Chapter Text
“Hey Donnie! Heard you had quite the party last night!”
The spectacularly hungover turtle in question holds his head between his palms and moans with such self-loathing that April actually steps away from him.
“Need some water?”
“God, yes.”
“I figured.” April snickers, disappearing for a few blissful moments before the returning sound of her footsteps reverberate in his skull like an entire fleet of bagpiper’s bellowing away on a crag. “Here. Drink up.”
Donnie makes the verbal equivalent of a deflating balloon as he guzzles, his eyelids tacky against the dried-up contacts fastened to his corneas. He cringes as he feels the coldness of the liquid dribble down his oesophagus and reaches blindly for the hand sanitizer beside him.
“Mikey took a video of last night's shenanigans,” April continues, and Donnie doesn’t need to see her to know that she’s practically glowing with glee. “I can’t wait to watch ‘Mad Dogz: The Musical’ on Broadway next fall.”
“Guhh…” Donnie shudders, already dreading what he’s about to witness. He holds up his index finger in a pitiful attempt to make her wait as he all but peels his contacts off his eyeballs and tosses them in the trash bin. “Where’re my glasses?”
“Already got ’em,” April grins, holding them out to him. He takes them reluctantly and forces his vision to focus on April’s screen.
The film begins behind the edge of a familiar wall, the lens quickly zooming in on Leo after the establishing shot. The slider, clad in an ‘I Woke Up Like This’ crop top and nothing else, holds the melodica that Donnie swears was tucked away in his trashed bedroom closet.
"Am I a maaaaan? Or am I a turtle?"
Leo let the hoze drop from his lips and responded in his deepest voice. "Am I a turtle?"
"If I'm a turtle, then I'm a very manly turtle."
"Very manly turtle."
Donnie watches in horror as the profoundly plastered version of himself continues, his off-tune baritone filling the room. "Am I a maaaaaaaan? Or am I a turtle?"
"Am I a turtle?"
"If I'm a man, that makes me a turtle of a man."
"A turtle of a man."
By some miracle, the sloshed nightmare duo finally stop caterwauling.
"I can’t believe that song won an Oscar," Donnie said, snagging the melodica from Leo’s lap and striking a C minor. "I’m surprised I haven’t won an Oscar."
"We can’t even stay on TV, D." Leo pointed out, tickling the synthetic ivories as Donnie continued making horror music. "We need better agents."
"Yeah, I never liked that Bishop guy." Donnie stopped abruptly. "Oh wait, wrong show."
Leo giggled as Donnie started playing the Jaws theme. "Besides, I think we’d be more likely to win a Tony! Mad Dogz, under the lights of Broadway!"
"Please, make it stop." Donnie croaks, burying his aching eyeballs in his palms. Everything hurts and he feels like he's dying, but April won't let him go that easy.
"It gets worse, but I'll spare you the details." April snatches her phone away, tucking it into her pocket. "I'll cherish that 'Defying Gravity' performance for the rest of my life though."
"Kill me, please." Donnie begs, burying his face in the nearest soft fabric, which just so happens to be a dish towel Drunk!Donnie had snagged from the kitchen for goodness knows what reason. "I am actually about to die."
"Trust me, there will be worse hangovers to come." April assures him, patting him ever so gently on the shoulder. "Just wait until you get a taste of tequila."
“I would rather eat glass,” Donnie whines, glancing blearily around him. He’d only woken up a few minutes earlier in his lab, keeled over and plastron down on the blanket he’d been using as a mattress since the attack. “Where’s Nardo?”
“Probably still snoring in the living room,” April smiles, shaking her head. “That’s where the two of you passed out last night. Mikey took some adorable close ups. You two were snuggling .”
“I would never ,” Donnie hisses, glaring at the evidence before him. It was hard to refute the fact that they were indeed smushed together and drooling on each other against a beanbag in the photo. “Delete that!”
“Never!” April taunts him, wagging the screen of her mobile in his face. “And, just so you know, I already have multiple backup copies just in case you decide to get handsy with my cloud storage.”
Well, there goes that idea. “I am never speaking to Michael again. What was he even doing up so late?”
“Aw, come on now. At least he didn’t rat you out to Raph and Splints. Then you’d really be in real trouble.”
April, despite all her audacity, has a very good point. “ Sighhh. We need to get Nardo out of there before they find him.”
“Consider it done.” April raises her elbow, waiting patiently as Donnie drags his forearm up in a pitiful display of absolute pathos. He clunks his elbow against hers with none of his usual enthusiasm and watches as she walks away, fighting the nausea in his belly.
“You owe me!”
Defeated, Donnie simply groans.
~
Obsession is a funny word. They’ve followed him for years like a ghost, and it feels like it's only now that he's grown up that he’s able to see them floating around him. Bands, video games, Lego, almond butter granola bars. He hyper-obsesses over things. It's just in his nature.
