Chapter Twelve:
Nettle

"cruelty"

Disclaimer: I do not own the series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Like, at all. It and all its respectable characters are © to Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, and ViacomCBS and Nickelodeon. However, all writing contents and semi-plots here are © to me, unless it is stated otherwise. All shows/ books/ video games/ songs that are mentioned in this chapter are all © to their respective owners, I do not own them.

Summary: When Shay moved out of Los Angeles to Montana with her kids, it was to be closer to her family. She had a house, good friends and family support, and a paying job, even if her boss is a nightmare. They had a routine and it wasn't much, but it was still good enough. That all changed when the mutant turtle brothers show up in her life. Just how far will she and her kids go to protect them from the tight knit community? And more importantly, to help them get home?

Notes: To my readers, I am so, so sorry I haven't replied to any of y'all at all. I feel like a jerk, and I'm so sorry if that's the impression I gave. I allowed for this story to sit and fester—and what's worse, I left y'all hanging. Thank you to The butterflies for your lovely, heartfelt, and personal messages and I wish I could have replied so much sooner. To all my other guests, thank you for reaching out!

Is it running in our blood? Is it running in our veins?
Is it running in our genes? Is it in our DNA?
Humans aren't gonna behave as we think we always should
Yeah, we can be bad as we can be good

Underneath it all, we're just savages
Hidden behind shirts, ties, and marriages
How could we expect anything at all?
We're just animals still learning how to crawl

We live, we die, we steal, we kill, we lie
Just like animals but with far less grace
We laugh, we cry like babies in the night
Forever running wild in the human race

Another day, another tale of rape
Another ticking bomb to bury deep and detonate
I'm not the only one who finds it hard to understand
I'm not afraid of God, I am afraid of man
—"Savages" by Marina and the Diamonds

She was aware of the pain. It pulsed in time with the beat of her heart. It ebbed and flowed with the pounding at her temples. Something was ticking, faintly. Tick, tick, tick—like a clock. Shay groaned, which devolved into a coughing fit. She was pressed against something, and it was digging into her chest with her head propped awkwardly against it. It took a moment for her to twitch her fingers to life, and to flex her legs, her feet. Nothing felt wrong, except for an achy twinge across her lap. A seatbelt.

It came to her then, where exactly she was.

She was in her truck. She'd been…driving. Or about to drive, at any rate.

Her eyes fluttered open and she braced her arms against the steering wheel, pushing herself away to collapse against her seat. She stared ahead through the windshield, not completely comprehending what it was at first. Shay traced over the spiderweb cracks that had bloomed across the glass, blinking a few times. She dropped her gaze to her lap and saw that she was still snugly embraced by her seatbelt.

Shay reached for the button to release it and craned her neck to glance at the driver's side door. The strap across her chest and lap eased away and slipped back into place. She stared at it, left hand reaching back for the handle. She groped at the side and frowned.

It took her a few more seconds to comprehend why she couldn't find the release to get her out.

Her door was bowing inward, digging into her seat and against her hip. The tinkle of glass caught her attention next, and she looked at all the glass that covered her. The driver's side window had been smashed completely. Reflexively, she started carefully sweeping the shards off her with trembling hands.

She began to remember how that happened. Someone had rammed right into her. She'd blacked out.

Donnie. Donnie had tried warning her. How had he known…?

Shay groaned, but cut herself off when she heard the tinny cries of a voice. Small, filtered, close.

Her phone. She leaned over, fumbling awkwardly at her passenger seat. She found her phone wedged beneath her bag.

The words on the screen blurred before her eyes, but things finally came into focus. Donnie. It was Donnie's name branded at the top, and numbers were ticking away. He was the filtered voice she'd been hearing. She swiped her thumb across the speaker button.

"D-Donnie?"

"Oh, thank goodness. Shay, are you okay?"

"H-How did you…?"

"Your security cameras, I was watching."

Her thoughts were molasses. The question came to her slowly. "Why?"

"Leo, he asked me to—you know what? It doesn't matter right now. I need you to listen very carefully. It was your boss, he hit you."

Her boss…her ex-boss. Peter. That sparked a bit of heat inside her and she sat upright, groping for the seat controls on the side of her seat. Despite her door crushing inwards, she could wriggle her hand down just enough reach those controls. Relief was bliss when her seat moved backwards, giving her enough breathing room to pull her legs out from under her steering wheel. Shay crawled awkwardly into her passenger side seat.

