Raphael yanked the oil drain plug from his bike and liquid midnight oozed into the dirty pan below. The turtle sighed and wiped his fingers on a rag he kept in the pocket of his bomber jacket. Unfortunately gloves didn't come in mutant turtle sizes. He knew oil was carcino-whatever, but it wasn't like he was gonna live long enough to get cancer anyway. No one got cancer anymore. The end of the world got always you first.

The turtle sat on the floor while he waited for the oil to drain. He considered putting something on the stereo, but decided against it. He wasn't exactly interested in advertising his whereabouts. Not tonight, anyway. Instead, he pulled one of Casey's cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and lit it up. The turtle took a drag and the cigarette crackled, its fire lighting up the silence.

The garage was empty save for Raphael and his bike, and that suited him just fine. Things had been uneasy around base since he returned from his last mission. Last botched mission. No one talked to him about it, but he saw them from the corner of his eye looking at him while he walked down the corridor. He saw the not so subtle glances over their shoulders while he was sitting in the mess hall. Raphael exhaled smoke sharply from his nostrils. He fuckin' saw it all.

So he retreated to the place he and Casey had shared. They had always worked on their bikes together in the garage. It was like, their thing. Casey had always given him shit about how he babied his bike. Raphael had always rolled his eyes and tell Casey to laugh it up; they'd see who was laughin' when he was stuck on the side of the road with a munched valve train. But Casey had never really cared about any of that shit. Casey just wanted to ride.

Raphael had thought about it; just riding right out of the compound and never looking back. But he knew he wouldn't make it more than a mile without being blown to smithereens by a score of the Shredder's legion bots. He and his bike would be nothin' but a pile of ash on the side of the empty road. Not to mention he would probably give the coordinates of the base away. The ever watchful legions did not sleep. They did not stop. They would never stop.

The turtle couldn't even remember the last time he actually rode his bike. Was it when people had actually lived in New York? He flicked the butt of his cigarette gently and ashes drifted to the ground. Whenever it was, it was too long ago. He and Casey used to talk about it; what they were gonna do when the end of the world was over. Riding their bikes way over the speed limit down the highway was always on the top of that list. They were gonna fly.

The thought almost made Raphael smile.

He hadn't ridden in years, but he still kept up his bike. Changed the oil. Checked the tire pressure. Lubed the housing tubes. It had become a ritual, rather than a necessity. He had never been any good at meditating, but working on his bike always made him feel calm. Even if the bike was fucked because he rode it too hard, braked too hard, turned too hard and ate it - there was a comfort in knowing that with the right parts, and a couple of hours, and more than a couple of beers, he could fix it. Make it right again.

Smoke rose slowly around Raphael's face and he inhaled, savoring the painfully familiar turtle hadn't been in the garage since before that night, before that mission. But he was tired of everyone staring at him. He took another drag. At least in the garage he could be alone.

Something screeched behind him. Raphael's head jerked back to look over his shoulder, heart hammering beneath his plastron. There was someone standing in the doorway with a long, lean arm braced up against the metal rolling door. She tossed her long, purple ponytail back over her shoulder.

So much for being alone.

Angel sauntered across the garage wearing a jumpsuit unbuttoned down to the waist; the top and sleeves slung around her hips, tied in a loose knot over her pelvis. The tank top she wore under her jumpsuit left little to the imagination, plunging below the sharp lines of her clavicles and clinging to the curves of her body. Raphael forced his gaze back to his bike. If you got it, flaunt it. He wasn't gonna judge. But he wasn't gonna give her the satisfaction of gawkin' over her neither.

"Since when do you smoke?" she asked, her naturally plum lips turned up into a slight grin.

Raphael merely grunted and turned back to his bike.

He could hear the heels of her boot getting closer and closer as she made her way across the garage, but he refused to give her the satisfaction of watching her do it. Raphael had watched Angel go from a tween to a teen to a grown ass woman, and all the ways in which she had filled out made him more uncomfortable than he was willing to admit. He had tried to talk about it with Casey once. Casey just said he was being gross.

They had been tight, Case and Angel. They had worked out together constantly. Casey had invited Raphael to join them on more than one occasion, but he could never bring himself to say yes. When he saw Angel in her workout gear, the well defined lines of her musculature drawing his eyes down her body, he felt just like Casey said. Gross. Seeing her in those short shorts and that damn sports bra made him feel like he did the first Master Splinter pulled out a dirty mag he thought he had hid underneath his bed. Like he was lookin' at something he shouldn't. So Angel got workouts with Casey and Raphael got garage time. That suited him just fine.

Above him, she cocked her head to the side and her purple hair spilled over her shoulders. "Oil change?"

