Warning: This story will eventually be Kigo, and elements of said Kim/Shego goodness are present even in this chapter. If you don't like that sort of thing, please read no more. Also, me writing Kigo fanfiction doesn't necessarily mean I despise Ron Stoppable or any other characters in the show. This pairing just happens to be my favorite.
Disclaimer: I don't own Kim Possible. Kim, Shego, Ron, Wade, Drakken, and all the rest are copyright to Disney, Bob Schooley, and Mark McCorkle.
Stranded: A Sitch in Spine
Kim Possible awoke with the slow, reluctant intent of one who has slept for a long time and wishes to continue to do so, shifting beneath her sheets and moaning when her comforter slid heavily over her chest. Despite the layers of bedding under which she was buried, she still felt cold; her hair brushed at her cheeks and lips, tendrils of icy thread, and her toes hummed with pins and needles of numbness. Feeling that her father, a humanoid penguin if there ever was one, must've gotten up in the middle of the night to adjust the thermostat in favor of cooler temperatures, Kim pursed her lips and rolled out of bed.
She barked her nose sharply on a solid rock wall and yelped at the rude scrape of pain that lanced up through her sinuses. A flailing arm brought similar results and torn knuckles, and she sat bolt upright with a hiss, blinking forward into almost complete darkness. Her breath wafted in faint clouds before her with every exhale, and her comforter slithered down her chest to pool in her lap, a lump of chilly, leaden cloth. She clung to it as she squinted and tried to make sense of her surroundings, attempted to seek out the familiar glowing numbers of her alarm clock, the outlines of her desk in the corner.
The events of the past few hours came surging back to her in the next instant, and her breath caught in her throat with remembrance. The tangled cobwebs of sleep were burned from her brain by the memories of surging snow, forest debris—of exploding airplanes and burning gloves and flickering green plasma, and trees that lurched and tore themselves from the soil and roared down mountainsides like great wooden dragons, snarling and spitting and destroying everything in their paths.
See you on the other side, princess, a phantom voice purred between her ears, dark and sinister and entirely familiar. And then, with attempted warmth and something else, something stifled beneath a green- and black-checked cloak of forced malice, I'll hold you until we get there.
Oh God, Shego, Kim processed, and remembered the woman's arms tightening around her as they fell together into darkness. Curling her toes in her boots—for she was most definitely wearing boots, and this was most definitely not her room—the teen superhero made as if to stand, pushing the heavy lump on her lap onto the cold packed snow upon which she'd fallen, she guessed, some odd hours before.
The lump groaned.
"Shego!" Kim hissed, and immediately knelt again as relief flooded through her chest and throat, groping about in the darkness until she found a surface different from those of the snow and stone. Swallowing the suspicious lump between her collarbones that often meant the onset of tears, she tightened her fingers slightly and another groan, this one fainter than the first, greeted her ears—she was pinching an elbow, she realized, and let go with a faint sound of both apology and worry.
Drawing back entirely from Shego for a moment, Kim began to fumble with numb, stubborn fingers at the clasps of the chambers of her utility belt. Though most had been ripped away—the fall, she assumed—she found two still intact, one containing smelling salts and the other, a tiny glowstick which she snapped with the forcible press of a slender thumb. She shook it even as she leaned forward over her fallen nemesis, and to her immense relief, the plastic stick began to emit a faint blue glow that outlined the woman beneath her, a shredded and broken figure sprawled on the snow.
Kim focused on Shego's face first, taking in the woman's blackened eye and slightly parted lips, the latter tinged with crystallized bits of dark substance she suspected to be blood. She reached out with a hand that looked rather small in comparison to Shego's to brush the bruised cheek, to gently wipe the woman's lips and feel the pulse fluttering, erratic and agonized, beneath the elegant jaw. Mentally cursing, Kim moved the glowstick slowly down along the alabaster throat, noting with rising horror the shadowy marks peeking above the collar of Shego's rather ragged uniform—and the ominous puddle forming beneath her enemy's neck and shoulder, staining the snow an unidentifiable shade under the sickly blue light.
