I have no idea when this story was written or where it was ever posted. But, like the previous chapters, it focuses on the Turtles through the eyes of their friends, and so it seems to fit right here in the anthology.

Bonus note: A few weeks after originally posting this chapter, I stumbled across some records indicating that it was first posted on Stealthy Stories in June 2009.

I stick a post-it, written on the back, to the kitchen window, and go up to the roof to watch the sun set.

Sure enough, after dark, I find myself joined by a shadow of a friend.

"Hi," he says. "Saw your note." A comfortable pause. "What brings you up here?"

I take my time, thinking about it. He's looking at the sky, not even really waiting, just being. There's no rush.

"I thought it would be nice to... take the evening air."

He nods, dark against dark.

This is where our worlds overlap, just for a little while. The night is early enough that my mind doesn't populate it with bogeymen or with flesh-and-blood criminals; late enough to cover him with a cloak of safety, of anonymity.

Are YOU even sure which one he is?

It can be hard to tell, when he's just a shape, a soft voice, a solidity in the gently moving air.

Of course I am.

It's beautiful up here.

The little boxed-in roof of my two-story building is freedom for me, but just a waypoint for him, a launching pad before he rockets away under the stars. (Stretching himself over thirty-story drops, swinging up crenellations, reveling in the interplay of body and building, anatomy and architecture. Once I was on a mission with them - when we made our escape, they ordered me to ride turtle-back as they booked it over the roofs. I was convinced I was going to die at any second. It was also the most exhilarating experience of my life.)

Sometimes I don't know why they come to my place so often. Sometimes I do. I'm their link to the opposite half, their doorway to the world on the other side of sunrise. They stand in the edge of twilight, catching the reflected glow, picking up breadcrumbs.

I stand there too, in the cool penumbra, because I hate being trapped on my side of the line, always hearing women shouldn't be out alone after dark. In a still-not-perfect city, they make things a little more okay. They would never let the monsters catch me, never let the blackness swallow me down.

I trust them. And I know, from their increasing unselfconsciousness about topics of conversation (details their enemies would pay anything to know, details that make me even more fiercely protective of my mutant family) that they trust me.

I know, from the way that they no longer feel compelled to talk all the time, nervously spilling out words, constantly reminding me that they're not what they look like.

I know. I've learned. I don't forget who they are when they're quiet, don't lose my trust when I can't see what they're doing.

Like now.

His strength and his weapons (which weapons, are you sure?) so close, so invisible, and this easy silence between us, and it hardly even matters which one he is, because I know none of them would ever hurt me.

These are not the people my parents warned me about.

Time's up. The day shift is over; the night shift is starting. This belongs to him.

I move towards the edge of the roof. "Are you coming in?" I ask, but I don't think he will. For them, in is a place to wait out the sun. Not a place to go during those precious hours of deep dark, when their own bogeymen seek refuge, and the roofs and alleyways become the castles and boulevards in their kingdom of the night.

"No," he says. As I climb over the low wall, I feel him watching me, making sure I get onto the ladder safely, ready to catch me if I don't. "Good night."

"Good night," I reply, with a slightly canted emphasis that gives the phrase a sense of promise, of possibility.

I wish they could have the sun.

But I love that they own the dark.