The days following his second lay back when he was thirteen went by in a bit of a blur. His family had allowed him to sleep most of the time away as they would when one of them had the flu or was feeling poorly, and mostly he could just pretend that was the reason. In the morning they'd nudge him awake gently for breakfast and extend his bedroll in a darker corner of the lair so the rest of the family wouldn't disturb him as they went about on their daily activities.
Donatello was grateful for their attentiveness at first but didn't fail to notice the way they all spoke in hushed voices and the curious looks in his direction. He guessed Master Splinter had talked to them, otherwise he would have been assaulted with questions as soon as he'd woken up the next morning.
It took Mikey three days before he asked, snuggled in his bed with him one afternoon with the excuse of wanting a nap. Donatello told him the same story he'd told Master Splinter, no point in changing it now even it wasn't very believable.
"You fell?" Michelangelo parroted back in a scared little voice, his eyes sparkling with tears as his mouth trembled.
He watched his brother's reaction with apprehension, the way the tears pooled in his blue eyes and then slid over his skin. For a fearful moment he thought he must have said something he didn't mean to, that he'd given himself away but as he repeated his own words in his head he couldn't find anything.
"No, it's alright, Mikey. I just fell. I'm okay. I'm..." He said as he tried to comfort his brother, but he had started shaking too.
The truth was he wasn't okay, he was as far from okay as he'd ever been. As he repeated those words out loud pretending they were true, he tried to comfort Mikey in the way he wished he would be comforted. Michelangelo just clung to him and sobbed with little hiccups as he tried to speak, his words coming out warbled and difficult to understand.
"Y-you can tell me. It's okay," Mikey repeated over and over again. "I won't tell anyone, I promise."
Donatello pulled his smaller brother closer and Mikey burrowed into his embrace, both of them trembling. I could tell him, he thought, I could share my secret with Mikey and he'd understand, he would-
No. It was a terrible idea.
Michelangelo wouldn't be able to hold onto a secret like that. Mikey would try to convince him to tell the others and when he refused he'd end up telling them anyway even if it was by accident or out of fear for him. He couldn't use his little brother to unburden himself, it wasn't fair of him to ask Mikey to do something he wasn't be capable of.
"I'm okay, Mikey." Donatello told his brother instead. "Don't worry, I'm okay."
But he wasn't acting "okay" was he?
He'd been waking up with a horrible pressure on his chest and in his throat, his face wet with tears. He'd also been crying on his own in the bathroom, hiding himself away for long periods of time just wallowing in his pain and pity. He'd sit curled up on the toilet when even a tiny pee turned into agony as the liquid burned against the broken skin of his tail. He'd despaired in those moments alone, sick with fear about having an infection and perhaps needing stitches down there where he couldn't do them himself or worrying he'd ripped something deeper inside him.
Donatello realised he had to grow up quickly and begin his charade that moment. He couldn't afford to keep acting the way he was. He was alarming his family by not going back to normal immediately and they'd start asking questions soon that he wouldn't be able to answer. If this was going to work he'd have to start coming up with a plan.
Donatello washed his sheets and put away his bedroll that same afternoon, ignoring the surprised looks he got from his family when he joined them for practice. During meditation began to think out his plan, beginning with a talk with Master Splinter about needing more privacy and the way they could expand their living space a little to accommodate separate bedrooms.
It was also around this time that he'd started researching and keeping record of his condition. The way he'd started thinking about it in cold, clinical terms helped with his coping as he detached himself from what was going on. That traumatising experience became a list of measured symptoms with approximate dates as he tried to recall everything that had lead up to that moment in the sewer tunnel. The terrifying sensations became nothing more than numbers on paper. Then he'd contrasted and labelled them with technical terms he found in Master Splinter's medical books.
