When they finally found him, after hours and hours of searching, he didn't respond to them,
He just stared at the bloody ground, wide-eyed and silent.
…
The night had started like many, many before. There had been news on TV, alarming footage, and they hadn't hesitated to have a look for themselves. It wasn't that hard to find out where the problem originated from.
They had been fully expecting a fight.
They always did.
It was in their very existence. They were fighters.
And they had fought.
But their rivals had had the advantage of fighting in their own turf.
Somewhere in the middle of battle, they had been separated, getting lost in interlacing halls and floors. The building was old. It had crumbled beneath the weight of them.
None of them had noticed, too focused on their fight.
At some point, each of them was on his own.
Not for long, however. After the fight, Leonardo and Donatello quickly found each other on the base floor, climbing over broken walls and debris. Raphael was on a floor beneath them, but they found him after a while as well.
Michelangelo was nowhere to be found.
They immediately started looking for him, calling out in the dusty halls, littered with unconscious or dead bodies.
Nothing.
No sound of fight.
No sound whatsoever.
No sign, no trace of their brother anywhere.
Worry was quick to fill their minds and they quickened their steps, running through halls, jumping down stairs, breaking in doors.
No trace.
Not until one of them spotted a dim, flickering light from beneath a heavy steel door. Surprisingly enough, it hadn't been locked.
A control room.
Screens, screens, screens, some of them had been black, some were been flaring, creating an unsettling buzz and flicker of light. A few of them were working.
One of them showed their missing brother.
Immediately, Donatello sat down and started to hack into the system, trying to figure out where their baby brother was at.
The other two were left to stare uselessly at the screen.
Michelangelo was facing a man, in some sort of laboratory. The image was fuzzy, grainy, but there were cages around them.
Raphael and Leonardo frowned.
The man, wearing a lab coat covered in large, dark blotches, looked lanky and old, not like he was much of a challenge. But Michelangelo wasn't moving, his weapons drawn, ready to charge, but frozen in his spot.
Something was keeping him from attacking.
It took him a moment to recognize that the man was holding something. From the angle of the camera, it was hard to see, but he was holding something to his chest.
They appeared to be talking and next to him, Raphael made a small sound. "Is that a cat?"
Blinking, Leonardo squinted his eyes, staring at the grainy image and surely enough, there was a motion, a tail and two pointy ears appearing from behind the man's arms.
The oldest brother felt his stomach twist.
He urged his quickly typing brother on to work faster. Whatever was going on in that room wasn't going to end well if they didn't do something fast.
He just knew.
And really, Michelangelo dropped his kusarigama on the floor, lifting his hands in an appeasing gesture.
Leonardo couldn't see clearly, but Mikey looked scared.
And then it happened.
There was a quick motion, one of the man's arms jerked outward, before the other arm pulled back and hauled the cat at Michelangelo as if it was a toy. He caught it, instinctively, but Leonardo saw him fall to his knees just a second after.
The cat was dead.
Michelangelo fussed over it for a moment, maybe trying to save it, stop the blood that coated his hands now, anything.
Then, as if he had burned himself, he put it down, jumping up and scrambling back until his shell connected with the wall.
The video feed was without sound, but they knew the man was laughing. The shaking of his boney shoulders told them.
Michelangelo was pointing at him, talking, possibly screaming at him.
The man only took a large step to the side, halfway vanishing behind the edge of the screen and Michelangelo again lifted his hands, showing he was unarmed, shrinking in on himself to make himself smaller and obviously not meaning to attack.
When the man returned to the screen, he held another creature in his arms.
"Donnie, HURRY!" Leonardo hissed, already feeling the silent rage of his strong brother rub off on him. Raphael was deadly silent next to him, but Leonardo knew him better than that.
The hate radiating off of him was strong enough to create an almost physical reaction to it. Leonardo felt his skin crawl.
Oh, there would be hell unleashed if Raphael got to get his hands on that man first.
For a mere second, he was tempted to feel sorry for that man, to speak up and warn his stronger brother to leave the judgment to the human authorities. Almost. But as the second animal followed the first, hitting the youngest of the brothers square in the chest, he kept his mouth tightly closed.
No.
He would make sure Raphael would be the one dealing with that man. They both deserved that.
