Elsewhen.
Putting the spear back in its box takes more effort than Donnie expects. Sure, maybe he's a little possessive over his tech, but he knows when to put the toys away. It might take a little prodding, but he does it.
This doesn't feel anything like packing up the lab for the night. The spear's tremors intensify when he pulls one hand away to flip open the box, like it's pleading with him not to let go. And to tell the truth, he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to let it out of sight for a second, let alone lock it inside musty wood and then walk away.
A flood of heat pours out of the spear and into his hand. Seems like the spear agrees with him.
The thought of the spear preferring one thing over another lets Donnie slip it back into the box and close the latches. Preference means sentience, and Donnie's not quite ready to wrap his head around the idea of a weapon with a personality. Maybe after a nap and about a gallon of coffee.
Mikey and Leo would love this. He smooths both hands over the box's lid. It's straight out of one of their weird fantasy novels from the seventies.
Thinking about his brothers stings, but all the poison is gone from the wound. He's got the spear. He's going home —
Leonardo clears his throat from the door.
— when the work is done here.
"Right." Donnie dusts his hands on his thighs as he stands, and gives Leonardo a sheepish smile. "Sorry. Got a bit distracted. It's…" He falters over his next words, not sure if he should bother trying to explain. Talking about how the spear felt in his hands would feel awful close to gloating: Look at what I can do that none of you could!
Donnie shuts his mouth and spreads his hands, where the spear's solid warmth lingers. "Sorry," he says again.
"Don't apologize." Leonardo takes off his glasses and polishes them on a scrap of cloth. "So it's the real thing?"
"The real —?" Donnie cocks his head, the warmth in his hands fading. "You know I have no basis for comparison, right? It's not like I'm an expert in magical spears."
"You're the Champion," says Leonardo, as if that's enough.
"Yeah, and it didn't exactly come with a rule book." Donnie squeezes his head in both hands, frustration welling up like blood from a cut. The spear tugs at his attention from behind, and Leonardo's milky eyes pin him in place. He's cornered.
"It felt…good," he says, when it looks like Leonardo's just fine with staring him down till he fills the silence. "Isn't that enough?"
He doesn't say, it recognized me. There's still a part of him that doesn't trust anything that feels good or right, because he knows better — he's Donnie, and it always gets taken away.
Look at what happened to —
Shut the door.
Leonardo makes a considering noise as he settles his glasses back on his face. "It'll have to be." A brittle smile pinches the corners of his mouth. "Come on, we've got a long day ahead of us." The hem of his coat whispers against the doorframe as he spins to leave — no matter the universe, all Leos love a dramatic exit — without waiting for Donnie to follow.
The door hisses closed behind him, and the lock cycles through with a gentle sigh. Even with a wall between them, the spear still plucks at the perimeter of Donnie's mind, impatient to go to work. But he keeps his eyes on Leo, and doesn't look back once.
A few grey-suited workers move through the repair bay, watching Donnie covertly as he walks by. None of them make eye contact, and that's fine with him. They've got more important things to worry about him; he and Leo leave them to their soldering irons and spools of copper wire, their tunneler and jeeps, and climb the stairs without speaking.
After two hours of pouring over old maps in bad light, the inside of Donnie's head feels like it's been rubbed with sandpaper. Not that he's going to ask for a break; he's still got the remnants of his pride, and if these brothers don't need one, he can hold on a little longer.
Careful, Donnie, that sounds a lot like you're trying to fit in.
That needs to be the absolute last thing on his mind. There's no place for him here, not now, and definitely not later, once he's struck the final blow and broken the Boar down to molecules. He'll serve his purpose, and then he'll go home. Simple as that. Trying to heal wounds that his own face keeps reopening is a waste of energy.
He gives the back of his neck a surreptitious squeeze to ease out the ever-tightening knot, but he catches Raphael's gaze as he straightens up. Raphael narrows his eye, then clears his throat.
"I dunno about you guys," he says. "But I'm beat. Let's take a few, ease out the kinks?"
Leonardo doesn't look up from the map stretched out in front of him. "We've got a lot of ground to cover," he murmurs. "It'd be more productive if we broke the back of it now."
"Yeah, but we've been at it since like, dawn," says Mike, jerking a thumb at the window. A few indifferent rays of grey light are breaking through the looming cloud cover toward the east, barely enough to qualify as light, let alone day. "Time to take a breather."
