All the Golden World

It was clockwork.  Precision.  As Raph might say, his anal ass doing what he always did.  A rueful smile played along the edges of her mouth, but it died away.  Mirth never lasted long in this gray twilight of her life.  There was hardly ever a reason to smile if it was not out of bitterness.  The leaves beneath her boots made the softest sigh of resignation as she placed her weighted step upon them.  Soaked with morning dew and the chilled rain that had fallen last night, the forest floor was spongy and buoyant as she continued on her way towards him.  Where she had slowly learned he’d be at every morning at this time.  It was due to his nature, one possibly manipulated by a slight obsessive compulsive disorder that he was able to be found at all.  That’s how April discovered his place of solitude, anyway.  Part of it was luck, part of it the end result of dogged determination on her part, and lastly, it was his own consistent mannerisms.

Her footsteps faltered as she spotted the familiar silhouette.  No doubt standing where he stood every day since the incident.  Sentinel and still.  Gripped with a regret and blanketed by an oppressive guilt that she could never imagine or really understand.  It was not where the others might have guessed, for he did not stand at the grave-site.  But at the other end of the field, just beyond the scrub of bushes, boulders and skeletal trees swaying in the November misty morning.  At the edge of the property of Casey’s farm on the outcropping of a cave that hung over a wide lake ringed by thicker over growth and trees; both evergreen and deciduous, he stood poised and hushed.  Stoic and fixed.

With a trembling exhale that clouded across her vision in a white puff of breath, April moved forward.  She came to stand next to him.  And in his presence she could not speak and found it hard to breathe at all.  He gave her no acknowledgement that he even knew she was there.  But she knew that he was aware of her presence since she breached the opening of the old trail that led her to him.  She was lucky that he hadn’t left.  It had taken several weeks of waiting and watching for him.  Building up her courage to come here, to approach him this close.  The wind, biting and icy, blew between them, making the end of his dark coat billow and her arms reach up to hug herself against the chill.

It had been just under four months.  Less than sixteen weeks since she had last seen him.  Staggering on legs that could barely carry him, wounded, drenched in blood and blinded, cradling Master Splinter against his chest despite the bone protruding from his right arm.  Wide gashes and gaping wounds covered him.  When he collapsed inside their building, he would not release his father from his arms.

A sound was coming from Splinter that was as terrifying as it was painful to listen to.  A rattle, a wheezing straining sound squeezed from bloodied lips, punctuated by a tight barking cough that sprayed Leonardo with crimson and white droplets.  Leonardo fought Casey and Raphael as they pulled his sensei, limp and trembling, from his arms.  He fought them, eyes wild with panic and desperate fright.  Screaming wordless sounds, Leonardo grappled with his brother.  Until April ordered him to make it stop before he made his own injuries worse.  Raphael had to subdue Leonardo as Casey carried Splinter from the room.  He had to knock him unconscious.  It was only then that they were able to turn their attention to the multiple jagged puncture wounds Leo had sustained from shrapnel as well as the broken bone of his arm. 

And Splinter.  Beloved father.  They could not save him.  Donatello was not there.  Hadn’t been for a long time.  His skill and calm demeanor was sorely missed at times like this.  And miss him she did, often.

Her shaking hands could only do so much.  Her limited nursing training that she’d picked up over the years out of desperation and necessity only served to mend the non-life-threatening wounds she and her friends endured with grim faces and the occasional crude jokes to help laugh off the pain of setting bones, stitching wounds and tearing compresses from infected flesh.  Splinter fought death as he had fought Saki, despite the suffering he would not surrender.  He remained, quivering in anguish, wheezing through rattling lungs, straining to pull oxygen into them, erupting into explosive hacking coughing fits that would wrack his entire body as though he were having a seizure.  Eyes rolled white when opened and foaming mouth, no one could reach him.  Most times his eyes remained pinched tightly closed.  He fought on, despite the pain, despite the cause already being lost. 

When Leonardo came to, he would not leave Splinter’s side.  Spooning broth between gritted fangs, holding shuddering limbs tightly to his body when the coughing fits would come, bracing him up in order to ease his breathing as much as possible.  Four days passed and he would not succumb.  And his son would not leave his presence. 

