Unbreakable bonds, chapter 23 (Final)

Hello,

My name is Donatello, I’m 16 years old and I’m a teenage mutant ninja turtle. I live in New York, together with my older brother Leonardo and Raphael, and my younger brother Michelangelo. Our father is Hamato Yoshi, but we rarely call him like that. We often refer to him as Master Splinter, or simply dad. In addition we have 2 other sisters, one ‘adopted’, and one being the biological daughter of Hamato Yoshi, and we have one ‘adopted’ brother.

April O’Neil and Casey Jones. Those were our first humans friends and they’ve slowly become part of the family. Karai, actually Miwa, had always been part of the family but had been taken away from dad when she was just one year old. But in the end she came back to us, but I’ll get back on that later.

April had suggested I needed to do this, she said I needed to express my feelings if I didn’t feel like talking. She said it would help me, and my brothers to cope with what happened. So I decided to give it a shot.

My only younger brother Michelangelo, Mikey, got taken from us a little over a year ago.. We thought he had died by the hand of the Shredder, and while we were desperately trying to move on, he was getting tortured and experimented on in the lab of crazy scientists. And I will never forgive myself from trying to forget about him.

April and Casey found him in the lab by accident, and I’ll never be able to repay them. I couldn’t even express how grateful I am for bringing him back, and saving him from that hell-hole. And while none of us blame them, and there was no way they could be blamed, they were too late. The damage had already been done, and the scars had already been made.

Still, after 2 whole months I can’t look at the scars without feeling my stomach turn. Two long surgical scars were running down his legs, starting from his upper leg, and stopping at his ankles were they were met by the scarring caused by the chains. He has the same on his left arm, while the right one was spared, they used the right limb to supply him with food and fluids but after a while you couldn’t see anything anymore.

But the biggest damage was done in his mind.

They tortured him, cut him open while he was awake and they taunted him. They washed him with ice-cold water and they had him strapped down for a year. Of course that would leave a mark. And he isn’t the brother I once knew, he has changed. He doesn’t laugh like he used to laugh, he doesn’t prank us anymore and he doesn’t contain the innocence he once carried with him.

He got better these last 2 months, but only a little bit. He’s so awfully quiet the whole time. Maybe he isn’t being too quiet, but for Mikey he is. He’s more like Master Splinter, only talking when he feels it’s necessary, and even when watching a movie he’s just sitting, finding comfort with one of us. Sometimes he doesn’t talk at all during the movie, and sometimes he does.

It was heartbreaking at first, the first movie night we planned, just with the four of us we had expected something, anything from him. But as the movie progressed not a word left Mikey’s mouth, instead the only thing he did was lean tightly against Raph, desperately seeking comfort by his older brother. Something he needed a lot lately.

To help him heal and cope with the things that happened we made up a kind of plan. It was a silent agreement between all of us that we needed to keep Mikey busy most of the time and we would slowly decrease it. But for now, everyone thought it was a good idea to keep him company. So Leo, always being the one to wake up first, would keep an eye on Mikey in the morning.

Almost right away, surprising us, Mikey wanted to get back to training, even getting back to his nun chucks. We didn’t really understand because weapons meant blades and tools they used at the lab, but Mikey never backed down from them, maybe we were being too protective of him. The only time he really freaked out was when Leo drew a tanto, that was the only thing that really reminded him of a scalpel.

But Mikey pushed on, and gradually he began to increase his training with the help of Leo and Master Splinter. And unlike the Mikey we used to know, this Mikey was determined to train. Not as much as Leo would do, but he trained long, and once he did train he was determined and focused. Slowly he regained some muscle, and he was still the fastest out of all of us even though he didn’t have his usual stamina.

Mikey had quickly taken over the job of cooking again, and it kept him busy for a while. He always made us breakfast, lunch and dinner. And on some rare occasions we did. We weren’t too happy with Mikey doing all the work but for now it would keep him occupied, and would keep his mind off the horrors he endured for a whole year.

After breakfast Mikey would either go to the living room or his room, and Leo always followed him, making sure it wasn’t too suspicious. Though it turned out it was, because 2 weeks ago when Mikey was sitting in my lab he confronted me. But he wasn’t blaming me, or telling me he didn’t need it, he was thanking me for doing it because he understood why we did it.

And he was thinking us for keeping him busy because he also knew that was something he needed right now.

