* If you'd like a good backdrop for this chapter - I'd suggest the song "You and Me" by Lifehouse. I often write along with music, and it was my inspiration.

(Two Days Later)


Raphael hesitated for a long moment in the shadows outside the house, causing Karina to pause in her stride as well.

"Everything okay?" She asked.

He nodded after a second. "Yeah. I was just sort of hoping...I thought maybe comin' here might bring something else out of me."

"Memory wise you mean?"

"It was the scene of the crime."

"Does it remind you of anything?"

"Nada." He couldn't help answering with a half grin.

"You'll be bilingual before you know it turtle. Can we go inside now? It's freezing."

"Yeah, sure...sorry." He replied, letting out a breath as she grazed his wrist to pull him inside.

Karina let them in the back door, and hurried to turn off the alarm.

"Alright - Luke and Kat won't be back until around 2 or so...I suppose we can easily hold down the fort between the two of us, can't we?"

"Do we have like a menu set-up or something? 'Cause it's late, and I'm seriously hungry." The turtle mentioned.

"We don't need take out. I never got to make my Christmas fettuccine - and I figured tonight would be good for it."

"You mean I get to sit back by the fire, and you're gonna cook for me?" He said impishly.

"No, you're going to keep me company." She clarified. "And you can make yourself useful too. Sit down at the table, and I'll give you something to do."

"Would this be a good time to mention I don't know jack about cooking?"

"Relax Raph, you can just prep a couple of things for me. Think you can take a broccoli crown apart?"

"Broccoli has a crown?"

Karina laughed at him. "That's what some markets call it, when they sell it by the head without the stalk. You're supposed to break it into manageable pieces."

"How many pieces do you want?"

"Raph, you don't have to be that precise."

"It might help if you were. Otherwise, I can just break it in half like this, and call it a day. See? Half for you, half for me. What more do you need?"

"You're a comedian tonight, huh? Just hack the crap out of it, so you come up with several florets. Is that clear enough for you?" She asked, wagging a finger at him.

"That's all you had to say sweetheart." Raphael grinned.

Less than fifteen minutes later, Karina already had the kitchen smelling fantastic just from the pan she was already tending.

"So this is a tradition with you?" Raphael asked.

"It used to be a family thing." The woman said a little wistfully. "A latin family cooking italian for the holidays might sound a little strange, I know. But my Mom was looking for a change one year, and we all loved it so much that we kept asking for it again after that."

"Tell me more about your Mom." Raphael requested. "If it doesn't bother you that is. The guys don't seem to mind talking about our father, but I know you might not feel the same way."

"It's alright." Karina said. "My Mom came to the United States with her family when she was sixteen...she was very determined to learn the language, and become a citizen herself. She met my Dad a couple of years down the road."

"You said he was a cop, didn't you?"

Karina nodded, giving her attention momentarily back to stirring the sauce. "Things were good between them in the beginning. My Mom always said that she married one man...who changed into someone else entirely. Some trauma related to the job."

She didn't elaborate, and it didn't seem like she wanted to talk about him anymore.

"Was you Mom always a dancer?" Raphael changed the subject.

"She was a teacher, a very good one. She ran in the right social circles with my father, made contacts...started building a business up from there. Kat, Brandon, and I, we all had lessons of course. I was the only one interested in really pursuing it further. The two of them were always more...physical. They jumped on the Tai Kwon Do train when they were teenagers, and never looked back."

"Did that ever make you feel left out? I mean, if all of my brothers were into ninjitsu and I wasn't...I'm not sure how that'd make me feel."

"It didn't bother me." She told him. "I sort of kept to myself anyway. Dancing was life back then, it was practically the only thing I thought about."

"So it wasn't just your Mom's dream - it was yours' too?"

"Same passion, different direction." Karina admitted. "Teaching was on the agenda, for sometime down the road. But not until after my own career was over - at least, that was how the fantasy went."

"Why didn't you go for it?" He asked not unkindly.

