right around the corner II - angelmichelangelo - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2024)

“Are you sure it isn’t just another stray again, Don?”

Raph’s voice carries itself loudly through the length of the empty sewer tunnel, a hint of teasing webbed around his words, evident also in the way the corners of his mouth twitch upwards into a slight smile, Donnie scoffs in response, quickening his steps to further the distance between them.

He glances down at the mutagen tracker in his grasp, the little green dot blinking up at him in quick succession.

“Pretty positive,” he replies in a flat tone. He steps around a shallow pool of dirty sewer water. Something small and dark bobs around at the surface. Raph follows suit close behind him. “This thing wouldn’t have just gone off for another cat or rat.”

They walk in silence for a little while. They pass an open storm drain that lends itself to a sliver of morning light that comes through, dots of dust float around in its wake before Raph slices through it with his body.

“But… but where would a mutant come from, Don? One that we don’t know about, I mean.” Donnie glances over towards him to watch the shape of his more pronounced jut of his throat bob with uncertainty. “It’s just us down here. Right?”

That had been the case for the last ten years of their lives. No more Kraang or Shredder or imposing alien invasions. Their biggest posed threat these days were pulled muscles and sore heads after a good beat down with a few rouge Purple Dragons, mostly because they weren’t kids anymore. And being so close to thirty was a chore, on both the body and soul it appeared, especially when you were a ninja that spent so much of your youth flipping about pulling ridiculous stunts. It all caught up to you, one way or another.

Donnie sighs. The dot grows bigger on his screen, continuously blinking with vigor.

“I can’t imagine we’ve gone this long without any knowledge about any secret mutant roaming about the sewer,” he says. He looks up. There’s a fork where the tunnel splits off. He pauses only for a brief moment before he moves towards the left side, Raphael follows wordlessly. “But never say never,” he adds, voice dropping a careful octave.

They keep moving through the dark still of the tunnel. The stench down here is more pungent than usual, mostly because it’s so hidden away from where any sewage worker might find themselves. It’s clear that it’s an untouched part of the underground in the way that trash and the corpses of whatever poor rodent had succumbed down here lines the edges of the walls, pushed aside as they make way of the path ahead of them.

Raph carefully toes the bones of what looks to have been a mouse, with a grimace. “Maybe there’s a reason we ain’t found this thing yet,” he says. He gags a little when the strong odor grows heavy and thick in the air. “Dude. This place reeks. Even for a sewer.”

Donnie hums in agreement, maybe to save having to swallow down any of the stink himself, he refrains from verbally responding. The dot winks dangerously at him now.

“I feel sorry for whatever sucker is living down here,” Raph says sadly as they carry on. “Like. Really sorry.”

Donnie huffs. The sour air tickles the back of his throat and he has no choice but to swallow it down. “Raph, be quiet. We don’t know what’s down here and we don’t wanna—”

Something in the shadows shifts. The sounds of empty, hollowed out cans clank together and there’s a soft whimpering cry following after it. Years of ninja reflexes kick in at once as both turtles make a grab for their respective weapons. The blunt metal of Raphael’s sai’s wink in the dim light.

“Careful,” Donnie whispers. His mind supplies him with flashes of old memories of mutant squirrels and his gut churns at the thought. He edges half a step closer nonetheless.

Raph is the first to step forward and whatever lurks ahead of them whimpers at the sight. Donnie’s white knuckles grip on his staff seems to loosen. This… this isn’t a monster.

“Hey,” Donnie says softly. Raph hesitates before turning to face him. “I don’t. I don’t think it’s dangerous. I think it’s—”

There’s a sharp hiccup of breath and the cans rustle again and Raph’s spinning around in an instant, in the same motion he’s also dropping his brandished fists by his sides as the source of the noise slowly clears the shadowy corner of the tunnel.

Stepping forward is a tiny mutant turtle, a scruffy, yet distinguishable orange bandana wrapped around the top of his little head, thumb wedged in the corner of his mouth and big, round ember eyes sparkling with fresh tears, Donnie feels his heart drop to his feet in mere seconds.

“Oh.” Raph says blankly as he stares uselessly at the tot. “Oh, sh*t.”

***

It takes a good twelve and a half minutes for both Donnie and Raph to entice the kid out of the shadows with all smiles and soft voices, very quickly stuffing away their weapons to make good on their promise to him that they’re the good guys and they aren’t going to hurt him.

They don’t get a whole lot of sense out of him at first, especially when he’s still sucking on his thumb and blubbering through panicky tears, it’s evident without tangible words that this poor child is scared.

But Raph works his charm. Let’s him hold his hand all the way home. Presses him tight into his side when the kid squeaks in fear as they pass through the darker parts of the tunnel. Donnie’s tracker blinks at him the entire stretch they walk with him, indicating that this is definitely their mutant. He glances down at the child.

This, in some way or another, is one of their own.

They make it home and whilst Donnie instructs them both into his lab, Raph is still chewing his ear off with a random slew of conversation, popping him up on the lab chair as Donnie taps away at his computer.

“—and I love this,” Raph says, pinching the material of his hoodie that’s got some indistinguishable logo scrawled across the front of it. He grins. “Super rad.”

Donnie shoots him a deadpanned look over the top of the kids head. “Rad?” He says, blinking. “Way to show our age, man.”

Raph rolls his eyes. The kid still has his thumb stuck in his mouth but he manages a small smile around it. “He’s a bonehead, isn’t he?” He says, leaning forward into his space with a whisper. “Do you have a Donnie too? Is he a bonehead?”

The boy nods. Then, more tears seem to well up behind his eyes.

Ah. That was perhaps an oversight.

“Oh hey,” Raph soothes him. “It’s alright. It’s okay. This Donnie is real smart, too.” He tells him. He curls a hand protectively around his tiny little arm. “He’s gonna figure this out, don’t you worry little guy.”

Donnie continues to furiously type away to gather what scraps of information he has on the multiverse and interdimensional travel.

Raph watches him for a moment before he turns his attention back to the silent child. “So what do we call you, anyway? You got a name, kid?”

Donnie is sure both of them know the answer to that question, what with the color choice he dons on the sparing items of clothing he has, as well as the baby face he sports still, it’s translated through every instance and version of his brothers that exist in this lifetime and the next. He awaits his answer still.

He unsticks his thumb from his mouth, swiping saliva over the front of his hoodie uncaring, he blinks once, tears having evaporated, and tucks his head a little further into his shell without going all the way, speaking in a small, unsure voice, thick with a baby fat still, he tells him:

“Mikey. My name’s Mikey.”

***

It sucks that their own Mikey is so far away right now. It wouldn’t be totally impossible to rein him back; he’d be sure to make the trip from North Carolina to New York look like an absolute breeze if Don was to call him up and explain that there was currently another, much tinier, younger version of him perched on their kitchen counter right now.

Leo on the other hand, all the way in Japan might be a little harder to tack down, as it often was these days. Karai had been under strict instruction, given by Raph, to keep their eldest sibling in check whilst they were both so far away from home.

Leo had a habit of forgetting to send letters and calling home when promised and it made Donnie’s gut feel sticky with worry every time another day passed by without word. But then his phone would light up with her name and face and she’d be talking a million miles a minute about all the adventures they’d both found himself in, like nothing had changed at all. It was just the way it went.

Raph’s on babysitting duty. It’s a good thing that next to Mikey, he’s the best with kids out of the four of them. He’s disappeared into Mikey’s old room, exactly how he’d left with before he’d moved three states over to essentially chase Woody during his college days (and if they decided not to come home after that, that was their business) and when Raph returns it’s with an armful of dusty, old action figures.

Donnie’s heart kicks up in his chest a little at the sight of them.

“Here,” Raph says, handing out the one that Don thinks might be some kind of unicorn man thing. “This’ll keep you occupied.”

And because this Mikey is just a kid, no older than seven, he gladly takes the figure and tentatively works out all the limbs before he’s making it dance across the table, babbling away to himself without a care in the world.

Donnie watches him for a moment, until Raph’s leaning in his space, voice low and careful.

“So you figure out where he came from yet?” He asks.

Donnie’s throat bobs. Glancing towards his laptop, it’d had a few much needed upgrades the past few years, held together by duct tape and willpower alone, he stares blankly at his screen that offers him limited support.

“He’s definitely one of us,” Donnie tells him, mindful to keep his voice quiet. “See these readings here?” He taps at the screen, leaving a smudged fingerprint in its wake across the glass. “This reading shows he’s related. Not like – actually related, but he’s not just a random mutant that’s popped up.”

Raph sucks a breath through his teeth. Relief, perhaps. They weren’t totally responsible for this kid then. Well. Until they could find his home, that was.

“So another dimension?” Raph says slowly, a familiar realization dawning across his face. He brings a hand up to rub at the side of his jaw. “Can’t you just… zap him home?”

Donnie feels his brow furrow. It had been that simple once. A few spare Kraang parts were somewhat easy to come by now that they were more or less lying about the city, and he was more than capable to stitch something together and just… blast the kid back where he came from.

His eyes trail from the computer screen to the child. He’s curiously peering at the other action figures that lay about on the table. He reaches out for one and quickly snatches it up.

“Not that simple,” Donnie breaks to him. Raph’s entire body seems to sag with disappointment. “He didn’t come through the way we’ve done it before,” he tells him. He scrolls down the page with one finger. Taps at the screen again with another. “This, right here, is some sort of… residue.” He tells him. He turns to face Raph who’s sporting a rather disgusted look.

“It’s the only indication as to how he ended up here.” He pauses. A pit seems to form in his stomach. “And I have no idea what it is.”

Mikey continues to talk under his breath to himself, narrating his own story as he continues smashing together two figures, Raph glances at him and then back to Don.

“So he’s… sticky with it?” He says slowly.

In the absence of Mikey’s rather childish sense of humor, Raphael was sure to make up for it, Donnie had found.

“Yeah,” he says with a curt nod of his head. “Basically.”

Mikey stops playing, setting the figures down, his face pinches together, and even though he doesn’t really look like their Mikey, his features and the shade of green slightly different, the widening gap between his baby teeth more like his own than anything else, Donnie still recognises the look that only little brothers can possess.

