A/N: My best hotmilkytea asked for a bunch of kiss prompts for April and Donnie, and somehow what happened was several thousand words of arranged marriage shenanigans. I have no idea how.
Donnie reminds himself to blink, and to breathe, and to smile - the gentle smile he practiced in his mirror for a solid month - when April appears in the doorway of the chapel.
She takes one look at him, and pulls a gun out of her wedding dress.
Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, he thinks, even though his heart plummets straight to his feet. At his side, Raph growls, and then Casey unsheathes a police baton along with his hockey stick.
Donnie keeps smiling because he doesn't know what else to do with his face, but April isn't aiming at him. She's aiming right over his shoulder.
That's when the gunshots start, and Donnie realizes that April - his brave, furious, beautiful, absolutely badass bride - isn't shooting at him, but at the platoon of Kraang who just crashed through the back wall of the chapel.
Let's back up a bit, shall we?
Once upon a time, there were humans, and there were mutants, and they had been at war for a very, very long time. No one remembers how the war got started - some say it started with two brothers, one human and one mutant, who fought over a woman, but frankly that story has been told too many times and wasn't very interesting to begin with - but everyone knows about the fields that never stop burning, and the heads on spikes along the road.
It took almost a thousand years - years during which the air over Nebraska boiled, and Beijing nearly fell to an army of rats led by a masked king, and an actual alien invasion - but finally, the powers that be on both sides of the war said Enough.
Which was long overdue, to be honest, but at this rate, the world would be uninhabitable by the end of the century, and since staying alive was the one thing that both sides could agree on, the leaders agreed to a ceasefire.
Getting curb-stomped by pink screeching aliens has a wonderful way of putting things in perspective.
The world took a deep, shuddering breath, and wondered what would come next. Other than the Kraang invasion, that is.
An alliance, said the leaders. That's what we need.
And how, said the world, which was tired and desperate and had almost forgotten how to hope, do you plan to do that?
...uh, said the leaders. We'll get back to you?
"You're kidding me," said Donnie. "A wedding? They do know this is actual, real life, and not fanfiction, right? We need - I don't know, treaties, and to stop shooting each other, and -"
Leo shrugged. "I mean, it's not like we have any other options, do we?"
Donnie tried not to choke on his own tongue. "We do," he said, enunciating each word precisely. "Like treaties. And shooting the actual aliens, instead of each other."
"Yeah, because the other ceasefires worked so well," said Raph, with a meaningful glance at the deep scar winding up Donnie's thigh. "We'll just go yell give peace a chance and put flowers in their assault rifles and boom! We got peace locked in! Up until the Kraang turn us into grape jelly."
Donnie balled his hands into fists, both to keep from rubbing at the scar and in case he decided to pummel Raph in the face. "It's an idiotic idea," he said. "Marriage doesn't solve anything when it's just normal life. It's not going to solve a war."
Mikey leaned against his shoulder with a tired sigh. "Can we just like, enjoy the silence for five minutes?" he said. "I'm tired, dudes. When was the last time people weren't tryin' to kill us?"
"Never," Donnie said in unison with Raph and Leo. He threw an arm around Mikey's shoulder and closed his eyes. Mikey did have a point - they should take the chance to rest while they could, in case everything burned down around them tomorrow.
Splinter breathed quietly nearby, asleep or meditating, and slowly, Donnie's brothers fell asleep too.
He stayed awake for a long time, wondering. Who were they going to rope into this disaster?
Probably not anyone I know, he thought, as sleep closed over his head.
Raph hadn't stopped laughing in five minutes. Mikey was facedown on the floor, making strangled noises, and Leo was looking anywhere but at Donnie.
"No," Donnie said again. He'd lost track of how many times he'd said it so far, but nothing else came to mind. "No."
Splinter laid a warm, dry hand on his shoulder. "You have been honored, my son," he said, his whiskers ever-so-slightly twitching. "Make us proud."
Donnie thought about saying No again, and decided to hyperventilate instead.
In the two weeks before he met his blushing bride - who, if he was very, very lucky, wouldn't attempt to kill him on sight - Donnie filed twenty-seven appeals with the United Nations and the mutant resistance.
He did not beg, he did not plead. He cogently and efficiently laid out all the reasons why he was a terrible choice for this endeavor. He eloquently argued his position.
He had diagrams.
Every appeal was denied.
"Look, nerd," said Raph. "Sack up. If this falls through, we're all dead."
"We may all be dead at the reception anyways," Donnie shot back. "Haven't you guys seen Game of Thrones?"
Mikey looked up from a bowl of spaghetti-os, sauce smeared all around his mouth, to intone "Fear is the mindkiller."
"That's from Dune," Leo and Donnie yelled at the same time, while Raph pretended to have an aneurysm.
"Donnie," said Leo, in the extremely reasonable voice he reserved for extremely important moments, and that made Donnie extremely murderous, "it's up to you now. You have to go through with this. But we'll be there -" He glared at Raph and Mikey, who both nodded, if a little belatedly. "- the whole time. We'll watch your shell."
"Thanks," said Donnie. He felt a little better, but it didn't stop him from starting appeal twenty-eight five minutes later.
Donnie met his bride in Central Park, in the middle of a rose garden. Other than a touch of hay fever, a smidge of agoraphobia, and a crippling fear of being shot several thousand times, he was in a surprisingly good mood. After all, the worst had finally arrived. Nothing more to worry about, no more appeals to file. He could bend to the inevitable, whether that was marriage or death.
