I don't own any of the characters, movies, books, etc. that are mentioned in here, except for Ruby.
He made a point, the next time they met, to ask her name. It turned out to be Ruby, although she didn't offer a last name. He figured that she has as much trouble trusting him as he did her; heck, probably more. But the visits got a little easier after that. He'd catch her nearly every day, even if they didn't have anything new to exchange. Being able to just do his own thing, without hiding behind a magazine or tuning out Mikey's caterwauling or Master Splinter's fucking annoying meditation CDs, was incredibly relieving. Ruby didn't tell him so, but he got the feeling that she enjoyed having company during her downtime.
She got him hooked on the Discworld books; he brought her a few series he had painstakingly collected over the years. She didn't comment on the water-stained novels, and he didn't comment on the brand-new, unbroken books she 'lent' him but never asked him to return. He'd soon acquired his own little pile in the shadow, minus the Oreos. She let him borrow copies of Broadway musicals that he carefully hid from his brothers, and cussed him out when he brought her the first volume of 'Kill Bill' and none further.
Sometimes he was too wired up to read; meeting with Ruby usually took place before patrol, when he was keyed up to go and get moving. Those meetings were often short; just a quick exchange of words before he left to meet his brothers. He learned her schedule well enough to know when to expect her to still be up by the time patrol ended, and when she realized that he would be waiting for her then she stayed up later, even when it began to get colder at night.
It was sooner than Raph hoped, but later than he'd expected that Leo and Donnie caught on to the change in his schedule. He'd been out one time too many; he'd been home one night too late; and both they and Splinter were curious as to where he was going. He made the excuse of meeting up with Casey and hoped that none of them would follow up on that; Jones was so defensive and impossible to talk to that if Leo did try to interrogate him he'd probably lie just to get on Leo's nerves, but Raph hoped that it wouldn't come to it. He was reluctant to actually ask Casey to cover for him; the idiot was still jonesing to be a detective, and Raphael didn't want to become his first 'case'.
Mikey didn't tell a soul. Raph hadn't talked to him further about what he was doing and Mikey did not ask. He was usually the nosiest of the four, but despite his lackadaisical attitude toward privacy he very clearly understood the need to have something that didn't have to be shared with anyone else, and he respected Raph's space. Raphael made his first request to Ruby about four weeks into their tentative friendship, and asked her for a few copies of comics he knew his brother was missing from his collection.
That opened a dialogue between them, about their families. Raph refused to give names, but he told her about his brothers - vague, shady details that could apply to any family anywhere. In return, she told him about hers. It was odd to hear about someone else's family; Raph's was so loud, so larger-than-life that they kind of drowned out anything else. April never talked about her father except in relation to them and his work. Jones rarely discussed his little sister; apparently she was living upstate, but that was all Raph knew. Ruby, on the other hand, told him that she was the middle child in a group of three; one older brother and a younger sister, both of them very far away. She loved to talk about her family – their faults, their good points, the stupid shit they had pulled as kids – and for the first time Raph got a look at a family that did not intertwine with his, didn't have anything to do with aliens or psychopathic ninjas or mad scientists. It made him feel a little lonely, but also part of a larger world outside of his insane patch of New York underground.
Apparently she had not been in the city for long; the animal shelter that she worked at had only hired her nine months ago. Raphael, who had never been farther out of the city than Sachs's estate, was horrified at how little she had explored, and was not quiet about it. In exchange for her introducing him to Pat Conroy books, mail-ordering him pralines from Georgia, and showing him what was so fucking special about sweet tea, he gave her directions to the best food joints, the most striking rooftop views, and a hand-knit poncho. The poncho was a big hit; apparently nobody had ever made anything for her before, and she immediately shrugged off her coat and discarded it, wriggling into the wrap with every sign of enjoyment.
She wasn't nearly as reluctant to be seen as he was and he caught a few indistinct glimpses of her in those first few weeks. She wasn't as willowy as April and sometimes light would flash on the corner of her face, like she was wearing glasses, when they began to watch movies on her laptop (with difficulty. Ruby refused to dangle her computer on the ledge of a building so they had to find a different spot, one with a shadow large and deep enough that Raph felt comfortable hiding in it. It wasn't as good as the ledge and Ruby spent two weeks very obviously not pushing him, but eventually they settled on a compromise where he stuck to the best shadow he could find and she simply wouldn't look into it.)
The amount of trouble that they both went to got on Raph's nerves and he wished, really wished, that he could just show up and sit beside her and they wouldn't have to keep secrets or dance around things he couldn't talk about. There was a hot feeling of shame that he quickly punched into the back of his mind that first month, until he realized that Ruby actually was not judging him. He could be as careless or as paranoid as he wanted and she'd roll with it. It was an unusual concept, and he wondered how far it could go. April got weirded out by the more inhuman aspects of their biology; Casey would say some of the stupidest shit without even thinking about it; Vern – as much as Raph disliked him – actually went with everything the easiest, but he still could be an insensitive dick. But Ruby cleaned up crap and molted feathers, treated scale-rot and ringworm, played with tarantulas and socialized feral cats, and Raph had the feeling that she wouldn't be weirded out by his family shedding the occasional skin or scutes or having to build specialized furniture. He would never find out, but it was a comforting thought.
