It's been a long time, y'all.
Shego didn't turn around when she heard Kim Possible approach. It wasn't just the jangling cuffs that hung from her belt that had alerted her to Kim's presence. It was her barely-laboured breathing, the shifting of the uniform against her skin as she hiked, her familiar footfalls… The girl's footsteps were calm, and measured, and almost… sad. There was no need for stealth. Not between them, not anymore.
"It's over, Shego."
"I know." The villain said nothing for a long moment, gazing at the roiling sea thrashing against the cliff beneath them, at the wispy strips of cloud entangled in the rapidly darkening sky. Kim had stopped about five feet away from her, eyes looking everywhere else but at Shego. "So, where are the other agents?"
"I told them to give me a minute."
Shego raised an eyebrow. "And they agreed?"
"Hey, I'm Kim Possible, right?" A wry smile stretched her mouth. "I can do anything. Besides, everyone knows I'm the only one who could ever keep up with you."
Shego gave a dry chuckle and looked down quickly to hide the welling in her eyes. They didn't speak for a long time, Kim looking at Shego, Shego looking at the view. Then, as out-of-place in the cool silence as a plasma-enhanced claw through someone's ribs…
"You know I didn't mean to, right?" Shego sounded almost plaintive.
Kim sighed, her tired eyes still averted. "I know."
"If I could go back in time…" Shego trailed off.
"I know."
"Okay. That's… that's all I wanted." She turned around, lowering her eyes and thrusting her arms out in front of her. She knew the drill. And she waited.
But Kim didn't come forward. Not yet. A spark of the old determination had surfaced. "There's got to be another way."
"Kim…"
"There– there must be something we can do to—"
"Kim, we can't change the past. I-I…" She bit her lip. "There are consequences, consequences for what I did, and…" Finally, Shego looked up. Her eyes burnt holes into Kim's, the extinguished fire temporarily relit. "I've been running all my life from retribution. I think it's time I bit the bullet." She nodded towards her wrists, eyes still locked with Kim's.
The Global Justice agent at last strode forward. Shego shut her eyes sadly… then flinched at the arms that wrapped themselves around her shoulders, and the head on her shoulder. At the soft, red hair tickling her face and the Club Banana 'Yellow' perfume wafting up her nose. At the "I'm really going to miss you, Shego," spoken muffled and choked into her clavicle.
"Yeah… me too, pumpkin. Too bad we never got to be proper friends, eh?"
"Who needs propriety? You're always going to be one of my best friends."
Kim stepped back and they smiled at each other one last time.
The Global Justice officers loitering around the nature reserve's parking lot weren't surprised to see their agency's rising star loping down the steep slope with what looked like a cowed Shego in tow. It was Kim Possible, after all, and she could do anything. Only Ron didn't start after the pair of them, intent on subduing the villain whether she was being unruly or not. Only Ron didn't have his regulation GJ plasma rifle and/or tazer-prod trained on her, eager to zap her if she so much as blinked. Only Ron noticed the pained look that passed between hero and villain as Shego was manhandled and thrown into the holding van. Only Ron patted Kim's back and gave her a tight hug, where their colleagues hooted and cheered and high-fived their strangely melancholy squad leader.
No one else really understood, either, why the Stoppables had named their first daughter Shego, or why, along with the pictures of her children and her husband in her wallet, there was also a yellowing strip of photographs of a teen-aged Kim and a strangely familiar green-skinned vixen posing playfully in a photobooth.
Shego got death row. What can I say? Build a couple doomsday devices that never work, get a couple years in the slammer. Actually directly cause a death, and well, that's a different story, isn't it?