KP – One Oh One : Part XVII - Fall Into Place
All logic aside, Sherry Godfrey couldn't get over a severe case of he heebie-jeebies caused by her current situation. She was stretched out prone on her own bed being examined by a woman she not only knew to be the mother of her worst enemy, but looked one heck of a lot like her to boot. She couldn't help but think that it could be Kimmie holding that cold-ass wand to her expanding belly.
Voices in her head, put there by years of telling herself that most other people were exactly like her, kept screaming at her to get out of there, to head into the hills and forget all about this. If it were up to her alone, she would have done just that. Unfortunately her daughter had other things to say about it. For her she gritted mental teeth and let the examination proceed
How Doctor Anne Possible managed to get her hands on a portable ultrasound device she didn't know and didn't care. All that mattered was the little shape it revealed in her tummy.
"Well, Miss Godfrey," She had given up trying to get the older woman to call her Sherry, or even Shego after the first couple visits. Their relationship remained purely proper and professional, even though the examinations were taking place in her rented home. "It appears your little girl is doing perfectly well, at least as far as I can tell. Still wish you would reconsider and get checked out by the proper specialists. I'm having to research just about everything I'm doing for you."
"Hey, Doc, I appreciate everything you're doing for me, but I can't take that kind of risk. I mean, what if Kimmie or the buf…I mean Stoppable were to see me?"
Anne turned a disapproving eye toward the raven-haired young woman. "One, I think you are underestimating the impression you made on her the last time you met. Two, please quit calling her that. Kimmie is what her father and I call her. With all due respect, coming from you is…well, disrespectful."
"Sorry, Doc. Old habits and all." She sat up, letting the pink scrub fall back over her midsection. She had taken to wearing the loose fitting clothing as her girth expanded. She was just a little girl the last time they were in fashion for the general public, but she discovered them quite by accident when she was zapped into a cable TV signal and ended up on an episode of some generic hospital drama. There would sometimes be a stretch of days when she didn't even leave her house, even though her 'doctor' hadn't put her on any kind of restriction. So far, despite all the punishment she had dealt her body over the years, her pregnancy was progressing without any major complications.
The only time she had actually been off the property since first contacting Doctor Possible she found herself in one place she would have never considered going back to. Sherry didn't consider herself a religious person. In fact, she hadn't set foot in a synagogue since they day her adoptive parents, the Godfreys, perished in a horrible car accident. She had been twelve at the time and didn't know she was adopted.
Somehow without thinking about it, she put on a nice, conservative dress, pulled her long hair up into a bun and went to Saturday morning services at the Reform Temple in Middleton. Her Hebrew came back to her haltingly, but somehow it felt comfortable participating in something she felt she had completely forsaken.
She really didn't think of herself as a Jew, especially since she had learned she was adopted. The Godfreys had been very open in their religious views, and left it to their children to make their own decisions how they were called. It struck her as she listened to the Rabbi speak that she really didn't know what direction her brothers had gone in.
Still, that was what she knew, so when the spirit hit her feet, it was a Temple she found herself in.
There was a bit of a moment when she realized exactly who was sitting in the pews near the front. She should have noticed them the moment she sat down. After all, how many redheads could there be sitting with a trio of blondes.
She was a little confused that Kimmie was sitting there holding a baby. It certainly couldn't be hers. It had only been a few months since they were forced to work together, since they had come to a sort of understanding if not a full-on truce. She almost laughed out loud when it dawned on her that the baby was most likely Stoppable's sister.
Princess gets to practice on a sister-in-law first, she thought to herself. Then she got a little sad. The sight of Kim Possible and her fiancé sitting there in the Temple, holding a child as if it were their own made her realize just how much she was missing out on. In just a few short months she would be holding a child, but that child would have no father. It didn't matter that he had laid down his life to save millions, what mattered was he wouldn't be there.
Could she have had what those two did if she had never turned down the dark road she had taken? There was no way to know. She was just cynical enough to realize that she couldn't call it unfair. She had done evil, horrible things. She was literally capable of taking candy from a baby. She had thrown explosives at the Alaska Pipeline. She had tried to kill that happy little redhead so many times.
