It had been a Thursday afternoon and Shego had been alone in the house. Kim had been asked to present a symposium regarding the status of Independent Operatives within the Global Justice network of agents and the twins were attending a cheerleaders meeting after school. Shego had opted to remain at home and exercise.
When the doorbell rang her first inclination, being antisocial by nature, was to ignore it. She had learned from her angel, however, that being a good neighbor meant answering the bell. She stood up from the floor of the workout room in the basement of her home and climbed the stairs to the living room; she did pause to peek through the curtains so as to prevent another incident like the one with the Adventists.
Shego was greeted by the pleasant surprise of seeing young Alexander Rockwaller standing on her welcome mat.
She smiled with the warm feeling of true joy and opened the door… after grabbing a robe from the laundry room to wear over her skintight leotard. In a house full of women, she had to remind herself to behave appropriately around this boy; it wouldn’t do to be immodest. Tall for his fifteen years and slim, he had Ron’s frame and hair, but Bonnie’s sharp eyes and keen mind. He and the twins had been closely knit for years even though the Stoppables lived several blocks away and zoning ordinances had placed them in different schools.
“Hey, sailor, new in town?” She smiled down at the young man, looking so much like a perfect blend of his parents that it was eerie.
“Hello, Ms. Possible. Mom already warned me that you might say something like that.” He blushed and grinned.
“To what do I owe the visit?” Shego glanced around the street. “Are you here with your folks?”
“No, Ma’am. I took the bus.” He swallowed hard and shuffled his feet a little. “I wanted to talk with you and Mrs. Possible about something, please.”
“Alexander, is everything Ok?”
“Yes, Ma’am. There’s just something… on my mind that I wanted to speak with you about.”
“Ooo… sounds important!” She teased him and tousled his hair. “Well, it’s just me right now but you’d be more than welcome to hang out.” She cleared the way and bade him enter. “Pum… Mrs. Possible should be home soon and the girls’ cheerleading thing is almost over so come on in and have a snack!” Nervously polite, the teenager walked inside and let her escort him to the kitchen.
Both Kim and Shego loved this boy as if he had been their own because he was the child of their two most trusted and loyal friends, Bonnie Rockwaller and Ron Stoppable. Even though Ron had finally wed Bonnie just over ten years ago, they had agreed for their son to keep the name ‘Rockwaller’ because they hadn’t truly been a couple at the time of his birth. They gave their daughter the surname of ‘Stoppable’ along with a first name that made Kim a weeping mess for days.
“How’s Kimberly doing at pre-K?” Shego poured two glasses of ice water and then found a bag of pretzels.
“She’s fine. She still says ‘Aletts’ and always wants to show me stuff.” The older brother grinned in spite of himself. “She’ll drag me around the yard yelling, ‘Aletts, come see, come see!’ She’s nuts.”
“I’m a little sister, did you know that?”
“Really?”
“Really, really.” Shego blinked back the pain at the memory of Mego’s face. “Two older brothers and two younger.” She gathered the items she had assembled and carried them to the table, slightly confused when she saw Alexander rise from his chair and move towards her but pleased when she realized that he was going to give her a helping hand. Most teens didn’t behave like that any more, except for her perfect daughters and this wonderful boy. “I’m pretty sure that I acted the same way more than once.”
“She’s cool, I guess.” The boy nodded to himself, cheering Shego up in just the right way. She watched the young man as he looked around, inspecting the rooms within his line of sight as if he had never been here before, though this had been like a second home to him for most of his life. If anything, he seemed to be avoiding eye contact with her.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“No, Ma’am. Thank you.”
“Alexander, if there’s something on your mind you can tell me.”
“I… I, um… suppose that I should wait for everyone.”
“Ok. But then you’ll have four curious faces staring at you instead of just one.” She munched a pretzel. “I don’t want to press the issue, but maybe you’d be more comfortable talking with just one person at first.” In her attempt to make him feel more at ease, she feared that she might be too pushy. “Whatever you have on your mind, maybe we should all be here. Just forget what I was saying. More pretzels?”
