A/N: The events in this story follow immediately after my earlier story, Crimson and Clover, which itself is a sequel to my first story, The Visitors. If you haven't read either one of those, I would suggest doing so, because otherwise, this story will be very odd, kinda like me. :) The short story Trouble might come in handy too. And If you have read the other two/three, then you should know by now that this story will be Kigo, so if it offends, please read something else. I won't be offended, I swear. Different strokes for different folks and all that. Most of the characters belong to Disney; some don't. And finally, I should warn people that this one is not going to be as humorous as the other two; it is going to be a little angsty in places.

Chapter 1 – Dreams

"Beep, Beep, Be-beep!"

The four-toned, subtle yet unignorable chime rang throughout the bedroom. A dark-haired, pale green-skinned woman, although already awake, patently ignored it, knowing that it meant she would have to move and not wanting to in the least.

"Beep, Beep, Be-beep!" it rang a second time, and this time the noise roused the red-haired woman also sleeping in the bed.

"Don't you think you should get that?" Kim mumbled sleepily.

"No," Shego said firmly, determinedly maintaining a grumpy look on her face even though Kim's breath on her bare back threatened to make her giggle. "Besides, it's yours," she pointed out.

"Then I had better get it, I guess," Kim sighed, pulling back the arm that had wrapped around Shego's waist.

Shego caught her hand and promptly put it back where it had been, restoring the arm to where it belonged. And, for good measure, she gently tugged on it so that Kim's body cupped hers even tighter. "Sorry, Princess, but I'm afraid I can't allow you to do that," she informed Kim, and smiled when she felt Kim chuckle softly.

The Kimmunicator continued its appeal, but both women ignored it, as least until the noise roused a third member of the household and a cry could be heard coming from the nursery next door. "Sounds like Uncle Wade woke up your daughter again," Kim chuckled, and Shego grumbled something impolite under her breath. "Make a deal with you, Junior," Kim offered. "I'll call Wade back, you go rescue our damsel in distress, and if Wade doesn't need anything urgent, we'll all come back in here and snuggle."

"You drive a hard bargain, Pink," Shego mock-grumbled, "but okay, if I have to go get Mimmie, I suppose I will." Kim laughed softly and withdrew her arms, rolling and hopping out of bed in one fluid motion. She grabbed her robe so that Uncle Wade didn't get more on his viewscreen than he had been anticipating and called him back.

Shego unapologetically waited until Kim was covered up and there was nothing else to see before she jumped out of bed and grabbed her own robe, throwing it on as she went next door. She walked over to the crib and looked over the side, smiling fondly as the infant within immediately stopped crying and lit up into a smile. She was a cutie, all big green eyes and wispy red hair, oddly reminiscent of another baby that Shego had once met. Her full name was Miriam Anne Goshen-Possible, but no one ever called her Miriam. Shego preferred Mimmie, Kim's family called her Mimi, and her own family called her Migo. Having a Migo and a Mego did get confusing from time to time, but it wasn't any more confusing than having two Wegos. At least Mimmie and her uncle looked nothing alike.

"Hey there, Mimmie," Shego said, gently lifting the baby by her arms and cradling her into the crook of her left arm. "Let's go find Mommy." She stepped over a half-asleep, half-guarding-the-crib clouded leopard. "Morning, Anna," Shego said and Anna growled back an acknowledgement before falling completely asleep now that her charge was gone.

After emerging into the hallway, Shego took a look around for Kim, but didn't see her. "Hey Pumpkin?" Shego called out, trying to find where in the upstairs of the Mansion her wife had gotten to. There was no answer, and Shego frowned, sharing a glance with the baby tucked in her arm. "Where'd Mommy get herself to?" she asked Mimmie, gently swinging her. The baby laughed and Shego joined in. "Yeah, you've got a silly Mommy," she confirmed.

"I would say she's got two of them," Kim interjected wryly, popping out of the upstairs office. "Hey there, little love," she said, smiling, and Mimi giggled. "Wade didn't have anything all that important," Kim said. Her eyebrow quirked and Shego looked at her warily, knowing something was afoot. Kim kissed her, deftly distracting her before impishly spiriting Mimi away.

"Hey!" Shego protested. "I found her fair and square!"

"Well, you get us both if you come back to bed," Kim tempted.

Shego's eyebrow arched as she looked condescendingly at Kim. "Are you insinuating that I, one of the most feared women in the world, would want to do something so incredibly soft as to have 'snuggle-time' with the likes of you two?" she asked archly.

