I have been waiting for this moment...
Donatello closed his eyes and pulled a breath in through his nose. A smile turned up on the very corner of his mouth as the wind whipped the tails of his mask back behind him.
April watched, leaning against the ledge of the rooftop next to him. She smiled when he sighed. He already looked twice as energized as he had before they left the walls of the lair.
She had the ability to escape whenever she wanted to, to go home—a home that resided up on the surface in an apartment building by the street—and even she felt the tension and suffocation that had begun to fester from five teenagers being trapped underground for weeks. Donnie deserved to breathe, deserved to let his muscles unwind.
She glanced down toward Murakami's. The lit windows cast rectangles of warm light across the pavement. There was only one customer left and Murakami had already flipped the sign to CLOSED. He had promised April that she and Donnie could have the restaurant to themselves the moment the last person left. She was in no particular hurry though, and she had the distinct feeling Donatello was enjoying the air.
She grinned to herself as she glanced back at the side of his face and loosely crossed her arms. "So," she said. "Feeling any better?"
Donnie smiled and looked down at her. "Much. I'd have never thought I needed to get out this much."
April nodded. "Cabin fever gets to the best of us."
A length of comfortable silence passed between them.
She brushed a few loose strands of hair back, only to have them blown in her face again. She tucked them behind her ear and this time leaned her palms against the ledge.
"So, those theories you had about Leo and Raph … Did you ever get to find out if they were right?"
Donnie stared straight out across the rooftop. He just barely nodded. "Yeah."
"And?"
He waited a moment, his eyes shifting in that way they did when he was far off in thought. Then he finally nodded and turned his brown gaze on her. "I was right."
She smiled. "You always are."
"Yeah, nine point five times out of ten, I'd say." He shrugged, trying to push back a little ray of pride, but she saw it.
She looked down and shifted her feet. "So … are you still hesitant about sharing these theories?"
They met one another's gazes again and his turned uneasy. She smiled.
"How about if I guess, and you tell me whether or not I'm close?"
At this he softened and grinned again. "Okay."
She nodded, looking back across the roof. "Leo is in love with Karai, but Karai doesn't want a relationship, mostly because she doesn't know how to be a part of one. Raph is jealous of her, because he's in love with Leo, but Leo doesn't want to acknowledge that he loves Raph back because they're brothers and he has Karai to consider, which probably makes Raph even more pissed because he's a little embarrassed about loving Leo too, but he'd never run away from anything, and he feels like that shouldn't stop Leo either …"
She took a breath and looked toward Donnie. "Am I warm?"
Donatello stared at her, his expression one of the same warm admiration she constantly caught him gazing upon her with. She felt a strange urge to touch his cheek just then.
She curled her fingers and her palms remained pressed against the ledge.
"Did she tell you?" he asked.
"Who, Karai?" April couldn't help the snort that escaped her, and she covered her mouth quickly. But Donnie was smiling.
She passed her hand across her nose and shrugged. "I can't imagine Karai being the type of person to run around gossiping."
"Then what were you guys talking about before we left?"
April blinked. "Oh that? She was telling me how much she wished she could take back the past fifteen years, that she wished she'd never known the Shredder, and that Splinter could have been there for her instead."
She turned her eyes on Donnie who gazed back with a distant film to his expression—thoughtful, as always, and maybe a little disturbed.
"I think she's really sorry, Donnie—about everything. She really wants you guys to like her, but she doesn't know how she should interact with you. And she says she doesn't care if Raph never trusts her, but I don't think she really means it. I think it bothers her. But with Leo being in the middle of them, I'm not sure how willing Raph's ever going to be to accept her, especially not if Leo still has feelings for her."
Donnie nodded, his eyes grazing the cement beneath their feet. He took a breath. "What do you think?"
"About what?"
He looked up. "Leo and Raph."
She let her head drop to the side. "I think it'd be nice if they could get along for once. I think if Leo gave it a chance, he could be really happy with Raph."
Donnie looked taken aback by this. "Really?"
She nodded. "Yeah."
"Even with them being brothers?"
"Especially with them being brothers … I mean, sure it's different," she shrugged, "but my best friends are mutants for crying out loud, who am I to judge anything? If Leo makes Raph happy and Raph can do the same for Leo then why shouldn't they be together? It's love isn't it? I was always taught that love is never wrong, so why would it be for them?"
