What's in a Name?

Background Character

In the background where I've always been, In the shadows while the heroes win, And I wonder "Is it such a sin To want a life that goes like that? Would that really be so bad?"

For some people, time speeds up, where everything seems to pass by too fast to comprehend and they’re left scrambling in the dust trying to claw their way back to a place that feels safe.

For others, time slows down. Every feeling, every thought, seems to quicken compared to the environment around them, as if they're stuck in syrup and struggling just to keep moving.

Sometimes it’s a mix of both, sometimes it’s something else entirely. There’s never really a wrong way to feel it, it’s not like anyone has a choice how their brain handles times like those. A common way most people feel fear though?

A chain, weighing them down, keeping them in place. Even when the world moves too fast, or too slow, or not at all, fear still holds a piece of them down, or pulls them forward almost against their will.

Mikey is so tired of feeling chained (forgiving the irony of his ninpo being chains), of his family feeling chained down by fear, fear of discovery, fear of losing each other, fear of the responsibilities forced upon them from generations past.

The fear that drives him forward as his older brother dives behind a portal to a world he, by all means, shouldn’t be able to reach, that he’ll lose that blue to the pink monster trapped beside it, that home will be that much quieter during a time they should be celebrating their victory, their freedom.

Freedom. That’s another thing people all handle differently. Generations have argued and debated and fought over what they all think freedom is.

Whatever it is, Mikey wants it. He knows his brothers do too. He can feel it in the way that Raph and Donnie hold onto him, their own arms cracking alongside his as he renders space and time itself apart to reach the piece of them they refuse to lose. Their thoughts and wishes and dreams flowing through him as if they were his own, and some of them are. He feels it as Raph reaches a glowing hand forward to their final piece, as Leo grabs onto the hand offered to him, as Donnie sends a drill to push the pink back. He’s tired of his family being the ones responsible for cleaning up other people’s messes. He’s tired of always feeling like he’s about to lose the people around him. He wants to be free. He wants his brothers to feel free. Not hiding in sewers and fighting for scraps.

As the light that was once confined to where he faced stretches around the four, blinding and powerful, more powerful than he ever meant it to be, pulling them together, then apart, the directions they fly the same but not, and as his mind quiets, the pain now too much to hold on, that is the last thing he can remember feeling.