Disclaimer: I don't own the TMNT

A/N: Alright. As a warning, this is my first attempt at an angst story. Really angsty. Repeat: IT WILL BE GORY/BLOODY! It will be more than one chapter long, but probably no more than five chapters tops so it'll be short. It is also my first attempt at a Splinter POV. Please let me know if I'm doing this right or if I need to improve on it! I love it when I can fine tone a POV writing style to match the character exactly. I've been commended on my Raph, Don, and Leo POV along with OC so I hope that I can do this next hairy challenge! Plus I mostly depend on the DVD's for my TMNT viewing pleasure so they are still in the first Lair, I don't know what their next one looks like.

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Chapter 1

Coming Home

Sometimes I wonder about all the things that we are blessed with in this life. And the people who choose not to accept these blessings or to take them for what they really are. I see families torn apart on the streets because they cannot realize that they are their greatest asset and gift. It is the gift of each other. Of family. I sometimes pity the people who feel that way, who simply cannot see what is in front of them. But I must be on my way to see my own four blessings and gifts. I am separated from the outside world because of what I am, and as much as I would like to help those poor people, there are some things that they must learn and realize for themselves. Learn their own lessons.

I am thinking these thoughts once again as I travel through the sewers. I often allow my mind to wander at such moments. I am still alert and oriented to my surroundings, but there are times when I need to be by myself. Alone time, I believe that it is called.

Naturally I love my sons dearly, in fact however harsh they may think of me sometimes I truly adore them. They are my life. It is just that sometimes, on one of the many occasions when their energy level exceeds my own, I begin to feel a bit stressed. I have lived with them for the fifteen years of thier lives, and it seems like every day each of them carry double my own energy level and at night sometimes it is all I can do but to fall into bed. I cannot say that it has been easy raising four sons on your own with no previous training of my own. A few times I had truly wished that I could've gotten that training ahead of time so that I wouldn't have made so many mistakes, but things ended out fine in the end.

After all my sons are all I have. As I said before they are my life.

I spy out of the corner of my eye a blanket that someone left behind. I pick it up for inspection. We already have better ones for sleeping with, and the fabric is rather harsh. Perhaps I could use it to give their fighting dummy a new skin. The stuffing is coming out in too many places with it's current skin as it is. Satisfied I roll it into a manageable bundle and place it in my bag along with my other finds. Having Ms. Oneil and Mr. Jones in our lives may have made it easier to get better quality goods, but I feel that the need to search for items will never be quite vanquished.

A smile creeps upon my lips as I approach the door to our lair. Alone time is all good and well, but I truly feel the need to get back with my sons. Besides, my favorite soap opera is going to come on within the hour. And my arthritis is acting up a bit as well.

The moment I touch the door a terrible feeling overwhelms me with such suddenness that it is all I can do not to fall to my knees. My heart is pounding and my muscles grow weak. My breath comes in short, quick gasps and my throat tightens in a panic. All my fur raises on end and bristles. My ears flick nervously and my nose trembles in the still air. I thwap my tail against the pavement and reach for the door once more. My hand is trembling. What is going on?

That smell, I recognize that smell. No, smells. There are many of them. Too many. I cannot sort through them all, and they are masked by the ever present smell of the sewer waters. One or two seem to stab at my nose more than any of the others. Something tells me that I should know these...

Finally the door opens. The air hits me like nothing I've ever experienced before. Choking slightly, I drop everything that I'm carrying and take a shaky step forward. The air is putrid. Vile. It is thick with the acrid, coppery stench of death. Of blood. Something hits my hand and in a daze I look at it. It is a tear. I touch my face. I did not realize that I was crying. But why?

The air is thick. Alert even in this moment, I know for certain that there is no one in the lair. No one.

Then it hits me, tearing through my dazed shock like a wild animal. MY SONS!

Frantically I rush forward, stumbling and grasping at the air. "MY SONS! WHERE ARE YOU!" My heart tightened and convulsed in panic as I screamed for them. I'm still gagging at the stench hanging in the air like a heavy blanket. Blood. Death. No...

I see the first figure immediately. A still form lies in the corner. Near the couch. I freeze for a split second then rush over to him, practically tripping over my feet doing so. I fall at the side of his body, next to the orange bandana tails. My dearest Michelangelo. With a trembling hand, I gently grasp his shoulder and turn him around. I stiffle a gag at the site. Instead I choke, and I feel fresh tears spill down my cheeks. They drip on his face. His beautiful, loving face. He's smiling. A small smile. It still plays his lips. His eyes are still open, staring sightlessly into nothing. There's a remote control clasped in his hand, a finger poised over the button. The knot in my throat gets bigger, choking me.

