Author's note: This fic features a reading of 2014!Donatello as being on the autism spectrum. If there are any issues with my depiction please contact me so I can make the necessary changes. Rating is for language and eventual violence.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

-Theodore Roethke

"Donnie..." A voice in the dark, close and quiet enough that it's barely more than a warm puff of breath against his ear slit. "You awake?"

Donatello's fingers twitch against the crumbling foam of their sleeping pad, trying to burrow back into sleep like so much loose sand. The foam is rough against his cheek, almost uncomfortably coarse against the softer skin under his eye, but he likes the way it presses against him everywhere else, firm but flexible and smelling comfortably of must.

"Donnie? Donnie! Psst!" A hand brushes against his shoulder, the back of his neck, feather light and cloying. "Wake up."

The touch slips under his shell like ice, turns electric hot as it races down his ribs to curdle under his plastron, deep where he can't scratch. He groans in protest, tries to withdraw to the safety of in, but his body doesn't work the way instinct wants it to and there's little room to maneuver with four of them crammed shoulder to shoulder on the mattress.

Sometimes the only way to escape a predator is to confront it.

Especially when that predator is your little brother.

His limbs are stiff from the long day carrying supplies through miles of half-flooded tunnels into this new space—dirty but dry and big enough that their footsteps echo in places—but eventually he manages to push himself up onto his elbows just far enough to turn his head back towards his left. Raphael mumbles something senseless as the foam dips beneath him but doesn't wake.

"Wha'issit, Mikey?" he yawns.

"Hey." Michelangelo hasn't stopped touching him, but he's shifted his grip to the thick denim of his coveralls. That's better, that's okay. "Wanna ask you somethin'."

Donnie settles back down with a sigh. Mikey's never been good at letting a line of thought wait until morning. "Yeah?"

There's a faint rattle of snot as Michelangelo breathes, the ghost of the chest infection that's haunted him for nearly a month now, prompting their move. Even though Donnie knows that it's not a good thing, that it makes Dad's brow crease and Leo bite at his bottom lip until his teeth leave a neat line of dents that don't fade for hours and hours, he kind of likes the sound. Likes the rhythm and static of it.

"Whattaya think of this place?"

Donnie shrugs. It's pitch black in their underground home—they blew out all of the candles before going to bed—but this close Mikey's sure to feel the gesture.

"'S cool, I guess," he mumbles. "Lotsa pipes, an' the big fan..."

Dad had shown them all the fuse box in the corner that they were never, ever supposed to touch. They know about electricity and the little yellow triangles with jagged arrows humans use to remind each other how dangerous it is, and Dad's been careful to emphasize over and over that just because something wasn't working right then didn't mean that it couldn't. Donnie had fallen asleep thinking about the wires inside, so much thicker than the ones he finds in radios and old boomboxes, insulation cracked and falling away in places to show the glint of copper underneath.

"Yeah, the fan's kinda cool, it's just— Hey!" His tone shifts mid-word, curling in on itself in the way it does when Leonardo scolds him for breaking a rule or Raphael holds something up high where he can't reach. Donatello's brain sketches the accompanying expression across the black of his eyelids: Michelangelo with his brow furrowed, mouth twisted and puckered tight. "You really awake or just pretendin'?"

"Ow!" The well-aimed pinch to the soft skin under the rim of his shell yanks Donnie abruptly out of his half doze. "Stoppit!"

"Shaddup," says Raph, annoyance graveled by sleep but loud enough to startle.

"You shut up!" Mikey hisses, shifting under the covers as if to sit up, and now it's Donnie grabbing at his sleeve, pulling him close enough that the edges of their shells clack together.

"Shhhh! You'll wake up Dad!"

There's a sound from the foot of the mattress. Cloth against cloth.

Mikey goes stiff in his arms. They lie together, motionless, listening.

Silence.

Donnie hopes that might be the end of it, but after several minutes Michelangelo starts to fidget again.

"I wish there was a candle," he whispers. Sometimes Dad lets them keep one of the big scented ones burning, cocooning them all in a comforting circle of dim light and the faintly sour bite of citronella oil, but they'll have to be careful with their supplies until Dad finishes scouting their new territory for the best places to scavenge. "It's just—"

He sucks in a shaky breath.

Exhales.

"It's so big."

Donatello frowns, remembering Mikey's whoop of delight when Dad first pushed open the heavy metal hatch two days ago, the brutal game of tag that had ensued once they'd all realized the true extent of the space.

"But you liked it plenty earlier."