Probably one of the few times she was grateful being so small; she didn't need much room to maneuver in tight spaces.

Shay tugged at the door handle, confused as to why it wasn't giving way before she noticed the lock. She thumbed it over and delight overcame her as it popped open when she tried again.

Glass tinkled as she dragged pieces that had landed on the passenger seat out of her truck and onto the asphalt. Her legs were shaky, but solid as she landed on the ground. She blanched when she saw that her store neighbor had been affected by the crash as well. A massive dent from where Shay's truck had slammed into her was apparent. An airbag had deployed, unlike Shay's. It was still partially inflated and was keeping her propped upright. Shay stumbled over to her door and tugged it open with hardly any resistance, thankfully enough.

She shook the woman's shoulder a few times, phone still in hand, before moving to push down on the airbag to clear space for the woman.

"Donnie—Donnie, call 911. I gotta—I gotta help her. I can't leave. Please."

His protests were silenced as she hit the end call button and slid the phone into her back pocket.

"She-she hung up on me!"

"What's she doing?"

"Well, look, Leo! She's…helping that woman. The one who came out right as Shay was."

He was already snapping his fingers over the keyboard as quickly as he could, pulling screens up and moved to pick up his phone once more, dialing in for the police. Leonardo tensed beside him as he watched the open windows that held two fixed camera angles.

Shay was shaking the woman with one hand, pushing down the airbag down with the other.

Slowly, the older woman came to, head bobbing against her chest as she struggled to keep it upright at first. There was no sound, but from the angle of the first camera, he was able to read her lips. 'Are you okay? Stay with me, I need you to wake up.'

Even disoriented after a crash she herself was in, Shay was hellbent on focusing on someone else.

"Hello? Hi, yes! Uh, my name is Donnie—my friend just got in a car crash, I was on the phone with her. She needs help—the address? Here, I have it right here…"

Something in the corner of the camera caught Leonardo's eye. Donatello was busy with the dispatcher, trying to impress upon them the urgency of the situation. His grip on the back of the computer chair tightened.

"—no! No, you need to go to the address I just gave you, not my location! My friend is in trouble, she just got t-boned by her old boss! He's going to hurt her!"

"Donnie—"

"—one second, Leo—w-wait, ma'am? Ma'am! Listen to me!"

"Donnie, look!"

Donatello's mouth slammed shut with an audible clack and he turned his attention toward the computer screen. "Oh, no. No, no, no. Ma'am, now. Right now. Send a squad car!"

"Easy, easy. Take your time."

"Th-thank you. Oh, my head…"

"Your airbag deployed and probably hit you hard in the face."

The woman groaned in resigned response. "Oh…th-that would explain things…"

Every moment that passed was a moment of clarity that Shay clung to. If she was able to think more clearly with each second, the better. She shoved such thoughts aside and kept her focus on the woman.

"What is today? Can you tell me that?"

That was what EMTs asked for in potential concussion victims, right? Simple yet vital inquiries. Simple on the surface, yet telling for the deeper repercussions.

"It's…Thursday? Yes—no. No, it's definitely Friday. Today is—is Friday."

The conviction was impressive enough, given that it was correct. Shay swallowed past the uncertain lump in her throat and nodded at the woman, mute at first.

"Today…is Friday, yes." She finally responded, a tentative approval of victory coiling inside of her.

"Good. Good…okay. Just—just give me a second. I'mma call for an ambulance, just one second…"

Her phone. Where was her phone? She just had it. Or was it still in her truck…?

Shay glanced down at her feet and stooped down to reach for it.

Something caught her eye, and she looked up just in time to see a fist flying at her face. She jerked to the side, just enough for the blow to be glancing. The hit connected along her temple, but it dazed her enough that she toppled backwards into the crevice of where car proper connected to the door. It burned long after the initial shock had ebbed. Peter loomed over her, eyes wide and wild. He lunged at her, a hand flying to follow after her with a guttural snarl. Shay slid further down and kicked out a leg, hitting his thigh at first. He barely noticed, hands clawing to grab at anything of hers. She lashed out her hands, trying to redirect him and kicked out again. A hoarse grunt eked out of him when her second or third kick connected between his legs.

It wasn't as strong as she wanted, but it was just enough to give her another round of breathing room. The woman still in her car cried out, "What are you doing?! Leave her alone!"

