And So It Goes

- Kiyoko Michi

Summary- Something is wrong. The Lair is in shambles, his brothers are gone, and Don can't even remember how he got here. What the shell happened here? (A SAINW AU)

Disclaimer- This is what fanfiction is all about- taking someone else's incredible, underdeveloped idea and running with it. …

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Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes".

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

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To Don, it was as if the world was falling apart, and him with it. He could deal with the unbelievable vertigo, the blurring and falling and twisting, but something was just wrong. It was almost like an uncontrollable fall, but he couldn't feel wind or movement and he'd already been falling for much too long. If this had been real, he would have been long dead. Instead, it was as if the entire world was being shifted- everything moving, changing around him. And he was helpless to stop it. He couldn't see anything clearly anymore, couldn't think with the unfamiliar something pressing against him. He tried to call out for his brothers, but he couldn't even hear his own voice. They had been with him, must have been with him, but there was nobody there anymore and nothing he could do to control the convoluted spinning.

And then it stopped. He landed (but it wasn't landing, not when he hadn't truly been falling in the first place- more as if the world finally clicked back into place) so suddenly that the solid ground abruptly under his feet almost threw him onto the floor. As it was, he could just barely stop himself from retching from the sudden shift. And when he finally regained control of himself, he almost wished he hadn't. He was still in the Lair, still where he'd started, but… not. This wasn't his home.

The lair was in shambles. Don could only stare blankly at the sight. It was definitely their Lair. He could easily see that in the twist of the now dry river cutting through the floor and the signs of his brothers' presence, like the broken piles of TVs that they'd once used. But it had been a long time since anyone had been there, and the neglect was obvious.

Don slowly turned around, mouth gaping as he took in the changes. The lair looked… crumpled. If he hadn't been so familiar with his home, he probably wouldn't have even recognized the place. Nothing was intact, not even the walls. Piles of material that were once part of the walls or ceiling or furniture lay heaped carelessly on the floor, the results of what looked like an enormous battle. A moment later, he saw where a large part of the material had come from. There was a large, gaping hole stretching across what used to be part of the wall and ceiling. It looked as if something had ripped its way through the very stone to reach the Lair. Knowing how powerful their enemies had become, the possibility wasn't as farfetched as he'd have like.

Don took a few steps closer to the hole, dodging the scattered material to reach its jagged edges. He couldn't see any of the tell-tale signs of an explosive or corrosive material, the obvious way it could have been made. There was no blackened or melted stone around the tear; only a large pile of what should have been the wall lying in front of it. It truly looked as if some giant thing had torn its way through the wall with only brute force, impossible as the idea should have been. For something or someone that strong to have found the lair, his family must have-

Don froze, thunderstruck. His family… Shell, what had happened to his family? Someone had attacked the Lair, the resultant fight ending with the destruction of their home. His brothers must have fought; the lair was too ruined to mean anything else, but he couldn't tell who had won. His eyes passed almost unwillingly around the room again, seeing signs he'd missed the first time around.

The couch had been cut clean in two in what he recognized as the work of a sword, and he could see thin nicks in the wall he knew to be the same. As he made his way carefully through the ruined room, he found himself wishing their weapons left more distinctive marks. If he could see that, he'd at least know they'd all been prepared enough to put up a good fight against whatever it was. As it was… he couldn't be sure.

A glint of metal caught his eye, and he reached down to pick up an old, unfamiliar kunai. He carefully touched the end of the blade, his hand shaking slightly as dry flakes of blood so old as to be nigh unrecognizable fell to the ground. One of them had been hurt… and he could see more hints of blood around him. Slightly discolored streaks on the walls, small spatters at odd intervals on the floor… it was faint, but it was there. Don knew it couldn't all be from his family, but some of it undoubtedly was. What had happened to them?

Don put a steadying hand on a nearby table, one of the few things still intact in the room, then flinched back at the unexpected feeling under his fingertips. Raising his hand, he saw that his fingers were now coated with… dust? There was a thick layer of dust covering the tabletop and, looking back over the room, he could see dust he'd overlooked earlier coating the rest of the room. It was thick and undisturbed, save where he'd been walking earlier. Numerous other signs of time passed also revealed themselves to him.

A nearby, collapsed chair, which he had assumed broken by whatever battle had taken place, also showed unmistakable signs of decay, the wood sagging from rot. Rust covered numerous broken piping and wiring, supplies he'd constantly inspected for signs of degeneration and had known to be good not long ago.

