In a fisted glove
And the eagle flies
With the dove
And if you can't be
With the one you love, honey
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with
--Crosby, Stills and Nash, Love the One You're With
Raph watches his brother balance on the prosthetic. He's been doing the physical therapy thing with Mike ever since Maureen went back to work. He's had more fun. The sunny demeanor Mike's been knocking himself out to maintain around most of the family dissolves in the reality of the hospital's rehab room.
The nurses have left them alone; they probably need the break.
This is about the worst Raph's seen his brother.
At least, the worst when I was paying attention, a guilty voice adds in the back of his mind.
Mike stumbles again and curses. "This is never gonna work..."
"Mike, you're doin' all right. You'll be back in the training room any day now--"
"I'm not training again."
Raph almost drops him. "What?"
"I'm not training again," Mike says simply, pulling away from him and standing, carefully, on his own. "What's the point?"
"Satoru's still alive, for one thing."
"They arrested him, didn't they?"
"Oh, yeah," Raph says, "that'll take him outa commission for a whole week--"
"Raph--"
"And that kid of his. Oroku Saki waited years, what makes you think he wouldn't? If he comes after us, he'll be looking for a weak link in the chain..."
Mike throws up his hands. "There's not much I can do about that."
"You could start training, for one thing. Mike, you're the fastest, you could compensate--"
"No," Mike says, turning so violently toward his brother he almost knocks himself over, "I can't. And I'm not going to, understand?"
"Okay, okay-- calm the hell down, willya? Shit..."
"Raph, I just..."
"It's okay, Mike. It's okay." He puts his hand on his brother's shoulder. "We'll get through this, right?"
"Right..."
"Am I late?"
"Not yet."
Don grins. "Traffic sucked, and I forgot my watch... you know, I'm glad we fought for our licenses. There's something about a guy's face when he realizes he's just flipped off a giant turtle..."
Maureen laughs, and he sits down at the table. "You see Raph?"
"On the way out. Taking Mike to physical therapy?"
"Yeah. Thank God. I don't know what I'd do if he wasn't taking him at this point, you know?"
Don nods. "Yeah."
"They were really close, weren't they?"
"Closer than any of us."
She shakes her head. "I hadn't realized..."
"When Raph left-- and Leo... it changed a lot of stuff. It was us against them a little bit when they came back... I mean, if you'd asked me if Raph and Leo could live together for a week, let alone for years--" He laughs. "Not a chance--"
The waitress interrupts them then, takes their drink orders; spring water for Maureen, coffee for Don.
"Coffee?" Maureen asks, a little teasingly.
"I seem to have lost patience with tea. Think I'm getting old and I need the extra energy..."
She smiles a little. "Don?"
"Yeah?"
"I can talk to you... can't I?"
"Yeah."
"It's just..." She looks around to make sure the waitress isn't nearby. "You know him, you know? You guys went through so much together... and I wouldn't even know where to start with Raph..."
"What?" He frowns. "What's wrong?"
She presses her fingers against her forehead. "It's just... he won't let me touch him."
"What?"
"You know... touch him... he just... won't. If I try, and if I get close to the scar... he just shuts down. Shuts me off. Just..." She gestures vaguely at the wall. "It's just-- over then."
"So..." He searches for the right word for a second. "No... love life to speak of?"
"Nada. And it's not just that. I mean, I wasn't naive, you know? I knew it would change him, you know? But I didn't expect him to... I don't know... disappear."
The waitress comes back with their drinks. Don looks down at his coffee for a while, stirs it, takes a breath. "Maureen."
He lifts the coffee cup, sips. "When... after I came out of the lab, I didn't want to see anyone. Maybe Mike told you... humans most of all. I wouldn't see April. April. I hurt... so much. And... I didn't want to be in a place where anyone could hurt me again. Where I could hurt like that again. And when we got out to the farmhouse... I figured I'd stay there. Maybe live in one of the caves. I was figuring out a way to keep it warm in winter... and then you went off the road."
He looks up at her. "You... you don't know how hard that was, going out there. I almost didn't, but Mike..." He smiles. "You know Mike. I didn't really have a choice... but I swear, Maureen, after that-- the labor was easy compared to that."
"Maybe for you," she says wryly, and he laughs.
"Good point." He reaches out, touches her hand over the table. "It kicked me in the ass. It made me go out there and look at things again, you know? Realize what I did still have left. How important my friends were. How... how beautiful the world still was."
He rolls his eyes. "You know what I mean, anyway... I think that he's gotta get kicked in the ass. And I don't know what'll do that. But I know it's gonna take some time."
"How much time do you think?"
He shrugs his shoulders. "Longer than it took me. He's spent his whole life relying on his body... it's gonna be a while."
