A/N: This one-shot picks up on a bunch of SAINW headcanon developed with Flynne and SkitsMix, in which Shadow is Casey and April's biological daughter. Also assumed to take place after Raph and Leo go their own way, although that will become obvious :)
Family Portrait
Nobody knew for sure how Shadow had acquired the camera.
The teen's casual fascination with photography had begun years before, sprouting from the discovery of a dust-choked 1960s Polaroid Swinger amongst the relics from April's antique shop. As a little girl, she would totter about with the brick of a device in her tiny hands and a golden rule that nobody should ever be prepared for their picture to be taken before the flash blinded everyone in a ten mile radius.
But the complaints battering April's ears at various hours of the day were not about that camera. The Swinger sat collecting dust on a shelf in her daughter's digs; roll film was hard to come by these days, and - reluctantly - a younger Shadow had decided to save its remaining ammunition for 'special occasions'.
The stealth flash-photography crime rate had receded to an all-time low . . . and then a sentry had collared her en route to the command centre yesterday, with a tirade about "gross invasions of privacy".
Now the long dark of a ventilation shaft loomed beyond April's feet, punctured by the beam of the pocket flashlight she gripped between her teeth. Entering feet-first was a pain, but it had been the easiest way to close the grille behind her and cover her tracks. She didn't know the duct well, either; shuffling along on elbows and butt was marginally safer, at least in case of any sudden slopes or vertical drops.
But she had reason to believe it was safe enough. Reason to believe, from the dirt and grime frequently found caked on the back of a certain someone's pants, that she was following unspoken protocol. April plucked the flashlight from her mouth and held it for a second in silence, muting her breaths. Sound was a confusing distortion within the shaft, but in the near distance she could hear a repetitive tapping sound. Occasionally, a few clicks.
Elbows down, and with the patience of a practised saboteur, April began her rhythmic push through the shaft. It wasn't exactly roomy, and she hadn't gone very far before a tight corner reflected the flashlight beam back at her in a blinding burst. It would be difficult to navigate soundlessly. She rotated carefully onto her side, pressing her back against the inner wall of the bend.
Between the tapping, an oblivious devilish giggle echoed its way around the corner, caught up in its own amusement. April switched off the flashlight and curved herself around the bend, but the push she had to give herself made the shaft metal wobble noisily under her weight.
The tapping stopped instantly. Past this corner, the shaft opened up about six feet ahead. There was shadowy movement in the gap, and then another flashlight beam lanced across April's tensed figure.
"Who's down there?" A pause. Then, furtively: " . . . What's the password?"
April mulled this over. "Little girls should be seen more and complaints about her heard less?"
A head of dark hair thrust itself petulantly in view at the opening. "Mooooooooom! What the shell are you doing here?! How did you-"
"You thought I never knew where this place was?" April laughed, buoyantly propelling herself the rest of the way down the vent. "Oh, sweetie. I track Foot troop movements over breakfast. Though, I'll admit, you are more of a challenge."
Shadow harrumphed and disappeared from the opening, allowing April to emerge fully into the lit space.
It was a junction, three times wider than the shaft itself and with an extra foot of ceiling height overhead. Sluggish old fans thumped along one wall, stirring up a sad little breeze and flapping at the tattered corners of the heavy blankets that had been spread around the floor. There was a rumpled sleeping bag wedged against one wall littered with a menagerie of books, writing implements, a one-eyed teddy bear that had seen better days and earbuds tangled around a portable music player. Crumbs crunched under April's hands as she slid her way in; evidence of illicit snack hoarding, no doubt.
In short, it was all the usual debris of a teenager's bedroom thrown into a ventilation shaft. April's daughter was sprawled on her belly in the middle of it all, caught between the warring light of a portable halogen lamp and the flickering glare of her laptop and doing a solid job of obstinately pretending her maternal invader didn't exist. The ceiling was still too low for a grown adult to sit up straight, so April adopted a casual stretch on her side with her cheek propped up in her hand and watched Shadow for a minute, wearing a fond smile.
"We had treehouses in my day."
"That was a long time ago," Shadow said, in the matter-of-fact manner of someone commenting on the building of the pyramids, and after a thoughtful moment added: "Besides, you kinda need trees for that."
"You have a point - but I'll have you know it wasn't that long ago." April flattened, tucking her hands leisurely behind her head. "So this is where you sneak off to all the time. Cosy."
"Yeah." Shadow's tone was one of disappointment. "Too cosy now. Soon I'll have to find someplace bigger."
"You do have your dad's height, that's for sure." April's eyes began to wander the details of Shadow's workspace. Besides a scrapbook with the edges and corners of what she assumed were polaroid pictures poking out between the pages, the youth was focused almost entirely on her battered laptop - and there it was, plugged into the machine by a threadbare cable. The cause of current civil unrest in the base, and contributor to at least ten percent of cases of temporary rebel blindness by overzealous flash usage.
