A/N: So me and my friend Nick had a throwback weekend where we binged-watched Kim Possible, because it was our favorite show as kids. Then, my Muse literally attacked me with this story in my sleep and is currently holding me at gunpoint to finish it. (She's an uppity thing, if you hadn't noticed by now.) It's a darker, more adult look at the series that I loved so much when I was younger, featuring my all-time favorite baddie, Shego. Post-Graduation, of course. And eventual Kigo, in later chapters. Now, read!
Dear Diary: Chapter One
On the Run
Kim hadn't lived for all that long, but she'd done and seen things that most other girls her age hadn't, so she supposed that this gave her an unusually astute perspective on life in general. Or, at least, she hoped this was the case. It was about the only payment she'd ever gotten for what she did, if it was.
Kim Possible saved the world. In its simplest form, that was her job description. What and who she saved it from, and why? Well, that answer was a little more complicated.
So far as Kim was concerned, life was an amalgamation of nearly infinite experiences that always managed to somehow add up to something greater than the sum of its parts. That's what made life worth living, after all. If life was just a sequence of events, it wouldn't be the mysterious and indescribable thing that it tended to be. Kim thought a lot about life. How could she not, when she was almost constantly on the verge of losing it? So she thought that her opinion on the subject was pretty damn important, thank-you-very-much. And her life? It was exciting, which she liked, but it wasn't the life that she wanted to live. Certainly it was the one she chose to, but if Kim thought that there was a viable and normal alternative… well, she'd probably jump on the opportunity in an instant.
If only the 'supervillains' she defeated like clockwork could hear that! They'd explode out of sheer incredulity. Because to the world, Kim Possible had the perfect life. Rich and loving parents, glamorous day job, perfect grades, a boyfriend from a storybook romance novel, the position of captain on the cheer squad: what else could she possibly want? And Kim would have been inclined to agree with them, if it weren't for the fact that none of these things were Kim.
Well, some of them were, she amended. Her parents were rich, so she lived a cushy lifestyle at least. (Rocket scientist and brain surgeon, people! It pays well.) Her grades were impeccable, and this because she worked for them, so Kim would concede to that. She held her position on the cheer squad by her own merits too, not that she actually enjoyed it. (Sure, it was great practice for her athletic lifestyle, but the false, annoying cheerfulness and behind-the-scenes bitchiness really grated on her nerves.) Not only that, but her boyfriend wasn't someone she was actually dating, her missions to tangle with villains were dangerous and frightening (and really something that Global Justice should have been handling) and her parents didn't really love her.
Or at least that was Kim's theory. The only other person who knew the 'real' Kim was Ron, and he was neck-deep in his own issues. She was glad she had him though. Even though they were both drowning, being able to cling to each other as the water rushed in dulled the panic.
It all started when Kim was very young. Pretty much with her birth, really, seeing as she had been born wrong. She'd been a perfectly healthy baby physically, mind you, but she was a disappointment almost from the beginning. Both of her parents were at the upper echelons of their respective fields, and were literally geniuses, intelligence-wise. And Kim was… not. Truly, she was extremely intelligent, but she was still normal. Not like her younger twin brothers, who took after their brilliant parents.
And Kim's parents made sure she knew it from the moment it had become evident that she wasn't going to pump out a new theory of relativity at the age of five. Not directly, of course, but that aura of condescension was always there: that silent but ever-present message that Kim just wasn't good enough. Her parents were so damn proud of the damn tweebs, and their lack of pride in their daughter told her exactly what they thought she was. A mistake.
No, Kim was never going to have an IQ of 180, so she decided to compensate in other ways. She couldn't design and launch a rocket into low orbit using only kitchen appliances, duct tape, and chewing gum, but Kim had decided from the moment she'd been able to truly understand why her parents didn't love her that she would be the model daughter. She'd be the perfect specimen of an all-American kid, and there'd be no way her parents could keep looking at her like she was a defective prototype. It hadn't worked at first. Not until her first job 'saving the world', that is. Once Kim had graduated from being a babysitter to being a hero, she was suddenly worth the attention that she'd always longed for.
