So. I have no idea how long this is going to be, but it gets intense in this very first chapter, and I only plan for it to be more so as I go along. Please point out any spelling mistakes you may see, I need the help greatly!
This fic is rated M for gore, violence, and language.
Enjoy.
"You can't be serious." Came the irritated grumbling that teetered dangerously along the cliff face of anger as Donatello's shell thumped against the ground for the umpeenth time, "Aren't you tired of getting you carapace waxed already? Fight me!"
'I'd really rather not.' He merely thought as he rolled quickly to dodge the incoming foot trying to stomp him into a fine olive-green powder. Recovering quickly, purple framed eyes met with red surrounded ones. His bo had been long since lost in the never ending spar between he and his brother, but Raphael's aggressive offenses still couldn't quite break Donatello's impenetrable defense. Once he was on his feet again Raph wasted no time in barreling forwards. Don quickly side stepped his brother and grabbed one of his wrists while pressing firmly on the muscular turtle's shell, sending the heavier turtle stumbling past his target and furiously whipping around to see Don yet again step back into an Aikido ready position.
"Don…" Raphael's voice revealed that he was now beyond mere irritation, "Hit me already, you wuss!"
"He's right, Don. This won't end if you don't make a move." Leonardo's tempered patience held a tight tinge to it. Donatello wished he could ease his brother's worry but he just couldn't bring himself to. He hadn't ever had the same ache in his fists for violence that his brothers all seemed to posses.
"Yeah dude! This is getting boring!" Mikey called, evolving Don's slight guilt into indignation in an instant. Just because his practice spar hadn't ended in less than a minute didn't mean it was any less important than theirs had been. But patience was never his little brother's strong suit, so he decided to ignore them as bull headed Raphael charged once more. Just as, if not more, stubborn as his hot tempered counterpart, Donatello flipped over the attacker and pressed a foot against his larger carapace to send him tripping forwards yet again, only this time Don actually managed to do some damage. To Raphael's pride, that is.
"DONATELLO!" Raph's rage filled roar reverberated in the air as the terrapin whose semi-calm facade had shattered pivoted on a dime, fists flying at his unwilling opponent. Said turtle had calculated this outcome and spent no time switching from defense to dodging. Ducking, spinning, faking, Don avoided Raphael's wild and powerful blows, some of which either grazed him or came way too close to knocking his brains out for his liking. The red wearing ninja's growls, grunts, and roars of rage went on as he tried in vain to land a hit on his genius brother in vain. Soon both turtles were out of breath and exhausted. Because Donatello was not so winded as his frustrated and overexerted brother he was able to finally counterattack.
"Gotcha." He muttered under his breath once Raph slipped up by curling his arm around for a right hook a smidgen too slow. Don grabbed the outstretched arm and jammed his shoulder against his brother's plastron, using his momentum and weight to carry him up and over his head. Raph's impressive weight caused the floor of the dojo to shudder as he landed hard on his side, wind knocked from his lungs and left arm being tugged behind his back as his lighter brother sat atop him to hold him in a submissive position.
"...Yame." Leo called the match with poorly covered disappointment. Don got off of his brother immediately and offered a three fingered hand to Raph. The larger turtle glared at him from the ground for about half a second before rolling his eyes and huffing in reluctant defeat, taking the offer of leverage and letting himself be pulled up.
"Geez Don, this is why we all hate sparring with you, it takes forever!" Raphael complained as he dusted himself off nonchalantly, making Don smirk.
"It wouldn't take so long if you didn't have the stamina of twelve elephants." He stated matter-of-factly while using the inside of his wrist wrappings to wipe sweat from his brow. Raph only grunted and gave Don's shoulder a playful smack before both of them faced Leo and Mikey.
"Are we done now?" Mikey whined at Leonardo, whose mask of indifference never faltered even as he consented to ending their training with a nod. Mikey whooped joyously and leaped over Leo's head where the eldest had remained in his lotus position. "Time for some Alley Brawler 8!"
"What?" Raph's head whipped around so fast Don had to flinch at the crack emanating from his neck, "That game came out last weekend, how do you have it already?"
Mikey's eyebrows would have been wriggling mischievously if he had any, "Donnie put it on backorder for me. I'm already at the boss on level five."
"What? And you didn't tell me until now?" Raph's audible disbelief followed the both of them as they raced out of the dojo a little too eagerly to play their games. Don also tried to make a hasty exit but was unfortunately halted by Leo's quiet calling of his name. Looking back with dark chocolaty eyes, Donatello could see the concern in Leo's posture and knew he was in for a lecture.
