Raph thought for a second, then answered her question.

"Green." Madi smiled at his answer and laughed silently. He raised an eyebrow. "What's so funny about green?"

"Nothing," She replied. "It's just that red and green are Christmas colors. And they just so happen to be my favorite, too." The suspicious look evaporated from Raphael's face and he tried to stop a smile from forming on his lips. They had the same favorite colors? "Next question: what's your favorite holiday?'

"That one's easy; Mutation Day. It's the day my family and I were all mutated, so we celebrate it every year. It's kind of like the humans' 'birthdays'. We all eat algae cake and exchange gifts with each other. Plus, we get the day off from training. So that's pretty fun." Raph explained to her. She was fascinated by his words. It was sweet that his favorite holiday was Mutation Day and not something else like Halloween or Valentine's Day.

He caught her staring and immediately didn't like it. Did he look weird? Was something sticking out of his enormous stack of blankets he was engulfed in? Did he have something on his teeth? Wait, why did he care? 

"What's your favorite holiday?" Raph decided to ask to break the awkward silence. He could feel his hands getting clammy, but he could tell it wasn't from the countless blankets that covered his body in a large cacoon. Madi contemplated for a moment as she thought about her options.

"I guess my favorite would be Christmas because I absolutely love snow." Madi began to explain, staring off across the room as she spoke, her whispery voice filled with excitement at the thought of the subject of the white powdery matter. "Not the gross kind you find in the streets after it's melted and mixed in with the gross filth and dirt. The snow in Central Park is always the best when it comes to snow. I remember when April used to spend Christmas with me and my mom because her dad would be busy."

Raphael listened intently to her words as she spoke. He kept his eyes on her as Madi told him all the reasons she loved snow and how fun snow balls fight were with April, then began to explain how one year she and April had gotten a terrible case of frost-bite because they'd been out for three hours straight when the temperature was nearly into the negative numbers. He couldn't help but get lost in her eyes, even in the darkness of the livingroom at five in the morning. Those beautiful blue pools...

"-should do that some time, don't you think?"

"Hm? What'd you say?" Raph said, realizing that he hadn't heard what she had just said. He was too busy taking in her beauty. Madi rolled her eyes, thinking that he was just being mean and not paying attention to her or -even worse- falling asleep while she was talking. She didn't like it when that happened to her with teachers. She'd be explaining a long equation to her math teacher and with a snap of her fingers, they were out like a light. It happened more often than you'd think, surprisingly. 

"What I said was that we should go to Central Park in the winter time, when the ground is completely white and coated in freshly fallen snow. Of course we'd go at night, though, to avoid any unwanted eyes. I'm sure Splinter would be fine with that if we only go out for a few minutes, just long enough for me to kick your shell at snow-ball fighting." She repeated, a small but tired grin on her lips.

He couldn't tell because her voice had been so energized, but she had actually been quite exhausted from the day's events. And she should've been. It couldn't have been easy to drag not only herself but him as well out of that river against the current. Her muscles were probably like goo at this point and her bones must've been stiff from the cold. He knew his were.

Raph smiled back, a genuine smile.

"Yeah. I'm sure Sensei would be fine with just a few minutes of fun."

Madi yawned.

"Why does this always happen?" Madi asked him.

"Why does what happen?"

"We seem to always have our best conversations either really early in the morning or really late at night." Madi answered. "Like that night on the roof, that morning when you were drinking Dr.Pepper with your mask off, now...." She listed off all their most sucessful conversations one by one, then trailed off and yanwed once more. "Why is that?" She was getting dreary the longer they stayed up. And from the look on the clock on the wall, it was nearly six AM. By this point, she was only half awake.

"Maybe it's because I know that when you wake up, you won't remember all of it." Raph answered truthfully, knowing that at that moment he was taking advantage of her tiredness. She yawned again. 

"Why is that? Do you say important stuff that I'd want to....know?" She spoke through another large yawn. Now they were coming like rapid fire, one big breath of open-mouthed air after the other. Raph chuckled silently at her adorable attempt to stay awake. It really was a valiant effort, but it wasn't going to last much longer.

"Yeah, you could put it like that." 

"Tell me something, then. Tell me something that you'd be afraid to tell me when I'm not drugged by the lack of sleep..." She trailed off, her head leaning back as she finally lost her battle against the night. Raph looked over at her in her own sleeping cacoon of blankets, knowing that she was completely out, and whispered something that Madi would've definitely wanted to hear.

Something that she hadn't heard someone say to her in a long time, something that held so much passion and so much safety, but also the possibility of being venomous and explosive. Three little words that every girl dreamed of hearing ever since they could remember. Three little words that can either mean so much or so little. Three little words that could make or break a person's soul.

They were words that Raph had thought about for a long time, words that he had seldom ever used around his brothers and rarely ever around his sensei, but seemed appropriate when explaining his emotions toward this human girl sitting less than two feet away. They weren't strangers anymore, he'd known her a while. And he knew enough about herself and her pas to know that he wanted to be a part of her future.

They were words that scared him when he thought about how much she disliked the sewers, about how much she wanted to be free and live her own life. That was the attitude of a girl that wanted to see the world, didn't want to be held down by just one place. She was sure going to go far with her persistent attitude and courageous heart, but she'd leave him in the dust in the process. Three words that could've started something new, something beautiful.

But were left out in the cold.

"I love you." 

* * * * * * * * * * *