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A New Lease on Life	By : Ghost-of-a-Chance Category: +S through Z > Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Views: 3159 -:- 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
- 41
- 42
- 43
Suggested Listening: AFI "Demo—Synesthesia," 3 Doors Down "Let me be Myself," Breaking Benjamin "Angels Fall," Lifehouse "Hanging by a Moment"

41: Standing on the Borderline
Dreams aren't known for making sense, but this one takes the cake. Empty beer cans carpet the floor and the whole mobile home reeks of uncleaned litter boxes and piled trash. From her shadowed corner, Amber scans the dark parlor in dismay, her eyes ultimately drawn to the lump curled up under a black and green Granny Square afghan on the even lumpier sofa.
Aaron. She flinches at the sight of him. He's always been lazy about grooming beyond the usual showering and hair washing, and he always refuses to shave outside Summer unless threatened with physical violence…this Aaron has gone far beyond those tendencies. His blond corkscrew curls are matted and slick with grease and grit. His beard and mustache have grown into a single tangled mess—he's long left behind his usual lumberjack appearance and is pushing toward homeless. He absolutely reeks of heavy liquor—liquor he would never have touched before she died. Mercy claimed he was handling her death as well as he could…so why is he falling apart?
Right before her eyes, Amber's friend stumbles from the sofa to the front door. Lightning splinters the sky, sending goosebumps parading up and down her arms and chills racing down her spine. "Aaron, it's alright," she tries to soothe, but no words come of it—she is, as always in dreams of this nature, invisible, inaudible, and incorporeal.
He shambles out the back door and down the rickety wooden steps, never noticing the ghost following him every step of the way or hearing her pleas for him to turn back. Rain pelts their skin, stinging like a shower of nails. Still, he wanders into the bedraggled field he calls a backyard. Shouting drunken obscenities, he demands the impossible—demands that God bring Amber back, bring Mercy back, put everything back the way it is supposed to be.
Lightning crashes. Thunder rolls. Torrents of rain and hail fall from the skies, the wind picking up until it moans and howls in the treetops. Through it all, the drunken blond shouts and screams at the roiling sky, never hearing the pleas of his unseen, unheard friend. Finally, as though realizing his actions have no effect, he falls to his knees in the mud, sobbing brokenly. Amber lays a hand on his shoulder, trying to reach him. Aaron startles. His lungs still, his eyes wide, he seems to work up the nerve to acknowledge something.
Hoping, fearing, dreading and praying, he turns his face to the shoulder she holds, his eyes widening but not meeting hers. "A-Amber?" he stammers, passing his hand through hers to touch his shirtsleeve and visibly struggling with himself. "I felt—I felt you—are you there? –Tell me you're there!"
"I'll always be here," she answers though she knows he cannot hear her. "I've always been here—just stay strong." Doubt narrows his off-kilter blue eyes, and she heaves an exasperated sigh. She can't interact with him…but maybe…
A moment after he first felt the strange presence, Aaron Willis' answer appears in the form of his back door violently swinging open and whacking against the siding. There is his answer…he begged for proof that she is still there, and she told him to get his arse out of the rain. Finally, he feels sure he can manage to live on, if only for another day. As the back door swings shut behind him another loud crack of lightning splits the air. Even as the storm worsens and terror creeps along her nerves, the invisible brunette feels comforted that if nothing else, her friend isn't stuck out in the rain.
August 29th, long before dawn
The bizarre dream still running amok in her head, Amber took the only course she could think of—she wandered into the kitchen to put the kettle on the boil. She never expected to see Mercy slouched over at the table…clearly, she wasn't the only one in the Lair suffering sleep interruptions, though Mercy's struggles were clearly more physical than mental.
It was amazing the amount of progress the blond was making, really, and Amber couldn't be more proud of her. Donna Mays' body was an addict, hooked on something Mercy would never have wasted her time on, but Mercy was making the best of what she had. For the most part, she was doing well. Every now and then, though, she'd struggle again—just like tonight, she'd find herself staring down a bottle of poison and forcibly reminding herself why she had to stay clean. She hated alcohol, hated everything about it, but her body craved it like a junkie craving a fix.
