The hours after they saved the world were a blur. There was lots of crying, mostly happy tears, and plenty of reunions when they were able to tell everyone that Leo survived but other than that Mikey didn't remember much of it. His hands ached and his head felt like it was full of cotton. When he finally felt even remotely grounded in reality again, everyone was curled up in the living room. Mikey was sitting next to Raph, who had fallen asleep, on the couch. Donnie and April were napping on the floor while Splinter patched Casey up nearby.

Instantly, Mikey stood up. Where was Leo. Frantically looking around to no avail, he ran over to Leo's subway car and opened the door. He was in bed, chest slowly rising and falling. Mikey took a deep breath and held tightly onto the doorframe, steadying himself. It was okay, everything was okay. Leo was safe, Raph was safe, Donnie was safe, everyone was safe and they were here. His eyes slid closed and he slumped to the ground.

Waking up in his hammock, Mikey tried rolling onto his side before realizing he couldn't. He couldn't move his body. Opening his eyes, he frantically looked around the room. Donnie was sitting next to him reading a book, but no one else was in sight.

"Donnie?" Mikey said, but it took way too much effort to be normal, talking shouldn't be this hard.

Looking up from his book, Donnie smiled. "You're up, that's good."

"Where is everyone?"

"Leo's passed out in his room, April's in there too. Pops is talking with Casey, and Raph was cooking last time I was in the kitchen."

"Mmmkay." Mikey could already feel himself slipping back into sleep.

The next time he woke up, Donnie was gone. Raph was sitting in the chair this time pretending to read a book. He was staring at one page though, lost in thought. Mikey went to pull himself to a sitting position but stopped short. His hands and arms were covered with bandages. The sight brought the reality of what had happened flooding back.

The portal, how much it had hurt, seeing specks of himself flying away, desperately begging any higher being that Leo would make it through the portal—

"Holy cannoli…" he said softly, barely above a whisper. It was enough of a disturbance to alert his biggest brother though, whose head spun around almost immediately.

"Mikey!" Raph exclaimed, smile lighting up the room. "You're up!"

"Yep." Mikey tried to muster up more enthusiasm, but it fell flat. He was too focused on the tight pain in his stomach and his sandpaper tongue. "Can I have some water? It feels like I haven't had anything to drink in forever."

"I mean you were out for three days…" Raph trailed off, rubbing the back of his head. A chill ran down Mikey's spine.

"Three days?!"

"Off and on, yeah. You passed out for two days and woke up once when Donnie was watching you, around," Raph pulled out his phone and checked the time, "Fourteen hours ago? That portal took a lot out of you." That made sense, even now phantom electricity tingled around his hands, which felt thick and numb, but Mikey's head was still spinning. Three days?

"I'll get you some food. Do you want to eat it here or try going to the kitchen?" Raph said, pulling Mikey out of his head.

"The kitchen." He wanted to see everyone, and getting out of bed was probably the healthiest option. Being around loved ones helped speed up the healing process! (At least that's what his psychology books had said.)

"Alright, hold on." Raph scooped Mikey up in his arms, carrying him like he was a baby. It was comforting, familiar. He curled up, snuggling closer to Raph's chest.

Sitting in the kitchen were Splinter and Casey, quietly talking over tea. His neck prickled when he didn't see Leo and Donnie there, but he poignantly ignored it.

"Ooh, is that strawberry hibiscus?" They both looked at Mikey as he spoke, smiling widely.

"Michelangelo!" His father said. "It is good to see you awake, are you feeling alright?"

"Feeling fantastic! But seriously, is that strawberry hibiscus?" Mikey said as Raph set him down in one of their chairs. He leaned against the back, settling in.

"No, it's chamomile. Would you like some?

"Can I have as much sugar as I want?" Mikey pulled out the puppy dog eyes. (Hey, if he was going to be injured and hurt he may as well pull out all the stops to get as much sugar in his tea as he wanted.)

"Sure." That was a shock, Splinter didn't even try and negotiate how much sugar he could put in and Raph wasn't giving him a small scolding about how too much sugar was bad for him. They must have been really worried.

"So… where's Leo? And Donnie?"

"They're in Leo's room," Raph said. "We put Leo on bed rest but he keeps trying to get up and do things." He put a PB&J and cup of tea in front of Mikey. "So now someone gets to be on Leo Guard Duty at all times."

Mikey laughed a bit. "That checks out." He went to grab the sandwich but pulled his hand back the second he touched the bread, taking in a sharp breath.

It hurt. Like pins and needles, but worse. Almost like electricity. It spread along his hands, up his arms. Pulling them close to his chest, Mikey winced, feeling the tears start to gather in the corners of his eyes. His toes curled up and he bent down, hunching over his lap.

