Disclaimer: I wish I owned something as cool as Jimmy Neutron.

A.N. I normally never dedicate a chapter to anyone but this chapter is dedicated to jediguru who inspired the whole Cindy's recovery from Jimmy's POV idea. I hadn't given it much thought until you brought it up, and the more I thought about it the more it developed into well….

This….

Anyway it starts after Cindy's back and living with her mother, but before their argument in the previous chapter.

Jimmy's POV

It was a reoccurring nightmare that brought me to Cindy's house every day. I knew from her mother's past actions that I wasn't allowed within a fifty-foot radius while she was there, but keeping me away from Cindy, now that we had found her, would be like separating protons and neutrons. Her mother left the house at exactly 8:30 each morning. Allowing for the travel time to her office building, just in case she accidentally forgot something at home, I snuck across the street and knocked on Cindy's door at 9 o'clock sharp. It was well worth it to see a beguiling Cindy peer up at me, sleepy eyed, exquisite blonde hair still tousled from sleep in the same grey sweats day after day. It assuaged my fears that built during the night. Each minute with her made the hole in my heart ache a little less. Still the pain never fully went away. I couldn't put my finger on why though.

The dream that had begun the night we found her alive and whole plagued me the moment I slipped into unconsciousness each night. The location was in a constant state of flux, changing between every place that had been important in our friendship. The island, Mars, the park where I found her, the lab, Strych's rooftop, aboard our thrill ride rockets in space, the alley where we shared our only kiss, all flashed around us in a myriad of hues and shades.

Each time I would stand transfixed as Strych held her in his arms. The weapon changed each time as well, but always I was forced to watch the horror on her face as he lowered it to her neck. It was the look in her eyes that killed me each time. The utter helplessness and defeat that registered there in her face broke me, piercing my heart.

"No don't do it! Don't kill her you monster! I love her! Take me instead! Please?!" I would hear my dream self implore for him to spare her life.

Just before plunging the weapon into her, he looked up at me, and smirked. It was a smirk I had seen on his face many times before and it filled me with terror. At the last moment he lowered the blade to her stomach. Then he would stab her once in the abdomen, as though to cause the most pain possible, and finally thrust the weapon into her neck. Strych would throw her to the ground and disappear into the shadows, dissolving into the nothing that he truly was.

My body would unfreeze at this point and I'd run to her side. I tried my best to staunch the blood that flowed from her two wounds. She struggled for breath as she slowly bled out.

"Noooooo!!!!" I screamed into the perpetually changing sky.

"Cindy," I gasped, "Cindy I love you. I'm so sorry. I love you. Please don't die."

Blood seeping from her mouth, she reached for my face with her hand. When it faltered, I would grab it and press it to my tear streaked face. She whispered to me in a voice so faint that even in my dream I had to endeavor to hear it, "Jimmy, I l-l-l-lo," but could never complete her dying sentence before I would see the spark fade from her eyes.

Each night I awoke crying, gasping for breath in my bed, only to realize it was only a dream. The fear lied close to my heart though until I could see her again. I couldn't resist going check to make sure that she was ok each morning.

Little by little, as she slowly recovered, she revealed to me what happened to her. It was so hard watching her at first as she struggled to cope with her impaired body. Seeing the once strong Cindy Vortex now struggle with the weakness of a day old kitten was worse than any physical injury I could have sustained. Cindy assured me constantly that it was just the sedatives his minions had issued to her and the following paralysis that deteriorated her physical strength; that there wasn't anything else wrong with her body, save being incredibly weak.

At first the muscles in her legs were so weak that standing for brief periods of time no longer than ten minutes would cause them to cramp so badly that she couldn't fend off the tears of pain that sprung to her eyes. Each time she apologized profusely for showing her vulnerability, but I always brushed aside her apology.

"Cindy," I said one day while I was carrying her down the stairs to her living room, "You didn't do this to yourself. Stop apologizing like it's your fault."

I carefully set her down on the loveseat in front of her television. I had already picked out a movie for us to watch and popped some popcorn.

"But if I'd…" she started to say.

"Nope. Don't want to hear it, Vortex," I called from her kitchen as I went to retrieve the popcorn from the microwave.

Cindy was constantly berating herself for not being more prepared the night she was taken. She seemed to be convinced that if she had trained harder, been at a different angle when he grabbed her, that it would have saved us 6 months of misery. Personally I didn't think anything could have prevented the events of that night from happening. But if I could have gotten away with it, I would have locked her in my lab myself to keep her safe.

