Donatello had been awake for some time, but felt no immediate urge to get out of bed. He rolled onto his side and listened to the far-off sound of grunts and blades slicing through the air — Leo practicing his morning katas, as regular and comfortingly predictable as clockwork. There was something pleasant about hearing something so… reliable.

His mind was still lingering on the strange events of the night before, no matter how hard he tried to dislodge it from his thoughts. He did his best to think about other things — the movie they had watched, the hot water heater that needed fixing soon, the fact that Mikey had gotten cheese all over his keyboard — but his thoughts inevitably slipped back to the figure he had seen in the road.

He didn't think of himself as a particularly fanciful person. His life — the very fact that he existed at all — was strange enough without generating new strangeness in his own head. But he was sure that he had seen something out in front of the Battle Shell that hadn't been a bag of trash. It had been tall — taller than any human he had ever seen — angular, dark, and rippling softly in the wind.

The problem was, he didn't know what he had seen. And without any idea of what he had seen, he had no idea how to learn more about it.

And it had been in his dreams during the night — restless, fitful dreams that weren't quite frightening enough to be nightmares, but were still unnerving. In those dreams, the shadows of the lair had come alive and followed him, whispering and reaching out with fingers like wisps of smoke. His brothers had gone about their business, seemingly not noticing that anything was amiss. But Don had felt them brushing his skin, leaving trails of icy cold wherever they touched him.

And the strangest part was that in the middle of it all, he had seen April.

She had been curled up on the aqua couch, but he had seen her so clearly that he had been able to make out the shadow of her lashes against her fair cheek, the outline of her fingers against her baggy khaki pants. Her face was turned away from him, as if she were ashamed or trying to avoid his eyes, and her hands were tightly folded in her lap.

When he had spoken her name, she turned towards him reluctantly, and it took a moment before he realized that tears were trickling down her face. A wild, pleading expression had seeped into her green eyes, as if she were desperate.

"April, what's wrong?" he had asked.

Her hands had come up then, gently resting against his cheeks as she whispered, "I'm going to make this as easy as I can for you."

And then he woke, breathless and staring at the ceiling of his room.

Most of the dream was nothing too alarming. The shadowy creatures were probably a combination of what he had seen — or thought he had seen — with the movie he had watched. His unconscious mind had simply mixed the two together, and filled his dreams with whatever he had seen and thought about on that particular evening.

The last part puzzled him, though — nothing that had happened that night should have made him dream of April looking so sad, or saying what she had said. There was something about her haunted, tearful eyes that wrenched at his heart, making him want to comfort her even though he knew that it was all in his imagination.

He was just considering going back to sleep when he heard feet padding into his room.

"Yo, Don," Raph's gravelly voice called out. "You sick or somethin'? Are you gonna spend all day in bed?"

"No, and no," Donatello said, swinging his legs off the side of his loft bed and climbing down to the floor. "I was just—thinking."

"Well, if you want to think in the shower, it's free now," Raph said, adjusting the damp towel around his waist. "Better use it fast before Mikey uses up all the hot water."

That was a valid possibility, so Don slipped into their shared bathroom and stepped into the shower, soaping himself quickly and rinsing off with the hottest water he could stand. He and his brothers — save Mikey, who often dawdled in the shower — tended to bathe very quickly, since they didn't have to worry about doffing clothing or washing hair. His shell could use a good scrubbing, he thought, staring at himself in the mirror, but that could wait until the next day.

As he came down into the main living space, he surveyed what his brothers were doing. Leo was training with Master Splinter, imitating the mutant rat's complicated martial-arts movements with an expression of great intensity. Raph, having just bathed, was already lifting barbells with an almost casual air, as if it was no big deal to him. And Mikey was draped over the couch, immersed in a stack of comic books.

Don moved past them to his work area, and sank into his chair. He began tinkering with one of the gadgets he had left there the previous afternoon, but found that he couldn't focus on it.

He rubbed the heel of his hand against his eyes. His mind kept skittering back to that strange dream he had had, and the sense of unease that it had left him with. Especially that last part with April — for some reason, her final words to him seemed… ominous.

He looked down at the half-disassembled device in front of him, and thought of how April had kissed his cheek after he fixed her furnace. She always seemed to feel guilty about taking advantage of him, but the truth was that Don loved seeing her leaf-green eyes light up and her mouth curve into a smile when he presented her with some gadget that he had reworked or repaired. It was a sizable reward for something that took so little from him.

She seemed more relaxed when they were running through experiments and crafting devices together, when she could be sure that he was doing what he did for the sheer pleasure of it rather than as a favor. They had spent many long evenings in his lab, sustaining themselves on coffee and stale bagels, their minds humming in unison as they rewrote code, soldered computer components, built new devices from salvaged scraps from the junkyard. Time stopped meaning anything, and there was only the simmering delight of creating something new with a like-minded person.

It had even gotten to the point where Casey had complained about Don monopolizing too much of April's time. In response, Don had quietly claimed to be busy more nights every week, freeing up April's time.

He glanced down at some of the machines on his desk, and thought of the various experiments and projects that he and April had left half-finished. He wondered if now she might be able to spend time with him on them — and immediately he felt a stab of guilt for thinking only of himself when she was going through a breakup.

Then he heard the chime of his Shell Cell, and quickly picked it up.

"Don?" April's voice said.

"April? Is something wrong?"

"Yes — no — sort of." Her voice sounded strained. "Something happened last night — I can't talk about it over the phone —"

A chill went through him, and his hand stiffened around the phone. "Did someone hurt you?"

"No!" she said quickly. "No, it's not like that. I — it's just — Don, you know how we agreed you would come over to my apartment with the Sentinel robots? Can we do that now instead of tonight?"

"Of course."

"I really need someone to talk to."

"I can be there in just a few minutes," he said. He reached across his desk and closed his fingers around the Battle Shell keys.

"Thanks, Donnie," she said, and he could hear the relief and warmth radiating from her voice.

He stared down at his Shell Cell as it went silent, and his hand clenched around it. April hadn't even hinted at what was bothering her, but it sounded urgent — or as urgent as something that had already occurred could be. She sounded desperate, frightened. And he was suddenly filled with the desire to drive that desperation from her voice. Especially when he thought about that dream, and her eyes full of tears…

Don quickly stuffed one of the small malfunctioning robots into a duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder, He was halfway across the lair, headed for the elevator, when a voice came from behind him.

"Where are you going, Don?" Leo called.

"To April's," Don replied over his shoulder.

"Did you forget something last night?"

"No, something upset her. She asked me to come over right now so we can talk," Don said, feeling slightly uncomfortable about telling Leo what April had said to him.

Leo's brow furrowed. "Do you want me to come?"

"No, I'll be fine," Don assured him, hitching the bag higher on his shoulder. "I'll see you later."