A Ninja's Dance

Chapter 42

The last time Judith had been frog marched from a room was when she was a child, maybe eleven years old, in the kitchen of the Carter families most recent house. She'd thrown a tantrum at the announcement that they were moving, again, and her father had taken hold of her arm and escorted her to her room to calm down.

'Calm down' was code for 'stop making such a fuss', and it had sent Judith's frustration through the roof. It'd made her feel small, weak and unheard, and as Leo's fingers closed around her arm and she was marched out of the lab, the same set of muddled emotions came flooding back.

"Leo, what-" She tried and failed to say something, snatching glimpses of the boys shocked faces as their brother deposited her outside and turned on his heel. She made to follow him but was stopped when the door was unceremoniously slammed in her face.

Judith stared, shaking slightly as she examined the dings and dents in the metal of the door. She felt a little dizzy, as if her mind was trying and failing to catch up with what had just happened.

She hadn't meant to disturb them, she hadn't meant to see anything she shouldn't of. She'd needed to talk to Don and when she'd arrived, she'd heard someone unfamiliar say her name. It wasn't her fault that the table had been a mess of documents and they'd left out that picture.

The picture.

Judith looked down, staring at the picture still locked between her thumb and forefinger. It was of a man. A very, very dead man. Face covered in black ooze and sunken eyes rolled back in his head.

It was like something out of a horror movie.

Questions exploded into Judith's head and she closed her eyes in an attempt to press through them, trying to sort them out into some kind of comprehensible order.

Who was the man in the photo? How had he died? Was he related to the Purple Dragons in some way? Was his death related to her in some way?

Who'd said her name in the lab and why?

That last though came strong and loud and Judith squared her shoulders, rallying herself against the desire to turn tail and run. She had nowhere to run to, standing still wasn't getting her anywhere so the only way to go, she reasoned, was forward.

Forward through the door into the lab.

Judith reached out and gave the handle a good tug, eyes narrowing when she realised Leo had locked it behind him. The frustration at being forcibly removed had been lulled slightly by the shock of the picture, but it rushed back now and Judith seized it like a lifeline.

Anger was something she could sink her teeth into, it was tangible and solid and she could hurl herself against it. Compared to the misty haze of self pity and fear she had been stumbling through for the past few weeks, the burning weight of rage was a welcome change.

"Leo!" Her voice caught at the tail end of his name, strangled a little by the swelling heat in her chest. She slammed a fist against the metal and tried again. "Mikey! Raph! Someone open the damn door!"

No one came and Judith grit her teeth, switching to an open palm as she banged both her hands against the door. The resulting thumps echoed through the lair and rattled along Judith arms, each one getting louder as she threw more and more force behind each blow.

"Who were you talking to?!" She was yelling now, despite being vaguely aware that the burning anger she was feeling was probably disproportionate to what Leo had done.

But it didn't matter. It was like a dam breaking. Like that door in her face somehow represented every gunshot in her direction, every ripped piece of clothing on her apartment floor, every possible threat to her family and most of all her inability to do anything about it.

"I heard my name! You can't just shut me out like this!" She backed up, glaring through blurry eyes at the metal blockade.

Nothing happened. There was some scuffling inside that she could barely hear over the blood rushing in her ears, but the door didn't move, didn't open.

"This isn't fair!" One final burst of rage pushed a guttural shriek from Judith's lips as she slammed her foot against the door, kicking it with everything she had. Pain blossomed instantly along her toes and she stumbled backwards with a yelp.

Cold assaulted her.

Instantly everything dulled, greyed, then quickly faded to nothing as an icy feeling raced down her spine and pooled in her foot.

She swayed on the spot.

Her rage left her, silenced by a slap of chill that wrapped her mind in cotton wool.

Her chest hollowed out as she drew a calm breath into it.

She stood, silent, eyes unfocused.

Around her time moved, but nothing happened. There was nothing so she remained still.

Waiting.

Then slowly, the emptiness faded. It gave way bit by bit to a swift rush hysteria as she realised what had just happened.

She'd...disappeared…again.

She wasn't sure how, or why, but she now recognised the sudden haze that had dropped down on her. Her breaths began to stumble over themselves in an attempt to get in and out of her lungs.

What had once been anger yo-yo-ed into fear and back again with dizzying speed.

Just how much control did the Biosites have over her?

Judith didn't get much of a chance to debate that question, any start she made on untangling it was cut short when the lab door slammed open and Raphael marched out, shoulders squared and anger etched onto every feature.

