This follows Adventures in Turtle Sitting/Good Genes storyline. They don't belong to me. If they did, I wouldn't be worrying about fixing my sink. 'Cause I'd make Donny do it. Please read and review. (Edited for format 3/1/08)
Drip.
The sound of falling water, so normal, so constant, did not dissuade him from his work. He twirled his pencil through his fingers, brow furrowed in thought, then quickly scratched some figures out onto his pad.
Drip.
A quick erasure, then a frenzied scrawl as the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place in his mind.
Drip...Drip...SPASH!
Donatello froze in shock as a cascade of water splashed over his shoulders and soaked his notebooks, smearing the writing and wrinkling the pages. A cold trickle ran down his neck, prompting a shiver, and he turned with a look of complete disbelief to stare at his brother. Michelangelo was standing behind him, wide-eyed, with a half-empty bucket of stagnant water hanging loosely in his hand. Donatello's voice emerged in a low growl. "Mike..."
"Bro, I am so sorry." Michelangelo hurriedly placed the bucket on the floor and held his hands out in a gesture of supplication. "I tripped on your power cords, dude, I so did not mean to do that."
Donny took a deep, steeling breath and forced his fists to unclench. The urge to tackle Mike and grind his face into the concrete was strong, but he willed his even temper to prevail. With gritted teeth. "What are you doing, anyway?"
Mike made a horrid face, screwing up his nose and sticking his tongue out. "Master Splinter caught me trying to booby trap Raph's kick-bag, so he's making me empty the drip buckets." With a disgusted sigh he turned the bucket over, spilling the remaining water across the floor, and plopped to a seat on it. "Living in a sewer blows chunks, Don." Mike craned his neck to peer around Donatello's shoulder. "What are you up to in here?"
"Nothing," Don muttered, gathering the soaked papers into a ball and tossing them toward the wastebasket. "Just working some things through."
"With pencil and paper?" Mike snorted. "A high-tech guy like you? I'd have never thunk it."
"Pencils can start revolutions, Mike." Donatello sighed and rubbed his forehead. The stress of his current work had spawned a grinding headache in his temples, and he could feel the rise of his blood pressure pounding through his veins. It was a problem that had plagued him for long months now, and he seemed no nearer to finding answers than when he began. The specter of the monster he had become after his infection with Bishop's mutagen haunted him. He had to know, had to find what other secrets were lurking inside of him.
"What the heck does that mean?" Mike's eyes were scanning the room, and Donny could tell that he was not really interested in the answer to his own question.
"You should read up on some French history, Mike. Some of history's most important minds wrote their most influential work while they sat in coffee houses in Paris. Their pencils were the weapons of the revolution." Donny murmured, tapping his fingers on a fresh sheet of blank paper.
Mike gestured around him, at the dark concrete walls. "Dude, does this look like a coffee house to you? And unless the history of the French Revolution comes in comic book form, I don't see it making my reading list any time soon." Donny gusted another deep sigh, one that his brother recognized as his last warning. Mike did not need a hint to hop to his feet and back slowly from the room, hands held up in submission. "I'll just, eh, let you get back to it." He turned on his heel and ran, his rapid footsteps fading to silence as he fled.
Donatello's lab was removed from the main lair by a long tunnel that jagged left and jogged right, far from the bustle of the dojo and the common area. When he realized how quiet it was in that dark cove, Donny immediately commandeered it not only as his lab but also as his living quarters. As much as he loved and respected his brothers, he very much needed a separate space, a place to retreat from the others. His need for solitude didn't seem to sink in sometimes, as it seemed that his brothers were constantly at his door, wanting this, that, or the other thing. Wanting him to repair the things that they had broken, not caring what their carelessness might be dragging him away from. For all their teasing about him being the brains of the family, they certainly made copious use of his knowledge, not to mention heaping abundant abuse on his good nature. And all this usually without a thank you.
It was not that he did not love his brothers. He did, fiercely, and with all his being, and he knew that they felt the same about him. He knew that they were grateful for his help, without them having to say it aloud. But being a family, he thought, sometimes means that your temper eclipses your love.
