Author's Note: I own nothing but Marie and Jaclyn.

Chapter 8: Teenagers

"I don't think so."

Jaclyn's face fell into something between an annoyed scowl and an indignant pout. She was tempted to argue, but Marie got there first.

"It's just tobacco," she said, reaching into box to pull out one of the little tin canisters. "Totally leg—"

She paused, glancing over the four massive turtles before her. "Wait, how old are you guys?"

"Nineteen," Michelangelo piped up, straightening a big to appear taller and, she imagined, older by default. Not that he had to; he, even as the shortest of the brothers, was still at least six feet tall, a good few inches taller than Marie.

"Totally legal!" she finished with a grin.

Leonardo shook his head firmly. "Absolutely not," he said. "You two should know better than to bring that stuff in here."

Marie's grin fell slightly, and Jaclyn grasped for straws, bringing out the secret weapon.

"But it's traditional ritual!"

A browridge raised over bright blue eyes.

Marie glanced at her friend, catching on. "She's right!" she agreed. "Smoking the hookah is a traditional practice in Middle Eastern cultures, a way to bond as comrades and friends."

"It goes back hundreds of years," Jac said. She let her head drop a bit, looking disappointed. "We just thought it would be nice for all of us, you know, new-found family and all."

Leonardo's lips tightened, considering but still opposed. Marie and Jac glanced past him at the others. Michelangelo was clearly excited to try something new, Donatello was notably curious, and Raphael and April had their eyes fixed on Leonardo, seemingly more interested in his reaction than the contents of the box Jaclyn held.

"I don't think-"

"Is that a hookah?"

The room turned to see Splinter peeking through one of the newly-scrubbed windows of the old subway car, his shining black eyes bright even in the dim lighting of the lair.

"Yes?" Jaclyn said slowly, trying to pre-guage the patriarch's upcoming response.

His eyes crinkled. It was the easiest way to know he was smiling, since his rat's jaw made it difficult to see the curve of his mouth most of the time.

"I have always wanted to try hookah," he mused. Jaclyn's gaze went back to Leonardo, and she smiled triumphantly.

Marie grinned and skipped past him. "Come on, team, we need every pillow and cushion in the lair, stat!"

He remembered Donatello telling him about drugs. Leonardo was pretty adamant that none of them touch the stuff, even though Michelangelo wasn't sure exactly how he'd get his hands on any anyway. But Donatello had looked them up, telling Mikey about a few and their effects, how they'd feel at the time and their consequences.

The hookah didn't make him see things, didn't make him all slow and unable to function. But it smelled good and gave his head a little bit of comfortable fuzzing and made his body a little more relaxed.

As relaxed as it could be, with Marie's hair brushing his propped-up leg every time she turned her head.

The pipe had passed him again, and as Donatello took the pipe, once again inspecting it with vague interested as he rifled through the different flavors of tobacco in the box, Michelangelo let his eyes wander over the group. They mostly sat on the floor on the pile of cushions he, Marie, and April had gathered around the low coffee table they'd fashioned from an old wooden door and some cinder blocks. He had settled into a beanbag, Marie sitting cross-legged on the ground next to him, leaning back against his outstretched legs occasionally to recline a bit. Leonardo, Jaclyn, and Splinter all set facing the table, noble and official-looking, both enjoying the activity and observing it as a ritual a bit more than as a time to relax. Donatello had pulled up a chair, seemingly to get a better view of the simple yet mesmerizing workings of the ornate glass pipe on the table. And April and Raphael sat on opposite sides of himself, looking almost a bit...awkward. Weird.

He looked at the women in their company, all fairly different in looks and style. April. April looked like any bombshell you'd see in those magazines he'd found in Raphael's hammock years ago. Slim, stunningly gorgeous, long shining hair and full lips and blue eyes. Movie star beautiful. The kind of girl that got harassed on the streets a lot, according to Raphael, who spent a lot of time trailing their human friend to make sure nothing shady went down.

Jaclyn looked like the girl next door, with her natural, pretty features, smokey eyes, and a more bohemian, modestly flirty style. She and Marie were both bigger than April, to be sure, but that was just fine to Michelangelo; there was a certain charm to the curves they had that April didn't.

