A/N: I got some reviews that tell me that there is some considerable confusion out there. I hope that this chapter clears up some of it, and if not, there is some additional words on the subject in an author's note at the end of this chapter.

Disclaimer: I don't own the turtles. I don't make any money from this. I mean no harm. Please don't sue.

Chapter 3 – That Which Doesn't Kill You...

"Why won't you help us?" Leo demanded of his purple-masked brother. "We don't know what to do with them!"

"Leo, leave me alone." Don begged. He clapped his hands over his ears, trying to drown out his brother's insistent words.

"You're the only one who knows how to take care of them!"

"Leo, stop. I- I can't."

But Leo didn't stop, he persisted. "I understand that Bishop did some horrid things to you, but how can you just sit idly by while your children, your own flesh and blood, die?"

Don was shaking. He'd been doing that a lot lately, and he couldn't stop. "I don't know any more than you do! Don't make me do this. Please, Leo, don't make me." He begged. "I can't."

"Donnie, this is getting ridiculous, it's been three months. You have to start taking care of those eggs just like the rest of us have been. You have to take some responsibility for them." Leo carefully watched his shaking brother for a moment. Don sat on his bed hugging his knees to his chest. Noticing this, Leo sighed and softened his tone. "And, more importantly, you have to start taking care of yourself" While Mike had gained back the weight he had lost while in Bishop's clutches and then some, Donnie had not. If anything, he'd lost more.

"Let's get one thing straight, Leo." Don's voice turned cold. "I didn't ask for this and I sure as shell didn't ask you to go find them."

"Donnie!" Leo breathed in surprise, unable to believe what he was hearing and the sheer ice with which Don said the words.

When Don spoke again his voice was quiet, but it sounded hollow, almost as though it belonged to a completely different person than the one who had spoken moments ago. "You don't understand. You can't. No one can."

"Because you won't talk to me. How can I even begin to understand, when you absolutely refuse to let any of us in? Let us help you, Donnie. Talk to me."

Don sighed. After a long moment he nodded and began to speak again. The icy tone was gone, but it had been replaced by the detached one that Donnie had adopted recently. The one that sounded like he was a million miles away. Leo and everyone else in the lair hated the new tone, but nothing they tried could snap Donatello out of it. "When I see those-" he cut himself off and paused a moment, pushing images away and gathering his thoughts before continuing his sentence where he left it. "I'm back in that lab, Leo. But they're always here. I can't get away from them, and everyone is insisting that I help." He rocked back and forth a little on the bed before continuing. "I know that I should. I know that I shouldn't blame what happened to me on them. I know that they didn't do anything, that they're innocent. Really, I know I should help... but I can't, Leo. I just can't bring myself to do it. I've tried, honest I have, and I can't." Don was shaking his head. "I want to help, Leo, but I can't. I can't."

Leo sat a listened quietly to his brother's words, but didn't feel that his biggest question had been answered. "What did they do to you in there?"

For a long time the two turtles sat in silence, but Leo could wait. He had always been pretty tolerant of his brothers, and the past few months had added greatly to his ability to be patient with them, particularly where Donatello was concerned. Leonardo just sat there and waited, knowing that when Don had figured out his own mind that he'd share the discovery.

"They... You already know the worst of it. Part of the proof is sitting in the other room. Beyond that, I... I don't really remember much of it."

"Where did they get the eggs-." Leo was cut off by his brother.

"I don't know, and I don't want to know!" Don shouted, his anger returning as quickly as it had dissipated. "Get out!"

Though Leo was startled by the sudden shift in Don's temper, he couldn't say that it was entirely unexpected. The mood swings were startling in their suddenness and occasionally frightening in their ferocity, but Leo knew that, despite how hard they were to witness, they were a step forward from Don's previous habit of retreating into himself. Even as he reacted to the outburst, Leo noticed that his brother was shaking again. "Donnie." Worry laced the short name.

"GET OUT!" The purple-masked turtle screamed a second time.

"Ok, ok, I'm going." Leo backed out the door and left the shaking turtle in solitude. As he closed the door he could see Donnie curling up on the bed with his back to the room. When Leonardo turned around, another brother was standing in his path, and looked just as irate as the one he had just left alone.

"I told you not to do that." Mike hissed as Leo stepped out of the room. "I told you not to distress him, and what do you go and do?"

"Mikey," Leo started. The instant Don had shouted the first time, he'd known this moment was coming. Ever since their return to the lair, Michelangelo had been extremely protective of Don. So much so, that Leo occasionally wondered if it was a help or a hindrance.

"Hasn't he been through enough! Just leave him alone, Leo! He'll talk when he's ready, and he's not ready yet. You have no idea what he went through."

"Because he won't tell anyone!" Leo insisted. "And you're no help either!"

Mikey looked at the floor. "He won't tell you partially because the pain is still too fresh, and partially because he doesn't know. Give him some time. He wants to tell you, but to relive it now..." Mike trailed off.

"Maybe I'm thinking too far in the future here, but those eggs aren't going to be eggs forever."

Michelangelo couldn't help but sigh. "I know, Leo. He knows too. He... he would talk in his sleep while we were captive." Mike admitted. "Every night he relived what happened to him during the day. Leo, you wouldn't believe some of the things they did. He might be better off not remembering most of it." Part of his statement to Leo had been a lie, but the main points were truthful. If Mikey had anything to say about it, the whole truth would never be revealed.

