The conversation after that died almost immediately.

Leon watched with interest as their counterparts stood awkwardly and wandered around, hardly interacting with one another, aside from inspecting each other's heads and confirming their well-being. Other than that, they mostly just… meandered from one part of the room to another. Without something to do, they didn't seem as… amazingly awesome as they originally had.

Mikey and April enlisted their counterparts' help to pack away all of the bloodied blankets into the laundry room quickly. With all of them working together, it only took one trip in total, and after they got back, it was immediately just awkward silence.

Donnie stole their scroll backpacks at some point, dragging April after him as well. He said something about running tests on them, like searching for 'invisible ink', whatever that means. It left them empty handed, and Donatello was banned from accessing the lab and the wi-fi, which meant there was…

Nothing they could really do.

"Well." Donatello sighed at length, after several minutes of quiet, opening up his side pouch. He took out his origami paper, shuffling it between his hands like it was a deck of cards. "Who wants to not waste my materials and fold some origami?"

"Yeah, I still haven't figured out how to make an elephant." Raphael volunteered, thrusting open his hand to accept a few sheets of paper. "Deal me in."

"Absolutely not. I'm not teaching you how to fold elephants, and you're going to waste so much trying to get it right. Get your own origami paper or do something else!" Donatello scolded, ignoring Raphael's glowering. He startled back to the turtles in front of him as Raph and the Mikes clambered over. "Oh, wow, okay… I wasn't expecting anyone to actually… hmm."

"It's too messy with the normal blankets to skateboard!" Michelangelo wailed, tossing his hands into the air. "So like, artsy things are our only hope!"

"Ohmigosh, you want to do artsy stuff? Ooh, baby!" Mikey set a hand on his shoulder, pouting at the ground and raising his gaze slowly to face Michelangelo. "We don't have to do origami if you don't want to!"

"Dude, do you have other stuff we can use?" Michelangelo gaped, eyes widening. "Not just food stuff?"

What kind of artsy stuff do you want to do?" Mikey goaded, shaking his shoulder.

"Uh." Michelangelo scratched the side of his face, eyes flickering over to Donatello for help and then back to Mikey. "I want to sculpt… David!"

"I don't know who that is!" Mikey said brightly, dragging Michelangelo up despite having the worst handhold of all time. "But you can totally sculpt him! I have the stuff in my room! I can't believe you've been here for so long, and we haven't discussed art even once! That's a crime. Bye, Raph, we're going to do art!"

"Suuure," Leon whined, "say bye to him, but not me, that's fine, that's peachy."

He rounded his eyes over to Donatello, who was fumbling with the paper and staring at Raph like he was an enigma he couldn't unravel. Raph brightened as he was handed three sheets, setting two off to the side and watching Donatello eagerly for instruction.

Raphael sat down beside them, and Donatello reluctantly handed him one piece of paper, watching him suspiciously to make sure he wasn't going to go ahead with the crafts. Leonardo rose to patter over to the side, pulling out his swords and falling into a fighting stance.

Leon watched Leonardo go, then pushed himself up to trail after, hugging his arms to his chest as he approached. He winced as Leonardo swiped his sword through the air, winding through a couple katas.

"Hey?" At Leon's voice, Leonardo jolted, turning to face him. "Yeah, hey," Leon continued, offering an absent-minded wave. "Can we, uh, talk?"

Leonardo's gaze switched over Leon's shoulder to watch their brothers, and then slowly turned his attention back to Leon. "Okay, sure. Do you want to spar? Draw your weapon." Leonardo fell into a pose, holding the hilt close to his shoulder, furrowing his eyebridges.

"What? No, I don't want to spar." Leon balked, staring at him. "...Is that what you guys do whenever you have a conversation? Just fight?"

"Um. Not all of us?" Leonardo blinked, sheathing his sword carefully. "Mostly just Raph and I. We're not good at sitting still during…" He gestured between them, offering a shrug like that would clear it up. It cleared up nothing, and something on Leon's face must've showed it, because Leonardo sighed lightly. "You know. Heart-to-hearts."

"Oh." Leon breathed. "No! Not a heart to heart! That's not what I'm meaning by this, anyway. I just…. Uh, I wanted to ask about the mystic… healing mojo thing. Very cool and stuff, but I mean…" he rubbed his neck, the tingles of phantom pain still there. "I know I've never had it before or whatever, but it didn't feel right."

