Chapter Four: The Waiting

The next few weeks passed much the same as the first day Raphael had been home. Angel insisted that he take his full reserve of medical leave: a mind-numbing six weeks. What she expected him to do with himself for a month and a half, he didn't know.

Xever came and chopped the dead, burned ends from his hair. After fruitlessly attempting to style Raph's length into a presentable cut, he'd given up and suggested his friend start fresh.

"Do you have any idea how long it took me to grow this!?" Raph snapped with irritation.

Xever had narrowed his eyes. "Yes, I do," he'd answered, but he didn't argue as he usually would have. Instead, he just shampooed and conditioned Raphael's fluffy black mane and braided what was left into shoulder length cornrows.

"There," he'd said, patting Raph's shoulder. "Until you decide what to do with it."

The rest of his company teased him a bit about the braids at Traximus's wake, having never seen his hair in style other than loose or compacted into the tight bun he stuffed into his helmet.

"Watch out; here comes Snoop Dogg," they'd snickered and Raph flipped them off, though he smiled and laughed along with them.

No one laughed when it was time to bury Traximus. The company stood in silence, dressed in black slacks and dresses. Alopex, Angel's wife, had come along to show her respect and support. She stood next to the captain, brushing a thumb lovingly over Angel's scarred knuckles, graciously saying nothing as the tears began to stream silently down Angel's pale cheeks.

Raph skipped out on the reception, having already given his sympathies to Belinda. He couldn't listen to anyone else talk about the towers. They'd all be going back into action, but not Raph. Raph was going home. It was a bitter point and Raph chose to leave rather than lose his temper and snap at anyone. Trax understood, he was sure.

The funeral was one of the few things to punctuate the monotony of Raph's medical leave. Most nights he ate dinner with his ma and Casey, but otherwise he simply puttered around his apartment, drinking and getting stoned. Pot had never been a big part of Raph's life, but he'd smoked a lot in the last two weeks. Before bed, he'd pack the flimsy bowl of his aluminum foil pipe and fire up.

Drinking was nothing new, but Raph had never partaken in such frequent blind drunkenness. If he drank enough, he'd fall into a death sleep, deep and uninterrupted. No horrific memories of people falling from buildings, bouncing off the crumbling sides as they chose plummeting to certain death over being burned alive. No nightmare visions of deformed bodies with melting skin lifting their crippled hands out to him and begging in smoke choked voices "Help us, Raph. Save us."

He'd rather drink himself into a liver transplant than deal with that every night. Sometimes, he drank so much that he fell asleep early in the afternoon, well before the sun had begun to set. He'd pass out on the couch or bed or the floor and sleep through dinner. When Raph had missed dinner with his ma for the third day in a row, Casey came knocking.

"Bro," Casey said, wrinkling his nose. "Ya gotta get outta this apartment. It stinks and you stink. When was the last time ya took a shower?"

"Piss off, bonehead," Raph grumbled, but he moved aside to let Casey in.

His older brother looked around and clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "Ma'd have a heart attack if she saw this."

It wasn't that bad, Raph thought. Sure, there were dishes in the sink and he hadn't done laundry in two weeks. Maybe he hadn't picked up the empty beer bottles or righted the chair when he'd drunkenly stumbled into it a few nights ago, but it was alright. Raph couldn't even smell the beer that he'd spilled on the carpet anymore.

"Good thing she ain't here then."

"Yeah, good thing." Casey regarded Raphael, his deep-set cobalt eyes serious. "Raph, you okay?"

How was he supposed to answer that? Raph couldn't tell Casey how he'd spent the last two weeks drinking and beating the shit out of his belongings with directionless fury.

Raph kicked an empty beer bottle absently. "I dunno, Case. It's just … all such bullshit."

"No kiddin'," his brother responded, sitting on the arm of the upset chair. "Why doncha come get a drink with me somewhere other than this craphole you call an apartment?"

"Fuck you," Raph answered automatically, but he nodded anyway. Going out with Casey sounded like a good distraction, an alright way to pass another night on the bench.

