othellovonryan | (no subject)

(no subject)

Noise.

It starts as just irritation. A metaphorical crawling under your skin. Things are too noisy, too bright, there is too much happening all the time and you can't take it all in-

Then silence it, make it yours, make it you, take control and destroy what will not submit

It sounds so inviting, a freedom from the noise, but its wrong, its wrong, its wrong and the noise is getting louder, mechanical and foreboding as it sees you, it knows you are there, and it wants to make you apart of it.

Anatawa hitorijanai

For a moment, there is quiet.

You breathe.

And fall through water.

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Right.

That answers that.

[sorry, Donnie, this is going to hurt. and she grits her teeth, puts some Night into her muscles atop the Name strength, and heaves.]

[hope you like being yanked bodily out of the console the rest of the way, the hard and fast way,]

[Moving is very difficult when he's all connected, so even as he tries to resist, he just doesn't have the strength or mobility to resist.]

[Getting yanked out really is not a fun time, and there's a scream as the tentacles are all pulled out of his back.]

[There's gonna be a lot of blood.]

[Its really not a good time.]

[right, well. she has Night to call on, so she can in fact start pumping that into him from where she's grabbing him to help like. soothe and also slowly heal those wounds that. she just helped make, yes.]

[can't do much about the blood, but. well. you get used to that.]

Pretty sure I'm not the one that needs - much less needed - saving right now, kid.

[You really kind of do. At least until the sensory issues hit.]

Everyone needs saving. That snake just keeps-keeeps hurting everyone.

[Gasping and there is some relief from the pain as he tries to push himself to his feet. He's not succeeding so well.]

Where....where is the Technodrone? They went quiet.

Everyone gets hurt, Donnie. But the people who try to save everyone rarely save what they're after by trying it.

[The unbridled arrogance of many a hero's downfall, she thinks, irritably - or, sometimes even worse - their victory. some of that irritation is probably what has her putting her next response like this:]

I killed them, Donnie. They weren't going to do you any good.

Oh.

[...]

No, that's good. They were getting too unruly. That gives me more time.

I'm not trying to save everyone, that's ridiculous, its just the people who matter.

... it's not a worthless goal, Donnie.

But if you work with them to save themselves, you'll save a lot more of them than if you leave yourself to try and save them all on your own. Even if the only ones you're trying to save are the ones that matter.

[she offers him a hand up. to help.]

[and as Donnie takes it - or even as he moves as if to -

Before all five of them an orc lay on a bed, his breathing laboured

Hakram Deadhand, born to the Howling Wolves Clan. Once the Adjutant, now the Warlord. Though victory had been won, or the so the clamour outside claimed, two evils yet lay in him. One was horror in the mundane, the spine cracked by the Prince of Bones’ hand that now stilled his limbs. Light healing had made the wound livable, but little more. Sorcerous healing of so fine a thing was beyond the ken of any on Calernia save perhaps the finest mage-doctors of Ashur. None were here. And so instead the Warden had sent for another.

“It was a wound taken defeating the Prince of Bones,” Hanno of Arwad quietly said. “It is a tragedy, Warden, but I do not know if it is…”

“Unjust?” Catherine Foundling finished, fingers clenching.

It was a powerful boon, Undo. The stuff legends were made of. But like all legends, it had been dealt into hands that would not abuse it: the White Knight could not unmake what he did not see as unjust, and he was a rare kind of man. The kind that dying so others might not, the bloody pyre of heroism. Many of the Named that had died in Keter, most of them, would remain in the grave. It was not unjust to die willingly for something greater than yourself.

“He didn’t die,” the Warden said. “Instead they hurt him, White Knight, and did it where it’d cut deepest. He only just got out of that chair and now they put him back into it. For good.”

The dark-skinned man met her gaze, his face a calm contrast to her stormy one.

“He’s done so much to keep this continent standing that no one but a handful of scholars will ever know about,” she told him. “We both know how the world works, Hanno. In the books he’ll be the Warlord like it’s all he ever was, because that story fits. It’s cleaner. The rest will get swept under the rug, and they’ll just remember him as a footnote – the first Warlord in ages, broken in Keter. End of the tale.”

Her face clenched with fury and grief.

“He deserves better.”

