XII. Compass

The Great Turtle sent him one last dream.

Shadow spooned more sugar over the blueberries in the chipped glass bowl, in time with a Christmas carol playing on the tinny old kitchen radio. Then she leaned forward and watched Mike rolling out pie dough in sure, smooth strokes across wax paper on the table, his forearms powdery with flour and his rolled-up sleeves edged in white dust.

Even after a year and a half, he could read Shadow's every move. Something was bugging her.

"What's going on in that busy blonde head?" Mike teased as he worked.

She tugged at the ponytail draped over her shoulder and frowned at him.

"How come you never visited before now?" she asked. "April invited you lots of times in those letters. And I know you got 'em, cause of what you wrote back to me. You were always answering what she told you about my stories."

"Only because a certain someone wasn't likely to share the stories of how she got suspended trying to break into the school," April said from the stove, where gravy simmered and a pot of acorn squash soup threatened to boil.

"I'd forgot my homework!" Shadow protested. "And besides, I wanted to see if I could get in."

"Shoulda gotten Donnie to help you disarm the security system first," Mike told her.

"Michaelangelo," April warned.

Casey tried to cover his chuckle by clattering the pots in the sudsy dishwasher more loudly.

"I certainly would not have helped," Don said from the far end of the table, where he was building a small mountain of potato peels. "At least not until she's 18. Ask Raph when he comes in from guard duty; he's good with the basic systems."

April rolled her eyes.

"But Mike," Shadow insisted. "You didn't come."

Mike lifted a short, broad knife from the tabletop and trimmed a near perfect circle of dough. He lifted the corners of the wax paper and swung the finished crust over, letting it slide into the flour-dusted pie dish waiting at her side. Shadow started ladling blueberries in.

"I'm sorry, kiddo," Mike said finally, wadding up the ragged line of leftover dough and tossing it at Don, who caught it in one hand without looking, popped it in his mouth and resumed with the potatoes. "I missed hanging out with my Shadmonster. I wanted to be here."

"But you were scared of Leo," she said bitterly.

Mike laughed, glancing at the shadows of the back hall. "Nah, that wasn't it. I've tangled with plenty worse creeps. Just 'cause I don't feel like dealing with his crap doesn't make me scared."

She glared at him. "So you stayed away because the scientists or someone else would track us all down if you came?"

"No way. Hey," he said, shaking his head and stopping his work until she met his eyes. "I would never do anything to put you at risk, Shadow – at least, nothing that you or the family can't handle. Understand? I would never have gotten this change," he went on, holding up his dough-speckled, five-fingered hand, "if I thought it meant real danger to you. And I wouldn't have come tonight if I thought there was any chance I'd get followed by people meaning you – or your parents – or my brothers – harm."

He caught Don watching him and returned his brother's steady gaze.

"So why?" Shadow demanded, slapping the wooden ladle back into the bowl so drips of purple berries splattered on the wax paper.

"Why'd I hold off coming?" Mike pulled the filled pie back toward him and began folding strips of dough in a lattice across its top. "I don't know if this makes much sense, Shad, but – I knew I wanted it too much. If I'd come back all those times I wanted to, I might as well have not left in the first place. I'd end up hiding out here, safe in my – my comfort zone, they call it at the shelter. Acting like my kids, going back someplace that just ain't good..."

Mike trailed off, then gritted his teeth in embarrassment. "That's not what I meant. You guys are good. It's just...it wasn't good for me, for awhile."

"Because of Leo," she said with heat.

"No," he answered, absently.

April poured the gravy into a ceramic bowl and quietly covered it, left it on a warming plate and came to stand behind her daughter. "Take a look at him, Shadow," she said. "What do you think? Did he make the right decision, waiting to come back until he was ready? And until his brothers asked? Does anything about him feel different?"

Shadow squinted. Mike finished the top crust and sat down, munching the remnants of dough as the niece he'd helped raise scrutinized him.

