There were many admittedly strange things Mikey found normal.

A giant pigeon flying around his home with a toddler strapped to his chest? Sure.

An eight-year-old running around every corner with a hockey mask and wooden sword thinking no one could see her? Amusing.

A renowned scientist just as engrossed in a princess anime as the child in his lap? Brilliant.

However, folded sheets, freshly cleaned in his linen cupboard? Weird.

Dishes that had been cleaned by hand and left in the rack to dry? Unheard of.

A little kid curled up on his couch in the middle of the night? Sigh.

"Hey, kiddo," Mikey shook their shoulder gently. A mound of curly black hair stuck out from the top of the blanket they were cocooned in. "Wake up, you can't stay on the couch."

"Nnnmmmm," a small voice grumbled, and a pair of brown eyes opened up and peeked through their trundles of hair.

"Do you know where you are?" Mikey smiled, crouching down and doing his best to make himself small.

"Not really. Shadow gave me map of how to get here."

Oh.

Oh.

"So, you're Angel?" The kid nodded. "Well, it's nice to finally meet you! I've heard a lot about you from Shadow."

"Really?"

"Yeah, kiddo. She's real worried about you." Mikey tilted his head. It was midday, and he had arranged with Rockwell and Pete to have the boys for a couple of days. Slash had convinced him to at least tell Rockwell about his last mutation day. Granted it took him a couple of months of pestering but Slash had little else to do with his time. And Rockwell and Pete had finally set up their place in the sewers, so they had the boys for a couple of days to give Mikey some peace.

But the universe loved laughing at Mikey and his pain so instead of rearranging his kitchen and just about everything else in his home at least twice he was looking after yet another child. A very complicated child.

"Do you want something to eat?" he asked. Angel nodded and untangled herself from the blankets. She followed Mikey to the kitchen and he could feel a headache coming on. Angel was too calm given she was being lead around by a giant turtle. Either Shadow had told this girl too much, or she had an undying amount of trust in Shadow. Both were problems because Shadow.

"Want to tell me what happened?" he asked, watching the girl out of the corner of his eye and pulling bowls out of the cupboard. He was going to make omelettes. "Shadow told me a little bit about you when she tried to give you that knife."

He moved to the fridge and pulled out the eggs. "I can crack those," Angel said. He let her ignore the knife thing. It wasn't her fault anyway.

"Did you clean the lair while I was asleep?" he asked gently. Mikey surveyed the girl. She was smaller than Shadow, granted Shadow had been over doing it with the ninjutsu training and had bulked up a bit. But Angel was thin and short in a way that didn't sit right.

"Yeah." Mikey waited for her to elaborate but she wouldn't look at him. He'd figured Slash had been around, but he wouldn't have woken up because the guy can't help but stomp.

He knew he wouldn't get far. The kid was only here based on the opinion of Shadow, who wasn't even here because-

"Don't you have school today?"

"I'm sick" Angel said plainly. She still wouldn't look up from whisking the eggs.

"Fair enough."

-:-

Angel didn't talk much before Shadow finally showed up with a very agitated Casey in tow. But if anyone had mastered the art of ignoring Casey it was Shadow.

"Hi Angel!" She vaulted over the turnstiles. Angel and Mikey both looked up from the TV. They were watching the VHS tapes of Raph's favourite magical girl anime. It was a good way to waste the day and the show wasn't bad. "You didn't come to school today."

"She's sick," Mikey said not unkindly, looking at Casey and tilting his head towards the dojo.

"I swear to god Mike, I didn't know she'd done this till she was dragging me down here." Casey grunted and slammed the dojo doors shut behind them.

"Do you know what happened?" Mikey asked, sitting down at the base of the tree. "Because she hasn't told me anything."

"I think her mum has gone away somewhere. She does this sometimes."

"Well she came down here on her own."

"Yeah, she got spooked."

"She can't stay here, Casey." Mikey frowned as Casey dropped next to him. His tone was pained. "She needs to go to school. She can't stay in the sewers."

"To be fair this isn't really the sewers, it's the old train line."

"You're considering this?!"

"A little."