Hopefully the former.
"Is that her?" Mikey yelled, pointing into the crowd of humans clustered on the other side of the garden. "Or her? Oh, wow, hope it's not her."
Raph clapped a hand over Mikey's mouth and dragged him away, which left only Leo at Donnie's side as he walked toward the dais. Camera flashes dazzled his eyes, and when he finally blinked away the tears, he found himself facing a gangly, gap-toothed man who was scratching his armpit.
Leo squeezed his shoulder. All the blood drained out of Donnie's face. The sun was too hot, the roses were overpowering, and he was going to get married to someone who might not have showered since birth.
So much for bending to the inevitable. Donnie nearly leapt off the platform and went screaming back into the sewers - he loved his fellow mutants, but not that much - before a skinny, red-haired woman stepped from behind the man, and gave him a cool, appraising look.
The smell of the roses faded away. So did the camera flashes. Donnie had a vague impression of freckles and hot blue eyes, and nothing else.
Oh, he thought, the blood coming back to his cheeks in a rush. "Hi," he said, and held out his hand. "I'm, uh, Donatello? Donnie. I'm Donnie."
The woman inhaled hard through her nose, and lifted her chin. She shook his hand, firm and quick, then let go. The Neanderthal behind her snorted and adjusted his bandanna. "April," she said, unsmiling.
A bee buzzed past Donnie's nose, then settled on his plastron. He barely felt the pressure of its feet as it crawled across his scratched scutes, but April's gaze followed its progress, still appraising.
The bee got bored and flew away a few seconds later. April sighed and shook her head, suspicion crowding out any hint of friendliness. Donnie wondered what she would look like if she ever really smiled.
For a few seconds, he almost hoped he'd find out.
They were allowed to go for a walk together, with the press and their bodyguards following at a discreet distance, so they wandered through the rose garden and try to make conversation. Which, somewhat predictably, went poorly.
Donnie couldn't ask about her family, because the odds were excellent he had exploded or melted some of them, and she had taken one look at Leo and adopted a lofty disdain no amount of discreet distance could dissolve. So they walked, and didn't make eye contact, and didn't talk, and Donnie felt his heart shrinking, bit by bit.
She hated him. He wasn't surprised, but he had hoped - because hoping was in his DNA, just like the shell and the green, pebbled skin - that they might find some common ground.
"This is idiotic," April said, out of nowhere. She stopped, and sent a death glare at the reporters until they backed away a few steps. Donnie felt an entirely unwanted burst of admiration for her, but kept his face neutral as April turned back.
"I don't know what you did to get roped into this shitshow, but it sucks for both of us." She gave him a challenging, brows-arched look, and seemed knocked off-kilter when he just nodded. "So we've got to find...I don't know, some way to live with each other. Till the Kraang kill us, or whatever."
"I'm not going to kill you in your sleep," Donnie said stiffly. "No matter what you might have heard. We didn't start the war."
April's gaze sharpened. "Yeah? Is that so? You guys were pretty hellbent on finishing it, though. Like Alberta -"
"Oh, excuse me," Donnie snapped back. "We were liberating a prison camp."
"You took out a residential neighborhood." she blazed, leaning into his face. All the hints of a smile were gone. She was fire and heat and hate, and all of it was directed at him.
Donnie no longer cared. "And humans have been vivisecting mutants for centuries, and mutants have been converting humans for just as long, so unless the atrocity parade is fun for you, there's really nothing more to say. We're stuck with each other. We have to deal with it."
April rocked back on her heels, her lips pulled tight over her teeth. Then a shadow crossed her face, and unexpectedly she softened. She looked young, and tired, and almost familiar. Donnie hoped he'd never faced her on a battleground before, or if he had, that he never remembered it.
"You didn't kill the bee," she said, out of nowhere.
"Bees are dying out," he said. "We've already done enough damage, no matter who started it. The bees shouldn't have to pay."
April huffed. "That's almost sweet."
"It's true."
They stared at each other for a long time, human to mutant.
"I won't kill you in your sleep," she said. "I promise."
"Good to know," Donnie said. "April's a pretty name," he added, because it was true, and because it might help.
"Thanks," she said, a little color touching her cheeks.
They kept walking, listening for the bees.
The Neanderthal turned out to be April's somewhat self-appointed bodyguard, which meant Donnie not only had to endure all the eyes of the world on him as he attempted history's most ill-fated courtship, but he had to deal with Casey Jones, a sentient cloud of Axe body spray.
"Just gonna say this once, turtle," Casey told him, one month before the wedding. "You hurt April, and you got to deal with me."
"I'm breathless with terror," Donnie replied. He turned another page in his book, and tried to breathe through his mouth.
"I'm serious, freak. Hurt her, and I'll —"
"What?" Donnie finally looked up, blowing right past anger and into the deep blue sea of resignation. "You'll screw up the one chance this planet's got of surviving whatever the Kraang have planned?" He spun his chair around. "I'm not going to hurt her," he added, as Casey stared holes in the back of his head. "This needs to work. We all need it to work."
A brief, vivid thought occurred to him. "Wait." He spun his chair back around to meet Casey's gaze. "I'm not…this isn't…you two aren't…?"
Casey sniffed, folded his arms, and sank into a seat across the table. "Nah," he said, after a pause long enough to make it clear he was just messing with Donnie. "I mean, don't get me wrong, Red's hot, and we made out a couple times, but I'm here in a strictly professional capacity."
