After that initial meeting, she refused to lower the sheet she wrapped around herself, even in Raphael's presence, expressing a sense of modesty, humility, and decency. As soon as Leonardo had recognized the woman's discomfort at having no clothing, he'd taken it upon himself to gather just a few of their sensei's old haoris and passed to his brother for the woman. She had immediately donned one, though her shell and the length prevented her from allowing it to hang by her shoulders. She let it fall down her arms before closing it across her chest and biceps and tying it with some ribbon Donnie had scrounged up. The cloth still ended at her thighs and looked as indecent as any woman wearing nothing but a man's oversized shirt, but it seemed to satisfy her desire for coverage.
The following days continued to blur together as the brothers attempted to adapt to life with not only a sixth mutant and fifth turtle, but also the second woman to ever reside in their household for more than a of couple hours. It took two full days before the woman would see anyone but Raphael without cowering to a back corner of Donnie's room with some kind of blunt object. And even when she did allow any of the other mutants into the room, she still required Raphael's presence and no one was allowed near her except the red-masked hot-head. After another day or two, she finally started to venture beyond Donatello's room.
As the days passed, Leonardo marveled at the patience his usually impulsive and brash brother displayed, as the woman whose name they continually failed to glean, clung to him. Not that he particularly blamed his brother, either. It had to be a strange sensation to have a female of their own species press herself against him. Was it awkward? Was it pleasant? His brother surely had to be growing familiar with it after nearly a week passed since her arrival.
Today was no different than any of the previous days, as Raphael emerged from Donatello's room, straight-backed and fierce as ever. It had become a routine, Leo realized. As soon as they awoke, Raphael went to Donnie's room – the engineer having taken up residence on the couch – and would emerge a few minutes later with their newest companion pressed flat to his shell. Meanwhile, breakfast duty continued to rotate between rest of the mutants. Today was Leo and Mikey's turn, and while his younger brother grumbled his annoyance at having been awoken so early and poked at the eggs he was cooking, Leo set the table. Laying tableware in their proper places and filling glasses with milk, tea, orange juice, or coffee depending on each of his family's personal preference. He left only one glass empty as his gaze shifted to watch his brother's entrance.
In the week since her arrival, Leo had yet to see the woman actually join them for a meal. It was nearly the only time she left Raphael's side. While he and his brothers feasted, she took the plate shoved into her hands, and disappeared for a few short minutes before reappearing; plate missing. They always found it later; washed, dried, and put away but it raised a warning sign in Leonardo. When he made an inquiry to their sensei about it, Master Splinter had only told him that it was perfectly common for a woman to shy away from eating in public. Especially in front of five strange males. Leo accepted the explanation but still made a note to ask April about it when she and Casey returned from visiting April's out-of-state sister.
Raphael flopped down at the table in his usual place, soon followed by a yawning, stretching Donnie as he rubbed an eye with one hand and drew his coffee-filled mug to his lips with the other. Leo watched the woman sidle away from Donnie and tentatively drew the plate laid out next to Raphael from the table. She pressed the empty platter across her barely clothed chest as Master Splinter joined his sons at the table and Mikey approached from the stove with a serving bowl full of golden eggs.
As Mikey and Leo took up their places at the table and Donnie reached over, dunking his spoon into the bowl of eggs, the woman started to step away, but everything stopped when Raphael reached out and grabbed her wrist. His amber eyes locked on her periwinkle depths. "Stay." He commanded gently, "Stay and join us."
Everyone's attention fell to the woman, and the hand clasped around her wrist, holding their breath, waiting to see what would happen. She looked as frightened as ever as she beheld the attention now upon her, mimicking a doe in headlights quite well. Master Splinter was the first to break the silence, as he cleared his throat and resumed spreading a slice of butter across his bread. Donnie quickly looked away as well, heaving a spoonful of eggs from the dish and flopping it onto his own plate before plucking a couple strips of bacon from another plate. Leo followed the act, trying to pretend like he wasn't as curious as his siblings to see what would happen next.
Michelangelo was the only one who apparently didn't understand the cue, as he sprang from his seat, latched onto the back of the chair positioned between his seat and Raphael's, and pulled it out. "Yeah, Crystal, join us!" He squealed.