But Marie. Where Jaclyn was natural, Marie was edge. Thick black hair streaked with unnatural silver, and bright red lips ever-present, she was obviously looking to grab attention more than look pretty. But she was pretty, Michelangelo decided. Her eyes were a shade somewhere between blue and green, and they almost disappeared when she smiled, crinkling at the corners. She laughed a lot. He liked to make her laugh. He was good at it. Once when he made her laugh, she placed her hand on his bicep as her other arm wrapped over her stomach in her fit of giggling, and he felt a heat flush into his face at the touch. That was his goal. To make her laugh and touch his arm again.

He was starting to pay more attention to Marie than to Jaclyn, even to April. But they didn't seem to mind. He even saw April sneak glances over at them when he was making Marie laugh, and April smiled. She didn't seem sad or upset. April was a good friend.

Marie was shaking her head at something Jaclyn was saying, and her thick, dark ponytail brushed the side of his knee again, catching his attention. It looked soft, and he started fidgeting with the sunglasses looped over his necklace to distract him from the urge to reach out and touch it.

"So, let me get this straight," Donatello was saying. "You aren't thrown off by the time travel, but this, this, you're drawing a hard line at?"

"Yes," Jaclyn exclaimed, tossing her hands up in exasperation. "There is no way that they would be able to communicate! Those people wouldn't speak Modern English! It'd be some old dialect of French."

"Even if it was English," Marie piped up. "It'd be completely unrecognizable at that time. Even Shakespearean pronunciation, which is fairly recent is difficult for untrained listeners, let alone hundreds of years before that. Their English would pre-date Chaucer."

The turtles blinked at her. She shrugged. "I studied historical linguistics in college."

"But, the fact of the matter still stands," Donatello argued. "The fact that you find this more unbelievable than the concept of time travel-"

"But the point of the movie was time travel," Jaclyn interrupted. "You're meant to suspend belief as far as that goes because it's the whole point of the movie. A complete disregard for historical integrity is completely different!"

Brown eyes flashed toward Marie from behind thick glasses. The woman shrugged, reaching to take the pipe from Leonardo's outstretched hand. "Welcome to living with Jac," she said simply, taking in a long drag from the pipe and letting the white smoke swirl slowly out from between her red lips.

The friendly debate continued for a while, until Donatello conceded to the fact that the potential of time travel was, in fact, more feasible, in theory, than pre-medieval Europeans knowing modern English. Jaclyn looked rather pleased with herself.

"So," Marie said, straightening up and leaning forward towards Splinter. Michelangelo missed the brush of her hair instantly. "Tell us a story about these guys when they were kids. I'm dying to hear all about it."

Splinter's eyes crinkled, and three of the four brothers collectively groaned. All except Michelangelo; he had no shame, and it took a lot to embarrass him.

"Well," Splinter said, bringing a clawed hand up to stroke at his goatee. "There was the time with the duckie blanket…"

This time, a louder groaning, and Raphael and Leonardo both were up like shots.

"I gotta go lift-"

"I left something outside-"

"TELL US EVERYTHING," came the ecstatic cry from April as the three girls scooted closer to the rat, Michelangelo joining them, and Donatello chuckled at the retreating backs of his brothers as his father recounted the Epic Battle of Duckie Blankie to his captive audience.

Michelangelo slipped from his room as he had the past few nights, to go and check on the girls. They had their own room now, a larger room in the subway terminal that appeared to have been a convenience or gift shop, cleared out to give the women more privacy, a space to call their own, since they were effectively "homeless" now. He didn't like to think of them that way. He liked to think this was their home, now, but there was an air of sad temporariness to the situation. Like they were just biding time until they could live up top again. He didn't really like to think about that. He liked having them around. They were fun, and pretty, and smelled way better than his brothers, and they never made fun of him like his brothers did. He didn't mind the picking from his brothers, not really, but it was nice to have someone who, you know...didn't.

He stopped short in his quiet creeping when he saw the light, his eyes quickly adjusting. It was Marie, sitting on the cold concrete floor next to the wall of the station near a grate, her face eerily illuminated by the screen of the laptop Donatello had lent her to continue her writing work. He made a quiet scrape with his foot deliberately, a soft sound to alert her of his presence without startling her. She looked up at him, face fresh and washed, the usual winged eyeliner and cherry red lips absent. She looked even younger bare-faced, when she hardly looked her 28 years all dolled up. She broke into a warm, welcoming smile.

"Hey Mikey," she said, voice hushed and friendly. He returned her smile and sat down next to her upon seeing her pat the floor in invitation.

