Shego griped her head in her hand when the ringing wouldn’t stop. She stumbled forward slightly in an attempt to make it go away.
“If this is a salesman, Jehovah witness, or a Pixie scout, then they won’t get to sit down for five months.” Shego staggered to the door paying the price for her excessive drinking the night before, “Screw it. If it isn’t a hot chick on the other side they’ll wish I’d give them a plasma enema.”
When Shego opened the door the last thing she expected was standing right there. Well the last thing expected was a tutu wearing Dr Drakken singing ‘We are the Champions’ in tune. Oh wait that already happened on his fortieth birthday, he’s a good, wait strike that, better than he was before singer once you get a few drinks down him.
The person on the other side wasn’t the blue skinned doctor, but instead a white skinned redhead looking very dishevelled and a bit worried by Shego’s appearance. Which was not at all surprising considering Shego was only dressed in a baby blue tee-shirt sporting some old band logo with one sleeve missing, black jeans with a leg torn off below the right knee, no shoes or socks on, her hair was still as long as ever except it was sticking up in places and hung loosely in front of her but didn’t obscure her vision, much.
“What‘re you doin’ here, Kimmie?” Shego’s voice was hoarse and low.
Kim shifted from one foot to the other nervously, “I called you earlier.” Shego looked confused, “It was only 4 hours ago.”
Shego put up a hand to silence her, “Was I polite?” A nod, “Did I swear?” A shake of her head, “Did I say you could come over without the threat of death or dismemberment?” Another nod, “Then I was drunk.” Kim gave a look of mock shock, “Just give me the gist of it.”
“Well I know we haven’t seen each other for about 14 years but you’re the only one I know that…”
“You’re waffling, Princess.”
“Um, right.” She blushed, “Josh and I had another fight, a big one, and now I could use…”
Kim didn’t get a chance to finish as she silenced Kim with her hand. Her recovering intoxicated mind had already filled in the blanks, “Who’s Josh?”
“My husband.” Kim held her wedding ring up as proof.
“Ah. You’d better come in.”
Kim looked on in surprise for the second time that night as the former villainess invited Kim into her home, again. Kim had to wonder yet again if she was still drunk.
“Where did it happen?” She asked as Kim
“Just at our house.” Shego made a ‘go on’ motion with her hand, “In Middleton.”
“Aww, I told you that saving the world doesn’t pay enough to live off of.” Shego started moving, albeit sluggishly, to what Kim assumed was her kitchen.
Her snide remarks would have infuriated Kim to assault her, but Kim was not that 17 year old girl anymore. Now, if Kim wasn’t so emotionally and physically exhausted, she still would have still jumped her.
“So what happened after the fight?” She asked standing next to her refrigerator with a carton of apple juice in hand, “Quicker than coffee.” With Kim’s questionable look she guessed what Kim was going to ask her as she downed the carton.
“I came here.”
“You didn’t tell anyone else.”
At the Kim looked away, “I didn’t want to impose on anyone’s life. I don’t feel I have the right.”
“So you come to the one place you didn’t mind “imposing” on?”
“No!” Kim said a little louder than she intended, “It’s not like that. I remember you saying you owed me.” Kim sighed and turned towards the door, “I shouldn’t have come here.”
Shego grabbed hold of Kim’s arm and spun Kim to face her, “Oh no! You are not walking out of my house after waking me up wanting to cash in one of your little favours.” Shego’s grip softened and so did the fire in her eyes, for a minuet there Kim thought they were going to have a repeat of one of there old fights, “but after what you’ve just told me I couldn’t turn you down now could I?”
Kim smiled as Shego released her, now slightly sore, arm, “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Just tell me what you did with him.”
“I left him there.” Kim asked baffled by this strange turn.
“Amateur mistake, Kimmie.” She moved towards her coat rack, “We’re gonna have to burn all the evidence that links you to it.”
“Evidence?” Kim said mirroring Shego’s words
“Yeah, unless you got rid of it earlier?” With Kim’s blank expression she assumed that she hadn’t, “And we’ve got to burn the body as well.”
“Body?”
“Wait, you didn’t leave him bleeding to death did you? Damn that’s harder to clean up. He might have called the cops or an ambulance or somthin’.”
“Back-up.” Kim held her hand up in front of the semi-hung-over woman stopping her from going anywhere, “What are you talking about? What body bleeding to death?”
“Now’s not the time for games pumpkin.” Shego tried to get past and it started a scuffle between the two that led them to rolling around on the floor in each others arms struggling for dominance. “Let me go!”
“Not till you tell me where you’re going and what you’re going to do.” Kim held her down with her legs on top of Shego’s stomach.
Shego immediately spun Kim around so that she was on the bottom and Shego was in almost the same position that Kim previously occupied except Kim had her chest to the floor and Shego was sitting on her back holding her hands down, “I’m going to do what you asked me to do.” Kim wrapped her legs around Shego’s head and flipped her into the wall behind her. Shego staggered to her feet and wiped her nose to check for blood, “I’m going to sort out the mess you’ve made. I’m gonna get rid of the dead body of your hubby.”
