Title: Meeting Fand

Author: walutahanga

Summary: Leonardo encounters an old friend. Being forgotten is difficult, especially when you're the only one left who can remember.

Disclaimer: You seriously think TMNT is mine? Are you kidding?

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"…and the Druids gave him a drink of forgetfulness, so that afterwards he had no more remembrance of Fand nor of anything else that he had then done…and Manannan shook his cloak between Cuchulain and Fand, so that they might never meet together again throughout eternity."

'The Sickbed of Cuchulain'

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It was dark. The rain poured in icy rivulets down Leonardo's face as he crouched on the roof. Water mingled with the blood rolling down his arm. His muscles were cramping from the cold and he'd have liked to rub his hands together to generate some warmth.

There was a faint whistle, reminding him of the reason he didn't. Across the street, two Foot ninja appeared and scampered across the rooftop, quick as squirrels, before disappearing again. This had been going on for the past twenty minutes, ninjas appearing and disappearing on rooftops at random intervals. They knew there was a turtle was somewhere around here. They were just trying to rattle him into revealing his position. Leo could have told them it was a pointless tactic. None of his brothers had survived New York by being easily unnerved. The only thing that worried him was that a ninja might accidently trip over him, and he'd have to silence them before they could alert the others.

That, and the fact that it had been half an hour since he'd seen his youngest brother dragged unconscious into the back of a van, and fifteen minutes since he'd had to split up from the other two. That worried him a little. He hoped Donny and Raph made it back to the Lair okay. Rescuing Mikey from the Foot was going to be difficult without having to rescue them too.

It was too bad Casey was visiting a friend in Los Angeles this weekend. He might be lousy at stealth, but he was great at diversions. Leo briefly entertained the thought of asking April for help and dismissed it. Her ninjitsu skills weren't yet at a level where he'd feel comfortable relying on them, and she lacked the sheer muscle that allowed Casey to simpley bulldoze through a fight. It looked like it was going to be Leo, Donny, and Raph tonight, and possibly Master Splinter, if he was up to it.

The wind changed direction, and cold rain started hitting Leo from a new direction. He grimaced, hunkering down. He might be better off worrying about himself being up to it rather than Master Splinter. The mutation might have changed a lot of things, but he was still a reptile and the cold was affecting him more than it would a human. It was making his reactions slower, and his thoughts sluggish. The blood he was loosing from the slice on his arm probably didn't help matters. If he didn't get out of the rain soon, he was going to start drifting off.

As if to compound his problems, a light went on in the house below.

Leonardo had been still before, but now he barely breathed as light poured across the balcony beneath his hiding place. The door opened and a young human woman walked out. He knew it was a woman from the way she walked, even wrapped up in a jacket several sizes too big for her, the hood tugged low over her face. She did not look up, but walked a few steps into the rain, until she was standing directly underneath his hiding place. He kept very still.

When she spoke, she kept her gaze on the house across the street, not looking at Leonardo once, her lips barely moving. Her voice was so soft he could only just hear it through the rain.

"If a weary traveller required shelter, it would perhaps benefit him to know that the upstairs window is open."

She went back inside. The light shut off.

Leonardo crouched in the dark, weighing his options. If it was a trap, it was an overly elaborate one. The Foot wouldn't bother luring him out if they knew where he was hiding. On the other hand, the Foot weren't his only enemies. Water trickled down the back of his neck and he decided to risk it.

Moving was painful, his limbs stiff and clumsy from the cold. He climbed laborously down the drainpipe. The window was open as she'd promised, and he clambered inside. It disturbed him how clumsy he was after just fifteen minutes in the rain. He closed the window behind him, and felt a little warmer. He stood on the wooden floor, dripping water, and flexing his muscles to try and get the blood flowing again.

The sound of footsteps made him withdraw into the shadows.

The door opened. It was the woman from before. She had removed the jacket, and was wearing a plain white cotton dress. She was younger than he had been expecting. If she was more than two years older than he, he'd eat Casey's hockey mask. She looked without seeing him, and walked to a chair where she laid some folded towels. She turned and bent over a lamp, and a moment later, soft golden light filled the room. She straightened and he got his first good look at her. She was of asian descent, and small and slim like a little doll, with china-white skin and black hair cropped in a neat fringe across her forehead. Not beautiful exactly, but, but there was something pleasing about the way her features fit together. Harmonious.

Her reaction when she saw him was strange. Her eyes widened, hands flying up to cover her mouth. She made a small sound in the back of her throat that could have been a sob or a laugh. He kept very still so not as to startle her further. She whispered something behind her hands that might have been a curse or a prayer. He didn't recognise the language, other than it wasn't English or Japanese. Her eyes were bright and wet as they roved over him.

"I won't hurt you," he said, keeping his voice low, spreading his hands wide to show his harmless intent.

She shook her head impatiently. She grabbed the towels from the chair and hurried over to him. His fingers twitched toward his katana before he could stop himself, but fortunately she didn't seem to notice, laying her hand on his arm and steering him toward the chair with a strength that belied her size. He went with it warily and sat down, trying not to show what a relief it was to get off his feet. Not many humans were so quick to touch him or his brothers, not even those with benign intentions. It was only natural human wariness, and the girl's familiarity made him uneasy. Only those who knew him him well were so unwary, or those who were too powerful to consider him a threat.

