Set after The War for Dimension X and written for Apritello Day 2016 over on tumblr :D With some headcanons about April's powers and the Soul Star, too.
With thanks to the lovely theherocomplex for her beta-work, to kleptotello for organising Apritello Day 2016, and to everyone who supports these two nerds.
Happy Apritello Day! May there be so many more :D
twilight galaxy
"Donatello! Now you listen to me, young man, you turn that shuttle around right now or when I override whatever it is you've done to those security protocols you will be in big. Trouble. I mean it, you little— bloop!—"
"Uhhh, what's that, Professor?" Donnie asked, cupping his ear and leaning close to the speaker. "Sorry, you're breaking up, can't hear you! We'll be back in a few hours!"
"This is a digital connection. It can't break up."
From where she was sitting, April watched Donnie out of the corner of her eye as he blinked, caught. "Uh— kssshshshhhkkshhhhk— think it's the atmosphshhhskskksh— we'll be back for dinner— kksssssshk—okaybyeprofessor!"
He thumbed a button on the shuttle's main control pad, and the link went silent. Something bleeped, and April looked up from her magazine (the articles in RoboHealth were surprisingly well-written, even if half of them were in binary) to where two of the screens were displaying INCOMING CALL. "Are you going to get that?" she asked sharply, and tried not to wince when Donnie flinched at her tone.
Technically, this was just a fun little trip off-ship. The fact that they had snuck out, stolen the transport shuttle, and only been caught when they were about to hit atmo on a nearby planet was just that — a fact.
And then there was the fact that Donnie had, somehow, in the weeks they'd been in space, learned enough programming and code to steal a space shuttlefrom someone who was literally part-robot—
— and he'd done it all for her.
After they'd gotten back from Dimension X, Mikey spent most of his time making constant kissy-faces at Raph, and Leo spent most of his time looking intensely concerned at how Raph was practically floating and very gently touching his snout, and Donnie had followed them back on board with his long arms folded behind his head, looking almost smug about whatever it was that had just gone down. They had all buzzed with so much excitement, like they'd all had just the best time while April had a ringing migraine from Casey's campaign to literally stamp his displeasure into every bulkhead on the ship (he'd slammed CJ into the walls of the armoury), and the niggling irritation that she wasn't strong enough to go out on a mission, oh no, but she was sure as hell strong enough to sit around on a ship that an entire race of killer dinosaurs knew by sight, and she and Casey were totally enough on their own to fend them off if they decided to come for the black hole device.
The turtles are four pieces of one. They always have been. April got that, she understood that. And it was okay if they wanted to hang out together, without her, and without Casey. She got that too.
They didn't need to make excuses when they didn't want her around.
When the Professor debriefed them, April found herself holding Casey down and ignoring his sulk over Mona Lisa and metal dragons, and biting the inside of her mouth when the turtles told her about Dimension X, and the newly-learned history of the Kraang — what she supposed was also her history as well, and she thought she handled it pretty well.
Then Mikey jumped in with "ooh ooh! And April, guess what! You thought Irma was Kraang Sub-Prime, BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE" and told her about how her best friend was just another monster content to let the world be torn apart because: humans, and that was the point she had had enough.
"Great," she snapped, letting Casey go and turning on her heel. When she walked to the door, she made sure that her steps were sharp, and precise, and not stamping. "Glad you all had fun."
Raph snapped out of his loved-up daze long enough to say, "what's her problem?"
April managed to keep her fists balled tight instead of flipping him off with both hands held high as she left the bridge, and headed for her room.
But she couldn't sleep, too keyed up from the energy she hadn't burned off from the hard day of sitting around, waiting for a fight that would never come. When she'd had enough of pacing, she lay on her bunk instead, alternating between glaring at the wall and staring at her phone, reading through text messages her dad had sent two months in the future, and five months in the past.
Where are you? x
Your report card is here. Chinese for dinner?
Be safe, April.
The Professor told everybody over the comms that they had to stop the ship for the night — something about a meteor storm — but April had ignored it, as well as the polite, but firm, invitation that perhaps April might like to join them all for dinner. Distantly, April knew that she was sulking — and that it was justified, and that in the morning Donnie would fuss and Leo would say something acerbic and smart-assed and smug, but right now she wanted to sulk; maybe they'd feel guilty for ditching her, maybe they'd realise that maybe next time, she'd be useful.
