shoutout to the minecraft soundtrack it's the only reason this fic was ever written at all
(i also made several changes to chapter 1 while writing this- no major changes, it's just better now lol)
Contents
Previous
Donnie watched Mikey storm out of the dojo, surprised. He hadn't realized Mikey was so upset.
Leo moved to follow him, but Splinter raised a hand to stop him. "Continue your meditation. I will check on your brother."
Donnie winced at the sound of a door slamming and a pool of guilt formed in the bottom of his stomach. He truly hadn't meant to upset his little brother, he'd just wanted him to stop fidgeting so much and distracting him.
Looking over at Leo and Raph, they seemed equally as surprised at Mikey's disappearance. Mikey was not one to storm off when he was upset, and criticism tended to just slide off of him. That Donnie had managed to upset him enough to drive him away was... worrying.
When Splinter returned a few moments later, Mikey wasn't with him. "Michelangelo is very upset, and wishes to be alone for now. I ask that you all respect his space until he is ready to talk. For now, we will continue our meditation."
"Hai, Sensei."
Donnie found it much more difficult to enter a meditative state this time. He was worried for Mikey, and- a little nervous, if he was being honest with himself.
He couldn't think of a single other time that Mikey had been genuinely upset at him. There'd been moments when he'd found Donnie's obsessive nature and complicated explanations annoying, but he'd never been truly angry at him. Clearly, he'd crossed a line this time.
But what line? All he'd done was tell Mikey to stop fidgeting, maybe a little more harshly than was necessary, but he'd said similar things in the past without such a negative reaction.
But he'd also told Mikey he wasn't trying. Donnie had been thinking it for a long time- and he suspected Leo and Raph had as well- that Mikey could improve his focus and meditation skills if he would just try. He had so much potential, if only he would apply it! But instead, he goofed off during training. He blew their cover during missions. He distracted his brothers from important work. He forgot things, constantly. He was easily the most distractable person Donnie knew- which, granted, wasn't that many, but still.
Great, now Donnie couldn't keep his focus.
Eventually, Splinter dismissed them and Donnie quickly retreated to his lab. He needed to do some research. If there was anything he could do to help his little brother, he wanted to know.
Donnie didn't know much about psychology- machines and software had always made much more sense to him than the mind. Feelings were more of Mikey's thing than his, anyway. But he was doing this for Mikey, so he'd just have to figure it out.
It honestly took much less time to find a probable cause than he'd expected- almost every source he could find listed ADHD as a potential cause for concentration issues. From there, he just had to find the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) article on ADHD.
It was frighteningly accurate to Mikey's behaviour. Poor listening skills, small attention span, fidgeting and restlessness, they were all things he'd seen in Mikey. The page even brought up things Donnie hadn't previously considered, such as Mikey's avoidance of anything that required concentration- when they were younger, Mikey used to hide in the sewers to get out of learning math or reading. Good for ninja training, not good for learning anything else. Splinter always found him, anyway.
Reading on, Donnie felt more and more like a huge jerk. He really couldn't blame Mikey for being upset. He was dealing with all of this every day of his life, and Donnie told him he just wasn't trying hard enough.
He'd be pretty pissed off too, in that situation.
But it was too late to change the past. He knew what was wrong, now he just had to figure out how to help.
Mikey must have eventually fallen asleep, because he woke up feeling rather sore at- he checked the clock- four P.M.
The soreness probably came from sleeping on his stomach with his neck bent to the left. He rolled over onto his back and sat up, and yep, he was gonna be feeling that tomorrow.
Rubbing the side of his neck, he checked in with his body. Other than being sore, he felt much better than he had before. Less like glass, at the very least.
He laid back down and stared at the ceiling. He and his family worked on a nocturnal schedule, so everyone else was probably asleep right now. Leo and Splinter were usually the first to wake at around six, so he had a couple hours alone. But he knew that as soon everyone was awake, they'd demand to know what was wrong, and he didn't know what to tell them.
He'd tried explaining it to them before, when his lack of focus had first become a real problem as they began training. The way his brain hopped eagerly from one thing to another with little rhyme or reason, often speeding off and leaving whatever he was supposed to be doing far behind.
