A/N: This is an AU, NOT my headcanon. It's inspired by sammisue's headcanon, that Shego doesn't really have feeling in her hands due to nerve damage from her powers. I'm not...entirely sure what her headcanon is, but...anyway, she inspired this.
Happy birthday, sammisue! Everyone go read her fanfics.
Feeling
Shego's step echoed as she shifted her weight to the side, surveying the items on Dr. Drakken's work table. Some were easily recognizable—a hammer, a screwdriver, a soldering iron—but others she had never seen before, and she decided that the blue villain she now worked for was at least more knowledgeable in various engineering fields than she was. But the jury was still out on whether or not he was a 'genius' as he claimed.
Shego glanced over her shoulder to the heavy, metal doors of the lab. They were closed, and the soft hum of machinery was the only sound in the lab so late in the night. She assumed Dr. Drakken had gone to bed, but the lights had been on when insomnia and boredom had brought her down.
She surveyed the objects on the table again and an old curiosity began to surface in her mind. She frowned at the idea as her eyes fell over the hammer again and the memory it brought, and she shook her head to rid her mind of the thought. But she knew it was still there, clawing its way forward as she picked up an unknown object and turned it over in her hands.
It resembled something like a dentist's drill, if she was recalling that tool correctly, and yet something was off about it. It also looked geared to working with larger materials than teeth. After a moment she held the object away from her slightly and flicked a switch on its side. A white glow emerged from the tip of the object as well as an electrical hum. She narrowed her eyes, and then glanced back at the soldering iron.
The thought was back in her mind—the one she had sworn she would never allow again. But looking at the array of tools she had never seen made the curiosity press forward like a drill in her mind, carving a direct line through the barriers she'd erected and going straight to her conscious thought.
'Maybe, one of these...'
Shego felt the hesitation and also the pull—the sense of knowing she was about to cross a line she shouldn't cross, and knowing that there could be ramifications, and also...knowing she had no other choice. With a sick feeling of regret, she pulled off her left glove and dropped it on Dr. Drakken's chair.
The tips of her fingers were nearly black, and a dark green faded to pale in a slow gradient from the tips of her fingers across her palm and to the beginning of her wrist. She flexed her hand twice, amazed at the motion as she couldn't feel any of it excepting the slight pull of tendons in her wrist. And then she looked at the object in her hand.
She felt the first real uncertainty, and after a moment flipped the switch to turn the tool off and picked up the soldering iron instead. That was familiar, and something she had used before. Perhaps, this time...it would be different.
She turned on the soldering iron and waited the length of time she knew it would take to heat. And then without even a breath of caution, she placed the dark, pointed end on her fingertip.
Nothing. There was still nothing.
She drew the iron down her finger toward her palm, watching the texture of the skin change slightly as it was burned. But she couldn't feel a thing. The cost of her powers had been the death of the nerves in her hands. She hadn't felt a thing with them since that horrific comet strike when she was eleven years old.
While she was used to having appendages she could use and never feel after so many years, she still held a fool's hope that one day, maybe...she could feel again.
She turned off the soldering iron and put it down in disgust, turning back to the strange drill-like object that had glowed. She picked it up and turned it on, hesitating as she hovered it over another finger. She had no idea what actual damage the device might cause. But...if she could just feel it...
"Shego?"
Shego startled and dropped the tool as she whirled around, keeping her un-gloved hand behind her back.
"Dr. Drakken!"
The man was fully attired in his blue lab coat, suggesting he'd only been out of the room for a brief interval. He was looking at her expression in confusion which she attempted to school from its panic, but he quickly moved forward and toward the still-running tool she had dropped. She took the chance to grab up her glove from the chair and put it on as he examined the device before turning it off.
"What were you doing with my microscopic laser drill?" he asked when he turned back to her.
"I was...just looking at all the tools. I don't know what most of them are."
Her boss's confusion remained for a moment, but then faded as the boyish glee she was getting used to bloomed on his face.
"Would you like to know what they do?"
"Uh. Sure," she said hastily, even though all she wanted to do was escape from the situation that had very nearly revealed her. But staying to listen would be a better cover.
As Dr. Drakken began talking about the laser drill so rapidly she couldn't have followed if she tried, behind her back she pressed her fingers into her palm one after the other, and then pinched her finger where the soldering iron had run over it.
But there was nothing. She couldn't feel a thing.
