Bear in mind, this story is entirely in the Mirage continuity…

Chapter 10

April unlocked the door, careful to balance the need to be quiet for her tenants against the need to alert the ninja in the apartment that all was well before stepping inside. "Mikey? We're home!"

She and Casey slipped through the door as quickly as they could, and locked it behind them. Mike wouldn't, after all, be going home that way!

"Mike?"

"Wha - ?" He peeked groggily over the back of the couch. "Oh. Hi…"

"Were you asleep?" April was surprised.

"Yeah, I put Shad down about," he checked the clock while he yawned, "three hours ago, and started watchin' a movie…"

"Hm," she looked more carefully at him. He was puffy-eyed from the impromptu nap, true, but the circles under his eyes hadn't developed just during the evening while he babysat for her and Casey! "Why don't you go back to sleep, okay? Spend the night with us?"

"No, I gotta get back – " he protested.

"You could be here when Shadow wakes up in the morning," April suggested. "You know how she fusses when she wakes up and you're gone…"

"…okay…" he relented at the thought of the toddler. "Gotta call Splinter…"

"I'll let him know, okay?" she assured him. "Just go back to sleep."

"…kay…" he was already sliding back into unconsciousness. By the time she came back with a blanket for him, he was slackly asleep again.

"He okay?" Casey nodded in the direction of the living room as he stepped out of Shadow's room. "He seemed pretty beat, to me."

"Me, too," April frowned. She called Leo to let him know that Mike was staying at the family apartment for the night. She wanted to ask if there was something going on that she should know about – was there a reason Mike looked so beat? – but let it go for the time being, figuring that it was a conversation best held in daylight.

For a long time after getting into bed, she lay there staring at nothing. Some days, she had a hard time with the idea that "life goes on" – and this was one of those days.

The Turtles and Splinter came back to New York City three months to the day after Donatello's disappearance. They didn't let her know they were coming, but just showed up one night in the kitchen, sneaking in from the hidden basement access and surprising her while she did the dishes.

She was glad to see them.

She was angry that they had given up the search.

She understood completely why they had to do it.

Things had been a little strained between the two households during the two weeks since, while they re-adjusted to life in close proximity…and to life without one member of the family. Only Shadow seemed immune to the slight tension, demanding her usual share of Mike's attention whenever he was near and fussing if she didn't get to see him when she wanted to.

For Shadow's sake as much as for their own sanity, April and Casey made arrangements for Mike to come and babysit the child while they went out.

She tried not to feel guilty for enjoying the movie – wasn't she still grieving? Hadn't a member of her family, a virtual brother to her, been declared dead recently?

April wondered if it would feel more real to her if she'd actually seen his body.

She shivered at the thought, and wrapped up more tightly in the comforters. It really wasn't possible to think that he was dead! But it was equally impossible to think that he was still alive, after all of this time with no word or sign from him.

It took her a long time to fall asleep.

She must have been asleep, though, because the numbers on the clock had changed when her eyes flew open again. She struggled up out of the comforters, panicked for no reason she could come up with in her sleep-addled thoughts.

Casey was already on his feet, though. The big man grabbed up a baseball bat and charged out into the darkened hallway.

Someone was screaming.

She was halfway to Shadow's room before she woke up enough to realize that it was Mike.

The sound choked off on the heels of that realization.

"Mike?" Casey loomed in the narrow doorway to the living room, blocking her view. "Mikey, buddy, you okay?"

She forced her way past him, noting his lack of resistance as she did – it must not be too bad, for him to give way to her – and assessed the situation for herself.

Mike was on his feet in the middle of the living room, wild-eyed. The coffee table was overturned by his feet. The TV remote must've been involved in the chaos, too, because the screen was playing snow and static just behind the Turtle.

"Mike? Are you okay?" She stepped closer, carefully.

He gasped and backed up, one arm coming up in a warding gesture. Casey grabbed her shoulder to pull her back, and she shook him off.

"Mikey, it's okay. Wake up!"

He blinked. Dropped his arm. Looked around the room. "Aw, geez…" he whispered.

It didn't take long to set the room to rights. It took far longer to pull the story out of the reluctant Turtle.

"So you've been having these nightmares ever since Don disappeared?" April handed him aspirin and water for the headache that knotted his brow up, and sat down next to him on the couch.

He shrugged deeper into the blanket and avoided her gaze while he obeyed the wordless command. "Yeah, sorta. It doesn't happen every night." He looked up anxiously when Casey came back from checking on Shadow. "I didn't wake her up, did I?"

"Nah, she can sleep through a bomb blast," Casey waved this off.

"But it happens a lot of nights, doesn't it?" she guessed shrewdly. "And when it does, you don't just…roll over and go back to sleep, do you?"

"No," a small shake of his head. "It's really hard to sleep, after."

"Mike…what is this dream?"

If he could've pulled even further away from her, he would have, she could tell. She shot Casey a look. He understood, and climbed to his feet. "Well, I gotta get to work early tomorrow, guys – let me know if anybody needs me, or something…" and he went off to bed with a show of carefully closing the bedroom door behind him.

Alone, now, April tried again. "Mike…what are you dreaming?"

He shrugged and went on avoiding her eyes.

"Is it about Don?" she pressed.

Still no answer. But no negative shake of the head, either – she felt like she was on the right track.

