The Devil will find work for idle hands to do...
--The Smiths, What Difference Does it Make?
Splinter wakes up sweating, his heart pounding, trying desperately to sort out the dream.
Finally, he caught enough of it. He was back in Japan, with his master Yoshi, the night Oroku Nagi was killed. The dream was about Shen. That was one of the few things that was clear...he could see Nagi, shoving her across the room, enraged...
Nothing good will come of this.
Of what?
Something in his mind whispers April...
Her pregnancy? He remembered blood in the dream, oceans of blood...had Shen been pregnant? Was that another reason behind Hamoto Yoshi's rage? Or was that something new, something the dream had implanted in his mind? With what little he knew of humans then...she could have miscarried...he's working too hard now, the dream's fading...He sits up, settles his back against the headboard, tries to relax, to let the visions float back into his mind.
"Do we hafta watch this?"
"C'mon, Mike," Raph says. "It's an old Pammie Anderson repeat. You like Pammie Anderson."
"Not that much," Mike says, but he sits next to his brother anyway, puts his feet up on the coffee table. They're watching the cast jiggle across the beach when they hear
pounding at the door.
"Who is it?"
"It's Casey," he says. He sounds out of breath. "Lemme in."
"All right, hold on," Raph says, gets up, opens the door.
"Was it you?"
"Was what me?"
"We did the friggin' ultrasound today," Casey says, and shoves something in his face.
Raphael takes the paper, looks at it, turns it, looks again. The color starts fading from his
face. "Holy shit..."
"She won't tell me," he says darkly. Something about the way he says it bothers Raph.
He looks up at Casey's face, but all he can read is anger.
"She okay?"
"Who gives a shit?"
"What's goin' on?" Mike asks, getting up. Raphael hands him the ultrasound.Mike stares
at it for a long time. Finally, he looks up. "How--?"
"That's what I wanna know," Casey growls.
"I'm gonna check on April," Mike says, holding Casey in his sight.
Shadow gets the door. Mike can see she's been crying.
"Shadow, honey, what's goin' on?"
"Daddy-- he yelled and he--"
"Oh, sweetie..." He picks her up and she clings to him. "Where's April at?"
"She's in the kitchen, she's hurt...I dialed 9-1-1 like I was supposed to..."
He almost slips on the blood, puddling, starting to congeal where the linoleum meets the
living room carpet.
She's huddled under the kitchen table, in shock he figures, her breathing shallow, barely
able to react to the sound of his footsteps.
"No," she groans, so low he can barely hear her, "please...no more..."
"April, it's me, it's Mike."
"Mike, I'm gonna lose the baby--"
"Shadow called 911--"
"She here?"
"I'm here," Shadow says, runs up, grabs April's hand, slick with blood.
"...oh, Shadow...good girl..."
Mike doesn't even know where to start, she's bruised and cut and bleeding everywhere,
the worst stains on her jeans, spreading between her legs...he knows first aid, but
that was never part of the program..."April?"
"wha--"
"The baby...it's...?"
She turns her head, makes an effort to focus on him. "What?"
"April, maybe we're radioactive or something, I don't know, maybe this is just--"
"no," she says. "no accident--"
He can hear the paramedics at the door.
Shadow looks up at Mike. "Uncle Mikey--"
"...honey," she says, "he'll take care of you..."
"I'll keep her safe, April. I promise."
"thank you..."
"Hey, Shadow," Leo says, picking her up. "Whatcha doin' here?"
Splinter frowns, something about her being here bothering him, reminding him of his
premonitions...
"Mommy's hurt," Shadow says, squeezing Leo tight around his neck. Leo frowns, looks
over at Mike. "What happened?"
Mike picks the ultrasound photo off the coffee table, hands it to Leo.
"What...what is
this?"
"April's ultrasound."
Leo shakes his head. "What..."
