Okay you guys. This will be the last chapter of the 'first part' of this story. After that chapters start to get a little darker actually, a little more mental torture and stuff. But please first enjoy this last chapter in which I'm gonna finally give you guys some answers, yay!

Chapter 12: cracking

It's been a couple of weeks since Leo and Donnie got us out of that hell hole. It hasn't been easy on any of us but somehow we managed to pull through. The biggest surprise of all is that Mikey is still breathing as Don didn't expect him to make it another week. Him and Linda worked their asses off though and even with them keeping a constant vigil on his condition, Mikey's heart stopped beating for another two times the first night. According to Don it was the shock making him do that. His body was exhausted.

And not to mention Leo. All the stressing and him being up and about while actually still sick made him catch a bad case of the flu. He had been delirious for almost a week and with Donnie working himself to death already it was mostly me taking care of him. Not that I minded. I needed to do something productive, I still need to.

Ever since Leo got better things have been quiet around the lair. We haven't been doing patrol, Master Splinter claiming that none of us is ready for that. And as Leo is still weak, Donnie hardly sleeps and Mikey is… well the way he is, we've been slacking off training too. Without the physical activity we usually do and hardly anything to entertain us, I feel like I'm going crazy. And Leo's no better, he's getting irritable which I think might also be because of his worry over us.

The only thing that really calms me down is sitting at Mikey's bedside. Seeing my little brother slowly healing, his heart beat and breathing getting better, it calms me down. Donnie even got him of life-support some days ago and thinks it won't take that long for him to wake up. I hope that day comes soon. I need to figure some things out and Mikey has to help with that. When he's ready for it of course. He isn't lying in the strange chemical anymore. His burns are already scarring over and are now bandaged. His cuts and other wounds are healing well too and the only problem left really is the breathing. Donnie has cleaned him from the smoke inhalation but his lungs aren't fully functioning yet. Linda worries about them ever being able to do that again. Not that it matters, Mikey is done being a ninja. The damage is too much. Leo says we need to have faith, believe in Mikey but I'm not stupid. The scarring will only get worse and when he wakes up and Donnie can assess the mobility he still has, I'm pretty sure there'll be bad news. But all in all, he's alive and I guess I should be glad. I hope Mikey thinks about it the same way though.

Suddenly I feel a cold hand landing on my shoulder which makes me jump. I turn around, almost throwing the chair I'd been sitting on to the ground. I glare at the one who dared to sneak up on me and to my surprise it is Linda. I haven't really seen her around much, she's always working in the lab or somewhere topside in the hotel she's staying. She told us her actual home is somewhere in North Carolina.

"I didn't mean to startle you," she mumbles politely, taking me in with a curious glance. I don't say anything in return when I sit back down. She makes me nervous. It's hard to have someone you don't know being the only one to stand in between the life and death of your brother. Especially when you thought she was in the bad-guy's conspiracy too.

"I need to speak with you," she says next after she notices I'm not going to reply to her. "I need to have told you this before your brother wakes up."

My head snaps back up and I narrow my eyes at her. Why do I have the feeling that, although she is an ally, she has way to many secrets and tricks on her sleeve? No matter how hard I try to convince myself, I can't trust her. Not yet.

"What do you want?" I hiss more aggressively than intended.

"They really have had you for nine months Raph, what Donatello said was true," she says, stumbling over the word Raph, reminding herself not to say the name Raphael out loud. She has done that multiple times before and it angered me. "They have moved you to different locations without your knowledge while you were captive."

I shake my head, getting annoyed with her polite and steady voice. Never does she seem to speak any emotions, just factual and in an even tone. "We've been in that cell for the whole time, lady. No way they moved us."

I let my eyes roam over the still body of my brother before placing a soft hand on one of his burned arms. I'm glad he's getting better but I wish the bandages that are on now could stay forever. I don't want to see what's under there.

"They did." I sigh in annoyance. Doesn't she get I don't want to talk? Not about this.

"Do you remember how the hallways I led you through seemed a bit out of place?" I give her a slight nod, turning my head to show her I'm listening albeit not enthusiastically.

"The place you have been in was a new type of technology. It is like a hologram only a hundred times stronger. It is able to convert molecules into new ones, producing an environment with the actual feeling of what they are trying to produce. It's highly advanced, just like about everything that you have encountered those months. The chemical that saved your brother is one. As well as the Plexiglas that didn't melt under the extreme heat of the fire. The ones that held you captive are chemists and physicists of the highest levels but all of them shunned by society as their experimenting wasn't completely… legal. By hiring them Raphael could make sure your brother experienced the worst torture possible."

I can see how she swallows after the last sentence, not even minding my soft growl at the monster's name. Maybe there is some emotion in that woman after all. She softly sighs before continuing her story.

