All characters and places in this story belong to the Disney Corporation, just like Lucasfilm,

ESPN, Pixar, Marvel, Jim Henson Productions and ABC do.

The original creators were Mark McCorkle and Robert Schooley.

I receive nothing for the writing of this story.

If anyone knows Zaratan or can get in touch with him, please let him know that I am doing this. If he give me permission, great. If he doesn't and wants to finish it himself, great. Either way it's a win.

This is the chapter that I wrote and is based on other writings that Zaratan has done.

A special thanks to Cajunbear73 for beta reading this chapter while Temporaryinsanity91 takes some time off to deal with some family heath problems.

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Previously

"Fine then, we won't resolve this and you can continue to make your daughter miserable. I thought you were a better father than that!"

THAT got the reaction Kim was looking for. Ron was on his feet in a heartbeat, stepping right into Kim's face. "You... you..."

She calmly stared hard into Ron's reddening face. "Then we are going to go downstairs and settle this, once and for all. Agreed?"

Ron's fingers flexed repeatedly, fists clenching over and over again. "Fine. You want to do this, we'll do this." He waved his hand towards the basement door that lead to the training room.

Kim turned and opened the door quickly. When it was open, she paused, turning to glare back at the stripper who had yet to move from her son's lap. "And you missy better keep your hands OUT of my son's pants."

The stripper Candy (really Janice, but that wasn't something she told people), eeped loudly and leapt to her feet. "Yes ma'am."

With one final glare, Kim headed down the stairs, followed right behind by a pissed off Ron Stoppable, who slammed the door behind them.

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She quickly checked the basement as she stepped off the bottom step to make sure that everything that Michelle told her about was where it should be. She'd been here before but not since they'd finished setting things up the way they wanted them. Two thirds of the very large basement was used as a training area and was lit with recessed lights. The remaining third had an overstuffed couch and refrigerator for water, to relax in after a workout. It was lit with low hanging track lights.

The training area itself had a weight machine, with a couple of jump ropes dangling off one of the bars, a treadmill, and an exercycle that were all near the outer walls along with a punching bag while the center of that area had floor mats covering about a 20 by 20 area. The perfect size for a sparring match.

It was the center of the mats that she headed for with Ron following close behind. She thought with them standing in the middle it would help to nudge him into the sparring match with her that he needed. A way to vent his hate, but when she reached the normal position for one of the fighters and turned she saw that he had stopped at the very edge, so they were now 13 feet away. The look on his face screamed his feelings of her that a deaf man could hear. If she hadn't already steeled herself for this meeting, she would have flinched from the hard, cold hatred that came pouring from the man that she once called her best friend, her lover.

"What's the matter with you?" he yelled, almost trembling with anger.. "What part of 'stay out of my way' didn't you understand? Or was that just something you managed to forget about before busting in here like you owned the damn place? "

"Hey! I put down the down payment for them so I!…..." she yelled back at him, both of them drowning out the sounds that came from the floor above them as people were leaving.

"Yeah?!" he cut her off. "And I paid it off for them as a wedding present and I was invited to live here till my stuff arrived so you stormed into my home to accuse me of being an unfit father!

"I never accused you of that!"

"NO! You did something worse. You insinuated it! You put the idea into half of my daughter's wedding party's minds that I'm an unfit father. Something you don't need to prove, but I'll never be able to disprove it! They'll believe it even though it's based on nothing!"

You come busting in here like you're trying to recapture your youth? Sorry the vents aren't big enough for you to crawl through!

"What the hell are you talking about?!"

"The young heroine makes her way into the villain's lair, her normal stealthy entrance disrupted by normal-size ductwork. She finds the young hero surround by minions as a woman tries to tempt the young man over to the side of evil." he mocked as a story narrator.

"She's a stripper and a whore!"

"Her name is Janice and she's a first year intern trying to pay off her college loans. She went to the University of Upperton, the same college your mother did. I wonder what she did to pay off hers.

