bigassmagnet replied to your photo: WIP meme snagged from @bigassmagnet!
Ship of Theseus!
TMNT 2012, post “The Power Inside Her” psychological horror. Is the Donnie that April assembles out of scattered atoms the same Donnie that she disintegrated? Donnie can’t remember everything that happened or where they keep the coffee filters. Leo knows more than he’s willing to tell.
***
For half a moment that stretches for an eternity, Donatello knows the agony of life without skin. Or muscles. Or bones. Or eyes or nerves or t h o u g h t s o r s e l f o r
--
Hard-wet beneath, empty-wet above, inside and outside cold, cold, cold. Before he can entirely make sense of his newly formed boundaries, air rushes into him, then out again, pushing back the wide, wide black.
He discovers his limbs in quick succession, instinct pulling them towards the strange, steady thumping at his core. They won’t bend correctly, won’t tuck inside. He’s in danger. Exposed.
Mass resolves itself into the sensation of weight. He pushes down, forelimbs trembling at the exertion. His stronger hindlimbs lift him the rest of the way vertical. He stumbles, blinking as the world abruptly shifts from two dimensions to three.
“Donnie!”
The stink of ozone floods his nostrils as a soft body crashes into him, smaller and thinner than his own with limbs that wrap around him like iron, red-hot from the forge.
April.
He remembers.
(Everything? Some things only? What all did he—)
His tongue feels heavy in his mouth. He’s uncomfortably aware of his teeth, the sour slick of his saliva. He pulls her closer with numb hands.
April looks up at him, face pale and shiny in the rain, hair clumped together in lanky tendrils. The street is too dark for him to see her eyes, and for some reason this surprises him. “Thank god, I thought… I th-thought…”
She slips from his fingers, boneless.
Strangely, he doesn’t try to catch her.
