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At long last, after years of careful study and application, Michelangelo had finally achieved the perfect paper airplane.
It was a work of art, truly. It may have looked deceptively simple—creamy white drawing paper in ten crisp folds, but in actuality, it was the product of a lifetime of experimentation and finesse.
And, when thrown correctly, down a long, adequately-dry sewer tunnel for instance, it could glide effortlessly and endlessly, Mikey was certain.
So, the fact that Raph, in a fit of boredom, had snatched it from its place of honor on the lair coffee table (in retrospect, perhaps not the best place for it to live) and lobbed it gracelessly at a wall was, in Mikey’s opinion, almost unforgivable.
Raph felt bad about it. Truly. When the airplane hit the stone lair wall with a fwip and slid nose-first back into the no-man’s land behind the complicated maze of the water filtration tanks, at first, Raph hadn’t thought much of it. He’d just wanted to see how it would fly.
But one look at Mikey’s agonized face told him he’d screwed up.
Raph’s eyes went wide as Mikey rounded on him, and he sheepishly lifted his hands in a placating gesture. “Whoa! Sorry, Mikey. Seriously, sorry, bro. I didn’t realize it meant that much to ya!”
“That was the —” Mikey exclaimed, “Perfect. Paper. Airplane!” With each word, he jammed a green finger into his brother’s plastron. He was indignant, certainly, but also very thoroughly enjoying the moral high ground.
“Yeesh, Mikey. I’m sorry! Look, I’ll make you another one.”
Mikey huffed his annoyance and turned dramatically, spinning on one heel. “You couldn’t make a paper airplane to save your life. When life-saving paper airplanes need to be made, you’re gonna have to look to me, bro!”
Raph crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. “In that highly unlikely scenario, I’ll try to remember that. But I’ll have ya know that I can—”
“No!” Mikey’s glare ended the conversation. “That is the perfect paper airplane. It is one of a kind. And right now, its crew needs to be rescued, which I will do—” Mikey interrupted his brother’s half-hearted offer of help with a hand raised in the air, “by myself, thank you.”
Raph knew when he was beat. So, with a muttered final apology, he slid out of the room.
And so it was that Mikey squeezed his head, his shoulder, and one arm in the shadowy, slender gap between the water filtration system and the Reservoir Station wall. He knew he had to be cautious. If he broke something back here… Well, Don might not yell at him exactly, but he’d shake his head and get that terrible long-suffering, disappointed look.
Mikey could see the airplane. When he held his breath and stood on his toes, shell scraping lightly against the wall, reaching for the place it rested on some piping just above a big spigot, he could just barely bump it with his fingertips.
He almost had it.
And then, something else caught his eye.
Under that spigot, a carefully-folded rectangle of transparent plastic with something inside, the whole thing smaller than the palm of Mikey’s hand, lay against the side of the tank with lines of blue painter’s tape holding it on either side.
Immediately forgetting his quest for the airplane, Mikey reached up to carefully unpeel the tape, releasing the item, which flopped into his hand.
Intrigued, Mikey slid himself out from the narrow space and inspected his finding.
Inside a small, sturdy plastic ziploc lay a little booklet of compressed paper, meticulously hand-cut and held together with two substantial brads on one end. And on the front of it, a capital M was carefully printed.
M for Michelangelo.
It was for him.
Mikey opened the booklet to a page that was roughly in the middle. A drawing of a balloon took up most of the paper, but the perspective aimed down, toward the earth, where a small figure with a square head gazed up. A robot.
The picture was in pitch-black ink on white paper, no trace of color.
Mikey turned to the next page. It was almost the same picture, exactly. However, the string tied to the balloon had shifted. And the robot was just ever-so-slightly smaller, farther away.
It was Donatello’s drawing-style. Unmistakably. You don’t spend seventeen years living in the sewers with someone and not know their every scratch and scrawl.
