Chapter Text
If you had told yourself about two and a half months ago that you would be stood up on the edge of a building underlooking one of the busiest streets in New York City, while getting screamed at by three of the angriest Turtles you had ever seen, you wouldn’t believe yourself. But if you had, you probably would have acted differently towards the one you had met that night, while out at the underpass. It would have probably been worth it.
That night, you had nowhere you needed to go, nobody you needed to see or talk to. Walking at eleven at night cleared your mind from your struggles, and that's what you did as often as possible. You usually took shelter at an underpass that nobody seemed to visit often, sure it had graffiti plastered all over the visible walls, support beams and even on the ground, but whenever you seemed to stroll on over, nothing seemed to change from the last visit. The isolation from the rest of New York was good for a Yokai like yourself, as nobody was there to see you. Sure, you had your cloaking brooch on you at all times, but a part of you liked not disguising yourself, you took pride in being a Yokai.
As you arrived, taking shelter from the winds growing colder by the minute, you plopped yourself onto the ground as a shiver travelled up your spine from the coldness of the concrete. You leaned against the wall that was protecting you from the cold as you took out your phone, messing around with it. It was an awfully quiet night, strange for this part of the city. You could usually hear the sounds of cars passing overhead or of small animals scurrying by you, either way, there was always a sound to be heard. The quietness seemed unnatural to you, but it was a nice change. As you scroll through your phone, you see someone out of the corner of your eye. You press the button on your brooch as fast as you could, before the person could recognize you as not human, but when you look over at them, they didn’t look very human either.
The first thing you noticed about them was the purple bandana that covered their face, but that didn’t look too out of the ordinary compared to the second thing you noticed about them, their green skin. Look, you only talk to humans from your school, but from what you had seen of them, none of them had green skin unless they were deathly ill, and even then, that's just a slight tint. This person’s skin was a shade of jade with some slight purple markings on their shoulders. They were A Yokai, A turtle Yokai. They gave you a stare, you couldn’t even begin to pin down what exact emotion they were feeling towards you, nervousness, disgust, annoyance, somewhere around there you assumed. From what you could tell, they were not happy that you were occupying the space that they wanted to occupy. Not really wanting to start a fight with this stranger, you start to pack up your stuff to leave. As you scurried out of the underpass, peering out of the corner of your eye, you notice that they had stolen the spot you were sitting in for themselves.
The next time you saw them was a few days later. You had gotten into a scuffle with a friend, nothing terrible, but bad enough to want to spend some time apart. You didn't blame them, you said some things, they said some things, and you were ready to apologize and make things right, but they just needed a little more time. You knew they would come around eventually, so you didn't worry about it. As you grab your bag, setting off on another nighttime walk, the person you saw at the underpass a couple of days ago popped into your head. After seeing them that night, you remembered how rare it was for a Yokai to be above the hidden city without a cloaking brooch. That was the first one you had seen without one, the first in a long time at least. The tension was high between Humans and Yokai and it was too risky to be seen by them.
The night was nice to you. The breeze was cool, not cold like it was many nights ago. Not many people stopped to talk to you, not many things were in your way, and you just got to enjoy the night. You started coming up towards your favourite underpass after some twists and turns around New York. All of your walks seemed to end up stumbling upon the underpass again. You decided to take a peek underneath it to see if the person had changed anything, but what you didn’t expect was for them to be sitting there, back turned. They had a different outfit though, they had a huge purple hoodie on with the hood up. You could only tell it was them because of their recognizably green legs. They seemed to notice your presence as they turned their head around slightly to peer at you through their hood, but they then dismissed you and continued with what they were doing.
You enter the underpass, dropping your bag to your side then pressing your back against the wall, sliding down until your knees reach your chest. You couldn’t help but draw your attention to the person sitting across the underpass, working on something intensely. You could hear them mutter and laugh to themselves as they worked, it should have scared you off, but you felt like this guy couldn’t be that bad. As you kept looking at them, you hadn’t realized how long you’d been staring until a strident voice echoed throughout the underpass. “Can I help you?” They said, being clear they were annoyed with you. “Whatcha doin stranger? Looks interesting.” Your head perked up as you asked. They turned back with their drawn-on eyebrows raised, probably due to being called ‘stranger’, but it soon changed back to their monotone expression as they continued with what they were doing. “This is advanced technology that someone like you wouldn’t even be able to begin to comprehend, so really, there is no point in asking me that,” they grumbled. Okay, tough crowd…
You just sat there as they worked, you didn’t even want to try to start a conversation with them because you didn’t want to be shut down the entire time. You move your bag closer to you, opening it up and taking out some homework you needed to catch up on for your metalworking class. You needed to do your work, it was the only way to keep yourself enrolled in a human high school and you did so much to get accepted, you were not going to lose it to a dumb thing like failing a class. As you wrote down some stuff about preparing the metal for it to be cut, you heard a loud grumble, then some short ones to follow. You peered up at the noise to see them looking through all of the things that littered the floor around them, quickly picking stuff up and dropping it, they seemed to be looking for something and not being able to find it put them in distress. “Hey.? You good?” You asked as you got up from the wall you were leaning on, putting one knee on the ground as your arm draped over it. They didn’t respond at first but then gave a loud sigh. “No, I am not ‘good’! But you wouldn’t understand why!” he hissed, not even wanting you to attempt to help.
