See, I told ya I'd be updating more frequently! :D Hope you enjoy.
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The words flew out of Drakken's mouth almost before they had a chance to register in his brain. "Dementor was at the refreshment table - with me! You know how he's usually off, ya know, chillin' with his peeps?" He thrust his hands downward, pinkies extended, like he'd seen a rapper do in a teen magazine once.
Shego didn't give him an answer, and Drakken didn't wait for one. "But last night, he hung out at the refreshment table! I think his henchmen were there, too, but he didn't pay any attention to them. He wanted to talk to - to me!" He paused to gulp in air. "He must have stayed for at least an hour! I think he finally left - things get really blurry right around then. I think I was pretty. . . uh. . . tipsy." Drakken stopped, word supply exhausted, and crossed his fingers and toes that he'd said what he'd meant to say.
Shego must have understood, because her face turned to stone. Not really - that would be very creepy - but it got all hard and stiff. It was like she was so angry, and not just with him, that she couldn't even scream.
The thought that at least some of that scary-blank look was intended for Dementor made him feel safer somehow, and it loosened the knot in the hose. Things were starting to flow again, but they were ugly things that hit him square in the forehead - things he couldn't talk about, but had to. "He was being - nice to me," Drakken admitted in bewilderment.
Shego gave her head another sad shake. "Dementor doesn't do 'nice,'" she said tightly. "Especially not to you."
So she'd seen through Dementor's happy-to-see-you act, too! He was so glad he'd never gotten up the nerve to fire her for ditching him during the Attitudinator fiasco.
Drakken leaned back against his pillow, listening to the lub-DUB, lub-DUB of his heart pounding his ears. His heart was still beating, Shego hated Dementor almost as much as he did, and his brain was starting to function reliably again. It was the first time he'd let himself believe that he might survive being hangedover for the next couple hours.
No sooner had he thought that, though, than an image began to flash obnoxiously in his mind like a strobe light, only lit up for a nanosecond. It took Drakken half a minute to recognize it was his shaking hand holding a glass, and another half a minute to to realize that, with each flash, the glass got emptier and emptier until it started over again at full.
Drakken was finally able to freeze-frame one of the flashes and notice something strange about the glass. Instead of being small and oval like the cups had been last year, it was impressively tall and shiny and shaped like a cylinder, with a skinny little stem on the bottom that shouldn't be able to hold it up - but, thanks to the wonders of physics, it was.
Sweet baby gherkins - was that a wineglass? How had he missed that last night?
Fingers poked at his few weak spots, crying, "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" And when the flashes came again, he spotted a small, yellow person reaching for his empty glass.
The details were starting to click into place, but he didn't feel any triumph at finally remembering. "He proposed a - toast. . . to our newfound friendship." Drakken thought he would be sick just repeating the words.
Shego propped one hand in front of her face and pretended to scribble on it with another finger, like she'd had tiny ballpoint pens installed in her gloves. That would probably come in very handy. "Note to self," she murmured, although it obviously wasn't just a note to self, because she made sure Drakken could hear it too. "Kick Dementor's tail."
That helped a little, but there was still something clogging up the hose - the darkest, hardest thing, the one that he suspected was also the most important. He had another flash of his hand curled around a glass, and this time it was accompanied by a voice that was far too familiar. He couldn't make out any words, but it had the same perky, coaxing tone Mother had always used when she was trying to get him to drink cod liver oil.
He waited for the shivery chills to go away and a semi-coherent thought to replace them before he took a deep breath, the required preface to something you didn't want to say more than once. Shego turned to look at him, just like she was supposed to, and Drakken blurted, "He said my glass was almost empty and that I needed a fresh one to make a toast. He was always telling me to have some more punch."
He had to pry his eyes open with his fingers and hold them like that to keep from having to face the now-complete image that was waiting behind his lids. But Shego didn't give him her usual, "Why are you doing that? You look like you have a thyroid condition?" In fact, she bit down hard on her lip, a face Drakken had seen dozens of times over the years. He was pretty sure it meant she had the urge to cuss but she didn't want to do it front of him, which he appreciated.
She also threw a glance over to the piranha pit, like she wanted to toss Dementor in, even though there weren't currently any piranhas in it. His last school had died when one of his acid baths had leaked into their pool - he still felt bad about that - and he hadn't been able to replace them. Piranhas were so expensive these days - something to do with the destruction of the rainforest - but the Central Headquarters Of Aquatic Supervillany had had a special on extra-large catfish. He'd remembered seeing a documentary on Animal Planet about catfish that got big enough to swallow people whole, so he'd bought a dozen and hoped for the best - or, to be more accurate, the worst. They probably could swallow a little shrimp like Dementor whole, but "catfish pit" just didn't have the same ring to it.
But all thoughts of fish or fishes or whatever the stupid creatures were called vanished when Shego turned back to him. She could have popped a balloon with the point of her chin, and when she spoke there was no expression in it. "He got you drunk."
The words fell with a thud to the pit of Drakken's stomach, which wasn't doing so hot to begin with. So thatwas what the picture in his brain had been trying to tell him.
Heat washed over him, running down to his fingertips. He wondered if that was how Shego felt when her hands started glowing. Dementor hadn't just laughed at him walking into walls and slurring out gibberish. He'd planned for him to get - what was that dreadful term Shego had used? - plastered. And he'd been willing to do anything - including pretend to be Drakken's friend - to make sure that plan succeeded.
It felt strangely like betrayal, though Drakken knew that was ridiculous. Who expected their biggest rival to be nice to them?
But this - this went way beyond rivalry. Even Kim Possible didn't hate him that much, and he was her arch-nemesis. It was her job to hate him.
As cocky and stubborn as she was, if he was honest with himself, Drakken couldn't imagine Kim Possible tricking him into getting drunk. Actually, she'd been very kind of him when the Attitudinator scheme had backfired and left him good last November. Looked at him with soft eyes. Introduced him the buffoon's little pet rodent. Told him everything was going to be okay - and, just for a moment, it had been.
Drakken shook his head and frowned to himself. Maybe it was better to think about Dementor after all.
There had been something so different about Dementor's behavior last night. His "demeanor," his psychology books called it, and wasn't that hard to say? Dementor's demeanor. Demeanor Dementor. Dementor Demeanor dipped a deck of dappled dachshunds. . .
Get a grip, Drakken! He snatched up two handfuls of sheet and brought his newly invented tongue twister to a screeching halt. He always babbled like an idiot, even in his head, when something had him that freaked out.
No, "freaking out" wasn't really villainous. What would Jack Hench have called it? Applicative? Applesauce? Something like that.
Whatever. He needed to get back to the point. And the point was Dementor had been acting weird last night. The genuine pleasure on his face was so different from the phony-baloney, evil-eyed smile he always flashed just to torment Drakken.
He could have fooled a lie detector with that face. And Drakken, who knew better than anyone what a liar the man was, had been fooled, too. Was Dementor that good an actor?
Or was I just that drunk? That was a creepy thought, and he flicked it aside.
Apprehensive! That was what it was! Apprehensive! Drakken tried to picture the word spelled out in bright lights in his brain, the way he always did with new fascinating ones, but he was so - so apprehensive, the letters formed a scrambled mess. The only ones he could be sure were in the right place were the first a and the last e.
The heat began to drain away, leaving behind only the cold, lonely sense that it was frightening to be hated so bad. In spite of the sweat soaking his lab coat, he shivered back to the image of himself getting drunker and sicker, one gulp at a time, while Dementor watched gleefully.
His first impulse was to cry, "What?" But he already knew what, and when and how and where and who. The only thing he didn't know was. . .
"Why?" Drakken asked weakly. The word was followed by a cough, and he could have sworn he heard gravel bounce in his throat.
Shego considered that for a moment. A strange sense of peace swept over Drakken as he observed her, the kind of peace that came when there was nowhere to go but up. No matter what his sidekick said, there was no way she could make him feel any worse.
"Probably just for laughs," Shego finally answered. Her lips did their thing. "Let's face it, you were pretty amusing last night."
So much for peace. Blinding white-hot fury shot through Drakken. He'd never been this angry at anyone before - not his henchmen, not Shego, not even Kim Possible. He hated Professor Dementor for chatting with him like they were the best of buddies, when really all he was doing was waiting for all that non-punch punch he'd gotten Drakken to drink to kick in and make an idiot out of him.
And he hated Dr. Drakken for falling for it.
That was Dementor's way of entertaining himself. Could he not rent a movie like everyone else? Drakken could understand hurting someone because they did something to you first, or because it would get you closer to world domination. But putting them in danger - just for fun?
