“Shego!”
It came much too loud and too early in the morning for the pale-green skinned woman as she sat at the small kitchen table of Drakken’s latest lair, hidden just off the coast, a glass of orange juice in one hand, the other rubbing a throbbing temple. Last night had involved far too much alcohol. The annual tradition of drinking on her birthday was usually was followed by the annual hangover from hell.
“Drakken…” Her glare from beneath her tangled hair froze the cerulean scientist in his tracks, “Shut. Up. I’ve got a giant hangover right now, and I can’t hold myself responsible for any possible disemboweling that may occur because of it.”
“But Shego-” His whine was cut off as he noticed a glowing talon-like finger raised at him. “Oh real mature Shego! But I’ll have you know that our problem with Kim Possible is finally over.”
Shego rolled her eyes as she sipped her juice, mentally preparing to ignore the scientist’s ramblings of whatever mechanical monstrosity that he’d come up with now.
“Kim Possible is…missing! Most likely dead!” He slapped the newspaper he had been holding onto the table, an unusually small hand pointing at the headline. “She’s gone!” He started to dance poorly around the kitchen, chanting “No more Kim Poss-i-ble! No more Kim Poss-i-ble!”
Shego began coughing, choking on her orange juice. No more Kim? Was Drakken joking? She quickly snatched the paper, and began skimming the article.
Kim Possible…Shego skimmed ahead…missing…more skimming…after going on a mission in Germany….more skimming……gone over a month…skimming again…presumed dead.
Shego stopped as she slowly read the sentence again.
Kim Possible…presumed dead. The words seemed casually pieced together, almost as if it wasn’t understood how powerful they really were.
Kim Possible was…dead.
The same Kim Possible who had managed to match or surpass her every time they fought? The same Kim Possible who had survived a trip through a giant cookie mixer? The same Kim Possible who had helped her and her idiot brothers defeat Aviarius?
Was it really the same girl?
Her body stood automatically, her legs shuffling away from Drakken and his private celebration. She felt nauseous, her body completely numb with each of her limbs weighing a hundred pounds. The girl she’d dedicated almost four years of her life trying to one-up…was gone. No warning, just gone.
It felt like she’d lost her reason to be.
There was no more redheaded perfectionist to taunt. No more girl who could make her want to strive to be better. No one who understood the person Shego was under her emotional armor.
She didn’t remember climbing into bed, wrapping herself in her dark green sheets, or Dr. Drakken coming to check on her several times that day. She wrapped herself in the cocoon of bedding and eventually drifted off into a restless sleep.
It was several days before she left her room, and her first trip out led her to the bathroom, but no further before she returned to her room, the sounds of cursing and struggling with a stuck door heard before the sound of splintered wood was heard from behind her closed door. Shego exited a short while later wearing one of her many cat suits, a small travel bag over one shoulder.
The hangar was a short trip from her room to the hangar where her plane rested. The experimental aircraft she’d stolen was one of a kind, repainted matte black with emerald flames. She preformed a quick pre-flight check before climbing it, stowing her bag behind her seat. The was no need to taxi the plane as the twin jet engine turbines worked up to operational speed the body trembling almost in excitement. A little push of the joystick and a small adjust of the throttle and she was off the ground and quickly leaving the hangar behind.
The aircraft quickly cleared the small hangar and began gaining altitude, pushing its way towards the clouds overhead, then in the blink of an emerald-colored eye later, passed them. Up here she could feel the problems that she faced down below stripping away with each the craft climbed. The hidden glances, the lusty stares, the hushed whispers. All of it was shed from her layer by layer, until she was bare from it all. There was no feeling like it.
Or no feeling like it anymore a small voice reminded her. The pain of loss seizing her chest, the pain coursing through it as the thought rippled through her mind, bringing with it more thoughts, each more confusing to her as the one before it.
When had she started caring about the teenager so much? When had she let the redhead get so far under her skin?
When had she gotten so weak?
She forced herself to blink several times, forcing tears away. She couldn’t cry. Not now. Not ever. She was stronger than that.
She was sure of it.
She had to be stronger than that.
The pale woman sighed as she silently reminded herself why she was going to Kim’s last known location. It was just closure. She had to know that the girl was truly gone. She couldn’t accept that the redhead was dead until then.
She coaxed the plane to travel faster; the body trembling as it approached the threshold of sound. Then the trembling stopped. It wasn’t often that she pushed her baby this hard, and she’d never tried to push the jet to go harder. She slowly kept adjusting the throttle, her airspeed increasing as she pushed the aircraft’s limits.
Even flying at the plane’s top speed the flight took several hours, and the pale woman had to begin to slow the aircraft as she approached German airspace. She swallowed as she steeled herself what she might find in the country below.
It hadn’t taken long to get into the country and even less time to find the Blackwood where the article had said Kim last was. The plan touched down in a small clearing gently, the engines whining softly as they shut down. Grabbing her bag, she left the plane, locking the canopy shut behind her and walked into the wood line. The further she went, the more she noticed shadows darting in the trees around her. The knot in her stomach told that she was getting close. The suspicion in the back of her mind told her that the shadows around her would keep her from getting there. She stopped, letting the bag slid from her shoulder and down her arm, landing with a small thump on the ground. The air rippled slightly as she ignited her hands, the glow casting a strong light out into the shaded wood.
