Centuries

Just one mistake

Is all it will take

We'll go down in history

~Fall Out Boy~

The water ran over me in near scalding cascades, washing away the taut pull of dried blood. The wound on my head, the gash on my arm, my battered knuckles and the claw mark down my back were screaming in protest against the blessed liquid washing away the grime and dirt clots, staining the floor of the shower in odd swirls of clear and crimson as it whirled down the drain. I don't know if I couldn't see through my tears or if it was the shower spraying me in the face, maybe both, but there was something internally cleansing about it all.

I wasn't a little girl anymore. They had to know that. I've been training with them for the past five years, and while they had almost a lifetime of experience in comparison, I'd been capable of holding my own for a long time now and I had my share of scars to prove it. I just, don't know what happened out there tonight. Or maybe I do, and I just don't want to face it.

I feared there was no denying it anymore. After all, the crippling weight of the truth is what brought me to my knees in the first place. Surely I could find a way to escape it. After all, that's what I should do. My feelings would only put the most important friendship of my life at risk.

"April," Donnie spoke to me through the bathroom door. His voice was fraught with concern and it brought a fresh twist to the knife in my heart. "Please let me take a look at you."

My voice was absent for the lump in my throat, rather than answer him, I rubbed my face and peered down at the steady flow of water slapping the tile beneath me. The sound mimicked the downpour of rain on a rooftop and my thoughts slipped back to the beginning of the night, before it all went sideways.

"It's raining, are you sure you don't want to skip patrol and stay in tonight?" Leo, always the gentleman, offered me an out whenever the weather was bad. Somehow tonight I found it insulting, as if because I was a girl I couldn't handle the conditions. Well screw that.

"I'll be fine Leo, thanks."

"Alright then, we're topside in five."

I should've stayed home. But no, for some reason I felt I had something to prove tonight.

"April! It's Raph, open this door or I'm bustin' it down!" Raphael's tone was gruff and irritated as ever, but I knew he was as worried as Donatello.

"I'm fine!" Yet my voice failed to relay my conviction, because it was a lie, and I knew it. I wasn't fine. Over the years I'd had some close calls, in fact, each one of us had. But tonight was too close. In that fraction of a second it was almost over and I realized he would've never known how I really feel.

"APRIL I will break down this door! One…"

Raphael's impatience could really irritate me sometimes.

Some things never change.

I shifted my weight slightly, only to have my body quickly remind me, with sharp jolts, just how badly some beatings hurt. "Well I'm naked, so, if you really want that image stuck in your head!"

I could hear him growling and cursing under his breath.

"April, please open the door," Donnie pleaded, and although there was a shower curtain and a four panel door between us, I knew too well the look that I would see if I removed those barriers. He didn't have eyebrows, but the ridges covered in purple fabric would be drawn together, bunching in the middle, his liquid brown eyes would be somber and yet they would still shine with little rays of hope, and his sweet mouth would bow in such a way that would tug at the frail strings of my heart.

The water was starting to run cold, and for a second I thought I wanted it anyway, just to feel the filth washing away. But I could never scrub hard enough to remove the stains of this lifetime. They were etched on my soul like the khanji branded on Raphael's arm. Besides, the iciness of it made my wounds sting and my muscles bunch up, only making it all the more difficult to come to terms with what happened and what I had to do because of it.

I reached out a trembling hand and flipped the lever, shutting off the water. But I didn't stand up, instead I drew my knees into my chest and wrapped my arms around me, feeling the steady trickle running down my back. Numbly, I watched the bright red rivulets crash against the water before blending to finish the journey to the drain. I only hoped this wouldn't put our friendship in a similar situation.

"April, I wouldn't usually do this, but if you won't open the door, I'm going to pick the lock." Donnie jiggled the doorknob and I knew he was already at work. I didn't have much time. It would only take him a few seconds.

"Please Donnie, don't." I whimpered, hating my own weakness, despising the knot in my stomach and my current inability to control my body or its emotions. I was still replaying that moment in my head…

"DONNIE!"

Tiger Claw found his opening and he went for it but just before he struck, I threw myself over Donatello shielding him from the razor sharp claws that ripped down my back. My flesh gave way like a hot knife to warm butter and in the next second Donnie rolled over top of me, absorbing the powerful cat's vicious strikes to his carapace.

"I brought you a towel, but you can't cover your back. It's pretty bad April, I need to-" His gentle voice trailed off as he stood over me.

I was a quivering, pathetic mess.

Soft terrycloth brushed my legs, but I kept my face buried against them.