He really was in danger last night, too. Too much alcohol, he remembered now, could kill you. Poison your liver until it shriveled up and went bye-bye, and you couldn't live without a liver, which was probably why they called it a "live" r in the first place. . .
Drakken could see himself now, liver shrunken to the size of a dried-up pea, stomach turning upside-down, bubbles from it floating up to his chest and piling up until it exploded or maybe stomach acid would splash up his esophagus and burn a gaping hole in his neck.
Those were fates he wouldn't have even wished on James Possible, much less himself. And if Shego hadn't been there last night and done whatever it was that she did. . . well, he didn't even want to think about it.
Drakken sputtered nonsensically for a minute. All reasonable thoughts had vanished, and even if they hadn't none of them could accurately convey what was tangling him up inside. The one tiny section of his brain that wasn't overheating told him to shut up and get a hold of himself, and Drakken was trying to obey when he felt his mouth move and heard someone who sounded a lot like him whimper, "Shego, I don't understand."
Instantly, he wanted to kick himself. He hadn't meant to let that slip out, but his normally lightning-fast reflexes were dull, his head foggy. And he wasn't even drunk anymore, so he could only imagine how much worse it had been the night before. Drakken shuddered again.
Only because she didn't offer any smart-mouthed retorts did he keep going. "Dementor was acting very friendly! He even listened to me talk about my evil plan!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Shego waved her hands through the air. The twitches disappeared and a look of horror took their place. "You told him about your plot?"
"Ye-es," Drakken replied slowly. A vague sense of dread was tugging at him, but he didn't know why. "He thought it was brilliant," he couldn't help adding.
Shego slapped herself in the forehead. "I'm sure he did," she moaned. "Brilliant enough to steal."
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The gasp that sprang from Drakken's mouth sounded high-pitched and panicky, even to his own ears. For the moment, he was too stunned to get mad. "Not my Teeth of Terror and Octopods of Doom?"
"Yup. You can kiss your little fishy-bot plan goodbye." Shego curled her fingers into a mocking wave.
That was when the shock wore off, and he was so angry it hurt. He wanted to hurl sarcastic, mean words into Shego's face, the way she'd just flung them into his. But his brain had quit thinking in words by this point and was operating solely on pictures.
Pictures of himself waking up in the middle of the night with his most astounding idea ever: Use robotic sea monsters to destroy international communication and trade. Once each of the continents were cut off from each other, he could conquer them all, one by one. Starting with North America, of course, so he could make Drakkcanada his official headquarters.
How he'd jumped out of bed instantly and outlined blueprints on the first piece of paper he could find, which turned out to be last week's newspaper. How he'd gotten to work on the basic structures the very next day, squinting occasionally to see what was scribbled across Garfield's fat orange belly. Shego poking her head in to remind him to eat and him discovering four hours had gone by in what hadn't felt like more than ten minutes.
Slaving over his robots, sharpening the sharks' teeth to gleaming points. Adjusting the heat of the octopuses' laser eyes until it was intense enough to slice right through a plane. How hard he tried to make sure every detail was perfect, arranging the circuits carefully inside special waterproof containers deep inside the beasts, so they couldn't short out, carving faces that would have given a lesser villain nightmares.
He'd still been having a bit of trouble with the octopuses' tentacles. He wanted them to be able to reach out, just like a real octopus's would do, wrap themselves around a ship, and squeeze until it cracked in two. But it wasn't easy finding a metal strong enough to crush an ocean liner, yet supple enough to flex like that without splintering.
If Shego was right and Dementor did copy his plan - if, with his incredible good fortune, he found the right metal first - it would all be ruined. His plot. Whatever was left of his reputation. His ability to look Dementor in the eye and jut out his chin and think, Yes, I'm smarter than you.
And here was Shego, acting like it was so trivial, dismissing his scheme with a wave of her hand, not even bothering to call it by its proper name. Did she not want him to succeed? Didn't she realize that being Most Trusted Adviser to the ruler of the entire planet would come with quite a few perks?
A rush of words did fill Drakken's brain then. Not insulting ones - scientific ones whose meanings were as familiar to him as the loops of his own fingerprints. "Those 'little fishy-bots,' as you call them," he said, injecting just the right amount of anger into his voice so that he sounded foreboding but not out of control, "are the result of precision design and complex engineering! Besides, octopuses are mollusks, not fish."
"It's 'octopi,' and I know full well what they are," Shego replied with sickening. . . calmness? Calm? Calmth?
"No, you don't!" Drakken heard himself shriek. "You don't know anything!"
Before the words were even all the way out, Drakken knew they weren't even close to true and would probably earn him a fiery-fingered slap. It didn't matter, though, as long as they knocked Shego down a few pegs.
But they didn't. She actually smiled, though her eyes were shooting sparks. Why did people smile at him when it was obvious what they really wanted to do was wring his neck?
"Hmm, let's see here." Shego tapped her cheek, pretending to be deep in thought. "Should I comment on your maturity, or just stick to fact that I can tell the difference between punch and booze?"
That was the last straw. Drakken could have sworn he felt a spring pop out of place somewhere inside him. "I don't care!" he cried, voice cracking on what was meant to be a growl - and with that, he threw himself down onto his stomach, face buried in his pillow, head and heart somehow pounding out of sync.
He wasn't crying, not technically. No tears fell from his eyes, but big gulps of air were ripped from the lungs and came out in little squeaky sounds, and his shoulders started to shake even though he was commanding them to stay strong. He didn't care how childish it made him look. Everyone already thought he was a moron, so what difference did it make?
The unfairness of it all overwhelmed him. Him getting drunk. Dementor stealing his plan. No one caring. Everybody would flip out and hate Drakken if he ever took one of Dementor's ideas, but noooo-
Like when you stole his teleporter? a tiny something asked in the very back of his mind.
Ugh. His conscience. How he hated the thing. Sometimes it was just a little nagging tug deep down in his gut, like when he caught Kim Possible in a death trap. But other times - like when he had forgotten to make sure his mother had a space helmet before he went ahead with his scheme to suck all the oxygen out of the atmosphere - it was like his guardian angel had reached down from heaven and slapped him across the face. It was kind of pathetic, really - who had ever heard of an evil megalomaniac with a functioning conscience?
Too bad a doctor couldn't just open him up and remove it the way they did with infected tonsils or a ruptured appendix. Drakken wasn't especially keen on the thought of being cut open, but it would be worth it if it would get rid of that little whispery thing that was probably keeping from achieving global conquest, and maybe get him some respect from his fellow evildoers -
Respect. Drakken let that word spell itself out in bright lights, as brilliant and shiny as it deserved to be.
He knew he'd spelled it right because somebody had written a song for that very purpose. He'd sung it for Shego one day to remind her that he was the big cheese around here and deserved to be treated as such. Even throwing in a little break-dancing routine - make it fun, and they'll learn, that parenting magazine in the dentist's waiting room had said - but he'd strained something in his knee and had to hobble around on crutches for three weeks. The pity had been plain on Kim Possible's face when she saw him trying to limp around her in his usual predatory circle. No respect there, either.
Come to think of it, it had been so long since he had last had respect - had he ever had it? - he wasn't sure he would know what it looked like if he saw it. He knew what it wasn't, though. The faces of Kim Possible and Dementor and Shego and even the buffoon and his naked weasel flashed through Drakken's mind.
He thought he'd earned some last night, but - his nose was tingly and he wanted to snuffle, but he pushed a hard snort through it instead - of course, it had been fake. Nothing about last night was real, except for all the stupid stuff he must have done. Drakken couldn't recall exactly what that stuff was, but he did remember the nasty laughter and the flaming-red cheeks that always went along with him humiliating himself.
The awful images rose up as if he'd called for them. Men fighting in bars, pausing occasionally from beating each other up to swing wildly at the air, because they were seeing double and aimed for the wrong one. Dumbo hiccuping bubbles through his trunk as he watched the pink elephants march by. Sitcom people tap-dancing on their coffee tables or announcing to the entire world who they were in love with, thereby ruining any chance that they would ever get together.
They looped through his head two, three, four times, and by the fourth trip something was different. Each worthless drunk now had Drakken's face. (It looked especially strange on the elephant.)
He figured he could rule out being in a fight. He hurt bad to enough to have been, but Shego wouldn't have waited this long to lay into him for it. Too bad, because the idea of smashing Dementor's face in was very appealing right now.
But the other things - those made "maybe, maybe, maybe"s dart through his mind and crush his chest, and suddenly he had to know for sure. Finding out might hurt too, but the not-knowing would surely drive him crazy.
Drakken lifted his face cautiously from the pillow to see Shego still hovering over him. She looked curious, amused, maybe a little ticked off, but not mad. That gave him the strength to flick his tongue across his lips and ask, "Did I dance on the table?"
