Chapter Text
For weeks, all Donnie has seen is the blue light of his computer. He's turned off all of his fairy lights and crawled into the dim of his lab, working on various projects for his racing mind. For too long he's been unreachable.
There had to have been a way. There had to have been. There has to be. He is Donatello, the genius, the innovator.
He hadn't known such a string of bitter failures until her. Each one after the other, all adding up to converge in one dark, dark timeline—if that idea was true, he thought. That night could have gone one of two ways, and the way that it went will forever be his biggest regret.
His fingers don't feel so diligent anymore. Not right now, at least. They fumble and drop the delicate tool he's working with, something that grates on his last nerve.
"No, no, stop! Work for me!" he says angrily, looking at his hand. It has never been this bad before.
It's been hours since he continued his work. He can't stomach it anymore. He can't drop another tool, write one more word in his notes illegibly; he has to stop. And that's only possible with another existing directive for him to focus on. With a sigh, he leaves the counter for the computer instead. There's always something to be done or looked at there.
Except there isn't. Miraculously, there is nothing for him to investigate. Just the sound of Mikey's video game in the den. "How can there be nothing?" he asks no one, picking through all his feed and reports of the week. No trace of the Foot, the bastard of the city. The coward. Disgusting, vile, it's vile, his stomach is twisting—
He stands up from his chair. Plants his palms on the edge of the desk. His gaze is lost in the still blue glow of the screen, a deep droning fading into his hearing. Like the sound of a wasp in flight. His ears are ringing; tinnitus he's developed from being in close range to gunshots, but it's slowly getting better. They heal where humans can't.
But it's driving him crazy.
Not being able to figure out if it's the silence he can't stand or the presence of noise, he reaches over and flicks on his stereo, letting the heavy metal play.
That's better. The rhythmic pounding in his ears and incessant, barely heard ring is thoroughly drowned by the sound.
The sheer exhaustion makes itself known by the heaviness he feels in his eyes, squinting into the darkness as he turns around and leans his back against the desk. He should sleep. But if he lays down, the thoughts will come back.
He looks at the bottle of melatonin April gave him last week. To help him sleep, she said. He needs to sleep.
There is no more to be done here, nothing engrossing enough he can occupy himself with without making himself mad. So he take it and dumps out as many as he needs, popping them into his mouth before washing it down with the stray bottle of Gatorade on the floor. It's now he realizes just how dehydrated he is and finishes off the entire bottle.
"You know," he starts in a mutter, wiping liquid from his mouth, but he can't bring himself to say it audibly.
I never believed in God , he thinks. And I still won't. I refuse.
In the moment she'd needed a miracle, He was nowhere to be found. Only Donnie had been her failure of a guardian angel that night, escorting her to the long dark himself. Trying to get a word out of her, trying his hardest to do what he could before it was too late. He'd held her small hand. Death isn't beautiful, he thinks sourly, shaking his head. He hasn't blinked in minutes. Nothing had been beautiful about that moment.
If gasping and choking for words was gorgeous, then the Foot soldier had been a true artist, he supposes, amused to the lowest degree. Behind him, his hands grip the edge of the desk so hard that his palms are beginning to hurt.
All his life had the background of struggle, the possibility of getting found out and their family torn apart. More recently, the Shredder on their tail, with blood on his mind. The stakes were even higher with the more human connections they gained between April, Casey, and [y/n]. More to bargain with, more to threaten, they'd found Donnie's weak point: his one and only girlfriend. The one spot he couldn't always defend, because as much as he wanted her to stay with him in the sewers, safe, she had a life too.
Donnie often felt the weight of it later, but he'd always known the looming threat of it all. Figuratively, The Sword of Damocles could have been seen as a recurring theme in their life, but he'd never wanted to look at it so grimly.
So, that was it. One moment she was there, the next she was gone, and reality was reaching crushing depth, critical mass, on him.
In Donnie's room, he lay in his bed, staring up at the sprawl of papers, stickers, and random equations on his ceiling. For once, his multitude of lights are on, the Christmas string next to him creating an array of colors against his wall. One bulb has gone out; the one he's neglected to fix because it doesn't matter, but curiously flickers on in his peripheral vision, eventually coming to stay lit.
The small blue light next to him burns softly, observing Donnie in calm silence as he nods off to sleep. His tense face relaxes. He'd always looked so sweet asleep. She wished she could have seen it more often.
The light escapes the bulb and floats to his bedside where a figure so faint sits at the edge, stroking his hand resting on his chest as he falls into a deep sleep. Her poor Donnie.
Sleep well, my love.