A crash resounded throughout the lair, causing three heads to turn.

While normally such disturbances had a sort of regular frequency in the ninja family, the three present knew it wasn't Donatello this time, even though the sound had come from the lab; because Mikey was laying on the couch with a videogame, Raph across the pit watching TV and Donnie to the side of them at the living room table going through science drafts, each in the furthest corner away from each other possible, as if in their own little world.

The three only had a moment to look at each other, wide-eyed and what the hell? And where's Leo? Running across their faces, before the oldest brother stumbled into the main living area mumbling to himself, Donnie's laptop in one hand and visibly frazzled. The younger three jumped up on instinct, torn between panic for their brother and fear about what's going on, but found themselves frozen in shock when Leo's mumbling became audible. He was erratic, not clearly talking either to himself or the family members present, and words like "Can't believe", "Never happen" and "Killed" could be picked out of his rambling. Moving through the lair with all the force of a train, he still stumbled over and bumped into things he clearly should've known were there.

It was Raph who was on his feet first, and he was already halfway to Leo, holding out his hands and almost going pale with panic as he started firing questions. Donnie and Mikey looked at each other, exchanging wildly confused and alarmed expressions, wondering what they should do. "Leo? What's wrong, bro? Is everything ok? Maybe you should sit down. What's goin' on?"

"What's going on?" Leo repeated, quickly and suddenly talking directly to his brothers and waving Donnie's laptop haphazardly, abruptly reacting so strongly to Raph's questions that Raph stopped in his tracks. Leo's eyes were suddenly on them, churning, fearsome and angrier than they swore they'd ever seen, flashing like lightning ablaze, but somehow he still got angrier by the second. Something deep and sickening twisted in the younger brothers' guts as they watched the oldest in fear. "What's going on! I think I should be the one asking that question!"

"Leo? What are you talking about?" Donnie asked, quickly trotting toward Leo as well, but not going any closer than Raph had, panic on his face mixed with confusion as he glanced from Leo to the laptop. Behind them, Mikey stared at the oldest brother and computer in turn, blood beginning to rush out of his horrified face.

"Oh, no." He thought, body tensing and nausea lurching. "This isn't...please, tell me no. I didn't even think to try and delete...I didn't think any of them would...please no, please."

Leo, practically shaking by now, suddenly whipped the laptop open and shoved it toward them, his eyes like burning sapphires of coal behind the computer. His voice had gone so low, sharp and slow that each little brother felt like moving might slice them open.

"Does somebody want to tell me who was visiting suicide websites last night at 3am, and reading about death by heights?"

Even watching from behind, seeing Raph and Donnie go white was like watching the ocean wash the beach away. But Mikey felt like he probably looked the same, his heart suddenly racing too fast afterwards to take in any more details. He instinctively curled backward across the couch as if to get away as panic and outrage ensued from the older two.

"It wasn't like that. It wasn't like that. It wasn't like that." His thoughts raced.

"What the hell?" Raph exclaimed, staring at the internet's history log like it was an axe Leo had found underneath the couch. Donnie instinctively grabbed the laptop, staring at the screen so closely and intensely that he could've been looking for display errors.

"I don't understand. I w...none of us would do that. It must be some kind of mistake..." Donnie rambled.

"Well, why is it there then!" Leo exclaimed, the very picture of an atomic meltdown as he grabbed the computer again for emphasis, and his outburst was quickly followed by Raph's, whose hands raked over his head as panic swallowed him whole.

"Mistake? The internet history doesn't make mistakes! Why the hell is it there! What the fuck!"

And as if on cue, all three older brothers turned in unison to look at Mikey, the only one who hadn't said anything, all four wide-eyed, and Mikey could feel the instant he broke out into a cold sweat. With sudden panic, he realized they weren't being accusatory, it was just becoming horribly obvious how he wasn't saying anything. He still had a chance to get out of this alive. He immediately glanced down, unable to meet their intense gaze.

His first instinct was to raise his hands, and deny everything. "Don't look at me like that. Like I'd be looking at stuff like that. That's crazy. That's stupid." His voice was unsteady and serious, and he hoped it was enough to make his brothers buy it. He shook his head at them. "Don't look at me like that."