"Yeah, but—" Mikey shuffles even closer, away from the edge of the mat. "It's too big, y'know? You can't even see the ceiling, some places."

Donnie tries to understand, but he's used to the world outside of his reach being vague and unknowable.

"Dad wouldn't take us here if it wasn't safe."

More rustling. Mikey's nearly on top of him now, the weight of him strangely comfortable despite the awkward angle. It's enough to pull Donnie's mind away from the way his breath tickles across his face and neck. "But what if..."

Cheek to cheek, it's still almost too quiet to hear.

"Donnie, what if Dad's wrong?"

If it were Leonardo lying here instead of dead to the world on the far side of Raphael he'd be quick to sooth his brother with hushed assurances that their father is never wrong, that he doesn't make mistakes. Donatello knows better.

"Then we'll make it safe. Okay?"

He expects an argument or at least a couple of rounds of Mikey's infamous strings of "Yeah, but how?", but Michelangelo just murmurs "Okay..." and falls silent. Donnie opens his eyes and looks out into the seemingly endless nothingness beyond his brother's shell. Stares until his eyes start to make shapes out of the black, flashing bluepink blotches that twist back on themselves in endless electric rorschachs, many-eyed, teeth sharp.

"Hey." He nudges Mikey with an elbow. "Wanna switch places?"

He does. Donnie scoots over, careful not to kick the warm lump of fur curled protectively around their feet. Mikey is not as considerate. His plastron clatters loudly against Donnie's shell as he scrambles over him, flopping gracelessly onto his own carapace with a grunt in a tangle of covers.

Raph whines at the sudden draft, then yelps as Mikey nails him with a misplaced hand in his attempt to flip over back onto his plastron. Donnie cringes, sure that they've woken Dad by now and braced for the gruff scolding, but their father's tail only sweeps back and forth across the top of the well-worn blankets in three sure strokes, smoothing and tucking them back into place.

He relaxes, shifting to fit his body into the warm space left by his brother. Michelangelo's whispered apology earns him a growl and halfhearted shove from Raphael, but the two quickly settle back into sleep, breaths slowing and deepening into the familiar rhythm Donatello knows so well, soft and warm against the distant, persistent plinking of water against stone.

He lies awake for a long time, thinking about the wires he isn't supposed to touch. How they tangle together before branching out again, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs.

He wonders where they go, once they disappear into the dark.

Between the blood loss and the post-fight adrenaline crash from hell, all Donnie wants to do is close his eyes and not be for a while, but with a hole the size of New Jersey in what's left of the fan room, most of the lair burned or half-buried in rubble, and Master Splinter still barely able to sit upright, that's not about to happen any time soon.

He has mostly blurred memories of the string of dead-end tunnels and abandoned utility outposts they lived in, one bleeding into another, before Sensei found this place. For most of their lives the lair has been their entire universe, a concrete shell of security carved out of the roots of humanity above. Now that that sanctity has been breached, there can be no rest. Even the five minutes spent grinning like idiots over a grumbling but very much alive Master Splinter while they passed around one of their big jugs of drinking water feels like a luxury that they'll soon regret.

What if they come back?

What if there are more of them? With bigger guns and live rounds instead of tranq darts? They aren't out in the open anymore with plenty of room for bullets to ricochet harmlessly, and Master Splinter lacks the thick plates of bone and keratin that saved them earlier.

What if...

It takes Donatello nearly an hour to reboot their security system and patch all of the priority perimeter sensors back onto the grid. While Michelangelo tends to Master Splinter, Raphael and Leonardo are out in the sewers "making damned sure the coast is fucking clear."

Despite taking minimal surface damage, the electrical in the kitchen is completely dead, so Mikey drags a hotplate over to the console station and commandeers a non-vital socket to make tea.

"Just don't fucking spill it while I'm down here," Donnie snaps from under the primary input station, buried up to his elbows in fried circuit boards and loose cables that snap and spit ominous sparks. His goggles are down in magnification mode, but one of his shoulder cams tracks a blur of movement in his peripheral vision and inserts a grainy pop-up of Mikey's three-fingered "okay" into his optical display.

He's just finished resuscitating the above-ground camera feeds when the main hatch creaks open.

"Aww, no love for the new side door?"

"You mean you ain't blocked it up yet?" Even big as he is, Raphael can move as quietly as any of them, but he drops to the dojo floor with a heavy thud. " Where were you raised, a fuckin' barn?"

Leo climbs in after him, his tread just as heavy with exhaustion. "Stay put, Mikey. We'll get it." Then, to Master Splinter: "No sign of the Foot. No maintenance crews, either. They must not have heard the explosions up top."

