IX
That night, Raphael was the last person awake. He sat up in the dark living room watching a Clint Eastwood movie long past the time the others went to bed, long past midnight. He simply couldn't sleep. He rarely could. It wasn't something that worried him or his family in the slightest for it was just a routine with him: he would be that last to bed, the last one up, and still be just as grouchy as ever. He sighed as he remembered the time when he and his brothers were little, and Michelangelo had called him "Oscar the Grouch". Raph had hauled of and smacked Mikey for that. He didn't like being called a grouch. He didn't like to be called anything.
The movie was just ending, and Raph was starting to think about going to bed when he heard a noise in the kitchen. He looked up. The lights in the kitchen were off, and it was darker than night in there. He stared into the black doorway and heard it again: Someone was opening and closing cupboards quietly, as if they didn't want to be heard. It wasn't one of his brothers or Master Splinter, he knew, for they would have announced their presence. And there was no way it could be that little brat with a tail who was sleeping in the infirmary—she didn't have the skill to walk silently past him; Raph would have noticed her.
So, someone was in their kitchen, looking for something, and they were trying to be sneaky about it. Raph stood up slowly, drawing his one of his sai out of his belt, and began to slowly make his way towards the kitchen. He got to the doorway and peered in. It was too dark to see anything. Raph decided to give himself a little advantage. He reached quietly over to the light switch on the kitchen wall, and then with a loud shout he threw on the lights, bathing the kitchen in light.
Sasha had been looking in the cabinets for something to make tea with. She had left the light off because she found she could see perfectly in the dark, and had not wanted to disturb Raphael. But when the lights switched on so suddenly, pain flooded into her eyes. Surprised, her instincts took over. She crouched down behind the table, and wrapped her tail around a chair leg, ready to throw it if the need arose.
"What the hell?" Raph breathed when he saw Sasha duck down under the table. He slid the sai back into his belt. "What the hell are you doing up?"
Sasha peered up over the table. Seeing Raph, she breathed a sigh of relief. "I had a dream," she said. "It bothered me."
Raph rolled his eyes and groaned. "Geez kid. I'm sorry you had a nightmare, but you don't have to go around like someone's gonna kill you if they find you."
"It wasn't a nightmare," Sasha replied, standing up and allowing her tail to relax. "It was a dream."
"Well then, if it was just a dream, what about it bothers you so much?"
"The fact that it didn't."
"Didn't what?"
"Didn't bother me."
Raph groaned and rolled his eyes. "If we're just gonna talk in circles, then I have better things to do with my time than talk to you. Like sleep."
"Than do them. I'm not stopping you." Sasha began opening the cupboards again, peering in at the contents.
Raph didn't move.
Sasha snorted. "So I guess talking to me is a last resort?"
"Listen, I don't need to take any crap from you. You just sparked my interest," Raph said, pulling up a chair. This girl's self-confidence held a slight appeal for him. He wasn't used to someone so being sure of themselves. "So what was so scary about this dream?"
"It wasn't scary. Or, at least, it didn't scare me. It should have though. That's what bothers me. Where do you guys keep the tea?"
"It's in the drawer next to the stove. What was your dream about?"
Sasha paused and placed both hands on the top of the counter. Her back was to Raphael, but her tail gave away that she was nervous, because it kept twitching from side to side. "It was about demons," she murmured.
"Demons?"
"Yeah. They were all around me, getting ready to attack, and I wasn't scared. I wasn't even worried. They were everywhere, threatening me, and laughing at me, and I didn't even care...Have you ever dreamed about demons?"
Raphael didn't answer. She seemed to accept that, and went on making tea. They didn't speak for a while. Finally, unable to stand the silence any longer, Raph spoke. "Damn."
Sasha turned to him, grinning. "So you get it now. Wouldn't that freak you out at least a little? If you had a dream that would scare the pants off any decent ninja, and you didn't even care?"
Raph nodded, but didn't say anything. This girl was pretty messed up. Not scared by a dream that had plagued him for years? She had to be kidding.