Yeah, right, you've really taken your best shot, haven't you, Shego? She imagined her pale skin turning mint green, her black hair suddenly reflecting green highlights instead of blue, her cocoa brown eyes turning bright emerald green. All she had to do was think about it and all that would happen. Then she could fire a focused beam of her power and it would take the back of her head off.
She swallowed hard, suddenly sickened with herself that she could think such a thing. Yet, despite that, she knew that if she truly intended for Kim Possible to be dead, she very likely would have been, and it wasn't through some sort of grudging respect for the younger woman (which she did have, but didn't figure into that particular equation.) No, it was the pure fact that Sherry "Shego" Godfrey was not a killer. Not at least in her sane moments. She could still see the eyes of the man she had done in when she went off the deep end and turned her back on her boyfriend and her brothers at eighteen.
It was the rest of the world that assumed she was an assassin. True, she was muscle for hire, but she considered herself more of a master thief than anything else. Maybe that was why she stuck with Drakken all those years. The only person he wanted her to kill was Kim Possible and even with her, he never said those words. It was never simple 'kill her,' it was 'finish her' or 'feed her to the gators.' Drakken seemed to be just as unwilling to really do something final with her as she was. That gave her a strange feeling in her gut. At the time, she didn't think of it that way. She was just battling her, thinking she was giving it her all.
Doctor Possible was packing up her borrowed gear. "So, what's the deal with…Kim and Stoppable? The Weekly Sphere had something in it about them having some problems."
Anne gave her a strange look. "I wouldn't put too much stock in those things. One of them even had the gall to put that she was having an affair with one of her professors. The kids are doing okay. They've got their problems, but it's nothing that any couple wouldn't have to deal with."
"Yeah, well, I kinda wouldn't have believed that thing about the prof myself. All our…differences aside, I know what Stoppable means to her. It's just, with those other kinds of stories, I just get afraid where there's smoke, there's fire."
Anne sat down on the edge of the bedroom dresser. "I'm surprised you care."
Sherry pursed her lips. "Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? I kung-fu it out with your kid for years, yet the thought something may be going bad between her and Stoppable just sits wrong with me." She sat there silently for a moment. "You ever watch cartoons when you were little?"
The flame haired neurosurgeon just smiled. "I have two boys. Three if you count Ron, I've been seeing cartoons almost constantly since I was a little girl. The only break I got was with Kim, since she doesn't seem to like them very much, unless she's watching them with Ron."
"Well, do you remember the one about the dog and that wolf who looked a lot like the coyote?"
"The one where they punched the clock?"
"Yeah. The way I see it, as long as Kim and I were working on opposite sides, we were enemies, but when I punched the clock at the end of the day, all that stopped. I know that's over-simplifying things, but it's the best way I can describe it. Besides, wouldn't that make you happy? That I'm trying to put my grudge behind me?"
"Miss Godfrey…Sherry. It's going to take a lot more than just words for me to trust you. To be perfectly honest with you, I'm doing this more because of your child than for you, but in the end, it's only your words and your actions I can go by, so yes, it does put me a little more at ease. Just let me remind you. Go back on our agreement and all it takes is one phone call and you're on the run again. Don't know if they would be able to catch you right off the bat, but you are most definitely not on top of your game right now." To make her point she looked down at the younger woman's belly.
Sherry wasn't as petite as Kim, but she was still not a large woman by any means. She was slightly taller, slightly broader at the hips and was a bit more generously endowed up top, but five and half months into her pregnancy and it was very clear she was getting larger. In fact, she hadn't been able to hide it for more than a month and a half now. Perhaps it was a good thing Shego had been replaced with Sherry Godfrey. It was hard enough for a woman in the evil community. There weren't any laws protecting mothers to be, so it was generally considered a sign of weakness to procreate.
"Doc, lemme say this, and don't take it the wrong way, but you're not real good at the blackmail game. Even a year ago, if I was in this position, I'd be thinking about how to take you out when all this was over. Do you know what kind of trouble you could be in for helping me? What if I were to double-cross you? What if the two of us are caught together?"
