Day 87

Shego felt much more like herself wearing her regular green and black suit, with the exception of the sterile nitrile gloves both she and Drakken wore on their hands. He too was back in his normal attire, and at her insistence they both wore respirators as they worked in the lab.

Drakken had sorted through his notes and kept the ones that were still relevant. Everything he deemed obsolete, including all but two of the Petri dishes, had gone into a pile that Shego had burned. After some research and scouring the lair for spare parts, Drakken devised a machine that combined Shego's glow and a pressure washer to fill the lab with pressurized steam, effectively sterilizing everything from floor to ceiling.

Seeing the success of his slap-dash invention Drakken had been motivated to sterilize the entire lair. But Shego suggested they focus on one thing at a time, the whole point of sterilizing the lab being that Drakken was eager to get back to his research now that he was feeling better. After a brief argument, he had agreed.

The lab was still wet from the steam hours after the pressure-cleaning, but Drakken had run out of patience waiting for it to air-dry. So Shego was methodically rubbing down everything but the walls and floor with towels while Drakken busied himself with reorganizing and testing all of the computers and equipment.

Shego frowned as her arms started to ache from her task, not having been properly exercised in ages. She found herself mulling over the rapport she and Drakken had naturally fallen into that day. He was back to ordering her around, and she was snarking at him as if nothing at all was different between them.

She had accepted his command to do the grunt work because one, the henchmen were still gone; two, they wouldn't do it right anyway; and three, there was no way Drakken would bother. If she wanted the lab clean and virus-free, it was definitely up to her. So she graciously hadn't set his coat on fire when he tossed a single towel at her upon their re-entrance to the lab.

It was the lack of eye-contact, affectionate smiles, and sincere conversation that were really bothering her. But...maybe they just didn't know how to do that in the lab-environment yet. She had effectively held him hostage in the bedroom for over a month for the sake of his recovery, although the last week she thought he could have ventured out without harm to himself.

They were still stuck on the island if they chose to obey the quarantine laws... Maybe she needed to get him off the idea of finding a treatment for the disease and just focus on...becoming themselves again. He had apparently had a world-domination plot involving fast food toys that he was really proud of, as lame as she remembered it being when he told her... Maybe she could get him to work on that instead, and then they could find their way toward whatever normal was supposed to be.

"I don't see what the rush is..." Shego said in annoyance as she wiped down the giant computer screen, standing atop the desk. "I mean...you're not gonna find a treatment today."

"I'm getting close!" he said in a mixture of pride and desperation as he uploaded his files from her laptop to the main computer. "Nnh...would you move?"

She glanced at him over her shoulder and wondered...was it true?

"Didn't know you were a biomechanic, Doc," she said with a grin, hopping down and smacking him in the rear with the damp towel.

He glowered at her and rubbed his rump for a moment before turning back to the computer screen.

"Necessity is often the mother of genius," he said with a confident smirk as the upload completed. He began disconnecting her laptop.

"Invention."

"Hn?"

"Invention. The expression is, 'necessity is the mother of invention.'"

"That too."

Shego was about to toss that towel on the used pile and go for a fresh one, when a thought literally stopped her in her tracks, her right foot frozen mid-step. Her eyes went wide.

"Uh...Drakken?"

"Hn?"

She turned to face him, twisting the towel in her hands and setting her foot down.

"Drakken!"

"What, Shego?"

He coughed into his shoulder as he turned to face her. The annoyance in his eyes vanished as he took in her wide-eyed alarm.

She took a deep breath. Maybe she was wrong...

"...When's the last time you—"

The landline in the lair began ringing. Drakken was closer and peered down at the tiny digital screen.

"No caller I.D.," he announced as Shego looked at him anxiously. He shrugged and picked up the phone.

"Dr. D.—!"

"Hello? Dr. Drakken's lair," he said sweetly. "Yes, she's here, may I ask who's calling?"

Shego strode up to him and grabbed the phone in impatience, her body shaking now with fear from her revelation. When she brought the receiver to her ear, her eyes narrowed at the sound of the voice on the other end. Drakken watched her curiously as he could only hear her side of the conversation.

"How did you get this number? Yes I'm fine... No, I— No, I don't care how you're doing. Why would I? ...Who cares if we're family? ...Hego, I am not going to come visit—"

She suddenly heard a dial tone as Drakken pressed the switchhook, and a second later the receiver was snatched out of her hands as he cried out in panic.

"I forgot about Mother!"

