Leo woke far too early. Though perhaps, came the wry thought as he slipped into his flight jacket, it was more accurate to say that sleep came far too late. Late enough that it didn't really happen much at all.

Meditation and the dry Operating Procedure updates to the PPDC Ranger Manual ate up some of the excess of time, but too many years of early morning training coupled with the dark thoughts that kept him from sleep made him twitchy, unable to sit still. Or maybe that was just too much time in the Drift with Mikey. Either way, as soon as the clock ticked over to an hour that wasn't too unusually early for him to be up, he was out.

Old habits kept him to the shadows, moving with stealth through lesser-used corridors and access walkways rather than the main traffic paths. Part of him knew it wasn't necessary; even if someone finishing up the night shift caught sight of him and marked that he wasn't due to be on deck for a couple hours yet, it wasn't like anyone was going to question his presence here. He was a Ranger, lead pilot of the alpha Jaeger in the Shatterdome.

And still, he could not help his silent passage.

He might once have told himself it was just to keep in practice, to prevent himself from losing his skills as he grew accustomed to life out of the shadows, laid bare beneath the lights of the Shatterdome. Recent events, however, changed that. His jaunts out into the city with his family were more than enough to keep his ninjutsu as honed as his katana. No, if he was being honest, it was because there was always the possibility that someone might ask. Especially now that Dom was on the security crew. She had a knack for seeing through his deflections, a reason to give him close scrutiny, and a very low tolerance for bullshit. Even though he knew from firsthand, painful experience that she was not likely to be up before she absolutely had to be, since years as a cop on the night beat had both shifted her internal clock and given her a pretty wicked right hook, he wasn't willing to take that chance.

So he hid.

There were any number of places he might have gone, but muscle memory ran strong, and he wasn't particularly inclined to fight it. Before long, he found himself threading his way across the catwalks far above the Jaeger bay, where few tended to venture unless they had a particular mechanical problem to tackle. It was the perfect place for someone who'd called the rooftops his playground to go without fear of disturbance. Plus, it was one hell of a view.

The Jaegers ringed the bay below, the three metal giants still for now. Sleeping, in a sense, though the glow of their incandescent hearts seemed almost to pulse like a heartbeat. Even now, he could feel the ghostly tugging of Shell Shocker, like an echo of a whisper at the back of his mind. His fingers twitched, and like a phantom limb, he could feel the reverberations of a thousand tons of metal and pneumatic fluid answering the call, though the Jaeger below remained still. With a quiet sigh, he let the thought go. It didn't feel right without a member of his family, without Mikey, in the Drift beside him.

Still, there was a rightness to that configuration in the bay below him: the stalwart nobility of Shell Shocker, the lithe grace of Quantum Bravo, and the immovable bulwark of Bruiser Shindig. Bruiser Shindig for now, he amended; she was due to be officially re-christened Goon Gala soon as the final paperwork went through, though no amount of convention would prevent his brother or Casey from smashing the name together into one ridiculous battle cry. The thought had him smiling. Once, he couldn't have imagined putting his trust in anyone other than his partner in Shell Shocker. Now, he couldn't remember how he had ever gone out to fight without knowing there were two other Jaegers waiting in the wings to guard his back.

No, he thought, folding his arms on the rail of the narrow catwalk and gazing down at the colossal machines below, night technicians swarming over them like a fleet of helpful ants. This was how it was supposed to be.

A quiet sound in the shadows next to him made him start, a kunai between his fingers even before he registered the curve of a shell in the darkness. But as the adrenaline eased, he felt the soft brush at the back of his mind that was happening more and more each time he and his siblings went into the Drift with April somewhere in the mix. He dropped the rest of his guard with an almost sheepish haste. He should have known. The number of people in this place capable of sneaking up on him could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Well, one of Casey or April's hands, anyway.

Slipping the kunai back into its hiding place, he edged just a little closer to where his brother sat, feet dangling over the impossible drop to the bay far below. "What are you doing up at this hour?"

"Said the pot to the kettle," Donnie shot back, his voice kept soft to match Leo's. His tone was wry, but it lacked the edge that it had when he was truly irritated.

A smile tugged at the corner of Leo's mouth. "Touché. But still. I thought I was the only one nuts enough to be up at this hour."

Donnie shrugged, his attention turning back to the gadget in his hands as he resumed the fiddling that Leo had interrupted. "Ever since I started Drifting with April, I get the occasional dream that's just…weird."

Leo frowned. "Bad-weird? Something I should be concerned about-weird?"