“No, thanks.” He bit his lip and seemed to reach an internal decision. “I guess it would make sense to tell you first. Then you might help me with what I wanted to say.”
“Alright.” She rinsed her mouth of pretzel and gave this boy her full attention. “Sock it to me.”
“Ok, sure…” He broke into an immediate sweat. “This is harder than I thought.”
Shego extended her hand and placed it atop his.
“Alexander, there is nothing that you can say to me or this family that would ever make us feel any different about you. We love you and you’re safe here. Take all the time that you need.”
“Ok… Ok… Ok.” He shook his head and took a sip of water. One deep breath later, and he was ready. “My Dad was the one that suggested I do this and Mom agreed. She said that it was a little old fashioned but they both felt that, well, since our families are so close and all, that it would be the best thing.” He looked her right in the eyes. “I wanted to ask you and Mrs. Possible first if it would be Ok to ask Sheki out Friday night and then… if she’s Ok with it… to, um, go steady.”
“Go… steady…?”
“Yeah…” He visibly relaxed once these words were out, grinning and wiping his brow with a sleeve. “I had to look the phrase up on the Internet! I… really like Sheki and would… love to take her out regularly. If that’s Ok with both of you.” He watched her blank expression, having expected… something. When thirty seconds had crawled by and she had not spoken, he started to wonder if he had said something wrong.
“Ms. Possible?”
Her left eye started to twitch.
“Are you alright?”
Kim arrived to an unexpected pleasure; dinner was being made ready on the stove and the table was set. She was so used to doing these tasks herself each evening that she immediately wondered what was wrong.
“Mmm, that smells good.” She walked up to her wife, the woman wearing a frilly pink apron over her usual walk-around clothes. “What gives?”
“Nothing ‘gives’, Princess!” Shego rolled her eyes. “Can’t I be the one to make dinner when my gals are so busy with their frantic, boring lives?” She let Kim embrace her but didn’t remove her oven mitts and returned to the task at hand once the contact ended. “Ok, so I was the one who was bored and thought that I’d make myself useful, is that Ok?”
“Sorry, mean and green!” Kim laughed and backed out of the kitchen. “Are the girls home?”
Shego stiffened.
“Um, yes.”
“And?”
“And they’re in the den.”
“Doing…?”
“I dunno.”
“Oh. Ok.” Kim removed her jacket and walked to the rear of the house towards the small room that served as den, computer room and occasional base of operations for Team Possible. She raised her hand and was about to rap on the doorjamb when she heard the faint sound of someone crying. Her first inclination was to break down the door and destroy whatever forces were causing her child to feel saddened but, as the mother of girls in their mid-teens, tears weren’t always based in reality. She completed her knock.
“Girls, are you in there?”
“…”
“Kasy? Sheki?”
“Yes, Mom.” Kasy’s voice, definitely not the one crying.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
Kim opened the door to see both girls at the window seat, Kasy’s arm around Sheki’s shoulder and the redhead doing her sisterly best to comfort the raven-haired girl beside her. Kim was at their side in a heartbeat.
“Sheki! What’s wrong, baby?”
“He didn’t call or anything!” More sobs, more tears. “Nothing!”
“I’m sorry, baby, but I don’t…”
“Mom, Alexander Rockwaller had emailed us this past weekend to say that he was going to stop by tonight, that he had something to talk to you and Momma about.” Kasy did the talking while Sheki curled up against her twin and wept. “There’s a dance at Alexander’s school this coming Friday and we thought that he might have planned to ask her out… but he never showed up.”
“Well, that’s not like Alexander at all! Are you sure that he hasn’t called? Left a message?” Kim reached out and stroked the cheek of her raven-haired child. “Did you ask your Momma?”
“Yes, Ma’am. She said that she hadn’t seen or heard from him.”