And this . It had an achingly lovely, precise quality. Like one of Donnie’s blueprints with light, exploratory lines overlaid with bold, decisive ones.
He knew what this was. It was a flipbook.
Handmade. Hand-drawn. Donnie had made him a flipbook.
Bracing the cover in his left hand, pressing his thumb against the smooth edges of the pages, Mikey started at the very first drawing in which a small robot with a rectangular head and dark, inquisitive eyes stood holding a balloon.
Flipping forward, Mikey was treated, to his utter delight, to a five-second mini-film of the robot opening his mechanical hand. The perspective followed the balloon as it rose into the air. The robot and the wide, rounded earth grew smaller below until they were enveloped by clouds.
Mikey did it again, faster, noting with a thrill the speed at which the balloon rose heavenward.
Again—slowly this time—marveling in the twists and flourishes showing the string’s movement that indicated the buffeting wind.
And again, this time intent on the robot’s expression as it gazed upwards—with satisfaction? Sadness?—watching its balloon rise higher and higher until the robot was just a small dot far, far below.
Mikey breathed out, holding the thing in both hands, his mind a whirl of questions.
He knew Donnie could draw.
But Donnie didn’t draw.
Mikey was the artistic one. He drew pictures and comics and doodles on every blank surface. Donnie drew blueprints. Plans. Equations.
He never spared the time for something that wasn’t practical, useful, or necessary. He never spared the time for something that was simply…
Beautiful.
Like this.
It must’ve taken Don ages . Well, a couple hours, anyway. Hours in which he wasn’t upgrading the security system or affixing lasers to the Battle Shell or reading quantum physics. Hours in which he was simply drawing a robot and a balloon. Over and over again.
And it was labeled M. For Mikey.
And it was taped. Not somewhere obvious, but behind the water filtration system.
Michelangelo wasn’t a turtle for mulling over a question. Michelangelo was a turtle who asked questions—ad nauseam, if necessary—and got them answered, conveniently, in this case, by the brother responsible for raising them.
And so, in a matter of seconds, Mikey was moving, hunting for Donatello. The perfect paper airplane lay forgotten in the piping behind him.
Don wasn’t hard to find. He’d been honing some of the systems on Stockman’s overhauled helicopter, improving its range and maneuverability.
The thing was really somewhat glorious, lit from above as it sat on its launchpad, ready to lift like a dragonfly from the water of the reservoir at a moment’s notice.
Mikey found Don stretched on his shell in the cockpit. The upper half of his face was largely obscured by the overhanging controls as he riveted a panel into place.
“Dude,” Mikey greeted him amiably. “How’s it going in here?”
“Hey, Mikey!” Donnie ducked his head out for a moment to flash his brother a wide grin and wave a wrench at him before returning his attention to his work. “Is it dinner time already? I’m further behind than I thought.”
“Nah, bro. You’ve probably got another hour or so. But hey, I got a question for you.”
“Okay. Shoot.” Donnie’s eyes and hands were busy with the panel, but Mikey knew he was listening. That was something Donatello was always good at.
Mikey crouched on the cockpit floor and held the flipbook out between his fingers so Donnie could get a clear view of it. “What is this?”
Donnie’s eyes flicked curiously to the item Mikey held. His eyes widened for a moment and his wrench halted in mid-swivel. Mikey could swear he saw the spot between Donnie’s eye ridges crinkle in concern. And then it was gone in a flash, Don’s focus resolutely back on the panel.
“It’s a flipbook, Mikey.” He twisted a bolt with determination.
“I know it’s a flipbook, dude. I’m asking what it’s for.”
“It’s for you, Mikey. I wrote an M on it.” His eyes were still on the panel.
“Yeah, and it’s awesome! I didn’t know you could draw like that! Well, I do, but you never actually do draw like that, you know?”
Silence.
“I mean,” Mikey scratched his head. “It’s really something. Thanks. I mean, it’s not like you don’t make things… There’s the Turtle Tunneler and the Sewer Slider and the Battle Shell. I guess you sorta got a transportation theme going, huh? And all those things are really rad! And someday you’re gonna make me that jetpack.”
