She was a terrible mother.
April wrung her hands as she paced the length of the Winnebago that, for the last two years, had been her home. It wasn't a large space to walk but the amount of times she had made the circuit meant she had probably covered miles in the last two hours.
She paused, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she attempted to take in deep breaths in another vain attempt at meditation . The vehicle was old and consisted of two large bucket chairs at the front, a futon couch with seat belts, a small fold in booth for the table, a kitchenette, a bathroom and then a double bed at the back. There were parts of it that had yellowed with age, parts that were falling down and, more often then not, Donnie spent a good deal of time jury rigging the thing into some sort of working order. Still, it had kept them relatively safe and on the move; two things that were priceless in their current situation. However, the limited size and portability also meant that finding a peaceful spot in was near impossible; especially with four children living in it. Well, three children currently, considering one was missing. She began to pace again.
Anxiously she moved to the small door entrance pulled her phone out of her pocket, opened it and then jammed it back into her pocket once again. Donnie had left hours ago, either he wasn't getting her calls or something had happened and he couldn't answer her messages. Either way she hadn't noticed that Janus was missing until twenty minutes after Donnie had left and, by that time, it was too late to go after him herself. Which meant she was at the mercy of her mutant turtle counterpart returning home early (doubtful) or her seven year old son seeing the error of his ways and coming home on his own (near impossible).
As she repeated the phone pattern once more her eyes shifted to the small pile of bodies currently occupying the futon couch.
There was no way she could leave the three children she had at home to go and look for her errant eldest. Her two older sons, Marcus and Febrian, were piled together, an interlocked jumble of limbs on the couch. At ages four and five they were more likely to try and rewire the electrical system of the television remote control into a working raygun then stay at home and behave themselves without supervision. Which left the youngest, Julian, at their mercy. Her little toddler slept soundly, wrapped up in fleecy blue blankets at a safe distance from his rambunctious brothers. Left alone for more then an hour she was certain the older three boys were not above using the youngest as a guinea pig. It was exactly that scenario that had landed the little boy in more then one predicament involving, markers, food dyes, household chemicals (benign Donnie had reassured her) and, on one particularly creative rainy day, a glowing tongue.
Turning from her present children her mind wandered back to her missing one. Eagerly, she opened the thick door of the motor home and then shut the screen. Donnie had parked their large, conspicuous vehicle on the edge of the city in an old camping area. Considering it was early fall and the weather was just starting to turn there were few campers around at this time and those that were had chosen the nicer sites closer to the amenities the park had to offer. Their isolation made for a more secure location and, fewer minds present, April found it much easier to scan for the specific brain patterns of the Kraang, a helpful little trait she had acquired during their time spent as prisoners.
She sighed, letting her face press against the metal of the door frame. If Jan was captured by the Kraang she didn't know what they would do. The thought was too terrible to consider. Her pacing resumed although this time the cool breeze made her slightly more comfortable.
If someone had told her years ago that she would have been friends with mutant turtles and training to be a female ninja in order to fight off an alien invasion she would have easily labeled them insane, given them a funny look and then moved on. Now, at age twenty three, her current life made that one seem almost mundane.
As she felt the buzzing at her back pocket she pulled the phone out and flipped it open with a speed that would have impressed even the Shredder. The message was short and sweet:
FOUND THEM. GOT J. ETA 20m- D
She felt the crippling fear that their son was lost and alone somewhere in the night lift away and she breathed a sigh of relief.
How she longed for mundane. For those lost years when her biggest concerns were getting to school on time, training and maybe wondering if her mutant dad was ever going to be human again. Now, her main goals were to avoid capture, survive to the next day, and keep the Kraang far away from herself, Donnie and the children. Things had really changed.