It all nearly went to hell in a handbasket about three months after their acquaintance turned into an actual friendship, when Raph caught onto Donatello following him one night. He'd had to make a detour to Casey's place, a surprisingly nice little place in Brooklyn, and he hung around the empty apartment like he'd been there a hundred times before Jones got home and nearly ruined the whole thing. Casey went pretty easily with the whole 'we do this every night, just go with it' looks that Raph shot at him until Donnie went away, but tried to interrogate him afterward on what was going on. He sucked at it, and Raph merely sneered some sarcastic comments and went on his merry way, but he knew that Casey would be telling April, and April…would actually probably check with Raph before she went to anyone else. She was pretty cool about that, and had learned the consequences of saying the wrong things to the wrong people. Raphael was not looking forward to that interrogation. He was comfortable lying to a lot people, but April was not one of them.
He didn't visit with Ruby for almost a solid two weeks after that – still leaving the lair every night, but either going to Casey's or April's or just running around the city, just to make sure that Donnie got off his trail. As much as he liked April, and tolerated Casey, he'd gotten used to the still nights on the rooftop. He returned to Ruby's just to have an Oreo thrown at his head; he'd caught it and eaten it, and they finished the package while he explained to her that he had not told his family about their meetings. She'd been quieter than normal that night, and when they watched a bootlegged movie she'd inched closer to his shadow than before. The possibility that she'd missed their meetings just as much as he did hadn't occurred to him; he'd teased her about it for a couple of days, but the realization had been a good feeling.
By the third week of October Ruby was ready to drop and sleep right on the clinic floor, she was so tired. Work had been particularly hectic with a horrifying number of tame and feral cats, three-quarters of which were black and therefore difficult to adopt, and a sudden cold snap had reminded her that she was little prepared for a New York winter. On top of everything else her mysterious rooftop had been AWOL for two weeks, making her wonder and worry about what had happened to him; had he been arrested? Kidnapped? Jumped off the roof? Got bored with their meetings? Moved? Murdered? Sick? His absence reminded her just how alone she was in the New York, with no family and no friends outside of work, insular and isolated in a city of eight million people.
He showed up quietly, so suddenly that Ruby chucked an Oreo at his head. Apparently he had some secret ninja moves, because he caught the thing before explaining to her that he had been getting his brothers off his back. It had never occurred to her that Raphael might have been keeping their meetings a secret, especially not from his family. But then, she hadn't told her family about him. What was she supposed to say? That she was meeting a mysterious man on a rooftop, at night, without ever seeing him? Her brother would hitchhike straight up from Florida just to knock some sense into her and beat Raphael to a pulp. It was easy to understand his hiding and his absence, then. They'd watched Pacific Rim and finished up her Oreos and Ruby had half-stuffed herself into Raphael's shadow, keeping her eyes averted but needing to feel that he was present. Work sucked the next day when she only got four hours of sleep, having stayed late on the rooftop to try and extend their meeting, but it was worth it.
Sometimes their visits were short, sometimes long, sometimes they talked and others they just read in silence, but they met almost every day after his disappearance. He'd usually show up either before her or very late into the evening, when she was just about ready to go to bed, and she had to wonder what exactly he did that kept him up and about so often. She'd looked around, but there was nobody called Raphael in her apartment building or the others next to it; it was as if he'd appeared straight out of the air. The fact that she couldn't give a physical description of him outside of has a big silhouette and wears a lot of leather didn't help much either.
Their policy of 'no questions' frayed a bit at the edges when he told her about avoiding his brothers. She didn't ask for names and he didn't give them, but he was more open than he had been previously, telling her about something one brother blew up, or a prank the youngest pulled, or how the eldest of the group was always pushing his buttons. Ruby got more of the impression that Raph just had a lot of buttons, but declined to comment as he ranted for a solid ten minutes, pacing back and forth on the shadowed side of the ledge like a spitting cat.
She learned that he and his siblings had been raised by his father, someone who Ruby got the impression that Raphael had an immense respect for. She could sympathize; being one of three kids raised by a single mom, she understood how much effort and dedication it took. He had apparently also been homeschooled by this father, which was damn impressive, considering that the guy had four sons to both raise and teach.
There were a lot of things he wouldn't tell her; what his family did, where they lived, what their names were and how old they were. Personal things, Ruby realized, little facts that might identify them. Were they celebrities or criminals? Was he simply secretive, or actually hiding something?
She supposed that it didn't matter. Whatever the reason he didn't want her to know about his family, she didn't get any bad vibes from him. Maybe she was wrong and he was part of a gang of serial killers, maybe she wasn't, but either way she wanted to enjoy their nighttime visits for as long as she could. Alone time was something that Ruby craved, especially after a long day at the shelter, but it had been a while since she'd made a friend who could simply be. Raphael was not one of the myriad people she found it was tiring to interact with, and therefor she enjoyed spending her downtime with him.
