Ensuring Discipline
part 14
Mikey snored lightly, mumbled something, and shifted so that one foot was hanging over the side of the cot he was sleeping on.
Don heard him and rolled his head on his arms so that he could see that his youngest brother wasn’t about to fall off of the unfamiliar bed. Sure that Mikey had settled again, Don tried to get more comfortable on the chair that he’d pulled up next to where Leo was sleeping. He had his arms on the bed next to Leo’s pillow and he was getting a cramp in his lower back from leaning forward in order to rest near his brother.
Just as he got semi-comfortable and lowered his head again, Don heard the creak of the infirmary door opening.
“Ya’ can’t sleep like that,” Raph said in a low voice.
Don struggled to lift his head, which felt as though it weighed a ton, and looked at his brother through bleary eyes. Raph was standing on the other side of Leo’s cot, arms crossed over his plastron.
“The next few hours are critical,” Don said, glancing at the intravenous bag that dripped its lifesaving fluids and medication into Leo’s body.
Don recalled the time directly following their retrieval of the real Leo in something of a fog. After Raph had placed Leo on the infirmary cot, he’d stripped the eldest of his gear while Don administered a sedative. With the number of wounds and the amount of cleaning they required, Don didn’t want Leo moving around or feeling anything that was happening to him.
Leo had tried to talk to them; to ask about the fake Leo, but Don had shushed him. When the sedative kicked in so quickly, Don was thankful. He didn’t want to deal with explanations at that moment; Don’s emotions were too overwhelmed for him to focus on more than one thing at a time.
Raph helped Don clean and dress Leo’s wounds, including extracting a small caliber bullet from Leo’s arm. While they played doctor, Mikey washed his oldest brother, gently scrubbing away layers of grime with a soft cloth and warm water.
There was broken glass in Leo’s feet and this Mikey dealt with as well, using a magnifying glass and tweezers. They knew that Leo’s feet were going to be painful to walk on for a few days, but that didn’t mean Leo wouldn’t try unless they forced him to stay bedridden.
All three brothers worked mostly in silence; the occasional word dealt only with Leo’s medical treatment. Their shared trauma was too fresh for conversation and they still had an emergency to deal with.
Once they had done all they could for Leo, Don had hung the IV drip, connecting Leo to a source of hydration and antibiotics. After Leo woke up they would get some food into him, but the moment’s most pressing problem was to make sure Leo’s infections got no worse.
“I’ll watch him, ya’ need some sleep,” Raph said. When Don opened his mouth to protest, Raph lifted a hand and stopped him. “Use the daybed in your lab; it’s closer than going upstairs. We’ll leave both doors open. If anything happens I’ll yell loud enough ta wake ya’ and I’ll send Mikey too, in case you’re too groggy ta get up. It’ll take ya’ half a second ta get back here.”
“Did you get any sleep?” Don asked. He didn’t want to leave Leo’s side, but he really needed to stretch out.
“Yeah, I did,” Raph told him. “I got a couple hours, but lately I’ve been getting more sleep at night than ya’ have.”
It was the first intimation between them since they had banished pseudo-Leo of what had happened during his stay. Don knew they were both too tired to explore the statement, so he left it alone.
“I’ve been dozing off and then dragging my eyes open again for the last hour. I’m exhausted,” Don admitted. He struggled to his feet and then stretched. “I changed the bag about twenty-minutes ago, so it won’t need to be changed again for another hour and a half. There’s a fresh bag in the warmer.”
“Not out of the woods yet, but he’s pretty tough,” Raph said softly, staring down at Leo.
Don nodded; his eyes on Leo as well. “Our mutation helps with that; we seem to heal quicker than humans. I wish I knew what happened to him.”
“He’ll tell us himself as soon as he wakes up,” Raph said with assurance. On a more somber note he added, “Ya’ noticed that puncture wound looked like it was made by a sai?”
“Along with the same tell-tale bruising we get when Mikey pounds us with his nunchucks,” Don said. “I noticed.”
They were silent for a few minutes, contemplating the wounds on Leo’s body. Neither had to hear the story to guess some of what had happened to him.
