Donnie had fallen asleep against the wall, keeping guard over me. For a little while, I had watched him sleeping. It wasn't the usual deal. Normally, I'd wake up to him waiting & wonder how long he'd been there. He would smile his goofy smile & a giddy, dreamy look would come over him. He was a big, silly kid. Now he was the weary attendant. Dutiful, responsible, obligated.
His eyes were heavy, his high rounded brow relaxed & the downward point of his mouth; half open. He was exhausted; his cheek resting on his slumped shoulder. I stared in introspection as he slept, waiting for him to wake, like he always had before. He was all arms & legs, crossed up against the cold bricks. I laid my hand on his face & ran my thumb over the splash of lilac freckles, beneath his eyes. They made his face so boyish.
That was what I had held on to. It wasn't that I hadn't respected his intelligence; the great mental prowess he possessed. It was that I leaned more on his humor; his smart ass wit. While I always knew he had the ability to protect me, I valued more the fact that I knew he wouldn't leave me without attention. A crutch to avoid believing he had real wants & needs. He would always follow my lead, he would always agree with me. Worst of all, I viewed his sarcasm only as his propensity for impatience... & only with everyone else. Someone so sweet & attentive to me could never loose their patience with me. It could never be condescending, only a joke. I think that's why his brother's had never really taken him seriously, in concern to me. He would never lash out at me. He always listened. He was always like child. That's what I had held on to all these years that I had been gone. That's what I had expected to return to. A child waiting at the door, for me to come home.
I felt more & more ashamed of myself, sitting there looking at him; for putting my ridiculous expectations on him, & what for? Because he couldn't grow up, in my mind. He couldn't ever take responsible ownership for anything? Even the things he created. They were insane extensions of his imagination. Yet here he was; a young man with all of the dreams & desires a young man should have. The complexities & inner workings of young male confidence & bravado. The self assuredness he had gained, the waning away of indecisiveness. The ability to say with command, what he wanted & what he could accomplish. Ownership of that strength.
I had seen men without so much as a roof over their head for their own children, in war torn reaches of the world, display this. I had seen disgusting, slobs who couldn't even hold their heads up, they were so drunk; still believe whole heartedly that they had it. It was something that comes to the forefront, something they carry with them from birth, & it doesn't become suddenly realized; it just is. I had only known it to be heavy handed; I didn't trust it. I had known "men" to only push themselves forward & all things "female" to the back, without even thinking of it. In my job, in my marriage, my inability to have children, my soft voice, my full figure. I had given up on my career because I felt it was impossible to ever be taken seriously, in investigative journalism, or anything else, as a five foot nuthin "cute little girl".
I was trained by the last living Master of an art older than Takenouchi-ryū. Over three years of my life devoted to centering myself, walking with dignity, saving human kind itself from my actual biological family & yet I still didn't display enough authority or confidence apparently, to warrant respect from people in the real world. I'd all too often seen even women as powerful as Karai, take on a sort of masculine demeanor, to command respect for their earned skill. Maybe that was just her style. Maybe she was ok with that, but I couldn't pull it off; I was built like a balloon animal. Curves on curves, pinched at every hinge of my body. I wished for the days when I was a frumpy, nerdy math wiz in a baggy sweater, with knobby knees & head gear.
I looked over his beautiful form, like a monument carved from wood & stone. He had grown into the ever watchful mountain, with long sinewy muscled arms & legs & great hands to pull the earth & trees & streams up to him. I thought of what he had said when we were sparring. I had put on him, all of my anger towards everything I felt was unfair in my life; when he had said he wanted to sleep with me just because he did. Even though I knew him, well enough to know it wasn't vulgar; I didn't hear him saying he was just being honest about feeling rejected. He had known all along; I was never sure about how I felt. I had never taken his affections seriously.
I was the one infatuated. How embarrassing, to realize so cruelly that someone you love so purely, was only ever infatuated with you. The idea of you wanting something real, was just a childish farce. How someone so serene would go to any lengths to show me his most honest vulnerabilities & I had refused to accept him. I had refused to give him the same in return. He was a mutant that had come into this world an animal, how could he know what humans feel. I would just let him entertain me until he finally realized it wasn't real. I had been the monster & in the end; I was never human to begin with. Perhaps; Krang have no soul. But oh how he did. Often times the most unappreciated people grow to be the most capable. Being disregarded, they become the most thoughtful. I reminiced over his human form; how I had accepted that attention without hesitation. All of his personality had been there, it just looked different. I had found it adorable & irresistable; even after I knew it was him. I was over come with the dread of accepting that the way I had treated him was like telling a grown man they couldn't have real forethought because they had come into this world a slobbering, blubbering infant.
