A/N: This fic takes place a few hours after the end of Walking Wounded, and immediately follows the events in Interlude: Westron Wynde.
Until she turned twelve, April thought special was something she needed to be. Teachers called her special, and made it sound like a prize, something to reach for with both hands. Her parents told her she was special, that she could be or do anything she wanted.
And then her mother died, and April found out what special really meant. It meant you were marked. It meant you were different, because when you came home from school and found your mother facedown in the middle of the kitchen, her coffee cold in its mug on the counter, no one ever really looked at you again. Special meant people treated you delicately, but not like something precious. They treated you like a bomb, seconds from exploding, and no one wanted to get caught in the shrapnel when you finally blew.
Special meant loneliness. Special meant sitting across from counselors who just wanted you to talk, when what you really wanted to do was cry until you fell asleep. Special meant waking up every morning, and having to remind yourself not to call out for Mom because then Dad's face would crumple and he wouldn't eat for the rest of the day.
Special meant being angry. Moms aren't supposed to die, and they aren't supposed to do it where their daughters can find them, and they aren't supposed to do it without saying goodbye. April had so much left to ask her mother, so many stupid little things, like why do you wear blue all the time and why do you laugh when Dad brings home asparagus for dinner.
She still hadn't asked why do you think I'm special, Mom? Instead, she had to figure it out for herself, when her father knelt down in front of her, brushed the hair out of her eyes, and said "Sweetheart, we have take care of each other now" in a careful, careful voice.
Special meant wanting to scream, and knowing it would never help.
April never wanted to be special. She wanted to be happy. Her father did what he could, and April treasures him for every single time he indulged her, even as he battled his own grief. Did April want to go out for dinner every night for two weeks, because being in the kitchen for more than five minutes gave her nightmares? Then they would go out for dinner. Did April want to stay up and watch Doris Day movies until she fell asleep on the couch, even though it was a school night? Then her father would cover her with blankets and sit up with her, then carry her to bed.
Her father didn't have anyone else left to love after her mother died, just April, and he loved her with everything he had. That made April special too, the only way she could bear the word now, because all she had left was her father. But no matter how much love he gave her, her father couldn't stop the tiny, thirsty, furious seed in April's heart from drinking in all her grief, and sending out its bright roots to search for more. And when it bloomed, her grief gave way to anger, and she stayed angry, every day since.
Had that seed been there from the beginning, just waiting to blossom? April doesn't know. Maybe it was some other Kraang gift, one more thing to make her special. April O'Neil, the motherless child, the angry girl, the weapon. She doesn't want to be any of those things. She doesn't want to be special. And yet, she is motherless, she is angry, and she is a weapon. She is, if the Kraang can be believed, one of the most important people in the world.
April knows what she is. She's dangerous.
Sometimes, when she's stayed up too many nights in a row and hasn't been eating, her thoughts go charred-black at the edges, and she sits on the edge of her roof and wonders why she's still alive. The turtles have done the cost-analysis — Donnie has, at least — and there's no way she's worth the risk. If the Kraang come back, if they catch her again — well, she certainly doesn't expect them to be merciful. They made it clear when she was sixteen that her pain amused them, and that they were prepared to hold a grudge for a very, very long time. So why, she sometimes wonders, has neither side taken that final step? The turtles love her, but April would hardly blame them if they chose the world over her, and wouldn't it be easier for the Kraang to just erase her and start from scratch with someone more pliable?
But no. April is special.
April is also very tired.
When her thoughts go dark like this, someone always appears to pull her out of the undertow. Usually Donnie, sometimes Casey, like they've been called to her by some low-level telepathy. Casey will tease her out of it, get her spitting mad, then laugh and hug her too tightly, and Donnie will — Donnie will sit quietly with her, not quite touching, and tell her about stars forming in distant galaxies.
On one of those nights, she told Donnie she was afraid all the time, and he only smiled and touched her hand.
You don't have to be afraid, he told her. You're star stuff.
She had laughed, and punched him in the arm, because really, Donnie? Carl Sagan? He just kept smiling, until her laughter died away, and instead of being afraid, she thought of atoms bonding after thousands of years apart, and new light spreading through cold darkness.