The only thing that really gave Ruby a clue about why Raph was so secretive happened late in December, just a few days after Christmas. Ruby – wrapped in a whole assortment of the knit winter-wear that Raphael kept giving her – had been walking home from the subway when she'd been pulled behind some scaffolding and into an alley. She'd barely had time to scream before a tennis shoe landed in her face, and when she stumbled to the ground a hand was rifling through her pants pockets, another through her poncho. She threw her purse as hard as she could, catching somebody on the shoulder, and it earned her a glancing kick to the thigh. The second assailant started palming through her bag, and then a massive…something had landed hard on the concrete and sent the guy flying into the wall. The other was swiftly removed from Ruby's side and given similar treatment, although with a little more ass-kicking, from what Ruby could tell in the darkness. The new guy let out a loud HA and picked Ruby up with one arm. She'd watched him with a bleeding nose and dirt-crusted eyes as he retrieved her bag and pressed it into her chest.
"Here you go, dudette," he said. "You okay?"
His shadow-within-a-shadow was not particularly tall, but something about his bulk had reminded Ruby of Raphael. His hand had nearly swallowed her forearm, rough and strong, and when he moved she heard fabric swishing and the clatter of metal and plastic. For some reason, he'd seemed to be staring very intently at her.
When she'd opened her mouth to reply she remembered that she'd been kicked in it, but she tried to smile at him anyway.
"I…shit, ow, yeah, thank you – "
"Mikey! Come on!"
The newcomer disappeared as suddenly as he'd appeared before Ruby had even finished her sentence, and she barely saw his shape vanish over the top of the building before the clanging of the fire escape had even stopped its echo. She'd gone home, put an icepack on her face and leg, and waited for Raphael to show up. It had been one of the later nights, when he arrived just a little bit before she was ready to turn in, smelling of sweat and the city, exhilaration still riding in his voice.
The bleeding from her nose stopped just before he came, though Ruby was still spitting blood into a hand-towel.
"What the fuck happened to you?!"
She'd chosen to lean against the rooftop side of the AC unit, staring right into his shadow. Apparently he climbed right up the side of the wall, and Ruby silently evaluated her opinion of him being an XXXL-sized Spiderman.
"Got mugged," she said with a shrug. The slight thickness from her swollen lip kind of ruined it. "Somebody called Mikey gave me a hand. Maybe you know him? Big, brawny, stayed in the shadows?"
The very silence around Raphael had echoed with a cringe and oh shit. They talked at length and with no small amount of hesitation, pauses, and redacted sentences, and that's how Ruby found out that Raphael was a vigilante. Part of a group of vigilantes, no less, made up of him and his brothers.
It was better than serial killers, at least.
Ruby brought Watchmen, The Avengers, and every single Spiderman movie she could rent for them to watch the next night. Raphael was not amused.
The little thing in the 2014 film where Raph knows how to knit? That's my favorite thing. Bigassmagnet on tumblr headcanoned that he knits April an entire winter wardrobe, and I'm totally glomming on that idea. Got to do something during all those hours in the Hashi. I also loved how absolutely horrible at lying everybody but Donnie was.
I've never read any Pat Conroy books (don't tell anyone. I think the whole of coastal South Carolina would gang up on me). But I have had pralines from Savannah and Charleston and they are the best things EVER, it's just maple syrup and pecans but it's fantastic. And people get real serious about their sweet tea down south. It's almost more popular than beer, which is really saying something.
I was so insulted the other day. I was reading this book and then it…ended. Like an asshole. SAME thing with 'Kill Bill', I rented the first movie and then it ended on a massive cliffhanger and I was muttering 'FUCK Quentin Tarantino' for five minutes.
I think the brothers are canonically about seventeen by the 2016 film, but I have so much difficulty in believing that so I'm just making everybody twenty or twenty-one or so for this fic. The 2014 film is the hardest – you cannot convince me that those boys are actually fifteen in that film, no matter what canon says. They do feel a little younger in the sequel, but I'm still pushing them up to their twenties, because that's just how I see them. If you try to tell me that twenty-something men never act like that, then clearly you've never lived in a college dorm.
My shelter doesn't actually deal with much more than cats or dogs. We've gotten in guinea pigs, horses, a snake, and one emu, but my town really isn't a big one for exotic animals. I'm actually basing some of Ruby's tasks and experiences on the animals seen in the movie The Secret Life of Pets, which takes place in New York. There were lizards, birds, rodents, snakes, every kind of dog or cat, etc.
Black cats are the least likely to be adopted, even though they really are the best cats ever. As a person who works with animals it is my professional opinion that black cats are awesome. So the next time you want a cat, please consider getting a black cat. If you're worried about them being bad luck, remember that a black cat loving you is good luck.
The movies Ruby brings all center in New York, so that's why she didn't bring Batman as well.