A/N: Forgive my hand-wavey science - if the show can get away with it, so can I!

It takes Leo four steps — four steps at a run, four steps with strides as long as his legs allow — to feel the rhythm of the fight slip away from him. That quickly, and it's gone.

He keeps running. There's nothing else he can do; an arrow could change its course more easily than he could. Feinting left or right would leave one of his brothers unprotected, and stopping would bottleneck them, jammed together and vulnerable to the same blow. No, he has to keep running, has to keep his feet hitting the pavement. If he stops, they fall.

Knowing that doesn't keep him from hearing how Usagi's footsteps are just that half-beat out of time with his brothers', with his own. They don't need Usagi, they need Donnie. He needs Donnie two steps behind him, Donnie's shadow falling over his shoulders. It's always been the four of them at the core of every battle, four sets of hands and eyes connected through that pulse. One heartbeat, four bodies.

Crossing the street takes ten steps, ten steps that spread themselves out over an hour, a day — long enough for Leo to feel Donnie's absence, and to hear Raph yelling wordlessly on his right. He has enough time to see Mikey's nunchuks blur through the air, enough time to smell the air leaking out of the shattered house, cold and rotted, like a dead winter forest.

He even has enough time to lock eyes with Slash and to wince as his third lid scrapes down over his eyes. Then Slash roars again, and Leo swings his left arm in his first stroke as the buildings around them shake.

Why is it no one ever wakes up? he thinks. No one hears anything in this city.

Leo's swing takes him into Slash's range. He misses when Slash twists to the left and grabs for Leo's leg, but he didn't want to hit Slash. That's Raph and Mikey's job, and as soon as Leo spins out of the way, letting his katana direct and balance him as he moves, they swarm up through the space where he used to be, white-eyed and massive. It doesn't matter that Raph's almost a foot shorter than Mikey; they pummel Slash on both sides of his head with the handles of their weapons, the blows meant to deafen and disorient long enough for Donnie to move in and —

Donnie's not there.

Usagi is. And Usagi hesitates, eyes narrowed in calculation, long enough for Slash to find his balance and to see Usagi. Long enough for Slash to smile.

He almost killed Donnie, Leo told Usagi, just after the last time they saw Slash, a hulking shadow diving underwater. How many years ago was it? Seven? Eight? He beat Mikey into the roof in front of Raph. If he ever shows up again…

Leo had shrugged, and let his silence speak for him as he poured another cup for each of them. He should have said more, because Slash's return is no longer conditional.

"No!" The cry leaves him the instant Slash raises his arm, and Usagi throws himself to the right — clumsily, yes, but the movement carries him under Slash's arm and out of reach. Leo swallows, a hard metallic taste dripping down his throat, and charges.

This time, Slash is ready for him. Their moves have changed; they fight together now, but Slash sat in the dojo every day after Raph rescued him from the trash and watched them, memorized how they fought alone and against each other. Leo knows Slash has forgotten nothing.

It hurts like hell when Slash's fist collides with his plastron, and for five seconds, his vision goes white and he can't breathe, and his pulse pounds in his ears. He manages to keep hold of his katana, thank God — he'll take any victory now, large or small.

When his vision clears, the first thing Leo sees is Karai, standing apart, the breeze tossing her hair and the black mask in her hand.

I don't think you're as good as you think you are.

Watch me prove you wrong, he thinks, and heaves himself off the ground. So they don't have Donnie, so Slash is back. It's just one more fight, and they haven't failed yet.

What he needs is a plan.

"Usagi!" he yells, sliding his katana back into their sheaths. "On me!"

His friend obeys without question, placing himself at Leo's back. Maybe later Leo will be able to enjoy the fact that Usagi is taking his lead, but that all depends on whether or not they survive. The fight hasn't begun yet, not really.

The sound of his voice makes Slash turn his head, ponderously slow. Leo isn't fooled; he knows that Slash can move like a lightning strike, but it's tempting to think of him like a mountain, as slow as centuries. Slash's smile is slow too, a crack in an old foundation.

