Agnes stood on her broom, using a feather duster to clear the cobwebs in the corners of the lair's ceiling and hang fresh, shimmery ones. Her cheerful humming only slightly brought Leonardo out of his meditation, but when she overbalanced with a slight "Oh!" the turtle was on his feet to catch her when she fell.

"Agnes!" he gasped in relief, setting her back on her feet. "What on earth were you doing?!"

"Well, dusting, of course! Doesn't look like these ceilings have been dusted in ages!"

"That was dangerous!" he tried to rationalize with her. "You probably shouldn't be standing on something so narrow so far up!"

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, Leonardo! I was in no danger."

"You fell!"

The witch tsked condescendingly. "Do you really think I would work without a net? Watch…" She threw herself backward, falling at normal speed for a moment, then drifting to the floor like a feather, leaving Leo blinking as she splayed her bandy legs out in an awkward sitting position. "Oh!" she realized. "I'm sorry to have disturbed your nap."

The blue-banded turtle shook his head with a slight chuckle. "It wasn't a nap, I was meditating."

"Just sitting and thinking, then."

The witch received a wry look from him. "It's a little more involved than that…"

"Oh, yes. 'Involved' sitting and thinking. Of course."

"It helps me to concentrate on things, to really understand them."

"And what has your intense thinking been about, then?" The crone's tone softened. "Your father?"

Leo sighed and nodded. "Memories of him, figuring out what he would have wanted for our family, trying to work out what I need to take from that into my own leadership." He looked downward and away from her.

"Learning to get along without him," Agnes put in, and the turtle nodded, shutting his eyes to hold back forming tears. "And has it been working?" the witch asked, shaking her head as though she already knew the answer. "No, that black aura of yours hasn't budged."

The turtle looked at her with an unvoiced question on his lips, but the old woman just nodded knowingly. "Let me show you something." She turned toward her still-floating broom. "Fetch," she told it, and it zoomed out the dojo door, returning a moment later with Agnes's large bag looped over its handle.

"Oh," Leo commented, somewhat confused. "That's a handy trick."

The crone rolled her eyes. "That wasn't it… Now, come," she motioned to him as she folded her own legs more comfortably beneath her. "Sit, sit…"

Leonardo did as told, taking the place beside her that she patted. Agnes reached deep into her bag, pulling out a thick tallow candle. Guiding it with her wand, she floated it to one of the already lit candles in the exercise room, then brought it back to rest in front of them. Agnes then guided a clear glass vase, with a narrow neck and rounded bowl for the bottom, from the bag as well, upending it over the flame, where it floated levelly midair. "Visual aids," she explained. "Look."

Leo watched the yellow candle produce a thick, pungent smoke, which wafted up the bottle neck and pooled in the sphere.

"You just keep it all in, don't you? Your grief, so you can be a good leader for your brothers. These," she tapped her wand on the glass twice, indicating the smoke, "are the bad feelings. If you let them go…" She righted the vase, letting the vapor escape. "…they dissipate. But if you let them gather and build…" she said, turning the beaker back over to catch the smoke once more. It churned and swirled, darkening as more filtered in from the burning fat, tarry splotches beginning to clot against the bowl.

Leo's eyes never left the smoke as Agnes brought out three more thinner candles, lighting them off of the first, and moving her wand in a circular motion to widen the mouth of the bottle to catch the added smoke.

"You worry about your brothers, and try to alleviate some of their grief as well, by adding it to your own, comforting them, so they don't have to bear the burden themselves."

With the addition, the roiling mass became so dark and greasy, it looked to Leo like a nearly solid mass, the top of the vase fully obscured by a mass of tar that had collected there. Like the exact opposite of a light bulb, that when turned on, would cast beams of darkness across a room.

"But you've just held on to it all… haven't let go of it. Maybe haven't wanted to let go."

He looked up, directly into her eyes. "That's it… That's it exactly." He looked back to the smoky orb. "What if…" he started, "What if I can't?"

"Well, what do you think?" Agnes removed the extra candles and moved the vase down over the initial flame. It guttered and shrank, smothered in the darkness, until it extinguished. "Grief, or anger, hate, jealousy, doubt… if you hang on to them for too long, they'll eventually snuff out your light." She poked him with the wand as she directed the bottle and candle back into her bag. "Don't you allow that to happen, young man!" She then grasped him by the shoulders, giving him a light shake. "It's time to let it go."

