Let it never be said that Wildcard had passed up an opportunity to bum piggyback rides off world-famous super heroes; When Leonardo knelt and gestured that she could climb up onto his shell for the trip back down to ground level, she did exactly that! Only now it wasn't to be cute or funny. It was using an excuse to clingto him and maybe calm down a little.

This person had accepted her in a very deep and powerful way, and wiped tears from her face as if she were something precious that needed looking-after. Maybe Sandro's vocabulary would have contained strong enough words to describe all the things that had just done to her head, but hers didn't. Instead she bunched her arms around his collar and neck, and the tips of that worn blue bandanna were long enough to flick across her whenever he turned his head. Physical contact felt like some strange form of shelter.

She held on tight.


The manner in which Leo traversed fire escapes, pipes, narrow decorative molding, and sheer brick walls on the way to his sewer entrance of choice was both effortlessly strong and incredibly nimble. Carrying her didn't overbalance him, and he could wall-run and slow-fall like he planned to star in the next Prince of Persia movie. Sandro lacked this sort of agility, and Wildcard made a mental note to bring that up to someone, eventually.

Blue Turtle seemed to be giving their surroundings a sharp-eyed overview as he dropped down to the sewage entrance of choice and set her down. He gestured she should descend first, and followed immediately afterwards. With the manhole cover replaced above them everything turned pitch black, but these shafts were solid tubes of concrete for at least eight feet till they reached the sewer proper, and she could use the ladder rungs easily enough by touch alone.

As it turned out, Leo had not been the only concerned party.

"Did you find her?!" an anxious Orange Turtle called from below, and Wild's heart soared.

"Mhmm. She was trying to ditch us," Leo tattled unexpectedly from above her.

"Hey!" she protested, startled and blind.

"Mini!" Michelangelo might as well have had his heart cut out.

"'Ditching!' Oh, I'll show you ditching! Surprise Trust Exercise!" Wildcard called down into the sewers, and then pushed back from the ladder and released into a free-fall. Weeeeee- Flump! An Orange Ninja sprinted up to get under her in time and caught her bridal style in both enormous arms. Hehe! If she was going to be teeny all her life, then she might as well make the best of it, right? "Hi Sunshine!," she snickered. "I can't see a thing."

"Omigod and you still jumped!?" She got a blind forehead nuzzle in exchange for her faith in him, and immediately had no idea why she'd ever hesitated about getting into the sewers as fast as possible. "D'awww...! Nobody else trusts me with important stuff like that! Seriously, Donnie always makes fun and says I'd drop stuff."

"That is because you have dropped a lot of very important 'stuff,'" Leo muttered as he jumped to the ground beside them (with an enviable lack of broken limbs).

"Not since forever ago!" Mikey argued, and then Wild was getting flipped over Orange Turtle's shoulder for another piggyback. Whoopie! She bundled her arms around his neck from behind. "Mini, did Leo tell me the truth or is he lying to me, were you really going to ditch us?" he pouted.

"Naawww, only the mean old teacher face," she corrected and successfully smooched his bandanna through the inky blackness, "but he apologized for being a doo-doo head, so we're cool now."

"I knew it!" Orange Turtle whooped triumphantly. "See? Told you she'd never leave us!"

Leo cleared his throat. "Mikey specifically laid the blame for your tardiness on me being a 'doo-doo head.' Those were his exact words."

Wildcard lifted a hand, and met Michelangelo's proffered hi-five/three without even needing to see it was there. Much celebratory hooting was had.


Sandro must have been pacing just inside the door, because he spun to them as they entered. "You're late!" he accused.

"So everyone keeps telling me! And here I thought I was still an hour and a half early!"

"Ah," Donatello called wryly to her, "but he waits for you at the door, nearly wagging his tail in anticipation."

"I do not! I only-!" Huff. "Why wouldn't you just come as early as you could!?" Sandro stomped exasperatedly.

"Well maybe I was busy, Mr. Clingy, ever think of that?" Wildcard teased him with a crocodile grin as Mikey let her down. "Living segments of my life above ground, which have nothing whatsoever to do with you!"