That sentence contained words with more syllables than Donnie expected from Casey, but more importantly, that sentence felt honest. He nodded, and pulled his laptop over. "Good. Glad we got that worked out."
"Just remember, you're turtle soup if —"
"I've had two conversations with April, and I already know she doesn't need you to protect her," Donnie snotted as he pulled up the new schematics for Metalhead. He might have been counting down the days till he was sacrificed on diplomacy's altar, but there was always something else to repair.
Casey went all thoughtful, which he probably believed made him look handsome, and in reality just made him look concussed. "You got that right about her," he said, and punched Donnie in the arm. "All right, now that we got that covered, what're you workin' on?"
Donnie watched Casey's face, and found only honest interest. He turned the laptop around slowly. "Schematics," he said, "for, uh, a robot."
"Sweet."
A lifetime spent making war meant Donnie slept lightly, when he slept at all. The first knock had him sitting up, blinking sleep out of his eyes, and the second had him halfway to the door.
"Who is it?" he said through a yawn, reaching for his bo.
"April. Can I come in?"
"Huh," said Donnie. Then: "Uh, yeah, one second."
He unlocked the door of his hotel room — he had a lot of opinions about the UN and the resistance and their brilliant idea to save the planet by getting him married, but at least they sprang for decent accommodations — and then stepped aside as April stalked in.
What he knew about April would barely fill his smallest test tube, but he knew this: April carried herself through the world like she was ready to start throwing punches, even though she barely came to his shoulder. She'd lost too much already, she said with every step she took, and no one was going to take anything more from her.
Donnie could relate, even if he would never tell her that.
So he watched as she stalked in, and sat on the edge of his bed, and then got up to pace. He stayed by the door — which would stay unlocked, just in case — and waited her out.
"This is so stupid!" she yelled at last, whirling around on him with fists raised. Donnie braced his feet against the floor and tightened his hand on his bo, but April didn't notice. Her hair — loose for the first time Donnie could remember — flared and crackled around her head, and her eyes burned, bloodshot and ferocious. "They won't let us talk, they keep us locked up when we're not in front of the cameras — how is this supposed to work? How are we supposed to make this work?"
Donnie bit his tongue. April kept shouting.
"I know your name, I know you're a mutant and that you've got like, twenty brothers, but that's it. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?" She dropped back onto his bed, starfishing her arms and legs to take up as much space as possible. "This is bullshit. Cannot stress that enough."
"Yeah, well." Donnie sank into the seat at his desk. "At least you know I've got brothers. You know that dossier they made up for you? They blacked out everything except your name. So you're already one up on me."
"Seriously?" April sat up. "Not even my birthday?"
"You could be forty for all I know," Donnie said. "Or grown in a lab." He bit his tongue again — too on the nose, maybe — but April surprised him by laughing.
"Okay, let me clear that up. I am definitely not forty, and based on the humiliating home videos my dad made, I was definitely born." She brushed her hair back, and gave him a not-quite-smile. "So, there you go. Does that make us even?"
"Just about." Donnie rested his bo against the desk and turned to face her fully. Without the cameras and the politicians and the bodyguards — brotherly and Neanderthal alike — to distract him, Donnie realized he actually liked how she looked, down to the awkward angle of her wrist as she propped herself up.
Careful, Donatello. How many mutants has she killed?
He couldn't ask that question without having to answer the flip side himself, and that would doom this — whatever this was, and would be — from the beginning. And really, hadn't there been enough blame thrown around over the years? The world had bigger things to worry about than score-settling now. Everyone's hands were bloody.
It was time to try something new.
"I've got a really dumb idea," he said. "But hear me out before you…start laughing, okay?"
April arched an eyebrow. "Do you generally get laughed at a lot?"
If you only knew.
"Let's…start fresh," he hedged. "The war's supposed to be done with us, right? We're this big symbol, so what if we…just let it go?"
"What, just forget the past however many years? Everything y— we did?" April huffed. "It's not that simple."
"Not everything, but…" He waved at them both, hoping she would understand. "We're just two people. People. We can let it go. We can…" The words caught in his throat, and he shrank into himself, hearing Raph braying in his ear: Thanks for nothing, genius! Time to go back to blowing each other up, I guess!
"We can do better," said April. Her face had a quiet, almost wistful cast to it — unlike Casey, thoughtfulness suited her. "Right? That's what you meant."
Donnie nodded, unable to keep a smile off his face. "Yeah, yeah, exactly. We just — we start fresh. It'll be awkward, and strange, but…it might be better than what we've had, you know?"
April smiled for half a heartbeat, and Donnie thought, oh no, as all her sharp edges softened.
"Okay," she said, and stuck out her hand. "A fresh start. I'm April O'Neil."
Donnie shook, gently, and let his hand linger on hers for three extra seconds. She didn't pull away. "Hamato Donatello. Nice to meet you."
By silent agreement, they met in his hotel room every night. At first they just watched movies — they both had plenty to catch up on, and mercifully, they both preferred their science fiction heavy on dialogue and light on explosions — which kept them from figuring out how to talk to each other.
Of course, when two nerds were in the same room long enough, talking tended to happen anyways.
"I don't believe it!" Donnie yelled, as April hid her face. "You didn't just — this marriage is cancelled, I cannot marry someone who thinks Ben Affleck was a good Batman!"