Idly, she thought back to that fateful night, the last time she had fought alongside the turtles, Casey and Master Splinter. The night that had started both her and Donnie down the path that they were now committed to. It had been an epic battle, the Footclan, the turtles and the Kraang all mashed into TCRI in one large free for all. There had been bodies strewn across the shimmering white tiled floor, robot parts underfoot nearly everywhere and little pink brain bits littering the floor like confetti. Retrospectively she probably should not have been there although she knew there was no way the turtles would have been able to keep her out of the fight (although Donnie had tried). With the sole exception of Karai the Footclan showed little interest in her but the same could not be said of the Kraang. In the end she had been taken and, predictably, Donnie had rushed right through the Kraang portal after her. It had closed behind them, locking them both away in a pocket of Dimension X space and had made them the unwilling guests of the Kraang for the next twelve months. Of course she hadn't know just how bad it was going to get back then, In the moments where they left Earth she had only had enough time to see Donnie suffocating on the floor of the holding room they had appeared in before she had been rendered unconscious with a sharp injection of a powerful sedative that she was destined to become very familiar with.
When she had awoken she was in a glass prison, Donnie in the cell alongside hers and hundreds of other creatures all around them. Initially, she was terrified, she had been frantic, like a caged animal pacing and lashing out at everything she could reach. Donnie had spent days talking her down, calming her and crooning to her. Eventually she began to listen to his voice and believe in his reassurances; that it was unlikely they were going to die otherwise the Kraang would never had bothered keeping them alive this long. As time passed Donatello's voice became her only comfort, for days on end they sat back to back, hands pressed against the glass as they spoke in hushed whispers.
The first time they had taken Donnie she had nearly lost her mind. He had returned days later, a mess, leaving her to wonder just what they had done to him. Then they had taken her and she no longer had to wonder. She preferred not to think about the days they kept her, the things that they had done.
April shuddered; those had been the darkest days of her life.
Once she was returned Donnie began implementing his plan. There were others like them, mutants taken and held captive experimented on. To her surprise they were kept in paired cells like she and Donnie were. Always a human and mutant pair and always taken by the Kraang separately. As time passed they all got to know one another, the cells were not sound proof and, on occasion, April would see other humans being dragged out alongside her. She began to speculate.
It took Donnie six months to figure out, bypass the security system and finally break them all out. He rewired the Kraang's own weapons system to self detonate after giving everyone the timeframe and the location of a nearby escape portal. In the choas their first stop was the genetics lab. Donnie was determined to eradicate all of the 'samples' they had taken from both of them, and was unwilling to take any risks that her DNA would survive the explosive purge. That was when they both discovered what those samples had been used for.
They had taken more then just DNA this time.
She had seen things in the labs that she would never recover from. Even as they had destroyed all the genetic material they could a new challenge presented itself. Under both her and Donnie's specific designation numbers were what the Kraang labeled as "viable genetic biological subjects"- children.
Most were kept in a sort of stasis, just as the Kraang had done with her clones on Earth, but the reality was they wouldn't be in stasis forever. The biological remains on the lab tables made it painfully clear the Kraang were not interested in keeping their 'subjects' alive and given the fact she and Donnie had just armed a bomb, everything in this lab going to be incinerated. In the end neither of them could contemplate the idea of murdering their own children and Donnie had managed to release the stasis fluid and retrieve the children from their tubes just in time to arrange an escape. They made it through the portal, broke the connection and in that moment, becamethe parents of five living boys.
Escaping with very small children had been near impossible. In the end they both acknowledged it was a combination of her telepathic abilities, Donnie's know how, stolen Kraang tech and a lot of luck that had them dropped in the middle of nowhere Earth alive. Even then it wasn't easy. They had no money, no idea where they were, a group of young children who were totally unsocialized was not a good situation.
They lost their youngest son in the first few days.
April pulled away from the doorway to turn towards her boys, suddenly overcome with love for them. Carefully, she knelt down on the shaggy brown carpet and took a moment to simply observe them as they were now. Unable to stop herself ran her fingers run through Febrian's thick red hair for a moment before reaching over and pulling the warm blanket up and over Marcus' smooth shell. Both boys snuggled closer to one another, looking way more innocent asleep then they ever could away. Delicately she bent over to press a kiss to each their of their temples.
