A Million Miles Apart

A/N: Happy (late) 4th anniversary of A Million Miles Apart! Wow, I can't believe it's been over four years since I started this story! It's crazy how time passes. I want to thank everyone who's still reading this story and have stayed patient with me after all the long space between updates and just how damn LONG this story is. Seriously, I looked over all my chapters on Microsoft Word and counted the pages and it's over 500 FREAKING A4 PAGES! Man, that's longer than a few Harry Potter books, and they're not even in A4 pages.

Also, yeah it's been very hard to write this chapter for some reason, so I'm sorry it took as long as it did. Though I'm not going to promise to do better next time, since I'm good at promising to do better only to not be able to follow through on that promise, either due to writer's block or no motivation to write. I can only promise to try to do better.

Anyway, I hope you'll like this chapter and please review, favorite and follow!

Chapter 70, Nightmares or a Psychic Link?

I woke up on the floor of a big room, still in my pajamas and my hair down. I blinked and tried looking around and to figure out where I was- it looked like some kind of bar or a pub, but not one that I recognized. I wasn't sure if it was even in New York, but then again I hadn't exactly been a partier, especially not at bars.

I crawled to my feet and looked around at all the people that were dancing around me, and then blinked when I got a closer look at them because none of them were human. Sure, some of them were close, but they either had different colored skin, pointy ears or other body parts that no normal human I had ever seen had. The rest of them were so very clearly not human and I wasn't even sure they were mutants, since they didn't look like any biological creature I had ever seen. And there were so many of them! Big and small, thin and fat, friendly-looking and hostile-looking. They all looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. Maybe they were aliens? I had had dreams about the Kraang; maybe these creatures were connected to them?

None of the 'aliens' in the room seemed to notice me, despite me standing in the center of the room with a lamp right over my head. They were either talking amongst themselves or dancing to the music pumping out of the loudspeakers on the walls or standing at the bar with drinks in their hands.

But then, suddenly, the lights flickered and the room went pitch black and I couldn't see a thing. I barely had time to blink before the lights flickered on again, but once my eyes had adjusted again, I made a sound somewhere between a horrified gasp and a terrified scream.

It was the same room as before, but now the music was gone, parts of the ceiling had fallen in, floorboards were cracked and broken under it and electric wires were hanging from the ceiling with sparks flying left and right. But the worst part was all of the bodies lying around me, and the blood that covered the floor and the walls. The iron-like smell stung in my nose and I had to cover my mouth to keep myself from throwing up. Tears stung in my eyes and I tried to back away from the scene, only to step in a small puddle of blood, and when I looked down at it, I saw a dead man with four sets of glazed eyes staring up at me in terror, the top of his large skull crushed by the caved-in ceiling.

I shrieked and flew back, my hands still covering my mouth and more tears falling down my cheeks. The lights flickered again, but it didn't go dark around me; the other end of the room went black. I looked over at it, squinting a little to try and see if there was anyone there and caught sight of a silhouette in there, though it wasn't easy to see who or what it was.

'What is this? Did I fall asleep watching Space Fights again?'

Then the lights went out for a two seconds again before coming back on. This time the scream got lodged in my throat my whole body froze. I couldn't move or scream or gasp or make a sound. My hands had fallen from my mouth and my arms were now hanging limply by my sides, my feet were frozen to the floor and my eyes stuck on the very familiar yet horrifying shape in front of me.

Donnie was standing in front of me, but it wasn't really Donnie. His posture was stiff, his hands clenched and head slightly lowered. His face was a mask of anger, heartache and pain and his eyes were zeroed in on me. But the thing that terrified me the most was the fact that he was COVERED in dark, thick, crimson blood. For just a moment I felt unsure whether it was Donnie I was looking at and not some kind of twisted monster, because the mutant in front of me looked nothing like my dead best friend.

He started to walk towards me, slowly and stiffly. "You did this to me, April," he said, slowly raising a hand to his face and slowly pulling his mask off, blood starting to pour over any previously untouched skin. But I barely noticed that. Instead I saw the three, bright red scars that covered his face, one of them just barely missing his eye.

Donnie clenched his mask in his fist so tightly that it shook. His eyes remained cold and hard, a look I had never seen on his face. "It's all because I TRUSTED you! I thought YOU would save ME for once!"

I backed away, hoping to get away from this abomination that looked like my best friend, but he just kept stalking closer.

"But that was just too much to ask for, wasn't it? Too much to ask my best friend to catch me when I fall for once, huh? Too much to ask that you be there for me for once in your life?"

I opened my mouth but couldn't speak, could barely even breathe. My eyes were locked on him in horror; his blood-drenched body and his almost lifeless eyes. He was only a few feet away from me now, the blood almost dripping on my feet, and I took another step back to avoid it.

