Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The battlefield was silent now.The portal was gone. The Krang were gone. They’d won. The sharp, jagged glow in Michelangelo’s arms should have faded by now — that’s what he told himself. That’s what everyone had said. The cracks were supposed to stop once the portal closed.

But they didn’t.

They pulsed, slow and steady, the golden light inside flickering like molten metal in a forge. He lifted a trembling hand to his face, and the tips of his fingers broke off into glittering dust, scattering into the wind.

“...Guys?” His voice was small, trembling, but enough to draw the attention of his brothers.

Leo turned first, his confident grin faltering into dread. Raph froze mid-step, the color draining from his face. Donnie’s mask lenses retracted, wide brown eyes locking onto the fracturing lines creeping up Mikey’s arms.

“Mikey…”

They saw the cracks climb higher, wrapping over his shoulders, splitting along his legs and plastron. The gold wasn’t just light anymore, it was liquid fire seeping from within him, bursting through fissures in his skin.The youngest turtle’s knees buckled. He screamed.The sound tore through them, raw, agonized, and desperate.

“MIKEY!” Donnie was already sprinting, the others on his heels, but the gold was faster. By the time Donnie caught him, Mikey’s legs were crumbling into dust, scattering in golden streams.

“I don’t wanna go!” Mikey sobbed into Donnie’s chest, clutching weakly at him even as his arms flaked away. “Please… I don’t wanna go.”

Raph dropped to his knees beside them, shaking his head furiously. “We’ll fix it, buddy! Just.  just hold on—”

“It hurts…” Mikey whimpered, voice breaking. His tears streaked down his face, glowing as they fell. “God, it hurts so much…”

Donnie’s arms tightened around him. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” His voice cracked. “Stay with me, little brother. Please.”

Mikey looked up, eyes glassy, the world going hazy around him. He tried to smile, but his lips trembled. “I’m sor—”

The word never finished. His body splintered all at once, bursting into a cloud of shimmering gold. The dust caught the dying light of the sunset, swirling like stars before fading into nothing.

Something so breathtaking shouldn’t have been so devastating. Donnie’s arms closed around empty air. He didn’t move. Couldn’t move.

“He’s… he’s gone.” The words were barely a whisper, but they shattered what was left of the brothers’ hearts.

And in the silence that followed, all that remained of Michelangelo was the faint, lingering glitter and gold in the wind.

Chapter Text

Donnie could hear screaming. Sharp, jagged, raw — tearing through the heavy air. Who was screaming? It wasn’t Leo. Too high to be Raph. And then it hit him like a blade to the chest.

It was him.

A loud, primal sound ripped its way out of his throat, unstoppable, unending. His knees gave out beneath him, and he collapsed forward, clutching the empty air where Mikey had been only moments before.

“He’s gone!” he screamed, voice breaking into pieces. Hot tears spilled down his cheeks, soaking into the edges of his mask until the fabric clung damp and heavy. “He’s gone—”

The truth burned as much as it froze him:They’d saved Leo…But they’d lost Mikey. It wasn’t a fair trade. It would never be a fair trade. His baby brother — bright, infuriating, full of light — had shattered and scattered into a million glittering pieces. Gone with the wind, and Donnie hadn’t been able to stop it.

He felt hands wrap around his shoulders, firm and grounding, pulling him close. He didn’t fight it. Couldn’t.

Leo.

Leo was hugging him, his voice a soft murmur of words Donnie couldn’t hear through the ringing in his head. Another set of arms joined them, rougher, stronger — Raph. He wrapped around both of them like a shield, holding them together as though he could keep the world from taking anyone else.

They stayed like that for what felt like hours, huddled on the cracked ground, their sobs mingling in the empty air. The grief was heavy enough to crush, yet none of them moved to escape it. When they finally made it back to the lair, the silence followed them in like a ghost.

Donnie felt… hollow. Void of anything.

It was as though losing Mikey had sucked out every emotion he had left, leaving only an aching emptiness in its place. No grief. No rage. Just nothing. 

And somehow, that nothing hurt even worse.

Chapter Text

The air in Gotham’s underground was thick, damp, and stale. The Bats boots echoed quietly against the stone, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the yawning dark. His cowl lenses adjusted automatically, filtering the shadows, scanning the terrain.

He had followed reports of tremors beneath the city, odd spikes in radiation and seismic activity that didn’t match the usual patterns of Gotham’s decaying infrastructure. His trail had led him here—deep beneath the foundations, through cavern after cavern, to something he hadn’t expected.

A Lazarus Pit.

The pool glowed faintly in the hollow chamber, its surface a sickly green, reflecting against the jagged stone like warped glass. He had seen one before. He knew what they could do. The water should have been still, untouched, its power contained. But it wasn’t.

