The Drumming Song
It was a dream. It had to be a dream, right? Just like…like Papa. He dreamed that Papa died, that Super Shredder stabbed him through the heart and threw him off a roof. When was that dream? A year ago? He couldn't save Papa. All the life was gone, the blood was on the ground pooling around them, soaking his kneepads. What the fuck. What the fuck. He saved Donnie that one time, Donnie's heart had stopped and his body had broken, and Mikey had healed him, right? So…so why was his sensei, his father, his dad, his daddy, his papa—
"Mikey?"
It was like a shuddering blow, shaking the dream. The voice was so loud, so intense. He turned away from it. He couldn't move. Some part of him turned away anyway.
"Mikey, please, I know you're coming back, please, just acknowledge me. Please. We're scared, Mikey, it's been so long. Wake up. Please, Sunshine."
Wait. Only one person called him that.
Wait.
He wasn't dreaming.
It wasn't a dream.
It had never been a dream.
In his mindscape, Michelangelo screamed.
He screamed, long and hard, and the silvery blue space around him opened and he fell, tears erupting from his eyes hot like the lava he'd fallen toward and Leo had saved him from like Tarzan. He remembered that, all too well, right before they had finally gone back in time and warned Splinter so he had kicked Shredder's butt so hard Shredder had been badly wounded and taken mutagen to super-size himself and—
It's my fault. All of it. From the beginning, I set it in motion. I made friends with Chris Bradford. Hell, it was probably my shuriken that Tiger Claw found that alerted Shredder. I messed up so much. Why am I still around? When we were at that Kraang hideout, way back, when nobody wanted to team up with me, I should have left. I should've just run. Like at the farmhouse, when I was dancing with Kitty and then they yelled at me and I ran away and found Napolean, why did I go back? I'm the source. I'm the cause of all our bad days, I'm the biggest screw-up ever…
He struck something solid. The floor of the white place. He was flat on his face and the wind had been knocked out of him. The was a powerfully agonizing throb on his right side, like a broken rib and a bleeding lung. He concentrated and it faded slightly. Heat radiated down on his head. Wheezing, Mikey sat up, seiza style even as the scars on his legs protested and pulled. He looked up.
Ho shit.
He had never seen a deity incarnation angry before.
Hecate was angry.
Next to her stood Loki and Apollo and Hermes. They looked angry.
"Hamato Michelangelo," Hecate hissed, like a cat, "if you ever think those things about yourself again, I will make you stand in the crossroads on your head and recite that epic fanfiction that Homer human wrote."
Mikey blinked. "Which one? Iliad? Oddessey."
Hecate's golden eyes flashed. "Both."
"Um…"
Loki crouched, grinning widely. "Ever read my saga, boy? In the original tongue?"
Michelangelo whimpered. "Dude, that's punishment."
"That's the point, Little One," Apollo piped up, kneeling down and sitting back on his ankles in the same seiza pose. "Where are all these self doubts coming from? Is it because you nearly died a few days ago?"
"I…what?"
"You must remember. The bullet?"
Lava-like pain flared through his right side again. Mike winced.
He remembered.
He and Raphael had gone topside to get pizzas, to celebrate their eighteenth Mutation Day. The day before, he and Donatello had gone to Gaia's apartment to spent a lazy day of studying for Gaia's finals followed by hours of sex and recording brain activity during sex for science, because it was Donnie, and that was how this whole polyamory thing had kind of started, the physical, although Leo and Raph were still astral plane sex with Gaia only and Gaia had pegged Leonardo as asexual anyway, same as April, and it had been a wonderful day because he had played with Gaia's hair that was now past her hips and Gaia had given Donatello a full body massage with telekinetic assist that had left Don like Jell-O, and Mikey had laughed.
And the next day they had gone back to the lair to set up the party and everyone was there, and Raph had been in a particulary great mood because Y'Gythgba was still around, his Mona Lisa, she and Freya had become friends, and Mona even approved of the spiritual sex therapy with Gaia, and sometimes she joined…
And Mikey had been babbling about toppings as the two of them had made their way to that new pizzeria across town, and then those Purple Dragons had shown up, robbing a pharmacy, and there had been a lot more Purple Dragons than Mikey had remembered.
And one of them was running around with a gun. Mikey had not noticed but he should have, he really really should have, he was the family telepath. It had not been until later that he had identified it as a Glock 17. He would have giggled, had his lung not been filling with blood.
See, he had gone one way and Raph had gone the other and they had knocked down every gang member, and Mikey had been doing a slow victory dance, taking his time, and he should have sensed it coming. But sometimes clairvoyance and clairsentience just don't work like in fiction. And the guy had lifted the gun just enough.
And Mikey had felt this strong, blazing punch to his rib cage, half a second before the air cracked with a gunshot. They don't sound like they do in the movies.
Michelangelo had blinked, frowning, hand automatically moving to press against his plastron. He looked down. Blood spilling over his hand.
