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“You’re gonna be okay, Donny. Just hold on, it’s okay. Hold on.”
Blood trickled from Donatello’s mouth in a steady stream of liquid fear, running to claim as much land as it could against the expanse of smooth scales.
Raph reached out to wipe the liquid away and it smeared, dark against paling green. It stuck to Raph’s hands, and soaked into the handles of his sais as he launched himself against carbon-copy Kraang droids, each one as alike as the other. He would have to change the wrappings on his sais later. The blood wouldn’t wash out.
Leo ran, Don’s head bouncing against his chest, Mikey springing from building to window-sill, nunchaku a deadly blur, kusarigama wrapping around thin necks and snapping them like so many metallic twigs.
Screeches of fleeing Kraang filled the air, and a part of Leo wished he hadn’t been brought up with the honor to spare their lives.
At the same time, if Raph lost himself to vengeance now, there was no guarantee he would ever come back.
“Cover us, Mikey! Get them away from here! Raph, opening!”
Two things happened at once. Mikey threw two smoke bombs toward Leo and Donnie, one near them and one close to the manhole cover in front of them. The other was that Raph threw his sai, wedging it under the cover.
Leo ran forward under the haze of smoke, stepping down on the sai to levee the cover off the ground and flying into the air. Hopping down, he landed straight on the concrete, crouching to absorb the impact and clutching Don tighter to protect his neck.
Raph flew in after him, snatching back his sai and shoving the holecover back into place. Mikey leapt away from the fight, taunting the Kraang as best he could and drawing them away from the less than untrackable exit his brothers had made.
“Come get me, yo! Who wants turtle soup?”
Mikey bounced from building to building in a whirr of nunchaku, easily deflecting and avoiding everything the Kraang sent his way. He’d give his brother’s the time they needed, and, when he was sure they wouldn’t be tracked, he’d join them himself.
“Let me take ‘im.” Donatello was shifted into Raphael’s arms, Leo panting as he rolled his shoulders to relieve the stress.
“Donnie. I need you to talk to me. You’re hurt, okay? We need to know what to do.”
Don blinked at him, redwood eyes hazed with pain and clouded with what had to be a concussion. “Sss… bad...”
Leo glanced down at Don’s body. Terrible burns over his front, definite internal bleeding, horrible sounds every time he tried to breathe… “It’s bad.”
Don’s brows furrowed together as he tried to think, as his mind that normally had no setting slower than a Ferrari F40 was crippled to a halting crawl.
“Lab.
Now
.”
“We’ll get you there. Promise.”
“Leo.” Raph’s eyes bored into his older brothers. “Can you use the healing hands to help him? That could work right? Master Splinter could…”
“I’m not Master Splinter and I can’t.” The words were brusque, but Raph knew the harshness wasn’t directed at him. “And even the healing hands can’t fix everything.”
“You could get those poisons out of us! You helped heal Mikey’s arm after Super Shredder. It could help-”
“Not for something like this, Raph! We’ll just… get to Don’s lab. He has a plan. We’ll fix this.”
But this wasn’t something they could fix. Raph was a realist. And this… body broken and bleeding from an explosion Don should never have been in… no. Raph knew the end to this story, and there was no happy ending for anyone.
“You have a plan, right Don?” Leo’s eyes were pleading. But Raph knew he was also keeping Don awake. You did that when people had concussions. And when they were the doctor who needed to treat their own deadly injuries.
Don nodded jerkily, smearing blood on Raph’s plastron. He didn’t seem inclined to say anything, but Raph thought that if he had a punctured lung he wouldn’t feel too talkative either.
“Stay with us, Don. You can sleep later. Just for now, okay?”
Don nodded again, blearily this time, and Raph thought he could see the lights of their home up ahead.
“We’re almost there.”
“Do you need me to set anything up, Don?” Leo again. Hands almost trembling with nervous energy.
“Mmm. Med table. Clear it off.” Leo dashed off, Raph weighed down by his thin but substantially taller brother.
A sound of crashing could be heard ahead of him as he jumped the turnstiles, and Raph vaguely wished Don would live to give Leo a lecture about lab safety and procedures… it wouldn’t be Michaelangelo getting lectured, for once.
Mikey would be glad for that, at least.
Don coughed and Raph couldn’t keep distracting himself anymore. “We’re here. Whaddya need?”
It seemed impossible. But they’d pulled off miracles before, right? Who knew what Don could have squirreled away in that lab of his.
Don lifted a shaking finger and pointed to something tucked against the wall. A helmet. The old thing he kept trying to use on April. The psychic measurer or amplifier or whatever it was that Donnie wanted and if it would help Raph would try anything.
Raph laid Donnie down on the newly cleared table (noting the smashed glass and bent metal on the floor beside it) and Leo dashed off to cart the helmet/radio combination over beside Donnie.
“You want this on?”