The Soul Star pulsed once where she'd left it in her jumpsuit pocket, a warm, inviting thrum of power.
She was useful.
Some time later, her door-chime burbled. She cast her mind out, pushing past her own sleepy annoyance to see what they wanted and if it was worth just ignoring, and groaning when what she felt was warm, and timid, and so excited.
"Donnie, it's three am," she grumped, loud enough for him to hear, and rolled over, smashing her face into her pillow. "Go to sleep!"
Instead of going away, Donnie very gently tapped a knuckle four times against her door. "April?" he whispered. "April? It's me. Donnie. Are you awake? Can— can we talk?"
He was not going to go away, April realised, when she heard him very quietly shuffle his feet, and clear his throat. "Ugggggh," she grumped, kicking off her bunk and stomping over to the door, punching the lock button. The spaceship doors were swooshy Space Heroes-style sliding doors, so instead of slamming it open the way she would have done back on Earth, April prepared her best shitlook to greet whatever the hell Donnie wanted at three in the morning.
"This better be good, Donnie—" she began, and then stopped, looking up (and up) into a big green face full of sheer, gleeful excitement, all suited up and ready to go.
Donnie glanced down at her, clearly pleased that she was still wearing her jumpsuit, and then looked back at her face. He bounced on his toes. "C'mon," he said, and offered his hand. "I have the best idea."
Donnie glanced at the INCOMING CALL monitor again, and shot her a sly grin as he flicked a switch. Instead of Professor Honeycutt, and his Punishment Face, and Disappointed Voice, a slow guitar riff poured out of the speakers:
"Ground control to Major Tom, ground control to Major Tom…"
Donnie, at least, she couldn't stay mad at.
But his choice of music was completely wrong. "NO." April slapped the pause button on the touchscreen nearest to her, dragging up Donnie's AWESOME SPACE HIJACK playlist and swallowing down the fifty questions that specific title brought up. "If we're stealing a spaceship," she said instead, "we're doing it to the right songs."
A man's voice poured out of the speakers. Donnie waggled his brows at her: "On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the turtle with the red roses?" he said.
"Will he offer me his mouth?" April replied, and when Donnie's cheeks and throat flushed as he said "yes", she smiled.
"Are you sure this is the right place?" April asked, when he opened up the shuttle. Her nose wrinkled as she looked around at the grey-grassed clearing, and Donnie fought back his immediate rush of anxiety — this was cool, this was a good idea, this would be totally worth it! — and offered her a grin instead.
"Yup. We park here, take a little walk, see the sights… Oh!" He tapped a finger against the dome of her spacesuit helmet. "And the atmosphere is comparable to Earth — so you don't need this." He took in a deep breath himself to demonstrate. "See? A hundred percent Earthling-friendly."
"It smells like old pennies." April tossed her helmet back into the shuttle. Donnie tried not to let his heart sink a little — she wasn't wrong, but there were better things about this planet than the smell that she hadn't seen yet. He tried to convince himself that this was just because April had been in a bad mood. Maybe she was a little tired, too, but this would cheer her up!
Something squidged up against his space-boots as he jumped down from the shuttle. He forced down the face he wanted to pull (he had lived in the sewers — he had definitely stepped in worse), and offered her a hand. Her small fingers curled around the side of his hand as he helped her down; the planet made her lighter than she was on Earth, and on the ship, but her grip was the same. She trusted him — he knew that much. She knew he wouldn't let her fall. And maybe—
He swallowed that down before it had a chance to become anything more than a half-thought. April was his friend. And this was just a trip between friends, same as every other time they hung out. Nothing more, nothing less. Couldn't a guy do something nice for his best friend when she'd had a bad day?
He stretched out his arms once she let go, wincing when his shoulder-pads bit into his biceps. "Well, we've got pretty much the whole day here — are you hungry?"
April checked her communicator. "Donnie, it's five thirty," she groaned.
"Not here," he replied brightly, waving up to where the planet's sun was burning in a teal sky. "This planet has a shorter rotation than Earth, so it's early afternoon. So, uh. Brunch?" He nodded towards the horizon, where little curls of orange smoke were rising above the treeline. "There's a village about a mile's walk away. We can see if they have pizza!"
"You have a problem. You all have a problem."
