Author's note:

Right, two down, two to go. For this chapter, we're returning to Pink Floyd (yeah, that obsession will never die) and to the song Us and Them, from their 1973 masterpiece The dark side of the moon. I think I've probably taken more chapter titles from this one album than any other. However, given that its concept is all about the people and the pressures of modern life, it seems somewhat appropriate. Anyway, the chapter title, And in the end, it's only round and round, and round, is a lyric from Us and Them and describes perfectly the situation that Kim currently finds herself in. I hope you all enjoy.

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Chapter seven: And in the end, it's only round and round, and round

After her impromptu encounter with Ron on Monday, Kim's week had gone majorly downhill. By Tuesday morning, she had felt so suffocated having been stuck at home, that she'd called Wade and told him she'd take the job his colleague had put in a request for. After dangling the threat of going back to Amy over Ru-Ru's head if he wrecked her apartment, she had left for what should have been a blue milk run. A simple task of ensuring cargo X got from point A to point B. What could possibly have gone wrong? Answer: everything. No less than three different villains had attempted to steal said cargo, the last of which had actually succeeded. While she had fended off villain number one with little trouble, villain two had been much better prepared. And while she had been dealing with him and his hired muscle, villain three had snuck in and swiped the cargo from behind both of their backs. He'd then escaped in a hovercraft and it had taken her four whole days to track him down, retrieve it and get it safely to point B.

Matters had not been helped by the constant need to fend off thoughts about her newfound sexual preferences and what it meant for her. It seemed that was one problem that had refused to be left back in Middleton. At the most inopportune moments, she'd found thoughts creeping into her mind about how she would go about finding a girl to ask out, how she would manage to ask said girl out, what having a relationship with another girl would be like, how things would work between them, including in the sexual department and what her family, friends and the world at large would think about her now being a lesbian. That last point had been the most difficult and contributed to the worst part of the mission; the stares of everyone she had encountered. Even though she knew it was all in her head, Kim could not help but feel that everyone who looked at her knew her secret and were judging her because of it. She'd felt so self-conscious that she'd struggled to hold a conversation with anyone during the initial phase of the mission (prior to the cargo being stolen) and almost been grateful to villain number three for stealing it, as it had allowed her to set out on her own to retrieve it. By mission's end, she'd genuinely been relieved to go home and shut herself away in her apartment.

Kim sat huddled on her sofa, wearing a pair of blue pyjamas and her fluffy pink dressing gown. What the hell am I going to do? She'd arrived home yesterday afternoon to find her apartment surprisingly still intact, bar a bit of a mess in the kitchen. After the cargo had been stolen and she'd realised it could take her days to retrieve it, she'd called home to ask Ru-Ru if he would be able to feed himself during her extended absence. She'd received an, "uh-hu, uh-hu," which had not filled her with confidence, but convinced her enough that she could leave him to his own devices and not return to find the apartment building reduced to a pile of smoking rubble. However, the naked-mole-shark had got creative when it came to opening the fridge and eaten most of the contents. Thus, she'd been forced to go out that morning to re-stock.

The stares of everyone she had passed in Middleton, largely because she'd known a lot of the individuals, had been far more intense than those of the strangers she'd encountered while out on her mission and made her skin crawl. "They have no idea that you're a lesbian," Kim had told herself over and over inside her head, as she'd pushed her cart around Smarty Mart. Her palms had been uncontrollably sweaty and she'd pulled the hood of her hoodie up to try and avoid attention. Neither action had helped. With every gaze that landed on her, she'd imagined a disdainful sneer in place of a smile and heard something like, "get away from me, Freak," or, "eww, stop checking me out, Lezzie," in place of hello. If that wasn't bad enough, fate had decided to shit on her by having her mom appear. Fortunately, she'd seen the woman first and so been able to bolt down a different aisle and make a hasty dash to the checkout, having only got two-thirds of her list.

"You're supposed to be the girl who can do anything, so deal with it already," a voice said inside her head.

Kim had unwillingly become accustomed to debating her problems with herself of late. For someone normally so sure of herself, having her mind torn in two to the point that she was almost constantly arguing with another version of herself felt exceptionally disconcerting. Worse yet, her brain had even anthropomorphized the voice. Casting it in the image of her younger self, with blue Club Banana capris and green vest as standard and without the physical and mental battle scars she'd suffered in the years since. In short, the Kim that really could do anything. And to cap it all off, as though she was mocking herself, she or it, she didn't know which, had started using the name Kimmie.

