Rest and Recuperation

by LucaWrites

Summary:

After they defeated the Krang, nightmares among the brothers are unfortunately not uncommon.

Mikey comes up with an idea to try ease the burden, even just a little bit.

Notes:

First ROTTMNT fic! I love these turtles I hope one day we get another season or a movie sequel 🥺

“Get out of here, Mikey!” 

“What?!” he screamed. The chain of his nunchaku swirled through the air, its presence obvious as it throbbed with mystic energy. It wrapped around a huge piece of debris, and he yanked it so he could throw it into Prime. He saw Raph, encased in red ninpo, hurtling after the alien, going faster with Donnie on his back, creating a mystic jetpack with his ninpo. 

Why would Leo tell him that? He would never leave them. Did he think he couldn’t handle the battle? Was this just another case of Youngest Sibling Syndrome?

“You’re too young! You’ll get hurt!”

“I’m doing fine!” he yelled back, leaping into the air and wrapping his nunchaku around Prime before swinging him around and throwing him into another building. “I can handle it!”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his brother slice one of his katana through the air, a trail of blue fiery energy trailing after it.

A flash of blue. He yelped as the ground disappeared beneath his feet, and the chains of his nunchaku shortened back to their regular length as he lost his focus on them. He landed hard on concrete, and his gaze was drawn upwards. 

The Technodrome floated towards the gaping wound in the sky. On the rubble floating around it, were his brothers, fighting a desperate fight against Krang Prime to keep him in the Prison Dimension.

“Close the portal, Casey!” came Leo’s voice over his comms.

This wasn’t how it happened.

“But you’re still in there, Sensei!”

“Close it! We have to keep Mikey safe!”

There was a quiet moment. 

Then the portal closed on the Technodrome, still half-in-half-out of the opening, and there was a mighty explosion. 

This never happened. 

The explosion pushed a neon cloud of dust outwards, spreading across the sky. His brothers were still on the other side.

Wake up, he told himself. Wake up.

Finally, his eyes opened to the art-covered ceiling of his room. As soon as he was awake enough, he closed his eyes and spread his mystic senses through the lair.

He could feel Donnie’s ninpo, the one who had a room closest to his. It brought him a little relief, reminding him that his brothers were still alive. But it throbbed with fear and a large dose of revulsion. He was probably having nightmares about the Technodrome, about having foreign alien tentacles burrowing into his skin and shell.

A little further away was Raph’s. Also alive. Similar to Donnie’s ninpo, it was active but at the same time not. Asleep, but in the midst of a nightmare. It also radiated fear, but it was a different flavour than Donnie’s fear. It felt like it was directed towards himself, only a little bit directed outwardly. 

But furthest was Leo’s ninpo, somewhere in the dojo in Mikey’s mind-map of the lair. Alive. It throbbed with pain, deeper than just physical pain, something that Mikey would’ve never known about if he couldn’t feel it. It was much more active and sharp than Donnie’s or Raph’s, signalling that he was awake. Mikey still didn’t know what happened when he was in the Prison Dimension, what was keeping him from sleeping—when he finally opened up about it, he’d specifically asked Mikey to leave. He couldn’t stop the prick of hurt as he turned to leave, but he hadn’t wanted to make Leo uncomfortable either. 

He laid there, letting his mystic sense really take in how his brothers’ ninpo felt. 

Then he got out of his hammock, taking his bright colourful blanket with him, and started on his mission. 

He poked his head into Donnie’s room first. He drooped a little when he saw his older brother had worn his battleshell to sleep. But at least his goggles and mask were set neatly on the desk below his bed, beside his round glasses that he usually traded for contact lenses. His brow ridges, now devoid of the bold sharpie’d eyebrows on his mask, were wrinkled together. His lips were pressed into a thin line.

He entered the room, before putting a hand on the softshell’s shoulder and shaking him a little. 

“Wake up,” Mikey whispered, still sort of groggy himself. “You’re having a nightmare.” He shook him one more time before there was a sharp intake of breath and Donnie’s eyes opened. 

He blinked sleepily at the box turtle, then squinted, probably to clear up his nearsighted vision, seemingly trying to figure out what was going on. 

