how to get very good at juggling

🌻 chapter 4 🌻

Leo is burdened with terrible knowledge, Mr. and Mrs. O'Neil deal with teenage rebellion with varying levels of success, and April goes grocery shopping.

April considered sleeping over at the Hamatos, and a not insignificant portion of her reasoning was simple spite, due to how much her mother was asking her to come home. She was literally at the Hamatos every single Wednesday, she wasn't about to change her weekly plans because her mother was having a crisis over April's every day normal. The dinner that Mikey and Casey had prepared (a mushroom polenta made with dashi) was eaten and the dishes were cleaned up, a handwritten grocery list had been stuffed into her backpack, and April was running out of excuses to not leave. 

Raph and Mikey had talked things out before dinner, and it seemed to have gone well since they had pretty much immediately gone into the living room to play Mario Kart. Donnie was still stuck on the pyrotechnics, unfortunately, and had recruited Casey for the tedious work of getting all the sparklers and rockets hooked up to the timer system. Casey had quickly become Donnie's favorite lab assistant, much to everyone else's relief, since he'd spent most of his life playing lab assistant to his Master Donatello. Evidently not even twenty years in an apocalypse could get rid of Donnie's frankly insane wire management system. It didn't take long before it was just April, Splinter, and Leo left in the kitchen. 

Splinter was humming a vaguely familiar tune as he moved around the kitchen, filling the kettle they'd gotten him to replace the dark armor helmet with water and setting it on the stove. "Make me some tea too?" Leo asked, giving his dad big puppy dog eyes that were extremely unnecessary. 

"Of course, Blue. Do you want some too, April?" Splinter said, turning to look at the two of them. 

"Nah, I'm alright," April said, stretching her arms out with a yawn and leaning forward across the table. 

"Are you going to stay over tonight?" Splinter asked, rummaging around in their cabinets for his and Leo's favorite mugs. 

April sighed, resting her chin on the tabletop. "No, I'm gonna go home. I told my mom I would," she grumbled. Leo was giving her a sympathetic look, so she closed her eyes rather than deal with that. 

"She misses you. Perhaps the working from home has made her realize how much she has missed," Splinter said, trying to be comforting. It might've worked, if April didn't feel her phone vibrating again. April understood that she probably wasn't complaining to the audience that would be most sympathetic to her plight, but in this case she was pretty sure that Splinter's parental instinct was balanced out by his longtime assessment of April as his most competent child. "What kind of tea?" he asked, directing his voice at Leo. 

"Do we have that blueberry lemon one still?" Leo asked. Splinter hummed in confirmation, and the kitchen lapsed into a comfortable silence again. It was nice to be like this, sitting in the kitchen with Splinter and Leo, waiting for water to boil. For ten whole minutes, this was something she thought she'd never get to have again. This was something Commander O'Neil may have never got to have again.

April felt herself getting emotional, and for a second thought about taking Splinter up on his offer of tea just to have something to keep her mind occupied. But then her phone started buzzing over and over again and she pulled it out, seeing her mother's contact light up the screen. She groaned, dropping her phone on the table and letting it continue to vibrate, buzzing even louder against the wooden surface. "Why is she like this?" she whined. That wasn't entirely fair to her mother, who scientifically had no way of knowing April's current emotional state and how it would be affected by a poorly timed phone call, but April wasn't feeling very fair at the moment.

"Yikes," Leo whistled, eyes flicking up to April's face before back down to watch the screen. 

Before April could react, Splinter swiped her phone off the table with his tail. He answered the call, still using his tail to hold the phone up to his ear. "Ah, Mrs. O'Neil!"

April couldn't hear the other end of the conversation, instead just watching Splinter nod along. Even knowing that Splinter had once been Lou Jitsu, it was hard to tell a lot of the time. The completely vapid expression that slid naturally onto Splinter's face as he nodded along to her mother, however, was one that April had seen a thousand times before on the silver screen. "Oh, I completely understand. No need to worry! April left her phone on the table, she is helping Leonardo pick up his room. Such a good girl! So helpful, I truly don't know what my boys would do without her," he said cheerfully. April and Leo, who were not doing anything close to cleaning Leo's room, both stared at him, jaws hanging slightly agape. Splinter's eyes focused in on them, and he made a shooing gesture. 

