Experience Tumblr like never before
• some rambling rambles I can came up with thinking bout F!Mikey and P!Mikey from Cj’s pov. I didn’t rlly have a thing in mind for this, so my bad if it’s a little all over the place 😂😅 Just figured I might as well put this out there seeing as I ended up writing quite a bit for this anyways 😂
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Life always seemed to find a way to pull the ground out beneath him. Although in hindsight, Cj really should have known better. Logically speaking he knows the apocalypse had left a heavy toll on his family, changed them in ways that would not otherwise have naturally occured. He could see it in the free unrestrained way the youngers would clamber on top of each other, laughing, shouting, shoving, sometimes shaking. But nothing, could quite prepare him for the shift that was Michelangelo.
Master Michelangelo or Uncle Mi, sometimes dad, was the light, the warmth of the resistance, always there to lend a helping hand or be a shoulder to cry on. Able to calm anyone down no matter the heated the argument. Unwavering in his hope and optimism. “Tomorrow can always be a better day” he had said, calm, unhurried as ever, never one to raise his voice (unless you were a certain pair of disaster twins) and always taking great joy to speak in swirling riddles with a wink and a tired but twinkling smile. Privately Cj always thought Uncle Mi just enjoyed watching the confusion on people’s face rather than the riddles itself.
Casey thought he knew him. Thought he would be able to see strands of his Uncle in Mikey. Seeds of behaviour that under certain circumstances Cj could logically see how it blossom into the man he grew up under.
And the ravenette did, edges of the Doctor Feelings that sounded just a little too much like when Uncle Mi had to play mediator between pent up resistance members or stressed out siblings. The unwavering belief that tomorrow could always be a better day. It was all there but it came out wrong. Instead of a clear path he could see, from point a to point b, it was all warped, broken. As if someone had broken their bone and clumsily tried to splint it back togather. Once straight bones now crooked in alignment, it fit, but the roots was now broken and disjointed held together by broken joints where once strong, healthy and naturally branching roots should have been.
The sparking relentless energy Mikey carried as he bounced from one project to another, frantic hand gesturing and all about the murals he couldn’t wait to draw, the food he wanted to make, it all ran completely and utterly contrary to the calm and subtle mischief of his uncle. It seemed that out of everyone, the apocalypse had changed Michelangelo the most. Hacked away a core fundamental part of his being and beat into him a calmness and quietness what was once loud, vivid and booming.
And.. and it broke his heart. Left Cj feeling wrong footed and empty. How could he ever call himself Uncle Mi’s nephew, (much less his son ohgodpushitdown.) if he knew so so little of the man?
Even Leo for all his showboating had a sharp wit, protectiveness and sense of humour that run identical to his sensei. Donnie kept his stiff dramatic abeit much more prideful attitude than his Uncle tello but nevertheless just as loving and April remained a fiercely tenacious, resourceful and steadfast pillar. Frankly, it was more uncanny how little she changed. Even Cassandra, for little as he remembered his mother had remained a relentless, barreling force. Albeit more subdued. And Drax was as no nonsense and reluctantly affectionate as ever, though he was a tad bit better at showing he cares in Cj’s time than the present.
What happened to you? Is this what the Apocalypse would have done to you? Is this what having to raise me had done to you?
(“But you promised you’d come hang out with me today! You promised!”
The greying turtle stares down at the faded ball beside his feet and then to the pile of well-read magazines to the corner. A cloud passes across his face. Dark, considering. He wants, Ancestors, does Mikey want. But his brain feels like mush and his limbs heavy like lead. “I’m so sorry big man.” He smiles quietly at the disappointed 8 year old. His facial muscles already aching from that small exertion alone. “Maybe next time k’ay? Uncle Mi is feeling real tired today.”
The cloud does not dissipate.)
Can you mourn for a version of someone who never existed, has never existed and now will never exist again?
A smaller, much scalier hand reaches out from the corner of his eyes.
“Cj, Ceej? You good? I’ve been calling for you for the past 5 minutes.”
He was? Shit. Jerking upwards, the ravenette tears his eyes away from a wall he didn’t know he was staring at and angles his face towards the turtle hovering by the subway car entrance. Was the-his room (and wasn’t that’s a concept that still took getting used to?) always so dark? Man was he really just sitting in the dark staring off into space for who knows how long until Michelangelo-Mikey found him? Jeezus Talk about embarrassing.
“I’m good. I’m good. I Promise.” Casey nods quickly. “Sorry for spacing out.”
“Are you sure..?” The box turtles eyes dart nervously back and forth from Cj to the floor then to the Cj again. “Can I.. come in?”
Ok, he takes it back. There is one thing Uncle Mi and Mikey were identical in. They both treated him so carefully sometimes. Actually, now that he thinks about it, the whole gang, save Draxum and Cassandra, treats him so carefully sometimes it made him want to scream.
“Ye-es. Mikey.” Casey rolls his eyes annoyed, but still making sure to smile to let the fellow fifteen year old know it was all in good fun.
“Oh. Well Oki-doki then~!” Mikey beams, skipping into the train car. Immediately plopping himself beside the empty space next to Cj and leaning against him. Casey grins in response, welcoming the contact.
“Wait..” The orange turtle’s eyes narrow suspiciously at a corner just a little to the boy’s right. “ARE THOSE MY STICKERS ?!”
A light bubbling sensation tickles his chest. Foreign but not unwelcome. “Are they? I don’t know what you’re talking about ” The teen smirks.
“Case! You can’t keep stealing mine!”
He blows a raspberry.
Mikey lunges forward.
Laughing, Casey dances out the way. “You can’t be mad at me! I’m from the apocalypse!” The human singsongs as he makes a beeline for the exit.
“You can’t keep using that card forever!”
“I can! And I will !”
Maybe it was all wrong. Maybe the war and the apocalypse had dug its fangs into his beloved Uncle and he came out a little more distorted than he would have liked. But here in this space, under the safety of the earth that should have long collapsed before Cj was even born, he watches his uncle sometimes-teacher-sometimes-father, now turned brother chase him through the lair. And thinks maybe just maybe, his uncle would have thought this hacking away worth it, if the world and by extension, Casey himself could continue to have moments like this too.