“Weeks,” Raph said, without taking his eyes off Leo. “How did he make it? How did he survive?”
“Strong minded, strong willed,” Don said.
“Smart,” Raph added.
“Determined,” Don said, wanting to add disciplined, but after what they’d just gone through, that word stung too much.
Finally lifting his eyes, Raph looked across the bed at Don. “It wasn’t a very fulfilling way ta rid ourselves of that fake,” he murmured.
“I know.” Don met his gaze. “I would have liked to beat him until his outsides looked more like his insides, but there really wasn’t enough time. Don’t worry; he’ll get more than what’s coming to him. Knowing our Leo, he arranged it so the fake can’t leave his world again. He’s alone and he doesn’t have his gear. Without the support of his family, he’ll be miserable and forever on the run until one of his enemies finally catches up to him. That’s worse than what we could have done.”
“Ya’ could have told us he was a fake,” Raph said.
Don stared at him, trying to gauge his emotions. Raph didn’t seem angry, just hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Don said. “Later, when Leo is better, you, Mikey, and I need to talk.”
“We gonna bond over our shared tragedy?” Raph asked with a hint of a smile. “Would ya’ really have turned him into chopped liver if ya’ got the chance? I thought ya’ were a pacifist.”
“I’m peaceable, not a pacifist. There’s a big difference.” Don smiled back at Raph, relieved that the big guy seemed open to discussion.
“Whatever,” Raph waved it away dismissively. “Go ta bed before ya’ get all philosophical and put
me ta sleep.”
Don nodded and with one last glance at Leo, left the room.
As tired as he was, once Don stretched out on the daybed in his lab, his mind wouldn’t let him fall asleep. There were so many things that still needed to be done and one of them was a comprehensive discussion with Raph and Mikey before Leo was awake enough to start asking questions. The brothers needed to be on the same page about what had happened while Leo was gone; the uppermost was to avoid allowing Leo to feel guilty about any of it.
When the alarm Don had set went off and woke him, Don jerked upright in surprise. The last thing he remembered was a feeling of frustration that he couldn’t fall asleep.
The three hours he’d allocated for himself were probably only two, but Don didn’t want to waste any more time. He’d sleep longer and harder once the unfinished business was taken care of.
Standing quickly, a sudden wave of dizziness hit him and Don swayed slightly. More rest was definitely required, but he pushed that aside and headed into the infirmary.
Raph looked up at him when Don came through the door, his expression disapproving. “Ya’ didn’t sleep long enough. I told ya’ I had this under control.”
“I know but I’ve got so much on my mind right now that I can’t stay asleep,” Don said. “Where’s Mikey?”
“He woke up hungry and went to make some sandwiches,” Raph said. “Leo seems ta be resting easier.”
Don moved over to his sleeping brother and checked his vital signs. The fever he’d had was diminishing and his color was closer to normal than it had been for hours.
After changing the bandages on several of Leo’s wounds, Don stepped back with a sigh. “There are a couple of spots that I need to keep an eye on, especially that bullet wound, but I’d say the worst of it has passed.”
Mikey appeared in time to hear Don’s pronouncement and said, “It’s nice to get some good news for a change. I made soup to go with the sandwiches; if you guys want to eat I’ll watch Leo.”
Don stopped him before he sat down. “Leo will be okay for a little while; the sedative will keep him out of it for a few more hours. I want to talk to both of you before he wakes.”
Raph and Mikey exchanged glances and then Raph got up from his chair. “Yeah, we need ta go ahead and get that out of the way.”
Once they were in the kitchen, Mikey set a plate piled high with sandwiches on the table and ladled out three bowls of steaming vegetable soup. Don’s nervous stomach wasn’t quite ready for deliveries yet, but he knew he had to eat something, so he took in several spoonfuls of soup before the stares from his brothers made him look up.
“Soup’s good, Mikey, thanks,” Don said with a smile.
Instead of acknowledging Don’s thank you, Mikey said fretfully, “Raph said you knew he was a fake.”
Donatello set his spoon down. “I didn’t know until two weeks after he started abusing me. When I realized it, I was afraid of what he’d do if he knew I’d found out. There were so many things going through my head then, but the uppermost was that I couldn’t let him hurt you guys anymore and that I had to find out what had happened to our real brother.”
