Work Text:
Title: Mister, Are You An Angel?
Fandom: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Synopsis: New York City isn't as he remembers, and its citizens aren't much better. Donatello learns this the hard way.
Notes: 2003verse; set during s03e21: Same As It Never Was; Starvation; Canon Compliant; Implied/Referenced Deaths; Original Child Character (OC); Worldbuilding
Pairing: N/A
Posted: February 15, 2022. International Fanworks Day!
It's different, Donatello thinks. The Big Apple rots with a dominating darkness. The City That Never Sleeps is on the edge of dozing off into a creeping oblivion.
What once proudly teemed with life now bleeds of it in its gradual demise. He and Home seem disengaged, neither belonging to the other.
New York City just isn't the same.
Smothering his sorrow at the contemporary condition of it is a labored effort, and one severely lacking in success. Refined smokestacks tower over the infrastructures of crumbled stone, broken steel and shattered glass, their mighty breaths of flame and fumes so thick with supremacy it reigns above poor Earth in its ascent.
Murk obscures the ether as if denying the people their chance to experience Heaven. Mechanical monsters with lifeless, metal wings outspread in legions as they soar over the city, distortions of divine messengers with who they are truly servants to and what convictions they strictly enforce at their Lord's command. Like those numerous blimps and video screens showing that face everywhere around him aren't enough as is.
Damn that Shredder, the tyrant responsible.
Admittedly, Don hasn't delved too much into the full extent of the dystopia, though then again he may not need to. Seeing is believing, the adage goes, and there's no greater truth than seeing Home in disarray and with the culprit's pride plastered more or less everywhere. That tells him enough, right up there with... Father's grave.
Even now, Don can feel his stomach roil at the image of that plank for a monument in his mind. Splinter it spells out, looming over soil that's had thirty years to blanket the corpse marked with wounds of murder.
An honorable sacrifice it had been, so Don has heard, where the wise, benevolent elder suffers a death at Shredder's hand in exchange for his children's escape and survival.
It haunts him, from deep inside Central Park amidst withered trees and paths in between. Although he and Michelangelo have long since departed from the grave, Don feels he hasn't truly escaped it. He may not ever. This is something he shall have to live with for the rest of his life whether or not he likes it, and he doesn't.
The only saving grace in this depressing situation is that he at least won't be alone. That's not saying much, though. Not that Don hates the company, but this new Mikey moving beside him is an unsettling change.
A silver cap protecting the nub of a left arm severed, an aged face as hardened as the steel pads on his knees and shoulders, scars engraving their dark history all over his teal skin once so silky now calloused, and that leaves Don with a brother different from who he can remember. And what's with the explosives equipped on that chest sash?
Mikey catches him staring. "We're gonna reach Base soon, Don. It won't be long."
The gruff voice fills Don with unease—foreign with its solemn tone and maturity, possessing none the cheer nor restless energy from youth upon the tongue.
In outward display, he musters a feeble smile to show his appreciation at the assurance, despite the opposite effect it's having on him. "I'll... take your word for it."
"Just keep up the pace and follow my lead," Mikey speeds past him, his feet swift yet so silent that he actually needs to keep an eye on his brother to make sure he's really there.
Don follows Mikey, and together the two run the rooftops and leap from building to building.
Silence is their virtue, shadow their protection, stealth their guide, speed their instinct, and their watchful surveillance upon the angel pretenders (Utrominators, they're called) are their security. There's a reason why the city lacks wandering civilians at the moment after all, so Don knows caution well enough to not trifle with peril.
Sadly, no amount of caution might prepare him for what awaits him upon arrival at the Resistance Headquarters. Mikey had told him earlier that they're visiting an old friend, though Don isn't sure he can take that at face value. Who knows if the old friend will only turn out half the truth, old but not much of a friend to him?