And Kim had loved it. She'd basked in the sensation like a housecat in a patch of sun. Finally, finally her parents loved her! It didn't matter that she didn't really like cheerleading. It didn't matter that she had to sneak out of the house a few nights a week to find someone to teach her more martial arts so she wouldn't be so helplessly outmatched. It didn't matter that she constantly ran headlong into life-threatening situations at the age of fourteen without any adult supervision whatsoever, if you didn't count the goons that were trying to kill her as supervision. It didn't matter that she was bisexual and couldn't come out of the closet because her Dad said dykes were disgusting. None of it mattered, because Kim finally had what she wanted. She'd made her parents proud! She'd even been able to help her loyal friends Ron and Wade in the process. Ron, whose parents had refused to have him tested for ADD despite glaring symptoms and simply written him off as stupid, and therefore only ever expected him to fail (which sort of became a self-fulfilling prophesy, most days). Ron, who had stood loyally at her side no matter what, and Wade, who she'd met when she stopped a group of older kids whaling on the chubby black boy and calling him a nerd. Wade, whose single mother regularly dosed herself into a stupor, leaving her ten-year-old genius child to pick up the slack and take care of the both of them physically and financially all whilst fighting severe social impairment on his own.
Yes, Team Possible's missions to save the world helped all three of them. It made Kim a hero, and worthy of her parents' love. It proved to everyone that Ron was more than a failure. It gave Wade a chance to socialize with friends, even if it was through the screen of the Kimmunicator. Everybody's happy!
The illusion lasted all of two months before it was shattered by an innocent question from the helicopter pilot who happened to be giving them a ride home that day.
"Hey kid, are your parents okay with this villain-fighting of yours? You look pretty beat up, and if it was my kid, I'd be pretty frantic," he commented lightly.
Kim's happiness crashed down around her ears with the sound of shattered glass. She'd never answered the man, and was silent all the way home as Ron kept glancing over at her nervously. He was nervous for a good reason, really. Kim was absolutely seething. For the first time in her life, she mentally shifted the blame from her shoulders to the shoulders of her parents.
It was a long-overdue perspective.
How dare they? How dare they allow their child to do what she did? They encouraged her, knowing that she was poking a sleeping bear in tangling with people who blatantly stated their intentions to kill her. It didn't matter that she was athletically skilled enough to cheat death again and again. Normal parents would have fainted at the mere thought of Kim Possible being their child.
So why didn't hers? Why didn't they care? She wanted to grab them by the shoulders, shake them, and scream, 'Parents are supposed to love their children unconditionally!' So what if she wasn't a certifiable genius, and merely highly intelligent? So what? They were her parents. They were supposed to love her.
But by the time they'd arrived back in Middleton, Kim had cooled down considerably, falling into a state of resignation rather than rage. Neither she nor Ron mentioned that ride ever again, because he knew and she knew he knew the truth.
Kim would never be good enough.
She never stopped doing the missions though, and never stopped pretending that everything wasn't as perfect as it looked. To this day, Kim wasn't sure why. Perhaps it was a moral obligation to do good, though Kim rather doubted that. More likely, a large part of her continuing the missions was probably the fact that it was a chance to use Kim's one true passion: martial arts. But a part of her, even if it was a little part, kept on going for a more disturbing reason. It was the part of her that looked all the atomizers and death rays and plasma bolts and clubs and cliffs and varying weapons right in the face, unflinching and fearless. It was the part of her that knew just how close death was, and just… didn't care. It was the part of Kim that wanted to die; that looked at her mother's lack of reaction as she wrapped her injuries after a mission and wondered if she had any right at all to be alive if she was clearly such a glaring, unwanted mistake.
Kim tried not to think about it too much. She supposed that she sort of hoped that if she didn't acknowledge it, it would go away. It never did, of course, but there you have it. Psychoanalyzing yourself was never really accurate anyways.
