Don put his hands down. "What are you talking about?"

"Those guys were right outside our door!" Leonardo waved his phone in the air. He had already checked to see when the alarm system had first sent out a text. "Nobody noticed for over fifteen minutes!"

Michelangelo had been watching TV with Raphael, but he crossed the room to stand next to Leonardo. "Calm down, Leo. It's not as if they got in or anything."

"Don't tell me to calm down!" Leonardo yelled. It was a wonder that he had even heard Michelangelo speaking over the sound of his thundering heart. "For all we know, they're coming right back. I heard one of them say that he knows we live in the sewer, and this is a point of interest to them now!"

Raphael turned off the TV and joined his family. "They didn't seem to notice that it was a fake wall."

Don nodded his thanks to Raph. "Even if they did, it's only the garage. I installed another false wall between there and the Lair that can drop down in emergencies. If someone broke into the garage, they wouldn't know that the Lair was here."

"They'd figure it out," Leonardo grumbled. "They always do."

"But we would have time to escape," Michelangelo pointed out.

"Perhaps," Leonardo conceded. "But we've lost a lot of homes over the years. This doesn't bode well. And, they obviously know what the Battle Shell looks like."

"I can change it," Don offered. "Raph and I can reconfigure the exterior, then Mikey can repaint it. They'll never know that it's the same vehicle."

Leonardo crossed his arms. "We'll just add that to your to-do list, then."

"What?" Don said, sensing sarcasm. "I can handle it."

"Of course you can," Leonardo snapped. "You think that you can handle anything...until you can't."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Don shot back.

"You're overextended, Donatello, and you're too far along to be taking new projects on." Leonardo swung around. "And now we have to worry about finding a new home."

"No we don't," Don scoffed. "This was nothing."

"Babies!" Leonardo hollered, loud enough to shock everyone, and even make the triplets react. Don could feel them lurch within him. He put his hands on either side of his belly as if attempting to cover their ears.

"We-" Leonardo quickly cut himself off. "You're having babies! What about their safety?! They won't be able to run away like we can. And I know we're not supposed to say anything, but you're getting too big to run away yourself!"

"I'm fine!" Don defended. "I can still run. Situations like this are exactly why I spend so much time trying to keep in shape, despite the rest of you trying to convince me to take it easy."

"Oh, you are not fine, Donatello," Leonardo choked out. His voice took on a low, warning tone. "That's why you panic at night. That's why you went into false labor."

"I'm okay," Don attempted to soothe. "That was nothing."

"It was not nothing!" Leonardo yelled. "This was not nothing! Stop saying that it is! None of this is working, Donatello, and if you'd bothered to ask anyone else how they were doing, you'd know that!"

Don blinked in confusion. "What?"

Just like that, Leonardo couldn't hold back anymore. There was so much that he had been wanting to say, but he had held it inside for fear of hurting Don. Suddenly, he couldn't keep it cooped up within him anymore. It occurred to him that he hadn't ever been protecting Donatello to begin with. He'd only been giving him a false sense of security, and it wasn't fair to any of them. "This won't work. We can't have babies here, Donatello. We'll never be able to keep them safe. Shell, we can't even keep ourselves safe!"

"We are safe," Don insisted. "Those guys are gone. It's fine."

"Again!" Leonardo shouted. "Nothing about this is fine! Those guys will come back. If not them, it'll be their friends, or Hun, or the Foot, or Baxter Stockman, or the Triceraton." Leonardo pointed at Don's belly almost menacingly, "Or, Bishop will come for them."

Don leaned back in fear. "No, he won't. I'm blackmailing him, remember?"

"That's no guarantee," Leonardo claimed. "Nothing is."

Don kept his voice level, once more attempting to calm his brother. "That's true."

Leonardo deflated. "I can't guarantee anyone's safety, Don. Not our own, not yours, and especially not the babies. It's unfair of you to expect me to."

"I never asked you to," Don pointed out. "Where is all this coming from, Leo?"

"You may not have asked me to, but I'm your clan leader, or at least I thought that I was supposed to be," Leonardo replied. "And that makes me responsible for the safety of everyone in this clan, including the unborn."

"Okaaay," Don said, unsure where this was going.