"Yeah, well, having seen some of the space worms around this galaxy, I'm not putting any of those in my mouth," Donnie shot back, then laughed when April pulled a truly disgusted face. He tapped something on his own communicator; the shuttle shimmered, then vanished with a low thrumming sound as the cloaking device activated, revealing only the pale, bare trees behind it.
"You're sure that's working?"
"Yup. I just pretend it doesn't sometimes to make Raph sweat. Donnie are you sure this is going to work Donnie are you trying to get us killed, well gee Raph, I dunno, what's a little ventilation between brothers anyway?" He rolled his eyes. "Like, yeah, that's exactly my plan, good job finding me out, it's not like I spent the last how long playing checkers with Mikey instead of doing anything useful."
"In fairness," April began, and Donnie pouted.
"That was one time," he replied. "Besides, it's Raph. He always needs to have something to complain about. The day he doesn't is the day we know he's a Pod Turtle." Then he frowned as a memory nagged at him — of Raph, with flat green eyes, and a croaking voice, and the smallest, angriest Kraang they had ever seen. "Actually," he said thoughtfully, "even when he was a Pod Turtle, he was complaining. Anyway. It'll be fine! What's the worst—"
"Stop talking." April reached up, her hand covering his mouth, and she scowled at him from under her hair. "You just stole a spaceship, flew us to some weird new planet, and ticked off the Professor — so help me, Donnie, if you jinx this—"
Beneath her fingers, he gave the most innocent smile he could, and held up his hands in surrender until April, satisfied, pulled back. He pressed his mouth together; he could feel the imprints of her fingers against his lips, and his heart beating unsteadily, the way it always did, and the way he had learned to just get on with. When a few seconds passed between them, and the silence was on the verge of getting weird, he turned, nodding towards the village behind the trees. "So," He dropped into a sweeping bow. "Would the Lady April like to take a turn around the gardens?" he asked, and ignored how his heart pounded against his plastron when she tucked her gloved hand into his elbow.
The nearby village was actually closer to a market, with houses just happening to be there, and here things smelled less like pennies and more like grilled fish, with herbs and spices and charcoal. Donnie stayed at April's side for the most part, but eventually, something shiny caught his magpie attention and he drifted over to a stall full of old spaceship parts. April followed her nose to a stall staffed by a soft-looking, four-armed old lady whipping something that looked like cotton candy out of what looked like purple, meaty gravy. Something gnawed at her stomach, reminding her of the dinner that she hadn't eaten last night, and the breakfast she hadn't eaten this morning — and the old lady had just handed April a big lilac cloud, with a bright green feather stuck in as decoration, when Donnie hustled up behind her, looking pale.
"So, uh, apparently I look like food?" he said, hastily paying for April's meat-candy and leading her firmly away. "The marshland here is apparently a great source of fish and, uh." He nodded, a little nervously, towards a cheerful, blinking sign that depicted a turtle-like creature holding a spoon as it merrily dug into its own belly and ate itself.
"What's the worst that could happen?" April echoed, shooting him a wry look before she glanced around at the marketgoers. She hadn't sensed any malintent, but she knew all too well how quickly that could change. "Should we head back to the ship?"
Donnie snorted. "No. I'm just going to go vegan for today. And, uh." He glanced at her lunch. "Probably forever."
"It's not turtle," April said, pulling the feather out and squinting at it. "I think it's a bird?"
"But golly, aren't vegetables nutritious."
"Mm," April said, side-eying him as she tore off a piece of her meat-cotton and stuck it thoughtfully into her mouth. It tasted like greasy chicken, but she figured that telling Donnie that wouldn't help. "You're probably safe. There's not enough meat on you anyway," she added instead. "You're too skinny for anything except soup."
"Wow. Thank you so much."
April smiled sweetly, and Donnie shifted. April caught the slight squirm in his stomach, the pulse of are you really looking at me? like that? under excuse me I'm svelte indignance. She pushed it aside, letting her attention be caught instead by a small woven bag at his elbow. "Did you actually buy something techy? Where did you even get the money for that? Did you pay money for it?"
"A ninja never tells," Donnie said evasively, and April stared at him until he caved. "I paid for mostof it."
"The Professor's going to ground you."
"He can try."
"Yeah. My money's on the robot who knows where you sleep. And you'll get Leo lecturing you."