Donnie continued to stare at her, still with that glitter of admiration. The breeze caught her hair again, carrying it across her face, but it also cooled her cheeks, which was especially nice at the moment. Sometimes Donnie gave her looks that made her stomach feel all squirmy and anything to distract from that was appreciated. Though … she also kind of liked that squirmy feeling.
"You really believe that then?" he said. "Love is never wrong?"
"Of course." She smiled.
He pursed his lips, eyes shifting cautiously, then lifted his hand.
He hesitated, as though trying to convince himself to let his arm fall back to his side. Instead, he seemed to ignore it. She watched him nervously bite on his lip, but he reached out without meeting her gaze and brushed her hair gently back behind her ear.
"What if Karai did want to be with Leo?" he asked, still not looking directly at her. He stared at the top of her head like he was watching to make sure her hair stayed where he put it. His arm made it back by his side, and her fingers inched forward along the ledge. "Would their love be okay?"
"What do you mean?"
He shrugged. "I mean … She's human, and he's not."
"So?"
His eyes finally dropped to hers, and she kept her gaze steady on him. Another breeze passed between them and this time it turned her fingers cold. Her hair stayed in place, but she found herself wondering if he would tuck it behind her ear again if it didn't. She liked to think that he would. Then again, sometimes Donnie allowed his nerves to get the better of him, even after those brief moments of confidence.
"It doesn't bother you?" he asked finally.
"Of course not. Why should it?"
His eyes shifted again and he began to shuffle his feet. "It shouldn't … Or I mean, I don't want it to. It's just that … I know we're different, and it's a little difficult to—"
She gasped.
A familiar ice-cold sensation had just hit her chest and was now ringing in her head like an alarm. She went still and her eyes widened as the sensation sent succeeding chills down the back of her neck and through her spine.
Donnie's gaze turned to one of concern, brow pulling down in the middle.
"What?"
She glanced off to the side, her heart picking up in pace as she searched the horizon for movement. "Someone's watching us," she said, her voice nearly brushed away by a new current of wind.
Donatello tensed and immediately adopted a severity that she was somehow always surprised by. He straightened himself to his full height and scanned the rooftops over her head, eyes narrowed. She watched the buildings behind him.
The chill intensified, and just before she could reach for the tessen tucked in the waistband of her shorts, Donnie snatched her arm and yanked her against his plastron. She stumbled forward and felt the familiar whiz of shuriken skim the end of her ponytail.
She snapped her eyes to the right as the sharp silver weapons embedded themselves in the door leading to the stairwell.
She hardly had time to look the other way before Donnie pulled her by the arm and started her feet in motion. She neither argued nor resisted but ran alongside him and waited to peek over her shoulder until they'd leapt across the adjacent alleyway and landed on the rooftop of the next building.
A small legion of Footbots was following directly in their wake, silent and quick on metallic feet, darting seamlessly across the ledges like shadows. Her throat closed.
"Donnie …"
"Jump!" He tugged on her arm and she reacted without question.
They made another leap, but this time not nearly high enough to make it to the next building.
For one split second, April's heart froze with a gust of panic. But she gasped and squeezed her eyes shut as Donnie latched onto the railing of the fire escape on the opposite wall and jerked her momentum to a halt as his grip tightened around her arm. Her feet hung over empty space for all of two seconds before Donnie pulled her onto his shell.
She immediately wrapped her arms around his neck, trying not to divulge her fear with her trembling limbs. All this time she'd spent leaping over rooftops with him and his brothers and the prospect of falling still scared her.
Her skull vibrated, and she looked around just as a Footbot leapt off the ledge two stories above them and reached out. Donnie released his hold on the fire escape.
They dropped.
April's knees tightened around his shell, but he landed with hardly an exhale, expertly taking the impact with an unyielding bend to his knees. His feet were hardly on the ground for more than a second before he shifted her smoothly back to her feet and they were running down the length of the alley and around the back.
"We need to get back to the lair," he said, half a second before they skidded to a halt and took a sharp left down the next alley as a wall of moving shadows pressed toward them, throwing yet more shuriken into the cement just where their feet had been.
Donnie snatched up a silver trashcan lid and twirled on the ball of his foot to fling it back like a Frisbee. It ricocheted off the back wall and, by the sound of clashing metal and high-pitched yipping, probably took out about three robots.