"Ah. That." Leonardo agreed, arms going limp and hanging on either side of his body. "Right. That was…" He fell silent again, eyes sliding over into solid white as he glared at the ground. Leon felt his heart constrict, uncomfortable over his shorter counterpart avoiding his gaze.

"You better not say 'nothing', because it sure felt like something. It felt like you were… pulling something out of me? Like an infection or something." He wrinkled his nose. "Like a magician or whatever pulling out handkerchiefs."

Leonardo snorted in mirth, but ran his hand down his face. "Funny, I thought the same… okay, you sure you don't want to spar?"

"Yeah, you're the only guy I'm ever going to say this to, but I really am not in the mood to lose." Leon ignored the quirked eyebridge Leonardo sent him, chuckling lightly. "Yeah, but seriously, clearly you think this is going to be something deep, since you didn't just immediately go 'yeah, don't worry little buddy, it was just an infection'," Leon lamented as he fake swooned, kicking one leg out in front of him and leaning backwards, balancing between his thrown weights. "So, spill." He scoffed, straightening. "What was that? It can't be normal."

Leonardo fidgeted his hands together, and Leon gestured him down into a sitting position, and Leonardo quietly obeyed, watching Leon carefully. His expressions were almost calculated, as if trying to gauge how Leon would react to each twitch of his eye.

Leon crossed his arms stubbornly over his plastron in response to Leonardo's stare and folded his legs together. "What happened?"

Leonardo sighed, closing his eyes and massaging his left temple. "I was… trying to pull the Shredder out. He exposed himself, trying to steal the healing energy from you. So, I thought I could just… force him out."

"Wait, my Raph, over there, said that you said that good ol' Shredder and I's souls were… bonded? Yeah? Doesn't that make us like…" Leon floundered for a bit, "uh, the gordian knot of all gordian knots?"

Leonardo nodded with a wince.

"Eh, great, okay, and slicing didn't really work, and we're working on dicing, which, y'know, are both basically the famous way of undoing gordian knots. And then you tried to…" Leon steepled his fingers in front of his jaw, squinting, "...just untie it, like a normal person? Grab an end and pull?"

"I know." Leonardo chirped, dragging his hands down his face. "You don't need to remind me. I shouldn't have fed him so much energy, and I definitely shouldn't have tried to pull him out! What was I thinking?"

"What? Dude, no! Calm down, big Leo!" Leo comforted, slightly alarmed at the sudden shift in emotions, from relaxed to panicked, that Leonardo had gone through. "No, it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard! Imagine if it had worked! Yeah, just 'oh, don't worry, just healed your partly destroyed neck and removed your dream demon while I was at it, no biggy'! That would've been great!" Leon's wide grin faltered at Leonardo's expression, and he leaned over to punch his arm. "Hey, no harm, no foul. So, it didn't work and my neck felt like it was Hypno's sleeve? Big whoop! Now we know!"

"You're wrong." Leonardo breathed.

"What?"

"You're wrong. I almost pulled your soul, too. So do not try to say there wasn't any harm! If that had happened, I don't know if you would've been able to get back to your body at all, and even if you were able to, Shredder might have been able to beat you there." Leonardo pointed furiously at Leon, growling under his breath. "Yes, sure, it didn't actually happen, but it isn't fine! Because I think…"

Leon frowned at Leonardo's falter, reaching out his foot to nudge Leonardo's knee. "You think…?"

"I think he somehow…" Leonardo hissed out a breath. "When he grabbed you to keep from getting pulled out, he might've twisted you two further together." Leonardo interlocked his fingers, imitating a chian. "I hate to admit it, but… this could really get worse before it gets better."

Leon frowned, heart stuttering in his chest as fear gripped him. "But… we have a plan."

"If my healing hands heal you both, there's…" Leonardo shrugged helplessly, face pinching in frustration. "Well, maybe… But if your… Master Splinter doesn't have scrolls relating to this situation, then…"

"...Okay," Leon reflexively chuckled, his voice lacking all of the confidence he had obtained two minutes beforehand, fear pulling at his chest and head, a gradual throbbing pulsing at his forehead. "Okay, so what are we… what am I going to do if this doesn't…?" He ran a hand along his scalp, rubbing the back of his head.

"No, naw, who am I kidding? Of course everything will work out fine!" Leon forced a smile on his face, leaning back on his hands as he settled them behind him, beaming at Leonardo. "It always does, yeah?"