While Casey waited, Raph showered. He wasn't exactly caked in layers of filth, but his skin was a whole new color when he finished washing. He was sure he smelled better. As an added courtesy, he even put on clean clothes before reemerging and following Casey to the El Camino.

They didn't talk as they drove to a nearby bar, Dusty's. They'd been going there since Raph had gotten his first fake ID. It was dark and dingy and the crowd was rough, just like they liked it. A fight could be counted on most nights. Even Casey and Raph had traded blows in Dusty's. The fact that the drinks were cheap and strong probably aided in that. The owner was an older woman named, unsurprisingly, Dusty. She tended the bar in a leather bustier and jeans, but sometimes she stalked the building perimeter or threw out belligerent drunks who broke her property. She didn't fight the bar's reputation and she almost never called the police, but you could bet Dusty would kick you out on your ass if you broke one of her tables. Tables didn't grow on trees.

"You wanna talk?" Casey asked as he took two bottles of beer from Dusty, one for himself and one for Raphael.

"Nope," Raph responded. He nodded at Dusty and she nodded back. Raph liked her, even though they'd exchanged maybe fifteen words in all the years he'd known the woman.

"C'mon, Raph," Casey persisted, sliding into one of the tables near the pool table.

"C'mon nothin', Casey," Raph snapped, slamming his beer down. "I don't wanna fuckin' talk about this with you, a'ight, so stop askin'!"

Casey's opened his mouth to yell back at his brother, maybe insult or cuss at him, shove him and beat it out of him, but his mother's words floated back to him.

"Give him space, Arnold," she'd said when Casey had brought up his concerns about Raph a few days ago. "You know how your brother is. He's gone through a traumatic event. You've gotta let him talk to us in his own time, sweetie."

"What if he don't?" Casey had demanded and his ma had shrugged her shoulders.

"Then he don't, Arnold. You leave him be."

"Alright, fine,' Casey grumbled at Raph, taking a plug off his beer. "Excuse me for carin', jesus."

Raph scowled. Stupid, nosey Casey. Why couldn't they just drink and enjoy each other's company? Why did they have to talk about their feelings? Talking about his feelings was one of Raph's least favorite things to do; they were all awkward and jumbled up and when he tried to talk about them he just sounded like an idiot. No, thanks.

Silence stretched between the brothers, interrupted by the occasional clink of a bottle or shuffle of feet. A couple of men played pool off behind Casey's shoulder. The smaller one was cheating, Raph was pretty sure, moving the balls just slightly when his opponent's head was turned. Raph didn't say anything; it wasn't his problem.

Minutes stretched into an hour. An hour stretched into two and two into four until neither brother was sober enough to be the designated driver.

"Casey, you idiot," Raph complained as they stumbled out of the bar into the crisp, early morning air. Their arms were thrown around each other's shoulders for shaky support. "Why'd you drink so much, huh?"

"You drank," Casey retorted, his head lolling away from Raph, then back to thud on his shoulder. "Ya big fuckin' drunk."

They'd have to take a taxi and come back for Casey's car later in the day. It was always Raph who had to be the responsible one when it came to Casey; his brother was the only person he knew who was more of a mess than Raphael himself.

Digging his phone out of his pocket, Raph flipped it open to call a cab. On the screen was a pixelated envelope and the text "1 New Message". Who was texting him in the middle of the night? Or maybe they'd texted him earlier but Raph had been too drunk to notice.

'Hello, this is Leonardo Hamato. You gave me your number at the hospital,' the message read. 'I just wanted to check in and see how you were faring. Perhaps you'd like to meet for coffee sometime this week? Please let me know if that would be acceptable.'

Raph rolled his eyes toward the sky and called the taxi company. He'd reply to the prudish text in the morning. Leonardo Hamato was probably in bed already anyway, dressed in a pajama set buttoned up to his chin and a matching sleeping cap. Right now, he needed to get Casey home before he puked on anything.

"Alright, here we go," Raph said, cramming Casey into the taxi when it pulled up to the curb. He climbed in beside him and gave the driver Casey's address. After he'd dumped his brother on the couch and locked the door behind himself, Raph took the cab home.