“He HATES me!”
“Ok, I don’t know what the sitch is, but…” Kim paused at the sound of the telephone ringing out in the hallway. “But that young man is far too mature for that sort of behavior. And he certainly doesn’t hate you.” She stood, walking to the door. “You two had better get ready for dinner and then we’ll see if we can’t figure out what’s going on.” She had been looking at them both but Kim had been talking to Kasy; she knew that the younger redhead would be able to help her sister pull herself together for a little while, and by then Kim hoped that the sitch would have improved.
The incessant ringing of the telephone called to her like a siren. Kim moved to the phone with a frown on her face.
“Hello, Possible residence.”
“KP? Hey, It’s Ron.”
“Hello, Ron!” This was unexpected and Kim had stopped believing in coincidences years ago. “You wouldn’t happen to be calling about your son, would you?”
“I sure am. Has he been by there this evening?”
“He hasn’t, but it’s funny that you called.” Motion at the end of the hallway caught her eye and she saw Shego walking out of the kitchen with a full plate of food in her hands. “Ron? Hang on a second, will you?”
“Sure thing, KP.”
“Shego?” Kim called out to her wife and the tall woman froze mid-stride on her way through the dining room. “Shego, what’s up?”
“Up? Why?” The woman didn’t even turn around. “Why must something be up?”
“Where are you taking that plate? You’ve walked right passed the table.”
“Oops?”
“Well… “ Kim shrugged off the distraction. “I’ve just been talking to the girls and Sheki’s very upset. They were expecting Alexander Stoppable to stop by and he apparently hasn’t. You haven’t seen him, have…”
“No.”
“Are you…”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well. The girls will be out in a minute so we’ll be eating shor…”
“Ok.”
“Thanks again for fixing dinner!” Kim removed her hand from the receiver; by the time she had placed it to her ear again she noticed that Shego had disappeared and the plate of food wasn’t sitting on the table. “Ron?”
“No, this is Ron. You’re Kim”
“Very funny.” Sitch or not, she smiled. “Ron, no one here has seen him but he was expected. We know that boy and this isn’t like him.”
“You got that right. His mother and I expected him back home by now for dinner…” Ron lowered his voice and Kim guessed that Bonnie was within earshot. “She’s getting pretty worried.” There was a quavering in his voice that matched the shiver in Kim’s bones; neither of them wanted to face a worried Bon-Bon.
“Do you know why he’d planned to stop by?”
“Well, yes, but it’s sort of personal. Personal for him, that is. It’s best that he tell you… when he shows up.” Even Ron sounded worried. “I actually hope that he’s just walking around trying to work up his nerve.”
“Work up his nerve? For what”
“KP, let’s just say that my boy is a chip off the old blockhead. He needs a lightning bolt to strike him before… nope, I’ll let him tell you.” The man sighed. “Look, if he does show up at your place, please send him right home, Ok? He can always stop by your place tomorrow.”
“Will do, Ron.”
“What about him?”
“Who?”
“Will Du. I don’t think that we need to contact ‘GJ’ just yet…”
“No, Ron…” Kim controlled her breathing, reminding herself that Ron’s son was currently missing and that even when not preoccupied that it was still Ron she was talking to. “Never mind. If we see him tonight, we’ll drive him over to you and Bonnie. Tell her not to worry and that he’ll be Ok.”
“Easier said than done.” He did sound a little more relaxed, though.
“And if he’s not at home in an hour or so, Team Possible will search for him.”
“Thanks, KP.”
“Anytime, Ron. Give Bonnie our love and keep some for yourself.”
“Will do… oh, now I see what you meant.” He laughed. “Give our love to Shego and the girls. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.” Kim set down the receiver. She stood by the telephone for a moment, deep in thought, when movement again distracted her; it was her daughters.
“Was… was that Alexander, Mom?”
No.” Kim gathered herself. “That was his dad. Alexander hasn’t been home since this afternoon and they haven’t seen him either.”
