it's insane to me that donnie donahue doesn't have more hype like okay mr gorgeous brown eyes big ass muscles loving father and husband who shows up and gets his job done well ily. and goddd the "death and chaos" tattoo after pittfest and then the "miracles and blessings" after his daughter was born ohhh crying donnie donahue they cannot handle your empathetic well adjusted soul genuinely one of the most likable people on this show
Thank you for inspiring me to go outside of my comfort zone and actually try to use some color. And if it's too similar to your liking, feel free to let me know cus I'm more than willing to take it down if you're not comfortable!!
I’m losing and gaining followers at a pretty equivalent rate, so I imagine it’s like the Abe Simpson gif whereupon they see all the man-spiders and whistle their way out the same door they entered
2012 Splinter, in the rottmnt’s Hidden City: I have missed being able to walk freely outside. It is a great gift to once again blend into a crowd. To be treated as normal.
Also 2012 Splinter:
(The Head-canon that 2012 Splinter is extremely attractive by Yokai standards will never die as long as I’m around)
Rise Splinter walks next to 2012 Splinter and believes everyone is admiring him instead (and he acts like it). 2012 Splinter knows they’re actually looking at him, but plays along with Rise Splinter’s version. Partly to maintain his sanity, and partly to mess with his sons.
The medic’s name was Dr. Caldwell, and she had the particular quality of stillness that belongs to people who have delivered difficult news so many times it has stopped being difficult and started being simply necessary.
She pulled her chair close to the bed, sat down at your level rather than standing over you, and folded her hands in her lap.
“I’m going to explain your options,” she said. “And I’m going to be direct, because I think that’s what you’d prefer.”
You looked at her. “It is.”
She nodded. “A heat of this severity — three missed cycles, the suppression your wolf has been under — has two viable pathways through it. The first is biological. Mating. Pack support. Physical proximity, scent, contact. Your wolf gets what she’s been asking for and your body completes the process the way it’s designed to.” She paused, not for effect but to give you space to speak if you wanted to.
You didn’t.
“The second option,” she continued, “is medical sedation. A suppressant compound, administered intravenously, strong enough to carry you through the full week. It keeps your wolf suppressed, manages the physical symptoms, prevents your body from tearing itself apart trying to complete a biological process without the support structure it needs.”
Another wave moved through you. You absorbed it the way you’d been absorbing them — jaw tight, hands flat on the mattress, eyes on the ceiling, breathing through it until it passed. Dr. Caldwell waited without comment. That was the thing about her that you were already grateful for. She waited.
When it broke you said: “The second one.”
“I expected that,” she said, without judgement. “But I need you to understand the risk profile before you agree.” She glanced at the monitors, then back at you. “In your current condition — the weight loss, the nutritional deficit, the physical strain of the last six months — sedation for a full week carries real risk. Your body has very little reserve. If something goes wrong while you’re under, your ability to fight back is limited.” She held your gaze. “Before I can put you under I need to be certain you can handle it. That means a full examination. Bloods, vitals, and your arm.”
Your arm.
You looked at the bandaging. The neat, clinical white of it that covered something that had been neither neat nor clinical when you’d done it yourself in the dark of a motel with shaking hands and whatever you’d been able to find in the first aid kit you’d bought in a shitty little corner shop.
“Alright,” you said.
Dr. Caldwell nodded and stood, reaching for her equipment. You sat up.
It took more effort than it should have. Your arms shook slightly with the push of it, your body already running on fumes, the heat and the sedative and the forty minutes in the back of a supply truck all presenting their collective bill at once. But you sat up, and you looked at the four of them arranged around the room, and you said what you needed to say before anything else happened.
“Conditions,” you said.
John straightened almost imperceptibly. He was listening. He was always listening — it was one of the most unnerving things about him, the quality of his attention, the way he gave it completely and without visible effort.
“Dr. Caldwell stays in the room,” you said. “The whole time. No exceptions.”
“Of course,” the medic said.
“No one touches me without asking first.” You looked at each of them as you said it. Simon, whose jaw was set but who held your gaze without flinching. Kyle, who nodded once, steady. Johnny, who nodded immediately, almost before you’d finished the sentence. John, who simply said:
“Agreed.”
