Why hasn’t she come back yet? She’d better be all right. If something that happened to her, I’ll…I’ll never forgive myself. I hate her making me feel this way. She’s nobody, just a useless, empty-headed kid. I shouldn’t care and I should want to kick her ass. But, all I want is for her to come home. This is her home.
Shego sat on her sofa, glancing at the loft every now and then. Her pet had not come back yet and it had been almost a week. She did not know what to think. She tried to be angry with the girl; she had tried her very best to be pissed off. Instead, she just missed the girl and worried about her little monster. It made her think about when she had let Kim go the first time.
(Flashback)
Shego wandered into work after being without her pet for a month and some change. She was cranky, crankier than usual actually. She never noticed, but she was much huffier when she did not have someone to go home to.
Her good friend noticed, but she never said anything about it. She thought that it might offend her friend to suggest that she was not better off on her own, which the raven-haired woman kept swearing she was. Besides, Shego was always grouchy, after all; so, her boss did not think anything of the super-powered woman’s behavior. That was until Shego snapped; she just had to have a breaking point, Betty thought with a sigh.
The pale woman had gotten into an argument with a coworker. The guy eventually said something about her attitude and Shego cracked like thin ice on a pond. She verbally tore into him; most people would have fled in terror or at least left deeply insulted from her profane language. He did not back down, though like most other people would. Shego was not deterred from him standing his ground and she was determined to win the battle.
How did Shego win? Well, she punched him in the abdomen with all of her might and then kicked him across the face as he bent down in pain. He was knocked unconscious, which was to be expected from a master martial artist like Shego. And she was summoned into the chief’s office.
“Sit down, Shego,” Betty ordered in her business tone. She could not believe what she had to put up with when it came to the younger woman.
“Whatever,” the super-powered female scoffed and complied with the command while making sure to look as insulted as possible, as if she was the one that had been wronged.
“Why are you here?” the one-eyed woman inquired. She could not believe her friend’s attitude; she would like to tell her to just grow up, but Shego would just flip out in a rage and she just did not feel like putting up with that.
“Who the fuck knows,” the green-skinned woman replied. She did not care why she had been called into the office. She was so sick of dealing with complete and utter morons, people that were not capable of doing half of the crap that she did and live to tell about it without a scratch on them, getting in her face like they were hot stuff. She was just sick of all of it.
“Shego, what’s wrong with you?” the boss asked. She wished that she could just get on the phone and call up that brat and tell her to get her ass on back to Shego before the woman did something stupid…well, stupider.
“What’s wrong with me? There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s all of those fucking idiots that you recruited into this screwed up department. They’re complete, total fucking idiots,” the raven-haired woman declared with a growl.
It had come to the point where it seemed like every time that Shego opened her mouth, she was growling. And if she was not growling, she was scowling. She was just in a festering and foul mood and it was getting fouler by the second. Doctor Director did not know what to do with the younger woman. She had never seen her friend so irritated just from waking up in the morning it seemed; her employee was practically unapproachable now, unless a person was willing to risk the bruises and burns anyway. Going up to Shego now was like going up to a rabid pit-bull that was hyped up on cocaine.
“Shego, you were arguing with the fucking guy because you didn’t want to move out his fucking way,” the chief pointed out.
Doctor Director was obviously getting fed up with her friend. Shego was making everyone’s lives hell. Some people were even calling in sick to not have to deal with her for the day; hell, she had been tempted to not come in a couple of times to not have to deal with her super-powered employee. She bet that if Shego ever took a day off, the whole office would rejoice, herself included.
“He was in my damn way!” the younger woman argued.
“You weren’t even going anywhere,” Betty growled that time. She wanted to grab Shego over her desk and just bitch slap her; she was that angry with her.
“Neither was he.”
“He was trying to get to his desk.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
Doctor Director sighed; it was getting more and more tempting to get on the phone and call that brat. Shego obviously needed help. She required something or someone to calm her down and to relax her. Who would have thought that spoiled brat served such a big purpose, Betty wondered. And to think, all that time, the one-eyed woman assumed that the girl was as useless as an extra toe.
