AN: Kim Possible owned by Walt Disney Company. Characters will seem OOC, read the first chapter for full disclosure. Please leave reviews…

Reenter the Dragon

By Eoraptor

Pt 4: Sociopathy

Warmth. It had been a long time since Shego felt warmth while sleeping. "The Facility" was situated at the head of a wide mountain plateau, and as such, it constantly had a cold wind blowing through. Wherever the prison was, it was not a warm climate. In almost three years it had never got much above fifty degrees in her experience. The inside of the building was kept cool as well, usually somewhere in the mid sixties.

Normally, this wouldn't be a problem for the dragon woman. She came complete with a built in atomic furnace, after all. But The Facility seemed to have an answer for everything. Her monthly injections killed her plasma somehow, so she was left to shiver and growl at the chill, her limbs slightly stiff in the cold if she didn't keep moving. Then of course, there was the floor plan of the secret prison. Stone walls did not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. It was the very lack of these things that made the place even colder, both literally and figuratively.

The Facility was pretty well communal; no doors except in the infirmary, large windows that looked out on the nameless plateau and only a large hurricane fence in the distance. Actually, it was three hurricane fences, spaced about thirty yards apart and topped with razor wire, lights, and cameras, but these encircled a space of at least twenty acres surrounding the lone building and its thirty-some "residents." There were paved areas, dirt and grassed areas, and even a small garden plot in the open terrain between fence and building. Individual rooms within the block house were small square affairs, with a single piece toilet/sink pedestal set in one corner, a single twin bed, a small dresser for jumpsuits, socks, and undies, and a small desk, all bolted to the floor.

The openness wasn't for the prisoners' comfort, however. Quite the opposite; it was to make everyone look over their shoulder constantly, and to fight tooth-and-nail to hold the small amount of privacy they could pretend to maintain in the cloisters of their small but open-access rooms. There were no boundaries save the fence, no walls beyond the rooms, no cover to be had anywhere. Even the garden was limited; the tallest plant growing was a single three-foot high tomato plant belonging to Sanchez.

So why was it that she felt warm and safe, even with the hard floor beneath her butt?

Something moved.

Shego froze. Her first instinct was to lash out at any movement within her personal space, to rend it asunder and face the consequences later. The half-somnolent woman suppressed the urge to strike out at the movement just yet, for some unconscious reason. She twitched after a predetermined amount of time, expecting the clock-work precise timing of a tazer shot as well, but it never came.

She realized, after a moment, that the floor beneath her backside was carpeted and not hard at all as she had first imagined. In fact, it was very soft. Movement again; it distracted her and she gave in to the impulse to react. She sprung away from the motion, to the center of the floor space before she had even opened her eyes. Upon opening her electric jade orbs, Shego found herself not in the center of the stone floor of her room, but between the feet of two full sized beds in a hotel room.

Sighing heavily, Shego scrubbed her face in her palms and pressed the balls of her hands into her eye sockets, attempting to shake off the rush of initial panic. Reality slowly flowed back to her as she rubbed her eyes and moved from her crouch into a slightly more natural sitting position. When she removed her palms from her face, she saw Kimmie sleeping on the floor next to where she had been.

The girl… no, Shego shook her head softly, forcing some further perspective on the situation… The young woman, was still sleeping apparently, sitting there on the floor where they had sat and talked after cleaning up from her little "night terror."

"Night terror nothing... it was some kind of fucking flash back," she shuddered, shaking her head bitterly and looking at the savior whom she had nearly killed. She looked to the makeshift scarf Kimmie had wrapped around her neck, and then to her own hands, scowling at them. "She's lucky I can't do… that… any more, or she'd just be a fucking corpse. A head and a body with a charred stump in between. Damn it Shego!"

"She's also not too thrilled to hear that first thing in the morning, ya know?" came a grumbled response from across the floor, "Not a charming mental image to wake a person up with."

The emerald woman blinked and stared across the floor to where the redhead sat. She hadn't seemed to move in the least, still appeared to be sleeping there, but obviously wasn't. Shego looked around in embarrassment and finally spied the wind up alarm clock of the room, barely visible with the tiny amount of light allowed in under the heavy and still-drawn curtains.

