A/N: This chapter includes minor character death references and graphic violence.

Elsewhen.

The only sound left in the world is Donnie's ragged breathing. He doesn't know how long it's been since the screaming stopped, but the weak sunlight doesn't fall on his shell anymore, so he assumes the planet's still turning and time's still marching forward.

But in the absence of sound, it's easy to imagine nothing has changed or will change ever again, and that if he stops breathing, then silence will swallow the entire world. After what he heard a few minutes or hours ago, would total silence be the worst thing?

Of course it wouldn't be the worst thing, he's seen the worst thing, the worst thing is spread all around him like the petals of a flower, like the way Casey's chest is —

He tries to hold in the sob, but it leaks out, high and reedy, through his teeth. It rings in his ears, long after the actual vibrations in the air have ended, so Donnie presses his face to the stone to try and muffle the echoes. It's bitterly cold against his skin, but after a few minutes he starts to go numb, and that's even better than the silence.

That's where he stays until his stomach sends up a plaintive rumble. And then he remembers Mike handing around the dusty hot sauce bottle, and hates himself so savagely his entire body shakes.

Donnie knows he has to get up. He can't stay here, whining into the stones while bodies cool all around him, but getting up means seeing the scope of his failure, every bloody inch of it.

The how of the spear came to Leonardo and the others doesn't matter. Donnie's sure it's a wonderful story — a grand battle that defied all reason and took every bit of their skills, because they would have known if the price paid wasn't high enough — but the spear was a fake, and he didn't figure it out. It just felt so warm, so solid in his hands, and he had believed that it could be over that easily.

How could he have forgotten the lessons he's spent his whole life learning? It's never that easy, and he doesn't win. But he did forget, just long enough to doom everyone.

Alice was right, in the end. He was just a trick.

"I'm sorry," he says, finally lifting his head. It's going to hurt, it's going to destroy him, to look at what he's done, but whatever else he is now, he's not a coward. And looking is the only thing he can do for them.

The setting sun sends weak rays between the buildings, just enough light for Donnie to make out the familiar faces and bodies all around him. Past that first ring of the dead, the bodies blur into a vast, grey accretion, with only a bruised face or bloody hand here and there distinguishable from the rest.

It's so quiet his head aches. Donnie turns in a slow circle, memorizing the outermost rings first, the broken machinery mingled with equally broken bodies, and then drawing inward, until all that's left is the family at his feet.

They fought and hoped so long, and their faces show only the agony of their last few minutes. Just like his vision, all those weeks ago.

Karai and the Shredder lie, empty-eyed, at the base of the spire. The broken pieces of the spear lie on the stairs, mutely accusing.

He should do something, Donnie tells himself. Cover them, somehow, give them a little privacy — but who's going to spy on this graveyard?

"It's all over," he whispers. "They're all…"

Leo, Mikey, Raph: he's never going to see them again. He vanished out of their lives, and destroyed them just as utterly as he destroyed this world and this family. Maybe that's what the other Donnie did — maybe he followed the Bull too, and got tricked, and then his world slowly fell apart until Donnie showed up, to repeat the cycle.

Donnie's stomach churns, and even though there's nothing in it, he retches until he's breathless and gasping for air, bile searing his mouth. He can smell the blood on the air now, sweet and too-rich, the iron tang sinking into his sinuses. So much of it, drying on the stones. It'll never wash away.

I did this I killed them I did this it's my fault I didn't fix it kill me a thousand times it won't make up for not fixing it

He promised to save them but they still died, exactly the way he knew they would. If he opens his eyes, he'll see Raphael's face tilted up to the sky with his mouth hanging open, his hand just a few inches from Alice's. Behind them, halfway up the stairs, will be Mike, just a collection of bones and limp muscle hanging at wrong angles. Leonardo is out of sight, but Donnie doesn't need to see him to know what he looks like, skin grey and dry and just as tattered as his coat because all his blood's drying on the stones, red to brown to black, and it's going to stay there forever, just like Casey will stay there with his chest burst open like a flower, they're dead and so is everyone around him, he's the only one left because in the end he couldn't save anyone and that's what he'll see, forever, all the bodies of the people who believed he could fix this and who died to get him here.

He doesn't hear anything except one breath, and then another, and another, the last lonely sound in a dead world. In and out, in and out.

A soft noise — like a sigh, but from no living mouth — floats down the stairs. His training asserts itself instantly, a knife through his grief; he reaches for his bo, and startles when he doesn't see a person, but a door sliding open at the base of the spire. It gapes open, a toothless mouth leading down to a black and silent throat — an invitation, from another survivor of this dim and silent world.