Now where was I? Oh yeah. Seeing their attempts to sway the young hero, the heroine commanded them to cease and desist their efforts as she then went to confront the main villain by insulting him till she lured him into their final encounter by threatening him with the one thing he truly cherished, his daughter's love. You figure you're not done screwing with me so now you're trying to ruin up my relationship with Michelle?"

"You're the one ruining their wedding with your...!"

"Me? You're a fine one to talk! You're the one that just came in here and ruined your own son's bachelor party, making all of his friends think that they needed to get your permission to have a stripper here for his party! "

When she didn't reply because that hadn't been her intention, to break up the party, Ron forged on. " You look like you might be wanting to take her place? Is that it or maybe you were just looking for a date for after the wedding. I know how you liked to make friends with college guys."

"How dare you!" she shouted back at him with her own indignation, now mixed with her own rage. "I told you what happened back then last night! If you hadn't..."

"You told me a story. A lie in other words that makes it sound like it was all my fault! A lie that makes me responsible and you looking like the victim to anybody that will believe it!"

"I didn't lie to you, Ron. I've never lied to you, especially about something like that."

"Never?!... Never?!" he shouted the question back at her in astonishment. "Have you forgotten that Halloween when you lied to me? And what was that about? About you wanting to be with Josh Mankey at a party!"

"Oh grow up. That was all the way back in high school and you weren't the only one I told a white lie to." she answered as she dismissed the accusation. "I can't believe you're bringing that up after all this time. After all we meant to each other."

"Sorry. I didn't know that there was a statute of limitations on lying. A time when a lie is no longer a lie anymore. Grow up." he repeated more to himself. "Funny. If I'd listened to you the first time you ever told me to 'grow up' you'd have spent the night dancing with Eric and Drakken would have taken over the world. I wonder what they would have done with you then. Ever ask yourself about that, or was that something to be forgotten about too?"

"That was a long time ago, Ron.

"And what does time mean to us, Kim? Your first lie happened twenty five years ago. One year later we were dating. A little over a year after that we were...lovers, or so I thought. Maybe just fuck buddies to you. But less than a year after that you broke up with me and then nothing for the next twenty three years.

When we do meet again, what do I get at that party? You looked at me with that look of horror on your face, like you just found you stepped in a pile of dog crap at a party and everybody knew it."

"I was surprised...and in shock!"

"So was I but at least I said something. I was at least able to say 'hello.' What did you say to me after all those years, huh? What did you say to your former best friend? Your boyfriend, your so-called lover? He screamed the question at her, but then quietly gave the answer.

Nothing.

That's what you said.

Nothing."

That's when it hit me that even though your husband had passed away a few years ago and you were alone you still didn't want anything to do with me.

"Well you could have called me!" she countered holding back her tears of anger and regret.

"Why? Why should I have called you? You had the life you wanted. You had the life you really wanted, with the man you wanted... The man you dumped me for. Why should I try and worm my way back into that perfect little life like a pathetic loser, after you kicked me to the side?"

After all the time I thought that someday you might get in touch with me just to say 'hello,' or finally say 'goodbye' or even 'kiss my ass,'...nothing. You just sent your little mouthpiece, your Metatron, the voice of Kim almighty, over to talk to me. All she wanted was to find out what in the hell I was doing there or what I wanted from you, like we were still friends. And just like before, she didn't want to listen to anything I had to say about what went down back then. She even said hello to me the same way she said goodbye to me. The only thing she didn't do was call me a 'bastard' loud enough to wake up Hana from her nap like the last time.

"I didn't... Wait.' she stopped herself as she grew confused. "What are you talking about? Monique didn't say anything about calling you anything. She said she just turned and stormed off after you told her...about Bonnie being..."

"So now you're trying to blame Monique for you breaking up with me?"

"No!" shouted Kim as her anger came back full force. "I'm not trying to blame her for anything, even if it was her idea to let you heal a little before I tried to apologize to you. She was the one that..."