With a sigh, Leonardo waves them away. "Fine, point taken. Get some food or some sleep, and be back here in an hour." He doesn't rise as the rest of them do, even when Mike taps his heels together and snaps a salute.
Donnie lingers awkwardly at the table. He wants out of the stale, incense-laden air, but the sight of Leonardo hunched over the maps, alone, tugs at his heart. None of the brothers should be alone so close to the end.
"Hey, Donnie." Raphael claps a hand on his shoulder, and pulls him out of the room. "C'mon, take a walk with us."
Mike kicks the door closed behind them, and then sidles up to Donnie's other side. "So," he says, nudging Donnie's shoulder with his own. "What'd it feel like? You know, the sp —"
"Shut up," Raphael mutters, and picks up the pace. "Keep a lid on it for five seconds, all right?"
Without maps and battle plans to distract him, the pull of the spear is harder to ignore. His hands pulse, once, with remembered warmth, and he's tempted to excuse himself and go back to the repair bay. Just to check on it.
Then Raphael pushes open a door, and ushers Donnie inside. It's just as cramped and dark as the room Donnie slept in earlier, but there's a solid, lived-in smell here, where his room only smelled like dust and bleach. He trips over what feels like a pile of shoes two steps in, and decides hugging the wall is his best bet till the lights come on.
"Sorry about that," Raphael mutters from the doorway. "Dumbass is always leaving his stuff around. Hold on, I'll get the lights."
Mike snorts. "Thought you would've gotten him house-trained by now, seriously."
"Have you met Casey?"
Donnie smiles to himself, knowing no one will see. It's good to know this conversation survived the translation between universes, too.
His smile melts away the instant Raphael turns on the lamp, and he meets Alice's cold gaze across the cluttered room.
"Whoa — kiddo." Mike cuts a quick glance Donnie's way, then moves into the space between him and Alice. "Leonardo said you…"
"He said I freaked out and ran off, right?" Alice rubs her thumbs over her knuckles, where the skin is raw and blistered red where it isn't broken completely. "And that he'd asked Casey to make sure I wasn't off punching walls somewhere?" She holds up both hands, knuckles out. "Oops."
"You did freak out," Raphael says. "Unless you're calling Leonardo a liar —"
"Oh, relax." With a sigh, Alice drops down onto the edge of the bed. "I had a bad moment."
Mike grabs one of her wrists, waves her hand in front of her face. "You call this a bad moment? Alice, you know Leonardo's gonna blow his lid when he sees this. After the Karai thing —"
Alice lets her arm slide limply out of Mike's grip. "This doesn't even compare to the Karai thing, you know that."
Donnie stands very still against the wall, held there as much by self-control as he is by the swelling undercurrent in the room. He's hearing half the conversation, and that about three decades of history lie beneath every word spoken; staying still and keeping his mouth shut are by far his best options — for staying out of the blast radius, for piecing the story together.
Of course, that's not what happens. Alice leans around Mike's shell and gives Donnie a sharp, glittering smile.
"Let me guess" she says. "You'll just be taking the spear and going, right? Back to whatever shithole you crawled out of?"
Donnie's ready for hostility, so he doesn't flinch, but there's a stark note of something else in Alice's voice: fear.
He bites down on his first reply — I just spent the last few hours planning an assault with your uncles, do you really think I'm going anywhere? — and his second — I want the Boar dead as much as any of you, and I'll start here — and says the one thing he can, knowing he's just plunging the knife deeper.
"I'm not going anywhere till this is done."
The whole truth. No evasions. It is, after all, important to be accurate.
Alice, to Donnie's total surprise — and judging by how they rock back on their heels, Raphael and Mike's too — bursts out laughing.
"That's great," she says, still laughing. "You won't have long to wait, then. When does the suicide mission start, exactly?"
Mike grabs her shoulder and gives her a shake. "This is why Leonardo benches you, kiddo, come on."
"Can we cut the crap already?" Raphael flips his eyepatch onto his forehead, then rubs at the slack skin underneath and sighs. "It is a suicide mission, Mike. There's no way we're getting around that."