How he knows that isn't clear, but he knows.

His little burst of adrenaline fades almost immediately, and he's too numb, too exhausted, to feel much curiosity. But there's nothing he can do here, nothing left he can ruin, so Donnie climbs the stairs, slowly, with his head bowed, and doesn't look back until he reaches the door.

The air flowing out is rank, faintly clammy, and familiar. It smells like the way home. Donnie lingers on the threshold for a few seconds, just breathing in that smell, and then looks back over his shoulder. The last thing he sees before he steps inside is those few inches between Raphael's hand and Alice's.

The door slides shut behind him, as silently as it opened, and the sun sets on the world for the last time.

There's nothing inside the spire; the inner walls are just as smooth and featureless as the outer ones, with the same diffuse glow filling the empty space. The spire's base is as wide as a football field, and it tapers to a needle-fine point a few hundred feet over his head.

Donnie takes it all in with a single glance. Because there's nothing else for him to do, and no other doors appearing to guide him onward, he starts walking toward the center of the spire, straining to hear his footsteps in the hush.

He walks for five minutes before he figures out that he's no closer to the center of the spire than he was when he started. There's still just enough light to see by, and the ground's still a total blank, but the wall behind him keeps receding with every step. It's getting larger the farther inward he travels.

One more trick, Donnie thinks, but doesn't say — the thought of filling the growing space with words unnerves him — and forces himself to stop. If this is one last trick of the Boar's, he's played right into it. It was phenomenally stupid to come in here at all. Just because it smelled like home doesn't mean it's safe, or right. After all, isn't blind trust what got him here to begin with?

He shrinks into himself again, stung by the venom in his own thoughts, and feels the gibbering panic start to creep through him again. I did this I did this I killed them all —

"Peace in the particulars," he murmurs, so the words won't carry past him — but what the hell particulars are there, here? Everything's smooth as an eggshell. There's nothing for him to hold onto.

I could let go, says the last coherent thought in his head. What's stopping him from going crazy? It's done. He's not going home and he's not going to win. The story ends with the Champion alone, in a quiet room, with two worlds dying around him.

I did this I failed I didn't fix it and Alice made a noise like she was trying to cry and I did that —

Donnie takes another step, and he keeps breathing. He won't stop. He can't. As long as he's still breathing, still walking, there's a possibility he'll find a way home.

You always do, says April. In Donnie's mind, she smiles, and tosses her hair out of her eyes. He can't bring himself to shut the door on her face, or on the faces that follow. His brothers, and Casey; Usagi, Splinter, Jenny, Angel. They pierce him, one by one, and fade away, until the only face left is April's. Donnie closes his eyes for just a second, just to savor the way light streaks her hair with golden, and nearly stumbles as the floor opens under him.

The light wasn't just in his head; it's flowing out of a hole in the floor, drenching him in its warmth. Two inches away from his toes is a staircase, the stones smooth and sand-colored, leading down into the light. Another invitation.

Donnie hesitates. Light doesn't indicate safety, or escape, or goodness. He could be about to stumble into the biggest trap of all — the Boar has a thousand little torments, just waiting for him to blunder in — but it's the stairs, or going back to walking the spire.

Not much of a choice.

The longer he stares into the light, the more he's aware of faint aches in his knuckles and shoulders, and the warning pulse of a migraine in the back of his head. Nothing he hasn't felt a thousand times before, but the pain's such a sharp contrast to the steady warmth of the spear — the fake spear, he reminds himself, viciously — that he welcomes it.

Trust the pain. It sounds like something Leo would say, after training for ten hours straight, until even Donnie's eyelids were sore, and Donnie feels a small, strained smile start to pull at his mouth.

"Worth a try," he murmurs, and takes the first step. The aches in his hands sharpen as he descends, and the migraine spreads into his temples, but it's perversely reassuring. It's a warning, not a lure.

He's gone down twenty steps when he catches the scent of home again, mud and slime and trash and worse, the kind of smell that clings to cold, wet walls and that you're never sure is gone completely, no matter how many times you shower. Homesickness overwhelms the pain in his hands and head for a brief moment.

The smell occupies so much of his attention that he doesn't notice the light increasing till it nearly blinds him. By the time he hits the last stair, he's shielding his eyes with one hand and balancing himself against the wall with the other. And still the light sears his eyes, goading the pain in his head to go higher, higher, until he's so dizzy he just drops to his knees at the base of the stairs.

