Sorry, lovely readers, life is so inconvenient sometimes. Plus, writer's block is pretty much the worst. Big big thank you to Tigergirl for helping me out there :)
Anyhow, here's a relatively decent-sized chapter for you guys. As always, let me know what you think.
He followed her.
It wasn't creepy, he told himself. He just wanted to get to know her without scaring her. He remembered—under a shudder—the guy with the cat. There was no way he'd make that same mistake again, especially not if his brothers were going to shoot him those we-told-you-so faces.
They never gave him enough credit. He wasn't a complete idiot. Sure he fumbled things up sometimes, didn't take the time out to think and rationalize like Donnie and Leo, but who ever said he had to? (Raph certainly didn't.) Mikey knew how to be stealthy and that was what was important.
She never saw him.
And he learned a great many things about her this way. The first being that she was a morning person.
He had to admit this was a trait he wasn't particularly fond of. It took him three days to figure out what time she normally left her apartment. And by the time he figured it out, he was getting into major trouble for skipping out on training at six o'clock in the morning. He heard the most chastising from Leo for that one, which he didn't mind. Leo was easy to ignore most times.
She liked to get coffee in the mornings from a little shop on the corner called Drips.
He wished he knew what kind, but he could never get close enough to know. He simply had to be content watching her through the window from across the street. She always sat at the same table, closest to the door. Sometimes she'd bring a book with her to read, other times she'd talk with the older, dark-skinned woman that worked there. But mostly she watched the people walking past the window as she sipped on her coffee placidly.
After about an hour, she'd leave and walk five blocks over to the place she worked at—a day care with a little orange door. The first time he'd followed her there, it took him about an hour to come to the conclusion that he wouldn't be able to find her after she entered the building, but every day at about ten o'clock she'd walk out of the side door, following a horde of children about four and five years old, as they barreled out onto the small playground sandwiched between the day care center and a salon.
There was one kid who seemed particularly smaller than the rest and didn't seem to like running around in circles and being poked with sticks by the other kids. He had a head of curly hair and round glasses that were much too big for his face. Excluding his size, he kind of reminded Mikey of Donnie.
The woman—Jennifer—every day would ask this little one if he felt like joining the other kids, and when he shook his head, holding onto her hand with both of his, she'd smile kindly and walk with him over to one of the benches where they'd sit down and she'd open up whatever book she'd brought out with her that day: Tacky the Penguin, Where the Wild Things Are, When You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day.
Mikey would hide in the shrubs on the other side of the fence, directly behind that bench, and listen with his knees pulled up to his chest, sometimes staring at the ground as he envisioned what the pictures looked like, but most times watching the back of her head, waiting for that occasional moment that she looked off to the side so that he could catch a glimpse of her face.
In the afternoons, around two or three o'clock, depending on how long she felt like sticking around, she left the daycare and walked to that same food cart he'd first seen her standing at.
She loved gyros—the spicy ones—and he didn't know why that got a smile from him.
Most times after this she'd walk home and he'd leave her alone for the day, finally deciding that he should probably get back home and suffer the wrath of his brothers and sensei. Other times, she'd walk around for a while, wander in and out of shops, stop to talk with people who were sitting around in corners and on steps with trash bags and grocery carts by their sides.
She seemed a very social person. She always smiled, even when there was no one around. He witnessed her taking a taxi maybe twice and the subway once, but otherwise she walked everywhere. And she was constantly singing to herself, mostly lullabies and nursery rhymes—the same ones that Donnie used to teach to Mikey when they were younger.
She had a lot of friends, but no husband, and no child of her own it seemed. But the way she interacted with the children at the day care and the one little boy that reminded him of Donnie, he had no doubt in his mind that she'd be the best mother there was, which was why it only made sense that this be the woman he'd been looking for—his mother.
The more he followed her around, the more he learned about her, the more he was convinced. She had all the traces of every single one of his siblings, including himself—not to mention knowing all of the things Donnie had taught him, reading the same books, singing the same songs. There was no way this couldn't be her.
"Donnie?" he said when he returned home one evening.
He'd just escaped Leo's warning of going to tell Master Splinter that he'd been gone again, though Mikey was sure the old rat was already perfectly aware.
"Hm?" Donnie hummed, tongue poking out, goggles over his eyes as he used a blow torch on the toaster.
Mikey vaguely wondered if the notorious tattle-tale in blue had gone to tell their sensei yet that Donnie was stealing the kitchen appliances again.
"Where did you learn all those songs and stuff you taught me when we were little?"
The flickering blue-white light vanished and Donatello peeked up at him—or at least turned his head in Mikey's direction. The little turtle couldn't tell where exactly his brother was looking through his goggles.
"What songs?" he asked.
"You know, the lullabies and stuff. Like the one with the spider, and the one with the cradle that falls out of the tree, and the one from the book."
