Note: This 'verse is structured in such a way that makes things a bit confusing when I post on this site, with Interludes bridging the larger, more action-oriented arcs and drabbles sprinkled in between. For reference, this fic begins a few hours after the end of Walking Wounded, and starts the build-up to the confrontation with the Boar.
And off we go!
"Donnie, you've blown me off for more than a month. I'm starting to take it personally."
Donnie groans. The last thing he wants to hear right now is Jenny's voice, pulling him out of the sweet cocoon of his bed. He's managed to wrap himself around someone small and very warm, and all he wants is to go back to sleep as he shamelessly steals a little more body heat from that small, warm someone.
"Donnie. I shouldn't have to hack your computer just make sure you're okay. Wake up!"
With one more groan for good measure, Donnie rolls onto his back and turns his head to his laptop. He blinks wearily at the screen, where Jenny watches him, eyebrows raised.
"What do you want," he says, not quite a question. His voice sounds like it's been dragged through a street full of rocks and broken glass.
"Oh good, you're up." Jenny pushes a hand through her hair. "Seriously, Donnie, I don't know what's going on with you, but this whole ignoring me thing is — holy shit." Her eyes flick over him, then widen as her mouth drops open. She recovers almost immediately, but two spots of color dance high on her cheeks. "Bad timing?"
"What?" he asks, still sleep-fuzzed. When he follows her gaze, he finds April curled into his side, one hand hooked around the leather straps crossing his chest.
Donnie speaks seven languages and still doesn't have a word for the dread that wakes in his gut when his ex-girlfriend sees the love of his life snoring in his arms. Within seconds, he's more awake than he wants to be, and trying to untangle himself from the knot April and his blanket have wound around him. Even asleep, April is no help; when he tries to peel her fingers off his straps, she huffs and curls her fingers tighter, murmuring something he doesn't catch.
There's a muffled explosion of what might be laughter from his laptop, and Donnie glares at Jenny, who looks back innocently. Only the gleam in her eyes gives her away. Donnie knows all too well what that gleam means, and the dread in his gut blossoms into outright fear.
"Atta boy, Donnie," says Jenny, her widest shit-stirring smile splitting open her face.
"Two minutes," he whispers, finally managing to slip out of April's grip. Explaining April in his bed to Jenny will be just one more indignity in a life full to brimming with them. "Two minutes, and I'll call you back from the lab."
Jenny rolls her eyes as she nods, still grinning, and signs off without another word.
Getting out of bed takes longer than two minutes. The moment he swings his legs off his futon and tries to stand, hot pain tracks up from the soles of his feet, and the deep gouges in his thighs strain their stitches. He inhales, eyes closed as he prepares himself, and stands up slowly.
He's been hurt worse before — Slash comes to mind immediately, with the familiar shiver of fear — but the cuts in his feet are the kind of low-grade misery that will linger for weeks. He'll be useless until then, and the realization carries another, darker thought with it: that the attack might not have been meant to kill him and Casey, but disable them.
But for what? He shudders, and hears the wind again, cold enough to drive away the last of April's warmth.
It eats. That's what it does.
"Donnie?"
He glances down to find April blinking sleepily at him from his futon. She pushes her hair out of her face and smiles. If only he could freeze this moment, set it in glass and amber, to bring out whenever the weight on his back gets too heavy: April's smile, her hair on his pillows, the hollow in the mattress where his body rested next to hers for a few hours.
"Where're you going?" she asks through a yawn.
Donnie swallows. There's nothing he wants more than to crawl back into bed with April, where the worst he has to worry about is not staring too long, but — no.
Get it together, he tells himself, as he smiles back at her. He hopes his smile looks more reassuring than it feels. She stayed because she felt bad. Don't make it more than it is.
A second, plaintive voice speaks up: but what if —? He shuts it down, stamps on its neck, and waits until the echoes fade before he answers April.
"Jenny called — I'm going to go talk to her in the lab."
April stretches with a grimace and a nod. Her shirt rides up, ever so slightly, and Donnie looks away from the pale strip of skin exposed by her movement. "Okay. Tell her I said hi." She rolls onto her belly and pillows her head on her arms. "Can I stay here?"
"Of course! Uh, yes. Sure. Sleep well. Yes." Shut up, he yells silently to himself, just shut up and go.
April's only response is a sleepy sigh and another smile as she nestles deeper into his bed. The two minutes Donnie promised Jenny are long up, but he stares, willing his aching feet to move, until April is asleep again.
The call barely connects before Jenny's face fills the screen. Donnie tries not to look at the time, but the knowledge that he's only gotten three hours of sleep fills him with deep, hopeless resignation.
"You did it!" Jenny squeals, without preamble. "Donnie! You — oh my god, I'm so — you are completely forgiven for ignoring me. Completely." She beams at him, and the urge to cradle his head in his hands nearly overwhelms him. He's too tired to tell Jenny she's got the wrong end of the stick, but his expression — or lack of one — is enough of a response. Her grin melts away like butter in a hot pan.
