The worst dreams, Nia thinks, aren't the ones with death and agony and the screaming terror of the first of many violations, many crushing losses. The worst dreams are the ones that don't hurt. 
The ones where the Shredder's got his head between her legs, or he's filling her up with his cock and touching her in way that makes her fall apart with pleasure. His touch isn't painful, not this time, and she clings to him not because she's frightened or scared, but simply because she wants to. 
In those dreams he tells how her how beautiful she is, how he crossed the land of the dead to find her, how he will love until the stars burn out, and she believes him. She runs her hands through his hair and tells him that she loves her, too, the words sweet on her tongue. 
He'll smile at her, face slick with blood, and she'll smile back. And it won't be until her orgasm shudders her awake that Nia realizes whose blood it is. 
She wakes up with dampness between her legs and streaming from her eyes, convulsed with need and self-loathing. Sometimes she has to touch herself, or just sob into the pillow until the feeling goes away. 
Nia's been online. She'd read words like forced arousal and fantasy as a means of control, but it's so, so hard for words alone to stop the shame from crushing down, suffocating her. Especially when it happens again and again and again, no matter how hard she tries to stay awake. 
Her mother cuts in sometimes, tries to tell her it's not her fault, that everything will be alright, her pure light burning and soothing Nia's wretched little soul equal measure. She offers some solace, but she can only keep the dreams away for so long. 
Not to mention that just because Nia's awake, she doesn't get to enjoy the luxury of being alone in her own head. 
My love,  Saki whispers in her ear. My bride. The light of my life. His hands massage her shoulders, trace the curve of her hips. Let me distract you, that was what every time she woke up shaking from dreams about the ghost of the woman she couldn't yet name. And then he would fuck her, and then she would put on his black mask and go kill people for him, and then, and then-- 
And then, the bloodstained stage. Raph screaming in her face, in stereo with Tang Shen's voice buzzing through her mind. Falling to her knees as everything crumbled in on itself. 
In her darkest, smallest moments, she hated them for that brutal awakening. Before that night, Oroku Lavinia and Oroku Saki had been star-crossed lovers, reunited across time and space. She was his right hand, his most favored soldier, queen of a city and one day the world. 
And then, just like that, she wasn't. Now she's a teenage rape victim, a child bride, waking up from wet dreams of hell and losing her shit whenever anyone looks at her wrong. The inside of her mind is broken glass, painful to live in and harder to use. 
Maybe one of the worst things is that none of it is new. Her memories are a blur, but she knows that Oroku Saki violated her centuries ago, his hands still slick with her father's and brothers' blood. She knows he broke her somehow, with Kitsune's help no doubt, twisted her into a perfect little wife. 
Nia still doesn't know how she died. In battle? Trying to push Shredder's spawn out of her womb, a possibility that terrifies her still? Any one of the million diseases that haunted those days, sweeping her down in a twist of fate? 
(Maybe she killed herself. She's certainly thought about it enough these days) 
The memories hurt, but she has to hold on to them, no matter how they cut. She has to, because otherwise she'll fall back into the same pattern of thinking  the rat's the one who hurt you, he bloodied you, he locked you up with those mockeries of your brothers to guard you, but soon Saki's going to come take you away on a white horse--  
"Enough," Nia rasps, thumping a fist to her temple, savoring the dull ache. "No more." 
She makes herself roll out of bed, go through her stretches, splash off in the bathroom. Even tries to meditate, although that's been almost impossible since her return. This plane is enough of a clusterfuck without having to deal with a higher one. 
"You spend too much time off in that head of yours," he rumbles, nudging her out of lotus position. She rolls her eyes, but she can't help giggling as he plants butterfly kisses along the curve of her neck, pulling her on top of him--  
Anyway. 
It's still early, so she's careful not to wake her brothers. Things are still awkward between them all after everything, and she doesn't want to start the day being treated like glass. 
