Allison approached the door that was slightly ajar with caution.
Though she could find his sardonic remarks humorous, Allison realized that she was somewhat afraid of speaking to Raphael. The snide comments he had made that led to his current condition were annoying in hindsight, but Allison never had been able to handle herself in a conversation that required quick wit. Anything more than applying a "sarcastic tone" eluded her, and she felt that she was walking into a battle unarmed. Maybe he just acts that way for show, she hoped, getting close enough to look into the room and seeing yet another green mass lying on a bed. Maybe he's really a nice guy and-
"What the hell are you doing in here?"
Though she hadn't even stepped into the room, the turtle in the red bandanna glared at her with a vaguely dissatisfied expression. Taking a deep breath and forcing a wry smile onto her face, Allison said, "Hello there, starshine. How's life?" Forcing himself into a sitting position as the girl stepped into the room, Raphael winced slightly as he muttered, "A pain in the ass. As per usual."
Waiting for him to get into a comfortable position, Allison glanced over his wound. A bandage was wrapped tightly around his left shoulder, not all too dissimilarly from the way her own shoulder was wrapped. The only difference was that he seemed to have many more layers of bandages, which made sense considering he had an actual wound whereas she was only bruised. From what she could tell, the shot had gotten him only a few inches above from where his heart was (or where it should have been, if he and his brothers had an internal anatomy similar to that of humans), which would explain the concern the others had felt. He seemed well enough to not let this tough-guy act die away, and this was made clear as he looked at her begrudgingly after finally sitting himself upright. "Why'd they send you in? Leo already tired of playing Florence Nightingale?"
Cautiously placing the tray over his lap and allowing him to steady it to his liking, Allison replied, "Leonardo is having a talk with Master Splinter at the moment." Raphael rolled his eyes as he opened up his box of cereal. "Figures. That chump spends too much time ruminatin' on stupid stuff."
"It's not stupid!" Allison blurted out defensively. "You were hurt and your brother was worried about you! It's only natural!" Allison instantly regretted her words and how she said them, but knew that she couldn't back out now when Raphael flashed her another look. "Natural? Natural! You're one to talk about 'natural,' okay, sister?" Seeming to think better than continuing that line of thought, he poured some cereal into the bowl and muttered, "Jeez, a scratch on the shoulder and suddenly the whole world's falling to pieces."
Allison crossed her arms over her chest and looked down. "I'm sorry," she told him rather unapologetically. "But I was worried about your injury, too. It was what made me try to pull away from that crazy bum with the rats. I didn't want Mike to get the supplies back here and discover that it was too late." A moment of silence passed and she ventured a gaze towards him. He was silently pouring milk into his bowl, absently stirring the cereal with a spoon. "Yeah, well," Raphael finally said, "it wasn't too late. So both you and Leo need to chill out over the 'could haves' and 'would haves,' capisce?" Allison said nothing as he capped the milk bottle and settled it on the nearby nightstand cluttered with the medical supplies she had bought. "Capisce?"
"Right," Allison answered, looking away. "Whatever." Spotting a chair nearby, Allison was contemplating whether she should sit down and attempt a civil conversation or if she should walk right out and sit with Donatello and Michelangelo again, when Raphael suddenly snapped at her. "Hey, listen kid, I don't get why you're acting like such a brat. I didn't have to get shot on account of you, you know. I could've just let the bozo make off with you and do what he and his buddies were gonna do with that other chick they had in the alley. I didn't even hear any thanks from you yet."
"I was going to thank you," Allison almost yelled, glaring darkly at him, "but you started going off at the mouth before I could even start." Incredulously, Raphael retorted, "Me! You're the one who comes in here and starts sticking up for Leo's worry, like you know a damned thing about any of us!"
"I came in here to give you food!"
"So you gave me food; what are you still doing here?"
"Nothing, so maybe I should just leave!"
"Then leave!"
"I will!"
Surprised at how quickly she had lost her temper, Allison could do little more than clench her fists at her sides (despite the stinging that came from her right hand) and glare at the hotheaded turtle, breathing hard. They simply stared at each other for a moment, and Allison gradually found the humorous triviality in the entire situation. Her furrowed eyebrows and grim lips were about to give way to a more genial expression when Raphael sternly ordered, "This millennium, lady." The comment only made her finally lose it and she looked down with a grin. This guy's a winner, she thought as Raphael seemed to misinterpret her smile and began yelling at her some more.
Feeling her hand tingle, she brought it up to her face and saw that her bandages were turning pink. Damn… I must've opened the wound when I balled my fists. Seeing the stained dressings, Raphael piped down. "Jeez," he murmured, "is that from those humongous rats Mikey was talking about?" Beginning to unwrap the bandage, Allison didn't even glance at him as she said, "Maybe you should chill out and not worry so much, capisce?" From the corner of her eye, she could see Raphael send her another glare and couldn't help but crack a smile as she turned away and began to leave. "Jerk," she snickered somewhat jokingly.
