Unlike all of the other awakenings that bright morning, theirs was quiet and peaceful. There was no shouting or weeping or even hugging. They'd known that they would wake up together, and that was all that mattered. The where wasn't important.
Instead, they just smiled softly at each other, green eyes meeting brown, and reached out. Without a word being spoken, they greeted and welcomed, running fingers through hair here, stroking a cheek there.
Spiritual union had been, well, perfect. What other word was there for it? But it was good to have skin and senses again. Good to be alive. They could smell the incongruous perfume of the spring flowers all around them and see the sunlight bringing their colors to glowing life. They could hear voices in the distance, though those voices didn't matter in the here and now.
They could also feel the Sun's warmth and the grass tickling beneath them. Apparently, they were as naked as Adam and Lilith on their first day in the Garden. Not that they cared.
Then the voices crested the lip of the crater, and the outside world intruded on Eden. But this time, it was welcome.
"Kimmie!"
"Ronald!"
----
When Colleen Possible had first reached the top of the hill and spotted the two bodies lying still at the center of the crater, white skin stark against the green grass, her heart had dropped into her stomach. She froze, not daring to move or breathe, irrationally convinced that if she didn't move, neither would the rest of the world, and she would never have to descend this hill and see her daughter's dead body. What she'd seen that summer had been bad enough.
Then she noticed something: tiny movements, hard to spot from this far away. The "corpses" were touching each other.
They were alive.
"Kimmie!" She screamed.
One of the figures raised its head, and its face lit up. A face that she would have recognized across much greater distances than that which separated them. Only two other faces in all the world were as important to her, after all.
"Kimmie!" She screamed again, and it was. Her daughter was alive. Still shouting Kimmie's name, she launched herself down the crater's slope, her husband hot on her heels.
"Mom! Daddy!" Kim shouted, scrambling to her feet and running to meet them.
The three of them came together, and for the second time in ten minutes, the world went away. The only thing Colleen was even remotely aware of – beyond the solidity of her daughter, squeezed almost breathless between herself and James, the certainty of her presence, her survival, her safety that was consuming everything else – was a brief and passing awareness that Ron's parents had somehow appeared beside them and were greeting him in the same way that they themselves were greeting Kimmie while Rufus chittered happily somewhere in the mix.
Ron was okay, too. That was good. Back to that later.
She had no idea how long that moment lasted, but it was finally broken by gasps of shock all around her.
Anger flared. So Kimmie was naked. Didn't they have anything more important to worry about? Or at least the decency to look away?
She relaxed her grip so she could turn around (in place, so she could act like a human changing screen because they all had less maturity than the seventeen-year-old boy standing beside her) and tell them so, but doing so allowed her to get the kind of good look at Kimmie that she hadn't been able to get while running at her full-tilt, half-blinded by tears.
Her jaw dropped and her eyes went wide, and the tears pouring from them doubled, then trebled.
Kimmie just grinned at her, not the slightest bit embarrassed.
"What do you think, Mom?" She asked. "Like the changes?"
----
Kim's scars were gone.
Well, almost. There were four parallel lines across her right eye, which was strange because they hadn't been there before. There had been one terrifying glasscut scar, but that was all, Colleen was sure of it. She'd memorized those scars.
And now they were gone. Kim's skin was smooth and even. Even the four new marks across her eye were so regular that they almost looked like tattoos.
Colleen Possible was a doctor, but she had never been Kimmie's doctor, and as a mother, she had always respected her daughter's privacy. And James was, to be honest, ever so slightly uncomfortable with Kim's body. But at that moment, neither of them could stop themselves from stepping back and staring.
It was impossible. They were all gone. All evidence of the catastrophic wounds she'd suffered less than six months before had been simply…erased.
"So?" Kim prompted, still grinning, not the slightest sign of embarrassment showing on her unmarked face. "You like?"
"What?" Colleen said, jolted out of her shock by the question. "Of course we do! Don't you? I…I mean," she stumbled, realizing how stupid the question sounded, then finally gave up: "Why aren't you more excited by this?"
