Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth IV, 3
"This ... is ... awesome!"
Casey's gleeful shout was still ringing in her ears when April's fist smacked into his left cheek — a textbook mawashi-tsuki that dumped him on his butt and left him staring at her in half-concussed disbelief. "Ow, Red, what the — ?"
"How could you?"
She meant to yell, but her throat closed around the accusation, muffling it. Casey blinked at her like a malfunctioning Kraang and she snarled her next words at him. "How dare you? 'Awesome?' The Earth is gone!" She followed him as he crab-crawled away, clumsy and slow in his makeshift battle-gear, mouth ajar. "Everyone we know is dead! My dad — " For a second her voice threatened to quit completely, but she forced it to continue. "Your dad ... your sister — "
"Enough!" Leo exclaimed, but his I'm-your-captain tone faltered on the second syllable. April slammed a foot down beside Casey's elbow and he froze; she leaned over him, fists raised. He was still goggling at her, as if he couldn't understand what she was saying, but nobody could be that brainless, nobody ...
What's wrong with you?
"All our friends," she choked out. "Leatherhead, Slash, the Mutanimals .. Mr. Kurtzman, Murakami-san ... all gone! There's no one left but us!" Her hands started to shake; behind her ribs her heart pounded out a frantic backbeat. "No hockey team, no chemistry class! No Purple Dragons, no Foot, no Kraang!" Her intuition throbbed in cross-rhythm with her pulse, sneaking her glimpses of the tangled emotions hidden behind Casey's blank face: surprise, yes, and dismay and growing fear, but no misery, no loss. Why? Why? "Nobody to protect, nobody to fight! No Shredder, no — no Karai — no — "
"April!" Raph's voice this time, sharp and angry, with Donnie's an instant behind, full of concern mixed with warning. Too much: she shut her eyes, shut the others out to focus on Casey. Briefly she saw herself as he did: her hair, backlit, a fiery halo around her shadowed face, her lips pulled away from her teeth in a grimace. He was scared of her and scared for her, but nothing in his head answered her grief. She couldn't believe he didn't care — not about his family, not about their friends, not about —
" — Splinter!" she wailed and the turtles' anguish broke over her like a tsunami. She staggered, unbalanced, and Casey pushed himself upright. His confusion was ebbing, pity displacing fear; April didn't need to see the slack line of his jaw firming as he shook his hands free of their gauntlets to reach for her.
"April," he said, "I'm so sorry."
But he wasn't sorry — wasn't sorry enough — and his ready sympathy rasped like sandpaper across her pain. She opened her eyes, power and anger hammering against the inside of her skull, demanding release. "They're all dead!" she shrieked, flinging the words at him like shuriken. "Dead, dead, dead, dead!"
He shrank from her, hands covering his ears, mind cracking open like a walnut. At last she sensed agony curled inside a protective shell of shock and curiosity and inappropriate enthusiasm. Her fingers hooked into claws as her mind dug at his, prying at that distress. But Casey panicked and his alarm swept everything before it. April saw herself again, eyes gone blank, arms and legs contorted at unnatural angles as her power crackled through them, but she couldn't control the spasms any more than she could resist the hands wrestling her to the floor, or respond to the voices clamoring at her from all sides: Whoa, sis, chill out! and What's wrong with her? and April, listen to me! and Oh, dear, this calls for something stronger than cocoa ...
And then, abruptly, nothing.
"April! Hey, April!"
She sighs, laying aside her dustcloth to force up the sash of her bedroom window. Down in the yard Mikey salutes her with a rake, its fan of green blades crooked and splotched with rust, then waves it over the waist-high pile of brown leaves beside him. "C'mon, April, jump!"
"No way!" April frowns at him, exasperated, and he grins. She might have known he'd find a way to turn chore time into playtime. Raph is going to pitch a fit when he and Leo return from training, to say nothing of how hissy Donnie will get if anything interrupts whatever science project he has cooking in the barn. "Some of us have work to do, Mikey!"
"Odoru ahou ni miru ahou, onaji ahou odoranya son son," he wheedles incomprehensibly. "It'll be fun!"
