#tmntflashfic

He feels completely shaken and nearly completely numb. Some leader he is.

“…sleep sounds great,” Donnie says, speaking for them all. He starts quiet, but seems to slip into doctor/caretaker mode partway. “Do you have medical supplies? Showers? I’ll take anything of those at this point. And. Um, food would be good, too…”

“Everything,” Honeycutt confirms. “There’s everything you’ll need and more. Please, right this way.” He starts to patter off, his metallic body whirring softly as he does. Leo feels his team look to him for the next course of action- they’re in literal alien territory, battle shaken and without backup, they don’t even know if Honeycutt is for real with his helpfulness- and Leo has to take an inhale that only hurts a little.

They don’t have many choices, here. He’s on his last legs- near literally, his old injury is flaring hot and bright and everything hurting to the bone- and he knows his brothers and friends aren’t any better off. They need help, and while suspicion and caution scream dully in his ears, Leo knows they can’t afford to refuse Honeycutt’s assistance.

Leo moves to follow Honeycutt deeper into the spaceship, and his family follows. He prays it’s the right call.

—-

There’s a real shower block, with hot running water and stalls and actual soap, and Donnie kind of wants to cry a little.

But, he can’t. He’s official and unofficial team medic/caretaker/etc. etc. etc. and he can’t fall down on the job just because he’s reeling from time travel and earth’s destruction and oh, his father dying for the second time right in front of him.

Donnie sweeps all those painful thoughts right into compartmentalization, and sets the maelstrom of fear/grief/anxiety/confusion aside for later. He has a job to do, and that’s making sure that everyone is still in one piece and not suffering from any hidden injuries that could kill them without him noticing.

Internal bleeding is something he thinks of constantly, out in the field. Donnie knows he could try to stop it, but here and now he has none of the tools and not enough trust in Honeycutt. He prays to god that no one has anything on that level of injury or near it; he has only his field kit and cautiously trusted supplies from the alien robot that saved them.

After Honeycutt leaves them, standing filthy and still shaking in the pristinely white showers, Donnie is the first to discard his weapons. His hands need to be free for the act of healing, not dealing out further damage.

Its standard procedure at this point; the post-battle checkup and thrice over injury search. They have so little margin for error, Donnie checks everything in threes. His family are all so far into shock still; none of them make a peep of complaint about his thoroughness. Even Casey, who usually has a quip or two about being indestructible, lets Donnie do his checkup in peace. Casey’s eyes are unfocused, now that his adrenaline and endorphins are crashing. There’s just the slow sink of reality dawning on him, and it’s somehow hard to watch.

Donnie lightly pats the side of Casey’s head, calls him a foolhardy idiot who needs to watch his right flank better, and shoves him towards the nearest stall. That gives Casey enough of a jolt he turns in a quick movement to shove Donnie right back, before ducking into the stall and abandoning his filthy clothes on the floor. The interaction gets some of the bleariness out of Casey’s gaze, and he moves with a little less sluggishness.

Donnie is finished with his brothers and Casey’s checkups, and April is waiting her turn for the showers just outside the shut door. She still needs another onceover; a more specific type, since her Kraang mutation always leaves room for questions. He starts to move towards it, on automatic and just following the patterns he laid for himself years ago, but the door opens before he can reach it.

Raph enters- when did he leave? Donnie was so focused on keeping his patients still, he didn’t notice- and he puts a hand on Donnie’s chest.

“Hey,” Raph says, firm and low. “Breathe.”

Donnie’s thoughts, running mostly on learned patterns and set guidelines, stutter for a moment, and he realizes his chest feels tight. He didn’t notice how shallow it’d gotten, his breathing.

On command, Donnie takes a deep inhale, and feels the dizziness in his head clear a bit.

“Good, keep doing that,” Raph says, still firm. He’s holding himself together well, all things considering- though still obviously wound up and repressing the inevitable rage storm that will come later- and Donnie is distantly grateful for that. He can’t handle having to calm that sort of rage right now; he doesn’t think any of them could, the states they’re in. Leo silent and scratching his throat roughly, Mikey buzzing with nerves and aimless energy, Casey swinging between  focused and aware and seeming lost in a painful way, and April-

Raph reaches up, and tugs off Donnie’s mask. It comes away with a slight stickiness, and Donnie notices then that he’d sustained a minor cut on the side of his temple. No wonder he feels dizzy.

“I checked April,” Raph says, and he’s steering Donnie back towards the showers without letting him fight it. “She doesn’t have anything life-threatening, and you can do a triple check after you take care of yourself, Donnie.”

“But-”

“After,” Raph says again. “You can’t play doctor if you’re the patient, Don. Get in the shower before I make you.” He herds Donnie towards the stalls, and Raph gives the leather straps across his shell a tug. “Unbuckle these and get in there. I’ll dump ‘em with the rest.”

“What about you?” Donnie asks, hands moving to unbuckle his gear before he realizes they are. He’s still dizzy, but not concussion dizzy. Just… not breathing quite steadily and experiencing a severe headache in the making.

“Someone has to keep watch,” Raph replies, taking Donnie’s belt and gear from him. “Me and April will watch our backs until you four finish primping, got it?” Then, in a less gruff and nearly soft tone, “Breathe, Donnie. You can chill out for ten minutes, we’ve got you covered.”

The hand on Donnie’s shell is immensely helpful in forcing his lungs to expand fully. He takes a couple breaths, trying to shake the panicky shallow breathing, and manages to find his center again. A trillion terrified and overwrought anxieties beckon for attention in the back of his mind, but he sweeps them away once again. For later. Not now, later.

“There you go,” Raph says quietly, giving Donnie’s shell a pat. “Now clean up. April will want in pretty quick here. Never works out well if we keep her waiting.”

Donnie shakes his head wryly, and manages to stay steady long enough to shower off the dust from their world-ending battle.

—-

Mikey has to physically pry Leo’s swords from his hands, and then tug those hands away from the scars on his brother’s neck right afterwards. Mikey’s own hands and arms are sore as hell, still feeling the bone creaking blows from the massive Triceratons, but he hustles Leo into the shower before they give out.

Leo needs some time to find his leader self again, which Mikey can understand, because he himself needs some time to find his happier self again. The flashes of the battle they’ve just come from blink fast and painful across Mikey’s vision- his dad, his friends, his home, the black hole swallowing them all- and he drowns them quick as he can with hot water, the second Donnie releases him from checkups.

Everything feels raw and achy, and Mikey can’t keep track of his own thoughts or emotions; they’re all jumbled up with one another, relief and grief and anger and fear and hope and rage and love and loss, and he gives up trying to control anything and just burns it all away with the horrible images.

He’s shaky all over, adrenaline leaving him without much else than empty feeling lungs and frayed nerves. His head is all clouded up with too many things and he feels like bouncing against the walls until that’s gone, but also feels like lying down and never moving again he’s just so tired all of a sudden-

And he turns the water up hotter scalds his scales, so it drowns those things too.

He narrows down what emotions he’s going to let in right now- really, just what emotions he can use and not have get out of control- and drinks some too-hot water to finish the temporary cleanse. He’ll freak out a lot more later on, a lot more, but he’s not panicking right now. Panicking is tiring, and he’s seeing in his brothers and friends that none of them can handle panic any more than he can. Not at the moment.

He’s still jittery, though. Jittery and needing somewhere to channel his energy. Leo, still in the process of finding his own center, presents a good enough target.

Leo’s got smudges on his shell, from being thrown against the pavements and dirt. Some scratches, too. Mikey taps his brother’s shell as he enters the space, and waits for Leo to turn and look. Mikey waves the bar of sweet smelling soap, which reminds him of flowers and fermenting fruits, in a silent offer.

It takes a beat, where Leo unwinds whatever reflex Mikey almost triggered, and his brother accepts the offer with a wane smile.

Shells are great for a lot of things, but they can be a real pain to keep clean. Technically, they all can reach the spots that are hard to get, but that takes effort and none of them have any of that left right now. Staying standing is hard as it is, and coordination like that is asking a little much.

So Mikey lathers the worst spots directly, and scrubs with his bare hands. Space-robo-guy didn’t give them any loofahs, odd since he seems to have everything else, so elbow grease will have to do. The hot water Leo is tilting his face into sprays onto Mikey as he washes, and for a brief second, Leo relaxes just a fraction with both sensations at work.

Mikey smiles and finishes scrubbing Leo’s shell clean. He barely has to ask for Leo to do the same for him; just handing off the soap is enough, and Mikey gets a gentle push under the hot water again. He always manages to get chilled after a fight, no matter if it’s the height of summer or he goes for the hot drinks right after, so once more being in the spray further chases the cold out of Mikey’s body.

Leo doesn’t speak- he’s going through the whole ‘re-finding his voice’ thing right now, and Mikey won’t push him- and works with steady pace. The atmosphere is a sharp turn from all the hyper stress Mikey has been riding all night, all freaking night, and the comfort of having someone literally watching/washing his back calms some of the burnt out nerves in his limbs.

Then the sight of his father’s impaled body hits his vision with utter clarity, and it nearly ruins all his work to keep everything under control.

Leo catches the hitch in Mikey’s breathing, or maybe the full body recoil he can’t suppress, and moves a soapy hand onto the back of his neck. Leo’s grip is soothing, because he immediately starts massaging stress points there.

“Shh,” is all Leo says, quiet and hoarse. “…’s okay.”

It’s not much, and Mikey can hear the strain for Leo to manage just that, but it’s enough. And Mikey sucks in a breath, and shoves everything back into order.

He’s fine. He’ll be fine until they can sit down properly and know they’re secure enough to talk and grieve. Leo’s thumb works out a knot in Mikey’s strained feeling neck muscles- a bit of whiplash, maybe, those Triceratons can hit hard- and only removes it once Mikey is breathing steadily again.

“Thanks,” Mikey manages, “…I think I needed that.”

Leo runs a hand down his shell, a gesture that further soothes the anxious energy Mikey has, and goes back to scrubbing.

When he’s done, they go nab Donnie before he can escape and skimp on self-care he definitely needs. Between the two of them, and some help from a boxers-clad Casey, they drag Donnie back towards the showers for a good shell scrub. He fights them weakly, because while he can hide it well, he’s obviously starting to really lag, and there’s only so much he can do to fend them off. Which is nothing.

There’s soap everywhere and Donnie gripes quietly, and it’s another notch up for the comforting atmosphere Mikey managed to establish with Leo. Even with Casey butting in to be a nuisance, fake-complaining about the exclusionary action of no one scrubbing his shell, and Donnie kicking his shin without real force, and snippily saying, “Shut up, Jones, and keep your jealousy of our superior physique to yourself.”

There’s a brief tussles and soap fight, and it results in Leo finding the energy to lock both Casey and Donnie in holds, while Mikey spreads drippy shampoo all over their noggins, because they’re idiots who so deserve it for their squabbling.

Their gear and belts were apparently kidnapped at some point, including Casey’s clothes, so they have to go out in just the towels left in their place. Mikey doesn’t even wear clothes anyway, so the towel is in fact a step up from that. And also cozy. Space towels are cozier than earth towels, in his opinion.

April and Raph laugh at Casey, who is shameless about being in nothing but a towel and soggy boxers. It’s the first laughter from any of them all night, and it gives Mikey a boost he didn’t notice he needed.

—-

April is hard pressed not to just… sit down, and curl up. Her powers are still spread outwards, opened up wide in a large net, just in case something tries to sneak up on them all. It kind of hurts, since she’s already overwhelmed by everything earlier. She feels raw and off-balance, and can’t find her center no matter how she tries to stabilize her mind.

Her boys are showering, while she guards the door. She’s got aches appearing all over her as she stands there and a throbbing migraine on the way. Her last explosion of power burst some blood vessels in her eyes; she can feel the itchiness already starting. In her desperation, and fury, and grief, she’d opened the floodgates and-

-burned.

