Leo moved down the line of his little furry students and watched their forms as they moved through a difficult kata. He kept Machi and Miwa, sitting together on one side of the dojo, in the corner of his vision.

Machi giggled as she watched her Aunt Miwa make her dolls form poses similar to what she could see Akito and the bunnies doing. Her other aunts usually cradled the dolls and pretended to feed them with fake bottles. Aunt Miwa not only made the dolls move like Akito but also named off some of the poses as she went.

"Doko – Hicho – Kosei," Miwa said.

Machi giggled again.

Miwa glanced over at Leo and caught him rolling his eyes at her. She ducked her eyes away from him and hid her own smile.

Leo sighed internally. He was still trying to keep Machi off the mats during practice so Miwa wasn't helping by sparking her interest in ninjitsu even more with that type of playing. But considering Miwa had probably never touched a doll before in her entire life, he honestly shouldn't expect anything else. And at least it was keeping Machi entertained.

Leo went back to working with his students before dismissing them early for the day to allow a few minutes of just playtime before the bunnies were picked up. He had recently spent some time in meditation thinking about how he grew up with his three brothers almost constantly and sometimes irritatingly by his side. While Akito and Machi had each other to play with plus a doting grandfather and plenty of aunts and uncles, Leo wanted to make sure they had more time with the bunnies for real play. He and Raphael were still trying to figure out what to do about school for both kids. If they were being raised in their original dimension, they would've just gone to a normal school and had plenty of other kids to play with there as well. But that wasn't a possibility in this world.

His thoughts were interrupted when Usagi entered the dojo and he met up with his old friend to review their progress before saying goodbye to the bunnies.

Seeing the rabbits leave, Miwa hugged her little niece and complimented Akito on his kata before she headed towards Leo.

"Where are you off to today?" Leo asked her as he began wiping down the weapons they'd used.

"I told Michelangelo I'd help him and Woody on the food truck," she said.

"Well, it has to be more fun than trying to help Donnie in his lab," Leo said.

"It better be," Miwa said. "Donatello wouldn't even let me touch anything. At least Sadie was there to talk to, although she's pretty serious while working down there too."

Leo laughed. "Yeah, sometimes it's better to just back away when the two of them get involved in a project together."

It had been almost six weeks since they'd finished the monster hunt for Winters and so far, Leo had noticed that Miwa had been doing her best to re-assimilate herself into the Hamato clan. She'd left briefly on a short trip back to Japan, which she knew had made Leo twitchy, a term she learned quickly not to say around him, even though it made Raphael laugh. But when she'd first come to New York to meet with Winters, her initial plan was for a brief stay and she hadn't brought enough to be able to just stay forever. So she'd returned to Japan, gathered her things, and officially relocated not only herself but a large number of Foot soldiers to New York City.

And while she enjoyed spending time with her clan family, she politely declined Donatello's offer to turn part of the first floor into an apartment for her. She wasn't sure she was ready for that much family togetherness. So she found an apartment for herself just a few blocks away instead.

And although she wasn't living with them, she did make an effort to just be with them. She got up early and joined them in their dojo for morning practice and was impressed with Leo as lead in training. She noticed a contented air with Leo in his leadership not only with his brothers but also as a sensei to the little children he taught as well. She liked it.

She even worked up the nerve to compliment him on it one day after their morning practice and Raphael had quickly, although playfully, elbowed her and declared that Leo was taken.

"Oh, trust me, I know. I see the way you two look at each other. And that's in public," she replied with a grin. "You do realize the rest of us can see you right?"

"Thank you," Donatello had huffed out beside her.

And she also liked seeing Leo and Raph with their kids. The foxes were adorable and she couldn't help but grin when she got to spend time with them. But more than that, she couldn't help but grin at the way the Leo and Raph doted and worried over them. Or the adoring way Akito and Machi looked back at them in return.

After morning training she'd head to her father's apartment next door and have breakfast with him. On some days she'd return to the dojo and play with Machi while Leo taught Akito and the bunnies. She'd also made her way down to the Hamato-Jones garage where she got a tour from April and Casey and a growl from Raphael for moving some of his tools. She'd hung out with Donatello and Sadie in their lab and had even been dragged out for her first ever girls' night with Sadie and April. It was probably an unusual girls' night considering April's pregnancy meant she'd been ready for bed by 8 pm, but Miwa had appreciated their efforts and she had nothing to compare it to anyway. And the three of them did declare that night that since they were overwhelmingly outnumbered by males in the clan, that they would make their nights out a regular event.

Most evenings found her back in her father's apartment. They spent the first few weeks playing catch up. She told him what she'd been doing in Japan while she was away and he filled her in on some of the other events that the clan had been through in the past six years. Eventually it led to other discussions of the past as she was finally comfortable enough to ask him to tell her stories about her mother. It had quickly become her favorite time of the day.

