Adult-FanFiction.org : Cartoons

A New Lease on Life	By : Ghost-of-a-Chance Category: +S through Z > Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Views: 3157 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own TMNT, any of its characters or devices, or any songs/books/movies referenced. No money is made from this story. I DO own any & all OCs included in the story...and a Woozle.

Chapter List
- 34
- 35
- 36
Precautions for this chapter - some mild sexual content, angst, and a possible abuse trigger though it's nothing explicit...YET.
Suggested Listening: Adam Lambert "Aftermath," My Chemical Romance "The Ghost of You"

34: Lust, Love, and Loss
July 9th, Saturday, the Dojo
Denim blue eyes shot insults at Raphael across the training mat; scruffy blonde hair stuck to sweat-gleaming skin. All in all, Mercy was tempting him more than ever, and all she was doing was glaring at him.
Almost two months ago, Raph started Mercy on a strict strength training schedule. Before Mercy woke in the body she now reluctantly called her own, Donna Mays allowed it to go to ruin—she wasted away from drink, malnutrition, and apathy, and eventually passed away in her sleep. If she'd had any idea her body wouldn't simply stay dead, perhaps she would have taken better care of it…but then wouldn't we all?
As the two month anniversary loomed, Raphael felt confident that his pupil was ready to move on to the next step…well, technically combat shouldn't be the next step, but who ever said he was a good sensei? He had no illusions regarding his skill in teaching—or lack thereof—and frankly, he had ulterior motives. Those motives, fortunately, had yet to become clear to the blonde charging across the mat at him, head down and arms braced.
"Bum-rushin' only works in da movies," he reminded Mercy with a sneer, easily deflecting her attack.
"Bite me, Meathead!" Mercy spat as she lunged back up again for another attack.
"Mark da spot, Blondie!" Clearly toying with her, he let her get in a hit—only one, a rather weak blow to his plastron—then let out a bark of laughter when she swore and shook the sting out of her knuckles.
"What spot?" she snapped back throwing herself right back into her assault, "Try the darkest part'a my skinny white ass!"
"I ain't bitin' yer heart, Kid." The taunt infuriated her as expected, and she completely lost her cool. Outside the door of the dojo, Master Splinter cringed at their language, but his whiskers twitched in amusement regardless. It seemed, he considered silently pacing toward the kitchen, his son had quite a bit in common with the abrasive blonde; neither would ever beg for her namesake, and neither had any of their own.
In her previous life, Amber would have given almost anything for a chance to see the City Hall subway station in person; in her new life, she'd give even more to never see it again.
The brunette hovered nervously at the edge of the platform, trying to coax herself into taking just one step toward the round chamber the brothers first discovered her in—that first step was always the hardest, no matter what path she might be taking. In the back of her mind, she heard Donatello wandering around the station just beyond, switching on lights and noting places the missing file might be hidden.
Why did it seem she only saw this place when disaster was imminent? The first time, though she didn't really remember much of it, she was freezing to death. The second time she'd completely blown her friendship with Donnie to bits, slapped him for not understanding her, and ran away like a child. Now…now she was being hunted down over information her counterpart stole, and the mutants she owed her life to were putting theirs on the line to protect her.
"Braids?" Donnie's sudden greeting startled her; grey-green eyes wide and pupils dilated to pinpoints, she looked up to the pair of hazel ones a head above hers. "What's wrong, Hon?" A faint blush streaked across her cheeks, her fear chased away by the memory of those eyes greeting her when she woke that morning…and being pinned to the sheets shortly after with his lips at her neck. As always, she thought with frustration, anytime she was around Donnie, her mind took up permanent residence in the gutter.
"I hate this place," she mumbled instead of acknowledging the raunchy thoughts coursing through her mind. "Used'ta love it…now't I've been here, I hate it." She wasn't the best at communication, but the genius was slowly learning her language; he understood what she meant, even if she sometimes couldn't give him more than puzzle pieces.
"We found you here," he recalled softly, his eyes drawn to the precise corner where he found her. Half a year later, the memory—her scantily clothed body shivering violently in a pile of trash—was still vivid and still jarring.