Hanno of Arwad did not answer, though he was brave enough not to shy from her burning gaze. The White Knight was not a man whose convictions were easily moved. And yet he stepped back, when instead of trying tirade or persuasion the Black Queen of Callow got down on her knee. Catherine Foundling was a proud woman, it was known. She had held to the bone of that pride ever since, as a girl, her father had taken into the heart of an empire and the mighty had knelt around them he had told her of a way to live: we do not kneel. Her father’s truth, one he had lived and died by. Refusing compromise even in the face of death, unbending for anything or anyone.

But Catherine went down on her knee, because she was more than her father’s daughter and Hakram Deadhand mattered more to her than pride.

“Please,” she asked. “I know there are others as deserving, that you only get once a day.”

Her fingers clenched.

“And still,” she said. “Please.”

And Hanno of Arwad let conviction move him, offering a hand then another. The first to bring her back to her feet, shamed she had ever knelt before him, and the second laid on the Warlord’s side. Undo. Creation shivered, then the White Knight let out a small breath as he stepped away. The Hierophant replaced him, weaving an incantation, and after his eye ceased moving around he pulled back to give the others a nod.

“His body is in perfect condition save for the limbs cut by the Severance,” he said.

The Warden and the White Knight matched gazes for a long moment, Catherine Foundling dipping her head into a nod that said much without need for words. Hanno returned it.

“I’ll see you outside,” he said.

“Might be you will,” she agreed.

And with a mute goodbye at the Princess, Hanno of Arwad left the small room where he had brought a miracle. He was not one of the Woe, and the last evil that lay in Hakram Deadhand’s body was not the kind to be beheld by outsiders. The orc began to stir awake as the White Knight closed the door behind him, Hierophant still standing by his bedside. Hakram woke feverish and befuddled, as if did not recognize where he was. His vision swam into focus, coming to Catherine, and tension left him.

“Cat,” he gravelled. “Where are we?”

Her jaw clenched.

“Keter,” she told him, hoping.

The Dead King’s curse had been a mind-killer, but only half of it had reached him. Vivienne had caught the other. The confusion on the tall orc’s face deepened, to the horror of the others.

“What is the last thing you remember?” Masego briskly asked.

“Heading for the Arsenal,” Hakram told them. “Would someone get me out of these bindings, they-”

And the horror on his face when he saw the limbs lost to the Severance was like a blow to the stomach for them all. He fought to master his face, but the anguish was too deep and sudden to be smoothed away.

“I,” he began, then his voice broke. “How much did I lose?”

“Two years,” Indrani said.

“There might be more,” Masego said. “It is too early to tell.”

“It should have been less,” Vivienne bit out. “I caught the spell, it-”

Her words caught his eye, and the way he stiffened did not go unseen by any of them.

“You don’t remember who I am, do you?” Vivienne Dartwick softly asked.

Hakram shook his head, the hint of shame on his face burning the rest of them like acid. The Princess swallowed thickly, blue-grey eyes turning to Hierophant.

“There has to be a way,” she said. “You told us the curse is still in him, why can’t you purge it?”

“It is,” Hierophant simply said, “the Dead King’s work.”

Even from the grave, Trismegistus King’s will was not to be easily overwrit.

“There’s always a way, with curses,” Catherine Foundling said. “You taught me that. The magic fails if there’s not a way out.”

“It has a price,” Hierophant said. “And it will not bring everything back.”

“But most,” Catherine pressed.

“Most,” he conceded.

And the Warden stepped forward, but a hand was laid on her arm and she found Vivienne Dartwick’s gaze had turned to steel.

“No,” Princess said. “Not this time. Let me.”

Neither woman gave, but eventually the Warden was the one to look away. Vivienne knelt by the bed, Masego’s hand on her shoulder, and faced a hesitant Hakram.

“You don’t remember me, right now,” she told him, “but I haven’t forgotten. There’s a debt between us, Hakram Deadhand.”

“I cannot call on it,” he replied.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

And Hierophant’s other hand came to rest atop the orc’s head, his flesh eye finding Princess’ own to seek one last confirmation. A simple nod and magic billowed out like the wind. Currents of it, thick and visible to the naked eye as faint blue trails, as Hierophant bound them all together. It was not a spell, not in the way he had been taught as a boy, but something simpler. Will exercised on the world, the purest manifestation of what he had hoped to become. And through that binding, he drew out the curse as one would a poison. It fought and wriggled and tried to sink its hooks deep, but inch by inch it was drawn out of Hakram Deadhand and into the only place it could be.

