A/N: This entire fic is a retelling of the final battle in the Kim Possible season 2 movie "A Stitch in Time".
And so the battle ended.
Staggering back, Kim Possible struggled to raise her arms. Her armor had been shredded, and plasma burns were scattered all over her body, sparing no skin or hair. Her once smooth and flowing head of red had been reduced to a synged scalp of blackened, charred remains.
Leaping over her with a graceful flip, Shego's teammate landed with a hobble. Despite her best efforts, she had not been able to evade all of Kim's moves, and her body was starting to remind her that they were two sides of the same bruised coin. Both strong, agile, quick; but one had been blessed with more training while the other gifted with other skills.
Shego hadn't fared much better. Her favored catsuit was torn, revealing skin even paler than Kim Possible had remembered, and her black, grey-lined hair had been abused by more desperate assaults made by her nemesis. Overcoming her speech impediment brought on by a swollen lip, she conceded, "You put up a good fight, Kim!" And with a jump start, she pounced upon the hero, delivering a powerful boot to the face, sending the young woman flying back. "Senescence hasn't been cured yet," Shego confessed, admitting to the hard reality that she had passed her physical prime. Then again, realizing that Kim Possible was somehow fated to always beat her had been an even bigger pill to swallow. "But I've got the biggest brainiacs working on it!" she quickly added as she began moving to flank the wounded warrior.
"Shego told me you'd be a tough bone to break!" the Other Kim laughed as she grabbed her alternate self and spun her around by the back of her shirt. Kim lost her balance and toppled to the ground as desired. "But nothing that a little tag teaming couldn't handle!" Shego's partner strongly decided as she spat on her downed opponent, saliva landing next to her head.
"Don't do that," Shego ordered as she approached the two redheads. Her step was slightly off, legs swollen and bruised. There was a slight struggle to draw breath. As the adrenaline wore off, Shego began to feel the full effect of Kim Possible's vicious defense.
The Other Kim did a doubletake. "What?" she asked, legitimately confused at the seemingly contradictory order. All her life, her master had lectured her on the dangerous foe that they would both eventually come to face. She'd been trained for a glorious victory, but now that it was here? "But she's the-"
"DON'T do it," Shego repeated as she knelt beside her defeated foe. "It's disrespectful, Kimberly. This woman has earned my respect," Shego honestly and truthfully confessed as she placed a firm hand on the younger woman's shoulder and turned her over.
The sight was one that she'd fantasized about for decades now. And she was finally able to bear witness.
The once unbeatable Kimberly Ann Possible rolled over, back firmly smacking against the cold marble floor. Her long, albeit torn and burned red hair was fragmented and frayed enough to reveal her facial features, although personally she would have rathered they remain hidden.
Her once smooth skin was serenaded with cuts delivered by the dagger-like gloves that both antagonists wore on their green and black catsuits. Blood, old and new, dried and dripped, black and bright red.
She had taken several hits to her face over the course of the battle that had waged on for nearly twenty minutes. The pain was so constant that she had become dulled by the searing sting, but the skin had swollen and turned the undesired bluish/black that all bruises tended to take on. Her nose wasn't broken, miraculously; but it had dispensed blood shortly after suffering one too many hits.
Kim felt most of her teeth still in place, although some were exercising their newfound flexibility, much to her discomfort. Her heavy, ragged, and pained breathing suggested that she'd suffered a broken rib. Wincing at the pain, she recalculated that number to be somewhere between three and all of them. A collapsed lung also seemed possible.
Swallowing, Kim Possible looked her longest-lasting, most formidable arch enemy dead in the eyes. Summoning to strength to overcome the pain that plagued her entire body, she managed to mutter, "Time… waste of… time."
"What?" the other Kim asked, kneeling down and examining her mirror image as if she were a riddle. "What's a waste of time?"
"Be quiet," Shego ordered as she gazed intently into her rival's eyes. "What's a waste of time?" she practically demanded.
"Time monkey…" Kim answered, frowning initially but failing to keep it as the pain surged back and claimed her composure. Sucking in air, she spat, "You wasted it, Shego." before feverishly panting for some sort of respite.
