#qpr donnie and april supremacy

[cryptidtumbleweed]

Introducing... Runaway Donnie AU!

This is a new AU I recently started and am currently writing a fic for! Just wanted to share it for feedback and stuff :3

The story is that a ten-year-old Donnie, who’s nonverbal, struggles with feeling like he’s a burden to his brothers. He feels left out of the things they do and struggles with communicating with them, even though they all have learnt sign language together.

After a few particularly hard things happen, Donnie just... has enough of it all. He packs his things and leaves the sewers. He wanders the streets of New York all night, until he realizes how dumb of an idea running away is. But he’s got himself lost and he ends up falling asleep in an alleyway. The next day, he keeps trying to find his way back, but only gets more lost.

By the next evening, he’s so hungry that he can’t go on and ends up sitting in a park and crying. There he ends up meeting a young April who decides that he needs a friend. She ends up taking him home with her and lets her sleep in her treehouse for the night. The next day she introduces him to her parents and they end up letting him stay, thinking he’s just a lost child who’s parents will come looking for him soon enough.

Donnie ends up staying with her and grows up with her, leaving behind his family. He still misses them, but he feels happy where he is - he also feels like April is more understanding of his mutism.

I also have some individual notes for this AU:

Raph was always the one that put the most effort into trying to communicate with Donnie. He could tell Donnie felt left out and tried this best to include him.

When Donnie went missing, Leo, Raph and Mikey searched all over the sewers for him. They wouldn’t stop looking for him and even as years passed by, they sometimes hoped to find him on their missions.

Mikey was the one to discover Donnie was missing - when they couldn’t find him anywhere, he went to check Donnie’s secret hiding places (Donnie had showed them to him so he and Mikey could do artsy stuff and reading together)

April’s parents are well aware of Donnie not being human - they don’t mind though, because they can see how close their daughter is with him. They also care for him very much.

Donnie’s scared of leaving the house, because he worries his appearance will spook people. Thus, he’s only ever attended an online school April’s parents found for him and rarely leaves the house during the day. In the evening, though, he and April often go to the park or to an arcade.

April and Donnie develop a queer-platonic relationship. Donnie is aro/ace and April is an ace/lesbian.

April meets Sunita in school and when she meets Donnie, she gets him a cloaking brooch. Donnie is mesmerized by it and begins to use it often - he even joins April at school once he gets comfortable with leaving the house.

Donnie meets his brothers again one evening when the arcade he and April are in gets attacked. He’s in his human disguise, so they don’t recognize him. After that, April begins to ask him questions about his past and family again (Donnie never really opened up about any of that as he was ashamed to admit he ran away)

Donnie’s still very into technology - he hasn’t been able to build things as amazing as the canon Donnie, but he’s still very skilled. He’s also fascinated with astronomy, especially the stars 

I’m not quite sure how the turtles would reunite yet, I’m focusing on Donnie and April growing up together at the moment. But this AU’s definitely going to be developed and like I said, I’m writing a fic on it!

Very open to hear thoughts on this!