"You alright?" He barked, closing the gap between them until they were less than an arms length from each other. If had been anyone else Judith would have assumed he was angry at her. As it was, she could see his concern behind the lines of his expression.

"No!" She burst out, running her hands through her hair and pulling on it a little harder than was necessary. "No I'm not!"

They stood across from each other for a few beats, Raph looking just as angry as Judith wished she could feel and neither of them saying anything else until Raph grimaced and rearranged his features into something softer.

"Look, you weren't meant to see...all that." He said, voice lowered slightly from the hard line it had started at. Judith let out a bark of laughter.

"No shit." She snapped back, her eyes landing on the lab and narrowing to a glare. She could feel the fury swelling in her chest again. "I don't like being manhandled, Raph. I'm not a fucking child."

Raph's shoulders stiffened as he followed her stare to the metal train cart a few metres away.

"Yer. Look, he got slammed from all sides when he barred the door." He said, crossing his arms and tossing her the slightest hint of a dark smile. "S'ok to be pissed. I am most of the time."

Judith let out a long breath, fists curling and uncurling at her sides. The edge of the picture gripped between her fingers stuck into her palm with each twitch.

"That doesn't-" She started, cutting herself off when another hit of cold dribbled down her spine and settled the turmoil in her head once again. It took a few mellow breaths before Judith felt confident enough to speak.

"Thank you, Raph. But apparently the Biosites don't think being mad is an OK use of my time." It came out close to monotone and Judith rubbed at her eyes in an attempt to clear the calm.

"Whad's that mean?" Raph's voice was closer than it had been before and Judith looked up at him, surprised by confusion.

Had Don not explained this to everyone?

"They're making me calm." She said simply, emotion ramping up again. "I don't want to be calm. I want to know who you were talking to in there, and why you were talking about me, and who is this?" The sentences came out in a increasingly loud rush and culminated in Judith holding the picture of the dead man up to Raphs face, shaking it accusingly.

Raph glanced at the photo, briefly, before swatting her hand away.

"A dead guy we found in an alley." He grunted, crossing his arms with a shrug. "What de ye mean the Biosites are making you calm?"

Judith gaped at him, glancing at the picture in her hand to make sure it still showed the black sludge and rolling eyeballs that terrified her so completely.

It did.

"You found a body!?" She exploded. "When?!"

"Bout a week ago." Again, the answer was disinterested. Like this was normal. Like it wasn't a big deal. "Now whadid ye mean bout the damn Biosites?"

Judith found herself speechless, eyes darting over Raphael's face as she attempt to make sense of his behaviour. The way he kept circling back, it sounded like he was more concerned about her than finding a man in a dumpster.

Which was crazy.

But was that what their life was like? Was this really not that unusual? Did they find dead people in dumpsters often?

She let out a breath through her teeth, blinking to force the sudden onset of confused and angry tears back behind her eyes.

This whole thing felt so out of her league. Dead people in dumpsters should never be something you shrug about.

But, perhaps if she answered Raph's question, he would be more interested in answering hers.

"I'm stuck in another dose of the emotion control thing that they do." She said, trying to relax her shoulders. "I don't know what the limit is, I don't know how scared or angry or anything I'm allowed to be before I'm just...emptied by them." She threw her hands in the air, turning her face to the ceiling and sucking in a few more deep breaths before she spoke again. "Raph, how can you so casually brush off finding a bo-"

Raph cut her off.

"That's what happened last night, yea? This 'emotional control' crap?" He was looking down at her with a strange expression, a mix of things that Judith couldn't quite identify. She frowned, nodding slowly.

"Yes. But-"

"And it's happenin' right now too? So this isn't the first time this has gone down?" His gaze was eerily intense, like he was putting something together and getting angrier with each puzzle piece that fell into place. "How many times we talkin' here?"

Judith paused, unsure of how to respond to that. She hadn't tried to count it out before, and for a moment she lost focus as she chased the illusive foggy spots in her memory.

"Ah, three? Maybe four times?" She mumbled finally. "It's hard to tell though because sometimes its really subtle and afterwards it all gets hard to remem-"

Raph cut her off again, rounding her and dropping a hand to her mid back. With a gentle push he got her moving towards the lab, flanking her as he guided her up the stairs and into the dimly lit interior of Donnie's workspace.

The room hadn't changed since she'd thrown out. The table was still overflowing with documents and blueprints. The light of the screen was still the main illumination, casting deep shadows over the three sets of eyes that turned to them as they entered.

