~Hey there, everybody! Sorry for the delay - my dog had to be put down a couple weeks ago, and I didn't feel much like writing for awhile. She's at peace now, though. :')

Anyway, here is the (hopefully) long-awaited finale! Mega-mega-big thanks to anyone who's been reading, and if you haven't left a review, now's the perfect time if you wanna. At any rate, hope you enjoy, and my next story should be a little shorter and a lot less streeeeeeeeeeetched ooooooouuuuuuut.

Love ya guys!~

Him

"I am no longer defined

By all the wreckage behind"

-Matthew West

Remnants persist in haunting his slumber.

Take now, for example. He's just standing there in a dream, with blackness nudging at him, when he senses a presence. A nasty presence, worse than the Phantom of the Opera or Frankenstein or any of those other guys who turned out to be merely misunderstood. A hellish orchestra announces its arrival.

When he turns around he sees, as he somehow expected to, a man about his own size but put together more compactly. Mightier.

He's sure he's never seen him before, this man whose corresponding scar jumps out even more than his own against skin the shade of a glue stick. And yet as soon as they make eye contact, he's a fawn in the path of a laser blaster. . . or your ordinary boring hunters' tools that can still kill you. It feels so instantly familiar. His blood vessels give a unanimous chill.

The air turns hot and smoky. He's about to fall to the ground - stop, drop, and roll, just how they taught him in elementary school - when a hand, weathered from a long life before the invention of sunscreen, grabs his arm.

He sticks to the spot.

"Dr. Drakken," the. . . being leers.

"Black-Eye Brown!" he spits. The name is like acid on his tongue. How he knows it is unfathomable. "What are you doing here?"

"Checkin' up on ye," Black-Eye says. "How ye been farin' lately, Drakken?" The one sliver of light catches on the sword hanging from its belt. It could cut him up faster than the razor blade that one stinkhead smuggled into prison, more effectively than frog dissection.

Which he was never exactly fond of. He can look at photos of frog organs all day on the Internet, but put him in front of a croaker that's already croaked, give him a scalpel, and he suddenly gets a little nauseous.

Trying not to imagine himself suspended in formaldehyde, he swallows back some of that same nausea. So he's stunned by the stability in his voice when he says, "I've been doing wonderfully, thanks for asking. Not that it's your beeswax." He rotates his head ninety degrees clockwise about the origin so that Black-Eye can't watch him struggle against fear.

"And how about your mother?" It says "mother" the way leopard seals say "penguin." Would say. If leopard seals could talk.

This is scaring him more than that documentary on Animal Planet about the catfish that could eat people. But pure, undiluted rage throws the whimpers to the floor and stomps over them. "Don't even bring up my mother!" he says. "She's none of your concern!"

If Black-Eye can see that he wants to claw several new scars into its flesh, it isn't intimidated. In fact, it smirks, more expertly than Shego. "Ohhh, I have every reason to be concerned about her, Drakken - considering she's my great-great-great-great-granddaughter."

Error A113. Server corrupted. Try again?

He hurtles backward seven steps, groping for a world his subconscious didn't bother to upload. "You lie!" He peers into Black-Eye's black eyes and sees only a wash of evil, the kind that, like a wart virus, infects every single cell and mutates them to be like it. "There is NO WAY anyone as good and kind and sweet as my mother could have come from something like you!"

Black-Eye shoots him an amused look. The kind prisoners get when they ask to use the privacy of the guards' bathroom. "What was yer mother's last name before she wed?" it says, assuming - incorrectly - that he's not smart enough to know the term "maiden name."

Uh-oh. "B-B-Brown," he gets out. "But that - that doesn't mean anything! Brown is a very common last name!"

And it truly is in this instance, isn't it? He's not just bluffing anymore, right?

But the longer he stares at Black-Eye, the more he notices it. The general U-shape of the face, the round curves of the bones. Thinner and more masculine than his mother's or even his own.

His.

He gasps and gasps and gasps until it's more of a habit than a method of breathing. "If - if you're her ancestor, you're mine, too! That's why we. . . .that's why we look so much alike?"

Black-Eye's laugh is corroded, like its vocal pipes have been one with the water so long they've rusted. The mean eyes narrow and take on a gleam. "Now yer gettin' it, lubber. We're blood kin."

"Well - well - well, well in that case, if possessing me is your idea of bonding time, you have a very poor definition of the word 'family'!"

Black-Eye shakes its ponytail or...didn't they call it something different in ye olden days, back when it was truly in style? "As I told ye before, ye bear my mark. Ye wear my face." It treads closer, boots grinding the ground. "We are the same."

The evil, the depravity, everything he always wanted to achieve, almost chokes him. He smacks his lips together, frantically searching for moisture. "We are not the same!" he counters. "My teeth are twice as big as yours, and I couldn't grow a beard to save my life!"

He awaits the Scowl of Overwhelming Frustration. Black-Eye, though, is made of sterner stuff than that. "Yer my descendant, Drakken. Ye have a legacy to fulfill."

Upward tilts the chin they share. More annoyance than anything has him folding his fists and drilling a hole in Black-Eye's forehead like those brain-tapping machines he so regrets. "You can't make me!" he says, more kindergarten-esque than he was hoping for. Still, he pronounces it with pops and crunches that serve as handy supplements.

Black-Eye keeps closing in as though he never even spoke. (How rude! He couldn't even be harassed by a polite evil spirit?) The heat it brings behind it whips just inches from his nose and stays there. Scalding. Roiling.

It's mad, he realizes. Not mad-crazy. Mad-angry. Because the tables have been turned, and it's the heat's turn to be impotent.

Well, those tables haven't done a complete rotation. He's not a vicious force of utter darkness embodied in a spiral of smoke. He's not even a muscle-y man with a nifty beard and an even niftier sword.

And he's frightened.

But the heat isn't reaching him.

"Ye were destined to follow in my footsteps!" Black-Eye continues. The inferno jumps three degrees with every over-enunciation - okay, now he can see a resemblance.

The clear place beats the shiver to the base of his spine. "No, I chose to follow in your footsteps!" It comes out full and booming and only microscopically shaky. "But that's not who I am anymore!"

Black-Eye's aura seethes, unaccustomed to being denied. It lets out a roar, fire blasting behind it, illuminating its face, hard as a ten-ton diamond from the center of the earth.

He'd be dishonest if he claimed it wasn't effective. The Cheerios in his tummy gurgle a warning. Every line segment of his body bucks to get away, to find Shego -

The clear bubble in his head, though, remains untouched by fright. It feeds him the words, one at a time, with a baby spoon. None of them taste of strained peas, either.

"We may look alike, and you may be my ancestor, and we may have cut our faces in the same place, but I'm not going to - to - to sell my soul the way you did!" Saliva isn't showing up yet, but he presses on without it. "It's too late for you, and I'm sorry! But I won't be fulfilling your legacy - I'll be redeeming it."

If freedom has a flavor, it's what's resting on his tongue right now. He might even be brave enough to stride up to the podium that just appeared - it's a dream, okay? - stand behind it, and tell the invisible support group that hello, his name is Dr. Drakken, and he's a recovering megalomaniac. It's been sixty-two days since his last evil scheme. . .

Black-Eye's features twist, just now registering its dearth of power. It draws back like it's been swiped at with Shego's plasma claws, sudden poverty racking its visible strength. A black fog appears where the broad-shouldered form once stood, spews a few bolts of lightning, then storms away. Literally storms, with thunder echoing behind it.

The temperature cools. Heat-raised blisters on his arms miraculously settle. And there's a sense of drawing-out, of poison being drained from his body.

Black-Eye and everything it ever represented are gone. For good, with any luck.

Before he can even celebrate that, though, someone else appears in front of him. Eric.

Not the hollow, dying Eric. The handsome Eric with the brown hair just the right mixture of combed and tousled and the squared-off jaw so unlike his own.

His substitute Synthodrone son.

That's the saddest tongue-twister anyone ever thought up.

His mind turns to a raspberry-flavored Icy Pop. He raises one hand and wiggles his fingers in a haphazard wave. Blurts out the first teen slang that comes to him, which happens to be, "How's it hangin'?"

Amazing how that actually fits. He has enough trouble finding the correct words with normal, everyday people, let alone ghosts.

Well, yeah. How would a scientist concoct a plan for dealing with things that are scientifically impossible?

But hey - it's a dream. Anything can happen! He can harness the awesome power of peanut butter cups and use telepathy to drop gigantic ones on top of bad guys. Or shoot vines strong as steel out of his neck to ensnare his opponents. No - wait - can't he legitimately do that last one in the real world now?

Eric greets him with, "Hey. Nice to see you again, Dr. Drakken."

His proper title. It bequeaths him his long-held respect. Pacifies the yearning for veneration.

Yet his Adam's apple seems to have bulked up without the rest of him, and he can't swallow it away. "I don't see how it could be," he mutters. "Considering I was the reason you were destroyed."

His fingers coil over themselves, much the way his insides are doing. (That can be fatal if you're a horse. He's glad he's not a horse.)

"Dude! No," Eric says, shaking his perfect head. "I did it to myself. I was being a jerk, and it came back to bite me in the behind." He grunts, a trait that must be inherited but sounds so much more sophisticated out of Eric. "Well, actually, in the foot."

He starts to protest, but Eric holds up a hand. "Besides, I was just a Synthodrone. I'm at peace now. You -" Eric squints at him - "you would have had a world of hurt waiting for you."

The mental images of Diablos gnash their claws now that he's been taken off the menu.

Quiet envelopes them. It might be the first peaceful silence he's ever been a part of. It helps, some, Eric going down nobly after all.

The glimmer in his eyes is reflected back at him from a light-bouncing object in the corner. It's not a sword this time. His Hydro-Pollinator, its fluid gleaming in the dimly lit lair like a miracle.

He runs to it, interlocks his arms around it, and presses his cheek against it. His wonderful, ingenious invention that he knew would be the one to grant his wish for a new life - because two-thousand-five-hundred-and-fourth time's the charm, right?

"Did you hear I saved the world?" he asks Eric. Perhaps a little overeager. Pretty much the first good deed he ever did; he wants to brag on it a little.

"I did." Eric's smile is, for once, genuine. "You were awesome. I'm proud to call you my dad."

Pardon me while I weep, he thinks. Good weeping.

Then Eric dissipates away. He hyperventilates bald-faced glee into his palm.

(That's the only sort of glee he'll ever achieve. Like he told Black-Eye, he can't grow a beard to save his life.)

He's done so many happy dances before, but this is a dance of joy. Unencumbered by evil for the first time in twenty-three years, his heels kick up farther than he ever guessed they could go. He's a chemical sample, plucked from the mire and cleansed of impurities to start a new life as a shining example of its element.

It lasts for about a minute-and-a-half before the rushed transition to one of his least favorite places on this planet or any other. A courtroom. He doesn't need to feel the burrowing of the handcuffs into his wrists to figure out he's the one on trial, or even take in the picture of himself flashed across some type of evidence screen.

Himself on That Night. In his rhinestone-spangled suit. Vicious, ruthless, deadly. . . everything he ever wanted to be.

Wanted. Past tense.

Faces are hurrying past him in a whirl. They're unfamiliar, and yet he recognizes every one of them. People he killed with his carelessness, with his hatred - not for them, for a teenage girl who only wanted to protect everyone. Including him. From himself.

The gloss is gone from his doings, and the deep shame left behind bends him double.

"How do you plead, Dr. Drakken?" The judge's voice booms as if it's coming through a bullhorn. Atop the International Space Station.

He turns to face a panel of pixeled jurors. They're accusing him with their eyes, the only things not blurred away, hungry for justice, and he doesn't blame them. He has no clue what punishment awaits him, and he almost doesn't care. Nothing can be more grueling than the knowledge that he's done it.

