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Cassandra “Casey” Jones has had the same morning routine for the last 10 years.
It may be the result of basically being raised in a cult since she was seven, but she’s never been a morning person, so since she’s been de-indoctrinated, she still keeps the routine. It makes getting out of bed easier if she knows the exact routine she has to follow.
She gets out of bed at 8:30 on weekdays. She rolls out of the covers directly onto the yoga mat on the floor right next to her mattress. She starts with some stretching, then moves to flexibility training, then some basic workouts. Planks, push-ups, crunches, whatever she feels she needs to wake up her muscles. Then a shower. Here, her routine has shifted as she’s grown her hair out. She uses shampoo and conditioner now. O’Neil also gave her some masks and cremes and mousses for Christmas but… she has no idea how to use them. So just shampoo and conditioner. She can do that. She can handle a slight change. The added five minutes it takes to wash her hair does not fill her with an anxiety she can’t shake. It… does not do that.
Shower over. She gets out, using a wet skin lotion quickly before drying off. She combs and musses her damp hair up to her liking, then goes to get dressed.
Casey doesn’t have a uniform anymore, but she’s sort of made her own uniform now. After finally agreeing to wear something besides her foot clan duds, she went with Blue and Orange to pick out some new ones. It was… a process. There were some “statement pieces,” as the boys called them, that she really did like on the rack, but when she put them on, it just ended up looking off. Like a costume. Even as the turtles hyped her up, she couldn’t handle it. She settled on purchasing a few loose graphic tees, and, like, 10 pairs of the same sweatpants in varying colors. She sets out her outfit the night before; today it’s navy-blue sweatpants with a blue t-shirt that has some colorful winged horse on it (Blue made her buy it, saying that Dash would totally be her favorite pony. She doesn’t know what that means yet, but she likes the sense of determination behind the horse’s eyes).
Today, though, her routine really falters.
The shirt goes on fine, swallowing her just enough to feel comfortable. The pants though… they feel especially snug on her hips as she pulls them up. That’s odd. She pulls at the elastic band in the mirror, furrowing her brows at the lack of give. She’s had the same pants size since she was fifteen years old. The fact that would suddenly change feels… disconcerting.
She supposes she has been eating more. Orange makes all sorts of delightful meals and desserts, and he knows that Casey will give her honest opinion and not spare his feelings when he tries a new recipe, so she’s been invited to many dinners. And she’s always been offered seconds, which was never a luxury she had in the Foot, so if she was still hungry, she’d accept. She’s also not as active as she used to be. She still goes on patrol with the turtles a couple times a week, and she and April go jogging together on Sundays, but she’s not training nearly every hour of the day like she used to, so…
She shakes her head. Change is fine, especially since she went through a major life alteration not even a year ago. This is fine. It’s fine.
---
Three months later, it is so, so not fine.
She ripped one of her pairs of sweatpants. Not at the knees from falling, not at the ankles from stepping on them, not anywhere from barely dodging some criminal’s knife, instead, she ripped the seams of the inner thighs. She’s down to nine. And those pairs are all the same size as the currently hold-stricken pair. She’s scared to even try. She really likes her pants, and she doesn’t want to ruin another pair. It would be a complete waste of money.
But she does have to leave the apartment. But she can’t do that without pants. She grumbles at her reflection.
She’s never really focused on how she looked before. Every time she looked in the mirror she never singled out physical traits of hers, good or bad. She just saw her. Now though? All she can see are hips wide enough to split perfectly good pants. She zeroes in further. When did she get those love handles? And those stretch marks look fresh. She studies her cheeks. She’s certain they're wider than it used to be, dragging her whole face down with the weight of it. She doesn’t even know if she recognizes the girl she’s looking at the reflection of. It’s disconcerting.
She forcibly steps back from the mirror, shaking her head as if she could physically dispel her train of thought. Well. No time for worry now. She pulls out her phone, dialing April.
She still needs pants.
---
“Oooooo!” Orange’s eyes light up as Casey and April arrive at the lair. “Case, I am LOVING this look on you!”
Casey’s face goes bright red, hands fisting some of the excess fabric of the brightly colored maxi skirt she’s donned. “Don’t-“
“Casey? New look? Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it,” comes an exceptionally sassy voice from down the hall. Blue rounds the corners, hands behind his head, and his eyes widen. “Oh, that is new! I like it, when did you get it?”
“It’s from my closet,” April says. “Cass is just borrowing it for… reasons she won’t explain.”
“I just-“ There are too many eyes on Casey right now. She can almost feel them tracing her new curves, how her stomach pushes just enough out of the skirt to make her look like an exploded muffin, she tugs her t-shirt down because she’s certain that those violent red stretch marks are peeking through.
“Hey guys,” Red walks in, carry a box of VHS tapes. Purple follows behind him silently, giving a nod to the visitors. “Oh, Casey, I like your skirt!”
“For fucks sake, can everyone stop looking at me, please!?”
The cheery, familial atmosphere melts into tension, shock and confusion covering everyone’s faces. Casey is immediately racked with guilt. April did her a solid by lending her clothes, she was welcomed into the turtles home, and all they did was compliment her and, what? She lashed out at them? That’s fucked up. She should apologize. She opens her mouth to do so.