Donnie rolled his eyes, with a what else is new? expression on his face as he dug into the bag, and April found herself feeling relieved that the moment had passed — and then wondering why. It wasn't the first time Donnie had tried to preen about his appearance and gotten shot down for it, if not by April, then by (usually) Raph, or Casey. It wasn't the first time that April had noticed that Donnie and his brothers were built; even when they had been fifteen, there had been barely any puppy-fat on them aside from what was left on Mikey's cheeks. And sometimes, when they were training—
She shook her head.
Donnie always got teased for being the skinny one; it shouldn't matter if April decided to tease him about it too.
"—technically this is for Casey but if I can get the ship's replicators to clone it, we'll have more efficient explosives—"
"You bought all of this from one stall?" April asked, tuning back in, and did not mention that Donnie thought that more explosives was an appropriate souvenir for Casey Jones.
"Hey, if I was allowed in a Goodwill, I would fix America. Besides, I know my brothers. Their forgiveness is easily bought."
"Whatever, you goof." She tore off another piece of meat-candy. "Did you even buy anything for yourself?"
"No, but, uh—" He shifted, and his bright enthusiasm clouded over a little, insecure and nervous. "It's not much, but—" He tugged out a little resin locket from the bottom of the bag. It was tarnished, and some of the links in the chain were dented and poked up from where he had coiled it into his hand, but when he held it out, wearing that timid, hopeful smile that she'd tried to forget—
She shoved the piece of cotton into her mouth, focusing on the way it dissolved on her tongue instead of the way Donnie's face fell.
"I can clean this up back on the ship," Donnie explained, and he reminded April of the people who tried to sell something on the street when they knew she'd already decided no. "and it's just big enough to fit the Soul Star fragment you have, so you don't have to keep it in your pocket all the time. If— if you want…?"
It would be useful. The Soul Star in her pocket needed to be closer to her, she thought. Next to her heart, for example. It was practical. It was necessary.
She caught Donnie's fingers before he closed them around the little locket, keeping them open so that the locket could glimmer in the daylight. "Thank you," she said. "That's an awesome idea."
Donnie lit up. Then he spoiled it by laughing, an awkward ugly burst from his throat. "If you want to see another awesome idea, follow me!" he said, his hand catching her elbow and pulling her towards the woods.
Donnie led her to a small clearing. It was different from the plain one they'd parked the shuttle in: no grass, just wet marsh peppered with squishy, squeaking blue moss, and tall grey trees that drooped with thick, transparent film that glittered in the late-afternoon sunlight.
One tree was growing on a wide, flat rock that floated lazily in the air.
"Huh," April said.
"Pretty cool, right?" Donnie eased past her, then pushed a rock the size of his shell, the muscles in his arms bunching until the rock gave way and slowly bobbed its way across the clearing. "There's something about the magnetic force of this planet that reacts with the metal content of these rocks and— ta-daaaaa." He waggled his hands. "These babies showed up on the scanner when I looked after dinner."
"You just scan planets?"
"Yes?" Donnie looked at her from over another rock. "It's my downtime. What did you think I did? Raph and Casey keep blocking off the holodeck for some weird role-play they found, and if he can't beam down and form an away team, Leo's not interested. Besides! Do you know how many people have gotten to see the types of planets and— and moons we have?" He laughed once, his hands bunching up by his face. "Zero. Zip, nada! Just us— well, me, mostly, but still! You know, sometimes I think it was a good thing that Dregg put a bounty on our heads, because the amount of species there are just trying to kill us — this type of knowledge could change science! I mean, today you ate an alien, April! You are literally digesting something that could change the face of science and biology as we know it!"
April had a brief second of horror in which she expected the next words out of Donnie's mouth to be ooh hey can I get a sample of that, but they were not.
"So," she said instead of a comment about how Donnie should call NASA; of course Donnie should, but he never could. "I mean, it's neat and all, but…why did you wanna show me this?"
"Well," Donnie said, puttering about and inspecting a football-sized floating rock. "You didn't get to come with us to Dimension X, and the holodeck is pretty cool but…"
He trailed off, eyeing the rock again before pulling off his bo to run a scan on it.
"But?" April prompted. Then, when he didn't reply, "Donnie?"