Leonardo's face was carefully schooled, a blank canvas of nothing, but Leon could still see the piles of emotions lying within his eyes, the corners of his lips turned just the slightest bit too much. He was scared. He was so full of doubt over their chances of success, latching onto barely concealed grief that Leon could see as clear as day. His expression was too much like Raph's when he was hiding away his real emotions, except not really, because Raph put on an effort to look happy. Leonardo just looked… exhausted.

"It only usually works out fine." Leonardo hissed. "And even then, just for my brothers and I. The people around us…"

Leon felt what little hope he had managed to cling onto dwindling, leaving him feeling small and hopeless in front of a deep canyon. Suddenly, all he could think about was Gram Gram, and how he had led her and left her to her death. Was that all she was? A person in their orbit, destined to become nothing more than collateral damage?

She was the original Hamato, so maybe it passed down to them. Maybe all their ancestors were doomed to die so they could thrive. Leon wondered if he had only sped along the process. If in another life they could've spent more time with her. Would it hurt more, to get to know her before she was taken, or would there have been comfort? Ah, yes, the old 'loved and lost' debate. Delightful.

Leonardo was still talking, Leon realized bleakly, his older counterpart flapping an arm about anxiously as he spoke, eyes roaming at the ceiling, past Leon to their brothers, and just about everywhere but at Leon himself. He was still talking about plans that had failed, and friends hurt. He was doing the nervous chattering thing Leon knew he himself had done, speaking to fill the emptiness, to give sense to the pounding thoughts against his skull.

Vaguely, Leon realized both hands were mimicking Leonardo, flapping back and forth wildly in the air, slapping against his knees every second shake. Ah, nervous ticks. Leon focused on keeping his hands still, and turned his attention towards Leonardo, who was still going.

"Y'know," Leon said slowly, drawing Leonardo's attention away from the air he was angrily raving at and back to his younger counterpart. Leon patted his knees once, and continued, "I am personally offended. You said you and your brothers are always the ones to walk away scott-free? What does that make us? If we're not also your brothers, what are we?"

The tension in Leonardo's shoulders fell at the tease, and he released a low chuckle as he rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. "I said it works out for us. Not that we were unharmed after. Besides, I was under the impression that you were our cousins, not brothers."

"On the contrary, my dear Nardo," Leon mimicked, doing his best to sound just like Donnie as he addressed Leonardo with an air of fake superiority. "We're your nephews. And son, singular." At the strange choking noise Leonardo made, Leon raised his hands placidly, a genuine grin spreading across his face. "Hey, Shred-head said it first. And since he's the first guy who even hinted we're related at all, he gets full administration over our family tree. I don't make the rules, I just say them like they're true."

"No…" Leonardo groaned into his hands, trying and failing to hold back the smile that crawled over his face. "A family run by Shredder…"

"It's more likely than you might think." Leon joked, shrugging good-naturedly.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, both fiddling their fingers as if they had to say something, but couldn't quite figure out heads or tails of it. Leon found his gaze wandering onto the swords latched onto Leonardo's back, and remembered when they were last in Leon's mind.

He had tried to mimic Leonardo's position, shift his hands and legs into an identical pose, but he really hadn't slid into it easily. He had felt awkward and out of place despite his best efforts. And then when they had fought when they first met, Leonardo and his brothers had wiped the floor with them. Without the mystic powers, and the pressure points, Leon had his doubts that they would've lasted even a minute with them.

It brought forth a sudden need to do something, to ask, to become better. If there was a chance that they wouldn't be able to beat Shredder… Leon couldn't make his brothers keep coming into his head to bail him out. He had to be able to do it himself.

"Hey, uh, weird question." Leon blurted out, fidgeting his fingers together, watching Leonardo carefully for any indication that he was asking too much. "I know I said no sparring, but, uh… do you think you could… train me?"

Leonardo's head snapped back towards him from where he had been watching their brothers, blue eyes widening in surprise. "...what?"

"Just like! So I can fight better! Because if… this continues. If you're right, and it gets worse, and it keeps going, I'm… not going to make my brothers deal with it. You saw how Mikey reacted when his nunchucks got shattered. And Raph's already tired enough after Shredder's whole biz, and there's no way I'm putting Donnie in there because he gets super uncomfy, but…" He hesitated, awed to find that Leonardo's expression seemed to be relaxing, understanding welling up. Inspired, Leon pushed on. "But if I learn how to fight, I can handle it! Without my brothers needing to, y'know, baby me."

