Well a couple of things happened, the first of which being a bad case of writer's block (*shakes fist* My arch nemesis). But I found a way to overcome it! This time anyway...Then there was a pacing puzzle to solve. This chapter was initially intended to be longer but I decided to break it up into two. So, the good news then is that you get two chapters instead of one this time. And I will try try try my absolute best not to be so long with the next one.

Whew, okay...Proceed, read, enjoy, and let me know what you think :)

It had never been so difficult to remain calm.

It was taking twice the amount of focus and patience that life usually called for, which was saying something, considering what he had to endure on a day-to-day basis. But his sons needed him now. His son needed him now—to stay calm, to be brave, strong and resilient.

Splinter's nose twitched—a shift of movement that threatened his entire intricate mask of composure. He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath and allowed it to flow out of his lungs, out of his blood, out of his spirit and his mind.

He opened his eyes again. The knot of nauseous panic remained.

He tried to narrow his focus on what his eldest son was saying.

"We can check, but I doubt they'd go there. If the Shredder wanted us to find them, they'd have stayed where they were."

"Why don't we just use the tracker thing to find the signal in Donnie's T-phone?" Mikey asked.

"We've tried that twice already."

"But maybe—"

"It's not going to work!" Leo said, shooting a glare at his youngest brother. "They don't. Want us. To find him. Do you understand that? They're not going to let his phone just sit around. They've probably destroyed it by now. Trying to track him would just waste time."

Michelangelo frowned and turned his attention to his feet as the older turtle hunched back over the map he was glaring at.

Splinter's nose twitched again.

On the ride back to the lair, Leonardo had placed himself in Donatello's seat, while Splinter cautiously put his rusted driving skills to the test and guided the Shellraiser home. But he'd been aware of the air and the way it thickened in poison with his son's growing shell of bitter resolve.

The young leader may have come back to his senses, but Splinter wouldn't say his eldest son was fully collected emotionally, much like himself, with the exception that Leonardo's determination was cold. And Splinter could not help but fear for him.

He feared for all of his children, of course, most of all his missing son.

Splinter's religious practices normally did not involve monotheistic beliefs, but in desperate moments, sometimes he found himself whispering prayers to any god that would hear him. And he did this now, silently begging for the safety of his son, that this nightmare would end soon. But of course, there didn't seem to be much else that he could do. And this in itself made his stomach clench into an even tighter knot.

He closed his eyes again. Please be well, Donatello. Please stay strong.

He peered down at the lab table he was standing over and ran his fingers tenderly along the edge, as though he was handling a cherished possession of a lost child.

He did not allow his eyes to wander around the lab. He knew where everyone was.

Leonardo was standing opposite him. Michelangelo was sitting cross-legged on the end of the tabletop. Raphael was leaning back against the wall behind Donatello's computer with his arms crossed—glaring and silent. Casey had joined them upon receiving their urgent call, and was now hovering casually with his arms crossed over the corner of Donnie's desk. April was huddled against the wall by herself at the far end of the room, lost in a daze. Karai was pacing back and forth between the lab door and Mutagen Man, glancing in every direction except for Raphael's.

Relatively speaking, they were all where they needed to be … There was only one person missing.

Splinter bowed his head and released another long breath.

Leo's voice was a muffled blur to her, and she hardly felt any other presence besides that of the purple cloth in her hands. She twisted and weaved it between and around her fingers, staring down at it in numbness.

She was trying to rewind and replay every moment of the fight before she'd checked out, attempting to find where she could have acted differently, how she might have been able to stop them from taking him. And actually, there was a lot she could have done—a lot she didn't do. And it made the buzz of numbness heavier.

She was only vaguely aware when Karai stopped pacing and walked over to her side of the room to slide down next to her. They sat in silence as Karai watched April's hands wrap and un-wrap the mask around her fingers.

"I've been meaning to thank him," she said after a while, surprising April with the volume and poise of her voice.

April glanced at her once-enemy with an expressionless gaze. Karai nodded toward April's hand.

"I never really got around to it, or I guess, I just didn't know how to say it. But he did a lot for me, and I should have said something."

April turned her eyes back down to Donnie's mask. She didn't like the way Karai was talking, as though Donnie was already past salvation. But she nodded in response.

"It's not just you," she said. "No one ever thanks him enough, not even me. I suppose if we did, it'd get really tedious after a while." She shrugged. "He's saved my life more times than I really want to count."

She tugged on the end of the mask, tightening it around her hand and clenched her back teeth. "I had the chance to pay him back for that … but I wasn't good enough."

"It's not your fault, April," Karai said, her voice annoyingly flat. "You guys were alone. It's impressive really, how long you lasted before—"

"But I knew he was lying to me. I knew he was lying about Splinter saying it was okay to leave the lair, but I let him do what he wanted because I knew he needed it. If I had said something—"

"But you didn't," Karai said. "It doesn't matter anymore. It happened."

