So spring semester is starting to kick everyone in the pants now - the holidays are over :( I'm taking two writing classes and three literature classes so I'm most definitely going to be up to my eyeballs in reading and writing assignments. To give you a fair warning: updates will be sparse. *sigh* But I will do my best to post new chapters when I can.
Yep...That's all I really have as far as housekeeping goes. Umm...Splinter is a very contemplative person. Enjoy a little walk through his train of thought :)
He tightened his grip on the head of his staff as he stood patiently—for the most part tuning out the voices and the drips and shifts of movement around him.
It had been a solid hour since his two sons had departed the safety of the lair and he would be the first to admit to himself that he was more than worried. He knew he ought not to be, that stress was an easy catalyst for disfiguring his composure. And he needed to remain composed, or else become the over-bearing, over-protective, over-stressing parent his sons hated. He'd seen it in Donatello's eyes just before they'd left. The I-can-walk-on-my-own-two-feet look when Splinter had suggested that Leonardo go too. But even to send Donatello away to fix a simple technical problem had taken an intense amount of faith on the old rat's part. How could he not have ordered his eldest son to accompany him?
It wasn't necessarily that he believed Donatello specifically incapable of going out to excavate the problem and coming right back, for he knew the young teenager was more than capable. He would've assigned a tag-along to accompany anyone that had to leave the lair, that was simply how he worked and his sons knew that. The thought of any of them wandering around alone outside of their home gave him itches of anxiety that crawled through his fur like fleas, especially taking into account their uncanny talent of running into trouble wherever they went. Sometimes he wondered if his life since over a year ago might've turned out a little less nerve-racking had he never allowed his boys to traverse to the surface in the first place.
So maybe he was over-protective, but did he not have every right to be? He'd been keeping a close eye on both Donatello and Leonardo since the dire effects of their last mission weeks ago. And while Leonardo seemed right on his feet again, Donatello still showed signs of a slow recovery. He was getting better, definitely. He didn't seem nearly as fatigued as he had a week ago, though that mostly depended on how much he exerted himself and pushed the boundaries of sleep, though Splinter wasn't at all ashamed of interfering with this. And the young terrapin hadn't vomited for at least a few days, which was good Splinter supposed. But he knew it would take a long time for Donatello's body to effectively heal from an illness like that, and to send him into infested waters and disease-covered walls so willing, just made the great rat cringe.
And it wasn't just that. Any number of enemies or mutants or regular sewer excavators could crop up in those tunnels at any moment and he was sure his intelligent son could not make the run back home just yet. Maybe he should have been the one to accompany him.
He thought, very frequently, about why it was so hard to watch his boys leave the lair time and again without him. He knew they were getting older. He knew they were starving for a kind of freedom they would never know. And he knew the more he kept them from what little freedom they could find only made them squirm and whine and feel even more alienated. But even as much as they'd grown over the years, they were still just children, and in his eyes he was sure they probably always would be—not for the lack of maturity they might occasionally display or that he thought himself superior to them at all, but because he simply wanted them to remain those wide-eyed and innocent little turtles he'd found himself with on the day of their mutation. Innocent, healthy, and alive. And it sickened him to know that there was a fair number of adversaries crawling around the surface just over their heads that had every intention of ridding the world of his sons well before it could rightly be called their time. He didn't understand how they could be so black-hearted - grown men who had, on numerous occasions, given their best to the attempt of murdering four children, his four children.
The world was such a twisted place, and it only seemed to grow more warped and grotesque as the days went by. He felt bad for the little ones that had to grow up in it these days. But it also scared him, as a grown man—or rat, he supposed. And maybe that was really why he let his sons go on without him into that world. Maybe he was just too afraid to face it. But how cowardly and hypocritical of him to teach his sons of bravery and sacrifice and yet not to uphold these qualities himself?
He closed his eyes and bowed his head. He'd lost so much in his life. To lose anything ever again—anyone ever again … He wasn't sure how well he could convince himself to accept it.
He took in a long breath and opened his eyes again, glancing over at the four teenagers currently in his presence.
He allowed himself a small smile as he observed Michelangelo and April for a moment. They were turned toward each other, sitting on the step above the pit. April's legs were crossed and Mikey had one foot dangling over the bench and the other tucked under his thigh. It seemed they were playing a hand game of sorts—or at least they were trying to. They kept stopping to giggle because Michelangelo's hands were so much bigger than April's and he couldn't perform the motions as swiftly or as gracefully as she could.