"Mikey? Mikey, you okay?"

"Orange, what's wrong?"

"Master Michelangelo?"

He couldn't answer, couldn't say anything, too focused on trying not to cry.

Eventually, the pain passed and Mikey was able to sit up again. Raph was rubbing his back, whispering calming reassurances to him.

"I think I'm good now," Mikey said, flexing his hands experimentally. They still tingled, but the pain was gone.

"Good! That's good." Raph said. "I'm gonna go tell Pops and Casey we don't need—" Just then, Donnie stormed into the kitchen, Splinter close behind.

"I'm here! What's wrong, is it a laceration? Contusion? Paresthesia? A concussion? Is he bleeding out?" He came over, quickly making a beeline for Mikey.

"We're good Donnie, it's all good now," Raph said.

"Yep! I'm a-okay!"

Donnie sighed, looking like a huge weight had just been lifted off of his shoulders. "That's good. That's good. Though I still need to do a medical examination now that you're awake."

"Can I finish my sandwich first?" Mikey said, already reaching for the food.

"Sure. Raph, go tell Leo and Casey we've got this before Leo tries to jump out of bed again."

"On it! Make sure you drink plenty of water as well! Not just tea!" Raph said as he jogged out of the room. That was more like normal. Experimentally wrapping his hand around the cup, Mikey took a small sip of the tea. Absolutely saturated with sugar, just the way he liked it. The sweet flavor bloomed over his tongue and warmed his bones.

Donnie carefully held Mikey's arm and started his checkup. The bandages came off in ribbons, speckled with pinpricks of blood. Mikey was confused for a moment (Cuts don't bleed like that, do they?) before he looked at his arms.

Half-formed, glossy scabs pockmarked his skin, the biggest being about the size of a nickel, the residual of the bleeding. Chunks of flesh were just… gone, leaving small divots in his skin.

"Oh." Mikey barely registered that he had spoken, reaching out to touch one of the holes before stopping and staring again.

When the light hit just right, a web of silvery cracks sprawled across his arms. He shifted his arm slightly, watching the lines appear and disappear.

"Yeah," Donnie replied. "It's healing at least. I'd still keep it bandaged up though, to make sure nothing disturbs the wounds. With any luck, the smaller ones will heal completely." Mikey nodded his head, trying to commit the notes to memory. "We should have Nardo look at it when he's feeling up to it, medicinal sciences are not my area of expertise."

"Leo always was the better medic," Mikey said, grinning as he said it.

"Uh, scoff! I am just as good a medic."

"Yeah, but Leo always had the fun bandaids." They fell into the familiar banter quickly as Donnie wrapped the bandages back around Mikey's arms.

Finally making it to Leo's room, Mikey and Donnie ducked under the tarp that had been put over the giant hole in the subway car. Mikey's breath caught in his throat, it wasn't a pretty sight.

Leo sat on his bed, and Mikey couldn't help but compare him to a mummy. There were two casts, one on his left leg and another on his right arm, and he was painted a motley black and blue all over. Bandages wrapped around his chest and shell, as well as almost everywhere else, and he had a black eye, sealing his right eye shut. He was also hooked up to some weird machine Donnie had built, which was probably an amalgamation of medical equipment.

But seeing Leo, Donnie, and Raph all together again, all safe, Mikey felt more at peace than he had since waking up. Yes, they were hurt, but they were alive.

"Miguel!" Leo said, eyes lighting up when he saw Mikey.

"Leo!" He desperately wanted to jump onto the bed to wrap Leo in a giant bear hug, but he stopped himself. He didn't want to make anything worse.

"Hey, don't worry little bro, it looks way worse than it actually is."

"Leo you—" Raph started to say before Leo put a finger in front of his mouth.

"A-buh-buh-buh. Please, I'm the medic here. I'm going to be fine, stop worrying!"

"Right." Raph wore a skeptical glare.

"Well, fam." Donnie said, distracting everyone from the looming spat. "As long as Nardo stays in bed, I would like to say that we are all officially in the clear, physically speaking. Congratulations, we survived." Pressing a button on his wrist screen, confetti burst out of his battle shell and showered the turtles.

Mikey burst into a fit of giggles, watching the confetti land all over Leo. Nothing was particularly funny, he was just relieved. They really had survived.

A few hours later, Mikey found himself back in Leo's room. This time, to watch him.

"Mikey? Where's Donnie?"

"In his lab. I'm on guard duty now!" He sat on the very edge of Leo's bed.

"Raph let you do that? After just waking up?" Leo said skeptically.

"Well…. Not exactly."

"And by that you mean…?" Leo drew the end out, asking Mikey to add to it.