"My tea," Leo whined in a whisper, and Splinter rolled his eyes, pouring the hot water into Leo's mug and setting it on the table in front of April. April got to her feet, grabbing Leo's crutches from where they were propped up against the wall and handing them over. As Leo got to his feet, she started gathering up their things, preparing to take them to Leo's room or wherever he felt like going. 

"Oh, Blue is doing very well, thank you for asking! He is milking his broken bones for all they are worth, that's how we know he is feeling better," Splinter said into the phone as the two teens shuffled out of the kitchen and into the living room. April and Leo stood there for a second, listening to the Lakitu's blaring warning coming from the TV as Raph and Mikey tried to run the lap in reverse. 

"Ye-eah, my room," Leo mumbled, turning towards the hallway containing his bedroom and starting to shuffle his way there. April trailed behind him.

Donnie had welded a sheet of metal over the giant hole in the side of the train car that made up Leo's room. April knew Mikey was making plans to paint a big mural on it for Leo, but he was waiting until his hands stopped shaking so much and he could actually hold a can of spray paint or a brush before he put paint to metal. April moved ahead of Leo, sliding open the door to the refurbished subway car with her foot before moving off to the side to put Leo's belongings on his desk. 

The slider hobbled in behind her, face screwed up in concentration as he struggled to lower himself down onto the bed without just falling over. He must have seen April move to help him, though, because he sent her a sharp look. "Leon's got it," he huffed, swinging his full-casted leg up onto the mattress. 

"If you say so," April conceded, sitting down in his desk chair, still holding the mug of blueberry tea in her hands. She glanced back toward the kitchen, but she couldn't hear Splinter's half of the conversation over the muffled Mario Kart soundtrack. When she finally looked back at Leo, he had managed to get fully onto the bed, propped up by a multitude of pillows and plushies, mostly supplied by Raph. 

They made eye contact and Leo reached out toward her, making grabby hands. "Can I get my tea?" he asked. April dug her heels into the ground, pushing the wheels of the chair across the vinyl floor until she was next to the bed, handing the mug to Leo. His right arm and leg had both been pretty shattered, but his left arm had only one pretty clean break. Combined with their super-soldier genetics, it was probably only still in a brace to make everyone who wasn't Leo less anxious. 

After one whole month, the bruising was mostly cleared up, and he had some color back in his face, but the muscle atrophy…it was going to take a little bit of time once Leo was fully healthy to get him back up to his normal weight. He looked loads better than he had in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, wrapped up head to toe and on oxygen. He looked loads better than he had a week after the invasion, cleared to go home but still covered in bandages and fiberglass, skin mottled with purple and yellow bruising. 

April's train of thought must've shown on her face, because the tired look on Leo's face was replaced with a small smile. "Don't look at me like that," he scolded, more good-natured than anything. "If you keep looking at me like that, I might start thinking I can get away with shit."

"Language," April chided just to spite him, earning an eye roll for her troubles. She waited until Leo was taking a sip of his tea before saying, "Did you know my mom had a crush on Lou Jitsu?"

Leo spewed tea all over his sweatpants, managing to set the mug down on his nightstand as he hacked up a lung. "August!" he cried out, good hand to his heart, before using it to point accusingly at April. "You're fucking kidding me. Where's Donnie, I know he's recording this."

"Dude, I wish," April agreed. "I told her he's Lou Jitsu and she blushed. Worst experience of my life hands down. Every time Barry kidnapped me? Absolute cakewalk compared to the utter horror of my mom blushing about your dad."

"Apes, I love you dearly, so very much. Why could you not have waited until after Friday to tell me this?" Leo whined, throwing his head back. "I'm gonna have to look August in the eyes and be like 'Hi Mrs. O'Neil! I already know more about you than I ever wanted to know!'"

"Someone has to suffer with me," April said with a shrug. 

