A/N: Specific warnings for this chapter include: graphic depictions of violence, unreality, and minor character death.
All Leo wants is another hour of sleep. He'll settle for another five minutes, but it's obvious he won't even get that much, not with Mikey tossing in his bedroll and Raph yelling on the other side of the roof. Not to mention whatever's creaking overhead.
"Just five more minutes," he whispers. "That's all I want."
The creaking catches his ear again, and through the syrup-sticky layers of sleep, Leo feels the first flare of alarm.
When he finally gets his eyes open, all he sees are two people beating the hell out of each other twenty feet away. One is a mountain, slow to turn but still deadly, and the other is —
Leo would know Raph anywhere.
Raph's fighting, alone, and something's still creaking overhead. Leo tears his eyes away from Raph as he untangles himself from his bedroll — too slow, he's so tired, he can't move as fast as he needs to — and watches the closest support strut of the water tower give out completely. Half the water tower drops three feet, thousands of gallons of water shift, and the creaking turns into a scream as the wood begins to shatter.
"Leo! Mikey!" Raph screams. The massive form laughs, nasty as steel wool on skin, and swipes Raph across the back of the head while his attention's divided.
Slash, Leo thinks, the sour taste doubling. That's all he gives himself time to think; he dives low and rolls himself and Mikey out of the way as half a block's water supply floods the rooftop. He feels Mikey's startled inhale when the water hits them, and claps his hand over Mikey's mouth.
"Hold your breath!" he yells in Mikey's ear, hoping Mikey's awake enough to understand — and then the water hits them, cold enough to freeze the air in their lungs, strong enough to wash them to the edge of the roof and pin them there.
Mikey thrashes, but Leo keeps his arms locked around Mikey's shoulders till the water pulls back and leaves them gasping for air. When Leo opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is the fine layer of gravel plastered to Mikey's skin.
At least he's awake. Leo heaves to his feet, shivering and shaking water out of his nose and eyes, and tries to find Raph past the wreckage of the water tower. A pile of jagged wood blocks half his view of the roof.
Just his view, not his hearing. The air swells with snarls and Slash's low, ugly laughter, the desperate edge to Raph's breath that means he's getting winded and knows it.
Leo reaches back for Mikey without looking and drags him forward at a run. A faint voice in the back of his head mourns the loss of all their supplies, but at least they slept with their weapons on. Food, bandages, extra blankets — they can find more. Provided they survive the next five minutes.
He can't deny how much he wanted this moment; he hated scuttling like an insect through the city. Ugly as this is — and Leo knows it's only going to get uglier — it means an ending.
"Let's make it a good one!" he yells, without knowing he's doing it until Mikey shouts a wordless agreement and surges past him, nunchuks white blurs in the air.
Slash turns his head and opens his mouth wide in a silent laugh. "Mikey!" he bellows. "Good to see you, little guy! Didn't get a chance to catch up last t—"
Mikey's in midair when Slash gets to guy, and slams feet-first into Slash's chest before he can finish the sentence. Slash stumbles back two steps but he comes up swinging, a snarl boiling out of his mouth as he claws after Mikey.
But Mikey's not there; he spins away, under the arcs of Slash's thick arms and toward Raph, who's doubled over and clutching the back of his head.
Leo was merciful before, because he remembered how much Spike meant to Raph, even if nothing of Spike remains, and because he had the choice of killing Slash or keeping his family alive — and he will always, always choose the latter.
Tonight, he doesn't have to choose.
"Hey, Fearless," Slash purrs, dropping into a crouch with his head between his shoulders. "Left me a nasty scar not too long ago. Seems like it's time I returned the favor."
Leo tilts his head to the side. Somewhere close by, someone's weeping, but he shuts his heart against it, and lets his third lid slide over his eyes. Let there be no mistake; he's going to end Slash tonight. He unsheathes his katana, relishing the ring of steel, and bows his head.
Slash roars till the rooftop shakes, and rushes Leo — but Raph bodyslams him from the left, and he and Slash smash through the ledge, and fall out of sight.
Mikey moves a half-second faster than Leo, silent and swift as an arrow. He vaults off the roof, leaving Leo alone with icy water splashing against his ankles. It shouldn't have been like this; he would've made it clean, taken it out of Raph's hands once and for all —
Forget it. Move. Adapt. Your brothers need you.
The drop's three stories down, and Leo feels every inch in his gut as he plummets, exchanging grace and silence for speed. It's not far to jump when you've spent half your life jumping off skyscrapers for fun, but it is a very, very long way to fall.
A fall started everything: April falling, Donnie reaching. Three stories down.