"I may have been supposed to tell Donnie it was his turn to watch you and instead I just came to watch you myself." Mikey looked at Leo to see his reaction. A giant smile filled his face.

"That's my little bro!"

Watching Leo wasn't that hard, he had no clue what everyone else was talking about. It was actually peaceful. Mikey read him comics out loud, they watched skateboarding compilations on Leo's phone, and they sat and talked. The hardest part of it all was probably not being able to see his brothers when doing it. What if they were hurt? What if they were missing? What if the Krang—

"Hey, Leo?" Mikey said, putting down the comic they had been reading.

"Yeah?"

"I'm gonna go check on the others. Stay right here, okay?" Leo looked like he was going to say something, but Mikey gave him the best puppy dog eyes he could muster at the moment. Any arguments fled that moment as Leo slumped back down.

"Alright."

It took a moment for Mikey to get the nerve to leave the room, what if something happened to Leo, but he got passed it eventually. Ducking under the tarp, he went straight to Donnie's lab. Peeking in, he saw Donnie hunched over his desk. It was dim, which made the purple sparks flying off of the tech he was working on shine even brighter. Mikey slipped away from the door and went to the kitchen. Again peeking around the doorway, he watched the room. Splinter and Raph were sitting together, drinking tea, talking about something. Mikey's gaze lingered on Raph's shell for a moment longer, staring at the giant crack, before he went back to Leo's room.

"Welcome back! Everyone shipshape?" Leo said as Mikey entered the room.

"Yep, everyone's fine." But that didn't stop the prickly, gross feeling he felt, and it definitely didn't stop him from wanting to keep all of them in this room, safe and together.

Mikey settled back into his spot on Leo's bed, but before he could get too comfortable the tarp was pushed aside.

"Hey, Don, where's—" Raph stopped talking when he saw Mikey. "Mikey? Where's Donnie?"

"In his lab."

"I thought he was watching Leo. I told you to go get him."

"Yes, but! I figured I would help out and watch Leo instead!"

"Why didn't you go get Dad then?"

"Because I wanted to do this."

"What part of 'you need to rest' did you not understand?" Protective anger was creeping into his voice. "You can't rest if you're trying to keep Leo from walking every five minutes. Do we need to have someone watching you as well?"

"No, but just because I need to rest doesn't mean I can't help! I've been resting with Leo! I've barely gotten up at all! And besides, you all needed a break. Especially you, Hamato Raphael." The room went quiet when Mikey pulled out the full name. There was more bite to the words than he had intended, and Mikey swallowed the guilt that welled up. He hadn't meant to snap.

"That's not—"

"Raph." Mikey's voice was softer now. "You need a break just as much as the rest of us. Now that I'm up, I can sit with Leo and make sure he doesn't do anything stupid. Because if he's a big dum-dum and tries to walk on his broken leg and gets hurt worse, that would make me really, really sad." He gave Leo the most pitiful look he could.

Leo sighed dramatically. "I guess I can stay down, for Mikey's sake."

"I still would feel better if you had gotten Dad to watch him," Raph said. "I know that you're capable, but I still worry. Especially with what happened with your hands." Leo's face scrunched up, confused about what he was talking about.

"Donnie looked them over, it's fine. We're all on edge right now, a lot happened. Go get some sleep, I'll call if I need help." Mikey gave Raph a soft smile which was returned in full.

Raph went to leave the room before turning back towards Leo. "You, stay in bed."

"Aye-aye Captain," Leo said, giving Raph a mock salute. Mikey sat next to him on the bed, snuggling close to his older brother.

"I did mean it." He said.

Leo gave him a quizzical look. "Mean what?"

"About you staying in bed and me being sad if you get hurt worse." Mikey grabbed his phone and unlocked it. "And also it would hurt like hell and you would learn the hard way."

"Yeah, I know bro." There was a weight to those words, making Mikey's chest ache. Maybe he had been too harsh? "You want to watch skating fail compilations until we pass out?" Leo had a shit-eating grin on his face.

"That sounds great." Mikey pulled up the playlist in a flash. The perfect low-effort thing to watch while they slowly fall asleep.

The landscape was horrific; crumbled buildings, broken cars everywhere, with everything stained red, like everyone who used to live there had bled out in the streets. Turning around, Mikey saw his brothers standing in the distance.

"Donnie! Leo! Raph!" Mikey yelled as he started to jog towards them. "What's—" He stopped in his tracks. Something was wrong. Their silhouettes were wrong. He was running now, mind racing with a million thoughts before he saw them clearly.