With a trembling hand I slowly stroked his cheek, stopping short of the gaping wound on his neck, opening his throat up from ear to ear. Pulling a small blanket from the couch I gently placed it over his body, hiding the tremendous puddle of blood on the floor, hiding where they sliced his throat, so that all I can see is his smiling face. With loving caress I close his eyes. They open back up slightly, as though he's looking at me slyly, ready to play another joke.

I knew what had happened. They had gotten him first, as he watched television, before he even had a chance to defend himself. What kind of dishonorable fiend had done this! I look shakily around the area. The televisions are still on. Some cartoon plays on their flat, cold screens. The screens are spattered with Michelangelo's blood, the joyful characters smile and make people laugh through the haze of red surrounding them. It is like a sick joke.

The blood on the wall is in an arc, pumped from arteries before he finally landed on the floor and bled to death. Such a way to die...My eyes are blurry with tears as I slowly lean forward and kiss his cheek, brushing his skin with my sensitive whiskers. This is no right. He should not feel so cold, such a warm, vibrant, joyful person feeling so cold...

I spy the footprints and immediately search for the source. The battle plays out in my mind. They sneak up and dishonorably kill my Michelangelo without a fight, I see their footprints smearing the floor with his blood behind the couch. But they were disturbed. Perhaps Michelangelo managed to make a noise, warn them somehow. There is a faint edge of footprints on the end of the blood splatter. Two toes. One of my sons.

Looking at Michelangelo forlornly, I give him a final kiss before shakily getting up to follow the trail. It leads straight into the lab. Donatello.

As if they knew what I was thinking, I see a green foot on the corner. Hurriedly I rush forward. My heart skips as I see him. He seems sprawled so...carelessly. One hand still resting on the counter, he laid in the narrow aisle way, his head propped up on the wall behind him. His eyes were wide with shock and his mouth was slightly agape. A neat little hole was set in the middle of his forehead. Blood and brain matter were smeared on the wall behind him. I stood there, frozen for a moment before I finally managed to scramble forward and touch my son. I tripped over his legs and his bostaff before finally reaching his face. I cupped his cheeks with both hands and rubbed my cheek against his forehead, sobbing silently.

It seems so ironic, that someone so precise could be thrown so carelessly to the floor. That someone so intelligent would be shot in the head. I did not even wish to see the hole in the back of his skull. I could feel his head squish into the wall as it was. With the same sort of gentle caress I closed his eyes as I did Michelangelo's. They stayed shut.

His bostaff was laid across his chest. It was then that I felt another presence, not now but before. Perhaps he was not thrown carelessly. I peered at the bostaff, wiping my eyes with a bloodstained paw. The last few inches of the end of the weapon were red with blood. I could smell from where I was sitting that it was not Donatello's blood. It was not the smell of anyone that I knew. The cabinets on the far corner were broken, black fabric clung to the jagged egdes. I realized what happened.

An odd sort of gratuity fluttered in my heart that I knew that he did not go down alone. Obviously they had since carried the body off but Donatello had gotten one of them nonetheless despite their having superior weapons. I embraced my son. Not for what he did or how he did it but for who he was, who he never would get a chance to be again.

As much as I was loathe to leave him as I did my Michelangelo, I knew that I must to see what had become of my other sons, though I had a horrible, shaking feeling that there fates were no better.

I saw the blood before I completely stepped out of the lab. I could smell some of Raphael's and Leonardo's but the vast majority of it was of nameless, unknown enemies. This was not just told in scents. I could see blood splatter, and pools of blood formed in the figure of bodies before they were carried away by the surviving attackers. A pride in my sons rose bitterly.

I saw Raphael first. Lying facedown by the pool. Blood was still trickling into it, staining the waters. I slowly crept up to him. He was lying in a pool of his own, of his own blood. I touched his shoulder as I had already done before to his brother. It was already getting cold, but he still had some remnants of warmth in him. He had died more recently. I swallowed hard as yet another lump formed in my throat. Slowly but firmly, I turned him over as well. I couldn't help but flinch and gag at the sight of him. A shudder went through my body. My son, taken out so...violently! Surley they could have stopped at one point! Yet despite the ravages of his body his face wore an unnerving peaceful expression. His eyes were closed calmly and his mouth was relaxed. It was almost as if he was just sleeping. He went with peace. He went with honor.

He was shot and stabbed repeatedly throughout his chest, legs, and arms. Most of the wounds were on his plastron, so that it didn't even look like a plastron any more. I wondered if he had any more of the substance left to hold everything in. I could see his insides. Slowly I turned my head away from the scene below his shoulder and concentrated on his face. His sweet face. With a trembling paw I slowly stroked his forehead, his cheeks, pinched his chin, and kissed his nose. He hated that. Always did. The thought brought a fresh onslaught of tears to wrack my system. I had to take a deep breath and use a moment to recover myself before smiling at his relaxed figure once more.