“Ah,” he said, having woken up enough to realize, “good—or bad—middle-of-the-night, Angelo. I presume you were also having a nightmare before you came here?”

Mikey nodded, taking his hand off of Donnie to grip his blanket and wrap it a little tighter around his shoulders. “I wanna try turtle piling at Raph’s. Are you okay with that?”

“Of course, Michael.” He sat up, before carefully maneuvering his way to the floor of his room, taking his purple stolen high-thread-count blanket with him. When he touched the floor, he wrapped his blanket over his shoulders like a cape, matching Mikey. “Let’s get Nardo.” He began walking towards his twin’s room, before Mikey stopped him.

“Um…he’s awake. And he’s at the dojo.”

“Of course he is,” Donnie grumbled under his breath as he set his glasses on his snout. He didn’t stop squinting, though Mikey knew it was now a half-asleep scowl. “...How do you know?”

“Ah. Uh. I can sense your guys’ ninpo? I have to turn it on, but I can.”

Donnie blinked slowly. “I’ll ask about that when I’m awake enough to comprehend basic English. Now, if Nardo’s awake, we should both go. If somehow your Youngest Sibling Charisma doesn’t work on him, I’ll drag my dumb-dumb twin to Raph’s room.”

As they walked, Mikey heard his older brother grumbling under his breath. Most of it was complaining about his twin, though there was an undertone of concern to it. 

They came to the dojo they had in their underground lair, and sure enough, there were the sounds of blows hitting a punching bag. 

Donnie stomped up to the dojo and threw open the shoji with one hand, keeping his blanket around his shoulders with the other.

Leo whipped towards the now-open shoji, pausing the punching bag beatdown. He let his stance relax when he saw it was his brothers, stopping the punching bag with a hand. 

“Morning,” he said casually, cocking his hip and putting a hand on it, a smile on his face that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He was wearing his blue mask, covering eye bags that Mikey was pretty sure were there.

“Good morning!” Mikey chirped, channeling as much of his Innocent Naïve Little Sibling Energy into his words as possible. “Wanna go to Raph’s with us and turtle pile?”

Leo’s façade cracked just a teeny bit, not able to think of a deflection, distracted in the face of the pure radiance emanating off of his little brother. “Uh…”

The box turtle kept going, though he couldn’t stop the passive-aggressiveness from leaking into his words, letting the slider know that yes, he knew that he was sneaking out during the night. “I’m sure you don’t have any solo missions that you’re warming up for, right? Because that’d be breaking one of the Big Five, and if you got hurt out there, we wouldn’t be able to help you!”

“Of course not!” Leo said, righting his smile. “I would never,” he scoffed, flipping his mask tails over his shoulder like hair.

“Then let’s go turtle pile!”

Leo opened his mouth, obviously beginning to reject the offer. 

Donnie spoke first. 

“Hamato Leonardo, my brother, my twin, my dumb-dumb sibling, I know for a fact that you haven’t slept in days, and have instead been going out and defeating D-tier criminals. You know I record everything. So before I fall asleep in this dojo, get your insomniac butt to Raph’s and at least try to sleep before I get my spider battleshell and drag you there myself.”

Leo sighed, his facade finally shucking off like shedding scutes. Mikey was surprised—usually it took them longer to take it down. Maybe he was just so tired he couldn’t maintain it. After all, without the facade, he looked like he was about to fall over, but he still managed a guilty smile to his brothers as he folded his arms over his plastron.

“You guys know me too well, mi hermanos.”

“Scoff, of course we do, Leon,” Donnie said as Leo walked out of the dojo. Mikey closed the shoji behind them, after turning off the lights. 

“Are you gonna take off your battleshell, Don-tron?” the snapper asked gently as they made their way towards their older brother’s room. 

“No,” Donnie responded flatly, not even glancing at the technology on his shell. His hands tightened a little on his blanket.

“...Okay.”

They walked, passing by the graffiti’d walls—courtesy of Mikey. When they got closer, Mikey sent out his mystic senses one more time, and sensed that Raph was now awake. 