Nia knows they mean well, but sometimes she can't help being reminded of when they were human and the boys, swaggering in the first bursts of adolescence, had gotten convinced they needed to protect her. As if she hadn't spent her life training harder and longer than any of them, determined to overcome every one of her father's doubts. 
She'd had a fun time rubbing their faces in the dirt until they got the message, she thinks, smiling as she tugs on her gear. 
But you weren't good enough to save them, were you? Or yourself.  
Her smile fades. 
She finds herself checking all of their rooms as she heads out to the dojo, just in case. They're all snoring peacefully, even Donnie, so Nia pauses to grab a blanket from his dusty room and toss it over his too-narrow shoulders. 
Donnie's been drawing blood and doing tests, rambling about hypnotism and drug use and all the things that could have led to what he calls the  incident.  She doesn't really believe any of it (she knows the truth, and it stings) but it's nice to pretend. He's also been good at helping with the tests Angel and April brought, the ones proving that Nia was, at least physically, clean after what Saki put her through. 
Raph's snoring like a hurricane when she peeks in, and for a second she considers waking him up. He understands what it's like to abruptly find yourself tossed in a family you don't quite remember, and he's been great at helping her work out her frustrations through sparring. 
But Raph hasn't been getting much sleep these days, either, kept awake from nightmares by the rest of them. He needs what rest he can get. 
Finally, Mikey. He's curled up in a little ball around his teddy bear, looking so small and vulnerable it makes her heart ache. He's always trying to distract Nia with games and hijinks these days, flirting with death by playing pranks on Raph just to make her laugh. 
Nia finds herself drawing closer, tempted to plant a soft kiss on his temple. She reaches out, and 
He's on his knees, sobbing, too small, too young, and she can't even hold him because of the rope binding her hands behind her back. She tries to call his name, make him look at her, but bruising her hands seize her chin. She's forced to look up into eyes filled with a kind of hunger that she's never seen before, one that terrifies her.  
"You look like your mother," he says.  
No, no, no. Nia backs out of Mikey's room fast, breath rasping painfully in her throat. She rubs her arms frantically, dragging her nails over her scales.  Come back. Come back.  
She doesn't bother approaching her father's room. She doesn't have the strength for that. 
Instead, Nia makes her way towards the dojo, feeling herself relax as she enters the dojo. Her feet brush over the mats-- 
He's pinning her, grinning wolfishly. "Alright," she huffs. "You win." He doesn't get off and she squirms, that fear she can't quite explain worming into her stomach. "Saki...."  
"Now, wife," he says, pinning her arms over her head. "I take my prize."  
"Enough," she repeats, even though she knows that's stupid, this is one of those things that never really ends. 
She cycles into the first few katas, trying to soothe the dark buzz. Her feet are silent on the dojo floor, the only sound the faintest rush of her fists snapping through air. 
Donnie's been researching how some female turtles get larger than their males, how she might grow taller than all her brothers. She watches new muscles ripple across her frame and tries not to mourn the loss of something as silly as a bit of extra femininity. 
In her first life, he liked to stuff her into elaborate silk kimonos, the most expensive things she'd ever worn, liked adorning her in jewels and fans and elaborate hairstyles. In her second, he tucked flowers from his garden into her mask, telling her about the crowns they would both wear one day.  
Physically she appears the same as her brothers, but they're starting to suspect she might be stronger. The brutal extra training she got from Saki, both before and after her death, has been enhanced with this powerful new body behind it. 
She made an effort to hold back for a while, but that pretty much fell apart after she emerged from an "episode" to find all three of them groaning on the ground, her father holding his bloody nose in the corner. 
She kneels before his throne, blood on her hands, offering him heads as tokens of her love. He takes her hand and helps her rise, kisses her in front of everyone, and she feels like a frog being turned into a princess, a lowly sewer rat made a queen.  
Nia stamps the ground, perhaps a bit harder than necessary. Her fingers flex, circling back into a tighter fist. 
