#tmnt asks

3. Does she like stuffed animals? Does she like any real animals, and if so, what kind?

As a teenager/adult, I'd say she's indifferent to stuffed animals, would probably be a bit confused if someone offered her one as a gift (though she would accept it regardless). As a child before she lost her parents, I'm sure she had a few. Her parents loved her more than anything. But if she received one now from someone she loved, I think she'd keep it on her nightstand.

As for real animals, Daph has a complicated relationship with them. The only non-human creatures she was ever exposed to growing up at the EPF were mutants and aliens (and possibly military K9s) so she has a significant fear of animals, especially ones that are bigger than her. Carnivore, omnivore, herbivore, doesn't matter. If it's big enough, she's keeping a healthy distance. Her perspective on mutants is obviously challenged with the turtles and Master Splinter coming into her life but that instinctive fear of other non human sentient creatures stays with her. It slowly does simmer down over time though.

When she's finally living in her own place, she attracts the attention of a stray cat that she is initially wary of but slowly starts adjusting to. Every night she leaves a can of food for the cat on the fire escape (she knows what it's like to be hungry and homeless) and they eventually come to trust each other enough for Daphne to reach out and attempt to pet her. Kitty allows this and then domesticates herself into Daph's apartment and eventually gives birth to kittens underneath Daph's bed. Kittens become a full-time operation for a bit since Daph needs to find them homes once they've been weaned off mama (April and the guys help her with this. Mikey is over the moon about it). Mama cat still comes and goes as she pleases through the window but she never strays too far from then on. Daph names her 'Judith.' You'll find that Daph tends to give animals human names. Nothing silly or complicated just straightforward name.

4. Please tell me a little bit more about Daphne. Any general info you're willing to share ❤️

Happily!

So where to start...

She is:

persistent

ambitious

incredibly loyal

curious

utilitarian

creative

Daph is excited to learn about whatever she can but particularly about people. She is fascinated by others and likes to sit and listen to them just talk about their lives and experiences she never got to have. While she was living at the EPF, she never got to make friends with kids her own age so she grew up listening to soldiers and the staff at the base talk about their own lives. Everyone had a different story and she was enraptured by the idea of eventually getting to leave the base someday and see the world, to experience the things she had only ever heard about.

Due to her environment, she's grown to be very independent, competent, and utilitarian. Even after leaving the EPF, she values things more for the use they can serve rather than aesthetics. When getting something for herself, she'll always consider how useful it will be first before parting with her money. But if a friend gifts her something she considers more frivolous, she'll gladly accept and cherish it. April and the guys all know to get her something useful first and nice second and that usually leads to Daphne getting things like a new set of softer sheets and a blanket from April, a newer pair of boots from Mikey when hers get worn out, or a refurbished watch from Don that he found and fixed up just because she mentioned wanting one and he wanted her to have something nice.

Growing up under Bishop and then surviving on the streets for a year led to her having to get creative in both her general life and her combat style. 03 Bishop is extremely versatile in nearly all of his fight scenes and this is something he passed on to Daph since he saw to her training personally. She'll use her environment to her advantage in a fight or exploit a flaw in her enemy's defenses as soon as she notices one. The most important lesson she took from her father is to never play the odds when they aren't in her favor.

After escaping the base, she learned how to survive very quickly and even after April and the guys helped her establish herself financially, she still picks up useful skills to save herself money and from relying on others too much. She mends her own clothes, repairs her shoes, troubleshoots and fixes her apartment appliances, etc. She finds creative ways to fix her own problems in order to remain extremely self reliant because she's never really been able to rely on anyone else emotionally, physically, or otherwise.

I guess I can also give some background and sprinkle in some more of her general info that way:

Daphne was born to two of Bishop's subordinates (her mother a geneticist in one of his labs and her father an infirmary doctor at the base, both ex military, last name: Rooke). Daph's original given name is [classified] both to avoid confusion and to respect her decision of choosing a new name for herself. At the age of 5, she lost her parents one night when an alien escaped containment in her mother's lab. Daphne happened to be there that night with her father and got caught in the chaos. Bishop saved her life by pulling her from the danger and eliminating the threat. At this point she's trauma bonded to him like a little duckling.

Bishop saw her as an opportunity to get a pet project off the ground and as such, took on the task of raising her to be an eventual secret operative/super-soldier. And by all accounts, it went very well. Daph was an extremely curious child and she never lost that interest in learning throughout her life (it's one of the main things that attracts Don to her). She takes to her training and education like a fish to water. Bishop oversees most of it personally but she does have other adult influences in her life as she grows up at the base. Most are fleeting, but the one that stands out in its consistency and impact is her relationship with Captain Greg Anderson, Bishop's unofficial second in command. He basically becomes her second father figure, offering her much needed emotional support since Bishop is notoriously awful in that department.

