Journey to the Center of Mikey's Mind - Alternate Story

The Blameful Burden

"There's gotta be some way to get to Mikey..." mumbled Raph frustratedly as he hastily wandered further into the black landscape ahead. He suddenly felt a chill against his body and his mask tails whipped around his head in a tempered flurry of red.

"Wait Raph, the memory is changing again!" called Donnie.

"Don't care." shot back the hot-head. He was fed up of chasing visions of his little brother when they should be finding the real thing. A sickly yellow wall appeared in front of Raph, stopping him from proceeding any further. He groaned bitterly.

"Uh... Is this April's apartment?" enquired Leo, oblivious as to what was about to happen.

"Oh no." breathed Donnie, suddenly assailed by dread. By Donnie's tone and Leo's question, Raph immediately knew what memory this would be. He turned around reluctantly and took in the scene. Mr O'Neil was sat with his legs up on the couch, past-Raph had his hand on Mikey's shoulder and a smile on his face and April had wrapped Casey in a relieved embrace, leaving both the past and the real Donnie looking rather displeased.

"Ugh," uttered past-Donnie agitatedly, "not to break this up, but Leo is still out there!" Raph felt suddenly queasy watching this. He steadily traipsed back over to his brothers and put a hand on Leo's shoulder with a sigh, looking down at the worn wooden floorboards. Leo looked at his brother in surprise, but didn't say anything, curious to see how this played out. Donnie edged in closer to his eldest brother so that their arms were just barely touching and looked down dejectedly. Both Raph and Donnie closed their eyes and winced when they heard the smash of glass, and again when they heard the clatter of a table splintering and the scrape of a shell against the wooden floor.

Raph's grip on Leo tightened but Leo stumbled back as he realised what he was looking at. It was himself, but bruised and scarred, his shell cracked.

"What..." He trailed of in his consternation. Donnie supplied an answer to the unvoiced question.

"That's what happened after the Shredder... you know, during the Kraang invasion..." Leo nodded but never looked away from himself, lying unconscious in his brothers' arms.

The three were silent for all but three seconds before Donnie spoke again.

"I'm sorry I didn't listen, Leo. If we had gotten out of New York when you said, none of this would ever had happened." He couldn't even bring himself to meet his brother's eyes, such was the shame he felt. Leo look at him in shock.

"What, Donnie, no! This wasn't your fault. You know I don't blame you, right?"

"Yeah, but -"

"And besides, it all turned out alright in the end, didn't it?" Leo smiled at the taller turtle and lifted his right leg, bending the joint to express that he no longer had any problems with his previous injury. Donnie finally looked up at Leo and smiled gratefully.

"Yeah, I guess it did."

"Why are we seeing this?"

Raph's sudden gruff vocalisation pulled the other turtles from the moment.

"What?" asked Leo, confused.

"Why would Mikey be thinking about this now?" The two brothers looked at eachother and thought.

"Hmm, I don't know." stated Donnie unhelpfully, but before Raph could make a jab at him about supposedly being the smart one, the room started to reform. The faded yellow walls gave way to a gloomy grey-blue with a dirty cream panelled trim and the wooden planks on the floor transformed into black and white patterned tiles. Within seconds the entire room had changed, and the three turtles were now standing in a darkened bathroom, a comatose Leonardo resting in the bathtub and a gently snoring Raph sitting beside him. None of them said a word, for they didn't have any to speak.