"Daddy talks in his sleep?" The small girl asked.

"Not usually, only when he is stressed to his limits." Mike played with the maroon bandanna the little turtle wore over her head.

All Leo could do was watch and listen to Mikey's stories.

"It's really not my place to say anything." Mike looked down, but kept talking. "I guess, three months is when I can step in though. Have you seen the scars on his sides?" he asked.

Leo nodded. He noted the haunted tone that came into his brother's voice.

"Those are from surgeries. No anesthesia. I could hear him scream some of those days, a lot of those days."

"What's anes... anet..."

"Anesthesia is used to dull pain. Doctors give you a stuff so you can't feel anything and sometimes put you to sleep while they perform surgery. Bishop and his cronies just cut your daddy open." He could see tears forming in the little girl's eyes again. "Hey, if this is too much, I can stop."

"NO! I want to know." The little girl cried. "Please keep telling the story, Uncle Mikey."

Mike nodded and continued. He pulled his young niece a little closer, offering comfort as he told a story that was anything but comfortable.

"I don't mean to sound callous, Mikey, but why didn't they do anything to you?"

Michelangelo shrugged, and both turtles were surprised when Donnie yanked open the door to his room.

"Because..." The purple-masked turtle said flatly in an odd monotone. "Mikey was a back-up just in case Bishop screwed up with me. In the meantime, he was a control specimen." Without another word directed at the pair in the hall, Don returned to his room and shut the door. As he did so Leo heard him muttering. "Every good experiment has a control group." If it weren't for the tone of voice, the statement would have been reminiscent of the Donatello of old.

Leonardo and Michelangelo moved to the main room of the lair, chagrined that their brother had heard every word of their previous conversation. The eggs were sitting in a corner where they could be kept safe, and the pair stood in front of the box. A few weeks ago Leo had found a heat lamp that he had talked Don into fixing. That had taken a lot of convincing and more than a little conniving, but Leo had hoped that the lamp would be a start for Don. Unfortunately, the purple turtle had only further distanced himself from not only the eggs, but the rest of his family as well. The only good that Leo could see come out of the lamp, besides having the device working again, was that Donnie had rediscovered his inventions and he was doing that instead of lying in bed all day. He had to admit that it was a step forward, but it wasn't the one he had been hoping for. Leo gazed at the leathery eggs that lay in the box and knew that his family's life would never be the same again.

"I'm worried, Mikey." Leo admitted as he stared at the eggs. "I don't think Don's going to be able to bond with them. Heck, he hasn't made any attempt to spend time with us."

Mikey just shook his head. "His machines are predictable, they can't hurt him if he doesn't want them to, Leo." He said quietly with tone and wisdom he had rarely shown before his capture. "People are not predictable. He can't control other people. He spent so much time without having any control of his surroundings or even himself... He hasn't readjusted well." Mikey reached down and gently stroked one of the eggs before backing away from the harsh light of the heat lamp that washed over them.

"So how do we get him to be social again?" Leo asked quietly.

From his spot in the darkest shadow he could find, Mikey just shrugged. He was forever turning off lights, and Leo and Raph were still getting used to the quirk that Mikey had adopted.

"Perhaps, if the four of you do something together." Splinter suggested from the other end of the room. "Something in a non-threatening situation. A weekly game night?"

"Something small?" Leo asked. "To draw him out of his shell, so to speak?"

"Exactly, my son." Splinter smiled.

"What about the eggs?" Mikey asked.

"Make sure that you have the game in this room. Have them around, but not prominently placed."

"You up for Cranium tonight, Mikey?" Leo asked with a grin.

"Dude, that is only like, the best game EVER! I'm ALWAYS up for Cranium!" Mike exclaimed as he took a step out of the shadow.

Leo had to smile at the way Mikey spoke. He hadn't heard much of the old Mikey enthusiasm in a long time. Raphael was working on the Shell Cycle, and Leo went to talk to him. "Hey Raph, you up for Cranium tonight?" When Leo caught a look on Raph's face that suggested that the turtle might say no, he gave his reasons hoping to persuade his red-masked brother.

"Donnie really has to snap out of it!" Raph responded.

"I wish it were that simple, Raph. I really do."

"He's going to have some seriously messed up kids if he doesn't stop acting like this."

Leonardo sighed. "That's why we're doing this. If we can get him to bond with us again, then maybe the kids have a chance with him. Right now, I don't think they would."

"How long does a mutant turtle stay in its egg anyway?" Raphael asked as he put away the socket wrench he'd been using.

"I don't know." Leo admitted. "But I doubt that it will be too much longer."

"But you said Daddy bounced back from bad stuff!" Catherine cried.

"Have you ever known him to behave the way I've described?" Mike asked with a single raised eyeridge.

"No." The little turtle in the maroon bandanna replied.

"Kitty Kat, the odds were stacked so far against him when he came home, that it's a miracle he ever recovered. He just needed some time to work through it, that's all."

A/N: Oo-oo-ookay. I seem to have caused some considerable confusion, though for the life of me I can't figure out why the existence of eggs automatically leads to the conclusion that Bishop GOT said eggs from Don. Just to clear things up... he didn't. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Don doesn't know where the eggs came from. I am still my father's daughter despite the fact that he didn't carry me around inside himself for nine months. This is the same sort of thing. They are still Don's children despite the fact that he didn't provide the eggs.