Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT.
05:
Raphael stood silently on the fire escape, panting heavily and sopping wet from the rain. The window was streaked with rain and the whole building seemed to be completely dark. He couldn't see a damn thing that was inside of it. He was so confused. Was this an apartment building?
Then before he had time to think, the window in front of him was open and he was staring down at the little mousy-haired girl from Mia's Friendspace profile. The girl grinned up at him. Then she reached out and grabbed his hand, and hugged it to her chest.
Raphael stared down at her, frowning. She wasn't afraid of him at all – what a weird kid. Then he climbed over the window ledge and muttered quietly, "Thanks, kid."
He looked around the room silently. It was pitch black, but from what he could there were two beds, and the whole room seemed to be a mash-up of teenage girl and grade school princess. Then he spotted her, standing in the doorway and the screams inside his head vanished instantly.
Mia was staring at him. Gaping at him like he was a figment of her imagination, which she probably hoped he was. Her black hair fell to her shoulders in a disheveled curtain that hid part of her oval face from view, and her pale skin was offset was by the darkness. Her right leg was done up in a bright pink cast, and she was balancing herself with a pair of steel crutches.
Raphael straightened himself and felt his spine go rigid. He stared back at Mia silently, not knowing what to say or if he should say anything at all. He couldn't tell if she was afraid of him right now or if she was planning on using her crutches as a weapon. "Huh?"
He looked down to see that the mousy-haired girl had wrapped her arms around him and was beaming up at him.
Raphael frowned down at her.
What a weird freaking kid.
"Clara!" Mia said somewhat breathlessly in a worried tone.
Within an instant, the girl released Raphael from her grasp and was on the other side of the room beside Mia.
Raphael looked up at Mia, frowning. "You are afraid?" He had meant it as a statement, but it came out as a question instead. He thought back to that night again. The look on her face when he came near her...
Mia's gaze snapped back to him and for a second, she looked like she might say something. Then she paused and looked away from him, down at the floor. She frowned and shook her head. "Y-you're real," she said in a hushed, choked whisper that was more timid than afraid. "I-I mean..." Her voice trailed off. Then she looked up at him and went on, "I mean, you're really here...Raphael?"
Raph froze at the sound of his name. He wasn't sure how, but it sounded different coming from her. Then he remembered why he was here and frowned. "Is this –?" he said, giving the room another quick once-over. Then he crossed the room and pushed past her into the hall. Like the room, he had just left the entire place was pitch black, but he could tell it was an apartment. He turned back to her. "You live here?"
Mia looked down at the floor again and nodded.
"Oh, my god," Raphael said, shaking his head in disbelief. "And you –" He gestured to Mia. "There's nothing wrong with you – you aren't in trouble. You're perfectly fine." He went back into the bedroom and sat down on the bed that was covered with a My Little Pony bed set. Then he looked back up at Mia, and said, "Why did you call me if you aren't in trouble – why didn't you call back to let me know you weren't in trouble?" He could hear the accusations and confusion in his voice, and he couldn't quite figure out how to disguise it. He had just come all the way over here and exposed himself to a human – two humans, actually – because he'd thought Mia was in trouble, being beaten to death by Purple Dragons or something. And she wasn't. She was freaking fine. Other than the cast, that is.
Leo was going to have field-day with this one when he found out.
Mia looked up at him. "I –" she started. Then she stopped and pointed to the girl, who was now sitting in the middle of the room, playing with her toys in the dark. "Clara is obsessed with you, alright, and she called you or whoever and it's my fault –"
Before he even knew what he was doing, Raphael was on his feet again and yelling at her, "And you couldn't call me back to tell me that?! I know it's not exactly an iPhone, but I thought you could have probably figured out the concept of Re-dial otherwise I wouldn't have given it to you." He gestured to Clara now. "Instead you make me come over here, thinking you're in danger because you let your – what, she's your sister, right – play with the stupid T-phone?!"