Lately, he’s been diligently obsessing over monitoring Leo's vitals, or obsessing calculating Mikey’s mystic output, or obsessing over collecting data on Casey’s Google searches. He's got spreadsheets for days, baby, and he glosses over them now with a piña colada in hand. They're tasty. And the only thing that gets him to sleep these days. He keeps telling himself that.
And so the day passes, locked in his lab, and Donnie is still searching for salvation at the ready. It takes time, a little effort, and a lot of ignorance to get him there, but he’ll find the lead he’s looking for eventually.
At the moment, he's keying information into their medical documents about Raph's eyesight, or lack thereof. There's something degenerative happening, possibly macular, and he needs to find something to stave off the damage long enough to find a cure. He’s got a few samples in for testing as he types, but some of the specimens will take a few more days to come back with results. Donnie frowns; this is more Leo's jam, but he's not about to burden his brother with the news that Raph’s secretly going blind and is refusing to tell anyone. It had taken a piña colada, disguised as a protein shake, to get the truth out of Raph to begin with; there's no way the big guy would admit it forthright, which means that a whole other can of worms is about to be opened on his behalf.
It’s just another secret he has to keep to himself.
Marie Curie, being the only one with brains in this subway station is a pain. He takes another drag of his drink and keeps scrolling.
Hours pass like slicks of hot oil. There are no such things as restful moments when there's a task at hand to finish, to tinker with, to perfect. He’s too introspective to let the shadows of his demons rile him up tonight; he has a job to do, and letting himself think about his own problems is like throwing away the keys and hoping gravity will push his wheels where he needs to go.
So he doesn’t. His trashed room that he can’t clean up because it’s just too much, the pile of secrets weighing on his shoulders, the weird, niggling feeling crawling up and down his body every so often…they need to be ignored. He can deal with his problems later.
Then there's the issue with Leo's lack of ninpō. The Kraang is obviously responsible; the despicable bubble gum skid mark used its powers to render all of their abilities useless during their first encounter, so it only makes sense that the Kraang would do it to Leo the first chance it got in the prison dimension to ensure the beat down it gave to Leo would be as pleasurable as possible. Donnie gags a little at the notion and drums a quick beat against his knees before redirecting his train of thought.
It’s 3:18AM and his family needs him.
Breathe.
He has connections in the Hidden City, all of whom owe him something or other. He doesn’t just get his cash from hacked ATMs and pseudonymous patents, you know; illegal dealings are just as much up his alley as anything, so long as the shipping address doesn't end in New Jersey. He starts a little fishing expedition, mainly to see who or what may have dipped a finger or two in the wonderful world of mystic mojo, and watches the results appear before his eyes.
The black web is teeming with tidbits of information, and Donnie jumps on all of them just because he can. His username has a reputation to uphold and the idiots on the other side of those screens know he’s not to be trifled with. Donnie loves a good doxxing, not to mention a full scale malware attack, and many of them learned this the hard way.
Half of what he finds turn out to be false leads, which isn’t entirely unexpected, but Donnie is nothing if not persistent. If he types the right words and shares the right information, he’ll have what he’s looking for in no time. He doesn’t particularly want to head back to Witchtown (the disdain with which he remembers that adventure has long soured his memories) but it’s 4:27AM and his family needs him.
Breathe.
His PC pings and Donnie glances over at the auxiliary screen, peering through his glasses at the information rolling across the program he’s had running for a few hours now. It’s not what he wants to see, but it’s what he’d been expecting; Raph’s going blind despite their best efforts, and there isn’t much he can do about it until the rest of the tests come through. Donnie doesn’t quite understand it yet, but the zombification of his brother at the hands of the Kraang had infected his body with what Donnie can only describe as a parasite, slowly and surely infecting its host. It’s by some miracle that it hasn’t spread yet, remaining solely in the soft tissue in and around his eye, but Donnie isn’t sure how long that will last.
He needs a solution, and he needs it fast. If he could bioengineer a virus to attack the Kraang’s parasitic hold on his brother, there’s a chance they could stop the macular degeneration from getting worse. He might even be able to fix his vision once the parasitic infection actively attacking the tissue is rendered obsolete. It’s a huge task, and it’s one that he needs Leo’s assistance with, but which brother does he prioritize first?
Donnie catches himself grinding his teeth and opens his mouth wide, wincing at the sickening crack. He’s going to have to switch over to coffee as his preferred libation if he’s going to solve the increasingly complicated web of problems sprawling out in front of him.
It’s a lot of work, but Donnie grows where he’s needed.
Breathe.