Turning back to Kim's silhouette, she snorted softly and tried not to stare at the shirt the younger woman had drawn about her neck, "Eleven thirty. Hardly first thing in the morning there, Princess."

Kim stretched herself out and arched, parts of her body tensing and relaxing rhythmically. She did it to ignore the forced, hollow quality to Shego's snark. The redhead could hear the words, the same kind the two of them had always exchanged; but even in the dim light she could see the lack of fire and conviction, the absence of the trademark Shego-smirk.

Masking her pained sigh at that absence with a groan and further stretch, she rose from the floor and padded over to the curtains. After a moment's bracing, she threw them wide and let mid-day's light spill into the hotel room. She paused out of the view of her new roommate, thinking to herself and rubbed her wounded throat softly beneath the long-sleeved shirt she had put around her neck in the early morning hours.

"Still sore, huh?"

The vacationing agent flinched softly at the words, not realizing she'd been seen. She rubbed her neck more openly, but conscientiously kept herself covered as she had in the predawn hours before they'd fallen asleep. "Yeah… a little, Shego. I'll be in turtlenecks for a few days, I s'pose. You still pack a punch."

There was a sound of tinkling behind her, and she turned away from the window to see Shego thoughtfully sifting the broken shards of mirror piled in the waste basket. "Yeah… so do you, Angel. I hope they don't take this out of my tab."

Kim smirked softly at the quip and was about to retort about whose tab it was when the aberration caught up to her. "Angel? That's a new one, Miss Go."

"What? Oh… well, yeah… I had a lot of time to think on them while I was away, you know." Shego looked up from her seat between the beds. She slowly rose as well, her body popping audibly as the muscle tension of her explosive leap gave way to normal morning stiffness. "…and Miss Go? Gah… please don't mention her again. Prison of the body was almost as bad as that prison-in-my-mind that was your substitute teacher."

"Yeah? Well tough. I've got almost eight years worth to catch up on with you when it comes to nicknames." she had forced herself to pause before speaking, to once again not ask about prison. "So get used to it, frog-face."

She'd asked twice about where Shego was during the previous night. After they had cleaned up the broken glass of the vanity, she had calmed Shego down enough with simple conversation to get her to open up a tiny bit. That was until she'd asked about where Shego had been for four years. She got a gruff bark of a response, once again reiterating "prison," and nothing further on the subject. After several more awkward minutes they had again slipped into a comfortable rolling conversation about the old days, and had drifted off to sleep next to one another sometime around three in the morning..

"Frog Face… Yeah, that's weak, Princess… so I'll allow you the practice, for now." Shego's face momentarily became its old self; smirking, confident, and cute in the same dangerous way a baby rattlesnake was. "I need to grab a shower… Then I trust you can treat your old nemesis to lunch, since you let her sleep through the five-star continental breakfast?"

"Mind if I join you?"

Shego's expression boggled, and she nearly tripped over the foot of the bed she had been rounding. It took her a full thirty seconds to recover herself enough not to simply let spill her disbelief at what she thought she had heard the former teen hero offer. "I think you're supposed to buy me dinner first for that, Pumpkin… not lunch afterward. Honestly, what did you mother teach you?"

"I meant… you seemed… it's not that!" Kim stumbled, then snorted dismissively.

"Uh-huh…" The larger woman shook her head slowly. Taking a deep breath she turned to proceed to the suite's bathroom. "If you make a drop-the-soap joke, you're getting a plasma enema… and I'm not talking the kinky kind."

"Way to go Kim…" The redhead sighed as Shego disappeared. She moved and sat down at the desk, cradling her head in her hands, "Your crush of the last five years or so waltzes back into your life and you turn into an innuendo-spewing teenager. Should have just asked her what size strapon she prefers while you were at it. As if she'd let you do that with her when you couldn't even hug her last night!"

-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-

"You don't have my office bugged, do you?"

"You know I couldn't tell you if I did." she gave the dark skinned young man on the other end of her vid phone a coy smile, "But why do you ask?"

"Because I was just thinking of calling you, and I know that you don't have any mind reading abilities or super-powers, unlike your ex."