For the dust to be so thick, the supports so rotten… this didn't just happen overnight. He could have missed a battle, could have been unaware for the hour or so his brothers had been battling for their life, but for the Lair to look as abandoned as it did… it would take a lot more time than Don could accept had passed. It was impossible… just this morning he'd been… he'd been…

He'd been what? Don slowly sank to the floor, clutching his head. He couldn't remember… He couldn't remember what he'd been doing this morning, why he'd been gone when the fight had taken place. Shell, he couldn't even remember how he'd gotten back into the lair in the first place. The first thing he could clearly remember was his first glimpse into the ruined Lair and before that… he didn't know. It was just… blank.

Don held his head tighter, fighting to remember. He saw a faint glimpse of something, a half remembered thought and a faint feeling of vertigo and something being horribly wrong. He grasped the thin tendril of memory eagerly, trying to follow it back to something he could use, some answer. He was so close… and then it was gone. The recollection, faint as it had been, fell away from his mental grasp, and even the feeble, half remembered sensation faded away. Don let out a soft groan of frustration at the loss- he'd been so close…

Don let the frustration take hold for a moment, then forced it to bleed away. If he couldn't remember how he'd gotten here… then maybe he could remember something from the other direction. He sharpened his mind again, focusing this time on what had happened this morning (or, at least, the last morning he could clearly remember). It felt as if the entire morning was muffled, shrouded in a thick fog he could barely see through.

It had been a normal day, he could remember that much. He could vaguely recall getting up as usual, eating breakfast, training… everything had been fine up to that point. Then… something had happened. His memory started to break apart, the fog growing thicker, but… he could remember being completely shocked, caught completely off guard by… and that was it. It was as if he'd run into a thick mental wall- everything was black after that point, missing.

He pushed desperately at the wall, straining to find a way around it, and was rewarded with a brief flash of dark green, the worried, determined eyes of his immediate older brother staring at him from behind a red mask, before the wall clamped down again. Try as he might, he couldn't break through again.

Don let his head thump back against the wall behind him. "What the shell is wrong with me," he whispered softly, flinching slightly as the sound of his own voice split the thick silence covering the Lair. He was supposed to be the smart one, supposed to be the one with the answers, and he couldn't even remember what had happened to his family. How was he supposed to find them? Why wasn't he with them in the first place? He knew his family would never leave him behind… but what if they hadn't had a choice? They could have been captured or separated or (he shuddered at the thought) killed, and he had no way of knowing. Not with his mind so messed up he couldn't even remember anything.

Yet… he had remembered something. That flash of Raph's face… he looked like he was in a fight, keeping an eye on him like he always did. Combined with the faint feelings of surprised horror he could remember, was his memory blank part of the fight that had destroyed the Lair?

Don's eyes flickered around the Lair again, but there was no way for him to tell if he'd been fighting in the battle. The idea fit, and it was reassuring to have figured out at least one part of the memory blank he'd been struggling with, and that he hadn't somehow abandoned his family during the fight. But he still had no idea what had happened to his brothers, or why the destruction of the Lair seemed so old…

Don let in a sharp gasp as the weight of what the memory blanks could mean hit him. There was a large chunk of his memory missing for an unknown reason and, judging from the decrepit state of his home, a lot of time had passed. For all he knew, years could have gone by. Years that he couldn't remember, and who knew what had happened to him during that time. How old was he now? How much had he forgotten?

Don stumbled out of his crouched position on the floor, eyes locking on what had once been the bathroom. He needed a mirror… he needed to know what had happened to him, how much of his life the memory blank had wiped out. As he forced his way through the debris holding the door closed, his mind raced with possibility after possibility of what could have changed. Yet, as he finally managed to clear the way to the cracked mirror inside, he was met with the familiar, scared face of a sixteen year old mutant turtle, not the unknown, scarred adult form he was half expecting.

Don twisted halfheartedly in front of the mirror, searching for any new scars or unfamiliar changes, but he seemed exactly as he expected himself to look. He slumped in relief- whatever had happened to the lair, whatever had happened to his brothers, he was still the same.

So he was left with the exact same questions. There was almost more, now that he had ruled out the obvious answer for the decaying state of the Lair. It just didn't make sense… how could all this have possibly happened in such a short amount of time? He needed answers. He needed to find his brothers; everything else was secondary compared to that.

Turning away from the mirror, Don walked slowly back to the main room. His eyes swept over the room one last time, but nothing new jumped out at him. His eyes hesitated for a moment at the top of the staircase, where his brothers' rooms lay, but he continued past. His brothers had definitely carried the fight into the main room regardless of where they'd been during the attack, and he doubted the old, half ruined staircase could support his weight regardless.

His gaze finally stopped on the elevator, one of the few things that looked as if it was still capable of working. There was nothing else he could do here, nowhere else he could look. The only place for him to find the answers he needed would be Topside. Don slowly made his way over to the elevator but, just before he reached to open it, he paused. Someone had obviously tracked them to the Lair. Someone that was strong enough to destroy it, injuring his brothers in the process. He doubted someone like that would just fade away or forget about his family, no matter how much time he'd forgotten. So what types of traps or monitoring technology had they set?