"Still like giving orders," he rasps. When Mikey leaps at him, nunchuks spinning, Slash bats him away without looking. Leo winces as Mikey hits the ground shell-first, but his brother bounces up almost right away — favoring his left side a little, but steady. "Always know what's best, don't you, Leonardo?" Still smiling, Slash sniffs the air. "Where's Donatello? Didn't want to come out for another beatdown?"

Leo bites down on the hot words fighting to get out of his mouth. He feels Usagi at his back, and on the other side of Slash, he sees Raph next to Mikey, both of them white-eyed and ready.

Slash shifts from foot to foot. "You've gotten better," he says. "How long's it been, five years? Got all kinds of new moves."

"Try seven years," Raph bites out. "Seven years you slept down there waiting to get called like a dog. Man, what'd the Boar offer you? Eternal life as its pet?"

Slash flinches, a tiny gesture made monstrous by the size of his shoulders, and rounds on Raph, nails extending to claws. Leo catches Raph's eye and nods. Keep going. Keep him focused.

"I knew a good deal when I saw one," Slash says. "The Boar offered me —"

"What, good dental?" Raph spins his sai. "Too bad your retirement plan sucks."

Leo shudders as Slash chuckles and shakes his head. "You should see what happened to the ones who said no," he says. "Like Stockman. Like Xever."

At the corner of Leo's vision, Karai touches her stomach, a small, lost movement.

Leo doesn't care. Now's the moment.

He runs full-out, legs pumping, cold air in his face, right into Slash's reach. This time Slash's fist is an open hand, each finger tipped with flechette-sharp claws —

don't think about that don't think about it don't

— and yes, they open his skin just as easily, a new gouge for each arm because at the last minute he holds them up to protect his face. Slash roars again, delighted, hungry for blood, the sound so familiar Leo isn't sure for a moment if he's twenty-five or fifteen. And it doesn't matter, because the pain is the same when Slash's other arm slams into his plastron again, and sends him flying across the road.

He doesn't white out this time; the pain of the impact and in his arms keeps him aware, and that's good. Good because he isn't sure how badly he's bleeding yet, and good because now he gets to see his plan.

Slash forgot about Usagi, forgot about Mikey, forgot everything but his bone-deep instincts to fight Leo and listen to Raph. All those years watching them bred that into Slash, made their fight part of his soul. And if he and Raph are still going to be at odds, even now, Leo's going to use that.

Raph kicks one of Slash's feet out from under him, then rams Slash in the side — it doesn't knock Slash over, but it gives Mikey the chance to loop his kusarigama chain around Slash's neck and yank his head back, baring his throat. And Usagi moves like water, perfect thought, perfect form, keeping Slash off-balance as Raph crouches to jump, ready for the killing blow.

The sound of someone clapping freezes them all in place. Leo looks around, suddenly aware of his pulse spiking and the thick taste of blood in his mouth, but Karai stands as still as she did a few moments ago, her hand still on her belly. No one moves.

No one, of course, except the woman clapping at the end of the street.

She keeps clapping as she walks toward them, each beat from her hands in time with her steps. Her smile is wide and gentle under a heavy fall of black hair so long it trails the ground behind her, and her robe is white. White as snow, white as bone, white as the teeth of her smile.

Leo pushes himself to his feet, an absurd compulsion telling him that he has to face this threat standing — because this is a threat, one aimed straight at the heart of his family, and even if he's covered in blood, he will still stand against it.

I am fire on the mountain, he tells himself, and reaches back for his katana as he walks to block the Boar's path.

It pauses mid-step, then plants its feet flat on the ground and faces him. Just like Donnie said, it wears the shape of a beautiful woman, velvety skin and silky black hair, but it's not a woman. Leo can't afford to think of it as one, or be fooled by its grace, not when all he feels is the disdain rolling off the Boar and sweeping toward him, the faint amusement, the contempt. It would crack him between its teeth as soon as look at him, and if it's not doing so now, that's only because it has some other purpose.

Leo's read the story. He knows what the Boar does.

The Boar eats.

"Such a brave one," it purrs, taking one step closer. Leo smells it, jasmine and ash. "Always the bulwark, always the firm wall. But you, sweet boy, are not the one I want." It cranes its head, searching behind him, its smile turning into a sneer as it sees Mikey and Raph. "Where is he?" it asks. "Where is the Champion?"

