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It’s early in the morning when he first hears them. They’d had a day off to rest - something they usually had to beg for, but Donnie had been wearing himself down ever since. The whole memory thing. He didn’t ask, Splinter took one look at him stumbling into the dojo, bloodshot eyes that blinked sluggishly up at their father, and told them he was giving them all a day of mandatory rest.
Who knows if Donnie will actually follow through with it, but… well. At least it gives him a chance.
Mikey appreciates the effort though. There was a time when he would have scolded Donnie for his fatigue and then humiliated him shortly after. He supposes the idea is to make the late nights undesirable, but that assumes that his brother stays up on purpose - he doesn’t.
The rest of the night had been going well. Had been peaceful. Hell, Mikey even got out his most valued oil pastels - given to him by April after she accidentally stole them from her art class. Some of them are short and stained with other colors, but he cherishes them all the same. He got out the thick cardstock that he’d found dumpster-diving behind a crafts store and tried for something realistic. He tried to draw Ice Cream Kitty from a photo he had on his phone, deciding her soft texture and light colors would do well with this medium.
It was relaxing. So relaxing he forgot that today was a scheduled snack and meal day until Leo came and dragged him to the kitchen. He looked annoyed at having to do this again - his brothers took turns enforcing the schedule and this was Leo’s second time. He knows Leo thinks he’s weak, and is disappointed that he can’t overcome this. He took a granola bar and swallowed it down without really tasting it until his brother was satisfied and took the white board marker and crossed off the scheduled snack.
As he made his way back to his pastels, he heard the sound of his brother’s chair rolling across the concrete floor - so much for a rest day. For a moment, he contemplated barging in and forcing Donnie to rest, but he must have been watching some Kraang video he’d found because the familiar screeching sounds rose as he hovered by the door.
A distinct fear left him paralyzed and he reminded himself that Donnie was - Donnie was fine . He’s listening to the security footage he’d downloaded at their last raid and, besides, Donnie isn’t the crazy one. He’s not the one who needs to be reminded to eat or talk or function.
If Donnie decided to work in the lab today, then he must be up to it.
That was how he’d reasoned it. He didn’t go in because Donnie doesn’t need the extra help - no other reason. He heard the high pitched scream of an angry Kraang and retreated back to the safety and quiet of his oil pastels.
He intended to remain there until it was time to eat again, secluded away from the unsavory noises and smells of the lab and away from the overbearing concern and judgment from Raph and Leo respectively, but the sounds of shouting wormed their way through the walls of his room and broke his focus.
Before, he would have just put in headphones and cranked the volume. Ever since coming back from Dimension X, and more so after having the scab scraped open by that mutant, he can’t stand not being able to hear what’s around him. So, he decides to go see what the fuss is about this time.
And Ice Cream Kitty is just about done anyway. She’s just missing a little light in her eyes to give her life. So, carefully, he places the picture up high on a shelf where the vents in his room won’t blow it off and where he won’t accidentally smudge it.
When he steps into the kitchen, Leo and Raph pause their argument.
Pause isn’t the right word. They make the argument nonverbal, a series of looks and huffs and passive aggressive language that builds and builds and builds until -
“You are un- fucking- believable!” Raph exclaims.
Leo rolls his eyes, “Oh please, what did I do? Look at you too hard?”
Jesus Christ. This is too far beyond helping, maybe if he just slides back -
“Mikey!” Leo calls, “You have a meal, remember?”
Great.
He puts on a placating smile, “Sorry, dude! It just looked like you were in the middle of something.”
“Nothing more important than your health,” Raph says immediately. Donnie must have drilled them for this. Where does he get the time?
“Of course, I’ll just -”
“It has to be at least 1000 calories,” Leo reads, deciphering Donnie’s chicken-scratch rules, “Isn’t that excessive?” He adds, expression turning sour.
He tries to answer before Raph does, but his hotheadedness makes him quicker to speak, “No. It’s what Donnie says he needs. If he didn’t have this schedule, who knows when he’d eat!”
“Please, he might not be a genius, but he wouldn’t starve himself!”
“He wouldn’t be trying to! He’s got a fucked up stomach!”
“He’s Mikey !”