Leonardo nodded thoughtfully, eyebrows softening. "Protective and proactive, impressive!" A smile started to sneak across his face, and he rose to his feet, offering Leon a hand up. "This is my first time saying this to anyone, even April, but… I'd be honored to be your sensei."

(:)

April watched Donnie work, perching herself onto one of his less-used desks, folding one knee over her leg, and picking at a loose thread. "Alright, Dee, whatcha doing?"

"I'm running tests. For example, some of my scanners are calibrated to run tests on the possibility of invisible ink. Using black lights and artificial fire-like lighting… The check for lemon juice being the choice ink is coming up blank so far, but I'm wondering if it's a possibility that instead of lemon juice, it's kumquat juice." At April's expression, Donnie elaborated. "The fruit that our… visitors brought to ward off Shredder. If they already have the ability to ward him off, perhaps they're used in other mystic practices? Who knows if kumquat ink is even invisible? I'm probably going to have to leave the room to get one for a sample or something." He folded his hands in front of his chin, frowning at the computer screen as it just relayed the exact same words on each scroll, revealing no new information.

"Hey, I got you." April promised, firing him a finger gun. "Stay here and chill, I'll be right back!"

"You're a saint." Donnie whined, thumping his head against the desk and giving a shaky thumbs-up over his shoulder.

April frowned at him, concerned. Donnie was very rarely this exhausted. Even when he was tired, he was usually devoted to being oblivious to everything that happened around him, including the presence of his own siblings. She wasn't sure how long it had been since he had slept, but judging by the distinct lack of visible eyebags, she assumed it had been recent, but that didn't clear social exhaustion.

Poor boy. She had no doubt that his current state was due to the overwhelming presence of people, especially people he didn't know. As someone who loved interaction but couldn't get Donnie's distaste for socialization for the life of her, it had taken April a while to understand. Now that she got it, though, April felt a fierce protection over him.

April wasn't about to blame their counterparts for anything, they had done so much to help. But she did know their presence was tiring Donnie, which was at least part of the reason he had snapped so drastically earlier. There were a lot more buried there, lots of things building up that April would have to uncover later on when Donnie wasn't so close to shattering.

For now, at least, she was focused on helping Donnie in other ways.

Where had they said the kumquats were? She had seen Mikey beeline for one of the back rooms. She hardly knew they existed, pointing them out once during the early days of her knowing the turtles, but they had shrugged them off, not caring much for their existence one way or another.

Sometimes, when Donnie got especially overwhelmed, April wondered why he never went to those backrooms, but only ever stuck to his lab. Nobody would ever guess where he'd gone, and he could go bother-free for as long as he wanted. However, the distinct lack of Donnie would probably cause more harm than good, and… well, sound carries remarkably well in the sewers. Maybe, then, it was a good thing Donnie stayed where they could find him.

As April slipped through the atrium, kicking a couple blankets to the side as she went, she kept an eye on the five boys seated throughout it. Donatello was holding a paper crane proudly in front of him, gesturing with a flourish, and Raph was staring down with heartbreak at his own wad of paper. It looked semi-decent, but not anywhere as good as Donatello's. Raphael, meanwhile, was still on the first two folds, face scrunched into a grimace. From the way Donatello was eying him, April had a sneaking suspicion Raphael was not following instructions.

On the other side of the atrium, the Leos sat facing one another, Leon's back to them. From how still he was sitting, April could only guess that he wasn't talking, but Leonardo wasn't, either, focusing on his brothers and Raph. As April walked, her eyes met Leonardo's, and she gave him a peppy wave. He barely lifted his hand in response, and April felt her spirits sink. She knew her brothers had told her in passing that this Leonardo was serious, and perhaps that was just his normal wave, but it still felt wrong seeing a Leo greet her like that. If Leon ever reacted like that to her, she'd immediately get him tea and a hug.

Leonardo's head snapped back to Leon, and even though April couldn't hear anything, she knew from the way Leon's hands pulled to the front of him and the way he tilted his head that he was talking. He looked so small though, a poor contrast against what he was usually like, that April didn't put the possibility of tea and hugs away.

