Disclaimer: If I owned TMNT, the season finale would have happened differently.
A/N: I am so entirely appalled, pleased, heartbroken, and enraged by the Season 3 finale that I couldn't help but write… and write, and write, and write about it. So this is what I came up with, mostly because I wanted to slap the crap out of Casey at the very end. Not cool, Casey. Anyway, I might continue with this although as of right now I'm working on a light-hearted Michelangelo reader insert. We shall see.
Enjoy.
Something snapped. April gripped the arm of a nearby space chair, steadying herself after their sonic acceleration, "Awesome?"
Casey lowered his arms and smiled at her, adrenaline lending the spark in his eyes, "Yeah! We're in space, Red!"
She inhaled slowly, shakily, through her nose and leveled him with a glare cold enough to freeze the ship's engine. "Seriously?" her voice shook, "You think this is awesome? You think the destruction of our entire planet is awesome?"
His eyes widened a little bit at her outburst, "I didn't-"
"Splinter is dead!" she hissed, loud enough to garner the attention of their four mutant friends and the fugitoid robot, "The whole world is gone. Everyone! They're dead!"
Michelangelo looked up from his cup of hot chocolate, suddenly finding himself lacking an appetite, while Donatello gripped the leather across his chest and observed.
"I know, that!" Casey raised his hands in defense as she approached him, each step a heavy thud, "I was there, too."
The turtle in red paid little heed; instead, found himself swamped by his own train of forlorn thought.
April jabbed her index finger into his chest, "Then explain how this is awesome, Casey," she spat, her face flushing red from anger.
Leonardo looked back out the main screen, replaying the events of the hour back in his head like a broken record.
The vigilante's silence prompted her to push him, both palms flat across his chest. "Hey!" he stumbled back a step and narrowed his eyebrows, "What the shell, Red?"
"We're all orphans!" she cried out, flinging her small hands about in a fit of rage, "My father is dead! My mother is dead, if she wasn't already!"
"April-"
"Your dad and sister! Master Splinter! Everyone is dead! DEAD, Casey!" The girl's lightly applied mascara dripped down her cheeks and she crumbled, face in hands, onto her knees, "Sucked through a black hole."
Casey Jones stood there, staring down at her sobbing form, "I…"
She hiccuped behind her palms, "And you… hic… have the audacity to… hic… say it's awesome."
"I was just trying to help," he whispered, crouching down to her and extending a hand, "We all-"
"Don't touch me," April hissed, angling away from him and reaching up to grab the arm of a white ship chair, "Don't you dare."
He knelt there, watching as she dragged herself shakily to her feet and rub each temple simultaneously. "April, we all cope differently," he began slowly, "Don't you think I'm upset, too?"
She did not reply. Instead, the kunoichi took a deep breath and brought her hands down to cradle across her torso; a stance she often took, Casey noted, when she felt vulnerable.
"The only thing we can do," Casey stood and watched her, "is to move forward the best we can."
Swallowing heavily, April ran one hand along the smooth surface of the furniture and wiped her face with the other.
"Red-" she finally looked at him and the pain in her eyes dropped a heavy weight inside his stomach. Casey felt his throat tighten, eyes stinging with warm liquid, and he tore his gaze away.
A pregnant pause drifted throughout the room. Several moments passed and not one word was spoken; but what was there to say? Their whole world had been turned upside down. Earth was destroyed, along with everyone they knew and loved.
"April's right," Mikey spoke up, cradling a lukewarm mug of hot cocoa, "this whole thing sucks. Majorly."
All eyes turned to him, albeit some (green, especially) hesitantly.
The youngest brother looked down into the cooling brown liquid and thought of his sensei, his father. "It sucks, but we have a job to do," bright blue eyes glanced up and rested on each member of their little group in turn, "We have to save Earth."
"But Mikey, Earth is gone," Donnie gripped the leather across his plastron tighter, knuckles lightening. "There's nothing left to save."
