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It was fine, really.
When Raph started pushing him around more and more, because he noticed how Mikey didn't even try to fight back and it doomed him in the red clad's eyes as an easy target.
No, really! It was fine!
When Donnie let it slip that he was relieved about Mikey being the one getting the short end of the stick instead of him, because maybe, the youngest deserved it more.
He swears it's fine.
When he notices how Leo purposefully pairs him with anyone other than him unless it's strictly necessary for Raph and Donnie to be paired together.
How none of them ever include him in their plans.
How none of them ever considered his opinion during missions, even if he has proved time and time again that he can also be right about many things! But they choose to still not trust him, because his mistakes are greater, bigger, brighter than any accomplishment he ever managed to achieve.
And he is especially fine when he catches himself instigating more fights, causing more trouble, raising his voice more often, just to get a reaction from his brothers so they can remind him of how useless he is.
He has grown dependent to the pain.
He needs to know how pathetic he is, how he is perceived by others, and he knows that just asking for their opinions will lead him down a path of "white lies" in order to save his feelings from the harsh truth.
Long gone was his need for praise, being replaced by a nasty, desperate need for pain.
He needs the pain, he needs the hits, he needs the punches, he needs the glares, he needs the scoldings... because if he isn't useless, what is he?
He feels like an obsolete machine. A machine that's barely working, all broken down and overheated, that still turns on from time to time due to some incredible miracle and the one you hit repeatedly in hopes of fixing whatever it is that's making it malfunction.
Hoping you can beat the obsolete away.
Days and days went by in which his brothers' mistreatment came to a sudden stop. It didn't matter how much he yelled, lashed out or broke stuff, no one paid him any mind. Not even Raph, whose buttons were incredibly easy to push, would do anything when Mikey was straight up annoying around him.
What does this mean? Has he finally annoyed them so much to the point where they didn't even want to try and correct him anymore?
The idea was mortifying, making him lose sleep at night, thinking of what he could do to get his precious pain back. He needed to be corrected! He needed to be fixed!
He needs it!
The stoic leader, the one who always remained calm in the eye of the hurricane, the one who feared nothing, has found himself facing his biggest fear.
It was stupid. The consequent argument wasn't proportionate to the miniscule incident that caused it, but blue and orange still yelled at each other as much as their lungs allowed them to.
"You are insufferable! Sometimes I just want to... I want to─!"
"DO IT! WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO, DO IT" The youngest eyes, once filled with hope and joy, once so big and bright that they could melt the ice in anyone's heart, laid broken and glassy, so very desperate that they replaced the sky they once held with an angry storm.
Taking Leo's hand desperately, Mikey placed the open palm against his cheek, almost pleading.
"PLEASE, JUST HIT ME IF YOU WANT! TELL ME HOW USELESS I AM! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, JUST DO IT!"
His blood ran cold at the sight, forcing him to open his eyes to the nasty reality that played before him.
His little brother wanted nothing but to feel pain and he didn't understand where he went so wrong as to lead him down this path.
When the other's hand didn't move, when it instead wrapped around his cheek and caressed it with great care and concern, Mikey almost felt like collapsing to the ground or punching himself rather than keep on waiting for any of the others to do it. It was obvious that wasn't going to happen anymore.
"Please... I need it..." Was the last thing that could be heard coming from Mikey, before being engulfed in a hug so tight that it almost felt like an echo of the pain he craved.
For now, that was enough.
He could pretend this was pain.
Because pain was reassuring.
And he deserved the pain.