Epilogue: Where Do We Go From Here?
They returned home with three days left in their original 'planned' vacation, though somehow spending those remaining days on the road didn't seem appropriate to them. Instead, there was a lot of time spent just talking. Kim talked to her parents, talked to Ron, talked to her minister, talked to Ron's rabbi.
She spent a great deal of time talking to Shego over the course of two days. Oddly enough, not much of that time was spent talking about the past. Ron rolled his eyes, calling it "Girl bonding" (sick and wrong was mentioned on several occasions) and left them be. For all the love he shared with Kim, he was still a guy and she was still a girl and there were things he could not (and would not) understand. Lack of understanding was one thing, the wisdom to recognize that lack was another. Ron had become very wise about these things.
There was a very long discussion about who actually owned the Trinity. Part of that discussion revolved around whether Neil ever owned it in the first place. It was eventually decided (after angry looks from Kim and Shego actually turning green again) that he did indeed. The craft was returned to the Space Center for study and storage until it was needed by his heir. Shego considered accepting ownership in the name of her unborn child, but instead decided it would be held in trust by the center instead.
They all used the ship one more time to make a flight to Neil's home town for the funeral. To avoid any awkward questions, Wade devised a holographic projection of an Oceanic Airways 747 over it for the flight. Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox church was filled to overflowing, including both Dr. Director and Wil Du representing Global Justice. Wil was much better, thanks to the otherworldly ministrations of Max Evans.
Max and his friends returned home to a joyous welcome from all their families. Liz's father actually made a game of exactly how much he could actually stuff down Ron at his restaurant.
On the third day, Shego disappeared. The guest bedroom she had been occupying was immaculate and she actually left a note expressing her gratitude to Kim and her family for their hospitality, though there was no hint of where she was going. No one was truly surprised at the turn of events.
It took GJ the better part of a week to help Wade set all of his equipment back up. The very day the FBI took it, GJ agents arrived with a warrant to collect the system and put it in safekeeping for the time being, considering the important secrets the computers contained.
Millard Bedarest left the FBI and was accepted as an agent for GJ, where he demonstrated an extreme aptitude for the work, as well as an uncanny ability to irk Wil Du (who remained very irkable!) with his cheerful demeanor, silly grin and his propensity for wearing his sunglasses everywhere! He was also smitten with another new agent by the name of Ava Harding.
Agent Tybor was found incompetent to stand trial and was committed involuntarily. Some months later he broke out and found employment with a super villain.
Yasmine Reth simply disappeared of the face of Earth, which was entirely likely in some minds considering she wasn't from Earth to begin with and she must have had some other means besides Starler to return home.
When Wade finally was able to look at Kim's mysteriously dead Kimmunicator, he found a bullet lodged in the battery. There wasn't a hole on the outside of the unit, so he had no explanation how it got there. He did discover that it was a 9mm slug, and not a round from a P90 rifle.
On the last night of their official vacation, Ron and Kim drove up to Durango. Ron even considered bringing Neil's old mountain bike, which was still hanging in the Possible's garage more than a year after he left it there, but Kim pointed out that it was a downhill racing bike and he had no idea how to ride the thing. He tried demonstrating he knew how to ride it but he didn't realize the thing weighed nearly fifty pounds (Ron's old purple Cannondale was just under thirty!)
The trip wasn't for mountain biking anyway. They splurged on a room with a king-sized bed and a wide-screen TV. The Mouse-Ears channel was showing a marathon of Ron's favorite show, so they climbed into bed around five in the afternoon, snuggled close and watched the cartoons till they ended at midnight. For the first time, Kim paid close attention to them, wondering if her theory about who these people were was true. Even with the heavily stylized style of the artwork, she became more and more convinced it was true.
Once the shows were over, Ron turned out the lights and they put their promise to wait to its greatest test to date. They did not fail, but neither of them was the least bit sorry. With only the comparatively short drive back to Middleton, they weren't worried about sleeping in the next morning.
They spent the drive back home talking about what the wizard Oray had told Kim. Neither of them knew what it meant that Ron was supposed to be this "sword thing" so they decided to let time reveal whether it would be an important part of his destiny. With Neil gone, they had no real link to it otherwise.
They drove home, also planning how they would announce their engagement to their families.
Shego was surprised how easily she slipped away. Maybe, just this once, Global Justice was willing to look the other way. So be it. In just over seven months she was going to have a baby, a child who would begin life without a father. Sherry Godfrey (somehow using her old Team Go code name just didn't ring true any more) was determined the infant would have a mother. How she would accomplish that was beyond her at the moment. Assets had been squirreled away, but she didn't have confidence that her caches would be there when she truly needed them. She had already been off the villain radar for over a year and it was unlikely many people would be willing to hire a self-described assassin and mercenary whose only well-known assignment was as more of a sidekick and bodyguard than anything else. Assassin? Drakken always assumed she had some formal ninja training, but she was not a trained killer. The only time she had ever killed anyone sent her on a spiral of madness that was the real time she lost her soul-mate.
No! She was not going to cry again! There had been enough crying all around. In all these years, she didn't weep over the loss of Neil the first time. She was too angry. Angry at him, angry at her brothers, especially Hego but most of all she was angry at herself. Her mind replayed the events of that day. The man she killed wasn't important. He was just an innocent person who had the misfortune of getting in her way when all that bottled up rage and emotion was given vent. She remembered everything about him, his face, so full of terror, taking its place with that of the unborn child she had lost earlier that year.
The remainder of Team Go had come after her and Hego, damn him, had for some unfathomable reason included Neil in the mission. Why did he do that? Neil left! Quitting his position as the GJ liaison! Hego hated him! Was it some extra measure of cruelty? Did her brother entertain some illusion that seeing her ex-boyfriend and near fiancé would snap her out of that madness?