The surface rippled, disturbed by something recent.

Batman knelt at the edge of the stone and activated his scanners. The readings were off the scale—unstable energy, mixed with something foreign. His gaze shifted to the ground. Footprints—wide, heavy, clawed—pressed into the muck. Too large to be human, but not the usual hulking creatures he’d battled down here before.

Something had crawled out of the pit.

His jaw tightened. Lazarus resurrection was never clean. The pit didn’t give life without taking something in return. Those who rose from it rarely came back whole. And if whatever emerged had enough strength to pull itself from the toxic water… it was already loose in Gotham’s veins.

The prints led deeper into the cavern system, winding like a trail of shadows. Batman followed, moving silently, each step measured. His cape whispered against the stone, the hum of the Lazarus energy fading as he went further from the pool.

The footprints grew erratic the further he went—staggered, uneven, as if whoever, whatever it was, had been struggling to find balance. He found claw marks in the walls, deep gouges where hands had dragged, pulling a body forward.

The world here was silent, but Batman’s instincts screamed. He wasn’t alone.

He paused, listening. Somewhere deeper in the cavern, a wet, shuddering breath echoed faintly. Then another. Batman’s eyes narrowed. He moved closer, keeping to the shadows, every muscle coiled.

And then he saw it.

At the edge of the darkness, just beyond where his light reached, something moved. Its silhouette was hunched, trembling, and faintly glowing. Not the Lazarus green—something else. A fractured, golden shimmer pulsed from beneath cracked skin, leaking through fissures like molten light.

Batman froze, every calculation in his mind grinding against the impossible.

This… wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen crawl from the pit.

The creature raised its head, and for the briefest moment, he saw a flash of its face. Not monstrous. Not demonic. Something else. Something almost… human.

And then it vanished deeper into the maze, leaving only the echo of claws against stone and the lingering shimmer of gold in the air.

Batman exhaled slowly, the weight of the unknown pressing heavy in his chest.

Whatever had crawled from that Lazarus Pit, it wasn’t just resurrected.
It was changed .

Chapter Text

That’s all there was at first. A crushing, suffocating void that dragged him down and down, swallowing every flicker of self. It clung to his throat, seeped into his lungs, burned through his chest.

Michelangelo couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.

It felt like drowning.

He thrashed or thought he did but the weight was everywhere, pressing in until every nerve screamed. His skin split apart in jagged seams, bones splintered and reknit wrong before tearing again. Something seared through him, thick and violent, flooding every vein.

Thick goop encased him. It filled his lungs, nose, choking him, drowning him. It filled the cracks of him like molten acid, twisting into the remnants of mystic fire still buried in his soul. The two forces snarled, tearing at each other inside him. His body wasn’t a body anymore it was a battlefield.

He wanted to scream. When he opened his mouth, only burning water poured in. And beneath the panic, beneath the agony, something else began to stir.

Anger.

Hot. Fierce. A fire too wild to smother. It clawed its way through his fear, roaring louder than the pain, demanding he fight, demanding he survive. The sludge whispered as it coiled tighter around his heart.

 Strength.
  Survival.
    Vengeance.

Mikey’s eyes snapped open.

The world swam in a sickly green light. The water around him churned like it was alive, clutching at his limbs even as he forced himself upward. He kicked. Clawed. Fought his way through the sludge of death. His body screamed in protest, every bone grinding like shattered glass, but still he climbed.

Because he was scared.
 Because he wasn’t ready to die.
  Because he wasn’t done.

His hand broke the surface first, glowing cracks racing up his arm like molten veins. The air above was heavy and foul, but he gulped it down in greedy, broken gasps, dragging himself onto stone.

He collapsed on the cavern floor, green water sluicing from him in steaming rivulets, seeping back into the earth. His cheek pressed against the cold rock. His body didn’t feel like it was heavier, louder, every heartbeat hammering like thunder in his ears. The anger still burned under his skin, tangled with terror, twisting into something jagged and sharp.

Mikey curled in on himself, clutching his plastron, chest heaving with fast, shallow breaths. His whole frame trembled. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know what he was anymore. Only two things were certain: The pain hadn’t stopped. And he wasn’t alone.

Footsteps echoed in the dark. Steady. Heavy. Coming closer.

Mikey’s chest tightened. Panic clawed up his throat. The glow in his veins pulsed harder, urging him to move, to fight, survive.

He pressed his back against the wall, claws gouging at the stone, trembling, torn between fear and fury.

He didn’t know who or what was coming. He didn’t know if he wanted to be found. So he ran, crawled his way through the labyrinth or caves.