RAMIE

Maybe it was my fault. Maybe it was Raph's. Maybe it was nobody's. But fault probably has little to do with it at this point in time. But back then it was everything. Back then she was everything.

Ramie.

Rachel Marie Foy.

She was Raph's girl. At least, that's what Raph believed. That's what Ramie believed, too. The problem with believing is that sometimes it just isn't real. You can believe something, that doesn't necessarily make it true. I don't know if Don and Leo saw it the way I did, if they did they never said. And Splinter would just look on and scowl - like any father would when he wasn't so sure about the girl his son had taken as his own.

I don't know where I fit into the picture those early days. I do know where Raph stood. He saved her. None of us really knew how he did it or what really happened that night. Only Raph and Ramie. She was bloody and angry when he brought her into the den. He was staring at her with a look in his eyes that I didn't recognize. Not at the time, at least.

She was pretty and young. There was a fire in her gaze and a scar on her cheek. A long, thin one that may have been made by a knife or a cat with an attitude. She never said, we never asked. And she never tried to cover it up. That didn't matter, it didn't make her any less beautiful.

I know she was beautiful on the inside, too, but she hardly ever let us see that side of her. She hardly ever listened when we spoke to her, and when she did she would shoot back with sarcasm. She had to be tough, had to be opinionated, had to be a secret. And she had many secrets.

Fire eyes and an acid tongue. And demons in her closet. You couldn't try to wake Ramie up when she went to sleep. If you did, she would wake up screaming and throwing punches. The first time that happened I was on the receiving end. Even as fast as I was, I could not avoid a bloody lip.

But we should have known from the very beginning that we were in for a ride that we could not get off of. It was Don that first saw the lines on her arms. We asked her about it. She ignored us. But we never saw her doing drugs and she never left the den. Maybe the lines were old. But they never faded. I don't suppose they faded in her mind, either.

But from the very beginning everyone could tell that Raph and Ramie were just alike. Maybe they were a little too much alike. Maybe that's what went wrong.

I could hear them every night. I didn't have to wonder what they were doing, it was clear enough even through the wall that separated our rooms. I would turn off my light and try to ignore the noises they made. But I could never get to sleep, and somewhere inside of me I felt pangs of jealousy. I hated myself for it, but I'd close my eyes and imagine that it was me she was pressed against, naked and warm. And then she would say his name and reality would come back.

But those nights became fewer and the fighting began. It started with yelling and slamming doors. Then things were broken against the wall. Always at night, never when the rest of us could see them. When daytime rolled around they would come out of his room smiling as if no angry words had passed between them. But we all knew. Maybe nobody knew as well as I did. Nobody else wanted so bad for it to end.

But it didn't end - it became stronger. And one night I heard a noise, the sound of a slap. I jumped off my bed and listened. There was silence for a few seconds and Raphael told Ramie to get out. I heard another slap as she told him to go to hell.

I ran from my room and reached Raph's door as he slapped her back once for the first two she had given him. I didn't care if she had started it, I didn't care that his retaliatory strike was far softer than the ones that she had given him. All I cared about was that he was hitting a woman - a woman he professed to love.

I don't know why I didn't just pull him aside and talk to him. I should have. Maybe it would have been different. But I didn't think - I acted. I hit him. I punched him square in the jaw. He shook his head and glared at me, then told me to get the hell out of his room and mind my own business. I didn't see then how it couldn't be my business.

I turned and took Ramie by the arm, leading her out of the room. She wasn't crying, wasn't speaking. The look on her face was blank, unemotional. As if she had been expecting the hit. Like she had been through it before. I glanced over at her scar and turned her around in the doorway. I told her to give me and Raph a minute, then I shut the door and locked it, leaving my brother and I alone in the room.

That was when all hell broke loose.

Raph tried to walk past me, to get out of the room. But I just wouldn't let it be. I spun him around and he screamed at me again, saying in so many words, to mind my own fucking business. Neither one of us threw the first punch - we both did it at once. We trashed his room, breaking the bed and the dresser. Finally, he focused his strength and hoisted me off my feet, throwing me through the wooden door into the living room.

