Very very late birthday fic for SkitsMix!
Set in 2k3 season 1, about a week or two after "The Shredder Strikes", but before the Underground story arc.
The New Normal
Unexpected visitors at odd hours were one of the many things April had gotten used to since becoming friends with the turtles, but the tap at her window as she passed by still made her jump. She set down her load of dirty laundry and hurried over to lift the sash. "Hey guys! What's up?"
Don smiled and gave her a little wave from his perch on the side of the building. "Hi, April. Mind if we stop in for a second?"
"You have to ask?" She stepped out of the way to let the brothers swing inside, one after the other. There was a little hitch at the end - Mikey's entrance wasn't as smooth as his brothers', and when he landed he listed a bit to the left. His shell clunked against Raph's before he had the chance to right himself. Raph's hand shot out and caught hold of his belt, steadying him.
It wasn't that big of a misstep, but one thing April had learned was that, as a general rule, missteps were not something that happened to ninjas. "Mikey, you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, sounding a bit annoyed.
"That's actually why we're here," Leo said. "Mikey's ankle is hurt and we wondered if we could drop him off here and then pick him up when we're on our way back from our run."
"Aw, your ankle is hurt again?" April asked, giving Mikey a sympathetic look.
Raph snorted. "More like still hurt. Shell-for-brains didn't realize it was still busted."
"I thought it was better!" Mikey pouted. "You know I wouldn't have come with you if I thought I couldn't keep up."
"He did a flip off a rooftop and landed wrong," Don explained. "Apparently he needed to take it easy a little longer before going back to regular training."
"Of course he can stay," April said. "Although I can't promise I'll be very entertaining."
Mikey grinned. "That's okay. I can be entertaining enough for the both of us."
"Of that I have no doubt," she said with a chuckle. "Make yourself comfortable. I've got to get this load started." She gathered up her armful of laundry again as Raph helped Mikey limp over to the couch.
When she came back from the laundry room, Mikey was alone and the window was closed again. "Wild Saturday night at Casa O'Neil, eh?" he asked. He settled more comfortably in the corner of the couch, stretching his legs out on the cushions and hugging a throw pillow against his chest.
"Bite your tongue," April said with a grin. "Between Stockman and that Nano thing and the force of destruction called Casey Jones, I've had about all the 'wild' I can handle. You need anything?"
"Maybe some ice?"
"Sure, just a sec." She headed to the kitchen and pulled a bag of peas out of the freezer. She wrapped it in a thin hand towel and brought it over to the couch. "Here. This should help."
Mikey draped the bag over his ankle. "Hey, nice! I can ice my leg and defrost dinner at the same time."
"Remind me never to come over when you're cooking," April said dryly. She went back to the kitchen and started scrubbing out the sink. "So tell me," she ventured after a moment, "I know you said you hurt your ankle in a fight, but I never really heard any details. What happened?"
Mikey rubbed the back of his neck. "Heh, well, that's a bit of a long story."
She gestured with soapy rubber gloves. "Do you see me going anywhere?"
"Guess not. Okay, so. You remember that major blackout a while back?"
"Yeah."
"Well, turns out the guys responsible for it were those same ninjas we ran into the night we met you. They call themselves the Foot Clan."
"Huh. Between the Mousers and everything else that came after, I almost forgot that you'd told me about them," April said, half to herself. "Funny to think there's actually a clan of ninjas hiding somewhere here in New York."
Mikey raised a brow ridge. "Um, April? I have some news for you about my family…"
She rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean, wise guy."
He grinned unrepentantly, but sobered as he continued his explanation. April's cleaning slowed and eventually stopped as she listened. Her feelings ran the gamut from astonishment to something akin to worry as Mikey described their confrontation with the Shredder.
"…so yeah, getting half a building dropped on your foot will give you a bit of an owie," Mikey said, wiggling the toes of the foot in question.
April's brows drew together in a worried frown. "This guy sounds like bad news, but you seem to be taking this pretty lightly."
"Oh, he's bad news. But he's old news," Mikey replied. "We kinda dropped a water tower on him."
April took off her gloves, then crossed the apartment to sit on the arm of the couch beside him. "You know, at the rate things are going, every time I hear a siren I'm going to start wondering if you guys are responsible for it."
"That's almost certainly not going to be true." Mikey's grin was cheeky, but the distracted look on April's face gave him pause. "Hey, everything okay?"
"Yeah, everything's fine," she answered. "I just…you know, it's not every day a friend of mine tells me they had to use lethal force."
"We kinda had to, April," Mikey said, fiddling with a loose thread at the edge of the pillow in his lap. "He was gonna kill us."
"I know. I know you did what you had to do," she said, patting his shoulder. She shook her head ruefully. "I hadn't realized it before, but I've gotten used to the idea of the four of you getting involved with some sort of fight - which sounds really strange to say out loud. I'll admit, it was a bit of a shock at first, but it's not any more. And now these confrontations are escalating, and somehow it hasn't struck me as unusual. It's just…it's a little strange to realize that it hasn't really been surprising me any more."
Mikey was quiet for a moment. "I guess you kind of did get dropped in the middle of things." He lifted earnest eyes to her face. "We don't have to keep bringing you in on stuff if you don't want us to."