A useless act. Earth has been reset- her father, her Sensei, her friends, her home, they’re all back and she can try to save them more time- and now she’s got a power that still wants to grow larger, and has to calm that instinctive reaction. There’s no need for it right now, she needs to reel it in before her headache gets any worse.

She knows who exiting the shower block before the door even opens; her tendrils of invisible power reaching out and brushing against the swirl of angerangergriefconfusionfearconcernconcernrageconcern coming towards her. It’s Raph, and while she can’t hear his thoughts per say, she can feel them. She can feel all of them, her boys, and it’s likely all that’s keeping her steady. The assurance that they’re here, they’re alive, and not going anywhere until they all do. Together.

Her heads throbs, though. Too much input. And she’s so tired right now; exhausted from emotional whiplash and from pretty much everything else she’s had to deal with today. (Yesterday? Six months from now? Time travel is confusing.)

She pulls her powers away from the boys in the shower, and center most of her focus on Raph’s mind alone. His own emotions are jagged, rubbing both him and April rawer than they already are, but it lessens the throbbing migraine in April’s head.

He doesn’t speak as he comes to stand beside her; weapons in his hands and a posture that’s forced into attention. She can feel his exhaustion as well as her own, and knows how badly he’d just like to lie down. Don’t they both. Don’t they all.

For a bit, they just stand there, waiting for their turn to get clean. April had opted to go last, since she knew that once she stepped into the hot spray, she wasn’t going to want to leave it any time soon. Better to get everyone else through before she went inside and pressed pause on herself.

She, thankfully, only has a few scrapes here and there. Nothing requiring more than a wash and maybe a small band-aid.  She has bruises- oh does she ever have bruises- but nothing open or bleeding. Small mercies.

She feels like she’s bleeding, though. Somewhere in her chest, a wound that’s been torn open and then scarred over again too many times now. This is the umpteenth tragedy in her life, and it hurts deeply. Pierces straight to her core, and threatens to let misery and hopelessness swallow her whole. So many times, so many times she’s dealt with losing battles they couldn’t afford to lose, and this time they lost their whole world. An entire planet’s population, just gone, because they’d failed.

If she reaches out again, she knows she’ll feel Leo’s own miring emotions. Failure and the fear that haunts him when they lose battles; it sticks to him in ways that are not easily removed. April wants to reach out and nudge those thoughts away from him, but her own precarious control might not be strong enough to keep a bleed-over from happening. Like Mikey’s tightly wound scattered emotions are too bright and sharp to get near, and Donnie’s winding, pacing, spiralling anxieties are too likely to pull her own into their circles, and Casey’s staccato thought process jumps between confidence and confusion, likely to unsettle what little balance April has achieved-

And that leaves Raph’s ever burning anger, solid and steady and furious, to concentrate on. So long as he doesn’t let that anger swallow him, April can stand to hold onto it and not risk harm.

But, as they stand there, watchful and quiet, she feels him doing just that. She feels the rise in the strength of his emotions- they’ve always been so powerful, she couldn’t ever imagine feeling so much all the time- and he starts to slide downwards. He’s trying to not, trying hard as he can because he knows none of them can handle anyone truly melting down just yet, but it’s happening and it’s out of his control.

He’s scared and furious and grieving and sorrow filled and just plain terrified all at once; it’s overwhelming, even to April, as she hastily withdraws most of her power from him. Neither of them has moved since he came out, but April feels tenseness all through his body, and he audibly clenches his jaw. Teeth clacking loudly against each other.

He’s just barely holding on, for the sake of all of them, and it makes April’s frayed emotions rise into her throat.

So she reaches out, with the hand that doesn’t hold a weapon, and grasps his large trembling wrist.

Words are hard, and sometimes they’re not enough. They lost everything and then got it all back within mere minutes of each event, and the shame of failure is dragging each of them down. No gentle words of comfort can make that better; not all at once, and maybe not at all.

Actions are easy. Actions make sense to them both. So April holds onto Raph’s wrist until it stops shaking, and he eases his death grip around his sais’ handle. His shoulders slump ever so slightly, showing for a moment a vulnerability that he never likes to make known.

He’s big, and strong, and sometimes mean, and he’s a kid who just lost his father. April understands those feelings too well, and feels old and young at the same time.

He lifts his hand to slide hers close to it, and turns it so that his thumb can catch her fingers. For a second, they let go of bravado; linking digits together and just holding on. Breathing, and not letting emotions or painfully fresh memories drag them down.

Words are hard, and sometimes not needed at all.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Raph’s emotions stabilize, and recede to a level he can handle. April’s skull aches still, but she reaches out a psychic touch regardless. Sending comfort and I’m here we’re here we’re all here along the tendril she brushes him with.

He doesn’t relax, but some of the tenseness leaves him. Now, if anything were to happen to them in this moment, Raph wouldn’t lose his head in the fight. True relaxation can come later, when they’re regrouping and can actually see one another is fine.

April already knows that the professor is sincere with his actions; that he really does want to help them. No one can lie to her anymore; not if she’s opened up her mind’s eye and is staring straight through any barriers they try to hide behind. For the moment, they have an ally and a safe place to rest.

Of course, telling that to her still battle-fresh reflexes and her ingrained triggers of fight or flight is a bit of a challenge.

Holding onto Raph, physically and mentally, helps to calm those reactions, as bizarre as the idea might seem. Two hot-heads, keeping each other calm. Wonders never cease.

They remain like that, linked together by their fingers, until Casey comes sauntering out in nothing but a towel and his pride. Then, laughter takes the place of sorrow for a moment, and April feels lighter in the same way Raph does.

—-

So they were in space. Holy shit they were in space. In a space ship, with a space robot, and they’d used space showers and gotten space towels to use while a space washer/dryer thing space cleaned their stuff, and now they were sitting in a space living room with a space TV and a space couch, and-

Casey watched his own planet get pulled apart into tiny little pieces and sucked into a black hole maybe a half hour ago.

He’s… still not sure how that’s supposed to make him feel.

On the one hand, planet scale destruction is kind of cool, but… only in fiction, as it turns out. Mostly, seeing everything fall apart like that had been sort of really… scary.

Casey’s always considered himself up to the challenge of anything; including space invasions and massive alien brawls. Those things had been really fucking metal, since all there was to it was to hit the enemy with his weapons until they stopped trying to wreck everything. Facing foes five times his size? No sweat. That’d actually been really exhilarating.

Except.

They’d failed, and his little sister, and dad, and all his normal friends… the brothers’ dad, and April’s too, all their families had gotten sucked into the black hole, and…

Yeah. That hadn’t been cool at all.

Casey rubs his right cheek, feeling a bruise starting to really form there. His mask took most of the damage, but the power behind the swings that’d been aimed at him hadn’t been stopped by it. Usually he embraces the aches that follow a good fight; they’re just a part of the packaged experience, kicking ass on a nightly basis and coming out the winner of things.

But they didn’t win this time. They lost, and they lost badly.

The aches don’t feel so pleasant, knowing that.

But hey, they get to try again! Time travel is a thing and it gave them back their world, so they can do things over a second time. Somewhere on earth, his dad and sister are fine and everyone else is as well. They’ve got six months to stop the Triceratons from finding the black hole generator, and that’s plenty of time in Casey’s opinion. They’ve got this on lockdown.

But… that doesn’t quite erase the fact that he watched his whole world die just a short while ago.

Casey will save the world… later. He admits to himself, while he spaces out a bit during whatever the professor robot is saying, that he’d actually rather just. Sleep. Not think about anything in particular for a couple hours, get up, and go from there.

He misses pretty much everything that’s going on- but suddenly the brothers are carrying bedrolls into the room and April is tugging him out of the way. Wow, he totally blanked out there. Raph shoves a bundle of soft fabric wrapped around itself into Casey’s hands, and he winces a bit as the push hits his sternum. He got nailed there pretty hard, couldn’t breathe right for a solid minute.

Everything hurts and he can actually feel his energy crashing. Time to sit down.

The bedroll pops its clasps without much fuss, and unfurls and expands. It turns into something that resembles a sleeping bag, but with more padding and softer fabric than Casey’s ever found on earth. No pillow to be seen, but hey, Casey is definitely not complaining right now. He’ll probably pass out on the first horizontal surface he can find that isn’t made of bees.

He’s not really sure where to put his bedbag- in the middle of the floor, across the room, where?- and ends up just dropping it in front of the couch. He doesn’t have energy for actual brain power right now; he’ll just put it wherever.

And maybe everyone else has the same sort of feeling, because after Casey drops himself onto his bedbag, everyone else follows one by one. There’s plenty of space in the room for them to spread out, but… kind of feels less exposed, clumping together in one spot. It feels warmer.

Casey sinks slowly backwards, leaning on the couch behind him. He’s got his clothes back, even his bandanna, and they’re actually even cleaner than they would’ve been if he’d washed them at home. They’ve got the option to go get food, as much as they want and whatever they want, whenever they want it.

But Casey kind of just wants to sit for a while. Maybe figure out how to get rid of the uncomfortable feelings he’s got swirling around his head.

He doesn’t like failing, and he certainly doesn’t like losing. He failed to protect his city, and he lost his family. It’s weighing heavy on him, and he’s not sure what to do with those feelings, even though he knows they’ve undone all that stuff already.

Doesn’t change that at some point it did happen. Doesn’t change that they fucked up so badly they cost themselves everything. Doesn’t change that his dad and sister were dead, and so was Splinter, and Mr. O’Neil, for at least a couple minutes.

That horror drenched thought suddenly slips from his grasp, and he blinks at the seeping comfort that isn’t his. Casey turns his head, and finally figures out just who sat down next to him.

April’s curled around herself, but Casey can feel her invisible threads of power brushing over everything. Her head is down and her eyes are shut, but she’s still aware enough to send some comfort towards him.

Casey doesn’t have to be a psychic to know she’s not doing so hot herself. They’d talked about it sometimes, during the months on the farm, how April sometimes feels like she never gets a break anymore. That she can’t hold onto anything good in her life without something trying to take it away.

Casey came into the game late, and has only heard about some of the stuff the brothers and April have dealt with the past few years. He thinks they’re all pretty amazing for that, and now he’s starting to understand why some nights they’re just… tired.

Casey feels tired. He put out a lot of energy tonight, and had the rest yanked right out of him without his permission. He gets why April is curled up and small, and why Donnie looks like he’s staring hard at nothing; why Leo hasn’t said a word since they boarded the ship, and why Mikey’s usual volume has all but evaporated; why Raph is on his other side and slumping boneless against the couch. He gets it.

Casey slumps a little more, and rubs his face; covering his eyes from the dim lights of the room.

“…so,” Donnie finally says, a long pause later. “Who wants to go first?”

Casey takes a deep breath. It might as well be him. Talking helps, right? “So my dad and sister were dead for about two minutes there, and I now understand how that can really fuck a guy up, since I know you guys have lost your dads a couple times already. Let’s not do this ever again, since this is honestly the shittiest I’ve felt in a long time, and also am I in the dead dad club yet?”

There’s a brief silence, and then Mikey bursts into tears. Leo and Donnie are the ones beside him, and they immediately go and start making shushing sounds, holding Mikey between them as he hiccups and cries.

“Too soon?” Casey asks, wincing. Raph smacks him over the head, and then drags him into a rough hug. Casey’s arms are shaking- hey, when’d they start doing that?- as he hugs Raph back. “Jeez, Raph, ease up there I’m kind of- kind of choking, what’re you- hey, I’m fine, don’t- don’t-”

Casey didn’t really notice he started crying.

Funny, not noticing something like that.

“-fuck,” He whispers hoarsely, and hides his face in Raph’s shoulder.

