The Ahh-ness of Things (or The Sentinel of Mono No Aware)

The Silent Treatment

 The big metal sliding doors of Donnie's workshop were cracked open enough for a person to walk through, and as I stepped inside, I saw him from the corner of my eye. His back to me, working on something at his big machining table.

"Thank you for the towels." I called over to him politely and as half expected; he didn't answer. The whole of the bay was a mess! There was music on somewhere, at least there was that. I realized he wasn't working on anything at all, he was shuffling books around. It seemed he had been clearing things out for sometime, before now. Boxes & crates filled with junk parts, wires, laboratory glassware in utter disorganization of any kind. Next to the table were stacks of Science Fiction paper backs from the fifties, manuals, car books, giant encyclopedias. Books in English, books in Japanese and he wasn't really doing anything with them. He wasn't cleaning up, not sorting them, just shuffling them around and I knew he was really agitated. When he was stuck on a problem, when he's stressed, he fixes things. He sits down and focuses his mind on something tangible, but when he can't even do that, he kind of just moves things around back and forth in his space. Kind of like when someone is trying to pack up and move in a state of panic; they don't know what to keep, what to get rid of. They don't know what to put away first and they just kind of make a bigger mess. I really felt like I should leave the room, but I didn't know where to be. I wanted to talk, but I didn't know where to stand & I was too abruptly uncomfortable to approach him.

I was so dead tired and I honestly didn't know how to get back above ground if I did go. It had to be the middle of the night so I figured it was best to broach the idea of me staying or at least find out why I couldn't. The trained investigator in me came to the forefront and I began looking around the expanse of the room for clues as to why everything was in such disarray. Why had the tunnels & storm drains been closed off, all the entrances hidden. The rubble, the new secret door. Mostly, my concern was Donatello's absolute silence. I began making my way along the length of the room to the back, behind the gigantic vehicle lift. There were several buckets of motor oil & hydrollic fluid, just up against the wall, uncovered. Even Mutagen Man had junk piled up against him. I'd honestly forgotten about poor Timothy; Donnie's pet monster. I guess Donnie had, too. I peered at him through the glass of his tank; suspended in frozen captivity. Donnie looked back at me as he lifted a crate from one spot only to set it down in another. When he'd gone back to shuffling things around the table, I stood watching him for a while, from behind the safer obstruction of the lift's cherry picker. I hadn't thought there'd be a moment I feared him, not since I was kid, but I could feel the vibrations of his heart pounding in the air & every breath was charged with anger. It was like that feeling, that instinct of knowing you should should be on edge but you can't accept it & you don't want to make a scene.

I wanted to speak but my words caught in my throat , so I just stood cautiously observing him from behind the steel arm of the crane; his shoulders worked above the ridge of his shell as he hunched over the table. He was a little bigger now, thicker & not so lanky. His second shell hadn't grown back completely & it didn't entirely close around the front. It sort of formed a chest plate that started just below his collar bone & extended down his abdomen to a smooth point beneath his waist line. It was clear he couldn't retreat inside of it, as if he only wore it. The greater dome of his shell was a warm liver chestnut in hue with golden ridges. It was beautiful, like carved wood. For what he was, he was very elegant, he'd always had that about him. He & Leo both; they kind of had a princely demeanor. The light on the table reflected off of the smooth, cool greenish skin of his arms as he reached for things, the purple freckles so child like. He would have been about 24 now; a year younger than me.

I couldn't figure it out. He wasn't covered in any new scars, no notches in his new shell, only the etched imprint of where he wore his staff. There were no new crazy assault vehicles or robots; infact there was nothing but crap everywhere. He hadn't been building anything, not for a while. No projects, no test tubes by the Bunsen burner, a stack of papers ON TOP of his laptop. K that's not normal! I watched him as I walked across the room to his picture wall and I could see where a lot of the frames had recently been taken down, leaving only blank squares in lines of dust, in their place. There wasn't a single picture of me, and my heart sank; I didn't belong anywhere in this house any longer. Like the act of removing my images would erase me altogether. I couldn't hear his thoughts; but I for damn sure could feel them. My coming back was opening old wounds that had probably only just begun to heal. What could I say to him now. My welcome had come & gone; there was nothing I could do in this moment. He had nothing to say to me. Only as I turned to leave, I noticed there were a couple new frames on the wall; documents. I walked up and read them, realizing they were degrees. Two of them! One was a Bachelor's in micro biology the other a freaking Masters in engineering. Noting the dates, I forgot all of the darkness & beamed with joy, laughing out loud;

"You can't just get two degrees, you have to earn them both at the same time!"

The resonance of his voice was hollow & monotone in disdain. "You can accomplish a lot in six years, April."

Oh my god, enough! My frustration gnawing at me, the obviousness so unbearable; I chimed in without even a thought. "Yeah like having kids?"

That got the win. The bell had rung, yelling match to ensue. He was struck motionless, facing away from me.

"I heard her call you "Oji". Who is she Donnie? Where did she come from?"