Mikey went in first, and Raph glanced over once he saw the box turtle. 

“Nightmare?” his older brother asked as he flopped onto the snapper’s plastron. The word was a little mumbled because of the headgear in his mouth, but the box turtle could still understand what he was saying. Mikey nodded, already feeling a little better as he pulled the blanket over himself.

Raph looked over the twins still standing, and lifted his arms up and gestured for them to come over. 

“Nardo was in the dojo,” Donnie said as he laid down between Raph and the wall, burrito-ing himself in his blanket.

“Snitch,” Leo grumbled, but didn’t make any effort to deny it. He flopped down on Raph’s other side, mashing his face into the mattress. 

“Leo,” Raph admonished, “take your mask off.”

Leo grumbled and took his mask off, not even bothering to untie it and just slipping the strip of fabric off of his head before putting it on Raph’s nightstand.

After that, he turned over and pulled a part of Raph’s blankets over himself. Mikey glanced over and saw that Donnie’s breaths had evened out, and Raph’s eyes were beginning to close. 

Mikey sighed, relieved that his idea was working, before letting himself be taken by sleep.

* * * * *

When he opened his eyes again, he still had all three brothers with him. He sat up just a little, trying hard not to wake the snapper beneath him. 

The clock on Raph’s nightstand read, ‘8:39 AM’. 

Leo was, miraculously, asleep. The bags under his eyes were less pronounced, and the box turtle hoped that he would be asleep for some time longer to make up for all those nights of missed sleep. 

Donnie was on the other side, and even though his battleshell was still securely on his shell, he’d let Raph wrap one of his arms around him. Mikey took that as a win.

And when he looked at Raph, his face was completely relaxed. There was no Raph Chasm, as Leo called it, and he looked like the 18-year-old he was.

Mikey folded his arms under his face and rested his head on it. 

They should probably be going on a mission. As the first one awake, he should probably wake them out so they can go. 

But also, he knew his older brothers needed sleep. All of them, not just Leo. Even though they tried to hide it from him—either because of their own internal complexes or because they wanted to ‘protect’ him, or both—he knew.

So he closed his eyes again and let himself settle into sleep. 

They could afford to miss a day of patrol.

* * * * *

They slept in that morning. As in, until noon. Mikey was still the first up after he fell back asleep—further hitting home just how much his older brothers needed rest—and he carefully got up off of Raph and made his way to the kitchen. 

When his brothers finally came in, he was in the process of making pancakes. 

“Why didn’t you wake us up, Mikey?” Raph asked, helping by washing some blueberries. He was about to go patrolling without eating breakfast—the twins following behind—before Mikey invoked Splinter and Dr. Delicate Touch to make sure they all stayed. 

“I checked Donnie’s police scans—”

“You what?!” Donnie squawked, from his seat at the table where he was doomscrolling on his phone. “Did you—”

“Don’t worry, Donald, your search history and social media apps stayed unopened.” Quieter, he said, “I don’t really wanna touch those…”

Donnie breathed a sigh of relief, and Raph motioned for Mikey to keep talking. 

“Yeah, so I checked Donnie’s police scans, for both New York and the Hidden city, and they were completely fine. So I figured we could sleep in.”

Raph hummed, indicating that he was still a little miffed about not being woken up, but also understanding Mikey’s logic. 

“Well, Raphie, now we have a day off!” Leo said brightly, leaning forward and setting his elbows on the counter before resting his chin on his hands. The grin he was wearing seemed genuine, and Mikey hoped it actually was. He saw that the bags under his eyes were much lighter, too. “A day off starting with pancakes. They smell really good by the way, Mikey.”

Mikey beamed. “Thanks, Leo!”

They finished the pancakes, and Mikey plated them. 

Donnie’s had unsalted butter, a sprinkling of icing sugar, and blueberries on the side. Simple, no textures similar to the Technodrome console, and still pancakes.

His had syrup drizzled on top, blueberries, and a few strawberries he cut into stars because why not. He also had banana slices, stacked in the order of banana slice, strawberry star, and then blueberry on top.