April’s arms wrap around his torso, and he feels her press her face against his back. Her hold is as tight as Raph’s, and Casey can feel an invisible one brush over his body. He’d hug her back, but Raph’s got a vice grip around him and Casey kinda has the same on his friend.

It feels a little like they’re trying to hold each other together. Casey’s not sure how well that’s working.

“…s’rry ‘bout Mike,” Casey mumbles, hearing Mikey’s hiccupping sobs still. He isn’t sure why he said that stupid shit. He’s not ever sure why he does.

“ ’s okay,” Raph mumbles back, “was gonna happen anyways.”

April makes a ragged little “—!” sound into Casey’s back, and it’s just- so sad. Everything feels sad. Everything kind of is sad.

The dull static that’d been holding down most of Casey’s emotions lifts, and he feels the full impact of everything all at once. It hurts, a lot. Everything hurts. His face, his chest, his head, and his heart.

Casey misses his dad and sister with striking pain; misses master Splinter, misses their home. It’s cold in space, and the only warm things he’s got around him are his friends.

It’s awkward to do so, drop one hand from his hug with Raph and angle it to find April’s, but he manages it and she holds the grip tight as he does. Trembling until they squeeze so tightly it doesn’t.

One, two, three- breathe.

They’ll figure this out. They’ll save the earth and then everything can go back to normal.

But-

That can come later.

Casey’s a bit too tired for heroics right now. He’s always up for a challenge, usually, but right now… he doesn’t think he could manage it at all.

However, holding onto his best friends for a bit- that sounds way more manageable.

—-

They take turns.

First it’s Mikey, then Casey, the most vocal members of their team with their emotions and reactions. Theirs are incoherent for the most part; buildup of events and thoughts that just couldn’t handle anymore, hard as they’d tried. Then it’s Raph and April, their teammates with emotions so big they sometimes can’t contain them. Theirs are louder, angrier- an expression of how helplessness to stop what happened makes them so mad and scared they can’t keep it to themselves. Then finally, with the other four moving through the worst of their breakdowns, its Donnie and Leo’s turn.

Donnie’s is controlled. Silent. It’s hard to watch, though; seeing Donnie slowly deflate and just… lie there. He’s the tallest of Leo’s brothers, and yet, manages to look so much smaller; curled into a hug between April and Mikey on either side of him. There are so many things in Donnie’s head none of them will ever really know, let alone understand, and doubtlessly Leo’s brother is running scenario after scenario of what they could have done differently. How they could have won. How they could have saved their father.

Donnie doesn’t make a sound, and barely shows his distress as he works through it, clinging to April and Mikey both. They all know anyway, how deeply he’s hurting.

Their lineup shifted into a cluster at some point, and their beds are overlapping as much as they are. Leo somehow found his way near the center of it, where Donnie is at the moment, and finds himself corralled there by Raph and Casey.

His throat itches and his leg aches, and Leo doesn’t fight the gentle persuasion for his turn at things. Raph is strong again, back in control of himself and ready to catch Leo the moment he falters. Casey’s brief expulsion of his terror and grief is gone, and replaced again by his steadfast determination. They’re here for Leo. And, Leo admits he needs them.

He failed. He failed his father, he failed his brothers, he failed his friends and he failed his world. Leo’s head swirls with that knowledge, and it pulls him down the moment he lets it. He should’ve been a better leader, should’ve been able to plan to prevent this, and should’ve found a way to stop the blades and the man who wielded them long before they went through Splinter’s back.

The death of an entire world is on their hands, on Leo’s hands, and it’s too much for him to handle.

And as he collapses under that impossible weight, air leaving his lungs and his voice gone completely, his brother and friend catch him, and don’t let it crush him.

Leo leaves most of himself behind, trying to gasp around the pressure that’s on his lungs. He’s there but he’s not, and a part of him goes back to the moment he gained the scars that wrecked his voice and maimed his leg. He thinks a part of him will always go back to that moment, no matter how many years pass.

He’s back in the moment he watched twin blades go through his father’s chest, helpless to stop it, and the moments that followed where he watched an entire world die. He’s there, and it hurts, and he can’t breathe-

-and then he’s back, and pushing past the horrors. Numbness recedes and his lungs inflate again. Guilt and shame still cling to Leo like life sucking leeches, but they’re not so bad he feels like he’s being pulled apart at the seams.

He can’t tell if he’s crying- god knows it wouldn’t be the first time, pushing through this state of mind- but it doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t care if he is. Between the six of them right now, there’s no barriers, no bravado. They’re all they have at the moment, and trying to hide anything about themselves will only hurt them worse.

Leo, somewhere in the haze of flashbacks, had ended up leaning almost entirely onto Raph’s shoulder. Leo’s head still feels fuzzy beyond use, but he’s got back his senses enough that he can take stock of his surroundings. His head is lolled sideways, cheek against the bone of his brother’s shoulder. His hand is clutched by Casey’s humanly warm one. Both grounding sensations are welcome.

He breaths steadily, and finds Donnie’s eyes through the cluster of bodies. Donnie looks about as well off as Leo feels, with shadowed eyes and an obvious exhaustion.

They pass an understanding between the two of them, in that moment of eye contact. They’re both blaming themselves right now, for not stopping these events before they played out. Their siblings and friends are reactors to a situation; Leo and Donnie are planners. It’s their job to plot the course of things, and find the path that presents the best outcome.

They failed miserably at their job this time, and that weighs like lead on them both. They don’t have to say so, they just know.

Donnie’s grim and grieving expression says all that, and Leo conveys the same with his own. Whether or not their family will agree, this is something they’ll place on their shoulders together. The responsibility for everything, even if it’s not entirely their fault.

But it feels like it is, and that’s enough to push them to take that responsibility.

The moment of understanding passes and Leo breaks eye contact with his brother. They can discuss plans later, as well as strategy and how to avoid something this catastrophic from happening ever again. Analyze where they went wrong, and how to become better for their mistakes.

But that’s for later, much later.

Right now, Leo is still edging a part of his mind that’s been dragging him down this whole while, and he needs to pull himself together lest he fall into that black pit. Donnie is probably doing the same with his own mind, tucking his endless questions and anxieties away so they don’t interfere with his work.

Leo closes his eyes, breathes, and works on pulling everything back together for his family.

Eventually, he does, and they all go quiet. The stages of shock and grief have run their course, and now they huddle together as they accept their situation.

The attempt at creating a neat lineup of sleep spots had been mostly pointless. Inevitably, with their post-breakdown moods slowly dissipating, Leo finds himself tucked into a pile of beds and bodies. It’s crowded, and squished, and it makes the ache of loss so much more bearable.

Leo can’t remember when they started doing this; piling together whenever they ended up sleeping in the same room. Whenever they did, it was probably out of self-preservation. If Leo were in his room- or alone at all, really- he likely wouldn’t have been able to find his center again. He doesn’t doubt the same goes for everyone around him.

Leo has Donnie on one side of him, and Mikey on the other. Either Casey or April is by his head, since he can feel hair tickling his skull. Beyond that, it’s too much effort to figure out who ended up where. It’s better to just sink into the feeling of being safe and warm, than to do anything else.

Leo still can’t sleep. Can’t even imagine sleeping with what waits in his subconscious. But, he can lie here, and listen to the breathing of each family member he has. It sets the worst of his fears at ease, and he manages to actually relax for the first time in hours.

He’s clean, freshly bandaged, and he’s surrounded on all sides by the people he trusts most. Everything still hurts soul deep and bone deep both, but that’s alright. He has his family, and they have him. Even the scars around his neck and leg hurt less, so long as he has his brothers and friends to support him.

So long as they’re together, they’ll make it through.

Leo can’t sleep, but he can lay awake and listen to the steady breathing and near silent shuffles of his family. Maybe they do the same, lying awake and reassuring themselves that they’ve still got each other, even after all that’s happened. Maybe they don’t, and some of them manage to find sleep, despite the mind bending horror they’ve seen tonight.

Whichever it is, Leo can at least close his eyes, and know that he isn’t alone. He’s comfortable, pressed into the pile like he is, and he doesn’t think he’ll move for hours. Not with the quiet murmurs between Raph and Mikey happening close enough for him to hear, or the soft huffs of breath coming from Donnie, April, and Casey. Those insignificant sounds make all the difference in the world, for Leo.

So he leaves his eyes shut, and drifts.

“They don't want me to go,” he tells you miserably over a mug of hot cocoa. You meet your grandma's eyes over the top of his head. Her lips are pressed into a firm line, the dark blue of her eyes sympathetic and angry. “It's so far away.”

“Donnie went,” you point out, bristling with the unfairness of it all. “They didn't stop him.”

“Donnie ran away.” Mike's fingers curl around the packed warmth of his drink, eyes fixed on the wafting steam. “They didn't have a chance to stop him.”

And that, you think, with the slow burn of sudden inspiration, is a great idea.

“If you need anything,” grandpa says firmly, helping you pack the bed of your truck in the dark of one o'clock in the morning, “anything, you just give us a call.” 

Your sleepy cousins are in their pajamas on the porch, hugging Mike because he was always like a second big brother to them, and he's kissing their soft foreheads around an affectionate smile. Grandma is inside, throwing together a cooler full of food for your long trip, and you slam the stubborn tailgate shut with so much love ballooned up inside of you that nothing feels impossible.

Grandma embraces you both at the same time in both arms, right there on the sidewalk, grandpa's coat thrown on over her nightgown. Grandpa pushes an envelope into your hands—its thick with cash, and he refuses to take it back. Your cousins tug you down for another round of hugs and kisses, and you squeeze them tight, missing them already.

Mike leans out the passenger side window of the truck, waving and waving at your family until you turn the corner and throw them out of sight.

Mike's house is dark, and the car is gone. You wonder if his brothers are out looking for him, and wonder why they didn't check at your house first. Mike unclips his seatbelt, pops open the door, and promises to be quick.

You leave the engine running, and watch the glowing clock on the dash.

It takes your best friend fourteen minutes to return, tossing a single duffle bag into the bed of the truck and climbing back into the warm cab with a cat carrier in his arms.

“They weren't home,” he says breathlessly, and his eyes are bright now—this one last hurdle leaped, he's finally beginning to believe that you're really doing this. Klunk is purring in a way that matches the grin on Mike's face, and you grin right back.

You stop at an ATM and drain Mike's savings into your checking account, just in case his brothers get any funny ideas. You both have a full ride through school, thanks to a plethora of scholarships and grants and one or two student loans, but it's something like twenty-six hours between Arizona and New York, and who knows what might happen.

You stop at a gas station to fill up the tank and send Mike in for convenience store food. Laugh when he comes back out with an arm full of energy drinks and microwave burritos, and catch the King Size Twix he tosses you over the roof of the truck.

You stop one more time, right on the edge of town, at the You Are Now Leaving... sign. The road ahead is dark, an endless stretch of country highway. Neither one of you looks back.

“Ready for this?” you ask him.

In response, Mike turns the radio on. Your phone is still plugged into the AUX, and within moments All The Small Things fills every inch of space in the cab that isn't already taken up by boy or cat or junk food.

Half of your best memories could fit right here, layered one on top of the other like photocopies, you in the driver's seat and Mike in the seat beside you, speeding in circles down the same road because there was no where else to go—fifteen, seventeen, nineteen years old—beating the same Blink-182 song to death over and over and over again.

Your smile is so wide your cheeks are aching. You shift back into drive and gun it forward, down a new road this time. Mike whoops once, then laughs, and then starts singing along mid-chorus, his voice the most familiar thing to you in the whole world.

You get lost almost immediately, because neither of you thought to buy a map, but Mikey's eyes are wide every time you pull into an unfamiliar city and you'd drive through every state in the country to keep that excited brilliance in his face.

