The lair's so quiet Mikey can hear bits of dust tumbling out of the hole in the wall. There's a leaking pipe somewhere nearby that's the loudest thing in the room, a steady drip-drip-drip, tightening Mikey's jaw a little more every second.
Then Splinter gasps, as Mikey dabs antiseptic along the edges of the ragged hole in his side, and all the other sounds disappear. Everyone's heads snap around to stare, and Mikey fights to keep from shrinking into his shell.
"Sorry, Sensei," he murmurs, his voice all scratched up, "but this is gonna sting."
"It is all right, my son," Splinter replies, and Mikey swallows hard. These days, Splinter only busts out with the my son thing when the shit has truly hit the fan, and if Mikey wanted to hide inside his shell before, it's pretty much a compulsion now. Not that hiding would do him any good. The lair would still be a mess and there'd still be extra holes in the people Mikey loves on top of the hole in the wall. And Donnie would still be gone.
So, hiding's out. All he can do is get Splinter cleaned up and bandaged, and then see if Leo's got any plans in that big old brain of his.
He's used to the whole medic thing, because surprise surprise, he's the one with the steadiest hands even if Donnie's got a whole hospital in his head, but there's no bright side to cleaning blood out of your dad's fur or sewing up your brother's legs when he gets used as a chew toy. Normally Mikey's all about bragging rights, but he'd be happy to take a pass this time around if it means things could go back to the same old.
Not likely, he thinks as he tosses the fistful of gauze into a trashbag. Not a whole lot of same old left around here.
So Mikey gets Splinter cleaned up, listens to his lungs to make sure Karai didn't puncture anything, then slaps on a bandage and lets himself be satisfied over a job well done. That good feeling lasts for as long as it takes him to straighten up and crack his neck, and then the wreckage of the lair pours back in and he's drowning in the noise inside his brain: Slash is back Slash was here Karai stabbed Sensei and April is gone and Donnie left Donnie left Donnie left.
Meditating's not going to help, and thinking happy thoughts will get him nowhere. The only thing that'd really help is getting to take a few slices out of the Boar — but that's not happening any time soon, and bacon puns won't fill the empty hole in his chest. Mikey's spacey, he gets it, but he's not dumb, and what they're looking at is just subtraction: there were six fighters, seven if you count Usagi, and now they're down to three.
Something cold and sticky oozes down his spine. Maybe that's what the Boar's been doing, he thinks, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Just wearing us down, making us smaller.
Probably Donnie would've figured that out already, and had a fancy word for it. But Donnie's gone, and Mikey can't help thinking that it's just what the Boar wants, even if it was the Bull that Donnie followed out of the lair: the Champion's out of the way.
So what happens next?
He glances over at Leo, who's having his own first-aid party with Usagi on the opposite side of the couch. Usagi can walk, but he's not going to be fighting anytime soon — and he knows it, going by the tight little frown puckering up his face. And then there's all six feet of Casey, too busted to do anything but wince while Raph cleans out the hole under his arm.
The family's a lot smaller than it was, even if Mikey and his bros aren't the ones who got hurt. That's an ugly little thought on its own — Mikey'd rather be the one hurting than the one cleaning up, it's simpler that way, less to worry about — but what comes after is even worse: maybe it's not just about taking out fighters, maybe it's about making it harder for whoever's left to keep fighting.
Mikey blames his next shiver on the cold air pouring through the hole.
"All right," he says, and gives Splinter's shoulder a squeeze. "You're good, sensei." Talking hurts, but he'll deal if it gets rid of the silence. There's got to be a little noise, to cover up what's not here anymore. So he pushes on, even though his throat burns with every word. "Anyone else need any help from Dr. Shellenstein?"
Leo shakes his head, Raph ignores him, and Splinter squeezes his shoulder back as he stands and heads for the kitchen. Mikey glances around, till his eyes fall on Angel, who's all balled up in a corner of the couch. She chews on the cuff of April's hoodie, her eyes totally blank, and just like that, Mikey's got a mission.
"Hey," he whispers, flopping down next to her, hard enough to make her bounce. She smiles around the cuff, but keeps chewing. April's gonna be pissed, Mikey thinks, then slaps that thought down. Bad idea, to think about April right now. "You doin' okay?"
Angel shrugs, her eyes sliding away from his, back to the hole in the wall. "Depends on what you mean by okay." She lets the sleeve fall out of her mouth. "I didn't get hurt or anything, but — is it always this bad? Do you guys always get your asses handed to you like that?"