I stumbled to my feet and looked over at my family. All of them. Splinter, Don, and Leo stood staring, angry, disapproving looks on their faces. Ramie sat on the couch, looking away from me. Raphael stepped out of his room and around me and the shattered door. He didn't give any of us a second glance as he walked out of the den.

Splinter and the others didn't ask what had happened. They all just left the room, retiring to their own. When they were gone, Ramie looked over at me. She finally got up off the couch and walked to my side, touching my eye where Raph had bloodied my ridge. She gave me a tight-lipped smile and took me by the hand, leading me to the bathroom.

She cleaned my wound and asked why I had done that, why I had defended her. I guessed that nobody had ever done that before. I still didn't ask. I told her that it needed to be done. Honor and a lady's plight... and all sorts of chivalrous notions such as those. I didn't mention all the nights I had been kept awake by thoughts of her and me together. That maybe I could love her better than Raph ever could.

If I loved her, that is.

I sat down on the edge of the tub and she leaned close and kissed me. I had never been kissed before. Not like that. I pulled away and stood up. I felt awkward, like it was wrong. And it was wrong. Ramie was Raphael's girl, not mine. She and I were nothing alike. She was acerbic and forceful, I was and always have been the exact opposite.

It would never work. Never. She and I... we were not supposed to be together.

At that moment it didn't matter.

I pulled her close to me and looked into her eyes. She smiled. I'd never seen her smile like that. I was drawn inside those brown eyes. I was overcome - and we were alone.

She slipped out of my arms and undressed without a word. I watched her, a feeling building up inside me that I had never known before that evening. My chest ached and my head swam, warmth making it's way up my body. She was my brother's girlfriend, but that night she was mine.

Ramie turned towards the shower and my eyes followed the curve of her bare back. There were scars there, too. Larger and far older than the one on her face. Signs of the way her life had gone when she was a child. Somehow, in that instant I understood why she was the way she was. Why she was so defensive and angry, why she had slapped Raph and why she didn't react when he slapped her back.

I stepped into the tub and turned on the water, taking her by the hand and bringing her inside with me. I drew the shower curtain... and I learned. She showed me how to begin and let me continue. She held on to me and looked into my eyes.

She whispered my name.

That night will live with me for the rest of my life. Sometimes when I look back on it I smile... and sometimes I cry. Sometimes I just sit and think, wondering if it would have been different if I hadn't touched her... if I hadn't let her touch me. But she had touched me. My body and my heart... so strong. The look in her eyes and the sound of her voice will be forever burned into my memory.

And a night was all I had with her. I knew it was all that I would ever have with her. And she knew it, too. She said nothing but my name. As we lay in the hot water together, she held on to me and smiled. Then she stood and dried off, and she dressed and left the room. I closed my eyes and sank down, thinking about her and me, then about her and Raphael. I stayed in the water until it turned cold.

The day came soon and Raphael returned home. Through our shared wall I could hear him apologizing to her. He was sorry - I knew he was. He had never hit her before, never hit a woman before that wasn't trying to kill him. I could tell how much it had hurt him to do it this time. That didn't make me any less angry.

After that day life went on for a while. The door was fixed. Raphael and Ramie calmed down and seemed to slip back into where they had been before that day. Ramie and I never spoke about it, but she and I caught each other's eyes from time to time. I don't know if Raph noticed the way we were acting. The way we tried not to act.

I think that Raph was even beginning to forgive me. Forgive me... as if I were the one that needed forgiveness. I thought that maybe if he had known the whole truth he wouldn't even consider it. If he had known what she and I had done that evening...

He didn't know then. He found out.

One day she left the den for the first time in over a month. That night she was sitting on the bed and hugging her knees. Raphael's door was partway open, so I looked inside. She told him everything... how she had found herself in my arms after he had left that night. How she and I had looked into one another's eyes and felt what was hiding there.

Raphael didn't say anything. He stood and looked down at her, then turned and walked for the door. I didn't leave, I stood aside. He glared at me as he walked past. He left. No fights this time, no words. Just that look in his eyes. Maybe he hated me at that moment, maybe he hated her. It didn't matter. We had both betrayed him.