But the thing was, she wasn't kidding him. She was simply stating fact, "Objectifying the event" was what Donnie would say. This girl made him nervous. She was just so cool, so collected, even when she had no idea what was going to happen to her. She was more like Splinter than any of his brothers. It was like she was from another world.
She set a cup of tea down in front of him. "You should get more sleep," she told him, sitting down across from him.
"Speak for yourself," Raph sneered.
"I don't think I usually sleep much. My body can't handle it. It's like I always have to be on alert."
Raph thought for a moment before he spoke. "Have you thought that maybe you're so jumpy and on edge because someone's always smacking you around?"
"Point to any physical evidence of abuse," Sasha said. "And when you do, I'll believe you. But I only have one scar on my entire body. It looks pretty old, too, 'cause I only just noticed it today." She pulled the left side of her tank top collar down to reveal a faint, yet definite scar that ran from the top of her shoulder almost down to her chest, following the line of her collar bone almost exactly. "It was made by a blade. But not like in surgery. Something else."
Raph cocked and eye ridge. "So, lemme state so far what you've come up with about yourself. One, you don't have a family. Two, you're not scared by dreams about demons. Three, you have a scar that isn't from surgery. And four, you don't like people touching your Token. Great! With all that information, we can easily assume who you are and where you're from—you are a demon yourself and you're from Hell." He let out a sarcastic laugh.
Sasha raised an eyebrow at the red-masked turtle. "You're a jerk, you know that? An immensely huge jerk." She finished off her cup of tea. "I should go back to bed."
"Probably," Raph agreed.
She didn't move. She just sat there, staring down at her cup. "It's kind of cold in the infirmary," she murmured. "I don't think the kerosene heater Donatello put in there is working. I think it's out of fuel."
"Dammit, kid. Why are you complaining to me? You're tough. Sleeping in the cold won't kill you."
She looked up at him. "No, it won't." She stood up and put the cup into the sink. "G'night."
Raph watched as she left the kitchen, and then drank his own tea, grimacing at how strong it was. He knew why Sasha had mentioned the cold. She wasn't worried about freezing to death. What she was worried about was her dream. He almost felt sorry for her. Almost. Something inside him was telling Raph that if worse came to worse, the girl would find ways to survive. It was the people that had no way to survive without help that Raph really pitied.
Sasha didn't fall back asleep when she got back to the infirmary. Instead, she sat on her bed with her blanket curled around her, and stared into the darkness of the room. A few minutes later, she heard Raph head to bed, and then the lair was completely silent.
It was so still that when the person entered the room, Sasha could him sense immediately and very clearly. She couldn't see him, but he was in there with her. She held her breath and waited for the other person to make a move. It didn't take long.
"Hello Sasha."
The voice was calm and sure of itself.
"Who's there?" Sasha demanded, peering into the darkness. Her tail lashed wildly around behind her, ready for anything.
She was still the only person in the room, or so it looked. Sasha, though, knew better than that. Her whole body tensed up. "Who's there?" she demanded again.
"Who, me?" the voice came from her left.
Sasha turned to look, and there standing next to the door to Donatello's laboratory was a young man. Like Sasha, he had silver hair and a black tail. But his eyes were different. They were gray and pupil-less. He seemed to be staring right through her. Around his neck was a Token, only it looked to be made out of iron instead of silver.
"Who are you?" Sasha asked, narrowing her eyes at him.
"What? You've forgotten me?" He sounded truly offended. "How could you have forgotten me?"
"Do I know you?"
The young man grinned. "Not anymore I guess. Oh, well, good things never last." He eyed her neck. "Got your Token I see. That's my girl. I knew you'd come around eventually." He sneered, an expression that suggested pure evil.
"What does that mean, I've come around? Who are you?" Sasha asked. But before her questions were complete, the man disappeared completely. Sasha could no longer sense him anywhere in the room, or anywhere in the lair.
She pulled her pillow up to her and held it in her hands to keep them from shaking. That person. She knew him. She had seen him before. Yes, she had seen him before, but where? She could sense it—she almost had a grip on the memory. Yes, she knew who he was. He was...He was...but before she could remember anything besides that she knew him, the memory slipped back under the surface.
