Archive of Our Own

He’s ignoring Donnie, standing there in the corner of the room, all static and silence, heavy like a dark storm cloud, the youngest turtle turns away, a sigh seeping out past pursed lips, it’s easy to make himself busy as to not think too much about the thick quiet that fills the room.

And it’s not like Donnie can really talk anyway. That’s the way it’s always been, with these ghosts that linger; they can observe and stay fuzzy around the edges in the in-between worlds, but they haven’t a voice.

Not until Mikey gives them one, anyway.

But Mikey is turning his back on his brother, leaving him to haunt his corner of the room, all because Mikey has a plan to go topside, knock a couple of Purple Dragons around because they’ve been getting particularly nasty lately, hanging around bars, following girls to their cars in hoards like a hungry pack of dirty dogs, all sneer and filthy comments spilling from their mouths; the cops hadn’t made any effort to make amends, clearly , and thus so the responsibility had fallen on Michelangelo’s willing shoulders.

“I’ll be fine,” Mikey says to an empty room. “I have my chucks and the smoke bombs if I need a quick exit.” He draws a short breath that bites at the in between of his ribs on the way down. “It’s nothing I can’t handle, okay?”

And when he turns on his heel, the other side of the room is void of any kind of presence, leaving Mikey alone with all the breath that spills out of him at once.

***

His first ghost was when he was about six years old. Something cold and dark in the corner of his room, he was too tired, brain still foggy from whatever dream he’d been pulled from in an instant to even comprehend whatever fear was buried deep within him, and so he’d just blinked at that figure that was blending in with the shadows, staticy and wobbly like someone had paused between switching television channels, and after that moment, the spirits just kind of surrounded themselves around him.

His father had explained to him one evening, after he’d clambered into his lap, interrupting a meditation session as he’d pushed his beak against the tufts of fur that peeked through the chest of his robe, that Mikey had a gift. That these spirits were drawn to him for a reason. That there was no reason for him to be afraid of them at all. That they were just lost and needed someone to guide him home.

And if Mikey thinks hard enough, he can remember the gentle weight of his father’s paw rested across his shell from that night, thumbing around the edges as he’d tried to quell his growing worry at such a revelation. He throws a look over his shoulder, just to chase away the thought that perhaps the phantom feeling wasn’t really the ghostly touch of his father, but he’s met with nothing and nobody – just the icy breeze of the city zipping past him.

He stalks his prey, creeping across the rooftops, he sinks himself into the shadows, crouched down low, he keeps a watch of the rowdy group of Dragons that are mingling about on the street below, clouds of heavy, thick smoke billows from between them, skunk air follows and their obnoxious, loud laughter tallies up and down the stretch of the street without care. Mikey shuffles closer to the lip of the roof, hands clasped tentatively around his chucks stuffed safely in his belt.

There’s a girl that crosses the street to avoid them. Her head is down, she’s walking almost double time to avoid them, wrapping her arms around her middle like she might just somehow make herself turn invisible, but like a pack of dogs, they sniff her out and once they have their sights on her, it’s all too late for her. They’re like sharks migrating to the other sidewalk, she doesn’t even look up when they begin calling out to her.

Mike knows how they play. And they never play nice. And he isn’t even going to let them get in the first foul. He’s calling the whistle now.

He darts across towards the other roof, feeling weightless he soars through the air, and he’s already whipped out one pair of nunchucks before any of them can even notice what is about to come down upon them.

He takes the first strike with ease, his chuck goes slamming into the back of one Dragon’s head, and he doesn’t even make a noise when he crumples to the floor like wet paper, he’s folded. And he’s sure it’s the sound of his jaw bouncing off the concrete that has the other’s whipping around with big, fearful eyes that are darting across the night sky in hopes of catching him out first.

But Mikey is quick and he’s good at what he does as he leaps again and his chain goes singing through the air with a deep chime and the chuck comes back around again, this time clipping one of the guys across the side of the head and he stumbles over his own feet as he screams out in pain.

