Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts as it usually starts: within a meadow, with miles and miles of greenery farther than the eye can see. The sky is a robin’s egg blue, streaked with thin wisps of clouds. At some point it sinks beyond, beyond ; past a lush treeline to kiss the earth at a faraway horizon, where birds are dotted across perpetually frozen in flight.

No wind blows here. In this wide expanse there is nothing but space, nothing but the steady thud, thud of Takeshi’s heartbeat; the quiet whoosh of air as he inhales, exhales. There is nothing but the soft morning dew glittering on the grass, dampening his back as he rests his weary body on the soft soil; a body tired from play, tired from fights, tired from the struggle and the experiments and the screams and the screams and the screams --

There is a soft nudge on the palm of his hand. He doesn’t know where his limbs are placed or how he can still distinguish his hands from his feet. He feels scattered, tossed akimbo, like a ragdoll; but the pressure against his index finger is insistent. So he lifts a heavy eyelid to peer at his new tormentor.

It is something…green. A tiny thing that could fit in his hand, round like a little toy. It…it looks like something from…a long time ago. Something that shouldn’t exist here, so far away from home…

“Takeshi,” someone whispers. It is Akane, her tiny voice quivering. “Takeshi, please. Wake up.”

The nudging against his finger grows even more insistent. He turns his palm up, allows it to crawl into his hand. He lays a thumb against its back and strokes it gently as the sky turns gray and Akane, Akane -- her voice starts to crack as she weeps.

He wakes.

--

It takes days, weeks, months. Akane and he, constantly running, moving. Scavenging food, searching for shelter. Stealing sleep that would turn into mere naps when Akane wakes against him, shaken and tear-stricken from another nightmare. Her eyes would be haunted, houri wide against the bright red of her… her fur. 

Fur. Oh, oh god, this isn't a nightmare. It's real, this is all real, it's --

He can imagine what he must look like in turn. No, no, he doesn’t need to imagine; he’s seen enough reflections of him against broken, grimy windows; has caught glimpses of enough diagrams from the laboratory they had escaped from. He knows how his ears have changed, how his nose has warped, how his eyes have transformed to capture the intensity of the sounds and smells and colors of this lopsided familiar-unfamiliar technicolored world.

Damn the Kraang. Damn them. There are times when Takeshi wants to ruminate on that; wants to tear his new hair out while yelling at Fate and asking them why, why them? They were only children , for god’s sake. Only children, made to suffer through a bestial existence, made to earn their freedom through desperation and destruction and luck . Nothing but luck.

But at least now they have found a home -- or at least, a more stable shelter thanks to this traveling circus of freaks and freak-lovers. At least for a time they will have walls to surround them from prying eyes or interdimensional gates, no matter that said walls were only made of flimsy cloth and rusted metal. At least, at least for a time Takeshi can pretend with Akane that his confidence is not misplaced: that the Kraang had not followed the siblings into Earth; that they had not taken an interest in chasing after their mutated subjects; that they had no concern over whether or not they live or die in their own birthplace, deformed and monstrous as they are now.

Whatever the case may be, however long it took, it had taken eons. And now, Takeshi can rest his weary head on a mat and sleep amongst beings not emaciated from hunger or silently weeping in pain.

The sleep of an exhausted man (or, creature? Animal? Mutant?) is mute and dark. But when he wakes, it is with the ghost sensation of a weight in his deformed hand -- a bastardized version of a paw -- and a rhythmic stroking across his forehead.

He doesn’t remember having heard anything. Yet somehow, when he opens his eyes, it is with a song in his heart.

Soft kitty, warm kitty, little ball of fur…sleepy kitty…

--

“Tiger Claw,” the man declares, cocking the gun and handing it to him handle-first. “That’s what we’ll call you now.”

“I’m honored,” Takeshi says dryly. So much for creativity. He is, quite literally, a tiger with claws -- an operative name as such would have no purpose for concealing his identity at all. Then again, it’s not like anyone on this damned planet would expect to see a six-foot tall tiger walking on its hind legs. He takes the stylized pistol -- too small for his paw, less serviceable than his custom blasters -- and holsters it. 

He’s one of them now. Akane will return from her initiation mission tomorrow, and stand tall next to him as well.

