It's rough, but here it is, all 27 pages (in 18pt anyway). It's little more then a spell checked rough draft so expect it to be a little well rough, but once I do some more editing I'll replace it so check back often and please feel free to let me know about any glaring mistakes so I can fix them. Thanks.

Chapter 12

Shego and Kim quickly settled themselves in their favorite spots on Shego's plump and comfortable couch, which meant Shego was on the right hand side of the couch with her legs kicked up on the coffee table, Kim snuggled up next to her with her legs tucked under her. Shego had her arm wrapped around her fiance', doing her best to be gentle about Kim's burned shoulder, something she knew she would feel guilty about for some time to come, despite her partners assurance that there was nothing to feel guilty about as it really was just an accident.

"So..." Was all the older woman said once they had both gotten settled.

"Yeah..." Came Kim's simple and unsure response, both knowing they had a lot they needed to talk about, particularly if they were going to get married, but neither knowing where to begin. "Where do we start?" Kim finally asked after several minutes of tense silence.

"I...don't know." Came Shego's honest and hesitant response.

It was another several tense minutes before either spoke again.

"Do you have any idea what it's like to be expected to be the best all the time..." Came the young hero's quiet words, deciding she would be the one to open the Pandora box.

"Actually I do. You said something like that the night at the club, after the Absinthe." Came Shego's simple response.

"I wasn't sure if that had actually happened or not. What was it like for you?"

"To be honest, a lot like what it's been like for you. Once Hego had talked us all into the hero gig, we were quickly dubbed Go's City's finest and held up to an impossible standard. Which Hego only made worse with his comic book mentality. As the only girl on the team, I was the role model for all the little girls in the city. I had to be be spotless in public and after having already been soured thanks to the whom ever those meddling scientists were, wasn't exactly something I enjoyed, but forced myself to endure."

"Charlie, about that, what happened?" Kim interrupted.

"I thought we were talking about you?" Shego replied without the usual edge to her voice.

"We were, but like you said, It's been almost the same just a different stage I think. So will you tell me what happened?" Kim asked, turning to look up into her fiance' eyes.

Shego could only sigh at the half plead she was faced with before giving Kim a gentle squeeze. "It's not an easy thing to talk about, or remember for that matter. A lot of it I've done my best to forget, some of it was lost because of what ever drugs they were playing with, never mind the physical and emotional trauma they put us through."

Kim put the hand of her good arm across Shego as best she could without moving to comfort the visibly pained woman. "Take your time Charlie, we've got all the time we need for this." Kim assure her.

Shego just continued her story, after Kim's reassuring words. "After the comet, me and my brothers didn't have anyone. It was just us and our parents and they didn't survive impact. None of us being old enough to become caregivers for the rest, we became wards of the state, something that's less then fun under normal circumstances, add unknown radiation signatures and no one knew what to do with us."

"They we're afraid?" Kim asked gently.

"They were paranoid, to many sci-fi flicks. Someone got it into their head that we would be a danger to others. So at first they kept us isolated, even from each other at times. At first it was innocent enough, as powers began to manifest they would ask us to show us what we could do. Then they started to push us to see how far we could be pushed, but then things started go get less innocent even to a bunch of teenagers. They started having us take 'supplements', they told us they were just vitamins but we figured out pretty quick that they were testing drugs to see if they could control our powers, either to enhance them or suppress them. The bigger problem was often times they would switch back and forth from one to the other without letting the previous drug work it's way out of our systems."

"That's barbaric." Kim gasped.

"And extremely dangerous. None of us new the extent of our powers without the drugs, messing with variables like that with out a baseline is insane at best." Shego was very visibly shaken by this point. Kim carefully crawled from Shego's left to lean against the couches arm rest, sitting on her fiance's lap and wrapping her good arm around the shaking woman. Assuring her that she would help her through this if she could.

"They...they hurt Wego..." She began to sob in anger, disgust and guilt at her inability to protect her little brothers. "They permanently split him." She forced out between sobs.

"Him? You mean?" Kim asked in shock.

"When we went in there, I only had three brothers. I left with four. Those bastards, they could have killed him, they could have killed all of us." Finally admitting what had happened in that place to someone she trusted, Shego broke down, sobbing and leaning into Kim's tight embrace.

