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Braving it in the New World	By : EvaBrick Category: Comics > Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Views: 10091 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own the Ninja Turtles, nor am I making any money from them. I'm just borrowing the boys for a while. I do own my original characters.

Chapter List
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Leonardo looked around Evelyn’s tiny apartment. The building had once been an Episcopalian convent and the rooms were all really small. The kitchen was dark and she had obviously forgotten that he needed light. He found a switch on the wall and clicked it on. Everything was in one room, except the bathroom. There was a bed at one end and a kitchenette at the other. A small tv was mounted to the wall beside the cabinets and a vase with a dying pink rose sat on the table. The top of the small dresser had a hairbrush, some night cream, and a plastic storage box that looked a bit like a glasses case. There were no rugs or any other personal effects in sight. The only window had a lovely view of the brick wall of the next building, which was only about three feet away.
“I’m glad I can’t see this place,” Evelyn said, apologetically. “Cause I think it’d depress me.” She shrugged and moved to the kitchen and carefully filled two cups with cold water from the tap. “Nuns take vows of poverty so they don’t need a lot of space for stuff, but it’s a bit small for me.”
“It’s alright,” Leonardo said. “It’s cozy.”
Evelyn snorted and shook her head like she didn’t believe him. “I can’t have any clutter because it’s too easy to lose things and because I can trip. So you’ll have to leave your shoes in a cupboard or on a chair and never leave anything on the floor.”
“I don’t usually wear shoes,” Leo said. “I have weird feet.”
Evelyn paused. “No shoes? Don’t your feet get sore?” She put a teabag in each mug and put them in the microwave.
Leonardo moved into the room and sat on a stool by the counter. “No,” he said. “Sometimes we wrap them or wear sneakers so we don't step in something gross, but our feet are pretty leathery. And we only have two toes.”
“Can I feel your feet later?”
Leonardo hesitated, then decided to just roll with it. “Yeah sure, why not?”
The microwave beeped and Evelyn carefully took the mugs out and set them on the counter. “This is an awful way to make tea, but if I boil water in a kettle, then I have to pour it and I tend to just burn myself.” She fished the teabags out and carefully held a mug out for Leonardo to take. It was too far to his left, but he reached out and got it.
He took a sip and cringed. “It tastes great.”
“Liar.”
“Alright, it tastes like you boiled a boot, but I’ll drink it anyway.”
They both laughed and Evelyn made her way to the other side of the counter to sit on the second stool. “I just thought of another question.”
“About me?” Leo asked.
“Yeah. It might be a bit insulting, but I’m only asking because I can’t see and I assume other people can and don’t need to ask.”
Leonardo rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Fire away.”
“Do you have a forked tongue? Talking about tasting things made me wonder.” Evelyn’s dead eyes gazed off toward the couch. The skin around her eyelashes looked a bit irritated and red.
“Like a snake?” Leo said. “No. My tongue looks like yours, only bigger.”
“How much bigger?”
“I dunno,” Leo said. “It’s about as wide as your hand and thicker… I don’t really spend a lot of time looking at it.”
“Wow,” Evelyn said as she sipped her tea. “Think of the things you could do with that.”
Leo’s tea caught in his throat and he spluttered.
“You okay?” Evelyn asked. She set her tea down and reached for him. Her delicate fingers rested on his hard plastron as he coughed up the tea.
“Yeah,” Leo wheezed.
She patted his plastron reassuringly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you that badly.” She pulled her hand back and rubbed at her eyes, which had gotten a bit redder.
“That’s okay,” Leo said. “I’m just glad you can’t see me blushing.”
Evelyn laughed. “Do your cheeks turn pink when you blush?”
“Darker green.” Leonardo cocked his head to one side while he looked at the pretty organist. “Speaking of things changing colour, are your glass eyes bothering you? Your eyelids are getting red.”
He watched as Evelyn’s cheeks turned pink. “I usually take them out in the evening,” she said, “but I didn’t want you to see me without them. I have black glasses but they make me feel like Stevie Wonder.”
“Would you like me to go so you can rest?” Leonardo asked.
“No, don’t go! I mean… it’d be nice if you stayed.” Evelyn sighed and her shoulders slumped. “I don’t have a lot of visitors. I used to like to cook and have my friends over, but it’s just easier to eat at the school’s cafeteria and well…” she trailed off and gestured to the depressing room that was too small to entertain anyone. “Buying groceries and using a stove is pretty intimidating now.”
“I like to cook,” Leo said. “Sometimes I watch cooking shows and try to make what they do. It doesn’t always work out, but I’ve learned a few good recipes.”
Evelyn smiled and leaned back against the counter. “Sometimes I sit here and listen to cooking shows,” she said. “I like to imagine that I’m doing the cooking. Some of my friends who have been blind since birth can cook pretty well, but I didn’t put much effort into learning. I never thought I’d be blind this long.”
“Well, maybe we can cook something together,” Leo said.
“Like what? I don’t want to burn myself.”
Leo looked into his mug at the gross tea and thought for a moment. “How about cookies? Measuring stuff and mixing is pretty straightforward.”
Evelyn’s face lit up. “That sounds fun,” she said. “So long as you don’t mind my fingers touching everything.”