His stomach turns. The last thing he wants to do now is eat, but maybe - maybe - if he eats something, they’ll stop fighting. Maybe that’ll take some stressors away. (Except they’re not fighting over him, not really. They’re fighting because they’re pent up and they want to. They’re fighting over nothing, over everything).
He scans the fridge for an acceptable meal and finds that they all are unappetizing. The leftover Chinese food is the least offensive. He grabs it and forces himself to sit at the table - it has to be supervised. Splinter is probably meditating and Donnie is still in the lab.
He grabs a pair of chopsticks and doesn’t bother heating up the leftover pork lo mein and egg roll. Pretends he’s not really there and ends up somewhere in between.
Mikey views the whole situation through a muted lens. It wasn’t crafted or carefully decided. He just… slips into it.
It happened in Dimension X. That’s what his brothers would insist. That’s what they always do. If he was weird before it was a flaw of his character, a defect they had gracefully avoided, but now it’s always Dimension X. The name holds so much power. It makes him a survivor and a warrior. But most of all it makes him a victim to his brothers.
It’s suffocating.
Raph slams his fist down on the table and Leo holds his gaze. They act like they’re so different, but they’re the same - at their core. Two sides of the same willful coin. Sun and moon.
He doesn’t know what they’re fighting about now. He used to. He used to take great care to know, so he could mediate. Provide damage control. Now he’s just-
The thing is, the lens may have been perfected in that hell hole the Kraang call a home, but it was born on Earth. He can’t do much, but he can recall when it had made its first jolting debut.
His brothers like to act like he went through something unspeakable and maybe he did. He doesn’t really know, because the whole thing is pretty damn real to him. He doesn’t have the privilege of disbelief.
He doesn’t know what his brothers are arguing about anymore. They probably don’t even know. These arguments have gotten so circular, so repetitive, that they all end up being about the same thing. Raph feeling disrespected by Leo’s restrictions and Leo feeling disrespected by Ralph’s doubt. They want the same thing. To be seen as worthy.
It all boils down to respect.
A part of him wants to scoff at his brothers, but even the protection of the recent reveal of his time in prison wouldn’t be able to protect him from the shared wrath of his eldest brothers. If not for the muted lens, then it would have been harder to prevent his gut reactions. The lens is good at tempering him.
Leo and Raph both think they’ve experienced the height of disrespect in their own petty slights against each other. They’ve never been hosed down in a Kraang prison, muzzled and chained up like an abused dog, or been shocked out of showing any sign of personhood with high tech cattle prods. They never had a thick metal collar leave him shaking and scarred, residual shocks making his muscles spasm while the deep voided eyes of the Kraang droids stare back. They’d never had to beg for basic necessities, never been forced to discard anything resembling dignity under the vigilance of whatever robot was present. Uncaring. Maybe even amused. They think disrespect is being disagreed with, questioned. And they’re not wrong. He just thinks their experience is limited.
It’s not the right word. It’s like different degrees. Levels. A minor boss is still a boss, but the big boss that you fight at the end is worse.
It’s like a video game.
It’s like having the privilege of disbelief.
Donnie pops his head out of his lab, yelling at the two to shut up. Mikey stares down at his food, which has become room temperature by now and he still hasn’t touched it.
He’s not hungry. And there’s no need for him to eat, really. He ate breakfast and had the mandated snack. That’s more than enough to hold him over for a few days.
It’s a mandatory meal. Written on a month by month basis on an old whiteboard Donnie painstakingly detailed for him the day after the incident. He says his stomach is used to going for long periods of time without substantial food. It takes time to train your appetite, but you can learn quicker under stress. Or by force.
The food had looked good the night before, but the noodles have gone dry and the pork has lost its appeal. His stomach twists. He picks up the chop sticks.
Eat , he tells himself, eat .
It’s not a difficult task. Before, he would have rejoiced at one of his chores being eating a full meal. Now it's daunting. He doesn’t need the food is just another way of him saying he can’t eat it. Another way of reinforcing what he’s already becoming to his brothers - broken.
He hates this part of himself. The part that demands he acknowledge the change Dimension X caused. Food used to be the opposite of a problem. A blessing and a comfort. It kept him warm in the winter and allowed him to care for his brothers.
He hates feeling like a victim, but the shake of his hand makes it impossible to deny. For once, he’s glad Leo and Raph are too busy fighting to notice him. They’re blind to everything, including his weakness.