Losing the little one had been horrible and if the Kraang hadn't put her into a depressive episode watching her baby die and being powerless to stop it certainly had. Even as she laid on their makeshift bed for days mourning Donnie assured her there was nothing they could have done. There had been other fetus' that they couldn't save, that they had chosen to destroy and the youngest child had been a gamble. They had both been aware that there was a risk he had not fully developed but they had also agreed a chance at life was better then no chance at all. Still, April knew that those deaths would haunt her for the rest of her life, but not the way her baby did.
He had been too small, Donnie had said. Underdeveloped lungs. Without access to proper medical care he had simply slipped away from them, his tiny green body gasping for breath before finally giving one last shudder and drawing still. For days Donnie had been beside himself with guilt, blaming himself for not being able to get their son to an incubator, or to gain access to a hospital.
In the end they had buried him in that forest they were hiding in, laying the little body in a small unmarked grave. Donnie had named him Harue and she had found wildflowers to lay on the grave and said a prayer over the small soul. He had sworn to her that day that as long as he lived he would never let her bury another child. She didn't bother telling him that it wasn't a promise he could make, instead she sat beside him at that grave, cradling the children and holding onto Donatello.
The sound of the door pulled her from her morose nostalgia. Her head shot up as her mind immediately cast out a mental net, already identifying the newcomers as Donnie and Janus. Hurriedly, she moved to the door, yanking it open in time to see Donnie drop in front of it, shouldering the metal frame he held it open as he slipped in; their son laid limply on his shoulder.
"Oh no, is he hurt?" she asked frantically, moving to lift the boy from the turtle's grasp.
"No, he's alright. He passed out about ten minutes after we texted you" Donnie replied tensely, pulling his gloves off as April eased Janus onto the couch.
She gathered Janus in her arms. He was bundled up warm at least and the hood would have kept his rather distinctive O'Neil hair from becoming recognized.
Red heads to do make the best ninja, she thought to herself with a laugh. They were much too obvious.
"April, are we making a mistake here? "
She paused, turning to look over her shoulder at Donnie. His face was downcast and more then anything he looked tired. It was a strange expression on his face, normally he as endless ideas and energy. She hadn't seen that look on his face for a long time.
"What happened out there?" she asked cautiously.
She watched the grown turtle collect himself for a moment, as if the thought was elusive. Whatever it was must have been severely upsetting to him because more often then not Donnie, had stop trying to filter his thoughts and feelings from her. It had led to more then one interesting conversation between the two of them but, overall, their communication was key. If he was unsure about how to express himself in this she didn't know what she should expect from him.
"Jan snuck up on me just as the others found me. Everyone was tense and no one was paying attention when we all realized someone was there." He looked up at her, fixing her with his sienna stare, "Leo nearly hit him with some throwing stars before I could tell him to duck. We're lucky Jan's got such fast reflexes, he dropped before they hit."
April pursed her lips. The guilt was written on his face. The moment she had first seen Donnie in that Kraang lab, agonized at the state of their unconscious children, she had known he would be an amazing father. The downside of that particular trait was he could not abide his own failures, not with her and certainly not with their boys. This would incident would definitely fall under the Donatello Hamato umbrella of failure. The fact that he had unknowing endanger his own son devastated him.
"It's not your fault." She responded immediately, pulling another blanket from beside the futon and draping it over their eldest son before pressing her face into the boy's thick hair, breathing in the scent of him mixed with the smell of the night air.
"It is." Donnie ground out in frustration; "He could have been hurt April. I should have known he was following me."
She frowned as she climbed to her feet, moving to standing in front of him, "If Jan was following you, actually following, then you probably wouldn't have known. That being said there was probably little to no chance that those stars would have hit him whether he ducked or not."
They both shared a significant look.
"He's evolved that quickly?" Donnie asked carefully unwrapping the bandages from around his wrists.