"Mini-Meanie!" Mikey gave her a reproachful pat upon the head. "He's gonna need some aloe vera for that burn!"

Wildcard snickered and then hopped blithely over to her death-glaring counterpart, and leaned in to put her arms around his waist. But instead of hugging her, Sandro leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked away! "Psst," she whispered, "it was a lie; I have no life!" He scoffed. "Sanddrroo," she whined, tugging at his arms and then standing on her tip-toes to hug him about the neck instead. "I'm sorry, and I love you, and you're my only friend, now hug me! Pleeeaaase? Pretty pleeasse?"

Sandro smirked to himself, glanced at her, and then leaned over and squeezed her off the ground. That settled both of them down. Firecracker hysteria which had built up along her nervous system now melted out, exchanged with earth and clay wherever he touched her. Maybe the same thing happened in reverse to him, and he felt energized?

"Children," Leonardo called. Wild looked and saw that his clothing was now black again instead of gray. Whatever he'd been streaked with was gone, too. "We are already inexcusably late for this morning's lessons, and one of you still needs to change into appropriate practice clothes."


Sandro knew something was different the moment his uncle asked if he would be alright practicing on his own today. He answered an unhesitating, 'Yes!'

The weird, strained, and icy distance Leo had repeatedly reinstated between himself and Wildcard looked to have melted. Course, maybe it was too soon to cry victory; Uncle Leo was only just finally looking at her consistently while addressing her, which had previously been an all-time record-breaking low on the records books for how he treated people; but Leo had apparently gone out with Mikey to find her that morning, and that must have meant he was concerned.

"Should I work on my stances again?" Sandro heard his companion inquire.

"No, you are going to be practicing with a wooden staff today, Kinpōge-kun," Leo explained, shattering all patterns of reticence with her.

'Kinpōge?' Sandro wondered, glancing over at them as Leo made his way to the weapons rack.

"Working on only one narrow set of fundamentals is good for training muscle memory," his uncle explained to her, "but it reduces the scope of understanding if abused, and limits a person's ability to adapt. Besides, you seem a naturally impatient creature, so hopping about from subject to subject may actually help you focus more."

"It seems you've seen this before," she drawled with shuttered eyes and a bemused expression, and it seemed she no longer felt threatened or stressed by him.

"Mm, yes, courtesy of the one you've named 'Sunshine.'" Leo passed her a staff. "Most of our practice equipment is for individuals taller than yourself, so I will order some new things to suit you. In the mean time, our spares will have to do."

"It's not my fault I'm vertically challenged," muttered someone who might never truly get over that.

"Did I say so? Hmm. I shall have to watch myself, clearly I am a loose cannon with taunts today."

Sandro paused in his exercises, and grinned to himself. Uncle Leo sounded genuinely happy to see her.


Michelangelo hurried quietly up behind where Donatello leaned in the hallway, and joined him in peering out past the threshold of the dojo.

Someone had clearly lost respect for someone else mid-lesson—or at least wanted to test their new boundaries—and now Leo was balanced in a squat, catching, blocking, and deflecting every single attack his miniature assailant could throw at him. One-handed. Without moving any other muscle in his body.

Wildcard eventually grew quite cross with his serene unflappability, and decided to pounce upon him, but he caught her by the nape of her outfit and gently tossed her backwards. She went rolling, picked herself back up, walked back to him, and then plopped herself down and put her elbows on her knees and her chin upon her hands.

"Okaaay, I'm listennning," she pouted.

"Kneel, please, Kinpōge-kun."

She mimicked him snidely and then yelped as he picked her up and tossed her away again. At least she was wearing the training gear they'd gifted her so that no elbows or knees got bumped in the process. "Ya know, maybe I just won't come back!" she hollered from off screen.

"Hmm, my maple bonsais do need watering," was his unbothered reply.

She stomped back and glared at him. Then with a great eye-roll and an exasperated sigh, she sloppily knelt. "Yes, Sensei," she droned obnoxiously.

"Seiza. Shins beneath you, toes together, hands upon your thighs. Were you raised in a barn?"

"No. Wait, does a warehouse count?"

