Day 53

Drakken sat up in bed suddenly as a coughing fit shook his whole frame. Shego reflexively moved to his side to support him, remembering how the last fit nearly had him falling out of bed and spraining half his back.

His eyes were wide as he doubled over, only staying slightly upright due to her hands on his shoulders as she knelt on the bed in front of him. The coughing continued, as it always did, lasting nearly a minute this time.

"Stop," she finally said, worrying that he would severely injure his throat or chest or something else.

His wide eyes peered up at her in confusion. "If I... Could... Stop..." He gave up trying to respond through the violent convulsions until finally, whatever was forcing them out of him subsided and he began to fall to his side. She helped him lay down, watching him in concern. His breaths were long and labored and far too shallow for how much effort he was putting into them. And the amount of sweat on his forehead seemed to have doubled from the effort he'd just been through.

"How do you feel?" she asked slowly, not sure what else to say.

He closed his eyes, and when he answered his voice was hoarse. "Like an elephant...is sitting on my chest. And like I'm...being stabbed in the back. And every time I breathe, the knife...is pushed in deeper."

Shego's brow furrowed in worry. She helped him turn back over and straightened his bedcovers, and then stepped back from the bed to watch him. She glanced around the room briefly and then brought his desk chair over next to the bedside. As she sat and watched his tightly closed eyes, his sweat-drenched hair, and each painful intake of his breath, a dark, heavy feeling clouded her soul.

A coughing fit suddenly broke her thoughts, and she turned away and doubled over just as he opened his eyes to peer at her.

Day 55

Shego sat by Drakken's bedside and held an ice pack against his forehead. His fever was still terrifyingly high, and she didn't dare leave him anymore in case she came back to find him...gone.

He only woke up to cough, and each time when the coughing subsided she put a straw from a cup with a hot broth concoction in his mouth that she'd found in his recipe book, and then after that a straw from a glass of ice water. She would only make him take as much broth as he could stand, but she would make him finish the water every time.

He was sweating all of it out faster than he could replenish it, anyway.

She forced him to lay on his side due to his labored breathing and kept the oxygen respirator on him at all times. He sounded like he was trying to breathe underwater, which absolutely terrified her. But she didn't know what else to do besides what she was already doing.

In the brief times he seemed to actually be at rest, she alternated between reading magazines and watching TV in his room to distract from her worry. Once she even attempted one of his technical journals, but that had lasted all of five minutes.

The various news channels reported the death toll at over 2,000 worldwide and Shego wondered if any of her other villain acquaintances had encountered the disease. But after the devastating phone call with Junior she had distanced herself from anyone except Drakken.

Her own fever had gone entirely and now she only had the cough. Her morning sickness wasn't abating however, but she didn't mind as much since it reminded her that she had something to live for...if Drakken died.

Day 56

"Shego!" Drakken cried suddenly, and she sat up in her chair with a start.

She watched his feverish eyes that were darting around the room without focus as he pulled the respirator off his face, and she grabbed his head between her hands to center him.

"I'm right here. What is it? What do you need?"

"I forgot to..." His head fell back against the pillow.

He didn't move but to breathe, but the outburst—the first thing he had truly said in two days—scared her as much as it gave her hope.

"What is it?" she asked, gripping his shoulders and talking to keep him lucid. "What did you forget?"

He opened his eyes with effort and stared at her desperately.

"I forgot...to tell you..." His eyes fell closed again in exhaustion, but he forced them open. "I love you." He reached a hand out from beneath his sheets toward her abdomen. "Both of you."

Pain and joy hit her all at once in a confusing wave. "You told me," she said quietly.

"I did? No, I...I'm sure I forgot..."

She kissed his forehead as he passed out again, thinking back to the recent morning on the couch. He hadn't said the exact words, it was true. But she knew by the way he had said her name.

He had still insisted on going to the lab after their brief love-making that day, but he hadn't lasted long, retiring to his bed soon after lunch. And he had only left his bed twice in the days that followed to use the toilet, and once to take a bath that she forced him into.

