Rain poured down April's office window, drumming against the glass. As much as April hated getting wet every time she stepped outside, she was grateful that it was finally warm enough for rain. No matter how many layers she put on, or how high she turned the heat up, she just hadn't been able to shake the aching cold lately. The end of winter was gnawing at her; she could feel it in her bones, in the tips of her fingers that were always just a little bit numb. Her stomach lurched slightly and April leaned forward, clutching her abdomen. Please don't puke please don't puke - she thought desperately to herself, eyes frantically darting from her desk to the floor where the wastepaper basket was.

Morning sickness was a total misnomer. Between week nine and week ten April had gone from periodically feeling slightly nauseous to feeling like she was going to vomit all day. Every day. She sighed miserably. Being pregnant sucked. April rifled through a pile of papers on her desk, groping until she heard plastic crinkling under paper. As her guts churned, but she felt the smallest sense of reprieve as her fingers closed around the half-eaten sleeve of saltine crackers. She popped one into her mouth and chewed lugubriously as she scrolled through her inbox, dragging e-mails into the appropriate folders. She shoveled another saltine into her mouth and glanced down at the bottom of her screen at the clock. Twenty minutes until her office hours were officially over.

Twenty minutes until she could leave the university, get on the train, and go home. April absentmindedly bit her lip. She still didn't know how she was going to tell him.

She had rehearsed the conversation over and over while she laid awake at night, staring at the ceiling, with only the sound of the wind tapping at the window for company. When she had finally succumbed to her wit's end, she briefly considered writing him an e-mail about it, just to get it over with. But now it was Valentine's Day, and he was coming over later, and she was going to have to figure out how to tell him she was pregnant over Chinese food and the false pretense of a bullshit Hallmark holiday. April rubbed her eyes behind her glasses. She wanted him to know. That was as far ahead as she could think. One step at a time, she tried to reassure herself. She would cross the next bridge when she came to it.

April mercilessly deleted a slough of e-mails from a student irate over the B she had given them on their latest paper. She took a deep breath. At least office hours had been slow. She hadn't even had one student come to visit her. It was just as well. She probably would have puked in front of them. Or on them. Breathe in. She reminded herself. Breathe out - she exhaled, trying to be mindful of her breath despite the overwhelming sensation of nausea that gripped her entire being. She felt like like she was on the deck of a boat rocking back and forth on the tide; her guts sloshing back and forth accordingly. Her phone vibrated across the surface of her desk, causing her to pause mid-chew.

A message from Casey was flashed on screen. Vid chat? :)

She choked down a mouth full of half-masticated cracker and picked up her cell. She hadn't heard from Casey since before Christmas. It wasn't unusual for them to go a few months in between texts or calls, though she had found herself wondering when she would hear from him. She hadn't woken up to a cascade of drunk text messages sent in the wee hours in the morning, or received any sorts of calls asking him to settle a debate between him and his team mates about who would win in a fight – Wolverine or whoever the topic of conversation was (he always made it a point to let her know her opinion carried additional weight, as a scientist and all). She hadn't expected any more last minute tutoring requests since he had lost his scholarship, but she had thought…she frowned. She had thought she would hear from him. He just left on Christmas day, without a word; without a text, or a call, or even a note. How could she blame him after what had happened between him and Don? Between her and Don? Her heart sank.

The phone vibrated again – pulsing in the palm of her hand. Her fingers tightened around her cell as her eyes drifted to her door. Her office mate was already gone for the day. And she hadn't had any students during office hours all day…Fuck it, she thought to herself. The door was locked and her reply was sent within seconds.

Love to.

Before April was back in her computer chair, her phone was vibrating again, a photo of Casey smiling widely (showing off his new front teeth) filling the screen. April couldn't help but chuckle to herself as she slid her thumb over her to cell to accept the chat request.

"Hey," she said, stifling a burp that tasted like a pile of saltine crackers and puke.

"Red!" Casey was smiling his best lopsided smile. "How's it goin?"

"Oh you know. Same ole, same ole," April lied, and tried to remember how to smile. "How 'bout you?"