Eat .
He shoves the food in his mouth. It tastes like mush and the pork is gritty on his tongue.
Now. Swallow.
His stomach revolts immediately. The argument finally breaks up as he flings himself towards the trash can. He heaves, emptying his stomach, and is stuck panting over the trash can.
He hates feeling like a victim. But his inability to even eat dinner makes it hard not to.
“Mikey,” Raph says from somewhere behind him. He squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to see or be seen. A hand presses on his shoulder and he whirls around, breaking the contact and getting into a low crouch.
His heart thunders in his chest. Too fast and too loud. It makes his stomach twist. His eyes are still shut and he - he wants to see, but he knows, he knows, that’s it’s better when he doesn’t.
It’s not safe. It’s a mantra in his mind, it’s not safe, get low, be quiet, and close your eyes.
Brace yourself. Footsteps on his left draw his attention, but they’re receding. He turns his head back to center.
“Mikey, open your eyes, please.”
The mantra Donnie had him write wedges its way through his thoughts until it sits clunkily at the center of his brain. You’re on Earth, not Dimension X. You’re on Earth.
It’s just Raph. He’d recognize the cautious thickness of his voice anywhere. Raph only takes that tone on rare occasions and its presence is rooted deeply to coming comfort.
Raph clears his throat and his voice is stronger, “Look at me.”
He pries his eyes open. Raph squats a careful distance away and his forehead is pinched with worry. Behind him, his bowl is overturned and the noodles are splattered across the kitchen. His throat constricts.
“I’m sorry,” he says, eyes down. He’s in the Lair, on Earth, with his family. It’s the definition of safety, but he’s on edge regardless. The safety is unacceptable, fits wrong when he tries to put the fact in his mind. Danger is always around the corner, always present, even when you take the best precautions.
The most dangerous mistake is getting comfortable.
“Don’t apologize,” Raph growls, breaking two of the rules he knows Donnie set up. Don’t give orders and don’t allow anger to fuel your speech (the last one has a more Splinter-ian spin. It must have come straight from the source or a cheesy, pirated self-help book). “What happened?”
It’s weird to him that he can think of these rules, all these contingencies - so many different outcomes, different dangers - while also being barely able to focus on the world in front of him without panicking. The question makes the double focus blur and his hands grip at his shell.
“I don’t - I -”
Why is he so afraid? Why now? He was able to shut this down in Dimension X, why is he so weak?
He puts his thumb between his teeth and bites down hard. Some skin breaks and red blood rolls down his wrist, but the pain has him centered. The taste of iron stains his tongue.
Raph grabs his bloody wrist, pulling it away from him, and his mind goes through several reactions instantaneously. He jerks his hand away, kicking a leg up to throw Raph off balance all while fear washes like freezing rain through his body. The tiny, fearful, broken part of him says don’t fight and his body locks up.
He doesn’t want to make Raph mad - and he knows, he knows it’s fear, it’s always fear - but the contact is making his skin crawl. He can’t focus on answering the question which is the whole reason he bit his thumb in the first place and if he can’t answer the question, Raph’s gonna be mad.
He must do something pathetic because Raph drops his hand like it burned him.
Raph gets closer, though he never actually touches him again.
It’s not safe, his mind screams.
It’s Raph, he reminds his brain.
That hasn’t mattered before.
Raph bares all his teeth and says, “Don’t ever do that again,” he pulls back slightly and bites out, “What. Happened.”
His body finally agrees on a response and that response turns out to be having a fucking panic attack and then promptly passing out.
The overhead light blinks down at him, rocking in the air. He blinks and is helpless to do anything but let wakefulness fully wash over him. Raph is kneeling at his side, hands carefully directing him to sit up. His voice is carefully contained, instructing him on how to breathe. Textbook reactions. He has the misfortune of being painfully aware of what modern psychologists say help with panic attacks. Knows the grounding exercises, the mantras.
His skin still crawls and nausea still rolls through his stomach. The hands shift.
The hand on the back of his shell inches up to the top of his back and one finger brushes the scarred skin at the base of his neck.
Mikey’s mind shutters and his body moves without his say so once again.