"And then after my new Robo-Butlers have become a staple in every home, we flip the switch and turn the amiable automatons into my legion of— Shego? Are you listening? Shego?"
Shego startled and looked down. Drakken's gloved hand was covering hers on the work table in the lab.
She pulled her hand away quickly, grabbing it with her other, and Drakken recoiled and blinked. They regarded each other for a moment, Shego's thoughts entirely arrested, until Drakken frowned and blushed faintly, turning back to the robotic component he was working on.
"You could at least listen to the plan!" he spat in defense.
Shego crossed her legs over to the other side where she sat on the work table to face away from him slightly, still holding her hand. She didn't feel anything... Of course she didn't. But something had made her look down. It hadn't been his voice that brought her back into focus. Somehow...it had been his hand on hers.
"Robo-Butlers, legion of doom... Go on," she said, finally waving her hand absently.
She looked at the dead appendage as she set it back down on the table. She knew she hadn't felt anything when he had touched her... She couldn't have. And yet somehow, it was definitely what had drawn her focus.
The curiosity she felt about the moment dissolved quickly into anger. There was no way Drakken had touched her hand for any other reason than to get her attention, but if he had...she still wouldn't feel it. She would never feel anyone touch her hands for any reason at all.
What did it even mean to feel? She had physical feeling in all of her other extremities, though she knew somehow it wasn't exactly what it was supposed to be, due to the comet. And other types of feeling... She couldn't let herself feel anything beyond anger, resentment, greed... Those feelings would drive her as she aided Drakken in his plot to take over the world, and in her own goal to erase every memory the world had of a super-hero named Shego.
No. 'Feeling' wasn't something one did with their body. It was merely the darkness churning in her soul like magma, building until the day it might explode again like it had the day she had left Go City.
"Shego?"
Drakken's voice brought her focus back, and she saw his confusion at what must have been a dark look on her face. But rather than reacting in fear or annoyance to her lack of listening, he simply sighed. Her brow rose.
"Just...hand me those pliers," he said with another sigh.
Shego looked across the table where the tool sat out of reach and picked it up, her fingers grasping the item with the proper amount of strength from both practice and remembered instinct. When she turned back and handed it to Drakken, she watched his fingers brush against hers.
He turned his face away quickly and frowned, another faint blush coming over his cheeks as he used the tool to manipulate some tiny wires. Shego looked at her fingers for a moment before setting her hand back on the table. And she frowned at the sudden unexpected feeling not in the dead extremities, but the one that tried to break through the darkness in her heart.
Shego stared at the menace of the glowing and electrified green mass that was the syntho-plasma, out of control and about to consume them both. Suddenly, she had the sense she should turn around. But the threat in front of her caused her to ignore it.
"Shego? Shego!"
A tug in her shoulder caused the villainess to finally turn, and she saw two things. First, that Drakken had a death-grip on her hand—which of course, she hadn't felt him grab—and second, that another mass of the living goo was headed straight toward them.
Shego growled and in one swift movement had thrown Drakken up over her shoulder. She flipped out of the way of the rampaging sentient substance, setting Drakken down when they were clear. And then they began to run.
"I think it's time to put syntho-plasma in the 'fail' category, Dr. D.!" she said between her labored breaths as they sprinted out of the lab in their snowy mountain lair and toward the hover-car bay.
Shego felt that instinct to turn again, and a second after felt a familiar haphazard tug in her shoulder. She looked down to find that Drakken had taken her hand again for some reason as they made their escape, and she looked up to see his face half-turned back the way they had come, twisted in terror and also in thought. Whether he was trying to think of a way to salvage the plan or reason where it had gone wrong was beyond her, but she found her thoughts drifting immediately to his grip on her lifeless hand.
He must have grabbed it to get her attention before, but...she had told him awhile back of her inability to feel with her hands; that every object she held was held due to practice, and memory from childhood. It was why she was occasionally clumsy with new things, which he had very rarely seen because she concealed it well. It was also why she lacked confidence in cooking, as the art required a certain dexterity. No, all her hands were good for were burning things. So knowing this...why had he grabbed one?
After leaping into the hover-car, Shego had expected Drakken to let go. But when she tugged against him to reach for the controls she wasn't able to free her hand. She looked again to where he was holding on tighter, while biting his other hand apparently in attempt to keep from either shouting or perhaps crying, if the way his eyes were pinched shut was any indication. Shego couldn't analyze it in the moment, since the living green plasma was still in pursuit, and with her free hand she started the craft and guided it out of the bay and away from the lair.