Including paper cuts in that one dippy spot on your thumb.

It's guilt that's set his body aflame and given him a permanent case of the stomach flu. It's guilt, it's always been guilt, and he's (quite literally) sick of it.

"Guilty," he says. His own voice is missing its typical boom. It's shaken with regret.

The room begins to hum - not hum a song, just whisper back and forth until the noise gets shrill.

The judge's own faceless head almost disappears behind his gavel. "Are you sorry, then, Dr. Drakken?" The words are less murky this time, stemming from his memory and not his imagination.

He doesn't move his mouth, but he hears himself say, "Sorry? For what? That people died?"

"No. That you launched the attack in the first place."

Those eyes. . . he can feel them glaring across every inch of his aching back. Intense as laser beams. Staring at him in such a way that he's certain he's gone bald in the last two seconds.

He wilts like a flower that needs watering. It's as though he's in a play and he's forgotten his lines and nothing he can come up with will be formal enough or sufficiently significant. Ad-libbing will only lead to a tangled snare of vowels and consonants, anyway.

Like Rip Van Winkle awakening after decades, he opens his eyes and finally sees. Truly sees his repulsive deeds on Diablo Night, robbing the world of innocent life, the pride that nearly destroyed everything he loves, the monster inside that had bound and gagged his conscience.

And, for once, there are no angels and demons warring in his chest. There's only a magnet, repelling him away from his own evil, from the vision of himself as world ruler, that can't ever, won't ever, shouldn't ever, come true.

Because - he doesn't know whether it's possible for ANYONE to be a supervillain and a good person. But it sure isn't possible for Dr. Drakken. Power soaks into him, hardening parts that are designed to be soft, driving him further and further toward the darkness the Lorwardians lived in. And the world doesn't need another Warhok.

Now the faces whirl at a hundred miles per hour, like one of those carnival rides where the bottom drops away and only the laws of nature pin you to the walls. It blurs them, but for him, they'll always be far too clear.

He's sobbing, hoarsely, without tears. Without denial.

But there's that clear space, smooth and blank. He pries his lips apart and says what he should have said all along. And not because it could grant him parole.

"Yes! I'm sorry!" he cries. "Oh - my - gosh, I'm sorry! I'm soooooo sorry!"

He careens to the floor, plastering his fingers to his face - fingers that quickly dampen enough to prune.

Just like that, the courtroom vanishes. There's no judge anymore. No jury. No audience anxious to watch him get his just desserts (and he has no idea how that phrase originated, because desserts are scrumptious and what do they have to do with being punished?). Only him, and the shiny hand reaching down to him.

He accepts it and is pulled from a crumbled heap into a vertical line. Arms stronger than Shego's but gentler than Mother's settle around him, and they don't launch fear through his nervous system.

"That's all I ever wanted to hear," someone says. Not audibly. It reverberates through his system the way his flowers' messages do.

He leans his hair-spikes against the shiny chest and sighs in relief. Apology accepted. He knows out there in the rest of the world, it probably won't be enough. But right now there is no coldness, no icy fingers to wrap around his throat and snuff out his breath. There's only the feather-lightness of a man who's found a place where an earnest apology is all that's required.

And in these arms, that man's no longer a killer.

Sometimes Dr. Drakken still hurt. Reforming hadn't been a miracle cure for that.

And the fear - some of that still plagued him, mostly in the form of nightmares. Diablo nightmares, prison nightmares, Warmonga nightmares, in-school-in-his-underwear nightmares. Weirdest of all were the ones Drakken couldn't remember once he woke up.

They were marked by the fact that he didn't. . . well, remember them, but they must have been humdingers because they triggered the sprouting mechanisms. So many mornings, he awoke - with petals around his neck, eyes that needed contacts, and a mind equally fuzzy - and wondered what a lovely marigold was doing in his mirror.

Admittedly embarrassing as that was, however, Drakken greatly preferred it to awakening in the middle of the night, body mummified in the sheets and terror strangling him. As soon as he was able to gather his thoughts, he'd gone straight into the reassurances:

It's okay. I'm safe now. No one will hurt me.

It was the same routine Drakken had been reciting ever since his first hour as a supervillain - only now it worked. Because now all those things had journeyed to a place where they were the truth.

He'd sold his island lair to a nice woman who wanted to turn it into a science museum - and how could Dr. Drakken say no to that? - and said it was big enough to serve her nicely, not to mention the perfect grade of austere to be exciting to kids. That might explain a lot about Kim Possible's attitude when she'd shown up to thwart him. Oh, well, he was a scientific genius, not an interior decorator.

His new house, though, was excellent! Longer than it was tall, it was painted a shade of beige that Drakken knew he'd have to do something about.

But the bedroom - oh, the bedroom. . . It was spacious and roomy (a word Drakken never understood, because wouldn't all rooms, by their very definition, be "roomy"?) enough for his protectively giant bed, with plenty of sub-bedspread space to store his comic book collection. And he'd located the perfect latitude-and-longitude spot on the wall to hang his UN medal from so that it would shimmer in the sunlight.

That ceremony had been one of the Very Best Events of Drakken's life - although he hadn't had a lot to choose from in the years leading up to it. He and Shego had been granted a full international pardon for their past transgressions, and the audience cheered as if they could have been .0002 percent as happy for their second chance as Drakken himself was.

They couldn't. No one in the whole of creation could have been as happy as Drakken was as he gazed out over the crowd - the mob that wasn't crying for his blood, the eyes whose twinkles didn't mock him.

Ambassadors and delegates. Crime-fighters who had also been Drakken-fighters. And there, way in the back, was Bob Chen propped up on crutches.

That was what finally brought the happy watering in Drakken's eyes to an overflow.

He didn't get a chance to speak to his old college chum/mortal enemy, though. Dr. Director - Dr. Director! - of Global Justice - Global Justice! - showed up and offered him a job - as a scientist, not an agent. Which was probably for the best, because Drakken had never mastered the fine art of kicking people. Hard to build up enough momentum with these runty legs.

Global Justice? He'd only ever dreamed of pilfering their coveted technology. Drakken stammered that he would think about it, for the sole reason that his brain was going into Emergency Shutdown mode and nonsense letter combos would soon be falling from its ceiling like oxygen masks.

He'd said thank you - hadn't he? He must have - and took off and nearly crashed full-on into the pecs of a very big man who seemed dimly familiar, and not just because he reminded Drakken of Superman. Where had he seen this guy before? Either in the toothpaste aisle at Smarty Mart, or. . .

"I am Hego," the man said.

"Ohhhhhh." Yes, that computed. The guy was as big and blocky as Shego was slender and wiry, but Drakken could see a certain similarity in his pale skin and thick swirl of hair.

Hego snapped his arms across his block of a chest. "I'm sure you know how very strongly I disapprove of criminal activity."

"All riiiiiiiighhhht." Where was he going with this?

Wherever it was, it sent Hego's Adam's apple into a sudden jerk. "And I was so distraught" - oooh, good word! - "when I learned my baby sister had turned to a life of crime. But of all the villains out there, I'm glad she wound up working for you."

Drakken blinked until his eyelids cramped. ". . . Why?" was the only thing he could both shape and eject.

"Because I know you did the best you could to take care of her," Hego said, all clogged up.

Drakken wasn't sure how to tell the man that this might very well have been the kindest thing anyone had ever said to him. He knew how much Hego loved his sister, and he suspected Shego loved her brother back - in some secret part of herself she never showed anyone.

They were still standing there, examining each other the way scientists did with mutations on a cellular level, when Shego herself stepped out of the crowd. She groaned so loudly you would have thought her leg had just connected with a solid-steel safe. One that Jack Hench had claimed any old weakling could smash to smithereens and then zapped them until they were strong as corundum just before you. . .

Thankfully, Drakken was saved from the first curl of hate that had surfaced in a week's time by Shego's,"Ohhh, man! I was hoping you two would never meet."

Then she knocked their heads together and left smirking.

Drakken rubbed his sore noggin - which, contrary to popular belief, wasn't hard enough to deflect any blow - and watched Shego's hair swing down her back, longer than anyone's and reflecting the light like a glazed donut. And voiced the question he'd been waiting so long to ask, the one he finally had an eyewitness to answer.

"What was she like as a kid?"

"Oh, she was adorable." Hego chuckled. "Until she opened her mouth."

That made perfect sense. But as Drakken squinted, the picture wouldn't come into focus, as though he'd forgotten to pay the cable bill.

So much else about his life now that his career as a villain was finished, though, had developed in the manner of a crystal - a homegrown crystal, not perfectly, but in a way he could trust. Things weren't all better, but every aspect of his life had improved at least one notch. And that was what was known in the world of science as a pattern of growth.

There were other advantages, too. There was not feeling like a guilty ball of spines that popped every beautiful thing you tried to touch. Food actually stayed down now. Drakken had only puked once since the aliens invaded, at the Middleton Summer Fair, and that was his own fault. Should have known better than to ride the Cannonfire Doom-Coaster 3000 after eating all that cotton candy, but it had just looked so. . . incredible.

He'd taken the job, of course.

Even though some of the Global Justice agents always eyeballed Drakken like they were completely sure he was only there to smuggle out clandestine weapons and sell them to the villain community, there wasn't a scrap of it that wasn't a thousand times better than anything from his days of villainy. Besides, he didn't need everyone's approval to know he was a worthwhile being.

It was amazing - how much easier it was to keep his ego in check now that he truly believed it. Now that he didn't feel like he had to rub it in people's faces. Okay, so there was still the rare occasion where somebody would taunt him, like stupid old Will Du, and Drakken would want so badly to demonstrate how much smarter he was, make the kid eat his words. But even then, it wasn't accompanied by much of an urge to laser-fry him or drop him to a pool of hungry sharks, and Drakken considered that a definite improvement.

Not that he didn't ever have flustered moments anymore. He had plenty, and most of them were accompanied by the petals springing forth from his neck to add to his blotches. Still wasn't quite - heh-heh - able to keep much of a handle on them when he got overwhelmed. Shego, who'd already been there, done that, bought the jumpsuit, said they'd take a couple of years to get completely under control.

Surely she was speaking from experience, but Drakken couldn't picture Shego with her powers doing anything but obeying her commands. Shego just always seemed so un-in-non-constrained by the limitations of a human body. He'd heard her sneeze once or twice before, but did she ever even burp? Cough? Develop hiccups at an inopportune moment? Despite her translucent green, she was the least fragile person he'd ever met.

Still, Drakken thought he might be starting to get the hang of it. It was tough to yell at a cute little ring of fluff, and the flowers seemed to respond better to gentleness. After a period of great focus - sometimes for as long as twenty minutes! - he was able to grow a new flower, like unlocking special armor in a video game. Now if he could just unlock hydrangeas in time for Shego's birthday. . . .

And, okay, yes - it had occurred to him a couple of times that their strength and their obedience had "One-Way Ticket to World Domination" written all over them. (Not literally - that would have been strange.) The itch that he'd learned was named powerlust ignited for a moment. But that would have sent him straight back to the place where he couldn't tell respect from terror, where something was forever chasing him.

That little upstart Will Du, though - he pushed Drakken's buttons (a phrase Mother always used, as if his temper were a remote control). Once, Drakken had just been strolling down one of Global Justice's seemingly-infinite hallways, marveling at its grandness and how some portion of it belonged to him, when a snooty voice called his name from five doors down.

It was an aristocrat, calling to a peasant. Drakken's stomach went into an uneasy swirl, the first one that'd rumbled there since those nice UN ambassadors had tied that cord in a firm knot behind his neck. Minus the Doom-Coaster incident. He prayed as the kid approached that he wouldn't break into his one-man floral show.