"Yo, where you going?" Allison looked at Raphael over her shoulder as she replied, "I'm going to go get Donatello so he can bandage me up again." She was mildly surprised when he responded, "What, you can't put on a bandage by yourself?" He motioned to the nightstand besides him. "Should be another roll on there somewhere, along with something to clean it up with." He began eating his cereal after saying these words, as though he didn't want Allison to place too much stock in the offer… if such a word could be used for that.
Not moving from her spot by the doorway, Allison inquired, "Do you usually eat your little bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios while looking at people play with open wounds?" Seeming to restrain his bitterness, Raphael responded, "Hey, no one said I was gonna be watching ya, okay? I'm just sayin' there's stuff in the room to clean that up, so ya don't need to bug Donny for something as stupid as a new bandage." With a spoonful of cereal in his mouth, he added, "And Honey Nut Cheerios makes the world go round. Screw you if you think otherwise."
Allison allowed herself to laugh as she slowly walked back towards Raphael's bed. "And here I always thought that the Earth's rotation had something to do with gravity. I have the strangest ideas sometimes." As she got to the nightstand and looked for the bandages, she heard Raphael mutter with a full mouth, "Oh, you're a riot, you know that?" Accepting the comment for the fact that it was simply his way of always needing the last word, Allison took the small roll of bandages, some tissue, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol and sat in the nearby chair.
Seeing the rat bite for the first time, Allison cringed. It didn't necessarily look bad or infected (other than being very red and very swollen), but the huge gashes reminded her of the enormity of the rats. If her instincts hadn't driven her to smash the rat against the mailbox, she would most likely have been missing an inch of flesh right below her knuckles. Wiping the excess blood away with the clean part of the bandage, she was thankful to see that there was no pus, just blood. Granted, she didn't know anything about medicine, but the sight of pus sickened her, and so she was glad to see just the ruby liquid from her wound. I should probably get this looked at by a professional, she thought as she tossed the used bandage into a nearby waste basket and began opening the alcohol bottle. These look even deeper than the time I almost cut my thumb off with the table saw… I'll probably be needing stitches or something.
Soaking a handful of tissue with alcohol, she absently set the damp tissue on her wound… and nearly dropped the bottle as she gasped loudly. Yanking the alcohol away from the cuts, Allison bit back a shout on account of not wanting to deal with anymore of Raphael's distemper until she got this done. However, it looked like the gasp was enough to attract his attention. "Hurts?"
Allison swallowed the bitingly sarcastic words back, knowing that she would be liable to declare verbal war on him because of the blinding sting. She slowly nodded, holding the tissue a few inches above her wound as though preparing to suddenly drop it once the pain subsided. Looking at her swollen hand, Allison mentally challenged herself to simply accept the hurt when she suddenly heard, "C'mere."
Looking up, she saw that Raphael had extended one hand towards her, using the other to set the now-empty bowl and tray to the side. "What?" Allison queried, suddenly worried. Annoyed, Raphael repeated, "C'mere." Putting the bottle of alcohol down on the floor, Allison stood up and slowly walked over to him. With his extended hand, he brusquely grabbed the arm of the injured hand, causing Allison to flinch. Great, she thought while squeezing her eyes shut as he took the alcohol-soaked tissues in his other hand. He's just gonna hold me down and tell me to grin and bear it. Oh man, this is worse than getting a shot at the doctor's office.
"The problem with you is," Raphael told her lowly, "you're just going for it head on, causing yourself more pain than it's worth. You might get away with that if ya scrape your elbow or something, but something this big needs to be tackled a bit more carefully." Flabbergasted, Allison opened her eyes and looked down, seeing that he was gently edging the alcohol closer and closer to the larger gashes, getting her used to the quiet stinging before moving on to the more serious wounds.
As the wounds got larger, Allison's discomfort grew. Her fingers twitched to close into a fist once again, but the hand holding her arm lowered and held her hand open. "Oh no, you don't," Raphael said warningly. "That'll only make the wound open even more and cause you to bleed longer. I'm surprised Donny didn't warn ya about that." Adjusting his much larger hand within her palm, he added, "There. If it hurts, squeeze into my hand." Trying not to speak in a whimper, she informed him, "I have a really tight grip." With a smirk, Raphael told her, "Give it your best shot."
With that, he finally covered the entire wound with the alcohol, wiping at it more gently than Allison would have expected. This didn't stop her gut reaction to clench her fist, however, and her fingers quickly pressed into Raphael's strange hand and wrist. She noted a small grimace from Raphael as he mumbled, "That is a tight grip." Relaxing somewhat as he seemed to finish up, Allison sighed, "Yeah, nurses used to hate it when I held onto their hands during shots and procedures."
