Izumijihchan gave me an idea. Use canon when in doubt and keep it simple. Something I need to keep in mind.
Training was torture. It wasn't especially difficult, but Mikey's jokes that would normally at least raise a feigned smile from Leo, a quizzical eye ridge raise from Don and a slap on the back of the head from Raph, passed right by him along with Leo's katana. It impaled the wall with a spark.
"You might want to pay attention, Raph. You don't have any hair to graze," Leo said as he retrieved his katana and put it away with an annoyingly graceful flourish. "I can't believe how sloppy you were today. If you did a leaning dragon like that in a fight, Hun would just have to blow on you and you'd fall over sideways."
Raph jerked to awareness, his nerves pricking at the name. "What about Hun? You seen him lately?"
"No. Have you?"
Raph's face reddened and he grabbed a towel under the pretense of wiping sweat out of eyes.
Master Splinter hobbled into the dojo on his cane, a sneer of irritation on face. "Please do not kick me mistakenly in the face so much today, Raphael. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but it has damaged my whiskers. You have missed training for several days now. Where have you been?"
His guts turned to lead and he glanced back at Leo to read the suspicion in his eyes. Both his eyes were narrowed and searching him for deceit. Perfect.
Raph had spent the greater part of the last three weeks perched on the windowsill of Shannon's hospital room, listening to the beeping of blood pressure monitors through the glass. He spent the free moments he could spare anyway. Grueling practices were punctuated by crying smilies from Shannon with no messages attached, except "I miss u."
Not that she was lonely. Her mother sat by her bedside whenever she had a moment off from court and when she wasn't there, some other relative sat next to her, demanding that she stop crying and finish her food. Her three adult half brothers from her father's first marriage stopped by for five minutes to demand justice for her, ask for an autograph for their bosses and force their children to say, "Get well soon."
Raph couldn't go in the room with witnesses present, so the best he could do was send her constant text messages that she couldn't read while he stared at her gradually healing face and hands with longing.
The indicative squeal of a text from Shannon resounded through the room and he ignored his family's inquisitive stares and Mikey's demand for an explanation as he pounded the keys of the phone.
Shannon was going home today. Her parents and aunts and Uncle Theodore Roosevelt were all going back to work and New Jersey, except Uncle Theodore Roosevelt because he lived in the city and didn't have a job. She wanted him to come to her room so she could give him a present and kiss him. He sent her a message saying that he would be there as soon as he could and that he'd gotten her something too, then his feeble male brain fumbled over a present for a girl. He wondered if his preoccupation would result in one of his brothers being knocked unconscious.
Training ended with frustrated demands from their father to stop being so purposefully incompetent and Mikey skipped off to the lab to find something to break, since Don had mouthed off to their father after he missed a block and now had to clean the bathroom as punishment.
Raph watched Leo putting away the training mats and suddenly said, "You ever think about girls?"
Leo's voice was thin and tense. "Are you insinuating that I'm gay?"
"What? No, man. I mean, do you ever think about having one. I mean, as a girlfriend! Not just like… getting laid. Like… one for yourself." Raph fumbled with his belt to find the Disney princess Band-Aid and fingered it awkwardly as he spoke.
"Not really. I have my hands full already. I don't know what I would do with a girl. I'm awkward enough with April and she's just a friend, you know. Why? That's a strange question from you. Do you have your mind on somebody?"
Raph's eyes widened and he blushed and he knew it. "No! I was just thinking how stupid it would be."
Leo obviously didn't believe him, which was his default reaction whenever Raph brought up anything other than fighting, beer or porn. Raph felt a pang of guilt. Leo wasn't that bad and he did trust him, but not as much as he could. "Okay. Whatever. And yes, it would be stupid. So you like some girl?" Leo's face contorted with discomfort. "It isn't Karai or April is it? Angel! Raph, she's not even fourteen!"
"Angel! You… And they say I'm the pervert around here." Raph stomped out of the dojo with the air of an insulted bull, heading towards the hospital, then heading towards Johnny No Thumbs' office as soon as he remembered that he needed to find a gift for a girl.
"When did I know Gina was the one? When I knocked her up and her dad threatened to cement me under that mini mall he was building if I didn't marry her. That's when." Johnny took a swig of his beer and raised his arms in a shrug at the hockey players on the big screen TV in his office. "Why the sudden questions? You and your wife break up?"
