A.N.: Hello! I decided to update a little earlier than planned! Hope you all enjoy!

Casey sat alone on the back porch, gently swinging back and forth on the hanging swing. Even though he wished the porch light could be off, he knew that his foster parents would freak out if it was turned out. In fact, they were probably checking on him every few minutes.

I'm with Donnie now.

He tried to tell himself that April deserved someone better than him—but his stomach boiled with rage when he thought of April hanging on the arm of someone else. Especially a mutant turtle.

The turtles. If they hadn't entered into this, then Karai would never have come after him. He never would have relapsed.

He wouldn't have lost April.

Suddenly, there was a loud pop and the porch light went out. Casey started at the sound. He stood up, slowly backing toward the door.

"Casey Jones," said a familiar voice.

Casey hated that voice. He wheeled around, looking for its owner. "You've got a lot of nerve showing up here, Karai," he growled. "My parents are going to call the police."

Karai sashayed out of the bushes. "Is that any way to greet an old friend?"

"I'm straight now," Casey said. "Stay away from me. You can't manipulate me anymore."

Karai folded her arms. "I'm not here to manipulate you. I want your help."

"Not gonna happen."

"Look, I know you think I'm a horrible person. But you don't know anything about those turtles you were protecting. You don't know what their master did to my family. They deserved to be punished. But that's not why I'm here."

"Oh yeah?"

"That woman with April. Satou. I want to know about her."

"Atsuko? Why? So you can try to kill her too?"

"No." Something in Karai's voice wavered. "I—I can't explain it. But I need to know who she is. I'll give you whatever you want."

"Whatever I want, huh?" Casey snapped. "How about you give me my life back! My friends! My girlfriend! My parents' trust! You ruined all of that for me!"

The door to the porch swung open. "Casey?" It was Jen. "What's going on out here?"

Casey looked back at where Karai had been standing. She was gone, as though she had simply vanished into thin air. "Nothing, Jen," he growled. "The light bulb blew out. I'm just—really frustrated."

Jen stepped out onto the porch and pulled Casey into an embrace. "It'll get better, honey. I promise. Standing out here and shouting won't help anything. Come inside."

Casey started to follow Jen inside when he noticed a piece of paper lying under the shattered light. He scooped it up before Jen could notice it.

"Wow," Jen said, confusion in her voice. "It really blew, didn't it? I'll have Sean come take a look at it."

Once inside, Casey went upstairs and unfolded the piece of paper. It was a phone number, followed by a note:

Just in case you change your mind.

With a snarl, Casey ripped the paper in half. He was about to throw it in the wastebasket when something held him back. Without knowing why, he smoothed the two pieces out and slipped them behind a poster on his wall.

Then, he lay face down on his bed and screamed into his pillow.

Donnie hadn't slept in fifty-three hours. He was constantly busy either checking April's fluid levels or slaving away over beakers, trying to refine the chemicals he needed out of the mutagen. He was starting to get shaky; his vision was blurring. But he was closer than ever to the retro-mutagen. Element by element, he was getting closer. Each iteration of the solution was closer to the desired molecular form than the first. He would be done soon. When April woke up—if she wakes up, he thought—she would need her father more than ever.

If he hadn't been able to help her before, by Darwin's beard, he'd help her now.

"Donatello?"

Donnie yelped.

Aunt Mei had come into the lab and was standing behind him. "Donatello, I need to talk to you."

"Not now, Obasan," Donnie slurred.

"Yes, now," Aunt Mei said firmly.

With a groan, Donnie swiveled his chair around. "What is it?"

"Listen to me. I would tell you that you have nothing to blame yourself for, but you will probably just ignore it. So instead, let me tell you that killing yourself over this isn't going to make anything better."

"I'm not—"

"Donatello, you aren't sleeping and you're barely eating. You know just as well as anyone what that does to a person."

Donnie was too tired to hold back the tears. "What if she never wakes up?"

Aunt Mei put her arms around him and gave him a quick hug. "If she never wakes up, your refusing to sleep won't change it."

"I—love her more than anything, Aunt Mei. I'd do anything to save her."

"Then go to bed."

Begrudgingly, Donnie got up and went to his room. He undid his mask and his knee and elbow pads and crawled into bed. When he finally fell asleep, he was too exhausted for nightmares.