The blood mostly wiped away, Raphael motioned for her to get the bandages. As she retrieved them from the chair, he asked, "You had a lot of… 'procedures?'" Picking up the roll of bandages, she kept her back to him as she responded, "Kinda. I… was a sick kid. And accident prone. Always getting banged up some way or the other." She handed him the bandages, noticing another small smirk on his face. "Heh. Sounds like tonight's encounters were just waitin' to happen to ya, huh?"
"I guess," she told him as he began unwrapping the bandages. "It just… still seems so surreal." He nodded as he began taking care of her hand. "Yeah, that's what they all say at first. You'll get used to it quick."
"All?" Allison asked, a bit surprised. "You mean other people know about you?" With a sharp laugh, Raphael responded, "Of course. You didn't think we'd manage to live here all this time and not get at least a few other visitors, huh? I mean, if we hadn't already been trained in dealing with humans, Mikey probably woulda done the smart thing and look for an address on ya and leave ya at your place." He paused for a moment, then added, "I guess we should know by now we can't trust Mikey to do the smart thing."
Pushing her hair out of her face, Allison queried, "But… if you've been here all this time, how come you haven't… well… how come the newspapers and scientists haven't gotten wind of you? I mean, all that stuff that happened concerning that Oroku Saki guy and the Foot Clan… shouldn't it have gotten you guys at least some sort of mention in the papers, good or bad?" With a hard bitterness in his voice, Raphael explained, "As much as Leo and Donny and the rest want us to be the saviors of human society, we know we gotta keep things on the down low, or else we might as well pack up and head for a swamp in Florida."
A moment passed, and Allison whispered, "You guys deserve better than what you have, after-" She winced as he tightly tied the bandage, and a look into Raphael's eyes told her that the wince was fully intentional. "Better? Like what? Who's to say we ain't happy here, huh? We've got food, shelter, and each other. We don't need to go and get jobs and pay rent for some shithole that's even more fallen apart than this place is. We don't need to worry about wearing just the right clothes to impress just the right people to make just the right 'connections' in the world. We're happy, and if you think we need your pity, then you're out of your damn mind, got that?"
Surprised at the outburst just when it seemed she had been reaching him on some level, Allison pulled her hand away and stepped back from him. He didn't seem at all ashamed at what he had just said, and she couldn't help but wonder what caused his disposition. It was then that Donatello's words came back into her mind: "…I guess the thought of being an outcast for the rest of his life pretty much weighs on his mind more than he'd like to admit." Her eyes softened at the thought, and she was almost horrified to discover that she was only giving him more pity. Pity? No. Empathy. "Just because I'm human doesn't mean I don't know how you feel," she uttered thinly.
"Oh, what," Raphael scoffed. "You gonna give me some sob story about how you were a nerd in school? How you were the kid who rocked out to Band A while everyone else liked Band B? How you couldn't fit in, no matter how much you tried? Jeez, kid, if you're tryin' to be my friend by feeding me that-"
"Why don't you just shut the hell up and listen for once, dammit?"
Raphael gaped at her, surprised by Allison's interruption. Instead of conceding to her request, he looked away from her, seeming to quietly seethe. Seeing that this wasn't going to be easy on either of them, Allison knelt down by the bed and looked down at her newly-bandaged hand, sitting back on her heels. This is stupid. He's not going to care at all.
"The reason I was so accident prone as a kid is because I was overweight. Like,… really, really overweight. And yet I still tried to run around like all of the other kids, and when a fat kid falls, it hurts. Not just physically, but emotionally. When a bunch of eight-year-olds see a fat girl falling on her face, the natural reaction is to point and laugh. Hell, when a bunch of eight-year-olds see a fat girl doing just about anything, they point and laugh.
"After a while, I just stopped trying to be like everyone else and was happy with just keeping to myself, being who I am. In high school, I realized that I really was that kid who listened to this while everyone else listened to that. I hated the fascination with appearances and cliques, and didn't care what the other girls with the perfect bodies said about me. When we die, we'll just all resort back to the dust from which we came, and so it was stupid for me to worry about lip gloss.
"The same thing happened in college. Fuck the world, I'm me. I went to a really small school in a suburban area, where everyone came from the same cookie cutter. I only went there because they gave me the most scholarships, and I didn't let the awkwardness bother me. No one talked to me, except for those weird outreach groups that wanted the whole world on their side. And I didn't care. I was fine with that. Until….
"… near the end of my sophomore year, I discovered my mother had cancer. I had about four weeks left for the semester, so I figured I'd just wait until after finals to go back home." Allison paused for a long time, her vision wavering with tears. "By the time I got home, she was already in the ground.