“I need to go,” he says with a whine and Donnie feels his heart pinch. Raph’s reaching across for him in an instant, all his big brother instincts kicking in at once.

“Oh, we know, little guy. Don’t you worry. We’re gonna get you home, no trouble.” His entire hand wraps around the small bulk of his shell rather protectively and Mikey just blinks up at him, face straightening out.

“No,” he protests. He then starts to wiggle about where he’s sat. “I need to go. I need to pee.”

Raph suddenly flushes. Donnie chokes back an obvious laugh.

“Ah. Right,” his brother says shortly. He plucks the kid up off the counter, guiding him in the direction of their bathroom. “Sorry.”

It was nice to have the lair feel a little more… full, Donnie realizes as he watches the pair go. He huffs, turning back towards the slew of information his computer continues to spit out at him until he feels his eyes turn square.

***

This Mikey, it turns out, is not quite like their Mikey. He’s plucking off almost every topping laid across his pizza slice, pulling a face at every single one as he drops them back into the cardboard box. Raph is watching with bewilderment.

“I didn’t think it was possible for any version of Mikey to be a picky eater,” he says, his own slice sagging slightly in his hold. Little Mikey, finally happy enough with the state of his food, chews the end of his slice between his front teeth. “This is crazy.”

Donnie, who’s letting his own food grow cold in lieu of watching over his laptop again, just hums in response. He still can’t quite grasp how this kid just happened to fall into another dimension. And why it was just him, alone. He side eyes the child carefully. He doesn’t seem to be enjoying the pizza barren either, evident in the way his whole face seems to scrunch up.

“Hey, Mikey?” Donnie tries. Big round, ember eyes glance up. That’s another thing that’s changed here. He misses his brother’s big old baby blues from time to time. “Can you remember anything else about what happened? When you got lost.”

Raph scoffs, only because they’ve tried this a thousand times already. All the kid seems to be able to tell them is that he wandered a little too far from his brothers and just fell, getting back up and he was here. It wasn’t much to go by: no sounds or sights to indicate anything that might be somewhat useful.

“Nope,” Mikey says with a shake of his head. “I just falled,” (Donnie’s corrected him a few times on this but each time he says it, he’s starting to think he’s just doing it out of spite now), “and when I got back up, you found me. Instead of my Don-Don.”

Something icy runs through Donnie’s veins. The way Raph bristles, he’d imagine his brother is feeling it too. Somewhere, someplace far from here, there’s a Donnie and a Leo and a Raph all missing their Mikey. A Splinter probably running himself rampant to get his child back. Donnie pushes those ugly thoughts out with a hard, harsh shove. He doesn’t want to think about missing siblings scattered about the place, or dad, for that matter. He swallows thickly. Plucking up one of Mikey’s discarded pepperoni slices, he pops it in his mouth.

“I’m sure your family is looking for you just as hard as we are trying to get you home,” Donnie assures him. Mikey smiles. He doesn’t really need it. It’s binding law, no matter the universe, that they always look out for each other. It’s just the way it is, and how it always will be.

“I hope it’s soon,” Mikey then says, looking down sadly. Something dark and heavy flashes across his face. Homesickness. “I miss home.”

Raph is reaching for him again. Something bone deep within him, a constant need to have his arm curled around him and close. Donnie feels something airy happening in his chest at the sight.

“I know. You’re being real brave, y’know that. Super brave.”

Mikey grins, all toothy, he lilts forward for emphasis when he says,

“You’re a lot like my Raphie.” He picks up a discarded mushroom slice and hands it to him like some sort of peace offering. “You’re nice.”

Donnie hums a low laugh. Raph looks at him pointedly but it’s a nice kind of thing happening here. Neither of them decide to ruin it.

“He is nice,” Donnie muses. “Isn’t he?”

***

They put Mikey to bed in their Mikey’s bedroom, only because it’s the only room in the house that still has the slight resemblance to a child’s room, what with the action figures and the comics and the posters that are still housed here. All the things Mikey didn’t take and left behind.

Donnie and Raph included.

And it goes well, Raph tucking him into bed, switching on the nightlight without question, and then Mikey gets all misty eyed, sucking on his thumb again, he’s able to mumble around it something about a Flumpy.

“What the heck is a Flumpy?” Raph questions when Mikey’s breathing gets all pitchy and high, and he’s twisting up the bedsheets in his free hand.

“She’s my kitty,” Mikey whines. Donnie clicks his tongue. Ick had long since gone but even if she were still around, it didn’t make sense to send a child to bed cuddled up with a bowl of sentient ice cream. “She’s all soft and cuddly and—”

Raph barks a laugh, startling them both, he shoots Donnie a knowing look.

“I get it,” he says, turning away briefly to rummage around in Mike’s drawers, Donnie watches him curiously before he’s returning with—

“Teds.” He declares, holding up a ratty looking bear that had certainly seen better days. Donnie and Mikey both blink at it.

“This was our Mikey’s,” Raph tells the child, passing it to him. “He’s maybe not as… nice as your Flumpy but Teds is pretty good for cuddles too.”

Mikey seems to investigate the item for a bit. Teds used to be all of theirs at some point in their very early years. Soft, cuddly, clean baby items were something sparse down here in the sewers, so finding such a thing must have been like gold dust for Splinter back then.

They’d all eventually outgrown poor Teds at some point throughout their lives, but Mikey had always made a point to save a space for him in his bedroom. If they ever caught Mikey snoozing away the mornings with him tucked under his arm, or Teds lounging about on top of his unmade sheets, neither brother ever commented on it.

Donnie’s chest goes tight. He hadn’t realized that Mikey hadn’t taken Teds to North Carolina with him.

“What do you think?” Raph asks him. Mikey gives him a cautionary hug before his face breaks into a grin, snuggling down with the bear in his grasp, it’s clear as to what he thinks of his temporary replacement stuffie.

“We’re just down the hall,” Donnie reminds him after they’ve re-tucked him back into bed. He thinks about maybe pressing a kiss to his head. Maybe a little pat or something but instead he just awkwardly hovers by the door for a cool few seconds before exiting without another word.

Raph, who’s shuffling towards the direction of his room, throws Donnie a look over his shoulder. “You gotta admit, Don,” he says, the shadow of a smile passing over him. “He’s a sweet kid, huh?”

Donnie snorts. He feels bone tired and it’s only been half a day. “It’s Mikey,” he says pointedly. “Of course he is.”

***

He’s dreaming. He knows he is. He’s standing in the middle of the lair but everything feels different. Like that in between moment when you think there’s another step and the bottom and it feels like your foot is falling through the floor. That gut swirling kind of moment that has your brain going oh no, this isn’t right.

Mikey is there. He often is in most dreams he has. Leo’s there too. She’s talking, mouth opening and closing but Donnie can’t quite make out what it is she’s saying. Donnie is trying to reach them both but the distance from the lab towards the pit seems to be endless. Raph’s trying to reach him too, moving in slow motion.

Mikey stands in the middle. He says his name just once.

Donnie.

He wakes up to a clammy little hand pressed firm against his cheek.

“Wha– huh?” He pulls himself up off the bed in record time. There’s something tacky drying across his chin like saliva, and he can feel a knot of muscle in the back of his neck start to slowly loosen.

“Donnie.” It’s Mikey. Not his Mikey. “Donnie. I, um. I had an accident.”

Don blinks at him. His eyes long having adjusted to the dark, he watches the shape of the smaller turtle shift from foot to foot. The oversized sleepwear shirt they’d put him in is damp and darkened at the bottom. Donnie clicks his tongue.

“Oh,” he rasps, his voice clinging desperately to sleep still. “It’s okay. It’s alright.”

He takes Mikey to the bathroom, assuring him the entire time that it’s fine, that he’s not in trouble because the last thing he wants now is another waterworks show without Raph awake to help soothe it. He cleans him up best he can, strips the sheets off and sets him to sleep in his bed.

Once he’s down, he shuffles off towards the lab, stifling a yawn that pops his jaw.

He wasn’t gonna get back to sleep anyway.

***

“All I’m saying is that maybe it’s worth asking.”

Donnie sighs. Then, just for dramatics, slumps over his lab desk and presses his face into his keyboard. He hears Raph snort a short sounding laugh, then the keys start to dig into his face just a little uncomfortably so he sits back up.

“It’s weird.” He says shortly. “You do it.”

Raph shrugs like he hasn’t a care in the world. “Okay.” He picks up the T-Phone resting on the desk. “If it means getting our little guy home then I will.”

Donnie’s heart stutters in his chest, so he launches himself forward and snatches the phone back.

“No! Wait.” He swallows. “Let me think about this.” He says, stalling.

Raph sighs. The lab is quiet, and if Donnie were to strain his hearing just a notch higher, he’d be able to perhaps make out what episode of Super Mega Robo Force Five Team Mikey was currently glued to in the next room over.

“Don.” Raph’s voice is soft. Forgiving. “It’s just April. She’s our friend. Just call her.”

Maybe ten years ago it’d be a no-brainer solution to their problem here. Donnie would be jamming that speed dial button like no tomorrow and she’d be down in the lair like a shot, with maybe Casey in tow spouting some terrible one liners that were totally ripped from some bad knock off movie.

But that was ten years ago. Times had changed. April had gone to college, made new friends. Got a real person job in the real person world. It wasn’t like there was any real big fall out.

She’s seen the opportunity to finally have a sense of normality and taken it. And Donnie would admit, it’d stung a little to find the lair hollowed out without her here so much of the time. Especially given that he had wanted that too, desperately so.

He glances at his phone. How long had it been since he’d called her last? Maybe a Christmas ago, or a year before that just to check in.

He swallows again.

“Okay fine,” he says, all his words rushing out of him at once, like he’s afraid he might change his own mind in an instant. “But if it gets weird, it’s your fault.”

Raph grins. He’s always grinning. “Weird?” He says as Donnie hits the call button and presses it to the side of his face. “Dude. It’s already weird.”

The ringer sounds a million times amplified and yet he can still hear the sound of his own heart pounding in his chest.

Right. He thinks bitterly. Weird is their thing, isn’t it.