The explosion that followed soon after hadn't been caused by Kim Possible that time, but by Drakken's own haste in experimentation. But Shego would yell at the man for it later. Now that they were high in the sky, clear of the pursuit of any green goo and only the scent of smoke interrupting the chill of the air around them at their altitude, she needed first to deal with the fierce grip he still had on her hand when she looked down to the seat between them.
She looked at the way her fingers were contorted in his grasp and frowned for a moment, wondering if he might have broken them. But when she looked up again he was still biting his other hand, and there were definite tears in his eyes.
"Dr. D.?" she asked, suddenly concerned.
He blinked suddenly and turned toward her, and she drew back with a gasp. The left side of his face was burned and even had some slightly blackened spots. Clearly the syntho-plasma, which operated within some kind of electrical field, had touched him in their escape, and she'd missed it.
She swallowed down the lump that had come to her throat both for concern for him, and for the memory of pain that had surfaced at seeing his own.
"If you'll let go of me I can get the first aid kit," she said evenly, surprised at the lack of edge in her tone.
His eyes dropped and then widened at seeing the way he still held her hand. He released her, and after flexing her hand several times and determining that at least her fingers didn't seem broken, she reached below the seat for the case containing their medical supplies.
When she looked up again Drakken had stopped biting his own hand and appeared to be trying to halt his tears. Shego opened the case and then frowned.
"Dr. D., didn't I tell you this needed to be re-stocked?"
Drakken looked down at the near-empty case in her lap but said nothing, only replacing his hand in his mouth to bite hard on it again. She had noted tooth marks in the black leather prior to his doing so. Shego sighed in frustration at the complete lack of any supplies for cleaning or bandaging in the case, but at least there was still plenty of burn gel which was the more important in the moment.
She pulled the cap off of the gel and then hesitated. There weren't even cotton balls in the kit. There wasn't anything she could use to effectively spread the gel onto Drakken's burn.
She gritted her teeth and frowned as she looked up at him again. She didn't know why the tears he was fighting got to her. Or maybe it was the fact that his blue skin was starting to blister, and she still had a memory of similar pain herself. But whatever the reason, and with a small fluttering of fear in her heart, she began pulling the glove from her hand.
Drakken's squinted eyes widened slightly at the sight she had never before let him see, of her blackened fingers with streaks down through the dark green of her palm. Where the color faded to her normal pale green at her wrist, the skin there also softened from the rough scarring that she had gained when the comet's power had first seared through her hands.
She squeezed too much gel from the tube onto her fingertips—a sign of her own nervousness at revealing the ugliness she hid, that she couldn't exert the proper pressure—and then set the tube down in the kit. She lifted her fingertips toward Drakken's face and he watched the movement of her hand.
"This'll be easier if you move your hand," she said through a sigh.
Drakken's brow rose, and he removed the hand from his mouth he'd been biting, hurriedly attempting to dry his tears with the cuff of his glove. His eyes remained on her hand until the gel touched the side of his face. He winced and gave a slight hiss, but then blinked repeatedly as it began to provide relief.
Shego sighed again through her nose, her mind brought back to the moment she had sat up amid flaming wreckage, smoke choking her lungs, and her hands ablaze with a green fire that had terrified her. Now, it was her source of power, and her way of shutting down her anxieties by exerting power over others. But at the time it had been pure fear, and...pain. It was still the greatest pain she had ever experienced, and she hated remembering it. But it was in her dreams... The cries of the dying, the roar of flames...and just pain.
"Thank you, Shego."
She was startled from the horrifying memory at the sound of Drakken's voice. He was looking at her now, and not at her hand, and she could see that the burn gel was providing him some relief. She took a deep breath and then sighed through her nose.
"You're welcome," she said.
Drakken looked hesitant, and then glanced down to where her other hand still held the first aid kit. She followed his gaze and then her own eyes widened as his hand reached for hers, but then stopped halfway there.
"Did I hurt you?"
"What?" Shego asked, her heart suddenly beginning to race. What was he asking?
"When I squeezed your hand."
Shego felt a relief sweep over her at his words, not sure why she had panicked to begin with. There had been no reason for it.