Arms folded across her chest, Mei leaned against the wall next to Donatello's bedroom door, listening carefully for signs that her nephew was going to try to sneak out and go back to his lab. After about a half hour, she decided that he was probably not going to come out again until after he'd slept. Nevertheless, she fetched a pillow from her own room and lay down on the floor in front Donatello's room. It wasn't overly comfortable, but she was determined to ensure that he sleep. Just as she herself felt her eyelids begin to droop, she heard footsteps.

Splinter loomed over her, looking at her curiously.

She sat up. "Someone needs to make sure that boy gets his sleep," she whispered.

Splinter nodded. He sat down on the floor next to her, leaning his back up against the wall. "April's dilemma has affected him the worst," he replied quietly. "But none of us has gone without trauma because of it. None of the boys have been sleeping well. I just came from Michelangelo's room—he was having nightmares."

"He has such a gentle spirit."

"Of all of my sons, no one needed a mother more than him." Splinter smiled and placed his hand on hers. "He loves you dearly, you know. They all do."

Mei smiled back. She gave Splinter's hand a quick squeeze. "I would have gone to him, but—"

"I am glad you went to Donatello. He would not have listened to me anyway. I never could come between him and his science."

Mei looked at Splinter's face for a while. If it had not been for his fur, she imagined, there would have been visible dark circles under his eyes—his deep brown eyes, the only part of his appearance unchanged. The more she got to know him, the more she thought that it was no wonder her sister had loved him so much. He too was a gentle spirit; even as a hot-tempered young man that gentleness must have shown through somehow.

There was no way that Shen would have loved him otherwise.

At that thought, Mei felt her face get hot. She quickly let go of Splinter's hand and folded her arms. "Donatello truly loves April, doesn't he?"

"Since he first saw her, I imagine."

Mei's face grew even hotter. Determined to change the subject, she cast about for something innocuous to talk about. "My new project supervisor at work is awful."

Splinter raised an eyebrow, as if startled by the subject change. "How so?"

"He sent me a flame email and cc'd it to the whole team, just because I called in for a family emergency the last two days."

Splinter blinked. "It's been over fifteen years since I've used email."

"Really?" Mei asked. "Even after Donnie started building computers?"

Splinter looked down at the ground. "I had no reason to contact anyone."

Mei's heart sank. "You must have been so lonely all those years." She remembered the pain of her own loneliness, a raw, aching emotional pain with no balm until recently.

To her surprise, Splinter smiled. "Not as much as you might imagine. My sons saved me from that." Then a twist of sadness entered his expression. "But Shen and Miwa…the ache of their absence has never subsided."

"I seem to remember you saying that Miwa survived, didn't you?" She tried thinking back to the night when she had sat in the den reconciling with Splinter.

"Yes," Splinter sighed. "But Shredder took her and raised her as his own daughter, teaching her to hate me."

Mei nodded as the memory came back to her. "She doesn't know any of her true past?"

"No. She does not even know her own name. Shredder named her 'Karai.'"

Mei jerked her head up. "Karai?" she said loudly. Then she remembered that her nephews were trying to sleep. She shook her head. "That girl who coerced Casey?"

Splinter closed his eyes and nodded. "Shredder has done well in teaching her the ways of cruelty."

"How can—does she know—know what that monster was going to do to April? A girl her own age?"

"I do not know," Splinter said heavily. "But I try not to think about it, or any of its implications."

Mei's skin crawled at the thought. "Not even Shredder would sink to that level. Not if he raised her as his own child."

Splinter's eyes lit up with rage. When he spoke, his voice was tense with suppressed anger. "I never thought my childhood friend would become a murderer, let alone what else he has done. He has shown that he has no honor."

Mei tried to stifle the tears that stung her eyes. She remembered what Shredder had said to her: "In your darkest hour, remember that Hamato Yoshi did this to you." Everything he had done, he had done just to make Splinter suffer. Mei's suffering had merely been a tool to make Splinter's existence into a personal hell of guilt and blame. "It—it's not your fault, Yoshi," she whispered. She was saying it to herself as much as to Splinter.

Splinter scoffed. "It is," he said, but then his tone softened. "But I have forgiven myself for it."

Mei threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly; after a second of hesitation, Splinter returned her embrace.

Bound together by shared pain and loss, they sat there silently holding each other until the morning.