Drakken cringed at the sound of his own voice. He sounded less like a nightmare-inducing villain and more like a bullfrog with a bad case of the flu.
For half a second, a smile danced in Shego's eyes. "No," she replied, and she didn't sound too mad, either.
At least there was that. Drakken tried to nod, but he might as well have attempted to topple Stonehenge with his bare hands. There was a terrible pressure on his head, squeezing it so hard he was surprised his brains weren't oozing out his ears.
"Did I put a lampshade on my head?" His voice came out stronger this time.
"No." Shego gave her head a firm shake - exaggeratedly, like she was imitating him.
Drakken shot her a half-hearted grimace, just so she'd know that hadn't escaped him, and scowled down at his hands. They looked tiny and pale against his maroon sheet, like little blue puddles on a giant. . . red. . . thing. He'd never realized before how small they were, the fingers thin and almost dainty like they belonged to a little girl rather than a ruthless megavillain. Drakken quickly shoved them under the covers before Shego could notice them, too. It would just be another thing for her to treat with that blasted disrespect.
"Did I confess my undying love for anyone?" He almost didn't ask that question, because it was so improbable. If he were undyingly in love with someone it was as much news to him as to anyone else. He couldn't even remember the last woman who had brought up thoughts of flowers and jewelry and heart-shaped boxes of chocolate to be split after a romantic candlelit dinner -
No, wait. Yes he could. DNAmy.
Drakken felt his shoulders stiffen. DNAmy, the one who had strung him along and broken his heart. She'd taught him a valuable lesson, too: relationships needed to be taken slowly. The next time he fell for a woman, no matter how perfect she seemed to be, he was going to wait at least a week before proposing to her.
But even though he hated her now - couldn't stand the sight of her - well, that sight still made his heart skip a beat and then sag at the edges. It was hard to look at DNAmy, her cute chubby face and the soft little hands that made his seem enormous, without remembering the wonderful day he had been in love and conquering the world seemed unimportant in comparison.
What if he wasn't "over her," as the kids today said? And what if he'd announced that to every single villain gathered in HenchCo's basement?
All those panicked thoughts ran through Drakken's mind in about five seconds, before Shego gave him the smirk that always signaled impending doom and said, "Well - you told me you loved me -"
Drakken's stomach heaved in disbelief, but Shego held up a wait-a-minute hand. "- but you told the hovercraft you loved it, too, so I'd take that with a grain of salt."
He latched on to that last word, a compound he recognized. "Sodium chloride," he mumbled, just to steady himself.
Shego rolled her eyes. "Sure, whatever floats your boat." The sarcasm in her voice hardened into sternness. "No, basically, you just talked way too loud and laughed way too much. And then you barfed."
Well, that wasn't very exciting. Embarrassing, sure, but nothing that screamed "LOOK HOW INTOXICATED I AM!"
Drakken pulled his knees back up to his chest and began to rock himself, out of thoughtfulness this time, not despair. He was perfectly capable of doing all those things when he was - somber? Sobering? What was the word for un-drunk? Maybe no one had thought there was anything weird about his behavior last night, and he wouldn't have to do a massive memory wipe after all.
"So - nobody even knew I was drunk?" he asked. A small flicker of hope crept in, as thin the stream of light that was tormenting his eyes. That would mean no new ammunition for Dementor and his boys.
Shego's brows pinched together. "Of course they knew you were drunk. It was kinda hard to miss."
So much for hope. So much for not needing to perform the memory wipe. If only he could remember where he'd put that amnesia gas. . .
"Unless you're DNAmy, that is," Shego continued with a snicker. "I don't think she had a clue what was going on."
Thank you, God.
Shego plopped herself down on the edge of his bed and leaned in closer. A little too close, as far as Drakken was concerned, especially considering she didn't look happy with him. "And you ruined everyone's evening," she informed him.
"Really?" Drakken asked skeptically. That would have been quite a feat, when he stopped and thought about how many people usually came to Hench's gatherings. Hench himself, of course, Dementor and his henchmen - he usually brought about six - Killigan, probably the Seniors (though they didn't appear in any of his memories), (shudder) DNAmy, Monkey Fist. . . not to mention the amateur thugs and one-note villains who always showed up - ten was a low estimate -
Drakken did some quick mental math. That was at least twenty-three evenings he would have had to sabotage.
"Yes, really." Shego gave him half of what he assumed was probably meant to be a smile. It was hard to tell with Shego sometimes. "I don't think anybody really stuck around too long with that trash can."
"Trash can?" Drakken repeated in bewilderment. "What trash ca - oh." Now he remembered. "That trash can." The one he'd bent over and emptied his belly into, the one he'd clung to for dear life because the ground was threatening to come up to meet him.
It was starting to come back to him, and remembering made the muscles around his mouth jerk. Drakken glanced down, relieved to see that their bucket (his bucket; Shego had never once used it) was propped against the side of his bed, just a few feet away from where Shego's feet dangled. Not that he needed it right now. Still, it would be nice to have it, just in case. . .
He closed his eyes and forced himself to consider more pleasant matters. Like the fact that he'd ruined twenty-three people's evenings without even trying. That felt good - in an evil way, of course. Jack Hench's little doohickey - and it must have been a piece of junk if Dr. Drakken couldn't be bothered to remember its name - had to have been malfunctioning when it declared him a playground bully. He was a regular force of destruction! The thought brought a smile to his cracked lips.
It disappeared about five seconds later, though, when Shego turned to him and glared so hard he was surprised she didn't burn a hole in his forehead. No one could glare like Shego. Maybe not even him. "You sure ruined mine," she added.
A low growl started deep in Drakken's throat. He was about to unleash it, along with a retort that he hadn't been having a blast himself, but something stopped him. Could have been the fact that the pressure had mutated into a sensation similar to being zapped with a laser, right in the forehead, over and over. Or maybe it was because the words were muttered exactly the same way Drakken would have grumbled them if the prickles were stabbing at him. Maybe, just maybe, Shego was nasty when she got prickly too.
"Really?" he said again, this time in the nicest voice he could muster. Okay, so it still sounded like a hibernating bear that had been woken up in January. But between the hangover and hating everybody in the world (except possibly Shego), he thought he did pretty darn well.
"Yeah." Shego did not appear overly touched by his concern. "I was off doing my own thing - "
Right - she'd left him and gone off by herself, though he wasn't sure why. Shego was so good at being his sidekick, it was hard to picture her doing anything else. Why would anyone want to be alone, especially at a party?
Maybe she'd wandered off to play one of those virtual-reality, battle-to-the-death games that were supposed to help you practice your fighting skills. Like Shego needed practice! She always won those games, and Drakken was glad because he knew he'd go beyond-mad-scientist mad watching Shego die, even if it was only virtual. "What thing?" he asked tightly.
There must have still been an edge to his voice, because the glare didn't let up. "I thought I'd just hang out somewhere, maybe try one of those battle simulations -"
He knew it.
"- find some other villainesses to chat with." The words hissed out between Shego's teeth like steam.
What did women do together that was so important? The only things Drakken could up with were trying on makeup and giggling about men, and he couldn't see Shego enjoying either one of those, at least not for very long. It was baffling, but, he realized, he didn't particularly care.
Especially not once it occurred to him - Shego hadn't wanted to be alone. She just didn't want to be with him. Drakken felt a spark of anger, but it was washed away in the sadness and the jealousy and all the other itchy things that had him eying the bucket again.
The steam turned acidic. "Guess what I had to devote my night to, instead? Dragging your sorry carcass home, helping you stand up, trying to get you to walk in a straight line, waiting outside the bathroom for you to finish upchucking, and making sure you didn't need to go to the hospital."
Oh. That didn't sound very fun. Almost as not-fun as being the one whose body was so overwhelmed by alcohol it was going haywire. If he could have spared a brain cell to feel sorry for her, he would have.
That was twenty-four evenings he'd ruined, and Drakken didn't feel good - or even evil - about spoiling Shego's. He just felt sort of dirty, like he'd just discovered his scalp was infested with fleas. He wanted to say something. Tell her he was sorry. But the words got stuck in his throat, next to the little bit of pride he had left.
He wasn't sure how much good it would have done, anyway. Shego's face had frozen over. He suddenly wanted to see the happy twitches around her mouth again.
There must be a way to show her that he hadn't meant to cause so much trouble - that, in fact, he'd gone out of his way not to do anything dumb. And then, a brilliant idea surfaced, tucked inside a half-formed memory from the night before.