"Because that's the way it always is, isn't it?" Donnie continued and while his voice was even there was a sense of danger there too- the calm before the storm. "Always gotta put yourself first, right? And when things don't go the way you want them too, you take it out on the people around you! And when someone else needs your help you can't be bothered to lift a finger, can you?"

He chuckled a mirthless little laugh that made my skin crawl. His eyes seemed hollow and empty and his body was stiff and it made him look like some kind of robot. But there was also something… evil in there too. Like this was how Donnie would look if he had no heart, no love or compassion in his life.

A Dark Donnie.

Donnie smirked and it made him look deranged. "You can lie to yourself all you want, April, but we both know the truth. You could have saved me. You could have prevented all of this from happening if you'd actually cared about me and had bothered to help me for once. But no, that was just too much to ask from my BEST FRIEND."

I swallowed but my mouth and throat felt completely dry. My stomach twisted tightly with guilt, because wasn't this what I had been telling myself for months now? Had I not been replaying that moment in my head a million times, asking myself why I didn't hold on? Why had I let go of him? Even if I hadn't been strong enough to pull him away from the portal on my own, I could have held on long enough for the others to find a way to help.

All of this could have been avoided if I had been stronger. If I had been able to actually help my best friend.

Suddenly Donnie seemed to snap and got up in my face and I was unable to move away from him. He yelled, "IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT, APRIL!" and the room suddenly burst into flames around us and they were closing in-

I jerked awake and sat up in my bed with a loud gasp, my heart pounding hard in my chest. I couldn't breathe around the fear. The nightmare still had my lungs in a vice grip.

Because that was all it was, right? A nightmare caused by lingering feelings of guilt and trauma? I should just leave it alone and go back to sleep, right?

Only it wasn't that easy. Because even if those feelings had been there for months now, it wasn't that easy to shake off the thoughts that I could have done something different that day. How I could have done something, anything, to make sure Donnie didn't die, even if all I really could have done was to hold his hand and try my hardest not to let go until the others could help. At least that would have been something.

But instead he had literally slipped out of my grip and I had been absolutely powerless to stop him from falling into that portal. And no matter how much Splinter and the others reassured me and said that they didn't blame me for what had happened that day, nothing could ease that guilt. After everything he had done for me since we first met, it felt like I had let him down in the worst possible way. Especially since- on that first day we met- he had caught me, saved me from falling. And this was how I had repaid him for everything he'd done to help me and my family.

What a sick joke.

I sighed and lay back down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Tears started to fall from my eyes and ran down my face and into my ears. I clenched the covers tightly until my knuckles turned white and my nails almost broke through the fabric.

There had been something else about that dream that unnerved me. It hadn't really felt like a dream, at least not like my usual ones. It had felt a bit too… real. I'd had dreams and nightmares that had deeper meanings before, but it wasn't always clear that's what they were before the event it was warning against or whatever it was trying to tell me actually happened.

But I knew I had psychic powers and they did tell me things that had helped before, like when people were close by or watching me and my friends, and I had once been able to read the Kraang's thoughts when the turtles and I broke into TCRI, and I had somehow defeated the Kraang that were trying to steal my DNA, even though I still have no idea what I had done. Either way, I had more or less accepted that I could hear and see things others couldn't, but I didn't always know how to use these skills- or control them.

So what if my dreams were trying to tell me something else with this dream? What if they were trying to tell me something about Donnie with this nightmare? But what could they mean if that were the case? That Donnie blamed me from beyond the grave? That seemed like a bit of a stretch, but, hey, maybe there is an afterlife; what did I know? Or maybe just something about what had actually happened to him? Maybe after he had landed on the other side of the portal, he'd ended up bleeding and got caught in a fire?

I shuddered at the thought and shook my head to clear those thoughts. No, I didn't even want to think of what could have caused his death, but I could only hope it was painless and quick.

And whatever my dreams meant, I didn't have time to sit around and feel sorry for myself right now. The guys and Splinter needed me to be a solid rock for them while they regained their footing after everything that they had been through. I may have lost my best friend, but they had lost a brother and son. I could sit and feel sorry for myself when I knew for a fact that they would be alright.

All of them.

Raph had- albeit reluctantly- accepted that Donnie was gone and wasn't going to come back, so he was on the right track of becoming better. It was hard for him and it hurt that it had caused him so much pain, but he needed to face reality. It was a painful but necessary hurt that would help him in the long run.

Mikey and Master Splinter were already on the way to improvement even if they were still hurting.

So that only left Leo.

I sighed and slowly got back under the covers. 'First help Leo and make sure he'll be okay, then focus on dreams and nightmares and what they mean.'

I suppose it was kinda fitting that it was raining day in and day out. I mean, all things considered and after all we had been through, it seemed fitting that the days were just as grey as I felt. Sure, Master Splinter still refused to let us go outside and Mikey and Raph were growing more and more restless every day, but I just couldn't bring myself to care that much about it.

