#drdrakken

He scowled and took his gloves off and tossed them aside, and then took off his lab coat, which was covered in mud. He noted that the inside was still dry and clean, and after a moment spread it out against the wall. He almost moved Shego to sit on it until realizing that she was still wet. He would move her when she was dry.

He picked up one of the bags of chips and was about to tear into it when he realized it would be unfair to eat in front of Shego when she couldn't.

She would never eat again.

Feeling sick to his stomach, he tossed the bag aside. He pushed his hair out of his face, and then did the same for her. He thought a moment and wrung the water out of her hair, and then lifted her head to try to lean it in a way that was more upright.

"So...so the paralysis...will last a long time," he explained. He tried to think of what she may be thinking and what questions she would ask. "I'm not sure how long since...we don't know how much venom the spider injected."

He looked at her still face. In his mind, he could hear her yelling about how it was all his fault, and how if he knew about spiders then he should be doing something to solve the problem.

"Um...when the rain stops, I'll try to fix the hover-car again. And then we'll go to a hospital. We're close to home. I know it hurts, but...it won't make a difference if we wait."

He stood up quickly and moved out of her line of sight as he felt the threat of tears in his eyes again. He was lying to her, but he also wasn't. It wouldn't make a difference to wait...because nothing could be done.

He turned and looked down at her again and made the decision not to be quite so selfish. He sat down next to her and cautiously held her gloved hand in his bare one. He moved near enough to press his dry shoulder into her wet one, and reached up again to brush the damp hair back. That time he pulled it all the way back so it wouldn't fall in her face again, and he stared at her half-lidded eyes.

"Would you like your eyes open, or closed?" he asked. He knew she wouldn't be able to answer. "If it keeps raining...and we have to sleep here, then I'll close them for you. Uhm..." He looked down to where he held her hand. He wondered if she wouldn't like it, and if she would rather he wasn't leaning up against her side. "If...if you don't like me being so close, you can...use me for target practice later. I was just thinking...if the spider had gotten me and I was paralyzed, I would want someone...I would want...you...close to me."

He bit his lip and mentally kicked himself. There couldn't possibly be a worse time to be talking about his feelings.

They had been on three dates. Only three. And each had only gone 'okay' as far as he was hoping. Shego hadn't left the dates early or set anything on fire, but she hadn't seemed as thrilled as he was either. None of the dates had ended with her smiling. But, she kept saying yes to his invitations... They were supposed to have gone on another at the upcoming weekend.

Tears filled his eyes again as he realized it would never happen. He would never get to tell her...that he loved her.

He wiped his eyes as quietly as he could with his free hand. He couldn't do it... He couldn't tell her something so important when she couldn't respond, and when she was dying... It wasn't fair. Especially if she didn't feel the same, then it would only make everything worse.

He sighed and looked back at her still face. Her lips were slightly parted, and he could see wetness at one corner of her mouth. Rain? Saliva? He held his breath and set his fingers beneath her chin and felt for her carotid artery...

"I'm just checking how fast your pulse is..." he said as he stared into her half-lidded eyes. The fear that he could have been talking to a corpse for the past twenty minutes nearly choked him, and he sighed in relief as he felt her heart beating strong, but far too rapidly beneath his fingers. He let himself gently stroke her cheek before he returned his hand to his lap, and then mentally kicked himself. That could have been very unwelcome.

"Sorry..." he said.

He took a deep breath and thought about what he would actually do when it stopped raining. He would have to fix the hover-car eventually...since he wasn't about to leave Shego to find help without any transportation. And not when giant monster-spiders were around, and perhaps even worse things.

"I think I can have the hover-car fixed...pretty quickly, when the rain stops. I really think it was just a blown fuse... I can replace it with another from a non-essential feature..."

Drakken's brow furrowed as a memory suddenly struck him. Of all things to think about, on the very worst day of his life...