"Well, it's like- I'm supposed to be doing warm-ups, right? But then, while I'm doing them, I start thinking about whatever Splinter's gonna teach us. And then I start thinking about the things he's already taught us, which makes me think of that time Donnie tripped himself with his staff, which reminds me of that TV he fixed, and then that reminds me of that cartoon Raph showed me, and then I'm thinking about Transformers when I'm supposed to be sparring."
None of them had understood, really, but they had tried to. Splinter had told him he would get better with practice, and at the time, Mikey believed him.
You'd think he'd have gotten better at it after years of practice. But he hadn't.
As time went on, Splinter and his brothers had become less and less understanding. Leo especially thought of that he should've grown out of this years ago- Mikey was the only one who seemed to get less focused as he got older. While his brothers excelled at training, Mikey struggled to learn division. He struggled to stay quiet. He struggled to be as good as them.
So, Mikey knew that the evening would come with a lecture and questions he didn't know how to answer.
Well, he was awake right now. Might as well get up and do something productive.
He climbed out of bed, slowly to avoid head rush. He unlocked his bedroom door, and headed for the kitchen.
For as long as Mikey could remember, he had loved cooking. When he was little, he'd often climb on top of a stool to watch Splinter make dinner. And when he got older, he started helping. Nowadays, he did a lot of the cooking for the family, because as much as he loved his brothers, they were hopeless in the kitchen.
On his way through the common room, he picked up an iPod that had been left on one of the beanbag chairs. They may have had to destroy the TPod, but it turned out that an iPod worked just as well.
When he reached the kitchen, he poured himself a glass of water and drank the entire thing before pulling out the ingredients he would need for pancakes. His brothers wouldn't be up for a while, but he needed to do something and he didn't feel like drawing. He could just put them in the fridge until breakfast.
He put in the earbuds and turned it on. Familiar music filled his head, pushing his thoughts out of the way. It wasn't a perfect fix, and he still found his mind wandering sometimes, but it at least made his attention span more manageable.
He'd carefully crafted this playlist one song at a time- if a song wasn't familiar enough, it just made him more distracted, so this playlist had to be made up entirely of songs he knew like his own scales.
Now, he could just focus on the music, and on cooking.
It didn't take long to get into a rhythm. Flour, sugar, baking powder, it all went by in time with the music. Eventually, the kitchen was filled with the lovely scent of pancakes. When they were done, Mikey put them in a container, and into the fridge.
But he was still the only person awake, and he still felt the need to do something. So he started making scrambled eggs. When that was done, he made some bacon. When that was done, he had kind of run out of ideas, so he just made more pancakes, all while tapping his foot and bobbing his head in time with the music.
He turned off the heat and moved to get another container (though he was sorely tempted to have some now, breakfast was in just a few hours, so he'd have to be patient), but stopped when he realized he wasn't alone in the kitchen. Leo was leaning against the wall, watching him cook.
What was he doing up? A glance at the clock revealed that it was six P.M., the time he and Splinter usually woke up. He had been cooking for much longer than he'd thought- he had made quite a bit of food.
He turned off his music, but realized he didn't really have anything to say. The silence of the early evening felt pretty awkward, especially with what had gone down the previous night.
He eventually settled on, "Evening, Leo. Want some?"
I mean, since it turned out breakfast wasn't hours away...
Leo gave him a small smile. "Sure."
Splinter entered soon after, and the three of them ate quietly together. Since Raph and Donnie weren't up yet (and normally, Mikey wouldn't be either) everything felt much quieter than usual.
After breakfast, Mikey was tempted to hide away in his room again, but he figured it would be easier to just deal with the inevitable sooner rather than later. So instead, he followed Leo into the common room to watch Space Heroes with him.
Leo paused, kneeled down to put the tape in the VCR, and turned his head to face Mikey.
"When everyone's awake, you know we have to talk about what happened yesterday, right?"
Mikey shrugged. "When everyone's awake."
Leo put the tape in.
A couple hours later, Donnie and Raph stumbled into the kitchen for breakfast. Mikey shouted after them that there were pancakes in the fridge, and they grunted in acknowledgement.
