This is the first thing that's not my idea, and I realize that for someone who doesn't really like AU's, I'm writing an awful lot of them. But when I first saw Nicollini's Robin-hood-esque AU drawings, I wanted to write the story so badly it hurt. And wonder of wonders, she let me. So here it is. Now run to nicollini on tumblr and look up her tmnt-au tag to see the gloriousness of her illustrations. The ideas and character design are hers. I just put all the pieces together.

Children of the Forest: Chapter 1

Sleep, fleeting and elusive, was to be denied her again, it seemed. April sighed as she stared up at the canopy above her bed, the rich embroidery illuminated at unpredictable intervals by the intrusive flickers of lightning. First it was the dreams, then the unending cycle of thoughts in her head, and now even the weather conspired to keep rest from her. Thunder cracked again, shaking the walls and the bed beneath her, and she couldn't keep back the sting of tears from her eyes. When she had been younger, she had run to her father during storms like this, seeking comfort in the warmth of his arms. But now there was no such relief. For her father had kissed her goodbye all those months ago, and set out to negotiate peace with Idara, and never returned. But despite Lord Oroku's urgings to give up the search and accept that her father was gone, she simply could not do it. So she lay, awake until all hours of the night, alone with her troublesome thoughts.

Though perhaps fate had something different in mind. Lightning flashed once again, and had she been asleep as she ought to have been, she would have missed the shadowed figure with the drawn knife leaning over her bed. With a sharp intake of breath, she rolled away as the blade came down, and it caught only the edge of her arm, slicing through the thin fabric of her sleeping shift and the skin beneath rather than driving into her heart as its wielder had intended.

April's cry was masked by the thunder, but she had taken the assassin by surprise. He had not expected her to wake, and it was time enough to seize the bedsheets and sling them over his head. As he struggled with them, a formless shape beneath the cloth, she ran. Not for the door, where there were sure to be others waiting, but to the opening beneath the tapestry on the wall that would take her down a hidden corridor to the north wing.

She tried to go quietly, careful not to alert the figure in the next room. She could buy herself time, at least. The only sounds that filled the corridor were her ragged breath and the soft padding of her bare feet against the stones, easily masked by the storm raging outside. But though her progress was as silent as she could make it, her mind was a clamoring tumult to rival the fury of the storm.

How has this happened? Lord Oroku doubled the guard when my father went missing. How could they have let these assassins past? Why did no one come when I cried out? Why-

She glanced over her shoulder, watching for pursuit, and so was unprepared for the collision with the figure in the shadows of the corridor before her. Hands locked on her shoulders, stopping her before she could fall, and April drew a breath to scream. A hard hand clamped down over her mouth, and this new attacker pressed April back against the wall. In another moment, however, she recognized the feel of the gauntlets sheathing the hands that held her, and the flickering light of the storm through the filigreed windows high on the walls threw a familiar silhouette into sharp relief.

"Karai…" she breathed as Karai's hand left her mouth, and her hands came up to grip the armour encasing the other girl's arms. "My room! They-"

"I know," Karai said, and her voice was flat, drained of her usual wry, sardonic humour. Karai seized April's wrist, and she began to drag her down the corridor. "We must hurry, highness."

"Your father must hear about this," April said, panting as she tried to ignore the pain in her arm. "He-"

Karai stopped then, and turned to look over her shoulder. And in the unreliable light of the storm, April caught sight of her warden's expression, and felt her heart turn to ice. "No…" she whispered. "Oh, please no…"

"My father," Karai said, and the word was dripping with anger and confusion, "has his own ideas about how this kingdom should be run, and you are no longer a part of them." Her hand tightened around April's wrist. "And once I should have been glad of that. But that… that was before I knew you. Now I don't know what to think. But of one thing I am sure." She brought up her other hand, resting it on April's shoulder. "I am your warden, and I am not about to let you die on my watch."

