A Disinterested Party Chapter 2, a kim possible fanfic

"A Disinterested Party" chapter 2

By Eoraptor

Shego glared at her cellphone, and was half temped to incinerate it without even looking at the ID. Who on Earth had the nerve to call her at…

"Ugh… Ten-thirty A.M." She groaned as she caught sight of her green LED alarm clock. She reached for the curtains; but thought better of it a moment later, noting the strength of the sun just peeking under them. "Okay, so who's got the great granite stones to call me when I haven't slept?"

Turning the offending phone over to see the name of the soon-to-be deceased, she rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Yeah… she's definitely got them."

"Yeah? What the fuck do you want?" she grumbled into the phone after opening it and pressing it to the side of her throbbing head.

"…"

"Try that again, but add at least two hours and you pick up the tab." She growled and rolled her eyes at the thought of dragging herself from the bed she had tried to sleep in.

"…"

"Okay, yeah, that's a bit more doable." She snorted, already starting to stir at the promise of free drink. "Yes Mommy… I'll shower first. Geebus you're such a nag sometimes."

"…"

"Yeah, and you're another!"

Shego clipped the phone closed with more force than was strictly necessary before reluctantly throwing the covers off of herself.

- - - - - -

"Sharon."

"Beth."

Whoever happened to know the two thirty-something women sitting down in the coffee shop would probably be asking themselves why a critical case psychotherapist and a special operations mercenary were chummily having coffee. Of course, anyone who would know both a merc and a shrink would be few and far between, and not likely to be having coffee in Upperton anyway.

"Your menus Miss Thompkins, Miss Ramirez." The familiar server dropped off a list of so many coffees and treats that it required three laminated pages.

"You look like shit, Beth." Sharon smirked and picked up her menu.

"You talk to your patients with that mouth, Sharon?" Shego matched her long-time friend's smirk with a nearly identical one of her own. The aforementioned observer who might know both women would wonder just whom had originated that smirk in the first place.

"If I did, I'd be a lot more bland when it came to you." Sharon chuckled softly and shook her head. "You know I have to blow of my steam somewhere… I can't be Doctor Sharon all the time any more than you can be Shego the hard ass. So, you want to tell me which party put those bags under your eyes? I could seriously use a good one."

"Yeah, party," Beth Ramirez mused wearily, sighing into her menu.

Her slightly rounder friend arched a brow and looked up. "I know that voice, Bethany. So, how many days since he's called?"

"We've had this talk before Sharon… I'm not a patient, don't try to analyze me." Beth grumbled and tried to concentrate on her menu of coffee drinks.

"Yeah… and we've also had the talk where I tell you to differentiate between when your shrink asks you something and when your friend does." Sharon rolled her eyes and blew out an exasperated breath. "Except that even I wouldn't take you on as a client."

"Fine…" Beth groaned heavily, rolling her stiff neck from side to side, trying to relieve the knots. "She hasn't called in a little over a week, my friend."

"She, huh?" Sharon arched a brow salaciously and leaned forward a bit, "I thought you gave up on women after the misadventures of Betty and Beth during Sophomore year?"

"And I have again," the meteor mercenary grumbled, heaving her chin into her hands and muttering against her fingers. "It was just a stupid mistake."

"You say that, and yet… you look like you haven't slept in at least a few days, Miss Hard Ass. So obviously this was a pretty profound mistake. How big a mistake we talking here? That cheerleader whose name I could never remember, or Bobby Grimm?" Sharon leaned forward onto her own hands, her coffee ordering momentarily forgotten.

The mercenary known as Shego winced slightly at the word 'cheerleader,' until she realized that her college roommate was talking about an older liaison, and not the most recent one. With a weary sigh, she sat up and cracked her neck audibly, eliciting a wince from her table mate.

"Oh, not like either one of those, though probably a little closer to old Bobblehead Bobby." Shego sighed at the mention of her long-ago activist boyfriend, the one who could never commit to one particular cause for more than a few minutes. "Whatever happened to him anyway?"

