For those of you who have read chapter 12, this is just the same - I had some complaints that people couldn't read the last chapter so I'm just uploading it again as a new chapter ;)
So, here it is guys, the last chapter. I hope you guys are gonna miss reading this story as much as I'm gonna miss writing it :')
If you enjoyed, please vote and comment, and if you want to read more from me in the future, please follow :D
I want to thank you guys for all the support. This was my first try at writing fanfiction and you guys have helped me through it and made it a great experience. I hope you all have a good day and good luck with all of your own writing endeavours ;)
Here we go!
Mikey wasn't aware of much at first. He knew it was dark and quiet and that was about it. A few moments passed like this until Mikey's consciousness was drawn out further by a dull throbbing in his head and at his side. The pain kept growing. He just wanted to go back to his serene tranquillity, but it didn't look like that was going to happen. The aching persisted no matter how much he tried to ignore it. He sighed inwardly and felt the heaviness in his eyes lifting. He slowly blinked them open, but quickly scrunched them up tight against the onslaught of bright whiteness that had filled his vision. He groaned as he turned his head away from the source, his voice tired and hoarse.
Donnie, who had been preoccupied with rummaging through the cupboards for fresh supplies, now froze, his heart jumping up into his throat. He turned and looked behind him to where his little brother was lying on the bed, but saw that although he had been soundly sleeping before, he was now shifting, a pained expression on his face.
"Oh... oh, um...w-wait, um..." Donnie stumbled over his words as he juggled the various bandages, salves and packets which he had piled into a mound in his arms. He rushed over as quickly as he could without tripping over the bandages that had unfurled themselves and were now trailing down to the floor in front of his feet. He managed the dump everything onto the small metal table at the bedside without causing a major avalanche and then focused his attention on his brother, placing a gentle olive-green hand on his unwrapped arm as he leaned in closer.
"Mikey?" Donnie noticed him shying away from the light and quickly rushed over to the panel on the wall to adjust it. When he returned to the bedside Mikey looked more relaxed and was looking up at the ceiling dazedly. Donnie addressed his brother again. He smiled with satisfaction as Mikey's shining baby-blue eyes locked with Donnie's own warm chestnut-brown.
"Hey, how you feeling?" Donnie's heart pounded in his ears as he waited for a response.
"Why isn't he saying anything? I know he hit his head but it isn't that bad. I couldn't have missed something could I?"
Donnie's frantic stream of thoughts was broken when Mikey uttered a single, pained word.
"Ow." Donnie dispersed a light laugh with his sigh of relief.
"Believe it or not that's a good thing, Mikey. It means that you haven't sustained any nerve damage."
"Well it sure doesn't feel like a good thing, D" moaned Mikey, allowing himself to sink into the soft pillow beneath him.
"I'll grab you some painkillers, just a sec." As Donnie got up to ransack the cupboards once more, Mikey asked him where everyone else was.
"They're with the professor, working on the plan for retrieving the first piece of the black hole generator from the Triceraton ship."
"Oh, yeah..." Donnie could tell by Mikey's tone that he was remembering the argument they had had before this mess had started and he felt guilt squeezing at his stomach.
Mikey shook the memory from his mind and instead peered curiously at his surroundings. His vision was limited by his lying position on the bed but he still recognised the room as the medical bay of the 'Ulixes'. When the turtles and their friends had first arrived on the ship, Fugitoid had given them the grand tour, showing them every inch of the ship and boasting smugly at their admiration. It wasn't a huge ship by all accounts, so they had gotten to know the layout fairly quickly, although Mikey always wondered why there was only one bathroom; it just seemed silly for a ship with so many bedrooms.
The aching in Mikey's head and arm brought him back to the present. He winced as he carefully lifted his head and looked over to his left. His arm had been completely wrapped, neat squares of gauze visible as bumps under the pristine white bandages. He dropped his head back onto the pillow and considered this with confusion. That was when Donnie returned. He remarked that he was just going to adjust the bed so Mikey could sit up. Mikey mumbled a "mmhmm" and the older brother noted his pensive tone and faraway expression as he clicked it into place.
Donnie handed over a couple of pills to Mikey, and then a glass of water. The young turtle took them gratefully and swallowed both, one after the other. Donnie asked Mikey what he had been thinking about.
"Oh, nothing dude, just that... it's on the wrong side." Donnie flashed Mikey a quizzical look, prompting him to continue.
