The lair was empty on first sight, so April invited herself in and kicked through the rusty turnstiles, skirting around the lowered living area to make her way into the kitchen.
"Hey, guys! I brought pizza!"
She set the boxes down on the kitchen table, knowing that her announcement was rather redundant, given the family's extraordinary senses of smell and hearing, not to mention Donatello's security systems; they probably knew she was coming before she even reached the tunnel.
Immediately she heard the patter of excited footsteps, coming rather later than usual after her arrival in the lair.
"April! April!"
The squeak of a wheel accompanied Michelangelo's voice, and April turned around to see him scooting a battered pink stroller into the kitchen. To her immense surprise, he completely ignored the pizza boxes.
"April, look! I've got a baby!" He pulled her into a quick hug, then waved his hands at the stroller, practically humming with excitement.
"Is that so," she said with a grin as she down to take a look under the hood.
She was expecting a teddy bear, maybe even an action figure wrapped in a blanket. It was neither. It was mossy green, it had a lot of teeth, and it was very definitely alive. The brown knit blanket it was wrapped in shivered as it twitched its tail.
April straightened up very slowly, all the muscles in her body tense and tingling.
"Mike," she said tightly. "I don't think that's a baby."
Michelangelo looked down at the tiny reptile and cooed.
"I know," he said with a sigh. "He's just too cute. He might be a little angel!"
April snapped out of her daze and grabbed his arm, pulling him back a few inches.
"Mikey," she whispered forcefully, "That's an alligator."
"Yeah!"
The little thing blinked at her as she stared in incredulity.
"How…?"
"I found him," Mikey said, bending down to adjust the incongruous little pink bib he had tied around the alligator's neck. "He was all lost and sad, so I brought him back! Sensei said I have to take good care of him. He's pretty little, but isn't he just the sweetest?"
April rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms.
"Mikey, you can't just bring an alligator back into the – wait. Splinter said you can keep him?"
"Uh huh."
What had happened to Splinter's no-cats-no-puppies-no-pigeons-no-strays rule? He'd bent it for an alligator? Sure, he'd let them keep Casey, but didn't he know what alligators ate?
"Mikey, how are you going to feed it?"
Mikey straightened up, hand to his plastron.
"I happen to be a world-class expert in everything tasty, April. I'm gonna make him pizza, and pizza-noodle soup, and pancakes…"
"Alligators are carnivores, Mikey!"
"It'll be meat-lover's pizza."
"Why would Splinter let you keep it?" April dug the heels of her palms into her eyes, trying to keep her voice even for fear of hurting the younger boy's feelings.
"Mikey, an alligator is not a pet."
Michelangelo pulled the stroller against his chest, his eyes wide with affront.
"April! Leatherhead is not a pet! He's a little baby and he needs someone to take care of him!"
Leatherhead?
April opened her mouth to argue but was interrupted by a high-pitched klap! She looked down into the stroller to see pale green eyes locked on her face, little claws waving in the air toward her. Michelangelo bent down to see and chuckled.
"Aw, he likes you! Here," he began to unbuckle the straps around the alligator's belly and thrust the creature at her before she could see what he was doing. "You should hold him!"
"Mike, no!" April put up her hands in protest and he dropped the alligator into them before she could pull away. She quickly maneuvered her fingers beneath the bib and away from the toothy snout as Mikey rambled on.
"You should get to know him," he said with a nod, moving around the table and fiddling with something on the counter. "Sensei says I can be his mom, but it would be nice to have a lady to be a bit of a mom as well."
"Mikey, you are not volunteering me as the mother of an alligator," April said hoarsely, holding the little reptile at arm's distance. Michelangelo ignored her, but she noticed him subtly pushing the stroller farther and farther away from her with his foot. With no place to put the creature down, April forced herself to calm. It wasn't snapping at her; in fact, it was just looking at her. It squirmed a bit and April gave it a little more support, pulling her arms in a bit closer as they tired. The alligator made another little klap.
That's when she noticed what was wrong with it.
It sat in her hand, instead of simply being held, and its shoulders and hips moved all wrong. April looked around at Mikey, who was still busy at the counter, then bent over and carefully placed the alligator on the floor, belly-down. It klapped in displeasure before unsteadily pushing itself up on its forearms and sitting upright in a slouch. She settled down beside it and it turned to look at her with intelligent eyes.
"Mikey."
"Mmm?"
April slowly pushed her hand in front of the creature and booped it on the nose. It frowned at her and wrinkled its snout, making a soft klap again.
"This is a baby."
"Mm-hmm…April, I just said that."
She offered her hand and the alligator grabbed it, hugging her fingers tight and allowing himself to be picked up again. He closed his tiny eyes as she ran a finger up and down the top of his snout and made a very tiny rumble.
"No, I mean…is this a baby mutant? A mutant alligator?"
"Yeah. Dudette, what's up? Didn't you hear me? I guess he is pretty distracting, huh?"
The little alligator – Leatherhead, she reminded herself – settled down quite calmly in the stroller, and April stared at him for a long time.
"I…"
"We found him during our mission last night," said Mikey. "He was all alone in this really big room and I couldn't just leave him – "
"Wait, so he was with the Kra-"
"SHH shhshhhshhshh!"
Mikey leapt over the table and clamped a huge green hand over her face.
"Don't mention the you-know-whos," he said as she struggled to breathe. "He gets real upset when he hears that word!"
April pried his hand away and glanced at the baby alligator, who was still watching them with fascination. He squirmed a little bit and twitched his tail, but relaxed when Mikey made his way around the table and cooed over him.
