In her dream, Donny looks just the way he did on the day he disappeared—young and strong and whole—except he is standing at her bedside at the nightmarish Saki Asylum, a pair of drooping lilies in his hand. Although the flowers are dying, they are still the most beautiful things in the room, which is uniformly gray and dismal.
"They're Splinter's," he explains, his brown eyes soft and solemn behind the purple mask. "He's gone."
"I'm sorry, Donny."
Donatello stares silently at the filth-encrusted window for a moment, and April feels the sudden urge to take him in her arms. It isn't like the occasional attraction she'd had for him years ago—more like the desire to mother him, to tell him she'll take care of him, that he doesn't have to look so sad.
Finally he trains his eyes steadily onto hers. All the fear and sadness in his face is gone; in their place there is only deadly resolve. She squirms uncomfortably on the dingy mattress.
"These are Splinter's gift to you, April." He presses a single delicate green stem into each of her hands. "Use what you have been given."
The snow-white flowers lengthen and change before her eyes into a pair of shining katanas.
"No," she whimpers, hands shaking uncontrollably. The katanas burn her palms like cold fire. She tries to let go.
Donatello imprisons her frail white hands within his powerful green ones, forcing her to clutch the beautiful, painful swords. Agony. She turns her head away and feels his breath against her ear. His voice is a caress, yet is filled with resolution and urgency. "You've forgotten who you are, April. Remember who you can be."
He gently lifts her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. She sees only love and encouragement there; her burning hands begin to cool and strengthen. And then she is swept back into nightmare as the lines around Donny's body blur and fuzz, as though he's being erased from existence.
"April, you can—," he manages to say before he fades away entirely.
That is usually the point at which April wakes from the dream, drenched with sweat (which is only partly due to fear), with blood roaring in her ears, throat burning, knees shaking.
When she wakes up screaming Donatello's name, an Utrom orderly comes into her room and injects some kind of sedative into her bruised, bony arm, and she falls back into disturbed dreams that are too vague to remember.
But when she wakes up silently, finding the flea-ridden bedclothes balled up in her raw hands and blood streaming from her fear-bitten lips, she can recover herself before any of her Keepers notice that anything is wrong. On those silent nights she remembers Splinter's katanas and begins to hope, then to trust…then to plan.
April almost enjoyed walking the streets with Leonardo by her side after so many years. But memories still stung her. She no longer knew the location of the Resistance headquarters. After she betrayed them—after she ran—they disowned her. She knew that the surviving members of the original Resistance despised her as a traitor, while the new generation of freedom fighters associated the name O'Neil with cowardice and treachery.
And why shouldn't they? April's mouth filled with a hot, metallic taste that was more than just the afterbite of the poison the staff of Saki's Asylum had been feeding her. It was the taste of failure and fear and despair, all rolled into one.
The Shredder's Asylum was a place of confinement for political prisoners who were weak in body but still a potential ideological threat to the One Government. Blacklisted from the Bureaucratic and Working Classes and unfit for the hard physical labor of Shredder's Work Camps, April had run from the Resistance only to find herself rounded up by an Utrom patrol and locked in the cell-like hospital room.
Her biggest problem with it was that it gave her too much time to think.
She almost savored the arsenic-laced meal that her Keepers brought her each day. That Shredder—such a bastard. At least he could have poisoned her to death outright, or paraded her out to one of the public executions that had become the only source of entertainment to the joy-starved public.
Casey had been the true backbone of the Resistance Movement. He'd been their rock, a general and a hero. After his murder at the hands of Shredder's elite, the rest of the Movement had hoped that April would fill his shoes. How could they have been expected to understand how nightmarish her existence had become without Casey? They had no food. Their children were being killed. They needed a leader.
And she had deserted them out of fear and selfishness.
April realized that Leonardo had just asked her a question and was waiting for her to answer. "Could you repeat that? I was…somewhere else."
"I asked if you'd like to clean up a bit before I take you to Angel. I mean if you're looking to impress her, you might try wearing actual clothing for a start."
April could feel the flush creeping up her pale cheeks. She knew Leo was…well, maybe not exactly worried about her, not after all these years, but definitely concerned for her. She was someone he had known Once Upon a Time, someone he had cared for. Maybe he even believed that she could restore her name among the Circle of Resistance leaders.
She wasn't sure if she believed that herself.
"Angel said I had fifteen minutes…"
He wordlessly handed her his long black trench coat. As she pulled it close around her, covering her rags, April breathed deeply the scent of spices and sweet tobacco and incense. Leo lived well. He might be an outsider, but he had made a name for himself among the underdwellers and the Tribes. The heavenly scents reminded her of how much of a Nothing she had become.
They had nearly reached the gates of the power plant when a squadron of Utrom slaves in recon formation roared overhead, the flaring lights of their exosuits casting red reflections on the black smoky sky. April found herself flung breathless and shaking into the shelter of a dark, abandoned doorway. Leo stood over her protectively, a katana drawn…waiting…the squadron gone…safe to walk at last.
Shamefaced, she looked up and realized he'd been speaking to her again.
"I was just wondering how you got Angel to agree to meet with you," he repeated patiently. "You're one of her least favorite people. Actually, she may hate you as much as she hates Shredder, just for different reasons."
He gestured up at the tall iron gates that loomed before them. A giant-sized likeness of the Shredder towered in the courtyard beyond: it was difficult to escape his gaze anywhere in the stone-faced city. "We're here, by the way."
"Leo, there's something I should tell you: Raphael will be there. I told Angel that you wanted the meeting—that you wanted to talk to Raph. That's the only reason she agreed to see me."
The waves of coldness that suddenly seemed to be flowing from his tense form were worse than any curses or screams or angry words that he could have flung at her. Those damned dark glasses….
"You had no right, April." His voice was so calm.
"It was the only way," she whispered. She wished he would yell at her like Mike used to do, but it was like a bottomless chasm had suddenly opened up between them. He'd shut her out as cleanly as if she didn't exist.
"I will escort you to Angel, because Casey would want it that way. But I won't meet with him." He faded back into the darkness surrounding the giant gates. "And I won't be seeing you again, either."