"I didn't say he was good, I said he was acceptable!" April shouted through her fingers. "You're such an elitist shit!"
"That," Donnie replied, "just means I actually have taste."
"It means you're a snob."
"If it means not suffering through that — that hack trying to emote, then —" He yelped as April shoved him off the bed. "Oh, very classy," he said from the floor, as she peered over the edge of the bed. "Is this how you win all your arguments?"
April preened. "I don't have to win, I just have to end it." She froze, her mouth opening in a tiny o of dismay. "Uh, sorry, that was —"
"Help me up." Donnie stuck his arm into the air. "It's the least you can do."
April gnawed at her lip, eyes narrowed, then grabbed his hand with both of hers and dragged him back onto the bed. Instead of moving away, putting the usual four feet of space between them, she stayed close, her hip almost brushing his.
"Let's watch Star Wars next," she said, not quite looking at him. "Unless you think that's too low-brow?"
"Please. Star Wars is a classic. Just don't tell me you think Han didn't —"
"Don't even say it!" April hissed as she grabbed the remote. "Han always shot first. End of story."
"Whew."
Donnie never knew when he started daydreaming about April. He wasn't even aware of it most of the time; sometimes he would commit things to memory to tell her later, before their nightly movie, and sometimes he would think about her laughing or tying her hair back into a ponytail, but it didn't affect his life, right up until he got distracted thinking about the freckles sprayed over her nose and Mikey laid him out in morning training.
"Enough!" Splinter tapped the floor with his cane. "Everyone but Donatello is dismissed."
The squad filed out — Mikey lingered long enough to blow a raspberry at him — and Donnie found himself alone in the dojo with Splinter.
"Sorry about that," he muttered, not looking up from his feet. "It won't happen again."
"You have been distracted a great deal lately," said Splinter. "It is…unsurprising, I suppose, given your nightly activities."
Donnie's cheeks flushed, hot and dark. "Who told you?" he asked, miserably. Now Splinter would tell him to stop, to start forming plans to keep April off-guard or to find out what she knew, and his heart ached. She wasn't family, she was barely a friend — but they had promised to be new, and he couldn't betray that.
But if Splinter asked — well, he couldn't betray his family for a human, could he?
"I have eyes, my son." Splinter sighed. "I have only one thing to say."
Don't trust her. Don't look at her like a person. Don't give in.
Donnie waited.
"Be cautious — but do not forget compassion." Splinter smiled when Donnie looked up, an old, sad smile made of equal parts regret and nostalgia. "There is room for both, in this new world."
The next night, April fell asleep halfway through the movie. Rather than wake her, Donnie let the TV keep running long after the movie was over and the late-late reruns of I Love Lucy came on.
Slowly, inexorably, while Donnie tried to decide if he should sleep in his chair or go bunk with Mikey, April's head came to rest on his shoulder. She was warm, and she smelled like apples, and after his heart stopped pounding, Donnie let his eyes slip closed.
When he woke up in the morning, she was gone, but she had turned on the coffee before she left.
The first assassination attempt — well, the first Donnie knew about — came with just over a month to go before the wedding.
He'd been walking from one meeting to another, talking to Leo but oh so very aware of April walking twenty feet ahead, when Raph let out a roar and plunged off the sidewalk and into the street. Leo threw Donnie down, then sprinted after Raph, katana gleaming in the sunlight.
Donnie stayed down till a count of ten, then looked up. He heard gunshots, but they were far enough away to sound more like firecrackers. He peeled himself off the sidewalk, staying low and ready to run, and scanned the street for his brothers.
Twenty feet away, Raph and Casey were cheerfully pounding in some goon's face, while Mikey and Leo were green blurs just past them. No one looked in immediate danger, and Donnie had just grabbed his bo to join in — why should he miss out on the fun? — when something hot buzzed past his face, and his left cheek started to burn.
"Donnie!" screamed Mikey. "No, Donnie, get down!"
Another burst of heat slashed through his upper arm, and a third caught him in the right side. It barely hurt, but his ears started ringing and he dropped to his knees, his bo clattering away uselessly. A fourth burst hit him in the shell and knocked him over, and somewhere, someone was laughing.
The sun blazed overhead, white and clear and merciless. At least I'm dying outside, Donnie thought. Wait, I'm dying?
"You asshole!" someone screamed, so close he cringed away. The pain ripped him open when he tried to move, and the air around him smelled thick with salt.
Oh, maybe I am dying.
"Asshole!" someone screamed again, then the air split with gunshot after gunshot. The person who'd been laughing stopped, rather abruptly, and then the only sound was the dry click of an empty gun barrel.
Donnie forced his eyes open to see the blurred forms of his brothers approaching, but a shadow fell over him and blocked the sun.
"Donnie, Donnie, are you okay, I didn't —"
"Get away from him, you're not —"
"Back off, she was trying to help, shortstack —"
"You wanna start something, Jones?"
"Donnie," said April, and touched his chin. Donnie's vision cleared just enough to make out her face, and the hard line worry had slashed between her eyebrows. "You're going to be fine," she promised.
Then the sirens started, and April stood up with her hands over her head. Donnie opened his mouth — she helped me, it's okay, she promised not to kill me — but he passed out long before he could form the words.
Donnie was never sure how, exactly, the fact that he was shot four times by human dissidents didn't restart the entire human-mutant war. All the fancy diplomatic footwork took place while he was in a medically-induced coma, and by the time he woke up, the Children of the Pure had been smashed to dust by a joint human-mutant task force.
