Title: Looking Back, Coming Clean
Story summary: Years after the events of 'Clean Slate,' one man follows his conscience.
~*~*KP*~*~
Looking Back, Coming Clean
by Slipgate
Kim and Ron Stoppable were visitors in a house that had once felt like home for both of them. James and Anne Possible had invited their daughter and son-in-law over for a family dinner. Both Stoppables had been very busy and had not gotten to see Kim's parents in a while, so the opportunity for a family dinner was immediately welcomed, even if it was brainloaf.
After a convivial dinner during which James Possible seemed to keep looking at the younger couple and smiling distractedly, the food was finished and the time to wash the plates had arrived. As they rose from the table, Kim and Ron moved to assist at once, but they were surprised when James held up a hand.
"Kim, I'd like to talk to you privately in the den for a bit. Ronald, would you mind helping Anne with the dishes while we talk? I'm sorry, both of you, but this is kind of important."
"Sure, Dad. You okay with that, honey, Mom?"
Both nodded.
~*~*KP*~*~
Curious, Kim followed her father to the den. She smiled with pride as she saw the high school graduation photos of herself and Ron on one wall and their college graduation and wedding photos on the mantelpiece. Her eyes lingered on the picture of their kiss in front of family and friends, with her decked out in white. It was funny how much it looked like the picture of the Moodulator kiss. (She'd eventually asked Wade to retrieve a copy from his data logs.)
Coming back to herself, she realized that she had ignored her father in her zone-out. Fortunately, he hadn't said or done anything. In fact, he seemed to be pausing to look at the mantelpiece also. However, Kim noticed that he wasn't looking at any picture in particular, judging by the angle of his head. Curiously, she followed his line of sight and saw a small, flat plastic case sitting on one edge of the mantelpiece.
With a glance to her father for his reaction, she approached the case and lifted it from the mantelpiece. "This is…" she voiced, recognizing it from somewhere but unable to place it in her memory.
"The DVD I made for you when that device wiped your memories, Kimmie-cub," her father supplied.
"Oh, right!" A pause, then, "You still have this, Dad? I'm surprised it survived the Lowardian attack."
Her father simply nodded mutely.
Something seemed off. "Dad, I'm guessing this is here because you were looking at it recently? Did you find it in some housecleaning and start thinking about looking through it?"
"I didn't find it in any housecleaning, Kimmie-cub. Can… can you have a seat, have a talk with your old dad?"
"Always," she said with a smile, though she was perplexed. She sank into one of the armchairs near her. Her father took the facing one some distance away, and then leaned forward with his chin resting on steepled fingers and his elbows propped on the arms of the chair.
When she was about to open her mouth to encourage her dad to speak, he opened his own and beat her to the punch.
"Kim, I… It's not that… I, uh… thought… I can say this! … Kim, I have a confession to make. I think I'm somewhat responsible for you not remembering Ronald quite as well as you should have back when the MRM erased your memory and we were working on getting it back."
Kim's eyebrows shot almost to her hairline. This was most definitely not the jovial mood her dad usually displayed. She found her voice after a moment. "Confession?" she asked incredulously. "Okay Dad, why do you think that you're responsible for me not remembering Ron sooner than I did?"
"Well… do you remember… your mother and I, and even the twins to some degree, we wanted to help you to remember everything and not be lost like you were. We were trying and struggling and hoping you'd remember things.
"One of the things we came up with," here he cocked his head to indicate the plastic case in her hands, "was a DVD that would show different events in your life, all compressed into a short timeframe. The idea was a bit of a long shot since… you know, it would only be able to show so much. And even what we could show would be out of context and too brief to make much sense on its own…"
Kim found herself recalling parts of the DVD vaguely – high-speed playbacks of things like family videos, school events… and was that a mission she recalled seeing in fast-mo?
James continued, "and even if it did communicate the events, it would be like brain overload… imagine if Mr. Barkin assigned 500 questions to study for on every weekly history pop quiz!" This got Kim to laugh.