"ARG!" she screamed in frustration and slammed the pillow hard against the bed. She felt some of the stitches give way under the force of the blow. "ARG!" She slammed the pillow again, and then began punching it with every word. "WHY—CAN'T—I—RE-MEM-BER—A—GOD—FOR—SAKEN—THING?!?" With one last exertion of force, she raised the pillow above her head. But instead of slamming it against the bed, she lowered it, then wrapped her arms around it and began to cry. The tears were cool against her hot face as they ran down her cheeks. She remembered that she had only cried twice in her life, but she couldn't remember when those times were, or why they had made her cry.
A hand on her back startled her, but when she looked up, she didn't find the strange man there. Instead, it was Michelangelo's eyes staring back into her own.
"I heard you shouting," he explained. "I came to see if you're all right."
Sasha sniffed loudly and tried to brush away her tears. "I'm fine."
"No you're not," Michelangelo said. "But okay." He sat down on the edge of her bed. "Wow, you've got the most comfortable bed in the whole lair," he breathed. "No wonder Raph likes to get hurt so much."
Sasha smiled at the joke through her tears. "Michelangelo, do you believe in demons?"
"Demons?" He frowned. "I don't know. What do you call a demon?"
"I don't know. I just had a dream about them, that's all." She decided not to mention the strange man to him, since that would only cause more problems.
"Is that why you're awake? You're nervous that the dream will come back?"
Sasha's jaw nearly hit the floor. "How did you know that?"
He grinned. "Just call me Therapist Mike. Master Splinter says I have a gift for understanding people. If you want, I can stay here until you fall asleep. When I was little and had bad dreams, Master Splinter would sit up with me till I went back to sleep. That always kept the dreams from coming back. Leo did it sometimes, too. Trust me, it works."
Sasha nodded. "All right. I'll try to go back to sleep if you promise to stay with me till I'm snoring."
Michelangelo nodded. "Deal."
That night, Raphael was the last person awake. He sat up in the dark living room watching a Clint Eastwood movie long past the time the others went to bed, long past midnight. He simply couldn't sleep. He rarely could. It wasn't something that worried him or his family in the slightest for it was just a routine with him: he would be that last to bed, the last one up, and still be just as grouchy as ever. He sighed as he remembered the time when he and his brothers were little, and Michelangelo had called him "Oscar the Grouch". Raph had hauled of and smacked Mikey for that. He didn't like being called a grouch. He didn't like to be called anything.
The movie was just ending, and Raph was starting to think about going to bed when he heard a noise in the kitchen. He looked up. The lights in the kitchen were off, and it was darker than night in there. He stared into the black doorway and heard it again: Someone was opening and closing cupboards quietly, as if they didn't want to be heard. It wasn't one of his brothers or Master Splinter, he knew, for they would have announced their presence. And there was no way it could be that little brat with a tail who was sleeping in the infirmary—she didn't have the skill to walk silently past him; Raph would have noticed her.
So, someone was in their kitchen, looking for something, and they were trying to be sneaky about it. Raph stood up slowly, drawing his one of his sai out of his belt, and began to slowly make his way towards the kitchen. He got to the doorway and peered in. It was too dark to see anything. Raph decided to give himself a little advantage. He reached quietly over to the light switch on the kitchen wall, and then with a loud shout he threw on the lights, bathing the kitchen in light.
Sasha had been looking in the cabinets for something to make tea with. She had left the light off because she found she could see perfectly in the dark, and had not wanted to disturb Raphael. But when the lights switched on so suddenly, pain flooded into her eyes. Surprised, her instincts took over. She crouched down behind the table, and wrapped her tail around a chair leg, ready to throw it if the need arose.
"What the hell?" Raph breathed when he saw Sasha duck down under the table. He slid the sai back into his belt. "What the hell are you doing up?"
Sasha peered up over the table. Seeing Raph, she breathed a sigh of relief. "I had a dream," she said. "It bothered me."