The turtle sighed inwardly, resigned to his fate as he turned again and made to sit in front of his eldest brother. Looking on from afar the untrained eye would only be able to tell the difference between the two by the color of their masks. But as Donatello came in close proximity to his brother he couldn't help but compare his inferior self to the leader of their small clan. Where Leo's build was svelte and muscular, Don's thin frame was caused by the occasional malnourishment and lack of dedication to the arts. The turtle donned in blue sat with an air of pride and dignity, while he struggled to fix his ever drooping posture. Even the elder's skin tone seemed healthier. Don somehow had become the most pale out of all his brother's even though they spent an equal amount of time under the sun.
"Yes, Leo?" While Don knew his brother's hawk-like gaze had probably caught his appraisal, he also knew Leo had a difficult time figuring out how he felt and wouldn't be able to tell where Donatello's train of thought had gone. The leader licked his lips slightly as his silvery gaze searched the other's face for something Don knew Leo wouldn't find.
"There were some close calls in your spar just now." Leo began carefully, trying not to let his smart brother catch on to where he was heading with his incoming speech. Too bad for him, Donatello was just as intuitive as he was brainy.
"I had calculated that he might land a few hits." 'I had everything under control.' The second meaning was meant to be clear, and the slight narrowing in Leo's eyes proved that the underlying message had come across. Even still, the older brother seemed determined to make a point and went on regardless.
"Indeed. But Raphael seems to be adapting to your defenses faster every session. You lost your bo in the first five minutes even after you had the upper hand by disarming him as well. Not to mention you lost to him yesterday." 'You're slipping up.'
"A small mistake on my part. I should have incorporated that low kick into the possible outcomes following my landing." 'It was a one time thing. It won't happen again.'
"I see." Leo hummed thoughtfully in the way he does when planning strategies for battle plans. It was the same hum he used when he was about to make a deciding move whenever they played chess, and it had Don's heart thumping in his chest. Donatello knew he had lost control of his composure, even if it were only for a split second. He saw the twinkle of victory in Leo's ever watching eyes and just knew he'd seen it, "I'll be honest Don. Your performance recently concerns me."
"I may have been slacking a little in training the past couple of weeks. But only because I was distracted with the T-Phones. Now that they're fixed I'll be up and running well again like-" Leo held up a hand and quickly stopped Don from continuing further. Donatello gulped and had no doubt now that his nervousness was clearly visible.
"That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it." Don averted his eyes immediately, looking at his hands folded in his lap. He could see Leo shift uncomfortably from his peripherals. Out of the three of them, Leo had the least problems with Donatello since their father had died. Don knew his older brother still wasn't comfortable taking Master Splinter's place as clan head as well as he knew that he was unused to scolding his most obedient brother.
"I'm worried, Don. Is this how you're going to treat the enemy?" Leo's voice was quiet and sincere. It was the tone of a concerned family member trying to help his loved one. He'd really come a long way from the days when he would confuse the timing of his role as the leader with the times he should have acted more as an older brother. Leo was now a real source of comfort for them and all of their role model. He'd grown. Just like Raphael had overcome his temper, for the most part, and learned to redirect it into compassion and strength to support his family. And like Mikey had mastered the art of focus and was able to fight on completely even grounds with the eldest brother as well as show a deep understanding of even the most complicated matters that still surprised all of them.
Where his family had progressed, Donatello only felt that he had regressed. Leo's obvious concern was proof enough of that.
"Your defense is impeccable, as always. But Donnie," Leo had taken Donatello's silence as an invitation to continue, even pulling out the old nickname Don had abandoned years ago, "We're ninja."
"I… I know, Leo." Don said with a sigh, closing his eyes and rubbing a hand over his ever-tired sockets. He could feel his elder brother's worry intensify and regretted letting his composure slip further. To make up for it he steeled himself internally and managed to look up again to meet the gray gaze, "I know as well as any of us that things can't always be settled without injury. But here, in our own home? I can't bring myself to see the benefit of attacking one another as if we were enemies."
And there it was, the real issue laying out in the open as Leo no doubt wanted in order for him to prod at the prone and tender subject, "We have to be prepared. You know this. Without strengthening your offense alongside your defense, you leave yourself vulnerable. You're slowing down, and Raph's only getting faster because unlike you, he's willing to have a balanced regime. When we're all balanced we have a better chance of not only protecting ourselves, but each other as well. Plus we all know how to control ourselves in the dojo. We've gone over this before, Don. I know you understand, and I know you didn't argue with this logic in the past," Leonardo leaned forwards and placed a hand on his brother's knee, looking him straight in the eye, "What's really going on, Donnie?"
Don looked down again, this time at Leo's hand. Warm, strong, calloused, and most importantly, alive. He looked back into those eyes filled with wisdom and care. Eyes that could see. Whatever he had been thinking must have showed on his face, because after a mere few seconds it was as if Leo had read his mind like a children's book.
