Disclaimer: I do not own Kim Possible or have any claim to it.

Author's Note: I took some definite liberties here with regard to some of Drakken's inventions, but I liked the concepts. I also ascribed a few of my husband's peculiarities to Dr. Drakken, simply because it amused me. A general thank you to all who are reading this!

Consciousness and Compromise

The first sensation was pain. The pain came from everywhere and nowhere simultaneously; it was all-encompassing, suppressing all sense of self.

As Dr. Drakken, formerly Drew Lipsky, fought his way toward consciousness, he was able to isolate the origins of the pain. This was not much of an improvement, but it did shoot him to full wakefulness with impressive speed. Once awake, he took stock of himself.

His head was throbbing, his left arm was immobilized and felt almost on fire, and he got pains in his chest every time he took a breath. The last thing he remembered was being flung a great distance by a green-skinned woman about nine feet tall who shook the ground when she walked. Warmonga, that was her name. Mercifully, he did not remember the impact, though there must have been one.

As his eyes adjusted to the pale light coming from somewhere, he recognized the lower levels of his ruined lair. Taking a deep breath, he sat up, using his right arm to support himself. Almost immediately, he regretted the change of position as a wave of nausea and dizziness passed over him. He felt almost as bad as the one hangover he'd had, back in college, when some upperclassmen had thought it would be funny to get the freshman nerd drunk. He didn't remember much about the evening, but the morning after remained clear in his memory more than two decades later. In a way, the experience had been instructive; he had never overindulged in alcohol again.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Drakken let out an agonized groan. It was at that point that he realized he was not alone.

"Dr. D?" mumbled a sleepy but familiar voice, and he opened his eyes again, peering through his loose hair to see the black and green lump on the floor resolving itself into his onetime sidekick. "Good, you're awake."

"Sh – Shego?" he stammered. He couldn't imagine why she would be here. Her long hair was tousled, her makeup smeared, and she was wiping sleep out of her eyes. Drakken didn't think she'd ever looked so beautiful. If he hadn't been so distracted, he probably would have wondered where that thought had come from.

"Oh, here," she said, half to herself, as she moved to sit beside him. She pulled an elastic band from her wrist and pulled his hair into its usual ponytail, a simple gesture that made him feel…cared for. "I had to wash the blood out."

"I was bleeding?" he blurted with some surprise. He felt gingerly around the bump on the back of his head (that explained the headache) and confirmed that a scab had formed there. He had not cut himself since the incident that had given him the scar around his left eye. The experiment that had turned his skin blue had also made it unusually tough and difficult to pierce, which had come in handy through his years of villainy.

"You took a good crack there," Shego informed him as she returned to sit on the mattress that Drakken now realized lay on the floor. "I guess your alien sidekick had a temper."

Drakken groaned, with more than pain this time. He'd decided that sitting up was a bad idea and was kicking off his shoes in preparation for lying down again.

"Wait a minute," Shego interrupted, standing up and pulling the heavy lab coat off the couch to drape over the back. She looked at it critically. It would need a good washing, but it didn't show much damage. "I think this thing's in better shape than you are right now. What's it made of, anyway?"

"It's a steel-reinforced cotton/synthetic blend of my own design," he replied matter-of-factly as he lay down with his head resting on the arm of the couch.

"Steel – are you telling me that thing's armor?"

"Essentially, yes. It doesn't keep me from getting battered now and then, but it does reduce the impact, and it doesn't wear out. It's also chemically resistant and flame retardant." An additional feature he'd added after one too many threats from his sidekick was that it would absorb some of the power of her plasma bolts, but he had no intention of telling her that.

"Didn't it ever occur to you that I could use some material like that?" Shego demanded. Drakken looked at her, perplexed.

"You already have a practically indestructible suit especially designed for your unique abilities," he reminded her. "Anyway, I couldn't make it thin or flexible enough to be useful to you. I don't need to move quickly or quietly; you do."