The girl pressed a towel to his injured right arm and used two more to rub him down, wiping away the cold water. The towels quickly turned red, and Leo felt the tiniest bit light headed. Oh. Perhaps he'd been bleeding more than he'd thought. No wonder she'd been so insistent about him sitting down.

The girl chafed his chilled skin to warm it. It was performed with an impersonal efficiency, and Leo wondered if she was a nurse or a doctor of some kind. When she was done, she tossed the damp, bloodied towels into a basket, and turned up the thermostat. Leo relaxed further as the room began to warm up. The girl took a wooden box out of a cabinet and carried it over to rest on the floor beside his feet. She knelt to open the lid, and he noticed that her small feet were bare beneath the hem of her skirt.

She removed bandages and bottles from the box with a neat kind of precision, everything in it's place, labels turned to the front, packages turned to matching right angles. It was soothing to his perfectionist soul and reassured him that she knew what she was doing. She was quick and exact, as if this was a ritual she had performed a thousand times before.

She hesitated at the last, glancing up at him.

"I will need to stitch your arm," she said, making a motion with her hand to convey sewing something. "Your wound needs to close. Is that okay?"

Her english was thickly accented, but precise. Her accent wasn't quite like Master Splinter's, but it was similar. She turned the 'l's into 'r's, rushed some syllables and dragged at others. Splinter could probably have identified where it originated from, but Leo couldn't tell.

"Yes," he said. "That will be fine. Thank you."

His stupor vanished when she reached for his right katana. He grabbed her hand without thinking, thick green fingers curling abouth her slim wrist. For several frozen heartbeats, they stared at one another, the girl's expression honestly taken aback.

"Don't touch that," Leo said. He tried to sound mild, but it came out cold and grating.

The surprise faded from the girl's face, and she bowed her head until all he could see was the dark of her hair where it joined the nape of her neck.

"My apologies," she said. Her words were very formal. "I should know better than to touch warrior's weapon without his permission. I was overeager. If you would please move your katana so that I might see the wound better."

Leonardo released her wrist. His heart was pounding, the last of his cold-induced apathy ripped away by adrenaline. He realized the fingers of his other hand were curled about the hilt of his left katana, and had been since he'd grabbed the girl's wrist. He forced himself to let go.

He drew his right katana and placed it on the table beside him. The hilt was wet with blood and rain. The girl moved more carefully now, making no sudden movements as she peeled the towel from his arm. When she what lay underneath, she tsked under her breath. She soaked a cloth in alchohol and began to clean out the wound.

"You've done this before?" He asked, trying to make conversation to take his mind off the burn of the alcoho, and the fact he'd almost run a sword through a young girl's gut without realizing it.

"My father." Her voice was distracted as she dabbed at his arm. If she was angry or frightened, Leonardo couldn't tell. Maybe she meant what she said, and had simply accepted his reaction as to be expected.

Leonardo glanced about the room. It was a work room of some kind, with a pester and morter on the table, and a cutting board with bunches of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling. There were old books in languages he couldn't make out and what looked like a scrying crystal in the corner.

"So what does your father do," he asked. "If he needs stitching up all the time?"

"We are shinobi."

Leo tensed and wondered if he shouldn't have kept hold of that katana after all. Shinobi was a Japanese word for 'assassin'. But he didn't think that was what she meant. No ninja would have made such a clumsy attempt for his weapon, nor admitted so calmly to what they were. At least he hoped not.

"I'm sorry," he said carefully. "Shinobi?"

"The closest english equivelant would be 'sorcerer'."

"You do magic?"

She shot him a flat look.

"We manipulate chi," she said, tone clearly stating that the difference should be obvious. Leo didn't understand how chi differed from magic, but knew enough from dealing with Donatello when he got huffy over science to know that the answer wouldn't be worth the pain of asking the question - and that was if he understood the answer in the first place. He nodded seriously.

"So what does a shinobi do aside from manipulate chi?"

"We hunt demons. Hold still please."

Leonardo started as his eyes met those of a skull hanging on the wall. It was oddly shaped, a little too long in the jaw to be human, the teeth a little too extended.

"Um… just so you know," he said. "I'm not actually a –"

"Demon? Yes, I know." She sound ever so slightly amused. She licked a thread to slip it through the eye of a fine needle.

"You're not going to ask what I am? Ah." He flinched as she pressed the edges of the wound together.

"The Buddha makes creatures in all shapes and forms," she said calmly, projecting an aura of mystery and arcane knowledge. She ruined it a moment later by adding: "Besides, a demon wouldn't get his shell kicked by a bunch of foot ninja."

So she'd noticed the ninja then. Maybe there was something to this 'chi' stuff after all. Something else nagged at him, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what bothered him about what she'd said.