"I didn't realize we'd reduced him to a title," Kim sighed softly, looking at the lens of her phone's camera. "But considering I didn't even get a post card from Tokyo this year…"

"Yeah... well Ron did kind of have his hands full with a ninja kindergartener." Wade chuckled on his end of the call, sipping on, of all things, a bottle of water. "So, if not a bug; to what do I owe the rare pleasure of a face to face?"

"Well… um… huh…. How to put this?" chewing her lower lip, the agent hemmed and hawed, eyes drifting to the still closed bathroom door and the sounds of a bath therein.

"One night stand you want checked up on?" the chubby programmer gave her a meaning-laden look from the small screen. "So... who is she? Or is it he?"

Green eyes looked aghast at the screen. After a long moment during which Kim's cheeks darkened several shades, she rubbed her face in her hands self consciously. "Your brain still rocks Wade… but it's not like that. Well not completely anyway. And just how did you know? Or think?"

'great… I'm being interrogated by my own geek… god I'm slipping so fast.' She continued to herself before Wade resumed talking.

"You called me up, apparently straight out of bed and with the mother of all hickeys," he motioned around his face and hair and then to his neck, "And you looked directly to what I assume is your hotel's bathroom, where I can hear water running."

Kim blew a frustrated, and relieved, breath through her lips and redressed the small screen, "Like I said… and in surround sound even, with a driving base line. But this is a lot bigger than just a dalliance."

"Shego?" Wade managed to hide the mix of emotions on his face pretty well, but the surprise still drifted through.

"Are you sure you don't have me bugged? Or chipped like," she made air quotes as she stared at the screen archly, a mixture of paranoia and wry humor in her gaze, "the ex?"

"Just call me Holmes, Agent Watson," he winked at her and pulled on his water bottle again, "You wouldn't call me to background just any piece of tail; you could have your own agency do that. But Shego… She's too dangerous to do that, and you know that I have other channels. Plus, she's the only person I know you would let spend the night aside from Ron, me, or one of your family when you're on vacation in a strange city, unless you've started becoming promiscuous in your old age? Which, I might add, not the brightest move Kim Possible ever made."

"Too many darned geniuses in my life," Kim groused softly. She touched the screen, though, missing this kind of instant rapport in her new life with Global. "Yeah… all true Wade. Worse, she says she's been in prison. And if she's an escapee…"

"Then you have to put on your double eagle and turn her in."

"Okay, who are you and what have you done with the boy who tried to use a bun warmer to get the girl?" She arched her brow at the screen, trying to mine any humor and levity from the situation. "The Wade I remember barely came out of his room, let alone dispensed profound deductions on interpersonal relationships."

"Well, we all gotta grow up some time, Kim. So… You want to know where the green meany has been huh?" Wade already appeared to be typing on multiple keyboards, just like old times.

"Please and thank you."

-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-KP-

Shego was trying to enjoy the bath. Normally she was a shower woman, but after four years of only taking lukewarm prison showers with naval sprayers and bar soaps, she'd decided indulgence was the better part of valor.

"What the fuck is up with Princess?" She lay in the generously sized tub, immersed and occasionally rippling the water; but too bothered by the last two days events to enjoy the soak completely. She gave the water particularly petulant slap and sighed, looking over her own body through the sloshing suds. "Tempus Fugit indeed…"

An expression of concentration crossed her face for several seconds. It increased in ferocity with each passing second, until it was finally banished with a snort of frustration and another slap on the water. "Damn it! Still nothing! Did they fucking kill it?! Gahhhh!"

"Shego!?" The door flew open behind her shoulder a second later, banging against its hinges sharply, "Are you all right?!"

"Cheese and Rice, Princess! Would ya knock first?!" the emerald bather growled and turned about in the tub until she could face Kim. She sat up, but made little move to cover herself for the moment despite her exclamation.

"Well, I heard a lot of splashing, and then yelling, I was worried you'd hurt yourself or… or something." Kim blinked in sudden embarrassment at Shego's nudity and turned around, and then turned around again when she found herself looking at Shego's reflection in the generous bathroom mirror. "I mean... the way you fainted yesterday, and then conked out on the bed… and last night."