Takeshi returns to his and Akane’s run-down apartment without much issue. With his hood pulled low and a slow, looming gait, he averted intrigue rather than encouraged it. It is such that he simply climbs up  the fire escape, in as much broad daylight the neighborhood’s smog would allow, and pulls a wire to unlatch their window. In this part of town, nobody would challenge such an act; they simply did not have the energy to. Reasonably, there simply was not much to steal anyway if one lived here. He crawls through the opening without preamble and shuts it behind him.

He prefers not to go through the entrance and risk seeing his landlord. They only communicate through his new organization’s liaison, given his and Akane’s… special, contagious condition . But should the worst happen, he’s certain that his landlord finding out the status of their mutation would only cause the inconvenience of having to threaten the man’s life should he break his silence.The life of a random spectator is a small price to pay for secrecy. Secrecy meant security, and security meant that the siblings could live their lives in peace.

It has been a long time since Takeshi has worried about the Kraang. Whether or not it was by their mercy or by Takeshi and Akane’s ability to stick to the shadows, it matters little. If he was any more significant to them then his security measures would have meant nothing, toppled down like a useless sandcastle before a deluge of interdimensional power. But it has been years, and he has not felt any more significant than he has had to for eons.

It is a welcome anonymity.

His bags dumped haphazardly by the window (he trusts that Akane would be swift enough to avoid them), Takeshi lopes to the bathroom. On the way there he digs into his pockets and tosses a tight roll of bills on the dinner table -- positioned just perfectly for Akane to see right when she gets home, for those new set of kunai that she had been eyeing the other day -- and peers under their sink for their small first aid kit. Takeshi grabs it and makes his way to the couch.

He discards his sweater on the way and leaves it as an indistinguishable lump on the floor. Underneath it, his gray shirt is painted red with a thin red gash only a few millimeters wide but at an impressive length from pectoral to stomach. Takeshi discards the shirt, too, and starts poking around the first aid kit to find the dressing for his shallow wound. Later he would take the clothes to the old run-down coin laundromat where the owner was too busy watching her soaps to actually look at the people passing through her store.

He turns the television on as an afterthought, turning the volume down low so that his neighbor downstairs wouldn’t start pounding at the ceiling complaining about the noise. He treats his wound slowly, like a clock going through its motions; the disinfectant doesn’t hurt him, and he knows in a few moments his mutated blood would seal his wound as if nothing had happened in the first place. But he did have to at least prevent himself from bleeding on the furniture or Akane would chop his head off.

Once done, Takeshi yawns and stretches out on the couch. It has been a good day, quite rare for its kind. He has heavy pockets, with money enough to tide them over for a good, long while, and even longer if he makes a true career of this. Soon enough he and Akane can move on from this place, find a true refuge, and start their life anew. 

There is a warm ray of sunlight peering through the musky clouds. It filters through the mild grime on the window he had entered and rests onto the side of the couch Takeshi was perched on.

In the silence and serenity of a warm home, Takeshi lays his head down for a small cat nap.

He opens his eyes to a meadow.

It is a wide, endless field dotted with unmoving morning dew; it is a horizon with birds frozen in flight and no wind to carry them along; it is a robin’s egg blue sky with clouds that roll endlessly until they disappear past a canopy of pine.

He’s too old to not recognize a dream when he’s in it. This dreamscape is a familiar one, though he rarely gets to see it nowadays. It is a place that is ceaselessly green, the shade so unbelievably vibrant that though he had tried looking for it once on the internet he still couldn’t quite find the right one.

There is also a familiar figure far away. He’s seen it before: another being, formless, bathed in green, always out of reach. In any iteration of this dream that he’s been in, when Takeshi tries to move towards it,  the being always seems to drift farther away. It would seem like he would have to walk for eternity to make even the most minute change in distance between them.

But at the same time, it would feel nearby. There are times when Takeshi decides to turn back; to walk away from it rather than towards. He would then hear its steps against the ground as if it was walking beside him stride for stride, pace for pace; would listen to the rustle of the grass underneath its feet; would barely make out the words to a distant voice telling stories of its life, its family, its craft, or other random nonsense that Takeshi would not remember when he wakes.