Raph and Donnie started yelling at him and exclaiming, saying something about then who, and impossible, and what the hell, and too much horror and freaking out and disbelief to actually think Mikey had done something like this, but when Mikey looked up at them again Leo was staring at him, and meeting his gaze was like a lightning strike to a metal post. The others' words were lost on him when his heart stopped and his body tried to jump back, and in that brief, tense second that they stared at each other, Mikey knew the truth had already told itself. Raph and Donnie could tell, too, or they'd be able to, as soon as they stopped panicking and trying to deny it.

"Mikey." Leo said in a low voice, but it still overpowered Raph's and Donnie's bickering like a creek drowning in a landslide, and they stopped to stare as Leo took a solid step forward.

There was no assaulting lecture, or furious accusations, or even any sort of loose-hinged, wildly panicked freaking out, because all of that was in the heavy steps Leo was taking towards him, his face blank and his blue eyes like ice and fire colliding in a blaze of chaos, and Mikey immediately went on an intense defensive.

"Why were you even checking the internet history!" He said, scrambling and leaping over the far end of the couch, freezing at the other side as if he intended to use it to protect him.

"Why was I checking? Ha!" Leo laughed, but it was coarse, and filled with panic, and horror, and anxiety. "Here's a better question! Why should I have to!"

Mikey's emotions flared, and suddenly there was burning anger, and hurt, and frustration that he didn't know where came from. "I don't know, why do you have to?! You afraid we're gonna run off and get killed too, if you don't watch us?!"

In the next instant, the world had exploded. Leo had dropped Donnie's laptop and lunged, and whether to apprehend an escape or to grab him by the neck and shake him, nobody could tell. Donnie had dove for his computer in reflexive panic and Raph had been all but knocked off his feet at the sudden explosion of movement, and Mikey was charging away at the same time Leo had lunged after him, both brothers screaming.

"Stop, leave me alone!"

"Michelangelo, come here, RIGHT NOW!"

"Go away!"

"MICHELANGELO HAMATO!"

Furniture tumbled and crashed as the two raced into the hallway where their bedrooms were, entered and exited a couple as Mikey vainly looked for a place to hide, and back again. The other two were immediately charging after their brothers, presumably to stop them both and restrain Leo, but Mikey knew he'd never get away then. He knew they'd hold him down until they'd twisted and wrung some kind of response out of him, no matter what it was – and who knew what they'd do once they had one.

He knew they wouldn't listen, wouldn't understand. Not like this.

In a right turn sharp enough to send Leo careening across the floor and Raph tumbling into the nearest wall, Mikey shot out the entrance of the lair.

.

.

.

The cold, gravelly pavement of the rooftops stung his feet as he raced across the dark, late-evening city.

It wasn't like that. He couldn't even fathom it being like that, not ever, not if the whole world froze over...not with brothers like his. Never.

His knee was jarred slightly as he landed hard on a rooftop and raced onward.

Sometimes it was just hard to stop over-thinking, and looking for the meaning in difficult things, especially after the world slowed down and he was left alone with his own brain. And when he was lying awake and couldn't stop thinking, he couldn't sleep, so he distracted himself by staying up on the internet, because staying up distracted was far better than staying up with nothing but his own thoughts. And if he looked up something unhappy, the internet had a way of taking it and using it to show him things that really weren't happy.

Even if he was only looking in the first place because his mind had a morbid need to know more about the very thing that had traumatized him, whether that made sense or not.

He made a long leap, jumping over a large gap between buildings.

He could just as easily avoid all those things, and probably find a better way to distract himself, he knew – but there was no force on earth that could make him bother any of his brothers with this, not like this, and certainly not when they were hurting so much themselves – and he wouldn't bring it up to April or Casey for largely the same reasons. So he went off in search of other things, anything to drown himself in, but it never seemed to have any meaning and it never helped at all, so the vicious cycle repeated itself. That happened far too often lately, since there was a new empty room in the lair where there had once been abounding love, and security, and guidance. With this pain he had now, he didn't know what to do with it.

The cold wind whipped his face and his eyes stung.