He blinks and Raph is under him. His forearm presses hard against his neck, knee digging into what would be the soft flesh of a Kraang. His brother bucks and kicks, but it doesn’t register. Raph’s fingers dig into the scales on his arm, drawing long, red marks.
It doesn’t register.
Everything is bright and intense, grating and overwhelming, but at the same time he is disconnected. His body is acting, but he is not there.
Vaguely Raph’s wheezes get past the mental fog he’s in and the sound is what jars coherency.
He rips his arm away, just beginning to scramble backwards when two sets of hands grab him from behind. Coherency evaporates - he is one of the Kraang-made versions of himself. Rabid.
There is no pain, no fear. What matters is life or death. Life is getting out of this hold, making sure the ones who restrain him can’t do so again. Death is complacency.
He’s the one bucking now. The pure panic flowing through him doesn’t allow for disciplined martial arts. Everything is instinctual. There is no thought. No plan.
Life or death breeds urgency. That desperate drive is all that fuels his actions, all he is. A trapped animal who would fight anything it came across.
The hold shifts and he throws his shoulder forward, one of the bodies following the motion. He lurches as the hold strains and then breaks, but remains on his feet. Twisting, he swipes at the face of the other and then brings his elbow down on the connecting arms.
Someone cries out, but it is not him.
The smell of bleach and disinfectant hit his nose and the splotches of color that had been making up his vision congeal to create one smooth image. He’s in a lab. That knowledge sends him reeling until he bumps into a table and grabs blindly for something sharp. Something he can use. His fingers find a scalpel blade first and he shifts to grab it at the handle.
His mouth is curled into a snarl and he holds the scapple out in front of him.
His vision is still blurred and he hears nothing but the rushing of his blood, the roaring of his heart.
People (Kraang?) gather in blurred shapes at the edge of his vision.
“Stay back!” he shouts.
Surprisingly, the people do.
The air isn’t sweet - not like Dimension X, but the odor of the lab is too familiar, too easily connected for him to relax.
Belatedly, he feels the wetness of his face. Tears or blood, he can’t tell. It matches the raggedness in his chest. The red staining his hands. If the artist in him were awake, were aware, it’d be strangely poetic. Fit for a canvas and oil paints. The artist in him is not awake.
Eventually, the defensive creature ebbs. He becomes more like himself - or what he remembers that to be.
With that comes little reassuring facts: he’s in the Lair, he’s on Earth, and it’s safe to say his life is not in immediate danger. He repeats them in his head until his grip on the scalpel becomes lax and his vision is totally clear.
His brothers are a few feet away from him, still and purposefully unthreatening. Raph’s neck has developed a reddish purple hue. They’re waiting for him to give them the okay.
He puts down the scalpel. He takes the first steps, closing the space between them until they’re just outside of an arm’s reach. How does he look to them? How much of this behavior can they explain and how much of it is just entirely foreign?
His brothers don’t have the answers in their expressions. Care and concern make up the maps of their faces. They’re so scared and yet they’re giving him this precious pretend control.
They’re waiting for him but he doesn’t have words like he used to. The well of words failed to be replenished and now he finds himself with a limited reserve. Donnie calls it habitual silence learned from times of isolation and trauma. Mikey thinks that’s a long winded way of saying what he dreads - the Kraang broke him. At some point in their Dimension, in their prison, a part of him so necessary to his personhood, to his character was irrevocably altered, warped, or destroyed. Some crucial part of himself failed to survive, to adapt, in that hell and as a result he is not himself.
The person his brothers knew is dead. And maybe Mikey always knew that. He mourned enough for himself, saw the ash for what it meant, but his brothers just keep digging .
He has nothing of substance to say. The audience of Leo, Raph, and Donnie is guilt inducing and all-together suffocating. There’s only one thing left to do.
“I need to leave,” he whispers.
Raph lurches forward, hands reaching out in an aborted effort to keep him safe and close. Evidently the ring of bruises around his neck taught him caution.
He needs to get somewhere where he’s unknown. Blank. Or at least out of the Lair. He could really go for a pizza joint in Long Island. His brothers care. It’s one unchanging fact. And he will always buckle under their concern, let them check him over, listen to their fear-born lessons.
