"Okay, I think I got it." You may be going stir crazy. You would not be surprised if you were, but you have more pressing matters that, ridiculously, involve the timeline of fucking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2012. You had not just stood the headassery of season four and five, but conquered it, tamed it if you will. You do not remember the last time you ate. "So the only way I'm going to survive this series is if I somehow, through some sort of spiritual bullshit, get to become at least somewhat adept at ninjitsu." You sigh. "But the only reason he trained her is because of her psychic bullshit."
You stumble towards the kitchen to eat for the first time in days. "Actually, you know what? Fuck that." You open the refrigerator, salivating at the food. "I'm just gonna buy a fucking gun. Dodge bullets, bitch." You pull out a large slab of meat, tossing it on the counter. "If they aren't going to actually incapacitate people, I will."
A sudden thought stops you in your tracks. "Wait, so, what timeline am I on?" You feel your heart drop. "Because if we're doing the whole thing..." You shake your head. "You know what? Prepare for the best and accept—that's backwards."
You put the meat back. Something about the existential dread kills your appetite. You crawl back into bed, close your eyes. 'How long have I been in here?' The time had admittedly swirled in on itself, your brain completely fried from all the contemplating death. 'At least long enough to be in the no-man's-land where I'm not hungry.'
You freeze up at the sound of knocking on your window.
Your eyes slowly pan over to the covered glass. You rise to your feet.
You shake your head, trying to remember to think rationally 'This place is very high off the ground for a stalker.' Despite yourself, you quickly go to the kitchen, grabbing the largest frying pan you can find and slowly approaching the window.
'There isn't even a proper ledge out there. You're being paranoid.' Slowly, you reach for the curtain, yanking it open.
You scream at the sight of the hanging figure, only realizing you recognized said figure after a couple of seconds. Thoroughly embarrassed— 'Yeah, I could never be a ninja.'—you slide the window open, face red. "What do you want, Raphael?"
He wears a shit-eating grin. "What, scared?"
"Of a shadowy figure in my window? Yes." You sit back down on the bed, voice cold. "You gonna just hang out there or what?"
He climbs inside. "Alright, so here's the situation." He sits on the windowsill; you feel secondhand vertigo. "Donnie—first of all, where have you been?"
"Binging the most traumatic part of your lives so far on my phone so you and your brothers don't get killed by swole Shredder."
His face went pale. "Shredder?"
You blink, a factor you had admittedly completely forgotten becoming apparent. "You don't know he intends to come to the city," you remember. "That's—"
"He what?"
You sigh. "He is the least of your concerns at this particular moment. What about Donatello?"
"No, back up." His smile was completely gone. "When is he getting here?"
You shrug. "I dunno."
"You don't know?"
You put your hands up at his obvious rage. "Dude, it is honestly not that big of a deal right now. He doesn't even get close to killing your dad until the end of season two."
You are decidedly not helping matters. "He gets close to—"
"Are you gonna repeat everything I say or are you going to tell me what's going on?"
"I'm gonna—what?" Raph is quite clearly not taking this news well.
You try to calm him down. "Take a deep breath, alright? It might not get to that point, but you have to tell me what's going on first."
He growls in frustration but follows your instructions. "Mikey found out that he can apparently talk to people online, and he found this site where he can talk to—"
"I'm gonna stop you right there." You pick up your phone, typing away. "You can't, under any circumstance, let him go talk to Bradford."
"Well, I know it would be bad--"
"You misunderstand." You get up, starting to grab your things. "Bradford is working for the Shredder."
This seems to be news. "He's what?"
"Working for Shredder."
"But he's—how?"
"You have bigger concerns than the how, currently." You read the page you had pulled up again. "How long ago did he find this guy?"
"Yesterday, I think."
"Then... hold on." You read the summary of the episode in question more thoroughly. "Okay, so we aren't totally fucked, but we gotta make sure he doesn't see him again."