And unlike some of Mikey's other pastimes (sewer LARPing, pizza checkers, competitive belching ...) it probably will be, if it doesn't kill her. April measures the jump with her new eye for vaultable distances and shakes her head. "I'd break both ankles!"
Mikey tosses the rake away, wades into the pile and holds up his arms. "I'll catch you!"
She hesitates, glancing back at her half-cleaned room. She's already changed the bedclothes and tidied away the few personal things she brought to the farmhouse. Her dad's not here to write her name in the dust on the mirror or the bureau top, and she fends off a pang of loss by imagining one of the world's messiest ninjas trying to pull that trick. Pot, kettle, black — even Donnie's neatnik tendencies are confined to his lab. April gauges the drop again as Mikey waits. "Really?"
"Sure!" he says brightly. "Trust me!"
April bites her lip, then hastily pops out the screen and sets it on the floor. Ducking beneath the sash, she draws her legs over the sill and pushes off with a kiai that sensei would be proud of. For a few seconds she soars through the air in a shallow ascending arc, her arms spread like wings, then gravity yanks her into a raptor's stoop. Her kiai mutates into a scream of mingled terror and delight as she plunges feet-first toward Mikey, but true to his word, he catches her. "Oh, yeah!" Mikey crows as they tumble together into the crackling leaves. "We gotta do that again!"
Giggling herself, April rolls onto her back, closing her eyes against the glare of the noonday sun in the pale sky. Her ribs hurt where they banged into Mikey's plastron; she wriggles against the forgiving ground, summer-warm and drier than she'd expected. But her discomfort only grows, the tickle of dry leaves against her arms and neck mutating into the ache of sore muscles beneath a rumpled sheet ...
"Ow," April mumbled, wincing as she pulled her covers straight. Sewer apples, but she hated the morning after a fight. Three Advil and exhaustion were usually enough to put her to sleep no matter what she'd strained or wrenched, but waking up again — ugh. Just five more hours, please. Between blissful unconsciousness and miserable alertness, she'd take unconsciousness every time. Carefully turning on her side, April snuggled into her pillow, wondering if she could dream it back into leaves. Sure, Mikey, you want a turn ... ?
"You with us again?"
April's eyes snapped open, then immediately squinted against the blare of a vividly white and wholly unfamiliar room. "What in the — ?" she mumbled, lifting a hand to shade her face and blinking at the red-masked turtle hovering beside her. "Raph? Where are we?"
"Ship's medbay," Raph said, waving irritably at the ceiling. The light dimmed from blinding to dazzling and April wondered when Donnie had put the lights on a motion sensor and what he'd been thinking when he had. Mikey is going to have a field day with that ...
Raph shifted to stand between April at the worst of the glare, recapturing her wandering attention. "Hey," he said quietly, "how're you feeling?"
That tone, from Raph, always made April check for missing limbs or signs that she'd recently undergone surgery. "Sore," she said, peeking under her sheet to run the inventory. Two arms, two legs, no visible bandages: good, except that someone had taken away her clothes — all her clothes — and dressed her in a pale green, sleeveless hospital gown. Her sleep-sodden brain stalled on that, trying to decide how embarrassed to be and only belatedly asking, Wait, medbay? Ship?
And then an avalanche of memory crashed down on her, stopping her breath and sheathing every nerve in frost.
The spaceship! The singularity! Oh, God, Casey —
"April? April!" Raph again, switching in an instant from concerned to furious. "Don't do this to me; I can't — " He grabbed her shoulder and she flinched, turning her head away as tears began to leak down her cheeks. "April, what is it? What hurts?"
"Sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."
He startled, fingers flexing on her shoulder, then kneaded it awkwardly. "Hey ... hey," he said, sounding ... helpless. Lost. As lost as she felt. "You don't have to — " She gulped back a sob and he knelt beside her. "Aw, April. Listen, you — you had a bad day and Casey's an idiot. I'd've clocked him myself if you hadn't gotten there first."