Setting the bowl on the table in front of the sofa, I flopped down next to her and pushed a button on the remote to start the movie. While the previews played, she winced as another muscle locked up. She mashed her palms into her eyes to stem back tears that would soon follow.

"Come here," I said swinging her feet around to lie in my lap.

Her eyes were wide and her face flushed an enchanting shade of ruby as I rolled up each of her pant legs.

"What-what are you doing?!" she demanded in a higher register than I had ever heard her use before.

She reached to pull them back down, but I stopped her hands.

"This works better if your clothes aren't in the way."

I halted when I realized that my comment could be construed in another way. I felt my brow furrow as I grimaced at the carelessness of my words. I mentally kicked myself for a moment.

"Deep tissue massage," I shook my head and cleared my throat. "I've been researching different forms of physical therapy, and this one seems like the best way to help alleviate the pain you're in."

She looked at me skeptically for a moment. I felt a rush of heat flow to my face as I blushed.

"It's worth a try?" I shot her a hopeful look.

She rolled her eyes and waved her hand at me.

"Alright mister, but if you try anything funny…" she let the threat hang in the air.

"Scouts honor," I said, crossing my heart with my hand.

"You weren't ever a scout," she shot me a fake scowl.

"Was too."

"Were not."

"Was too."

"Were not!"

"Was too!"

"Oh yeah?" she scoffed, "For how long?"

"Five minutes," I admitted ruefully. "One of my experiments went a little awry and… Well, let's just say there's a Scout Master out there somewhere who thinks he's a squirrel."

She laughed and leaned her head back to rest on the arm of the couch. I could feel the nerves spasming in her legs as I kneaded the muscles. Slowly, as the movie continued and she unwound, they began to relax and I could see the relief wash across her face as the pain ebbed away. She looked so beautiful and peaceful sitting there that I got caught up in staring at her.

'Focus Neutron focus!' I reprimanded myself when I realized that I had missed a third of the movie already.

I tried to throw myself into the rest of the movie, but I kept glancing at her out of the corner of my eye. Her eyes were closed and a contented smile rested on her face. Not for the first time, I wished that I had the nerve to tell her how I felt. Sure I could face down any number of criminal masterminds bent on my destruction, but the thought of telling the alluring girl next to me that I was madly in love with her made me quake in my shoes. I was just about to force myself to turn my attention back to the video when she made a noise that reminded me of a cat's purr. I bit back a laugh. Cindy opened one eye slowly to scowl at me.

"Shove it boy genius," she muttered unenthusiastically and closed her eyes again sighing faintly.

"It's helping isn't it?" I asked.

"Mmmhmmm" she nodded slightly. Her head barely moved, but her smile grew wider.

The credits began to roll. I stood and placed her feet gently on the seat where I had been sitting. After I pulled the DVD from the player, I turned to her and held up two new movies that I had brought over from my house for us to watch.

"Comedy or action?"

"Both,"

I shrugged and put in the first disk I had picked up. I walked back over to my spot and resumed massaging her legs. This time I was determined to not spend the time goggling at Cindy and actually watch the movie. It was some old action movie that my mom had picked up a few years back. Mom and Dad had raved about it, but the special effects were super cheesy and fake. Something about how awful the movie truly was brought a smile to both of our faces as the horrendous plot worsened.

"Hey," she said after a time. "How's your arm healing?"

"Oh, that. It's pretty much healed now. No complications. It's gonna leave a wicked scar though,"

"Really? Let me see," she sat up and grabbed my arm.

I felt a tingle briefly shoot up my arm as she shoved the sleeves of the shirt I was wearing further up my bicep to get a good look. She hadn't really ever seen it. There was always a bandage on top of it while it the scab was there and afterwards I adopted longer sleeves to cover the wound. Cindy didn't need another reminder of the severity of the battle for her life. I think that was why she wore a long sleeved hoodie everyday as well; to cover the scars her shackles had left on her wrists. It still freaked out my mom to see the scar as well. I hadn't paid much attention to it once the stitches had been removed and the itching stopped.

"Oh geez, Jim," her voice was a surprisingly soft whisper.

Looking down then I could see how it bad it really had been. The scab had finally healed and the new skin that replaced it was a bright red-purple tint and stretched taunt across the width of my arm. Cindy ran a soft finger over it, tracing a gentle path over the place where Strych's sword had torn into me, and I involuntarily shivered. A solitary tear slipped down her face as she took in the damage.

'Great! Now I'm making her cry!' I thought.

