And the grin he maintained, faltered.  So much had changed over the years.  He was not the person he once was and far from the boy with such ambitions, so unfaltering in his stride.  The life he'd known and taken for granted had reared its ugly head, bared its ugly teeth and tore gaping holes in his perceptions.  Humanity made itself known and just as quickly retreated beyond his grasp, unobtainable.  It had become a sticking point, something he thought he might never overcome.  And it was costing him everything he held dear...everything.

     He ran a trembling earthy green hand over the closed book that he reminisced over.  His glassy eyes fell on the distant wall as if in a daze, lost in the memories they'd helped him stow over the years.  It was a tatty old sketchbook, bound, the kind an art student might carry and fill with smudgy pencil scrawl. But this was not full of drawings, no; it was so much more. It was a piece, a mere scrap of his patchwork life, carefully written in various colors on lightly penciled lines. No one page was like another, each a product of a day as unique as the author, which pen was found and contained enough ink in which to write and in whatever lighting conditions were available. Some pages were stained with mildew and warped from dampness, discolored by age. Stuck in it too, were other pages from other books in varied states of wholeness. It had the kind of look and smell of a book that had been stowed for a long time and neglected…forgotten.

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I.

Purity

     A small boy splashed along a dark corridor. It was dark and hollow, the walls curved up to meet high above in a manner that left there no ceiling and floor. Pipes ran along overhead, rusty, seeping and encrusted in minerals. Every now and then a dim light bulb graced the darkness and illuminated the way, shiny brick and a thin current of jet-black water.

     He was unlike any child that ever walked the earth, perhaps owing to the fact he naively settled for the dank sewers instead. For this child had never set foot on true earth but remained suspended in it, surrounded on all sides by it as if entombed. Water, brick and concrete were all his strange little bare feet had ever known. It was his home and unquestioningly so.

     His breath had gone ragged as he panted along the tunnel, water splashing up to his waist and running back down his naked legs in rivulets. He was late! The others had surely made it in time but he, who told them to go ahead as he brought up the rear, had simply taken too long in trying to be sure they weren’t followed…as he knew he should have. Halting in front of his destination, and to his horror, the child looked up to find the way barred.

     Towering above him, thin wisps of a snow-white beard trailed down to greet him. Attached to it, a face full of such disbelief, of such disapproval. The seemingly aged man had a deeply lined and sunken face of blotched olive that did no justice to what must have been fine Asian features from his youth. He was slightly hunched and bore signs of frailty. But the edge in his eyes, the sharpness there, was that of one much younger, suggesting he was a man who simply lived more than he should have. His clothes were baggy, torn and stained with muck of the underworld. There was an old torn hat upon his head, the wide brim hung to his shoulders, soaked and still dripping onto the leathery overcoat which in turn dripped onto the already saturated brick. To the untrained eye, he merely appeared homeless. But as the boy below knew all too well, his master had in fact beaten him home.

     The searing in the strange child’s chest was unbearable on top of the pain he could already feel from the imminent punishment. His round green face fell to regard the two toes on each of his small wet feet. There was no way he could look into the eyes that must be casting only the sharpest of daggers down at him. The disappointment he would see there…it would be unbearable.

     "HAMATO LEONARDO!" Came the seemingly thunderous hoarse voice from above. The boy, Leonardo, jumped at the sound of his own name. It crashed down on him like the very tunnels were caving in, for the tone in which he chose. Normally soft-spoken and even then only when necessary, his master was the kind of man one listened to when the mood did strike him to speak. And now, well, it couldn’t be more plain that respect was in order. So rarely did he hear his surname that ever so briefly he considered that he must have been speaking to someone else.

     "Inside. Now!" Again the boy startled at the sharp heavily accented voice that cut through the near silence of the tunnel. Leonardo's muscles were taught, rendering his whole body stiff as a board. It was with a great mustering of courage that he unglued his clenched jaw to respond with a feeble Hai Sensei. And he did as he was told, passing over the threshold as rigidly as a frozen penguin, past the great tattered legs of the man he called his Sensei and Master, not daring to look up into the prematurely aged face. There was nothing worse to Leonardo than disappointing Master Splinter.

