A/N: Written for SkitsMix, Christmas 2k17!
"Santa isn't real."
Michelangelo recoiled from the bed, clutching his sole remaining hand to his heart with suitably dramatic flair.
"Do my ears deceive me? You know, talkin' like that is a surefire way to end up with a lump of coal, kiddo."
His audience was less than impressed and far from perturbed. Shadow's defiant frown was cut more severely in the dim lamplight of her mother's room; a discerning critic at the best of times, the young girl stared up at him from the bed with her arms folded in stubborn denial. Michelangelo hovered over her, wearing his strongest encouraging grin, waiting for her to relent.
And waiting.
. . . And waiting.
Something cold and strange pulled like quicksand in the pit of his stomach. It threatened to dislodge the smile on his face - his very best Uncle Mikey smile that had, for once, failed to make even the smallest dent in that adolescent resilience. As the seconds dragged by without shifting the grim demeanour from his niece, it dawned on him that Shadow might actually be serious about this.
He kept the smile going - through the unwelcome ease of long practice with wearing masks - and settled casually on the edge of the bed for an emergency intervention.
"C'mon, Shadow. You looove Christmas!" he teased, insistently tucking her resistant upper half back under the covers. "You were super excited about it last year!"
Something approaching guilt caught in her cobalt eyes and deflected them away to the side. "I know . . ."
"And you got a bunch of cool presents -"
Her eyes snapped back to him with a flash of annoyance. "Yeah, I did! But I know they didn't come from Santa."
"Is that so?" Michelangelo let his brow furrow in puzzlement and stroked his chin with a ponderous air. "Where else would they have come from?"
Shadow tossed up her arms, undoing all of his blanket work in one sour burst of childhood temper. "Uncle Mikey! Santa is . . . stupid! How would he even get down here? It's not like we got chimneys, and he'd set off all the alarms!"
She would certainly know about the alarms, given how some of her recent fledgling ninja attempts to sneak around the base had turned out. Michelangelo made the diplomatic choice not to mention this as he reached once more for the duvet, beaming with seemingly infinite patience.
"Heh, you gotta try harder than that. We talked about this before! See, some of Santa's elves are ninja and -"
Shadow gave an almighty harrumph and rolled over onto her side, screwing herself up into the duvet and presenting him with nothing but the obstinate crown of her dark-haired head. "Look, it doesn't matter, okay? You don't need to tell me stories about this stuff anymore. I'm not a baby. I'm almost a grown-up."
You're eight and a half, Michelangelo despaired. It was rare that he couldn't find a way past the wall that Shadow's reserve could prove to be, but this time it felt a hundred feet high and built in uncharted territory. Beneath her blanket she was a tightly coiled lump of unapproachable nope, and he reluctantly settled for placing his hand on the part of the lump that looked most like a shoulder and giving it an affectionate squeeze.
"Okay, Scrooooge. Whatever you say. Just get a good night's sleep, all right?"
Shadow murmured her dissent at even that request, but she did at least deliver a quiet, muffled "G'night." Michelangelo bent to plant a kiss on the top of her head, flicked off the bedside lamp, and began a steady backwards retreat to the door.
"Who knows?" he grinned. "Maybe Santa will prove you wrong in the morning!"
His parting shot elicited a grumble from his target. Only once he had clicked the door closed behind him did he let his smile drop with the weight of a stone.
A silken white invader had descended upon occupied New York in recent weeks, blanketing its conflict-battered streets in dense layers of calming, freezing white. From a rebel perspective, the bad weather was reluctantly considered a friend; it hampered Foot activity, played havoc with the Shredder's surveillance tech and gave stealthy surface forays an extra element of camouflage.
On the other hand, Michelangelo could feel the winter chill penetrating right down to the hidden corridors of the subterranean resistance base. He suppressed a shudder as he approached the doors to the mess hall, the floor as hostile as ice beneath his bare feet. Their secret home sprawled for miles below their stolen city and it was a complete and utter pain in the shell to keep warm without tapping into the general power grid and giving away their location like a great honking siren. Engineers were constantly running back and forth keeping their off-grid generators purring, and the sub-zero temperatures didn't play nicely with the plumbing, either - there had been one too many freezing cold showers of late.
Michelangelo stepped into the mess and was immediately bathed in flashing, coloured lights. For just a heartbeat, his unease and discomfort fell to the back of his mind.