The call connects. Suddenly his heart isn’t trying to race out his chest anymore. Stilling, in an instant when he hears a soft, gentle voice on the other side of the line.

“Donnie?” Dishes clink together. The sound of a faucet quickly turning off. Domestic, is his first thought. “Donnie. Hey.”

Raph nods viciously at his brother like it’s any semblance of encouragement, Donnie for whatever reason stands. He needs to pace for this conversation.

“April. Hey. How. Uh. How are you?”

A pause. “I’m good. Great. Is, is everything okay? Is something wrong?”

Donnie’s throat grows tight. He hates that she’d think that the only reason for a phone call was to break bad news. If that wasn’t a rather comical indication to their shared trauma, outliving their friendship, then he wasn’t sure what else would compete with it.

He clears his throat. “No. No. We’re uh. We’re good.” He glances up towards Raph. “Raph says hello.”

Raph smirks, full of his usual mirth. Asshole.

“Oh,” April breathes through the phone. He can practically feel the relief ooze right out of her through the speaker. “That’s good. Leo still in Japan?” She asks. “Mikey still in…”

The whereabouts of their youngest brother must escape her, voice trailing off rather awkwardly, Donnie is quick to inform her.

“North Carolina,” he says shortly. “And yeah. Leo is out in Japan still. She’s good.”

His attempt to smooth over awkwardness is met with abrupt silence. Donnie blanches. Had it really been that long since they’d spoken that April hadn’t known that Donnie had two sisters now? His heart rattles against his ribcage fiercely as the thought slams into him at once.

“Oh,” is her covered attempt of surprise. A squeak evident in her tone, covered up with a quick clearing of her throat. “Sounds good. That’s good, Dee.”

Donnie is quiet. He knows he’s supposed to ask about her life and what she’s up to. He knows from varying conversations throughout the years that she’d done college. Found herself. Got herself a tidy little job with a tidy little apartment. Normal.

He just misses his friend.

So he skips the pleasantries. Turns around to dig his palm into the edge of his desk just to ground him when he tells her,

“So, um. We kinda have a problem.” He doesn’t hesitate long enough for her to ask what kind. “An interdimensional kind of problem.”

There’s a beat. Then a surprised laugh at the other end of the phone.

“Ah. One of those problems.”

Donnie feels his face pull itself into a smile. “You know the one.”

“Do you want my help?” She asks. Like nothing has changed.

Donnie looks towards Raph. He’s nodding again like his head might fall off his shoulders.

“Um. Yeah. Just some advice, really. We’ve got this kid, a mutant turtle kind of kid, and he fell through a portal and—”

“Give me a couple hours,” April cuts him off, sounding rushed like she’s moving through her apartment with the force of a hurricane. “Same place, right?”

Donnie blinks at Raph. Raph blinks back at him.

“As always.” His voice squeezing past the lump in his throat. “You remember where it is?”

He can hear the sound of keys rattling around and then April’s flowy laughter. “Donnie. There’s not many underground New York sewer lairs I retain to memory.” He can practically feel her smile from over the phone. “I’ll find you.”

***

April true to her word arrives a few hours later after their call in the middle of the evening when the sun is low in the sky and Mikey is groggy from an unexpected nap. Raph is watching the TV on the lowest volume possible without it being mute, something sleepy crowding his face, and Don just keeps watching the entrance to the lair with anxious eyes, heart kicking up in his chest every time he hears the rumble of a train up ahead of the valve pipes moaning.

When she does eventually appear Donnie isn’t sure whether he’s supposed to hug her or what when she passes through the turnstiles but it doesn’t matter because she’s already wrapping her arms up around him as he’s contemplating it all in his head, giving him the type of hug that feels like it’s supposed to last forever.

Raph’s next, squeezing past his brother, they’re talking over one another like nothing has changed at all after so much time apart, and then April’s eyes land on the small figure poking out from behind Raph’s leg and her eyes go impossibly wide.

“Oh wow,” she breathes, mystified.

“Yeah,” Raph tells her. He plucks Mikey up off the floor like a cat to present her their little situation. “This is Mikey. Obviously.”

Mikey blinks at the girl after he’s been set back down again. He’s sucking on his thumb once more, clearly a habit born out of nerves. He’s tucking himself away into his hoodie. There’s a stain on the front from an earlier peanut butter and jelly sandwich, smeared in a dark, sticky shade of purple and Donnie suddenly feels very aware of how bad they are at taking care of this poor kid, his cheeks flushing hotly.

“Hey, honey,” April says softly. She crouches to his height. He doesn’t shift from his place behind Raph’s legs. “It’s okay. It’s April.”

Mikey blinks up at her rather owlishly. He pushes his thumb back further behind his teeth.

“Chances are he hasn’t met his April yet,” Raph explains, giving the younger turtle a comforting pat across his shell. “He’s a little skittish.”

April stands, groaning as she straightens herself out, her knees pop and she finds Donnie’s face with a grin. “But super adorable,” she says, face pinching together like it can’t quite contain the joy from being around such a teeny version of the turtle she already knows.

This isn’t your Mikey, Donnie has to reprimand himself sharply inside his own head, batting away the thought fiercely.

His throat bobs with a breath. “I have some readings on my laptop,” he offers to her. “Maybe you’d like to have a look. Coffee?”

April hums, shrugging off her coat, Raph hesitates, ready to take it from her but she’s already slinging it over the couch like she’s done a million times before.

“C’mon,” she says, voice all soft and gooey as she looks at Mikey again. “Let’s fix this, huh?”

***

By the time Don’s done explaining the situation to her, her mug of coffee is empty, ringed with dark brown lines all the way down the inside, Raph keeps himself busy at the stove, prodding a fork impatiently into the instant noodles that simmer in the pan slowly.

“It is strange,” April muses. She pulls a strand of her hair from behind her ear, chewing on the end of it as she narrows her eyes to glare at the screen before her. “I’m not sensing any Kraang or alien interventions here.”

Raph sniffs. “Well that’s good.” He dishes up the ramen, steam billows from the bowl in curls of wispy white steam. Mikey glances curiously towards it as Raph sets it down in front of him. “That’s the last thing we need right now. An encore from those guys.”

“Good but at the same time not great,” Donnie interjects. He’s grateful that this isn’t the result of another alien invasion or a flare up of old enemies since gone. His gut twists up inside himself. It still meant they were none the wiser as to where this poor kid had come from.

“Ouch! Hot!” Mikey suddenly yelps, letting his fork fly across the table with a clang. He sticks his tongue out and whines. Raph scoffs whilst April reaches over to grab his hand.

“Oh, honey, be careful, you have to—” She cuts herself off with a sharp gasp, catching tight in her throat she goes rigid for a moment, hand clasping tighter around the smaller mutant's hand.

“April?” Donnie and Raph both say at the same time. Blue eyes turned milky, it’s evident that she isn’t with them anymore in this kitchen, someplace else as her chest moves in slow shutters. Mikey whines again, trying to free himself from her iron bar hold, Donnie moves forward, placing an oversized hand on her shoulder and—

“Oh.” She says, body slumping heavily, all of the air seems to rush to her at once as she drops Mikey’s hand to palm at her forehead with a wince. “Oh man. Been a while since I did that.”

Raph is already closing in on her with a glass of water in his hands. He presses it to her free one. “Yeah,” he says with a slightly surprised laugh catching onto his words. “You good?”

Donnie chances a glance towards Mikey. He’s poking at his noodles rather uninterested now that something more interesting is happening. He peers up at April with careful eyes.

“Did I hurted you?” He asks in a small, unsure voice. Despite how tiny and meek it is, it runs deep, chasms right through Donnie’s chest. So much so that he doesn’t pull him up on his bad vocabulary. “M’sorry if I hurted you.”

Glossy tears seem to spring behind April’s eyes, making her voice go wet and wobbly, she doesn’t chance holding onto him again, but instead leans into his space and says in a hushed, comforting tone,

“Oh, sweetheart. Mikey, you didn’t hurt me.” She tells him. Then, her mouth curls around a small smile and bingo. Donnie knows she’s got it. “Honey. You didn’t hurt me at all. In fact, you’ve helped me.”

Raph’s face breaks into a grin as Mikey, seemingly satisfied with that answer, pulls his noodles back towards him, this time, more cautiously he blows on them before scooping up a forkful.

“You got it?” Raph beams at her. April nods and Donnie feels his lungs spasm a little at how he’s quickly drawing in mouthfuls of air as excitement grips him.

“I think so,” she says, the space between her brows creasing a little, the faded line there becoming more prominent than before. “We were right. It’s not Kraang and it’s not something we’ve ever dealt with before.”

Donnie hums. He isn’t sure where she’s going with this, but he holds on tight to her every word.

“He. He came here himself, Dee.” Her eyes are wide when she looks up towards him. Still the faint traces of tears wetting them ever so slightly. “He made a portal. He came through it himself.”

Mikey slurps up a mouthful of noodles all at once, broth flying about in its wake lands sticky on his chin.

“He made a portal?” Raph says, pitching himself forward. “Like. He’s a freaky little scientist? Apes, he’s a kid.”

April shakes her head vigorously, flyaway hair skirt about her forehead. She then turns to Donnie, she reaches out, folding his larger hand between her own.

“Not the kind of portals we’ve dealt with. No technology and science behind it.” Her throat bobs with the excitement of it all. “It’s like some sort of mystic energy.” Her mouth twitches and she looks back towards Mikey. She keeps ahold of Donnie still. “It’s untapped. Super untapped but…” she takes a well needed breath, her chest rising and falling. “But I think the only person that can get Mikey home… is Mikey here.”

All three adults turn their attention towards the kid. He’s sipping more noodles through his ‘o’ shaped mouth. Ember eyes flicker up to meet their gazes. He swallows down his food with a comical gulp.

“Mystic energy,” Don parrots back. He rubs his hand over his jaw as his brain swirls with a million different possibilities as to what that entails. “Kinda like… Chi?”

April hesitates, mouth twitching, then she quickly nods. “Uh huh. Kinda. Like the link between body and soul.”

Raph, from his spot at the table, drops his head forward tiredly, a long, heavy sigh escaping him like an old bike brake. “So,” he says quietly. “How the heck do you undo what it did?” He looks up towards Mikey who’s watching him with wide eyes.