Vivienne Dartwick let out a shuddering breath, accepting it whole as she closed her eyes.

The magic ebbed low, then guttered out entirely. Hierophant’s hand retreated and Hakram suddenly clutched his forehead as he let out a roar of pain. Fangs drawing blood from his own lips, he shook wildly until the fit passed and a light returned to his gaze that had been gone. It lit up the room, reflected in the others around him as their hopes soared and he let out a wounded noise at the sight of the Princess.

“Vivienne,” he said. “Gods, Vivienne, what have you-”

The Princess of Callow let out a rasping laugh, eyes opening as the curse’s foul magic flared.

“My turn,” she said. “The choice came, Hakram.”

The curse boiled out, Vivienne Dartwick’s left hand turning to ash until there was not even bone left above her wrist.

“And I judge you well worth a hand,” she finished.

Looking more fragile than anyone had ever seen him, Hakram let out a grieving curse and drew her into his arms. It was as if a dam had broken, all of them coming together onto the sickbed in a pile of limbs clutching the others tight. The Warden rested her chin atop Indrani’s head and breathed in raggedly. For the first time since she had left the Dead King’s all, it felt over. Finally over.

“Alive,” Catherine Foundling whispered.

Crippled and lost, a parade of the mangled, but they had gone through the storm and all five of them come out the other side breathing.

When she finally let herself weep in relief, she was not alone.]

[the memory leaves her ragged, too, in its aftermath, and the words, ironically, come even easier for it.]

You're not fighting alone, Donatello Hamato. Never forget that.

[He does take her hand, to try and get to his feet-]

[Then the memory comes and he jerks away from her, hissing loudly as the teal over his skin burns and sizzles.]

I-I know that! [And he does. He truly, honestly does.] That's not-not the point! The point is no one else seems to!

Don't they?

[she doesn't let go.]

Then ask yourself how I got here, to you. Did I get here alone? Or did I have help?

When the last pieces were thrown, did I still have to go it alone, or did it turn out I had help from somewhere I wasn't even looking for until then?

[That teal keeps sizzling and he's grimacing.]

I understand how teamwork works! The problem is everyone else is so willing to throw it away to die! The only way to stop it is to not let them do that!

[grabbing him by the back of the neck, palms against the underside of his jawline]

And then who's going to save you, Donnie? Who will keep you from falling apart if you're holding them so tightly back from ever trying anything again they can't ever reach you anymore?

You can't win their fights for them. You just can't. You can only help and be helped in return.

[The room shifts. Half of it is still the inside the living ship, but half the room morphs into what looks like the inside of a subway car turned into a modern Medbay.]

I don't need to be saved. I'm careful. I'm careful. [He grimaces, hissing in pain as the teal fights to remain.] I'm the weakest one, the most vulnerable, I know how to keep out of the way, I'm not the one who almost dies-

[Standing in the lair, holding back Leo as he tries to potentially attack a human teenage boy, asking where Raph is-]

[Staring into the sky as the Technodrone explodes and knowing Leo is still up there, he's alone-]

[Looking over crackling scars over Mikey and his own arms, how much worse they're on Mikey, how much worse they could have been if they hadn't helped-]

[Screens light up around the medbay, medical charts of his brothers, how bad the injuries had been.]

The world could have ended and I was the only one who didn't almost die. I don't need help.

[she almost shouts it, mostly because the intensity of Donnie's own emotions threatens to carry her away on it, too, and she has to reassert control somehow - but she doesn't. she bites down and doesn't let go.]

Why do you think your brothers throw themselves in the way of things like that? Because they don't want it to happen to you. Your brothers love you. They know you fear being too weak to help them, too fragile to bear the weight of the same burdens they do - and so they respond to your fear by taking on those burdens even more, to defend you.

You're heroes, Donnie. [she does her best to keep the bitterness out of the word, for his sake.] Love isn't going to betray you unless your story's supposed to be a tragedy, and - look at me - I know you've seen some pretty horrible things, but I just don't think that's the kind of story you've been given a chance to live out, here.