"One of us," Mike says simply. "He tried to beat it out of her, but she wouldn't say
anything. She's at the hospital now..." He looks down. If it's showing on either of their
faces, he doesn't want to see it.
Don asks, "How bad?"
"Bad. When they took her, they weren't sure if they could even save her...I was
gonna call Robyn tonight, see if she could find out anything more...we gotta clean up the
apartment, anyway..."
Splinter takes the picture from Leonardo, looks at it carefully. A daughter, he
thinks, that much he can sense. But he can't see if she'll live, if either of them will live.
"Where's Raphael?"
"He went with Casey. I told him to get him out before I came back with Shadow..."
They're at the edge of the East River. Some kinda gang fight goin' on tonight over on
the other bank, but neither of them are really paying attention.
"I should beat the shit out of you," Raph says, staring out at the water.
Casey says nothing.
"But it doesn't really make any friggin' difference, does it? I could rip your goddamn
balls off and feed 'em to the fishes and it won't make any difference. That baby..." He
turns to Casey. "Don't you get it?"
"Get what?"
"It's as close as we're gonna get. No one's ever gonna want us, you know that,
April knows that..."
"And you want a kid to go through the same shit?"
"I don't know." His eyes wander
back out to the river. "I mean, if you sat me down and said, 'Hey, you want a kid?' I'd say,
'Hell, no.' But...it's too late. She's already pregnant...and....I don't know, Casey. I don't
know." He turns away, blinking back tears he doesn't want Casey to see. "I gotta get
back."
"All right."
"I...look, you already know this, but I'm gonna say it again anyway. Stay the hell away
from her."
"Yeah, I'll find a motel or something." He turns back to Raphael. "Raph?"
"What?"
"Was it you?"
Raph turns and faces him. "You wouldn't be alive right now if it had been."
They've all gone to bed, now. Splinter gets up, starts the faucet, gets the cold water
going, fills the teapot. He lights the burner and puts the pot on, opens the canister of tea,
measures the leaves into the strainer. He's feeling old, lately; the cold's getting to him,
and his nightmares have become just short of unbearable.
Though he suspects they will trouble him less, now that they have finally made their way
to his waking life.
He stands there, waits until the water boils, fills the teapot, plunges the strainer into the
boiling water. He walks the teapot to the coffee table in the living room, walks back to
the kitchen, gets two cups, puts them next to the teapot, sits on the couch, waits.
The tea brews, and he pours it into the cups, starts sipping at his.
Finally he hears the footsteps. "Donatello?"
"Sensei?"
"Come, sit down," he says. "We have much to discuss."
----------------------
She's six months along when he sneaks into the hospital room.
"April," he says, sitting down by the bed. "Can I talk to you?"
She glares at him. "I gotta restraining order."
"I know. I'm not gonna hurt you, April."
"Why are you here, then?"
"I wanna know why."
She sighs. "I don't know why, Casey. I've been trying to figure that out since I did
it."
"I mean, we were tryin' for a baby, if you didn't want me, why--"
"I wanted you, Casey. I wanted the guy I fell in love with, the fun one, not
this...this creep who kept pushing me and pushing me...another month and I wasn't
pregnant and you'd just brush me off most of the time, but the second I was
ovulating...and you wouldn't go to a doctor..."
"April--"
"And so eventually, it was after I was pregnant but I didn't know that then, I went to the
doctor and I had him test..." She puts her head in her hands. "Casey, it was
you...you...you can't..."
"You didn't tell me?"
"And then, when I realized I was pregnant, and I didn't know what to do, so I
just...I just pretended it wasn't happening, that the doctor was wrong, that you were the
father and everything was going to be all right..." She smiles bitterly. "What a
joke."
"But why--"
"I don't know, Casey. I don't know why I did it. God, he's just a
kid...it's my fault, I'm not trying to say anything else, but dammit, he wanted me,
and I knew it...and I liked it. I was flattered. Maybe I just wanted someone who would
look at me and see something more than a goddamn baby factory," she says. "Oh, Christ,
Casey, what difference does it make now?"