“Shego, I’m suspending you,” Doctor Director informed her employee.
“You’re what?” Shego shouted and she punched the desk because of her anger, breaking it without any difficulty.
“For two weeks,” Betty continued on. It was originally going to be for one week, but her desk cost a lot of money and her friend had just ruined it. Apparently, the pale woman needed a lot of time to cool off.
“Two weeks?” Shego shrieked.
“You want to try for three?”
“Fuck you.”
“That’ll be good for three. The suspension starts immediately. Bye now,” Doctor Director said.
“You can’t fucking do this!”
“I just did. Bye.”
“Bet—” Shego attempted to argue.
“Get out,” the one-eyed woman ordered. She did not even want to hear anything from her friend anymore. She did not even want to deal with the pale female anymore.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do for three fucking weeks?” the younger woman demanded to know.
“Straighten out your attitude for one.”
“I don’t have a fucking attitude!”
“You’re being a bitch, more so than usual. In fact, calling you a bitch right now is like insulting bitches. Go cool off and then come back. Call in one of your mother’s favors and go to some tropical island. Lay on a beach for a few days. You need to relax. You need to unwind,” the chief suggested.
“I don’t.”
“You do. Now, get the fuck out,” Doctor Director ordered in a calm tone.
Shego snarled and stormed out of the office; believe it or not, Betty was glad to see her go. Shego was her best employee in regards to doing her assignments, but she was a problem to deal with. Her antisocial behavior was coming out too much recently and it was bringing everyone else down. If she did not straighten herself out, she was going to be more of a liability than anything else and Doctor Director believed that she might have to fire her friend.
The raven-haired woman left the building with a deep scowl on her face. She did not want to be at work anyway. She did not want to be surrounded by ridiculous and outrageous dolts that swore they knew things about her. She was sick of seeing morons every time that she turned around. She hated them all.
The pale woman went home to nothing. The large apartment seemed so empty. She bet that the place had an echo. It never seemed so monstrously huge before. She tried to ignore the overwhelming feeling of isolation that came with being in her massive apartment and she looked for something to do since she was now free for almost a month.
She could not believe it; she had three whole weeks with nothing to do. There would be no one to beat up legally for three weeks. Her talents would go to waste for three whole weeks. Part of her actually wanted to go beat up Betty for suspending her, but she knew that would not help matters.
The first few days were not so bad. She caught up on her reading, but after that she was at a loss. She was not a woman of many hobbies; her job was like her hobby because she got to practice her fighting skills and she got to beat people up. Not to mention, she got paid to do it. What more could she ask for?
She decided to work out, but she could not do that for the whole day. After lounging on her sofa for a few more days, an evil thought crept into her head; there was a chance that she might be lonely. She refused to believe that, though.
She was a loner by nature, habit, and choice. She did not like dealing with people and she hated having people around her because they always, ultimately did something very stupid. So, she asked herself, what was there to be lonely about? Nothing. Yeah, it was probably nothing, she told herself.
A few times, she had been tempted or almost accidentally called for her pet, to play a game or do a trick, just something to entertain her, only to remember that she did not have a pet anymore. She sighed; okay, no pet. So, there was no one to torment, no one to watch act ridiculous for her own personal amusement, and no one to hold while watching a movie. She was alone.
She tried her best not to think of her pet. She told herself that it was best that the girl was gone because it was better for her pet. Her pet needed to do something with her life and not waste away on her sofa like some fat cat.
The selfish side of Shego did point out that she should have just kept the brat because she would at least have someone to entertain her at the moment. Why should she care if the little pest wanted to waste her life? The problem was that she did care, so she told herself to just to stop thinking of the rascal because she was not coming back and if she did, Shego would just turn her away again. That girl needed to do something with her life beyond sleeping all day.
Well, she was still on her own. She was tempted to take Betty up on her suggestion of calling her mother and getting her to do a favor for her. But, she was not interested in getting anything from her mother at the moment. She did not feel like dealing with that woman anytime soon.
After over a week of being by herself, Shego was blessed with company; okay, maybe it was more like cursed with company. Who said beggars could not be choosers because she would like to punch that person in the mouth. As lonely as she was, she would have preferred that to Drakken showing up.