He hits the ground, knees bent, and rolls to a stop ten feet from where Slash is trying to slam Mikey and Raph through the pavement. Slash's skin is softest at the bridge and elbow, under the jaw and beneath the eye; Leo aims a shuriken at each place as he runs. None of them miss, and Slash's grip loosens long enough for Mikey and Raph to break free. Their shells are dusty and the dry outer edges are riddled with cracks, but none of the cracks have traveled deep enough to worry Leo. Not yet, at least.
"On me!" he yells, while Slash is howling and trying to pull the shuriken from under his eye. "Let's go, let's move!"
A wave of force blows all three of them back. Leo rides the silent concussion with his mouth open in a scream no one can hear; his ears throb with the pressure, and he can't breathe, not till he hits a telephone pole and drops to the sidewalk, all the strength leached out of his body.
When sound seeps back into the world, Leo hears a dozen voices screaming, and the rattling of metal bars.
"Mikey?" he grates out, casting around for anything familiar. "Raph?" His katana lie a few feet away, half-buried in a pile of debris — the entire street's dug up, with chunks of asphalt littering the stoops and sidewalks all around him. He sees Mikey sitting up, a hand clamped to his forehead, and Raph just beyond Mikey, shoving a piece of street the size of a couch cushion off his legs.
They're alive, Leo thinks, shaky with relief. There's no time for gratitude; Slash hulks toward them, blood pouring fresh from the raw wound under his eye, and with all his teeth bared.
"You wrecked my face," Slash grunts. "Gonna make you pay for that, Fearless. Gonna take both your eyes. Gonna —"
"Leave them," says a sweet, musical voice. "My pet, my darling one, leave them, leave them and come share with me. Your face will heal, and there will be time for them later, they will not be leaving now. Will they?"
Before he looks up, Leo steels himself to meet the Boar's beetle-black gaze. He remembers the smiling mouth, just a fraction too wide, the fine layer of madness under its features. Leo's ready for all of it by the time he lifts his head, but the Boar's shining, unliving perfection is gone. A web of cracks have shattered its face, and now its nose lists to one side and its smile drifts up through the honey-slow leak of fluid from its eyes. Sheafs of hair unravel from its scalp as he watches, to fall in a soft pile at its feet.
April, he thinks, what did you do?
"Hello, Leonardo," says the Boar. "So long, and now you have come to play. But first, first I must feed. You interrupted my dinner, my silly, sweet boy, and now you must watch."
One white hand strokes Karai's blank face. Are those claw marks around Karai's eye? Leo tries — and fails — to scrape up a handful of pity for her.
"Leo —" says Raph. He shoves to his feet, groaning, but a twitch of the Boar's fingers sends him back to his knees.
"Stay down," says the Boar, a sharp edge creeping into its voice for the first time. "I will not tell you again."
Raph makes a strangled noise, but Mikey crawls to his side, whispering something Leo can't make out, and he stays down.
"Now," says the Boar, too much delight in its voice for Leo to bear. "Come here, my pet, my lovely Slash, and choose. What shall the meal be tonight? What shall we —"
An anguished scream cuts off its words. Leo's close enough to see the cracked lines of its face twist in disgust, and then it shifts to one side. Behind it is a cage, and dim, pale figures huddle close together in it, shrinking away as the Boar reaches one hand in to stroke someone's arm.
There are darker places than dread or fear, places that have no name. Leo finds one of them as he watches Slash wrench open the door. He drags a man out by his hair, clamps a hand over the man's face as he screams, and then holds the struggling human up for the Boar's inspection.
"Oh." The Boar sighs, dreamy pleasure thickening its voice. "Yes, my pet, my good one, this is as fine a morsel as I dreamed, yes, good, good."
Its tongue rolls out of its mouth. A scream builds in Leo's chest, and fades away, useless.
But something in him snaps, and he's on his feet, grabbing his katana, sure of nothing but getting between the Boar and the terrified, weeping man — and of the tanto under his wraps.
Slash is drooling.
The Boar tilts back its head, teeth gleaming — and its teeth go all the way down, into a black and hollow throat. It doesn't see Leo coming, doesn't seem to hear Mikey and Raph calling his name, and doesn't see Karai meet Leo's eyes, and flinch as she does.
She moves so slightly Leo thinks he's imagined it, just a twitch of her arm and then a step forward, not breaking his gaze once.
The Boar screams and drops the man as patches of blood spring up on its white, white robe.
"You little —" it shrieks, but Karai is already out of reach. She glances back at Leo once, as she throws the cage door wide.
"Karai," he says, smelling lilies as she runs past him, holding her stomach. "You —"
"It wasn't," she snarls, before she disappears into an alley, "for you."
