"I did it," Don announced to an empty room. "I recreated the cure!"

Donatello bounced to his feet. His chair spun across the aisle within the room, ricocheting off the opposite side. Objects teetered and threatened to fall, but eventually straightened themselves out. Don deftly navigated his way to the door, throwing it open. He half expected the rest of his family to be awake, but knew that at such an ungodly hour, it was unlikely. As it was, only Lila sat sentry by his lab door.

She looked up at him with curiosity flooding her eyes when Don burst through the door. "Good morning," she said.

Don blinked at her. "You're talking to me now?"

She lowered her gaze, staring intently at her paws. "I'm sorry. I realized too late I was acting childish. Much like I did when I left Tanz and Emock."

Don smiled at her, broadly. "It's okay. I understand. I asked too much of you."

"May I ask something of you? Your family has been so kind already, but …"

"Anything, Lila," Don assured her.

Lila paused, as if tasting her words. "Would you help me return home? I need to own up for what I've done."

Don blinked. He hadn't expected Lila to stay for the rest of her life, but he also hadn't given thought to her leaving either. "Oh."

"I really appreciate everything you have done for me. You've protected me, taught me how to stand up for myself, and it's really helped. I will really miss you."

"How will we return you home?" Don asked. "You said you don't remember where you came from."

"I arrived here on a floating craft. I think I will return in the same manner."

"Lila, there are a lot of boats that come to and leave New York. Though if I remember correctly, someone mentioned you most likely arrived from somewhere in eastern Asia. Where exactly is beyond me. We can't just go up to the Shredder's door and ask where –" Don cut himself short. Lila didn't know that her species was simply a genetic experiment done by the Foot clan. He didn't want to upend her world by telling her the news. She didn't need to know. "I mean," Don stuttered in amendment, "we can't ask the Shredder how his men found you and if they caught the identification of the barge you arrived on."

Lila averted her eyes, hunching her shoulders and curving her spine to pull her head away. Donatello crouched down beside her and tentatively reached out to touch her. Her muscles shuddered for a moment, but she let him pet her softly. Her fur was remarkably soft.

"Maybe I can help research where you might be from and pick a boat from there," he told her. He didn't want to crush her hopes. She wanted to own up to what she perceived as a large mistake. Who was he to stop her?

"I don't see how," Lila replied miserably. Her voice wavered in a low meow.

"I can research the approximate region based on vegetation, animal life, and by the date you arrived at New York. That should narrow things down considerably."

"I lived where there was a lot of grass," Lila offered.

Don took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Oh …" If she couldn't supply him much detail, he wasn't entirely sure how accurate his geographical pinpointing would work. "I think I'll start by looking at the date you arrived."

"The moon was full five days before I arrived."

"Uh … that helps."

"Really?" She picked her head up from its hung position, catching Donatello's eyes with her own. They sparkled in the small amount of light from around the room.

"Yes, actually. We have so many skirmishes with the Shredder, none of them terribly stick out to me anymore. I promise you that I'll get on to figuring out how to return you home tomorrow, okay?" He stroked her fur further down her back, feeling her press her spine lightly against his hand as he moved. Sometimes she acted like an overgrown cat.

With Lila's resolve hardening, Don's sense of abandonment increased as well. He grew accustomed to her feline form laying across his floor, having stolen his pillow from the day she arrived. Whenever he had a hard time sleeping, he could make out her breathing from the ground. For some reason, her presence was comforting. Even his brothers had accepted her into their family, even though Leo and Raph had their issues up front. Raph had taken her out for whatever reason only days previously, which Donatello didn't see as any small thing. Sending her home would mean losing a friend. Don didn't forget his friends or take them lightly. Everyone was important.

Lila's face was inches away from Donatello's when he opened his eyes again. "Are you okay?" she asked him, almost too softly for him to make out. He hadn't realized how much emotion he had let seep into his body posture. His hand hung out limply on her hind leg, his eyes closed and damp.

"Yeah," he assured her with a weak smile. "I am. Why don't you go off to bed? I need to make a pit stop at Leo's room."

Lila nodded, bouncing to her four feet. "Thank-you, Donatello," she told him. With a flourish of her tail, she pranced across the lair, climbed the stairs, and disappeared into the dark doorway of Don's room.

He took his time in following, having to pull himself together before stopping by at Leo's room. It wasn't that he was ashamed of his emotions, he just didn't want his brothers to see him at a weak point. Sometimes he wondered if he was too empathic for the line of work that the family had fallen into. Hard events hit him emotionally, when they seemingly rolled off his brothers.

Leo's door was permanently open to the rest of the family. He trusted them enough that they would respect his space, which was usually the case.

Don rapped his knuckles against the door frame, leaning against the wall. He couldn't see anything peering inside; the infinitesimal amount of light from the main body of the lair wasn't enough to pierce the dark reaches of their individual rooms. Don's announcement was met with perfect silence.