"Huh? Oh!" He grinned broadly, twirling his space-bo once, and then he swung it at the rock. There was a thick metal clank—
Donnie was gone—
—and there was a giant space rock heading towards her face. "Donnie!" April yelped, and dove out of the way. She landed on her hands, and twisted it quickly into a flip. Her boots sank into the swampy moss with a squelch, and she'd barely regained her balance before another came spinning, this time lazily, towards her.
She pulled out her blaster and shot it. "Donnie!" she snapped, glaring between the slowly-bobbing fragments of space-rock, but Donnie was nowhere to be seen. "What the hell, Donatello?"
"Ooh, Donatello," Donnie mimicked, from somewhere behind her, in the heavy-branched trees. It was his little shit voice, the one for when he was trying to wind up Raph or Leo. "Didn't you say last week you were getting better at being a kunoichi?" Donnie asked, from somewhere in the trees. "So come on, April. Prove it. Think of it like a Ninja Field Trip!"
An hour later, April wanted to kill him.
"I will drag you back to that marketplace and I will scoop you out myself," she gasped, and Donnie cackled from where he was sitting on top of a big, floating boulder. The rock was covered in scorch marks, and Donnie had deliberately decided to make himself king of the castle once they had both realised that something in the way the rock had formed had meant that it was taking more than just a couple of shots with April's blaster to trash it. "Get down here!"
"Nope." Donnie stretched his arms up above his head. "You're just gonna have to make me."
He started humming Wrecking Ball.
"Oh my god." She shook her blaster out, but the small screen on top still blinked with charges remaining: 4. Recovery time: 5 minutes. Donnie had figured out how to press himself low enough to the boulder he was floating on so that he could avoid her shots, and the rock itself just swayed gently each time she hit it.
"Come on, April," Donnie sing-songed, and when she squinted up he was lounging around, fanning himself with a big green hand. "Remember, the true ninja uses all her weapons."
"Oh, I'm gonna use my weapons alright," April muttered to herself. She was going to scalp him with her tessen, and shoot him with her blaster, and then she was going to hurt him.
"I CAME IN LIKE A WREEEEEEEEEECKING BAAAAAAAAALL"
"I HATE THAT SONG!" April yelled, firing off a shot. It missed, and instead clonked into a floating rock a few feet away. Lazily, it swung back, and then just as lazily, went floating slowly into Donnie's boulder. A loud crack echoed around the clearing, and even from the ground, April could see the smile drop from Donnie's face.
She'd figured it out.
"April, now, let's be reasonable," Donnie said, as she paced around, looking for the best rocks to shoot, and remembering how Donnie had patiently, earnestly tutored her all the way to that A in Geometry, and the A- in Physics, and how he had been so proud of her for dragging her failing Trigonometry grade all the way up to a B, and oh he was going to regret that. "April? My sweet chinchilla? Most precious spring-time flower?"
April ignored him, casting out with her mind and latching onto Donnie as she explored the clearing more — when she passed a small grouping of rocks, and a tiny note of terror coloured Donnie's thoughts, she knew that she had him.
"Littlest honeybee?" Donnie asked, when she lined up her blaster, and shot three times.
A smaller rock went sailing across the clearing, smashing apart as it crashed against a bigger one. The second rock clonked into a bigger one, and finally the bigger one swung lazily, inching closer until it slammed heavily into Donnie's rock.
Donnie squawked, and scrabbled for a hold onto his rock, and fell head-first into the marsh.
"Hey, I found it!" he yelled, holding up something small and metallic, and then rolled onto his back, trying to get to his feet.
Trying being the operative word. As April watched, Donnie sunk into the marsh like a wide brick. "Uh." He waggled a hand in the air. "Little help?" He kicked his big feet up, then flopped back down again. "The swamp— kind of has, um. Suction." He wiggled again, and looked so pathetic when April finally got to him that she dug into her pockets, pulling out her phone. "Seriously?" Donnie glared as she snapped off a picture. "You're the worst."
"Not your sweet princess?" she asked, clasping her hand around his wrist and pulling. She dug her heels into a squealing piece of plant, and heaved again and again until Donnie came loose with a heavy sucking sound.
Something dangerous flashed through Donnie — his eyes and his mind, but before April had the chance to react, he twisted, hooked his foot around her ankle, and tossed her gently into the ground. The wind whooshed out of her chest, and she coughed at the hard landing: even in the soft swamp-ground, Donnie had only half-pulled his punch.