He loved his brothers, so, so much, and knew they would have no problem letting him know how much they loved him, too. But the crushing loss of their father had crushed all of his brothers to the ground, and he knew there was nothing they could do about it because he was in the same place, too. Leo had been stalking around with his shoulders hunched and his head down, and none of his little brothers knew what to say to him at the moment because they were terrified by the crippling weight and guilt their big brother must've suddenly felt on his shoulders, justified or not. Raph hadn't been leaving his room much, hadn't been eating much, and when he did, he either avoided everybody or didn't talk to anyone; and Donnie had just begun down the path of drowning himself in projects, increasingly working himself to death until it detrimentally effected his health, and talking to everyone and anyone about everything and anything, as long as it wasn't about anything important like family, or the issues at hand, or the trauma demon they were all suddenly facing off against.

The first few days, the four of them had held onto each other like life rafts in the sea, and there was love and comfort and a sort of security in that, even if parts of it felt flimsy and desperate – otherwise, they all would have probably caved in on themselves and never recovered. But nobody was talking about it and now they refused to acknowledge it, because it was getting too difficult to say everything was going to be alright as if the chasm-like feeling of guilt, and sudden vulnerability, and loneliness, and anxiety, and doubt, and loss of direction, wasn't growing too strong to handle.

Mikey had a special anxiety in his heart for Raphael, because out of all his brothers, he was the one who had to watch what happened up-close, practically within arm's reach, and his silence was driving panic through the rest of his brothers like a knife. The anxiety and worry etched into their oldest brother's face seemed to be aging him by a couple hundred years, and it was visibly amplified by a little over a thousand any time Leo caught a glimpse of the immediate younger. Mikey and Donnie felt the same way.

He didn't even want to think about how it felt to know it didn't matter when the four of them would come home from missions at night anymore, or how they'd be effectively on their own if something horrible happened, or how for everything Splinter used to do for them while they were gone, they'd have to do it themselves.

How there was no wise, parental figure there to give advice anymore when they got stuck, and nobody to give them a furry hug and understand everything when it seemed like nobody else in the world did. Nobody would text them to check on them during missions anymore, nobody would be on the couch watching TV when they came home, the pets wouldn't be looked after, the lair wouldn't smell like the noodles he'd made them for dinner. The smell of incense would never drift from his room again.

What they were gonna do about Oroku Saki now, or how they were gonna stay safe at all, he wasn't sure, because he didn't think any of his brothers or either human friends believed the tongue-in-cheek blow Casey had given the man was going to keep him down. It made him too sick to the stomach to think about, and made the chasm-like anxiety and loss of security so much worse.

And damn it all, since his brothers had all decided to put up a tough-guy act, if he wasn't the one that let them find something like – like – this, of all things in the whole world, and of course they had to be so dramatic and make a huge deal out of it. Of course he would be the one, in this situation, that would let them down, and make himself look like he couldn't...like...like...

He stopped on a fire escape, dropping his head into his hands and sniffling.

Where was he going? Where was he?

He started crying a little harder, and then was quickly crying a lot harder, more than he'd thought he was going to. And when he looked up, he realized he was standing in front of April's apartment.

When did I get here?

Fist violently shaking, he knocked anxiously on her window, and covered his face again, unable to contain the sobs, not really sure whether she even heard him or not.

But like always, without fail, he heard the tell-tale bumps inside the apartment as she approached the window, and April quickly threw it open, hardly before she even looked to see who it was.

"Mikey."

It was about ten minutes later that Mikey was sitting on her living room couch wrapped in a blanket and a hot drink on the table in front of him, with his face buried in the soft fabric and hardly coherent as his sister and friend sat beside him, coaxing as much of the story from him as possible.

April already had a good idea of the state the Hamato family was in at the moment, and honestly the only reason she wasn't staying with them right now, or making them stay with her, was because she needed to wrap up some loose ends at school and fabricate something to tell her own family before she was clear, and Casey was in the same situation. But the plan was for both humans to move in with their turtle family as soon as possible, and both human friends had been visiting frequently, April most of all, because she had a terrible feeling she knew exactly what her boys were going through right now – and just how much they needed anyone who even vaguely simulated parent-like behavior.