He went back to fumbling with his stuff, then got up to lean against one of the support beams, showing what he was working on. Was it some kind of computer thing? You couldn’t tell. “I could try and help?” you hesitantly ask. You get off your knee, then sat down with your legs crossed over each other. He slowly turns his head towards you, then lets out a large chuckle. “Yeah, okay, call me when you make something greater than this! Only then will you be at most one-fourth qualified to help me.” he boasted, gesturing towards his… Computer..? Invention? yea let's just call it that. You were already getting fed up with this guy, but you didn’t want to give into his smug superiority complex that easily, so you pushed forward. “Well do you want to try and fix the problem, or do you want to sit there and complain that the problem isn’t being fixed? Hm?” You smugly inquired, giving his energy back to him. As you said that, you realized how rude that sounded, and you wished you hadn’t given into yourself to do that. The turtle just glared at you with his monotone expression, rolled their eyes and started talking. “Well if you HAVE to know, I am so close to finishing my upgrades, but I am all out of screws because my stupid BROTHER, decided to use them all for whatever dumb thing he was doing which I am sure isn’t as important as this!” They complained, “If you have any solutions, then be my guest.”. Screws, this was all about screws.
You may not understand robotics, but you understood screws. You decided not to push him any further, and though the idea seemed appealing, you instead thought about what you could do about his little problem. You soon get an idea. You grab your bag, rummaging through it, and remembering you pocketed some screws from your metalworking class a while back. The reason? For the thrill. Even though there wasn’t anything thrilling about stealing screws from a metalworking class, the teacher hadn’t noticed they were missing yet so you were off the hook for now. “Will these do? They’re all I got.” You held out the screws to them. They got up from the place they were sitting and swiftly stepped over to you to look at the screws. They flipped their goggles down and took a single screw from your hand, examining it thoroughly. Once they were done, they flipped their goggles back up and took all of the screws from your hand, going back to what they were doing before.
You started to pack up, you wanted to continue your walk, not sit here with this nerd all night. Of course, you didn’t mean that harshly, they seem pretty cool, but even though nobody necessarily needed you, there were some places you needed to be. As you start to leave, you hear a loud ‘AHEM’ from the person you had previously helped. You turned to them, and they then stood up, then stepping an inch closer to you. “The screws aren’t what I had been using previously, but they will suffice for now. I will give you credit for this,” they said, which you assumed was a thank you. “No problem… Glad I could help. I didn’t catch your name by the way.” you said. They hesitated but soon rolled their eyes. "Donatello" was not something you expected. “Sweet, I’m Y/N, hope to see you again,” you stated as you walked off into the cool breezes of the night, leaving them in the underpass.
After that, you did in fact see them again. It had seemed that the underpass that you had claimed as your hang-out spot had been claimed by another, that person being no other than Donatello. At first, he was still wary of you since you two didn’t know each other that well, but he seemed more open to getting to know you. You started seeing Donnie at the underpass way more than you originally had, which was about every other day, sometimes 2-3 days in a row. He started to warm up to you the more you two saw each other. He started opening up to you about his inventions and technology, he told you some ideas he had for one and another he finished working on which was that computer he needed the screws for. He explained that it was a tracking device so that if he or one of his brothers went missing, they would have an easier time finding each other. It would go on their shell and would be a pain in the ass to take off by any bad guys. This apparently was a regular occurrence which freaked you the hell out. He also seemed to take interest in your times in a human school even though you’re a Yokai, he had a LOT of questions about it like what classes you took, what they were like, and if you ever revealed yourself by accident.