"Oh my god, we left him alone talking to your mom. This is the worst, I can't believe we have to add your mother to the People Not To Leave Splinter Alone With list. Fu-uck," Leo kept going, absolutely hamming it up to get some laughs out of April. "August O'Neil, on par with the likes of Baron Draxum and Big Mama."

"Yeah, you can say that to her face," April snorted. 

"And get sent back to the hospital? No thanks," Leo said, shaking his head. 

Splinter's voice came booming from down the hall, interrupting their banter. "April!" he shouted, dragging out her name. 

"What?!" April shouted back, even though it was pretty obvious what he wanted. 

"Your mother is on the phone!" came the response. 

"Will you two knock it off?!" Mikey screeched from the living room, evidently caught in the middle of the shouting match. 

April paused, sticking her head out of Leo's door and facing toward the living room and kitchen before shouting at the top of her lungs: "Be there in a sec!" She glanced back at Leo to see if he needed anything, but he met her eyes with a grin and a thumbs up. 

"Text us when you get home," he said. 

"Will do, boss man," she responded with a sloppy salute, watching the way his face screwed up in disgust, before slipping out the bedroom door and running down the hallway in her socked feet. 

Splinter was waiting for her in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, phone still held up to his ear though his eyes kept getting drawn over to the race on TV. "Ah, here she is now. We'll see you on Friday, August." August? They were on a first name basis already? He handed the phone off to April with his tail, and the teen scrambled to hold it up to her ear. 

"Hi, Momma," she said, trying to erase the trepidation from her voice. 

"Hi, honey, are you about ready to head home? It's starting to get dark," her mother said, like it was a reasonable sentiment to express to someone who had fought against both the supernatural and the alien and came out on top. 

"Yeah, I'm getting around now," she answered reluctantly, though a pretty large part wanted to argue for her own competence. Splinter gave her a soft look, placing a hand on her arm and giving her a pat. "I'll talk to you when I get home, okay? Love you." 

Her mom got out a "love you, too" in response, definitely sounding like she intended on saying more, but April hung up the phone anyway, unable to stop the sour look on her face. "She's only worried about your safety," Splinter told her, his voice just barely sounding over the Mario Kart soundtrack. He moved his hand down over hers, giving it a small squeeze. 

"Garbage time for her to start," April muttered, squeezing Splinter's hand back anyway. She refused to look at his face, knowing she wouldn't like the expression she found. 

April turned towards where Mikey and Raph were sitting on the couch, raising her voice a bit for them to hear. "Alright boys, I'm heading home," she said, leaning over the back of the couch to kiss the tops of their heads. 

"G'night!" Raph hummed.

"Get home safe," Mikey followed up. Both of them leaned into her touch, though their eyes didn't leave the screen. 

"Tell Don and Case I said good night," April told Splinter as she slipped her shoes on, tugging her backpack up onto her shoulders, before heading out into the access tunnels. 

She stayed in the access tunnels for most of her trek home. This lair was closer to her apartment than the previous one had been, but she couldn't help but miss the winding paths she'd had to take through the sewers to get back and forth. It had quickly become second nature, and even if she hadn't walked it in seven or eight months, she was still pretty sure she'd be able to walk it with her eyes closed. This path was not nearly as familiar. 

It barely took ten minutes before she slipped through the old metal door that led into the station by her house. From there she headed above ground, shivering a bit in the brisk spring air. 

Her mom was sitting on the couch when she finally walked in through the door, the news on and the volume turned down to a faint hum. "Oh, there you are," her mother said as she slid her shoes off. "I was getting worried."

April stiffened, curling her hand around her backpack strap. "You really didn't need to," she responded. "I'm always at the Hamatos' on Wednesdays." Maybe her annoyed tone was more apparent than she thought, since her mother just shifted uncomfortably. "I'm going there after class tomorrow, too. Mikey needs help with the groceries and he wants to get a head start on the cooking," she said.

Maybe the way she had phrased it made April's mother seem like it was up for negotiation. "Your father wanted to get Thai food for dinner tomorrow," she said, and April just squeezed her backpack straps tighter. 

"Well, you guys enjoy your Thai food," she snapped. 

"April," her mother said in a warning tone, shifting on the couch. 