The presence of the cerulean inventor did not help ease Shego’s feeling of loneliness. Cooking for him was not the same as cooking for her pet. He just did not appreciate it in the slightest. He certainly did not make her feel like the world’s greatest chef like her pet did. She could ruin a meal and Kim would still eat it with a smile on her face as if she had never tasted something so delicious. She would even ask for seconds if she had a mission that day; not that Shego knew about the missions back then. Drakken never requested seconds no matter what.
There were other problems with the onyx-eyed scientist showing up while she was longing for her pet; not that she would ever admit to longing for her little pest. She could not cuddle him. It would just be weird and against her very nature. He was not even cuddly; her pet was cuddly. She wanted something to cuddle to take the edge off of everything, to help relax her in someway.
She soon realized that she could not stand him each minute that he was at the house as the days ticked away. She ignored him most of the time that he spoke because things were less painful that way for both of them. She desired to punch him in the neck almost every five minutes to silence him and his ranting after a while. He actually soured her mood the more that he was around. So, when she went back to work, it would have been logical for her to be worse off than when she left. But, that was not the case.
Shego was glad to go back to work, glad to have something to do; it gave her a reason to avoid the blue-skinned doctor. She decided to avoid everyone at work too and that way she would not flip out on anyone and she would never get suspended again. She did not talk to anyone; she just did her assignments, wrote her reports, and went home at the end of the day. It became almost a pathetic, dreary routine, but it did keep her from being suspended again and that was what counted.
The only break in her rut came from the few times that she completely lost it on Drakken. The first time that it happened he just got too deep into her business and kept pestering her about her family. He wanted to know where they were, what they did, and a trillion other things that she did not want talk about and was getting on her nerves. He just went on and on, not listening when she ordered him to stop. She eventually just blasted him; it seemed like the reasonable thing for her to do in her opinion.
Yes, Shego had actually hit her boyfriend with a plasma blast and that had only been the first time. She had done it a couple of other times after he started babbling about one of his projects and he just would not stop. It did not help matters that he talked down to her when he started going on about his work. She could tell him to cease, but he did not listen and she blasted him. The worst part of it, she supposed anyway, was that she did not feel guilty about it at all.
Hitting Drakken was like hitting one of her brothers. No regret or remorse followed the act. He deserved it, her brain always told her and she moved on with her life, never thinking about it again. He never seemed to learn his lesson, though.
She had seriously hit her pet once and that was mostly because she did not know what else to do and hitting the girl was the first thing that came to mind. It was like an instinct after her mind told her to be offended. But, she hated to admit it, she had not hit the girl out of annoyance or anger; it was fear that made her hit the girl. Her pet had really scared her that day and she did not know what else to do when struck with fright. She did know that after hitting her pet, she had not believed in her heart that the redhead deserved it like she did when she hit everyone else.
She would never hit her little monster again, she vowed, if the pest ever returned to her. But, she knew that she could never make the same promise with Drakken. She had hit him before and it was highly likely that she would hit him again because he would get on her nerves again. Maybe one day she would feel something negative about abusing him, but she doubted it. As long as he was there and getting on her nerves, she would hit him and he continued to get on her nerves. It turned into a vicious cycle.
(End of Flashback)
Shego was drawn out of her reminiscence by a disturbance. There was a knocking at the door that jolted her from her thoughts. She climbed off of the sofa and went to the front of the apartment. She opened the door and there stood Betty.
“I’ve been calling your phone all day and you didn’t pick up,” Doctor Director said to explain her presence.
“Oh…I didn’t hear it,” Shego said absently as she motioned for her friend to come in with a tired wave of her hand.
“No? Well, where is it?” the one-eyed woman inquired as she entered the apartment and her friend shut the door behind her. They went to the sofa and flopped down on the furniture.
“I don’t know where my phone is,” the pale female honestly replied while scratching her head in bewilderment. She had no clue where anything was it would seem.
“Are you all right?” Betty asked, masking her concern just barely.
“Yeah. Why would you even ask that?”