She coughed as she landed, and opened her eyes to see Donnie looking at her with an insufferable grin on his face. "Match wasn't over," Donnie said, holding her down with his wrist pressed lightly to her throat. "You're getting careless, April. Like Master Splinter says, the match is not over until Michelangelo starts crying."
"Splinter actually said that?"
"Well, no — Leo said it. But he does a really good impression of sensei."
Nothing sad wove its way through Donnie at the mention of his father, and April relaxed. She hadn't even realised that she had tensed up. It happened too often; someone would mention Splinter, or the lair, and then somebody else would remember what had happened in New York, and the lives that were at stake if they didn't fix it.
Something snapped across the marsh, and Donnie shot back down, covering her. "Donnie—!" she protested, but Donnie cast her a dark look. He didn't shush her. He didn't need to. He tilted his head in a fraction of a nod to the same path they had taken to the marsh. Someone had followed them.
April tilted her head backwards, trying to look, but only caught a glimpse of four arms and a familiar face. "Oh, it's that nice old lady! The one who sold me the—" she made a vague gesture. "…the thing. Yeesh, she followed us all this way?"
Donnie said nothing, but hovered lower, until she could see the tight line of his mouth, lines denting in the edges. "Followed," Donnie said lowly. "We've been walking for an hour, and she just happened to follow us?" He flicked his gaze down to her, and then back up.
April shrugged beneath him. "I don't sense anything bad from her," she said, and it was true — the old lady just felt cheerful, and generous. She shoved Donnie's shoulder until he let her up, then waved.
The old lady was not alone; next to her was a smaller, squatter alien, also with four arms and a dark mustard colour to his skin — her son, maybe? April wasn't sure, but from him all she sensed was the same cheerful type of generosity, and curiosity, but that was normal, because everybody was curious, on every world, about the weird-looking terrans, just like the weird-looking terrans were curious about everything else.
"Hello!" April called, waving again. "Can we help you?"
The old lady burbled something through her second mouth, her fourth arm pointing at Donnie while the third held up a credit chip. April shook her head; one of Donnie's knocks had put her translator on the fritz, but the sudden shock of outrage from Donnie was enough to clue her in even before he started yelling: "I am NOT FOR SALE."
Good price? the translator said, finally kicking back in.
Donnie hauled himself to his feet, and the old lady applauded, saying something again to April that frizzled through as legs good for roasting. April glanced once at Donnie's thighs and calves, and then looked away.
"Uh, no thank you!" April yelled back, resting a hand on Donnie's tense arm. "I'm uh. I'm keeping him."
The old lady turned, speaking to her son, then nodded.
Good idea, she said. Could make money breeding this one.
"What!?" Donnie spluttered, at the same time that April said "Uh, no— no, no, I mean—" Her intention was to say that no, Donnie was a sentient being, he wasn't for sale either as food or for breeding, Donnie was an important person to her and also was kind of important to his entire planet right now, but the old lady nodded again, and both she and her son pulled out blasters, one in each hand.
"Are you kidding me," Donnie said flatly, reaching for his space-bo. April slid into her usual stance when fighting with Donnie, and didn't have time to wonder when it had become so natural to fight at his side. "How many shots do you have?" he asked her, and April glanced at the small screen again.
Charges remaining: 1
"One."
"Then let's make it count," Donnie said, glancing at a thick tree across the way, not far from the old lady. She understood his tactics — shoot the tree, cause a distraction, and run.
But, she thought. One turtle, and one human, and one blaster? It would never be enough. Something whispered to her, reaching out to her powers and gently drawing them out, reaching to the burning coals at the back of her mind, behind her eyes, and setting them alight.
"No," April said.
She knew what she had to do. She had so much power, so much, that it burned at her wrists and the backs of her eyes and the throbbing pulse of her temples. It flowed through her, her energy, Donnie's energy, the soul of the planet beneath her feet rising up to obey her, the Soul Star channelling it all.
And then she pushed.
"So, uh, it's a good job we didn't do that on the ship," Donnie said, about five minutes later, when they were far enough from what was left of the swamp after April had blasted it. They hadn't stayed around to really assess the damage, but Donnie was fairly sure that there would be nothing coming after them. "I'm not sure how we'd explain that to the Professor."