How do I just deal with this? Kim asked irritably. She'd been over this multiple times and gotten nowhere. I only just discovered I'm a lesbian last week and have no clue where to even begin.

"Simple," Kimmie replied smoothly. "It's Sunday. Dress up in something nice, go out, find a cute girl and ask if you can buy her a drink. So not the drama."

Kim shook her head, it so is the drama. What part of that is simple other than the fact it's Sunday? First, I don't know how to dress to catch the eye of other girls. Second, I don't know where to even look for other lesbians or how I would even recognise them. And third, I have no idea what sort of girls I even like. If you've forgotten, I spent all of high school trying to figure out what sort of boys I liked… and even then, I never figured it out.

"Geeze, calm down, Girl," Kimmie said. "First, you know how to dress nice, so no issue. Second, there are a lot of good bars here in Middleton or you can go further afield if you want. And third, that's what you'd be going out to do; find out what sort of girls you like."

See, you don't even know, Kim fired back. You're just spouting half-answers that don't tackle the actual problems.

That comment was enough to end the argument, for now at least. For she had once more hit the nail right on the head. While her mind might be torn between the girl who could do anything and wanted to dive straight in without fear, and the girl who understood the gravity of the situation and had genuine concerns about what would happen if she tried, the reality was, neither knew where to begin. And in the end, no matter how many times the arguments swirled round and round inside her head, she always came back to the same point. I need someone to talk to about all of this… someone who knows what they are talking about… someone who is actually a lesbian.

Kim cast her gaze to the opposite end of the sofa, where Ru-Ru sat with a packet of dry-roasted peanuts; watching an old James Bond film, she didn't know which. While his naked-mole-rat lineage naturally reminded her of Ron, his shark side definitely reminded her of Shego. It felt like she had a living hybrid of both her former best friend and her rival sitting beside her. It was the latter half, the sneaky, dangerous, keep her on her toes part that drew her attention. Shego… It had been just over a week since she had inadvertently sent the green-skinned-woman to jail and her suspicions from Monday had already proven to be true. She missed her. While it had been a long time since she had duked it out with her rival every week, just knowing that she was out there, that she could run into the woman on any given mission, had added that extra spice to her life.

As though he knew she was thinking about his owner, mistress, roommate, friend, or whatever he and Shego were to one another, Ru-Ru stood up and wandered over to her. He looked up at her with his beady black eyes; always so full of mischief and uttered, "Shego?"

Kim sighed, "yep, Ru-Ru, you got it in one… Shego."

She did not know why she had told him the truth. Was she that desperate to talk to someone, or in his case, something, about any part of her current pulsating black mass of problems? The answer to that she already knew happened to be yes. Earlier in the week, she'd done as Wade had asked and given serious thought to calling her mom. She'd almost been ready to forgive the woman for incarcerating her within the Possible residence, just so she could have someone to talk to. Only a combination of residual anger and fear had stayed her finger from calling her on the Kimmunicator. She'd almost called Monique too, but recalled the argument they'd had last time they had spoken and the subsequent shit her ex-best girl had flung at her while she had been breathless and unable to respond. Unlike her mom, who she knew would be grateful that she had decided to call her, Mo had made it clear that she had no intention of entertaining her without a full-blown apology first. And Kim still did not see what she had to apologise for. That ultimately left her with the naked-mole-shark option.

"Miss her?" Ru-Ru asked.

Kim assumed it was a question, given that the naked-mole-shark had admitted to her on Monday that he himself missed Shego. "Yeah," she answered with a small nod. "Life always was that little bit less interesting when she was in jail. Either I'd forgotten how much, given that it's been over two and a half years since she was last arrested, or all the high school drama I had going on back then lessened the effect."

"Uh-hu, boring," the naked-mole-shark agreed. He then bounded back across the sofa and returned with his bag of peanuts. "Nut?" he offered and held out the bag to her.

She smiled faintly and dipped her fingers into the bag to pluck out a couple of nuts. She didn't really want them, but didn't want to bum Ru-Ru out when he was trying to be nice either. "Even though Wade admitted calling Global Justice to the scene before I'd even got there, I still feel guilty about what happened to her," Kim then said, before eating her handful of nuts. The memory of watching the GJ agents manhandle Shego into the chopper, floated through her mind as she chewed. "They treated her like an animal and I just stood by and watched…" She then offhandedly uttered in a distant voice, "all it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing," recalling the words of Winston Churchill from her history books. While she would certainly not class GJ as evil, it still seemed fitting. Maybe injustice would be a better term.