"Oh," was all that Shego could say. It was clear that he had actually given the matter some serious thought, and she was oddly touched. She swept her gaze over him, noting the changes since she'd turned him into a half-wrapped mummy and giving a low whistle. "Those weren't there earlier."

Following her gaze, Drakken saw that purplish/black splotches were blossoming all over the areas he could see, and he was certain there were more he couldn't see. Bruises looked particularly nasty on blue skin.

"Is there any anesthetic?" he asked plaintively, wincing and putting his good arm to his head.

"I'll see what I can find." Shego left and returned with a bottle of aspirin. Drakken grabbed four and dry-swallowed them before Shego pulled the bottle back out of his reach. "Whoa, take it easy, Doc! You've lost blood, and you haven't eaten anything since at least yesterday."

"Everything hurts," he complained. He knew the medication would tear up his stomach even more, but he really wanted to make the pain go away. He lay back to wait for it to work. "I suppose you're responsible for this?" He made a gesture indicating his upper body.

For a moment, Shego thought he was accusing her of causing the damage, and she wanted to flare up at him. Then she realized that he was talking about the bandages, and she relaxed.

"Volunteers weren't exactly lining up for the privilege," she quipped.

"But…why?" he asked bluntly, and she shifted uncomfortably. It was a reasonable question, even a natural one. It was also a question she'd deliberately been avoiding asking herself. She hugged her knees to her chest.

"Yeah, you know, it doesn't look very good on your résumé to say that you let your boss bleed to death in the middle of nowhere." As usual, she hid anything that might be remotely emotional underneath layers of sarcasm and indifference. Drakken looked at her piercingly for a moment, then returned to studying the ceiling.

"You aren't actually working for me anymore," he pointed out reasonably.

"Technically, I still have two weeks on my contract."

"You broke your contract when you abandoned me."

And there it was, the Lorwardian in the room. Shego had left Dr. Drakken behind, in prison, leading him to team up with a large, green-skinned alien with limited cognitive skills but advanced technology, thereby putting them in their present predicament. She was willing to accept that responsibility, but there was no way she'd admit that to him. Still, she felt a reasonable, mercenary explanation was in order.

"Look, Junior and Eddie busted me out," she said. "I owed it to them to do one job each."

"You could have asked them to get me out, too," he countered, sounding sulky.

"Okay, first of all, neither of their plans required a genius." Drakken looked sharply at Shego when she said that, and she belatedly realized that she had probably never actually called him a genius and meant it before, but there was really no denying the man was brilliant. Also bizarre and often self-deluded, but brilliant. She decided to press on as though what she'd said was nothing special. "Secondly, neither one of them would have listened to me. Junior didn't even understand half of what I said, and Motor Ed would just say things like, 'Babes don't tell dudes what to do.'" She did the last part in a credible imitation of Ed's voice.

"And that worked?" asked Drakken, rising up on his good elbow and looking acutely interested. At Shego's withering glare, he sank back down onto the sofa. "Nnnngh. Never mind."

"Good choice," she told him, but secretly, she was pleased. It had just occurred to her that the main reason Drakken got so upset about her mocking was that he actually cared what she thought. She was forced to admit that, compared to his cousin Eddie, Dr. Drakken was a veritable Prince Charming. At least he appreciated her skills and made use of them. He even listened to her opinions once in a while.

"What about after that?" he said petulantly.

"I needed a break, okay? Have you met your cousin?"

Drakken gave a dry chuckle that turned into a hiss as his ribs protested.

"So I was just supposed to sit around and wait for you to decide you were ready to go back to work?" he challenged when he recovered enough. Shego opened her mouth, couldn't think of anything to say, and shut it again. Unfortunately, he was right; that was exactly how she'd been thinking. She thought nothing of running off with other villains but expected that Drakken would be there when she wanted him. Was this what she had been reduced to, that Dr. Drakken was her fallback guy? How pathetic was that?

In fact, it was with a shock that she recognized that the longest, most intimate relationship she'd ever had with a man was her professional partnership with Dr. D. They lived together, they worked together, they'd learned to adapt to one another's strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies. Shego had gone on dates periodically and even indulged in the occasional one-night stand, but that was pure, physical release. She never went to the trouble of actually getting to know those guys; she didn't see the point.