Soothed by this image, Splinter shifted his gaze toward Raphael and Casey Jones who were lounging on the bench on the opposite side of the pit. Casey was speaking about something with much animation, waving his hands around and his phone with it, creating circles of light that never stayed still. He seemed content, even despite the fact that Raphael was paying him no mind whatsoever.
Splinter studied his second-eldest, taking in his posture—his arms spread out like wings across the step, one leg stretched in front of him, head leaning all the way back. And the rat noted, with curiosity, the haze of a drifting mind in Raphael's eyes as he stared unblinkingly at the ceiling.
He knew the past few weeks—or he should say the past couple of months—had been particularly difficult on Raphael and it pained him to keep his distance, but his temperamental son had a very specific way of expressing himself that the sensei knew better than to challenge. While he always made it perfectly clear that his sons were free to share their opinions and feelings of all varieties with him, he knew this was the most difficult for Raphael to do. And he didn't necessarily take it personally. It was simply not in Raphael's list of natural habits to verbally express his feelings in general. While the young turtle did not do well to conceal his emotions—especially the more negative ones—he was only willing to share his thoughts if they accented his strengths, never his weaknesses. And Splinter knew that to attempt to coax his son into sharing things he did not wish to admit—and to his father of all people—would only cause his son to draw further inward and turn him away from freely expressing himself to anyone.
So he had to watch from the sidelines and simply hope that Raphael would humble up enough to come to him one day, if he pleased. He would never force it, but of course he was not without his subtle indirect attempts sometimes.
There was something between Leonardo and Raphael that he had never truly understood, though he spent most of their lives observing them and trying to figure it out. He knew if he was going to get through to Raphael at all, it would have to be through Leonardo, which was why he had unashamedly given his eldest son the task of uncovering his brother's secrets weeks ago … Only now he wondered if that had been the right decision. It seemed Leonardo had learned something that put an odd kink in his and his brother's relationship - not that it hadn't been strained before. Now it was just simply a different kind of strain—a very complex one that had them constantly seeking out one another only to turn away and act like they didn't recognize the other's presence. Very peculiar indeed, especially since it reminded him of …
His ear twitched at the sound of voices and his quiet pondering was immediately stifled.
"Would you forget about that, please? We've kind of got a limited time frame right now."
"Well, I'm going to need to see what I'm doing, Leo."
Splinter and the teenagers with him all ceased their previous activities and peered through the darkness of the lair toward the entrance where the sounds of Donatello and Leonardo shuffling past the turnstiles signaled their return.
"Did you find the problem?" April asked as Donnie came through first, the light of her phone illuminating his slightly flushed skin. His eyes shifted and he didn't stop his half-walk, half-trot toward his lab.
"Uh … You could say that."
It was then that Leonardo shifted into the light, carrying a limp body.
Splinter tensed, eyes flashing, and everyone else jumped up from where they'd been sitting.
"Is that Karai!" Mikey said. April gasped with her fingers to her lips.
Splinter's fur shuddered; he wasn't sure what with. An interesting mixture of emotions began to turn in his stomach as he gazed upon what indeed was his daughter cradled against his eldest son's chest. He found himself unable to breathe for a moment and ignored the way that the fur rose on the back of his neck like it only did when an ominous sensation took over him.
He had to put it to the side though, all of it. And at the moment it was quite easy to do this.
"Long story that we don't really have time for right now," Leo said, hastening after Donnie for the lab.
The rest of them followed hurriedly behind them, crowding around the lab table where Leonardo carefully laid Karai.
Splinter gazed down at her—his daughter—in bewilderment. And he was sure he wasn't the only one, but at the moment, he lost his normally careful practice of being fully aware of every breathing entity in the room. For a moment, he hardly recognized any other presence.
How could this be? he was wondering as his eyes roamed the perfectly porcelain face of his teenage daughter who looked so intensely like her mother that it frightened him. But she wasn't supposed to have this appearance. The last time he'd seen her she was a serpentine mutant the size of a python, glossy and white with silvery purple plates. The last time he'd seen her she'd nearly squeezed the life out of him, but all he could do then too was stare—stare and mourn and yet hope with just as much intensity that his daughter wasn't completely lost, that she was still there somehow. He hadn't known how correct he'd been in hoping so—at least not until her eyes had softened upon him calling her name, the one he'd given her, and she'd loosened her grip on him and slithered off within the next blink of an eye, not to be seen by his eyes again until now, months later, in a seemingly human form. Though, something was definitely off about this state of her, something that made that fur on the back of his neck ripple with tingles of warning.
He narrowed his eyes and leaned closer, his nose twitching at her scent. And he could've sworn her nose did the same too, right before her luminous green eyes popped open and glared at him.