Mikey reminds himself that Angel's nineteen, that she's never dealt with anything remotely like this because Milagros made sure her Angel didn't have to, and that she's not trying to be an asshole. Still, the back of his neck prickles, and he takes a minute to think over what he wants to say.
"You're lucky you didn't ask Raph that," he says, sinking a little lower into the couch. Angel's eyes flick to Raph, who's glowering at a roll of gauze like it just farted into his protein shake. Mikey sees her get the hint. She doesn't apologize, but her voice is a little kinder when she talks next.
"Yeah, I — it just seems so hopeless, you know? Is this what you guys deal with all the time?" Angel gives him a look that says she really hopes they don't, and Mikey's relieved he can give her that much comfort.
"Things usually go more our way," he says, not letting himself think about being fifteen and watching Shredder take out his bros, one by one. And most definitely he doesn't think about Slash, nope, he doesn't. "This whole…Boar and Bull thing, it's not exactly our usual fight."
Angel snorts. "Tell me about it. I don't even — I just wanted to keep my gran safe, and now all this…" She waves a hand at the lair, then shifts deeper in the couch. "What do you guys do now? Wait?"
"Plans are Leo's thing." Mikey lets his head fall against the back of the couch. That stupid broken pipe keeps leaking, and with their luck, it's a hot water pipe, which means no blasting tonight away for a few minutes with a shower. Not that I wanna be in the shower, Mikey thinks, remembering the stink and the steam and all the teeth coming at his face. "He'll figure something out."
Angel gives Mikey a look that clearly says yeah, right, then tugs the hood over her head. "But until then?" she asks. "We just sit here, wait to get told what to do? That's a great plan."
She's nineteen. She's freaked out. Mikey holds his breath to make sure he doesn't say anything crappy. He glances at Splinter, who's just coming out of the kitchen with a tray covered in tea mugs. Were we ever this bad? he asks Splinter silently, and even though his dad doesn't look his way, Mikey hears his voice, loud and clear. Oh, no, Michelangelo, you were much worse.
"You got any suggestions?" he teases, which is a lot better than biting her head off, but Angel just shrugs and goes back to chewing on the cuff. She's scared, he tells himself. Some livestock god-thing drove her around and then she got to see us get our shells kicked, and before all that she was finding out home isn't home anymore.
He starts to lean in for a quick one-armed hug, nothing fancy, but another thought starts nibbling at the edges of his brain. He tries to ignore it, because it's probably that memory of Donnie walking away, his shoulders curved in and his head low, or it'll be Donnie asking where's April, and Mikey can't handle any of that right now.
But the thought keeps nibbling, little bites he can't ignore, and finally he lets himself pay attention.
Where had Angel been, when she met us at her apartment?
Mikey sits up straight, like someone just hit him with a cattle prod. He'd been so busy being freaked out at what had happened to his grannies, and the smell of that resin was stinking up everything — he never asked one stupid little question: where were you?
He can totally ask now. Not like he has anything better to do. So he clears his throat, winces, and then leans back, all casual.
"Hey, Angel?" Mikey asks, once everyone's got their tea. "Remember when we met you in your apartment, a couple weeks ago?" He kept his voice nice and low, but Leo's head snaps around so fast his mask tails hit him in the cheek. Mikey doesn't look his way, but he tips his head in Leo's direction. I got this, bro.
Leo nods once, but he's watching Angel, and now Raph is too.
"Like I'm gonna forget," says Angel, against the rim of her mug. Then her eyes narrow, and Mikey groans silently. Yeah, she's nineteen, but she's not stupid. No one who lives in her neighborhood is. So now she knows he's got an angle.
"You were comin' back from somewhere," he says, not even trying to sound like there isn't a point to the question. Everyone's paying attention now. "Where?"
"I dunno." Angel throws him a sulky glare, but Mikey just takes a long drink of tea. He can wait her out if she plays dumb, but she's already up to her neck in this spooky crap. It's not her fault, but she knows something — and, Mikey thinks, his throat aching so much he can barely swallow, as Donnie would say: all information is worth having.
"You gotta know," he says, nudging her foot, smiling a little. Leo's eyes are burning holes in the side of his head, ready to jump in if Mikey goes off the road, but Mikey's not worried. He saw the flash in Angel's eyes, one little spark that told him all he needed to know. He just needs to push.
"I don't," Angel snaps, that flash glittering in her eyes again. She's not scared, but she's uncomfortable.
Good. Mikey can use that. People say all kinds of things when they're uncomfortable.
All information is worth having.
