The silence that followed her revelation stretched on for a long enough time that her eyes grew heavy. Admitting all of this (and it wasn't even everything, just the beginning) had exhausted her more than she'd expected. The turtles all stared at her with blank expressions, their eyes unfocused. She'd expected them to blow up on her. Scream and yell and tell her to get the hell out of their home. But they'd done nothing except sit there silently, lost in thought. It made her uncomfortable and jittery.

She hissed as a painful spasm burned through her leg, causing her leg to kick out and off the couch, nearly tagging Mikey in the head.

"Woah!" Mikey's eyes refocused and he tucked his knees underneath him, grabbing ahold of her ankle in a gentle grip. "You alright, Sammy?"

"What's the matter?" Donnie asked, scooting closer and reaching out to place his hand on her shoulder. "Another spasm?" He placed a careful hand on her thigh, feeling it shake through the blanket.

"I'm fine," Sammy grit out between her teeth as another spasm tore through her leg. "It'll pass."

"Yer not fine," Raph grunted.

Leo was the next to speak up. "Tell us what we can do to help."

She blinked up at them, stunned. They were all staring at her with such concern, as if she hadn't told them just moments ago that she was, or had been, a killer. Sammy began to shake her head, "It's alright. I said I'm f-."

"If you say yer fine one more time, I'm gonna get mad." Sammy craned her neck back to look up at the imposing red-banded turtle. He had stood up and moved behind the couch to stand directly over her, his arms crossed over his chest. That scowl on his face would be menacing if not for the soft concern in his light, green eyes.

Her lips turned down into a pout, Sammy dropped her gaze to her lap and mumbled under her breath. "It helps if you…massage it."

"Oh," Donnie said. "Of course. That makes sense." The genius turtle made to pull the blanket open when he stopped and looked up at her, his expression sheepish. "It would, uh, help if I moved the blanket. Is that okay?"

Sammy could only nod. With a small, reassuring smile, Donnie carefully but quickly opened the blankets she'd had wrapped around her and leaned over her to take her trembling thigh in his hands. In this position, the tall turtle hovered over her, her nose practically in his neck. Sammy gasped at the first tentative squeeze of his hands.

Donnie apologized and released her as if he'd been burned, but Sammy shook her head, the tip of her nose accidentally brushing against the corner of his jaw. "N-No, I'm fine," she told him, her voice a little breathless. "Just…sensitive." Which wasn't entirely a lie. Her leg was always sensitive, the nerves ready to scream at any kind of touch. But this time…it was more than that. His touch was…exciting, and she didn't know what to think about that.

"O-Oh, yeah. Okay. Good," he mumbled. He hesitated for only a second before taking hold of her thigh again. "Were you also instructed to have your calf massaged as well?" Donnie asked as he began to knead her thigh with gentle but firm motions.

"Um. Yeah," Sammy answered, struggling to keep her voice neutral.

Donnie nodded, his glasses slipping down a bit on his nose. "Mikey. Since you have her foot, could you massage her calf?"

"Ya, brah! No problem!" The youngest turtle exclaimed, sounding a bit too excited at the request. When his hand curled around her calf and he squeezed, Sammy jumped. "Mikey! Gently."

Mikey smiled in apology. "Sorry, sweetcheeks." He squeezed again, the pressure half what it had been.

As the two turtles worked the rent muscle of her leg, Sammy held the blankets under her with white-knuckled fists. There was some pain, as there always was, but it was immensely pleasurable as well. She struggled to control herself and swallow back the moans that wanted to escape. It never felt like this whenever Casey, Winston, or Kayne would do it, and Sammy tried her best to ignore it. This could spell trouble that she did not need…

"How's that?" Donnie asked her after a couple of minutes, rubbing his thumbs in small circles along the edges of her scar.

"Better," she whispered. "Thank you."

The purple-banded turtle nodded, his lips turned up in a soft smile, as he pulled away and sat back against the couch, close enough that their legs were almost touching. Mikey though didn't move at all. He kept gently massaging her calf with one hand, holding her ankle with the other. He'd scooted closer so that his knees were pressed against the couch and her socked foot was pressed against his lower plastron.

"Um… Mikey?" She whispered.

The turtle looked up at her, his sparkling blue eyes wide and innocent. "Yeah, sweetcheeks?"

"You can, um, let go," she told him, gesturing to her leg with a wave of her hand.