The girl has run off now. Somewhere safe, Mikey can only hope as he quickly scans the empty side of the street. He strikes again, this time he’s taken his shot at a pair of exposed kneecaps and he roars out in agony as he collapses against the floor.

A few others decide to turn tail, floundering out of the street with heavy breath, Mikey slides out of the shadows for some more one-on-one.

He gets in a few kicks and hits, but not before he’s been returned the favor. He staggers backwards after a particularly nasty fist to the face, and there’s something wet and sticky smeared across the underside of his beak, running along his top lip and he just smiles, no doubt staining his teeth a deep red, he lurches forward and punches him back, twice as hard.

And at the end of it all, Mikey walks away on top. He always does. Purple Dragons are sloppy and useless. They’re just a warmup in the grand scheme of things – a warmup that is totally worth it, of course, but he’s barely broken a sweat by the time he’s running home.

He comes back to the lair and is quick to swipe the back of his wrist over his face that’s still smeared with blood, only because Donatello is standing in the corner again, heavy and brooding and Mikey can feel the static energy that expels from him in big rolling balls.

He frowns, watching the fuzzy figure flicker in and out of focus. “I’m fine,” he croaks. “Just a nosebleed. Really.”

Donnie’s presence hums, like electricity before a power short circuit and then he’s gone.

Mikey sighs, rubbing the top of his head with a hand, he’s alone once more to lick his wounds.

***

When Mikey was thirteen he didn’t want this stupid, stupid gift.

He’d wake up in fits of tears, the cusp of what he understands now as a panic attack clawing at the edges of his lungs, he’d suck in fitful, desperate breaths as Leo would do his best to comfort him, patting his shell, with Donnie watching on with big round eyes whilst Raph would run to the next room over to grab their father.

Those nightmares would plague Mikey for years. These horrid, ugly visions at first were put down to the fact that perhaps he watched one too many horror movies too late at night. Or maybe it was the gorefest comics he was so invested in. But Mikey explained one night, through sobs, that it wasn’t any of that.

These were so real; so raw and vivid, these images that made his stomach tighten, his skin grow clammy. He’d yelled at his father with big, fat tears cascading down the sides of his faces that he just wanted to be left alone. He didn’t want to help them – why should he?

And Splinter had done his best to calm his son, rocking him to sleep, sending his brothers back to their rooms, it was all futile. They’d stand at the foot of the bed, refusing to move until they knew he was okay. And Splinter would assure them that he was okay, that he would be okay but they’d stick around anyway.

Just like now.

Mikey’s poking at his ramen, uninterested because there’s a headache blooming behind his eyes, rolling around his skull like a big damn rock and whenever he flickers his eyes upwards towards the other end of the table, his brothers are there, watching him like hawks.

So he keeps his focus zoned on his untouched dinner, wrapping the noodles around the prongs of the fork before he allows them to slide back into the thick broth.

He looks up again. They’re still there, refusing to move.

“What.” He says outloud. His voice always feels too heavy and too loud for the room. Like he should be whispering instead.

And of course they can’t ever answer him back. There’s no tenderness to Donatello’s worry, no abrasiveness to Raphael’s instruction to eat. There’s no voice for Leonardo to ask him if he’s okay.

He drops his fork into the bowl with a splash and a clutter and he pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes until dark shapes dance around beneath his lids, trying to inch out the headache from his aching skull.

But it doesn’t work. It’s still there. And when he opens his eyes again, his vision taking a moment to unblur, the other end of the table is empty and his stomach suddenly growls.

He picks up the fork and forces down the first mouthful of noodles.

***

He’s seventeen and he’s standing in his bedroom and Splinter is there, standing at the edge of his bed with a warm smile, his eyes are soft and his tail swishing back and forth like it often did when he was happy and content and he’s got his arms folded in front of him like he’s ready for his son to come to him. Ready to welcome him in an embrace if need be.

And it’d be fine… if his father hadn’t died less than three days ago.

Mikey doesn’t scream. He doesn’t cry like he thinks he might have. He just stands there and kind of stares, watching the edges of his father’s form start to go all fuzzy, like he’d been watching the TV for too long; it’s heavy and faraway and Mikey thinks about taking a step closer, just to be in arms reach but he’s afraid to burst the bubble.