A bad day. April pressed her knuckles to her lips to stifle a wholly inappropriate giggle. Raph's sense of humor ran black, but not as black as that. I'd've clocked him myself. But he hadn't, and he couldn't have done what April had tried to do after she'd hit Casey. That idiot. Her breath caught in her throat again, neither sob nor chuckle, just ... silence. She didn't want to ask. She really didn't want to ask, but she had to know. "Is he ... okay?" she mumbled.
"Yeah, sure," Raph replied glibly. Too glibly? She snuck a look at him and he raised his right hand, palm out. "Ninja's honor. The prof's giving him and Mikey a tour of the ship — " Raph's brows jerked, as if he were suppressing a sure, that'll end well eye-roll — "Leo's meditating, and Donnie's, um ... " He glanced over his shoulder, hands tightening unconsciously into fists.
"What about Donnie?" April snapped, pushing up on her elbows to follow the line of his gaze.
Her neck and shoulders protested the exercise with sharp twinges, but she paid them no mind. On the other side of the room Donnie lay on his own berth, covered almost to the shoulders by a pale sheet. His eyes were closed, his arms folded across his chest, his clever, restless hands limp and still. April's stomach plummeted as if she'd fallen through a trap door. "Donnie! Donnie!"
"Ssh!" Raph held her back when she tried to scramble off the mattress. "Whoa, take it easy! He's fine, honest."
April elbowed him hard in the plastron, but he didn't even grunt, just took the blow and barred her way. She kicked at the sheet, now tangled around her legs, then gave up and fixed Raph with her best glare. "What. Happened?"
He met her narrow-eyed stare steadily. "After the professor put you out, he freaked, too, and got the same dose. Dropped him like a rock." Raph's posture shifted subtly, anxiety and anger flickering through him like lighting in a storm cloud. "Things got ... intense, but then Leo told everybody to calm down and Mikey sat on Casey, so it was all good."
April doubted that. "Who sat on you?" she asked.
He shrugged and smirked. "Somebody had to carry you guys down here."
She meant to smirk back — tried to smirk back, but her face crumpled instead, squeezing tears from her eyes. Somebody had to — and who else was left to? A whimper leaked from between her clenched teeth, and April threw her arms around Raph's neck to muffle her sobs against his shoulder, the ragged edge of his plastron digging into her chin. Don't wake Donnie, don't wake Donnie, don't, don't — As long as he was asleep, he couldn't hurt like this, like someone taking a steel file to his heart. She could feel hers crumbling with every beat, bits of herself flaking off to feed a black hole of despair in her chest. Don't wake up don't wake up don't wake up ...
Raph braced her stiffly, one hand patting her back in a mechanical rhythm. His discomfort was palpable, but she only clung on harder until he sighed and bent his head to hers. "Listen, April," he murmured, "there's still us. If everyone else really is — gone — " his chest rose and fell as he took a steadying breath — "then we gotta stick together. Look out for each other. Be a team." He disentangled her arms from his neck, gently but firmly pushing her away until he could look her in the face. "And I promise you, someday we'll find those Triceratons and make them pay for what they did. And they'll never, ever do it again."
His hands were cool on the bare skin of her arms, but his gaze was arctic. April repressed a shiver. Raph's pain was all jagged edges: shattered concrete and exposed rebar, or splintered planks and broken bottles — not just wreckage, but weapons. Yes, she thought, and No, remembering the Shredder. I have finally won! he'd gloated as the world collapsed around him, exultant in his empty victory. But Raph was right: the Triceratons had to be stopped. Why couldn't she forge the shards of her broken heart into a knife to pierce the skulls of her enemies, to learn their plans and make them hurt as she was hurting ...
... just as she'd tried to do to Casey?
No! That was different!
... Wasn't it?
Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No ...
A distant commotion dopplered into earshot and April's othersense surged to meet it like an arrow loosed from the string. Pain lanced through her temples, fading to a dull ache as she homed in on her target with unaccustomed ease. Without the interference of twenty million minds crammed into five bustling boroughs, her friends broadcast their positions and conditions loud and clear: Raph beside her, fiercely vigilant, and Donnie across the room, eerily quiet; Leo somewhere above, a thin crust of calm scabbing over the open wound of his anguish; and Mikey-and-Casey, a oncoming storm of mutual excitement. She jerked back as they thundered closer, blinking away the rainbows that flickered through her field of vision. Raph had already stood, the deadly edge of his anger blunted into familiar annoyance. "Those clowns," he said, not bothering to suppress the eye-roll this time.