"Oh you know, awesome," he leaned back and shot April a signature Casey Jones smirk.

April rolled her eyes, but she tried to be good natured about it. "That's good –"

"Yeah, I mean, Gabe and I moved back in together, and we got this sweet trailer," he was ticking his accomplishments off with the fingers of his free hand. Casey swiveled the phone around in front of him to display his new digs. It was…what was the word they liked to use on those lifestyle blogs? Cozy. It seemed cozy. Casey brought the phone back to his face, and April saw that he was sitting in an old, leather recliner. It creaked as he leaned into it.

"And I got a job!"

At least things are working out for one of us, April thought, her heart feeling so heavy she thought it might break. "That's really great, Casey."

"Yeah, Gabe hooked me up at the diner. Real greasy spoon sort of place, but whatever. Pays the bills. Mostly," a sheepish grin spread across his face. "Oh! Speakin' of Gabe - " he ruffled his greasy black hair. "I wanted you to meet her."

April blinked. Her? She watched as Casey took a lean back and a beautiful blonde woman slid into view beside him. She smiled and waved. Said hello. April blinked back at the beautiful woman standing next to Casey from behind her glasses, and suddenly felt blisteringly embarrassed. She was fully aware of how she was becoming increasingly disheveled looking with each passing day since her visit to the doctor last week, but until this moment, she couldn't have been bothered about it. April's cheeks flushed a bright pink thinking about her sloppy bun piled on top of her head and the bags beneath her eyes. She couldn't even remember the last time she put on makeup.

"Uh," she mumbled. "Hi." She waved back, slowly. Awkwardly.

"April!" Gabe smiled through the phone. "I've heard so much about you!"

Tucking one of many errant hair behind her ear, April opened her mouth to speak but she could not manage a single word. She suddenly felt fourteen again, like she was in highschool, clutching her binders, staring at cheerleaders and football players from behind her cokebottle glasses. She felt as miserable as she did then, smiling back at the popular kids with a mouthful of braces, and a face drowned out by her freckles, only to be ignored. Gabe was stunning. Like, captain of the cheer squad stunning. Beautiful blonde hair down to her shoulders. Beautiful green eyes. Beautiful smile. Just. Beautiful.

"You're Gabe?" the words fell out of April's painfully dry mouth. "Like, Gabe the roommate Gabe?"

Gabe's perfectly manicured eyebrow cocked incredulously at Casey Jones. "Roommate?"

"Just before we got serious," Casey chuckled nervously.

"I thought you told Raph-" April began, only to be cut off by another outburst of nervous chuckles from her old friend Casey Jones.

"Whatever. You know how Raph gets," he shrugged dismissively. Then he smiled. Changed the subject. "How are you?"

"Fine," April croaked, her mouth suddenly painfully dry from eating nothing but saltines all day.

As Gabe looked up at Casey, shapely lips curled into a beaming smile, like she had won some sort of prize, April couldn't help but wonder if this woman even knew him. How could she even really know him, if she didn't even know about all the years he patrolled the streets of New York at night, armed with little more than a hockey stick and arrant stupidity. How could she know Casey if she didn't know that he had spent the better part of the last decade fighting alongside mutants and freaks, trying to keep the world from falling into shadow. How could she even really know him, if all she knew was his position on the hockey team, and how shit his grades were. Something about the way Casey glossed over Raphael told her that Gabe had no clue. But she knew about her; she knew April. And April knew that wasn't because Casey loved her, once. It was because she was the only one who could pass for something normal. Her stomach lurched thinking about what an egregious lie that was, and it twisted again, because she knew how good she was at pretending it was true.

"How's New York?" Casey prompted, snapping April out of her thoughts.

"Rainy," her eyes drifted to her office window, streaked gray with water droplets cascading down the glass. "Which is better than snowy, I guess. I'm so over winter."

"I know," Gabe said, sympathetically. "Winter just feels like it goes on forever here in Goat Head. We're supposed to get another snowstorm this week."

