#i was mostly asleep and someone distracted me and i mistook the original for a reblog

[spectrumscribe]

Left-ways

(Reposting because I deleted the original by accident!! Sorry!!!)

Hecka violent Mikey one-shot I promised. Trigger warnings apply, apologies.

(Violent impulses are a bitch, aren’t they?)

————————————————

There’s a point. There’s always a point.

There’s always a point where he just can’t care anymore.

And then everything slides left.

Soooooooooo far left that everything just flips-

-and then he’s right-side up again! Just like new!

Funny how that always works, just like dysfunctional clockwork!

Ha! Ha ha!

Mikey’s been sliding for that left for a looooooong while. Too long. Too long and now he’s on the very, very edge of the left, and wondering why he should tip back to the right at all.

He needs space. Space from his brothers and their tight, stuffy, confining home filled with too many memories and sad things. He needs space so he won’t slide left-ways around his brothers, because that would be bad of him to do. He shouldn’t do that to them, they’ve already got so much to deal with right now.

Mikey kind of really, really wishes he had a portal to Dimension-X. He slid all the way left-ways in there a number of times, and nothing bad came of it! Maybe it wasn’t so nice for the creatures and Kraang he met while he was in there, but hey! A guy has to get his kicks somehow!

Mikey bites his lip and taps his fingers and fidgets fidgets fidgets and tries not to slide too far left-ways while he’s at home.

He can’t stand it, though. The stuffiness. The suffocation. The stillness.

Mikey is the only one moving, while his brothers sit still and silent and oh so very sad because of their father and Mikey can’t.

He’s sad, yes. But he’s slipping too far left-ways to have room for sadness and he needs to go. Because if he stays, he’s gonna slip right on over that edge, and the time it takes to flip right-side up is too long much too long for his brothers to go through.

Leo is quiet in the dojo and Raph is punching his things and Donnie is building something small and ticky ticky ticky and Mikey isn’t noticed at all as he slips away.

    Mikey misses his dad, misses having a whole family, and misses feeling like he wasn’t always edging towards the edge.

He’s left-ways and sideways and dancing over streets because there’s nothing else to do. He’s too wired for videogames, too careless for skating, so all he can do is leap and run and try not to slip without somewhere to aim it.

Maybe his brothers noticed him being gone, maybe they haven’t. They don’t see him slipping left-ways, but that’s okay! They’re not supposed to anyways!

Mikey wonders if Karai is better yet. She’s fast and deadly and her friend is fun too. Maybe they’d have something for him to do so he doesn’t slip left-ways all the way.

But he’s close. Oh is he so very close.

All the way left-ways and then upside-down to come back up right-side and feel like an okay person again that’s the plan that’s what’s going to happen if only he could find someone to aim it at-

Mikey stops, sharp and silent, and stares down at a building he’s passing.

Oh. There’s someone. There’s lots of someones.

Sometimes, with all the mutants and aliens and super ninjas- he forgets that the Purple Dragons even exist. Ha! Sucks to be them, so normal compared to everything and everyone else in New York.

Mikey slips over the edge of the building, and very nearly over his left-ways edge.

It’s buzzing in his skull, like a twitch twitch twitch that won’t stop till he either slides all the way left-ways or pulls himself back to the right. It twists and shrieks and makes more noise than Mikey can to drown it out and he hates it and he loves it because left-ways can be fun when he’s alone. When there’s no one there to stop him or distract him or get hurt in his left-ways slide.

His dad wouldn’t have wanted that, though. The slide, the slip, the flip off the cliff-

His dad would have been sad, disappointed, in Mikey for flipping all the way around and being left-ways the way he sometimes gets.

He’s at that point though. That point.

His dad is dead and their war is over and Mikey is sad and furious and bored.

He’s left-ways now, sliding through the open windows of the Purple Dragons’ hideout. Why they don’t move it, or at least defend it better, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t he doesn’t he doesn’t he doesn’t-

Oh, look, there’s Hun and his boys. Just like Mikey knew he’d be.

Mikey smiles, wide and gleeful.

