Chapter Text
He is going to die.
This is what Michelangelo knows: he is going to die and it is going to be with his brother’s name on his lips.
There’s not a lot you can do with a single nunchaku and a single arm, when you’re surrounded on all sides by robots with weapons that have a much greater reach than your own. He stares into the dozen raised swords, aimed right for him from so many different angles he could never dodge them all, and he knows what will happen next.
So—
“Donnie!” He calls out, and it is not a cry for help.
There is nothing that can be done for him now. He’s not afraid to die—he is afraid to die without seeing the brother he has missed for so long one last time. And this shiny, perfect fragment of a time he doesn’t live in anymore might not be his brother, but it might also be, and really, it doesn’t matter.
He is going to die.
“DONNIE! I’m—!”
And he can’t finish saying the hundreds, thousands of things he wants to say—sorry, most of all, sorry for not trying harder to keep this family together, sorry for becoming bitter and cruel and hateful, sorry for ever losing hope, sorry for the way he’d acted when he’d first seen that long-ignored-but-never-forgotten purple mask, sorry—because cold steel is cutting into him from those dozen swords.
Words become a choked-up scream instead. The way his flesh falls apart around the blades hurts.
“Mikey!” He can just hear, distantly, panicked, frantic. “NO!”
It’s Donnie. It’s his brother.
He was supposed to buy him time, wasn’t he? He’s not doing a very good job of it. He needs to get up and help him. Because Donnie’s going after the Shredder.
Donnie’s going after the Shredder. It sounds awfulterrifyingscarydangerousbadbadbadbadbad now that he thinks about it. Or maybe that’s the lack of oxygen to his brain and the slowly fading pain. Donnie shouldn’t be doing it alone.
Donnie shouldn’t be doing it alone. He needs to help him. He needs to—
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Darkness.
Silence.
It’s very quiet, wherever he is.
He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t remember why he is there. Or his name. Or anything else really.
He was supposed to be doing something, right? He remembers that.
He was supposed to be helping someone. Someone important.
He isn’t supposed to be here.
…He shouldn’t be here.
Something sparks at his fingertips (six of them? shouldn’t there be—) and it is red and blue and purple.
Right. Right. He can remember now.
He is Michelangelo. He is the youngest of four brothers, whom he loves more than he could ever hate. He is on a mission to finally take down the Shredder once and for all. He is buying time, valuable time, necessary time.
He is supposed to be helping Donnie—
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Someone’s laughing. SOMEONE’S LAUGHING.
THEY SHOULDN’T BE LAUGHING.
HE SHOULDN’T BE LAUGHING.
The world comes back in blurry, swirling colors and laughter that makes his teeth grit together. What once was pain, blood in his mouth, a yawning emptiness growing closer and closer and closer, becomes instead bright, kaleidoscopic lights and a lightness of body he hasn’t felt since he was sixteen. His eyes clench close at the sensation, the spinning that makes him nauseous even if he hasn’t really eaten anything to throw up.
And the laughter. Mocking, mocking laughter that makes every part of him tense, preparing for the expected barbarities that follow.
“You are the last of your kind, Donatello,” says a growling voice that the laugh fades to be replaced by.
What? He thinks, and forces his eyes to open.
And… it’s the same setting that he remembers from—seconds, minutes, hours, how long has it been?—before. Except there are some details that have been altered. He can’t even take in the changes properly because of what is right in front of him, the scene enough to make his breath catch in his throat.
Heavy footsteps, a giant monster of blackened metal and sharp points, approaching a smaller, silver figure that stands alone. That doesn’t move. That clawed hands reach out and grab—
“DONNIE!” Mikey cries out, and to his shock, the sound is echoed by two other voices. A quick glance to the left reveals a black leather trench coat and brown leather jacket that is both recognizable and yet unfamiliar. Leo and Raph. There’s something strange about the way they look, there’s something strange about his own shoulder, and yet—
Like the opposite poles of magnets, his eyes are drawn back to the events happening right in front of him. The two figures, Donatello and the Shredder, don’t react in any way that he can see to their shout.
He finds himself running towards them. Fuck the plan, fuck killing the Shredder, he can’t watch this and do nothing. A beat, and then two other pairs of footsteps follow behind him, and they’re all running toward Donnie full-pelt. Why are they on the other side of the room, why can’t he remember the reason he feels so strange, why why why—
“And now,” Shredder snarls into his brother’s face, “I will crush you, like the insignificant worm that you are!”
“You always did claim victory before you actually won,” Donnie growled back.
He can’t make out Donnie’s expression from where he is, but the hatred in his voice is enough to make him nearly stumble. He’d never heard Don sound like that; not once in his memory did Don ever sound like that.
“This whole attack,” Donnie continued, steadily growing louder in his rage, “was to get you into position to do THIS!”
Chains burst from the Tunneler and wrap around both mechs, trapping them in place, and Mikey finds himself skidding to a stop as he watches the final stages of the plan come to fruition. He’s only some ten feet away, and yet it could be miles or inches between him and Donnie. And then a dull thunk as something hits him in the back—once, twice.
“Michelangelo?” Leonardo’s voice asks, nearly right in his ear. A hand falls upon his shoulder, inquiring.
“He’s gonna do it,” is all he can answer, and as he says it he can tell his voice is practically drenched in awe.
“What is happening?” The Shredder asks, and the panic in the warlord’s voice makes his stomach twist in glee.
The drill appears in its place and starts spinning too fast to properly see, glowing blue and sparking with the rampant power coming from the Tunneler. Shredder’s mech suit tries to dig in its heels, but the pulleys for the chains are more powerful than the suit can stop with only its legs.
But Donnie’s still in his own mech suit. And the drill’s aimed right for his back.
