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He couldn’t see.
He couldn’t see.
He couldn’t—
Donnie flailed his hand around, struggling for purchase and the air that wouldn’t come. Oblivion howled at him, pulling him closer, and it caught him in a mortal struggle where he had no chance of survival. He’d heard that when people were on the verge of death, there was a moment of absolute peace where the panic ended. For him, that moment never came, and he fought tooth and nail into death, fighting against the shadows scattering his soul across infinity.
Presently, a low ring in the distance became deafening and he felt his head was going to explode. Synapses died in his brain and he ticked off the functions that turned off the longer the brain was deprived of oxygen. Claustrophobic blackness closed in around him, squeezing his body. If the sliced trachea didn’t kill him, the intense pressure would. He was sinking to the bottom of an endless ocean where the water pressure would break his bones and compress his veins but dammit if he didn’t keep trying to swim to the surface of the water—his hand moved, wildly grasping at the air—
“It’s alright to be scared. I’m here with you.”
Someone took his hand and squeezed hard. It was the first thing he’d felt in what felt like forever that wasn’t hurt.
The darkness pulled away, giving him a sliver of vision—just a sliver, a small slice out of the black. A woman knelt next to him, holding tight and stroking his head.
“Gram Gram?” Donnie said. He shouldn’t be able to speak with a cut windpipe. Somehow, he did anyway.
The woman smiled.
“No, you’re…” He squinted. He’d only seen her in faded photographs that Splinter kept hidden in a shoebox. “You’re Grandma.”
Hamato Atsuko nodded. She rested his head in her lap and held him tight.
“I’m dead?” Donnie asked.
“Close to death, yes,” said Grandma. She looked off into eternity. “Your brothers are trying to help you.”
“How’s that working out for them? And don’t lie, I can smell the truth.”
“…They are doing their best.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
They lay there, on the brink of forever. Donnie had never felt so cold before and it sucked all the fight to stay alive out of him. He knew it had to be only minutes since the attack but it felt like a lifetime.
He’d always believed there was nothing after death, his mind would stop working, he would just be gone and never know the difference. But he hadn’t considered for the Hamatos, that their spirits were always watching over the living members of the family, and they had to exist somewhere. Maybe they, too, existed in nothingness until they were called, maybe they were just apparitions. All Donnie could suddenly think about was that if there was some afterlife he was being dragged to, that he was going to face it without his brothers. Nothing felt more intrinsically terrifying.
He would be alone. Alone in the unknown.
Maybe he’d have long-dead family members around him, maybe he’d be able to watch his brothers and father and friends grieve him, watch his death ruin them, watch them die horrendously. Even with his ancestors at his back, he’d still have to face it alone. For forever, maybe. There were so many unknowns that panic gripped him and he held tight onto his grandmother’s hand. It was the only thing that kept him grounded. The crushing and horrible feeling of loneliness stretched out in the endless space he sensed creeping in closer and closer around him. The cold dug into him, like it was trying to separate his consciousness from his body with a crowbar.
His vision closed in. Suddenly in a panic, he dug his heels into the malleable ground beneath him, trying to move and kick his way somewhere, though he didn’t know where.
Grandma hushed himt. “It’s alright. I’m here.”
“I don’t know if—I can’t—” Donnie tried to say.
“Anata wa hitori ja nai.”
Then, suddenly, a soothing warmth radiated him his throat and spread out.
In the sliver of his vision, Grandma looked up, as if something had caught her attention. The stress lines and sadness in her face smoothed out. She looked at him and smiled.
Before nothingness could devour him, Donnie sucked in a harsh breath.
His feet skidded across a smooth surface and suddenly he felt incredibly hot. He was on fire. He was being cremated. He was drenched in lava. He was about to turn into ashes as his molecules broke apart.
“Donnie! Dee!”