Kim sat there, holding the love of her life, finally beginning to understand where a lot of Shego's anger steamed from. Not just from the death of her parents, but from the mutilation of the Wego's and the near torture her and her brothers were forced to endure. They sat there fore more then a few long minutes, Shego letting her emotions run their course, Kim holding her and soothing her through the woman's emotional breakdown.

It was near a full half hour later before Shego felt calm enough and strong enough to continue her story. "I snapped when I found out. He was my little brother, I was supposed to protect him and those bastards almost killed him, they probably would have if it wasn't for our healing factor. I broke out of their specially designed cell they called a bedroom, that they thought would be enough to hold me. I melted the door to raw slag and waded through the molten metal and went on a rampage.

"I destroyed the lab and anything else I could find before heading to my brothers cells. He tried to stop my when I headed towards the Wego's doors..." Shego began to sob anew as the memories she had tried so hard to forget came flooding back. "He grabbed my left arm as I went past him, I reacted and next thing I remember my right arm is covered in gore and I didn't know how it got that way. I looked down and there was a headless body at my feet." Her temporary strength now gone, Shego broke down into Kim's shoulder again.

"It's not your fault Charlie." Kim immediately assured her distraught fiance. "They tortured you and you brothers, pushed you faster then your bodies were meant to go. As much as a pain the tweebs can be, if anyone ever hurt either one of them I would have snapped too. It's not your fault, they pushed you too far." Kim told her broken lover, doing her best to comfort the crying woman.

It was another long half our as Shego's torrent of emotions crested and ebbed, Kim doing her best to sooth and assure the woman in her arms that what happened wasn't her fault. "It was an accident Charlie, just like what happened to me. You don't have to blame yourself." She told her, after working her right arm free of the the sling and taking Shego's chin in her hand to gently pull the woman's face out of shoulder so she could look deep into her emerald eyes before continuing. "It's not your fault, they should have been helping you and your bothers learn to control your powers so you wouldn't hurt yourselves or anyone else. Instead they locked you up and experimented on you." Kim continued to gaze lovingly into your fiance's eyes for several long moments, making sure the woman in her arm knew she would never hold judgment against her for what she had done while protecting her brothers before kissing her gently on the lips.

After another few minutes of silence with the two women holding each other, Shego had finally regained her composure enough to continue. "Even in the few seconds it took me to realize what I had done, I swore I'd never do it again. Even in my criminal career it was one line I refused to cross. No matter how many times I was faced with the choice, I never took the easy path." Shego said with the first real strength and conviction she had felt in over an hour. "If I could do it again..."

"It would have still happened." Kim interrupted, earning her an astonished glare from the woman next to her. "You reacted out of love of your brothers, you were protecting them and you had next to no control over your powers because of what they did to you. Look what I did to Hego, I hadn't even meant to use my powers, I was just lucky enough that he could take it. We both know how much training I've had over the years, I could have just as easily done what you did by accident. Now I understand why you didn't want me trying to go out until I got at least some control over them." Kim finished somberly. "Thank you." Kim added with a kiss, letting her girlfriend know just how grateful she was that she had protect her from having to learn that lesson the hard way the way she had.

The two sat there looking at each other for a time before Shego responded. "Alright." Was all she said, but Kim could tell that she had released some though not all of the guilt she felt from both accidents. It wasn't as good as the hero had hoped, but it was a start.

"Well after that they did the first smart they had done since taking us, the got out of my way and let me take my brothers out of there. It took us awhile, but eventually we found our parents lawyer. By then Hego was old enough to become our legal guardian and I wasn't long behind being legal myself. As it turned out our parents had left us a small inheritance, add to that the their life insurance payouts and were pretty much set after the lawyer did some shrewd investment for us on our parents behalf.

"We had the house rebuilt, but in a different part of the city selling the original property to make up the difference and started to pick up the pieces of our lives. We quickly decided that we wanted space to ourselves which is why we chose to move the house, and rather then try and go back to school we just home-schooled ourselves. None of us feeling any great need or trust for anyone other then each other. We started training, both physically and mentally in how to control our powers. The boys went they way boys do and focus on brute strength, I want a lot further and started learning multiple styles of Kung Fu.

"That was when we really started figuring out what we could do, like that resonance trick and a few others. Though the biggest things we learned is that we really couldn't hurt each other, something about the way the comet wired our powers kept the powers from being able to do any real damage, plus the healing factor pretty much made us each others punching bags. Not that it would have stopped us, we were family." Shego added, sounding more like her old self which earned a soft chuckle from the redhead on her lap.