"Goat Head?" April asked. "I thought you went back to Michigan."

Goat Head did not sound like a place in Michigan. Though, as April recalled from several games of trivial pursuit she had unapologetically creamed the turtles at, Michigan did have cities called things like Vulcan and Hell and Kalamazoo. So maybe Goat Head wasn't all that strange. But then again, strange was relative. And April O'Neil's barometer for the strange and unusual wasn't exactly average.

"Yeah, we did. But we wanted to move to Colorado to be closer to Gabe's folks," Casey explained. Next to him, Gabe nodded. She looked up at him with those big green eyes. Tugged on her sweater. "But that's not important!" Casey grinned, moving on. "What's important isssss. That -" he threw an arm around Gabe's shoulder, "we're havin' a baby!"

"What?" April's stomach dropped.

"I'm having a baby," Gabe wiggled out from under Casey's arm. And then the veneer of her aggravation gave way to that beautiful I'm a Cheerleader smile as she tugged at her sweater again. "Yep. Due in August!"

She sounded happy. And Casey looked so happy. April wanted to feel that happy. About the baby. About anything. So she forced herself to smile. "Congratulations."

"Check it out!" Casey crowed, repositioning his phone to exhibit the slightest, smallest bump beneath Gabe's heavy knit sweater. If Casey hadn't made it a point to zoom in and out like a close up in a Quentin Tarantino flick, April would never have even known she was pregnant. April silently, deeply begrudged Gabe for being one of those "radiant" pregnant people, when she just looked (and felt) hungover all the time.

"Come on, babe, I'm not even really showing," Gabe protested gently.

"Isn't it awesome!?" Casey shouted, pointing enthusiastically to Gabe's middle. And then he was grinning at April through the screen again.

"Totally," April smiled back at him. A genuine one this time. It felt good to smile for real. "Congratulations you two."

"We wanted to ask you..." Gabe began, almost shyly. April quirked a brow. How much had Casey told Gabe about her that she was nervous?

She wondered if Gabe knew what happened between her and Casey; about the years of agony and indecision before she and Donatello finally came together. She wondered if Casey went home to Gabe, after he kissed her at the conference that night, all those years ago. She wondered how they met. Was it at a frat party - or a football game Casey begrudgingly attended with one of his hockey buddies? Did they fall in love during a late night White Castle run - fuck in the back of Casey's beat up old Chevy behind the drive through after midnight? There was a part of her that ached for that; all that normal bullshit. Wasn't that why she had insisted on renting an apartment; splitting the bills; spending every Sunday night writing grocery lists with her secret mutant turtle boyfriend? But none of it mattered. They would never be normal. Not really.

She had said she didn't need it. That she didn't need to be any more normal. But she hadn't slept through the night since that doctor's visit. Each night she woke up, sweating, despite the burning chill in the winter air, thinking about how now matter what she did, their baby would never be able to play with other children, or chase the ice-cream guy down the beach on the Jersey Shore, or go to college. And in the cold, lonely hours of the night, she told herself that Donatello never had any of those things, and he was fine. He was fine. She was fine. But when she had been awake so long that she knew the shape of every shadow, and her bed felt so achingly empty without him in it, and she was too exhausted to lie to herself any longer - she would have given anything to be normal.

"Will you come to the wedding?" Gabe finished, timorously.

The bile was surging at the back of April's throat again. This was too much. Casey and Gabe were planning babies and weddings and happy endings and she was just trying to make it through a phone call without violently puking into her office wastepaper basket. "Wedding?" she asked.

Gabe smiled. "No official plans yet."

"Yeah, but, I mean," Casey rubbed the back of his neck. "We've been talkin' about it. And If we do, you gotta be there."

"I don't know. I'm just so busy with teaching and my thesis -" April stammered.

"Red," Casey said, his voice disarmingly serious. "You gotta be there."