"Yes? What is it? What do you want?" Drakken asked, reporting for duty as much as they could while he pretended to study the bulletin board on the wall.

Will ground his hands into fists. "I wanted to let you know, Dr. Drakken, that Dr. Director hiring you does not in any way mean that I'm foolish enough to take my eye off you." He narrowed his left eye - must have been the one he wasn't going to take off Drakken.

Drakken felt the muscles around his own eyes contract. "Yes, well, thanks. That's very big of you," he said with a sarcastic flourish Shego would have been proud of.

He tried to dodge to the side of the kid, but Will Du wedged himself into Drakken's no-touchy zone. "And don't think we were just sitting around waiting for Kim Possible to defeat you the night of the - "

Don't say it, don't say it, don'tsayit!

"Diablos."

He said it. Drakken strained for a look that wasn't completely akin to a sparrow about to fall out of the nest.

"We would have been ready and willing to nuke you if Miss Possible hadn't made her move when she did," Will finished.

Then he was gone, leaving Drakken's cheeks flushed and his chest as tight as a store-bought Slinkie with the price tag still holding it together. He couldn't delete the image of himself and Shego and all his henchmen going up in a mushroom cloud.

There was only one person to go to in all of GJHQ (a way-hip acronym for "Global Justice Headquarters") with stuff like that. He barged into Dr. Director's office without remembering to knock, and it all spilled out. As soon as he'd said the name "Will Du," Dr. Director got a wise look on her face.

"Ah, yes, Agent Du," she said, her mouth twisting like it couldn't decide between amusement and annoyance. "He's a brilliant agent - but a very difficult person to get along with. You're not the first employee he's come into conflict with."

On any other occasion, Drakken would have found himself comforted. But now he had to know - "Were you really going to nuke me?"

Dr. Director sighed. Too heavily. "It had been brought up, yes."

Drakken's vision was being blocked by the upward crawl of his under-eye bags. "It had?" he asked with the polar opposite of a boom.

"It had." Dr. Director situated firm hands on Drakken's shoulders, just enough of a touch to get his nervous system's attention. "There were several other, less radical, solutions we were planning to try first. If nuking were our answer to everything, there'd be very little left of the world."

Drakken nodded and actually understood. Maybe because he'd finally seen power for what it was: nice to have - essential in some cases - but if you abused it, you truly had less than none.

Still, there was something else that wouldn't leave him alone. Drakken looked physically down a few inches at this woman he metaphorically looked up to and choked, "Do heroes kill people?"

Dr. Director's one-eyed gaze grew stony, all but the droop at the edges. "There's not really a yes-or-no answer to that. We will do what we have to do, Dr. Drakken - but only as a last resort, and we take no pleasure in it. Some will tell you we can't afford sentimentality. That's true. But we also can't afford to grow callous."

It wasn't the cozy reply Drakken had hoped for, but from Dr. Director's lips it didn't scare him. He squirmed out the words, "I don't know if I could ever be responsible enough to do that. See, I have this thing - it's how I get around power - where I turn into an egomaniac and want to punish everyone who's ever been bad to me! And it's -"

To his bafflement, Dr. Director actually threw back her short haircut and laughed. It was rich and warm, a laugh that welcomed you and all your quirks. She completed his sentence with, "It's human nature, Dr. Drakken. We were never singling you out because we believed you'd be an uncommonly incompetent or cruel ruler. No one is meant to have that much power - that's why most governments operate on a system of checks and balances."

"Wait! Time-out!" Drakken held up his hands in the T sign his friend who used to be a buffoon taught him. "That powerlust" - hey, he remembered what it was called eventually! "- it isn't -"

"It isn't unique to you by any means," Dr. Director said. "I can still see you fighting it, but you have a much stronger sense of ethics now that prevents you from giving it free reign."

Ethics? He couldn't tell ethics from ravioli. All Drakken knew was that he could never, ever bring himself to kill another human being again. There were still several people he'd love to give wedgies to - Will Du among them - but nobody he wanted to kill.

Dr. Director let go of him and went back to her chair. Before she motioned him out the door, she slipped him a smile.

Drakken was completely sure his heart would pop. When somebody looked at him and loved him by choice, well, it was something no mind control could replicate.

And it was nice to know his blood might not have run any colder than anyone else's darkest patches.

From then on, what Drakken began to look forward to most each day - besides bowls of Fruit Loops in the morning and working in the lab and his conversations with Shego - was rediscovering who he'd been before evil had mutated him. He loved comic books and Disney movies and hated broccoli and was scared to death of tornado sirens. He had a great singing voice, and he wasn't a bad cook.

Who knew what he'd learn about himself tomorrow?

Power was still. . . well, powerful. But love was better, and it wrapped him up in a touchless embrace until he was able to look evil in the eye and tell it no.

The medal was there to constantly reinforce that. Respect and acclaim were laid down at his feet as soon as he'd given up on wrestling them away from an enslaved world. Everything he'd ever ached for, before power had slithered in and made such a mess of him. Its hold on him was fading, and no wonder, since its promises had always been empty and Drakken had finally called its bluff.

He'd always wanted to successfully tell somebody off.

It was more than that, though. More than "Dementor never got a medal, huh? Did he? Did he?" It was something that, from the exact instant he'd thought Kim Possible had been vaporized at his hand, had shoved the odds of Drakken dusting his lessons off and returning to his villain-life somewhere below the chances of scientists ever reaching absolute zero.

He had tasted what it was like to be liked, to be admired, to be loved. It flowed into him and scabbed up wounds decades old. To give that up for power, to trade real love for forced fear?

It would have been the stupidest thing he'd ever done, and Dr. Drakken was not stupid.

There was still so much ahead of him, so many joys and wonders he'd given up on last year, sitting at a barred window thinking it, and the looming cell doors, and the disgusting lack of privacy, were going to be his whole future. No prison sentence would ever be a factor now. Never again would he have to gag down some chalk-flavored supper while Cell Block D's resident bullies made plans to punch it out of him.

Nope, he'd be able to eat Spaghetti-Os for dinner whenever it suited him. And that was a change worth celebrating!

It didn't make the fear go away for good, and he still got that little itch in his chest every now and then. But Drakken didn't feel like he needed the world to ease them anymore.

()()()()()()

But there was still a whole storage closet's worth of stuff to make up for. Drakken spent the summer on what Shego had (rather irreverently) dubbed his "Apology Tour," in which he went to everyone he could recall hurting - a list longer than his torso - and did his best to put it right.

It was rough work, since most of the time he had so very little to offer them except his sincerest regrets. They seemed inadequate and wimpy in his head, but once he put them out into the air, they had some strength to them. Kind of the way his flowers did.

Perhaps they were more alike than Drakken had thought.

A lot of his minor-offense victims didn't even remember him that well. Bortle had stared blankly at Drakken until Drakken had to make a dive for the mirror to check for any rash of pimples across his T-zone - the zone where unfortunates were most likely to break out in acne, according to Hip*Teenz.

Dr. Wong, who he'd once forced to sit on an ice cube, had seemed amused when Drakken said he was sorry for any glutial discomfort he'd caused her. She'd patted his hand the way a mother would, even though she had to be younger than him, and said, "Apology accepted, Dr. Drakken. As you can see, I've recovered quite nicely."

Well, he could have asked her how her glutes were, but that was probably too "fresh," as Mother called Eddy when he was being. . . Eddy.

Dr. Wong and Shego exchanged twitches. It made Drakken feel like he was recovering quite nicely, too.

He didn't go to Dementor about the Teleporter thing. It would probably be another ten years before Drakken was ready to apologize to that jerk. The best he could do was not wish him Death By Plummeting Meteor.

And everything else wasn't a breeze, either - more like a hurricane (to continue the likening-wind-speed-to-ease theme). What Drakken had wanted to get over with as soon as he could had driven him straight onto the porch of that one prison guard. The mean guard who'd cursed everything from Drakken's sanity level to his ponytail to his ancestry.

Because his own family tree had been damaged, damaged by a Diablo that Drakken had idiotically commanded to take down that skyscraper and hang the cost! He'd left evil stains on the guard's cousin, the one who was likely very nice, the one who the doctors might never manage to help walk again. If the guard couldn't fix his cousin, he could at least wreck the villain who'd broken him in the first place. (Drakken had heard that once on Oprah.) The finger that Drakken used to press the doorbell was quaking like there really was a hurricane and it was the only leaf left on the branch.

Or something poetic like that.

The door was thrown open in a micro-minute, and Drakken found himself looking up at a man just as hardened as any of the convicted felons he'd guarded. Even in a dress shirt and nice shoes, he was intimidating. Drakken tried to peer beyond that, but the guy might as well have had a firewall around his heart. If he had one.

No, that was ridiculous. If he didn't have a heart, he wouldn't be angry about his cousin. As long as Drakken could zero his focus in on that, maybe it wouldn't hurt enough to require an imaginary Band-Aid.

"What the bleep are you doing here?" the guard asked - although "what the bleep" wasn't his exact wording.

Drakken felt himself pulling back like a recessed gumline. When he heaved a glance back at Shego, however, she gave him That Look in response. Not The Look that read, You are SO toast. That Look she'd given him at his medal ceremony, telling him, I trust you to do this on your own.

Whether he could have before she'd twinkled it at him, Drakken didn't know. Just her belief in him made made him strong enough to recite his prepared speech, one calming hand to his neck. This would not be an ideal time for his flowers to become operational. "Did you know I saved the world?" he began. "I've turned over a new leaf - literally! Because, you see, I have plants now - "

Shego gave him a jab that plainly meant, Get to the POINT, Doc!

Ah. Right. The point. Drakken had rather forgotten there was one besides this guard not coming after him with whatever the closest thing was to a Doomsday device that people actually kept in their houses.

"I'm really sorry about your cousin," Drakken said, wringing his fingers together. "I am so, so sorry, and if I could snap my fingers and heal him. . . I would. But I have a friend who has a friend who has a mother, and she designs cybertronic wheelchairs! If your cousin can't ever walk again, at least he could fly?" He extended a hand, full of the plan the clear place had been sketching in his brain the whole way here.

The man's eyes rejected it. His fist stayed in an enraged knot at his side. "You get out of here," he spat. "You stay away from my house. You stay away from my family."

His face was the picture of hatred, and it seemed to stain Drakken's hands blood-red. Like the day he plastered them to his face to stop the pain. So many times, he'd wished for them not to be blue anymore, but that was a friendly color in comparison, its only accusation one of chemical oversight. This red was blaring, forever blaming him for something he didn't know how to put right.

And those words - they nestled dangerously under Drakken's skin and branded him with so many awful names that had once been true. Fractions of the old Drakken struck him in the chest. Every one of them was coded with blueprints for doom rays, designs for torture chambers, and dozens of possibilities for mind control.

He took a big step away from them, off the porch, almost into the gutter. That wasn't who he was anymore. He was the new-and-improved version of Dr. Drakken, the one who had defended the planet with his legendary flowers!

"All right," he said, working his lips until they produced something intelligible with periods instead of "NGGH"s with exclamation marks. "Okay. I understand. Have a nice . . . life."

"What did you say?" the guard demanded, tight-jawed.

A sliver of fear coursed through Drakken. Before it could complete its loop, Shego had positioned herself between them. "No, no," she said. She was projecting sharply with the point of her chin. "He means it."

For an instant, what could have been surprise flashed across the guard's hate. Then he swore again, closer to the bottom of his breath this time, and went back inside, rocking the door closed behind him.

Drakken sniffled. The last of the spring allergies, probably.

Or maybe not.

Shego playfully jostled his arm as she tugged him back down the walk. "You did everything you could, Dr. D," she said.

