When Don counts the time up, he was in that other place for three days.
He doesn't want to think of it, but he does, constantly. It's a dark river running under everything he sees, mirrored similarities in gestures, looks and words, one reality overlaying another.
Every time it happens it makes his heart seize and his stomach flip and his palms prickle with sweat, and it's stupid – and he feels stupid, and powerless, and weak and scared – but it's physical, like a cold finger up his spine, like he's being fucked with. Like he's being watched.
Mikey with that frown he gets when he's thinking, Raph cleaning his sais with a slow, familiar sweep of cloth.
Draco didn't want to kill them. He wanted to take them apart, bit by bit. And how better to do it than to let him know he'll be the instrument of their destruction? That he'll be the one to fuck it up, but not how, or when.
Oh god, he's scared.
Donnie's coming to understand that he might not be okay. He might not be okay at all.
The light's so bright after the gloom of the chamber, the smell of blood is thick in his nostrils and he's aware his knees and hands are spattered with gore, but he launches himself at Mikey and Raph anyway, shaky and sweating but so relieved he can hardly speak, and he just gabbles some crap at them all, and Mikey's bemused, open face makes him hurt.
Then they're fighting again. When the adrenaline surge of battle peaks and everything around him stretches and slows and sharpens to hyper-realistic detail, he abruptly realises he is clean. Not a trace anywhere on him of blood or bone or grey matter when seconds ago he was soaked.
After the battle it's all prettymuch white noise to him. He takes it in, but it doesn't touch him. He looks for his bo, only to realise he lost it in that other place, and thinking about it laying where he dropped it on the floor of the dead Michelangelo's quarters, the room they shared with the sagging grey mattress and the damp seeping in from the walls and the sea of bottles and trash and fucking needles all over the floor makes his skin prickle. He remembers standing there, trying to keep his face expressionless, while that other Michelangelo laughed at him.
The goosebumps blend with the tingle and stomach-lurch of the portal, the feeling of your atoms being turned inside out, and then they are back in the lair.
'I hate that method of travel,' Splinter sighs, and his dark eyes move over them. 'You are all unharmed, my sons. Thank goodness.'
'Thanks to you, Sensei.' Leo bows, Splinter pats him on the shoulder and sighs again.
'Debrief in fifteen. Mikey, can you fix us something?' Leo is already moving toward the showers, and as Mikey fires off a little salute and starts toward the kitchen Casey stands up awkwardly.
'I, uh, I'll leave you guys to it. I guess you don't really feel like that monster movie marathon any more, huh?'
'Thanks bro.' Raph sounds about as tired as Don feels. Someone's tried to kill them again. Kind of a buzz-kill.
'I'll come by and see you tomorrow.'
Outside their lone functioning shower room Don leans against the wall.
He can't tell them. Ever. Lines have been drawn here that he can't see, and he knows, he knows with a certainty that's like a lead weight in his stomach, that if he puts one foot on the wrong track it'll spin them all off into the dark. All roads around him lead to a fifty-foot drop.
Raph slopes up the hall and comes to lean beside him with a sigh.
'Hey.'
'Hey.' It comes out wrong. He winces internally, even as Raph squints at him.
'You okay?'
'Yeah.' He injects more colour into the word – Raph's expression clears so it's enough to get him by, but then it's a moot point anyway because Mikey is skipping up the hall, pausing to pirouette to the bathroom door and rattle the knob, sing-songing 'Oh fearless lead-er! Don't forget to leave us some hot water!'
Don's stomach clenches painfully. He folds his arms and presses them into his middle – hard against the knot twisting there. He breathes slowly. He keeps his posture otherwise relaxed, and turns his face to his brothers.
'-yeah? Well you're not the only one who got a stadium full'a people screaming their name. We dominated!'
'Pfft. Did the grateful masses there actually give you a medal? Cause they actually literally gave me a medal, bro-'
The door opens, and Leo steps out in a cloud of steam. As he moves to pass Don their eyes meet, Leo's clear blue and amused, having caught the tail end of the boasting, but then their look shifts into something like concern.
Don slips past Leo and shuts the door, locking it behind him. He ignores the quiet murmur of voices from the other side, purposefully blocking out any words which he can piece together into meaning – he'll deal with that later. He focuses on untying his belt and kneepads. It's harder than it should be, all of a sudden his hands are trembling, not cooperating - but he can ignore that, too.
When his fingers get to his mask they stutter and slip, and then it's like his body stops doing what he wants it to altogether and just for a second, just for a few seconds he sinks down to his knees, laying his head against the cool tile and trying to calm the too-loud beating of his heart, the twisting of his guts.
It's cool and quiet, the world shrunk to a comfortable distance. He breathes. He shoves the throng of images and voices back, and tries to empty his mind.
He killed them all. These brothers might be here, but the others died, they all died.
His throat burns, but he digs his nails into his palms and shoves it back, shoves it down.
Not now. Not here. He breathes hard, and forces his mind blank.
It's a minute or two before he realises he should have started showering by now. He knows it will seem odd. He needs to be quick, then. He gets up, shoving his mask off to join the rest on the floor, and steps into the tub and under the thundering of the hot, hot water.