My first submission, and my first fanfiction in over a year! This is just a preview of a multi-chapter story I've been working on: Damaging Thoughts, Endless Consequences. It will include our favorite turtle family, but mainly focus around Donatello. This may lead into the SAINW timeline, but I'm not sure yet. Light turtlecest may also be included in the future, but I also have not decided on that. This is a concept I've had in my mind for a while, and I'm excited to finally get started on it! Please let me know what you think, as I said, it's been a while since I've written a story.
"You shouldn't have taken the blow for me."
Donatello's stern but nearly silent voice ends his thirty minutes of muteness. I look up from the gash across my plastron, now sterilized and properly wrapped, just as he lowers his hands from it. The genius drops his gaze once I set mine on him: Our first eye contact since we returned to the lair doesn't even last a second, and the confusion boiling in my gut steams into hurt. My teeth grind, and as I'm about to unleash the newly-formed frustration, I realize what Donnie's eyes are glued to.
Uneven tremors from his fingers release small puddles of blood, my blood, onto the dampened floor. Never had I seen Don look so desolate, his eyes hollow and lost, as if the drizzle of red rainfall was truly his own doing. I clamp my mouth shut and stare at the clearly pained soul in awe; guilt washes over me for even thinking about getting angry. I reach over to a clean towel amongst the pile of dyed ones, ignoring the cry of my recent wound, and place it over Don's hands. "Of course I should've, and I'd do it again. We're brothers," I enunciate in my most even tone, "We look out for each other."
"That's not the only reason, is it Leo?" The rhetorical statement barely ghosts out of that single sigh, and all I can do is stare. Donatello's entire body gradually meets the tempo of his fingers; I can feel it through the towel still in my hands, resting on top of his. Yet, his line of sight doesn't waver in the slightest, seemingly observing my blood stain the white cloth. The blade's mark may not have killed me, but the agony on Donnie's face might. It's like I'm reliving the battle that had occurred just earlier today, where we fought for our lives, and I witnessed his almost be taken from him. Of course I stepped in when my brother needed me, as I would have for any one of my family members. Nevertheless, the obvious guilt he's going through pains me as deeply as my wound, if not more. I've experienced the war against oneself; with the self-doubt that continuously lingers when you feel you could have done more, done anything, to have a better outcome.
I learned the hard way that life will not always go as planned, no matter what your guilt-ridden conscious fibs. Sometimes, control of a situation can evaporate into nothing, regardless of a clearly accusing finger. Hope appears to have abandoned you, fleeing into the tainted air that you're choking on, deaf to your cries for a miracle. When faced with moments like these, you have to go with the best possible option, even if it's not preferred. Replaying scenarios where one does something different and then blames themselves for not doing it instead is an endless trap, and its maddening. It leads you down the path of self-destruction, and I was once kicking its pebbles. It twists and turns violently, as you never know what irrational concept you'll face next, and end up accepting as the truth. That is not a path I want Donnie to travel. He shouldn't shackle himself to this needless weight, but I know he is already being drowned by it. Not a peep had slipped past his lips until now, but those clouded eyes tell the story quite well.