"What'd the Bull have you do?" he asks, hard now, like he's pissed off, and Angel's mouth drops open. Mikey was the safe one, he's been careful to be cool and non-threatening, so when he's not anymore —
"I told you, I don't know!" she half-yells, pushing away from him and spilling tea down the front of April's hoodie. "All it wanted me to do was carry a message and look where that got me! I can't go home, I'm stuck here, there are monsters everywhere, I can't stop smelling freaking ashes —"
Something hits the pause button in her brain, and she gapes at Mikey. "Shit," she whispers, eyes wide.
Leo blows out a long breath, Raph falls back against his part of the couch, and Mikey takes another sip of tea.
"I don't know — I don't remember," says Angel. "But I was - there were ashes, I think…shit. Shit." Anger makes her voice shake, and her hands tighten on her mug. "It's like part of my brain just fell off."
"It's okay," says Mikey, trying to sound safe again. He doesn't hug her or anything, but he smiles, all encouraging. "What do you remember?"
"Just…" Angel fades out, her dark eyes all starry and far-away, and Leo tenses again, just a little. Good thing he's not in Angel's line of vision. "Just like, a church, or whatever. Something old. It was all wrecked, like there'd been a fire or something." She shivers. "It was…creepy."
"A fire?" says Raph. He stands up, his hands still full of gauze, and turns to Leo.
Who's gone all stiff, the light that's left making the scars on his arms show up clear as the subway tracks outside.
"You sure?" Mikey asks Angel. She flinches a little, but he doesn't care. She can't get this wrong. "What else do you remember?"
Angel swallows, glancing at Leo and Raph, and then back to Mikey. "Yeah, I'm sure." She's caught the new edge in the air, how every word's razor-sharp, and she flinches a little more as everyone stares at her.
"Nothing, I don't — oh god, I went inside," she blurts out, like the memory just jumped out at her. Once the memories get started they just keep coming, pouring out of her in a big slushy run of words. "And there were like, pools in the ground, there were these huge windows, and it went down, so far, and — you guys know what I'm talking about, don't you? You've been there?"
She leans toward Mikey, eyes pleading for some reward for getting it right. The kid wants to help so bad, and it kills Mikey to look away, to not give her what she needs.
"An old building like a church," says Leo. His hand goes to the back of his head, rubbing in a slow circle. Mikey stands up, inches a little closer, but freezes when Leo pins him with a miserable, exhausted look. "Yeah," he says. "We know it."
There's a pause while everyone digests that little nugget of information — because things couldn't stay at life-ruining levels of awful, they had to drop right to apocalyptically terrible.
"What's up with the church?" Angel asks, even though her voice says she really isn't looking forward to getting her answer.
No one answers her. They — Mikey included — are all too busy trying not to look at Leo. But they're all hearing the flames, and the Foot screaming as they died, and something roaring underneath it all. Mikey bets they're all seeing what Leo looked like when they hauled him out of the basement.
"Not-so-ancient history," Leo says, still rubbing the knot of scars on his neck.
Mikey isn't sure what he expected. Maybe some obvious hey! I used to be your arch-enemy's headquarters, but I've been upgraded to evil god's fun house! signs, like pentagrams and black candles everywhere, like the posters Casey's had up in his room back when they were teenagers. But no, that'd be too easy.
Shredder's headquarters is still a burned-out wreck. Probably the city thought it'd be too much hassle to clean up a fire in a neighborhood where no one with half a brain ever went, so they just left the ashpiles to blow away in the first strong wind, and the building's been rotting down to the foundations ever since.
Good. Let the whole thing fall apart so no one ever has to think about it ever again.
He doesn't realize he's breathing hard till Raph shoves him, and then nods at Leo when Mikey glares. Leo ignores them, just stares up at the door, nothing in his face or his eyes. It's like he doesn't even see it.
"So what now?" says Raph, loud enough to make Mikey check up and down the street for anyone listening. The lights in the crappy apartments stay out, either because no one lives here, or because — and Mikey would bet his next five pizzas on this being the answer — no one's paying attention. No one ever pays attention. "You got a plan, Leo?"
Nine times out of ten, the only thing Raph's tough love routine does is make things worse, but tonight's the rare occasion that it works. Mikey watches Leo settle back into himself, in charge again. Relief, cold as orange soda straight from the fridge, floods Mikey. If Leo can keep it together, then Mikey's got no excuse.
"Not really a lot of room for a plan," Leo says, hauling up a grim little smile. "Angel was sent here for a reason —"
"Obviously," snots Raph, folding his arms. Leo's eyes narrow, but his arms relax a little where they're crossed over his chest, so Raph hasn't crossed the line yet. "And what was that reason?" he asks, jerking a thumb at the building. "Any idea what the Bull made her do, now that we're here? You know, since we can't ask her?"