She could tell that he meant it. She knew he was sincere; he could hear it in his voice. See it in his smile. He was serious. April had never known Casey to be serious about anything but hockey and pummelling assholes. And finding the best deal on malt liquor in the tri-state area. All of a sudden, she felt so far away from him. From their family; from the life they had all made, together. For years they were losers and freaks and lonely hearts against the world, refusing to let life take them out. They had only survived because of sheer, irrefutable will and each other. How was their family going to make it if it broke apart any more than it already had?

"Of course," April nodded. "Wouldn't miss it."

"Cool," Casey sniffed. "You hangin' with The D tonight?"

"Yeah, he's coming over later," April felt her posture stiffen slightly. "We're gonna have Chinese for dinner."

"Shin Shin's?" Casey cocked a brow.

"Shin Shin's." April smiled.

Casey gave her an approving nod. Gabe glanced up at him, a little shy. He smiled at her and threw his arm around her shoulder again. "Shin Shin's is the best, babe. We'll have to go after the baby comes."

Back in her comfort zone, Gabe smiled again. April tried to smile, too. "Do you, uh," she paused, groping for appropriate baby questions. "Do you know the sex yet?"

"No, but – " Gabe began.

"But we're totally naming them Shadow," Casey interjected in his excitement.

Gabe rolled her eyes. "For the last time, Case, we are not naming the baby Shadow!"

A small laugh escaped April's lips. A real laugh. She smiled; it felt good to laugh again. "Please don't let him name your baby Shadow," she smirked.

"Don't worry," Gabe grinned back at her. "I won't."

As Casey lamented Gabe being such a spoil sport, April just kept smiling. She felt an immense sense of relief that if Casey was going to run off and get shot-gun hitched to some girl, at least she seemed reasonable. Normal. Normal people didn't name their babies things like Shadow. But April O'Neil could not help but wonder when this sweet girl from Goat Head Colorado was going to figure it out - that Casey Jones was the strangest thing that would ever happened to her.

A knock rapped at April's office door.

"Sewer apples," she hissed under her breath. "Casey, I've gotta call you back." And then she paused. Waved awkwardly at the screen. "Bye Gabe - nice to meet you!"

With that, she promptly hung up. The call ended and the time appeared at the top of her phone screen. And April O'Neil breathed a sigh of relief.

The added bulk of her winter coat and her laptop bag made it an awkward squeeze through her office door, but April emerged nonetheless, only to be greeted by a wide eyed undergrad blocking her path. Her stomach lurched. She had managed to keep it together just sitting in her office chair, but standing up so swiftly was a mistake. April covered her mouth with a gloved hand.

"Um," the undergrad began, paper in hand.

"E-mail me," April croaked.

Her boots pounded across the carpet as she ran to the restroom down the hall.

She could still taste it, the acrid flavor of half-digested crackers on her tongue, while she stood on the platform, waiting. Her pants were wet to the knees; she hadn't noticed the glaring puddle at the entrance to the subway as she ran to catch her train. But despite every last ditch attempt, every little kunoichi trick, she still missed it.

With a gentle yank, April pulled her beanie off. She plucked her hair tie out, and as her bun fell away she ran her fingers through her hair, damp from her rain soaked beanie. She had forgotten her umbrella. Again. A breeze wafted over the platform, making her amber tresses dance around her face. Beyond the platform, lights flickered in the darkness. There was a train approaching, but it was not her's. So she stood, and she waited. She shoved her hands in her pockets, and as her tingling finger tips brushed the hard plastic of her phone case, she remembered. Might as well call him back while you wait, right?

The phone rang. And rang. And rang. Until it didn't. "Hey," she said, quietly.

When he didn't respond, she wondered if she even heard him over the sea of people shifting to board, to make their way across the platform, over the low, slow rumbling of the train on its tracks. She thought hanging up. She suddenly felt so stupid, calling him, when everything was so broken she could barely hold it together.

"Hey Red," she could almost hear the smile in his voice. "That was fast."

"Yeah well, I missed my train," she shrugged.

"That sucks."

"Yeah," April rocked back on her heels. "So –" the train pulled away from the platform, sending a gust of wind rushing over the platform, making her hair whip around her face. The beginning of the statement she didn't know how to end drifted off into nothing, into the darkness of the tunnels below the city. April cleared her throat. "So you and Gabe doing anything for Valentine's Day?"