Scarlet hair gleaming amongst the rubbish—unnaturally red, but striking regardless. She's lovely—soft and curvy with galaxies of freckles across her face and arms. Like a nymph of the wilderness cast down to the underworld, she seems pulled straight from a fairy tale. Something about her almost seems familiar, but how could I know her? It isn't possible—it isn't logical—it isn't REAL.
The genius shook his head to clear out the clouds, turning to meet Amber's eyes again. "It's been a long time, huh?"
"Not as long as ya think," she admitted under her breath. "I wound up here in May, too."
He doesnae un'erstan'—how could'e un'erstan'?! Run, O'Brien, run awa', 'at's all y'ever dae, 'it's all y'ever dain! Ya got anither chahnce an' ya blew it—ya fookin' skelped'im! Run, ya fud, ya glaikit coward! •
Amber broke away, staring down at the tracks below, recalling the day Leonardo found her and led her here—the day she nearly died a second time, this time at the hands of Northpaw and Hun.
She and Donnie were finally progressing in their relationship, but they still hadn't mended the breaches of trust which caused the feud—she still hadn't apologized or told him what she hid from him, and he still hadn't apologized for assuming the worst of her and accusing her of deceit. That argument was getting them nowhere, so they'd decided to simply ignore it for the time being. Although it meant they were now friends again—nay, more than friends, becoming lovers—it also meant someday it would blow up all over them again if they continued to ignore it.
She was already upset over the memories; of course a train would rattle past. This close to active tracks the sound was far louder than in the Lair. Right before Donnie's eyes, the events of the day he found her replayed. When Amber finally returned to herself—realized she wasn't trapped in the destroyed school, but safe in the underground—she found herself curled up in a fetal position in an all-too familiar heap of trash with Donnie's arms around her, one rubbing her back. The stench of the familiar rubbish burned her nose even as humiliation burned her cheeks, but the soft humming in her ear soothed the sting. Perhaps, she considered with a weary sigh, she wouldn't be constantly drawn back to the moment of her death if she'd actually done something to avoid that death the first time.
"You're okay," her tall lover promised when he felt her pulse stabilize again. No longer needing to monitor her pulse, his fingertips trailed from her neck upward, and he cupped her jaw and cheek in one massive hand. "It just caught you off-guard…you're still doing better on average, remember?" She gave a weak nod.
"If by better ya mean I ain't gone zombie-walkin' through the sewer again," she mumbled into her covered cleavage. Donnie sat back on his heels, still petting her back and holding her face; he said nothing about the neckline of her shirt drooping, nor of the tattooed head snarling up at him from behind it. He was glad to have met Amber—so glad to have her with him!—but every time he saw that dragon tattoo in her cleavage, all he could feel was regret for not being able to spare Kimber her horrific death.
"This place has bad memories for you," he acknowledged simply, his eyes drawn to the pinhole camera responsible for drawing his family's attention. Even now, months later, the recovered audio footage of Kimber's last night haunted him. "If you were conscious at any point before we found you, that makes it even worse." Amber considered his words silently, recalling the day she first found herself in this world.
Thunder cracks in the distance, a rumbling roar following behind. Someone screams—who screams?—as though those shrieks of terror will be their very last words. Shut it off, she cries to the owners of the hands that restrain her, shut it all off! Please, help that person, can't you hear them screaming?! A small pinch of the skin is followed by liquid fire coursing through her veins—what are they doing to her?! What has she done to deserve this?! Please, please, make the screaming stop!
Donatello felt her pulse spike, flinching at the sudden increase. "I'll take that as a yeah," he acknowledged dryly and wrapped his arms around the woman once again crawling into his lap. Before he could do more than bury his snout in her hair—partly to block out the trash smell with her coconut shampoo and partly out of habit—she stiffened, craning her neck to see around his carapace.
"Purple?" The unusually random comment left him staring at her in confusion.
"What?" he finally asked when it became clear she wasn't ready to elaborate. Instead of answering, she crawled off his lap and crept toward the far wall, eyes locked on something he couldn't see. "You see something purple?" Donnie prodded when she didn't answer, and she nodded vaguely.