A sob falls out before a sorry does.
She covers her mouth, surprised at how worked up she got over this short moment. She looks down, ashamed, before running to the bathroom and locking the door.
Casey slumps to the ground with her back to the door, letting sobs finally wrack her body. It’s a violent feeling, like all her muscles are tense enough to just explode if she moves wrong. Her face is hot, and wet, and sticky. She buries her face in her lap, and oh great, Cassandra, you got snot all over April’s skirt that she so kindly lent you. Could you be a worse friend? Could you be a worse person? No wonder you gained so much-
There’s a knocking on the bathroom door. It’s not a generic knock. It’s not someone outside asking to be let in. It’s rhythmic, with pauses spaced between them. She recognizes it as morse code, but it takes a moment to break throw her haze of tears and translate it into actual letters.
H-E-R-E. A long pause. H-E-R-E.
Donnie’s the only one of the Hamatos that knows morse code. She only knows it because she showed an interest in it when they were all watching a spy movie and Don offered to teach her. It's a subtle way to communicate, and Cassandra is not a subtle person, so learning it was a challenge.
And she does love a challenge.
They’ve never used it outside their lessons, though. This is the first time. And it’s nice. It’s grounding. The pattern reminds her of sleepovers, of late nights in Donnie’s lab as they exchange secret messages to practice. Plus, he wants her to know he’s here. That’s nice of him.
She thunks once on the door, letting him know she’s engaged now, then she taps out O-K.
Donnie sighs from the other side of the door. “Can I… can I come in? It’s just me.”
Instead of a verbal reply, she reaches up and unlocks the door with an audible click.
Donnie opens it, stepping in tentatively. He pulls a towel from a rack and lays it on the floor, sitting on top of it and next to Casey, looking at the same blank wall she was.
“Why’d they send you?” She mumbles. Then adds, “…No offence.”
Donnie snorts. “None taken. I also wondered why I was sent. Apparently, I was the only one in the whole room who didn’t point out your appearance, so they deemed me the most reliable person to talk to. If you ask me, they’re all just feeling too guilty to face you.”
“They shouldn’t feel guilty, they didn’t do anything wrong. I'm the one who yelled at them”
“They brought attention to something about you that we know makes you uncomfortable: Change. They had good intentions, of course, they just overwhelmed you on accident. They can be guilty without being bad people.”
“It’s not… it wasn’t the attention to the skirt that set me off, exactly. It was more the attention to me.”
Donnie stiffens. She sees out of the peripheral of her eye that he almost turns to look at her, likely to get some more context clues, but he resists, his eyesight staying fixed on the wall on front of them. “Elaborate?”
Casey huffs. “It’s stupid.”
“If it’s making you feel bad, it’s not stupid to me, even if it’s stupid to you.”
The two of them sit in silence, the emptiness broken up by the ambient noise of water rushing through the pipes, Casey sniffling, and Donnie scraping at the bathroom grout with his claws. It’s not a comfortable silence by any means, it’s tense with expectation and worry and a couple other emotions that Casey doesn’t have the bandwidth to name right now. But it’s safe.
“I’ve gained weight recently.”
Donnie speaks carefully. “…Yes.”
“Like, a lot of it.”
“Define ‘a lot’.”
“I don’t know!” Her fingers come up to tangle in her short locks, finding the light tugging grounding. “I’ve never kept track before! I’ve never had a reason to! But- but since I left the Foot, it’s like I can feel my body shifting against my will. I looked in the mirror today and I saw someone who I didn’t know, and it’s scary. And I-“ She grunts, kicking out with her feet. “I tore one of my pairs of sweatpants. That’s why I’m wearing this stupid skirt. Because nothing else could fit on my- on… on me.”
Okay, now the silence can be labelled as uncomfortable. Donnie furrows his brows, staring at a specific tile. He holds a finger up after a bit. “I am not ignoring you or trying to make you stew in your feelings,” he says slowly. “I am simply ensuring I say the optimal response as to not cause more emotional harm.”
The robotic response forces a laugh out of her. Maybe it was more of a single wet gargle, but the corners of her lips twitch up and her eyes crinkle regardless.
Donnie let’s out a deep breath. “Okay,” he finally turns to look at Casey. “Let me start by saying that your body is your own. If you would like to try and lose the weight that you have gained, there are healthy ways to pursue that. We would be happy to support you. However, it is important to note that your weight has increased because of you getting healthier. You have told me what Foot Clan rations and training sessions were like. You may think talking about the black spots appearing in your vision when you trained on an empty stomach is a funny, relatable story, but it’s not. That’s trauma. You should not have been forced to experience that for so long and at such a young age.
“Now, you are eating and exercising a normal amount. This may have caused increased weight gain because, one, your body finally feels safe enough to rest, to gather the energy it needs to survive and function, and, two, your metabolism is probably fucked from almost a decade straight of starving. Give it some time to bounce back before you make any rash decisions. You are still perfectly healthy, right? No joint pain, not easily winded?”
“No…”
“Good. If that changes, we can find remedies.”
