41. Blood is not thicker than water. Well, technically, it is a denser liquid, but that doesn't mean you can count on Eddy to break you out of jail.

At the moment, it is quiet here.

Quiet once was frightening. Quiet once was lonely. Now Drakken revels in it, because quiet back then meant no Shego, and quiet now means no Lucre, and the difference is abstaining from chocolate versus abstaining from cod liver oil.

Drakken sighs in relief, a sound that ripples off the unyielding walls, which feel cold and cruel under his fingers, cement on three sides, bars on the fourth. Vexatious place. He's basically locked in a lizard cage, only without a heat lamp for the prisoner to recline under. There are even a few crickets - one particularly noisy one on Lucre's side of the room - but they aren't intended as food for the prisoners. Although, now that he thinks about it, they would probably be better than most of the prison cuisine -

A fiery rush of nausea, and Drakken shakes his pounding head. No, he can't think about food, prison-issue or otherwise. He needs to concentrate on his great plan for escaping from jail.

Which is trickier than it should be. The standby from the old movies, chinking a hole in a wall with your spoon, doesn't work anymore - these spoons are plastic, and when you smash them against the wall, they break, so you still have a wall imprisoning you. What you don't have is a spoon to partake of the watery gelatin they serve for lunch.

Drakken did once manage to use a comb to pry up the grate over the shower drain, only to find the opening narrow and stifling. Well, fine! He didn't want to escape that way, anyway. Already feels like he's dripping in sewage all the time around here.

So what does that leave? Filing through the bars? With what, his fork? If only Shego were here with her Nail File of Ultimate Destruction -

Shego.

Drakken gulps. Shego, who laughed at him as Eddy busted down the women's prison with a giant robot almost as impressive was some of the ones Drakken has designed in his spare time. In direct violation of her contract, too! How "lame" - as Shego herself would say - is that? Why, he'd be completely within his rights to fire her - maybe even sue her, if the prospect of spending any more time in courtrooms didn't turn his underarms to marshes.

But revenge isn't what he's hoping for. For non-mushy reasons, he wants her here. Because, Drakken can finally admit, if only to himself, without Shego he has no chance of ever breaking out - except maybe in a rash from where the prison clothes scratch against his skin.

Also for non-mushy reasons, he still feels icky in the innards when he remembers Shego's exposed navel, skinny pants, big hoops on her ears, and the pile of hair that threatened to pull the whole ensemble over backward. He can't believe Eddy put her in that. . . Well, no, he can believe it, but it still galls him. Eddy looks at Shego and thinks he's only looking at someone young and beautiful, not someone smart and feisty and resourceful and vicious enough to make any evil mentor proud, with an overdeveloped sense of sarcasm and hands that never shake, not ever.

Drakken remembers how he defended Eddy to his mother the night the two of them were arrested for the whole Doom-Vee scheme. At this point, he wishes he hadn't, because Mother was right. Eddy is scum, some of their happy childhood memories notwithstanding. Doing - doing - whatever-that-is-called to a woman like Shego, and leaving his own family to rot in jail at the same time?

He must get that from our fathers' side of the family.

The revelation sends the cot shaking. He can't keep thinking about this. He needs to think of a way out. And that means he has to stand up and pace. It won't help the kinks in his back, but maybe it can massage away the ones in his mind.

Drakken rises to his feet, and the floor weaves under him. Black licks at the edges of his vision, as it does so often these days; the concurrent dread has become so mundane it is barely an alarm at all. He stumbles sideways, and a horrible, wounded-seal sound escapes from him. (He's only heard a wounded seal once, on a nature documentary, yet the sound will forever haunt him.)

No, not even pacing shall be an option. Not when he's still sore from his latest prison. . . altercation. Three men challenged the honor of Dr. Drakken's evil career, and he had no choice but to jump them. They got in a few good blows, having numbers and size on their side, but Drakken had indomitable spirit on his side, and he rained punches down on the biggest guy over and over again, and he kept raining until the guards stormed the multipurpose room and hosed him with tear gas -

All right, maybe it didn't happen exactly that way. It should have, though.

When the guard posted at the cell doors asked Drakken's nice escort why he was being returned to his enclosure so early, he actually said, "Were they beating him up again?"

Drakken twisted around to give the man his most murderous look. No, they were not beating him up. He fought back, which is a whole other thing. Men get in fights. Little baby rabbits get beat up. It would have been a lot easier to convince him through that murderous look, if the guard's attention hadn't been pointedly riveted to the not-quite-a-scar still burning on Drakken's upper arm.

And what is a little baby rabbit called, anyway? A bunny? A kitten? A pup?

When Drakken shuts his eyes, the darkness doesn't stitch itself into an answer, the way it did back when he was on the ADHD meds. Instead, it reels with footage of Eddy, dripping wet and petrified as two officers load him in the back of a police car.

