A/N: Moving into Leo's section. Two down, two to go.
Special note: As becomes obvious pretty quickly in this story, I've put the turtles in a different order age-wise than what I see all over this site. I don't know that there's an official order; either way, I've chosen a different one. For this story, Raphael is the eldest turtle, Leonardo is second, Michelangelo is third and Donatello is fourth. There are explanations for this in the text; and no, I won't change it on request. Sorry.
Warnings: None. It's a fluffy family story, all the way through.
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Michelangelo laughed and ran and Raphael ran after him, and as the door to Raphael's room slammed shut behind them Splinter guessed that Leonardo and Donatello would not be the only children having a sleepover this night. Then he stopped in the hallway and turned back to smile at Leonardo's door—smiling at the dedication and longing for perfection that characterized his second son, the dedication and longing that would make Leonardo a strong warrior and a natural leader when a few more years had taken him by the hand.
.x.
And it had taken a few years, Splinter remembered, before Leonardo's natural dislike of failure began to shine in useful colors, instead of acting as the shackles that sometimes constrained his training. Not that his second son had ever truly come to peace with failure. But these days Leonardo's difficulties in accepting his shortcomings meant a serious, calm demeanor, sincere dedication to his training and a tendency, more recently, to drag his brothers into additional training with him. Splinter was not sure, when he thought on it, where his other children might have ended up without Leonardo constantly pushing them to work and improve.
As he was doing now, from the sound of things in the next room over.
"Aw, come on—give a guy a break, Leo. I just moved like five hundred pounds of stuff. That's gotta earn me at least a five-minute breather."
"Five hundred pounds of DVDs, Mikey, which you weren't supposed to be messing with in the first place. What happened to focusing on the essentials?"
"Hey, work is work, right? And like every skilled worker in America, I've got the right to take my breaks. You don't like it, you can talk to my union rep."
Leonardo gave a heavy sigh, a sigh Splinter recognized well as the sound of someone dealing with Michelangelo's particular brand of eccentricity. Then his second son walked away from his troublesome younger brother, his footsteps almost as resigned as his last instructions.
"Well, don't break too long, all right? We still have a lot to do."
"You got it, boss!" Michelangelo sang out, his voice accompanied by the squeak of couch springs as Splinter's next to youngest settled back into relaxation. "Fifteen minutes tops. On my honor."
"What honor?" Raphael asked the invisible room, his voice rumbling low against the walls.
Leonardo sighed again. "Let Mikey alone, Raph. Help me move this table."
"Sure, I'll let Mikey alone," Raphael grumbled, his words strained with exertion or perhaps the clash of exasperation and amusement Splinter guessed had creased his forehead. "As soon as I crack his skull for sticking us with all the work."
"Aw, don't feel bad, Raph," Michelangelo called. "I'm the brains and you're the brawn, remember? You just keep doing your thing, Muscles, and I'll do mine."
"I thought I was the brains," Donatello cut in, his tone only half indignant.
"We'll see what kinda brains you are, once I get through with you," Raphael threw back to Michelangelo.
"All right, guys. Let's stay focused. We don't have all night."
Leonardo's last admonishment simmered the exchange down to a series of gravel mumbles and brought a smile to Splinter's face, a smile that stayed with him as he turned from the interaction invisible to all but his ears and gazed across the pictures in his arms once more. That control, and the calm demeanor that came with it, were legacies of Leonardo's childhood, although time had smoothed their ragged edges, as it smoothed all things.
It didn't show—or perhaps it did, after all—in the tight, faltering lines of his drawings, in the shrubs that were hardly green and the superheroes with ghostly faces, but Leonardo had always been the most determined of Splinter's children to understand the world and his place in it, and to act in accordance with that place. It was that determination, Splinter thought, that had made Leonardo into the leader he was—and that, in his childhood, had made him such a fast and thorough learner. That had led to his second son being the first among his brothers to do so many things.
.x.
"It is time for lunch, my sons. Are you hungry?"