As much as Mikey agreed with leaving Angel in the lair, it might've been nice to bring her along, in case she had any last-minute brainwaves once they got her on location. But Leo didn't wait for her to offer, and gave her his number-one I'm the leader, and you're going to listen whether you like it or not look, and she just deflated back onto the couch.
It's about minimizing risk. Raph'll be a little slow to grok that, but Mikey gets it. Maybe the Bull was okay with sending Angel into the dark, but Leo will never let a kid do his dirty work. So she's back at the lair, helping Usagi clean up, and probably she'll stay pissed off at Leo for the next thousand years, but she'll be safe.
Pretty ironic how the lair's probably the safest place in the city right now. Mikey's not quite sure why he's so sure about that, but they've given the Boar all the fun it's going to get for a while. It'll stay away. Hopefully.
"We'll do a sweep," Leo says. "Eyes only, then we'll go in. One floor at a time. Nice and slow."
They sprint across the road, then huddle up in the shadow of the doorway. Mikey's brain tries to tell him he can still smell smoke, but that's a lie. Seven years of rain and snow and being baked in the sun have blasted everything but the smell of decaying wood and mold away. The door's still in one piece, warped half-open in its frame, and beyond it, the floor's completely collapsed. Like a big, toothless, stinking mouth — and that's as far as Mikey lets that thought go. He stuffs it far down, where everything hurts and the hole in his chest keeps growing, and then he ignores it.
"I don't see anything." He squints into the dark, listening with more than just his ears. No one's here. Not too long ago, birds nested here, and raccoons made smelly little cocoons for themselves, but not anymore.
Probably got eaten, he thinks, too fast to stop himself.
"You sure?" A flashlight's beam hits the left side of the door. When Mikey looks back, Raph raises his brows, and wiggles the flashlight.
"What? I came prepared," he says, smug and smirking.
Mikey ducks down to give Raph room to let the beam trace the ragged edges of the floor. There's nothing at first, just old bits of carpet and splintered wood, and Mikey lets himself start to think this is a dead end when the beam falls on a sticky, gleaming smear of resin on the carpet.
"Oh, no," he whispers, rubbing at his throat when the words sting.
DOWN. Footprints are smudged into the grime all around the letters, just the right size for a nineteen-year-old in Converse.
DOWN. DOWN. DOWN. The word's everywhere, painted so many times that it stops making sense.
"The Bull's been busy," Leo murmurs. He holds out his hand for the flashlight, and shines it into the gaping hole. "Looks like we've got a plan," he tells Raph, before he shoulders his way through the door.
There's still a vague order to the church, and they fought through enough of these hallways to make their way through with only one flashlight. Mikey catches himself humming as they pass through what's left of the Foot barracks and dojos, and swallows it down, cringing.
He's in the middle, Leo on point with Raph as the caboose. Familiar pattern, but the space between him and Leo is too small, and so wrong it makes Mikey's hands itch toward his nunchuks.
Donnie should be there — but he's not, he tells himself, keeping his eyes front and straining his ears for any noises that don't belong in a dead old church. So suck it up and pay attention.
"How much farther do we have to go?" Mikey asks. His voice bounces off the walls, even though he's pretty much whispering. Too much empty space, too many blank rooms behind broken doors.
Leo flicks the flashlight to the wall on their left. DOWN. "A little farther," he says, and that might be a sarcastic smile in his voice, but it's too dark for Mikey to tell.
"You guys seriously think Angel doesn't remember coming all the way down here?" Raph asks, coming up close on Mikey's shell so he doesn't have to yell. "This isn't something most people forget."
"Yeah, and most people aren't being driven by some weird god-thing, so…" Mikey turns around long enough to give Raph the best duh look he can. "So give Angel a pass, okay? It's kind of a good thing she can't remember, I mean, look at this place. Addams Family Central."
"Cut the chatter," says Leo. He stops, sweeping the floor in front of him with the flashlight's beam. Raph grumbles to himself, something about bugs, and Mikey bites both cheeks to keep from saying anything Raph will make him regret. Besides, there'd just be an empty place where Donnie's laugh is supposed to be. "We've got stairs," Leo adds, aiming the flashlight at the corner of the room.
"Oh no," says Mikey as his spine tightens up. "Nope. No way. I've seen like a thousand horror movies and I know exactly what's gonna happen. We do not go down those — seriously, Leo? You're goin' down?"