Shego collapsed against the desk as he dialed her number and placed the receiver next to his own ear, his feet dancing in fear as he waited for the call to be answered.

"That's what I was trying to tell you!"

The phone rang out and went to the answering machine. His eyes went ever wider as he depressed the switchhook and quickly dialed again. The phone went to the answering machine for the second time.

"I have to go to her!" he cried as he ran out of the room, not even giving Shego a glance.

"I'm coming with you," she said as she jogged after him.

Drakken jumped out of the hover-car before Shego had fully set it down in front of the old colonial house. He ran down the walkway and up the porch steps in two impressive leaps, and Shego sprinted after him as soon as the key was out of the ignition. He yanked at the door handle fiercely and discovered it was locked. Shego jogged up next to him and flared her hands.

"Do you want me to—?"

She didn't get to finish the sentence as Drakken stepped back and kicked the door in, leaving Shego blinking in surprise.

"All right then," she said, letting her hands go out and following Drakken who had already disappeared through the door.

Shego felt her skin crawl as she entered the dark house. The air was stale and held an odor that defied description, and there was a familiar but eerie sound coming from somewhere. Everything about the house made her want to turn and run and leave anyone inside to fate. But she kept moving forward.

"Mother!" she heard Drakken calling as she hurried to catch up with him. "Mother! Moth—"

Drakken's calls broke off with a strangled cry and Shego followed the sound of his voice into the house's small living room. She nearly collided with his back, and her breath caught as she peered around his shoulder at the horrible sight.

They were far, far too late.

The body of Mrs. Lipsky sat slumped in a chair in front of a television that was still running, the volume turned low. A pile of tissues was on the floor next to the chair, and an empty cup with a dry, used tea-bag sat on an end table. A tissue box and the TV remote were in her lap.

She was almost unrecognizable with her face abnormally bloated and sagging, and her skin mottled purple, blue, and green. Shego noted a puddle of thick, brownish liquid beneath the chair, and the odor in the room was so foul that Shego nearly choked.

"Mother?" Drakken gasped in fright. He started forward.

The fear that Shego had automatically begun to compartmentalize assaulted her like an electric shock. She grabbed Drakken's arms and dug her nails in hard to stop his advance.

"No!" she cried desperately when he pulled against her in protest. "No!"

He fought her with every step as she dragged him from the room, prying at her hands until she ignited them and very nearly set his coat on fire. The words and half-sentences that he shouted were incoherent as he shoved and clawed at her and tried to escape back inside. But she grit her teeth and endured the abuse until she had him out of the house.

She threw him down on the porch probably harder than he deserved, his face hitting the aged wood with a loud smack. When he pushed himself up and looked at her, there was murder in his eyes and blood dripping from a cut on his lip. His enraged glare was unwavering as he stumbled to his feet and lifted his hands as if to lunge at her, his fingers outstretched like eagles' talons. Shego fell back into a fighting stance and ignited her hands, and he abruptly halted his approach.

They stood at an impasse, silent but for the heaving of their chests as they caught their breath. Drakken's eyes darted around the porch as if calculating a way around her. Every time his gaze passed over her the bared-teeth set of his jaw intensified and his eyes darkened with rage.

Shego didn't flinch under his fury, her mind made up that there was no way short of his killing her that she would allow him back into that house. Her own expression was resolute and commanding. But as the seconds passed, the devastating pain of what they had witnessed began creeping into her eyes.

"No," she said firmly as Drakken didn't show any sign of relenting. His eyes finally stopped on her with a look of accusation, as if she had somehow betrayed him. Her brow twisted in sadness even as her frown deepened and she shook her head. "No."

Drakken's rage began to abate as his face contorted in desperation, his eyes almost begging. But Shego shook her head.

"No," she breathed, her eyes likewise pleading with him to stop.

As she calmly stared him down, his resolve began to waver. Then after what felt like an eternity, Drakken seemed to shrink in front of her as he couldn't hold onto the anger anymore. It left him withered and broken even before his body hit the porch, and a second later Shego was on her knees in front of him, breaking his fall.

"Aaaahhhhh!" was the bone-chilling cry that came out of Drakken as he fell the rest of the way to the deck, his forehead nearly hitting the wooden planks even as Shego caught him. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight as a lump formed in her throat. He turned and clung to her, almost knocking her off-balance as he sobbed loudly into her hair. Shego rested her cheek on his shoulder and let her own tears slip down her face.