Sharon laughed softly, "Last I had heard, he was working for some outfit out of Alaska, had a show on the Knowledge Channel chasing illegal whalers." She rolled her eyes, loathed to admit she had actually watched an episode of the melodrama. "Oh God! Don't tell me you fell for another world saver type!"

The psychotherapist knew her one-time child development roommate too well. In three years of college classes, Beth had dated two Criminal Law majors, one Political Science type, and then there was that thing with the Environmental Sciences major-slash-cheerleader. She had no idea how it worked, since it was beyond even her own powers of analysis; but the iconoclastic Beth Ramirez, who abhorred both order and charity and was as mercenary in mindset as they came, always fell hard for the altruistic ones.

"It's that fucking red hair… It has to be." The faintly green woman bemoaned, and then pointed to the house special for the waiter, waiting for Sharron to order before continuing.

"Why do you think I went blonde a week after I met you?" Sharon smirked wryly and flipped a hand through her once-more red locks, indicating her order to the waiter also before handing him the menus. "You always had a weakness for gingers, and I don't happen to swing that way."

"A shame…" Shego smirked weakly as she sat back and ran her hands through her thick hair. "A therapist girlfriend might have kept me on the straight and narrow."

"Oh, right." Sharon rolled her eyes and flicked her fingers dismissively, "You, of anyone, should know there is no relationship more fucked up than one shared with a psychoanalyst."

"That's certainly what Leonard Markov said after you threw that crystal flower vase at him!" Shego quipped and grinned.

Taking a sip of her coffee when it arrived, the jovial woman sighed as it melted across her tongue and slipped down her throat. "So… gonna get this one out of your head any time soon, Sparky?"

"Honestly, Blondie, I'm not sure…" Beth let go a reluctant breath. "I tried to tell myself it was just a good screw,"

"Was it?" Sharon grinned wickedly, always up for tales of debauchery no matter the orientation.

"It was too good a screw," moaning into her coffee cup, the former criminal growled. "Trashy romance novel good…"

"Oh-ho…" the therapist to the powerful arched a brow, "I haven't heard you talk like that since Bobby. You got it bad, Sheegy. You try to tell her it was just sex too?"

"Don't remind me." Beth muttered around a sip of caffeine. "But she's young and stupid. Well, young anyway. And no, before you ask, not THAT young. I'm a Child Development major, not a pedophile. Just… younger."

Sharon chuckled as her trademark jab was cut off before she could utter it. "Young and stupid huh? Sounds more like my type, except for the whole no-dick-thing. She got a brother?"

"Oh shut up!" She threw a napkin at Sharon and rolled her unnaturally green eyes. "And, yes, she has brothers, you masochist. You know what I mean by young and stupid, don't pretend you don't..."

"You're starting to sound like your mother." Sharon supplied smoothly.

"You leave my mother out of this, Freud." Beth snarked and laughed. "But, she's… I dunno! You remember how you were in like, Junior High? Asking a friend to ask someone out for you cause you couldn't do it yourself?"

"We didn't know each other in Junior High, Beth." The off-duty therapist chuckled, "But yeah, I know what you mean. So what, she's still stuck at that point?"

"I don't know… when I woke up, she was trying to sneak off… I think anyways." The mercenary sipped her coffee drink slowly, contemplating. "From her own apartment no less. But, in as long as I've known her, she's never been one to sneak out. Sneak in maybe… but never out."

A cinnamon brow arched at this. It was just as quickly, if comically, brought down by a minty fingertip pushing on it. Dr. Thompkins laughed softly at the non-verbal exchange. "So, you knew this woman before now? How long? Since the bad days?"

"Yeah, since the bad days," Shego supplied, substituting the banal label for her past days as a criminal.

"The Bad Days" was the time during which she and her best friend had not spoken, having very different world views. Beth "Shego" Ramirez had, of course, worked for global domination, while her former college roommate, Sharon Thompkins had become therapist, analyst, and profiler to many of the people tasked with catching her. It was a hard time on both, since they had been fierce friends before Beth's fall to the dark side.

