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Perseverance	By : EvaBrick Category: Comics > Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Views: 9920 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Three weeks later...

“What will you do now, Charlotte?” a man’s voice said gently behind her. Charlie looked up from her grandparent’s grave at her visitor. How could he move so silently?

“I don’t know, Master Splinter,” she said, sighing heavily. “The building was insured and the stock was insured, so I have about a hundred grand coming to me, and I’ve had several offers to buy the building... the land alone is worth about eighty-thousand. They building is still worth about twenty.”

“Two-hundred-thousand dollars is a lot of money,” Splinter said, thoughtfully, sitting down on the grass next to her. “You could do anything you wanted, Charlotte. You could go to university and study poetry. You could travel the world. As tragic as your loss has been, you are also being presented with a unique opportunity; not everyone gets the chance to start fresh.”

“You did,” she said, taking his now-human hand in hers. The claws and fur were nothing but a memory. Yoshi looked much better. He’d been out of the hospital for nearly two weeks and his skin tone looked normal now, instead of waxy and pale. He’d been getting more exercise, too, and his musculature was improving daily.

“Which is why I understand how important this time is for you,” he said. “Do not make any decisions in haste. Take your time. Spend some time alone if you need it. Meditate, rest, eat, sleep, breathe,” he said. “Then when your body and mind are well enough, choose your new destiny.”

Charlie nodded. Splinter did seem to understand what was happening to her, even if she was still trying to figure it out, herself.

“Is Donatello mad at me?” she asked. She’d stayed at his side the whole time Splinter had been in the hospital and she’d helped out at the lair after he’d come back, but in the last week, she’d been feeling pretty weird. She hadn’t had time to process her own grief and now that she could take it all in, she felt tired, sick, and overwhelmed.

Charlie also found herself avoiding Don. She felt like no one understood her pain or her feelings. She hadn’t talked to him in over thirty hours and she knew that they must be out looking for her, but somehow, she didn’t care. She knew that Splinter had been looking for her, too, but only he knew where to find her.

“No,” Splinter sighed, “he is not angry, just frightened.”

“I understand,” Charlie said. “I’ve been there. I just... I just can’t handle it right now. I can hardly manage to blink... I just need some time alone.” She looked desperately at Splinter, praying he’d understand. He did.

“I will talk with him, Charlotte,” the ninja master said, kindly. “Time is nature’s greatest balm.”

“Thank you, Master Splinter,” Charlie nodded sadly. “Tell him... tell him that I’ll come back when I’m ready... I just need some time...” A new tear slipped down her cheek. She’d cried so much in the last few days that her eyelids were swollen and pink. They stung when the tears leaked.

Splinter patted her hand and stood to leave. “Decide what it is you want more than anything in the world and make it yours.” He cupped his hand on her cheek and leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “I am always here for you, Charlotte,” he said as he walked away, “and so are Donatello and his brothers.”

It was nearly dark before Charlie left the cemetery. She wandered slowly home, not really wanting to go there, but not feeling like she had anywhere else to be. She wondered if Donatello would be there when she got in; he wasn’t, but she found a note sticking out of a huge bouquet of wildflowers on her table.

Hey honey,

Splinter said he found you. I’m glad you’re okay. I was really worried, but I understand if you need some quiet and some time alone. There’s been a lot happen to you.

I’m so sorry about your store, Charlie. I know it was the strongest link to your grandparents. I wish I could bring it back for you. I’d do anything for you, my love.

I left a plate of dinner in the fridge; just nuke it in the microwave for a few minutes.

If you need me, just call and I’ll be there in minutes. I don’t care how late it is.

I love you, Charlotte.

~Donatello

Charlie would have cried if she had any tears left. She felt guilty - her own pain was so bad that she was hurting the one person who loved her, in turn. She opened the fridge and looked at the plate of food. It looked good, but she wasn’t hungry so she shut the door and wandered into the living room to sit down heavily on the couch.

She thought about calling Don, but she honestly didn’t want to have to talk to anybody right now. Instead, she picked up a pad of paper and lay down, propping her knees up so she’d have a surface to write on. She fluffed up a cushion and stuck it under her head, then started to doodle as she mulled everything over.

Donatello was beside himself and paced up and down the lair restlessly for hours. He tried to work out to burn off the extra energy, but he couldn’t stick with anything. He tried meditation and couldn’t sit still. He even tried watching tv with his brothers, but every show and ad somehow reminded him of Charlie. Finally, he stomped off into his room and lay on his stomach on his bed in a huff with his box of broken bugs and started to fix them just to keep his hands busy.