"Rough night?" Amber asked instead of acknowledging the untouched bottle of bourbon on the table; the wax seal was unbroken, so she told her insistent worrying to take a hike.
"Nothin' I ain't beaten before," Mercy admitted, shoving the bottle across the table and nearly onto the floor; just in time, Amber caught it and swept it away, stashing it back under the sink again. "What about you? You're up pretty early."
"Just a nightmare," the brunette admitted lightly as she filled the kettle, "nothing serious." Silence filled the room for a while—a tense silence, not the comfortable kind she and Mercy were prone to lapsing into. "You mentioned before that you went to my funeral." She shot a shrewd glance to the now squirming blonde. "How'd Aaron handle it, Mercy? How was he handling everything?"
"Uh…" Mercy hesitated, but then soldiered onward—she never could lie to Aaron or Amber to save her skin! "He's handling it the best he can—he lost both his best friends, you know, but he's a tough cookie—he'll bounce back in no time." Denim blue skittered away from grey-green, fixing on the ferns lining the table. "Don't worry about Willis, a'right? He'll be fine…an' we can't exactly do anything to help anyway."
There it was—that single small insistence was proof. Amber froze, heedless of the cold water pouring down the side of the kettle; as if the strange dreams weren't enough, now she had proof that Mercy was hiding something from her. Mercy was a terrible liar. "What about Gran'da?" Amber asked lowly. "What about our families?" Mercy shook her head viciously, her shaggy blonde hair growing even more disheveled from the gesture.
"I a'ready told you," she insisted weakly. "Your family's fine—Aaron is fine—there's nothing to worry about!" Lie. Lie. Another lie! Amber clutched the handle of the kettle with everything she had; suddenly she didn't feel like tea anymore. "…Amber?"
"I'm goin' back to bed," Amber declared shortly dumping out the kettle and setting it aside. "It's too damn early an' the guys are gonna be out'a town until tonight either way." Shortly afterward, she curled into Donnie's pillow, her thoughts a chaotic tangle. Weekly dreams of Aaron suffering…Mercy's insistence that he was fine…nothing made sense anymore, nothing but the sweetly familiar aroma of coffee, spice, and clean grease filling her lungs. Nuzzling into his pillow and inhaling deeply, she hoped the smell would calm her fears and silence her worries.
She never did fall back asleep.
The bell over the door jingled merrily, but the atmosphere inside Red Fern Florist was anything but merry. For a moment, Mercy felt she had somehow managed to walk into the wrong florists'…then she caught sight of Abilene Whitaker's brightly dyed hair poking up between two tall shelves. Plum purple today—though her hair was almost rarely the same color—or colors—from one visit to the next, that shade of warm dark purple was a familiar shade on her head, as were the side-swept bubblegum pink highlights visible on approach. Unusually sarcastic grumbling reached Mercy, concerning her even more; Abby was always worrisomely well-behaved and sweet as sugar, even to the old biddies who loudly judged her over the roses and gardenias she happily sold them.
"Something wrong?" The storekeeper squeaked in surprise and jumped straight up in the air, upsetting a planter of Maidenhair ferns. Mercy caught it without any forethought; perhaps living with ninjas was wearing off on her. After the requisite—and incredibly awkward—greetings were out of the way, she followed Abby up to the checkout counter silently, wondering about the defeated expression the woman wore. Over the next few minutes, the blonde pretended to examine a seedling catalog on the counter and the story was explained by the tired woman puffing on an e-cigarette despite a ban on e-cig use in enclosed public places. The search for a new hire to cover Abby's increased hours failed and after a full semester of burning the candle at both ends, even after dropping two classes to lighten the load, the young woman was contemplating calling it quits on the beauty school front.
"If I'm too busy worrying about Red Fern," Abby admitted quietly, "that's focus I'm not able to expend on my studies. The beauty academy sounds like an easy degree…then you go through it and realize it's a lot of work. If I can't get a break on this end, I'm gonna have to take a semester off…and I worry if I do, that I won't go back…I'll never accomplish my goal if I'm stuck in this place."