The news program on the television was playing footage from the day of the invasion. Donnie had done a good job of cleaning up the digital media of all of them, replacing them with blurs where they couldn't be edited out entirely. But April could still clearly see herself in the footage, fighting alongside Casey and Splinter, even if it wasn't recognizable to anyone else. "Mom," April shot back, using the same warning tone. "You don't get to pull this, not about things I've been doing for the past 10 years. Not about the Hamatos."

"I'm not pulling anything!" her mom responded, exasperated. 

"Then what do you call this?” April asked, gesturing around her. "The need to know where I am all the time? The need for me to be home all of a sudden? You're picking now of all times to helicopter parent me? I got through an alien invasion, I don't think–"

Her mom got to her feet, clenching her fists. "There was an alien invasion, and I didn't know where you were!" she shouted, and April unwillingly took a step back. "I thought I was going to die, and I didn't know where my baby was!"

They both stood there, April's mom glaring at her. April felt her backpack pressing against the closed front door. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, at a loss for what to say. This was untrodden ground for April. Would Commander O'Neil have known what to say, what to do? How to deescalate the situation? There was no way to know, but April didn't think there was any universe where she could be so blatantly faced with her mother's fear and mortality and do something about it.

April's mom broke first, collapsing back down on the couch and holding her head in her hand. "Go to your room," she told April, gesturing toward the hall with her other hand. Her voice was low, soft but still warning. Just hard enough to remind April of what was at stake.

"Mom, I–"

"Go to your room!" her mother repeated, her voice filled with much more emotion and volume than April could deal with. She scrambled down the hall, turning into her bedroom and slamming the door behind her with an urgency and fear she hadn't felt in a month. April fled like a coward. Commander O'Neil would've been ashamed.

April heard her dad get home an hour or so later. He came home late more often than not, so his absence from their earlier spat hadn't really been felt at the time, but April had been dreading the fallout to come ever since she realized he would surely hear about what happened, and would not hear about it in a light that favored April. Still, it wasn't until closer to 10pm when her father tapped against her bedroom door, calling her name quietly. 

Pretending to be asleep was an option that was on the table, but April has spent the past hour stewing in her cowardice, so she got out of bed, turned the bedroom lights on, and cracked open the door. "Hey, sport, can I come in?" he asked, eyes glancing into the room behind her. 

"...Are you gonna yell at me?" April asked, holding on tightly to the edge of the door. 

Her dad's expression shifted into something a bit sadder. "No, I'm not going to," he answered. April let go of the door, taking a step backward before moving to go sit on the edge of her bed. Her dad shut the door behind him, pulling her desk chair out until it was a few feet away from April and sitting down. 

He folded his hands in his lap, wringing them for a moment as he seemed to try to gather his words. "...I know neither me nor your mother have ever been exactly…super present," he started, scrunching his nose to push his glasses further up his face. "And you've always handled that very well. You've always been very mature and responsible…self-sufficient. We're very proud of you for that."

April knew this. Say what you would about her parents, but they had always been very vocally proud of her, both to her face and behind her back. "And you know this, but…the invasion was very scary. Your mother didn't know where you were, you hadn't come home the night before, and she had just assumed you were with Sunita. And when the news hit Chicago, and I couldn't get in contact with either of you…" Her father took a shaky breath, his eyes darting away from April and focusing in on the far corner of the room. "I know all three of us were scared. Your mother and I both assumed– which was wrong of us– but we assumed that you also wanted to…regroup a little bit. Just keep everyone close to home. But we should've talked to you about it. It's a bit late, but I'm still going to ask you: what do you want from us here?"

That was the question of the month, wasn't it? What did April want? She was happy to have her parents closer. It was weird and different, sure, but it was nice, and there wasn't any denying that. But she didn't want having her parents more present to mean that she lost her independence or her ability to just hang out with the Hamatos. At the end of the day, they were just as much her family as her parents were, and she wanted all of her family to be more present. She didn't want to have to trade one half for the other. 