That was the first night in almost half her life April believed that being special wasn't so horrible. And maybe that was the first night her stomach dropped when she met Donnie's gaze, but then Casey swung up the fire escape and whatever fragile realization she had just begun to touch scattered.
April understands what special means now. It means that there are people who will always believe she is worth saving. The very first person to believe that, the one who looked at her and saw not grief or fury but something he wanted to cherish, is standing within reach, shaking, looking like his heart has been cracked through its center.
He saved her. Over and over, too many times to count. April could try for the rest of her life to deserve Donnie, and she would never come close. He's too kind and patient. He's forgiven her for every selfish, vicious outburst, and he will keep forgiving her, because that's Donnie.
If he's a monster, April thinks, watching Donnie cling to his door, staring at her with wild eyes, then what am I?
The answer's easy: she's a monster too, just as the Kraang made her.
Donnie doesn't stop shaking. He barely moves at all, and no one who hasn't spent the last ten years or longer memorizing how his body moves would be able to see it, but April can see every tiny tremor as it moves through his arms and legs. He's trying to hide them from her, locking his knees and elbows and gritting his jaw, but April knows. And shouldn't she know his body by now, maybe even better than her own? His is the body that keeps saving hers. A shield, a spear, a shelter: his body has been so many things that her own can't. So when he shakes, she sees it, and she aches to touch him, and let her body do what his can't.
But he asked her to wait, and until he asks her for something else, she'll stay right where she is.
When she shifts to let her weight rest more on her good leg, Donnie's eyes don't flick downward to track her movement. They stay locked on her face, and the only noise in the room is the almost-silent rattle of his breathing.
"What happened to you, Donnie?" April asks, the question breaking out of her before she can snatch it back. Her hands lift, reaching out to him, ready to cradle his head between them. There's so much weight on his shoulders, and it wasn't there when he left for the lab. Jenny, for all her bluster and teasing, has never left Donnie like this, so what did? What crept into his safe, quiet lab, and left him like this?
Donnie shakes his head, a bare twitch, and his throat jumps.
"You don't have to tell me what's wrong," she says, inching closer, watching to make sure he doesn't flinch away from her. "But please, let me help you. I'm here."
"You w—" Donnie cuts his sentence off, shaking his head again, distress etched into his face like fault lines. He's not as quick to lock down the liquid-flame ache in his head; it flows out of him and into April, and buries itself in her head like a scythe.
She hisses a gasp through her teeth, and reels, struggling for balance. It burns, but it's not flame, not at all — it's ice, and it makes what she felt in Donnie's head last night feel like a summer breeze. This is winter, snow-choked mountains and ice underfoot, air freezing in her lungs, it's —
Despair. What she feels is perfect, holy despair.
"Oh my god," she wheezes, the breath knocked out of her and the room spinning around her. No one deserves this feeling. It's bleak, and cold enough to whip the air out of the room, the kind of cold she had only read about and never thought she would experience. But the cold keeps coming, like an army on the march, and above it all shrieks a high and lonely wind.
Then she's swallowed by the wind and pinned between its teeth.
It's too dark to see much beyond desks, old computers, and a dusty collection of beakers, but April knows this is a place she's never seen before. All the angles are unfamiliar, and the air is too cold, much too cold, for it to be Donnie's lab. He always manages to keep it a precise seventy degrees, balanced neatly between arid and too-dry.
And Donnie would never, not in a thousand years, allow dust to show its grey face in his lab.
Could it be the Kraang's?
April shakes her head. She refuses to think about all the white panels, and what hides beneath them. Instead, she takes a careful step into the dark room, watching her footing when something crumbles under her shoes. Every movement echoes, and even her pulse thunders too loudly in her ears.
Her empathy may be muted, but ten years' worth of training would warn her if she was in any immediate danger. Besides, this might be a dream — and no matter what scary stories try to tell you, it's impossible to die of fright.
She makes it five steps into the room before a light flicks on, far in the back of the room. It goes off again immediately, and someone's low voice rumbles in the distance.