Snap she did. There he was, his face full of dismay and pity. All of her rage and fear bust to the surface. All she wanted to do was escape that face, the face that had once loved her but now stood with this look of judgment over her. Green fire leapt from her fists, brighter and hotter than ever before. She grabbed him, the verdant plasma totally enveloping him. What was left of her sanity, of her inner goodness was burned away in that cleansing green fire as surely as it reduced the man she loved to ashes, just as it had that other poor man.
The flames died away and he stood there unharmed, a look of utter disbelief on his face. Just like her brothers, her power could not affect him. She raged then, still wanting to wipe that look of judgment from his face. She seized him by the throat with her claw tipped glove but some remaining shred of humanity kept her from ripping it right out. She shifted her weight and they both started going over. Almost blindly she brought her elbow down, putting the full force of her weight, muscles and power into the blow. From that moment until sometime in her nineteenth year all she remembered were his screams of pain as she escaped into the night.
For all her desire to prevent it, the tears rolled down her face anew. She was doing it again. She was running away, even though the one person she could count as a mortal enemy had offered her honest and unconditional help. Kim even offered friendship. She suddenly wished she could once again embrace the younger woman. Was it so bad to long for the love of friends?
No! I am an outcast! It is no less than I deserve! This is my punishment for the evil I have embraced. I don't deserve friends, let alone love. That is what Kim deserved, wasn't it? She has parents, brothers, friends, soon-to-be-in-laws and most of all she has Ron, all of who love her. She could renounce her past and repent her sins but that could never excuse any of it in the eyes of those she wished to love and, more importantly, in her eyes.
That was why she kept Neil at arms length for the last few months except for that one time, that one moment when they both gave into their longing. The shining instant that now was all she had left of him. He took her into his home, without question and now, now that it was too late she knew that he never stopped loving her. Now she knew the look on his face the day she maimed him, it wasn't judgment and pity, it had been despair, the utter loss of what he loved. He knew then that his future had been ripped away.
Her hand went once more to the shape that rested between her breasts. It wasn't the ring she foolishly rejected seven years earlier, a ring she knew still rested in a drawer at his house. She briefly entertained the notion of returning to Tybee, but she didn't want to press her luck with GJ. No, this ring was different. At a glance it looked like an ordinary wedding ring, but if you continued to stare at it you could see the deep purple stone wreathed in stylized flames. She didn't know why, but when she had searched in vain for his body it had been there, waiting. There was no reason to, but she somehow knew that he had been wearing it when he died.
Wiping the remaining tears she got up to leave Middleton for the last time. There was nothing left for her. Kim didn't deserve the heartache that would come being friends with someone who, essentially, was evil. She was walking away when an utterly unexpected voice brought her up short.
"Shego. Don't go, please."
Her mouth dropped open at the sound of that voice. Her eyes started at his feet. He had on battered hiking boots of some kind, blue jeans and a rather distressed looking leather jacket but his face was the same one she had seen for so many years. His eyes were dark, the heavy circles around them making them more so. His hair was just beginning to recede but the back was caught up in a short ponytail.
"How did…I thought?"
"Shhhhh. I guy dressed up like something out of Lord of the Rings brought me out. He explained a good many things, including what had happened to you." Drakken put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at his blue features a moment, then wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly, desperately.
"I am so, so sorry Shego. Sorry for what happened to that young man. Even more so I am sorry that I left you behind that day. I have so few friends and what I did should have cost me even that."
"Friends?" she sobbed.
"It's so much more than that, but if you can forgive me and call me your friend, I will be content."
"I don't have friends. I just hurt people."
"The worst hurt you could do is to not let me help you now when you need it most."
"Drakken…"
"Drew. Please call me Drew. You are wrong, you know. You do have friends. Friends you might not even suspect."
"You say that like I might even consider the Princess a friend now."
"As a matter of fact, I just spoke to Kimberly Anne."
"You what?"
"You heard me. She told me I just missed you and that if I ever did anything to hurt you she would…well, let's just say she mentioned some things that would even make you blush."
"Drak…I mean Drew, I don't think I can go back to trying to take over the world with you."
"The we won't. I've learned about beings far worse than me trying to do that. I would hate to go through all the trouble of taking over the world only to lose it to some otherworldly demon. No, this man who set me free gave me a task."
"What is it?"
"I'm not telling." He smiled, some of his old evil mirth showing through. "I will tell you that part of it is taking care of you."
"I can take care of myself well enough."
"Maybe. Why not let someone who loves you help anyway?"
"Loves me? What?"
"Oh, come on, Shego. You think I put up with your sarcasm and insubordination because you were such a valuable employee?"
"But just as a friend?"
"If that's what you want. I've always been your friend. Well, except that time when I left you, or that other time when I…"
She looked at Drakken. For the first time she actually, honestly looked at him. He was kind of ugly, with the scar under his eye and that light blue skin (she always thought her skin, when it was green, was kind of exotic and sexy.) There was no way to sugarcoat it. He was just plain butt ugly! His tiny little hands were nothing short of creepy! (She had once seen a picture of him taken while he was in college and his hands had looked perfectly normal then!)
Oh snap! Who cares! Here he was, offering his friendship and obviously so much more. It may just be friendship right now considering there was still a raw, fresh hole in her heart that would take time to heal, if it ever would, but could she afford to throw another friendship away?
As a way of answering, she gave him a weak smile.
"Come on, Shego…"
"Sherry. Sherry Lynnette Godfrey." She corrected him.
Drakken blinked. Then he blinked again. In all the years he had never heard her even breath her real name. A moment later he offered his hand.
Sherry took his hand and left Shego behind.
Coming soon: More of the mysteries of the Trinity unfold in Part 3, coming soon to a computer screen near you!