Author's Note - Thanks thanks a thousand times thanks for all the feedback so far. As I said in Alienation I'm new to writing TMNT, though it was the first fandom I ever loved way back in the day. It makes me all happy and shiny inside to know that the community here is so supportive. I want to answer you all individually, and I hope I'll get time to. Kind words should be met with, like, at least a personal thank you. But if it takes me a little while, it's only because I'm writing this story in my spare time, not 'cause I don't care.

Anyway, this is more darkness. In future chapters there will be a lot of flashbacks about how things came to end up here, and those will be less dark. And of course recovery will have bright moments. So it isn't a total bummer, honest.


"Thank God! I thought we'd never…guys?"

Leo heard the sounds like the distant hum of a TV. Interesting, maybe, but too far away to connect to him.

"Leo? Don? Mikey?"

Female. His mind supplied April, and his head turned in vague curiosity.

Red hair, pale skin. Huge brown eyes, and mouth open in slack shock.

He wondered what she was so alarmed at.

Then his mind sent him messages, making him realize what was happening.

April was there. The door was open.

It was time to go.

"Casey?" April's voice was jarring when she spoke next. No longer a distant television, but a friend with a name. A voice, loud in the small grey-walled room.

A shadow came up behind her, looming.

"Did you…shit! Damn it. Guys, are you…"

Time to go, then.

Leo turned to his brothers.

Don was wide-eyed. Shocked. Mike looked at Leo with the same dull curiosity Leo felt.

Leo moved.

It was hard, slow. His legs were cramped from days of sitting, and weeks of being in the same four-walled closet. But he moved, slow and sore. To his brothers.

He couldn't speak, but he met their eyes one after the other, and he held out a shaking hand to them.

"Casey. Get Splinter." April spoke softly, her voice wavering.

Leo ignored her, looking to his brothers. All that mattered, if they were truly getting out, was making sure Don and Mikey were safe and they all made it together.

He heard footsteps from the door, and he turned, wide-eyed and tense.

She stopped where she was, staring, her eyes wet. "Leo? It's me."

He dismissed her, reaching to help Don to his feet.

Don was light, but Leo was weak, and it took a few long seconds of pulling, and bracing his own weight against a wall, to have Don on his feet.

Don sagged back, eyes on April.

Leo reached for Mike.

Mike just looked at him, worried. Leo had spent the last few weeks reading his brothers' faces as a way to communicate with each other, and so he saw the thoughts in Mike's head easily. Was it safe? Was it a trick? Was it even real?

Leo shrugged, trying to smile. Maybe dangerous, maybe a trick. Maybe they were insane. But whatever it was, it was different. And different had to be better.

Mike reached up and clasped his hand, then looked to Leo's side.

Don stood with arm outstretched, ready to help.

Mike took his hand in his other, and together they got him to his feet.

They stood for a moment. Leo took Don's other hand, and they stayed huddled together.

Whatever this was, Leo promised them with a look as strong as he could manage in his state, it would be the end of it. Whether they were free, or whether this was a trick. It was the end. They wouldn't be back in this room watching each other die slowly.

Mike squeezed his hand.

Don dipped his head, agreeing.

They released each other's hands, and turned to the door.

April moved forward a step, but stopped herself. She looked at them like they were ghosts, or strangers, or something other than what she expected.

"Guys, we tried…we tried to get here sooner. They caught him. Bishop, I mean, and…" She swallowed and trailed off. "We've got the van. We're getting you home."

Home.

Leo felt Mike shiver beside him. He nodded, moving one slow, painful step forward.

Mike and Don stayed close on either side of him.

April turned away, her hands going to her eyes for a moment. Her shoulder hunched and shook, but she drew in a loud breath and straightened. "Come on," she said without looking back, her voice choked.

Leo looked around in curiosity when they moved out the door. A hallway, white and bland. There was a door across from theirs, open to an empty room. Down the hall was another open door, and it was there April moved.

They followed, helping each other, resting and looking around in distant surprise.

An odd realization, Leo thought with something like wryness. He was so close to dying in a room he knew nothing about. He didn't have the slightest idea where they actually were.

Casey appeared in the doorway before April. He was as pale as she was.

"Where's Splinter? I think they need help walking to--"

"April. Splinter's in…we found…" Casey's voice was choked.

Leo looked up at that, his feet stalling.

Raph.

It had to be.

He saw the grey shock on Casey's face and couldn't move. Not dead, he said to himself as loud and firm as any words spoken out loud.

Not dead. It wouldn't be fair.

Don nudged his arm, and he got moving again.

Casey and April waited for them, uncertain. Casey moved in at one point, as if to support one or two of them. But Leo looked at him when he came too close, and his face formed a warning.

Casey somehow understood it. He stopped, held his hands up, and backed away.

They left the hall and emerged in a wide, bright, open room. The glint of metal tables shone dully under the light, and like their cell there was no color present. White, black, chrome, and nothing else at all.

Mike stopped. Leo turned to him, and heard him whimper. Saw the sudden fear in his eyes.

He grasped Mike's hand, nudging Don.