“N-not yet.” Don made an aborted grabbing motion before grinding out: “...unplug.”
Leo unplugged the helmet from the old radio as Don pointed to something else in the room, a large metal box with colorful dials on a rolling side table. Raph dashed off to grab it, and shoved the thing next to his brother.
Don fumbled with the cords, trying to align them to plug them in correctly, when Raph took them from his hands and held them in different orders until Don indicated the one he wanted. He coughed, body spasming and limbs flailing in every direction.
Leo grabbed hold of him and tried to hold him down. Don’s eyes flickered wildly as he managed the last words his brothers would ever hear from his mouth: “‘s not ready.”
“I don’t care. Whatever it is, it’s ready enough.” Raph pushed forward the helmet. “You want this on now?”
Don stared at it, blood continuing to make it’s way down his face before he nodded. He tried to speak and choked on blood. Leo tilted his head forward, trying to control his limbs and open his airways all at once.
Raph put on the helmet. Don stared at one button set aside from all the others. Raph’s hand hovered over it. Don nodded, face darkening as he tried to breathe. Raph’s hand came down and Don’s body jerked as though electrocuted. From the sparks the helmet was making, Raph wasn’t sure that wasn’t what was happening.
He moved over to help hold Don down, letting Leo focus on helping Don breath. He felt a buzz under his fingers and watched as the wires twitched and jerked, a swath of them leading into the closet. Don gasped and Raph realized. He might not survive this.
Not ready.
This invention wasn’t ready. And Raph wasn’t ready to let go of his little brother. Trapping Don’s legs under his own, he pressed a hand to Don’s face. “Hey. Love ‘ya, bro.”
Don tried to focus, mahogany eyes trying to lock onto his brother, but Raph couldn’t imagine he saw anything but a red and green blur. “You done real good, and I’m proud of you, okay?”
Don gasped and shuddered, eyes trembling before rolling into the back of his head.
Raph wanted to grab the back of his neck, but Leo was already there, and Raph needed to grab Don’s arm again anyway.
Leo looked over at Raph and Raph could read his thoughts in his eyes. If Raph was saying goodbye. This was no time for pride.
“Yeah. I love you too, Donny. You did great. Th-the Kraang won’t be coming back now. You did really great. No evil intergalactic team-ups now. You did it. We’re all really proud of you.”
Don’s lips twitched in a smile before contorting into a grimace. Raph could see the light draining out of his eyes, and it almost looked like his life was pouring through the wires themselves.
“We love you, okay, Donny? Mikey loves you too, he thinks you’re the greatest big brother in the world and you did so good Donny, so good, we love you.”
Leo pushed his forehead against Don and pressed a kiss against his cheek. Don jerked and went still. Raph’s fingers, pressed against his wrists, couldn’t find a pulse.
The wires went still.
Raph felt like someone was stabbing him in the throat. His arms locked up. He couldn’t move. It was Master Splinter and the Super Shredder all over again except Splinter had at least been old , Donny wasn’t even 17 yet…
And he wasn’t supposed to die first.
A crashing from the closet. Raph and Leo’s heads jerked towards the noise, but neither moved away from Don’s body in their arms.
The crashing continued. The door jerked, the knob jerked before the door crashed open.
A robot staggered out. Lith and purple and grey, the Hamato symbol adorning it’s shoulders and chest and with long ears like a bat’s, or antenna. The visor where the eyes might have been glowed purple and it staggered, unsteady on it’s feet, head turned toward Leo and Raph.
“...Guys?”
Donatello’s voice, distorted and broken and metallic and not gone .
Raph was moving forward before he even knew what was happening, catching Don as he fell, vaguely aware of Leo by his side doing the same.
“Donny?” Leo’s voice, confused and questioning and so tentatively hopeful.
“L-l-l-l-leo. Leo.”
“What’s this, Donny?”
“M-met-t-t-talhead 2.0. But it’s n-not ready the inter-terface… it’s not ready. I u-used Kraang and Utrom-m-m technology to psychically up-p-p-p-pload my consciousness into a robot-ot-otic body. Like how the Kraang contr-r-rol their bod-dies. But it’s not r-r-ready !”
Raph’s grip tightened around Don’s body. His new body? Forever?
“Th-the machinery is f-fine b-b-b-ut the mental uplink… the emotions they-ey-ey aren’t ready! They won’t load r-r-r-ight and it’s making everything w-w-wrong!”
“It’s okay.” Leo. So confidant. So sure. “We’ll get through this. We’re all alive. That’s what matters. We’ll fix this, I promise.”
Don looked at Leo and trembled, antenna straight down like a terrified dog. His head lowered, raised again, and then his shoulders hunched in on themselves. “... I want to cry.”
And if Raph was stuck in a metal straightjacket without any way of expressing himself he thinks he would die or go crazy, so he reaches out to pull Don into his arms, even though he doesn’t know if that helps anything anymore.