My brain was a jumble of memories, moments that were ingrained in places deep within me, tucked away and protected because they were both treasured and sacred. From the first time he saved me from the Kraang he left a mark somewhere inside me, and bit by bit with every save, in every fight against every foe, he'd whittled and carved his way through me. But until tonight I never questioned what exactly it was that he was chipping away at.

"April."

He was right beside me now, kneeling, uncomfortably I'm sure. My head wouldn't lift, my body wouldn't stop shivering, my heart refused to do any less than sputter and jerk and I realized that the steady liquid dripping down my face wasn't reminiscent of the shower at all. It was me, weeping.

My tears had little to do with the sting of my wounds, or the tender jolts that jarred me with every muscle twitch, but they had everything to do with him. He'd done more than just save me time and again, he'd listened, he cared, he held me when I thought I lost everything, he was there, even when I didn't want him to be. We could fight in one breath and he'd protect me with his next, I could count on him, and I'd come to depend on him…

I felt the towel being tenderly wrapped around the lower half of me before he scooped me up, still in my curled up state, so that my back was upward and my head was draped over his arm. "I'm not trying to uh, make you uncomfortable or anything April, but I've got to take care of you."

And now he was taking care of me. Again.

"I'm sorry Donnie," I heard myself whimper.

He froze mid-step and took an audible breath before we began moving again.

"Please be alright April," Mikey cried.

"That looks bad Donnie."

"I know Leo. Raph open the door to the lab for me? Thanks. Okay, I'll call you guys if I need anything."

I heard the door shut behind him and he held me while opening a cabinet and tugging something fabric out then swinging it over the table before he laid me on it.

"April, lay on your stomach."

Nothing on my body worked. I was incapable of anything more than reliving five years of memories while trembling in place. It was a horrible feeling, fear of facing the truth, knowing everything it would put at stake. Fear of him looking in my eyes and seeing, because right now, I knew I couldn't hide it.

He maneuvered my body, carefully covering all of my private areas until he had me in a position that gave him full access to my back. Quickly he went to work and I managed to turn my head to the side and catch a glimpse of him.

His eyes reminded me of hot chocolate, so warm and comforting. The corner of my mouth quirked upward involuntarily as his pink tongue peeked out the corner of his mouth, the way it always did when he was deeply focused on his work. The amethyst tales of his bandana draped over one shoulder and I wanted to wrap my fingers around it and pull him to me. Something hurt inside me and I knew it was past time. It was five years past time.

"Donnie."

He was threading a needle and seemed to freeze at the sound of my voice. His eyes drifted from the needle to my face and I pushed myself up on the table, wincing against the protest of my beaten flesh, and he wrapped a sheet around me faster than I could be exposed.

"You… you should lay back down April, I'm not done."

My gaze was fixed on my hands and my body hung awkwardly on the edge of the table, a white linen sheet haphazardly twisted around me, but I had to stop being the coward I knew I must look like. Managing to swallow the lump of fresh tears struggling to escape my throat, I bit my lip and summoned all the energy I had left, to do what I should've done years ago. I'd almost waited too long and I sure as hell wasn't going to make that mistake twice.

"I was so scared Donatello. He was right there and you were pinned and-" my voice broke, unable to function for the knot in my throat..

A big green finger pressed gently against my chin, tipping it up so he could look me in the face. I clamped my eyes shut to avoid feeling what his rich brown eyes always conveyed to me.

"April you saved my life tonight."

With his kindness, his sensitive nature, and God help me, his courage and intellect, everything that was Donatello, both simple and yet infinitely complex, had woven its way throughout me, and he'd become as essential to me as my life's blood.

"I can't lose you," I managed to whisper.

I sensed him flinch and his hands flew off me like I'd burned him, "What?"

Tearing my eyes from the cup of my fingers I forced myself to look at him, "Donnie, I can't lose you, and tonight scared me. It was real, there was a half a second where the worst, it was a possibility, and the past five years flashed before my eyes." I licked my split lip trying to wet my mouth, "The worst part was, if it did happen I would've never told you… You'd have never known."

His mask bunched up and his eyes seemed to frown almost matching the arc of his mouth, "I wouldn't have known what April?"

The enormity of the night, the rawness of the truth, and the sheer depth of my emotions filled me, brimming and seeking, desperate for a way out. The only option was for it all to spill over in the form of endless rivers down my cheeks. With timid fingers I reached for the tattered amethyst fabric, feeling how thin and delicate it really was. My eyes swept up his perfectly defined tea green shoulder, along the curve of his plainly inhuman face and it just slipped out.

"I love you Donatello."

A shy smile graced his sweet mouth and his eyes pooled like melted like chocolate, "Really?"

I sniffled, wiping furiously at the annoying rainfall my eyes would not stop producing, "Really."