"I don't have a scale or anything." April replied, running a hand through her long red hair, "but yeah, I think so. He's the one with the most exposure to the Kraang. We don't know what they did to him. Or us."
He nodded thoughtfully before looking at her again. Over the years she had begun to read his eyes; those large almond eyes that were amber and crimson at alternating times. He was worrying again, about her and them, about his limited resources and what he could do when a situation like this presented itself. April firmly believed Donnie had spent the majority of the last four years worrying. Softly she reached out to cup the side of his face, he leaned into her touch.
"What if it's too dangerous?" he asked, justifying her thoughts on his state of mind, "What if I'm pushing you and the boys into danger just for the sake of figuring out what's happened to us? Really, what do the answers matter if it's going to get them hurt or killed?"
She gave him a gentle smile, "If you don't want to do this Donnie we don't have to. If you say that this is too dangerous, that it's not worth it we'll go."
He seemed shocked at her reply, his eyes widening and a smile tugging at the side of his mouth, "Who are you and what have you done with April O'Neil?"
She gave a chuckle and grinned up at him, letting her own emotions seep out of her and into him. She saw the quirked eyebrow that indicated that he knew what she was doing but instead of letting her go and breaking the connection he help her closer. Softly she pressed her lips to the side of his neck, then the underside of his jaw. The signal was clear to both of them.
She watched him for a moment before his smile turned into something else. It certainly hadn't been her intention of taking his comfort in this direction but now that it was presenting itself she was not willing to let the opportunity pass by. With a cursory glance behind her and a little mental check she ensured that all four boys were fast asleep. Then, in a moment, she jumped, letting his hands fall under her thighs as she did as he instinctively caught her. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her hair trailing down her back. She gave his neck a light bite before running her tongue along his bottle green skin and pulling away.
His mouth descended on hers with a familiar hunger and she returned it with her own, matching him move for move.
"This is new." He murmured against her throat, dragging his broad tongue along the length of her neck, "Mental note: Self deprecation is one of your turn ons."
"Yeah, that's right." April grinned as she tilted her head back, giving him great access to her neck, while simultaneously stripping off her tank top, "Keep talking. We'll see if you regret it or not later on."
She felt him press her back into one closet doors, grinding his still covered body against hers. Desperate, she wrapped her legs around him as best she could to draw him as close as possible, as she felt the hardness against her core she let out a delicate moan that Donnie promptly stifled with his own mouth.
He reacted to her reactions. His own growl of arousal was felt as their mouths moved against one another. April wrapped her legs more tightly against his shell, opening herself up to him began thrusting against her.
"You sure?" he whispered against her, dragging his teeth against her now.
"Hell, yes," she moaned, her hands working to undo the ties of his shirt.
"Door locked?" he continued, his hands gripping tighter against her legs as he pulled away form the wall and began walking towards the back bedroom.
"Yes." She purred pressing her lips to his pulse point.
"And they're asleep?" he countered, throwing her down on the bed.
"As much as they're going to be." She replied enigmatically, only too aware of the number of times their attempts at being amorous had been ruined by late night wanders, nightmares and bathroom breaks.
He didn't waste another second.
There were times when April wondered if there would ever be a time when they would get more then stolen moments together. The physical aspect of their relationship had come into play months after their escape. The first night being the night after they had buried Harue. Back then it had been something different, she had been grief stricken and had gone to him in the night looking for any sort of comfort. The physical act had sated her but in the morning things had been awkward. They hadn't talked about it until a few months later when, while staying in rather sleazy hotel, Donnie had tentatively touched her under the blankets of their double bed. It hadn't been anything like the first time, nothing too intense, especially with the children sleeping so close at hand, but it had been perfect. It hadn't been about anything but them and what was shared between them.
As they became more used to one another and more reliant on one another's support, the physical had grown as well. There would always be the kids and there would always be constraints, no matter what their feelings were, so their trysts were fast, passionate and so intense they bordered on mind blowing. April just wondered how they could get any better then they already were.
