2. Friendship
"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light."
- Hellen Keller
Every single bone in his body was aching, even the tiniest of his toes. Not that he had many. The pain coming from his right side was stronger than the rest though, and it was worse when he tried to move.
He opened his eyes slowly, hoping to find the grey ceiling of Donnie's lab at the lair, but instead he was met with a white and rather fancy-looking chandelier with spheres hanging down. Bringing a reluctant hand to rub the sleep off his face, he tensed as he wearily observed the rest of the unfamiliar room. The walls were painted in a soft shade of lilac and the floor was dark. There was a big window and a balcony with lacy silver curtains, the same color as the blankets keeping him warm in a wide king-sized bed.
"Woaa," he drawled as his head began to pound harshly, "dude... where the shell am I?"
A pile of clothing sitting on a chaise long near the bed suddenly stirred and then sat up. Mikey was speechless as he gawked at the two very peculiar and curious pair of eyes blinking rapidly while staring at him. The boy broke into a grin and jumped off the chair, starling him.
"You're finally awake! MOM! The turtleman woke up!" he called out, walking over to the bed. "Are you okay now? You were asleep for three days, you know."
Mikey didn't say anything. Mostly because he couldn't really find the words, or his voice for that matter. He wasn't used to having children so at ease with him when he was out of his mascot outfit.
"Give him space, D, he's scared." He followed the sound and saw her leaning against the doorway with arms crossed over her chest, giving him a mildly amused and kind smile. She was short and lean, he noticed, with soft but taunting curves. Her long hair was dark, reminding him of rich dark chocolate, and adoringly curly, framing a beautiful heart-shaped face where a pair of eyes the color of the ocean was watching him with mirth. In the pit of his mind, Mikey couldn't help thinking she was quite possibly the most attractive woman he'd ever seen.
"Hey there... how are you feeling?"
Mikey cleared his throat. "Oh uh... sore, I guess... but I've had worse days," he answered cautiously.
"After seeing all those scars, I believe you wholeheartedly. What about that wound of yours? C'mon, let me have a look at it." The woman sat beside him on the bed, moving the covers away from his body. Michelangelo flinched with the cold air but it was nothing like when she touched his ribs, bringing forth a much worse kind of pain. It felt like a thousand needles piercing through his skin. She took off the bloodied bandage and replaced it with a clean one after oiling his wound with something that smelled worse than the sewers. She chuckled when he wrinkled his nose. "I know it's horrible, but it'll help – I swear. The worst part is over. I managed to prevent the infection in time, you were lucky to have been out only for three days."
"Thanks." He lowered his head back on the pillow. "I can't remember anything... how did you find me?"
She tugged a dark lock behind her ear, looking sheepish. "I'm afraid I run you over with my car... Sorry about that."
Mikey chuckled. "That's okay. I think you saving my shell pays it off."
A guttural growl echoed through the room and Michelangelo found himself blushing once he realized it was his stomach. She laughed good-naturedly, rising to her feet and stepping out of the room. When she came back, she was carrying a silver tray with a bowl of hot soup, a couple of ham sandwiches and a water pitcher with a glass.
"Here. I figured you would be hungry. Damian help him sit, will you?" After the little boy helped him into a half decent sitting position, she settled the tray on his lap. Michelangelo didn't have to be told twice, he immediately slurped the soup down and attacked the first sandwich. "I'm Sage by the way, and this is my son, Damian."
"Mwfewangewo," he muffled out through a mouthful. She chuckled when he blushed again. He swallowed the food loudly. "Sorry. I said my name's Michelangelo, but you can call me Mikey."
Sage flashed him a dazzling pearly white smile. "Nice to meet you, Mikey. So is there anyone you would like to phone? When you were down with a fever you kept calling out for a Leo... is that it?"
"Oh." Mikey looked down at his hands, trying hard not to look sad yet failing miserably. "No... I mean yeah, I got someone I should call, but I don't know the number and I lost my phone when I was attacked..."
"I see. Well, that's too bad because you can't go anywhere this week with those injuries and even then only depending on how you heel. I've never taken care of a humanoid reptile before, so I can't really be sure how you'll react to some of the medication..."
"You mean I can stay? Here, with you?"
Damian grinned from ear to ear. "Of course you can! Right, mom?"
"Sure, I'm not throwing you out of my house if that's what you're afraid of," she said with a smirk.
"It's just that most people I meet don't really want someone like me around them, much less crashing at their place..."