"You feel like you're sad, Mikey," she told him. A tiny smile appeared at that, and he watched her thoughtfully in return. He could see April working up to say something, chastise maybe, then bite her tongue. "Yeah," Shadow continued. "Sad."

She tilted her head and considered him awhile longer. Don started chopping the potatoes, listening, as Casey tugged the plug free of the drain, rinsed his hands and came to April's side.

"But you don't feel lost anymore," Shadow said. "You kinda looked lost, all the time, before."

The last of the smile slid away and Mike swallowed, turning his attention to the blinds drawn protectively down the tall kitchen window.

April squeezed her daughter's shoulders. "I think you may be right," she said softly. "Mike...had to find his own compass..."

Their friend took a deep breath. He swiped his fingers through his hair, leaving a trail of white highlights in the mussed brown. "Aw, geeze," he said, glancing at his floury fingers. "Hang on a sec."

Mike jogged to the sink and washed both hands and arms in the warm water, then dried them with the towel, brushing flakes of dough from his sweater to the floor.

"After Master Splinter," Mike said, coming back to his seat, "I kinda think we all had to do that. Find our compasses. Well, maybe not Raph and Don so much." He looked to the second brother, who raised a brow at him and continued chopping. "Raph's always followed his own self, and Donnie, you can find your center in all sorts of things, from your computer stuff to fixing engines to physics and stars to – I don't know. You just, it doesn't matter what's going on around you, you hold your center.

"Me and Leo, it's different. I've been thinking about that. I just always wanted to do what was best for the family. Not like a martyr or anything. It's just – that's all I wanted. And by the time Splinter died – I don't know, maybe even before – we didn't have much left we hadn't already done a thousand times before. I mean, what else could I contribute? There was stuff calling to me that I knew I could do, that I knew could make a difference. But I couldn't quite see it or hear it or make it out. There was all this junk in the way, I couldn't even tell what it was. I just had to find a way to get through..."

He trailed off, shook himself a little, started gathering up the used wax paper.

"As for Leo..." He glanced to the hallway again, knowing if his brother cared to listen he'd hear well enough, "I think Leo's compass, besides Master Splinter, is always doing what he thinks is the right thing. Except sometimes, and he's still got to learn this, even if you do everything exactly right, things don't turn out the way you want or even expect. Things, or people. They don't always come out peaceful, or safe, or in control."

Casey snorted. "You'd think he'd have figured that out from Raph a long time ago."

The family grinned.

"He figured out a long, long time ago that that theory doesn't apply to Raph," Mike conceded. "But he really didn't expect to get a monkey wrench like one of us going human...from me."

Shadow picked up the ladle again and began running it around the glass, making the bowl rock as she scraped clumps of sugary blueberry juice from its sides. "So what," she muttered. "Who cares. I could have told him things get messed up. Why can't he just quit being a jerk and let you come home?"

Mike set his elbows on the table and propped his chin on his fists, hard. "'Cause he's Leo, Shadbabe," he said fiercely. "And he's still leader. He's head of the Clan, with Splinter gone.

"Come to think of it... By all rights, you should have started learning from him, training with him, by now. You need to start talking with him again."

"Why should I? He doesn't know anything you and Raph and Don can't teach me," she snapped.

Mike laughed. "I wish! Geeze, Shadow, the man can do more with half a chopstick than I could do with both of his katanas and – and a unicycle! C'mon, give the guy a break. This is between him and me, not him and you. Besides," he said, as she gave up on the bowl and sat forlornly under April's hands, a lump of angry misery, "who said that, even if he told me to, I'd come home?"

She looked up in surprise, and her expression hit him hard: it tore at him, scared and lonely the way she'd looked when she was five, saying goodbye...

He remembered that night clearly – the first time Shadow understood what it meant when her uncles donned their war gear and their faces went still and their spirits turned inward, and they didn't laugh or joke or want to play. She'd recognized, then, that they were preparing to do something that might take them away, forever, to a place she couldn't follow.

He collected himself.