Leo smiles back. "I'd be happy to give him a message," he says. "But for now, you have to deal with me."

The Boar's smile slips for an instant, like melted wax sliding down a wall. What Leo sees behind it is nothing he can name, not teeth or blood or even bone, more like a forest than a true face, but not like a forest at all. It's —

He shakes away the thought, and by the time he looks back into the Boar's face, the smile is back in place, and dark eyes gleam at him through its hair.

"No message," it says. "But my dear boy, my dear Leonardo, why was it not you? So strong, so brave and so very young, it should have been you that faced me. Your brother cannot, but here you stand, here you face me."

He and his brothers are no strangers to evil; they've faced monsters in too many forms to count. Of all the monsters, only Kraang Prime came close to the creature that stands in front of him, smiling, close enough to touch. Kraang Prime hated him, and thought he was small, a pest to be eradicated — but it never radiated this casual malevolence.

Hate comes so easily to the Boar, and it smiles so easily too — and why shouldn't it? Leo knows any resistance he can offer is a joke, because what good are blades against a god? And what good is he?

He's not the Champion.

Beneath the pounding of his heart, Leo's surprised to find his feet steady on the pavement, and his hands firm on his katana. He's comfortable here, a lonely candle burning against the whole of the night sky. One flame is all that's needed to open the way for light, though, and as long as he holds, Raph and Mikey will too. Even now, as the Boar takes one more step, Leo hears Mikey tighten the chain around Slash's neck, Raph brace his feet to hold more of Slash's weight; in the quiet center of his mind, far from fear or doubt, he listens to Usagi shift, and feels the warm blood drip from the wounds on his arms.

He's not the Champion, but he's still their leader. He will not move.

"Do you think to protect him from me?" asks the Boar, in its whisper-sweet voice. The moonlight on its skin is loving, the curves of its cheeks gleaming like pearls as it smiles wider. "I do not wish him harm, so long as he —"

"So long as he signs up," Leo says, childish pleasure filling him as the Boar blinks. Mikey's head jerks up, white eyes wide at Leo's interruption, and Leo finds it in himself to smile. Oh yes, I dare.

"He serves, we live. Old news." Defiance is so easy, after fighting in the dark all these years. All they have to lose is their lives, same as always, but that doesn't mean their lives are cheaply given. If Leo falls — if his family falls — then it's nothing less than what they've signed up for. But Leo knows now how to read his opponents, and god or not, the Boar isn't here to kill them. If death had been on its mind, it would have crushed them by now. It's here to take their measure, and to scare them. "You won't get what you want," he says, his pulse so heavy his tongue is clumsy with it. "Donnie won't break. We won't break."

He throws the refusal onto the street between them, all too aware of how pitiful it sounds. And he knows how he looks, a monster standing in front of a beautiful woman, steel glinting in his hands. There are stories about this, too, and anyone watching would think he and his family are the villains, the ones who eat.

The Boar licks its lips, its tongue a hot fever-red against the white of its skin.

"You say that," it says. "But he will break, or he will die. There is nothing else for him, not in this game, no matter how brave you all are. It is the way of the game, eat or be eaten. Which will he be?"

The words He'll be Donnie are in Leo's mouth, but they crumble and fade when the Boar reaches out with a long-fingered hand, and brushes its fingers against the scars on his arm.

"I know what you are, Leonardo," the Boar tells him.

He tenses, ready for the pain his muscles still carry to wake. And it does wake, the slick, biting, cold pain of the Shredder's flechettes, singing with the new pain in his shoulders and plastron — but the Boar, he realizes as the pain crests and he bites his tongue to hold in a cry, isn't interested in his pain. Pain is just a path to what it really wants.

His humiliation.

That follows the pain, a hot flare of it igniting along his spine. Humiliation. The laughter as he tried to scream threats through a swollen mouth, how easily Rahzar bent back his fingers, how quiet the cracks of breaking bone, how he howled at them to leave his family alone, and how the laughter rose at that and broke over him in a flensing wave.

"There are so many ways to break, so many cracks already," says the Boar, so gently its voice is almost a song. "Pain is one way, yes, oh yes, brave one, but so is this."