Upon reaching the wall she dropped to her knees in the rubbish and pried loose a bit of tile only to drop it with an ungodly shriek and scramble away from the wall. "What?! What's wrong?!" Unable to get out anything more than another shriek, she pointed frantically at the area she uncovered…and what was crawling out of it. That, Donnie decided with a cringe, was a very well-fed cockroach. "A bug?" he asked the spazzing woman dubiously. "That's what you're freaking out over?"
"That ain't a bug!" she insisted shrilly refusing to take her eyes off the crevice in the wall. "That's a monster—thing looks like it could eat a mouse!" Donnie shrugged.
"You're in New York, Hon," he reminded dryly. "It's probably been eating rats." For a moment all she could do was stare at him, her jaw agape and no words coming out. Realizing she was very freaked out by roaches, Donnie rolled his eyes, shook his head, and approached the pest with a long-suffering sigh. A moment later a loud crunch rang out through the room—triggering a protesting squeak from Amber—as the offending insect was stomped under a work boot. "There, problem solved." The look she gave him said quite plainly, no, the problem was not solved, and she was not sticking around in the station a moment longer than she had to.
As his perplexing girlfriend stood squirming in the doorway, Donatello knocked a couple more loose tiles away from the hole dripping purple ink. Behind them lay a rather well-hidden hole in the wall…and in that hole, a faded purple file folder brimming with soggy printouts. Kimber managed to disguise the hiding spot pretty well—well enough he'd never have noticed it. If the ink from the soaked file folder hadn't run and dripped down the wall, it might have been hidden there until the wall came down. "Hey, you found the papers!" he called out to Amber but received only a grossed out curse…a curse he soon felt like repeating and expanding on. They found the paperwork Kimber stole but every page was saturated with rainwater. The very hiding place that kept it secure ruined it.
The information the turncoat Dragon stole died with her…the trail was officially cold.
Amber and Donnie returned to the Lair in defeat, neither ready to talk over what they'd found. Almost immediately upon arrival, the brunette hit the showers; after over half an hour of just standing there silently under the cold spray, she finally set about cleaning up and making herself presentable. Life couldn't stop just because she had a rough day - she already agreed to co-op dinner with Mikey and Mercy that night and couldn't leave them holding the sack. She didn't need to deal with her memories when there were more important things at stake.
She wasn't prepared for her reaction to the sopping wet printouts. She hadn't expected to see not stolen papers wet with rain, but piles of cherished books lost to a storm. In the library of her school, she couldn't register anything beneath the cold grey haze that had filled her. Now she didn't have shock holding her back…and she almost wished she did.
'What ever happened to all those books?' she wondered as she shambled into the kitchen. 'Surely the school district tried to salvage them…surely they didn't just give up on them!' No matter how horrible the idea was, though, she had a feeling they did just that. Small towns didn't have much in the way of funding, but the school would have received a FEMA grant to cover costs of rebuilding. That grant was sure to cover everything from new buildings to new books, but it was unlikely to cover salvage and restoration of the buildings' contents…or lawsuits over injuries incurred in salvaging those contents.
'If that ain't proof I didn't fit in,' Amber considered almost bitterly, 'then nothin' is…so many'a my neighbors died in that first storm, but I'm more torn up over the damn school'n any'a them.' The fact that those neighbors wouldn't have spared her a tear mattered not. As she dug out fresh vegetables and set to trimming and chopping them, she pondered over a decades-old debate. Would her closed-minded neighbors have been more accepting of her if she hadn't stood out so strongly, hadn't stood for things they condemned? Would they have understood her if she had done more to fit in? A lifetime later, Amber still had no answers, only one realization—one that gave her pause.
Donnie seemed to approve. Donnie's eyes always softened when she slipped up, lapsed back into the gruff brogue the years beat out of her voice. Her odd phrases and unfamiliar curses and colloquialisms didn't repel him the way they did her old neighbors…if anything, they seemed to draw him even closer—like a moth to a flame… 'That's not morbid at all,' she considered with a cringe, not realizing that not only was Mikey watching her in silent concern, Donatello was as well.