"Have you been having nightmares again?" Don flinched at the unfiltered words as he slowly nodded, and Leo's grip on his knee grew tight to the point of causing a bit of pain, "I thought you were going to tell us if they started again."
"I-I was going to! But…" But his hellish dreams had evolved over time into horrors beyond anything he could or would want to put into words. After he'd returned from his little vacation in the alternate universe the Ultimate Drako was so kind to send him on, Don had told his brother's of his venture. He'd initially left out the part where they all had died because of his miscalculations. Then the nightmares had started. At first they had been simple re-runs of the events going through his head, watching his brother's die one by one before his eyes dozens of times. He'd wake up in a cold sweat on the floor every time, but he had managed to hide it when they were at that level since he was able to easily blame his lack of sleep on a late night project.
It was a few weeks later when things had started to change. His brothers would die in a different manner at first, more violently and dishonorably than they originally had. Guts spilled upon the concrete floors of Shredder's temple, heads rolling around before being crushed by a Karai Legion, or the wicked Utrom's gauntlets tearing one of his poor brother's in half. He'd wake up screaming after those ones, and after being caught and interrogated by his brothers, he'd moved into his lab to sleep. Of course he hadn't told them what his dreams were about, lying that he couldn't remember what it had been about and laughing them away with gentle taunts and thanks for their concern. He still regretted his immature decision to do so.
Two weeks after the dreams started warping into more and more violent and gory scenes Donatello finally broke. The visions that finally led to his confession of what had really happened in that timeline. He shivered where he sat as he unintentionally recalled the nightmare that had almost killed him.
"Mikey? Raph?" Don called out as he looked around from where he stood. He was in the middle of the room they were supposed to be fighting their last fight for freedom in, but no one was around. Not his brother's, no April, no Karai, and no Shredder. There was only silence and his drumming heart. Panicking, Donatello turned in circles to see if he had missed anything, "Leo?"
"Dona...tello." The turtle masked in purple whirled around at the sound of his name being called out in a hoarse voice.
"Mikey! Mikey, where are you?" Don called out frantically. Suddenly the lights went out. Total darkness consumed him and the ground beneath his feet became warm and slick. The tell-tale scent of blood hit him with such intensity that he stumbled backwards, slipping and falling against something solid. In his fright Donatello cried out and lashed at whatever it was he'd run into. The lights burst on without so much as a click, leaving Donatello confused and dazed as he tried to tug at his arm that had somehow gotten caught in whatever he'd struck. His eyes quickly adjusted so that he could witness the sick horror awaiting him.
Don let loose a strangled scream to see his hand, equipped with Shredder's signature gauntlet, pierced into the stomach of his baby brother. An unholy amount of blood was gushing from Mikey's abdomen. His mouth was slack and baby blue eyes already lifeless. Donatello could only scream further when his arm seemed to move of its own accord to slice slowly upward. Michelangelo's plastron seemed to be made of butter when faced with the sharp blades that slowly sliced through him until the tips reached the tender meat of his neck and viciously sliced open his esophagus. Sinew, intestines, vital organs, and other viscera began leaking out from the hole he'd just created in his dearly beloved brother's body.
Donatello's own body moved as if it were a mere marionette strung up by some wicked puppeteer, but his mind and his voice remained his. He screamed and cried his brother's name even as he continued to mutilate as desecrate the body with deep cuts and stabs that the younger turtle could no longer feel.
"Donatello!" Leo's firm grip on his shoulders and firmly grounded voice brought an increasingly pale Donatello back to his right frame of mind. The purple masked turtle felt sick to his stomach and he noticed how violently he was trembling. His eyes could no longer hold tears for the memory of the nightmares, but they were distant and haunted anyways as he looked up to his brother.
"I won't do it again, Leo, I promise." His voice sounded unnervingly hollow even to his own ears, but Don couldn't let himself express the deep anguish he was feeling for fear of losing control. Leonardo's grip never faltered.
"You haven't done anything Donnie. How many times do we have to tell you this before you believe it?" Leo's grip traveled down the length of the geniuses' arm until a hand was softly cradling each of his wrists. The leader began rubbing gentle circles into the inside of Don's bandaged wrists with his thumbs, "Or are you talking about these?"
"Both." Don replied instantaneously in monotone as he focused on the soothing massage he was getting upon the old scars he'd given himself years ago. That was during his second bout of nightmares after he'd nearly lost Splinter in the data stream. Needless to say his family hadn't been happy that he'd resorted to inflicting harm upon his body instead of telling them how anguished he'd been. Even saying they were 'not happy' was a definite understatement.