The light recedes so abruptly it leaves him nauseated and twice as dizzy as before. Donnie cracks one eye open. He's in another huge room, but this one he recognizes: the old sewer thoroughfare, its far end bordered by a high iron grate. A door stand open on one side, but if anything had been kept inside, it's long gone now.

The thoroughfare's almost as empty as the spire above him. A black puddle spreads across a few feet of floor, with what might be blood spattered beside it, as well as on a nearby wall.

The echo of violence reassures him as much as the pain. Someone was here, not too long ago. He isn't alone.

Before he can remind himself he doesn't deserve any reassurance after what he did, someone clears their throat nearby. It's a small, polite sound, meant to get attention but not startle, but Donnie grabs for his bo anyways.

When he turns, a beaten, weary version of his own face smiles at him from across the room.

Trick, screams a thin, cynical voice. Run, it's a trick. It keeps screaming that till a new surge of pain crests in Donnie's hands, and he nearly drops his bo. The migraine slithers toward the front of his head, but it's tolerable. For now.

"That's good," says his double. "You're learning to trust the pain." A limp, colorless cape shrouds everything but his head, where an equally-colorless mask is wrapped around his eyes. The eyes aren't any different from Donnie's, though; a deep russet, brown in some lights, blood-red in others. Monster's eyes.

Donnie clenches his hands around his bo, stamping down on the pain. Try as he might, he can't think of anything to say to the figure slowly pacing toward him.

"There's not much time left here," says the other Donnie. "I wanted to talk to you, before you left."

"Before I —" Donnie shakes himself — a bad idea, because his migraine makes his brain feel like it's sloshing around inside his skull. He doesn't shut his eyes, even when his vision blurs, and stays focused on the vague blur five feet ahead of him. "Where's the Bull sending me now? Some other nightmare? One more stop along the —"

"It's sending you back." The other Donnie's voice is filled with longing, so sharp Donnie tastes blood on the air. "You played your part, I played mine. We all did. And now you get to go home." He pushes the cape over his shoulders, and holds out a long, thin measure of wood. "It's time to end it."

Donnie backs away, horrified by the spear in the other Donnie's hands. "How do I —" he starts to ask, then shuts his mouth on the rest of the question. He already knows the answer, doesn't he? That whole walk through the light while his head and hands felt like they were on fire? A far more eloquent lesson than words could manage: trust the pain.

"It'll hurt," says his double. "It's going to hurt like hell. But it already does, right?" He quirks a smile, the twin to Leonardo's, unbearably sweet, eternally sad. "Don't apologize," he adds, when Donnie starts to do that exact thing. "I…I already know."

Of course he does. The how doesn't matter; no matter how far away they are, Donnie will know when his brothers die.

"What happened to you?" he blurts out, because his curiosity will be the last part of him that dies. "I mean — you don't have to answer, I'm —"

"It couldn't be killed while it was here, and in your universe," comes the answer. "It's too spread out. You have to kill all of it, or it keeps feeding, and keeps coming back. That's why all the other Champions failed. They killed a piece, but not its heart." He meets Donnie's gaze, holds it. His eye sockets are bruised almost black. "Increments," he says. "The Bull's been pushing the Boar into one universe for the last ten thousand years. Yours. But while it was with the spear, you — we — couldn't get to it. And it was watching us too closely, so it had to be someone else." He shivers, just a little. Donnie crushes the urge to lay a hand on his shoulder, something, to try and comfort the slow grief moving just below the surface. Then the other Donnie looks up, and smiles again. "It worked," he adds. "The Boar's all one piece now. You can kill it."

Donnie's eyes move helplessly to the spear. The pain in his head grows as he stares at it. How much is it costing this other Donnie to hold on to it so tightly?

"You have to go now," says his double. "This world's almost done. You don't want to be here when it goes."

"What about you? You can't just —"

His double shakes his head. "I'm staying. I'll go up top, one last time, and wait. It's been a while since I saw the sky."

Twenty years and more, enough time for a daughter to grow up, for brothers to get old. There's nothing Donnie can say to the turtle standing in front of him that won't somehow sound like gloating.

"Why couldn't the Bull come get the spear itself?" he asks instead. "It's…it's a god, right? Shouldn't it have been able to just take it?"

The other Donnie almost grins, like the question's exactly what he wanted to hear. "The spear works both ways," he says. "What kills the Boar, kills the Bull. It won't come close."