"Leo?" Don questioned.

"Donny?" came a sleepy reply.

"Um … may I speak with you?"

From within the room, Don heard Leo's body shift against the sheets and his mattress. "Yeah, sure. Come in." The thick amount of sleep still coated his brother's voice.

Donatello did as told, taking a few steps into Leo's room. Over the events of the past couple months, he had grown accustomed to the geography and lack of obstacles in Leo's tidy room. Using his spatial awareness, Don padded to the middle of Leo's room and knelt down on the ground, facing where he figured his brother was.

"Um … what's up?" Leo asked.

"Leo, I found the cure."

"What? Really?"

Don nodded. "I can't be certain that it's identical to what you brought back from the Shredder, but I do know it counter-acts the poison in the blood samples I took from you perfectly. I had to study the reactions and make-up of the poison in your blood samples and what little I had left from the antidote to come up with this."

"So you're sure it'll work on me?" Leo asked.

"Very," Don assured him. "I know you don't know me like you're supposed to, but do you trust me?"

"Of course. You're my brother." Leonardo said that with such conviction, that it pulled at Don's heart strings. The last time they had spoken, Leo wasn't even sure that he wanted to remember anything of Donatello, and that they were perfectly fine as they were. His selective amnesia was too much of a wild roller coaster ride for Don's taste.

Don ducked his head for a moment to regain his composure. Sucking in a deep breath, he confronted his nearly invisible brother again. "If it's anything like what you found to cure me, it's going to be painful. I … I don't think there's a way around that. The chemical reactions are violent, but not deadly."

The shape of Leo's body was vaguely visible as Don's eyes adjust to the dark. Very little light poured in front the main chamber of the lair, and even their trained eyes struggled. Even with the lack of sight, Don could tell that Leonardo was staring directly at him. He could feel the energy in the air. "I remember."

"I – I'm sorry," Donatello apologized. It was his fault that Leo had to make that decision in the first place. He was the one stupid enough to drop the vial in the middle of his experimentation to fix him.

"For what?" Leo asked him sincerely.

Unable to lift his eyes to meet Leonardo's, Donatello flicked his gaze off to the side. "The pain I've caused … and will cause."

"Donny," Leo replied. The gentle tone caught Don off guard. He could hear Leonardo shift against the sheets of his bed before he knelt down in front of him, placing a hand on Don's shoulder. "I don't blame you for anything. We couldn't have gotten this far without you. You saved Raph and me when we went to confront the Shredder, and I know how much you were still hurting – how confused you still were – when you did so. You put hours of your life into helping me and haven't given up on me. You've given up so much of yourself so that you can make things right again. You haven't caused anyone pain at all."

Donatello didn't know how to reply to his brother. He bit down and swallowed, struggling to control his breath. "I don't know if I completely agree with that," he told him. "But I'm going to leave the cure in here tonight – on your desk? – and we can all be there for you tomorrow … if you want to take it." He swallowed again. "If you're still interested."

"If it means remembering you and sensei, yes," Leo said matter-of-factly. "You should go get some sleep now, then. I'll see you, and everyone else, tomorrow." He reached for the vial that Donatello held in his hand, gently prying it from his fingers. Getting up, he placed it on the desk as Don suggested. Turning back around, he looked straight at Don again. "I'm anxious to remember who you are, Donny. I couldn't have asked for a better brother."

Don was startled into catching Leo's eyes. His posture didn't suggest any type of deception; that he really meant what he said. Since Leo contracted the poison, the two brothers had gotten to a rocky start, but in the end, Leo was right: nothing really changed between the two of them. Leo still relied on him when it came to the big things like this.

"Leo … I … thank-you." He rose to his feet, brushing off his knees.

"Goodnight, Donny." Leo paced over to his bed and sat back down.

"Goodnight."

Donatello slipped out of Leo's room, crossing the distance between their rooms in a daze. With rationality settling back in, Donatello realized that the way Leo treated him barely differed from before. But at the same time, Don was going to get Leo back for everyone. He would remember Master Splinter as well. Everything would be back to normal, especially once Lila was on her boat back to the area in which she lived. It would almost seem as if nothing had changed at all.

"Don?" Lila's voice asked quietly from within his room.

"Yeah?" Donatello responded.

"You did well, you know."

Don blinked. "What do you mean?"

"I mean … good job." She exhaled with a rumbling purr. "I'm glad to have met you."

He didn't know how to respond to that. All in all, he wasn't entirely sure how well the compliment, if it was intended as a compliment at all, fit his description. He was looking for the cure more out of selfish reasons, to be remembered and fit in again, than for Leo's well-being. No one appeared to think of it in that fashion. Even Lila, an external factor, admired him for what he had done. Donatello didn't have the heart to correct anyone.

Making his way over to his bed, Don laid down and watched her breathe. Sleep had a hard time coming to him.