Donatello lay in bed, eyes wide open and fixed on the ceiling, retracing cracks and stains he had memorized years ago. Arcane energy burned his skin, running in spiderweb patterns throughout his weightless body.
He felt a buzzing in his head, under his skin, confusing, disorienting, trying to lull him into relaxation, to release his stranglehold on life.
Donnie imagined choking the energy to death.
He couldn't relax. It was waiting for that.
April's power… it stitched him back together, but it wasn't right. It wasn't supposed to happen. He was supposed to be dead. And he wasn't supposed to come back. Every time he began to drift off, he felt the electricity peak, just like the terrible infinite moment where he was suspended, high and helpless and knowing something was terribly wrong just before-
Well, that part was hard to remember.
He understood what was happening, or at least he thought he did. That made it easier. It was just like what happened to Sensei. Shredder had killed him, during the Triceraton invasion, and they had fixed it, gone back in time. But the destruction of Earth, as Professor Honeycutt had put it, had been a focal point of time. A large event that could happen, or it could not. They had made it not happen.
But the time stream still wanted to flow, regardless of the major stones in it's path. The little things, things that were supposed to happen, still would. People met each other, people were born. People died. Master Splinter died in almost the exact same way as he would have, and the time stream was corrected again.
Donnie was supposed to die. Time said so. It happened, and it was big, and April's unlimited power pulled him to pieces as she became one with the cosmos. And she tried to change it but… too little, too late. It was supposed to happen, now. There was a dead-Donatello shaped hole in the universe just waiting to be filled. All that was left was to wait, and to plan.
To be honest, Donnie was just thankful he had some measure of control over these… attacks. They'd tried to start in the middle of patrols before and… well, he could postpone them. It made things worse later, but then he could deal with them when they didn't put his brothers in danger.
He hadn't told them. How could he? How could he tell them that even though April had saved him… he was still dying? Faster and faster, every day a little worse… how could he tell Mikey that one day he might not be able to hold himself together any longer? How could he tell Raph that he might not always be strong enough? How could he tell Leo that there wouldn't even be a body, just… violet dust.
Violet dust in the face of April's limitless power.