"See? You didn't even have to get married to get us working with the humans!" Raph punctuated his sentence with a punch to Donnie's good shoulder, and grinned innocently when Donnie groaned. "Just had to get your dumb ass shot! Wish I had known that, I would've given you a beatdown for world peace."
"You would give me a beatdown for a can of Pringles." Donnie rubbed his shoulder, and cheated a glance over at Leo, who stood between Donnie's bed and the door. He'd been there when Donnie woke up, and would probably keep standing there till Donnie got to go home. "So, uh. Where's April?"
Raph and Mikey immediately put on their I'm staying out of this one expressions and got really interested in the Good Housekeeping magazine on Donnie's side table. Leo just kept staring off into space, the very picture of a wounded hero.
Given that Donnie was the only one in the room with actual, genuine wounds — and the morphine drip to prove it — Leo's martyr act was a tougher sell than usual.
"Okay." He smoothed the blanket over his legs. "Let's get this out of the way, shall we? You feel guilty that I got hurt on your watch, because a good leader wouldn't have let it happen, and now you're overcompensating to make up for your perceived failure. Did I hit everything on the checklist?"
Mikey shoved his face into Raph's shoulder, snorting. Leo just turned a cold, unforgiving glare in Donnie's direction that, due to the morphine and a lifetime of exposure to all Leo's dirty looks, was thankfully ineffective.
"I did fail," Leo began, but he went back to glaring when Donnie yawned and looked away.
"Right. Can we skip the masochism this time around? Pain isn't as much fun as it looks." Leo looked down at the floor, and Donnie pressed his advantage. "I'm going to be fine, Leo. I mean, seriously, I'm six and a half feet tall and it took them four shots to do any real damage. Let's not give them too much credit."
A fleeting smile crossed Leo's face. "Fine," he said. "But Donnie, if you want out, now's the time."
"Of the hospital?" Donnie asked, about to point out that the hospital was where the morphine was, and while he didn't plan on acquiring a narcotics habit, he wanted to enjoy a pain-free existence a little bit longer. Then he saw Leo's face, really saw it, and his chest went cold. "Oh."
"We have leverage," Leo went on. "We can say they can't assure your safety, that this whole thing was poorly thought out from the beginning, but as a gesture of good faith we went along with it." His eyes gleamed with the cold light of the tactician. "It could be over tomorrow. You'd be safe."
Donnie thought it over. He knew Raph and Mikey were watching him, but he kept his eyes on his bandaged hands. How had he hurt them? Maybe when he fell, before April —
"Who took out the shooter?" he asked, without looking up.
"Donnie —"
"It was April, wasn't it?" Donnie said, feeling something heavy settling over his shoulders. But he didn't feel trapped, and a few moments later, he realized what it was: certainty. "I'm not going anywhere."
The next time he woke up, April was standing next to his bed. A dark shadow watched them through the window in the closed door, but Donnie could live with that.
"Hey," he said, in a sleep-rough voice. "You're here."
"Yeah," said April, one corner of her mouth quirking up. "Only took a week of interrogations — I'm sorry, debriefings — to convince everyone I wasn't somehow behind everything. Lucky for me, the Children of the Pure hate me even more than they hate mutants. So." She shrugged, and pushed a loose piece of hair behind her ear. "How are you feeling?"
"Pretty good, considering I got a little perforated back there." Donnie licked his lips, and reached for the full glass of water at his elbow. The water was cool and clean, better than anything he could get in the sewers, even with his jury-rigged filtration system, and he tried to savor it in sips but ended up gulping the entire glass down and nearly choked.
April took a step toward him, but stopped awkwardly in the middle of the room, her hands half-extended.
"I'm good," he managed, once he'd coughed his throat clear. "Stupid of me."
"Stupid of me," said April, abruptly, savagely. "I could have messed up everything. Your brothers were talking about pulling you out of the agreement as soon as you woke up —"
"April, I talked them down, it's fine."
"— but I couldn't just — what?"
"I told them I wasn't going anywhere." After a moment's thought, he held out his hand. April stared at it, too many emotions trying to crowd onto her face for him to make out any one on its own. Sad, surprised, angry — and grateful, maybe. Human faces were hard to read.
"Why?" she asked, the question heavy as lead. "Why would you stay?"
"Because…" Donnie thought about pulling his hand back, but kept reaching out until April took one more step forward and slipped her fingers into his. "Because we're something new, right? We have to stick together."
Because you saved me, he thought. April's gaze caught and held his. Her hand felt frail and thin and warm, but he knew everything but the warmth was an illusion. There wasn't anything weak about April, not at all. Because I care about you.
"I was so scared," April said. "When you — when they shot you. And it was the first time I was afraid of humans, instead of mutants, and…you're right. I don't know what we are, but we're new. Just like we agreed." She squeezed his hand. "I'm glad you're okay," she added, finally looking away. The room was too dark to tell, but she might have been blushing.
"I'm glad you were there," Donnie said. "And, April? Thank you." He tried to put everything he felt into those two words — his certainty, his gratitude, even the simple, unexpected pleasure he felt just holding her hand — and hoped she understood.
And she did, she did, because she took one last step forward and kissed his cheek. Donnie felt her eyelashes flicker against his skin, and held still and silent when she didn't pull away.