Any traces of frustration seems to bleed out in an instant. Raph once again reaching towards him, curling a hand around the small dome of his head, adjusting his mask and giving him a small pat.

“How do you get him to do it again if he isn’t even sure how he did it in the first place?”

April looks nervously between the brothers, making Donnie’s heart trip up in his chest. He has a feeling he knows what she’s doing to say. He has a feeling he isn’t going to like it all that much.

“I don’t think there’s anything I can do,” she tells them sadly. “Our energy, it doesn’t match.”

Donnie’s throat goes tight, squeezing out his words with force when he says in a small voice. “So you’ll need someone who’s energy does match.”

There’s a smile, barely there, touching at her eyes. “Yeah.”

Raph stiffens at the realization. “Mikey,” he breathes.

The much smaller, younger Mikey at the table, who’s made good on his noodles by now, perks up. He blinks owlishly at Raph. “Yeah?” He says.

A surprised laugh spills out of Donnie all at once, causing his body to jerk forward, he too has the reaction to hold his hand out and graze his palm over the much smaller shape of his shell.

“Oh. Not you, kid.” He feels something hot prick the backs of his eyes when he flicks them upwards to meet Raph’s gaze. “We, uh. We were talking about our Mikey.”

Little Mikey seems to be instantly intrigued by this, sitting up on his knees to make himself just that little bit taller, his grin is wide, taking up most of the space on his face.

“Your Mikey?” He chirps excitedly. “Am I gonna meet him?”

Donnie doesn’t say anything. Raph fills in for him pretty quickly.

“Yeah, little man. I think it’s time you did.”

***

April is overly apologetic as she leaves, stalling by the turnstiles as she fixes her coat sleeves for the hundredth time, she pauses to glance over towards where Mikey is standing by the training dummy, giving it a rather experimental poke.

“If you need me again though…” she says, voice thin with worry. Her brows knit together and all Donnie wants to do is just, erase all her fretting with a simple wave of his hand. He settles for just bringing her in for a tight hug.

“You’ve done so much already,” he assures her. She’d offered to call in her work, some white lie about a distant uncle falling ill but Donnie had almost instantly vetoed that idea. She hugs him back, somehow twice as hard. “Thank you.”

They let go and Raph has his turn, sniffing away any bubbling emotions, he makes her promise to come back and visit soon.

And when she says yes, it feels solid. More solid than any of the other times she’d said yes in the last ten years over the phone or in emails or in text messages.

She pushes through the turnstiles with a heavy click and they watch her leave, disappearing into the shadows, leaving just Don and Raph standing in silence before Raph is filling it with a low voice,

“So. Two reunions in one week. Who’d have thought it, huh.”

Donnie sighs. He runs his palm over his face. “Yeah.” He croaks. He throws a glance over his shoulder to where Mikey has toddled off to, having seemingly grown bored of the dummy quite quickly, he’s taking off for the direction of Mikey’s old room, mostly because it’s where he knows the action figures are kept.

“Want me to round him up?” Raph asks, hands situated on his hips like he’s just born ready.

Donnie sucks in a breath. Wedges his tongue in the inch wide gap between his two front teeth, sucking down saliva.

“No,” he tells him. “It’s okay. I got it.”

He follows Mikey towards his room, pushing the heavy steel door open, there’s a fleeting moment of nostalgia where he thinks he might just find his Mikey lounging sideways on his bed, attention absorbed entirely by whatever comic book he’d recently found.

The boxy old TV that once rested atop his dresser had long since gone, a thick layer of dust coating across the stained oak. Gone were the old VHS tapes that were stacked up in uneven piles. Gone where the nights they found themselves crammed into this very room, an old movie playing as they tried to keep their voices low to stop father from finding them up at such a late hour.

The back of his throat itches, so he clears it with a cough, and he suddenly remembers the other presence in the room when the other Mikey spins around fast, a gasp expelled from his lungs, eyes wide and round as he clutches at something he tries to hide.

“I, uh. Was just looking!” He rushes his words out all at once. There’s a little color blooming beneath his cheeks. “I didn’t mean to. I just—”

Donnie huffs a laugh. He effortlessly drops himself onto the bed, old springs squeal under his weight. He pats the empty space beside him, watching as Mikey glances upwards before tentatively joining him.

“If you’re anything like my Mikey then you’re something of a curious turtle, huh?”

Mikey shrugs, and then he nods, hands fiddling, Donnie can make out that what he has in his grasp is a polaroid. Instinct calls out to him to snatch it up and save it from being ruined, but he swallows it down.

“Can I see?” He says instead. Mikey doesn’t hesitate to hand it over.

In the photo is of all his siblings crammed into the frame, all smiles and laughter, in the middle is Splinter, caught between a laugh, Donnie’s heart aches something heavy as he drinks in every little detail of his face. He still has a few photos of his father in his lab still, but this was a rare candid picture. This was something different than the photos he’d pose and line them up for. This wasn’t uniform and proper.

This was just dad.

“Daddy.” Mikey points out proudly, jabbing a little green finger to the center of the image. “Is that your daddy?”

A surprised laugh bubbles out of Donnie. Surprised because there’s tears biting at his eyes that weren’t there moments ago. He sniffs.

“Uh huh. And that’s my Leo and my Mikey, too.”

Mikey crowds Donnie to get a closer look, absorbing it all with careful concentration. He then looks up at Donnie with big, round, curious eyes. He doesn’t have his brother’s face by any means, but he certainly shares his inquisitive nature.

“Where are they?” He asks, tipping his head to the side slightly to crane his neck up to watch for Donnie’s response.

Donnie smiles. He traces a thumb over the image. “They’re where they’re supposed to be.”

The poetic answer is lost on the child, face screwing up with a confused frown, he just shuffles closer towards Donnie, carefully studying every detail he can of the photograph.

“They don’t look like my brothers. Leo looks different,” he comments. “He doesn’t have my Leo’s special stripes.”

Donnie isn’t sure what special stripes really entails, but he’s quick to gently correct him.

“She.” He says. “My Leo isn’t my brother. She’s my sister.”

Mikey blinks. He looks shocked for a second before his face rearranges itself into something more neutral. “Oh. My Leo was my sister. He’s my brother now.”

Donnie’s heart skips in his chest. He laughs. Was it always destined that way, perhaps? A link connecting every single versions of them that existed? He wonders what his Leo would think of it all; universal theory and the stretching of space that separates them all. He’ll maybe ask her when he speaks to her next. Sooner rather than later, he would hope.

“Is your Mikey going to help me?” Mikey asks in a small, unsure voice. He’s moved away from Donnie, his waning attention on the photography apparently having thinned out for the time being, he pulls on the hem of his hoodie instead, looking lost.

Donnie curls him back towards him with an arm wrapping around his shoulders. It’s like a phantom ache — this small weight pressing into his side like this. The one armed hugs that are ghostly now.

“I hope so,” Donnie tells him. “Whatever happens. We won’t give up on you, okay? We’ll get you home. Stranger things have happened to us, hm?”

Mikey grins at that. All toothy and sparkly eyed.

“Promise?” He asks.

Donnie doesn’t technically have a pinkie. He holds out a finger nonetheless.

“Pinky.” He replies.

***

Since Donnie was on April calling duties, he’s able to wrangle Raph into calling up their Mikey.
He isn’t so sure why he’s nervous, anxiously pacing up and down his laboratory enough times to burn circles into the floor as he listens to the sound of his brother's conversation peter out over the phone.

Raph appears in the lab doorway clutching his T-Phone in his hand wearing a thin, worn looking smile.

“Says he can be here in a couple of days tops.”

Donnie hums. He was right. Mike really does make it seem like a breeze when it came to coming home.

Donnie uselessly fiddles with the bits and bobs on his desk. He picks up a wrench and then puts it back down again. He can feel Raph’s eyes bore into the back of his shell.

“What did he say?” He then asks.

Raph offers him a half aborted shrug of his shoulders. “Said it sounded weird. Said weird was totally his thing.” There’s a small humored smile ghosting across his face. “Dude. Dee. Just relax will you? You’re picking up the wrench again. What is it with the wrench, you wanna throw it at my head?”

Donnie has indeed plucked the tool back up off the desk. He stares at it in his hands once again before he drops it back down again with a long suffering sigh.

“No.” He says rather wearily. “I just. It’s weird. Is it not weird?”

Raph moves across the room with ease, dropping himself into his chair, his does an aborted little half spin, rolling over towards the desk to take the wrench himself, flipping it lazily between his hands.

“Yeah,” is his short answer. “I’ve told you. Weird is our thing.”

Donnie feels his beak scrunch up. Like he’d tasted something sour.

“Yeah but.” He says with a dejected huff. “We’ve gone all this time without seeing everyone and then. This kid just pops out of a damn mystic portal and suddenly it's like an all star reunion episode up in here.”

Raph doesn’t answer straight away, as if mulling over what great and wise answer he has stashed away for his immediate younger brother, he rolls the tool around his hands for a moment before he lifts his head to meet his gaze.

“Look, I know change is scary. We’ve always known that. When Leo left, when Mikey left. When dad… passed. It’s freaky, right?” Donnie knows he’s avoiding the weird word right now as to save it from overuse. “But maybe this whole portal thing happened for a reason, y’know. Maybe this Little Mikey was sent here, for a purpose.”

Donnie watched as his throat bobs. He finally sets the wrench back down again, abandoning it to fiddle with his wrist wrappings instead.

“Dee. It’s gonna be alright.” He tells him. He sounds so sure that Don can’t help but believe him. “It’s just us, okay?”

There’s a tickle in the back of Donnie’s throat and his gut forms itself into a hard, tangled knot. But he manages to nod his head anyway, blinking away the looming threat of tears.

“Yeah.” He croaks. “Okay.”

***

Mikey is set to arrive on the Thursday evening, so by that afternoon, Donnie is burning holes in the dojo floor from his back and forth pacing whilst Raph does his stretches with Little Mikey practicing with the small wooden nunchaku set he’s swinging about.