“We could have helped if you’d said something,” Raph asserted.
“Could you?” Don asked. “What I was doing was playing mind chess with a maniac. He’d been studying us ever since he arrived, the slightest change in behavior or nuance in your speech would have tipped him off. It was dangerous enough that I knew, but telling you two would have increased the odds of him catching onto us astronomically.”
“If I had known that wasn’t our brother, I’d have beaten the truth out of him,” Raph growled.
“He would never have talked,” Don said. “I think you know that as well as I do; he was too much like our Leo in that regard. Maybe we could have jumped him sooner, but he would have sent us off on a wild goose chase and found a way to escape, probably after smashing the globe. I just couldn’t take that chance with him; I had to let him have time to give things away without meaning to. If the answers I needed weren’t in Master Splinter’s room, fake Leo was the only clue I had left to where our Leo was.”
“We only arrived in time to hear him yell that he was gonna smash something and then teach you not to disobey,” Mikey said. “Did he tell you why he kept that globe and why he was gonna brick up Master Splinter’s room when getting rid of the globe would have been easier?”
“That globe was his insurance policy,” Don answered. “He couldn’t bring himself to destroy it because if something went seriously wrong here, he could have used it to escape back to his timeline. I think he knew deep down that our Leo would hold onto the globe; that’s what the fake Leo would have done if their roles had been reversed.
“He was so paranoid that one of us would find the fragment that he had to keep checking on it, hence Leo’s new habit of meditating in Master Splinter’s room. I wouldn’t be surprised to know that he even gazed into it a few times and saw our Leo, thus confirming that Leo was hanging onto the thing.
“Once he decided that he liked it here just fine, he figured that bricking up Master Splinter’s room would keep us away from his secret but still give him access to it if it became necessary for him to escape. As long as the crystal globe was here, even behind a brick wall, he could retain his control of its whereabouts. Anywhere else and anyone could have found it or anything could have happened to destroy it.”
“Ya’ said something about gear earlier,” Raph said. “He had his katanas when we sent him back, so what were ya’ talking about?”
Don felt his face heat up a little. “He left me alone one of those mornings after I’d spent the night with him, so I took a chance and searched his room. I found a knapsack full of food and survival gear. The condition those things were in told me that the fake Leo spent a lot of time on the run.
“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you guys about. I want to remove the other Leo’s things and clean up the bedroom before Leo is ready to leave the infirmary. The monitor and those cameras Leo had me install need to be taken out as well. We can put that stuff in the garage with the rest of my extra electronics so Leo won’t ask any questions about it.”
“It ain’t just a knapsack up there, is it?” Raph asked, his expression dark.
There was no point in lying and Don knew it. “No, he had a lot of ‘toys’ too. He must have been truly demented to have used valuable space in his knapsack for that junk.”
“He probably thought of that stuff as training tools,” Mikey said. “He used them on us; he probably used them on his brothers.”
Raph made a huffing sound and Mikey asked, “What? Do you doubt that’s how he drove his brothers off or are you trying to pretend he didn’t abuse you? I don’t much like to think about what he did, but even I know it’s not healthy to try and act like it didn’t happen.”
“Let’s take care of one thing at a time,” Don said, interrupting them. Raph was beginning to take on a belligerent look and Don didn’t want him to fall into a pattern of battling the truth rather than accepting it. “If you two will remove the cameras from our rooms and my lab, I’ll pack up fake Leo’s things in a box and disconnect the monitor and the tell-tale wires.”
“I want to burn that box,” Raph said.
“Raph, maybe it would be best if you don’t . . . .” Don began.
“I don’t want ta look inside of it,” Raph interposed quickly. “I just want ta see it burn. I want ta know we really have destroyed the last of him.”
“Closure,” Mikey said in a near whisper. “I think I want that too.”
Don was silent as he thought about it. In his mind he could picture a pyre of flames at the center of which stood that box filled with fake Leo’s dark soul. Somehow the concept brought him a sense of peace and he realized how much better he would feel upon seeing the real thing.