"Shut up, you fucking cunt! C'mere, you bitch—you fucked with me; now I'm going to fuck with—GET OVER HERE!"

Shay managed to scramble away, squeezing by just enough to get clear of Peter's grasp. Or so she thought. She yelped, clawing at the asphalt as a tight grip on her ankle clamped down hard and dragged her backwards. Shay growled and twisted, barely registering the burn along her backside as her shirt rode up, exposing her skin to the ground. Peter bared his teeth in another snarl, his free hand scrabbling to get a grip on her other leg. When he couldn't grab her, he punched down on the leg he had in hand.

Shay let out a strangled scream at the explosion of pain that assaulted her senses, her eyes squeezing shut. Down on her thigh, her hip, her rips—she blindly lashed her still-free leg out of reflex, and the tight hold on her suddenly released. That freedom was accompanied by the satisfying crunch of her boot connecting with something that made Peter let out a muffled scream.

But her relief was underscored by the deep ache in her leg that made her hiss as she lamely pulled herself to her feet and limped off to her truck. She threw herself into the passenger seat, ignoring the dull bites of broken glass that stabbed at her through her clothing. She hauled herself in deeper, wedging herself into the space between the front seats, reaching down at the floorboards.

Where is it, where is it?! Come to mama!

She groped blindly, fingers smacking into a coat she'd left there for the last two months—she threw it aside—and found her ice scraper. She weighed her options and found it unsatisfactory. Not a good weapon. Not what she was looking for—

"You should have never slipped through the fucking cracks! You should have just died in the gutter like the fucking trash you are, you cock-sucking whore!"

Peter's tight hold on her returned, clinching down on her calf and dragging her out of her vehicle, just as her fingers closed around the object she'd been looking for.

Peter wasn't expecting Shay to come out swinging with a crowbar. Her first hit went wild and slammed into his temple. It was hard enough to daze him, to get him to back off. Shay was practically sprawling out of the passenger seat by then, graceless and scrabbling to get her feet back under her. She didn't take her eyes off of Peter as she did, watching as he clutched at his head, wincing in pain with his teeth bared in a grimace.

The moment his eyes met hers, he seemed to forget his pain and lurched after her with a wordless, determined roar.

Shay ducked from him, missing his first attempt at grabbing her, but the second one connected with part of her hair and her ear. He yanked her back toward him and she screamed, instinctually pulling away. Her ear hurt worse than the tugging of her hair. Shay ripped herself away regardless of the pain, just as Peter tried to grab more of her to haul her back into his grasp.

She screamed when the pain rose to an all-new peak and she felt something rip as she swung the crowbar again, this time with both hands. The metal connected with his solar plexus. Peter's eyes bulged as the air unexpectedly rushed out of him from the blow and he stumbled backwards, struggling to breath as he groped uselessly at his stomach and chest.

Something slipped from one of his hands and bounced off the ground. Shay shuddered and gasped when she saw it was her industrial earring, with fleshy, bloody bits still clinging to it, encompassed by a sizable chunk of her hair. She reached a shaky hand up and winced as she gently probed at her left ear. Her fingers came away warm and bloody.

"Oh, you motherfucker—what the fuck is your problem, you asshole?! All I wanted to do was my fucking job, and you couldn't even let me have that! I DID NOTHING TO YOU BUT EXIST!"

Shay didn't wait for him to answer or to recover. If she did, she knew she'd have more problems. She swung the crowbar at him, again and again and again. Any attempts he made to grab or block her was met with resistance until he was helplessly sprawling on the ground, curled into a trembling ball and trying to protect his head. She hit him anywhere she could, as hard as she could, to keep him from getting up, from hurting her. Red filled her vision, and she couldn't hear anything above her own heartbeat and heavy breathing thundering away in her ears. She barely winced when every blow that connected was accompanied by a sickening crunch that she felt more than heard.

Don'tstopdon'tstopdon'tstop—

Her arms and back burned, almost overshadowing the constant aches on the side of her head, her flank, her leg, her hip from Peter's assault on her. When he finally stilled on the pavement, she hesitated, momentarily afraid she'd gone too far. When he began struggling to sit upright, he glared up at her. Peter wheezed with bloody spittle dripping from his parted lips. Something snapped in her at his defiance, at his refusal to just stay down. She swung at him one last time, and the blow connected with his jaw.