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     Unlike the outside of their home, bearing no traces of the life within, the inside was the complete opposite. The second little Leonardo crossed over and stepped onto the mat, the sights and smells that greeted him were nothing but comforting, even despite his gloomy disposition. A dimly lit room, though much brighter and warmer compared to the single-bulb ambiance of the tunnels, spread cavernously before him. In reality it was actually quite small and cramped but to the child it was simply airy.

     Leonardo stopped just inside the door, his three fingered hands wringing relentlessly together as he scanned the room for his brothers. Had they escaped the wrath, made their way into bed without detection? Or had they made it home at all? Oh my! What if they didn’t make it home?! He thought, his panic rising. So it was no surprise that his eyes widened dramatically at three small heads and three sets of curious eyes that suddenly appeared over the top of the moldy threadbare sofa.  They peered at him innocently enough to cause Leonardo to growl under his breath. The room was eerily and unnaturally silent. Obviously they’d been told to sit quietly and wait, an order that was not liable to be effective for long. This did NOT bode well though, and Leonardo changed his temperament quickly and meekly turned his eyes up and back to his master behind him. The old man merely grunted and gestured the boy onward. Leonardo knew what he must do and swallowing the lump in his throat, eyes to the ground, he made his way in silence towards his master's room.

     It was not as if he’d gotten in trouble often. Usually petty things that cropped up between the brothers that he’d get blamed for on account of him being the "eldest" among them. But this was different. It had never truly been discussed, the repercussions for leaving the safety of the sewer.  They knew they weren't allowed out of that door, the door that he just passed through, without their Sensei.  Why, he'd never even imagined. For all he knew and could scare up, horrors beyond anything he could envisage awaited them out there.   And they'd done it before, of course, with minimal punishment and to no great damage, children being children, naturally curious and ignorant of their own mortality.  It's just that they had never gone so far that was the issue.  They had been so close to the unknown, the above, the forbidden.  

     Leonardo honestly had no desire to find out what was up there.  If Splinter said don't go then there must be a reason and it was good enough for him.  But it was his brothers that threw a wrench in the matter.  They didn't seem nearly as concerned about either what their sensei said or what awaited them in the great unknown. Leonardo feared the consequences of both.  It was simply law and one which Leonardo suddenly imagined if broken was punishable by death. Why hadn’t he thought of it that way before?  He and his brothers hadn’t actually done though; he was fully prepared to argue. They’d only gone so far as to see where Master Splinter had gone, not actually follow him above. At least that was the story he was sticking with and so far as the events unfolded, it wasn’t exactly a lie.  

     The tense child was lost deep in his account as meandered his way through the many years-worth of scavenged clutter.  Mounds of dusty books, loose-leaf paper, broken radios and other appliances littered the already confined space.  It was clear from the state of the place that Master Splinter was a pack rat by nature.  As he passed by the end of the couch, the largest of the three boys snickered and launched into a repeated singsong whisper of "some-one’s-n-trouble". The injustice of his brothers sitting so unconcernedly on the comfy sofa, smiling and jeering even while he was about to face punishment, caused him to snap. He lashed out suddenly, breaking the relative quietude.

     "It was your idea, not mine! I was the one who told you to come home and you didn’t listen! YOU NEVER LISTEN!!!!" Leonardo was standing at the couch end with his hands balled into tight fists at his sides, face screwed up in anger. His eyes were so narrowed that his cheeks automatically pulled his mouth into a tight-lipped sneer and he looked as if he were about to tip over he was leaning so far into his verbal assault.

     "Why would I listen to you?" Said his snide brother as casually as he could for effect.

     "HAI!" Cut across the authoritative voice that ended all confrontation immediately and had made Leonardo jump for a third time that night. "Leonardo, to my Room. Raphael, sit and say nothing." Leonardo did as he was told with a look of highest contempt for his brother. It simply wasn’t fair.

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