Both Leonardo and Raphael had taken similar routes at one point or another, pushing themselves or placing themselves in harm's way on purpose to cope with their deep seated fears and anxieties. Both of them had been outraged to learn Donatello had been cutting in secret when they had opened up to him each on their own about their own forms of self-harm. Don had even been the one to suggest solutions and had been more than willing to be a listening ear whenever one or the other was triggered. By not asking for help in return, he'd both betrayed their trust and inadvertently deemed them incapable of assisting him. Needless to say, since that time neither of them have been as open with their deepest despairs with Don as they had been before.
Mikey had been understanding. None of them had ever burdened the self proclaimed youngest of the group with their problems, but that had been impossible for Don when said brother had been the one to find him bleeding out over the tub. Stubborn Michelangelo had been, and still was, determined never to let Don get so caught up in his own head like that again. After he'd woken up on the cot in his lab that doubled as a bed for the infirmed he had been thoroughly interrogated.
Before, the first time they really learned about the his night terrors, he had told them about their deaths in the alternate reality he'd been sent to. They'd all thought his nightmares had just been based off of that and hadn't imagined they could be any worse than what he actually had to experience in the waking realm. After he'd been caught with bloodied wrists, he had been forced to tell them about the true nature of his dreams. That night he had broken down in front of the brothers he had been forced to murder over and over again in his restless slumber. He'd begged and pleaded for forgiveness that they had insisted wasn't necessary until he'd worked himself into such a tizzy that they had to sedate him before he passed out all over again.
It wasn't a time the family talked about regularly.
"How long?" Leo's voice was dangerously low. Don looked up and huffed through his nose at his brother's worry. It wasn't unwarranted, but the fit that had drove him to suicidal tendencies had been over five years ago now.
"The day Splinter died." He said simply, quietly. Leonardo tensed and slowly dropped Donatello's wrists back into their owner's lap.
"That was six months ago, Don." The statement was made with an obvious tone of disbelief and disappointment that made Donatello want to clam up and disappear. Instead the brainy turtle hurried to explain himself.
"I know, Leo. But everyone was grieving. I couldn't just push my problems onto you guys at a time like that." He defended, the argument causing Leo cross his arms in his version of anger.
"Everyone was grieving, and that includes you!"
"It's not as bad now, though! I knew I could ride it out and I did. Leo. I promised you I wouldn't do this-" Don motioned to his wrists with a tilt of his head, "-again, and I won't."
"I'm not worried about you hurting yourself again Don! I'm worried about you bottling everything up until something even worse happens!" Leo burst out in a rare moment of emotion. Donatello could only blink stupidly at his brother as he struck a fist against the tatami mat and the crinkle in his brow deepened, "You're going to get yourself killed. You don't think I haven't noticed how much you've started holding back against the Purple Dragons and rouge Foot Ninjas while we're out on patrol? You end up more winded and bruised than the rest of us after every fight- and it's not because you're not up to par. It's because you're expending so much energy to avoid hurting the enemy that you can't defend yourself!"
"I'm handling the situation, Leo." Don couldn't get his voice raised above a quivering whisper, shaken at seeing how upset his brother was. He had no idea Leo had been so worried about this.
"No, Donnie, you're not." Leo's glare was piercing and deadly serious. The blue clad turtle leaned forwards and quickly grabbed Donatello's wrists back up, squeezing them with the intention of making the younger brother think about his old injuries that would heal on the outside but never really on the inside, "Tell me this isn't what was going through your head the last time. Tell me why this time is any different than the last."
"It is different!"
"How!?"
"Because this time my brothers aren't the ones I'm murdering!" This time it was Donatello's turn to snap as the turtle shouted his reply and yanked his hands away from Leonardo's grasp. The violet masked terrapin stood and whipped around as he trembled with emotion. His fisted were clenched into tight balls when he noticed two extra sets of eyes at the entrance of the dojo. Of course his younger brothers wouldn't be able to keep their curiosity reigned in once they had heard Leo's raised voice.
Don couldn't help but feel devastated. He'd been exposed, caught lying to them once again to protect himself. His mind began to whisper to him.
'They know. They'll never accept you. You're a vile monstrosity. A demon. A murderer.'
"Donnie, wait!" One of them called out as he dashed by his brother's and out of the dojo. He wasn't sure who it had been, but he had managed to beat them to his lab and lock himself in before they could drag him away to reveal even more of the secrets he'd kept close. Pounding came from the other side of the door he slid down alongside muffled protests and pleas to let his brothers in.
Honestly Don felt as if he might have overreacted, but the shaking in his hands wouldn't stop, and soon after his brothers had given up attempting to bully him out of hiding did he bury his face in the very hands he'd used to take the lives of thousands.