"I'm not sure how we're going to explain this whole trip to the Professor." April rubbed her nose, checking the back of her glove again. Her nose hadn't bled, but every so often, she rubbed it as though it should be bleeding. The fact that it wasn't was only a minor comfort. He'd never seen April so powerful before, not even back on the farm, when she'd destroyed a monster with just her mind.
He shook it off. As much as he wanted to ask April if he could run tests, something told him that it wasn't the best time. Instead, he pushed it aside in favour of the matter at hand: their angry guardian.
April had a point, Donnie thought, but— "Leave that to me," he said. "He's a reasonable guy."
A reasonable guy with a fusion core and hand-blasters, but still.
(Fusion core! And the hand-blasters were such a unique design — maybe if he could bring himself to rebuild Metalhead, one day, the Professor wouldn't mind him copying that so much. With some obvious adjustments, of course — but still! Fusion.)
Besides, when did they ever go someplace nice without at least one thing going wrong? Comparatively, this was a picnic compared to basically anything else that wasn't going to the alley next to Magnolia Bakery on garbage day. Northampton? Sure, if your brother's in a coma. The past? Better dodge plague and watch your sort-of mom die! The docks? Now with added missile launchers! Coney Island came with a ghost train full of monsters and his mentally-unstable sort-of sister, and space…?
…yeah.
He checked the time, then glanced up. The sky was starting to shift, oranges and greens fading in, and the clouds clearing. "Looks like it'll be a good night," he said.
"Good night for— Donnie, we're not staying here, are we?"
"No! I mean, I figured we'd stay here maybe a couple of earth hours longer, and then head back?"
"Yeah, but— stay here for what?"
Donnie smiled, and pointed towards the trees.
They were the same type of trees from the clearing they'd left the rocks in, with thick film hanging from the branches. But instead of being grey, heavy things, as the day quickly darkened, the trees began to slowly, quietly, glow.
"They're bioluminescent," he said. "Well, kind of. It's kind of a mix between that and the way glow-in-the-dark stars work."
"Whoa," April breathed, reaching up to touch a soft, furry blossom that drooped from a nearby branch, and Donnie, though his fingers itched to touch everything as well, to take clippings and cuttings and samples (oh sweet Tesla, samples), just… watched. The glow from the plant lit April's face softly, picking out the paler freckles along her chin and cheeks, and made her eyes glimmer in the dusk. "You figured all of this out just by planet-scanning?"
"Yes?" Donnie said, then wilted when she gave him the I'm not buying look. He dug into his belt, pulling the small piece of metal he'd found in the swamp. "Okay so I maybe lost a planetary probe earlier, so I wanted to come down to get it," he confessed, "and when I saw the type of things that were on this planet— I mean, c'mon, look at this place!"
"You couldn't have just left it? It's just a probe, Donnie."
"It's a space probe," Donnie said, unable to stop himself from sounding wounded. "And besides. It's— it's been fun, right?" he asked. It was a small victory that his voice didn't shake and shame him, and a bigger victory when April smiled, and rolled her eyes, and nodded.
He shoved the probe back into his belt.
"There's one more thing here I wanted to see, then we can go back," he said, and tried to sound like that wasn't the entire reason for bringing her here — just her, just the two of them.
Just friends.
The beach was more of a lake-shore, and there was no sand, but pieces of rock, some of which floated, and others twitched beneath her feet as she walked. The water frothed, something churning beneath the surface, and on the other side of the lake, shadows loomed from a mountain range tipped with snow.
"We made it," Donnie said quietly. April glanced up, but he wasn't looking at her; instead, he was looking upwards, where the sky had faded from its strange green-orange sunset to something deep, and dark, and infinite.
A meteor streaked across the sky.
"The storm," April realised, as two more glittered, and then faded away.
"They don't have these in Dimension X." Donnie straightened, puffing his chest out a little bit, pride and pleasure running through him in equal measure.
"It's beautiful," April said, and meant it. A lilac meteor flew by next, cutting across the path of another, each one small and bright and gone before she could blink. "I've never seen a shooting star before."
"Wait, really?" Donnie asked. "I mean — you lived at the farmhouse for a while, right?"
April shrugged. It was easier to look at the stars in Northampton than it was in New York, but even growing up where she did, where the nearest store had been Bernie's and April's handful of memories before waking up in the city included the trip twice a month to the big supermarket on the edge of the nearest town, sitting on her booster seat with a frozen chicken between her knees, she had never seen the stars until she'd gone to space.