Of course not; nothing between them has ever been for him. Why would that change now? But the door to the cage is open, people tangling in each other as they try to shove their way free, and the Boar is clawing at its bloodstained robes, too occupied by the damage Karai caused to chase any of its prey down. Even Slash is too shocked to do more than watch Karai's slender shape fade away.
The crowded faces blur together as they race past Leo. Fear twists them out of true, leaves their features nothing more than dark smears where their eyes and mouths should be, but each one coalesces briefly as they take him in. He gets to see sick relief evaporate when they meet his eyes, he gets to hear them scream. He gets to smell the thick welter of their fear as it rises off their skin, and he watches one mouth after another shape the same word: monsters.
Stay still, don't be a threat, don't move, he tells himself — but in the end, he's just another unfamiliar shape, with a blade in his hand. They're right to run.
Slash shakes off his shock first; he makes a playful grab at a dark-haired woman as she limps past. His heart's not really in it — Leo knows he would have gutted her if he really wanted to make an impression — but her terrified scream and someone's answering cry from one of the apartment buildings shatters Leo's paralysis. He lunges forward, clumsy, and puts himself between Slash and the woman, just before Slash's next blow falls.
A massive fist collides with his shell. It would have pulped a normal spine — score one in the it's good to be a mutant column — but Leo's on his feet and facing Slash before his brain registers the pain. The woman slumps on the ground, clutching her arm and weeping in a language Leo doesn't recognize. It's just nonsense, gibberish streaming through his head and back out without leaving anything to mark its passage. All that matters is ruining the grey-green face in front of him.
Raph blows Leo's plan apart in a heartbeat. Leo doesn't even sense him coming until Raph fills his vision, fists blurring as they batter down on both sides of Slash's head. There's a dull crack, muffled by a few layers of skin and muscles, and then Slash makes a soft, liquid noise of surprise. The bottom half of his jaw swings loose; above it, his eyes are glassy and bemused.
"Whaaaoooooh?" Slash slurs, blood and saliva dripping out of his mouth in equal measure. "Whaaaa — whaaaaaa —"
Raph yells as he leaps, but the Boar's shriek drowns out whatever he's saying. The his fists come down like hammers on either side of Slash's head, and two more muffled cracks split the air as Slash's shoulders disintegrate under the impact.
The air leaks out of Slash in a gauzy little hiss, and he reels from side to side before collapsing on his belly.
Leo stares at the body — because that's what it is now, or soon will be, just a pile of flesh and bone without anything powering it — and then looks up at Raph. His brother uncurls his fists slowly, breathing slowly. Somewhere behind Leo, Mikey drags the woman to the sidewalk and leaves her propped against a mailbox. When he comes back to Raph's side, a silent question flashes between them: how did that happen?
Voices swell the air around them; doors and windows slam open in every building on the street. For a handful of seconds, Leo's outside his body, watching from one of the rooftops as three monsters loom over a woman in shredded clothes. There are sirens, in the distance. Stay out of sight is still his first commandment — but he keeps his feet planted on the road. This is where they make their stand.
Let the city watch.
"You little beasts," the Boar hisses. It rises off the sidewalk, bowed at the waist, spitting with every word. The long bloody rags of its robe flicker like flames, and a bitter, wretched heat roils out of its mouth. "Filthy little beasts, you play at war like children and you think it has meaning, you think you matter." The hairline cracks in its face split wide, and a frantic web of light, sickly fireflies flickering in the empty space within, meets Leo's eyes. "You mean nothing!" it screams, the long march of teeth down its throat opening as its jaw unhinges. Someone bursts into tears nearby, but Leo can't tear his eyes away from the Boar as it straightens up, and throws its arms wide.
"Let me show you war," it says, its own teeth tearing its lips to rags as it speaks.
Leo takes a reflexive step back, spreading his own arms in front of Mikey and Raph, ready to take the hit — but the hit never comes. The Boar roars, its jaw fracturing its face straight back to its ears, then plunges its hands into the street.
The ground ripples outward from where the Boar's hands are buried to the elbows in the asphalt, sending up billows of dust and cracking the sidewalks straight through. These are old buildings, thrown together when New York outgrew neighborhoods daily, and they don't stand a chance as the Boar keeps roaring, and the shockwaves keep coming. One by one they fall into each other like drunks on their way home, support beams snapping like toothpicks and windows shattering, but nothing — not even the Boar's unending roar — can drown out the screams of the people trapped inside.
Block by block, the city crumbles.
Elsewhen.
When Donnie opens up the tunneler's engine, he finds not only are the fuel injectors totally shot, but the coolant system is leaking in two separate places. On a good day, with all the right equipment, he could rebuild both systems in a few hours, and increase fuel efficiency by at least thirteen percent. He's got all the right equipment — the brothers have a hoard of military-grade spare parts and tools that made his mouth go dry when he laid eyes on it — but there's no time for improvements. This is battlefield surgery, where speed matters a few orders of magnitude more than finesse.