“I told you, Shek. I told you that he would’ve called.” Kasy managed to look both relieved and supportive. “Something’s probably happened to him.”
“Oh, I hope so…” Sheki wiped her eyes and looked up to see two identical expressions of shock aimed right at her. “That not what I meant!”
“We know, Shek, we know.”
“That settles it.” Kim raised her arms to scratch at her head, ruffling her hair. “You two change into your mission clothes and I’ll get your Momma. I hope that we don’t hurt her feelings, but dinner is going to have to wait!” She watched as Kasy have a very Shego-esque smirk and Sheki smiled at her through her tears.
“Thank you!”
“Team Possible’s on the case!”
“Damn straight…”
“Language, Mom.”
“Scoot. Now.” Kim gave them her own resolute smirk and they disappeared in a figurative cloud of dust.
The petite redhead returned to the kitchen, looking for her wife; Shego was not there. There was a saucepan of cooling gravy and several pork chops arranged on a serving platter, one chop apparently having been removed, and a vegetable medley steaming away in a bowl. With her trained and experienced eyes she surveyed the room, wanting nothing more than to corral the one remaining member of Team Possible and begin to scour the neighborhood. More bits and pieces of information filtered through her eyes and settled in her brain, coalescing into a picture that didn’t quite make sense.
There were four complete place settings of glasses, cutlery and flatware on the table. The package of pork chops had contained six, but one was missing. Glancing over her shoulder to the kitchen, she confirmed that both vegetables and gravy appeared to have been disturbed and partially dispensed… but to where.
And where was that one fully laden plate that Shego had been carrying?
“Shego?”
Kim recalled that her spouse had been walking through the dining room and in the general direction of the interior garage door; she turned on her heel and walked in that direction herself. That door was firmly shut and she reached for the knob, turned it, and confirmed that the garage light was indeed off. Impatient and feeling foolish, she began to pull the door shut again when a sparkle of light from the concrete floor caught her eye.
Leaving the overhead light off and having to bob and weave her head to keep the tiny pinpoint of light in focus, Kim soon realized that the light was a reflection from the hubcap of her car; the source was apparently coming from elsewhere in the garage so she slowly entered the darkened room and then closed the door behind her.
“Shego?”
Kneeling down, the light source quickly became evident. There was a small storage room at the far wall, usually reserved for storing rakes and holiday ornaments. That door was also shut but there was a strong ray of light seeping out from underneath the jamb.
“Shego?” Kim reached back and turned on the garage light, walking around the vehicles and stopping to stand quietly at the storage room door. The inexpensive plywood was a fair conductor for the voices that she heard on the other side.
“Is your pork chop done Ok, Alexander?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Gravy hot enough? I can warm it up for you if you’d like.”
“No thank you, Ms. Possible. Can I please call home?”
“Ooo… sorry. I, um… I don’t think so.” There was a pause. “Some water?”
“Ma’am, my mom gets really worried if I’m not home for supper, and…”
“Oh, I’m sure she does. We don’t let the girls stay out too late, either.”
“Uh, right. Are you going to untie me?”
Kim’s eyes had been slowly growing wider ever since she had heard the voices, now they sprang open as wide as saucers. She grabbed the knob and twisted it, releasing the lock and shoving the door open so hard that it impacted against the inner wall of the storage room and rebounded. There sat Shego on a folding utility step stool, holding in one hand the missing plate of food and in the other hand she held a fork with a chunk of meat in the tines, a glass of water sitting on the floor.
Alexander Rockwaller was tied to an old chair with rope, bound so tightly that he was completely immobile and there was a little smear of gravy on his chin.
“SHEGO! WHAT IN HELL ARE YOU DOING?” Kim would have continued but her lungs had run out of air. She drew in a ragged breath. “Um, hello, Alexander.”
“Hello, Mrs. Possible.”
“Shego… what is going on?” The emotions bottled inside her didn’t make it to her mouth.