“You’re makin’ me nauseous, bro,” Raph tells him as he moves from his crescent pose to lunge forward. He hisses and groans, no doubt from the ache he’s undoing in his stiffened joints and bones. Donnie stops in his tracks and sighs.

“Okay, I’m anxious,” he says, deadpanning his brother. Little Mikey whoops and hollers as he parades around the large bulk of the tree trunk, mercifully attacking it with all his might. “Sue me.”

“Well stop.” Raph snaps at him. Donnie wonders if for a moment, he’d totally killed off his mojo, but he instead closes his eyes and takes a long, sobering breath. “You should try this,” he says after a while, voice a little less clipped and tense. “Might unclench that stick you keep lodged up your ass.”

Mikey, having overheard the crude language, snigg*rs a laugh, falling about like it’s just the funniest thing in the world.

“Great,” Donnie sighs. “Now if we ever do get him home, we gotta send him back with a right potty mouth.”

Raph doesn’t open his eyes, but his mouth lifts itself into a small smile. “Hey. He has three older brothers himself. One of ‘em is bound to teach him at some point.” He takes another slow, deliberate breath before he stands, rolling out his shoulders, he opens his eyes only to instantly frown at his brother standing before him.

“And it aint if,” he corrects him pointedly. “It’s a matter of just when.”

Mikey has since peeled himself up off the floor, training chucks forgotten, he’s now trying (unsuccessfully) to scale the tree with a series of grunts and groans.

“Which won’t actually be that long,” Raph adds, checking his imaginary watch on his wrist.

Donnie sighs. True to his word, it really wouldn’t be long until Mikey was waltzing back into their home for the first time in a long time. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to see his brother, or that they’d left with some bad blood between them.

It was just a harsh, abrasive reminder that Mike had managed to leave the sewers: he’d gone and seen more of the world that he had, like Leo had. Raph was perfectly content to sit at home, grow old and fart around.

Donnie on the other hand…

“C’mon,” Raph says, walking out of the dojo with Little Mikey in tow. “Help me set up Leo’s room for Woods. I love them both but I ain’t sleeping in a room next to theirs when they share.” He shudders rather dramatically, dropping his voice to a comical whisper. “The things you hear, man.”

If Donnie could blush, he could. “Wonderful.” He comments, rather dryly, and the three of them head to Leo’s room to change it from stagnant to simply spare.

***

Their Michelangelo arrives like a busy hurricane passing through their living room, sweeping up both brothers in his arms with a flurry of laughter and happy tears, pressing his beak into Don’s cheek and squishing him tightly between his arms.

“Jesus!” Raph wheezes once it’s his turn to be crushed, wobbling on his tippy toes when Mikey lifts him up a little. “What’re they feedin’ you in North Carolina? Horses?”

Woody, who’s stood at the turnstiles, with a hand on his hip and a collection of bags at his feet, huffs a gentle laugh. “You’d think it,” he says. “He’s gonna have withdrawal symptoms for livermush whilst we’re here, just a heads up.”

Raph pulls a face once he’s let go. “Livermush?” He echoes somewhat weakly.

Mikey laughs without explaining, filling up the room in an instant with his delight, he pulls down the hoodie he’s got thrown on around his neck. “Nah, not when I’ve got good ol’ New York pie to tide me over,” he grins. It’s then that his eyes fall upon the other Mikey in the room, whom of which is hiding slightly behind the TV set with a cautious look cast upon him.

“Oh, hey,” Mike grins, crouching down like he were merely approaching a stray dog. “It’s me. But smaller. Hi dude.”

Little Mikey comes out of his hiding spot, gingerly approaching their Mikey with big, owlish eyes.

“You’re me,” he says quietly around the thumb he currently had secured under his tongue.

Woody laughs again, ever so gently as he watches on with a softened gaze.

“Sure am.” Mikey says. “I’m here to help you get home,” he tells him with a confident nod of his head. “Shall we do that?” He asks.

Little Mikey’s face breaks into a grin, a soggy looking thumb is popped out of his mouth and falls at his sides with the rest of his fingers on his hands. Whatever cautions he had were now washed away with his sheer, unbridled confidence. “Yes please,” he says, taking Mikey’s hand in his.

***

Raph orders in a boat load of pizzas because according to Mikey, he could, quote, eat the jeans off of New York City, end quote – whatever the hell that meant.

The adults are crowded around the table, nursing their last few slices whilst Mikey rocks back and forth off his chair, blowing his lips around the rim of the beer glass Raph had offered to him half an hour ago. Little Mikey is toddling about the kitchen with one of the action figures after begrudgingly eating his share of pizza; his plate an array of varying toppings as well as all of his crusts he refused to even attempt to eat. Even the soda Woody had poured out for him had mostly gone untouched – the bubbles slowly sinking to the bottom.

“So, how's the Tar Heel state treating you both?” Raph asks, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand; it comes away greasy but he doesn’t seem to care.

Woody nods frivolously, swiping away the bouncy, dandelion curls that still loop over his eyes with a flick of his wrist as he swallows down his mouthful of cheese and jellybeans.

“Good,” he says. “Easy.” He hums. And Mikey hums in tandem. Such a couple-y thing to do, Donnie supposed. “We just moved, actually. A little basem*nt apartment right by the Emerald Isle beach.”

Mikey’s eyes go wide with excitement, leaning forward, he pitches himself across the table, splaying his hands against the wood grain. “Oh, dudes, it’s like to die for. So damn pretty at night. Don, I know you said we were fresh water turtles, or whatever, but like, there’s something in me that just yearns for the ocean now.”

Woody chuckles, sipping on his own beer, gulping down a steady mouthful. “He only gets to see it at night, for obvious reasons, but we manage. But it is really lovely.” His cheeks flush a little. “Maybe you’d like to come visit sometime. Spend a couple weeks outta here, make a change.”

Raph scoffs a laugh while Donnie remains quietly poking about at his dinner.

Mikey’s beak wrinkles. “Yeah, dudes. Get some fresh air.” He takes a generous swig of his drink. “I didn’t think I could forget what sewer smelled like until now.”

Donnie jabs a thumb into a crust, tearing it in half, he fails to lift his gaze from his food when he says, suddenly somewhat icy,

“Yeah, well. You’ve been gone a while, so.”

The table falls silent. Woody downs the rest of his beer and Don feels his whole gut grow tight as what he’d just said.

His brain swims around an endless ocean of words; what to say to make it less awkward and obvious that he’d been hurt. But he comes up short, drowning in all of them, it’s Raphael that is finally able to fill the silence.

“Hey. It’s getting late.” He says, sliding his palms across the table. “That little tyke needs to sleep and you guys had a long trip up.” He’s nodding towards a rather sullen looking Mikey.

Their Mikey, that is.

He clears his throat, pushing away the bottle from where he’d been relaxing it between his palms during the entire meal and fixes himself a wonky kind of smile. “Sure.” He tells Raph, voice only a touch tight. “I’m pooped.”

Little Mikey snorts a laugh, stopping in his tracks to plaster a hand over his mouth.

“Pooped!” He says with a giggle. Woody laughs back.

“Yeah,” Mikey says with a rasp. “Pooped.”

Raph takes charge in wrangling little Mikey to bed whilst Woody is shuffled into Leo’s old bedroom — skirting about the awkward conversation about who was sharing what bed, he disappears into the bedroom, but not before he’s planting a chaste kiss on his lips.

Donnie watches carefully from the kitchen, unable to make out what it is he says to him next that has Mikey’s entire face screw up, but the human pats his arm lovingly and then is gone for the night.

Donnie, suddenly aware that it was just them now, is quick to busy himself with the few plates that were scattered about the table. It’d been a long time since he’d had this many dishes to wash of an evening but he dumps them all into the sink and blasts them with water from the faucet.

He doesn’t hear Mikey slide up beside him and almost jumps when he’s greeted with his tentative voice.

“Can I help?”

Donnie’s heart jumps in his chest. He swallows it down, trying to find a semblance of normality in the moment, he chuckles weakly, sparing his brother a fleeting glance as he starts scrubbing.

“You? Help with dishes? Since when.”

Mikey fiddles with the dish rag for a moment, weaving it slowly between his fingers. “I got pretty domestic in my old age,” he says with a simple shrug of his shoulders.

Donnie cleans off the first plate and hands it to his brother.

“I don’t think it was age that did that,” he comments.

Mikey dries off the plate and clears his throat, unclipping his voice. “Is that why you don’t like him?”

Donnie bristles. He drops one of the smaller plates into the water, letting it sink to the bottom of the basin with a muffled thud.

“I…” he clears the croak edging into his voice with a sharp cough. “I don’t not like Woody. Where did you ever get that from?”

Mikey flicks off a soapy bubble from the back of his hand; it wobbles about in the air for a second before it bursts wetly into nothing.

“Then is it me?” He asks, voice small. “Because I left?”

Donnie’s throat goes tight. His stomach feels a hundred degrees hotter than it should be. His chest does a jerky little spasm around his heart, making it clench uncomfortably. He coughs again, though it does very little to chase away the ache there.

Trust Mikey to bring out the Big Gun on Conversation on his first night back.

“No.” Donnie says plainly. He doesn’t make an effort to retrieve the plate that was currently submerged. “I don’t hate you, Mike. That’s– that’s impossible.”

Donnie had spent an entire life with his brother, right here next to him, grown up beside him (past him) and despite everything, Donnie had never any room in his heart to feel hate. He didn’t hate Woody and he didn’t hate Mikey, either.

He just… he felt hurt.

“I only stopped calling because you did.” Mikey explains to him. He’s twisting the rag up in his hands again, pulling at it as if to relieve some tension he’s probably feeling. “I just. I thought you didn’t need me no more.”

Donnie’s eyes burn with tears. Frustration boils up in the smallest caverns on his chest. He turns to his brother and as soon as his eyes meet his… it all ceases; fizzling out with a weak, tiny pop like a sad little soap sud.

“No,” Donnie croaks. He swallows back his tears, hot and acidic in the back of his throat until it hits the bottom of his guts. “I did need you. We– I was jealous,” he admits in a warbling voice. “You got to leave, Mikey. You left the sewers, you left New York and you never came back. I… I always imagined you’d come back, but you didn’t. And that hurt.”