"What, you're on the crazy train now too?" Mike spits. Donnie feels himself fade out of their awareness completely. It's like lancing a wound, but the infection never ends. "It's bad enough the kiddo thinks so, but you? Come on, Raphael, you gotta know —"
"What I know," Raphael says, still rubbing his empty eye socket, "is that the Boar's gonna see us coming from miles away, and we wouldn't get through the grinders even if we still had the tank. Every street from Tenth to the lair's in the kill zone." He pushes his eyepatch back into place and gives Donnie a wistful smile, the sad twin to Leonardo's. "We're not gonna get you in twenty blocks of the Boar or Shredder, no matter what Mary Poppins here or Fearless wanna believe."
"I don't believe you," Mike says. "This is our one chance, and you're what, givin' up? What does Casey have to say?"
"Casey's on board with Raphael and the kiddo," says Casey from the door.
The past two days have been some of the most surreal and wrenching of his entire life, but Donnie's brain is stuck on the fact that Casey Jones — who has no inside voice, in any universe — managed to walk into the room without any of them noticing. He swallows his laugh in time, thankfully, because the last thing this situation needs is him coming down with a case of the giggles.
Casey edges past him with a small nod, not quite meeting his eyes, and sits down next to Alice. But it's Mike he turns to, face drawn and grey. They're all grey, Donnie realizes, because they live in a world where the fires never stop burning.
Pity so thick it nearly chokes him fills his chest, but Casey's talking, and Donnie forces himself to listen.
"You haven't been around, Mike," he says. "Bein' here, seeing what it's like — there's no way out. If we do this, we're dead, spear or not. We can't get close. Streets'll chew up anyone who tries. We've seen it," he adds in an undertone.
"That's no reason to stop tryin'!" Mike throws a betrayed look around the room. He's kind enough to include Donnie. "Guys, we got the spear. We got the Champion. We gotta try."
"No one's saying that," says Alice. She looks up from her battered knuckles. "But let's not kid ourselves. We're dead. Leonardo can talk about the work left to do, but let's face it. Maybe that's…"
Raphael finishes the sentence for her: "Maybe that's not the worst thing in the world."
Casey falls back on the unmade bed. "We know that's not the worst thing in the world."
A well-worn silence settles over the room. No one looks at each other, and Donnie's wondering if he can make a silent exit and sneak down to the repair bay when a thought strikes him. It's so simple he ignores it at first — easy to do when the room is full of exhausted, muted anger, and the spear tugs quietly at his mind — but the thought rises again, and his mouth goes dry.
"What about ignoring the streets?" he says, his heart picking up speed. Everyone turns in unison to look at him, and all of them look like they'd forgotten he existed. That's fine. He's far past being offended, there's a plan bubbling at the back of his head and even the song of the spear is fading away.
There are subway maps in the piles in Leonardo's room, and there's a half-dead tunneler in the repair bay. Oh, how did he miss this before? Fifteen years of never seeing the sun while they memorized every inch of the sewers —
"What if," he says, and pauses to relish the moment when his plan solidifies. "What if we went under?"
"The subways," Leonardo says, for the second time.
Donnie pushes down on his impatience and nods. "Well, not exactly the subways. What I'm suggesting is that we use them as guidelines, and use the tunneler to go beneath them. It's not elegant, but —"
"We haven't accessed the subways in decades," Leonardo says, thoughtfully, as if Donnie hadn't spoken. "Not since —" He lifts one hand palm-up. "You realize most of them have collapsed?" he asks.
As if that wasn't something Donnie thought of in the first thirty seconds of forming his plan. "That's a military-grade tunneler you've got in the basement. It's built for boring holes through mountains, and for surviving anything it finds along the way. We're talking radiation shielding, ground-penetrating radar, the works. It can handle anything short of total infrastructure collapse — and since you've still got buildings standing, I assume that hasn't happened yet."
Everyone's looking at him, their expressions ranging from rueful amusement to seasick. Donnie coughs, then shuffles his feet. "Sorry," he says. "Get me started, and I just can't stop."
"I think I'm gonna be sick," Mike announces. "Jeez, that's creepy." He rubs the stump of his arm. "It's just like —"
"We know," says Leonardo. He takes off his glasses, sets them to one side on the table. Instead of polishing them, he folds his hands and stares at Donnie for a long time. "It really is extraordinary," he murmurs. "You could be him, give or take a few years."
Donnie braces himself for Alice to cut in with Like hell he could be, but when he chances a look in her direction, she's folded herself against the wall next to the window. She doesn't acknowledge him at all.