Kim just shrugged. "Because it's no big."
"No big?"
"It would've been once," Kim admitted. "Once, it would have been everything. But now…" She shrugged again. "It happened just when it was really starting to not matter. Go fig."
"Not matter…" James Possible goggled. Then he shook his head. "Never mind that. Kimmiecub, how did this happen?"
"I don't know," Kim said, shrugging a third time. "It must've been when Ron and I were remade after the joining was complete."
James blinked. "And just what does that mean?"
Kim gave him a long look, half trying to decide what to say, half trying to decide if he could understand. "It's a long story," she said at last. "And I'm not sure there are words for it in English."
"Nope," Ron said, joining them, no less naked and no more ashamed than Kim. Rufus was perched contentedly on his shoulder and his parents were trailing helplessly behind him, looking just as confused as the elder Possibles. "Not in Spanish, Japanese, Hebrew, Swahili, or Apache, either. There's a couple words in Sanskrit that come close, but not really. The only language that really has words for it, we can't pronounce."
The words were perfectly audible and clear, but James and Colleen Possible didn't really hear them as anything but strings of sounds, information being recorded by their ears. They were too busy looking back and forth between Ron and Kim, their eyes growing ever wider.
The changes, as Kim had called them, were a lot more extensive than they'd first thought. It was just that, in comparison to her healing, Kim's other changes were fairly subtle. Ron, as always, was blatant.
One of his eyes was now green, for one thing, and his hair had gone strawberry blond. In contrast, Kim's eyes now had brown flecks where they had once been flawless emeralds, and her hair had tawny blond streaks amidst the red. And while it would be impossible to tell without counting, it certainly looked like Ron had a few less freckles than before, and Kim had a few more.
Both sets of parents were still trying to think of something to say when Kim changed the subject for them.
"Felix!" She cried, pushing past them and rushing over to where he was standing (standing!) with his mother and Monique. Once there, she caught him up in a bone-crushing hug that he returned after only a moment's hesitation.
"Look at you!" She gushed, taking a step back to do just that.
"Look at you," he countered, doing his best to do so without ogling too much.
"Blown up by a supervillain," she challenged.
He grinned. "Hit by a car," he responded.
"No more massive scarring."
"No more spinal damage."
With a squeal, she hugged him again. "Oh, that so rocks!"
"Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah, it does."
"Kimmie."
Still beaming, Kim turned to face the owner of the tense-sounding voice. It turned out to be her mother, who was holding out the lab coat she'd been wearing when she'd arrived.
"Could you put this on, please?"
"Oh, right," Kim said, glancing down at her own nakedness as if this was the first time she'd noticed it. "I'll probably be embarrassed about this later," she said as she took the coat and pulled it on. She didn't sound like she believed it.
"Oh, yes. You will be," Bonnie agreed, her voice for once full of mischief instead of malice.
"Just as well, girlfriend" Monique added, stepping up for her own hug. "If you'd spent any more time pressing your boobies up against my BF, we would've had to have some words."
"Oh, please, Monique," Kim scoffed, glancing down again. "Like you have anything to jeal about in the boobies department."
"Uh, excuse me," Felix said, holding up a hand. "I hate to interrupt this…really, really fascinating conversation…"
"Don't worry, dude," Ron said, appearing at Kim's side, wrapped in his father's jacket. "Every guy here hates you for interrupting it, too." Then he paused, and glanced over his shoulder at an eyebrow-raising James Possible. "With maybe a…couple of exceptions," he added nervously.
The eyebrow just went higher.
"Yeah, I can't blame them," Felix admitted, drawing the attention back to himself. "But I have to ask:" He looked back and forth between his two friends, then settled for looking someplace between them. "Did you do this for me?"
Kim and Ron looked at each other, looking unsure for the first time since they'd woken up.
"Kinda?" Kim suggested.
"Maybe?" Ron added.
"Can you elaborate on that?" James Possible asked, slipping back into "MrDrP". What's a scientist without endless curiosity?
