Chapter Text
April wanders into the eerily quiet Atrium and frowns, “Donnie? Mikey?”
The words echo throughout the Lair, but she doesn’t hear a response. April frowns and makes her way to the only place that wouldn’t hear her call, Donnie’s soundproofed lab. She smirks at the light pouring out the bottom of the door and tugs it open. The door gives easily, unlocked and April grins as she heaves it open, knocking on the inside.
“Knock knock!”
Footsteps come from Donnie’s second bedroom April had helped Mikey create when Donnie started spending more time in their lab and neglecting their health more. She waves as Donnie sticks their head out from the curtained off room, one of their most done expressions on their face.
“Seriously?”
“You’re supposed to say who’s there!” April whines walking over to her best friend.
Donnie steps out of the room and rolls their eyes, “Who’s there?”
“Orange.”
Donnie groans, already having heard this joke in the past, but they still play along as they open the curtain to let April walk into the room. April loves Donnie, “Orange, who?”
April smirks and shoots Donnie with a pair of finger guns, “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”
Donnie groans around a choked down chuckle as Mikey giggles from behind her. April turns around and smirks at the box turtle, only to be greeted by a familiar red eared slider. Her smirk becomes slightly strained as she looks at the tired turtle, shaking under one of the weighted blankets where Mikey is holding him. The slider’s eyes are wide, the pinprick pupils shaking and glazed over as he stares through April.
“Oh.”
Donnie sighs from next to her and walks past to sit down and press their shell against the shaking turtle pile that is probably sensory hell for her exhausted sibling, “Yeah.”
April understands why Donnie’s text was so short. In Donnie speak, that signalled desperation, uncertainty, reaching the breaking point.
“Okay,” April murmurs under her breath and takes a deep breath in, giving herself a moment to take in the situation before her, “Okay. Fill me in.”
She crouches down in front of Leo, gently placing the back of her hand to his slightly warm forehead, drawing out a whine from the turtle. Donnie looks between them and chews on their lip, before opening their mouth to answer, “He ran into my lab and hid in my… pizza fun box.”
“We all know that’s not what it really is, Donnie,” Mikey rolls her eyes as she tightens her hold on Leo, “and I’m prettyyyyy sure it’s not morally sound or safe.”
Donnie doesn’t answer and just continues, “He refused to come out.”
“Yeah!” Mikey cuts in, “He was freaking out! Wouldn’t stop whimpering and snarled at us whenever we tried to get close. It was a bit like when Donnie gets overwhelmed, but extra vocal.”
Donnie nods in agreement, lowering a hand to give Leo a scritch on the back of his neck and April watches as the turtle relaxes slightly, “He was terrified and didn’t want us close, but when we tried to leave, he tackled Mikey and wouldn’t stop yelling for me to stay.”
“We managed to coax him into the bedroom and under the weighted blanket, but…” Mikey trails off as Leo shoves his head into her neck.
April’s tongue runs over the bottoms of her teeth as she watches the way Leo, despite having such a distant and spooked look in his eyes, keeps an eye on each of them. Mikey didn’t even look this spooked during the Gumbus Incident and her poor sister was terrified then.
“Okay,” she murmurs, running her hand over his carapace to a spot April knows Mikey loves. April grins as Leo melts under the scritches, meeting Mikey’s eyes, “You said he has a brother, right? Do you think…?”
April can’t bring herself to finish that sentence. Mikey looks away, eyes scrunched closed as she shuffles against Leo slightly.
“No,” April looks over at Donnie, who is tapping away at their wrist, “the Big Guy is fine.”
April frowns at them, “How do you know?”
Donnie sighs, long and suffering and April prepares herself for a lecture fondly, “Because none of the security cameras in New York have picked up the Big Guy since he last entered his… Lair and, before you say we avoid the cameras every night and you would be correct if we only considered those owned by humans, I, the Great Hamato Donatello, have no blindspots when it comes to the entrances and exits of the New York City maze known as the sewer system!”
April raises an eyebrow, “Just the entrances and exits?”
Donnie crosses their arms, “And around the Lair. I do understand boundaries-“ Mikey coughs pointedly, “some boundaries and appreciate the help with understanding other boundaries.”
April snickers. Mikey does love some privacy to get away from her older sibling’s overprotective watchful eye.
“So,” April starts, “You’re sure he’s in the sewers?”
Donnie nods, smug smile on his face, “Of course! My tech is designed with the most advanced image recognition around, because it was made by moi! The only people currently in the sewers are us, Papa and the Big Guy.”
April raises her eyebrow, “So how come you didn’t know he even existed until a few months ago?”
Donnie stalls, fingers twitching as they turn to face April slowly.
“The Big Guy had dropped a bunch of sewer sludge over them,” Mikey interrupts gleefully, “and Donnie never noticed because the image recognition doesn’t recognise sewer gunk!”
