Raphril Week – Day 7: Rest

A/N I do not own TMNT, but I am forever grateful for their existence. The final day D': Alas all good things must come to an end… Thank-you so much to all of you for reading and reviewing! It's people like you that really make these weeks great!

They say it's a kind of numbness at first – a hollow emptiness – the lone indication that something is amiss. Numbness. Neither good nor bad just there… Or not. It sounds almost comforting, after all isn't that how the song goes? Comfortably Numb. Yeah… It's anything but.

God, how he wished it were mere numbness. The simple romantic idea of it that pervades the thoughts of all those who have yet to experience it. They do not realize the precarious balance existing in such a void. Constantly inches from absence to absolute agony.

You know it's there too.

That's where the fear comes in, the anxiety, the terror; that crippling sensation which leaves you breathless and your heart racing. And it's in that moment – that single hopelessly long instant – that you don't fall: you plummet into the merciless realization of all you have lost and with it the brutal truth that your life will never be the same without them. It is the last part that leaves you undone: a shell of yourself. It's that incomprehensible, utterly ungraspable reality that they are no longer there. No longer alive. No longer with you. It is that fact that you must face, but how can one atom possibly accept what it is to the rest of the universe? It cannot grasp it; yet no truer reality exists. No force is more honest and more difficult to accept. So you retreat back to the void, but you always know. It always haunts you: what is on the other side of numbness.

That is grief.

Where does one begin describing the incomprehensible? At the beginning? If there even is one?

Maybe it began when she was told she was sick – was dying.

No. It was sooner than that: when her body just could no longer keep up with his pace.

Maybe it was that insidious knowledge tugging at the back of his mind – that if not cut down by the enemy, he would naturally live a much longer life. Who was he kidding? No one honestly thought him, the impulsive hothead would outlive anyone. Well maybe Michelangelo, but never her. She was supposed to live forever.

A childish dream perhaps, but sometimes a person has nothing else.

Everyone's heard the story before. Lover get sick. Together lovers try to fight back, but of course she takes a turn for the worse. In the movies they go into just enough detail to niggle the back of one's imagination without instilling a true sense of horror. Of course there are parts that are far more gruesome, difficult, noteworthy, but it doesn't matter. Finer details are not provided. It always ends the same: death, their final rest, and that's it. Enter sob story and cue internal angst-filled monologue where the audience weeps their obligatory tears. Close curtain.

Fuck it. Even the sorrows, humanity's dredges, get rolled into a layer of glittery nostalgia when death gets involved. When sickness gets involved. When things get rough. When it gets uncomfortable.

Thing is, it's not all fire and brimstone just as much as it's not all rainbows and butterflies. It's the warped – twisted – routine that slowly takes up the old and when that no longer works, a new series of adjustments are made, followed, and accepted.

Accepted.

That's when the fight really begins to be lost. When there really is no going back. Maybe that's when one begins to wonder what it will be like. It's the simple things that will probably be missed the most. Those little things that continuously seem to be taken for granted.

Not seem – are. They are taken for granted. How can they not be? After all, how glamorous can brushing teeth with one's partner possibly be? Fighting over the stream of water while gently pushing the other out of the way only for the other to graciously return the favour. The little buzz of irritation when they leave that little blob of congealed toothpaste in the sink. Hardly beautiful, even less memorable, but isn't that what's missed most?

When did the ordinary become so extraordinary?

Maybe in the same instant when one realizes that what's missed the most is not those rare glimpses into a disrupted existence, but life itself. The ordinary. The routine. And the comfort that comes with it.

But even that doesn't begin to encompass what it meant when he lost her and nothing he did or said would ever bring her back. She was dead and there was no undoing of her final rest.

He could barely remember their last moment together, yet somehow it was still permanently etched into his mind.

When he left, the cold crackled the air itself and the stark periwinkle rink of sky mocked the bitterness of his breath. The grooves of his tires were caked in frozen snow and even the friction of the road could not thaw the rubber. He had to spit on the glass of his helmet's visor to block it from the inching fog of his warm breath. As his internal temperature dropped, it no longer became his concern.

