Family History

Title: The Dark Ocean - Side Story - Family History
Author: Rann Aridorn
Notes: This takes place sometime after Choosing Your Family and before Chapter Eighteen. While it's actually long enough that it easily could have been a part in itself once it was finished, two things kept it from being one. The first, that it didn't achieve that length and wasn't finished until all twenty parts of Dark Ocean were done and posted. The second, the stuff here doesn't have any real effect on the main story at this point in time. It's world-building and stuff that will become relevant further down the line, maybe much further, but for now it's not really necessary to the main plot to read it.
Legalish notes: All characters having appeared in Disney's Kim Possible are the property of Disney, and are used here without permission, but with no intent for profit. All other characters are original and the property of Rann Aridorn.


"Bueno Nacho, where there will 'bue no' beating the taste!"
Shego rolled her eyes a bit, then said, "Listen, Hego, I'm on a redirect here so I can't talk long. I figured GJ would have a harder time getting a tap for a corporate line than your home one, too."
"Shego?" Herman Go sounded surprised, but quickly replied, his voice sounding hushed. "Are you alright? Is everything okay? Do you need my help?"
"No, I'm fine. I just wanted to touch base and say hi." Before her brother could voice his surprise over that, she continued. "Also, I wanted to ask you something. Do you remember anything about mom's family? I've been trying to remember if I ever heard about our grandparents on that side."
"What? Uh, well... I think maybe they died?" Hego replied uncertainly, obviously taken back at the abruptness of the subject. "I really can't recall. I do believe that mom mentioned that her father was a harsh teacher once, but other than that..."
"Mm." Shego pursed her lips, considering that one for a moment.
"But it's that exact subject that makes me glad you've called, Shego!"
"Eh?" The green-skinned girl blinked. "What is it?"
"Grandmother wants to speak to you. She's made it, ah, very clear that if you call any of us, we're supposed to tell you."
"She what?" Shego blinked in surprise, then frowned. "Oh, she'd better not be wanting to give me a lecture about making it so Yori can inherit my title. If she thinks-"
"She just wants to talk, Shego," Hego cut in quickly, sounding a little nervous. "She's made it very, ah... VERY clear that she needs to discuss something with you, as soon as possible."
Shego considered for a few moments, then said, "I'll see what I can do. I'll talk to you later, Hego." Without waiting for him to try and divert her again, she cut the line. Propping her elbows up on the console and her chin up in her hands, thinking over the request.
Finally, she pushed herself to her feet and went in search of her lover, and quickly found her working through staff katas in the training area. Shego sidled over to a position nearby, waiting, watching Kim Possible's sleek, perspiration-gleaming form move through the elegant motions of the Staff Branch of the Three Ancestral Dragons School.
Eventually Kim slowed, then spun the staff to rest it across her shoulders, draping her wrists over the top as she turned to Shego and smiled. "Hey. What's up?"
"I think I need to head to Go City for a day or two," Shego replied slowly, rubbing the back of her neck. "Apparently my grandmother has something important she wants to say to me. I don't know what, but it's probably nothing big. I can probably just make my way down there, yammer at her for an hour, then head back."
Kim blinked, swinging the practice staff off of her shoulders and carrying it at her side as she walked over to Shego, raising a hand to trail her fingers along her lover's jaw. "Take all the time you need, Shego. I know how important it is to you to reconnect with your family."
"It's not THAT big a deal," Shego muttered, glancing away.
"The tears I saw when you read your mom's letter say otherwise," Kim teased gently, smiling and leaning in to kiss Shego's lower lip. "Go, silly. We can manage patrol without you for awhile."
Shego nodded slowly. "... Alright." She sighed, shaking her head. "I'd love to give you a really -thorough- goodbye, pumpkin, but apparently this is an ASAP thing. Besides, if I get it done and get under way really fast, I won't have time to think of an excuse to get out of it."
"Good idea," Kim said in a wry tone.

Shego crept through gardens and yards where she had once sulked part of her youth away, eyes cutting through the gloom easily, the light of guard flashlights like a beacon she could have avoided with time for a lunch break. She slipped past various other alarm triggers and other natural hazards (who put an area of glass bricks on the ground around a pool, -really-?), making her way up to the house itself.
She took a quick glance around, then scaled the bricks, her claws finding even the most meager of holds in the mortar and stone. She'd chosen to make her entry at the oldest part of the house, where the security would be easiest to defeat, having been installed long after the fact and with an eye to not interrupting the antique architecture.