“When it’s done,” you continued, “someone keeps watch. Outside. Not in here unless Dr. Caldwell calls them.” You paused. “I don’t want to wake up with four alphas standing over me.”
A muscle moved in Simon’s jaw. Kyle looked at the floor briefly. Johnny’s mouth pressed into a line that wasn’t quite agreement and wasn’t quite protest.
John said: “Agreed.”
You looked at him for a moment. Looked for the calculation in it, the manoeuvre, the long game playing out behind those steady eyes. If it was there, you couldn’t find it. You’d never been able to find it with John, which was either evidence that he was exactly what he appeared to be or evidence that he was better at it than anyone you’d ever met.
You lay back down.
“Alright, Dr. Caldwell,” you said. “Let’s get this done.”
She worked efficiently and without unnecessary commentary, which you appreciated more than you could have articulated. Blood pressure cuff, the familiar tightening and release. The cold disc of the stethoscope. The pulse oximeter clipped to your finger, its small red light blinking steadily in the low light of the room.
She noted numbers into her tablet without sharing them, which told you the numbers were neither alarming enough to require immediate reaction nor good enough to offer reassurance.
Borderline.
You’d known you were borderline. You’d known it for a while and had made the calculation — the same calculation you’d been making since the beginning — that borderline was liveable and living was the point.
The heat moved through you in waves every few minutes. Regular now, like a tide finding its rhythm, and the sedative Simon had given you in the treeline was wearing thin, the edges of each wave a little sharper than the last. You breathed through them. You did not make sounds. You kept your eyes on the ceiling and waited for each one to pass and then returned your attention to the room.
John had uncrossed his arms.
You noticed that. He was standing by the door with his hands loose at his sides, and you thought about what that meant — whether he’d done it consciously or whether it was something he’d absorbed from the conversation you’d had three days ago without making a production of it — and then you stopped thinking about it because that line of thought went somewhere you weren’t ready to go.
Kyle was watching the monitors with the focused attention of a man who needed something to do and had found it. His eyes moved between the readouts and you in a regular pattern, checking and checking again, and every time a wave moved through you his gaze went to your face and stayed there until it passed.
Johnny was against the wall. He’d moved fully into the room at some point — you’d registered it peripherally, the shift from half-in to present. He was standing with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on you with an expression he clearly had no idea he was wearing. Open in the way that Johnny was always open, emotions running close to the surface and visible to anyone paying attention, but underneath the openness was something older and more complicated that he was working very hard to hold quietly.
Simon hadn’t moved from beside you.
Dr. Caldwell hadn’t asked him to.
You hadn’t either, and you were aware of that — aware that you could have, aware that it would have been consistent with everything you’d said and done since the treeline, aware that the reason you hadn’t was something you were filing away in the same place you filed the jacket and the hand over yours and the forty-three minutes in the back of a supply truck when you’d almost believed you were going to make it.
The medic reached your arm last.
She unwrapped the bandaging carefully, set it aside, and examined the scar with the focused, neutral attention of someone who had seen a great deal of field injuries and was now unfazed by the sight of them.
She ran two fingers along the length of it, gentle, precise. You felt her pause at a specific point — midway along, where the scar tissue was thicker, where the stitching had pulled unevenly because your hands hadn’t been steady enough and the light had been bad and you’d been working by feel more than sight.
“Who did this?” she asked.
“I did,” you said.
The room changed.
The quality of the silence shifted in a way you felt in your chest — something tighter, something that had weight to it. The specific texture of people absorbing information they’d suspected and are now having confirmed. You didn’t look at any of them. You kept your eyes on the ceiling and let the silence be what it was.
Dr. Caldwell’s expression didn’t change. “The stitching held reasonably well,” she said, which you understood was the most generous true thing she could say about it. “But there’s something in the scar tissue.” She pressed gently at the point where she’d paused. “Can you feel that?”
“Yes,” you said. You’d always been able to feel it. A small resistance, something that didn’t belong, that you’d told yourself was just the way scar tissue formed sometimes and had declined to examine too closely because examining it would have meant admitting it needed attention and admitting it needed attention would have meant finding someone to give it.