From where they sat all in a row on the floor of the living room, one cheerfully colored pacifier slipped into each mouth, four sets of little eyes blinked back at him, responding no more than if he had not spoken at all. The young turtles looked at their father and then at each other, and then Michelangelo seemed to lose all interest in sitting up and toppled over onto his back, his pacifier shooting from his mouth like a missile at the impact of his shell hitting the rug. Michelangelo blinked at the escaping article and then put his newly open mouth to good use, setting off on the string of nonsense syllables of which he never seemed to grow tired.
"Ba ba ba ra ra ra la la la da da da…"
Splinter sighed, leaning over Michelangelo to retrieve the orange-rimmed pacifier and putting it back into his next to youngest's mouth before the meaningless outpouring could earn any more than a glare from Raphael, seated to his right. Then he shook his head, stepping back out of the plastic pipe and netting playpen he had constructed himself, smiling as best he could at the four pairs of eyes still watching him with apparently no comprehension at all.
"Wait here quietly, children. I will return when I have prepared your chairs. Is that all right with everyone?"
Michelangelo slurped his pacifier, Raphael narrowed his eyes, Donatello shifted in his seat and Leonardo tilted his head to one side, at least assuming the appearance of comprehension. Splinter held himself back from another sigh. All of the parenting guides he had been able to get his hands on—which was not a great amount, honestly, and of course only addressed the development of human children—claimed that his sons were reaching the age at which children began to understand what was said to them.
Occasionally Splinter felt that he might be getting through to one or two of the young turtles—by and large, however, he might as well have been expecting comprehension from a quartet of brick walls.
"I will return in a moment," he finished, backing toward the kitchen.
Donatello lifted a hand to wave. Michelangelo did the same from his position on his back, but his aim was off or the next to youngest turtle was developing a mischievous streak rather early, because his hand smacked squarely into the back of Raphael's head on the way up, which earned Michelangelo a return blow to his knee. Splinter considered going back to separate them. But since the single blow seemed to be the worst Raphael had in mind, in the end he left them to it, all too aware that the sooner he got his hungry, troublesome children into their high chairs, the better things would be.
Of course, 'high chairs,' like almost everything in the lair, was a relative term.
Splinter entered the kitchen and went immediately toward the far wall, away from the few appliances he had salvaged from the dump and around the low-set table toward a set of four mismatched structures. One of them truly was a high chair—Splinter had been lucky enough to find one on an early junkyard visit, back when all four of his sons could fit, and would consent to fit, into a camping backpack.
It was not a particularly beautiful chair, and when he'd found it one leg had been broken far shorter than the others—but it had been easy enough to bring the others down to the same height, and as it still had the tray that was made to fit its bars Splinter considered it a spectacular find. Very useful, too, for his eldest child, because the tray stopped Raphael from squirming out of his seat before the rest of the family finished their meal—a godsend with his most temperamental son.
His most temperamental son, who had recently decided that anything put into his mouth needed to be spit across the room and stopped being trustworthy with his banana mush. So Splinter slid the real high chair up next to his own chair, where he could prevent—or, at the least, interrupt—Raphael's bouts of battle with his food.
Donatello was not a squirmer. He was a whiner, though, and Splinter had learned early that it was more heartache than it was worth to try to force Donatello into something he considered uncomfortable. Which was why Donatello's high chair, such as it was, consisted of a baby's car seat that Splinter attached to a chair the same size as his to bring it up to height. It had a chest buckle as well as a lap buckle, which kept Donatello securely in his place—an important precaution recently, since Splinter had been seating Donatello across the table from himself.
It was a change Donatello was not fond of at all. The youngest of the turtles didn't much care for feeding himself, especially when he had always been so favored before. But with the situation as it was, there was nowhere else to put him, and the table was not so wide that Splinter could not reach across it and slip a spoonful of mush into Donatello's mouth, if that was absolutely required.
Michelangelo's chair was a work of art.