Mikey huffs a watery sounding laugh. It lacks any semblance of venom. “I guessed that. You have a tendency to get a little green.”

Donnie blanches. More tears spring behind his eyes. “I don’t appreciate puns at this time,” he says, straight faced. All while Mikey’s breaking into the biggest, warmest grin. All full of teeth and mirth.

“Yeah, you do,” he says, voice soft.

“I’m sorry.” Donnie then blurts. He fishes out the dish and starts scrubbing. “I’m sorry I stopped calling you. I’m sorry.”

Mikey bumps his shoulder with his; he still hasn’t quite managed to match his height, and he probably never will, meaning that in all shapes and forms, Mikey will always be his little brother.

But he’s filled out, broader and bigger in ways that Donnie isn’t so sure how to count at all.“Me too.” He says, so sincere that the tears Don had been desperate to bite back, rise to the surface once more. He sniffs, chasing them away a final time, he allows himself the simplicity of standing here at the kitchen sink and just wash dishes with his brother. “I’m sorry. I love North Carolina. And I love Woody. And I love the beaches and stupid livermush.” He laughs gently. “But I love you guys, too. More than all that, ten times over.”

“I missed you and Raph and the city.” He presses his lips together. “I even missed the smell, would you believe?”

A laughter bubbles out of Donnie. “I would, actually, yeah, with you.” He says with an easy bob of his head.

“I got so wrapped up in my life,” Mikey admits. “It felt like no time passed, and then I got that call from Raph and ten years had come and gone just like that.” His voice goes tight. His eyes shine wetly. “I don’t want to be the kind of family that only makes time when it matters.”

Donnie watches him carefully.

“I wanna be the kind of family that makes time for the bits that totally don’t matter, also. The weekends with no significance. The calls where we don’t have anything interesting to say to each other.” He takes the plate from Donnie’s hand, clasping his fingers over his, stilling him.

“I wanna be each other's best friends again, Dee.”

Donnie’s heart wobbles about in his chest, causing his voice to come out all shaken up.

“Oh, Mikey,” he says softly. “We’ll always be best friends.”

***

Donnie is dreaming. He knows he is. It’s a good kind of dream, the kind that feels like he’s basking under a beam of warm sunlight and there’s no such hurry to wake up and face the real world. The kind of dream he can linger in for as long as he wants.

He’s home, standing in the middle of the pit and his family is there. It’s an easy kind of dream that he kind of just… floats through, spectating on what goes on around him; Leo and Raph playfully jibe at each other at the pinball machine. Mikey is sprawled out on the floor burning through a wobbling stack of comic books. Donnie lifts his head up and there, standing by the tire swing is his father.

It’d been a while since he’d dreamt of him: usually he’d push any kind of semblance of him in his subconscious to a dark crevice of his mind. But he watches as the rat smiles at him and then gently pushes the tire with the end of his cane, the pair of them watching as it sways gently before stilling.

“You always had them, Donatello,” his father speaks, his voice a welcomed memory. Oh how long it had been since he had listened to it. Tears spring hotly behind his eyes. His chest cinches.

“Sensei…” he speaks, stepping forward, he’s no longer gliding, but he’s solid against the ground, feet shuffling against concrete. “Father.”

Splinter settles his cane tucked up beneath his arm: the last time Donnie had seen him, he’d been so frail, constantly needing it as a crutch against his wilting weight. What a breath of fresh air it was to see him stand tall once again. How good it felt to see his father in his glory with all of the life still sparkling behind his eyes.

“You always had them, Donatello,” his father says again. Donnie tries to step forward, but finds he cannot, suddenly, the gap between the bench and his father seemingly spanning further and further as the seconds tick on. “You always had them, and you always will.” He says, voice so crisp and clear to him despite their growing distance.

“That, my son, is what brotherhood is all about.”

He smiles at Donnie, so gently it feels like a beam of sunlight piercing through his very soul as he struggles against the imaginary restraint to get to his father. But it all proves futile. He can hear Mikey’s voice speaking to him softly from behind him, pulling him away from where Splinter stands before him. He tries again, but this time, he’s beckoned over by Raph and then Leo and then, he finally wakes.

There’s nothing spectacular about it; no hyperventilating or sweating or even a bout of tears to accompany it all. He just wakes slowly, blinking away the sleep from the corners of his eyes, and smacking his lips together to rid the stale taste left behind in the back of his throat from his dinner last night.

You always had them, his father’s voice tally’s about in his head, still so clear sounding. And you always will.

He lays there for a second, ruminating on the meaning of the dream – whether it was just a dream or perhaps something more, and despite the chasm of longing that chips away deeper and deeper in his chest, wishing to just squeeze his eyes closed tight and spend just a second more with his Sensei, he feels a smile touch at his lips as he pulls back the blankets and heads out to find the others.

He makes his way to the kitchen where Woody is stood, his back to him, he hasn’t quite clocked his arrival yet, standing in only a pair of Hello Kitty pajama pants, he sways his hips to whatever song he hummed quietly to himself as he fixed himself a cup of coffee.

Donnie chuckles to himself, and the human jumps about a foot in the air, spinning mid-air, he sets the half full mug down against the counter with a sharp clatter, relaxing when he notes it was just Donatello standing behind him.

“Oh man,” he says with a weak chuckle, no doubt trying to balm any hot flush of embarrassment he was probably feeling speed through him right now. “You, uh. You gave me a fright there.”

Donnie smiles at him, moving past him to grab his own mug, he’s grateful to find that Woody had in fact made enough coffee for the pair of them.

“Hey,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders as he takes out the sweetener he had tucked away at the back (Raph had him banned on account that it was supposedly bad for him). “You’re practically married to my ninja of a brother, you should know better.”

Woody blanches for a split second, like some kind of rewriting reboot that has him questioning the nature of that particular phrasing of words before he’s relaxing and huffing a laugh.

“Yeah but have you met Mike? Dude has like, a megaphone lodged in his throat or something because he is pretty incapable of being quiet.”

Donnie snorts a laugh; it was comforting to think that even with the passage of time, his younger brother still struggled to find his volume button.

Donnie fixes himself a drink as Woody stands and nurses his.

The pair idly chat about North Carolina and Woody’s particular choice in pajamas (turns out, Mikey got them for him, because who else would) before the kitchen is slowly occupied by the rest of their family. Little Mikey comes padding into the kitchen after actual Mikey, tucked behind his leg as he rubs sleepily at his eyes he’s helped up onto the kitchen counter as Mikey starts to narrate what breakfast options they had.

Raph mulls about around them, working in tandem like not a day had passed since they’d been here like this. It feels so natural as he nudges his little brother wordlessly out of the way so he could get to his protein shake that he’d chug down each morning.

“So.” Mikey speaks, his voice filling the room with all his presence. He gives Little Mikey his share of pancakes first before piling Woody’s plate up after he starts pawing at his arm for some. “What’s the plan for today then?”

Raph swallows hard. He pops a hip up against the counter. So casual. “No clue.” He looks to Donnie. “Dee?”

Despite the hot rush of caffeine that was currently shooting through his system at the rate of a comet, he still felt a certain weariness web about his bones and muscles and soul; something that came with growing up, he supposed, he runs a hand down his face as he stifles a yawn that creeps out of him.

“Well,” he starts off, letting his hand fall limply down his side. “We could run some tests. I had some readings from before, and what that could mean is—”

He’s cut off rather abruptly by Michelangelo’s spatula waving about in the air, little flecks of pancake batter go flying about the place, one blob landing on Raphael, earning him a weak shove.

Mikey ignores it, forgoing to speak over his immediate big brother.

“No, dude. No science stuff,” he says, a tongue hanging out of his mouth for emphasis. It makes both Little Mikey and Woody laugh. Donnie deadpans them.

“Look, I know we gotta figure this whole shebang out here, but I walked in and it’s like, real negative vibes going on here.”

Donnie chews the inside of his cheek, letting his brother continue, as he’s sure to have something more to say.

“And this little tyke,” Mikey does indeed add, with heavy emphasis on each of his words as he slides around and places his hands on Little Mikey’s shoulders, his palms swallowing him up entirely. “He’s had a pretty crazy week, what with dimension hopping and all.” He then grins, one of his signature Michelangelo grins that’s all teeth and has his eyes going all squinty and tiny and oh, no.

Donatello has an idea where this is all going.

“You wanted my help,” his brother says, eyes skate across the room from Donnie to Raph. “Then I say, we unwind a little. Kick back and think on it some.”

Little Mikey shovels a heaping forkful of pancakes and syrup into his mouth. Perhaps the most food Don had seen him consume in his time here.

He takes a step forward, gently clipping the kitchen seat with his hip, mouth moving too fast for words to catch up with him, he’s soundlessly arguing against his brother before he can shut it down with another simple wave of his hands.

“C’mon, Dee,” he says it like he’s pleading. Like he’s asking for leverage, when he knows (the bastard, Donnie thinks) he knows he’s got the highest ground between them all.

Little brother privileges, it would appear, had failed to fizzle out in their time apart.

Donnie sighs, and rubs nervously at his elbow.

Mikey moves forward, still beaming. “You do all your best work when you’re not really working at all. Don’t you?”

Don swallows hard. That had been true. For the longest time, it was often when Mike would coax him out of his lab and force him to watch a new episode of whatever badly dubbed anime he’d found in the bottom of some old bargain bin, or whether it was just getting Don to step outside his own caged thoughts for an hour or two… it didn’t deter from the fact that Mikey actually had a point.

“Fine,” he says, feigning only slight defeat as he rolls his shoulders forwards and sags. “What did you have in mind?”

Michelangelo, whom of which had failed to stop grinning, somehow does so even harder. He clutches Little Mikey tightly, and rocks excitedly on the balls of his feet.

“I have the most awesome idea, dude.”

***

A good few, long months in the wake of Splinter’s death, the whole world had seemed so… dulled. Food hadn’t tasted the same, video games felt lifeless and boring and even the endless scientific experiments that Donnie had pulled upon himself as a mental distraction to their new situation had felt so… futile and tasteless.