Raph snorts — Mikey almost sticks out his tongue at him, because he's so glad Raph's handling this so well, seriously, he is — then follows Leo and the bobbing flashlight glow.
"You first," says Mikey, in unison with Raph. He groans, then starts to stomp down the stairs — and nearly slips on the slick stones. "Ugh, watch yourselves, guys, this is a —"
He can't see Leo ahead of him, flashlight or not. "Leo? You there?" Raph leans against his shell, trying to see into the dark, and Mikey nearly falls again. Mikey slams a hand up against the wall in time to keep himself from turning into turtle jelly at the bottom of the stairs, then calls again. "Leo! Where are you?"
"Shh!" comes Leo's voice, much farther away than Mikey wants him to be. "Get down here — now. And be quiet."
"Because ninjas are supposed to be quiet, right," Mikey mutters, inching down the stairs with Raph sticking close behind him. "A little light would be nice, bro — oh, nice, thanks."
A soft glow fills the hallway in front of him, warm and inviting. The air's warm here too, not freezing like it is upstairs, and humid as a greenhouse. Mikey hurries toward it, more than ready to thaw out, and he's just caught sight of Leo's silhouette when he realizes that the light is green, not yellow.
He skids to a stop, his stomach dropping right to his feet, and only Raph crashing into his shell keeps him from bolting right back up the stairs. No way does he want to know what's making that light.
"Come on," says Raph. He grabs Mikey's arm and tugs him along, toward Leo, and the green light seeping up from a hole in the floor. "We gotta do this, Mikey."
No, we don't, Mikey nearly yells, as they pull even with Leo. He keeps his mouth shut, though, because yelling's the only idea that might be worse than going toward the light. Yelling might get something's attention.
He doesn't want to look. He stares at his feet, and the sheer drop a few inches from his toes, but he doesn't look into the huge pool of light below them, not until Raph makes a noise like he's choking.
Then, there's just one word he can say, and his throat aches trying to hold it in before it forces itself out.
"Teeth," he says faintly, staring down at the glittering walls, every inch covered by a forest of jade-green, gleaming teeth. A clean white light burns at the center, tinted green by the teeth as its rays travel up toward Mikey and his brothers.
"So," whispers Mikey. "Looks like we know what the Bull wanted us to see."
Elsewhen.
Donnie may have spent most of his life under New York instead of walking through it, but he knows the city. Even the dying version spread out around him matches the map in his head, and he knows, from one glance at a few ruined buildings and a broken street, where they are. And he knows, as soon as Raph's double pulls him to his feet and starts walking, that they're not heading toward the lair.
Raph's double. His old, one-eyed, grey-edged double, pacing silently beside him, hands stuffed into the pockets of his bomber jacket.
There are a million crucial questions that Donnie should be asking, but his head hasn't stopped throbbing where the red-haired woman hit him, and his curiosity is far outweighed by self-preservation. For now. The first layer of shock and exhaustion is sloughing off; now Donnie feels naked, over-exposed, a worm wriggling on hot pavement. He doesn't sense anything living, beyond the four people surrounding him, but he can hear the buildings crumbling, and a cold, insistent wind bites at his arms and legs.
The wind —
"So," says Raph's double. "What's your story?" He doesn't bother to hide how badly he doesn't want to be talking to Donnie, and Donnie would ignore him and let them go back to their separate, miserable silences if he didn't think that would only make things worse.
"I told you. The Bull sent me," he says, picking his way around mountains of crumbled asphalt. Huge pieces were sheared out of the street, and their edges are half-melted, smeared like badly-applied paint.
The street burned, Donnie realizes, and looks away, quick as he can, from the car pinned under the largest pile.
Raph's double snorts, and picks at the edge of his eyepatch. "Yeah, I got that much. But why? Sent you for what?" A bright green eye turns in Donnie's direction, then darts away when Donnie tries to meet it.
"Some kinda…Hail Mary? Or what? Why'd it send you?" His voice rises, roughened by years of yelling and who knows how much heartbreak, and he stops dead in the street, feet planted on the broken asphalt, and stares up at Donnie. "What good did it think you'd do?" Raph's double asks, bitter past words, and the wind carries his voice away, into the dark city.
"Keep up and shut up," calls the red-haired woman, without looking back. "You want to get all feelsy, do it on your own time." Mikey's double leans in close to murmur something to her, but she pushes him away, and picks up the pace. Her braid swings as she moves, one bright flash — and Donnie slams that mental door shut, before he can think of April, or imagine her face.