"Anytime," she whispered.
The Kraang attacked the day Donnie walked out of the hospital. Or, they attacked one hour before he would have walked out of the hospital.
"They melted the front door?" he yelled, staring at the pile of molten slag that had once been a very nice entrance with a very nice fountain. "Today?"
"Suck it up, nerd!" Raph yelled back, and tossed him his bo. "We got some redecorating to do!"
Donnie caught his bo one-handed and gave it a practice spin. His arm ached at the shoulder, but his range of movement was just fine. Good thing, too, because the far hallway burst into flames, and then a squall of pink-bellied robots streamed into the hospital.
"All right!" Mikey bounced forward, nunchuks spinning. "Who's keepin' score this time?" Without waiting for an answer, he slammed a fist into the first robot's stomach. "Got one!"
"Already at three!" Leo said, managing to sound smug and encouraging at the same time. "Keep it up, you guys!"
Donnie was not, in general, a fan of violence; violence had ruled his life since he was old enough to understand that mutants were feared, and hunted, and violence meant that his life was measured in battlefields instead of hours in his lab, or laughing with his family.
But today, facing the aliens who wanted to chew Earth to a pulp, Donnie found he could handle a just little more violence.
Even at their worst, the humans had tried not to attack mutant hospitals.
"Fore!" he bellowed, and swung his bo like a golf club. The Kraang squealed as the hit connected, and then stopped squealing as it spattered against the wall.
"Ew," said Mikey, eyes wide. "Do that again, D!"
Donnie was happy to oblige, but before he could wind up, a fist-sized hole punched itself through the Kraang he'd just targeted. Before the robot toppled over, he caught sight of April, hair pulled back from her face and clad in a trim black jumpsuit, lowering her gun. Behind her, Casey twirled his hockey stick, his face covered by a goalie mask.
"I'm almost impressed, sister!" Raph yelled. "Now let's see if you can keep up."
April didn't even glance his way. Her eyes met Donnie's over the body of the dead Kraang, and she grinned.
She looked —
Oh no, Donnie thought, as another section of the hallway collapsed and a new squad of Kraang poured in. She looks beautiful.
April stared at the box. "But I didn't get you anything," she said, the familiar slash between her brows appearing. "It's not some holiday I should know about, is it?"
"No, no, it's just a present, it's…" Donnie shuffled his feet and ducked his head. This was a terrible idea, the kind Leo called sentimental and that Raph just called mental, but he'd been so sure while he was bent over his soldering iron. "I just wanted to make you something."
This time, he didn't mistake April's flush.
"Okay," she said, ducking her own head, and sat down cross-legged on the end of the bed. Her fingers worked at the ribbon — Donnie felt a by-now familiar burst of affection when she set it aside carefully, instead of tossing it at the trash can — and opened the box.
And then, she was utterly, completely silent.
Donnie counted to twenty before he cleared his throat. "If you, uh, don't like it, I can take it back? Or make another? I had to guess at a couple things, extrapolate, you know, not that I minded, but I just thought you would —"
"Donnie?"
He blinked at April, who'd finally looked up from the box. "Uh. Yeah."
"Thank you." she smiled as she said it, a smile that lit her whole face and turned her eyes hot and blazing, and he could only bask in her warmth. "You made me a gun."
"Not just any gun," he said, holding up one finger, smiling a little himself. "It's, um. Keyed to your biometrics."
"Keyed to my — holy shit." Now April's smile was a shark's grin, wide and white and toothy. "So only I can fire it?"
Donnie felt a hot thrill start at the base of his feet and work its way up. "Yeah," he said. "That's right. It's just for you."
"Wow," April breathed. She ran her fingers over the barrel, almost lovingly. Donnie strangled the urge to start listing specifics — there'd be time for that, later, after he stopped admiring April as she admired his gift.
"This is amazing." She said it with so much feeling, such honest enthusiasm, that Donnie found he couldn't say a word. He never got to make gifts, just tools, and he'd almost forgotten how much joy just creating could give him.
A gun wasn't a typical gift, but he and April weren't typical people, were they?
"You're welcome," he said, shuffling a little. His eyes were on his feet, but he heard her set the box aside, and stand up. Then her feet appeared next to his, and her warm hands touched his arm.
"Seriously, this is amazing," April said, so close her breath fanned against his plastron. "You really set the bar high for Christmas, you know that, right?"
He laughed, and finally dragged his eyes up to meet hers. "What can I say? I'm a perfectionist."
April smirked, then stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. She lingered this time too, a centimeter closer to his mouth than before.
Of course, because Donnie's life had been and would always be balanced on the edge of total disaster, that was the moment Casey chose to walk into his room.
"You chucklefucks. Now I owe Raph forty bucks. You couldn't have waited till after the wedding?"
Donnie never really dreamed of the future; his present was too loud, too crowded, for much dreaming to happen. There was always something else to fix, to fight, or to flee, and getting distracted by a future that might never arrive was an easy way to get himself — or worse, his brothers — killed.
But the war had ended, or so the politicians kept telling him as they pumped his hand and smiled with all their teeth, and now he had all the time he wanted to think about next.
"Do you think you might go to college?" April asked. They had started spending their nights in her hotel room — a much safer place than his, because she had terrified Casey into never entering without knocking — and the wreckage of a truly indulgent room service dinner had taken over one of the beds. "They're talking about letting mutants in now, if they pass some kind of equivalency exams," she added, when Donnie looked up from his second dessert. "You know, for high school stuff. Like the SATs."