The more he thought about it, the more annoyed Don became. Despite his distance from the common areas of the lair, he could hear Raphael and Mike arguing, their voices grating and jarring at his nerves. A shriek from Mike, "Ow, my spleen!" Donatello threw down his pencil with a bark of frustration. He snatched up his trench coat and a baseball hat, and stormed out toward the main lair.
Raphael had Mike by the arm, pinning him against the stone floor and twisting the shoulder back. Michelangelo was bucking and kicking, trying to free himself, all the while pouring abuse on his brother's head. Raphael caught Don's eye and his brows shot up at the look he got in return. He released Mike, giving a rough shove that sent the younger turtle sprawling. "What's your problem?" Raphael snapped at Don.
Donatello replied with a rude gesture, which drew a curse from Raphael. The irascible turtle moved to follow Don, but was stopped by a word from their oldest brother, who had been quietly watching his brothers' brawl. Silently, the three watched their quiet family member disappear up the ladder toward the street.
As Don walked, he felt the anger and tension dissipating. There was nothing like a midnight walk, he thought, to clear your head. The night air was cold, cold enough to freeze his breath, and he pulled his coat tighter around him to ward off the chill. A chill of a different kind ran down his back, however, as the beam of a spotlight swept up the alley toward him. A look to the left, and one to the right, revealed no escape, and Donny cursed himself for choosing a route with no manholes.
A quick survey of the alley revealed a half-open door, with a dim light shining far within. With no other option apparent, Don ducked into the door just as a police cruiser turned down the alley and stopped. The slam of two car doors and a babble of voices told him that he would be stuck here for a time, so with an out-blown breath of disgust, Don shut the door as quietly as he could and turned the lock, then turned his attention to his surroundings.
As he did, he had to smile at the irony of it. He was in a church, a sanctuary. He was hiding in a church, of all places, the historical place of asylum for the hunted and the disenfranchised. The dim light came from a table of flickering prayer candles, their wavering flames casting shadows over the crucifix above the altar. The smell of incense lingered on the air, and again Donny smiled. Between the candles and the incense and the cold of the stone floor, this place could practically be the lair.
"Who's there, please?" The voice stopped Don in his tracks, and he silently cursed himself for his inattention. Slowly, he turned toward the voice, tucking his chin into the collar of his jacket to hide his face, and jamming his hands into his pockets.
A young woman stood in the aisle, head cocked in a listening pose. A fringe of mousy brown hair peeked out from under a headscarf, and she wore the plain gray garb of a young nun. She had a plain, unremarkable face, milky-pale with a spatter of freckles splashed across the bridge of the nose, and a wide, bow-shaped mouth. Her eyes were cornflower blue, with a circle of darker hue ringing the iris. Donny remained still, his mind racing as he considered the options. But as his mind fought over whether to flee or to hide, she looked right at him. Or rather, she looked right through him. "Hello?" she called again. And the realization washed over him like a rogue wave. She was blind.
Donny's shoulders sagged with relief and his hand left his bo. He hadn't even realized that he had grasped it, so ingrained was the instinct. After a moment's hesitation, he ventured quietly, "I'm here."
She smiled and inclined her head to the side. Her hand sought her wrist and her fingers brushed the open face of her watch. "It's awfully late to be visiting our little chapel, isn't it?"
"I'd call it early, personally," Donny replied. The realization that his secret was safe drained the tension from his body and he slid to a seat in one of the burnished wood pews. "And I might say the same to you." His wry comment was rewarded with a smile, and she moved carefully to sit in the same pew. "Aren't you afraid, being here all alone at this hour?"
"Well, generally the types who like to cause trouble avoid churches for some reason. I don't think they like to tempt fate." Another smile crinkled her nose. "Lightning bolts, you know." A laugh escaped Don, and her smile widened further. "I'm May."