The first thing the genius did upon return was begin preparations to dry the sodden papers Amber found. Granted, what he saw in the station was illegible from running ink but perhaps something could be salvaged anyway. Now, a spiderweb of twine crisscrossed every corner of the lab, and every sheet of paper was hung to dry. Several salvaged box fans—vital when the HVAC system couldn't keep up with the summer heat—were hard at work circulating the air, and the dehumidifier he salvaged and refurbished was cranked up to the max. If there was anything to be gleaned from those papers, then so help him, he wouldn't give up until he found it!
Those were his thoughts on the matter before he ventured to the kitchen to offer a hand with prep-work; now, he felt sure he should have been more suspicious of Amber's silence on the trip home. Mikey, no stranger to the brunette's tendency to lose herself in her thoughts, seemed pleading his brainy brother to do something. Sky blue eyes darted back and forth between Donnie and the woman staring through a large white mushroom as though not seeing it. With a nod and pointed glance to his brother, Don approached Amber and gently pried the mushroom from her hand.
"I thought you were allergic to those," he pointed out as Mikey excused himself to given them some space. Seemingly coming back to herself after a long wool-gathering trip, Amber blinked down at the pile of cubed mushrooms in confusion.
"Huh," she remarked, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "So I am…I thought…I thought those were…peppers?" The admission made her wince; how did she mistake mushrooms for peppers? "No worry, though…I didn't eat any…I don't think…" If she did, she considered with a cringe, she would know in an hour...when her stomach felt ready to implode. She trailed off as Donnie pulled her chair out and away from the table and sat straddling another.
"Talk to me, Hon," he urged calmly, his arms folded along the battered back of the old wooden chair. "What's going on in that head of yours?" She avoided his eyes, looking over to the pile of vegetables still waiting for preparation. "Those can wait," he reminded, his eyes firm but his words soft; gentle fingertips on her chin urged her to face him again. "We need to talk…you haven't spoken since we left the station, and I know it wasn't over the roach."
"Roach?" she grumbled with an embarrassed flush. "Try half foot spawn'a Satan." Donnie snorted.
"Please. It couldn't have been two inches long—they get bigger, you know." The look she gave him plainly said you're not helping. "What's really bothering you, Braids?" Her lips parted to let out another insistence of being fine—another white lie to protect him from her troubled thoughts—but she caught herself. She wasn't fine…and he wasn't the one who needed protecting at the moment...and hadn't she vowed to stop hiding her not-so-pretty sides from him?
"Kimber's dead," she admitted softly instead, "but'er death was in vain." As though that one sentence burst a dam in her subconscious, the rest seemed to come rushing out in an angsty flood. Amber's eyes watered as she lunged to her feet to pace. "I can't stand it—it's wrong! She put 'er life on the line to take down the Purple Dragons, betrayed people she cared about to do it, an' a'thin' she tried wiz for nothin'—the papers're useless!" Strong arms wrapped around her from the back, and she turned to smother her tears in Donnie's shoulder. "I used'ta hate 'er," she confessed weakly, "now I jus' feel sorry for 'er…an' ef she wiz anithin' like me, she'd hate that."
"Probably," Don answered rubbing her back; he said nothing about her lapse in speech, but found himself curious. Was she truly so broken up that she was losing control, or was she actively watching her words less than usual? Curious indeed… "Don't give up on her yet." Watery green eyes met his and he forced the smile he knew she needed, brushing a stray tear from her cheek before it could fall further. "Even if we can't salvage any of the information she stole—even if we can't turn in any of the dirty cops—we won't stop until the Purple Dragons are done and Hun and Northpaw are taken out. She wanted to take the gang out of power, and so help us, we'll do just that."
Donatello truly believed what he was saying, Amber realized in silent awe. His eyes—veering green in the bright light of the kitchen—met each of hers in turn full of promise. "Kimber's death wasn't in vain, Amber," he swore softly. "We'll accomplish everything she set out to. Besides, in a way, she was you—if you stole valuable information, what would you do?" Amber blinked at him, seemingly lost, then a trace of pink stole over her cheeks.