~
It takes him, Raph, Mikey, and April three days to track down a peanut shaped semipermeable nucleus yōkai named Alamo who happened to have a very useful scroll in his collection of highly questionable mystic items. Mikey enamored the single celled limbless invertebrate with his sparkling fingers while Donnie and Raph scanned through the membrane’s various items for what they were trying to find. It was Raph who found what they were looking for in the end, but their less-than-legal investigation led them to a plethora of other wonderful finds that Donnie would make great use of in the future.
Which is how he got here, half sprawled on his gaming chair, staring intently at the high definition scans he'd proudly procured while Alamo was happily adrift in a Mikey-shaped fantasy of sunshine and rainbows. Getting one’s mystic swag back is…surprisingly dull when it comes down to it. A circle. Hand holding. And a spell that only contains four sentences.
Donnie empties the rest of his delightful tropical slurry into his coffee mug and smirks at the screen, ignoring the persistent flash of pink from the corner of his eye.
He's done weirder shit on a Tuesday afternoon. It was time to get cracking.
~
“Alright, let’s give this a whirl.” Donnie checks their surroundings before folding himself into a sitting position. He’s put down colour coded stickers for them to sit on (because Darwin knows they can barely follow his basic instructions without a visual representation) and they seem to be sitting where he needs them to sit. Leo rests in the middle, with Donnie and Raph on either side, and Mikey right in front. “Hands?”
He doesn’t like this part, but he gets it. They’ve got to channel some major mystic swag and a physical connection is the best way to charge their empty battery of a brother sitting between them. Fingers now joined, the atmosphere in the air immediately thickens, hazy and thick with static.
“Focus,” Raph instructs them, his voice low and level. For someone who openly admits that he’s not the most scholarly of turtles, Donnie has to commend Raph for how seriously he’s been taking everything mystic lately. From the scrolls they’d found to the soul-searching meditation exercises he’s been learning to perfect, Raph was quickly becoming a bonafide expert in the spiritual side of things.
Donnie feels something happening around them, but it’s just not enough . “We’re not…” he grumbles, opening one eye to glance around them. “We’re going to need more—”
“—more what?” Leo grits out, his frustration quickly becoming discernable. “We don’t even know what we’re supposed to do!”
“We need to focus on our powers,” Raph explains, his brows furrowing. Donnie glances down at the scroll resting beside his knee and scowls at it; had three days of digging through scrolls and (gently) harassing various shady people in Witchtown led to this?
“What powers?” Leo winces and Donnie smirks a little despite himself as Mikey kicks him in the hip. “Hey!”
“Trust yourself!” Mikey exclaims, his optimism stirring something up in their supernatural situation. The four of them inhale and focus once more, and the crackle of energy encircling the tetrad of mutated turtles turns strangely palpable in a heartbeat
Donnie’s a little skeptical about this part, but he’s willing to try anything if it means patching his family back together piece by piece. With all the force he can muster, Donnie tries to open his mind as much as possible and mentally hollers into the familiar buzz that greets him. ‘Trust your mind.’
The last thing he ever wants to do is give his brothers free-for-all access to his inner thoughts, but this strange connection through their heads is nothing like he’d expected it to feel. It’s surprisingly comforting here, like a warm blanket, and Donnie can easily sense each of their ninpō through the bond they’d formed between them. Raph’s is all heat and fire and stoicism, burning brightly in the hearth. Above them, Mikey’s crackle of lightning lights up the starless sky of their sanctuary, and Donnie’s own violet energy sizzles with a measured effervescence, hop-scotching in and out around them like soldering sparks.
The only presence missing is the one they’re trying to bolster, and it’s withering despite all of the goodwill Donnie is trying his best to project.
"Whatever trash yer thinkin', stop it," Raph opens his eyes to glower at Leo, stealing the words right out of Donnie’s mouth. It’s like sharing a collective thought, which is more than a little strange as he feels Mikey’s encouragement before he even hears it.
"You got this, bro!" Mikey beams, his own golden fireworks ricocheting around them. "I believe in you!"
Grimacing, Donnie yells again into the midst of their mindscape and hopes his words get through. ‘Trust your body.’
It takes a moment or three but there’s definitely something cooking now, that much is certain. The three of them can all feel it shuddering through their connection and they hone in on the little murmur in the dark, encouraging it with all the flames they can muster.
‘Trust your heart.’
The circle sparks beneath them and Donnie can’t help but peek a little as a soft gleam of cyan throws the angles of Leo's face in sharp relief. His brother’s brows are deeply furrowed as something shifts between them, their spell suddenly coagulating into something both distinct and remarkable. It feels wildly giddy in a way, and he knows his brothers are sharing the same feeling as he doubles down and bellows the final line into the void.
‘Trust your soul.’