Mikey seems to believe it, though Don is even wary of him too. Not that Don wishes to feel this way; with full earnest he doesn't! But really, it can't be helped. Not after the seething resentment on his brother's grimace when they reunited, not after the melancholy musing from Mikey that simply couldn't resist slipping out as they sneak through Central Park. Not after "How could you just abandon us!" or "It's the way it is."
Nothing he ever expects from the goofball he knew by heart. Seeing is believing, and seeing his flesh and blood as this grimmer individual, incongruous with his younger counterpart, tells quite a concerning story.
So eerily alien, so unknown, these mysteries behind this new world and its inhabitants, which naturally terrify Don. Shell, who knows how Leo and Raph will react should they meet him?
And perhaps that may be an untold lesson. If there is one certainty in everything uncertain, it's that not knowing is the biggest concern one can have, and three decades of a supposed absence Donnie knows nothing about can validate that principle.
He and Mikey at some point vacate the rooftops and venture through the streets and alleyways. Suddenly, the shadows are a dependable ally now more than ever. Foot Gestapo roam the streets, not in armors of flight but in armors of trundling wheels. Their responsibility is terra firma that lacks the perpetual footfalls of New Yorkers, a duty as important as the skies are to the Utrominators.
From out the dark alleyway which he and Mikey enter, the stern bellow of an enforcer booms, "You are in direct violation of curfew! You need to come with us right now!"
"I merely sought food for my grandchild! She's starving!" a voice aged like an ancient tree groans, "No! No, please! Not the Torture Chamber! I beg you, have mercy!"
Black, elongated shapes shift around vigorously in the light ahead him, the sounds of struggle between the endangered and enforcer noisy to those near. He grits his teeth and tries to reach for his bō, only for Mikey to seize his hand.
"There's no need for that," Mikey intones, "They'll be gone soon."
Don turns to his brother. "We can't observe and do nothing. We have to save him!" he balks, his cry barely a whisper and his face a loud show of horror.
Mikey simply gives an unimpressed frown. "You can't save someone who's already dead."
The heavy drop of that startlingly calm and cold comment stuns him, so much so that he realizes too late the shapes having vanished after the screech of rubber chasing the distance beyond.
Once he belatedly collects himself, Don wrestles with a sea of negative emotions drowning him in its dark, icy grip. Frustration, grief, jaundice, all at once.
The first thing he does is blame himself and his shortcomings as a ninja that hesitates. He shouldn't have let Mikey stop him; he should have heeded his instincts and acted on a rescue when he still had a chance. Maybe then—
"Here 'round these parts," Mike tells him, "trying to be righteous for helpless strangers in need ain't always right. Ya can't be taking such risks anymore. Impetuous heroics won't do any good."
Don shakes his head, hoping to shrug away the horrible words that slip inside it. It isn't something he can just accept. "But—"
"But nothing!" his brother's face contorts in irritation, the wrinkles looking thick as opposed to his tenuous patience. "Life's not the same as back then! Are you even aware what kinda forces they have, just for patrol? Or how they keep track of the people who mess up? That old guy had zero chance the moment they found him; he was caught and would've been hunted down relentlessly even if he fled.
"Had you gone out there, you'd end up the same as he did. Shell, Don, there's only so much I can do for you! It was a miracle that I managed to dispatch the Foot Gestapo before they figured out who you were when they found you, and believe me, miracles aren't something you can rely on in a place like this!"
The outburst from Mikey saddens Don, and his shoulders sag. "Mikey..." he breathes, at a loss for words other than the one who has stolen the rest from him.
But his brother doesn't relent. Mikey stomps up to Don and pierces his wide-eyed stare with a forbidding kind.
"I doubt I can ever dissuade you from whatever you got planned for the Shredder but know this: You won't disappear a second time, and neither Leo nor Raph will have that next to Father's death on their conscience, either. My family shall not fall apart any more than it already has."
Don recoils at the resolution, a sharp sting to his meek heart. It's a harrowing experience being hit by all the horrific implications behind those words.