She set her head down on the bed next to his and listened to his labored breaths. His face was bluer, if that was possible, and his lips definitely were. She'd gotten used to the constant sheen of sweat on his skin. Suddenly he erupted into another coughing fit. She sat back and waited, tissues in one hand and the cup of broth in the other.

"Shego..." he gasped when he had finished coughing. She put the straw in his mouth and he obediently drank. The broth and the water each took a few minutes to accomplish for how often he had to stop and catch his breath. When he finished the routine he looked at her desperately. "I forgot to tell you..."

"Shh..." Shego said, the pain winning over everything else tearing at her heart. She set the cups down and climbed into the bed with him.

"I forgot...to tell you..."

"I love you, Drakken," she murmured next to his ear and then kissed his neck. His skin was still like fire on her lips.

"Shego... I love you, too..." he murmured.

His arms went around her and she curled into his chest. The heat was uncomfortable, and she knew she couldn't stay that way very long for his sake—the last thing he needed was added heat—but it was wonderful to know that he did, in fact, like cuddling.

Day 57

Shego woke up pressed into Drakken's chest with her legs entwined in his. She felt a pang of regret from having fallen asleep with him so feverish, and then she realized...she wasn't as hot as she expected to be. She reached her hand up to his cheek and found it had cooled...

...And then she drew back in horror.

"Drakken!" she cried, kneeling over him and shaking him by the shoulders. His eyes remained closed, his body limp, and his skin unhealthily pale. She dropped him back onto the bed and set both hands on his chest, desperately feeling for a heartbeat or breath.

There were none.

A choked gasp escaped her lips seconds before she fell on his chest and sobbed. She had killed him. She was careless, she brought the virus into the lair, and she had killed him.

Shego sat up from her nightmare with a loud cry.

"Drakken!" she cried, turning over and shaking him by the shoulders, tangling herself up in his sheets in the process.

His eyes flew open in a wild panic and a second later his hands held her wrists in an iron grip. She froze with a gasp of pain and tried to pull away, but his hold was far stronger than she had known he was capable of. Especially as sick as he was.

"Drakken!" she said again, more quietly and less frantic.

His eyes focused and found hers, and in confusion he let go of her wrists. "What...?"

She fell on his chest and cried, staining his already sweat-soaked t-shirt with her tears. She kissed at his neck and held him tightly.

"I thought..." she stammered through her tears.

"What?" Drakken asked again weakly. "Shego?"

She tried to calm her breathing as she lay against him. "I...had a nightmare," she explained.

He coughed, and she moved off of him so he could breathe. She pressed into his side and was rewarded with his arm laying heavily across her. She looked into his eyes and found them lucid and worried.

"Don't leave me..." she said quietly as she looked at him.

His lips parted for a moment and then he shook his head against his pillow sadly. "I don't want to."

She set her face against his shoulder and cried some more, the pain from the nightmare still gripping her chest and the images still horridly vivid. She felt his hand on her wrist and looked up with tears staining her face again.

"I hurt you..." he said, and she noticed the finger-shaped bruises already starting to form.

"It's okay," she said, setting her face against him again.

"Come here," he said, turning on his side and guiding her face toward his with a hand under her jaw. When she rested her head on the pillow across from his he leaned forward and kissed her wet cheek. He set his arm across her again and she pressed into his chest, wrapping one arm and one leg around him as her other hand gripped his shirt. She shifted down to rest her head under his chin, and once she did he gripped her shoulder tightly.

"I'm sorry," he said sadly.

"No!" she protested quietly, holding him tighter.

He sighed, and she felt him relax in her protective hold. She didn't close her eyes again for fear of seeing the nightmare, but instead stared at the part of his neck she could see and focused on the slight movement of his tendons as he breathed.

She lay that way for nearly an hour, tense as the nightmare replayed every time she tried to relax. But finally she gave into exhaustion and fell asleep in his heat again.