"I know." And yet his shoulders were falling downward in sadness.

I know - and what are you supposed to do when your best gets thrown back at you like it's yesterday's coffee grounds?

Still, the man had an entire lifetime, hopefully many decades to come, in which to change his mind. It wasn't hopeless. People could change.

No one knew that better than the ex-con with the medal of honor.

()()()()()

The next fence Drakken attempted to mend went much better. Of course, he observed as he crossed the driveway, this fence didn't appear to be in need of repair at all. It hung in nice straight pickets like his teeth.

When Dr. Freeman opened the door and saw Drakken on his front stoop, his eyebrows whooshed up almost to meet his hair, and that was saying something. Short-trimmed hair, almost shaved into neatness. Add in the small but stern biceps and the white coat that had never seen a stain, and Drakken was feeling like a caricature of a person next to him.

"Dr. Drakken!" Freeman sounded surprised, but not unpleasantly so. "Whatever brings you here?"

Ahh. A nice greeting. So luscious.

"Did you see me on the news?" Drakken blurted. It wasn't a line he'd rehearsed, but it just popped out with Freeman being as kind as ever. Even if he hadn't played the fearful captor as well as Drakken would have liked (or, well, at all), he'd been a very pleasant person to kidnap.

Dr. Freeman smiled with just his bottom lip, every bit the way Drakken remembered. "For saving the world? Yes, I did."

"I turned good," Drakken added. The little fidgety things danced his fingertips together again. "I'm a good guy now. So I've been - I've been making amends. And I have something. . . for. . . you."

Drakken dug into the pocket of his own lab coat and ruffled - rifled - did whatever around. Oh, come on, come on! You can't have gotten lost. Tell me you didn't get lost. . .

Nope, there it was, wedged into the corner, almost in a seam. Blast those things; they'd ruined so many dramatic reveals!

Dr. Freeman stared at the envelope, now disappointingly wrinkled, that Drakken thrust at him. "What's this?" he asked.

"It's money!" Drakken cried even as Freeman ripped open the envelope to reveal most of Drakken's First Ever paycheck. "You're - you're supposed to pay people when they fix your Destructo-Bots. Well, most of the etiquette books say 'belongings' and not 'Destructro-Bots,' but I figure I owe you even if someone melted them down after that."

He pointed a glare at Shego. She tossed her tresses, all complete indifference.

Freeman's whole face joined in the smile. "Well - thank you, Dr. Drakken! Would you like to come in and sit down?"

"You mean it?" Drakken said. Oops. Lost control of a shriek there.

"Of course." Freeman wafted him in - good word, wafted, perfect for how he fluttered his forearm.

Drakken followed. His legs were rapidly turning unsteady, so he grabbed onto the nearest object his fingers found - which turned out to be a stereo that switched itself on and blared, "Don't even think about it!"

He jumped a foot backward, stumbled over a futon, and lay on his back laughing, joyous at the wonders of technology. Dr. Freeman's living, talking appliances. Lovely little things.

"Easy now," Dr. Freeman said, twisting a dial on the stereo. "Dr. Drakken is here as our guest."

Drakken bounced on his seat. Happy didn't even start to describe what he was inside.

Freeman situated himself on the couch across from him. "So, what exactly brought on this change of heart?"

"Well -" Drakken took a moment to clear the boom back into his voice - "here's my story. I was born very young. . ."

Shego's groan could have been weighted with lead. Drakken ignored it. If Dr. Freeman was to fully appreciate his change, he had to have all the information.

This here, this was serious business, one scientist to another.

After the brief version of his childhood - brief because he did know they had limited time, and brief because Drakken didn't particularly wish to relive it - Dr. Freeman leaned back against the couch and shook his head. "My parents are divorced too," he said. "I don't know what I would have done if my father hadn't stayed in my life."

Oh, blessed day, he understands me!

It was even more awe-inspiring than the sentient stereo.

And Freeman sat, rapt - Drakken had always wanted to say that, "rapt," - at Drakken's description of the Diablo plot. Not sparing a single horrid detail. Not downplaying the pure evil intent he'd launched it with. Not sugarcoating the agony he endured when his conscience came back from the dead. It all came out, brutally honest and real.

The shadows had turned to evening by the time he was done, and Dr. Freeman patted his back as they walked to the door. Drakken's nervous system still buzzed as if caffeinated, but just knowing that Dr. Freeman could even stand to touch him after he spilled the wretched depths of his soul soothed his pulse.

"I wish there was something else I could do to make it up to you," Drakken said. Awkwardly. He felt as though he were plucking words like dandelion seeds floating by, trying to arrange them without crushing their delicate fluff. The pressure to get this right throbbed in points on his head. "If - if you ever need a favor or anything, you can call me."

He hastily scribbled down his number and stuck the sticky note on Freeman's chest. Freeman opened the mouth that hadn't stopped smiling for the past five minutes and said the most shocking of all farewells:

"You're a good man, Dr. Drakken."

They'd barely made it back to the sidewalk before Drakken burst into sobs. He wasn't positive why, but his back was feeling pretty limber, like he'd visited the chiropractor and gotten it cracked, and all the aches were just the general soreness on its way out.

Complete and utter, overwhelming relief slid over him, as warm and soothing as the water in a hot tub. Laughter bubbled in his throat, tangling with his sobs and producing a totally undignified snort, but Drakken didn't care.

"He - he said I was a good man," Drakken gargled through the tears dripping down.

"Uh, ye-ah." He could almost hear Shego's eyes rolling. "Why do you think you stunk so bad at being a villain?"

Drakken wailed in happiness all the way back to the hovercraft, where he found a Kleenex and blew his nose. He'd never noticed just how pretty the setting sun was before. The yellow rays were bleeding pink and purple, signaling that this wonderful planet was finishing another rotation.

That planet wasn't his kingdom. But it was his oyster.

And for slimy mollusks, oysters were surprisingly scrumptious.

Then there had been the return trip to prison, on the other side of the bars. There weren't really any bars at all, not in the break room where Drakken found his guard, the guard who'd sat with him while Drakken was on the precipice of ending it all. Confidence threatened to leave him in the presence of his former captors. Only his guard's grin at the sight of him prevented the walls from closing on in Drakken like a torture chamber.

It was still the scariest place he'd ever been, aside from the Lorwardians' warship dungeon. Drakken readied his thanks, fully preparing to deliver them and get out of this pocket of Hades as fast he could. But as soon as Drakken had locked eyes with the man's respectful ones, gratefultitude had overwhelmed him, and he'd wound up bawling on the man's shoulder.

If anyone laughed, he didn't hear.

()()()()()

That made him feel twenty tons lighter than he'd been a few months ago, even if he'd actually put on a few pounds. His physician had said that was a good thing.

The hardest apologies, however, had yet to be voiced. Every time Drakken faced the prospect of apologizing to the families of the Diablo victims, he got reflux all the way up into his nasal passages. They'd sooner beat him with sticks than forgive him, and who could blame them?

Drakken was just now beginning to truly like himself, not in that overblown manner that performed the inverse of his self-doubts. An ego was a difficult thing to keep at a healthy BMI - if it were underweight, it went binge-crazy trying to nourish itself and usually wound up with its stomach one bite away from popping. Drakken figured as long as it didn't outgrow his conscience, they were both being properly maintained.

Dr. Klein helped with that. That was his new licensed psychotherapist, who had as many letters after the name on his office door as the alphabet soup of things he'd diagnosed Drakken with. Sometimes Klein pushed Drakken to rehash his nastiest memories. Sometimes he just handed him a coloring book and crayons.

Drakken liked him.

When he'd brought up the Diablo victims and their families - how he longed to say he was sorry, but knew he'd break down once they came into proximity - Klein hadn't even blinked. He'd pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil and asked Drakken what he wanted them to hear from him. And so the letters evolved.

Currently, they were in the rough draft stage. Well, "they" were actually only one, a lament to the family of the brown-haired, bespectacled man who had never left Drakken's thoughts.

He will haunt me for the rest of my life -

Klein had cut out "not literally - I don't believe in ghosts" -

who he was and who he could have been if not for me. I don't expect you to be able to forgive me, at least not yet, but I hope it will bring you some peace to know how truly sorry I am.

Drakken did blink, hoping to employ his lids as windshield wipers. The sting behind them was still there, but maybe it was better that way. Maybe it was Kim Possible's silent partner in ensuring no one ever conquered the world.

()()()()()

Tokyo was definitely at least a typhoon. The Diablo attack had hit the city more ferociously than anything since Godzilla. This was going to hurt, and whether or not that hurt turned out to be good for him in the long run, there was still so much about it that scared Drakken.

A conscience, he decided, was just like a foot. It could fall asleep, play dead, until you forgot it was even still there - and then wake up at the worst possible minute in debilitating tingles. You had to pace around on it in circles, even though it burned all the way up your leg, because the only way to get rid of the pain was to walk it off.

See, that sounded very profound, but Drakken wasn't sure of the scientific application.

Drakken padded in his autumn footy pajamas over to the wall where his medal hung. The luminous gold sunlight spilled over its luminous gold surface, and he touched the spot where the two converged. It was his morning ritual to remind himself that he was no longer a monster, that Kim Possible wasn't his enemy anymore, that nightmares only cropped up in his dreams now.

His prayers made him feel warm and protected when he snuggled into bed at night, but they were never a guarantee of fang-free dreams. Still, Drakken clicked up a memory-photo of Mother's eyes filming over - the first happy tears he'd given her cause to cry - and constructed a wordless Thank you.

Now - today. Today he wanted to invoke the aura of someone professional and sincere. And intelligent, of course, though for once Drakken's IQ was going to have to take a back seat to his intentions.

Since there weren't any clothes that could keep his hands from flopping like trout lost on the beach (really lost; didn't trout inhabit inland waters?) or scream for him, "I ACTUALLY HAVE INTEGRITY NOW!", Drakken chose to simply go for his most professional outfit. The business-cas one he'd never wound up giving back because he cut a pretty strapping figure in it - not to brag or anything.

Drakken hurriedly changed, and - oh, yes, that was good! The purposeful cap sleeves (that was what they were called, right?) just long enough to hide the scarring-over place on his right arm and the creases of the khakis (that were neither wacky nor tacky, Drakken thought with amusement) were as respectable as ever. In it, he didn't look as loose and feeble as baby powder anymore.

Come to think of it, remembering to eat three meals a day was paying off. He might even have to start wearing his pre-prison-size pants again.

Shego waltzed in while Drakken was wrestling with his belt, to get it on the sixth notch instead of the eighth. Mischief twinkled all over her face. "Getting a little chubby there, Doc?" she asked.

The words were like boulders tumbling through his chest. The eyes he turned to her must have been crestfallen, because Shego swept the air clean with her hand, evaporated the twinkle, and raised her arms in mock - but not mocking - surrender. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said quickly. "It was just a joke. You're fine. You're healthier now. You're fine."

Drakken gaped at her until his jaw was in great danger of being dislocated for life. Had she just said "I'm sorry"? Shego had never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever used those words before. Ever.

He examined himself in the mirror and discovered the smile that had decided to stick around after all. He saw his father's businesslike bearing and his mother's honest emotions.

It was nice to have Shego in his corner now, now that she was actually being supportive. Not that she didn't still have extreme potential for sarcasm wired into everything she said, but it was gentler now. Not gentle - Shego would probably never be gentle, not unless the Attitudinator had hit her, and that thing was busted now anyway - but gentler.

And after all these years of yearning to be her buddy, her confidant, her family, Drakken had finally broken the surface. When she'd smiled at him at his medal ceremony, it was so magnificent one of his meddling little flowers hadn't been able to bear the distance between them and sealed it by wrapping them in a hug. It was. . . well, it was nice.

