Please Talk to Me

Mikey didn't want to wake up. His bed was comfy and warm, and the breeze on his face reminded him of the forest in Northampton, on those cold winter days where the air was clear and the sky a bright blue, and he was allowed to walk under the sun.

It was weird that the lair smelled like it, but Mikey had witnessed weirder things in his life. He didn't question it.

He would have managed to go back to sleep if not for his furiously protesting stomach. It slowly but steadily brought him to the realm of the awakened, and he remembered that he hadn't eaten in hours. The few snacks he had gulped down while talking to April in the Shellraiser didn't count.

Why hadn't he eaten more, anyways? It wasn't like it was hard to order a pizza, or two or ten, and–

His memories came back all at once, crashing against his skull like the Shellraiser against a Kraang's vehicle.

Mikey opened his eyes to slits in order to take in his surroundings.

He was lying on a comfy mattress, his body covered with a purple blanket. There was a roof above his head, and when he looked around, he realized that he was inside some sort of shed that opened on a meadow. He slowly palpated his body. He didn't seem to have anything broken, but his equipment had disappeared. Worse, his brothers' bandanas had disappeared too. He grabbed his arm frantically, feeling the place where the bandanas should have been again and again, just in case they had turned invisible. But of course his life couldn't be that simple.

Mikey tried to calm down and picture what Donnie–good old Turtle Donnie–would tell him if he was here. After a few painful seconds, the loved face of his brother appeared in his head, telling him that these bandanas were just pieces of cloth and not an incarnation of their souls. Losing the bandanas couldn't be a bad omen because bad omen didn't exist.

Mikey silently thanked Imaginary Donnie, even though Imaginary Donnie was clearly delusional in his stubborn rationality, and went back to taking in his surroundings. He tried to discern another presence, but the only sounds he was hearing were the breeze and birds. After a quick debate with himself, he decided to stand up and explore the place. The motion made him groan; he felt groggy. It was probably a result of whatever they had injected him with.

The thought forced him to think about non-imaginary, non-turtle Donnie. The one who had attacked him with needles even though Mikey hated needles and Donnie was supposed to know this. The one who had captured him as if he was an enemy.

The one who couldn't remember him.

Mikey bit his lip and clenched his fists. He didn't have the luxury of falling apart right now, not when there weren't any brothers to pick him up. Throwing a tantrum didn't sound like it would help much either, but maybe it would release some of the tension in Mikey's jaw, so Mikey opened his mouth to complain about how unfair everything was.

To his surprise, no sound came out of his mouth.

He proceeded to silently but vehemently freak out until he noticed the cameras in the shed's ceiling. The realization almost blinded him by its obviousness.

He must be watched by his captors at this very moment, maybe even by Donnie himself.

Mikey jumped, grabbed the camera and tried to puppy-dog it. He didn't have a mirror to see the result, but it was worth a try.

His stomach growled, louder than before. Mikey let go of the camera and dropped his eyes to the floor in utter misery.

That was when he noticed the two bowls that had been put in a corner of the shed, one filled with salad and fruits and the other with water.

Mikey rubbed his eyes, because surely he wasn't seeing right. Fruits and salad? Did they not know how to properly feed healthy mutant ninja turtles? Couldn't Donnie have at least remembered that, if nothing else?

As he drank the water and gulped the content of the bowl–food was food and he was famished–he rehearsed the lecture he was going to give Donnie about the importance of grease for survival.

Although, if he was being honest, it could have tasted worse. On a pepperoni and anchovy pizza, it might even be delicious. He would have to try that when he would be back home.

Way too soon, the two bowls were empty. Mikey burped and decided it was as good a time as any to explore the rest of the place. If he was being held prisoner, he would rather knew where. He supposed it could have been worse; he could have been tied up and about to undergo deadly surgery in a Kraang facility, to name one of the many examples his fertile imagination helpfully provided.

Mikey took a few steps out of the shed. Trees encircled the meadow, and he could see nearby a stream ending in a small pond. It looked like it was outside–the sounds, the smell, the feels, the illusion was almost perfect–but Mikey's instincts were telling him that he was underground. He had grown up underground, he knew the feeling.

Mikey spotted at least twelve cameras on his way. He climbed the trees, but the sky-ceiling was too far above to be reached, at least without his kusarigama. He didn't see any birds either, although he could hear them. Maybe they were hiding?

At regular intervals, he tried to talk, call, yell, even whisper, but he was unable to speak at all. He hated the thought that he was being watched by he didn't know who. As a first class ninja, he was supposed to be the one doing the spying. The reverse was just too creepy.