Her goal, Mercy knew from past talks, was to join her fiancée as a stylist at The Mane Event salon uptown. Cherie was a genius with hair dye in its many forms; Abby was a whiz at cuts and styles. Together, they were unstoppable...but one was currently stuck in what she saw as a dead-end job—manning the counter at her family's shop. The air buzzed with uncomfortable silence, and Mercy knew the younger woman was about to take things much farther than their short acquaintance would allow. She was giving off the same signs Amber did when Amber brought up unpleasant subjects…and Amber was one of Mercy's oldest friends.
"Well, spit it out," she urged dryly. "Ya got somethin' to say, so say it."
"Just come back to work, Donna!" In that name, Mercy could almost hear the sound of a needle scratching across a record. What?! "No matter what you did, Mom'll forgive you—you're family to us!" Time passed unnoticed, Abby fixing a pleading gaze on Mercy, and the blonde struggling to find some way—any way—to respond to her. It never once occurred to her that she might be drawn to this little shop for any reasons other than the comforting feeling it gave her—was that reaction a matter of nurture rather than nature? Did she continually find herself drawn here because of Donna's body, rather than because it was a source of color in the endless grey of the Big Apple? Her head hurt with the implications.
"I…think you have me mistaken for someone else," she finally attempted. "My name's Mercy—I'm…I don't remember anything before New Year's Eve this year—that's when I woke up under that overpass." Somehow her insistence became an admission she wasn't ready to voice.
"You're Donna Mays," Abby insisted softly, her hazel eyes bright with unshed tears. "You were hired fresh out'a high school and worked here through college…then you got word about—about your family…you started drinking to cope and showing up to work hungover." Mercy shook her head in denial, her heart pounding, and backed away toward the door. With every step away, though, Abby took another toward her, insisting, pleading, begging. "Mom took it hard when she had to fire you…then you just vanished!" Mercy clutched at her head feigning confusion. It wasn't hard—what were simply words to the sweet shopkeeper were turning around everything Mercy thought she knew!
"No…this can't be…I'm Mercy, not some Donna person!" To add on to the amnesiac who's having their brain broken illusion, she let her voice grow shrill in her denial. "This can't be—I can't—" Forcing her eyes to go wild and frantic to mimic someone backed into a corner, she took in a deep, shaky breath. "Igottago."
"Donna, wait!" Abby cried out to her, but Mercy felt only the thudding of her sneakers on the pavement. Several streets down, she ducked into an empty alley, bewildered and suddenly bone-tired. Tell her to hide something from her closest friends and she couldn't lie her way out of a paper bag, but oh-ho-ho, ask her to fake someone else out and she was an ace!
Who would ever have thought that she would not only run into someone who knew her body's reckless and drunken former occupant, but that this whole time, she was frequenting that occupant's former place of employment?! The awkwardness was at nuclear levels! Silently spearing her fingers through her shaggy blonde hair, she thought back over the countless times she'd frequented Red Fern—the numberless times she'd chatted with Abby Whitaker while trying to convince herself no, she did not need another fern or philodendron! What, she thought with a grumble, aloe, ferns, and philodendrons always reminded her of the few years before Clarity got hung up over Mercy having a twat, so sue her!
Though she fought the realization, she had to admit it: in all those visits, she couldn't recall once that Abby had used the name she'd been given. The perky shopkeeper always called her by one of many affectionate and overly familiar pet-names—Doll, Sugarlips, and Pun'kin to name a few. She always thought it was just one of Abby's oddities—a tendency to treat even total strangers as besties—but was she really just skirting around using the name Mercy gave her? Was she really so close to Mercy's now-deceased body-mate that she wouldn't see her any differently?
Half a year had passed since she awoke under that bridge, but life was only becoming more twisted and tangled by the day.
The Hardys' Loft
The smooth, dulcet tones of Bink Krosby filled the loft with warmth. At the stove in the small kitchen, a spunky brunette in a frilly pink apron swayed in time with the crooning from the speakers. A glass of lemon-water in one hand and the other occupied with stirring a glass pan of chocolate melting on the stove, Briallen savored the rare, calm, contented mood. Naturally, something had to ruin it. The sudden blaring of her phone startled her, and in that startle, she spilled water right into the molten chocolate.
