Cold Fire Rising

Chapter 25

(Author's Note: Yay, they're HOME. Man, the final scene of "The Ever-Burning Fire" had me in tears. Plus, Mikey falling toward that lava, and Leo saving him Spider-Man style, that made me sob and cheer. Aww, they love each other!
Since the show itself still has a bunch more episodes for Season 4, let's pretend my story is set in a slightly different universe where I say stuff happened. And Splinter learns some things about it. And I am having so much fun writing it.)

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Chapter Twenty-Five

"What happens when people open their hearts?"
"They get better."
― Haruki Murakami

"It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone." ― Rose Kennedy

"Before you can live a part of you has to die. You have to let go of what could have been, how you should have acted and what you wish you would have said differently. You have to accept that you can't change the past experiences, opinions of others at that moment in time or outcomes from their choices or yours. When you finally recognize that truth then you will understand the true meaning of forgiveness of yourself and others. From this point you will finally be free."
― Shannon L. Alder

"As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation - either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course."
― Martin Luther King Jr.

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Back on the Ulixes, there was shouting, there was anger, and April's fury was a whirlwind. Crowded around the unconscious Michelangelo's infirmary bed, the turtles considered waking him up just enough to create a force field just against her rage.

A week went by. Michelangelo remained in his deep healing sleep as machines breathed for him. Oxygen mask working overtime, dozens of stitches along his sides, somehow the scar along his left leg had burst open again; more stitches and also panic. There was no poison or venom in his system, and they assumed the psionics pushed it out somehow. They assumed the psionics also must have pushed his heart to pump and work again, because Donatello had been getting so tired and Raphael had dropped into a trance and gone into Mikey's soul, they had to assume the psionics made him alive because they had been so scared...

April was still upset, but once the story was told, she calmed herself. She went to the kitchen and took a folded-up, blood-stained sheet of paper from a box on the counter. She laid it out as neatly as she could, and she waited.

Mikey woke up, and carefully eased back to consciousness with Donatello's help, fully aware of everything. He sensed the clashing emotions of everyone on the ship and called them in for a chat, a long long chat, in which he recounted everything. How he had taken down as many reptilians as he could just by flinging them against walls. How he had run up against a soldier so strong that it had taken both nunchucks and telekinesis to bring him down, dragging Michelangelo's own strength. How that final battle with The Alchemist had been a knowing risk, a completely aware sacrifice, as the scars along his body had ripped open and his own power had tried to burn him from the inside out before the strange, new, purple energy swept in, protecting him while giving him strength to rip The Alchemist's very mind away in a fit of pure wrath.

April relaxed as soon as she was able to register Mike's puppy eyes, the raggedness of his breathing, the pallor of his skin, the knowledge that he had technically died on the battlefield. She burst into tears, threw her arms around him. The voice of professor Honeycutt pulled them back. They still had a huge mission to finish. Mikey nodded, pressed his hands together, took a deep breath, and began glowing.