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Usually, it wasn't too hard for Splinter to connect with his sons.
Leonardo had grown into the habit of joining Splinter for meditation almost every day, reported to him with the results of that evening's patrol every night, and often discussed matters with him of big choices concerning the team.
Raphael was occasionally up for a little extra training, and sometimes came to him for advice.
Donatello often poured out his heart to whoever was surrounding him- Timothy, Metalhead, sometimes even muttering to himself- and didn't seem to mind if Splinter listened and offered him wisdom. Donnie also shared his lab's work with his father, keeping him updated on his work and findings.
Michelangelo… was the exception.
It wasn't that they didn't get along, but outside of training, the two did not interact all that much. Splinter supposed this was due to a lack of common ground. Truth be told, there wasn't much to do that would entertain the both of them. Splinter liked to spend most of his time meditating or training, both things Michelangelo was content to spend only the minimum allotted time his father required of him. Mikey, on the other hand, liked to pass his days in fictional lands, be it video games or comics or TV or his own mind. Few of their interests overlapped.
Even when they had conversations over a meal or some tea, their speech would vividly contrast, Splinter's train of thought flowing like a brush painting smooth ink, Michelangelo's additions to the conversation wild and unpredictable, jumping from one thought to another and who even knows how he got from point A to B. Even when Splinter tried to paint the outline of the conversation in bold dark ink for Michelangelo to follow, his son would color way outside the line in scribbles of crayon a wrong color for the picture.
Raising Michelangelo was, in a way, harder than raising the rest of his sons. Each came with their own challenges.
Raph's temper was one of the first problems to arise, and Splinter had been patient in walking his second eldest son to a calmer mindset over the years. It was harder to deal with than Michelangelo's difficulties in some ways, and in some ways, it was easier. The easy part was that a hot temper, with the exception of a good reason to set it off, was universally treated as a bad thing.
Michelangelo spent too much time away from reality. He was content to attach sentimental value to too many physical objects: comics and food and action figures from the TV shows he watched. Splinter observed as his youngest son was sucked into fictional worlds and shed real tears over people who didn't exist, over scenarios that would never come to pass. He noticed when his son left a fantasy world and remained shaken by it for some time to come; when things that had never actually happened really disturbed him. Splinter wished his youngest would let go of these imaginary scenarios, let go of the meaningless objects cluttering his room and spend more time resolving his real-life issues. Michelangelo was too detached from the real world, and Splinter knew he was right about this.
The only problem was, he knew Michelangelo was right, too.
Splinter had stressed the importance of focusing on reality to his imaginative son more when he was younger. But as time went on, Mikey proved that his time off in other worlds had value.
Michelangelo always extended his hand to anyone he met, assuming the best of the stranger until evidenced that they might be hostile. Once, Splinter had asked him why he had chosen to shelter Leatherhead from the Kraang despite the alligator's impressive size and generally threatening appearance, and Michelangelo cited a ridiculous name of a fictional character in response, explaining that the character's story was partially about how everyone was scared of him for his size despite his good heart.
Splinter had shrugged the explanation off as a childish one until a few weeks later, when Michelangelo was rewatching the cartoon from which the said character came from and pointed him out to Splinter. Splinter had recognized the cartoon on the screen, not from watching it himself, but from remembering the effect it had had on his son after Michelangelo had watched it the first time.
His enthusiastic son had been strangely quiet, deeply pensive for a few hours after first finishing the cartoon, and at the time, Splinter had looked down upon Michelangelo for taking such a silly world so seriously.
But now he knew. It was because Michelangelo had been there for that character, had seen that character's point of view, and had felt for him. He'd learned lessons through the character's eyes through situations he'd never been in, and when he found Leatherhead, he hadn't wanted the poor gator to go through the same things.
When Michelangelo had gotten a deep cut on his arm a few days after and Splinter had stopped by his room to check on him and make sure the abrasion was healing well, he'd noticed the action figure of the character displayed proudly on his son's shelf, and he understood.
That figure was not just the blank-faced toy Splinter had once taken it to be, but a reminder of every lesson the cartoon's viewers had ever learned through its eyes; a collection of memories and emotions and things so much greater than the plastic itself poured into the small toy.
Splinter had looked around the cluttered room and saw the objects for what he realized Michelangelo must have seen them for all along: parts of the worlds his son had watched, brought into reality, reminders of lessons and hardships scattered across the floor and on the shelves.
