Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s an old cliche that starts with everything happening too quickly to process, and ends with an inching slowness that steals all your hope right from under your fingers. Mikey was not a big fan of cliches, he liked to think he was more of an out of the box kinda guy. Liked everything fast paced and wild and careening around corners with a whole lot of razzmatazz.

Then again, there were no more original ideas, as they say.

He’d gotten the wild pace, the careening. Maybe he was just lacking the razzmatazz. Maybe there was no more razz left in the whole bucket of matazz. He’d really like to speak with the manager, because the matazz was really lacking lately. Less of a ‘fun thrilling adventure with his favorite best bros in the whole world’, and more ‘stuck in a really scary place and starting to feel a little hazy around the edges’. This matazz wasn’t up to par, he was sorry ma’am but he’d have to ask for a full refund. And store credit.

It was his fault, probably. Leo had said he had a funny feeling about the big empty building they’d snuck into, like it was too open and too quiet. Don had mentioned that the mutant they were tracking down was stealthy, smarter than their usual foe. Raph had even suggested they take things carefully, usually a huge red flag. But all Mikey had seen was a whole lot of frowning faces and a whole lot of making him nervous in a way that was really not fun and really not like his big bros.

Turns out, they’d been right. The guy had been hanging out on the ceiling with his whole army of creepy goo guys, and just plopped down right on top of them while Mikey had been too busy trying to play it off like usual.

He’d gotten a nice ol’ kick to the rib cage for that, splashed with some really burny backwash from the little goo goblins, and promptly tumbled directly out the window from the fourth floor. Luckily, he’d landed directly in a half full garbage dump, which saved him from having something worse to complain about.

Of course, then the entire building had to crash down with him a few moments later, not so lucky. Mikey figured the rubble must have landed on the lid, because try as he might he absolutely could not lift it, or see much of anything. And there was a big ol’ dent right in the middle he could feel, which had narrowly missed his curled up shelled form. He figured he was lucky again that he’d landed somewhere more fortified, because everything seemed pretty dusty and still around him and he didn’t really like the idea of being a turtle pancake. Actually, it kinda made him absolutely freak out for the first few minutes after all the chaos, he might have hyperventilated a little. Then hyperventilated some more when he realized he was probably using up the air.

Less lucky again, was the way that he absolutely had no idea where the shell his brothers were, or if they were okay. He really tried not to think about that though.

His brothers were the bravest people he knew, not that he knew many people. April was equally as brave, but she didn’t have a shell or Master Splinter teaching her how to kick butt, she just kicked butt in her own April way. April was at home though, working on a history paper or some sort of school thing that sounded really boring and really awful. She was safe, that’s what was important. So was Dad, because it was time for his soaps, and he didn’t even know they were out fighting anything. He’d be curled up in his armchair complaining about the commercials like always. Safe and okay.

Leo n’ Raph n’ Don had to be okay too, because they were his brothers. And they were always okay. Mikey was the klutzy one, the one with too much energy and nowhere to put it. The one Master Splinter said had a lot more potential than his limbs knew how to organize, a natural maybe. Maybe accident prone, if you asked Don. Mikey was the one with the ‘special cases’, the weak immune system, the brittle bones, all those fancy five dollar words Don always had sticky noted and highlighted around his lab. He was used to people worrying about him, it was just what his brothers did, cause he’d scared them a lot when he was little and it had crept into their hearts and stuck thick, like a heartbeat that skipped every fourth pulse and sent a little shockwave of fear through them if they got too comfortable.

He wasn’t used to having to worry about them. He knew they had their things, growing up with just each other made it easy to read little things, their eyes and their posture, Mikey just knew. But they all had a particular thing about being an older brother, about making sure they took care of Mike in their own way, it made them happy. It made Mikey happy to see them happy, to feel safe and loved and like there was always a net under him. They didn’t want him to worry, so he tried not to. Optimism was key.

But there’d been an explosion, and they’d been right there. Mikey figured he was only safe because he’d already been outside, and his weird luck had picked up to keep him from getting smooshed. They’d been inside the building, and- he was hyperventilating again, stop that Miguel. Leo’s voice filled his head, as Mikey imagined his usual hand on the hip eye roll, panicking doesn’t help anything, buddy. Ya gotta stay calm, you don’t know anything yet so. It’s fine, right?

“Right,” he nodded to himself. He tried again to shove the lid open, and heard something ominously rumble above. “Okay, so I’m stuck in a trash can, can’t move it without stuff falling, my arm really really hurts, and my chest feels a little bad. That’s fine, it’s okay. Donnie probably put a tracker somewhere on me like he usually does, and they’re all okie dokie so they’ll find me. Just, um. Just have to wait.”

Mikey was terrible at waiting, though. He liked to move, to be active. Dad said he had no patience, but it was based off of a desire to help, so it wasn’t all bad. He’d gotten in trouble a lot as a kid for just wandering off alone, enough that his brother’s had made him carry around a phone inside a pocket at all times just so they could tell him to come home and make sure he wasn’t passed out in a gutter somewhere.

Leo always, always chased after him, though. And Raph would be there to fret and give him hugs even if he said he was okay, it still made him feel even better. And Don would invent something to make sure he was even safer next time, stay up all night to hold it out to him in the morning like the bags under his eyes weren’t dark crescent moons highlighted in red. That part was actually more of a problem than a comfort though.

He knew Donnie had a bit of a problem, being the oldest twin but the middle child had to be confusing. Having a brain smarter than most adults on the TV they crowded around probably made him feel more responsible than even Dad half the time, because Don was the one that knew stuff. He was the one who figured out what was wrong with Mikey as a kid, he was the one that had to be their doctor and their tech guy and their engineer and everything complicated and scary he kept Mikey from even knowing about. For all his smarts, the guy sure didn’t know how to take a break though.

Mikey sighed loudly, pretending he could see the dust swirling around him in the darkness. Maybe today had just been destined to be bad. He’d tried to break up a fight between Leo and Don earlier, and both of them had snapped and told him to ‘Stay out of it Michelangelo!’ Which, was Bad all over if they pulled out the full name. They even used the kind of tone that made him shrink his shoulders and duck into his shell just a little bit, and they hadn’t even apologized after. Too wrapped up in being Annoyed over nothing, he was sure.

They always apologized later, Leo would sneak into his room with cookies or with a goofy ghost story or just tickle him until he couldn’t help but giggle. Don would show up sort of awkwardly with a full season of Jupiter Jim and bribe him with a marathon and hot chocolate until he definitely couldn’t be mad anymore. He loved their marathon nights. It was the only time Don seemed to let go of whatever thing made him puff his chest up and arch his brows and constantly pretend to be a rubber wall of Indifference. Marathon nights were when Don talked to him about his big amazing science plans, about his dream of being an astrophysicist, of actually working with the people who did what Jupiter Jim did, but like. Real life and with less aliens.