"Oh, no, that's not what I meant at all! Meeting you guys was the best thing to happen to me in a really long time, and I wouldn't change any of it," she assured him. "It's just…it's funny, the things I consider normal nowadays." She huffed a laugh. "You'd think this wouldn't come as such a big surprise, considering everything that's happened since Stockman turned out to be a mad scientist."
Mikey looked at her thoughtfully for a minute or two, but then he smiled, and she could see that he believed her. "Yeah, well. I think if someone can say their life has included a mad scientist, all bets are off."
She snorted. "I think if someone can say their life includes mutant ninja turtles, all bets are off."
Mikey laughed. "Touche."
From the next room, the dryer let out a soft buzz, sounding the alert to the end of its cycle. April took a deep breath and stood. "Listen, I'm going to go get that. Will you need anything when I get back? How's the ankle?"
"It's better," Mikey said, rotating it carefully without dislodging the bag of peas. "I think I can wrap it now. You don't happen to have an ace bandage, do you? If not, I can always borrow a pair of pantyhose."
April raised a dubious eyebrow. "I'll get you an ace bandage," she replied, smirking. "Just sit tight for a minute, ok?" Mikey saluted, and April headed down the hall. The laundry she'd put in the wash when the turtles had arrived wasn't quite done, but her previous load was dry. She bundled the warm towels into her arms and carried them out to the living room, sighing appreciatively as the retained heat from the dryer soaked into her.
She walked up to the couch and plopped the towels into Mikey's lap. "Here, make yourself useful." She picked up the bag of peas and put them back in the freezer for future use, then went to find her first aid kit. It was still relatively new, something she'd purchased shortly after meeting the turtles (and Casey, she added with a mental eyeroll). She retrieved the roll of bandage from within the case and returned to the living room, breaking into a grin when she saw Mikey happily burrowed in the pile of warm towels.
"Those were for you to fold, not nest in," she said with a laugh.
"I'm totally folding right now," Mikey said. "I'm just moving with ninja speed. Can't be followed with the naked eye."
April smirked. "Uh huh." She sat on the end of the couch and gently lifted Mikey's foot into her lap to begin wrapping his ankle. "Is this okay? Not too tight?"
"No, that's great."
"Good." She gave her finished bandage a final pat and looked over to see Mikey watching her intently, eyes happy and unguarded and startlingly blue.
Mikey noticed her curious look and tilted his head. "Uh…do I have something on my face?"
"What? Oh, no," April said, somewhat sheepish. "I just - your eyes are blue. I don't know that I've noticed before."
"That's because I'm the pretty one," he said with a grin.
"So I've heard. Multiple times." Her smirk shifted into a slightly nervous smile. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"Nah, go ahead."
"Your eyes," she said, plowing forward before she could change her mind. "I usually can't see them this clearly. I'm sorry, this is probably kind of rude to ask…"
"No, it's not!" he hastened to assure her. "It's our third eyelid. We keep it up most of the time - habit, at this point, I guess. We don't really think about it." He shrugged. "It's not like our eyes are completely shielded or anything, but at least it provides a little protection." April opened her mouth, then stopped herself before she could ask him to demonstrate how it worked; that, she was certain, would be impolite - but he read the curiosity in her face anyway. He pulled off his mask. "Here, look." He blinked, and there it was - a translucent layer covering his eyes and casting a haze over the iridescent iris beneath.
April leaned slightly closer. This was how she usually saw her friends' eyes, but they'd always had their masks on, and she hadn't thought it appropriate to look closely. "And you can see clearly?"
"Yeah. There's a little haziness, but it's normal for us and we don't really notice it unless we think about it." He blinked again, and April found herself looking into his unobstructed eyes again - clear and bright, but a little hesitant, which wasn't an expression she was used to seeing on this particular turtle.
"Wow," she said. "That's actually…"
"…Kinda creepy?" he asked with a wry grin, finishing her sentence for her. He ducked his head a little to pull his mask back on.
"I was going to say 'pretty cool'," April said. His foot still rested in her lap, and she tweaked his toe to get his attention. "Hey." He looked up, and she smiled at him. "I've come into contact with my share of creepy stuff, and I'll have you know that turtles have never been on the list."
"You're only saying that because I'm the adorable one. You wouldn't say that if Raph were sitting here." His tone was teasing, but she could see the happiness - and perhaps a hint of relief? - in his answering grin.
She laughed. "What will you give me to ensure I won't tell him you said that?"
Mikey gasped, flattening a hand against his chest. "Blackmail, April? I was unaware you had such a devious streak!"
"Well, now you know." She winked at him. "Don't you forget it."
Mikey sighed and patted his nest of towels. "I guess I can fold these now, if that will buy your silence. But I still expect payment."
"I'm babysitting you while your brothers are out. I gave you a bag of peas. I wrapped your ankle. What more do you want?"
He grinned impishly. "Ice cream?"
"I should have known." She crossed her arms. "How about this? You fold those towels to make sure I won't talk, and I give you ice cream out of the goodness of my heart?"
He chuckled. "I can live with that."
April carefully transferred his injured foot from her lap to the couch, then stood and headed for the kitchen. She paused briefly to give the top of his head an affectionate pat, smiling warmly when he leaned into her hand. It was true, there had been a lot she'd needed to get used to ever since the night Stockman's mousers had chased her and the turtles into each other's lives, and some changes had been harder to adapt to than others. But this, she thought…this took no effort at all.