Had I not seen the Sun
I could have borne the shade
But Light a newer Wilderness
My Wilderness has made-
-Emily Dickinson
A girly magazine flitted to the ground. He'd slid it, gently, across the table top. A nail file tumbled out from the pages.
A date, he thinks. Shego's on a date. It doesn't taste right in his mouth. He doesn't go out on dates. He sighs, and bends over to pick up the mess he made. He's a genius. A cerebral type. Shego is...vivacious. Independent. That's why she's on a date, and he's enclosed in a cave/lair, staring at Vogue.
He hears an alarm beep from a console, telling him Shego's back. He rushes over and flips the monitor on, despite the social upbringing to detract him from eavesdropping.
The man is walking her to the gate, his head moving around with curiosity. Shego stops, punches the keypad. The gate clicks open, and she shifts her attention to the date.
Shego, he urges. Don't be gross! He leans into the small screen, squinting at the pixels making up the picture. His hands grip the sides of its frame. The brute leans in, wicked, and Shego isn't moving away [Drakken's face is almost pressed to the screen, nose slightly flattened].
She kissed him once. Pressed to a wall of a photo booth, she leaned in just like that [A whacked-out, out-of-proportion taste. It wasn't right, and he regrets the event wholeheartedly]. That was then, and now his eyes are wide and pained; the image is so piercing, but not because their lips are making contact. No. It's dark around him, and he's alone, head resting against the screen's cold surface. The only sound is the soft buzz of the video.
He finally blinks, and Shego's slinking away as the date stumbles backward to his car, dopey. Drakken closes his eyes, flicks the show off.
She has a right, he chides himself, to attract and be attracted. He's not jealous, but possessive. He doesn't want an employee to be distracted, especially one as vital as Shego. Right? Especially by men who look like something out of Gentlemen's Quarterly and probably smell like money.
He makes sure he's out of sight before she gets through the front door. This job must be a joke to her, her boss an embarrassment. With men like that on her line, he wonders if a brown paper bag over his head would ease her pain.
Save face, he tells himself. She was Kung Fu fighting, and he was bumbling with his weapons of mildly feasible mass destruction. He's unwilling to be unwound. She snaps at him like he snaps at her. It's a reciprocation, and it's wearing him thin.
Between Kim Possible's success and Shego's sarcasm, and his own failures, he's more like a threadbare rug than a super villain. He's well trafficked. So when the yelling match with Shego starts, he's at his top speed, veins pumping furiously to his brain and vocal cords.
When he turns to bear the brunt of her yelling, she is sweaty and panting, still reeling. Possible is long gone, but oh, how she remains. Shego flips the hair off of her damp neck, then his eyes and her eyes come into contact. Her chest is pounding, adrenaline vibrating her body subtly.
Momentarily stunned by her appearance and what it does to him, he forgets what they are arguing about. His heart skips a little, and he cannot think beyond the moment; can only concede to whatever dagger she's throwing at him.
"Alright, alright, Shego!" He has his hands up in front of him, nerves wiggling in his voice. Her face holds fast to a flash of surprise, and his stomach churns, so he turns on a heel to speed away.
In the bathroom, he splashes his face with water. The droplets slightly catch as they roll away. He tells himself that he isn't going to yell at her like that anymore, but he's afraid to stop. She would be alerted, ascertained that something is fishy.
Admitting there's a reason to not yell is admitting too much.
Shego has his leg in a bear trap, but she isn't even looking. Blue, scarred, and humiliated, he looks in the mirror and wonders how he could possibly fix this.
The robbery was flawless. Without guns, or bombs (maybe some plasma), he and Shego made off with over a million. With a yell and a forceful attitude they commanded the stage. The civilians were a great audience, with deep pockets and even deeper bank accounts. Of course, they only took relatively small amounts from each account, a mild irritation to their inflated wallets, but money is money and the sum is the bottom line.