It's not like it has to do anything besides get us there, Donnie tells himself, digging a bottle of industrial sealant out of the toolbox at his side. One way trip, remember?
As far as defense mechanisms go, he could do a lot worse than cheerful fatalism. And focusing his attention on the microcosm of repairs makes it easy to push the spear's tug to the back of his head. This is where he needs to be. The time for the spear will come.
Turns out planning for an attack against an eldritch abomination's lair is pretty much the same as planning an attack against anything else: he still has to wait for the sealant to dry, and he still has trouble finding the right socket for his wrench. He could be at home, getting ready to go after the Kraang or the Foot, with his own brothers getting ready a few feet away.
Here, Leonardo's asking people to be torn apart to give them time to get to the Boar, and he's a reminder of everything this world has lost.
He'll stick with cheerful fatalism, thanks.
Besides, focusing on the meticulous rituals of diagnosis and repair means he can ignore what's going on outside the tunneler's walls. If he stops to listen, he can just make out the nearly-subliminal hum of activity in the rest of the bay, but nothing like words or individual voices. It's better this way; if he knew who was nearby, or whose shout cracks through the quiet buzz, he'd wonder if they were one of Leonardo's volunteers, or one of the brothers, or Alice.
He almost expected Alice to stop by, just to make sure she got her parting shot in, but she stayed with Leonardo when he left for the repair bay, and he hasn't seen her since. He's almost certain that's a good thing — neither of them need distractions this late in the game, but he could be a punching bag for a little while, if she needs one. Master Splinter always said to beware what you took into battle; any chink in your armor could let in a killing blow. If she's got something to say, better she spits it out now.
Great advice. Too bad he's not following it himself. Just look at everything he's carrying in with him: there's the usual guilt, the whispers of What else could I have done and What have I missed, the homesickness that threatens to crush his chest if he doesn't keep stamping it down, the resigned anger over being expected to solve this nightmare with a plan that basically comes down to run at the enemy and take your best shot.
It's the plan of last resort. Every other hope has been extinguished. Donnie arrived just in time to watch it all end. Whether that's in blood or victory is up to him, and the ancient wood and metal waiting for him on the other side of the repair bay.
The sealant's dried. Time to replace the fuel injectors, test the engine, and —
"I thought you said you could just bypass the whole thing," says Leonardo, as he boosts himself through the open hatch. "Changed your mind?"
Donnie shrugs. "I saw you had the spares. This is faster."
Leonardo crouches at his side and fishes in his coat for a heavy metal thermos. "I'll defer to your judgment," he says, and holds the thermos out. "Here. I thought you could use some."
The metal's warm to the touch, and the fragrance that hits Donnie's nose when he opens it makes his stomach cramp with longing. "It's coffee," he says, a little stunned. "How did you —"
Now it's Leonardo's turn to shrug. "Our Donnie had secret stashes all over the base. He and April — well, I don't have to tell you, do I?" He smiles, not quite looking at Donnie, his dark glasses catching the worklamp's light. "It's probably terrible. Who knows how long it's been vacuum-sealed? I might not be doing you any favors."
Donnie responds in the only way possible: by tilting his head back and draining half the thermos in a swallow. It's borderline flavorless, but at least there's no sugar or — horror of horrors — powdered creamer diluting it. Just coffee, hot and bitter and familiar.
He caps the thermos and holds it out to Leonardo, who shakes his head. "All yours. Never really acquired that particular taste."
"Right." They sit quietly, not moving, not looking at each other, while the smell of coffee covers the scent of sealant and grease. Donnie lets his head fall against the back of the driver's seat, and closes his eyes. If he could sit like this forever, he would.
But he can't.
"How long do we have?" he asks, regretting the necessity of breaking the first truly companionable silence he's had since he got here.
Leonardo sighs, a weary sound that's far more eloquent an answer than any spoken one could be. "Mike's out with the scouts," he replies. "Once he sends the signal, we'll roll out, and he'll meet us at the rendezvous point. Till then, it's just final checks."
Donnie notices, for the first time, that all's gone quiet outside the tunneler. No hiss and pop of soldering irons, no buzz of voices. Everyone's wrapped up in their own private silences, trying not to think about what comes next.
"I wanted to talk to you before we got started." Leonardo shifts, props his shell against the wall of the tunneler. Donnie waits, eyes still closed and hands still wrapped around the fading warmth of the thermos, and waits. "There's something I only just realized and I…"
He sighs again, so tired that Donnie wants to slide down to the floor of the tunneler and never move. "Whatever happens next, you'll go home," Leonardo says. "I believe that. You're not meant to stay here, with us."
