Archive of Our Own ^beta

Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.

- Richard Siken

In New York Base 01, the rumour mill never rests.

“What do you think happened to him?”

Words are passed around like crumpled notes between friends.

“I heard he was trying to build a transmat and got stuck in another dimension.”

Theories are posed between soldiers, medics, mechanics.

“Come on, that old horseshit again? It was his mutant genes. I heard a few years back he experienced a secondary mutation and it turned him into a mindless dinosaur-looking motherfucker. They turned him back, but like… genes mutate all the time on their own, don’t they? I bet it came back and he’s still out there somewhere, some poor lonely old-ass dinosaur with no idea how many people are searching for him.”

Some are far more plausible than others.

“What is this, a horror story? The Foot took him out. Obviously. They probably dumped him in a pit and torched him like they do everyone else.”

These walls talk, and these walls listen.

“No way, man. He was a Hamato. The Shredder wouldn’t have just let him die quietly. He would have broadcast his execution on live TV.”

Sometimes those listening in are a little too close to the situation.

“Not even that, he would have broadcast him tied to a chair for ransom or something. Y’know, lure out the others?”

Sometimes those listening in already know the pain of this loss.

“Bold of you to assume he didn’t just get taken out by some dumbass footsoldier by mistake.”

They have lost someone too. A friend, or a father.

“The Shredder still would have broadcast his body, though. Probably taxidermied, the sick fuck.”

Or a brother.

“This is getting stupid. Ever think maybe he just ditched? Someone had to leave first. Someone always has to leave first. Makes sense it would be the one with the brains to skip town first.”

The brother wants answers. He wants answers more than any of these fools could hope to understand. It consumes him, leaves him waking in a cold sweat, tremors wracking his body.

“Jesus Christ, don’t let O’Neil hear you say that. She’s been looking for an excuse to punch someone ever since Jones died.”

Where did he go? Where did Don go?

“It’s not O’Neil you have to worry about, any of the turtles will kick your ass if he ever catches you guys talking about the missing one, so just shut your traps until we’re out of the base!”

Where did his big brother go?

“I thought we were fighting against fascism. What, we can’t even have an opinion around here?”

Is he anywhere anymore?

A hand clamps down on Michelangelo’s shoulder, and he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Leonardo is at his side, expression thunderous. The voices fade off into the distance as the resistance fighters leave the base, heading out into the streets of New York for a standard nightly patrol.

The hard expression tugs into concern. “Mikey, you shouldn’t be up by yourself, your dressing needs changing. And have you even taken your painkillers?”

Michelangelo ignores Leo’s words. It still hasn’t sunk in yet that his arm is gone - maybe it never will. Instead, the words from that overheard conversation rattle around in his head like shrapnel.

“Ever think maybe he just ditched? Someone had to leave first. Someone always has to leave first. Makes sense it would be the one with the brains to skip town first.”

“That’s… that’s bullshit, right?” Mikey utters. He feels oddly shaken up, the same way he does after he’s had a really close call against an enemy, or when he loses his footing right as he’s about to jump onto the next building. (The same way he did when he first looked down and saw nothing but blood and bone where his arm was supposed to be.)

He doesn’t know why their words have taken this toll on him, but they’ve chilled him down to his bones and leave him shaking on the spot.

“Look at me.”

Leo drapes Mikey’s favourite knit blanket around his shoulders and forces their eyes to meet.

“Don’t listen to them, Mikey. It’s just gossip. Stories told by clueless people who think they know the kind of person our brother is.”

Michelangelo knows that. He knows that. Leo’s eyes are firm and steady. He is unwavering. Leo knows it’s not true and Mikey trusts his brothers more than anyone in this world, so why is he crumbling from the inside right now?

(Donatello has been missing for five years, nine months and eight days now. Mikey promised himself this year that he would stop counting the days, but he just can’t seem to help himself.)

…

Michelangelo hears Leonardo before he sees him.

Footsteps fall lightly, but it’s telling that he can hear them at all. His eldest brother brings with him a heaping of rainwater, running off of his dark leather coat and pooling at his feet.

“3rd Earth has been shut off from the rest of the multiverse,” he announces to the room.

Leonardo’s report is the first time that Michelangelo has seen him in five years.