Think about it, Donnie - if you're right, and the problem is that they're sacrificing themselves so much and not thinking about how what you're really afraid of losing is them - how is what they've done different from what you're trying to do now? How is it going to be better for them, when what they're doing is trying to keep you safe, to only realize what's gone wrong - what they've gotten wrong - after you've burned yourself out failing to do their job for them, thrice over?

I don't want them to! I work so hard so they don't have to.

[Younger, so much younger this time, designing his first battleshell. He can see Raph to the side, looking nervous, but tentatively hopeful. Donnie's back aches, covered in bandages, and Raph has bits of foam at the ends of the spikes of his shell.]

I know they love me, but they're so good, Cat. They're so painfully good people, they care so much about everything to the point of insanity. They'll give up everything for the world without a second thought.

But heroics are not so neat. All the answers won't be to almost die and save the world. They won't just be beat the bad guy and there's no complicated feelings. Sometimes the answer isn't good and evil, but evil and a greater evil and they're-

[There are tears in his eyes, between the pain and the emotions.]

They would destroy themselves for it.

I wouldn't. I could do it. That was always the plan. I would do what they couldn't...even if it meant having to be a monster to them.

I would give up everything to save them, even if it means they would hate me. Why not just do it now, when I could keep them from being broken, from being forced to make those hard choices because I can't do it for them?

No. No, they won't.

[she nods, slowly, every ache in her body reminding her of it.]

Good's just a long con that suckers the most painfully desperate of us, the ones who throw it all on faith that their prayers'll be answered by anything that cares - and Evil is, at best, what takes in the rest of us, that won't give up betting on our own ability to turn the tide before it gets that far. That's the truth of my experience, and I've the scars to show for it.

[she sighs.] But "good people" still deserve their fair shake, same as the rest of us, even if they need a shorter chain around their ankles to keep it fair.

[she reaches up, to wipe the tears from his eyes, and gives him a weary grin.]

Even though it hurts ... even though you're not wrong about the possibility - You can't just take away their right to fight beside you just because they might try to fight instead of you. Not if you love them. Not if they love you. Not really.

[The teal is receding on his skin. It seems like the pain is meant to keep people from trying to get rid of it, because it hurts as its forced to fade from his skin. Pulling pained whimpers and grimaces, but Donnie isn't fighting to get away from her.]

We're the thing that tries to answer. That cares. When mutants go crazy. When things threaten the world. We can do it. We can fight those things others can't hope to stand against. To give hope. I didn't hate that idea. To make the world better, even if we had to be set apart of it.

As long as I had my family, that...

That was all I needed.

But if I lost them-

I can't be the last one standing, Cat. I can't.

... I'd love to promise you that you won't be, but you and I both know there's no promise that stands up better than actions you can take. None at all.

But I can tell you the truth - and that's got to be worth more than a promise. You deserve more than to be set apart from the world. That's the problem with being a hero and being a villain, Good and Evil with capital letters. Feeding those impulses convinces you you're a part of something that's outside the pressures of the rest of the world, above or beyond or overseeing it all, and you're not.

You're always part of the world. You don't make the world better by being something other than the world. You make the world better by remembering you're just another crab in the goddamned bucket, and you're never getting out of there alive on your own.

And you know what? If your brothers need you to remind them of that? Then you do it. Because if anyone can get it through their heads, Donnie, I know you can. If I can, I'll help. I'm good at being a looming reminder of people's chances at surviving a stupid idea.

But you can't do that by hiding them away from every possible danger to themselves they might throw themselves at, out of a certainty that at least it'll be better if you can throw yourself at them instead. Because -

Because Donnie, how are they ever going to survive anything if they don't have you, either?

[He shakes his head.] You don't understand. That....its not the Good and Evil that sets us apart. Its not that we see ourselves as some kind of...of force of nature, or anything so haughty and that's why we're apart. We were just born.

[Donnie is moving around the Medbay. While care was taken to make it sterile, supplied, its also clear that the space is converted from a subway car, the outside showing the abandoned stations. He's looking over the X-rays for Leo as Casey hooks him up to IVs and cleans up what he can. He's listing off supplies as SHELLDON uses metal arms to quickly gather them from their stores. His back aches, each move reminds him that the battleshell is staunching the bloodflow so he can keep working. He has to keep pushing, because he's the only one who can.