His head snapped sharply to the side from the blow, blood spewing from his mouth and she thought she saw teeth fly from it as well as he finally collapsed onto the ground, unmoving. Shay heaved a shuddering breath, and it hitched painfully in her chest as her legs gave out beneath her. She slowly crawled away from Peter, dragging the crowbar with her. The metal scraped along as she did. Normally, she would have been irritated by the sound, but she had little energy left to care or react.

Faintly, Shay could hear the sirens wailing in the distance and that made her remember she wasn't the only one hurt. Sluggishly, she pulled herself up to her feet, wincing as all the aches and pain from Peter's hits finally seemed to register. She grimaced as she limped over to the other woman's car, giving Peter's prone body a wide birth.

The woman stared at Shay with wide, round eyes as she gently helped push the airbag down once again. It took a few tries, but she wrestled the seatbelt loose and got the woman out of her vehicle. Shay helped set her down on the ground and sat beside her, bracing herself every time the pain grew to a crescendo.

"H-Holy shit. He tried to…h-he tried…and you, you were…wow, just wow. Are you okay?"

"…yeah. Pretty sure he ain't getting up for a while. We got time."

The woman sniffled. "I tried…I tried to get out so I could help, but I couldn't. I just couldn't, I-I-I was so scared. Was he going to hurt us both? I'm-I'm so sorry. I just…couldn't."

Shay let her head loll a bit to the side tiredly and sighed heavily. "S'okay. I'm sorry you had to see that tiff between me and my ex-boss."

The sirens were heralding closer. Maybe a few streets away, at best. Shay glanced across the street and groaned. She blinked owlishly at the gathering crowd. "Oh. Look. We have an audience."

She waved limply at the folks across the way. Two people—a man and a woman—were trotting over to them. The woman beside her groaned. "I just want to go home…"

Shay grunted back in agreement, sinking down a little in exhaustion. "Yeah…me too."

The police came at last, along with an ambulance to haul away Peter. He was strapped and handcuffed to the gurney, still knocked out cold. Shay felt warm satisfaction at the sight of her work, his face bloodied and swollen. A cop rode in the back with him and the EMT, intent on escorting the man to the hospital.

A second ambulance arrived on scene shortly after the first left, and the EMTs began their work on Shay, and the other woman, who had introduced herself as Audrey Smith. While one worked on cleaning up and assessing Shay's injuries, she began providing her statement to the officer who was questioning her on the incident. Audrey corroborated with Shay's story: Peter had hit Shay's truck with his own vehicle, which ended up crashing into Audrey's, and then proceeded to attack and verbally abuse Shay. Any injuries he sustained had all been made purely in self-defense. Shay had even allowed the cops to review the security footage from inside the gallery before they began questioning her in earnest.

Thankfully, some of the lingering bystanders had also added their perspective, including the man and woman who came to hers and Audrey's aid, further solidifying Shay's defense.

"I want to press charges against him, and have a restraining order put in place." Shay said, lips peeling back in a grimace as the EMT apologized, sinking a needle in the woman's ear.

"Small sting, there we go. We'll get you stitched up in the next few minutes, then you should be good to go," the EMT said before slipping back into the ambulance to grab a few things. Shay nodded to them and then turned her attention to the cop standing in front of her.

"We'll get to that, don't you worry. We just need to get a few more details about this, first."

"Am I going to be under arrest?"

"Currently, no. According to Montana law, you had every right to defend yourself once he initiated the physical assault against you. You're just lucky he didn't pull the .45 Sig Sauer that he had in his vehicle. Looks like he might have forgotten about it, maybe from the crash rattling his head like it did yours and the other victim's."

"Or maybe he just wanted to beat me to death with his bare hands," Shay grumbled. The officer frowned, and shook his head.

"Or that. We won't know anything else until he wakes up and we get a statement from him. But I doubt he'll do much talking for a while, not with how broken his jaw looked. Do you know why this all started at all?"

"I got him fired and he was also humiliated in front of Julian—the owner of the gallery, I gave you his contact information. To be fair, Peter has been trying to sabotage me for the past two or so years and get me fired under false and petty pretenses. I'm guessing his pride was rather bruised after this morning and thought he was owed some kind of retribution. He tried taking it out on me."

"Oof. Yikes. Yeah, that'll about do it. I've seen people kill someone for a lot less, though."

Shay bobbed her head slowly and sighed heavily. "I don't doubt it."

