Summary: Kim is the prime suspect for the murder of an asylum-seeking felon. Unfortunately she has no memory of the crime, and as even Kim's closest friends begin to doubt her innocence, Drakken and Shego somehow become her only hope.
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Warning: This has a bit of a grisly start, but I do not intend for blood and gore to be a theme of the future chapters.
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Feedback: I love it. I'm newly addicted to this fandom and would love to know how I am received.
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Disclaimer: Characters not mine, but the story is :)
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1
Pain was the first thing she registered, after the strange, swimming blackness slowly sifted into shapes and colours. Unbearable, head-splitting pain that made her feel as if she could burst, and she cried out only to find that her throat was too dry to make a sound.
Somehow, amid the scrabbling she must've been doing, doubled-over in pain, sprawling on the cold tiles of the floor, her hand scooped through a slippery, sticky pool of liquid. She stopped writhing for a second – her eyes, she was hardly able to open them the light was so bright – and brought her hand closer to her face.
Focus.
No, it was too hard, too bright.
She blinked sore, heavy eyelids.
Focus.
Her vision swam, blurring and fogging like breath on a window. But she saw it, somehow, through the brightness and searing pain – the dark, deep red of blood. So thick it was almost black.
My blood?
She instinctively touched her other hand to her head, patting and smoothing, checking for injury, skimming briefly down her torso and legs.
Her hand came away clean.
As her vision slowly became clearer she realised she didn't know where she was. The room was unfamiliar, magnolia walls around her and cheap linoleum tiling beneath her. And more blood – a lot more blood – smeared across the smoothness of the floor in sprawling arcs.
There had been a struggle.
She hauled herself onto her hands and knees, her head objecting to the movement with sharp, stabbing pains of protest. Her hands slipped and squeaked through the blood as she crawled forwards, agonizingly slowly, following the blood trail from the tiles through to the carpet of the next room.
She didn't know if she screamed when she saw it.
It was almost too horrific to even make a sound, the way it was laying, all strange and angular, an arm bent the wrong way, another hacked off at the wrist, the throat torn open with the head bent back from the broken stem of its neck and the stomach split from chest to groin – everything inside it spilling idly out over the legs.
The pain resurged with the force of a sucker-punch to the temple.
And then blackness.
...
The metal of the cuffs scraped against the table leg. They restricted her movement, her hands secure under the table top, making her hunch over. She had struggled feebly against her restraints at first, but had given up soon after, choosing instead to glare at the two-way glass ahead of her.
She looked round at the sound of the door unlocking, her eyes following the slow, measured progress of the police officer as he moved across the room to the desk. He gave a heavy, laboured sigh and sat down on the other side of the table to face her.
He looked at her hard and leaned forwards, his elbows on the desk and his fingers steepled. Kim looked down, unable to hold his stare. She looked down at her own cuffed hands, hauntingly red from the blood they had not permitted her to wash off before her interrogation. This was the third officer she'd had sit in front of her, shout at her, reason with her, point and yell and demand to know what happened.
But her answer was always the same. She just didn't know.
'If you continue to be uncooperative little lady, we're going to have to resort to more drastic methods,' the officer drawled.
Kim clenched her jaw. Little lady. She thought about the body, its missing hand and its spilled guts.
The officer leaned back in his chair, his legs spread wide and his shirt straining over his round belly.
'Right,' he said, tapping his hands lightly on the surface of the table. 'Solitary it is then, until you feel like talking.'
He uncuffed her briefly, to slip the restraints from the table, and recuffed her a second later. He smelt of smoke and coffee as he leant over her, and Kim held her breath until he was done. He hauled her up with a thick strong hand around the top of her arm. She felt her skin bruising beneath his grip. She was pushed through the door he opened and out into the corridor, dragged along quicker than she wanted to walk, marched past endless doors to nameless rooms.
She closed her eyes and willed herself to wake up, telling herself for the hundredth time that day that it was all just a bad dream.
...
There was an explosion.
Not a huge one. Not enough to crumble the walls. Kim's extensive knowledge told her that it couldn't have been much more than a small smoke grenade, but she instinctively dived for cover, and in doing so unintentionally flipped her accompanying officer over to crash forcefully into the wall, his head connecting with the masonry with a sickening crack and knocking him out cold instantly.
