Save Me from My Dark Side
Chapter Nine
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
Turbo cracked his eyes open at the sound of loud knocking from the front door. Damn it. He'd been having a peaceful bout of sleep for once. At least his headache was gone now. Still, he didn't feel like getting up. Besides, Rosie should still be in the house...she'd answer it. He groaned and rolled back over to finish his nap. He didn't hear anything for a while, then-
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
Okay, that was coming from his bedroom door.
"I'm trying to sleep!" he yelled out, covering his face with his pillow to drown the noise out.
He heard the door creak open and next thing he knew, someone had grabbed the covers on his side of the bed and jerked them hard enough to send the racer toppling out of bed. Turbo felt disoriented to find himself suddenly in a heap on the floor, rubbing his head where he had hit it.
"You explain yourself right now, mister!" he heard the amusingly serious voice of Felix demand of him.
Turbo jerked his head up and glared at his friend. "I think I should be asking you that! What the hell do you mean by barging in here and-"
"Never mind that!" Felix cut him off angrily. "I just want you to know that I think you're the biggest...jerk...I've ever met!"
"Didn't we already establish that?" Turbo grumbled as he tried to pick himself up off the floor, using the mattress for assistance. "Besides, I thought we moved past my brainwashing your wife into forgetting you?"
"That's not why I'm here!" Felix insisted impatiently, even going so far as to stamp his foot...a little. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Your wife went through a lot of trouble today to do something special for you and you just destroy it like it was nothing? What's gotten into you?"
"What are you talking about?" Turbo asked in confusion as he finally got back in bed, leaning his back and head against the headboard so he'd be propped up.
Felix had already seen the mess in the kitchen when he'd bounded up the stairs, and he grabbed Turbo by the hand and dragged him back out of bed, forcing him to walk around it to get to the door.
"Fix-It, have you lost your mind?" Turbo was growling now, trying to pull back from the grip he was in. "I'm not in the mood for games!"
"Good, 'cause I'm not playing one!"
When they got to the kitchen, Felix nearly threw Turbo in front of him and pointed down at the destruction that was still there.
"She made you a plate of your favorite cookies and you heartlessly knocked the whole thing onto the floor!"
Turbo's temper went down and he felt this terrible pang of guilt ride into him when he saw what Felix was referring to. Sure enough, right beside the overturned table was a broken plate and ruined helping of chocolate chip cookies.
"I...I didn't even see them there," he said quietly, running a hand through his hair. "I had no idea."
"Then why'd you knock the table over?"
"The light was hurting my eyes so I had them shut, and I got pissed off trying to feel for the switch so I just..." he paused and didn't say anything else, thinking it obvious what had happened after that.
She'd made him cookies; his favorite cookies. There was no telling how long it had taken for her to get them right, even with someone helping her. He couldn't imagine how upset, how hurt she must. She probably thought he did it on purpose.
Felix relaxed when he saw that Turbo was acting more rational...and remorseful.
"Where's she at?" the racer asked, not turning to look at Felix straight-on. He put one hand on the table for balance and rubbed his face with the other one.
"She's sitting by the duck pond. Crying, I might add."
"Yeah. Of course, she is," he said, barely whispering it. "I did go off on her pretty hard earlier. I was so tired of her feeling sorry for me."
"It's called sympathy, you silly goose," Felix lightly kidded. "She loves you, how else is she supposed to react when she's sees you're having a rough time?"
Turbo sighed and shook his head. "I don't know. I just...I just want her to be proud of me again, is all. She used to look at me like she thought I was the most important person in the world...like I was a star. She doesn't do that anymore. Now she...she coddles me all the time and it makes me feel like a baby."
"Turbo, I assure you that she still thinks the world of you or she wouldn't even bother," Felix told him, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. "She sure wouldn't have married you. And I don't know why you're complaining about 'coddling', I mean, would you rather her not give a flying rat? Pardon my language."
"No, I guess not," he had to admit.
What had gotten into him? Looking back, Turbo couldn't believe he'd caused so much damage, drunk or not. He had come home and made the one person that had been there for him feel possibly even worse than he did. It was a terrible feeling knowing that he had hurt her so much.