"You need to eat something," she said suddenly, afraid she would reveal something accidentally. "It'll help your body replace the blood you lost." She stripped her gloves off as she stood up.

"You can't cook," Drakken sighed morosely, and Shego felt herself bristling. Almost immediately, she caught herself. What he'd said was no more than the truth, and she'd never been bothered by her lack of domestic skills before. Her value lay in other areas. At those times when it was just the two of them, like now, Drakken did all the cooking. It was basically a form of chemistry, after all.

"There isn't much food here, anyway," she tossed over her shoulder. "I think even I can manage instant oatmeal."

As expected, the only things edible were some dry goods, although there were some very interesting science experiments in the refrigerator that might once have been fruits and vegetables. She didn't bother with the freezer, deciding she could take inventory in the morning. As she hunted, she tied back her hair with a strip of cloth to keep it out of her way.

She did find some cinnamon-flavored oatmeal and used her plasma fire to boil the water to mix it with. In addition, she discovered some powdered lemonade and mixed up a pitcher of that.

"Breakfast of champions," she murmured to herself. She found a folding TV tray, set it up beside the couch, then brought in the small meal. Reluctantly, Drakken sat up and poked at it. He didn't really feel like eating anything, but he knew that she was right and he needed to get some sugar into his body. He slugged some of the lemonade first, even though it was pink, and he hated the pink kind. It went down easily enough, so he moved on to the food.

"So what did those two idiots want you for?" he asked, making conversation. It was kind of unnerving to have her just watching him eat like that.

"Junior wanted to steal something unique for his old man's birthday. Eddie…" Shego rolled her eyes. "He just wanted a hot babe to drive cross-country with."

Drakken paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth, his eyebrow shooting up. That couldn't have gone over well.

"Is my dear cousin still in one piece?" he inquired curiously, and Shego smirked. The two of them shared a look of mutual suffering, and a little of the tension between them eased.

"I didn't do him any permanent damage, but he's probably occupying your old bunk at the pen by now."

"I find that I can accept that news with equanimity," said Drakken soberly, making Shego giggle. Dr. Drakken spent several moments contemplating Frugal Lucre driving Eddie crazy with his constant jabbering. Or maybe it would be the other way around; it was kind of a tossup between those two as to who was more annoying.

Once started, it didn't take Drakken long to finish his impromptu meal, and he made a rather awkward visit to the bathroom while Shego cleared away the dishes. When they rejoined one another in the common room, Shego announced that she should re-wrap his ribs while he was upright. He meekly acquiesced as she removed the gauze that was pinning his arm to his side so that she had an opening to reach around him.

It was a slow, painstaking process to unwrap him while maneuvering around the broken arm. Drakken felt acutely aware of her fingers brushing his skin, her breath on his neck, and her hair occasionally brushing him. True, her touch was clinical, and it wasn't like she wasn't in the habit of touching him – usually to get in his personal space and annoy him, as far as he could tell – but direct skin-on-skin contact was rare. Maybe it was just that they'd been apart for so long, but there seemed to be something almost intimate about her actions. Drakken cleared his throat, needing to fill the silence.

"Why did you come here?" he asked the first question that came to mind. Her hands paused in their work but resumed before she responded.

"I was curious," she answered, and Drakken could almost hear her shrug. Although he had no way of knowing it, that was another question she'd tried not to think about too much. "Team Possible interrupted my vacation because they thought I'd broken you out. I wanted to see who had."

Drakken mulled that over for a few seconds. He decided it was time for a little honesty.

"I thought it was you, you know," he admitted. "Someone at the prison told me a green-skinned woman was looking for me. Naturally, I assumed…" he trailed off, trying not to remember the elation he'd initially felt at the news. That had immediately been followed by irritation that it had taken her so long and then confusion as someone else entirely abducted him. "The next thing I knew, I was being sucked into an alien ship, and an unusually large woman was asking me if I was the 'Great Blue,' whatever that means."

