Credit
By Eoraptor
AN: Kim Possible… Disney… blah blah blah… Rated 13+
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No one ever gave him the credit he was due.
He'd put up with her fiery temper over the years, her domineering attitudes, her controlling need to always be right, the drive to save the day even when no one wanted her to… And no one else ever saw that for what it was. He'd saved the world, saved the girl, saved his pants even. He did it while he was terrified, while he was embarrassed, and while he was pining away quietly for someone too good for him.
No one recognized him for it.
Buffoon, doofus, naco-boy, loser, the side kick, John, Tom, Juan, Don Stackable. People just couldn't remember him. But that was his job… to be the distraction, to seem unimportant, to be the person no one realized was even there until it was too late and the lights were flashing and the countdown to self-destruct was sounding.
He was never accounted for.
He was the nice guy, the goofball, the one destined to perpetually finish last. Hot girls only hung around with him on the rebound, or until he paid for dinner, or they no longer needed someone to hold their purse. How many high school hotties had she heard of drifting through his life while he did his own thing?
He remained unnoticed.
This creature, who was both a boy and a man in so many ways... He lived to never be normal, to always relish the oddities in life, and yet his story was the story of so many people. He lived in mediocrity, obscurity, and anonymity. By doing this, he'd made her even greater than she already was, the way the ordinary always elevate the extraordinary, simply by being normal.
Yet he went unpraised.
In the end he'd risen above it all, of course. He'd become those things he was never supposed to be. The football star, the boyfriend, and finally the hero. People knew his name now, as much as they'd known her name for years. He'd gotten those things he never even realized that he'd wanted, save for the one. Aliens, Pirates, Videogames never stopped his quest.
Still, he died pointlessly.
The final injustice, though, was this. She'd worked so hard to join him, first in life, bridging their two worlds that were so separate; the hero and the sidekick, the cheerleader and the geek, the best friends who shouldn't be more. Then, she'd worked even harder, lacking him in her life, struggling onwards for him, finally joining him in death.
But they were forever separated.
Now that was far more injustice, far more badness, far more evil than she'd even been capable of, even on her worst day.
Sighing, and letting the tears fall onto the new grass, she held out her hand. She sprinkled the fresh grave soil down amongst the green blades, digging yet more of it from the pouch on her ankle and casting it down, until a large mound of gray dirt lay in front of the stone. She'd carried the freshly turned earth with her from another part of this city of the dead because it was all she could do for them now. She carefully excised some of the living sod from over the grave and placed it back into her pouch, preparing to make the trek back to that other, fresher tombstone to complete the exchange and rejoin them.
She stopped though, and again read the tombstone.
Ronald Stoppable
1989-2007
Beloved Son, Brother and Friend
It wasn't enough, not for him, not for either of them. Kneeling before the granite, a boiling green fingertip began tracing out a new line. It was crude and unfinished, especially compared to the carefully crafted lettering above. Yet that made it special, just like the man who lay beneath, the one who never got the tribute he was due.
Finally rising from her editorial, she walked back across the acres to complete her morose tribute. Behind her, faintly steaming, the headstone had changed, forever proclaiming the truth.
Ronald Stoppable
1989-2007
Beloved Son, Brother and Friend
THE ORDINARY HERO
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AN: Well, people wanted a sequel to "Release" so here it is. I know it's not what people were probably expecting, but the first story was written on impulse… So must be the sequel. It's definitely not what people were wanting or expecting, but it's how I'm closing this out. Thanks for the read.