Raph tossed an empty beer bottle at the wall because he could and it shattered into a glittery spray. He tried to remember the endless series of lies he'd told in the past. "Yeah we broke up. I'm not thinking about a girl for me. It's a friend. He's all confused. His family won't let him have a girl, you know. But he… doesn't get it." He popped the cap off another beer and chugged so Johnny couldn't see his expression.
"If you've got a woman, butch. Don't be afraid to show it. Unless you got enemies that want to hold her for ransom or something. Then you should keep a lid on it. Unless you want her whacked so you can get her out of the way. So what's she like? This friend's girl?" Johnny motioned into the open doorway and his midget body guard swaggered into the room in his black trench coat and shades, handing him a loaded gun.
Raph put his feet up on the desk to block Bald Tony the midget body guard's path. "You try to shoot me, Johnny, and I'll put a blow hole in the top of your head with my sai." He fingered the Band-Aid and absently brought it out of his belt. "How do you know it's not just fucking around… not that he's fucked her! I mean… she's cool, you know…"
Johnny's Grecian nose contorted with disgust at the bloody piece of plastic in Raph's hand. "You carry around a bloody Band-Aid? Disney… Did your girlfriend give it to you?" He pointed at Raph, laughing. "It's just like Edward Cullen carrying around that bottle cap that Bella Swan gives him."
"IS NOT!" He tossed it to the ground and his throat instantly closed as his security object lay in the middle of the floor out of reach. "I just don't care about the shit that covers up my cuts. And how do you know that about Edward Cullen? You read that shit?"
"No. My daughter loves it. She's team Jacob. Her friends make fun of her a lot for it. So what do you think? Edward or Jacob?" Johnny bent down and picked up the Band-Aid from the floor, inspecting it like a diamond.
"Edward's a pussy. At least Jacob has balls. And he doesn't glitter…"
Johnny threw a bottle opener at him. "Sparkle…"
"What the fuck ever. He doesn't sparkle in the sun like a disco ball. That would freak the shit out of me if I was a girl. I'd be over the hill and on the back of Jacob's bike in ten seconds."
Bald Tony called from the corridor, "Edward is a gentleman!"
Raph leaned forward, his foot stomping on the floor as he sat up. "A gentleman! He sits in her bedroom at night and watches her sleep like Ted Bundy. And he's always acting like it's true love if you want eat the chick. Only if you want to eat them out. That's the only good kind of eating… Whatever… I lost my sentence." He changed the channel and laughed as a baby monkey stole a banana from its mother. Johnny tried to snatch the remote, but Raph held it effortlessly above his head, smirking.
"You read Twilight, Butch? What the fuck?"
He whacked Johnny on the head with the remote. "No! Mikey kept reading parts out loud and I couldn't get away from him. You know what it's like to live underground with nobody but you're brothers? Bella Swan is a little idiot. I'd dump that bitch if she were mine. Bella don't have a personality besides that she's really horny, she can't walk a straight line without somebody trying to kill her for no reason and whining around about her rotten life when she's got it real good actually." He stood up, his bleary drunken eyes watering with zeal. "See my girl is kinda horny, but kinky, you know… I mean, she's a good girl. She just…"
Johnny jumped to his feet. "You're girl? I was right! You do got a girl. Fuck, Butch. You're real ugly. You sure get lucky a lot for an ugly circus freak."
"Laid a lot?" It took him a few seconds to remember that Johnny thought he was thirty five and had been married for ten years. "Oh yeah. I got the right pheromones, I guess. I need to buy something for a girl. Like a real nice present."
"How nice? I got different layers of nice and shockingly, it's price determined." Johnny motioned at Bald Tony with his head to bring in the merchandise. But Bald Tony was in the next room and didn't see the gesture. "Hey, Tony! Get back in here! You know you're supposed to stay where you can see me so I don't go yelling like this! Makes me look stupid!"
Bald Tony nearly tipped over as he approached Raph in a different trench coat laden with stolen merchandise. He moved to open his jacket and held onto a chair as his center of gravity changed with the weight shift. "The left is $20 and the right is $40."
Raph pulled open the right side. "Don't bother opening the left side. I take care of my woman and treat her right. Jewelry huh?" He skimmed the jacket for a letter "S", but didn't find anything. Then his eyes lit on something. Too perfect. "That one."
Bald Tony plucked it out from his arm pit and held it up to the light and Raph swiped it away, jabbing it into his belt. "Thanks. Put it on my tab, Johnny."
As he left, pelted with badly pronounced Italian insults, he scooped the Band-Aid between his toes and then stuck it back in his belt.