As he wobbled through the living room, he supposed that Casey had a point. The place was a pigsty, filled with the mess and odors of two weeks' worth of binge drinking. Yawning, Raph flopped onto his couch, letting his arm hang off the side against the barrage of beer bottles spilling out from under the sofa. He'd clean it up in the morning. Right now, he was going to sleep.

It was early afternoon when Raph woke. Groggily, he rolled off the couch and dragged himself to the bathroom so that he could wash the sandpaper taste out of his mouth and the crud from his red-rimmed eyes. Squinting blearily into the mirror, Raph grimaced; he looked as bad as he felt. The night with Casey had been welcome, but the hangover pounding like a drumline between his temples was not.

At least he didn't have to go to work. There wasn't anything he particularly had to do. Even cleaning his apartment was optional, but he decided that he should do something about the mess before things started to grow in the filth. He put a load of dishes into the dishwasher and threw away all the beer bottles before getting in the shower.

Raph turned the water on as hot as he could stand. It beat down against his skin, massaging the soreness in his head and neck. Steam fogged up his mirror but unclogged his face, opening his nostrils and ears and pores so that he felt fresher and more alert when he shut off the water and grabbed a well-worn towel from the rack.

As Raph strode from the bathroom back to the living room, he snatched his phone off the coffee table and scrolled through his messages. One from Angel, two from his ma, one from Casey asking where his car was, and one from a number he didn't have saved. Raph opened the message and read it, chuckling at Leonardo's text. What a priss. Had he replied? Raph checked his sent messages; no, he hadn't.

'Rure,' Raph typed, forgetting to click the 7 button four times to make an s. He deleted the message with a guttural grunt and retried.

'Sure. U free at 2?'

By the time Raph had buttoned his jeans and put on a clean shirt, Leo had responded.

'Yes, that would be perfectly fine. Could you meet at the Hungry Ghost? The address is 183 Sterling.'

Rolling his eyes at the formality, Raph responded with a casual 'ok' and shoved his phone into his pants pocket. It was past 1 already, so he might as well just ride over there. It wasn't far away, so maybe he'd stop and shove some food in his face before going to the coffee shop.

As it turned out, though, it wasn't necessary. The Hungry Ghost was in a strip of other small businesses. It had a black lacquered storefront and bright white letters proclaimed the coffee shop's name. Coffee shop and café. Well, damn. He should have just come here and had a panini rather than the pit stop he'd made at McDonald's. Fast food wasn't his favorite. It made him feel gross and bloated. Raph was usually strict about what he ate, but lately he was too tired and hungover to be that particular.

"Raphael."

Raph's head turned at the call of his name. In the back-corner booth, next to the big bay window, sat Leonardo. A small mug of either weak ass watery coffee or tea steamed in front of him. Checking his phone, Raph saw that it was only 1:30. Seemed like he wasn't the only one who'd gotten there early.

"Yo," Raph said in greeting, sliding into the black vinyl booth across from Leo. The policeman looked better than he had in the hospital. A bit of color had returned to his skin; at least Raph couldn't see the veins so much anymore. He was cleaner, too, and his hair was recently cut, no longer carefully shaped as it had been at ground zero nor loose and unkempt like it had been in the hospital. Short hair wasn't really a thing Raph went for, but the cut looked right on Leo. Raph smirked to himself; Leonardo was too proper for something as unconventional as long hair.

No longer wearing his dress shirt or hospital gown, Leonardo sported a short sleeve button-down shirt in powder blue tucked in light khaki pants. The stump of his arm was still wrapped in gauze, but it wasn't bloody anymore. He knew he shouldn't stare, but it was hard not to. For some reason, the stump had begun to fall in on itself like a bad soufflé.

"Donatello," Leo said, noticing Raph's eyes on his lack of an arm, "said it has to heal before he can shape it for the prosthetic. Without the rest of the arm, it flattens. It's part of the healing process, I suppose." Leonardo smiled as well, just the slight upturn of the corners of his lips. "Any other questions?"

"Nope," Raph responded, leaning back against the bench and crossing his arms over his chest. If Leo was trying to embarrass him, it wasn't going to happen.