"I'd make copies," she answered with a sheepish smile. "Ya think she did?" He gave a lopsided shrug and an almost as lopsided smirk.
"The odds are pretty good…I'd say about 83.57%. The question is where she would hide said copies." Amber cringed. She knew where she'd hide secret documents…no one ever thought to check the bookshelves.
"Looks like I get to go digging through that tote of bodice-rippers in her shed," she grumbled squeamishly. "I'm'a need gloves…and bleach…they looked far too stained for my tastes." Donnie chuckled at her pinched expression and let her go; the moment she was free, she hurried over to pull her Scotch out from under the sink and collected her usual glass from the cabinet.
"You know," he teased as she slopped about two fingers worth into the small jar and took a deep sip, "you're living in Kimber's body now…so technically whatever's staining those books is also yours." Despite her track record, Amber managed to not inhale the whisky and choke on it; instead, she turned a disgusted cringe to him.
"Thanks, Dee," she grumbled into her glass, her face almost scarlet. "As if I didn't already feel awkward enough washing another woman's fud an' knowing your brother flanged it. Ya jus' give until it hurts." Strangled snickering sharpened into laughter, then laughter into wheezing, then, sure enough, he snorted. Despite herself, Amber felt a grin tug at her lips and her own lungs began shuddering in amusement.
By the time Mikey returned, the pair were laughing too hard to explain themselves. He felt sure he missed something awesome.
Dinner passed by without further any incident unless one counted Amber being completely unable to look Raphael in the eye, and Mercy letting out a loud unladylike belch halfway through then Mikey proudly rating it an 'eight out of ten.' After dinner, the family went their separate ways. Donatello went to work on the wiring in the barracks while Amber and Mikey did the dishes and some prep-work for the next night. Around ten, the two lovers met again, this time in his—no, the genius corrected himself fondly—their bedroom.
"Hey, Hon." Donnie's greeting was answered with a forced scowl from the brunette sulking through the bedroom door. Clearly, he realized with a grin, she felt a little playful and was 'punishing' him for laughing at her earlier. He scooted his chair back from his desk to face her.
"I'm not speaking to you," she declared shouldering past him to the far corner grabbing her night clothes on the way.
"You just did," he reminded teasingly. Instead of responding she closed the makeshift curtain between the desk and 'changing corner' and started shucking off her clothes. A loud thump rang out followed by an even louder, "Scunner! My foot!"
"Stubbed your toe again?" Donnie asked innocently and received a grumble in response. "Figured as much. I put a light back there for you—turn it on." A moment later the lamp kicked on and he realized his error. Though he intended only to help his lover avoid stubbing her toe on the nightstand time and time again, he didn't take into account the effect of light and shadow on polyester; right before his eyes, Amber's silhouette was cast onto the backlit cloth with striking clarity. His cheeks scalding hot, he found himself unable to turn away.
Without realizing she was putting on a show for him, Amber wrenched open the clasp of her brassiere and let the garment fall away with a barely suppressed groan. "God, that feels better," she mumbled aloud tempted to fling the hated contraption across the room slingshot style. She took a moment to enjoy her newfound freedom—unaware that Donatello could see her awkwardly rubbing the feeling back into one sore breast after the other, and the unavoidable response her body had to said massaging—then begrudgingly reached for the zipper of her jean shorts. Donnie choked and tore his eyes away, forcing himself to focus on the blueprints scattered across his small desk. Don't think about the breasts, he reminded himself almost frantically. Just ignore them, nothing there to see, and definitely no nip—no, bad Donnie! Don't think about the breasts!
When Amber finally emerged from the little cubicle, clad in her oversized Knicks jersey and a pair of modest cotton sleep shorts, she found him blushing up a storm and unable to look at her. "What's your problem?" she asked dryly, one under-groomed eyebrow arching to the heavens.