The fall semester doesn't start for nearly a month—you have time to make a few detours. So you follow the road signs into Pheonix, and get there as morning dawns across the desert. You eat breakfast at a waffle house, spend the day lost in a giant mall, smuggle Klunk in Mike's hoodie everywhere you go.

After that, you stop in Albuquerque, and then Santa Fe. You drive with the windows down, unplug your phone and tune into different radio stations as you go. You turn off the road late for the night in Las Vegas, New Mexico, because Mike laughs when he sees the sign.

You make Mike hold his bag until you check the questionable motel room for bedbugs, but after that he's creeped out and refuses to sleep alone. He and Klunk crawl in with you without waiting for an invitation, and you roll your eyes and lean over him to turn the light off.

The linen sheets are more scratchy than soft, over-starched and bleached too many times, and the seafoam green of the walls glows almost neon when headlights pass through the thin curtains. You can't count how many nights you've slept like this in your life, with Mike pressed against your chest, breathing softly, mouth slack against your shirt, but he's never kept you up before.

He's warm, his brown skin dusky against the pale pillows in the dark, and you can't see his freckles even from this close but you could probably still count them if you tried.

In the morning, you wake up with Klunk nestled under your chin, and Mike shutting the door behind him with an apologetic grin.

“I meant to be back before you woke up,” he says, tossing the truck keys back on the lopsided nightstand. He's in his own skinny jeans and your over-large hoodie, curly hair a messy halo around his head. He holds up a plastic bag, amber eyes bright. “I picked up breakfast!”

You open a styrofoam container of scrambled eggs and French toast, a strip of bacon and two strawberries on top shaped like a smiley face, and you wonder what on earth you did to deserve him.

You pull back out onto I-25 North and follow it up toward Colorado. The music is down low this morning, and Mike has the atlas folded open on his knees, tracing the trip so far with a pink highlighter.

His phone is in the glove compartment. He turned it off after the seventh missed call, something tight and unhappy on his face, and there's still a pale shadow lingering there hours later.

You merge left sharply, just barely making the exit, and Mike squawks in surprise.

“Woah, where are we going?”

“You'll see,” you say, and turn off the interstate completely. Mike shifts Klunk out of the way and scoots the map closer to your side of the bench, just in case.

The Garden of the Gods ends up being a day-long stop. You wander some of the trails, and take an obscene amount of pictures, and make shapes out of the rock formations. Mike is flushed by the time closing hours are near, his face stretched into what might as well be a permanent smile, and you tap the arm of one of the two young women standing nearby.

“Do you mind taking our picture?” you ask her, holding out your phone.

She looks past you at Mike and then she smiles, the light of her own adventure bright in her eyes, and takes your phone. You turn to grab Mike's hand, and drag him up to the immense hoodoos, two towering, spire-like rocks that stand together and form a small open window where their edges don't quit meet.

“Tourists take pictures in it all the time,” you tell him, helping him climb up. “It's pretty much required while you're here.”

“Oh,” Mike says, voice soft. You sit opposite each other, knees bunched together, and then turn to smile for the camera. Mike never let go of your hand, and he's still holding it now. You can feel his heart beating through the press of his fingers, a little too fast.

You glance at him, sidelong, to make sure he's okay, and startle a little at how close he is. His face is radiant in the half-light, in the shadowed keyhole of the impossibly huge rocks you're sheltering in, and the fingers of his free hand find a home on your cheek.

Your breath catches.

There’s an eternity here, right here, in the careful way he touches you. You cover his hand with your own, and lean through the two inches of space left dividing you, hair flattening where your foreheads come together.

“You did all this for me 'cause you thought I was sad?” he asks, very quietly.

“Nah, Mikester. 'Cause I want you to be happy,” you say, no louder than him.

The woman hands your phone back, and she's covering a delighted smile with her fingers.

“You two look good together,” is all she says, and you grin, a little bit flustered, a whole lot pleased.

Mike wants to go shopping in the Visitor Center before you get back on the road, and the two of you compete to find the cheesiest, tackiest souvenirs. You end up buying the winner, a stuffed bighorn sheep in a little T-shirt that says, “Someone in Colorado loves you!” and Mike buys twelve dollars worth of 'famous fudge' because you both make bad choices.

You check into a motel and take Klunk inside, and have dinner at an Italian place downtown. The stuffed sheep comes with you, and the waiter laughs when he sees it presiding over the table. The dessert menu is long and impressive, and Mike is torn between semifreddo and panna cotta, so he gets one and you get the other and you sneak bites off each other's plates.

A hearty meal after a day of hiking after several days of driving has you flagging by the time you make it back to your motel room. You're ready for bed in about two minutes, and yawn a goodnight as Mike turns the lamp off.

Mike's voice wakes you up sometime later, in the dark timeless place between midnight and morning. You blink blearily, and lift your head, and find him sitting on the other bed with his phone to his ear, stroking Klunk's fur calmly.

“Do you want me to apologize?” he's saying quietly. “I worked so hard for this, and you were going to take it away from me. What am I supposed to apologize for?”

You're frozen, hardly daring to breathe. The silence is impossibly heavy, and you wish you could hear both sides of the conversation your friend is having. You wish you could see his face, see what new damage this is doing him.

“I'm nineteen, Leo,” is the next thing he says. “You can't stop me from going.” Another pause, and finally Mike's shoulders are hunching as he begins to bow under the weight of the argument, and you can only imagine what he's listening to. His voice is thick and hurt when he snaps, “Donnie was right to leave, and so was I!”

His face is briefly illuminated by the screen as he takes it away from his ear to jab the End Call button. He's not crying, but his eyes are bright and wet, and he rubs them with the sleeve of the hoodie he never gave back to you.

“Woody?” he says softly. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah, Mikester. Let's go get some ice cream.”

There's a 24-hour diner down the street. You walk there, close enough that your arms bump, close enough for Mike to slip his hand into yours while you're waiting for a light to change.

You thread your fingers through his and hold on tight. It would take a tornado to force you apart.

Close to Boulder, your truck starts making a pretty ugly grinding sound every time you turn. Mike bullies you into getting it checked out, and the weathered mechanic at the auto shop tells you that your steering column is all but shot.

“Been doing a lot of driving in that old girl recently?” he asks, and you nod, a little shame-faced. “We'll get her taken care of. You're gonna have to stay put for a little while, though.”

You call to let your grandparents know, and end up giving them the number of the auto shop. The mechanic is amused when he sees you the next day, and lets you know that the parts and labor have been paid for. The truck will be ready for the road in about four days, and until then you're stuck in Colorado.

“We're not in a hurry,” Mike reminds you, grinning a little. “Let's go find a place to stay.”

There's a roomshare on Craigstlist advertised for as cheap as twenty bucks a night, and you jump on it.

“After this, we're sleeping in the truck,” you tell Mike sternly, not really meaning it. It's not like you're strapped for cash. But he rolls his eyes and nods along anyway, tugging you towards the bus stop.

Mike's roommate is a pretty cool guy, ex-Marine by the looks of it, and happy to have Klunk sharing their space. He helps Mike set up a fold-away cot, laughing at the anecdotes of their roadtrip so far as Mike shares them, and you stay to make sure he'll be okay before heading into the other room for the night.

“Slash works thirds, so you probably won't see him tonight,” Leatherhead says, Klunk purring warmly in the crook of his arm. “If you need anything, don't be afraid to ask.”

The bed shifting wakes you up. Cool air wafts under the blanket as Mike climbs in next to you, and the mattress settles with his weight. The stupid sheep is under his arm, and his eyes are sleepless.

You push yourself up on one elbow and look down at him. There's a curl of dark hair flopped over one of his eyes, and you push it out of the way with your fingers. 

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Mike says, gazing at you. His voice is as reverent as it was in the Garden of the Gods, careful and quiet. “Woody?”

“Mikester?”

“I want you to be happy, too,” he says.

Kissing Mike in a stranger's bed at three a.m. skyrockets to the top of your list of favorite things.

Raph whacks Mikey’s shoulder as he and Donnie join the pile of disappointed teenagers, and Mikey whines wordlessly about the punishment.

April just sighs, and tries to remember when she agreed to having a second parent in her life.

 Why did you shift the tone?

April just wanted to have a nice dinner out with an admittedly cute girl who’d helped her out with a vending machine. Not this. Because this is definitely not what she intended to happen, but someone is insisting on being what April can only describe as a flirt.

She feels her heart stutter every time Harmony looks over, or smiles, or tilts her head just right and her bangs fall out of place. And the way Harmony wears a too big jacket and makes it look as flattering as an evening gown, and the perfectly sharp eyeliner that should clash but doesn’t, is just driving April crazy.

April focuses very hard on keeping her words steady and her eyes from staring at Harmony’s lips. It’s a hard thing to do, especially once they leave the restaurant and Murakami’s slight barrier between them.

April O’Neil has a quiet sexuality crisis for about two hours, and doesn’t know what to do with it even afterwards. She never really thought about girls like that, but oh does she now. She definitely does now.

Even after Harmony turns out to be Karai, and tries to kill her, April very guiltily admits that yeah, she’s still cute. Foot clan ties and all.

 I ache all over.

“Ninjutsu sucks,” April proclaims, lying on the floor of the dojo and not even caring about appearances anymore. Everything hurts and she is never moving again.

“Welcome to the club,” Mikey says in an only half mocking tone, slumped against the random tree the family has growing in here. Seriously, April doesn’t understand why or how the tree is here. But it is.

“Diligence is rewarded with… something,” Leo says, clearly trying to start a leaderly speech, but also clearly too tired to do so. “Wait I know this one, hold on.”

“Everyone stop talking, I’m trying to die in peace,” Donnie mutters belligerently from his position splayed on the floor. Raph grunts an agreement, and makes no move otherwise from his spot beside Donnie.

“Sucks,” April says with more emphasis, because when she signed up for ninja training, she did not think it would include six hour plus sessions of pure and utter agony.

 Let’s wait for them.

“Can we just give up and leave them?” Mikey asks April, once the second hour rolls by.

April scans the alien market they were- not lost in, just momentarily confused by- checking again for any sight of Leo and Raph. “No, I’m pretty sure we still need them.”

Mikey makes a drawn out sound of annoyance, and flops his head backwards against the bench they’re on. “Oh my god, how hard is it to get one measly electro-converter-whatever?”

“Apparently hard enough it takes two plus hours,” April says dryly, shielding her eyes to the blinding three sun sky. Why was it always desert planets lately; she had sand in places she never wanted to.

Something catches her eye, and April turns her search towards it. Then she grimaces.

“Uh oh,” She says.

“Why the ‘uh oh’?” Mikey asks in a wary voice.

“Uh oh because it looks like the deal went bad,” April says, grimacing further as she watches the two brothers try to run through the thick crowd. Their pursuing enemies look really angry, and April isn’t eager to find out why.

Mikey doesn’t move from his slump, apparently unbothered by the turn of events. “Welp, can’t say I didn’t expect that one. Should we wait for them to escape, or help ‘em out?”

April watches the way Leo and Raph scurry through the throngs of people, Leo carrying the engine part they need for the ship. None of them aliens pursuing them have drawn weapons yet, but April doesn’t like the look of the swords on their backs.

“Let’s wait for them to escape,” April says, leaning back and pulling up her hood. They’re both tucked into their sand-resistance cloaks, and seem innocuous to the aliens passing by. Hopefully. “If they can’t shake them in five minutes, we’ll intervene.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Mikey agrees, still not bothering to even lift his head.

 It wasn’t very convincing.

April grins for her aunt, and swears it’s just a self-defense club. That’s why she’s asking for money to buy new workout clothes, and why she’s been keeping such weird hours.

She conceals the guilt of having to lie about her friends, about her father, and about why she comes home with bruises and cuts not caused by training. She tells her aunt that the self-defense club is because she’s still shaken up about losing her dad, and can’t handle being unable to defend herself anymore.

