Waiting for Each Other

After their break, Mikey's brothers resumed their exploration. Mikey watched them from above the buildings and behind the machines, longing to go with them inside the prefabricated buildings but knowing that these were too small for him not to be noticed.

He was tempted to do so regardless, if only to counter the boredom that had once more crept into him. Raph was starting to look just as bored as Mikey, so while the contents of said buildings didn't seem very interesting, at least he would feel less alone.

Mikey hated to be on the sidelines.

He had almost made up his mind to try this and fight the pink genie's–evil instigator of this messed up situation and Mikey's current nemesis–pressure on his brain, when Leo suggested another pause.

"We should get some rest, even some sleep if we can. It's easy to lose track of time underground, but it has already been eight hours since we arrived." Leo pointed at the last prefabricated building they had explored. "We can use the cots inside. One of us can keep watch, just in case." He watched them with an impassive expression. "I can take first watch."

Mikey checked his T-Phone. Had so much time already passed? No wonder Mikey was bored.

Raph eyed Leo suspiciously. "You want us to sleep here? And what are you going to do in the meantime?"

Mikey didn't miss the flash of exasperation crossing Leo's face.

"If I had wanted to hurt you, don't you think it would already be done? And it's not like I can go back the way we came."

Raph pondered this before reluctantly nodding. Mikey thought the matter was settled, but Donnie hummed and tapped his chin, drawing the attention of the other two.

"Actually, the fire might have been extinguished by now. It's possible we could go back, at least up to the entrance of the tunnel. We would need help to climb to the surface."

Raph's eyes widened. "What? And you're only saying that now?" He threw up his arms. "What are we waiting for?"

Mikey was sharing Raph's surprise. They could have left this place already, and go back to the surface were pizzas and TV and friends resided? Indeed, what were they waiting for?

Donnie and Leo exchanged a look, and Mikey's senses tingled. His brothers were hiding something, and that something was bad.

Raph must have come to the same conclusion, because he frowned and crossed his arms. "What are you not telling me?"

Donnie grimaced and cleared his throat. "So, Raph. If I may ask, what did you understand of all the files we've looked at so far?"

Mikey was paying close attention. So they had found stuff inside the buildings after all. Whatever they had found hadn't been discussed between them, Mikey would have noticed. Granted, he often blanked boring discussions out, but his brothers were talking so little that the shortest comment had his full attention.

Raph shrugged. "Not much. They're boring lab notebooks."

Mikey smirked. He knew a Raph-attempt to hide his embarrassment when he saw one. He was pretty sure Raph hadn't even tried to read the notebooks.

Donnie didn't seem fazed by Raph's lack of enthusiasm. "Well, it's true none of them give us the big picture, but you can parse that they refer to a big discovery somewhere inside this underground complex."

"I noticed that," Raph lied. "What about it?"

"Also," Donnie went on as if he hadn't heard Raph's comment, "you might have noticed that the entrance was blocked by a door not even our friend here had access to." He nodded towards Leo.

"He's not my friend." Raph's protest lacked conviction. He was clearly focused on something else. "What are you trying to say?"

For his part, Mikey was hanging onto Donnie's every word. He had a bad feeling about this, and his intuition never failed him.

But Donnie seemed reluctant to say more. He looked at Leo expectantly, and Leo sighed.

"As I'm sure you're aware of, a lot of governmental operations must stay strictly secret." Leo paused, as if he wasn't sure how to convey his message. "Depending on what this place is exactly, the higher authorities might… not want any witnesses."

In the silence that followed, Raph blinked several times.

"What?"

Mikey wasn't so slow to understand. He shrunk on himself, resisting the urge to fully hide inside his shell. And here he had been foolishly following his brothers, without paying much attention to the rest of their surroundings. Without looking out for potential enemies. Such ninja he was.

Raph started pacing nervously. "Are you saying that they would kill us?"

He sounded both incredulous and horrified, and Mikey had to fight the impulse to jump down and give him a Mikey bear hug.

Just the fact that he was thinking about it was giving him a slight headache. It looked like the pink genie was watching him closely.

Leo watched Raph with the utmost seriousness. "I might be allowed to stay alive, and so might Donnie, as he already has authorization to access some classified information, but you…" Leo didn't seem to know how to complete his sentence.

Raph's head was turning from Leo to Donnie to Leo. "You're kidding, right? It's a joke, right?"

Donnie shrugged. "The dead can't talk, can they?" Seeing Raph's incredulous stare, he went on, almost apologetic. "Of course, it's only a hypothesis. Maybe they are trying to rescue us. But still, I would feel better if I knew exactly what secret is hidden here."