As Karai had spoken, the ice around April's heart had continued to grow, squeezing the breath from her, but at those final words, it cracked, and despite herself, a few tears spilled down her face as lightning flashed once more. Karai tsked, but her voice gentled as she wiped the tears from April's cheeks. "Come, highness. No time for that. It will be dawn soon, and we must get you well away from here before then."

April lurched after Karai as her warden tugged her forward again, her eyes going wide. "Away? But…"

But of course Karai was right. April could not stay. Not if Lord Oroku had decided that she was no longer necessary to his plans. Over the year since her father's disappearance - she would not say death - Lord Oroku's influence had crept throughout the court and the kingdom so slowly, so inexorably, that she had barely noticed it happening. Until now, as she wracked her brain for somewhere, anywhere, that she could go for help, and found that she could not come up with a single one that she could trust to be unswayed by the lord who had made himself so indispensable to her father.

Moving away from the outer walls, what little light there was vanished, and April was left with only the creaking leather of Karai's armour to lead her through the dark. She didn't ask where they were going; the smell told her plainly enough: hay and horse, growing stronger as they descended. Finally, after an eternity in the darkness, there was a slight lessening of the endless black as Karai cautiously cracked a door and peered out. "Good. Be quick, highness."

April squeezed through the door into the shelter of the stacked bales of hay that concealed it. Straining on her toes to peer over Karai's shoulder, April could see her horse, waiting and saddled.

"Clear," Karai murmured, and tugged April forward, pushing her toward the horse. Karai reached for a satchel slung across the doorway to the stall, and tossed it at April. "No time to change. You must go quickly." Without waiting for an answer, she unbolted the stall, pushing the door open and leading the horse toward April.

She stared at Karai in mounting horror as she took in just what the bag and the single horse meant.

"You're not coming?" April's voice sounded small and weak in the face of the thunder, and as Karai looked at her, the other woman's expression softened.

"I can't, highness," she said. "Someone must make sure your path is clear." Karai stepped forward, resting both hands on April's shoulders. "You, my princess, are strong, and brave, and stubborn as a thick-headed mule. You can do this."

Smiling despite herself, April drew herself up and nodded. Slinging the bag across her back, she swung herself up in the saddle and turned the horse toward the door. But as she looked down at Karai, a hundred unsaid things rushed to fill her, and she found herself suddenly overwhelmed by emotion. "Karai, I…" Her fingers knotted in the reins.

Her eyes bright with understanding, Karai shook her head. "No time," she said brusquely, and ran for the door. Moments later, April could hear her distant voice calling to the guards on the wall. "A traitor rides for the south gate! Quickly, before she escapes!"

April's hands tightened further, and the horse shifted beneath her, sensing her unease. The wound in her arm burned, and there was a sweat on her brow that dripped into her eyes and stung, and she wiped it away impatiently, trying to still the tremors of fear that shook her limbs. There was nowhere else to go. No other choice. She would have to ride into the Demon Wood, and hope she could make it through before the assassins realized where she had gone.

Or the demons stole her soul.

Drawing a deep breath, she urged the horse forward into the lessening dark.

She had hoped. For one brief, fleeting moment, she had actually let herself believe that she had gotten away. Then, hours after the rain had stopped and the sun had crested the horizon, as she had allowed her weary horse to choose its own pace along the narrow trail that ran along the edge of the forest, she had heard the undeniable sounds of pursuit behind her.

April urged the horse to run again, but the trail was winding and uneven - few people were brave or foolhardy enough to venture this close to the haunted trees - and it was slow going. Gradually, the sounds of pursuit grew louder, and she knew that she would not evade capture if she continued on this path. With a whimpered plea to the four gods, she hauled on the reins and the horse plunged into the shadowed gloom beneath the trees.

Despite the fear that poured thick through her veins, choking her with the intensity of it, she could not help but feel a little awed as the horse pounded through the verdant wood. She had heard tales of course, friends of friends of a relative who had ventured into the forest on a youthful dare or an attempt to prove their mettle, but nobody she knew had ever gone into the forest. It was dark, and cursed, and dangerous.