"At any rate," Leonardo goes on, the thoughtful slope of his voice disappearing and taking on a hard strategist's edge, "travel underground poses its own sets of challenges. Yes, we have the tunneler, but it hasn't been operational in years."
"What's wrong with it?" Donnie asks, then shakes his head. "No, wait, it's the Goliath model, right? Probably bad fuel injectors. That'll take me an hour to bypass."
Leonardo smiles coldly. He's reassessing Donnie, even though his pale eyes give nothing away. "You're selling yourself short," he says.
"Call it a liberal estimate," Donnie replies, then pushes ahead before anyone else can jump in. This conversation's already taken twice as long as it needs to; he has a plan, and they need to let him get to work. "Anyways, using the subway map to guide us once we're underground — we don't have to follow it exactly, but it'll give us alternate routes if we get blocked — we make our way to the spire." He crouches next to the table and traces the route. "The tunneler can carry four people. Five, if we're okay with not having any elbow room."
"Seven," says Casey. He shrugs and scratches his chin when Donnie looks his way. "What? You think we're gonna let you do this alone? All or nothin', Don."
"It's a solid plan," Leonardo says, ignoring everyone but Donnie. Under the weight of his stare, Donnie feels the rest of the room fall away, until it's just Leonardo's weary face and blank eyes filling his head. Even the pull of the spear fades to a slight tug. "Right up until you consider the Boar's defenses." He taps a fingertip on the map, right along the line Alice pointed out hours before.
Meat grinder, Donnie thinks, his tongue dry as dust.
"We don't know if they stretch below-ground." Leonardo taps the map again. "We haven't had the manpower to use on recon missions. And with the obvious damage to the infrastructure —" He gives Donnie another chilly smile. "I decided not to risk it."
Alice exhales sharply. An entire lifetime of arguments is captured in the sound, like flies in amber.
Donnie shudders at the metaphor. A bit too close to home.
"But what I do know is that the defenses go down for a few minutes after they're…activated." Leonardo lifts his chin when he's done speaking, and Donnie doesn't think he imagines seeing Leonardo's shoulders stiffen, like he's waiting for a blow. He doesn't have to wait long.
"They what?" Alice shouts from the window. "You smug asshole, how long have you been sitting on that?"
"Why the hell didn't you say so before?" Raphael's face is grey, his mouth drooping in a slack, betrayed o. He doesn't shout, but Donnie still hears him clearly over the others' yelling and his pulse roaring in his ears.
"It wasn't pertinent," Leonardo says, unruffled on the surface. Donnie's close enough to see the way his hands tighten on the edge of the table.
"Not…pertinent?" he manages, once the first roar has died down, and everyone's glaring at Leonardo instead of him. "That's a game-changer. That's — that's the definition of pertinent. Why would you sit on that?" He can't keep the accusation out of his voice. If he'd known that going in —
"No." Leonardo hits the table with his fist, once. Everyone jumps. His voice doesn't change a decibel. "The game-changer is the spear. Now we have it. Now we have you." He lifts his fist, and jabs one finger toward Donnie's face. "Everything's different now."
The spear, its pull strong enough to bend light. It hasn't leveled the playing field, but if they can get close, they have a shot. With luck, that's all they'll need. Donnie knows it's certainly all they'll get.
Luck, though — since when has he ever had that?
I had something better, he thinks, staring down at his hands. I had my family. I had —
He shuts the door, gently.
"The only problem," he says a moment later, "is the activation." He lifts his head, feels every muscle in his neck aching as he does, and makes sure to meet everyone's eyes. "Someone's going to have to set it off."
Leonardo nods, like Donnie's just announced they need oxygen to breathe: affirming, but not particularly surprised. "I think you'll find we won't lack for volunteers," he says.
Donnie's stomach drops. "You're kidding."
"No, I'm not." Leonardo's sweet smile ghosts across his face. "I overheard what you all were talking about. Casey forgot to close the door."
"Dammit, Case," grumbles Raph. Mike and Alice grin, and try to hide it.
"But you're not wrong," Leonardo goes on. "It was always going to be a suicide mission. I just wanted…to hold off, as long as I could. Hope can be a powerful weapon."
Donnie says, "Or poison," before he can stop himself, and the bitterness in his voice shocks him. Shocks everyone in the room, by the looks of it. Even Alice is looking at him with something close to sympathy.