Sharon held that Beth let her issues with her brothers drive her to the edge; but then again, she couldn't fault her at least in being pushed over that edge. Her brother kept pressing her and pressuring her to give up her education and return to Go City. This in turn drove Miss Ramirez the child development student and TA further into her already pragmatic, mercenary mindset, and warped her identity as Shego into something darker than the old Team Go heroine. Eventually, in the dark of an October night, Beth had screamed and bolted after answering the ringing phone.

It was an age before Caller ID was widespread on college campuses, so Sharon could only assume, rightly so it turned out, that it was Martin "Hego" Ramirez, calling to demand her help in fighting some villain or other. She learned a few days later that "Shego" had indeed gone to help… She helped The Defenestrator defeat Team Go, and then vanished into the criminal underworld.

Sharon was thankful that her friend had finally returned, if not to heroing, at least to the lighter side after the Alien Invasion of a few years ago. They were able to let bygones be bygone and return to friendship, beginning with these little coffee outings. Sharon had needed it as much as Beth; she'd been getting a bit too closed off in her world of heavy confidentialities, and the snarky, foul-mouthed mercenary helped to ground her on how pompous some of them could really be.

"Wow… so you knew this confused ecologist back when you were a bitch on wheels, and she still keeps in touch with you? Must be about as stubborn as you are, Sparky."

"You got no idea, Blondie." Beth sighed wearily again. "I almost wonder if she's not just keeping an eye on me, except that… when we talk, it's not like she's probing me, she's just reliving the old days."

"And did you have the hots for her in the bad days too?" Sharon was genuinely curious now. She didn't remember her friend being this perturbed over a paramour since she forced herself to come to terms over her bobble-headed ADD boyfriend not being able to focus on their relationship the way she wanted.

"Oh GOD no! She was a righteous little punk back then. Thank God she's mellowed since getting out into the world, or I'd a' killed her myself." Shego laughed morosely, and then stopped, looking up. "Okay, why are we still talking about this shit?"

"Cause, I got no fucking love-life, so I'm living vicariously through yours." Sharon smirked archly. "And because you're better than a soap opera any day of the week when it comes to twisted plots."

"Yeah… I think I'm done entertaining you for one day." Shego rolled her eyes good-naturedly, and then yawned, stretching back in her side of the booth and arching, "Besides, I feel a nap coming on, and I'd rather be at home on my leather couch when it finally hits."

"Well, sleep well," Sharon nodded amiably, again paying attention to the bags under Beth's eyes. "I don't need to see you in for nervous breakdowns and sleep deprivation any more than you want to be brought in.

"If it came down to that, I'd slam a bottle of vodka and a few Tylenol first." Shego snorted and gave a limp-wristed wave before taking her coffee and slipping out of the booth.

"Hey! No fair bringing up college adventures!" the redhead whined plaintively, and then sighed, finishing off her coffee. "Besides, you took the bottle away from me before I got through more than half!"

"Just keep telling yourself that, Blondie!"

"I fully intend to, Sparky. Denial is just a river on the planet you saved!"

The response she received as a predictable finger and the off duty therapist chuckled heavily, shaking her head.

- - - - - -

A few minutes later, Sharon settled into the driver's seat of her car and slid her key into the ignition.

"What are we going to do with you, Beth?" Sharon chuckled to herself and tapped her fingers on the wheel. "Redhead, world saver, energetic… stubborn enough to hang on for years… Everything you could never resist. Hell, she was probably a freaking cheerlea-…"

Sharon almost fell out of her seat. Only the seatbelt stopped her from falling out the open door and onto the asphalt.

A younger redhead hero type, who was unsure about her feelings for Beth, but whom was stubborn enough to still be talking to her even after the bad days…

A client who had had an encounter with a woman she said was a relative of one of Sharon's other clients, and was incredibly unsure of what to think about it, but seemingly unafraid of the ramifications…

The therapist smacked her head repeatedly against the seat and rubbed her face. "Shit… well, I'm either about to do the greatest study ever on Opposites Attract… or make about a dozen ethics violations."

AN: part two, long delayed and long in draft form. Read, Review, and Recommend Please