"Are ya sure?" He asked, continuing to rub her leg. "'Cause I can do this all day! I don't mind at all-."

"Mikey." The turtle at her feet looked over at his oldest brother. "Stop being weird," Leo told him.

Frowning, Mikey grumbled, "I'm not bein' weird." He let her go, though but didn't move so that her foot still rested in his lap.

Not wanting to temp anything, Sammy lifted her leg back onto the couch and laid the blankets back over herself. "Thank you both," she said, making sure she caught Mikey's eyes so that he knew she really was grateful. The turtle gave her a crooked grin that had her heart fluttering inside her ribcage.

The sound of something scraping across the floor drew everyone's attention. Leo had pulled his recliner around to the front of the couch and sat down, facing her. "Now, if you could," he said, his gaze serious. "I'd like you to explain what you meant before." Sammy registered movement at her back and she glanced out of the corner of her eye to find Raph returning to his own recliner. "About what They had you doing," Leo continued, bringing her focus back on him.

He seemed reluctant to mention the exact word she'd used so Sammy said it for him. "Exactly what I said - killing." Her voice was quiet and strained and laced with a small amount of shame.

Leo said nothing. He just looked at her, his expression expectant.

Sammy took a deep breath and pushed it back out through her nose, steeling herself for the conversation to come. "They recruited me for what They called a "Ghost Unit". We were assassins basically." She dropped her eyes back to that crack on the floor, unable to meet any of the turtle's eyes. "They used us for everything. Politics. Organized crime. War. We worked outside of the government to eliminate threats that the military or law enforcement couldn't. It's easy when you don't exist. The laws don't apply to you." Sammy scoffed and shook her head.

"And you just…killed whoever they told you to?" Leo asked after she'd gone quiet without realizing it.

Sammy lifted her gaze to the turtle's, meeting his eyes with a hard expression. "I've never spilt a drop of innocent blood if that's what you're asking."

The blue-banded turtle's brow twitched. "How can you be so sure?"

"I made it my business to know who they were sending me to kill," she told him. "I've refused contracts before at my own detriment."

"What do you mean by that?" Donnie asked, his voice barely above a whisper. He sounded scared of the answer.

Sammy swiveled her head to the side just enough to meet Donnie's watery stare. "They didn't allow a refusal of a contract without consequences."

"Is…" Mikey cleared his throat. "Is that how you got those scars?" He whispered.

Shaking her head, Sammy said, "No. They made sure not to scar us. These were from…something else." She trailed off slowly, her vision blurring as she lost focus and her nightmares floated to the surface of her mind.

"What are they from?" The youngest turtle pressed.

Sammy chewed on the inside of her cheek as she considered how best to answer his question. Well, more like how much she actually wanted to tell them. They didn't need her nightmares.

"I won't go into too many…specifics," she began. "But I'll tell you everything pertinent." Sammy's gaze returned to that crack on the floor. It would continue to serve as her anchor for what came next. "There were six of us. Five before I was recruited. All of us but one, myself included, believed we were doing a necessary evil to rid the world of actual evil. At least… That's what we had to tell ourselves to get through each day. Now, our sixth teammate, and I say teammate loosely, was…insane to put it lightly. If there was anyone that enjoyed killing, it was Roman. He was…erratic on his best days, psychotic on his worst. Which was usually the case with him." She could remember, quite clearly, his "killing face", or so they called it; the thin, toothy grin and the manic light in his eyes… It was not a look anyone wanted directed toward themselves. "He couldn't do contracts on his own for fear he'd draw too much attention to himself, so one of us was always paired with him if we weren't on a contract that required the entire team. I just happened to…luck out that last time." That night over a year ago had been the end of her. She just hadn't figured it out until too late. "It was supposed to be a simple contract. Take out a small cell of terrorists in some tiny country. We'd run hundreds of those before. It should have been simple. In and out. I didn't realize until it was too late that the intel was bad."

She and Roman had arrived at the ramshackle warehouse in the middle of nowhere to find it empty. Sammy had realized what was happening too late when she'd felt the stab of a needle in her neck. As she'd fallen to the ground, succumbing to the drugs pumping through her veins, she'd caught Roman's expression - his Killing Face. She had expected to not have woken up that next morning, and a large part of her, for a long time, had wished she hadn't. But to her horror, she had.