"Are you kidding me? She's — oh for fuck's sake, Donnie, you can't let her just play around like that!" He hears a muffled thud as Jenny slaps her desk.
"Hey!" he snaps. "It's not — it's not like that, okay? I asked her to stay. She's not —" He closes his eyes as Jenny throws up her hands.
"She's not what, Donnie?" Jenny stares at him, her face hard with anger and — loyalty?
Maybe it shouldn't, but it still amazes him that people beside his family can care about him — that people can be more than neutral, that they can defend him and love him, even when he's not offering anything for their direct benefit.
"It's been a…hard month," he says, lamely. Jenny's brows pucker together, and she makes an impatient hurry-up gesture with both hands.
Donnie swallows. Jenny doesn't know, because he couldn't be bothered to tell her. The roof, Rahzar, Karai, the door to April's room slamming shut. Was that just a few hours ago?
His head starts to ache, and a long shriek of wind slips through him, full of icy teeth.
"What happened to you, Donnie?"
He lets out a bleak laugh. Telling it means reliving it, every frantic, lonely moment. The blood on his hands, the teeth in his skin.
"April — April fell, Jenny," he begins, his voice fraying like old thread.
"My god," Jenny breathes, an hour later, when Donnie finishes talking. His throat aches, and what started out as sleepiness has bled into exhaustion. But the tale is told, and Jenny's hostility is gone. That's something, right? Now they can talk about anything other than myths come to life and how he failed and -
"Did you say the White Boar?" Jenny asks.
Donnie nods, leaning his chin on his hand. "Yeah, some old fairy tale Splinter told us when we were kids. Karai's just using it to get under Leo's skin. What a mess." He sighs, almost missing the way Jenny twitches, what little color she has in her cheeks draining away. "What is it?"
She licks her lips and cuts her eyes away from his. Donnie groans; Jenny's tells are so obvious to him now that it's possible he knows what she's going to say before she does.
Right on cue, she says "Stephen had a dream," and Donnie groans again, even louder.
"Oh, good," he snaps. "Because that's just what I want to hear about, your psychic husband's dreams." He regrets what he said as soon as it leaves his mouth, and Jenny's hurt look only twists the knife. "I'm — I'm sorry," he says. "But honestly, Jenny, after the night I just had? I don't want to hear about dreams. I want to be asleep." Asleep with April, he thinks, and flushes.
"Donnie, this is — just listen, okay? I know you hate this stuff but…" Jenny rubs her mouth. "I think it might be important."
He slumps down in his chair, wincing as one of the gouges pulls at its stitches, and nods. Easier to get it over with now.
"He, uh, he dreamed of New York." Jenny rubs her mouth again, going even paler as she speaks. "And there was this pig, walking through the streets. This huge, white pig."
The tips of Donnie's fingers go cold. He ignores them, focusing on Jenny's voice.
"And uh, then it stopped, and started rooting, like it was trying to dig something up. It pulled the street apart and it kept digging and digging until it —" She pauses, steadying herself. "I swear to God, Donnie, I thought this was just some random weird dream, but after what you just said…oh my god."
"Jenny, tell me," he says, hating himself for always needing to know. He should be telling her to stop talking, like he does every other time she tells him about one of Stephen's dreams, but his damned curiosity won't be satisfied until he hears the rest. The chill creeps up his hands, through his wrists.
"It found a nest," she says, her voice small. "And there were, there were turtles in the nest."
Your brothers are far away. So very far away.
"And a rat," Jenny says.
Let me show you just how far away your family is.
"Stop it," Donnie says, but Jenny doesn't listen as she forces out the last few words.
"And the pig — it ate them. It ate all of them except one."
"Stop it!" he yells, and smashes his fist down on the table. "It's nothing, Jenny, it's just a stupid dream."
Who am I trying to convince?
"Stephen's never wrong," she whispers, not meeting his eyes. "Not when he dreams like this. And it's too close — rats, turtles, the pig? And what the pig did?" Jenny lifts her head, jaw set. "I've heard the story too, Donnie. And weirder things have happened to you."
It eats. That's what the White Boar does, it eats, says Karai, reaching for Leo.
Donnie shakes his head, pushing the memory away. "I know you believe," he says, too tired to hide his disdain. "But I don't. I'm not going to jump just because Stephen had a dream that matches up with some old story. It's not real, Jenny. It's just one of Karai's tricks."
You don't really believe that, do you, Donnie? asks the plaintive voice from earlier. Part of you is starting to wonder if there could be truth in that old story. And that scares you. An enemy this powerful, that can get into your head and play around with what it finds? It's your worst nightmare.
Without thinking, he moves his hand to his belt, where the tooth is tucked into a pouch. The point is sharp enough to have already worn away the leather. He winces as it catches at his skin. There's hunger in it yet, a mystery he has to solve. And he will, because that's what he does.
"Donnie —"
He waves her words away. "No. I'm sorry, but it's not rational."