The gossip rags were all over that, of course. According to them, Drakken had been secretly dating his sidekick for months, and they were going to have lots of (ehhee) flower children, and Shego had spent the night at the lair a few times - which, in fact, she had. However, it had always been due to bad weather, and she had her own quarters, so where was the impropriety in that? Even the legitimate newspapers wondered if they were an "item," which had apparently stopped meaning "thing you carry with you on an airplane flight" when Drakken wasn't looking.

Drakken didn't know. He was just grateful to be with Shego, in whatever sense you employed the word "with." They'd had their disagreements, their issues, even their out-and-out skirmishes, but together they almost made a normal person.

Almost.

Ah, well. Normal probably wasn't all it was cracked up to be, anyway.

There wasn't really a lot of time for a relationship, Drakken mused as he marched out to the hovercraft and hopped into the passenger's seat. Not right now. The prospect of being across the room from a pair of lips that had every right to curl in loathing at him was nerve-racking enough.

The need to be seen as the (flawed, yet gallant) hero he'd chosen to become filled Drakken's anxious heartbeat. He needed it as bad as salt needed both sodium and chloride so it wouldn't be deadly poison. If only he could simply hack into everyone's mental warehouses and erase all reference to the old Dr. Drakken!

. . . And what would that be except mind control?

Gaah. Living inside the law could be so frustrating at times like these.

Shego drove the hovercraft so Drakken could nibble his fingernails down to the quicks - whatever those were - and practice his apology speech in his head. He cupped one hand to the exact topical spot where the medal's gold would be thumping him if the cord were hanging around his neck and breathed from deep in the diaphragm. Worked on not imagining everything from a bouncer. . . bouncing him out to being greeted by a S.W.A.T. team far more willing than Global Justice to nuke him.

"Penny for your nerves."

That was Shego, as usual, reading his mood as well as she read one of her magazines.

By sheer instinct, Drakken started to drop a glare on her, but it softened into a nod. "Yes, I'm a bit. . . apprehensive. Okay, I'm nervous! What if he - what if he charges me?"

Shego's eyebrows peaked. "Uh, go after him with your doom flowers?" she suggested.

"Ah. Yes. Indeed." Drakken chortled sheepishly. "Sometimes I forget that I have plant powers now. Not that you guys are easy to forget," he added before his vines could start squawking inside him.

Silence that left him puzzled.

"I just. . ." Drakken crossed and recrossed his ankles. "I've never really been very good around. . ."

"People?" Shego snickered. She still did that - and the smirking thing - a lot, but she'd abandoned the expression that said, Come on. Which one of us can actually DO stuff - and who can't?

That was the only reason Drakken was a few notches softer than a roar as he shot back, "I didn't hire you to crack wise, Shego!"

"I know," Shego said simply. The wind carried it back to him like some - really smart robotic-homing-pigeon - creature. "You hired me because you were never able to defend yourself."

Not a turn of her voice was caustic. Just all-knowing. Knowing things Drakken had thought he'd kept well-concealed, things he'd been ripped too far open to pretend they weren't there anymore.

Maybe that was for the best. Geodes had to be cracked open before anyone could see the natural beauty seeping through their layers.

Bolstered by that imagery, Drakken ahemed as if he were trying to avoid swallowing his gum (although he wasn't chewing any). "No, Shego. I never was. I spent my whole childhood getting picked on and beat up -" here came the part he'd never confessed - "and that didn't change when I became a villain. All I wanted was to be on top for a change." Drakken's brain conglomerated the middle-school locker room with prison and then seemed to shudder inside his very cranium. "But I won't go all emo on you now."

"'Go all emo'?" Shego laughed again, but not in the scornful way that had hurt him so many times over the years. This laugh just sounded like she found him kind of a gas. It was a sound Drakken decided he liked.

Drakken propped his elbows on the dashboard next to hers, grinning, eager to shove the past into some remote archive. Maybe it was like a library card and would expire if you didn't use it for eighteen months. "Yes, 'emo.' That's what the teens today say when they mean someone's being emotional and sappy and angry - "

"Yeah, I kinda knew that." Shego never once took her impassive gaze from the clouds she didn't appear to be finding pictures in. Her face was still generally more heavily guarded than some of the government weapon reserves they'd infiltrated. Drakken wished it would open up to him, just a peek.

The command to speak reached his mouth before it could be filtered for pollutants. "What about you, Shego?" he said. "What about your childhood?"

Drakken glanced up to see Shego's eyes squeezing into slits. Oops. Not a good question to ask.

Fix it. He had to fix it.

And yet his curiosity had the clear space on its side. A geometry expert could probably reconstruct at least a quarter of a puzzle from just one piece -

Just one piece.

"Please, Shego." Drakken heard his boom pitch upward. "Just tell me one thing about your past, and then I'll leave it alone. Just one? Pretty please?"

Agh. Agh. Agh! Why did he say that?

Still, how many times had he wondered what had led Shego to where she was the first time he'd met her: on his doorstep, already hardened into killer aloofness at the tender age of. . . what, twenty? How many hours had he wiled away puzzling over her and the unreadable shade she could pull down over her face?

Drakken's next glance up didn't meet with an assault from all things pale and sharp. Shego was shifting the gearstick between her fingers and squinting like she was seriously considering what he'd just asked her.

"Middle school," she finally said. "Was not a lot of fun for me."

Drakken groaned his agreement. "Who was it fun for?" Besides the Carl Thompson types, of course - popular, athletic, only receiving the best of what adolescent alterations had to offer. . .

"The half of the boy population that had actually hit puberty was constantly hitting on me," Shego continued. She put up a palm as though that could stop Drakken's nostrils in mid-flare. "And the girls were nasty. Let's just say being green and having freak-powers wasn't the kinda thing that got you into their little groups."

Wait - what was she talking about? Shego, a freak? Shego, being slighted by her peers? Was that what he was hearing?

"They picked on you?" Drakken whispered in disbelief.

"Not exactly. Not to my face." Shego's grin shone dully against her black lipstick. "They were too scared of me for that. But I'd walk down the hall, and there they'd be all in a little knot, hissing at each other. Then they'd see me - heads up, smiles on. 'Oh, hiiiiiiii there! No, we weren't talking about yoooooooooou at alllll!'"

Her voice was as sour as milk that was left out overnight and got halfway dried into clumps. . . ohhh, gross. The sadness in it had gone rancid a long time ago.

That was deep.

For the first time, Drakken was able to picture Shego as a preteen, long-haired and long-limbed, her face rounder and just beginning to take on its hard set. It made his throat threaten to go all emo.

"I wish I'd known you then," he said on a whim.

Shego jerked a look back at him. "Why?" Her tone dared him to answer with, So I could have protected you.

And while Dr. Drakken was far from being a coward, you didn't take dares that ended with Shego's green plasma in your face. He scrambled for something to say - something kind, something brave - something befitting a hero.

It waited for him in the clear space, every bit as shiny as his world-saving plan.

"I would have been your friend," Drakken said. The words were clumping, so he had to push them out fast. "And you would have been mine, and then maybe none of this would have ever happened."

The twitching crept over Shego's mouth. Her eyes were a soft class within their customary shrewd look. She didn't need to say anything.

And Drakken felt proud.

Not arrogant. Just proud.

He flattened his surprisingly dry hands against the khaki slacks that his bony legs were still lost in. He never had gotten around to returning them to Hank Perkins back when their partnership had dissolved. Hadn't wanted anything to do with the man.

Drakken sighed until he whistled. Another bridge charbroiled behind him, although Perkins had been the one to set it on fire. How could you mend a relationship when, for once, you weren't the one at fault? Apologizing and not getting anything in return was a little like walking around with one shoulder higher than the other. James's apology had been huger than huge, but Hank had never contacted Drakken to express any sort of sorrow at abandoning their failing business and leaving Drakken behind with all the surplus inventory of cupcakes. . .

Okay, he needed to stop thinking about that inventory, or he was going to blanch a shade greener than Shego.

Not that he didn't anyway when they landed and he took in the city. The lit-up neon wouldn't come alive until nightfall. The skyscrapers that truly did appear to scrape the sky, however, were enough for Drakken. And to think he'd had the power to topple their towering heights one night!

Drakken raised a hand to smooth his hair, which was thankfully a lot softer and shaggier than the porcupine quills it was standing up to resemble. He might have been stronger now, but he couldn't promise he wouldn't collapse if this apology turned out to be a flop. It was So Very Important, and some little scaredy-cat part of him wanted to run off and hide.

Good then. Maybe it would run away with itself, rendering his remaining self courageous, the way atoms became positive when they lost electrons.

Yes! Positive. He needed to think positive.

The Nakasumi Toy Company wasn't hard to pick out, with its garish color scheme that always made his eyes itch. Now he wondered how a building so bright and playful could also look so foreboding. Drakken maneuvered his Adam's apple around at the thought of some attack goat bursting from the door and devouring his pants, leaving him to meet with Nakasumi in his boxers.

Now, see, this isn't thinking positive.

Somehow, the door opened. (Whether he had done it or Shego had done it or it was automatic, Drakken couldn't have told you.) Somehow he fumbled his way up to the receptionist's desk and stuttered that he had an appointment to meet with Nakasumi-San. She eyeballed him with something that wasn't quite suspicion (a close relative, though - maybe a first cousin?) and directed him to a chair.

Drakken sat; no creepy little cartoon toys popped out of the walls to scream at him in Japanese. Still, Drakken's legs couldn't be - errr, still, and since their stunted reach stopped several inches short of the carpet, they initiated nervous back-and-forth mode.

Other than that, Drakken was pretty sure he seemed calm and collected on the outside. Maybe no one would see his eyelashes were clotting. Maybe now that his eye-bags weren't so large and sooty anymore, no one would notice their bunch.

"Chill out, Dr. D."

Well, maybe no one except Shego.

After what Drakken realized wasn't eternity only when it ended, a door yawned open. Nakasumi entered the room, not as big as Drakken had expected, but the intimidation factor had Drakken's contacts batting at warp speed. Next to him was a young woman with her hair rolled up in one of those business-balls. Drakken felt several spiky strands soaking onto his own forehead.

Nakasumi acknowledged Drakken with a nod. He was a full head shorter than Drakken but with a broad, wise face and a chest like a gorilla (hopefully a gentle one). He reminded Drakken a bit of Senior. It soothed some of the storm in his gut.

Drakken breathed in until his lungs swelled. Let it out. Sound waves bounced on his exhale, something rough that sounded roughly like, "Hello."

The translator leaned down to whisper in Nakasumi's ear. He nodded again, listening as if they were the very oldest and dearest of friends.

Drakken bet the tabloids had a field day with their relationship, too.

Ugh, how I always hated Field Day. . .

Okay. No. Focus. He could do this, he could! "I'm sure you know me," Drakken began. "Heard of me. Probably despise me with every fiber of your being."

As Ms. Translator-Whose-Name-He'd-Missed bent down again, Drakken examined Nakasumi. His eyes weren't hateful, but they were guarded. Drakken felt his composure unraveling.

"And it's obvio - " The words clogged in Drakken's throat, like lozenges he'd been foolish enough to swallow whole.

Still, he could see the same wise wrinkles in Nakasumi's forehead, higher and balder than it had been at the parade last year, that etched Senior's face. He glanced backward at Shego. Even though she wasn't jumping in to save him, her almond eyes were as stable as the periodic table, and they consoled him.

"And it's obvious why you would," Drakken managed to say this time. "I hurt you. I tied you up. I tried to kidnap you. I stole from you - and worse, I stole your ideas and used them for evil! That's corporate-shyster-ism at its worst!"