"Pssh. Prob'ly thought it was just Raph lettin' one rip, right? They're just used to it, is—owww! What the hell, man? That was my blood-suckin' arm."

The kettle comes to a boil, drowning out most of Raph's sputtered reply. Donnie untangles himself just long enough to tug his headphones up over his ears. They're not plugged in to anything right now, but the design of them is just snug enough to pull a thick comforter over the rest of the world. He can still hear his brothers bickering as they drag the welded steel remnants of their couch out of the console room and shift chunks of concrete into a makeshift barricade, but it's muffled under the closed, cupped-in sound of air against his eardrums and the even thump of his own heartbeat.

He keeps working. He's got a rhythm going, can see how four-six-twelve steps ahead if he reroutes a power supply here and sacrifices an HVAC pump there he can get the thermal cams back on, then the first layer of offensive deterrents, then the—

"C'mon, Don." A hand claps around his ankle. "Break time."

It's Leo, he knows it's Leo, and he's not tugging all that hard, isn't even touching skin, but it still comes as a shock. He lashes out, nerves fried, but Leo dodges the kick with practiced ease.

"Sorry." He spreads his hands. "Thought you heard me earlier."

Breathing hard, Donnie yanks up his goggles and jabs a finger towards his headphones. Leo grimaces.

"Sorry," he repeats, tilting his head towards the small clearing in the debris where Mikey has laid out cushions, tea cups, and several cans of room temperature Orange Crush. "Sensei wants us to sit with him for a bit."

Donnie shakes his head reflexively. "In a minute. I just need to re-calibrate the bio profiles and then—"

"Donatello." There's a grunt of pain at the edge of his father's voice, but it's the same tone he uses when Donnie's attention drifts too far during meditation. Precise and faintly sing-song, like the sound his bo makes at the end of an uppercut. "Come and have some tea."

Leonardo smiles at him softly and holds out his hand. At some point he'd pulled his mask down around his throat and splashed water across his face. It hadn't been enough to completely wash away the grime and concrete dust clinging to his skin, and the rest has dried in streaks, grey against mottled green. He looks old, and at the same time very, very young.

Two hours ago they thought Master Splinter was going to die.

Donatello lets his brother pull him to his feet.

There's a barely-singed cushion waiting for him in his customary spot between Raph and Mikey. He kneels, bowing his head briefly to his master, who returns the gesture with slow, measured fluidity.

"Coffee's AWOL, bro," Michelangelo shrugs, pressing a steaming cup of tea into his hands. Donatello nods and curls his fingers around the heat, craving the damp warmth fogging his glasses and the delicate familiarity of the chipped but functional porcelain more than the caffeine.

Raphael has an afghan spread out across his lap—an ugly orange and brown one he made before he got any good with a crochet hook. He thrusts the ragged edge of it towards Donnie, frown deepening into a scowl when Donnie makes no move to take it.

Is Raph cold? Donnie's only had time to give the environmental controls a cursory examination, and snow this late in March is not exactly unheard of. They'll be in serious trouble if the heat's busted on top of everything else.

He blinks numbly at the wool lumped on his lap until Raph heaves a ragged sigh, digs out an old army blanket, and tosses it around Donnie's shoulders.

Oh, right.

Battle shock.

Leo comes back from the kitchen with an armful of power bars and beef jerky, making sure everyone takes a double helping. Donnie chews at his mechanically. Even with their accelerated healing rates they'll be anemic for a day or so. Raph had brushed off his earlier attempts to take a closer look at his cracked shell, and Donnie's own thighs and forearms are burning from the strain of trying to hold up the crumbling tower. He's pretty sure he pulled something in his bad left shoulder when they were all dangling in a human and mutant turtle daisy chain fifty stories above Times Square. He wonders what injuries everyone else might be hiding.

The meal settles into something almost like normalcy. Donnie finishes his first cup of tea without really tasting it, but the hot liquid and extra weight of the blanket loosens the thick bands of tension radiating out from under his shell. He smiles around a mouthful of jerky at the wide-eyed look on Leo's face when he tears into his power bar with a little too much force and scatters granola crumbs all down his kasazuri, almost chokes when Raph's snickering morphs into a stream of badly-suppressed cursing when his freshly-cracked can of soda fizzes traitorously down his front. Mikey passes him a second cup of tea, and it's sweet this time, loaded up with enough sugar that there are undissolved crystals ghosting across the bottom. Just the way he likes it.

It's enough, almost, to keep his insides from locking up again when Master Splinter sets down his empty cup and saucer and folds his hands neatly across his lap.