James grinned for a moment before his expression turned dour again. "So I mean, it was a long shot, but we wanted to at least try and tell you things, jog your memory, get you to understand basic skills that you seemed to have forgotten… like, if you remember, you uh… didn't even fully understand the concept of light any more."
Here Kim winced. While she'd always been petite, feeling like a mental six-month old had been more mortifying than the times she had been called a tall ten-year old. Some of her embarrassing behavior right after her mind had been wiped made her feel mortified more than her stature ever had.
"To even make such a DVD, though, even when you preserve all your home videos, it was hard to be sure where to even begin. So please understand that, and maybe I'm trying to be an apologist for myself here… but please understand that although we tried to come at it with the confidence that we can solve any problem 'the Possible way,' we were kind of scrambling."
It didn't seem the time to speak, so Kim was silent. James' eyes were lowered in such a way that he appeared to be looking at the plastic case resting lightly in Kim's lap.
"'Oh, she's got to see her Pixie Scout induction, James!'" he said, in a slight falsetto that was not a bad impression of her mother's voice. "Oh, she's got to see her first time seeing Santa Claus, honey!" he said in his normal voice. "'Oh, she's got to see… James, what else do we cover?'" he said again in his impression of Anne's voice. Then he returned to his own voice. "What do you possibly do in order to really cover everything, even if you had everything available?"
The question seemed to be asked more of the air around them than of Kim herself.
"And then there are the things you don't necessarily have a video of… How do you even communicate those? How could we show you how much you loved Pandaroo? A picture of you with Pandaroo as a kid and again at your current age? Those two pictures on their own wouldn't really be a clear message."
Kim had to confess, "I have to admit, Dad, I've never given much thought about the effort you all put into making the memory DVD. I'm sorry about that." Once she was fully "back," she had tried to forget the whole escapade as quickly as possible. Her only concession other than a heart-to-heart with Ron years after the fact came three months later when the MRM had been rebuilt. After it had been tested to be safe, it was used on her once to "verify" that there wasn't anything still missing from her memory. All she consciously got out of that double-check was realizing that rat-fink Bonnie Rockwaller was the only one who could've messed up her new shoes in sixth grade. As much later as it had been since the wipe, she appreciated the verification, and the huge smile of relief it brought to Ron's face had been worth going through the trouble. That smile had tripled in its intensity when she followed it up by checking his tonsils for him.
"It's all right, Kim. Seeing you so thoroughly back in one piece was all the thanks we needed. I'm honestly amazed at how much we did accomplish over that first night even if it wasn't, and obviously couldn't be, everything."
James leaned back in his chair. "Some of it involved telling you things rather than leaving you to connect the dots on your own. You got the idea that I was your dad, and your mom was your mom, and that you would be going to a place called school… But there was so much we couldn't cover, like how apparently at one point you told Ronald you had a recollection of lots of travel but still didn't recall that it was missions that you had gone on."
Kim remembered the conversation. She was on the back of Ron's scooter, with Ron unable to hide his surprise at how much he was re-educating her.
"After that first night and the next morning, Kimmie-cub… you'd been told some things and you'd connected with some other information so that pieces of you were back at least, or were re-created so to speak… because you know being told something and understanding it are two different things. However, quite simply, we couldn't cover everything. I mean, you were a lot further along; instead of commenting on 'light,' you could actually talk and communicate somewhat normally. But it was all still very half-baked."
James got up and walked to an old picture of a brace-faced Kim with her arm around a goofily grinning Ron that hung on the wall. There were bunny ears involved. A copy of this same picture existed in what was left of the Stoppable treehouse, and had been on the staircase wall of the old Possible homestead before the Lowardians came. He looked at the picture for a while. Kim got up and walked over to him. She hugged him tightly from behind. He patted her hand but didn't otherwise react.
"The next morning, Kim?" James prompted.
"Hmm? What about it, Dad?"
He glanced at the picture in front of him again.
"I'm convinced that you had just remembered Ron's appearance from the day before as the guy that had taken you home. That you'd been told by us that the two of you had been best friends forever, but that you didn't really remember him, or have a connection with him again… yet."
