How did that always happen? The zoo was boring, yes. There was nothing on the description signs in front of the cages that Donatello did not yet know (not that it kept Raphael from reading it out loud), but at least the evening was nice, the animals were quiet and the snack automats were incredible easy to open.
Yes, that was an hour ago. But of course SOMEONE had to suggest getting pizza and of course SOMEONE knew a shortcut and of course that shortcut had led them right into trouble. Now they were fighting Meatsweats plus an army of mutant ants that the crazy pig man somehow had learnt to control. Whether he had killed Hypno or eaten any other mutant with mind controlling powers, Donatello did neither know nor care. Meatsweats definitely used the insects like puppets sending them at the turtles as his personal army. That was smart, but Donatello was smarter. Ignoring the calls of his brother, the he swung himself on the roof to jump back down on the building’s other side. A smoke bomb and a run through the cooking department later, Donatello left the supermarket (and its coughing, confused employee) and returned to the fighting scene.
His brothers had been backed against the wall by the ants, with Meatsweats grinning at the sidelines. But Donatello was determined to wipe this grin out of this ugly face.
When Donatello came down from the roof and landed between the ants, a confused look replaced said grin. When the bottles shattered between the insects, it was too late. Meatsweats chitin armored army scuttled.
"What...How...Why?" His brothers‘ confused voices mixed, echoing in the alley.
"Vinegar!" Donatello spoke, while whirling around to look at them like a circus director addressing his audience. "Their non-mutated kind hate the odor of it so I figured they would, too. Even moreso with possibly heightened senses."
"Not bad, Donnie!" Raph commended with a broad smile. But soon his face fell in horror and before Don had the chance to ask what was wrong, he felt an atrocious pain rushing through his upper leg and was slammed against the cold alley wall, his temple colliding with the bricks. Looking up with a groan, he saw the outraged Meatsweats run towards him, the giant hammer bloody. His vision blurred by pain, he also spotted Raphael and Mikey running towards them but it was clear that they wouldn’t reach them before the pig mutant‘s weapon would collide with Donnie’s head. On the bright side, he felt his consciousness slip away from the throbbing pain in his leg and forehead so that he would not even feel the final hit. In fact he was so dizzy that he was sure to only imagine being grabbed by the shoulder and whisked away before merciful darkness surrounded him.
He woke up to his head buzzing. No, something else was buzzing. It was some sort of machine. But what? And someone was talking. But who? The voice sounded familiar though.
Confused, Donatello let his eyes wander around, looking for the source of the noises. To his surprise, he was in his own laboratory, lying on the couch his brothers had gifted to him for his last birthday. His wounded leg was wrapped up neatly and an icepack was draped along his forehead. Turning his gaze to his workbench, he spotted Leonardo, his phone in his left hand, the right struggling with the coffee machine.
"You keep saying it can make tea as well, Raph, but it doesn’t," he snarled into the phone.
"Please don‘t break it," Don said dryly.
Immediately Leo spun around, a smile spreading across his face.
"He‘s awake!" he all but yelled into the phone. "Just get your butts here."
With remarkable speed, Leonardo suddenly sat by Don's side, a bottle of water and some painkillers in his hand.
With a curt "Thank you" Don took them.
"You’re welcome," Leo smiled. "How are you feeling, headache aside?"
"Confused. Disoriented," Donatello admitted. "Leo, what happened?"
"What do you remember?"
"Meatsweats must have hit my leg and I stumbled against the brick wall, hitting my head," Donatello recalled, brows furrowed in concentration. "I saw him coming at me with that hammer and... I think I passed out then."
Leonardo nodded.
"Hmm, yes. When I saw him swing that huge hammer at you...," Leonardo paused for a second, swallowed and then cleared his throat to continue, "I saw I couldn’t be there in time."
"But my head is still attached to my body and not left as a bloody mess on an alley wall."
"Thanks for that image, bro," Leonardo said with a disgusted expression before explaining. "I created a portal to get to you and - after grabbing you - one to the lair."