Nobody had ever told her it was beautiful.

Massive trees raised gnarled trunks toward the sky, so big that it would have taken ten men standing fingertip-to-fingertip to reach all the way around. The trunks and branches dripped with emerald vines and moss like an elderly lady displaying her fine jewellery, and the forest laid out a soft carpet of ferns beneath to catch shining droplets of moisture as they fell.

They had hesitated, Oroku's men, as afraid of the forest as any of the villagers, but she could hear them pursuing again. Her heels dug into the horse's sides, and she wished desperately that she dared slow long enough to dig her sword and dagger out from the satchel on her back, where she could feel them digging into her spine. But even that delay was too much. She kicked the horse again as it raced along the edge of an embankment, begging with him in hushed tones to continue, to bear her just a little farther.

There was no warning. One moment she was glancing over her shoulder, searching for signs of pursuit, and the next she turned back just in time to see the massive owl, its pale brown feathers practically glowing in the dim, green-tinted light, swoop in front of her in its pursuit of prey. Her horse reared, bellowing in terror, and suddenly the world was spinning. Up was down, and down was up, and she was flying, no, falling, no ground to catch her as the embankment dropped away beneath her. She felt something tear and give way as her feet finally connected with the steep incline, and she screamed in pain as her ankle wrenched backward.

When she finally rolled to a stop at the bottom of the hill, she could do nothing more than lay for a few moments, panting, staring down at the tattered, mud-stained hem of her shift. It hid the damage in the ankle that radiated pain along the length of her leg, and part of her wished it to stay that way, afraid to see the damage that lay beneath. Her fingers twitched, stirring pine needles and leaves and raising the smell of loam, and she eased herself to a sitting position, biting her lip as even that tiny movement sent another knife of pain stabbing through her ankle. Carefully, she drew her shift away from her foot, and caught her breath at the angry, swollen purple of the joint beneath. April let out a tiny whimper of despair, but no more. She didn't have time for self-pity. It wouldn't take long for Oroku's men to realize that her horse no longer had a rider.

Now, at last, she could ease the satchel around, withdrawing the small, slender weapons within. She buckled the dagger around her waist over her filthy sleeping shift, but the sword she left free. It was long enough to help her ease herself to her feet, just enough to help support her as she gingerly inched forward. Carefully, she took a tentative step.

Instantly, she regretted it, and she tasted blood as she bit down to keep from screaming again. She felt like she was still falling, the ground rolling before her in a way that it had no right to, and she was burning and frozen at once, and her ankle felt as though a hundred knives had stabbed into it, but she still could not afford to stop. For she could once again hear pursuit behind her.

She had no concept of the passage of time as she dragged herself through the trees. All she could focus on was the pain, the tearing sensation in her ankle each time she moved, the stings of the small cuts dug into her bare feet by the sharp sticks and tree needles hidden beneath the ferns, the burning of her breath in her lungs and the wound in her arm and the sweat that poured down her face. She fell, several times, forcing herself back up each time, and it could have been hours or only minutes until the moment when she fell into a cluster of bushes and could not get up again.

For a long while, she could only lie there, shaking from the effort it took to keep from crying. How had she ever thought she could do this? What on earth had possessed her to run into the Demon Wood on her own? Seasoned hunters had perished beneath the shadows of these trees; why had she ever thought that a princess who had barely been outside the city walls could ever manage it?

A soft rustle, barely a sound, caught her attention. Brushing her tangled hair from her eyes, she shifted, her hand slowly lowering a large leaf next to her face until she could see what lay beyond.

A small creek ran next to where she lay sprawled, its waters barely fast enough to make a slight laughing trickle in the air. But it was the creature next to it, its delicate head bent to drink the water, that made her breath catch in her throat.

It resembled a deer somewhat, small and graceful, about half the size of an ordinary deer. Rather than a rack of branching antlers, however, it sported two small horns that twined together above its brow into a single crooked spire. The dappled brown hide looked soft as velvet, and April's fingers itched to touch it despite her current condition.