Honestly, I couldn't bring myself to care much about anything lately. Ever since I woke up in the farmhouse, my energy and will to do anything had simply drained away, more and more every day. My appetite had diminished; even I had noticed how much weight I had lost in the last couple of weeks, and no matter how tired I felt I just couldn't sleep at all. Well, I could now, but only because the others insisted on giving me a shot of sedatives every night just to make sure I would get some rest. But even then, I still had dark circles around my eyes and still felt so tired that all I could do was sit in my chair and stare into the fire or at the rain, contemplating everything that had brought me to this point. Every wrong turn, every mistake, every stupid action that led me to losing a brother, tearing my family apart and breaking my heart for a second time.

Yes, it had hurt when Karai broke my heart that first time when I had been stupid enough to trust her in the Kraang facility. Yes, it had hurt to know she had just used me to get what she wanted. But this- this was something else entirely. Having your heart broken because of rejection is one thing, and while it hurts, it's nowhere near the heartache that comes with this kind of betrayal. As if it's not enough to lose someone you've loved and cared about for so many years, but to find out that a person you've wanted to help and believe in turned out to be responsible for it and had absolutely no regret or remorse for their actions… it hurts on a completely different plane. And that's not even taking into consideration everything I had done.

I took a shaky breath and leaned back in my seat, staring out the window and the rain pouring down before turning back to the warm fire instead. It was the only source of warmth in my life right now. The days felt so cold and empty now and fire was the only comfort I could find.

I sighed and closed my eyes, taking my thoughts back to how my life had looked only six months ago, after that first time we had defeated the Kraang. I had been so strong, stood tall among my brothers and had had confidence in my abilities as a leader. I had been so sure that I was on the right track, confident in myself and making sure the team would succeed. I had tried so hard to make sure I did everything right, to make sure I could be the leader my brothers and friends needed me to be and to make sure the city was still standing by the end of every mission.

So where had I gone wrong? What had been the one mistake that made me lose track of the right path?

I thought back over these past months, ever since we had defeated the Kraang. What about when we had accidentally dropped those cartridges of mutagen over the city? Had it happened that night? Had that been the point where I started to completely disregard Donnie's feelings and push him away? Or maybe when he was forced to freeze his friend after it tried to attack April and Casey? Or sometime after I had told Donnie to basically kill Metalhead and he had ended up saving us along with every mutant in town, sacrificing himself in the process?

… Or maybe it had been way before that? Had I just been so wrapped up in myself right from the start that I had completely missed that I had mistreated my one brother who did little to nothing to provoke and aggravate me? And if so, how had Donnie seen me? How had he taken my sudden change in attitude and treatment? Had he been confused and hurt, or had he started to hate me?

Had he… I swallowed and pressed my eyelids shut as tightly as I could, biting my lip. Had he hated me when he died?

My throat felt tight and raw and painful and tears were burning behind my tightly closed eyelids. I tried to take a breath, but it came out more as a sob than anything else. Sometimes, in my nightmares, I can hear Donnie's voice and the words that he threw at me in that fight that would turn out to be our last real conversation before he… died.

"You've never been there for me! All that I'm doing in the lab, that I'm building, inventing and creating, is for you guys! But you never ever ask me if I have any ideas of my own or if I want anything from you! And you always expect me to fix everything in this home without any second thoughts! That is unfair!"

"You're such a hypocrite, you know that?"

"I hate you..."

I pressed my lips together and fought back the tears. I buried my face in my hands.

Why? Why did that fight have to be the last time I actually talked to my brother? Why did the last time I looked him in the eyes and said what I was thinking have to be a moment of anger and frustration and hurt? Why couldn't I have just taken a step back and really listened to what he was telling me? Donnie rarely ever opened up to any of us or tried to tell us when something was bothering him; usually it ended with us prying for answers when he seemed to act weird. I swear it was like pulling teeth getting him to talk sometimes. So why had I tried to shoot him down and shut him up the one time he came to talk to me about what he was feeling? The whole thing was practically gift wrapped for me, to realize that I probably needed to be a better brother to him, and somehow I still managed to screw it all up and throw it all back in his face and tell him his feelings weren't important.

Yes, our job protecting the city and the rest of the world from the Foot Clan and the Kraang was incredibly important, but so was Donnie. If I can vent to Splinter about my feelings when I didn't feel confident in my leadership skills or insecure in any way, then who the hell am I to say that Donnie can't? Who am I to say that I can feel or say or do as I please without even considering how that comes across to the others? No wonder Raph or Donnie would get angry at me if I've been acting like I'm above them in every way, or that they need to work to be worthy of my praise or respect or love, like my love for them was conditional and would disappear if they didn't fulfill my requests.

