TMNT: Ricochet ▶ON HOLD (till gets more reads, votes and comments)◀

Chapter 15

me rolls by in a slow-motion blur. It's hard to tell how long it's been since the ship, since the explosion that sent them hurtling toward the abyss. Raphael still can taste the static on his teeth, feel the heat searing his skin. Behind his eyelids, there's nothing but a wall of blistering white.

When he dares to open his eyes, everything's blurry and he can't move. So he just lies there, his body sinking into the bed like a thousand pounds of lead, the world tilting in a seasick nightmare. His throat is raw, his eyes and mouth feel like sandpaper, and the rest of him... the rest of him is still unaccounted for. Everything below his neck is a tingling nothing.

Something tells his brain he should be in a world of hurt, but agony is lost somewhere in the buzzing. In a weird way, it feels nice. Like a warm electric current that soothes his muscles. Heavy, like sinking slowly to the bottom of a warm pool.

When he sleeps, lets himself drift.

People filter in and out. The hovering, disembodied heads. Once, they startle him awake with a loud bang of something dropping- a piece of equipment; something- and his reflex is to fly out of bed, eyes wide, and ready to fight.

But he's too heavy to move, his mind too thick to think. Leaves him panicking silently, trapped, the ceiling spinning dizzily above him.

In the end it's all about as nice as a roundhouse kick to the face. When he's awake, he's hyper-aware of the headache thundering between his temples, the thin tube glued to his face, stuck up in his nostrils, filling them with strange-smelling air.

And then he sleeps, plunging back into the warm pool. Lets himself sink until it's too dark to see. Until everything is gone. Only blackness. Only warmth. It swallows him deep until he's nothing. No one. Can't even remember his own name. Until he realizes he's gone too deep. Panicking, he tries to claw his way back, but the surface towers above him. The water's too dark, and he's too tired to swim.

In the back of his brain he knows he should feel something. If he wasn't dead he should feel something.

They move him somewhere else. He doesn't know until he opens his eyes and the ceiling is different. It's not a good feeling. But there's nothing he can do. His body is useless. His mind won't focus. Can't piece together the fractured memories from the real things. Can't remember enough to try.

Growing pools of blood. His family broken all around him. But they hadn't lost. An explosion hot enough to melt his bones like wax, to wipe the years of blood feud clean. A cleansing fire, turning it all to ash.

Then something slides over him. Holds him gently like an injured bird. Weightless.

His mind cuts out like a dead television. Static.

There's no way they could've survived. There's no way any of this could be real.

But Mikey was there. Touched him. Glimpses of memory flash through him like a lightning storm at night, but he can't remember where he went, how much time he's lost since then. Is he still there? He tries to lift his head and look, but he can't even raise it off the pillow.

"Ah, you're awake."

He tries to tilt his head in the direction of the voice. His eyes still won't blink clear.

"Mmmyeah..." he groans muzzily, and it grinds through his chest like a blender full of broken glass.

"Your brothers will be coming to visit you soon," says the voice. Squinting hard, he can just make out a pink shape hovering near his bed. Another floating head. He hazily tries to focus on where he thinks her eyes should be.

Brothers. At least he can latch onto that much. Brothers. Mikey, who drifted into his room like a ghost. Held his hand. Cried. Don, who helped overload the power core, forced to be the cog in the machine that would send his family to their deaths. And Leo, impaled on his own blade, choking on a scream over the sick sound of slicing meat.