Later, April would find a quiet moment to pull him aside and talk to him. Almost a week of not interacting with the boys aside from texting and hearing about how poorly they were handling everything, like Leon becoming leader and his subsequent mental health issues. Or maybe that was from the whole Shredder-in-his-head deal. Either way, a talk with him was overdue.

April refocused herself on the task at hand. Right now, Leon was taken care of. Donnie wasn't.

April located the room quick enough. There was a muddle of blankets on the floor, and she found herself surprised that they hadn't used every blanket for the pile in the atrium. She located the plate with the single remaking kumquat, going to pick it up.

Wait. Wouldn't Leon… need this? Because, well, first of all, ew, why was it sitting in the open, that was like bacteria waiting to happen. Secondly, she couldn't just take it. Not even for Donnie's experiments.

April pocketed it with her to go ask, beelining out of the room and heading straight for the Leos. She almost tripped at the sight of the two of them standing up, mirroring each other's stance, fists balled firmly at their sides.

"Feet a little further back and apart." Leonardo was instructing as he neared, sliding his own feet to demonstrate, and then shuffling back to his original pose. "Remember, a firm, balanced starting stance is important in any fight. It helps guide what your next movements will be, and stops you from being knocked away by a sudden attack. It's useful for out of battle, too."

"Hey, boys." April waved, interrupting their conversation. She raised an eyebrow at Leon, curious to what was going on in the minute between when she last left the room to now. Without relaxing his impossibly stiff posture and letting his pose fall back to his common lazy one, Leon waved back at her. His expression didn't shift to anything pleading or generally concerning, so she let it pass. She was totally asking later, though.

"So, these funky little orange fruit thingies," April continued, holding it up carefully, "do you have… more of these? Because Donnie wants to snag one." Not to mention if their plan didn't work out… who knew how long Leon would have to be on these?

"We have plenty." Leonardo reassured, placing his hands on his hips as he watched her, never shifting his balance like Leon. "You, or Donnie, I guess, can use that one if you want." He frowned, briefly, eyes drifted over towards where they had dropped their backpacks. "We should probably refrigerate the-"

"Way ahead of you, other-Leo." April reassured, snapping her fingers at him. "I can do that while heading back up to Donnie. What about you?" April asked, turning her full attention to Leon and watching for any tells that he was being forced to train. His expression remained bright and neutral, and his hands didn't so much as twitch to form the sign language for 'help'. "Do you need anything?"

"Nope!" Leon chirped, sounding energized and happy, his voice nothing like she had expected it'd be. "Thanks, Apes!"

"Uh-huh…" April mused, looking Leon up and down. "And you're fine with… this whole situation?"

He smiled at her with what felt like fake innocence, tipping his head. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You're unpredictable." April determined, tossing the kumquat up in the air and catching it again, rolling her hand dramatically through the air as she offered a bow. "Welp, I'll get out of your non-hair! Good luck on your training sesh."

She strolled off, turning towards the backpacks as she went. She located which one stored all the kumquats with ease, lugging it after her up the ramp and into the kitchen. She was momentarily surprised that neither Mike had taken up residence in the kitchen, which seemed to be, at very least, Mikey's default resting spot, but she shook it off.

April counts them as lucky that the refrigerator had been out of the blast zone that had carved out a couple cabinets, and not just because of the inconvenience. Electrical fires were prone to happen around busted kitchen appliances, especially fridges, and electrical fires weren't easy to put out. She counted that one firefighter gig she took as tribute for knowing that. She got fired from it, of course, because apparently people needed credentials to legally fight fires, who knew? She didn't have the necessary paperwork, so sue her, she had a license for crane operation but not for battling fires.

April loaded away all the kumquats, keeping the original one she had found firmly clasped in her hands. She nudged the backpack into the far corner, and headed back out of the room, turning her attention back towards the lab and Donnie within.

Donnie spun around in his chair as she entered, face relaxing from the grimace it had been set into when he saw who it was, a soft smile splitting across his face. "Oh, good, have you got the catalyst?" His voice and words, despite his effort to appear awake, betrayed his exhaustion.

"No matter how many times you use that word, I'm still sure you're using it wrong." April sighed with a hint of mirth, placing the kumquat gently in his awaiting palms. "Believe it or not, you using big words doesn't work on me like it works on the guys."

"This is perfect, April." Donnie congratulated her, pointedly ignoring her. He pulled a scalpel out of seemingly nowhere and cut into the peel, carefully pulling off the skin and snatching out a singular slice, handing it over to April. "Hold that. Don't eat it."