When we were little, both Mikey and Donnie had looked up to me for quite a long time. Raph might have too at some point, but he grew out of that pretty fast and became the 'jealous second oldest' of the group. But Mikey and Donnie had looked up to me and seen me as their hero for years. I knew Mikey still did to an extent, but maybe not quite the same as he had when we were kids, since he wasn't exactly afraid to disobey me and follow Raph's lead every once in a while. But what about Donnie? Had he looked up to me for as long as Mikey had? And what had he thought when I suddenly stopped acting like the hero? When I became more self-absorbed and looked down on the people around me and saw myself as the main character in a great story?

I had so many questions floating around in my head and none of them would ever be answered, and it was my own fault. I hadn't cared to get the answers when I could. When I still had the chance to make amends and get the relationship with my little brother back. I hadn't bothered to, because I hadn't wanted to. Hadn't thought there was anything to mend.

And now it was too late.

I was sitting in the chair by the fire, where I spent most of my time lately. I knew that I was worrying my family and friends; they had tried to get me to join them in other activities, but I just couldn't bring myself to care or want to do anything else than sit there with my thoughts.

The others sat around the TV, all occupied with their own activities. Mikey was lying on the floor less than a foot away from the TV, watching cartoons, a big smile on his face and his eyes wide with a childlike wonder I hadn't seen in him in months. And, as depressed as I was and how little emotion I felt these days, I couldn't help but smile when I saw him that happy about something, even if it was just from a cartoon.

Raph was on the couch, engrossed in a thick book, though his brow was furrowed and teeth slightly clenched like he was struggling with reading it, which was a bit strange. Raph may not have been an intellectual in the same way Donnie was, but he was a fine reader and could be seen reading books every now and then, though it was a rare occurrence to actually see him with a novel rather than a comic book or magazine of some kind.

But hey, at least he wasn't punching walls or driving himself insane due to a lack of physical activity.

Master Splinter was sitting on the carpet, meditating, despite the fact that the loud volume from the TV should have made that task pretty much impossible. Though, Master Splinter had been able to meditate before in the Lair despite all four of us making a mess or loud noise in the past; maybe he was just used to it at this point?

Casey was sprawled with a comic book in his lap and resting his head in his hand, looking pretty bored with life. Which was understandable; considering how active Casey was- he was a lot like Raph in that way- it made sense he would get restless and bored from a lack of something to do. And there wasn't exactly a lot to do out here that was physical, at least not at the moment.

April had been sitting by herself all day and was very quiet. She had barely said a word when she came down for breakfast and there was a haunted look in her eyes. She said that she hadn't slept very well and she was very tired, but there something else in there too, but I hadn't thought too much of it. We had all had bad days since we got here and I guess everything had started to take its toll on her, which all things considered was only fair after everything she had been through and had done for us. At the moment she was sitting with her T-phone and earbuds in her ears, listening to something while writing or drawing in a notebook, so at least she was staying occupied with something.

I turned back to the fire and sighed heavily. Looks like everyone else had found something to pass their time with and here I was, sitting without anything to do. But I just couldn't bring myself to really care, because I just didn't have the energy to do anything at all. Even watching a movie or reading a book seemed too strenuous. But I felt fine just sitting here in front of the fire and thinking rather than focusing on anything else. If I was allowed to I wouldn't even leave the bed on most days, but sharing a room with Raph always meant that you were eventually rudely and physically forced out of bed and dragged down to breakfast or just out of the room for any other reason. Honestly I didn't see the reason why it was better for me to sit on my butt down here than to lie in bed all day, since I didn't do anything most days anyway.

I sighed again and looked straight into the flames until my eyes teared up and I had to blink. My face and body got warm, almost till it burned from sitting this close to the fire, but I didn't care. In fact, I kinda liked the pain. The pain was one of the few things I could feel these days aside from my grief, and it reminded me that I was still alive despite everything that had happened and how much I had changed.

"I'm sorry, Donnie," I whispered as the tears fell from my eyes, and this time they weren't from watching the flames. "I know it doesn't help or change anything now, but I'm so, so sorry that I wasn't there for you when you needed me. That I wasn't the big brother you needed me to be."

A/N: Yes, Space Fights is meant to be Star Wars, in case I was too subtle about it. Considering how Space Heroes is meant to be Star Trek, I figure there was to be a version of Star Wars in there too. And while I'm not a Star Wars fan (I haven't watched the movies) I think April would probably be a fan.

So, April has strange nightmares and Leo is very, very depressed. Things are still bad around the farmhouse but are going to start to become better now, chapter by chapter, and they'll all get better. Which is great because I'm starting to get a little sick of constantly writing pain and grief and sorrow on this end.

Thank you for reading, I hope you liked this chapter and please review, favorite and follow! G'night everybody!