Its eyes, sloe-dark, meet Leo's as he struggles to breathe and find his center. Pain is a reaction, trap it in your body. Be the fire on the mountain. If he breaks, Raph breaks, and Mikey breaks, and then Slash is free, and they —

"Did you tell your brothers you wet yourself in the dark while you cried?" the Boar asks. The song in its voice mocks him, and this is the one humiliation he can't bear, that he was dirty and couldn't fight. Leo swallows, shoves the pain and humiliation down. They are not him. They do not define him.

"You shut your mouth!" Raph shouts, as Usagi lets out a disgusted, furious cry.

No, Leo wails silently, as the Boar's hand falls from his arm and its gaze falls on Raph. Don't fall for it, Raph —

"Small and angry and afraid," the Boar spits out, its smile never slipping. "Afraid of yourself, of all you feel, afraid of being left behind, oh, yes, yes, you are, boy, for you are the only one they could do without. If you died, the scar between them would heal, and they would learn to laugh again and they would forget you."

Raph's inarticulate, rage-choked cry fills the street, and Leo hears the words beneath it, clear as if Raph had shouted them: it's not true it's not don't say it it's not true please don't let it be true. He has seconds before Raph's control shatters, and whatever hope they had for getting out of here alive is gone.

"Hold!" he shouts, his voice finding its way past the pain still thrumming through his arms —

cold metal opened me up and all I smelled was blood and I did I pissed myself but that was done to me and it isn't me this is me

— with all his force behind it, all his will. He is their leader, his voice is their ultimate authority. And Raph, pivoting to face the Boar, Slash forgotten, freezes in place. He shakes with barely harnessed fury, his fists clenched and his teeth bared, but he holds.

I've got one chance at this, Leo thinks, as the Boar's head swivels back to him. He thought of the Boar as another opponent to fight, but it's not something he can fight, not now. The Boar is a predator, hungry and full of teeth, and if he's not the Champion, then he's just prey.

Prey evades.

Raph is going to hate this. Leo hates it too, leaving a weapon like Slash in the Boar's hands, but in the balance, his family's lives matter more. They can deal with Slash later.

He hopes.

"If you're done," Leo says to the Boar, carefully, calmly. He must be deliberate now, not fire on the mountain but ice, a glacier, ancient and deliberate. "Then we'll be going."

Karai — oh, god, he had forgotten Karai — makes a strangled noise that might be a laugh. The Boar's gaze flicks to her, giving Leo a precious second to school his face and steady his hands. When it looks back to him, he smiles. Wide and red, and full of teeth.

"Enjoy your new pet," he says, with a nod back toward Slash. "Sorry he's second-hand, but I think he's got a few good years left in him."

Slash snarls, lunging for Leo, but the Boar raises one hand and the snarl twists into a whine. From ten feet away, Leo can feel Usagi and Mikey's bewilderment, and Raph's frustration — and it's Raph who breaks the silence, just as Leo expected.

"Are you serious — what the hell are you doing, Leo? We don't walk away —"

"We're leaving," Leo says, without looking at Raph. He'll explain later, when they're safe, but he needs Raph to obey, for just a few minutes more. "Stand down." When Raph doesn't move, Leo tears his eyes from the Boar long enough to glare at his brother. "Stand down, Raph."

The Boar watches him, silent, no longer smiling. There's a horrible, thoughtful cast to its features, and the pearly glow is gone from its cheeks. Now its face is a death mask, waxy and heavy.

"I'm sure we'll see you again," Leo says lightly, letting his smile fade. "Let's move!"

His last words, directed not at the Boar but his family, are sharp, chips of ice flung into the air. He sheaths his katana and turns from the Boar, like there isn't blood on his plastron, like every movement doesn't hurt him.

Don't look like prey, he tells himself. Don't run.

Mikey is the first to obey; he slides off Slash's back to the ground, the long chain disappearing as he folds his nunchuks into his belt; then Usagi, one eyebrow crooked as he sheaths his blade. That leaves Raph — snarling, immovable Raph, who'll never leave a fight unless he's dragged away, or dead.

Leo doesn't have time for the first option, and he won't even consider the second. Raph will always fight him on this, always, till the day they're both dust. No matter how much he shouts or begs, Raph will dig in his heels — especially now, especially because of Slash.