"Whatcha doin', kitten?" he asked. "There's gotta be more comfortable places to hang out."

"I know," she said. She laid a hand over the grate and held a finger to her lips to shush him and bid him to listen. There was water running below them, echoing up through the grate.

"The sound of water helps me clear my head," she said. "This is as close as I can get for now."

She shut the laptop, and he held his hands up, "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to bug ya, I can go-"

"It's okay," she said. "I gave up on finishing the article about twenty minutes ago. I was playing Rift." She grinned sheepishly.

His eyes flickered over to the grate again. "Water, huh?"

"Yeah," she said, setting the laptop on the floor in front of her, well away from the grate. "I grew up in the country in Michigan, right next to a creek that we used to play in all the time. And my family used to go to this lake every summer and stay there for a week, a whole week of nothing but relaxing and being happy and irresponsible…"

She looked dreamy for a moment, gaze unfocused, and then her face dropped a little. "I used to drag Jac to the beach all the time," she said. "Coney Island, sit on the boardwalk, just dangle our feet and watch the ocean, listen to the waves. It was good for us, little taste of living on the lakeshore at home."

She looked a little sad, and it made him restless. He didn't handle sadness well. He wasn't a comforter, he was a….happier. He glanced in the direction of the girls' room, and his and his brothers', and Splinter's.

"Wanna go?"

She looked up at him, eyes wide. "Go?"

"Coney Island," he said. "It's dark, we can keep to the rooftops, get you some of that wave therapy, girl."

That smile was creeping back over her features, that fun-loving, adventurous, slightly mischievous smile she got sometimes. She looked to the bedrooms, then back to him.

"Okay."

Okay, he had to admit, it wasn't an easy journey to make. He could lift and carry her no problem; he may not have been as strong as Raphael, but his mutant genes made him far stronger than a typical human and carrying an extra couple pounds was no big deal.

But going the roof route meant that he had to have his hands free, and, well, Marie's upper body strength wasn't the best. There was a lot of stopping and repositioning, resting, and a lot of squawks of terror from the ponytailed girl clinging to his shell like an oiled-up barnacle every time he made a big jump or landed a bit harder than she liked. He wasn't sure how they did it in the movies, with the damsel in distress who seemed to have even less muscle than Marie holding onto their swinging, leaping heroes without so much as a slip. Movie magic, man.

They made it to Coney Island much faster than she probably ever had by taxi, since they could avoid traffic and one-way streets...well, streets, period, by the way the crow flies. He landed on the lower rooftop overlooking the peninsula, most of the lights off at this time of night, not the bustling hub of amusement it was during day and twilight hours.

She slid off his shell with a not-all-that-graceful slump, stretching out her aching arms, flexing her fingers to get some circulation back.

"Man, that was rough," she complained. "I did a push-up a month ago and everything. What was the point?"

He smirked and gestured toward the view. "Your water, m'lady."

She made her way past him, eyes wide and jaw slacked. They could see for miles here, still quite a few stories up, and the breeze here was warm and salted, none of the touch of the city having tainted it with that smell that was just so New York. Her eyes danced over the water, the parks, the buildings of Coney Island, and she suddenly grinned, raising an arm to point towards the peninsula. He followed her gaze and laughed a little.

"Hop on, babe!"

Everything was closed in the park, but a little bit of brute strength from him and a tight squeeze from her, and they had popcorn and cotton candy and sodas from a concession stand (she'd left cash on the corner, citing "Catholic guilt"), and she made a grandiose effort in holding all of it as she clung to his shell while he scaled the massive metal structure.

"You good, cupcake?"

"Mmmffnnn," came the reply from around the twisted tie-offs of the cotton candy and popcorn bags. It sounded positive, so he continued.

When he got to the top, he stopped, giving her a little boost to climb over his shoulder so she could get comfortable and also take the bags out of her mouth (that had to be a choking hazard or something) before he climbed in. The car swung and creaked a bit, making him freeze, wide-eyed. He alone was easily a few hundred pounds, plus her weight...was it safe?