"Roman had set me up," she continued, her voice devoid of any emotion. "I'm not sure if he meant to do the same to everyone eventually, or if I just happened to be the unlucky one paired with him that night. I'd never trusted Roman anyway." None of them had trusted Roman. "So, it was stupid of me to allow him to get the drop on me. I woke up from a drug-induced sleep the next morning, strung up to the ceiling of some windowless room." The only light in the room had been that of a few flickering wall sconces, and her nose had burned from the smell of rust and mold. She didn't tell the turtles that she'd been stripped of her clothes and weapons before being strung up. If they didn't already assume that based on the scars they'd seen, she wasn't going to outright admit it. "Roman had sold me out to an…organization that our unit was regularly dispatched to keep in line. I can't say why Roman did it, or what it was they had offered him to do it, but…" Sammy trailed off with a shrug. She'd never bothered to ask Roman why he'd done it before gutting him.

"And then?" Leo hedged when she remained silent, his voice tight.

Sammy's leg trembled. "I was tortured," she answered in a low voice. "I won't bore you with the gory details." Mostly because she'd rather not admit aloud how they'd carved and stripped her flesh. Her scars were evidence enough. "But I suppose you could say I deserved it for all the lives I've taken," she continued, ignoring the growls and gasps of the turtles around her. "Or at least, that's what I'd believed anyway. Still do I guess…"

"No one deserves that," Leo disagreed.

Sammy shrugged, not bothering to look up from the crack on the floor. "Whether that's true or not, it doesn't matter. It still happened, and there's nothing I could have done to have changed it." She could feel their eyes on her like a physical weight, and she rolled her shoulders as if to try and shake them off.

"H-How long were you…you know?" Donnie asked in a trembling voice.

"Well, I couldn't tell the passage of time inside that room," she said. "But after I'd gotten out and was coherent enough to retain information, Kayne told me I'd been missing for eighteen days."

"Eighteen days?!" Raph hissed. "They cut you up fer eighteen days? How'd ya even survive?!"

Sammy tilted her head as she considered the burly turtle's question. "Sheer will I guess. And the fact they wanted to keep me alive for as long as possible to draw it out."

"How'd you get out?" Mikey whispered.

"Kayne," she answered just as quietly.

Sammy had been ready to give up, hours from death, the day Kayne had come barging into the warehouse, guns blazing. She'd awoken to the sensation of her chains rattling and the ground shaking beneath her toes. It had been one of the rare times her tormentor had left her alone long enough for her to actually sleep. She'd heard the gunshots before the yelling, and amidst the chaos, the door to the room had burst open, brilliant white light flooding in and blinding her. Kayne's loud cursing at the sight of her had sent her into a hacking fit of laughter, the relief like a shot of adrenaline.

"Who's Kayne?" Mikey asked, pulling her from her memories.

"One of the members of my unit and my closest friend," she told him with a soft smile. "I'd be dead if he hadn't found me when he did."

Most of her was grateful that he'd found her, but a smaller, louder part of herself wishes he hadn't, wondering if it might have been better for her and everyone else if she'd died that day. Kayne had been furious when she'd admitted that to him. If she hadn't still been recovering at the time, he'd have busted her lip for it.

"And what about the assholes that did this to ya?" Raph asked her. "And that Roman guy?"

"Yeah. What happened to them?" Mikey echoed.

"Everyone in the warehouse was already dead when Kayne carried me out," she explained. "Roman… Roman was harder to track down. He'd disappeared after selling me out. Once I was healed up for the most part, we went in search of him."

Donnie leaned in toward her. "Did you find him?"

She nodded. "Yeah. We did."

"And what did you do?" At Leo's question, Sammy glanced up and met his eyes.

"I gutted him," she said, deciding honesty was the best way to go about answering him. They already knew she was a killer, so it only stood to assume that she'd killed the man that had betrayed her and put her through hell.

Leo didn't react but Raph did, telling her, "Fucker deserved it."

"Yeah!" Mikey agreed.

Sammy glanced between the two turtles, surprised. "I thought you guys don't condone such things as murder."

"No, we don't," Leo told her. "But things happen." He shrugged and Sammy raised a brow at him.

"Yeah," she agreed slowly. "Things happen."

The five of them fell quiet, all lost in their own thoughts. Sammy wondered what it was the turtles thought of her now. Did they think her disgusting? Immoral? Evil? She wished the couch would swallow her whole. Or that she'd just disappear into thin air. She didn't think she could go back to the turtles ignoring her as if she didn't exist.