Certainly, she could have called her grandmother and set up an appointment, met her for lunch, or hell, just walked up to the front gate and announced herself. However, she still didn't know just how hunted she and the others still were, so best not to take any chances.
Besides, the old bat had been so insistent she come. So she'd come on her own terms.
Shego slid onto a veranda and moved easily and silently as a shadow over to the door. She opened a small, thin knife and inserted it into the doorframe at one point, slowly drawing it over to the side until all the various pressures and tiny sounds told her it was just where it needed to be. She quickly picked the lock, opening the door on the other side and sliding into the dark room.
It looked like a study or a tea room or some silly thing like that. Not much in it other than a table, a few chairs, a fainting couch, and some vases and art, including a large painting over the fireplace. Shego actually paused as she caught a look at it, then wandered over to look up at it. She didn't think she'd ever seen it before on her visits to Go Mansion. It was big, the person it portrayed close to life-size. She looked like she was in her thirties, very beautiful but very... pale, contrasting with all the black she was wearing. The dress looked Victorian or something, with a super-low scooped neckline and a corseted middle, with a long, full skirt that was overlaid with ribbons attached at the waist. Her eyelids and lips were done heavily in black, her hair pulled back into a bun fastened with a pair of golden chopsticks, the tops with small, elaborate decorations, thin braids trailing down from the bun. Behind her stood some huge, almost crudely-carved statue of grey stone, towering above the woman so much that its head wasn't in the frame.
"I don't think you ever really heard the story of your namesake, did you?"
Sheila whirled around to face the chair in the corner, her heart suddenly hammering in her chest. The room had been empty when she'd come in... she hadn't just seen it, she'd smelt it, heard it. She hadn't heard or smelled anyone even approach the room, let alone enter it. But there, sitting in the chair as if she'd been there the whole time, was her grandmother.
Wanda Go actually looked extremely good for a woman who was approaching seventy. Her form was still trim, neither fading to unhealthy thinness or starting to bulge with fat. Though the black satin dress she wore wasn't quite as tight and low-scooped as the ones the matriarch had worn when Shego was a child, it showed that there was still a respectable figure beneath it. The lines on her face merely seemed to enhance the severity of her features and the natural contours of her cheekbones and jaw, and the intense set of her eyes. Her hair had gone a brilliant, pure white, but it seemed to have avoided gaining that brittle, frail look so many older people's developed; it was drawn back into a bun, and speared by what looked like the same pair of decorative chopsticks as in the painting. Now that she saw them again, Shego realized they were actually an integral part of her image of the woman, just one she'd never given a second thought before.
"W-wha?" Shego glanced uncertainly at the hallway door, then at the veranda door. Both were exactly as they had been when she'd come in.
"Though I suppose her being your namesake is arguable. Sheila is, after all, one of a handful of names that we like to have recur in the family. It was even my grandmother's name." Wanda rose from the chair with a smoothness and grace most women never attained, let alone retained into their golden years, sweeping across the short distance to stand beside Shego, looking down at her thoughtfully. "Though from stories of her own rather wild years, the two of you had enough in common that you could easily enough have been named after her."
Shego opened and closed her mouth a few times. She was now just as dumbstruck by how they'd gotten onto a genealogical discussion as how her seventy-year-old granny had snuck up on her.
"But no, I encouraged your father to name you Sheila with this particular Sheila Go in mind," the older woman continued, turning towards the painting and folding her arms over her chest. "She was the first Go to arrive here from Germany. In a day and age when most women weren't even allowed to own property, she managed to carve out the town that would one day become this city, and no one told her she couldn't. Though that may, of course, have had something to do with the fact that everyone who might say no was scared silly of her."
"Er... Gramma Wanda?" Shego cleared her throat. "You... had something you wanted to talk about?"
"Yes. And I'm talking about it."
"... You dragged me out here to give me a family history lesson? I thought this was urgent." Shego scowled.
"And it is." Wanda turned back to face her granddaughter, mouth a thin line. "I understand that you feel what you're doing now is of great importance. And it certainly may be. In great part I'm simply glad that you've finally found something that you are well and truly passionate about, instead of simply passing the time with."
Shego ducked her head a little, not knowing what to say.
"Come, girl. Give me a hug." Wanda held out her arms, and after only a moment's hesitation, Shego moved forward to let herself be wrapped in them. "Let's set aside old ways, and speak to each other as adults who share blood. I will explain why I felt it important to speak with you."
"Alright," Shego said quietly after a moment, squeezing her grandmother gently. "It's nice to see you, Grandma."