After lunch it was my ‘job’ to watch over him. Of course I couldn’t force him to go anywhere but most of the time, especially after he confronted me, he spent his time in my lab because he didn’t want to bother me. But we would also find ourselves in front of the TV a lot of times. Honestly I’m still shocked by the fact that Mikey is willing to go into the lab, but that was after I hid everything.

With the help of Leo and Raph, and our human friends, we found enough drawers to hide everything from sight, and Mikey was brave enough to come in. Mostly we would just sit around, sometimes talk a bit, and he would sit there, enjoying my company. And again, I couldn’t stand the unusual quietness that was surrounding my little brother, or finding him in tears when he was too quiet for too long, and he had time to think.

Though if I were to believe Raph, the nights were the worst. Raph and Mikey would often, if not all of the time, wake up with huge bags under their eyes. Not even after two whole months did the nightmares go away. And it was an ungiven task Raph had taken upon himself, watching over Mikey during the night. We knew it was probably a bad idea to do, but after a week of screaming us awake every night multiple times, we moved Mikey’s bed to Raph’s room, creating a twin bed.

But even so, Mikey still didn’t get rid of the nightmares. Sometimes I would be awoken as well but I knew Raph was there for Mikey if he would once again wake up screaming and trashing, mind flashing between nightmare and reality. They were bad, getting dangerously close to night terrors but they were expected.

Sometimes Mikey would even fall asleep in my lab while I was working because the lack of sleep was getting too much. I could never bring myself to wake him up, seeing the bags under his eyes, but every time I was forced to face the consequences. Because probably the worst thing I had ever seen, even worse than the scars on his body, was the look in his eyes when he woke up from another nightmare.

I would never be able to forget that look on his eyes. There was so much hurt written in the once bright blue eyes. He wasn’t even him anymore. He would be screaming and trashing, trying to hit me as his mind back flashing back and forth between the nightmare and what was really happening. Mostly it wouldn’t take long to snap him out of it but calming him down was another problem.

The first time it had happened, 9 days after we got him back, I had to hold him for a full hour before he had calmed down enough to be released. Mikey had always been a turtle who loved hugs and little actions that showed him we loved him. But now he couldn’t live without them, whenever something bad happened, he needed someone to hold him and to assure him he was safe and he was with his family, instead of those people.

He had told me about it once, but only very briefly. When he woke up, it was exactly what I just described, him flashing back and forth. One time he was trapped in his nightmare, and the next moment he was back with us but the problem was that he never knew what was real. He wanted to get away from the nightmare, but once he got into the real world his mind wouldn’t accept that he was safe, throwing him back into the nightmare.

After he explained that part, he had carefully reached out for me, grabbing my arm and turning it upwards, slowly unwrapping the bandages. The bite mark was still on there but it was faint, and you probably wouldn’t have noticed it if you weren’t looking for it. He had stared at it for a few second before revealing his tearful eyes, whispering ‘I remember’ softly.

He didn’t say anything else, instead I carefully pulled him into a tight hug. He had apologized over and over again for biting me. The time when I washed him, and he was confronted with one of the things they did to him, his mind flashed back to the nightmare again and out of self-defense, he had bitten me. I don’t know if I should be happy that he remembers or not.

He remembers, and I hate it because he’s feeling guilty because of it. But knowing also means that he doesn’t completely loses his humanity, and that there is a chance that he’ll recover. It didn’t happen again, but he did try. There were things we didn’t know about, and we accidently exposed him to, sending him back into his nightmare. That was the thing that was nagging me so much, the answers.

Even now, after 2 whole months after it had happened, we still didn’t have all the answers, and something told me we are never going to get them. Mikey rarely talks about what happens and none of us are pushing him. But he told me little snippets of his time during captivity, he told little snippets to the rest of us but never the whole story, or even a part of it.

The scientists, they hated him, they feared him at the same time. And while they did want to know about him and his build up, they only cut open his tail for sheer fun. Bathing him with cold water was another test of determining his immunity, cutting open his arm and legs was for research but the taunting and the electric shocks were for fun, purposely prodding his muscles was for fun, and it sickened me to hear him talk about it.

Because he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much time had passed, he still couldn’t talk about it. He would just shut down when he tries to talk about it, he would recall everything that happened to him. And it hurt me to see him like that, gasping for air and holding me as if his life was depending on it.

Maybe he did want to tell us, and maybe he didn’t but that didn’t matter because he couldn’t even get past a few sentences. And somewhere I was fearing that we would never be able to found out what really happened, this wasn’t something he could recover from.