“Dinner?” The look of innocence on the older woman’s face was sincere.
“How long has he been tied up?”
“…”
“Alexander?”
“Well, I’d really like to use the bathroom, if I could, please.”
“Shego, start talking.”
“About what? I was feeding the boy dinner when you barged in, simple as that.”
“And he’s in here, why?”
“Doy! It’s obvious… he was going to ravage our baby.”
“WHAT?”
“Huh? No! I swear, I never…” The young man could not have looked more shocked.
“I couldn’t let him run around loose.” Shego shrugged, apparently feeling that her point was well made. She glanced back to her young captive. “Oh, Alexander, you’ve got a little schmutz there…” She pulled out a napkin from her pocket and wiped the gravy from his chin. “There, sorry about that.”
“That’s Ok, Ms. Possible. Could I please…?”
“Shego, listen to me, I want you to hurry up and untie that boy…”
“Kimmie, he’s male and you know that they only have one thing on their minds.” Her voice and demeanor was so calm and relaxed that Kim was starting to doubt her wife’s sanity. Alexander was starting to look frightened.
“… you untie that boy and let’s get him out of there before the girls…”
“Mom, we’re ready but I can’t find Momma… ” The younger redhead, now wearing the coal-black body suit that served her as mission clothes, stood just behind Kim and stared into the storage closet in wonder. “Oh, shit.”
“Kasy, language!”
“Sorry, Mom. Hey, Alexander.”
“Hey, Kas.”
“Ok, so much for ‘Plan-A’. Kasy, please get back into the house before your sister…”
“Mom, what’s everyone doing out…” Having donned a similar outfit, Sheki moved around her twin and saw what was going on over her mother’s shoulder. The girl took in the entire sitch at a glance and her eyes locked with those of Shego, a vestige of doubt starting to flicker in the older woman’s eyes.
“Great, so that’s ‘Plan-B’ circling the bowl.” Kim faced her other daughter. “Sheki? Baby, now, please don’t be upset…”
“Mom…?”
“Hey, Sheki, Kasy… why’s everyone all dressed up?” Shego eyed her wife with suspicion. “Kimmie, was there a mission and you didn’t tell me?”
“Momma…?”
“Sheki, would you like to go out with me this Friday night?”
“Alexander…?”
“There’s a dance at my school and I’d really like to take you.”
“I… I…”
“Nothing doing, young man! You’re staying right here!” Shego nodded, feeling vindicated when she turned back to her family. “See? This is what I’m talking about. He just wants to get into her…”
“Oh, this is wrongsick.” Kasy backed away and made to pull her twin with her. “Shek… let’s go back into the house, Ok?”
“Yes, please, girls. I’ll see that we get Alexander home, and…”
“Princess, bad idea.” The former villain shook her head.
“MOMMA, HOW COULD YOU?” The look of pain and embarrassment on the other girls face was absolute.
“Wha… Now see here, young lady, I’ll have you know…”
“I’VE NEVER BEEN SO HUMILIATED IN ALL MY LIFE!” The bruised flush covered Sheki’s entire face and neck.
“Shego, untie him now.”
“Pum…”
“NOW!”
“Alright, alright… everyone’s yelling too much…” With a sigh of disgust at her wasted labors, Shego ignited one finger and sliced cleanly through the coils with a meager plasma field. “There. Happy?”
“I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT YOU DID THIS!”
“Baby, it’s not that bad!”
“Mom, it kind of is.”
“Kasy, you are so not helping…” Kim wondered how the sitch could get any worse, when…
“I HATE YOU!”
The words rang out and clattered to the concrete slab floor of the garage like a handful of broken glass. Never had those words been spoken in the Possible home, never had they been thought in the Possible home but there was no question as to whom they were directed.