"And you as well." Wanda drew away, moving over to turn on the light switch, then moving back to sit in the chair. She gestured at one set at an angle to it, and Shego walked over and sat down as well. "Now, I will explain why it was important that I bring you here and speak to you of our family's history. But first, I'll ask you to trust me while I explain a bit more of that history."
"Alright," Shego allowed. "I'll go along with that."
"Thank you. Now, that particular Sheila Go, the first to arrive in America, was already a widow by that time in her life. She had several children and a fair bit of extended family. And it was they who became the first of the family council, as we began to set up our family's new life in a new world, and to do things in a new way than we did in Germany." Wanda picked up a photo album and laid it on the small table between the two chairs, turning it so that it was upright for Shego and opening it. The photo must have been a reproduction, to judge from the size and the paper it was on, but it showed a large family gathered at the end of what was obviously a pretty small town, the woman in the painting standing at the front.
"That was the very beginning of Go City. Over the years, some of the extended family drifted off, leaving just enough behind to fill out the family council. But the main line endured, continuing strong and steady. Though members of it often struck out into the world... trapping, the gold rush, many other ventures and adventures... almost every one eventually returned to take up their place on the family council and help guide Go City ever further into the future."
Wanda turned several of the pages, stopping on another reproduced photograph. "Another of the family who shared your name, 'Sureshot' Sheila Go and her brother, Norman 'No-Go' Go."
Intrigued by the nickname scheme of her male ancestor as much as anything else, Shego leaned forward a bit to peruse the image. A woman that did indeed look an awful lot like her was leaning back against the post of a wooden awning, grinning rogueishly and pushing the brim of her cowboy hat up with the barrel of a Colt revolver, another still in its holster at her hip. A man who looked like a younger version of her father was standing nearby, an almost identical grin on his face, a repeating rifle resting against one shoulder. A sheriff's star was pinned on one side of his chest.
"They mostly made Norman the sheriff, I think, because they couldn't give the star to a woman back then," Wanda continued, her tone amused. But it faded, honest remorse in her voice, as if these were close relations rather than people who had died long before her parents were born. "Sheila was his unofficial deputy, by all accounts the two were as inseparable as if they were twins. But one day, they went after some men who had raped a woman the previous night, and Norman was, of all things, bitten by a rattlesnake as he lay in a sniping position in some rocks."
"It was a rattlesnake bite that killed him?" Shego asked, shocked, raising her head from the photo.
"Yes, but not before he'd finished picking off most of the men and making it possible for Sheila to round up the rest. By the time she came to find him, he was already dead. Heartbroken, she returned to Go City. They say she never rode a horse or fired a gun again."
Shego sat back, surprised to feel some of that same pang it sounded like her grandmother had felt earlier. She imagined Ron or Yori dying, and being so hurt by it that she never wanted to fight again. The scary thing was, it was easy enough to imagine, and thus easy enough to know how that other Sheila must have felt.
"There are many, many stories here. I've chosen to give you a few highlights I thought might catch your attention. Such as yet another Sheila Go I mentioned earlier." Wanda turned a few more pages, settling on a sepiatone print of a woman wearing a corset and hoopskirts, but somehow managing not to look as restrained by them as other women of the period did, even when they were standing still. Shego blinked, staring. In this case, the resemblance was uncanny. "My grandmother apparently led quite the little life of crime in her twenties. She traveled the globe staging daring robberies with various cohorts, until apparently she'd gotten her wild oats out of her system and returned, years later, and settled down to her own place on the council."
"So, what, is that the lesson? That you think I'm eventually going to get tired, drop everything, and come home to sit around and talk about zoning ordinances?" Shego frowned, looking up from the album again.
"Not quite, dear. I do believe that, eventually, you will come home, and that you will take your seat on the council." Wanda sat back, steepling her fingers and gazing at her granddaughter. "But whether that is a year from now or twenty is up to you, and how your life and feelings develop. I see it as likely because this is your home, and there is a great deal of tradition worth upholding and remembering by returning to it."
"And does all of this have something to do with my saying that I want Yori to have my seat on the family council if I die?"
Wanda let out a soft breath. "Sheila, I do not doubt the strength of your feelings for this young woman. The family we choose can be just as bound to us, just as strong and important, as that we are born into. Having just explained to you how important our bloodline is to me, I think you'll understand how profound it is that I can say that. But there are things about our family you do not know, that few outsiders know, and that would make it difficult to assimilate such an unknown factor into."
"... Alright." Shego leaned back in her chair. "I'm listening."