"Well, you gonna go apologize or what?" Felix queried, giving his friend's shoulder a little shake before releasing him. "The sooner, the better."
"What if she doesn't accept it?"
"Don't be ridiculous, she's not a child holding a grudge. If she sees you're being serious, she'll forgive you."
Turbo pondered on that a bit. Well, she had forgiven him for committing murder, but then again that really had nothing to do with her anyway. No, this had been a personal attack...she might not swing so easily on this. Could he really blame her if she didn't?
"Look, I'll even walk halfway there with you," Felix offered. "Come on, now, I've seen you walk into dangerous situations before without batting an eye. Surely this is easier."
"Not really, but if you say so."
There was no need to even walk halfway there. Turbo could tell the bench was empty right away. He stopped dead in his tracks, an overpowering sense of depression sweeping into him.
"She left me."
Felix gave him a curious look. "Don't go jumping to conclusions," he said in reassurance. "Maybe she just fell asleep and we can't see her."
Turbo's eyes fell to his feet, his eyes visibly getting wetter by the second. "I don't think so."
Felix couldn't handle the sight of his friend crying so he dashed the rest of the way to the bench, mentally praying that he was correct in his assumption. He felt his heart drop when he saw that he had indeed been very wrong. Where did she go? Felix turned back around slowly towards the racer, who had glanced up long enough to see that Rosie had in fact left.
"She left me," he repeated quietly.
"Jimminy jamminy," Felix quoted under his breath as he headed back to his despondent friend. "Now, don't you start all that. I'm sure she didn't go too far. She might have just went to stretch her legs, is all."
Turbo wasn't listening. "I...I didn't m-mean for her t-t-to go," he stammered out, tears slowly making their way down his face. "I d-d-didn't want h-her to l-l-leave."
Felix didn't know how to fix this, if he even could.He pasted a nervous grin on his face and turned Turbo around to start pushing him back home.
"How about you go back inside and I'll find Rosie and bring her back?" he suggested in an overly friendly voice, glancing around East Niceland as they walked in hopes that he would spot her somewhere. He didn't.
"W-what if she d-doesn't w-w-want to come back?"
"Think positive, pal," Felix reminded him, though truth be told he was a little worried himself.
He perked up when he saw Q*bert and his pals outside in the square of East Niceland. That gave him an idea.
"I know!" he exclaimed happily, momentarily stopping his pushing of Turbo. "Maybe Q*bert saw where she went."
Turbo wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "You think so?" he asked with just a hint of hope in his voice.
"Maybe. It's worth a shot, right?" Felix put his fingers together and whistled. "Hey, Q*bert, can you come here for a minute?"
The adorable orange game character jogged over to where the two men where and began to talk in his unique language. Turbo didn't understand anything he said but Felix was thankfully somewhat fluent.
"Yes, you're welcome again for the pie earlier," Felix told him with a smile. "Hey, have you by any chance seen Rosie around anywhere?"
Q*bert answered and Felix listened intently while Turbo hung back and waited anxiously for a response. The look on Felix's face after he had mentally deciphered Q*bert's answer did not seem very promising. He asked the orange creature something and again waited on the answer. Finally, the conversation seemed to have ended and Q*bert bounded away back to his friends. Felix had this look like he didn't want to say what was on his mind.
"She did leave, didn't she?" Turbo asked sadly, sticking his hands in the pockets of his houserobe.
Felix felt horrible, not to mention uncomfortable, being the bearer of bad news. "Q*bert said he saw her get on the train to the Station and..."
"You don't have to say anything else," the racer interrupted him hurriedly, his eyes quickly flooding with tears again. "That-that's all I n-n-need to h-hear."
He turned around to walk himself back home, the sound of audible crying reaching Felix's ears. The handyman was at a loss on what to do. He skipped a few paces to catch up to him.
"Look, maybe she just needed to clear her head," he theorized, walking alongside his buddy. "Or she went to see a friend somewhere. Just because she left the game doesn't mean she left you. She'll be back, just wait."