"Um, yeah, I am, 'cause you do," Kim replied, unrepentantly confident. "And I'll turn the puppy-dog pout on you if you don't." She turned it on full-force and Mimi, having been coached for a while, did the same.

"You taught the kid how to do it," Shego said flatly, seeing her demise in those sorrowful looks. "I am so screwed," she sighed.

"Pretty much," Kim confirmed. "So back to bed?"

"Yes, dear," Shego responded affectionately.

Kim chuckled and turned towards their bedroom, only to be stopped by the sound of the doorbell ringing. She and Shego glanced at one another and shrugged, neither one knowing who it was. Being the far less modest of the two, Shego padded down the stairs to answer it, completely unconcerned that she was in her robe and had nothing on underneath.

The speculative look she wore deepened into a scowl when she saw who was on her doorstep. "How may I help you, Lieutenant?" she asked through gritted teeth, very, very, unhappy that her wife-and-baby cuddle time was being delayed due to the likes of her.

"It is 'captain' now, Ms. Goshen," the Lieutenant said. "And I am here to arrest you."

"Again?" Shego questioned in a bored tone. "What is this, like the 20th time you've tried?"

"32nd," the Lieutenant corrected succinctly. "But this time your, um, wife is being arrested too, so she won't be here to protect you. Now please hand over the baby, because she is going into protective custody."

"Over my dead body," Shego said darkly. "My wife is perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but if you even think about touching our child…" Here she stopped, wanting to finish with, "I'll kill you where you stand," but knowing that the Lieutenant would add threatening a police officer to the rest of her trumped-up charges. Shego glanced up to the top of the stairs to see that Kimmie and Mimmie were okay, but they were no longer there. Kim had retreated to the bedroom as soon as she had seen it was the Lieutenant at the door. Shego had a brief stab of panic that they had already arrested Kim and taken Mimmie away, but Kim emerged seconds later fully clothed with Mimmie in her baby sling.

Kim gazed down at Shego and Shego looked back up at her, her heart breaking as she conveyed her message to Kim with her eyes. "Run," her eyes pleaded. "Don't let them get either of you because of me." Kim nodded and retreated into the nursery, emerging with a diaper bag and a pissed-off clouded leopard. She spared one more look at Shego and then disappeared along with Mimmie and Anna into one of the Mansion's many secret passages.

"Should we go after her, Captain?" one of the officers asked.

"It won't do any good," the Lieutenant said dourly. "She and that kid are halfway to Mexico by now. Besides, we got what we came for," she explained, smirking at Shego.

Shego was not listening or even paying attention to anything but her own thoughts. The love of her life and their baby girl had just disappeared, gone, at her behest and forced to become fugitives because of crimes that she had committed. It was all her fault, she knew that and the guilt was overwhelming. She should have never fallen in love, never tried to make a life with Kim because people like her weren't allowed such privileges. She bowed her head, the tears came, and she could nothing to stop them.

Shego awoke with a start. What in the hell had that been about? she wondered, noting that her cheeks were still damp from where she had been crying in her sleep. She took a deep breath, trying desperately to banish the sadness and overwhelming sense of loss that her dream had inspired. It didn't help, and nothing was going to, for as a voice broke into her thoughts, she realized she had not quite woken up yet. Either that, or she had managed to travel several years into the past.

"Sheila, sweetie, are you okay?" a plaintive voice asked. "I know I shouldn't have told you like this, but…"

"But what, Nina?" Shego challenged, that still familiar, slightly high-pitched whine clueing her in to where and when she was and causing her to snap back into being a petulant, pissed off sixteen year old in love for the first time with a first girlfriend that was telling her it had all been a mistake. "What part of 'I'll love you forever' has changed?" she asked. "I'm still the same person I was a year ago; I am still a smart mouth with pale green skin that has glowing hands. My feelings for you haven't changed. Hell, I still go to this insanely expensive boarding school, so even if you were only after my money, I still have that."

"It's not you, Sheila," Nina protested. "It's me; I just don't think I am gay. I think I was just doing some experimenting."

Shego's face darkened. "I am no one's experiment," she growled. "Get out now, Nina," she ordered. "And I would find a new roommate because you are not living in this room again."

Nina didn't say anything. She looked like she wanted to, but dumb as she was sometimes, she was smart enough to know when to be quiet. She turned and left and Shego slammed the door behind her. It wasn't until she heard Nina's footsteps grow progressively softer and then disappear that she allowed her façade to crumble and she collapsed on her bed. The tears came for several agonizing minutes until she steeled herself and wiped them away. Nina would never see her cry, that she swore to herself, and no one was going to get close enough to make her cry like that again.