He’d soon find out that such a thing was called depression. An ugly word, he had thought, for such an ugly feeling, coiled up and festering in the bottom of his gut like a parasite, chewing him up for nothing.

Each of his siblings had felt that horrid sensation of depression; each in their own ways, it’d caused some nasty fights in the first few, fresh months of grief. Leo and Raph were back at each other's throats like they were thirteen again and Mikey had molded himself into the perfect ideal of a recluse, tucked away in his room where he shed a good third of his body weight which was frightening, to say the least.

Don hadn’t really clue on how to cope with all those feelings at once – April’s father had done his best to coach them through it, what with him having all the credentials and certificates that proved he was a scientist in that regard, but it’d been hard. Like insanely hard to find anything of normality for a while.“Something that forces you away from your current environment and together as a family,” Kirby had suggested when Donnie had meekly asked him what his best options were to having a sense of familiarity again.

And at the time, Donnie had silently scoffed at the idea, mostly because there weren’t many places they could exactly go away from home. The farmhouse was once such a place of recouping but now it housed too many painful memories. Especially when their father was buried just feet away from the front porch out in the yard.

It’d been April who’d coined the idea.

“You always said you wanted to do something with one of the old sewer reserves,” she’d suggested one long, sleepless night from where she’d hung upside down off his bed, her newly cropped hair just brushing past her ears as he’d sat slumped at his desk for what felt like days, unable to unstick himself from his chair like he’s grown roots there.

And so he had. He’d taken her down to one of the nearby reserves just to scope it out.

Within a week, he’d managed to get Mikey out of his room to help scrub it clean and by the second week, they’d turned the whole thing into a bit of a hang out spot with a dive pool to mess around in.

In all honesty, he’d almost forgotten about the whole thing until Mikey was marching them all down there by the afternoon.

“It probably needs cleaning,” Raph had warned him warily after he’d made up his mind on the matter. “It’s been a while since we used it.”

Mikey scoffs and throws Raph a sponge, letting it softly bounce off his head. “Good,” he’d said with a curt nod of his head. “There’s enough of us here to get started.”

And that was what they were doing now.

No doubt, the pool was in a dire need of a few touch ups from the last time Donnie had ventured down here. Nowhere near as bad as it was when he’d first happened upon the project – cleaning the small amount of limescale off the edges of the tiled bowl was nothing compared to what he had Mike scrubbing off them in the beginning stages all that time ago.

It only takes up the whole chunk of the morning to get it cleaned with the lot of them working on it before Don is filling it up with fresh water.

He’s confident enough that with their immune systems having grown up in a sewer, along with the mutagen sprinkled in, they should fair okay to splash about in it, even if they had somehow missed a spot.

Raph watches on carefully as the waterline slowly creeps upwards. He casts his eyes over to Little Mikey, who’s watching curiously from a distance, twisting tiny hands together, he then throws Don a look.

“Hey.” He says, garnering his attention quickly. “We sure this lil guy can swim?”

Mikey, who’s sat on the other side of the pool alongside Woody, already dangling their legs over the edge where the water licks at their heels, hums.

“He’s a turtle, Raphie.” He clicks at him playfully. “Course he can swim.”

***

Turns out that Little Michelangelo isn’t as strong as a swimmer as they would have believed, having Raph waddle halfway to the middle of the pool to carefully guide him as he splashes about with his face screwed up, doggy paddling through the shallow end that he’d now limited to even with all their watchful eyes.

“Could be a box turtle,” Donnie muses as he watches Raph coach him with each kick and flap of his legs and arms; a tedious effort as he continues to bob up and down despite the way Raph’s arms are stretched out towards him just in case he disappears for too long beneath the surface. “Judging on just the shape and density of his shell. Along with the markings.”

Mikey, whom of which is sat beside him, dangling his legs into the warming water hums in acknowledgment. “It’s cool,” he says with a small grin. “Even after already meeting other versions of us, it still trips me out every now and then that they’re like, real, dude.”

Woody chortles. “Think how I feel, man. One of you is enough. Took me long enough to wrap my head around that you were real, even.”

Donnie glances sideways to watch the way his brother leans into him, laughing away like he were determined to steal all of Woody’s air, pressed up against him like he was never getting back up again. “Whatever,” he says and Woody’s grin just widens, the dimples in his cheeks growing deeper with each bit of laughter etched across his face.

A moment of stillness between the three as they watch Raph with Little Mikey still. Mikey unsticks himself from the human to gently nudge Don with an elbow bumping against his, making Donnie slowly turn to face him again.

“You have any clue then?” He asks, entirely serious, voice still soft around the edges like he was understanding of having no answer to his question. “How to get him home, I mean?”

Donnie swallows thickly. He remembers perhaps the last time they’d been here together, just before Leo and Karai had left for Japan, and him and his little brother had sat in this very spot, swinging their legs over the edge of the pool like they were fifteen again, perched across a New York City rooftop city for the first time counting all the buildings they could finally see.

“Not really,” he admits. “April said that it was a matter of tapping into his, er, Chi.” He explains clunkily. “Not really my forte.”

Mikey blinks, then, in true fashion, he grins. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” he says gently, bumping his shoulder against his again. “Dad wasn’t totally right about everything, y’know.” His throat bobs, no doubt swallowing a hefty pill of emotion with it. “You and Raph. You ain’t as out of touch with your feelings as you maybe think.”

Donnie tears his eyes away, only because if he glances at his brother’s face for too long, he’ll find his vision swimming with unshed tears from all the new freckles he has to count, or the small, faded scar he’s got traced across the curve of his chin, unsure of when or how it got there.

“I mean it, Dee,” Mikey assures him as he places a warm hand over his, unmoving. It gets Donnie to look at him again. “You held out together this long. That has to count for something, right?”

Donnie swallows. “Yeah,” he rasps, his voice coming out all small and thin sounding. “I guess.”

There’s a loud splashing sound and a series of laughter and giggles that travels up and down the reserve chamber, filling the small room with a type of happiness Don isn’t so sure he’d feel again for some time. It was nice, to just sit back and feel the warmth lick at his ankles and the weight resting heavy on his chest finally start to shift some.

Maybe Mikey was right: maybe he did just need to get out of his own head on this one.

He smiles to himself, unable to help it as he watches Little Mikey splash Raph playfully, making the older turtle splutter a little, rubbing water from his eyes, reminded of the days when Leo and Raph would chase each other through the water in a similar fashion.

Who was he kidding? Mikey was often right about most things he wasn’t.

***

Eventually the retire back to the lair; their day out having exhausted Little Mikey, it’s Woody that offers to carry him back home, resting on his hip he walks ahead whilst Don has a moment to check in with his brothers.

“Well, that’ll keep him quiet,” Raph comments, albeit a little breathless as they slow walk behind the human by a good few feet. He reaches up and wrings out his bandana tails, letting little droplets of water trickle down his neck to pool at the dip where his shell meets his shoulders.

Donnie laughs gently. “Who? Mike or Woody?”

Their Mikey barks a surprised laugh. “Both. He’s good with kids, you should see him with all his nieces and nephews, he’s got, like, a sixth sense.” He says with a sure nod of his head. “You shoulda called earlier, guys. Woody would have run rings ‘round you guys with that little guy.”

Donnie hated to admit it still stung a little, like a tiny little thorn buried somewhere deep in his chest, in a place he couldn’t quite reach at the mention of this other family Mikey had adopted him into… but with their talk last night as well as the day they’d spent together today… it was a hurt he was slowly learning to dislodge and discard. Nothing but a faded scar, someday.

“Yeah, well, as long as you guys don’t come back at Christmas with any nieces and nephews for us to run around after…” Raph says, playfully.

The three of them chat idly about everything else they’d been up to whilst they’d been away from each other, Mikey managing to pepper Leo into the conversation also, like that wasn’t another twinge in Don’s chest at her mention.

“We should call her,” Raph suggests just as they reach the turnstiles, no longer agile enough to hop it after an entire afternoon of wading back and forth through water, he simply hip checks it and nudges past it. “Since we’re, y’know. All here.”

And Mikey’s whole face lights up at the same time Donnie’s chest goes a little airy, like he’d somehow stolen all the energy there from him.

“Dude, yes!” Mikey agrees. “After dinner?”

And like that, it’s a done deal. No wiggle room when it came to Donatello’s only little brother as he skips off to catch up with Woody and Little Mikey.

Raph is already heading for his room, no doubt to out-nap the fatigue that was probably plaguing him and he grins, shrugging his shoulders, told Donnie hey, that’s Mikey for you.

***

Donnie tries to protest against Mikey cooking them dinner the second night he’s home, not because of his somewhat lack of judgment and trust of his brother’s culinary expertise, but because he almost forgets that Mikey isn’t just a guest here in their home.

This here was his kitchen for the longest time, since he could just about reach his snout over the lip of the oven, he shoos Donnie out of the way to cook them up something that thankfully wasn’t livermush as Don, Raph and Woods entertain Little Mikey in the pit.

“Freaky, ain’t it?” Raph comments as they watch Mikey toddle about with an assortment of action figures grasped tightly in both hands. He’s proudly narrating what kind of story he was acting out with them, talking over himself so fast, he’s barely making full sentences. “Is it freaky to you?”He looks to Woody who’s watching on with a look of endearment. “Seeing this? Oh yeah.” He lounges back and scratches at his neck where there’s day old scruff starting to sprout there, just as blonde as the hair on top of his head was. “Mike already filled me in on the whole dimension universe stuff you guys dealt with before.” He grins, like it were a totally normal sentence to say. “Guess it’s kind of a ‘see it to believe it’ type shtick, huh?”

Donnie hums quietly. “That’s usually the case with us, yeah.”

Eventually Mikey emerges from the kitchen, looping them back into the room with a call of his voice, where Donnie is served up something that was worlds away from what he’d usually turn his hand to back in their teenage years. No such worms or bark or fly eggs to be found on his plate.

Then he remembers that Woody, whilst humbly a pizza chef back before they moved from the city, probably had a hand in such achievements.

Once they’ve finished their meal, Mikey is rushing to fish his cell out of his hoodie pouch, not even having swallowed the last mouthful of his dinner before he’s calling up Leo, pitching himself forward and stretching an arm out, he’s gesturing wildly for everyone to get into frame.