The door swished open, Space Heroes-style, and Mikey bounced in, Casey chasing him like a defender after a loose puck. "I told you he'd be in here!" Mikey crowed. "Raph, dude, you'll never guess — April! You're awake!" He leaped through the air to land in a grinning crouch on the foot of her mattress, hugging his knees to his chest. "Awesome! I gotta show — oof!"
Raph tackled him to the floor. "Quiet, shell-for-brains!" he grunted as he wrestled his brother into a headlock. "Donnie's still asleep!"
"But, Raph, it's so — urk!"
"If you wake him up, so help me, I'm gonna — "
"Too late," Donnie's dry voice interrupted. "But I appreciate the consideration. Please, don't stop on my account."
April's spine sagged with relief — not that she hadn't trusted Raph's word, but Donnie had been so ... so ... "Are you okay?" she demanded.
He wobbled a bit as he climbed off his berth, but once both his feet found the floor, he steadied. "I think so," he said, his sharp gaze taking in every detail of the room before meeting April's. Raph gave his brother a quick once-over, grunted, and returned his attention to strangling Mikey. Donnie ignored them, crossing quickly to April's side. "How do you feel?"
"I'm fine," she reassured him with a wave, blinking away the spangles twinkling in her peripheral vision again. Donnie frowned, catching hold of her wrist to take her pulse, so she added defensively, "I've just got a headache, that's all."
"Hmm," he said, squinting at her with what Mikey liked to call Dr. Donnie's X-ray eyes. "I'm not surprised. On top of — " he hesitated, his fingers closing protectively around her arm — "everything else, you're probably dehydrated." He set her hand down on the sheet with a pat, then made for the sink and cupboards set into the wall opposite the door, absently hurdling his brothers as they rolled into his path. He rummaged the shelves and with a triumphant "Aha!" withdrew a straw-topped container that he filled with water from the tap. Dodging Raph and Mikey again ("Lemme go! He's awake now!" "Yeah, and who's fault's that, huh?") he handed the bottle to April. "Here. Work on this and I'll see if the Professor has anything to offer besides cocoa and knock-out drops." His determinedly cheerful tone cooled on the last words with unvoiced emphasis: He'd better ...
"Dude, he totally does!" Mikey eeled out of Raph's hold and launched himself at Donnie, gamboling around his taller brother like an eager green puppy. "He showed us the galley and it's got this machine that makes, like, any food you want out of nothing and science, bamf!" He waved his hands in a complicated gesture that April guessed was meant to represent the bamf! part of the process. "Except it's not programmed for pizza yet — not real pizza, just the lame kind with canned tomato sauce and fake cheese and not enough oregano." He planted himself in front of Donnie, eyes round and beseeching. "So can you please, please, please come and teach it how to make a stuffed crust pepperoni, jalapeño and jellybean Michelangelo special? Please? Pleeeeeeeeease?"
Donnie clapped his hands over his earholes. "Yes, Mikey, all right, I will!"
Mikey seized him in a suffocating hug. "Best. Brother. Ever!" He transferred his grip to Donnie's arm and began towing him toward the door. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon! I'm starving!"
Donnie snagged a grinning Raph by the shell as they barged past him, but Raph dug in his heels and brought the whole cavalcade to a halt before it reached the threshold. "Whoa, hold up!" he demanded. "Whaddaya need me for?"
Donnie sighed. "Do you think I can successfully reprogram an alien culinary molecular assembler — "
"I'll help!" Mikey offered.
" — with Mikey leaning over my shoulder the entire time and trying to 'help?'"
"Hey! I'm right here, you know!"
Raph snorted, then shrugged. "Shouldn't somebody stay with April?"
