"Donnie?" Destiny calls, poking her head into the laboratory. "You in here?"
There's no answer. Destiny goes in a little more, her tail swaying. Her hand moves to her shoulder unconsciously and she winces as she becomes aware of the throbbing ache. She had been hoping to get a few painkillers from Donatello, maybe get him to check her arm. Then again, she can find the painkillers herself.
She hurries to the shelves lining the walls behind Donatello's main workspace and starts searching for the bottle of pills that April and Casey had picked up. The shelves come up with nothing and she turns back to the desk, just then seeing his first aid kit. With a slightly embarrassed laugh at not having seen it sooner, she opens it up and easily locates the pills.
As her hand closes around the bottle, she notices three folders laying next to Donatello's computer. Her ears perk when she reads the number written on the top one: 60184.
"Sarina?" she mumbles.
She steps closer and spreads them out with a sweep of her hand, revealing the remaining two and their numbers alongside glaring red stamps declaring "DISCONTINUED". She picks up the first one and, casting a quick glance to the door, opens it. The first thing she sees is a baby picture.
The pill bottle falls from her hand and she drops the folder, her entire face going a shade paler as she starts to shake. The baby wolf mutant in the picture keeps staring at her and Destiny's back hits the wall, her breathing picking up.
The door opens and Donatello enters, carrying a cup of coffee. He stops short when he sees Destiny, his eyes widening. "Destiny?" he asks.
She jumps, claws unsheathing as she whips her head up. She hardly relaxes even once she sees who it is. "What...what is this?" she demands, pointing to the folder. "Why is there a picture of me?"
Donatello's shoulders slump. "It's your TCRI file."
Her lips part and she takes a shaky breath, retracting her claws. Questions race through her head, all begging to be asked, but all that she can get out is a weak, "W-What?"
He moves to his desk, sets his coffee down, and slowly closes to file. Destiny doesn't take her eyes off of it even when he turns around and snakes his arm around her shoulders. He sets it in her hands and starts leading her to to living room.
"There's a lot that Sarina wanted you to know," he murmurs.
-----------
Destiny keeps staring at the folder in her lap. The other turtles, April, and Casey have gathered around near her. She hardly moves, every muscle stiff, tail rigid. She looks as if she might burst into tears at any second. No one dares say a word.
She finally opens the folder back up, picking up the picture of herself as a baby. Turning it over, she finds a typed label declaring the "Date of Mutagen Injection" as May 18, 1998. Her ears flatten against her hair and she looks up at her friends and family.
"Does...this mean that I'm only fifteen?" she asks.
Donatello kneels down and motions for her to turn the picture back over, where he points to the baby. "You're sitting up by yourself in this picture. You'd have to be at least six months old then."
Destiny hands him the picture before returning to the papers. There's multiple sheets reporting the health and activity of "Subject 60182", the dates on each paper spanning over months and months of observation, ranging from milestones to general behaviour. Destiny reads over some of the various notes, face struck with disbelief.
There's other notes about four other experiments with four other children, all taken from different hospitals on the same night, each experiment taking place between October 1997 and May 1998. Three were deemed failures, two survived. She pulls out the second photo in the file, featuring a wolf pup with sad eyes and ears pressed flat against her head. She also hands this off to Donatello.
She feels as if she may throw up as she flips through the scant reports and has to force herself not to crumple everything into unreadable lumps. She stops on the final ones in the stack. There's one clipped together packet labeled "Hospital Report" and a final page declaring the termination of Subject 60182 and a final note.
"61390?" Destiny repeats, again looking to her silent, watchful friends. "That's the number on the other file, right? They were my replacement?" Donatello and Leonardo nod in affirmation and she bows her head. "Who are they?"
"We'll tell you once you're done this."
She sighs and goes back to the folder, finally picking up the hospital report. The first paper on the stack is a short list of the five different hospitals across New York where the babies were retrieved from. The hospital next to Destiny's number is Weill Cornell Medical Centre.
She flips to the next one to find a birth certificate with another picture clipped to it. This picture has a newborn baby in it with no signs of mutation, her eyes screwed shut and her tiny fists at her reddened face. The birth certificate itself is incomplete. The space for the baby's name is blank, but most everything else is filled out.
This certifies that was born to Penelope Harlow and Trace Young on October 18, 1997, at 10:47 a.m.
Weight: 6 pounds, 4 ounces
Length: 20.3 inches
"October eighteenth," she mumbles, tears welling in her eyes. "That's...that's my birthday: October eighteenth."
"Hey, that means you turned sixteen only a few weeks ago!" Michelangelo pipes up, kneeling down behind her and resting his hand on her shoulder. "And...you're only eighteen days younger than me and the guys."
"Happy belated birthday, wolfie!" Casey adds with a forced yet hopeful smile.
Destiny can't bring herself to smile. Her eyes are now on the names of her parents, hope building in her chest. Who are they? Where are they now? Her heart pounds as she looks past the certificate to the next paper, where there's a picture of a surprisingly young woman clipped to the top. She has loosely curly brown hair and kind blue eyes, her pale cheeks dotted with freckles.