I wonder why that is, Donnie thinks, reading the same thought on his double's face. He wouldn't be able to stop himself from taking the Bull's heart out along the way home, if he had half a chance.

"Was it worth it?" Donnie asks.

His double closes his eyes, curving in on himself. "It was worth it, as long as the Boar dies."

The light around them flickers, down to almost total darkness. When it comes back up, dimmer than before, the other Donnie's staring at the ceiling with his mouth set in a grim line. "It's starting," he says. "You need to hurry. Take it." He closes the space between them and shoves the spear at Donnie. "Take it."

Donnie slides his bo back into its holster as the light flickers again. He tries to brace himself for the pain before he takes the spear from his double's hands, but the shock of it leaves him reeling. While he tries to catch his breath, the other Donnie grabs him by the shoulders and spins him around. Thirty feet feet ahead of them, the air ripples, and splits open on a bird's-eye view of a dark, rubble-strewn street. Shapes move, distorted like they're underwater, but Donnie can make out a few bright bursts of color as they dart back and forth: red, orange, blue.

"Oh my god," he whispers, caught by relief and homesickness in the same instant. Home. His brothers. They're alive.

"You can kill it," the other Donnie hisses in his ear, pushing him forward. "You can. You will. And —" they're almost at the portal now, running together, sharing the agony of the spear between them — "April's alive."

He shoves Donnie forward while the words are still ringing through his head, over the headache and the roar of the portal, and then Donnie falls like a shooting star, burning like one too, toward the street below.

The Donnie who belongs to the dying world watches the portal snap closed behind the Champion, and lets out a long, heavy breath. The light flickers overhead as he turns toward the stairs. He's got a long way to climb, with a lot of old bones and muscles to slow him down, but what he said to the Champion goes for himself as well. It's time to go.

The spire's shrinking; already it's half the size it was when the Champion first came inside, and it takes barely three minutes for Donnie to reach the door. It purrs open as he approaches, and then he breathes the first free air he's had in almost thirty years. It's too dark to see the courtyard, but he knows where his family is. He saw it all. The Boar made sure of that, before it vanished. It made him watch for decades, while April starved and his brothers died by inches, while Alice —

He says her name, poor lost daughter, and stumbles on the first step. There's barely enough oxygen left to get him down the stairs, but he makes it, and then collapses at the base, gasping and clutching at his chest.

I've played my part, he thinks at the Bull. He's not naive enough to think he'll get an answer, or even be heard at all. Now give me what you promised. Let us be done.

He's so tired of being alive. At least that's one punishment he won't have to bear much longer. He rolls onto his shell, spreading his arms wide as he can, and turns his face up to the sky.

"Won't be long now," he says to his family, as the first stars go out.

Some things are too big to wrap your head around. Raph can handle gods, monsters, fairy tales coming to life, but his brain stalls out when the first building shatters into dust.

There are people in there, he thinks over and over, even though a tiny part of him knows it's time to start using the past tense. Whatever's inside the building now is the consistency of a milkshake. There are people in there.

Then the next building goes down, and the screaming starts. Not just one voice, but dozens of them, all shrieking at the top of their lungs — screaming for help, or for someone, or just screaming without words. Raph can handle that too, screams aren't anything new, but what kicks him in the gut is how fast the screams cut off. New screams start, farther away as the next building goes down, and the next, but they don't last for long either. It takes maybe ten seconds for them to get drowned out by the sound of the buildings collapsing.

His brain tells his arms and legs to move, but the signal gets lost somewhere along his spine. All Raph can do is choke when the wall of dust hits them and listen to the Boar laugh. It just smashed two city blocks to rubble and it's laughing.

The first layer of shock crumbles off Raph's brain. Still plenty to go, nice heavy layers that keep him from thinking about how many people just got pulped, but his body's listening to his brain again. He may not be able to handle what just happened —

slaughter

— but the Boar's still laughing, and Raph knows exactly what to do with the anger boiling past the numbness blanketing his brain.

Mikey got the same idea, just a little bit faster — he's two steps ahead of Raph before Raph manages to get his feet in gear, nunchuks spinning, all without yelling or any painfully stupid trash talk. He's so quiet it's freaky, the loudest noise the way his feet crunch on the broken asphalt, and Raph feels like a bomb going off by comparison.

Whatever. Noise doesn't matter, making that laugh end does.

"Guys! No!" Leo wails, grabbing at Raph's arm as he runs past, but Raph's way beyond listening to Leo now. His brain's firing off a long series of commands, and they're all smash break destroy. Music to his ears.