"So, 'fess up," she smiled. "Where'd you get the digital camera? Was it Mike?"
The teenager didn't even look up. "I'll never tell, no matter how much you torture me. I'll take it to the grave."
"Uh huh. It was Mike."
Shadow's grin flashed in the unevenly-lit gloom. "Actually . . . Uncle Raph sent me the camera. It was broken, though. Mike helped me find some things to fix it. I've been testing it and it works great!"
"I know it does," April groaned. "I've heard all the complaints. Cole in particular is feeling harassed. 'Stalked' was the word he used, actually."
"But he has such a photogenic butt, Mom." At her mother's warning glare, Shadow rolled her eyes and smirked. "I'm kidding. He does have a really expressive face, though." She spun the laptop around, putting the screen in front of April. The editing software framed a photo of the young resistance soldier sagging at the foot of a dorm bed, his combat fatigues dirty and scuffed and a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his mouth. The features of his face were drawn up in a determined, faraway stare.
"Also, he probably doesn't want you to find out he's been smoking in the barracks again, so. There's that," Shadow added helpfully.
"Noted." His face was expressive; April found herself caught up in the intensity of Cole's blue-eyed stare, and wondering exactly how bad his day had been on a scale of awful to hell-on-earth. "But I think I'll let him off this time. The base is full of jumpy soldiers with an itchy trigger finger, Shadow. I know you don't mean any harm, but -" She began to turn the laptop around, but Shadow's hand darted out and pushed it back toward her.
"It's not what you think," her daughter said patiently. "Look at the others."
April minimised the editing software, exposing a folder of dozens of images beneath the current file. Curiously, she began to cycle through the pictures, feeling Shadow's keen eyes watching for her reaction.
She was expecting a sequence of prank shots, perhaps silly staged selfies with Mike or blurry stills as her impish daughter made a quick retreat from her latest victim. Instead, that hard and brooding photo of Cole was followed by a trio of sentries half-heartedly playing cards on watch, bathed in radiant lamplight. Then a group of medics in the infirmary sitting area, chatting and laughing over a five-minute lunch break, and an animated Michelangelo spinning some tale that had a table of soldiers in the mess grinning and enraptured . A ragtag gang of kids waved makeshift weapons around in the balefully-lit corridors a frame later, acting out another mission, while grease-slick engineers supped coffee and wrestled with the guts of a truck in the vehicle bay of the next shot.
Then there was a rebel on a stool in the infirmary, head bowed as she clutched the hand of a still figure occupying the bed.
It was everyday life in the base. April shuffled on through, compelled by each careful, thoughtful photo. When the war was over - assuming they won, and April always assumed they would, someday - documents like this would be the Anne Frank's diary of their time. The photos would be hosted in museums, or presented in documentaries, narrated over by elderly survivors recounting the good and the bad of these hellish days.
When she reached the end, she met her daughter's gaze over the rim of the laptop.
"It's not just for me," Shadow said earnestly. "What do you think?"
"I think you could be a professional war photographer," April replied, a little sadly. "Just . . . if people are having a hard time, don't test their patience too much, hm? Maybe explain what you're doing."
Shadow sighed mildly. "All right."
"I bet if they saw your work, they wouldn't mind. Too bad we don't really have the resources to spare to print some of these . . ." She turned the laptop back to Shadow, and reached for her daughter's messy scrapbook instead. "There's something about holding a real photo, you know?"
Shadow stared at April's hands on the thick tome and took in a short breath, the tip of her tongue curling hesitantly against her upper lip. Whatever objection had been rising in her settled back down too quickly for April to figure it out, however; her daughter turned all attention back to her screen.
"But that's the great thing about a digital camera! I can keep 'em forever - well, as long as I've got a hard drive to store 'em on."
Keep 'em forever. April's mind caught on the phrase. Some of the people in Shadow's photographs could be dead as soon as tomorrow.
An ache throbbed in deep in her chest. "I wish you'd talk to me more, kiddo."
"'Bout what?"
"Photographs don't leave, do they?"
Shadow frowned. She said nothing.
April opened the book. The early scrapbook pages were a shot through the heart - polaroid snaps of happier times pasted haphazardly onto the thick paper by small, enthusiastic hands. A lot of group photos and smiling faces. Master Splinter. A whole bunch of Casey. Shadow had retired the camera from active use before he had left them, and there was no sudden, heartbreaking disappearance of him from the pages as there was with Splinter - but instead, the photos themselves began to change as the war had swallowed up their lives.
It was the group photographs, mostly. They just . . . stopped.