"My sons," he says. "It has been a long and trying day. You have faced an enemy of great cunning and strength. Trained in shadow, you have walked in daylight for the first time and seen the world of humans at its best and at its worst. You have fought bravely for each other, for this family, for strangers and old friends newly met. And though your battles have left their scars, you have come back united and victorious. I cannot repeat how proud I am of each of you, both as your father and as your teacher."

He closes his eyes, inhaling deeply. "I wish that I could spare you the burden of this heartbreak. Yet it is the harsh truth that every victory comes with its own losses."

It's harder to read Master Splinter sometimes, with his thick, dark fur and pointed face. Donatello shifts in his seat, glancing at each of his brothers to gauge their reactions. Michelangelo is sitting straighter than usual, mouth puckered and brow ridges tightly furrowed. Leonardo's eyes lock briefly with his as he makes his own scanned survey, but his eldest brother turns quickly away, plump cheeks deeply creased.

Raphael is the easiest, eyes dark and shoulders hunched, arms folded tightly against his plastron.

"We can't stay here, is what you're sayin'." The muscles of his face and neck ripple and clench as he shifts his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other. "It ain't safe."

Master Splinter flicks one ear briefly at the interruption but nods in acknowledgement. "It is uncertain that we will be truly safe anywhere. Our enemy has been struck low, but like the hydra we do not know what heads still lurk, ready to rise up and strike. Our home, our very existence, are no longer secrets we alone hold."

Mikey's hand shoots into the air.

"I trust April O'Neil," he says, eyes round and clear. "Not sure about the other guy, but he helped bust us out and he never came down here. Plus I think he's kind of a doofus nobody'd believe? So we should be cool."

"It's not Vern that I'm worried about," Leo frowns. "It's those Foot guys with the cattle prods."

Raph's lips pull back, flashing white, jagged teeth. "Yeah, and they've got us pre-programmed on GPS and a bad habit of not textin' before they come over. So let's get off our butts and scram already."

It's like watching a movie, one of the badly-shot horror ones that Mikey loves. Grainy and stiffly-acted, the faces disconnected from the dialogue, but with a slow, creeping dread bubbling underneath all the same.

Donnie fists his hands tightly in the afghan to keep them from shaking.

Mikey raises his hand again, slowly this time.

"Could we nap first?" he asks. "Dunno about you guys, but I could really go for a nap."

"We all need rest," Leo concedes. "But I don't know if we can afford to linger that long. Donnie? When's the soonest you think we could leave?"

The good thing about Leonardo is that when he asks a question, he almost always is looking for a very literal answer.

"Ten minutes," he says automatically. It isn't as if the theoretical possibility of having to abandon ship hasn't been brought up before. Dad used to make them do drills, when they were very young, and Donatello's crunched the numbers on his own compulsively about once a week since installing the first version of their security system. "Fifteen if you want to be neat about it. But—"

His voice cracks halfway through the word. He swallows, adjusts his glasses, and starts again.

"But it leaves us vulnerable. We'd be taking base essentials only, and then only as much as we can carry. We'd be betting on it being enough to last us until we can find someplace else, restock our food supply, and re-establish basics like sanitation and fresh water."

He slices through the air in front of him with his palm.

"Full reset. If anybody comes for us we'll be on new turf with no warning system and no reserve to see us through even a minor complication."

"Yeesh," says Mikey, sticking out his tongue. "Sounds like a real fun camping trip."

Leo runs his thumb along the long scar down his right cheek, thinking. "We've lived rough and on the run before. We can do it again."

Anger spikes through Donatello, hot and electric. His memories of those times may be softened by time but that doesn't make them pleasant.

"We're kinda bigger than we were when we were four, Leonardo. We can't exactly cram into a coffee can and live off apple cores and candy wrappers."

"So what," Raph prods, "you got a better idea?"

Donatello reaches unconsciously for his necklace, pulling and twisting the beads back and forth between his fingertips while he tries to regulate his breathing. Tries to ignore the way Raphael watches him, eyes glittering, the way Leonardo pointedly doesn't.

"We could stay," he says at length. "For a while, at least. We'll have more resources to find and evaluate a new place, and we'll be better prepared to cover our tracks when we do make the move. We can make strategic choices about where we go instead of scrambling to make do in the first spot we hunker down in. In the meantime we salvage whatever equipment we can. We'd still be limited to stuff that can easily be carried, but we can make multiple trips. After the immediate survival gear we prioritize the weapons and security sensors, medical supplies, a few personal items. Maybe a couple of generators, depending on how far we have to go. Things that will be hardest to replace."

