffled back and away from Master Splinter. Away from the light, even if it had done nothing to reveal Leo yet.
When he worked up the energy to at last turn back toward his room, however, he was met with something different. Something frightfully dark, putrid. There was a muskiness to the air as shadows gave way to sharp and moving coiling darkness. The hall led not to bedrooms but onward to endless, caverns and consuming umbrae.
The world disappeared and in its place stood frightfully familiar forgotten passages.
“What is going on?” Leo asked out loud, voice returned in the nothingness.
He turned again, back toward Master Splinter and the home he had just seen with his own eyes, but it was eaten up by disturbing darkness as well.
Heart racing, Leo tried to square himself, ready for attack in the uncertainty.
In the confusion of the moment, he wasn’t sure where he needed to go but he knew movement was his only possible salvation. So he moved, he climbed, he ventured through gnawing and echoing blackness until he could no longer tell when his eyes were open or closed.
Leo had stared so long into the darkness that he felt truly blind.
“This is a dream,” he finally concluded, stopping his stride and taking a breath.
The realization was immediately soothing. He felt as though a great burden had been lifted from him. Dreaming — of course, it had to be dreaming. There was no logic to the fright, to the sights. He was lucid enough to catch the disturbing nature.
And, surely, if he was lucid enough to make the realization, he was more than enough awake to pull himself from a strange nightmare.
Standing still, Leonardo continued his breathing then closed his eyes tightly. As before, there was no difference between the darkness of his dream and the blackness hidden behind his own eyes.
It all changed the moment his eyes were reopened.
But not how Leonardo expected.
He looked at the alley before him. It was nighttime, but the light trickled down to him from the tops of the buildings and from the corner of the alley’s opening. There were bricks and mortar, even a trash bin near him. He could see a manhole cover and the fire escape positioned exactly where he knew they should have been for April’s building.
“What the,” he muttered, backing up and away until there was the soft click of his shell against a hard surface behind him.
Turning around, Leonardo could see the flutter of his mask’s tails fly past him. It was enough to urge him to look down to his person, see that he was fully dressed as if he was out for a patrol. He blinked, head throbbing, and reached with one hand for his aching temple.
His other hand found purchase just over his shoulder, gripping onto the familiar handle of his katana.
When he looked back to what his shell had hit earlier, he saw that it was the backdoor to Second Time Around. And, more than that, it was creaked open.
Considering how late it was, Leo knew it was wrong for the door to be open at all.
Deep within him, something stirred. Coiling angrily around his heart was heat and it wasn’t entirely unwanted.
If there was something wrong with April’s shop, that meant that there was trouble. And where there was trouble, well, dream or no, Leonardo had more than enough reason to unleash on it.
No more hesitation, Leo unsheathed his blades and kicked the door open with a swift, singular motion.
The heat around his chest moved and churned in him, hungry and ready for something Leonardo wasn’t ready to give voice.
He stepped onto the hardwood floors with ferocity in his spirit. It was wrong, everything that was happening was wrong, but Leonardo felt why exactly it was wrong was intangible.
The intangible feeling grew as the slithering, hissing claws of darkness began to warp the vision of April’s store again. The darkness chewed away at the scenery, the silence breaking into a ring of deafening noise.
He rushed in, the heat in his chest much more preferable to the terrifying unknowing he had felt from before.
It was anger, it was thrill, stepping into nauseating satisfaction of breaking and busting and hurting the familiar setting around him.
When he came across the junk on display, watching as it stuck out from the tendrils of blackness like a sore thumb, he smashed and broke it.
Glass clashed against his fists and dresses ripped jaggedly with the edges of his swords.
It felt good. It felt right.
When he came across the large glass central display, he mindlessly used the edge of his sword to scratch into the glass.
The sound of scraping glass momentarily disoriented him and Leo sat back on his haunches.
“Stop,” he said to himself. “Why are you doing this?”
But the darkness never stopped growing. A dream, it had to be.
And if it was a dream, then what was the harm? It was as simple as that.
“Who’s going to stop me?” his voice asked, his lips unmoving. “You?”
It was a ridiculous question to ask oneself. So ridiculous, especially, when it felt as though — when he knew — he had been the one to ask himself. He laughed at it, at the pure insanity of it all, and continued on with his mindless destruction.
And it did feel good. He watched things shatter and break — objects that were no doubt considered priceless to a former owner. He crushed an old collectible figurine then knocked over a dusty coat wrack. He brought a hanging bike down crashing onto the register and felt the glee of it.
“This is wrong,” Leo reminded himself. “If I was awake, it would be so, so wrong to do this.”
He paused and smirked as the shop began to come out of focus, like eyes blearily opening awake. “Yes, it’d be terrible to do this if I was awake.”