"Crystal?" Donnie asked skeptically, eying his brother. Leo and Splinter both dropped their heads as the diversion clearly failed to avert attention, and Raphael's hand fell away, leaving the woman to make her own decision.
"Yeah. I mean, she won't tell us her name. Why can't we give her one?"
" 'we', what 'we'? You just threw that name out without consulting any of us, which means you decided to appoint a name. And that's even the point. You can't just pick a name for someone. She's got her own name. And until she says otherwise, we should respect her privacy and let her tell us when she wants." Donnie growled, bracing his hands on either side of his breakfast filled plate and leaning in toward his overeager brother.
"Would you both shut up?" Leo griped to his own empty plate, though he snapped to attention at a scrapping sound and the soft clatter of ceramic meeting hard wood. The woman perched on the edge of her chair, drawing it closer to Raphael, as she chewed on her lower lips. "Y-Yoko…" She whispered, drawing everyone's attention back to her as her muscles tensed, as if struggling not to bolt. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed hard, before she said with only a shred more confidence, "My name. It's Yoko. Yoko Hamashira."
Her muscles tensed again as Mikey leaned on the table, as if trying to look into her face. "You don't look like a 'Yoko'." He quipped, yelping when Leo unexpectedly latched onto the knot in his mask and yanked him back into his own seat. Without so much as a word, the blue-masked leader lifted a spoon from his suddenly filled plate and started eating as though nothing had happened. Fighting the grin that spread across Donnie and Raphael's lips, fighting the satisfaction that filled the sensei on his left, struggling with the many questions that filled his head. He'd had his suspicions that she could speak English, she'd responded to it well enough, but to hear the words flow from her lips with barely an accent…
Breakfast passed in silence after that, each brother receiving a swift kick to the shins whenever they opened their mouth for anything other than to continue eating. It was awkward, but at the same time, quite pleasant. In their young lives, the brothers had endured few meals that didn't include rakish behavior or screaming at one another. Leo tried to fight the little smile that pulled at his lips as Mikey grunted from yet another kick. He imagined his brother would have a very sore leg after this meal.
Eventually, they each finished their meal and slowly drifted away from the table, until only Leo remained, leaving him to clear away the dishes and stack them next to the sink to be washed. As he approached the sink with the last of the dishes, he found her standing there, weight shifted awkwardly onto one foot as she blocked his way to the bubble filled sink. He didn't ask what she was doing, only set the dishes down on the already diminished pile, grabbed a towel, and started drying the dishes she passed to him. After a few moments she spoke softly. "Thank you. For not pushing it." She whispered; her voice like silk. He found himself contemplating ways to keep her talking, but she elapsed back into silence, the splash of water and clatter of ceramic hitting ceramic the only sound that passed between them. At least until a new sound echoed from the living room, a noise that had Leo scrambling not to drop the plate he was drying, struggling not to throw it down and run as the familiar voice pierced the stillness.
"Jeez! It's like a morgue in here!" Casey's voice.
"It is rather… Quiet." April's voice; tentative, assessing.
They were back! As soon as he was finished drying the dish he held, Leo slung the damp towel over his shoulder and tried not to sprint across the threshold.
"Woah! April!" Mikey cheered as he and the others followed Leo's example and burst into the main corridor to meet their guests. Mikey – as per the norm – was the first the breach the distance, as he nearly fell to his knees before their red-haired friend, his attention fixated on the woman's swollen belly.
"You sure you ain't got twins in there?" Raphael jeered, eying the woman but approaching the broad shouldered man at her side as they clasped forearms in greeting. And behind them, as he approached, Donnie launched into a lecture about body habitus, fetus size and development, and even the position of the fetus and how all those factors determine the size and shape of a mother's swollen abdomen in the final stretches of pregnancy. The lecture obviously fell on deaf ears as April was goaded into telling Mikey every detail and exciting thing to happen while she and her husband had been away while Raph and Casey apparently found themselves locked in an arm wrestle.
Leo waited, biding his time as even his sensei joined the group in welcoming their friends home from their trip. He waited until he recognized the slump of his brother's shoulders and a series of oh's and ah's that issued from his mouth in excitement as he drew the humans' attention toward himself. As if she too knew the signal, Yoko slipped from the kitchen behind Leo, though she hugged the doorframe. Weary. Leo expected as much. It had taken him and his brothers a week just to learn her name. Throwing Casey and April at her now would only frighten her more.