The place wasn't as huge as it first looked. Soon after Mikey had entered the fake forest, he was prevented from going further by an invisible wall. He remembered that Donnie had told him about these once. He called them force…force…force fiends. Yes. That was the name for sure.

Mikey made his way back to the shed, making as much noise as possible to make up for the fact he couldn't yell in frustration. Leo would have freaked out, but Leo wasn't here and if he wanted to disapprove of Mikey's actions, he should have been.

Actually, he should have been here even if he didn't want to disapprove of Mikey's actions.

Mikey kicked a tree hard enough that one of the cameras fell in his hands. He tried to crush it, but it was more resistant than it looked, even with all the experience Mikey had at destroying things. Maybe Raph would have managed to squash the thing to tiny, tiny pieces. Raph had more experience than Mikey at willingly destroying things.

Mikey missed Raph very much right now, and not only for camera-crushing purposes.

As he entered the shed, he fully intended to collapse on the mattress and hide in his precious imagination for a while, his safe place where his brothers were turtles and always with him, but then he realized that the bowls had been refilled with water, salad and fruits. He paused to devour the food before putting his plan into motion and hiding under the blanket so whoever was watching him couldn't see him anymore.

He wasn't in the best of moods, and daydreaming was harder than usual. His thoughts kept bringing him back to the fact he had been careless enough to get captured by humans, even though Master Splinter had drilled into them that humans shouldn't discover their existence, ever. Master Splinter would be so disappointed in him right now.

Master Splinter. His last son was missing, and Splinter had no way of knowing why. Mikey was going to be sick. And what had Casey thought when he had arrived to the complex and Mikey had been nowhere to be found? Had he asked April? Had both of them reconstructed what had happened?

How much time had even passed? Mikey had no idea how long he had slept, not without his T-Phone to give him the time of day.

Speaking of his T-Phone, was Donnie the one who had taken it? Had he not recognized his own tech?

Before this whole situation, Mikey would have dismissed the thought. But Donnie hadn't recognized his own brother, aka the one and only Mikey, so it didn't seem as impossible as it once was.

Mikey absent-mindedly rocked his body, and realized that he still had his emergency water balloons on him. His captors probably hadn't thought to look for them. Even Leo didn't know where Mikey hid them, he had admitted that much.

It made him feel a tiny bit better, like the pieces of rubber filled with water were a link between him and free Mikey.

He had finally managed to drift into an uneasy sleep when he heard the static. He recognized the sound of a TV screen being switched on, and immediately straightened up.

One of the shed's walls had turned into a screen. Mikey wrapped the blanked around himself and sat ready to retreat in his shell, just in case the screen was trapped. When a familiar human figure appeared on it, though, he jumped on his feet and walked towards it until his snout touched it.

But then he couldn't see the big picture, just a few patches of white and brown, so he took a few steps backwards.

"I'm glad you're awake," Human Donnie said.

He was sitting at a desk, smiling. His posture was a bit too straight if you asked Mikey, as if his brother felt unsure, but his smile was as kind as ever.

Donnie was kind, had always been, but he had also been involved in capturing Mikey, so Mikey felt allowed to pout at him. He turned his head to the side, pretending not to look at the screen but keeping it–and Donnie–in his line of sight.

"I apologize for the rudeness of drugging you," Donnie went on.

Donnie did look apologetic, and Mikey forgave him on the spot.

"I'd come see you in person, but I'm still working on the authorizations." Donnie turned his head left, as if he was watching someone off-camera. "In the meantime, this will have to do." He cleared his throat. "Do you… Do you understand me?"

Mikey assumed that if Donnie was asking him a question, he could somehow see and hear him. Probably thanks to the multiple cameras that Mikey hadn't hidden away for this very reason despite the creepiness of their existence. The more Donnie saw of him, the more he was susceptible to remembering, right?

Mikey opened his mouth to answer Donnie, not really thinking it would work, and was totally unsurprised when his complete, utter inability to speak manifested again.

He tried to nod instead, but that didn't work either.

This was a novelty, and not one Mikey liked. He tried to move his head in any way, spinning it like a mad turtle, and that worked–but then, this couldn't be interpreted as an answer to Donnie's question.

Mikey couldn't communicate with Donnie.

Donnie waited, but Mikey couldn't do any better. It wasn't very easy to say 'I understand every word you say but I can't talk because the universe is unfair and pink genies are evil, also please bring me some pizza, o my not-so-long lost brother that I miss terribly' while spinning your head.

Donnie was not one to renounce that easily. "Can you talk?"

Mikey dutifully tried again. He opened his mouth and tried to get a sound out of it, any sound. He tricked his mind into believing that he wasn't trying to communicate with Donnie, he was just stretching his vocal cords. As Master Splinter used to say when Mikey baked them the most delicious of algae and worms cakes, it's the thought that counts.