This must have been the room. The one Mike had been brought to. The one Raph ended up…

Raph. Oh God.

If the thought hit all three of them at once he wouldn't have been surprised. The moment Leo thought it, Mike straightened and sucked in a breath, determination shining over his fear.

There was no time for alarm. Not with one of them missing.

They turned and looked around.

Leo saw brown fur at the same time Casey spoke.

"Hey, Splinter? We found the others."

Splinter.

Oh, God.

It came home to him as the achingly familiar body of their father and mentor turned to them.

Splinter.

Leo moved on stumbling feet, trying to meet him.

Splinter's eyes were dull, but they brightened a little to see the three of them there. He moved fast to meet them before they had to walk far.

"My sons."

God, that voice. Leo had heard it in his head for weeks. He reached out a hand, still yards from his father.

Splinter moved to grasp it, reaching them and nearly collapsing against them. Thin, furred arms held Leo tightly for a moment, before moving to his brothers.

Leo watched him, and reality was starting to make the beat of his confused thoughts pick up, faster and steadier.

April, Casey, Splinter. Rescue. There was no Bishop, none of his sneering guards. No one. Just their family and this large, sterile-looking room.

He glanced at where Splinter had been standing, where Casey now stood.

His heart stopped.

For the first time in weeks, noise came from his mouth.

"Raph," like the rasp of rice paper burning the inside of his throat. It sounded nothing like a voice.

But he didn't care. He moved a step away from his brothers and Splinter. He stared, sickness rising in him strong enough to cut off his breath.

There was a table, metal and surgical, gleaming under the lights. On the table was his missing brother.

Dead. He had to be dead. He was still and too pale, his coloring washed out nearly to grey. Hurt. All over, hurt. Dull purple and brown bruises splattered over the grey of his skin.

He was skeletal, his bulky arms and legs thinned until Leo could see bone at his wrists and in his legs. Bone he could never see on the broadest of his brothers before.

His eyeband was long gone, like the rest of them. His eyes were black, sunken even when shut.

But there were things on him. Diodes taped to his arms, his plastron. Tubes, wires. His ankles and wrists were bound by thick straps. His skin was sliced, gashes and tears everywhere, and his leg was shiny red through a thick gashed strip that looked as if…as if they'd cut him to peel the skin away just to see what was underneath.

Leo might have thrown up if there was anything in his body. Instead he just stumbled, drawn inexorably closer.

Then he saw something else wrong behind his brother's shoulder. Something uneven, or…

His shell.

Right behind his head, something was…a piece of it was…

Gone. Cut out. From his shoulder blade to the middle of his head, a thick section was missing. There were long lines, serrated marks. Left by…by knives or…

Like they just sawed it off.

He swayed, shutting his eyes against the sight of him.

Raphael.

A hand grasped his arm, and Leo blinked up at April. At the sight of her - human, dressed in white - he almost pushed away, almost tried to escape. But he didn't have the strength to do it fast, and by the time his body would listen his mind was telling him to stay.

He stared at her, wanting to ask something or say something, anything.

She reached out, wet lines down her face glittering. "I'm sorry we didn't find you sooner."

A faint whimper grabbed him before he could respond in any way. He turned, knowing that it was Don's voice whimpering, and found his brothers right behind him, casting sick eyes on the table.

He reached for them.

They went with him, and on his other side Splinter came up and moved. Family. Together, finally.

Raphael deserved so much more, but it was something.

Leo reached out when he was near enough, and his fingers hesitated over Raph's arm. He was scared to touch, to feel dead flesh.

He heard Mike breathe, ragged and broken, and shut his eyes. On wavering feet, with Mike's hand on his arm and Don close enough on his other side that their elbows brushed, he mustered the courage to lay his hand on Raph's.

Cool. Dry.

Breath rasped, loud and sudden. Breath that didn't come from Mikey or Don.

Leo's eyes opened.

From the sunken darkness around Raph's eyes was a glitter of brown. A faint sound, like a hiss, and Leo flinched.

Raph. Trying to speak. Trying to look at them.

Alive.

The others realized a moment after he did, and though he stood silent and stared at his brother, Casey and April were suddenly talking back and forth, searching around them for something. Disturbing the silence.

Casey appeared at the table with a scalpel picked up from one of the tables around them, and he started sawing through the straps holding Raph to the table. The paleness was gone from his face, leaving red-cheeked determination.

Leo just touched his brothers hand, unsure whether to feel relieved or not. Across from him, holding Raph's other hand, Splinter's furred cheeks streaked with moisture, and he rasped quiet words towards Raphael.

Leo backed up suddenly, his fingers slipping from Raph's hand. He felt Don's shoulder bump as he went, and Mike's hand reached for him.

When he looked at them he saw what April had been so horrified by. He saw suddenly that they were as skeletal as Raph. Thin, huge-eyed, gaunt. He looked down at his hands and saw the thinness of his own arms.

It had happened so gradually, right in front of him, that he hadn't noticed it in himself, or Don or Mike.

How long had they been there? And how…

He turned back to the table, watching with dry eyes and hitching breath as Casey and Splinter picked Raph's limp body off the table.

How had things ever come to this?