“I know you haven’t talked to Casey in a long while, Raph, but do you think you can get him to come by and watch Leo while we make a run over to the junk yard? It’s the only place nearby where we can build a large enough fire to burn that stuff without anyone noticing it,” Don said.
“He’s gonna be full of questions,” Raph warned.
“Just tell him Leo had a misadventure on the other side of a portal and that he was injured before we managed to retrieve him,” Don said. “Casey doesn’t need to know that a replacement occupied the lair in Leo’s absence.”
“He sure doesn’t,” Raph agreed, reaching for a sandwich.
“That brings up another point I’d like to make,” Don said, watching as his brothers began to eat. “Just exactly how much we tell Leo.”
Mikey swallowed a bite and said thoughtfully, “Yeah, I was wondering about that myself.”
“Leo doesn’t need ta hear the gory details,” Raph said adamantly. “Ya’ know full well that he’ll blame himself for that shit and go into one of those funks of his. I want Leo back healthy and whole, and that’s means inside of his head too.”
“I agree, we should not tell Leo that the fake version molested us sexually,” Don said, being forthright with his choice of words. “We can’t tell him outright lies either; for one thing he’ll know and for another it’s too hard to maintain a lie for very long.”
“So what do we tell him?” Mikey said. “From the marks on his body, it looks like he had a run in with his counterpart’s brothers and they obviously didn’t care for their Leo. He’s gonna figure out that a bad Leo on one side of the crystal is still a bad Leo on the other.”
Don leaned forward and said, “We tell him part of the truth, that fake Leo was abusive and controlling, that he sometimes used physical violence to force us to do things his way. We admit that he manipulated each of us by threatening to hurt our siblings. I think we should let him know that we didn’t realize for a long time that this Leo wasn’t him and that we believed Master Splinter’s absence had affected his judgment.”
“Ya’ wanna tell him that we thought he’d flipped out after sensei left?” Raph said.
“Didn’t you? I know I did,” Don said. “Up until I realized that Leo was a fake, I thought that our brother was mentally unstable. We have to admit that to him otherwise he’ll wonder why we allowed that fake to hurt us without fighting back.”
“He’s gonna wonder why I didn’t anyway,” Raph muttered. “I always fight with him.”
“That’s why we
have to tell Leo how that faker used our concern for each other against us,” Don stressed again. “He’ll understand that most of all. You tell him that the fake told you that he would take your bad behavior out on Mikey and I. He certainly made it clear to me that you two were vulnerable when I tried to stand up to him.”
“It’s why you changed tactics, isn’t it Donny?” Mikey murmured softly. “Instead of fighting him, you pretended to give in completely and to like what he was doing to you.”
Don thought he heard the faintest hint of a question in that last statement and wondered exactly how much Mikey had gleaned from his observations of pseudo-Leo and Don’s interactions. Mikey was extraordinarily perceptive.
With a sigh, Don said, “I knew I had to keep him close to me, no matter what. I had to keep him away from the two of you long enough for you to get your equilibrium back. He worked hard to divide and conquer us and to destroy our self-confidence.
“I wanted you to know I wouldn’t let him hurt you anymore and the best way to do that was to give him what he desperately wanted, someone who would do everything he said without question. We have always had complete trust in each other and he was trying hard to tear that apart.”
“Ya’ made a pretty damn big sacrifice, Donny,” Raph said, staring into his brother’s eyes.
“We all did, Raph,” Don told him. “I didn’t martyr myself; I just did what we’ve been trained to do. I adapted.”
They finished their repast then and Raph phoned Casey. Don had just finished checking on Leo and was on his way upstairs when Raph stopped him to say that Casey would arrive at the lair in a little over an hour.
The three brothers separated and quickly went about setting the lair to rights again. Don cleared the desk in Leo’s room of the things pseudo-Leo had left behind, his lips curling back in pain and disgust as he once more handled certain items.
After Don was finished with the desk and had removed the monitor, he stripped the bed and remade it with fresh linens. Once Leo’s room was back to normal, he headed downstairs with his sealed box and met Casey as the man came in; taking him to the infirmary so he could sit with Leo. Don made sure that Leo was freshly sedated so that he wouldn’t wake to play twenty questions with their human friend.