Drakken had to wait the required 1.34 minutes for the concept, the image, and the idea to morph into something he'd be able to get out of his mouth. He'd always wished he could just reach inside his brain and pull out the picture he had in his head, show it to Shego and not have to explain anything. Communication would have been so much easier without those darn words getting in the way.
While he waited, he twiddled his fingers under the covers. Did push-ups with his eyebrow. Tried to massage the sides of his head, but the ache was too big to be soothed by his tiny fingers.
Finally his picture-to-word translation was complete, and he could speak. "Shego," Drakken coughed out around a throat full of oozy slime and sharp-edged pebbles, "I tried really hard not to make myself sick at the refreshment table this year." His hands swooped through the air in their eagerness to convey his urgency. "I only had one brownie!"
Drakken paused for effect and waited for pride to glimmer in Shego's eyes, the way it did when he remembered not to do stuff like tell Kim Possible his plan or put a self-destruct button on one of his doom rays. It didn't. The stony-cold look went away, but it was replaced by the pity, mixed with disgust, like he really did have fleas. Drakken scratched at his head absentmindedly. That was the power of suggestion for you.
"Dr. D." His nickname was accompanied by a heavy sigh. "That just makes it worse."
Drakken's mind tied itself into another knot. "What makes what worse?" It took all his strength to snap that back, rather than give in to the whimper that threatened in his throat.
Shego rubbed her temples, though he was sure her head couldn't hurt an eighth as much as his did. "Drinking on an empty stomach," she explained. "It makes you get drunk way faster."
She sounded like she was scolding him for not being an expert on the horrible beverage impersonating fruit punch, and he would have lashed out at her for it if he hadn't been so weary. It figured the only time he remembered to use self-control, it would up working against him.
Still, it made sense from a scientific perspective - even drinking water on an empty stomach made him feel kind of funny. That was the only perspective that mattered, Drakken reminded himself, shoving away the clogged-up feeling in his throat and the fizzy one in his nose.
He tried to tilt his head to get a better look at Shego, but it just lolled uselessly on his neck. "So, what are the other variables?" he chirped, surprising even himself with his cheerfulness.
Shego suddenly looked very tired. "Variables?"
"For getting drunk. What else determines how drunk you get?" Drakken put on his most serious face. "I want to know."
He never thought he'd want to know more about the substance responsible for his current misery, but the effects alcohol had on the human body - a hypothetical body, not his - was a scientific process. Unlike his emotions, which obeyed no rules, followed no pattern, conformed to no standard. Scary as alcohol might have been, it was a much safer topic than why the shame was thickening in his throat.
Besides, the more he knew about it, the less likely it was to happen again, and Shego had the info he needed. Every now and then, through some strange twist of fate, someone might know something before you did, and when that happened it was imperative - a good word - to absorb their information as quickly as possible so you could remain the smartest person around. No one ever died from too much knowledge - unless it was of another country's military tactics or something.
Shego rolled her eyes up so far Drakken was sure she could see into her own brain. (She had to reach him how to do that.) "Well, let's see." She was using her teacher-tone again. "Men can drink more than women -" She held up a hand to cut off the words he wasn't planning to say anyway. "As a general rule. Don't let it go to your head."
Her voice had hardened, so that she sounded like a cranky teacher, and that bothered him. "I wasn't going to, Shego!" he growled. Didn't mean to growl, but his new, gravelly voice couldn't help it. "Just because my cousin is a male chauffeur doesn't mean I am!"
"Chauvinist."
"Eh?"
"Never mind." Shego shuddered a few times, like she was shaking off thoughts of Eddy, and held up a fist. Drakken instinctively shrank back, even though his sidekick tended to fight more with kicks and plasma bursts than punches.
But she uncurled a finger and held it up straight, with a purpose, the way people did when they used their hands to check off items on a list. He let his shoulders relax.
"How often you drink," Shego began. "Drink alcohol," she added before Drakken could say that he drank all the time, that dehydration was no fun. "That affects it. So does -" she unfolded a second finger - "how fast you drink it." Another finger came unfurled. "And what you weigh has something to do with it, too."
She said it all very casually, not in a firm factual manner at all. All of those facts, though, fit with the little he'd read about alcohol and how it was absorbed into the bloodstream.
They were fascinating, but it was getting tough to keep his eyes open. His lids felt like they had hundred-pound weights tied to them. They sagged lower and lower, until Shego's face was replaced by colorful explosions, like the remnants of a particularly interesting dream.
"Yoo-hoo." Shego's hand waved back and forth in front of him like a windshield wiper, sweeping away the fireworks. "Can I ask you to remain conscious while I'm talking to you?"
Drakken glared at her through his droopy-lidded eyes. About seventeen indignant replies skipped through his mind, but he was too overcome with fatigue to say anything more than, "I hurt."
Shego did not seem particularly moved. "Well, YOU were the one who wanted a science lesson."
Phew. For a minute there, he'd thought she was going to say, "Well, YOU were the one who went and got drunk," and then he'd have to yell at her and he didn't think his head could stand that.
"Now, I'm willing to bet you don't drink very often." Shego touched the first finger and gave him that all-knowing glance. "Am I right?"
Drakken managed a very-tiny nod. Something had stolen his words again, but it wasn't frustration this time. There was no itch in his chest, no fire in his belly, only the bone-deep tiredness that told him there was no point in fighting. It was the way he felt sometimes when Kim Possible appeared in his doorway, flanked by the National Guard - a sensation that never lasted very long but that scared the bejeebers out of him every time.
"And I know you drained your glasses in one chug last night." Shego moved on to the second finger. "You always do."
He unexpectedly let out a nervous laugh, even though nothing about this was funny. Ironic, maybe - who would have ever thought that, out of his little things Mother called "quirks," that one would get him in trouble? - but not funny. Still, maybe Shego was right. Maybe you had to laugh to keep from crying.
"As for your weight - " Shego's brows hiked.
So much for that hypothetical person. It was all very personal now. The chuckle died in Drakken's throat as he glanced down at his slender frame. No - "lean" sounded more masculine. But no matter how deep his voice was, he didn't feel very macho right now.
Shego gave him a quick scan with her eyes and he puffed his chest out, just a bit, to make up for how the shame had deflated it. "You're. . . what, 160 pounds?" she asked casually.
"Give or take," Drakken replied equally casually. It had been 155 at his last checkup, but she didn't need to know that.
Shego drummed her fingers on the bedspread as if she was processing that. "See, that's not exactly puny - "
"You're darn right it's not!" Drakken interrupted. His voice came out somewhere between a snarl and a cough.
Shego acted like she hadn't heard. "- but it's not real big, either."
She said it like it was a fact, not an insult, but Drakken could feel his biceps shrinking anyway. He set his chin and met her eyes and hoped his glare was as cold and blank as hers.
"So, let's just say the odds weren't exactly in your favor," Shego finished dryly. With a flick of her wrist, that conversation was over.
But the one in his head wasn't. His thoughts were screaming Shego-like things at him so loudly, Drakken wanted to cover his ears, even though he knew that wouldn't help.
He was too miserable to argue with any of them, so he settled for frowning at his accomplice. "Did I mention my head hurts?" he said. His voice curled up at the ends, because it really did hurt. Thrummed like a fingernail that had been cut too short. Drakken let go of his sheet and groped at his forehead, fingers sinking into the wrinkles he always frowned over his nose when when he had a headache.
"Don't whine, Doc," was Shego's only response.
That time Drakken did clap his hands over his ears, but not quick enough to muffle his own yelp. "Don't say wine, Shego!" he pleaded.
He thought he heard her chuckle and mutter something about it being spelled differently, but he didn't care. It didn't sound differently, and that was all that mattered to the instincts that had just been taught to hate that word.
Drakken kept his ears covered, because it just felt safer that way. So when his mouth open - of its own volition - he almost didn't hear himself say, "I bet you think I'm really stupid for getting drunk accidentally, don't you?"
The instant the sentence was out, Drakken wished he could grab it and pop it back into his mouth. Or become a judge so he could order that comment struck from the record. Strucken? Stricked? Strack? In the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter, he knew. Still, it was so frustrating to have the right word dangling just out of your reach -
"Yeah," Shego replied without missing a beat.
Before that could even start to hurt, her face changed. She didn't smile but, for a second, her chin stopped pointing at him like an accusing finger. "But not half as stupid as if you'd done it on purpose."
Drakken's jaw dropped, nearly scraping his chest. "People do this on purpose?" he asked weakly. How could that be? The spinny, pukey feeling of certain death - you might as well stick your head in a hydrolic press.
This time, Shego did give him half a smile. A wry one. (He'd read that word in a book once, and it was perfect for Shego.) "Hard to believe, isn't it?"