"Um…how to explain…uh…help me, Ron?"
"Nothing simpler, KP."
She looked at him quizzically. "Nothing?"
"Sure! It's like this. The Unshaper was, like, made out of pure Nothing. So what do you need when you want to fight Nothing?" He looked at his audience as if expecting an answer. Getting nothing but blank looks, he pushed on. "You need Something! So you take Chaos – " He pointed at himself. "And you get yourself some Order," he pointed at Kim. "You put them together…" he brought his hands together. "And boom!" he pulled his hands apart. "You get Creation, which makes the Something. The Unshaper couldn't survive having all that Something shoved down its Nothing, but even after destroying the Unshaper, there was lots of Creation left over, and I'm betting that all that Creation undid every bit of destruction that ever happened to you. Does that answer your question?"
Nothing but blank stares and blinking.
"Thank you, Ron. Very simple."
"What? You understood it."
"Yes, but I already knew. Look," she turned to Felix. "The short answer is yes and no. You're better because of something we did, but it wasn't something we could control. Everyone in the world who survived is a little bit less hurt than they thought they'd be. Every building still standing is a little less damaged. But you were at Ground Zero. You didn't just get fixed, you got…rebuilt. Restored. Your body is back to factory-new condition, from before the damage was done."
"Then why aren't I…no." He shook his head and waved his own question away. "No, never mind. At least your explanation was in sentences I could follow."
"Now I have a question," MrDrP said, stepping forward. "Exactly how did you go about 'putting together' Order and Chaos?"
Kim and Ron looked at each other again. Nervously.
"Um…"
"Hey! Who's that?" A voice called from further up the slope.
All heads turned to see Steve Barkin, who was descending the side of the crater toward them, but looking and pointing out and across.
Following his finger, they saw two more figures lying sprawled in the grass. One of them was pasty white, even paler than Kim, while the other was cinnamon-brown.
"Drew?" MrDrP asked. "Sheila?"
"Mission faces" promptly fell into place as Kim and Ron started to move.
"Wait," James protested, his parental sternness dissolving back into confusion. "You didn't – "
"No, we didn't," Kim said, not pausing. "It's not what you're thinking, but it still won't make you happy, so could we discuss it later? They're your friends."
"Right, right, coming," James Possible said as he hurried after his daughter.
Colleen Possible could only stare in shock and horror as she watched them go.
----
Surprisingly, it was Drew who woke up first. It didn't seem to take much effort for him, either. He just blinked a few times, said something to "mom", and then opened his eyes.
"James?"
"It's me, Drew. Are you okay?"
"I…I think so. Nothing hurts, anyway." He sat up and gave himself a quick once-over. "But I do seem to be naked…"
"We'll deal with that," James said, shrugging out of his jacket. "But Drew…how did you and Sheila get here?"
Drew looked around, perplexed, as he pulled the jacket on. "I have no idea. Where is here?" Then he looked back at his college friend, his confusion only growing. "And who is Sheila?"
Horrified, James Possible just pointed to where Sheila lay, a few feet away in the grass, being tended by Kim and Ron. For some reason, Colleen was just standing back and watching.
Drew looked, frowning at what he saw. "Yes. Yes, I do know her. From somewhere. But…where?"
"Oh, no," Kim moaned.
"What is it, Kimberly?" Drew asked suddenly anxious.
"You and Sheila showed up right at the end of the fight," she said. "When it looked like even her brothers were in trouble. You were a big help…"
"But you took a hit," Ron finished. "And it looks like it did bad things to you."
"So it would seem."
Just then, Sheila groaned. Drew hurried to her side, apparently concerned for her whether he remembered her or not.
Sheila groaned again and raised a hand to her head. Apparently, unlike anyone else on the Space Center grounds that morning, her awakening wasn't painless. But it did come, which made her luckier than some. With a final wince and a grunt, she shaded her face with her hand and opened her eyes.
The first thing she saw were two faces leaning over her. One, she recognized immediately.
"Oh, Pumpkin!" She cried softly, raising a hand to brush at Kim's face. "Your face!"