“It needs to come out before we sedate you,” she said. “If there’s debris in there and you’re under for a week, we risk infection, inflammation, complications we don’t want.” She held your gaze. “I need to open it, clean it properly, and remove whatever’s in there. It’s minor. But it needs to happen.”
“Fine,” you said.
She held your gaze. “It will be uncomfortable. Do you want someone to stay close?”
You looked at the ceiling.
The automatic answer was no. The automatic answer was always no — you don’t need anyone, you’ve managed worse, you stitched the thing yourself in the dark with shaking hands and bad light and you can certainly lie still while a qualified medic does it properly.
But you were so tired.
And the heat was still moving through you in waves.
And the automatic answer felt very far away right now.
You didn’t say anything.
You didn’t have to.
You looked at Simon and instantly he moved to your other side — not the side Dr. Caldwell was working on, not crowding her, just the other side — and sat down and put his hand on the bed near yours. Not taking it. Not gripping. Just putting it there, available, the same way he’d put everything forward tonight. Quietly. Without demanding receipt.
You looked at his hand for a moment.
Then you turned your face toward the ceiling and put your hand in his.
He didn’t say anything.
Dr. Caldwell began to work.
She was precise and efficient and explained each step before she did it, which you were grateful for in the way you were grateful for everything she did — the directness of it, the respect of it, the treating you like someone who deserved to know what was happening to her own body. The antiseptic was cold. The work was uncomfortable in the specific way of something being done carefully to an area that had been left too long, scar tissue that had formed around something that shouldn’t have been there.
Simon’s thumb moved once against the back of your hand.
Small. Slow. You didn’t think he knew he was doing it.
You didn’t say anything about it.
Dr. Caldwell found it twelve minutes in — a small piece of gravel, she confirmed, worked deep into the tissue, probably from whatever surface you’d hit when the wound happened. She removed it with the clean efficiency of someone who did this well.
You felt the release of it, small and physical, something your body had been quietly compensating for so long it had stopped registering the compensation.
“Done,” she said.
Simon’s hand was still under yours.
You became aware of this at the same moment you became aware that you’d been holding it rather than the other way around — your fingers closed around his, at some point during the last twelve minutes without your noticing, and you were holding on with the specific grip of someone who needed something to hold and had reached for what was nearest.
You didn’t let go immediately.
Dr. Caldwell began bandaging your arm, brisk and neat, and you stared at the ceiling and registered the warmth of Simon’s hand under yours and put it on the shelf with everything else.
She reviewed her tablet. She looked at the monitors. She said the things you’d been waiting for her to say, the things that mattered.
“It’s borderline,” she said. “Your body has been under significant sustained stress and I want that clearly documented. But the sedation is viable. We can do this safely if we’re careful.” She looked at you directly. “Do you consent to the procedure?”
“I do.”
You thought about the cottage. The fire, the map, the moment your wolf had surfaced and said here and you had whispered okay into the empty room like a promise you weren’t sure you were making to her or to yourself.
You thought about the treeline. The two hundred and fortieth step. Your fingers in the soil and the wave that had taken language away and left only the raw animal fact of how much it hurt.
You thought about John’s hand over yours, shaking, not hidden.
You thought about Simon’s hands on yours just now, unhurried, careful, asking for something without words because some things don’t have them.
You looked at the IV line Dr. Caldwell was preparing.
Then you looked at the four of them — John by the door, Kyle at the foot of the bed, Johnny against the wall, Simon still beside you — and you said it the way you always said things. Clearly. Without softening it. Because clarity was the only currency you had left and you were not going to spend it on something that wasn’t true.
“I’m still not yours.”
The room held its breath.
Simon’s hand moved. It squeezed yours.
John looked at you.
“We know,” he said.
Dr. Caldwell adjusted the IV line. You felt the cold thread of it move up your arm, and your wolf made one last sound — not surrender, not submission, not the desperate broadcast of the treeline — something quieter than all of those.
The ceiling blurred.
The room softened at its edges.
Simon’s fingers were still against yours, and the last thing you were aware of before the sedative took you was the warmth of them — just that, just warmth — and the sound of John’s voice saying something to the others that you couldn’t quite hold onto as the dark came up to meet you.