The whoosh and zing that results, for lack of a better word, quite literally steals the air from Donnie’s lungs. "Whatever you're doing, it's working!" he cries above the maelstrom, eyes wide open with unrepentant awe. Red, orange, and purple energy cascades within their perfect squall, static chaos tearing at the seams of their realities, and the four of them share a look of wonderment between them. It’s like nothing he’s ever seen and everything he’s ever wanted to feel, all fireworks and love and mayhem and joy and mystic hands and hearts and souls crashing into each other as one bursting beam of life.
Leo’s ninpō wriggles just out of reach and the three of them urge him forwards, watching as Leo’s lips stretch into the smile they all know and love. It’s the familiar crackle of ozone, the zingy tangle of electric turquoise noise, all mischief and adrenaline and everything Leo represents. They watch with bated breath as the butter knife clutched between his fingers swells and grows, turning into a blade that he thrusts into the air victoriously. The metal sings, crackling with delight, and the storm around them breaks with a torrent of air that bursts through every manhole and grate of New York City.
“I…I did it!” Leo cries breathlessly, staring in wonder at the matching pair of mystic weapons firmly sitting in his grasp. He shares an equally bewildered look with his brothers, matching expressions of elation quickly morphing into glee. A moment later, they’re circle turns into a giant heap of giggling limbs and howls of joy, and Donnie honestly can’t contain his excitement.
“It worked!” he squeaks out, squashed between Raph’s bicep and Leo’s shell. It’s unheard of. It’s absolute insanity. His mind is still singing with the connection they’d all shared between them and it’s absolutely frying all of their brains but oh so worth it!
“Hamato clan, baby!” Mikey shouts, his legs kicking with uncontained excitement. Truly, Donnie doesn’t think he could say it any better himself.
~
And with that, things went back to normal.
…or they should have.
They’re all back on their feet, more or less. Mikey’s hand tremors have all but ceased, only appearing occasionally when he’s tired or overexcited. April’s cuts and bruises are all healed, and his father isn’t nursing a limp any longer. Casey’s personality is finally starting to crack through the weight of his trauma, growing more comfortable with them after weeks of tip-toeing and trepidation. And, as for Leo, he’s physically back to his usual self so long as he wears the ankle brace they’d designed and fashioned together with their 3D printer.
The only outliers to his much sought after normality are him and Raph.
“Just because there aren’t any vaccines against parasites allowed for human use—”
“—absolutely not, it’s too dangerous to test a prototype parasitic vaccination on Raph without—
“—don’t you think I know that?! But if we don’t fine tune this bad boy ASAP, Raph’s gonna lose his eyesight—”
“—for the love of Pythagoras, can you please stop arguing with me for three seconds and use your earholes to comprehend some actual logic—”
“Fine.” Leo huffs, crossing his arms across his chest. His eyes are straining against the light of the monitor, and Donnie has already told him to take out his contacts and just wear his stupid glasses already, but Leo’s never been one to listen to common sense, let alone good advice. “All three tests came up ineffective. How, exactly, do you think studying sporo-whatcha-ma-call-its are going to help us?”
“Because while the rest of you dumb-dumbs were healing or actively trying to derail your healing by being stupid,” Donnie begins, his tongue razor sharp with exhaustion and frustration, “I was studying sporozoites and how cryopreserved parasites can trigger immune responses in patients with certain viral illnesses, and since the Kraang parasite is acting like a virus—”
“—except how, exactly, do you expect us to find enough samples to try your theory out? Not to state the obvious, but New York City is still—”
“—if you’d let me finish for once in your life, you’d already know that I’d be acquiring the parasitic samples from me.”
Leo’s mouth opens, then closes, then proceeds to hang off his skull. “...you're gonna what now?”
Donnie’s lips press into a thin line. Weeks of hardly sleeping, weeks of squirming sensations and flashes of hot sticky pink, weeks of multitasking so feverishly that he’d started noticing something wasn’t right….it had all led to this. A cursory scan of his own health should have alerted him earlier, but he hadn’t been actively looking for a parasitic infection, let alone leftover Kraang residue in his bloodstream. He’d been so busy taking care of his brothers, taking care of April and Casey and his father, that he hadn’t had time to take care of himself, which hadn’t really mattered in the great scheme of things anyway. His body had managed to continue functioning even without sleep, evidently, and Donnie continues to take that for granted.
Begrudgingly, he has the Kraang to thank for that.
“It doesn’t matter.” Donnie waves him off, gesturing to a pipette by the centrifuge. “By isolating the parasites in my blood and weaponizing them, I can run another controlled test on each of our genetic variants until one finally triggers the protective immunity we need to kill the Kraang’s infection off for good.”
“No. No no no no no.” Leo raises a palm, glaring full tilt at his brother. “We need to go back a hot minute because you just told me that you have the same Kraang parasites making Raph go blind in your body ?!”
Donnie rolls his eyes. “It was your idea, remember?”