"Our family line goes far back beyond the first Go to come to America. We came here from Germany, but there are hints that further back, our family may have come from somewhere else entirely."
Shego raised her eyebrows incredulously. "What, like aliens?"
"No, dear, not quite. Not many tales or sources survive from that time, but there are references to 'the great crossing' and the 'passage between worlds'. This could mean something as simple as coming from another continent or another part of Europe. But it could mean other things as well. But it is certain that we are different from many other people in this world."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean magic, Sheila."
Shego slowly grinned. "You're kidding me."
"Have you ever noticed, darling granddaughter, how when you watch a movie or read a book, and someone makes some fantastic revelation and the one they say it to says 'you're kidding me', how rarely, if ever, there is actually any kidding going on?"
Shego's grin disappeared. "... You're not kidding me."
"No." Wanda smiled a bit herself. "From time immemorial the Go family, mostly following the female line, have dabbled in all sorts of magic, often specializing in black magic." She waved a hand dismissively, apparently preempting any questions. "Which is an entirely different thing from dark or evil magic, my dear. A long explanation which is not entirely relevant right now. But many of the prominent members of our family have waved their hands and brought forth supernatural effects. The first Sheila Go in America was a specialist in golems... when I said she began to carve out the city, she almost literally did so, using golems to clear fields and plots, and unearth stone for foundations. 'Sureshot' Sheila and her brother were both naturals with a kind of alchemy which says that distance effectively doesn't exist, which is why their shots so rarely strayed or went wide. Even my grandmother was a dabbler in various kinds of true prestidigitation."
"I see," Shego said slowly, when it seemed that her grandmother had wrapped up for the moment. "So... what about Dad?"
"The talent mostly bypassed your father. It only manifests in that it bolsters his luck and his charisma considerably, slightly beyond the human norm."
"And me?" Shego asked a moment later.
"For you, and for some of your brothers, I had great hope. Your mother was violently opposed to you learning the mystical arts... she would never tell me why, I could only gather it had something to do with her own family's school. Still, I intended to begin forging a closer relationship with you as you got older, to 'sneak' you at least a few secrets and set you on the path to making use of some of your power, keeping the art alive for another generation."
"So what happened?" Shego murmured, even though she already had a sinking suspicion what it was.
"The meteor." Wanda's expression was grim, and she shook her head slightly as she continued. "The power it infused you with was... unnatural. The magic in our family line is drawn from the life force of the planet, it is something of this world and its creatures, its stones, its laws. The meteor was from somewhere else, what it granted to all of you replaced that flow, forced it into working its way."
"... That's why I'm green all the time?" Shego whispered.
"Your brothers had the talent, but nowhere nearly as strong as you did. I believe that's why the meteor's effects seemed so much more striking on you. Where it simply tinted your brothers' skin and hair when they would use their powers, it had worked itself into you so thoroughly that there was now no 'switching it off'."
Shego took a deep breath and huffed it out, then nodded.
"I was disappointed. Deeply. Between my disappointment and the sense of the... unnatural... I was getting from you, I let it affect how I treated you far more than I should. For that, my dearest granddaughter, you have my everlasting apologies and regret."
The green-skinned woman swallowed, then nodded. "So... what changed?"
"I had begun to worry that the magic of the main family line was done with, that any children any of you would bear would follow the flow of your otherworldly power, that by the time the power of this world reasserted itself, our family's arts would be a forgotten memory. But I heard about your... change. And I had to see for myself."
Shego blinked. "My change? What does that have to do with it?"
"Your power flow is different now. It has realigned itself into the natural one of this world. The new infusion of something natural has tamed and refocused the unnatural."
The younger woman's jaw dropped. "You call this 'natural'?!"
"What's more natural than an animal?" Wanda smiled ruefully. "But I know what I see. Your gift has returned."
"You're saying... I could learn magic?" Shego said slowly.
Her grandmother shook her head. "Unfortunately, no."
"But you just said-"
"You're too old, Sheila. Your power has too long lain dormant and unused beneath the heel of the meteor's energy. Though it is there inside you again, it is too late to train it to heed and answer you. Your mind, your body, and your power could not unlearn enough of what they have learned to give you the ability."
"So, what... it's pointless?" Shego frowned, looking down.
"It might not be for your children."
Shego's head raised, eyes widening a little. "What?"
"Your children, Sheila. I am thinking of your children."
"My... kids?"
"I still have quite a few years left to me, God willing," Wanda said with a small smile. "And most of them should be active, healthy years. But they will not last forever. I've brought you here today to ask of you... beg of you... for the sake of our family, the culture and art that we have held dear for hundreds of years... have a child within the next five years."