Drakken nodded, making his bulky boulder of a head feel awfully light, and found himself pitching forward onto his sheets. With cracks and creaks and moans - and the help of someone else's strong, steady hands - he managed to push himself back up to a sitting position.
He was trying to breathe around the pain when Shego went, "Ugh," and looked at him sharply for no reason Drakken could figure out. He tried to sneer back at her, but his facial muscles were too tired to contort into that mask that kept everyone out. All he could manage was a cross-eyed squint that didn't help his head any.
"'Kay, look, look - I wasn't supposed to get into this big long conversation with you," was all Shego offered in the way of explanation. "I was just gonna ask if you've learned your lesson and then go home."
His lesson? Anger squeezed Drakken's chest tight. Like he was some naughty child who'd broken into the cookie jar? If anyone needed to be taught a lesson, it was Dementor for thinking it was a hilarious to get someone drunk, or Hench for not labeling his dangerous substances. All he'd done was gulp a few glasses of what he'd had no reason to suspect wasn't fruit punch.
"And what lesson would that be, Shego?" Drakken asked it as coldly as he could, but he sensed he wouldn't be able to keep his temper in his check for too long. His throat ached from holding back the scream that he knew wouldn't do him any good.
For only about the third time since he'd met her, Shego appeared at a loss for words. Her mouth drooped downward in doubt, something he hadn't even known she could experience. "Well - I was gonna say 'Don't get drunk,' but since you didn't even know you were drinking alcohol -"
At least she remembered that.
"- I guess the moral here is to know what you're drinking - before you drink it."
That didn't sound like a scolding. That was just just good advice from a friend. The angry burning in Drakken's throat fizzled away, his urge to kick and scream and punch things overpowered by exhaustion. He wasn't used to anything being stronger than his fury - maybe it should have scared him, but he was too tired for fear, either.
Drakken opened his eyes as wide as he could, big and sincere, so Shego would see that he didn't want this to happen again any more than she did. Probably less. "Yes!" he agreed. "Next time somebody offers me a suspicious drink, I'll put it on a slide and examine it on a molecular level before a drop of it goes in my mouth!" He flung his arms out dramatically and glanced up at his sidekick, waiting for her acknowledgment of his latest clever idea.
But instead, he saw eyes rolling and a smirk starting and fingers tapping impatiently on her thighs - amusement in danger of turning to disgust. "Right," she said, a little too chipper. . . ly. "And should you not happen to have access to a microscope, you can bring it to me."
Drakken felt his face light up. So she did want to help him! "You can be my wine taster!" he cried gleefully. "All the great rulers have them!"
Shego did the slice-the-air thing with her hands. "That is so not what I just said!"
"Whatever." They'd discuss that later, when he had the strength to argue. "Point being, if it turns out to be alco - " Drakken stopped. The pinch in his throat wouldn't even let him say it.
"If it turns out to be - that stuff," he corrected himself, "then I'll know to toss it."
Shego looked at him like he was some cute little kid insisting the Loch Ness Monster lived in his swimming pool. "Yeah - or - you'll know to drink it in moderation," she said in a phony-happy voice. Even that one reminded Drakken of a teacher - one of those evil teachers that tormented kids but made sure to smile and act nice when parents were around.
"Moderation," Drakken repeated. He ran the word through his brain a few times, but he couldn't find the compartment where it belonged. Maybe breaking it down would help. "Mod. Er. Ra. Tion." Nope. Still nothing.
"Mod. Er. Ra. Tion." Shego said it super-slowly, like maybe she was making fun of him. "It means you don't have too much of something.
She didn't add "I know it's a novel concept to you, Dr. D.," but he could hear it anyway. Her eyes glinted, erasing the "maybe."
"Nnnegh getttt - Shego!" was the closest thing he had to a retort. Not exactly coherent, and it didn't have the same effect when it came out in a whispery croak, but he just couldn't scream at this point.
Shego didn't appear to have heard it at all. "So, drinking it moderation would be getting a glass and sipping from it now and then. You know, instead of gulping down four glasses in an hour and getting so smashed you talk to table lamps." Contempt poked through every syllable - or something metaphorical like that.
A long, deep pang went through Drakken. He should be used to it by now, he thought numbly, Shego poking and prodding at his raw places. But whenever she mocked his foiled schemes or malfunctioning machinery or his tendency to make up words because the right ones always seemed to go on vacation just when he needed them most and leave him sputtering like a confused motorboat, it stung like it was the first time.
Still, there was something else about this particular sting, something that went beyond Shego's making fun of me or What's with the obsession with table lamps, anyway? Something familiar. Shame again, with a bit of good-old-fashioned guilt thrown in for good measure.
For the third time that morning, Drakken flashed back to a time he'd rather forget, to a really old, really girly book they'd had to read in eighth-grade English. The memory brought on a scowl. Contrary to what the poster hanging in the school library said, books were not his friends. He could read just fine, but books had hundred of pages and thousands of words on every page - every time he opened one, it all turned to alphabet soup. He was able to recognize letters, make out a word here and there, but he had no idea what it was trying to tell him. He had trouble with his textbook - except science and, usually, math - but fiction was even worse, because there were no diagrams or glossaries or indexes to make it easier to understand. By eighth grade, most of them didn't even have pictures anymore.
This book, with its words whose meanings he knew but that all bled together in written form, and the print so tiny he practically needed bifocals to read it, was even harder than most. He'd barely been able to finish it, and when he had, he put it out of his mind entirely. Never thought of it again.
Until now, when a scene from it was clearly unfolding itself in Drakken's brain as if he'd read it yesterday. A little girl had gone over to her friend's house for a tea party, which made them both feel very grown-up. He wasn't sure why - all the girls he knew had stopped playing tea party in third grade. It wasn't really a tea party, for that matter, because they didn't serve tea. He remembered it taking place a long time ago, so maybe they'd still had that tax on tea.
Anyway, the hostess served her guest what they both thought was fruit punch or something, and it was so good she just kept having more and more. But it turned out to be wine, and after three glasses, she was flat-out drunk.
He'd laughed at the time. Now Drakken shuddered for the poor girl. She'd staggered home with everything spinning around her and no idea what was wrong with her, and he knew how miserable she must have been.
Her mother was understandably very upset. She marched herself right over to the friend's house, because there were no phones back then, and started yelling at the friend's mother - well, she wasn't biologically her mother, but she loved her and took care of her, and that made her something very close.
Then she got mad and started yelling back. What was it she'd said?
"Three tumblers full of anything would have made her sick even if it was just. . ." Whatever they'd thought it was. "If I had a child who was so greedy she'd drink three glasses of anything, I'd sober her up with a good spanking!"
The words went straight through Drakken. He would have said it was an honest mistake, no one's fault, but, no, apparently, apparently the accidentally-drunk girl was to blame.
And she'd been right. Little old ladies were always right, at least in books. Drakken stared down at his lap and tried in vain to smooth one of the dozens of wrinkles out of his lab coat, something sour forming on his tongue.
What if she was right? If he hadn't been such a greedy-guts and didn't drink so much punch, would he not have gotten drunk? His heart began to pound out her-fault-her-fault-her-fault, your-fault-your-fault-your-fault, smashing against his temples and making him feel ugly inside.
No, of course not, Drakken told himself sternly. That's just stupid. It would be like blaming someone who was out taking a stroll for getting run over by a car that was on the sidewalk instead of the street.
Plus, if it was his own piggish fault, Shego would have already laid into him for it. She wasn't the type to mince words - more like grind them up and fry them and serve them on a platter with lemon wedges. And why was it that he could remember almost word-for-word a speech he'd read in a book twenty-eight years ago when he forgot where he'd put his goggles five seconds after he set them down?
Obviously, the notion was beyond ridiculous, but it was hard to banish it completely. What if Jack Hench didn't need to label his alcoholic beverages, because anybody who was enough of a glutton to down four glasses of anything would get what was coming to them? What if - her-fault-your-fault, her-fault-your-fault - a you-deserve-it lurked in Shego's thoughts, behind those eyes that gave nothing away?
It all pressed in on him until Drakken had to come back with, "Ha-ha-ha, Shego. That's easy for you to say! You've probably never been drunk!"
He waited for her to lift her lip at him and sniff, "You got THAT right."
Instead, Shego leaned her head back and fixed her gaze on his calendar, looking nothing like the girl who could knock out men twice her size and demolish a building quicker than any wrecking ball. When she spoke, her voice was faraway, like she was having a flashback of her own, and it didn't sound like she was enjoying it any more than Drakken had his.
"Mildly tipsy. Once. Hated it." Shego locked eyes with him. For once, hers revealed something, but before Drakken could figure out what, it was gone. "Vowed never to do it again."