In spite of the hardships, the rebels were trying hard to feel Christmassy. It was an effort they made every year. Someone always seemed to find the time to throw up a plastic tree in the middle of the mess hall. Scavenged and saved decorations would build up on it over the weeks approaching that once-magical date, gradually filling the room with the reflective glitter of threadbare tinsel, clashing baubles and sputtering, semi-working lights. It was a disorganised bundle of ugly, but it was charming in a way that a turtle who had grown up in the sewers on the surface world's junk could appreciate.
And nobody talked about it. Nobody planned it. It just happened, by mutual unspoken agreement, the most covert and important mission of each year. On the big day, the hall would be full to bursting with squads exchanging secret santa gifts and the kitchen workers pulling sugary and alcoholic miracles that had the resistance quartermasters scratching their head. There would be carol singing, and games, and the very best cheesy Christmas movies played on their faithful TV set from their small communal library.
As important as their community spirit was, most families - particularly those with children - would try to do something private, too. Michelangelo's diminishing family was no exception. He and April had an agreement; between the box of decorations he'd stashed behind the sofa to transform April's living quarters and whatever gifts they could scrape together, they would wait until the girl was asleep and then make the magic of Christmas happen for Shadow.
It sounded so simple, but it never was. As the leader of a resistance movement against an alien dictator, April's free time was always in the minus figures, and Michelangelo's 'leisure' hours had to be snuck in between missions and the exhausted sleep he needed to recover from them.
It had been easier when there were four of them. Michelangelo felt his thoughts sliding down that familiar, bitter track and wasn't in a good enough mood to rein them back in. They had abandoned him, abandoned April, abandoned Shadow. Maybe this was their fault. Maybe if they'd been here with her instead of leaving it all up to him to maintain any sense of normality, she wouldn't have just thrown her entire childhood in the trash at the ripe old age of eight -
"Mike!"
April had emerged from the west door, carrying a battered cardboard box and sporting the same combat-ready fatigues she'd been wearing three days ago. Her short hair was mussed and she looked like she'd had about three hours of sleep in the past week, but despite all this she walked with an enthusiastic spring to her step that filled Michelangelo with dread.
"So what's our mission status?" the rebel leader grinned as she neared him, brandishing the box like a sporting trophy. "Target all tucked up and dead to the world? I think we managed to scrounge some great stuff this year. Angel donated a few CDs. I think she'll really like those comic books you dug up. Oh, and I managed to get hold of some film for her Polaroid, can you believe it? Only took a slight mission detour to what's left of B&H last month." April rifled through the small selection of covered packages held in the container. "I could only find newspaper again for wrapping . . . but look what I got!"
She produced a small, clear packet from the box and held it up to him with so much beaming aplomb that it could have been her unbeatable plan for defeating the Shredder.
Assorted snowman, reindeer and jolly Santa face stickers with charming googly eyes grinned mockingly at him from behind the crumpled plastic.
Oh boy.
"I wrapped, but I figured you'd want the honours of sticking."
Michelangelo made a faint, strangled noise. "Uh. April?"
"No sticking any to me while I'm not looking, though, okay? That's the deal. Hard to direct a strategy meeting when everyone's snickering at your back."
"April, we might have a little . . . problem."
She immediately clutched the box to her stomach. "Oh, no. Is it the Christmas lights? Did they finally give out this year? I don't know if we'll be able to find anymore before -"
"No, no no. It's something Shadow said." He inhaled a deep, nervous breath. " . . . She told me she doesn't believe anymore. You know . . . in Santa."
Michelangelo hardly considered himself a mathematician, but even he could have plotted the fall of April's face on a line graph.
"Oh," was her initial response, soft and defeated. Then her particular brand of defiance (which was so often mirrored on her daughter's face) flashed in her green eyes. "Oh, what? Since when?"
"I don't know." The turtle narrowed his eyes. "If I find out some punk kid on the base put the idea in her head, I'm gonna be having words."
A listless silence stretched between them, only seconds long but with the ache of an eternity. April was staring into the cardboard box, every trace of a smile ejected from her face. Michelangelo swallowed a few times, finding himself - just this once - at a loss for easy words.
She put him out of his misery before long, issuing a soft snort and meeting his gaze with a sad shrug. "Well. I guess we're lucky we got away with it as long as we did under the conditions we're in, Mike."