So, he can’t let them respond. He doesn’t wait for permission, he just goes. It doesn’t matter how much shit he’ll get for this, at least he’ll be out of the Lair. Out of hearing Leo and Raph bicker about leadership, about missions, and most recently, really unsubtly about him. Out of meal plans and Donnie’s invasive questions. Out of Splinter’s rapid shifts between nurturing father and strict sensei.
He’s always been the fastest of them all. Not the strongest or most technically sound, but grace, speed, and flexibility have always been his area of expertise.
The Lair is a speck behind him in minutes and he launches himself up into the cold New York City night air. His brothers will have attempted to take chase, but he’s agile enough that even Donnie with his extensive knowledge of the sewer system couldn’t have kept up.
Being alone brings a peace it hadn’t until after Dimension X. His brothers see that as a flaw. An understandable one, but ultimately something fixable. Around others, even his brothers, his mind can’t fully relax. It takes solitude to let his entire guard down. It is probably something left over from Dimension X, like when the darkness of the brick doesn’t fully disappear under a coat of spray paint.
He doesn’t have a destination in mind. He considers April, but it’s later than she usually likes to be disturbed and she doesn’t always get it. Casey is probably out. He never stays in one place for too long and he’d spend the whole night trying to find him.
As he glides across rooftops, he decides to head for the safety of the docks. Large stacks of cargo crates make up an almost beautiful backdrop as it is lit by the dim light of the moon and the few yellow lights that are turned on for the cranes and workmen who have the misfortune of unloading late night ships. The inky black water is choppy, the repeated smack of it against the dock is constant.
The air is salty and thicker. It clings to his scales and sits heavily on his lips. Finding a suitable place to crouch - out of view of the few tired folks and high enough where he can see the harbor and the tops of the surrounding crates - he takes in a deep breath of the sea air.
It’s salty.
Distinctly different from the sweet sting of Dimension X.
The months have just changed from August to September, the water would be cool, but not unpleasantly so. The harbor may be full of gunk and filth, as Donnie is always reminding them, but they live in a sewer, so Mikey refuses to draw the line here.
And the water looks so appealing from his perch. It would swallow him whole and he kind of needs to be swallowed right now. To be made into less. The memories of the scalpel in his hands, Raph pinned below him, scraping desperately against his hold, are still too fresh. (The memories of everything are always just waiting to come to the surface, to be itched like an infected wound). The ruthless brutality that drove him is still simmering too close to the surface.
He shoots off from his perch and allows himself to enjoy the feeling of falling through the air, flipping up over any obstacles and arcing up high. He lands on one of the light poles and plunges into the depths of the harbor.
The murky water surrounds him and he soaks in the feeling of weightlessness. The salt seeps into the raw skin on his hands, grounds him. It’s as he predicted, cold, but not so cold it would hurt him. He goes under again, swimming down away from the surface. It’s been so long since he was able to do something like this. Completely alone, in the muted safety of the water. Completely in control.
He can almost forget the hold even a simple meal plan has over him. Can almost forget how he ends up unintentionally being what he keeps on promising he’s growing from. The cool water aches just enough to keep him sane.
It didn’t used to be this hard.
Everything had been so nicely packed away - only the mural in the subway tunnel gave the notion that there might be something beyond the basic story.
Now everything is fresh. The water provides distance. There are no oceans in Dimension X. No rivers or lakes.
He breaks the surface again to float on his back in the empty harbor. The sky above him is hazy, stars blotted out by the constant pollution, but the moon is still visible. It stares down at him, unblinking. Removed.
It’s only when the lights from the guards begin to shift that he pulls himself towards the docks. As natural of a swimmer as he is, he doesn’t want to chance being caught under a large ship. The walls are covered in grime and barnacles, the salt water turns the dried sea sludge into thick and sticky muck.
It clings to the cracks in his fingers.
Pink slimy tissue, stuck under his nails, staining his scales. The scream of the alien echoes off the metallic walls, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no one to hear it.
He wipes his hands on the wall. Toxic fuchsia smears burn in his vision - his hands are still dirty.
The concrete bites into him, coupled with the breeze off the ocean chilling his already frigid body, forcing the memory away.
It’s just sea sludge. It’s just sea sludge.
His phone is where he left it. When he turns it on, his home screen floods with notifications and missed calls. It makes him want to plunge back into the harbor, even with the massive cargo ship docking behind him.