Don snorted. “Don’t hold your breath,” he mumbled.
“And all of that is great. But this is… different.”
“Hm,” Donnie murmured an acknowledgement.
Mikey waited a moment, but nothing further was forthcoming. Okay. Now for the direct approach. “But Don, why was it taped behind the water filtration system? You coulda just, you know, given it to me. Like, what were the chances I was gonna find it there?”
Finally, Donatello’s efforts involving the panel ceased. Mikey thought he heard him give a soft exhale of breath. Don cast aside the wrench and slid his head and shoulders out from under the helicopter’s controls, sitting up fully to face his brother. For the first time in this conversation, he gave the entirety of his attention to Mikey, his eyes focused and worryingly serious. Mikey felt a twitch of concern deep in his belly.
“I didn’t want you to find it, Mikey. I hoped you’d never find it.”
Mikey pursed his lips, a picture of confusion. He fell back into a sitting position, resting his shell against the cockpit’s narrow hull. “Whaddya mean? Why’d you make it for me if you didn’t want me to find it? Talk about bad gift-giving etiquette, bro!”
Donnie sighed again and scraped the back of his hand across his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was low, but clear.
“After Drako and that alternate-future I got flung into, I put some plans in place. I’ve left…directions for you. Every morning, the first thing I do is ping a program on my computer. Five digit code. It sends a signal, a ping. Easy. It’s the very first thing I do each day and I never forget. But if seven days go by and it doesn’t get a ping from me, a file opens. It would automatically send each of you an array of videos, schematics, and instructions. April and Leatherhead, too.”
Now, Donnie’s entire focus was on Mikey. Michelangelo could tell that Don was trying to keep this explanation short and sweet, but he still felt… overwhelmed. Pings? Schematics? What was Donnie talking about?
Donatello continued. “Leo gets security systems—figured he’d be emotionally invested in that, you know? Cameras, alarms, hidden doors, all that stuff. Raph can handle vehicle mechanics and repair. He’s doing loads of the routine maintenance already. Gadgets, shell cells, and chemistry stuff goes to April. Leatherhead can take over medical; he’s already got our charts and histories.”
Mikey was beginning to see where this was going.
“And that leaves utilities to you.” Donnie shrugged and smiled wanly. “Water, heat, power, air pumps. You’re good at that stuff, Mikey. You’re great with your hands—intuitive and resourceful. You learn really quickly when you’re in there doing it. Besides, you’re pretty much impervious to confined spaces and the bugs that live in them. And that’s more than can be said for certain other members of our family.”
If Don was aiming for a laugh, he was sorely disappointed. Mikey was looking at him with an expression not far from abject horror.
“The water filtration system.”
“Yeah. The water filtration system.” Donnie’s smile now was apologetic.
“You—you left this for me there… for in case I had to fix the water filtration system. For if you were gone?”
“Well, the filter needs to be changed at least twice a year. So…yeah. I knew you’d find it. I knew you’d find all of them eventually.” Donnie tilted his head, perplexed. “How did you find it? Is something wrong with the filtration tanks?”
Mikey ignored the question. “Find all of them? What do you mean by all of them?”
“All the, I don’t know… gifts.” Donnie’s eyes slid away. He clearly felt unsettled with the word. “There’s a slap-bracelet wedged in the controls of the water heater, for example. Magic eye poster of Chewbacca rolled up behind the central water pipe. Your favorite flavor of Pop Rocks taped into the main air duct.”
“Tropical punch?”
“Tropical punch,” Donnie affirmed.
Mikey nodded. He felt his throat closing. It was just the two of them sitting there in the partial shadows of the Turtlecopter. But Mikey increasingly felt that someone was sitting on his chest.
“And where would you be?” The question was strained.