"Well, just take it then!" Mia screamed at him.
Then there was a small thud at his feet, and Raphael looked down to see the T-phone on the floor in front of him. He stared at it silently and an instant later there was a much louder crash, and he looked up to see Mia on the floor with her crutches strewn to the side and her legs sprawled out awkwardly.
Raphael stared at her.
He could feel Clara staring at him.
"Just take it," Mia said again. "I never asked for it..." Her voice trailed off.
And that was when Raphael realized she was crying.
Crap.
All of his anger and annoyance evaporated. He felt a twinge of guilt in his stomach and he grabbed the phone off the floor. Then he walked over to her and knelt down beside her. "You didn't have to ask for it," he reminded her. He reached out for her hand slowly, hesitantly, but she jerked away from him suddenly. "Okay," he said, frowning. "No touching. Got it."
Mia shook her head, frowning. "You keep it," she said, not looking up from the floor. "I really don't want it." Her voice was choked, but she was no longer sobbing.
"Too bad," Raphael said, dropping it into her lap. "I gave it to you. That makes it yours, Mia."
"You know my name?" Mia asked him.
"Yeah," Raphael said, frowning. "A friend of mine found you on Friendspace and showed me your profile."
Mia nodded silently.
Then Raph nodded and said, "I should probably get out of here before your parents get home or something, huh?" He crossed the room over to the window.
"Raphael?"
Raph paused with one leg in, one leg out of the window and looked back at Mia. "Yeah?"
She looked up at him with fresh tears in her eyes. "I'm so sorry," she said quietly. "You saved my life and I treated you horribly that night, and I know I did. I've thought about it before tonight. I wanted to apologize – I just didn't know how because I just didn't want you to be real, but now you are real and you're here. I didn't even thank you for that night –"
Raphael cut her off because she was starting to blubber. "You don't need to thank me," he said simply. "Th-that's not how this whole thing works." He was tripping over his own words in disbelief. He had never thought this would happen. She was apologizing to him. She wanted to thank him. None of this made sense. He shook his head again. Then he stepped out onto the fire escape and lightning lit up the sky once again. "Just keep in touch, okay?"
One hour later, the lights in the apartment finally flickered back into life and Mia sat silently on the floor of her bedroom stunned. Raphael had found her. He had come to her home. He had been inside in her bedroom on her bed.
Mia looked up at Clara, who was now playing dress up in their closet. She watched her silently, frowning. When Raphael had been, Clara had been happier than Mia had ever seen her. She had been friendly, open, and fearless – pretty much the exact opposite of Mia."You do realize you're going to have to completely forget that he was here, right?"
Clara dropped the princess crown she was holding and looked at her, frowning.
Mia frowned back. "Janie can't know that he was here, Clara," she explained. "You can't draw any weird pictures of him in our room or hanging out with you or me. Or do anything to make Janie think that someone else was here with us – all traces of Raphael need to be gone. Do you understand?"
Clara stared at her for a moment and then nodded.
Mia nodded silently, but she knew she didn't.
How was she was supposed to move on now?
Raphael lay on his bed silently, staring up at the ceiling of his room with AC/DC blaring from his stereo.
"Hey, Raph!"
Raph looked up to see Donatello and April standing over him. "Yeah?"
"New phone," Donnie said, dropping the gadget into his lap. Then he turned and left.
April didn't follow him.
Raphael frowned. This was happening way too much for his own liking. "You need something?"
"Are you going to talk to her?" April asked him.
Getting right to the point today, are we?
Raph didn't bother asking her which "her" she meant. He didn't know that many of them. "I don't really know if that's such a good idea."
April shrugged. "Well, maybe she thinks it's a good idea."
Raphael laughed humorlessly. "Yeah, right. Besides, don't you think she'd tell me if she actually thought that?"
"She probably would," April said, smirking, "if she actually had your number, so she could contact you."