“Roll him over—”
Hands turned him on his side. Gravity felt much too heavy, but the hands effortlessly swung up, and something hot and fiery and bloody wormed its way up his oesophagus and forced its way out. His narrowed vision came back and he was looking at a pool of red collecting on the floor beneath him, dripping from his mouth and teeth. He instinctively tried to take in air and it came, empowering but weak. Donnie retched and coughed to clear out the blood flooding his mouth, then finally, the flow eased off.
Three sets of hands were on him, holding his body in place while he struggled for air. One set on his lower shell. Another on his head and neck. A third holding tight onto his arms, fully extending them. It was deadly quiet, save for his wet, uneven breathing and the quiet rasps of the three people closed in around him.
His vision slowly ballooned out and he blinked rapidly to clear the darkness.
“Donnie?” That was Raph. “Donnie, can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you understand.”
Raph’s hand fully encompassed his. Donnie squeezed as hard as he could and Raph let out a kind of muddled, choking sob. He shifted his gaze to look at him and Raph was doubled over, entire body shaking while he cried onto him.
“What are you…?” Donnie blinked. He shouldn’t be able to talk. His windpipe. His voice sounded faint and barely there. He tenderly touched his neck against his better judgment, and while his fingers came back bloody, his skin was whole. “What did you do?”
His whole body ached as he pushed off the floor. Leo and Mikey’s hands steadied him as he sat up.
“Don’t get up too fast,” said Leo. Donnie had never seen him so pale and terrified.
“What did you do?” Donnie repeated. He spat out a wad of blood and felt his throat. Smooth skin. Bloody, but smooth.
He looked to his brothers for an answer. Leo took one look at him and suddenly collapsed in a heap. Mikey exploded into tears and grabbed Donnie in a crushing hug. Raph stayed hunched over and sobbing. All three were covered in blood. Mikey was soaked from fingers to his upper arms, leaving behind crimson handprints on Donnie’s shell and shoulders.
They were inside the Turtle Tank. Donnie was on the floor. There was a trail of blood that led from the door to where he was sprawled with his brothers, broken, around him. Mikey seemed incapable of letting go, while Leo lay flat with his hands over his face, and Raph just cried so hard that he didn’t breathe except in hiccups.
He was alive.
Donnie tried to grapple with it. Could this be a dying dream? A hallucination created by his oxygen-starved brain? Donnie waited for a few minutes, but nothing felt less real or more distant. His rapid heartbeat pounded hard in his ears. He was shaking hard and couldn’t stop.
His brothers crawled over to him and squeezed him in the tightest hug he’d ever received, and even if the hug wasn’t on his exact terms, Donnie let them have it. Let them hold tight. It was real. It felt real. Leo outright kissed his cheek and head, which he permitted with a vague grunt of protest. The searing heat he’d felt in his body cooled into a strange, familiar warmth that settled in his chest and made his hands tingle. He kept reaching up to touch his throat, the phantom sensation of his cut throat still powerful and vivid.
It was a long while before any of his brothers were in a state to speak coherently, by which time their eyes were bloodshot and wet with tears, and Donnie had been squeezed so hard he was sure they’d cracked a few ribs. The blood on the floor was drying.
“Would someone tell me what you did?” Donnie asked for the third time.
Leo sniffed loudly. His voice was heavy and he snot trailing out of his nose, gross. “Mikey…”
Donnie looked at Mikey, at his bloody arms, at his warbling smile. He took a few deep breaths, then raised his hands and flashed a smile.
“Magic hands, Dee,” Mikey chimed in a broken voice.
“Since when can you do that?” Donnie demanded, a little too sharp, a little too accusatory. Mikey just smiled.
“I didn’t know I could,” Mikey said thickly. “I just…I had to…I stuck my hands in your…in your neck.”
Donnie blinked. “Oh, that’s not sanitary, Mikey! I saw you picking your nose like an hour ago!”
“That’s not…” Leo threw his head back and howled with laughter. Donnie prepared to snap at him, give him a biting, sarcastic comment, but he looked a second time and he realized that the laughter wasn’t at his expense. It was relieved laughter, almost elated. “‘That’s not sanitary!’ You were basically dead and all you can think about is that it’s not sanitary.”