"Shad," he said quietly. "You remember that time we had to leave on a mission? You were in kindergarten. You remember how I gave you Mr. Bear, my old bear from when I was still a little kid, so you'd know I was with you no matter what?"

Slowly, Shadow nodded.

"Someday," he continued, "you're going to grow up and go to college and go travel somewhere incredible, maybe lots of somewheres, and find a job and a home and people of your own and a life that's nothing but yours. And you'll come back and visit, lots and lots of times I hope, maybe even to live for awhile until you get on your feet, but – " Mike glanced around to the others, apologetic. "It won't be the same, when you do. Because you won't be the same. So right now, I'm the one who's not the same anymore. And I haven't done growing yet."

Over her daughter's nodding head, April sent Mike a look of approval.

"Someday, you know," she told him and Shadow and the rest of the room, "it's all going to work out."

"But he just said he doesn't belong with us anymore," she told the dusty table.

Mike shook his head. "Not right now, maybe. Who knows what could happen down the road? I'm just saying that...like with Mr. Bear, no matter where you are or who you become, I'll always still love you. We all will. That's not ever going to change."

"Knucklehead Mike's right," Casey said, tugging his daughter's ponytail. "But if you pull that roof-jumping stunt of yours one more time, you can forget about college. We're going to lock you in a box in the basement until you're too old to jump – like, 72!"

"You could try!" she shouted, springing up. "Mike already taught me how to pick every lock you could use!"

"She's good," Mike agreed, ruefully, balling up the wax paper remnants.

"Learned from the best." Don stood, too, scooping handfuls of potato cubes into a bowl for transfer to the stove. A buzzer sounded, and April slipped away to rescue the pumpkin pie from the oven. "Did Mike ever tell you, Shadow, about the time Raph got stuck on the wrong side of the security door at Les Miserables, and Mike had about 30 seconds to get it unlocked before half of Broadway came down on Raph's head?"

Casey started laughing. "Who cares about the lock? What the heck was Raph doing at a play?"

"Ohhh, that's a story for another day," Don said warily. Shadow began to plead. "C'mon, guys! He'll wreck another of my projects 'by accident' if I tell!"

Mike turned his head at a sound from the hallway. "Speaking of whom, I think Raph's back from guard duty... April, you didn't leave the pie out there, did you?"

Leo opened his eyes and watched the shadows on the ceiling for awhile. "'Monkey' wrench, huh?" he whispered after awhile. "Very punny, Mikey."

Leonardo grinned and slept deeply for the first time in something close to years.

Days passed. Mike got moved to a regular room. He told the state troopers he'd taken some vacation from the City to enjoy the foliage and search for inspiration for his folk song performances. Mike said he'd scaled a support wall on the Route 9 bridge to Northampton, hoping to land a photo of the river from an unusual angle, when he missed a handhold, lost his grip and fell.

"I remember a couple of guys...picked me up off the rocks downstream awhile later," Mike wheezed. "I don't...remember much. I know they were fishing...maybe without a license...and that's why they didn't...stick around? I've been thinking up...a few song lyrics about 'em... 'Riverside Angels.' You wanna hear?"

They didn't. They ruled Mike's case accidental, and his insurance agreed to pick up 70 percent of the costs of the hospital stay.

After the deductible.

And after the emergency room usage fee.

And after the surcharges for out-of-network providers.

Medications were another matter altogether.

"I better get some awesome royalties on that book," Mike whispered after hanging up the room phone.

The ride to the farmhouse that Friday evening hurt. It hurt more when Shadow, and then Raph, hugged him. He didn't mind.

"Only been 10 days," he protested. "Ow."

"It's been longer," Raph assured him.

They set him up in the living room. The first night, they all camped out on the floor in front of his couch/bed and toasted marshmallows in the fireplace. They told ghost stories and Shadow filled Mike in on everything she'd been doing since Christmas. Even with a wheezing voice that could only manage a few words at a time, Mike had them all sore with laughter from his tales of hospital food and wacky nurses and his roommate who snored like a truck.

"There," he said, satisfied, as Shadow clutched her sides and protested. "Now we've all...got achey ribs."