"Why would I…?" April started, getting cut off as Donnie snatched up a camera-looking device and flashed it in her face. She blocked the beam of light with her arm, but Donnie was already turning away again, pulling out what printed and shaking it twice before laying it flat on the counter. "Gah! Dee, what was that?!"

"Scanning for brain waves. Please eat your slice now." Donnie instructed, cradling what was left in the kumquat in his hand and tucking the peel back over the empty slot, kicking back from the table.

"What are you doing….?" April asked, cautiously taking a bite of the offered kumquat slice, watching Donnie cautiously.

"Running as many tests as I can think of on these little devils." Donnie explained, spinning over to his microscope and chemistry side of the lab. He placed the rest of the kumquat on a petri dish, pulling his goggles over his eyes and sliding his custom three-fingered gloves on. He pulled out a tweezer and some dissection needle holders, stooping down to slowly pry open the kumquat.

"M'kay, tests, and is there a reason you're acting all mad-science-y towards fruit?!" April winced, frowning over his shoulder. She nibbled at the kumquat with uncertainty, still doubtful she should be eating it but doing so anyway if Donnie wanted her to and it helped Leon in the long run.

"I'm testing the properties and how exactly they help Leon and calm his nerves. How it affects his brain, mostly." He inserted an eye dropper into the kumquat, carefully extracting quite a bit of juice from the kumquat. It wasn't done neatly, though, and April could see that some small strands of the fruit made it into the dropper, too. "And, of course, could you insert this drop into that machine over there?"

"Of course!" April chirped, swallowing the last of the kumquat as she accepted the dropper. She turned to the machine, finding the little hatch that allowed her to insert the juice, squeezing it in carefully. She didn't dare to touch the liquid to pull out the strings with her fingers, but she managed to scoop out one of the three with the dropper before giving up.

April turned around again, bearing a bright grin as she faced Donnie, putting her hands on her hips. "Alright, Dee, now what should I- Hey!" She spluttered as he flashed the camera-brain-scanner-device at her again, stumbling back a step. "Donnie! Give me some warning!"

"No can do." Donnie scoffed, pulling out the second brain wave scan and flapping it about before swiveling over to the original picture and holding the scans side by side. "Hmm, no difference. It's about the same amount of brain activity."

"'Scuse me? Were you expecting a different amount?" April inquired, crossing her arms and jutting out her hip, scowling down at him.

"It wasn't so much expecting as wishful thinking." Donnie admitted, scowling down at the two sheets. "You were possessed by Karai in a similar fashion to how Nardo's possessed by alternate-Shredder. I was hoping consuming the kumquat would give similar reactions so I could look into how it works on a mental level."

"Yeah, but Karai's gone?"

"Exactly. Ergo; wishful thinking." Donnie repeated, waving a hand flippantly and tossing both sheets of paper into the garbage. "The machine should be done scanning the formula. Could you push the indigo button?"

April glanced back at the row of seven buttons all in varying shades of purple, and hit the one that looked the most blue. The machine rumbled, and across the room, the parchment scanner Donnie had been using to filter through the scrolls beeped.

"So," April began, turning around slowly and bracing herself for the flash of a camera. Nothing happened, but April still remained bristled, waiting. "Um, do you need anything else, Dee?"

"I don't think so. Just trying to… Make sense of today, I suppose." Donnie sighed, letting his hands drop. "...thanks for being here. You're about the only person who doesn't make my social battery go…" He paused, staring at his palms, rubbing his fingers against one another slowly. "For a lack of a better word, kaput."

"Yeah?" April smiled, shoulders sagging and feeling the tension in her shoulders ease up. "You're my favorite person, too, Donnie. You better know that, or you and I are going to have a talk."

Donnie smiled, far too briefly, and twisted his attention elsewhere, a frown curling at his lips. "…I assume since you now know your presence doesn't bother me, you really are going to pursue a specific conversation topic?"

"No." April responded, rolling her eyes despite her relief that he was starting to sound a bit more like his old self. "Not until you're ready to talk about it. Or until your social battery recharges. I know you, and I know topics can be just as draining as people. Honestly, I'm surprised you didn't run out of charge earlier."