Focusing back on the screen, he watched as the man gestured over to Michelangelo, threatening a third animal with what seemed to be a large scalpel.
Their youngest brother moved slowly, over to a bare spot in a corner.
The man did something off screen and the ground beneath their baby brother opened up, swallowing him up. A chute of some sort, and Leonardo grit his teeth.
"Mikey!"
"I found him!" Donatello was out of his seat and out the door in a second, the remaining two brothers not even bothering to ask. They just followed, dashing down another two floors and into the room Michelangelo had been in just moments ago.
It reeked of death.
Leonardo took a moment to take in the scene before him.
The large room was lined with cages, all sorts of animals giving terrified shrieks and howls, skittering within their cages.
At least those who were still alive.
Blood covered most of the floor and most of the man still standing in the corner of the room.
Several carcasses were on the floor. Some new. Some already putrefying, filling the room with the sickeningly sweet smell of rotting flesh.
Leonardo distantly heard Donatello gag and violently empty his stomach somewhere behind him. Raphael was next to him and he could hear the leather of his sais squeak in protest at how hard his strong brother gripped his weapons.
This man was dead.
The oldest brother stepped back, not even bothering to pay any more attention to a dead man. He was far more concerned with the whereabouts of his youngest brother. Leaning over the dark duct in the ground, he tried peering down.
"Mikey? Michelangelo! Are you okay?" No answer. Just the lingering thrum of his voice vibrating off the metal lining. "MIKEY?!" He tried, louder.
Still no answer.
A look over his shoulder showed the man trying the same sick trick he had used with Michelangelo, keeping a small pet to his chest, bloodied hands holding a scalpel to the creature's neck.
Raphael didn't hesitate.
Horror crept into the man's face, but his arm wasn't quick enough to even scratch the pet's fur before sharp, pointy steel buried itself into his elbow with deadly precision.
The animal used its chance to skitter off, leaving the man defenseless.
Leonardo didn't watch as Raphael took his rage out on him. The sound of gurgling breaths and splattering blood too familiar by now.
Instead, he turned his eyes to his sickly pale but determined other brother, having found a rope to climb down that chute into the blackness below.
The smell wafting up from there was unbearable.
The way down luckily wasn't too far, and when they touched ground, it was soft. And wet.
If Michelangelo had fallen, his landing shouldn't have harmed him.
Physically, at least.
A single step was all it took to tell Leonardo everything he didn't want to know.
Carcass disposal.
They were standing on a pile of dead bodies, blood and other liquids squelching under their feet and this time, Donatello wasn't the only one who gagged.
As little as he wanted to, Leo reached for his belt, searching blindly for the glow stick he kept there.
"Mikey...?" He called, bending the plastic and shaking it until it lit up with a sharp, green glow. Immediately, there were twin groans behind him and the sound of dry-heaving.
The entire room. The entire. Large. Room... was covered with corpses. In between fur and bones were the occasional human parts and Leonardo felt his own stomach lurch.
Somehow, he managed to keep himself under control.
Michelangelo had to be somewhere here. He couldn't have gone far. There was no trace of him here, only a half-opened door.
When they finally found him, he didn't respond to them,
He just stared at the bloody ground, wide-eyed and silent.
Pale, green skin was covered in blood. Not his own. None of it was his own.
Again, Raphael was the one to act first. Yet, he moved slowly this time, carefully to not startle their silent brother further.
"Mikey, hey..." He called, soft and slow.
The youngest turned slowly, lifting his head to look at them. But he didn't seem to really see them.
His eyes were wide, too bright, too empty. There was blood on his face and in his eyes as well, tinting them pink and Leonardo had to swallow against the rising bile in his throat.
"Let's go get you home, hm? We're done here." Raphael murmured, reaching out a hand to touch Michelangelo's shoulder.
Before he even made contact, though, Michelangelo jerked away, startling all of them with a panicked scream. As if the touch would harm him.
"Mikey?!" Instinctively, Raphael lowered his hand, worry overtaking his features as he tried to figure out what had startled him so.
They all watched as Mikey looked at them, then down at himself. At the blood slowly sliding over his body and dripping onto the ground.
The first move was slow.
Michelangelo lifted a hand to wipe off some of the blood from his plastron. Instead of removing it, though, he only spread the smudges. The hitched breath that followed told them all what was happening.