Mikey managed a kind of growl, and lost himself in several attempts at producing other noises with his throat until he realized that his brother was watching him with fascination.

He clapped his mouth shut and crossed his arms.

Donnie was scribbling furiously in a notebook on his desk. Mikey wished he could have taken a look at it, but of course he couldn't go through the screen.

Or could he? It was worth a try.

Alas, the attempt was unsuccessful and earned him a slightly aching head.

"Who are you?" Donnie asked as if Mikey would somehow start answering him. "How did you get inside the lab?"

"Stop asking him questions," another voice said off-camera. "Clearly he won't answer. Maybe he's not capable of doing so."

Mikey recognized Donnie's colleague. He wanted to make a rude gesture at the screen, but that didn't work either. He guessed insulting someone was a kind of communication.

"We don't know that until we try," Donnie corrected the man. His features softened when he looked back at Mikey. "We brought you here so we could study you. There have been rumors about mut-people like you, but until then I had no reason to believe them."

Mikey watched Donnie with his best no-nonsense look. He rarely used it, but the opportunity called for it. Donnie was a mutant.

Donnie went on as if he hadn't noticed anything, and maybe there hadn't been anything to notice. Mikey needed that mirror. He needed to know what exactly he could get away with, so he knew how to trick the pink genie and reach his brother.

"You're a humanoid turtle, which is fascinating in itself, but we also found these weapons on you. Are you able to use them?"

Donnie took something from inside his desk, and suddenly Mikey was looking at his beloved nunchucks. He tried to grab them, and his arms moved towards the screen, only to meet wood.

Donnie smiled, thrilled by Mikey's reaction.

"So you do recognize them. I'm sorry, but we couldn't let you keep them. You're safe here anyways."

Mikey didn't like being safe here at all. He wanted to be safe in the lair, with Splinter and his brothers.

"I'd love to know where you found them," Donnie said.

"There is no way he knows how to fight," Donnie's colleague muttered off-camera.

Mikey definitely didn't like the way the man spoke about him as if he wasn't present. Not to mention he was quite offended at the statement. Not knowing how to fight? If only he had the opportunity to show the man how wrong he was…

He made do with yelling in his head a few of the best swear words he knew, the ones that would definitely get him in trouble with Splinter if he ever said them within the rat's earshot.

"This is a mystery, too." Donnie took a pile of ashes. "I tried to open it, but it just… self-destructed."

Mikey blinked. Self-destruction? Was it all that was left of his T-Phone?

Now that he was thinking about it, he did remember that Donnie himself had upped the security on their T-Phones at some point, because, as he put it, they 'couldn't be trusted to say the right thing at the right time'. He had been mostly glaring at Mikey while saying this, but Mikey was pretty sure the others were involved too, and–

His breath was caught in his throat when Donnie showed him the four bandanas that Mikey had been so upset to lose.

Orange, red, blue, purple. Purple, blue, red, orange. Mikey reached for the pieces of cloth, and his fingers met wood once again.

He couldn't do anything. He couldn't yell, he couldn't shout, he couldn't tell Donnie that the purple one was his own.

Mikey slowly sunk to the floor and hid his head in his arms.

After a while, Donnie cleared his throat. "So, uh. I'm going to leave you now, so you can get used to your new environment. I hope that next time we'll meet in person. If there is anything you need in the meantime, please don't hesitate to let us know."

Mikey's stomach broke his train of thought. He tried to mimic a pizza, aka the most important thing he needed right now, apart from his brothers of course.

But his hands wouldn't move.

Donnie didn't have that problem. He waved at Mikey before switching off the screen, leaving Mikey alone and miserable in the shed, watching the wall stupidly as if it was going to switch on again.

It didn't, and Mikey dragged himself to the mattress, buried his body under the blanket and closed his eyes.

His body wanted to sob, but the only tears he was permitted were utterly silent.

Mikey was floating. He passed through the walls of his prison, then through several other walls. He saw offices and laboratories, some of them having medical equipment that made his immaterial body shiver. He finally arrived in a barely lit office, where a human was bent over his desk, writing in a notebook.

It was Human Donnie.

Mikey tried to touch Donnie, only to pass through him instead. The next second, he was floating in nothingness.

The change of scenery was expected from a dream, but it still made something inside Mikey shiver. He turned around to see Turtle Donnie shrouded in pink smoke. Mikey tried to reach for his brother, to blow the smoke, to grab it in his hands…

He woke up with a start and immediately noticed the thumps. The noise was coming from below ground–from below his bed. Something was coming, closer and closer and closer…

Mikey opened his mouth and failed to yell.