Not for the first time, he wishes they could go to a hospital. Or a vet. Or literally anyone outside of their small family. But if there was ever a worse time for them to show themselves to the population at large than an alien invasion, he doesn't know when it is. He already sees reports in one of his goggle lenses of the Earth Protection Forces attempting to gather up all the people mutated by the Kraang. Yeah, no, even if they got lucky at the hospital, it wouldn't take long for EPF to cart them off to a lab for dissection.]

Being Good, being heroes, it....it was a way to feel apart of it. At least for me. To know that we could affect the world, that we could be something, even in a limited capacity. That we weren't just surviving out of sight, only finding ways to pass the time, but doing...something. Something that mattered and then it got...it got so big.

It was just supposed to be some criminals and mutants. Save a few purses, maybe a few lives. Maybe some injuries, but we were always tough. Even I was hard to hurt compared to humans. It was never supposed to be so dangerous, it was never supposed to be saving the whole world.

We...we're just kids...

[There are tears in his eyes, and its not just the burning of the teal on his skin.]

I'm supposed to keep my family safe. Not with strength like Raph, but always have a plan. Always have a contingency. A way to survive and escape and have warning. And if I don't, I'm supposed to fix things so next time, it doesn't happen. But I can't prepare for things like the Shredder or the Kraang. I can't prepare for things that can decimate armies in minutes.

[Cahterine Foundling sighs, letting her eyes shut, briefly. The Warden - not of East or West, but of all things with a story, all that earn a Name - opens them with a thin-lipped not-smile. she knows what she has to say. there's only one thing for it. any other words would be spent cheaply, and hit like limp water.]

Life is a long game of learning you can do a lot of things you used to tell yourself you couldn't - even I started with sharp things in an alley and worked my way up.

Let me tell you a story, [she says, and lets the memory sweep from her hand to Donnie like a tide, instead.

Once more I found the Marshal of Callow standing beneath a sycamore.

The same as last time, a bone-dry skeleton of a tree hollowed out inside. Dead and dying, the limbs having yet to catch up to the emptiness at the heart of it. Juniper’s escort had stayed far, as ordered, and as I limped past them across the dusty ground I found my eye dragged above. Sunset was painting the sky in layers, just like the stones of the hills to the west: the dark blue of night high above, with a distant moon, but then it lightened. Yellowed. Only to deepen once more, orange and red and at last a rich purple. Day died and its death throes shifted across the stone and dust, shade cutting in fluid slices as it swallowed up Creation in a never-sated maw. The Wasteland, for all its many dangers, was capable of eerie beauty at times.

Juniper was not leaning against the tree. I saw that first, even as I approached her. I had thought to find here the same hunched and self-loathing creature that’d been wearing the skin of one of my oldest friends for over a sennight, but this was… different. Her back might not be straight, but she was not sagging like withered vine. Instead she stood there with a lost and thoughtful look on her face, looking straight west. I followed her gaze, founding nothing more than the sappers of the Rebel Legions at work digging their own trench and palisade. They were skilled hands, well-drilled for all that they had deserted the Tower’s service. The three generals leading them had kept them disciplined.

I hesitated to break the silence. I’d found what I’d thought I would, and I was not sure I wanted to interrupt… whatever this was. For all the intensity of the Hellhound’s gaze, I had of late seen in her fragility that had me staying my hand. As I wrestled with my doubts, she came to a decision of her own. Her voice was rasping when she spoke. Dry, and she licked her chops before doing it.

“The Scribe, she said that Sacker’s in command among the deserters,” Juniper said. “Is it true?”

I hummed.

“Can’t be sure,” I admitted. “But the Jacks heard the same thing. I think Mok has more pull when it comes to strategic decisions, since he has the biggest army, but that Sacker’s the lead for tactics.”

Her eyes never left the sappers digging to the west. I bit my lip, then cast aside my hesitation. It wasn’t doing me any good.

“They tell me you’ve been here more than two hours,” I said. “Have you been looking at them the whole time?”

The Hellhound laughed. It was a low, rumbling thing. Not quite amused or happy, more like a… release. Vented feeling.

“Yeah, I have,” Juniper said. “Because there’s this…”

She shook her head.

“She was like an aunt to me, Sacker,” the orc said.