I went into Raph's room to talk to her, but she wouldn't speak to me. She pushed me away. I understood enough. I left the room and shut the door. I should have stayed in there, I should have spoken to her. I should have done something. Anything.

I left her by herself and went to my own room. I laid awake in my bed and waited for Raphael to come home and confront me. But he didn't. He didn't come home that night. He didn't come home the next morning.

I saw Ramie in the kitchen at breakfast. She was silent. She drank her coffee and ate her cereal and looked at me across the table. I tried to speak to her, but the others were there. Don and Leo were asking her where Raphael had gone off to the night before. She told them that she didn't know.

As she left the kitchen, Splinter took her gently by the arm and pulled her aside. They looked into one another's eyes and she started crying. I had never seen her cry before. I didn't know she could. She shook away his grip and ran out of the room.

She stayed in Raphael's room until evening, then she came out and went into the bathroom. I heard the water in the tub filling. Raph still wasn't home. A few minutes passed and she turned off the water. A few more went by and I decided I had to talk to her.

I knocked, but she didn't answer. So I opened the door. She was resting in the tub, her eyes closed and her hand hanging over the side. I reached down and touched her shoulder. A thin syringe fell from her hand onto the bathroom floor. I hit my knees beside it.

I knew what it meant, I knew what she had done. I picked Ramie up out of the tub and ran with her into the living room. I screamed out to my brothers and they ran out of their rooms. I laid her down on the couch and shook her, begging her to open her eyes. She didn't move, she didn't blink. She didn't breathe.

I cried, holding her close to me. Don, Leo, and Splinter looked on. They didn't ask. I didn't say. I didn't have to. Leonardo looked towards the bathroom and walked inside, emerging a moment later with a piece of paper and an object. I couldn't look, but Leo thrust them out towards me.

I blinked, and past my tears I saw a thing that I had never seen before - except on commercials on the television. And those commercials made it obvious enough what it meant: one line... two lines...

I saw two lines.

My eyes shifted to the paper. A note... and the few hastily written words.

I just don't know anymore.

I didn't know, either. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if the baby was mine or if it was Raphael's. I didn't know if It was my fault. I didn't know if there had been any way I could have changed it. I didn't know why she hadn't told us. I just didn't know.

I dressed Ramie and laid her on Raphael's bed. I sat and stared at her. She looked the most at peace that I had ever seen her. I put my hand on her stomach and wondered again. Did she think the child would be too different? Did she do this because she didn't know who the father was? I just wanted to know why. But she could never tell me. Never tell us. One of us... Raphael or I... we could have been this child's father. This child... maybe my child.

The baby would never have a name. Neither human nor mutant. So different. So special. She took the child as she took herself. Both. Raphael and I had lost them both.

He came home that night to silence. I was in his room when he entered the den. I heard the sewer door open, I heard whispers. They were telling him. I heard glass shatter.

Raphael bounded into the room and to Ramie's side. He ran his fingers down her cheek then and looked up at me. He grabbed me by the shoulders and slammed me into the wall, challenging me with his eyes. He wanted me to fight. He wanted someone to blame.

He looked back over his shoulder at the woman lying on his bed, then he dropped me to the floor. He left the room and sat on the couch, hanging his head and holding it in his hands. He didn't cry. He wouldn't let himself.

We laid her to rest under the city, in the sewers where she had lived for the last months of her life. We didn't know if she had family above - and we knew we couldn't leave her out where the humans could find her. They would examine her - and they would find the child within her.

We never talk about it, Raphael and I. We never mention the child. We never say her name. But we haven't forgotten her. How could we? We both loved her. She loved both of us.

Those are the days we will never be able to put behind us. As many events as have come and gone, as many as will be... none will ever mean as much. Through all of our battles, our hates, our loves, our lives. It was those moments that we will never forget. As hard as we may try.

I don't know if we will ever forgive each other. I don't know if we will ever be at peace with ourselves. I don't know if we will ever understand why she did what she felt she had to do. I thought I knew so much so long ago. I wish I knew as much as I knew back then.

But I just don't know anymore.