"Yeah, well." Donnie grumbled, glaring at the cut apart kumquat in front of him, two slices already in sample dishes and three more eyedroppers full of the juice lined up. The peel was shoved to the edge of the table, and the rest of the slices sat neatly on a petri dish. "I could chalk it up to adrenaline. Or…" He muttered something April was unable to catch.

"What was that, Dee?" April asked, approaching his workshop to grab the unused dissection tools and setting them out of reach.

"I said that…" Donnie's voice still lowered to almost a whisper, but this time April was keenly listening. "Miguel was right."

April couldn't quite hold back the sarcastic snort that came out at that, looping her arm loosely around Donnie. "You're going to have to be more specific. Mikey's right about a lot of things."

Donnie grumbled with the slightest touch of good humor, glaring up at her through the corner of his eye. "Yeah, yeah. I meant about…" he grunted, rubbing a hand down his face. "You know. Donatello. And I."

"Okay…?"

"I had a good time with him!" Donnie barked, casting his hands into the air, and glaring up at the ceiling. "There, I admitted it!" His hands came back down, palms clasped over his face as he whined, still turned towards the ceiling. "It was… pleasant to be with a fellow genius."

April tightened her grip on Donnie slightly, tucking her chin on the back of his chair, right over his shoulder. Her other arm rested gently over his chest, putting her hand over his heart. "Yeah?" She prodded, urging him on.

"Yeah." Donnie sighed, slumping against her touch. "He's a talented inventor, and introduced me to a few of his own gadgets. Of course, I returned the favor and all, and it was… quite relaxing. There were about six hours of bliss at the end of our collaboration session, but…" He paused, shaking his head.

"What happened, Donald?"

"He let slip a… particularly sensitive subject that I, in true, sensitive, dumb-dumb fashion, didn't handle well." Donnie side-eyed her, checking her expression. April nudged his cheek with her forehead, her bun shoving against the top of his head. "…evidently," Donnie continued, "their father is… gone. Gone-gone."

April stared at him for a long moment, biting her lip. Conflicted emotions zapped through her, thinking of their counterparts. On one hand, they were now obviously adopted by her. She'd have to check their ages later to figure out if she had older or younger brothers. Her heart strung with sympathy for them, wondering how they managed it. She had seen how upset her brothers had been the whole time Splinter was kidnapped, and how heartbroken they had been over Karai. On the other hand, April's gut twisted angrily towards Donnie. It wasn't his secret to tell.

"Donnie…"

"And I guess it pushed me over the edge. I may or may not have experienced a small mental overload during that time and couldn't focus on anything other than the fact that they…" Donnie paused, tipping his head back against hers. "He died, and they didn't do anything to stop it."

April froze, her mouth snapping shut as she tried to process. "...they what?"

"Perhaps I inaccurately read between the lines." Donnie shrugged. "Maybe they tried. But they're trying with Nardo, too, and he's not better. Come on, hurting Shredder hurts Leo? Really? Is he getting worse, or was it always like…?"

"We can't know." April hissed, wrapping her arms around him. "Donnie, if you think that they're going to kill Leo because they couldn't protect Splinter… then you gotta think that about me, too." April tightened her grip as Donnie jolted, starting to round on her, but she refused to let him gain enough traction. "I wasn't there when Shredder hurt her. But y'know what? I was there when Karai… Yeah. And I know you guys were there when she got hurt. So if you're going to get mad at them for their own dad, you got to get mad at all of us, including you, for our grandmother."

Donnie made a whine in the back of his throat, wiggling one arm out to wrap around April, and thrusting his face against her hair.

"But, Donnie, it was no-one's fault. It's just one of those things that just…" April squeezed him. "Happens. I know you're scared, and it's okay to be. But you can't blame them. You just can't."

"I know." Donnie whined, squeezing as hard as he could in a futile effort to draw April's attention away from the tears that were leaking into her hair. "I just… I need to process. I need to make sense of it, April, because I'm so confused, and I just… my head…"

"Do you need tylenol?" April asked, heart twisting. She hadn't meant to overwhelm him, and make his head throb like it did when his stress and anxiety rocketed up to heights she couldn't even fathom.

"No." Donnie whispered, clinging to her. "Just… stay here. I don't want to be left alone."

"Okay, Dee, okay." April reassured, lowering her voice to a near whisper as she tucked her hands fiercely around him. "I'm here. I'm here."

Donne just pressed closer against her.

(:)

Shoutout to Pixel_Picasso and samathekittycat on AO3 for helping me with this chapter!