Raph was still a Krang zombie. Eyes all wrong and limbs ending in horrific tentacles. Donnie had purple tentacles crawling out of his shell, wrapping around most of his limbs. Leo was exactly how he was when first pulled out of the Prison Dimension. Limbs at wrong angles with far too much blood everywhere.

They said nothing, just shuffling towards Mikey. And he couldn't move. Mikey stood frozen in place until they were just an arm's reach away.

Bloodied, broken arms clawed at his legs. Slimy, purple tentacles grabbed at his arms.

Think, alien rope encased his neck.

His brothers tightened their grip on Mikey, faces blank as he tried to beg them to stop.

Then—

Mikey bolted upright. Breath ragged and hands tingling, just like they had after the incident today. He felt the bed shift and looked to his side, seeing Leo start to sit up.

"Whazzit? What's goin' on?"

"Nothing, nothing." His voice caught in his throat. "Go back to sleep Leo."

"Doesn't sound like nothing." Leo was sitting up now, wide awake and worried.

"It's—" Mikey clammed up. "It's nothing. Just a nightmare." He could still feel the phantom limbs around him.

"You're not the only one with nightmares you know." Leo shifted his position a bit, resting his good hand on Mikey's arm. "Everyone's been having them. It's okay to talk about it."

"I know that, but…" How could he justify that? Leo had enough on his plate, and definitely more than enough nightmare fuel for himself. The last thing he needed was Mikey telling him about his own problems.

"Hey," Leo brought him out of his head. "It's okay if you don't want to, I won't push." Mikey felt his eyes dampen.

"Thanks, Leo."

"Anytime." One thought begged for his attention, making Mikey break the soft silence that had formed.

"Leo?"

"Hmmm?"

"Promise you won't do that again."

Leo's brow furrowed. "Do what again?"

"Do— When you—"It was so hard to say the words. "We thought you were dead." A few tears fell onto the blanket.

"Oh, that." Mikey felt Leo's hand tighten slightly. Crap. Why did he have to bring it up? He definitely wasn't helping Leo, this was such a disaster. He should—

"Pinky promise." Leo's voice pulled him back to reality, again. Mikey looked over to see Leo's hand held out, their equivalent to a pinky finger raised. "I pinky promise that I'll never do that again if I can help it."

Mikey frowned. "No, you'll never do it again. Period." Leo sat on that for a moment, staring at his finger.

"Okay. But only if you don't open a portal like that again."

"What? Why."

Leo's face fell. "Casey didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?" Mikey was nervous, what could Casey have possibly told him? Leo took a deep breath in and let it go before he started talking.

"Casey said that you sent him back with your 'mystic hands', and you did the same thing to get me back. But…" Leo had to take another breath. "It took everything you had."

The words hit Mikey like a truck, ripping the blanket of denial he had wrapped himself in since waking up. He really had been that close to dying, to disappearing forever.

"Okay," Mikey said. "No more portals, and no more stupid self-sacrificing. For either of us. Deal?"

"Deal." Leo smiled. Mikey went to wrap his own "pinky" around Leo's, but halfway there his finger froze up. The sharp pain was back.

Mikey held his wrist with his other, thankfully pain-free, hand. He heard Leo talking to him, asking what was wrong, but he couldn't pay enough attention to make out what he was saying. The searing pain took all his attention. His eyes were closed shut, but a few stray tears still made their way out.

The pain started to dissipate after a while, leaving a tingling sensation behind in its wake.

"-Swooosh, just like in the last movie. And then Jupiter Jim says, 'Fear not, for I am…" Leo's voice came back into focus.

"Leon, what are you doing?" Leo stopped his rant immediately.

"Oh thank god." He smiled wide, full of relief. "I was describing the plot of the first Jupiter Jim movie. I needed something to talk about since you weren't responding and— That's not important." His smile fell. "What happened, are you okay? Is this what happened in the kitchen earlier?"

"Yeah, it is. But it's not that big of a deal, really." Mikey said. Leo's face scrunched together.

"Like hell it isn't! Michael, you were crying."

"Just a little."

"Mikey—"

"Leo, really it's— I'm fine." How could he not be fine? Yes, his hands hurt like hell, but they paled in comparison to everything his brothers had to have dealt with. Leo was sitting across from him in several casts with a cracked shell for Pete's sake. "It's really fine Leo."

"Mikey—"

"It's late. I'm tired, you're tired, let's just… let's just drop it, okay?" He wasn't lying, not technically. It was late, and they were both tired.

"Okay, but this isn't the end of the conversation." Leo didn't look happy in the slightest, but he let it go.

Mikey grabbed Leo's hand. "Pinky promise still?"

"Yeah." A small smile came over Leo's face as he held out his "pinky" again. They linked fingers before settling back down to sleep.