"W-why would sh-she come b-b-back?" Turbo asked him, wiping his face. "A-after what I put h-her through?"
"Because she loves you, why else?"
That didn't seem like a very convincing reason. How much lenience did love offer in situations like this?
She LEFT me.
After Felix had made sure Turbo got to his house in one piece, those three words were all the racer could repeat in his head for a good five minutes. He sat there on his couch blinking ahead of him into space, not fully believing that this real-life nightmare was happening to him. It was the worst thing he could think of, that she had left him of her own free will...because of something he did.
Part of him said to get up and go find her, however long that took, and beg her to come back home and forgive him for being a such an insensitive dick; the other part said that no matter what choice of action he made now, he'd done too much damage for her to take any apology from him seriously.
Sweet milestones of their relationship came sweeping into his mind: how they'd first met, their..."first time"..., their first date (strangely, it did happen in that order), the first time they'd ever said 'I love you', their first anniversary...the wedding...
There had been a long period of time when he had marginally trained himself to not remember these moments, due to him having thought she was dead up until approximately a week ago...but now, he couldn't shove them out of his head even if he wanted to. Turbo grabbed the large accent pillow that was laying on the couch beside him and pressed it up to his face, allowing himself to sob into it.
He couldn't imagine anything worse than her not loving him anymore. Oh sure, he knew that was a silly, childish thing to think that she could just suddenly not love him anymore, but it really hurt that she had left. Maybe she would come back, maybe she wouldn't. He wouldn't blame her if she decided to stay away from him. He suddenly felt more lonely than he'd ever felt in his life, even more than when he'd first gone into exile following the fateful RoadBlasters event. At least then he'd been able to resort to anger and bitterness to keep his mind slightly preoccupied from his depression, unless of course those emotions had simply been but extensions of it.
A drink. That's what he needed. A drink would take away the pain he felt, even if only temporarily.
His eyes were stinging from having rubbed tears away so much and fresh ones coating over the raw skin. He opened the liquor fridge up and grabbed the one remaining beer that he had (only one left?) and wasted little time popping it open to chug down. It took faster than he thought it would to finish it and he quickly realized that he was going to need something else to do the job. Something better.
And just like that, the words of Officer Bob floated back to him:
"You know, if you really want to feel better, forget this watered-down junk. You need the hard stuff...Just find me when you feel like REALLY forgetting your worries."
Officer Bob had to admit that was astonished to see Turbo again so soon. It hadn't even been a full night out in the real world, yet Litwak still had a good three hours to come back to the arcade. The ginger-haired policeman was situated on some benches in Game Central Station just outside of Tapper's with two of his cronies, Freddy Freak and Candy Goodbody. Their respective vehicles were parked nearby: a squad car bearing the number 54, a flowered hippie van, and a purple/pink sports car. Freddy was a tall buff guy with long scraggly blonde hair with a scruffy beard, his eyes red from so many years of drug usage; Candy was a voluptuous pouty-lipped woman with kinky brown hair and too much make-up (it was fairly obvious just by looking at her what her...profession...had been in A.P.B.).
When Bob had caught sight of the white-clad racer, he noticed the look of distress he was wearing and immediately one of his shit-eating grins worked its way into existence. Candy blew a ring of cigarette smoke from between her lips and raised one of her perfectly plucked brows at him.
"Whatcha lookin' at, doll?"
"Shaddup, woman," Bob said harshly, but it didn't faze her none. In her line of work, she was used to that kind of treatment.
"I'll be right back, don't do anything stupid while I'm gone...if that's even possible," he told the two of them as he raised himself from his seat, straightening his tie and his hat as he did so.
"Turbs!" he greeted in his most friendly voice, his arms open wide in a welcoming gesture. "Back this way again?"
It was obvious that the racer had been crying...a lot. The fact that he was so miserable almost made Bob crack a smile, but he managed to force it down and keep up his façade of "good ol' buddy". Turbo had his eyes cast down to the floor, tears starting to fill in them again.
"I...my wife, she...she..." A big tear fell out and landed on the tile floor. "She left."