There are a lot of things Mikey could say to his brother. Why is this the first he’s hearing about Leo contacting the multiverse? What was he doing fucking around with the multiverse in the first place when April told him, trusted him to keep an eye on the resistance in Northampton? Why has he never returned Mikey’s calls or letters during this time?

But there’s no point needling him for these answers, because Leo will simply clam up again and leave as soon as the criticism starts.

“Sit down before you fall down,” Mikey says instead, taking in his brother’s exhausted, dishevelled appearance. “Dry off and you can tell me everything.”

He tosses over to Leo a blanket always folded over the back of his chair, which he saves for when he’s in charge of comms at night. It’s one of the few things he has left from a simpler time, a time when there were four close brothers, not three disconnected, a time when it was normal for Raph to knit Mikey a blanket for Christmas and Mikey to underappreciate it, leading to several large pulls from where he let Klunk make biscuits on it back in the day.

Now, seventeen years later, it’s one of his most cherished possessions.

Leonardo pulls off his coat and Mikey picks it up, hanging it on a hook in the corner and dragging a metal bucket to sit beneath it, catching the water that drips off. It provides a metronome of metallic thunks with each drop. Thunk, thunk, thunk.

As he turns, Mikey catches sight of his brother’s body and frowns. The scarring on the back of his head has faded more since the last time he saw Leo, but there are deep gashes down the front of his plastron that weren’t there the last time he saw him. He only glimpses them briefly before Leo wraps himself up in the orange knit blanket, folding himself up into the comms chair like he’s another piece of the decor.

There’s so much about the injuries, old and new, that have Mikey’s insides scrunching up like old newspaper.

When did they end up like strangers?

He puts the tea on in silence. It’s old, so it doesn’t taste as good as it should. If Leo’s been visiting the Battle Nexus, the tea he’s had there was probably far better than the stale crap Mikey can provide. But here in New York Base 01, this is as fancy as it gets, and Mikey limits himself to one pot a week to make it last longer.

If Leo read his letters, he would know this, but Mikey is getting the feeling that he’s been letting them pile up.

He places a chipped mug in front of his older brother and hoists himself up to sit cross-legged on the table opposite.

“So.”

Leo blinks a few times at the directness of Mikey’s approach. It would have been amusing if he didn’t look so much like a drowned rat right now. “I expected you to say something goofy, like ‘spill the tea’ as you handed me the cup.”

Ah, that would have been good. How come Mikey stopped making jokes, again?

It was probably something to do with the apocalyptic worldwide takeover they’re trying to stave off.

“I’ll save that one for next time.” He fixes Leo with a pointed look. “Now, what’s the story?”

“Right.” Leonardo’s entire body sags, folding itself up further and further inward. “I’ve been… dimension-hopping lately.”

“Escapism. Didn’t strike me as your style.”

Mikey gets it, though. He can’t leave even if he wanted to - he could never bring himself to leave April alone to handle this place. Besides, if he leaves, who is going to keep a watchful eye over Sensei’s grave? Raph is always off somewhere on his bike, constantly running on empty fumes only to reignite whenever he crosses paths with a footsoldier. And Leo, apparently, is more prone to leaving for 2nd Earth whenever things get tough.

If Mikey’s coping mechanism wasn’t clinging to the few constants he has left in his life, maybe he’d be just like them.

“Not escapism.” He frowns up at Mikey, who holds his gaze unfalteringly. “...I really was looking for solutions to our problems. And two heads are better than one.”

That second head being that of grey fur and long ears tied back, if Michelangelo had to guess.

“And it backfired?”

Leonardo stares down at his cup and takes a sip.

“And it backfired.”

Michelangelo thinks about the new Daimyo. He might have been raised better the second time, but he still conflates him with being The Ultimate Ninja Asshole who tried to kill half his family during their first time at the Battle Nexus.

“I’ll be honest. I’m surprised it took this long for that guy to cut this place loose,” Michelangelo muses. “He seemed like the type who would turn his back on us at the first sign of trouble. Wouldn’t be the first time he’s completely screwed us over.”