Watching the youngest brother sitting beside her, shoulders heaving and face so terribly wrenched in despair whenever he showed a glimpse of it, April gave a grievous, broken-hearted sigh. "Oh, Mikey baby."

Pulling him into the tightest hug she could manage, she squeezed her little brother as he cried out painfully, wracked with horrible sobs.

"I just...don't know...what to do." He cried, broken voice muffled in the fabric. "I didn't mean it. I don't know why I even...but I can't go back, 'cause they're gonna be yelling, an' they'll yell at me, an' they won't listen 'cause...'cause they can't, they don't know how, 'cause they're hurting so bad, and I did this to them, oh April, look what I did to them..." And Mikey stopped there, crying too hard again to continue.

April buried his head under her chin and hushed him, holding him tight and rocking gently back and forth, and willed herself, with every force by which she called herself strong, to not let her own crying get the best of her. She stroked Mikey's head, and blew on the back of his neck to soothe him and cool him down, the way her father used to do for her, until his crying softened a little again.

"Mikey." She said gently, quietly, lovingly, and he soaked in her words. "Your brothers may be mad, and you're right, they're probably very scared. But you know what they feel so much more than mad, or scared?"

She kissed the top of his head, urging him to answer the question himself, and pushed a little more when he didn't right away. "I know that you know."

"They love me." Mikey answered weakly, face buried deep in the blanket as a fresh wave of tears wracked his body.

"That's right," April kissed the top of his head again, "They love you. They love you so much, Mikey. We all do, more than the whole world." She looked down at him, snug against her in the blanket, shoulders trembling. "You know that, don't you?"

She got a weak nod, and she stroked the side of his head and held her hand there, coaxing his tear-soaked face up to hers to look sincerely, and a little sternly, into his eyes. Her voice a little quieter, a little firmer, she repeated, "You know that, don't you?"

He held the gaze, eyes full of pain and honesty and remorse as he nodded again to her, until he clenched them shut against the stream of tears coming down, so she squeezed him back into a big embrace as he retreated his face into the blanket again, stroking his head and rocking back and forth.

"Oh Mikey...we do, we love you so much. I know how distant your brothers have been lately, and I know them well enough to imagine how much worse it must be between the four of you. God, the things you all have been through, I just wish I could go down there and hold all of you until all the troubles went away."

"I wouldn't mind if you did." Mikey said, making a rough, wet choked sound that could've been some attempt at a laugh, and April chuckled warmly at the light attempt at humor, giving him a tight squeeze.

"That's right, and your brothers aren't gonna get away from it either, even if they want to." She smiled, before it melted slightly again. "I know all of you are hurting so much. Your brothers have a particularly hard time verbalizing their own feelings, and might even say some things they don't mean, but I'm here to assure you that no matter what, those three would drop the whole world to listen if you said you wanted to talk."

She traced her finger gently down his head as his eyes were locked on hers while she spoke, such deep complexity in those baby blues that it made April proud to say they belonged to her baby brother.

"Can I tell you a story, Mikey?"

Looking up at her with wide eyes, Mikey gave a ghost of a nod.

April sighed, snuggling her baby brother close. "When I was nine, I lived with both my parents in an apartment, much further out from the main city on the outskirts. My dad was climbing in the ranks of science and my mom was an environmentalist who worked as a florist. My Aunt lived in the inner city and owned the consignment shop, Second Time Around, and the farmhouse I took you guys to."

Mikey nodded again, already completely lost in the story with such awe on his face, it almost made April chuckle.

She continued, "One day, my dad was having an important convention at the lab where he worked, and my mom went with him, so my Aunt was staying with me at the apartment. We got a phone call early that evening from a police officer, telling us my parents had gotten into a terrible wreck."

Something drained from Mikey's face, and he looked a little paler.

"It turns out, something my dad had been working on had turned into an incredibly controversial topic over a very short period of time, and he and his team came under fire from some secretive group that was never clearly identified. Now I think it had to do with the Kraang, and some parts of the government that knew about them and was trying to keep some info secret. Either way, it was ultimately suspected that my father was attacked intentionally, but it was my mother who died."

