When Shego woke up again, she knew she'd been asleep for a much longer time. Looking at Drakken laying next to her, she was surprised to see him already awake and staring thoughtfully at the ceiling with a slightly furrowed brow.

She grinned and rolled over until she was snug against his side. He smiled happily at her, and she slid her hand across his chest. She nuzzled at his cheek with her nose until he turned and met her lips in a soft, warm kiss. Her hand slid lower, down his middle and below his waist.

He grabbed her hand. "What's gotten into you?"

She smirked and took in a breath to reply.

"Don't answer that," he said quickly, his face flushing.

Her cheeky grin broadened and she began kissing and nibbling at his shoulder.

He sighed. "Really Shego, we have to get up. The tree isn't even in the stand, and I have to rebuild the vacuum, and bake more cookies."

"Let the henchmen do it," she suggested, kissing his ear.

He sat up, and she followed with her arms around his neck.

"Do you really want the henchmen to decorate our first Christmas tree?"

Her brow rose. He had a point.

"Fine..." she said with mild annoyance. She kissed his neck, and she slid one hand down his chest and below his waist again. "But let's shower first."

He didn't stop her this time, and turned to her with a smirk. "Are you sure it's a good idea...to give me this much confidence?"

"My husband should be the most confident man in the world," she answered, moving to kneel behind him and letting her other hand gently scratch across his chest.

He turned to look at her. His expression was unreadable, and it took her off guard. A warmth she had seen only on very rare occasions was slowly blooming in his eyes.

"G-get up," he said, his voice shaking slightly, "or we'll never make it to the shower."

She laughed and quickly scampered away into the bathroom with him chasing closely behind her.

Shego stood back behind the couch as the henchmen turned the Christmas tree in its stand.

"Still crooked. Go a little to the left," she said. She sighed as she watched them struggle with the fir tree as they had been for the last twenty minutes since she'd had them get it out of the basement. There was no way she could set it up on her own with her wrist out of commission. She'd decided it was definitely sprained, and if it didn't start feeling better by the end of the day she'd go to the doctor.

The tree only got more crooked in its stand as the henchmen turned it for what must have been the tenth time. She sighed and rubbed her aching hip socket. "The shower might have been a bit much..." she muttered to herself.

"What's that ma'am?" one of the henchmen asked.

"Nothing," she answered. "Push it forward a bit."

They complied, and for an instant the tree straightened up.

"Stop," she said.

They had already pushed it too far, and now it leaned forward awkwardly.

She sighed again, glaring with impatience. "Now...pull it back just a hair."

They did so, looks of fear in their eyes.

"Stop!"

They froze. She smiled. The tree was finally perfect.

"Now...don't move. I'll tighten it."

She bent down amid the small rain of pine needles and tightened the tree firmly into place in the stand.

"Why is this thing so dry? Haven't you been watering it?"

"Uhm..."

"Ugh," she said with a scowl. When she got back up, the tree was blessedly still straight. She sighed in relief.

"Now...set up the ladder, and open all those boxes of decorations," she said, gesturing with her good hand.

"All of them?" one of the men asked.

"Yes, all of them."

She stepped around the couch and sat down, pulling her laptop into her lap and flipping it open. She started looking through all the different images she'd saved of Christmas tree decor and wondering what Drakken would like best.

The holiday was very different, now they were together. Before she'd met him, she hadn't celebrated it as a villain. And in the past several years he had always talked her into drinking cocoa and watching Snowman Hank. "Even though we're in the Caribbean and it's too hot for cocoa," she reminded him each year.

With her own family, it had been an aluminum tree with scant decorations and even fewer toys, due to the family's finances. After her parents' deaths she'd stopped paying attention to the holiday altogether, even when Hego set up a tree in Go Tower. It hadn't mattered much to her in the past, and it certainly didn't matter much as a manufactured hero or as a villain.

She sighed and studied one image of a themed tree with silver tinsel, frosted blue balls, and silver and blue train ornaments hung all around.

"What do trains have to do with anything...?"

Her brow pinched in worry. What if he wanted a themed tree?