Even though Leo was watching himself in motion, he knew where his body was going almost immediately. Toward the back of the store, clear for all customers to see when they first entered, was the prized picture of April’s family hung for all to see. It was there as a testament to the store’s history. Even though it had been burned down and lost once before, it was still something old and handed down. Just like the store’s stock.
Family, history — it meant something.
“It’d be terrible if I was doing this. Wouldn’t it?” Leo asked himself.
He looked down at his forearm taking in the familiar sight of his own green flesh and the definition of his tense muscle. Leo sheathed one katana, then rested the flat side of the blade against his arm.
With a swift motion, Leo cut through the top layer of skin. He could feel the sensation for only an instant — the searing heat that had been fueling him since he entered leaving with a sickening, oozing sensation across his arm. Then he went numb and painfully, painfully cold.
Mesmerized, he watched the trickle of red escaping him, so bright and contrasting to his dark green skin.
Then his body, never seeming to give him time, moved again. He mashed his thumb into the painful wound, searing pain hissing through his body.
When his body strode over to the family portrait, Leo used that red soaked hand to begin pressing and pawing and destroying the image in front of him.
When that wasn’t enough, he began writing.
The longer it went, the less real it began to feel, and Leonardo felt his mind begin to teeter back away from the dark visage that had unfolded before him. The image clouded, the gnawing darkness that had been ever-present in the dream finally eating up the little light he could see.
A whisper followed him into the bleariness halfway between waking and sleeping.
An old voice, more ancient than any Leonardo had once known, whispered into his mind fervently. And together, I said to you once. And together, I say to you again. And together we shall rule the world. All you need, all I need, is for you to sleep. Sleep and I will let you have so much fun. It will be like living in a dream.
Leonardo didn’t wake with a start, didn’t jolt out of his bed.
He opened his eyes and stared into the quiet nothing of his room. It wasn’t the blackness of nothing he had been staring into like the void. It was his room, in the dark. A familiar and not altogether unwelcoming sight.
There was some sweat at his brow which he wiped at with one arm, flinching slightly at a sting he felt when he did so. But he didn’t do much else.
He laid in bed and tossed to his other side, vaguely uncomfortable. Despite having only just woke up, he was exhausted. So he closed his eyes and drifted off again.
***
With a turn of her keys, April unlocked the front door of the shop. She turned and faced Casey, pushing the door open so they could walk in together.
It had been a rare, quiet night for them, kept far away from the noise and nonsense that usually followed their unusual lives and, especially, their unusual adopted family. And she would have never had such a night to herself had it not been for Casey’s encouragement, if not full insistence that they do so.
“Thanks, Casey,” she said as she looked down at her shoes. Despite herself, she always managed to go slightly pigeon-toed in her nervousness, the points of her red heels nearly touching. “I mean it, for everything.” When she dared to look up, she found her date smiling back.
He always managed to put a smile on her face more easily than anyone else.
Fishing in her purse for her favored pocket, April began to deposit her keys securely.
Casey slicked back his hair again, in that nervous way he seemed to do. His smile dropped into unadulterated nervousness. “It was the dinner,” he concluded from nothing. “Man, I knew I shoulda made reservations at that stupid Chinese—“
“No, really, Casey,” April laughed. “I’m not being sarcastic. I really had a good time. I like Italian, and the movie was great. The park was great.”
Before April could walk much further into her shop, however, Casey’s large hands grabbed her shoulders and held her back. April felt herself be pulled flush to his chest and she was momentarily confused.
“Did you leave the backdoor open?” Casey asked in hushed tones, nodding to the other side of the shop.
“Of course not,” April whispered back. But, of course, the door to the alley was open, letting in the pale moonlight and illuminating reflective glass on the floor. “Oh, god, my shop.”
“Maybe it’s the guys,” Casey muttered, twisting himself around April and putting her between him and the known safe door they had come through. He groped around in the darkness until his hands found purchase on something hardwood and he pulled it up like a bat. “Just in case, though.”
“That’s an umbrella, Casey,” April informed him before securely walking over to the wall and pulling off an antique cavalry sword she had hung up only a few days prior.
“Hey, you’ve heard Master Splinter,” Casey shrugged. “Anything’s a weapon in the hands of a monster.”
“Master,” April corrected. She sighed and shook her head. “Okay, if there was an element of surprise we’ve lost it, I’m turning on the lights.”
She reached for the switch and flipped it, only to receive an ominous click. She frowned and attempted again — off then on — and received the same lightless response. “That’s funny,” April muttered. “The power must be out.”
“Or cut,” Casey offered.
