7. Song
December, 2005
Shego paused in her walk down the hall of the lair as she heard a familiar croon. She smirked and stepped nearer to Drakken's bedroom door to listen in as he sang in the shower.
As she recognized the familiar melody of the Oh Boyz song, "Quit Playing Games With My Head," she cringed. Drakken's rendition was fine, but she would forever associate the song with a jail sentence made more horrid for Junior's impromptu concert. Her young pupil was an even worse singer than he was a villain.
Shego shook away the memory and listened again with relief as Drakken started to sing something else. She would never tell him that his singing was actually quite good... He overdid it on karaoke nights, making the event very often an embarrassing one, but at the lair with no audience he was great. So she secretly enjoyed it when she happened upon him singing to himself as at the same time she logged plenty of mocking fuel away in memory for the future.
The pop song finished, he paused a few moments as she was accustomed to before beginning with another song. But soon she heard it again, his voice barely filtering through the white noise of the shower. She realized his voice had grown softer as he was singing with soul, deliberately emoting the song she hadn't yet identified through the wall. She was tempted to sneak into the room to hear more closely but then grinned as he sang louder and she began to recognize a popular love ballad. She could pull this out to tease him with for a long time and was starting to calculate ways to do so, when he suddenly stopped.
She listened to the streams of water from the shower, wondering what had happened, since usually his solo concerts went on for a good half hour at a time or longer until the hot water was spent. But then she finally made out his voice muttering something to himself and sounding very bitter, in stark contrast to the passion he had been singing with moments before.
She finally and carefully passed through his bedroom door in confusion, and then hesitated seeing the bathroom door was cracked open as he showered. But the removal of the barriers made his voice all the clearer, and she realized he wasn't talking to himself as much as he was having a conversation with someone who wasn't there. She couldn't make out the words, just the inflections. But when suddenly her name sounded on his lips, she strained to hear further.
He had sounded sad.
But even stepping cautiously into the room, she missed whatever it was he was saying as a familiar, frustrated groan left his lips. Shego paused and waited, afraid to inadvertently give away her intrusion. But then he began to sing the love ballad again picking up where he'd left off and not sounding nearly as joyful as before. She recognized the song finally as "Everything I Do."
Shego's chest suddenly felt heavy, like a hand had clutched it, wondering if there was a connection between his song choice, the imaginary conversation he'd been having, and the sad way he'd spoken her name.
Her quest for mocking fuel was forgotten as she stole away from the room, the confusion of emotions she'd spent days forgetting flooding back to her head once more.