He looked at a pizza box and recalled his sons telling him about the food after going to the surface for the first time. He briefly wondered if this memory was what his son associated the food with every time he ate it, if that was why he loved pizza so much. Perhaps it was not only a food to him, but a reminder of him entering the next chapter of his life.
A pizza box was a trivial item, but then, perhaps so was the little glass container Splinter had bought the baby turtles in, and he'd kept that all these years, on the shelf next to the picture of him and his old family. Those two items were the only objects Splinter had allowed himself to grow attached to, reminders of gateways from one chapter of his life to the next.
Looking around the room, he realized that may have been why Michelangelo seemed to insist on keeping so many seemingly insignificant things- he had been with those characters through their stories, and he wanted reminders of their chapters.
Splinter had only lived a few chapters through his own life and the short fables he'd allowed himself to read; Michelangelo had lived many through the cartoons and comics he let himself truly feel for. Under the bright colors and unrealistic sequences and dialogue that sometimes felt forced, maybe there was really some meaning to the worlds his son explored, after all.
Of course, that didn't mean Splinter could just let Michelangelo keep anything and everything. There was to be a limit to how much his son could keep; there was a line between sentimentality and materialism.
That could start, Splinter had thought as he looked around the room, with the pizza boxes and Chinese takeout cartons. He stopped to wonder if there was a story attached to takeout food, as well, before resolving to make Michelangelo clean his room of the boxes. He'd let his son keep one if he wanted to, but one was enough. No need to have several reminders of the same chapter.
Splinter would still make Michelangelo get rid of some of his things if his collection grew too bulky, would tell his son to quit TV or video games if he spent too much time on them, but after that day, he grew more lenient. Perhaps there was room for that stuff, as well.
The problem with raising Michelangelo was that he and Splinter were both right in their own respects, but they stood on opposite sides of a scale. He could tell Michelangelo to stop if his son wandered too far into the extreme of that scale, but he and his son were very different, and being on different sides meant that they didn't have much to do together.
Because of their differing interests, if his son sensed they had spent too much time apart, Michelangelo would be sure to come up and give him a big hug. Splinter would, on very rare occasion, set aside his differences and attempt to play one of the video games his son had collected with him, but this disinterest in the game combined with his lack of technological know-how would always result in a limited play time. Sometimes Michelangelo joined him for a bit of extra meditation, an effort which Splinter appreciated, even if his son ended up either drifting into his fantasy world or falling asleep after the first ten minutes.
So the two treasured the memories of the times that they could do something together that would entertain them both.
It had been a while since anything major had happened on patrol, and Splinter found himself satisfied with the meditation he'd gotten today, not having many anxieties to think over at the moment.
It had also been a while since he had spent time with Michelangelo, so he kept in mind to look out for anything his youngest son might enjoy as he went about his day.
He decided to refresh his memory on his mantras and dug through the scrolls he kept in a box in his room. Unable to find the specific one he wanted, he pushed several more aside in an attempt to dig for the bottom of the box, consequently making one tumble out and unravel itself on the floor.
Splinter reached down to pick it up, but stopped when he caught a glimpse of the scroll's contents.
The Japanese characters on the scroll told a short story, a fable Splinter had heard several times in his childhood, a short lesson his father had taught him through the means of a tale.
It occurred to him that Michelangelo probably had not heard the tale before; he couldn't recall telling his sons this specific fable, and Michelangelo was not fluent in Japanese, so his son would not have read it.
Michelangelo likes stories, Splinter thought to himself.
He abandoned the search for his mantra and picked the scroll off the ground before going to find his youngest son.
He found Mikey on the couch, stuffing pizza into his mouth and pouring over a comic, one he'd already read quite a few times.
"Michelangelo," Splinter called, and Mikey looked up.
Splinter gestured for his youngest to follow him to the dojo.
Splinter sat in front of the dojo tree and gestured for Michelangelo to do the same across from him.
Mikey gave him a questioning look and did so, sitting on his legs with his hands on his knees, proper dojo etiquette.
"I would like to read you a fable," Splinter said.
Michelangelo's eyes went wide at the word 'fable'. A story with a lesson, Splinter had taught his sons. "Did I do something wrong, Sensei?"
Splinter raised a brow, then realized. Calling his son to the dojo then asking to read him a lesson. "No, my son. I only wished to read a story to you."
Michelangelo dropped his formal posture at this, lying chest-down on the carpet and propping his head in his hands with a murmur of "Aww, yee, storytime!"
