Err, it's been a while, yes? Real life's been keeping me so I apologize for the delays in my fanfics. It might take me a while before I can get back to them again, I don't really know. Please bear with me and thanks in advance!

There's nothing I wouldn't do to hear your voice again.

Sometimes I want to call you but I know you won't be there.

Sixteen hours before…

"What the fuck was that about, Donnie?!"

The resident turtle genius groaned at being forcefully pulled from his research but turned to the angry voice behind him. "What was what about, Raph?"

Raph crossed his arms over his plastron with a glower to match. "Your deal with Mikey earlier, during the fight with the PDs!"

A blink then it was Donnie's turn to scowl. "This again? Why won't you and Leo just drop it?" And why was he the one getting the lectures anyway? He's the one in the right, for crying out loud!

"You're the one to talk! Why don't you drop whatever it is that's going on between you and Mikey? It's been almost a week!" Raph snapped.

Donnie straightened from his chair. "That has nothing to do with—!"

"The shell it doesn't! You've been nothing but a real asshole to him ever since then!"

"Well if he was a much easier person to work with, I wouldn't have to set him straight, would I?" Donnie growled. "Come on, Raph! We all know it! If Mikey hadn't tripped on that crate, the PDs wouldn't have known we were there before the ambush! It's his fault the whole mission would have gone disastrous!"

Oh Raph knew that, all right.

The Purple Dragons were breaking in some store down 31st and the turtles were going to pick them off one by one, but Mikey just had to play around like he always did and shatter a crate rather loudly near their hiding place. That resulted into an all-out brawl between them and the rest of their opponents who had actually outnumbered them.

But while Raph had been as downright pissed at Mikey about it, he didn't think it gave him or anyone else any right to say what Donnie did. "You could have been a lot nicer about it! I'm the jackass of this group and I still won't take it that far!"

Calling Mikey a downright idiot, a waste of space and a whole lot of other vicious names that made Raph's skin itch. Saying that the rest of the team was better off if Mikey wasn't with them. Blaming Mikey for nearly every little thing that had gone wrong in all of their missions (while most of them had indeed been the smallest turtle's fault, it was certainly not ALL).

If the tirade had gone any longer, Raph was sure Mikey would have broken to tears. And if Leo hadn't stepped in, Raph was sure that he would have shut Donnie up himself with a fist.

"And that's the other side of the problem!" Donnie said coldly. "You and Leo are always taking his side, no matter how bad he ruins everything! Tolerating him, sparing the rod for more times than I can count—how is he supposed to grow up if you keep on babying him?"

"We're not babying him, for fuck's sake!" Oh, and Raph still had a half-mind to use said fist. "We—YOU of all people—should know that that's just how he is! He's a scatterbrain and he's pretty reckless, but he's not a waste of space and he definitely did not deserve to be treated like dirt by his own brother!"

"I'm trying to make him learn—"

"You're hurting him, Donnie!"

"—if that's what it takes, then so be it." The purple masked turtle said in firm finality, making Raph's nails dig against his clenched hand.

"What the hell's the matter with you, Donnie? I get that Mikey gets onto everyone's nerves at some point, but now you blow up on him faster than even me!" The red banded turtle's voice became subdued. "You and Mikey used to be two peas in a pod. What happened to that?"

Donnie's hard brown eyes turned back to his workstation.

"I grew up." The simple logic that Donnie moved forward while Mikey did not.

It wasn't Donnie's fault Mikey got left behind because the latter never moved at all.

And it wouldn't be fair for the world to ask Donnie to stop and wait for a kid who probably never will.

Sometimes I feel broke inside but I won't admit.

Sometimes I just want to hide 'cause it's you I miss.

And it's so hard to say goodbye, when it comes to this.

Three days, six hours, fourteen minutes and fifty seconds later, Donnie counted, most of which he spent in the darkness of his lab.

The quiet of his instruments and the steady hum of his machines were the sole comfort he had nowadays, even if they weren't much help. Being anywhere outside or in the vicinity of friends or family poked at the still gaping wound left in his heart ever since Mik—him. It wasn't something Donnie wanted to deal with at the moment.

Not that anyone intruded his privacy lately, what with everyone too focused on their own grief and coping with the suffocating silence to bother. All of it suited Donnie just fine.

Logically, he was only delaying the inevitable progress in the stages of grieving. But the pain was still too fresh, too great. He had all but fallen apart the first few hours and he wasn't sure if he could survive another breakdown like that again.

"Yo, Donnie."

Huh? The purple masked turtle looked up from his work. "Raph?"

The hotheaded turtle flashed a wry grin from the entrance of Donnie's lab. "Haven't seen you in a while, bro. What's up?"