Mikey's face scrunched up, clearly on the verge of tears, and he looked so desperately at April that she felt the need to bump her forehead to his, reassuring him.

"It's ok. I'm still not over it, really, but I've found some pretty great people – and turtles – who've come into my life since then." She smiled back when Mikey's expression lit up, and she continued. "At the time, I didn't understand what was happening – clearly – but it was a bit too much to explain, anyway, and nobody expected me to understand. So Aunty only told me that there had been a car accident, and my mother had passed away." April's face fell, and she sighed again. "I became continuously more sad and angry for a long time, and it was made worse by the way my dad kept getting pulled aside and made absent by the mountain of people and issues he had to deal with after the incident. The rest of our family was supportive, but our family was small, and sometimes they seemed to get drowned out by all the questions and controversy and moving around that happened after that. Eventually, it was only my Aunt that stayed with us and continued supporting us at all. I didn't understand, and I was sad, and so angry, and I wouldn't talk to anybody, because nobody could possibly understand what I had suffered and what I was going through if everyone was too busy trying to attack the small family I had left."

April paused, and for a moment, the two sat in silence as she stared off into the distance, only the light sound of the rain that had started outside to be heard. After some time, Mikey snuggled in deeper to April's hug, and sighed. When she looked down in surprise, he looked up at her, and gave her a soft, affectionate smile; and suddenly, once again, April understood how the youngest sometimes appeared to effortlessly pull the rug out from under his brothers' feet, and turn them into helpless puddles of affection in less than an instant – no matter where they were an instant before. Smiling, she kissed his nose and held him tight.

"Eventually, my Aunt had had enough of my acting out and walling myself in, and she cornered me in this very living room and had it out with me. Oh, I screamed and I yelled and I cried, Mikey, and at the end, all I could do was cry. We both did a lot of all those things," She added with a small chuckle. "I hadn't ever wanted to involve my Aunt in my problems, and so I'd never really opened up to her like I should've, and shut her out and fought with her far more times than I like to remember. We talked for a long time. And ultimately what Aunty told me was how much she loved me, and believed in me, and how I never needed to be afraid to talk to her and say whatever I needed to, because she was there for me and refused to go anywhere; and I was safe with her, and we were going to be ok." April looked down at Mikey, and she looked sincerely, directly in his eyes.

"There were a lot of terrible, mixed-up feelings, and I was scared and didn't want to talk about it, because I didn't know what to say anyway. I was trying to push it all away and carry on, to be strong. And I don't really have this particular experience, but – brothers have gotta be particularly bad about doing that, especially big brothers, don't they?"

Mikey didn't move for a second, looking at her. But in the next instant, tears were running down his face again, and he gripped April's sleeves in his hands as he leaned into the hug, nodding his head.

"Oh, baby." April squeezed him tight and nuzzled his head as the youngest began choking up sobs. "Sweet baby brother Mikey, listen to me. My Aunty loved me and refused to leave me alone, and because of her, I was able to work through a lot of the problems I was facing and have the courage to take the world on again. I didn't ever ask or expect my Aunt to be there for me like that, and would've never known how to ask in the first place – I even tried to shut her out and fought her for a while, just like I did to everyone else. But she broke down that wall and forced herself in there with me, because she loved me that much."

April took Mikey's chin under her hand and gently lifted his face, wiping his tears away with her other hand. "Oh, but hon, don't you know how much your brothers love you."

Mikey cried, his voice hoarse and broken, and he nodded again, unable to speak.

"I've seen the crazy things they're willing to do for you, and the way they're all so wrapped around your little finger, you can make any of them melt at a moment's notice. I know that you know how incredibly much they love you, because they absolutely gush over you, and they couldn't be any more obvious." Her voice going more quiet, she paused a moment before adding, "You don't gotta be afraid of them. You four are suffering so much, and we've found ourselves in some scary times, so it's so hard. But trust me when I tell you, you're a lot more important to them than any of that."

After a few minutes, Mikey spoke up again with a small voice. "I wanna go back, but I'm scared."