The Boar looks up without pulling its hands out of the street, and grins as it watches them come. There's maybe fifteen feet to cover, barely enough to build up any momentum, but Raph's got enough muscle to make up for that. He made sure Slash would have to text with his tongue for the rest of his pathetic life, he can keep the Boar busy long enough for Leo to come up with a way to get everyone out of the danger zone.

Mikey's already midair with a length of chain clenched in his fists by the time Raph jumps. His sai are solid cool weights in his hand, the most real thing he's ever touched, and he's got his anger leashed, focused on the cracked-porcelain face below him.

He's only going to get one hit, but he's gonna make it a good one.

Leo yells his name, only a step behind now, but he might as well be miles away. Raph's gone, Raph's flying.

Then Mikey's kusarigama blade rips its mouth open from ear to ear. It howls, yanks its hands out of the street to try and shove its face back together as it spits out thick black blood by the mouthful.

Not today, Raph thinks, happy for the first time in weeks, a smile tickling the back of his throat like a sneeze, and aims for its eyes.

Mikey skids away to give him room to hit, rolls to his knees with his eyes whited out and all his teeth bared, but then his mouth drops open, and he's yelling Raph's name along with Leo.

Training overrides anger, and he pivots as soon as he hits the ground. He's close enough for the Boar to grab him, but it lets him slip past, out of reach, to come up panting on its other side.

"What?" he starts to yell, but shuts his mouth with a snap when he catches the sheen of the streetlights on Mikey's kusarigama.

It's melting. Wherever the Boar's blood touched it, the metal's dripping away in fat, silvery clots. Raph grips his sai a little tighter, grateful Mikey and Leo warned him before he messed them up, but that can't be all that freaked them out.

He darts a quick glance around the street, filing away the sirens and yells to deal with later, and locks his eyes on the Boar. It's got its eyes squeezed closed even though that's not doing anything to stop the run of black water from under its eyelids. The whole top half of its robe is stained grey by the water, and Raph catches a whiff of it on the air: rotting wood and some sticky-sweet plant, maybe. Something old, whatever it is.

Raph backs away. The Boar's stopped pulverizing the city, which is definitely a good thing, but it's not over yet. Not by a long shot.

Slash tries to shove himself up, then makes a weak whuffling noise and thumps back down on his plastron. Raph shoots him a look, and gets a full blast of hate from the half of Slash's face that he can see. But Slash can't get up, so he's not that worried.

What worries him is the Boar, who's not just shaking anymore, but lighting up, with that white shine breaking through the cracks in its face. Its robe starts to peel and flake away on the breeze — underneath, its skin is just as white and smooth and blank, no bumps or curves anywhere — and then its hair starts to fall off in thick clumps, till the Boar just gives itself one big shudder and the rest of the rags fall to the street.

"Oh, sh —" whispers Mikey.

Before he can finish, the Boar throws back its head and roars. Raph watches its spine bend in a perfect curve, bones and skin popping like firecrackers — but what makes his brain shut down all over again, are its feet. Which aren't really feet at all. They're hooves.

Of course they are. Raph feels his concussion for the first time. I hate magic.

The Boar's head jerks toward him, the torn flaps of its mouth twitching. "Do I startle you, my angry little beast?" it asks.

"You're disgusting," Raph shoots back, because what he's looking at makes the back of his eyes itch and his skin feel two sizes too small. "You're just a —"

"Monster." The Boar tilts its head, mouth still trying to pull up into a smile. Raph starts to look away, but the black eyes find his and he's locked in place. It flicks a black-clawed finger at him. "Freak. Creep. Fiend. Demon." It licks its lips, more black water pattering to the asphalt. "All these things, I am," it says. "But at least I am not an animal."

It finally manages to smile, just in time to slam that last word home. Raph feels it in every muscle. The way Mikey and Leo flinch into themselves, just a little, they do too. This is the one thing they can't fight their way out of, even if they're all fighting together. Doesn't matter how many battles they win, doesn't matter if they somehow win this one, the world's going to see an animal first when it looks at them.

The Boar can pass for human whenever it wants. Maybe not for long, because sooner or later your brain says wrong wrong wrong and then the magic trick starts to fall apart, but long enough to get what it wants. It let go of that disguise because it wants to. Because it can, and because it wants them to know that, right before it kills them.