Michelangelo had presented his father, when the need for high chairs came around, with a unique dilemma. Michelangelo took after his eldest brother in terms of his table manners: he squirmed and tried to free himself from his chair if he wasn't interested in eating, and if he was he still squirmed, though in that case usually toward the table rather than away from it.
At first Splinter had tried Michelangelo in the actual high chair—but unlike Raphael, Michelangelo was slight enough in his build to slip out under the tray if he set his mind to it, and had even wormed his way out the space beneath the arm rest once, when Splinter's hands had been blocking his normal escape route. Michelangelo needed absolute containment. Which was the basis for Splinter's ultimate solution: a newspaper crate wired to a short stool, with holes cut in the crate wide enough for Michelangelo's legs to fit through but not a centimeter farther.
Michelangelo had yet to escape from this chair—especially after Splinter threaded a rope through the back, which he could tie around his son's stomach like a seatbelt whenever the young turtle seemed particularly energetic. All the same, Splinter was not sure whether to be annoyed or impressed that the failure was not for lack of trying.
These days, Michelangelo sat next to Donatello on the opposite side of the table, which did not make him very happy either—not because he wanted to be next to his father, but because he wanted to be next to Raphael, whom he seemed to enjoy annoying all the more when his elder brother was trying to eat. Splinter was honestly glad to his bones that current circumstances did not allow his two most disruptive children to sit together at present, even if it did mean Michelangelo feeding rather vigorously off of Donatello's tray.
And then there was Leonardo's chair.
Splinter was sad to admit he seemed to have run out of ingenuity before he got to Leonardo's high chair; he was only lucky that Leonardo did not require much. Leonardo could not really be said to exhibit table manners—what very young child could?—but he did not squirm and he did not try to leave the table before his brothers, nor did he usually throw his food around the table or steal from his brothers' plates. He did have trouble getting food into his mouth sometimes, which tended to result in a very messy face for his second son—but of all the trouble Splinter confronted at the dinner table, mess was by far the easiest to deal with.
So Splinter had ended up just setting Leonardo in a chair like his own, with a few phone books to lift him higher, and letting him use the edge of the table as a plate. For safety he wrapped a belt around Leonardo's stomach and then through the back of the chair; but even this small gesture had yet to prove necessary, for which Splinter was thankful, as he wasn't at all sure the belt would have been enough.
With a small sigh, Splinter placed Leonardo's chair beside his own. Leonardo's place had not always been at his elbow. But Leonardo had been the first among his brothers to truly embark on the quest of eating solid food—so much so that he tired of banana mush and wanted to eat off of Splinter's plate, or at least to be given the same things. This made it easier, for the moment, to keep Leonardo at his side during meals. At least, it made feeding Leonardo easier. Splinter was fairly sure it had ratcheted the difficulty of mealtime in total up a few notches.
All the same.
With chairs, bottles, bananas and a mash of sweet potatoes in place, Splinter set his own plate—peas, carrots and a large dinner roll. Then he turned back to retrieve his charges from the living room, preparing his heart for the chaos soon to follow.
The turtles had stayed relatively out of trouble in his absence. Donatello was sitting right where he had been left, holding onto a stuffed bear that was missing both ears. Leonardo had stayed put, too, although he was missing his pacifier. It hadn't gone far; it was just in Michelangelo's mouth, alongside his orange one, so that Michelangelo was sucking on the rubber of one pacifier but the plastic of the other and creating a wheezing sound with every intake of breath. Which might have been, but was not necessarily, the reason that Raphael had taken his own pacifier in his hand and was beating Michelangelo in the head with it, a show of violence that his brother did not seem to notice.
Relatively out of trouble.
"Come, my sons. Let us get this over with," Splinter said, bending down to pull Donatello and Raphael into his arms. He felt, as he did so, not a little like the man in the riddle he had once read who was trying to transport two hens and a fox across a river in a boat made for two. Some children would not behave if left behind, others would fight, others it was simply a bad idea to leave together, even harnessed into their high chairs… the old rat did what he could.