"Donny. Nice to meet you, May." May startled Don by extending her hand in his direction, which posed a conundrum for him. After a moment's hesitation, he folded her hand within both of his, hoping against hope that the feeling of his three fingers against her five wouldn't frighten her overmuch. Her sightless eyes widened a bit, then her brow furrowed, but she did not pull away.
"So what brings you here, Donny?" May's voice was inquisitive, but Don instinctively knew that while she had noticed the difference of his hands, she wasn't overly curious about it, and she certainly wasn't going to ask. The realization gave him a warm flush, and he cleared his throat with a hint of embarrassment.
"Just needed to get away. I live with my three brothers, and sometimes they get to be a bit much. And this seemed as good a place as any, I guess," he replied honestly, omitting his real reason for needing to get off the street. "It was either thump one or two of them, or find someplace quiet where they won't follow me."
"Well, there are few better places in the city to get away from it all than here." May shifted in the pew, her skirt whispering at her movement. "When you spend your whole day living through your ears, coming someplace silent is so soothing. And you do meet the most interesting people in the middle of the night." She smiled, an expression that Donatello had quickly realized came easily to her. "Besides, I've lived here for years, and have never had a problem."
"You live here?" Surprise marked Don's question. "By yourself?"
"I grew up in the Catholic orphanage here in the parish. When I joined the convent, I asked to be assigned here." She shrugged. "I don't know. I've just always felt safe here. Out in the city there is so much noise, so many people, that it can be hard for me. But here," she gestured toward the front of the church, "I know every stone of this place. I can almost see it."
That was a feeling to which Don could relate. "The city can be a scary place," he said quietly. "Especially when you're different."
She nodded. "But here, at night, when it is just me, I don't have to worry about anything. I know that I am safe."
"You have to admit, though, you're sitting here with a strange man, whom you've never met. It's the middle of the night, and there is no one here to help you. How can you not be frightened?" As soon as the words left his mouth, Donatello regretted them, fearing that they would frighten May into retreat.
Instead, she pursed her lips in a quizzical expression. "I choose not to, I suppose. I have faith that I will be watched over." Donatello shook his head slightly with wonder. "There are some places that evil will not go."
"Faith won't keep the boogey-man away," Don said under his breath. "How can you be so sure that this place is safe?"
"Faith doesn't mean knowing with certainty that something is true. It is choosing to believe that it is true, despite any lack of proof." May sighed and turned her face to the front of the church. "Faith is the belief in things unseen. Sometimes you just have to give up on finding proof, and just believe."
"Just believe," mused Donny. "That's not exactly my strong suit. I'm more of a 'show me' sorta guy."
"You might be surprised how liberating it can be to just let go of that, though. To be able to accept something without worrying it to death is a really good feeling." May's voice was earnest, her face calm. "If I spent all my time worrying about why I was born the way I was, I would never accomplish anything. To be able to just throw my hands up and accept it is such a relief."
Donny's brow creased at her words. Sometimes he felt that his entire being was caught up in discovering the secret of his origin, in reasoning out every twist and turn of the DNA that brought him to where he was. The idea of not caring about it was so foreign, yet so intriguing. Oh, the time he could spend on other projects! The energy he could use to build! The ideas he could develop! He felt his excitement bubbling into a laugh, which erupted with a strangled choking noise.
May turned to him, her face questioning. Donny shook his head, though he knew she could not see it, and murmured, "Faith is a funny thing."
The night faded to morning, and Donny was startled to see the dawn creeping across the stone floor. They had talked through the breaking hours, both unheeding and uncaring of the passing of time. As he took leave of his new friend, Donatello could not help but feel that something had begun here, a lesson that he was eager to learn.
Donatello scanned the alley quickly, ensuring that there were no winos or thugs lurking in the shadows. The candlelight flickering in the windows of the chapel beckoned him on, as it had for many nights in the past month. In those moments that life in the lair became too much to bear, it was to this place that he had fled. It was safe, it was quiet, and a friend always waited within.
But this night would be different.
