Ambition
He emerges from the lab, shaking green stickiness from his hair - correction, from what's left of his hair. With shaky hands, he runs a cold, wet washcloth over his cheeks, over and over and over again, hoping it'll soothe the burns on his face.
"Shego," he announces to his sidekick as he plops down into his chair, "I have made an important scientific breakthrough."
Shego doesn't even glance up from the piece of paper she's looking at. "Mmm-hmm, what's that?"
He dabs at a particularly painful splotch on his chin. "Ventilation shafts do not like Jell-O."
That gets her attention. "What?" she almost shrieks - Shego's not a shrieker - jerking her head around so fast it looks like she's going to give her herself whiplash.
He grins sheepishly, his way-too-dry lips cracking as he stretches them. Ouch. He drops the smile and yelps, rubbing his mouth in agony.
Shego's eyes droop to half-mast. "Oh, nuh-uh," she says, like denying his injuries is going to fix them. "You did not blow yourself up again!"
Tightness in his chest makes him cough, and he could swear he sees a cloud of smoke come out of his mouth. "Actually, I did." He hears his voice slip up into a whine. "And it hu-urts!"
Shego flings her arms into the air and rolls her eyes up to the ceiling. "Fantastic," she says, voice all drippy with sarcasm. "Simply amazing." She squints at him in that way that makes him feel like he's being interrogated by the police. "Do we need to vist the ER, or are you good?"
Ooh. He shudders a little at the thought. He doesn't like the ER. Too big and white, with too many nurses running around too fast, and the whole place smells like bathtub cleaner. So he shakes his head. No, he doesn't want to go there. Not today.
"I think I'll be okay," he answers, feeling the top of his scalp - ow, ow, ow! - to see exactly how much hair is left. Not much. Just patches of stubble, and a few scraggly little strands of what feels like string. Great. "In a few hours, after the swelling goes down and everything."
"Dr. Drakken, medical expert," Shego says absently, already focusing her attention back on the piece of paper. He growls under his breath. What is there about that thing that could possibly be more interesting than him, especially when he's hurting and needs help? Sure, he might not need to go to the ER, but he might need a Band-Aid - or an ice pack - or maybe just some TLC. (That's an acronym for "Tender Loving Care" that he learned from his book of teen slang.)
As if to answer his question, Shego suddenly starts to snicker. He glances at her warily. He doesn't see anything funny about this situation, unless she's laughing at his nearly-bald head and blacked-up face. "Shego?" he whispers, more to himself than to her.
No answer. A horrible thought occurs to him. What if she's reading something he wrote? What if she stumbled upon one of his failed plans for world domination, or his mad-scientist log, or the love letter for his seventh-grade science teacher that he never got around to finishing because he couldn't find anything that rhymed with "Bunsen burner"?
"Shego, what is that?" he demands, shoving his chair closer to hers.
"It came in the mail today," Shego says. That's NOT an answer.
"From who?" His heart is sinking, even though that doesn't make any sense. How do hearts sink? Ocean liners sink when they hit icebergs or other ships, but hearts are locked firmly in place inside people's chests.
Shego looks up, eyes twinkling mischief. Even before she opens her mouth, he knows what she's going to say. "Your mom."
"SHEGO!" he shrieks. He jumps out of his chair so fast it topples over and hits the ground behind him with a loud thud.
He scrambles over to Shego's chair, but she stands on top of the table and holds the letter over her head, out of his reach, and grins down at him perfectly calmly. How can she be so calm when he feels like his veins are going to pop any second? He can feel them throbbing in his neck as he jumps frantically for the letter, his fingers missing by mere centimeters. If only his hands were bigger. . .
"Give that to me!" he snarls, and by some miracle, his voice goes lower. Maybe his vocal chords have finally realized he's an adult. "Opening other people's mail is a federal offense, you know!"
Shego just rolls her eyes and keeps smiling. "Thank you, Mr. Genius-Who-Thinks-Supervillains-Should-Abide-By-U.S.-Postal-Laws."
"Please," he hisses, and, drat the luck, his voice goes high and tiny again. "Please give that to me. Please!"
"Hmmm." Shego rubs her pointy chin, like she's considering that. He peers at her, giving her his biggest eyes and his biggest smile and his best please-have-mercy-on-me face.
"No." His sidekick's voice shatters his hope, and he has no choice but to pound his fists into the top of the table. "But -" Shego holds up a hand, studying the letter like it contains the secret to world domination. " - since you used the magic words, I will read it to you. Although, I think you've probably already heard it."
His feet lose the ground beneath him, and he pitches forward. "What do you mean?" he yelps. "What is it, Shego?"
"Your mom found it in the attic," Shego explains, twitches still dancing around her lips. "Apparently you wrote it when you were in sixth grade."