Shego blocked a kick Kim sent her way, “What! Josh isn’t dead.”
Shego dropped her arms and stopped fighting, “Then why the hell did you come here?”
Kim dropped her arms as well, “I needed some place to go to.”
“Then why didn’t you go to a fricking hotel?”
“Because I didn’t want to be by myself.”
“Go to one of your friends places.”
“Ron’s……not really available at the moment and Monique is married with two children so I…”
“What about the ‘rents?” Shego interrupted
“They were part of the big ‘moon shift’ a few years ago. The first ones actually.”
“Ah yes, sitting on the surface of the Moon with nothing but a giant snow globe between you and instant death.” Shego sighed and started moving towards the kitchen again, “Coffee?”
“You’re going to wait for it now?” Kim asked following her out of the room.
“I think I need it.” Shego turned the kettle on and sat down at her kitchen table, “So do you want some?” She asked with a wicked smile.
“Always with the innuendos eh, Shego.” Kim took the seat opposite her, “I could sure use it though.” When she saw Shego’s smirk she quickly responded and tried to stop herself from blushing, “Coffee, just coffee.” She failed.
“Uh huh, sure.” She looked at Kim for the first time since she fully woke up, and Shego had to admit Kim had changed. Where she once had long shoulder length hair she now had it cut short, her face now shone with experience instead of youthful exuberance and also, “What’s with the eye patch?”
“Oh.” Kim reached up to remove the item, “I keep forgetting I have this thing on.” She rubbed her eye and blinked a few times getting used to the light, “Part and parcel of being a director, I guess.”
Shego reached over to study the eye ware, “Yeah, I heard about that. Didn’t think you’d go out of your way to make yourself look like the good doc. How’d you get used to the lack of depth perception when you put it on?”
“It’s not your standard patch. It’s made of a two-way material that also has a H.U.D of vital information.”
“Need to know stuff, huh? Like how much money your departments waste? Access codes to Granny’s cookie recipe? Whenever the President takes a leak?”
“Never take anything seriously, do you?” Kim asked taking back the eye patch and putting it in her pocket, “You know even after everything, GJ still has you on its watch lists.”
“I’d be insulted if I wasn’t.” Shego replied getting up when she heard the whistle of the kettle to make the coffee, “Cream, sugar?”
“Just C….” Kim started to say before Shego interrupted.
“’Cause I’ve got neither.” She said with a smirk.
Kim sighed, “Well black then.”
“Good.” Shego’s smirk grew larger as she set the mug of steaming black coffee down in front of Kim. She shook her head at the stylised mug showcasing one of her fights with Shego.
The conversation lapsed into silence as they drank and the redhead considered the ex-thief that sat in front of her, “What happened anyway? I take it you won?” She tried to lighten the situation with a joke.
Shego blinked, confused and then contemplated her appearance, “Ooh.” She realised and rubbed her hand across her face as she remembered the night before, “Yer, there was this club. There was a fight; somehow I got in the middle of it. It didn’t last very long after that.” She chuckled to herself at the memory and then soured as the rest of it came back to her, “Then someone recognised me,” lighting her hand in emphasis she continued on, “and it got a bit hairy when they mobbed me and then some guy stole my shoes.”
Kim laughed at that, “Price of fame, eh?”
“Laugh it up now, Princess. I’d like to see you get out of a drunken fan mob at midnight while you’re hammered out of your mind.” She chuckled at the thought of the normally sober goody-goody smashed. “I think I lost my socks in the cab ride home.” She muttered.
“That might have been when I called you. You said something about your feet itching.”
“Yeah that sounds about right. So what happened between you and the hubby?” Shego asked half caring half not wanting to have another ‘communication breakdown’.
“I don’t really want to talk about it.” Was her answer and Shego was willing to accept it, for now, “It wasn’t one big thing that started us fighting, lots of little things kept pilling up but I just though ‘No big’ at first.” This wasn’t what Shego would call “not talking about it” but for some reason, which Shego couldn’t comprehend why, she didn’t interrupt Kim with a sarcastic comment about it, “He’s just not the guy I fell for.”
There wasn’t much to be said after that. Kim yawned and it quickly spread to Shego and they both put down some empty cups of coffee, “I’d better call it a night or morning or something.”
“Tired already? You’ve got no stamina in your old age.” Shego chuckled and put the empty mugs into the sink. “The guest rooms are down that hall to the right. I’ll go get you some sheets.”
“Thanks.”
They both made their way down the dim hallway, “You know, if you’re not too worn out, we could go round your house tomorrow, change all the locks and install some laser cannons as a security system while the hubby’s out.” Shego said half jokingly.
A small smile appeared on Kim’s lips, “I’d like that.”
To Be Continued
By W. C. Reaf