She groaned and pushed the laptop to the side and looked up at the twelve-foot monstrosity. His family had always done live trees, big family dinners, and lots and lots of gift exchanges. He'd told her that the tree always went up the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas became a whole month's affair, from the caroling around the neighborhood to the bringing of food and clothing to the homeless. She'd smirked at the last, and he'd reminded her it was in his pre-villain days.

He'd put her in charge of the tree. He trusted her with the tree, which he'd described as the focal point of everything. A home needed a good tree for everyone to gather around, he had explained. It brought everyone together.

She had argued that it was the people themselves who mattered, but his little pout when she complained about the task had been enough to push her into agreement. So now she sat surrounded by the boxes of decorations she'd spent the last several days buying, not even knowing how many she needed, and wondering what on earth to do with them.

She reached for her laptop again and tabbed over to the website she'd found that explained how to decorate a tree. There was even a new website that boasted to be a "quick encyclopedia" that had various articles about Christmas traditions. She hoped to read through some of them before his mother arrived, just in case something got sprung on her at the last minute.

The henchmen finished setting up the ladder, and she waved them away with her good hand. Judging by how long it took them to get the tree straight in the stand, Drakken's earlier point about them decorating was very well made. It couldn't be that hard, right?

In the lab, Drakken had finished rebuilding his automated vacuum and was packing it up for the second time in the cardboard box he'd found, this time with more padding.

Next to the desk, Admiral Cuddles barked from his crate.

"I know you want out boy, but...Shego wants you better-trained, first. And there just isn't time before Christmas."

He watched as the dog pawed at the latch, whimpering.

"I'll take you for a nice, long run on the beach later," he said decisively. "How does that sound? Does that sound fun, boy?"

At that moment, the phone on his desk began to ring. He picked it up before the first ring had finished.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Son! How's my Drew doing?"

Drakken cringed instinctively. "Oh, hello Mother. Everything is dandy. I mean...merry and bright, here in the Caribbean."

"I can't believe you were able to afford a house out there!"

"Well, it's...not exactly a house, Mother. It's more of a...um..."

"And how is little Admiral Cuddles? You always come up with the cutest names for things..."

"Oh, he's...happy as can be," Drakken answered, eyeing the small dog who looked at him sadly from the crate. He turned his back to it.

"Anyway, the reason I'm calling is because my flight got moved up because of the blizzard coming in."

"Wha... Moved...up?"

"Yes, I'm calling from the airport. My new flight number is...4876, and I should be there in about eight hours."

"Eight...hours..."

"You'll still be able to pick me up, won't you?"

"Oh, ye— Yes, of course Mother! Now I...I still have some baking to do, so I'd better hang up."

"Of course sweetie! I'll see you soon! Hugs and kisses!"

"Hugs and...kisses..." he said, hanging up the phone in a daze.

He raked his fingers back through his hair. That wasn't enough time. The lair wasn't remotely ready for a domestic visit. And she wasn't supposed to come until mid-morning on Christmas Eve.

How would he tell Shego?

The dog barked at him and snapped him back to attention. He picked up the package he had just finished taping and headed out of the lab. One problem at a time. First thing's first, wrap his mother's present...

He walked through the kitchen and then paused. He hadn't been able to find the wrapping paper the first time he'd done this. And he'd never found out where it was, due to Shego's early presentation of one of her gifts for him.

He tugged at his collar where he'd suddenly started to sweat, and headed into his bedroom. The paper hadn't been in the living room, so she must have put it in there. He looked around after stepping inside, but the only thing out of place in the room was the unmade bed and her red lingerie lying on the floor.

He hurried out of the room as he felt the heat under his collar again. Maybe she'd put the wrapping paper in her room?

A quick search there found no paper, and her half-finished breakfast tray still sitting on her bed. He frowned. He wished she wouldn't leave dishes lying around the lair, even if she never did the dishes...

"Well, if you'd just fix the dishwasher..."

He mentally added it to his to-do list and headed out of the room. He was at a loss as he adjusted his hold on the box and headed into the living room. He knew he'd told her to buy wrapping paper earlier that week... It wasn't like her to forget anything.