She waved a dismissing hand. "Oh please, it takes more than a little difference to scare me off."
"Why?" He regarded her thoughtfully, trying to figure out this woman, who had willingly brought him – a freak, for lack of a better term – into her own place and who was worried enough to care for his wounds and save his life. Aside from April and Casey, there weren't many humans out there who could look at him like she was looking. As if he was normal.
"I don't know," she answered truthfully as she stared with deep sea green eyes into his own, "maybe I'm weird."
They shared a kindred smile.
"Yeah, mom, you're really weird," Damian chirped in, grinning mischievously.
Sage shot him a look. "Oh so you think I'm weird? I'm not the one who likes pickles with ketchup."
Mikey wrinkled his nose. "Pickles with ketchup? Really, little dude?"
"What? It's good, you should try! And mom eats French fries with ice cream. Now that's gross."
"It is not!" Sage stood up, chuckling at Mikey's nauseous face. She patted her son on his bum. "Come on you, time for bed. Mikey needs his rest and you have school early tomorrow."
Damian pouted but did as his mother told him to. He hopped out of the room with a friendly wave towards Mikey over his shoulder, who waved back just as nicely. When Sage moved to follow him, Mikey stopped her. She fixed him with entrancing clear eyes that, for the slightest of moments, made his heart jump in place.
He cleared his throat. "Thanks... for this, y'know... not many people would do this for... well, something like me I guess."
"I'm not quite like most people." She gave him a heart-warming smile, "but you're very welcome. Now do try and get some rest, alright Mikey?"
After she was gone, Mikey fell back against the soft purple pillows of the large bed with an exhausted sigh. In the back of his mind, he felt a nibbling guilt for having stolen her bed.
Yeah, he chuckled. She was most definitely not like most people.
"I'm not joking, Raph! It's been almost two weeks and there's still no sign of Mikey! You better start doing a better job at looking for him and find him once and for all or so help me god I will-"
"You will what?" Raphael cut his brother off, standing dangerously close to his beak. "What are you gonna do exactly, huh Don?"
Donnie closed his hands tightly, fingernails digging into the leathery skin of his palms. He inhaled deeply but turned his head to the other side, looking down at the ground as he wanted to avoid conflict.
"Yeah. Thought so." He walked off to leave the lair.
"He's our brother," Donatello called after him. "That used to mean something to you."
Raph didn't give him an answer, not because he didn't have one but because he didn't like hurting Donnie. He didn't deserve to be hurt despite of how much it annoyed him that he kept trying to take over Leo's place. He knew Donnie was only acting like that because he was being forced to step up and take charge of his family. Their master's gruff voice stopped him dead in his tracks.
"My son." Splinter sounded so tired, so worn out... It was as if he was a hundred years old and time was finally catching up to him.
"Mastah Splinter." Raph bowed his head respectfully.
Splinter lowered his ears, watching him with sad beady eyes. "Your torment will not end if you insist on keeping it to yourself."
"Yes, Mastah," he muttered through a clenched jaw as he took the opportunity to run out of the lair, moving swiftly in the shadows.
Donatello heaved a desperate sigh, letting himself fall over the arm of the couch, bringing a hand to rub his face, eventually pressing the bridge of his nose when the all too familiar feeling of a horrible migraine began to throb. The faint, yet firm, touch of Splinter's furry hand on his stiff shoulder jolted him. He looked up at his father, only to find him mirroring his worry.
"Raphael may be going through a difficult time but I am certain he is trying very hard to find Michelangelo," he said soothingly. An attempt of comfort for both of them.
"I know that… but it's been so long since Mikey went after him, Master, and we can't find him anywhere. I can't even get a sign from his shellcell. It's as if he disappeared out of thin air."
"Your worries are my own, Donatello. All we can do for now is search and hope that nothing bad has come to him."
April made her way through the jungle with difficulty, fighting the wilderness with her brand new katana. She was panting and sweating from everywhere. Her underwear was a mile up her but and her hair couldn't be any frizzier.
This was not a good day.
She had taken a flight to South America because the situation had, in her opinion, gone bad enough and something – anything – had to be done. If neither Donatello, nor Raphael were going to put themselves together and man up to bring their brother back, then she would do it for them. He was family too after all. They all were. Mikey was like the little brother she never had but secretly always wished she did, and he had been gone long enough to make them all dead with worry.
It wasn't like Mikey to disappear like that. He might still be a kid in a twenty-seven year old body but he wasn't that irresponsible. He had always been careful to keep his cell at hand and the tracking signal on so Donatello wouldn't go crazy with worry. The fact that this time there was absolutely no sign of him was too frightening.
