Author's Note: Thousand apologies for the late update! Between studying and work, I didn't have time to continue the series until now. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy it. Writing about the Turtles' brotherhood is fun. Comments & reviews are welcome, thank you!
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It was easy for Donatello to think Michelangelo had no brain.
Donnie and Mikey were always on the polar opposite of the personality poll since they were little turtles. Donnie was studious, he likes to read and much focused on obtaining knowledge. Mikey was the poster-child of hyperactive, loving television and video games and the only books he would ever deigned to read were the ones with more pictures than words. He had an attention span the size of a microcell, whereas Donnie could spend hours, maybe days, in his lab trying to solve a problem. Mikey was loud and outgoing, whereas Donnie liked the quiet and seclusion as it allowed him to think, and before April and Casey he never really wondered what it's like to have friends outside his own family.
Donnie didn't think he and Mikey had anything much in common.
Which was rather ironic, considering Mikey's favourite place in the world other than the kitchen or the living room was Donnie's lab. Donnie had tried many times to bar him from his lab, given Mikey's reputation to break and destroy things he could not understand. But Mikey would always find a way to get into the lab, or fiddle with something in the garage. And if he yelled at Mikey, Leonardo or Raphael would always come to the orange-banded turtle's defence. Despite Mikey spending his days generally irritating everyone within his vicinity, their older brothers only consented to giving him annoyed looks or the occasional reprimanding. Leo and Raph often give Mikey a wide liberty when it came to misbehaving or getting into their personal spaces.
Donnie found it extremely hard to tolerate Mikey foolishness.
It wasn't as if he needed to mess around with another one of his retro-mutagen experiments. He just wanted to see what colour the smoke would look like once he added chemical A with chemical B. Which would be a huge mess, a mess that Donnie would need to clean up later and caused him weeks of backlog.
Mikey was an idiot and a bother. And if being at home was bad enough, it irked Donnie to no end when Leo often paired him with Mikey during missions.
This whole A-team, B-team thing was ridiculous. Leo and Raph at least had the mind and skills that complimented each other, and they always left him to babysit their youngest brother, who had recklessness similar to Raph's but with even less common sense. In missions, Donnie's main task was often to man the various machinations that they stumbled upon. Sometimes the technology required intense thinking, and Mikey's incessant babbling wasn't exactly helping. Worse still was when he thought it would be fun to treat the buttons like they were some sort of keyboard to be pressed at will. It was always Mikey who gave them away with his clumsiness, Mikey who always got captured by the enemies, Mikey whose scatter-brained schemes almost always got them into trouble.
Donnie was no saint, and in his crueller moments he wondered why they even bothered bringing Mikey along anywhere. It would be much safer and more productive for everyone if they all went and Mikey was left home with his video games.
He never dared to voice out his opinion, and he never knew why. Maybe it's because Sensei would launch into one of his lectures about them being brothers and yada, yada. Leo would too, or maybe he would just ignore Donnie's notion because Mikey could just turn on that look of his and Leo would give in and let him go. And Raph, well, Raph would simply growl at Donnie for being so mean.
It wasn't until their visit to Dimension X that Donnie had full appreciation of their baby brother. Mikey was like a different turtle there, a combination of every good quality possessed by his brothers. Leo's steady leadership, Raph's strength, Donnie's intelligence. And there was something else too, something entirely his own -his wackiness and his ability to see the world in an entirely different perception.
The night after they had escaped from Dimension X with Leatherhead was the night when Donnie stood by the door of Mikey's room and took a long look at his sleeping brother (Mikey had forgotten to lock his door for some reason), who lay sprawling on his bed and snoring cheerfully. He wondered if Mikey's amazing persona was all Dimension X's doing, or if he had underestimated him all along.
Over time, since that night, he found himself not really minding that Mikey was always at his elbow whenever they were in his lab. Sure, he would answer exasperatedly whenever Mikey asked a stupid question or snap if he broke his concentration, but as long as he knew he had locked the more dangerous chemicals on a cupboard, Donnie was fine with Mikey hanging out in the lab (he did, however, draw a line when Mikey decided to bring his skateboard in).
And one day, he heard Mikey recite the entire periodic table in a form of a rap song. He turned and asked him how on earth did he manage to memorise the entire table by himself.
"I didn't", said Mikey cheerfully. "You taught it to me, D. I just made a song out of it."
Donnie watched Mikey dance about the lab with his arms flailing around. Taught. He remembered how Mikey had single-handedly saved them all from the Parasitic Wasp months ago. Donnie had only managed to give him halted instructions, being infected by the Wasp. And Mikey had prepared the antidote while being infected himself.
He also recalled how when he had lost his intelligence after the Snakeweed and Creep attack, Mikey had prepared the antidote purely from the memory of watching Donnie preparing the said antidote.
It was at that moment when he understood why Leo always wanted him to pair up with Mikey. Despite his inattentiveness, Mikey was just as curious about the world as Donnie was. He was also eager to learn and thirsted for knowledge. Except where Donnie was content with reading and the quiet, Mikey needed to experience things, banging and fiddling with everything in his path in order to understand what they were and how they work. Once he had the full understanding of anything, Mikey was just as much of a genius as he is.
Donnie thought of all the times Mikey had latched himself to him, watching, absorbing, learning. And all those times, Donnie had seen him as an idiot and a bother.
Quietly, repentantly, he shed a small tear at the corner of his eye, thinking of all the nasty thoughts he had ever had for Mikey, and silently resolved to make it all up to him.
If Leo spoils Mikey and Raph protects him, Donnie will be his teacher, and give him all the knowledge in the world.
Author's Note 2:
Another apology if this chapter felt a little all over the place and not as put-together as Leo's and Raph's.
I guess I also painted Donnie as a little mean in this one. Truth is, it was hard for me to find really significant Donnie-Mikey brotherly moments during the first two seasons of the 2012 series, since Donnie is basically a jerk who cares more about April than his brothers (I love you Donnie, but that move in "Target April O'Neil"? Not Cool).
I had to go back and really comb through every episode to find it. Thank goodness for more recent ones in season 3.
Next up ~~ Mikey!