He'd only faltered once, his body shaking and feeling like he was going to throw up as he neared panic when he'd found out about "self fertilization". Donatello hadn't even considered it, had managed to think of the eggs as just something his body produced that needed to be expelled like a kidney stone. The thought that there could have been something living in them as he'd smashed them with his hands gave him nightmares for months. It still gave him nightmares sometimes even though he now knew he was practically infertile, a side effect of his condition and the unnatural* chemical cocktail his hormones produced in him.
It was only thanks to his preparation that the following year he was able to lay again in secret, sneaking away from the lair once his contractions were close but he could still walk and get far enough away to not be heard or disturbed. He prepared a pack full of things he'd need while he was in labour, including items to record his progress and what happened to him and to clean up afterwards. He'd also prepared previously scavenged items he'd hidden so he had an alibi for his absence. Donatello still got into trouble for sneaking out of the lair without telling anyone.
But he'd gotten away with it.
In the new lair it was much easier, he almost wanted to thank Baxter Stockman for destroying their old home. He didn't even have to leave now. He had a lab he could lock with the excuse of doing "delicate experiments". All he had to do was stage and prepare the results beforehand and he had all the time he required alone.
His determination to keep his secret had faltered the first time he'd laid twice during a season, horrified that he'd have to go through this more than once a year when he'd only barely recovered. A couple years ago he'd even had a third lay in the season, the first had happened surprisingly early due to an exceptionally warm February spent at the farmhouse that had triggered his cycle before it should have.
None of that mattered to him anymore, it was just additional data added to his journals where he recorded his seasons. This would be his sixth recorded season and it read mostly the same as the previous ones, except for the side-notes he'd started writing about his iron levels. Data held no emotions or judgements and he looked at the string of annotations he'd been writing this far in the year with the same calm detachment as he would with any other routine experiment. He recorded the date, his age, weight and symptoms, as well as the approximate number of days he had left before he would lay.
Sighing he rose from his desk and slid the journal back into the space between thick, old manuals where he kept it. He'd thought about keeping it in some locked drawer or the back of a cabinet somewhere but there really was no point to it. He had dozens of similar journals and his family had no interest in reading them. It was best left in plain sight instead of having someone walk in on him being all secretive. Before leaving the lab to get some breakfast he made sure to pick up the papers with his test results and the list of pharmacies and addresses.
It was Raph's turn to cook which meant he'd pulled out a box of cereal, the sliced bread and a carton of milk and you could help yourself. Raphael was sitting in his usual spot munching on some sugary, colourful loops as he read the sports section of the newspaper.
"What a feast!" Donatello said with a smile as he popped a couple slices of bread in the toaster.
Raphael grinned back, knowing Donatello preferred his simpler way of going about breakfast. "Only the best for my family. I really shouldn't spoil you guys but you deserve it." His eyes darted to the papers that Donatello had placed in his spot in front of him and he reached for one, turning it around.
"What's folic acid?" Raphael asked as he read the charts and numbers, all traces of his good mood gone as he tried to make sense of what he had in front of him.
"Oh! Ah, I wanted to go over that with Leonardo..." Donatello started to say.
"This your blood test?" Raphael frowned as Donatello nodded, and went on with buttering his toast as his brother read. "I'm no doctor, but ain't these numbers here supposed to be between these other numbers here?"
Raphael continued reading through the chart in silence after Donatello nodded again and then through the paragraph he had written on the bottom with his conclusions. Donatello felt as if he were awaiting some kind of judgement, the only sound in the kitchen was of his knife scraping against his bread. He wasn't sure what kind of a reaction he was hoping to get from Raph but somehow it felt important that it be the right one.
After waiting nervously for a while, Raphael put the paper down. "Ya got anemia?" He asked, still hunched over the charts. When Donatello nodded a third time in response he shook his head sadly. "We should be taking better care of ya."
"You shouldn't be doing anything, Raph." Donatello answered with a smile. "I'm the one who let it get so bad. I've been looking up places we could go to get the supplements-"
"We'll get ya whatever you need, Donnie." Raphael said as he got up, heading for the fridge. "Let me make you something better than a piece of toast for breakfast. Ya hungry?" He rummaged around in the refrigerator for a moment. "Your dinner's still in here." He frowned as he pulled out a plate with chilli and rice covered in cling-film. "Beans got a lot of iron in them, don't they? Want me to heat them up for you?"