Something caught her eye up ahead: a hunting shotgun on the ground. Well, that was the first sign of lifeform she'd come across since she left the village.
"Hello?!" she called out, looking around. "Can anybody hear me?!"
There was no answer, so she plunged back into the jungle. Her feet suddenly got caught on a root and she stumbled forward. She tried grabbing onto a tree but her hands failed the lower branches. She fell through a hole.
"AHHHH!" April closed her eyes, expecting the impact with the ground but it never came. Instead she found herself wrapped safely in a pair of bulky and familiar leathery arms.
"It's a long ride from the city to just… drop in," her savior joked in a deep voice.
When she opened back her eyes, April was met with Leonardo's gentle blue ones. Her heart gave a thousand leaps in its place.
"Leo!"
Finally…!
"Mom, I don't wanna go! Please don't make me!"
"We've been through this already. In fact we go through it every single week! This is your father's weekend!" Sage blew a few curls away from her eyes as she scavenged her loft for her stubborn son who insisted on making her life a lot harder. She looked under his bed and opened the closet hoping to find him inside like the last few times. No such luck.
"But I don't like it there!" He kept whining, "he's got that woman living there and I don't like her. She talks to me in a baby voice, mom, a baby voice!"
"Considering how you're behaving at the moment, I can't say I blame her! C'mon, Damian, your father's going to be here any minute now."
"I don't care!"
She heard low chuckling behind her. She turned around to see Michelangelo leaning against the doorframe with his arms and his legs crossed. He had stopped wearing bandages three days ago. His wound was nothing but a faint pink line, another scar joining several others.
Sage frowned, torn between amusement and annoyance. "Do you think this is funny?"
"Kinda, yeah," Mikey admitted with a smirk.
"Well, it's not! He does this every time, Mikey, every time – it's exasperating!"
He decided to help her out, seeing as he didn't really think pushing her further over the edge was a good idea. An angry Sage was not be messed with, and she wasn't very fun either.
"I thought kids liked spending time with their dads," he started, looking under the desk.
"I guess but... well, let's just say James isn't exactly the friendliest guy and he doesn't really like children… actually it's not that he doesn't like them but more like he has now idea of how to deal with them. I do see D's point of view though. I mean we were married and even I still don't know how I put up with him for that long y'know. But we made a deal after the divorce and he got conjoined custody and that means he takes Damian with him every other weekend."
Michelangelo pulled Damian's scrawny figure out of the laundry basket, grabbing him by the back of his white and blue stripped shirt. The boy pouted and flailed his arms and legs around, trying uneventfully to break free from his hold. When he couldn't, he simply crossed them and glared at her with his piercing mismatched eyes.
"You could let me hide," he argued.
Sage sighed as she straightened up, cocking her hip to the side. "I'm pretty sure that would be considered kidnapping."
"No it wouldn't."
"Sorry, little dude," Mikey said, coming to her rescue, "your mom's right."
He glared harder but eventually admitted defeat. Figuring the worst was over, Mikey put him back down. Just in time for the bell.
"Alright that's him. Come'ere-" Sage pulled Damian closer and shoved him into his old denim jacket. Then she grabbed the faded grey backpack on the desk and gave it to him, amused by the way he clung to it as if his life depended on it, holding the bag close to his chest. "I'm lettin' you take your PSP but you better come back with all of your homework done or there won't be a next time, okay?" Damian nodded sulkily. She smiled a little. "Say goodbye and let's go."
Mikey reached out a hand to give him a fist-bump. "See ya around, little dude. Don't get into too much trouble."
"You still gonna be here when I come back?" Damian asked, flashing him a puppy-dog eye look that could rival his own and he was the master of puppy-dog eyes.
Mikey and Sage shared a look but it didn't say much. Neither of them were absolute sure about what the answer would be.
"Well, I don't know," he answered honestly. At the boy's dejected look, he quickly added, "but if I'm not, it doesn't mean you're never gonna see me again. I'll swing by loads of times, you'll even gonna get like major sick of me. I promise."
Damian perked up and, after sharing another fist-bump with his friend, he let his mother pull him to the front door and to his father.
Sage couldn't help but to roll her eyes at the man waiting on the other side of the door. Five years separated and he still hadn't changed even the slightest. He stood, leaning against the wall in front of her doorway with one leg pulled up and hands shoved into the pockets of a pair of brand new dark washed jeans. He looked all cocky and mighty in his favorite and expensive leather jacket. Surprisingly, he was polite enough to take off his Ralph Lauren sunglasses when she met him.