Donnie's hand on hers made her jump. She looked up at him, confused, as he curled his fingers around her hand and held it. "We're glad you made it out of there," he told her, his voice soft. "Both that warehouse and the Ghost Unit."

He squeezed her hand and Sammy smiled, but it was a pained sort of expression. "So am I," she told him. "So am I." She glanced down at their entwined hands, thinking she was incredibly lucky in that regard. No one left the Unit unless they were dead. She's lucky she hadn't been retired with a bullet between her eyes. Winston had fought tirelessly on her behalf to convince Them to just let her go.

With a sigh, Sammy looked up and met each of the turtle's eyes before telling them, "Thank you." They each raised their brows at her. "For listening and…not judging me. Out loud at least."

"There's nothing to judge," Leo told her. "We might not agree with what you did for work, but the world isn't always black and white." Out of all the turtles, Sammy hadn't expected Leo to be so accepting.

"I'm sure ya rid the world of some nasty assholes anyway," Raph added.

Leo looked over at his brother, unimpressed, while Sammy snorted out a surprised laugh. "Yeah. I suppose I did," she agreed after a moment. She'd hunted the worst of the worst and their faces might haunt her, but she didn't regret ridding the world of them.

Sammy sighed and practically melted into the couch, her hand still tightly gripped in Donnie's. As stressful as that conversation had been, she found herself oddly relieved. Casey had an idea of what she had done for a living and what had happened to cause her sudden retirement, but she'd never once given him any details or any explanation. She wouldn't have been able to stand it if Casey looked at her the way her targets did - with fear. Sammy acknowledged that she was extremely lucky the turtles weren't looking at her that way either.

She felt a pair of arms wrap around the lower half of her legs and glanced down to find Mikey hugging her legs to his chest. He rested his chin on her knees, looking up at her with shining, blue eyes.

"What's the matter, Mikey?" She asked him, reaching out to touch his cheek.

He sighed, the sound impossibly sad. "I just don't like that ya had to go through all that, sweetcheeks." He nuzzled her palm and held her legs tighter. "Or that yer still sufferin' for it."

She brushed the pad of her thumb underneath his eye as she told him, "I appreciate that, Mikey, but I'll work through it eventually. I'm a lot better than I was right after it happened." Sammy pat his cheek before sitting back again, dropping her hand into her lap.

"Are you feeling okay?" Donnie asked her, turning her hand over in his so that he could check her pulse.

"Yeah, just…exhausted." She blinked, the movement sluggish.

"Then you should take a nap," Donnie told her, letting go of her hand and standing up. He adjusted the pillow she'd used before at the end of the couch and then gestured for her to lay down. "Mikey. Let her lay down," he instructed his brother when he didn't release her legs.

The orange-banded turtle did as he was told albeit reluctantly. Sammy gave him a reassuring smile as she maneuvered herself into a comfortable position on the couch, pulling one of the blankets up around her shoulders. She snuggled into her makeshift bed and watched through heavy lids as the turtles all got up and left, all except Leo.

The blue-banded leader crouched in front of her and reached down by her feet for the second blanket she hadn't managed to grab. "We're gonna let you rest," he told her as he tucked the blanket around her with gentle hands. "And then, after patrol tonight, I think we'll all watch a movie together? Sound good?"

Sammy stared at the turtle, perplexed. His attitude had done such a quick one-eighty that it made her head spin. She'd thought that after the tale of her sordid, bloody past he'd be back to not trusting her and giving her the cold shoulder. Apparently, she'd been wrong… She wasn't sure what to say, or if her voice would even work, so she just nodded.

He smiled at her, his eyes gentle. "Alright then," he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze before standing up and walking off.

Feeling strangely content with everything, Sammy allowed her eyes to drift closed as she listened to the quiet voices of the turtles as they milled about the Lair. And this time, as the darkness swallowed her, she wasn't afraid of what awaited her within it.

A loud clang jolted Sammy from her deep sleep. She shot up, instantly on alert, looking about herself with frantic eyes.

A face appeared in front of hers suddenly and she struck out without thinking. "Woah! Woah!" A rough, calloused hand caught hers before she could connect with anything. "I'm a friendly, sweetcheeks!"

Sammy blinked, her eyes actually focusing on the face inches from her own this time. "Mikey?" She asked.

The excitable turtle smiled at her, the expression blinding. "The one and only!" He told her. "Sorry for startlin' ya. We were just settin' up for the movie."

