Chapter Text
Despite everything, Donny was fine.
Reasonably, he should be having a panic attack. He should be breaking down in tears. After all, he had just watched all of his brothers die in front of him, but for some strange reason, he feels oddly giddy. His heart still beats rapidly against his chest, and he can hear the blood rushing in his ears, but he's chalked it up to a mix of adrenaline and relief.
Don is simply happy to be home. He's glad to be out of that dystopian future. He's glad that his family is alive. He's glad everything is alright again. The gleefulness can't last forever, he's sure, but he'll ride this high while he can and deal with the consequences soon after.
He wonders how he should tell his brothers about what he saw. If he even should, really. It just seems too dark to bring up nonchalantly, and he was never the best at asking to talk about heavy stuff. He doesn't want to get the lecture about bottling up his emotions from any of them, but it'd feel an awful lot like shoving his problems onto them if he tells them. He'd only cause them distress either way for no good reason–
"Don? You good?" Raph's voice cuts through his thoughts and Donny physically startles, turning to his brother quickly.
He smiles at his brother, but it ends up being a little too wide, and he can't look anywhere but the eye Raph was missing.
"I'm good," he answers as honestly as he can. "I'm great, Raph."
"Yeah, well, you’ve been standing there too long. Sit down."
Don drops his smile and walks over to the computers. Much to both his relief and exasperation, Raph follows.
He sits down and quickly checks himself for injuries. He has the usual body-wide ache he gets after being tossed around in a fight, but he can’t feel or see any major injuries. He does have some scrapes and cuts, though
— he supposes he’ll have to clean them later.
Raph tilts his head. "Your breathin's kinda off, Don," He mentioned, a furrow in his brow.
"It's been a long day, forgive me for breathing oddly," he answers, unintentionally sassy in his tone.
"Jeez, someone's snappy," The red-clad turtle mutters in annoyance. "D'you want help patching yerself up? I dunno what you did in whateva world you got sent to, but it roughed you up good."
He stills for a moment at the mention, but doesn’t visibly falter more than that. "I can do it myself, thanks."
"You sure?" Raph asks, in a tone that says I know something's up.
The word no sits on the tip of his tongue, but Donny was never one to not overthink. He considers the factors.
If he says no, Raph will probably just be more suspicious that something is wrong. Plus, Donny doesn't want to be alone right now, so why not let Raph help?
"You're gonna keep insisting, aren't you, Raph?" Don mutters.
"Maybe," Raph answers.
Donatello sighs. "You can patch me up," he spins his chair so it's facing Raph. "Bring what you need and a seat for yourself, and I'll let you."
Raph's face loosens a bit and he nods, trotting off.
Donny exhales a breath he didn't know he was holding. The feeling from earlier is fading, he realizes, and he still hasn't planned for how to deal with that. If he should tell anyone or not about that timeline.
...He should, right? That way if he does go missing, they'll make sure things go differently. He can try to tell Raph when he's back. It'll be hard to talk about it, but what matters is how important that conversation will be in the long run. If he doesn't tell them, then they'll have no heads up if he goes missing, and he would have seen all that for nothing.
But then a thought strikes him - what if telling them makes it all worse?
Before he can ponder that any longer, Raph returns, placing a chair down unceremoniously and sitting down, opening a first aid kit.
“Give me yer arm. That one's real scratched up n' dirty an' junk." Raph says, looking at Donny's left arm. Don obliges and holds his arm out towards Raph, who grabs some antiseptic wipes from the first aid and cleans the dirty cuts and bruises.
"Man, how did ya scrape them up like this?" Raph asks. "Must've been some crazy sciencey adventure ya went on, huh? Fightin’ some mad scientist?"
Don hesitates before nodding slowly.
"Man, I got to race on motorcycles," Raph smiles fondly at the recollection, then grabs some bandages and slaps them over the wounds. "You don't get to drive like that every day. I gotta find a way to go back there..." Raph mutters. "Other arm." Donny obliges.
"Mikey went on a superhero adventure," Raph says, cleaning Donny's wounds on his right arm and the small scrapes on his face. "N' Leo visited Usagi's world. How 'bout you, Don?"
Donny freezes, feeling the ever-so-vivid memory of watching his brothers die bubble back up to the surface. Nausea courses through him - he can practically hear the slice of a sword cutting through the air, his brother's screams, the thump of their corpses as they hit the ground.
He blinks and tries to shake the memory, internally counting his breaths. In, out, in, out...
"Don? Earth to Donny, hello?" Raph calls, in a way that would sound rude if Donatello didn't know he was worried.
"Sorry, I have to- I have to go," Donny stutters out an excuse, getting up from the chair. "It's urgent."
Raph looks at him with confusion. "Jeez, Don, what's up witcha? You're actin' weird. Weirder than usual."
"I'm fine, but I really have to go, Raph" He reasons, already speedwalking off. "I'll talk to you later."
Donatello ignores how he's shaking like a leaf. He ignores his heart beating in his chest again. He ignores Raph's call of his name as he leaves, ignores how similar it sounds to how he shouted when Leo died—
"Leo! No!"
—ignores how he feels like he might just throw up this time and - oh, he's in the bathroom. Acting on impulse, he turns on the shower in hopes it'll muffle his panicked, shaky breathing. He doesn't step into the shower, instead sits by it, his shaking fingers fumbling as he desperately takes his mask off.
As he stares at it in his hands, he can see that one end is ripped.