And then Raph is knocking against his door; they’d ordered a pizza and Mikey had only come away in here just to compose himself (family dinner without him was just so strange still) and still, tears blot the corners of his eyes and his heart goes a little wobbly in his chest and Raph knocks again and then his father is gone.

“Mike?” Raph’s voice floats through the door, apprehensive. “You good?”

Mikey stares at the now empty space in front of him, like if he manages not to blink, he might just appear again. He doesn’t. Mikey sniffs and even without blinking, tears still manage to slip away from him, rolling down his chin, he clears his throat before calling back to his awaiting brother.

“Yeah, Raph.” His own voice sounds so far away. “M’fine.”

***

April comes down to the lair, cradling a bag of groceries, there’s a worrisome look pinching at the edges of her face when she sets the paper bag down on the table, hiking her jeans up with a wiggle of her hips, her voice is firm when she asks him.

“You good?”

Mikey takes his time in turning around. He’s busying himself at the sink, bubbly water cascades over his wrists, he stops the flow and flicks off the remaining droplets of water that clings across the insides of his fingers and manages to plaster on a smile when he turns around to face her.

“Course,” he says with a half hearted shrug of his shoulders. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

April’s brow furrows. If Mikey stares hard enough he can just about make out the faint line that’s beginning to grow permanent there against porcelain skin.

“You look tired,” is what she tells him. “Have you been sleeping?”

And the quick answer is no. Mikey seldom sleeps. Because the minute he does, he’s haunted all over again. His father told him all that time ago that the visions and the ghosts and the spirits weren’t here to harm him, but he’s been proven wrong. It hurts him, almost every single night.

His throat bobs. “Kinda,” he tells her. He was never any good at lying, even with all those years of being the littlest brother tucked under his belt – everybody could always see right through him.

Now it’s the other way around. 

April moves forward and her hand comes up and touches at his cheek. Her hands are warm and welcome and he’s always been grateful for the physicality that exists between them with no known bounds. He loves her a little extra for that.

“You need to talk?” She asks him, voice dropping low and serious. Her hand doesn’t move, only her thumb that brushes back and forth, like swiping away imaginary tears.

Mikey swallows again. “I do talk,” he tells her. She sighs wearily in full big sister fashion.

“I mean to somebody that can talk back .”

Mikey hums, placing his larger hand on top of hers, he’s able to envelope it entirely, giving it a squeeze as he gently pulls her away.

“They talk to me,” he assures her gently. His chest feels heavy, like there’s an imaginary weight rested right there. “In their own way. They talk to me.”

***

For a turtle that had such little faith in the afterlife and the beyond and ghosts and ghouls and spirits, Donatello sure does linger a lot.

Mikey finds it sad, though he doesn’t ever admit to it out loud. He’ll just find Donnie standing at the edges of the room, like he isn’t sure what to do with himself, hands twisting and feet shuffling and Mikey will watch him and smile and call out to him like he’s really actually there.

Raph and Leo will often accompany him together, rarely does he ever find them apart which he finds a touch ironic. Two brothers that spent a majority of their time at each other’s throats were now attached at the hip. Mikey finds that nice. He likes that whatever conflict that was always lit between them in life had seemingly fizzled out in the life beyond that.

He hopes that wherever it is they are now that they’re okay and that they’re happy.

Splinter is the one that appears less. After his reappearance stint when Mikey was seventeen it was another three years until he saw him again. And another two years after that, he drifts in and out when Mikey needs him most. His throat grows tight and he tries to picture his face, his whiskers, the little gray hairs that were peppered around his snout. The soft pads of his paws that’d caress his face and run across his shell. 

They linger and they stay and at first Mikey thinks that perhaps he’s doing something wrong. Like he’s supposed to be helping them passover or something, like they do in those bad CW shows that he used to watch with Leo, like there was some unfinished business he needed to take care of for them so they could go in the light.