“What?” Leo’s facial expression quickly morphs into horror. “I told you to drive a spaceship. I did not tell you to climb into its tentacle brain and merge with it.”
“Except that was the only way to communicate with its interface,” Donnie explains, turning back towards his keyboard in the hopes that his nonchalance will reassure his brother that this is nothing to worry about. “What matters is that it isn’t affecting me like it’s affecting Raph. I was exposed for two minutes. Raph was exposed for several hours.”
“Donnie? Seriously?" Leo looks at him, really looks at him, and Donnie squares his shoulders under his stare. He's in the right, after all. Nothing is wrong with him. "Show me the scans."
"No."
The statement comes out of his mouth unbidden. He's in the right. There's nothing wrong with him.
"Donnie…" Leo's expression shifts again, this time to consternation. "Let me see the scans."
"There's nothing wrong with me."
"Yeah, that's a big fat lie." Leo slips out of his seat and takes a step back, oddly enough, and Donnie is immediately suspicious. "Raph was right, you have been acting weird, and I should have listened to him."
With that, Leo leaves.
And Donnie, perplexed and riled up from expecting an entirely different reaction from his twin brother, is suddenly very much alone.
~
"Sorry D, but the charade is up."
Thirteen hours later, Donnie finds himself thoroughly cornered by the turnstiles. The metaphor is uncanny; he's only got two choices.
In. Or out.
"I found your scans, even after you tried to encrypt them," Leo explains, standing slightly out in front of his father and brothers. April and Casey round out the team. "Did you honestly think we wouldn't start to notice?"
"What are you talking about?" Donnie grounds out, hackles rising.
"You've been avoiding us, D. More than usual. Before, we always hung out together, especially when those two," Mikey jerks his thumbs towards both Raph and Leo, "were arguing all the time. But now…now I barely see you," Mikey whispers, nervously fidgeting with his fingers. The wave of guilt is quickly tampered down by indignation, however.
"I've been busy!" He tries to deflect, but no one seems to be budging. "The lair and everyone in it wasn't just going to repair itself."
"We cleaned up yer bedroom last week, ya know, and ya didn't even notice," Raph says, crossing his arms across his chest. "And Leo here says ya haven't been sleeping unless yer drinking that pineapple stuff."
"Not to mention you're completely ignoring everything you love," April chimes in, shifting her weight onto her hip in a way that Donnie knows means business. "I checked your Xbox stats when you were repairing the tank's hull the other day. You game daily, D, and you haven’t touched your console in weeks. Something's up."
"The Master Donatello I knew had vices, but he would never treat his body the way you're treating yours." Casey says, rubbing his forearms unconsciously. "We used to see this, sometimes, in the rebel camps. It was an infiltration tactic by the Kraang, and it worked every time…no one made it out alive, because we never caught it before it was too late. The Kraang would use people as hosts…" Casey shivers. "It would trick you into thinking you were fine until it paralyzed you, and then when the tentacles came out—”
"You're lying," Donnie hisses, growing more and more frustrated by the minute. "There's nothing wrong with me."
"My son, we have all had to face our mortality, some more than others, but it's always been you, Purple, who has shouldered most of the burden. Do not take this on alone."
"You're all being ridiculous." Donnie waves them off, unable to even glance in his father's direction. "There's nothing wrong with me."
April steps up beside Leo and somehow manages to glare down at him over the frames of her glasses. "Donnie, listen. We can do this your way or we can do this our way, but you're not getting out of this whether you like it or not. We love you too much for that."
Something very strange quivers in his stomach and Donnie retaliates with all the force he can muster. "Leave! Me! Alone!"
Oh no.
A cold chill passes over him, but the feeling is quickly flooded by hot, hot heat. That awful squiggly sensation he's been ignoring for days starts worming its way up from the base of his skull, forcing him to shudder.
"I've been b…I mean, I'm not…" Donnie pinches the bridge of his nose and ignores the waning alarm bells sounding between his ears. "Is there a point to this Spanish Inquisition? Because I have better things to do than stand here and play intervention."
"Leo." Raph intones, pressing his hand against the blue clad turtle's shell. "You ready?"
"As I'll ever be." Leo squares his shoulders and steps forwards properly, getting into Donnie’s space. "Hey, D! What will it take for you to admit you have brain worms?"
Donnie visibly recoils. "I don't have brain worms."
"That's exactly what someone with brain worms would say if they had brain worms and they didn't want to be caught admitting they had brain worms."
Donnie doesn't honestly know what to say to that, but his instincts are telling him to deny it. "I don't have—”
“—brain worms? Because I'm pretty one hundred percent sure that you do, or else you wouldn't be acting like the turtley version of a self-destruct button." Leo takes another step forwards, and Donnie immediately snaps his jaw in warning. "And speaking of buttons, I know juuuust how to push every single one of them."