Shego considered Kim's words before chuckling. "Maybe," she admitted with a sigh as she gently moved some of the hair from her face, taking in the younger woman's face. "For you. But for me, it's been the greatest investment I ever made. The best job I ever undertook." Lips slowly curling into a blissful smile, Shego allowed herself to become drunk with the prized success. After so many years, so many defeats, so many humiliations, the bane of her existence was finally down for the count. "Taking you down," Shego muttered as she gazed into Kim's eyes, realizing for the first time that they were the same emerald green as her own. "It's what I've always wanted. The only thing I've wanted for a very long time," she confessed as she still bore that psychotic smile.
Her teammate and playmate, Kimberly, was beginning to feel very uncomfortable with her lover's sudden change in demeanor. Since the beginning of their relationship, she'd been raised to regard the original Kim Possible as the most horrendous abomination in Shego's world. She was told to believe that this woman had hurt her, had harmed her, had made her suffer so unbearably that Kimberly had wanted to kill her just as badly as Shego wanted to.
Yet, here she was, kneeling beside her, stroking her hair, as if Shego loved the original Kim just as much as she loved Kimberly.
Swallowing hard, Kimberly shakingly asked, "S-Shego? What are you doing? Can we get rid of her now?"
"Kimberly," Shego slowly and firmly muttered, her smile vanishing completely. "I have waited two lifetimes for this moment. You will not ruin it for me. Be silent."
Kimberly backed off, her reality slowly unraveling thread by thread. Shego, the woman she'd known since her preschool days, the woman who never aged, the woman who had slowly taken over her whole life, consumed it and made it her own, the woman she now loved had taken a complete turn in the exact opposite direction. She slowly stepped back, each boot quivering as she struggled to keep balance. It scared her.
Parting her lips, Shego took in a calming breath and sighed with satisfaction. "You shouldn't undersell yourself, Kim. I grew up with four brothers and dysfunctional parents. But it was you and your inability to suffer defeat, no matter how powerful I could have been. You got under my skin, Kim. No one else did."
Kim slowly absorbed the realization that she'd driven Shego into an insane obsession. In hindsight, it seemed quite obvious. Every relationship needed to be balanced, that was just basic logic. But there was an unexplainable phenomenon that caused her to ask, "How is she so much stronger in this timeline?" In between bloody coughs, she managed to wheeze, "How does a Shego-trained Kim beat me?"
Smirking, Shego rolled her eyes and revealed, "Because I wasn't the one who trained you, doy." The way she says that last word, her signature insult, gives Kim a small shiver that strongly reminds her of the severe wounds she sustained.
"Sure, I was there since your birth," Shego continued, unaware of the hero's pain. Or perhaps she simply didn't care. "I took on the jobs necessary to oversee your growth as a young girl, but I never interfered. No, I was just 'Miss Go' to you until you took up crime fighting."
Kim fell silent, save for her ragged breathing. She was floored at how responsible and calculated Shego had become.
Shego's smile faded as she fell deeper into thought. "After you'd gotten into the swing of things it was just a matter of offering you a chance to do it full time. Of course, you accepted."
Kim considered the strategy to be a sound and logical one, but it didn't explain the whole "take over the world and become The Supreme One" thing. "But… that doesn't- There was China. Russia. The EU. What about America? Wasn't there resistance?" Swallowing hard and dreading the answer, she questioned, "How did you dominate the world?"
Shego was broken from her trance and smirked at her defeated foe's eversharp mind. "I didn't destroy the planet, obviously. No, Kim, once I had you, taking the world was a task that we worked together on."
Painfully, Kim managed to turn her head and see her alternate self, watching with growing concern. A plan slowly began to form out of desperation. She just needed more out of Shego, and two lifetimes of planning could definitely provide her with the desired words. "How?" she asked, starting off simple.
"Oh, don't get the wrong idea, it took me forever," Shego fully admitted with a wave of her hand. "Twelve years before you were even born, to be exact. You and I had to go back to the very beginning, just to make sure that I had the best chance. See, I only needed enough money to form my own think tank of super geniuses. After that, it was a simple process of developing Drakken's mind control collars, and attaching them the key figures of every super power. A few mandatory programs and failed resistances later, I had the entire world under my control."
Recalling grand adventures with long nights in casino crusades, Shego chuckled. "Granted, that took longer, but it was definitely more enjoyable. Anyways, that's how I got the military power to match my financial power."