“I’m sorry, what’s stopping infection here? His literal finger was in his nose! That’s disgusting!”
Raph’s shoulders were shaking, and Donnie reached out to touch his arm. Raph scrubbed at both his eyes with the heels of his palms.
“Mikey got to you first,” said Raph. “He just started screaming over the comms.”
Donnie stared down at the scarlet blood smeared across his plastron. His skin was a washed-out shade of green and his hands trembled terribly until Mikey took both of his hands and just held them.
Raph finally set one leg under the other and heaved himself up. A sudden and dangerous calm overcame him.
“Donnie, can you do something for me?” Raph asked.
“Raph—” Mikey started, suddenly wide-eyed with fear.
“I just need Donnie to do this one thing.”
Mikey and Leo each grabbed one of Donnie’s arms and half-dragged, half-supported him to the Turtle Tank’s door. He tentatively tested the strength of his own legs and, while shaky, they held. He was fine, aside from some mild effects he could attribute to blood loss. Nothing that couldn’t be reversed with time and care. It was real.
“Easy, brother, shake those wobbles out,” Leo said with forced cheer. His smile didn’t meet his eyes.
Donnie smacked the back of Leo’s head.
“Um, ow. The disrespect I feel right now—”
Leo’s smile quickly faded when he caught sight of Raph turning the corner of the Turtle Tank, dragging someone by the arm. In his other hand, he felt a blade.
Donnie’s heart seized hard in his chest. The grip on the two brothers flanking him on either side became crushing, but if he was hurting them, they didn’t complain, just held a little tighter. Leo’s glare was poisonous, while Mikey looked at the floor.
It was one of the cultists. Not just any cultist. His cultist.
They must not have gotten far after his attack. They wouldn’t have. Not with Donnie bleeding on the ground and when at least two of his brothers wouldn’t have let his murderer off the hook. He could imagine it in his head: the cultist running desperate from an enraged Raph, his blood soaking the front of their robes.
The cultist was tied up and Raph shoved them in front of the group. He seized their hood and pulled it down, revealing a person with a youthful face and a mane of long blonde hair.
“Is this the one?” Raph asked, his voice barely a growl.
Donnie didn’t know what to say. He held tight onto his brothers. The cultist was pounding at Raph’s plastron.
“Donnie?”
The slice on his throat, the feeling that his head was going to topple off.
“Dee?”
He looked back up at Raph. “I don’t know, I didn’t see their face.”
Donnie met the cultist’s eyes and he knew one word would seal their death sentence. He didn’t have qualms about it. Hell, if he could walk straight, he’d slit their throat himself. It was his brothers he was worried about—he didn’t like the hard anger in Raph’s eyes that wasn’t directed at him, and he didn’t like the callous glare Leo gave the cultist, and he certainly didn’t like Mikey doing everything within his power to not look.
The cultist had made him powerless, left him to die with an open neck. Now, Raph was handing the power back to him and Donnie didn’t know what to do with it.
“Let me see their weapon,” Donnie finally said.
Leo left his side and took the blade from Raph’s outstretched hand, holding it up for Donnie to see. Blood stretched over the metal and he had a freeze-frame image of the moment before impact, a moment he’d trained to counteract and he’d been stupid enough to let his guard down for one moment—
His expression must’ve answered him, because Leo put it back down.
“Mikey, take Donnie back into the Tank and wait for us,” Leo ordered him.
“You’re leaving me out?” Mikey asked. Raph was already dragging the cultist away, who was screaming profanities and struggling against his immense strength. “That’s not fair! You always do this!”
“Someone needs to stay with Donnie.”
“I want in, too.”
“Maybe next time,” Raph called back. “We’ll make sure they hurt plenty on your behalf.”
Raph’s tone left no room for argument. Whatever horrible event Leo and Raph had planned for the cultist was strictly older-brothers-business-only.
Donnie and Mikey watched them go until they turned around the corner and were gone. Then, Mikey tugged at Donnie’s arm and they hobbled back inside the Tank.