"Ohnononononononono!" she protested trying to scrape the chocolate away from the puddle of water but to no avail. Right before her eyes, it curdled into a gritty solid mass—the brazil nuts on the counter wouldn't be getting dipped after all. Even if she wasn't upset over the ruined dipping chocolate, the name popping up on the screen made her blood boil. "Oh, GAH! Oh, for the love of—This had better be good, Leonardo!" she spat into the rhinestone-encrusted phone propped between her ear and shoulder. "You owe me a whole block of Ghirardelli dark!"
"You were baking?" Leo asked sheepishly.
"Dipping nuts," Bree admitted digging her fingers in between her scrunched-shut eyes. "Next semester's my last and it's gonna be a doozy—making junk food is my coping skill, so sue me!"
"I meant no offense." She could practically see his placating hands up don't strangle me! gesture, along with the boyish grin he seemed to think would soothe her ruffled feathers. He wasn't entirely wrong…that particular crook of the lips on his orange-masked brother led to the bathroom's first christening. Sucking in a slow, calming breath through her nose, she silently counted all the reasons why losing her temper was a bad idea…unfortunately, Bev likes him was the only reason she could think of. It was looking pettier by the moment.
With a tired sigh, she switched off the stove, scrunched her curly brown hair back across her scalp and tried again. Perhaps he had a good reason for calling her…but then again, did he ever call her when he wasn't being an idiot? "Lay it on me, Skagbait," she offered wandering out into the parlor to greet her more subdued cousin. "What's eating ya?"

The Garden
"What's going on?" Bree's demand—voiced in the doorway of the Railyard—echoed off the walls like a cartoon character's yodeled fall. Her intentionally grumpy entry into the garden-in-progress was met by a shake of the head and sigh of defeat from Splinter. "Leo called me in a panic because no one's answering their phones!" Absolutely covered head to toe in potting soil and mud, Mercy grinned but put her finger to her lips for silence, pointing mischievously toward the other brunette. Perched on the edge of a rail bed already lined with rock and gravel, Amber was grinning at her phone screen and blushing like crazy at the face on the other side of the connection.
"So it wasn't the air filter, it wasn't a clog in the runoff pipes, and it wasn't something in the air conditioner itself," Donatello wondered aloud on the other end. "Then why was the unit draining all over the foundation?"
"Algae," Amber laughed, rolling her eyes as Bree approached silently. Amber asked the same question when what they were discussing occurred, but her demand was much more frantic, irritated, and obscenely-worded; of course, she was the lucky sonuvagun who got to clean up after the ancient window unit flooded her crawlspace. In hindsight, it revealed a crack in the foundation—too small to see without inspection but large enough for water to seep through. "Summer's always really humid in Muh-zur-ruh but that one was a whopper, an' I was runnin' that beast nonstop—it developed algae in the drain pan, an' that made the water runoff just pour right out!"
"Hey, Bree!" The greeting came from the leanest of the four mutant brothers, a genius currently sprawled across a faded vinyl lounge next to the pond. "How's Beverly?" The genius brought his drink back up and snagged the straw, sucking out the very last dregs. Bree couldn't hold back a snort of laughter at the hollow sound or the sight of a lethal warrior holding a dinky little juice box, noisily pulling at the straw with pursed lips and hollowed-out cheeks. "What?" As sore as her cheeks felt, she was sure her face was turning red.
"BAY-BEE-CAKES!" Donnie squawked in protest as his younger brother literally dove over the back of the chair and wriggled his way into the view of the screen, all the while pantomiming kisses at Bree. "Oh, I miss you - Do you miss me? I wish you were here, this place blows without you!" The mushy turtle went on and on telling Bree everything she was missing out on—as if she wasn't used to not seeing him for weeks! At first, Don struggled under Mikey's unexpected weight—and the squirming lump on his lap—and ducked the pair of bare feet swinging wildly in his face and nearly clocking him with every swing—then, without warning he shoved the hyperactive turtle off his lap…right into the pond.