Raph couldn't remember climbing through her bedroom window so quietly before and then felt like a total stalker as sat down on the end of her bed, watching her playing clumsily at the harp with her feet. It was a new obsession shortly before her disappearance. She sat with her back to him, her feet wrapped around the instrument and her back hunched.
Maybe he should go back out and knock on the window. He suddenly felt like a stranger in a space that used to be familiar. "Hey," he said.
She plucked the wrong string and hit a sour note, whirling around with a little gasp. Her face lit up and she skipped to him, yelling, "You came! Finally!" She fell into his arms dramatically, like a Shakespearean actress collapsing after a knife to the chest. Raph spun her around in the air and then abruptly put her down when he imagined delicate bones breaking.
"Why'd you stop? Oh, you want your present now?" She went to the bedside table, gripping the side of the bed as she went and pulled out a bright pink piece of paper, then shyly held it out to him.
It was a handmade card covered in pink and purple glittery hearts. He opened it, going a little strange at the unabashed girliness of it, and read, "Thank you for saving me. I luv u." And a spattering of more hearts.
She read it beside him and he knew she was watching for reaction. "The hearts are 'cause I love you," she said tentatively. "And I couldn't go nowhere to buy you something." Then she coughed and it resonated in her chest. Why hadn't he noticed how pale and thin she was? Her skinny arms shook as she held on to the bedpost and sank down suddenly, losing her strength.
"What's the matter?" he asked. "You okay?" What a stupid question. Of course she wasn't okay.
Shannon coughed and then gagged on something thick in her throat and swallowed hard, making a face, her freckles standing out against her pale cheeks. "I'm real sick. I swallowed a lot of my puke and it made me get pneumonia. I'm not supposed to walk around. But I have to play. I'm so bored."
Raph sat on the bed and gently nudged her aside. "You should listen to the doctor. He must have learned something going to school so long."
She leaned against him and poked his arm. "I want you to hold me, please," and he lay back on the bed, wrapping an arm around her delicately, then tucked the blanket securely around her as he pulled her into him. "When I was in the hospital and my family was there, I closed my eyes and pretended I was asleep and then I imagined you were there holding me. I could remember how you smell and feel and stuff at first, but it got harder to remember after a while and I got scared that I forgot you."
He stared at her and watched her chest rise and fall and the rattling wheeze. The bite marks glowed white against her ribs as her nightgown fell open slightly. He gathered it shut and pulled the blankets up further. "I like the card. It's real nice. Nobody ever made me a card before."
"Really?" Her eyes drooped a little and she forced them open. "I was all embarrassed because I couldn't buy something nice.
Raph reached into his belt pocket and his hand froze under the covers, the little gift closed in his fist, doubt settling in. Maybe it was too obvious. He should have thought harder about it. Whatever. He wouldn't pick out anything better anyway. "Here. I got you something."
A little necklace chain with a charm shaped like a pair of eighth notes fell into her hand. "Oh! Put it on me! So I can be pretty like you."
He repressed a smile and pushed her up into a sitting position, pulling her hair over her shoulder. "Aw, fucking… damn it…" he murmured as he fumbled with the tiny clasp.
Giggles emanated from Shannon as she absorbed his frustration. He turned on the television as her eyes drifted shut and she slept against his chest, her arm curled around him and stroked her hair absently, wondering about the balance of karmic accounts and how much this would cost him in the future to create equilibrium for a moment this good. His girl was safe. Still sweet and innocent and his. Her arms wrapped around him as she slept and he watched a horror movie about a van full of teenagers going to the prom and one of them turned out to be the ghost of a girl who was murdered by her boyfriend on prom night and sought revenge against all teens in prom clothes. Raph wondered how she happened to haunt their van. It must be destiny.
As Melody screamed at the sight of her boyfriend's head in an ice box with her corsage in his open mouth, he felt Shannon's body tense against him. Her legs drew up and a slight whimper breathed against the skin of his collar bone. He shook her shoulder and her eyes opened, red and confused. "Where'd the water go?" she muttered.
"Bad dream?"
She stared dully into his eyes for a few seconds and then shook her head slowly and looked away, concentrating at a rainbow on her bed sheets. "Don't be all ashamed, now. And don't lie to me. I'm a ninja and we got ways of telling." He put his hand under her chin and directed her eyes back to his. "Did you have a bad dream?"