"What I want to tell you, is that while you may have been unconscious when they moved the two of you, your brother hasn't always been. Within the first few days Raphael noticed the strong bond between you and tried to wrack it. The moving would only take a day or three. After that he would keep you out for sometimes over a week, a couple of times close to four. During that time Michelangelo would be tested on, tortured mercilessly so they could see if they could break him if he was not near the comfort of his elder brother. But he was very brave."

My eyes are burning because of what she tells me. They hurt Mikey that much? They've put him through the unthinkable and I didn't even know. He never told me!

I glance up and see a soft smile playing on Linda's lips. "Yeah, he was really brave."

I nod, a ghost of a smile taking over my face for a second before it disappears. I can't help but feel terrible at the thought of Mikey being hurt more than I thought. And being alone, damn it.

"Only in the last few weeks they kept you together again. It was the moment they stabbed him in his shoulder that they knew they couldn't separate you again or you would figure out the wound healed to fast. The burns, the acid, they kept torturing him with that so you wouldn't notice the wounds weren't as fresh as before. Stabbing him again and again would be too obvious though."

I push the nauseous feeling that keeps spreading through my stomach down while swallowing the bile out of my throat. We've been through so much lately and just when I think I've seen it all, these demons appear to be even more evil than I thought. Something in the back of my mind wonders if you can ever get used to the sick feeling that comes with the knowledge of your baby brother being tortured to death, but I pay it no attention. I will find out sooner or later.

"Raphael grew tired of your defiance. That of you and your brother. And if burning him to death wasn't bad enough, he wanted you to go through the pain of seeing your brother die twice. Lucky for us or he wouldn't be here right now," Linda concludes her story.

Only now I notice how hard my hands are clenching the armrests of my chair. I was so occupied with the awful feelings of sickness and pain within myself I didn't notice what was going on outside. Slightly the same as in that dungeon. I had felt so powerless there and I didn't even know half of what they did to us. I was literary kept in the dark. Why didn't Mikey say something though? He could've told me instead of doing this all by himself.

"Why did he do this to us? Why did he do this to Mikey?" My voice sounds a lot more broken than I wanted it to and inwardly I curse myself. I don't get why this woman makes me feel so angry, so lost, so… hopeless. She has seen everything there, knows about what happened to me more than I did, than I still do, and she had looked down at us when we were there. While they tortured Mikey and drugged me to the point I was out for weeks.

"Because of you." It sounds harsh, cold, but it isn't directed towards me. She's angry but not at me and not at Mikey. I see how her eyes flicker something dangerous for a second before they turn stoic again.

"You murdered his brother. Raphael was in the Footclan when he was younger but his little brother didn't approve. At one point the child followed him out and got himself killed. It was by your hand."

It hurts. We never aim to kill people, we only do out of self-defence. To know that I hit an innocent kid out there, it really hurts but strangely enough I do not feel the guilt I expected. I guess I cannot bring up the empathy I should feel for Raphael and his brother. They shouldn't have been there, period. And they especially shouldn't have come after my own brother. It doesn't matter what I did, if you touch my family you are dead. Still the numb feeling at the revelation scares me. Shouldn't I feel as sick as when she told me about what Mikey went through?

"That's all. I thought you needed to know this so you Michelangelo wouldn't need to tell. I guess I am leaving now."

Before she can turn around I grab her hand, standing up from my chair again. She looks me into my eyes and for a slight moment I can see the pain hiding there. I wonder where it comes from.

"Who are you?" I ask. "How do you know all this? Who was that kid? What does this have to do with a poor kid?"

She struggles out of my grip and rolls her arms a bit, trying to gain back her composure. I stare at her for a while, silently demanding an answer from here. Her face is directed towards the door so I can't see it. I can clearly hear her voice when she speaks though.

"I was Raphael's fiancée. We never really married though. The only thing he would be occupied with was his revenge. Revenge at you for murdering the only one in his life he truly cared about. It killed him from the inside and affected his mind and soul, like a venom. Like poison. He was lost long before I tried to get him back to me."

With that she walks out of the room. I listen to her heels on the tiled floor until she's good and well out of the lair. After that I sit back down again and place a hand on the bandaged head of my brother.

Blood is rushing through my ears and I feel slightly dizzy. I feel hot but I'm shaking all over and it's hard to swallow. My mind keeps spinning into circles, trying to make sense of everything I'm just told. Hate is slowly bubbling up.

I'm so lost in my own world I don't even notice the movement from under my hand. \

And that's the ending of part 1. Please review and tell me if you liked it, if you don't get it and want me to explain or just because you want to :D See ya guys!