“Baby, I…” Shego didn’t even have time to rise from her impromptu seat before Sheki had broken into violent sobs and ran from the room. Staring after her daughter with her mouth half open, Shego looked to those remaining for understanding, her mind locked by those three words. “Kimmie, what just happened? What’s wrong with her?”
“Kasy, please see that Alexander gets to the bathroom, and…”
“Kimmie… what did I do wrong?”
“… and see that he calls his parents immediately afterwards. You can use my car to drive him home, Ok.”
“Sure thing, Mom.”
“Please and thank you.” Kim shifted aside to let her daughter slip between them and help the young man to his feet, his limbs numb from the tightly bound ropes. He moved in stunned silence, apparently realizing that he had been caught up in one woman’s fit of temporary insanity. Shego didn’t move as the two teens left the garage; she was staring down at the plate in the unlikely event that it held the answers she sought.
“Kimmie?”
“Shego, I don’t think that we can talk about this tonight.”
“What did I…”
“No, I mean it. This does not get discussed tonight.” Kim had guessed that this time would come but had never dreamed that it would go down so badly. “Come on into the house.”
“She said that she hates me.”
“I’m going to go talk to her now. You need to go sit down and eat something and then I think that you should go to bed early.”
“That… sounds like a good idea, Princess.” The older woman stood and brushed the dirt from the seat of her slacks, bent over to lift the water glass and carried both it and the plate of food past Kim and into the house. Standing alone in the garage, Kim wondered how she would ever explain this to Bonnie. Rubbing at her face, the hero sighed and left the echoes of her footsteps in the empty room behind her.
‘ding’
“She said that she hated me.” The elevator doors opened and the ladies walked out onto the maternity ward.
“You know that she didn’t mean it.”
“I felt so bad, afterwards.” She shook her head in amazement. “I felt like shit. I mean, how is a mother supposed to feel about her flesh and blood growing up into the adult world and becoming a sexual being?” Shego looked as if she might be willing to remain in the elevator and hypothesize the ancient sitch all day so Kim forced her to walk out into the corridor.
“No one’s gotten it quite right yet, I’m sure.” Checking the markings posted on the walls, Kim pointed them in the proper direction. “And every parent has to do the same thing we did.”
“I seem to recall that he took the heat for it.”
“There wasn’t really much heat to take.”
“Where there’s Bon-Bon, there’s heat. What was it that he told them?”
“That he chickened out and just walked around awhile.”
“We don’t condone lying to parents, do we, Pumpkin?”
“No, we don’t.”
“God, I love that boy.”
“And he loves you.” Kim smiled at her. “He never did hold a grudge, either. He just chalked it up to ‘middle-age crazy’.”
“And he didn’t panic, I’ll grant him that.” She hung her head and blushed, her dead white skin with its algae tints giving way to a dusky bruise. “Balls of steel, that boy. I knew right then and there that he had the stuff to make Sheki a good husband.”
“Riiight.”
“Why did you handle it better than I?”
“Because I didn’t suddenly loose by mind, that’s why!” Only now could Kim laugh about it. “It’s because I was too close to them as infants and you became just a little too close to them as teens.” Kim took the taller woman’s arm and led her down the hallway. “You didn’t see that they were becoming young ladies. I hate to tell you, but you can’t stop nature.”
“I never will understand what was going through my head that day, but I just might have kept him locked in that closet to keep him away from her.”
“You wouldn’t have. I know you.”
“I made her cry. She said that she hated me.”
“And how many years did that last?”
“…”
“How many?”
“Just until two days later, still three days before the dance.” Shego breathed a little easier. “She came to me and we talked… well, she talked and I listened. My baby said that she didn’t hate me.”
“I rather doubted that she did.”
They reached the nurses station at the middle of the obstetrics wing of Middleton General and Kim repeated the identification of both herself and Shego; there was another rousing chorus of fawning gratitude for some other occasion of world-saving and daring-do that never failed to embarrass Kim and amuse Shego, which was welcomed now as it helped to bring her out of her funk. The reformed villain was proud of her spouse, more proud than she could ever express, really, and she felt that because Kim avoided the praise and adulation that others wanted to heap upon her it made the redhead that much more of a natural born hero.