“Statistically, it’s improbable that we’re the only life forms,” Don mumbled, head propped up on his hands as he lay on his stomach beside Mikey.

Mikey snorted, “I mean, I sure hope so. Humans exist, for one thing.” Don arched an eyebrow in that particular way of his that Mikey could never master.

“Alright sass master, got me there.” He slurped another mouthful of coffee loudly as Jupiter Jim narrowly avoided a laser blast from a reptile alien. “Did you know, there’s a radioactive cloud out there shaped like a bee? And one that tastes exactly like raspberries.”

Mikey blinked, Jupiter Jim rolled dramatically down a cliff. “How do they know it tastes like raspberries? Wouldn’t their heads pop off?”

“Mm!” Don swallowed another mouthful of coffee, Mikey pretended not to notice that he was halfway done his fourth cup. “They would! But the chemical compound is the same as raspberry flavouring. Also! It’s alcoholic.”

Mikey whistled, not taking his eyes off the screen. “How’d you know all that, Dee?”

Don fell silent for a moment, the rest of the Jupiter Jim team appeared in a beam of energy and chased the reptile into a ravine. This was Mikey’s favorite episode, it was the one where the whole team talked about how important Jupiter Jim was to each of them and shared their backstories while he was recovering in the healing chambers.

“Yanno, they have these tests online? For NASA and all these groups, supposedly if you get a high enough score they’ll mail you an invite or some kind of offer.” Mikey turned his gaze carefully, catching the way Don’s mouth twitched downwards slightly. “Course I passed them all, highest scores. Easy peasy. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t bothered, though.”

Mikey stayed silent, not wanting to break Don’s thought. It was so rare to see him like this, open and honest.

“Ignorance is bliss, as they say.”

Jupiter Jim’s team was recounting all the ways he had brought them together, finding each of them in their lowest points and immediately seeing what made them special. It was Mikey’s favorite part to quote dramatically. He turned his head towards his brother.

“Hey, tell me again about that new gadget you’re working on? You said it was like a anti-gravity booster?”

The next day he presented Don with his greatest masterpiece yet, a drawing of Don as the first turtle on the moon and a Very Official Document declaring Donatello a member of MENSA- Most Excellent Ninja Space Astronaut. Don’s smile was so wide Mikey’s chest hurt.

Mikey felt his eyes sting a little around the edges, something a little like dust and a lot like the kind of slow swallowing fear of the dark he’d had as a tiny tot. Except then he’d always found his brothers curled up right beside him, maybe tucked himself right underneath Raph’s big teddy bear arms and let his rumbling snores chase away all the scary stretching shadows. Now there was only the shadows, only the inescapable silence.

The Lair was never silent. Not ever. Mikey had a weird paranoia about silence. They lived in New York for crying out loud, the city that never slept. And even when it did the pipes still rumbled and the train cars still rattled and Don still mumbled to himself and Dad still grumbled in his sleep. It was never absolutely still.

“Guys?” Mikey whispered, just to prove that he was still here. That his voice wasn’t being stolen from him in the nothing along with everything else. “I’m scared,” he told the stillness, like it would nod understandingly back. Like it could give him the answers he really needed that his brothers were fine and they were looking for him and he wasn’t trapped forever. He couldn’t take the quiet, the way it pressed in on him and made his ears ring with the need to find something, anything to tune in on. He sniffled loudly, forced the knot in his throat away, and hummed. The first thing that came to mind, the Jupiter Jim theme song.

He hummed and thought of Donnie giving him all the space facts, the incorrect physics and what Mars was Really Like. Of Leo jumping over the couch and noogie-ing them both, calling them nerds loudly while happily joining in. Of Raph cheerfully plodding over with a big bowl of popcorn and picking their tangled limbs up just to plop them down on him, a big lazy pile of the best brothers in the world. Of Dad laughing to himself and settling into his arm chair beside them and demanding the volume increase until all their ears hurt.

He sat in the dark, waited, and hummed.

Don didn’t deal well with unmet expectations.

Potential was such a double edged sword; sure, he could fix everything because he learned advanced mechanical engineering by the time he was five and self taught bioengineering a few years later, but that also meant he had to fix everything. Because in all honesty, he was the only one who could. Sure, they’d gotten by before he’d figured out how to retrofit a toaster into a makeshift furnace, or before he’d rebuilt a fridge by reverse engineering all the parts from a TV commercial, but it wasn’t pretty. Sure, none of them had contracted an incurable terminal illness before he’d figured out how to get them the antibiotics they needed and what vitamin supplements they were missing, but it still left its scars.

That wasn’t to say Don didn’t love building things, improving what he already improved just to see if he could. His absolute favorite feeling in the world was knowing he’d found a new way to make something even more . Followed closely of course by knowing he was actually the first one to invent it at all, and the ensuing ooh’s and ahh’s of his family helped.

In cases like today however, not being able to preemptively guess a situation and solve it before it even happened really showed its disadvantages.

Watching Mike get absolutely blindsided by a mob of the gelatinous acidic offspring of their newest rival was not fun, watching Mike get kicked so hard they could all visibly see his plastron nearly crack was terrifying, but seeing Mike get launched backwards out the fourth story window was absolutely the worst thing ever.

Strike that, actually, the worst thing ever was seeing all of this, being immediately blocked by the little jello friends, and having them grotesquely coagulate into a larger gelatinous monster and promptly swallow them all up. Added bonus of not even being able to check if Mikey had landed face down on the pavement or somehow miraculously swung his way down in his usual naturally reflexive way.

Although, being swallowed up in jello made the explosion around them perfectly harmless, a pleasant side effect. The slight acidic burn on their entire all-over skin was awful, though. Luckily, Raph had managed to smash-jitsu out of their confines as soon as they’d been launched a safe distance away, so no lasting damage there.

The second Leo broke free, he was already gasping Mikey’s name. Typical worrywart that he was, but Don couldn’t find any ounce of humor in him when he noticed the smouldering pile of rubble that was the entire side of the building Mikey had fallen from.

“Oh no,” Don mumbled, brain immediately calculating the odds at a speed that made him nauseous. A lot of the odds were bad, really, really bad. Mike could tuck himself into his shell, benefit of being on the smaller side permanently, and genetic turtle traits, but his shell couldn’t withstand an entire building’s worth of pressure. Oh god, he was going to be nauseous.