For some reason, Colleen Possible started forward when she said that, but Ron stopped her, whispering something about explaining in a minute. Kim ignored them both.
"It's no big, Sheila. It was much worse before, don't you remember?"
Sheila shook her head. "No…" She winced – the motion of shaking her head had probably hurt it – but when she opened her eyes, they were clearer. "Worse? Querida, it looks like you nearly lost your eye!"
"I did," Kim answered simply. "I was ferociously lucky. But that happened a long time ago. Now enough about me." She reached out and pulled Drew into the center of Sheila's field of view. "There's someone more important here."
Drew and Sheila stared at each other. Hard. Each knew that the other was important to them somehow, and they were visibly struggling to remember how. A silent minute passed.
Finally: "Drew?"
"Sheila," Drew answered, and this time with conviction. He pulled her up into a hug, and she clung tight, glad of an anchor – her anchor – even if she couldn't be sure of anything else.
"God, Drew," she whispered. "This is scary. I can't remember anything."
"I know."
"I don't know where we are, or how we got here, or why…"
"I know, Sheila, I know…" He murmured, more gentle and comforting than anyone there had ever heard him.
"And I sure as hell don't know why we're naked…"
Drew promptly broke down laughing. He loosened his hold so he could look her in her grinning face and shook his head. "Ah, yes. I remember now," He chuckled. "That's why I love you."
Sheila's grin faded. "Is it?" She asked.
Drew's smile faded as well. With a sigh, he released the hug, helping her to sit up in the grass and then letting her go. "I don't know," He answered, sitting back on his haunches. "It seems right, but…I don't know those things either. Kimberly tells me that we came here to help – "
"And just what is going on here?"
Drew rolled his eyes and groaned. " – your brothers."
Sheila sighed and put a hand over her eyes. "Ai, conyo."
----
Hego, his costume torn and scorched, strode through the crowd until he reached the spot where Drew was helping Sheila to her feet. He stopped there and put his fists on his hips, glaring…at which point his brothers rushed right past him and pack-hugged their sister.
"Mami!"
"You're okay!"
"Oh, my boys…" Then she gasped. "Oh, no! Miguel, what happened to your eye?"
"My eye?" Mego asked, pawing at the left side of his face. "What about my eye? What's wrong?"
"You don't feel it?"
"Feel what?"
Gently, she took hold of his probing hand and guided it to the four hard ridges across his right eye.
"Does that hurt?"
"Does that matter?" Mego wailed, scrubbing at his scars. "I'm deformed!"
"No, you're not."
"You just have to say that because you're my sister," Mego sobbed, covering the scars with both hands.
As soon as the words left his mouth, he stopped.
Sheila just raised an eyebrow.
"Oh. Right. I forgot. You're my sister."
The Wegos burst out laughing.
"It's really not that bad, m'ijo," Sheila said, gently pulling his hands away. "No worse than Kimmie's." She nodded toward the teen hero, who was standing nearby, clutching her boyfriend's hand, looking more concerned than really seemed warranted. "In fact – "
"Well, that's not so bad," he said, paying his attention to where she was nodding instead of what she was saying. "I guess."
Kim grabbed Ron's arm with her free hand. It wasn't quite clear which of them she was restraining.
"You always were a charmer, Miguelito," Sheila said dryly. "Now give me your tunic."
"What?"
"I said give me your tunic. I've got a bad case of naked here, I'm getting cold, and if I take one off Jesus or Jaime, I'm still mooning everbody. Now give."
Grumbling, Mego obeyed.
"All right, that's enough," Hego growled, storming in amongst his family.
"What?" Sheila asked, unperturbed, as she took the garment from her younger brother and pulled it over her head. "You want me to stand around naked?"
"I can't believe your cojones," He shouted, ignoring her question. "Asking for anything after all you've done! Have you no shame?"
Kim and Ron tensed up at that, but Sheila didn't have time to do anything but note it and return to the business at hand.
"What've I done, Hector? Come – "
"Will you stop that?" Hego bellowed.