“I won’t remember any of this,” Takeshi would say. No sound would come out of his mouth. He would extend a paw to his side, palm up, and meet warmth against his own. It is a sensation of something not quite solid, not quite ethereal, but familiar enough to soothe. Familiar enough to yearn for.

So now he walks away. Extends a paw to his side. His companion’s footsteps quicken and its babble starts up excitedly. The grass rustles loudly as it rushes towards him, and --

-- his hand is held by something, someone , solid and real.

“ -- and you’ll never guess what Leo did,” it -- a he -- says far too energetically, “blew up the toaster just by touching it, can you believe --”

Takeshi’s head whips around before he could think twice about it. He meets a round, green face and equally round eyes blown wide with glee. The creature is shorter than he, with a strip of purple cloth bound around his eyes. His whole body is green, his chest covered in some sort of organic armor. His back is encased by a large shell -- like -- oh, oh. It is a kame . A turtle.

The turtle keeps speaking, as if he isn’t quite aware of Takeshi’s attention. He is rapidly spouting a story about his siblings, his home; his eyes are bright and his smile even brighter. His gap-toothed grin breaks into young, boisterous laughter that reverberates through Takeshi’s heart. 

His three-fingered hand is a familiar weight against his paw and Takeshi’s not-quite thumb strokes over the back of the turtle’s hand impulsively -- and the gesture brings his mind to a careening halt as he…he remembers.

Cages. Experiments. Screams. Akane, pleading for him to wake up, as his then-human fingers clutched tightly around the echoes of a fever dream.

This creature…his companion…looks like a child. Or at least a child at the cusp of adolescence. He would have been Takeshi’s age when he had been…taken. When he…when they…

He finds himself drawing up a hand and resting it upon a pale green cheek. His paw fit perfectly around it like a baseball would fit into a mitt. 

“What did they do to you,” he whispers brokenly, reverently, surprised to hear his own voice actually come out of him. The Kraang, damn them, those heartless bastards. How can they keep on doing this? Stealing children, ruining lives; making them suffer the way he and Akane did, and for what? For what joy but to satisfy their own masochism in the false pretense of science and discovery ?

His companion had long since stopped speaking, turning his eyes on Takeshi with curiosity.

“Wow,” the turtle-child said in response, “Kitty Spirit-san, I didn’t know you could speak!” He beamed, his cheek bunching into a grin against Takeshi’s paw, “my meditation training must be paying off! Finally; I was getting worried when all the other guys managed it first. Well at least I’ve mastered it before Raph did! Though Leo didn’t really say this happened to him too while he was meditating and --” he shook his head roughly, dislodging Takeshi’s paw from his cheek. 

He steps back; Takeshi follows on impulse, unwilling to part from his elusive guide and only realizing belatedly that it might cause the distance between them to expand once again, like in his dreams before. But the turtle-child’s hold on his paw is firm and determined. The distance between them does not grow.

The turtle-child shakes their joined hands -- upwards, downwards and again -- like a handshake. “My name is Donatello,” he declares, “and you are my Spirit Guide! My Kitty Spirit-san!”

Kitty…?

Takeshi could cry. An innocent victim. Instead, he puts on a face of bravado and snorts. “No, don’t call me by a childish name,” he starts, “my name is --”

“Takeshi!” Akane’s voice screeches through his brain. He jolts awake; the remote clatters to the floor, forgotten. Takeshi sits up only to catch his sweater via his head.

“How many times do I have to tell you not to scatter your stuff in the house,” Akane grouses, kicking at his discarded shirt on the floor. “And seriously, did you just sleep the whole afternoon? Those feline habits are really getting bad, brother…”

Takeshi suffers through her scolding with half an ear and tries not to show irritation on his face for having his sleep interrupted. It wouldn't do for the new operative 'Tiger Claw' to be so hung up over a mere dream, after all.

He rubs the pads of his paw with the other. A ghost of sensation remains over it, like a thin sheen of ethereal morning dew, immovable and pristine until the end of time. Donatello, he mouths, without moving his lips. His little spirit guide.