"If I knew that, I'd be able to rationalize my way through it," Donnie said, tucking a few loose wires back into place and closing the cover on the thing he was working on. "I don't think April really knows, either." Carefully, he dropped a tiny screw into place and tightened it. "But she has her own ways of dealing with it, and me being anywhere in the vicinity of that is just awkward." As Leo winced in quiet sympathy, Donnie shrugged again and tightened another screw. "So I come here."

Leo dropped down on the catwalk next to his brother. "I've been meaning to ask-"

But he'd spent a lot of time in the Drift with Donnie, too, and the look Donnie turned on him stilled the words before they formed. Donnie knew exactly where Leo was going with this, and though his brother's brown eyes still held the shadows of remembered pain, there was no denying the open, honest truth of his answer.

"I'm okay," Donnie said softly. "Better than okay. It may not have turned out the way I wanted, but I've been thinking about it…" He turned a knob on his gadget, frowned, and twisted another screw. "And if someone with a quantum reality rift generator turned up and offered me a choice between what I always wanted and what I have now… I'd choose the Drift." There was a note of something almost like surprise in Donatello's quiet words. "Every time, every permutation, I'd choose the Drift." The wry smile was back, but tempered by a softness Leo was much more accustomed to seeing on a different face. "Turns out love is a lot more nuanced than I ever suspected. Who knew?"

He's changed, Leo thought, his own note of surprise colouring the realization. Hardly surprising, though. They all had. Even if the War hadn't had its effects on them, nobody emerged from the Drift quite the same as they'd been when they went it. Not even Raph and Casey, though some days it was hard to tell.

"What about you?" Donnie asked, yanking Leo back out of his wandering thoughts. Donnie's attention was no longer on his gadget but on Leo, and as Leo followed Donnie's gaze, he realized that the dim light threw his scars into sharp relief. "On a scale of one to ten," Donnie pressed, "how bad is it?"

Pulling his sleeves further down his wrists with a self conscious tug, Leo shook his head. "I'm fine, Donnie."

Donatello didn't say anything in response. Just looked at him and made that sound, that sharp exhalation of air, that conveyed more disgust and done-ness in a single breath than Leo or any of his brothers had ever come close to emulating. Groaning, Leo rolled his eyes. "All right, fine. Four." As Donnie's expression shifted to concern, Leo nudged him with a toe. "Don't. At this point, it's just white noise. Most of the time I barely notice it any more."

"And yet, you're not sleeping," Donnie pointed out.

"That doesn't have anything to do with old scars," Leo shot back. Donnie gave him the look again, and he amended, "well, only a little. There's a lot more going on. But I'm dealing." He grinned. "Mikey helps."

"Honestly, I'm surprised he's not here with you," Donnie said.

"Angel had a bad night. He was up pretty late making sure she was okay. At this point, I don't even think a kaiju could wake him up." Sometimes, Leo envied the fact that throughout it all, Mikey had retained his ability to sleep like a rock wherever he landed, no matter how inconvenient his resting place happened to be for the people around him. Leo didn't begrudge him that, either. He caught glimpses of the bad nights in Mikey's thoughts sometimes, and Mikey had earned every moment of sleep he got.

This time, it was Donnie's turn to wince in sympathy. "I didn't know it was that bad."

"Don't beat yourself up over it. That girl is pretty damn good at hiding it from everybody but Mikey. I think the only reason I know at all is because of the Drift."

Donnie snorted. "Man. Our family really doesn't do things by halves, huh?"

"Tell me about it," Leo said. "And yet somehow we keep coming out the other side."

"Yeah, well, it helps that we have a good leader showing us the way."

Leo blinked. The words had been off-handed, Donnie's attention once again on his gadget in his hands, but the words struck hard, bringing with them flashes of memory, of darkness, and the world coming apart at the seams, and those same hands holding him together, stitching the broken pieces back into place, keeping him from coming apart until he was more or less whole again.

"Dee-" Leo began, but before he could begin to sort out the tangled thread of thought, the lights on Donnie's gadget flickered to life, and Donnie straightened with a triumphant "Ha!" Leo's train of thought was abruptly derailed by overwhelming curiosity. "What the heck is that thing, anyway?"

Donnie looked at him, and for a moment, it was like the war had never happened. It was the face of the sly, smug, deservedly arrogant genius looking back at him, basking in the delight of showing off a new toy. "You know Takahashi's war with the coffee maker?"