The phone rang once, late in the evening, and he ran Michelangelo over in his haste to get to the kitchen to answer it. It was just April and he passed it sadly over to his youngest brother before dragging himself lethargically back to his room, feeling completely miserable.

“Give her time, man,” Raphael called to the purple turtle from his spot in front of CSI. “She’ll call.” Donatello just mumbled an incoherent response that involved the word “fucking” about twice.

Charlie didn’t call that night. She didn’t call the next day either. Or the day after that. Leonardo stopped by her place on his way to the drugstore for more Aspirin, but she wasn’t there. All he found was a pad of paper near the couch with the top page crookedly torn off. He looked in he room and saw that her closet door was open and that there were several discarded pairs of high heels lying on the floor and that two blouses had been chucked on the bed.

“She must have gone to meet with the insurance agent, bro,” he said, back at the lair. “It looks like she got dressed up.”

“Doesn’t she love me anymore?” Donatello said, feeling sick. “This is killing me, not knowing anything... I miss her.” He wanted to go and wait for her at her place, but Splinter had made it very clear that she needed to be left alone to grieve. Even April had agreed, saying that Don might just push her away if he pressed the situation too hard when she was in such deep mourning and shock.

Leonardo put his arm around his brother and hugged him. There was nothing he could really do, but hope that Charlie would call in her own time. Leo could sort of understand how his brother felt. He wished Lisa would call to chat and let them know how she was doing. He’d called her a week ago to check on her and she’d seemed pleased to hear from him, but he didn’t have the guts to call her again - she might suspect that he liked her and although he couldn’t figure out why, it seemed like a bad thing.

Charlie, however, was making a lot of phone calls, just not to the turtles. She’d called her lawyer first and made sure that her parents had no legal claim to anything she owned. She’d made an appointment with him and drafted a will, stating that she didn’t want either of her parents to have any right to decide on any medical procedures to be done to her in case she was ever incapacitated and couldn’t decide herself. She also had it written in that Hamato Yoshi and Lisa Miller would have power of attorney in case anything ever happened to her.

Then she’d called her insurance agent to find out exactly how much money she’d be getting.

She’d called a building inspector, and as painful as it was, went over the whole store with him to see how structurally sound the place was and to get an estimate of what it and the land was worth.

She’d called and called and called and made appointment after appointment with all kinds of businesses until finally, she had all the information she wanted.

Charlie sat at her kitchen table with the stacks of paper spread out in front of her and an all-important CD-ROM and weighed her options logically in her head. In the end, the choice she had to make was pretty clear. She picked up the phone and dialed.

“Hi April,” Donatello said, sounding like his dog had just died. She felt a tinge of guilt.

“It’s not April,” she said, surprised to hear herself sounding happy.

“Charlie!” he cried, his voice full of relief. “Are you okay? How are you feeling? Can I come over now? Oh baby, I miss you!”

“I’m okay, Donnie,” she said, smiling into the phone. “I missed you too. I’m sorry I didn’t call you... I just... I couldn’t. I needed some time.”

“It’s okay, honey,” he said earnestly. “I understand. I really do.... it just sucked, is all.”

They both laughed and it felt good.

“Can I come and see you?” he asked. She had a funny feeling that if she didn’t say yes, he’d camp out on her fire escape.

“Yes,” she said, “I want to see you, but can I come there? I want to get out of here for a while.”

“Sure!” he said, not caring if he had to build a rocket ship to go to the moon to seen her. “I’ll come and get you. I’ll be right there!” he hung up and tore out of the kitchen and out of the lair at lightening speed, slamming into Raph on his way by but not stopping. Raph’s glass of water spilled on his chest and the red turtle sighed and wiped it off with his wrist-guard.

“Dat’s really pathetic,” Raphael said, shaking his head after Donatello.

“What’s the matter, Raph?” Mikey snorted from the couch. “Did you splash something on your chest again?” Mike was laughing so hard that he had to lie down and hold on to his sides.

Raphael gritted his teeth and his eyes narrowed to slits. He walked up to the couch, squatted down behind it and using all his strength, flipped it over on top of his brother before stomping off to the dojo, so he wouldn’t have to hear the giggling that was still coming from under the sofa.

“Yo, Leo! Guess who just called?” he shouted.
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Perseverance