When April turned to face Casey, she saw from the corner of her eye something darker than even the shadows of the store move. It nearly made her jump and, considering Casey did jump, he must have seen it as well.
The couple looked at each other curiously, but silent. They knew that the turtles had enemies, and it wasn’t unheard of for those enemies to attempt to make easy targets out of either April or Casey. It was best to stay calm, alert, and quiet until they had a better grasp of what was happening.
At least, that was April’s take on it.
“It’s totally Raph, he knew I was taking you out tonight,” Casey grunted. “Maybe Mikey, he’d totally break something.”
“Casey, hush,” April shushed him, going so far as to put her hands over his mouth for emphasis.
He muttered around her hands, childishly, but it was muffled enough that they both could hear an eerie dripping noise from the blackest shadows of the store.
“Okay, c’mon, guys,” Casey burst out, grabbing April’s wrists to pull her hands away from his mouth. He looked toward the darkened store. “This ain’t funny anymore!”
April looked to see that the light just outside the door was on and it clicked in her mind that the power wasn’t cut as Casey suspected. She then glanced at the large neon open sign in her window.
Pulling herself free from Casey, April stepped back over to the light switch and flipped it again. She didn’t flip for the indoor lights, however, just for the sign, which immediately shown with a brilliant glow, lighting up the shop behind it.
With more of the shop lit up, April and Casey could both see the ruin which had been left by the intruder. Hanging instruments were on the ground, a bike smashed through the main display, fabric slashed, glass cracked and strewn around.
It was enough to make April gasp, her lip quiver. She worked so hard on her store, worked with so much pride.
Casey was already on the move. He stepped over the left display window with cautious, slow steps. He was gripping the umbrella tightly as he felt around the darkness.
“On the right,” April directed him toward the display’s plugin.
“There’s something sticky over here,” he informed her. “The open sign’s not strong enough this far out, can’t see what it is.”
“If you plug in the display lamps, we’ll be able to get a clearer assessment,” April coaxed. She walked closer herself, daring to examine her destroyed retail. She held the cavalry sword in her hands. “Casey, we saw something move, we need to get the lights on—“
“Got it,” Casey said and, with a click, the display lamps began to light up, a good number of them flickering and buzzing from damage.
Once more of the store was lit, April put a hand over her mouth and held back a gasp.
The damage was worse than she had hoped, but that seemed like such a small thing compared to the true horrors of the scene. Everything, particularly the countertops, was bloody.
Casey got to his feet almost immediately and looked down at his hand to see the thick, dark blood on him. He looked back to April worriedly.
“Oh my god, what happened here?” April whispered in awe. A cold chill ran through her body as the words escaped her.
She was mesmerized and, yet, she also wasn’t sure she wanted to know, that she could have accepted whatever evils had taken hold of her store.
All the same, she looked to the aisles where their moving shadow had appeared and saw, to her relief, nothing. Perhaps her mind had been playing tricks on her. But, then again, Casey had acted like he saw it, too. Whatever it was.
Her mind raced with possible answers, but they all came back to the most likely scenario.
“Casey, we need to check on the guys,” she said, beginning to walk around the store and inspect the damage closer up. “This is a lot of blood. Maybe something happened tonight and they haven’t called us yet.”
“God, let’s hope not,” Casey muttered, wiping his blood-covered hand off on his pants before fishing a shell cell from his pocket. Long before he said a word, April could take a guess of who was first on his list to call. “Hey, Raph!”
There were some unkind sounding words thrown out on the other side of the phone, but April had wandered far enough through the store that she missed the specifics. She looked down and noticed a pool of the dark blood, like it had been settled for a while. And out from it were red splatters against the hardwood — the drips from before? But then how could the blood look so coagulated and darkened already?
Had she been seeing things or not?
“You mean you’re in bed right now?” Casey asked, putting the umbrella down on the counter. “How long? Did you guys get into something tonight? Come by the store?” He paused then, earnestly asked. “Okay but are all of you in bed?”
April followed the drips of blood, only nominally taking in the conversation between Casey and Raphael. As she did so, she found herself reaching the wall, where even more blood had pooled.
“Yeah, someone trashed the store, looks like someone got their butts handed to them.” Casey walked in a tight circle. “No, I mean someone got hurt it looks like. Wanted to make sure it was none of you.”
When April looked up the wall, her heartfelt as though it dropped out of her chest, plunging into her stomach with a cold splash. She covered her mouth with her free hand and let out a choked cry.
“April!?” Casey yelled in alarm, immediately rushing to her side.
Even at a distance, Raphael’s voice carried in a harsh, “What’s going on over there!?”
Turning her gaze from the wall to the counter, April couldn’t help the sting of tears that reached her eyes. Her family portrait, her store, everything defaced with some sickening message.
