Broken

by Venka Le Fay

I don't own Ninja Turtles. TMNT belongs to it's respective creators, please support the official release in whatever incarnation you may fancy.

He was back in the prison cell. He didn't understand, was last several hours with his family just a hopeful dream. He could vividly remember sitting down with his brothers, father, and April all of them happily eating pizza as if that was the only care they had in the world. Had his reunion with his family just been a hopeful dream?

Suddenly the door to the cells flew open and the Shredder stalked in looking quite pleased with himself. He looked at the young turtle chained to the wall with little regard.

"I have no further need of you." Shredder said nonchalantly. "I've already learned the location of your subterranean home; Bradford and Xever are leading an army of Foot Soldiers there as we speak. Your master will be brought to me alive…but I have no qualms as to what will happen to your brothers." Karai appeared with two Kraang Droids carrying April O'Neil between them. April's body looked badly beaten and blooded.

"April…" Donnie whimpered the human girls name in shock and horror. He wanted to go to her, to reassure her everything would be alright.

"It didn't take much for your girlfriend here to talk." Karai smirked. "She resisted the pounding I gave her after she turned herself in, but she sang like a little bird before I slit her father's throat…and I can't wait to do the same to your master." April weakly looked up at Donatello tears falling down her face.

"Donnie…." April's voice was nothing more than a sad and frightened whimper. "Donnie…I'm sorry. I had hoped by turning myself in, I'd be able to lead the guys here so they can get you out. I didn't know…I….I'm so sorry."

Shredder stalked forward to the turtle chained to the wall. Donnie however he could only see April...he wanted to kill Karai for every bruise and mark the female Kunoichi have put on her beautiful face. But his mind had turning about the shock that April had revealed the location of their lair. Yes it was in the hope of preventing any harm to her father, but still would she honestly have done that.

"Have you two said your good-byes, yet?" The Shredder purred sadistically in Donatello's ear as he released the blades of his gauntlet.

"You may take her away." Karai said as the Kraang dragged the red haired girl out of Donatello's line of vision.

"NO!" April screamed in anguish. "DONNIE!"

"APRIL!" He screamed after her. "Let her go! Please! Don't let them take her away! I'll do anything you want!"

"She's not the one you should be concerned about!" Karai sneered as if it didn't matter one way or another as to what the red heads fate was.

"You don't understand!" Donnie protested "You're dooming this planet and everyone on it…including yourselves."

"Don't worry, you'll see her again!" Shredder sneered as if humanities destruction was not his concern. He raised the claw like blades into the air. "In the next world!" Donatello cried out as the blades arced down towards him.

"Donnie, wake up!" Leonardo said as he knelt over his younger brother clutching Donatello's shoulders. "You're having a nightmare!" The other turtle continued to thrash and cry out.

"No….April" He said in a half moan half screamed. "Let…her go…"

"Donnie!" Leo yelled, he could hear everyone else starting waking up to the commotion. Fortunately Donnie's screams subsided and he opened his eyes looking about him as if trying to process where he was before they locked onto Leonardo.

"Leo…" He said as if afraid this was the dream.

"Yeah it's me…" Leo answered. Just then the bedroom door flew open, Raph and Mikey both tumbled into the room.

"Are you dudes alright?" Mikey asked in concern.

"We're okay Mikey," Leo answered as he helped Donatello sit up. "Donnie was just having a nightmare."

"I'm sorry…" Donatello whispered softly to his brothers. Mikey at once went to his older brother and gave him a hug.

"Hey, it's alright." Mikey said trying to be reassuring. "If it makes you feel better…I still have nightmares about Dinosaurs." Donnie hugged his younger brother back. Just being able to feel his younger brother's arms around him reassured him this was reality. Leo and Raph seemed to look as one another in concern as if sharing the same thought.

"You sure you're okay Donnie?" Raph asked. Donnie nodded his head tiredly still he felt uneasy; an unease that would only be alleviated by seeing if April was alright with his own eyes. Fortunately the red haired girl also appeared in the door way. Her hair still wet from a recent shower, dressed in her pajamas and a butter yellow fleece robe. Unlike the visage of her that he saw in his dream, she was whole and unharmed. He reached out to her at though wanting to be certain what he saw was real. Obligingly the girl approached him kneeling she wrapped her arms around him holding him like a mother would a frightened child. Before she stood up and returned to her room. Leo quietly ushered Mikey and Raph back to their own room.