"I thought it was my other arm that got sliced, wasn't it?" Donnie's eyes widened.
"So you remember that, huh?"
"Well, yeah, it's pretty hard to forget something like your brothers' deaths, Don. I don't understand it, but that doesn't make it not real." He stopped for a second then smiled rather grimly. "Just like all your sciencey stuff, huh?"
"Oh... yeah." replied Donnie sadly, looking away for a second. He seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. The genius looked back at his brother and asked: "What do you remember before all that though? Before the um... darkness?" He visualised the contorting blackness that they had all been surrounded by and luckily, Mikey seemed to understand what he was getting at.
"I remember all of us arguing, and then going to the holodeck room, and then there was this huge boom sound! And the lights went all flickery! The room was like a total wreck, dude!" Mikey paused for a second and shot his brother a defensive look. "I promise, it wasn't me bro, I didn't break it!" Donnie raised a hand and stopped him. He was kind of hurt that Mikey thought he would just assume it was his fault.
"I know Mikey, it was a meteoroid." Mikey's face lit up.
"What, like one of those flying space rocks?! Cool!" Donnie's brow creased in disapproval.
"No Mikey, not cool. It seriously damaged the ship, not to mention you got seriously hurt. In fact it could have been a lot worse!" Mikey shrunk away a little and Donnie's expression softened. He sighed and began to explain what had happened, although he left out the parts about the voices and the memories; he didn't want to get into that right now, at least not without discussing it with Raph and Leo first.
"... and that's when we brought you back here." he finished. Mikey had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the telling of the story, but that was because he had been trying to connect the pieces between his brother's version and his own. He all of a sudden remembered all of the little details he had forgotten, like trying to open the door and getting electrocuted, and seeing the squirrelanoids and the Shredder suddenly dissolve in front of him as they were defeated. All these things made sense now.
"So, all that stuff happened inside my head? That's crazy!"
"Yes, well, it's over now. The professor managed to fix up the room quite easily once the connection broke so we shouldn't be having any more problems like that. Now do me a favour and stay still while I re-wrap your burns." Mikey smiled fully.
"No prob, Doctor Don!"
But as it turned out, it was a bit of a "prob". Mikey kept squirming and pulling as Donnie applied creams and gauze to the bright pink flesh.
"Sorry Mikey, but it's for your own good." he said frustratedly. Mikey yelped audibly as Donnie pressed a piece of gauze against his palm.
"I know, but you're taking forever and it hurts!" cried Mikey pitifully. Mikey's shouting could be heard from across the ship and it had soon drawn a crowd. The first to arrive was Raph who skidded to a halt in the doorway, his expression changing from fear to joy. He looked back down the hallway and shouted:
"Guys! He's awake!" He rushed inside, shortly followed by his brother and their two human friends.
"Donnie!" he yelled angrily and proceeded to hit the genius across the back of the head, "How come ya didn't call us in here?!" Donnie stood up from the little black stool he had been sat on and looked Raph straight in the eyes, similarly ticked off.
"Because I needed to change his bandages and I knew that if I called you in here THIS would happen!" Donnie gestured to the magnitude of people now crowding around the bed and shooed them. "If you're gonna talk to him, do it from over there!" he pointed to the other side of the bed and sat back down heatedly. Everyone looked at him, slightly taken back and Mikey laughed.
"Doctor's orders." he shrugged with one shoulder and then yelped again as Donnie continued to redress his wound. The others shuffled around to the other side of the bed and simultaneously jumped in with questions for the youngest turtle.
"Woah dudes, it's like you haven't seen me in months!" he exclaimed. Leo chimed in.
"Well actually more like a couple of days."
"You had us all worried." smiled April. Casey interjected with a cocky grin.
"Well except for Donnie and the professor." Donnie tore his attention away from Mikey's arm and threw Casey a nasty glare.
"Only because we knew the medication would work. I've spent enough time studying it now to know its effects and functions. When this is all over I'd like to have a go at replicating it in my lab." He finished with a pleased grin, thinking of all the possibilities for new and better medicines to be discovered.
"Well, I still don't trust the stuff," stated Raph, crossing his arms. "What if he grows a second head or something?"
"What?!" cried Mikey in alarm. Donnie started listing the chemicals in the medicines that "most certainly will NOT cause Mikey to grow a second head" as Raph rolled his eyes and shook his own from side to side. Leo leaned down and whispered some consolation to his little brother.