Raphael grunted in acknowledgement. She knew it was an oil change. She probably knew the minute she walked in; you could hear the oil gushing out of the bike from across the empty garage. She knew bikes, and cars, and thanks to the apocalypse - she knew tanks, too. Angel was the first one to let everybody know how well she knew her way around an engine. So why was she playin' dumb?

The turtle's eyes narrowed behind his red mask. Was she really gonna play this game with him? He popped up, grabbed a wrench, and set to work on removing the oil filter. Maybe if he kept working she would leave. Or sit down. Or something. Anything would be better than her standing behind him in silence, watching him. Judging him. They both knew she could do an oil change faster than him with her eyes closed. But this wasn't about speed; it was about serenity, damnit.

"I just thought -" she began. Shoved her hands in her pants pockets. "Haven't seen you in a while. Are you, like, okay? Do you wanna talk about it?"

Raphael kept his eyes on his bike. "Does it look like I wanna talk about it?" he growled, trying to keep his cigarette between his lips. He gave the filter one last good twist with the wrench. When she didn't snap back at him, he almost sighed. Remorse rose up in him slowly, like the smell of something rotting in the merciless heat of the afternoon sun. He shouldn't have snapped at her. But what'd she expect? She knew he had never been good with words. Or feelings.

The turtle's eyes darted up briefly from his work to snatch a glimpse of her. He expected her to have her arms crossed over her chest, hip cocked, don't fuck with me scrawled across her face. But instead she just looked sad. He looked back at his bike, but he could still see her, sliding into view in his peripheral vision. As she lowered herself down beside him on the floor, Raphael felt his entire body stiffen.

He should have just total her to fuck off the moment she came through that door. He should have told her to piss off; take a hike; that she could eat him. He didn't want to hold hands, or have a prayer circle, or talk about his fuckin' feelings. He wanted to be alone and to work on his goddamn bike in peace. There was nothing comforting about some girl bargin' in to his and Casey's sacred space, actin' like she owned the place. Actin' like she knew what he was going through. Or how much he hurt.

"He was my friend too, you know," she said quietly.

"Yeah, well, he's gone now!" Raphael snapped, his cigarette falling from his mouth as he reeled back from his bike. His body opened up as he leapt upwards, taut, muscled arms flexing - and the wrench flew from his hand across the garage. "And no matter how much we talk or don't talk, he ain't comin' back!" he roared.

The wrench clattered on the floor.

Raphael's shoulders heaved, his chest rising and falling beneath his jacket with deep, furious breaths.

"So what's the fuckin' point," he spat.

The turtle gritted his teeth; shoved his fists back into his pockets. He wanted to throttle something. Punch someone. Something. Anything. Feel someone's teeth break against his knuckles. He wanted to hurl himself off a rooftop. He wanted to wake up so black and blue he couldn't feel anything but the bruises. So much for serenity.

"Don't be an asshole, Raph," Angel said flatly, looking up at him from the floor. Then she looked away; shrugged her shoulders and flipped her hair out her face, like she didn't give a shit. "I mean, Michelangelo warned me that you were gonna be a dick, but come on."

Of course. Michelangelo. Michel-fuckin-angelo. Of course Michelangelo would be the one to rat him out. Since he lost his arm all he did was sit up in that security control room all day, watching the CCTV vid feeds. But at least he was still around. Donatello had vanished. Splinter was dead. Leonardo left because he couldn't handle being a fuck up for once in his perfect bushido prince life. Michelangelo was still around, but that didn't make Raphael feel any less alone. They were both still here. But it didn't make them any less broken.

"You barge in here while I'm workin' all "let's cry it out 'n talk about our feelings" and I'm the asshole?" Raphael snarled.

The cigarette had fallen to the floor, so he crushed it under his heel. The last dying ember of the smoke flared up under his skin and he stifled the urge to scream; to tell her to go fuck herself; to tell her to leave. Would Casey have thought he was being an asshole, too? Probably. Casey had always had a soft spot for Angel. Maybe it was because she was the little sister he never had. Or maybe it was because her grandma used to load him up with chuchifritos. Whatever the reason, Casey had cared about Angel, and he had wanted Raphael to care about her too. Raphael exhaled angrily through his nostrils. But Angel wasn't a kid anymore. She could take care of her fucking self.

"Whaddya want, Angel?" he growled.

Why had she even fucking bothered? Where was she the blood stained dawn he had brought Casey's body back to base, wrapped in a dirty sheet? Where was she when he told April what had happened? He had had to confess his failure, alone. How dare she waltz in now, weeks after they had put his best friend in the radiation-soaked dirt, and ask Raphael how he was, when he couldn't be anything but ugly, and angry, and all he wanted was to be alone.