And now, since she'd graduated high school, Kim was being forced out of the comfort zone she'd built for herself out of heroism and denial. Her whole life was a lie. Even her 'dating' Ron, which really only lasted a week. They'd just decided not to advertise their breakup in an effort to not draw attention to themselves. Kim was under enough stress as it was, and Ron, who had decided to go back to Yamanouchi for an indefinite period of time for his own escape come summer's end, agreed with her. With each of her parents pressuring her to enter their respective fields, Kim was having major angst over choosing a college to attend, and the deadline for such decisions was barely a week away, and that was the late deadline.
The thing was… Kim didn't want to go to college. Not if it meant that one of her parents would hate her more than they already did. Besides, she didn't like either neuroscience or aerospace engineering. She liked martial arts; and much to her parents' derision, pencil sketching, which she'd only ever continued in secret after being told that such a skill was plebeian and, with the advent of computer imaging, essentially useless.
And she wasn't about to join Global Justice like Dr. Director wanted her to. No way was she going to entangle herself in that bureaucratic clusterfuck. Kim was Kim. Even if Kim wasn't good enough, she wasn't about to lose what little of herself was left after the self-purge she'd done to become 'Kim Possible, World's Savior'!
In short, Kim didn't know what to do. All she wanted to do was live, but she wasn't quite sure how to make that happen.
And that brought her to the subject of the person she was tracking down at the moment. Shego. Yes, Kim knew a lot about life, but she was willing to bet that her pardoned nemesis knew more. When Kim thought about life, the ex-hero (and now ex-villain) was the first thing that popped into her head, simply on the basis that the two were nearly synonymous.
Kim didn't know anyone else who was more alive than Shego. It was in the way she moved and in the way she spoke, and in the way her eyes burned with an emerald fire to rival that which she held in her hands when they fought. She said what she wanted to say, did what she wanted to do, and didn't take any attitude from anyone.
It would shock the world to know just how desperately Kim admired that about her. In fact, it would shock the world to know that Kim admired a lot more than that about Shego. The woman was a brilliant fighter, for one, and Kim looked forward to their tussles more than anything in the world. (She suspected that Shego did too. The woman was always full of witty quips and devilish smirks when they fought, and Kim had never walked away from a fight with Shego with more than minor burns, despite the fact that she'd witnessed the woman's green plasma melt through metal with ease.) Shego was also clever. More so than any of the other baddies anyways. Kim still wasn't sure why the hired thief hadn't snapped and just taken over the world herself, if only to spare herself the headache of listening to the various megalomaniacal rants she was routinely subjected to as evil hired help.
In a way, when Kim looked at Shego, she saw a dark and ever-so-tantalizing version of herself. Or at least, someone she wished she could be.
Which honestly kind of freaked her out.
Still, she was beyond excited at the moment. After she'd been pardoned for her role in thwarting the Lorwardian invasion, Shego had seemingly vanished off the face of the earth. No crimes, and no public sightings. Not even a speeding ticket. Kim felt that she should be proud of her for this, but in reality, she was a little disappointed. She actually missed fighting Shego. No one else could come close to matching the thief's skill, and she was the only person who really challenged Kim at this point. Without Shego pushing her to get better, Kim felt… flat. Needless to say, when she'd gotten the call from Wade that Shego had been sighted, Kim was thrilled at the possibility of a spar, even though she wasn't technically supposed to be rooting for the pardoned villains to return to their dastardly ways.
It was odd though. Like all villains, Shego had a style, and with Shego, it was go hard or go home. Kim would have thought her more likely to break into Fort Knox rather than a shabby apartment building in a run-down neighborhood in Chicago. There was nothing there to steal! Wade would have never known it was Shego, really, except for the fact that she'd just happened to pass by a security camera on her way in, and Wade's facial recognition software in conjunction with a police report that she'd been sighted in the area that morning had alerted him to her presence.