“You don’t look so great. Besides, you haven’t come to work in the past few days,” the chief pointed out. She thought that her life-long companion might have been sick, but it did not look like that was the case. Something was up, though. She just was not sure what it was, but she bet it was serious from Shego’s appearance.
“I haven’t? I called in, didn’t I?” the emerald-eyed female asked in a bemused tone. She continued to rub the top of her head and her eyes showed sorrow and puzzlement. It was like she was hopelessly lost. Something was definitely going on, the one-eyed woman concluded.
“Yeah, you called in. But, it’s not like you to miss days and not answer your phone, except for that one time when it was really cold. So, what’s the problem? Why are you in here looking like you just fell out of bed?” the brown-haired woman inquired in a confused tone of her own.
“It’s nothing,” the younger female replied in a dismissive voice. It did not seem like nothing from the way she was looking. She was still in her pajamas and it looked like she had not slept in a couple of days; she actually had not slept in two days because she was worried about her absent pet and she was surprised to find out that it was hard to sleep through the night anyway without that slender body pressed against her.
“Where the hell is your brat?” Betty asked while looking around. Was that little punk so useless that she could not even keep Shego company while she was obviously going through some kind of problem, the older woman could not help wondering. She doubted that she would ever understand why her friend kept that hopeless shrimp around. That girl was just a waste of space most of the time.
“Oh…she’s….she’s out,” Shego answered in an unsure tone.
Betty nodded. “She ran away?” she guessed because her friend was just too distressed for the girl to simply be “out.” She also doubted that her employee had thrown the girl out or she would have simply said that.
“She did,” Shego confirmed. “But, I was going to throw her out anyway,” she quickly added.
Doctor Director felt a slight headache coming on. The brat was gone again; Shego seemed to have gone off the deep end, or was at least close to it. The elder woman knew how it was going to go because it was a rerun; well, it was sort of a rerun. The brat had not runaway that first time, but she had not been around and that had affected the super-powered woman.
Betty wondered if Shego had come to realize how much she needed that useless runt. She guessed that Shego kept Kim because she subconsciously understood that she needed the olive-eyed girl, but from the look on her friend’s face, that subconscious thought might have worked its way into her consciousness because she looked absolutely wrecked and Betty was willing to bet it was because her pet ran away. It was about time that Shego realized that there was more to having Kim around than the fact that she liked having someone willing to play the fool for her.
“You were getting tired of her?” Betty asked her friend since Shego claimed that she was going to throw Kim out anyway.
“No,” the green-skinned woman answered honestly.
“She was getting on your nerves?” the one-eyed woman assumed. She would not put it passed that kid to do something stupid and upset Shego to the point where the pale woman would consider kicking her out, like when the little idiot kissed Shego with tongue that one time.
“Not exactly.”
“Well, I’m all out of guesses. You want to throw me a hint or hum a few bars?” Betty requested.
Shego showed Betty her left hand. The brown-haired female did not see what the big deal was at first until her eye spied something quite wrong, in her opinion anyway. There was a ring on Shego’s ring finger.
“What the fuck is that!” Betty asked as if the ring was some unidentified, mutant bug. She even pointed at the ring with a slightly terrified look on her face.
In Doctor Director’s defense, she was beyond surprised and a little horrified too. Seeing Shego with a possible engagement ring was more frightening than aliens landing and knowing that they did not come in peace. She believed that she should have been given some kind of warning before being flashed the ring. She thought that Shego’s actions could be considered attempted murder for the simple fact that she could have died of shock. Her blood pressure was already up thanks to her job and her so-called friend was trying to give her a heart attack by showing her what could be an engagement ring.
“It’s just what it looks like,” the raven-haired woman stated.
“Are you fucking insane?” Doctor Director demanded to know in an almost hysterical tone.
“Could you take this just a little worse?” Shego inquired sarcastically.
“You’re going to marry Drakken? Drakken of all people? Have you even stopped and thought about this just a little bit?” the boss asked. Of course, she could have taken it worse and just punched her friend in the face for doing something so blatantly foolish. She was tempted to threaten to tell Shego’s mother on her for doing some to outlandishly irrational.
