A/N: Angst fic, because the idea hit me and demanded writing. This is NOT in any way part of my headcanon. I consider this wholly AU.

Warnings include: mentions of past sexual abuse; mentions of pedophilia; consensual non-abusive sexual acts included in the fic.

This ficlet, obviously, is rated M.

Loud

Shego never made a sound.

Drakken had been aware of it the first time, but it hadn't registered as anything significant then. He of course, had had other things on his mind.

He noticed it more the second and third times, but only because he was making so much noise. He assumed he wasn't leaving her any room, and so after that made an effort to leave space for her. Nothing changed, however.

The absence of her voice, which he was accustomed to being a constant presence in his life, was becoming more and more upsetting as time passed and as in every other circumstance they grew closer. He started becoming quieter himself as he observed her and tried to analyze why, during an activity in which he had expected her to be very verbal, she was so silent.

Most of the time her eyes would be open and she would be looking at him, her lips pressed firmly together. Sometimes her face would contort, or she would bite her lip. And the more he studied her, the more he noticed that deep beneath the happiness she always presented, there was a melancholy in her eyes. It seemed to occasionally get nearer to the surface, but it would never make it. Whenever it seemed closest, Shego would close her eyes, press her lips together in a tight smile, and when she opened her eyes again the look would have sunk down to the depths.

Drakken wondered about that almost as much as he did her silence and wondered if the two were related.

He determined to find out all of it one day and decided he would be absolutely silent, as she always was. If she didn't fill the void then he would ask.

Keeping quiet was hard however, and he found he couldn't look at her if he wanted to accomplish his goal. He closed his eyes and looked away, focusing only on remaining silent as he sought to understand. Until...

"Why are you so quiet?" Shego asked.

Drakken's eyes snapped open and he looked at her. She had the look in her eyes that he knew—happiness, with melancholy deep beneath the surface. But there was something else now... A slight concern and anxiety mixed with curiosity. It was distracting and Drakken took a moment to think of his answer.

"You're always quiet," he stated with a small smile, hoping the words would come off casually.

Shego's soft smile faltered and the melancholy rose rapidly toward the surface. But she seemed to shove it back down with minimal effort and the corners of her mouth twitched upward. She put her arms further around him.

"I like it when you talk. Keep talking," she said, and he watched her eyes as the strange, worrisome sadness grew nearer to the surface. His smile faltered. As did his actions.

Instead of speaking, he closed his eyes and kissed her shoulder as his mind began spinning with his lack of understanding. He felt her arms move up more securely around his neck.

He supposed it shouldn't matter and that he should let it go... But it simply didn't make sense. Everything about Shego's personality suggested that she...should be very loud when they made love. But she was utterly silent and come to think of it, almost...inactive, letting him do everything. He did not understand. His confusion began turning to worry, and then to upset. His two suddenly warring instincts were to stop everything and demand an answer, or to finish and be so good that whatever reason she was silent would be forgotten in her ecstasy.

He went with the latter. And it wasn't long before his own decision to be silent flew away as he couldn't help murmuring his love for her between every kiss and every deliberate touch.

When he felt her familiar writhing and her thighs clenching at his sides he looked up from where he was kissing her neck. He was suddenly surprised to find her crying as her face went through its familiar contortions as she rode her waves of pleasure...in complete silence. But the tears staining her cheeks were new, and Drakken determined to stop and ask her if she was okay as soon as she'd come back down from the high, but then...

Her lips parted and she sharply, but softly, took in a shallow breath. It was the first sound she had ever made. So Drakken kept going.

Later, as they lay cuddled tightly together in a tangle of limbs, Drakken was still kissing her all over and murmuring his love, all of which she accepted to his relief with a small, contented smile. Her face was still slightly damp, and she kept her eyes closed throughout his attentions. His confusion about her silence was only growing as he stared at the remaining traces of tears on her cheeks.

It was significant. It had to be. And it had something to do with whatever was in her eyes that she seemed to fight every time they were intimate. And he couldn't bear the new worry that was rising in him... That he was doing something wrong and somehow making her unhappy, or hurting her.