A pause and then her chin bobbed against his fingers as she nodded. "I dreamed I was in a box and I was naked and dirty and there were these people with cages on their heads and they yelled at me. I had the baby only he was dead and all rotten and falling apart and I kept trying to put his skin back on, but it fell off. And I kept yelling for you and you didn't come. I knew you wouldn't, but I did anyway 'cause it made me feel better. And then I was in the bathtub and my uncle came in and said we were going to play a secret game." She blinked a few times and hid her face in his neck.
"Bad dreams suck." Very profound.
She nodded and coughed into her hand, the hot spittle seeping through her fingers and onto shoulder. She rasped, "I'm sorry I'm so weak. I should protect you from those bad people who hurt you like you protect me. And you're real brave. You don't have bad dreams. I'm not going to cry. That's a sissy thing to do. Even if Smurfs get me in my sleep, I'll be brave and I won't cry or anything."
Sometimes Raph felt like an invisible personification of Avoidance stood at his back, shoving him out the door or window and into the safe waiting arms of Denial. He could pretend he had to be home by midnight and watched the tree outside beckoning him. "I have lots of bad dreams," he said, watching the limbs bounce against the glass. "Nothing wrong with crying either, if you're really scared."
"Yeah there is. You don't cry because you're brave."
He snorted. Brave, tough Raph. Always flipping out at the slightest provocation and crying like a little girl. "Nah. I guess not." He muttered as quietly as he could and hoped she didn't hear. Lying to your girl was pretty low. He tilted her face up again so he could look in her eyes. It was nice and made his chest warm. It wasn't exactly a sexy move, but he was taking care of his girl. Being a man and giving her strength when she was wilting with sickness and fear. "You say stuff I never can. That's… something…" And even that was too much and his cheeks burned.
"I'll stop then. I won't say when I'm scared. It'll make me braver. You're so brave 'cause you don't think about it." Her cheeks were slightly broken out from lack of hygiene and her hair was greasy, but her eyes were warm with trust and adoration.
She wanted to be more like him? Too much of a coward to ever confide in anyone? He had to stamp that idea out right away. "I get tortured sometimes. Not all the time, but more than the average guy. I guess lawyers or dentists don't get tortured, but… more than… um…" He awkwardly shifted his legs and his knee brushed against hers. "Well, I get tortured sometimes… but not enough for you to worry about!" Her eyes welled up with worry before he'd finished the sentence and quieted down again as soon as he spoke a word of reassurance. How could she have so much trust in someone like him?
"My brother Leo was hurt real bad last year. He was unconscious for ages and we thought he'd be all fucked up in the head and we'd have to feed him or something. I think he'd rather that we just off him, rather than live like that. He's real…" Raph conjured up his brother in his mind's eye and tried to verbalize the vibe surrounded him. "…he's an… uh…"
She leaned against his shoulder. "He's your big brother."
"Yeah… He's our leader though and he's…" Raph sighed with annoyance at his stupidity. "I thought he was just afraid to wake up because he had to fight if he woke up. I don't know. I just thought he was being weak. I don't know why. He's never weak. I guess it would be better for us if he chose not to wake up instead of not being able to. That meant there wasn't hope. If he was just doing it on purpose, then we could harass him until he woke up again."
She softly kissed his shoulder and then coughed out a thick ball of phlegm. She said as she polished his skin dry with her nightgown sleeve, "You were the one that was scared. And you were ashamed and didn't want to say, so you said he was scared instead because he couldn't say it."
He looked at the stipple marks on the ceiling and tried to understand. It made no sense, so he assumed she was right.
"You must have been so scared when I was gone too!" She sat up slightly on her elbow and looked down into his face. "You saved me, didn't you? Mama said that somebody brought me to the hospital and wouldn't stay or leave a name. I'm sorry you were scared! You didn't worry too much did you? I'll take care of you now! You do a lot for me and I never can do anything back…"
He held up the paper card. "You gave me this. That's thanks enough."
Shannon played with the hem of the sheets and burrowed into them, her eyes peeking out at him. She said in a muffled voice, "They gave me a pregnancy test yesterday and I'm not pregnant again. That's good. If you got me pregnant, would I lay a big egg?"
He imagined Shannon on a huge nest, sitting on a pale green egg the size of a medicine ball. "No. I don't think I could get you pregnant if I tried. Different DNA or some shit. Don said that. He said a lot of other shit too, but I didn't listen. Didn't think I'd need to…" He copied her and hid under the sheets, only his eyes and top of his head visible to her and heard a giggle from her side of the bed, as he'd hoped.
"You don't got to be embarrassed. I'll let you make you love to me."