I did remember. It felt like a lifetime ago, but I remembered. I’d never seen her as embarrassed as she had been when I’d first seen her meet her mother and almost-aunt fuss over her after she became a legate. It’d been a memorable sight.

“Auntie Sacks,” I idly said.

“She used to tell me stories,” Juniper distantly said. “When I was small, Catherine. To make me go to sleep. That was all back in Summerholm, before I went home to be raised by my father. Goblin stories about gore and raids and little girls that got gobbled up for being too slow or too dim.”

“She seemed close to your mother,” I said.

I’d never grown to know either more than shallowly, but it’s been obvious to be even when I’d been young.

“She was probably Mom’s closest friend in the world,” she replied. “She spent more years of her life with Sacker at her side than she did my own father. It showed. Goblins aren’t usually… good with children. Sacker was making an effort.”

“She seems to have made an impression on you,” I said.

Juniper flashed pale fangs at the deepening night.

“She did,” the Hellhound said. “But not just for the stories. Did you ever hear she was meant to rise to Marshal in Ranker’s place when she retired?”

“There were rumours,” I acknowledged. “You know, back before…”

I gesture vaguely, meaning a great many things but not in particular. She snorted in amusement.

“I looked up to her for that,” Juniper said. “Even more than I did my mother, because my mother was never going to rise higher than she had. It wasn’t like Istrid Knightsbane I wanted to be when I grew up, Catherine. It was like Grem and Ranker and Nim. The Marshals. And Sacker, she had the stuff. The marshals knew it, so the Carrion Lord. If things had turned out different, it could be her serving as the Tower’s greatest captain instead of Nim.”

“A lot of things could have gone differently,” I said.

My hand half-rose to the cloth covering the eye sloppiness had cost me before I forced it down. Some mistakes stayed with you longer than others. I found Juniper’s gaze had moved to me, catching sight of the aborted movement, and I flushed in embarrassment. Those kinds of regrets I preferred kept unseen from even my friends.

“It’s an eye, Catherine,” Juniper said. “Just an eye. You could lose both and still be who you are. And that’s what eats at me. When did you know?”

“Know what?”

Her gaze was alight with something I could not quite name.

“Who you were,” Juniper gravelled. “We’ve hung titles around your neck like necklaces at a summer fair, Warlord. Countess. Squire. Arch-heretic of the East. Black Queen, Queen of Lost and Found, of Winter, of the Hunt. First Under the Night. But before that, when did you know?”

Half a dozen answers, some flippant and others rote, came to the tip of my tongue. I could not get any of them out, not meeting her eyes with my last remaining one. Seeing the cast of her face in the last gaps of the day, the despair and the hunger that burned in her eyes. I did love her, Juniper. My own Hellhound. As deeply as I did the Woe. I’d loved her as the hard-eyed foe I had to overcome to prove myself worthy of my father’s tutelage, when we’d both been children, and I loved her now as the woman who’d built a kingdom and an army with me. So I stayed silent, for a long moment, and told her the truth.

“In the Everdark,” I quietly said. “There was…”

I swallowed. I’d never spoken of this to anyone, not even Hakram. The words did not come easy. Was there a way in any language ever made that I could truly explain what they had been, the last moments of the battle in Great Strycht?

“I lost,” I finally said, tone quiet. “They carved me open, Juniper, and all the power and the death and the madness I’d gorged myself on came pouring back out.”

I looked down and found my hand was shaking a bit. I had come to understand the Sisters, and they me, but that had been after. After.

“It was like blinders went off my eyes,” I murmured. “And Gods, but I had done so many horrible things. More of them were all I could see ahead, and I was just so fucking tired. So I went down.”

I closed my fingers into a fist, to kill the tremors.

“And I stayed down, waiting to choke in the snow.”

I heard the sharp intake of breath.

“But I didn’t,” I murmured. “It took too long, you see. Snow melted enough I could breathe. And I still wanted to stay down, to sleep, but I just…”

I laughed, as mirthlessly as she had.

“It was a choice,” I said. “And there was nothing weighing the balance either way. So I ask myself, why not?”

I tightened my cloak around my shoulders, shivering.

“And then?” Juniper quietly asked.