Raph rolled his eyes and groaned. "Geez kid. I'm sorry you had a nightmare, but you don't have to go around like someone's gonna kill you if they find you."
"It wasn't a nightmare," Sasha replied, standing up and allowing her tail to relax. "It was a dream."
"Well then, if it was just a dream, what about it bothers you so much?"
"The fact that it didn't."
"Didn't what?"
"Didn't bother me."
Raph groaned and rolled his eyes. "If we're just gonna talk in circles, then I have better things to do with my time than talk to you. Like sleep."
"Than do them. I'm not stopping you." Sasha began opening the cupboards again, peering in at the contents.
Raph didn't move.
Sasha snorted. "So I guess talking to me is a last resort?"
"Listen, I don't need to take any crap from you. You just sparked my interest," Raph said, pulling up a chair. This girl's self-confidence held a slight appeal for him. He wasn't used to someone so being sure of themselves. "So what was so scary about this dream?"
"It wasn't scary. Or, at least, it didn't scare me. It should have though. That's what bothers me. Where do you guys keep the tea?"
"It's in the drawer next to the stove. What was your dream about?"
Sasha paused and placed both hands on the top of the counter. Her back was to Raphael, but her tail gave away that she was nervous, because it kept twitching from side to side. "It was about demons," she murmured.
"Demons?"
"Yeah. They were all around me, getting ready to attack, and I wasn't scared. I wasn't even worried. They were everywhere, threatening me, and laughing at me, and I didn't even care...Have you ever dreamed about demons?"
Raphael didn't answer. She seemed to accept that, and went on making tea. They didn't speak for a while. Finally, unable to stand the silence any longer, Raph spoke. "Damn."
Sasha turned to him, grinning. "So you get it now. Wouldn't that freak you out at least a little? If you had a dream that would scare the pants off any decent ninja, and you didn't even care?"
Raph nodded, but didn't say anything. This girl was pretty messed up. Not scared by a dream that had plagued him for years? She had to be kidding.
But the thing was, she wasn't kidding him. She was simply stating fact, "Objectifying the event" was what Donnie would say. This girl made him nervous. She was just so cool, so collected, even when she had no idea what was going to happen to her. She was more like Splinter than any of his brothers. It was like she was from another world.
She set a cup of tea down in front of him. "You should get more sleep," she told him, sitting down across from him.
"Speak for yourself," Raph sneered.
"I don't think I usually sleep much. My body can't handle it. It's like I always have to be on alert."
Raph thought for a moment before he spoke. "Have you thought that maybe you're so jumpy and on edge because someone's always smacking you around?"
"Point to any physical evidence of abuse," Sasha said. "And when you do, I'll believe you. But I only have one scar on my entire body. It looks pretty old, too, 'cause I only just noticed it today." She pulled the left side of her tank top collar down to reveal a faint, yet definite scar that ran from the top of her shoulder almost down to her chest, following the line of her collar bone almost exactly. "It was made by a blade. But not like in surgery. Something else."
Raph cocked and eye ridge. "So, lemme state so far what you've come up with about yourself. One, you don't have a family. Two, you're not scared by dreams about demons. Three, you have a scar that isn't from surgery. And four, you don't like people touching your Token. Great! With all that information, we can easily assume who you are and where you're from—you are a demon yourself and you're from Hell." He let out a sarcastic laugh.
Sasha raised an eyebrow at the red-masked turtle. "You're a jerk, you know that? An immensely huge jerk." She finished off her cup of tea. "I should go back to bed."
"Probably," Raph agreed.
She didn't move. She just sat there, staring down at her cup. "It's kind of cold in the infirmary," she murmured. "I don't think the kerosene heater Donatello put in there is working. I think it's out of fuel."
"Dammit, kid. Why are you complaining to me? You're tough. Sleeping in the cold won't kill you."
She looked up at him. "No, it won't." She stood up and put the cup into the sink. "G'night."
