"April."

"Mmmmmm." April tried to ignore the voice murmuring her name, but it was oddly persistent. How strange for a voice in her dreams.

"April, wake up." A large hand on her bare shoulder beneath the blankets, rousing her from slumber with the utmost gentleness.

One blue eye opened at last, fixing Donatello with an annoyed stare. If her pique bothered him, he showed no sign of it, instead grinning at her in his typically unrestrained, gap-toothed fashion that was so charming. She couldn't help smiling back, though she all but dozed off again.

He tugged the blankets away, leaving her exposed to the air. April shuddered at the sudden wall of cold, then at the intensity of his darkened gaze on her skin.

Donatello held his breath. No, she had taken it away, for the hundredth time that night. He bent down to kiss her, at the same time handing her her snow boots.

"Get dressed. You have to see this."

April suddenly realized why the room seemed colder than it should be; though the heater was still running, the cabin door was propped slightly open with her old fruit crate. Struggling into her clothes and boots, she dimly wondered what could possibly excite him enough to risk going out in the subarctic cold in the middle of the night. From the corner of her eye, she noticed reddish and green glimmers on the bank of snow just outside her door. As she stood up, Donatello wrapped a blanket around them both, taking her hand beneath it as he led her outside.

"Look, April." Donatello's face was drawn to the sky as though by magnetic force, and the look of quiet joy and serenity on his face made her heart clench, followed by a wave of tenderness. Gripping his hand more tightly, she looked up too.

Wide ribbons of green light stretched and rippled across the inky sky, interspersed with narrower bands of red. The stars seemed to flicker and dance like candle flames beyond the shimmering veil of color. In the absolute silence of night, April thought she could hear a faint hiss as the curtains of the aurora rose and fell. Still watching the sky, Donatello pulled her closer to him. When she met his eyes at last, she realized that he'd been staring at her rather than the cosmic spectacle above.

"April..." His lips were suddenly pressed to her forehead, murmuring her name against her skin. She had stopped feeling the biting cold long ago, cocooned with him in their private northern paradise.

"Donnie?" She swallowed hard, her emotions threatening to rise up and choke her at last, after everything that had happened tonight.

"Please...stay with me?" It was a softly-spoken plea, but taut with need. April let out a sigh that made a gentle breeze over his face.

"Always."