Author's note:
Right, folks, last chapter of the update. This time the chapter title is the opening line to Paul McCartney and Wings' song Band on the run, from the album of the same name. Given where Shego ended up last time we saw her and that the opening verse of the song is about being in jail, I think it is highly appropriate. So, here's chapter eight: Stuck inside these four walls.
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Chapter Eight: Stuck inside these four walls
Black. That's all that could be seen inside the small cell, pitch black. There were no windows and not a speck of light managed to penetrate between door and frame. Yes, the cell was about as dark as you could get. And cold... bitterly cold. Cold to the point that the very air would catch in your lungs as you took a breath, force you to cough and, had there been any light, visible as you shakily exhaled. Not that they could be seen, but the room did contain scant furnishings; a narrow cot with a box base, a small sink and a toilet.
Atop the cot, clad in an orange jumpsuit and with a thin grey blanket huddled around her, lay a woman with green skin and raven hair. However, in this room such details were arbitrary. She huddled her knees close to her chest in a desperate attempt to keep warm but could do nothing to stop her body from constantly shivering. How long she had been here, she could not say. Two meals arrived each day, both consisting of a bowl of grey oatmeal, with a strange aftertaste and a glass of water. Unfortunately, she'd lost track of how many and since they were the exact same, she no longer knew whether it was day or night. Feeding time also served as the only time she saw light; five minutes allotted with each meal, then it was a return to the darkness. And each time, the dull illumination stung her eyes, forcing her to squint as she ate the blurry contents of a bowl she could barely make out.
The green-skinned woman lay in silence, bar when a shiver caused her teeth to chatter. The metaphorical green embers inside of her, that she had desperately endeavoured to keep alight, were close to flickering into oblivion. At the start of her confinement, she'd forced herself to exercise, in order to generate body heat to stay warm and keep those precious remnants of fire glowing. However, she'd eventually run out of energy and her food supply had only just been enough to sustain her. So, she'd retreated to lying on the cot and willing her mind to conjure up thoughts and images that might give the fading embers some semblance of sustenance. At times she'd fall asleep and then wake up sometime later, somehow feeling more tired. For the moment, she was awake but felt utterly exhausted. Her pale green skin, so used to being warm, felt frozen to the touch and had it not been for the constant shivers that wracked her body, she could easily have been mistaken for a clothed ice sculpture.
Eyes open or closed, it did not matter, for the same darkness surrounded her regardless. And somewhere amidst that bleak abyss, she could hear the voices of the two halves of her own personality argue relentlessly. A single subject having torn her mind apart. The green-skinned woman watched on as the two individuals, cast in her own image, battled with words.
"Why can't you face up to the truth?" the first woman, dressed in a short brown skirt, grey jacket and teal turtle-neck, with a matching headband in her long raven hair, said in annoyance. She went by the moniker, Miss Go.
"What, the truth you're choosing to ignore?" the second woman countered. She was clad in a form-fitting green and black catsuit, with matching gloves and boots. Her raven tresses flowed freely down her back. Her name, of course, was Shego.
The green-skinned woman felt her frail fire flicker, like the heated argument was slowly consuming, rather than kindling it.
"No, the truth that, if you would just accept it, might help free you from that cage you've kept yourself locked in for the past six years," Miss Go retorted.
"Cage," Shego snorted. "I liberated you. You were a mess before I took charge. A pathetic, weak mess."
"Liberated, is that what you call your existence?" Miss Go asked rhetorically, her voice laced with contempt. "You emotionally cut yourself off from every single person on the planet. You're little more than a hollow shell that coasts through life under the delusion of contentment."
"It's far better than the state you ended up in," Shego spat. "Any time you opened up to someone about anything, you got burned. Your parents, brothers, friends, all of them burnt you to the point you could barely cope. Then there was Danni…" she left the name to hang in the air like an unexploded bomb.
However, it seemed to have stopped close enough to the target, as Miss Go bit her lip and took a moment to compose herself before replying, "what happened with Danni was… difficult to take."
The moment of hesitation before the reply was enough for Shego to capitalise and she took full advantage of it. "Difficult? Don't you mean apocalyptic? She laid waste to you with one shot and you had no one to blame but yourself. Your just lucky I was able to pick up the pieces; make you strong."