"Heal?" questioned Ron. "Heal? Good God, woman! You ripped my heart out that night. I was bleeding out and you thought it best to wait before even trying to stop the bleeding? Come on Kim. You can come up with a better story than that."

"It's not a story, Goddamn it! It's the truth! Why won't you believe me?" she yelled and pleaded at the same time.

"Because, I may not be as good or as fast as my dad, but I can still add things up.

One: You said you were doing it because you heard that I had no real friends and I never went out so you were only doing it for me, yet you didn't even ask me why. Didn't even consider I had a reason for staying in my room all the time."

"You were lonely and missed me. The same way I missed you." she said.

"Yeah. I was, but I had a reason. A really stupid reason looking back on things but I had a reason."

"Why would you do that to yourself Ron?"

"Because I was studying!" he screamed, which stunned her into a momentary silence. "I had a plan. I never told it to you because I wanted it to be a surprise if it worked and if it didn't, it would have been another stupid pipe dream on my part. I'd made the Dean's list that first semester. If I'd made it again, two semesters in a row, that would have gotten my grade point average up high enough so I could transfer to your school and we could be together again."

"But why didn't you tell your parents? They were the ones that told me you were so miserable at school."

"Of course I was miserable. I was missing you and I was having to do something I'd always hated doing. Studying! I never told my folks because if I'd told them, they would have told your folks, then they would have told you. End of surprise."

"Two: If you had been sorry back then, about what you said, you could have had Wade fix you up a ride and been there in four hours. Four fucking hours!"

"Well you could have answered the phone!" she said as she held back her tears from that major mistake on her part. "I tried to call you but you wouldn't answer and the people on your floor said you didn't want to talk to me."

"Because I didn't need to feel worse by hearing you tell me that even though your just broke up with me, even though you had me crying, I couldn't stand to hear you tell me... you still wanted to be JUST friends. It was a full day after that before I started drinking."

"Three: You said you hadn't been seeing anyone. That there wasn't another guy."

"There wasn't, Ron."

"Bullshit. Like I said, I can do the math. Three months after you didn't say anything to me, three months after Monique wouldn't listen to a thing I had to say and slapped me and labeled me a bastard on my parents' own front porch, you were knocked up and getting married."

"How...?"

"Good God Kim. Every channel carried the news about that except the Mouse Network! When the kids first came to visit and I first found out they were getting married, they were joking about how he was marrying and older woman and she was robbing the cradle. By three months. Three fucking month's difference!

Three months, so that means you were on your back with your legs spread and banging Michael's father less than two months after you dumped me and I became the 'bastard of Middleton.'"

"I didn't meet Joshua till after I found out that Bonnie was pregnant!"

"It took 'twelve stinking years' for us to kiss the first time, Kim, two years before we...before we... had sex, so are you telling me that it only took you two months to get over our breakup, meet someone else, fall in love and get pregnant? You must have been really torn up about us then? Especially with all of the "We have to be careful." and all the different methods of BC we used... That must have been only with me because none of that applied to him."

"Alright! That's enough!" she shouted. She had come here ready for a fight to help him move on, thinking she knew all the facts and would educate him one way or the other, but she hadn't been ready for this. She hadn't known about Monique slapping him that day and calling him a bastard in front of his family's home. Kim had told her to get out as soon as she found out why Ron and that... that skank whore were getting married, not giving her a chance to say anymore. She hadn't known about why Ron had shut himself from people at college to try and get the grades he needed to transfer just so they could be together. Worst of all, she hadn't known that Ron had figured out how long after that terrible day that her son was conceived.