Don't look like prey.

"With or without you, Raph," he calls, carelessly, without looking over his shoulder. He knows the look on Raph's face, how the third lid will slide away to leave the hurt unveiled in Raph's eyes. I'm sorry, Leo begs, knowing he has to hurt Raph, and use his brother's fear to get him out alive. I'm so sorry. Please understand.

He takes the first step away, feeling the Boar's eyes on him. Watching, hungry, waiting for him to pause before it falls on him.

One step. Two. Mikey and Usagi fall in behind him. If they have questions, they know better to ask them now — but Raph's footsteps don't follow.

Come on, Raph. One misstep, and they're dead. Blood on the streets.

Three steps, four.

Leo's control is vast, a keen blade he's honed his entire life, but it cracks when Raph's steps don't echo behind him. He can't do this, he can't leave Raph behind. It's only been three seconds, barely any time at all, but without Raph, they're all dead. It's always been all or nothing. Family or death.

Raph growls. Leo's next step nearly falters as relief burns through him. He knows that sound: capitulation, and the promise of a fight later. He'll take it. It means Raph is with him, and he can get them out alive.

Slash hisses something when they reach the end of the street, the words bitten off by another sharp whine, and Leo knows, with iron-forged certainty, that the Boar won't chase them down. They don't look like prey; they aren't running, they aren't afraid.

Not that it can see, at least, and sometimes the appearance is all that's needed.

The closest shelter is to the north. He'll explain there, and pay what's owed for what he did to Raph.

But they'll be safe. They'll be alive.

This trick won't work again. Leo takes a deep breath as they turn the corner, and counts the footsteps behind him.

One, two, three.

Time to run.

Donnie doesn't wake either time April gets up to go check on Casey, though whenever she slips back into bed, he curls around her, murmuring. If he's actually saying anything, she can't make it out. So she lets him cling, and nestles as close as she can before she dozes off again.

As far as Casey's concerned, last night's episode might as well have never happened. His low fever has broken, and he grumbles at her and bats her hands away whenever she touches his forehead. April wishes she'd focused through her panic and touched his mind, to be sure it's gone, but that chance has passed — no point in hating herself for it now.

She did, a little, as she brushed the hair off his forehead and made sure the water glass on the table was full. Casey's mind felt like it always did: warm, loud, a lived-in and cluttered house, the smells of pine and wax and ice. But something else moved through those cluttered rooms, and made his head its home for a few minutes.

The Boar.

Now the smell of jasmine haunts her, and the palms of her hands are marked. Yet again, she's been set apart as special.

Donnie would say that I've always been special, she thinks sleepily, turning to rest her chin on his plastron. He's still asleep, mouth open, arms and legs loose under the covers, and there's nothing about being here in his bed that doesn't feel familiar, or safe, or right. His body is a cool, solid weight under hers; his hand rests gently on her hip. Protective, but not possessive.

She rubs his plastron over the slight curve of his belly. It's ten in the morning, according to Donnie's bedside clock; on a normal day, Donnie would already have been up for four hours and halfway through his second pot of coffee. He deserves more sleep — by the rings under his eyes, a week of sleep wouldn't be a bad start — but they need to talk, and she wants to know why Leo and the rest aren't home yet.

Her twisting to reach Donnie's t-phone wakes him when nothing else would; he opens his eyes, and starts to reach for her before he catches himself and lets his arm fall back to the bed.

April makes herself smile. She knew this wouldn't be easy, and there's no one to blame for that but her. "Hey you," she says, holding out his phone and pressing close to him again. "They're not back yet. Should we worry?"

"Uh," says Donnie, taking his phone without looking away from her. "I talked to Raph last night. He asked about shelters, and…" His voice fades off as he turns his attention to his t-phone, frowning slightly. She strokes his forehead while he reads, careful to keep her touch light, but she feels him hesitate before he finishes his thought. "They stayed out too late, so they're crashing at a shelter for the day. They'll be back tonight. Nothing to worry about, but Leo wants everyone home to talk when they get back."

"And we're not on lockdown?"

Donnie shrugs, his eyes on the ceiling. "Kind of a moot point, with the three of us like this. We're not going anywhere." He hasn't moved away from her, but he hasn't gotten any closer either.

