A/N: This is a sequel to "Worth", and as such, will be more clear if read after reading "Worth", but it should be possible to understand the gist of the pertinent background information without doing so, if any of my dear readers so desire.

Warning: There are some ugly scenes in this story, including strongly implied torture. If that is a trigger for you, kindly press the back button. As usual, cuss words are censored.

Disclaimer: I'm not an owner, I'm just a random shipper.

Worth Even More

Dr. Elizabeth 'Betty' Director paced her room restlessly. Her mind was in turmoil, as it had been for the past two weeks, ever since that...incident. She felt dirty. Unclean. Soiled. It was a feeling that began in her mind, but spread throughout her body. She'd been taking multiple showers a day, using all variety of soap and/or shampoo. Something like this couldn't be treated through such a method, and she knew that, but she couldn't help herself. It was inconceivable, what Shego had done to her. Whenever she thought about it, which was all the time, she swung back and forth between feelings of rage and depression. But that feeling of being soiled, that never went away.

There were other treatment methods, though. Once a day, each day for the last fourteen straight, she'd beaten the captive Shego to her heart's content. It should've been thearapeutic, and it was...momentarily. She felt infinitely better while it was happening, but afterward, the dirty feeling always returned even stronger than before.

Betty had always been a work-obsessed individual. 'Workaholic' could only begin to describe how much of herself she put into her job. Now, thanks to this...thing...she couldn't even focus on work properly. For the first time in her life, her work was taking second priority in her mind, and through no choice of her own. It was enough to drive one insane.

Exercising, the only other outlet she'd ever allowed herself in the past, didn't help in the least. The past couple of days, she'd begun trying other common forms of distraction, things she'd never had any interest in before. Cat videos on youtube. Video games, of the shooting variety, of course. Romance novels. Was that EVER the wrong choice. The prior two failed miserably, but the last one actually exacerbated the problem, forcibly bringing everything she was trying to forget to the forefront of her thoughts.

And so she paced. Avoiding the problem was a complete and total fail, so she had one option left, the one that suited her personality best anyway: confront it. Think it through. Face the problem directly, and find a solution. No more distractions. No more trying to trick the mind or the body. Discover what was at the very root of the problem, and fix it. What was wrong with her? Most people did not act this way, did not feel this way, from something like this. She knew that. Why was it different for her, and what could she do to change it? It was time to truly examine herself, and find out just what kind of person she was inside. Her pacing slowed as her mind began to race.

SBDSBDSBDSBD

Shego's head rolled back and forth as she came groggily to consciousness. She glanced right, left, and down. Yep, still manacled to the wall. She flared a hand. Yep, the manacles were still flame-impervious. She took a quick inventory. Yep, still naked. Options?...Yep, still zilch.

Betty had really gone off the rails, here. Shego had to admit that she hadn't anticipated such a reaction. Even her worst-case-scenario projections had her placed in a typical max-security GJ cell after capture, which she would've broken out of in a few days, but this...this was something else. Betty hadn't registered Shego's capture at all. Officially, Shego was still at large. Which allowed Betty to ignore the regulations regarding humane treatment of prisoners. Like not chaining them to the wall. Or like not beating them to within an inch of their lives on a daily basis.

Shego felt something rolling around in her mouth. She spat out blood and... Oh. Another tooth. Yipee. Unlike any other adult human, Shego could regrow her teeth, but it was a very painful process. There's a reason babies scream their little heads off when their teeth are coming in. The feeling of her ribs reknitting together was not pleasant either, and became even less so as her healing factor was taxed ever more heavily by the day. The floor below her was soaked in her blood. Pain tolerant though she was, she was beginning to think that her first assessment, that the prize she had nabbed was worth any price she had to pay for it, may have been just a little off.

The sound of the door opening was startling, as she'd already had her daily visit. Less surprising was the person walking through the door, as Shego had only had one visitor since being incarcerated here.

"'Sup, Bets? Once a day not doing it for you anymore? Well, go right ahead. You'll wear out long before I do." Shego bluffed. She was far from recovered from the prior beatings, and she really, really didn't want to have to tank another one, but there was no way she was going to let herself look weak in front of this woman.

But Betty did not immediately walk over and begin laying into her, as Shego had expected her to. She just stood there and stared into Shego's face looking for...something.

"What? You just come to ogle this time? I gotta admit, it is a pretty spectacular view. Even I gotta take a few minutes in the mirror to admire it every day." Shego masked her relief, as she did everything else, with humor and sarcasm.

Betty still didn't respond. The silence dragged on, making Shego feel very uncomfortable, in a way that had nothing to do with her being chained to a wall. She searched for something to say to break the oppressive atmosphere, but for once, she had nothing. Just when she thought she couldn't take it anymore, Betty finally spoke.