"Don't listen to him Mikey, that's just Raph's way of saying he was worried too." Leo smirked and Mikey laughed slightly. Leo put a hand on Mikey's good shoulder and said, "Good to have you back, bro."
***
To Mikey's great frustration, Donnie wouldn't let him leave the medical bay for another day:
"Not until I'm completely sure that no infection has set in." he said.
This left Mikey with a lot of free time and nothing to occupy his attention, so everyone agreed to spend the next 24 hours taking turns sitting with him, if anything to prevent him from constantly pestering Donnie to let him go.
In the end, it seemed this wasn't necessary, as towards the end of the first shift with Leo the youngest turtle had fallen asleep again. The eldest was going to wake him but Donnie, who had come back into the room to gather various medications for his experiments, told him to let him rest.
Shortly after, Raph came in to swap with Leo.
"Ugh, what's the point of me bein' here if he's asleep?" he grumbled and pulled a stool up next to Leo. "You can go Fearless, I'll make sure he doesn't get into any trouble."
Just then, Mikey jerked in his sleep and made a feeble whining noise which caught the three brothers' attention.
"Probably a nightmare." said Leo, frowning.
"Hardly surprising after all he's been through." sighed Donnie. There was silence for a moment before he mustered the courage to speak his mind. "Guys, we have to talk to him about what we saw." Donnie watched his older brothers for a moment, begging them with his eyes to say something. Donnie felt relieved when they both nodded their agreement, although that was quickly replaced by a gnawing anxiety as he realised this meant they'd actually have to confront Mikey about his own thoughts.
Mikey jerked again and his breathing quickened and became more laboured. Raph placed a hand on the covers over his baby brother's leg, but lurched backwards when the leg was pulled away and Mikey sat up with a start. He looked around at his older brothers' worried expressions and immediately put on a smile.
"Sorry bros, didn't mean to scare you." The other three turtles exchanged a look and a nod. Donnie swallowed nervously and then started.
"Mikey," he began uncertainly, "when I told you what happened inside the holodeck room, I may have left out a few details." Mikey looked at him in confusion.
"What do you mean?" he asked. Leo spoke next.
"We ended up inside a few of your memories."
"And they weren't all happy ones, little brother." said Raph downcastly. Mikey looked nervous all of a sudden. His eyes darted around the room as he replied.
"What? I don't know what you're -"
"You can drop the act Mikey, we were there, we know what we saw." said Leo firmly. Mikey's expression changed quite abruptly to one of annoyance.
"Just drop it, bros. I'm not in the mood for a lecture right now, especially about my SUPER PRIVATE THOUGHTS!" Leo opened his mouth to reply, but Raph got their first.
"We ain't gonna lecture you Mikey, we just wanna know yer okay." Donnie and Leo were as shocked as their little brother to hear this coming from Raph. The former two both nodded in agreement. Mikey seemed at a loss, his anger suddenly melting away.
"Dudes, there's no need to worry, you know that? You just caught me on a bad day." he smiled genuinely, touched by his brothers' concern.
"It was still our fault." stated Donnie remorsefully. "We shouldn't have yelled at you the other day. April was right, it was just an accident."
"Besides, if it weren't for us, ya wouldn't have so many bad memories to begin with..." Raph trailed off and looked away.
"Guys..." Mikey began. Raph started speaking again.
"No. Don't say it's okay 'cus it's not." he looked up into Mikey's eyes and said completely seriously: "We're sorry. We'll try harder to be better brothers. I promise."
"Me too"
"And me."
Mikey looked around at his family surrounding him. While he was a little embarrassed that his brothers had seen so much of his inner emotions, he was also in a sense relieved. He was glad that they understood now. Maybe they would be more inclined to listen to what he had to say, and to trust his instincts, however crazy they may seem at times.
"And Mikey," added Leo, "You don't have to worry about proving yourself or being able to do things on your own."
"No one should go it alone. That's why we're a team." finished Raph with a smile, hooking his arms around Leo and Donnie. Mikey looked at them all appreciatively and wondered how he could ever have believed those awful dream turtles were his brothers. They were truly just the worst parts of damaged thoughts. These turtles, they were his brothers. The ones that smiled and laughed with him and encouraged him. Of course they annoyed him and teased him from time to time but these were the people he knew he would always trust with his life. They would always protect him, and love him.
"Thanks, bros." he said simply, and he knew that everything would be alright.