THE JOURNEY HOME

After constructing a small steam basket over a pot of simmering water, they had left the beacon to reform in the damp warmth. It had been fusing together for several hours as they readied themselves for departure, but despite their one way trip, Leonardo couldn't help but pack things safely away, leaving all in order.

"We can't take anything." Donatello explained, "It could potentially mess with the time line, or cause temporal anomalies."

Leonardo nodded, but the only real temptation was the talisman. He showed his brother the small rock.

"It's beautiful. I believe it's a meteorite of all things. Pallasite. It's been broken along this edge during impact so you can see inside of it." Donatello marveled at the stone's reflective facets. He placed it down. "To think, out of all the things on Earth you were drawn to, you picked up something from outside of it. Kind of neat, huh?"

"A little spooky, actually."

"Well, maybe we did find each other, in other ways."

Leonardo balked at the thought, "That's a little mystical coming from you, Donnie."

Donatello dismissed the observation with a knowing shrug.

"Even I know that you can't measure the bonds of family with a ruler."

Leonardo couldn't help but agree.

"That you can't."

They were interrupted by a low bleeping sound emitting from the beacon. Donatello walked over to the bowl of simmering water, removing it from the basket and kicking out the flames. It dripped with moisture, but within seconds the surface turned tacky, and then completely dry. He inspected it briefly.

"It's ready." He pressed a button recessed into its side and it whirred to life. "Are you?"

Leonardo took one last look around his mud hut, the embers smothered in the hearth, the A-frame laden with smoked fish outside the porthole, and out onto the plains where the ponds glistened placidly. His mind came back into his body and he reached back to touch the hilts of his katana, reassuring their presence.

"Let's get out of here."

Donatello pressed a sequence of buttons, a trill of beeps responded before a circle of light engulfed them both. As they faded out of existence and reformed slowly within the lair, Leonardo could see, at first, the ghostly shapes of his brothers and beloved master, and knew he had finally arrived back home - but for a fleeting moment which came the thought, wondering if he had ever woken from sinking depths of the lake at all.

...