"Oh, you know the usual. Still working on that retro mutagen for Karai, among other things. So far, everything I've been using to reverse engineer the mutation is falling flat because I can't figure out just what Stockman added to Karai's mutagen to make it so unique." Donnie said. "I've also been trying to upgrade the power source of the Shellraiser if I could boost its speed. Since we lost that Kraang powercell, I've been hard pressed to find an adequate electric power source that can—"

"Yeah, yeah, that's great and all but when was the last time you stepped away for a break?" Raph said with crossed arms. "We haven't seen you really leave your lab in days. I know how much you love your machines but being cooped up here all day isn't doing you good, Donnie."

"Don't be ridiculous, Raph. I do come out once in a while—"

"Bathroom breaks don't count." Raph countered, holding up one of the mugs sitting on Donnie's desk. "And when was the last time you've had anything decent other than this coffee crap?"

Donnie rolled his eyes irritably. "Raph, just stop. I'm telling you I'm fine!"

"Bullshit." Raph growled. "You look like an effing zombie, Don. You haven't been eating or sleeping well lately and you're being snappier than usual. Wanna run that by me again?"

"Oh for heaven's sake!" Donnie threw his hands up. "I'm fine, Raphael! I'm still walking, breathing and pretty much functioning, aren't I? Look, I've got important things to do, and you're not helping! If there's nothing else, I'd rather focus get back to my work in peace!"

Donnie turned to another part of his workstation in relative silence for a few seconds until Raph spoke again.

"I don't know how he does it."

The purple masked turtle's breathing seized. No, no, no. Raph, please don't—!

"We just take him for granted as the airhead of the team, but there really are things only he can do." Raph went on, a somber yet fond expression on his face. "Getting you out of this dingy place, for one."

"Stop it…"

"Me and Leo, as long as your experiments don't blow up to where we at, we pretty much leave you alone, and you pretty much tune us out when we try to get you out of your lab. But somehow, he's always able to do it, to stand being around you even when you're so deep into your work it's like talking to a wall—"

"I said stop, Raph!" Donnie slammed a wrench on the table. Raph's eyes hardened.

"Not talking about Mikey doesn't make it any less real that he's gone, Donnie!" Raph snapped, ignoring the violent shudder that passed his younger brother at the lost turtle's name. "And it's not fair for you to just turn around and pretend that nothing's changed! You're not the only one who lost a brother, and you're not the only one who's still not OK about it."

"I—I—" Donnie knew about that, of course; understood that, despite Raph's tough guy front, he knew how deep love and the desire to protect ran in the older turtle's heart.

It was one reason why Raph was prone to diving without thinking, especially if it was (to him) for the good of the family. He also knew that was why Raph felt pain and rage more strongly than any of the brothers.

Oh how he remembered back then, ferociously emotional and passionately loving Raphael, a literal roaring mess of denial and anguish. He remembered green eyes, manically small amidst the torrent of tears, of barely held back limbs thrashing erratically and throat rented bleeding raw with that voice that sounded far more tormented than a wounded, dying animal.

"NO! MIKEY! No, no, no, God damn it, Leo, get the fuck off! I have to—! Mikey! MIKEY!"

Donnie jumped when he felt an arm around his shoulders, making him blink back the building tears.

"It's OK, Donnie." Raph said, voice uncharacteristically soft and solemn. "I got you, little brother. You're going to be OK."

"But I—I can't, Raph. I don't want to be fine!" Donnie whispered. "I don't deserve to be. N—not after what I've done, what a terrible brother I've been."

It hurt, it hurt so much it made him want to die alongside his brother, but Donnie did not want the pain to fade ever. He didn't deserve the relief. He had been such a bad big brother while Mikey had been alive. He won't be any worse by allowing himself to forget.

"You've made a mistake, Don, and you know that now." Raph's words remained gentle even when Donnie wished the older turtle would just yell. "But the Mikey we all know won't hate you for it. He never did. I'd know because he told me so."

Donnie choked. "H—he what?"

"Remember the last time we argued about him after that fight with the Dragons? You really did a number on him back then, you know. It was why I was so mad at you." Raph gave Donnie's shoulder a squeeze when the younger turtle shuddered at the memory. "But Mikey, he never held it against you, the shitty things you said or how you've been treating him. All he kept saying was that he really missed you and he wished he knew how to make things OK with you again."

"I was an idiot." Donnie sobbed. "A high and mighty idiot who didn't know what a wonderful brother he had until he lost him."

"But he loved you anyway." Raph whispered. "Mikey loved you and wouldn't want to see you beating up yourself like this."

"Raph, I…"

The older turtle sighed and bumped his forehead against Don's. "You don't have to be not fine alone, Donnie. None of us are now, so let's all just suck it up and be broken together until we're all ready to be OK again, all right?"