No sooner had the door shut behind them when Donnie’s strength gave out and he sank to the ground in a heap. He couldn’t stop shaking, and despite feeling dreadfully cold, sweat beaded on his forehead. He put a finger to his wrist and tried to time his rapid heartbeat. Mikey was at his side in an instant.
“I’m fine,” said Donnie. “I’m just in hypovolemic shock.”
“That’s not ‘fine,’ Donnie,” said Mikey. “What do I do?”
“When we’re back at the lair, fluids and blood through an IV. Right now, just let me lie on the floor.”
Mikey sat alongside him, and they waited. It was a long wait. One that extended far past comfortable for the things they’d all just endured. Donnie knew he should feel something, but everything—from his body to his mind—was numb and distant. The only thing that grounded him was Mikey.
Mikey sat opposite of him, legs curled up against his chest, looking but not touching, respecting his space. And then, Donnie couldn’t stand the distance and he held out his hand. Mikey scooted forward and pulled Donnie close. Despite that, he couldn’t absorb any body heat from his brother and he was trapped in the cold. A part of whim wondered if he was still dying.
Still, he knew he couldn’t just lie around, sprawled on the Turtle Tank’s floor with his vision swimming. After all, he had contingencies to prepare for.
Donnie raised his tech-gauntlet to his face. It took two tries to steady his hands enough to hit the on switch, and then, he tried to fall back into the familiar routine of coding, something that should’ve come naturally to him. He had notes he needed to take and a new task list in his head and his body wouldn’t cooperate with him.
“What are you doing?” Mikey asked.
“Need to update my contingencies,” said Donnie.
“Huh?”
“Previously, I didn’t account for my potential death being a factor—”
“HUH?”
“—so now I have to update all protocols in the lair, in the Tank, on my computers just in case. It’s at least a week’s worth of work so might as well start now.”
“Donnie, no!”
“What’s a password Leo could guess? Probably something stupid like ‘Leo is Amazing.’ Do you think he’d be able to guess ‘1-2-3-4-5-6?’”
Mikey grabbed both of Donnie’s hands in his. “Please stop.”
“I’m just preparing—”
“I don’t care what you’re preparing for, just please don’t do this right now! Please just…” Fresh sobs wracked Mike'y’s body, made his shoulders jolt. “Please just stop.”
Donnie didn’t know what to say. He kept his attention locked on Mikey for a long time, and said, “I’m sorry.” He meant it. He was surprised how much he meant it, so he said it again. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to prepare for anything right now,” said Mikey.
“But I can’t—I shouldn’t been better prepared—I account for anything and that random cultist came out of nowhere. I made a mistake, so next time I need to be prepared.”
Mikey started at him, incredulous. “Oh, you’re gonna have a long session with Doctor Feelings later.” He turned over Donnie’s hands and rubbed his palms with his thumbs. “Donnie, you can’t predict everything that happens, and this as sure as hell wasn’t your fault. Take some deep breaths, okay? Leo and Raph’ll freak out if they come back and you passed out.”
It took a lot of effort. Donnie’s chest was spasming with a mixture of panic, shock, and guilt. Nothing in his body stayed still long enough to breathe, but Mikey was waiting, and he sucked in as much oxygen as he could manage. It felt flawless.
“There,” said Mikey. “I know you’re not okay, and nobody’s okay right now, but it will be. Maybe you can’t predict everything that happens, but right now…”
Donnie stared at the crimson coating his arms, joining them together, thought about how much he’d wanted Mikey’s hands to hold when he’d been drowning in his own blood.
“Right now, we’re okay, and our brothers are gonna be back soon, and you’ll see that they’re fine too. I just want you to take it easy.”
“But I—”
“And no overthinking. Mikey has spoken, the contract has been sealed.”
Donnie squeezed Mikey’s hands back. His body felt cold and his grip was weak, though Mikey’s hands were so impossibly warm that he wanted to hold them for forever.
