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Donnie stared at the water running over his hands. He was standing at the kitchen sink, washing his hands- he assumed that was what he was doing, at least. He didn’t remember coming up from the table and going to the sink. He didn’t remember if he’d actually washed his hands yet or not. Just in case, he washed them, focusing on each step. Water. Soap. Scrub. Water.
Water. Soap. Scrub. Water. Water, soap, scrub-
“Donnie?” Leo called his name. Donnie looked up.
“Yeah?”
“Dude, you’ve washed your hands like… five times now,” Leo said. “You good?”
“Yeah, just… making sure they’re clean, I guess. I-” he paused, thinking for a second. “I’m going to go back to my lab. Farewell.”
~*~*~
The lab door slid shut behind Donnie. While he knew it had happened, his memory of walking there was hazy- that had been happening a lot lately.
Pizza supreme, why was he so tired?
He sat down to look over and check some calculations for the project he was working on- rebuilding S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. Donnie wanted to rebuild him before rebooting the AI’s memory, so he’d have something physical to come back to.
Donnie stared at the numbers on the screen. He looked over the calculations.
All the numbers were neatly organized, values and units labeled with what they corresponded to. But it didn’t make sense.
He tried to run through the math in his head, but it disintegrated halfway through, and he couldn’t remember where he’d started. Every time he ran through the math, his mental whiteboard erased after every step.
Restart. The measurement in spreadsheet cell A4 was for the surface area of the semispherical guard around S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.’s inorganic eye, and the surface area value meant that the radius was…
Restart. Cell G8. The area of the front plate on S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N.’s torso. It was nearly rectangular, but had been designed to look like a turtle plastron, so that meant to get the area you had to…
Restart. Cell A2. There was the eye guard radius measurement. The radius corresponded to the surface area because the radius was used in the calculation when…
Restart.
Restart.
Restart.
“Donnie?”
He barely heard the voice. His brain ignored it, anyway. If it even wanted to try and puzzle out these simple, easy calculations, it needed to focus.
Restart.
“Hey, Donnie.”
Restart.
Goddamnit, why couldn’t he get this?
“Donnie!” Leo was just barely below shouting.
“Hm?”
“Tello, are you ok? You’re just sitting here, staring at the computer screen, and you’ve seemed out of it all day-”
“I’m fine,” Donnie lied.
“You were like, entirely zoned out!”
“I’m fine,” he repeated.
“Have you been pulling all-nighters again?”
Donnie 'sighed'.
“Nardo. For the last time, I’m fine. I’ve been sleeping an adequate amount.”
He wasn’t lying about that, at least. He had been sleeping. Which made this all the more frustrating- he was still tired and unable to concentrate even after a full night’s sleep.
“Alright. Okay.” Leo looked like he wanted to ask something, but he didn’t. “Goodnight, then.”
“Oh, uh… goodnight,” Donnie said as Leo left. Night? What time was it?
He checked the time on his computer. It was already nearly 9:30- he’d been sitting there, trying to figure out basic math for hours.
He didn’t have the mental or emotional capacity to deal with that, so he went to bed.
~*~*~
Donnie woke up with a good eleven hours of sleep under his belt. And he was still tired. Standing up was an unfortunately dizzying experience, but it wasn’t the worst light-headedness he’d ever felt, and he needed caffeine.
He walked into the kitchen- Mikey was nowhere to be found, and Donnie felt thankful for the lack of noise (and then immediately felt guilty)- and sat down at his spot, where someone had fortunately placed a large mug of coffee. Hopefully for him- if it wasn’t, too bad, it was his now.
The kitchen was suspiciously quiet. Donnie picked up the mug of coffee.
“Care to share with the class, dearest brethren?” he pointedly addressed the silent room.
Raph spoke up first.
“Dee, we don’t know what’s going on, but obviously something’s up, and…”
Donnie quickly lost track of Raph’s words, letting the audio float away and disappear into the thick pea-soup fog in his brain. He instead tried to focus on lifting the coffee mug, which was, like most things lately, surprisingly and frustratingly difficult.