Splinter decided against asking when "aww yee" had become a common phrase and unraveled the scroll.
It was a short and pleasant story about a painter realizing the value of internal beauty, short enough it seemed to keep Michelangelo's attention for the entire time, although Splinter mused that must have partially been due to the youngest's love of fiction. He did notice, however, that his son became a little fidgety after a while of having nothing to do but listen.
He wondered if Michelangelo's mind had connected parts of the story to other things, events or worlds he didn't know of. Perhaps the leap in thought from one subject to another was perfectly logical to his son because of a connection in his mind Splinter did not know of, and that was why his additions to conversations seemed so out of the blue. To Splinter, his train of thought may have looked like the scribbled crayon against the smooth train of ink that was the story that guided him down that trail, but to Michelangelo, the crayon belonged there. For him, it was there all the time.
That gave Splinter an idea. "Wait here," he told his son, and left for his room, returning a few minutes later with an armful of items: a radio, a cassette tape, some loose papers, and various art supplies.
He placed the radio on the dojo's shelf and popped the tape in, and soon, an unfamiliar voice filled the room.
Splinter placed the papers and supplies between himself and Michelangelo as the narrator read the title and author of the next fable. He gestured for his son to help himself, and they both dug through the supplies before settling on mediums to work with and got to drawing.
Splinter chose a paintbrush and dipped it in a bowl of water he'd laid down before swirling it in a tray of dark watercolor and listening to the story.
The second fable told a tale of a father trying hard to raise his son, and learning, in turn, that his son had things to teach him, as well.
Michelangelo hummed as he drew on his own paper, the sound soft enough to indicate he was still trying to listen to the story. Out of the corner of his eye, Splinter could see his son smiling and swinging his feet idly in the air as he worked.
Splinter brushed the black watercolor onto his paper in smooth strokes, steady and even, the lines growing thicker and thinner just as he wanted them to, practiced like the Japanese characters he'd brushed onto papers so many times. He lost himself in the calm strokes, in the rivers of ink he painted onto his paper, in each time he placed his brush on the paper and each controlled flick with which he ended the line.
Before he knew it, the paper was filled in the design he'd chosen- a simple, beautiful bamboo print, one he'd seen so many times in his childhood home. He had no reminder of the place from when it still existed, no object to remind him of that chapter long gone, but nostalgia still swept over him as he looked at the print, as if the painting had been a piece of his old home he'd taken with him all along.
Michelangelo set down the crayon he'd been using and pulled his paper off the ground, making numerous more of various colors roll off his page. He turned his paper around and proudly showed Splinter the image.
The paper was covered in wild scribbles of color, gaps of white paper interrupting the uneven streaks of wax. There, in the middle of the paper, stood poorly-drawn versions of the turtles and Splinter, all holding stick figure hands and smiling out at the viewer. The figures were disproportionate, the colors overlapped where they weren't supposed to, and some of the colors were just plain off.
Yet, Splinter nodded and said, "It's beautiful," and meant it from the depths of his heart.
Michelangelo grinned from behind his drawing, and Splinter found himself comparing his son's smile to the one he had drawn on himself on the paper.
For all the inconsistencies his son had drawn, each of their smiles were accurate, from Donnie's gap-toothed grin to Raph's subtler smirk to Leo's dorky smile to Splinter's own soft, warm one.
That was the detail he got right because it was what he really watched for, Splinter realized.
He noticed Mikey peering at his painting.
"Whooooah," he said. "Pretty."
Splinter sensed his son was being genuine, and mused that his painting must really have been something else for his son to admire a colorless picture. Still, the one Michelangelo had made held more beauty to him.
"Do you mind if I keep this?" Splinter said, gesturing to the said picture.
"Sure," Michelangelo said, looking a bit flattered, and handed him the crayon drawing.
Splinter dismissed his son with a hug, and Michelangelo left the dojo with a brightness about him.
Splinter caught himself looking at the papers for a bit too long. It was foolish to attach sentimental value to such frivolous objects. They would not last forever.
Yet, perhaps it was not the objects themselves that held the value, but the memories attached, which lasted much longer. After all, Splinter did not have many memories shared with only his youngest son. He didn't have anything to remind him of his own past memories, either.
Maybe, for today, he would let himself take a leaf from Michelangelo's book.
He set the two pictures on either side of the shelf, one straightforward and controlled, the other bright and scattered. There was room for both of them.