I see you @troublesjunkyard ... And now you've given me an excuse to rant!! *insert evil laughter here*
That post was emo Leo, and that's big when he's 14 so let's talk about that time!
14 is honestly such a big year for these boys..
I'd say some major events include:
Leo getting the role as leader
Sneaking out of the sewers
Baby's first murder
Raph getting his face scar
So lots is happening!! I'd say this is the first time since their mutation (not that they remember it) that something is actually happening in their lives.
Let's talk about Leo becoming the leader and Splinter..
On their birthday, Leonardo is given the title of leader. Which Raphael says is a sucky present because what about the rest of them?? The thing is that he has no idea how right he is, especially since Splinter gives Leo this incredibly important roll to fill, and then basically doesn't do anything else. From this point on, Splinter doesn't take a very active roll in their lives. He is still around, he is still their Sensei, he trains them and continues to go out to scavenge and provide for them, but anything else? He's not around.
Raph is trying to punch a hole through a brick wall? Leo's problem.
Donnie set something on fire in his lab? Leo's problem.
Mikey's tagging the living room walls again? Leo's problem.
And of course..
It's dinnertime and they're getting hungry? Yep, it's Leo's problem.
The point of him doing this was to bond them as a team, have them learn to rely on and trust their leader. He felt they were getting to be old enough to start looking after themselves, so he forced them into it. This caused a lot of problems, and even a slight divide between Splinter and the turtles, mainly Leonardo.
Especially since Splinter gets increasingly frustrated with Leonardo coming to him for help with his brothers. Splinter says it is his job as leader to be responsible, and some times he will scold Leonardo for relying on him to solve the problems, even questioning if he made the right decision making him leader or on really bad days just insulting him.
That's why Leonardo doesn't allow the others to disturb Splinter with anything. He insists that anything they want to say to Splinter should go through him first, that way he can decide if it's something Splinter would scold or insult them for. He just wants to protect them from it.
015. the wine cellar of a large mansion . / i want you to know, you asked for this.
↪ 𝑺𝑬𝑻𝑻𝑰𝑵𝑮 𝑷𝑹𝑶𝑴𝑷𝑻𝑺 : @tahitiwoke.
it's two am on a saturday evening - or rather, a sunday morning. the kind that a few months ago would have meant waking up in about three hours, two and a half for phillip, who was always diligent in every aspect of his life, including the ones that she sometimes wished he wouldn't be. it's been a long time since she'd been able to amuse herself more with sitting on his lower back for fifty push - ups than she would have with an extra thirty minutes in bed, just lying there, more and more often because, in all honesty, they'd been getting old.
but, that's life. you make these kinds of concessions, when you're in love.
she flips the light at the top of the stairs leading down into the cellar and there's a hum that comes in reply, an audible hum, indicative of the insane levels of energy that this massive peacock - display of unconscionable wealth siphons, and this is just the cellar. there had been a time when claire had considered herself to be well - to - do. she no longer considers that a fact. not when she's now able, owed entirely to phillip's dime, to waif down the elegantly minimalist staircase into a wine cellar filled absolutely top to bottom with wines that would have gotten her impeached for even thinking of placing on the white house menu for one night only. she laughs to herself, alone, and apart from the fact of that word, alone, there is another problem with this picture.
claire's already been down here a few times, tonight. in fact, the stem of her evidentiary last glass is still slotted between her fingers with the cup cradled in her palm as she reaches the bottom step and finds her socked feet on the beautiful marble, and somewhere upstairs on the massive island in the spacious kitchen, with the vaulted ceiling, her phone is buzzing with a call from christopher brady, who she really should speak to. and she will. she will, just not right now.
in the meantime though, she is going to keep making use of all this opulence that she has started to hate phillip for, now that he's dead.
she's slow in pacing between the racks, eyeing label after label through the glass doors that wouldn't ever dream of fogging over, because the entire level is temperature controlled. she runs a finger over the surface of the door closest to her and is reminded in a brief little flicker of what it had felt like to have her back pressed against it the first time he'd brought her down to see it, the chill of the glass raising the hairs on her arms as his mouth had found the junction of her neck and shoulder, and she pulls her hand away reflexively. claire moves on to the next door, and the next, until she stands in front of the reds which had always been her intention, because white was too flimsy, too light, too apéritif to handle what she requires of it, which is to help stomach death, which is to help drown the little piece of her that wants to kill him herself for making her do this again. so no, white would never do. she's eyeing down a particularly pretentious looking cabernet sauvignon which she has no doubt is straight from napa valley and well over what he'd once called the modest price point of three thousand dollars, and she opens the door with a flourish that is for no one, because no one is there to see it.