Donnie tucked his knees up to his chest, he couldn't help but feel embarrassed; it had all been a bad dream…just a stupid dream. Leo shut the door behind him and returned to his tatami mat. He had expected nightmares, heck he himself had more than a few of them for the past year. And he had had to field more that few of them from one of his brothers at one point or another.

Both boys looked up when they heard a knock on the door. Neither of them were surprised it was Splinter with another cup of tea. Every sickness, every serious injury, every nightmare, this special tea was Splinter's holistic therapy. A bitter blend of herbs that had a soothing earthy aroma, but tasted like tar and vomit, all of them had to drink it at one point or another. Even April when she had caught that small cold several weeks back. And while they did admit it helped a good deal, there were various levels of resistance to being offered this remedy. Mikey and Raph were the most resistant to drinking it, so much so Mikey would even deny he was sick at all if it would prevent the need to drink it. Raph forcibly had to be held down so it could be poured into his mouth, and then he had to be prevented from spitting it out. Leo and Donnie would drink it with little complaint because the sooner it was over with the better.

Even though the tea was meant to help him relax and ease any problems with in his mind and body. He couldn't help but feel like he was purposely being drugged because there was no other way to deal with his issues. Splinter said nothing to either boy, he simply left the tea cup with Leonardo, placing a paw like hand on Donatello's shoulder as a small gesture of fatherly comfort and left the room. Leo didn't hand to the tea cup to Donatello immediately. Instead he held it a moment staring down into the earth brown depths before speaking.

"Do you…" He started to ask as he set the tea down on a small table and pushed his tatami mat closer to Donnie's. "Do you want to talk about it? Sometimes talking about what's scaring you does help elevate nightmares."

"What's there to really say?" Donnie answered. "The nightmare I had was just visions of what I feared would happen while I was the Shredder's prisoner. Don't get me wrong, I'm actually glad April and Splinter didn't turn themselves over to the Shredder for my sake. But I feared somebody would have if not them then maybe one of you." Leo nodded, before handing Donnie the tea cup. The younger turtle looked at it before swallowing it as quickly as he could, grimacing at the flavor of the liquid.

"And here I thought nothing tasted worse than worms and algae." Donnie quipped as he handed the tea cup back to Leonardo and lay down feeling the effects of the tea starting to work. Leo set the tea cup aside before laying down on his tatami mat.

"I'm sorry." Donnie softly apologized once again.

"Don't be…" Leo answered as he wrapped his arm protectively around his younger brother. "You've done nothing to apologize for." Donnie wanted to clarify more but the tea was making it hard for him to keep his eyes open. He sighed as he drifted off to sleep, taking comfort in the gentle thumping of his brother's heart.

"Not so tough without your stick, are you." Dogpound sneered with a growl as a battered Donnie struggled to get to his feet again. "You can drop the tough act; you brothers aren't going to come for you."

"They'll come." Donnie firmly stated.

"I highly doubt that," Dogpound growled. "I have Foot Soldiers monitoring the city, none of 'em have seen so much of as a scale of your brothers. Looks like they've left you for dead, and given how ineffective you are as a fighter I wouldn't blame 'em. Why else would your master have given you a bo staff as a weapon? He must have seen how useless you were from the start."

"No!" Donnie yelled covering his hears from these comment statements the mutant dog was making. "No, no, no!" His was only saying these things to get him to doubt and betray his family. His brothers were probably doing all they could to try and find him, but with no way to track where he was there wasn't any way of reaching him. But he truly believed…no…he *knew* his brothers were doing all they could to find him. Dogpound only laughed at the Turtle before slamming him into the ground once again with his gigantic fist.

"Keep denying it, if you want." Dogpound laughed. "But you know what I say is the truth. You're family has left you here to die!"