But Takeshi is too old for fanciful thought. He does not live in a meadow of impossible peace; he is a newly minted mercenary, hidden away in the smog of a crowded city and concealed by the cacophony of life among all its sounds and chaos. He is warped beyond means and now, he realizes, perhaps also in inner ways that he didn't even think of; touched by the Kraang in a way that he possibly cannot fix, or cannot even understand.

Perhaps that is why he cannot understand this strange yearning, this foolish desire to see Donatello again. 

He needs to get his head checked. Hopefully there's healthcare for paid mercenaries.

Chapter Text

He is good at this. All of it.

It takes a while to learn how to properly catalog his missions, collect the right photos, and present the right evidence to prove to his benefactors that he had done the job well. In a few months he realizes that he gets a hefty bonus if he presents his clients with a unique token from the encounter. A few more weeks after that, he learns how to read the bloodthirsty millionaire du jour to anticipate what sort of macabre memorabilia they would like to place on their fireplace next to their family’s vacation photos.

On their missions Akane refuses to be in the same room when it is time to deliver the finishing blow; it almost always falls on Takeshi’s paws to deal the final strike. It is not a hardship he is loathe to bear; he understands that he has a job. One to their patron, the other as Akane’s big brother.

The splatter of blood does nothing to faze him. In some ways he thinks it should; he bleeds like this, or at least bled like it, once upon a time. But sometimes the scent of bloodspill is oddly tantalizing, a dark musk cloying at the back of his tongue like fried liver. It makes his pupils constrict, his nostrils flare, his mouth water as his stomach burns with heat.

It…makes him hungry.

But he is not too far gone as to start eating people , of all things. He is not a fool. He knows this new craving is all because of his tiger mutation. He has been made unto a predator, to take joy in the hunt and feast upon its fruit. He knows that he has been hardwired to lay his claws upon the next prey, to thirst for the chance to get the next high over and over again. 

He knows how to control himself. He takes the work that overjoys him, satisfies his bestial needs with the most gruesome and complex of tasks. On days when there has been too much of this, he retreats into his new, much larger room and chews on a pile of high-grade kobe -- raw, bloody, fresh .

He doesn’t acknowledge Akane’s long, morose stares when he picks up contract after contract of the same caliber. She has little to complain about with the money they rake in and the rewards they trade with it. He is not blind to how she soothes herself with clothing, or jewelry, or her small attempts at philanthropy. If it helps ease her apprehension, then he has done his job.

The mutations have rendered Takeshi and Akane mostly nocturnal. It is a good thing as well, since most of their work is done at night. Their eyes are suited for the lack of lighting and their feet naturally padded to match the vacuum of sound. Unfortunately, many dealings in the human world are done in the day -- while there are still contracts that would be made at the twilight hours, the wealthier benefactors had no fear of slinging around blood money in the peak of the afternoon. While Takeshi was already well known enough in the circuit to be a sought-after commodity, at the end he is still a mercenary with an earned taste for the finer life, and he who wields the vault full of cash also wields the power over the terms of the engagement.

Most of the time his handler would deal with it on his behalf. But nowadays the word of his appearance has run its circuit among heirs of old money, and they have increasingly demanded not just the guarantee of his track record, but also his appearance. To debunk the myth , they would say, though oftentimes there would be underlying motives in the request. Some, with the intent to see the real deal before they committed their price; others, with the attempt to entice him into their bed with more coin, curious of how it would be like to bed an honest-to-god tiger; and yet others, with the intent to remember his face should he decide to either turn on them or one day kill them in turn.

He saw no harm in entertaining their requests. It wasn’t like anyone outside of the four walls of the negotiation room would ever believe that someone like him exists. And if an assassination attempt was to be carried out on the infamous Tiger Claw, then it would invite the ire of not just his organization, but also that of his even more mysterious partner -- Alopex -- who he had very carefully kept out of sight, but not word of mouth. His appearance would be enough to guarantee confidence, and oftentimes he would return home with heavier pockets from the more adventurous clients.

But it also guaranteed another thing: that between his night contracts, daytime liaisons, and the underlying paranoia of a revenge plot carried out at the most unlikely of times, Takeshi had to learn to sleep light. He learned the art of a military nap. He learned how to manage his own adrenaline, discovered his favorite brand of coffee and energy drinks, and practiced honing his feline hearing so that a pin drop would rouse him from sleep. He learned to keep his blaster underneath his pillow and to rely on the goosebumps on his flesh so that he may cease feigning unconsciousness and reverse-ambush any attempts on his life.