"Stop what?"
"Stop shouting our real names to the whole world!" He shouted, waving at the crowd around them. "Do you hate us that much?"
"Look," Sheila snapped, "For one thing," She held up one finger. "Our enemies could always find us. Remember the viewscreen? For another…" She paused, then lowered her hand, giving him a long, pitying look. "Why don't you take off your gloves and – "
"Don't tell me what to do!" Hego roared. "You walk out on this family, you're gone for years, and then you show up at the last possible second and you think you can start giving – "
She didn't wait for him to finish ranting. She just grabbed his hand, pulled off his glove and held it up in front of his face.
"And for another thing, you! Are! Not! Hego! Anymore!" She shouted.
Hego could only stare in blank horror at his hand, finally noticing about himself what his brilliant powers of observation had missed about his brothers:
No more pale skin, no more blue tinge. No more than his brothers were purple or red anymore.
Like them – like their sister – he'd reverted to the color he'd been before the comet had struck. Where she was cinnamon, he was mahogany – the color of a boy who tans easily after he spends endless hours working out in the sun with his father.
"Hadn't you noticed?" Sheila pressed on relentlessly. "Can't you feel it? It's gone."
"What are you talking about?" He demanded, denial and terror at war in his voice.
"The Glow," she answered. "Whatever happened here, whatever we did…it's gone. No more Team Go. Just us. Just la familia Gomez."
Hector stared at her for a long moment, perhaps hoping that she'd say "Just kidding!", or that he'd be able to read a lie in her eyes. But her eyes never wavered, and the pitying expression was back. He looked back at his hand and flexed it, clearly trying to summon the blue Glow.
Nothing.
He collapsed to his knees and raised his hands and face to the sky. "NOOOOO!" He wailed.
His siblings and the crowd just stared at him.
"You know," Sheila said, wincing and rubbing one of her ears. "You could actually be more melodramatic if you practiced a little."
"Seriously," Miguel agreed. "And what are you whining about, anyway?" He asked his brother. "I lost my powers and I got my face messed up."
"Yeah, but"
"Your powers"
"Sucked."
"And really,"
"Your face"
"Wasn't that great"
"Either."
"Shut up. I'm in the denial stage right now. When I hit anger, I'm going to kick both of your asses."
"And on that note," Drew said, "Perhaps we should get all of you to a hospital. Whatever deprived you of your powers might have caused further damage."
"Good point," Sheila agreed. "C'mon, Hector," she said, not ungently, reaching down to her crumpled big brother. "Let's go."
Too defeated to argue, he took her hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. Still, he felt the need to raise a token protest before allowing himself to be led away. "And why is he giving orders now?" He demanded.
"Because he's part of la familia Gomez now, too," Sheila answered, iron in her voice.
"I am?" Drew asked, stunned.
"Yes, you are," She replied with the same determination. "Or were you planning on going somewhere?"
He paused, recognizing just what she was saying, and how serious she was. "Never," he said.
"Good. Then that's settled. Come on, Hector." Without another word, she put her arm around her brother's broad shoulders.
For once, Hector knew better than to argue with his little sister. He just laid his massive head on her shoulder and began the trudge toward Middleton hospital.
Before Drew Lipsky started after the young woman who'd just announced their engagement, he paused and turned back to Colleen Possible, who looked absolutely livid for some reason. He hoped it wasn't him that she was angry with.
"Will you be coming, Colleen?" He asked. "The Go Team Glow might have – "
"I'll be along in a moment, Drew," she interrupted, her voice tight. "I just need to get a few things straight first."
Then she turned to Kim and Ron.
----
"All right, I've been quiet long enough," Colleen Possible whisper-snarled to her daughter and the young man that she already thought of as her son-in-law. "Explain. Explain now."
"Colleen?" James called. He'd started after the Gomez family – heading to the hospital seemed like a good idea, after all, if for no other reason than that the boys were waiting there – but nobody seemed to be following him.
"Just a second, dear," she called back, showing no sign of the emotion she'd directed at Kim and Ron.