“She’s in room 302.” Kim had returned to her. “Are you ready?”
“Doy! Let’s see how she’s…”
“No, I mean are you ready to see her like… this?”
“Kimmie… come on!” Shego huffed. “This is her third pregnancy and she’s as healthy as an ox! I’m as concerned as a mother should be but I’m not bugging!”
“She’s not going to be at her best you know? She’ll be in pain and look a little rough around the edges.”
“Ooh, I am SO telling her that you said that!”
“No big… she made me promise to say that on the day that Sheila was born.”
“Crap.”
Kim raised her brows in bemused doubt and they moved down the hall towards the desired location. They stopped just outside of the closed door to the room and each took a moment to read the name scrawled on the medical chart resting inside its mounted folder; the name read ‘Sheki Go Rockwaller’.
“So, no bugging?”
“I promise, no bugging.”
“I don’t know…”
“Send me in, coach! I can take it!”
“Ok…” Kim gave a perfunctory rap on the fireproof door before opening it, peeking around the jamb to see if all was well. “Hello, hello!”
“Oh! Mom!” Kasy was the first to look up; she had been seated in a chair beside the raised hospital bed. “Come in!”
“Ms. Kim! Good morning!” Anna Lipsky was sitting on the edge of the bed, nestled beside their other daughter and gently mopping the pale green brow with what appeared to be a damp cloth and holding a large cup of chipped ice for the patient. The young woman was just a year older than the twins and her blue skin created a sharp contrast to the familiar faces but her smile was just as warm and joyous. “We were hoping that you’d be here soon!” She noticed the larger form standing behind Kim. “Ms. Shego! Oh, this is great! Today’s the day!”
“Mom… Momma!” Sheki lay on the bed and she looked as beautiful as a woman who had been carrying a baby for nine months had a right to look. Her face was puffy but glowing and a few errant strands of her long black hair were lank against her forehead and cheeks; the rest was tied up with a pale pink ribbon. Her pale green skin was florid around her neck and her eyes looked bruised, a sure sign that she was unable to get comfortable in the temperature of the room. She was sitting upright in the bed and draped with a shapeless hospital gown that did nothing to hide the pronounced mound that was her stomach, her hands resting defensively on its bulge even as her shining eyes welcomed her parents into the room.
“Oh, sweetheart!” Kim moved into the room. “We’re so happy for…”
“MY BABY!”
“Damn… Shego, you promised.” Kim felt the air of Shego’s passing and it was all that she could do to avoid being sucked along in her wake. The taller woman ran to the bed, arms outstretched, a look of panic on her face.
“Kasy, look out!” The dark haired woman jumped away from the bed and prayed that her own partner had been able to do the same.
“Just make a hole, Anna!” Kasy smiled and moved away also.
“Momma, I’m fine… ghaa!” Sheki was unable to say more because of Shego’s arms suddenly wrapping around her upper body; Shego replaced Anna on the bed and held her daughter tight.
“MY BABY!”
“Momma, please…”
“Shego, she’s fine!”
“SHE’S IN PAIN!” Sobs muffled the words. “SHE NEEDS ME!”
“Well, I did have a contraction a few minutes ago.”
“SHE’S IN AGONY!”
“Oh, good one, Shek…”
“Sorry!”
“SHE’S BLEEDING!”
“Ms. Shego, that’s the floral print on her dressing gown.”
“Anna, trust me, she’s not listening.” Kim sighed and held out her hands to Kasy and Anna. “You two had better come with me and we’ll leave these two together…”
“Cowards! Don’t leave me!”
“MY BABY!”
“… for some quiet time.” The three grinned and blew kisses at Sheki, who blew a raspberry back at them and resigned herself to the loving, if hysteric, arms of her mother.
To Be Continued…