But it’s been years and it’s apparent that their unwillingness to move on and go forth is simply down to being stubborn. Down to the fact that Mikey is their unfinished business. They won’t leave him because they’d vowed it, a long time ago when their bodies and souls were one, that’d always been the promise.

And now here they were, carrying that very promise out.

***

He argues with them still. It’s a brotherly thing and also because if he doesn’t exercise his anger in some way, he’ll just let it wrap up inside of him twisting and pulling until he’s all cut up and he doesn’t think that's any good for him, so he yells at his brothers whenever they’re hovering or watching him when he wants to be alone.

He wants to go out again. He’s got wind about some arms deal happening downtown and it’s supposed to be something spectacular because in New York it always is, but he’s got all three of his brothers here now, watching as he sticks his shuriken into his belt, boring holes into the back of his shell.

“You want me to just sit down here and do nothing?!” He’s yelling, his voice carries down the empty stretch of tunnels that surround their home. His heart is hammering hard against the inside of his chest. His cheeks feel hot. All the telltale signs he might just start crying, only because he wishes for one of them to just yell back for once.

“I hate it here,” he hisses under his breath when he feels Leonardo shift closer to him. If he were really here, in the full flesh, there’d be a tight hand wrapped around his wrist and a voice of concern to stop him.

But there isn't. So he goes anyway. He doesn’t even look back to check if they’re watching him still.

***

The deal goes sideways and Mikey ends up caught up in the middle of it all. There’s bullets spraying across the broadwalk that they’ve found themselves upon, bits of wood splintering around him and Mikey is swinging one way to take out one of the goons that’s brave enough to charge right at him, and then once he’s on the ground, he’s swinging the other way to avoid to shower of bullets that rains down on him once they have him in their sights.

He doesn’t get hurt. Not badly, anyway. He leaves the fight with a graze. He goes home, limping as the ache starts to settle along his wounded leg, crimson trickling down his thigh and pooling at his kneepad, he feels the material grow thick and heavy and once he’s back at the lair, his brothers are there waiting for him.

Raph is wearing one of his ‘I fucking told you so’ looks whilst Leo and Donnie just look upon at him, anxious and he starts to patch himself up.

“I’ve been hurt worse.” Any animosity that was there before has bled right out of him, no fight left in him, he keeps his words deliberately gentle for their sake. He dabs at the wound with a wet cloth – it really only did graze him as it whipped past him. That was all. But Donnie is inching forward with restless hands, even though they both know there’s nothing he can do, Mikey sighs and lifts his head up to face him.

“I’m okay,” he whispers to him, voice impossibly soft. “Promise, Don.”

And so his brother sink back to their corner of the room whilst Mikey fixes himself up, talking out loud of all the steps he takes to disinfect the injury, the bandages, how often he’ll be sure to check in on it in the upcoming days. It’s all the necessary bits and pieces that Don had shared with him once before, out of convenience, all of them had been trained in a little bit of first aid. All of it now just to settle any rising anxiety his brother had. His gaze dances upwards and they’re still there.

He smiles at them, lips pressed thin together. “Wanna watch me watch a movie?”

And they can’t answer so Mike just hobbles to the couch, dropping himself down, he hisses as he reaches over for the remote, like an old bike brake, he says outloud to nobody in particular as the array of screens flicker to life,

“Guess it’s my turn to pick, hm?”

***

When Mikey was six he saw his first ghost. When he was ten, he started having nightmares and when he was thirteen his nightmares got a whole lot worse. He spends more or less every waking hour throwing looks over his shoulders every time he feels static crawl up his shell or the temperature drops a degree lower than normal. He has a gift, he knows that, but it often feels like a curse more than anything.

And perhaps it is a gift in some sense. His brother still stick around, even if nobody else can see them, it stops him going totally stir crazy on days where he feels too heavy to roll out of bed and go patrolling, or the times when he’ll send April and Casey away from the lair for weeks on end because talking outloud feels like a much too big kind of effort. 

It’s a gift. But at what cost?

Mikey has a home full of ghosts. Ghosts that linger and hang about in the shadows of rooms and worry and fuss over him in the littlest of instances. His home is full of them. 

But he’s never felt more alone.