Leonardo recovers first, and nods. He runs his hands over his face, his breath shuddering out of him. "You're right. It is poison. There's nothing left to save. I waited too long, I —"
"No." Donnie's not going to let them fall apart now, not when they're so close. Let them think of this as one more impossible battle, the kind they faced day after day when they were too young to know they should listen to the odds. "You're all still here. The people downstairs — there's always something. Always someone." He bites the inside of his cheek till he tastes blood, clenches his hands until the little bones groan. "I promise, we can do this."
He looks around at everyone again, at their still, expectant faces. The spear pulls at his mind again, almost the last warmth left in the world, and he damns himself with the same old promise.
"I can fix this. We can win."
At the window, Alice smiles.
Behind April, the torch gutters and throws the other April into uneasy shadow: black pits for eyes, hollow cheeks. She's missing one earlobe, and what April can see of her neck is covered in swirling, thick scars.
"I asked you a question," says her double. She tilts her head so the shadows hide her scars and the ragged leftovers of her ear, and narrows her eyes. "You can talk, right? When you're not body-slamming people."
"Yeah, I can talk," April shoots back. She crouches down to grab the torch, happy for a reason to put herself in shadow. There's no telling what her face is giving away.
"Are you going to answer?" Her double hisses and clutches at her side. She leans against the wall and slowly slips to the floor, cradling her ribs. "God, what did you do to me? I feel like I just got hit by a train."
"Sorry," April says, almost sincerely. "You threw a shuriken at me."
"That doesn't seem to have bothered you too much." Her double shrugs. The movement turns her shadow into a rolling tangle thrown high on the tunnel wall. "Did you see where it went? I don't have that many left."
April hesitates. You don't just hand over weapons till you're sure they're not going to be used against you, not even to someone who's wearing the same face.
Her double smiles. "Let me guess," she says, hissing again as she stretches her legs out in front of her. "You're thinking about how you don't want to give a potential enemy something they can use. Right?"
"Something like that," April murmurs. She can afford a little honesty. The only other living thing in this tunnel is trying to catch her breath two feet away.
"I'd say I don't blame you, but I really want that shuriken." There's anxious need written all over the other April's face; under the roil of her own emotions, April feels a surge of want. "Did you see where it went?"
"Somewhere over there." April points with the torch. "I'll hold the light," she offers, when her double gives her a baleful look and heaves to her feet.
"Wow, thanks," she says, and limps down the tunnel. April inches along behind her, the torch and her raised hand held between them. Finally, the other April stoops, groaning, and lifts something off the ground. "Got it. Looks like it survived whatever you did, thank God — and don't think I've forgotten you haven't answered my question." She turns around, grey-skinned in the torchlight, with her eyes gleaming sharply in a hard, lined face.
I hope I never look like that, April thinks, and hates herself for it.
"What the hell are you?" The other April's voice is cracked and raspy from disuse, but there's no mistaking the tone, not when April's used it herself so many times over the years: no more evasions.
April could take her double; she's got the torch, and she's got power singing under her skin, enough to smash the tunnel into dust if she wanted. What makes her answer is the face staring back at her, defeated and furious and still proud. Under the age and the suspicion, there's loneliness, an unspeakable ocean of it.
"April O'Neil." She lowers the torch so the light isn't shining into her double's eyes. "Born in New York, raised in New York, and —" She licks her lips, the power surging through her. "And turned into a science experiment in New York. What about you?"
The other April smiles. "You too?" When April nods, her double's smile widens, but her eyes are steel-sharp above it. "The goddamn Kraang. What a bunch of assholes."
There's nothing to say to that, so April just nods again. Nods and smiles, because it's a perverse relief to know someone else finally understands.
"It seems like I missed out on a few upgrades," the other April goes on, her eyes focusing thoughtfully over April's shoulder. "That…whatever you did, I can't do that."
"Yeah, it's not exactly standard."
"No?" the other April prompts. She shrugs when April shakes her head. "All right, I won't push. Your turn."
Where are the others and what are you doing down here are the first two questions that come to mind, but while they're fighting for dominance, what April actually asks is "What do you want me to call you? Because the other April's going to get old, really fast."
Her double snorts, then clutches her side again. "Who says I'm the other April?" she asks. "Well, I guess I'm not really in a position to argue, am I? Call me…O'Neil."