Someone had once told me to let him just be. Let him be strange & awkward, let him muse absurdly & dance & sing & make things for me & call me just to hear my voice. "Let him go be & watch what he does." That all of it was a love letter spelled out with fumbling feet & insecure playfulness, just for me; & what an incredible thing that was. "Watch how he grows, it will be into something beautiful, you wait & see."
You accept someone at their most vulnerable; when they can't even control their inner voice, when they try to speak to you & only gibberish comes out, when their antics are all to make you notice how they just want to make you smile; & there you find the most honest love. I didn't understand that, then . I bought into the idea that I would only be encouraging his annoying, unwanted advances. That wasn't true though; I wanted to feel that. I just never respected him, until now. Like Raphael had said; "There is nothing in this world more impressive than a girl looking up to you." Even if it meant I now had to respect him from a distance, because he wasn't dancing & singing for me anymore.
I curled my arms against Donnie's bent leg & rested my head against his shell. I could never hear his heart beat. I could never feel him breathing, his plastron shell would only slightly rise & fall. I put my hand to his neck just under his chin & waited to catch the slow throb of his pulse. His arms enclosed around me lazily in his sleep; it was the little things. The reminder that he was nothing like a human, & yet he was a young man, with caring arms that instinctively wrapped around me even in his sleep. The place where your soul resides, hara; just above where your navel would be; that's where I laid my head on him. I waited for his soul to feel me there.
I took his hand & studied his long clawed fingers. His nails were like most animals; something left over from his natural state. They were brown & clear, even black. One had a white streak down the side. There were inter lapping V shaped scales-like scutes over the knuckle of his wrist & creases that reminded me of dried clay. He had a small patch of the same purple freckles, on the back of his hand, that speckled his cheeks & his shoulders. He wasn't a true freckle face like me & Mikey though, they were almost like little birth marks. Angel kisses, my mom had called them. I think she would have liked Donatello. I could see them sitting together, drinking coffee, talking about some scientific theorem. He would have made an excellent teacher like her. My father was always scared of him, & Donnie had wanted to get to know him, so badly. Maybe my dad blamed him a little for everything that became of all of us. He kind of had a right to.
I had regarded him exactly how I was angry with the world for regarding me. Someone who had nothing realistic to offer. So he hadn't been what I had expected, I smiled to myself sadly; he was more. He wasn't a monster, he was an intelligent, sweet & sensitive boy inside of a strange body he could never quite get comfortable in. Just like me, a determined woman in a pretty package, small in stature; that I never quite could get other to see past. He had seen me for who I always had been, instantly. He hadn't even seemed surprised when we discovered I wasn't human at all, really. He had wanted to support me in learning every thing I could, even touted it freely to the point that I was overwhelmed with my own negative assumptions. He did it out of love & respect for me.
We had become fast friends because we were like souls & where we didn't seem to meet; we complimented each other. Suddenly I had become aware that I had fallen in love with him & it could have gone on forever from there, because I knew he genuinely loved me from the moment we met, but I wanted to believe that it was all in his head. That it was all an adolescent crush on me. That he saw something in me that I really never was. I just didn't believe in myself as much as I thought I did. It didn't matter if he believed in me, if I didn't see it for myself. I prided myself only on the accomplishments i could make as a human. His attention wasn't annoying, it wasn't unwanted. In fact it made me feel wholely appreciated.
Irroniclly; I'd ended up with the one who didn't really know or appreciate me. The one who's persistent, arrogant advances had finally succumbed out of simple exhaustion. Because I needed to convince myself that Donnie & I had no business being together. I allowed myself to believe those negative affirmations had come true, abruptly. I took myself out of the equation. Love works like the virtue of Makoto; it evolves through truth, sincerity, honesty, & faithfulness. By that definition; I never loved him, but he had loved me with fully formed passion from beginning to end.
I could feel his very soul speaking, as the quiet thoughts echoed through his tired mind.
"I was always certain. Now I'm not so sure."