“I don’t know, Mikey.” Don’s voice held a plea. “I really don’t know. I didn’t do this to scare you. I didn’t mean to scare you. I don’t want to be gone or dead or in a coma. I’m going to work hard to avoid all of that.” His tone softened. “We’ve talked about this. I just want to be prepared. For anything.”
“And this?” Mikey realized he was clenching the flipbook in a fist now, damaging the pristine edges. He forced himself to relax his hand before he crushed the thing. “This was supposed to make up for it? For you being gone?” Mikey didn’t aim for sarcasm very often; it wasn’t usually his style. But now his voice soured, taking on an acidic tone. “Oh, hey, my brother Don isn't here anymore but that’s okay ‘cause look at this nifty flipbook I found behind the water filter!”
“No, no. I didn’t mean it like that, Mikey. I didn’t mean—” Donnie’s voice faltered and he pressed his chin to the top of his own plastron, struggling for breath. When he looked up, tears were filling his eyes.
“You were so angry, Mikey. That other you. The Drako’s dark-future you. Raph and Leo were angry, too, but not at me. You were mad at me. Furious. Beyond furious! I don’t even have a word for it.” Don gasped for air. He pulled his mask down to hang around his neck as the tears started to spill onto his cheeks. “You thought I’d left, Mikey. You thought I’d just gone off and abandoned you. Or he did. The other Michelangelo. You didn’t even touch me. That whole time I was there; it was like I repelled you. Eight days, Mikey. It was eight days of that. And when I did reach out to you—” Don remembered that moment at the foot of Splinter’s grave when he’d reached forward to clasp Mikey’s shoulder. “It was like I’d burned you. You tensed up; you shrugged my hand away like I'd… like I had hurt you.”
Donnie’s voice stuttered. He swallowed a breath. “And then…then at the very end—”
Mikey was clenching his teeth now, his jaw set, his eyes prickling and the view of his brother fuzzy through his own tears. But he didn’t interrupt.
“I— I can’t control how you’d feel if I was gone, Mikey. I can’t apologize if I’m not there. I can’t make all that anger just go away. But I can—” Donnie paused and moved his hand to the flipbook in Mikey’s palm, not opening it, but sliding his thumb over the M on the cover. “But I can remind you that I love you. And I can do that over and over and over. And even if I’m not there to tell you myself, I can still show you.”
“And this,” Don plucked the flipbook from Mikey’s hand and held it in two fingers. “This is how I planned for that.”
Mikey swallowed back a cry of sorrow. His tears, like Donnie’s, now flowed freely down his cheeks. He leaned forward to press his forehead into Don’s shoulder and gathered his brother into a tight, encompassing hug.
Donatello and Michelangelo had cried together over all of this before. Donnie had sobbed, curled against Mikey's plastron, when he first told them all about his alternate-timeline experience after that terrible series of wracking panic attacks. And Mikey had cried on Don a few months later, finally expressing all that marrow-deep fear of him disappearing. They’d cried for how Don had watched his brothers die. They cried for their shattered family and the world that had careened into a dystopian wreck. But this was the first time they had grieved simply for that other Michelangelo, the one who had endured for years with a missing arm, a heart full of rage, and three absent brothers.
For a few minutes, the two turtles sat like that—their arms around one another, messy with tears, gulping in staggered breaths. It took time before Mikey, his forehead still pressed against Don’s shoulder, was finally able to speak.
“You don’t need to show me. You don’t need to, Don. I don’t need Pop Rocks or slap bracelets or really awesome flipbooks.” Mikey’s voice was raw. He felt Don’s tears, warm on his shoulder. “I already know. I do. I already know.”
Don didn’t answer immediately. He waited, matching his breath to Mikey’s until it eased and his tears slowed.
“But if you already know,” Don sniffed, allowing an imploring note, for just this moment, into his voice. “Then why were you so mad? Not you-you. Other you. Why didn’t he know?”