Don had always taken it as an assumption that he was meant to always get them out of bad situations miraculously at the last second. His staff and tech were always treated like some kind of utility belt, always the exact right thing for the exact right time. Nevermind the fact his tech only worked right eighty percent of the time- also a side effect of being light years ahead of every advance, sometimes you and your brothers were the test dummies- never mind that even if he could calculate most regular everyday interactions, the types of people they met went beyond odds. Acid jellies included.

He was the doctor, he was the one who’d poured over books and internet forums and read dissertation after dissertation when he was five years old just to figure out why Mikey got so hurt all the time. He was the one who’d had to explain to Dad what ‘brittle bone disease’ was and why it was really important they all find vitamins and sit in the sunlight once a day. He remembered highlighting pages and pages of facts, trying to find out if Mikey was going to be one of the cases where his bone formations would give him heart problems, if his headaches were a sign of something even worse, if there was even anything he could do about any of it. He was the one who’d had to worry his whole life that he could have learned more, that if Mikey got too sick and his heart wasn’t able to work too well, he’d just disappear on them. Don was the one who always worried he was missing something, that there’d be a cure he could make or a warning sign he could find, or when Mike broke his leg this time maybe it wouldn’t heal okay.

Maybe this was the time Mikey wouldn’t just bounce back even brighter, and there had to have been something Don could have done differently, because he was supposed to always know everything. If he didn’t, that meant the world was actually a huge unending mess of variables and unquantifiable disasters that made Don want to lock everyone in his family in a vault and force them to be okay forever.

He remembered all the times his brothers got sick, all of their injuries, all the ways he could improve their outfits or their strategies if they’d just let him so that none of them would ever get hurt again.

When Leo and Mike had gotten lost that time in the sewers, and Raph and Dad and him had paced and stressed and worried as the little blip on Don’s program flickered out and back again, that had been a turning point. Only of course for the two of them to just show up outside the door, shivering but not frozen in the bottom of the sea like Don had pictured, but the way Mikey fell so, so ill after had been….

Well, Donnie had promised it wouldn’t happen again. That he’d get better equipment, better medications, and they’d all be fine.

Don pushed the door open to Mikey’s room, hearing the pained wheezes rattling from their smallest brother even in his sleep. Leo hadn’t moved in hours, just holding Mike’s limp hand in his and frowning to himself.

“You’re gunna give yourself wrinkles like that, you know.” He whispered, every inch of him the confident casual brainiac as always. Leo blinked up at him slowly, too slowly Don noted, his brother hadn’t slept at all since they’d gotten back. He just hummed, before turning his tired eyes back to their brother.

Mikey looked awful, pale and so impossibly small wrapped up in a mountain of blankets. His brows were furrowed slightly, like breathing hurt, and that was the worst part Don decided. That Mikey had to fight all this alone.

“He’ll be okay, he’s Michael, toughest kid we know.” Don added, nudging Leo’s shoulder gently. “It’s just a bad virus, all kinds of awful stuff floats around in that water, he’s lucky actually. I’m surprised you’re not sick too, from what you said.”

Leo sighed, his hand clenched tighter around Mikey’s small one. “He has to be okay,” And Don heard the rest like it was spelled out in neon letters in an alleyway, several hundred watts of responsibility and self blame. Of course Leo would find a way to put more of it on himself, like that wasn’t Don or Raph’s job as the older siblings. Like Mikey was only Leo’s responsibility just because their baby brother looked up at him like he was all red capes and blue spandex.

Mikey groaned quietly, a rough grating sound even in his sleep. Don’s brain spat out statistics of bronchitis, of fungal infections and bacterial pneumonia, of Leo catching it and the amount of antibiotics they absolutely did not have. He breathed long and slow, remembering that symptoms would have shown up by now if it were anything worse than an awful flu, that Dad’s herbal tea had already brought down Mikey’s fever, that they had a 24 hour window where they just had to watch him carefully and make sure he didn’t take any sudden turns for the worse.

He’d be fine, Don reminded himself firmly. He survived a tumble off a literal waterfall, and two hours out in the cold, a flu wouldn’t get him. Don wouldn’t let it. He squeezed Leo’s shoulder.

“He will be, he’s got us doesn’t he?”

Leo was going to destroy his hands, pulling at the rubble frantically. The guy was radiating terror, he was going to give himself a panic attack at this rate.

“Leo, Leonardo stop! Come on, Leon, this isn’t gunna work, we have to-”

“Have to what, Don? Our brother is in there somewhere, he’s- I have to- Mikey’s in there , Don!”

Don shot a glance to Raph, who was steadily pulling at the larger boulders and visibly shaken as well, Leo’s words making a spark of panic light up in his eyes.

“Think rationally, Leon! We don’t know he’s in there yet, let’s do a perimeter check first and-” And my scan will be complete enough I can get a solid picture if he’s even alive or not first before I decide what information to give you, Don thought grimly. “And we can call Dad and April to come with the Turtle Tank, it can lift a lot more than any of us anyways!”

“What if he’s hurt?” Raph spoke up suddenly, voice wobbly and tight with fear. “What if… he could be scared, and hurt. What if he-”

Don fixed him with the levellest look he could, not now Raph, we can’t do this right now, I can’t do this. “He’ll be fine, you know Mike, but if we go pulling rubble randomly, we could cause a larger collapse. We have to be careful.”

Leo shook his head, Don readied himself to argue again but stopped. Leo was trembling all over, shaking from his shoulders down to his toes. He knew Leo got like this, about Mikey specifically. Ever since that one bad week when they were kids, it was like a flip switched in their nonchalant brother’s brain, a sheet of glass that cracked all the way through. He took everything about Mikey’s well being really personally, for a long time he’d have a panic attack alongside Raph if Mikey was so much as scraped up from falling over.

Don remembered the one time Mikey had actually been mad, snapping at Leo for ‘not trusting him to be as good at stuff as they were.’ That had actually been a really tough day, for all of them. Dad had needed to sit them all down and talk about how Michelangelo had to make his own choices and live his own life, and sometimes that meant he would get hurt. If they just held his hand everywhere and worried, it made Mikey think they thought he was less capable somehow.

Maybe Don never got that message as well, because it wasn’t logical. Obviously Mikey was just as skilled as they were, if anything maybe he was even better. He was the first one to figure out their mystical weaponry, the creative artistic one, the people person, the empathetic and kind one. Of course he wasn’t less capable, he was just more likely to get hurt. It was just statistics.

Leo had tried to give Mikey space after that, but he’d struggled, he’d also never believed Mikey was less able to kick butt. He’d said once, about that day in the pipes, that Mikey had been the hero, actually. That Mikey had reacted faster and been tougher. PTSD did that, Don figured, made people anxious about things that were inevitable, like not always being okay forever.

Maybe Don had the same problem, in a different way, because he refused to consider for even a moment that he didn’t have complete control over the situation, even with the building half collapsed and two panicking brothers.