By this time, Shego had repositioned the bandage and was beginning to wrap it tightly around him.

"So, of course, you told her you were," she supplied.

"Not immediately. But then she told me that she would provide The Great Blue with advanced technology and weapons."

"And you couldn't turn that down." Shego could imagine the scene now, and she completely understood. Naturally, Dr. Drakken wouldn't have been able to refuse the possibility of a doomsday device that he didn't have to expend time and effort to make himself. "Okay, but what was with that plan?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, come on! Sucking away the oxygen in the atmosphere? First, what's the point of ruling a world of dead things? Well, except plants, I guess. Second, Mel Brooks already used that in the plot of a movie, like, 20 years ago."

Dr. Drakken frowned deeply. He hated copying other people's ideas, but he had thought the whole thing sounded vaguely familiar. Truthfully, he'd only wanted a plan big enough to lure Kim Possible there so that Warmonga could flatten her. He hadn't really thought much beyond that, but there was no way he was going to admit that to Shego. Therefore, he retreated to his usual defense when she was right and grew defensive.

"Don't be ridiculous," he snapped. "I wasn't going to allow everyone to die. The brain can survive seven minutes without oxygen, and just about everyone would be unconscious by two minutes. At that point, we could have returned the atmosphere, and I could have seized control before the world's leaders came to." It sounded good to him, and he was rather proud of himself for coming up with that on the spur of the moment and with a headache besides.

"If you say so," she said doubtfully. "There." She finished wrapping him up and moved back to her mattress. The bandages were considerably tighter, but Drakken noticed that breathing didn't hurt nearly as much. In addition, the aspirin was finally starting to work, and now that he wasn't in so much pain, he was feeling tired.

"I suppose this does sort of go beyond the call of duty," he remarked thoughtfully as he lay down on the couch. "Maybe I ought to give you a signing bonus."

"Does that mean you'll take me back?" Shego inwardly winced at how desperate she sounded. She hadn't realized until that moment how much she really did want her job back.

"I'm a supervillain, Shego," Drakken sighed. "I don't really expect unswerving loyalty. I might have hoped that you and I were beyond such things, but…well. Anyway, I'm not a solo act. You know that."

For some reason, his casual acceptance of her betrayal made her feel something strange. In a flash of intuition, she understood that the reason he'd taken such obvious pleasure in gloating over the alien's prowess was because he'd been hurt by her abandonment and felt the need to lash out at her. Was this guilt that plagued her? Surely not. She'd left that behind with her family.

"Okay, I left you to rot in prison, and you sicced a monstrous alien on me," she summed up. "Can we call it even and start over?"

"Yes, I think we can," said Drakken after a moment. He suspected that she'd also been responsible for the mysterious message about The Great Blue waiting for Warmonga on Pluto, but that would have been self-preservation, and he could respect that. Maybe it was time to let bygones be bygones.

About ten seconds later, he was asleep. Shego bemusedly wondered whether he would even remember their agreement when he woke up. Either way, she felt better. She went to one of the bunkrooms and returned with two blankets. She gently draped one over Dr. Drakken and pulled the other over herself. Neither of them stirred until morning.

--

Author's Note: Hey, if Ron can have a titanium-reinforced belt, why can't Drakken have a steel-reinforced coat?

Review responses:

Katsumara: Thanks, I do think Drakken and Shego have developed a sort of affection born of long association, even if it's slightly dysfunctional. When you think about it, their partnership is a little like a marriage, as I've implied in this chapter.

saragil: There will be a bit more, plus I have an idea for a post-series oneshot.

shadowgirl416: There really aren't that many of this couple, are there? I think they deserve some attention. Hope you enjoy!

PoisonousAngel: Right you are! She's still taking care of him here, but the next chapter or two will have them more as they used to be.

automaticloveletter: I don't intend to forget, but this story won't be very long. It's only a bridge between episodes, after all. I do tend to update frequently, about once a week.