"But there must be something we can tell her." Michelangelo could hear the pleading, whiny edge to his voice, and he hated it. "There's gotta be a way to convince her!"
"I don't think so. Once they know, they know. She was gonna figure things out sooner or later." A fond smile curled the corner of her mouth. "She's too smart."
"I know. I know. It's just . . ."
He couldn't articulate. Even if he wanted to, the words would have lodged in the sudden thick, inexplicable lump in his throat. A confusing sense of loss weighed heavy on Michelangelo's chest, potent but completely irrational. What exactly was his problem? They did this for Shadow, didn't they? They always did it for her. That was the point. But . . .
He glanced at April and saw the same despondent, abstract grief reflected in her face. Maybe he hadn't realised quite how much this single, annual, non-violent ritual in their upside down lives had meant to him, to both of them, until the kid had unwittingly ripped the rug out from under his feet.
This one thing . . . They couldn't even have this one normal, fun thing, could they? His fist trembled where it had clenched at his side.
Then April touched his arm, effortlessly understanding, and smiled.
"I know. But Christmas doesn't stop just because the kids start to grow up. Listen, we can decorate the room and we can still celeb-"
The shrill peal of an amber emergency siren cut through her words.
Everyone present in the mess hall lurched to attention amidst a rising burble of alarm. The tinny voice of the intercom began spitting out instructions in rapid fire, beginning with the worst of them all:
" - Commander to the command centre immediately -"
"Oh no," Michelangelo uttered under his breath. Panic was flooding him from the bottom up, and it had nothing to do with the emergency itself. "No, no. Now? It's Christmas Eve!"
April's sigh was incredibly tired. "Guess Ch'rell doesn't celebrate."
"But . . . but, Shadow . . ."
"I know, but what can we do, Mike?" April laughed, but it was all despairing breath. The box of lovingly prepared gifts rattled in her arms when she broke into a run. "What can we do?"
Damn, but it was cold up there. Michelangelo couldn't shake it from his bones. A few feet away, April was rattling off orders to the rebels around her, sending individuals running off for mop-up work. Her hoarse voice had begun to fuzz at the edges, though, a blur of sound he couldn't quite focus on.
A convulsive shudder took off down his spine, and suddenly April stopped. When he glanced up she was looking directly at him, her cheeks and nose rosy with the chill from above and her eyes bleeding raw exhaustion and stress and . . . concern. She closed in on him, pressing a gloved hand to his shoulder.
"Go get warm, Mike. You're done here. Go . . ." Here she paused with a pained frown. "Go to Shadow. Just . . . try and soften the blow? I'll be with you as soon as I can."
His bitter smile made it clear he'd rather be back out in the snow.
Fourteen hours. Fourteen since that first siren, and Michelangelo felt the crushing weight of each one in every trudging step along the corridors leading to April's quarters. The little outpost they had been called on to defend had a fraction of the population of the main base, and had needed all the reinforcements they could get. It had been important work. Life-saving work.
But now it was the middle of Christmas Day and beneath that suppressing layer of cold weariness, he was angry. Michelangelo had fought with a vindictive, personal viciousness unlike him, because heavy in heart was the knowledge that because those Foot goons were wasting his time, one little girl in particular would wake up on Christmas morning alone in April's bed, and then she'd go into their pokey living room expecting at least the usual poor showing of decorations and presents and . . .
Nothing. No lights. No presents. No family.
He realised he'd been standing in front of the door for several minutes, breathing hard through his nose.
Michelangelo didn't know what he could say or do to fix this. He hadn't even come bearing gifts - they had left the box behind last night in the command centre as everyone prepared for field combat. It was too big a detour for him to contemplate going to find it right now.
But he opened the door anyway, because he wasn't his brothers and he wouldn't run away from her.
"Hey, kiddo . . . You in here? I am so sorr-"
Multi-coloured flashes of radiance dazzled him before he'd even got a foot in the room. Michelangelo squinted in bewilderment; Christmas lights - his and April's lights - were strung haphazardly around the furniture at about the maximum height an admittedly tall eight-year-old might be able to reach, their illuminations catching on the glittery ornaments and tinsel shapes that had been tacked up on the walls. It was all stuff from the box he kept hidden behind the sofa . . . well, most of it. Here and there were new additions - lovingly-crafted origami stars sprinkled with glitter, chains of paper snowmen and cheeky reindeer with huge painted red noses.