They walk in a not-quite-friendly silence until O'Neil clears her throat.
"So, whatever you do," she says. "Do they come with, like, healing powers? I know, it's stupid," she adds, when April gives her a surprised look. "I figured I'd ask, because this hurts like hell." She waves at her side with a sheepish smile.
"No," April admits. "It —" She cuts herself off before she can say It only works that way for me, and covers with a sigh. "It's pretty much what you just saw," she says instead.
Always hold something back, comes Leo's voice. Your allies will forgive you. Never let down your guard, except with family. The family you choose.
Her eyes sting. The walls around her are so familiar she could navigate by the echoes of her footsteps, but there's nothing in her head, not even a whisper, of her family. Just an old woman wearing her face, her mind almost as shrouded as April's own. All April gets from her are ripples of pain from what must be two bruised or broken ribs, and a faint pulse of suspicion. Everything else is hidden behind gauzy layers of subtle misdirection: don't look, there's nothing here.
April wouldn't mind learning that trick herself, but asking means admitting she's poking around. She's sure O'Neil's tried the same thing, but bringing it out into the open seems…rude. It's ridiculous to think about manners when they're stuck in the dark together, but April keeps her mouth shut, and her scans passive.
O'Neil snorts again. "Well, won't be the first time I've had to deal with a couple broken ribs."
"Sorry about that," April says, staring at the floor in sudden awkwardness. "I wish —"
"It's not going to kill me." O'Neil barks a laugh, then coughs wetly. "If it does, I'd thank you."
The abrupt bitterness in O'Neil's voice slants April off-guard. She looks up, and finds O'Neil grinning at her, ten years dropping off her face as she does.
"You heard me," O'Neil says. "I'd thank you."
April's not squeamish when it comes to death — it'd be a bit hypocritical considering how she spends her time — but something in the light way O'Neil tosses off the words makes her tongue shrivel. Maybe that's how O'Neil wants it, because they go back to walking in silence, with the brittle snaps of the torch the only noise.
It's easy to lose track of time, surrounded by so much quiet. It's easy to lose yourself, let all thoughts slip away until your mind's smooth as glass. April doesn't realize O'Neil's out of sight until a cough breaks her out of her quasi-trance. She turns around to find O'Neil leaning against the wall, holding her side.
"Sorry," she says. "Just need a minute to catch my breath."
"Is there anything I can do?" April asks, even though she knows there won't be. "Do you have supplies anywhere? Something to…"
The wry, almost pitying look O'Neil gives her makes April shut her mouth with a click. "Where do you think I'd keep supplies down here?" O'Neil asks.
"The lair's not far, right?" April says, embarrassed pride making her voice stiff. God, she hates when people give her that look. "Maybe there's something there we can use."
O'Neil shakes her head, all wryness gone. "How far do you think we are from the lair?"
"I don't know — if I had to guess, half a mile, tops?" April tries to keep her frustration tamped down, even though she knows she's being led, and the hairs on the back of her neck are standing up.
"Which way?"
"The way we were — oh my God, just come out and say it," April snaps, gripping the torch till her knuckles ache.
O'Neil stands up, wheezing on every exhale. "You could walk that way for forty miles, and you wouldn't be any closer to the lair than you are now," she says. "No matter how far you walk, you're never going to get there. But the lair doesn't matter. You don't want to go there."
"Why not?" April's heart stutters against her ribs. "The others —"
"The others," O'Neil says, her voice rising, "are gone. Along with the lair, and New York." She coughs again, then wipes her mouth on her sleeve. "The Boar took it all," she adds, her voice dropping to a rough whisper, shaded with years of regret and grief that never mellowed. In the uneven light of the torch, she looks like an animal, all desperate eyes and old fury. "It threw me in a cage, then it wouldn't even let me die. It put me here. I can't get out." O'Neil bares her teeth. "So don't worry about what you did to me. The Boar's not going to let me die. Not while it can still have some fun."
"It's here?" April hates herself for sounding so weak, but there's no stopping the slow crawl of dread down her spine. Her hands still hold the echo of the Boar's perfect, waxy skin, in the moment its face broke under her fingers.
It said, I have killed you twice, and smiled.