There's no way they'll be able to carry most of his carefully-scavenged servers much further than a few blocks. Same with the kitchen appliances and all of their beds, but the servers are going to hurt the most. If he's lucky he might be able to salvage some of the fiber optic cabling after he backs up the most crucial data blocks using his own mobile systems.

Raphael drains the last of his soda with a snort and crushes the can. "You sure it wouldn't be easier to just hunt down the rest of Sacks' goons and kill 'em all?

"Dude." Mikey reaches behind Donnie's shell to smack Raph's meaty shoulder with the back of his hand. "Not cool, dude."

Donnie has to duck forward to avoid Raph's own retaliatory shoulder strike. "You're the one who wanted to kill April before you got a good look at her, dipshit."

"Hey," says Leo. "Language."

Raph growls—a less than effective threat, given the afghan—but Leo holds his ground.

"We're having a civil conversation about a serious decision we have to make as a family. One where we're not killing anyone unless we absolutely have to."

"Well last I checked I'm part of this family, too, and I say it's looking more and more like we shoulda killed a lot more of those bastards when we had the chance. And don't give me that look—" Raph points at Donnie. "—like I'm the only one with my hands all dirty. You weren't exactly tapping them politely on the shoulders with your bo."

"I wasn't giving you a look," Donnie scowls. "That was battle. This is—"

"War." Whether fighting with blades or fighting with words, Raphael's nostrils flare in excitement each time he draws first blood. "Christ, wake up and smell the sewage, Don! You were the one in the fucking cage. You think they're gonna come down here and treat us sweet when they can make some cash offa us dead as easy as they can alive? This is just the start of it, and it sure as hell ain't gonna stop."

"Enough."

Their master's tone commands immediate obedience. They fall into silence, heads bowed.

"Each of you will prepare a pack with whatever necessities for your physical and spiritual health you can carry."

Donatello knows there's nothing logical about the way the embers of his anger blaze bright into panicked betrayal, but the instinct to fortify, to withdraw fully into a hard shell of known safety is too hard to ignore. "Sensei, I—"

Master Splinter stills him with a raised claw. "As a contingency. We must be prepared at all times for immediate flight. However, I agree that to allow the specter of our enemies to chase us blindly from our stronghold into parts unknown when we are able to defend it for a while longer would be tactically unsound. We are weak now, but with careful planning and hard work we will soon be strong again."

Raphael stands abruptly, dragging the afghan with him. He scowls at it, big fingers plucking daintily at the loose loops of yarn tangled in the metal buttons of his loincloth before giving up and tearing it free.

He doesn't look at Donatello as he walks away.

"Don't forget to pack your undies, Mike," he calls over his shoulder. "We ain't commin' back for nothin' once we go."

"Wait, seriously?" Michelangelo's eyes move from their scattering of surfboards to the disco ball before settling on the fridge. He'd been Donnie's partner in crime for that particular escapade and so had intimate knowledge of just how much of a pain it had been to find it in the first place. "I mean not right away, jeeze, but even if somebody comes looking for us won't they eventually go away?"

Master Splinter shakes his head, smiling faintly. "A ninja strikes from the shadows and leaves no trace, my son."

Brushing the last of the granola from his lap, Leonardo makes to follow Raphael into the dojo. "I think that's the Boy Scouts, Dad."

The old rat, in his infinite wisdom, shrugs.

"We don't know what all might be used against us, so we can't risk any of it falling into the wrong hands," Donnie explains. DNA plucked from the bristles of a toothbrush. Personality profiles reverse-engineered from notes carelessly scribbled into the margins of their meager library and the junk each of them has crafted into treasures. The possibility of what someone competent enough could make of the guts of his security system is terrifying all on its own.

The logic of it doesn't make it any easier, though.

"Anything we don't take," he forces himself to finish, "we destroy."

"Besides, Mikey..." Leo yanks playfully at his brother's mask tails as he passes, ignoring the yelp of protest to wink at Donnie. "I don't think you want the Foot going through your browser history."

Michelangelo goes pale. Leonardo grins, brighter and fuller than he has in a long time, and lets out a bark of laughter. Master Splinter is alive. They're alive, and so is April O'Neil and all of the people of New York Sacks and the Shredder planned on murdering for the sake of money and power. Whatever wounds the fight has dealt them will heal in time, but until then they'll sleep in their own beds tonight and worry about finding a new place to call home tomorrow.

Donatello tries his best to echo his brother's expression, but it doesn't take.