His voice winced over itself, but that was okay. Vulnerability was a tactic Richard Lipsky would have never employed.

Big breath. No saliva went down his windpipe. Good sign.

"But I thought you might like to know that I'm now reformed. Gone straight. On the side of law and justice and honor and good stuff. And I have to tell you how sorry I am."

Once Ms. Translator finished interpreting, Nakasumi's face flickered surprise for the first time. He tipped up to meet the expression Drakken knew was contrite with his own intent one.

Drakken practically had to crowbar his back teeth apart. "That's why I wanted to give you this. It rightfully belongs to you. After everything I did to it, you probably don't want it - you probably just want to rip it up - but - but - but it should be yours to rip up."

He groped in his khaki pocket for a minute and then held out the blueprint with the loathsome little devil on it. The one that didn't start out that way, the one whose destiny hadn't been to decimate, the one who Nakasumi must have had such plans for.

The evil potential he'd seen in it literally sickened Drakken.

More of the truth pulled loose. "I'm so sorry," Drakken repeated quietly. Well, maybe most people wouldn't classify it as quiet, but by Dr. Drakken standards, it was just this side of a whisper.

Nakasumi reached for the paper with reverence, as if it were something sacred rather than demonic. The bare sweeps of scalp were shining.

Drakken crossed his fingers until the knobby midpoint on each one - did that fall under "knuckle," too? - turned white.

More stuff was said into Ms. Translator's ear. When she straightened, hands folded at the waistline of her dress, she said, "Nakasumi-San says he is grateful for your apology."

Yes? Yes? YES? Drakken tilted forward so that he almost sprawled onto his elbows, which were quivering along with everything else on him in anticipation of more.

Nothing came.

Drakken caught his gaze before it could sink to the toes of his sensible brown businessman-shoes. Oh. Right. He'd mixed all the ingredients together and slid them into the oven. Now he had to bake it at 350 degrees and hope for the best. There was no E-Z Bake Forgiveness.

Whatever the analogy, when Nakasumi's eyes met Drakken's, they knocked him backward toward his seat. Smacked his posterior right against it while still standing - and, boy, did that smart!

Every wrinkle in Nakasumi's brow understood and believed. That Drakken was sorry. That he was different now. That -

That those people were still dead. No amount of apologizing was going to bring them back. But the old Drakken was dead, too. It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough. But it was a start.

A great weight was lifted from his stomach. Sort of the way it did when you threw up, only without all the acid and discomfort. Plain old-fashioned regurgitating, maybe?

Drakken bobbed his head until his spikes almost took flight. "Yes," he said, which wasn't exactly brilliant because all his concentration was on not hyperventilating from relief. And joy. And something like peace. "Well, I won't keep you going - from going - I - I won't keep you! You can go!"

Another crease, a happy one, bloomed around Nakasumi's mouth at that translation. He didn't smile, but the gorilla was gentle after all.

Drakken was about to stick out a palm, even if it was a little clammy. (A little? It was practically Maine in those fortune-teller lines. Because Maine had clams . . .) Yet at that moment, a new message dinged in his clear place. Information he'd picked up from that kid - once a buffoon, now upgraded to friend. Something about Japan, which he had apparently learned from another school there and the people who had given him his sister.

That was ripe with distraction, so Drakken grabbed the clear place and centered it on the info he needed. There it was, the goofy kid demonstrating a move that made him look capable.

Eyes shut tightly, Drakken dipped his entire upper half down over his waist. One hand went flat, fingers turned upward, and the other formed a fist that pressed lightly into it.

A greeting. A farewell. A sign of respect.

More quiet fell. Drakken squirmed in it and cracked one eyelid just enough to peer out. Nakasumi was doing a curious study of him.

And then he bowed back.

Drakken stared down at the top of that balding head until it - along with the rest of Nakasumi's body, of course - that would be extremely creepy otherwise - turned and strolled back into the heart of the building. Drakken's own heart was thundering out a rhythm that could have been mistaken for a stampede of angry cows.

I did it. I didit!

With a wild whoop, Drakken spun in a circle. Dizzied himself. Fell halfway onto the chair and was still giggling - unashamedly giggling - when Shego stepped up and flicked his jaw.

"You got something on your face, Doc."

Drakken grabbed the nearest reflective surface - which happened to be a window - and grunted to himself. There was a tiny yellow bloom struggling to blossom right under the round of his chin. Drakken gave it a push, a soft one, and it retreated back without further argument.

"Wow," he said. "They're actually starting to listen now."

And they were happy. Oh so very happy, because they could sense it in him. Nakasumi had stood straighter and walked more relaxed(ly?) on his way out, and it had Drakken ready to do cartwheels that he'd very possibly made that man's day.

He'd almost forgotten how. . . well, good it felt to do something good. When he'd paid for Shego's Christmas vacation or did something nice for his mother or, oh yeah, when he saved the world, he just felt like he was glowing inside. It wasn't as exhilarating as evil, but there was something so - pure about it. And Drakken liked it.

"Well, Shego?" Drakken held out his fingers, sticky with the residue of sweat. "Shall we get started on our next adventure?"

Shego moaned in what would have been perfect exasperation if it weren't for the tiny gleam in each eye. Like sunlight bouncing off a mossy pond. Or something like that.

"Who knows what may lie around the next bend?" Drakken continued. He swiveled and followed his point straight into a wall, prompting a guffaw from Shego.

Oh, well. Rome wasn't built in a Carpe Diem.

(One of those words meant "day" - Drakken just couldn't remember which.)

Drakken walked out of the building, sunshine warming his face and goodness warming his soul. He'd done everything he could to set things right. Maybe someday that would be enough.

Most of the rubble he dodged on his way back to the hovercraft had been the work of the aliens, not Drakken. Funny how he'd been so mad that their attack was going to outshine his own - and two hours later, he'd poured his brilliance into a new plan that had changed him forever. Drakken grew a flower for the sole purpose of giving it a high-five.

A mutual high-five. Lots of flowers had five petals. One of Mother Nature's little tricks to make sure water was evenly distributed.

Dr. Freeman was wrong; he wasn't a good man. But he wasn't a monster anymore. Maybe he was even closer to being a good man than to being a monster. He was certainly closer than he had been before he'd given those blueprints back.

Snowman Hank would be so proud.

"It's day one of the rest of my life

It's day one of the best of my life

I'm marching on to the beat of

A brand-new drum, yeah, here I come

The future has begun

Day one"

-Matthew West

Her

"Even when the jury and the judge

Say you got a right to hold a grudge

It's the whisper in your ear saying set it free"

-Matthew West

"Okay - taking a few. Starting now."

Kim Possible leaned up against the door to her dorm room and heard it click cleanly into place behind her. Wednesday was the one weeknight without evening classes, and that was a huge gap of a breather.

That was definitely enough time to get her choose-a-true-crime-article-to-write-about paper going. It wouldn't be hard to pick out an article, considering about one out of every five featured her, and Wade had bookmarked them all over the summer.

Kim loved the bustling, zippy college environment, but there were times when even she needed a break. Running her fingers through the tangled red bangs that hung a bit too long over her forehead, she peeled herself from the door and took some yoga-breaths.

The occupied-by-Kristin side of the room was still vacant. Her photojournalism class must have been running late again. Professor Lutz, Kim had heard, always chose the camera over the clock.

So far, college was so not the drama. Kristin was a nice enough roommate. Sometimes she forgot to clean her hair out of the shower drain, which was a MAJOR toe-curler, but she and Kim hadn't had any serious ishes yet. And the French classes she'd taken since freshman year was so coming in handy. Of course, having Ron within ten miles - they could have been in Czechoslovakia for all Kim cared.

The proffs were super-understanding, too. Kim's psychology instructor had given her what he'd called an "extended warranty" on last week's assignment because of the whole stopping-Dementor-from-cleaning-out-the-Louvre thing. Kim had waited for the Bonnie-style pouts, the hair-flipping, the whines of "Why does Kim get special treatment?" rolled out nasally.

Nothing.

Actually, Kim hadn't met any Bonnie-types yet. There were plenty of pouty-lipped girls who planted their stiletto heels in the middle of the hall and whispered their heads together, but they'd all been at least decently friendly. Phew on that.

And her Criminal Justice professor had told Kim that her "reputation had not been exaggerated," which was always nice to hear. Getting to major in what she dug, like, practically guaranteed that I'm-out-my-element was going to be - mostly - a past-tense feeling from now on.

Kim tugged the just-longer-enough-to-look-more-professional cut of her Club Banana skirt down over her knees and flopped back onto the bed. Its lumps and dips were still pretty foreign to her, but it was the closest thing to her own bed that she had anymore. Sometimes she still woke up in the middle of the night - hey, YOU try coming through an alien invasion without nightmares every now and then - and thought she was at home, a home that had been leveled by the same aliens counting on preserving her as a trophy.

It was like something out of a bad dream itself - the girl who could do anything reduced to a girl who could do zilch. Kim shivered every time she imagined herself unconscious, her Kimness about as useful as Ron's scooter, dangling from Warhok's too-muscular-to-even-look-hunky arm. If Ron hadn't been there -

But that was the whole point, wasn't it? Ron would have been fighting for her if he'd broken both legs and his collarbone, and she would have done the same for him. They'd be there for each other.

Hopefully forever.

That reality wasn't all warm and fuzzy. What it was was one of the most beautiful sitches Kim had ever been a part of.

She was already saving up to buy him a new scooter.

Even the Kimness wasn't enough to make Kim envy Ron for being the one to end the aliens, though. Sometimes, somewhere beyond the deepest parts of those milk-chocolate-browns, she could watch the explosion she'd barely been awake to witness. Kim didn't know how she would even start to deal.

Ron's solution was what it always was: to live in the moment, even when he was freaking out over the past or the future. There was enough boo-yah-worthy stuff about their life in Paris to keep him the happy-go-lucky Ron she loved. But Kim could see something deeper at work in him every time he channeled his MMP, a sincere effort not to lose his sweetness. It was probably the most mature reaction he'd ever had to anything. On the sobbing-breakdown front, he was doing WAY better than anyone would have expected.

He'd basically owned everybody who'd ever pegged him as a loser.

The thought brought on a grin, and Kim lifted herself lightly from the bed. All right - she'd kickstart her paper and then maybe text Monique's brand-spankin'-new cell phone. The girl was totally jelling that Kim was doing the college thing in Paris. Monique had made her promise to send her pictures of all the boutiques while they'd hugged and cried the day Kim's plane left.

Yeah, cried. Talk about beyond weird. Kim had seen Monique cry maybe twice in the nearly-three-year course of their friendship - and she'd seen herself cry maybe half of that. She'd almost forgotten how warm a tear was when you lost control of it and let it spill over.

Monique had been right, though - the fashions in Paris were different. There was some unforced snazz to them on their home turf, before they got packaged and bottled and shipped across the ocean for girls like Bonnie to fall down and worship. It was all very cool.

Kim was just envisioning a new pair of non-frumpy tights to wear with the ankle boots Marcella had given her when her cell phone jangled in her pocket.

That's probably Ron, Kim thought, glancing at her mini-Kimmunicator's watch. His classes get out around now. The kid kept better track of Kim's schedule than his own - classic Ron - and never failed to show up with a DVD for them to watch in the lobby on Wednesday nights.

He even came through with the occasional chick flick. Was this guy a catch or what?

The number on Kim's screen, though, wasn't one she recognized. Only because it had a Middleton area code and the rest of the Possible family were still migrating from one house to another every few days did Kim pick it up, flip it open, and hold it in place with her chin.

"This is Kim."

"Kim. . . Possible?" The voice on the other end hesitated on the brink of familiarity.

The thunder in it rang a bell. It almost sounded like. . .