Kim didn't know how to reply. "I'm…" she began, thinking back.
James interrupted. "Why else would you mess up his name, when it was just three letters? Why else would there be so much difficulty remembering all the things you did together- not just the fact that you were dating, but everything else? Keep in mind, this is the same girl who was confusing the dishwashing machine and the shower that same morning. I mean, although you managed to function fairly well, I'm convinced you didn't quite remember as much as it seemed like you remembered… that interacting with you was convincing and looked like you were further along than you were. I'm further convinced that along with all that, you probably didn't actually remember Ron so much as you were just relying on what you'd been told. I think you were assuming you were remembering more about him and your connection to him than you actually were."
Kim was silent for a moment. It was all a lot to take in, but truthfully it gave her something to point at in terms of the majorly unfair way she'd treated Ron back when she couldn't remember them dating. The two stared at the picture of the little girl and the little boy who had grown up to be husband and wife.
After a few minutes, Kim opened her mouth. "Okay, so… it's a given that I was remembering things bit by bit. And you actually helped explicate it further for me, Dad… and helped me feel a little better about the way I treated Ron, because, y'know, I guess maybe you're right; maybe I really wasn't remembering Ron as much as I was being told about him, and not being able to take it as fully to heart as other things that were jogging my memory earlier."
She thought a moment and came to a possibility. "I think maybe Ron was so important to me that I couldn't remember him in parts…" Kim said, "It kinda had to be a lump sum, all or nothing. It couldn't trickle in like other things. It's like how I didn't remember cheerleading and then once the situation came up, suddenly the muscle memory was all there, and I went from not remembering any of it to muscle memory to bam, it's all back."
Kim continued, "Maybe something similar happened with Ron. Probably similar things happened with other things, too. Like, I'd remember all of my first meeting with Monique all at once, not just pieces of it. And maybe that's a factor too!"
James' head swiveled around. "What do you mean, Kim?"
"When I first met Monique I was connecting so much with her that for a while I was being kind of neglecty of Ron." Kim said. "And I mean, I know I'm wildly speculating at this point, but maybe, just maybe, I was 'meeting' Monique again but this time without the foundation of knowing Ron to make me eventually stop and think 'Hey I'm leaving this other friend out.'" Kim paused, and then looked at her father. "Anyway, um, there's a lot of reasons why I might not have remembered Ron, Dad… it wasn't necessarily anything you did." she said.
"I know, honey, but here's the thing. And this is what I feel guilty about, Kim. I don't think that I was trying to hide the fact that you and Ron were a couple… but I think I didn't quite get around to it or focus on it as I should've. I mean I did try to bring up Ron that first night and sort of ease into the topic, but I'd only gotten as far as telling you about him rather than making sure you understood his significance to you. Your mother and I just didn't realize until the next morning, when he said, 'It'll be like a second first date' that you probably didn't actually remember that you were a couple, so we didn't know what your reaction would be to the information."
Kim had no words. James had brought up something that still bothered her sometimes even though she clearly hadn't been 100% herself at the time considering not two seconds later she was chewing on flowers like food.
"Long story short, Kim," he said, then paused for a deep breath as if he was about to plunge into a shark-infested pool. "In our mad rush to think about things to explain to you that first day, we got some material about Ron, but not all of it, and probably not what you would consider the most important piece. It's not that I was intentionally trying to hide that he was your boyfriend, but I still feel like I left something crucial out, and as a result, I probably contributed to you not remembering Ron as you should have, even though I know Ron is so important to you. … This just eats me up inside… the idea that I might be somewhat responsible for the tough time he went through with you… because of that, because of me."
James turned and made for the chair again. Kim was turned toward him but hadn't moved from her spot yet, more from being frozen at what she'd just heard. After he sat, he looked up at her. She put the DVD down on the mantelpiece and clasped her hands together absently.
Kim's mind was churning with her dad's "confession." This was a perspective on the event she'd never before considered. As she digested it, she remembered that he had said he only had so much time on that first night – and obviously, that was true. "What happened to the later nights after that first night?" she asked.