Mikey couldn't help thinking that survival instinct wasn't the sole reason why Donnie wanted to keep exploring. After all, Donnie's survival instincts had never been the best out of the four of them. The number of times one of his experiments had almost killed them was proof of that.

Raph took a deep breath. Mixed emotions passed on his face, before settling on something Mikey was very familiar with.

Anger.

"And you couldn't have said it sooner?"

Leo eyed him impassively. "It's not like it would have changed anything. We would have died if we had stayed in the tunnel outside."

"I like to have access to such information regardless." Raph crossed his arms in an obvious effort to calm himself. "We're talking about my life here."

"Now you know." Leo also crossed his arms, mirroring Raph's posture.

"Let's not forget that we might all be condemned already," Donnie said, lifting a finger. "Maybe we're contaminated and contagious somehow, and they'll want to kill us all." He smiled smugly. "And before you ask, I didn't tell you sooner because you said that you weren't interested in such hypotheses."

Raph rubbed his temples. "True," he admitted. He looked at Donnie and Leo. "I'm a simple man with simple needs. I'm way over my head here. What do we do?"

"We help each other," Leo said.

"And we look for another exit," Donnie completed.

"And what if there is no other exit?" Raph raised an eyebrow.

Nobody answered that, and the three of them stood in silence for a while. It gave Mikey some time to try and process everything that had just been said.

The whole place had never felt particularly welcoming to Mikey, but now it was starting to feel downright creepy. Was there someone hidden in the shadows, observing them, biding their time?

Leo broke the silence first. "I still think that we should get some rest."

Raph shook his head. "I can't believe that you're suggesting we sleep. Do I look like someone who could sleep right now?"

"We'll need energy to keep going," Leo insisted.

Raph closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Mikey thought he was doing a great job of keeping his cool.

"Alright," Raph muttered under his breath. "Calm down, Raph, this is fine. Everything is fine." He opened his eyes. "Then I'll take first watch. I need to think."

Leo nodded.

Mikey sat on the top of a nearby prefabricated building, making sure that he was out of Raph's line of sight.

Raph wasn't the only one who needed to think.

So far, Mikey hadn't considered the implications of them being in such a strange place. He had been too happy to see his brothers reunited to worry about it.

And now, it looked like they were in danger and Mikey had missed it.

Of course, Mikey wouldn't stand for it. Whoever tried to hurt them would pay the price.

But how could he best protect his brothers?

Mikey made a conscious effort to call back to his working memory the numerous times he had participated in planning a mission.

One of the things Leo always wanted to have was information. How was the place? Who was the enemy? Where should they be looking for whatever they were looking for?

Mikey didn't know much about the enemy, but he could at least try to explore their current location on his own. While following his brothers, he hadn't thought much about the layout of the place. It was huge, with prefabricated buildings and machines scattered at random–or at what looked like random. Maybe Donnie had already discerned a pattern.

Mikey raised his eyes to the ceiling. Thanks to the neon lights hanging from it, flashlights were unnecessary. It was high enough above him that he couldn't jump to it, but from the machine nearby, who was higher than the others, and with his grappling hook... Yes, it might work.

He hadn't thought to go there before, because he wanted to stay close enough to his brothers to listen to their conversations, but it would definitely give him a better view.

Mikey was about to silently move towards the machine in question, which was luckily behind Raph, when his brother moved.

Mikey stilled and watched him. Raph took a few steps away from the building where Leo and Donnie were resting and chose a spot where he could still see it, but that was hidden in the shadows.

There, Raph sat on the ground and lifted his head.

"Hey," he whispered. "Are you here?"

Mikey's heart beat faster. It wasn't like there were many people Raph could be talking to. And Mikey wanted nothing more than to answer Raph, to go to him and hug him and tell him everything that had happened and how much Mikey was missing him and…

The sudden pain in his head didn't surprise him. Mikey braced himself and focused on the ground right in front of Raph. Such an interesting ground, with its dust and gray color. How could Mikey resist landing on it? Raph's presence had nothing to do with this decision, nothing at all. It wasn't a matter of communicating with his beloved brother. The dust was so much more interesting than him.

When Mikey's body answered his call and he landed right in front of Raph, he knew he had won this battle. Obviously the pink genie was having a hard time navigating around Mikey's way of thinking, and especially his awesome ability to delude himself as much as he wanted to.

Raph smiled when he saw him, a huge, sincere smile that had Mikey's heart swell with nostalgia.

"Here you are. I didn't get the opportunity to thank you before, so thank you."

Talking was still out of Mikey's reach, so he merely stared at his brother. He hoped Raph could see the longing in his eyes.

Raph must have been thinking that Mikey was confused instead, because he added, "you know, for saving my life."