The sirens stop when they get to the edge of the wreckage. Someone's talking on a megaphone, trying to get people to safety, but it's happening in another world. The cops and EMTs won't get close till they know it's not a bomb, which buys Raph and his brothers a little time, but it's not going to be enough.

Raph jumps. Go for the throat this time.

The world lurches while he's in mid-air. He's close enough to see the way the Boar's skin peels away from the muscle underneath, how something white but not bone gleams inside its head, and how its eyes leak greasy drops that roll down its cheeks like oil.

Something's changed.

It's too late for him to change direction, but as soon as he lands he rolls away, coming up on the Boar's other side, in full sight of anyone watching from the end of the street. Too late to care about that now.

From where he's sitting, Raph can't see the Boar's face, but he can see the way its whole body trembles, just a tiny, all-over shake.

"There has never been two," it says, not to him or Slash or anyone at all, but with its face lifted to the sky and its long fingers twisting into knots. Raph's lungs and throat burn with sudden cold, because he's never heard anything put that much hate into a single sentence. Not just hate — horror, confusion, defiance, all of it wrapped in that ancient, glassy hate.

The air ripples again, and a white-out like one of Donnie's flashbang grenades floods his vision. By the time he's blinked his way clear again, gasping and knuckling tears out of his eyes, the Boar's dug its hands back into the street, teeth bared and face still tilted up and back.

Thunder rolls in the distance.

Raph locks eyes with Leo and Mikey, forgetting the Boar for a heartbeat as a tremor starts to build under their feet. The warhounds bunch together under the cage or chunks of asphalt, so Raph knows whatever's coming is a whole new kind of bad. If he turns his head, he could see what Slash is doing, but he doesn't really care that much to begin with, and stops caring at all when the ground fractures like glass, and clouds of steam boil up from the cracks.

"Get back! Get back!" Leo yells. He grabs Raph's arm and yanks him back, scrabbling for Mikey at the same time, but a geyser bursts out of the street between them before he catches hold. Raph watches, gut churning, as Mikey disappears behind a wall of steam.

Mikey starts to scream. There might be words buried in there, but Raph can't make them out. He tries to bulldoze his way through the steam — move fast enough and maybe he won't get cooked — but Leo yanks him back, hollering something in his ear that Raph doesn't understand. So much noise, the steam and the screaming and the ground ripping apart and the Boar's laughing again, loud enough to be heard over everything else. Raph looks back as Leo drags him to the sidewalk and shoves him up against a mailbox, hard enough to make his shell shriek when he hits the bruised parts, and the Boar's just visible between the billows of steam. Its mouth dangles loose and the steam cooks its skin right off its muscles, but the Boar keeps laughing, while the street shatters.

"We gotta get Mikey!" Raph bellows at Leo. He tries to shove past — he thinks Mikey was over there, but he can't be sure, everything's turned around and he can't breathe without boiling his lungs — but Leo pushes him back down.

A belch of super-hot air rolls overhead, close enough to burn their skin but not to kill them. Raph grits his teeth — pain's nothing, he's got to get to Mikey — and throws Leo off him to charge toward the last place he saw Mikey.

Mikey's gone when he gets there.

"Gone, gone, gone, my sweet lovely boy, they will all be gone!" The Boar's voice fills the world. "You can come but they will be dead and I will use my teeth on you, teeth and hooves and it will last forever, yes, my sweetness, my —"

Raph tries to scream at it, shut up, you're nothing, you're dead, but the edge of a geyser catches his left arm, and he just screams. This isn't pain he can crush and ignore, it's everywhere, eating him alive.

Not like this, he thinks, before the pain flattens every thought in his brain. He's not going to die like this. It's not going to end like this.

He drops to his knees. There's no air to breathe, and he can't feel anything on his left side. No way out. Just heat, burning him out of his body, into a hungry white light.

And there are teeth, waiting for him there.

"Raph!"

He opens his eyes. All he sees are walls of steam, no matter where he looks, but someone called his name. He's not alone. It's enough to make him push to his feet, one-armed, and stagger around in a circle. "Leo?" Raph yells. "Mikey?"

The steam rolls back into the cracks in the street, so quick Raph nearly pukes from the sudden rush of cold air. His left arm's a dead mess, he can't even look at it yet, but that's fine. He can see someone walking toward him through the fading steam, and they're the one calling his name.

Donnie's home.

When Raph starts to fall, Donnie catches him under the right arm, careful not to brush against his burns. The spear vibrates in his hand, jolts of agony pulsing through every nerve in his body, but it's all secondary to Raph's dazed smile when their gazes meet.