"I didn't get my shell kicked," he said with a great deal of dignity. "I was making a tactical retreat from superior - ah!" He gritted his teeth as she began to sew his wound back up. He didn't like getting stitches. Never had. Especially when anaesthetic was difficult to get hold of, as it frequently was living underground. But he had stitched up his brothers often enough to see that the girl knew what she was doing. She didn't tug his skin into a bunch, or try to go too quickly. Each stitch was careful and measured. She was biting her lip as she worked, teeth resting on her lower lip in a set expression of concentration.

To distract himself, he studied a photograph on the wall. It was of the girl and an elderly man who must be her father. Her features in male were plainly stamped on his face, marked by age. They were standing in front of a small house, staring at the camera with serious expressions.

"Is that your father?" Leonardo asked.

"Yes," the girl answered absently. "You may have heard of him. His name is Chung I."

Chung I. The name struck a chord, somewhere in the back of Leonardo's mind. An aquaintence of Splinter's perhaps? Someone his father had once mentioned? Leo couldn't remember, and so settled for saying:

"You look a lot like him."

"Yes… I suppose I do. People say so all the time. I resemble him more than I resemble my mother."

"I don't see any pictures of her."

"Above the door."

Leonardo saw it then, cast in shadows by the lamp. It was a black-and-white picture from a couple of decades ago. The serious-faced woman in the picture was very pretty. The girl was right when she said they didn't look much alike, but Leonardo could see her mother here and there, in her mouth and the tilt of her eyebrows.

"She's beautiful," he said. The girl nodded.

"She died when I was very small. My father loved her very much. I barely remember her."

"Any brothers or sisters?"

The girl paused in her stitching, and covered it up by reaching for a cloth to dab at his arm.

"I once had four brothers," she said slowly.

"Once?" He wondered what had happened, that she spoke of her brothers in the past tense. He felt a stab of sympathy. He might sometimes fight with his brothers, and certainly didn't always agree with them, but if something had happened to one of them he didn't know what he'd do. He could scarcely conceive of himself existing without his brothers.

"Certain things…changed," the girl said. "And while my brothers are more or less as they have always been, I am not as I once was. I do not believe they would recognise me now, even if I stood before their very eyes." She flicked a quick glance up at him, then back down again. "I doubt they would even remember my name."

Leonardo had trouble believing that brothers would forget their own sister – much less not come looking for her – but he supposed she would know better than he.

"Was it a demon?" He asked.

"No." The girl put the cloth down. "It was not a force that could be fought or defeated. What of you?" She added in almost the same breath. Her voice was slightly strained as she asked; "Do you have any siblings?"

"Three brothers," he said, accepting the new direction of conversation.

"Any sisters?"

"Yes. One."

He saw that she had gone pale. The needle was suddenly trembling in her hand.

"You do?" There was an odd sound to her voice, as if she were trying to catch her breath.

"Yes," Leo said. "Her name's April."

"Oh." The girl's voice was small and subdued. She seemed to have gotten control of herself as she took up her stitching again, though there was a little wobble to her hand that made him grunt as the needle dug in. "And you get along with them?" She said. "You are… happy together?"

It was an odd question and he took a moment to think about it.

"I suppose so," he said slowly. "I mean, who needs happiness when you have family? If you have the right family, you make it work."

The girl nodded to herself.

"Yes. You make it work. That is… that is very good advice. I will remember." She quickly finished stitching the wound, then tied off the thread, and snipped it. "Keep the stitches clean and take them out after three days. Your chi is a strong one, but it would not do to risk infection."

"Thank you."

He inspected the wound carefully. It was good work. Her stitches were small and neat. If he was lucky it might not even leave a scar. She wrapped a bandage about his arm, clever fingers snugging it into place. He watched as she began replacing items in the box with the same neat precision that she'd taken them out, and realized there was one question he hadn't asked.

"What is your name?"

She hesitated, hand hovering over the box, eyes not quite meeting his.

"Mei," she said at last. He waited, but more was not forthcoming.

"Mei," he repeated, accepting the answer. "I am glad to have met you, Mei."

She smiled, meeting his eyes properly for the first time, and he changed his mind about her not being beautiful. She was truly lovely when she smiled. But the smile faded all too quickly and her eyes roamed across his face. He wondered what she was looking for.

"It doesn't mean anything to you?" She said, a hint of desperation in her voice. "It doesn't cause some… sense of daje vu? A flicker of familiarity like some half-remembered dream?"

"No," he said honestly. "Should it? Have we met before?"

"No," she said, looking away. "It was foolishness on my part. Such terrible conceit to think that you might…" She shook her head. "Nevermind."

Leonardo didn't know what she was talking about, but he couldn't waste time finding out. He looked out the window and saw a flash of movement on a rooftop some distance away. The Foot were moving off.

"I should go," he said. "I have to find my brothers." He picked his katana up from the table. It took two tries to sheath it. It looked like he'd be fighting with just one blade tonight. He looked at Mei. "I'll come back and see you."

To his surprise, he meant it.

But Mei smiled sadly.

"I do not think that would be a good idea. In any case, my father and I will most likely be gone within a few days. We never stay in the one place for very long." She rose up on her tip-toes, startling him by pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. "Go and find your brothers, Leonardo."

Her accent rolled the words like a carress. It wasn't until after he'd already left that he realized he'd never told her his name.

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