"Hey, Skype with your own phone!" the genius ordered as their significant others cracked up. "You have unlimited data for a reason!" Once the hilarity was over and Mikey was sulking off to dry out his sodden board shorts, Bree wandered away and Donnie's confident smirk softened. "I've missed you, Braids," he admitted to the only brunette still in view. "It's been hard sleeping at night—have you still been doing okay over there?"
"Aside from bein' sore an' skint?"♦ She gave a one-armed shrug. "Meh. I'll sleep when I'm dead." As she—too late—suspected, this led Donnie to protest anew Casey's refusal to allow the girls to join them at his grandmother's farmhouse—or, more specifically, Mercy and Amber. The vigilante didn't really know Beverly and Briallen yet, and as such, hadn't been asked about the cousins accompanying the brothers; he was asked if Mercy and Amber could come with but shot the idea down without hesitation. That protest was—as every time before—met with reminders to be patient, that Casey had every right to refuse anyone he so chose, and that someday he might allow her and Mercy to tag along for the groups' trips to the farm if he wasn't harassed over it. "Like it or not," Amber reminded Donnie, "I've still got a bleatin' gang sign in my cleavage—it's fadin' out, but it's a reminder to him, too."
"Gang sign or not," Donnie mumbled, "what it's inked on is pretty nice." Her suspicion that she hadn't heard him correctly went straight out the window at his teasing grin and wink. A scarlet blush spread from her hairline downward, all the way to the still-blistered tattoo on her chest.
"Must I repeat that lesson about respect?" The sarcastic jab made Donnie startle and nearly follow Mikey's path into the pond.
"S-Sorry, Sensei!" the mutant stammered as Amber smacked her palm over her face in embarrassment. Last she saw, the rat was knee-deep in mulch at the other end of the Garden; of course, he'd sneak up the moment one of his sons 'let their hair down.' A too-shrewd deadpan pinned Amber like a still-fluttering moth on a foam board. He clearly knew the blame wasn't all on Donatello and was—at least she thought—silently shaming her for not pulling the offended southern belle act. Oh, Masta' Splinta! I don't know nuttin' 'bout makin' no babies! Yeah…Scarlett O'Hara wouldn't have been convinced either.
"We should be home shortly after sunset," Donnie reminded her with a sheepish grin and neck grab. "Thanks to that box trailer, we can leave while the sun's out…and—" A sudden noise she couldn't hear drew his attention off-screen and his nostrils flared. Amber couldn't help comparing the occurrence to the last time he pinned her to the sheets; her skin burned as her brain did a gleeful swan dive into the gutter. When his bright eyes met hers again, they were paired with a sheepish smile and scalp scratch. "Sounds like Casey's finally moved on from cussing at the grill to butchering lunch—I'd better get the fire extinguisher."
Time crawled after Amber's conversation with Donnie; evening couldn't come soon enough.
Late that night
Sometimes people never got a chance to revisit their moments of weakness. Sometimes a fear would never be conquered and a tragedy never moved beyond. Then again, once in a great while, something – be it karma or fate – would reorder the world in such a way that mortals had no option but to submit to the forces at work. This, Amber knew without a doubt, was one such time…and she wasn't quite sure how she felt about that.
In one ear, Casey vehemently reminded April that she was trouble—a Purple Dragon, a snake in the grass, and putting on as though she wasn't really Kimber all along—she was trouble through and through. In the other ear, April argued that even if the brunette wasn't telling the truth—if she still was Kimber—this might be the only shot they had at breaking her out of her new-life-new-world delusions. On the other hand, if she really was who she claimed to be, this might be the only way of proving it. More raised voices joined the din—Donatello and Leonardo coming to her defense and Mikey trying to defuse the figh. If Raphael hadn't followed Mercy to the garden for some much-needed 'welcome home' necking, she suspected a fourth and fifth voice would sound with the rest, although much louder and with far more cursing. Only Splinter remained silent, choosing to observe without interference. Amidst the angry din filling the living area, Amber was frozen—torn between the nightmarish past, the saccharine present, and the uncertain, ever-feared future.