"Alright." Leo took a drink of his tea. "Uh, thanks for meeting with me. I hope you don't think it's strange. I just wanted … uh, to talk."

Raph arched an eyebrow. "Whatchu wanna talk about?"

Leo was quiet so long, Raph didn't think he was going to answer. Once or twice, Raph opened his mouth to say something, but he didn't have anything to add to the silence. He could tell Leo about the great injustice of Angel forcing him onto leave, but Raph wasn't in the habit of sharing the personal details of his life with strangers. That was asking for trouble and no one cared anyway. He'd learned at a young age that people didn't care about each other, not really, not in some cosmic sense of moral –

"I've been having nightmares," Leo said, catching Raph off guard and interrupting his train of thought. "about that day. I … don't know how to talk to about it." Leo fidgeted with his mug, rolling it between his palms. "I don't want to see a therapist or bother my family. I thought that maybe ...?"

He let the question hang unasked in the air. Raph considered saying no, just getting up and walking out right there. Leo didn't want to bother his family, but he'd bother Raph? Raph felt he should be insulted, but, maybe, Leo thought Raph needed someone to talk to about what they'd experienced as much as he did. If Raph was honest with himself, he thought Leo might be right.

"Nightmares, huh?"

"Yes," Leo said, not raising his eyes from his fiddling hands. Nightmares wasn't a completely accurate description. Every time Leo closed his eyes, he saw the carnage of that day. He saw suffering and loss, both his own and that of others.

He'd awoken early that Tuesday, just like he did every day. Even weekends were not exempt from Leonardo's daily routine of morning meditation, yoga, and running. On work days, Leo rose even earlier to get his 10-mile jog (5 miles away, 5 miles back) in with enough time to grab a shower, eat breakfast, and roll into the station at precisely 7 am.

Karai was usually there already when Leo arrived, sucking down cups of milky sweet coffee and making the walls sweat with her piercing amber scowl. She'd follow him into his office under the pretext of discussing the day's agenda. Leo supposed it wasn't a pretext because it was an important duty they shared as captain and deputy inspector, but Karai always leaned a little too close, spoke a little too casually for Leo's comfort. It was always welcome when the other officers filtered in between 8 and 9.

He was there, in his office with Karai, when the first plane hit. Outside of his shuttered windows, men and women stared with mouths agape. Even he and Karai shared a brief, startled glance before bulleting out of the door to direct their officers.

They were on the scene by 9:15, having abandoned the car on a side road and run the rest of the way rather than fight through the standstill traffic. Many of the drivers had simply stopped in the road and stood staring at the billowing inferno against the New York skyline with horror. He understood how they felt, but he didn't have the luxury of staring. Karai radioed for dispatch to work on traffic control, to get these people out of the way because all of first-responders in the boroughs were pouring into Manhattan.

Once they were at the towers, they quickly lost one another in the chaos and Leo did not see her again until she came into his hospital room. He'd stayed in the hospital for two weeks after Raph had been released with Don guarding him like a dragon does his hoard. Finally, Don had relented and allowed Leo to go home and heal, though he had to return in six more weeks to be fitted for his new arm. Though Don had surely experienced his share of horror that day and in the weeks that followed, he never talked about it. Leo would ask if Don was alright and his brother would look up from his coffee with a distracted "huh?" then brush off Leo's concern.

"I'm fine, Leo. Hand me those pliers, would you?"

Don didn't seem any more bothered than his usual fidgety self, so maybe he was fine. Maybe he wasn't experiencing the same kind of nightmares that woke Leo in a cold sweat every night. His arm being torn from his body or engulfed in flames or swallowed down by a fiery demon while Leo tried to claw his way to safety up the crumbling towers.

The dreams made him feel petty and selfish and so he mostly kept them to himself. When he'd told Usagi, the man had frowned and gripped Leo's shoulder, giving him the sort of silent support that had always been enough before. Now, it just made Leo feel empty and alone, standing in front of an abyss that had taken something important from him but that no one else could see. At least you are alive, the world seemed to say, and that should have been enough. The shame stilled Leo's tongue more than anything and he was almost relieved when his dreams began to shift and fill with the faces of those he'd carried from the wreckage, those he had saved or tried to save.