April licks her lips, swallows, and decides to see what happens when she speaks. What's the worst that could happen? If it gets too creepy, she'll wake up. And Donnie will be there.
"Hello? Is anyone there?"
Something thin and fragile — a test tube, maybe, so old it's brittle — shatters. No one responds, but the silence around her has a gathered, held-breath quality to it now. She's not alone.
"Hello?" April threads her way between two desks. "Uh, sorry to barge in like this, but —" Is this a dream or not? Help me out a bit, subconscious. "But I'm not sure where I am. Can you help me?"
Her foot catches on the leg of a chair. She tumbles forward, gasping, and barely keeps from falling. Her pulse deafens her, thudding in her ears until it's the only thing she can hear. Don't want to fall again, Jesus Christ. She laughs, a little shaky, and stands up.
"If you want me to leave, just say so," she says when her breathing is under control again. She wants to wake up now; she might not be able to die in a dream but she doesn't want to dream about falling, either. "Seriously, I can just —"
Her voice shrivels to a whisper, then falls apart. Something is moving just beyond the last desk, a humped, crooked figure, wrapped in cloth so faded it has no color at all.
Run, run, screams her training. Don't look, whatever you do, don't look.
It moves like it's been beaten, like a kicked dog crawling back to its master, hoping for some small kindness. It's so tall, all spindly arms and legs and a heavy, heavy head. April tries to turn away, but this is a dream, and she's trapped in place, her feet rooted to the floor. All she hears is the sick rush of her heart, and she can't stop herself from looking up, and up, and when she sees the gleam of the figure's eyes, she feels like she's been slapped.
You had to look.
Donnie shoves the hood of his makeshift cape back and squints down at her.
"April?" he asks, and she can't look away, even though this Donnie is wrong. An old, ragged mask, no leather straps, marks on his neck and plastron, bent, ruined hands, and oh, his face. This is Donnie old, old and sad and —
This is what Donnie looks like when he's been broken: greyed-out skin, his eyes milky and dull, a concave curve to his belly that makes her throat ache to look at. His mouth twitches in a parody of a smile. On this Donnie, it's nothing more than a handful of bones, leaves in winter wind.
"April," he says, in a voice like a sigh, and reaches out for her. At the last minute, just before he touches her, he pauses, and April chokes out a sob. That pause is so Donnie, always giving her a way out, always doubting how much he's wanted, and seeing it in this Donnie is intolerable. She reaches back, her hands too clean, too small against his, and squeezes his fingers. She does it gently, because even in the dim light, it's impossible to miss how the knuckles are swollen and tender, and how none of the bones lie in straight lines anymore. His fingertips are ragged, no longer capable of any grace, or even efficiency.
This Donnie, with his destroyed hands, is the worst thing April has ever seen.
"It's me," she says, the words faltering. "I—"
"Shh," he says, absently, sternly, and brings his rough fingers to her mouth. It's the lightest of touches, barely there at all, but there's history in it too, and something quiet in his gaze. Something intimate; this Donnie has made this gesture before, touched her like this. "I almost forgot what you looked like," he says, his crooked mouth trembling. "That was the worst of all. Not being able to see you." He stops, frowns, and slowly pulls his hands away from her face. "Too young," he murmurs. "She's too young. Not right."
April tries to snatch his fingers back. She's not sure why she wants him to touch her so badly, but it's important that he does. It's so important that he never stops. But Donnie keeps withdrawing, until his arms are at his sides and he draws his cape around himself once more.
"Stupid," he says, his head dropping. "Almost fell for it. Just another trick."
If she felt like she had been slapped before, it feels like she's being flayed now.
"Donnie," she manages to say, reaching for his hands even as he shrinks away from her. "What happened to you?"
He steps away from her, shaking his head, a horrible, dry smile spreading across his mouth. "See, that's how I know it's a trick, you bastard," he says, and wags his finger at her. "The right one would know. Not my April." The smile fades, just as quickly as it came, and he starts to shuffle back into the dark. "Not my April," he says, over and over, until the lab is filled with the whispered echo of his lost voice.