"Ah, rebellious child, if you wish to be excused from today's lesson, you need merely ask. Rest assured you will not hurt my feelings; I now can think of at least seven trees I could be pruning."

"Oh I'm sure you know of some very interesting paint you could be watching dry," she sassed as she picked herself up into a neat seiza posture. "There. Good enough for Mr. Perfectionist?"

With nowhere to go, nowhere to be, and not the slightest trace of impatience or tedium visible in his eyes, their eldest brother merely smiled. Almost smugly, even, as if playing a game he knew he'd already won, and utterly content to wait around for the outcome. "It'll do," he agreed.


"Does Leo have a magical color-changing ninja outfit?" Wildcard asked them over breakfast, somewhere in-between forkfuls of hashbrowns bathed in ketchup.

"It's not magical," Donnie explained as he resupplied her plate from his griddle. "It's an application of ultra low power analog signal processing and fiber optics, courtesy of a few chips and tricks I pilfered from Kraang drones. Runs off of ambient electromagnetic waves. Neat, huh?"

"You made it!" she marveled, sounding awestruck.

"Well the fabric, anyway," he preened a little. "Boy was that a difficult experiment. Had to get the magnetism, electric current, and acidity all just right while baking it at far, far, far too many Kelvins. Never did get around to making more of it, but the prototype ended up amounting to sufficient surface area for one outfit and a couple embellishments."

"Wow..." she admired. "I wish I could come up with stuff like that..."

Sandro leaned near her elbow. "What's a Kelvin?" he whispered.

"Unit of temperature," she whispered back. "There aren't negative Kelvins, zero is absolute zero, like if all the electrons dropped off and rolled away cause there was just so little energy."

Donnie glanced over to her and paused in washing the counter. Hmm. Wildcard's vocabulary—heavy on the sciences and weak in the liberal arts—had finally piqued his curiousity. Her logical reasoning skills seemed poor at times, but he was starting to like the effect she had on his family members, and that was making him less skeptical about her.

"Oh, hey, I know I covered everything in ketchup," she abruptly felt the urge to explain, "but that's totally just my custom when dealing with fried potatoes of any variety, it's not an insult, I promise! Your food is always exquisite!"

"You could say," Leo leaned over her, "'Gochisou sama,' to thank a person for their cooking."

"G-gochi-sou...?" she blinked up at him.

He nodded. "And then 'sama.' Gochisou sama."

"Gochisou sama!" she repeated brightly, and Donnie smiled.

"Correct." Leo patted her head and stood back up, and she beamed as radiantly as if she'd just been given a gold star, an Olympic medal, and a brand new kitten. Leo circumnavigated the table to come up and fill a thermos with hot water for tea on patrol. "Teach her Japanese, Donatello," he requested with just the two of them in the kitchen.

"A few words here and there?" Purple Turtle wondered slowly. "Or...?"

"Perhaps it would win points with her father if she formally took up the study of a foreign language," Blue suggested. "April might like to learn she is not merely interested in Ninjitsu."

Well now there was an idea; Even the fact that the children did their homework together had won points with Donnie, and both parents did seem to be concerned with academia. Hmm. "I'll suggest it to her. No promises. I uh packed some food for you, by the way, it's there on the counter top."

Leo paused what he was doing, stared, and then twisted about to see if this was indeed the case. "You have not made me a brown paper bag lunch in years."

"Yes, well, you really should be eating more than twice daily. And, by the way," he raised his voice, "I am this close to licking all the frosting off the Wildberry Poptarts and putting them back in the box to punish you for all the times you finish off the last one and neglect to place them back on the shopping list."

("Ew!" Sandro, Wild, and Mikey all complained from the dining table, though Wildcard immediately added 'Nice one!')

"... I shall endeavor to be more sensitive in the future. Thank you."


"Kinpōge-kun," Leo called as he finished donning his katana again at the doorway. "Have you decided whether you plan on continuing your study of Ninjitsu?" That almost didn't sound like a segue, so perhaps Leo was earnestly inquiring as to the answer.

"Mnnhmm!" his new student hummed past a mouthful of breakfast.

"Then tomorrow you will be on time," he instructed.