"Maybe I'm tired of being alone," she said. She looked up at him with wounded brown eyes, and for a second, he almost felt bad. "And maybe you're not the only one who's hurtin', Raph. You ever think about that?"

Raphael paused; shocked by how quickly his red hot anger was cooled by her somberness. He chuffed and shrugged his shoulders, but sat down on the floor beside her. They sat next to one another, not talking, staring at the wall. Raphael watched the oil drain into the pan, black and slick and insufferably loud in the silence.

This is why he didn't want to talk about it; because it ripped him open, left him exposed and angry as a new wound. The actual wounds from that night still weren't even all that healed. Scores of soft, pink lines marked the skin of his shoulders; his arms and thighs. The jacket only covered the ones above the waist, but it made him feel…less naked. Like he wasn't so much of a fuckin' freak. He could walk like them; talk like them; wear clothes like them. No big deal. At the end of the world, they were all just waiting in line for their number to be up anyway.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" he asked. Maybe if she got to talk about herself and her feelings, he could get back to work. Maybe she would realize this was all a bunch of bullshit and leave. And then he wouldn't have to think about Casey. Or her. Or the way she smelled; like the engine oil under her fingernails and the baby powder in her hair. Shampoo was hard to come by at the end of the world.

His eyes drifted back to his bike.

"I dunno," Raphael thought he heard her shrug. "I guess I just keep thinking that one day I'll wake up and - and the world won't be this ugly dried up place. And all my friends won't be dead anymore."

Denial. Raphael couldn't remember all the stages of grief; he rarely made it past the second one. But he knew the first one was denial. And she was in denial. Maybe they were, too, all those nights they spent, talkin' about what they were gonna do when the end of the world was over. Maybe denial was what they all needed to make it through just one more day.

He stole a glance at her from the corner of his eye. Angel's knees were tight to her chest, arms crossed over them. She looked so damn sad. He wasn't sure if he had ever seen her sad before. Compromised - yeah. Afraid - sure. Angry - all the goddamn time. But sad was new. She caught him staring at her. Shit. He cast his gaze back to the bike. The oil was still draining.

"You shoulda run it for a few minutes before you started," Angel said, her voice soft but still matter-of-fact. "Warm oil drains faster."

Raphael rolled his eyes. "Fuck you," he mumbled in the most neutral tone he could muster, though he was silently wishing he had thought of that. She was way better at this than he was. "For the record, I ain't exactly in a hurry."

"Whatever, dude," Angel raised a finely arched, pierced purple brow. "See if I try to help you again."

The turtle stood and began aimlessly rummaging around in his tool box, ignoring her. Maybe if he stopped talking, she would just go. So he picked up wrenches, put them back, rolled them around, felt enormously stupid and awkward.

"...you seen her lately?"

"Nope," he grunted.

He didn't want to talk about her either.

Angel wasn't the first to ask if he had seen their fearless Rebel Leader. He hadn't. She hadn't spoken to Raphael since he had brought what was left of her husband's corpse back to base. Angel wouldn't have believed him if he told her what had happened that day. How she did not speak; how she did not cry. Like she had accepted Casey's death years ago, before she even sent him into battle. Like it was inevitable. He knew it was. But still, he thought she was going to cry. The turtle sniffed diffidently. He had.

He didn't want to talk about her. Or what they did that night, before they buried his best friend's body. Because she had wanted to smother the ache and the anguish and the guilt. Because he'd always wanted to. Because every time Casey told him about that thing she did with her tongue and her hands, he had wished it was him on the other end of it. He did not want to talk about her, and he did not want to think about her, or what they had done in the dark.

It was a mistake.

They hadn't spoken since. It had been weeks, and no one had seen her. While they licked their wounds the Shredder and his legion bots marched on. Dug deeper. Got closer. And all he could bring himself to do was smoke a dead man's cigarettes and smother how he really felt with the ritual of repairing a relic from a past they were never going to make it back to.

"Well, she has to talk to us sooner or later," Angel leaned back on her elbows. Her neck lolled back, and she looked up at the ceiling, into the glaring fluorescent lights flickering above them. "Like, I can't believe that even you haven't seen her."

Even after his outburst, she was still trying to get him to open up to her. It was admirable. Or commendable, or whatever. But it wasn't gonna work. He didn't want to talk about April. Or Casey. He just wanted to work on his bike and be left alone. But Angel was stubborn. Always had been.

"If you're gonna stay, make yourself useful," Raphael grunted.

