M [with flourish]
Oil paints were easiest to work with, fixing mistakes days or even weeks after he realized he'd done something wrong. Oils were forgiving. But more and more he found himself drifting to watercolors, so cruel in how they could drip and alter the work. The only medium he refused to work in was ink. When the pen touched the paper, that was it. Indelible. Unchangeable. You had better have a steady hand and a backup plan for hiding those stray marks.
A row of canvases lined the wall, stacked four or five deep. Most of them were commissions. He would mail them out within the week, all with the stylized M and flourish that was his signature. None of his clients knew what he was. All they saw was his website and his portfolio.
He kept a steady supply of junk food behind him, and multiple soda cans less for the sugar and more to avoid drinking the brush water yet more time.
Today's picture was for himself. The lair, the way he remembered it.
They hadn't lived there in years. Every detail wavered with time and memory and emotion so that the canvas washed in with green shadows and blurry streaks of light.
The eldest, as smoky as the candle before him. They heard him little and saw him less, and even back then he had found shadows more inviting than the light.
Michelangelo wondered, sometimes, if his brother would have stepped aside. Would have allowed someone else to step up. Not Raphael. There was too much animosity and anger there. But if Michelangelo had tried his hand at it, had voiced his opinions more confidently, had been just a little more serious. Years had turned their brother into a walking ghost. The empty space was still waiting for someone to fill it, to take charge and even command him back, if only that someone was confident enough.
He dipped the brush in water, wiping off the dregs. Added a darker, olive shade of green.
Had he ever been confident enough? Or patient enough to assist Donatello, painted behind distorting, rounded beakers and flasks. He could have helped instead of broken things for attention. Could have been at his brother's shoulder instead of forever at arm's reach. After all, when he put his mind to it, he managed last second saves with hasty instructions and the barest understanding of what he was doing. Imagine what he could have done. Could have done.
Everything about Raphael was ruddy. Red mask, red anger, red frustration. The punching bag took his punishment, but then so did the rest of them. Michelangelo had done his best to distract his brother, worrying at him like a crow pulling the tail feathers of an eagle, playing until Raphael was laughing again.
But Raphael trailed into the dark shadows, and his laughter came far less when Splinter passed, now just a gray impression in the corner of the canvas. One moment quick with life, one more moment gone. Like smoke blown out of his mouth. Like flame extinguished from his eyes. The flame lost from their master took the fire out of Raphael who no longer knew what to do with himself.
Wash the brush. A lighter shade of green, and flecks of orange. He held the brush to the canvas.
And paused.
The space he'd left for himself felt too small, cramped between his siblings. He felt he should paint himself with arms outstretched, in a playful back flip, a cartwheel or a somersault. Or stretched out on the floor, reading a comic book. Or.
Drawing? Writing? It felt so. His siblings had deep shadows around themselves, the internal conflict that came with heavy passions or desires.
What had he wanted?
What did he want?
His brush touched the canvas, and a long blur of green and orange dripped down in a muddy mess.
He lowered the brush back into the water. Cleaned all the paint from it. Shoved the canvas in a far corner of his workshop and began working on another commission.
The canvas collected dust that slowly filled in all the color.