It was definitely weird. But beggars can't be choosers, and a tussle with her favorite villain was just the thing Kim needed to push her troubles away from her mind. It'd been too long since they'd fought each other, and Kim desperately desired the release.
Kim knew something was seriously wrong as soon as she neared the apartment though. When Shego moved, she was silent. Like a cat. Kim would know, considering how many times the other woman had been able to sneak up on her, and while Kim could clearly see through the partially open door of the apartment that the person inside was Shego, something was definitely off. Besides the issue that Kim could hear the scuff of her uncharacteristically heavy footsteps and angry muttering, Shego was actually wearing white.
As in, something that actually wasn't black or green!
Kim nearly fainted then and there, but pulled herself together and stepped into the doorway, clearing her throat. Shego was so startled that she jumped and spilled a cardboard box of assorted personal items across the floor. Something that Kim had never seen her do.
This was so the drama.
"Princess," Shego breathed, tensing as if she wasn't certain whether or not to expect an attack. She wore her long shiny hair pulled back into a flattering ponytail, giving Kim a clear view of her sharp green eyes fixed upon her with distinct wariness. It was strange seeing her in a white button-down blouse and jeans, wearing flats of all things, but it wasn't a bad look. Just different. "What are you doing here?"
Kim raised an eyebrow. "I could ask you the same thing, Shego," she replied quite equitably. She frowned. "You look like you haven't slept in two days," she pointed out. "What happened to you?"
And really, it was true. Shego's features, while normally smooth and as perfectly proportioned as a Hellenistic statue, were currently pinched with tiredness, and her eyes underlined with dark shadows. Her unusual outfit was distinctly rumpled, and Kim didn't miss the lack of strength in the stance of her body. Kim almost felt bad for catching up to the thief.
Key word being almost.
"Look Kimmie, I don't have time for this," Shego snapped with her customary belligerence. "I've kept my nose clean, if that's what's got your panties in a twist."
Kim frowned. It appeared that Shego didn't want to play. "What are you doing here?" she asked again as she watched the other woman bend down and gather what she'd dropped back into the box, unable to restrain herself from admiring the curve of her ass as she did so. She missed the old cat suit, but Kim decided that the jeans weren't half-bad either.
She could almost feel Shego roll her eyes in response to her question. "I live here," she shot back, before adding somewhat bitterly, "or at least I did."
For the first time since arriving, Kim tore her eyes away from Shego and took in her surroundings. The inside of the apartment wasn't as dingy as the outside building. The walls were painted tastefully in mint green with an accent wall in warm beige, and the front room that Kim could see was occupied by a dark leather couch that looked surprisingly comfortable. Gauzy white curtains billowed gently over the windows, and the space smelled of citrus and cherry wood. Other than that, however, the room was depressingly bare of all personality. The reason for this, Kim saw, was because any and all personal items had been packed into six cardboard boxes, five stacked on the floor and the sixth being the one that Shego had been carrying when she had entered.
Bewildered, Kim blinked twice. "Why did I get a call that someone was breaking in?" she asked, leaning up against the doorframe slightly. "And where are you going?" At Shego's dirty look, Kim raised her other eyebrow. "Hey, you've gotta admit, this is a bit sketchy," she defended. "It's the middle of the night, and you don't even have the lights on!"
Shego gave a very put-upon sigh. "The local cops are gonna be here in T-minus five minutes, Pumpkin," she said. "Forgive me for not wanting to alert the neighbors that I'm moving out."
"But you were pardoned!" Kim blurted. If Shego had 'kept her nose clean', as she'd said, then there shouldn't have been an issue.
"Doy! Only on the federal and international level. Local warrants are still quite alive and well until they've reached the statute of limitation," Shego retorted with her trademarked sneer. "You really are just another pretty face if you believe Global Justice would give up on me that easily."
And she's back! Kim silently cheered at the acidic tone.