“Don,” Leo asked helplessly, trembling in an all over way that made every inch of his fourteen years stand out in his big round eyes. “What do we do?”

He has to be okay, Don heard, from a much younger Leo carrying the weight of the world on his too small shoulders. And he heard Mike happily babbling in his ear, colouring in broad paint brush strokes in his sketchbook while Donnie figured out his brand new invention, perching himself on a probably uncomfortable empty desk just to keep Don company. He saw Mikey, asking the exact right out of the box questions two seconds after walking over, enough to shake up Don’s overworked brain, to see the simplicity of the error message he’d been struggling with for hours. He saw Mikey giggling as Raph threw him up high on his shoulders and charged around the living room, calling Don to help them build the best pillow fort ever. He heard Mikey in a small voice asking him if he ever felt lonely in between episodes of Jupiter Jim, when the dim light just barely lit up the dark pools of worry in Mikey’s wandering thoughts.

A million fractionated moments, spread out in a myriad of shards around them like mirrors.

I don’t know, Don almost admitted, just barely biting back the words as they burned behind his teeth. I don’t know everything, I can’t, I’ve tried. It’s never enough.

“We split up, and call for him, and wait for Dad and April to get here.” He nodded, perfectly in control. Perfectly calm. Breaking every scientific hypothetical rule with every denial of mounting statistics, and trying desperately not to notice.

And then, quietly.

Humming.

Chapter Text

Leo wasn’t sure exactly when or how he’d gotten the job of doing their collective laundry, somewhere far enough back it was lost in sepia toned haze. Don had built their first laundry machine, showed them all how it worked, and suddenly, Leon was the expert who picked the day and who had to help fold and sort this week.

Even weirder was the fact he genuinely didn’t mind. Leo complained about almost every chore, even though he’d do them all almost as soon as he was asked. It was more of making a point, yanno, a way of saying I resent this task! While also fully accepting its importance and designating himself as the super capable ultra helpful brother who of course had the job done perfectly. Laundry was almost relaxing, though. Something in the rumbling of the machine, the swish of the water, maybe. Something about being able to solve problems, the guy who knew all the tricks to get stains out.

He really, really, didn’t like stains.

Pizza grease was a common one, but he’d figured that one out easy peasy. Little bit of dishwasher soap and bam! Evil grease stain no more. Chocolate and coffee? Vinegar, dish soap, and soda water, baby. Who did they think he was? Some kind of amateur? It wasn’t even like they had a lot of clothes to worry about, but man, scrubbing a myriad of strange chemical combinations out of Don’s belts and wrist guards was a fun time. Mostly he found soda water and a lot of scrubbing usually worked well enough- other than the one time it had burned a hole clear through but he refused to accept responsibility for that. Whatever chemical Don had been using was clearly sentient and clearly out for blood.

Ah.

That was his least favorite, actually.

Every other stain was a challenge, something Leo took as a badge of pride when he figured out the secret way of scrubbing Raph’s mask clean. It was mindless, relaxing, and felt like he was helping from behind the scenes in a way only he could, nobody wanted to interrupt either lest he assign them a task; it was Leon time. A break from the arguments and the teasing and the high energy, it was nice.

Blood stains were like a drop of oil in water. They pushed every good thing to the side and the brink and sat dead in the center staring at him and daring him to try and erase it. He knew the tricks to get everyone’s belts and straps and guards looking brand new, but.

If someone was bleeding bad enough to stain, no soap or determination could fix it. Not really. Scrubbing it away felt like a denial almost, a way for him to placate his own guilt maybe and shove it off to the side pretending like he was doing enough. A coat of paint over a dented wall.

Leo maybe worried a little too much, maybe. He was the coat of paint in all senses, his smile was a poster tacked up over a hole in the wall they didn’t want Splinter to see. He acted calm and casual, and mostly he was- he didn’t worry in fights or about new encounters or anything that would normally make people stress- but he worried a lot about Mikey. Mikey was his only baby brother, his responsibility since the guy started following him around when they were kids, he also got hurt. A lot. Like, always.

He’d worried about Michael his whole life, since he’d broken his arm from just rolling off the couch too hard as a baby. Mike had stopped getting hurt so much when he’d gotten older because he learned how to land better, how to stop himself from tripping so often, being lighter on his feet and so on, but man. Leo was so, so tired of seeing rusty red-brown against orange backgrounds.

What he wouldn’t give to have never seen Mikey’s favorite smiley knee pads cracked and dotted with red.

Right now, though? Staring at a mountain of crushed concrete and twisted metal, he would give absolutely anything to only have a simple stain to deal with.

He’d thought it was worse to not know, to be surrounded by what if’s and worst cases and maybes spiraling so high they blotted out the sun. When they’d heard the faint humming just barely squeaking through the concrete, sounding thousands of miles away and too close all at once, Leon had thought ‘thank you’ fervently, and directed nowhere and everywhere all at once. When they’d started calling back, digging steadily closer, he’d seen it as a miracle mile, the heroic ending to a story. When Don had turned towards them looking abruptly pale as the debris got larger and larger, and his gaze more spooked than they’d ever seen him, Leo hadn’t known what to think. This was good right? Mikey was alive, obviously, and not a turtle-cake lost forever, so what was the problem?

And then the sirens started.

“We…. We can’t get him out,” Don had whispered, like all the puppet strings holding him had snapped all at once, like he was actually letting his impenetrable armor of rationality crumble into dust between his fingers.

“What does that mean, Don? We can’t just-” Raph started, a confused desperation beginning to form in the line of his shoulders. Leo felt like an old TV, the first one Dad had ever brought home, which had barely any signal and too much static. He remembered having to press his head so close to the screen just to make out the image between the bouts of abrupt snow, turning the volume up to max just to hear the stilted conversations. He remembered feeling like it was still standing on the other side of the sewer grates, looking up at the sun, but it had been something. He felt desaturated, like he couldn’t quite hear somehow, he was missing the lines of dialogue that could queue him into what events led to those dark unfathomable eyes.

Don’s shoulders tensed, his hands clenching around his staff and his eyes squeezing shut, like an immediate instinctive reaction. Like a flinch but it held fast and pulled his loose strings taught.

“We can’t do anything! You see that?!” He gestured towards a large chunk of debris that appeared to be almost leaning against the remains of the building. “That is called a ‘triangle of life’, there's a void under it because of the way the concrete broke, and that’s where Michelangelo is.”

Leo’s anxious heart beat swelled with relief, and then paused as Don’s gaze continued holding steady on wild fear. “Isn’t….that good?”

