Donatello hadn't known Lila for much longer than his other three brothers. He was the one that had physically saved her from the Foot, showing his face to pull her up from the ledge and lead her to the lair. They hadn't struck up much of a conversation because of her shy tendencies, so he couldn't say that he had been the friendliest out of the bunch, either. Although when Leo was trying to decide her fate, he had been talking about her in a couple different lights in order to stay on top of things as a leader. And then when it came to bed time, Mikey had already disappeared, because he seemed to be a good candidate for befriending her.

He rolled over on his bed, resting his cheek on his hand. The light from his alarm clock and the light creeping in from under the door allowed Don's trained eyes to scan around the floor of his bedroom until he found the dark shape of Lila curled up. He had offered her his bed without telling her that it was his, but she had quietly declined it. He didn't even have to press for an explanation, as she gave it: she was much more used to the floor instead of a fluffy cloud-like surface. He suspiciously let it slide, as she had taken a catnap on their couch, and allowed her to take one of his pillows and take residence among the many papers by his desk. He wasn't sure about the length of her stay, but if she was going to stay long at all, he'd have to do some serious convincing so she could be more comfortable around the lair.

Thinking that she was asleep, he continued to watch the very slight rise and fall of her sides, as he was unable to drift off to dreamland himself. Still lying on his side, he shifted slightly so that his arm wouldn't become numb after being shoved under his shell for so long, but after that he was still. His mind kept going through reasons as to why the Foot would want the cat. As far as he knew, the Shredder wasn't about to go around and pull together a mutant army. Granted, he wanted the turtles dead, but that was because they had meddled into his business far too much for his liking. What were teenagers for, after all?

At the thought of age, he blinked, his focus once again on Lila's form. He had been given her name, and he was aware that she didn't know the name of the place where she hailed from, but other basic information was currently denied to him. For the moment it was because she was in no state to talk, with her unconscious and all, but he wondered if she would ever give away her personal information away anyway. She had the private air around her, although Don was getting the feeling that she would tell him more than his brothers.

For the moment he shrugged that thinking off. His brain relatively unoccupied again, he found himself stifling a large yawn. Shifting again to cover his mouth with his hand, he blinked hard to clear his fuzzy vision.

Lila's ear flicked in his direction at the noisy yawn. Staying still so that he would no longer bug her, he waited for her ear to relax again, but it did not. Quietly so as not to wake her, he whispered, "Lila?"

"Yes?" Her reply was immediate without a trace of drowsiness. Perhaps he had been incorrect in thinking her asleep.

"You're awake," he observed stupidly. This statement caused her to lift her head up and twist it in his direction so that her big eyes were fixed on him.

"Yes," she confirmed anyway.

"Are you uncomfortable?" He couldn't help but be concerned, even after their hushed argument before he had flicked the lights off.

"No."

"Am I bothering you?"

"No."

"Then why are you awake?" Sleepiness wasn't becoming of the supposed genius. Besides, his knowledge rested in machinery and technology, not psychology.

"Because long periods of sleep aren't typical of my kind."

Before, when she had mentioned herself in the plural form, suggesting that there were more creatures such as herself, Donatello had ignored it. Now that the two of them were alone and calm, the fact couldn't be as easily skimmed over. "You mean that you're not unique?"

"Everyone is unique," she argued unsatisfactorily, but she appeared to have more to say. "But I said that I am a Homo silvestris, and while our species is small, it is not as miniscule as one."

Her vocabulary was quite impressive from what Donatello was gathering, but that alone didn't help him. All of her explanations, while short, were begging more questions than answering them.

"How many of your species are there?" Don inquired, true curiosity showing through his voice. The sleepiness had been effectively forgotten after the conversation had become less one-sided.

"There are … four others of my kind," she replied, an obvious hesitation before stating the number. Don briefly wondered why, but he didn't press for an answer behind it. Instead, he simply hinted about his curiosity.

"Four? Are you sure?"

A pained sigh broke from her lips, and Don instantly regretted asking such a thing. "I had three great friends and a sister growing up, but a few years ago my sister fell in and passed away. It took a while for me to get over it, but … T—my friends helped me overcome the pain. Eventually the tom I was closest to fathered my kits." She hesitated even more here, the panic obvious in her eyes even in the nearly nonexistent light. "A-another one of the toms, he … he didn't like me having his kits and he … we … he's gone now, too."