When he reached the living room, it had transformed from the spartan cave with a TV into...a mess. Boxes upon boxes of open Christmas decorations were scattered around the base of the twelve-foot tree he had picked out, some of them on the coffee table and even on the couch. Shego stood halfway up a ladder in front of the tree, a string of Christmas lights coiled over her shoulder as she was trying to position the end of the strand around the top. She glanced back at him over her shoulder when she heard him come in.

"This is all you've done?" he said in disbelief. "You got the tree in the stand?"

"The henchmen did that. Would have taken me half the time, but, you know," she said, holding up her sprained wrist.

He looked for a spare place to set down his box, and finally settled with putting it against the wall near the door to the hallway. That seemed the least likely place for it to get lost in the shuffle.

"I can't find the wrapping paper," he said, stepping forward into the mess. He looked at the boxes of shiny colored balls and frowned.

"Well, I bought it," Shego said, turning back to her task. "Didn't you put it away somewhere?"

Drakken looked up at her back. "What?"

"It was with the groceries yesterday. And the knick-knacks, and these lights," she said, looking down at him again. "Didn't you see it when you put the rest of the stuff away?"

"...No."

She narrowed her eyes at him before turning back to the tree. "Well, it was there."

He watched as she bit her lip and tried to put the lights around the tree without pricking herself on the needles. He wondered how long she would try that before giving in to being covered in pine scent and tar.

"I'm...sure I would have seen it," he said cautiously.

She set a hand on her hip and turned back to him with a frown. "Maybe your dog did something with it when he knocked me down the stairs yesterday."

Drakken grimaced as she turned back to the tree. It was certainly possible... Maybe Admiral Cuddles had taken the tubes of paper as toys. Which meant they would be ruined, and he would need to go buy more.

He pushed aside one of the boxes on the couch and sat down heavily, resting his face in his hands. It didn't make sense. He would have seen a mess. And he knew where the dog was almost every minute of the day. When it wasn't with him, it was with Shego. And now it was in the lab in a crate.

"Or maybe it just rolled somewhere when I fell," Shego said.

He glanced up at her back as she finally got into a rhythm stringing the lights. Then he looked around at the room.

Rolled somewhere...?

He grumbled to himself as he began shoving the boxes of decorations around. If the wrapping paper was in that mess, it would take forever to find.

He picked up a box of tiny, multi-colored plastic balls and set them on her closed laptop on the coffee table.

"Why did you buy all this junk, anyway?" he asked in frustration.

He missed the anxiety that flashed through her eyes, but looked up to see the irritated frown.

"Tell me again why we have to do this?" she said, stepping down from the ladder. She plugged in the lights and the tree lit up in color. She had no reaction but to set her hands on her hips.

He felt a little pang of hurt in his chest at her indifference. "Because...it's Christmas," was all the explanation he had.

"But why here?" she continued, grabbing a box of red and white translucent frosted glass balls from beneath the ladder and then going back up. "We could be doing this at your mother's house and avoiding all this...all of this."

"Because Christmas at my mother's house would be...eugh," Drakken said.

"It would be a white Christmas," Shego said thoughtfully, beginning to carefully hang the balls around the top of the tree.

"She would want us to...take family photos in matching outfits, and wear matching pajamas on Christmas morning..."

Shego turned, her eyes wide.

"And we would...have to go caroling even if it's snowing. And ice skating. And make maple candy. And try to fit in all of the family traditions in just a few days..."

Shego turned back to her task thoughtfully. "I thought you liked all that stuff."

"Most of it. Not the matching pajamas," he said, beginning to organize the boxes of decorations by category around the base of the ladder. It would make his search for the wrapping paper go faster. "But...you wouldn't."

She looked back. "Maybe I would."

His brow rose. "Like...like what?"

"Ice skating sounds nice," she said with a small smile.

"Oh..."

She hopped down the ladder and approached him. "And caroling in the snow wouldn't be so bad...if it means having your arms around me," she said. She took his hands and spun around so her back was against him, and his arms wrapped around her middle.