Don leans his head against Raph’s shoulder, and presses into Leo’s body but the trembling continues. “I c-c-can’t feel it ! Just the pressure not…”
A machine screams, long and broken, into the lair, and the sound of it vibrates through settling dust and settles in the nooks and crannies of home hidden from prying eyes.
And a family that has already borne so much more than it deserved in a thousand lifetimes takes one more scar.
Michaelangelo runs into the lair as fast as he can, cuts and scrapes stinging where sewer water splashed against them, but he couldn’t care any less.
“Guys! Guys! Where’s Donny? Is he okay?”
Mikey’s legs carried him to Donny’s lab, because that’s where they went. When they got hurt or sick it was off to Donny’s lab with you nownownow and then you got better and everything was fine because Donny did that it was like his superpower, a magical make everything better superpower.
But Mikey didn’t know if Donny’s superpower would work on Donny … The door was open and that was a lot of blood on the ground on the table where Donny… Donny… Donny’s body ???
Mikey didn’t remember moving forward. He was just there looking down at Donny… Donny… red blood and pale green skin and Mikey didn’t think Christmas was his favorite holiday anymore because… because he’d never be able to not think about this again…
Shaking fingers reached out to touch Don’s skin and jerked back as if the coolness of the touch had burned him.
Don blurred in Mikey’s eyes, he was wearing a funny hat for some reason (April psychic crystal and bird worm thing) and it was probably one of Donny’s super smart inventions but it didn’t work and now… now Donny…
Mikey took the funny hat off Donny because he didn’t need it anymore. Donny didn’t need anything anymore. Except, maybe, a hug. Mikey needed a hug too. B team. They would hug each other.
Mikey crawled onto the bed like when he was a little turtle and the monsters under the bed got too scary (although he’d done it just last week: Mikey don’t watch that, you’ll get nightmares but Mikey never listened, did he?).
Mikey tucked himself against his big brother because Don was nice and tall and good for tucking against because there was so much of him to cuddle with. Mikey nuzzled Don’s neck and felt tears leaking past his mask.
Donny… he couldn’t be gone? Right? If he wasn’t gone Mikey would… would give up pizza and never read another superhero comic again and never ever watch cartoons again, even if there was a marathon on TV…
Mikey was being silly again. Silly Mikey. He knew that wouldn’t work. He’d tried it when Papa died. Just like Raphie said, no one out there was going to trade Mikey’s pizza and comic books for Papa’s life, and they wouldn’t do it for Donnie either.
But… but Mikey was still willing to do it. And… maybe this was his fault? Because he should have known by now, he should knowknowknow that people were dangerous and it was his job as a ninja to be prepared and be good and to be able to fight and protect… and he learned that after Daddy died!
He knew what would happen if he was a bad ninja, and he stayed bad anyway and he kept watching his cartoons and eating stupid pizza instead of getting strong and he let bad alien robots explode his big brother who was just trying to save the world from a Kraang/mean alien team-up.
If Mikey had practiced he could’ve thrown a shuriken into the Kraang shooting at Donny. If Mikey had paid attention he would have noticed before they shot at Donny and hit their computer he was trying to hack and made such a big explosion Mikey’s ears were still ringing but Donny was right next to the explosion and BOOM and turtle didn’t go together and BOOMBOOMBOOM Mikey should’ve gone BOOM, not Donny nononononono…
“Leo, Mikey’s in here!”
“When did he come back? Get him to Donny now!”
“Mikey, come on kiddo, it’s okay, it’s not so bad, come on we’re going to Donny’s room, it’s okay…”
WAIT NO someone was trying to take him away from Donny no this was wrong, Mikey couldn’t let go he let go of Papa and now Papa was buried somewhere in the ground and Mikey couldn’t hug him or cuddle him anymore he was going to cuddle Donny forever …
But the people wouldn’t go away and they made Mikey let go and go away even though he didn’t want to. And they took him away and dragged him even though he said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to be polite but they won’t let him go back to Donny where he needs to be and they’re going somewhere else-
“Mikey?”
MIKEY KNOWS THAT VOICE HE KNOWS IT HE KNOWSKNOWSKNOWS
“Donnie!”
There’s a robot and it has Batman ears and a Cyclops visor and it’s kneeling on Donny’s floor and it has Donny’s voice and Mikey has never hugged anything so fast in his life.
“Donnie. Donnie. Donnie.”
Hands wrap around his body and rest on his shell and Mikey snuggles in because he knows this is Donny no matter what he looks like.
“He made some kinda gizmo to put his head in this robot, Mikey. Now, his emotions are just a little mixed up and he talks kinda funny, but…”
But, nothing. Family. Their family is together and they’ll love each other and stay together like they always have. ‘Cause Donny is okay.
Leo and Raph and Mikey and Donnie, they’re all together and they’re all a family. And, in Mikey’s book, anytime they’re together is a happily ever after.