Angel glanced at him with a quizzical look on her face. The turtle set the oil drain plug and an o-ring down beside her. She shook her head and smiled, but she rolled the rubber o-ring over the ridges of the plug anyway. It was easier for her, with her small, slender fingers. He always dropped the damn o-rings.

Raphael crouched next to his bike and began to screw the new oil filter on. He didn't like her lookin' over his shoulder. The turtle was suddenly acutely aware of how huge and ungainly his fingers were. He tried to wipe away the grime where the older filter had been, and just felt like he was pokin' around down there blindly like some sort of virgin. He fumbled with the filter, dropped it, picked it up again in a hurry. He could feel her eyes on his shell, and he was just relieved she could not see his face.

"You gonna fill that with oil?" Angel cocked her head to the side, pointed at the filter. "You know a cold start's shit on your engine."

"Christ, Angel!" he dropped his hands to his sides in exasperation. "You wanna do this oil change?"

"Where's the fun in that?" she grinned and wiggled her eyebrows. "Maybe I like to watch."

The turtle groaned. That might have actually made him uncomfortable, once. But he wasn't that inexperienced idiot anymore, so he just turned his shell to her and kept working. He took her advice and dabbed the new filter with oil. After he screwed it onto the bike, his fingers were slick with it. Raphael rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in an endless circular motion, the way girls liked. His tail swelled a little thinking about it.

The turtle snatched up a rag and wiped his hands off. Was she tryin' to make him uncomfortable, or was it just a joke? People made jokes like that all the time, right? She and Casey must have messed around like this. Like she was just one of the guys. Or maybe she just missed him, like he missed him. Or maybe she just wanted a distraction.

All of a sudden, Angel was holding something up between two fingers. The drain plug. He reached for it, accepting it gingerly. His fingers brushed against hers and he wondered why she had come, even when she knew he was just going to be an asshole.

His fingers curled around the plug. "Thanks."

"No problem," she tucked a strand of purple hair behind her ear.

He wondered if anyone had ever told her how beautiful she was.

Angel grew up in underground bunkers, in hangars and gyms and crisis situation rooms; she never got to go to dances, or get corsages, or have boys tell her she was beautiful in the backseats of their cars after the sun went down. Beauty was a luxury none of them could afford anymore. Like love songs, and poetry, and shampoo. But somehow, she was still so damn beautiful. Raphael cleared his throat.

April had never made him feel this way; all pissed off and riled up at the same time. Probably because she had always been just out of reach. April - she had always been beautiful. She was a woman when they met her. They had all fantasized about her; wanted her; thought about her when they thought they were alone. Even Leo. It wasn't weird. It just was. Raphael had always loved her. But it was was never going to be anything more than what it was; unrequited.

But Angel - Angel was a little girl in a training bra that he and Casey caught over and over again sneaking out of her window late at night after her grandma went to bed. Angel was their little sister. Angel was a kid that did shit like joining the Purple Dragons and letting her friends pierce her face. She was a woman, now, all long legs and full lips. But even if she wasn't that little girl anymore, he wasn't going to be another one of her bad decisions. Like the Dragons, and that second eyebrow ring that had got her grounded, he knew they would only end badly. And he wasn't willing to lose anyone else.

"So. Uh," Raphael rubbed the back of his head. "You wanna help me with this oil change?"

Angel leaned back on her elbows. "What am I getting out of this?"

"Gettin' to be smug about this old asshole asking you for help?"

She smiled up at him. "Sounds good to me."

Raphael gave her a sideways glance. "You're s'posed t'say I'm not old."

Angel snorted, then chuckled; "You wish."

He was old. His back hurt every morning when he rolled out of his bunk, and his knees ached with every step he took. Years of death defying leaps and falls and botched landings were starting to catch up with him. He was only twenty-eight. The turtle sighed; he extended a three fingered hand to her, and she took it. Her fingers wrapped around his, and he felt his stomach lurch a little. Raphael pulled Angel up from the floor, and suddenly she was so near that he had to stop himself from pulling her in closer. Instead, he only tilted his head to the side.

"Funnel's over there."

"Yeah, yeah," she brushed her hands off on the pants of her jumpsuit and sauntered to the workbench behind them. Her long purple ponytail swayed behind her, emulating the swing of her hips.

Raphael glanced at her over his shoulder, letting his eyes linger on her. His mouth curled up in a slight smile. This time he didn't mind giving her the satisfaction of watching.

A/N: This story was prompted by a late night conversation with a friend when I was in a major slump with my ongoing Apritello story Precious (Fragile) Things. So major thanks to princessebee, who provided ample support, encouragement and feedback as this story progressed. She even beta read the damn thing. Thanks babe.