He was still taking in the scene when he caught a speeding child-shaped bullet to the stomach. Michelangelo bent at the waist with an oof, which made it so much easier to receive the fierce pincer hug his niece was attempting to apply to his middle.
"You're back! You're safe? Didja get hurt? Wow, you're cold." Shadow's big blue eyes were wide with worry, and she pulled back from him only to snatch his hand and draw him doggedly toward the sofa. She looked back just once, peering around him rather than at him. "Where's Mom?"
She hid it well, but he recognised the familiar fear lacing her voice. "She's fine - just finishing up on some stuff. She'll be here as soon as she can." The platitudes tumbled out automatically; Michelangelo's brain was still fighting to reconcile the difference between his expectations and the reality of walking into the room. Shadow didn't question them, though, her face immediately brightening with relief.
"Do you like it?" Her question clearly encompassed the enthusiastic dispensation of Christmas decorations.
"I love it," he grinned weakly. "Those ninja elves sure know how to make a place pretty."
Shadow clucked her tongue in disgust. "You didn't hide the decorations very good, you know!"
"I figured." Michelangelo gave a long-suffering sigh. The magic of Christmas was evaporating right in front of his face. "But . . . why, kiddo?"
Shadow pushed him insistently onto the couch and wouldn't answer until he had his rear firmly in a well-worn seat. Then she immediately set upon him with three different fleece-lined blankets, a recently filled hot water bottle that she stuffed between them, and finally, herself, nestled against his side in a warm lump as effective as any radiator.
"'Cause you couldn't this time," she explained. "'Cause of the mission. I thought it would cheer you up when you came home! You always make up the room so nice every year. It wasn't fair."
Shadow was pouting, fully offended by this travesty of justice. When she really was grown up, her enemies would have a force to be reckoned with on their hands, judging by her early levels of righteous indignation.
April had been right, though. There was no give in the girl's words, no invitation for debate about Santa or elves or any of the Christmas tales they'd spun her over the years. Shadow knew, clearly a lot more about their annual pantomime than Michelangelo had ever guessed at. In spite of the girl's positive sentiment, that ache of strange loss began to burn cold behind his plastron.
"Shadow?" Her name came out in a wistful tone. "When did you decide you didn't believe anymore?"
She briefly buried her face into the blanket, only revealing it again inch by guilty inch. " . . . Don't get mad. I kinda stopped last year. But you and Mom were so excited and I didn't wanna make you feel bad . . ."
Oh, geez. Michelangelo huffed out a laugh that was utterly self-deprecating. The whole ritual really had been for the grown-ups all along. Somehow he managed to pry his arm free from his blanket cocoon and curl it around her shoulders. "I'm not mad, kiddo. I'm just . . . an idiot. So what changed this year?"
"It's just . . . It's you and Mom who do all these things for me. I didn't wanna be thanking Santa anymore. I don't need him." Shadow beamed, her eyes aglow with adoration. "I got you!"
The knot in his chest fell apart. Michelangelo squeezed his niece closer and had to clear his throat before he could speak.
"I'm sorry we made you feel bad. We just wanted to make it fun for you, kiddo."
Shadow laid a hand on his arm and gave it a reassuring pat. "It was fun! But next year? Is gonna be even more fun. 'Cause now I can do Christmas with you, right?"
A glittery origami star dangled just a few feet away from his head. One of Shadow's new additions, though he had taught her how to make them. It seemed blindingly obvious, now that he looked at it.
She didn't want to be pampered at Christmas anymore. She wanted to participate.
The last dregs of the cold left Michelangelo on the wings of any remaining misgivings. April's words from fourteen hours earlier drifted back to him: Christmas doesn't stop just because the kids start to grow up.
"With you on Team Santa," he assured her, "everything will be ten times more awesome."
Shadow wrinkled her nose. "Only ten times?"
By the time April shouldered into the room with the present box hoisted against her hip, the pair of them were dozing amidst a swathe of blankets on the couch, looking almost angelic in the rainbow glow of Christmas lights. There was really nothing to do besides drop the box on the table, kick off her snow-soaked boots and sink heavily into the spare seat at Michelangelo's other side. She picked out the edge of the blankets, slipped inside and was absorbed immediately into the warm collective bundle of her family.
"Merry Christmas, April," Michelangelo murmured softly, without seeming to move.
"Mm." April smiled her way into sleep. "And to all a good night."