"Wait, hold on." He walks after you as you try to find your jacket. "Why? How could Shredder—"
"If he goes, he's gonna talk to him about general shit, right?" You slip it on. "At some point, in return for learning his secret bullshit, he's gonna want info on you and your dad."
"Then the Shredder will know where we are!" The horror in his eyes is apparent.
"Exactly." You pull on your shoes. "That, and you'll have to confront foot soldiers, which isn't good for anyone."
"Wait, is Mikey gonna be alright?"
"I mean, he gets kidnapped, but—"
"We're going. Right now."
"Awesome." You were already one foot out the door. "Close the window on your way out."
You rush down to the first floor of the building, nodding acknowledgment to the doorman as you look up and down the street. 'He has a dojo or something, right?' You try googling his dojo, only to find that, not only is it a chain but that they are all incredibly spread out. 'It's at times like these,' you contemplate, running towards the closest one, 'that I wish I could drive.'
It takes you about 10 minutes of running to get to the place, only for it to be closed. You feel tempted to throw your phone.
'Wait, when does it—hold on.' You already hate timelines. You sit down on the curb, pulling your phone out again to find some clips. 'So, Chris and Mikey meet up sometime after patrol, order pizza, and then it's sunrise.' You look up at the slowly lightening sky. 'Okay, so that means they're currently ordering, right? Because it was clearly dark in that last scene.' You put your head in your hand. 'I mean, it is, right? Because those are just wall separator things, not windows, since the sky was very clearly green in that next scene.' You get to your feet. 'So I just need to find that billboard with that specific graffiti and main message and we're good to go, right?' You groan. 'But there have to be a thousand billboards in fucking NYC.'
You stop, smiling slightly at the graffiti. 'Is that not a purple dragon?' You grin, going back to running. 'I just need to get to Chinatown, right? Is that their territory?' You swallow, turning a street corner. 'I guess we'll find out.'
The buildings tower around you as you wander the streets, the quiet desolation ringing in your ears with the force of a gong. The pounding of your feet against the pavement does little to stifle the silence. The gang in question may not be a challenge or concern for vigilantes but to you? You are barely a flower now, bright and beautiful and oh so easy to crush. But you cannot and will not stand still for long. The walls of the alleys you run crush your sides and the darkness strangles you, but despite the beating of your heart begging you to stop, you cannot. How can you?
You can stop what comes next. That is what fuels you. Never mind the fact you must stumble to a halt to vomit into the nearest dumpster who knows how many times, the taste of acid staining your tongue. You can rewrite history.
But you cannot.
You walk around for approximately too long before correctly citing that this is, in fact, futile. You start to panic.
You turn back around. 'He goes back to talk to his brothers, right?' You feel your body start to shake. You keep your phone to your ear, pretending to talk to someone as you run around like a headless chicken to not get bothered, hopefully. 'Then I still have a chance to catch him before he leaves, right? At least he won't get kidnapped.' You look around quickly, slipping into an alleyway and prying off a manhole cover, climbing into the sewer. You pull the cover back into place and start running along with them, the smell nauseating in the darkness suffocating. 'Please tell me I remember where this stupid lair is.'
You laugh in relief when you see the abandoned subway, sprinting down the tunnel. 'I can catch him,' you promise yourself. 'I can catch him before—'
You slam into someone. They grab your wrist before you fall. "Yo, you alright?"
"Mikey!" You feel your whole body relax, but the relief is quickly squashed. 'Thank fuck.' You grab his shoulders. "You can't see Bradford again."
"Wait, what?" He groaned. "Did Raph set you up to this?"
"What? No!" As the adrenaline and panic start to wear off, you feel your body begin to falter at the excessive strenuous physical activity, panic, no food or water for two days, and sleep deprivation. You dig your fingernails into your palms to try to keep yourself grounded. "He just said that you were friends with him or something and I went looking for you!"