The child managed to swallow her food without choking on it, grinned, and waved to him. "Bye Sensei! Have a fun patrol!" His stare lingered on her a moment longer as he headed out the door, to suggest she'd end up regretting it (and thus likely be bored out of her mind) if she was tardy. He left, and the door closed behind him.

"That's just the strangest name to give her," Donatello finally decided aloud, and Michelangelo laughed in agreement.

"'Kinpōge?'" the girl asked them. "Why? What's it mean?"

"It's a flower," Sandro was equally bemused. "Only he's adding 'kun' to the end, which is neither cute nor respectful, just kinda... boyish, honestly. Like you could use 'kun' for me, Sandro-kun, but we'd probably use 'chan' for you. You'll hear Donnie say that, he calls Mikey 'Barbarichan' all the time."

"It's adooorabbbleezzz," Michelangelo crowed, leaning over Wildcard from behind and tickling her. "It's a tiny, tiny yellow flower! So kawaaaaiiii Kinpōge-taaannn!"

"No YOU'RE kawaii!" she fought back with that most juvenile of retorts, slinking into her chair to get her feet and knees up to use as weapons. "No more making fun of me being small! RAWR! Rawr rawr rawr! I'm not cute! I'm a dinosaur and I'mma bite your fingers off! RAWR!"

"You look more like some kind of rabid hamster to me," Sandro disagreed as he leaned over to take stock of her claim.

Wildcard apparently decided this was cause enough to kick Sandro's plate of food into both of their faces, and then of course all hell broke loose. Donatello sighed at the three children he was tasked with babysitting, and then dropped his dish rag and went to go get the broom and floor mop for them, to a backgroundchorus of 'STAND STILL SO I CAN KILL YA FASTA!' 'That's too easy, catch me first!' and 'Run faster, Mini! He's right on your tail!'


Michelangelo boosted Mini up to sit beside the kitchen sink and got out some soap and clean wash cloths, while poor Sandro had to go change into clean clothing owed to maximum coverage by bacon and egg grease. Donatello had just waved his hands in the air and said something about irrepressible children, and then probably stalked off to the lab to program something.

"So I missed you," Mini blurted out of nowhere as the two of them washed their faces and hands.

Mikey looked at her.

She smiled up at him. "Did you guys have a great party?"

Crraaaapppp. Raph and April didn't know about her yet, so of course it hadn't made any sense to invite her to the farmhouse, but then maybe nobody thought about how they'd left poor Mini out of her best friend's big day like she was a leper or something. Man, come to think of it, hadn't her own birthday party been basically deserted?

"I guess so," he grinned awkwardly. "Did, uh, you have fun camping in the wild outdoors?"

"I guess so!" she teased. "I caught some red sliders and pretended they were my friends, but I think they only loved me for my minnows. Country turtles are nothing like urban ones. They don't even like cheese, what's with that?"

Mikey stared at her with the faucet water running forgotten beside them. He looked down at his hands, glanced behind to make absolutely sure Donnie wasn't there, and then leaned over and scooped the girl up. The quick, rigid way she scrambled to clasp her arms around his neck told him a very long story about her troubles.

"What did Leo say to you?" he grumbled.

"I like Leo." She breathed deep as if to bolster herself. "I dunno even why I like Leo, and I still do."

But she was quivering a little, and his heartbeat kicked up a notch or two. Donnie was wrong: It wasn't crazy or bad to want to take care of a kid, even if it wasn't your own kid. It couldn't be. Michelangelo shut his eyes tightly, turned his face into her hair, and squeezed her to him and gently rocked her side to side.

"S'okay," he vowed. "You don't always gotta be funny, tough, and lovable for everyone else. You can mess up. You can get sad, or afraid, or lonely, or say the wrong things. You don't gotta be the adult for me or hold up a brave face. No one here's gonna leave you."

Mini's face was red with emotion. He sat on the edge of the sink and rubbed her back, until he'd coaxed the first sniffles and huffs out of her.


When Sandro got back out of his room he found that Michelangelo was sitting on the kitchen counter and holding an absolutely bawling Wildcard against his collar like she was just a toddler. His toddler, even. Sandro's eyes widened and he slowed to a freeze, looking hesitantly from one of them to the other. Holy crap.