Dammit, Donnie. April strangles the impulse to touch his mind. She can sense confusion and longing in equal measure, and quiet disbelief. Her fingers keep their careful movements on his forehead, willing away his confusion, waiting out his disbelief.

The longing, at least, she has a cure for. As soon as Donnie sets his phone aside, she wraps an arm around his shoulders and kisses his cheek. "Did you sleep well?" she asks, her mouth close to his skin. Donnie shivers, but she recognizes the movement. It's not a bad shiver, not by any means.

"Pretty well," he says. He picks at his blanket, a determined edge to his frown, and April aches, knowing what he'll say, hating that it's the first thing that comes to his mind. "April, you —"

"I want to be here," she interrupts, as gently as she can. "I'll say it as many times as you need to hear it. But Donnie, do you want me here?"

That gets him looking at her, determination crowded out by incredulity. "You have to ask?"

"It's important," she tells him, one eyebrow arched, "to be accurate. A very smart person once told me that. More than once, actually. Pretty much every day since I've known him."

Donnie sputters, torn between indignation and laughter, and while he's deciding, April tugs his head down and kisses him. It's not her best kiss by any stretch, not the kind Donnie deserves. She's still learning how to fit their mouths together, but the learning curve is too pleasant for her to mind the challenge. Especially when Donnie kisses the way he does, all his focus poured into her after a slight start of surprise. That much attention, that much concentration, is a heady thing — and a little terrifying. There's so much love in everything he does, from the way he adjusts the arm wrapped around her to how he slept with himself between her and the door. There always has been. When she was sixteen, it scared her.

Now, at twenty-six, she understands.

Somehow, she ends up on her back again, with Donnie hovering over her, supported on his elbows. She wants to pull him closer, and forget their half-healed bodies, he's heavy and so big, so steady, and she wants as much of him as she can get. His kisses — slow kisses, gentle, exploring kisses that make her forget to breathe — aren't enough.

Eyes closed, she breaks away to catch her breath. He'll blame himself if I pass out, she thinks, nonsensically, almost laughing. Before she can kiss him again, Donnie nuzzles into the curve of her neck, his mouth hot against her sleep-warm skin.

"Oh," she breathes. This is…unexpected, but Donnie is thorough, making his deliberate way up the column of her throat with light kisses and just a heart-stopping hint of his tongue — an imitation of her own little trick from the night before. It's been so long since she was touched like this, so very long, that every touch of his mouth sends a tiny jolt through her.

No, that's not right. She hasn't been touched like this before, not once in her life. Not with this much care, or such intimacy; Donnie knows her body, Donnie trusts her body. It may not be conscious knowledge, just something that evolved from so many years fighting at each other's side, but when he presses his mouth to the thin skin just under her ear, it seems like something he's already done a thousand times before.

Not that it stops April from letting out another breath, one that — if she's honest — sounds more like a moan than a sigh.

Donnie goes very still, then lifts his head. His eyes are as warm as his mouth, pupils wide — and he's doing a terrible job of not looking pleased with himself. "I thought you said we didn't have to rush anything, April," he says.

She strangles a new urge — this time, the urge to actually strangle him — and laughs, a unfamiliar, throaty sound. "Did I? I'm an idiot."

He kisses her again, almost before the words are out of her mouth. They have to talk, soon, if not now, but April lets the kiss linger. She's finally got the trick of how her mouth fits against his, and a true scientist always makes sure she can replicate her results.

After Donnie's bedroom, the kitchen is too bright. It's no cooler than the rest of the lair, but April shivers until she gets her hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. She sips it slowly as Donnie talks, not moving or speaking as he tells his side of the story.

It doesn't take long. Donnie doesn't want to tell it, no more than April wants to tell her side, but he doesn't waste time or words. He's concise, almost brutally so, considering that he's talking about the Boar playing around in his head and turning nightmares into weapons. There's only one moment when his voice falters — I couldn't get to you in time. I know it wasn't real but — I couldn't save you — and April doesn't try to fill his brief silence. She just reaches across the table and slips her hand into his, and lets him squeeze.