"When I was fifteen...I spent that summer helping my Mom out at the studio. It got her so excited, she was thrilled to have me by her side. She already knew that Kat and Brandon were looking very different directions, and I was sort of her last hope for carrying things on. It wasn't that she ever pressured me or anything. I'd always kind of felt like my fantasies were just a pipe dream anyway. How many people actually get accepted to Juilliard?"

Raphael didn't really know what to say, so he waited to see if she would go on.

"I'm a life lesson in regret Raphael. I was too scared to go for what I really wanted back then, and I'll always pay the price for it. I'll always have to wonder."

The turtle cocked his head at her. "But if you're always looking back, how are you supposed to get anywhere? I think eventually...you're gonna have to kiss whatever decisions you made goodbye, or you might not get to have a real life at all."

"I think leaving California was my first attempt in doing that." She told him, and lightly tapped her spoon on the edge of the pan to get off the excess sauce. "That ought do it Raph. Let me get combining here, and we'll be ready to eat."


"Chica, you can cook. I'd wager you could give Mike a run for his money." Raphael told her.

"Don't tell him that. I rather enjoy the supporting role in the kitchen."

"Sure, it can be our little secret. You can just keep cooking for me."

She gave him a look, and then caught sight of the clock out of the corner of her eye. They'd gotten a late start on the evening as it was, and now it was almost 11:30.

"You wanna go to the living room?" She asked. "We can take care of cleaning up later."

"Isn't a ball supposed to be dropping or something?"

"Not for a few minutes, but we can go ahead and turn it on."

They ambled into the next room, and settled onto the oversized couch with the remote.

"The fire's beautiful and all, but it sure screws with the heating in this house." Karina remarked.

"You cold?" Raphael asked, and yanked the blanket off the back of the couch to toss at her.

"This must be why Luke got Kat a Snuggie for Christmas."

"A what?"

"The blanket with sleeves. You haven't seen the commercials? I'm sure she wouldn't be caught dead in it."

"That sounds...interesting." He allowed, lightly rubbing both hands over her arms, as if to generate more heat.

"Who are you kidding? You have to be colder than I am." She pointed out, and he shrugged.

"It's not so bad, and the change in scenery is sure nice. They've done okay for themselves up here."

They talked about nothing in particular for the next few minutes, with the TV on low in the background. When it got closer to midnight, Karina reached over to turn it up.

"Okay, this is it."

"How many people are out there?" Raphael asked.

"A ton Raph - it's the happening place to be in New York City."

"Do you wish you were there?"

She glanced at him for an instant, light green eyes regarding him in all seriousness. "I'm exactly where I want to be."

While the voices counted down on the television, she fidgeted somewhat nervously on the couch, her gaze actually boring into the wall beside the television screen. Karina exhaled softly when they reached one, and fixed Raphael with a playful gaze.

"There's a tradition about New Years' y'know." She said.

"What's that?"

"You're supposed to kiss somebody at midnight. It means good luck in relationships for the rest of the year, some junk like that."

His breath had already caught in his throat, as he was quite unable to tear his amber gaze away from hers'. "Is that how it goes?"

"Mm hm. And it's bad luck to break a tradition - that's what Donnie tells me."

"He does seem pretty smart. It's probably not a good idea for me to tempt the fates either - I sure don't need anymore bad luck."

Hesitantly, more than a little awkward, the two met in a brief contact of a peck. Neither of them moved immediately after it, hovering as it were in mid-air, like time had decided to suspend itself. The pause last nearly five seconds, before each seemed to sense the other moving at the exact same moment.

A single thought didn't cross between the pair, as Karina was suddenly wrapped in his arms, kissing him deeply. To Raphael, it felt like he'd literally stepped outside of his body, as he kissed her back eagerly. She cast her blanket completely to the side, pressing both hands against his plastron to push him down on the arm of the couch.

The woman nuzzled in next to him, kissing him again in a more deliberately lingering fashion, that left the turtle with the biggest goose bumps yet.

"Wait a second." He said a little breathlessly. "Are you out of your freakin' mind?"

She laughed, tracing a finger along the line of his jaw. "I don't think so. Are you?"

"Well, I do have brain damage."

She dropped her forehead against his, so that her bronze hair fell slightly over him. "I think I can live with that."