They all looked at her, concern bleeding through their various fronts of liveliness, impatience, and aggravation. April flinched from the attention, taking a sip of water to settle the sudden queasy roll of her stomach. "Guys, I'll be — " she began, but before the lie could emerge, Casey broke in.
"I'll stay."
Everyone's attention swung to him where he stood propping up the wall beside the doorframe, hands in his pockets, chin tucked in close to his chest. April shook her head and opened her mouth to say No, really, I'm okay (or maybe No, really, go away!) but this time Raph forestalled her. "Right," he said, pivoting to snare Donnie's arm and join Mikey in hustling him out the door. "We'll be back in a few."
"Wait, what?" Donnie protested, but his brothers had him outnumbered and outmassed. He resisted them long enough to call over his shoulder to April, "Keep drinking that water and I'll bring you back an oral rehydration solution — "
" — and a slice of flyers and fungus!" Mikey finished with a grin as he yanked Donnie into the corridor.
"No, Mikey!"
"Why not? It's good for what ails ya — all those protons — "
"Protein — and I said no! April needs — "
"Would you two just can it? You're worse than — "
They bickered away as the door slid shut behind them, reducing the yelling to a swiftly fading mutter. April chewed her straw, then drank another few swallows of flat, lukewarm water. Probably distilled, she thought. Even a molecular assembler couldn't actually make something out of nothing. If the ship spent a lot of time in deep space, it must have to recycle as much matter from its waste products as possible. Better not tell Mikey that ...
Casey cleared his throat and April couldn't ignore him anymore. From the careful way he pushed off the wall, she guessed that his shirt was probably hiding ribs as viciously bruised as her own. What his set face was hiding she didn't want to guess. "Casey, I'm sorry!" she blurted out, just as he mumbled, "Sorry, Red."
They looked askance at each other. "What was that?" April asked, her hands clenching and unclenching around the water bottle.
Casey rolled his shoulders and squared his stance. "You first," he answered.
April forced herself to face him, though she couldn't raise her eyes above his chest. "I'm — I'm sorry for — " trying to peel your brain like an onion, oh, God — "letting loose on you like that." She pulled her chin up and was startled and shamed when his gaze skittered away from hers. "It won't happen again," she said, her voice catching on the last word. "I promise."
He did meet her eyes then, briefly, frowning as he did so. "Good. Because watching you 'let loose'" — he punctuated the phrase with air quotes — "on the Shredder was wicked, but on me?" A shiver ran through him and he shifted, planting his feet more firmly on the floor. "Not cool, April. Not cool at all."
Her shame tipped over into anger at how easily he accepted her apology, as if she had been the only one at fault. "Right," she said, barbing the word with sarcasm. "Way less cool than a free ride in an alien spaceship — away from the black hole that swallowed your entire planet."
Casey winced, ducking his head. "No," he said to the floor. "But I couldn't — I can't think about that yet." He blew out a breath, then gathered himself and sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry I didn't just keep my trap shut, though," he added. His right hand picked at the sheet, snapping the thin fabric between forefinger and thumb. "You were right to shut it for me."
April said nothing, disarmed by his honesty. Embarrassment warred with empathy within her — stupid, of course he cares! — until a dribble of water leaked from the straw onto her thigh. Unwinding her cramped fingers from around the bottle, she set it aside, remembering Mikey sipping white-knuckled from a cup of cocoa, Raph and Leo sitting their separate vigils, Donnie rising to the challenge of reprogramming yet another alien machine. They were still dreaming, that was all — rousing slowly to the pain of an unimaginable loss, winding themselves in what comforts they had against that terrible awakening. Something wry tugged at the corners of her mouth: I never thought I'd be the morning person in this bunch.
And since there seemed to be no hurry to face the day, the least she could do was give them all five more minutes.
"Space travel is pretty awesome," she said, nudging Casey with her foot. But when he met her tentative smile with an equally shaky grin, her resolve broke with her voice. "I just wish — " she whispered, blinking back tears. "Sorry."