The thought of her own dead body doesn't bother her. It's the violation of Donnie's thoughts that leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. Casey's too, if that was the Boar as well — and April's intuition tells her it was. She knows what it's like to have control stolen from you. It's her life's story, that theft replayed over and over, and she'll gladly murder — yes, murder — anyone who tries the same thing with her family.

She wrestles her anger down, where it can stay banked low for when she needs it. As long as she has an ember left, she can light a fire from that, and burn out her enemies. But not now, not when she still has her story to tell.

It takes even less time than Donnie's: the quiet lab, the bent, shuffling figure, the other Donnie's old grief and bitter refusal. She leaves out her memory of his hands; there's so little she can do to protect Donnie, but she can do this: she can be the only one who remembers the broken, graceless fingers, so similar to the ones she's clinging to now.

She's pathetically grateful that they had a few hours of quiet together before they had this conversation. No, more than grateful; relieved, too. At least he slept, at least he knows now. If she had waited, nothing she could say would breach the guilt Donnie's retreated behind. It's not just guilt, it's contempt for himself, for what he thinks he's failed to do.

April flinches as a bright pinch of anxiety snaps at her mind. He'll knot himself around his guilt and his failures and it won't matter that they're not real, that he hasn't failed anyone. As long as Donnie thinks he has, he'll stay slope-shouldered and dark-eyed, and he won't let her help him.

Donnie toys with the sugar bowl with his free hand, his coffee untouched in front of him. "So you saw me," he says. None of the roil in his mind comes through in his voice. April bites the inside of her cheek as self-recrimination fills her. He's so good at hiding the outward signs that she got used to not looking deeper.

Lazy, April, lazy.

"I'm sorry," he adds, the slightest pause following his words before he pushes ahead. "You shouldn't have had to see that, you're not…" He shrugs, and hunches further into his shell.

There's already enough guilt at this table for both of them. She's had enough time to feel bad. As good as it feels to finally talk to Donnie about what's hurt him, he's still carrying all the weight. He won't give it up willingly, because Donnie thinks he deserves it, every ounce — but April is a kunoichi, and she knows what to do: not misdirection, but redirection.

"Do you think it's a possible future, then?" she asks. She runs her thumb over his knuckles, watching through her lashes as the guilt in his gaze is slowly displaced by consideration. "Or some other universe? Like with the Kraang, but this universe is —"

"Just a few decisions off from our own?" Donnie frowns, his eyes focusing near her left ear.

April ducks her head to hide a smile. Give Donnie a problem to solve, and he'll spend everything he has to find an answer, even the energy he's using to beat himself up.

She lets go of his hand — Donnie needs an undistracted moment — and gets up to refill their mugs. By the time she gets back to the table, favoring her leg as she sits down, Donnie is shaking his head.

"Whatever it is, it's not the immediate problem." He leans his chin on his hand and sips his coffee without seeming like he's tasted it at all. "Assuming all this is true — which is a big, big assumption — we're still fighting this without any effective weapons. We don't even know what the endgame is, or the time table." One finger starts to tap on the table. "Too many conditionals."

"We've got the myth," says April over her mug. Donnie nods distractedly, and she keeps going. "We've got the visions, for lack of a better term, we've got the tooth, and we've got these." She lifts her left hand, where the white slash still marks her skin.

They should have had this conversation a week ago, the morning the myth came crashing through their lives. Instead they've been working side-by-side, but not together. This is where Donnie needs her, as his safety net. She doesn't have his facility for connecting the dots; if she's a genius, it's a practical, methodical kind of genius, an earthquake to Donnie's lightning. He illuminates, she unearths.

Ten years of facing the Kraang and the Foot didn't prepare them for this. How do you fight a myth?

The sleepy Catholic in her head and the not-so-sleepy Irishwoman have answers for that: with holy water and silver, with swords from the bottoms of lakes and cups filled with blood, with salt and sage burned along windowsills and turning shifts inside out and Cold Iron and crossing running water and with bowls of milk and honey laid out under the moon.

All of which Donnie will reject, because Donnie is stubborn and Donnie has his pride, and if he can't find a solution through science, he sure as hell won't take one from faith.