“And then I got up,” I softly smiled. “And I think that’s what stayed with me, Juniper. The even balance and the question and the choice I made. And it’s gone to shit since, you know. Death and doom and the age falling down on our heads. And every day the same choice is there waiting to be made: lie down…”

“Or stand up,” the Hellhound finished.

I nodded.

“I’ve stayed on my feet,” I said. “I will, until I am either victorious or I die. I think that’s what left of me, when you whittle away the rest.”

Juniper looked away.

“I thought it’d be victory,” the Hellhound admitted.

“It’s never the victories that stay with you,” I tiredly said.

Large fingers laid against the dead wood.

“No,” the Marshal of Callow said, “I guess not.”

A moment passed.

“You’re looking west again.”

“Ranker’s dead,” Juniper quietly said. “But Sacker’s here. Nim is here. And Grem uses Sepulchral’s army. Everyone who is or could be a Marshal of Praes.”

I studied her, but her expression was hard to make out and her eyes stayed west.

“There’s this thing I see, Catherine,” she confessed. “The lay of it. Two hours I’ve watched the sappers, how quick they work. How quick the work will be done. And I know how quickly Nim’s will work, and ours and…”

“And what?” I quietly asked.

“And there is a box,” the Marshal of Callow said. “Where the battle will happen. I see it. It’s where it’ll all happen and we can shape it.”

I could smell it the air, now. Victory. Yet Creation did not shiver, fate did not ripple like a lake in the wind, because this was not the writ of any Gods. It was just Juniper of the Red Shields, looking at a dusty field in the middle of nowhere and being the woman I’d glimpsed in her at seventeen.

“You want to fight,” I said.

It was not a question.

“Sacker hasn’t seen it,” Juniper said, sounding disbelieving. “She can’t have, not if she’s raising those walls. Sacker hasn’t seen it, and she could have been a Marshal.”

Large fingers clawed at the thin bark of the dying sycamore. She turned to me.

“I could be wrong,” she told me, tone anguished. “I could be just seeing what’s not there. I’ve… these have not been good days, Catherine, and I did not stand up in the face of them. I need you to know that I could be wrong.”

I would have answered, but she was not done. The words were spilling out of her like broken barrel.

“I feel like my entire life I’ve been drawing a bow,” Juniper said. “And ever since I’ve been your marshal, I’ve just… stood there. And my hand’s been trembling. But this? This place, this box, these foes?”

The hand left the tree and she pushed away, straightening her back.

“I can release the arrow,” Juniper of the Red Shields said, pleaded. “I can win this. Please.”

And I could have taken her by the arm, brought her close and told her that she did not need to win back my trust because she’d never lost it. But I knew, sure as dawn, that it was not what she wanted. Needed. And I was my father’s daughter, so I offered her the very same grace I was once offered. My wrist snapped out and metal slapped against my palm.

I handed her a knife, pommel first.

“If you mean the words,” I replied, “commit. Carve them.”

Incomprehension, first, but I saw her eyes clear as she matched my gaze. I did not mean the plea, or the apology that came unspoken with it. Those were between us. What I wanted from her was conviction. The Hellhound leaned close to the tree, reaching inside, and carved. The strokes shook, at first, but grew certain. Her hand did not tremble. And when she withdrew, deep in the hollow of a dead tree waited these words: Marshal Juniper wins here. I smiled, startled.

“Here?” I asked, amused. “Exactly?”

“This tree is where we win,” the Marshal of Callow said, tone even, “and everyone else loses.”

She offered me back the knife, pommel first. I took it.

“Let’s go home,” I said. “It’s getting late.”

“Yeah,” Juniper said, eyes red. “Let’s go home, Catherine.”

We’d left alone. We came back together.

she grips Donnie's shoulder, and doesn't let go just leans in and whispers, as the memory finishes:]

Do you know how Juniper and I met? She tried to beat me at a game of raising the towers, knowing I'd never played it before. So I kicked over her tower.

[Its a powerful memory. There is no doubt about that. Of Hope, but not the kind of hope born out of optimistic naivety.]

[Its the kind of hope that leads to his twin, two decades and change in the future, that tells Casey two things: Save the world and grab a slice. Because saving the world was necessary, but he wanted Casey to also finally have a chance to be a teenager.]

[Its the kind of hope where for once, his science was wrong, where the worst thing to happen to Raph was proof that the day and he could be saved.]