"They do but I don't think I should eat that right before practice." Donatello started to say but Raph put the plate in the microwave anyway after peeling off the plastic.
"Let's get you healthy first, Don." Raph continued. "You should be taking it easier while you get better. Let me deal with the rest, I'll have a talk with Leo and Splinter."
"What do you need to talk to me about?" Leonardo asked, catching the end of Raph's sentence as he walked into the kitchen.
Donatello reached for the papers he'd brought originally to show Leonardo but Raph snatched them away before he could. "There's gonna be some changes around here, starting with you backing off Don."
"Well, I wouldn't say it tha-" Donatello tried to intercept the beginning of the argument.
"What are you talking about?" Leonardo interrupted. "If it's about last night-"
"Damn right it's about last night!" Raph slammed the papers down in front of where Leonardo stood at the table, making all the plates and things on it jump, including Donatello.
Leonardo only held Raph's glare, both of them not backing down until the beeping of the microwave made Raphael turn away. Donatello winced as Raph closed the the microwave door with a little more force than necessary and plonked the plate in front of him in the same way. He really didn't feel like eating a full plate of chilli for breakfast but Raph wasn't even looking at him.
"Maybe it's not such a good idea to eat that before training." Leonardo told Donatello who just shrugged and looked back at Raph.
"Donnie ain't practising today." Raphael stated, crossing his arms and giving Leonardo a defiant stare.
Leonardo's eyes darted to Don, looking him over quickly for any sign of illness before placing his attention back onto Raph. "Is he feeling sick again?"
"He is right here." Donatello lifted up his hand. "And I think I can manage some practice, we just have to-"
"Read. This." Raphael interrupted him, holding up the now slightly crinkled paper up to Leonardo's snout before Leo snatched it away irritatedly.
"Are you sure these numbers are correct?" Leonardo asked as his eyes darted over the charts and he probably didn't mean anything by it but it rubbed Raphael the wrong way.
"What? Are ya saying he faked them? Is that it?" Raphael scoffed.
"That's not what I meant."
"Then just admit you were an asshole when your brother was sick! What kind of a leader are ya?!" Raphael bellowed a couple inches from Leonardo's face.
"You guys were just as worried about his weight as I was!" Leonardo pointed an accusing finger at Raph, jabbing it at his chest. "You just left it up to me to deal with it so I could be the bad one! You were the one who first said he probably had a stash of food in the lab!"
Raphael shoved Leonardo back and actually growled, baring his teeth and that was when Don decided he'd had enough. "Okay, stop!" Donatello called out as he pushed himself between his two snarling brothers. "This is getting ridiculous, can we all just calm down?!" Even in Raph and Leo standards they were getting too aggressive over this and he had a feeling it was more about their hormones than about him.
"What is going on here?!" Master Splinter called from the door and a sleepy Michelangelo woke up as he peeked over the rat to the scene in the kitchen.
That seemed to snap both of them out of their glaring match and they stepped away from where they were pressed against Don as he tried to shove them back but it took Splinter asking a second time for an explanation for Leonardo to finally sit down. Hesitating about where to start, Donatello began a recount of his findings, or at least the part of those findings he was willing to share with his family.
Donatello had to admit he felt slightly relieved when Leonardo took over the conversation as he began making his own plans to go out that night and retrieve the medicine he needed. He wasn't lying to his father per se, everything Don had said was true. It just wasn't the whole truth and that still made him uncomfortable.
Donatello was silent during most of the conversation, making his own plans in his mind. If they were going to hit a pharmacy instead of asking April to purchase the medicine for him, there was a chance he could get his hands on more items he required for his condition that he wouldn't be able to if he had to go through someone else. He wouldn't have to answer any questions if he got the items himself. Now Donatello only needed to figure out how he was going to get Leonardo to allow him to go after his embarrassing performance from the day before.