"Huh." He scraped his spoon along the bottom of his bowl, not sure if the sour feeling in his stomach was indigestion or anxiety. Maybe he'd thought about college, once or twice, when they had a quiet night at the base, but he never managed to insert himself into the fantasy. Somewhere out in the world, there were places where people could learn, and argue, and teach, and experiment, but he'd never get close enough in daylight to see the welcome sign, much less be admitted.
He hadn't thought about it in years.
"That sounds good," he hedged, tucking the bowl aside and lacing his hands over his knees. "College. Good."
April gave him an unconvinced look. "Did I just hit some weird raw nerve? Like, college isn't your thing, or…?"
"It might be," he answered. "I just haven't really thought about it."
"NYU has a great physics program," she said, leaning forward. "And their internships — Donnie? Are you okay?"
"Do you really think they're going to let me in?" he asked. No heat, no anger, just the stark question.
April shut her mouth with a click, rocked back on her heels. "Maybe not right away," she said, "but things are going to change —"
When? he thought, the first hard crack of anger splitting through his head. I got shot a month ago, April. You really think they're going to let me waltz on into one of their institutions of higher learning? The world didn't agree to start something new with us. And what if the Kraang win? No college for anyone then. No anything, anymore.
He didn't say any of that. He didn't need to. April read it clearly enough in his face.
"They will change," she said. "They have to. I mean, if I can say I was wrong — if Casey can — then we'll get there. It's going to work, Donnie. This." She waved between them, but she could have meant anything: peace, their approaching marriage, college, survival.
Donnie wanted to believe her, but believing was just as hard as dreaming if you'd lost the knack, and it had been a lifetime since Donnie believed in anything other than his family.
Hope was a different story, but hope just happened. Belief needed to be made, and remade, every day of your life.
"It'll work out." April's eyes blazed, the hot blue light that always made Donnie think of electricity and summer and the way the horizon shimmered above the ocean, and he felt his heart rise to her — to believe, right alongside her. "It might take time, but it'll happen." She covered his hands with hers, and squeezed but didn't smile.
He took a deep breath, then turned his hands over to cradle hers. Could she feel the way his pulse beat hard in his palms and wrists? "Yeah," he said, his voice thin and strained. The last of the day's sun tumbled through the window to turn April's hair into a fiery corona, turned her skin bronze and her freckles gold. She was beautiful, and fierce, a worthy opponent — but she was going to be his wife.
Donnie balanced on the knife's edge for a heartbeat, and then started to fall.
"Let's beat the Kraang first," he said. "Then you can help me with my applications."
April's smile lit the room.
"So," said Raph, in the lazy, gleeful voice that always made Donnie want to hiss like a cat and then hide under the table. "We need to talk about your bachelor party, Don."
"I guarantee that we do not," Donnie said. He kept his shell to Raph — eye contact was always a bad idea when Raph sounded like this — and went back to rechecking his suitcase. Ostensibly, there was a honeymoon connected with this marriage, all expenses paid, all needs fulfilled, but he had a feeling the cruise ship would be pretty light on shuriken and copper wiring. "So whatever you're planning, don't."
"Aw, come on, it's your big night!" Raph clapped him on the shell, hard enough to send him sprawling facedown into his suitcase. The bed dipped as Raph sank down next to Donnie as he clawed his way out of a pile of cotton webbing. "You've got a lot to celebrate, lover boy."
"It's a diplomatic formality," Donnie said, wincing inwardly at how hollow the words sounded. "I drew the short straw. That's all."
Raph groaned and flopped on his shell. "Yeah, you're not fooling anyone. Casey walked in on you two making out —" Donnie squawked, because how dare Casey Jones lie about such a quiet, private moment —
(the answer was, as always, because he was Casey Jones)
— but Raph just kept talking. "So this formality crap? It's just crap. You're getting married for real. To her."
Donnie swallowed another squawk and stole a glance down at Raph. Worry didn't sit well on Raph's face, like most emotions that weren't smug delight in someone else's suffering, or violent joy, but that didn't mean the emotion wasn't genuine. "I thought that was the point. Marrying her."
"Yeah, but it's real." Raph scowled harder. Donnie pushed aside several jokes about clenching and making diamonds, because he didn't need both hands to count how many times Raph had actually tried to emote in his life. "It's actually a thing."
Donnie sat down on the floor. "For me, yeah. A little." Raph's eyes bored into his, cold and green and angry for no reason Donnie could name. Raph probably couldn't even name it. "Is that so horrible? It's…honest."
"You don't think she's faking you out? This has been a dumb idea since day one," Raph said, conveniently ignoring how much he'd enjoyed said dumb idea when it was Donnie on the hook, and not him. "What if it's some trick?"
"She killed a guy for shooting me, Raph."
"Wouldn't be the first time they played a long game." That was Leo, standing at the door with Mikey hovering just behind. "Good chess players know when to sacrifice a piece to win in the end."
Leo, Donnie knew, was an excellent chess player.
Of course there was a chance that it was all subterfuge, that he'd walk into the chapel tomorrow to be gunned down or ripped open or tortured, and that April would watch all of it with a smile. The leaders on both sides had said enough, but it came down to him, in the end, to make sure they meant it. And that meant putting his neck on the line, and hoping April would too.
New very rarely meant safe. Not in war, not in science, and definitely not in life.