"Why?"

"Why what?" Shego asked, relieved at having a topic of coversation, but completely confused at the directionless inquiry.

"Why WHAT?! Are you SERIOUS?! You waltz into my room, in the middle of the company that I built, and tear my life apart, tear it completely to pieces, and when I ask you why, you have the gall to say 'why WHAT'?!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold your horses there, Little Miss Drama Queen. Overreaction, much? Tear apart your life? Are you serious with this right now? Come on, it was just a ******* kiss!"

"It was not just a ******* kiss to me, and I know you know that from how much effort you put in to make it happen!" Betty took a deep, shuddering breath. Shego was shocked to see that this woman, the second most feared person in the villain community, the unflappable, unshakable, stoic, ever calm leader of Global Justice was on the verge of tears. Not just on the verge of crying, but about to burst into uncontrollable, hysterical tears.

"Hey, no, stop. Just stop, I...I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry! I didn't know you'd take it so hard, honest! Just..don't cry." Betty stared at her in disbelief. Shego could hardly believe it herself. She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she'd apologized for anything in her life. Before this moment, she could count on the fingers of one hand that was formed into a fist. In any case, what business does a prisoner manacled to the wall have trying to comfort her captor? Nevertheless, she felt a strong urge to head off Betty's tears by any means possible, and Shego was never one to deny or question her urges. But now that the danger of waterworks had passed, Shego found herself increasingly curious. "Why is it so important to you, anyway?"

"It's...I've never tried to put it into words before. I don't know if I can really explain it. Especially not to you. There's no way someone like you could possibly understand."

"Try me." Shego challenged.

"Fine." Betty sighed. "I probably need to vocalize it anyway, for my own benefit. Just thinking about it by myself hasn't helped at all. I just keep going in circles in my head." She sat on the ground and leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes.

"I know most people don't take romance very seriously. They treat it like a game. If you screw it up, just hit the reset button. Break it off and try again with someone new. I never wanted to be like that. Maybe I should say it more like, I always wanted to be the opposite of that. One romance, for my whole life. One first love, one first kiss, one first...well, you know. One first everything. No second tries. Kind of like destiny. I don't really believe in destiny, or rather, I believe destiny is something we make for ourselves, but I always thought this was within my reach. If I just saved myself, no falling in love, no one-night-stands, not even kissing, then one day I might meet that one other person, maybe not a perfect person, but someone else who's been saving themself too, and we can have all our firsts together."

"That sounds like a recipe for an instant single-at-eighty life to me." Shego snarked.

Betty gave a little smile, eyes still closed. "And I would've been fine with that, if that's how it turned out. That would just mean that I did the best I could on my end, and the person I could've met didn't do the same. Or maybe we crossed paths, but we never became anything because of some other failure of mine that I didn't anticipate. Either way, I would've been satisfied with that result." Her smile disappeared, and her lower lip began trembling again. "But now it's different. Even if I meet the perfect person, my first kiss is already gone. My dream is dead."

Shego snorted. "I still say that's an overreaction. First kisses don't mean anything. A babe like you, no guy is going to care if your first kiss is gone or not, as long as he can hit that. I don't care if he's a mouth virgin or what, that's what he'll be thinking. I guarantee it."

Betty's eyes snapped open, and she glared at Shego. "I shouldn't have bothered trying to explain it to you. Of course you wouldn't get it. Someone like you couldn't possibly understand true romance."

"What's that supposed to mean, 'someone like you'?"

"A shameless flirt, giving it away to anyone who looks at her sideways. A loose woman, flaunting her body at any given opportunity. An easy girl. Someone. Like. You."

"Hey! That's...okay yeah, that's actually pretty accurate. But still! You think I don't understand romance, just because I'm a little on the flirty side?"

"Of course you can't understand! Do you have any idea what it's like to save your first kiss for thirty years, only to have it stolen by someone who doesn't give a **** about you? Just to mess with your head? No, you don't! It's just...It's not...AHHHH!" She broke down in angry tears, slamming her fists on the ground.

"Awww, Betty, come on now. Betty. Bets? It's okay, it'll be alright. Why don't you come over here and hit me some more? That always makes you feel better, right?" Though Shego had thought just minutes before that she would do almost anything to get out of another beating, now she found to her astonishment that she would rather take that beating than have to see the tears of one Dr. Betty Director.

Dr. Director ignored her and just continued sobbing, curled up into a ball on the ground. Shego racked her brain for anything that could end the torture of watching this woman cry, but she drew a complete blank. Just as Betty said, Shego simply couldn't understand. She certainly didn't value her own first kiss so highly.