Mikey gave him a tight smile and raised a finger to his mouth to suggest his nephew stay quiet for just a bit, maybe in the hopes that Wildcard would let all the bad energy out in one big deluge. Boy was it a deluge. Sandro swallowed, sat back on his heels, and clasped his hands nervously together in front of himself to wait without alerting her to his presence.

It... um, it was a little weird to watch this. Firstly because he'd never seen Wild so emotional, and secondly because protecting her was Sandro's job. He sort of expected to feel jealousy, but that faded away as a realization slowly dawned on him. He stood a little straighter, because he didn't have to carry his burdens—or hers—alone.

Wildcard's sobs eventually trailed off into whimpers and sniffles, and she finally started wiping at her face in some effort to compose herself. Sandro breathed easier, and quietly came up to join them. "Wild?" His voice cracked a bit, and she twitched.

"Give her a minute or two to rest, San-san," Mikey chuckled, rubbing her back as he slipped off the sink and walked over to the pantry. "That was a hella good cry right there."

"S-sorry," she hiccuped. "I sh-shouldn't've..."

"N'aww, Mini, hush. You were my baby girl within three puns of meeting you." Mikey picked out a packet of dark chocolate cocoa powder and a handful of fresh marshmallows. "If Donnie and Leo don't think so, they can suck eggs." He settled her down on her own two feet, poured some hot water and the cocoa into a mug, and put the mug into her hands.

Wildcard stared at her cup and the marshmallows floating in it. "I already have a dad," she reminded Orange without lifting her head.

"And a sensei. Hmm-hmm-hmm. Do you have a mom?" Mikey questioned as he leaned over and placed his hands on his knees just to peer at her.

Wild's eyes widened at him. Then she stumbled forward and hugged him again, and probably tried very hard not to spill any scalding hot cocoa on him. "I love you, New Mom!" she blabbered in wounded hysteria.

But Michelangelo pulled her into that hug and said solemnly, "I love you too," as he touched his forehead to hers. Wild went still like she'd been transfixed, and a long moment passed in silence. Then Mikey smiled and kissed her brow. He briefly cupped her face in both hands, still smiling, and then let go and and turned to re-include a very startled Sandro (who had been uncertain how serious and/or private this moment was or whether he ought to intrude).

"Okay, listen up!" Orange explained brightly, "You two need to talk to one another! And I mean talk, like heavy stuff, like whatever you don't say in front of us grown-ups." At that instruction, Sandro quickly hurried over to clasp his dazed companion to his side. Thud. There, much better. "As for me, I'm going to go make sure Donatello stays in the lab for the next solid hour, and then when I'm done we are going to do an awesome uber birthday story sharing party. Complete with leftover cake. Capisce?"

Sandro bobbed his head and Wild did likewise, and Mikey grinned and ruffled her hair and patted his head, and then stood himself back up again and went to exit the kitchen. But he turned back and added,

"Oh, and really, give her a couple minutes to calm down first. Like, you can totally measure it by half a cocoa cup. Everyone is always better by half a cocoa cup."

"I... I got it, uncle Mike," Sandro cleared his throat.

"Right." He winked and hopped off to go bother Donatello, leaving Yin and Yang to peer after his departure.


Sandro sat his dazed companion down on the edge of his bed so that she could nurse on that hot mug of cocoa while he backtracked to ease his door shut. Of all the possible Wildcardsplosions, crying into a very nonjudgmental adult might have honestly been the best way to go. He squatted down to get a better look at her face. She showed him her half-emptied cup of cocoa.

"What's in ya head right now?" he asked, just to be sure.

"It feels kinda empty," she admitted.

Man, that was a fantastic springboard for a joke if Sandro had ever heard one. Instead, he got up to retrieve a plump little crocodile from where she'd been chilling out in her pool in the corner of the room. "Here we go," Sandro smirked. "This always makes me feel better."

"So faaaaatttt..." A successfully distracted Yang hugged on Lady Smiles like the latter was a baby. "I wuvvv herrr...!"