Mikey tried to smile, tried to convince himself that he was smiling at the walls and not at Raph. But his energy reserves were depleted, and the pressure in his head was back with a vengeance, increasing every second.

"I know you understand what I'm saying," Raph said, observing Mikey with attention. "You don't have to be afraid of me. I won't hurt you."

Mikey knew that, of course, but it hurt that Raph didn't know Mikey did. And so was Raph hurting Mikey after all?

Mikey's thoughts chased after that idea for a bit, trying to resolve the incoherency, which only worsened his headache.

"You look tired," Raph added. "You should get some rest." He smiled again. "I'll keep watch for you too."

As soon as Raph mentioned it, this reality crashed on Mikey. Yes, he did need to sleep. He had for some time now. And now that it was at the forefront of his mind, it excluded everything else.

Somewhere in a corner of his brain, uncomfortable facts were trying to call for his attention, trying to tell him that maybe he shouldn't let his guard down, that the situation was precarious, but Mikey easily ignored them.

He all but collapsed to the ground, closing his eyes and curling up on himself.

The world went mercifully black.

Mikey was floating into pink smoke so thick he couldn't see anything. He was breathing it, and its sugary smell made him nauseous, in a way no food ever had.

He tried to blow it away, but it resisted. It was choking him, and Mikey panicked, waving his arms and legs until he hit something solid. Mikey grabbed the thing and pulled, moving his body closer.

It was only when he bumped into a rough surface that he realized what it was. He grabbed its edges and clung to it, clung to the back of Raph's shell, until his fingers hurt.

He could feel Raph's presence filling the space, could feel his will fight the pink smoke like Mikey's did, and for a second the smoke thinned, and Mikey reached for his brother's hand…

Mikey woke up to Raph softly shaking his shoulder.

"Hey," Raph whispered. "My watch is over. Leo is next, so it might be better if you don't stay here."

For a second, Mikey wondered why Raph was a human. Then he remembered the place, and the time, and his dream started to fade away. He clung to its remnants and stored them in his heart, to be examined later.

"You're a heavy sleeper, aren't you?" Raph grinned. "I've been trying to wake you up for a while."

Mikey sat on the ground, and Raph's jacket fell from his shoulders. He blinked at it, confused.

Raph picked it up. "I was afraid you would catch a cold," he explained.

Somehow, Mikey wanted to cry. He stood up and vanished once more on the ceiling of the nearest building instead, following Raph's instructions.

Raph gave a last look in his general direction before going inside to fetch Leo and take his own rest.

Mikey watched in silence as Leo left the building, looking as impassive as always. He tried to discern traces of not-enough sleep on his brother's face and found none.

Mikey swallowed hard. He couldn't read Leo like he usually did, no matter how much his brother tried to remain stoic in situations of great stress or great promise, like the release of a new episode of their ongoing show.

It hurt more than he was ready to admit.

Unlike Raph, Leo didn't choose a spot to sit and watch. He started patrolling around the building, and Mikey decided that it might be better if he moved away a little.

He silently jumped from building to machine to building, until he was confident that Leo wouldn't be able to track him down.

His eye caught another high machine, and he was reminded of the plan he had intended to execute before Raph had started chatting with him. Maybe it was time to give it a try.

Mikey climbed on the machine and threw his grappling hook. It held on his first try, and soon enough, Mikey was reaching the ceiling.

Here, he realized that his grappling hook had caught a pipe. The ceiling was full of them, hidden behind the neon lights.

Mikey heard Donnie's voice in his head, telling him to follow the pipes. He tried to see whether they were favoring a particular direction, and indeed, they seemed to converge somewhere.

After a brief hesitation, Mikey decided to obey Donnie's voice. It would mean leaving his brothers for a short while, but Leo was guarding them, so surely it would be alright.

Mikey knew he had struck gold when he found the origin of the pipes. They were going out of a building that looked very different from the other ones. First, it was much larger, if not higher. Second, it was spherical. And third, it wasn't a prefabricated building: it rather looked like it was made of something very, very sturdy.

Mikey turned around to see if he could see an entrance, but he found one.

Puzzled, he came back towards the building his brothers had elected for their rest. He was so deep in his thoughts that he almost didn't notice Leo, who had moved right to Mikey's former hiding place.

When he did notice him, it was too late to hide. Mikey froze in place, half from the pink genie's control over his body and half from… well, not fear, because like he had told April, he definitely wasn't afraid of his brother. Even when Leo was watching him with narrowed eyes, like Mikey was a prey he would soon catch.

For once, Mikey was glad he couldn't talk, because he might have let out a very undignified shriek of…surprise. Definitely surprise.

But at least Leo wasn't pointing a gun at Mikey this time.