"Being the only girl in the bunch it quickly fell to me to keep them human, or else they might have fully devolved into apes, particularly the big blue one."

"Of course." Kim added, knowing what her own brothers were like when left to their own devices.

"As thing's got back to normal, well normal for us anyway. Quickly noticed a few things that flew by my brothers. The biggest thing, and Hego will argue this till he's as purple in the face as Mego, is that I'm by far the most powerful. I might not be as physically strong as he is, but I'm a lot stronger then I should be. My healing factor was always stronger then theirs, add into that that I'm the only one with powers that can be tossed around and it adds up pretty quick.

"The other things I noticed where more subtle and a lot more annoying. Unlike them, I can't turn of my glow. Which is why I voted for not trying to go back to school, I really didn't want to finish high school the color of lime jello, that kind of grief I didn't need." This comment earned a giggle from the girl on her lap. "Watch it red or kick you off my lap." Shego warned playfully.

"Doubt it." Kim replied still giggling lightly, glad that her fiance was acting more like he normal snarky self, but finally understanding where most if not all of the green woman's anger had come from.

Shego just sighed before continuing. "The other obvious thing I noticed is where they could more or less turn their powers on or off, mine were fulled by raw emotions, as such they can flare up any time I'm seriously emotional. As you found out the hard way." The look of guilt was obvious on her face, but less then it had been when they got up that morning at Kim's parents house.

"You hungry yet?" Shego asked out of the blue, derailing the train of topic they had been on all morning.

"Starving actually. How'd you know, we only had breakfast a few hours ago?" Kim asked.

"Power doesn't come from nothing sweet cheeks, fundamental law of physics. The more you use your powers, the more your powers use you. And right now your bodies running on over drive to heal that burn, which means your burning major calories. Plus if I know your mom half as well as I think I do, she probably left a pharmacy in your bag to help with that burn and it's probably about time to take them, half of which probably needs to be taken with food. So now's as good as time as any to make lunch."

#

The two women quickly made their way to the kitchen after Shego had helped Kim up off her lap, keeping the redhead steady until she was confident the girl wasn't going to fall over. She knew that despite the healing factor after only a day Kim could still easily rip open the burn if she fell and tried to catch herself.

Kim sat on her usually stool at the granite breakfast bar across from the stove as Shego starting gathering ingredients to make them both lunch, after setting Kim's over night bag on the counter for the redhead to check what meds her mom had left her.

"Well?" Came Shego's simple question from across the stove as she assembled everything she would need for tomato soup and grilled cheese, which consisted of cans of tomato sauce, cream cheese some and some herbs for the soup, fresh bread gourmet cheese for the sandwiches.

"The usual, couple of antibiotics, an anti-inflammatory, and oh vicodin, score!" Came Kim's enthusiastic resonance as she set the various bottles on the counter, popping the last open one handed to take a couple of the wonderful pain relieving drug.

"Never figured you for a pill popper Pumpkin, there's hope for you yet." Shego jibbed playfully as she began adding things to a pot on the stove.

"Hardly, but trying to kill me or not, you've sent me to the er enough that I know the value of a good pain killer when it's needed." She rebutted swallowing two of the pills along with a good amount of water from a bottle Shego had put on the counter for her. "And the morphine Mom gave me this morning wore off a while ago."

"Comet powered metabolism's will do that to ya." Shego commented while tasting the soup she was stirring.

"Let me guess, given that I heal faster I'll also metabolize painkillers and stuff faster."

"Pretty much. And honestly you probably don't need the antibiotics, but I've you saw me when I caught your cold, so a little added insurance never hurts. But on the plus side, you'll be able to drink anyone under the table. Others then yours truly of course." Shego added with a smirk.

Kim could only roll her eyes at her odd choice of partners as she replaced the lid on the pill bottle and moved onto the others in line. "So how'd you guys get into the hero biz. You know my story, I pretty much just stumbled into it."

Shego sighed, knowing that they were going to have to open up that can of worms sooner or later. "It was Hego's idea of course. Even though he was suppose to be the legal guardian, I quickly and fairly easily talked the lawyer into letting my run the finances. He could tell I would be a lot more responsible with them then Hego would be. To this day I technically still have power of attorney over him and most of his accounts even if he doesn't know it."

"Your kidding?" Kim laughed.