Voice rising in hysteria with every syllable, Donnie’s battleshell hits the wall with a resounding thunk. "I thought we agreed to stop arguing with each other.”
“That was before I found out you'd been hijacked by the Kraang." Leo opens his palms, the gesture pointlessly deceiving. Donnie knows what Leo's after, and he's not getting it! "You're still you, D, none of us are gonna deny that, but you've been acting hella weird and we had to do something. I mean, if you hadn't roped me into what was happening with Raph’s sight, we'd probably already be dealing with Shaun of the Donatello as we speak."
Donnie snaps his jaw again, a sure sign as any that Leo has hit a nerve. "I'm feeling perfectly adequate, thank you very much—”
"But are you? Really?" Leo tips his head to the side, his gaze blazingly thorough. "We're here. We're healing. Mikey, dad, April, Casey, even Raph and his Kraangified eyeball that we're going to totally fix once we de-brainworm you. We're good now, even if we weren't before, because that's what we do. We stick together. We heal together. We put up with each other's crap together because we're family. We care about each other, and we care about you!"
"Except there's nothing’s wrong with me!"
"Says the guy whose eyes are literally glowing pink right now," Leo remarks, setting his palm against Raph's outstretched wrist. "Hooo boy, this is way worse than I thought. Time for Plan C."
Raph nods once and steps gingerly to the left, his eyes carefully trained on Donnie. "Stay calm, little brother. We're gonna get ya fixed in no time. Mikey? Magic hands."
“Got it!”
Donnie bristles, his instincts screaming at him to just attack already as his brothers widen their semi-circle around him. He wants to run away, but some bone deep urge is holding him back. "You're all being irrational."
"Irrational? Dude, you're acting nuttier than the Paleo diet." Leo replies, sliding ever so slightly to the left. "Let's not be doomed by the narrative, bro, we've had enough of that already."
"The only one's you're dooming are yourselves!" Donnie gurgles, and the voice that comes out of his mouth is not his own.
"Holy sh—"
"—ut 'er down, Mikey!"
With a flourish that Donnie sees a fraction too late, Mikey enacts a forcefield between them, glittering and humming with an energy he dares not to touch. His youngest brother holds the mystic barrier steady, his hands outstretched, and guilt tries desperately to grapple with the wall of rage he's crashing up against.
"Sorry, D." Leo sighs, standing within mere millimetres of the boundary between them. "But you're kinda homicidal even on a good day and I can’t have you choosing violence no matter how much you're hurting." Grimacing, Leo turns his head towards Casey. "How long we got?"
"Judging by his reactions? Probably only a few more minutes," Casey responds, glancing over at April. "Is it ready?"
"T-minus sixty seconds," she calls back, using Donnie’s own tech to monitor something on her holoscreen. "When the timer goes green, grab it and run back."
"Understood." Casey salutes her, then disappears out of sight.
"Are ya sure we hafta trap him like this?" Raph murmurs, watching as the shell of his brother snarls at the forcefield between them. "This ain't fair, Leo. I should be the one who—”
"He's got to be perfectly still for this to work, and we've only got one shot to get this right. I need you to trust me on this."
Raph nods. "Always."
"Good." Leo steels himself, turning to stare down his infected brother once again. "Not sure pink is the best look on you, to be honest, D."
Canines bared, Donnie’s pupils retract into slits. "Let me go."
"Not a chance." Leo inhales, his mask pinching together, and it's obvious how much it hurts to say it. "Mikey? How ya feeling?"
"Like a million bucks!"
Donnie’s eyes lock onto Mikey’s hands, and whatever part of him that’s still him feels immensely relieved that Mikey doesn’t appear to be injured. It’s almost a blessing that his vision is starting to black out around the edges, because he doesn’t think he even wants to know how his family must be looking at him right now.
"...help me…" Donnie scrubs his palms against the fabric of his hoodie repeatedly, screwing his eyes shut as the pent up frustration of everything starts bursting out of his body like a volcanic eruption. His legs seem to be frozen in place as liquid fire courses through his body like a chemical reaction gone wrong, rooting him to the spot.
The world narrows in on a pinprick, noise and sound interspersed in a reverie of fog and hazy static and hectic, haggard breaths. Donnie doesn’t know what moves first; the shadows of his family bearing witness to his downfall or his own hands wringing themselves again and again until they feel like they’re engulfed in flame. The pull and tear of pressure, the gasp of oxygen, the red hot fury thrumming through his veins like molten lead—it’s taking over, it’s taking over, it’s taking over—
His heart thuds erratically in his chest.
"Donnie! Hold on, help's comin'!"
"We got you, bro! Just another few seconds!"
There's a buzzing in his ears.
Bodily functions…he can’t…he can no longer classify them.
"Stay calm, my son!"