This world, too, had a Willsdale, Missouri. This Willsdale, like her own, experienced the storm to end all storms—an EF-5 tornado—but not five years ago, not when her Willsdale was torn to bits by an EF-4 and an EF-5, just over a week apart. This world's Willsdale only endured one tornado—an EF-4 that cut deep tracks across the city limits and a few less rural miles—and it occurred shortly after school ended that year. That Willsdale's high-school-slash-junior-high-slash-bingo-hall was barely touched by the monster storm, but the elementary school and City Hall were leveled. Worst yet, the New World Willsdale's death count was much, much higher…and thanks to the childcare center and nursing home in the path, a disproportionate number of those lost were children and elderly.
All those books left to ruin…all those nights of weeping over the books, the trees, and the history-packed building she loved…and now she knew her Willsdale was absurdly lucky. The Fall-Winter Semester would begin on September fifth with barely 2/3 of the students of the year before. A ceremony—complete with speeches and a symbolic moment of silence—was planned for the exact time when Willsdale's students' lives were turned upside down.
That ceremony brought the whole story full-circle, back to the room full of grown-ass adults arguing at the top of their lungs over one who couldn't speak in her own defense. When disaster first struck the small town deep in this world's Missouri Ozarks, it was touted as one of the worst disasters of its time; a darker, bitter part of Amber wondered if being a bigger city would have made it 'more disastrous.' In the usual fashion of leaders, the President of the United States came to survey the damage, express regret over the death count, and pose for the press shaking hands and staring at the wasteland that was once Willsdale. That president was seeking re-election the next year and desperate for votes—desperate enough to revisit a small town and give a speech before Willsdale high school in honor of the many students and staff who would never return. Reporters from every corner of the States would be attending, bringing news home with them, and April was selected to represent her new bosses: EFX-NYC, or, more colloquially known as "Channel 9." Without even thinking about how the others might react, she invited Amber to tag along, if only to act as an Otherworldly tour guide.
The president was speaking at Willsdale…people were coming from every corner of the country to stand with them in their time of regrowth. Was Amber's Willsdale given such honors? Were her neighbors and home granted such pomposity and ceremony? Or were they, as she feared, simply swept under the rug, pooh-poohed by the world at large for not having stronger structures, and altogether forgotten? There was no way to know for certain. If nothing else, visiting this Willsdale might bring Amber some closure…and Casey was entirely against it, convinced it was a needless risk and that Amber would surely "shank Ape da moment dey crossed da state line." She felt a bit too numb to even respond to that accusation.
A new noise broke through the din—the ticking of a distant clock—but the others showed no sign of hearing it. The day Amber died, she was in shock—numb to all internal and external forces—the only thing that broke through that shock was a gut feeling that she had to see her school, she had to see its library. She followed that gut feeling, and it led her to her death; perhaps, knowing that, upon feeling the same gut feeling calling her to the Lab, she should've run the other way? Nevertheless, she followed it like siren-song from a rocky shore.
The din behind her dulled under the blood pounding in her ears at the sight before her: that infuriatingly confusing glass vial was glowing again. Right before her eyes, the Freaky Space Glitter gleamed like a dying star—brightening and dimming in time with the ticking reverberating against her eardrums and echoed by her heartbeat. Moss green eyes scanned the Lab warily, checking every dark corner for some hidden trickster or strange force, and found none. Without a word, she reached out and touched the specimen vial—felt the cold glass and the inexplicable warm pulse of its contents—and steeled her nerves.
She was always running…always hiding... She was done running and hiding—whatever came for her, well, she would damn well meet it head on like the strong woman her Gran'da raised! She never noticed the racket in the room beyond the lab or the mutant genius watching her nearby.
Donatello stood unsteadily in the doorway, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, torn between confusion and worry. Confusion, that he could explain by his lover's silent and single-minded approach of the vial he kept under constant surveillance. Worry…now that emotion was harder to pin down. He worried at her mental state—somewhere between empty and intense—worried at how she didn't seem to register anything beyond that damnable glowing dust. Most of all, he worried that their time was up, that whatever unexplained phenomena drew her from her world to his was about to take her back out of it.