Destiny stares at the paper as it blurs in and out of focus, forcing her to wipe her eyes of stray tears. She hears someone sit next to her before a comforting hand falls against her leg.
"You look like her," Leonardo says softly.
She still doesn't speak. She detaches the photo and looks at the paper beneath, quickly reading over the words printed there. Her heart plummets into her feet and she goes still, further desperate tears fighting to escape her eyes.
"Des? What—" Raphael starts, leaning over to try and see it.
Destiny crumples the paper into a ball as she stands abruptly and chucks it across the lair, right into the pool beneath the tire swing. There's a startled gasp from April and Donatello scrambles to the pool as Destiny gathers up her file.
"I'm done looking at this," she mutters, practically shoving it into Leonardo's arms as she climbs from the living room and heads for the dojo.
"Wait—Des!" Leonardo calls, but she's gone.
Silence. Donatello scoops the paper from the water and tries to carefully unfold the sodden paper. Michelangelo hurries over, eyes wide.
"What is it, D?" he asks.
Donatello curses under his breath as he spreads the paper onto the floor, the words already running together. He can make out the name Penelope and "age 19" but little else. Pieces are already starting to break off into nothing.
He shakes his head and stands back up, looking first to his little brother and then to the others. "It's ruined," he states. "We'll have to ask Destiny about what it said."
Inside the dojo, the door at the far end slides open and Master Splinter emerges. He looks out at the supposedly empty space, his ears perked. There's a few sniffles from near the tree that prompts him to investigate.
When he reaches the tree and looks up into the branches, he finds Destiny sitting there. She's curled herself up as best she can without falling, tears rolling down her face as she stares at a picture that Splinter cannot see.
"Destiny, what is wrong?" he asks. She doesn't even look at him, her eyes screwing shut as she takes shaky breaths. He moves just a little closer. "If you need to talk, I am here to listen."
Destiny sniffles and drags her hand across her nose before handing the picture down to Splinter. He takes it and turns it over, finding the youthful face of a woman staring back at him. Destiny wraps her arms and tail around herself.
"My mother," she whispers. "Penelope Harlow."
He nods thoughtfully. "Ah...I can see the resemblance," he comments. "Did you get this from that file Leonardo told me about?"
"Yeah," she mumbles.
"And this has upset you?"
Destiny buries her face against her hands as a shudder rolls through her. "My mom is dead."
Splinter's expression softens and he murmurs out another soft "ah". Destiny forces herself to climb out of the tree, her entire body sagging as she reaches the ground. Splinter says nothing as he rests his hand on her shoulder and lowers her to the ground until they're both seated.
He presses the picture into her hand with a gentle, loving smile. "My ears are still open, and trust me, they are very good at listening."
Destiny wishes she could laugh, but she just lets out a weak cough as she wipes more tears from her face. "I just...it's so silly," she mumbles. "I didn't know she existed before today."
"Your feelings are always valid, Destiny."
She stares at her hands. "I...always hoped that maybe, just maybe, my mom and dad were still alive. I imagined that I could go and find them and actually be their kid." She swallows hard and drags her knees up to her chest as she starts to stare at the picture again. "All I want is my real family, someone who could tell me about who I am, somewhere where I belong, but now...that's gone. I'll never be anything more than an orphan, mutant freak."
Splinter hums, stroking his goatee. "That is a very harsh thing to tell yourself," he says. "But, I do understand how hard it can be, feeling as if you don't belong anywhere."
She tilts her mouth down to her kneecaps and takes another deep, shuddering breath as her tears create tiny damp puddles on her jeans. "Honestly...sometimes I wish that I had never been mutated or maybe that I was never born," she admits, tracing the pale scars on her arms. "That would be easier than feeling this alone...abandoned."
"I am sure that your mother never dreamed of abandoning you," Splinter says. "Her death was unfortunate, abrupt, and there is nothing that you could have done to stop it." Her ears flatten against her hair and he continues, "So...instead of dwelling on what could have been, focus on what you have because of what has happened."
"Trauma, scattered childhood memories, and a constant wish for death?" Destiny mutters.
"Destiny...we've talked about this."
"I'm just kidding...about the last part," she says with the barest trace of a laugh. "I have...a lot of mutants and people who care about me, I have a home, I have a great teacher who reminds me about what's important..."
"Exactly." He smiles and pats the top of her head, making her tail wag weakly. "This is just another bridge you have to cross, but you will reach the other side. You will be okay."
She leans against his shoulder and sighs. "I hope so."
He wraps his arm around her, careful to avoid the bandages. "Is there anything else you need to get off your chest?"
"My dad's last name is Young," she says, "but my mom's last name is Harlow. That makes me wonder...what's my actual last name?"
Splinter chuckles. "That's a valid question. I suppose it is up to you to choose."
"Destiny Young-Harlow..." she says to herself. She ponders for a second before nodding. "I choose Hamato."
"That is a lovely choice."