His sons are dead.
He will join them if he doesn't run.
Splinter knows this. He knows it deep in his veins, knows it from years of teaching his sons the difference of when to fight and when to flee. It is perhaps the clearest moment of thought he has had since this mess begun.
Splinter grasps his walking stick in his hands and looks at Saki. Really looks at him. The man (though he is hardly a man now) is mounted on his horse merely yards away. The garnish red of his helmet accents is the color of rust. His armor seems to give off steam in the blackness. His steed, far too large to be any normal horse, is far too still, not even twitching to breath. Both of their red eyes, glowing like fading embers, are easy to see despite the night air.
If Michelangelo was awake, Splinter thinks, his youngest son would compare the man to a poorly dressed Lord of the Rings villain.
No. If Michelangelo was alive he would say that. Splinter's sons are not sleeping. They are dead. This too is fact. If he makes it out of this fight, he will never again wake up to find Leonardo practicing in the lair, katanas raised and ready. He will never smell Donatello brewing coffee late in the evenings when it is far too late to be drinking such a beverage. He will never hear Raphael attempt to stifle a laugh to spare his own feelings. He will never see Michelangelo stare at him with an expression so open, it makes his heart ache.
It is not one Splinter wants to accept.
He should run. Splinter knows this. If he fights the Shredder, or what is left of him, he will die as well. He will join his son's corpses on the battlefield to be trampled during the demons victory march. The man is too powerful. There is no sanity in staying.
But if he leaves, he will leave his son's bodies to the Shredder's claws, to his horse's hooves, to the cold grass that has not moved in the slightest since the Shredder showed. His son's will be trophies. Signs of the man's victory. Shells on a wall.
Splinter cannot let that stand.
He raises his stick, trying to ignore his shaking legs. He will die here, that is certain but maybe, if he is lucky, very lucky, perhaps the Shredder may die too. After what he did to his sons, he deserves it.
It's not nobel. It's not honorable. It is petty and brutal and everything he raised his sons not to be. But Splinter doesn't care.
His sons are dead.
The Shredder charges. Splinter springs. And behind him, ever so softly, four once corpses take a breath.