"Okay," he said, turning back to rejoin them.
Before Colleen could protest, Nana intercepted him. "Why don't you just keep going, James?" She said. "You may have forgotten, but you need a bit of a check-up, too. Little Jossie needs one even more."
"Aw, Nana, I'm bigger'n you are!"
"To me, you'll always be eight pounds, six ounces."
"But mother – "
"Let them have whatever moment they need," Nana insisted, herding her descendants along. "They'll catch up."
Silently thanking her mother-in-law, Colleen Possible turned back to her daughter and son-in-law. "Well?" She demanded.
"It's all very simple, MrsDrP," Ron said.
"Is it?"
"Sure it is. We lied."
Colleen Possible's eyes went very wide, and she took a deep breath. She'd been this angry before, more often in the last six months than the whole rest of her life put together, but never with the two people before her now.
"About what?" She asked, her voice carefully neutral.
"We didn't have much control of all that power after we killed the Unshaper," Kim answered. "But we did have a little. Just enough to make one change."
"And you used it to help the people who maimed you and tried to destroy the world?" Colleen asked, dangerously quiet now.
Kim shook her head. "Not that simple, Mom. We couldn't do anything nearly that precise."
"Then what?"
Ron frowned thoughtfully for a moment. "Maybe it's better if we showed you," he said at last. "Hey, Bonnie!"
Like many of the people present, Bonnie had turned her attention back to her own group once she'd ascertained that Kim and Ron were still alive, so she was startled by the yell.
"What?" She demanded, turning around.
"My Mom just told me that your sisters are awake," Kim called. "And they're almost as healed as the people who were here. All the damage the lake-things did to them is gone."
Everyone who knew Bonnie's history with her sisters nearly wept when they saw the joy that lit her face at the news. Connie and Lonnie didn't deserve their sister…but they might sooner or later learn to appreciate her…given a few lessons…
"And so was the damage inflicted by being rampaging psycho-zombies," Ron added cheerfully.
Everyone stared at him blankly for a moment, then went on as if they hadn't heard. Bonnie took off in the direction of the hospital at a run with Brick and Bethie (when had she arrived? Colleen vaguely remembered people following her from the hospital…she'd had to tell the boys not to…Bethie must have been one of them) following close on her heels.
"Monique – " Kim said.
"Don't worry, GF," Monique interrupted, grinning. "I'll check in after MB here gets his check-up. If they're mean to her, I'll put 'em back in a coma."
"Thanks, Monique," Kim grinned.
("MB?" Felix's mother asked.
"Miracle Boy," Felix answered. "Don't worry, you'll get used to it.")
Kim and Ron turned back to Kim's mother, who no longer looked angry. Now, she was simply…lost.
"I…I don't understand," she said.
"She doesn't remember," Kim said. "Nobody does. No one, anywhere in the world, remembers that the Unshaper drove people crazy and made them do bad things."
"And they never will," Ron added. "You could tell them what happened, show them pictures or videos – not that there are any anymore – or even forensic evidence, and they'll still never make the connection. It'll all get blamed on the monsters."
"And that goes for everybody from Connie and Lonnie Rockwaller to Team Go," Kim finished.
Colleen Possible stood there for a long moment, visibly struggling with it before she finally managed to speak: "Do I even need to tell you how wrong this is?" she said at last.
Kim sighed. "No, you don't. But it was the best we could do. If we hadn't, the world would have gotten a dessert course of misery with all the riots and lynchings and trials and even in the best possible sitch, families and communities would've been torn apart. Do you think Bonnie and her sisters could face each other? These people are victims, Mom. They don't deserve that."
"What about their victims?" MrsDrP countered. "Don't they deserve justice?"
"They have it," Kim answered. "The Unshaper is dead. It was the murderer. The people were just…weapons."
Colleen pondered that for a while. "And the people who weren't controlled? Who just took advantage of the chaos?"
"Oh, they got nothin'," Ron assured her.
She smiled weakly at that. "I suppose I can live with that."
Pause.