It almost felt like his hands had no bones, no muscles- it took all of his effort to lift the mug, and his hands shook so badly from the stress that coffee sloshed out of the mug.
“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath as the hot coffee ran over his fingers.
“Shit, are you okay?” Leo quickly took the mug from Donnie and checked his twin’s hands. “Okay, nothing’s burnt, nothing’s broken- you were probably just surprised.”
“‘Mkay, it’s lab time,” Donnie declared. He didn’t want to be here anymore- people simply talking to him was just too much, and the kitchen’s bright lights didn’t help.
He stood up, and immediately fell over. That was much closer to the worst light-headedness he’d ever felt. It felt like it was close enough to threaten that title, even.
“Okay, Raph decision. You’re going back to bed.” Raph grabbed one of the Donnie-approved blankets from an adjacent room. Raph then proceeded to bundle the softshell in the blanket before picking him up, and carrying him to his room- not his lab. Leo followed close behind.
“No no no- I’m fine, it’s okay, why are we in my room, you’re not allowed in here,” Donnie said as he tried to fight through the blanket. Unfortunately, he failed- but that was unsurprising, considering he couldn’t lift a coffee cup or stand up.
“You just collapsed, Tello. You need rest,” Leo said, shaking his head.
“But I just got rest.”
“Last time I acted like this, you told me that if I didn’t sleep, you’d rewire the TV so it would only play that digits of pi channel.”
“Have a nice nap, Donnie.” Raph turned off the lights and the two of them left the room, leaving Donnie bundled in a blanket in the dark.
He could hear his breath. He could feel his heart beating- was it always that fast? It shouldn’t be that fast, right? Was he dying? Is that why he couldn’t stand and couldn’t lift a mug and couldn’t do math and couldn’t follow a conversation and couldn’t think , why was it so difficult to just simply think?
Enough was enough. Donnie wanted to do what he did best- it was research time.
~*~*~
Less than ten minutes of searching got him his answer. Myalgic encephalomyelitis- chronic fatigue syndrome. It matched up. Major fatigue 24/7, with even minor activities worsening it? Check. Sleep that felt like the opposite of rest? Check. Headaches? Check. Brain fog? The biggest check to ever check.
But what had brought it on? Donnie’s research told him that chronic fatigue was usually triggered by some sort of infection, but he hadn’t been sick recently, so what could’ve-
Oh.
The Technodrome.
Becoming a spaceship had been wonderful, but the consequences of being forcibly removed from said spaceship had been horrid. As soon as the adrenaline had worn off, he’d begun to feel sick- but he knew it wasn’t a virus or anything, just a result of the sudden separation.
Maybe he’d left a part of him in there, and now there was nothing to fill that gap. Or worse, there was no gap- only holes full of what used to be him, and wasn’t anymore. Dead tissue, Kraang tissue. Either way. He was less, now.
Donnie had lost something. If he really cut down to it, he’d lost himself.
If he really cut down to it, if he was honest with himself and really thought, losing himself wasn’t bad. He just hated that he had to be here to know that he wasn’t really here.
If he really cut down to it, if he was honest, and if he shone a light through the brain fog and formed a coherent thought, he’d left a part of himself with the Technodrome, but there was something here, too.
Floating.
Donnie thought of something, but just as quickly dismantled the thought. He’d resolved to never ask Leo about the Prison Dimension unless his twin came to him first.
But he wanted to know. Was this what it had felt like? Floating?
He really was floating, in nearly everything but physical. Floating in a fog, no attachments to thoughts or motion or anything.
It sucked. At least now he sort of knew what was up, though.
The most frustrating part was that he couldn’t remember what his train of thought had been ten seconds ago.
Even though he didn’t need sleep, didn’t really want sleep, Donnie shut his eyes.
The darkness didn’t make a difference, he was still floating.
But it helped to have nothing to focus on when he couldn’t focus, anyways.