[Its the kind of hope where Raph throws himself off a goddamn cliff in the worst kind of trust fall exercise.]

[Its the kind of hope where their father hands over the final piece of armor in exchange for their lives.]

[The decisions made that are terrible, but they're a terrible that allows for a step after. Casey got that slice. They saved and caught Raph. They were able to stop the Shredder, eventually.]

[So different from Gram-Gram. From their grandmother and great-grandfather, who resigned themselves to the sacrifice, to duty, without thinking of there being a next for themselves. Maybe those choices were less terrible, but they came with a high cost for the ease.]

[He knows.]

[Choosing to stand is not an easy choice.]

[It will never be an easy choice.]

[He looks down at his hands, at the crackling scars over his arms.]

[That moment on Staten Island, when his mind is racing, trying to think of a way to break through to the Prison Dimension, to retrieve Leo, but there won't be time, the Kraang is going to kill him, he doesn't have time, and the despair is all consuming. If only he hadn't been so weak. If only he had been able to protect Mikey, Raph could have been with him, could have given him another option-

But Mikey didn't fall. Didn't freeze. He stood up, and he reached and reached and reached until he made the laws of the universe bend to his will, to tear a hole through to Leo. A hole that was starting to burn parts of Mikey away, but Raph and him were quick to give him power, to share the burden, because whatever the consequences, it was worth it if they all went home.]

They're amazing. My brothers. If it wasn't intelligence based, I never had a hope of beating them. [He laughs a bit.] I cheat a lot of games. Playing fair usually means I lose.

Raph just makes everything feel safer. He always did. If he's around, its so easy to believe things will be okay.

Mikey always finds the light. In people who really didn't deserve a chance, when winters were rough, and when we needed hope, belief, that things could be change.

And Leo...Leo always knew what we needed. What I needed. The words we needed to hear, how to wind down, how to find hope. He...he was the first one who didn't demand 'showing' to just 'get it.' Before the others figured out how I worked, he just...knew.

Our world was small, and I could fool myself into thinking I could protect it. But now there's more and I-

I don't-

I don't want to lose anyone-

[Which is when the teal begins to burn, steam raising off Sacrifice as he starts to scream, collapsing against Cat. Any points of contact with the teal beginning to burn her too.]

[But the teal is getting to be Less far more quickly now.]

[she's endured worse. will again, and that's just how it is. you get back up, you take the hit, you get back up.]

Hhhhht. You know what having people who have your back can be, Donnie?

The biggest way to cheat the rules of the gameboard you have. Don't - nnngh - lock it away for the sake of a safety you'll never know.

Use it. Your relationships aren't just problems to solve - they are the solution to your problems. So put that ability to untangle the knots of the universe to work like I know you can and instead of trying to throw them in a box and away from where you can do the work you need to with them, grab hold of the tools you need to solve this problem already.

I know! I know! I know I know I know, okay?! I know its easier with-with-with others-with help, but I don't-

[There's another pained screaming, curling up against her, sobbing in pain and in pain that isn't physical.]

I'm t-t-tired. So tired, I don't...don't....

[The teal sears away as words escape him and then there's another presence. A hand on Cat's side because]

[Well]

[Its a seven year old Donnie, with glasses and a purple hoody, and hand can only reach so high.]

Hug's good. Time.

... you've got a lot of yourself in here, you know that? Makes me want to say something about how you have a bigger heart than your body knows what to do with.

[anyway, she relents from holding Sacrifice so hard, but only because she's going to pull him and this smaller turtle into a hug.]

Not very good at ... these, [she says, frowning.] But ... here we are.

[The tiny Donnie lets out a breathy laugh.] Or egocentric. Joke.

[Sacrifice doesn't fight, merely holds on as the searing gets to be less by virtue of there being less space for the teal. The wracking sobs are still happening, but it may be he just needs to get it out.]

[Nor does the smaller turtle, though he's careful to not touch the teal at all. No thank you.]

Did good. Connected me.

[yeah, yeah, she says she's not good at this but she's still gonna hold him till he gets it out of his system.]

Some of the kindest people I've known have also been the most self-involved people I've ever met. Comes with the territory, I expect; nobody's charity's ever so selfless as they make out.

Either way, it puts you in good company, for what it's worth. "Connected you", huh?