Ok so, in the wake of fINALLY getting chapter 1 of Thirty Percent Good put out there, I was filled with euphoria. I haven't hit the PUBLISH button in forever. I woke up this morning and read some horror and then I was bored so I watched TMNT. I'm in the process of like my second or third rewatch of the 2012 series. And lemme tell you that Karai is my queen and that one scene in Season 2 where she hugs Splinter brought tears to my eyes. So here is a collection of one-shots and drabbles with Karai, home where she is supposed to be, instead of lost and mutated and confused or mind-controlled out there in the scary bad world.

Expect some fluff. This is me patching together my feelings. Again. Also, I haven't decided if there's going to be any chemistry between Leo and Karai, I'm still conflicted about that whole thing because? She's his father's daughter? And he's his father's son? Is that biological? Or does he just count as adopted? Stepsister? But Leorai is just so cute? I don't know. We'll see.

I keep my eyes wide open,

Bless this ground, unbroken.

I'm about to make my way,

Heaven help me keep my faith

And my eyes wide open.

-Eyes Wide Open (Sabrina Carpenter)

It had been two months and the boys were still getting used to having a girl around the lair - a girl other than April.

Karai, even with all her stealth, left traces of herself all around the place. A shimmery scarf that stuck to Donnie's callused fingers when he picked it up to fold it. Hotel-sized bottles of shampoo in the bathroom, as though she hadn't quite decided yet if she wanted to stay. She sometimes came around and stacked up stray comic books, nudged beanbag chairs back into shape, swept floors and rewound VCR tapes. A tidy woman's small touches.

She was quiet, she stayed out of the way, as if making up for the fifteen years she had spent causing harm in the name of justice and Oroku Saki. April hovered around her at times, as if wanting to put an easy arm around the other girl's shoulders, draw her giggling away into a bedroom to talk about boys and celebrities and whatever else girls talk about, but Karai still seemed like someone unapproachable. Something rough-edged and cold from years of instability and hostility. Leo followed at a distance like he was collecting information, like something was always on the tip of his tongue. Raphael sparred with her in training but she got the sense that he was holding back. What was the threshold for full-on attacking a new family member? Donnie offered her a new phone that he had made, with all of their contact information put in precisely and professionally. No stickers on the contact pictures, no nicknames in the name fields. They were walking on eggshells around her, it was pretty clear.

Then there was Mikey, talking, talking, trying to get Karai to open up. "I always wanted a sister", he told her, "and now I have you AND April!" That day he had pulled Donnie's laptop away from him - Don had been working for too long, anyway - and pulled up a bunch of online shopping websites. "You need something that doesn't scream 'emo kid'", he told Karai. "Something normal, so you'll feel normal too."

She had laughed. "I live with four turtles and my father is a rat. I'd hardly consider that 'normal'."

"You know what I mean. Our kinda normal. With us. So you're not being dark and shadowy all the time when you're home. You know, be you. Be bright."

Nobody had ever told her to be bright before. To be her. Father - not father, she reminded herself, Shredder - had always told her what to be. Be stronger. Be more responsible. Be more ruthless. Such a small statement from Michelangelo brought tears to her eyes but she hid them behind a laugh.

"Okay, whatever that means. And I'm not that emo."

"Yes you are. But you do it classy." An innocent smile, freckles bunching up under his sparkling eyes, and then Mikey was chattering away again, hitting 'place order' on the computer and typing in the address of an abandoned building downtown for delivery, and she had a cartload of casual t-shirts and distressed jeans and soft hoodies, and they felt like redemption. Somehow dressing like a normal girl instead of a subtle killer made her feel like she could be this, be the sister that Mikey was looking for and the daughter that Splinter had missed for so long. New clothes like a new chance.

She shed the metal half-mask that had made her whole face sweat and traded it in for a soft bandanna-type mask, forest green, that matched her brothers' in cut and mirrored Raph's skin tone. On patrol with them, on the rooftops, the wind fluttered those tails behind her like the stabilizing ribbons of a kite, and she felt free as one. New clothes, something small, but they made her new too. A redressing, a remaking. It was a softening of sorts, a settling into this new family. It was Karai, being bright.