"Donnie —" She clutches for him, reeling, and his room slides back into focus. But it's not right, it's too cold, there's wind in her head that shouldn't be there and she can't breathe, she's lost something, she's lost, she's
gone
The Bull opens one pond-sized eye — the other has been long burned away, and there is nothing to be seen here — as the Champions cry out in one voice.
Now. It must move while it still can, shifting the pieces while there is yet time. It can do so little, and it regrets this intrusion. Later, the Bull shall beg her forgiveness, but now it must grasp at this chance. The Boar has turned its attention elsewhere, to its wayward servant, and it shall not notice if the Bull adds this scrap of magic.
She gasps as the change takes her, a single ember against an entire winter, but her self gathers round the fragile heat.
Forgive me, thinks the Bull, even as it knows she cannot, will not, for this last, monstrous invasion.
Even if it saves her life and all the others besides, she will never forgive.
April slips back into her body, cold but thawing, faint threads of nausea dissipating, and finds Donnie watching her, mouthing her name.
Am I yours? she thinks, too full of the other Donnie, broken and alone, to say a word. Let me be yours.
She holds out her hands, ready for him to shrink away or shake his head, but Donnie grabs her wrist, clings to her like a lifeline, and lets out a long, shivering breath.
Focus. He needs you. Don't cry. Be better.
April's given herself these talks before — head high, back straight, act fine — but never quite so desperately. She doubts it'll work at first, because she is still so cold, and Donnie's hand on her wrist makes her think of rough fingers at her mouth, but Donnie looks at her, silently pleading for help, and she feels the first hint of steel in her spine.
"It's real, isn't it?" she asks, rhetorically. "The Boar." When Donnie nods, his pulse jumps in his throat and he squeezes tighter, until the thin bones in her hand creak. April doesn't protest. Let him take whatever she can give him; without him, she wouldn't have anything to give anyone, so he can have this, and she will be brave for them both.
She tugs him away from the door with the gentlest bullying she can manage, stroking his wrist and not letting go when he drags his feet. Instead, she lets him squeeze her fingers, watching and chewing on her tongue as he breathes through the pain in his legs. Red blotches, visible even in the low light coming from Donnie's desk lamp, have begun to show through the bandages on his left thigh, but April can't think of leaving him long enough to get fresh gauze. This is where she needs to be, letting Donnie crush her hand in his as she eases him to the bed.
When they get there, he doesn't let her pull him down to the mattress. He draws her in close, until there's barely a finger's-width separating them, and lifts his hand to hover near her throat.
It's only when he hesitates that April comes right up against how dangerous Donnie can be. She's always know that he's brilliant, and watching him fight astonishes and unnerves her in equal measure. But with his hand inches from her neck, she feels how powerful he is, how he is not human and never will be, and she knows he could hurt her without making an effort.
He won't hurt her. Never has, never will. The same hand waiting to feel her pulse is the same hand that caught her as she fell, all those years ago. So she tilts her head back, baring her throat, and holds his gaze as she nods.
Donnie's hand settles over her neck, and April shivers as his heavy thumb traces her pulse. He's so careful, so delicate, but all April can think of is how nothing about them or this moment or the weight of what they feel is safe. They will always be too much, they will always be monsters. They will always have each other.
"We'll kill it," she says, as his thumb moves up to rest against her chin. "I promise you. It's dead."
Something in her shifts, something hungry, and April closes her eyes.
She stays silent and still until he takes a breath — the first full breath she's heard since he came back to the room — and slowly, reluctantly lets his hand fall to his side.
"Dead isn't good enough," he says. "It needs to be —"
"— gone," April finishes for him. This is an old conversation. They've had it for each of their enemies. Dead is only the first step; gone is the endgame. No miracles for what waits in the dark.
"Gone," Donnie agrees, tucking her hair behind her ear. He draws himself up, head high, and April imitates him. Yes, they're still broken, but they're still here, still ready to fight. They always are.
"Let's go tell the others," April says. She takes his hand, hides her fingers in his, and together they head into the lair.