"You have a lot of nightmares, though, don't you? You like to give yourself nightmares. I've seen you do it, with monster movies and scary books and that sort of thing," she studied him as he looked off into the middle distance away from her. "So these must be different."

He shuddered, then. "Yeah…different."

She fell silent. She could tell he was getting close to crumbling – every instinct she'd developed over years of dealing with the Turtles told her he was nerving himself up to finally break down and tell her what she wanted to hear. All she had to do, then, was stay quiet and wait for Mike to talk into the silence.

He squirmed a little in the blanket, and shot her a covert look. She went on waiting, sure now of her game: the silence was making him more nervous than the idea of telling her.

And finally, he broke down and told her what she wanted to know: "It's the same dream all the time, right? It's…I'm in this place. I should know it, but I don't. I can't see enough of it to recognize anything…I know this place, really. Or at least I think I do – maybe I've just dreamed it so many times that it feels like I really know it. But it's a place, with walls and doors and people. I can't see the people, but I hear them. And there's a noise, off to one side, like a crowd at a baseball game or something…I don't like it, and I don't know why.

"I go through this doorway, every time. I can't stop myself. I don't even really want to, because…because Donnie's in there." His eyes flicked up to meet hers, briefly. "He's in there, and he's…it's bad, and I don't even know why! He's doing that thing, where he's on the ground with his arms and legs tucked up under his shell, know what I mean?"

She shook her head, wordlessly. Mike clambered out of the blanket and folded himself down onto the floor. "Like this," he demonstrated. He bent forward over his folded legs, pulling his arms in tightly enough to hide them under his shell, and dropping his head to the floor. It was a pose that disturbed her, and she was glad when Mike uncoiled and came back to the couch.

"We can't pull into our shells anymore, o' course," he told her uncomfortably. "The arm bones and leg bones are too long, and the muscle structure…well, anyway, that's as close as we can get. And it's only something we do…we've done it since we were kids…when we're sick or really, really upset about something. Like, 'depressed'-upset. Even I don't do that very often, not even when I have a nightmare.

"But Donnie – he's like that. On the floor in this room in this weird place. And I try to put my hands on him, to get him out of that position, but my hands go right through him. It's like I'm a ghost. Or maybe he is, I dunno…he can't hear me, either. I call him and call him, and he doesn't move.

"And then something starts coming into the room. It's like a pipe broke somewhere and the water's leaking in, right? Only the water, it's really blood. Blood starts coming into the room along the floor, really slow at first. I don't know where it's coming from. Don, he doesn't move. And when the puddle gets big enough that it touches him, it starts coming faster. And I'm yelling at him, really getting scared now, because the blood is going to make him sick where it touches him. I dunno how…and it's not until the blood starts really pouring in that I realize that it's going to drown him. He's going to drown, right there in front of me, in this room full of blood, and there's not a damn thing I can do to stop it – " He shuddered, then, before finishing up by saying simply, "And then I wake up."

"Screaming?"

He looked away again. "Not always. Not as much as I used to. It's gotten easier to wake myself up before I actually get that far…"

"Does Splinter know about this?"

He laughed shortly. "Yeah, everybody knows. I woke 'em up enough times…"

She suppressed a wave of irritation – was she, or wasn't she, a member of the family, damn it? – because it wasn't going to help the situation at hand. She made a mental note to hash that out with the family collectively, the next chance she got, and brought her attention firmly back to Michaelangelo. "Does he think that there's any chance that…maybe…these aren't just dreams? Is it possible that you're actually not dreaming?"

"It's gotta just be a dream," he frowned. "I had nightmares alla time, back when we first went to the farm – you did, too, right?"

He had a point there. It was even the same dream, over and over, that robbed her of the ability to sleep. She pressed the issue anyway, unwilling to give up the idea. "Are you sure it's just a dream? Could it be, I dunno, some sort of, of contact from Don?" It felt stupid the minute it left her mouth.

"Nah," Mike shot it down with an uncomfortable shrug. "It's a dream. If there were some kinda psychic connection or somethin'…well, wouldn't that be more up Splinter's alley than mine? Or even Leo, it would be more Leo's deal – he's into all of that astral plane stuff. Not me. If Donnie were able to reach out that way – and I'm not sayin' he can't, because I have seen Master Splinter do some freaky stuff in my life, like switchin' bodies with an old guy in Japan and crap like that – why would I be the one who got the message?" Strangely, he seemed totally relaxed about the idea that someone else might be able to have some kind of unconventional contact with his missing brother – as long as that person wasn't him.

April shook her head. "That still doesn't rule out the idea that it could be something more than just a dream, Mike. In fact, you're really just making my point for me. It's possible, isn't it?"

"Not me," he shrugged. "It's not really my thing. And besides, even it was happening – wouldn't Master Splinter know about it? Even he thinks these are just dreams."

"Ah." Now that was crushing.

Mike stood and stretched. "Well, now that I've ruined your night, too, I'm gonna head home."

"It's four in the morning," she objected.

"Yeah, I gotta get up in a few hours for practice," he grimaced. He folded the blanket up and headed for the basement door. Halfway there, he paused and looked back at her. "April?" His expression was solemn.

She looked up from her folded hands. "Mm?"

"Thanks." And then he was gone.