Raphael pulled his whiskers as he was sealed into his seat with the tray, and Donatello's face fell, a sheen of tears collecting in his eyes as his father walked away and left him in the kitchen. But Splinter was quick at retrieving his children by now, and his youngest had not gotten through more than his pout before he reappeared with Leonardo and Michelangelo in his arms. When those two were settled as well into their chairs, Splinter doled out mush in equal measures to all of his sons—then he settled down in his chair to watch them, too wise by far to expect much time to eat his own meal.
Raphael took one look at his food and smeared his fingers in it, then reached out toward Donatello, intent on sliming his youngest brother with the banana residue. Splinter caught his hand with a wet rag long before he got there, and with a quick swipe of a rubber spoon he had a glob of the mush in Raphael's mouth, much to the consternation of his eldest.
"Let Donatello alone, Raphael. Eat your own meal," Splinter said, though he did not expect much compliance. Raphael frowned and spit banana back onto his tray. Splinter swallowed back a sigh. But he didn't have time for more than that, because Michelangelo was pushing his bottle against the rim of his tray with great gusto, determined to knock the whole thing to the floor.
"No, Michelangelo. This is food. It is not a toy," Splinter tried, steadying the bottle just at its tipping point and pushing it back into Michelangelo's little hands. Michelangelo grinned up at him and shrieked. Splinter shook his head at the obvious demonstration of how little his next to youngest understood of what was said to him; then he was forced to leave Michelangelo to his own devices, because a plaintive whine had begun on the opposite side of the table, a sound he knew well as the warning bell for a tantrum.
"What is the matter, Donatello?" Splinter asked the youngest turtle, earning nothing but a heavy-eyed glare and a wavering lip in response. Not that he needed a response. With another glance at Michelangelo, who was chewing now on the side of his bottle instead of the nub, Splinter armed himself with another rubber spoon and began to feed Donatello as well, interspersing bites of sweet potato with the struggle to get another bite of anything into Raphael's mouth.
In the midst of confusion that required more of his ninja skills than he would have liked to admit, Splinter glanced over at Leonardo to check on his second son's progress. Leonardo alone among his children seemed interested in his food—or rather, in his father's food, as he did his best to pick handfuls of peas off of the old rat's plate. Splinter didn't have a moment to wipe the dribble of banana off of Leonardo's chin, but he did have a moment to smile, as he stuck one spoon in Donatello's mouth and used his temporarily empty hand to push Michelangelo down in his seat.
The ability to eat solid food, as well as the dexterity to do so, were developmental and didn't have so much to do with the mannerisms of a child, he suspected. But Splinter guessed that Leonardo's determination to eat what he himself was eating had a great deal to do with emulation—and that was a thought that made him smile, because there was a show of will in it that Leonardo was the first of his children to display. The will to grow up.
Splinter had survived only a few more minutes of the chaos of mealtime—with no chance yet to touch his own food—when catastrophe took its familiar place at his table. Raphael had just performed the rather irritating feat of spitting his baby spoon onto the floor when Splinter looked up from his crouch to see that Leonardo, having exhausted his father's supply of peas, had taken a carrot in his small fist. The carrots were small, but not small enough—just large enough to choke on, Splinter thought to himself as he straightened, catching his feet on the legs of Raphael's chair as he tried to hurry around the table. A choking Leonardo was the last thing in the world he needed at the moment…
But either Leonardo did not like the look of the carrot or his young mind had already decided it was too dangerous to try, because the little turtle didn't put it in his mouth—much to Splinter's amazement, Leonardo sent the carrot rolling away across the table and turned to look back at him, his eyes asking for another source of food. Splinter relaxed a little from his rush. Then he smiled again and brushed a hand across the top of Leonardo's head, taking a moment to look down at his second son even though Donatello had started up his whine again.