It’s partially a lie, that explanation. April is past being shaken, and moved onto being angry. So very angry.

She conceals that anger too, and smiles for her aunt every time she asks about her martial arts.

April keeps things vague, and knows that it’s not as half convincing as she needs it to be.

 It went to dark places.

She listens to his half mumblings and shrieking shouts and shuddering, slow breaths as he calms down, and sometimes wonders if she really saved her dad at all.

Kirby O’Neil is not the man he was, and April O’Neil isn’t the girl she was either. Neither of them are the same anymore; and hearing the pained, distressed sounds her dad makes in the dead of night, trying so hard to cope with the things he endured for her, breaks April’s heart in ways she hadn’t thought it could still break.

The sound of her father breaking down takes April along with him, because she can’t stop the vague connection of empathy she has. Her powers are still something new, and she doesn’t have enough control yet to completely shut everything out. Including the strangling, terrifying fear and despair that sometimes grips her father.

Even if she knows that he’ll recover, stand back up and smile like none of this happened at all, and go to work the next day like any other normal dad- the anxiety attacks and night terrors still drag April down. Down into visions of metallic cells and cold restraints and dark things that make her fear spike without fail, and she struggles to pull herself free each time.

 We like the darkness.

April doesn’t know if she was ever afraid of the dark. Maybe as a small child she’d been, but now, she dances through it without fear.

After all, her closest friends dwell there, and she’s learned the shadows better than the light.

And as she does, she learns how to melt into it, to make it a part of her very being. Learns what shadows can hide her wholly, and how to make them cling to her like a second skin.

Her four friends, strange and otherworldly as they are, are much better at this than her. A lifetime of experience makes them masters at something April has just begun to take into herself.

It doesn’t bother her often, because she’s far too busy racing with the night wind and playing training games in the slanted dark of each street.

 I was ready to go.

April glances back at the farm house, thinking about the temporary peace it’s given them all the last few months. But also, about how the basement had held secrets she wasn’t ready to learn, and how those secrets weigh on her still.

It’d been a place to hide and heal their wounds, a beat of quiet in a time of raging wars and hard losses, but it had also slowly become a place where the walls felt too tight. So tight and cramped that April had wondered if they were getting smaller by the day. The six of them all but snarling at one another some days, when cabin fever became too much and there wasn’t enough room in the world for them to feel comfortable with their lives. A sanctuary that had slowly turned prison.

“Are you ready to go?” Donnie asks, calling over from the Party Wagon. They’re all piling in, food and weapon supplies already inside and locked down for the drive. Casey honks the horn once, and the other boys shout at her as well.

April smiles, shakes her head, and starts towards them. Turning her back on all the things she doesn’t want to linger on any more than she has. “Ready when you guys are.”

 We all talk about it.

Sometimes, when one or more of them hit a wall and just can’t anymore-

April, and her five closest, (only), friends will sit down in a great big pile, and just talk.

Especially after they lose the earth, and they drift through space and galaxies, someone will have a nightmare or an anxiety attack or just a bad day in general; and so they all react accordingly.

Sometimes it’s April’s turn for those. Bad moments where everything is just too much and too heavy, and she’ll just want to curl up and not be. Those moments are made so much easier, because she has five willing ears to listen to her, and she pays them the same affection.

Sometimes she talks about her dad, about the Kraang, about being something that’s neither human nor alien. And they listen, and she listens to them.

They talk about the Shredder, and what he’s done and taken. They talk about how they miss home, and how they miss things from before. Maybe they weren’t as close back then, because trauma and war ties people together tighter than anything, but they’d had less to worry about. To fear.

They talk about master Splinter, they talk about April’s father and aunt, they talk about Casey’s own father and sister, and they talk about the mutant allies they’ve made. They talk about who they count as their family.

They talk, and it makes things easier. And then they keep going, until the next time one of them needs this.

 Can we kiss you?

“Can… can we kiss you?” April asks tentatively, because this is really, really weird if she’s honest with herself. Even by their standards.

Donnie blinks, eyes darting between April and Casey on his other side, and the way they’re all a little too close to be platonic. No one else is in the room, Donnie’s brothers taking their turns for a sleep cycle while the three of them keep watch of the ship.

Or. They’re supposed to be. They’re doing this instead.

“Uh…” Donnie glances between them both again, looking confused and lost. “Both of you?”

“That is the plan,” Casey confirms, and April can sense the nervousness squirming in his aura. They’ve all been dancing around this for a long time, and now, with space from the earth, lost in literal space as they try to catch up with the timeline, they can’t dance any longer.

Donnie’s eyes widen, and his lips purse in the anxious way they always do. “I. I’m not really sure how to respond to that?” His words turn into a question, as he shifts uncomfortably on the sofa between them. “I mean, um, I wouldn’t be- be upset if you did, but are you sure-?”

“Yes,” April says, and cuts Donnie off by catching him in a messy kiss. She used to take her time deciding her actions, but these days you just did or didn’t, and chances passed by in blurs. They have this moment alone, finally, and she’s going to seize it before it’s gone.

It’s probably wrong, what she and Casey are trying to make happen. But monogamy is for ordinary people, and the three of them are anything but that.

April watched an entire world die, and then went back in time to save it. She can handle a little thing like having two boyfriends, who happen to be boyfriends with each other.

When April leans away from their kiss, Donnie’s staring at her with a sort of awe that makes her insides warm pleasantly. He’s been giving her that look for so long, and now she feels she’s returning it.

Of course, Casey breaks the moment they’re having, and April can only smile in amusement as he and Donnie start something that’s both a kiss and an argument at the same time.

She winds her hand into Donnie’s, as he and Casey break apart to stare at one another like the quarreling yet affectionate idiots they are. April gives Donnie a grin as she leans across his lap, and meets Casey at the halfway point for a kiss just between them.

The look on Donnie’s face is shy but attentive, and he watches them the whole time. It makes the exchange all the more exciting.

Things get a bit blurry from there, but April finds she doesn’t mind that at all.

 Can we shoot them?

“I’m just saying-”

“No, April.”

“-if we shot them, this would be over,” April says, pointing her laser gun at the captured aliens they have. “Seriously, we could just go ho- back to the ship if we shot them. Like, one blast for each of them, and I wouldn’t miss from a point blank range so it’d be a quick death-”

“April!” Leo scolds, giving her a wide eyed look. “We’re not shooting them! Jesus!”

“It’d destroy their connection with the machine!” April says, waving her gun and free hand at the giant whirling death machine they accidentally got tangled up with. How many plots for world destruction could one universe hold anyways? This was ridiculous.

“We’re waiting for Donnie and the professor, and we are not shooting people.”

April threw her hands up. “Oh my god, literally just one shot each, and then this’d all be over-”

“April!!”

“Fine! God!”

 These people are ridiculous.

April can’t help the laughter that comes out of her nose, and struggles to not swallow her now burning drink down the wrong hole. Her laughter is half snorted, and she coughs as she keeps going anyways.

Leo’s embarrassed shouting is barely heard over the howling laughter of everyone else; Mikey’s cheeky, completely unrepentant smile only egging both reactions on. April’s lost the thread of conversation between them now, but the growing noise serves to bolster her laughter anyways.

She’s returned to this, after weeks of fiercely refusing to see any of them, and it feels as though she never left. They’re all here, even with the new addition of Casey to their group, sitting around a kitchen table and eating a combination of pizza and Japanese takeout. Like nothing ever drove them apart; like there wasn’t a period of heavy, furious tension at all.

April has walked out of the lair so many times, away from it and the bizarre family living here, and once swore it would be the last time.

And yet.

Here she is, warm and welcome and laughing so hard her sides are aching. Accepted back even after the things she’d screamed at them, and finding herself having well and truly forgiven her friends.

The four brothers and their father, they always seem to accept her back, bring her home, no matter what happens. That sort of unfaltering loyalty astounds and warms April, and she can’t help but think how ridiculous it is that they would give so much of it to her.

April’s laughter, shared with four and now five people who seem to stand by her no matter what, makes her feel lighter than it has in weeks, and she hopes to never fall so low again.

 It’s not fair at all, is it?

April tries not to think about it too much. Dwelling on anything that makes her upset is dangerous these days, trapped in the farm house while Leo sleeps and New York burns. She knows her powers are growing, and the plate she accidentally threw across the room just yesterday - without even looking at it, let alone touching it- says all that needs to be said. If she lets her thoughts get too loud, too angry, she’s not sure what will happen.

But it’s not fair.

She’d just gotten her dad back, her life on track again, and now he’s gone and so is master Splinter. So are her aunt and every friend she has in school. All of them. Gone. Warped into mindless creatures or- or-

Or presumed dead.

April hunches her shoulders, and tries not to drown in anger and sorrow as she makes lunch. Because cracking the salad bowl in two won’t help anything, or alleviate the ever louder chant in her mind that it’s not fair, why me, why always me, it’s not fair.

But things haven’t been fair for her in a long, long time, and that knowledge gives her no comfort. Just a grim reminder of how things are, and will be for the foreseeable future.

 Are you crying?

April wakes up a day later, after That Night, and doesn’t want to.

She doesn’t go back to sleep though, because what’s waiting there could be even worse.

She doesn’t bother dressing, because she isn’t going out. She’s taking sick leave from school and training, and trying so hard not to feel the absent weight around her neck.

She makes herself breakfast, listless and not actually hungry, and finds herself reaching for a necklace she doesn’t have. To toy with it, like it really was a harmless pendant.

There’s nothing there, and she drops her hand. Ashamed.

She eats tasteless instant oatmeal, and barely finishes the meal. She doesn’t have any real appetite, not with the images and sensations still rising up her mind in unwanted, stinging flashes of memory.

It’s still raining. The windows of her apartment are streaked with it. The rain has just kept falling and falling, ever since…

Ever since the night she killed Donnie, and attempted to do the same to the rest of their family.

That thought remains lead like and suffocating on April’s consciousness, and it’s why she’s here at home. Because she doesn’t trust herself yet to look her friends in the eye, and not break.

But also because… she still wants the crystal back.

The sensation of Power, roiling and endless, still tingles at the tips of her fingers. The voice of Za’naron remains in her head, an echo of the alien’s soothing, sinking, strangling influence on her mind. The scene of her powers, her powers, tearing her best friend apart plays on repeat in her memories, and April feels heavy with exhaustion and guilt.

But outside of that guilt, that exhaustion, the feeling wanting remains. And April feels like the worst person in the world for that.

“April?”

April doesn’t have to turn around from the window to know it’s her dad. She’d felt him moving through her ambient senses long before he’d approached the living room.

“April, honey… are you crying?” Her dad asks, stepping further into the room.

April blinks, and hastily wipes away a few tears that escaped without her permission. “No,” She says, forcing her voice to remain steady. She can’t burden her dad with yet another one of her problems. “No, it’s just the rain. I’m fine, dad.”

Her dad seems pale, paler than he usually is these days, and a stricken emotion crosses his face. April can feel his concern, his worry, and she can’t bring herself to look at it too closely.

Her dad crosses the room, and with gentle care, pulls her into a hug. Its warmer than how April feels- which is cold, cold and hollow without the burning power she’d held just hours ago- and she lays her head against her dad’s shoulder.

She’s so tired of this. So tired of tragedies and fights and seeing her friends get hurt.

She’s so tired.

Her dad strokes a hand down her back, and April closes her eyes as he murmurs to her. “I know you don’t want to tell me what’s happening, but please know I’m here for you. Whenever you want to talk, I’ll listen, April.”

April tries to suppress the emotion welling up in her, and only barely does.

She wants to talk about it… but she also just wants it to disappear. She wants the nightmarish experience of killing her own friend to fade into nothingness, and for everyone to forget the time April lost herself in her own powers. She wants the memories, Za’naron, and the crystal gone forever.