He paused in his doting and lifted his hand to her cheek to wipe away the remaining wetness, and her eyes opened to look at him.

"Shego...why were you crying?"

She hugged him tighter. "Because you make me so happy."

A smile bloomed on Drakken's face, but it didn't reach his eyes as he thought of the consistently sad look in hers.

"Then..." he took a nervous breath, "why do you always look so sad?"

Shego's face fell. She looked away as her fingers twisted around his hair for a moment where her arm was around him. He held his breath as he waited, and then just when he thought he needed to apologize she looked back.

"I do?"

Drakken nodded slowly. "You look...like you're lost in thought, and sometimes you look really sad but then you...just shake yourself out of it."

The sad look was suddenly back in Shego's eyes, along with anxiety. Drakken's own rose rapidly and he lightly rubbed her back as he thought quickly.

"If I did something wrong, or something to hurt you, I'm sorry. If you tell me what it is, I promise I—"

"No!" Shego said quickly, covering his lips with her fingertips. "No, you're...amazing."

She followed her statement with a strong kiss, and she pressed into him as her lips made it very clear she meant exactly what she'd said.

When they parted she still looked sad and even more anxious. Drakken wasn't sure what to do and continued rubbing her back as he waited to see if she might say more. She had all but acknowledged that there was indeed something bothering her whenever they were in bed together, and if he wasn't the problem...then what was?

"I...guess I should have told you this," Shego said, settling her head onto the pillow and looking up at the headboard. Her eyes darted to his briefly to see he was listening, and then she looked away again. "When I was very young...before the comet hit, my uncle..."

She trailed off and her eyes grew very distant. A dark foreboding built in Drakken as he watched her seem to slam a wall up between her emotions and whatever she was about to say.

"He was my mother's sister's husband. I always felt uncomfortable around him. Like...whenever we'd all play football...if I was hiking the ball and he was quarterback, I didn't like the way his hands touched the inside of my thighs."

The foreboding Drakken felt exploded into a dark inferno. A sickening black weight began turning his stomach at the same time a raging heat began coursing through him to every nerve ending. He didn't want to hear another word, but he also wanted to hear the end so if the man was as vile as he suspected, he could target a death ray directly at his home.

"It started when Hego and Mego and I lived with them—my aunt and uncle—for a little while. My mother was really sick after she had the twins, and she and my dad couldn't take care of all of us. One time my aunt took everyone else to my cousin's basketball game. I guess I was napping when they left and my uncle...must have convinced them to let me stay home. We were the only ones home."

The sick feeling in Drakken's gut won out as he listened to where he was certain her reminiscence was going. Her eyes had grown hard as she spoke, but he could still see the sadness deep within.

"He came in in the dark. Woke me up and told me to be quiet. He...he..."

Drakken gripped Shego's shoulder and she bit her lip hard as she was startled. She made no sound, despite being surprised. Her eyes met his.

"I was five. It happened...four more times. And then we went back to live with my parents, because my mother got better. I've never told anyone. But...each time it happened, I would start to cry and...he would keep repeating 'be quiet' and if I didn't he would hit me so...I learned to be quiet."

Drakken scowled in anger. "He's still out there?"

"Yes... But, my cousin caught him with a woman shortly after my aunt died. He hardly has a relationship with his kids now. I guess that's sort of punishment..."

"That's not good enough." Drakken sat up abruptly. "Where does he live? I'm firing up the laser—"

"Drakken. Wait. That's...not everything."

Drakken turned back to face her, his eyes slowly widening. Shego sat up and he set his hands on her arms.

"In high school...and later in college, I had boyfriends who wanted me to talk while we... But I couldn't. And so they would...rough me up. I broke up with them when it was obvious they weren't really in it for me."

Drakken felt the rage begin building again as his arms circled her and he wondered if there was a way to find those two men and aim his laser at their homes as well. He refocused as he felt Shego's hands rest lightly atop his shoulders.

"They got rougher when I didn't talk... So I..."

It all clicked for Drakken.

"You can't talk because of your uncle...and you're afraid to do something different because you're afraid any change might...might make me...?"

"No," Shego said, shaking her head. "I know you would never do anything like that."