“Alright, who’s out there? I’m not in the mood for playing games today. So get out here, so we can get this over with.” Some of the shadows shifted slightly as she spoke, but none of them approached. “Come on now, you little bastards. I don’t have all day!” The last word came out almost as a growl as she twisted and throwing a ball of energy into a tree, the wood exploding into a shower of splinters from the impact. “Now I didn’t put any heat on that one, but if no one is out here by the time I count to ten someone is going to the burn ward. And it isn’t to visit some poor orphans.” The glow grew larger around her hands, covering her wrists and lapping at her forearms, the air rippling from the heat as oxygen was consumed violently by the superheated plasma.
“One…Two…Thr-“
“Relax Miss Go.” A calm voice interrupted the pale woman who turned to face the speaker.
The speaker surprised the glow wielding woman as she saw a woman. The woman before Shego was slender, her brown hair cut short, barely longer than her ears. A dyke haircut Shego mused as she toned down her glow, taking note of the woman’s eye patch and blue jump suit. The woman’s combat boots convinced Shego that she was looking at something out of a B movie.
“What happened? You just get out of some bad lesbian science fiction movie production?” Shego scaled back the energy further so that there was nothing more than a whisper around the ends of the talon-tipped fingers of her gloves.
“Not quite Miss Go, you see my name is Doctor Betty Director, and the people you were just threatening are some of my agents. I’m sure you’ve heard of Global Justice?”
The pale woman snorted and crossed her arms, the glow completely extinguished now, “So what does the supreme-leader of the Goody-Good Patrol want with me?”
Betty walked closer, so that she was only a few feet from Shego, “Nothing. Well, at least nothing right now. I know your record fairly well, but that isn’t why we’re here. My agents and I have been trying to find Miss Possible since her initial disappearance in these woods almost a month ago. I’m sure you’re here because of that press release that was made earlier this week, correct?”
Shego nodded slowly, not feeling comfortable with where the conversation was leading. She repressed the feeling, deciding to wait and see where the conversation actually lead before acting.
“Today my organization is pulling out. From what we found, well, it is very hard to believe that she is alive. There has been no sign of her however, and with the evidence we collected, we don’t believe there ever will be.”
The color began to fade from the woman’s already pale complexion.
The one eyed woman looked towards the tree line before she spoke, “We found a single boot, a broken communication device that her partner Mr. Stoppable identified as her ‘Kimmunicator’ and a lot of blood Miss Go.”
“Ho-How much blood?” Shego’s legs were shaking now as she willed herself to stay standing.
“Enough blood Miss Go to paint my office with. I’m not entirely sure what you came here looking to find Miss Go, but I hope that I helped you find it.” The woman walked passed Shego, her hands clasped behind her back.
Shego collapsed her complexion the color of chalk. Kim was gone.
It really was true, wasn’t it?
Her shoulders began to shake as the tears began to well up in her eyes. The woman didn’t know why she shed tears for the redhead. Maybe she respected the rival she lost. Maybe it was for a connection that they had despite being on the opposite sides of the law. Maybe it went deeper than that. Shego didn’t try to find why, letting herself breakdown and collapse, sobbing softly until her eyes had no more tears.
She spent the night on the wing of her plane, staring at the night sky, not sure what to do anymore. She’d fought Kim. It was what she did. Drakken would cook up a hair-brained scheme, Kim and her buffoon sidekick would show up to stop him, and she’d fight the redhead. But what could she do now? The girl had given Shego a reason to try harder, to become stronger, to develop new skills with her powers, to become something else. Something stronger.
Kim was the first person who actually wanted to understand who Shego was. To know what drove her. To know what Shego felt, wanted, believed.
Until they that first time they first met in battle, Shego had just been a thief and a sidekick to a bumbling villain, but Kim gave her the drive to become something more.
But what was she now? It just didn’t feel right to go back to her old life. Yet she didn’t have anywhere else to go. Curling into a ball she tried to think, but found her thoughts not on her problem, but on Kim instead. The teenager drifted from her mind as doubt crept in.
Did she even have a purpose now that Kim was gone? She held herself tightly, eventually falling asleep without an answer.
Time passed slowly after she returned to the lair, one day blending into the next, each moment feeling like the one before it.
Drakken watched Shego’s decline into depression as the weeks based, each day the woman becoming worse than she was the day before. The man wasn’t the most knowledge about matters of the heart or mind, but he was sure that something was bothering the woman. “Shego? I know that sometimes we aren’t very close, but I like to think of us as some kind of extended family…and well…I was wondering if you would tell me…what was bothering you.” He cringed, expecting the woman to lash out at him, only relaxing when he realized that she didn’t even look up at him. “Shego?”
“Why do you keep me around?”
The question startled the man causing him to flinch, ready to cover his face from any energy-induced burns he may receive. “Well…we’re a family Shego! Not to mention you’ve pulled me out of trouble more times than I can count. I can trust you, even if you get cranky and abusive at times.”