"Well she'll at least tolerate crazies," Sandro grinned as he took a seat beside the two of them. "I'm sorry ya ended up havin ta cry so hard. I um shoulda been a better brother."

"I thought you did a great job," Wildcard confessed with a small smile his way. "You stole your dad's bike and risked life, limb, and lecture to come stargaze with me just so I wouldn't be alone. You even gave me a birthday kiss."

"And a birthday punch," he recalled fondly, sifting her hair gently to see if he could spy that bruise. She giggled. "You wanna... um, talk, maybe?"

"Pfft," Wild roiled her eyes. "I've only ever told you anything because you bullied it out of me. You think that's changed just because Mikey keeps managing to get my eyes to water?"

"So it ain't the first time he's calmed you down," Sandro frowned. "Well alright then, thanks for clarifyin. This about the way ya dad wrecked ya house a few weeks back, maybe?"

"Sorta, but only cause it followed so fast on the heels of something else." She pursed her lips thoughtfully and he got the impression she might try to feed him half a truth. But then she blew out a breath, set down her mug, got Lady Smiles off her shoulder, and faced him head on.

"Okay, so it's like this," she raised her hands: "I can remember being five years old, waiting for the bus on the very first day of school, and then," she snapped her fingers, "he was throwing knives and swearing so I had to cover my ears. When he ran out of knives he went on to dishes, and then onto appliances and furniture. I knew he wasn't mad at me! So I wasn't scared... I just watched. When it was over, and he was just standing lost in the middle of it all, I got out of my chair and went up to him, took his face in my hands and told him, 'It'll be okay, Daddy,' and I hugged him. And that was when he'd calm down."

Sandro frowned, shuttered his eyes, and folded his hands in his lap to listen, wordlessly encouraging her to continue.

"Here's the thing though," she leaned forward and raised her fingers to indicate something small. "He knew. Don't you see? I'd easily have forgiven him, but he wouldn't let himself get away with it. he older I got, the less and less I saw them, till I'd honestly forgotten they were even a thing." Her eyes searched his face, as if pleading with him to understand.

"That actually sounds really rough," Sandro admitted, but her shoulders slumped. "No, listen. I mean it would be rough to have anybody exploding near you, yeah. But to know how strong their growth game was, to know they were honestly working to improve the situation for your sake all the time, that almost sounds worse. Like, you'd have to soak all that blast damage, but then you don't even have the recourse of venting at them."

"Y-Yeah." She grew hopeful again and then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm scared that'll be me one day," she admitted, "I mean, I'm scared of way worse stuff than that, but I already sorta 'explode.'"

Sandro leaned back with a smirk. "Heh. Let's be honest, if one of us is gonna end up tearing a room apart one day in a fit of anger, it'll probably be me. I'm even strong enough to pull it off."

She slowly grinned. "But you're so neat and clean," she protested.

"Have totally imagined putting that desk through a wall," he pointed. "Scares me to think about, actually. Enough that I get angry at myself for getting angry..."

"Seen that!" she agreed.

"Yeah. But you aren't done spilling the beans," Sandro reminded her, with a poke at her chest. "You said your dad's latest fit came on the heels of something worse. Explain. And dun try to dodge."

"I'm not dodging! I'm... honestly still figuring out some of the stuff, cause I learned a lot while it was happening," she rubbed at the back of her neck. "You need some background if it's to make any sense."

"I don't think I do. You shouldn't be givin me the synthesized palatable version, you should be tellin me exactly what happened and how it made ya feel."

"Not happening," she shot a glare his way. "It's not what it looks like on the face of stuff."

"Give me the play-by-play," Sandro growled, leaning over her, "cause if I let ya sit here justifying your da's actions to me, ya could ramble on for the better part of a million years and not be done."

Her eyes glinted sharp and green at him, and he knew she was coiling up to bite. "Look, unlike somebody, I'm not the one who has a strained relationship with my—"

Sandro lunged at her, grabbing her shoulders and slamming her back into the headboard. "No." He enunciated the word and stared her down, her with her grit teeth and the light sneer of her lip. "Tell it like it is, in all the naked ugliness. Tell it like you'd tear it out of me: that I feel my dad hates me and resents my conception, that my mom treats me like a goddamn prize-winning pet that she can keep in a closed tank and drop in food flakes every once in awhile."