A piece of it is still in that dimension, he realizes.
At least April has proof I was there, a cruel part of Don's brain thinks, and he wants to break down then and there.
He rests the mask in his lap and digs his nails into his arms in a desperate attempt to ground himself. I’m safe, he reasons, there’s no reason to freak out over a question. Breathe in, breathe out, Donatello reminds himself, releasing the tension from his arms and moving them so he can rub his thumb in circles into the palm of his hand.
Slowly, he finds himself calming down, but he doesn't feel much better emotionally. If anything, he feels worse.
That's fine, he thinks to himself, standing up. He can hold on a bit longer. At least until he can put precautions in place, at least until he can prevent that future. He'll tell them when he knows everything is fine. For now, he’ll pretend everything is normal. He turns off the shower.
He looks at the mask, stares at the tear, and wonders what April is doing right now. Donny wonders if she’s angry at him for leaving again. He doubts she would be. She’s probably grieving the others, or maybe letting everyone know they’re free from the Shredder. Something productive for either herself or the world. Donny, on the contrary, decided to have a panic attack in the bathroom. He suddenly feels quite useless, a contrast to that overwhelming feeling of being much too important earlier.
If he disappears, the world will end, and instead of preventing it, he’s wasting his time sulking.
He needs to do something productive, but whenever he looks at the tear in the mask he’s going to think of April, and he’s going to think about how he's the reason his family died, and if he never disappeared in the first place-
Donny has to fix this tear. He’s never been one for sewing - whenever any of their masks were damaged, Leo or Splinter fixed it.
He’ll go to Leo, he decides, turning off the shower and tying the mask back onto his face. He looks in the mirror. Don thinks he looks miserable. He suddenly feels quite small.
He turns, opens the door, and walks in the direction of Leo’s room.
It isn’t that far, really, but the walk feels remarkably long anyways. When he gets there, Donny softly calls Leo’s name. He can’t see too much from the doorway, but Leo isn’t visible in the little that he can. It’s silent for a minute, and Don briefly wonders if he should call for Leo again, but not even a moment later Leo emerges from the room.
“Sorry,” Leo says sheepishly, “I was meditating. What’s up, Don?”
“I accidentally tore one of the tails on my mask,” Donny tells him. “I hate to bother you, but it’s really bugging me.”
“It’s no problem, really,” Leo gently smiles at him and gestures for him to come in. “Just sit wherever.”
Don enters the room and sits down in the middle of the room. Leo grabs a needle and thread from a drawer and sits in front of Donny.
“Give me your mask,” Leo says. Don unties it and carefully hands it over to Leo. The blue-clad turtle inspects it for a moment before getting up and walking over to where he keeps the fabrics.
After a few moments, Leo frowns, humming in dissatisfaction, and walks back over.
“Don, what… What exactly happened to your mask?” Leo asks, looking into Donny’s eyes. Despite the lack of pupils with the mask on, he knows from the sensation of someone's gaze burning into him.
"The tear?" He asks, feeling something twist inside of his gut. "I told you it was an accident, didn't I?"
"No, it's faded," Leo frowns, something unreadable and yet distinctly concerned showing as he stares at his younger brother.
"Oh," Donny breathes, eyes widening. He feels everything wash over him all over again, and yet nothing at all.
“You look exhausted,” Leo whispers, nearly too quiet for Donny to hear. “Donny, what happened?”
Trying to stop his emotions from pouring out is like trying to stop water by covering a drain with his hands. The longer he tries to stop it all, the more that's going to come out all at once, and he honestly doesn't know how much longer he can hold on.
He fidgets with his hands. He's been silent for far too long, and Leo is still looking at him with something close to pity.
"Can you fix the tear?" Donny asks, voice somehow unwavering.
Leo blinks, eyes widening a little, but his face turns neutral after a moment. "Well, It won't be the same color at this end if I try to sew it up." Leo looks at the mask in his hands again and turns, grabbing some purple fabric and scissors. "Unless you want to have a different color on that end, there’s nothing I can do. We could make you another mask-"
"No," Donny interrupts, louder than he intended to. He clears his throat. "No, thank you."
Leo studies him for another long moment. "Are you sure you're alright, Donatello?"
He sighs, closing his eyes for a moment and cupping his snout with his hands. "Yeah. Sorry, Leo, I'm just tired. It's been a long day for all of us. Maybe I just need some me time." Don grabs his mask from Leo’s hands and stands up. "I'll be in my room."
He walks away before Leo can respond.
Unlike last time, Donny isn’t panicked as he runs off. He only feels sad, really. The walk to his room feels longer than the walk to Leo’s, though.
When he finally reaches his room, he climbs onto his bed and slumps down with a whine.
He hates this. He hates not being okay. He wants so, so badly for everything to be normal again. He hates this constant worry that he’s sure will keep eating away at him for a long while. He hates having the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He wants to never leave his brothers alone ever again. He wants to stay huddled up in a turtle pile with all of them and fall asleep, surrounded by the people he cares for. He wants to sneak out with his siblings to watch movies at drive-in theaters. He just wants everything to be normal again. He knows that if he tries to act like everything's okay while he's around them all for much longer, it will all spill out, and he’s smart enough to know that nothing will ever be the same once it does.
Donatello can't afford for that to happen, he can't. They don't need to know what would hurt them.
He'll stay in his room, he thinks, until he implodes on himself silently.
Nobody has to hear.
Nobody has to know.