Michelangelo wasn't having any of it, "We'll find a way, dude, we always-"
"Renet."
"What?" all heads turned towards the red-banded turtle, his piercing green eyes glossed over with unshed tears.
He huffed, crossing his arms in such a way that was so normal, so Raph, they all momentarily forgot about Earth's tragic conclusion. "Renet," the turtle repeated, "you know: time master or whatever in training? She brought us on a ridiculous chase after the time scepter and royally screwed up several times in the process."
"Hey," Mikey glared at him.
"Well, it's true," Raph leveled him right back before addressing the group as a whole, "Anyway… wouldn't she be able to bring us back in time? We could make sure Zog never got his armor back - make sure he never sent the signal."
Hope flared in April and Mikey's eyes, but Leo shook his head. "I don't think that would work," he stepped away from the flight console, "If the entire Earth is destroyed and Renet's timeline takes place in the future, then that means she's gone, too."
Michelangelo visibly deflated, "But she said we were heroes…"
"We were," Leo's voice hardened and he turned to the silent Fugitoid. Opening his mouth to address the robot, Donatello's high pitched squeal of eureka! promptly cut him off.
"Wait! Guys, she said we were heroes," Donnie gasped, garnering their collective attention. "When we met Renet, she said we were heroes!"
Raph snorted in bemusement, "Yeah, we've established that."
April and Casey glanced at one another before turning their gazes back to the turtle in purple.
"You're not understanding what I'm getting at here," Donatello squinted his eyes, attempting to get his thoughts in order. "Renet is still out there," he breathed, "and you know why?"
His hypothesis was met with curious stares, yet nobody answered.
"Our fate has been predetermined this whole time," a glimmer of faith turned his brown eyes into a beacon of hope, "The scepter brought us back in time, without Renet's intervention, to save Master Splinter. Renet wouldn't have been alive in the future to jump back to our timeline, had the destruction of Earth been permanent and destroyed her."
"Um…" April wrung out her hands nervously, "Are you sure you're not just grasping at straws?"
"No! I'm certain," Donnie ran one large hand down his face, "don't you see? If the Earth was really destroyed, Renet would have never been born."
Leo's eyes widened, "She would have never travelled back in time."
The second youngest brother sighed in relief, "Exactly."
"So… Renet is still alive?" Mikey asked tentatively, looking up from his lap.
"I'm positive she is, Mikey," Donnie beamed.
Raph cleared his throat and stepped closer to the center of the room, where everyone had begun congregating for Donatello's massive explanation, "What if this is why she called us 'heroes'? We end up saving Earth and show up in her textbooks, like she told us."
"How do we do that, though, exactly?" April raised an eyebrow, eyes still slightly puffy from her earlier breakdown.
Casey stuffed his hands in his pockets, "It ain't like we can go back in time, unless ya got that Renet chick's phone number."
"Not exactly," Donatello admitted, "but I've sort of got an idea. As of right now, we're still making history. Out of all the people in all the timelines, it seems, those with the ability to mold time itself are the only ones to notice the changes within it."
"And what does that mean?" Leo asked, although he was fairly certain he knew where this was going.
Heaving a great sigh of intellectual triumph, Donnie's eyes roamed across each familiar face and the new robotic ally that had rescued them, "We start changing history enough to make Renet notice. She'll come back and we'll have our tickets back to the past."
April clapped her hands together in comprehension, but then a perplexed expression drifted onto her features. "But Donnie," she began, "if you say fate is set in stone, despite whatever idea we go with, wouldn't we be just continuing the 'story'? It won't change anything if this was meant to happen."
"Renet is alive," he repeated, "so that means Earth still exists in the future, despite what the Triceratons have done. In another timeline, this exact scenario happened; whatever we choose ends up leading us, or someone else, to the restoration of Earth."
"So why did you even propose the idea if fate is just gonna fix the problem?" Casey raised an eyebrow.
Mikey smiled and spoke for his brother, "Maybe fate needs a little push?"