"You're right! There! Satisfied? When we were coming home from break, his family and girlfriend were driving up to get him and had a wreck. All three of them were killed instantly. By the time I went back to college, I was so distraught and he was still in mourning and tore up that 'yes!' We managed to find a moment of comfort with each other. It was supposed to have been a one night thing and neither one of us was thinking and I got pregnant with Michael. We got married because of Michael and the only reason we stayed married was because of Michael! Is that what you wanted to hear? That I did the same thing you did? That I've been hiding the facts that Michael was a total accident? That he came from two people that hardly knew each other instead of two people that were in love and were just careless one time? Is that what you wanted to hear? Does that make you feel any better?"

After a moment's silence, Ron said, "You might want to ask Michael about that. You're standing under a vent return that carries the sound though out the house and if he is still upstairs, then he just heard everything you said."

Looking up over her head at the small metal grill in the ceiling, she knew what he'd said was true because when they were looking at the house to buy Kim had gone upstairs while they remained in the basement as they talked about what they could do with it for their needs. While she was upstairs, she could hear them plain as day and the two would have 'initiated' the basement then if she hadn't interrupted them.

"Michael?" she called out softly hoping that she didn't get an answer, but after almost a minute, her hopes were crushed as she heard his voice answer.

"Mom. I'm a...I'm a gonna step outside and call Michelle. I didn't realize...

You always told me to be 'totally' honest with you. I guess that was only meant to be a one-way street."

"Michael, we didn't want you to think of yourself as an accident, that you weren't wanted."

"Mom. It didn't matter to me how I was started. Only how I was loved as I grew up. I just wish you and Dad would have trusted me to know the difference."

Kim closed her eyes as she heard his footsteps heading to the front door as once again in her life, she wished she could go back in time far enough to unsay something that she knew she should have never said in the first place.

And for the first time in twenty three years, a part of Ron Stoppable, a part he thought had died one night after a call on his Kimmunicator had ended his relationship with her, he felt sorry for his former girlfriend.

He had always tried to be as honest as he could be with his daughter as she grew up, thinking that some of the times he hadn't been honest with Kim in the past was just more reasons she broke up with him when she found someone better.

With his daughter though, he'd adopted the old philosophy of "Don't ask, don't tell." If she didn't ask, he wouldn't tell, but just two days ago, she'd asked him and he told her. He'd told her how both he and her mother were both drunk having had a breakup with the people they'd loved. He told her she'd been conceived at a college party. And she'd taken it in stride, even making a joke about her friend Janine being conceived at a Britney Spears concert, whoever that was. His trust and faith in his daughter had been well placed, but this eventual talk had worried him ever since his divorce was finalized with Bonnie and he knew it would be him alone doing the talking.

Wanting to say something to Kim, but not knowing what, all he could say was, "Kim, I didn't..."

The look she shot him burned away any feelings of sorrow he felt as her own anger and shame took over. She quickly took off the flimsy blouse she was wearing and took a fighting stance as she looked at him with her own hate finally showing.

The reasons she came here were forgotten because at that moment, all she wanted to do was take her feelings out on the man that had forced her to reveal some of her secrets that she'd buried from the outside world, her family and herself. Once again she hated Ron Stoppable and what he'd done to her, but this time she wasn't going to run away crying. This time she was going to fight and make him pay.

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Janis Ian's 'Aftertones', from the Album 'Aftertones', Columbia Records, 1976:

Sometimes it's all too much to say aloud.
The Sound's a shroud.
The meanings crowd.

Sometimes the words are painful to the ear.
They disappear and nothing's clear.
And all that's left of me are aftertones.
I take them home.
We live alone.

But I remember chains of melody.
It pleases me.
This song's for free,

Within the mem'ries of our life gone by,
Afraid to die, we learn to lie.
And measure out the time in coffee spoons.
In fading suns and dying moons.
Till all that's left to see are aftertones.
And no one knows where meaning goes.

But I remember chains of melody.
It pleases me.
This song's for free.

And, ooo, I like the sound
Of harmony from time to time.
I really do believe
In some kind of tomorrow
When it speaks to me.

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To Be Continued...

As always, if you have a question about something or you find an error, drop me a note or put it in a comment.