Anne just raised an eyebrow. "Well, for one thing, if you were to double-cross me? I've left an encrypted file with Wade Load that would be opened if something were to happen to me. It had very precise details about where you can be found and what condition you are in. I know, it's a bit cliché, but I thought it a good precaution to take. Like I said, I don't trust you. I'm not going to trust you. All I'm going to do is help you get through this, for your little girl's sake."
Sherry put a hand on her belly. "I'm impressed. I guess being around the princess…Kim." She quickly amended with a glance from the fiery doctor. " Guess it's rubbing off on you. Still, Doc, you've got nothing to worry about as far as I'm concerned. I might be evil, but I'm a woman of my word. You've got my promise that the war with your daughter is over, finished, kaput. Doesn't mean I won't defend myself if she gets it in her head to come after me, but I'm done with her."
"Fair enough." The two managed to have some form of the same conversation every week when Anne came up to examine her.
She finished putting away her instruments. "Look, at some point we're going to have to rely on some other outside help. We need to have a sample of your daughter's DNA examined. When that happens, it is very likely the person doing the lab work is going to see something strange. There is no telling what changes your own DNA have undergone, considering the physiological changes that go along with your power."
Sherry just nodded her ascent. "I kinda figured something like that. I was just hoping, considering what happened to me the night she was conceived, that she might just be a plain, normal human being. It all depends on whether this goes skin deep." She held up the back of her hand. She had very pale skin, but at least it was a normal color. Her child's father had some sort of healing power, and had used it to change her back to her normal human appearance from before the comet.
When she used her powers, her body was bathed in the strange radiation referred to as her 'Go Team Glow." It turned her entire body green, from mint green skin right down to dark green lips she would normally cover with black lipstick. After Neil died, she learned how to damp down her powers to the point she changed back to that normal appearance, but she still had no idea whether it was a cosmetic change, or something deeper.
The thought she might pass on some form of her powers to her daughter scared her. The comet struck when she was fourteen and it still took a long time for her to come to grips with it. She couldn't imagine how an infant or toddler would handle it, if they even could at all. Her nightmare was the child throwing a temper-tantrum and blasting the whole house down.
"You sure that's safe and all, Doc?"
"Yes. It's a very standard procedure. The baby is in no danger at all."
"No, I don't mean taking the sample itself. What if some do-gooder at the lab sends the results up the line to somebody. What if they match the results up with me. Won't that put both of us at risk?"
"I thought of that. There just might be a solution. Wade Load can run all the necessary tests, and he can be discreet when he has to. After all, he had both Kim and Ron chipped for years before they knew about it. He can keep a secret when it's important enough."
She got up off the end of her bed, pacing the room slowly. "This is so wrong on so many levels. I'm putting my life in the hands of Kim's Mom and her computer geek? What's the world coming to?"
Anne stood up, gathering her bags. "It's your call. Still, it's best to find out as much as we can as quickly as we can."
"Okay, Doc. Bring the stuff you need next week. Just, nobody but Load and you know about this, okay?"
"Deal. Oh, one more thing, I'd lay off some of that crap you've got in the kitchen. Really thought somebody in as good a shape as you are would eat better than that."
Sherry smiled. Not everything in the house was hers. Certainly the older woman could tell she wasn't living alone, but her 'roommate' was always gone when she came. She made sure of that. It was probably a pretty easy guess who shared the house with her, but his room stayed closed and locked while the doctor was around.
"Trust me, Doc, except when I get my cravings, I'm eating stuff that would make a dietician proud."
"Cravings? Please tell me you don't want pickles and ice cream."
She made a terrible face. "Yuck, no. I hate pickles. No, it's more like frozen burritos and pop tarts. Every now and then I just want to curl up with some cold double berry pop tarts and chow down."
Anne nodded as she got ready to leave. "Just don't overdo it."
Sherry followed the doctor to the door. "Tell me something, if it's not too personal. What did you crave when you were pregnant with Kim?"
The doctor smiled softly at her patient. "Fudge Ripple ice cream, cheese quesadillas and my mother-in-law's fried chicken. Same thing with her brothers."
She waved as Anne drove off. Strange how life changes so quickly, she thought.