Don tried his best to keep the suspicion from his own eyes at such a choppy history. He should have been happy that he was being told this information in the first place. As she continued her voice pitch had become higher, and her vocabulary had taken a turn for the worse. Pulling his mind away from the pessimistic thinking, he got to wondering how old she could be again, especially at the mention of having children.

"I don't mean to be rude," he began, pausing. A blink of her eyes encouraged him. "May I ask how old you are?" She acted like she had been around for her fair share of years, but she had an almost child-like air about her when mentioning her past.

"Seventeen years?" she replied, though the rise of her voice at the end caused Don to believe that she wasn't so sure about that. Even so, if that was close to her age, she had been around for nearly the same amount of time as him and his brothers. They weren't so sure about their exact age, either, so he couldn't give her any grief on being unsure.

"You act more maturely than that," Don complimented.

Her shoulders shrugged. "I have always been interested in language, though where I come from new words are hard to come by."

"Are you sure that you don't remember that place?"

"If I ever see it again, I'll recognize it, but to my knowledge it does not have an official name."

"Sorry for my nagging."

"It's no problem," Lila assured them. A silence stretched out between them, but Lila never relinquished the eye contact. Another yawn erupted from Don's mouth as their conversation settled down, and he was about to drift off to sleep, but her soft voice jerked him back to complete awareness. "The others … like you, do you have a name?"

"What do you mean?" Don asked to make sure he understood what she was asking of him.

"I am Homo—"

"Ah, yes. We call ourselves the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." He offered her a friendly smile at this, hoping it'd be to her liking. As he had realized earlier, he hadn't looked into their taxonomy, simply because they were mutated turtles. It was a genetic anomaly, and there weren't a whole lot of them.

"The 'teenage' part won't last forever."

"Well, no …"

He thought he saw a small flash of her teeth at this, as if he had been awarded a smile.

"Does this stone jungle have a name?"

It took Don a moment to figure out what she meant by stone jungle. Eventually it hit him that she was talking about the city. "New York," he replied, "sometimes called the Big Apple or the City that Never Sleeps." Too much information, Donatello; keep it simple.

She mouthed the names of the city after him, resting her head back on her front paws.

"That turtle wearing blue … he was cold and calculating at first, but once he talked to me he changed completely."

"That's Leonardo."

"I don't think he likes me."

Don was taken aback at this comment. He never thought that Leo would have animosity towards any of their invited guests. "I don't think it's that, Lila. Leo's … protective of the family. He keeps a close eye on all of us. Having to worry about your well being as well might seem a little daunting to him right now, that's all."

Lila lifted her head again, though not quite as high as before. "We'll see," she said calmly.

"I won't let him, or Raph for that matter, kick you out on the streets to fend for yourself against the Foot." Don was making a friend out of Lila, and the turtles didn't leave their friends to fend for themselves.

"Who's Raph?"

"The one that was yelling most of the time."

"Oh, him." Lila's eyes narrowed into comfortable slits. "I don't like him."

A smile tugged at the corner of Don's mouth. "It's hard to imagine why. He may not seem like the friendliest of mutants, but after you get to know him, you get to see through his hard-won mask."

"How long does that take?" Lila idly asked, lowering her head again, one ear still centered on Don.

"Depends on the person, I think. Michelangelo—the friendly, kind of clingy turtle—still is having a hard time finding the soft side of Raph."

Lila was silent again, and Don was beginning to feel too tired to break it. "You have an interesting family," she finally commented. "It's almost reassuring."

"How so?" It was probably one of the last questions Don was going to ask before he let things slide.

"It reminds me of home," Lila replied quietly. When Don didn't reply, her ear swiveled back to a more comfortable position, but he couldn't tell if she was asleep or not, just like before.

He wasn't sure if his family reminding her of home was a good thing or not, since she didn't seem to want to talk about it, but he took comfort in knowing that his family wasn't the craziest thing in the world. Sometimes some normality was a good thing.

The room was silent again save for their hushed breaths. Neither of them moved any longer as sleep sunk its silent claws into Donatello and pulled him to sleep. Even though he had taken a nap after getting Lila to safety, it apparently wasn't enough. He was a teenager, after all. Teenagers tended to have the habit of staying up late and ignore morning completely. Don was also known to spend absurd hours in his lab, fighting sleep with everything he had so that he could get a project finished. Whatever the case, he still welcomed sleep when it called to him. Within minutes his breathing had become more regular and deep, and would stay that way until he was ready to wake.