"Nice timing, nerd," Raph rasps, then sags against him. "M—Mikey, where's Mikey and Leo?"

"They're here," Donnie says, glancing around to make sure he's not a liar. But there's Leo, lying on his shell and gasping for air, and Mikey a few feet away, cradling the side of his face. They're burned, and battered, but they're alive. "They're okay," Donnie adds.

Raph sighs, and lets his head loll against Donnie's shoulder. "Now or never," he murmurs, and then slides out of Donnie's grip completely. He's still breathing, and that's the only reason Donnie lets go.

That, and the sight of the Boar at the other side of the street. It stands up, long fingers twitching as it draws them out of the street.

"Donatello," it says. It doesn't smile.

The spear spasms hard enough to knock the wind out of Donnie's lungs. He rocks back on his heels, as much from the spear as from the look of utter contempt the Boar levels at him. A face that wrecked shouldn't be able to telegraph pain, let alone hate, but it does, so intensely Donnie feels it crawling over his skin.

"So you have come to kill me," says the Boar. "But I will burn you first." It throws both arms wide, and a blazing ring of fire springs up around it, ten feet high and climbing. The flames lick at the sky, bone-white and reeking of burned meat, and behind them the Boar smiles at Donnie.

Come for me. Let us make an end, my sweet boy, my Champion.

"Now or never," Donnie says to himself, as the pain wracking his body crests. The flames blind him as he runs toward them, and their stench makes him choke, but he doesn't stop. He never has, he never will. Of all the truths in his life, that's the only one he believes.

He leaps with the spear held high in both hands, and clears the flames by mere inches. Below him, the Boar watches him fall, its arms still open.

At the last minute, it swings one arm inward, and buries its claws in his thigh. The pain's small compared to the spear, but it burrows deep.

He hits the ground without feeling the impact. What he feels instead is astonishment, and denial, and hunger — and relief so faint he must be imagining it. A blurred flood of images fill his mind to overflowing: blood spattered on snow, steam rising from the lake, and a fur-coated hunter, shouting as he raises a spear.

Donnie comes back to himself with the Boar's claws still buried in his thigh, and its free hand wrapped over his own where he grips the spear. It's shivering, black water flowing from its ears and nose, and it's still smiling.

"You sweet boy," it whispers, the words still clear through the roar of the fire. "You perfect little beast. Kill me, and what comes after will make all my hungers seem like blessings. They sleep in the dark waters, and they do not understand hunger. They will come, they are already waking — but only if I die."

"You're going to die," Donnie spits. He tries to pull his arm free, but the Boar clings to him, its mouth inches away. "I'll kill you, I'll kill you —"

"They have said that every time," the Boar hisses. "I remember you, I know your smell, my sweet boy, it has greeted me in every world and I have eaten them all, they promised me death each time and failed." It digs its claws into his thigh, ready to tear him apart, vein by vein, and smiles. "You failed, the girl failed, and I will always eat, always, unless you join me. My lovely Donatello, I ask you, one last time, to join me, do my good work, and I will let your family live."

Donnie sucks in a breath against the pain. His knuckles are swollen, burning lumps. His vision wavers in time with his pulse. No telling how much blood he's lost already. He has to get free. Nothing else matters.

"All of them." The Boar lets go of his hand, and strokes his face. He flinches away, but its touch is light. It's almost kind.

The moment the Boar touches him, all Donnie's lurid fantasies of a fight vanish. There won't be some glorious battle, or even a continuation of the ugly street-brawl his brothers were just waging. That's not his part to play. The end to this whole nightmare comes down to him, a promise, and a choice.

Somewhere, under the pain, under his anger and shame, Donnie's almost disappointed. It would have been easier, that way.

But easy's never been part of his life, has it?

This choice could be. He could take the deal, save his family, and let the Bull start fresh with some new idiot who just wants to do the right thing. It would be so easy. All he would have to say is yes.

And if what the Boar says is true, if something worse really does sleep in the cold between universes, then he should say yes. Save what you can. Adapt. He'll find a way. He always does.

The Boar senses his hesitation; it pulls its claws from his leg, and backs away. Its smile trembles, wet and eager, ready to give him anything he asks if he just gives its life back.

All he has to do is lean forward, or let go.

"Donatello," the Boar purrs, stroking the air between them. The lights inside its head dim, and slow their darting spirals. "My sweet boy, come with me, sit at my right hand, be mine and you will live forever."

Mine.