The moment he stepped into the church, he felt it. His instincts dropped him into a crouch, and he snatched his bo from his belt. A quick scan of the church revealed no immediate threat, but he knew it was there. There was evil here.
Then a sound, a scraping and a low chuckle. As Don's eyes swept the aisle toward the altar, his heart seemed to stop. There, in the middle of the floor, lay a single shoe, tipped on its side, its low heel broken and hanging askew. The incongruous sight was enough to goad him to action, and Donatello broke into a run, a growl growing in his chest. As he skidded to a halt at the front of the chapel, a look to the left showed him his foe.
A man was crouching over May, who was curled on her side, knees drawn up toward her chest. At their side lay the collection box, a few dollar bills spilling from it. The man did not look up until he heard the dull 'clonk' of Don's bo against the stone floor. A quick glance to the side revealed a nightmare, and he scrambled sideways away from his victim.
Donatello could see the terror in his eyes. He was used to that look of disbelief, of confusion, and of sudden realization. He saw that look every time he confronted one of these thugs. Normally it did not bother him, but seeing this man staring at him while kneeling over the body of his friend, of the only person who did not look at him as anything other than a person, the only person who had never asked anything of him…it was more than Donatello could stand.
"Jesus," whispered the thug, backing away. Anger grew in Don's chest, a pounding, clawing rage.
"He can't help you now." Donatello's voice was not much more than a whisper, but the threat in it was so clear that the color drained from the man's face. He took a backward step, preparing to turn tail and flee, but Don's bo flashed out like a lightning strike, tripping the man and sending him in a crumpled sprawl to the floor.
"Please, man…" The man's whining plea only heightened Donatello's rage, but as he stepped forward his foot brushed against May's outstretched arm. His distraction served as opportunity for the thug, who with a grin and a flourish snatched a wicked looking buck knife from his boot sheath. A quick thrust.
Donatello parried too late and felt the bite of steel in his shoulder. The blade stabbed deep, nearly to the hilt, and the thug gave a practiced twist, ripping the flesh with a wet, shredding noise. Pain heightened Don's growl to a roar, and with a powerful sweep of his arm he knocked the man away, sending him crashing over the altar where he landed in a tangled heap. Don planted his bo and launched himself after his attacker, landing straddled over the man's prone form.
Without a sound, Donatello wrenched the knife from his shoulder, gripping it with ferocious force. The thug's face, though dazed by his tumble, reflected new terror at the sight of this creature, rage roiling off of him, standing over him with a blood-covered knife. Without a word, without a thought, Donatello dropped to a knee, using his body weight and momentum to drive the knife through the thug's throat. He felt the knife rebound off the spinal cord, and then stop as the tip of the blade broke against the stone floor. Hot blood spurted over Don's hands, and he knelt there, silently watching as the man's life ebbed away, hearing the last rattling breaths change to gurgles as blood flooded the lungs.
He stayed there, motionless, for a long moment, his own breath heaving in his chest, the wound in his shoulder burning and pulsing with his heartbeat. But memory prodded him to his feet and he leapt back over the altar to his friend's side.
May's eyes were open, unseeing as ever, but they were bereft of their spark, of their soul, and he knew straightaway that she was gone. One hand was tucked up against her chest, the other stretched out toward the altar as though pleading for aid, for salvation. A rusty handprint of dried blood marred her pale cheek. The blossoms of arterial red blood upon her blouse hid a series of deep knife wounds.
"Oh, Christ," Donny breathed, and it was half an oath, half a prayer. He dropped to his knees at her side, his breath hitching in his chest both from the exertion of the fight and the sight of this woman, his friend, sprawled before him in a pool of thickening blood. He brushed her cheek as he whispered to her, though he knew that she could not hear him. "I should have been here to watch over you…" Then a thought struck him with an almost physical force, driving a moan of anguish from him. "Oh, fuck…fuck, God, please don't let her think it was me! Please, let her know it wasn't me!" He dropped his head to his hands, overcome with the horror that his friend might have believed that he had done this, had willfully hurt her. Killed her.