So the room was the same. But the oppressive tension that weighed Judith down the minute she stepped through the door was brand new. Even when they had been in her apartment, enemies pressing in on them from all sides, there had been a certain amount of joviality to the boys.

All that was gone now.

It felt heavy.

"Raphael! What the hell are you doing?!" Leo, who seemed to be in the middle of an heated argument with Mickey and Don, strode across the room with an intensity that had Judith recoiling. She saw his hand reach out for her shoulder and for the first time since those dark and painful days bedridden in the lair, Judith felt a real shot of fear.

It happened insanely fast, so fast that it took Judith a few heart beats to realise that the body that stepped in front of her wasn't Raph. It wasn't Raph's hand that had grabbed for Leo's wrist and stopped him in his tracks.

Donatello had crossed the room, forcing himself between Judith and his brother with speed that really shouldn't have been possible.

"Enough, Leo." His voice came out steady. Even. Angry.

She had never seen Don angry before. Frustrated, concerned, tired and stressed, yes. But this anger was something that radiated off him and completely filled the room.

She didn't like it. She didn't like this.

This whole situation felt wrong.

She knew brothers fought, she had brothers herself. But the level of tension in the room was suffocating.

The self deprecating part of her brain piped up to whisper that this was her doing, all her fault. If she'd just let it go. If she'd just left them alone. If she hadn't needed them to go to her apartment, if they weren't so tired, if she hadn't gone for a walk that day, hadn't been such a drain to them. They wouldn't be acting like this if it wasn't for her.

But that, she decided, was bullshit.

This kind of...rage...amongst family didn't rear up because a girl walked into the wrong room at the wrong time. This originated somewhere deeper.

Still, she found herself wishing she could calm it all down. Wishing she could calm Don down.

Without giving it much thought, Judith reached out, her palm coming to rest on Don's shell with a gentle pressure. She hoped, however irrationally, that the contact would somehow help. She saw the faint twitch of head movement as Don glanced back at her and slowly, painfully slowly, Don uncurled his fingers from Leo's wrist.

"She has a right to know" He said, his tone still strained but missing the hard edge it'd had before.

Leo's lips thinned but he said nothing, his eyes darting to Judith over Don's shoulder. His pause gave Raph enough space to sidle into the room, pushing past his brothers with a almost-but-not-quite on purpose shoulder check that forced them further apart.

Maybe it was the the fact that Don was currently defending her, but Judith felt her confidence and curiosity rally.

"A right to know what? What is going on?" Asking was not, perhaps, the smartest thing to do. Posing a question to a room full of riled up men all tiptoeing around a full blown, aggressive, argument was perhaps somewhat of a risky move to take.

But once it was out, it was too late to take it back.

"Nothing you need to be concerned about." Leo said firmly before anyone else could respond, turning away from her towards the table.

Judith and Don started speaking at the same time.

"You don't get to just-"

"You don't get to decide what concerns me! Especially when you're in here talking about me to someone!" Judith was the louder of the two of them, and Don cut himself off to let her talk.

Leo let out a frustrated huff.

"Judith, this situation is so far out of your depth, you won't understand or be able to do anything about it." His voice had a hard line to it and he didn't turn around and speak to her directly.

The emotional whiplash from the whole day was catching up to her and Judith's frayed nerves gave way once again to her rising temper. With his shoulders set like that, back turned, Leo was basically dismissing her. Again.

She was being metaphorically frog marched away, again.

"So I don't get an opinion on what happens to me because I'm useless?!" She burst out, throwing her arms in the air and emerging completely from behind Don. "I realise I'm not a badass, and I've been a real emotional fuckup for the last month, but you're telling me I don't get to know who you were talking to, when you were talking about me, because you think I'm off the fucking deep end of useless?!"

This was a ridiculous statement. Because if Judith was being honest with herself, she was, in fact, 'off the fucking deep end of useless'. She had, so far as she knew, zero ability to help whatever situation they were currently in.

But that just served to make her angrier.

"That's not what I said!" Leo rounded on her, eyes wide with exasperation. "You're not useless, you're just not-"

"Fucks sake, Leo! Ain't no fuckin' point." Raph exploded into the middle of their face off, making no effort to diffuse the situation whatsoever. "She's involved whether any o' us like it or not! Time to clear the air before someone ends up dead with all this...secret shit."

"I'm with Raph." Mikey chimed in, possibly the only one in the room that had maintained any level of calm.

Leo glared at Raph, and then Mikey in turn, before swivelling to Don when he added his two cents.

"He's right, Leo."

Raph gave a bark of angry laughter.