And at the same time, it didn’t matter anymore, because he was finally back with us again after a whole year of missing him. Even in our lair there were things he couldn’t face. It wasn’t a secret that he felt less comfortable with Casey. He never met him before he was captured, add that to the fact that Casey is a human just like them, makes a dangerous combination.

He didn’t distrust him, but it was obvious he wasn’t entirely comfortable when he was alone with Casey. His relation with April had faded a little as well. It wasn’t as bad as with Casey, but if you paid attention to it, and you knew how it was before, you could see a decline. Mikey just didn’t trust April as much as he used to do.

Mikey told me about it, it wasn’t like he didn’t trust April or Casey, he wanted to trust them, he wanted to hang out with them but he just couldn’t like he used to. They were human, and the ones that hurt him were also human. He hated it, the feeling of not fully trusting his human friends and I couldn’t tell him everything was going to be okay, because I knew it probably wouldn’t go away.

Karai, Miwa, was the worst. 5 weeks after Mikey came back to us, Leo brought Karai to the lair. She had claimed that she believed that Splinter was her real father, but in the end it was all a trap, TC was tracking her. Dad sent Leo, Raph and me out to watch over Karai as she lured TC somewhere else. We eventually fought him, and in the end Karai jumped in and knocked him backwards.

Seeing that he couldn’t win against the four of us, he retreated. I sabotaged the tracking device and we all went home. I had expected Mikey to wait for me, like he always did when we went out on a patrol once in a week, but he wasn’t there. Over the course of a few days we all noticed immense changes in Mikey’s character.

He rarely talked anymore and he was alone more often. We found out the hard way, when Miwa caused him to have a full-blown panic attack. It took Raph hours to calm Mikey down and Leo had to take Miwa away from the room. Still, I couldn’t believe how stupid we’d been. Miwa, even if she didn’t want to, had a share in Mikey’s capture, she was the reason that he was taken for a year.

She was the one that captured him, she had handed Shredder the bucket of blood that was used to drown him. She hadn’t helped him when Mikey had pleaded for her, for someone, to help him. But she just turned her back on him. She left him injured on the street after she got him out, where a couple eventually found them and alerted the police, eventually ending up in the lab.

And it was hard for Mikey to accept Miwa into the family, not because he didn’t trust her, it was because he couldn’t.

We all knew it was because the wounds were just too fresh, and we were right. Over the last 3 weeks Mikey started to feel more comfortable around Miwa. He didn’t flee the room anymore when Miwa came in, he started to relax more within her presence but mostly he was just ignoring her, how rude it really sounded. But it was true, he was pretending like she wasn’t even there.

And yet, Mikey never gave any indication that he hated Miwa.

He didn’t hate her, Mikey had told me that one night. it was the same as with April and Casey. He just couldn’t trust her, even if he wanted to, how much he forced himself to trust the humans. The humans hurt him, the humans cut him open. And how much it hurt Miwa, it hurt Mikey equally as bad.

But apart from Mikey’s distrust for humans, he was doing well. He was alive, if that is well enough for you. He got so much better since he returned to us. A frightened turtle who was scared of every little sound or touch. He got better though. He got used to our voices, and he didn’t jump or freak out when he talked with our normal voice and at a normal volume.

He didn’t freak out as much when we hugged him without warning, he didn’t have daily panic attacks anymore. And only those facts emphasized already how bad Mikey was doing actually. He wasn’t Mikey anymore, but we knew we had to live with that, and hope Mikey would someday be more like himself, and wouldn’t have to be distracted every minute of the day.

Raph and Leo said Mikey was like a deep cut, something that would heal slowly but would never completely fade. Me, I thought, how harsh it sounded, Mikey was like a phone with a broken glass, only the screen protector holding it together. He was broken, and we were the only thing keeping him together. One day he would be able to accept the cracks, but he’ll never be fixed.

And even if Mikey would never be the same again, he was with us again, he still loved all of us, and maybe that was the most important thing.

~

A story ends when it’s the right time, when everything is resolved. Well this is not the end of the story. The end of the story is when we die, that’s when our story ends. Because no matter how hard we try, Mikey will never be who he was, he will always be reminded of the horrible things they did to him at that lab. And only when he dies, does his story fully end.

So I can’t say this is the end of our story, because there will be many parts more, many cliffhangers, many twists and turns, and relapses that would anger and sadden the readers of our ‘book’. No, these last two words only mark the end of this particular chapter, but the story isn’t over yet.

THE END.