And You And I

S219(U8): I'm moving through some changes

Author's note:

Ok, folks, I just have a quick point to make here before we get into the chapter. Thanks to some eagle-eyed reading from Celioxa, I've had to go back and make a slight addition to chapter 15: Where we start. When I wrote the chapter, I completely forgot to mention that Shego had Kim's personal jamming device with her when she was both asleep and up until the point she restored her glow. So, I've gone back and added it in, just in case any of you are confused by its appearance in this chapter.

The chapter title this time around is a lyric from the Yes song Changes; from their 90125 album and is a reference to what's been going on in Shego's life recently. Enjoy.

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When Shego finally arrived home after restoring her glow, the searing green plasma that had enveloped her hands had finally dissipated. However, her glow itself had not; still shinning so bright that an onlooker would almost require sunglasses just to gaze upon her. Even if she could, she would not have extinguished it. After being without the green Team Go glow for nearly two weeks, she needed to feel its presence at every moment. To revel in the joy of being complete once more. She might have felt like shit, owing to the illness that still wracked her body, but she would not have traded her state of being for one where she was perfectly healthy but without her glow; either in or out of prison.

Shego awoke sometime the following afternoon, with only the vaguest recollection of what had happened after returning home the previous day. From the bottom of the stairs, she may or may not have called through to Ru-Ru, who she'd assumed had still been in the living room, that she was going to bed. She'd then and this was based purely on the fact that she currently lay atop her bed, made it upstairs and collapsed atop the mattress. She sat up, felt her head spin and promptly flopped back down. Ok, note to self, don't try that again so quickly. Shego took a few stabilising breaths, waited for her head to clear and then tried again much more slowly. She succeeded in sitting up this time and cast her gaze around her bedroom. Damn, it's good to be home. Heh and to think I have Kimmie to thank for the fact I'm seeing this room after only eleven days. I wonder how her morals will hold up the next time I get... She quickly quashed the thought. No, I am not going back to jail again. While she always had a similar thought in the wake of escaping prison, there was an extra bite this time, perhaps due to the extra reasons she had to avoid it. For one thing, there was Brooks. She'd thrice escaped on the good Captain's Watch now and knew the hateful woman would have her straight back in that freezing cold solitary confinement cell the moment she had finished processing her and probably for a month. Then there was Ru-Ru. She'd got damn lucky that the naked-mole-shark had found his way to Kimmie, otherwise, she would probably have never seen him again. And she did not want to think about what might have happened to him had GJ got their hands on him. Finally, there was...

Shego point-blank threw the last thought out of her mind and stood up. Not only had she failed to get underneath the covers yesterday, but she'd also not managed to strip out of the charred dregs of clothing that still clung to her body after her glow had exploded and incinerated the rest of the garments. She pulled a three-inch ring of blackened material that had once been red from around her right wrist and another, this one with a flap about three-by-four-inches, from her left shoulder; the only discernible remnants of her hoodie. A mesh of burnt material that may have been a mix of bra, t-shirt and hoodie clung to her breasts and virtually disintegrated when she pulled at it. Her trousers had fared slightly better; the waistband and a good portion of the upper left leg still intact. Her socks and shoes had either been consumed by the green inferno or fallen away as she had walked home. Undoing the button of her ex-combats, she hauled the waistband and solitary piece of trouser leg off. When they hit the ground, a blackened metal disc fell out of the pocket. She frowned at it and stooped to pick it up. What the...? While it had not survived unscathed, a blinking light told her that it still worked. It took a moment for the memory to come back to her, Kimmie's personal jamming device. She turned it over in her hand. Seems like those little Tweebs of hers have been tinkering with science of the mad variety, as whatever that alloy is, its composition certainly won't be found in any chemistry textbook. Now completely naked; her glow still surrounding her, she turned the device off, set it down on her nightstand and headed for the bathroom.