Colleen Possible was no less brilliant than the rest of her family. Between her confusion and the speed at which the answers were coming, she hadn't thought to ask the obvious question, but now that she had a moment to think, she made the connection:
"…but why do I need to?" She asked as it hit her. "Why didn't your…thing…work on me?"
Kim and Ron looked at each other. It was Ron who finally took a deep breath and spoke:
"Funny thing about magic, MrsDrP," he said. "It may be all about chaos, but it still has its own rules. You made a vow, and the magic wouldn't let us make you break it."
"Vow?" Colleen Possible asked, staring at him quizzically. "What 'vow' did I make?"
Ron cleared his throat: "Ahem. Quote: 'I'm sorry, Sheila. I'll forgive you when my daughter isn't scarred anymore.' Unquote."
She stared at them both, her mouth hanging open.
"I know," Kim said. "It is so freaky when he does that…"
So the last thing on Mama Possible's mind.
"How…how did you know about that?" She gasped.
"We didn't," Ron said. "The magic did. And it wouldn't let us make you forget. Because that would mean that you never forgave Sheila."
"You want me to…to forgive…Shego."
"Sheila," Ron corrected. "Shego's dead. And it's entirely up to you, but you should know that there's kind of a glitch in the system when it comes to her."
"What do you mean, 'Shego's dead'?" Colleed demanded. "And what 'glitch'?"
"I mean Shego's dead," Ron replied. "Dr. Drakken, too. Those parts of Drew and Sheila died in the fighting."
"They'll never get those years back," Kim added softly. "They remember that they're in love, but they don't remember why. They'll have to rebuild that from the foundation up."
"And the glitch is this:" Ron continued. "Because you never forgave Sheila, the magic gave you an out so you could take your revenge if you want to: if you tell people that Sheila was Tiamat, they will remember."
"And Sheila won't have a chance," Colleen Possible finished bleakly.
"Nope," Ron agreed. "The best she can hope for is that Will Du gets to her before Yori, because he'll use bullets."
Rufus cocked one of his paws to his head, his claws pointed like a gun. "Boom," he said, making a trigger-pulling gesture.
Colleen winced and turned away…then kept turning away and started pacing.
"Of course," Ron continued, acting like nothing had changed, "Once she remembers what Shego and Tiamat did, she probably won't want to go on living."
Ferocity flashed across Colleen Possible's face and she opened her mouth to say something…then closed it again and kept pacing.
"You have no idea…" She muttered.
"I'm sorry, MrsDrP?" Ron said. "I couldn't hear that."
"You have no idea how hard this is!" She shouted, rounding on them. "If she'd hurt me, I'd have forgiven her already! But she hurt my daughter! My baby! Until you have your own kids, you can't imagine…!"
"Probably not," Ron agreed. "And what I went through was bad enough."
That brought her to a halt.
"As for me, see above re. 'already forgiven'," Kim said. "For pretty much the reason you gave."
Colleen Possible stared at her daughter, her mind a maelstrom. This wasn't fair. Ten, fifteen minutes ago, she'd been happier than she'd ever been. Now…
"You're still scarred," she blurted.
"What, these?" Kim brushed at her eye. "I didn't get these from Shego."
"Then where?" Colleen asked desperately, almost in self-defense. She'd held lives in her hands before, but this was too big, too fast, too much.
"Sabertooth."
Colleen Possible just stared. Blank. The system had finally crashed. "Sabertooth."
"Long story."
"Apparently so."
"The point is that I'm okay, Mom. You're the one who's still hurting."
Collen Possible sighed and put a hand over her eyes, her shoulders drooping with weariness. "You're right, I am. And it's hard to let that go."
She took another deep breath, the dropped her hand and raised her head.
"Make me forget."
"Mom?"
"You heard me. I could never look at her without seeing the person who hurt my daughter. It would drive me crazy, knowing that she was walking around free. I would hate her. And someday…" she shook her head. "And she doesn't deserve that. It's better this way. Make me forget. I'm sorry. That's the best I can do."
