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Christmas had been a very happy affair with the four turtles and their two close human friends. It had been their second Christmas without their sensei and father but unlike last year, the four brothers were able to enjoy their day, remembering all the Christmases that they had shared with their father and all the memories that they held of him.
April and Casey were also part of the reason that the turtles had a better Christmas. The first Christmas after Master Splinter died they mourned him, his death too fresh for them to enjoy the winter holiday and April and Casey had also mourned, fluttering in and out of the lair but never spending too much time there.
They made a promise to each other and the turtles that they would not spend another Christmas like that and that they would make it a very happy time and this year they had fulfilled their promises and it had been the happiest day since Master Splinter had passed away.
When New Year came around, the six were sitting around the tv watching whatever was on and discussing new year's resolutions and what they hoped that the new year would bring them.
Leo, who had been avoiding a certain someone, promised to talk to her and work things out between them. He also promised to go easier on his brothers in their practice sessions, admitting it was hard to take over their father’s position but he was going to try as hard as he could without projecting onto his brothers.
Raph, like every year, promised to try and work towards controlling his anger. He did improve every year ever so slightly, so he did keep his promise, but he had a long way to go. To go along with his promise to work towards his anger, he promised to pick less fights, both with his brothers and when he was out topside, he knew he got them into some sticky problems before and didn’t want to continue on that way.
Donnie promised to be more understanding of other people's feelings and try to reign in his excitement for certain things so he wasn’t distracted all the time, he’d said that whilst looking at April which had actually caused her to blush and avoid eye contact with the tall turtle. He always promised to spend less time in his lab and more time with his family.
Mikey had promised to be more focused, especially whilst sparring and during practice to help his oldest brother not be so stressed about taking over the role of Sensei. He also promised to pull his weight around the lair, clean up after himself and pick up extra chores to help his brothers out and stop being so lazy. Everyone had protested that he wasn’t lazy but he said he still needed to step up.
April had promised to be more open with her emotions, so she was able to control her abilities and let people help her so she didn’t lose control. She also promised to be around for the four turtles more, apologising for the time she had spent away from their underground home due to all the sadness she felt when she visited. The brothers were understanding and promised to help her with her empathic powers.
Casey had struggled with his New Years resolution, he had visited the brothers as often as possible since the passing of Master Splinter and was nearly always in high spirits. He tried to split his time between each of the brothers to help them all out whether it was sparring, cooking, fixing up things or just talking to them about how they were. He had even spent a lot of time around April’s apartment trying to make sure that she was okay as well and helping her out.
The other five in the room commented on how amazing Casey had been in the past two years and how much they owed him. Of course Casey told them that they owed him nothing at all, they were his family and he would do anything for them.
With the others all focused on their own lives they hadn’t really thought about what was going on with Casey, as he always seemed to be happy so they assumed everything in his life was fine, but it really wasn’t and they managed to get him to open up about what was happening at home.
Casey’s mother had moved out of the apartment and taken his little sister with her, she’d given Casey the option to come with them but he’d chosen to stay with his Dad, he didn’t want to leave New York, it was his home. His dad had started to drink heavier and was becoming angrier at the fact that his wife had left him, so Casey tried to stay out of the apartment, but that had only made him even angrier, thinking that his son was trying to leave as well.
He’d lashed out at Casey that night, and even though he had apologised, it wasn't something that Casey could forget. The turtles and April had been shocked, stunned and very angry when they had heard all that was going on.
Although angry at Casey’s father, they were angry at themselves as well for not noticing. Each of the five made another new year's resolutions to check in on Casey often and make sure that he wasn’t keeping anything from them and in turn Casey made a resolution to make sure he didn’t keep what was going on and how he was feeling to himself.
It was the first year that everyone managed to stick to their resolutions. Leo and Karai had gotten back on good terms, that turned to great terms that turned into a relationship. He’d also stepped into his father’s shoes perfectly now, their practice sessions feeling as though they were being led by Master Splinter himself, although without the fear that you’d be hit by a cane.
Raph mellowed out the most that year, apart from one incident with Casey’s dad although they’d all been angry at that and hadn’t said anything to Raph about him losing his temper. Raph listened more to Leo when they went out on patrol and never jumped the gun, something that impressed his older brother who was complimenting him almost constantly now.
Donnie had matured a great deal in how he reacted with a lot of things, which became very weird for his brothers and friends, they were so used to hearing about everything Donnie did and made and found themselves asking him about his latest experiment or invention and became very interested in his work now that it wasn’t pushed in their faces. April even wanted to spend more time with him and he did struggle with keeping his feelings to himself, maybe sometime in the future things would change between them.
Mikey had come to love doing the chores around the lair, although still let his brothers help out as they constantly told him he didn’t need to do everything around the lair. Mikey also made sure that once a week he would meditate with Leo and sparr with him, showing his brother how much he had improved in his skills and his focus.
April had a greater control over her powers and could even ignore most of the emotions around her, they only really affected her when they were severely strong ones. When she and Donnie became closer, it was nice to not have to feel all the extreme emotions that used to be there, with all of that gone she finally saw him in a romantic light and definitely planned to do something about that next year, maybe that could be one of her own personal new year's resolutions.
Casey had moved into the lair officially almost six months ago, shortly after a very bad incident with his dad. He thought he would feel guilty about leaving his father in the state he was in but his friends had pushed all of the guilt out of him and had pampered him the first few weeks of living in the lair. The longer he lived in the lair the more he regretted not moving in earlier.
This year had been a good one, even with the few bad events that had happened here and there but much better than the previous and hopefully the following year would be just as good, if not better.