They drifted off, to sleep or to guard duty.

Sometime around 2 a.m., Mike woke and saw Leo watching him from the floor.

"Hey," he whispered.

"You destroyed everything," Leo told him. "I wanted to kill you."

Mike felt his stomach go cold.

"But you didn't destroy things, really. Did you? You just changed it all. The last two years...we didn't have this..." Leo gestured around the room of sleeping family. "We didn't have this because I couldn't let you change from who I thought you should be..."

Mike sighed.

"I'm so sorry," Leo said.

Mike forced a smile. "I missed you so much," he said, and his expression melted into tears.

Leo reached up and took his brother's open hand.

Mike said softly: "I'm sorry, too. For wanting you and Don and Raph to change with me, at first."

Leo tilted his head. "Did you change your mind when the procedure went so wrong?" His brother looked at him sharply. "I saw it in the dreams," Leo explained.

Mike hesitated. "Partly. They could do it better the next time, I'm sure. We'd make it go right. It...it was what happened after. Having to deal with bills, and losing so much of my training, and all kinds of people to keep track of, and working most of the day, and not getting to go all the places I used to without putting all those responsibilities at risk... It wouldn't work for you guys. It's not your style."

"Caught up in the rat race," Leo observed.

"Except these rats aren't anything like Master Splinter," Mike grinned. Then he grew quiet: "I saw him," he whispered.

"Who? Splinter? Where? When?"

"I'm not sure, exactly. I think it was still in the E.R. So... It would have been right after you guys got me to the hospital."

Leo pondered this. "When your heart stopped? Did he say anything?"

"Yes." Mike turned his head. "He said, 'Mike. You will go to the Dagobah system. There you will learn from the ninja master, Yoda-san.'"

Leo rolled his eyes.

"Nothing like that," Mike admitted. "He didn't say anything. He was just there. Like he always was, for all of us. Watching over and making sure I knew everything was okay."

Leo nodded. "I miss him," he said finally.

"Me, too."

They listened to the breathing of their family, the steady mumble of the fire's embers, the creaking of the house as it settled against the autumn chill.

"Do you remember how he talked after that winter," Leo asked, "about April's choice to take us into her life?"

Mike thought about it, turning his head a little to see that friend, curled under a knit throw across the room. "He said...she accepted the changes her choice would bring."

Leo nodded. "He said she gained more than she lost, even after the fire," he said. "Do you feel that way, too?"

"About...my choice?"

"Yeah."

His brother was quiet a long time.

"You know, there were times..." Mike said finally, "whole nights I couldn't sleep, trying to block out the memories, stop thinking about you and the others, stop thinking about what I wanted to say or do if we ever got to talk face to face. Losing you guys was like losing – I don't know, more than an arm or a leg. I didn't know how to be, anymore." He squeezed Leo's hand. "But I never...never wished I hadn't made the plunge."

Leo could hear Mike chewing at his lip, caught up in thought, just as his brother used to when they were young.

"That never changed," Mike finished. "And the good stuff – working with the kids, going shopping or playing tourist right out in the open on the streets, going skating at Rockefeller Center under the lights of the big Christmas tree, taking a girl out for coffee, getting to go anywhere and do all that stuff we always dreamed of – that made up, almost, for everything else."

"It wouldn't, for me," Leo said.

"I know.' Mike's free hand ran up and down his blanket, rubbing at his sore, shell-less chest. "After the first few weeks, I knew that about you. And Donnie and Raph. It's just different, for me."

"It is," Leo said. "I didn't want to admit it. But, Mike, you need freedom and change to be who you are. So be that. Do what it takes to find it. Show me what you discover along the way. I promise...I'll try to listen better, this time."

Mike smiled at the ceiling. "Do what it takes, huh?" he echoed. "You know, I've got these great plans for a children's home, and I just need a couple of millions dollars to get started. Can I hire you guys to rob me a bank?"

He almost busted a stitch as they tried to muffle their laughter.