He runs his hand back across his head, and a bit of lemon-lime Jell-O falls into his palm. He stares at it, wishing he could be back in the lab, trying to figure out how to make The Incredibly Evil Tower Of Jell-O, wishing it would work and the world would be kneeling at his feet - well, everyone in the world, because the planet doesn't have knees. Then nobody would dare to look at him with anything but adoration and respect.
Shego's eyes don't have anything even close to adoration and respect in them. "What I Want To Be When I Grow Up," she reads in a high, squeaky voice. "By Drew Lipsky."
He bites down on his bottom lip, so hard he can taste blood. "Shego, I am going to dock your paycheck so much your grandchildren will be born dizzy!" he snaps.
Shego apparently isn't impressed with his threat (which, now that he thinks about it, didn't make much sense), because she keeps going. "'1. A famous scientist, most importantly.'" She stops and chuckles, shaking her head. "Whoa, Doc, you really didn't know how to spell back then, did you?"
He gives her a Look of Death, one he's been practicingin front of the mirror for just such occasions. He knows that's one of those questions he's not supposed to answer. Retortical or something like that; words are so hard. . .
"'Maybe I'll be the one to discover a cure for cancer or something,'" Shego continues. "'I'd like that a lot. OR, maybe, someday, in a lab experiment gone horribly wrong, I'll gain powers and become a science superhero! Like Spider-Man. I could call myself. . . Dragon-Man!'" She tilts her head, studying him in a way that makes him want to grow a different face. "Or maybe," she continues, still sarcastically, "I'll just turn myself blue, instead."
He buries his face in his hands and tries to picture himself young and unblue. The memory that comes back is vague, unfocused, like he needs to adjust the little TV in his mind, but he can still see a scrawny kid, with skin the color of cookie dough and weird teeth. He swallows hard, because his throat is suddenly lumping up. He doesn't want to remember being Drew Lipsky.
"Do you always have to be such a smart Alex?" he demands, hoping to distract Shego from her mission. It probably won't work - Shego doesn't distract nearly as easily as he does - but it's still worth a try.
"Alec," Shego says without missing the proverbial beat.
He blinks at her. "What?" That makes even less sense. What's an alec?
"Never mind." Shego waves her hand, dismissing the non-word word entirely. "You wanted to be a superhero?"
You WERE a superhero, Shego! That's what he wants to say, but he doesn't. It's one of those things they don't speak of.
"'2. Handsome.'" Shego puts down the letter and looks at him again, out and out grinning. "Well, that was a miserable failure."
He already knew that, but hearing someone else say it out loud makes something in his chest just snap. "GIVE ME THAT LETTER!" he cries, hurting his throat. He makes one more lunge for it, but Shego shoves it behind her back at the last second, and he vaults all the way over the table and lands on the other side, head in Commodore Puddles' water dish.
Shego keeps reading, doesn't bother to ask if he's all right. "'I'm kind of weird-looking right now' - ya think? - 'and I wanna grow out of it. I want the braces to work, and I want to get rid of the glasses. Maybe I could even get muscular like Eddy's dad.'"
Hindsight is 20/20, they say. He's never understood that expression until now.
He lifts his head out of the water bowl and shakes the water off it, until the drops finally stop running down his neck and making it cold. Secretly, he hopes some hits Shego. Preferably right on the nose.
But when he turns around, coughing and sputtering, Shego is perfectly dry. What is she, immune to everything?
"Well," Shego sits criss-cross-applesauce down on the table, "you got rid of the glasses. And the braces did work."
It's the closest thing to a compliment he's heard all day, and it puffs his chest out. "And, believe it or not, I have filled out some since then." He grins then, showing off all of his orthodontist's hard work.
Shego's lips twitch, and she picks the letter back up. "'Popular. I want to have a lot of friends, but I don't want to be like the popular kids at school, 'cuz they're jerks. I feel kind of funny around kids my age, maybe because I'm smarter than most of them. Not to sound arrogant or anything.'" She rolls her eyes. "Of course not, Drewbiekins."
His stomach knots up, stiff and hard. Even though it embarrasses him, that's still his mother's special name for him, and he doesn't want her using it, having it in her mouth long enough to say, long enough to get her germs on it. And he wasn't being arrogant. There's nothing arrogant about knowing you're smarter than most people, right?
Right?
"I really was a child prodigy, you know," he coughs, trying to keep his voice calm. Why doesn't his villainous anger ever scare anyone?
"Except in spelling," Shego chimes in.
"Paycheck!" he snaps back. "It's getting smaller by the minute!"
"'NUMBER FOUR'," Shego reads loudly, talking over him, ignoring him. "A really great. . . dad. . . Because mine. . . left."