He'd lay them out on never ending rows of stretchers, hundreds of people who crumbled into ash no matter how gently he sat them down. "I'm sorry," he'd cry as his arms burned to glowing cinders then blew away like dust.

As Leo shared his private nightmares, Raphael leaned forward on his hands, listening intently. There was no judgement on his face and he gave the slightest nod of understanding as if he, too, had had dreams like that.

"I didn't lose nothin'," he said, gesturing candidly at Leo's stumped arm, "but yeah, I think I know how ya feel."

Relief flooded Leo and he relaxed. This was why he'd wanted to meet with Raph; he'd suspected Raph would understand his experiences.

"How are you handling it?" Leo asked.

"Mostly drinkin'," Raph replied, shrugging his shoulders. "Smokin' pot sometimes."

"That's illegal, you know."

Raph laughed. "You gonna arrest me?"

"No," Leo said, sipping his tea. "I'm off duty."

"Haha," Raph said sarcastically. "Why'd you become a cop, anyway? To bust potheads?"

"No, not to bust potheads," Leo answered, having not caught Raph's sarcasm. His slight smile fell away, leaving only a serious expression. "It was because of my mother. When I was twelve and Don was eleven, our mother was killed by a Purple Dragon. They're a street gang, located mostly in-"

"I know who they are," Raph answered with a hard, clipped tone, his face morphing in anger. "They murdered my brother's dad."

Leo stared, but then he remembered Raphael's white family. Obviously adopted. That stringy haired man, Raph must have meant. His father had been killed by the Purple Dragons, just like Leo's mom.

"After that," Leo continued, nodding, "I decided that I wanted to go into law enforcement. It was childish idealism, thinking I could save the world, but I don't regret my decision. My mom used to tell me a story about starfish, and that's how I feel about my policework."

"Starfish?"

Leo nodded. "A woman is walking along the beach. She sees that many starfish have become stranded upon the shore. There are thousands of them. The woman begins to pick them up and, one by one, she throws them back into the ocean. As she does, a man comes up to her and says 'Hey, why are you wasting your time? There are too many to save; you can't make a difference.' The woman bends down and picks up another starfish, then throws it into the ocean. She says 'It made a difference to that one.'"

It took Raph a minute to understand the point of the parable, but when he did, he nodded. "Your mom sounds like she was a cool lady."

Leo nodded solemnly. "She was."

A moment of respectful silence passed before Leo asked about Raph's own reasons for becoming a firefighter.

"I just like fire," he said, laughing. "I ain't got some big story. I like danger and the thrill of it and helpin' people. Just seemed like a thing to do."

"That's as good a reason as any," Leo responded and Raph nodded.

"Damn right it is. Lemme tell ya, when I was 7, I set my ma's rug on fire. Boy was she pissed. She whooped my ass so hard I didn't sit for a week!"

Raph laughed uproariously and even Leo smiled, laughing along, imagining Raphael as a young troublemaker, setting fires and getting whooped for it.

If Leo believed in reincarnation, he might have thought that he'd known Raph in a previous life. There was no other explanation for how easily the conversation flowed once it got started and, before Leo had realized it, his stomach was rumbling for want of dinner.

Leo glanced at his watch; it was nearly 6 pm. He'd been talking with Raphael for four hours.

"See you found that watch," Raph said, nodding towards Leo's arm.

Leo chuckled. "So I did. Listen, I've got to get going."

Raph nodded, pulling himself out of the booth and stretching his arms above his head. His shirt came up a fraction, exposing his navel and the hard lines of his stomach. Leo politely looked away.

"I really enjoyed speaking with you," Leo said nervously, eyes aimed at the tiled floor. "Perhaps, uh, you'd like to do it again sometime?"

Raph rolled his eyes for the twentieth time. When they'd got to talking, Leo had been so cool and confident. Now he was trying too hard again and acting like a doofus. It would be almost cute if it weren't so pathetic.

"Yeah," Raph answered, leaving the insults unsaid. "Sure, why not?"