gotgreenmagic

"Bad different or just different?"

"Bad for you. You've been quiet and submissive and..." He almost said scared but there was only so much he could really pick up on just from talking to her over the journals, and he wasn't sure he trusted that suspicion.

"Check you out. I didn't know you were so perceptive, sunshine," she said weakly, then sighed. "Listen, I just...some stuff got dug up, and...I don't know. Maybe 'quiet and submissive' is better for this hellhole."

Probably not the best choice of words. A million things ran through Mozenrath's head at once, but first and foremost he felt denial -- that he was hearing this from her at all. That it sounded like she was giving up. He really didn't know what she meant about things being dug up -- he didn't know her past all that well, or if it was something that specifically happened here, but all roads, in his own refusal to be told what he should be, pointed to one person.

Mozenrath drew in a calming breath, and for a minute he couldn't look directly at her. When he spoke, for the first time in a long time he actually sounded dangerous.

"What did he do?"

There was something in the tone of his voice that raised the hairs on the back of her neck and she turned, surprised, to face him properly.

"I. He. You mean -- nothing. He didn't do anything." That wasn't precisely true. "Nothing deliberate, anyway."

"I would tell you if it was me," he said, a little coldly. "If I can't help you, fine, but I need to know something."

"It's not - I don't - it's that freaking flood, okay?" Shego snapped. "I thought I was okay and over it and past it and all that jackass needs to do is forget to shave for a week, show up to work wasted and oh, hey, suddenly I'm having the same nightmares and the same freakouts again and I can't, alright?"

She fisted two hands in her hair and pulled. "I just....can't."

"Hey -- " As her tone raised in pitch and intensity he started to feel a familiar pang of defensive panic -- usually reserved for himself. It's the way he felt when he knew he was getting too angry to control himself, and the way Scotty tended to make him feel when he didn't leave well enough alone. He took hold of her upper arms when her fingers twisted into her hair, though. "Hey, it's okay." He didn't even know if those were the words he should have been using, but he wasn't really thinking about that.

"No, it is not." Shego twisted away from him, freeing her hands from her hair because they'd started glowing and she had no immediate plans to set her head on fire. "It is not okay. I am not okay. This entire freaking situation is so completely and totally not okay that I just - I -"

She yelled incoherently and hurled a ball of green energy at nothing in particular, barely having the awareness to aim away from Mozenrath. This was what she'd been afraid of, letting the lid off her frustration and then not being able to get it back on, but acknowledging that didn't make it any easier to handle.

A ball of green fire shot past Mozenrath, narrowly missing the door and striking a nearby tree. Debris and smoke and ash burst forward with the impact and sent his cape and headdress fluttering in the hot, musky breeze it created. Oddly he didn't flinch -- not in fear anyway; there was an uncomfortable twitch when some ash got in his eye. He held up a hand and the air around him appeared to give him a wide berth.

He didn't have the impressive aspects of his power anymore, but at least he had little things to maintain his personal space and comfort. At least it helped him look calm.

After all, if there was one thing he was accustomed to, it was throwing firey tantrums.

"Does that feel a little better?" he asked.

"No," she said quietly. She sat down, lacing her fingers together over the back of her neck. "Actually, it feels a little bit worse."

"I can't make your decisions for you," he said, stepping toward her purposefully, "but I'd honestly rather you be angry because someone hurt you than afraid to react at all."

She glanced up at him. "I don't - that's not it. I'm not mad at anybody. I'm sure as heck not scared. I just..."

She groped around for the right words. "I just miss feeling like there's a point, y'know? I miss feeling like my existence serves any purpose other than as a box-ticking exercise for some blond jerk from the future."

"Shego, that's stupid," he snapped. "Your master plan is to play dead until Kirk throws you out of here so you can what? See how you can be of use to someone else?"

"No," she snapped back. "I don't have a master plan. I don't have anything anymore, that's kind of the point."

"You've got you, and that's what's supposed to be important. So when you shut up because you think that's what this place wants, you've got even less than that."

"I never thought I'd hear an after-school special out of you, sunshine," she said, mostly to herself. "Look, I'm not shutting up because I think it's what this place wants. I don't care what this place wants. Shutting up just feels easier for me right now. And it's not like anyone really wanted the original version," she added, very quietly.

"Yeah, well nobody else gets that crap for free, just so you know." Which was all that needed to be said as far as him and uplifting speeches. And like a cat cleaning itself to cover up a mistake he was looking around at other things, now. Until that last part, anyway. He glanced down. "And I like the original."

Shego gave him a guarded look, then half-smiled and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "I...thanks. Thank you."

"You're welcome." He said it shortly, more like he knew it was customary that one phrase followed the other in polite conversation. "Just don't let it get around. We've both got reputations to maintain, right?"

"Yeah, sure. God forbid that two grouchy sarcastic jerks would ever see anything in each other," she said dryly, then blinked and checked herself. "I mean - hell - you know what I mean."

"Oh stop," he drawled. "I hardly meant it like that. And if that were the case it still wouldn't be any of their business."

Shego made a non-committal noise. For someone who'd knocked out his Warden's lights on her behalf, or maybe his own behalf for reasons of brief but psychotic jealousy, Mozenrath really seemed not to have mind his mind up on the issue of how much like that they were ever likely to get. Not that she was ever going to lead the way there. It just - would have been nice to feel needed.

She dismissed that entire internal monologue as a symptom of sleep deprivation and picked herself up off the floor, dusting herself down.

"I - didn't exactly mean to show up here and offload on you," she offered, the closest she'd ever get to an admission of embarrassment.

He didn't attempt to correct her on the matter. Whatever he'd decided in regards to her, it was caught up in his determination not to give his Warden leverage over him. "Well, you might not have meant for that to happen, but I did, and one of us was going to get our way, don't you think?"

She smiled wryly. "I guess. Why'd you want to know so much anyway? I didn't think guys did the whole feelings shtick." There was sort of a compliment hiding in there.

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