“Yes, I mean no. It’s. Leo we cannot move that or that big chunk of rubble above it is going to fall down too! They’re balanced, precariously albeit,  but any movement could dislodge it and-”

“Don,” the static in Leo’s head swelled loudly. “Tell us what to do.”

The sirens grew closer, daybreak beginning to paint the wisps of silver a gentle gold. Usually this was Leo’s favorite part, the time of day he tried so hard to catch and drink in with every moment. When the bleary eyes opened and the day to day stuff started up in full tempo.

After The Incident, when Mikey was still small enough to worry about, Leo had loved taking his brother with him to watch the sunrise. Not the junction with the waterfalls, that had been neatly scratched off places he’d ever visit ever again, thanks, but he’d found a nicer nook with a good view of a quiet street. It was close to a hot water pipe, so it was toasty and secluded, and dark enough that they didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing anything in the shadows. Not that anyone really ever walked past from Leo’s experience.

Mike was an artist, through and through living up to his namesake in every way, and even back then his eyes rounded out with awe just watching the deep pinks and purples and bright warm oranges drip across the skies like he wished he could put them there himself. Leon wasn’t sure which part was his favorite really; he loved imagining that he was waking up with the world, that he was a part of it even at a distance, but he loved how enthralled Mikey always was too. Like they were sharing a secret somehow, something bigger than words could wrap around.

The way Don was looking at him, felt like some sort of parody, a dark twisted sort of wordlessness that he couldn’t possibly understand, but his gut roiled and dropped like he could still, somehow anyways.

“We have to leave him,” Don whispered, like it was punched out of him, like it killed him to know.

“What?! No, we- we can't! We'll just dig him out, right? No biggie-”

“The cops, Leo.” Raph added, voice equally as hollow. "They'll see us."

“He’ll be safe here, for now. Safer than if we stick around and all get caught, anyways. We’ll come back later, with the tank and Dad. The safest thing to do in a structural collapse is to stay still and wait, he can do that.” Don was rationalizing this, Leo realized, there was the logic kicking back in like a computer reboot. He was rationalizin g leaving their brother behind! Leo’s mouth opened, ready to argue, full of stark nearly blinding rage for a moment at how callous, how awful, that Mikey trusted him and!

And. The anger drained out, the faint humming growing quiet as the sirens rounded the corner, red and blue splashing off the rubble in the distance. Don didn’t have an instant fix this time, he saw it all over Don’s tense and blank face. And they didn’t have time.

Leo glanced helplessly over to his big brother, knowing in the end that it was Raph’s call. That they’d always relied on his decisions even if they didn’t agree because he always considered everything, always. Because Raph just wanted to protect all of them and do his best, and he’d never call for anything they didn’t all at least understand.

Raph’s eyes were pinched, a horrible emptiness filled Leo’s lungs.

“We have to go,” Raph said, and the static turned up to eleven and drowned everything else out.

When Mikey had been really little, before Don had figured out exactly why he got so sick, why he hurt so much, Leo had used to pick his baby brother up, plop him on his lap on the couch, and make up wild stories just to make Mikey smile. He’d tell stories about big friendly monsters, about rocket ships to the moon made of mozzarella pizza, all sorts of wild ideas. Later, Leo’d found a box of crayons in the dump and brought it home with a slightly soggy notebook, and Mikey started drawing out the stories as Leo talked.

Leo loved it, like he was the director and Mikey was the play; it was like having someone listen to every word he said and place gold glitter over each syllable. Mikey’s favorite was the ‘lonely astronaut’ story. Leo had taken an old book about a space journey Dad had found, and changed it all up just because. Transforming the baby book about vocabulary words into a tale of a lonely astronaut who wanted friends, who travelled all the way to Mars with his orange flowers.

“ He thought if he could plant his orange flower and if it grew up really big, it would mean people could see it from Earth and Mars wouldn’t be so lonely either. So he scooped up some Earth dirt, put his flower in a jar, and took his rocketship to Mars one day without saying goodbye to anyone.” Leo said, and he’d told the story so many times Mikey jumped in with a “Bye bye!”

“It was a really long journey, and really lonely. Only space rocks and far away stars to say hi! But he made it okay. And when he opened up his rocket door, and he took a big step outside with his moon boots, he found he wasn’t so alone at all.”

“He saw three smilin’ faces!” Mikey giggled, drawing with a green crayon in big circles.

“Right! And those three faces looked so friendly, he wasn’t scared at all. The first one told him he was-”

“Super strong!”

“You got it bud! And the second one said?”

“He was super smart!”

“Mhmm! And the last one, the coolest and friendliest one, he scooped the lonely astronaut up in his arms and?”

“Hug!”

Leo laughed, “He gave him the best most cuddly hug ever aaaand…. Tickled him until he smiled!”

Mikey squealed as Leo scooped him up in his arms- carefully, always carefully, and tickled him all over until Mikey’s smile was so wide his eyes squeezed shut.

“Leo!! Leo!” Mikey laughed.

“And the astronaut knew then that he wouldn’t ever have to be alone ever again! Cause the three aliens helped him plant his flower, and took him to their alien house and said?”

“Love you!”

Leo’s heart hurt it was so full, “you bet! They said “Mr. Astronaut, we’ll help you grow your flower and give you lots of hugs!” And asked him if he would stay on Mars and be their friend because nobody else could be their best friend the same way he could!”

Mikey beamed at him, “Leo!”

Leo stuck his tongue out at his baby brother and let him crawl back to his crayons. “What do you think bud? Is that story still good?”

Mikey’s chubby fingers passed over a blue and orange crayon, pressing them into Leo’s hands with all the seriousness the four year old could possess. “Leo? Did the ast’rnaut love them too?”

Leo hummed, “I dunno, what do you think?”

Mikey showed him his artwork, flapping the paper with four smiling green faces, one in orange with a circle around his head. “I think…. The or’nge flower grew up so big you could see it in the day! Because I know he loved them the mostest!”

Even the most distant scary person would have melted at that, Leo was pretty sure. He reached out and let Mikey fall into his lap, his pudgy arms wrapping tight around his neck. “I love you the mostest too buddy.” He whispered into Mikey’s temple, and held on just as tightly.

Climbing up onto the rooftop in the shadows, watching the deep orange skyline burst above the city like a spotlight, Leo couldn’t breathe.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Wait-

Mikey coughed, it felt like burning needles under his ribs. He could feel something moving where it didn’t belong, but ew, oh god, gross, if he focused on that too much he would definitely yartz. No thanks.

It was a little hard to track the time when you were buried under who even knows how much concrete and unable to move much, he was running out of ways to distract himself. Actually, no scratch that, he’d run out of ways almost immediately after waking up the second time. He’d passed out in between there for a bit, an indefinite weird squirmy amount where the grey fuzz in his brain had just kinda caught him around the middle. When he woke up, nothing had even moved. Just the darkness, the dark nothing, and him, lying flat on his shell waiting for anything at all. 