I could write a dissertation length post about Daphne's complicated relationship with the both of them (and will do so if requested <3). But for the sake of this post, just know that she essentially grows up being coparented by these two military men. Their own relationship is a very unconventional unhealthy dynamic but I can get into that in another post as well if interested!

Even more important to Bishop than Daphne's want to learn was her obedience. Daphne by all means was a very obedient child which is why Bishop had minimal reservations about sending her out into the field at 16 to see how she would fare. That mission was a turning point for how Daphne saw herself, Bishop, the EPF, mutants and aliens. It wasn't immediate, but more so the inciting incident that led to her beginning to question what Bishop had taught her.

During this Incident she obtained a nasty shoulder injury, a fatal one. Bishop saved her life by using a concentrated dose of a cellular regeneration compound he had intended to inject her with later down the road to finally fully turn her into the genetically modified soldier he always planned for her to be. Now, he had been injecting her with extremely mild doses of this compound for years to allow her body to adjust to it but since the more concentrated dose needed to be given to her prematurely to save her life, her body reacted aversely. Not only did she experience the trauma of being fatally shot and nearly dying but her body also experienced the trauma of the compound working its way through her system and yanking her back from death.

She now has a massive scar on her right shoulder that causes her chronic pain for the remainder of her life. Due to the compound still being present in her system though, she tends to heal noticeably quicker than normal people.

She ends up using the next year after the Incident to recover from her wound, working in one of Bishop's labs, and trying to sort through her trauma. Bishop is of course no help in this area, so she ends up becoming even more distanced from him than ever before. At 17, she's come around to the fact that the man who adopted her is truly monstrous and she actively fears for her life now that he likely sees her as 'useless' with her new disability. This spurs her into taking action and choosing to run away from the EPF base (but not before taking some sensitive information as a poorly thought out hail mary so to speak).

And her running away is that first chapter of my fic that you read!

5. How do her and Donnie work through arguments?

A very good question. I don't see Daph and Don arguing very much at any stage in their relationship, and it would depend on what they're arguing about. As a general rule, I imagine Don would typically be the one to approach arguments more gently than Daph. She has a whole history of her perspective and opinions not mattering to those around her and if she felt that way again, it would probably trigger some not so great reactions from her.

Don of course is also carrying his own trauma which I think would cause him to detach and self-isolate rather than engage in an argument if something triggers him, which would upset Daphne further.

She would have a much harder time than Don approaching arguments with care and consideration because she's always been shouted down or ignored altogether. Being with someone like him, who affords her the space to express herself and is not so easily angered would definitely help ease her into a new mindset that she doesn't need to react a certain way in order to be heard and understood. Similarly, once that mindset sinks in, I think she'd be able to afford him that same grace once he's in a bad mental spot and could use some support even if he doesn't think so. Don most definitely is ready to help others with their problems and uses them as an excuse to neglect his own.

6. How do they comfort each other, and how easily can they tell when the other is feeling down/hurting?

After being together for a while, they can both quickly tell if the other is upset. Daph spent more than half her life monitoring Bishop's emotions in an effort to avoid upsetting him/trying to please him so she's very practiced at noticing small changes in facial expressions and body language. Her go-to comfort method is to guide Don to bed (usually he works himself to exhaustion when he's trying to avoid thinking about something). She'll persuade him by asking for him to lay with her for "just 5 minutes." He's usually out cold within that time and they talk about things in the morning. Very straightforward strategy and execution.

Don has a more hands off approach to comforting Daph. It's touch and go as to whether she'll want physical contact or not and while Don can tell when she's upset, he can't always tell what's best to help her. So he'll make himself present, shoo anyone from the room if she's visibly bothered, and just be there with her. He lets her approach him (kinda like a stray cat). If she wants physical contact, she'll initiate it. He will probably try to talk with her but if she's not feeling vocal, he'll drop it quickly and wait until she's ready.

7. What's their biggest hurdle in their relationship?

There's a few big ones. I'd say the first is definitely the revelation that Daph had been lying to Don and his family about her past for the first few years that she knew them until a confrontation with Bishop revealed everything in the worst possible way. This actually takes place before they get together romantically but it's significant enough that I felt the need to include it.

While Don makes every effort to keep her in his life, he still has to work through a lot of hurt feelings. This hurdle is significant for their relationship because it doesn't just impact them but also Don's relationship with his family, specifically with Raph. Raph has a very strong reaction to this and clashes with Don over it multiple times. This makes the beginning of Don and Daph's relationship not go over as well as it could have. It takes a while for Daph to rebuild trust with everyone. Don is mostly responsible for keeping things together because he's the one actively making sure she knows how much they all care about her while she's pulling away and scared that Bishop is going to try to drag her back to the EPF. That whole period is extremely difficult for everyone in the group and it definitely puts a strain on Don and Daph's relationship.