As the sobs slowly faded, Shego decided to try one more time. "Look, it's really not that big a deal. I mean, it was my first kiss too, and you don't see me freaking out about it."

Dr. Director's head shot up. "What?"

"I said, it was my first kiss too. Not a big deal. Who cares? It's not like the first one has any more significance than any of the others."

"You're lying. That couldn't have been your first."

"And why not?"

"Because of what I already said. You're a shamless flirt, flaunting your body-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't deny it. I flirt. I flaunt. So what? It's all in good fun. No one ever got my engine going, so I never actually kissed anyone. Not that it would've mattered if I did. That's the whole point I'm getting at. If you wanna kiss, kiss. If you don't, don't. It doesn't matter."

Betty stared at her long and hard. "You're...really telling the truth? You never kissed anyone?"

"Nope."

"What about...beyond kissing?"

"Beyond kissing, what're you...oh, what, you mean sex? Gah, you are such a prude! Beyond kissing, hah! Uh, no, though. No. You can check my hymen if you don't believe me, I'm in no postition to stop you. Unless you broke it with one of your punches when I was too out of it to notice, it's still there."

The look in Betty's eyes was changing by the second. The hopeless depression that had been there was fading, and it was being replaced by something different. Something positive. Shego couldn't help but feel happy about the change, though why she should be happy her captor was feeling better, she had no idea. Maybe because it meant she was less likely to be beaten?

"Shego, can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead. I've got nothing better to do at the moment. I was thinking about going window shopping, maybe buying a few things with the five finger discount, but then I was like, 'nah, I'll just stay here and answer Betty's questions instead'."

She ignored Shego's sarcasm. "It's the same question I started with. Why'd you do it? It had to have been difficult to break into my room, and it seems like you did all this with no exit strategy whatsoever. At first, I thought you were trying to throw my life into turmoil, but now it seems like you didn't even know it would affect me like like this, and you're even trying to comfort me. It seems like a whole lot of trouble, and for what? What do you even get out this? Up until this moment, I would've sworn up and down to anyone who asked that you wouldn't lift a finger unless there was a large paycheck in it for you. So why this? Why me?"

Shego was very uncomfortable, a feeling she was definitely not used to, being someone supremely comfortable in her own skin, who ordinarily could not be thrown off kilter by anything. But she remembered contemplating this very question the day she made her fateful infiltration, and none of her reasons from that time rang true to her any longer, except maybe that one reason that she never quite grasped, not being given much to self-examination or deep thinking.

She shrugged, as far as she was able in her position. "Maybe I just wanted to be able to say I broke into GJ HQ."

"No. There are targets of infinitely greater value within our HQ that would've been far easier to obtain. Try again."

"Maybe I just wanted to see what you would do."

"No, I don't buy that either. The fact that you keep saying maybe is a tip off that that's not your real reason."

Shego's frustration increased as she continued her fruitless self-searching. "Why does it even matter? It was just a kiss, Bets! Who the **** cares?"

"I care! Please, Shego. I need to know. It's very important to me."

Shego glared. She wasn't glaring at Betty. She was just glaring aimlessly, focusing inward as she never had before, but the answer eluded her still. "I don't know, okay? I don't know. I just wanted to. I wanted to, so I did. Story of my life. I'm not a complicated person, Bets. Maybe there's some deep reason, but if so I don't even know what it is. I just do whatever the **** I feel like. That's who I am. Get used to it."

Betty just looked at her for a long moment, finally coming to a visible conclusion. She stood. "That sounds like excellent advice, Shego. I think I'll take it. If I can."

"Huh?" Shego once again could not follow the apparently random line of thinking, especially when Betty took out the key and began undoing the manacles.

"I'm going to cut you a deal, Shego." Shego nearly collapsed as she was freed, but Betty caught her and lowered her gently to a sitting position. "I'll give you some time to recover, and then you'll fight me. I'm aware that ordinarily I would have no chance, but I believe you're weakened enough to make this a fair fight. First one knocked unconscious loses. If you win, I'll let you go. I've got your catsuit in a bag just outside the room. You can wait for me to wake up and I'll walk you out, or just make your own escape if you're confident enough."

"Sounds good to me." Said Shego. "Not that it matters, since there's no way you'll win, but what happens if I lose?"

Dr. Director leaned in close, until her face was less than an inch from Shego's. "You take ******* responsibility."

A/N2: I'll add a short epilogue at some point, but the story is essentially over. I don't know if I'm the first to attempt this pairing or not, but I do know that if it exists at all, it's very, very rare. I blame Kigo for this. Not that I can blame Kigo writers. Kigo is very delicious, after all. But I'm arandomshipper, so here's a random ship for ya'll.