Except now, it was weirdly damp. He kept hearing this weird rushing sound nearby too. Mikey couldn’t focus though for too long, not really out of the normal, but it was like his thoughts kept drifting up and away in big balloons and fading into nothing before he could grab them. Something a little like boredom and a lot like bone deep exhaustion. But that didn’t make any sense. Mikey was boundless energy, he was pretty sure that would be his middle name if he had one. To be tired enough to forget would be like, the time Don and him had watched all of the Jupiter Jim movies back to back for two days straight, and then had to do jumping jacks and fell over.

He snorted quietly to himself remembering how funny Don had looked falling asleep still half upside down with his cheek squished into the training mat. And then the memory fizzled out.

Why was he laughing? His lungs felt icky. Like he’d been breathing in sawdust and it had painted his lungs all off grey.

He wondered when his brother’s were coming, then tried to think of something else. Something that would make him less scared. Like the way it wasn’t so quiet anymore, that was nice. Whatever that rushing was kept him from getting too antsy at least. And it was colder now, which was good. Being trapped in dark confined space really made the air musty and warm really fast.

He’d been humming something, hadn’t he? Right, the Jupiter Jim theme. He remembered when Raph had found a kazoo out in the dump and tried to learn how to play the theme for them, he’d chased Mike around for hours just blasting the tiny thing in off note squeaks. Man, he missed the big guy. What he wouldn’t give for a Raph Hug Supreme right about now.

He wondered where his brother’s were. He wondered if they’d forgot him. His head hurt.

He forgot to wonder.

Raph’s greatest joy in the world was his family. It seemed obvious, probably, but they were everything to him. He was happy to be able to protect them, to lead his brothers across rooftops or charging into battle, happy to help, to give out hugs, all of it.

Sometimes it was scary, sure. Everything about living as a mutant turtle was scary out of context. But he had a brainiac for a brother who’d invented a robot before he could do jumping jacks, a Dad who knew all kinds of amazing martial arts, a brother who always found a way to bounce back and keep them all motivated even when it seemed impossible, and a baby brother who was so full of natural talent he could figure out anything on the second try. Plus, he was real good at smashing.

Raph was grateful endlessly for the fact that they’d all grown up learning how to compensate for each others weakness and bring out the best in each other, in such close quarters it was easy to get grumpy and pick fights after all. Raph had learned from the best though, watching his brothers apologize and do nice things for each other made him a better brother too. And a better leader. His brothers trusted him, and he trusted them. Easy peasy.

Except for when it wasn’t easy at all. Except for when people got hurt, when his brothers were really scared, not just spooked or over exaggerating for a joke, when he wasn’t sure for a moment if everything would turn out okay this time. That was when leading became a burden, something he had to do because he was the oldest, a coat that was three sizes to small and ten times too heavy.

Looking over at Leo’s shell shocked and pale face, the way that Don wouldn’t look directly at anything, not even the tablet he was haphazardly punching codes into, the dust still lingering in the morning air, Raph could barely swallow.

Mikey had always gotten sickest when they were younger. If there was a flu bug that Leo caught, then Don would too- nature of being “twins” maybe? Probably just cause Don didn’t sleep enough honestly- and then Mikey would get it twice as bad. Like their collective germs had multiplied in his tiny body even though Mikey’d never done anything to deserve it. If Raph sneezed, Mikey would cough five minutes later, that sort of thing. He was also painfully eager to help, the kid had the biggest golden bleeding heart imaginable. Once, Leo had sprained his ankle and cracked his shell trying to pull off some fancy move he’d seen online on his skateboard- Raph swore Mikey and Leo combined was like taking out all the impulse control in the room and setting it on fire- and Mikey had spent the whole two weeks doing everything he could to make sure Leo never felt left out. Drawing him stuff, talking for hours about everything he’d seen out in the sewers, finding DVD’s of Leo’s favorite movies just so he had something to do while he was in forcible bed rest.

Mikey was the one always coming home with pets and with big sad eyes any time the news showed someone hurt. He was the one who’d offered to throw Raph’s pet fish a funeral while their other brother’s awkwardly attempted to be soothing despite visibly not understanding the situation at all. Mike was also the one who bent over so far backwards to help that he got himself in way too much trouble way too often.

Raph always worried, but he knew Mikey needed his space to grow too. Dad had said once that it was like a flower trying to grow in a dark forest, that they had to let some rain and snow get through in order to let the light hit its petals too. Raph understood that, and he never wanted to smother his brothers, so he tried to be ready for the worst at all times, just in case.

Maybe it was a product of growing up happy and loved, but this was looking a whole lot worse than even his worst case scenarios. In his most bone rattling sweat inducing nightmares, he’d never imagine having to leave a brother behind in the dust and rubble while cop lights refracted angrily back at them. He’d never imagined not knowing if a brother was hurt, never thought of the way Don’s voice strained as his glazed eyes rounded out with knowledge no one should ever have. He never imagined hearing Leon’s sad strangled note of despair, the way it just kind of squeaked out of him with an ‘oh’, and a lot of forlorn desperation, watching the fire trucks pull up and that pile of rubble containing their brother light up in blues and reds. He never wanted to ever think about Dad’s voice on the phone, the way his casual playful aura of disinterest would fall apart into fatherly fear in one half syllable, and how Raph would know deep down in the throbbing parts of his heart, that it was his fault.

He didn’t want to imagine that at all, actually. So, looking at his brother’s at their deflated shoulders and hopelessness, the way they seemed like crayon outlines of themselves, Raph decided he wouldn’t have to.

Placing a hand on each of his brother’s shoulders, he pulled on that endless amount of easy calm trust in his chest he always held for his family.

“Donnie, I got an idea.”

Raph had a hearing problem, something about sitting too close to a radio for too many years, but he always heard a strange high pitched ringing in his ears. It made things like whispers too close to his head, and quiet humming teeter just on the side of aggravating, like itching the inside of his ears but painful.

It made dead quiet too loud, the steam whistle in his head turned up to an eleven and impossible to escape.

Don knew all of this, obviously as the families doctor, he’d made sure to write notes about every ailment his brothers experienced. He’d assumed Raph liked music because it helped drown the constant noise out, that sometimes he didn’t hear things as clearly and had to rewind and watch with subtitles. He knew something about the way humming vibrated outwards twinged that thing in Raph’s eardrums that made it painful, and yet the guy never complained.