"When were you gonna tell me?"

"Eh," Casey shrugged and grinned. "Nothing permanent. It's just that her mum knows where we live so if she does go looking for Angel its safer here."

"You know I can't say no" Mikey groaned.

"Yeah, I'm being a jerk here. But Shadow isn't. She just wants her friend to be safe." Casey smiled but it was tight. "She's better off here than in the system."

Mikey flinched a little. "You sure about that?"

"You wouldn't even have to do anything!" Casey laughed and stretched his arms above his head. "Angel is always taking apart remote-control toys. Just push her in front of Rivet and you're good."

Rivet hadn't been in the lair all day. Where he was Mikey didn't know but the shower stopped working the day before so he could be rerouting the whole cities water system for all he knew.

"I guess someone should make use of all of Donnie's old junk."

"But hey seriously," Casey brought a heavy hand down on Mikey's shoulder, both of them tensing up. "When Angel's situation gets bad, it's really bad. That's what Shadow tells me. Those two are really good at hiding it."

"I'll give her a T-phone. But I'm serious, Case. She's human, she doesn't belong down here."

"Yeah I know." They got up and left the dojo to find the lab had been invaded.

It wasn't until two after hours of clean up, and a long lecture on why you don't stick screwdrivers into any robotics Shadow, that Mikey finally had the place to himself again.

-:-

"Pizza boy keeps askin about you." Slash said gruffly.

"Why? I see him every Friday," Mikey mumbled and stared over the rooftops. He missed going on patrol. And Slash had decided that he was in charge of Mikey's exercise plan (even though Mikey trained in the dojo every day and spent who knows how long chasing turtle tots). He didn't need the extra workout but he humoured Slash more than anything.

"Try texting him on the T-phone. He's annoying me."

"He's just the pizza guy, Slash. I'm not looking for a friend."

He regretted saying it because it wasn't entirely true and Slash got that look. He looked like a kicked puppy because Mikey did or said something he wouldn't have a year and a half ago. Slash was the only one who really did it because he knew Mikey the best.

Slash held the expression long enough for Mikey to let out a very long groan.

"Fine! I'll socialise with the pizza guy!" Mikey threw his arms in the air for the drama of it and- "oh geez, Rockwell's right. I am dramatic."

"And as with anything, you're the last to know." Slash wore that shit eating grin of his. Mikey charged him but was easily pushed back on his shell.

-:-

Mikey must have been too slow to get in contact with Woody by Slash's standards because two days after patrol Mikey learned that Slash had told Leatherhead, who told Pete, who told Rockwell, who told April, who told Woody, "Hey, did you know you can text on these T-Phones?"

They were all conspiring against him.

Hey, its Woody. How are you?

Mikey looked up from his phone at the wall. Once upon a time he would've rambled about everything that had passed through his mind in the last twenty minutes and they would have been there for an hour but now? He was stumped. His mind still went a mile a minute but it had a tendency now to just stop. And it just decided to stop. Dammit.

And Mikey didn't really want to open up about the boys. Woody thought the 'mouths' he had to feed were the Mutanimals and not three toddlers.

I'm alright. Ready for pizza tonight. :)

Mikey can sense someone, somewhere laughing at him. Dammit.

-:-

Angel liked to show up after school, nod at Mikey and then disappear into the lab for an hour or two before saying she was going home.

"Yeah, you're not going alone." Mikey was stern the first time and now it was just an unspoken thing. She didn't question Mikey's rules, which were really simple.

If it's dark and you need to get to the lair, send a group text. Someone will get you.

If you need to leave the lair after dark, someone will have to take you. No going on your own.

You can't be in the lab on your own.

Mikey sensed a theme as he spoke.

"Casey, I'm a dad. No, worse! I'm a boring dad!" Mikey flailed on the couch, elbowing Casey on is way down. "So many ru- Hey, Leonardo, do not eat that!"

Casey, for what is was worth, looked up from his phone as Mikey shot up from the couch, receiving yet another elbow. "Yeah, Leo. Don't do that."

