If You Think I'm Gonna Come Up With A Title For This, You're Dead Wrong

Chapter 19

"Yup." He popped the P. "That's another reason, the morality of it."

"And if she was fine with it?"

He chose his words carefully. "Then I'd like to know she's safe." The movie is white noise, now, the images on the screen seemingly meaningless. "Why do you ask?"

"Curious is all." He is glad his brother can identify, at least, the slight edge to his words. Of the four of them, he and Raph were the two worst at reading people, so it was not always any guarantee that he would pick up on it.

"Why?"

He shrugged, finally looking back at the movie. "Just not sure it's worth the effort."

His eyes shifted back towards him. "Watch it."

"Not what I mean."

"Then what do you mean?"

He thought for a moment. "It's like worrying about the moon," he said slowly, never the wordsmith. "It's going to come, you know it's going to, so why stress about it?"

"Because you can't stop the moon." His response is immediate.

"And if Shredder himself went looking for her," Raph replied, "or the Kraang came in the middle of the night, or she fell in front of a train or whatever, that you could stop?"

"I've got to believe so, yeah. Can we watch the movie already?"

"It's called multitasking."

"For you, maybe." He tried to change the subject. "See, I've got no idea what's happening now."

"But if you know that you can't stop everything—"

"There's something to be said," he glared, "about the benefits to hope, that believing that something will happen is good in its own right. Faith and all that. If we're going to talk about this all day—"

"I'll get off your back." He put his hands up half-heartedly, went back to the movie. "Just asking is all."

This line of conversation is not uncommon. It is for lack of a better thing to talk about, Donnie thought; it is easier to relax and think about something that might be feasible than talk about the serious, life-threatening stuff. He could hardly blame him for interrogating him. He knew that, if it had been he who was pining after some girl, he would have asked him all about it. It was something they had been raised to have interest in by their father and having the reality of a dream they had all considered fantastical fuels better conversation than the inevitable demise of their planet. Still, he wished he was not so curious.
The movie continued.

—

You are gone too long.

At first, when he had brought this up to his brothers, the first thing they said was that he was being paranoid. It was not as if you did not leave the sewers every once and a while, by his inadvertent suggestion; humans require vitamin C to function. You may stay out for hours at a time, out with friends they do not know, for school, so as to not lose your place in the world above. None there would ever fault you for it, of course. If they had the option, they would likely do the same, and it is only by virtue of this that he, as scared for your safety as you are, that he makes an effort to trust you to come back.

He texts you an hour after you leave, and you respond, for what that's worth, as little as it is, something simple, a picture of the park. An hour after that, he texts again, the smell of rotting meat finally starting to disperse as his brother rests in his room, just to make sure you are still fine and healthy, to another response, an unenthusiastic— he chides himself for his reading into it— confirmation of your safety and a reminder to text you when the situation is sorted out. And when it is, when he tries texting you again— 'The sun must be going down'— he receives another response, explaining that you are going to go back home for the night, that you would see him tomorrow.