As the seconds ticked by, the green-skinned woman was treated to a montage of the events being cast up. It all felt like ancient history, murky and with the details skewed by time and personal bias. And for better or worse, like it had all occurred to someone else. Yet she felt almost nothing in relation to it. Simply a brief thought of, that was an unfortunate event.
"Ok… I'll accept I made a serious mistake with Danni and was not in a good place afterwards," Miss Go said slowly. The woman then quickly went on the attack, "but ever since, you've kept yourself so emotionally cut off from other human beings that you can't even be friends with someone, let alone anything more."
"That's because I don't need friends," Shego retorted. "I get by perfectly well by myself."
"Exactly," Miss Go stated firmly, "you just, 'get by', that's it. Your lack of proper human connection means your life is predominantly flat. Sure, you avoid the lows that would otherwise hurt you, but you miss out on most of the highs too."
"That's bullshit!" Shego barked. "I get plenty of highs and don't get hurt in the process; win-win."
"Really," Miss Go challenged. "What highs have you had in the past month?"
"Doy, how about my five fights with Kimmie? Pretty sure those were some major highs," Shego said almost offhandedly, like the answer had been so simple that it required no thought.
A thin smile formed on Miss Go's face and a light laugh escaped from her mouth.
"What's funny?" Shego demanded.
"You," Miss Go answered, a look of satisfaction on her face. "Your immediate reaction was to list some of the interactions you had with virtually the only person with whom you have any sort of emotional connection, discounting a certain naked-mole-shark, of course."
A green inferno blazed behind Shego's eyes as she yelled, "I do not have an emotional connection with Kim fucking Possible!"
This only caused Miss Go to laugh even harder. "Case and point, Cupcake. Now, do I need to go into the details of the two nights you spent with Kim in Spritzers, not to mention the rather hot, no pun intended, make-out session the two of you had inside Dr Drakken's volcano lair? Or are you going to be woman enough to accept the truth?"
"WHAT FUCKING TRUTH!" Shego bellowed, her fists clenching and looking as though they might combust into balls of green plasma at any moment.
"That you want a relationship with Kim that is deeper than just the rivalry you share with her," Miss Go answered plainly, seemingly unphased by her counterpart's savage outburst.
Even though she had not asked for it, the green-skinned woman was then treated to another series of flashbacks, this time focusing on the very events that Miss Go had listed. Like before, she felt almost nothing in regards to them, even though they were so much fresher and undistorted in her memory. When it reached the volcano lair, a memory of the heat inside it surfaced and her body shivered violently. Would she ever be warm again? Things then quickly concluded with a fast-paced fight sequence, followed by the aforementioned 'hot', albeit brief, make-out session with the girl known as Kim. She knew it was her entangled with the red-haired vixen; bodies pressed against one another and tongues intertwined. Yet the only thought she could muster was a dispassionate, that's nice.
Shego, on the other hand, was a tad more volatile in her response, "I DO NOT WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH THAT FUCKING BITCH!"
"Ok," Miss Go replied in a placating tone, "I'm sensing some issues on your part regarding Kim at the moment."
"Some issues!" Shego yelled incredulously. "Have you forgotten that bitch is the one responsible for me ending up in jail and having my glow suppressed!" To illustrated her point, the woman raised her right fist and tried to ignite it in a green ball of plasma; nothing happened.
At the mention of her glow, the green-skinned woman became acutely aware of the hollow, emptiness that permeated her being. Her unearthly superpower had been an integral part of her for so long; physically altered every cell in her body, that to have it suppressed made her feel like her very soul had been sucked out. And at present, what remained was struggling not to be overcome by the sheer icy darkness of her small cell.
"You don't know that for certain," Miss Go then said, by way of a counter to the other woman's last point.
"Really?" Shego snorted in disdain. "So, GJ just happened to show up in time to arrest myself and Drakken?"
