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Leo opens his eyes. Tries to, anyway, but they're gummed and sticky with blood, so that all he sees is a dim red film. He puts a bit more force to it, wincing as his lids finally crack open.
All he can see is a swirl of black and white, folded and twisted together like a malfunctioning TV screen. The TV was so staticky when he was a kid. When Donnie finally figured out how to fix it, Leo found it weird to see Captain Ryan's face for so long without it descending into a gray blur.
"Shh," someone says. "It's all right." Or maybe no one says that. Maybe it's all in his hand. Maybe it's just his captors taunting him, softening him up for the next round of blows and burns and cruel, cutting words.
Silly little gimp. No one wants you.
"Can you hear us?"
A question. Questions are good. He always liked answering questions as a child, and maybe that made him a goody two-shoes, but he hated the silence that came when Sensei asked a question and no one said anything.
"Mmph," he announces eloquently. His head is ringing. He thinks he can hear someone muttering something under her breath, and the pain dies down a little. Not a lot, but enough to make him feel better.
"It's okay, Leo. We've got you." The ropes are being cut away, slithering down the back of the chair. That's it, sweetheart. Show us that pretty tail. Hands between his legs, spreading them, and the baseball bat didn't scare him nearly as much--
"His heartbeat just picked up." He thinks the voice comes somewhere from the heart of the black-and-white storm. "Leo? Leo, it's us. Karai and Shini."
Oh. He narrows his eyes, staring harder at all the black and white. Shini's black clothes, Karai's white scales. Shini's black hair, black clothes, and Karai's moon-bright fangs.
Black night behind them. White bone on the floor, peeking out of punctured, stinking bodies. Blood mixed in with all that black and white, now that he looks more carefully. What's black and white and red all over?
"A newspaper," he mumbles. He can imagine them staring at him, thinking how weird he is. That's okay. He gets that a lot.
"We're going to get you out of here," he thinks he hears Shini say. "Okay, sweetheart?"
Sweetheart. They never call him that unless he's on his knees, mouth sore from pleasing them, raw with denial and desperate to be touched, brain cooked to the point that he's been reduced to pure want.
Speaking of his mouth, he thinks he's missing a tooth. Huh. He and Donnie are going to be gap twins, aren't they?
A body looms over him, arms reaching out. His body tenses against his will. Seriously, what does it even have under there?
"Leo, look at me." The voice is a soft hiss, trembling ever so slightly. That's not right. Her voice doesn't ever tremble.
Why does that bitch keep him around? She may be a cunt, but you'd think the Master would have left her with some taste.
"Feel thissss?" Cool scales against his cheek. He knows those scales as well as his own by now, knows them as well as the weight of his swords or the flow of Shini's hair in his fingers or what your father's eyes look like when he dies in your dreams a thousand times.
"Karai," he breathes.
"You're sssssafe, Leo. I promisssse." And his body doesn't believe that, but he knows how to force it to relax anyway, knows how to drink in her scent and take comfort in the pressure of Shini's hand in his.
He lets himself be scooped up and pulled into a careful bridal carry. It should be embarrassing, but he's too tired to care about that right now. He can hear Shini chanting some more spells to make the blood dribbling from his nose and wrists stop, her power buzzing gently over his skin.
Karai starts to move, her scales gliding smoothly across the floor. Well, more or less smoothly. She keeps having to go over or around bodies, because...huh, that is a lot of bodies. Should he give them a lecture about that, or something?
"Foot dissssssenters," he hears Karai say to Shini over his head. "I ssssshould have known-”
"You couldn't have," Shini says firmly, jamming a boot into one man's head. He makes an ugly squeak and stops twitching.
But Leo could have. He's been attacked by ninja over and over again; he's learned the ugly lesson of the ambush more times than he'd care to remember. But he'd been distracted because, because...
"Oh." His voice is soft and painful in his throat. "I...I ruined date night, didn't I?" And he'd been so worried, so determined to make everything go perfectly so they'd know they hadn't made a mistaken with him, and then--
He can feel their eyes on him. "No," Karai says--too quickly, he's sure. "You didn't ruin anything, Leo."
"I did." And oh god, are those tears in his eyes?
What a pussy.
"I was stupid, I g-got caught, and I m-made you wait. And then you had to, to--"
"We didn't have to do anything, Kappa, understand?" Shini says firmly. "Trust me, this was more fun than going to some boring American movie." She smiles at him, but it's weaker than her usual cocky grin, it's raw and angry and frightened, frightened for him.
Her hand rests on his cheek, rubbing a bit of blood away. "The only ones responsible for this are dead," she says, giving Karai a significant look.
Karai nods slowly, lapping blood from her teeth. "And we wissssh we could kill them again, for you."
They're trying to comfort him, and Leo should be able to keep it together for them. But...but he's hurting and scared and overwhelmed, shaking with too many emotions at once. He lets out a soft sob, then another one. Each one makes his aching ribs flare with pain, but he thinks he might suffocate if he tries to hold them back.
They keep talking to him as they make their way out of the warehouse, their voices soft and warm in his ear slits. Leo can't really make out what they're saying over the sound of his own blubbering, but the sound alone is enough to make him feel a little better.
Karai settles back against the wall across the street, Leo still cradled in her arms, while Shini goes back in to light the place up. As Leo's sobs start to die down, he can hear her speaking into the phone, calling in Donnie, because of course Leo has to ruin everyone's night --
But Karai smooths her finger-tongue over the top of his head, and something about the gesture makes it hard for him to remember how mad he's supposed to be at himself.
Karai puts the phone away and looks down at him. He can see her face blurring in the dark, upper body shifting as black hair sprouts from her temples and the bright scales melt away.
"There are bruises on your legs," she tells him quietly. It's not a question.
Leo closes his eyes. "They didn't do anything. They just...touched me, a little." And spat their dark, ugly questions in his face, their biting words, but that was all. Nothing like what had happened to Karai. "It's not a big deal."
"It is," she says quietly. "And that's okay."
Oh, look at that, he still has tears to shed, doesn't he?
Karai hums to him under her breath, the sound reverberating under her scales. It's an old Japanese lullaby, the same one he sings to her when she has a nightmare.
They watch the fire roar up in the warehouse. Shini flings herself out the window in an overly elaborate somersault, obviously calculated to draw their attention and provide a bit of distraction. She flows elegantly to her feet, tossing a middle finger over her shoulder as she runs to join them. The heat from the flames warms Leo's face, like curling up before the farmhouse's fireplace with cocoa.
"I wish we had marshmallows," Shini complains, plopping down beside Leo and already taking herbs out of her pouch. She pauses, waiting for permission to touch him with her hands--hands that, while not entirely human, are still covered in human skin, and with all that entails.
Leo takes a few seconds to prepare himself before nodding. Karai adjusts him to a more comfortable position as Shini sets to work.
"Donnie's going to try to get rid of most of that," Leo says. The battle between Shini and Donnie over the proper ratio between herbs and "actual medical care" is legendary by now.
"Well, he can suck an egg," Shini says easily. Something crashes in the warehouse behind them, and she smirks to herself. "You know, there have been worse dates."
"Definitely," Karai chimes in.
And, well--Leo is hurt and scared and still feeling tears mix with the blood on his face. But he's also got the hands of people who love him holding him together, and the distant rumble of his brothers coming to get them farther down the road, so perhaps they have a point.