April carefully bundles up her grief and tears, and pushes them far, far into the back of her mind.

“Thanks, dad,” April says quietly. “But I don’t have anything to talk about.”

Nothing at all.

Her father doesn’t have anything to say to that, and just holds her tighter.

It takes another few days, meditating on and off to fold the frayed edges of her powers and mind up and away…

…tucking the worst parts into themselves, hiding them so far inside her mind not even she can find them anymore…

…and then April can wake up again, and smile, and go on about her day like nothing ever happened.

She picks up her sword, her fan, and sweeps her hair back into a ponytail. She heads out into the night, and steps placidly over the still ongoing repairs to the lair.

She ignores the sideways glances she gets from her friends, and keeps complete and total iron control of her abilities.

She smiles.

And there’s not a tear in sight.

 It made no sense.

It made exactly zero sense to April, sometimes. How Leo will constantly say “Sorry April, ninjas only.”

Like she’s any less of a ninja. Like all her hours and hours of training mean nothing. Like she hasn’t spent the last year plus working her literal ass off to keep up with them, and damn near succeeding sometimes, despite their very large gap in years to learn ninjutsu. She’s done everything they’ve done, faced the same dangers and enemies as they have, with half the weapons and less than half the experience.

And yet.

“Sorry April, ninjas only,” Leo says, limping along like he didn’t still have a bum leg or needs help walking when he strains himself, like she hasn’t put her all into keeping their family afloat and together while he slept, like she doesn’t deserve to have a mystical ninjutsu camping trip too. And then they all just leave, and April has to stand by and watch their shells disappear and ends up going and breaking the skin on her knuckles pounding those stupid planks right after.

And she still fumes through the night, the next, and the next, until the day they walk back out of the woods.

April may have been imagining Leo’s face, the moment she finally broke the board right down the middle.

 I was in love with them all.

Originally, April had imagined herself to not fall for anyone easily, if at all. People and relationships were just such a hassle, and she had her schoolwork. She’d thought she didn’t need anyone.

But then there’d been Donnie, and then there’d been a certain kunoichi masquerading as a normal teen, and then there’d been Casey, and before she’d turned out to be a spying robot, there’d been Irma…

At some point or another, or even currently, April had felt something dangerously close to love for each of them. Or at least slightly off-kilter attraction, mostly inspired by the desire to simply beat a certain someone at their shared profession. (She hasn’t gotten her yet, but April would give Karai her just desserts one day. Some day. Maybe a kiss too-)

April’s brain fizzles, and she hunches a little more over the lair’s kitchen table.

Ooh boy.

She needs to slow down on the crush accumulation. Seriously. Two boys are enough; adding a highly trained and girl of dubious morales to the roster isn’t necessary. Even if said girl pulls off armor like high fashion and somehow never has her makeup out of place and god dammnit did Karai sometimes make April want to wipe that smirk off her face forcibly through a furious sort of kiss-

April makes something close to a whine, and covers her head with her arms; feeling quite sorry for herself and her late blooming bisexuality, with the addition of the inability to just choose someone.

“What’s botherin’ you tonight, April?” Mikey asks, flipping a few midnight pancakes on the stove. “You feelin’ sick?”

“I’m dying,” April mutters miserably.

“…huh. That’s a shame.”

April groans again at her friend’s lack of serious sympathy, and thunks her head against the table top.

God. Dammnit.

 Does anyone really want the ordinary?

April O'Neil isn't an ordinary girl in any sense. Hasn’t been for a long time.

Not since the night she fell into an alien conspiracy, and gained the strangest friends she could ever imagine. Not since she picked up a weapon, and decided she liked the sense of power and thrill that came with ninjutsu. Not since she spent the formative years of her teenagehood fighting one war after another, and somehow managing to still have teenage drama throughout it.

She isn't an ordinary girl at all, and she thinks that's fine by her.

 None of it mattered.

More often than not these days, April looks at her assigned schoolwork and just… can’t see the point of it.

College preparation used to be so important to her. Getting good grades and impressing her teachers used to rank close to the top of her priorities. She used to spend hours and hours studying, and love every second.

But now she’s seen and done so much more than those things. She’s fought crime lords and ninjas, aliens and mutants; defeated each one and come out of the fights even stronger. She’s learned how to manage finances and budgets and a household, lest she and her friends have starved while they were without parents those three months so long ago. She’s been to the edge of the universe and back again, and won’t ever be able to forget the other worlds out there, the other possibilities.

Looking at her math and history assignments, April can’t shake the feeling that it doesn’t really matter. Not in the grand scheme of things, and not to her.

Not for the first time, April wonders just how she’ll ever be able to live a normal life, now that she’s experienced the extraordinary.

 They know how to do this.

After master Splinter passes, after they made sure the Shredder would never hurt anyone ever again, and after they returned home to a home that felt empty…

April realizes with a heavy heart, that they know how to do this.

They know how to grieve, and they know how to move on. It’s happened to them before, the loss of the brothers’ father and April’s second parental figure. They’ve seen him die too many times, and now…

April hurts, bone deep and then to her very soul, and yet… feels almost numb.

There’s a gravestone this time, and that may be the only difference from all the others.

Splinter’s death flashes before her eyes often, the powerless moment she’d had watching the blades emerge from his torso. The world shattering second between feeling as though they might have finally won, and the moment she’d known they’d instead lost.

She feels grief, and sorrow, and regret for not being strong enough to save her second father figure. She wades through those emotions, and mires in nightmares and flashbacks that come to her in bad moments.

But more so than that, the feeling of vicious triumph of the Shredder’s death come to her, and April is far past being unsure if she likes it or not. She’s seen and done this more times than she ever should have, and she knows how to deal with it. Knows how to handle the balance of welling grief and whirling fury at losing someone so dear.

They all do, these days. The brothers and Casey and her. They’ve done the song and dance of losing someone so vital to their family twice before, and perhaps the greatest relief is that this will be the final time.

April hopes so. She’s not sure if she could do it a fourth time over.

 I have the sun.

A sun burns inside April. It grows brighter all the time, and sometimes she wondered if it would swallow her.

And then it did, for a single night, and she tore apart herself and someone she loved. It’d raged and roiled and burned her from the inside out. With the voice of a fallen angel ringing in her ears, screeching and singing and urging her on, April had lost herself in the torrent of white hot power.

And then she’d come back, the sun inside her not extinguished, but doused enough that she was herself again.

And just as that burning, ever growing sun had dimmed, she’d fanned its flames and torn apart reality one more time. To bring him back.

The power to change reality as she saw fit, it’s a dangerous, terrible power. Forged in her from the moment she’d been born, and designed to be used as a weapon by creatures that’ve done nothing but hurt her family since before she’d even existed. Yes she could use it to protect her family, her new one made of odd and wonderful people, but the things she’s been used to do already, the things she’s been forced to commit…

They weigh heavy on her, as heavy as the pool of energy inside her body. The one that feels like an ocean sometimes, and one she has yet to see the bottom of. An ocean of fire and white energy, bigger and brighter than April herself ever will be.

She’s scared of it. She worries about it. She loves the feeling of it. She can never let it tempt her again.

April has a sun inside her, one meant to break everything she sees and remake it in a twisted image, and she will never again let it burn her away.

 Celebrate them.

In between patrols and fights and tragedies-

-April learns to love the small things.

To celebrate them as they come and go, because everything is tenuous these days.

The days when her dad can walk out for work and come home with a smile, and then last the whole night without a panic attack; April celebrates them with extra-long hugs and truly bright smiles as they share dinner together.

The nights when she lands a jump just right, or executes a move perfectly, or earns an extra moment of praise from master Splinter; April beams and pushes herself harder, because she knows that now that she’s done this she can do better.

The moments that she gets to share with her friends, any and all of them, during patrols and training; when Donnie and Casey make the tips of her ears a little red, or Mikey and Leo make her laugh a bit too loud for ninja-ing, or Raph challenges her to a foolhardy bet neither she or anyone else in their group is going to really be able to win- April’s heart swells, and she lets herself experience the split seconds they’ve got with no other thoughts in her mind.

There are too many things that could interrupt those things, lately. Too many dangerous events and people that could take them away.

April’s learned, though. Learned that she has to celebrate them while they’re here and hope to god that there’ll be more in the future.

Between their shells and the broadcasting equipment they haven’t had the time or tools to rip out and cast aside there’s barely room to think in the back of the van, especially with Leo stretched out on the roughly napped carpet.  The van reeks of old take-out and the overpowering char of singed flesh.  It takes all the willpower he can spare to keep from gagging, his nausea not helped at all by the van’s badly balanced suspension and the heavily potholed highway beneath them.  

Casey has a place upstate, he says, an old farm turned commune  by his stubbornly free-spirited grandparents, abandoned now but out of the way and safe.  

“Just like home,” he assures them, knuckles white around the steering wheel.  “Reeks of patchouli and everything.”

(Donatello knows too well the smell of dead rats after a hard rain.  How it feels to wade through their bloated, loose-limbed bodies.)

Mikey watches intently as Donnie fiddles with the leads connecting Leo to his hastily-repurposed computer pack.  He feels naked without its familiar weight against his shell, untethered, but his brother’s need is far greater than his own.  Leo’s heart rate is erratic, his breathing shallow.  They need to get him someplace quiet and still.  Someplace where Donnie can focus.

“He’ll be okay.”  Mikey’s voice is rough from disuse and unshed tears. One hand hovers hesitatingly over the long crack in Leo’s shell, wanting to touch but afraid of shattering him further. “Right?”

Raph’s eyes flick up to meet his, silver irises shadowed by the same question.  All they want is a word.  Just one.  Yes or...

Or...

There are days when Donnie just can’t shut up (not won’t, because will is not the issue, because the words just trip and run on and on and he’s not fast enough to catch them, to pull them away from the places they aren’t wanted), and there are days when sound won’t come at all.  At least not in the shapes he wants it too.  Tongue stuck and chest full of too-hot air and the raw, high whining of his brain still has to come out, somehow, like steam from a tea kettle. 

Lucky then for the cold sink of his body, for long reptilian limbs that leak heat into the damp chill of sewer.  Lucky then for morning practice and the repetition of bow and stretch and hit and hit and hit (“Again, Donatello”) until the rhythm overwhelms him, the impact of stone and wood and flesh against his palms knuckles feet shell wrapping itself like a heavy blanket over all his too-prominent parts.

(Sometimes, when he should be sleeping, he lies awake for hours, sickened by the feel of his own heart beating.  A fist-sized machine beyond his control, a drum forever out of step with the rapid-fire cadence  inside his head.)

“You alright, Don?” Casey calls.   He’s watching him through the rearview mirror, brow furrowed and eyes bloodshot. April, after much brow-beating from Raph, finally crawled into the front seat for a nap half an hour ago.  The hard jut of her forehead rattles faintly against the passenger door window as the van drifts briefly across the rumble strip. The blue glow of the console radio dial is just bright enough for Donnie to make out her reflection against the glass, pale and expressionless as the moon, jaw slack against her chest and lank hair lank streaked with soot.  She looks dead.  Deader than Leo, even, and he’s—

“I gotta,” Donnie says. “I gotta, I gotta—”  

The rest doesn’t want to come out.  Not even when he rolls his head back (and back and back), mouth stretched wide as possible to give it room.  Not even when his fingers worm their way inside to try and pull it free.

“Hey.”  Raph looms into his space, but it’s not him he’s talking to.   A hand the size of a hubcap reaches out, taps Casey decisively on the shoulder.  “Pull over.  Piss break.”

The good thing about this part of rural New England, there’s no shortage of desolate side roads.