"I know," Donnie says, bitterly surprised at how much this rejection hurts. Alice's anger was one thing, but Leonardo's calm, reasonable voice telling him he isn't welcome is something else entirely. He knows what he's done. Coming here, years after he could have done any real good, utterly destroyed this family.
And you're supposed to be the good guy, right? he thinks at the Bull, a sour taste climbing his throat. Way to prove it.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry," he says, opening his eyes to find Leonardo's gaze already on him. "I never meant to — to hurt you. But I'm going to fix this, I know I can, I promise."
"Donnie." Leonardo lays a gentle hand on his knee, that unbearably sweet smile creasing his face. "I know you did. And I believe you. But…that's not what I'm saying. It's not your job to fix us. Or save us."
"Yes, it is," Donnie says, chest burning. It is, it is. It always has been. It always will be. "Why else am I here?"
"It took me thirty years to figure it out." Leonardo's still smiling. Now he takes off his glasses, and sets them aside. Beneath the milky cataracts is a faint trace of bright blue and the brother Donnie knows. It's enough to choke him. "I lied to myself, I kept waiting, but now I understand. We don't want to be saved, Donnie. We just want to be done."
Donnie tries to find something, anything to say. But grand speeches have never been part of his skill set, and all he can do is mutely shake his head and Leonardo keeps smiling at him.
"Remember that," Leonardo tells him, squeezing his knee lightly. "When it comes time to end it."
"I can't," says Donnie, finally finding his voice.
Leonardo's smile turns almost pitying. "I know," he says. "You wouldn't be you, if you could." He reaches across the space between them, and throws his arms roughly around Donnie's neck.
Donnie hugs him back, fiercely, trying to put everything he can't say into the contact while he still can. He made a promise, and he's going to fix it. He'll find a way. It's what he does.
"Thank you," says Leonardo into his shoulder. One final squeeze, then he lets go, and slips silently out through the hatch.
The coffee's cold, and the last two mouthfuls are almost all grounds. Donnie drinks it anyways. Then, he sets the empty thermos aside, and goes back to work.
The final battle comes with a considerable lack of fanfare. If Leonardo is as big a fan of big speeches as Donnie's Leo is, he doesn't give any in Donnie's earshot. By the time Donnie crawls out of the tunneler, the teams have dispersed to their starting points, and it's for him to pile right back in with Raphael, Leonardo, Casey, and Alice. Mike is only present as a voice over the radio.
It gives him a queasy sense of unease, being separated at this late stage, but he keeps his misgivings to himself. The tunneler is still cramped, even without Mike riding along, and everyone seems to have silently agreed to compensate for the lack of space by not talking more than strictly necessary.
Donnie holds the spear upright between his knees, gripping it with both hands. The only lights come from the dimmed dashboard readouts, enough to frost the spear's head with a cold, distant glow. He keeps his eyes fixed on that faint glow, counting the sewer junctions off in his head, listening to the engine for any sign of trouble. There's not much else to do, other than listening to Raphael mutter under his breath as he drives, and thinking about how much this trip is like all the rides up to the farm in the summer. All the rush to get ready in time to leave, and then hours of sitting, so impatient his head aches.
Is there a farmhouse here? It's too late to ask, and it's dangerous to start wandering through those memories. He needs to be present, to find focus, if not peace, in these particulars.
He realizes they've reached the final junction before the grinders with an ugly little jolt. "We're here," he says, leaning forward toward the driver's seat. "We're here, Raphael, we're —"
"Heard you the first time," Raphael says without any heat, and kills the engine.
With the dashboard lights off, complete shadow envelopes the tunneler's interior, and swells every noise till even the quietest sigh hits Donnie's ears like a punch. The sound of Leonardo thumbing on his radio makes everyone jump.
"Mike, we're in position," he says. "Waiting on your signal."
"Copy that," comes Mike's voice, tinny and harsh through the static. "Grinders going — they're active."
Donnie shuts his eyes — a pointless gesture, here in the dark — as Mike goes silent. Active's such a passive word for what they all know is going on up top: six volunteers, for six points of approach, and an army behind them. Six humans being torn apart, bones pulped and muscles shredded, bodies twisted beyond meaning. All to clear the way for him and this brittle piece of wood and hope.
It had better be worth it.
"Mike, are we clear?" Leonardo asks, after thirty seconds of silence. Only static greets his words; he makes a low, frustrated noise and then shifts in his seat.
"Punch it, Raphael," he says. "We can't wait. We'll — we'll meet him there."