One of seldom instances of the mind acting as a curse, where Don knows better but feels an undying need to wonder anyway. About Leo, Raph and Mikey's adjustment to this twisted world, about the three decades they endure in lack of peace and in abundance of paranoia.
About his own disappearance leading to the bitter distance between his family.
Mikey starts to move past him, towards the end of the alleyway that no longer had an elder or an enforcer. Just before he actually passes him though, he claps a hand on Don's shoulder and eyes him intently again.
"Welcome home, Donatello."
The smile on Mikey's face is bitter, and so, too, the words. It leaves such an awful taste in his mouth like bile, nauseating him, making him desperately want to regurgitate.
Regardless, Don suppresses this feeling, easier to accomplish upon the tender squeeze he senses upon his own shoulder. Sudden and subtle, but there.
Then, his brother leaves. Not long after, Don follows because in spite of many things wrong, there's a few things about Mikey familiar enough to feel somewhat right. Or, at least, a tad comforting enough to stick around for.
Besides, this is all he has now.
The rest of his journey with Mikey elapses in a monotonous hush and an unbroken stealth through the city. Don finds many things as they move. Old structures, new structures, and many paths either vaguely familiar or far beyond his faithful memory.
Constant among these things are the shadowy faces with eyes glowing in gore, shown through banners and screens, and the statues of a man made of blades randomly stationed in alarmingly tremendous numbers.
Time is gold, and the Shredder doesn't withhold his boast about owning a decades worth of the treasure. Evident with all the changes he imposed onto New York in his image, Don bitterly muses.
After a long while, they both stop at a particular building.
"We've reached Base," Mikey states.
While titanic in expanse, the place is not only dilapidated but leaves a legacy of ruin on the ground it now scarcely stands on. Mighty stone runs down through the main entrance in streams if they were jagged and made of hundreds of broken, solid pieces. There the truth lies before him to behold.
Don and Mikey approach the building. They head towards the far side of it before sneaking inside through a small opening, to which they enter a corridor punched with holes and littered in more stone.
"I feel that I should warn you," Mikey advises as they leisurely tread the corridor leading downward, "we'll probably encounter a fair share of humans. More than a hundred. They aren't gonna try anything, though they can be...curious. Can't blame 'em given their perspective. Kinda hard not to stare. So expect a lotta eyes on ya."
The revelation catches Don by surprise.
It...does make some sense, he supposes when really thinking more about it. Earlier, Mikey spoke a little about the rebellion with familiarity that would only exist from personal experience, from having to meet so many humans.
Still, to Donnie, it's surreal. He has only ever met a small number at best, the majority being the mere dozens allied with the Shredder, but to meet a large group of them? Hundreds all at once?
"It's been a while since I last went to this place. Don't really hang out here too much, though I do stop by to help every now and then. The humans should be able to recognize me either way, and when they see ya they'll make the connection. I think you'll be fine," Mikey says airily.
But Don shudders anyway and sticks closer to Mikey.
The first lesson Father taught him as a ninja, of importance tantamount to his own life, is avoid and be unseen, especially when it comes to humans in great numbers.
"They are unpredictable," Father would always say, "and unwelcoming to all things distinct from what they believe normal."
Father proved to be right, of course. Mutant turtles, sadly, fit their fears like a glove in just the right size. Even April hadn't taken too kindly to him and his family when she initially met them through pure happenstance.
What he and Mikey are about to do is taboo, breaking a sacred rule Father wished they heed with religious regard. Facing the Shredder, or the Triceratons, or even Agent Bishop right now suddenly doesn't seem so bad. Don, at least, knows those guys and their schemes well enough. He won't even know where to start with a hundred humans he's never met before.
The two walk, and walk, and walk down the long path ahead. Eventually come the shapes that either saunter around or sit on various spots of the dirty floor as if it were their only comfort, and it might have been for all he knows.
Numerous pairs of eyes start to follow him upon swift notice, preceding their hushed voices.