He has not seen meadows and blue skies and birds frozen in flight for ages . Has not even thought of them once in favor of this new, wild, exciting and dangerous life.

His joy is short-lived.

It is on one of these grisly missions that it happens. Takeshi is picking at the little tokens scattered on the target’s desk. The target, himself, is a slender man with gray in his hair and a curled mustache on his lip. His suit is of expensive wool and silk, its lapels crusted with tiny diamonds. Unfortunately, its value is marginally decreased by the large hole Takeshi burnt through it and its owner with his blaster. 

The suit is still smoking, barely. Takeshi tries not to think of the scent of steak and instead focuses his attention on finding a nice little bauble that would get him a fatter paycheck at the end of the day. 

There is nothing but the soft rustling of his clothing as he pokes around the room. They are on a luxury cruise liner, in one of the VIP rooms. The site of the murder is made gentle by the sound of the ocean waves meeting the ship’s hull. It would have been better if the night was a bit stormier, so that the noise of the thunder would mask the noise of the body hitting water when Takeshi throws it overboard.

Takeshi pockets a case of Cuban cigars and a watch. He then procures a body bag from his backpack and stuffs the executive inside. Thankfully his blaster also instantly cauterized the wound, so there was very little spillage of any sort to clean up. It would still be better to call Alopex in for a cursory check before they left, though.

“Alopex,” he whispers to his earpiece, “the mission is done. Can you clean up while I dispose of the evidence?”

"Okay," Akane whispers back in a tinny, staticky version of her voice. Takeshi hauls the body over by the tiny private balcony. It takes him short work to toss the body overboard. It bobs atop the water in a few uncanny moments, the waves pushing the bag tight against its captive and making the bag bloat. For a moment it looks like a little basket sailing atop the water, a covered little dinghy accidentally cast away, slowly twisting and warping until it sinks underneath the darkness.

Moses, Moses , Takeshi thinks. The river flows not gently for thee.

He turns from the sight, sliding open the glass panel that split the little balcony from the suite. He watches the barely-illuminated slope of Akane’s shoulders as she daintily picks among the desk’s clutter like a tiny sparrow. A swipe of cloth here, a small adjustment there. Everything as they were before they entered the room, a picture-perfect rendition stolen from long-range cameras and a couple days of surveillance. No fingerprints, no traces.

And when Takeshi grabs a pair of shoes to place them near the balcony doors -- no suspicions. A classic suicide. The narrative of the day.

Akane does her work with her usual steadfast focus. She fixes her gaze on her hands, does not look up when Takeshi inspects the bookshelves or spins the large decorative globe. She does not seem to waver when he pockets a knife from the wall display. But when she does not move for the longest time, Takeshi begins to take note.

“Alopex,” he rumbles, “are you finished?”

Silence. From where he stands Takashi is unable to see her eyes, shrouded as they are by the night. Her hands are still on the mahogany table. She is clutching something, a frame of some people that will be long forgotten. Takeshi moves closer.

“Alopex,” he tries. He wants to reach out to her, shake her out of her stupor. But they are at work and he keeps his hands to himself; there are eyes and ears everywhere and in places that he cannot begin to fathom. He cannot afford to have them know how much Alopex means to him, and he to her. He clears his throat, gently, “if you’re done --”

“He had a family.” Akane mutters hollowly. Her paws clench. The force of her grip makes her arms shiver.

“Takeshi,” she hisses fiercely. Takeshi’s jaw clenches and he makes to retort for her to use his codename -- but he is struck dumb when she meets his gaze.

Her eyes are terrifyingly wide. Takeshi can almost see himself in the whites of them, her pupils so narrow that they were almost little shaking pinpricks. Those eyes looked past him, beyond him, into nothing, everything. Then, for a heart-stopping moment -- they glimmer. 

Tears.

“Takeshi,” Akane’s voice is the sound of wood groaning under years of weight. It is the moan of a violin in a concerto of agony, the sound of a dying animal in prolonged torture. Takeshi’s heart is rendered in confusing sorrow; he finds his paw raising, reaching out, only stopping a hair’s breadth away. Then her face crumples and --

 She. Shatters.