One time when you were talking, you accidentally let the scuffle with your friend from a while ago slip to him. You two had made up by then, but once he heard about it, he was determined to get to know the situation and take a side himself, and he didn’t hold back. It was fun to talk to him, it was refreshing to have a new pair of eyes look at all of your experiences. He told you more about his life than he originally let on. He told you about his brothers and how much of a pain in the ass his brother Leo was to him. He told you so many stories of how ‘he’ saved New York so many times, but you figured that he was tweaking some details to try and impress you. He was unpredictable, but at the same time you could read him like a book, it was a great change of pace.
Soon, you two started to hang out away from the old underpass. He knew better places to hang out than you did, so you let him do all the work of choosing where you two went. His favourite thing to do was to take you to tall building tops. You don’t really go to places where you risk people seeing you unbrooched, the only exception being, well, the underpass, but you were open to the change. You also started your hangouts a little earlier, so you two weren’t coming home at 4 in the morning like you used to. Donnie was starting to get more tired in the daytime, so much that he couldn’t do his job correctly if he wasn’t getting the correct amount of sleep, not that he was doing it perfectly before. He told you in the past that his brothers were getting suspicious of him, as he was leaving the lair at the same time almost every night, not telling them where he was going. He often ranted about how his brothers always wanted to know where he was going, one time he even caught one of them trying to follow him on his way to hang out with you. “Why don’t you just tell them? That will most likely stop the nagging.” You would say to him, but in typical Donnie fashion, he would shut you down on that idea. He also didn’t want you to meet his brothers, even though he talked so much about them. He never gave you an explanation for either of these things, often saying that “It’s fine, don’t worry.” and, “They will see you soon enough.”, but what you didn’t know is that you would be meeting them unexpectedly faster than you had originally thought.
You balanced on the edge of a rather tall building, overlooking one of the streets of New York, watching the cars drive past the citizens on the sidewalk, watching lights flicker off in the stores as they shut down for the night. You look down at your disguised hand as you turn to Donnie who was walking beside you with his tech bō over his shoulder, he had his eyes glued to the ground as he let out a yawn, it seemed to you that something was on his mind. “You alright Don?” You yelp at him, which seemed to catch him off guard as he stumbles over his steps. You have never been able to startle him that much with just a yelp which confirmed that something was up. “Yeaaahh, I am fine… Y/N why do you ask?” he asked, trying to look normal as he leaned on his bō. “It’s just, you seem so zoned out right now, you bored or something?” “NO! No, I'm not! Of course, I'm not! Why would THE Donatello be bored?" he quickly yelled. You thought it was weird, but you didn’t want to question it, so you just smiled and nodded, continuing to look down at the city. Just then, when you were almost on the edge of one building, getting ready to hop to another rooftop did you hear a raspy voice. It seemed like it came from the alleyway at the bottom of the building. “Alright guys, it says he’s comin this way, so get ready to strike, we got another Purple Dragons situation in our mitts, so let's put an end to this!” You hear someone say. Yikes, wouldn’t want to get involved with that.
As you reach the edge of the rooftop and go to jump from it to the next one, you decide to peer down into the alleyway to see who was going to enact this plan you just happened to overhear. You couldn’t see them very well, but from what you did, there were three people, one with a red bandana, one with a blue one and one with an orange one. The one in the red bandana was visibly bigger than the other two and what you assumed to be the one giving orders. His shell was littered with spikes, while the other two were not. Wait, shells.? They were turtles. Your heart dropped at that moment as you put two and two together, realizing who these turtles were. You look over to Donnie who had his face buried in his phone, reading something. “Uh, Don?” You quietly call to him. He couldn’t even respond when the three people from the alleyway leaped onto the top of the building, man could they jump. You stumble over, the side of your head briefly meeting the building roof, you turn back to them as they stomped closer to you. You slid away from them on your back, your legs were too shaky to get up on your feet, but you were determined to get away. They meant business, they looked like they wanted to skin you alive, if these were really what you assumed to be Donnie’s brothers, he didn’t tell you about this.
You heard your heart pound roughly in your chest, your breathing picking up as they inched closer and closer. You see Donnie jump in between his brothers and yourself, you took this as an opportunity to quickly crawl as far away as you could at that moment. You made it to the side of the building, as you grab the ledge and pull yourself onto it, your legs still shaking violently, your heart still beating, and your breathing slightly calming down. You could hear Donnie’s pleas to his brothers as one of them strayed from the group. “Who are you?!” he yelled at you, suddenly behind you, which made you tumble over again. You looked at Donnie who looked back at you. He was trying to reason with the red one, the other two were nowhere to be seen. “Well?!” he persisted. As you look up at him, you recognize the blue bandana that covered his face, it was Leo. Donnie had only shown you pictures of him, that was only because he was accidentally in one of the photos he showed you of himself. Leo impatiently tapped his foot, waiting for an answer. “I’m just a friend! What do you want with me?” you yelled back to him. He didn’t seem to like that answer.