“Christ,” Casey muttered, coming up behind April and comfortingly putting his hand on her shoulder. “Raph, listen, I know it’s late, but you guys need to come here immediately.”
***
“Sure thing, we’ll be right there!” Raphael yelled back into his shell cell before hanging up.
As groggy as he had been when he first got the call from Casey, by the time it ended Raphael had been in full motion. He was put together and had his sai in holsters before he was out the door.
Outside of his room, two of his three brothers were already up and dressed to leave. Michelangelo and Donatello both had expressions that ranged from concerned to exhausted, but there was no doubt that they had overheard Raphael’s expressive conversation over the phone with Casey.
“What’s going on?” Don asked, tightening the tails of his mask.
“Something bad’s gone down at April’s store while they were out,” Raph growled, already making his way to the stairs. “Casey said we needed to head over immediately.”
“Yikes,” Mikey uttered, leaping athletically ahead of Raph like it was a competition.
Notably, though, Don hung back. “Hey,” Don called, drawing Raph and Mike’s attention back to him and the hallway. Don’s face was drawn down into a frown. “Where’s Leo?”
When they looked around, the air felt stilted and strange.
Leo wasn’t there. But his room was closer to Raphael’s than Don’s room was. Not to mention, their fearless leader was a notoriously light sleeper — arguably more difficult to sneak past than their constantly alert father.
“Weird, think he’s okay? He was kinda acting weird earlier,” Mike noted, tapping on his chin in thought. “Maybe he was coming down with something.”
“Hey, what part of immediately do you guys not get?” Raph asked, pushing past Mikey to continue down the stairs. “Let him get his beauty sleep for all I care.”
“Now, hold on,” Don argued, walking back down the hall and toward Leo’s door. “He’s going to want to be there if it’s something serious, Raph.”
“Again, for all I care,” Raph grumbled, but he had come to a complete stop already. He crossed his arms and theatrically tapped his foot in wait. “Just hurry, won’t ya?”
Don waved off Raphael’s comment before knocking on the door. “Hey, Leo? Leonardo! I’m coming in.”
Their brainy brother followed through and continued talking, his words more muddled with walls between them. If Raphael had initially cared more about the specifics of their conversation, he might have paid slightly more attention, but for the time being, he couldn’t have cared less.
“What do you think he was dreaming about?” Mikey asked, bouncing on his feet. “Had to be dreaming and snoozing pretty deeply to not overhear your racket, Raph.”
“I don’t care,” Raph huffed. “I just know I’m gonna leave both of them of they don’t hurry up.”
There was a lull in the conversation as whatever was happening in Leo’s room picked up. It was enough to make Raph and Mike glance at each other in mutual concern.
Don’s head popped back out and he looked frazzled. “Hey, guys, you go ahead, we’ll meet up with you at April’s. Won’t take us long.”
“What? Why?” Raph demanded.
“Thought you didn’t care,” Mike whistled, earning the punch to the shoulder Raph gave.
“Leo had some kind of accident or something. It’s not…” Don hesitated, then waved at them. “I’m just going to take care of it. Don’t want it to get infected or something.”
“Infected?” Mikey asked, face scrunched up.
“What the hell did he do exactly?” Raph snapped.
“We don’t know, just, get to April’s, they said it was immediate, right?” Don said, ducking back into Leo’s room and disappearing from sight.
Michelangelo crossed his arms and tilted his head. “This is the weirdest night we’ve had in a while, isn’t it?”
“God, don’t jinx us,” Raph grouched before grabbing onto the top of Mike’s shell and dragging him along. “Now, c’mon. If Don’s got whatever’s going on with fearless leader, more power to him. But I ain’t leaving April and Casey hanging when they ask for our help directly.
“Fair, I guess,” Mikey responded, though he wasn’t sounding particularly convinced. “Hey, did you hear Leo talking in his sleep earlier?”
Raph glanced back at him only momentarily as he unlocked the sewer gate. “No. I was happily asleep before Casey called. Why?”
Shrugging, Mikey attempted to seem calm and collected, but there was a hint of something unsettled in him. Uncertain. “It was just weird. Like it was definitely Leo but, I don’t know.”
“What’d he say?” Raph asked over the echo of their footsteps through the cold tunnel.
“He was just talking in the third person or something,” Mikey explained. “Never heard him do that before. Never heard him talk in his sleep before either.”
Giving it only a passing thought, Raph frowned. “Yeah, me neither,” he admitted. “Now shut up, we’ve got April and Casey to worry about.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” Michelangelo attempted to joke, but his heart wasn’t in it.
The rest of their run was eerily silent.