Don grimaces. Upon every face, whether adult, adolescent or the phases before puberty, their dark bags and deep wrinkles all the same tell a kindred history without peace that few would dare broach.
When the humans fix their gazes on him, they instantly present various reactions. Among them he can find hope for the best, suspicion for the worst, and wonder for the unknown; though, now as he's looking further into it, the dispositions might not entirely be different from one another. To him, they seem like symptoms of a cause, the need to learn more about what they see is a new development in their lives.
Don feels conflicted about it all in any case. He can understand their stances on his presence, and yet at the same time he simply can't stop feeling...violated.
How can he? Before him from all sides are the eyes of strangers almost probing him like some experiment to be tested on. It disturbs him as a disciple of ninjutsu, as a reclusive, reserved individual, and as even a scientist where his work strictly handles machine and never any kind of creature.
The sooner he and Mikey get to where they need to be, the better.
Too reflective for his own good, he doesn't have time to expect one of his hands getting promptly seized and tugged by what seems like small, thin tree branches lacing themselves together.
Naturally, this causes his heart to jump. He quickly notes the way his arm slopes down as it stretches, too.
Halting his stride in the process, Don casts a glance at his lower side.
Such a poor thing, this human girl beside him. She appears at a tender age he estimates to be no older than twelve. The miniscule muscle from her limbs does little to conceal the bones under a skin as pale as the moon. Those rags hanging loose off her small, gaunt body aren't much better, seeming more like short-sleeved robes than anything.
Her long hair as black as night runs wild down her back like the waves of a rampant ocean, and her indigo eyes add an enthralling mystique to the gloomy sight in its glow.
"You look a lot like Mister Mikey!" the girl says curiously, her voice a fleeting whisper like leaves from a fallen tree wafting in the winds that wander off. "Are you like Mister Mikey?"
Don instinctively turns to Mikey for help, only to be met with what he interprets as stunned silence. Looks like the only other turtle around hadn't anticipated this frail human to actually approach him, either.
Realizing that he's on his own, he looks back at the child and answers as civilly as he can, "You could say that."
"Wow! But you also seem different, too..." her brittle digits reach as high as the crook of Donnie's arm, and she has to stand on her toes to do so even then. She observes him with amazement. "Something about you is...nicer. Cleaner. And you look like you get more to eat than all of us."
The child's remarks hit Donnie hard. Come to think of it, there hasn't been one face from this reality that showed even the slightest promise in health. Even Mikey appears thinner now than when he was a teenager; even if just slightly, unlike the rest of the humans, it is noticeable if Don squints hard enough.
Does he actually stand out that much in comparison? It makes him wonder what Shredder has done to leave everyone in this sickly plight, their starvation heralding slow deaths.
"You must really be special then!" she chirps, snapping him out of his thoughts.
Unsure how to properly respond, Don bashfully tells her, "Guess I am. Where I hail from is, well... nothing like here."
"Hmm... Mister, are you an angel?"
Her inquiry, despite the harmless approach to it, comes as a bombshell and stuns Don. It's disorienting in a way. He isn't sure if she really said it or if he isn't hearing things, judging from how out of nowhere it sounds to him.
Thrice he blinks. "I beg your pardon?"
"Were you sent from Heaven? Were you?" the small, frail human presses, "I hear that Heaven is a paradise where there's no pain or illness, or labor camps, or torture chambers, or low rations, or any need to worry since it has everything you could ever dream for! Grandpa always tells me how those who have those luxuries are angels. So, is that it, then? Is that why you're so unlike us?"
Don shifts uncomfortably, biting his lip, before her eager stare. The rich blueness of her irises light up with a hope that washes over him, stifling any protests he has for the flood of fantasy that opposes the poor reality they're in.
"I knew it!" she decides, no doubt taking his silence as confirmation. "You're an angel that came to answer our prayers! Grandpa and I always had faith someone would show up and make the world a better place, and faith is the only thing we can possess in times such as these. But I'm so glad it paid off! We can at last have a chance for salvation with your help!"