One time she and Karai fight and she chokes the other girl until she passes out. She might have kept it up until Karai died if Alopex hadn't pulled her off. Shredder sits and watches the whole thing; Nia wonders if he would have been just as expressionless if it was her on the ground.  
Alopex never looks at her quite the same way after that.  
Karai. Her granddaughter, maybe, unless Shredder had dragged some other poor girl into his bed after Nia was gone. Nia doesn't remember how her old face looked like enough to tell if they resemble each other. 
"Such a pretty girl," he'd said, back when he was human. No one ever called her that before him. She hated it. She was naive enough to believe he might let her go if she'd been ugly.
If the resemblance is close enough, will Saki soothe the grief for his missing wife in his granddaughter's bedroom? Nia prays he won't, prays that he isn't depraved enough or simply isn't interested. She and Karai have never been friends, but she doesn't deserve that. 
Kitsune had embraced her like a daughter, talking about how happy she was to have her back. Alopex always looks anxious when the fox witch is mentioned, but never quite manages to remember why when Nia asks.  
Nia would like to kill Kitsune, but if she has the chance, she'll leave the honor to Alopex. It's the least she can do. 
To be honest she and Alopex haven't talked much after what they've been through together, although Nia supposes it's the bonding experience to end all bonding experience. If she dared, Nia would ask Alopex whether she sometimes has trouble where in time she is, too. 
He likes to touch her as he corrects her kata. Or, if he doesn't see anything to correct, he touches her anyway. It's his right.  
Nia launches into a flip, enjoying the sense of weightlessness. Her mask tails fly past her face--blue, always blue (until they're not). 
"My wife and I have finally been reunited," he says, a possessive hand on her shoulder. He pulls the scarf enough for them to see the bite mark on her throat, for all--Foot and foe alike--to gasp. "We will never let you separate us again, Yoshi."  
Stamp, punch, kick, block. Stance to stance, like a river over stone, or the relentlessness of a wildfire. 
She breaks the fingers of everyone who calls her whore, or freak, or any of the hundred names she hears hissing around her head. It's a kindness compared to what Saki does he catches wind of the same.  
Lift, land, move, shift. Punch. Whirl. Block. Roll. Sway, spin, twist. 
He fucks her in the shower, on his desk, on the dojo floor again. He fucks her on the throne, hand over her mouth so passerby won't hear. He fucks her in and out of her gear, his clothes. Sometimes he's tender and sweet, sometimes he leaves her bruised and shaking, used too badly to move.  
Hiss, slap, punch, punch, punch. Relax, breathe, breathe...bone-breaking roundhouse. 
He fucks her  
--he rapes her-- 
when she's still slick with her family's blood blood, smears it over her face, between her legs. She wakes up trembling with memories of a tent in a grassy field, of her own screams, looks at the muscular body snoring next to her and wonders why her gut twists at the sight.  
Nia launches backwards, her shell screaming as it's bent almost too far. Her feet come down hard enough to sting. 
He makes her a wedding ring, out of ruby and jet.  
She buried it in the woods at Northampton. Nia can still feel it burned into her skin. She thinks she could find it again if she looked, with no need for markers. 
He's got his tongue inside her, shattering her with each expert flick and caress, while she struggles not to fall off the desk and its former occupant bleeds on the carpet.  
Her stupid traitorous body can't decide whether it misses or fears him more, and some days she fears the strain will tear her apart. 
"You tremble at my touch sometimes because of what Yoshi did to you," he says, touching her face. And she remembers blood, screaming, agonizing pain, massive hands holding her down, roaring fire, and she won't realize until later the cruel irony of why everything felt so real.  
She needs to keep it down, so she won't wake her brothers. She refuses to let them see her like this (it's happened too often already). 
"We will avenge your brothers and paint this city with Hamato Yoshi's blood," he tells her. And she's the one who pulls him into a kiss this time.  