"I need to rethink the screen for the changing corner...a shower curtain just doesn't cut it." Amber stood there staring at him for a moment, puzzling through his reply, then with a start, turned back to the tiny curtained space. Sure enough, the outlines of the nightstand and the desk lamp on the floor were cast on the screens. He saw everything. The way she saw it, she could get embarrassed—turn just as red as the genius was turning and start babbling in humiliation—or she could make things awkward. Amber being Amber, and Amber being shameless, it was obvious which she'd pick.
"Hey, bras hurt. You try wearin' one'a those things all farkin' day."
"Sorry, I don't have the parts," he declined with a crooked smile and a sideways glance. As the laughing brunette turned down their bed, he vividly recalled the way Amber had rubbed the feeling back into her abused bosom. Perhaps she was wearing off on him, because he couldn't help himself…he went there. "…Kimber does."
Sweat-slicked skin gleams under the bright lights of the dojo; sun-blonde hair, perpetually mussed, brushes teasingly along Raphael's skin. He'll never be able to set foot in here again without finding himself recalling this moment—the sight, sound, scent, and sense of Mercy bodily pinning him to the mat and working her way toward his feet.
The fluid uncertainty of the situation makes the prostrate ninja wonder—could this be a dream? Surely he wasn't beaten by the mouthy blonde, surely he didn't let her win just to reap the—or did he? In this strangely ominous moment, he finds himself unable to swear for or against that suspicion.
Lips sneer against his suddenly bare skin; work roughened hands work their way under the lip of his plastron and pull his swelling length free of its confines. "Merse," he protests feebly as she leers up at him, teasing him with her hot breath. "Ya don't have'ta—I ain't gonna—"
His promise falls away in a loud, rattling groan as foreign sensations sweep him under. Hot—wet—soft skin and blunt teeth—unable to resist her, now more than ever before, he props himself up on one elbow. Watching his little minx in fascination and awe, he slips his fingers through her perpetually messy hair. Sleek blonde locks shine vibrantly against his skin—gold against green—as he cups the back of her head with a tenderness he would never believe himself capable of. Everything this woman does makes him want her more—everything she is draws him closer by the day. If she has her way, he's sure, she'll have his heart in her hands and his nads in her pocket. She lets him slip free, trailing lips and teeth along every bit of bare skin she can reach.
"I ain't gotta," the blue-eyed temptress acknowledges as her hands roam. One winds up splayed across his massive right thigh, a half-assed attempt at pinning him down. The other dives between his legs and latches mercilessly onto his tail, her fingers wrapping around it and pulling in a suggestive mimicry of the torture his other length has been enduring. Swept away by her deceptively soft touch, he slumps back against the mat with a deep, throaty churr, his eyes falling closed with a shudder and his palm trailing down to her cheek. "Gonna anyway, ya lunk-head. I love ya, ya maw'ron."
Something isn't right; he lurches upward again, his wide eyes registering the change. Right before his eyes, short blonde hair lengthens and darkens to punch red. Denim blue eyes pale to mossy grey-green. Unpainted lips, curled in a perpetual smirk, have darkened and softened, and the sarcastic soprano voice has become a husky purr tainted with the smog of New Jersey.
No…He shakes his head, blinking in disbelief as if the sight before him would vanish in smoke. Kimber gently releases him and creeps back up to straddle his midsection. "I love ya, ya muck-brained maw'ron," she swears with none of Mercy's taunting or sarcasm. Her manicured nails trail along his clenching jaw as though searching for a chink in his armor. "I always have—I always will…yer more'n a rival ta me, Raphie."
"Kimbuh," Raph winces, averting his eyes from the naked redhead in his lap, his cheeks almost matching her hair. "I'm sorry…I can't, Kim…yer…yer dead…" His lungs ache from the razor-sharp air filling them; his eyes screwed shut and stinging, he finds himself pulling her tightly to his chest as though she'll be torn from his arms. "Yer dead, an' it's my fault—ya din't deserve dis!"