Everyone in the tunneler hears the hitch, how it says everything Leonardo refuses to. Raphael exhales in a noisy gust, and turns the engine back on. Donnie counts in his head: two junctions to go, then one, then —
"Oh fuck," says Casey quietly, with all the force of a prayer. "Oh fuck, Jesus, here we go."
The tunneler passes under the grinder, chews up brick and soil and plunges ahead, and if a shiver passes through everyone inside, no one admits it.
This is it. Donnie squeezes the spear till his knuckles pop. His pulse is a heavy iron beat in his throat and tongue, but he's not panicking. He's centered, balanced, separated from his fear and adrenaline by the living warmth flowing from the spear and into his body. This is where it ends. I can do this. I can. I will.
The mantra absorbs all his concentration until the tunneler's path slopes steeply upward, the engine coughing and groaning as the drill eats its steady way through layers of sewers and foundations. They're going to come up straight through the old playground, where dandelions used to sprout all around the poles of the swingset, every autumn.
Make a wish, Donnie thinks, as they burst into watery grey sunlight.
The engine heaves one last time, a death-rattle shaking the floor under Donnie's feet, and then wheezes painfully until Raphael shuts it off. It can rust here, one more broken hulk in the middle of the city. It's done its job. Donnie resists the urge to pat the wall as he unstraps from his seat.
I wish —
"All right, let's go!" Leonardo's yell shatters Donnie's thought. He kicks the door open, sweeping out and into the playground in a swirl of heavy black leather, his katana already drawn. "Move out!"
There are still two blocks to cover before they get to the courtyard, but with the spear in his hands, Donnie feels like he could take it in two leaps. He jumps, tucks his head as his feet hit the ground, and comes up with the spear held across his body. Then he's running, close on Leonardo's heels, with the others racing behind him.
I wish —
They round the last corner, racing past ash-cloacked buildings on silent feet. Donnie feels himself grinning, feels hope rising in every cell of his body. The voice of the army fills the air ahead of them, gunfire and the clash of metal swelling to greet them. One more block to go. It's almost done. A thousand voices screaming all at once, the air hot on his face and arms, the spear sings in his hands; he doesn't even feel the ground under his feet, just relief, just hope.
The sound of the battle disappears. Leonardo stops so abruptly Donnie collides with him. A startled yell dies in his mouth as he reels back, and sees what's standing at the top of the stairs.
Not just what. Who. Grey, shriveled bodies, tattered skin and clothing fluttering in the wind, scattered at the Boar's feet and forgotten - and Mike on his knees, his head cradled in the Boar's hands.
"Donatello," purrs the Boar. Its voice is all Donnie can hear, and its teeth are slick and red. "My boy, my beautiful boy, you came to me." It laughs, a high girlish sound that makes Donnie's skin go numb. "I saw you coming, I smelled you. I am everywhere you could go. I have been waiting for you."
Mike's eyes meet Donnie's for a heartbeat, one flash of flat, hopeless blue, and then the Boar twists its hands. Mike's neck snaps, and Raphael screams, but all Donnie hears is the emphatic sound of Mike's body hitting the stairs.
There's no clear way to get to the spear from where April is standing. She's not even sure where the light is coming from; back home, this part of the sewers is a dim, muggy thoroughfare where three different mains meet before running out to the reclamation plant. Now, it's a dry and chilly room, so large it swallows everything but the sound of their breathing.
She shrugs off O'Neil's hand and focuses on the grate under her fingertips. Nothing but old metal — no psychic echoes, none of the weird crap she expects to find when walking into a room and finding the answer to all her prayers.
"Who put it here?" April presses her hand flat against the grate. "I mean — it's just sitting here, how do we know it's the real — shit!" Glaring at the spear through the grate, she squeezes her stinging hand into a fist. Well, there's your answer, she thinks ruefully.
"What happened?" says O'Neil. She's hovering again, close enough for April to catch a hint of her rank breath. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I asked a stupid question," April replies, inching away. Her fingers are fine, no sign of burns or other injury on them, but they still ache. "Got a stupid answer." My body will remember that, thanks.
"You — what?"
"It's…complicated," April hedges, tossing O'Neil an apologetic look that clearly has no effect on the other woman. She turns her attention back to the grate, follows its unbroken, unremarkable curve until her eyes hit a dark shape on the far left side. "There — I think that's a lock."
Without waiting for O'Neil to catch up, she takes off at a jog, perversely reassured when the echoes of the pain that had blinded her in the tunnels reassert themselves. It's not bad enough to slow her step, but by the time she reaches the knotted metalwork, she's squinting against the persistent throb in her temples.
The knot looks like a handful of brambles, needle-sharp points gleaming against the rust. If there's a place for a key, she can't see one. Not that a keyhole would be at all useful now — she's got no key, no lockpicks, just her empty hands.