"Where's the next manhole?" he asked, hardly breaking his pace.
"Across the street." She pushed her legs to run harder, though they were already whining about exertion with every pull of the muscles in her thighs.
Her eyes had already narrowed on the shadows in the alley yards away. She shot out of the nook and her foot planted itself on the edge of the curb ready to propel her forward.
"April, wait!"
Donnie's hand snatched her shirt and yanked her backward. She toppled back against his plastron and flinched when the ground shook. Rahzar's hulking figure landed just feet in front of them, cracking the cement beneath his boney heels. Donnie's movements were so swift she didn't even notice him reach for his belt before a cloud of black and purple smoke erupted between them and the wolf.
He tugged her to the right and she followed him into the next alley.
He had already dropped, slid toward the manhole on his kneepads, and was lifting the cover when Fishface plummeted down toward the back end of the passageway. The manhole cover gave off a loud clang as Donnie let it fall and sprang to his feet. He yanked out his staff as he ran toward Fishface, twirled it over his head, and swung with all his might. Xever ducked.
April shivered, and she turned just in time to jump back and avoid being sliced down the middle by a pole arm. She whipped out her tessen and decapitated the Footbot before her with one swipe. It fell to pieces on the ground only to reveal a second and third just behind it.
She bared her teeth and sliced toward the one on her left. The edge of her tessen grazed its face, carving a gash that spit out frayed wires and pops of electricity. The second Footbot grabbed her arm with a steely grip and she whipped around, closing the fan, and stabbed it in the eye. It gave a loud yip that sent her ears ringing and waved its hands around blindly when she slipped from its grasp.
Another pinch of warning alerted her, and she spun to the side as Rahzar's giant, clawed hand pounded the ground exactly where she'd been standing, smashing the Footbot to pieces instead. He threw its remains to the side and straightened his spine, leering at her.
"Little girl," he said, the hint of a purr reverberating over the corners of his curled smile.
She scowled and fanned out her tessen again, striking a defensive pose.
"What a pretty little toy," Bradford said. "Too bad it won't do you much good."
She wrinkled her nose and lashed out with all her might, smacking him across his boney snout. His head whipped to the side and a threatening growl rumbled up from his chest. He slowly turned his face back at her, his yellow eyes glittering with malice. He cricked his neck and took one stomp forward before Xever's howl grabbed their attention. Rahzar snapped his gaze to the right and his eyes widened a split second before the beet red fish crashed into him and sent them both to the ground.
April leapt over them and ran to where Donnie's bō was a spinning blur dropping Footbots left and right. His expression had donned a curtain of ferocity, eyes solid white and focused, lungs releasing bursts of sharp cries as he struck one Footbot to the ground and stabbed another in the chest with his naginata blade.
As he zeroed in on the next wave, another Footbot snuck around his back. April flung her tessen and it sliced its way through the bot's neck before returning to her hand. She sprinted forward to cut down another but was tackled to the ground from behind.
She grunted as the Footbot pinned her wiggling body to the cement with its own, its arms wrapped around her shoulders.
She searched the folds of its uniform and her hand locked around a shuriken blade. She yanked it out and stabbed it into the bot's stomach. It's grip fell away from her and she shot to her feet only to receive a blow to the chest half a second later that sent her flying backward.
Her back hit the wall, and her breath was snatched from her lungs. The back of her skull smacked against the blocks of cement just a second behind. She was caught blinking stars from her vision, feet just barely catching their balance as she recovered with one hand pressed against the wall and the other clutching her tessen.
"April!"
She glanced up just in time to see a Footbot charging toward her, wielding two glowing white rods charged and snapping with jagged flashes of silvery-blue electricity.
She only had time to cringe. Then Donnie jumped in front of her and lit up like a conductor.
Her voice stuck itself to the sides of her throat and her eyes widened, watching Donatello's body shield her own and absorb the pain. His shell was to the attacker, arms raised above her head, fists clenched against the wall, muscles coiled and spasming with the electric current popping through his veins, pushing strangled grunts through his bared teeth as though he was doing his best to hold back a scream.
She reached for him and received a super-charged jolt to her fingers that pulled a shocked cry from her lips. She drew back in horror, clutching her singed hand to her chest.
"Stop!" she cried. "Stop, please! Stop it!"