Raph resisted the urge to copy her again and giggle at the invitation, but his mind interfered and reran the film he'd seen at Scottie's house. Merritt climbing over her lifeless body… Everyone all over the world watching…
She yawned and looked at the bedside clock with a gasp. It's Sunday night! I didn't go to church or anything! Emyrs won't go with me because I took her one time and she said the preacher was in love with her and she didn't want him to be too distracted to do his sermons with her in the congregation. So I'm going to pray now 'cause I didn't go." She shut her eyes and clasped her hands and he took the opportunity of vulnerability to fondle her backside.
"You quit it! None of that when I'm praying!" She slapped at his arm and he grimaced as if she'd just struck him with a brick. She closed her eyes with penitence again. "Dear Jesus, please forgive me for not going to church. I keep forgetting because I'm sick and stuff. And thank that Pretty Raph found me and that he loves me so much and help him to not be so scared of stuff all the time…"
His pride pricked up and he opened his mouth to refute the accusation of cowardice before God and girlfriend.
"…And watch over my baby, wherever he is and whatever his name is. I wish I knew. And take care of my family, even if they're all real mean and please let little kids in far away countries stop being so sick and starving. I don't have any money to do anything about it. I could play them music, but I don't think that would help much. Thank you for Pretty Raph and help us to get married or something if we have sex or to be married in your eyes at least and if we don't, then I'm sorry for making love to him when we're not married. I'll say I'm sorry for it ahead of time. Thank you and goodnight."
She opened her eyes blearily and puckered her lips at him, begging for a kiss. He crossed his arms in silent rebuff. "Get married? I'm sixteen, woman! Why do you think I'd want to get married? I never said anything about it."
Her lips stretched from a pucker to a frown. "You said a while ago that marriage was nothing but the man trying to control our lives and it was just a meaningless piece of paper and it shouldn't make no difference if you want to be together. It's just for other people."
He shrugged at her dramatically. "Yeah. Exactly! Why would I want to get married then?"
"We won't have to really go get married. But I know that my church don't like it if we go having sex when we're not married, so I'm going to call you my husband in my prayers and that ought to make it okay. I love you more than anybody and that's what it's like to be married anyway."
Her cold nose nuzzled his neck. "What are you doing now?" he said, whining as he envisioned himself standing at an altar next to Shannon in a white dress and his father shaking his head from the pew, saying, "I TOLD you to get your dick out of her! You should have listened to me! Even if I was just a dream manifestation of your subconscious worry about the relationship and how it will affect the family!"
She rubbed her nose back and forth against his skin. "My nose is cold. Make it warm."
Raph sighed loudly and with great drama, hoping she read his disquiet through the gust of air aimed at the top of her head, but she didn't stop. He pulled her back gently by the shoulders and breathed directly in her face and earned a wrinkled nose and an, "Ew!"
"You like my breath when we make out. You should like it all the time. You were going to marry me a minute ago. Now you're too good to get breathed on in the face?" He smiled slightly and tried to force it back into a scowl and supposed he looked like Two-Face from Batman.
"Okay…" She pouted her bottom lip out at him. "I'll just be your girlfriend to you and you can be my husband to me."
He scratched his head and his fingernail slid against a scar from a gash. "Still doesn't sound right to me though. And I couldn't get married if I wanted. Which I DON'T!" He leaned into her face with childish emphasis. "You want to go live in a sewer with…" His eyes bulged and he sat up suddenly. "I got to go home now… uh… training… Night run… I mean… Fuck…"
She sat up and squeaked with pain. "You live in the sewer? Do you pay rent to the rats? Or do you charge them? And if I played down there would they all run to me and I could lead them away like the Pied Piper? Is there an alligator down there like everybody says?"
Raph pulled himself away from her bed and went stiffly to the window, mentally bitch slapping himself. "Yes and no. I got to go." He jumped out the window and escaped her without any difficulty, since she couldn't coax him back to the window with promises of kisses.
So she wanted to have a totally one sided marriage with a guy who lived in the sewer? Maybe she could live in his room with him. It would be just as bad as living in the hospital. She never went anywhere and when she did, she usually got lost and into trouble. Maybe she would be safer.
Maybe he could get Splinter to buy them an island for their honeymoon and then Casey would miraculously build them a glorious cabin on the back of the property at the farm. And then she'd lay an egg and issue forth a little half mutant turtle baby.
Or he could just humor her and let her call him her husband if it made her feel straight with God, as long as she knew it wasn't real. Whatever made her happy. She'd earned it.