"Look," he sighed, letting go of you and not noticing the obvious slur in your voice, "I get it, alright? Not all of us can have a super awesome friend like Chris—"
"He's working for Shredder, dipshit." You feel the ground spinning as your skull rips itself apart. "Coolness be gone, that bitchass Dogpound fucker." You have no idea what you are saying. 'Huh,' you muse, struggling to stay on your feet. 'Usually, it takes longer than this to shut down.'
"Shredder?" You cannot feel things, so you have no idea what his actual reaction is. "He's here?"
"Yep." And with that, you collapse.
--
Suffice it to say, when you wake up, you feel like absolute and complete shit, with a pounding headache, extreme fatigue, and an obvious desire to not move from the bed in which you lay.
Thinking hurts. You decide against it for the time being.
You hear typing, soft muttering, the scratching of a pencil against paper. You do not want to open your eyes; whatever you are laying under is warm. You try flexing your fingers. You can, but it is barely worthy of being called a twitch. You feel sick and gross and sticky and like you are eating yourself from the inside out, but you are also very aware that moving will not help matters. Besides, what small part of you is not covered is freezing.
You let out a soft groan from a particularly egregious pound from your head. You hear the typing stop.
"Y/N?" Donatello's voice is incredibly soft. "Are you alright?"
You do not answer. Your throat feels like it is filled with sand.
"Oh, right." You feel the mattress shift under you. "You—right." He clears his throat. "You, uh, probably want to know what happened, right?"
You find yourself in between sleep and consciousness. You do not exactly understand what he's saying, but his voice is pleasant to listen to.
"Mikey carried you back," he explains. "He said you started talking about Chris Bradford working for The Shredder and collapsed." A pause. "Leo thought it would be a good idea to go take him down since he already spilled the beans."
'You aren't helping.' "Everyone got out alright." He is writing something. "We don't know how much Shredder knows or how he found us; Master Splinters said that the war has just begun or something to that effect." He pauses again. His voice is almost hesitant now. "If you spoke, I'd ask how...how this ends, who wins the day." He chuckles dryly. "Now that I say it out loud, I guess it's pretty clear that you wouldn't tell me, would you? Rightfully so, I guess; I don't know exactly how that sort of information might change things. Still," he sighs, "it is so... so frustrating, having information just out of reach, especially for someone like me. But you—... you probably know that too, don't you?"
It is not as if you can refute what he says.
He clears his throat. "A-anyways," he rambled, voice tight with awkwardness, "sorry for ranting. This would be totally embarrassing if you weren't so clearly incapable of coherent thought." You hear the shuffling of paper. "As far as your health is concerned," he continues, "without being able to take a blood test for obvious reasons, I can only conclude based on a totally-not-creepy physical exam that you're just incredibly malnourished and exhausted. I don't really have anything to actually prescribe you, but ya know... eat. Drink, too; just perform basic bodily functions."
He looks down at you from his seat at the foot of his bed, your eyes having fluttered shut again. "I..." he took a breath, starting again. "Remember what you said the other day? About me being able to kill you with my bare hands?" He looks back over at the line of code he is working on, ignoring the minute shaking in his hands. "I remember... do I kill someone?" He swallows, eyes focusing on the letters in front of him. "I can't really imagine it, why I'd want to." He covers his face with his hands. "I know I'm a ninja, but it's just—" He feels his voice start to rise. His eyes focus on your sleeping face; he calms back down for your sake. His words are slow and deliberate. "I always thought that we were doing all this for a fight we'd never have, that we would never have to do something like that, because... well, I don't remember why, but I just—..." His voice dies in his throat.
'Staring at her like this is creepy.' He stands up, gathering his things. 'You can't get yourself worked up over something like this. You just met her, and your hesitance is not anyone's problem but yourself.' "Just..." Despite himself, he mumbles out a soft plea. "Please, don't let me do something stupid." He does not know who he's talking to.
He slips out of the room.
You would not remember this happened.
He would.