He crammed as many fruits onto Leo’s pancake as he could, put a large amount of whipped cream on top, and made sure to put ample amounts of syrup on them without drowning the plate. Even though he knew Leo liked his pancakes drowning in syrup, Mikey refused to make them that way if he could help it. Because pancakes drowning in syrup aren’t pancakes anymore, just syrup, and he had enough debates about it with Leo to know that the slider didn’t mind if they were made Mikey’s way.

Raph had the most pancakes, and Mikey liked seeing how many he could stack on one plate. He poured syrup on top, sprinkled on a little bit of icing sugar, topped it with fruit, and put a few squirts of whipped cream on top. Though it wasn’t nearly as much as Leo’s.

Splinter—who was awake and hogging the TV while he cooked—had a bowl of white rice, a bowl of miso soup that he’d reheat once his dad got there since he didn’t like lukewarm soup, and some cucumber maki. His dad would be fine with pancakes, but the rat had already eaten breakfast and Mikey didn’t want to feed him two breakfasts.

He put his hands on his hips after stepping back, and looked over his handiwork with a proud smile.

A heavy hand landed on his head. “Those look good, Big Man,” Raph said. 

“Thanks!” he chirped. “Has someone gotten Dad already?” He turned around to look for Splinter, and he wasn’t there. 

“Leon’s on it,” Donnie said, looking up from his phone as Mikey and Raph set the plates on the table and sat down.

When Leo and Splinter arrived and joined them at the table, it was quiet. But then Donnie insulted Leo’s pancake preference yet again, Leo shot back a rebuttal, and then breakfast became a show between the two overdramatic twins about their breakfast preferences. 

Raph finally stepped in, and they turned back to their breakfasts. But, of course, not without one last jab each. 

Watching them, Mikey suddenly had the urge to say, “I love you guys,” with a radiant grin on his face.

His family members exchanged looks, but then they echoed his sentiments, no questions asked. 

And then they continued eating.

Their family wouldn’t be fully back to what they were before, but they could come close. And Mikey was completely fine with that. 

They were his family after all, and he was theirs. 

That was enough.

Notes:

The only complaints I have about writing these guys is that there's too many of them and they're all boys 😭. And then I don't want to say their names five times in the same paragraph, so I have to pull out the "refer to them by their species" card.

Also, the amount of creators out there who are a fan of both ROTTMNT and Sonic is hilarious, like they're so me lmao

Writing the initial part where all four of them were sleepy was written while I myself was sleep deprived. It was definitely an experience, lmfao.

I hc that Leo is pretty fluent in English, Japanese, and Spanish (I like the idea that he imprinted on Hueso and began learning Spanish that way), he could probably context clues other languages too, the other brothers are pretty fluent in English and Japanese, and can understand a pretty good amount of Spanish because of Leo, April is only fluent in English but can sort of understand + context clues Japanese and Spanish, and Casey usually speaks English but knows a few words in Japanese and Spanish.

Listen, I know in the show Karai says "anatawa hitorijanai" and Raph (and I'm assuming the other brothers) has no idea what the heck that means but a girl can dream.

Ok now screaming about the show:

AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH IT'S SO GOOD. The way the turtles' dynamic is is so relatable to real-life sibling dynamics, and the dynamic they have with Splinter is an amazing representation of dysfunctional families and aghowhfdosvjv it's so good. THEN THE ANIMATION AND THE CHARACTER DESIGN! They did so good making each turtle super distinct, and even the background villains and characters have extremely memorable designs. I also appreciate the inclusion of Japanese culture in the yokai in the Hidden City (not Japanese, but can appreciate cultural recognition) And the animation is straight eye-candy, Leo genuinely looks so cool when he gets his ninpo abilities and whenever he uses them *coughsinleobeingoneofmyfavourites* and every time his powers are in action I rewatch those scenes a few times. And I could go on and on about each of the character's complexity and their character traits and arcs and dynamics with side characters but this is an author's note in a fic, not a character analysis video. And because of all I previously mentioned, it genuinely upsets me that this show got cancelled. aughhhhhhhhh *sobs in the corner*

Anyways thank you for reading! Other ROTTMNT stuff coming soon hopefully!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of ROTTMNT Oneshots