"I...I don't know."
She brushes the tears off her face. "I loved you, Casey," she says sadly. "I really
did."
"Not any more."
"Not after this. No."
"You gonna stay with him?"
She shakes her head. "I don't know what I'm gonna do...they want me to stay in the
hospital, anyway, they're still not sure they can save the baby...I don't even know if they
really want to."
"I never wanted to hurt you, April, I just lost it..."
"It doesn't matter, though, does it?"
"No," he says. "I guess it doesn't."
----------------------
Raphael sits down beside the grave.
"Hey," he says gently, puts a wrapped package next to the marker. "Happy birthday.
Brought you a Barbie. Hope ya like it."
She'd be seven this year. Older than Shadow was the last time he saw her. He doesn't
even know what seven-year-old girls are like. Maybe she wouldn't like Barbies,
maybe she'd rather have one of those wrestling things or that dumb mall thing...
He doesn't come here very often, he's never sure what to say or even why he's here,
mourning a child who didn't even make it to her seventh month.
April's out in California now, living with her sister. Some years they get a Christmas
card. Raph always figures she's feeling better those years.
"I love you, Rachel," he says. "You take care, okay?"
He gets up before he starts crying.
Mike watches him from further down the hill, keeping in the shadows. Raph isn't one to spend a lot of time there; it about kills him every time he goes up. It's funny; it's a consolation for Mike. He's planted some flowers up there, mums and zinnias and pansies and iris and a big peony between Rachel and Splinter's graves, and he likes to go up and tend them. Makes him feel needed, he guesses. None of his brothers ever seem to rely on him anymore. 'Cept for the food, of course, they'd probably all starve to death without him. He's learned to garden and can; Leo does a lot of the hunting, most of the butchering. Mike doesn't really have the stomach for it any more, not since that day he saw April on the floor, bleeding like that...good thing they'd made peace with the Foot; Mike doesn't think he has the strength to fight any more. Not for real. Not again.
Leo checks the snare. Nothing.
Damn. He hasn't caught a rabbit in three days. Either the rabbits are getting smarter or
he's been overhunting them. Maybe Mike's right; maybe they should make a pen. Give
Mike something else to look after. He gets stir-crazy, sometimes, though he won't admit
it. Course Mike wouldn't let them slaughter any, after he started taking care of
them...
Sometimes when he's on the far edge of their land, he'll think he hears
something. Someone running in the woods or laughing and he'll think,
Shadow?
But he says nothing. They made the deal with Casey, and they've stuck to it. They get a
little land, and some mail, and they get left alone. And they leave Casey alone, and
April, and Shadow. Once in a while they'll trade some skins or venison, some of Mike's
canning, for something they need: books, seeds, Raph's birthday presents every year.
They do it all with notes. It's easier.
Leo realized it would hurt like hell, but he had thought it would fade. It seems to get
worse. He's not sure how long any of them can live like this. Losing Splinter last winter
didn't help.
Since they built the cabin and he'd gotten the place set up, Don spends most of his
time meditating. April's departure and his daughter's death sent him into a depression his
brothers are afraid he's never going to emerge from. The meditation helps, but not
enough. He only speaks when it's necessary; they have to drag him to train, practically
force him to eat. And sleep is nothing but torture. He dreams of April. The memories
have faded, and now it's murky, just glimpses; the feel of her hair between his fingers, a
whisper, a touch just behind his neck. And he dreams of Spinter, holding Rachel, both of
them beckoning him, Splinter whispering, "Come, Donatello. Join us. You've waited
long enough." Some nights he has sunk low enough that Mike and Leo have gotten into
the habit of watching him, making sure he doesn't do anything. One night,
Splinter, Don has promised. One night they'll forget. One night they won't
notice. I will join you.
It's only a matter of time.
--end chapter one--