Hard to believe those blue eyes used to give me goosebumps, she thought annoyed.
"Gorgeous as always, love," he greeted. She pulled one of the straps of her green dress up, feeling self-conscious of how he just seemed to swallow her whole with one look.
"Save the compliments for your bimbo girlfriend, I really don't need them," she snapped shortly.
"And mordacious as usual. Are you ever going to speak to me like a normal civilized woman?"
Sage bit her tongue and swallowed a comeback for the sake of Damien. "Just make sure you bring Damian back Sunday after dinner. Oh and don't leave him alone with that woman. He doesn't like it and quite frankly I don't either."
"Who I leave my son with during his legal time with me is none of your business."
"It is if it makes him miserable."
"He's not miserable. I give him anything he wants, he has no reason to be miserable."
"Money can't buy happiness, James," she said with any icy coldness, "it can't buy you what matters."
His eyes displayed a sudden sadness. Yet it came as fast as it went, so she wasn't sure if she had actually seen it.
"Come on, D, Tim's waiting in the car downstairs. I was thinking we could stop for some hotdogs before going home, huh? What do you think?"
Damian shrugged, but Sage could tell he felt a little better for not having to deal with Lauren, James's current girlfriend, so soon. He hugged her and then skipped off to the elevator. James moved to follow.
"James," she called with Damian's sleepover duffel in her hand. He backtracked to retrieve it, trying to play it cool even though she could easily notice the faint blush on his sun kissed cheeks. "See you later."
"Yeah yeah." He waved over his shoulder, closing the elevator and pressing zero.
After they were gone, Sage closed the door with one swift movement of her hand, heaving a sigh. She nearly crashed into Mikey on the way back to the living room, his sudden closeness behind her startling her to death. "Geez, Mike, you tryin' to kill me or what?!"
He ignored her, glaring at the closed door with a furrowed brow. "What in the shell did you see in that guy?"
"Ugh, typical! If only I could get a dollar every time someone asks me that…" she scoffed, stepping into the kitchen and went through some of the cupboards. Mikey followed her, hopping on the island counter and watching her move, involuntarily enjoying the way the thin fabric of her green dress clung to every subtle curve.
"James was your average rich bad boy who makes every girl weak in the knee," she continued. "He was a business management course senior in my college campus and even though he was as temperamental and dangerous as he looked, he had the most brilliant and fascinating mind I've ever met. He could make math seem interesting – and I liked it. Besides, I always had a thing for bad boys."
Mikey rolled his eyes. "Really, Sage?"
"So? Sue me!" She snorted. "Anyway, we started dating of course, but he changed a lot after his father died and left the entire company empire to his younger brother instead of him. He became obsessed with making money. He wanted to prove he was better than his brother and steal his place at the top. Then he, well…" She paused. Her forehead wrinkled before she went on, "he seemed to develop a thing for long legged blondes and a sudden amnesia concerning our marriage status."
Mikey's angry grunt made her smile through the hurtful memories. "The worst part, though, was when he didn't show up when Damian was born. He didn't step foot in the hospital until a week or so later, and when he held him for the first time there wasn't a single feeling of happiness or pride. He stared at our baby like he was just a… a… a thing that would require too much energy and attention and resources. I hated him that day… That wasn't the man I had fallen in love with… So I filed for divorce. End of story."
There was a silent pause.
"Wow," Mikey finally breathed. "What a jackass. Damian's the coolest kid in the world! He's nuts if he doesn't see it. And he's even more nuts to let go of someone like you."
She looked him sideways; he was blushing and twirling the ends of his orange mask adorably. She just found him so cute.
"Awe chucks, Mikey, you flatter me too much." His blush deepened, which made her chuckle harder. "Anyway, let's stop talking about James. It gives me a stomachache. You are officially healed and off the antibiotics so I say we should celebrate."
"Shell yeah! I second that motion!"
"Good." She grinned, pulling out of the fridge a six pack and out of the cabinets a bag of ketchup flavored chips. "What do you say to a Fast and The Furious marathon? I even borrowed the new movie from my collegue at the clinic."
Mikey hopped off the counter and engulfed her neck and shoulders with one of his rock-hard bulky arms, moaning in pure delight.
"Marry me, Sage. I don't even care if we're different species. I'll look past it."
She threw her head back and laughed good-naturedly.