James looked at her with confusion, so she clarified. "I mean, obviously you could only give me so much information in one night and one morning." she said, "What about the next couple of days before the mission with the train brought everything back again?"
James' eyes showed understanding now. "Well, if you remember Kim, I tried to talk about it some after that, but I think at that point, you wouldn't have taken me as any more credible than Ron. That, and actually we didn't have a lot of time with you to fill you in on anything else after that first day… between school and missions and, you know, Ron desperately trying to get you to remember him by taking you to your favorite places, you weren't home much." he replied. He leaned forward, looking at her with intense brown eyes – intense, but not hard.
"I've actually soul-searched on this Kim, wondering, y'know, did I hide this? Was I hesitant about your relationship and was I trying to avoid it? I don't know. Ultimately I told myself – and I hope this is the case – that it's just that there was so much to tell you that there's just some stuff I didn't get to. But maybe I'm deluding myself into thinking I'm not guilty of something here. With what I've told you, I'll let you decide. At the very least, whether some part of me intended harm or not, I had to apologize for my conscience's sake. I don't know what would've happened differently or not if I had focused on different things than the ones I did focus on. But I felt the need to apologize to you, Kim. I have this fear that I may have been responsible for your pain. Maybe you'll tell me I was, maybe you'll tell me I wasn't, but whether I was or not or whether you feel I was or not, I want to… not hold on to this any more."
The traces of the snarky teen in Kim wanted to tell her dad he was rambling, but his expression and the way his voice was losing strength had her adult tendencies tell her to shut up.
He wasn't completely unburdened yet. "I just thought I should finally level with you and accept your wrath if that's what I get," he said, "because if it is what I get, it's definitely what I deserve."
That was it. She'd had enough. She'd heard him chastise himself a few dozen times over the same thing in the space of… however long it had been. Some small part of Kim reflected that in this respect maybe Ron and her dad had something in common. But it wasn't the impatient side of her that answered. It was the side of her that understood what he was doing.
"Dad…" she voiced thickly. He didn't seem responsive, though he had grown quiet. "Dad…?" Nothing. "Dad…" she exhaled as she hugged him tightly, tears in her eyes.
His body was rigid at first, but gradually it became more pliant. Between her tears and catches of breath she tried to express herself. "Dad, I know you're afraid… but you've always tried to do what was right by me. And you've always been so concerned about me and so loving to me and so protective of me…"
James looked up at her.
"Your child, Dad, had lost her memory. If your child loses her memory… what you've described to me sounds like mortal fear that none of it would ever come back, and that you were scrambling to try and think of what will bring memories back for her. Ron was scrambling, too, and one of his first impulses was to go seek you guys out, which was a good impulse, y'know.
"You tried to do just like Ron tried to do, Dad. If your child suddenly gets amnesia and doesn't remember anything of herself… it's, y'know, way too much… it's a difficult experience to even think of…" She paused, her tears soaking into her father's collar. His tears mingled with hers.
"I can't… I won't believe that you had any malicious intent here." she said. "I will only believe that you were scrambling to try and come up with stuff to help jog my memory and get me back, and that there was only so much you could do and so many things you could think of… and of course, it's not like you tried to not talk about Ron. But there was so much else you needed to talk about, too, like you and Mom and the tweebs and, you know, what light was," she said and gave a small smile. "And those things were just as important for me to remember, if not more important, even though I love Ron with all my heart.
"So… of all the millions of things that there were to share with me, there were only a few dozen you could get to, and in your scramble to try and come up with all sorts of important stuff across the board, you just couldn't get to it in time. This does not a villain make, Dad. I've faced villains. I've faced villains who stole peoples' livelihoods and I've faced villains who've pointed death rays and cackled maniacally. You are not one of them. I do appreciate how you're trying to apologize for something you feel guilty about, Dad, but I don't want you to ever again… ever ever again… let this bum you out. You didn't mean any harm. You did the best you could in a desperate situation and tried to keep a smile on your face during it… 'the Possible way.'"