Fingers quivering, the girl reached for the zipper between the folds of the collar, dreading to see the damage she knew must lie beneath Shego's garments. Kim had been in tight situations before, of course, considering her career as a superhero. She knew how to splint limbs, how to fashion a tourniquet from a sleeve, and the basics of CPR, knowing that even the most meager knowledge could mean the difference between life and death on the battlefield. She could do little, however, for internal injuries—Wade was her man there, radioing in for professional medical help when the situations became too much even for a Possible (and besides, her mother was the brain surgeon and her father the rocket scientist—Kim thought she was doing pretty good fighting crime well away from laboratories, surgical instruments, and microscopes).
The thought of Wade brought other ideas like lightning bolts into her head and, dropping the glowstick into the snow beside Shego's head, Kim reached into her ample pocket to paw about for the Kimmunicator. She found the familiar tool with ease and brought it out into the range of the glowstick's light with a soft hiss of triumph, only to find that the small machine was veritably flattened, small wires sticking out of the seams like locks of shining flyaway hair. The screen was a spiderweb of branching cracks, and Kim, disgusted with both herself and her breakable gear, tossed the useless piece of equipment off into the darkness. She heard it clatter, descending into oblivion, echoing all the way down, and felt an unwelcome spike of fear force its way up through her abdomen and spine.
She and Shego were lying on a ledge of some sort. Just a few feet away, Kim realized, there was a sudden drop and emptiness, a chasm into which her Kimmunicator was still plummeting, lost to sight (and almost to sound) forever. Seizing the glowstick and temporarily leaving Shego alone, awash in snow and shadows, Kim extended her arm as far as it would go in the direction opposite the rock wall against which they were pressed, brandishing her only source of light as though it were a torch. If she squinted, she could only just make out the edge of their ledge, a small, snow-ringed ridge that ended both abruptly and without even the slightest slope of warning.
A small expanse of snow separated Kim Possible and Shego from an abysmal gulf of darkness.
"Perfect," muttered the girl, ignoring the feelings of anxiety worming around in her gut. Now wasn't the time, much less the place, to panic, and with a soft sniff of determination, Kim turned back to Shego and folded her fingers around the woman's zipper, glinting in the faint luminosity of the glowstick.
"Oooh, naughty Kimmie," came the rattling purr from the shadows near Shego's head. Kim muffled a shriek and whirled in the snow, thrusting the glowstick forward with indignance and humiliation until she could see her nemesis's face: good eye slanted open, lashes quivering; lips still parted, but curled upward into a lecherous sneer; eyebrows lifted, twin lines of deep green stained by idle flecks of snow. "Go on then," Shego coaxed, and gave her eyebrows a wriggle. "Unzip me, princess. I won't mind."
Kim immediately regretted feeling worried about the villainess. Grimacing, she tucked the hand with which she had been intending to unzip Shego's suit behind her back and informed the older woman, rolling her eyes, absolutely positive she must've hallucinated their twined fall, "So gross."
"Really?" Shego smirked and closed her eye again, turning the swollen side of her face into the snow. After moaning faintly, she looked up at Kim, squinted, and asked in a low, teasing rumble, "Then why are you blushing?"
The teen superhero lifted her hands to run her palms over her cheeks and, to her horror, found them quite hot indeed. "I'm not blushing," she lied. "It's cold. And I spent all night running around in the wind—away from you, thank you so much. They're chapped, that's all."
"Sure, princess," Shego taunted, but fell silent as she dug her hand into the snow. Crunching together an ample fistful of the stuff, she pressed it to her cheek and sighed expansively, altogether silent. Altogether still. Altogether not, marveled Kim, attempting to attack her.
"So," asked the villainess after a moment of companionable quiet, "where are we? I thought we'd be dead, but since I don't see any cute chubby cherubs with wings and halos, thank God"—and she winced, adjusting her makeshift icepack with a twitch of fingers—"or any roaring flames, I'm going to assume we're both still very much in the land of the living."
Kim answered Shego's musing with a nod, then thought quickly about how she was going to reply to the woman's real question. Tucking her soggy hair behind her ear, she relayed her guess to Shego. "I'm going to assume," she began, "that we were fighting on a giant windfall—a huge mass of trees, snow, packed earth—"
"Yes, Kimmie, I know what a windfall is," Shego grouched, but at Kim's stubborn glare, gave a wave of her hand to indicate she was still listening.