"It's already longer than it took you."
"Yeah. I don't know, Maureen. I really don't. More like years than months, probably."
"God..."
"Raven?"
She turns around in the hallway and sees Carlos. "Yeah?"
"You know 'bout Marta's party?"
"Yeah."
"Wanna go?"
"We're gonna run over to my grandmother's place tomorrow, stay the weekend."
"Oh."
"Sorry."
Carlos nods, heads up his own staircase, almost running into... ah... Cheryl? Yeah, Cheryl, that's it, he loses track sometimes... they never last long.
They're ready, willing and able to date a turtle; what Leo eventually finds out is that they're only willing to date a turtle. Sex, yes; commitment, no.
"I can't blame 'em," he said once, when Raph had said something. "Guess I'm not really looking forward to the day I meet someone's parents..."
Karai had argued with him about it once, when she'd come to pick up Isamu and found... think it was Mary, that time. Something about setting a good example for their son. Leo'd argued back. Carlos and Isamu had stayed in the room they shared and tried to ignore it with a sufficiently violent video game.
"You really expect me to believe you've lived a life of celibacy since then?" Leo had growled, and Carlos had watched Isamu's face.
Maybe she has, he'd thought to himself then.
He still wonders.
He's gone to bed already, tired from the physical therapy.
She's made herself a cup of hot cocoa; comfort food, she guesses. Her mom always used to make it when she was upset. "Maureen, honey, have some cocoa."
She misses her mom at times like this, when she feels like she's over her head.
She walks over to the bedroom door, opens it, watches him sleep.
At least he'd given her some hope. He'd thought there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
Years...
He turns over; he must have noticed the light from the door. His eyes half-open at her. "What'cha doin'?"
"Just checking up on you."
He smiles at her, dopey, still half-asleep. "You're beautiful."
She smiles back at him.
"You comin' to bed?"
"Soon."
"Miss you."
"I know." She walks over, kisses his forehead, and he closes his eyes again, still smiling as he falls back asleep.
I could wait years, she thinks as she walks back into the kitchen.
I could wait forever.
Shadow sits in the darkness, thinking, trying to quiet her rage.
The final straw had been when April had sold the Chevy.
The Chevy was hers, dammit. It had always been hers, and her father's. She remembered Her dad had promised it to her, when she graduated...
He'll never see her graduate.
Fuck.
Eleven o'clock. Mom and Raven went to bed an hour ago; they should be asleep by now.
She never actually saw the hockey mask. But she'd heard about it, a million stories about her dad's wild years, recounted by Raph and Casey when they'd had a couple beers and her mom was out of earshot.
Crime's up, all over the city, like it hasn't been for decades.
Like it hasn't since her dad was out 'bustin' heads' with the golf bag and a couple baseball bats...
She bought a real hockey mask, not one of those fake things they sell every Halloween.
It's heavier than she expected. Should protect her face pretty well.
"That's what it's for, right, Dad?"
Shadow pulls the golf bag over her shoulder and begins the long silent trip down the stairs.
Raphael is sitting on the fire escape wondering what to do with himself. His sex life has pretty much dwindled to calling Sean and seeing if he's around, which he's not, and he's never exactly mastered the ability to sit around and not do much of anything. "Alone with his thoughts" is a dangerous place for Raph to be, and he knows it.
So when he sees the alley door open, he's grateful for the distraction. He starts when he sees the silhouette of the golf bag, memories flowing like an electric current in his spine.
Okay... I don't believe in ghosts, so who...?
He swings over the fire escape and starts following.
She started off easy. Couple of purse-snatchers, kids... you may well have cured them of a life of crime, she thinks to herself, grinning. And it's not like she hurt them.
Much, anyway.
She is fairly certain one of them pissed his pants.
She smiles. She's in Central Park now, keeping an eye out for scum. Something catches her eye; a guy running, two bigger guys chasing after him with baseball bats.
Not going to be easy; but since when was anything worth doing easy?
She catches up to them just outside the alley-- takes the first one out easy. The adrenaline is pounding now; this feels good.
She runs into the alley after the second guy...
And she sees his friends. And the guns.
She's in over her head.
She tightens her grip on the baseball bat.
"Stupid little bitch," the jerk growls.
"Fuck you," she hisses back.
He grins. "Now that's a suggestion..."
She strikes out with the baseball bat, smashes him in the mouth, and his friends close in--
Go down fighting, she thinks to herself. Die before any of them can touch you...
She evades a couple of them, but one grabs her, leers at her, stinking breath almost choking her...
And then there's blood, pouring from the wound in his neck...
"Sorry I took so long," Raph growls, pulling out the other sai. "Wanted to make sure ya needed me..."