Miwa had also rented a space for a new Foot headquarters in the city where she and other elite soldiers led training, met to discuss patrols and reviewed progress. After spending some time within the new lives that the turtles had built for themselves, she was certain that she'd made the right choice in relocating the Foot. The turtles went out on patrols with them a couple times but it had been a few weeks since any of them had joined them. And overall, she could sense a feeling of relief from Leonardo that after a ten year run, he and his brothers were no longer in charge of the well-being of all the citizens of New York, which meant he and Raph could focus on being responsible for the well-being of her adorable niece and nephew. For now at least. She was pretty sure when the kids were older, that would change.

"Come say goodbye to your Aunt Miwa and wish her luck. She's heading out on Uncle Mike and Uncle Woody's food truck today," Leo said over his shoulder to the kids.

"It gets hot in there!" Akito said.

"Says the little boy covered in fur," Miwa teased back. She hugged both foxes and headed downstairs to see what food prep was left before helping Mikey and Woody load the truck.


Leo startled awake and froze. He wasn't sure why he was prone to nightmares, and although he didn't have them nearly as frequently as he had when he was a teenager under the influence of mushroom toxins, he still had them more frequently than anyone else in his family.

He found himself pressed into Raph's side with one of Raph's arms wrapped around his shell. Raph wasn't just not prone to nightmares, Leo couldn't even think of a single time that Raph had ever had one, for which Leo was thankful. He wouldn't want Raph to suffer through them. It was bad enough that his nightmares always woke Raph up from his own sleep.

Leo looked up to Raphael's face and wasn't surprised when Raph's eyes opened a moment later and looked down at him.

"What was it?" Raph whispered to him.

Leo ignored the question and instead just stared at Raph's green eyes. "Did you know that I can always see your eyes in the dark?" he whispered back. "They shine, like a light. You're my light in the dark, Raphael. You always have been. You always will be."

Raphael stared down at him for a moment before his other hand reached over to slide down the side of Leo's face. He gripped Leo's chin and raised his face higher so he could kiss him, then let go of him so he could sit up and pull Leo up with him.

"Come on," Raphael whispered, climbing out of the bed. He grabbed the baby monitor with one hand and Leo's hand with the other and pulled him out of the apartment and over to the elevator.

Leo followed without asking questions and a few moments later they were walking into the second floor lab. It wasn't where he'd expected Raph to drag him and he finally asked what they were doing.

"I have a surprise for ya," Raph said, moving through the dark to one of the lab corners. "And since yer in such a sappy mood, I may as well give it to you now."

Leo smirked at him and sat on the stool Raph pulled out for him. "Does Donnie know about this?"

"Yes," Raph said, opening a cabinet and pulling out a box. "Don saw that R symbol I drew on yer arm before. And since there's no way he was gonna find a wedding band big enough for his finger, he thought he could mark his finger with the letter S as a gift for Sadie instead." He popped the box open and removed what looked like an ink pen. He looked back to Leo and grinned. "But he didn't think a tattoo would work on the texture of our skin." Raph handed the pen to Leo and watched him turn it over in his fingers. "It's an ink Donnie created that will be permanent on our skin. Don showed it to me once he was finished because he thought I might like to borrow it."

Leo grinned up at him and handed the pen back.

"Yer sure about this? Cause its not comin off," Raph teased. "Yer gonna be stuck with it. And me." He'd barely had time to brace himself as Leo sprung up from the stool and kissed him hard, pushing his tongue into Raph's mouth before grabbing hold of Raph's shoulders.

After a few moments, Raph pushed Leo back down on the stool and grinned at him before he pulled an alcohol wipe from the cabinet and cleaned a section of Leo's upper arm. He leaned forward and blew on it to help it dry faster and could only grin wider as he watched Leo shiver under the attention.

Raph pulled up another stool and sat himself down next to Leo. Leo smiled as Raph's leg brushed against his leg and then he watched as Raph's eyes narrowed in on his arm. Raph took a deep breath and then lifted the pen to Leo's arm. Leo looked away and waited until Raph was finished before looking back and admiring the capital R symbol on his arm.

"Look ok?"

Leo smiled a wide, dorky grin back at him and leaned forward from his stool to kiss his favorite turtle again. "Perfect, Raph."

"Good," Raph said, a self-satisfied smile on his face. He reached up and grabbed another alcohol wipe and cleaned a spot on one of his upper arms. "Cause now it's my turn." He handed the pen over to Leo and looked at him expectantly.

"Are you going to give up the blue bandana?"

"Nope," Raphael said. "But one day that thing will turn to dust and I'll still have this."

"You really are a thoughtful turtle, Raph."

"Shaddup," Raph said, mock scowling at him. "My arm's waitin."