He gaped, not believing his ears. He couldn't picture Shego being anything but fierce and practical and in-control - three things that he'd discovered were impossible to be while you were drunk.
But then, it would explain how she knew so much about alcohol. Shego wasn't really the scientific type, so Drakken had always figure she was born knowing these things. But letting her know that would never do.
He studied his sidekick skeptically to show her he didn't automatically believe everything she told him. "So, this 'moderation'. . .has it been proven scientifically possible?" His voice came out cool and level, and he wasn't even trying too hard. That was what research did for him - unless he was researching cheerleading or rockets or something else that reminded him of someone he despised.
Shego kind of snorted. "Uh, yeah. It's what I do."
Of course it was. She always knew how to do everything in a way that wouldn't backfire on her.
Still, the very-recent memory of Shego's voice drifted through Drakken's sore head. Hated it. Vowed never to do it again. Apparently she'd had to learn the hard way, too, though evidently not as hard as his way.
Where would she have gotten alcohol anyway? In college, like him? Had she even gone to college? She hadn't seemed old enough to have completed it that first day she'd shown up on his doorstep, but she had to have finished because she was always making fun of him for dropping out. He'd heard you could take classes online now, though, which he just might do if he wasn't so busy conquering the world. . .
It was hardly the time for a revelation, but Drakken realized it anyway - that even though Shego was practically his family, he barely knew anything about her life before she came to work for him. The few things he had found out hadn't come from her: She used to be a superhero. She had four brothers who still were superheroes. And, because of that, she hated them so much she wouldn't even talk about them. That didn't make much sense to Drakken; a nice angry rant always made him feel better.
But Shego wasn't a ranter - at least not about that - so her past was a complete blank to him. He didn't know what she'd wanted to major in when she was in high school or who her best friend was in junior high or wanted she wanted to be when she was five.
Another pang prodded at Drakken, not as pointed as the shame, but thicker - disappointment, perhaps, or maybe just plain old sadness. He wished he'd known her when she was a little girl, so he could have protected her from whatever it was that made her so mean now.
And he wanted to hunt down whoever had given her alcohol and throw them to his sharks.
Drakken shook himself - ugh, and immediately wished he hadn't. This was no time to be getting all sentimental, not while Shego was waiting to hear his thoughts on the subject of moderation. He wasn't sure exactly what he was going to say, but he prepared his firmest voice, so that whatever it was would clearly be the final word on the matter.
Modd. Er. Ray. Tion. The letters loomed six inches tall in his mind's eye, but they didn't sparkle the way words were supposed to when he laid them out plain. Maybe he hadn't spelled it right.
Or maybe it was because he was picturing himself sipping from a glass of wine, staring down at its ominous contents, knowing full well the power it had to turn you into a dopey, halfwit version of yourself. Made his legs feel unsteady, and Drakken knew if he'd been standing up, his knees would have buckled and taken him to the ground.
As it was, the wobble crept up his throat in ripples and turned his firm voice into a nervous twitter, erasing the speech he'd just begun to rehearse. His mouth was already moving, though, and Drakken found himself grabbing the first words he could catch and tossing them out, hoping that they were coherent. "No, Shego," he sputtered. "I never want to drink evil fruit punch - ever again!"
Shego surprised him with a chuckle. "Evil fruit punch - man, you are such a kick, Doc."
Her lips were doing their twitchy thing. It wasn't salaaming at his feet, but he'd take what he could get.
"That's probably not a bad idea, actually," she continued, and Drakken managed a tired smile because that was the closest thing to a compliment he'd heard all morning. "I don't know about you, but I do not want this to happen again."
"Because I ruined your evening," Drakken said completely flatly. Okay, mostly flatly, with a ten-percent chance of quivers.
"Because you ruined my evening," Shego replied with equal-or-greater flatness. Jaw set, face smooth, she looked like Shego again. "For one thing, I was looking forward to the Seniors' company, and do you think I got to spend any time with them?"
It didn't sound like the sort of question he was actually supposed to answer, but Drakken guessed, "No?" anyway, just because this calm type of anger was so unnerving. At least when her pitch shot up and her hands glowed and a vein pulsed in her forehead, he knew to stay out of her way.
"Ding-ding-ding. We have a winner." Shego shook her head, hair swaying. Why did she have to have so much hair? Made him dizzy. "No, I didn't, because by the time they showed up, you were already -"
He plastered his hands over his ears so he wouldn't hear "plastered" again. One last memory snuck up on him and punched him in the face.
Him and Shego - Shego and he - whatever - them making their way down the sidewalk outside of HenchCo. Her walking, him stumbling, leaning heavily on her and weaving his way around squares of concrete that were shifting under his feet. Shego abruptly stepped off to the side, causing Drakken to nearly fall on his face as he followed her, to let two figures coming from the opposite direction pass.
But they didn't pass. They halted as if Drakken and Shego were stop signs and stood there investigating them to see if everything was all right.
Even with his bleary, drunken vision, Drakken recognized the stooped shoulders clad in a fancy red European suit, and the hulking ones right next to them. The Seniors.
He couldn't get his eyes to focus, but somehow he saw Senior's face as clearly as if he'd been highlighted in neon yellow. It was kind and concerned and not the least bit suspicious, which only made Drakken feel guiltier for some reason.
Anyway, Senior asked what was wrong, while Junior stood there, looking confused and Drakken struggled to keep his balance, and Shego told him - what had she told him? Anxiety lapped at his gut. There were so many things she could've been saying, none of them good, all of them true.
Suddenly, Drakken could see the lock on a shower stall jittering, watch Carl fling open the door, hear rough, middle-school-boy laughter mixed with his own little-girl shrieks as he tried to cover himself with the curtain. He was open and vulnerable, exposed to the world.
He strained to hear his partner-in-crime, but his ears didn't register anything except a dull roar. He enlarged the image to see if he could read her lips, but that pixelated everything like a computer with cheap graphics. What he knew without seeing, though, was that Senior was absorbing every detail - not only of Shego's explanation, but also of Drakken's sideways slant and quite literally punch-drunk expression.
For a minute, Drakken couldn't remember how to speak. The shame threatened to smother him. "Senior," he finally got out in a raspy whisper.
Shego squinted one eye at him. "Say what?"
"Senior!" Drakken repeated, much louder this time. It came out with an edge panic, a sensation more familiar but no pleasanter than the shame. The blaze in his chest made the pain in his head seem like a finger prick.
For a blink, Shego looked startled, but her voice was even as she said, "What about Senior?"
"The Seniors were getting there right when he left - " he began.
Naturally, she had to interrupt. "Yeah, I just said that."
"- and Senior asked if everything was okay, and you told him something!" Drakken shrieked over her. He could hear his own voice going raw, careening out of control, but he didn't care. He could imagine Senior's face twisted with revulsion, his wonderful, wise, wrinkled lip lifting the way everyone else's did, and it wasn't a picture he could live with. "What did you tell him?"
"Okay, okay, okay." Shego raised both palms like she was trying to hold off a rabid dog. "Calm down."
Was she kidding?
Shego dug her fingers into her hair, and they disappeared up to the knuckles. "Look, look. Just give me a minute."
Drakken stayed stock-still, except for the nervous wiping of his sweaty palms on his thighs, trying not to look like he was about to burst wide open. But he could feel his eyes practically popping out of their sockets, and they bulged farther the longer Shego raked her hair and didn't answer.
After what felt like ten thousand years, his sidekick finally untangled her fingers from her hair and stared at him solemnly - like, why couldn't she do that while he was explaining his schemes? "I don't remember exactly what I said," she said so slowly that Drakken seriously considered shaking her, "but I think it was something like 'Dr. Drakken had a bit too much to drink. I'm taking him home so he can sleep it off.'"
The chest-flames stopped in mid-sizzle. Those words weren't mocking or flippant to meant to mortify him, though they still did, just a smidge. In fact, he couldn't think of any nicer way to put it without lying - which Senior probably would've seen through - or telling him that he'd thought it was fruit punch - which she hadn't known. "You - you said that?" Drakken asked cautiously, just in case he'd heard completely wrong and his life really was wrecked after all.
"That's what I said," Shego confirmed. "'Cause, I mean, you don't say 'plastered' to Senior. You just don't."
Forget shaking her. Now the urge to hug her was overpowering, but Drakken resisted. He'd tried that a few times, and it always resulted in green plasma scorching holes in his sleeves. Instead, he closed his eyes to savor Shego's moment of respect, even if it had been more for Senior's sake than his.
"Yes," he murmured gruffly. "That is satisfactory."