Nah, couldn't be.

"Ye-ees?" Kim said slowly.

"Oh, thank goodness!" the thunder cried. "I thought your father had given me a fake phone number. . . he still doesn't like me very much - not that I blame him, but it still hurts, you know?"

It could.

Kim's lips pressed to hold back a laugh, not a scream. "Hi, Drakken."

"How did you know it was me?" That voice shot upward, its boom breaking into shrill shakiness, and became unmistakable. The fingertips just had to be tapping together in all kinds of nervous patterns.

The research paper flew to the farthest corners of her brain.

"Lucky guess," Kim said. She rearranged herself in the most comfortable chair - knowing Drakken, this was going to be an looong convo - and it gradually stole over her that she wasn't scared at all by him sounding as if he could be standing right out in the hall. The karate-chop reflex wasn't rearing up, either.

She had been a little bit peeved when she'd first heard about his award ceremony. Something along the lines of, Okay, I've been saving the world since I was twelve, and they've never given me a medal, but Drakken finally does something right, and they're all over that, had flickered through her - but how petty was that?

Drakken may not have deserved that medal more than she did, but he sure NEEDED it more. If it made evil any less appealing to her most painful-in-the-tail arch-nemesis, Kim would have given him the medal herself.

That was the part that Kim paused at uneasily. She believed the ringing sincerity that Drakken had used to declare he was going straight and the way his mouth tipped bashfully into something too small to be his regular grin. It was incredibly easy to tell when Drakken was lying - the bunchy eyes, the pinched-in chest, the half-sick expression he always got, as if that alone would get him off the hook.

Yeah, Kim didn't doubt for a sec that Drakken was fully willing to reform. Ready and able were two whole other stories. The man had never held down a job in his life - unless you counted the cupcake store and that awful stretch where he'd owned Bueno Nacho. He'd jumped straight from college kid to supervillain.

Would someone that damaged really be able to brush himself off and dive headfirst into the ranks of the good guys?

Kim clenched the phone tighter. "Sooo. . . "

"Sooo. . . how you been?" Drakken took a swing at "suave" and missed by a mile.

The question itself - the interest-in-her - was almost enough to jerk the phone out at arm's length so she could make sure this was legit.

"I'm pretty good," Kim finally said. It wasn't a lie, though "utterly weirded-out" might have been more accurate.

"Splendid! College being good to you?" Drakken asked.

"Yeah."

"What are you studying?"

"Criminal Justice," Kim told him.

"Yes. Very fitting." Drakken said it politely, but Kim would swear she felt him shudder.

Yeah, if this talk wouldn't be basically touch-and-go, she was Cleopatra.

There was a pause, and then Drakken's volume tiptoed up to the rich half-shout that had stopped drawing goose bumps out of her a long time ago. "Well, you've heard I'm reformed now, right? On a new path? A scientist at Global Justice? And they're very happy to have me?"

Six months earlier, Kim would have answered, "Oh, yeah, can I please hear all about it?" - in the frigid tone you had to use to freeze Drakken's ego in place.

That wasn't his ego she was hearing now, though. There was pride, def, but it was the guileless kind.

It'd been sort of hard to miss Drakken joining GJ. It was all over the news, and Kim had just about wanted to frame the picture of Drakken grinning from one doorknob ear to the other, Global Justice uniform hanging on his gangly frame, until she forgot that that face had ever worn the same leering mask as the Diablos themselves.

He'd gained a little weight since the night of the alien invasion, lost part of the dark smudges under his eyes. The brown eyes couldn't keep still any more than they ever had, but as they skipped over the faces, Kim noticed that they were no longer a dumping ground for hatred and fear of everything known to mankind. He was healing, and it made him look almost handsome in the same lopsided, little-boy way Ron had on prom night.

Kim didn't realize until she moved her lips that they had been slowly turning up. "I heard. Do you like it there?"

"Oh, yes!" was practically a squeal. "We've been working on - " Drakken took a preparing-to-plow-straight-through-three-paragraphs breath, and Kim sucked in one of her own to tell him NOT to spill.

Before she could get her mouth open, though, Drakken gave a cinema-worthy gasp and said, "Errr, yes, I just remembered. All of that is strictly classified."

"Wouldn't want to dish international secrets," Kim agreed. Some part of her was bizarrely proud.

"No, certainly not!" The ponytail must have been wagging side-to-side. "That would be thoughtless - and careless - and catastrophic! Maybe even evil. And I don't wanna be evil."

Kim's composure took a mini-hit at the words, as pure and longing as they'd been during that conversation before Drakken had been Attitudinated back to evil. But there was a major diff - this time, he got to make his own choice.

"Of course not," Kim said, hoping there wasn't too much irony lining her voice. "Look, Drakken, why did you call? Not trying to be rude, but this is mega-long distance. . . "

Kim reined in the rest: And a jacked-up cell phone bill that you have no clue how to pay is SUCH a good idea while you're just learning to go legal.

"Ah. Yes. Right." Drakken cleared his throat with a hack as if he'd inhaled something. "I just wanted to say thank you."

Is this a prank? was what Kim wanted to say.

"Thank you?" she repeated. She'd saved Drakken's life a few times, but Kim had never thought he'd processed any of it beyond oh-yay-I-don't-know-how-but-I'm-still-alive-now-to-conquer-the-world!

"Well, you're welcome, but I don't know what I did."

Kim stretched the skin over one temple. Reformed or not, Drakken could still be as ugh-inducing as ever.

"I wanted to thank you, though. For believing in me. The night of the alien invasion." Drakken swallowed, a rustier sound. "No one's ever done that for me before."

Everything on Kim stayed composed except her right leg, which dragged its way down from the chair to the floor. Well, sure, she'd believed in him - somebody had to save Earth, and Drakken had been the only one with a working plan. Those vines had wasted the Lorwardian laser cannons right there in the dungeon while Kim herself watched, so she really hadn't had any neg vibes, other than the standard Drakken-is-a-loser. And Kim had just come up-close-and-personal with the real Drakken, and he wasn't a loser at all.

He was - "due" was how she'd put it to Wade. Kim hadn't thought twice about it, or the "Good job" she'd tossed him after their escape. Playing the cheerleader came even more naturally to her than Kung Fu. But Drakken sounded like he was staring at them as if they were pieces of candy he'd never been allowed to have before.

Kim was glad Drakken couldn't see her blinking at the phone. It was still totally in her blood never to give him the upper hand. Casual was really the only way to go. "Well, it was no big, you know -" she began.

"Yes, it was! It was the biggest - big - everrrr -" Drakken's words were choked, and Kim could picture his big eyes filming over.

"Okay, okay, it was a big!" Kim cut in as fast as possible. Please don't cry, Drakken. Please don't cry. "What I meant was. . . you're welcome."

That silence was as thick and comforting as the quilt Nana had knit her for a graduation present.

"I wish there was some way I could make it up to you," Drakken sniffled. The tears still lingered in the rustiness that scraped the phone, but they weren't gonna be white-water rapids any time soon. "I was going to get you a new Pandaroo, but I heard that had already been taken care of."

Yeah, no point fighting it anymore. Kim went ahead and let her jaw drop. "You. . . were going to get me. . . a Pandaroo?" she sputtered.

"Ye-es," Drakken said. It was one of the few times Kim had ever heard him hesitate. "Would that have been okay?"

Um, nothing could have been nicer?

Kim shook her head at the whole sitch. A nice Dr. Drakken?

That was weird. But good-weird.

"That's. . . really sweet," she said.

He heaved a ragged sigh from a worn-out-old soul that had somehow managed to maintain some of its innocence. "I lost a teddy bear once," Drakken said, thoroughly solemn.

Kim swallowed a snicker whole.

It didn't really strike her until then that Drakken's boom had once been enough to get her flesh crawling with must. Shower. NOW. Kim pulled her leg back up and picked determinedly through the memories that threatened to re-juice her anger. She'd just struggled past the Diablos and was headed toward Warmonga, clasping her part in bringing them down and saving the day, when Drakken started talking again.

"So," he began, "how's the buff - buff - boof - boyffff - boyfriend?" It rolled off his tongue with the same grace he'd have stumbling over his gawky limbs.

Kim caught a sigh between her teeth. Oh, well. . . at least he was trying.

"Ron's doing super," Kim said. "He's the assistant manager of Paris's Bueno Nacho, and he's going to culinary school not too far away. You should taste his seven-layer chocolate cake."

"Mmmmmm," Drakken moaned - no doubt with a slob of drool hanging from his chops. She could picture the big goofy grin, the one that was so much like Ron's. "I heard he got rid of the aliens."

Sadness bristled Kim from the inside out. "He doesn't like to talk about that."

"I hear that."

His stab at empathy stabbed Kim, too, right in the center of her how-dare-you? "It's NOT the same thing, Drakken," her protecting-Ron reflex made her seethe.

Even as she said it, Kim saw Ron's face right before he'd thrown the aliens back into the atmosphere. She'd never have guessed that her sweet Ron could look fierce, but the liquid centers of his eyes had molded into hard chocolate. Still, it wasn't in the same chapter as Drakken's blatant, flip-of-the-wrist would-be kills.

"I know it's not the same thing!" Drakken's protest was fast and quivery. "Sort of the opposite thing, in fact! But I bet it feels the same."

A wave of rage started to break over Kim, but she recognized the regret that lay behind it. The same regret she could hear in Drakken's voice. Kim couldn't lie and tell him it was okay, but there was something neat about Drakken sharing his humanity with her.

Drakken sniffed. "Just. . . if he ever needs to talk to anybody. . . "

The trying was so thickly layered she could have choked on it. Kim's mind flashed back to the trial, to the remorse she'd been so sure at the time he'd been faking. She saw him in prison, slowly dropping twenty pounds and developing that haunted, self-loathing look in his eyes.

Ron's voice - It's really hard to wake up and know two people croaked 'cause of you - mingled with her mother's - You'd have to be completely heartless to take a life and feel nothing. Drakken had been an evil whacko with delusions of grandeur, but he wasn't completely heartless. She'd seen that.

For an instant, Kim understood her former enemy's pain - because it was the same as her boyfriend's. Maybe it always had been.

Kim glanced over at her Panderoo, half hidden beneath the French-white sheets. If Ron hadn't been there with a replacement - as IF - Drakken would have.

Twilight Zone, much?

Okay, so the remorse? Not new. He's just finally figured out what to do with it.

"I'll let him know," Kim said. Her backbone was tight, but her words flowed out like silk.

"Those aliens, though." Drakken didn't sound as happy as Kim would have thought he'd been over Warhok and Warmonga getting served - especially since half the cred belonged to him. "It's not like I'm going to miss them or anything - "

More shades of Ron scribbled across Kim's image of him.

"- but I didn't want them dead. Now, the big fellow, I never cared much for him. But Warmonga?" His voice suddenly turned into a tremor. "We worked together for a while. She kissed me."

"She kissed you?" Kim knew that was more shrill than silken. She could talk to Drakken now without her skin crawling, but the idea of someone kissing him still fell firmly into the "gorchy" category.

"On the cheek," Drakken was quick to clarify. "She kissed me on the cheek and now she's dead." He heaved a two-ton sigh, complete with nose-whistle. "It's hard."

"Uh, ya think?" was all Kim could say.

Drakken chuckled around the tail end of a not-quite-sob. "Yes, it's very hard. I talk to my shrink about that all the time."

"You're seeing a shrink?" Kim bit her tongue to keep "Thank goodness" from sliding off it. If Drakken really was getting help - if he wasn't taking his I-can-do-this-myself denial and careening headfirst into the good like he'd always done with the bad -

He can do it. He'll make it.