"We thought Leo was dead," April blurted out, her mouth moving faster than her mind. She wasn't really sure what motivated her to bring it up. It hadn't been what her dad was asking about. "The boys were all together, and I was with Splinter, but Donnie has this um, walkie talkie set up we were all using. Leo did something so, so, so stupid to save all of us, and I heard him do it, and then his connection went down. We all…we thought he was dead for ten minutes. He should be dead. Leo made Casey pull the key thinking it was gonna kill him, and the only reason he's alive is because Mikey pulled a goddamn miracle." She had to stop looking at her dad's face, instead grabbing the stuffed turtle Raph had gotten her for Christmas when they were twelve and holding it to her chest. Those ten minutes were going to live in her brain forever. 

"They're not just my best friends, Dad, they're like…they're my brothers. They've been calling me their sister for years. A-And Splints, I mean, he wasn't exactly super present for them either, when we were younger, but these past couple years he's really been trying, a-and–" April's voice cracked, and she squeezed the stuffed turtle tighter. Raph had thought it was so funny when he'd given it to her. They'd named it Caravaggio. "He hangs my tests on the fridge. He shows up at my job just to bug me sometimes. He knows what my favorite kind of ice cream is, and he's been teaching me how to use a tekkan. You're my dad, but he's m-my, I don't know, weird rat dad uncle. And I was sitting there with him, and Leo was dead, and I– and I thought–" 

She gulped down air, struggling to finish the sentence. "I thought, 'Leo's never going to meet my parents.' They shared everything with me, and I was too scared to do the same. What if Leo thought I didn't love him enough to share? What if he had died thinking I didn't love him?" 

A pained noise slipped out from her mouth, following the words she'd never wanted to hear out loud, and she buried her face into Caravaggio's plush shell. It was out in the air now. She couldn't take it back, couldn't undo what had already been done.

Her dad didn't move for a second. She couldn't see his face, on account of having her own smothered in polyester fur, but she could only imagine it looked incredibly devastated when he breathed out, "Shit."

There was another beat, and her dad was on the bed next to her, scooping her up into his arms. Something inside April broke, and she went from simply being upset to full on panicking. "You can't take them away from me, you can't," April begged, wrapping her arms around her dad and twisting her fingers into the soft fabric of his t-shirt as she sobbed, Caravaggio pressed between the two of them.

"We're not going to, baby, I promise, okay?" he murmured. "They're your brothers, we're not gonna take them away from you."

April felt a muted wail claw its way out of her throat. She wanted so badly to believe her father. That was all she'd ever wanted to hear her parents say, ever since she'd realized that the turtles were irreplaceable as friends. At her very core, though, she knew he was lying. Her parents would see the turtles as dangerous, and they would force her to make a choice. They didn't understand just how deeply April was a weirdo magnet, they didn't know that Sunita wasn't actually human, they didn't know that Cass had been in a supernatural doomsday cult since she was seven. Her parents would try to make April something she wasn't, and she would have to destroy herself or leave them behind. The former wasn't even really an option, considering how hard she'd tried to be normal. 

Why couldn't everything just be the way it had been again? It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. Everyone was still here, Leo hadn't died. She still had all the components of what her life had been before. Her parents didn't have to hover over her, they didn't have to be home so much more often, they didn't have to meet the Hamatos. She just wanted everything to go back to the way it had been before. April wanted to go back to the way she had been before. 

That just wasn't how it worked though, was it? Their scars were all going to stick around, physical and mental. Leo's shell was going to ache when it rained, Raph would never be able to see clearly out of his right eye again. They would always have this knowledge of what was waiting for them in the prison dimension, biding its time. None of them would ever be the same. The world would never be the same. 

April could never be the same.

Her classes the next day were absolute drags. It wasn't any fault of theirs, April actually normally thought they were quite interesting even though they were gen ed requirements. Her brain just couldn't focus, and her thoughts were all clouded and foggy. Her first class had been her public speaking course, and normally she just got up in front of the class with a loose outline in her head, but this time she could feel her words slurring, the sounds too large and gooey in her mouth. The professor ended up cutting her off halfway through, a concerned look in his eyes. When he asked if she was sick, she just decided to roll with it rather than tell him she'd been up half the night sobbing, and he let her postpone her speech until the following week. 