His family would have at least tried to return to their former home to recover keepsakes, like the last time the Mousers had driven them out of their home. Most of their enemies would have known that, or at least suspected. And if they had set up monitoring devices, the logical place would be at the common entry and exit points. It was all too possible that the warehouse exit or the elevator itself could be some form of a trap.

Besides, there was another, lesser known exit that he knew of. One he hadn't even informed his family about, let alone hinted at to their enemies. He'd discovered the half hidden tunnel in his lab during the early days in the Lair, an old, rickety shaft leading to the back area beside the warehouse. He'd thought it may have been a hidden back door, a sort of contingency plan by the previous inhabitants. After he fixed it up a bit, Don had used it to silently get out of the lair at night without bothering anyone. There was a minimal chance of anyone knowing it existed and, until he knew more about what was going on, Don wasn't going to take any unnecessary risks.

The door to his lab was harder to open then he'd expected- time had rusted the hinges closed, creating an earsplitting shriek as it was forced open for the first time in who knew how long. After the destruction of the main room, Don was caught off guard by how whole the room seemed. Age had nearly destroyed the lab, but it had escaped the utter ruin of the main rooms.

Ignoring the old clutter, Don walked over to the worn stone hatch hidden in the shadows at the back of the room. The stone yielded easier than the door, and the passageway was in better condition than he'd expected. After a brief test, he started climbing.

It was a short climb, and Don soon emerged into the mostly familiar dead end pathway. It was darker than he remembered and dirtier, but the large building beside him cast a familiar shadow hiding the alleyway. He looked back at their warehouse, feeling an increasingly familiar wave of shock pass through him. It was a good thing he hadn't continued through the elevator…

The warehouse was in possibly the worst state he'd ever seen a building in before. Large holes, some looking to have been from bullets or explosives, stretched the length of the structure, negating any cover the building should have had. It was hard to tell from where he stood, but it seemed as if rust and degenerated material had caused parts of the roof and walls to fall down, creating untended piles of rubble. The shadows of the nearby building didn't even fully cover the broken mess- he would have been all too visible inside. Honestly, with the rusted state it was in, it should have been torn down long ago. As if he needed another sign that something wasn't right.

Although…already, something else was jumping out at him for being wrong. It was far too quiet for a New York street, even during the night. The streets were completely empty, with not even the occasional car passing by. He could barely even hear anything in the distance. Coming from the city that never slept, it seemed as if his home wasn't the only thing that had changed dramatically from his memory.

Suddenly, the sharp sound of a helicopter blade shattered the silence and, almost before he realized it, Don had sprung to the side of the alley, melding into the shadows. A searchlight swept passed seconds later, narrowly missing the alleyway, followed by the rumble of a surge of cars blurring past. Thankfully, the patrol continued on without pausing, its noise fading slowly into silence again.

"What… the shell was that," Don whispered, his eyes still staring at where the cars had disappeared. He remained hidden for a few moments more before cautiously standing up and walking to the center again, thinking. It had almost looked like a patrol… The way the searchlight was probing the darkness without any clear goal and how official it all seemed. It reminded him of the military

The eerie silence seemed to take on a sinister undertone. Something was seriously wrong here. He could probably come up with a thousand possible explanations for what was going on, each more outlandish than the last, but that would be a waste of time. He needed real, solid facts. He needed to find out what had actually happened, who those people actually were.

Don made his way over to a nearby fire escape and started climbing- he'd need the roofs if he was going to move around easily. It was time to figure out what was going on.

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AN- I have no clue what I'm doing. None. I'm a teenager who only recently rediscovered writing, and this is the first time I've attempted anything longer than a one-shot. Also, the plot is a bit… uncertain as of now. I have the basic history and most of the major plot created, but I'm still looking for more things. So random ideas/what you'd like to see (assuming you actually like this enough to keep reading) are welcome. Half formed thoughts (explosives!), random sub plots (poison someone!), or characters (LH!) will help me with planning/writing. I'm mostly writing this because I personally was disappointed with the SAINW episode, so I'd like to know what other people liked/didn't like about the episode. Regardless of my confusion, I will do my best to finish this- I already have the second chapter half finished (I was spazzing too much to put this up when I first finished it).

I'd also appreciate mentions of writing style, since I'm pretty much just experimenting with styles right now. Was I too wordy, not descriptive enough, repetitive, bad dialogue/thoughts/OOC-ness, choppy, and so on. And please tell me if I get facts or stuff like that wrong. Flames are, as always, welcome.

The title is a reference to a reoccurring quote from the novel Slaughterhouse Five, a classic book about death, war, and free will. I thought it fit.