Leo nodded. Of course he did. The entire Shatterdome knew of the legendary conflict. Unlike their father, the Shatterdome's second Marshal was most decidedly not a morning person, and his first few hours on duty were entirely fueled by caffeine. Spurning Splinter's offers of tea, Takahashi relied on espresso to the point at which he had his own machine, purchased with a month of Shatterdome luxury rations on the completely accurate reasoning that it was necessary for the continued functioning of the base, and the incredibly fancy coffee maker was forbidden to the rest of the Shatterdome on pain of death. The thing had more lights and displays and gleaming chrome than the Loccent, and from the moment Takahashi had gotten it, it had contrived to make his life a living hell.

The pieces clicked into place, and Leo's eyes widened. "No. You didn't."

His grin widening, Donnie cast his gaze across the Jaeger bay. Takahashi's private office had a window overlooking the vast space, put there so he could keep track of what was going on, and from this vantage point, they had a perfect view of the gleaming metal monstrosity of a coffee machine. Right on time, as night shift ticked over into day, Takahashi staggered into view, reaching for the controls.

"Three… Two…. One…" Donnie whispered, and as Takahashi reached for the nozzle, a jet of steam shot from the machine. The reflexes of a trained ninja had Takahashi across the room in seconds, glaring death right back at the percolating death machine, and Leo could only stare, his hands clamped over his mouth in shocked disbelief, as Donnie lifted his finger from a button on the gadget.

For a long moment, there was only silence between them, before uncontrollable laughter burst past the hands clamped over Leo's mouth.. Which, of course, only served to banish the doubt that had started to creep into Donnie's expression and replace it with further smugness, but Leo couldn't help it. Yes, it was true, they owed Takahashi their lives and he respected the man more than anyone than perhaps Splinter… But the guy had an even bigger stick up his butt than his siblings always claimed that Leo had, and damn, did it feel good to see him at a loss for once.

And as he struggled to muffle his laughter, Donnie's grin turned conspiratorial, and he passed the gadget to Leo.

He shouldn't. He knew he shouldn't. But in that moment, the scar on his cheek stung with memory far older than most of his others, the flash of a katana wielded by a general of the Foot back when they had been human rather than mindless robots, back when they had been a force to be reckoned with, back before the Kaiju War had buried them beneath a far greater threat. And in the face of that sting, he took the gadget his brother offered, and punched a button, the machine started vibrating so hard that Takahashi had to lunge to keep it from falling off the table.

Donnie was a genius, and Leo had to admit, he played that machine like a virtuoso. Leo watched, reduced to further and further helplessness by the tears of laughter streaming down his face, as Donnie sent the coffee machine into the depths of madness. Takahashi didn't even know it, but he had made a grave mistake the day he had flatly denied Donatello access to the only machine on the base capable of brewing a decent cup of coffee. And yet, he couldn't remember laughing like this with Donnie in… In a very long time.

It wasn't very ninja of them, it was true. Despite their best attempts at stifling it, the laughter was loud enough to mask the footsteps approaching behind them.

"What is going on here?"

The aggrieved words sliced like a shrunken through the laughter and silenced them both. Slowly, they turned to look up at the forbidding figure of their father towering over them. Splinter's face was dark as he gazed down on them, hands folded behind his back. Even at this hour, the lines of his uniform were impeccable, and Leo was acutely and uncomfortably aware that he was only wearing his flight jacket, and Donnie even less. Silently, Splinter loosed one of his hands and held it out to Donatello.

Meekly, Donnie handed over the control box, shrinking beneath the force of Splinter's glare. The rat's gaze slid from the flickering box to the window on the other side of the bay, and he gave a quiet "huh" of understanding.

And as the brothers watched, Splinter reached out and pressed a glowing button.

A muffled boom shook the Jaeger bay, and a distant stream of Japanese profanity caustic enough to blister the paint on the Jaegers drifted across the distance between them.

At their look, Splinter raised a brow. "Call the Hamato legacy 'second rate ninjutsu' enough times, and one should not be surprised when the universe provides retribution," he said sagely, and looked back at the window. "I think his coffee needs a little more karma in it." Serenely, Splinter pressed another button. An instant later, the viewing window was obscured by a fine mist of coffee grounds.

As Splinter's quiet chuckle was drowned out by the twin outbursts of his sons, Leo let himself get lost in the laughter. It was a moment, he knew, just a moment of frivolity, bright, and precious, and fleeting. But it was moments like this that reminded him of what they were fighting for, and he would take them as the gifts that they were.