Leonardo looked at her elegant musician’s hands and decided he liked the idea of her hands touching… everything. “Not at all,” he managed to say. Suddenly he had an idea. “I can turn the light off and you can take your eyes out,” he said. “You don’t need the light anyway and then I won’t be able to see either.”
Evelyn winced. “Sorry, I forgot to turn the light on for you,” she said. “But that’s not a bad idea actually. Are you sure you don’t mind sitting in the dark?”
“I don’t mind,” Leonardo said. He hopped off the stool and snapped the light off.
“Is it really off?” she asked. “I don’t want you secretly looking at my empty sockets.”
“Seriously?” Leonardo said. “You’ve asked me to sleep with you and you don’t trust me enough to turn off a light?”
Evelyn laughed. “Alright, alright, fair point. You're going to use that against me forever, aren't you?”
“Yup,” Leo said as he sipped the awful tea.
She stood up and moved to the dresser. Her hand trailed over the brush and night cream, but stopped on the box. Leonardo could make out her silhouette, but nothing else. He heard the box click shut and then she moved back her stool.
“Can you see me at all?” she asked.
Leonardo shook his head and then remembered he needed to respond verbally. “I can see dark shadows, but no real details,” he said.
Evelyn sighed like she was relieved. “Are you grossed out?”
Leonardo snorted and took her hand. He put it back on his plastron and asked, “Are you grossed out?” He felt the warm puff of air on his face as Evelyn let out a silent chuckle. In the dim light from the window, he could see her shake her head. She tapped his chest with her fingernail.
“Can you feel that?” she asked.
“I can feel pressure, heat and cold, and vibrations, but it’s not like touching skin. My shell is like armour.”
Evelyn got up and moved around behind him. “I haven’t touched your back yet,” she said. “I want to know what it looks like.” She ran her hands over it, feeling the natural pattern of grooves and the slight curve. “Wow, you really are a turtle, aren’t you?”
“Sort of,” Leo agreed. He was a bit disappointed that she no longer thought he was human. It had been nice talking to her in the church back when she’d thought he was just a regular guy.
Evelyn felt his shoulders sag. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean it like that.”
Leo shrugged. “It's okay.
Her hands brushed over the bottom of his shell and he jumped in surprise. “Sorry,” she giggled. Her fingers brushed over some jagged grooves that didn’t fit the overall pattern. “What are these?”
“Where are you touching?” Leo asked. “I can’t tell.” Evelyn knocked her knuckles against the area. “Oh there,” Leo said. “That was from a motorcycle chain.”
“Were you in an accident?”
Leo shifted uncomfortably. “No… someone hit me with it in a fight.”
“One of those Foot guys you told me about?”
“Yeah.”
There was silence for a few long seconds. “That could have collapsed a normal person’s lung.” she said. “I mean, I’m blind as a bat and I can tell that cut deep.”
Leonardo shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”
“What could be worse than that?”
Leo carefully spun his stool around and put her finger on the mostly-healed hole in his plastron that Bubba’s ice-pick had left.
Evelyn gasped. “What happened?”
“An alligator stabbed me with an ice-pick.”
“That’s awful!” Evelyn said as she fingered the hole.
“Yeah, well…”
“It’s right over your heart, Leo.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You could have died!” Evelyn pressed her palm over the hole like it was a fresh wound.
“I know,” Leo said, solemnly. Evelyn was so close she was standing between his knees. The forgotten tea cooled on the counter. An awkward silence fell over them and he wasn’t sure if he should touch her or not. She sat down on her stool again and the moment passed. “So… what was your day like?” Leo finally asked.
Evelyn shrugged and sipped her tea. “I get up pretty early so I go busking in the park with my viola,” she said. “I like to be there when the joggers are out because I make more money. There’s a caricature artist that I like to sit near… he’s pretty good at stopping people from robbing me. His dad was blinded in Vietnam, so he’s got a soft spot for me.”
“People rob you?” Leo asked, appalled.
“Of course!” Evelyn said. “I’m a ripe target. It’s not like I can see them coming, right?” She patted the counter once, moved her hand over a few inches, and patted his hand reassuringly. “I know… it’s awful, but that’s my reality so I just deal with it.” She sipped her tea again. “Then I came back here to the school and taught music to the kids for a while. I’m doing a recorder class with them right now and teaching them the basics of braille music. Then I served lunch in the church’s soup kitchen… I usually eat there with the kitchen crew after everyone’s gone. I listened to a book-on-tape for a while, and ate dinner in the meal hall with the kids before evensong in the church. Then I played the organ for a bit and then you turned up.”
“Sounds like a busy day.”
She nodded. “The busier I am, the faster the time passes.” She gestured to the small apartment. “This is my waiting room until I get eyes… if I ever get the call, that is.”
Leo shook his head. “I can't imagine what that's like. So... you cant go on a trip or anything?”
“Nope. I might miss my only opportunity.” She sighed and twisted her mug in her hands. “I'm a prisoner, waiting in the dark for freedom.”
“Now that I can understand,” Leonardo said. “We spent most of our lives trapped in the sewer, only going out at night. Even now we can't let anyone see us outside of the store. We only have a limited freedom even now.”
“That sounds kinda sucky.”
Leo sighed. “I just want to be normal.”
“Join the club.”
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Braving it in the New World