She didn't think it would work, that the Footbot would actually heed her plea—it was a robot for crying out loud. But it didn't occur to her to be wary when Donnie gasped as the white-blue illumination of sparks shut off like a switch.
He tipped forward, arms bent at the elbows and braced on the wall on either side of her head. His face was so close that his forehead was practically resting against hers, and she could feel his breath brushing across her face, warm and fast.
She couldn't say anything, couldn't even reach out to him anymore.
His limbs trembled and the smell of singed cloth rose up with the wispy streams of smoke clinging to the tails of his mask as they hung over his shoulder. He blinked and looked down at her with half-lidded eyes, dazed and unfocused.
"April-"
His breathless moan evolved into a scream as the surge of electricity returned with a vengeance, illuminating the entire alley and arching his spine. She screamed his name, but it was lost in the current of sizzling and popping and enveloped in his cry.
When it stopped, the whole rim of his shell was emitting wisps of smoke. His knees buckled.
She caught him in her arms, but his weight was so dead she could hardly pull him up past her waist.
The Footbot with the rods raised the one in its left hand, prepared to strike again.
With one arm still looped around Donnie's shell, she whipped her tessen at its head. It implanted itself in the Footbot's skull and the force of the blow reeled it back. The rods fell loose onto its stomach and it gave out a metallic shriek as the currents blazed through its body and it short-circuited.
Her arm shook and she lowered Donnie to the ground, glancing up as she did to the wave of Footbots flooding toward her, headed by Rahzar and Fishface.
She patted Donnie's cheek. "Donnie," she gasped. "Donnie, wake up!"
The stampede was only a few yards away and the turtle's eyes didn't even flutter.
Breathlessly, with a pulse that squeezed all feeling from her limbs, she jumped over his unconscious body and yanked her tessen out of the fallen Footbot, immediately flinging it in a curve. It took out four front bots and skimmed Rahzar's snout again before returning to her hand.
The wolf growled, and she ran forward to meet him and Fishface head-on.
She dodged their strikes and sliced wildly, ducked Fishface's snapping teeth and kneed him sharply in the gut, then turned while he was doubled over and skimmed Rahzar's throat with her fan. He yelped and clutched at his neck, leaving her space to kick out the back of his knee and bring him down to the ground.
She whirled around and chucked her tessen, lodging it in the back of a Footbot that had just turned to scamper toward Donatello.
As she ran to collect her weapon, a hiss bubbled up behind her. She turned, threw herself down on her back, and thrust both feet up at Fishface who was pouncing toward her. The force of her punt sent him crashing into Rahzar and gave her enough time to scramble back to her feet and yank Donnie's bō staff from its sheath.
The naginata blade popped out and she squealed as it tore a rip through the thigh of her shorts, just barely nipping her skin. She whirled the bō around the way Donnie had taught her, and punted the end into the stomach of one charging bot and swung it like a bat at the head of another.
She stood her ground, hovering protectively over Donatello as she used his staff to ward off any and all attackers that tried to surpass her. She knew what they wanted and she would not let them take him.
She snatched two shuriken from Donnie's belt and chucked them out at the Footbot coming up on her left then wheeled around to stab down one that had gotten close while her back was turned.
A burst of stars popped into her vision as something heavy struck the back of her neck with a pain so enveloping that it stole all motion from her limbs. She felt her breath stop and heard the clatter of the bō staff as it dropped to the ground.
The world tilted.
Then she was on the ground, having no recollection of coming in contact with it. Her vision blurred in and out of focus, and she was just barely conscious enough to recognize Donatello lying on the ground beside her, eyes closed, a look of blankness to his face, arm stretched across the cement as though reaching for her.
She tried to call out his name, but couldn't manage it. She moved her arm, which felt as though it was made of lead, and caught a glimpse of her own pale fingers extending out and then falling on top of his before the tunnel of black surrounding her vision caved and she saw nothing.
"So when do you think I'll be able to walk on it?" she asked, tilting her head as she watched him work.
She was sitting on the edge of the table in his lab, palms pressed against the surface as she leaned back, feet bare and hanging off the edge. Donatello was kneeling in front of her, tongue poking out of his mouth as he cradled the heel of her right foot in one palm and used his other hand to gently but firmly wrap her ankle in a gauze.
"It's a low grade sprain," he said. "You should be fine in about two or three weeks."