"It's enough," Kim said, wrapping her in a tight hug. "I'm so proud of you. You're the best mom I've ever had."
Colleen Possible gave a deep, shuddering sigh and hugged her daughter back, burying her face in her shoulder.
Which was when Ron Stoppable laid his hand on her head like a benediction.
----
"Best mom you've ever had?" Colleen Possible asked, raising her head to stare quizzically at her firstborn. "What on Earth does that mean?"
"Oh…yeah…I'm sorry, this is going to take some getting used to."
"What's going to take a lot of getting used to?"
Kim winced and ran a hand through her bicolored hair. "That's a lonnnng story," she said.
Colleen raised an eyebrow. "You seem to have a lot of those," she said.
"I guess I do," Kim said, looking even more sheepish than before.
"Maybe we should go find someplace to sit down and tell a few of them."
"That's a good idea," Kim agreed. "Let's go do that." She took Ron's hand, and the four of them started to walk.
As far as Colleen Possible was aware, the walk to Middleton Hospital passed in companionable silence. She was wrong.
----
Well, that was awful, Kim thought at Ron.
Pretty much what we expected, then, Ron thought back.
True. At least it's over.
That it is. The only suckage that remains is that, since we're the only ones who remember, we can't talk about the trauma with anyone.
Kim sighed. Price we pay for starting the new world off with a lie, I guess. She squeezed his hand. I think we'll be enough for each other. Besides…she rolled her eyes. I think we have enough 'splainin' to do.
Like how they might as well start working on a ceremony, 'cause we're more married than anyone's ever been in the history of the world? He suggested, grinning wryly.
…yeah. Let's wait a little while on that one.
That's a good idea.
There was a pause, a moment of true silence, and then Kim spoke again:
We're never going to be really separate again, are we?
Nope. Heaven, Hell, reborn as cows…we're together. Is that so bad?
No. It's not even weird. I thought it would be, but…now that it's happening, I can't think of anything that could make me happier. She paused. Do you really think we might go to Hell?
If we did, we'd bring the place down. I don't think Hell can survive love.
True.
Anyway, I never thought it would be weird.
No?
If this was any kind of 'price' to us, it wouldn't have worked.
Good point.
I'm full of 'em.
That's not all you're full of.
He grinned, but then his face went serious. It does change everything, though. Can you imagine how scary it would be if we were anybody else? Think of it: forever
I am thinking about it. It's making me happy. And it doesn't change everything
She held out her hand, and a flint knife lying in the grass flew into it. She passed it to him with a smile as he stared in surprise.
We still have work to do.
Ron's look of surprise turned into a grin. We're gonna change the world, aren't we?
That's the plan.
His grin broadened as he threw an arm around her shoulder, while she put one around his waist.
Got your back, KP.
No. By my side.
Always.
It was still early morning – dawn had been just breaking when the battle had begun – so it was with those thoughts that they stepped over the edge of the crater and out into the new day.
Another New Beginning
Adrena Lynn looked at herself in the mirror for what she fully intended to be the last time.
It was better than it had been – at least she had her nose back – but she still had a handprint branded into the middle of her face, and that was more than enough. Someone had to pay.
She had seen on the news that Shego was dead, and that bummed her out a little. Not too much, though. Even if she'd lived, Shego would only have been the first part of her revenge. Shego had been the one to burn her, it was true, but she never should have been in prison in the first place. She never would have come near Shego if it weren't for…her. The one whose jealousy and showing off had put her in prison in the first place. The stupid little cheerleader with her innocent act for the cameras and permanent upholstery-burns on her back from that quarterback's car seats. The little bitch had probably paid Shego to burn her face off so she wouldn't have any competition for the cameras.
Well, before too long, little miss perfect wouldn't be quite so photogenic anymore.
She pulled on her cybertronic helmet, and it locked into place with the rest of the battlesuit that she'd stolen from the ruins of Global Justice. Adrena Lynn ceased to exist; Crash Damage was online.
"I'm coming for you, Kim Possible," she growled. "And it's gonna be freaky."