Silence. Thick, sick silence. He bends in the middle and clenches his fists and bites his lower lip. What he's feeling right now hurts a lot worse than a heating vent blowing up in your face.
Shego's voice trails off, and she stares at the letter as if it's written in Japanese. "Oh," is all that leaves her mouth.
He never told her. It was an unspoken agreement they had - he never asks about her parents, she never asks about his father. It's much better for everyone involved that way.
But now she knows, and it feels like his stomach is made of Jell-O. "Shego - " He doesn't want to say anything more.
"I know, I know." Shego's face settles back into its pointiness. "Moving along."
Forget docking her paycheck. Right now, he's never been more grateful to anyone.
"'5. I hope I make my mom proud of me. Actually, I hope I make EVERYONE proud of me. I don't ever want anyone not to like me again.'" Shego finishes the list and coughs a little. "Wow. You. . uh. . . have a funky way of making people like you, dude."
"Once I dominate the world - " he begins.
Shego interrupts, which he hates. Yep, her paycheck is getting docked after all. "I know, I know. Once you dominate the world, not liking you will be a crime punishable by death."
How can she say that so. . . so. . . calmly, like world domination is no big deal? "Exactly. And then it won't matter that I'm not handsome or muscular or hairy or - "
Whoa, Drakken. Stop. He reaches up to his mouth and grabs his tongue between two fingers, to stop it from blurting out anything else.
Shego doesn't even seem to have heard. "Dragon-Man," she mutters to herself, shaking her head. "Dragon-Man, defeating the forces of his evil with his incredible non-arrogant brainpower while managing to dream of contact lenses and muscles!"
His heart hits an iceberg and sinks. "Lock those lips, Shego!" he barks.
"Okay, okay." Shego holds her hands up over her head, still laughing. "Chill, Dr. D. I think it's kinda cute, actually."
Cute? He peers at her suspiciously, but the twinkle in her eyes isn't evil. It's. . . softer, somehow. A little bit more like Mother's.
"I'm not cute," he protests, sticking out his lower lip to prove it. There's nothing cute about mad scientists.
Snorting, Shego reaches out and pushes his chest with both hands. He stumbles backward and lands, buns first, in Commodore Puddles' water dish. "No," Shego agrees as he grunts and struggles awkwardly to his feet. "You're not cute." She tilts her head to the side and lets out what almost sounds like a giggle. "But you probably were when you were twelve."
He scowls at her, wanting this conversation to be over. Exploding Jell-O is starting to sound better and better all the time. "I was not," he mutters defiantly. "I was skinny and I had these huge round glasses that made me look like an owl and my front teeth stuck straight out."
The instant the words are out of his mouth, he wants to suck them back in. Why did he just tell Shego that? She's probably going to tell everyone else, and then he'll never hear the end of it!
"A real superhero." Shego puts her hands on her hips and breaks into a little-old-lady voice, which would make him laugh if he wasn't feeling all mashed up inside. "My, you were an ambitious li'l whippersnapper, weren't you?"
"Oh, come on," he says, trying to keep the whine out of his voice. "What did you want to be when you were little?"
More silence. Well, he's not going to take no for an answer this time. Shego's not going to learn all of his adolescent fantasties without some tradeoff. "Pl-eee-ease, Shego," he begs, injecting the whine full force. "I'm gonna bu-ug you until you te-ell me!"
Shego folds her arms on the tabletop and throws her face down into them. "Fine," she mumbles. "An astronaut."
He blinks, sure he must have heard wrong. "What?"
"I wanted to be an astronaut." When Shego lifts her head, she isn't quite smiling, but she doesn't look angry either. Her eyes are far away, like she's staring into the past. "Until, that is, I found out more about comets than I really wanted to know." She snorts, bringing herself back to present-day Shego. "Then I decided I wanted to be a teacher."
"Really?" He perches on the edge of his chair and leans in to hear more. "A teacher?"
Shego shakes her head and waves her hand. "Forget it, Doc. It obviously wasn't meant to be."
"Yeah." He shakes his own head, trying to clear it of thoughts of Shego as a little girl, wanting to be an astronaut. It's hard to see her as anything but what she is now. "You were meant to be my sidekick and help me conquer Planet Earth."
"Joy." Shego gets to her feet, smirking at him. "That's much better than being an astronaut."
He grins and folds his hands happily in his lap. "Yes, Shego. I think so, too."
For a minute, the world is the way it should be - well, as much as it can be without him in control of it. Until, that is, Shego whips out her cell phone and takes a picture of his letter and threatens to send it to every villain in this solar system unless he forgets about docking her paycheck.
Then he remembers why he needs to conquer the planet. So nothing like that can ever happen again.
He straightens his shoulders, runs a hand over his head again - it feels like some hair's already starting to grow back - and heads back to the lab.