Inwardly smoothing the indignant retort that rose in her throat into a quiet cough, Kim continued, "…if we were fighting on a windfall, the avalanche loosened the ground enough to dislodge everything. We fell through into this place, which has all the makings of a cave system or a ravine. It does make sense," she murmured, more to herself than to Shego, "that a windfall would form over a ravine."
"Mm," Shego thrummed, and Kim wondered if the woman was agreeing, disagreeing, or just didn't give a damn. Turning her head slowly to gaze off into the darkness, the villain considered and asked quietly, "Have you tried looking around at all?"
"Just over there," Kim answered, and pointed her trusty glowstick toward the end of the ledge. "Long way down."
"Of course it is. How about your spiffy little gadget? Did you call for help?"
Kim cocked her head and tried her best to examine her nemesis in the wan light of the glowstick. She thought she heard hope, of all things, in Shego's voice, and Shego hadn't ever seemed like the type of person who would willingly call for help—especially not in this sort of situation.
Maybe she's claustrophobic, thought Kim, and shuddered. Heaven knows I don't want to be stuck down here for very long either.
"I would've called Wade," she told the woman aloud, watching the opposing face carefully, "but my communicator broke in the fall. And I, err…" She trailed off and glanced over toward the edge of the ledge somewhat guiltily. Though she was positive the Kimmunicator wouldn't've been any help to their cause, she still regretted throwing it away. It hadn't failed her often before now.
"Kimmie's got a temper," Shego observed, her tone bemused. Kim thought her voice sounded weak, but the villainess made no mention of her injuries, reaching instead with her other hand to fumble quietly with the zipper between the folds of her collar. Pulling it down just enough to expose an expanse of alabaster skin mottled with cruel bruises, Shego dipped her fingers into the top piece of her suit and fished about, biting her lips from the inside. Kim politely looked away, thinking it was best not to aggravate the woman if at all possible—considering their situation, Kim couldn't afford to have Shego at her throat. Not if she wanted to survive.
"Damn!" Shego hissed after a moment, and came up with a handful of glittering metal fragments. She flung them off to the side in a motion painfully similar, Kim thought, to her own with the Kimmunicator; the look the villainess gave the teen was almost sorry, so wry and bitter it made her face. "Looks like my technology didn't do any better. Not that I want Dr. D," she growled, "to see me like this. Near you."
Kim found the words both biting and insulting, and she told Shego with narrowed eyes, "It was your choice, Shego. You're the one that yanked me down here with you!"
"And you've fallen all over yourself thanking me for that, I see," Shego returned dryly. "I saved your life, pumpkin."
"I am thankful," Kim assured the woman before she could stop herself. Her cheeks burned. "You just don't seem to be happy about your decision," she offered after a lengthy pause, and directed her gaze intently back to the woman's face.
Shego lifted a lip to expose a canine, and Kim was startled to find that her nemesis's mouth was full of blood. Swallowing with a grimace of distaste, the villainess returned simply and with apparently little patience, "You're worth saving. Now, go over there"—she pointed down the ledge over Kim's shoulder and her own booted feet, this time with the hand rendered gloveless by far too much plasma concentration—"and see just how far this ledge extends. Keep your eyes open for caves or sunlight." Shego closed her eyes, lowering her arm to curl it over her waist. "We have to find a way out of here."
"Duh," Kim murmured without her usual vehemence. She eyed Shego in concern, her gaze flitting to the bruises at the woman's collar and the fresh flecks of blood gleaming on the dark lips. "Shego?" she chanced. "What's wrong? What hurts?"
"That doesn't matter right now!" the woman snarled, opening her good eye and reaching up with all the quickness of a viper to seize the front Kim's shirt. The teen felt Shego's nails even through the thermal cloth, perfectly filed and deadly and somewhat hot, press insistently into her skin. Her visible green orb gleamed, a ring of furious green in the darkness.