"I love the heck out of you, Dontron, but if you ever make me do something like this again—"
The fear is controlling him. He is no longer in control.
"Guys! It's ready!"
Systems are frozen. Performance is failing rapidly. Background processes are overwhelmed. CPU is at 100%.
"April! Now!"
The forcefield drops and a needle plunges into his thigh a second later.
Force shutdown. Emergency restart.
Reboot. Reboot!
~
Hot. Lead. Anxiety. Memories.
He's running on phantom power, dancing on a grave of terrible ideas and caffeinated dreams too frosted over to be discernible. It's like his brain is wedged in between the spires of evolution, stuck in the reedy depths of what he was before and the humanoid reality of what he’s come to be.
In between the fever dreams and the lucid moments of gasping breaths, he wonders if the vaccine he and Leo concocted was actually working, or if this was the aftermath of an immune-reaction gone terribly wrong. Occasionally, he can feel the damp cotton sheets cocooning his body. Other times, he feels like a hornworm hosting the hungry, writhing larvae of a parasitic wasp.
He opens his eyes.
He's…on a rooftop, which is odd considering he's definitely also lying in their med bay. Staring up at the vapour trails tearing across the skies, he's faced with the constant reminder of the relentless iron claws clasping him to this city. There’s no escaping this; his ‘whole situation’, his family, the aftermath of this mission gone awry. They’re here, they’re alive, but they will never be the same because of it.
"Dooooonniiiieeeeee…"
He glances leftwards and spots a squirrel in plaid overalls breakdancing on his favourite Gundam coaster. It's not the weirdest thing he's ever seen, but it's close.
"Rise and shine, bro. I brought your favourite!"
The squirrel isn't talking, so Donnie turns to his right. There's an alpaca sitting on a bench, reading an interior design magazine. Nobody reads magazines anymore, and he tries to tell the alpaca that, but all that comes out is a faint gurgle.
"Wakey wakey, no eggs and all bakey!"
The alpaca is ignoring him, which is entirely absurd. No one ignores Donatello Hamato, inventor, engineer, and genius extraordinaire. He can't believe the audacity but, then again, he can’t exactly believe that what's going on in his head is real.
"Really? You won't even wake up for bacon? This calls for the defibrillator, sheesh."
Donnie inhales. " Mmmmrrrhhh. "
"There he is!" The voice resonates in his ears, and the familiarity of it makes him want to crawl off this rooftop and find his way home. "The way to a soft-shelled turtle's heart is through his stomach after all, you meaty freak."
Fever dreams be damned, he knows that awful sense of humour when he hears it. " Mmhhrrrrrrr. "
"That's it, Meatatello. Crispy bacon, fresh from the microwave, right under your nose…"
Donnie isn't entirely certain, but he thinks he pulls a muscle just opening his left eyelid. " Mmrh?"
"Oh, reduced to primordial turtle noises, are we? I am honoured." Leo smirks and clicks at him a few times, the sound coming from deep in his throat. "Let me get your glasses before you give yourself premature wrinkles."
In the span of moments it takes for Donnie to peel open his right eye, Leo sets his glasses down across his beak in a manner so surprisingly gentle that Donnie actually wonders if he's still dreaming. "Earth to Donnie, come in, over."
The turtle in question blinks a few times, his vision eventually turning from blurry to clear. He's in his bedroom, which is odd because it was definitely trashed the last time he saw it, and Leo is sitting cross-legged on his mattress beside him. " Mmhhr?"
"Yeah, we cleaned it up a week or so ago, but you didn't notice cause, you know, you had brainworms."
" Mmhhrr."
"I know, right? Totally gross. Anyway, the good news is, the vaccine worked!" Leo picks a slice of bacon off the tray balancing on his knee and taps off the grease. "The bad news is we're all totally mad at you. Just kidding. I'm mad at you, and everyone else is just happy you're still alive."
Donnie’s longing glance towards the bacon slowly tracks back up to Leo's strained expression. " Mmhr."
"Oh, I know you're sorry. Still, did ya think you were being brave or something?" Leo waves the bacon around like a conductor's baton. "Not sleeping? Working yourself to death? Drinking piña coladas alone in your lab? Taking one for the team?" Leo slumps over, staring intently at the bacon strip between his fingers. "You suck sometimes, you know that?"
Donnie slowly sloughs his tongue off the roof of his mouth. "...yeah."
"Good, I'm glad you know that, because you're not getting any bacon until I finish telling you how stupid you are." Leo bites into the strip obnoxiously, staring pointedly at his brother. "By the way, I found more than just your encrypted body scans on your PC. Thank goodness for April, because 'myfavoritetwinisleo' was not your password, which is the second reason why you're not getting any bacon until I'm done lecturing you."