Kim lost the rest of her cool, and her voice became choked with tears. "You were so loving and so… attentive… both before, during, and after that sitch. And another reason why I won't believe you had malicious intent is that when we came home and I told you about how I remembered Ron being my boyfriend and that I loved him, you were smiling and crying tears of happiness, and you were nothing but glad that your little girl really was 100% back to normal. I won't soon forget that. It was like a nightmare had ended for you, and now I know it wasn't just the fact that I had my memory back, but some of it must have been your relief that poor Ron wasn't going through the pain that he'd been going through. Pain that you did not cause or intend to cause, Dad, but that you felt in some part responsible for nonetheless.
"And even though it was tough on our relationship at the time, I know we're fine now. There's a reason that there's a picture of me in a white dress up on that mantelpiece. There's no harm, there's no foul, and you didn't mean either, Dad."
Kim held her neck at an angle where she could see the picture of the wedding. James shifted to look at it as well. "You know, Dad," she said, after she had some more control over her voice, "I can understand the wish to apologize if you feel responsible for something or if you are responsible for something. Even if you're not responsible, it says something about your character and how you are fundamentally good. Those are morals that you and Mom taught me. And I think you've managed to live up to them just fine."
A much calmer James asked, "But what about the fact that I'm only confessing to all of this now, Kimmie-cub?"
"Well, Dad? It was just an unconscious niggling at the back of your mind, one that you weren't sure about. When you did get to thinking 'Hey, maybe it was me?' you did the responsible thing." James opened his mouth, but Kim interrupted. "Even if you're about to tell me you started thinking it years ago, the fact of the matter is that you still weren't sure. But, you came to a decision and followed through on that decision, and you did the right thing for your soul, and for me, and for this family, and for the family to be coming up sometime soon with Ron." That got James' eyes to widen. "No, I'm not pregnant, Dad, I'm just talking in general terms."
James blushed in embarrassment, but his daughter lifted his chin to get him to look at her.
"Thank you so much, Dad. Thank you for my life, thank you for the struggles you went through trying to get me to remember things when I forgot them… and thank you for dropping me off at Pre-K one day and telling me that I would find a friend and that anything was possible for a Possible. I love you, Dad, and I really do want you to both consider this not your fault, and consider it apologized for even if it was. Don't let it eat at you any more. It's all good."
It was James' turn, after that impassioned plea, to start his waterworks again, and in a ragged voice he whispered, "Th-th-thank you." He sobbed, "Thank you honey, thank you, Kimmie-cub."
She shared his tears. "Thank you, Dad, thank you."
Father and daughter got their emotions under control. Eventually Kim stood and, with a kiss on her Dad's head, said she'd go check on how Mom and Ron were doing with the dishes.
~*~*KP*~*~
She walked out of the den and into the hallway, but she saw something in the hallway that stopped her.
"So, Ninja Boy," she asked, "how much of that did you hear?"
Ron enfolded his wife in his arms and said simply, "Enough. Dishes take a long time, but not that long."
"What do you think?"
"I think you're right."
"The wife is always right, honey. But… that's it? Just that you think I'm right?"
"I'm not sure I can add much to what's already been said. I mean, Mr. Dr. P wouldn't have meant it badly. It's not in him. Heck, he taught you right from wrong, and you've been a hero to millions worldwide."
She hummed, enjoying her husband's embrace. "So you didn't for a moment think, aha, this is why I went through so much pain?" she asked. She believed in her dad's good heart, but she knew that the MRM sitch had been especially tough on Ron. They'd talked about it themselves years later in a conversation that should've probably happened sooner. At least they had it out before she became Mrs. Stoppable.
"No, Kim. I went through so much pain because of something that was outside of either of our control. Just like you weren't responsible, he wasn't responsible." Ron seemed unusually somber. Kim guessed it was from seeing the man who'd been like a second father to him crying over the idea he might be responsible for hurting his children. "That's all in the past," he declared with the sort of finality he used to say, "Note serious face."