April could almost read the photographer's frustration in the staggered solo shots - a posing Mike here, a rare and opportunistic snap of Leo there. Some nice captures of Raph and Casey in the vehicle bay, but never with his brothers. Everything felt . . . disconnected. And then, nothing. The scrapbook wasn't full, and April faced a slew of empty pages.
"Last page."
Shadow's curt instruction made her pause in the process of closing the book. April traced her fingers to the back cover, opening it in reverse - and blinked. Here, teen Shadow stood between a one-eyed Raphael and Michelangelo, who were in touching distance of Leo and Master Splinter, and April found herself reunited with Casey. It had taken a pair of scissors, a bunch of spare photographs and a hell of a lot of glue, but Shadow had cobbled together a family portrait.
She could feel her daughter's eyes on her as she gazed over the collage.
"Shadow."
"What?"
"I'm not going anywhere, okay?"
"No, Mom." April hadn't been expecting the flash of irritation in her voice. Shadow twisted around to glare at her mother, her brow furrowed. "You don't want to go anywhere, and you don't want me to think you might go anywhere, but you can't make that promise to me. You don't know what will happen."
Then the frustration was gone, leaving on a short sigh. Shadow turned back to the laptop screen with a shrug. "Dad died. You could die, or Angel, or Mike. I get it, it's okay. I know you'll try not to. It won't be your fault. It's just how it is."
It was the tone of voice that hurt the most. There was nothing in it - no rage, no grief, no confusion. Just . . . grim acceptance of the odds they faced, and the consequences of a mis-step. But April stared down at the patchwork family portrait and knew there was a whole nest of thorns lurking beneath that apathy.
"It may be how it is, but it's okay not to like it. You're allowed to question, to talk about -"
"About Dad?" Shadow planted her cheek against an exasperated fist. "Mom. We're at war. I know what that means. I know why people I care about have to fight, and I know why sometimes they have to die. I just don't -"
Shadow bit the sentence in half. April saw her jaw tighten in the light of the laptop monitor, muscles bunching around the unspoken words.
"You don't what?" she coaxed softly.
The girl ground her teeth in frustration. " . . . I don't understand why people leave when they're not dead yet."
Ah. April bowed her head in understanding. "Hard to figure, isn't it?"
But Shadow didn't really need the prompt; for years, she had walled up her frustration and hurt behind hopeful letters to her absent uncles, behind quick defence of them from any outside criticism, behind imaginative and desperate stories about what kind of war victories they must be achieving with their time away, because it was absolutely intolerable to think they weren't doing something worth abandoning their family over. Now the walls split open, and April watched the feelings burst out through the cracks.
"They . . . They're jerks, Mom! For so long I told myself they were just busy fighting the war, doing important work, being heroes, and . . ." Shadow relented only briefly with a grimace of guilt. "And they are heroes, I know that, but so is Uncle Mike and he didn't leave us. Raph and Leo . . . they never come home and they do it on purpose. Dad's gone forever, but they could come back any time they wanted and they don't! Their family is right here, and I don't get it, Mom." Anger abated to pain, and her cobalt eyes - Casey's beautiful eyes - crinkled at the edges. "Did we do something wrong?"
April rarely thought ill of the wayward turtles, but if she'd had Leo and Raph in front of her right then she would have knocked their heads together for causing the distress on her daughter's face.
"No." Her answer was firm. "They did. And they know it, too. They're both too hurt and too proud and too ashamed all at once, so they avoid trying to make amends. Someday they'll figure it out and come home, though - I know it."
Shadow smiled, the expression far too cynical and jaded to belong on the face of a fourteen-year-old. "Do you 'know' that the same the way you 'know' you're not going anywhere?"
From her startled blink, she wasn't expecting her mother's reply to be a fond chuckle. "Oh, your Uncle Don would love you. All logic and reason! We're only human, Shadow; we can't know everything for sure. So we fill the gaps with -"
"Assumption?"
"- Belief. Hope. I have to believe that this family isn't permanently broken. It can be glued back together." April pushed the open scrapbook back toward Shadow, her hand lingering on that desperately hopeful collage. "I'm not going to tell you how to feel about them, honey. You're allowed to be angry, or confused, or upset. It's hard. It hurts that they feel like they can't be here with the people who love them. It would be so easy to take it personally, wouldn't it? To stop trying?"
Though she didn't answer, Shadow's expression was one of mournful reflection, focused on the scrapbook she'd taken in her hands. After a second, April continued: "But in my heart, I know your uncles and I believe in them, and I think that, deep down, you do too. Otherwise you would have given up on them a long time ago."
Shadow folded her arms over the open book and buried her face in them, grating out a flustered teenage groan. "Giving up on them would make it way too easy for them not to come back," she said, turning her head to pout at her mother. "I'm not giving them the luxury."
April's smile was warm. "That's my girl."