Without thinking, she presses the palm of her hand against the brambles, wincing as they slip under her skin. They're colder than she expected, enough to make her gasp and shiver, and she's ready to pull away and chalk this up to another bad idea when the grate pulses under her hand.
"Do that again," O'Neil whispers. April looks over her shoulder, and sees O'Neil staring not at her but at the spear, her worn features twisted by ferocious hope.
April grits her teeth, and presses her hand harder against the knot. The grate pulses again, but now April feels a gentle sucking at her palm, like a chilly mouth pressed to her skin.
The attrition is slow; it takes at least five minutes before April feels numbness spreading up her arm, and another three pass before her whole body starts to shiver. O'Neil murmurs to herself, barely audible. April looks over her shoulder, and finds O'Neil staring almost blankly at the spear, licking her chapped lips. April turns away, grimacing, disappointed in herself for her disgust. Can't she spare a little more compassion?
Her fingers twitch weakly. Just before the lightheadedness overcomes the pain lingering in her head, the grate goes still, and then crumbles silently into reddish dust. April drops to her knees, cradling her bloody hand in her lap.
"Oh," says O'Neil, her voice warm, musical, like a woman in love. "It's done. It is done. The spear is found" She doesn't seem inclined to get it herself, just to stare, like just looking is enough.
On the scale of bad ideas, this was probably one of April's worst, but there's nothing between her and the spear now except a few feet of empty air. She stands up, closing her eyes till her balance comes back. Then, she takes a careful step forward, and another, and another, pausing only when the ground beneath her feet shudders, and the walls groan under a massive weight. The rumbles peel off into the distance, and she takes the last three steps to the spear, hissing as her headache beats in her temples.
April feels the spear's age before she touches it: cold wood, colder iron, the blackened blood grimed into each well and groove. It looks heavy, but when she imagines its weight in her hand, the heaviness doesn't bother her. No, it comforts her. Something this powerful should be heavy.
"God," she whispers. "I can't believe it. This is it."
"Yes," says O'Neil, just as quietly. "This is the spear. They looked for it for so long."
"But it's here," April says, grinning over her shoulder at O'Neil. The spear is real, the Boar can die, and she'll bring this weapon home to her Donnie and stand right next to him as he strikes the killing blow. They're going to win. "It's here, let's grab it and go find Donnie — what?"
O'Neil isn't smiling at her. She just watches, sadder than April can comprehend. "It is too late for me," she says, her voice coming from a long, long way away. "This world is done. But that spear will save yours from being a meal, and all the others after it." Now she tries to smile, the corners of her mouth lifting, but the smile doesn't touch her eyes. "He would be a godkiller," she adds, wistfully, tilting her head slowly. "No one would ever be able to take that away from him. Not even his brothers."
April laughs, a little shaky, a little uneasy. Disgust or not, she doesn't want to leave this version of herself here, in this empty, half-erased maze of a world. She deserves better. She deserves to live. "I think even Raph would agree that being a godkiller is awesome," she says. Get the spear first. Find a way out. Figure out a way to save O'Neil. Easy, right?
She brushes her fingers against the haft of the spear. The wood warms under her touch, even as a faint sting pricks her poor battered hand. She almost smiles — pain's her oldest friend here.
"Such a pretty thing," says O'Neil, suddenly at her ear. "And such a pretty, pretty girl."
Her hand cracks into April's right shoulder, too fast for April to turn out of the way. The impact jars through April's entire body, rattling her teeth and throwing her off-balance, but she feels nothing but a vast numbness at first. She stumbles, and the spear tumbles out of her useless hand.
"My —" she says, through a hazy layer of disbelief. And then the pain strikes her, implacable, gleeful pain, and she almost misses O'Neil smiling down at her, blue eyes turned ink-black in the golden light. She tries to scream, tries to channel the pain out through her throat and into the air with the force of her cry, but O'Neil lifts her by the throat and throws her across the room.
"My pretty girl, my sweet, luscious girl, you came so far," says O'Neil, loping toward her, unhurried, unconcerned. There's no need for either; no one's coming for April here, and they both know it. "You slipped right out of my fingers after your trick but now I have found you again, now I found you and we are going to play. Yes, we will play, until you are just as broken as the first one."
April knows, better than anyone, that no one ever gets used to pain. No matter how times it's felt, pain's always new, and memory's no defense. April blinks back the grey waves at the edge of her vision, and tries to sit up with the wall at her back. Five feet away, the spear lies inert and helpless. If she could just get to it —
A cold line burns its way across her throat. April claps a hand to her throat, feels hot blood well through her fingers, and nearly starts laughing when she sees the rescued shuriken gleaming beside the spear.
You just had to feel bad, she thinks, swallowing her laughter. Just had to pity the monster wearing your face.