"Movie?" She muttered, glancing over Mikey's shoulder to find Donnie, sans his gear, inserting a DVD into the DVD player. "Right… Movie." Leo had told her they would watch a movie tonight when they got back. Had she really slept all night? This whole actually getting sleep thing felt so strange to her. "When did you guys get back?" She asked, turning her head to look at Raph as he strode into the living room with a soda and a bowl of popcorn in his hands. He offered her a crooked half-grin when he caught her staring. Sammy quickly looked away, ignoring the hot flush to her cheeks which only got worse when she heard the turtle's dark chuckle.

"We got back like thirty minutes ago," Mikey told her.

"Oh," Sammy mumbled.

A sound to her right drew her attention to the recliner where Leo was just taking a seat, a plate with several slices of pizza on it in his hands. He caught her gaze and smiled at her. "Glad to see you're awake," he told her. Sammy just nodded.

Something…was different about all of them tonight. What was it? She glanced at each turtle again, her brows furrowed in concentration. They seemed more…relaxed than normal, but that wasn't what was throwing her off. They were all weaponless which was typical if they were done for the day. So, what was it...-oh! They weren't wearing their masks! Sammy turned to Mikey, staring at him as if it were the first time she'd ever seen him.

He caught her gaze out of the corner of his eye and shifted to face her. "You good?" He asked. "Do I have something on my face?" He quickly lifted the hand that wasn't holding hers to his face, touching it as if expecting to find something there.

Sammy shook her head. "No, you don't," she told him with a soft laugh. "You're just not wearing your mask… I've never seen any of you without them before." Their faces seemed much more…open this way.

"Oh, yeah." Mikey felt around his eyes. "We take 'em off when we're really gonna relax. Is it… Does it look bad?" He asked, his smile faltering.

Shaking her head, Sammy quickly assured him that she thought they looked good without them. "It makes you all look more…open. Relaxed."

"So… You think I look good?" Mikey asked, a shit-eating grin slowly stretching across his face.

The question obviously flustered Sammy, her cheeks burning hotter than before. "Mikey!" Leo admonished, saving her from having to respond. "Leave her alone." Mikey held up his hands and sat back in the spot she'd vacated, that grin still on his face. Once he was satisfied his little brother wouldn't say another word, Leo turned to her. "There's food in the kitchen. Grab what you want and then we'll start the movie."

"We're gonna watch The Fifth Element!" Donnie said excitedly as he stood and walked away from the TV, the previews already rolling on the screen.

His brothers groaned and Raph said, "Really? Another sci-fi, Donnie?"

"Can't we watch somethin' else?" Mikey complained. "Like, I don't know, Fast and Furious or somethin'."

"What's wrong with sci-fi?" Sammy asked, a brow raised in question as she glanced between both Mikey and Raph. "The Fifth Element is one of my favorite movies."

At her declaration, Mikey backpedaled. "It's not that it isn't my favorite too!" His brothers and Sammy looked at him. "I just thought maybe we could watch somethin' different 's all!"

"Oh?" Sammy asked, amused.

Mikey nodded and opened his mouth to say more, but was cut off when he was hit in the face with a barrage of popcorn, a few pieces actually making it into his mouth. He coughed, accidentally inhaling a piece. "H-Hey!" He choked. "Not cool, bro!"

"Then don't lie," Raph told him.

"I'm not lyin'!" Mikey insisted.

His brothers all made noises of disagreement as Sammy got to her feet with a laugh and a shake of her head. Boys… She laughed again, shuffling through the living toward the kitchen. She didn't make it far though because the moment she began to pass by Raphael's recliner, her bad leg suddenly gave out. She threw her hands out to catch herself, but before she could hit the floor, a massive, green arm shot out and caught her around the waist.

"Fuck!" Raph growled, pulling Sammy up and into his lap. "You good?"

"Fine," Sammy grunted. "Leg gave out!" Her voice went up an octave higher as a terribly painful spasm shot down her back and into her leg.

"Shit!" Raph set his popcorn bowl on the small end table beside him, freeing up his hand. Her leg jerked involuntarily as her thigh muscle vibrated. "Hang on," Raph breathed into her ear. He shifted Sammy higher up on his lap so that her back was flush with his front, his arm that he'd caught her with cradling her to him. "I've got ya." The rumbled words sent a shiver down her spine, her breath catching in her throat. With one hand, the big turtle began to massage her trembling leg, careful not to put too much pressure on it.