Leo’s messages are short and to the point. They’re words from a leader, not a brother. It’s weird to have to remind himself that Leo is the leader. That he listens to Leo out of respect. Not fear. He thinks Dimension X really messed up his ideas of authority.
He’s not sure if there’s anything Dimension X didn’t fuck up.
Donnie sends only a few, but he thinks it’s because of an article he read recently. About smothering someone recovering from a traumatic event. None of them sound like Donnie, just like the rehearsed lines from his psychology textbook. They lack substance. He doesn’t like to be angry at Donnie. All he ever wants to do is help and he’s putting so much effort into new methods, finding research-based practices.
He just… Sometimes he can’t stand it. He feels like glass coddled by heat-proof tongs.
Raph has mostly called. His texts are short. Kind of threatening, but in a distinctly worried way. He doesn’t understand his older (maybe younger?) brother. He flips so rapidly between anger and worry that it can be dizzying. At the same time, he feels that it might be slightly hypocritical of him to say that. It’s not as though he’s been straightforward lately.
April hasn’t messaged, which he expected. She had, in her words, “a huge presentation” in the morning and told them all that she was not to be disturbed - come hell or high water.
Casey surprises him, though. He’s sent ten messages and even called twice. They range from worried to vaguely interested. Despite how often he’s around, Mikey doesn’t really know him. He knows he and Raph hit it off, and he knows he and Donnie step on each other’s toes, but beyond that?
Casey Jones is an unknown, crazy, reckless and tough, but altogether mystery of a guy. He once sent him a picture of a cat hanging from a tree with bright emboldened text beneath it that read “I Am Hanging” with no other context.
Whatever.
He slips his phone away and grabs his weapons. The sun hasn’t begun to rise yet, but the edge of the sky is burning a lighter blue. He’s not dumb enough to get caught in the sun, to be exposed.
The trip back is easy, but he’s careful not to leave any streaks of blood behind from the gashes in his hand. It’s too late to be cautious before, but he’s at least able to do this. He slips into the manhole, going back into the curving tunnels and attempting to keep his nerves in check.
These nerves are the normal ones, the ones that pop up when he zones out during training or sneaks out from right under Splinter’s nose. Teenager nerves. The kinds you see in movies right before the main character finally sticks it to the main character. Coming-of-age nerves.
They’re oddly comforting.
The lair is loud when he approaches it, voices flooding out into the subway tunnel.
He hears Donnie first, surprisingly. His voice is tight and creeping up high with anger, plowing over Raph and Leo.
“-Understand how you let this happen! Physical contact is completely unhelpful -”
“You think I don’t know that, D?” Raph growls.
“We’ve been having the same conversation for hours, guys,” Leo interjects, “It’s not helping.”
Raph doesn’t let the words sink in, retorting immediately, “Like you’ve been helpful, Mr. ‘It’s Mikey! ’”
Mikey takes in a breath, presses on the sluggishly bleeding wound on his hand and lets the pain center him.
He hops the turnstile. The ugly yellow light washes him out, makes him feel ghostly. He can’t bring himself to look up, traces the grimey subway grout with his eyes.
“Guys,” he whispers. No one notices and he clears out the clogged mess of his throat, “Guys!”
Silence falls heavy. Damning. His shoulders bunch up without his permission. As it stretches on, his eyes begin to burn and he tucks his chin down to hide the weakness.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, but it’s enough now. It almost echoes in the quiet, “I didn’t mean to - I just - I’m sorry.”
Those words break the stillness. His brothers all start to speak over each other - loud and contradicting, but it’s the steady tap of his father’s cane on the concrete and tile that catches his attention. He sees Splinter’s robe come into view. His brothers go quiet when they see their father still.
“My son, we were worried.”
“I know, Sensei,” he breathes.
Splinter brings down his cane, “Look at me, Michelangelo.”
He forces his head up, his father’s face blurring as his eyes continue to sting. His father sighs at the tears that begin to well, but does not admonish him.
“You are… distressed.” The word falls out of his father’s mouth in a sincere awkward cadence.
“Yes, Sensei.”
“I am not your Sensei right now, Michelangelo, and you are not my student. I am your father and you are my son.”
He chokes down another “yes, Sensei.”
“You are my son and have been distressed.”
“Yes.”
“And we have not helped,” Splinter says. It’s not a question.