Kim heard it then without having to really listen for it—the sound of desperation and urgency in Shego's voice, a frightening couple for the fact that, well, it made Shego sound scared. In previous battles, in situations where buildings were falling down around them and bullets from SWAT teams were flying and all hell was breaking loose, Shego had looked worried, sure, and occasionally even got the 'oh-no-my-ass-is-about-to-be-scraped-off' expression on her face, but Kim was hard pressed to recall a time at which Shego had exhibited fear. Staring down at the woman, she jerked her hands into her lap and blinked and wondered just what was bothering the woman so much to have to hear such a noise coming from her: to have to hear a panther whimper rather than roar.
Perhaps taking Kim's movement to be an unwillingness to cooperate, Shego softened her voice somewhat and reminded the superhero, "You're wasting time and air if we're sealed in here. Go do what I said." And then, to Kim's horror and incredible startlement, she grated out a rather unconvincing, "Please."
She released the girl as Kim rocked back on her heels and, after a few seconds, gained her feet, looking down at Shego's sprawled form with wide eyes. Deciding that it was best to say nothing in order to give herself time to stomach the phenomenon of Shego being polite, she set off carefully down the ledge. She kept her hands pressed to the rock wall lest the snow beneath her give way to darkness, feeling out every inch with questing taps of the toes and ankles; her hair swung against and clung to the back of her neck, irritatingly wet and beginning to freeze under the influence of the frigid temperatures.
I can't believe she's being civil to me. Either I hit my head really hard on the way down, or she hit hers, or this whole thing is a miserable dream. Kim allowed herself a quiet curse of, "Crackers!" when her hair caught in the rough crevices of the rock wall and pulled. Biting her lips, she dragged her fingers through the uncooperative mass and found, to her dismay, that she'd lost her scrunchie at some point. So not a dream, she admitted in sadness, and continued on her way.
She could hear shuffling in the darkness behind her interspersed with cursing that made the tips of her ears heat, and knew Shego must be moving around. Drawing a deep breath of icy air, Kim exhaled in a cough and held the glowstick resolutely forward. It was slow going, moving along the ledge—more than once she felt the snow beneath her give and heard it crunch, and she froze in her place, her hands on the wall again and her jaw clenched in agonizing hesitation. Kim thought that seconds must be turning into hours: her fingers were so cold, so stiff, she worried that she was going to push with them too hard and have to deal with them breaking off, icicles of flesh and blood and perfect fingernails.
All sense of time distorted, Kim was beginning to consider turning around when her hand went from the rock wall to a sudden curve and prompt empty space. She paused, groping about in the air for a solid surface, and grinned when she found none. She shifted the glowstick to her exploring hand and nudged it slowly into the open space, hope flooding her mouth with a clean minty taste when the opening of a cave, wider around than the jet in which she'd been brought here and twice as high as her, became visible under her light source's dim illumination. Holding her breath, Kim flexed her hand until it felt moderately human again, then held it out before the gaping hole in the rock wall, fingers splayed, palm turned inward.
After a moment spent in anguish, Kim felt it: the breath of the mountain, the brush of life and beauty and cold, clean air against her fingertips. Salvation! A way out! Closing the hand into a fist to give it a celebratory pump, Kim turned on the ledge and scuttled back the way, crablike, from whence she'd come, using every bit of her skill as a martial artist to ensure she didn't mistakenly vault over the ledge into the endless gloom below.
Shego came into her sights again after a few moments, outlined by the flickering glow from the small bit of plasma she had playing about her gloved fingertips. Kim noticed with relief that the woman had managed to sit up and prop herself against the rock wall, her legs still splayed out in front of her and her free arm tucked tightly about her waist. Shego's head was tipped back, her eyes trained on the blackness not below but above them—Kim looked up as well and saw nothing but a vaulted, solid ceiling of tree trunks, ice, and snow, a lid on their jar, trapping them inside. Lowering her gaze again, Kim took time to note that their ledge ended about ten feet beyond Shego's crooked form, the teen superhero curled her fingers all the more tightly about her glowstick in silent relief. Only a few more feet and they would've never landed on the ledge, lost forever to the belly of the mountain.