Again, Officer Bob was astonished, never thinking he would hear that. But then, what did he really care? It took everything in his power to keep from laughing cruelly in the poor man's face, thinking he deserved to have that little whore he was so fond of leave him.
"You don't say!" the cop gasped, putting a hand to his heart. "That's just awful!"
Turbo simply nodded, not wanting to go into details with it.
"Well, I'm just so sorry to hear that, my good man," Bob told him with as much of a sympathetic voice as was possible for him to pull off.
"Thanks," Turbo whispered, his hands in his pocket. "I...I feel weird askin', but...what you said earlier? About the harder liquor, does that offer still stand?"
On the inside, Bob was glowing, grinning ear to ear, and dancing a merry jig. He knew it would have only been a matter of time before Turbo would want to try something stronger than beer, but he never dreamed it would be so soon!
Bob put a friendly arm around the depressed racer, a forced frown on his face as he said, "Why of course it does, pal. No one can handle something like that on their own. Come over here with my buddies and we'll make sure you forget about that for a while."
The sound of a punching bag being hit was the only one that could be heard in the workout room. Rosie was so focused on directing her hits appropriately that she didn't know that someone had come into the room. She was trying to take her mind off the sadness and bitter anger that she felt, and maybe even childishly pretending that the bag was a certain you-know-who's face.
"Good evening, child."
Master Splinter's voice frightened her out of her thoughts and she spun around quickly to face him. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw it was just him.
"Good evening," she greeted back, doing a courtesy bow towards him.
"I must say, I was surprised to hear from your brothers that you were in here," Splinter commented, getting straight to the point. "They said you wouldn't tell them what was wrong, so I thought perhaps you would care to enlighten me."
Rosie sighed and turned her head away as sadness overpowered the anger she felt.
"Something happen at home?" he wisely deduced.
"You can say that again," she replied sadly, taking a seat in one of the chairs available, her head hanging down and her hands clasped together in front of her between her knees.
Splinter stood quietly for a moment, waiting to see if she might say anything in addition to that. When she did not, he asked,
"Did you have a quarrel? Words exchanged?"
From his position, he could see two falling tears hit the floor beside her feet and she wiped her eyes with her shoulder.
"Not so much an argument as just him yelling at me," she answered him. "He even knocked over a plate of homemade cookies I baked for him."
Splinter remembered the multiple attempts that Rosie had made to cook for them during her time of living in the sewers and he made a quick grimace of disgust. He couldn't really blame the guy for not wanting anything she cooked, as mean as that sounded.
As if she could read his mind, Rosie added, "Don't worry, I had help with them so they turned out perfect. He was just being a temperamental sourpuss."
Splinter smiled wisely and took a seat in the chair opposite of her. "Now, child, many times the ones we love do things that hurt us. No one knows why they do this, or why we do it back, but the fact is that we still love each other despite our faults."
"I do still love him," she responded tearfully. "But I don't want him taking out his frustrations on me, when all I've been trying to do is help."
"I understand he's had several issues since coming back into public view."
"That's no reason to be mean to me."
"No, it isn't," he agreed. "However, I think that perhaps it is causing his self-esteem to suffer, and thus he feels he does not deserve any of your affections. Or perhaps he does not even realize he is hurting you...it could be he believes he is venting, except he is doing it incorrectly."
Rosie sat silent, thinking that over. She leaned back into her chair and crossed her legs in a lady-like style with her hands folded in her lap. "I guess. Still doesn't make me feel any better though."
"You won't feel better until you both sit down and have a mature conversation. That requires going home," Splinter hinted firmly, yet gently. "You cannot hide down here forever."
"It worked once," she stubbornly reminded him.
"It didn't last forever that time, either."
There was a pause, then, "True." She sighed and looked down at her hands. "I just want things to go back the way they were."
"Then, you need to make them that way. Nothing is impossible. You're a smart girl, you'll figure it out."
She smiled slightly at that. "Thanks. In the meantime, is it okay if I stay here until I get at least a little more satisfaction punching something?" she kidded, jabbing a thumb at the punching bag.
The ninja master smiled back in his fatherly way. "As long as you need."
Do you guys need a happy flashback chapter? I believe you do.