"You were supposed to be watching them while I was with Angel!" Mikey frowned, pulling a set of keys from Leo's death grip. "Where did you even get these?"

"He's fine, no one is crying. Come on, Mike. Relax."

"I'm responsible for four kids, two squirrels and an alligator. If you got off your butt and helped, maybe I could relax."

"Alright, alright, geez."

He was stressed. Raphael and Donatello's rooms were due to be cleared out properly the next day and Mike was going to start migrating into Splinters old room. The boys were getting too big to be sharing a room anymore. Rivet asserted it was time for big boy beds. Raphael's old room was mostly cleaned out, but untouched for at least a year and need child proofing.

The last person in Donatello's room was Donatello and just that idea alone made Mikey want to hurl.

Two years. It was quickly coming up on two years and Mikey didn't know what to do with himself. He was going bad again. He went up and down waves throughout the day sure, but he was in a good period for the moment. The time he spent staring at a wall for no reason had dwindled, he tolerated tantrums without having one himself. Heck he even picked up skate boarding again.

But he was sure this wouldn't last. It never did and that was ok because he wasn't ok but everyone knew that. He had a problem and knew when to ask for help.

That and Rockwell never let him not talk about something.

He sensed an overload was on its way and he didn't know how to stop it.

-:-

"Hold on, you want to what?!"

Rivet's insistent push of the blue prints in front of them reiterated the point. He wanted to remodel the lair almost entirely. New kitchen. New Bathroom. New lab that better served as an infirmary and bedroom for any extended stays Angel might have. Hell, he even wanted to get his robot hands on the dojo.

Mikey really didn't need this half way through fixing up Raph's room.

"Can this wait until tomorrow? I need you to go through Don's things."

He figured that though he might regret it down the track, the less he touched of Don's room the better. He went nearly two years without laying eyes on any of it, he'll be fine for the rest of his life. The distinct memory and rush of scents he had to suffer with Leo's room was haunting him, adding to any and all agitation.

Rivet seemed oblivious and beeped.

"Ok, fine!" Mikey threw his arms in the air. He'd only gone to the kitchen for some lunch. "But one room at a time. Start with the bathroom. It's always giving us problems."

Rivet swivelled his head in delight and left the kitchen.

"You better be off to get Angel from school and not pick tile samples!" Mikey yelled, too tired to get off the kitchen stool.

-:-

Unsurprisingly, Mikey got about three quarters of the way through what he wanted to do in Raph's room before Rivet somehow powered through Don's room with little Angel at his heels. Mikey got shooed off with very stern beeps that meant parenting time go socialise with your kids.

Yeah, he forgot to do that sometimes.

Sure, he was running himself ragged constantly for them, but he often forgot to just sit with his boys. Talk to them. Make sure they'd recognise him.

But today he was dreading it.

Sometimes he'd have these moods. They were few and far but sometimes their loud squeals, sticky hands and newfound tendency to play rough made Mike want to yell. He didn't always liked how they would cling to him. And at this time of year, two months away from the anniversary of it all (No! their birthday, positive thoughts, positive thoughts) he felt it worse. Everything was starting to feel worse. Getting out of bed was harder, he'd cut his training hours down. Slash was beginning to hover and stay nights at the lair which was a sign he was getting really bad.

"When was the last time you ate?" Leatherhead asked.

Mike jolted a bit, not quite sure when he had laid down on the floor in front of the tv with Raph sleeping on top of his shell and Leo rhythmically rubbing the top of his head. It was nice.

"Why?" he asked through a yawn, focusing on the security of Raph's weight and Leo's gentle touch.

"You're not looking well," Leatherhead said gently, trying but failing to stop Donnie climbing up his arm. "I think we should head to Rockwell's for dinner tomorrow. He has been boasting about a dinner he made last week."

"Sounds nice," Mikey mumbled, feeling his eyes getting heavy. "I'm sure Pete will have the perfect bread to go with the meal."

"I have no doubt."

"I'm gonna sleep now, LH." Mikey's voice was barely above a whisper.

"Rest well, Michelangelo."


I'm dragging the second year out a bit but it'll be over next chapter...

Probably.