The fact that she hadn't known doesn't comfort her at all. She should have known better.
"Do you like this face?" O'Neil asks, tugging its lips into a smile with its fingers. "Such a sweet face, just right for my game, so I saved it all these years, long after she stopped needing it. She tried, she did, she held on till she was dark as stone inside, no light at all, and then I took what was left. All for this. All for you, my pretty one."
"Why?" April gasps for breath, focuses through the black spots in her eyes. O'Neil slouches toward her, fingers twitching and her face stretched by a vicious, ugly grin. "You could've — could've killed me when you found me. Why —"
She shrieks as O'Neil plants its foot on her broken shoulder. It grinds its heel into the new gap between her bones, grinning down at her with her own face, and laughs when she retches. Then, it drops to its knees next to her, so close matted red hair brushes April's forehead, and licks her face from chin to cheek.
April howls, pain and rage and utter terror fueling the sound as it boils out of her. Not a damn thing in her life has been fair, but this is the most unfair of all — that at the end, she's going to die scared and screaming with the spear just out of arm's reach. She's going to hear her own laugh as she dies.
"Just get it over with," she manages, when she can't scream any longer. "Why wait? Just kill me. Maybe this time it'll stick," she adds, finally meeting O'Neil's eyes.
O'Neil recoils from her, its mouth — even if April lives, she's never going to get over the sight of her own face being worn like a badly-fitting costume — hanging open. "You will not die yet," it says, simply. The thick, rolling cadences of its voice drop away, and April goes completely still. The Boar may wear a human face, but it's not human, and never has been. What meets April's eyes is another form of life, as inescapable as a black hole.
"I want you to feel him die first," it tells her, as it runs its thumb over her cheek. All its hunger is gone; what's left is a vague, patient disinterest. Its voice could freeze electrons in place. "He thinks he goes to kill me, because he carries the spear."
April's eyes flick toward the spear, still lying on the floor nearby. "Then what —" she asks, unable to hold down her curiosity, even now.
"That," says O'Neil, still stroking her cheek, leaning close enough for matted red hair to brush April's face, "is the real spear. I cannot touch it. What Donatello carries is a false hope. He goes to die, and you will feel it. And then, I will fill my mouth with your flesh." It smiles at her, a long line of saliva drooling from its mouth.
"Why?" April whispers, as she pushes past the pain rippling through her, searching for the spark of Donnie's mind. She can warn him — she can stop him. "Why would you —"
O'Neil presses its mouth to her cheek."My tender little girl," it says, against her eye, "despair sweetens the meat."
It bites down, teeth sinking into the apple of her cheek.
April grits her teeth against a scream, even as tears bead along her lashes. The Boar can leave her alive while it swallows her heart, but it doesn't get any more of her pain. She'll die with that much dignity.
And she's going to die. A pathetic, unfair little death, too far away to be of any help.
Donnie, she shouts inside her head. Don't —
Silence. The walls rise around her again, just beyond the little knot the Boar's made of their bodies. She can't reach Donnie.
I'm fucking useless. Fury crackles through her, driving back the pain — but it's not fury, it's power. She may be useless, nothing she's done may ever have mattered, but she's never been helpless.
Her left arm doesn't want to move at first, but she lifts it slowly, funneling all the power moving through her into her palm and fingers.
O'Neil hums against her face, unaware or uncaring, and bites her again, along the line of her jaw. It laughs when she presses her hand to its throat, like it's delighted by her little protest, a delight that ends when April draws in the deepest breath she can, and shoves.
Light erupts out of her hand, where the half-forgotten white mark bisects her palm, and she loses herself completely in the flood. She is the flood, all her joys and humiliations pouring out of her, and in the same moment, she is the Boar, a hunger beyond her understanding.
Then she's thrown roughly back into her body, her shoulder still broken and her face burning. She's exhausted, empty as a dead beehive, but O'Neil is halfway across the room, stumbling punch-drunk to its feet, with half the skin on its body shredded away.
"You," it slurs, and starts to slouch toward her.
April rolls to her knees, and half-walks, half-crawls to the spear. It burns her hand when she grips it, but what's a little more pain? She can't stand, but that's fine; she'll brace the shaft against the floor.
You have one chance, she tells herself, and turns around.
O'Neil stares at her, the ruined face twisted by pure, childish bewilderment. "You are not the Champion," it says, a tooth rattling loose to the floor. "You cannot use the spear, you filthy stinking fool, you are a meal, not a warrior, you are —"
"I'm holding the damn spear." Her peripheral vision's going grey, and she's so damn cold, she's got a minute left, maybe less. When she coughs, she spits a mouthful of blood to the side. "So come get me."