She bit hard on her own lip as he pressed her down into the mattress, hurriedly, dragging her sleeping pants off her hips along with her underwear as her own hands worked feverishly to get his pants off. After their first few times Donnie had given her enough time to get used to the logistics of his physiology. She was grateful for the fact that the mutation seemed to favour the human form over the turtle one and that they were actually compatible. At this point it was all familiar and she reveled in way he slid into her grasp; hot, hard and ready.
As always their coupling was frenzied. His hands dragged down her legs, discarding her panties before they moved up again. He immediately forced her legs apart as his mouth worked against her bare breasts, earning a moan from her at the vastly different sensations of his hot mouth against her while the cool air caressed her exposed sex. For her part she drew her legs up around him, her hands running down his head, shoulders, back and shell even as she let out throaty gasps as he tenderly bit down on a nipple while his fingers reached down to toy with her, spreading her wetness and dipping inside her to caress those specific spots that had her dripping for him.
Even with the more human aspects of his body present they both were aware that he was a great deal larger than a normal human man. Their first had been painful, not only because she had never been with a man before but also because neither of them was really aware of how to go about foreplay. It took him awhile the learn where to touch her to earn her moans and how to make her wet enough to allow his entry. In the end it had been a bumbling embarrassing affair although they both had managed to take pleasure in the act itself.
Ever the perfectionist, years later Donnie knew her body better then she did herself. He knew how to touch to make her cry and moan. What parts of her liked to be stroked and when he should get rough. He knew those specific spots in within her body that had her pleading for him. Within seconds his hands and mouth had her begging, rubbing her naked sex against his ready erection.
He let her line him up to her entrance and make the first move but as it became clear she was ready he pushed forward, thrusting into her fully. She arched up, her legs tightening against him as her arms sought purchase at his shoulders and biceps. He began moving quickly, pistoning into her even as he swallowed the sound of her moans into his own mouth.
It wasn't really surprising that she had learned to like it fast and hard. Certainly not when considering their situation but she was always amazed at how quickly Donnie would bring her to the brink. Even as she felt the sharp coiling of arousal tighten within her he was lifting her up, kneeling before her and spreading his legs so she could sit on his lap. Her body rose up and down now of her own accord, her hair falling around him in long red tendrils as she rode him, lifting herself up and slamming back down on him until every thrust hit that perfect spot inside her that made her insides burn and stars appear on the back of her eyelids.
She let out a gasp of shock as she felt her end approaching, rising up and up as he increased his speed until his arm locked around her holding her in place as his strong legs forced himself into her as deeply as he could go.
"Donnie, faster, keep going." she found herself begging.
As usual he conceded to her desires. Soon she felt that part of her that was so desperately chasing completion snap. Her pleasure spiraled around her as her muscles began to milk him, contracting against him even as he continued to thrust into her. Within seconds she felt him respond, his own body pushing her forward, her back into the bedding as he covered her. He hardened within her, reaching a deep part of her before she felt the telltale warmth in her womb and the rush of liquid heat spread across her center. Her own body rode the afterglow of their coupling as she pulled him to her; he carefully adjusted his weight so not to crush her.
Panting they turned to face one another. He was still connected to her, buried deep inside her body, although she could feel him softening now, the hardness ebbing away to the soft warmth of his body and the wet sensation of his seed running down her thighs.
She smiled at him and he returned the gesture, his eyes seeking hers. She saw love there, as she always did and she gave it back. They never said it out loud (she wasn't sure why) but she knew that this was perfect. As they laid there in bed, listening now to the sounds of the small bodies sleeping outside their door, his warmth at her back and her muscles soft and relaxed she knew exactly what he had been talking about earlier; why this was something he did not want to endanger. Because, in truth, this was likely as close to perfect contentment that either of them would ever achieve in their lifetimes and she knew she would protect it as vehemently as he did, regardless of the consequences.