"No one told me. I'm an only child, and my parents have been divorced since forever, so I don't really know my dad. I was always the strange one in the family, usually with a smartass comment to make about my viewpoints on life. No one wanted to hear me. No one wanted to talk to me. And that was fine. Until the day I rushed into my mother's house and saw my aunt putting things in boxes." Allison felt her throat go dry. She paused to swallow, determined not to cry in front of a hardassed turtle. After a moment, she went on.
"I missed my mother's funeral just because I was 'different.' I didn't have anyone to go to, anyone to cry with… and for the first time in my life, I realized how alone I was. If I died, no one would care. My body would be another Jane Doe. And all because I refused to allow myself to be what people wanted me to be." She managed a breathy laugh. "It seems so trivial. The clothes I wore, the music I listened to, the books I read… none of that had anything to do with me. None of it dealt with my personality at all, except superficially. It just made me different, and for that, people judged me. And for that, I felt it was within my right to judge people. I took my differences and kept them for myself, wallowing in them. They're mine, and no one else's.And because of that, my mother died without ever saying goodbye to her only daughter.
"I dropped out of school. I just couldn't do it anymore. And I decided that I needed to… change. I needed to bend. So I lost weight. Cut my hair. Stopped reading fantasy novels. Started looking at fashion magazines. Watched more soap operas, played less video games. And I became… normal. And people… spoke to me. And it was nice. Very nice. But I guess on the inside, I always knew it was just a cop out. It was fake."
She looked up, and Raphael was still looking away. She wondered if he heard anything she had said, but decided that it didn't matter. She hadn't said any of this out loud to anyone before, and getting it out helped her more than she could have thought. "And now I look at you, Raphael. At your brothers. And you were made the way you are and can't do anything about it. You can't just wear a different style of clothing or anything. And I wonder, do you feel trapped?"
Raphael shifted uncomfortably, and Allison felt slightly relieved, knowing that he was listening. Looking back at her hand, she continued, "But you didn't do what I did. You didn't use your uniqueness as a means to cut yourself completely away from the people who would mistreat you because of it. You didn't stop caring. You honed the skills given to you by your mutations, and you're using them to protect those who would use those very mutations against you. For people who haven't found the balance between losing themselves in society and ostracizing themselves from what could otherwise be a functional life. And, like you, I'm not sure if I understand logically why you do what you do, considering the way this world operates. But I do understand that, somehow… it makes you a far better person than I've ever been at any stage in my life."
The quiet overcame the room as Allison slowly lost herself in her memories. Though her current friends and co-workers knew that Allison's mother was dead and she wasn't very close to the rest her family, she had never articulated the reasons for this before. Perhaps on some level, she just didn't want to bring herself to face it. She didn't want to acknowledge how she had suffocated her own personality around whatever pop culture dictated she should be interested in. She didn't want to think that, though she did smile more often now that she had Robert and her other friends to talk to… she was somehow happier before, when she didn't try to please anyone but herself. Was she selfish, then, or was this just a trait of humanity?
"Eavesdropper," Raphael stated suddenly.
Allison looked up at him and saw that he was looking towards the door. Following his gaze, she saw no one there, but Leonardo slowly stepped into her line of vision. "Just checking in," the more solemn turtle said quietly. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything." Allison swiftly got to her feet, gingerly resting her injured hand at her side. "N… no," she began, but was quickly interrupted by Raphael's brash sarcasm. "Talk about a mood-killer, Leo. A little more and I would've been able to get her social security number and credit card info."
Allison looked back down at the wounded turtle, wondering whether or not what she said had had any bearing on him whatsoever. He seemed grateful for the interruption, and so Allison left it at that. "I guess I'll just go hang out with Mike and Donatello a bit more," she said, heading towards the door.
As she crossed paths with Leonardo, she stopped when she heard his voice. "Actually, Allison, Master Splinter thinks it's best if you rest a bit more. It's after midnight, and it would probably be a good idea for you to get some sleep as you heal." Allison blinked at him. "Sleep? Does he honestly expect me to be able to sleep after everything that's happened today?"
"Why don't you take her for some sparring, Leo? Maybe that'd tire her out." Leonardo allowed a bemused smile to emerge as he looked at his brother. "Not tonight, Raph," he said levelly as he approached the nightstand. "And if you don't get some sleep as well, you won't be sparring for a long time." Gathering up the tray and everything Allison had brought in, Leo commented, "Your mouth must want some rest after all the running you made it do tonight."
"Oh har, har," Raphael griped as Leo made his way back towards the door. "You must be taking wit lessons from Mikey." Ignoring his brother, Leonardo chucked his head towards the door, signaling for Allison to follow. "C'mon," he told her. "I'm not going to force you off to bed, but we should at least leave Raphael on his own for a bit." Nodding, Allison followed after him. As she moved to close the door behind them, she glanced back at the loud reptile and said, "G'night, Raphael."
Just before the door closed shut behind her, she heard his sour voice respond, "Yeah, whatever."