"It's barely anything to go on," Donnie murmurs, calling April out of her musing. His finger keeps tapping the table. "But if what we saw really is another universe, or even a possible future, then we need to see it again."

"What?" April leans back, bewildered. "How the hell would we do that? Ask the Boar to — oh. Wow. The portal." The science involved is beyond her, time and space folding in on themselves in grotesque, painful shapes, but Donnie understands it, and more importantly, he understands the predictor algorithms for tracking where a portal will open up.

Where, and when.

"Oh my God, Donnie," she whispers. "That's brilliant. Even for you, that's brilliant." She leans across the table and kisses him, a quick brush of her lips that barely muffles his surprised gasp. "Sorry. I just…had to do that. Carry on."

Donnie beams at her, his cheeks red. "Uh, well…it's not much to go on, but — but as far as hypotheses go, we've had worse ones. I can set search parameters for biometrics that match current patterns, then we can exclude strings that don't match up with these events. It'll be a lot of work, but we can narrow the possible matches and find —"

"— find the strings where there's a Boar, and extrapolate the precipitating events," April interrupts in a rush, her mind racing. Part of her squirms at the thought of using Kraang technology, and there's no doubt there's a monstrous amount of work ahead of them, work that may be for nothing if this hypothesis fails. The sight of Donnie smiling, his eyes bright with hope and his whole body taut with barely restrained interest, though, makes all of that worthwhile. "We can see what went wrong. Bypass failed attempts — find something that works."

"Exactly," says Donnie. "It's a big if, but I'm game if you are." He looks down at their joined hands, his flush flooding back.

April pulls her fingers out of his, then slips around the table to stand in front of him, and loop her arms around his neck. He only hesitates for a moment before lightly resting his hands on her waist, eyes wide and not quite believing.

"I'm game," she says. "Let's get to work."

Elsewhen.

"We lost three more people overnight," Alice tells Leonardo. He doesn't interrupt or look her way, so she takes that as permission to keep talking. "No signs of illness or injury, they just didn't wake up. We'll cremate them when the sun sets. There's a rabbi who'll say a few words. Casey thought it'd be nice if —"

"Do you ever think about them?" Leonardo asks. He sets his cup of tea to the side and folds his hands in his lap. "Donnie and April?"

It's shitty beyond words to be glad that he's nearly blind, but that means he can't see her grimace. Not this again. Mike's visits always make Leonardo ask this question, and she's sick of answering it. "There's a lot more to brief you on," she says. "And then I've got patrol schedules to rework, and then I have to go make sure Casey isn't playing martyr — again — and then I have to make sure Raphael and Mike aren't screaming at each other in front of everyone, and then I have to figure out the move south. I don't have time to think about anything, Leonardo. I have too much to do."

"That's not an answer, Alice," he says, shifting in his seat to face her. "Do you ever —"

What he wants to know is if she still mourns them as ceaselessly as everyone else, if there's still a hole torn out of her that's never filled in with scar tissue. What kind of daughter would she be if there wasn't?

Alice is a terrible daughter. She doesn't mourn them, not in any acceptable way. Their memories are the last bright things she has left in her life, and if she takes them out too often, they'll decay and then she won't have anything. This world is dying, it's all smoke and poisoned ground, and one day soon the Shredder will find them and call down the warhounds, and then they'll be food for the beast.

She knows the story.

When that day comes, she wants those memories real enough so her parents feel alive again, for just a little while.

"I can't, Leonardo," she says. "If I did, I'd be ready to give up."

That gets a smile out of Leonardo, a smile brighter than she's seen in years, since the cage.

Don't think about that. Keep that out of your head.

"And you won't give up," he says, reaching out unerringly to squeeze her shoulder. "They wouldn't either."

Alice closes her eyes, just in time to block out all but one memory: her mother staring out across the dead fields, her jaw set.

"He'll come back if he can," said April. "Even if he doesn't, we don't stop fighting. Promise me."

"I promise," Alice said.

She's kept that promise, even though they're gone, even though they're never coming back. She doesn't think of them, but she holds that close to her heart, closer every day.

"I've got work to do," she says, opening her eyes and pulling away from Leonardo's hand. "Get some sleep."

He sighs as she leaves, but doesn't try to stop her. She's just as stubborn as her parents, after all.