His touch, like Donnie's, felt sinfully good. It was wrong how much she enjoyed the turtle's touches… But that didn't stop her from doing it. She clutched the forearm secured around her stomach with a force Kayne would have complained about as another spasm thundered through her thigh, but Raphael didn't make a sound, he just held her tighter.

"Damn…" He muttered, his lips, accidentally she assumed, brushing against her ear. "The muscles tight as hell."

"It's because the spasms and tremors are caused by a severe, uncontrollable tightening of the muscle," Donnie explained, reminding her rather forcefully that there was more than just her and Raph in the room.

Sammy's cheeks lit on fire again, the heat spreading down her neck this time. What is wrong with her?! She to not let these things happen and get ahead of these feelings, whatever they were, before she did something stupid.

"I, I think I'm f-fine now, Raph," she murmured although her leg was obviously still having a fit.

The massive turtle she sat on growled in disagreement. "Yer leg is still shakin'. Just give it a minute." And through that minute he continued to knead her thigh until he was satisfied that the shaking and jerking had stopped. Only then did he help her to her feet, his hands lingering on her hips for a tad too long.

Needing to escape, Sammy said a quick, squeaky "thank you" and hobbled into the kitchen as fast as she could. Inside the dim room, mostly hidden by the fridge, Sammy leant against the counter and closed her eyes, trying to control her erratic heart rate. These turtles… They were going to drive her insane. How could all of them make her feel these things? Nervous. Content. Cared for. Happy. Not to mention aroused! It was such a drastic change from how they'd all been only two days ago. Sammy didn't know what to do with any of it, so she shrugged it off the best she could. She couldn't focus on any of it right now.

She took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then pushed it out through her nose. Feeling a little more centered than before, Sammy stood on her toes and reached for a plate in the cupboard above her head. The tips of her fingers just barely brushed the rim of one, pushing it further back onto the shelf.

"Damn it," she grumbled, pressing a hand onto the counter for leverage as she lifted herself as high as she could on her toes.

A warm, solid presence appeared behind her, and an arm reached over her head, skimming along her forearm and hand as it grabbed the plate. "Need help?" The low baritone sent an involuntary shiver down her spine that settled in her core as an uncomfortable but pleasurable warmth.

Sammy took the offered plate with shaking hands. "Th-Thank you," she stuttered, her voice a little too breathless for her liking.

"Of course," Leo rumbled, his breath warm against the crown of her head.

They stood like that for a long moment, Sammy holding the plate to her chest as if it would somehow ground her even as her heart tried to beat out of her chest. When Leo didn't seem like he'd be moving any time soon, she slowly turned around to face him. It took more willpower than she expected to lift her face to his and meet his eyes. He was watching her with an unreadable expression, but his eyes were soft.

"How are you feeling?" He asked her.

Sammy blinked, a little blindsided by the question. "Um… Okay. I'm okay."

His brows dropped, casting his eyes in shadows. "If you're not feeling up to it, we can skip the movie tonight."

"No!" Sammy shook her head. "No. I want to watch the movie. I shouldn't sleep so much anyway." Her body wasn't used to the peaceful rest it had gotten these last two times she'd slept and she was craving it. Any more and she'd become some kind of lazy couch potato.

The oldest turtle didn't look so convinced but he nodded nonetheless. "If you're sure," he told her.

"I am," she murmured.

He smiled at her then, the expression making his piercing blue eyes light up, and Sammy's heart seemed to skip a beat. "I'll help you get your food then. What would you like to drink?" He asked her as he stepped away to open the fridge. "We've got water and…" Leo bent a bit to peer at the bottom shelf. "A buttload of Orange Crush."

"I guess I'll take an Orange Crush," she said with a quiet laugh as she put a slice of cheese pizza on her plate. She hadn't had that type of soda since she and Casey were kids.

"You got it." Leo grabbed a can of soda for her and stood, closing the fridge. "After you," he told her as he took a step back, gesturing for her to go ahead of him.

Sammy muttered a quiet "thanks" as she limped past him. He followed close behind her, close enough that she could feel his warmth. Striding into the living room, she was hyper-aware of each turtle's stare as Leo led her to the couch where Mikey and Donnie sat, a small space just wide enough for her between them. Sammy only hesitated for a second before squeezing herself onto the couch. The space they'd left for her ensured that the two were plastered to either side of her, their heat seeping through her clothes and causing goosebumps to rise up all along her skin. Leo paused in front of her long enough to set her soda down at her feet before going back to his recliner.