Ru-Ru nodded his head emphatically. "Uh-hu, GJ bastards."

Kim tilted her head and looked somewhat appalled at him. "Does Shego let you get away with that sort of language?"

The naked-mole-shark gave her a wide, innocent smile that showed off his razor-sharp teeth and nodded again, "uh-hu, uh-hu."

Great, so he's got a potty mouth too. Why am I not surprised Shego lets him away with that sort of thing? I bet the little sod thought he'd hit the jackpot when she agreed to let him stay with her, as I doubt Amy is a fan of bad language and violent films, or lets him eat a mountain of junk food. "Let's try and keep that to a minimum, shall we," Kim said in the same tone she used to use on the Tweebs when giving them an instruction, not sure why she was treating him like a child she was babysitting. "However, I think I'm starting to agree with you about GJ. They never used to be so extreme." At least not that I saw. She'd only given a few passing thoughts to her conversation with Dr Director over the past week. Are they struggling that much that they're starting to become more brutal as a result? She didn't have the time nor the headspace to think about GJ and Betty. "I suppose it doesn't really matter, Shego's in jail and that's that."

Ru-Ru looked at her sweetly and held up his bag of peanuts again, "nut?" he offered.

A look of mild suspicion formed on Kim's face, as she dipped her hand back into the bag. If it had been Rufus offering to share his peanuts, she wouldn't have given the act a second thought. Only this was not Rufus. The naked-mole-rat was kind, considerate and would genuinely have tried to cheer her up. The naked-mole-shark, on the other hand, was sneaky, underhanded and not a fan of sharing.

She tossed the nuts into her mouth and received a smile from Ru-Ru, who then uttered, "Kimmie like Shego?"

Kim gave the naked-mole-shark a dark look at his use of the pet name. At least it's better than Princess. She then turned her focus to his actual question. "I'm not sure I can like her. She's a villain and I'm a hero. We're rivals, nemeses." She did not need flashes of all the good points from their two social encounters to know that it was a lie.

Ru-Ru gave her a sideways look and then, much to her horror, proceeded to do a one-naked-mole-shark interpretation of what she knew was her and Shego fighting and then making out inside the volcano lair. When he had finished, Ru-Ru then turned and gave her a pointed look.

Mouth still agape and olive green eyes wide, it took Kim several moments to respond. She felt so horrified... so exposed, at having been seen making out with Shego; with another girl. "You were watching us..." she finally managed to stammer. He may only have been a naked-mole-shark, but the idea that someone other than herself and Shego knew about her new secret almost sent her straight into panic mode.

"Uh-hu, uh-hu," Ru-Ru replied with a cheeky smile. He then made a smooch-smooch gesture with his lips.

Kim snapped. Oh my god, he saw me making out with Shego! Her brain then went into overdrive as she scanned her conversations with Wade and Ron, checking to see if anything she said might have given her away. What if I said something that tipped one of them off to the fact I'm now a lesbian? What about the people I met on my mission, or those at Mama Joy's or Smarty Mart? Did anything I said, did, or the way I acted give me away? Uncontrollably, she began to hyperventilate. Oh crap! Oh Crap! Oh crap! Oh cr...

"OWW!" Kim exclaimed, a sharp pain from the index finger of her left hand wrenching her out of her frenzied thoughts. Her eyes travelled down to discover that Ru-Ru had just bitten it. She shot him a sour glare, "what did you do that for?"

"Help," the naked-mole-shark replied enthusiastically.

Much to her annoyance, considering she now had yet another bite mark on her hand, she had to admit that he had done just that. Her breathing slowly began to regulate and the sensible portion of her brain said, calm down, Kim, you didn't inadvertently let the whole world know that you're gay. It's all in your head. Now she just had to convince herself it was true. She scowled at Ru-Ru, her finger throbbing but surprisingly not dripping blood. "Fine, I'll let you off, just this once."

The naked-mole-shark gave her a grin and reiterated, "like Shego."