She closed her eyes and pictured him, sitting in that old leather recliner. She imagined his broad shoulders shrugging. Casey had never been all that into Valentine's Day.

"Mm, not really. Just dinner at the diner before my shift," he replied a little absently. "We're going to her sixteen week ultrasound appointment tomorrow, though. So that's cool."

April blinked. "Sixteen weeks?" She instinctively glanced up and down the platform, as if she what she was about to say was secret. Like no one else should know. Once a kunoichi, always a kunoichi, she supposed. "Are you alone?"

"Yeah, Gabe's takin a shower. Why?"

"Casey," April's chest tightened. "Sixteen weeks ago you were here. In New York."

"Uh," he chuffed, "Not like it's any of your business, but we totally hooked up before I left."

"If she's sixteen weeks she conceived that baby while you were here," she replied, the volume of her voice slowly climbing.

"April," Casey scoffed on the other line. "Come on."

"What if it isn't yours?" April snapped. "Are you seriously gonna throw your whole life away for this baby!?"

People were staring. April blinked. She hadn't realized how loud she was getting. But she had gotten loud, and now people were staring. She could see their eyes darting to see what she looked like, to pinpoint her face from behind scarves, over the edges of their winter coats. She took a deep breath, tried to keep herself from shaking. The other passengers just kept pretending they weren't staring, until they weren't. Until they were all facing the track again, gazing off into the black, just waiting for their trains to arrive. She was just another crazy lady, waiting for the subway.

"Come on. You don't even know Gabe," Casey replied, his voice low.

"Yeah, well I know how to do math," April retorted, covering her mouth with her hand.

"I mean, this whole baby thing isn't exact science..." Casey went on.

April felt the heat rise in her face. "It isn't rocket science either, Casey," she snapped. "That baby isn't yours."

"So fucking what!?" Casey snapped back from the other line, and April stiffened where she stood. "We're a family now, ok? So it don't fuckin' matter!"

Her train was thundering down the tracks. It emerged from the tunnel, lights glaring in the dark, and April blinked back the light. Despite the roar of the train, and the cacophony of disembarking passengers, flowing over and around her like a river over stone, she could hear her heart thundering in her chest. Scores of commuters passed around April as they exited the train, yet she stayed entirely still, holding her phone to her ear. Frozen. Surrounded by people, she had never felt more alone. Her eyes stung with tears, and she suddenly felt so stupid. She told herself she was just trying to be a good friend - just trying to look out for Casey.

Each reason evolved into another excuse, spiraling uncontrollably, getting louder and louder inside her until she felt like she might scream. More than anything, she wanted to tell Casey to go fuck himself. That all she had ever done was look out for him, even to the point that it had brought her own life crashing down around her; that she was still cutting herself on the shards of everything they had broken. And while her hands ran red with every miserable mistake, he was off playing house with some woman his family had never even met. She wanted to tell him that she wouldn't have said anything if she wasn't his friend – and then, as the train doors shut before her eyes – her fingers tightened around her phone. That's not true, she thought.

You're just afraid.

And she was.

And two thousand miles away, the only other human who ever understood how impossible her life was silent on the other line.

"I've gotta get ready for work," Casey cleared his throat. "I'll let you know if the baby's a boy or a girl, ok?"

April felt her cheeks sting red with embarrassment. Casey was right. If they were family, that was all that mattered. Their family was all that had ever mattered. So April nodded, but said she nothing. And she hoped that somehow, two thousand miles away, he understood.

Stranger things had happened.

A/N: Sorry for the absurd delay on this chapter update! Unfortunately life has been a bit bonkers (moved, dog got VERY sick, family member died). Thank you all for reading along; every time I receive a favorite in my inbox my heart lights up. So thank you. I have been working on a 2003 fic that is nearly done (and will be published complete SOON). I hope to power through part two of PFT and complete it before they year is out. Let's see how that goes ;)