TMNT ONESHOTS.

" The Miner, The Canary, The Medicine. "

Post-ROTTMNT MOVIE,
MICHELANGELO-CENTRIC.

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My hands are torn and bloody, that is a fact that is sewn into my shaky hands. There are stripes with gold res-due.

Is this what dying looks like?

Dying feels peaceful, like an ending of the story, but the look—it is the climax of an ever-inducing story. The one I used to sit with smiles as the tale was told.

My hands, which are as useless as—well, anything the opposite of useful. My hands used to wield paints and pans, my weapons, but now, I just watch through sunken smiles and glossy-eyes tears.

I see Leonardo's guilt and shameful look, and my body begs to wrap my arms around him, but the stripes of what-not and should-not still run throughout my body.

They sting beyond eye-view recognition.

I collapsed on my sunken down bed, closing my eyes and wondering—was there another way? A new place of tranquility? Because this house, the house I hadn't grown up in, is enclosed and tainted.

I look at my shaking hands, hands that were once young and plentiful—it is as if I had aged by sixteen years, but I am barely thirteen. It feels so wrong, too be so young-

To be so young, while going through something so old.

His hands clenched, despite the buzzing inside it. He grinds his teeth together, clenching his eyes together. This wasn't fair! This WASN'T FAIR!!

He slammed his head into the pillow, sniffling and shaking his head into the fabric. It was terribly uncomfortable, stressful—but it was something.

Something for him to do, while his hands rendered useless.

They were once prized possessions of his person, of his being, of everything he was. They were useless, nothing but a desperate cry of help, but only his pillow entered.

He slammed his head into the pillow once more, shaking his 'lip' and gulping thoroughly, stains sinking into the pillow. He slowly closed his eyes, shaky sobs and huffs.

This wasn't fair!

This is unfair!

Why should he deal with this!? Why should any of them deal with this! He slams into his bed once more, his hands unexpectedly take the brute of it.

He couldn't swallow his shrieking shrill of pain, tears pecking at the corners of his eyes. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, the words bellowed and rumbled in his mind, as his spotty plastron heaved.

He pressed his face into the safety of his broken and bruised hands, gold rimming their edges unsympathetically.

Maybe, he would've wanted comfort—but the harshness, the bile, the pain—it swallowed him ahold, and swayed him into a recital, a dance and a blanket to sleep.

A blanket of gold, warm and cracked hands of the dead and  loved wrapped around his not-so-broad shoulders, holding him an embrace.

He relaxed his muscles, his trembling body and heaving heart, he allowed his body too stare upwards, gripping at the pained swallows his body allowed—he's alive.

His broken, calloused hands.

They hadn't taken the brunt of it, they just were visible, they were going too heal after a short amount of time, maybe a little longer then 'short'

It wasn't his hands, who wrapped a blanket around him shakily, despite all the spitting fumes of fire he dragged there way.

It was him.

He was the shattered one.

He was the golden ache, he was the tremors. He was the weary.

He swallowed, eyes wide with realization, with confirmation. His hands pressed into the soft fabric blanket, and despite the burn, the ache—he realized that physical damage left coverage.

They left marks and scratches of pain on your body, left stares of the frightened on your back as you tried to make peace.

They left muttering shushed whisperings of shock, and confusion —grief— as you tried to delve into something else, with a torn body of emotions

But it was the mental, the emotional pain that left holes. The unpatched ones, the ones you can't eye at and notice immediately, because they aren't noticeable.

They are hidden away in a bunker, a bunker of gold lines and singing canaries, warning you—the holder—like a miner in the cold mines. The canary would die if it inhaled so much.

And yet it still sang and chirped away, until the miner chipped away to the sunlight, too finding warm faces and food shoved their way, as the only thing accounted for is how their body was harmed.

Mikey was the miner, his hands the canary.

And you cannot blame the bird, doing what it has to do—which was keeping the miner alive and breathing, keeping them up still.

Mikey looked at his broken hands, no longer as broken as he saw himself. His canary hands of gold, of warm blankets, of what people mourn. Of what he mourns.

He pressed his head to his hands, whispering his own time of forgiveness, forgetting the need to be scared, to flinch, to be careful. He is the miner, his hands are the canary—

Which means..

Rushed steps came towards him, asking if he's fine—that his scream of frustration, of pain—was heard. Dull purple, strawberry red, bizarre blue, they all obscure his vision.

He is the miner.

His hands are the canary.

His brothers are the medicine that he must take after inhaling so much smoke and ash and rubble, not inhaling as much as he should've because the canary ached and sang its shattered and scarred heart out.

The miner, the canary, and the medicine.

He is content, nodding softly and letting his chirps and churrs get the same responses, pulling him into the golden blanket of an occasional rest.

It wasn't fair for the canary,

It wasn't fair for the miner,

It wasn't fair for the medicine,

But they all compliment each other in contradictory ways, and maybe that relaxed him far more than it should've.

Far, far more than it should've.

Leonardo looks at him through apologetic states once more, but Mikey brings his eyes to his this time, smiling in defeat, reaching forward for his older brother, clutching the brother's hand tightly.

His hands stung, but he is the miner.

And a miner is a miner,

And a miner must find the most valuable of ores, and sometimes, that is rubies, that is amethyst—and some times,

That is diamond.