Across from him, Shego's hair is soaked flat to her body. Water and hatred spill off her. Despite the arms the police have locked across her chest like door bolts, she lunges forward, still trying to cut her way toward Eddy, her long-nailed hands weaponized even without the glove-blades. In her eyes, Drakken can see a type of rage that will not simmer away as long as Eddy still breathes.

It's a feeling Drakken instantly recognizes, same as he can recognize the feel of a test tube, slim and cool between his fingers, even with eyes shut tight. He didn't know Shego could feel it, though. She always goes quietly with the police when it is the reasonable thing to do, and five different officers holding your shoulders definitely qualifies as "reasonable."

Sure, Shego has a temper second only to. . . well, his - but when she gets mad, it fuels her and makes the world tremble. Her anger has always been productive and efficient - yes, that's it - never stuttering and desperate like his own. Never lame.

He should pity her, Drakken knows, yet his pity has been smelted and treated so that it clings to him and him alone.

Drakken peels himself away from the cement and steps forward, trying to settle his footing on the slick surface beneath him. The dipped-in-sewage feeling returns, and he picks his way to the sink before he reminds himself that no, he can't wash his hands and make it go away, that only people with certain mind-sicknesses think it works that way.

It's as if someone is tapping out the tune to that Christmas carol about the drummer boy against his temples from the inside. Drakken plants his hands over his ears, even though they're not the parts of him convulsing in pain.

On his second or third back-and-forth rock, he catches a glimpse of himself in the shine of the sink's basin, and he wishes he hadn't. Not a pretty sight. Okay, so he probably never would have been featured the cover of GQ on his best day. But here? Now? He wouldn't even make good advertising for a funeral home.

Drakken stares at the wasted humanoid staring back at him, and he is sure he can see the life ebbing away from him, leaving the bones to stand front and center. His unfashionable jumpsuit sags away from them like he's trying to wear a parachute. Drakken remembers the money launderer man he fought with, how his jumpsuit wrapped tightly around his chest like a big Ace bandage, and he bites at his lip. He hopes that somewhere, right at this very instant, the man is still trying to wash Drakken-spit from his pores, unable to get rid of the smell and the damp splat of Drakken's loathing.

(Maybe he should try slipping down the shower drain again.)

His skin is pale and chipped, like plaster, carved with black down his cheek. The dark roundabouts under his eyes that he always imagined were so fear-inducing now seem frozen to his face in horror. The eyes themselves have lost their mad luster and are currently just cloudy and tired, bunched from underneath.

Drakken gulps again. If he stands here looking at this absolute wreck of what was once the world's most formidable supervillain for too much longer, he will cry, and that's no good. Even a short sobbing jag will leave his face bloated and miserable - it'll tattletale on him to inmates who practically have laser-scanner capabilities when it comes to such weakness.

Yet he can't close his eyes again to shut himself out, either, or he will see Eddy, nearly crawling into a policeman's lap in his effort to get away from the little girl who wants to wring his beefy neck.

Little girl. He shouldn't think that way, either.

Drakken turns away from the sink and shuffles back to his cot, a journey of about five feet that still winds him. The warden said this morning - that was just this morning, wasn't it, when a couple of guards were dispatched to deal with the robot-damage to the women's prison across the yard? - that it was visiting day. Yes, it was, it has to be, because Drakken hasn't yet seen his mother, and he knows she would never miss a day, not even if she had bridge club.

Whatever that is. All he knows is that they don't meet on a bridge.

Drakken glares once more around the perimeter of his cell. Stone looks back at him, and he can't abide its arrogance, either. It makes him unable to rationally hope that while he's in the visiting room, Pyro Pete will go on a rampage and burn the lizard-cage to the ground.

Spending quality time with Mother used to be about as much fun as being handcuffed to a pipe listening to Kim Possible elaborate to the authorities on exactly how she captured you while you were also nursing her flying Kung-Fu wedgie. Now, though, it's different. Mother is the only family he has left. Of any sort. The moment when he walks in and sees her is like the moment when you finally rip off a Band-Aid, when pain and relief vie for dominance in your nervous system.

The cot squeaks as Drakken bends, or maybe that is the sound of his back creaking. It sounds like the perfect atmosphere to interact with his mother, one where she is legally forbidden to touch him. No more cheek-pinches, no more bone-crunching hugs, no more lipstick staining his forehead. And for the first two or three months, it was good.

But.

Today he will sit across from her, so close he can smell the soap he gave her for Christmas three or four years ago, and he will know she still uses it, still treasures it. Her hand will rest on the divider, plump and soft like one of her homemade banana-nut muffins, and Drakken will realize he will never eat one again, and there will always be glass between them, and there shall be no more of her warm touch.

He isn't sure he remembers what warmth feels like.