The word arcs through him. Be mine, like he's a pet, like he's a slave, something to be owned and ordered and chained, until the last universe dies and he's forgotten what it's like to run high over the city with his brothers. Hidden, but free.

"My boy," purrs the Boar, reaching for him again. "Come to me."

He shakes his head, disgust welling up through his exhaustion. The game ends, now, the way the first Champion promised that it would: with the spear splitting the Boar's heart in two.

If that greater evil comes, he'll be ready. He made this promise a long time ago, and breaking it means he loses everything he is. He fixes. He heals.

He always will.

"Maybe they come," Donnie's says, as his tongue goes cold, holding the Boar's black gaze till his eyes water. "Maybe they don't. But today, you're done."

Its shriek cracks the air like thunder. Donnie's eardrums swell, the bones in his hands start to crack - but he hauls himself up, screaming back, and plunges forward.

The Boar's claws shred his skin like wet paper as cold, slimy water gushes over his hands, and a burst of desperate joy fills him. Almost there -

With one last cry, he uses the last of his momentum to drive the spear through the Boar's shriveled-root heart.

"You -" the Boar says, but the rest of its sentence is washed away by the stinking black flood pouring from its mouth. It pulls itself down the spear's shaft toward him, spitting and clawing at his plastron, but Donnie shoves, and the spear bursts through the Boar's spine.

It makes a faint, bewildered sound, and drops to its knees. "Not over," it wheezes, gurgling deep in its throat.

"It is for you," Donnie hisses back.

The Boar slashes at him, again, and again, clawing deep gouges in his arms. One even catches him across the face, and he feels it over the bones in his fingers grating together, but he shoulders the new pain, adds it to the pile and pushes forward, inch by deadly inch.

The Boar whines, wordlessly pleading, clutching at his face and baring its teeth and gasping, all while the black water spatters them both and fills the ashy air with the heavy smell of jasmine. Donnie doesn't blink. He doesn't breathe. Every thought, every memory, everything that he is or ever was is pressed flat, like light bent by a black hole, by the one implacable promise in the universe: I will fix it.

"Please," the Boar whispers, the word light as dust, and twice as dry.

Donnie sneers, contempt blazing past the agony in his hands for a split second. All that hunger and power, and it's begging. He holds the spear steady, and watches as the Boar's mouth goes slack and a slow breath rattles out of its mouth.

Its hands drop from his cheeks, hit the ground with dull thuds. Its head rolls back, blank grey eyes turned to the night sky, and the pain from the spear vanishes.

Last of all, the lights inside its head go dark.

The spear falls out of his hands. Behind him, the flames dip low, roll back into themselves, and melt away into clouds of rank smoke. He waits for a sign, a noise, anything that tells him that it's over, but nothing comes. There's just him, standing in a ruined street, counting the slow beats of his heart. When the flames are gone, the only sound left is his breathing. Again.

He drops to his knees. The Boar's hair hides its face, but he barely notices. He barely sees the Boar at all, or the wreckage around it, just like he doesn't hear the sirens. All he can do is sit, and stare down at his newly-crooked fingers and the blood leaking sluggishly from his thigh and arms.

A hand falls on his shell, and then another, and another. When faces appear in front of him, he can't quite recognize them. He should, he knows that, he should care about the blue and green eyes that meet his - but he can't. He doesn't have anything left.

"It said it wasn't over," he tells the faces. It's not enough, and now he's shaking, his whole body spasming and he can't stop, he can't think anymore except about how his hands hurt and his legs hurt and he's so tired he can't even remember his own name.

They lift him up, arms wrapped around his shell and soft voices murmuring, so he lets them guide him away from the dead woman in the middle of the road. He looks back once, and sees that it's not a woman at all. It's just a pig, a white pig covered with dirt and blood. Even that isn't what he sees, not really, but the edges waver like trees caught in the wind, and he cringes away from what the pig's body is hiding. Some things aren't meant to be looked at.

"It's done," someone says, the person on his right. Raph. It's Raph, burned and bloody but Raph, and he's smiling.

"I -" Donnie says, but he gives up before he can finish the sentence. I don't believe it. Instead, he picks up the spear with his good hand, waiting for the pain to crash through him again. No pain comes. It's just wood now, wood and metal and a little dried blood.

"Just in case," he says to no one at all, and starts walking toward the alley.

Donnie makes it three steps before his legs give out, but that's okay. His brothers are here. He can lean on them, for a little while.

Not to worry - there's an epilogue coming, to wrap up all the loose threads.

As always, thank you for reading.