Shego started awake, her eyes popping open. Just as quickly, she shut them again, as tight as she possibly could. She wasn't sure if she was really awake, and if she was still dreaming, well the bounty of crappy feelings the other two segments had afforded made her apprehensive about continuing to dream. At last curiosity got the better of her and she cracked open an eye, only to wish that she hadn't. She wasn't home, or at least, Shego thought as she got a better look at where she was, it wasn't home now. It hadn't really been home since she had left for boarding school in Go City. Shego could only guess why her subconscious had brought her back to Chicago.

Unexpectedly, a head popped into her room, making her jump. "Sorry, Princess," her father said apologetically. "I didn't mean to scare you. I just saw your light on and I thought you might still be up."

"Um, yeah, I was, I guess," Shego admitted sheepishly, her adult mind processing the sight of the father she had fought with and lost over five years ago talking to her like he used to. "Why? Did you need me for something?"

"Yeah, I did, sweetie," her father replied, his face growing sad. He looked like he was going to cry, and Shego, remembering only a few times she had ever seen him cry, knew instinctively when her mind had taken her back to. "Please, not this," she pleaded to her unseen tormentor. "Anything but this. Wake up!" she ordered herself. "You don't want to relive this!" But being fickle as dreams have tendency to be, hers picked that moment to transform her from being a participant into an observer, making it impossible for her to influence the scene unfolding before her.

Which is why her dream self didn't listen, but instead asked a question, a question that adult Shego already knew the answer to, and one that she didn't want answered again. "What did you need to talk to me about, Daddy?" she heard her childish self asking.

"Um, well, Pumpkin, I came to tell you that we are going on a trip to Middleton tomorrow," her father answered sadly.

"But it is only April," she heard herself saying. "Nana Mim and Nana Sheila aren't expecting me until June."

Her father sighed, and tears threatened to slip down his cheeks. "You aren't going to see your Nanas this summer, Shego," he answered, using her pet name in order to soften the blow of what was coming next. "Nana Mim and Nana Sheila are very sick; the doctors don't think they are going to get better and we have to go say goodbye."

"What do they have?" she childishly demanded. "Can't the doctors give them some medicine?"

"There isn't any medicine that can help, Cupcake," her father said. "They are both very old and there isn't anything the doctors can do about that."

"If they don't get better, what is going to happen, Daddy?" she asked.

"They are going to go to heaven, Sweetie," her father said gently.

Her family wasn't all that religious, but even as a child, she knew what this meant. "Then they are going away forever, and I'll never get to see them again," she said despondently, the sobs starting to come in waves as that prospect sent her into despairing hysteria.

Her father didn't saying anything because there was nothing that he could. He just gathered her up in his arms and let her cry, rocking her gently until she had cried herself back to sleep.

Shego awoke in her bedroom in the Mansion. It took her a few seconds to sort out where she was and then a few seconds more to realize that this was where she wanted to be. She breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief and threw off the covers, jumping out of bed before she could fall asleep again.

Well, she thought, that had thoroughly sucked. Even though it had all been a dream, the sadness and sense of loss were still clinging to her, and without really thinking about it, she found herself glancing down the hallway to the room that had been the nursery in her first dream. She knew objectively that there was no nursery, no crib and no Mimmie, but it didn't stop her from feeling a pang of something she couldn't quite grasp when she realized it was still just an office.

"This is nuts," Shego chastised herself. "We barely started dating and I am dreaming about kids."

It wasn't just dreams about future kids that was disconcerting her, though. The unpleasant reminders of two very sucky times in her life were also unnerving her. Shego was not a stupid person, and it was pretty easy to figure out that something in her nascent relationship with Kimmie was subconsciously bugging her. It also didn't take a genius to figure out it probably had something to do with a fear of Kimmie leaving her. Why would she be so worried about this now, though? She and Kim were barely starting out and they were taking a wait-and-see approach. So, if it worked out or not, well, that was life; even if Kim left, she wouldn't care that much.

Except she probably would, she realized, flashing back to the despair she had felt when Kim had disappeared down the trap door. True, in the dream, they had been together for a while, and true in the dream, Kim was going on the lam. But, Shego could tell, and she could admit it to herself reluctantly, that she would most likely feel the same way regardless of the circumstances surrounding Kim's departure.

"Well, fuck," she sighed. She realized suddenly that she was still staring down her hallway, so she shook her head to snap out of it and walked back into the bedroom. She threw on some clothes, grabbed her keys and went for a walk, her destination completely unknown.