"You were here?" Shadow spits, flailing away at a guy with a switchblade. "You were following me?"
"Damn good thing I did," he says. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Trying to stay alive."
"Before that."
She doesn't say anything. He grabs the one creep left dumb enough not to run away, smashes the end of his sai into the kid's temple. He drops.
Raph sighs. "Look, you don't pull that again, okay?"
No answer. She glares at the three figures crumpled in the alley.
"You come and get me first."
She looks up, disbelieving at first. And her lips curl slowly into a smile. "Right."
two years later
Raph stumbles into the bathroom just in time. As he shoves his face into the bowl his mind reels over exactly what he had to drink the night before... not that much.
Not enough to make him this sick.
After the nausea fades, the pain in his arm from last night reasserts itself. Then he'd assumed he'd pulled something. Now...
Shit.
This is sounding familiar...
God, Casey's been gone two years now--
Maybe he should call a doctor or something.
"Sean, d'ya think you could--"
"I gotta go-- see you tonight?"
"I'll call ya later."
"Okay."
Raph listens to the door shut, curses under his breath. Eight-fifteen. Kids should be able to make it to school on their own... he picks up the phone.
"'Lo--"
"April. Can you do me a favor?"
"Sure... what?"
"Need a ride."
"This morning?"
"Yeah."
"Where?"
"Just to the doctor's."
"What's wrong?"
"They just wanna look at me."
"What is it?"
"Just this pain in my arm... ache, kinda. And I've been sick to..."
The phone's already dead.
He winces as he gets in the car.
"Getting worse?"
"Not really."
"They think it's a heart attack?"
He shakes his head. "Not really. They just wanna check. Probably I pulled something and forgot about it." And got the flu on top of it.
"Shouldn't you be going in an ambulance or something?"
"They said it was probably nothing. They didn't want me to drive just in case, but..."
Red light. April looks over at him, her fingers tapping nervously on the steering wheel.
He's staring straight ahead. "I'll get you there as soon as I can," she says, trying to stay calm.
"It's nothin', April," he says, but like he's trying to convince himself.
And they get to the E.R. and they take him, no screwing around, he's on the gurney before either of them even have time to think about it and Raph's telling April things she never wanted to find out: "The will, April... you should know... you're executrix. Gave you and Leo joint custody of the kids... there's money, April. You and the kids... they're taken care of, you don't have to worry... never have to worry..."
"Raph, you're going to be fine. You'll..."
"You need to know..."
And they start pulling the gurney away.
"Don't leave me," he says, clutching her arm, his eyes desperate. "Please, April..."
"I'll stay, Raph, I'll stay..."
"Please--"
"I promise, Raph. I promise."
They disappear around a corner.
And April remembers the last time...
But it's different this time; different person, different situation...
He's conscious, he's talking, he's...
He's having a heart attack.
It's the same damn hospital, for God's sake.
But this is different.
It is.
She sinks down in one of the waiting room chairs and covers her face with her hands.
"So you're all here?" the nurse asks.
"All but one of our brothers," Leo tells us. "My sister-in-.law's trying to get him."
"Where is he?"
"He's on a retreat," Leo says. Mike snorts.
Leo turns to his brother. "What?"
"I just... I mean, why does he go?"
Leo shrugs his shoulder. "It clears your mind."
"I'll be back as soon as we have an update," the nurse tells them.
"I still don't get it," Mike continues. "I mean, you go out there, you sleep on the floor, you meditate half the day, you don't talk, you don't have sex... he does that every day."
"Mike..." Leo's voice is exasperated, but his face is trying to hide a smile. "Maureen's not back yet?"
"She said she'd call every ten minutes 'til somebody picked up," he says. "And she will... why have a phone at all if they're not going to answer it?"
"They only have a retreat every couple months," Leo tells him. "It's not like they do it every day."
"They could at least have voicemail or something..."
"And beepers too, right? Mike, you're supposed to get away from the troubles of the world."
"The troubles of the world don't stop 'cause you're gone."
"I noticed."
Maureen jumps when the hand brushes against her shoulder.
"It's me." Don tightens his hand, squeezes her shoulder. "What's going on?"
"Raph," she says. "Heart attack. Surgery."
"Any idea--"
"All we know is it's taking too damn long."
She gets up, and he hugs her; she sighs, starts walking to the waiting room. "How did you know it was us?"
"Lucky guess," he says wryly. "Caller ID said it was this hospital... the rest was pretty easy. Who else would call every ten minutes but you?"
They both stand in silence for a moment.
"Surgery."
"Yeah."
He reaches out and puts his arm around Maureen. "How'd they get his shell open?"
She avoids his eyes. "Bone saw."
Don winces, and they start walking back to the waiting room.
--end chapter six--