With a look that was mournful and unsure, he said, "I… don't know if I can."

"Of course you can. You just need to let go a little bit at a time."

"How?"

"Oh, there's a very specific kind of magic we use for that sort of thing. It's called… talking."

This caused Leo to let out a little chuckle. "You want me to talk about my grief? Are you sure you're a witch, because you're sounding more and more like a psychoanalyst."

Agnes waved a hand at him. "Pish. I'm a listening ear, and you know, one way to drive off those dark feelings is remembering the good ones." She gave him a big rot-toothed grin. "Tell me, what was your father like?"

Leo thought for a moment about where to start. "He was firm, but always kind, gentle and caring. He loved discipline, but also laughter and togetherness. He raised us to be a family, even though we weren't normal, or even like him. Strong. And clever… though I suppose part of that was necessity being the mother of invention. He was resourceful because he had to be, raising four sons off the scraps of the world above that was a danger to us." Leonardo paused, remembering. "There was a time when we were all still very small… I got very ill, and Sensei didn't want to leave me on my own in case something happened. But he still had three other rambunctious little turtles to raise. So he fashioned a sling out of an old t-shirt, so he could hang me in a sort of hammock around his neck, keeping me close and safe—and warm… we're exothermic—against him, and he could still attend to my brothers."

"I remember that," a soft voice came from the dojo's entrance, and Donatello came to sit beside them. "It's probably one reason you were so close with him."

"It probably is," Leo agreed, welcoming his brother.

"When one of us was sick or injured, Master Splinter wouldn't sleep. He might go meditate for a couple of hours to renew his strength, but otherwise, he would stay right by our sides until the crisis had passed."

"I… didn't realize that."

"'cause it was mostly you, Fearless! That was Sensei for ya, though. Always there to be our strength when we were tapped out or strugglin'." Raphael came to join them, sitting himself next to Leo, draping an arm across his brother's neck and leaving it there as a gesture of comfort and protection. "And boy, could he kick your ass if you were outta line, but he never did it without a reason. He wouldn't always tell us what is was, left it for us ta figure out on our own. Part a' his wisdom was leadin'us toward the answer and lettin' us go. Not too shabby for startin' out as a pet rat!"

Leo nudged him. "Some of us needed more directing than others."

"As I recall, you're no exception, Leo," Don chastised. "We all had some hard lessons to learn from him at some point."

"What was your hard lesson from him, Donnie?" Raph asked.

"To have confidence in my abilities, even though others may be better or faster physically. Also, to have whatever it was that I took apart back in one piece before Master Splinter got home," he added with a slight blush as the others all laughed.

Raph nodded. "On the other side a' the coin, Splinter had ta deal with a student with a Teflon brain…."

"I heard that!" Michelangelo called, feigning offense, as he entered the room, bearing a tray laden with glasses of milk and a plate piled with fresh sugar cookies.

"What took ya so long, knucklehead? I'dda thought you'dda been the first one in here!"

Mikey lifted the tray, indicating it. "Snacks! I figure if we're gonna be here a while clearing Leo's aura, comfort food is in order!" He offered the tray to Leo, who took the plate and offered the first cookie to Agnes as he helped himself to some milk.

"Thank you, Michelangelo. That's very thoughtful of you!" the witch said with sincerity, and Mikey sat beside her, looking pleased with himself.

Once everyone had a glass, Leo raised his. "To Master Splinter, a loving father, a kind soul, a fountain of wisdom. May we forever honor his memory."

"To Master Splinter!" the rest echoed and clinked glasses.

Mikey, with his mouth full of cookie, started in again. "You guys remember the first time Sensei sent us scavenging on our own, and all this really neat stuff just happened to appear right in our path? Like Donnie's first radio, and my first skateboard… And then it turned out that Splinter found all of that stuff himself, and ran ahead of us to plant it for us to find!"

Leo laughed, even though tears streamed down his cheeks. It was a sound they hadn't heard in a long while. "It backfired on him spectacularly. We thought we were the ultimate scavengers!"

"So the next time Splinter left," Don explained to Agnes with a big smile, "we snuck out, to impress Sensei with our great finds when he got back."

Raph guffawed. "We couldn't find our own feet! And we got so lost, Master Splinter had ta come find us and bring us home!"

Their reminiscing indeed went on well into the evening, and Meemaw Agnes noted to herself approvingly how much lighter all of her turtles' auras had become.