Kim's head rolled back, and she found herself staring up at the green marble ceiling. "You need… help," she muttered. Despite recent events, Kim was able to find some small amount of strength in knowing that the pain couldn't get any worse. And now was the perfect opportunity to put her plan into action. "What… happens now?" she baited.
Smirking, Shego looked around, taking in the success of her undertaking. "I've had a lot of time to think and fantasize about that," she admits with no remorse or indication of awareness.
"I think I know," Kim breathed. Keeping her tone consistent, she suggested, "Now that you've… finally got me… you don't need… her anymore, right?"
Shego paused, flinching ever so slightly. Both characters looked over to see the Other Kim stagger back, shock, horror, and disbelief vying for control of her face.
"This," she muttered as she stepped away from her lover and over towards the Tempus Simia. "This is what it's all been about: you and her, just you and her. There never was you and me," she growled as tears began to cloud her vision.
"Don't-!" Shego attempted to order, only to be interrupted by her former teammate as she grabbed the precious idol.
"You destroyed my life!" she realized. "You ruined any chance I had at becoming anything other than your pawn!"
"No!" the Supreme One shouted as she held an arm out, pleading. "You're wrong! She's just trying to turn us against each other!"
"I saw how you looked at her!" the Other Kim shouted back, grip tightening on the Time Monkey. As her entire reality began to unravel before her very eyes, the desperate girl realized, "You never looked at me like that! You never talked to me like that!" She blanked for a moment, recalling intimate moments of love and promises of endless happiness, all possible through the death of Kim Possible.
"Kimberly, she's just screwing with your head! Snap out of it!" Shego pleaded. She hadn't expected retaliation at this moment; she wasn't prepared for it. "Don't do it, Kimberly! That's an order!"
Suppressing her hyperventilation, the Other Kim made her ultimatum.
"You made me, Shego. You made me to kill that girl! And you made me love you for it!" Tears falling freely, she deadpanned, "If you're not going to kill her, I'm going to make her win the battle again!"
Blinking, Shego worriedly asked, "What are you-?"
"I'm going to destroy the Time Monkey," she stated, finally accepting the cold reality of Shego's sociopathic tendencies. "And if you want to stop all of your hard work from being utterly ruined, if you want to win for the first time in your life, then you're going to KILL Kim Possible like you promised me!" Choking on her own sobs, the Other Kim couldn't refrain from remembering, "You told me you loved me, Shego! You told me we'd be together until the end of time!"
Kim hadn't planned on possibly unraveling the very fabric of time and space. But in her current state, there wasn't much she could do about it. By now, everyone's heart was racing.
Drakken and Ron Stoppable lay beyond, whether in shock or anticipation wasn't determinable.
Shego stood tall, bruised, battered, and silent. Hair hanging down and dripping with sweat, she remained motionless against her newfound enemy.
"Well?!" the Other Kim demanded, raising the Time Monkey above her head. "You have to decide, Shego!" she spat. "Her or me! If you really love me, then do as you promised!" Legs quivering, she pleaded, "Shego, I love you..."
The desperation and utter sadness touched Kim in a way she'd never experienced before. Before her stood such a twisted version of herself. And yet, it was real. This woman was both her and not her. And regardless of what she was, this Other Kim was now the one who would decide the fate of two worlds.
Closing her eyes, Shego took in one last breath. Opening them again, she found that this wasn't a bad dream. "I'm sorry," she finally confessed. "I can't."
Kim watched her alternate self snap.
Before she could move to throw the Time Monkey upon the marble floor, her former lover stepped forward shouting, "Codeword! Tragedy!"
And then the Other Kim froze, Time Monkey still held high in the air. She grit her teeth and made the most unpleasant noises as she attempted to scream. Kim quickly noticed that her ring finger was glowing red under the green catsuit she wore.
Drakken found himself frozen in place too. The voice activation code worked on all control collars within reach.
Shego breathed a sigh of relief as she continued forward. "I did say that I controlled everyone," she huffed as she came eye to eye with her former partner in crime. "It was much harder to build a control collar into a ring form," she admitted. "But I got it done, just for you."
Kim found herself out of options. Her sidekick was detained, her backup was presumably captured by now, and she herself was rendered useless in a fight.