His motions became hectic, jerky, violent, as he tried desperately, to get rid of the blood on his skin. "Get it off! Get it off get it off GET IT OFF!" he was positively panicking now, tears springing to his azure eyes and hands rubbing frantically over his skin.
Before he could do any damage to himself, Raphael caught his hands in a firm grip, stopping him and forcing his youngest brother to look at him. "Breathe, Mikey. Breathe. And listen to me." He tried, calm, but with a certain firmness behind his words.
It didn't work.
Michelangelo struggled, trying to free his hands, terrified cries leaving his lips.
"NO! No, the blood! The blood! You'll get-... it's all-... I-... the blood- GET IT OFF OF ME! Please, please, please..."
When Raphael didn't let go, Mikey screamed. His knees hit the ground hard, and he still struggled.
And he still screamed, unintelligible screams, even more so, when Raphael followed him down, trying to get closer.
Neither words nor gestures worked to calm the youngest down. So, with much chagrin, Raphael gave a quick, precise hit to Michelangelo's neck, knocking him out.
There wouldn't be any damage, aside from maybe another bruise, but it would give them all time to get away from here and back home where they could tend to their baby brother properly.
Leonardo watched, still rooted on his spot, as Raphael picked Mikey up, not paying attention to the blood, gently cradling the youngest to his chest as he carried him away from this place. Donatello and Leonardo followed quietly.
They way out and back to their lair was thankfully quick and uneventful.
Leonardo and Donatello left Raphael to watch over a still unconscious Michelangelo for now, preferring to pay a long and thorough visit to the showers, almost as eager to get the blood and grime off their skin as Mikey had been.
By the time they were done, Michelangelo was already about to pull out of unconsciousness.
Leonardo pulled Donatello with him to the side, knowing Raphael would be able to handle the situation for now.
At least he hoped so.
The fears stirring in his middle weren't needed, however, as the only sounds carrying over to the kitchen, where he prepared some tea for all of them, were the quiet murmur of words. Raphael picked his little brother up once more, to carry him off to the bathroom as well.
A nice and hot bath was probably the best for each of them, but even after a short shower, he felt much, much better. Bathing was for Mikey now, Donatello and he could wait.
Hours went by.
Donatello had already gone to bed, exhausted after today's events and unresisting when Leo had sent him off.
But Leonardo couldn't sleep yet. He needed to wait for his two brothers to return. Needed to see for himself that Michelangelo would be okay.
The quiet click and squeak as the bathroom door opened was so loud in the silence of the lair that the oldest brother actually jumped, nearly knocking over his empty cup.
He stood when his brothers stepped out, slowly, unsteadily and Michelangelo having to lean heavily against Raphael's side to remain upright. Leonardo swallowed, but moved closer regardless. Just when he was opening his mouth to call out to them, Raphael's eyes met his and he froze.
A small shake of head and Leonardo knew to keep his distance for now.
Raphael's jaw was tight, lips pressed into a thin line and the oldest brother knew the damage done to the youngest was far more severe than expected.
He didn't try to get closer anymore, watching with a sinking feeling how Raphael maneuvered Michelangelo into his room.
Leonardo would not forget the haunted, empty expression on Michelangelo's face.
Not ever.
Out of the four of them, Mikey was the youngest.
The most naive and childish.
A competent fighter, versatile and unique in his techniques, different to his brothers but no less skilled or successful.
But he was not as hardened as his brothers.
Not as used to or prepared for the darkness accompanying their battles. True, he loved a good fight just as any of them did. But there had always been a resentment in him, whenever he had to use more violence than he wanted to.
He was loathe to kill.
It wasn't in his nature. He was kind, he was easygoing, always up to some sort of hilarious mischief. Michelangelo was playful and still believed the world to be a wonderful place that deserved to be saved. To him, they were heroes, battling evil for the greater good.
Leonardo hoped that he would recover from the blow his fragile mind had received. Just like he did the cuts and bruises that each of them usually carried home from fights.
Guilt gnawed at him, even as Leonardo made his way back to his own room.
He should have protected his brother better.
Kept him away from evils he couldn't handle yet.
He hoped Michelangelo would soon recover, be back to his usual, playfully annoying self. Find his happiness again and soon forget about the horrors he had seen.
He didn't...
He probably never would.