39Akumu
By Dierdre
Many thanks go out to Reluctant Dragon; Donny fan, gifted beta and the creator of many drool-worthy fanfics. Go check out her profile page!
AN: My third one-shot, inspired by a dream and written out of a simple desire to challenge myself. It will probably come as no surprise to those of y'all who've read my works before, but this is a rather dark and gory little tale. Don't say I didn't warn y'all, gentle readers. ;-)
His breathing was labored, the cool night air hissing through his clenched teeth in a continuous, harsh whistle. I could feel his exhaustion in the fine trembling of the arms that held me and hear it even through his plastron, where the breath shivered in his overworked lungs and rattled his chest like dice. He didn't seem aware of it, however, or of the blood that I knew still snaked down his side in rivulets of liquid ruby. He was too focused on the concrete beneath his feet as he ran, too driven by the urgent need to seek help.
It was hard to believe that things could have gone so wrong so quickly. All I had wanted to do was cook dinner for the guys, partially in celebration of an unusually lucrative day at my antique shop, but mostly because it had been a while since the six of us had enjoyed a quiet night together, uninterrupted by global disaster or sudden bouts of city violence.
He had dropped by for a visit at the end of his nightly patrol, and when I told him of my idea he had willingly volunteered his services as a pack mule. We had then spent a happy half hour liberating my refrigerator and pantry of anything edible, before leaving by way of the fire escape and making our way into the New York City night.
But our plans for a peaceful evening had been abruptly cut short when we turned a corner a block from my apartment and ran straight into trouble. One moment we were chatting amiably as we walked, our arms laden with groceries as we made our way to the nearest manhole cover, and then the next we had been set upon by a pack of thugs looking for easy prey.
The ensuing fight should have been a cakewalk, for the gang members were new initiates, barely more than teenagers and still amateurs in the art of takedown. Indeed, two of them had gone down with little trouble, courtesy of a few economical kicks from a ticked-off mutant who refused to relinquish his bags. Another kid with a switchblade had skirted around his falling comrades and rushed me with such swiftness that I dropped my own bags in surprise, but thanks to Master Splinter's teachings I soon laid him out with a spinning roundhouse kick to the jaw. Seeing the ease in which the others were subdued, the final member of the group had bolted without ceremony, fleeing into the night as fast as his legs would carry him.
In less than ten seconds the tussle was over, and although a large bottle of olive oil had slipped out of one of my bags and shattered on the pavement, no other damage had been done. That should have been the end of it, but as I kneeled down to gather up the surviving foodstuffs one of Splinter's many warnings was abruptly proven true: Be wary of the unpredictability of amateurs, for luck will sometimes turn in their favor.
As I had slipped the last of the canned goods back into the plastic bag, I was startled from my task by a sudden wild yell. The last thug suddenly emerged from the gloom at a dead run, a look of manic bravery etched across his white face, and I had looked over my shoulder just in time to see him pull an automatic pistol from his pocket and open fire.
His aim was shaky from the jarring of his feet against pavement, so the first few shots had gone wild, the bullets ineffectively burying themselves into the brickwork of the alley wall. He then fumbled at the recoil, nearly dropping the weapon, and regained his momentum a millisecond before a shuriken whirred through the air like a partridge and buried itself in his gut.
He had collapsed to the pavement with a strangled cry, his body writhing in a paroxysm of agony, and I was in the process of rising to my feet and turning around when the kid's hand tightened convulsively on the trigger. With my body twisted so awkwardly I could do nothing but cringe as the muzzle flashed in swift bursts of light, letting loose a spray of bullets even as a flash of mottled green reared up and blocked my vision.
It all had happened in an instant, that terrible twist of ill luck and fate. A bullet grazed the edge of my protector's plastron, knocking a chip off the bony keratin and digging a deep furrow into his side as the remaining slugs peppered the alley around us. The impact of the bullet nearly lifted him off his feet and he had lurched backward with a grunt of pain, his shell ramming into my partially turned back with enough force to send me crashing to the ground.