For what seemed like an eternity, Leo didn't talk. Then, as if he had made up his mind, his body relaxed ever so slightly.

"What do you want?" he whispered, his eyes fixed on Mikey.

Burying a hole right into Mikey's soul. Mikey wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them, to hug Leo and be hugged by him…

If only his eyes weren't so cold. If only his voice wasn't so distant.

"I know you've been following us. There is so much dust, it's hard to miss your footsteps."

Mikey cringed. He felt caught red-handed, as if he could have done better.

"I was tasked with capturing you," Leo said. "You know that, right?"

Mikey swallowed hard. It was hard to ignore, considering that just a little time ago Leo had been shooting at him.

"You're not like they said." Leo looked him up and down, gauging him. "You are… You did save Raph. And still I'm pretty sure you barely knew him."

On this, Leo couldn't have been more wrong. And while on any other occasion Mikey would have gleefully rubbed it in his face, right now, he was begging Leo to wake up. To remember. To understand.

"What do you want?" Leo repeated, as if Mikey's mutism meant nothing.

What did Mikey want? Nothing too complicated. He wanted his brothers back. He wanted to fix his mess and kick a pink genie's butt, no matter whether or not they had one.

He looked Leo in the eye, trying to convey his longing without words. Despite everything, he couldn't help hoping that Leo would recognize him, and the hope tasted bitter on his tongue.

He could feel the pink genie fighting him, or himself fighting the pink genie. He could feel himself losing.

Be patient, Splinter's voice whispered in his head, dispersing the fog in his brain. Bide your time. Trust in the link you have with your brothers, no matter what shape they have now.

Mikey clung to the memory as he stood in front of his brother.

"You..." Leo suddenly gritted his teeth and shook his head. "Never mind." He took a deep breath. "I don't trust you. But I won't act against you as long as we are stuck in here."

As Mikey didn't answer, didn't move, didn't do anything but stay here, Leo slowly walked backwards and jumped down the building. His eyes never leaving Mikey, he finally sat down, cross-legged, near the building's entrance.

Then and only then did Mikey realize that his legs felt like jelly. He sat down, hiding back in the shadows, and watched Leo.

Leo pressed his temples with his fingers, as if he was in pain, and took several deep breathes.

Mikey's heart skipped a beat. Maybe it was pure wishful thinking, but could it be that Leo had a headache for the same reason Mikey did? Was a part of him–of his true self–still conscious and still fighting?

Mikey was still wondering when Leo took his own grappling hook and started fiddling with it. It looked like it was damaged, probably from Leo rescuing Donnie earlier. Or the day before? Mikey didn't know, and he didn't care enough to check on his T-Phone.

But a plan formed in his head, a plan that he executed before the pink genie could comprehend its subtleties.

Mikey stood up and prepared to reach a more distant building, repeating like a mantra in his head that he wanted to think in peace to think in peace to think in peace–

Thud.

From the corner of his eye, Mikey saw Leo stiffen at the sound. He didn't wait for him to discover the object he had left behind–his perfectly functional grappling hook, ideal for reaching ceilings and getting overwiews, which had just happened to slip from his belt.

A complete coincidence.

Mikey waited for his current headache to increase, in retaliation for his cleverness, but it didn't. Maybe the pink genie didn't consider it was communication, or maybe they were tired, or maybe they had decided to bide their time, just like Mikey.

In any case, Mikey decided it was another win to his name.

Now he just had to hope that Leo would pick the hint.

"And you couldn't have thought about it sooner?"

Raph sounded exasperated, but Leo ignored his tone.

"It was this way," he said, pointing at the direction where Mikey knew the large spherical building was. "It was very visible from above."

Donnie was munching on an energy bar. He had protested when he had realized that neither Leo nor Raph had woken him up to keep watch, only softening when Raph had muttered a quick 'next time for sure'. Then Leo had briefly left them to explore the place from the ceiling, just like Mikey had hoped. For a human, he was in very good shape, and it didn't take him much longer than Mikey to go back and forth.

"It's not that far." Leo resolutely started walking, and the other two followed. "From the look of it, it might be worth investigating."

Mikey followed them with baited breath. He had eaten his own energy bars, that he had found in place of his grappling hook when he had come back, and he was in rather high spirits.

When they arrived at the building, Donnie whistled. "Now that's interesting."

Even Raph seemed intrigued, and they all walked around the construction, looking for an entrance Mikey knew didn't exist.

"The mystery deepens," Raph grumbled.

"On the contrary, it's starting to make sense." Donnie looked at Leo, a glint of glee in his eye. "I have a few theories. But I need to use one of these machines to be sure."

Leo sighed.