"It's too bad," Shego muttered as she glared at the Other Kim. "You were just what I needed. And I did enjoy your company, Kimberly," she admitted. "But you aren't the real thing. You could never be the real thing," she confessed as she took the Time Monkey from her hands.
The Other Kim squeezed her eyes shut, making the most horrific high-pitched scream of pain as she cried, frozen in place.
Kim began coughing, as hard as she could. She made a successful attempt at spitting out blood. Shego spun 'round with the Time Monkey in her grasp.
"No…" she muttered as she paced back to Kim's prone body. "No, you can't die now," she spat as she set the Time Monkey down next to Kim's head. "You will NOT die now, Kim!" she ordered as she pulled her into her lap, placing an ear on Kim's chest. "Must be a collapsed lung," she quietly decided.
Fast as lightening, and ignoring the searing pain that ran throughout her entire body, Kim threw a right hook directly into Shego's throat.
The Supreme One fell back, clutching her throat and coughing in pain.
Kim rolled to her feet and staggered towards the Other Kim, taking painful breaths and gasping in pain as she took each step. The few meters she covered felt like a forced march through hell and back for her, but she managed to reach her alternate self.
"Do what needs to be done," she gasped as she pulled the left glove off, revealing the glowing red control ring. "You're still the girl who can do anything," Kim pleaded as she pulled the ring off of the finger.
Shego was on her feet and charging, throwing herself at the two redheads and pulling them down into a tangled mess. "You're not going to ruin me!" she screamed.
Ignoring the original Kim, Shego engaged her former lover, pinning her to the ground. Glaring down at the girl, she shrieked, "I'm finally going to get what I want! You won't ruin m-!"
The Other Kim was able to yank lose her left fist and throw her own punch into Shego's throat, sending the Supreme One toppling over to the side.
She was on her feet and charging, leaping over her original self's defeated body and rushing for the Time Monkey. The thing probably wouldn't break by throwing it on the floor. But they were on the very top of a three hundred meter tall building surrounded by concrete, and the only thing separating her from it was a thin pane of glass.
Shego was on her knees with her right hand clutching her throat. Amidst the painful coughs and gasps for air, she witnessed the Other Kim making a break for it with her precious Time Monkey. Raising her left hand, Shego ignited her plasma and hurled a flaming ball towards her.
Her accuracy never failed her, and both she and Kim Possible watched as the Other Kim was sent flying, screaming as she broke through the massive pane of glass.
"NOOOOOO!" Shego scrambled, tripped, and fell again. Pounding her fists on the ground, she shrieked, "No! No! NOOO!"
Kim never heard the Tempus Simia shatter on the pavement; but she did see the massive city around them slowly start to melt away, crumbling and collapsing as the noise grew louder and louder.
"I had it!" Shego wailed. Raven hair draped around her face, hiding it from the falling world. "I had you! I had it all!
"Kay-Pee!" Ron called out, still bound in his chair with Drakken still frozen by his side. "What do we do?!" he begged, quite terrified of the end of the world.
Kim smiled, the overwhelming pain no longer giving her grief. "We save the future" she gently sighed as time and space didn't begin to unravel, but rather: they began to revert. She closed her eyes, finding peace in the pyrrhic victory.
Her eyes opened again. She staggered in her school clothes, gently massaging the sudden headache she'd received. "The future," she muttered.
"Wait, what? Ugh, brainfreeze!" Ron complained as he too seemed to be suffering.
Kim Possible looked around. Middleton. Their hometown. She was standing in front of her high school with Ron. "You were saying… that our future was bright," she slowly remembered as she looked around to see that small crowds of teenagers were dispersing, laughing and shouting. Cars honked, birds flew above. The sky was blue, and the sun was bright.
Things were normal, yet they felt so off. It felt unnatural to her for some unexplained reason.
"Yep!" Ron agreed as he jumped for joy. "And I hate meat cakes!" he proudly declared.
"And I hate mind control and violation of human rights!" Kim added with equal enthusiasm.
Both continued with their walk away from Middleton High. After all, school was out for the day. Kim felt at peace, but she had a nagging feeling that something was still off.
For now, she ignored it. She was with her best friend, and she had the homework for tonight already done in her head. Kim wasn't one to forget lessons to be learned. If there was anything to be remembered, she was sure that it would eventually come to her.