"But... Grandma..." Shego looked off to the side. "... I'm..."
"Deeply in love with a young lady named Possible, I've heard?" Wanda's smile quirked up a bit on one side. "You're hardly the first lady of the Go family to have such proclivities. According to my mother, my grandmother had rather an eye for comely young redheaded lasses as well."
Shego gawked, partly at that revelation, and partly at the idea of a mother talking about her own mother's lesbian flings.
"But there are always options. Both of science and of magic. Have you ever discussed the idea of children with her?"
"We sort of... talked about talking about it at some point," Shego confided.
"Is that like 'engaged to be engaged'?"
"Grandma."
"Sorry, dear." Wanda chuckled softly. "But it's five years in which to have that talk and to start trying. I would never ask such a thing of you if I didn't consider it to be a matter of such utmost importance, Sheila... Shego. Will you at least consider it?"
Shego sighed softly. "Grandma, I... really do think I want kids. It's something that's been pressing at the back of my mind for awhile. But the life I'm living right now... I don't see a change to it any time soon, and I'm not sure it'd be right or responsible to bring children into it."
"That's one of many things to consider, then."
Shaking her head, Shego made a small gesture with one hand. "I'll talk to Kim about it again. That's all I can promise right now."
"And if she says she doesn't want to?"
"Then I'll make it clear how important it is to -me-, and we'll talk about it some more, and eventually figure out how it has to be." Shego frowned a little. "Surely granddad didn't leap right to whatever you said was best."
"Oh, not all the time, no." Wanda chuckled, curling a hand around her chin. "But he generally knew when it was right to let me... take charge."
"Oh GOD. Don't use that tone of voice to talk about granddad!" Shego groaned, putting both hands over her ears. "In fact, I'm begging you, never use that tone of voice again. Ever."
"I'm sorry, dear, I'll just get back to having retroactively been born a little genderless old person," Wanda replied with a twinkle in her eye.
"Thank you." Shego rubbed her forehead, then glanced at the veranda door. "I really should go. I worry about what could happen if I'm found somewhere like this."
"No one is going to take you from here if you don't want to go," the older woman replied, the smile having disappeared, the twinkle in her eyes having been replaced by a hard glint.
"Yeah, but I'd rather not throw you, and thus half the city, into the chaos necessary to keep it from happening. Better to just not get caught here." Shego just smiled a little, not sure how to voice how incredibly touched she'd been by that statement. She started to stand, then hesitated and sank back down into her chair.
"Yes, dear? Something else?"
"This may not be the best time to ask this, but I guess... I'm trying to piece together some more things about my family. All of my family." Shego ducked her head, feeling a lot like a child asking something that they weren't sure they were allowed to know. "... Do you not like my mom?"
"Mm." Wanda propped her chin up in one hand, looking at Shego for long moments before answering. "Your mother and I, despite a number of similarities, are very, very different people, Shego. We've approached our lives quite differently from the very beginning. She the physical arts, I the mystical. I stayed in my home and devoted myself to it, she traveled the world. Like most mothers I felt there wasn't anyone quite good enough for my son, and that didn't help us get along. Do I dislike your mother? ... No. Will we ever be friends? Doubtful."
Shego nodded slowly, apparently satisfied with that. "Still, do you know anything about her parents?"
Wanda pursed her lips. "No, and that's by her deliberate choice. I wouldn't bother asking your father either, dear, he's unlikely to know any more than I am. Over the years, any inquiries to Sandra about her father and mother have been met with hedging, or in some cases outright hostility if the issue were pressed. From all I can tell, there was bad blood between herself and her father."
"I see."
"I can at least be a little more forthcoming, both with the good and the bad." Shego's grandmother pulled a backpack from around the chair, picking up the photo album and tucking it inside. "I've included a book that covers much of the history of our family, in varying levels of detail. It's a work in progress, of course, culled from numerous records and anecdotes. Perhaps you can find things applicable to your present in the past."
"Alright. Thanks, grandma." Shego rose to her feet, picking up the backpack and slinging it on as her grandmother stood as well. The two embraced, then Shego trotted to the door, peering down at the ground below. "Oh, hey, one other thing," she said, suddenly remembering something else she'd wanted to ask. She looked over her shoulder, and saw that the room was empty. Her grandmother wasn't anywhere in the room, or anywhere near it, the only smell a faint one lingering in the places where she'd stood or sat.
"... Heh. Magic." Shaking her head, Shego slipped out onto the veranda and began scuttling back down the wall.

-End