You backed away from him, your back now to Donnie and the others as he continued to plead with the bigger brother. You hadn’t seen him this desperate to accomplish something. You had seen him determined, but never desperate, you had always assumed that he thought he was too cool to be desperate, but this changed your view on that. “It’s not what you think! They had nothing to do with this!” He begged. “Leave them out of this!”. As you put your hand down on the cold building roof, you try to rush to the building's edge to your right, but as your back bumps the edge of the roof, you feel someone looming over you. You look behind you to see the last of his brothers, the one in the orange bandana, you forgot his name, the only one you knew by heart was Leo. Speaking of Leo, he stepped down from where he was standing and walked over to where you had stopped. The one in the red bandana who Donnie was pleading with, pushed him aside with a “Thank me later.” and trudged to where you were. All 3 of them were looming over you, they did not look happy, but you assumed that when they first jumped up.
The one that was behind you jumped over the top of you to stand beside his 2 brothers. You felt the red one grab you by your shirt collar, bringing your face closer to his. You turned your face away, you didn't want to look at them, you didn't want that to be the last thing you saw. Donnie rushed over, trying to claw between his brothers to get them away from you. “This wasn’t supposed to happen! I’m sorry!” he yelled at you as he peaked in between an opening that the red one and the orange one made, but they quickly closed it. You knew he was genuine, he never apologized, and you hadn’t heard him say ‘Sorry’ or anything of the sort before this moment. His voice was overshadowed by the yelling of his three brothers. You couldn’t catch all of it, your brain tuned most of it out, but from what you did catch, you heard ‘Trouble’, ‘Purple Dragon’, and ‘Leave’. You picked yourself up onto the ledge of the building and looked down to the street. It was the busiest you had ever seen that street in a long time. The street glimmered as it was illuminated with cars and street lights. You turn back to the angriest turtles you had ever seen, still screaming at you when you just gave up.
These turtles clearly didn't want you around Donnie. You didn't mean to mess up his duties as one of the saviours of New York, you didn't mean to mess up his relationship with his family, you didn't mean any of that. You just wanted to be his friend, that was it, but if you were getting in the way of more important things, you might as well just go. "OKAY!" You scream at them, and they all shut up as they let you speak. "I'll screw off, I get the message." You yell. The red one dropped you onto your feet as you lift yourself to the edge of the building and walk off, legs still slightly shaky. You try not to look back as you walk along the edge. "It was a mistake anyway," You mutter to them behind you. As you reach the corner, getting ready to jump to another building, you finally turn back to look at him, to look at Donnie. His brothers surrounded him. They seemed proud of themselves for 'protecting' their brother. You couldn't see Donnie very well, but from what you could, he looked hurt. You start to reconsider just giving in, you still wanted to hang out with him, but you just wanted to leave peacefully. You didn't want to fight. Donnie put up a hell of a fight against his brothers, but you didn't. You didn't have the confidence to override family, you felt like it wasn't your place. You didn't even defend yourself. You don't know if you would ever see him again, but if you ever did, you felt like it would be a while, you told yourself you needed to get over it.
You jump from rooftop to rooftop to try and get away from the situation. You felt like crying, but tears didn't fall, it was just an ugly feeling in your chest. You continued to walk, where you were going, you didn't know, but you just kept walking. You didn't feel like going home just yet. Like it did all the past times, it led you to that same goddamn underpass. You hesitated, but in the end, decided to sit under it for a bit. As your back slid down the wall, you looked at the ground. The ground was littered with things Donnie left from spare metal pieces, cut wires and tiny screws. You look over to where he used to sit, it was weird to not see him leaning against the support beam, but you knew he wasn't coming back.
The wind blew through the underpass, it was a lot stronger than when you were up on the rooftops, similar to the day you first saw him. You still feel that ugly feeling in your chest, You try to get your mind off of it, but you just can't. You start to think to yourself that this was always meant to happen and that it would have been better to never have loved at all than to love and have lost. You start to think of what would have happened if you had just decided not to engage with the turtle and if you really meant that becoming friends with him like you said you had was a mistake. You just sit there, thinking as you bundle yourself together under the cold, empty underpass.