She lifted her free hand from the first aid kit and flexed her fingers again several times.
"Seems to work."
"Does it feel...? Oh. I..."
She retracted her hand from his face with a frown, ignoring his obvious concern over the slip and choosing to wipe the remaining gel on the hover-car seat. She attended to the task meticulously, having to watch to make sure the gel was gone as she couldn't feel when it left her fingers or even that it was on them at all. But when she turned back, she gasped.
Drakken had removed her other glove and was examining her hand. She yanked it away and fell back in the seat, her heart racing again as she was utterly at a loss for words.
"Shego—"
She responded by igniting her hands, the familiarity of the green flames a comfort as Drakken leaned away from the danger.
"I'm sorry!" he cried, waving a hand in innocence. "I was just making sure I didn't break your fingers. I...I'm sorry!"
Shego looked at his horror-stricken and remorseful face with the red burn on the side, looking better already for the gel. She looked at her gloves on the seat between them, and the first aid kit that had slipped from her lap when she jerked away. And then she looked at her hands, the black of her fingers like the charcoal of burned twigs, her palms a strange, dark source of power. The green fire surrounded her hands like a threat and like the safety of a womb.
She let it go out and stared at the appendages, just as dead and unfeeling. She looked at Drakken. He looked less afraid, and...
Shego turned away sharply as she felt tears stinging her eyes, though she wasn't sure why. When people had pitied her in the past, she threatened them. If they had offered condolences, she tore them down with her words. And if they didn't stop she let them know that Shego the super-hero was not who they thought she was. No, she knew what to do with the fire that had destroyed her. It was her strength.
But now, for some reason...when she had seen that look in Drakken's eyes...she couldn't do either of those things. She couldn't threaten him with pain, and she couldn't just mock him. For some reason...it all felt wrong. And instead she was fighting tears.
She hadn't cried in front of anyone since the day the comet struck.
"Shego?"
She blinked and jerked her head slightly in his direction to let him know she had heard, though it wasn't necessary.
"I'm sorry, I should have asked... I'm just worried I broke your fingers. I was squeezing your hand...really tightly."
Shego snatched one of her gloves and used it to dry her tears, then slipping it back on and the other soon after.
"Won't matter if you did. They still work, and I can't feel them anyway."
"I'm sorry... I—"
Shego resumed flying the hover-car, taking them out of the smoke and away from horrible moment.
"Just forget about it, Dr. D.," she heard herself say, though she wasn't sure why she was letting it go so easily. All she knew was...a feeling...different than the memory of fear and pain, and different from the panic she had felt in the moment, was swirling around in her chest. A feeling she didn't recognize.
She glanced at Drakken and then realized...the look on his face wasn't the same as the pity she'd remembered seeing on others during the old hero days. This look was simply...concern?
The new feeling swirled more prominently in her chest, and she tightened her dead fingers on the steering controls. She wondered if actually feeling her hands again would be better or worse than whatever this other...feeling...was, that seemed to be taking over her.
Crackling close by. A roaring wash, slightly distant. A siren.
Flames.
Pain.
The sound of crying.
The realization that these sounds and sensations weren't a nightmare or memory, but the present reality, was terrifying. But none of them had been what woke Shego as she blinked up into the darkness of the night.
An orange glow at the edge of her blurred vision confirmed that she was indeed in the midst of a fire. She didn't know where or why. But she knew it wasn't the past, when the comet had struck. It was the present. And she was on the ground on her back, in pain again.
She felt something then. It was only the ghost of a feeling long forgotten, but she still felt it—for just a fleeting moment, and then it was gone. She knew it had been this ghost, and not the chaos surrounding her that had woken her.
She tried to guide her eyes in the direction of where the feeling had come from but only saw her arms. Her brow furrowed. Her arms were not under her control she realized, as they were elevated and she not the one lifting them. Her gaze traveled further and then she saw her hands.
Something pressed against her mind then, insisting this was the source of the feeling that had woken her. But that was impossible... Wasn't it?
She blinked a few more times and tried to force away the blurring in her vision, the sounds of the fire getting nearer a strong motivation. And then she saw the method by which her arms and hands were elevated.
It was Drakken. He was sitting beside her on the ground, one knee pointed up, and her hands rested atop it as he held them in each of his own. And then she saw his tears. His eyes were held tightly shut as whimpering sobs left his lips, tears sliding down his face in streams so rapid the heat of the encroaching fire couldn't evaporate them fast enough. This must have been the source of the crying she had heard.