Donnie started laughing, but as he saw Leonardo’s face, wearing a mixture of anger and hurt, he asked, "Wait! You’re serious?"
"Yes, Donatello!" Leo growled, his arms crossed defensively. "Thanks for believing in me."
"Oh, come on, Leo, cut the sarcasm!" Don retorted, rolling his eyes. "Two portals? Each created within seconds? AND leading to the planned destination? You have to admit that I have the right to be surprised."
"Yeah, well, I guess...," Leonardo shrugged, uncrossing his arms, and grinned. "It was pretty amazing."
"But how?" Donatello wanted to know. "Usually if you are trying to use the portal magic, the best we can hope for to happen is nothing..."
"Very funny, bro," Leonardo grumbled. "But seriously? I don’t know. I saw you lying there, helpless and about die. I just opened the portals. I didn’t think about it."
"If not thinking did the trick, you‘d never fail," Donatello chuckled.
The next moment the water bottle was slapped out of his hands and crashed shattering against Shelldon who immediately activated himself to clean up the mess.
"What wrong with you, Leo?" Donatello raised an eyebrow and tilted his head.
"Me?!" Leo yelled. "What is wrong with me ?! What is wrong with you ? THAT would be a good question!"
"What?"
"Half an hour ago I saved your life!" Leo exclaimed. "And you’re already back to being a jerk again!"
"Without you and your stupid Splinter trick, my life wouldn’t even have been in danger!" Donnie sat up, getting in Leo‘s face. "I would have been in my lab, safe and sound!"
"Well, excuse me, that I want to spend time with my brother!"
"Pfff," Donatello made contemptuously. "You just didn’t want to go by foot or ride the subway."
"What?"
"You wanted your lazy ass carried to the zoo with the shellraiser. Hence your ‘longing‘ for my company!"
Leonard raised an eye ridge and snorted.
"We could have taken the shellraiser if you‘d have stayed here!"
"But maybe I wouldn’t have allowed it."
"Maybe we wouldn’t have cared and taken it anyway."
"I wouldn’t have been there to operate it."
"Oh, please! We can operate the shellraiser just fine without you!"
"But could you have repaired it if something went wrong?"
"Would we have thought about that?"
"I guess you have a point there."
"Ha!" Leonardo exclaimed, only to add a second later, "Wait..."
Donatello scoffed. On wobbly legs he got up to walk over to the coffee machine.
"Maybe you just wanted to make sure I was around to do my ‚nerd stuff‘ if needed," he speculated while making coffee.
"Or maybe I just wanted my brother to be around!"
"Yeah, sure," Don chuckled without humor. "I am lucky that I build cool stuff. Else I‘d be too nerdy to bear."
"What? Who says that?"
"You!" Donatello answered, struggling to keep his emotions in check.
"When have I ever..."
"1 year, 7 month and 3 days ago." Donatello interrupted. "Splinter had just commended me for knowing an answer in the quiz show he was watching. Not that my joy lasted long thanks to your comment."
"I remember..." Leonardo admitted before starting to stutter, "B...but that was only because you had laughed at me for giving the wrong answer to the question before. You always do that! Make me feel stupid!"
"Oh, please!" Donnie scoffed while returning to his seat with the coffee. "That was just a joke. Since we were kids you make me feel weak. Like when we all fell from that swing I made. Because of my shell I was the only one hurting. And you had nothing better to do than to make your own little commedia dell‘arte with imitations of my cries of pain."
"Well, since we are sharing lovely memories how about you recall that earlier that day you laughed at me when we practiced how to read," Leonardo bit back. "I just stumbled over a few hard words and you made a rap song based on my stuttering!"
"That was because you laughed at me when I fell off my skateboard!"
"I only laughed because shortly before you said if bad jokes were rocks I‘d be the Himalaya! And then you made fun of me when I didn’t get that."
"Maybe, but that was only a payback for..."
Donatello halted midsentence. There was something in his brother‘s expression that was hauntingly familiar. At first he could not put his finger on it. But then he recognized it as the reflection of his own fear and pain. The fear of not being good enough and the pain of recognizing that it was true. And again he wondered...