"Oh, you ain't in the clear Genius." He snapped out, poking a finger in Dons direction. "I'm looking at you too. I defended you to our fearless leader here last night. Said you wouldn't keep us in the dark less you had a good reason too, but now I find out this thing with Jay ain't an isolated incident." His pointed finger tracked to Judith, his eye ridges raised incredulously. "So you got anything you want to share with the group? Maybe somethin' about Jay here and the Biosites that you've been keepin' te yerself?"

Don tensed and Judith rounded on Raph.

"Hang on, don't turn this on him! None of that is his fault." She said firmly, waving Raph away with a dismissive gesture that mimicked his earlier treatment of the dead man in a dumpster.

Speaking of the dead man, Judith realised she'd still holding the picture of him in an almost vice like grip. With a grimace she tossed it onto the table with the mess of blueprints and documents, knowing that even as it left her hand, it would never leave her head.

"What haven't you told us?" Leo had turned his attention to Don, eyes narrowed and voice low. The few words he'd uttered commanded the rooms attention and Mikey took this as his cue to intervene. He heaved a sigh and waded into the middle of the feud.

"Back off dudes. It's not anything he can't fix and we're all a little preoccupied right now. Info wasn't at the top of the priority list." He was holding up his hands defensively as he made his way to stand by his brothers, offering up the universal gesture for 'calm down' as he spoke.

It didn't work.

"Wait. You knew too? About the Biosites and what they're doin' to her?!" Raph was getting louder now, shoulders all tensed up and teeth slightly bared in a grimace.

Mikey just shrugged.

"I worked it out. I'm observant like that." He said casually, crossing his arms over his plastron and giving a little half shrug.

Raph actually growled at him.

"Oh! So I'm just a trustin' idiot for believing what Don told us, little brother, that it?" He was advancing on Mikey now, getting into his personal space and rocking back and forth like a predator debating the first lunge.

Mikey just gave his little shrug again, shaking his head.

"Nope. I just saw her switch out." He said, surprisingly unfazed by Raph's aggression.

"It wasn't shock, was it Donnie?" Leo hadn't shifted his attention from Don, and he threw his brothers nickname into the mix like a punch. That one word felt more like an attack than even Raph's advance at Mikey.

Without thinking, Judith swivelled to face Leo, eyes narrowing. She was surprised at how reactive she was to his tone. How hearing it directed at Don made her...

Well she wasn't sure what it made her, but it was decidedly not good.

She was winding up to say something, probably something she would regret, when Don put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently.

"No. It wasn't shock." He admitted. His voice held none of the strength it had before. He sounded tired, deflated.

Guilty.

But that didn't seem to appease Leo. With an aggravated grunt, he swore and pressed his palms to his eyes.

"Kuso! This is exactly why I said we shouldn't have used them. None of us knew what they would actually-"

"Hey! I was the one who made the call!" Judith burst out, hands curling to fists at her sides. She'd been able to make so few decisions about her life in the past weeks, she'd be damned if Leo took even one of them away from her. Especially to then lay it at Don's feet as blame.

"And they saved her life!" Mikey added, voice rising for the first time since this whole thing had started. He looked like he wanted to say more, but stopped abruptly when a loud order rang out through the lab.

"Jūbun'na!"

Judith had never seen the bottom fall out of an argument as quickly as it did in that second, with that one word. She was the only one who needed to turn around to know who the voice belonged too, and when her eyes fell on the disappointed features of Master Splinter, her own tempter cowed and curled into guilt and embarrassment.

She shrunk back, watching as Splinter took the time to look over each of his sons one by one. He let the silence stretch out as they turned their eyes to the floor and waited for him to speak again.

It felt like it went on forever, until finally Splinter sighed and tapped his walking stick to the floor a few times. When he did speak, it was in a calm, kind voice that cut away any of the remaining aggression in the room.

"I think it is time we all talked."

Authors Notes: Ah, hi...So, I've been working on my own original novel. That is literally my only excuse for it being nearly two years. I have been world building and map drawing and language creating and I just sort of got suckered in to my characters and their stories. I will not be regularly updating this because I am likely to be suckered in again, but if anyone is still here...

Thank you, as always, for taking the time to read something I've written.

Oh! Also. I am thinking of spending some time re-writing Sara's parts in this story. I don't quite like her cartoonish nature at the moment and I want to rework her character. So. I will let you know if I end up doing that and post the chapters that have been edited in my authors notes in future chapters.

Phew. Ok. Let's see if I have another chapter in me?