He’s silent, swift, making his way from the rafters to the floor in perfectly timed rebounds off the wall and the machines inside the warehouse.

Hun and his gang- just a few men not enough men- are at a table. Drinking. Eating. Playing cards. They’re laughing and smiling and seem at ease with one another.

How lucky of them. How lucky lucky lucky that they don’t have a dark, sorrow filled home to go return to. One that’s too full and too empty and Mikey hates it more than he can even express, which is why he’s left-ways so far left-ways that he’s-

Mikey makes a final jump from the big cat statue, to the floor, and lands without a sound. His chains though. He lets them clink as he does, and splay across the floor with wonderful metallic clangs.

They didn’t make those sounds in Dimension-X much, not unless he was in a Kraang ship- and while he did love being in those great big metal ships and being so far left-ways nothing felt real until he wasn’t left-ways anymore- Mikey loves the concrete of his city and the way it lets him make just as much noise as he feels like. And no more than that.

All the heads in the room whip towards him- one, two, three, four - and Mikey smiles and smiles and smiles.

Not enough heads. But they’ll do.

Mikey slips left-ways, and over the cliff.

    Crack crack crack crack crack-

How many bones does a hand have? Donnie would know, but Mikey doesn’t.

He likes the sound though. There are enough bones to make plenty.

Sound was fun and strange in Dimension-X. He misses that especially. Because Mikey could scream like he loves to do and oh the things that would happen when he screamed.

The man he’s holding is screaming. It’s not as good as Mikey’s Dimension-X screams, but he’s giving it his best.

Mikey is bored of it though, and tosses the man aside. The man skids across the floor, hitting the pile of boxes Mikey knocked over or maybe someone else had, earlier earlier earlier during the fight.

Not much of a fight, honestly. Mikey used to think these men were at least good for a work out. Now they’re all splayed out and quiet or quietly sobbing and god, so boring.

At least they’re good for itching the twitching in his skull! Mikey can appreciate that about them, even if they’re so pitiful, crying out and falling down and breaking breaking breaking so easily.

Mikey is jealous of Leo for getting to break the Shredder. Not fair not fair not fair- he wanted to do that, wanted to shred the Shredder and show him what it felt like to have a part of you so vital and needed and loved carved right out of your body.

Mikey misses his dad. Misses how stable everything felt with him around. His voice and presence and how he’d put a hand on Mikey’s head and everything would go quiet and he didn’t feel at all like he was sliding left-ways.

Mikey is left-ways. He’s upside-down. Mikey is smiling at Hun, who he chained up all nice like and tidy- look dad, I got something right!-  and has been waiting so patiently for Mikey to be done with the others.

Hun was a bit tricky, but Mikey is just so much more tricky! Tricky tricky tricky like Donnie’s ticky ticky ticky-

Donnie has been so sad, so quiet these days locked in his lab and room. Mikey doesn’t like it. And Raph has been sullen and scared, scared of what he saw on that rooftop. Mikey liked it better when he was fearless. Leo has been scared too, of who he has to be now for all of them and he’s different for that fear of what’s to come. Mikey liked it better when being the leader was just a game.

He wants his brothers back just as much as he wants his father. Because they’re there but they’re gone gone gone too and he hates it.

Mikey lists to the right, skimming over the bright red puddle that reflects the warehouse lights so well, and skips over to Hun, humming a tune his dad used to sing when Mikey was too wired to sit still and just wanted to go play in the sewers with the rats and snap snap snap some things till he wasn’t bored anymore.

Mikey is bored. And sad. The upside-down is helping with those. Hun’s pale, scared face is helping with those.

“Please…” Hun says, begs, pleads pleads pleads to Mikey’s deaf ears. Just like all the other men had! Before Mikey had broken them like he wanted to break Shredder and the Shredder’s men and everyone else who wasn’t his family.

His brothers always say he never listens, and he guesses they’re right!

He hates listening to things he doesn’t like!

    “You’re no fun,” Mikey says, bent over his knees and looking at Hun on the cold ground. “You gave Casey a hard time, why didn’t you give me one?”