The turtle at Donnie's side sighs, shrinking into his jacket. "Look, whatever you're here for? You've gotta know how this looks. You show up, after all this —" He tilts his head at the city, his eye catching the last smudged sunlight. "We've been tricked before, you know," he says. "Can't blame her for —"
He looks at Donnie, really looks for the first time. Donnie's skin crawls; he knows Raph's face, would know it anywhere, no matter how much time had passed, but this isn't Raph. It feels like a surrender to admit that, but this is not his brother. Never has been, never will be. And the turtle ahead of them is missing more than his arm, he's missing the elusive, mercurial brightness that made Mikey Mikey.
What happened to this Leo? Donnie thinks, and shudders. He'll know soon enough, won't he?
The turtle keeps staring at him, eye narrowed, mouth drawn tight. In all the essentials, this is still Raph: bulky, overpowered body, broad shoulders, thick legs, a bull-like tilt to his head, ready to fight — but there's so much missing that Donnie's heart beats slower.
The thought must have shown on his face, no matter how hard Donnie tried to hide it. Raph's double sneers at him, then stalks off.
"Forget I asked," he says. "Let's go. Leonardo'll want to see you."
Leonardo? Donnie shudders again, and hurries after the little group.
Why me? he asks the Bull, out of habit, as he tries not to trip over a rusted bicycle. What you do you want me to do?
There's no answer, but Donnie's starting to find that comforting. The absence — at least that's familiar.
The comparative silence that falls around him once they walk into the compound tells Donnie that they've brought him in through a back door. He shouldn't be hurt — their reasons are good ones, but it stings, being shut in a freight elevator and riding up in silence with four people who won't even look at him.
Casey — god, Casey, rangy and scrawny, his hands scarred with old burns, he's so familiar Donnie could scream — tries to make a joke, some lame line about getting the band back together, but the red-haired woman glares at him with steel-hard brown eyes, and Raph — no, Raphael — just sighs his name. No one tries to talk after that. Mikey's double picks at paint blisters, the elevator shudders and wheezes its way to the top of the shaft, and Donnie's the first one out, his ears throbbing with the forced silence. Even screaming would be better than this.
"Down the hall," says Raphael. "Last door on the right. He's waiting."
"He knows?" Donnie asks. The cold and the silence have left his voice reedy, a distant echo of what it should be. What happened to you? he asks silently, as Mikey's double climbs out of the elevator. What happened to all of you?
"Yeah, the boss knows," says Casey. He squeezes Raphael's shoulder once, then steps back into the elevator and slides the grate shut. "We'll be down in —" His eyes cut to Donnie, and a thin, wary light gleams in his gaze. "We'll be around when you guys are done," he finishes.
The red-haired woman hits the controls, then folds herself back into her corner, arms tight over her chest. In the instant before the elevator disappears down the shaft, she looks up, and Donnie sees her face clearly for the first time: freckles on her nose and cheeks, a sullen cast to her mouth —
Donnie watched her die, and he doesn't know her name.
He turns around to find the others — the unbrothers — staring at him, their faces unreadable. Fighting the urge to back away and reach for his bo — Donnie's sure that would go over so well — he holds up his hands, and tries to smile.
"Sorry," he says, not sure what he's apologizing for. For wearing their brother's face, for just existing. "It's just — odd. I've…" He falters, flummoxed into silence, because how do you say So, I saw you all in a dream, and you were fighting the Foot. They were winning, and I watched Karai stab that woman to death. What next?
Donnie shudders again, his mouth going sour. The blade broke against the stones under the woman's back, and she made a sound like rain through the grass. He slams the mental door again, hard as he can, and hopes it holds.
"You're tellin' us," says Mikey's double. "Dude, Donnie, I never thought —" He rubs his face, eyes wide and too-bright. "This is — I mean — Raphael, are you seein' this? It's —"
"Yeah, I see it, Mike," says Raphael. He puts a hand on Mikey's shoulder, and pushes him down the hall. "C'mon. We don't have time to waste."
Mike, Donnie mouths to himself.
The door at the end of the hall stands open, ready to welcome them in. Raphael and Mike stand back and let Donnie walk in first, then follow him and shut the door behind them.
A window takes up one entire wall, letting in the flimsy light that leaks through the low-hanging clouds. Heavy curtains frame the window on either side, The room itself is spartan, with only a broken couch and a few cushions littering the floor. Incense burns on a table shunted off to one side, and Donnie breathes in deep, grateful for the warmth and for the familiar smells of sandalwood and cedar.