“He’s… different this time around,” Leo mutters. He gulps back hot tea, not stopping to comment on the taste. Mikey would wager that’s probably for the best. “I’m not going to defend him - I’m furious. But he had to think of the possibility of Shredder realising this world was still connected to the Battle Nexus. Imagine him with his current firepower, storming that place to take the war staff. He already has plans to go into space, we can’t give him access to alternate dimensions too.”

Michelangelo feels a prickle of annoyance. Not defending the Daimyo his ass.

“So this was your idea, then? You agreed with the Daimyo to give up on us all for some greater good bullshit?”

“No, I didn’t, and how dare you?” Leo jumps to his feet, eyes blazing, and slams his now empty mug down next to Mikey so hard he flinches. “I asked for help! I tried to explain the gravity of the situation we’re facing and ask for some reinforcements! I went to a place where the best warriors across the universes gather, hoping I could at least convince some of them to join our cause, but-”

He takes a few deep breaths to calm himself, pulling the orange blanket tighter around himself. “...He said it was too dangerous to keep 3rd Earth tethered to the Nexus any longer. He told me to say my goodbyes to Usagi and then he ripped our world away.”

Mikey tenses at those words.

“Usagi was with you?”

“He was going to join the fight.” Leonardo turns away, voice wavering as he admits, “It was his idea to take this matter to the Daimyo to begin with. We both believed he would help. When the Daimyo said he needed to cut 3rd Earth’s tethers, Usagi was even willing to leave 2nd Earth behind and join me, but… I couldn’t let him do that.” Leo wraps his arms around himself, holding on tight to the fraying edges of the blanket, and lets out a big, watery sigh. “Fuck. I’m sorry, I couldn’t take him with me.”

Michelangelo’s heart pangs, and he gets down from the table. He walks over to Leo, reaching for his brother and pulling him in close, squeezing his shoulder as tight as he can. “Don’t apologise, I couldn’t have asked him to do that either. I’m sorry, Leo.”

They stand there like that for a moment, Mikey resting his cheek against his brother’s shell and holding him steady. Leo buries his head in his hands.

“I let you down. I let you all down. We’re cut off, we can’t bring in outside help. We’re fucked. And he was there, he was willing to come with me, but I- I couldn’t just let him-”

He makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, and Mikey holds on, waiting patiently while Leo struggles to spit out his own words.

“He - he has a son, Mikey,” Leo cries at last, words muffled against his hands. “He has a son! How the shell could I let him come with me if there’s a chance he might never see his own child again?”

Mikey freezes. His brain is struggling to keep up. Usagi being a father - that shit just ain’t computing. But Leo is frantic, he’s serious. He’s on the verge of breaking, even.

“A son?”

“I never even met him. Shell, now I never will. Isn’t that sad?” The tremors in his voice turn into nervous laughs, high and panicky. “We’re cut off now. We’re all alone in this world. It’s just us, and the Shredder, and no one to help us! God, I think I might be sick.”

A hiccup hitches into a heaving sob, and it quickens as more rapid sobs overtake.

“Leo, stay with me. You need to steady that breathing, alright? I’m running on two hours sleep, I don’t have the spoons to help you through a panic attack.”

He keeps his voice light, hoping this doesn’t go further than a few shed tears and some deep breaths. Mercifully, Leo begins to copy his steady breathing and slides down against the wall until the two of them are sat on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, only a Garfield-orange blanket between them.

Mikey reaches beneath the fabric for his hand and grips it. Leo squeezes back, still wrangling with his lungs, trying to do the counting trick Donnie once taught them.

It's a sad story, really. Leo had something good going for him once upon a time, a flicker of hope for a life that could have come after their years of hiding and fighting. Sometimes Mikey wonders how it would have all panned out if Donnie had stayed. Would the Shredder be gone by now? Would Donnie be trying to launch some tech startup with April, would Raph open a mechanic shop with Casey? Would he still be moonlighting for the Justice Force and kickin' it back with Splinter on the weekends? Would they be listening out for a new set of wedding bells soon, needing to bring something borrowed and something as blue as the mask on his brother's head?

In his dreams Mikey gets what he wants. In his dreams, his family are whole and thriving. He really took it all for granted, didn't he?

“I'm sorry,” Leo mutters again, once his breathing has begun to even out. “I'm sorry for letting the resistance down. I'm sorry for ignoring your letters.”