Kim shook her head and sighed, "she's my rival. We've fought more times than I can count and occasionally inflicted serious injury on the other." At the allusion to the scars on her left shoulder blade, the memory of the incident and the pain associated with it flared up inside her mind. "I tried to be her friend and she told me to go fuck myself," albeit, from her perspective, I did the exact same thing. "She then purposefully ruined my first kiss since Ron, kicked my ass but didn't bother to finish me off, messed with my head to ratchet up my anger," she felt a remnant of said anger and her fists clenched, "manipulated me into a position where I couldn't back out of kissing her and… and…" Kim sounded almost hysterical as she yelled, "and did all of that to help me figure out that I'm a lesbian!"

All of Kim's pent up emotions from the past week suddenly poured forth in a torrent of hot tears and she huddled her knees tightly against her chest. Her fears about being gay, anxiety about what people might think of her, the trepidation of actually going out to look for a girlfriend and everything connected with Shego. Despite the fact she'd basically told the green-skinned woman to go fuck herself on their second night out, despite how angry and aggressive she had gotten and despite her attempts to cause grievous bodily harm to her rival, Shego had, in her own way, helped fast-track her through what otherwise would have been a very long, drawn-out and painful process. And it had felt unbelievably good. However, that final part she was still trying to avoid dealing with. "…but because of my reckless actions, Wade contacted GJ and she ended up getting thrown in jail," she then whispered to herself.

Beside her, Ru-Ru climbed up onto the side of the sofa and gave her a light pat on the arm. "No cry, Kimmie," he said in what sounded like genuine sympathy.

It took her several minutes to stop. When she eventually did manage to regain control and dry her eyes, she gazed at the naked-mole-shark, who stood on the arm of the sofa with his bag of dry-roasted peanuts.

"Nut?" Ru-Ru offered and gave her another smile.

After someone had just cried their eyes out over something they still did not fully comprehend, offering them some form of salty snack was perhaps one of the least appropriate things to do. Which is why Kim couldn't help but laugh. Lacking the tact and nuances of a human, sharing his peanuts with her was perhaps the nicest thing that Ru-Ru could have imagined. "I'm ok," she said with a faint smile and helped herself to a couple of nuts. Am I trying to convince him or me as I'm not sure either of us will buy that lie?

Ru-Ru at least was not convinced, as he quickly shook his head and uttered, "ut-uh." A wide grin then formed on his face, "jailbreak?"

Kim looked at him she knew exactly why she had been suspicious of him earlier. He'd got her talking about Shego and admitting that she did actually like her rival, all the while trying to butter her up/bribe her by offering her peanuts, which she'd bought! "You sneaky little sod!" she declared, her infuriation momentarily getting the better of her. "I actually thought you were genuinely being nice."

Ru-Ru grinned at her and nodded his head, "uh-hu, uh-hu."

"Trying to bribe me into breaking Shego out of jail isn't being nice to me."

The naked-mole-shark shook his head, "not you, Princess."

It took her a moment to figure out what he had just implied. However, when she finally did catch on, her irritation evaporated. "You're trying to be nice to Shego by getting me to break her out, aren't you?"

Ru-Ru nodded again, "uh-hu, uh-hu."

Kim let out a long, deflated sigh, "I'm sorry, Ru-Ru, but I can't break her out…" Feelings of sorrow, regret and anguish were shaken up inside her, strained into a metaphorical cocktail glass and garnished with desire and lust. She dropped her head into her hands. "…I just can't," she finished, the words coming out almost like a wail.

Ru-Ru huffed, snatched up his bag of peanuts and stormed back to the other side of the sofa; blowing her a raspberry over his shoulder.

Kim watched him go and even though she'd refused him again, she could not escape the fact that she desperately wanted to do what he'd asked. To slip on her battle suit, drive the Sloth across the country, sneak into the prison and whisk Shego off to freedom. I need to see her, to talk to her. There's so much I need to ask her… assuming she'd ever want to talk to me again. If I could just apologise to her, explain what happened, maybe she'd be willing to sit down with me somewhere when she next gets out. However, I can't sneak in just to talk to her. I wish there was some way I could talk to her without breaking the law?

Kim would have been ashamed to admit that it actually took her several minutes to realise just how monumentally thick she was being. There was a way she could try and talk to Shego without breaking the law. It might be supervillain jail, but the prisoners were still allowed visitors. She knew that first hand, having gone to visit the fashionistas when in need of a new mission outfit. She'd just have to hope that curiosity would get the better of her rival and that she'd choose to entertain her. This is the right thing to do. I can see Shego without having to break the law. Mind made up, she rose to her feet and headed for her workroom to make preparations, thankful for having finally found some way out of the endless loop she'd been stuck in all week, tenuous though it may be.