She searched his face. He stared, stared, stared, until finally she crumpled, yielded, and dropped her head. "My dad followed us on the night of the hurricane. He saw me give us up to Mikey. I didn't know till we got back to the house. He..." she shook her head. "He shoved me inside and started shouting at me, cursing at me, and he was pacing and screaming at the top of his lungs. He demanded to know if I was stupid, if 'there was even an ounce of sense in my fucking head,' callng me asinine, idiotic, manipulative, and shouting that the only thing keeping me safe was that I don't exist."

Sandro slowly released the pin and sat back to see that all the fight had gone out of her. "And then?" he growled.

She pulled her knees to herself. "He opened a knife," she said as if knives were nothing, "and asked whether he needed to play horror movie villain with the neighbors and cut them to pieces, if that was what it would take to make me listen: If he needed to make me afraid of him." She twiddled her toes in and out as she walked, and rubbed her fingers together restlessly. "He, um, he had this blue-hooded jacket on, and I knew why but I touched him to make sure. And my fingers came away slicked with white and red paint.

"And I knew, I knew, that for him to be wearing that face meant all the chips had been down. If one of your uncles had tried to corner me, even just to ask who I was, he would have killed them, or tried. He would have done anything to get them away from me." She sucked in a shuddering breath, and looked straight down. "And it would of been my fault."

Sandro took a long, long moment to swallow every scrap of anger he had. "None of that sounds like your fault," he said, when he could breathe.

"It's a person's fault if they don't take into consideration their own unique circumstances, and somebody dies," she disagreed. "My dad's imperfect but I knew I was pushing him."

"It's cause he's scared of losing ya, ain't it?" Sandro distilled reality from all that darkness. She flinched, and he nodded to himself. "Kindergarten, coming down here, the hurricane. I bet when you were young he was freakin' out at every tiny bit of you he had to let go of. But then he grew and you grew, until finally now it takes something big to get to him. The 'could lose you forever' sort of things. Hell, sometimes he even manages to handle those like they're nothin, cause he wants ta be a da instead of a psycho, murder-happy, helicopter parent."

She peeked up at him weakly, and he knew he had come to the understanding she actually needed.

"Ya dad calmed down after that knife-wavin thing, didn't he?" Sandro knew. "You calmed him down. And then he felt ashamed, cause he knew he had no way to make shit like that up to ya."

"How... How could you possibly tell that, from where I left the story?" she sputtered. "How could you...?"

"Wild... There ain't a doubt in my mind that he loves ya. Okay? I know, I've seen it. But you can love him and still get pissed as fuck when he drops the ball on ya. You can admire him and still be angry that you're a structural support element in the life of someone who oughtta support you. Feelings are real, and they don't all gotta be one way or another. You can love him and still need help."

A shudder ran through her but they were together and on the same page. "Like how you love your dad?" she croaked.

Sandro let out all that swallowed anger in a big, quiet sigh. "Yeah. Sorta. Less pecker waving in your problems, I'd imagine." He nudged her shoulder. "D'you feel guilty for lovin on my family, or for being a little lonely when you've only got your dad around?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe don't be." He scooted closer to her to rest an arm around her back. "Your da's not merely allowing you visit us, he's sending you. He's smart. He knows damn well you're lonely, and even that you might need help. And maybe it's a bit of a sacrifice on his part, no longer having you all to himself... but he never wanted that in the first place, or else he wouldn't have sent you to school or tried to give you a normal life."

She teetered over and leaned into him, and he held her there.

"Heh. Mikey makes sense but... You must be able to smell your relationship nutritional deficiencies or somethin, if you somehow picked Leo on accident. There's some stability for ya, stable as an effing mountain."

"And you," she mumbled, much too weak to dispute whether either aforementioned turtle truly liked her. "I picked you."

"What are you talking about?" he groused as he nestled in to snuggle with her for a bit. "I picked you." He reconsidered. "Then again, maybe so did they."