The monitors beeped steadily in the quiet.
Dr. Caldwell made her final notes with the focused efficiency of someone who had done this many times and understood that the people in the room needed her to finish and leave. She gave them the schedule — vitals twice daily, check-ins every four hours, her number on the board, call for anything — and gathered her equipment and went without ceremony.
The door closed behind her.
None of them moved for a while.
You were asleep in a way you hadn’t been in six months — fully under, the guard finally down, the exhaustion of everything you’d been carrying visible now in the lines of your face in a way you’d never have allowed if you were conscious. Thinner than you should be. The bandaging white against your arm. The monitors tracking the slow, steady rhythm of a body that had been pushed a very long way and was finally, under chemical compulsion, resting.
Johnny spoke first. His voice was quiet, like raising it would disturb something.
“She got forty minutes,” he said.
“Forty-three,” Kyle said. “I checked the gate log.”
Johnny looked at him. Something moved between them — not quite humour, not quite grief, something that sat in the space between the two of them the way a lot of things sat in the space between soldiers who had been through things together.
“Forty-three,” Johnny said.
Simon hadn’t moved. He was still sitting beside you, and his hand was resting in yours on the bed. He was looking at your hand. Not at your face, not at the monitors — at your hand, the one that had gripped his jacket in the treeline the same way it had gripped John’s.
Kyle was watching the monitors. His jaw was set in the particular way that meant he was thinking about something he hadn’t decided how to say yet.
“Her bloods came back before Caldwell left,” he said, to the room rather than to anyone specifically. “I looked at them.”
John looked at him.
“She’s more depleted than the physical exam shows,” Kyle said. “The numbers don’t lie the way bodies do.” He was quiet for a moment. “She was running out of time. Another few weeks and she wouldn’t have been able to run anymore. Not physically.”
The room absorbed that.
“She knew,” John said.
Kyle nodded. “Yeah. I think she knew.”
Johnny pressed the back of his hand against his mouth briefly, a gesture that came and went fast, contained. “She still ran,” he said.
“She still ran,” John nodded. There was nothing in his voice that wasn’t understanding.
Simon said, without looking up from your hand: “She stitched her own arm. In the dark. Alone.”
Nobody answered.
Nobody needed to.
The words sat in the room and did what true things do — took up space, changed the quality of the air, made it impossible to be exactly what you’d been before they were said. John looked at the bandaging on your arm and thought about a shitty motel and a woman with shaking hands and bad light and the specific kind of determination that does what needs doing regardless of the cost.
He’d known, abstractly, that the months had been hard. You didn’t run the way you’d run — the planning, the precision, the three months leaving no trace — without being built for it in some fundamental way. But there was a difference between knowing something abstractly and standing in a room looking at the evidence of it.
“When she wakes up,” Johnny said quietly, “she’s going to try again.”
“Yes,” John said.
“So what do we do?”
John was quiet for a long moment. He looked at you — at the slow rise and fall of your breathing, at the way sleep had softened the lines around your mouth, at Simon’s hand and yours.
“She told me to ask,” he said. “Not to plan. Not to manoeuvre. To ask.” He looked at each of them in turn. “So that’s what we do. All of us. We stop anticipating and we start asking. Every time.”
Simon’s jaw worked. “And if she still says no?”
John looked at him for a moment. “I have a feeling she won’t.”
Kyle looked at the floor. Johnny looked at you. Simon looked at his hand in yours.
Outside the base continued its mechanical hum, indifferent and steady, the sound of a building that didn’t know or care what was happening in this particular room. Somewhere down the corridor a door opened and closed. The ventilation breathed its recycled air.
Johnny pulled a chair from the wall and sat down.
Kyle stayed at the foot of the bed.
John remained by the door.
And Simon sat beside you with your hand under his and his eyes on your face and didn’t move.
None of them spoke again for a long time. The monitors beeped, and you slept, and outside the window, the sky was beginning the slow grey process of becoming morning.
“Why don’t you use ai” idk man beyond the obvious environmental and “this machine causes psychosis and encourages people to kill themselves” thing I think asking the equivalent of a solid D student who is also a pathological liar if they can answer my question/do the work for me seems pretty fucking stupid