"Yes. Dr. Director recommended him. She said that most brilliant people need therapy." The words came out from some matter-of-fact place where he'd accepted them.

Ron would have pumped his fist and yelled, "Boo-yah!" Kim was kinda tempted to do the same thing. Major props to Dr. Director.

"You know what else Dr. Director says?" Drakken asked, sounding so much like a first-grader with a hyper-juicy secret that Kim had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

"What?"

The first-grader disappeared as Drakken said, solemn as a Buckingham Palace guard, "She said that as heroes, we do what we have to do, but only as a last resort, and we take no pleasure in it. That sounds like what the - he - your friend did." There was a rustle while Kim imagined him tipping his chin up in that drama-queen way he had. "So I guess he's a hero. You should tell him that."

Kim was so stunned she nodded against the speaker, something she hadn't done since Josh Mankey had first called her back in freshman year. How crazy was that - Drakken trying to help her comfort Ron?

As Dad would have said, What the Sam Hill?

"Smart lady, that Dr. Director," Kim said. Her trusting Drakken was another point for him in Kim's book. That woman had character-reading skills that left Kim admiring her in the dust. She'd never be fooled by someone like Drakken at any stage of his career, prom night included.

"Uh, ya think?" Drakken bellowed at his own joke. His voice was back to the one that could whine that she wasn't the boss of him. "She's very kind, too. Very forgiving."

Yeah. Clearly.

Kim's mouth twisted as she thought about that. Global Justice was actually an option she was considering after college herself, one of the main reasons she was minoring in International Diplomacy. How weird would THAT be, being on the same payroll as Dr. Drakken? There was still a certain nerves-on-guard effect from being in even a building that big with him. It didn't scare Kim, but it would sure as heck be annoying walking around with that needling her all the time.

Of course, maybe by the time she was done with college and ready for basic training, things would feel different. Kim was so rooting for that.

"It feels quite grand, you know," Drakken continued. "Being forgiven, that is. Or even being almost forgiven. I've been going around and apologizing to everyone I've ever hurt - who I can remember hurting, that is - Shego says I'm following the Twelve Steps - you know, like Alcoholics Anonymous - except I'm not an alcoholic - well, I did get drunk once, but that was an accident - because I thought it was fruit punch -"

The surreal quality was vanishing. No one could bunny-trail as far and as furiously as Dr. Drakken.

"Drakken," Kim said - even though there had to be a pretty hilarious story behind that. "The point."

"NNNGH!" That was Drakken, all right. Kim could have picked him out in a police lineup by those grunts alone.

To her surprise, it only took Drakken thirty seconds or so to work back to something coherent. "Right. The point. The point is - most people's behavior has been corresponding to how I responded to your father's apology." An Atlantic away, Kim was sure the white teeth were flashing. "Remember how I told him I couldn't forgive him yet, but I believed he was sorry?"

"Yep." She did. That had been a great moment. A mini-thorn of homesickness pricked at Kim.

"Well, those are mostly the vibes I've been getting." Kim heard Drakken's fingernail bounce off the phone, followed by more noises, closer to hisses than whimpers, and a "Dagnabit!" muffled by the fingertip he must have been sucking.

So much for hip. It was no wonder Shego's lips were caught between a constant curl and a constant twitch. Kim could feel some twitching of her own going on.

"I tell you what, Kim Possible." Drakken was bobbing his head, judging by the hair-flap against the receiver. "It was such a relief to get that off my chest. Off my stomach. For so long, I was so sick that -"

"Hey, how's Shego?" Kim cut in - because she was NOT interested in whatever went on in Drakken's bod. And since he'd actually been nice and asked about Ron, she might as well return the favor.

"Satisfactory," Drakken said with a big honkin' glob of isn't-she-great. "She hasn't gotten into any trouble since the night of the alien invasion. I don't know if she'll go straight too or not, but she said, and I quote, 'When you're wanted in eleven countries and the UN pardons you, you don't just run out and rub the nearest bank. You stop and think about what you wanna do with your life.'"

He didn't quite rock the practical flatness the way Shego did, but Kim caught enough of the gist to privately smirk. So Shego.

"She's not as excited about reforming as I am." In spite of the science report he no-doy wanted to reduce it to, Kim could hear the clog in Drakken's throat.

"Wouldn't expect her to be," Kim said. Basically, Drakken, no one gets as excited as you do about anything. ESPECIALLY not Shego. Sheesh - you about split your pants when they brought out the cement mixer!

Yeah, Drakken had been around to help with the house on and off during summer. He'd babbled brightly about what a perfect homogenous mixture the cement was and watched round-mouthed as the construction workers spread one smooth level of it. Kim had had to do all the eye-rolling herself, since Shego was never there.

That was A-OK with Kim. Trusting Drakken was life-twisting enough, but trusting Shego? That wouldn't be happening any time this decade.

"For now," Drakken said, "I'm just trying to be a good influence on her."

Kim would have laughed - the idea of Drakken being a good influence on anybody - if it weren't for the earnestness in his voice. It told her that Drakken cared about Shego every bit as much as Kim cared about Ron. Maybe not in exactly the same way - although what was up with that little flower-hug at the UN, anyway? - but just as much.

Her muscles pinched, Shego-ready, but Kim felt them loosen as she stunned herself by saying, "Well, I hope things work out for her."

Yikes - who let that thought in?

Then again, what sane person wouldn't rather have Shego as an ally than an enemy? There might have even been some leftover splinter of Miss Go somewhere way deep under all that sarcasm and plasma. Even if Kim never got close enough to discover it, maybe Drakken would.

Drakken, on the other hand, was giggling his Attitudinated alter-ego all over the place. That still had a loose-screw rattle to it, but not the kind that got Kim running for her mission gear. It was a laugh that invited everyone within two blocks to join it, and only the all the heavy nasties between them kept Kim from doing just that.

He and Ron were going to get along great now that they were on the same side.

Speaking of Ron -

Kim tapped her watch. Her take-fifteen had come and gone, and her laptop would go into hibernation any minute. "Look, Drakken, I need to get going."

"I understand," Drakken coughed. The image of him jamming his free hand into his pocket was as clear as if they'd been chatting on Skype. "Have fun at - at college."

"I will."

Drakken's boom spiraled down to an attempt-at-a-hush. "If your friends need dates for a big dance, don't build them robots," he advised.

Some small corner of Kim's heart softened and ran like wet mascara. "Big neg on that," she said. She could virtually promise she would never find herself in THAT sitch - but it still meant a heap, considering that was the event Drakken had nailed down as his life-wrecker. The father thing must have been too tender for Drakken to keep it within the reach of his mad-scientist rants. She couldn't just throw that back in his scarred little face.

"If you run into my fam," Kim added, "tell them I say 'Hi,' 'I love you,' all that."

A teeny twinge rushed into Kim's chest when Drakken said, "'Kay," just as sweetly spacey as Dad would have when he was off in the absent-minded-professor land. And then he said the one thing that could have floored her more than the "Thank you."

"Kim Possible. . . I'm sorry."

Kim breathed in sharply. Something mature layered over the child-whine she'd heard so many times before, the way Drakken's slashing cheekbones topped his little-boy cheeks. He didn't slap it casually into her palm like Ron had handed out his Benjamins from the naco royalties. It was closer to Ron's new-since-B-minusing-senior-economics method of giving away money: sorta cautious, totally respectful of how well-earned it was.

Are. You. Kidding. Me.

Her first impulse - the one she hardly ever followed - was to blurt out, "For what?" Kim knew if she did, though, Drakken would have been there all night, going over an item-by-item list of everything he'd ever done to her.

She could picture his face as she'd seen it on graduation night - mouth writhing with undeniable shame. Shame that had done its duty and now needed to be released back into the air.

That, plus there was still the quaver echoing in her ears. It was a shaky submission that apologized for death traps and global destruction and attacks on Kim's schedule.

And for Eric.

It was more than Kim needed to wait for something other than the dozen smart retorts launching into her brain like obnoxious Internet pop-ups, and to fix her eyes on a spot on the wallpaper so Diablo-Drakken couldn't drag back into her thoughts. "I believe you," she said at last. "Thanks."

"But you can't forgive me yet?" From the sound of the only-halfway-a-question, Drakken was less surprised by that than Kim was that he'd picked up on it.

Kim could count on the fingers of one hand how many times she'd been out-and-out flabbergasted in the past eighteen years. This was one of them, and it took a few seconds to shake it out to where she could be honest and still Kimness-approved.

"Not yet," she admitted. Prom night being over and done, and the heart-crossed assurance it would never happen again, didn't just X everything she'd suffered out of her mind.

But Drakken had suffered too, every evil he'd chucked out boomeranging back at him. Now he was reaching out, across all that. His tiny fingers could almost close the gap.

Almost.

Kim had an "It's okay, Drakken," formed on her lips to answer the "GRRRKKK"s. After a lifetime with Ron, she could drive down that road in her SLEEP.

The puny temper didn't explode into its infamous tantrum, though. "But - someday?" Drakken asked. His voice was plaintive, but it stopped just short of whiny.

"I hope so," Kim said. And she meant it.

Because the chasm was very, very deep - but it wasn't bottomless.

Drakken sighed again. It wasn't the martyr-act that drifted through the phone. He just seemed tired, like he'd only just realized he'd spent most of his nights ankle-deep in blueprints. "Fair enough," he murmured.

The silence was soft again. Forgiving Drakken would probably be more painful than those first few days without her wisdom teeth - still, for the sake of who her boyfriend was and who her former arch-nemesis could become, she had to try.

And wasn't she the girl who could do anything, after all?

"Very well, Kim Possible." Kim imagined Drakken's shoulders rolling back inside their pads. "I shall bid you adieu."

It was a Senior-wannabe goodbye that fell smack into the uh-who-even-says-that-anymore category. Kim was grinning when she said, "Bye," and clicked the call off.

A text from Ron was bouncing on her screen, like Ron himself was there to dance from foot to foot. Just found out they're rebooting Fearless Ferret as a multimillion-dollar movie! So. . . can we set a date for about two years? Not that I don't have mad love for the chick flicks, but any good superhero pic has plenty of smooching in it, right?

The beyond-cute kid and the man he was turning into? Irresistible combo.

I'll check my calendar, Kim texted back and headed to the mirror to touch up her lipstick. Some lotion wouldn't hurt, either. Crimson splotches from cell-phone-squeezing stained her fingers.

Aw, man, was Ron's reply. Don't tell me you've got your plannage planned out THAT far already!

Plannage?

Kidding, Ron. Meet me in the lobby? You'll never guess who just called me. . .

Kim stood up and swung her purse over one arm. Outside, the sky was a timid blue that matched Drakken's skin. That shade had never made him seem so non-freaky before.

That must have been why he'd fumbled through apologies all summer - he was working his way up to her. A "sorry" should insta-lose stacked up next to everything Drakken had done to her.

Hello - no contest?

Except this was no grudging mumble. Kim had felt the remorse streaming toward her, begging to be accepted by someone who'd seen his ugliest parts.

She couldn't ever let those parts off the hook, but there were flowers growing over them, painting a Drakken she could almost like.

Almost.

Kim stopped with the doorknob in mid-twist. It was a strange, beautiful moment to realize she didn't hate Drakken anymore. Instead, she felt a strange mixture of pity and pride and curiosity about what role he would wind up playing next in her story - and his own.

She closed the door behind as she started for the stairs to meet her boyfriend. And to turn the next page.

THE END

~I know it's not exactly a fairy-tale ending. . . kinda ironic, given the fic's title. But given all the heavy stuff that happens over the course of the story, I felt like I couldn't just pretend it was all super simple to resolve. What struck me as most important to get across is that all the characters are on the road to healing, even if it's not an easy road. ~