Thank you for joining me, once again, to enter the fandom. And it has finally happened. A SAINW fic from me. Not much, just a little drabble, but I've been dying to get it out anyway. Ahh, the SAINW-Mikey experience.

Disclaimer: Dude, if I owned them, Donnie and SAINW wouldn't have happened because it was awesomely wrong T.T

I don't know why I keep coming back here. Every time I go out of my way to get to this place I'm risking capture; and for what? So I can stand around staring at another deteriorating section of the sewers, lost in my own useless memories?

We can't afford that kind of distraction. There's a war going on.

I guess I'm just a self-indulgent idiot after all. My gaze travels over the corpse of the place that was once my home, and I call myself a fool. I don't know why I keep coming back.

I'm nothing but a fool.

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Sunlight filters in through layers of dust and cracks in the cement, and I notice that another piece of wall has crumbled away. One of these days, the whole place is going to collapse and I'll have no reason to come again. Maybe, if I'm lucky, he'll be buried with it and I won't have to remember anymore.

Or maybe he'll somehow know about it and come back to fix it.

Maybe he'll bring us all back together and things can be the way they were.

Maybe he can give Leo his sight back and somehow get Raph another eye.

Maybe he'll do something to stimulate some sort of latent reptilian ability and I'll re-grow the missing part of my arm.

Hell of a lot of maybes. Maybe it's better to just keep thinking he's dead.

**********************************************

Sometimes it's hard to drag up, but if I try I can still remember what this place was like when it was a home. Before he left us. Before Master Splinter died. Before the Shredder took over.

Kicking a broken piece of rock into the shadows of our old kitchen, I let the memories wash over me apathetically. It clatters like chains attached to ghosts of the past, empty words bouncing off of the walls and echoing into the confines of my mind. April told me once that I come back to remember, and she's probably right. The lair used to be warmer than this.

I can feel the cynicism creep up into my chest, forcing the bitter taste of grief into my mouth, and I sneer in response. What was there to grieve? It used to be warmer.

I used to read comic books. My brothers used to give a damn. My father used to be alive.

It's been thirty years. Things change.

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I used to be able to catch Raph here, once in a while. He would always be standing in the same place; right where his lab used to be. Out of all of us, I sometimes think he misses our other brother the most. It's not like I ever saw Leo hanging around his old room. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he just didn't want to be found.

And back when I could actually manage to find him, I understood. Nobody had expected it. We woke up one morning and we were one less.

He had done what we always feared Raph would do someday.

Which is pretty ironic, really. Once upon a time, I would have laughed at it. But not anymore.

Now, irony is just a pain in the ass.

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"Hey Donnie?"

"Whatever it is that's broken, just set it down over there and-"

"That's not why I'm here, bro. I just…"

"You just…?"

"I wanted to know if you were gonna take a break soon. 'Cause I got that cheesy space flick you like watching and I thought maybe you'd…you know. Like to watch it."

"Oh. Well, I…I can't really take a break right now, I've got these-"

"It's okay, I get it, Don. You're busy. Another time, right?"

"I'm sorry, Mikey. It's just that- that-"

"You alright?"

"Yeah. You know what, give me five minutes and I'll wrap this up."

"Really?"

"If I'm not out in five, you and Raph can drag me out yourselves."

"Awesome! We're gonna have such a good time, you'll wanna watch movies with us every day!"

"And who am I to argue with that logic?"

"Yeah. You spend so much time in here lately, I was getting worried that you demolecularized yourself or something."

"You're aware that 'demolecularized' isn't a real term, aren't you?"

"Pfft…Details. I'm gonna start the popcorn."

**********************************************

I try to push the voices into the back of my mind. It's easier to forget him if I can pretend he never cared at all. It's easier to accept that he left without saying goodbye if it sounds like the kind of thing he would have done back then.

I never missed him. I hope he never comes back.

"I hope he never comes back," the statement falls from my mouth, soft and bitter, and I can nearly convince myself that I meant it.

It would have been so much easier if I'd meant it.

"I hope he never comes back."

For both our sakes.