Raph drove Leo’s larger sewer slider for the return trip to the junkyard from the night before and Don rode with him. Don’s slider was still docked in the same location where it had been left and the other two slid in next to it.
As with the previous evening, they checked to make sure they were alone on the premises and then quickly set about building a small mound of combustible materials, at the center of which was the box filled with pseudo-Leo’s things.
When they were ready, Don handed a book of matches to Raph, one to Mikey, and kept one for himself. On three sides of the mound, the brothers simultaneously scratched their matches to flame and tossed them into the pile.
They watched in somber silence as the fire grew to a blaze and the box began to burn. Don felt a weight lift off him as the box and its contents was slowly consumed.
“It’s a fitting punishment that we sent him back without his gear,” Don murmured. “He’s going to have to completely start over.”
“I hope he doesn’t live long enough to start over,” Raph said, his gold eyes reflecting the fire’s light.
“What are we gonna do about that crystal fragment?” Mikey asked. “We can’t destroy it, can we?”
“No, it belongs to Master Splinter and it holds precious memories for him,” Don said. “We weren’t meant to be toying with it, though I think if he’d realized that it still had power he would have told us not to touch it,” Don said.
“I think ya’ should lock it back up in that chest so nothing else can escape through it,” Raph said, looking over at Don.
Nodding in agreement, Don said, “I’ll do that when we get back.”
After they were sure that the fire had done its job, the brothers headed for home. Casey greeted them with the assurance that Leo hadn’t woken during their absence and also a ton of questions. Raph answered a few of them as he sent Casey on his way, promising to share more once Leo was feeling better.
Seeing that Raph was checking on Leo, Don went immediately to Master Splinter’s room. The globe fragment lay in the open chest where Don had left it.
Don started to cover the fragment but his hand froze before he finished pulling the cloth over it. Although his better judgment urged him to wrap the thing and put it away, some inner voice bid his hands to lift the crystal from the chest. Careful not to allow the fragment to touch his skin, Don stared into the shard, something deep inside of him hoping he would catch a glimpse of his banished lover.
The crystal showed him nothing; no glow to indicate it still contained power and most of all, no sign of the false Leo.
Hands shaking, Don quickly folded the fragment into the cloth and placed it into the bottom of the chest. Hiding it beneath the false bottom where he’d originally found it, Don replaced all of Master Splinter’s keepsakes and closed the chest.
Donatello started to shove it back into its corner when an overwhelming sense of loss suddenly hit him. Palms flat on the top of the wooden box, Don leaned down as a tight knot formed in his chest. It became so painful that Don felt as if his heart would simply explode before the pain suddenly moved into his throat and then he yanked the mask from his face as raw tears began to spill from his eyes.
Unable to breathe, Don sobbed, trembling as a cascade of emotions overcame his ability to process them. Pseudo-Leo’s voice played in his head, telling him they would always be together, that he would take care of Don. A duet of churrs became the background music to those words; the sounds a reminder of shared pleasure and ecstasy.
Pushing away from the chest, Don stumbled towards the door but collapsed before he reached it. Pressing his hands to his eyes, the genius turtle attempted to force the tears back because each one that fell brought with it a memory, both good and bad. Finally Don pulled his knees up until they touched his plastron and started to rock back and forth.
In his head he could see Leo stretching his hands out to cup Don’s face lovingly; he could even feel the press of Leo’s lips against his own. There were times when Leo would simply touch him; a gentle hand on his shoulder, fingertips stroking across his own, and strong palms kneading the knots from sore muscles. His thoughts dwelled on those times when their lovemaking had felt real to him, those times when Don wanted the pleasure as much as Leo did.
“Stop it, stop it, stop, stop,” he murmured as he rocked. The feeling that he had lost something precious was false; Don knew on an intellectual level that he was pseudo-Leo’s victim and not a loving partner. But Donatello was not a machine and what he had experienced at his fake brother’s hands had left an indelible mark on him.
Don’s mind continued to battle with itself and he remained curled in a ball, trying to hold onto himself before he broke as completely as the shard of crystal he so desperately longed to touch.
TBC………………..