Donnie had never broken a promise. No matter what happened tomorrow, he wasn't going to break this one.
"Guys," he said, smiling at his brothers, the three faces he knew as well as his own, and loved a thousand times more, "it's going to be fine."
"But the Kraang —" Mikey piped up, only to be hushed by Raph and Leo simultaneously.
Donnie grinned at him. "If this whole marriage thing works out, the Kraang'll be nothing."
Good thing I decided against the tux, Donnie thinks as he crouches behind a pew. He hears the Kraang marching toward him, squealing and snarling, but he stays low, counting their footsteps until they're in reach of his bo. I don't think the rental fee covers alien invasions.
The first set of robot feet appear under his pew, and Donnie leaps up — silent, always silent, some things never change — and knocks its head off its shoulder with one smooth blow. The Kraang in the robot's belly screams as one of the sensors attached to its body sparks, filling the air with the smell of burned rubber.
"You good over there, D?" Mikey hollers as he blows past. "Need a hand?"
"Nope!" Donnie squeezes his bo, and the blade of his naginata slides out with a sweet shing! He barely has to flick his wrists, and the Kraang very quickly stops screaming. "I'm good!"
"I forgive you for not letting us have a bachelor party!" Raph roars over the screams of the Kraang, and the screams of the guests, and the heavy rumble of the chapel's back wall collapsing. "This is awesome!"
"Even better than strippers!" Casey yells.
Donnie takes a few seconds to wipe off his naginata and scan the battlefield. Raph and Casey are — somewhat adorably, as strange as that is to admit — fighting back to back, Mikey is pinballing through the chapel and making his own sound effects, and Leo is fighting with the savage grace that's saved their family, time and again. Splinter is beating the absolute snot out of two Kraang with his walking stick, and April's father, whom Donnie met the same day he met April and then never saw again, is herding the noncombatants toward the relative safety of the vestibule.
Everyone's got a place and a purpose. Everyone's doing their part.
And April, her wedding dress covered in burn marks and bloodstains, looks up as she reloads, and blows Donnie a kiss. Then, almost in the same motion, she pistol-whips a robot-less Kraang, and stomps it into jelly under her delicate little spike heel.
I love you, Donnie thinks, his heart not just skipping a beat but stopping completely.
Clean-up is going to be total hell, but as the groom — and additionally, as one of the heroes — Donnie exempts himself completely. He checks in on his brothers, and on Splinter, all of whom have some surface burns and bruises but nothing worth bragging about, and then he turns to search the chapel for April.
His beautiful, blushing, avenging-angel bride.
She's kneeling next to her father, who looks fairly shaken but not mentally broken, rubbing his back and murmuring to him while Casey watches over them both. The guests have all been cleared out of the chapel, the police have cordoned off the surrounding block — which are excellent, necessary security measures, but Donnie's pretty sure that means the wedding's off.
He's disappointed for all of thirty seconds, right up until April stands up, dusts off her dress, and picks her way through the craters and corpses to reach him.
"So," she says, tugging off her veil and tossing it aside. Her voice is scratched and burned-out, just like Donnie's. Smoke grenades will have that effect. "Fun morning."
"Not for the Kraang."
"Yeah, not really concerned about them." April folds her arms and gives him a rueful half-smile. "The minister's got a concussion. He'll be fine by the time they reschedule, but…" She licks her lips. "But I was kind of looking forward to being married, you know?"
Oh, he does, he does. "Well," he says, gesturing to the chapel. "No one's actually cancelled the ceremony yet. So, as far as I'm concerned, we're still on."
April stares at him without blinking. Then she bursts out laughing, sliding a little more into his personal space. Under the smell of smoke, she smells like apples. Donnie will never smell them again without thinking of her, warm and golden and deadly. "It won't be official," she says. "Without someone to…officiate."
Donnie takes both her hands in his. "We just wiped out a Kraang platoon together," he says. "That's official enough for me."
"Me too." April swallows, and gives him a sly, bright look through her lashes. "Kiss the bride, Donnie."
He does. Her lips are warm but chapped, and that's all he has time to notice before she pulls away. His heart skips — just skips — and his cheeks heat, and he searches for something appropriate to say — maybe I now pronounce us badass and badass! — but April interrupts it all by grabbing his plastron and dragging him down into another kiss.
A kiss that is just as hot and awkward as their first kiss was chaste, and she even tastes like apples, sweet and bright and tart. April kisses him like she's drowning, or on fire, like it's the last thing she'll ever get to do, and Donnie lets himself be carried away.
He runs out of breath at some point, and so does April, and they both fall back, gasping. Donnie can't even open his eyes at first, because there are kisses, and then there are kisses, and then there's whatever just happened between him and April, which probably just caused a supernova or two. He feels April clinging to him, feels the firm muscles in her back shift under his hands, and when he finally opens his eyes, she's just inches away.
"Wow," she breathes. "That was…"
"Really lame!" Raph and Casey yell together.
"Amazing," Donnie says, without even glancing their way.
"Yeah." April inhales, deep and greedy, and leans in for another kiss — just as another blast crumbles the chapel's last remaining wall, and a fresh platoon of Kraang swarm inside.
Donnie looks down at April, who's already grinning. "Ready, wife?" he asks, pulling his bo from its holster.
"Ready, husband," April replies, and takes aim.
And so they lived loudly, violently — but most importantly, happily — ever after.