He swallows, “No.” Admitting it makes the guilt worse - when he knows Raph is concerned, when he knows Donnie is run ragged because of him, when he knows Leo can’t handle this version of him.
His father hums, “Then, we have failed you, my son -”
“Don’t - I ran away! I did the bad thing! Don’t apologize, I - I - I should be apologizing, or, or begging for forgiveness!” he pleads.
“Do not say that, Michelangelo!” Splinter orders, “Neither of us is wrong here. You did disobey. You worried us, but we are not blameless - understand that. We want to help, but we did not today. Do not argue that.”
“Okay.”
Finally, Splinter turns away to speak to his brothers, “We will move this conversation to the dojo.” His posture shifts and he becomes their Sensei once again, “There will be no yelling.”
“Hai, Sensei!”
The dojo somehow never smells like the sewers. The smell sticks to everything else, but never here. It smells somehow like pine and cinnamon, a combination of sweet warmth and spice that always sits in the center of his mind, calms his heart. He sits under the tree, the spotted light dappling the early spring green tint of his skin. He always feels like a child here, under the tree. He returns to those small, protected, hazy memories.
In his mind, he is young and at ease, movements slow and telegraphed as he goes through his first katas. His brothers are equally young beside him in the memory, giggling at how they all wobble and totter through the movements. They are all gap toothed and light. Nothing sits between them yet, weighs down on them. They are young and free.
The presence of his brothers breaks his focus on the vision and he discards the images of their younger selves. They belong to a picture-book past. They don’t exist, except to remind them in the present of how crookedly they’ve grown.
He forces himself to look up at them and nausea hits him as he sees the swollen purple skin around Raph’s throat. He turns his hands so that his palms are facing up and the long cuts in his skin do not seem like enough. The reddish color of the blood stains his skin, but he is already stained - always will be. It’s being clean again that’s difficult.
Looking at the bruises that mark his brother’s neck, he doubts anything could make him clean now, could return him to what he once was. To what his family wants so desperately to be.
He is everything the Kraang made him into. Savage and beastly. There is nothing human in him left, nothing with a soul. The Kraang ruined him in the same way they ruin everything else.
Splinter sits beside him while his brother’s whisper back and forth amongst themselves. Mikey’s only ever known seven people who he would consider to be close to and four of them are in this room. But there have always been dividers between him and his brothers. Anything serious or imposing or dangerous was discussed between the other three before they told him anything. Just as Leo and Raph always bicker, he would always be the last to know.
Eventually they sit down to make a loose circle and he sucks in a breath to hold until his lungs burn. Splinter says nothing.
Leo leans forward, “What were you thinking? We were worried sick and you could have been hurt, or captured, or - or shell knows, Mikey!”
Raph would bite back at such accusatory words, would hurl back fire and sharpened mean words. He is not Raph. He swallows down his defensiveness and forces himself to be what he needs to be - small, apologetic, Earth-bound Mikey. “I know. I wasn’t thinking and I-I really am sorry.”
A hand lights on the back of his shell - in comfort, he belatedly thinks - and he jerks away. He peers up at Splinter, whose hand is still outstretched, and catches the hurt lining his face. He can’t be who he needs to be if he’s still untrusting of every touch, if fear still catapults back into the forefront of his mind with every uncertainty.
The beastly thing inside of him needs to be put away or put down. He does his best to padlock the parasitic monster and turn his mind away from it.
He eases back into his spot and catches his father’s hand before it can be taken back. He places it with steady purpose on his shoulder and forces himself to be unaffected.
Again, he says, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”
“How about an explanation, Mikey!” Leo says - always scathingly hot, like a righteous blue flame - “Why don’t you tell us what could have possibly made you think that was okay!”
Donnie begins to redirect the conversation, but before he can say anything, Mikey cuts him off, “I wasn’t thinking! I wasn’t thinking about how it would affect you guys or-or worrying about curfew or the Foot or anything! I had to get out and I-I know it wasn’t smart. I knew it then too, but it didn’t matter.”
“How could it not matter!” Raph nearly shouts, but his voice sounds scraped raw, “It’s your life! You could have died!”
“I hurt you! ”
His shout echoes in the quiet of the dojo. No one seems to know what to say.
“Oh, Angelo,” Donnie whispers in the quiet.