C’mon Don, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon, you can do it—get outta there, he finds himself thinking, frozen in place now, like something in him is saying he cannot intervene in this. His knees are trembling.
“NO! I AM THE SHREDDER!” Shredder screams, as if he can invoke his name and that will allow him to escape his fate. As if he were a god. “I AM THE SHREDDER!”
Metal starts grinding against metal. The drill has started digging into the first mech suit—Donnie’s mech suit.
The hand still on his shoulder tenses.
A beat. Two.
He catches the barest glimpse of olive green slipping away, coming to stand just to the side. He can partially see Donnie through the gaps in the Shredder’s mech as it stands between them and him.
“I AM—!” The assertion is cut off to be replaced by a ragged scream, and through the back of the mech the three turtles watch the tip of the drill appear.
Something within the mech explodes, and it all goes white with smoke.
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“Donnie!” Raphael’s voice calls, “Donatello!”
The smoke slowly begins dissipating, and gradually Donnie’s form is revealed. He’s keeping his back to them, a foot resting atop the mangled remains of what once was the Shredder’s greatest mechanical marvel.
As they watch, Raph’s voice makes his shoulders tense and bunch up.
It’s like they’re bearing witness to some grand, avenging spirit that had come to absolve them of the world’s evils. An angel, he thinks they’re called. Drenched in shadows and framed with smoke and jagged, ruined metal. He looks, for a moment, like he fits right into their world of grayscale and smog and hopeless terror.
The thought of such is enough for Mikey to shiver.
“It’s done,” Donnie finally says over his shoulder, his head tilting toward them, though not looking.
Mikey thinks he might be shaking, since—since it is! It’s done! It’s over! Donatello did it—his brother killed the Shredder! His lips twist up in a motion now unfamiliar to him, just the barest hint of a smile.
“Guys…” Leo begins, horrified, shocked, and not at all as happy as he should be. “Guys, look around.”
He does. And what he sees is enough to pull something from out his chest, enough to make him feel sick to his very core, enough to kill off that small little smile, enough to ruin the hope-filled joy the Shredder’s ruined body brought. Because… because…
There, on the left: his own body, ringed with red and hints of viscera from the multitude of deep cutting wounds. A few of the leather straps across his chest are sliced clean through, along with the plastron beneath them.
There, on the right: Raph and Leo’s bodies, Raph reaching out towards Leo, both of them covered in enough blood to paint them red through the green of their scales and staining their various articles of clothing. The black of Leo’s trench coat looks wet in the light of the room.
They’re dead.
He whips his head towards the Raph and Leo standing right next to him, whole and uninjured and— Raph has both eyes.
Terrified, overwhelmed, his eyes move as if through tar down down down towards his left arm. His left arm that is right there. He can flex his fingers.
“Holy shit,” Raph mutters, also looking at his—present again what the hell—arm. His older brother reaches out and snatches Leo’s glasses right off his beak. Perfectly clear and seeing eyes stare back. “Holy shit.”
Mikey looks at them closer. At the way they seem to fade at the edges like blurred photographs. At the very faint imprint of the objects that he can see through them.
“We’re ghosts,” he concludes. And then he remembers—Donnie tensed when Raph had spoken.
Spinning back around to where Donnie had been, he spots empty space. His heart skips a beat (can it even do that anymore? does he have a heart? does it matter?) and he flings his gaze around and around until he finally spots that blur of olive green near the end of the throne room. He’s standing next to April, back towards them as if trying to act like they’re not there.
“Donnie!” He calls out, “April!” Grabbing Raph and Leo by the wrist (he can do that. he can do that now what is going on—), he tugs them both with him closer to the pair.
A shudder runs down Don’s entire body at the sound of his voice. Gradually, glacially, the purple-masked head turns toward them.
“Mikey…?” Donnie mutters, so quiet that he can’t actually hear Donnie say it so much as read his lips. “Leo? Raph?”
April doesn’t react at all, seemingly not noticing them nor Don’s reaction as she continues talking, gazing out with hopeful eyes toward the ceiling, like she can see the stars through the building and the smog for the first time in three decades.
“—You gave us back our future.” She’s telling him. Mikey agrees; he did. The world’s a wreck but it can start rebuilding now. They have time, because of Don.
He doesn’t have to drag Raph and Leo behind him anymore, they’re moving of their own accord.
Donnie’s gaze is frozen on them, wide and surprised and—is he… crying? The purple of his mask at the corners of his eyes is darkening, as if being wet with tears.
Donnie, he decides in his mind, eyes narrowing, I’m gonna hug the living shit out of you.
If he can do that. As a ghost.
…He better be able to.
And then Donnie starts glitching in and out like an old TV screen, a broken hologram.
“G-ys! It-s ha-ning a-gain!” His voice sounds the same way he looks, weird and warbly and cutting into hearing and then gone again as if he has a bad signal, but his eyes are huge with panic and staring right at them. “So-eth-ings pu-lli-g me aw-ay! I-t’s str-ng-r th-s ti-me!”
“Donnie!” April exclaims. “Donnie!” Leo and Raph echo. Mikey doesn’t even bother calling, just reaching out even though he’s not gonna make it in time but he has to try because he just got Donatello back he’s not letting him go that easy—
“Remember! There’s always hope! No matter what!” Calls out April, and she sounds almost like her old self, like something heavy had been set free of her chest, like she can breathe right for the first time in too long.
Hope.
As one being, one mind, they leap together towards Donnie. It’s the first time in about twenty years that they’d read each other's minds like this.
Reaching, reaching, reaching—
As Donnie fades away, their fingers brush against him, solid as if they were still alive.
And then it all disappears again.
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