"It's fine," I told her in a gruff voice. I roughly pulled the clothing back down to cover the injury. "I've had worse."

"No you haven't." she shook her head.

"It doesn't matter. I can live with this. The alternative…" I gulped.

Neither of us said anything more as we allowed ourselves to get caught up in our own thoughts. The alternative to my wound was Cindy's death. There would be no way that I could live with myself if she died.

Part of me worried that I would outlive my tenuous welcome at Cindy's place, but Libby constantly assured me that I was doing the right thing. She called me one night to arrange Sheen's surprise bachelor/bachelorette party. She was convinced that, if left to his own devices, he would come home with yet another tattoo, or worse, some sort of weird piercing that would show in the wedding photos. Libby figured that if we did something together then she would be able to keep an eye on him. It concerned me that Cindy was going to be out in public, but Libby waved aside my fears saying that we were going to be miles away from Retroville and it would be so poorly lit that no one would recognize her. So Libby, Cindy, and I were planning to take him out to a club the week before the wedding. We weren't planning on telling Carl until after we picked Sheen up. Carl could never keep a secret. Poor guy wouldn't know what hit him and neither would Sheen.

"You're sure?" I asked for the millionth time.

"Yeah Jimmy," Libby told me. "I can always tell when you've been there. She pretty much hates to see the weekend come and has to spend two days alone with her mega jerk mother."

I had already left for the night and was peering through the curtains of my house out the window. Libby had called on her way to work and I was trying to ascertain if Cindy had mentioned anything about getting sick of me.

"Really?"

"Yes really!" she sighed exasperated with me.

"Honestly sometimes you two…" she paused.

"The two of us what?" I responded.

"Nothing. Anyway, it's doin' the both of you good. You know what I don't understand though?"

"No, what?"

"Why you won't just tell her already. Boy, I've known longer than I knew I liked Sheen that you two were meant to be together. Sometimes I get so frustrated I wanna just smack the back of that oversized head of yours and make the words spill outta your mouth for you."

"He he," I laughed skittishly and quickly changed the topic back to the party.

Though Libby knew how I really felt about Cindy, she wouldn't go behind my back to tell her. She knew I was waiting for the right time to tell her. A guy couldn't just walk up to a girl moments after rescuing her from the arms of a sociopath and declare his undying love for her. Life just didn't work that way.

A couple weeks later I was standing in Cindy's home gym as usual, waiting for her to finish yet another workout, the longest yet.

"I don't know why you do this to yourself," I lamented to her for the third time that day as I watched her tremble.

"Because when Strych comes back, I'm going to be ready," she growled at me.

"Oh," I should have known that would be her answer. It was always her answer.

"Enough people I care about have been hurt by that blazer-wearing jerk, I won't see another one get hurt while I'm still capable," her eyes blazed with the passion that reminded me of why I loved her.

"Cindy would you let me worry about that? It's really me he wants."

I was sick of her shouldering such a huge responsibility onto herself. This whole mess was my fault. If I hadn't pissed him off when we were kids…

"Yeah well, I don't see you doing anything to prepare yourself in case he does come back," her voice interrupted my thoughts.

It was a low blow and she knew it, but as the words sunk in I knew she was right. I hadn't ever really cared about my physique before and now I had become so focused on helping her recover I had paid no attention to my own physical state. Eustace had almost beaten me once. The next time, if I continued to do nothing, may be the last time I faced any villain.

"Whatever," I said disgusted with myself.

"Crap! Jimmy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bite your head off. My muscles really hurt today."

She attempted to follow me out, but her already exhausted legs could only carry her so far before I had made it out of the house. I shut the door, albeit a little harder than I intended. I mentally kicked myself repeatedly as I marched back to my house. In my room I jerked open the bureau that held some of my older clothes. Rummaging around for a few moments I found what I was looking for and hastily dressed myself. I stomped back to Cindy's house and rang the doorbell.

"You're right," I admitted. "I do need to be more prepared. Teach me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope."

She kicked my butt into gear that day. The summer she had taught me the punch I had used on Eustace seemed like a cakewalk compared to the following weeks. I trained harder than I ever had. Still it terrified me to think that he could have shown up any time during her recovery to finish us both off.

Each night, just before her mother came home, I bid her good night and sweet dreams, knowing that Strych may still be lurking somewhere out there, biding his time, waiting for us to become complacent.

A.N. Whew! Now we all know what's up with Jimmy. Again thanks jediguru for inspiring this chapter.