"There are other reasons why Global Justice might have shown up. After all, Dr Drakken's lair was in a location that could have caused serious damage had things blew up, which they did," Miss Go rationalised. "Besides, you have to remember, Kim was in a very aggressive and angry state, with a strong desire to see you suffer, all because of your actions. Even if she did contact them before she arrived, her disposition towards you definitely changed after that first kiss."
"Yeah right," Shego spat. "The bitch probably just used it as a stall tactic to allow her buddies more time to arrive. Don't think I didn't see her saunter off with Betty as I was being tossed into that chopper."
Miss Go was silent for a moment and a contemptuous smile danced upon the lips of her counterpart. When she finally did reply, her response was careful and considered, "there are multiple reasons why she might have gotten in that chopper with Betty. First and foremost, the active volcano on which she was standing, which could easily have erupted."
"I'm not buying that shit," Shego snarled. "Kimmie's a bitch and I'm having nothing more to do with her."
"That's not true and you know it!" Miss Go replied with similar steel in her voice. "And If you don't accept the fact that you want something more between the two of you, you'll miss the opportunity of something special with the one person who fully understands you!"
The argument continued inside the green-skinned woman's head, which had begun to hurt as a result. She was starting to feel like the two halves of her personality were going to physically rip her in two. She gazed at the two women, desperation painted all over her face, as tears threatened to escape from the corners of her eyes. Please… stop… she whimpered.
Shego and Miss Go turned to stare at her and simultaneously yelled, "shut up! We didn't ask for your opinion. You're just a worthless husk. The dregs left over after we've been suppressed by that damn serum. You can't even cling on to a few glowing embers."
The harshness of the dual reply rattled the green-skinned woman into silence. They had finally found agreement on something; that she was nothing without them. She could only watch on helplessly as they said in unison, "let's go, this one's got no fire left." The two women joined hands and merged into one. Disappearing at the precise moment that the last remnants of fire were consumed by the black abyss. Now very much alone in the icy darkness, the green-skinned woman desperately tried to huddle her thin blanket tighter around herself, as cold tears ran down her cheeks like freezing raindrops. Her spark once more well and truly snuffed out.
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Author's note:
Ok, so I hope you all enjoyed the second update of season two. I certainly enjoyed writing it.
First up, I want to talk a little about chapter five and what happened between Kim and Ron. This was a rather difficult chapter to write, largely because there were several different routes this encounter could have gone down, such as them properly talking about everything, a big argument, Kim slamming the door in Ron's face or them coming to blows. In the end, I used the characters frames of mind leading up to the moment where Kim opens the door to decide how it should go down. Ron, having made the effort to seek Kim out, had obviously let go of his anger enough to want things to be civil between them and Kim, who had been thinking about Ron and how much she missed him, was in a place where she was willing to listen. Hence, why I felt a physical and verbal fight was unlikely to occur. On the flip side, Kim had so much going on inside her own head that she could not open up to Ron at that point in time and he was hesitant to push the matter. So, while they may not have talked about much, they at least no longer hate each other.
As for Kim's second chapter, it was a lot easier to write and although it seemed to repeat things from her previous chapters, I felt it was important to illustrate just how much of a problem she is having regarding her newfound sexual preferences and how circular it all is for her. As always, I loved writing Ru-Ru in this chapter and found the idea of him trying to bribe Kim into breaking Shego out of jail with peanuts rather amusing.
Speaking of Shego, it was good to be able to write her a little bit less flat in this update... and then I took it away again. Ah well, dem's the breaks, lol. In all seriousness, writing Drakken, Dementor and Frugal Lucre was highly amusing, much like when I wrote the chapters at Drakken's boardgame day. I'll maybe have to find another opportunity to group some of the villains together. As for Shego's second chapter, that was an interesting write and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I hope you guys enjoyed it too.
So, in regards to the next update. Due to being stuck doing DIY for the past two weeks, my writing time has been limited and I've only managed to write one chapter in that time. However, it is a 10K plus chapter and the only one I planned to put in the next update (yeah, I suck ;p) and will be uploaded in two weeks. Hopefully, I will have the chance to write more over the next couple of weeks, so I will have the chapters I want to include in update four ready for the appropriate time.
As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read And You And I, and for all your support. Until next time, stay safe and enjoy life.
Warmest regards
K1G0