Not that he could "see" anyway.

The desolate landscape's only broken relief came from icicle-laden trees: reclusive statues in a bleak wind-rattled tundra. Shards of ice glimmered as pale sunlight licked their surface to only be trapped within the reflective facets. The only sign of their plight were mere drops of water: trying vainly to creep to earth only to be frozen again inches away from their gravid freedom. Inches away, yet always hanging on that precipice between what was and what will soon be. The void. That place between life and death where only grief is able to reside.

Eventually he would have to pull over and warm up – at least physically – but it seemed too late for that. He couldn't just walk into a motel lobby. That had always been her job. Her gift to him – one of many – but such a dear one. She was proof that he could be loved and accepted; now that proof was gone and only the cold was his companion. Even getting gas could be tricky whether he expressed vigilance or not. April was his gift of humanity and without her he was nothing more than a giant turtle. A freak. A monster. Yet she had loved him, and God how he loved her.

After miraculously filling up and avoiding undue attention, he hit the road once more. He didn't have a set direction in mind. He just figured he would know when he got there. Only then could he find what he was looking for.

Hours later, he had no destination at hand; all he had was horizon of descending darkness. With the sun's last feeble attempts at warmth absorbed into the umbra of night, new unexpected guides took their place. Stars with their ancient rays of light from galaxies long changed since their departure, winked in and out of existence as they sank into their place on the black sheet of eternity.

Another night on earth. Another night without her.

It had been as his brumal instincts awoke, asserting their presence no doubt, when his eyelids began to sink down and meet their frost-bitten partners that he began to swerve. He tried to recover as his eyes snapped open to realize his ultimate course, but his fingers were cramping from cold and his arms were little better. In that instant he knew he was going off the road. There was nothing he could do but brace for impact. His body left his bike behind in the snowbank as momentum did its job. His leather-covered shell, which hit the ground first, did nothing to slow his speed on the ice-crusted snow; he did not slow to a halt until his head crashed into a pile of fresh powder meters away.

For several moments, all he did was listen to the sound of his bike protesting its icy confinement. It took several seconds before he opened his eyes to see his visor cracked and smothered in snow. His limbs ached from both the cold and impact, but somehow his gloved hand managed to wipe the tendrils of winter's signature from the glass. With that done, he lowered his hand once more onto the comforting earth. Trying to rev his brain back into action, all he could do was gaze numbly up at the distant sky above.

It was perfectly clear, enticing the air to be all the more sharp with every inhale of his chest. If he cared, he would be relieved that nothing was broken, but he could not be bothered. Instead, all he could do was continue to stare hopelessly at the stars. Each mesmerizing pinprick of light crying to him of something he could not understand. Yet, the longer he lay there, the more they made sense and the less motivated he felt to continue on his journey.

Or maybe he was just tired of traveling to nowhere.

Gradually, the shock and adrenaline fed into his system from the crash eased away into that same oblivion. He was so tired and oddly not so cold anymore. No longer did he wish to move; the stars could watch over him as he slept. If nothing else, maybe they could help him find his way home.

Time no longer seemed important. All that mattered was how surprisingly comfortable he was right there in the snow: a powdery asylum of crystalized flakes. Somehow it seemed appropriate. Distantly he recognized that if he fell asleep, there would be no waking up. It didn't seem to matter. There was nothing left here anyway.

His eyes had been barely closed for a while when he jerked back to consciousness. He didn't know what triggered it, but mere moments after, smooth ribbons of light began to weave patterns among his starlit companions. A large green snake shifted over inky canvas, occasionally emitting strokes of yellow and white. Part of him wondered in the silence of the night if he could hear the light singing.

Minutes later, the band of green was illuminated by a stream of red. When those two beams of iridescence began to dance, underneath his cracked visor, on top on his frozen skin, twin pools of tears left steaming hot trails on his scales as they slowly overflowed.

And there, partially covered in snow and most certainly draped in frostbite, Raphael tripped over the edge to plummet from numbness to agony. Frozen in place, there was no escape. It was just him, the aurora, and the reality he fought so desperately to outrun.