She watched as Drakken's thumbs rubbed over her fingers, back and forth. If she hadn't been looking she wouldn't have known, as she couldn't feel his touch. And then he set his face down atop her hands as controlling his cries became more difficult.
"Shego..." left his lips in a choked sob. "I'm so sorry, Shego. I'm so sorry."
It seemed to be all he could say, in his struggle to hold back fiercer sobs.
Shego tried to speak, but found her mouth didn't want to work. Attempting to lift her head only revealed just how much pain she was in, as suddenly all of her nerve endings—those still functional—felt like the nearing fire that she feared. It was that knowledge that motivated her past the pain and she forced her head to rise from the stone and metal rubble she realized it was lain upon.
"Dra-..."
His head shot up.
"Shego! You're alive!"
The realization that he'd thought she was dead was eclipsed by the relief in his voice and the startling joy in his eyes. It was this sight she found herself suddenly able to focus on despite her blurred vision. Her head refused to lift any higher and she let it fall back to the ground.
Before he could say anything else however, the siren she had forgotten was suddenly the prominent feature in the atmosphere. Drakken leaned toward her, and she wondered in confusion whether it was out of his own fear, or a desire to protect her.
She watched as police officers pointing guns at them entered the periphery, and the sound of fire hoses blasting water started to eliminate the crackle and roar of fire. She couldn't hear what the officers were shouting as it all became a fog in her throbbing head again.
"She's hurt, she needs medical attention!" was Drakken's desperate reply to the officers. "She was thrown into that tower and electrocuted before it collapsed!"
They shouted something else, but Shego still didn't hear it, nor did she try. Her gaze had fallen slightly to fix on where Drakken still tightly held her hands atop his knee. And through the pain and the distraction around her, she recalled that somehow...it was that touch that had brought her back.
She couldn't feel her hands. She never would feel his fierce, protective hold on them. But the sight sent a different feeling stirring in her chest—one she was starting to grow weary of fighting, and wondering why she ever had.
Shego shifted where she lay on the large, round bed. The pillows were soft and comfortable, and the sheets like silk against her skin. But the pleasure of those physical feelings went all but unnoticed for the swell of feeling in her heart.
Drakken sat next to her, her bare hands held up between them. He kissed one palm, and then the other. His lips moved up one scorched and blackened finger, and then down its other side. And then he repeated the process on the next one. And the next...
It hadn't been easy to let go of the rage and the deadness inside that she had made her haven, and to let herself trust the feeling that Drakken had stirred within her. To give up what had been her source of strength and defense for so many years had been a battle, and one that had taken so long to win she feared losing him forever—especially after he had saved the world and everything changed. But it had been that fear that had been her final push, as she realized that life without him was far worse than braving the unknown and letting him in.
She hadn't known that in doing so, a veritable flood of feeling would come crashing over her like waves, utterly destroying the anger and bringing life back to the places that were dead. It was frightening... But she had to open herself to him. It was the only way they could be together. And in depths of her soul, she couldn't deny anymore that he was all she yearned for.
She continued watching as Drakken kissed her hands with all the attention and care in the world. She could imagine that it felt gentle, tender... His kisses to the rest of her body always were. And sometimes when she thought hard enough, she could imagine that she truly felt his touch on her hands. It had been his touch, after all...a touch she couldn't even feel...that had begun cracking through her walls.
She suddenly felt tears prickle in her eyes as she watched his lips linger on the back of one hand before favoring the other with the same, compassionate touch. And all in a rush she realized that she could feel.
"Shego?" Drakken asked worriedly upon seeing her tears. "Is something wrong?"
She shook her head lightly. "Nothing. It just..." She paused to take a shuddering breath as the emotions overwhelmed her. "...It feels so good."
Drakken looked perplexed for only a moment until realizing she didn't mean physical feeling, but the feeling in her heart. And then kissing each of her hands once again, he released them and she instantly locked her fingers behind his neck and pulled him down. Not that he needed any encouragement, but she felt she couldn't wait another moment to have his lips touch hers.
She hadn't known anything like the love he filled her with could exist. But she was certain beyond doubt...it was the greatest feeling of all. And their love... That was the feeling that mattered.