"You don't di'zerve it eitha," she reminds him gently, seemingly unaware that her skin has been steadily growing cold. Golden eyes finally peel open, and the sight of her—inhumanly pale and fading from view—makes him wish he'd kept them closed. "It ain't yer fault, Red…sometimes t'ese t'ings jus' happen, ya know? I don't blame ya fa t'is." A feather-light touch brushes along his trembling jaw—fingertips or painted lips?—and he struggles to hold onto the minx fading away before his eyes. "I'm dead, Raphie, but you ain't—stawp blamin' ya'self an' staht livin' a'ready!"
"Kimbuh, no!" He denied—he argued—he shook her by the shoulders, willing her to not do this, not to leave him again. No matter how hard he tried, though, all was in vain…like a dream fading in the light of dawn, Kimber Bryant faded away right before, him, her tender smile never leaving her cold blue lips.
"Live, Rah-fay-el…I'll see ya on t'a udd'a side."
Like so many nights before, Raphael woke with a strangled shout, lurching up in bed and grasping for someone completely out of his reach. His lungs heaving, his eyes burning, he stared into the darkness of his bedroom, the dream playing nonstop through his mind. He once swore he didn't love Kimber—that he never loved her—but with every passing day since her death, he found himself wondering more and more if he was completely delusional. Was he fighting guilt over being unwilling to listen and unwilling to help her? Was he grieving the loss of his best friend? Or worse, was he heartbroken over losing someone he—someone he loved?
He could have helped her…the others didn't know, and he'd rather keep it that way. When the truth came out, that Kimber was dead and Amber somehow stepped into her vacant body, it nearly broke him…he knew what had triggered the alarms the night Kimber died…he heard her voice on the security feed, begging for shelter and a chance to prove herself…He ignored it and left to bust skulls with Casey...and Kimber died. Now, he could no more admit that horrible choice to his family than bring her back to life.
"Hey!" A sudden voice at the door tore him from his self-loathing; golden hazel eyes shot to the blonde hovering in the open doorway torn between concern and fear. "You okay, Raph? You—You were screamin'…" For a single blinding moment, he found himself reliving the dream—found himself seeing Kimber instead of Mercy—and his blood boiled.
"GIT OUT!" he bellowed hurling the closest object—his alarm clock—at the apparition. With a terrified yelp, Mercy dove for safety; the door slammed behind her, the abused appliance shattering against it. Her skin crawling and her heart racing, she found herself back in another time—another place—and facing down another tormentor she should have been able to trust. She bolted for the door, her shoes pounding the pavement and her cheeks streaming.
In her wake, a horrified brunette stood in the open doorway of Donatello's room. She saw everything…it wasn't the first time she witnessed it, either, though Raphael was never the cause before. As loud crashes and oaths echoed from his room—many of them bearing the name of her counterpart—Amber turned to meet Donnie's gaze. The answer was clear to them, but Mercy was too blinded by fear to realize the reason behind Raph's outburst. Without a word passing between them, Amber yanked on her sneakers, grabbed a flashlight and her phone, and took off into the tunnels to follow her friend as Donatello rushed to the lab to track the fleeing blonde.
Mercy's previous life was a nightmare that never ended and Amber was often the only one fully in her corner. Even then, the blonde never let her down…no way in Hell was Amber going to leave her to fight her demons alone.

UP NEXT: Mercy gets her chance to shine in Collisions, Confessions, Conclusions

Glossary
• He doesnae un'erstan'—how could'e un'erstan'?! Run, O'Brien, run awa', 'at's all y'ever dae, 'it's all y'ever dain! Ya got anither chahnce an' ya blew it—ya fookin' skelped'im! Run, ya fud, ya glaikit coward! – He doesn't understand - how could he understand? Run, O'Brien, run away, that's all you ever do, it's all you've ever done! You got another chance and you blew it - you fucking slapped him! Run, you cunt, you stupid coward! Yeah, she's being a right bitch to herself here.
•A'thin' - Everything
•Wiz – Was.
•Ani'thin' - Anything, an odd pronunciation common to some parts of southern Missouri.
•Washin' another woman's fud an' knowin' your brother flanged it - So awkward. Washing another woman's vagina and knowing your brother fucked it.
- 34
- 35
- 36
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

A New Lease on Life