"Believe it or not, Case cracked your code. Turns out old you and this you have a lot in common." Leo's lips twist into an expression that doesn't quite fit on his face. "Did he ever tell you how you died? How we all died? Cause like, cool story bro, but can we not?" Leo clicks, likely in solidarity, and continues. "Anyway, I don't remember all the nerdy words, but Case did and he cracked your security clearance no problemo, and you know what we found? You've been keeping secrets."
Donnie briefly considers passing out again. " Mmrh. "
"Mmhmm. And while I didn't look at your folder of Reddit screenshots because I value my eyes, I did access the files that had our names on them." Leo scooches closer, his stare positively relentless. "Let's start on the one about Raph, shall we? I was hoping you'd just written a nice bodice ripper about Raph rescuing a fair yōkai maiden but nooooooo, you just had to openly admit you knew about Raph's blindness the whole time and didn't tell me."
"And of course, I couldn't stop there. I had to continue my deep dive into the wild world of colour coded Google Sheets to find all of my recent medical records and lo and behold, what did I find? Well, you know exactly what I found, I don't have to spell it out for you. You're just lucky Mikey wasn't around when April got to my injury stats first."
"And then! The Michael file! Call Oprah, because this one belongs on her bestseller list!" Leo snatches another strip of bacon off the tray and pops it into his mouth. "Studying his mystic output is one thing, but were you really planning experiments on the space-time continuum? On interdimensional time vortexes? Not to state the obvious, but I never took you for a Doctor Who fan."
Leo takes a deep breath and clicks at him. It's…not a very nice click, judging by the delivery, and Donnie sinks further into his mattress.
"Look, Raph is gonna kill me for ambushing you like this, but this secret thing? This holding stuff in and not telling us thing? It sucks, D. I'm tired, we're tired. This whole coming-to-age plot needs to get to the epilogue ASAP, because the next time you pull a stunt like this, we're gonna stop hunting villains and start becoming them, capiche?"
Donnie opens his mouth to speak, then promptly closes it. For once in his life, he can’t seem to come up with an answer.
“That’s what I thought.” Leo levels him with a look before plunking the tray of bacon on Donnie’s plastron. “Now, eat this before I eat it all. I made it for you.”
Donnie’s lips quirk a little at the edges. “...thanks.”
“You’re only slightly welcome,” Leo responds, crossing his arms and pointedly looking away from him. It’s all an act now, Donnie knows, because that’s always been their normal. They fight, they tease, they make up for it with little gifts of food or toys or tech. If the past has taught him anything, it’s that they’ll always be alright in the end.
Donnie spends an exorbitant amount of time dragging his elbow out from under the blanket, pausing frequently because he feels like he's been pulverized by the business end of a missile. He can see Leo desperately holding back from commenting, but even Donnie can see the humour in the moment as he finally slides his hand on his plastron, only to tip the bacon sideways.
"You're really gonna make me feed it to you, huh?" Leo snickers, his veneer finally buckling as Donnie churs miserably at him again. "You're lucky I love you, little bro. Oooh, that's right! I can call you little bro now that I'm officially two weeks older than you!" Leo flashes his trademark smirk but the shift in mood must register enough for Leo's chuckles to slowly wane. "I didn't tell Mikey, by the way. That's on you."
Shit . Donnie thinks. He doesn't say it out loud, but somehow Leo hears him anyway.
"Fabulous. Glad we're in agreement. Not my circus, not my monkeys." Leo plucks a strip of bacon off the tray and plops it into his brother's waiting mouth. "I hope you know that we’re even now since you fed me chicken noodle soup a few weeks ago."
Donnie groans with relief, emotionless bad boy be damned. Bacon is delicious, and there's nothing his brother hasn't seen of him at this point that could make this absolute dress-down in ego any worse.
"More?"
" Hhrrr …please."
Leo snerks. "Donnie? Being polite? Watch your head! Low flying pigs!"
Donnie, despite himself, pulls his lips into a grin. "...shut up, dumb dumb."
Leo laughs, shoving another strip of bacon into his brother's mouth. "Love you too, bro."
~
Time.
It passes differently now that everything is finally back to normal. Up on the rooftops of New York City, a new and improved Raph tottles across the Brooklyn Bridge with a stack of pizza boxes on his head, and Donnie grins because it’s wonderful. They’re still a little battered, but the scars and broken shell fragments are a testament to how close they got to the end of the world and how far they’ve come as a family.
Dragging his body back from the depths of near-Kraangification was a memory he’d rather soon forget, but his brothers had made it their mission to take care of him just as he had taken care of them. He felt closer than he’d felt in years to his ridiculous rag-tag nest of dumb dumbs, which happened naturally when you were forced to hang out with them for an inordinate amount of time.
It could have also been the spell, of course.
Donnie’s learned his lesson though. Some secrets, especially ones that come from being able to read his brother's minds, are best left unwritten.