It's amazing what ski masks can do. They worked well together; timing was perfect, as was their communication. Or lack thereof. Almost no words were spoken; just nods and instincts. I could get used to this, a tiny voice says inside his head.
As they fly away, masks still donned, he yells, "I see why this is so thrilling for you, Shego!"
All he can see are her eyes and lips, and they are smiling brightly as she laughs. "See what you've been missing, Dr. D?" She shifts gears. "We make one heck of a team," she says loudly, over the hum of the engine. Her face falls slightly, suddenly, and he pretends not to notice. "Now you're going to blow it all on some fancy machine." He almost didn't hear. As she whips off her mask [shakes out her hair], he sees her face is flushed, and stoic.
Though he eventually slips his own mask over and away from his face, he'd rather keep it on and ignore that the moment is gone. The rest of the ride back to the lair is silent.
Off to build his big machines, which, sometimes, make him feel defeated before he even finishes them.
That flash of whatever it was on her face won't let him go. Shego wants to rule the world, or at least never let it rest easy. They want the same thing, really. Every time he tries to picture it, however, he can't picture it without her. She's flighty, hair-triggered, and has her own agenda. At the moment, he worries, they just happen to align.
Later that night, as he lies passed out on his drawing board, he dreams they really kiss. Of success and fruition. He dreams that, as he pulls away her mask, she's not that different from him.
He just saw her naked.
Stupid hot tub. Stupid doors that don't think to lock themselves. He was only throwing something away, and the closest trashcan was the one in the guest bath. But how was he supposed to know that Shego was in there? It's not like there's an occupied sign, he tells himself.
Innocently and without hesitation, he pushed open the door, and there Shego stood in all her glory. Her hair was damp at the ends with a slight wavy roll to it, and he followed the flow down, swiftly, yet painstakingly. She had her bathing suit clutched in her right hand, arm raised to hang it on a rack.
Without a doubt, his mind instantly marked it as the most beautiful image his brain now possessed.
She was frozen, her face wide with surprise. That was all he could read. Surprise.
In the four (five?) seconds he had before he slammed the door closed again, a little button was pushed to confirm that there was no escape. That image would fill him up, hauntingly, forever.
Hours later, when he cautiously walks into the kitchen, she's there. She asks him what scheme he's come up with now; "some crazy whatchamacallit or whatever."
He's disappointed that she doesn't make this awkward or uncomfortable. He doesn't want stability, normality, maturity. As he finally begins his description of the next big take-over-the-world idea, he silently mulls over the fact that he hoped to be put on the spot so he could spill the beans. I saw you naked, Shego, and I want you to know that I enjoyed it.
The rest of the day passes uneventfully.
In his brain, when he closes his eyes, Shego's there. She's been slowly walking towards him each night he falls asleep. Among inventions and plans, she takes step after even step. The woman started as a speck on the horizon. So distant to him was his assistant, that he was caught off guard when she began to creep into his daily thoughts. Shego was getting ever closer, and now, she's cheek-to-cheek. He can feel the shape of her body pressed against his, her lips smirking against his skin. Whispering in his ear:
"How does it feel to be in love, Blue?"
He shudders himself awake, and quickly flicks on a bedside light. How do you get rid of this, he frets. He presses the base of his palms into his eyes, pushes until he sees stars, because he used to not care about relationships. His mind rolls on a singular track, and the train is skidding off the rails. There's no use.
He could tell himself that he shouldn't have become attached, but what would life have been without Shego? Just like it was before, and in comparison, that seems worse.
Vulnerable and queasy, he finds himself at war.
A/N: This is pretty rough. I might add stuff, reword it down the line. As for now, it's complete.
The poem and the title: Drakken closed himself off to relationships (his wilderness), but with Shego he is exposed to the desire for companionship, togetherness. So, in his rejection of social norms, he has found his own private Vietnam: A "newer wilderness" is created through interactions with Shego.
Supplemental: Thanks to Ninnik Nishukan for the great beta work! Read her stories, because they're wonderful.