The second biggest hurdle is probably Bishop himself. He does NOT like the fact that his adopted daughter has gone off and strayed from the path he's laid out for her. Now, to be fair, Bishop would not have liked her getting together with anyone; the fact that it's Don and he's a mutant, that's more irritating than her partner being a human but not by much. Bishop's main issue is that he believes relationships impede progress, and he finds confirmation in that belief when he sees how close she's gotten with Don and his family. She was supposed to be an integral part of his greatest achievement and instead she's abandoned him and the mission "to go play house" with a group of inconsequential street trash.

He actively attempts to use her connection to Don against her to bring her back to the EPF and that plan is successful for a while until the rest of the family is able to pull off a rescue mission. This leaves Daph with deep lingering fear over Bishop or someone else trying to do something like this again.

The third hurdle, honestly, is baby Misa. She arrives before Daph and Don seriously sit down and talk about kids or any sort of solid plan for the future. Daph was never against being a mom, but then again she'd never really thought about it at all, like it had never even entered her head. So with Misa being entirely Don's responsibility (since he did make her all on his own in his lab--complete accident), they both decide to put their relationship on hold for a while so Don can fully focus on being a dad and Daph can continue pursuing her ambitions free of any indirect parental obligation (because if they continue staying together, the unspoken implication is that eventually they both expect her to become Misa's mother and Daph just cannot handle making that kind of decision at that point in her life.)

8. I'd love to hear more about Misa! She sounds like the sweetest little baby. What kind of toys does she like? Is she more like her mom or dad? Does she like stories from or playing with Daphne and Donnie?

Misa inherits her parents' creativity and curiosity. She wants to learn about the world, always trying to go see/touch something she probably shouldn't. As soon as she can crawl, she's off! Her personality is evident very early on, as with most children, and it's made very clear that while she may look like her dad and share his intelligence and mischievous streak, she also has her mother's passion, temperament, and stubbornness. All that but with none of her mother's self-control. She does not bottle up her feelings like her parents; if she's unhappy, she will be heard!

Misa's favorite toys as a baby tend to be anything she can get in her mouth lol. Or anything the adults in her life use and keep out of her reach like the TV remote or their cell phones. She does love sensory books though (those thick baby books that have felt and other materials embedded into the pages for babies can interact with as their parents read to them) and toys that make noise (no one in the house is happy about that but they put up with it).

Misa is a huge fan of stories and books. Her parents make an effort to read to her every night before bed. Sometimes it's a kids book Daph gets from the library (Dr. Seuss is a favorite choice) and other times Don will read a textbook aloud until Misa falls asleep. She loves to listen to others tell stories as well. Master Splinter, who she has wrapped around her little finger, always obliges her request for a story. Mikey loves to tell her stories too, mostly about the group's adventures and whatnot, which leads to Misa wanting to become a warrior like her dad and uncles when she's older (this turns into a point of tension between her and her mother because Daph is terrified of Misa willfully going into the sort of situations they all did when they were younger).

Misa is always happy to play! She has favorite games to play with everyone but her favorites are 'samurai' (play fighting with a little wooden katana toy that Leo got her, Daph is unhappy with this at first but lets it slide when he promises to train her on how to use it properly), 'Godzilla' (her building towers out of blocks and knocking them down), and hide and seek (which she gets a little too good at).

I know this wasn't asked for but I also like to think that during Misa's TV time, she likes to watch 'Sesame Street' and 'Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.' Those two shows are exceptional in their educational aspects and treatment of their child audiences that I think Daph and Don would appreciate (and no Daph did not at all tear up the first time she watched Mr. Rogers with Misa and he said directly to the audience "I like you just the way you are"). She probably also watches Scooby-Doo since her mother has fond memories of it (Bishop was really strict about what media Daph could consume growing up and found a show about humans hunting down 'monsters' to be acceptable. And no, he never looked further into the show past the premise.)

9. How do Daphne and Donnie take to parenting? What do they take to easily, and what do they struggle the most with?

Don has a rough first year adjusting to being a father but his family and friends help him out a lot. He has the most trouble with losing even more sleep than before but given that he had a habit of staying up anyway, he had to just shift his mindset into seeing Misa as a long-term project that would need to take first priority moving forward. He gets very good at anticipating her needs and wants and they settle into a routine. He wishes that he had the freedom to hide out in his lab all day like he used to but baby must come first.