An eliara. She had heard of them, but thought them only legend. Renowned for their incredible speed, and the allegedly miraculous healing properties of powder made from their horns.

Beyond the eliara, there was a slight shifting of the leaves on the bushes. Slight enough that April would have taken it for no more than the wind, but the eliara raised its head suddenly, its enormous dark eyes searching the glade as crystal droplets of water dripped from its chin to sink into the soft white fur of its chest. It was that warning that gave April pause, making her look deeper, with the concentration that Karai had chided her for ignoring so often. And it was only then that she saw the blue eyes peering from the green face that the bushes concealed.

Demon…

Tears slipped down April's face as fear returned, doubled upon doubled. Oroku's men were bad enough - they could only kill her body. But a demon could destroy her soul as well. What had she done to deserve this? She moved, preparing to run, but the eliara was faster, bounding straight toward the bushes where April hid. The demon struck then as well, exploding in a blur of green from its hiding place, and though the eliara was small enough to swerve past April as it leaped into her hiding place, the demon was not so prepared. April had a brief moment of searing pain as the demon collided with her, had a vague awareness of startled blue eyes and rough, scaled fingers grasping at her torn shift, and a scream ripped from her throat as she drew her dagger, slashing toward the creature.

The demon screamed back, nearly as shrill, dodging her strike with inhuman speed and grace, and leaped back toward the creek. April did not wait to see it go, staggering from her now-useless hiding place, screaming again as her abused ankle took her weight, and she stumbled. That stumble saved her, for the next thing she knew, an arm swept through the air where her head had been, and she found herself blinking dumbly up at one of Lord Oroku's men.

The next few moments were a blurred confusion of sound, and noise, and motion, and pain, as she struck desperately with her dagger at the four men who converged on her. She may have been a princess, but Karai did not believe in her charge being defenseless, and April managed to get a hit or two on her assailants before one of them caught her wrist, twisting it, and she dropped the dagger with a cry. And then the confusion grew worse as a green shadow dropped from the trees, two men falling noiselessly beneath the flash of silver in its hands before the others even noticed it was there. April heard the cries of her attackers, the breathless shriek of "demon!", before they turned and fled back into the trees, and then that green shadow was looming over her. One of the blades in its hands slid into a sheath at its back, and it reached into a pouch at its belt. It drew something from it, dashing it into April's face, and she choked as a sweet dust entered her lungs.

Almost immediately, a languor began to spread through her body, and she sagged back against the ground, her vision clouding over. She was floating, buoyed by the half-sleep the powder had brought, and though it had stolen her will and her ability to move, it had also wrapped her mind in a blissful fog that kept her pain at a distance.

And so it was that she was able to focus on the voices that drifted above her, weaving a net with their words that pinned her and held her fast.

"Mikey! Are you all right?"

"Leo! You followed me?"

"We all followed you," a third voice chimed in, deeper and gruffer than the other two.

"I don't believe this!" the second voice was shrill with frustration. "You didn't trust me at all!"

"Of course we trusted you," added a fourth voice, terse and impatient. "We also know you. We just decided to make ourselves available nearby in case anything happened."

"And a good thing we did," said the gruff voice. "Leo caught a human."

"He what?" cried the impatient voice. "What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that she was attacking Mikey and I wasn't going to stand for that." There was a soft sound, like that of flesh lightly striking flesh. "What was I supposed to do, Donnie?"

"Looks like she wasn't alone." The deep voice sounded worried.

"I think they were after her," said the voice of her captor.

"This her blade?" asked the gruff one.

"Yes," came her captor's voice. "This one too."

"It's marked." The gruff voice sounded impressed. "So she fought back." There was a soft laugh. "Good for her."

"That blood could have been Mikey's," said her captor, annoyed.

"Brothers." The voice of the first demon spoke, softer now, more childlike without the thread of frustration running through it, and his voice sounded very close, as though he were kneeling next to her, though she still could see no more than a green blur before her eyes. "She's crying."