there are a lot of things that claire has had to come to terms with, in her life. she'd lived a full one, she'd looked her own demise in the face more than once and found a way to move beyond it, she'd learned to swallow down francis' death, she'd learned to swallow down the deaths she'd delivered with her own hands either literally or metaphoric, with the signing of a directive. nothing prepares a person for what it is like to be sixty six and still in too good of shape, good enough that you might last another twenty years : mourn, another twenty years. nothing prepares for what it's like to not be able to listen to a song that you've loved for more than forty years because you cannot hear it play without thinking of someone you knew for only half that long. nothing prepares for what it's like to live alone in a beach house in cape cod that retailed for a few million dollars on its own without the enhancements he'd made to it because jesus christ, phil could not ever be frugal or rational, or —
she flinches, for having thought of him as phil. for being reminded of yet another lapse in her traditions, another hangup he’d unwittingly helped her unlearn very much by accident. that ring is getting heavier all the time.
claire turns away and lets the door swing shut, carrying the bottle back with her toward the stairs and climbing up them, leaving the light on because it doesn't matter, because the light bill, if she cared to care, is on autopay from one of his numerous checking accounts which she has been made excruciatingly aware by his accountant that she has full control of to do with what she will. i understand the two of you never married. the suit ( phillip would have called him that ) had said. observed? pried, claire finally settles. because it had been a pry. one she hadn't bothered to offer any clarification on.
she makes her way back to the kitchen and ignores the small but steadily growing collection of bottles sitting on the counter, setting down the glass in her hand and the newest bottle in order to pick up her phone, eyeing the missed notifications for a moment before typing out a single text to the one that she actually cares about.
to: christopher brady.
sorry i missed your call, winding down for the night. talk tomorrow?
claire doesn't wait for his response, setting the phone back on the counter face down and leaving it even though it vibrates against her fingers almost immediately. she picks up the corkscrew on the counter and twists it with what can only be considered aggression into the stopper at the neck of the bottle and within a few moments she's walking with the unobstructed wine and a newly full glass out onto the patio that overlooks the beach, that overlooks the pier, that overlooks the place where she'd watched the sunset sink into the cresting waves and said nothing, i'm just happy, just a few years before. she brings the glass to her lips and drinks deeply, and she is not savoring it the way that one does with a four thousand dollar bottle of wine. it's just a drink. the way that this is just a house, and this is just a death, and she will have to get over it one way or another, eventually.
his ashes are still sitting in the comically nondescript box she'd received them in. there had been a condolence card taped to the cardboard, she had opened it and there had been an urn and inside the urn there had been a bag, and she'd closed it and put it away underneath his side of the bed and that's where it had stayed. the ghost of it is sleeping with her now, and sometimes she has the most intense urge to leave them there, because it's possible if she does that the emptiness will never have a chance to feel permanent but instead keep dangling between complete and incomplete as it has been so far. but claire is not staying in cape cod. was never going to stay in cape cod, because there is no corner of that house that does not remind her of him, there is no contractor she could pay to cut him out of the place and neither would she want to. it's important to know that this black mood that's overtaken her is not just because he is dead, or because he'd left her so much more than any person should ever have to look after, but because five days after he'd died she'd found an invoice on his computer for a reserved dock in the bass river marina for a vessel, and it didn't take her long to dig up why in the wake of the spiral that had caused, and in a little folder simply called claire she'd found a picture of a small downeaster and damn it if the name painted on the side of it clear as day in a pale blue that matched the curtains she'd picked for the bay window downstairs wasn't Alexa.
she'd cried. it was a lot, and she wasn't proud of it, and when she stopped it had felt foolish because it had been something sweet between them, and she remembers what he'd said like it was yesterday, and not just because she's been obsessively keyword searching their old messages trying to stave off the growing feeling of rot in the pit of her stomach.
from: phillip coulson.