I had a brief, terrible vision of blackened pavement decorated with glistening shards of bottle glass… before pain had raked searing lines of red and white across my face. I think I might have screamed, but had been unable to decide for sure before unconsciousness ripped away thought and flung me into the void.
I regained awareness an indeterminate amount of time later, with the feel of his arms under my shoulder blades and wedged at the bend of my knees. Warm, copper-smelling wetness was now running steadily down my face, gluing my eyes shut as he ran with such fluidity that I barely felt the impact of his feet on the pavement. The grim way in which he moved told me something was very wrong, but I wondered in a distant, worried way why I was being carried. He was the one who had taken a bullet. He was the one who was hurt…
Understanding hit with all the subtly of an executioner's axe as he increased his pace with a grunt of effort, pushing off the ledge of what I suddenly understood to be a rooftop. There was a brief, heady feeling of weightlessness before his feet touched down with an audible slap, jarring us both and sending lances of unexpected pain across the nerve endings of my face.
He fought momentum and ground himself to a halt as I gasped in shocked hurt, and only by turning my body slightly and clasping me close to his chest did he prevent me from reaching up and clawing at my wounded face. Panting for breath as I trembled and fought, he spoke with a halting voice made hoarse from overexertion and pain, "Take it easy, April. Gonna get you to a doctor. We're almost… almost there. Trust me…"
Holding me still, he continued with this circular dialogue of vague comfort until my struggles died away. My face burned as if I had buried it in a nest of maddened fire ants, but I forced myself to relax into something resembling calmness. He loosened his grip slightly and I used the resulting freedom of movement to reach up, wrapping shaky arms around his neck. Resting the side of my head against the hard muscle of his shoulder, I murmured tightly, "I trust you."
A corded line of muscle at the base of his throat flexed as he nodded in response to my words. Taking a few last deep breaths, he told me to hang on tight before once again surging forward.
The clip that had bound my hair must have shaken loose while I was unconscious, for I could now feel the wind of our passage pulling and tugging at the strands like a kitten playing with a length of yarn. Blood was cooling rapidly on my skin, sticking filaments of hair to my face like watery glue and sending cold shivers down my spine. I was thoroughly miserable, hurting fiercely… and trying not to panic at the terrible realization that was slowly dawning on my consciousness.
Even through the pain that peaked in intensity around my eyes, I could feel the faint brush of my eyelashes against the skin beneath my eyebrows. My eyes were wide open and blinking, not sealed shut by blood or anything else, but all I could see was blackness dotted with shifting flecks of white.
I was blind. God help me, I was blind.
We traveled for a time in silence, with only the cacophonous sounds of the city beneath us and harsh rasp of his breath for company. I kept my teeth gritted against the pain and tightened my hold around his neck as he leapt gracefully from rooftop to rooftop, but as the seconds grew into minutes I became aware that he was slowing down. His breathing had become desperate, shallow and far too fast for my liking, and I knew that he must have been more hurt than he let on. We had to take a break soon, before he made himself sick with fatigue.
I lifted my head from his shoulder and opened my mouth to say as much, when the point was rendered moot by his sudden agonized cry. He stumbled badly, trying to keep hold of me with arms that seemed suddenly drained of strength, before momentum ripped me from his arms and sent me tumbling across the pebbled concrete.
Pain detonated in my face with all the brilliant force of a bomb blast, and the scream that tore itself from my throat was deafening even to me. I writhed on the ground as I howled in animal hurt, my spine arching and twisting like a snake thrown into a bonfire. I was barely aware of the nails that dug furrows into my cheeks and temples, for the pain of this involuntary self-mutilation was nothing compared to the agony blossoming in my eyes like a magnolia flower. That terrible, liquid feeling of rupture…
And then two large hands circled around my wrists and pulled my clawing fingers away. I struggled and screamed my throat raw, too far gone to realize who it was that held me in an iron grip, but my strength seemed to have betrayed me. My arms were pinned easily to my sides and I was lifted into a sitting position, as a familiar hardness pressed into my back. Suddenly recognizing just who was supporting my body with his own, I slumped against his plastron, my head lolling against his neck as he whispered something that I could not make out through the roaring in my ears.
