Title Devotion
Characters Mikey,Splinter but characters are really irrelevant
Summary The love of sons...
Author's Note This was yet another vocabulary 'drabble' (as I use that term loosely in this 500+ word fic). This time I used more than one word. Grammar isn't important, but characterization and vocabulary is. Please feel free to point out any misuse of words. Thanks.
Undo one side, roll Sensei over, and undo the other, than carefully work them out from under his father. More rolling his Sensei around to replace the old with the new, as the old rat could barely move on his own. Michelangelo handled them with all the reverence they deserved; held out away from his body, bundled up in a ball of fabric. He stepped out of the stinking room, and took a breath of the—only slightly—cleaner sewer air that pervaded the lair. A nod at Leo, as his brother headed into the room to sit with Master Splinter, even though the black eyes no longer recognized them, and he couldn't even talk half the time; reduced to the chitterings and squeaks of his kin. The imago of their invulnerable father shattered by the reality of his dementia. None of them really liked to think about—much less talk about—the way their Sensei was deteriorating in both mind and body. How their once strong and capable father couldn't even manage the simplest of everyday functions without one of them assisting. They hated to see it when the mutant who had taken them in for no real, apparent reason, became racked with convulsions; jactations that would send his frail body to the ground, and would leave him gasping and spent, his weak heart fluttering in his chest. They hated how he appeared to have sunk into himself, leaving his fur quaggy, despite the sinew they knew lay beneath.
It was obscene; a burlesque parody of a proud personage that had opened his home and heart to four baby turtles that would probably have made better snacks than sons. (And, oh how that sent a shiver down Michelangelo's shell)
Yet they couldn't bear the thought of ending his obvious misery themselves.
So, Donatello wandered the internet, trying to find ways to ease their father's suffering. Raphael spent his time away from the lair, so he wouldn't have to smell the encroaching death, oftentimes bringing home the medicine that Donatello sought. Michelangelo tended to Sensei's physical comfort, feeding him, changing his bedsheet, or the cloth wrapped around his waist. Leonardo sat with him; in meditation, or reading in silence, or even aloud.
Because there were times when the thin fingers would grasp their hand, and the watery black eyes would focus on them, and he would wheeze one of their names. When he would thank them, and say how proud he was to have such good sons. And though the pain must be terrible, he never asked for them to end it.
Now their world revolved around him, as his must have around them at one time. Though they would leave, feeling the desperate need to have see the sky, or friends, or to play endless video games, always they would return, and never would they leave all at once. He had set them on the path of life, and it seemed only fitting that they would be there as he wended his way toward death.
Michelangelo immediately set about washing the soiled sheets and cloth. They would be needed before everyone went to bed.