"Yeah," says O'Neil. "So believe me, there's no point in trying to get home. I've tried." She lifts her eyes to the ceiling. "No one's coming for us."
April draws a slow breath, then reaches out — not for O'Neil's mind, but for the bright glimmer still shining in the back of her head. It's distant, like seeing the Sun from Mars, but she'd know its constant warmth from any distance.
Donnie, she thinks, eyes prickling again, and reaches.
For a long moment, there's nothing. No hope, no steady brilliance, just a vast and lonely gap. She feels O'Neil's eyes on her, then reaches a little farther, straining at the furthest limits of her powers. She shoves her awareness in one last breathless push, out into the silent nothing beyond her mind.
There — a momentary brightness, someone gasping awake, and then a shock of recognition before April's control snaps and she sinks back into herself.
April? comes Donnie's voice, a galaxy away.
She falls against the wall, stars bursting behind her eyes, struggling for breath — but smiling. When she manages to open her eyes, O'Neil is staring at her, open envy and a faint, bewildered hope on her face.
"What did you just do?" she asks. "What did you —"
"You're not alone," April says, still smiling. She's not sure she could stop if she had to. Donnie's mind — she felt it, and she heard him, and it doesn't matter how far away he is, she'll get there.
Because she has a direction.
"Come on." April pushes herself off the wall, lifting the torch high. "I know where he is."
O'Neil makes a quiet, heart-hungry noise, and follows.
The familiar press of Donnie's mind against April's fades in and out, like a radio station in the hill towns near the farm. She never completely loses it, but each time it drops out, she has to stop the headlong rush through the tunnels, and wait, breathing hard, to find him again.
O'Neil never complains. She doesn't say anything at all, but she watches April with eyes hooded and impenetrable in the torchlight.
"Sorry," April wheezes, as she stops mid-step for the sixth time. "It's hard to — keep track —" She gives up on finishing the sentence, and focuses on taking long, smooth breaths while she pushes her mind out, and out, into the stillness. The power running through her nerves seems to have taken care of any possible pain, though April knows not to be over-confident. Just because something doesn't hurt now doesn't mean nothing's wrong, or won't be in the near future.
Conserve resources, especially finite ones, says Master Splinter's voice. Your body may be your most versatile tool, but it also your most finite. You only get one.
"Thanks, Sensei," she says under her breath, and opens her eyes. O'Neil's leaning against the wall, breathing hard with her eyes squeezed shut and one hand braced against her side. April feels a shaft of guilt; if she's feeling this powerful, like she could run for days, then it's at O'Neil's expense.
"Do you need a break?" she asks. "We can wait a bit, let you get your breath back."
O'Neil shakes her head and pushes off the wall. April knows the stubborn angle of her — their — jaw. The answer's still going to be no in ten minutes, or ten years.
"We need to keep going." O'Neil nods down the tunnel, in the direction they were heading before the touch of Donnie's mind faded. "Can't stop. If he's here, the Boar will know. We have to —" She coughs, and ends up gasping for air before she can finish. April reaches out to steady O'Neil, driven by her guilt, but O'Neil pushes her away. Her bare hand brushes April's forearm, and the dry rasp of her rough palm quietly disgusts April.
"Fine," she says, switching the torch from one hand to the other. "Then let's get moving." She turns around, ready to start their steady jog again, but a thick, muffling blanket wraps itself around her senses, and the tiny light of Donnie's mind goes out.
"Shit!" she hisses. She squeezes her eyes closed, and tries to send her awareness back the way they came. Her mind strikes a sheer wall, and April reels back before trying again. Nothing — just the wall, featureless, blocking her from every angle.
"I've lost him," she says, keeping her eyes shut. The last thing she needs is to see O'Neil's face right now, a mirror of her own loss. "I can't —"
"No," moans O'Neil. The grief and the terrible hunger in her voice fill the tunnel. "We were so close — oh, God, Donnie. No, we have to keep trying, come on —" She grabs April's arm, before April can pull back, and the rasp of her skin makes April shudder. "Let's go!" says O'Neil, not noticing or caring about April's reaction, and pulls her back the way they came.
They haven't run fifty feet before pain shears through April's head. She stumbles, drops the torch, and falls against the wall with both hands pressed against her temples.
April knows when she hit the ground, but her nerves are too busy processing the explosion inside her head to register any more pain. She tries to scream, but she's blind and voiceless, writhing in agony on the clammy ground.
