(1st POV Donatello)

It was driving me crazy, what did Tigerclaw mean when he said that Mikey was the only reason we hadn't been caught? It has been a little over two weeks since we saw hide or shell of Mikey. To be honest, none of us were doing good. At first, we worked methodically, looking for any clues that he might have left at all. The longer it took us to find anything, the longer we went without talking to each other. If we talked, it always ended up in a fight. I don't know why exactly, maybe it was just stress and worry from missing Mikey and not knowing if he was ok, I know for sure that I felt like a failure. He would be with us right now if I had been better. After sensei passed, Leo made sure that we still had daily training sessions together. Most of us spent some time going over our training manuals from sensei on our own time. I barely touched it and threw myself into my work, refusing to deal with him being gone any longer than I had to.

It is ok Donnie, we all deal with grief differently, as long as we deal with it. I am here for you when you need to talk.

I felt a small smile as I remembered when Mikey would magically appear when I was about to breakdown, like he knew I needed him. A thought dawned on me.

Did he do the same for the others? Did we ever do the same for him?

The guilt I felt as I can not remember a time that I had comforted him since after we killed the Shredder. He was just so happy all the time.

I want to see his smile again.

I could see his smile again, I realized as I looked at the blinking light on the security camera. When I had put it in, we agreed to not to view what was recorded while we were home, only what was recorded when we were gone. Except for emergencies. This was definitely an emergency. I rolled to my computer a typed in the password to the camera logs. It might be hours and hours worth of footage, but I was gonna figure out what Tigerclaw meant.

We had put the camera in about a week after killing Shredder, realizing how anxious we were about leaving the cave with no one there but no one wanting to stay behind.

It would be sooooo awesome if we could just see inside when we weren't here, like a psychic! Mikey had exclaimed. It is what had given me the idea for the camera.

Could he have WANTED me to put cameras in? Why would he say it like that if he did? I wasn't…manipulated by Mikey, was I? I shook my head. No way, I know him better than that, Tigerclaw's words are just messing with me. So far, nothing about the footage seemed abnormal. Then I began to notice constant activity in the dojo around three in the morning. I switched to the camera in there and saw Mikey doing complex exercises and routines I had never seen him do before. Unlike how perfectly Leo performed his Katas, Mikey flowed from movement to movement, like water. Like it was as natural as breathing. I watched as he would flip a page in his orange manual and continue his exercise. He would stop around four and clean up, then return to his room. Always a half hour before Leo would leave his room to begin his morning routine before the rest of us woke up. Then after Leo had begun his meditation, Mikey would go to the kitchen and cook breakfast, just in time for the rest of us to get up. I had always thought Leo woke Mikey up. Then the day would go as normal, but I began to notice that Mikey tended to be the one reaching out to us. Getting us to watch movies, or play games, or anything together besides training and patrol. The way we talked to him began to bug me. We were pretty much adults, all of us, but we continued to treat mikey like a child. He let us. He acted that way. Why would he act that way? Many flashbacks crossed my mind, but one of the most prominent ones was our first night on the surface, when Mikey tried to tell us about the Kraang being an alien in a robot. None of us even thought to believe him. We are mutated turtles for shells sake, and we didn't think that was even feasible. What really caught my interest is after patrol, when the rest of us would go wind down and go to bed, Mikey would leave the lair. I almost didn't notice at first and had to go back multiple times because he expertly avoided the cameras. The only thing I actually saw was a turtle shaped shadow, and I couldn't find Mikey any where else in the lair. Why would he leave? What was he doing.

The most useless turtle is the reason we haven't found the lair yet.

Tigerclaw's voice rang in my head so loud I had to sit back in my seat from the shock of my realization. Mikey was covering our tracks.

Keep your brothers out of the multiple traps we have set…

Every time Mikey would disappear during a mission and reappear slightly more out of breath. Everytime he pulled a stupid stunt that somehow worked in our favor, or even when they didn't, they might have gone a lot worse if Mikey didn't 'mess up'. I always thought we were skilled and had luck on our side, which we were, but not all of our luck was luck, but the hidden skill of our youngest.

The others will not believe me, but it is the truth. It makes too much logical sense, no matter how much it goes against everything I know.

After I learned this nugget of truth, I didn't continue watching the normal everyday film. I skipped to the night Mikey disappeared. I only knew what my brothers told me, I needed to see it for myself.

'...Maybe if you trained Mikey better instead of babying him, then we wouldn't have ended up in this situation!...'

I felt the cold anger start to build in my throat but continued to watch, the freezing burn growing stronger and stronger. It quickly turned into the taste of death in my mouth as I watched Mikey wake up and view the scene I just saw. I could see the heartbreak on his face. His face turned to surprise as a piece of paper fell out of his wrist wraps. He pulled out his Tphone for a moment before putting it back and killing any emotions on his face.

What have we done? I thought as I stopped the screen and stared at our sun, without a drop of light.