"Would you like more peas, my son?" he asked, already dipping another spoonful onto his plate. Leonardo smiled back at him. Splinter didn't know whether the smile was for the peas or because he had understood his father's question; either way, he decided to take it as an encouraging sign.
He had relaxed too soon.
"Kh… khk…"
With a slight stutter and a stalling inhale, Michelangelo began to rock back in his chair, his head wobbling with the rest of him as his mouth gaped open and closed. Splinter's eyes shot to his next to youngest and then to the tabletop, where Leonardo's rejected carrot had been—but it was gone, and Michelangelo's face was losing its brilliant green, his eyes growing wider with every mired breath. Splinter raced around the table to beat a graying hand against Michelangelo's back.
"Spit that out, Michelangelo. You should not eat that. Spit that out, my son, spit that—"
Michelangelo spit it out. The great force of his cough hurled the carrot across the table and into Donatello's eye, the perfectly aimed missile earning a shriek and then a descent into tears from Splinter's already unhappy child. Splinter waited half a moment to make sure that Michelangelo's breathing had returned to normal; then he stuck the orange pacifier back into his mouth and hurried to comfort Donatello, who would stop wailing for nothing until he had been unbuckled from his car seat and lifted into Splinter's arms.
"Come now, Donatello. Come now. Let us be calm," Splinter urged, pausing in his pats against the little turtle's back to toss the carrot away into the bucket that served as his sink. Donatello kept crying, burying his face in the cloth of his father's robe. Splinter sighed.
"Ba da ba," Michelangelo sang out, his pacifier once more expelled from his mouth. Leonardo continued calmly eating the peas off of Splinter's plate, as though all the commotion were none of his business. And Raphael, whose face was a mask of spite and temper, had gotten Splinter's dinner roll into his mouth, wedged between vice-like little jaws—and although he could not swallow or even chew it, the look in his eldest's beady eyes told Splinter he would not be getting his dinner roll back, no matter how badly he wanted it.
Splinter took another glance around the table and decided to let him have it. He seemed to have lost the better part of his appetite in any case.
.x.
"So the second billy goat Gruff came up to the…"
"Ba'ridge?" Donatello asked, looking up at Splinter from his place in the old rat's lap. The youngest turtle was sitting between his father and the book in his hands, and he was pointing to the last word on the page, his forehead wrinkled just a little with the effort of reading it. "Is it b'ridge?"
Splinter gave a half-smile, patting Donatello's arm. "Very good, my son. That is bridge." Then he glanced at the little turtle sitting beside his elbow, tilting his head toward the book. "You see, Leonardo? Bridge."
Leonardo looked at his father in silence for a long minute, as though gauging the importance of this lesson. Then he leaned into Donatello to get a better look at the book, but pulled back after barely glancing at it, because Donatello didn't like being leaned on and had begun to wiggle.
"Bridge," Leonardo repeated dutifully—but to Splinter, even his young face looked skeptical, as though he realized how little educational value this exercise truly had.
Splinter held his sigh. He knew as well as Leonardo that one did not teach a child to read over the shoulder of his brother—but he had no energy to devote to that problem this afternoon. Not after the morning that had preceded it.
Splinter's day had begun like this:
Breakfast was always an exciting time in the lair. This morning it had gone past exciting and into troublesome, and at the hands of an unlikely set of culprits: Leonardo and Donatello. Splinter usually considered the two his least difficult children, especially when they were put together, but he had barely left the two of them beside a stack of picture books while he returned to the kitchen to supervise Michelangelo and Raphael's washing of the dishes before Donatello came running to him in tears, dispensing not so much as a word of explanation before he threw himself into his master's robe.
"Donatello. What is the matter?" Splinter had asked, lifting his confused eyes to Leonardo where his elder child stood in the doorway, both hands on his hips.
"Leo's being mean!" Donatello answered through his wail. "He said they killed the wolf!"
"He said who killed the wolf?" Splinter had tried to soothe Donatello with his gentle hand, but the effort was to no avail. The youngest of the turtles just kept crying, refusing to even look up at his baffled father.