She took a few deep breaths to calm her racing heart, and hoped that Wade wasn't too panicked at her sudden disconnection of their call.

With a reluctant groan acknowledging Kim's concerns, Shego lay back in the tub and resumed trying to soak. After a long moment, she realized Kim was still standing there, albeit looking away. She threw a wet, heavy washcloth at the back of the younger woman's head, "Obviously I'm fine… just frustrated… think I could finish my bath now? Or were you enjoying the show?"

Kim wheeled about at being struck in the head with the very wet washcloth. The night's exhaustion caught up to her and she momentarily forgot their situation, the last five odd years, and the fact that her roommate was laying carelessly naked in a bathtub she was paying for. "I was concerned, okay?! But I guess the big bad Shego fears not a little bath water, huh? Is that why you broke out? To impinge on my good will and get a free scrub and nap before going to break Drakken out of Florence?"

A fount of water announced that the old rivalry was on, and Shego erupted from the over-sized tub and the spray almost faster than Kim could process the change in position. She dropped back out of the bathroom and struck a stance even as Shego kicked through the air she had just been occupying.

"YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHY I ESCAPED!!"

Kim ducked and weaved from the claw swipes that came with that declaration, but found herself feeling a lot slower than she used to. She felt fortunate that Shego appeared to be slower as well; or at least that was how it seemed. A particularly vicious slash of clawed hands whipped through the air, and the only way Kim could avoid it was to close the distance. As Shego's arm impacted hers, Kim saw the rush of anger in the older woman's emerald eyes. She seemed again at the edge of reason, and Kim felt Shego's more powerful arms flailing against her now as she bore the brunt of the attack at her shoulders.

"You've got NO IDEA AT ALL!"

By the two second mark, Kim's brain realized something was different. This wasn't a matter of either of them being slower or out of practice. Instead of utilizing any of the complex moves and talents at her disposal, Shego was still just battering her with her arms angrily, using her as a punching bag. Okay, the metaphor wasn't wholly accurate, as punching bags didn't hit back as Kim had been trying to do up to this point; but this definitely was not a contest of skill or an outright fight.

"I HAD to get out of there! That place was eating my SOUL!"

Still putting up some effort not to be pummeled by the stronger woman's attacks, Kim grit her teeth and changed her tactics slightly. There wasn't enough room to get behind Shego in the small hallyway, so Kim thrust her thumb up under Shego's left armpit and into a nerve cluster she knew could be found there. It was like trying to jamb her thumb into concrete, but she felt and saw the emerald woman's bare left flank suddenly shudder.

The bigger woman dropped away, clutching her arm tightly now to her side, her eyes burning with wrath. After a few moments of glaring daggers at Agent Possible, she growled and fell out of her stance somewhat, clenched fists at her sides twitching still, "You have no idea at all why I had to escape."

Kim rose from her own stance as well, shaking out her battered upper arms and trying to hide the fact she had badly jammed her thumb. She blew a breath through a stray strand of cinnamon hair and sighed, "Then tell me why." Then she swallowed a bit, as more of her non-combat faculties returned to her and she regained awareness of the situation, "And could you put a robe on please? You're dripping on everything."

Shego looked down at herself, also realizing for the first time that she was naked and wet. Finally she looked back to Kim, her eyes narrowing minutely as she bit back a few cutting remarks. "I'll finish my bath, and then we can talk. If you're done hurling accusations that is?"

Kim's own olive eyes narrowed equally, but she swallowed and nodded, biting back her own bitter words as well. She was about to say something when there was a knock at the hotel door. "Miss Possible?"

"Shit…" She cursed and turned away, chewing her lower lip. She rapidly took in the damage they had done to the hallway wallpaper, and to the mirror shattered in the night, and scowled fiercely, "And pack your things, looks like we'll be heading to a new hotel."

Looking around herself and nodding resignedly, Shego turned and reentered the bathroom, clicking the door closed behind her.

"Just a moment…"

-- -- -- -- --

AN: Thanks to my two beta readers for eyeballing the story and helping me smooth it a bit. Sorry for the profound delays… there will be an explanation up on my main page shortly… Please read and review though… feedback encourages chapters.