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You never notice how someone holds themselves until it changes, suddenly and completely enough to strike a chord deep within, screaming that something was
wrong
.
Donatello had corrected Mikey earlier, when the younger had called it “uncanny valley.” Uncanny valley meant something human but
not quite
.
Almost
human. And there were no almost-humans at play here, Donatello said.
Karai disagreed. There was nothing human about this.
They’ve spent the better part of the night searching for Leo when he shows up. Stilted and awful, he regards them all with a cool nod and barely-changing expression. Like a leader addressing his subordinates. Not a dorky teenager reuniting with his brothers.
Red flag.
He doesn’t talk on the way home, either. Gaze cold, he sweeps over them in a way that has Karai’s hair standing on end and a sickening lurch in her stomach. It’s deeply familiar, like it’s ingrained in her bones, but seeing it on
Leo’s
face is throwing her off.
Red flag number two. She takes Leo’s hand with a secretive smile she doesn’t feel, abandoning their little caravan of misfits and leading them far away from their home and towards - well, anything else. Far enough that Raphael’s shouting can't be heard. Far enough that they couldn’t know where his brothers end up.
When ten minutes have passed without a
single
mention of his brothers and their well-being, Karai stops him in his path and whips out her tanto. “Who the hell are you?” she barks. Her arm is steady from years of training, but her heart is hammering wildly in her chest beyond control. “What is wrong with you?”
Leo smiles. Again, familiar, but warped by his sweet face like a ripple in a pond. “Karai,” he coos.”What are you talking about?”
Karai maintains her ground, even as the Leo-thing walks towards her. Her fear is masked by anger masked by hate; how
dare
this thing try to impersonate Leo? How dare they mangle this boy who is too good for this world? For the ugly thing inside of him?
Leo-thing walks closer, moves slower, a steady ship chugging along across the murky depths of the rooftop.”Karai, what’s wrong?” He calls her bluff, tips her tanto to the side and lets his hand rest heavy where it circles her wrist. She could never hurt Leo and he knows that and takes advantage of it. “Karai, we’re all alone. Why are you so worked up?”
“Why do you keep saying my name?” She bites. The funny thing about holding on to such a delicate part of the body is that she can feel the way his muscles flex. She can feel the way he barely brushes against her, pretending to hold her loosely, to lure her into a sense of security, just the same way she can feel his hand tensing and knows that at any second it could snap around her wrist like lightning.
And It hits her. She knows who this is.
Years of training slip down the drain when he sees that she recognizes him, and his hand closes around her wrist in an unforgivable and sickeningly familiar hold. “I like your name.” His free hand finds her waist, trailing down, down, taking advantage of her terror..”I gave it to you.”
The Shredder grins as he backs her against the wall, and somehow, someway, it's exactly how she remembers it, even spread across Leo’s face.
“Let me go!” She bucks up, coming back to herself. Stupid, embarrassing. Fifteen years of training and she’s rendered helpless at a stupid
smile
. Her bones turn to jelly at a simple
look
that she’s seen a million times before. “Get the fuck off of me, or I swear -”
“What, you don’t like this, either?” The Shredder grabs her ankle, impossibly small in Leo’s large hand, and
squeezes
until Karai lets out an undignified squeak of pain because Leo should
not
be capable of this much strength. At least… not that he’d shown her, yet.
“You were never as
sneaky
,” he pries her leg up, hard enough that her knee smashes into the brick behind her, “with your affection towards the
freak
as you believed, child.” His knee comes down between them, forcing her other leg to spread wide enough that she can barely keep her weight balanced on her toes. Panicked, she aims to headbutt him, to kick him off, to do
something
and fight back. He dodges every single blow and laughs like it’s Christmas. “I did this for
you,
Karai. I took his body for
you
, because I
love you
. Be grateful.”
“What did you do to him?” She thrashes in his hold, molten anger and fear for Leonardo overtaking the defeat for herself. What did you
do
?”
“Nothing to come to hysterics over.” The Shredder grins, and Karai hates herself for knowing Leo’s poor face twisted into something so cruel is going to appear in her nightmares. “But I thought I raised you better than this, Karai. You are an
Oroku
. To soil yourself with Leonardo…”
He leans in close. Karai can smell pizza on his breath. And something else that makes her blood run cold. “No,” she whimpers. “No, what did you
do
?”
