Chapter Text
As the early autumn sun cast long shadows over the fields, Mikey found himself drawn to the small bee colony he had started caring for. It was something that had begun almost by accident; he’d found an old beehive in one of the long-abandoned barns and decided to see if he could coax some bees back into it. To his surprise, it had worked. Now, a few weeks later, the colony was thriving, buzzing with activity.
Mikey knelt beside the hive, watching the bees flit in and out, their tiny bodies heavy with pollen. Their steady, purposeful movement soothed him, making him feel a little less adrift and uncertain.
“Hey, little dudes,” he whispered, a small smile tugging at his lips. “You guys are working hard today.”
The bees didn’t answer, of course, but Mikey liked to imagine they understood him and were attempting to respond to him with their gentle buzzing. He wondered if bees had their own secret language and if he could learn it! He was sure Donnie would know—he was full of fun facts like that—but no, he shouldn’t ask. It was probably a dumb question, Mikey reminded himself. His older brother had more important things to do besides listen to every random thought that found its way home in the orange-clad turtle’s brain.
Anyway, Mikey had quickly grown attached to them in a way that had surprised even him. They were so small, so delicate, yet they played such a vital role in the world around them. It was in stark contrast to the way he often felt—big, strong, but sometimes unsure if what he was contributing to the team, to his family, actually mattered.
As he watched the bees dart past him, Mikey couldn’t help but think about his brothers. They were back in the farmhouse, each dealing with their own struggles the only way they knew how: by not dealing.
Leo was still healing from his injuries, and while he was getting better, recovery was a long process that never failed to frustrate the eldest. Every small stumble or step backward dealt a disproportionately large blow to the leader’s confidence. The brothers tried to reassure Leo that setbacks were a part of recovery, that he was steadily getting better (even if the process was slower than they all had hoped it would be), but he refused to listen to their logic and continued to push himself harder than he should.
Donnie was secluded away in the barn, having turned the area into a makeshift lab. He was attempting to create a stable medicine to help Leo heal faster but neglected to take care of himself in the process. He refused to sleep, and barely touched the meals Mikey brought to him. As batch after batch continued to fail, the purple-clad turtle grew colder, more determined to blame himself for both his and Leo’s perceived failures. What little time he did end up spending in the house, Donatello snapped at the other three brothers, frequently allowing his irritation to get the better of his typically docile nature.
Raph was doing his best to get their oldest brother back to the skill level he was before the… incident with Shredder, so he spent most of his time hovering around Leonardo, much to the leader’s chagrin. He tried to encourage Leo by helping him train and building the strength back up in his leg, but more often than not the two would fall into old habits and their training sessions end in screaming matches. Leo felt smothered and just wanted to be left alone to deal with his injury his way, and Raph didn’t understand why their stubborn leader refused to even listen to him when he was just trying to help!
Mikey loved all three of them but was becoming increasingly frustrated with the heavy tension that seemed to always be surrounding the family members. He couldn’t stand to be inside the farmhouse and around his brothers for too long these days, the yelling and arguing starting to feel like a rope around his neck, pulling tighter and tighter as he listened to his older brothers take their frustrations and homesickness out on each other.
And while he was the jokester, the goofball, the one who always tried to keep things light, he had long since given up getting in between the fights that were happening daily now.
“Y’know,” he said to the bees, his voice quiet, “sometimes it’s really hard to be in there with them. I know they’re my brothers and I love them, but… I don’t know. They’ve changed, they’re all so angry now.”
Mikey sniffed, his chest suddenly becoming tight. He rubbed at it with one hand. “I wish things would go back to the way they used to be. I’m just so tired—"
One of the bees landed on his hand, crawling across his skin with thin, delicate legs. Mikey held perfectly still, his eyes wide and watching the tiny creature as it explored his fingers. There was something beautiful about its simplicity, the way it focused on its task to help the other bees survive. It knew that its colony, its family, would always be there to support one another.
“I guess you guys don’t have to worry about any of that, huh?” Mikey continued, the tears gathering in his eyes giving away the fake smile planted on his face. “You just do your thing… no arguing or shouting or fights so bad you just want to cry. Your family isn’t breaking apart, only mine is.”
The usually cheerful turtle did his best to keep the family together, but Michelangelo’s older brothers were proving that a very difficult task. They were so focused on proving each other wrong that they neglected their own well-being. And while he knew deep down they loved each other, a small part of him began to doubt it.
Mikey hated himself for considering it, yet plenty of evidence showed their family might be coming apart.
The bee on his hand took off, joining the others as they buzzed around the hive. As Mikey watched it go, a feeling of melancholy washed over him.
He tried to remind himself that it was just a bee, that it had more important things to do than listen to him whine about how unfair his situation was when, in reality, it could be much worse. Poor Master Splinter was still out there somewhere, Leo was recovering from a serious injury, and Casey and April had left the majority of their family in New York, with no way to know if they were safe or not, so he really shouldn’t be complaining.
But it was hard not to feel a little bit abandoned by the small, fuzzy creature. It had been the only thing to really listen to him in days, his brothers being too obsessed with their endless amount of disputes to have any time for him at all.
And he was trying to take care of them, make sure that they took care of themselves—they weren’t particularly known for their self-care skills in the Hamato family—but with each passing day, with each time he was ignored, shoved, or put down, it got harder and harder to keep going.
The youngest turtle barely registered his breathing as it started to quicken, lost in the hoard of thoughts circulating his head.
He knew he needed to, he needed to take care of his family. After all, that was his role. If he didn’t cook, didn’t clean, didn’t do the other endless number of chores, didn’t bring Donnie meals didn’t help Raph calm down didn’t didn’t didn’t—
Mikey took a deep breath in, and the buzzing and humming of the bees peacefully flitting in and out of the hive and overpowering the noise of the thoughts that had flooded his brain.
“Thanks for listening, little dudes,” he said, giving the hive a sad smile. “But I’ve gotta get back up to the house. I need to get back to work too, just like you guys are doin’.”
Mikey sighed in disappointment before pushing up from the ground and unfolding his sore knees with a POP! He didn’t really want to head back, and glanced longingly at the little beehive before forcing himself to turn away, his legs carrying him along the short path back to the house.
The sun had fallen lower in the sky, creating a beautiful sunset that the youngest turtle normally would’ve loved to watch. Any other day, Mikey would’ve begged the guys to sit out on the porch with him, basking in the final days of summer sunlight. But not today. Today, all he wanted to do was crawl under the covers and lay in bed until he wasn’t so tired and burned out.
But he couldn’t do that, because who would force Donnie to eat and stop Leo from training too hard and be the punching bag for Raph and make sure no one takes out any of their anger or fear or sadness or any other terrible emotion that just leads to a fight on each other? Mikey would just soak it all up like a sponge, just like he’s always done since he can’t be anything but happy because if he falls apart then everyone else will and it’ll be all his fault his fault his fault—
Mikey shook off his hands in a valiant attempt to stop them from trembling before forcefully rubbing his eyes and trying to shut his brain up. It didn’t do any good thinking about those kinds of things, so he just needed to stop.
At some point, while he was lost in the hurricane that was his thoughts, he had made it back to the house. Mikey took a deep breath in and stared at the front door, trying to steel himself before jumping back into the battle for absolutely nothing that his brothers were waging against each other.
“It’s fine, everything’s fine, it’s just dinner, it’s just dinner with your bros,” he muttered to himself. “Nothing scary about that. Nope, not at all.”
After taking one last long look at the barn housing the lively little beehive, he breathed in, planted a smile on his face, and pushed open the door.