Leo hummed all the time while he did anything, from flipping through magazines to doing warm up backflips. Raph had said once that he liked hearing his brothers sounding happy, whatever that meant, but he’d made Don promise not to bring his ‘ear thing’ up because it would make Leo want to stop. Raph was a soft, gooey centered enigma sometimes. Obviously Leo would stop because he wouldn’t want Raph to suffer, obviously. Nonetheless, Raph never said anything on the topic, ever.

If maybe he tried to interject whenever he noticed Raph’s particular eyebrow furrow and get Leo talking instead, no one said anything either.

Generally, Don was happy to leave the leader mantle to his brother, even if he didn’t necessarily agree with the guys methodology all the time. Or often. Raph never forced any of them to follow anything, always listened to everyone’s perspectives, and found the middle ground none of them had the patience to discover on their own. He was a fantastic mediator, even if he was frequently too soft hearted to really say no to anyone.

Which is why Don was so surprised when Raph had agreed to leave Mikey behind, or he would have been surprised anyway, if he were currently capable of processing that kind of an emotion. If he’d thought about it, which he would, later deconstructing and reconstructing every possible outcome and berating himself for all of them simultaneously, he was almost relieved when Raph changed course. Logically, leaving Mikey made the most sense, yes. Logically, they didn’t have enough time to properly extract their baby brother from the precarious position he was in without risking collapse before the humans arrived. But…

Emotionally speaking? Everything in him wanted to try anyways.

Growing up smart meant a lot of the time his brains outweighed his heart, that’s just how it was. He was certain of everything, clearly talented, and compartmentalizing stress into clear cut scientifically analyzable proof was a natural process. Mostly. But he didn’t want to be a leader, because rationally, he also knew a good system only worked with charisma, with heart. He didn’t know how to balance the two, and while he wasn’t sure Raph always did either, he didn’t make choices that hurt people.

“Leo, can you make a distraction nearby? Something noisy but not dangerous. Don- if we get you the time, can you pinpoint the way we could move that block off Mike without it falling?”

Don blinked. “I- even if I could- which of course I can- we don’t have the muscle power to move the whole block.”

“We do,” Raph’s familiar glowing red aura lit up the darkness around them briefly, his dark eyes flashing. “Tell me where to hit it, and I’ll make sure it moves.”

“Won’t that-” Leo’s voice broke, he shook his head, the hollow fear that had carved him out seemed to lessen a little. “Won’t that hurt you, Raph? You’re strong but, that’s a lot of concrete buddy.”

Raph smiled, the white of his sharp tooth glinting faintly in the dim. “Don’t worry about that right now, alright? We just gotta make enough noise that the cops don’t notice us digging around nearby. We can’t leave Mike here, that’s what we focus on.”

The analytical part of Don’s brain spat out numbers and theories and hypothesis, all sparking in red underlines that it wasn’t efficient, carried so many risks, that day light was already sneaking up on them around the cityscape.

Don thought of Mikey, abruptly. Trapped, clearly hurt bad enough not to think to yell for help, just humming Jupiter Jim to himself in the darkness. Expecting his brothers to arrive any second. He remembered a conversation they’d had once, Micheal all round earnesty and trembling limbs, mumbling in toddler talk about being alone in the dark. Waking up from nightmares as a kid and immediately checking for each of them, his feet padding down the hallways and carefully creaking open each door, only to see Don still awake in his lab. Don remembered the sheepish smiles, the duck of the head at being caught out, the wordless invitation Donnie set out for his baby brother to join him. How Mikey never ever turned him down.

Don pulled his goggles over his eyes, setting his programming to find the structural weaknesses, the point of contact and greatest weight, scanning probabilities and running simulations, until.

The odds weren’t great, they were abysmal actually, but a gleaming number shone back at him nonetheless. “We only have one shot at this.” Don nodded, and Raph’s grin grew wider.

Raph smacked his fists together, then bumped Don’s. Leo’s shaking fist joined after a moment.

“That’s all we need.”

Raph usually hated humming, not that he’d ever tell his brothers.

Don knew, because he had to know stuff like that, but Mikey always hummed when he drew and Leo when he was happy and even Dad did a lot of the time. April liked to hum when she was really excited about something- not always for good reasons, but it was still nice to see her so cheerful.

So what if Raph got weird headaches sometimes from it, worth it.

Now though? Hearing Mikey’s faint hum from that pile of rubble had been the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. And he’d give anything in the world to make sure they kept hearing it for the rest of their lives.

Mikey couldn’t remember a time he’d been away from his brothers, or if he ever had actually. He’d never wanted to be. He drew big blue skies, fluffy white clouds with no grates blocking the sun, and four green smiling faces holding hands with one small grey one.

It was getting really hard to breathe, Mikey wondered if the oxygen was running out, or if that weird cold liquid splashing over him was real. He figured he should probably be more worried, but that thought didn’t stick. His brain was like one of those steel machines Don made, the ones that magnets wouldn’t attach to, and glue came off of. Nothing seemed particularly important in the darkness, other than how lonely it was. It felt off centered. Not quite real, like he was in a big blanket of fuzz and watching everything happen in a movie. Except, yanno, he couldn't see anything either.

His brothers were on their way, he was sure. He couldn’t do anything anyways, the ceiling had collapsed lower at some point. Lying flat on his shell his beak almost touched the top now, which was a little gross. Dumpster fluids and all that, he was probably going to get sick again. Don would be mad, but then he’d give him vitamins and meds and make him wrap up in a blanket and Raph would give him soup and fuss while Leo put on Jupiter Jim for them.

Mikey wished he could watch Jupiter Jim now. There was an episode like this kinda, where Jupiter Jim was trapped in a rock slide with his team stuck on the other side, and there was a mission with a timer. Something ticking down, but Jim had the codes they needed. Jim was running out of air and getting sleepier but he managed to dig a hole enough that his team could hear him, and tried to pass along the codes so they’d still save the day while he was stuck behind.

Not that his team would ever let him stay behind.

Mikey usually knew all the lines, but, it seemed so distant and unimportant, like a dream he’d woken up from. Leo would tell him what happened, in his best dramatic voice. And act it out too, while Don made some lighting effects and over the top props and...and.

Mikey missed his brothers. It was still too quiet even with that rushing sound, and now it was cold too.

It hurt to breathe.

He remembered once, when he was so, so small, one of his first memories actually, Dad holding him in his lap and singing quietly. Mikey’s chest had hurt then, too. Probably because of his bone thing, he’d broken a lot of ribs and wrists and things just moving around as a baby. He remembered it hurting a lot, and crying because he didn’t know how to get it to stop, and Dad just bundling him close, rubbing circles in the back of his shell and rocking slowly.

Through the distant fog of memories, he could see his brothers carefully peering around the side of the chair, eyes swimming with worry, hanging off of Raph’s shoulders to make sure he was okay.