"April's powers are gone, Donnie, and Karai is back. Nothing about this is rational. I know you don't want to consider it, but maybe —"
"No! I don't need this! The White Boar is a story!" Donnie blazes, exhaustion pushing him out of frustration and into anger. What he needs twelve more hours of sleep, not guesswork and myth. He leans forward and jabs a finger at the screen; on her end, Jenny jerks backward. "Normally I'd appreciate you playing Devil's Advocate, but not today. I'm not going to waste my time on a stupid fairy tale, not when we have actual enemies to worry about. I have the tooth, and I'll track down however those things were made, and then we'll stop them. It's what we always do."
"The dream —"
"Was just a dream, Jenny, and I thought you'd be smart enough to recognize that."
Jenny opens her mouth, too shocked to even splutter, and signs off without another word.
Donnie debates the merits of apologizing via email versus trying to get Jenny back on Skype long enough to hear the rest of the family stir awake. The bizarre architecture in the lair means all sound is funneled toward the lab, so Donnie hears Casey yell, Raph yelling back, and Mikey hollering at them both from the kitchen. And he hears the doors to his room and Leo's open at the same time, and April and Leo murmur at each other as they walk away.
What does Leo think of April creeping out of Donnie's room? Did she try to sneak out, like the few hours they slept curled around each other were something to be ashamed of?
No, says the new voice, the one he fights so hard against. She wouldn't. She's not ashamed of you, she —
The lab door creaks open, and the smell of coffee hits his nose, thick and bitter and blessedly hot.
"Hey, you," says April, her voice still sleep-rough. "Figured you'd need coffee after talking to Jenny."
Donnie huffs, smiling in spite of the regret moving through him. April's here. She forgave him. She stayed with him. Oh, at least there's one good thing that came out of last night. "You figured right." Before he can turn around to face April, a message pops up on his screen. It has to be Jenny, ready to ream him out for being an ass, and he's ready to let her.
Hello, Donatello, says the message. Do you hear the wind blow?
He blinks. There's no sender attached to the message, no name, no icon, just eight black words floating on a white background. As he stares at the screen, another message pops up.
Did you ever wonder what the Kraang did to April when they took her, that last time?
She said she was fine, she said they just made her sleep, and you believed her.
Oh, Donatello.
You have always suffered from an overabundance of hope.
April's footsteps slow down behind him, and she calls his name, but Donnie can't look away from the screen. His heart no longer seems to be beating. Her voice is drowned out by the high, laughing song of the wind.
Did you ever consider that they may have given her an expiration date?
"No," Donnie chokes out, just before a tiny chink echoes behind him. He spins around in time to watch the second mug of coffee tumble out of April's limp hand, and fall to the floor without breaking.
Donnie is loyal, Donnie is smart, Donnie is fast and brave and strong, and none of that gets him out of his chair before April's eyes flicker, and whatever makes her April, that clever light, that subtle fierceness, drains out of her gaze.
She falls slowly, gracefully, all the lines of her body breaking, and this is — this is not right, this is a joke —
This is hell.
Donnie catches her before her head hits the ground. He saves her from that, cradles her neck in the crook of his elbow and pulls her against his plastron. All his prohibitions against touch are forgotten; he touches her face, her neck, her hands, and doesn't realize he's calling her name until the echoes ricochet off the walls and back down to him.
And then, he realizes, he's not calling her name so much as he's begging.
"April, April, oh god, April, come on, look at me." He takes her chin in his hand and turns her face up to his, stroking her cheek with his thumb, trying to meet her eyes. "Please, don't — please, just look at me."
Her eyes are open, their blue as bright as always, but she won't look at him. She can't look at him.
When he touches her throat, her skin is cool under his fingers, and that's even worse than how the rhythm of her pulse has stopped. April can't be cool. She was warm an hour ago, in his bed, warm enough for them both, and breathing, and now she's not, now she isn't moving, now she's more like a bundle of sticks in his arms than a person, fragile and thin and cold, how can April be cold?
"No!" He's screaming now, and April is still not looking at him. "April, please — April!"
The wind roars.
April is —
"No," he says, drawing her closer, holding her so tightly it hurts his arms, but April doesn't say anything. The last thing she said was his name, and now her mouth hangs open, an empty room in an abandoned house, because she is…not. April is undone.
A distant, irrelevant part of him wonders why no one has heard his cries, why no one has come to see what's gone wrong in the lab, what could make their brother scream this way.
It doesn't matter. If Donnie couldn't stop this, what could the others do?
Donnie holds April until even the wind in his head goes quiet, and he's left alone, his mind a perfect blank. She's not waking up, she's not coming back, and he doesn't know what to do. He has nothing. So he stays where he is, beyond tears, and watches April's face until a soft sigh intrudes.
When he looks up, a woman smiles down at him. A beautiful woman, with a gentle mouth and kind eyes, dressed all in white. When she speaks, her voice is tender as a mother's.
"You never planned for this, did you, my brave Donatello?" The woman's smile widens, teeth sharp as a winter wind. "You never once thought you would have to outlive her."