"Red Hood and Grandma," Donatello answered, losing part of the young girl's name as he often did when speaking of book characters. "Leo said they killed the wolf, and not chased it away."
Splinter looked up at his second son. "Leonardo?"
Leonardo frowned. "But they do, Sensei. The hunter does."
"Why do you say that?" Splinter asked.
"'Cause he's a hunter," Leonardo explained, his frown growing sharper by the moment. "Hunters do that, Sensei."
Splinter found it difficult to reply to that statement, all the more difficult when Donatello, always his most peaceful child, looked up at him with great, tear-filled eyes and demanded to know that Leonardo was lying.
Splinter had not been able to give either of his children the answer they wanted. Instead he had chosen a different option altogether: He had set Leonardo and Raphael down in front of a movie and taken Donatello back into the kitchen with him, setting aside the dishes in hopes that working a puzzle with a notably disinterested Michelangelo would help Donatello calm down.
But either Leonardo was in a particularly troublesome mood that day or Splinter had not been careful enough with his choice of movie. In either case, Splinter's day had continued like this:
Barely fifteen minutes had passed before raised voices called Splinter into the living room, not a little annoyed that another fight had been started so soon after the first.
"What is the matter, my sons?" he had asked, on seeing Leonardo and Raphael engaged in pushing each other toward the edge of the couch.
"Leo said it's gotta happen this way. But that's not true! He'd never lose that way," Raphael told him, his voice loud but completely unintelligible in his father's tired ears.
"But he did lose that way," Leonardo cut in, crossing his arms over his chest. Raphael pushed him again, almost sending Leonardo toppling off the couch.
"No way!"
"Raphael," Splinter admonished, moving forward to catch Leonardo's shoulders before the little turtle spilled off onto the floor. "It is not all right to push your brother this way. And please slow down in your explanation. I do not understand."
"In the movie," Raphael growled, waving one dismissive hand at the screen. "The Mace guy. He's good at fighting. He's not gonna lose really fast. He's not losing at all!"
Splinter glanced over at the television, where Ewoks: The Battle for Endor continued to play unheeded. He was not familiar enough with the movie to know exactly what Raphael was referring to, but he could see a similar thread cropping up in this argument as it had in the last—a thread that had sent a spread of wrinkles across Leonardo's forehead.
"But he did lose," Leonardo insisted, looking up at Splinter with self-righteous eyes. "He lost so fast. That's how it happened, Sensei. Raph can't say it's not."
Raphael tried to jump at his brother again, and Leonardo made to jump back, and through the throb of his headache it was all Splinter could do to lead them back into the next room, where Donatello was completing the puzzle alone. After a moment's thought Splinter pushed Leonardo into the adjacent toy room, where Michelangelo had sneaked off to and was splayed out on the carpet with the plastic animal toys, before returning to find an activity for the excessively upset Donatello and steaming mad Raphael to engage in together.
At least Leonardo and Michelangelo wouldn't fight, he had thought. It was the best he could hope for, in the end…
"Read more," Donatello insisted, dragging Splinter's attention back to the present and the two turtles sitting with him on the couch. Donatello's expression had dipped into a frown at his long, remembering silence, and the little turtle patted the page before them with a chubby hand, disrupting his father's reverie. "What happens next, Sensei?" Donatello asked, though they had read this book more times than Splinter could count and he must certainly know the story by now.
Splinter shook his head. "Yes, yes, my son," he soothed, sparing a glance at disinterested Leonardo before he continued reading. "So the second billy goat Gruff came up to the bridge, and his hoofs went trip trap trip trap as he walked across…"
But the story was so familiar that even as he read Splinter's mind began to wander, inevitably shifting back to the morning that had led him to this couch with two children at his side and two children running amok somewhere in the liar. A morning in which all of his children seemed determined to be difficult…
Splinter's morning had ended like this:
It couldn't have been more than five minutes after Splinter managed to cheer Donatello up and calm Raphael down—through the momentous task of convincing Raphael to play Donatello in a game of Go Fish— when all of a sudden the sounds of a squabble in the next room caught his attention, heralded by the raised voices of his two absent children.