Huh. How about that. More scars to add to my canvas.
"MIKEY!" And Raph had screamed, barreling toward him, and Mikey had swayed and dropped to his knees, eyes trained on the probably very young Purple Dragon whose hand had been shaking, and his power had struck out without his command and the kid had flopped unconscious, and the pistol – Glock, a Glock 17 – had dropped from his hand. And then Raph had been holding him, a torn jacket from one of the gang members in his hand being pressed against the wound.
Mikey had looked up at him, from his suddenly prone position. "…didn't sense it…"
"S'okay, Mikey, it's okay, you'll be okay, just hang in there," and Raph's face had been very pale, eyes very wide in pure horror.
"Burns," Mikey had muttered, sucking in a rather cold breath, "Ow. Raphie, 'm cold."
He remembered Raph slapping his cheeks, urging him to stay the fuck awake. He had been tired, and cold, and the telekinesis had been sluggish as though it too had been shot (had any of them been shot with bullets before?) and was pulsing in the back of his head. Raph's T-Phone had been glowing from the emergency panic signal, and then time had gone wobbly, because the Shellraiser had suddenly parked next to them and there were lots of hands on him, there was Donnie's hand pressing on his wound, and he was being carried, and he coughed a little to hard and spilled blood all down his chin, and Raph had screamed something and Leo had screamed something and Casey had screamed something and then Donnie had said, very very clearly, "Gaia, can you stabilize him?" And then the voice of his beloved Kitten had been like sunlight bursting through a cloud, and she had been hovering over him, and she had said, "I can get the bullet out but I'll need time to seal the internal bleeding" and then…
Then what? Then he had been floating in that deep, dark, extreme astral plane where healing energy darted like minnows in a navy blue ocean, like the one he and Gaia had found way way back when he had gone comatose after killing the Shredder (but he hadn't, not really, because Saki had come back as Super Shredder and murdered Papa and they had never cried so much, and what had been the point, he had nearly killed himself and Shredder hadn't even died and he just wanted to stay where he was and never move-)
"There's the memory," Hermes said, satisfactorily, and Michelangelo gasped and struggled to his feet. The gods in front of him smirked at each other and looked at him.
"Well, that sucked," he muttered.
"You had better leave those bad thoughts behind," Loki said with a growl.
Mikey just grumbled and folded his arms.
Apollo reached out and put his hands on Mikey's plastron. The pain vanished. "Could have been worse, you know. You could have lost an arm."
"Huh?" Mikey tilted his head.
"Sorry, wrong timeline. Time sometimes folds like pleats." The golden man patted his left shoulder. "You'll be all right. Just be careful."
Smiling wanly, Mikey shrugged against his hand and felt an odd phantom tingle along his left arm.
"Whoops," Apollo said, "residual alternate timeline energy, lemme get that off," and he petted the air above Mikey's arm.
When he stepped back, Hermes was glaring at him. Mikey stared in confusion, before he sensed the familiar pull that would take him away from the astral plane and back into his body.
Michelangelo slammed back into himself breathlessly and the mere fact that he was corporeal sent shockwaves of agony through him. A full body shudder had him whimpering.
"Mikey? Honey, it's okay, you're okay." Gaia's voice was a soothing salve. "Donnie, can you increase the morphine? He's in agony. I can only do so much, I'm exhausted."
Gradually, his body stopped shivering and clenching. Slowly, he opened his eyes. Amber cat eyes met his, and a soft human hand stroked his cheek. "There you are. Hi, Sunshine."
"Hi Kitten," he croaked. "Did I miss the party?"
Auburn eyes surrounded by purple cloth came into view. "We put it on hold just for you."
Mikey frowned. "W' bout the pizza?"
The two of them burst out laughing. "Rhea can go get more pizza now that you're awake. We put the cakes in the fridge." And Donatello wiped his eyes.
Their laughter seemed to attract a crowd, because Mikey was abruptly lifted gently into Raph's arms, his brother nuzzling his neck. "Fuck, Mikey, don't scare us like that, I really thought you were dead…"
Mikey managed a snort. "Dude, for me death is like a long nap ever since that shit with the Alchemist."
Raphael's very solemn, very dark green eyes stared at him. "That'd better be true."
Mikey kept up his trademark grin. The morphine, flowing through him, was making it easy. "Bro, I'm so awesome I have personal gods yelling at me to live."
Raph finally smiled. Over his shoulder, Casey blinked. "So, we're still having that party, right?"
Someone whacked him lightly on the head.
Mikey giggled, ignoring the ache in his lungs. Gaia kissed him gently, and he savored the coffee on her tongue and the cinnamon gloss on her lips. "I'll tell my sister to go get pizza."
"No bullet toppings," Mikey drawled. She just hummed, smiling, and kissed him again.
Michelangelo sighed. Ah, his family. Forever.