Leonardo eyed Donatello cautiously from where he was seated in his chair, not wanting to be noticed and paying no attention to what was on the tv. His brother seemed better after a week since they managed to get him the medication he needed. The guilt from having misinterpreted his brother's symptoms still weighed on him and even though Donatello kept saying he was fine there was still something off about him.
It wasn't the first time Leonardo had had this feeling though he'd learned not to trust his hunches during this time of year. He knew his hormones were messing with his instincts, something he usually relied on heavily, but he couldn't shake the perception that something was wrong and the fact that he'd had confirmation that Donatello was ill wasn't helping.
Leonardo couldn't believe his eyes when he'd watched Donatello in full gear walking over to them as they were making their way to the lift, intent on accompanying them to the pharmacy break-in. Don had argued that they needed him to make sure they brought back the right medicine, that they'd take much longer to retrieve it if he wasn't with them and finally that he would be coming whether they liked it or not. Despite his firm orders, he'd been unable to keep Don home, where he would be safe.
It hadn't even been thirty-six hours since he'd witnessed his brother collapse during training. A puppet with his strings cut sinking in slow motion to the ground. It was only because he'd been watching Don intently that he saw the slight tremor in his muscles before they relaxed while the others gasped and murmured about his defiance. Leonardo had called out his name loudly, causing everyone to fall silent and turn to him instead of Don as he slowly teetered back and fell. Only his quick reaction made it possible for Leo to reach his brother, catching him before he hit the ground and then lowering him gently to it.
The image replayed in his mind over and over as they made their way to their target, Donatello's skin pale and cold, his body slack, unseeing eyes staring through him and his breath fast and shallow. Leonardo had stared down at him in disbelief until Michelangelo pulled Don away from him to turn him onto his side as he watched dumbfounded. The panic took over Leo's mind and paralysed him as Donatello's limbs had flopped like a rag doll's while Michelangelo shifted his body. Only Raph's outburst as he was confronted had pulled him out of his trance.
The following day on their way to the pharmacy his own footing had faltered when Leonardo jumped the first alley. It was an easy jump and normally he wouldn't think twice about it, but the image of Donatello had the panic settle into his mind again. Donnie, staggering and falling over the edge of the building, body pale, limbs slack and unseeing eyes staring at him from the concrete below.
Perhaps his hormones were feeding his paranoia but by the time they made it to the pharmacy, Leonardo was winded. Raphael gave him an odd look because of it, the run had been an easy one and they'd walked part of the way there. He didn't understand that it was Leo's fear, lodged firmly in his chest like a jagged rock, that didn't let him breathe.
He kept everyone close together to scout the building instead of spreading them out to survey the area faster as they'd normally do. Thankfully, no one fought him on this even if they were taking a ridiculous amount of unnecessary precautions. Leonardo could tell the others were on edge too, unsure if it was because of the way he was acting or because of Don. Probably both.
The mission had been carried out without a hitch. Cameras and alarms were disabled, Donatello managed to find everything he needed relatively quickly, they left all the money they had plus a note detailing what was taken and a promise to pay the rest back and then they'd returned home at the estimated time.
The feeling hadn't gone away.
Even now, a week later, he could still feel the ghost of that panic lurking in the back of his mind, warning him of a danger that he wasn't sure was even there. Leonardo knew Donatello was keeping information from him. He wasn't as good a liar as he thought he was, but there was no way to tell if it was something important or just the usual embarrassing things they kept to themselves at this time of year. His smart brother was already prone to reclusiveness and secrecy, it could be nothing. Don did seem to be getting better.
And yet...
Leonardo frowned at the glimpse of discomfort he caught on Don's face as he rose from the couch. It was gone almost as soon as he'd seen it but he was certain he hadn't imagined it. Coming to a decision he followed after Donatello to the lab.