An actual fight between Leonardo and Michelangelo was so rare that, in spite of fussy Donatello and sullen Raphael, Splinter had gone next door to check on his middle children, and found them engaged in a tug-of-war of sorts, Leonardo trying to drag his brother back toward a field of fallen plastic ducks. Leonardo had never in his young life been interested in toys, particularly not a specific toy, and Michelangelo did not usually resist playing with his brothers, especially when there were toys involved—and between the two of them, Splinter could hardly find the words to ask what the trouble was.
"I was play'ng, Sensei!" Michelangelo had said, yanking on the arm Leonardo had grabbed. "I was play'ng wi'the duck an' th'little ducks an' Leo stopped me, he doesn' wanna play but he says I hav'ta play wi'them different, an' I don' wanna play wi'them anymore but he won't let go—"
"Leonardo? Why are you bothering your brother?" Splinter asked, interpreting from Michelangelo's long complaint at least that Leonardo had started this. Leonardo looked up at his father's perplexed and displeased face, and then he let go of Michelangelo, maintaining his sharp frown.
"He was playing wrong," Leonardo said, gesturing to the ducks behind him. "You read us the story all the time, Sensei, but he was playing it wrong. I want to show him how the story goes."
Splinter had a frown of his own now, though one of confusion more than reprimand. "What story, my son?" he asked, as Michelangelo came to stand beside him.
"The Ugly Duckling," Leonardo answered, shrugging as though the answer should have been obvious. "He was playing with the ducks, but he didn't have an ugly one. And then I gave him an ugly one, but he didn't want to send it away. I just want him to play the right way, Sensei," the young turtle finished, pointing now to the small stack of picture books Donatello had left on the floor. "The way you tell the story."
This was the trouble with Leonardo. He was not usually a troublesome child—but when he was, Splinter rarely knew how to explain things to him. With a sigh for the headache that was flaring up again, Splinter put a hand on Leonardo's shoulder, searching for words.
"The Ugly Duckling is not the only story that involves ducks, my son," he said at last. Leonardo blinked at him.
"It's the only one we ever heard," he returned, and Splinter lamented again their limited supply of picture books. But he pressed on nonetheless, keeping his voice steady.
"Be that as it may, there are many stories about ducks. And anyone who wants to play with the ducks may also make up their own story. Michelangelo may play with the ducks any way he likes," Splinter said. "Do you understand, Leonardo? There is no right or wrong way to play with the ducks."
Leonardo had studied him carefully, watching him with that same searching gaze that always made Splinter feel his next to oldest was imprinting everything his father did or said onto his soul—the gaze that made said father so nervous about what he was teaching his son. But the moment had been broken before Leonardo could respond, because Michelangelo had made himself busy gathering up the ducks and then returned to dump them at Leonardo's feet, annoying his brother not a little with the plastic invasion.
"Leo can have all the ducks," Michelangelo had announced, returning to Splinter's side. "He can have all th'ducks 'cas I don' wanna play with'm anymore, an' I don' wanna play wi'Leo anymore either, 'cas his games're really boring."
And that had been the end of his short-lived peace—the only peace he had gotten all morning.
It was after that disaster that Splinter had tried to settle his children down for story time, and for half a minute it had almost seemed to be working. But then Michelangelo had teased Raphael about being the troll under the billy goats' bridge, and Raphael—who Splinter knew had always fancied for himself the role of the biggest billy goat—had chased after him in a young rage, leaving the other three members of their family stranded on the couch.
And since Donatello had begun to whine again as soon as his father made to go after them, Splinter had decided to give up on controlling his two wild children, and to content himself with entertaining the two who had stayed by his side.