After discussing the reality they were facing, a long night of deliberation over the enemy whereabouts and timing of them being discovered if they remained at this location any longer, a hard decision was made.  They needed to move.  They had to or risk all of their lives.  It was Raphael who took Leonardo by the shoulder and roughly ushered him out of the room and away from Splinter in order to talk to him.  He wrestled him up and out on the roof of the dilapidated building they were using as a temporary shelter during the bombings.  He laid it out for Leonardo as they had discussed.  There was nothing for it.  They had to leave.  They could try to bring Splinter but moving him would most likely be the end of him.  Staying meant discovery and death for all of them.  Leaving meant killing Splinter.

She would never forget the scream of rage and denial that issued from Leonardo.  Sounding as though it tore through the young man’s battered soul.  She felt something break inside her that night.  And as she and Casey rushed to the roof and separated the brothers from each other, covered in blood, snarling and cursing, shouting things that crossed lines that should have never been crossed, she knew something had broken between them as well.  Something that would never mend.  Or if it did, it would not be the bond that once existed.  Like a bone set wrong.  They would heal but never be the same strong solidity that once they were.

The flat gray expanse of sky brightened and lightened with the oncoming sunrise.  The light pierced the black clots of clouds to come out in thin rays, silver and dimmed, but shining through nonetheless.  Her eyes watered.  Her throat was tight.  A golden orb breached the very edge of the tree line.  The reaching rays were brilliant.  Glorious. 

“Is it gold?”

His voice startled her.  To her shame, she jumped.  April glanced up at him, blinking back the tears that now wetted her lashes.

“The sunrise?”

“Yes,” she managed to choke out.  “It’s gold, Leo.”

He closed his unseeing eyes.  “I remember how . . . gold they were.”

At first she didn’t know what he was talking about, assuming he meant other sunrises.  The ones of his past, when he could see, perhaps when he was younger, just a child, peering out of a sewer grate between his brothers, giggling and squirming to be the first to see that golden burst of hope and light. The city becoming a world so bright and burnished.  Skyscrapers reflecting the sunrise and leaving them each blinded by the strength.  By the beauty.  And as each would turn, to see that light illuminated in their father’s amber eyes.  All the golden world without and within.

She glanced out over the lake, where the glistening surface shone with the amber glittering sunrise.  The wind blew against them again and she shivered.

“He opened his eyes for me.”

April’s heart pounded.  Understanding dawned.  In the distance a loon cried its haunting despair and the rippling water sloshed as another breeze brushed over the surface.

“At the end.”  He huffed and dropped his head, tipping it in her direction.  “He knew.  H-He knew what I was about to . . .”  He sighed.  The sound was as deep as the sky was vast.  “I remember.  His eyes were clear.  They were gold.”

Her vision blurred.  Burning her cheeks, the hot tears ran from her eyes, freezing against her flesh as the wind kissed her face.  Something like inertia was tearing through her insides.  She wanted to wrap her arms around him, wanted to drag him into an embrace, hold him and tell him that everything would be okay, not that it ever would be again.  But she knew he would pull away and the last thing she wanted to do after finally finding him, was to chase him away into hiding again.  And she was sure he’d run.  He’d disappear again.  Somewhere that none of them would find.  When he wanted, Leonardo could turn into a ghost.  So she stood shivering and warring with herself. 

Finally, unable to stand by and do nothing, chin quivering, body shaking, she hesitantly reached out with her left hand and brushed his with her fingertips.  She felt him flinch at the contact and she was sure he would bolt.  But instead, his hand turned over and he gripped hers in his.  She squeezed his fingers and fought the sound of her hitching breath as he returned the reassuring press.  A small sob escaped her.

“Don’t cry,” he said softly, not looking at her, raising his chin.  “The sunrise is gold, April.  Look at it.”

She wiped her cheeks furiously with her opposite hand and raised her eyes to see it.  To see it for him.  Across the sky, gray and heavy with dark clouds, a line of geese flew in an uneven pattern, crying out in hoarse, throaty croaks.  Above the line of spindly bare branches and the pointed tops of pine trees the gleaming gold broke through the bleak gun metal sky.  Piercing the darkest clouds.  Shining through.