Cass twiddles her thumbs. “But-“ she clamps her lips shut on instinct. Don stares at her patiently, as she takes a deep breath and tries again. “Isn’t it, I don’t know… bad?”
“Bad… how, exactly?”
“Aren’t I a bad person for letting this happen to me? I just… I can’t sit down and eat or relax anymore without just feeling guilt. I feel like I should be working harder, saving food for people who need it more, that I’m getting lazy and gluttonous and-“
“Cassandra.” A three-fingered hand is on hers, stopping her rant in it’s tracks. “I… we don’t give a fuck if you’re a perfect person.”
“…What?”
“Look, your weight is not a factor in your morality, I promise you that. But if it was? We wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t care. I would rather have a Cassandra in my life that is safe and healthy and comfortable then a Cassandra who is working and starving herself to the bone and is seemingly perfect.” Their hands interlock, and he makes rare, genuine eye contact. “I want more Cassandra in my life, not less.”
She’s crying again. “Would you like a hug?” She nods furiously. She’s not used to hugs still, but as arms wrap around her shoulders and squeeze her for all they’re worth, she decides they’re pretty good.
“Would you like to tell the others what we discussed? I feel as if they should be aware of this insecurity, so they do not accidentally hurt you again.”
“Not all of it.” She mumbles into his plastron. “Some.”
“Some is good.”
---
They go back out into the living room (no one comments on how Donnie and Casey’s hands are still locked together) and she is immediately hit with enough apologies to make her giggle at the absurdity of it all. She forgives them, of course, they were only trying to make her feel good, but she let them know that all the attention being directed at her appearance so suddenly just made her self-conscious and anxious.
“I understand that,” Mikey says, “But I do want you to feel comfortable getting complimented.”
April nods. “It’s good for your self-confidence sometimes. As your friend, I want to be able to tell you that your hair looks good today-“
“Or that your t-shirt is gas.” Leo perks up from the beanbag.
“Or that your guns have gotten bigger!” Raph rumbles from her right.
“Or that I like how your eyes crinkle when you smile.” Donnie murmurs from her left with a squeeze of her hand.
“-Because I’m your friend and I want you to feel good.”
“Guys, you just did it again,” Mikey points out from his perch on the armrest of the couch.
“Oh, shit-“
“Sorry!”
“I, uh-“
Casey laughs. “It’s okay, I’m in a better, uh, headspace right now. I’m not spiraling or anything. We should probably figure out a way to prevent that though.”
They collectively think for a long moment before Raph claps.
“Why don’t we just… ask permission to compliment you beforehand?” Raph tilts his head. “Like, hugs are supposed to make someone feel good, but we always ask beforehand, right? So, if I’m working out with Case and she’s looking especially pumped that day, I’ll go like, ‘Hey Cass, can I compliment how you look real quick.’ And she’ll go, ‘Okay, Raphie!’-“ He says Casey’s line in a sing-songy voice, earning an elbow jab from her, and he laughs before continuing, “-or she says she’s not feeling it that day and I keep my words to myself.”
“Besides the fact that I’ll be dead before you catch me calling you ‘Raphie’… that does seem like an adequate solution until I come to terms with being perceived.”
“Then it’s settled? New family boundary law in order? Everyone in favor say ‘aye’,” At Leo’s prompting, everyone agrees. “And anyone that isn’t in favor doesn’t matter because it’s Casey’s boundary and she said aye, so yay! Law passed.” He lightly punches the floorboards to mimic a gavel.
“So… if that’s all fixed,” April looks at Casey and smiles when she nods, picking up a VHS from the side table. “I believe we had a movie marathon in order.”
---
“This pair is really comfy! And I can move in it.” Casey steps out from behind the curtain in red lounge-pants, doing some side-lunges to prove her mobility.
“Then add it to the-“ Donnie pauses. “Wait. Are you aware those pants say ‘BITCH’ in glittery letters on the back?”
“WHAT?” Casey squacks, almost breaking her spine with how quickly she turns to look in the mirror behind her. “Aw, man, how did I not notice?” She swooshes the curtain shut again.
“I mean, I wasn’t saying you couldn’t keep them, in fact it seems rather accu- oof!” Donnie’s smug grin is hit dead center with the balled-up sweatpants.
“I hate you, Purple. Why did I bring you again?”
“Because I’m the only person you know that prioritizes comfort in clothing while still being stylish?”
“I know, like, seven people total. That’s not a huge compliment,” Casey says as she steps out from behind the curtain in purple leggings that stop mid-calf with mesh down the sides, twisting around in the mirror to see herself from more angles. “What about this one? It’s lightweight, and it has pockets! I figured I should get some stuff for summer since wearing sweatpants is a recipe for overheating.” At the lack of response, she peeks over her shoulder, seeing her normally green turtle friend bright red instead. “Don?”
He coughs, blinking, before making eye contact. “Permission to compliment you, ma’am?”
She laughs. “Permission granted.”
“Get the leggings. You look- it’s so- You’re…” He laughs awkwardly. “If you want, of course.”
Casey smiles, disappearing behind the curtain and putting the leggings in the yes pile. Smiling almost wickedly, she moves to test of the shorts she picked.