A gossamer length of broken chain trailed from the fist clenched under her chin, and Donny gently pried her fingers open. His breath caught in a near sob as light glinted off the silver and pearl crucifix she was clutching in her palm. He slipped the cross from her hand and pressed it in his own, closing his eyes against impending tears. With a whisper light touch, he passed his fingers over her eyes, closing them against the world for the last time. He rested his hand against her cheek, his soul filled with mourning that she would never again walk the stone floors of her beloved sanctuary in the dead of night, would never again sit in the magic silence of the dawn, with or without him. Anger and sorrow were battling in him, along with the knowledge that, unlike his other kills, he would never regret taking the life of the man who was crumpled behind him, the man who had stolen his friend.
Donatello took a steeling breath as he approached the lair, willing himself to project the sense of calm, of evenness, that his family took for granted. He would not share this pain, this loss, with them. This cancerous suffering, this slap of reality, it was his own, and he would not dilute it by spreading it around. He would hoard it, would keep it as his secret, and he would learn from it. And he knew that his brothers would not notice the change in him, not because they did not care, but because he was Donny, the steady one, and most of all because he would never show them the truth that he had learned.
The bleeding from his shoulder had slowed, now an oozing trickle that followed the contour of his arm and dripped from his fingertips. He had made no effort to tend the wound. He wanted to feel every stab of pain, wanted to count every drop of blood. The pain was his punishment, his absolution, for not protecting his friend. He wanted a scar, a reminder, so that he would never let her memory slip from him, so that the world would not be left without some physical mark of her life.
He listened at the entrance of the lair, and the silence within told him that his family was sleeping, unaware of his disappearance. A mirthless smile twisted his mouth as he stepped inside. It was only normal that they would not have realized he was gone. He paused to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and his spirit sank still further as he recognized the form of his father, his sensei, seated quietly in the center of the floor, watching. Waiting."It is late." The comment was made without accusation, without curiosity. It was what it was. And yet Donatello knew that his master sensed his heart was heavy. "I was concerned for you."
Donny dropped his head with a mix of shame and pain. The events of the evening were threatening to overwhelm his defenses, to spill out in a rush of words and tears. A heavy gulp, a breath, then, "I'm sorry, sensei. I lost track of time." The lie was hollow in his ears, and he knew that it would not be believed. The crucifix seemed to burn in his palm, but the contours were strangely comforting against his skin.
"You are troubled, my son." A statement, not a question. "And you are bleeding." Donatello spared a glance to his shoulder, but made no move to staunch the blood.
"I'm all right, sensei. I just had a bit of a scuffle, is all." Again, he knew that he would not be believed. Part of him wanted to spill out the story, to rail against the evil in the world, to ask his father why even the safe places were not always safe. But he would not ask. He would tuck this pain away and use it to grow, use it as a reminder that one must always be on guard, and that one must never get too close.
Splinter stared steadily at his son with his ebony eyes. "This world is sometimes an unfair place, my son. Sometimes, no matter what we do, and no matter how we try, evil wins."
A breath caught in Donatello's chest, but he would not rise to the bait. This pain was his. He would not try to ease it by sharing it. Pain shared is pain halved, and he wanted all of it. He would not reduce the memory of his friend by trying to lessen the suffering that her loss had caused him. "Goodnight, sensei." Without looking at Splinter, Donatello dropped his head and walked steadily down the tunnel toward his room, his haven, his safe place that now no longer seemed to be safe at all.
In the years to come, his brothers would never know the story. They all saw the picture torn from the newspaper that Donatello tacked onto the wall next to his bed, the black and white photograph of a plain girl with a multitude of freckles and a bow-shaped mouth. They all took note of the silver and pearl crucifix that hung with the picture. And they all connected the picture and the cross with the jagged scar on his shoulder, the one that he refused to talk about. But whenever they opened their mouths to ask for the story, the look in their brother's eyes was enough to silence them. The look spoke of sorrow, and of guilt, and of a strange knowledge. And the look also said that he would never tell them that story. That story was his alone. And it would stay that way.