Somehow, that spurs him on. “I hurt you and I couldn’t - I didn’t - I didn’t mean to! I thought - You were - I hurt you and, and I didn’t mean to and I didn’t want to, but nothing made sense . And I was scared. Scared of myself and what I did and what they made me into and I had to get out. I wasn’t thinking and I hurt you.”
Raph inches forward and as much as he wants to run away, Splinter’s hand burns on his shoulder. Anchors him there. When his brother is only a foot or so away from him, he offers out his hands, as if asking for permission.
Mikey has no right to refuse him now and lays his hands on his brothers. They’ve done similar things for meditation before, but Raph has never willingly initiated this before. He turns his hands gently right side up and the dark cuts on his palms stand out in the warm light of the dojo.
“You think some cuts and bruises can scare me away?” He says and then huffs the half-laugh he does in these moments he embodies the “loyal older brother” side of himself. “We’ve given each other worse in training. Hell, I’ve given you worse for less. You were, you were scared, you know. And not the type of scared that invites a lot of unwelcome contact. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, little brother.”
Raph gets insecure about his struggle with words from time to time, but he and Mikey have always had an understanding. It’s not so much the words themselves, but the moments and the intentions. It doesn’t need to be profound as long as it’s careful, as long as it’s soft when it needs to be soft.
This is what they’ve always had. Forgiveness in only a few words. In the unsaid.
He pushes past the sob building and smiles. It’s a smile he learned from Raph who learned it from Splinter and his own willful drive. “Who-Who are you and what h-have you done with Raph?”
“Shut up, you twerp! I can be nice!”
Donnie snorts lightheartedly. “Yeah, but if you tell anyone about it, I’ll pound ya!” Donnie says in his best Raph impression.
Everyone relaxes. There’s been too much serious conversation as of late and reconciliation doesn’t always need to be heavy - that’s Mikey’s opinion anyway. Leo’s less sure. It takes him a minute to join in on teasing each other.
The dojo is special. It somehow never smells like the sewers. It’s the place where they received their weapons, their mission. Sometimes it’s the only place they can return to who they are without the mission. It’s the only place they can still be sure Splinter is watching over them - either as Sensei or father.
It’s Leo who suggests getting pizza. The leftover Chinese food has lost any appeal it might have had and all of them jump at the idea. Raph and him decide they’ll go out to get it, leaving Mikey and Donnie watching TV in the lounge.
By the time the opening credits of Super Robo Mecha Force Five begin, his brother is falling to the side. He ends up sprawled - half off of the couch with his arms and legs in a tangle.
As quietly as he can, Mikey gets up from the couch and grabs a blanket from his room to drape over his brother’s sleeping body. It’s almost scary how he can physically see the fatigue leaving his body.
The pizza will be good , he thinks, though his stomach still isn’t hungry and there’s still that heaviness in the air. He’s always able to eat pizza. Always. And it’ll help Donnie. Leo and Raph too. Trust pizza to get rid of the tension and drive off that lingering feeling of belonging in Dimension X.
In the episode of Super Robo Mecha Force Five , the team runs out of fuel and is forced to rough it on an unfamiliar planet. Donnie stirs as the team begins to crack under the stress.
“Mikey,” he says, sleep clinging to his voice, “they didn’ make you ‘nto anything.”
He reaches out suddenly, fumbling in the empty air until Mikey allows his hand to be caught. This is not rehearsed. This is Donnie desperately reaching out to say one thing that he wants to. Any residual frustration he’d been feeling towards him melts away for the time being.
“The Kraang - they didn’t. You’re still you.”
Still helping even half asleep. Donnie’s been working too hard fixing everybody lately. He should make him that desert he really likes or convince April that Donnie really wants to do a self-care day with her but is too shy to ask.
“I’m serious, Mikey,” he insists.
“I know, D. Don’t worry.”
“I am.”
Mikey smiles, “I know. You need to sleep, bro.”
Finally, Donnie relaxes again. His grip loosens, but Mikey lets his hand be held. He worries too much.
Raph just barely beats Leo into the Lair, but they’re both smiling and out of breath when they arrive. Whatever argument they had must have been tabled or forgotten entirely in favor of pizza, which Mikey can understand.
Pizza is sacred. No argument can withstand against it.