Which brought him to the moment. Donatello, who was still fussy; Leonardo, who was still sulking; and no sign of the other two, except for the vague impression of noise coming from one of the other rooms.
"At last the third billy goat Gruff, who was much bigger than his brothers, came up to the bridge, and his hoofs went trip trap trip trap as he walked across," Splinter continued, turning the page. "The troll jumped onto the bridge and said, 'Who is that trip trapping over my bridge?' 'It is I—the third billy goat Gruff'…"
"Sensei?" It was Leonardo who spoke, and his voice was accompanied by a slight tug on his master's sleeve. Splinter glanced down at the little turtle, who had a pensive look on his face. Leonardo picked at the threads of the couch. "Are there other billy goat stories, too?"
Splinter rubbed his chin. "I believe there are," he said, though he couldn't think of any off-hand. Leonardo nodded to himself, turning away from the book again.
"Good."
It was an odd comment for his next to oldest—odder, considering the fight he and Michelangelo had gotten into earlier that day. Odd enough that Splinter had to ask. "Why is that good, my son?"
"Because these billy goats did a bad thing," Leonardo said, only confusing Splinter more with every word. "Maybe in another story they didn't."
"What bad thing is that, Leonardo? Do you mean when the third billy goat knocked the troll from the bridge?" the old rat asked, drawing a nod from peaceful Donatello.
"I don't like that part either," his youngest agreed, burrowing deeper into his father's lap. "They should have been friends with the troll."
"No, that's not the bad thing," Leonardo told him, folding his arms in a manner that Splinter recognized as his own lecturing pose. "The troll tried to eat them—it's okay that he got pushed off. I meant the little and middle goats. They put their brother in danger so the troll wouldn't eat them." Leonardo turned his eyes back to Splinter, waiting for confirmation. "That was a bad thing to do. Right, Sensei?"
Splinter wondered, not for the first time, how he had managed to raise a child with such determination to tell right from wrong, when half of the time he felt that his other three only understood the word 'want'. But Leonardo was waiting for an answer, so he chose not to dwell on it now, instead reaching down to pat his next to eldest's back.
"Well, Leonardo… do you think the third billy goat Gruff wants to protect his brothers?"
"Yes," Leonardo said, without a note of hesitation. Splinter raised an eyebrow.
"Why do you think so?"
"Because he's their older brother," the little turtle answered. "And that's what older brothers do."
Had Splinter taught him that, or had he decided it himself? Either way, it made Splinter smile, a smile he kept as he turned back to the book. "In that case, it is not such a bad thing for the billy goats to let their older brother fight the troll. Is it, my son?"
Leonardo looked away to consider that, and his serious face deepened Splinter's smile, distracting him for a moment from the long day it had been and the turtle still squirming in his lap. It was times like these when Splinter realized that his second son was the first of his brothers—and might be the only one for a long time—to truly engage in critical thinking, examining the world and his perceptions of it and trying to find the truth within them.
It was an inclination not everyone had, and an inclination Splinter was more than a little proud of; so proud that he managed to keep his temper when Raphael and Michelangelo burst into the room a moment later and clambered over the couch, kicking their master in the shoulder and upsetting Donatello with their raucous voices.
"The troll's after me!" Michelangelo shouted, beating his brother over the armrest and scrambling to hide behind Leonardo. "Save me, Leo!" he wailed through his grin. "Save me from the big bad troll. Just like the third goat in the story!"
"I'll show you who's a troll," Raphael yelled, knocking the book out of Splinter's hands as he barreled after Michelangelo.
"My book!" Donatello cried.
"No need, Raph. You already did!" Michelangelo yelled back through his unstoppable laughter.
And although he was once again ringed with chaos and commotion, Splinter held on to a sliver of his smile. For all the noise and disorder that came with raising four tireless little turtles, there were moments like this when he was so glad that he did: moments when he could see past the present, past the fight in his lap and the tussle at his feet, to the souls of the adults his sons were going to be. That was a sight that always brought a smile to his face.
End Chapter 10