Donnie didn't want to believe it, he refused to. But his mind did start to bring up times he felt belittled, disrespected, and forgotten by his brothers

Raph catching his younger brothers arms in the tines of his sai. One arm pulled painfully behind his shell while the other is held aloft.

"Say hi to Mikey!" Raph snidely said as he held his brother in this humiliating fashion.

"Hi, Mikey." Raph would say raising his voice almost to a falsetto. "It's me Donnie. I'm so smart, E=MC2..."

"Donnie, I thought you said you knew how to do this?!" Leo demanded in frustration when Donnie began to hesitate on dismantling the mutagen bomb.

"I wasn't expecting a design this complex, Leo." Donnie defended. In all honesty this was an explosive he was unfamiliar with. Even with what was at stake, couldn't his older brother understand that?

"It's alien technology, what did you expect?!" Leo shot back. "A round ball with a lit fuse and the word "Bomb" written on it!?"

"Look Spike, Donnie has a new stick he can break." Raph snarked to his pet Turtle while Splinter presented the purple masked Turtle with a new Bo Staff.

"No! Not Pizza Guy," Mikey cried out in displeasure as the Snakeweed ran off with the innocent delivery boy in his vines. "Take Donnie!"

"You want us to fight against Donnie and Mikey…?" Leo said as if the whole thing sounded like a joke. "Isn't that a little unfair."

Far too often it felt that aside from Mikey, he was the family joke. He was the weak one, the expendable one. No one seemed to care about what happened to him. He had never questioned it before because they did habitually tease one another; it was one of the ways they got along. And no matter how many times they argued or got into physical confrontations with each, there were always "I love you's" not far behind. But part of him did unconsciously wonder if they did truly care if he lived or died.

"Like I told ya," Dogpound snarled as he planted one of his feet on Donnie's shell as started to press his weight on to it. "They don't give two bits about you."

A tear fell from Donnie's closed eye lids. He half expected Leo to comfort him, but comfort never came. Opening his eyes he found himself alone. Leo's bed was made and the clock on the nearby shelf said it was past noon, he had slept through morning training and much of the day. A plate that held some toast, eggs, bacon, and orange juice had been placed on the table as a simple gesture of making sure he had breakfast. The food long since turned cold. Getting up he left the room and entered the lair. He still needed to use his bo staff as a make shift crutch, but he didn't need his brothers assistance to help him around the lair. To Donnie's dismay however not a single head rose in reaction to his presence.

Mikey was sitting in front of some Japanese animation show on the Anime 24/7 channel. Donnie didn't really pay attention to what it was, he liked anime well enough. But his preference were shows that had a well rounded story and developed characters. While Mikey tended to like the plotless ones that relied on the characters beating one the snot out of one another to solve any and all conflicts. Raph was sitting at the corner of the pit feeding Spike. The red masked turtle was vaguely watching the show Mikey was and would make a snide comment every so often. April herself was studying one of her text books from school, just because she was taking a school vacation didn't mean she couldn't attempt to keep her grades up through independent study. Her teachers had been nice enough to send her assignments via email. Since the cover story for her absence was being in Ireland with her father, her world history teacher had requested she write essays about the stuff she saw and learned about Irish culture and history. The only member of the family not present was Leo, but there was only one place he could be at this time. Meditating with Splinter.

"Is something troubling you, Leonardo?" Splinter asked his eldest son. The two of them had been meditating but the negative emotions radiating from Leo's mind was making that difficult.

"Sorry if I'm disturbing our meditation, Sensei." Leo answered. "I just find myself worrying about Donnie lately. It's the not the nightmares that are bothering me, I've actually expected those after what he's been through. But he refuses to talk about the nightmares or what's causing them, he just says it's what he feared world happen when he was held captive and leaves it at that. And he apologized for the nightmare as though he felt it was his fault he had one in the first place. "Splinter closed his eyes and bowed his head sorrowfully.

"I was afraid of this." He answered with the sigh. "Your brothers physical injuries have healed greatly, but the wounds to his Spirit continue to fester and if left unattended it can have disastrous results. And there is a likelihood the Donatello we knew no longer exists"

"So what should we do?" Leo asked feeling at a loss for how to help his brother. "What should I do?"