“Oh, so you did get them.”

The accusation is, again, very light. He's annoyed, sure, but now doesn't seem like the right time. He'll save the chewing out for tomorrow if Leonardo is still here, but chances are when he wakes up his brother will be gone, leaving behind nothing but the bucket of collected rainwater like a depressing calling card.

“I didn't know what to tell you.”

A bold-faced lie. He could have talked about his getaways to 2nd Earth, he could have talked about his dimension-hopping, could have talked to Mikey about his plans to contact the Daimyo directly.

When did Mikey become such a fucking pushover?

Well, probably the moment he realised that they're doomed. Deep down Michelangelo has known this for a long while, but seeing Leo show up here tonight, devastated and without hope, has shocked it into him anew.

Crap, he used to be good at this. Used to know the exact joke to crack - and even if it didn't land, a groan or retort was better than silence or indifference.

He doesn't know how to comfort his brother anymore.

“You could tell me anything. You know that, right?” Mikey tilts his head to glance at Leo, who at least has the decency to look embarrassed for breaking the thread. “You could tell me what's going on in your life. Mundane shit like what you had for breakfast. Heck, tell me a fart joke!”

Leo cracks a smile at that and shakes his head. Voice softening, Mikey utters, “Shell, you could have just sent me a note saying, ‘Hi Mikey, I'm not dead.’ That would have worked just fine.”

Beside him, Leonardo nods hollowly.

“Right. I… I can do that. I'll try to do that.”

“Pinkie promise?”

“We don't even have pinkies.”

“Pinkie promise?” Mikey echoes, more firmly this time. His older brother sighs and nods, lifting out the third digit on his right hand and wiggling it in front of Mikey’s face resolutely.

“...Pinkie promise.”

Quiet blankets the room. Leo's breathing is ragged, still finding its natural rhythm. Mikey thinks about his unfinished tea on the table, and how his fix for the week is just going to go cold and shit. That's the sacrifice of brotherly love, he supposes.

…On the topic of love.

“Did you at least kiss Usagi properly when you said goodbye?”

Leo’s head shoots up and he stares at Mikey incredulously.

“What the… You knew?!”

“You thought you were that good at hiding it?” Mikey retorts, nudging his brother's shoulder with his own. He leans back and sighs. “Well, if the world ends tomorrow, at least we can all die knowing one of us turtles got some action.”

Leo stares. Then he snorts. Then he laughs. He throws his head back and laughs at the absurdity of Mikey’s words, how inappropriate, how very Mikey of him. Mikey grins as the laughter goes on and on, briefly singing some life back into the room. If he closes his eyes, he can almost hear the other two laughing along. If he opens them again, the shadows of their youth will vanish, and so too will the voices. So he embraces the darkness behind his eyelids and clings to that warmth, even if it’s just for an instant.

Finally, when it all peters out, Leo sighs and looks over at his brother with a wry smile.

“What a bleak way to look at things.”

“That was actually an attempt at being optimistic.”

They laugh some more, and Mikey tells him some stories as the night draws on and the rain eases. Things April has said, bizarre objects he's found during patrols, memories that have come to him at inopportune moments. Leonardo listens along, occasionally filling the quiet with his own anecdotes, fewer and far between in comparison. There's a lot he's determined to keep to his chest, but Mikey can't be bothered to probe too deeply. It's all just word salad anyway, and then they are asleep.

In the morning, predictably, Leo is gone. Less predictably, however, he has left a small note behind beside mugs and a teapot that have been thoroughly washed.

I won't break the thread again. Returning to Northampton. I'll find a good story to tell you in the next letter.

Take care of yourself, Mike.

Michelangelo wants to believe things can be different, but his brothers have broken their promises too many times now.

After all, can't pinky promise without any pinkies.

(Donatello has been missing for fifteen years and six months, give or take a couple weeks. Mikey’s getting tired, and distracted, and old. He lost count of the days a long time ago, but he still tries to keep on top of the months. It helps him keep a grip on reality - otherwise, one of these days he’ll cut himself loose and lose that hold on Donnie for good.)

…

Leo might not survive the night.