"What happened?" Leonardo suddenly asked the question that haunted Donatello, too.
"I don’t know," Donatello answered, not even bothering to ask Leonardo to elaborate. He knew what he meant.
"I know I can be a jerk," Leo said. "But you can be, too. I didn’t really think much about it until we met Draxum."
"Draxum?" Donnie asked confused. "What has he got to do with it?"
"He almost killed us," Leo simply stated. "Kinda made me realize that we don’t have forever."
Raising his eyebrows in surprise, Donatello took in his brother. These were thoughts he had not expected the easy-going slider to have. But he understood what Leonardo was going at. He let him continue.
"That does not mean that I expect the worst to happen," Leo said. "But if it does..."
He bit his trembling lip. Donatello had not seen his brother so vulnerable for years. He wondered if he ever had.
"Leo...," he started but was interrupted.
"And with you I think the risk of the worst to happen is lower," Leo continued, appearing to be caught in his thoughts. "Just remember our first fight against sheephead. You were the only one to at least land a blow. You seemed to have a run until Mikey lost control over his weapon and bumped into you. So, you were right. It was not just your company I needed. I feel like Raph and Mikey are safer, too, when you are around. We need you. I need you."
"To feel safe?" Donatello asked.
"To feel like myself," Leonardo said quietly. "I know in the last years we grew apart. But we belong together, don‘t we? We‘re brothers!"
"Of course we are, but that doesn’t change...," Donnie started once more, this time being stopped by a look from Leonardo.
After a few seconds of silence, Leo repeated, whispering and with a pointed look, "I know I can be a jerk, but you can be, too."
Donatello frowned. That was it, wasn’t it? They both feared to be insufficient and they both hurt when they felt like they were. And when they were hurting, they both lashed out.
Letting images from their shared past slide before his mind‘s eye, Donatello saw a huge collection of tit for tat. Sure, his memory was better than Leonardo’s and if he wanted he could probably come up with something Leo had done wrong to justify any wrong Don himself had done while Leonardo’s cognitive performance would sooner or later fail him.
Maybe that would matter if this was about being right. But it did not matter since this was about being brothers.
"We cannot change what happened," Donatello finally said before he hesitantly admitted, "But I miss being close to you, too."
"You do?" Leo asked.
"I do," Donatello nodded. "But instead of being happy when you wanted me around, I tortured myself by telling me you wanted my tech around instead."
"I could have been a bit less... obnoxious while showing my affection," Leonardo sheepishly acknowledged.
"No kidding!" Donatello exclaimed before being able to stop himself.
At first Leo glared at him but then he laughed.
"I deserved that, I guess," he finally said. "But whenever I made fun of your ‚nerdiness‘ I was just being jealous. Well, not always. Sometimes you are just so annoying that I am making fun of you to make fun of you. But I know I can count on you."
"Admittedly, I am never jealous of you for making bad puns," Don deadpanned. "But however annoying they may be, they are like a little piece of home when we are out there. I feel... less vulnerable hearing you joke around in a fight."
"That leaves us where?"
"We both try to be less of a jerk towards each other," Don suggested. "And try not to see the worst in whatever the other does or says?"
"Sounds doable," Leo shrugged.
"Alright!"
For a moment they sat on the couch in silence. What was there to say? They probably had had their most meaningful conversation in years. Anything else would sound trivial in comparison. And still after a few minutes a grin spread across Leonardo’s face.
He raised his hand, made a fist and offered it to Donatello.
"Disaster Twins?" he spoke in a questioning tone.
"Leo, I must have told you close to a million times that we are not really twins. Just because we are the same a..."
"Disaster Twins?" Leo repeated, unfazed, with the same grin.
"We‘re not even the same species of turtle! We..."
"Disaster Twins?" Still smirking, Leo wiggled his fist around a little, holding his brother’s exasperated gaze.
Finally Donatello sighed, fist-bumped Leonardo and smiled lightly,
"Disaster Twins!"
The End