For once since his arrival, he genuinely perks up. Notwithstanding the naivety, he believes a bit of truth there and can't help feeling proud of that particular bit in her words. The corners of his lips part in a faint smile.
"Believe me, miss, I'm gonna do everything within my power to restore this world's future. I promise," he says.
The small girl beams at him. It's like observing a night full of life, the crescent as lustrous as pearls for lips and those twinkling stars across that blue for innocent eyes. "Thank you! Oh, thank you! I just wish my grandpa was here to meet you."
"Your grandpa sounds like a nice man. Where is he, anyway?"
"Grandpa went out to gather food. Rations have always been pretty low, but I heard now there isn't enough for half of us here. That's what he does, actually. He's one of many that have the duty of being Forager."
She drops her head and descends into a depressed hush after finishing, eyes drooping as they cast down where they stand.
Don frowns at her show of woe. "What's wrong?"
"I don't know," the child murmurs, unconsciously placing a hand on her chest. "This feeling is so strange and I'm not sure I like it."
"Could you tell me?"
"It's just... Grandpa's taking an awfully long time today. I know he always worries about me starving and tries to find extra food, but this is late even for him."
There must be a few or so familiar words in her disclosure, because he is absolutely certain that he's heard something along those lines from somewhere before. He can't quite place it, though.
Shaking his head, Don kneels down to her level and looks at the little human with reassurance. "If your Grandpa truly hadn't given up on this world for so long, then he may possibly be one of the strongest people I could ever have the pleasure of meeting."
Her gaze levels with his own, and he can detect faith and fear in them like yin and yang in their perpetual dance. "Grandpa certainly has his moments at times...but still I can't stop worrying about him. With the chance that he could get caught, having no one to save him..."
Then, instantly, it clicks.
"You are in direct violation of curfew! You need to come with us right now!"
"I merely sought food for my grandchild! She's starving!" a voice aged like an ancient tree groans, "No! No, please! Not the Torture Chamber! I beg you, have mercy!"
...Shell. Oh, shell.
"All right, enough," Mikey steps in just when Don blanches, bordering on hysterics and nearly forgetting how to properly breathe. "We got to keep moving," his brother claps a hand on his shoulder and gives a comforting squeeze. "Come on, Don. Please," he whispers, somewhat pleadingly from the sound of it.
Don squeezes his eyes shut and tries to slow his breath, tries to calm the heart hammering in his chest, concentrating on the aura of solicitude which Mikey emanates. Slowly but surely, he collects himself.
"I..." he starts as he eyes the bemused girl intently, trying his hardest to steady his shaky breath. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay, Mister, you do what you have to," she smiles, speaking in the kind of innocence that hurts him without her knowing, "I'll simply wait for Grandpa and hope he returns soon. He's all I have left."
Mikey proceeds to drag him away after that, gripping his wrist as if doing everything to keep him close and not let him slip away. He even sees to it that they're both as distant from all the humans close by as possible.
Despite himself, Don looks back at the girl one last time.
She gives him a light wave with one hand, while also resting the other upon her chest. He observes how her fingers curl and gather up a scoop of her tattered shirt, clinging onto the bundle like she's keeping her precious heart safe in there until the time comes when she can present it to the one she values dearly.
Donatello turns his head away without a word. He stares dead ahead and treads the dirtied floor, somewhat feebly and with the urge to fall on his knees and weep—but he does tread nonetheless. His free hand clings onto where his own aching heart resides.
If only he can make it a heart of steel. If only.
Author's Note:
I was bound to write something about SAINW eventually. I figured I might as well start now, so I did and, wow, I think I just depressed myself writing this. I have written a fair share of angst in the past, but they at least leave off an implication of hope, but not this. Oh, well, it's good to try something new, no?
For this one-shot, it's set after Donnie and Mikey visit Splinter's grave but before they meet up with April.