She knows the pain's started to fade by the sound of O'Neil calling her name. After that, other sensations start to assert themselves — the cold stones, the heat of the torch flickering against her face, something warm and wet under her nose and on her neck. She opens her eyes, and shuts them again when the torchlight makes fresh pain burst behind her eyes.
"What the hell?" says O'Neil. Her rough hand prods at April's arm and shoulder; April pulls away from the touch, more vague disgust welling up, and forces her eyes open. O'Neil sighs, then sits back on her haunches. "You okay?" she asks.
April scrubs her hand under her nose, not surprised at all when it comes away bloody. "Not sure," she croaks, around the sour-copper taste dripping down her throat and her pounding her.
"What just happened?" O'Neil leans close, one hand held out as she picks up the torch with the other, but April inches away, sitting up to cradle her head in both hands.
Donnie's steady brightness is gone, wiped clean out of her skull, like it had never existed to begin with. She pushes, her stomach twisting as she searches for the light. Her mind hits the sheer wall, but an instant later, a dim flash of pain fills her head.
Come on, Donnie, she thinks, where are you?
Nothing. Just the pain, as she throws herself against the walls closing her in. It leaks out of her head, till her shoulder and thigh throb, in time with the old clawed scars on her back. Every scar on her body's waking up, wretched and bright on the dark canvas of her body.
And when she pushes forward, the pain grows.
The body knows when the mind does not, she thinks. Wait, where have I heard that before?
"What is it?" says O'Neil, as April sits up straight and opens her eyes. "Did you get it back? Did you find him?"
April shakes her head, gritting her teeth as she tests the direction again. The walls slip, and she passes beyond them, her mind inching forward as the pain tries to scatter her concentration.
"The body knows," she murmurs, and pushes to her feet. "Come on, I —" She braces her hand against the wall to keep herself upright as vertigo tilts the world around her, and then takes a few tentative steps forward. "It's this way."
"What is? Donnie?" O'Neil's breath is hot on the back of her neck. "Did you find him?"
"No, I didn't — just — let me —" April laughs, even as her stomach churns. God, it hurts, but she can trust that. The body knows. It does hurt, it will hurt, but it will pass in time. The Bull promised her that much. She just has to keep moving forward.
Inch by inch, April creeps through the tunnels, with O'Neil at her heels. Every twenty steps or so, she has to stop and lean against the wall till the worst of the pain crests and passes, then she keeps creeping, breathing in ragged gulps and trying to convince herself that she's not slowly bleeding to death. It's just remembered pain, even if her nerves can't tell the difference.
"Are we getting close?" O'Neil whispers.
"I don't know," April says, and groans. Her legs are shaking and she feels the first hints of a fever coming on. It will pass, it will pass, she tells herself, and takes another step. And another.
And the pain shatters, the fragile pieces blowing away like sand in the wind. April nearly topples over, light-headed at the loss, and forces herself to stand up straight.
The end of the tunnel glows, a weak suggestion of light. And in her head — Donnie.
"There," April says, and doesn't wait for O'Neil before she sprints ahead. Somewhere in that light is Donnie — her Donnie, O'Neil's Donnie, it doesn't matter which, the mind is the same and that mind is what April needs to put this all together — and there's no more point in waiting. She breathes a thanks to the Bull as she runs, for the pain leading her when her own powers couldn't, and can't help a grin as she passes into the sweet, golden warmth.
She's not grinning by the time O'Neil catches up, holding her side and panting. No, she's staring straight ahead, blinking at the light sheeting down through a wrought-iron grate.
"Donnie?" O'Neil calls, swinging around. "Donnie, God, Donnie, are you here?"
"He's not," April murmurs, through numb lips. A bit premature with that gratitude, she thinks. Not quite premature, she corrects a moment later, just inaccurately applied.
O'Neil swears, too soft to make out, then hisses through her teeth as she turns and faces the same direction. April ignores her in favor of taking a step toward the grate, one hand held tentatively out to brush the rusted edges. A shock of pain rewards her, and she smiles. The expression feels cold on her face — more than that, it feels vicious. Triumphant.
"You did it," whispers O'Neil, her heavy hand falling on April's shoulder and squeezing.
Suspended in a pillar of light, barely two feet away, is a wooden spear, the metal head clotted with dark, ancient blood.