Kim moved close to her nemesis and tried to ignore the trail of mixed blood and snow the woman had left behind in her movements, stepping over it with tight lips and a soft swallow. Shego's eye flickered to her, a waning emerald—managing a grin, the villainess blew on her fingertips to extinguish the candles of plasma and asked quietly, "What did you find?"
"A cave," responded Kim, and amended directly, "a tunnel, actually. I could feel air moving down. I think if there's a way out of here, that's it."
Shego nodded. Kim could only faintly see her head bobbing in the darkness, a pale shape surrounded by lush curves of inky hair. "You didn't disappoint, princess. Very good." Kim felt like a dog being praised, but said nothing when Shego continued, "I'm glad you found it. How far is it? I could hear you breathing the whole way, so it must not be that bad."
Kim flushed. She knew she was well-versed in stealth tactics, but she hadn't been thinking about subterfuge while exploring the ledge. It was only natural that Shego, keen-eared as she was, would've noticed her progress. "I'm not sure," she found herself admitting. "It seemed like it took forever."
Shego nodded again. "You were careful," she said. After a pause, she murmured for the second time within only a few minutes, "I'm glad. I don't think I'd be very pleased if you decided to up and die now, since I took time out of my day to save your ass."
"I thought you said it was worth it," Kim observed, unable to keep the smirk from her features. She yelped indignantly, however, when she felt fingers detach themselves from the darkness to lovingly caress the curve of a buttock, retreating with a soft, teasing pinch.
Her buttock. Shego's fingers.
Shego tipped her a rather lopsided wink and purred, "Oh it is, princess. It's such a lovely ass."
"Shego!" Kim blasphemed in what she hoped was her most horrified tone of voice.
It only seemed to encourage her nemesis. "Nnn-yes? What is it, pumpkin? Would you like me to do it again?" Shego lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers enticingly in front of Kim's nose, and the superhero drew back with a soft hiss of disgust.
"In your dreams, Shego."
"You know it." Shego leered at Kim before she settled back again, tucking her ungloved hand into the crease between her arm and body. She didn't seem to be very intent on moving; her posture was that of a mortally wounded warrior slumped on a battlefield, Kim thought, recalling scenes from the rather gruesome movies Mr. Barken had entertained her American History class with over the past semester. Shego looked like she was waiting to die.
Kim frowned. As far as she was concerned, Shego was part of her team now, a necessary piece of her defense against the fear and the cold and the looming threat of dying, dying down here in the dark—a team of none but two. Kim wasn't going to lose a member of Team Possible, even if that member happened to be Shego. Reaching out willingly for the first time she could ever recall to rest her hands on the arm of the villainess, Kim cleared her throat and murmured in her kindest, most encouraging voice, "C'mon, Shego. We need to get you up on your feet and walking so we can get out of here. We can't just sit—we'll freeze to death."
"Mm," said Shego. The word wobbled—Kim was certain she could hear the start of tears behind it. "Wonderful. I've always fancied being a meat popsicle."
Slanting her eyes in irritation and rising worry that was almost suffocating, Kim informed the villainess, "We don't have time for this. You said so yourself, Shego. Stop joking around and get u—"
"I can't!" snarled Shego with such vehemence that Kim didn't even bother opening her mouth to argue, such a vicious retort and entirely honest to boot. Arm quivering beneath the teen's hands, Shego bared her teeth up at Kim and growled, voice wobbling again, good eye thinly streaming tears, "I'm useless. I'm stuck here—right here."
The words were echoing in the stone chamber around them, reverberating off the walls, drawing ever higher the sense of dread pooling in Kim's chest. And she could do nothing but stare in abject horror at her nemesis when Shego finished in a miserable, disgusted sob, "I'm not going to move, no matter how much you want me to, no matter how much I want me to—because I can't feel my legs, Possible!"
—To Be Continued…
Notes: Oooh, things are getting problematic! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Any helpful critiques, comments, and fluffy hats are very much appreciated.
This story is dedicated first and foremost to my friend Lizzie, who pestered me about writing Kigo until I finally gave in and did so. Thank you, Lizzie. I hope you like it.