Only Nia can't slow down. If she tries, she's worried she might shake apart with the force of everything screaming through her bones. 
He loves, even when he hurts her. Especially then, because it means he cares enough to correct her, to purify her.  
That's what he tells her, anyway.  
The dojo spins around her, sweat standing vivid on her scales. 
First kiss. First orgasm. First cock she ever sucked. First fingers inside her. First cock inside her. First time anal, vaginal, oral. First time she got eaten out. First time on her back. First time on her front. First in his lap. First time naked in front of a man she wasn't related to. First time called bitch, streetwalker, beautiful, perfect.  
Punch-- 
He says they'll figure out how to make her give him children.  
Jump-- 
She tells him about Romeo and Juliet, Bonne and Clyde and he smiles, says they're not doomed in the slightest. She doesn't mention Joker and Harley, although they fill her mind.  
Flow-- 
She's his Lotus Blossom, the other side of his heart,   
Turn-- 
hiswhorehissluthiscocksleevehis v i c t i m  
Kick-- 
His pretty Foot PRINCESS she's so LUCKY an ugly little freak like her getting true love she must be so GRATEFUL and any day now she'll be a human again that's how fairy tales work so it doesn't MATTER how much it hurts   
he's got his COCK in her CUNT and his FINGERS up her ASS and down her THROAT then she's gagging on his DICK and she LOVES it she loves loves loves LOVES  
The dojo door opens. 
Nia whirls, panting, fists raised. She sees who's looking in at her and stops breathing. 
Her father is standing there. 
"I'm sorry," he says, backing away. "I should go--" 
"Don't." 
The voice is hoarse, as if she's been screaming, but unmistakably hers. Her father blinks, surprised. 
What are you doing,  her instincts scream.  He's the monster. The beast. He killed your family, he pinned you down and hurt you, you need to run--  
But Nia is a monster too, she reminds herself--what better word is there for what she's been turned into? And the one she should hate, should fear, isn't here, except for the space he takes up rent-free in her head. 
She doesn't remember how much she has before she stops being lucid enough to remember that. She just knows that she has to take advantage of the time she has. 
Still, her fractured mind isn't quite ready to run back into his arms. So instead, she turns and makes her way over the weapon racks. 
Splinter watches here, his anxiety palpable from across the room. "Lavinia?" 
Nia picks up a sword, turning it in her hand. "You remember when you started training us as kids?" She hears him exhale in slow relief, although he still takes care not to approach her. "You tried to make me focus on the Tessen, even when I knew that swords for me." She'd had to train by herself for weeks before he caved. 
He lets out a low chuckle. "That was a mistake." 
"Yeah."  And not the only one.  She doesn't remember as much as she could, but she still remembers the mask he'd worn to chase her and her brothers through the city, the one that Kitsune would turn against her later on. 
But although he's imperfect, he still loves her--loves her like her brothers do, in a way that's fierce without managing to burn. And she loves him too, surprising as that feels from a heart as battered and scratched-up as her own. 
He shakes her head. "You were always so stubborn." 
"I had to be," she reminds him gently. "Catch." She tosses him a sword and he looks surprised, even as he snatches it out of the air. 
"I know, logically, you're not going to hurt me," she says. "But logic doesn't work as well in here," she admits, tapping her head. "So, I have to handle this the way I handle everything that scares me." 
Fearless,  her brothers call her. A foolish name, but she's still going to try her damnedest to live up to it anyway. 
"And with that mind..." She bows, keeping her eyes locked on his. "Father, would you do me the honor of a spar?" 
His tired old face cracks into something resembling a smile. "Of course, daughter." 
It's not what they had, and it might not last long. But it's a little piece of what they had before. 
Saki's face flickers across her mind.  We will find each other again, love. But you might not like me as much when we do.  
Hamato Lavinia smiles, brittle and fierce as a spray of broken glass, and charges.