April starts to cackle as Donnie pouts crossing their arms, “You try making an image recognition software that recognises your pores.”
April pats their shoulder, grin across her face, “You did great, Dee, but are you sure the Big Guy is in the sewers?”
Donnie preens and smiles at her gratefully, tapping away at their wristtech, bringing up a holoscreen they skim through, “Yes. I upgraded my tech to recognise sewer gunk and none of them are covered at the moment. The Big Guy has not left the sewers.”
“So, is he safe in the sewers?” April asks.
“I would know if a threat entered the sewers and I would know if,” Donnie assures, but skips to a new screen, where a few heart monitors show, six to be exact, “something had… happened.”
April wonders distantly how many of their vitals Donnie monitors. She doesn’t bother asking when this happened; after all, it’s Donnie. April really needs to emphasise privacy and permission with Donnie again.
Instead, she frowns, fingers framing her chin as she rubs where her goatee would be if she had one, “So it’s not that… that happened to the Big Guy… do you think something attacked them?”
Donnie shrugs, “The Big Guy was angry, definitely ready for a fight, but he was unharmed during whatever altercation occurred.”
“Errrr-“
“He wasn’t hurt,” April smiles at her sister.
“Oh!” Mikey perks up, “That’s good, right?”
April opens her mouth to reassure her sister, but Donnie beats her to it, “If someone attacked them and that was what scared Leo, yes.”
Ice drips down April’s back, “You don’t think that’s what happened, do you?”
Donnie hesitates, sending a quick glance at the two burritoed turtles. They sigh and nod at April, fingers coming up to their arm and holding it, not scratching, yet, “When we were in their Lair-“
“-we should call it something else, so it doesn’t get confusing,” Mikey interrupts, “Like Safezone or something.”
Donnie rolls their eyes, “When we were in the Safezone-“
“-title pending!” Mikey adds with a pleased nod.
“-Leo kept close tabs on us, the intruders, directing the Big Guy.”
April raises an eyebrow, “Excuse me?”
Mikey squeezes Leo with a grin, “Yeah! We thought the squeaks were just the old pipes, but they were actually Leo! He got a little close though and we caught him and the rest is history!”
April chuckles at that, shaking her head. Of course they caught their new fri-brother. She’d only became their friend during their second meeting when she’d managed to trap the ‘aliens that were using her rooftop basketball hoop to mind control all the adults to make her go to school’. Not her best theory, but she didn’t regret it. Without it, she wouldn’t have these awesome siblings.
Donnie nods and crosses their arms, staring at the ceiling, “Since we managed to catch Leo, if there was an intruder, I doubt the Big Guy would let him do that again. He is very protective and would never let Leo do something that would risk him getting caught and hurt-“
“But we didn’t hurt him!” Mikey cuts in, squeezing Leo even more against all odds.
“Which is the only reason I imagine Leo is here,” Donnie rubs Leo’s neck, scratching that spot he loves, drawing a far too quiet churr from the younger turtle, “and not bundled in the Big Guy’s arms.”
“You think he trusts us,” April realises, watching as Leo’s eyes begin to droop.
“He trusts us,” Donnie gestures to themself and Mikey. “He’s never met you and humans…”
Silence fills the room. April knows how this story goes. She’s seen the movies where aliens are caught by the government and the hero has to save them from dissection, a far too common trope she and her siblings always avoid.
Donnie whispers something under their breath and April squints at them, “What was that Dee?”
The softshell turtle waves her off, “Don’t worry about it. “
She squints suspiciously at the other turtle who sweats under her unyielding gaze. April could win this battle of wills, if she wanted, but she relents. Donnie doesn’t want her to know something; she’ll find out what it is eventually. Right now, she thinks.
And then she sees a bit of green in the blanket burrito.
Her breath catches in her throat. That was the green of her sewer hoodie that she usually wore after the pillow wars. It was the one hoodie she left here, since it always smelt of the sewers and was stained in gunk. April was not going to wear her usual jacket when playing around in sewer gunk. She already smelt like the sewers on a daily basis; she did not need to look like one too. April had given it to Leo after his dunk in the Atrium with Donnie, letting him warm up and even let the comfy, happy turtle keep the fabric he seemed to love. She had even been making note to buy one for him, maybe blue to match his mask or red to match his stripes.
Leo is still wearing that hoodie, the same hoodie that smells like not just the sewers, but her, a human.
Donnie refuses to say there was a potential intruder. They won’t tell her what they are thinking, but they have never needed to. April can always figure it out.
The Big Guy is probably scared of humans. April is a human. She gave her hoodie to Leo. Leo wore it home.
Could the Big Guy not recognise his brother under the scent of human?
…
Did he really hate humans that much?