Well, relaxed might not be the best word to describe it. Both sai were still clenched tightly in his fists. One was imbedded so deeply into the floor that it didn't move and his arm turned with it. Slowly I surveyed the scene as I had done before and saw what was perhaps the reason for the decimation on his body. He just wouldn't die.

He was first wounded over in the far corner. I can see the blood spatter, I know it's his. He was wounded more severely about two meters from there and fell the first time. Judging from the footprints he managed to get up and attack once more, where he was once again subject to a lethal wound. This was about fifteen feet from where he lay now. He dragged himself. I could see the slow, steady streaks of blood quite clearly. He had dragged himself with his sai before either bleeding out or being wounded once more. He had died fighting.

I hugged his face with my paws, pressing my forehead to his. My shoulders were shaking. My dear son. My dear, dear warrior son. You always had wished to go out fighting, at least you were granted this one final request.

Slowly, almost mechanically I got up and continued forward on the search. My tail dragged on the floor carelessly and my shoulders drooped. I looked at my hands. They had the blood from three sons staining them. I still had one more son to find.

I do not know how I could have missed it. He was so close. Only across the main room.

There was Leonardo, my last son, lying on his back, propped up against a pillar. I rushed over to him, eager to touch his skin once more. I felt his foot first, one of them was stretched out. It was still slightly warm. For a moment expectation thrilled deep in my heart as I took in the scene in the last two steps to reach his face. It wasn't as grisly as his brothers. He was wounded, and he was sitting in blood, but it did not look like as much and his wounds did not appear to be lethal. His head lolled to one side and his eyes were closed peacefully. He appeared to be unconscious. The markings on the pillar above him pointed to him being thrown against it. Perhaps he was still alive!

Hastily I grabbed his shoulders and brought him forward to me. I was shocked as I did so. His body came with me but his head didn't. It slid apart from his body in a sickening slurping sound. The moment that his neck cleared it dropped to the ground and rolled several feet from us.

I was so startled that I let go of his shoulders and he slumped back against the pillar, minus his head. A katana slid out of his lifeless hand and onto the floor. I sat back for a moment, aghast at what had just happened. I repeatedly stared from his head to his body and back again. The head was lying next to his other katana, red with his own blood. He was decapitated by his own sword.

It was too much.

With a strangled cry I staggered back and tripped before running again. I ran straight into the corner where there was no blood, there was no death, I was alone. I screamed. Clenching my fists so hard that my claws dug into my palms I screamed. I screamed and pounded my head with my fists. I screamed and kicked, tail flying everywhere. I screamed and punched my eyes with my fists until I saw stars. I screamed and bit my lip until it bled. Finally I just screamed to scream before the scream was turned into a mournful wail as the shock wore off and the realization of what just happened sank in.

My sons had been murdered. I was alone. My life had been murdered. My boys. My beautiful baby boys.

Squeazing my eyes shut I shuddered a loud sob as I spilled my tears onto the floor. Slumping in the corner alone I cried, sobbing so hard that the tears completely soaked through my fur. I couldn't believe it. My baby boys. My beautiful baby boys. Sorrow so deep touched my soul, touched my heart, I couldn't stand the pain. The fury. The disbelief.

My baby boys, my babies. I could hear their giggling, I could hear their fights and finally them crying because one had 'accidently' pushed the other. I could feel their tiny, sticky hands tugging at my fur, asking for more cake on their birthdays. Thier squeals of joy as they first tore open their simple gifts. Their wonder at watching me practice martial arts and finally asking to join in. My wonder as they learned ninjitsu like they had been born to it, and they were. Michelangelo laughing at a new toy or getting one of his brothers angry. Donatello as he explored another world entirely in the world of science and technology. Raphael as he threw his little tantrums and his pouting as he got punished for them. Leonardo concentrating so hard to get his ninjitsu moves just right as the rest of my sons were playing games.

I could see them all before me as I had always seen them, plain as day. As my babies. My beautiful little baby boys.

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A/N: Alright, I know that I had set up an ad for a beta reader but once I finished this story I just couldn't help but cast it online. The cast is still open for beta reader, I'll just save it for future chapers.

Soooooooo...how'd you like it? I wanted to try to get some tearful responses and typed my heart out. Please let forward any ideas that you may have. How'd I do on Splinter, BTW? Let me know if you're thinking M rating, but this is about as gory as it will get. There will be some chapters with the same amount of blood and stuff but none more than this.

Toodles!