Hun coughs, and Mikey hums sadly at how badly the man’s neck is bruised. Sometimes, Mikey gets a bit carried away. But that’s okay!

Mikey might be upside-down right now, but his dad taught him right! How to be right, even when he’s not right-side up! How not to kill things and people by accident!

Mikey’s laughter bubbles out of him, just like it has on and off all night and Hun makes a very funny sound at that.

His dad would be sooooo disappointed in him right now. Breaking and wrecking and being so mean without reason.

Too bad his dad is dead.

Mikey laughs, and laughs and laughs and laughs.

He’s smiling, and it hurts. Just a little.

Not as much as being home does, stuck not left-ways all the way or upside-down at all. Always right-ways always right-side up. Can’t be anything else around his brothers. His dad told him so.

“Be a good boy, Michelangelo. Treasure your brothers and their lives. Always love them, even when it’s hard.”

Mikey wishes his dad was here to say that, and not just Mikey whispering it under his breath.

Maybe being left-ways wouldn’t be so easy so fun if Mikey had reason to not be.

Hun is trying to drag himself away, and whoops- Mikey can’t have that!

“No no no noooooo…” Mikey says in a scolding tone. Like his dad would when he broke something he wasn’t supposed to. He stands up, and puts a foot on Hun’s back. Hun’s back has gashes and rips and lots of red that Mikey put there. Mikey thinks it looks better that way.

Mikey smiles down at Hun, who looks just so average without his glasses and perfect hair. Tsk tsk- how Casey ever had a rough time with this man, Mikey doesn’t know. He doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care he doesn’t care he doesn’t care he doesn’t care-

-twitch twitch twitch fidget fidget fidget-

“We’re not done yet!” Mikey says, cheerful and bright because this is fun! Fun like being at home isn’t and fun like training used to be.

Mikey is upside-down and all the way left-ways and he loves it and he hates it and-

-he wishes his dad was here to pull him back from it, because while it’s funny and bubbly and terribly wonderful like how so few things are-

-it’s lonely. And Mikey hates being lonely more than he hates being bored.

At least he’s not bored anymore! At least that!

Mikey laughs, and smiles, and enjoys being upside-down for however much longer it lasts.

    He walks back into his home, that’s still silent still stuffy still empty and full and mixed with too much of everything-

And he doesn’t let any of that touch him, because he’s right-ways again!

Left is done it’s time for right instead. Just like his dad wanted him to be.

Mikey sees his brothers, counts their heads- one, two, three- and smiles at each one of them gathered around the television for a movie night. Donnie asks why he didn’t answer his phone, and Mikey remembers oh yeah, that sound I heard that wasn’t screaming.

Mikey’s chains are clean again, his hands are clean again, and he’s right-ways and right-side up and so he smiles at Donnie and says, “Whoops! Sorry about that, got busy with some stuff and I guess I forgot to turn it back on.”

That gets a round of shaken heads and fond scoffs, and Mikey is alright with those reactions. They’re good ones! The ones his dad wanted his brothers to give Mikey, and not the (fun) ones that other people have.

Mikey smiles and smiles and smiles and doesn’t say anything about slipping left-ways to his brothers.

He loves them, adores them, wants them to never see his left-ways upside-down self ever ever ever-

And he won’t let them.

“So what’re we watching?” Mikey asks, and smiles, and slides into place right next to all his brothers and doesn’t say anything about where he’s been or why his chains are so clean. He says nothing at all, and smiles smiles smiles instead.

Hun hadn’t liked his smiles much. Good thing that Hun will be busy in a hospital for a long while, and won’t have to see Mikey’s smiles anymore!

His brothers smile back at Mikey, soft and tired and sad, and Mikey gives them one that isn’t like the one he gave Hun, and instead the ones he only gives them.

His dad would be proud of this, at least. He has to be.

Mikey doesn’t know what else he can do, other than to smile smile smile…

Until he slides left-ways again, and then repeats the whole thing.

Next time though. Not now. Not with his brothers.

Never with his brothers.

Mikey smiles, and smiles, and smiles…

And stays right-ways, for his dad. For his brothers.