One of his arms wrapped protectively around my waist, keeping my hands at my sides. A moment later I felt a hand brushing at my hairline, the calluses on his fingertips lightly scraping against my forehead like fine sandpaper as he raked the mass of hair from my face. The snarled tendrils parted like a curtain, and I felt the skin on his forearm crawl in visceral reaction.
The thunderous echo in my ears had lessened somewhat, enough so that I could hear the words that dropped from his lips in a choked, horrified gasp, "Holy Christ! April, oh god…"
"Wha' issit?" I slurred, in a voice so rough and thick that I barely recognized it as my own.
The sound of my voice must have shocked some of the panic from his system, for he took a shuddering breath and squeezed my arm reassuringly. "N-nothing." Another deep inhalation, steadier this time, and then he continued assertively, "It's nothing. You just got a little cut up, is all. Everything's okay."
His voice was admirably even, but I knew he was lying. The fine trembling in his arms told an entirely different story, as did the pain that was slowly spreading from my face and down all the nerve endings of my body like a poison. My teeth were chattering lightly from the chill of shock, and as my stomach flip-flopped with sudden nausea I began to be afraid. What was happening to me?
I again felt the touch of his hand on my forehead, and then a light puff of breath on my ear as he said softly, "I'm gonna call the others. They'll help us out, but I need you to keep awake and stay still for me. Can you do that?"
Feeling too weak and disoriented to properly respond, I curled on hand into a fist and gave him a shaky thumbs-up. His plastron vibrated as he let out a truncated laugh, before he squeezed my arm again in a gesture of approval. "That's my girl."
His breath hitched in a sound of pain as he fumbled at his belt, and then I heard the tinny chatter of an activated shell-cell. He dialed a number, his body shifting slightly as he pressed the phone to his ear, and there was a brief, pregnant pause as I strained to hear the familiar ring. The faint, tonal pulse was abruptly cut off and an answer came through from the other end of the line, the voice pitched in a tone of polite inquiry. The cell's volume was turned down too low for me to make out the individual words, but any doubt about who was speaking was quickly banished as he cried, "Sensei!"
He evened out his tone almost immediately, but that single word, spoken with such relief, told me far more than I wanted to know about the seriousness of the situation. For a brief moment he had sounded so frightened… and so very, very young.
"Master Splinter," he continued, his voice once again level, "April's been hurt. I was going to take her to Cabrini Medical, but-" He paused, sucking in a breath. "But I'm hurt, too. Feels like I tore something. I don't think I can run anymore."
Silence descended as he listened intently, before replying, "No, the punks who did this are far away from here. They were just kids, really. But April took some glass to the face, and I think- I think her eyes…" Seemingly unable to continue, he took in another steadying lungful of air. "We're safe for now, sensei. I'll leave the phone on; just have them home in on my signal."
He ended the call without another word, and there was a muffled clatter as he let the phone drop to the concrete. "My brothers will be here in just a couple of minutes," he said lightly. "You see? I told you everything would be all right."
The trembling of my jaw seemed to be a progressive affliction, for it had spread to encompass the rest of my body. He hurriedly crossed his other arm under my throat, holding me securely as I shook against him. The skin beneath my collarbones warmed slightly beneath his touch, but I was chilled in a way that no amount of body heat could remedy. God, I was so cold!
I must have said that last word aloud, for he drew me closer and threaded his legs around my own, minimizing my contact with the freezing concrete. Sighing lowly, I felt the rasp of vestigial scales as he rested his cheek against my forehead. "I know, April, I know. But soon you'll be safely in the hands of a whole horde of doctors. They'll patch you up before you know it and put you in a warm bed with so many blankets you'll barely be able to move. Sound nice?"