He remembered sniffling, because his chest hurt, but knowing his Dad would make it better somehow, and his brothers would help. It was a good memory despite everything.

“Raph?” Mikey rasped, his voice sounding funny in the almost non existent space around him. “Donnie? Leon? I just want…. Want you to know I love you guys, ‘kay?”

The part of his brain that was still fully online knew they wouldn’t hear him, and the fear still felt light years away and wrapped up in stardust, but it felt important. A reminder to himself that he wasn’t asleep.

When the darkness above him began to rattle, he almost thought he must have closed his eyes, because nothing had moved in what felt like forever. There was a distant sound, like a crack of an iceberg in a movie, like Raph’s jitsu activating for the first time. Mikey thought about the way Raph’s face lit up every time he got that move to work, like he was so excited to be able to have his own special hero moment. Raph always looked so heroic always, Mikey told him as much, but Raph just noogied him gently and never seemed to take it to heart.

Mikey wished he would, all of his brothers were so amazing.

Maybe Mikey did close his eyes for a second, thinking about the cool stuff his brothers had done over the years; that time Leo had swam through an ice cold sewer drain for him and then carried him in the cold for fifteen minutes; Don taking him to the junkyard to show him how he reverse engineered everything, only to fight off a bunch of angry guard dogs all by himself when Mikey had gotten separated; Raph performing the coolest series of flips and ducks just to knock out the bad guy holding Mikey over a ledge, and catch him before he could so much as realize he was falling. Maybe he was really running low on oxygen and was just sort of blinking out, like a candle on the last scrap of a wick. 

He'd been determined to hold on, but then he'd forgotten. Maybe it really was that simple, just falling asleep before you realized. 

Every breathe in Leo’s chest was white hot, electric fear behind his teeth. He jumped through a portal, jammed his sword into an important looking panel, and waited for the alarms to spike back up again before leaping through another portal. He didn’t know how long he’d been breaking everything and praying no humans were nearby, not that any of that mattered right now, before his phone lit up.

‘We got him’

Leo’s shoulder sloped with wild crushing relief, before sliding back up with the desperate need to see, to make sure. What if Mikey was really hurt still? What if he’d been crushed, what if- what if.

He’d never ran so fast in his life, leaping across rooftops, ignoring all the red and blues from below, although part of him did catalog that the humans seemed to have followed his chaotic rampage at least. All of his thoughts swirled around Mike. Grateful, unbelievably so, that he’d managed to hold onto a scrap of safety despite everything, making internal checklists of seat belts and bubble wrap and Mikey was not leaving the lair for a month if he had anything to say about it and-

He rounded the corner and pulled up immediately short. His brother’s were crouched on a rooftop, Raph absolutely covered in dust cradling something. Leo stepped closer, and caught the familiar flash of orange, and his heart snapped and rebuilt at the rise of tears to his eyes.

Crash landing to his knees beside his brothers, he reached out and hesitated, fear warring internally as he realized he didn’t know how hurt his baby brother was. If he was conscious even, if his brothers had managed to lift their little bro to the roof and were just sitting around because he was already too far gone or- Mikey’s eyes blearily slid over to his, with a lazy grin.

“Hi, Leo,” he croaked, and everything in Leo’s chest swelled and collapsed all at once.

“H-hey, buddy. Glad to see you in one piece, huh? H-how’re you feelin’?” He glanced over at Don, who had his phone out, Master Splinter’s voice faintly echoing over the device.

“He’s got cracked ribs, a mild concussion, a rotated knee cap, mild hypothermia, and a shoulder sprain,” Don told him, “He inhaled a lot of dust, and was sitting in a garbage dump, so we’ll have to watch him for any signs of fever but….He’ll be okay.” He heard Dad's sigh of relief echo through the static phone line at the same time as his and Raph's. 

Thank god , Leo thought, oh my god, thank you.

Splinter said something about meeting them there, Don mumbled something back about keeping Mikey as still as possible until they could check for anything internal, and all at once the saturation and the sound and everything sparked back up. Leo became hyper aware of the dig of gravel under his shins, the bruises and the soreness in his shoulder from slamming through so many doors, the way Mikey's breathing hitched just a little at the end, like a wheeze that wasn't coming out quite right, the way the sun was well and truly above the buildings now. It was a lot, it was too much probably, but he didn't have enough air in his lungs to be anything but wholly, and completely, endlessly thankful. 

He didn’t realize he was crying until Mikey’s shaking hand touched his cheek.

“Leo, what’s wrong?” And jeeze, Mikey looked so concerned, it broke Leo’s heart all over again. He glanced up to meet Raph’s eyes, and saw the familiar ache of ‘our brother is literally the sun’, and had to close his eyes for a moment just to force his lungs to cooperate enough he could reel himself back under control. The last thing Mikey needed right now was a big brother on the verge of a meltdown, anyways. Especially since he had nothing to even meltdown over. The what if's were still dangerously high, and it would probably take them all at least a month to process how many things could have gone wrong, to shake the way Don's eyes had gone completely blank with fear, the way Leo had been absolutely sure for a moment that his entire world had fallen down a deep dark sinkhole he'd never climb back out from. But he was fine, they all were fine. 

Mikey wasn’t a turtle pancake, they didn’t leave him behind, he didn’t blame them, and god, maybe he didn’t understand right now and maybe he would later, but he was alive. Leo felt his fourteen years fading away, remembered being a nine year old, scared that his brother had slipped through his fingers right in front of him, remembered thinking he would do absolutely anything to make sure Mikey was okay. He felt that same bone trembling relief as he had when Mikey had gotten the all clear from Don, when his sniffling was nothing more than a sniffle and he was all in all okay.

“Nothing’s wrong, Mike. Not a single thing.”

He wasn’t sure if his brothers would always be okay, and that thought haunted him with it’s black hole of panic and uncertainty, but he could be grateful right now. He could take Mikey’s mask and wash out the dust and the stains and be glad that this was all there was.

Maybe rust on orange wasn’t so bad, because it meant that they were still kicking. It meant that they’d gotten through the worst of it, and all that was left was a stupid stain, and Leo could get rid of that too. Maybe one day, when they were older and fought scarier villains things would be different, maybe building collapses would be the regular for them- he hoped against hope it wouldn’t be- but right now. He was so grateful. He pressed his forehead against Mikey’s, closing his eyes and just, thanked the stars and the sun and the moon and everything in between.

“What do you say we head home then, huh? Enough excitement for one day, I’d say.”

Raph laughed shakily, Don smirked but it felt a little too sharp. Mikey just kept grinning. 

"My heroes," Mikey wheezed, and the orange sunrise splashed the sky with blues and reds and purples above them.