The EMT returned and sat beside Shay on the back of the ambulance, cleaning away at the blood that still caked her ear and the side of her face. She winced as he gently pulled at clumps of tacky blood in her hair, and the EMT apologized to her.

"You got someone willing to pick you up? You shouldn't be driving with a concussion."

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, my dad's on his way. He's…gonna drop me off at home. What about my truck?"

"Probably not a good idea to drive that, regardless of your condition. We've got a tow truck on its way."

"Can I get it taken to a mechanic shop, see what they say?"

The cop shrugged. "That's something you'll have to take up with the tow truck driver, I can't do anything about where it goes once we call them in."

He wrapped up the last few questions shortly after that, and then the EMT finished his work as well.

"You should make sure you get with your primary soon and get some antibiotics for that ear while it heals up. The cartilage will take longer than the soft tissue, but I don't foresee any issues if you take care of both properly. Try not to wash it directly in the shower or bath for the next few days. The stitches are dissolvable, so you won't have to worry about getting them removed later on. Other than that, and the directions for your concussion, you should be good to go."

Almost as if on cue, her dad was pulling up into the back parking lot, engine idling. Relief was quick to melt over her tense muscles and she quietly excused herself. Her dad stepped out and was quick to pull her into an embrace, before putting her at arm's length to ask if she was okay.

"I'm fine, I'm fine—just…don't tell the kids about this, please?"

They waited until the tow truck came and directed the driver to the desired mechanic's shop. The shop was closed, but a call in the morning would alleviate that. The drive home was spent in relative silence, to which Shay was grateful for. She simply stared out the window, dozing for minutes at a time until she was being shaken awake.

"You're home."

Shay pulled herself upright and blinked at her dad, before nodding and snatching up her bookbag and clutching it close to herself. "Thanks. Tell the kids I love them. Let Mom know I'll call her later tonight."

"Don't worry about that, just make sure you get some rest and then worry about calling her when you're feeling better."

She leaned over and hugged him. He returned the embrace, squeezing tight before giving her a kiss on the crown of her head. "Go on, get going."

Shay mock-saluted him, and popped the door open, sliding out with her bag. It wasn't until that moment she recalled that she had left her coffee thermos at work. Ugh. I'll have to…grab it when I go back…tomorrow. Hooray.

She watched as her dad back his truck up and eventually pulled out of her driveway, stopping only to close her gate before leaving completely. Shay dug into her bag and fished out her house keys, rubbing at her aching temple gingerly as she mounted her porch steps. She didn't even get her key into the door. It flung open and she yelped as she was pulled inside and buried against a plastron, muscular arms pinning her in a tight hug.

"Holycrapyou'renotdeadweweresoworriedafterwesawthesecurityfootageandyourbossattackingyou—!"

"Mikey, let go of her before you crush her!"

"Break it up, numb nuts! She got knocked in the head, and things're still scrambled!"

She recognized the three voices: Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael.

Shay was thrusted away from the hard plastron and put at arm's length, and she blinked as she recognized it had been Michelangelo who had pulled her inside, crushed her into a tight embrace. Around her were the other three, looming just behind Michelangelo: Donatello, Raphael, and Leonardo. She pressed a hand to Mikey's chest, finally finding a reason to smile for the first time in hours.

"I'm fine, you guys. Really. Just a few stitches, just a little concussion. I'll be right as rain before you know it. It's not the first time I've had to take a hit from someone I know."

It took her a few moments to recognize what she had just said and she pulled away in the midst of the silence that suddenly hung between them all.

"…someone else did this to you before?" The question came from Leonardo, and there was a concerned edge to his words. Shay diverted her gaze from him especially.

"My…ex has hit me before. I fought back every time, except for the one time I was driving and couldn't. He punched me in the back of the head while we were arguing. Korra and Cas were in the backseat, and I almost rammed into another car because of that. Good thing I'm a good driver and avoided getting into an accident." Her hands curled into fists at her side. She finally lifted her eyes to meet the others' gazes, her resolve hardening almost as tightly as her jaw clenched. "I told you earlier, Leo. I'm not afraid of Peter, because I don't know how to be afraid anymore. I lived through some shit and I just…don't scare as easily as I used to."

Before any of them could respond—and Shay could see the windup on all their faces—the front door behind her swung open without warning, admitting Georgina White into her home.

Her words died instantly on her lips once she registered what she had stumbled upon before she opened her mouth to scream.