[6:33 AM JAN 2023] It's funny you know. My mother used to say my Dad was a good man in a storm, that he wasn't kind or sweet or particularly loveable, but that he fought for the things he had and was steady when the bad stuff came rolling in. I always wanted to be like that.
[6:34 AM JAN 2023] It's a good song. And I'm really flattered? Maybe that's not the right word. Glad? That you think that about me
she takes another sip from the edge of the glass as it scrolls through her mind, and closes her eyes, standing under the fucking flood light he'd installed on the back of the house which is motion sensitive and which she has sometimes managed to stand under for long enough without moving in the last few days that it has forgotten her completely and plunged her into a darkness that is comforting in that it seems to match the one inside her.
tomorrow, she's going to the marina. tomorrow she's dragging his ashes from under the bed and taking them out onto his boat, or her boat, as his inheritor, since it cannot now be theirs. since nothing can be. tomorrow she'll hire someone and pay them more than anyone could ever call appropriate to take her out into the middle of the bay and she's going to dump them there because he told her that same night years ago that all he'd ever wanted was to matter, to have an impact, and she can't think of anywhere he deserves to be less than he deserves to be kept under the underside of a bed because she cannot let him go. so, tomorrow. tomorrow she'll take his downeaster out to the gulf of maine and dump his dust into the salt water because he'd done what he had to and he'd mattered to her more than either of them had ever meant him to and because yes, phillip.
A soft smile formed on the redheads lips when Remy adjusted her necklace. She hadn’t even noticed the fact that it was crooked. Trying to get back into her teaching had caused her to be a bit scattered brain as she was spending most days prepping material. Her struggle controlling her powers due to her fluctuating emotions wasn’t helping either.
However, the kind gesture seemed to pull her out of her own mind and into the present. It was nice to be back around friends- people should could rely on. If only they knew what was going on in her head. “Thank you, Remy.” She mumbled softly, eyes looking up to catch his. The barely noticeable smile that graced her lips was one of the first genuine smiles she had worn in days.
A fight- that was what Suigetsu itched for the most right now. More than anything he wanted to get in a good fight. Not the kind where the other guy would end up in pieces after the first few minutes, but the kind where the outcome took hours of vicious sword-slinging to decide. Since coming here, he'd found that his life was lacking a certain thrill, one that could only be achieved through the mutual bloodlust of two capable parties. But seeing as how this particular environment was meant to be one based around peace and the reconstruction of a mundane society, it didn't seem he'd be getting one anytime soon. A shame really, as he'd already seen numerous passerby's who would make fairly suitable opponents. It was a waste of potential in his opinion.
But surely there had to be some way to satisfy this nagging craving of his. True, it wasn't likely that he'd find someone who would fight him willingly... but if he were to, say, force them into a situation where they had no choice but to fight... well was a different story altogether! It was perfect really; he'd simply wait in the shadows until another resident came along and BAM! He'd fly out, sword unsheathed, and have his brawl! Of course he had no intention of killing anybody, that would just cause needless problems. He'd just tussle, maybe leave a bruise or two, and be on his way. It was pretty much fool-proof!
With the blueprints of his scheme in mind, he slunk to the nearest alley and crouched there, sporting his shark-toothed smirk, and waited.... and waited......... and waited still......... It really figured that the minute he came up with a brilliant idea, there'd be no one around to implement it on. He huffed, pulling his water bottle from its holster and slurping indignantly. Just then, there was the faint but unmistakable sounds of footsteps gradually drawing closer to where he lay in wait. This was it! Finally, the chance he'd been waiting for was upon him! Overcome with excitement, he drew his Executioners Blade, and charged out to meet his opponent, swinging the sword madly with delight
"You're all mine sucker!" He laughed rather maniacally.
But just then... he felt a damp sensation just below his belt line. He ceased all movement and he felt his face grow hot. Fearfully, he glanced down at his pants and sure enough, right in the center of his crotch, was a wet stain. In his haste, he'd neglected to secure his water bottle, and the cap had flown off, splashing it's contents onto his groin. He dropped his sword and hurriedly covered the area with both hands.
"N-No! No! It's not what you think, I swear to god!" He stammered, his blush and shame both increasing with every passing second as he practically sobbed his excuses.
This... had not such been a fool-proof plan after all...
