Author's Note: Spoilers for Season 2
Waiting for April
If Donatello is an honest turtle (and he is generally...little white lies are sanctioned to prevent freak outs and end of the day scenarios, at least until he knows they're warranted) he knows he's got no chance. It's the truths that beat closest to the overlarge (for a turtle) heart that make them hard to turn and face; like the splinter you resist getting out of your finger because somehow you know; bent against all reasoning, that it will hurt that much more getting it out. It's the anticipation of pain that gets you in the end. It's like when they were younger (since, like much in his life, it's all a group effort) and Raph would make a fist to make him flinch and then punch him twice for doing so. Never hard. Well-never cruelly hard, since the day Raph pulls a punch is the day the earth stops spinning on its twenty-three degree axis- but just hard enough so that it hurts. Anticipation and consequence. That's the way it goes.
The way of the ninja is to avoid that consequence as long as you can, as Master Splinter said, making a point of making a lesson as he does nine times out of ten. To learn all the possible consequences, but know you cannot know all of them. To think strategically, but learn to roll with the punches, no matter how painful, to prevent the one you can't roll from. Donatello has never gotten it. He deals in facts which are rarely both but either one or the other, cemented into moldy textbooks and cracked computer screens.
And yet, maybe in a way he does get it? Because it's the anticipation that kills him. The girl (the human girl, vulnerable from front and back without a bony shell to block incoming shuriken, knives or anything else sharp and pointy. Arms thin. Speed negligible But smart. So smart. Smarter than anyone he's ever met, and agile, graceful, like peeking in at the dawn from below the grate of a storm drain. And why can't he ever be this poetic in person?) the girl, April, she has no interest in him. He's there for her, of course he is. They are mentally compatible and-even if he did mutate her father, it certainly wasn't on purpose and he'd saved the guy for her. But she has more affection for that Casey kid than she'll ever have for him- yet he hasn't given up trying yet. She hasn't said yes, but also she hasn't said no and that's important.
So right now he exists, trapped between the yes and the no like two halves of a turtle shell, protected and rejected (because turtle shells shouldn't be that large. Turtles shouldn't walk or talk or skateboard across city roofs or eat pizza.) until the answer finally comes. Even though he knows what it must be, he doesn't know what it is, so he'll keep hoping and trying until the splinter of doubt is yanked free. (Clarity can be sharp, but also painful) And after that- well who knows.
Take everything in its time, Master Splinter has said. But always think three steps ahead.
And he thinks he gets it. Almost. But right now there is a ooze antidote to tinker with and, maybe tomorrow a world to save. So he'll tuck thoughts of April away for another time and get back to work. Even then, the heart bordered picture of them sits at his elbow, visible just in the corner of his eye- and he tries not to think about the warped frame and splintered glass.