The movement had not gone unnoticed, he realized as April's green eyes swept beyond his kin, and past him, until the young woman was weaving through the crowd in front of her, toward Leo. No. Past Leo. "Hello, there." She greeted, kindly. Behind her Casey let out a low whistle, quickly followed by a hearty laugh, as he moved. The confident swagger seemed to startle Yoko as she sucked in a sharp breath, her pale eyes swinging toward Casey, and she took a quick step back, ready to flee.
Noting the change, Leo quickly intercepted his friend as Raphael appeared at his side, a firm hand on his shoulder, squeezing a warning. Casey halted his advances, and whirled on his best friend, demanding answers. Raphael started his explanation again, but his amber eyes cut to Leo, a request he recognized. Inclining his head in understanding, Leo moved back toward Yoko.
"You could have called!" Casey was complaining, "You found another mutant, and you didn't even bother to tell us?!"
"I'm sorry, telling you wasn't really a priority with everything that's been goin' on!" Raphael shot back. Leo quit listening as he ushered April into the kitchen where Yoko had retreated. Once he was alone with the two women, Leo flicked a hand between them. "April, this is Yoko. Yoko, this is April. She's a friend, I promise." He explained gently, but the mutant woman continued to recoil. It didn't surprise Leo.
"What happened?" April whispered in his ear, keeping her hands away from her sides, fingers splayed to show the frightened mutant she meant no harm.
"We're not really sure." Leo responded, "all we know is that she was shot by some Foot goons." He added, nodding toward the padded bandage peeking out from Yoko's robe.
"Shredder?" April whispered back, her attention instantly focused on Leo again, "he's back?"
"We don't know. That was almost a week ago. Haven't heard anything else since. But we also haven't gone topside either. We've been kind of distracted down here." He explained, inclining his head toward Yoko who took a very tentative step toward them. As if their whispered conversation intrigued her. In his normal voice, Leo beckoned the woman closer. "It's okay, Yoko. Come say hi. I bet you two will get along great." He added, before conveniently finding a need to leave the room and the two women behind.
With some coaxing from April and Raph, and a great deal of patience, Yoko slowly emerged from the kitchen keeping a wary eye on Casey as though he frightened her more than anything. And when she wasn't watching the human male, her pale eyes held a kindness the brothers had not seen, as she focused on April, on her swollen belly, as if she could see the unborn babe within. She kept close to the other female, and they engaged in a quiet conversation about parenthood. April managed to glean more information about her in a single hour than the mutants had gathered in the past week. Though the information wasn't particularly useful to the brothers, as the women mostly discussed children and families. But she was still weary. Weary of the brothers, weary of Casey, weary of her surroundings.
The Jones' stayed for most of the afternoon, but eventually took their leave as April expressed her gratitude toward having another woman in the family, and hopefully someone who could teach the turtles some house manners. Yoko let a soft laugh escape her lips, but quickly clamped down on it at the suggestion. And as soon as the couple was gone, she detached herself from the brothers, disappearing back into Donnie's room where she did not reemerge.
A/N: As some of you may have noticed by now, updates are fairly slow in coming, most of the time I'm lucky to get a new chapter finished once a month, but I just want to let my faithful readers know. I am a full time medical student and attend class Mon-Fri 08:00 - 13:00 {1:00 PM}, and usually spend my afternoons working on homework or studying, therefore the only time I really have to work on NB is during the weekend, but I also have to juggle home life too. I have two cats, a dog, a ferret, and a widowed grandmother that all require my attention as well. I also struggle immensely with depression and it often takes a heavy toll on my desire to write. I try to work on NB every weekend, but let's be honest, I might actually get some decent writing in maybe twice a month, if I'm lucky. Long story, short; please do not give up on NB just because the updates are slow! New updates will come out eventually, I promise! NB is only the first in a series of four stories that will follow the path of these characters and the development of their relationships with the turtles. There may even be a short "special edition" story in the New Horizons saga, so please keep reading. If you would like live updates on when new chapters will be coming out - or even if you have questions about a chapter/content/character - you can message me.