She'd never seen a shooting star until she'd known Donnie.
"How many wishes is that?" she asked, when a handful of glitter flew across the sky.
"As many as you want," Donnie replied gently, with a soft, sweet smile on his face. He wasn't looking at the stars. He was looking at her.
April felt her heart sink.
It wasn't the first time that Donnie had tried. It wasn't the first time that his timing had been completely wrong. If it wasn't him trying to say that's a pretty name, it had been when his arm was burned raw and Leo had been sailing towards her window, or when he had tried to quietly end it on a warm spring morning and in doing so kickstarted her own terrible timing.
"Donnie—" April began, the words heavy in her chest and in her mouth, and she stopped, biting the inside of her cheek as she tried to figure out what she wanted to say. There was no way out, this time — no distractions, no way to stop the conversation and put it aside. Donnie loved her. And there would never be a good time for her to love him back. Even six months in the past, April could see that there was no real future ahead. Not right now, with a world to save, and a genocide to stop, and maybe not ever, when they got back to Earth, saved everything, and the next thing went wrong — Purple Dragons, or real dragons, or high school, or— anything. "Donnie," she started again. "It's not that I—"
"Do you know where meteor showers come from?" Donnie interrupted, then.
"—don't— what?"
"Meteors— come from a comet. And comets circle the sun. Sometimes— sometimes, if they pass by and there's too much light — from— from the sun, or the moon — or, heh, moons, depending on the planet, you can't see them. But they're there. And comets always come back. And if you miss it, you can still find it, because it's still out there." He swallowed. "Does— does that make sense?"
Do you understand what I'm trying to say?
There would never be a good time, until April wanted it. Unless April wanted it.
You're in charge here.
She nodded.
"Okay," Donnie said. "So— we're good." He shifted, turning his face back to the sky. "Ooh, look at that one." He pointed at a broad yellow streak. She reached down for his other hand. Her fingers slid around one of his, and squeezed once.
Without saying anything at all, Donnie pulled his hand away and slid his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close. She nestled closer, tucking herself into his side, letting the weight of him sink into her bones until it reached her chest and weighted down her heart.
She wanted to know what Donnie's heart felt like, right now. Did it feel as heavy as hers, or was Donnie just… resigned to this? This… whatever it was between them, where he loved her, and she didn't know what she felt, and didn't know if she ever would. Donnie was a good person, would be a good man when they were older. Would never be able to walk down the street, or hold her hand in the park, but could take her to different worlds when she'd had a bad day just because.
He'd let her kiss him again and again, and not asked for anything else.
Her gut burned with the memory — the farmhouse, the smell of chopped wood and a warm morning, and Donnie's mouth against hers.
It wasn't as though they hadn't done it before.
She squared her shoulders, and Donnie let his arm fall away obediently, looking down at her — are you ready to go? or is there something you need? probably ready on his tongue. Her heart hurt, pulsing through to the ends of her fingers until she looped her left hand in his harness, and reached up with her right, cupping the back of his neck.
Like last time, Donnie was easy to kiss. His mouth was cold, and rough-edged, but April focused on his sharp intake of breath, and the soft, muted little noise of disbelief, and Donnie's heart, and Donnie's love.
And unlike last time, Donnie was brave, his hands lifting to curl around her waist, and like always, Donnie was gentle with her, carefully urging her just that little bit closer to him. His thumbs brushed the edges of her ribs, sending a shiver through her, and this time, he kissed her back, a small, shy little press of his mouth against hers, tilting his head to get closer, and following her for a heartbeat after she pulled away.
He pressed his mouth together, the same way she was, biting on the insides of her lips to try and stop her heart from racing. "Like a comet, right?" April asked, her brows coming together nervously.
Do you understand what I mean?
Donnie let out a shaky half-laugh. "Right," he said, clearing his throat. "Right," he said again, and looked away. He still hadn't let her go, and she kept rubbing her thumb against the worn leather of his harness, figuring that if she didn't look at him, he wouldn't see the way her face had heated up, and if she didn't look at him, she wouldn't look at his mouth, and
and when she looked up, into Donnie's big, hopeful brown eyes, all she could see was meteors.
"You're missing the show," she said.
"I know," he said.
This time, he kissed her first.
The meteor storm lasted another hour.
Donnie didn't make a single wish.
the end.