The car settled, and they both let out a little breath. She had sat down on the seat, and smiled up at him, scooting over to make room. Not much room. They hadn't thought this through, really, hadn't taken into account his size. But he sat down anyway, and she shifted, turning and twisting, unable to find a comfortable way to sit. He swallowed roughly, and made the bold move of reaching down, grabbing her by the calves gently, and swinging them over his lap, laying them across his lower thighs and becoming a turtle chaise for her, being careful to keep her legs at a decent distance from...um...things. She twisted with his movement, not pulling away, and found herself in a much more comfortable position in the long run, so she stayed there, casually draped over him, nestled between him and the side of the car against her back.

"Pick your poison," she said, holding up the bags of snacks. "I apologize in advance for the slobber."

He shrugged and plucked the bag of cotton candy from her fingers, tearing it open without much thought of just taking off the twist-tie. She grinned and reached for one of the the bottles of soda, looking out over the view. The ferris wheel was at the furthest point of the park, and there wasn't much past it before the edge of Coney Island, and from up here it just looked like they were suspended over the ocean. He watched her, shoving a handful of the flossy sweet into his mouth and offering the bag to her, and smiling happily as she did the same.

"This is really awesome," she said. "Thank you, Mikey."

"Don't mention it," he said, mouth full. "So, what was it like? Living out in the country?"

She tilted her head at him a little, as if amused by the question. "You've never been out of the city?"

She stopped, like she immediately regretted asking it. "Oh," she said. "You haven't, have you?" He shook his head. She looked sad, pitying, and he didn't like it. She shook her head, and the sadness was gone.

"It's pretty," she said. "Not like, this kind of pretty." She swept an arm out towards the ocean, the blinking of lights from the city in their peripheral.

"Where I grew up, there weren't any skyscrapers," she said. "The biggest building in my hometown is the three-story courthouse. Our main street is made of red brick, really old-school. And I lived outside the town growing up. Redneck family; I grew up catching crayfish and frogs in the creek with my bare hands, ran around barefoot, I spent my whole life outside. I had a dog…"

She trailed off, then raised her blue-green eyes, only the shine of them visible in the dim light, up to the sky above them, where only one star shone, the moon a sharp slice of silver. "And the sky," she said. "You can see everything. Millions of stars. You can see the Milky Way sometimes. I used to lay out stargazing all the time. There aren't any big city lights, you can see everything. We would count the shooting stars…"

"Wow," he said breathlessly, now looking up as well at the sad excuse for stargazing he'd been stuck with for his whole life. "I wish I could see that."

She looked back at him, giving him a little smile. "Maybe you will," she said. "Maybe someday we'll get so good at sneaking out that we can do it earlier and we'll find a car and drive out of town. Drive north...as close to Michigan nature as possible."

He grinned. "Planning our second date already, dollface?"

"Second-?" she said, her ponytail bouncing with the snap of her head towards him. She seemed about to contest it, but didn't. She was probably just avoiding a debate on it. He just took it as acceptance.

He asked about the dog. Her name was Dusty, she was a gift when Marie was five. She asked about his pets; he'd had a baby alligator hidden in his room for weeks until one night it bit the tip of Raphael's tail when he was sleeping and he had to get rid of it. She laughed at that.

He liked making her laugh.

They finished the snacks and sodas well before they finished talking. The sky was beginning to turn that dusty violet of impending dawn, and she blinked in surprise.

"Oh!" she cried out. "Mikey, we've gotta get back, it'll be daylight soon!"

He sighed. "Oh. Yeah."

She tilted her head at him again, a little crease appearing between her brows. It happened when she was concerned, or sad, he noticed. A telltale crease. Then it smoothed into non-existance as she smiled.

"I have to work the next few nights," she said. "But...I'm free Mondays. Same time next week?"

The grin didn't leave his face the entire trip back to the lair.

It was difficult, maintaining dignity with a body so broken.

Even so, the men bowed deeply to him as he passed them slowly, as straight-backed as possible with the assistance of the cane. The petite figure waiting for him at the control panel bowed as well. She was small, but fierce. A survivor, like himself.

"What is the progress?" he asked in Japanese, his voice a grating hiss.

"There is little," Karai responded. "Our scientists struggle still. However, we received this, and it is why I insisted you hear it, Master."

She pressed a button on the console, and a fuzzy radio signal filled the room, garbled. At first it sounded like gibberish, as if someone were skipping through radio stations. And then he realized that it wasn't multiple stations. It was one voice. One voice seeming to flip through a catalog of languages both mildly familiar and completely alien.

And suddenly, in a strange, choked-sounding voice, in English, for only a second.

"We come. The Krang come."