April put both hands on his cheeks after wiping his tears away. "It's ok if you're scared. You know I'm right here with you, and I love you to death, baby Mikey. But you know," she stroked his head comfortingly, "I think we should give them a call. I think they'd be really scared right now, too."

Looking deep into her eyes, anxious feelings etched deeply in his own, Mikey nodded. It couldn't be clearer that he thought the same thing, and with an encouraging grin, she pulled her T-phone out of her pocket.

"Want me to tell them where you are?"

Mikey nodded again.

.

.

A couple minutes later, April was in the kitchen on her phone, talking quietly. Mikey had drunk more of the tea April had brought him, even though it was a little cooler by now, but it was wonderfully soothing. The soothing effect was slightly counter-acted by his worry over his human friend's conversations with his brother, though, whichever one it was, because her voice had been growing increasingly more tense over the minutes, even though she kept it down. When he was about to get up and ask if everything was ok, she was suddenly hanging up and marching across the living room to the window again, mumbling to herself but sounding a lot more anxious than annoyed. It had started to rain a few minutes after he'd entered her apartment, and she looked out the window through the weather.

He got up and walked closer, keeping the blanket around his shoulders so he could wrap it anxiously around his middle. "What's wrong?"

"Everything's ok," She reassured, watching out the window with a slightly uneasy expression. "Your brothers were just already out looking for you, they said they'd come by here. I was talking with Raph, but he said he thought Leo was probably closer."

"Oh," Mikey looked out the window too, tensing slightly. Leo. He wasn't sure if he was ready to face his oldest brother first. What if he was still mad? What if he was mad? Mikey could understand if he was, really. After everything that happened, he'd just – left, without saying anything. Not that he – he was doing anything to say, or expected his brothers really thought so, either.

After all, it's not like he scared them half to death about it earlier this evening.

God, he felt sick again.

He knew his brothers absolutely loved him to death. But Leo had chased him around the lair just trying to get a hold of him, and then at least, he was angry, and he didn't know what to do about that. Leo didn't do that. Raph did, sometimes even Donnie did, but never really angrily like that, and never Leo.

He walked up next to April, watching her uncertainly, and turned his eyes down when she looked at him. "Raph...was...did he..."

April's expression turned sympathetic, and she gave him a warm smile as she lifted his chin up to meet her face again.

"He was pretty upset." She said very quietly. "I'm betting they all are. They're very scared about you, but Raph sounded relieved to hear that you'd come here. They just want to know that you're safe, and I think things will start getting better once they can come here and see that you are."

Mikey turned his face to the ground, hands clasped and hanging low. Where would they start? What would he say? Would they still be too upset to listen?

"It'll be ok." April said, as if reading his mind, and gave him a quick hug. "I'll be right here. If they're really angry, they'll have to get through me first, mark my word." She gave him a confident grin, and it softened an instant later. "They're just scared. Just tell them what you told me. It'll be fine."

Looking thoughtfully at the ground, Mikey sighed, mustering up some courage. He knew April was right. And after a moment, he swung his arms around her, burying his face in her shoulder when the tears rushed back. "I love you, April. Thanks for being a better sister than I could've ever asked for."

Tears welling up in her own eyes, she wiped at them and hugged Mikey back, as tightly as she dared. "Mikey honey, I love you sooo much, and I always will." She said, nudging his forehead with hers.

Releasing her, he gave her a big, tearful smile before walking back to the couch, throwing his blanket over the cushions and reaching for his cup. He didn't quite make it, however, before there was a loud thud on the fire escape outside April's window, and they both whipped around.

A/N: Hello everybody! I felt like there was so much more depth and character conflict that could've been involved in the season 4 finale and the associated aftereffects, and this is basically me exploring that idea. The second chapter is mostly finished already, but even though I've been working on this story on the side, it started getting much buggier and more difficult to put the ending together in a nice, neat package, so even though this was supposed to just be a single story, I decided it might need 2 chapters. As always, I can promise LOTS OF ANGST, and Raph, Donnie and Leo will be letting out some of their issues, too.

I'll put out #2 as soon as it's ready, so for now I hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading :)

(In other news: "Well that escalated quickly")