Raph all but pushes him out of the back of the van before Casey can even put it in park.  Is somehow also there to catch Donnie again as his locked limbs struggle to orient themselves in this suddenly expanded universe. That doesn’t quite make sense, but who else would it be?  Mikey’s not tall enough to haul him up fullway by the shell like that and Leo is—

And Dad is—

The long grass is slick beneath his boots.  Down the edge of a ditch, then up the other side.  This is the darkest night he’s ever seen, city lights hours behind them and the stars hidden behind thick, roiling clouds.  The trees whisper conspiratorially amongst themselves as Raph marches him deep beneath their cover, both of them making more noise than any ninja has right to.  

Deep, deep, deeper. The yellow glow of headlights vanishes behind the thick guard of tree trunks.  

“Raph,” he says, breath hitching.  “Raph, I gotta...  I-I gottaaaaah—!”

“Hold on,” he says. His tread is hurried but even, each heavy footfall kicking up thick , damp blooms of petrichor.  “Hold on, a little further...”

They emerge in a small clearing thickly carpeted in pine needles.  If it weren’t for the roar of blood in Donnie’s ears all would be silent, silent.

Raph’s grip on his shell is suddenly cloying.  He twists out beneath it, shoulders hunched and arms up in a defensive block.  

“Donnie.”  Raph’s command voice is a hollow mockery of Leo’s, bigger but lacking the iron core that keeps it from ringing.  “Donnie, we need you to hold it together.”

Donnie shakes his head, teeth gritted.  The Earth is a rock hurtling thirty kilometers per second through space and the endless black of the night above threatens to swallow him whole and how can he do this? How can any of them—

“Not forever.  Just for now.  Just until Leo’s up and fighting again.”

He’s...” It’s so hard to breathe. “Raph, he’s not—”

He is,” Raph interrupts.  “We all are.”

“Raph...”

“Hit me,” he says, and that’s an order Donatello can gladly obey.

It’s an ugly fight. No weapons, no finesse.  Leo would...  But Leo’s not, is he?    Leo’s not, and that makes Donnie eldest, makes him—

“I can’t!” he gasps.  “Raph, Raph, I-I-I can’t I can’t!”

“You can,” Raph growls.  I’ll help you.”

Donnie roundhouse kicks him across the face.  Harder than he meant to.  The jolt vibrates all the way up his spine, down the curve of his shell.  The sound of Raph’s teeth snapping together rings out like a shot in the little clearing.  

“Fuck!” he grunts, spitting thickly onto the dense forest floor.  Donnie can smell the blood from here.  “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

By the time they finish, he can’t feel anything but the burn of cool night air ballooning his heaving lungs. One ear is ringing and his bad shoulder clicks faintly every time he moves it, but when they step back into the glow of the headlights it’s clear that Raphael got the worse end of things.

Casey is sitting on the front bumper, hunched guiltily over a cigarette.  His eyes go round at the sight of Raph’s bruised and rapidly-swelling jaw, the still-oozing bite mark sunk deep into one shoulder.

“Jesus!” he chokes, nearly swallowing the half-smoked butt. “Did you guys run into a bear or something?”

“Or something,” Donnie echoes.  Something deep, deep inside of him, some instinct as old and territorial as the dinosaurs, feels sated.  Feels calm. The world firmer beneath his feet, his place within it rightly won.

Mikey pokes his head out of the back of the van, mouth open around the start of a question.  The breeze shifts, his nostrils flare around the fresh copper of blood, and with a quick glance at Donnie, then Raph, then Donnie again, he closes his mouth, nods, and slips back inside.

The front passenger door creaks open.  “Why are we stopped?” April asks with a yawn, scrubbing blearily at her face.  If anything, she looks more exhausted after her all-too-brief nap.  “What’s going on?”

Raph sidles up beside him, a wall of flesh between him and the trees.  “It’s nothing,” he says.  Nudges him, then, hard with one elbow, the way he does when Leo pulls him up short. “Right, boss?”

Donnie looks up, letting the word roll around in his head like a marble, adjusting to feel of it, the weight.  The wind has parted the clouds just enough for him to glimpse a sliver of constellation-studded sky beyond, the arched head of the Nemean lion staring back in distant, glittering approval.

Shini waited, leaning on her knees. Her eyes stung, and she very much did not appreciate the sudden awakening, cute as it had been.

Karai reappeared a short time later, though now in human form. Her back was to Shini, the white cotton of her night shirt catching in the slant of light from the window. Shini admired the way Karai’s body looked, knowing the power that lay in her lithe form.

However, Shini noted unhappily, Karai was still underweight. The thinness still clinging to her, a week after she’d arrived on Shini’s doorstep.

“Are you done yet?” Shini asked, only a tint of irritability in her voice.

“…yes,” Karai replied, finally turning to face Shini again. Her eyes were no longer green and slit, instead returned to gold-brown. All traces of her new changes erased, carefully concealed once more.

Shini quietly mourned that, since she’d only caught a few glimpses of Karai’s new form.

Karai slid back into bed without a word, turning away from Shini and facing the wall. Shini stayed sitting up a moment longer, then lay back down as well.

   When Shini had opened her door, expecting an enemy or a deliveryman, she’d nearly lost grip on her hidden knife, seeing Karai on her doorstep.

Dark circles under her eyes, and gauntness that spoke of painful hardships, Karai stood in the hallway of Shini’s apartment complex. Her hair was grown out from its careful grooming, and a wild look filled her eyes. She’d looked hunted, and very much haunted.

Shini had pulled Karai in immediately, shutting the door and locking it against whatever had driven her indomitable friend to her home.

   Karai told her of the upheaval in America, of the things she’d discovered and struggled with.

She wanted to have her revenge, and to dive right back into the fight to get it.

Shini had done a once over of her tired, bedraggled friend, and replied quite simply, “Nope.”

Karai was getting some down time, whether she wanted it or not.

Shini’s dear friend had never learned how to do that, it seemed. Relaxing and enjoying the frivolous things in life. The lives they led were too short to not, and they simply had too many wonderful luxurious things to experience before a knife found their backs.

Shini had taken Karai’s small weaponry arsenal, placing it out of sight with her own stored weapons. They wouldn’t need them for a while yet, not until Shini had chased the paleness from Karai’s complexion.

Karai had disagreed, saying that they needed to move fast. Her ‘father’ wouldn’t wait for her to gain strength again; they needed to strike while the iron was still hot.

Shini had taken Karai’s cheeks into her hands, and told her friend she was courting death with an attitude like that.

Shini was not like Karai, with her steel strong beliefs and ever true honor. Shini had loyalties yes, but they lay with those who paid her well, and the select few she cared for. The concept of running head first into war was alien to her, especially with her own life at stake.

Shini would fight for Karai, yes, but only after the young heir regained her strength.

It took prodding and teasing, and Shini being a general nuisance until Karai agreed to take some time off.

Shini dragged Karai out of her apartment, two days after she’d arrived, into the light of day.

While the sun was up, they would be ordinary young women. Night time was for ninjas and mercenaries; daylight was for two friends seeing the sights.

And what a sight Karai was, with her new and curious changes.

She hid them from Shini, whenever they raised their scaly heads. Literally, seeing as Karai’s hands would shift between fingers and mouths if she wanted them to.

Shini watched Karai through their day trips, covert and appreciative of her friend. Karai’s changes popped up in moments here and there, split seconds where she became more than human.

Her skin would shimmer, scales surfacing as her attention drifted too far from herself. Fangs dropping down as they readied for a dinner out, a split tongue darting out almost too quick to see as she tasted the scent of their food.

Shini’s favorite was the eyes, the deadly green that overtook Karai’s sclera whenever she became emotional.

Karai’s feelings of betrayal ran deep, showing starkly whenever they broached the subject. The tensing of her shoulders, the way the air around her became choking with fury. Her eyes becoming slit and reptilian the more she talked. Deadly, hateful, beautiful.

Karai would catch herself though, whenever she slipped up, and hide her mutations once again.

Shini was disappointed each time, her curiosity desiring she find out more, see deeper into the sudden newness Karai had.

She stayed herself though, seeing how uncomfortable the forced changes made Karai. After all, they had wrought havoc in her life, and very nearly cost Karai her mind and soul.

Shini kept her curiosities mum, and said nothing about Karai’s attempts to hide herself.

   They talked, they planned. Karai’s clan, the infamous Foot, was still active in Japan. Their home territory still thrived with clan activity, separated from their sister base in America. They discussed meeting with the clan leaders, ones that ranked just below the Shredder, to speak about the insanity that had clearly gripped the man.

From what Karai had told Shini, there was much to be done, much to get payback for.

Shini had never liked the Shredder. Respected, yes, feared, yes, but liked? Not even the slightest. For Karai, and for the sake of her own continued life, Shini had always been courteous and polite with the clan head.

Now though? She could not wait to slide a blade through his throat.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom and revenge talk though. They spent many hours simply being.

Television was a marvelous thing; it drained so many useless hours away so easily. Better yet were the games you could play on it, hours of easy fun all for the taking.

Karai wasn’t much interested in the latter, but movies were more than welcome.

Between trips wandering Shini’s chosen city- for the time being, she was always moving due to her jobs- she and Karai spent time in Shini’s apartment. Shini did it mostly because she could see Karai’s gauntness still, the dark circles remaining under her senpai’s eyes. Karai had gone through so much, and so alone at that, and Shini’s small heart ached for her.

Shini cared for so few, but Karai had always been an exception. She likely always would be.

Shini coaxed color back into Karai’s cheeks, and tempted her friend with delicacies ordered from restaurants around the city. It was slow going, but Karai began to regain her usual vigor.

Maybe a bit faster than she should have, but Shini supposed that was due to the mutations.

Karai was still Karai, but she was also… more.

When Karai thought Shini wasn’t looking, she practiced using that added ‘more’.

Shini knew she was doing it, and after forcing herself to curb her curiosity for days, she finally ‘accidentally’ walked in on Karai’s practice.

Her senpai’s hands were gone, and Karai was muttering under her breath at the twin snakes looping from her arms.

Shini let her footfalls create noise, and raised one immaculate eyebrow at Karai as she spun.

“O-oh, Shini, I didn’t- I didn’t see you there,” Karai said, her words faltering unusually. Shini resisted curling her lips into a coy smile.

Really, her friend was too cute when she got flustered. And over something so silly too.

“It’s my home,” Shini replied, allowing just the hint of a smirk in her words. “I’m likely to be in it.”

Karai’s cheeks flushed- how adorable- and she seemed to try and hide her long snake arms behind her back. “I thought you’d be out by now. You usually go grocery shopping.”

“I thought we’d order in tonight,” Shini replied, suppressing a giggle as Karai’s snakes refused to stay hidden.

Karai noticed where Shini’s eyes had drifted, and the flush crept to her ears. “I’m practicing with them, f-for combat.”

Her left snake arm opened its jaws, letting out a long goofy yawn without even a hint of fang. The other stuck out its tongue, going “phtphtphtpht" at Shini.

Shini couldn’t supress her giggling any longer.

"Oh yes. You'll strike fear into the hearts of our enemies," Shini laughed, putting a hand over her mouth to at least pretend some reluctance in her amusement.

Shini said "our enemies" and not "your enemies", because Karai’s enemies are her's as well. They decided that long ago.

Shini crossed the floor, not a hint of disgust or fear as she approached the twin appendages. She knew, without Karai having said so, that that is what her friend had been waiting for. For the rejection and scorn of her new self.

Shini had none, only curiosity and good natured amusement.

She reached out fearlessly and trusting, to pet the adorable little heads of Karai’s snakes. They slithered through the air, smooth scales brushing her palms as they bumped their heads against her hands.

One of them stuck out its tongue, quickly licking her skin. Shini giggled again.

Karai’s flush became even more pronounced, muttering under her breath, “No you stupid little- you're supposed to be deadly and terrifying, come on..."