"That would be nice," he agreed, resting his cheek against her head. "But...it would be the family. And Mother calling all of the shots."

Shego let go of him and stepped back to the boxes of decorations. She picked up a box of silver balls, and then set them down in favor of glass icicles.

"How bad can it be?"

"As soon as she finds out we're engaged...horrible," he said, resuming his search. "It will be much easier to tell her here."

"Why? What would she do?"

"She would take you around town and introduce you to all of her friends... And you would have to sit and make nice with all of them, over tea and cookies and finger sandwiches."

"Pass," Shego said, going back up the ladder.

"And we would have to go to the candlelight church service on Christmas Eve...at eleven o'clock."

"Pass again. I have other plans for Christmas Eve," she said, blowing him a kiss and winking at him.

He blushed. "H-haven't you had enough?"

"Of you? Never," she said.

He missed the compliment as his eyes fell on a tube of wrapping paper poking out ever so slightly from under the couch.

"Aha!" he cried, lifting it up triumphantly.

"Good. I need that to wrap the gift I got your mom, too."

He knelt down and peered under the sofa. Four more rolls of paper were lined up mockingly just out of sight.

"What did you get her?" he asked as he stood back up, gathering all of the rolls into his arms.

"A robe and slippers."

His brow twisted nervously. "That's all?"

"They're expensive. I don't know what she wants!" Shego complained, glancing down at him as she hung the icicles, trying to balance them aesthetically among the red balls.

"Well... We can take her to a nice dinner and call it your treat," he said.

She turned a quizzical eye on him. "I thought we were doing some big traditional Christmas dinner here?"

"W-we are," he said, stepping backward out of the maze of boxes he had created and toward the hall door.

She narrowed her eyes. "Then what am I missing?"

He swallowed nervously. "Mother's flight time was changed due to a blizzard. She's...arriving tonight."

"Tonight!?" Shego snarled.

"In about eight hours. We can...still be ready on time, if I have the henchmen help out. One of them can help you make up the guest room, and the other can help me with the cooking."

Shego continued to scowl at him, until a sudden yipping sound drew their attention toward the door. Admiral Cuddles appeared moments later bounding into the room at top speed.

"You let him out!?"

"No, I didn't! Cuddles! Stop! Heel!"

They watched in shock as the small dog leapt around among the boxes of Christmas decorations, sending plastic balls rolling across the floor and getting tangled up in fake cranberry strands. It half-hobbled, half stumbled over to the base of the tree and lifted up its leg.

"Drakken!"

"No, Cuddles! Bad dog!"

After the dog relieved itself it ran around to the foot of the ladder and started hopping up the steps.

"Oh, no. No, no no!"

"Cuddles, get down!"

The dog reached the step where she stood and started humping her foot. She recoiled in disgust, and then her eyes went wide as the ladder tipped off-balance due to her quick movement. She grasped wildly for something to hang onto and only got a handful of pine needles.

"Shego!"

She heard his horrified cry, but all she saw was a flash of aluminum followed by flashes of green and red as she fell to the ground. She heard the clash of the ladder against the stone floor and the sound of glass breaking, and felt the weight of the tree as it hit her back.

"Shego! Shego!" His voice got closer, and she opened her eyes to see the wrapping paper rolls go flying as he skidded to a stop on his knees in front of her. "Are you all right!?"

Her narrowed eyes darted around at the destruction. The ladder was a couple of feet to her right, and the tree was on its side half-behind her, half-atop her. Several of the branches were bent awkwardly where the tree pressed against her back, and the pain of where it had impacted her began to throb in time with her racing pulse. Boxes of decorations had been crushed, and delicate red glass shards were all around in a sea of short pine needles.

A stinging on her face and hands joined the throbbing in her back, and she wondered if it had been the glass or the pine needles to have caused the microscopic cuts that were surely the cause of the pain.

"Shego?"

She finally looked up to where his hands hovered anxiously above her, his eyes looking her over and around at the destruction. She began pushing herself upright but stopped with a gasp as a sharp pain made itself known in her leg. She and Drakken looked down in time to see one of the glass icicles had impaled the back of her right thigh about an inch, just above the back of her knee.