She was a bit more held together through her second class, a biological anthropology course, but most of her attention span ended up going to chewing on the straw of her water bottle and scratching hatch marks in the margins of her notepad while she stared at the projector screen. All-in-all an absolute wash of a day.

There was a small grocery store on her way to the lair from campus. She grabbed a small cart as she headed inside, dumping her backpack in the child seat and rooting around for the list that Mikey had shoved in there the night before. It had been folded neatly, but was now crumpled from April shuffling around her notepads and textbooks during the day. She fished it out, unfolding it and scanning Casey's careful and deliberate handwriting as she leaned against her cart, parked in the produce aisle. 

The list was a bit long, but April was sure she could get someone to meet her at the service tunnel entrance and help her carry the bags the rest of the way. She was pretty sure Casey and Mikey were braving Canal Street this afternoon to get pork belly, plus some of the other ingredients, so Casey probably wouldn't be able to meet her at the grocery store itself, even if he was willing to go above ground alone. He'd freaked out when she first tried to go home once the dust had settled, not sure why she was trying to strike out on her own when it wasn't an emergency. He took a little solace from Donnie's tracking chips, but said they collected a lot less data than Master Donatello's had. When Donnie had asked if he could take a look at his future counterpart's work, Casey had been pretty adamant about not having it removed. 

April got that, kinda. Their ninpo was the easiest thing to point at that bound them all together. In a world where they had lost access to their ninpo, though, Donnie and his pervasive branding was one of the few remaining things they all had in common. She'd be hard pressed to part ways with her Genius Built™ cell phone or watch. Maybe she'd be a bit less clingy about the tracking chip, but well, she hadn't grown up in an apocalyptic future and then gotten thrown back two decades, give or take a few years. 

Bit by bit, she filled up her cart, checking the items off the list with a stray highlighter floating around her backpack. All-purpose flour, a few yeast packets, a big jar of honey. Casey's handwriting was precise, maybe a little clumsy, but every letter was written with intention. Being honest, it was a welcome change from the near illegible scribbles that Mikey called his grocery lists. Canned mushroom soup, fried onions, bread crumbs. April was probably the best at interpreting his ungodly spin on cursive, sans Mikey himself of course. Casey's steady block print was a breath of fresh air. Maybe she could get him to keep doing the grocery lists even after Mikey's hands were better. Heavy cream, milk, eggs. Cheddar cheese, garlic, green beans. 

Casey probably wouldn't be able to transcribe things for Mikey anymore if he moved in with April and her parents. She didn't know why that thought made her sad. 

She dropped the frozen strawberries in her cart, checking her text messages one last time to see if there were any requests before she left the store. Her messages were empty, though, so she went over to the only open check-out lane, and loaded her haul onto the belt, paying with cash.

Raph ended up meeting her at the service tunnel door once she actually got below ground, easily hefting up the grocery bags that April had struggled to drag the few blocks from the grocery store and down the narrow station steps. "Are you good to help Mikey with the cooking today?" he asked as April rubbed at the red welts that the fabric grocery bags had left in her palms and up her forearms. 

"Hm? Yeah, of course. You know I wouldn't flake out on him like that," April answered, still a bit distracted as she wiggled her fingers to get the blood circulating again. 

"No, I mean like, are you feeling alright?" Raph clarified, shifting the grocery bags onto his far arm from April. "No offense, you uh, kinda look like garbage."

"Full offense," April grumbled, more on instinct than anything. 

Raph offered his now-free arm to her and she took it, letting him boost her up onto his shoulder. Once she was up there, he redistributed the grocery bags back between his arms. "Nah, I just…it was a rough night. We're all having 'em," April admitted, still trying to skirt around the topic. 

Thankfully, this seemed to be enough for Raph. He nodded, leaning his head against her side. "Yeah, we're all having 'em," he agreed. 

A companionable silence filled the tunnels as they continued back to the lair. The only sounds were that of Raph's footsteps and the low hum of the dim fluorescent lights. April tangled her fingers around the tails of Raph's mask, letting her back sag and her eyes drift shut.