Shego snickered under her breath, the way she tended to do when he used big words, and the moment passed. Still, when Drakken considered how she'd gotten him home safe and brought him Gatorade and everything, he concluded that he could let it go. Just this once.
No sooner had he made that decision than a little whimper slipped, entirely unpermitted, through his lips. All of a sudden, all Drakken could think about was the ocean surrounding his island lair - hence, why it was an island lair - and not the calm sea that taunted him when he was a bundle of twisted nerves. No, what he saw was the dark, moody water, the perfect backdrop for his maniacal monologues, on a thunderstorm-night, when the waves tossed each other around in the wind and crashed themselves angrily on the beach, their filmy foam flying straight up in the air. His stomach was beginning to feel like that.
Drakken's eyes opened to see Shego studying him quizzically, which also never ended well. "Why do you care?" she asked.
Her eyes were their all-seeing selves and he knew his were being their all-telling selves, so he shifted them away from her. One look at them and she'd come back with the answer, an answer even Drakken wasn't one-hundred-percent sure of. He didn't need Shego telling him any more things he hadn't figured out about himself, not today.
Drakken stuck his nose up in the air haughtily. "I don't," he said, careful to keep his voice in dead, couldn't-care-less zone.
"Yeah, obviously you do." Shego reached over and poked his shoulder, nearly jolting him out of his skin. "So what's the deal?"
At least she hadn't said "sitch." Drakken didn't answer, just pressed his lips tighter so they wouldn't vibrate. Another burp - a very large one - was creeping up his throat. He swallowed it and immediately felt like he'd eaten a hand grenade.
Shego's face got that I-figured-it-out shine. Needles stabbed at the back of his neck.
"Oh, I get it," she said, drawing out the "I." Clearly she found this delicious. "You don't want Senior thinking you're some kind of lush, do you?"
Lush. Another word he hadn't heard before today and never wanted to hear again. And she'd gotten disturbingly close to the reason for his discomfort - okay, so she was right on the nose, but he'd never admit that to her. It felt like a special secret, tucked somewhere in the deepest part of him, and Drakken hadn't had too many of those. He wanted to keep this one.
"We're not talking about it," Drakken hissed. "I mean it," he added forcefully before she could even come up with a retort. "Change the subject!"
Mischief sparked in Shego's eyes. "If I do, do I get a raise?"
Ugh. Leave it to her to find a way to make money off a catastrophe like this. She knew full well he wasn't made of money - in fact, he was barely scraping by, hardly able to afford to pay her her current salary.
He hadn't told Shego that part, and it wasn't a fun secret to keep. Instead of staying hidden away somewhere safe inside him, it oozed out of whatever compartment he tried to lock it in, rubbing at the itch in his chest. He shot a scowl at his sidekick, all ready with his lecture on how evil family should come first, but what came out was, "Ghenngh nik!"
"Okay, how about for getting you home and making sure you didn't get yourself killed last night?" There was nothing playful about Shego anymore. Her arms were folded smartly across her chest, her chin coming to a point you could have cut yourself on.
Still, Drakken noticed for the first time that she looked almost as worn-out as he must have. Her hair was sticking out in funny places, olive-green circles cupped her eyes, and even the smirk she gave him seemed tired. Some small part of him felt bad for her. Whatever she'd done last night had probably been above and beyond the call of duty, and unlike James - at least, the James who was his college chum - he knew Shego wasn't above extortion.
He was sick of being broke, sick of the red that had overtaken his checkbook, even sick of the villainous greed that rose up in him when he HenchCo's state-of-the-art black helicopters or one of those automatic trashcans on the home shopping network. But Shego was even more fond of the green stuff than he was. If she wanted a raise - or, worse, deserved a raise - and didn't get one -
"All right," Drakken said reluctantly. He wasn't sure how he was going to come up with the extra money, but if he didn't Shego might leave, and that was the worst scenario he could imagine. "On two conditions."
Shego blinked as if she'd just remembered he was in charge. "Which are?" Her brows morphed from checkmarks to question marks.
Drakken adopted his firmest expression and thrust out his own chin - that big, round one that wouldn't point like hers if he went after it with her nail file. "One: my mother never hears about this."
The twinkle was back in Shego's eye, though she at least had the decency not to grin. Drakken didn't see anything amusing about the entire situation. If Mother found out her "little baby Drewbie" had gotten drunk - even on accident - her reaction would make Shego's seem like, "Ehh, no big deal."
"Done," Shego said quickly. She flashed two fingers at him. "And number two?"
Drakken pulled in a deep breath, held it until his lung begged for mercy, let it out in a big whoosh. His eyes were watering, and that made it seem like he was observing his surroundings from behind a layer of glass that hadn't been cleaned in six months. "Tell me everything's going to be all right," he commanded the green-and-black smear he guessed was his sidekick. Hornets hummed in his ears.
Shego's eyes either hardened or softened; he couldn't tell which through the smudgy glass. "Ooo-kaaay." She stretched the word out tight, the way Kim Possible did when she thought his plans were nonsensical because she wasn't smart enough to understand them. Why, Drakken wondered, was he unlucky enough to repeatedly encounter people who could turn even the word "okay" into an insult?
But most of the snark disappeared from Shego's voice when she said, "Everything's gonna be all right, Doc." She even leaned over and patted his knee, which was somehow degrading and reassuring at the same time.
There was a tiny glimmer of security before the world disappeared in a blur of heat that seemed to rise directly from the center of his sternum. The wasps droned so loud, Drakken barely heard himself say, "Good. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to vomit my guts out."
And he proceeded to hang over the side of the bed - that must have been why they called it a hangover, he realized dazedly - and do just that.
()()()()()()
"Well, since you're obviously not in dire peril anymore," Shego said ten torturous minutes later, "I don't see a whole lot of point in sticking around."
Drakken knew she was right - would it have killed her to be wrong, just once? Of course, he didn't want her to be wrong about this, since that would mean he really was dying and that thought gave him no satisfaction.
Besides, he knew if he were going to die from this, it would've been last night. In a way, the worst was over. Headaches, upset stomachs - he'd had those before. The room wasn't spinning, the ground didn't tilt beneath him, and there was a connection between his brain and his body again, and all of those put him in a much better place than he was twelve hours ago.
Which brought him back to Shego's being right. He wasn't in any danger, unless you counted the danger of going insane from the sheer vise-like grip pain hand on your head, and she didn't need to be there anymore. She'd groused about having to get the henchmen to clean out the bucket, like Drakken had wanted to bring up what had made him miserable enough going down, and made several less-than-friendly remarks about how pathetic he was in his current condition, and Drakken was becoming less and less grateful for her presence. Scientifically speaking, there was no reason for her to stay.
Except for the fact that he always felt so much safer when Shego was around. There was some logic behind that, too - prior experience and the patterns formed in the past - but he knew Shego wouldn't buy that. It was also an embarrassing, unvillainous thing to admit, and Drakken wasn't desperate enough to risk what remained of his evil reputation.
"So - I'm gonna go home and take a nap," Shego went on. Her voice sounded loud to his tired ears, sending his already-nervous thoughts skittering to unreachable corners of his brain. She paused to yawn - something he'd rarely seen her do - and it made Drakken have to yawn, too. One of the world's great mysteries.
He considered protesting that decision, just because someone was punching him in the forehead, over and over, and he needed to fight with somebody. But he found he couldn't, not with what was left in his stomach boiling and Shego standing there looking so human.
"Very well," Drakken conceded, making sure to sound pleasant like the stern-but-benevolent boss he was. He waved his dismissively, shooing away the image she surely had of this helpless creature who couldn't function without her. "Go home and wink forty times or whatever the saying is. . ."
Shego snickered even though he hadn't done anything silly and strode toward the door, each step she took away from him making Drakken a little lonelier. He wanted to her to leave him alone - but he didn't want her to leave him alone. He groaned; and people wondered why he preferred differential calculus to his emotions.
Halfway across the room, his associate stopped and threw a glance back at him, the steel in her glare softened by sleepiness. "You should probably try to get some rest, too." Her face kind of mushed for a second, like she was seeing a frightened toddler instead of a notorious villain. Drakken's neck hairs stirred on principle, but he was too exhausted to argue - and for him, that was really saying something. "I mean, the only cure for a hangover is - "
"Sleep?" he interrupted hopefully. If that was the case, it should work out just fine, considering all he wanted to do was melt into the bedspread and take a seven-hour nap.
Shego shook her head, and Drakken remembered to look away from the swaying hair. "Time," she said. "And sleep's probably the least painful way to spend that time."
That made sense, good sense. Drakken closed his eyes to let his mind focus on processing that information and storing it for future reference.