"Oh...oh, no," Drakken said, his voice shaking as blood began seeping from the wound. He reached a trembling hand toward the icicle. "Um...I-I'll just..."

"No," she said firmly, scooting out from under the tree.

He looked at her worriedly. "But—"

"I said no!" she growled as she slowly sat up.

He reached for the icicle again. "But I ju—"

"If I have to say 'no' one more time I will hurt you."

"That's— OW!" She grabbed his wrist with a glowing, green hand as he reached for the icicle a third time. When he looked up, her teeth were bared in fury.

"You've done enough."

He tried pulling his wrist away from her, but she had him in an iron grip. He began sweating from the pain.

"I...please, that hurts... Y-you're going to set the tree on fire."

Her snarl abated ever so slightly, and the glow around her hand went out.

'Arf!'

They both turned as the dog pushed its head up through the branches of the fallen tree, still wrapped in cranberries and now with the string of lights twisted around its tail. The lights flickered as it wagged its whole rear end and started picking its way across the branches toward them.

"So...doggy school?" he said with a nervous grimace. The pain in his wrist returned and he looked back to meet her furious expression as her hand flared brightly.

"Not good enough. I never want to—"

With a sudden gasp she scrambled toward him, and they both looked down to see the dog happily humping her injured leg.

"Nnrrrargh!" she screamed, firing her glow at the dog. It howled in pain when the blast hit it and ran fearfully out of the room, dragging ruined decorations and broken fir twigs with it the whole way.

"Get that thing out of this lair! I never want to see Sir Humps-A-Lot again!"

Drakken recoiled from her anger, blinking sadly despite everything. "But...but..."

"No 'buts'! It goes! Either you get rid of it, or I get rid of it!"

Drakken's lower lip trembled as he thought of what her getting rid of it would mean. He nodded slowly.

"O-okay."

She leaned away from him and back into the mess of tree branches with a sigh, hissing as she accidentally leaned on her sprained wrist.

"We...we need to take care of you, first," he said shakily.

"I can take care of myself," she said, crossing her arms and frowning away from him.

"I...I know, but... You're right about that," he said, pointing to the icicle.

"We can't pull it out," she said, her voice calming slightly. "If it hit a vein or an artery...it could be really bad."

"Right," he nodded quickly. "I-I just panicked."

"Well, don't."

He bit his lip nervously.

"Can you stand?"

She tried pushing herself up with her uninjured arm and leg, but ungracefully tripped back into the mess of the tree with a hiss of pain.

"L-let me help," he said, reaching his hand toward her.

Glaring at him the whole time, she used his hand for support and got herself up on one leg. She looked down at the icicle with a sigh as the bleeding worsened.

"You'd better carry me," she said through clenched teeth.

He obliged immediately, scooping her into a bridal hold. She set her arms around his neck, but she had her face turned away from him in an angry frown. He picked his way carefully through the mess and toward the door to the balcony, his stomach turning at the blood droplets that were left in a small trail behind them.

"Look on the bright side..."

She turned her head toward him with a scowl.

"We...have a perfect reason to tell my mother to cancel, now."

Outside on the balcony, he set her gently in the hover car and then hurried around to the driver's side.

"How many hours did you say until she arrives?"

"Eight."

Shego frowned at him. "She's already on the plane. And you bought her a nonstop flight."

His face fell again, and he started up the car with a worried frown and sped off toward Puerto Rico.

"We should have just lied to keep her away..."

"Shego!"

"You lied and told her all the flights were booked, and that's why she can only stay for a day and a half," she retorted.

He looked away sheepishly.

"We could have lied to not go up there, either. We could have made up anything. We didn't have to celebrate Christmas to begin with," she continued bitterly.

Drakken bit his lip as a pain clenched around his heart. He had wanted to make their first Christmas as a couple special, and make it mean something for her. All he had succeeded in doing was getting her hurt and creating bad memories.

He sighed sadly, and they spent the rest of the flight to the US Territory in tense silence.