It’s not quite sinking in. Michelangelo has lost friends over the years, but none as close as when he lost Casey. Losing Casey was an experience unlike anything else, because on top of the grief he was also drifting in and out of consciousness, barely lucid from the pain medication he was taking, and trying to process the fact that he had also lost half of his fucking arm that night.

He was the one who picked up the frantic message from one of Leo’s close comrades, a kid barely out of his teens that has seemingly glued himself to the eldest turtle’s side. He was the one who sent out the distress call, who ordered the medics to set up the theatre for surgery, who reached for his brother’s hand as he was carried in on another's back, face bloody and melting and unrecognisable through the weak cries and writhing in agony.

He told them everything he knew about Leo's health and biology, let them take as much of his blood as they needed, ate a few stale biscuits to replenish his energy even though his nausea spiked at the thought that he was sat there, stuffing his face, while Leo could be breathing his last breaths.

Now, he’s the one who waits in the infirmary, growing increasingly numb as time draws on.

He’s seen death. He’s seen blood and gore and loss, he knows the score. But Leo’s death? His brother Leonardo’s death? It’s a pill he can’t even begin to swallow. If he dies… that’s it?

That’s so finite. With Donatello, they have always been spared the pain of knowing. Raph and Leo might yearn for closure, but closure means losing hope, and as jaded as he’s grown over the years, Mikey can’t bring himself to simply give up on Donnie.

He can’t give up on Leo either.

April sits with him for a while, rubbing a hand along his shell and trying to offer him words of reassurance that fall hollow as soon as they leave her mouth.

“They’re doing all they can,” she promises, face pale and pinched with worry. “But you saw what that explosion did to him, Mikey. Even if the surgery goes well, he might not… might not gain his sight back.”

Mikey isn’t sure what to say to that. It’s not like he can control the outcome, nor can he control how fucking scared it makes him feel to be that powerless. His brother might be dying, and he’s doing nothing.

Duties call April away, but she hugs him tightly before he goes, an embrace stronger than he has felt in a long time. It’s extra firm, he realises belatedly, because she worries that when she comes back, Leonardo will be dead. And if Mikey doesn’t have any family tethered to him when Leo fades away… well. He doesn’t trust himself to get through this alone.

He pulls his orange blanket close around himself and shuts his eyes, thinking back to that night he and Leo sat together with this blanket a barrier between them. He wants to be back there, laughing with his brother, trying to force him into making promises they both knew he wouldn't keep.

Mikey is homesick, even though Base 01 has been his permanent place of residence since the death of Master Splinter left them orphaned all those years ago. He’s homesick for training drills at dawn under the critical eye of their father, he’s homesick for the sound of bamboo clattering during balance practice. He’s homesick for lazy evenings with Klunk sleeping on his shell while he reads comic books, he’s homesick for the thick, syrupy taste of coffee the way Donnie used to make it for him, with four sugars and plenty of cream.

He misses being able to glance up and see Leo reading on the couch, knees tucked up under his chin as he turns another page on the pulp book of the week their unhoused friends down at the city dump salvaged for them. He misses being able to hear Raph’s off-key singing from the shower, as much as it used to grate on his ears at the time. He took for granted hearing Donnie’s power drill or blowtorch going at ungodly hours, took for granted the smell of burning incense and those long afternoons of meditation that would drag on and on.

Mikey can’t lose anyone else.

“Where is he?!”

Raphael bursts into the room, wild-eyed and frantic. His eyes land on Mikey and he falls down in front of him, reaching for his hand and gripping it tightly.

Mikey is too stunned to speak. As it stands, Raph has refused point blank to be in the same building as Leo for years now. If they ever meet out in the wild, he’s heard it turns into a sparring match that teeters on the edge of murderous.

There’s no reason Raphael should even be in New York right now, but he’s here, on his knees, terror splashed so bluntly across his face it makes Mikey’s heart ache.

“You’re here,” he utters.

The grip on his hand tightens. It hurts, and it’s so very reminiscent of how Raph would tug on his hand when they were just tots and wandering the sewer tunnels against their father’s orders not to. If a roach scuttled past, Mikey would be trapped in an iron grip and dragged along while Raph put some distance between them, crying at how much he hated bugs.

Raphael is ashen-faced and terrified.