Mikey lifted his head and dragged an arm over his eyes, mask saturated with tears. He turned himself around so that now he was sitting side-by-side with Don instead of facing him. Mikey’s shoulder maintained a steady pressure against his brother’s and their shells rested together against the bulwark. Mikey leaned his suddenly-pounding head back against the cool metal of the Turtlecopter.
He let the question settle for a minute. Mikey knew in his bones it was important to speak the truth, and to get it right. So, when he did answer, the words came slowly, haltingly. “If you were—if you were gone, Donnie, I would want to think you’d left. You know? It would be easier that way. So then I wouldn’t have to think about those other things, those other possibilities, that it might be instead. And if I’d really convinced myself that you’d just walked out, bro? Then I guess I’d end up being pretty mad. Because being mad at you would feel so much better than being sad about you, maybe.”
“Yeah.” Donnie scootched his shell a little lower and his head found Mikey’s shoulder. “Maybe.”
They sat together, then, leaning into one another in the dim, cramped little cockpit. Donnie sniffled, releasing a shaky, cathartic sigh. At some point, the air recycler kicked in, filling the quiet space with a background hum. Mikey thought of the packet of Pop Rocks stuck somewhere inside the air duct’s workings with blue painter’s tape. He looked down at the flipbook and rubbed a thumb against its edge.
A horrifying thought struck Mikey. “Am I the robot? Are you the robot? Who’s the balloon here?”
Don huffed a wet laugh and leaned forward to wipe his face with a (somewhat) less-grease-stained corner of an oilcloth from his toolbox. “It’s just a comic, Mikey. No one is the robot. The balloon’s just a balloon. It's not some kind of metaphor. It’s just what came to mind. I thought it would be interesting to draw.”
“It’s really good.” Mikey sniffed.
“Thanks.”
“You know, you really shouldn’t let balloons go,” Mikey stated knowledgeably. Occasional tears were still leaking from his eyes, but their pace had significantly slowed. “If they come down and land in the ocean, they can kill sea turtles. They think they’re food and eat them.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Mikey.”
“They’re like our cousins. They’re family!”
“I’m not releasing any balloons, Mikey. It’s just a flipbook.”
“Okay.”
Once again, the brothers sat for a minute, letting the silence lap at them, listening to their own heartbeats.
“You know, Don, you don’t have to like, teach us this stuff in secret over videos that never get sent. You could just… teach us, you know?”
Don shifted his head. “Hm?”
“I’m serious. Like what you’re doing with Raph, teaching him about the Shell Cycle maintenance and stuff, but with the rest of us. You’re right; I’d rock at fixing an air duct. You oughta see the paper airplane I made; I’m good at that stuff. You don’t have to do everything yourself. Delegate, dude.”
“Mikey, are you actually volunteering to do work?”
Mikey angled his head to make sure Donnie had a good view when he stuck his tongue out at him. “I’ll have you know, I’m very industrus.”
“Industrious.”
“That’s what I said.”
“You just want to find those Pop Rocks.”
“I’ll do anything for tropical punch,” Mikey agreed.
Raph’s voice echoed through the helipad room.
“Yo, Don? You still in here?”
“Yeah, Raph!”
“Dinner’s ready. Leftover spaghetti. Hey, is Mikey with you?”
“Present!” Mikey called.
“Well, wrap up whatever the shell it is you’re doing and get in here. It’s gettin’ cold!”
“Coming!” Don answered for them both.
Neither brother moved.
“‘Sides,” Mikey continued their previous conversation from where they left off. “If you share some of these tasks, maybe you’ll have more time to draw.”
Mikey held the compact little flipbook between them so they could both see it. Slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, he thumbed the pages, but backwards this time. The brothers watched together as a balloon, high in the clouds, floated slowly down in response to the undeniable soft pull of gravity. A small figure, rectangular face upturned, waited patiently as the balloon drifted nearer. The earth rose gently and the robot grew bigger and bigger. Until at last the string of the balloon rested in the robot’s closing hand.