Shego seemed to be studying the kitchen table for a long moment before she said anything, “But with Kim Possible gone why would you need me to protect you? She really was all that held you back, right?”
The man pulled a chair back from the table, sighing as he slid into his seat, “Yes and no… You see in the end this was more of a large game than anything. Her father ruined my life and I had to prove to myself that I was better than he was. But his daughter… now she was more of a challenge than he could ever prove to be… and I found myself trying not to beat him, but her instead. I guess somewhere along the line I stopped caring about the world and more about outsmarting her…” He laughed nervously, “It’s strange…I never noticed until now why I wanted to win so badly…”
“So….you don’t need me anymore?” Shego’s voice was on the verge of breaking as she spoke.
“Not anymore than I need this lair…Let’s face it…I have no use for the world, and, well, I’m getting rather old to keep trying to take it over. I think retirement is a better approach. Maybe I can sell some of my inventions to the military or something.” He sighed, “I’m sorry Shego…I guess we do need to go our separate ways… Do new things with our lives…move on…”
Shego didn’t say anything, as Drakken stood up and slowly walked away.
Move on? What could a woman like her do now?
The man paused, and looked back at her, “They held a funeral for her today…some place called Crestview Cemetery.” When he looked back towards her, she was gone.
Shego didn’t remember the ride to the cemetery or how she found herself slowly walking towards the cemetery gate, a thought fighting to stay outside of the cemetery, but a louder voice telling her to go in. To find the truth that she knew was hidden somewhere inside.
After a little searching she found Kim’s headstone. It was a simple design, an angel, wings spread with an arm reaching towards the sky.
“In memory of Kim Possible. A woman who never learned what was impossible really meant,” Shego smiled a little as she looked at it, feeling a sense of pride for Kim, quickly followed by the familiar grip of depression. This was the memorial to the girl who’d defined her life, and propelled Drakken to try bigger and better things.
The memorial for the girl who could do anything.
Except live forever.
“Damn it Kimmie…” Shego’s hand’s balled up, her talon tipped fingers digging into her palms. “You just had to die young didn’t you? You just couldn’t say no to anyone…and now…now” Her legs buckled, dropping her to her knees, the pain welling in her eyes. “I never got to prove I was better…damn you Princess! You didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me good-bye…”
Shego forced herself to stop crying, and wiped her eyes, “I might as well call it quits then too….After all…without you I’ve got nothing… Drakken quit trying to take over the world, and well…I don’t see the point in continuing to live in a world where everybody else thinks that I’m a tool or a monster.” She extended one talon like finger and bared the wrist on her other arm. It was quick and painless at first. She clenched her fist as the pain set in, the blood running free from her wrist, and onto the grass below.
The pale woman muttered curse words as she fought to stay awake. She was getting dizzy now, everything blurring together. “Good-bye Kimmie…” She slumped forward, her forehead bouncing off of the corner of Kim’s headstone and landing in the grass.
Somewhere in the darkness the woman thought she heard a familiar voice as the world grew cold and dark, “Shego…What happened to the woman I knew? The woman who helped make me strong?”
A slow beep of a hear monitor was the first thing Shego heard as she tried to look around to see where she was. As her vision neared the foot of the bed she noticed an older woman in a lab coat holding a clipboard. For a moment the pale woman thought she was looking at an older Kim until she remembered that she had once met the teenager’s mother. “I know you….”
The woman looked over at Shego, and sighed “We met before…you and my daughter worked together to find Drew and Ron last Christmas.” She was silent for a moment, “I’m Dr. Anne Possible, and you are very lucky to be alive right now. No one knows how you got here, especially since you showed up in the lobby bleeding extensively. Now I don’t know how you got that cut on your wrist…or even how you managed to get here with that much blood loss, but that doesn’t matter right now. You’ll be under observation for a few days then you’ll be free to go.”
Parts of Shego’s mind felt fuzzy, as memories about the woman came back into focus, “But…aren’t you a surgeon?”
“I’ve been known to make exceptions. Especially for people who made my daughter smile.”
Shego’s mind worked at this slowly, still recovering from the blood loss she’d sustained before, “I made…Kimmie happy?”
Anne nodded, “I’ve never heard her talk about anyone with more enthusiasm or pride. To her you were everything, a smart woman, a capable fighter, and she said you had something else that she couldn’t explain. Something that she wished she could get closer to you to figure out. For Kim anything she couldn’t explain right away was something more than just an interest, it was an obsession. And you’re the only mystery she never solved.”
Shego looked down at her own feet. She’d made Kim happy. She made the teenager smile.
She felt a small smile creep onto her face as she looked back towards the ceiling.
“Get some rest Shego…you need it while your body heals.”
Shego complied meekly, rolling onto her side and closing her eyes, the hint of a memory creeping back into her mind as she slipped off to sleep.
Was that you Princess?
A/N: And thus ends Chapter One of the revised version for those who read the original Bloodstained Hearts.
Next Chapter: Shego faces a monster, and finds help in a place she never expected.