"Swear to the guy up stairs. Turns out there was a clause in the will allowing our parents lawyer to name the benefactor if the eldest child was to irresponsible to be trusted to hold the family's finances. After ten minutes with Hego he was more then willing to let me take control, we just let Hego be the guardian on paper. I was only a few months younger then him anyway. So really the lawyer just did what I asked him to do until he could legal transfer everything over to me.

"I think it helped that my Mom and him had known each other since college, and when ever he and Mom had meeting she would let me tag along, it was obvious to him even when I was young that I would end up like my Mom and have a good head on my shoulders. He's actually still my lawyer, speaking of which considering everything going on, I really need to give him a call.

"Anyway, since I was in charge of the money I gave my brothers an allowance and Hego tended to blow most if not all of his on comics."

"Not a bad investment really, even I've got a few favorites locked away." Kim commented.

"True, but there only a good investment if you take care of them, something Hego was incapable of, no matter how many times I tried to beat it into his head." Shego sighed.

"Brothers, can't live with em." Kim started.

"Can't kill em. Believe me I've tried." Shego finished, taking another taste of the soup before starting a skillet to heat up for sandwiches.

"I think I can figured out some of the rest. Hego started reading his comics and got delusional."

"'Great powers come with great responsibilities' and all that crap. Much as I tried I couldn't get the idea out of his head. Believe me I tried, but the more I fought him on it, the more he was convinced it was the right thing to do. Eventually I had not choice but to go along with him on it to make sure he didn't get hurt. Despite what his thick head thinks, it's not a game, and I have no doubt that we can be killed if someone try's hard enough.

"We started strictly small time, police scanner stuff. The occasional armed robbery, kidnapping, kids stuff really. But eventually we got enough notoriety in Go city that the local loonies started crawling out of the wood works."

"Like Avearious." Kim supplied.

"God that guy is crazy, a giant flamingo? I mean how stupid cane you get!" Shego groaned as she dropped the first grilled cheese into the now hot skillet.

"Was that really any worse then Drakken setting up the magma drill in building made of cheese?" Kim goaded, giggling from her seat.

"Not my idea, I was just the sidekick remember? Didn't matter how much I rejected the idea and tried to get him to see how stupid his ideas where, once he got it in his 'brilliant' head, he was convinced that he was right and that it would work. I nearly flam-bade him for what that cheese did to my hair." Shego grumbled dropping the second sandwich into the skillet.

"No kidding, took me a week to get mine to stop smelling like cheese. And I didn't get bathed in it like you did." Kim commented.

"Thanks for that by the way." Shego replied while flipping the first sandwich.

"Not my fault you worked for a quack, but it was my job to stop you guys. Oh, what you do to him after the mind control incident?" Kim asked curiously.

"Forced him to sign a new contract that I wrote giving myself a fat raise with a no mind control clause and forced him to buy me a new jet, of course that was after I nearly burned all the hair off his body. Not that he had much." Shego shrugged as she flipped the second sandwich and began ladling up the soup.

"Please tell me you and he..." Kim shuddered at the mental picture that popped into her head thanks to her girlfriends vague description.

"Hell no, never mind his serious mommy issues, that man, and I use the word loosely, has no idea how to treat a woman, he's probably still a virgin. He had to build the Beebe's in college to get a date for crying out loud. And if your thinking what I think your thinking, I have no idea but judging by the fact I have seen him topless and never seen him with any facial hair, one can only assume." Shego quickly informed her shuddering fiance as she finished serving up their lunch, before moving around the counter to join Kim on the stools.

"Thank god, that was a visual I didn't need." Kim commented before taking another drink of her water.

"Do we want to start this conversation?" Shego asked as she sat down next to Kim, setting their lunch down in front of them.

"Now's as good of a time as any I guess." Kim resolved as she began eating her rather tasty soup.

"Where do we start, I doubt you really want the blow by blow of my past sex life." Shego began.

"Not so much no, not that it matters to me." Kim agreed.

"You're serious aren't you?" Shego asked, surprised at the truthful tone to which Kim had responded.

"Absolutely. I don't care who you've been with or how many relationships you've had. As long as you're with me and love me, that's all that matters. If or when a specific issue come up with you past, sex life or otherwise, we'll deal with it as it comes. Hopefully together." Kim replied before laying a chaste kiss on Shego's lips.

"I can agree to that." Shego responded.