"So," says a quiet, amused voice. "It looks like the Bull has a sense of humor, too."
Donnie turns toward the sound, his heart sinking and his fists clenching when Leonardo looks away from the window, and smiles at him. In his dark coat, in the faint light, Leonardo almost disappears, but his smile is a bright, familiar sliver — one that cuts Donnie straight through, and knocks all his questions out of his head.
"Leo," he chokes out, eventually, and feels Raphael and Mike flinch behind him. He catches himself, eyes stinging, the last numb armor slipping away. "Leonardo, what happened?"
The last unbrother watches him for a long time, the smile lingering at the corners of his mouth. Slowly, he takes off his dark glasses, and polishes them on his coat. His eyes are pale, the blue irises faded to grey at the edges, but still he keeps smiling, like this moment is a reason to celebrate. By the time he puts his glasses back on, Donnie has to remind himself not to smile back.
They're not his brothers. They're not.
Leonardo steps away from the window, limned by grey light that turns silver when it touches his shoulders and the curve of his shell under his coat. He reaches out with both hands, and Donnie holds perfectly still as Leonardo takes him by both shoulders, and then bursts out laughing.
"My god," he says, his voice stuttering and tripping over a relief so vast it could fill the city, a long-hidden golden light, "Donnie, it's so good to see you."
Leonardo crushes him into a hug, still laughing, so unexpectedly that Donnie can't resist — not that he would, given the choice. Donnie's seen enough of this world — what's left of it, that is — to know that there's precious little to hope for, just another day of eking out some kind of half-life in the broken stones. No matter why he's been sent, no matter what his mission, he's got no right to steal this from the unbrothers surrounding him.
A few seconds pass, and Leonardo's hug stays firm, an anchor, holding Donnie in place. Then Mike presses close, his arm slung tight around Donnie's shoulders, and with a thick mutter that Donnie doesn't catch, Raphael joins the hug, his jacket creaking as he stretches.
The shapes are all wrong. There are jagged edges to Leonardo's shell that Donnie can feel through the coat, Mikey's missing arm is a phantom weight on Donnie's shoulder, and Raphael is too solid, all strength and no speed, but when it's obvious they're not letting go, Donnie lifts his arms and hugs them back. Slowly, carefully, in case he sets off some fight-or-flight instinct, because he knows and they know he's not the brother they're mourning, but when they don't resist, he hugs them back, just as fiercely. He can still feel his own brothers' hands on his shell, the silent goodbye before he walked away, and he hopes — he almost prays, for the first time in his life — that the other Donnie, the one who would belong in this hug, made sure these brothers knew he loved them before he walked away.
They make him dinner. It isn't much, just beans and rice, with a dusty bottle of hot sauce that Mike hauls out of his knapsack with a smile that Donnie feels like a kick in the stomach. But the food is warm, and he feels something like wonder flowing out of them — for this chance to set four places, instead of three.
Donnie's starving, can't remember the last time he ate —
That's a lie, April made you toast, remember? But there's no April here. There are three brothers, not four, and there's Casey, and there's that dead woman walking, but no Splinter. They haven't even said his name.
No Splinter, no April, no you. What happened, Donnie?
Can you fix all this, Donnie?
Can you?
He slams the mental door again.
— but he pauses before he picks up his fork, because he hasn't gotten much of a chance to really look at them. Not all together, that is. Now that he can snatch a few seconds to watch, without being scrutinized from all angles, he can't help looking for echoes of the brothers he knows, the ones waiting for him to come home.
The echoes are there, like shallow ripples in the koi pond back home. Mike eats quickly, while Leonardo savors every bite and Raphael keeps strict boundaries between the rice and the beans. Donnie nearly comments on it, and catches himself just in time. It's not going to do any good if he starts comparing worlds out loud, and the peace between them is a fragile one, weak as the fading sunlight coming in through the window.
He has to say something; he's still himself, no matter where he is right now, and it's not like there's a shortage of questions he wants to ask.
"Is that…a good idea?" Donnie asks, cringing a bit when all three brothers pause with their forks halfway to their mouths. "Keeping the window open like that," he specifies, like he should have done right away.
Mike goes back to eating after a quick glance in Leo's direction, while Raphael grunts and shrugs. Leonardo sets his fork aside, still full, and wipes his mouth with a thumb.
"It really doesn't matter what we do," he says. His glasses flash white in the light, still opaque, as he looks at Donnie. "The Boar — the Boar knows where we are. We're not trying to hide."
