Note: These events take place during season 2, somewhere after "The Good, the Bad, and Casey Jones" and before "The lonely mutation of Baxter Stockman".
Author's Note: I'd love to see this side of Donatello in the 2012-version, but that's probably never going to happen… Thank god for fanfics! ;D
This is a somewhat different "Dark Donatello"-story in the regard that he's not exactly evil. As mentioned in the synopsis, he's still pretty much the same dorky, lovable turtle we know from the show. But with a somewhat screwed up sense of morality... Especially when it comes to whether you can or cannot use family members for your experiments.
This story contains: Whump, creepiness, needles, blood, humor, angst, light fluff, some Apritello, and Casey Jones.
You will NOT find: Character death, sexual themes, or explicit gore.
Prologue
Donnie's hands were shaking slightly as he patiently tried to add the exact right amount of yellow liquid to the content on a petri-dish. His eyes were staring blearily in front of him, and he found it a hard to focus at the task at hand. He somehow mustered enough determination to successfully mix the components without a problem.
The hour was clearly late, and the scientist looked like he should have gone to bed a long time ago.
The tall turtle made a pleased smile over his accomplishment and put the dish in an incubator. He hoped that this batch would show more progress than the last one. Or any of the 37 he had tried so far… Donnie was just about to stow away the bottles of chemicals he'd been experimenting with, but hesitated. He tapped his chin with a thoughtful expression as if he was trying to recall something. His eyes slowly widened in panic and he darted over to a burning hotplate, where a jar of mutagen was boiling merrily. Donnie swiftly turned off the plate and quickly moved the jar away from the heat source, careful to not breathe in the fumes. He made a relieved sigh as he put down the jar on the desk instead, and then went back to his various bottles.
"Alright," he stated to himself, and rubbed the back of his neck. "Unless I accidentally wanna end up mixing water with potassium, I should probably call it a night now."
He had barely finished the sentence when he stopped himself and took one last look on his experiments. He stared at the jar of cooling mutagen in silence.
"... Maybe just one more try," he concluded, and put the jar back on the hotplate again. "One more test, and then I can finally leave this behind me and get a few hours of well-earned sleep."
Donnie glanced at the clock at the corner of the computer screen. It politely informed him that it was 5:15 in the morning.
"… Or maybe a few minutes nap," he sighed, and shook his head in annoyance. "Why do I keep doing this to myself...!"
Donnie put on a mask and added some kind of blue liquid to the boiling mutagen, leaning away from it to protect himself from the fumes. Or a potential explosion. The mutagen seemed to react somewhat to the substance, making Donnie watch the mixture in excitement.
In the next moment, the mutagen gave up a tiny cloud of smoke with a squeaky, farting sound. Donnie's shoulders slumped as he looked at the experiment with the eyes of a disappointed parent. He sighed, tossed the mask aside, and then started writing in a journal on his desk. The book was filled with mathematical formulas, scientific terms, and sketches of chemical symbols. Though, some of the sketches were obviously of a more personal nature, like a drawing of a yellow spring flower with tiny hearts circling around it.
"So far, no further progress on the retro-mutagen experiments..." he mumbled to himself as his hand moved over the pages, with the swiftness of someone who didn't intend his words to be read by anyone but himself. "I did however discover some rather unusual reactions when the mutagen is mixed with substances containing high levels of sodium chloride, but nothing that appears to be substantial in my search for properties that can-"
He observed the words while tapping the pencil on his chin with a critical look. He sighed bitterly, and replaced the last sentence.
"It farts in contact with salt." he clarified with a tired look, and kept scribbling. "At this point, I'm getting increasingly concerned whether I'll be able to find an efficient way of creating retro-mutagen in... before I..."
He made a big yawn and rested his chin in his free hand. The other one kept writing in the journal, almost absentmindedly. His focus was slipping with every word.
"I need to learn more about the mutagen. If I could just get my hands on some new information, I might be able to come up with more ideas. At this stage, anything would be helpful, really... But for that to happen, I'll most likely need another Kraang flashlight... Flash-drive. Another Kraang flash-drive. To drive...No, to get new information. To get some... more ideas for... research, and...stuff..."
His head gently slipped down from its propped up position, and heavily hit the desk. But Donnie didn't wake up from the impact. Instead, he was snoring lightly on top of his journal, with his arms acting as skinny pillows. He mumbled something in his sleep which, even if someone would have heard him, probably wouldn't make a lot of sense.
The hotplate was still burning. The fumes of the mutagen steadily rolled out from the jar, like toxic waves. It didn't take long until Donnie was sleeping in the middle of a greenish fog, inhaling it soundly in his inattentive slumber.
. . .