April suddenly felt an odd surge of kinship with the little reptile; experimented on by the Kraang, mutated as a baby, with a deep loathing of the pink blobby bastards…
"Oh! Hey, April! I, uh, I see you've found our new guest."
April got to her feet and waved at Donatello and Leonardo as they entered the kitchen, each carrying an armful of boxes. Mikey immediately leapt up.
"What'd you get me, what'd you get me!"
"It's all of our old baby stuff," said Leo, twisting to stop Michelangelo from grabbing his box. "Splinter didn't throw anything away, and-"
Michelangelo rummaged through Leo's box and produced a stained baby sling, immediately adjusting the straps to their longest lengths and throwing it over his shell.
"Mikey, no, we need to wash that first…"
Michelangelo ignored Leo and plucked the little alligator from the stroller, trying to find a way to fit him into the sling.
"Dude, I think we might need to make a tail hole in this thing…"
April gently took Leatherhead from Mikey as he started to sort through Leo and Donny's boxes, approving or disapproving of what he found. Donny rounded the table to stand next to her.
"So, what do you think?"
At his presence, the little gator began squirming again, reaching out for Donatello. April held him up and Donny took him.
"He's really a baby mutant?"
"As far as we could figure it," said Donny, forming a little nest between his hands and his plastron for Leatherhead to sit in, which he ignored. "We think the…the you-know-whos were experimenting with their mutagen's effects on Earth animals. Trying to perfect it so that there were fewer unpredictable outcomes. There were a few others in the rooms we found, but they weren't…"
Donny sighed, gently tickling Leatherhead under the chin. Leatherhead grabbed his finger and nibbled.
"There – ouch – wasn't much we could do for them."
Leatherhead lost interest in Donny's finger and slithered around in his hands, hooking two claws on the top edge of Donny's plastron and then trying to pull himself up. April watched in bemusement as Donny gave the little reptile a boost and was rewarded an alligator to the face for his trouble.
"For some reason he seems to hate my face, I don't know why, he just grabs at it."
"Awww…"
Mikey walked up to them, covered in unravelling baby blankets.
"Isn't he just the sweetest?"
Wincing at the tiny claws as Leatherhead clung to his face, Donny sighed.
"Adorable."
April took mercy on him and softly pried the small alligator away. Leatherhead klapped in displeasure but curled up when she held him against her chest, looking quite happy with his new-found warm spot.
"And Splinter's okay with this?"
"Wasn't much of a choice, you know," said Leo. "I don't think he's too happy with having someone else to take care of, but we couldn't just leave him."
"I'm taking care of him!" Mikey announced proudly. "I'm gonna feed him, and make sure he stays warm, and read him bedtime stories…"
"It's not just Mikey, right?" April whispered to Donatello. He shook his head.
"Mikey's the one Leatherhead's really attached to, but there is absolutely no way we're letting him be responsible for raising a child. I think it'll be more of a team effort."
April backed up until she was resting against the counter. She watched Mikey and Leo argue about what from the boxes would be useful or not, absently bouncing the reptile in her arms.
"Is Splinter really okay with this," she muttered.
April hadn't been around for the boys' first fourteen years of life, but she imagined that raising a mutant child in the sewer couldn't have been easy, let alone raising four. She highly doubted that Splinter would be happy about having a fifth.
Donatello leaned against the counter beside her. Her arms were growing tired and she adjusted the alligator child until he was more comfortable against her front.
"I know he's not pleased with the situation," whispered Donny, watching as Mikey bustled around the kitchen to prepare Leatherhead some food, finally noticing the pizza and announcing that he would be making soup. "But it's not like we could have just dropped the baby off at social services."
He grew quiet for a moment and fiddled with his overlarge fingers.
"I know it's…I mean…if it's not too much trouble, do you think you could pick up some…?"
He gestured at the baby, who had wrapped himself around April's forearm. She nodded.
"No problem. I might have to get a few things second-hand, though…actually, my dad might have kept some of my old baby things. I'll look tonight and go get some bottles and diapers and stuff tomorrow morning."
"You don't have school?"
Michelangelo silently came over and plucked the dozing alligator out of April's arms with a grin, waking him up and pressing a scratched sippy-cup against his snout. It was a domestic scene April had never considered witnessing, especially down here. Mikey's usually exuberant, excited face suddenly sported a look of gentle concentration, and she felt a rush of fondness toward the tiny reptile that had brought it out.
"It can wait," she replied.
Inspired by the adorable pictures drawn by brokenheadmilk and astralpanda-a , and annym3 also did an adorable pic, all on tumblr, so go and check them out because they're AWESOME. Someone wrote a cute chapter about bby!LH and Donny but I CAN. NOT. FIND IT. If someone knows it, please let me know because I'd like to add it here, it's really sweet.
Leatherhead is my favorite character, with the right amounts of angst and kick-ass, tempered by a genuinely good heart. His interactions with Mikey in the 2012 series are absolutely teeth-rottingly adorable and I love every bit of it.
Raph's tortoise Spike aside, I can't see Splinter being one for allowing pets. Well, but he did let them keep Casey….
I think that having something to take care of, having a little more responsibility, will provide some interesting character development for a kid who's constantly been babied by his older brothers. Sure, Mikey enjoys attention, but he also strives to prove himself as more than just the baby of the family, and I want to explore some of that development. He seems to have a good intuition for people's needs, and I want to make sure I write him as more than just the immature, excitable! ninja turt he's often portrayed as.