The next time Shego woke the first thing she did was look at Drakken for life signs. She sighed greatly at the feeling of his heartbeat against hers, and the rise and fall of his chest.

She reached up to brush his hair from his forehead and found his skin hot and dry. Tiny salt crystals came away on her fingertips. Her eyes widened.

'Not enough fluids...'

"Okay you, up," she said, tumbling out of the bed and pulling on his arm.

"What?" he blinked in disorientation. "Shego, stop..." he whined.

"Bath for you, and you're drinking a gallon of water. Come on, up!"

"Nnh..." he hummed in displeasure as he was dragged from the bed. He complied by leaning against her as she walked him into the bathroom.

She sat him on the edge of his giant tub and started the water running.

"Okay, I'm getting some ice water for you to drink and...don't drown while I'm gone."

Shego sprinted away to the kitchen, genuinely concerned he might just pass out and fall in, and suddenly became aware of her own physical condition. Her hair was a mess, her wrists were badly bruised, and she smelled a little ripe. 'Cuddling didn't help...', she thought as she filled an emptied plastic milk jug with water and then started pushing ice cubes into it. She had run out of ingredients for the broth the day before.

She ran back to the bathroom and when she arrived found him sitting obediently but with a frown in the tub, his eyes closed as the water ran and filled it up around him. His knees looked like two blue volcanoes poking up out of the rippling water, and she was tempted to smile. The dire situation though, prevented that.

"You alive?" she snarked at him. His frown deepened as he opened his eyes and peered at her. "Good. Now drink."

She shoved the full jug at him, and he lifted it to his lips with shaking arms. She noticed then, it wasn't just his dark circles that were making him look ill... He had started losing weight.

He gasped in exhaustion as he set the jug down again after only a few swallows.

"Nope. You drink all of it," she said as she sat down on the edge of the tub.

"Maybe I don't want to..." he grumbled.

"Well, you have no choice, so do it."

He glowered at her as he drank from the jug again. She reached over and supported its weight at the bottom as his arms trembled, not letting him put it down until it was half-empty. He gasped and sank deeper into the bathtub, leaning his head back on the edge and closing his eyes.

"You're trying to kill me with water-poisoning."

"It's called water toxicity, and no I'm not. You're sweating out every single fluid in you and you need to drink to stay alive."

"Need electrolytes..."

Shego frowned. He was right. But she couldn't leave him to go to the store...

His expression had sobered a bit, and after a few rasping coughs he ducked his whole head under the water.

"Ew," she said when he came back up. "That's unsanitary."

"How else am I going to wash my hair?"

"Use the faucet, doy," she said.

He looked at the faucet, which she knew was entirely possible for him to use, but the grimace on his face meant he wasn't about to attempt it.

"You could wash my hair for me."

"Um, double ew."

"Or you could get in here with me," he said with a smirk.

Shego opened her mouth to make a smart remark back, but it died on her lips as she looked at him. His eyes were hollow and fever-bright, he still looked like he hadn't slept in weeks even though that was all he had been doing, and he definitely had more bones poking out than he had before... But he was smiling at her.

"Are you feeling better?" she asked seriously.

He considered for a moment. "Maybe?"

She leaned precariously over the tub and felt his forehead, and then kissed his neck in what had become her unique way of taking his temperature. She thought he may in fact be a bit cooler...

"Can't tell for sure with the water," she said, "but—"

He grabbed her arm suddenly and she had to brace herself on the opposite side of the tub to keep from falling in.

"You can still get in here with me," he said with a grin.

"Ruin this shirt, and you'll wish you were dead."

He let go of her arm, but was still grinning. She was saddened by the way his skin stretched over his cheekbones on his gaunt face. He leaned toward her with his lips puckered, but she scooted back and out of reach.

"Ohhh no. Not till you brush your teeth. And drink the rest of that," she pointed to the jug.

He grumbled and picked up the water jug as she moved even further out of his reach. The offer to jump in the tub with him was more tempting than she let on... But, he was still very sick.