Abducted (rottmnt fanfic)

Renewed Hope

Raph's pov:

Why hadn't we tried looking at things in Donnie's lab sooner? Of course he'd provide us with all the tools needed to find him in case he went missing, he always overprepared for everything! We should've thought of this when he first went missing, now we'd lost all this time aimlessly looking in places we didn't even see any evidence in. Mikey was so much more mature and prepared than we gave him credit for, it was always so hard to accept that he too was growing up. Seeing the twins grow up was hard enough, now I had to see Mikey becoming a more mature version of himself that was uncertain and unknown. They were all so much smarter and more mature than me, it was getting hard to accept the fact that they were growing up and leaving me behind. They didn't need me anymore, not nearly as much as they used to... But that wasn't the point, I was supposed to focus on finding Donnie. It wasn't smart for me to just stand around doing nothing. "Alright, let's get home."

"M'kay!" Mikey nodded, he climbed up onto me, which reassured me. He might've been growing up way faster than I was ready for, but he still relied on me. I smiled softly at him, then started walking home. Looking around, I could see signs of Donnie's absence everywhere. Scrapyards were starting to pile up, broken streetlights and wires were left unfixed, and there was no subtle sound of tapping on a screen behind me letting me know my little brother was there. The longer he was gone, the more obvious it was that he wasn't there. I didn't know how to process that, but I knew that it wasn't time for me to overthink. If I wasn't even the smart one of the family, I didn't have room for all those thoughts. I needed to spend my energy finding a way to get Donnie back as safe and quick as possible. "You're still thinking about how much you miss Donnie, aren't you...?" Mikey's gentle voice caught me off guard, I had forgotten how easy it was to sense my discomfort.

"Well... uh-... yeah, I kinda am..." I admitted. "It's just so easy to see that he's gone, y'know? I don't know where he is and I'm supposed to always know where you guys are. I'm the oldest, I'm supposed to protect you, and I can't help but feel like I let him down. I know you don't want me to think that way, so I've been trying not to, but it's really hard to think anything else." I didn't know why I said so much about how I was feeling, he didn't deserve to deal with my own emotional problems along with mine. Keeping secrets was so much harder when someone was being nice to you.

"It's not your job to take care of us, we're old enough to take care of ourselves and when we weren't old enough, it was dad's job to take care of us, not yours. You're only a year older than Donnie and Leo, only two years older than me, and you're still a kid just like we are." Mikey hugged me while staying on my shell. "You were barely able to take care of yourself when you started worrying about taking care of us, it's not healthy. And now you're worried about doing all of this searching for Donnie alone, not wanting to put that pressure on us. You're so worried about us that you're not realizing that the safest thing for Donnie is for all of us to look together. We're a team, we'll keep being a team, and we'll get Donnie back."

"Wow, you're so mature." I chuckled softly, feeling tears fill my eyes. "I uh... I don't know what to say. Thank you, Mikey, I really wasn't thinking about all that since I can't think of that many things at one time, but I really appreciate that." I didn't know he'd known how much I was thinking about across the span of us looking for Donnie, I didn't even know he could pick up on that.

"They call me Doctor Feelings for a reason." Mikey smiled. "Now, let's tell everyone about the new evidence!" he pointed to April's apartment's door, I'd started walking on autopilot while we were talking, so it hadn't been hard to get there. 

"Where were you guys?! I woke up alone and I thought something happened to you!" Leo ran up to us, he'd been searching the halls from what it looked like. "You guys say I'm the irresponsible one!" he laughed nervously, clearly just trying to cope with the fear he'd felt with humor.