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“And as such, he had the sais, which is primarily a defensive weapon for blocking attacks. It’s theorized that Splinter used this as a method for teaching him patience and control.”

“Donatello?” I questioned. “What does his staff say about him?”

“A primitive tool for the tech genius meant to teach him how to use his intellect to come up with creative ways to use it.”

“And last but not least, Michelangelo?”

“I think you should work it out. What were his personality traits?”

“He was the joker. He was scatterbrained and immature.”

“And what weapon did he have?”

I closed my eyes, picturing the orange turtle. “Nunchucks.”

“Very good. And what do nunchucks require?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had any,” I said dryly.

“Think.”

“I’m so glad you never taught me.”

Lake crossed his arms over his chest and waited.

I sighed. “I guess they require a lot of skill, which means you need patience.”

“Exactly,” Lake said with an enthusiasm better suited to me having discovered the cure for cancer. “They require focus and dedication. All their weapons offset their personalities. That’s the theory, anyway.”

“Who knew,” I said. Yet, I was smiling. A genuine smile. Not one I’d plastered on my face for appearance’s sake while lying through my teeth and telling everyone I was fine. Lake knew I wasn’t fine. He’d had front-row seats to me breaking down in his living room, so there was no point in maintaining a facade with him. It was freeing. Especially when he still wanted to spend time with me.

He could have pushed me out of the door first thing, but he hadn’t. He’d taken me for breakfast instead. He could have let me leave afterwards, but he hadn’t done that either. Instead, we were sitting on a bench in the early morning sun dissecting the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. And I was closer to happy than I’d been at any time since my resurrection.

I watched two geese fighting over a single chunk of bread that a toddler had dropped. They were so busy competing with each other that a duck ran in and stole it. “I need to fix myself,” I said, my words quiet.

“How are you going to do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“Who killed you?”

I closed my eyes against a sudden wave of nausea. Instead of the comforting darkness I’d been searching for, I got a concrete floor and a spreading puddle of blood and coffee.

I opened them again, forcing myself to breathe slowly while I took an inventory of my surroundings. Water. Children. Geese. Ducks. A chocolate bar wrapper floating past. Red, so probably a Kit Kat wrapper. All better things to focus on than the image etched on the back of my eyeballs. “I don’t know. They never caught anyone.”

“How did they…?” The sentence trailing away to nothing screamed of Lake deciding halfway through that it was too intrusive.

“They stabbed me in the back.” My fingers twitched, my instinct to reach behind me and rub the spot. Knowing Lake was watching, only a massive amount of willpower stopped me from doing that.

“Did they puncture an organ? Is that what killed you?”

“I don’t know.” I was starting to sound like a broken record. “I was dead.”

“You never asked Calisto to find out?”