“Talk to me, Mike, where the fuck is Leo?!”

“They're trying to patch him up in there. Trying to save his face. And - and his eyes. Shit, Raph, his eyes.”

Raph falters.

“It's that bad…?”

“I've never seen anything like it,” Mikey confesses in a whisper. If he closes his eyes, he sees it. “He was in agony. It was like his mask was fused to his skin.”

Raphael curses. He leans forward, resting his brow against the cold, distant metal of Mikey's kneepad, and screams out again, a screech of a curse that rattles the walls.

“Is he blind now?” he asks against scuffed steel and dark leather. “Will he ever fucking see again?”

“We don't know.” The admission haunts him. There is so much they don't know. His older brother might be dying in that room, and he has no fucking answers.

“Fuck!!” Raph punches the ground, hard. Then he slams his fist down again, four, five times. Screams some more. Wrenches his head away to stare frantically at the door to the surgery as if Leo is about to burst out in a sing-song voice and call, “I’m fine, dearest brothers, just a small flesh wound!”

When that doesn’t come to pass, Raph crumples in on himself, pulling away from Mikey’s legs and bunching himself up as small as a bulky forty-something turtle can. Wordlessly, Mikey throws the beloved orange blanket on top of him. If Raph realises it’s the same one he made for his baby brother all those years ago, he doesn’t comment. He just curls up further into it, entire body shaking as he gulps in lungfuls of air. Mikey leaves him to it, letting him ride the meltdown until he has tired himself out.

“What the fuck is he meant to do if he can't see, Mikey?” Raph asks eventually, voice hoarse and muffled from beneath the blanket.

“He’s a ninja,” Mikey bites back, even though deep down he knows that it has been far too long since they last so much as resembled ninja. “He’s always been the best out of all of us when it comes to fighting blind.”

It’s a small comfort. Miniscule, really. Raphael hums, hides further.

“...Hey, Raph? Do you remember when we got ambushed at April’s place, and we had to go up to Northampton to hide? Leo was hurt so badly, we didn’t know if he’d make it…”

He remembers the horror he felt back then as vividly as he feels it now, if only because he had nothing else to compare it to. None of them had ever been beaten so badly in their lives.

“Is this meant to cheer me up?” Raph mumbles.

“I just…” Mikey sucks in a breath. “...We talked to him. When he was out cold. We told stories, just hoping he would hear us.”

Michelangelo doesn’t think he believes in Master Splinter’s explanation from back then, all that talk about his brother’s spirit being damaged. If anything, talking seemed to give the rest of them more closure than Leo.

But now that he’s older, and he’s so devoid of hope, wishing that Leo can hear their voices might be the only thing keeping him from falling into Raph’s terrible habits and tearing up the place, cursing up a storm, curling in on himself until he disappears.

“It wasn’t real, Mikey,” Raph’s pathetically morose voice comes from beneath the blanket.

“But the stories we told were real. They’re still real, as long as we keep them alive.” He pushes up from his seat, sits down on the cold concrete floor beside Raph and tugs on the blanket, forcing his brother to share. Their shoulders touch, and Mikey can feel his brother’s warmth, the movement of his diaphragm as he breathes. “For instance, remember making me this?”

A watery laugh catches him off guard.

“I spent two months on this thing, and you let Klunk stick his claws into it the day I gave it to ya.”

“It was a joint gift for the both of us,” Mikey defends, unwilling to let Klunk go down for any of his kitty crimes, even decades after he left the mortal coil. Raph clips him around the head, too light to hurt.

“Shell for brains.”

“Butthead.”

“Jackass.”

The name-calling continues, as do the recollections of a time as lost to them now as Mikey’s arm or Raph’s left eye. If Leo hears them on the other side of those doors, or if Don hears them from wherever the fuck he landed all those years ago, Mikey hopes that their stories carry like a litany to the next disquieted soul.

(Donatello has been missing for about twenty-five years now, judging by the turtles’ ages. Mikey once forced himself to stop counting, but now he wishes he hadn’t. If only he knew for certain how long it had been since that last goodbye; that last smiling face and simple wave of the hand, that final moment of his mask tails sailing out of the door before it shut, and how it sealed their fates forever.)