A/N: Warning for crude humor. This continues the story from chapter eight.

12. Snowballs

December, 2005

"I told you."

"Shego."

"But would you listen?"

"Shego, it's cold."

"All the way from the Caribbean, I tried to warn you."

"I'm getting frostbite!"

"But somebody had to keep ranting about how their plan is foolproof since before we even left the lair!"

"I c-c-c-can't...feel...my toes! I have hypothermia!"

"Stop faking and will you listen to me? Automated isn't good enough! Especially if Miss Priss and her dopey side-kick show up. Her computer nerd will probably have a way to stop everything remotely anyway. Remember Little Diablo?"

"...Shego?"

"It's still a good idea, but you're going to need more than satellites if this is going to succeed."

"I can't f-f-feel my lips. Or fingers! Or face!"

Shego glared. "Got snowballs too I bet?"

Drakken stopped trying at that point, her insult striking harder than it usually would. The snow swirling around them and burying their feet—well, his feet, as she kept pacing and kicking it up—was one of the coldest snows he'd experienced, and he'd experienced severe blizzards as a child.

There was a small part of his heart that ignited, knowing that his cataclysmic world takeover scheme was extremely likely to succeed this time. But any heat or excitement was eclipsed by the power of the cold seeping through his attire, not at all made for the snowy weather.

He cowered as his feet continued to be buried in a drift while large, white flakes whipped around them. His shoulders were hunched, his knees bent and aching, and he had balled his hands in front of his mouth where he was trying to warm them with his breath. His joints were a mixture of tingling fire and ice, and he feared his extremities were in fact freezing and that he might lose a few digits. Shego's 'snowballs' joke suddenly felt less crude.

Said woman with the rapier wit was looming in front of him, but he barely startled at her presence as he blinked at the black and green of her uniform through the driving snow.

"Your hands are cold?" she asked, the edge to her voice having softened ever so slightly.

Drakken nodded with a whimper, and he could feel the eye-roll he knew she was giving above him as he drew into himself further, but he was too cold to look up. He was afraid more of the icy flakes would slip down his collar if he moved again. He'd already loosed his hair in effort to prevent it and provide some protection to his neck, but he felt the strands dampening and chilling with each passing moment.

Suddenly, his hands were surrounded by a pocket of radiating warmth. He blinked and looked up to see that Shego had put her hands around his, and while they didn't glow, a definite heat was emanating out of them and just barely starting to break into the chill he was experiencing.

"Dr. D.?"

He looked up and tried to blink away the snowflakes on his eyelashes that were blocking his view of Shego's face. Was she concerned now? Her sigh didn't give him any information.

"We can talk about it more and iron out the kinks back at the lair," she said with a measure of patience. "So come on, I'll drive. And get this thing deactivated... Don't want your snowballs freezing off... Not that they get played with much."

Drakken frowned as they began slowly shuffling through the snow toward the hover-car. He was suddenly aware that Shego's entire being seemed to radiate a warmth that he wanted more than nothing to lean into, but her crude jokes had made him feel sick and he wanted to either run away from her or make a snappy comeback. Not that he could think of anything to say.

So distracted was he by the cold, he completely missed the fact that Shego was holding her breath and watching him, waiting. Finally after several seconds, her voice broke through the artificial blizzard again.

"Well...?"

It didn't even cross Drakken's mind that she might be trying to egg on the direction of the conversation for reasons other than teasing, as he assumed she was upset about the weather machine. But as he felt his elbow was too stiff to bend, one corner of his mouth curled upward.

"The remote to turn it off is in my pocket. My trouser pocket," he clarified through chattering teeth as they approached the hover-car. And then, under his breath, "Then you can play with my snowballs..."

"What?" Shego asked abruptly.

"Nothing," Drakken said, certain she'd not heard him over the whip of the wind.

They had stopped walking, and he finally looked up to where her eyes were fixed on his face in a wide-eyed stare. Drakken felt a nervous leap of his heart, but he ignored it and forced his icy cheeks to move into a smug grin as he stared back at her.

"Ugh!" Shego declared in disgust, and Drakken was immediately regretful for the loss of warmth as one of her hands left his.s

His breath caught when he felt her fingers slide into his pocket, but the moment was ended before he could even register anything from the experience as she had grabbed the remote and turned off the malfunctioning weather machine.

"Let's just get back," Shego said, forcing Drakken ungracefully into the vehicle. "You've got a date with a hot shower and then you're hitting the lab. Maybe we can actually rule the world before New Year's."

Drakken curled in on himself in the hover-car's seat to seek warmth, nodding as she programmed the vehicle's autopilot to take them home. The minor test of his plan over and a failure, he'd assumed that was the end of the conversation among other things. But he was surprised a few moments later when Shego's hands found his again, their heat slowly starting to bring feeling back to his. And as he glanced sidelong at her as she blinked into the blizzard ahead of them, he allowed the warmth to rise in his heart as well.