'Shit!' Kim rushing to crouch at his side, wafting away the smoke that was beginning to roll through the corridor.
She looked up sharply at the sound of a scathing laugh.
'Nice move,' said a voice appreciatively. Kim squinted through the smoke, making out the distinctive abstract blocks of black and green, until the smoke finally cleared enough to reveal the sleek, poised form of her addressor.
'Shego?' Kim asked, feeling oddly relieved to see the familiar face.
'Doy,' the woman replied dismissively, glancing apathetically at the injured officer before looking at Kim again. 'Haven't seen Dr. D have you Princess? I lost him about four hours ago and figured he might've got his blue-butt hauled in here.'
Kim shook her head mutely, looking back down at the officer who still hadn't stirred but quickly turning her head in the other direction at the quick, heavy slapping of footsteps that rang down the corridor. Urgent voices yelled things like 'STOP!' and 'POLICE!' and 'DROP YOUR WEAPON!' – phrases that under any normal circumstances Kim would've felt reassured to hear.
But now they just filled her with a resentful, twisting fear.
Shego just sighed like the whole event was nothing more than a slightly irritating inconvenience and, without even really looking, swiftly flicked her hands to fire glowing balls of green plasma through the smoke. The yells escalated in volume and frequency, and there were several heavy bangs as unconscious bodies slapped against the walls and floor, and then there was silence.
'Police,' Shego muttered scornfully. 'What a shambolic outfit. I mean, why do they even bother?' She twitched her lips thoughtfully. 'Any idea which way the evidence room is?' she asked, a flicker of humour in her expression until she finally caught sight of Kim's hands. The smirk dropped immediately from her features and her eyes widened in shock. 'Cuffs Princess?' she asked, recovering quickly from her initial shock to smirk conspiratorially before tsking. 'Has somebody been naughty?'
'Shut up Shego,' Kim spat, unable to keep the quiver out of her voice.
'Oh this is just too good,' Shego continued, her voice as delighted as Kim had ever heard it. 'What did you do?' she probed. 'C'mon, tell me ... steal a My Little Pony dream house from Smartymart?'
Kim stood up from her crouch and advanced towards Shego menacingly, anger and desperation coursing through her like poison.
'Aw c'mon Kimmie – what are you gonna do? Your hands are literally tied.' She gestured to Kim's restraints with a wicked grin, but her expression once again transformed at the sight of the blood stains all over Kims arms and clothes.
'Holy crap ...' Shego took a step back, staring a little longer at the blood before looking back up at Kim. 'What happened?' she asked in shocked bewilderment.
'I ... I don't know,' Kim stammered, her throat constricting painfully. 'I woke up in the room with this ... this ...' she couldn't even say it.
A flicker of what could've been mistaken for genuine concern flashed across Shego's features.
'He was ... in pieces,' Kim forced the words out. 'And ... and then I'm dragged here and they won't let me call anyone or even ...' she scowled, her voice lowering to a whisper that forced Shego to lean in closer, 'they won't even let me wash it off,' her cuffed hands scratched desperately against each other.
Shego frowned at her before looking up sharply at the sound of more voices. 'Looks like they're wheeling in the back-up Kimmie,' she said, 'finally,' she added.
Kim just looked at her.
'That's my cue to leave, so I'm gonna...' Shego gestured behind her with a thumb.
Kim didn't move.
Shego sighed and agitatedly ran a hand through her hair. 'You're just gonna wait here til they drag you back in that interrogation room?' she asked.
Kim swallowed.
Shego rolled her eyes. 'For God's sake Princess,' she muttered as she yanked Kim's hands towards her.
Kim felt a brief swell of white-hot pain around her wrists and yelped, snatching her hands back to her chest. The cuffs landed with a metallic clink on the floor.
'I know you're all busy being traumatised or whatever right now,' Shego said, 'but if you know what's good for you, you should follow me.' And with that, the thief turned and ran, leaving Kim to stare at her newly liberated hands.
Another self-important announcement of 'POLICE! DROP YOUR WEAPON!' rang through the smoke-filled corridor and, acting on instinct more than any sort of rational thought, Kim turned and ran straight after Shego.