Daph makes the decision to become Misa's mom 2-3 years after she's born, so her experience is very different. She's around throughout Misa's life up to that point, offering to take her off Don's hands when he's exhausted the same way April and Casey do. So she has more so the role of a helping hand or family friend in caring for Misa. As time marches on, however, she takes a bit more voluntary responsibility with raising her and finds that coming home to Misa is the best part of her day. Once she's full-time coparenting with Don, though, it really hits her full force just how much work it is. Daph is not a natural mother figure so she's always trying her best to actively remain patient and understanding with Misa. This can be extremely difficult when she's overstimulated and tired from working all day. Again, the village is there to help so neither she nor Don get to a breaking point.

It's a good setup they both have where everyone shares the work of raising the baby.

---

Daphne is guns. Really any firearm but especially handheld semiautomatics (her handgun of choice is her military issued Beretta M9 that she got while at the EPF). Don actually gets a good eye for identifying the make and model after being with Daph for a while since she's always happy to talk about the pros and cons of certain sidearms. He also becomes a decent shot after many hours of her insistent coaching.

Other objects:

Don thinks of Daph whenever he sees: military boots; oversized jackets; tactical knives; books on anthropology, neuroscience or mechanical engineering; strawberry starburst candy; hot water bottles (she uses these a lot to treat her shoulder injury); fuzzy blankets and pillows (she loves little luxuries like these because the EPF had no such things and life on the streets was even worse); literally any of the projects she built or they worked on together.

Daph thinks of Don whenever she sees: hand tools; a pair of work gloves he gave her for Christmas; her A/C window unit which he helped her fix one obnoxiously hot summer day (and left a silly little poorly drawn smiley face on); her shell cell that he gave her; cans of energy drinks; her sketchbook (he is on many a page in there); lemonheads candy.

16. What scents, textures, sights or sounds remind them of each other?

Don associates Daph with anything marshmallow or strawberry flavored (even if she's more meh on that particular candy or dish); scents that are more fresh and nature based like eucalyptus or pine (her preference) or whatever her current shampoo is scented with (her soap and shampoo are whatever she can get on sale at the store; sometimes it's coconut, other times its hibiscus, fresh laundry, etc.); the texture of weatherproof jackets and soft fuzzy blankets (which she loves) and the warmth of her skin, the roughness of her calluses; and the sound of gunfire (which becomes oddly comforting? the longer he is with her)

Daph associates Don with the smell of coffee. Doesn't matter what type necessarily, but he is a fan of bolder darker roasts. She always smells it on the subway when commuting into work and it puts her in a slightly better mood. The smell and sound of rain also oddly remind her of him, possibly because it was rainy on the night they first met. The scent of car oil/grease also brings him to mind occasionally.

24. What is a happy (dare I say sappy) piece of their lore?

There's so many to choose from so I'll give you two of my favorites from different eras of their relationship:

The first takes place when they were really starting to become friends while Daphne was living at the lair for a while (during the same time as April after her shop got destroyed in s1). Don gave up his bedroom and bunked with Leo so Daphne could have her own space while she lived with them. During the weeks this went on, they got to work on a lot of Don's projects together (her experience working in Bishop's lab over the last year or so before she ran away proved extremely helpful in this regard). They quickly found themselves working on a project almost every day together. It became an unspoken regularity of the household.

Usually they'd spend their time together in Don's lab but occasionally they'd also work up in Don's bedroom that Daphne was occupying. They fell asleep together slumped over the lab table more than once and at one point Leo even caught them passed out on the bed in Don's room. It was a chilly night in the lair and it's a bitch to keep temperatures regulated given the high ceilings and all so Don and Daph were cuddled together in their sleep sharing the blankets. Leo did not breathe a word about it because unlike Mikey and Raph who would have jumped at the opportunity to tease Don a bit, Leo knows better than to risk pissing him off (or at least Leo has the most impulse control of his brothers).

Second piece of lore is from their 'beating around the bush' era aka they both know they have feelings for the other but shit keeps happening and getting in the way (and Daphne is still keeping her past a secret). But this moment is a very quiet one where they finally have a moment alone when everyone is up at the farmhouse. They go for a walk together at night and end up stargazing. Don points out constellations and recites some stories about them while Daphne soaks it in. She opens up to him a bit about how she always wanted to be a pilot when she was a kid or something else that would have allowed her to see different places and learn about different people. He responds that one of his biggest wishes as a kid was to go to university and get to learn everything he possibly could from people who had spent decades in their respective fields. Both of them have gotten to experience the other's greatest want (at least to some degree) and it brings them closer together because they silently vow to themselves that they'll do what they can to ensure the other gets their wish one day.