April turned narrowed eyes on Karai, whose expression remained impassive. April sniffed and brushed her wrist across her face. "You care?"

Karai's brow dipped. "Of course I do."

"It doesn't seem like it," April said, looking away again.

She heard Karai exhale after a pause. "I'm not particularly talented at showing emotion. It matters to me, April. I can tell you that honestly."

April sniffed again and blinked down at her lap. "Can you answer me something then, while you're being honest?"

Karai didn't respond, but April could feel her eyes on her neck. For a moment, the redhead was quiet too, watching as her fist trembled. She brushed her thumb across the mask and counted the pace of her heartbeat as she silently whispered for her stomach to stay calm.

Once she finally built up the courage, she looked back up.

"Will Shredder kill him?"

Karai stared back with an unwavering gaze. "No. Not as long as he needs him."

"But he'll hurt him?"

The briefest flicker of discomfort might have crossed the kunoichi's hazel gaze then, but April could never be sure with Karai.

"Yes. Shredder's smart. He knows how to inflict pain without causing damage."

April grimaced, but she forced herself to nod. "And once he's done with him? When he has what he wants? He'll kill him then won't he?"

Karai stared back in silence. A silence that stretched on so long that April's chest began to ache with grief already, as though Donatello really was gone, really was past salvation. But Karai looked away and stated very firmly, "He won't get that far."

April swallowed. "You're sure?"

"I know Leo," she said, glancing across the room where the blue-banded turtle himself stared down at the lab table. "He'd never allow the Shredder to harm his family."

April furrowed her brow, staring across the room as well. "But Leo's out of balance," she said. "Something's off about him."

"Of course something's off. He's missing a brother. It's like losing an arm for him. But that only strengthens his determination it get that arm back. He's not going to rest until Donatello is home. None of them will."

April pulled in a breath through her nose and nodded in return. That, Karai was right about. There would be no rest under the Hamato roof until they were all safe and accounted for. And this maybe gave her the smallest breath of relief.

As long as Donnie could wait for them, he would be okay.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and pressed her fist under her nose. Donnie would be okay.

"Karai."

Both girls looked up to Leo who was staring across the room. He was in full planning mode, with a crease on his brow and everything. His eyes might have given the atmosphere a frostiness that tightened a few muscles, but they were focused, and that was all anyone could really ask of him, or at least dared to ask of him.

Karai stood and walked over to the lab table.

"I need you to mark every possible place that you think the Shredder might be," he said, passing a hand over the map. "We've already put a pin by all the usual places. We need to know if there's anything missing."

Karai hunched over the table, eyes scanning the map and grabbed a small handful of pushpins.

It took an hour for them to map out every area that needed searching. And after that, there was no point in standing around any longer.

Once the teams were arranged, they set out in multiple directions.

Leo and Mikey took the Shellraiser. Raph and Casey took one half of the patrol buggy. April and Karai took the other. Splinter ventured out on his own again, and they all agreed to meet back at the lair at a certain time. Unless, of course, they were successful, in which case, they were to alert everyone else and wait to devise/revise an infiltration plan.

Not a single one of them believed they'd be returning to the lair without Donatello that night. Every pair carried a determined silence that needed no words to fill it. Half of them kept one hand on their favored weapon and the other on a phone. They were ready—maybe even more than ready. A very thin line could have been drawn at "begging for it." They wanted a fight.

But by the time the sun hit the horizon, a level of dread far more dense and subduing than the panic that had gotten them moving in the first place began to settle in the stomachs of each and every one of them.

It was six o'clock in the morning before Leo and Mikey, the last ones to return, dropped in exhaustion on the floor of the pit.

Splinter was sitting on the ledge over the waterway passage, attempting to force a spell of meditation on himself. No one could tell if he was actually mediating or just kneeling there trying not to look worried.

Raph was lying across the bench with an arm tossed over his face.

Casey was sitting next to April with a surprising amount of dismay in his expression. His hand glided up and down April's back as she sat with her face in her knees and her arms wrapped around her legs.

Karai was standing with her back to the pit, staring at the wall as though there was something interesting there.

Mikey had dropped himself across Leo's lap, and the older turtle sat staring blankly out across the pit.

There was silence.

And in that silence was a weight, a substance so foreign and heavy that no one knew what to do with it—not even the wise old sensei. So they sat there, and they waited, as though somehow that density might pick itself apart and evaporate on its own.

It did no such thing, of course. In fact, it only grew, expanded, became more tangible and voluminous, until it was bending back as far as it could and finally snapped in half when Michelangelo burst into tears.

No one spoke.

Casey, Karai, and Splinter all glanced at him. April joined his sobs, matching them with her own. Raph turned his back to them all and clutched a pillow to his chest. Leo wordlessly stroked his brother's head and continued to stare.