There was the hint of a grimace in Donnie's cheeks, as though he knew why Mikey was asking. And why wouldn't he? Mikey had come to understand long ago that it was okay to assume his brother in purple knew everything—because he basically did—which was unfortunate sometimes because it was hard to surprise him with information.
"Everybody knows those, Mikey."
"Yeah, but everybody was taught them by their parents and stuff. Where did you learn?"
Donnie pushed his goggles to the top of his head and a crease formed on his brow. "I learned from my parent too," he said, as though offended. "Don't you remember Master Splinter singing to us? He was human once, you know. He grew up on Japanese lullabies mostly, but I asked him if he knew American ones once and he taught me. He wasn't raised in a box—or the sewers for that matter."
Mikey blinked. "Sensei sings?"
Donnie sighed. "Yes, Mikey. Or at least he can. He doesn't much anymore since we grew up. I suppose I did develop memories a lot earlier than the rest of you," he muttered to himself as he replaced his goggles and turned back to mutilating the toaster.
"D?"
"What?"
"Will you come and see her?"
Mikey watched Donnie's shoulders sink. He didn't answer for a while.
He rocked forward in his chair and pursed his lips in that awkward way he did when he had something to say but couldn't effectively get the words to come out. He didn't look at Mikey when he finally spoke.
"Not to say I'm not curious, or that I don't care, but … Mikey, I just can't."
Michelangelo bit the inside of his bottom lip to keep it from poking out. "Why not?"
Donnie sighed through his nose. After another moment of silence he pulled the goggles from his head, setting them on the table as he stood, and looked down at Mikey with troubled eyes.
Donatello always towered over him, but sometimes, with the looks given through that purple mask of his, Mikey felt like that gap wasn't so big.
"I …" Donnie's eyes shifted and he shuffled his feet before looking back at Mikey and breathlessly confessing, "I want a mother too, Mikey. But just because you wish for something, doesn't mean it's going to appear, no matter how much you want it."
Michelangelo gave his brother a comforting smirk. "How d'you know if you never try it, D?"
Donnie didn't smile. "I'm serious, Mikey. I can't put my faith in something like that. I don't want to be let down."
Mikey continued to smile, placing a hand on his brother's shoulder. "You won't be, bro. She's amazing."
"She's a human," Donnie said factually, a sheen of detachment crossing his eyes. He plucked his younger brother's hand off his shoulder. "We're turtles."
The orange-banded terrapin rolled his eyes. "Dude, I thought we already went through this. It doesn't matter—"
"Mikey, please try to understand," Donnie whined.
The little turtle bunched up his nose and took a step away from Donnie's reach, suddenly annoyed. "Why do I always gotta be the one to understand somethin'? Why can't you understand for once?"
Donnie furrowed his brow as though what his little brother had just said made no sense, but Mikey was used to that and so didn't stop to listen to his older brother try to correct him.
"Not everything has to be all scientifical Donnie, why don't you just trust your gut this time?"
Donnie looked down at him cynically, one brow raised. "My gut, Mikey, is saying the exact same thing that I've been trying to tell you. We don't. Have. A human. Mother!"
"Well, then your gut's totally wrong, bro!"
Donnie scoffed indignantly. "I'm not wrong. I'm never wrong."
"Oh yeah?" Michelangelo turned on his heel and started marching for the door of the lab. "We'll see about that!"
"Mikey," Donnie groaned.
Michelangelo ignored him. He was already marching down the steps with his fists clenched by his sides when Donnie shouted after him. "Please, don't do anything stupid!"
Mikey gritted his teeth and kicked a pillow that had somehow found its way out of the pit. It flew across the room and landed by Raph's feet where the red-banded turtle paused his attack on the lifeless dummy. He glanced down at the pillow and then up at Mikey.
"What's the matter with you?" he said, not particularly meanly.
"Donnie's an idiot." Mikey pouted, stuffing his arms across his plastron and plopping down on the bench. He didn't even realize that Leo was in the common room too, glancing over his shoulder from where he sat in front of the television.
"You said Donnie?" Leo said.
"Yeah sure," Raph snorted, returning to punching the dummy. "The resident genius is an idiot."
"He still says there's no way we have a human mom."
"That's because there isn't, Mikey," Leo said, in a surprisingly patient kind of way considering the earful Mikey had gotten not too long ago about following this supposed "mother" around.
Mikey felt the corners of his mouth dropping again.
"Look, Mike, trust the stupid smart guy okay?" Raph grunted, not looking back or pausing his work out. "Donnie may have a big head, but he does know what he's talking about."
Mikey coiled on the inside. That's right—they didn't believe him either. He sighed and didn't say anything else about it. There was no point. He'd go see his mother the next day and that was something to look forward to. He didn't need his brothers—didn't need their doubt, and their pompous attitudes about knowing better than him. If they wanted to be that way, fine. Well, he had a mother and they didn't.