Chapter Text
His hands were trembling. Again.
Mikey hated it so much.
The pencil in his fingers fell to the floor as violent spasms shook his scarred hands, clicking loudly against the floor of his room. It sounded throughout the subway station halls, and Mikey could hear it echo far down the abandoned tunnels.
Damn his scarred hands. He couldn’t even do the things he loved anymore without being reminded of those horrific three days. The worst days of his life.
It was all blurry and he could hardly remember it sometimes; other times it was clearer than the constant beeping that came from his brother’s heart monitor. The memories hurt, more often than not, and when he thought of it it felt like there was barbed wire twisting around his heart. Whenever his hands twitched this badly it made him painfully upset.
His brothers had noticed it a few times, how badly the twitches frustrated him. But they had their own issues - Mikey didn’t want to add onto their worries with his own problems. He needed to be okay for them.
That was how it had always been. And for everyone’s sake, that was how it needed to stay.
Mikey gritted his teeth and picked up the pencil again. It shivered in his hands as they shook, and he very carefully, pressed it to the sketchbook on his bed.
The line he drew was not the usual quick stroke, but a wobbly, dark claw mark against the white paper. He tried to draw another line.
The sound of the graphite tip snapping sounded loudly in his ears.
That was the last straw.
Mikey tore out the page and balled it up, although it was tricky with how badly his hands were shaking now. He threw it across the room toward the trash can, where dozens upon dozens of other crumpled up pages lay. He curled up on the bed, his head almost fully in his shell.
Mikey was so out of it that he didn’t notice Donnie coming to stand in the doorway of the subway car.
“Mikey? Is something... wrong?” Donnie’s voice jolted him out of the daze.
Shit.
“Nope, Just drawing,” he replied quickly, trying his best to sound carefree and cheery. It felt so forced.
“You sure?” Donnie asked, glancing toward the pile of crumpled paper in the corner. It was messy, sure, but it wasn’t anything he needed to worry about, was it? It was just paper.
“I mean, I guess I’m trying,” Mikey admitted carefully. “Not the easiest with shaky hands.”
He laughed, but even in his own ears it sounded hollow instead of happy. What was wrong with him? He couldn’t let Donnie be worried about this - the softshell’s injuries were still a lot more of a priority.
Donnie moved further into the room to sit next to Mikey on the floor. Silence strung between them as Mikey tried his best to make his hands steady and draw. Apparently, though, the scarred fingers had other plans, as he dropped the pencil on the floor again.
Trying to pick it up was way too hard, so he just gave up and stared at the paper. There wasn’t even a line on the page he could go off of. His mind was just as blank for an idea.
“Are you absolutely certain there isn’t something bothering you?” Donnie asked again, his voice almost a whisper but still loud enough to echo in the small subway car.
“Compared to you guys, it's really nothing. I promise you, Dee, I’ll be fine.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Donnie snapped suddenly. “Come on, let me see it.” The softshell stretched out his hand, and Mikey just dropped his own into his brother’s. They were still shaking like crazy.
Donnie undid the wraps Mikey had put on his hands to try and help them heal (he’d done a terrible job on them by himself), which were still soaked with dried blood from the wounds. A small, somewhat choked gasp escaped him as the wraps fell onto the floor.
Mikey didn’t dare meet his brother’s gaze, because he knew what would be waiting for him there if he did - shock and fear and worry for him. Things he didn’t want to see right now.
“Mikey, when was the last time you switched out these wraps? They look awful, I’m surprised your hands didn’t get infected from this.”
“I haven’t taken them off,” he whispered. “I put them on after… y’know, and my hands have been too bad to change them. It's not worth the effort.”
Silence from Donnie. That didn’t bode well. He was half waiting for his brother to grab him under the arms and drag him into the medbay with Leo, which would have been entirely fair considering that however bad it seemed was worrying him.
“Come on, let’s go wash your hands off and get some clean wraps on them,” Donnie instructed, standing up next to him. Mikey saw from the corner of his eye how his brother had to grab the handle of the subway car to get up. Before all this no one in the Lair had ever needed to use them to get up.
Everything was different. It was all wrong now.
“Do we have to go to the medbay?” Mikey whispered. He may have taken some pleasure in sitting next to Leo while he slept and talking to him, but the beeping of the heart monitor and everyone’s constant, grief-filled coming and going made the place feel terrifying. “I don’t want Raph to see this - it’ll just get him more worried.”
A small, exasperated sigh from his brother.
“Ever the family therapist, aren’t you?,” Donnie muttered quietly. “Yeah, we can change them in the bathroom if you really don’t want Raph or Splinter or anyone else seeing it.”
“And you won’t tell them?”
“I swear I won’t. If your hands had actually gotten infected, it would have been an entirely different situation. Now come on,” Donnie said, grabbing Mikey’s arm and gently pulling him up.
He wasn’t stupid. He saw the strain it put on Donnie’s injured back, where the snaking wounds marked him in that eerie spiderweb he’d had to help patch up after the big fight.
Mikey didn't dare say anything as they walked through the Lair, even with how awfully quiet it was. The Lair had been too quiet as of late. Sometimes he'd find himself wandering near Donnie’s lab just to hear something other than distant trains and that terrifying beeping. At least the music offered something that he could focus on other than fear.
Donnie paused outside the medbay, where he heard quiet voices and the ever present beeping sound ringing through the subway car.
“Why are we stopping?” Mikey asked.
“I need to get you clean bandages,” the softshell whispered. “I can’t really patch you up if I don't have any.”
Mikey nodded. The beeping was all too loud as Donnie went into the medbay, and the soft whispers of whoever else was inside stopped. For a solid few minutes, no words were spoken that he could hear.
Donnie re-emerged from the subway car, eyes tired but bandages in hand. He quietly gestured to Mikey to follow him, and he did.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Raph was in there.” Not exactly surprising - the snapper had been practically living in the medbay since they’d brought Leo home after the invasion. “He looked at me funny for a little bit while I was getting bandages, but nothing too over the top. He didn’t even ask me why I needed them.”
“That’s not like him.”
“It’s not like me to willingly grab medical wraps and gauze either, considering the aversion to… well, you know.”
He did in fact know. Donnie hated absolutely anything and everything remotely slimy touching him. It was understandable, and Mikey hated it too, but Donnie’s sensory issue with it took the word “aversion” to an entirely new level.
He remembered how terrified Donnie had been on the Kraang’s ship. The eerie tentacles of the control panel. A shiver ran down his spine as he forced away the memory of the panel violently sucking his brother into it, leaving him alone in the room.
Donnie sighed again - a real sigh, not full of anything for the first time in a while - and they both went to patch up Mikey’s arms.