“They’re adorable,” Shini said truthfully, darting a glance up at Karai. “Just like you.”

Karai’s expression screwed up, offense at being called anything other than fierce or terrifying. The redness of her ears however, gave away her embarrassment.

Shini only laughed, and scratched the chins of Karai’s snake hands.

   Shini wanted Karai to be comfortable. She wanted her to feel safe enough that she could show her changes. Shini’s own fascination with them might have played in a factor of that, but more than anything, she wanted Karai to feel okay again.

Life had never been kind to them, regardless of how well they’d thrived in their respective situations. Shini didn’t want to see Karai restrain and hide herself like that, not when it was just the two of them.

As subtly as she could, Shini attempted to persuade Karai into thinking similarly.

It worked, slowly but surely, and Shini got to see more of the person Karai had become.

   They didn’t always remain at home, or keep to the daylight hours for trips into town. Sometimes, when the night was simply too tempting to resist, they went out.

Dressed in the proper armor, and a true warrior’s paint, they would hit one club after another.

Filled with thrashing and dancing bodies, lights and smoke clouding the air, Shini and Karai would dance. Martial arts was one thing, but there was always a rigor to fighting that dancing didn’t have. Dancing was light, dancing was fun. There wasn’t need for seriousness in a club, and Shini lavished in that.

More accurately, she lavished in Karai’s presence, and the graceful way she moved across the floor.

During one of these trips, while Shini was retrieving a couple drinks for them, some men approached her.

Shini was accustomed to this. Really, a pretty woman couldn’t go anywhere without being harassed. The lecherous grins the two men gave her told everything, and how their eyes wandered down her shirt only reinforced her suspicions.

Honestly. No class.

Shini was holding two full glasses, but she figured she could take care of the men without spilling any. Though, it turned out she didn’t need to.

“Excuse me sirs, but she’s with me,” Karai said coldly, sliding between Shini and the men.

The one who had approached Shini first raised an eyebrow. “Is she? Then we’ve got not one, but two beautiful ladies to entertain tonight. What do you say, feel like getting a couple drinks with us?”

He reached out to grab Karai’s shoulder, but winced away as Karai’s unforgiving grip circled his wrist.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Karai said, her tone becoming low and dangerous.

Shini smirked, smoothly going to stand beside Karai as she released the man. “Really, you should never touch a woman without her permission. And,” Her own tone fell, becoming just as dangerous as Karai’s. “We did not give you permission.”

The two men flushed angrily- perhaps also from one too many drinks- and looked ready to start a fuss over their dismissal.

However, as Karai’s demeanor turned sharp and inhuman- her fangs popping out and eyes shifting to deadly green- the men paled, and left faster than they’d appeared.

Shini smiled, handing Karai her drink and fluttering her eyelashes dramatically. “My hero.”

“You could have killed them with just your heel,” Karai said, taking the drink. “You weren’t in any danger.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate my brave senpai coming to my rescue,” Shini said silkily.

“You just like a good show,” Karai replied, no annoyance at that fact.

“Hm, true enough… and you gave quite a good one,” Shini grinned.

They finished their drinks, and Shini pulled Karai onto the dancefloor once again. No one else approached them that evening, and Shini quietly hoped it was because they seemed too exclusive to consider.

   “I’m taller than you.”

Shini finished dropping their bags onto the kitchen counter, careful of the groceries inside, and turned to look at Karai. They’d just finished shopping for the week’s dinner plan, and it seemed Karai’s wandering attention had turned to something besides food shopping.

Karai’s legs were missing, turned into a long and winding tail. While her upper body remained mostly human- though Shini could see scales shimmering there- Karai’s lower body had become like something of a naga.

And, she was indeed taller than Shini like this.

“You’re cheating,” Shini said, looking at the way Karai was balancing herself on the long limb. “It’s like standing on your tiptoes. It doesn’t count.”

“I think it does,” Karai grinned cheekily, smoothly sliding across the floor. She loomed over Shini, a hint of her fangs showing in her smile. “It only took six years, but I’m finally taller than you.”

“Cheating,” Shini huffed, crossing her arms and turning away. “I won’t recognize this.”

Then she shrieked, Karai’s arms covering her eyes and her friend latching onto Shini’s head.

“I taller than you, just admit it!”

“Karai- you’re messing up my hair, I just had this done!”

“Admit it!”

“Never!”

They ended up collapsing into giggles, though Shini stood by her refusal to recognize Karai’s added height.

   “Karai… please, it’s too late for this,” Shini mumbled, mostly into her pillow. “Karai.”

“Mmm,” Karai mumbled back.

Shini sighed, and sat up in bed. She couldn’t sleep while someone was still awake, too many self-preservation instincts to physically allow herself. Karai was not asleep, and there for, neither was Shini.

Shini pushed her sleep mussed hair out of the way, and looked at her friend.

Karai was hunched over her knees, tense and radiating frustration. Shini saw along her bare arms, a glimmer of scales appear and disappear. Then once again, as Karai’s expression twisted in concentration.

“Karai?” Shini questioned, watching her friend fight off her changes.

“I’m sorry, couldn’t sleep,” Karai said quietly. She seemed to shudder, another wave of scales appearing and disappearing on her skin.

Shini stared at her friend, observing the silent battle happening. It looked like Karai was restraining herself, and struggling to.

That wouldn’t do. Neither of them would get any sleep like this.

Shini rubbed her eyes blearily, feeling a flash of irritation for her stubborn friend. "Karai, please. For goodness sake, just turn into a snake already and go to sleep."

"I'm fine like this," Karai replied, again quietly.

"No, you're cranky like this. I’m cranky like this. Come on now, change already. My bed is plenty big enough."

No answer, Karai remaining silent in the dark.

"Karaaaaii-"

"Fine. I'll do it."

Finally.

"Thank you," Shini mumbled gratefully, flopping backwards onto her pillow again and closing her eyes.

Shini heard it, the soft pops and cracks, and something like rustling fabric- and then the bed dipped in a different manner, like something much bigger had entered it.

Shini breathed a sigh of relief, because now she could finally get a full night’s rest. She didn’t mind sharing a bed with Karai- and would never have sentenced her senpai to sleeping on the couch in her one bedroom apartment- but not getting a good rest severely hindered her graciousness.

Shini started to drift again, hazy sleep retaking her, but-

Something tickled Shini’s ear, and she laughed, swatting blindly at the sensation. She opened her eyes again, and turned onto her side.

She was met with the sight of an enormous white and purple serpent; luminous green eyes bright even in the dark.

Karai’s long tongue slithered out again, and tickled Shini’s nose.

Shini giggled, putting a hand on Karai’s snout. "Noooo- this is not what I meant, I meant sleeping, senpai. We are meant to be sleeping..."

Karai pushed against Shini’s hand, so it slid up and onto the crown of her head.

Shini left it there, marveling at the cool and supple feeling of her dear friend's scales. Shini could feel that if she slid her hand the wrong way, it could perhaps hurt her. But like this, the texture is smooth and welcoming; inhuman and strange, but slowly becoming familiar.

Incredible.

"You're very beautiful like this," Shini said softly, tracing the sheen of Karai’s scales in the slant of light from her window.

"Really?" Karai asked just as softly, in a different voice from her usual self. She’d never spoken to Shini in this form before; it was like listening to silk.

"Yes, really," Shini replied truthfully.

There’s a long pause, filled with a tension Shini is almost afraid to name. Tangible and new, yet also familiar. Just like Karai.

Then, on impulse, Shini leaned forwards, and pressed a gentle kiss to the tip of Karai’s nose.

Karai’s mouth dropped open, near comical shock showing on her scaly features and wide green eyes staring at Shini.

Shini patted Karai’s cheek. "There. All tucked in. Go to sleep now, Karai. We have much to do tomorrow."

And then she turned over, facing the wall, as though the kiss had never happened.

Shini’s face burned, feeling a sudden amount of embarrassment and self-incrimination for acting on her impulse. She just couldn’t hold back anymore, not with her friend looking at her like that, gentle and trusting…

Shini hoped that Karai wouldn’t take offense to the gesture.

A cool grip slid around her legs, and Shini’s fears abated. Something pushed against her back, Karai’s reptilian cool body slid close to Shini’s.

In the dark, Shini’s redness turned rosy, and she smiled happily to herself. Sometimes, a daring chance was worth the risk.

By the time morning rolled around, Karai had all but wrapped Shini head to toe in her long limbs, and Shini was in bliss.

   After that, Karai’s ability to shift and change got faster, and she stopped hiding it.

While Shini appreciated that gift of trust, she less appreciated the fact that Karai would distract her, and use her long snake arms to steal bites of dinner. Or, stretch out over the whole couch in her full mutant form, and leave no space for Shini.

Usually, Shini fought back against those tactics by teasing Karai till she was red, and simply choosing to sit on top of Karai until she moved.

And when they finally went to meet the Foot’s leaders, glinting weapons and black armor in place, Karai was simply gorgeous.

Watching her senpai face her opponents- proving her strength and resilience as the next leader- Shini was reminded of when they’d first met.

Young and still training, but not without their already emerging craftiness, they’d met because their masters had. An agreement to share information, as well as a demonstration of their pupils’ strength.

When Shini had first seen Karai fight- utterly demolishing foes twice her size- she’d looked like a storm in progress. Temperamental and quick to change direction, filled with unseen dangers until it was too late.

Shini sometimes thought that was moment when she’d fallen in love.

Now, years later and on the cusp of becoming a clan head, Karai moved similarly as much- but also more.

With her new form, and her finesse in it getting better each day, Karai twisted and whirled through her fights. Her body weaving between blades and strikes like nothing, and shifting between her two forms almost as quick.

Shini watched, fascinated and more than a bit awed, as Karai danced between human and monster without hindrance.

Fanged and green eyed- then grinning with a human’s knife like smile, and golden eyed again. Silver armor and black clothes, then white and lavender scales - Karai was every bit the kunoichi Shini remembered from when they’d said goodbye, and had proved she’d only grown stronger since then.

As Karai defeated her last opponent, sheathing her lone sword and not bothering to conceal her beautiful, deadly green eyes- Shini’s heart swelled, and she fell in love all over again.

She bowed happily, same time as the highest ranked members of the Foot clan did, and pledged allegiance to the new clan head.

   When time came for them to leave, packing up what possession they would need from Shini’s apartment, Shini wasn’t at all sorry to go.

They would leave majority of her things, since she could always buy more. And Karai had promised ample room for Shini in the Foot clan’s headquarters, so Shini was more than happy to abandon her apartment.

As they packed away the last of their equipment, weapons concealed carefully in suitcases, Shini paused, standing at the same table as Karai, with both their hands touching.

Shini wasn’t sure who moved first, but they leaned forwards, and kissed.

It was slow and sweet, filled with the gentle care their chosen life paths never allowed. In that moment, they could be as soft and kind as they pleased.

It wasn’t the first time, and Shini knew that it wouldn’t be the last. They could trust in that, at least, even if what lay ahead of them was uncertain.

Drawing away reluctantly, Shini stared at Karai. Her dear friend, and now partner, restored to how she should be. Strong, conniving, beautiful in every way; Shini couldn’t have loved her more.

Then they left, closing the door behind them and locking it.

They left, travelling to America with weapons in hand, set on reclaiming an empire.

In secret, when no one was looking, their weapons would be placed aside, and instead they’d link hands.

Shini savored every second of it, and indulged in the newness they’d both become whenever she could.

She had always loved Karai, but now it was different, because Karai loved her back the way she wanted.

   When Karai had shown up on Shini’s doorstep, dark circles under her eyes and desperation in every word- saying that she had to kill her 'father', to avenge herself and her mother, that she needed help from the one person she could truly trust-

Shini had said "Of course." without a second thought.