Future reference? Drakken stiffened into suspended animation, his brain stilled in mid-scan. Future reference?
What, was he planning to do this again? Preparing for the inevitable repeat performance that he would be powerless to resist?
Drakken's eyes sprang back open wide. "Shego!" he blurted just as her hand touched the doorknob, just before his throat closed up.
Shego didn't turn to face him, but he could see the sigh in her shoulders. "What is it, Dr. D?" she asked tightly. If he'd thought he'd heard a trace of tenderness before, it was long gone now.
It took Drakken a minute to regain any capacity for speech. "Am I some kind of alcoholic now?" he inquired, teeth clacking together in that uncontrollable way he hated.
Shego's response wasn't exactly what he'd expected. She threw back her head and howled. Drakken tried to laugh, too, but the best he could manage was a dry cough. Surely if she was laughing, it couldn't be that bad. . . right?
"Heh-heh-heh," he was finally able to titter. "Um, why are we laughing?"
Shego's chuckles stopped as if she'd understood the gravity of the situation, but the amusement playing around her mouth told him she hadn't. "Because you - " she stabbed a finger at Drakken - "just got drunk for the first time in your entire life - completely by accident, might I add - and now you're worried you're an alcoholic."
Well, gee when she put it that way, it sounded kind of stupid. "So I take it that's a 'no'?" Drakken ventured, pretending to be fascinated by his hands. Without the gloves they seemed to have shrunk since yesterday, covered with picked-at hangnails and a few hives left over from his latest chemical experiment gone horribly wrong.
"Yeah, it's a 'no,'" she said dryly. Her brows hiked. "That is, unless you have the powerful urge to go out and do it again."
Again? His jaw nearly came unhinged. The thought was incomprehensible.
Drakken managed to shake what felt like a head full of cement. Things were starting to go fuzzy around the edges and float before his eyes. It was from sheer fatigue, he knew, but it was so much like being drunk his stomach lurched again, and this time he was sure the hangover had nothing to do with it.
"That's what I thought." Shego sounded like she was about to burst back into laughter at any moment.
Drakken, on the other hand, didn't know if he'd ever laugh again. Even with the assurance that he wasn't a worthless drunk and Shego being almost friendly and the knowledge that his mother would never find out - even with all that, he still felt kind of grimy. It could have been the taste in his mouth, he guessed.
Whatever the reason, he said, "No," as solemnly as he could. "I'm never going near anything with alcohol again!"
Shego's face took on that teasing shine. "Not even mouthwash?"
Drakken froze. "Wha?"
"Mouthwash," his sidekick replied matter-of-factly. "Most kinda have alcohol." The shine got brighter. "And, by the way, you could really use some right now."
Now that was just uncalled for. He scowled so hard he felt it draw sharp creases along the sides of his mouth. Shego gave a smooth-faced frown in reply. Youth truly was wasted on the young.
The mouthwash revelation was much more important, however. In horror, Drakken thought of the tall bottle lurking on the shelf above the bathroom sink - smelling so innocent and minty, when all along it had been harboring an ingredient of pure evil! All it would take were a couple of swishes with some accidental swallowing, and he would be stumbling into walls again.
Shego must have noticed his stricken look, because she came and parked herself on the edge of his bed like they were having a friendly conversation. "See, the thing with alcoholics is that part of their bodies come to need that alcohol," she explained. "And that part needs it so bad they're willing to destroy the rest of their bodies to get it."
She rolled her eyes heavenward. "Geez, I sound like a pamphlet. Does that make sense to you, though?"
Drakken nodded with great effort, even though he wasn't sure how much of that he'd actually understood. Each word had dropped like it weighed five tons, so he knew they had to be important. He'd have to pull them back out and examine them later, but for now it was all he could do to keep his eyes open and his attention on Shego.
His sidekick leaned in closer, her spread-apart hands framing the air like bookends. "Look, what happened last night was an honest mistake. A really stupid one," she added with a scoff, "but just a mistake. Don't go getting a complex over it or anything."
Drakken exhaled shakily. As snappy and no-nonsense as those words had been, there was a strange comfort to them. Maybe it was because they were calm and sensible and straightened everything crooked about last night. Or maybe it was just because they came out of Shego's mouth.
"Though, if you do this again -" here her voice regained its sharpness - "I will have your head."
He tucked the covers up to his chin, feeling everything that stuck up above them throb. "You can have it now," Drakken mumbled.
Shego's lips twitched infinitesimally, and she got up and started back toward the door. Obviously, she was done talking, but the conversation seemed incomplete to him, like a chemical formula lacking a key ingredient, or a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing right in the middle. There had to be something he could say that would erase the memory of the night before and take the shame with it.
And then the piece locked into place, bright lights flashed, the equation balanced, and the bell all the way at the top of the pole dinged in triumph. "Shego!" he burst out, sitting bolt upright so dizzily fast he threatened to topple off the bed. "Wait!"
Shego spun around, looking entirely unamused. Usually that was a little. . . unsettling, but Drakken refused to drop his gaze this time. Instead, he looked her right in the eye, tapped his fingertips together, and sputtered what he should have said twenty-two years ago. "Thank you for saving my life."
Shego didn't fling her arms around her neck or tell him all was forgiven. She did something better. She smiled, and he wished he had a camera. She looked so nice when she smiled. Young and almost cute, like the little sister he never had. She should do it more often.
Drakken did look at his lap then, because he could feel his eyes softening. Shego didn't need to see that, not after she'd already witnessed him getting drunk and barfing and otherwise making a general fool of himself.
"See ya," Shego said lightly before he heard the door squeak. That was pretty good for her. Usually she didn't even bother with a goodbye before she left, sometimes while he was in mid-sentence, which really burned him up - and, you know what, he wasn't going to think about that right now. Anger used up too much energy.
Drakken twiddled his fingers in a little wave because he'd run out of things to say. Even the chopped-up syllables that could always be counted on to pop out of his mouth when he was frustrated had abandoned him.
All the parts of his brain that weren't absolutely necessary for survival were shutting down, preparing for sleep that wouldn't come. As sick and tuckered out as he was, he should have drifted right off, but Drakken's eyes kept flying open as if their lids couldn't bear to touch, and there was a weird twitch to his left leg that jolted his entire body out of relaxation every thirty seconds.
Drakken could only lie there, listening to Shego's fading footsteps and his own ragged breathing and the soothing hum of the air conditioner. None of them were loud enough to drown out the voices in his head.
Not audible, disembodied, crazy-person voices - that wasn't his particular area of madness - but recordings from his past. Apparently well-preserved ones, because he could hear the voices mocking him as plainly as if it had happened to day - Carl Thompson's, Jack Hench's, James Possible's, Professor Dementor's. There were times when it was easy to be recklessly evil and not care what people thought of him. Right now wasn't one of those times.
Leave me alone! he ordered them. Get away from me, or suffer the wrath of Dr. Drakken!
The voices didn't budge. They weren't afraid of him. Neither were the faces that popped up to join them - Duff Killigan's amused, Junior's twisted into a question mark, Dementor's condescending, Shego's annoyed.
Worst of all was Senior's. Drakken hadn't gotten a good look at him last night, so his imagination had to take over, and he watched that kind old face flip through every possibility from concern to disgust. The one that made Drakken want to throw up, though, was the blank expression, a mask of required politeness that hid Senior's thoughts. Thoughts like, That is the most repugnant thing I've seen all week, or Now THERE'S someone without an ounce of self-control.
Drakken would have punched his pillow if he'd had the strength. He wouldn't, shouldn't, couldn't care about Senior's view of him. After all, what was he but an old man with a cane and a passing interest in villainy? And no matter what he thought of Drakken, it wouldn't change the fact that Drakken was the one destined to rule the world, so his opinion didn't matter.
It didn't.
Condescending! That was the word he'd been looking for twenty minutes ago, the one that described Dementor to a T, whatever a "T" was. I hate him because he's so condescending! he mentally crowed in triumph and wished Shego were here to hear it. Why did the right words only come to him when nobody was around to show them off to?
Ah, well. He'd make sure to impress her with it tomorrow.
Hugging the perfect-word feeling to his chest, Drakken rolled over as his belly gurgled its protest. He wrapped his arms into a protective fold over it and snuggled into the pillow, repeating "condescending" to himself so he wouldn't lose it and remembering Shego smiling at him. His eyelids drooped down into darkness - comforting darkness, not the thick, dangerous kind that had threatened to swallow him this morning when he thought he was dead. After a few minutes, he drifted off into a wonderful, dreamless sleep.
()()()()()
The book that Drakken references is, of course, "Anne of Green Gables."
NOTE 11/13 - Edited to fix some typos and junk.