Idly she swatted at the fly buzzing around her head. Stupid flies. Cold enough outside for the ski resort to start making snow and we still get flies. Go figure. She went to the kitchen to find some fly spray, but by the time she came back , it was nowhere to be seen.
Stupid fly.
Kim was looking forward to the weekend. The uppermost slopes at the Middleton Ski Lodge were opening up that Saturday and she was eager to get to them. So much so, she had been in the garage the night before going over her snow-board and her other gear. Finally she was going to be able to go up there whenever her schedule allowed, instead of waiting to go on a closely controlled class outing.
It also meant a weekend away with Ron.
If every cloud had a silver lining, she was certainly finding one following their blowup back in October. Even though they reconciled and talked things out pretty thoroughly, subtle changes in their relationship started cropping up, and most of them were good.
For one thing, Ron seemed a good bit more attentive to her. It was as if he realized he was starting to take their relationship for granted. Even though they spent a great deal of time together all week long, he made sure they went on an honest to goodness date on Friday and Saturday nights, and when they were out on those dates, he became the consummate gentleman.
One thing she was starting to learn about him that she had never suspected before was a subtle old-fashioned streak. In fact, he really was almost a prude about certain things. At first she thought it was something bad, something he was avoiding, but slowly she came to understand it was a deep, profound respect he had for her that drove him to behave that way.
She really enjoyed his attentions all over again. Their private time was nice. Beyond nice. To use one of the words that had been slowly seeping out of her vocabulary, it was 'spankin,' but she found out just how romantic it was to slowly walk through the park, the city or even the campus simply holding hands. They had stuck a balance and their relationship flourished anew because of it.
That didn't keep her from looking forward to some quiet time away from the city with him.
Ron was a little put-out and frustrated himself. The school work was tougher than he had been expecting. He was doing everything he could to hold down a B average. Even the couple days he spent away from class during their last adventure had put him behind, and there was only so much Kim could do to help him. He knew he had to succeed or fail on his own. Help was one thing, but he didn't want anyone, even Kim doing the work for him. He had grown to the point where he knew that.
At least this first semester he was taking mostly core curriculum courses. There was one introductory course centered around his major, but unlike high school home economics, there was no cooking involved. In fact, it would likely be his Sophomore year before he actually saw the inside of the culinary school's kitchens. They were more interested in getting his basic education out of the way first, before gradually shifting toward a specialty. That meant Kim could at least support him in most of his classes.
Her own work was frustrating from another standpoint. Even though she was taking mostly advanced courses, she didn't feel all that challenged. She was holding down a solid A average (calculus was giving her fits, but she had a B in there.) Maybe she was really in the same boat as Ron, getting the basics down before the real work set in.
Ever since the Carrion fiasco, missions had been almost non-existent. There was the odd rescue or support mission, but none of the calls were coming from GJ. She tried putting in a call to Dr. Director, but none of the messages were answered. That made he wonder if Team Possible had been effectively 'fired' but she doubted it. Something was up.
Figuring out what had happened with Carrion was just as frustrating. Wade had been backtracking the computer records, but hadn't really had much useful to say on the subject. It was really weird how he was able to slip away from that prison camp. Her father read the paper from front to back every single day, and it seemed like there would have been some mention of his escape. GJ's silence on the matter wasn't helping much.
Still, there was another silver lining. For the first time in a year, she had been sleeping well without the aid of mild sedatives or having to have Ron at her side. In fact, since their second trip to the cabin, he had been spending almost all his nights at home, with the exception of a night when they didn't get home form a date until two in the morning and he mother had marched him into the guest room. She almost wanted to make an appointment with Doctor Foster to ask if by 'facing her fear' she had conquered it to some degree. All that mattered was the nightmares had stopped.
It also helped that the really nice dreams involving Ron had returned.
She shivered slightly as she made her way across campus, but it was only because of the chill November wind. She bundled her jacket around herself a little tighter. One more class that day and she could let Ron snuggle her and keep her warm. For once in her life, things were all good.
A tiny black form buzzed in the air, just a few yards behind her, multi-faceted eyes watching her every movement.
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