Donnie's fork tumbles out of his numb hand. Rice spatters across the low table, but no one seems to care about the mess. They're looking at him with the same mild surprise spread over three faces, and as hard as he tries to yell what do you mean, it knows?, no words come out.
"You're not?" he finally manages. He knows he sounds like an idiot, but this is so far beyond what he expected that he can't think past the fact that the Boar knows. How that fact isn't cause for immediate and prolonged panic is beyond him. He picks up his fork to give himself time to think, then ends up blurting out, "Why not? It's —"
The look the brothers share shuts Donnie up so fast his teeth slam closed on his tongue and he winces, tasting blood in the back of his mouth.
"It's what?" says Raphael. "Crazy?"
"Suicidal?" Mike supplies.
"For a start!" Donnie presses both hands to his head and tries to ignore his racing pulse. The Boar knows. It knows. As calmly as he can, he says, "Look, I know I'm — I'm not — it's not my place, I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but in my experience, when the Boar knows where you are? That's a bad thing."
"Did anyone say it wasn't?" says Leonardo, coolly. His glasses flash as he tilts his head, and he reaches for his water cup without looking away from Donnie. "It's a very bad thing."
"So why —"
Another shared look flickers between the brothers, and they all set down their forks and lean back from the table in unison. It's eerie, that reflected grace; they're so old and tired, with pieces missing, but Donnie knows that movement, and where he would fit within it, if. If.
They hold the look, silently, until Raphael shrugs again, one-shouldered. "You want to tell him, go ahead, Fearless," he says. The word jolts through Donnie's spine, another familiar tug, beckoning him to step into his rightful place. It'd be so easy to try.
Leonardo turns all his attention on Mike, who heaves an enormous sigh and pushes his dinner away, half-finished. "You're the boss," he says to Leonardo. "I'm always up for story time."
That rattles a dry laugh out of Leonardo — and then a cough, wet and racking. He waves off Raphael's hand as Donnie watches, and takes another long sip of water before he starts to talk.
"You've heard the old story, I assume," he says, as a preamble, and Donnie nods. Leonardo's voice is deeper than Leo's, a little rougher, a little warmer, and Donnie has to steel himself against the sly promise of comfort in every syllable. This isn't his Leo. He doesn't have the right to take any comfort here.
"Then you know it was missing a key element." Leonardo smiles, a hard, biting smile, with deep furrows framing either side of his mouth. "The story never mentioned how to kill the Boar."
"No," Donnie murmurs. "Lost in translation, I guess."
Leonardo's smile sharpens. There's nothing left of the brother who laughed and hugged Donnie like he'd waited a thousand years for him to walk through the door. There's just a warrior, hard as granite, patient as a glacier — and deadly as a blade in the shadows. The thought that his Leo, who still reads Space Heroes comics and starts fights on message boards about tea, could ever be this cold, makes Donnie's lungs freeze over.
"So." Leonardo measures out his words precisely, still smiling. "Have you had the dream? About the spear?"
Donnie rocks back, his throat working. It's all he can do to nod, the taste of rice and beans going rancid on his tongue. "Yeah," he says, scraping out the words by main force. Only shreds of the dream remain, but he remembers the imperative. "I have, but I don't even know what it looks like, it's just a name. We didn't start looking, there wasn't time before —"
Before the Boar came to the lair, before Slash and Karai, and what was left of Stockman, before April —
Slam the door.
"Well," says Leonardo, into the silence. "It's a fairly key part of the story, lost in translation or not. Apparently, the spear — even our story's not clear on this part — somehow has the Boar's mortal blood on it. One hit, and the Boar's killable again. For a few seconds, at least."
Outside, dark snow patters against the glass. Not snow, Donnie thinks, his hands going cold. Somewhere, out there in the dark, something is still burning, and its ashes are falling over the city. "I can see how that'd be useful," he says, holding Leonardo's gaze. "If it was real, and not just part of some myth."
"It's real. The spear. And," Leonardo pauses, clearly relishing the anticipation, so close to the Leo Donnie knows, the little shit who can't help showing off.
"And?" Donnie says, colder with every passing second.
"And, about a year ago, we found it." Leonardo folds his hands on the table. "We have the spear. That's why the Boar hasn't wiped us off the map yet. It knows what we have, and it's scared. All we need is to get close enough to use it, and it's game over."
Donnie opens his mouth, closes it, and feels his ears start to ring. Is this hope? Is this why he came all this way? To finally, finally, find an answer waiting for him?
Leonardo smiles again. "It's good you showed up now, wherever you came from," he says, reaching across the table to grip Donnie's shoulder. "We've got a plan, but we need your brain to make it work."