Raph watched as she left the kitchen, and then drank his own tea, grimacing at how strong it was. He knew why Sasha had mentioned the cold. She wasn't worried about freezing to death. What she was worried about was her dream. He almost felt sorry for her. Almost. Something inside him was telling Raph that if worse came to worse, the girl would find ways to survive. It was the people that had no way to survive without help that Raph really pitied.
Sasha didn't fall back asleep when she got back to the infirmary. Instead, she sat on her bed with her blanket curled around her, and stared into the darkness of the room. A few minutes later, she heard Raph head to bed, and then the lair was completely silent.
It was so still that when the person entered the room, Sasha could him sense immediately and very clearly. She couldn't see him, but he was in there with her. She held her breath and waited for the other person to make a move. It didn't take long.
"Hello Sasha."
The voice was calm and sure of itself.
"Who's there?" Sasha demanded, peering into the darkness. Her tail lashed wildly around behind her, ready for anything.
She was still the only person in the room, or so it looked. Sasha, though, knew better than that. Her whole body tensed up. "Who's there?" she demanded again.
"Who, me?" the voice came from her left.
Sasha turned to look, and there standing next to the door to Donatello's laboratory was a young man. Like Sasha, he had silver hair and a black tail. But his eyes were different. They were gray and pupil-less. He seemed to be staring right through her. Around his neck was a Token, only it looked to be made out of iron instead of silver.
"Who are you?" Sasha asked, narrowing her eyes at him.
"What? You've forgotten me?" He sounded truly offended. "How could you have forgotten me?"
"Do I know you?"
The young man grinned. "Not anymore I guess. Oh, well, good things never last." He eyed her neck. "Got your Token I see. That's my girl. I knew you'd come around eventually." He sneered, an expression that suggested pure evil.
"What does that mean, I've come around? Who are you?" Sasha asked. But before her questions were complete, the man disappeared completely. Sasha could no longer sense him anywhere in the room, or anywhere in the lair.
She pulled her pillow up to her and held it in her hands to keep them from shaking. That person. She knew him. She had seen him before. Yes, she had seen him before, but where? She could sense it—she almost had a grip on the memory. Yes, she knew who he was. He was...He was...but before she could remember anything besides that she knew him, the memory slipped back under the surface.
"ARG!" she screamed in frustration and slammed the pillow hard against the bed. She felt some of the stitches give way under the force of the blow. "ARG!" She slammed the pillow again, and then began punching it with every word. "WHY—CAN'T—I—RE-MEM-BER—A—GOD—FOR—SAKEN—THING?!?" With one last exertion of force, she raised the pillow above her head. But instead of slamming it against the bed, she lowered it, then wrapped her arms around it and began to cry. The tears were cool against her hot face as they ran down her cheeks. She remembered that she had only cried twice in her life, but she couldn't remember when those times were, or why they had made her cry.
A hand on her back startled her, but when she looked up, she didn't find the strange man there. Instead, it was Michelangelo's eyes staring back into her own.
"I heard you shouting," he explained. "I came to see if you're all right."
Sasha sniffed loudly and tried to brush away her tears. "I'm fine."
"No you're not," Michelangelo said. "But okay." He sat down on the edge of her bed. "Wow, you've got the most comfortable bed in the whole lair," he breathed. "No wonder Raph likes to get hurt so much."
Sasha smiled at the joke through her tears. "Michelangelo, do you believe in demons?"
"Demons?" He frowned. "I don't know. What do you call a demon?"
"I don't know. I just had a dream about them, that's all." She decided not to mention the strange man to him, since that would only cause more problems.
"Is that why you're awake? You're nervous that the dream will come back?"
Sasha's jaw nearly hit the floor. "How did you know that?"
He grinned. "Just call me Therapist Mike. Master Splinter says I have a gift for understanding people. If you want, I can stay here until you fall asleep. When I was little and had bad dreams, Master Splinter would sit up with me till I went back to sleep. That always kept the dreams from coming back. Leo did it sometimes, too. Trust me, it works."
Sasha nodded. "All right. I'll try to go back to sleep if you promise to stay with me till I'm snoring."
Michelangelo nodded. "Deal."