When they finally quieted, Leo looked around thoughtfully. "You could do something with this place, maybe. If Casey and April were okay with it."

His brother's eyes went wide. He pushed himself up on one elbow, just a little, peering around the dark room and what he could see of the hallway with an intent expression.

When Mike lay back down, Leo would have sworn he could see a light in his brother's eyes.

"Funny," Mike sighed. "Getting you back...being back with everybody...it's the first time I'm really glad to have gone away."

The brothers fell asleep, linked together, five fingers wrapped in three.

That Sunday night, they loaded Mike onto an air mattress for the ride back to New York and gave him the Percoset from the hospital doctor's prescription. "Not this stuff again," he groaned.

It was too crowded, but Shadow rode in the back of the truck with the Turtles the whole way. On the highways, the five of them sang, and at the rest stops and in traffic practiced silent ninja signals. She passed out next to Mike before they left Connecticut.

Raph and Leo unloaded the truck in the cover of darkness, got their friends to bed, and collapsed with their brothers in Casey and April's living room well after midnight.

"I can make us some sandwiches," Leo told the room without moving from the loveseat. "If anyone wants it…"

No one budged. "Too tired to eat," Mike said finally from the couch, where he'd been eyeing the heirloom teapot beside Splinter's shrine on the mantel. He pushed himself up with an effort and stared at the old Oriental carpet, still stained with juice from Shadow's younger days, while he tried to gather the energy to stand. "I should go…back to my place." The single room he'd called 'home' for more than two years suddenly seemed dark and cheerless. Worse, it was too far away.

Raph cleared his throat. "Yeah, about that…ya might wanna stop in the spare room before ya go. I think there's some stuff in there that you're gonna want."

Mike groaned. "Can it wait?"

"No, I don't think so." His brothers traded a look that Mike couldn't interpret.

"Awright, awright." Mike got his feet under him, grumbling, and staggered off to inspect the third bedroom. April and Casey kept it as a kind of standing guestroom, ostensibly for Shadow's friends, although it had never been used by anyone but the Turtles.

Mike hit the light switch.

He froze.

It was all there. The drawings from the kids at the shelter, the stacked boxes holding his Goodwill-rescued clothes, the magazine cutouts, the posters – even his prize possession, the painting of the linked hands, hung in its proper place above the bed. The desk was piled high with his notebooks and books. The bed had been made, recently, using the same thick blanket he'd gotten from the Salvation Army store with his very first paycheck.

His bookshelf from the tunnels stood against the wall, too. It was crowded with the trinkets and mementos from an entirely different life, each one a memory that seemed to strike him deep inside. A few of the posters on the wall, he noticed now, showed deep creases from when they'd been crumpled. Someone must have rescued the ones he'd trashed, smoothed them flat and hung them up with the rest.

His wooden gear box stood at the bottom of the bed, its lid propped against its side, revealing the layers of weaponry and protective gear within.

Shadow had placed his old teddy bear on the pillow.

"Hope you don't mind," someone said behind him. Mike turned to find his brothers watching him through the doorway.

"Mind? Why? You?" He couldn't figure out what to ask first.

Raph shrugged, looked away. "Well, the rent was due, and all, and we didn't have any money, so…" he shrugged again.

"You're going to have those medical bills," Don added.

"Didn't seem like you should go homeless," Leo finished. He looked Mike square in the eye. "After all, you have a perfectly good home here."

He couldn't speak.

"You can snag your own place again, soon as you want," Raph said nervously. "In the meantime, just save up and do your own thing. We'll stay out of your, uh, hair." He flicked the brown mess.

Don stumped forward on his crutch and peered over at the room again, as Mike snagged Raph's offending finger. "I don't know if we hung everything right," Don said, "or set stuff up in the best layout, Mikey. I'll help you rearrange it the way you want in the morning."

Mike smiled, letting Raph's hand go. He finally had words. He grabbed his brothers, gentle around their injuries, until they were all tangled up together again.

Mike leaned into his family.

"It's perfect," he said.