She sighed and winced as he tugged on the gauze. He noticed her tense and looked up with wide eyes.
"Sorry."
She shook her head. "It's fine." She lifted a smile and added, "I'm tough."
He chuckled and returned to bandaging her foot. "Yes you are. It cost you a bit, but I've never seen anyone except Master Splinter take Raph down so fast."
Her grin widened. "Yeah, it was worth it."
He nodded. "You're getting really good, April. You're a fast leaner."
"Not as fast as you though," she said, swinging her free foot at his shell.
A glimmer of a grin took his cheek. "We all have our strengths and weaknesses," he said. "I learn quickly and you're tough enough to take down Raphael in five point seven seconds. And you know what, one day, maybe you'll be catching me when I fall from helicopters."
She smiled down at him and he gifted her with a tender glance.
"You think so?"
He shrugged. "I wouldn't want anyone else to."
Her heart beat an odd, fluttery rhythm as they stared at each other. She wondered what was going through that brilliant mind of his, because for certain something always was. Maybe he was thinking of the day they'd met too, but he'd never know how often she thought of that day herself, and how she'd learned that as long as he was around, she never needed to worry. He would catch her if she fell. He always did. Maybe she would get to repay the favor one day.
She took a breath.
An immediate pain struck her head and sent a ripple through her body, making her muscles coil and her face grimace. The image of Donatello kneeling before her began to vanish and was replaced by black. She rolled over from one side to the other and back, her limbs becoming constricted the more she moved, heat pressing in on her back and breaking a sweat over her forehead. She couldn't breathe.
"Donnie," she gasped, hoping he would appear and free her from her restraints, wipe the pain away and cut through the darkness like he always seemed to do so easily.
But he did not come, and she began to feel fear again, so intense that it jerked her eyes open and she bolted upright.
"Donnie!"
Her breath was shallow and loud, bouncing off of the surrounding walls. She was blanketed with shadows in a room that was familiar but for a moment did not register.
She blinked rapidly and whipped her head from side to side, taking in the desk and chair on the opposite side of the room, the window leading out to the fire escape along the wall that was closest to her. There was a map with lines and pins dotting its surface tacked on the wall over the desk. A backpack with an open mouth and homework sheets spilling out of it had been tossed carelessly onto the bench below the window. A purple lamp stood currently unused on the corner of the desk and on the other corner was a framed photograph of her and her parents when she was a baby. The restraints around her limbs were sheets that had been twisted around her body as she'd tossed in her sleep.
She was alone in the room.
But this wasn't right. She didn't understand. She thought for a moment that she'd been in Donnie's lab, safe under his protection and care, having a sprained ankle bandaged. But she in fact knew that that was neither true nor had it ever happened.
She could feel the darkness pressing in on her, her fear solidifying and turning into panic as she remembered where she'd really been, what had truly happened.
It wasn't just a dream. It couldn't have been. She could feel the post-battle ache in her muscles, bruises swelling up all over her skin, the throb of a good hit to the back of the neck. But how had she ended up in her room? Had Donnie woken up after she'd blacked out? Had he fought off Rahzar and Fishface and the remaining Footbots, saved her and returned her home where she would be safe?
"Donnie?" she called out softly, knowing better than to believe that not seeing something meant it wasn't there.
All was silent. So silent, in fact, that she could feel the stale air around her pulsing with an ill-omened weight. She began to breathe shallowly again.
"Donnie?" she called again, yanking the sheets away.
She swung out her legs to step out of bed and froze, staring down at the purple strip of cloth draped on the corner of her nightstand.
She slowly reached out to take the mask in her hand, fingers poking through the holes where Donnie's warm brown eyes were supposed to peek from.
Her heartbeat jumped to her ears and a sting began to creep across her eyes.
She jumped out of bed and stumbled to the window, throwing it open. She climbed clumsily out onto the fire escape where a cool wind whipped her hair across her face and brought with it a silence unnatural to her.
Her eyes scanned the empty street, the vacant rooftops, and the shadowed alleyway across the street. She saw nothing even closely resembling her mutant hero.
She opened her mouth as her vision blurred, clutching the purple fabric to her chest.
"Donnie!"
Her trembling voice echoed through the city unanswered.
She could feel herself shaking with the effort it took to draw in another breath.
"DONNIE!"