"But I can't keep you safe, particularly when you don't listen to a darn word I have to say," Leonardo snapped.

"How am I not listening?" Don asked.

"You didn't listen when I told you not to leave the Lair unaccompanied, which led to you being abducted and impregnated, to begin with. You didn't listen when I begged you to come home afterward. You didn't listen when I told you that you were training too hard. You didn't listen when I asked you to keep an open mind about the healer."

Don wanted to argue about some of that, but Leonardo was ranting again, and Don was scared to interrupt. Leonardo's voice began to slow on its own, right before it broke entirely. "You didn't listen the other night when I told you… told you that I have sleepless nights too… I panic too… And, aside from that one conversation, you never asked what I thought was best for the babies. Because, if you had cared to ask… if you had listened to anything I had to say… you would have heard that… I don't think this is right. It's not right for them, or us, to live like this. It's no life for anyone, living in fear all the time."

"Are you serious?" Don balked. "Are you really telling me that this isn't going to work?" After all the talks they'd had, Don truly thought that this matter had been laid to rest.

Leonardo frowned then nodded. "Yes. If you really love them, you should want better for them. I know that I do. Do you really think that we're equipped to be parents, Don? To raise kids here? We're barely holding it together as it is."

Michelangelo and Raphael had long since been shocked into silence. Don looked to them, his hands still wrapped around his swollen midsection. They offered him no help.

"It's not as though I went looking for this!" Don hissed. "But, that doesn't mean that I don't love them. I do love them! I love them too much to leave them. I couldn't bear to live the rest of my life knowing that they're out there somewhere without me. Whether I wanted this or not, they're a part of me now. A part of all of us! They belong here with us. It's so simple, Leo. Why can't you see that?!"

"Why can't you see that loving something sometimes means letting it go?" Leonardo asked. "It seems to me that you can never stand to do that. You can't give up training, or your lab, or any semblance of our lives before all of this. But, you've lost sight of all the stuff that you'll be losing by choosing to stay here. And, you're not considering everything that you will be forcing the babies to give up along with you, never mind the rest of us. What you're trying to do - it's so selfish, Don."

"But we've seen the future here, Leo - Bishop's future, where we could walk free," Don reminded him. "It was practically a utopia. We know it's coming."

"That was 2105," Leo countered. "We don't know when everything changes, or if we'll even make it that far. For all we know, it might never even come at all." The turtles had learned that time travel was tricky like that.

Don threw Leo's previous words back at him. "As you said, there are no guarantees anywhere else that we might go."

"Is Bishop anywhere else?" Leonardo asked. "Or Hun?"

"No," Don admitted.

"Are we being hunted anywhere else?" Leonardo continued.

"Not that I know of," Don considered, although he was certain that he wouldn't be welcome on the Triceraton homeworld.

"Aren't there plenty of places where the babies could be raised as normal kids?" Leonardo asked. "Places where they would be safer?"

"I'm sure there are," Don conceded.

Leonardo threw his hands up. "I just don't get it. You say you love those babies, and you admit that they aren't as safe here as they would be pretty much anywhere else. Yet you insist on raising them here? In a sewer, on a planet where an alien invasion appears to be imminent, where our enemies know exactly where to find us, and a madman could show up at our doorstep at any time?"

By now, Donatello was barely holding himself together. "This...this is our home, Leo. Are you saying that we should leave? Now? I'm six months pregnant!"

"I'm not saying that we should leave," Leo replied. "I'm asking you why you feel compelled to stay. Surely you see how foolish it is? You say you'll do anything to protect the babies, but you won't take them somewhere that you yourself admit would be better for them."

Don took umbrage with this. "I did not say it would be better for them."

Leonardo shook his head almost violently. "Yes, you did."

"I said it would be safer," Don clarified.

Leonardo laughed bitterly. "Safer is better."

"No. Not always," Don whimpered. "Our lives have never really been safe, but we were so happy as kids. They could be too, Leo. They just need stability, the love of their family."

"They could still have you, Donatello. You don't have to leave them if you don't want to." Leonardo sighed. "And you do seem intent on staying with them."