Mikey didn’t let go until Raph and Leo came back sometime later. If they were a little bloodier than they had been when they left, Mikey didn’t comment on it. He just met their eyes and there was an unspoken understanding between the three of them that no one wanted to address.
Raph knelt by him and Mikey, eyes flicking over their joined hands and up Donnie’s bloodstained body.
“How you doing, Dee?” Raph asked.
“I’m going to need fluids and potentially a blood transfusion when we get back to the lair,” said Donnie. “My heart rate’s a little rapid, but nothing that—”
“No, I mean…feelings. How are your feelings?”
There was a long silence and Donnie realized they were waiting for an answer.
“Oh,” he said. “I don’t have feelings.”
They all sat on the ground together, in the drying blood and safe inside the Tank, away from any danger on the outside. Donnie realized his answer wasn’t quite what any of them were looking for. He wanted to snatch his feelings off of the floor, however whenever he grabbed them, they slipped through his fingers.
His emotions were muddled together, and he couldn’t tell if he was angry or sad or scared or if he felt nothing at all. And if he felt nothing, what was he? Some emotionless monster, something Mikey had dragged back from death wrong? All his plans and he’d never even accounted for his death, and now he didn’t know how to account for surviving near-death. It was another contingency that hadn’t been part of the formula.
“I don’t know,” Donnie admitted, voice shaking. “Raph, I don’t know.”
“It’s okay not to know,” said Mikey.
“Yeah, we’ll figure it out,” said Leo.
“We know you’re overwhelmed, but it’s okay,” said Raph. “You’re safe now.”
Silent tears swarmed out of his wet eyes and down his face. It was such an unusual display of strong emotion from him that his brothers looked near-alarmed, yet their arms closed in to press up around his body. Unlike the suffocating pressure of near-death, it wasn’t unpleasant—just protective and safe.
“I don’t know how to feel,” said Donnie.
“Well, you’re not dead, which is a really good start,” Leo quipped. “Keep being not dead.”
“Leo!” Raph hissed.
Donnie laughed into Raph’s shoulder, which his face was smashed up against. “Flawless advice, Leo.”
“I know, I’m a beacon of wisdom,” said Leo.
They held tight together for as long as they were able until Donnie actually thought they were going to kill him with hugs. The air still felt tight around them, but less so than earlier.
“Can we go home?” Donnie asked quietly.
“You got it!” Leo said. “One sewer lair, coming up.”
“Not saying I’m against going home, but what about the mission?” Raph asked.
“Ah, let the bad guys win for once,” Leo waved him off. “It lulls them into a false sense of security so it’s more satisfying when we kick their butts later.”
“At least get some comfort pizza on the way back,” said Mikey. “What’dya say, Donnie?”
“Can’t refuse comfort pizza,” Donnie agreed.
Leo hit the autopilot on the Turtle Tank and it jerked into motion. Mikey and Leo traded places so Leo was now at his side, arm swung over his shoulder. Donnie remembered the breathless moments before he’d passed out, the things he’d wanted to say.
“Guys?” Donnie said. He steadied himself. It felt like balancing on the edge of forever. “I love you.”
That was it. No jokes, no snarky remarks. No ‘I love you, but insert-a-downside-here.’ He said it, he meant it, he let it ring out in the silence without adding caveats. Donnie couldn’t look at any of them in the eye in case it didn’t land. Leo held tight onto him and he sensed he would not let go until they were home safe, where Donnie would spend a few restless days with his brothers clingier than normal.
“Love you too, moron,” Leo finally said in a sense that he spoke for the group. “Just remind me to get a video recording of you saying that later so we can remember this moment.”
Donnie laughed and sobbed at the same time. He was okay. He didn’t know how he was okay, and it still didn’t feel real that he was actually going home to the things that he was sure he would never see again. His brothers were real, and he didn’t know how they were going to explain this one to Splinter, and he didn’t know what came next, and there were going to be nightmares for at least a few weeks.
At least he wouldn’t have face it alone like he had when he’d been lying on the pavement, drowning in his own blood.