“I have tested Hamato Leonardo
thoroughly
, just as I have tested you. And he has failed. There is nothing there for you, nothing there for an
Oroku
. I have taken the last of his honor and he has become nothing more than a sniveling
child
in the face of our bloodline, nothing more than a mere smear in our history. He is, perhaps, Hamato Yoshi’s greatest mistake.” He leans in closer. Leo’s beak brushes her hair, an awful mocking of the movie nights they’d spend curled up together. “Do not let him be yours, too, my daughter.”
She sobs. A jagged, wretched sound, torn from her throat like blades. “You
monster
,” she spits. “You’re a fucking
monster
, how
could
you?”
Leo’s knuckles brush her cheek. Leo’s eyes look at her with the same lust and affection that peppered her childhood. “Perfection calls to perfection,” Leo’s voice explains. “And you, Karai, I have made perfect. I will give you everything. I
have
given you everything. I took his pathetic body for
you
.” Leo’s hands sit innocently on the outside of her thigh. “Come home, Karai. Come home and I will let you have fun with this body as long as you like. Come home and
admit
you need me, that you belong to me.”
“I will
never
be yours!” Karai’s chest heaves with the force of it. “Never, do you hear me? Fucking
never
! You’re disgusting!
I hate you!
”
Leo’s eyes narrow in ways that, on him, mean an introduction to an hour-long spoken essay about his Captain Dork. On Shredder they mean so much more. “I am disappointed in you, Karai.” Leo’s hand travels to the hem of her shirt. Leo’s hand yanks at her pants. “I wish it had not come to this.”
Karai’s face and throat ache from the force of her crying, hot and sore from all of the emotions eating her alive. “I hate you,” she blubbers. She doesn’t have it in her to fight, anymore. She never has. “I hate you
s-so much.
”
“I love you. Hopefully this will help you to see that.” Shredder is the one speaking, the one puppeting Leo’s hands to grope her and muffle the cries. But it’s
Leo
she feels against her skin.
“What did you do with him?” Shredder stares at her. “What did you do with him, where is Leonardo?”
Shredder smiles Leo’s smile, and taps his temple. “He’s enjoying the show.”
Karai cracks her head against the brick wall, in hopes that her cranium will bust open and bleed all over this ugly scene, spilling her bloodline before her father’s feet.
It just makes her see two Leos leering down at her.
-
When the other turtles find her, she’s not sure they know what to make of the clusterfuck that she is.
She’d only had a second of distraction, earlier, that she used to kick the Shredder off of her and make a mad dash for it, but adrenaline’s wings are only so long and she’d found herself collapsing on a nearby building holding a broken pipe like a lifeline.
Definitely not enough time to clean herself up.
Definitely not enough time to find new clothes.
Could turtles smell better than humans? She didn’t remember if Leo ever told her that they could. Definitely not enough time to take a shower, if they could smell better.
So it’s Raph who gets it first, from one sweep over her body. He must smell the fluids with his super turtle smelling or something, because his face crumples and he shields the parts of her she couldn’t cover from the other two, barking at Donnie to grab the blanket they kept in their little DIY home-renovated train car.
“Karai…” He never finishes the sentence.
“Did you find him?” Donnie asks, once they’re in HGTV’s dream car and on the way to the lair. “Leo, I mean. Did you -“
“Shredder possessed him.” The car jerks, and everyone looks away from Raphael for fear of their lives. “He said Leo’s still in there, but. I don’t know.”
“Well if Leo’s still in there, we can save him, right?” Mikey suggests. They come to an aggressive stop at a red light, and he tosses a nasty glare to Raphael. “Like, he’s still there so we can get tin can out and keep Leo in, right? Karai, how much of him was there?”
None. All. His hands ghost her body, places they had never been before. He had wanted to go slow. To be ready before his first time, before her “real first.”
Shredder took that from him, and if she knew him, it was violent and degrading. How much can you recover from that? The jokes about Karai’s lack of soul weren’t entirely inaccurate.
“I don’t know,” she breathes. They’re only sixteen. They’re only kids. All of them are only kids, and they’re saddled with
this
. She doesn’t have the heart to let her ugly theories spill into the light, so she avoids eye contact with Michelangelo.
“Oh,” Mikey slumps. “Right. The Shredder. Duh.”
Right. The Shredder. Destroyer of souls.
She watches Donatello abandon his post to hug Michelangelo. “We’ll get him back, Mikey. Promise.”
Raphael’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, and Karai knows his thoughts echo hers.
They get him back but
at what cost
? Will anything ever be the same again?
She pulls the blanket tighter around her ruined clothes, her ruined body. She knows the answer, already; Leo’s face twisted into pleasure seems seared to the backs of her eyelids. Leo’s hands on her. Leo’s voice in her ear.
A small, vicious part of her doesn’t want Leo to return.