There was a shifting around her, the sound of feet drawing closer against the carpet of leaves and tree needles on the forest floor, and the voice of the third drifted down from close to her ear, gentle as it lost the edge of irritation. "I think she's hurt." A hand brushed against her dripping brow, followed by a sharp gasp. "She's burning up. That's not the sleep dust. Something's really wrong."

"So what are we supposed to do?" the gruff one demanded. "She's a human. Nothing good ever comes of humans. They're trouble."

"Not all humans," said the young one.

"Storyteller's different." The gruff voice was defensive now. "I'm not even sure she is human."

"We can't just leave her here," the gentle voice said, scaled hands running carefully over April's limbs, prodding occasionally, and a small whimper worked its way through the fog and the lethargy as those rough fingers brushed across her ankle. "What do we do, Leo?"

There was a long silence, broken only by the soft sounds of the forest creatures, before there came a weary sigh. "We take her to Father and ask him what to do."

There was another long silence before the gentle one asked, "are you sure?"

"It's that or leave her here. You want to do that?"

The hand brushed over her hair once, followed by another sigh. "No."

More hands touched her now, tying a strip of soft cloth across her eyes and binding her hands behind her back, and she groaned as the movement pulled on the burning wound in her arm.

"Is that really necessary?" the gentle one asked.

"Until we know who she is and what she's capable of, we can't- Raph! What are you doing?"

"Taking this armour to Father. Maybe if he knows the crest they're wearing, it'll help us figure her out." There was a soft thud, followed by a derisive snort. "He's not going to be needing it any more."

Then the gentle hands lifted her, cradling her against something cool and hard, and the world swam, the fog growing thicker around her as she went limp against the demon. She was so tired of fighting… it would be so easy to just give up… and yet she clung to consciousness. She had come so far, pushed through so much….

April lost track of time again as they moved through the forest. There was a sense of swiftness, a breeze against her sweat-damp skin, but the demons made almost no sound, and the gentle one was careful not to jostle her wounds any further. At last, a new sound made its way through the song of the forest, growing louder as they drew near, until she could make it out as the thunder of water falling.

"Sorry," the gentle voice murmured. "This is going to be a little cold…"

She felt the demon move, shifting around her as though to shield her from something, but despite its best efforts, a wave of chill water slammed into her, icy against her fevered skin, and she cried out in shock and pain.

"What in the name of the ancestors do you mean by this?"

This voice was new, and rang through the air with an unmistakable authority. There was a moment of stunned shock from the four demons, before four voices began tumbling over one another in an attempt to explain.

"Enough!"

Silence fell again, and soft footsteps approached. "Donatello. Explain."

"She's hurt, Father," said the gentle one. "Her ankle, and a cut on her arm, and some other scratches, but there's something else. She's feverish, and the sleep sand wouldn't have done that to her."

New hands moved against her arm, parting the ragged, blood-soaked fabric of her shift, and the new voice, this father of demons, let out a soft oath under his breath. "I know that scent. The blade that made this was poisoned." He let the cloth fall back against her skin. "The toxin is an insidious one, but she caught only the edge of it. Fortunate for her, it would seem."

"There were men after her," said the leader's voice.

"They were wearing this," added the gruff one.

"Can we keep her?" the youngest asked, followed by a brief retort that sounded like a slap, and a muffled, "...ow."

The sound that this Father made spoke volumes. It spoke of weariness, and mistrust, and a fear of future regret, and helpless resignation. "Lay her here. There are things we must prepare, and quickly, if we are to save her."

She was moved again, laid down on something that was blissfully soft after the unforgiving forest floor, and as she was shifted, her awareness began to fade. She could hear the Father's voice continuing to bark instructions, the movements and shouts of the demons around her as they hurried to obey. But she could make out none of it until a hand rested against her brow, not scaled, but soft. The Father's voice spoke again, wrapping around her like gentle silk.

"You can rest now, child. You are in our hands, and we will not let you fall. Trust in us, and sleep."

And with that final, serene permission, April let herself slip away into darkness.