Raphael sighed and propped himself up on his elbow to look at her square in the face. "Okay," he said. "I'm going to ask you this and I want you to answer me honestly. None of those weird, girly mind games you use on Donnie: Why do you care?" It came out meaner than he'd meant for it, but April's sudden interest in his social life was more than a little weird and was starting to get old. Fast.
"Seriously, Raph," April sighed, dropping the innocent act. "It's just because I'm your friend and I care about you. Plus, I've seen Mia around school and she looks absolutely miserable every time I see her. You guys both just seem like you need someone to talk to."
"Interesting," Raphael said, nodding as though he actually believed her. "But why I can't just talk to someone other than her?"
April crossed her arms and looked at him stonily. "Because, Raph, you don't talk to anyone. You shut out your brothers and I. You're afraid to talk to Splinter and Casey sucks with stuff like this, and Mia has a T-phone, so that makes her part of the club, right? So why not talk to her then? It's not like you have anything to lose, except your excuse for being a jerk all the time!" Then she stomped out of the room.
Raphael cringed. Then he frowned and fell over onto his pillow. It had been three days since the night he had seen Mia. He hadn't told any of the others what had happened that night. That Mia had been fine and nothing had been wrong at all. He'd only said that it was no big deal and he took care of it. No one asked any questions. Since that night, the screams inside his head had quieted a bit. He didn't hear them when he was awake. Only when he was asleep. And he was more than done trying to force himself to forget about her because the one thing that he absolutely could not get out of his head was her apology to him. The way she'd said it and the look on her face. It was like she was actually sorry. Like she actually cared about his feelings. Even though she hated him?
It just didn't make sense.
A strange idea occurred to him: What if she didn't hate him – not completely, anyway?
She hadn't seemed scared of him that night, exactly, even though she seemed afraid to look at him. She had apologized. But she also screamed at him and broke down into a puddle of tears. He wasn't sure any of that constituted to a good time. So was there even a slither of a chance that Mia didn't completely hate his guts?
Raph picked up the phone Donnie had just given him and frowned at it.
Mia was in lunch when she got the text message and she jumped when she felt the T-phone – that was what he'd called it, right? – go off in her pocket. She carried it with her everywhere now, and Clara wasn't allowed anywhere near it. She wasn't sure why she'd kept it. She really didn't want it anymore. She was tired of hearing it, looking at it, and constantly worrying about when it would go off next. She even thought about throwing the thing off her fire escape, but she thought back to that night that was never supposed to happen and she just couldn't bring herself to do it. She didn't know why. She just couldn't.
She took the phone out and frowned at it.
"Hey," Troy said, reaching out and snatching the phone from her. "Isn't this your sister's toy?" He looked up at her. "Why do you have it?"
Mia snatched it back from him, scowling. "I don't know. She must have been playing with my bag again." She grabbed her crutches off the table and got to her feet. "I need to go to the restroom," she invented quickly and was grateful when none of the other girls offered to come with her.
Mia left the cafeteria through the west exit – the one in the opposite direction of Troy's next class – and went inside the girls' room just off the hall. She went inside the first stall she saw, threw her crutches against the wall, and locked the door. She took the phone out again and began scrolling through the text messages again until she found the one that was labeled NEW. She clicked on it:
'this is raphael. New phone. New number. 555-7274.'
Mia frowned as she read it. The message was so simple. It was like something you'd send to a friend. Was she supposed to respond, and if so then how? What was she supposed to write?
She sat down on the toilet and stared down at the phone. Raphael was real. She was done pretending that he wasn't. That had sailed when she'd collapsed on her bedroom floor and told him what a horrible person she was. Did this one little text message mean that they were friends – would they be friends if she responded?
Mia bit her lip and silently typed out the most simple, neutral message she could think of. 'K.'
A/N: I was thinking of doing a holiday special, but I decided to do this instead. I hope you guys liked it. I f so, then please feel free to leave a review. Happy Holidays! ^_^