"V-very," I quavered. The pain had lessened from unbearable to merely excruciating, and if I'd had the energy I would have smiled at his attempts at comfort. He was such a good guy, just like the rest of his family. I must have done something right in a previous life to be lucky enough to meet them…
That pleasant line of thought trailed away as I sensed something amiss, a sudden ominous stirring deep within my bones. Pressure built up around my chest as if I were sinking into deep water, constricting my throat and making it difficult to breathe. I began to pant in shallow, rapid gasps, cold sweat breaking out on my skin even as he lifted his face away and called my name worriedly.
I wish I could have answered, but at that moment the shaking of my limbs abruptly stopped. My body stiffened, spine arching back without any instruction from my brain, and the air was forced from my lungs in an explosive exhale, as if someone had planted a foot on my sternum and pressed down hard. Swelling waves of confusion crashed down on my consciousness, mingling with existing pain and renewed fear, creating a dizzying cocktail of emotion that I couldn't even begin to swallow.
God, what is-? What is-?
The answer came in the form of a seizure, rippling shudders that shot through me in electric pulses, like a cattle prod jolt to the spine. It was a true testament to the strength of his arms that he was able to hold on to me as I began to convulse in earnest, bucking and thrashing with a violence that I had never previously known. Unable to stop myself, I bit down hard, my teeth piercing my lower lip and flooding my mouth with the bitter taste of blood.
Like a lifelong sinner dropped into the fiery pits of the afterlife, each second trapped in the throes of my rebelling body felt like an eternity. But just when I had become convinced that I was dead and had truly gone to hell, the convulsions ended with such suddenness that the ensuing relief was almost as jarring as the seizure itself.
I fell limp in his arms, gasping like a stranded fish as he held me tight and whispered a string of words, sounds of reassurance that swept past my ears so quickly I could not derive meaning from them. His voice was tight and strained with transparent terror, the arms that held me shaking hard, but as my breath calmed and slowed the fear within my own heart faded into oblivion.
He ran a hand across my slick brow, and I all but laughed in delight when I realized that the gentle scrape of his roughened fingers and the sensation of his body curled around my own were the only things I could feel. I wasn't cold anymore, and the pain had bled away is if it had never existed. I smiled as a heady feeling of peace washed over my psyche, suddenly realizing that I had never felt so comfortable before in my life.
Reveling in the sensation, I sank against his plastron with a protracted sigh that rattled oddly in my chest, my head lolling to the side to nestle in the hollow of his throat. For a reason I could not understand, he seemed alarmed by this, and his hand slid away from my forehead to press itself urgently against the side of my neck.
With a choked cry of denial at what he felt beneath his fingers, he draped his forearm back across my shoulders and held me tightly. Burying his face in my hair, he began to speak again, his voice fervent but muffled, as if shouting from a distant, locked room:
"No, April! No, no, you can't do this. Don't go. Don't leave me here alone. …April? April, please…"
Leave him? Why would I leave him? I was right here, curled up in the protective circle of his arms.
…Except that suddenly I could not feel him anymore. I was briefly disquieted by this lack, but the emotion soon faded as I realized the warmth that radiated from his body had not left me. It surrounded me in an amorphous cloud that I could not see in the darkness, but instead could touch, mold, and wrap around my floating form like a blanket. Even the reek of blood had disappeared, leaving nothing to block the encroachment of warm leather and vanilla candles, the scent that I identified so much with him.
I felt a gentle tug as something urged me deeper into the welcoming darkness, and I obeyed without hesitation. Carrying the soothing warmth and scent with me as I sank like a stone, I heard the faint sound of anguished sobbing before that, too, faded away.
I couldn't understand it. Why was he crying? I had never felt so safe.