Leo paused the show and walked to the kitchen. He paused in the entryway to give Mikey a meaningful look.
Mikey sighed and joined his brothers.
None of them were wearing their masks (except Mikey, since he'd fallen asleep wearing his). Raph was about as awake as he ever is this early in the evening, but Mikey can tell already that Donnie pulled another all-nighter from the dark circles under his eyes.
"Thanks for making breakfast, Mikey," Donnie said, "but why'd you make so many pancakes?"
Mikey shrugged. "I'unno, I woke up at like four and needed something to do."
Leo leaned on the counter, watching while Mikey sat at the table and Donnie poured a mug of coffee- he must have made a pot some time during the day.
"I think it's time to talk about what happened yesterday," Leo began.
Mikey retreated into his shell (metaphorically, at least) and stared at the tabletop. "Sorry, bro, I dunno what happened. I just got- real frustrated, I guess. 'Cause I can't focus. Sorry for storming off like that."
"It's okay, Mikey, no one's mad at you. But don't make doing that a habit, alright?"
"Alright."
Leo smiled. "I know you can do it, Mikey. I've seen you have incredible concentration- just this morning, you were so completely focused on cooking that you didn't even notice I was there. We just have to work on applying that focus to other things."
Mikey didn't feel nearly as confident as Leo seemed to. "Right. I'll just try harder."
Donnie had been watching their exchange with a thoughtful expression on his face. "A-Actually, I think there may be a different reason why Mikey can't focus very well- or can only focus on certain things."
Mikey looked up at his brother. Raph was still mostly asleep, but he at least managed to open his eyes more than halfway.
"And why is that, Donnie?" Leo asked.
"Well, I wanted to help Mikey, since I was the one who upset him, and everything- I did some research, and I found that Mikey has a lot of the characteristics of combined type attention deficit hyperactivity disorder."
"And that means what, exactly?" Raph growled. Probably the first words he'd said that day.
Donnie sighed. "ADHD. It's a mental disorder that some people are born with that makes it difficult to focus, and combined type means that he has problems with both attention and hyperactivity. That's the simplified version, anyway. Poor focus is just one aspect of ADHD, there's also emotional disregulation, impulsivity, disorganization, and so on."
He turned to face Mikey, but looked at the floor instead of his face. "I'm... sorry. For saying you weren't trying. I didn't know you were dealing with this, but I still shouldn't have been so dismissive. I don't blame you for being upset at me, Mikey."
"I'm not mad, dude. Well- not at you, at least. I was mad, but- mostly at myself."
His whole life, Mikey had sort of thought, in the back of his mind, that he struggled because there was something wrong with him. That he was, in some way, fundamentally worse than his brothers. That he was a bad kid.
"I thought I really wasn't trying hard enough. But I couldn't figure out how to change that. I thought-" Mikey's voice cracked as he whispered, "I kinda thought I was broken."
There was a moment where Mikey seriously feared he may start crying, before Leo spoke.
"I- I think part of that is my fault."
Before Mikey could say anything, he continued, "As your leader, it's my duty to push all of you towards being the best you can be. And part of that is encouraging you to try harder. I should've realized that I wasn't really encouraging you anymore. I'm sorry I didn't realize that you were struggling. I should've noticed."
Raph, more awake after eating breakfast, said, "Don't be so hard on yourself. If Mikey's had this his whole life, then there'd be no change to notice."
Donnie nodded. "Raph's right. We can't change our past behaviour, but we can change how we act now."
Now Mikey was crying. But he was also smiling.
All of his brothers stood to surround him. "There's nothing wrong with you, Mikey," Donnie said. "There never has been. I'm sorry we made you believe that."
Mikey turned to pull his brothers into a hug, still sniffling.
"Thanks, Donnie. All of you. I love you."
"We love you too, Mikey."
AA thanks for reading!! i actually meant to write a second chapter a while ago but like. we all know what this fic is about it's a miracle i even started
also i'm so sorry splinter vanishes partway thru and raph says like three sentences i just couldn't figure out how to fit them in better dfskjdhsh