"I know yer there." Donnie startled at the sudden accusation, at first, missing that Amber had voiced it to thin air. "I knuw yer watchin' us,"♦ she repeated addressing the strange force she could not see, her speech twisting and her volume increasing by the phrase to a near-yell, then almost to a harpy-shriek. "Yar beein' such a sleekit creeper, ya arsehole! Quit fookin' hidin'! Tell me whot tae dae!"♦ The words—twisted, brogue-gruff words Donnie understood but had only ever heard from the Amber in his dreams—softened into a painful croaking plea.
"Palease…tell me whot tae dae,"♦ she begged falling roughly to her hands and knees and clenching her fingertips on the concrete floor as though fearing it would buck her off. Amber O'Brien, the woman from another world, was at the end of her rope and hanging on for dear life. The light emitting from the stoppered vial brightened and dimmed as before; it had no answer. "Ah doonae want ti go,"♦ the broken woman on the floor admitted tiredly. "Thurs nothin' in the world Ah wan' less…but ef Ah go…ef Ah see fer meself…"♦ A calm settled over her, steeling her nerves and stiffening her spine; right before the genius at the door, the woman on the floor went from broken to determined. "Ef Ah go," she asked the unhearing dust, her words sharp with warning. "…well ya take me 'wae? Or well ya lemme stay here—stay'ere with Dunnie?"♦
"You seriously think I have a choice here?" The words—spoken in an uncomfortably familiar feminine voice—sent Donnie flying into action. He slammed the door and bolted it shut, and dove to the Lair's security-system control panel. With the press of a ridiculously convenient button, the entire Lair was completely locked down—the owner of the voice had nowhere to run. Just as happened the day the strange visitor left shimmering dust on the bathroom floor, though, she got away, taking with her the inexplicable glow in the vial and the unseen ticking clocks. All she left behind was another pile of glimmering dust right in front of Amber—shimmering unworldly glitter framing empty spaces in the shape of high-heeled bootprints. Within moments, the evidence vanished into the æther.
When the mutant and the Otherworlder emerged from the Lab, April was beside herself with worry. Before she could get out a single word, Amber cut it off. "Ah—I have to go back," she admitted, catching herself quickly after her slight fumble. April and Casey exchanged a bewildered glance, both caught off-guard by the quick recovery from her brogue-twisted shouting in the Lab. "I've gotta see Willsdale—it's not the one I left behind an' it ain't the one I died in, but there's no doubt in my mind I've gotta see it for myself."
"What?!" Casey snapped, but Amber shot him a perplexing smile before he could launch into another round of shouting.
"Someone's gotta keep your arses out'a Meth-Lab Motel," she reminded with a humoring shrug, "and no one can show ya around like a local." Casey sputtered in rage but was otherwise incapable of wording another argument. Moss green eyes met a pair of refractive hazel ones over Amber's shoulder, both saying words that their owners weren't quite ready to speak.
I love you, my Sweet Speccy.
I love you, my Crazy Celt.

UP NEXT: the end of the beginning and the beginning of the rest in Full Circle

GLOSSARY because this chapter's a doozy!
♦ Skint – Scots financially broke.
♦ I know yer there - I knuw yer watchin' us – I know you're there - I know you're watching us.
♦ Yar beein' such a sleekit creeper, ya arsehole! – You're being such a sneaky creeper, you asshole!
♦ Quit fookin' hidin'! – Quit fucking hiding!
♦ Palease…tell me whot tae dae – Please…tell me what to do…
♦ Ah doonae want ti go - Thurs nothin' in the world Ah wan' less - I don't want to go – there's nothing in the world I want less than to go!
♦ Ef Ah go…ef Ah see fer meself…well ya take me 'wae? Or well ya lemme stay here—stay'ere with Dunnie? - …but if I go…if I see for myself…will you take me away? Or will you let me stay here? –stay here with Donnie?
TL;DR: Amber is so completely messed up by the idea of losing Donnie AND going to ANY Willsdale that she mentally regressed back to her old habits of speech (much worse than when teasing Donnie or too pissed to think straight) and she didn't even realize it until after the fact. This dialogue is pretty indicative of how Amber talked before she took on the 'twang' of her neighbors to fit in better. (Not that it WORKED…) This assuming a new identity to fit in is something she has in common with Kimber Bryant though she doesn't know it.
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A New Lease on Life