“He had a family ,” Akane sobs. Her shoulders shake. Her face is a picture of anguish, of pain. But through her torment all Takeshi could think of are her cheeks, and how they must remain dry for as long as they remain in this room.

No contamination. No trace.

Composed. Contained. Professional.

“So did many others,” Takeshi soothes, more mechanical than actually intentional. A small thread of fear grips his heart when her face twists even more; he can practically see her collapsing into herself, though her stance remains stable and strong. For a sliver of a moment he has the irrational compulsion to get nearer. He thinks that he may want to hold her, steady her, do his duty as her brother and protector. 

But he also has his duty to their patron. A job, a paycheck, and a package of Cuban cigars to earn a fat bonus with. It's the usual drill, and Takeshi…doesn’t understand her. They’ve been doing this for a long time; this isn’t their first rodeo. So why this? Why now?

Gently Takeshi grasps the edge of the frame and pries it from Akane’s grip. Her arms fall listlessly to her sides. He turns the photo. Looks.

It’s their late target. He is standing with his wife. She is holding a little girl’s arms aloft, both of them grinning wildly as the child stands on her mother’s toes. There is a little boy too. He is climbing on his father’s back as his father tries to keep his balance.

Takeshi’s heart…clenches, but not in sorrow. His lips twist. His nose wrinkles like he has smelled something foul.

Sentiment. Lies.

Without aplomb he tosses the frame over his shoulder. It sails into a short arc and smashes onto the floor, spills glass over the carpet. Takeshi sneers. A useless past.

“W -- why?” Akane gasps. Her chest rises up and down in fast, rabbit breaths. Takeshi stamps down his emotions and regards her from under his nose.

“We are not them, Alopex,” he declares imperiously. He turns away and stalks over to the fallen picture. Sneers down at it.

That family is not them. They had no such concept now. They are freaks, animals, abandoned and hunted and broken beyond repair. He does not remember their parents, does not remember if they even had a family. All he knows is that when he and Akane returned from their abduction there were no pictures of them on milk cartons, no posters, no open case, nothing to indicate that anyone ever even tried to find them. No house that even remained for he and Akane to hide in when they had first returned to Earth, so they had to make do with hollow concrete pipes and patches of dirt. No sanctuary, no guidance, no parents to rescue them, to keep their home warm for them. To hold vigil and pray for their childrens' return.

Nobody.

“We are not them, Alopex,” Tiger Claw repeats with finality. He toes the broken frame. Draws his foot back, and kicks it to a shadowed corner of the room. Hears it crash against some insignificant wall somewhere -- to be forgotten, destroyed.

Satisfaction. 

Tiger Claw sneers. “We are better.”

He turns -- the fur on his cheek rise like needles when a whistle of a kunai barely nicks a whisker --

-- Alopex screams -- an ugly, bloodcurdling thing that rings in Tiger Claw's ears and disorients him something fierce --

-- the next few moments happen quickly, like fragmented glass on a wooden floor. There is a rush of movement, a flurry of activity. There is his instinct, miles ahead where his brain was not, pumping adrenaline into his muscles. His breath -- as it tears out of his lungs, oxygen burning through his nerves as he is winded from a strike to his gut, his kidneys, and barely dodges one that went for his neck. 

There is the crashing of furniture, breaking of glass, slamming into the floor and blindly kicking upwards to get away -- upending the mahogany table to serve as a flimsy barrier -- drawing his blaster, searing holes into the wall as blood pounds in his veins, in his head, down his nose and his mouth and his -- his tail -- his tail -- his tail --

Then, the sensation of being pulled. 

Down, down, into the depths.

Down, into the silence, beneath the waves.

Moses, Moses --  the river flows not gently for thee.

...

Are you quoting The Prince of Egypt?

Tiger Claw's eyes snap open. He meets a wide, gray sky silhouetted by the sharp outlines of rocks. He fumbles, disoriented, flapping his arms around like he was still treading water.

"Well,” says a familiar-unfamiliar voice. It is sharp, nasally, boyish. “Mikey would probably make a 'Cat'-holic joke right about now, but I'm not sure if it's appropriate.”