So lost was he that he did not register the sounds of a vehicle pulling up nearby. Maybe that was why he wasn't bothered when blurry figures came into view before gently shifting him onto a stretcher. All he could see were the lights above; the rest no longer mattered. It was not until the aurora disappeared from view when he was lifted into a space of warmth and his helmet pulled off that he began to panic. Yet, it was more from his fear of no longer being able to see the heavens above than who he was with and where he was heading.

As he choked out a fragile scream of compliant, made delicate by frozen vocal cords, he felt two warm arms encompass him. His world somehow stilled once more as the blur of orange and green came in and out of focus, "It's okay Raph. We got you. Everything's going to be alright."

Michelangelo then shifted slightly revealing the semi-fogged window, "We'll be home soon. All you need is to do is rest."

The fibers of green and red light filtered through the glass and Raphael stilled. Yes, it was time for him to rest.

A/N Ha! I finally have two minutes to breathe! So as promised I write you, my lovely reviewers:

RBBBH: Oh my gosh! Thank-you so so much for taking the time to give me so many wonderful and kind reviews! I have to admit some of these prompts were difficult, and so I really appreciated you cheering me on as the week continued! You are awesome and I am so grateful to have you reading and loving my stuff *Hugs* I also am especially thankful of your review to Hurt. That was one of my more well-written pieces in my opinion and so I am absolutely elated to hear that it came across as spellbinding. It really made my day – heck it's made my week :D

Abandon All Sanity: Thank-you! Haha I don't know where it comes from, but I am thrilled to hear that I have managed to win you over to the Raphril side! YES! Raphril fans unite! Lol. Seriously though, thank-you so much for taking the time to read and review :)

Guest Ch 6 Sept 25: Oh thank-you! I've gotten so much positive feedback for this chapter and it really has meant a lot to me because I struggled so much with it. :)

Guest Ch 5 Sept 24: Thank-you! I am glad you are enjoying it. As for OYY, I'm afraid I just don't have time to write a new chapter at the moment. As it is, all the fics for this week I had to write over time and well in advance because my life is so insane and will be for a while. When I have some spare time it will be worked on, but you'll just have to be patient.

Guest B Ch 5 Sept 24: Personally, I like both 'verses equally so that is why I have been writing for both, and have tried to give them each equal screen time. With the exception of the first and last days each has gotten two prompts. Still, I'm glad you are enjoying my stuff enough and have enough faith in me to write for specific 'verses. :)

SetoAngel01: Awww do you have any idea how awesome you are? *Hugs* Reading this made me feel so much better! I agree though, I hate having to make them fight – really fight. I think Raph and April are definitely hot-tempered but that would usually prevent them from holding grudges or mulling over something too long. Plus, regular conflict would keep it from building to explosive proportions. Haha thus my conundrum. I am so relieved it reads well even if I am personally not so fond of it.

That said, thank-you so so so so so much for writing me so many incredible reviews this week! I totally felt all the warm fuzzies everytime I checked my email and saw that you reviewed! Even appreciating my more crazy ideas like those in ch 1 and 4 XD You are the best Raphril bud!

TheLadyOfSouls: I agree. A lot of up and down emotions. I'm glad you liked it though and thank-you for reviewing!

Smpalopoli: Thank-you!

Daklog73: Haha we could all use a little Donnie when playing Scrabble XD Thank-you for reviewing, I am thrilled to hear you're enjoying this week :D

SetoAngel01:

FeatherArtist: Exactly! I actually love the episodes where they just hang out and have a break from fighting the forces of evil for once. I am addicted to those few tiny little insights into other aspects of their personalities. Don't get me wrong, I love the action, but there's so much more to the turtles than that! Thank-you so much for all your awesome reviews!

Sunny Lighter: Yay! I'm super glad it did! I really think some of the best fics are the ones that leave me breathless from laughing so hard XD Thank-you so much for reviewing!

Larka13: Bahaha you and April can be cavity buddies XD I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for reviewing :D