Kim and Ron had been enjoying their embrace so much that they forgot that another occupant of the den was going to come out soon. James Possible suddenly appeared and, genius that he was, quickly made the connection. "Oh my God," he said with a gasp. "You must hate me Ronald. You heard all of that, huh?"
Ron looked up. "Didn't Kim already tell you, Dad? You just did what you could with a terrifying situation. We all did. Kim just got through telling you that you're not at fault. Don't think that I'm going to contradict what the most wonderful woman in the world just told you… It was just the circumstances that were unfair to all of us. And I want you to remember that. You were in a position that hurt and was difficult, too. For all of us, it was horrible to lose everything that makes your daughter your daughter. You, me, Kim, and the entire rest of your family went through a lot of pain back then. And it wasn't anyone's fault. It wasn't mine, it wasn't Kim's, and it wasn't yours, okay?"
Ron disengaged from Kim and approached James.
"You know what I'm gonna remember about you, Mr. Dr. P?" Ron asked calmly.
"What's that, Ronald?"
Before Ron said another word, he threw his arms around James. The young man's grip had gotten surprisingly strong over the years. As they hugged, Ron replied, "I'm going to remember that you were Kim's awesome dad while I was growing up. I'm going to remember Rocket Booster Day. I'm going to remember all the times you were okay with the fact that I was over even though I was over so much… I'm going to remember that even the times that you were a little annoyed by me, like the time you found Rufus in your Chinese take-out, you were still cool with me. I'm going to remember that when we had that Moodulator date, you didn't tell me 'Oh, I hate you,' or 'Oh, don't you do anything.' You told me that you wanted Kim to be happy, and that I'd only be in trouble if Kim was unhappy."
James was able to smile at this.
"And last but certainly not least, I'm going to remember that when we got married, you entrusted me with your Kimmie-cub, and you gladly gave her away to me. Even if you had reservations about me being with your daughter at some point before that – and that was your prerogative – it certainly wasn't the case at our wedding and it certainly hasn't been the case since then." Ron said.
Ron hesitated a moment, then went on. "And… I hope that I've treated her like the treasure you expect her to be treated as, and I want you to always let me know if I'm ever not giving her the respect we both know she so richly deserves."
"Thank you, Ronald…" James said, smiling.
"I love you, Mr. Dr. P."
That burst a dam in the old rocket scientist. "Ronald…t-t-thank you." he said, his eyes again watering.
Ron's next words came out as a soothing whisper as he patted James on the back. "Everything's fine, Mr. Dr. P, you didn't mean anything bad, you didn't do anything bad, everything is fine."
A minute later, James finally disengaged from Ron's embrace. "Okay, Ronald. I'll try to do as Kim said and not let this come up again or worry about it any more. I'll break with it and move forward – feeling more at peace thanks to you guys. How did you two get to be such wonderful, understanding people?"
"Well, Dad, I think we were raised and surrounded by pretty wonderful, understanding people ourselves." Kim offered.
"Thank you… thank you, Kim," James said, smiling a watery smile.
"Hey," she sternly corrected, "I'm your Kimmie-cub, remember?" She had an indulgent smile that told him, "It's okay just this once."
"Thank you, Kimmie-cub."
fin
~*~*KP*~*~
Disclaimer: Kim Possible (or Stoppable), Ron Stoppable, and the events of the Kim Possible television series alluded to in this fiction are all the property of Disney, and are used without intent or expectation of profit solely for personal enjoyment.
Author's Notes and Credits: This story was incredibly more difficult and time-consuming to write than I initially anticipated. What I initially thought I'd bang out in one day over the last weekend of May turned into something that was much more involved to wrap up.
I cannot thank FFnet author Pinky Jo Curlytail enough for being willing to review it and to help me clean it up into something worth publishing. She made sure all the interesting parts weren't buried under the rest.
I also owe Pinky Jo Curlytail for the inspiration to this story (a particular line she wrote in 'Ron the Boy' chapter 3 and a discussion about the episode 'Clean Slate' with her), and she owes the FFNet author MrDrP for her inspiration that lead to mine.
As always, if you do leave a review for this small effort, I will be glad to provide a response.