But then her brain caught up with Shego's words. Sure, Kim wasn't the biggest fan of Global Justice even if they had proved useful from time to time, but did she truly believe that they would do something so underhanded to Shego?
As she took in Shego's tired features, Kim realized that yes, she did. And disgust welled up in her. How did anyone expect things to get better if all people did was stab each other in the back? Shego had saved the world. She had deserved a truly fresh start, not a backhanded farce. Frankly, Shego deserved a tropical island vacation, but Kim wasn't the one calling the shots. And now? Now Shego was running from the local police, obviously bone-weary. Her condition made Kim righteously angry. She was the only one allowed to make Shego miserable, because everyone else was beneath her. She respected the woman as a fighter immensely. She deserved to fight against a worthy opponent, not to be forced to run from a pack of slavering hounds like a frightened fox.
Wordlessly, Kim straightened and prowled across the floor, body as taught as a bowstring, and hefted two of the boxes into her arms.
"What are you doing?" Shego demanded sharply, her hands curling into fists.
Kim nearly snorted, but let the thief's angry tone roll off her like water over the back of a duck. "Where's your car, Shego?"
For a long moment, Shego just stared at her, eyes scanning Kim's face for something nameless. Apparently she found whatever it was she was looking for because the woman nodded slowly and picked up a box for herself. "Follow me, Princess," was all she said before turning and heading out the door.
And Kim obeyed. It took two trips for them to get all six boxes brought down to the building's parking lot, and she helped to load them into the back of Shego's black convertible in silence, still stewing in her own anger. Shego was her nemesis. She was the only one allowed to ruin her life!
Kim was broken out of her bizarrely possessive thoughts, however, by the distant wail of approaching sirens. Alarmed, Shego jerked, shifting the last box in her arms. Incidentally, it was the one she'd already dropped, and she hadn't yet taped it back shut. Something small and heavy dropped out of it with a small thump, but neither woman paid it any mind as Shego made a dash for the driver's seat and Kim quickly dug around in the bag she'd brought with her, producing a handful of granola bars and a Gatorade, which she tossed to Shego.
"For what it's worth, Shego…" Kim said softly, "good luck. I'll do what I can for you."
Shego smiled wryly. "Thanks Princess," she said as she dropped her loot into the passenger seat, appearing nearly as confused as Kim felt.
Forcing herself into a more familiar pattern, Kim suddenly gave her a cheeky grin and winked. "I'll see you around, Shego. Give 'em hell for me."
The woman's eyes widened fractionally before she threw her head back and laughed. "Kimmie, swearing? The world must be ending," she hooted. Kim's grin was returned in full, and she was glad to see more fire in her ex-nemesis's eyes. "Your wish is my command, Princess."
Still smiling, Kim stepped to one side and watched serenely as Shego pulled out of her parking space and sped off into the night, feeling somewhat numb as the red taillights exited her field of vision. This whole encounter had felt… strange. Unreal almost, as if the evidence that Shego was a person just didn't compute. Especially since she'd just seemed so… young. For the first time ever, Kim realized that Shego couldn't be more than five or so years older than her.
With a sigh, Kim pulled out her Kimmunicator and requested a ride back to Middleton before moving to exit the parking lot before the cops managed to get there. She kicked something solid as she did so, however, and she jumped as a small rectangular object skittered across the concrete. Belatedly, Kim remembered the sound of one of Shego's possessions falling from the box when they'd been in such a hurry. Without thought, Kim pocketed what a cursory examination told her was a book before running off into the night. By the time she made her way back to Middleton via a trucker she'd pulled from a wreck a year or so ago, it was so late that she collapsed into bed the moment she got home, and she didn't get the chance to examine her find until the next morning.
And it was certainly confusing once she did. Kim hadn't the faintest idea what Shego was doing with that appeared to be a locked diary belonging to one 'Michelle Mae Govetsky'. Kim being Kim though, and in need of a distraction to boot, she supposed that she ought to find out.
A/N: Three guesses who Michelle is. I promise that this gets less cliché later on. Please review!