"That actually reminds me...of this one camping trip with Cousin Eddie... I know you don't like him, so...so you'll like this story," Drakken continued. "It was the summer before I moved to Colorado. He said I needed to have one last adventure since I had...become so nerdy and lame, and that he was going to rekindle my wild side. He did that air guitar thing, you know, where he plays it really lamely... That's how he described me.

"It started badly since he insisted we just take the bikes, and I knew we couldn't take enough camping gear on motorcycles. But he insisted. He said we didn't need tents, that real men just slept in the dirt... We started at a camp site and then hiked out to be in the woods and somewhere more private. I was glad for that since the camp site was full and...it was embarrassing just to come in on motorcycles with almost no supplies. And there were...some really cute girls at one of the camp sites. Th-that's important."

Drakken swallowed nervously as he recalled the memory. He wondered if it was okay to talk about past romantic interests with Shego... His chest tightened in pain again as he realized that his relationship with Shego was over. He tried to shake off the thought and continued talking.

"And...I promise I'll get to how this is relevant," he said, knowing Shego would be complaining if she could. "It was all fine at first... I was cold at night since we didn't have sleeping bags, and Eddie ate all of the snacks that first night. And drank most of the booze... Not that I wanted much, I was never much of a drinker... And I was nervous since we didn't have any tents or other protection. Eddie told me that real men wrestled the bears into submission."

Drakken rolled his eyes. He glanced at Shego. "I'm rolling my eyes right now... So anyway...the next day Eddie went for a ride while I had no food. I had already decided the trip was worthless and was getting ready to leave. But then Eddie came back and said the cute girls from the other camp site were in the lake...s-skinny dipping. And he hauled me up onto the back of his bike before I could say no, and we drove to the lake. Eddie..." Drakken sighed in disdain, "didn't waste any time. He took his clothes off and stepped out of trees in full view of the world... He has a very overrated opinion of his body, if you want to know. I was so mad at him that I...nyeheh...I pulled out one of the fuses on his bike and tossed it away into the forest. It only took a second, he didn't notice. But then he had turned around and grabbed me and...started pulling my clothes off too. Please...don't picture that, I looked awful before college.

"So Eddie pushed me out of the trees with him to join the girls... I think he had been drinking that morning too... I kept trying to hide behind trees, and the girls saw us and...after they'd hidden themselves in the water they started laughing. Eddie tried to play it off... Tried to make jokes about how good he looked... He wouldn't let me go, so I finally ran down into the water to hide. Eddie stood up on a large rock and started flexing, and posing. The girls kept laughing and Eddie finally got in and approached them. He was actually able to strike up a conversation. But when he tried touching one of them they got into a splash fight. Two of the girls ran off, but the others stayed... One of them even apologized to Eddie for the splashing, which I thought was completely absurd... And it turns out— Ah...I won't get ahead of myself.

"Anyway, Eddie is talking to them and then he mentions me... He said that between the two of us we could...we could satisfy all of them. I have never wanted to kill my cousin more than that moment..." Drakken grumbled. "And one of the girls said that wouldn't be a problem, that we'd already given them enough entertainment. They said if we came near them again they would call the police. And then they got out of the water and left. Eddie tried begging...and cat-calling them... I was too embarrassed to even look. And after they left I ran back up to where the bike was parked. Do you remember...I said two of the girls had run away before? They stole our clothes. The others were just distracting us. They stole my clothes and I hadn't even done anything! But..." Drakken sighed, "remember I had pulled out a fuse and thrown it away? We couldn't find it. We searched for over an hour. So we had to walk...back...to the camp grounds. Naked. Eddie yelled at me the whole time for how uncool it was for me to sabotage his bike, and I yelled at him for forcing me to join in on all of his stupid ideas... We've never gotten along as well after that."

Drakken sank back against the rock with another sigh as he finished the story. The memory wasn't nearly as amusing as he'd remembered.

"I'm sorry, that...probably wasn't a very good story after all..."