"Alright!" Mikey exclaimed with a clap. "Let's get this movie started!"

Donnie pressed play on the remote and the opening scene of the movie began. Within the first ten minutes, Sammy was already finished with her food, having eaten so quickly out of hunger and nervousness. She bent over to set her empty plate on the floor and pick up her soda. After popping the top as quietly as she could, Sammy tucked her knees to her chest and settled in the best her nerves would allow. She found her focus on the movie lacking as all of it was directed towards the two turtles pressed into her sides. She'd never felt so small in her entire life. Or this wound up! She was sure they could all hear the rabbiting of her heart, even over the sound of the movie. It was embarrassing…

Her tense posture and the constant nervousness fluttering in her stomach quickly sent her leg into another small fit. Sammy tried to hide it the best she could, shifting a bit on the couch to try and create some space between her and the turtles.

It didn't work though because Donnie leant over to whisper in her ear. "Are you alright, Sammy?" He placed his hand lightly atop her thigh and she jumped at his touch, her chest practically seizing as her heart jumped to her throat. "Another fit?" Sammy hummed her affirmation, taking a nervous sip of her drink as she did. "Here. Stretch out your legs. It can't be good to have your leg in that position." He didn't wait for her to do as he asked or even agree to it, he just took hold of her ankles and pulled her legs across his lap.

Sammy yelped at the sudden change of position which caused her to fall back against Mikey. The youngest, fun-loving turtle didn't say a word, he just shifted enough so that her head was resting comfortably on his shoulder. He placed his cheek atop her head with a soft, satisfied sigh. Sammy's leg twitched sharply, reacting to her new and unfamiliar predicament.

"Just relax, Sammy," Donnie told her, his tone gentle as he began to massage her leg.

His fingers pressed into her ruined muscle deliciously, easing her trembling leg into stillness. Despite her nervousness, Sammy felt herself relaxing against the brothers. She couldn't help it. While Donnie hugged her legs to his stomach, one hand on her good thigh while the other continued to rub her damaged one, Mikey nuzzled into her hair and took hold of her hand, rubbing his thumb over the top of it. She really shouldn't have let them but…not a single cell in her body felt like telling them to stop.

As the movie played on, Sammy's eyes grew heavier and heavier until she couldn't keep them open any longer and she drifted off to sleep once again.

Leo glanced out of the corner of his eye at the couch, shaking his head at the sight his brothers made. He wanted to think he disapproved of their advances towards Sammy, but he couldn't. Not with the jealousy currently souring his stomach. He wished he were the one on the couch, holding the tiny woman in his arms as she slept. And if the glower on Raph's face was anything to go by, he was wishing the same thing. At least he had gotten to hold her! Even if it was only for a short while. Leo hadn't been presented with such an opportunity yet, although, there was a chance he'd probably do nothing even if he was.

Sammy and he didn't exactly have…a friendly relationship. He'd only been trying to protect his family, but his initial distrust of her certainly hadn't worked in his favor. There had never been any hate on his end, not that Sammy believed that. He'd played his part well. Despite all that though, she seemed to have warmed up to him at least a little bit. Hopefully it was enough to continue to change her opinion of him. He didn't want to be the only one that hadn't garnered her favor when his brothers (himself included) made their intentions known.

As he watched her, her eyes flickering underneath their lids, he wondered how she would react to their advances. Would she welcome them? Or rebuff them? She would no doubt be shocked, especially at the seemingly suddenness of it all. But for him and his brothers? It wasn't sudden in the least. From the first time they'd seen her, they'd found her undeniably attractive, and as they'd gotten to know her, mostly through Casey and the few times they'd personally met her, she'd proven herself a worthy woman to love (not that they loved her yet but he was positive that would come with time).

Sammy was strong. Fearless. Protective. She had a surprising sense of humor, and a kind, soft smile. She'd never once judged them or even reacted to their appearance. From that first night, she'd treated them like any other person. It was a trait that had quickly endeared her to not only his brothers but Leo himself. But Sammy was also a little bit broken… She needed to heal. And he hoped that he and his brothers could have a hand in that. If she'd have them.

Author's Note

Woo! LONG chapter. I did not expect it to be so long! But I guess I was just really feeling this chapter. We're getting somewhere with Sammy's relationship with the turtles. Let's see where it leads ;)