"Don, can I speak to you a moment?" Leonardo asked before entering but walked inside and closed the door behind him before he could be refused. It was a fine line he walked with his brothers between being loved and being rejected but he had to do what was necessary to keep them safe.
Leonardo pretended not to notice the way Donatello huffed in annoyance before speaking. "I suppose you are going to do it anyway so go right ahead."
Perhaps this wasn't the right time but there had been no right times and he didn't think this could wait any longer. Maybe he should start off with a less difficult conversation. "How are you doing? Have you run any more tests to check your progress?"
There was another small sigh and instead of relaxing at his inquiry, Donatello tensed and then lifted his eyes and held his gaze. Leonardo recognized that look. He was getting ready to lie.
"I'm fine. Well, I'm getting there. These things are slow but I'm not in any danger and I'm progressing better than expected, really. At least, better than a human would, but we do tend to heal faster than regular humans. I haven't printed out any results though, I didn't think it was necessary unless there was some sort of anomaly you should be made aware of and there isn't. No anomalies, everything is fine."
Leonardo tried not to frown at the lengthy, ambiguous answer he was given. What was he not saying? Why would he hide it if there was something wrong?
He must have given away his thoughts because Donatello's expression softened, he unfolded his arms and stepped a bit closer. "Really, Leo, there's nothing for you to worry about."
Leonardo searched his gaze, knowing he wouldn't find any answers there. It was the vague wording that was making him uneasy, but when Donatello didn't want to talk about something there was just no way of getting it out of him. He wanted to believe his brother. Surely if there was something important Donatello would tell him, right?
"But how are you feeling? You sometimes seem like you're in pain." Leonardo ventured, placing a hand on his brother's shoulder in a way that he hoped was comforting.
It was always a hit-or-miss situation with his brothers when he expressed his concern over them. Sometimes they seemed grateful for it, even sought out his comfort and other times they were offended. He could never quite figure out which it was going to be beforehand. He watched Donatello grimace slightly and then shift his eyes away as he fiddled with his belt. This was more like a Donatello who was giving him the reluctant truth.
"I'm just feeling quite stiff," Donatello replied with a bit of a shrug.
Leonardo exhaled, some of his own tension and worry lifting with the reply. That made sense. With their strict training regimen, missing out on the usual intense daily physical activity they were used to could have this kind of effect on your muscles along with Donatello's extenuating circumstances.
He hadn't just gone from 100 to 0 for a week, the fact was Don had already been struggling before then and would probably already need some special training to ease him back into their schedule when he was ready for it. Patrolling was off the table until further notice and thankfully Don hadn't fought him on it.
This was good. Well, it wasn't good but it was something he could work with, something he understood. Perhaps he couldn't help Don with his medical condition but he could do this much for his brother and maybe if they spent more time together and let him prove that he was just looking out for him, Don would tell him the things he was keeping to himself.
"I can help you with some light exercise and your dietary plan, something that'll help to ease you back into training and make sure you don't lose too much muscle tone while... you... recover." Leonardo's voice trailed off as Donatello's expression closed again and he pulled away, Leo's hand falling limp to his side.
He'd crossed over that line again.
"I told you I'm fine, Leonardo. I can do that on my own." Donatello snapped and turned his back to him, signalling he was done with the conversation.
Leonardo only stared at his brother's carapace. Lately it seemed everything he did took him one step forward and two steps back with Don. "I'm only trying to help. Let me help you," Leonardo said in a pleading voice.
"Thanks, Leo." Donatello answered more gently but still didn't face him. "I'll let you know if I need your help. Close the door on your way out, please. I've got work to do."
With that, Leonardo was dismissed. He headed slowly towards the door, not wanting to say anything else to make things worse and closed it silently behind him. On his way to his room, Leo wondered if there was a way to reach reach his brothers and make them understand that he was only looking out for them. He wanted nothing more than to keep them safe and happy. Maybe someday he'd find the right words to say.
*Donatello uses the word "unnatural" because it is a reflection of his rejection towards his nature.