“Of course I have,” the younger female replied, but that did not assure her friend that she had thought out what she was doing.
“No, you haven’t if you’re still going to go through with this insane shit. You do know he’s moving out of town in a little while, right? You’ll have to move too,” Betty pointed out.
“Aw, you’re worried about being all alone?” Shego teased.
“I’m worried about you losing what little fucking mind you have,” the one-eyed woman declared and she poked her friend in the forehead, purposely looking to get a charge out of the green-skinned female. Shego grabbed her hand with expected swiftness.
“Don’t do that again,” the pale woman growled in anger.
“Now, if I didn’t listen and did it again, you’d be out for blood. What are you going to do when it’s Drakken poking you in your big fucking head? I’ve got no problem with you trying to take my head off. In fact, I get a crazy kick out it. Drakken won’t and the silly bastard doesn’t listen. If you go after him, you will take his head off. You’ll kill that guy if you marry him.”
“What’s done is done.”
“What the fuck kind of talk is that? That doesn’t even make any fucking sense. I guess that’s why Princess got the hell out of Dodge. She’s the real loser in all of this, even with the shit you’re talking. She’ll have to go out, get a real job, and find a real home—”
“This is her real home!” Shego snarled in pure fury and she tightened her grip on her friend’s wrist. “This is her real home,” the green-skinned woman repeated with conviction.
“Then why are you driving her away?” Betty inquired while ignoring the fact that she was going to have a nice bruise all around her wrist tomorrow. She would get the younger female back once her mind was restored her, if that ever happened anyway. She decided to just count herself lucky that her obviously distressed and insane friend had not grabbed her with her hands plasma charged; she would have one hand to go along with her one eye and then she would have to shoot Shego, which did not seem like a bad option at the moment.
“I’m not. She ran away,” the green-skinned female declared.
“Because you’re going to marry Drakken. She knows her time is up. You can’t keep her and marry him. It’s got to be one or the other. It can’t be both. You know that and she knows that. You have to stop kidding yourself,” Betty stated.
The brown-haired woman did not even know how her friend had managed to keep Kim and Drakken for as long as she did. She could not believe that the man actually believed Kim was only Shego’s cousin. Anyone with eyes that was around the pair for a few hours should have known something was up, in Doctor Director’s opinion.
“What should I do?” Shego inquired.
Betty could not believe her friend had actually let that question exit her mouth. She could not believe that it was even an issue. Sure, she could not stand that little brat and she had given Drakken that job, but he was good at his job and the brat was, well, a brat. But, the point was that she did not have to live with either of them and one of them kept Shego calm while the other one drove Shego close to mad. So, why the hell was it even an issue?
“Shego, I don’t know what the fuck is up with you, but you need to ask yourself, what do you want? Who do you want? I mean, the Shego I know would never ask such a dumb ass question. The Shego I know, when she wants shit, she takes it and doesn’t give a damn about what other people think. Sometimes, she doesn’t even care who gets hurt. I mean, I remember when we were in elementary school that if Shego wanted a swing, then she pushed whoever the hell was on it off the swing and used it. If she wanted the last slice of pizza for lunch, but there were people ahead of her in line, she flung those unlucky souls out of her damn way. If she wanted to answer a question and the wise ass in the class raised his hand to answer it, she slapped him in the back of the head and told him to shut the hell up while she answered the question without being called on. From when she was little, she took things because if she didn’t, she’d be overlooked, she’d be forgotten. No one forced her into doing things and she got what she wanted,” Betty stated.
Shego nodded to show that she understood what her friend was saying. “Have I told you how much I hate you?” she inquired.
“This week?” Betty riposted.
“Yeah.”
“No, not this week. You’d be so lost without me.”
“Please, I wouldn’t have half the problems I do if I never met you,” the green-skinned female remarked.
“I could say the same.”
“Please, with your family?”
“Okay, you got me. So, what are you going to do? Sit here, sulk, and be all engaged or go out and look for your fucking brat?” Betty inquired. Shego only looked at her friend; there was a strange expression in her emerald eyes.
Next time: the end