Drakken wanted to believe her. But her eyes sent a different message.

"Shego I— I would never do anything that you don't want me to! Do you...want to stop? H-h-having...? We don't have to anymore."

Shego's lips parted. She stared at him for a moment and then threw her arms around him, her face pressing into his neck moments later. Drakken held her close as he felt a wet heat at his neck from her tears.

"I'm so sorry Shego," he said, still reeling from what she had revealed. His horror and anger had become a swirling chaos that he didn't know how to manage. He just held her closer and let her cry. Silently, of course. He wondered if she had cried at five years old...

"I won't...we don't..." he stammered as the ill feeling returned to his stomach. But then Shego slowly pulled out of his embrace.

"No... No I love it. I love being with you," she said. Her eyes affirmed her sincerity.

She set her face in his neck again while Drakken's mind continued to spin while his chest ached and his stomach turned. He didn't know what to do. So he held her and waited while she cried, and tried to get his own emotions to settle.

It was several minutes before Shego pulled away again, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. The smile she gave him came from the depths of her reddened eyes without any hint of sadness or anxiety beneath. She set her hands behind his neck and leaned forward to place her forehead against hers.

"I love you..." she whispered.

"I love you too," he responded immediately, but his expression showed his uncertainty.

Shego looked at him thoughtfully for a long moment, and then drew him down to lay cuddled on the mattress again. She curled against him as he was used to, but her smile was different... More peaceful, somehow. Like she wasn't constantly on her guard.

"I'll...try to talk next time," she said softly where her head rested beneath his chin.

He pulled back to look at her. "You don't have to!" he said quickly. "I...I just...I thought you would. But you don't have to."

She looked into his eyes as if to verify his statement, and he watched her become even more settled as the seconds passed. Finally, she closed her eyes as she cuddled closer to him.

"Thank you," she said.

Drakken thought a moment. "...Can I destroy those men's homes with my death ray?"

Shego relaxed further. "Sure."

The next time didn't come for quite awhile. Drakken was too anxious about bringing up traumatic memories, and Shego had seemed a bit more distracted around the lair after their conversation. And especially after he blew up the houses of her uncle and two ex-boyfriends...

The idea of a life of celibacy wasn't a pleasant one. But worse was the idea of reminding Shego of the past, so with effort he worked to put the idea out of his head. Eventually he stopped dwelling on it, and as Shego seemed to have forgotten too, he was very content to move on with their lives. Until one evening when Shego surprised him with behavior that was very atypical...but exactly what he had expected from her when they got together.

She snuck into the bathroom while he was showering, eliciting a shout from him when he finally noticed the green figure leaning up against the counter. She was smirking at him, looking a mixture of smug and seductive. He wasn't entirely sure what to make of her presence, except that the look in her eyes was stirring the desire he had locked down and he had no idea what to do about it.

He got his answer after he dried off. The towel was barely around his waist before it was joined by her arms, the front of her nightgown dampening when she pressed against his chest, and her lips and tongue meeting his ravenously.

"Mmh, Shego," he mumbled uncertainly through the kiss as she started tugging him toward the door that would lead them to the bedroom. She grabbed his hands and set them on her hips when they backed up to the moat.

His mind warred with his body about what to do. Should he mention their past conversation? Would it only hurt things? Should he simply trust her and do what she wanted?

He settled on the latter as she hummed into the kiss as they sat together on the bed, so softly he had barely heard it. His brow shot upward when she hummed a second time, slightly more audibly. After a long period of indecision in which her kisses changed from tame to feral, he finally let himself slip away into her touch and into the joy of bringing their hearts so close.

For several minutes everything was familiar, except that Shego was a bit more forward in her actions than she'd been in the past. Her hands roamed more assuredly and her kisses were more fierce. But the two hums that had started things hadn't returned.

Drakken was perfectly content to murmur and cry his love for her with every passing second. He would have lost himself entirely in her arms, especially because it had been so long, but as they approached the precipice he felt Shego's fingernails tighten on his shoulders, and then...

A soft hum. And following it, even softer...

"Drakken..."

He lifted his lips from her shoulder to look at her face. Her eyes held pure joy.