“Do you even know what time it is in Japan?” Donnie asks seriously as he’s crammed in between him and Raph, an elbow stabbing him right in the softer parts of his plastron when Mike squeezes them in closer. “She might not even–”

The call connects after just a few rings, stilling Donnie’s words in an instant as both their sister’s faces are filling up the screen, matching smiles that Mikey wears once the signal stops lagging.

“Dudes!” Michelangelo cries. “It’s a party here, where are you?!”

The laughter that flows from Leonardo is easy and floaty – nothing attached to it that would suggest that she were perhaps put out that her siblings were currently all home aside from here.

Karai pokes her tongue out at the youngest, and Donnie is able to catch a glint of a metal stud in her mouth that he can’t quite recall was there last when she was home before.

“Aw, guys,” Leo says, head tipping to the side as he drinks all of them in. “It’s good to see you all together.”

Raph laughs. It’s easy. Nothing hurtful added to it. “Yeah, but it’d be even better if you were here.”

Leo looks like she is about to say something, but Karai is beating her to the punch, like in almost everything she does, pressing her cheek against her to fit more of herself in the frame.

“Well,” she says shortly, bobbing her head to swish her hair out of her face. “It shouldn’t be long now, things are going okay over here.”

Conversation snowballs from there as they all take turns in asking about Japan and the Clan and Woody immerses himself in even more Hamato Lore with big, sparkly eyes and Donnie can only sit back and think on how fast Karai had spoken at first to squash any conversation about them coming home.

It left an odd feeling wiggling about in his chest – not his usual anxiety or worry.

Something… something different.

Eventually the call ends, and Mikey is blowing kisses over the phone even when the screen goes black and both their sisters gone, he eventually sets it down and lets out a rather wistful sigh.

“I miss them,” he says. Raph curls a hand around his shoulder (it’d been too long since Don had watched that side of Raph creep from out of him like so). He gives him a short, comforting squeeze.

“Me too, bro. Me too.”

***

As nighttime falls across the city, the warm, sleepy glow of the moonlight that trickled in past the sewer grates above to bathe the lair in its usual blue hue, Donatello takes up the task of putting Little Mikey to bed.

Despite their adventurous day and the fact that he’d had a short lived, impromptu nap after dinner, the turtle was still endlessly hyperactive, talking a mile a minute about certain toys and the pool and Leo.

“It’s the best here,” Little Mikey says with a toothy grin that takes up most of his space. He clambers into bed with Teds tucked under one arm.

“I still miss home a whole lot but this place is pretty cool.”

A flicker of warmth, like candlelight, ignites somewhere deep in Donnie’s chest. Expanding outwards as fire catches, it leaves him feeling a bone deep kind of balmy satisfaction.

Maybe this place wasn’t so bad after all.

“I think you made it a lot cooler,” Donnie tells him as he tucks the comforter snugly around him.

It earns a giggle out of the younger turtle; he no doubt misses the real significance of such a statement — probably believing that Donnie had said it just in jest, but there was a weighty, undeniable truth to his words.

He’d reunited with April. Mikey was home. Things were different here. A shift in the atmosphere. A change.

“Thank you, Don-Don,” Mikey says around a long, drawn out yawn, little eyelids sliding shut against their own will. “For tryin’ to help me and stuff.”

Donnie chuckles softly. He bends himself over the sleepy turtle and presses a kiss against his brow bone.

“You’re nearly there, kiddo.”

Once satisfied he won’t be getting out of bed to bounce off the walls or sneak back into the kitchen to mess around some more, Donnie slips out of the bedroom and heads towards his own.

He catches Raphael as he emerges from the bathroom; a little dot of toothpaste left at his lip that he’d missed.

“All good?” Raph asks him tiredly, holding a small thumbs up.

Donnie smiles. He can hear hushed voices from Leo’s room (the couch remains vacant, but neither brother does anything to stop it) and tells him,

“Yeah. I think so.”

***

Come morning, Little Michelangelo is gone.

Donnie isn’t the first to wake; he never was much of a good riser when it wasn’t continued on from a long bender of staying awake every hour of the night.

It’s Raph that bursts into his room with wide eyes and panic creeping around the words he rushes to say,

“He’s gone. His bed is empty.”

Donnie rips himself out of bed to join Raph, Mikey and Woody in the other room. The bed seems untouched, Teds propped up against the pillow like he was just simply waiting for someone.

“Go check the tunnels,” Donnie instructs Raph. He runs a tongue along his bottom lip to unstick it from his gums. “I’ll check out the activity here.”

He parts from the group to head for his lab, Mikey hot at his heels whilst Raph instructs Woody to one tunnel whilst he dashes off down another.

“Think he went home?” Mikey is asking, chewing on his finger like he often did when he got nervous. Donnie grabs his laptop and boots it to life with a jab of his fingers against the keys.

“Possibly,” Donnie muses as he brings up all his previous research and readings. He walks back to Mikey’s room and stands in the middle, pressing the read button. “I can’t imagine he just wandered off…”

Numbers and little bits of information start to build across his screen, a blue sea of code dancing across the page in rivets.

It was a strange feeling; part of him wished that he had just somehow managed to pop back to his dimension, save him from getting lost somewhere in the sewers, but another small, greedy part of him was waiting for Raph to stroll back in through the turnstiles, breathless with relief with the kid on his hip and a well timed joke on his lips.

His laptop beeps merrily at him as the final conclusion of his readings takes place.

Mikey steps closer, crowding Donnie with zero respect for any personal space — now is a time Donnie can bypass that certain rule that he’d always managed to break anyway.

“What does it say?” He’s asking, voice hushed to a near whisper, finger still wedged into his mouth, it reminds Don of Little Mikey’s thumb sucking habit.

So connected, he thinks bittersweetly.

“It—” his voice is froggy, so he clears it with a sharp cough. “It’s like before. All that energy and displacement…” he turns his burning eyes away from the screen to face his brother. A smile wobbling across his face.

“Mikes. He went home.”

His brother laughs, all wet and bubbly and in turn it makes Donnie laugh too. Still clutching his laptop fiercely Mikey bumps a shoulder against his.

“Nice one, Dee,” he says, voice so gentle.

Everything for a moment feels stills and peaceful, whatever Little Mikey had left behind still lingering in the air when—

“Guys!” That’s Woody, his voice catching up to his body as he skids to a halt in the doorway, clutching the frame for support and his chest heaves.

Mikey and Don move at the speed of light to reach him, Michelangelo only a fraction quicker then he is.

“Guys,” he says again, catching each ragged breath with a desperate gulp. “Turtle. Sewer. Now.”

Donnie’s breath stills in his chest, just as Mikey takes another step forward, grasping at his boyfriend's hands with his, brow furrowing tightly.

Had Donnie been wrong? Had he not gone home after all?

“Turtle in the sewer? Little Mike or someone else?”

Woody shakes his head, curls skirting about across his brows, it’s then that a smile breaks across his face; so wide and true, it gets the breath that’s stationary in Donnie’s chest moving again.

“No,” he says, calmer now. He squeezes Mikey’s hands so tenderly, his eyes sparkling. “Not from another dimension. It’s… it’s yours.”

***

Mikey and Donnie end up overtaking Woody as the three of them barrel down the stretch of tunnel, coming to a stop when they spot Raphael.

His arms wrapped around a laughing Karai and Leo.

“Oh my god…” Donnie says with disbelief. Mikey laughs loudly, the sound echoing down the brick walls, it gets everyone to turn and face him.

Leo clocks her little brothers and is only pulling herself away from Raph’s iron grip to rush towards them.

Donnie hasn’t been somebody’s little brother in a long time — it’d always been a tender spot between him and Raph over who got that particular title ever since age orders had been dished out, but in the last few years of them being alone down here, it was an argument that’d slowly fizzled out, seemingly for good. He would never know if Raph was classed as his big brother or not and he was okay with that.

They had grown to be equals in adulthood, and that was fine by him.

But having Leo hold him like this, pressing her beak against his neck, a vibration of clicks and churr’s exchanged between them all that felt age old, Donnie felt that longing ache of being someone’s younger brother again finally start to untwist.

“What—” Mikey is the first to untangle himself from his sister, cupping her face in his hands like he can’t quite believe that she was here. Like she wasn’t real. “What are you doing here?!”

Karai greets them with Raph’s arm slung lovingly around her shoulders. “Heard there was a party,” she says so effortlessly. Donnie’s stomach flutters.

Leo throws Woody a grin over his brother's shoulders, looping him into the moment as he steps forward and allows himself to be enveloped into a tight hug from Karai.

“I just had a feeling,” Leo is telling her little brother, cupping his face back, holding a dimpled cheek in her palm. “Something was telling me to come home.”

Raph scoffs, full of mirth, no heat, he’s wrapping them all up in his arms. “Yeah,” he says plainly, no rush to let go just yet. “Me, you idiot.”

Leo laughs, all bubbly and fizzy and sweet and Donnie laughs too; he knows Raph’s only joking but it does make him wonder, all the usual cogs in his head turning and grinding out his usual heavy slew of thoughts.

He thinks of the mysterious little turtle that had jumped through dimensions like it was nothing, and picked all the pizza toppings off his dinner, as well as little brothers and their other halves and the home he still had, in brick and stone and love and time, he thinks of April too — how he’s going to call her after this: needing to see her again before Christmas or whenever it was they’d promised each other because this here was his family and it was still a fraction incomplete without her.

“Are we gonna stand about crying in a sewer or what?” Karai says, tugging them along in the direction of home where Mikey is excitedly rattling off about the pizza party they’re having later and Leo laughs and goes off with him, sandwiched between both him and Raph, she throws Donnie a look over her shoulder, eyes crinkled, as if to say,

Come on, Dee, let’s go home.

There’s still the taste of electricity in their air either left behind by Little Mikey or perhaps brought here by their Leo, but either way, it’s all the same.

There’s a home to go to now. He rushes forward to catch up with his siblings, his heart skipping in his chest with each step, bouncing away all the previous hurt and worry that had lingered there for so very long.

He always had his home. Splinter was right. No matter what corners of the earth they were, he always had them.