"I guess the next question is why have you never settled down. And being evil isn't an excuse." Kim added the last part seeing the thought before her fiance could voice the obvious excuse that she usually used when faced with that particular question.

Shego sighed as she thought about the question seriously for the first time in a long time. "I guess because I've never met anyone that I thought could keep up with me." She answered simply as she munched at her sandwich after dipping it into her creamy soup.

"There's more to it then that, isn't there?" Kim asked, sensing something wasn't quite right in her girlfriends tone.

"Why do I get the feeling I'll never get anything past you, not like you won't find out soon enough anyway." Shego sighed resolutely. "Call Wade, I need him to look something up for you."

"Oook." Kim agreed as she pulled out her kimmunicator, pushing her half eating lunch aside for the moment.

"Hey Kim, what's up?" Wade asked as his face filled the screen and his baritone voice sounded from the device's small speaker.

"Shego said she had something she wanted you to look up for me." Kim told him as she pushed a button on the hand hand held, activating the devices holographic display, Wade's face now floating above the device as she set it on the counter in front of the two of them so she could finish her lunch while it was still warm.

"You two know how me and my brother's got my powers right?" Shego asked, knowing that they both did.

"Yeah, you guys got hit by the rainbow colored comet." Wade responded while Kim was busy listening and eating.

"But did either one of you bother looking up when it might have happened?" Shego asked.

"Actually, no. We never really had a reason to, why?" Wade asked as the faint sound typing could be heard through the com line as the boy genius began the implied search.

"You'll see." Shego promised as she finished eating her lunch.

"This can't be right." Wade exclaimed as the results filtered onto his screens.

"It is." Shego assured him, not even knowing what he was looking at, but confident as to what he was questioning.

"What is it Wade?" Kim asked while looking questioningly at the woman sitting beside her.

"While I haven't found a specific date, the reports I've found that would match the description of a rainbow covered comet date back to the 50's." Wade informed her.

"Thanks Wade, I'll leave you to your thoughts, me and Kim still have some talking to do." Shego told the young man.

"Sure." Wade replied, still a little taken a back by the facts.

"So you're..." Kim started to ask, more then a little surprised at the revelation.

"Somewhere in my 60's." Shego filled in for her. "Where not sure exactly how old we are. Our birth-certificates were destroyed when the commit hit and who ever it was that took us did a pretty good job of burying our records when they took us. The same power that gives us our healing factor also slowed our aging. Regeneration is a bitch like that. Like I said, you would have noticed sooner or later."

"How long did where you..." Kim tried to ask, horrified at what the answer might be.

"Being tortured? Years, decades. Thirty years as near as we've been able to figure out. Not that we tired all that hard, we just wanted to distance ourselves as much as possible from that part of our leaves when we got out. And when we did get out, we pretty much kept to ourselves for another ten years or so, before Hego started team go.

"Don't hurt my counters." Shego gently admonished Kim, the rage in her eyes was as obvious as her ruby covered fist's that could be heard softly crackling before Kim realized whet she was doing and snuffed her hands out.

"Thirty years?" Kim's voice was seething in anger, a very uncommon thing for the young hero, but to listen to her now, you'd never know it.

"Give or take." Shego confirmed as she took one of Kim's hands in her own.

"If I ever get my hands on those...bastards."

"And if it turns out it was the government." Shego asked, which for the first few moments Kim could only answer with silence. Never considering that it could have been government sanctioned.

"It's a sad truth, but often times things like this are done by the government without it's citizens knowledge under the guise of being for the common good. For now, think about what that means to you and we'll see what Wade digs up now that I've given him a new starting point. But you need to be prepared to face that possibility."

"Ok... So ageless huh" Kim suggested to get the discussion more back on topic.

"Not quite ageless, more like slowed, otherwise I'd still be a teenager like the Wego's. Though their finally starting to come out of them themselves.

"That's one of the other reasons I've never done the steady dating thing. Eventually I'd have to bury anyone I'd stayed with. Thankfully it was just us, so I haven't had to bury any relatives, despite my idiot brothers doing their best to kill themselves."

"You know you love them."

"Of course I do, doesn't mean that there not idiots."

"True." Kim agreed. "The future huh"

"Yeah. It's going to be interesting."

Told you it was a long one, hope you enjoyed the tell all, though it really didn't tell all, just confirmed somethings that were suspected.

Read and review please.