"Yeah," he said, scrubbing at his face with his left hand. The other found hers and held on tight, and the awful weight in her chest lightened with the contact. There's still us, she thought, relieved and a little surprised to realize that Raph, of all people, had understood that first. But who would know better than he and his brothers what it was to be an us in a world full of them? She rubbed her thumb soothingly back and forth across Casey's battered knuckles and he drew their joined hands onto his lap.
A distant explosion thrummed in the walls and floor, fracturing their brittle calm. Casey dropped her hand and lurched to his feet, while April's mind went winging out to check on the turtles. The familiar knot of surprise, annoyance and fury from Mikey, Donnie and Raph was sufficient to reassure her even before an intercom clicked on and the Professor's cheerful voice announced, "Beep! Attention, passengers! Please do not be alarmed; we are experiencing ... technical difficulties in the galley. A slight adjustment to the jalapeño settings will be required before lunch can proceed. Bloop! Thank you for your patience."
"Oh, man," Casey groaned. "Even in space!" He glanced at the door, then at April. "Maybe I should go check on that?"
"Leo's got it," April replied as a starburst of calm-erupting-into-exasperation beelined toward the supernova of recrimination-calculation-thump-OUCH in the galley. She reined in her awareness as her peripheral vision began to shimmer and distort and her pulse to pound in her temples. Ow. Overdid it again. Easing her head down onto her pillow, she closed her eyes. "Would you — would you mind staying here 'til Donnie gets back?"
"Sure! I mean, no problem." The mattress dipped as his weight settled beside her hip; then the straw from the water bottle poked her in the lips. "You better drink up before you nap again, though. I don't want to get yelled at for not taking care of you."
"'M not tired," she mumbled around the straw. The water trickled soothingly down her throat, easing the raw spots there. "M'head just hurts."
"I'm on it," Casey said, taking her hand again. "Casey Jones, master acupressurist, at your service."
She opened one eye and regarded him skeptically. "Oh, really? Where'd you pick that up?"
"Reflexology chart behind the counter at Chung Wa's," he answered. "Cheapest ginseng and slowest cashiers in Chinatown — " He broke off to knead the web of muscle between her forefinger and thumb.
April closed her eyes again and tried to close her mind against the sudden surge of misery in his. When she had first begun to hone her intuition, Master Splinter had insisted that she also practice mindfulness. All knowledge begins with with self-knowledge; all mastery begins, and ends, with self-mastery. April hadn't understood the point of sitting still and breathing (attentively, unless she wanted to feel sensei's stick across her shoulders) until her powers had grown strong enough to overwhelm her with weird premonitions and other people's emotions. She'd learned quickly that if she didn't want to keel over with a daily migraine, she needed to be able to turn down the volume on the Psychic News Network and just ... be herself. Whoever that self was becoming. Do not struggle with what you feel, Master Splinter had counseled her. Embrace it, and let it go. Be the nishikigoi in the autumn pool, not the salmon in the spring flood.
So April lay quietly and breathed, listening to the dry air whistle in her nostrils, noting the soft brush of the sheets against her skin with the rise and fall of her chest. Other sensations were less easy to compass: shame still glowing in her cheeks and ears, loss that made her gut lurch, and above all the deafening silence beyond the ship's hull, a void that swallowed her cries (Dad? Sensei? Anyone?) without even an echo to mark that she had made them. Don't struggle, April reminded herself as despair eroded her control, seeping in like a flood tide. She curled her fingers around Casey's, letting his callused touch anchor her, steady and familiar and fond.
And whether because he actually did know his acupressure, or because her training took hold, April's headache gradually receded, and with it the weight of her friends' minds. She sighed, relieved, and took another sip of water. "Better?" Casey asked softly, and she nodded, hearing the smile in his voice as he replied, "Awesome."
Better. Not good, not yet (maybe not ever, her broken heart whispered), but better.
And for now, that would have to be enough.
Author's Note: This story was drafted immediately after the season 3 finale aired, but the season 4 opener jossed it. Oh, well. Mikey's Japanese line comes from the chant that accompanies Awa odori in Japan's Tokushima prefecture; roughly translated, it means, "A fool dances and a fool watches; if both are fools, you might as well dance!"