"Wait a minute," Don begged. "Just me?" It hit Don like a ton of bricks. This wasn't a rehash of that same conversation anymore. It was a new one entirely. "You don't want me to give them up. You're telling me to go too, aren't you, Leo?"

Leo thought frantically and hard - so hard that he didn't even notice that instinct had taken over and that he was already nodding his head. "Yes," he affirmed, surprising even himself with how resolute it sounded. But, deep down, Leo knew it was the truth. Earth, and the Lair, in particular, was just about the worst place in the universe for Don right now.

Don's heart broke. He didn't understand how this night had gone so wrong. Hadn't they just been chatting over ice cream? "B-but I need you guys too. Are you saying that you wouldn't come with me? Because I… I don't think that I can do this on my own."

Despite Don's distress, Leonardo soldiered on. All he could think about was Don's panic attack and his labor scare. Those incidents had made Leonardo realize just how fragile all this was. Behind closed doors, he and Raphael had been arguing almost every night. Leonardo now realized that Raph had been right all along. This pregnancy was killing Don, and they were all just ignoring it. In fact, it seemed to Leo that they'd been making it worse, continually piling more and more stress on top of someone that was already damn close to buckling under all of it. Asking one physically deteriorating mutant to take on the responsibility of protecting an entire planet while simultaneously figuring out how to doctor himself and prepare to be a father - something that never could have been expected.

In that moment, it seemed to Leo that the best way to help Donnie was to give him a clean slate - some time away to think without all of the distractions of life around the Lair, his bickering family and their own conflicted emotions, his dozens of projects, and this newfound critical security threat. Surely, if Don had some time to really consider the path that he was choosing, he would realize what everyone else already had - that this was all just too much to handle. If that meant tough love, then so be it. Being a leader means making difficult decisions, and right now Don needed to be protected from himself.

Leonardo tried to sound stronger than he was. "You wouldn't be alone. You would have your kids." Leo hoped that phrasing it that way would trigger Don to really think about their needs.

Don was shaking now. "I can't."

"Well, you can't honestly expect us to go with you right now, right? If this invasion is imminent, we need to protect Earth." Leo hoped that the explanation seemed logical, even if it was only part of the reason that it was best for Don to have some time alone. He added a little more, just in case. "Hun is wreaking havoc in New York because of us. We're the ones who stole his antenna and set him off on this rampage. We can't cause all this trouble and just leave. What if he was to find your prototype and tip off the Triceraton?"

"Yeah," Don agreed. "I thought I was needed here too, Leo. That's why I've been working so hard on the Earth Defense System."

"But we can't need you, Don. You're leaving the team," Leonardo argued. "You're choosing to be a father instead. So the rest of us just have to live with that choice."

Don was quiet. He didn't recall agreeing to leave the team.

"And you have to live with it too, Donatello. Choosing to father those kids is a noble thing, but it also means that everything changes. Your children won't be safe here in the Lair. This is a vigilante base that could be attacked at any time. It's not a home to raise children in. It's not fair of you to ask me to be responsible for choices that I don't even agree with. I can't be worried about extremely vulnerable babies on top of everything else."

"I never asked you to be responsible," Don stammered. "I'm responsible."

"If you are accepting full responsibility for their safety, please explain to me why it makes sense to keep them here, in a damn sewer, where they will be constantly hunted and have to be hidden. Why keep them in New York, where all our worst enemies know where to find us? You're supposed to be the genius, Donatello. And you're the parent, and the one accepting responsibility. Please explain to me why it makes sense to stay."

"For you guys. For family." Donatello looked around desperately, but no one came to his rescue. Don had known that Raphael was freaked out by this whole thing, but he had expected Michelangelo to stick up for him. Mikey was just… standing there.

Leonardo's voice was level and almost cold. Emotion wasn't playing into this at all anymore - only logic. "Don't stick around on our account. You've already made your choice." Leonardo pointed to Don's middle once more, his finger shaking with emotions that he was fighting desperately to restrain. "Do what's best for them. Find somewhere else to go."

This chapter was very difficult to write, and I'm sure that a lot of you will hate me for it. But, it was necessary for the progression of the story. We are getting to the part of the tale that that long author's note in the first chapter was about. Thanks for reading.