Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; you know what to expect from this site.

Feedback: Always appreciated.

The Not-So-Average Girl

"Hey," Kim said as she reached the reception desk, looking anxiously at the woman on the other side. "I'm looking for Claire Bennett; I'm a friend of hers."

"Down that way," the nurse nodded down a corridor, Kim nodding in thanks as she hurried long the indicated path.

She'd heard about the car crash when her mother had received the report as part of her duties, but even though Ann had been quick to assure Kim that nobody was dead, once she'd learned that the car was driven by two students at Kim's school she'd answered Kim's questions about who was involved in the accident. While Kim knew that Claire would be all right, as soon as school was over she'd hurried over to the hospital on her own, leaving her bag with Ron so that he could drop it off at her house and make a start on his own homework, too distracted by her concern for her friend to even make it to the cheerleading meeting that Jackie had arranged.

Cheerleading might be something Kim enjoyed, but right now she was more concerned with making sure that Claire was only in hospital because she needed a check-up rather than because she'd found something her ability couldn't fix…

As Kim passed by a tall man wearing a simple brown suit and glasses with a thick upper rim, accompanied by a tall dark-skinned bald man in a short-sleeved blue shirt and trousers, she suddenly found herself stumbling to the side of the hall, nearly hitting an abandoned gurney before she managed to catch herself. She was surprised at her sudden moment of clumsiness, but when the man in glasses turned to look at her Kim smiled reassuringly at him and continued on into the hospital, soon confirming to herself that whatever had just happened had passed by.

She appreciated that it was a minor thing, but when she couldn't recall ever tripping like that before, she felt she was entitled to be a bit surprised…

"Hey," she said as she walked into Claire's room, finding the other girl already changing into her clothes.

"Oh, hey," Claire nodded at her. "How are you?"

"I'm good," Kim nodded, looking tentatively at her friend. "How about you? I mean, obviously you couldn't get hurt, but I was worried that-"

"They just needed to take a check to be sure that everything was still fine," Claire explained with a slight smile. "I mean, it's not impossible for someone to get through a crash like that without getting hurt, but it's just…"

"And how did that even happen, anyway?" Kim asked. "I mean, I saw you and Brody talking a bit at the party, but- oh God."

"You worked it out, huh?" Claire said, her smile faltering as she took in Kim's horrified expression.

"He killed you?"

"To be fair to him, he didn't plan to kill me," Claire clarified with a grim smile before her expression faltered to a more solemn one. "But when I learned that I wasn't the first girl he'd tried to-"

"He raped someone else?"

"At least one of the other girls on the squad," Claire nodded grimly. "And when I saw him already flirting with someone else…"

"You decided to just… do this?" Kim asked, indignantly waving a hand at Claire as the girl finished dressing. "You went and nearly killed someone-"

"Look, what was I going to do?" Claire protested. "I couldn't use myself as a witness because there's no actual evidence that he even did anything because I heal so fast, and if Lori hadn't confessed to anything earlier I don't think I could talk her into testifying now! There was nothing else I could actually do to stop him-"

"You didn't even try to ask us for help!"

"Us?"

"Me and Ron," Kim clarified. "I get that you're dealing with a lot and we haven't exactly been close friends before now, but we wanted to help you deal with what happened to you, and you… you can't just do something like that!"

"Even when I know he's guilty-?"

"I'm not saying that there was a better solution, but you didn't even try to talk it over with us and see if we could think of something else!" Kim insisted. "Look, I know it's not the same thing as actually doing the job, but my mom's a medical examiner, and she's told me that quite a few of the crimes she's called in for basically only reached that stage because the guilty parties decided it was better to take justice into their own hands than bother trying to rely on anyone else to handle it. If you just start thinking that nearly killing someone is the best solution to every problem, how long until you decide that it's best to cut straight to that the second you just suspect someone's guilty even when it turns out later that they weren't?"

"I wouldn't-!"

"Hey, I don't think you would be that cruel either, but I'm trying to make a point here," Kim cut Claire off, sitting down on the bed to look reassuringly at the other girl. "I can understand why you wanted to do that to Brody, but it's just… two wrongs don't make a right."

"Bit cliché," Claire replied, even as her sullen tone made it clear that there was no malice intended.

"True, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work," Kim countered with a slight smile. "Besides, if you start doing things that way, what if someone finds out that you're responsible for what happened to… whoever you went after and decides to try and kill you in return? I get that you haven't found a way to kill yourself yet, but if someone else works it out-"

"I get your point," Claire nodded, looking a bit pale at the implication of Kim's words, sitting in silence for a moment before she looked curiously at her fellow cheerleader. "You think it's worth trying?"

"I think we lose nothing by trying to be the better person," Kim replied with a thoughtful smile. "It's like this show I saw once; sometimes the best thing we can do is live as though the world's the way we want it to be, so that we can eventually help the rest of the world realise that."

"Could take a while."

"We're young, hot and ambitious; we've got time to make our mark," Kim smiled at Claire before returning to a more serious expression. "Seriously, Claire, I understand wanting to hurt Brody for what he did to you, but we… well, we have to be the better person."

"…I can get that," Claire nodded thoughtfully, smiling tentatively at the other girl. "You're… you like that kind of thing?"

"Huh?"

"Standing up for people."

"Well… I guess hearing about some of the things Mom sees at work just… got me thinking about it," Kim shrugged.

"Oh… you mentioned that she's a medical examiner, right?"

"Yeah, for the local cops," Kim nodded. "I mean, she doesn't tell me a lot about her job for obvious reasons, but some of the things that come up…"

"You heard enough to realise that people suck?"

"More like I've heard enough stories about how people suck to know that I don't want to just become another one of those crappy people," Kim explained. "I'm not saying it's a perfect way to live, and maybe we'll find some cases where… well, to be blunt, where the extreme option is the only way to stop it, but if we don't try and find a better way to deal with problems before things get so far that the only solution is basically 'kill them all', than all we're doing is justifying hitting other people because they hit us first."

"…Good point," Claire sighed, shaking her head before she finally stood up from her bed and indicated the door of the room. "Well, I think I've got… something to do; care to join me?"

Nodding in acknowledgement, Kim followed Claire as they walked through the hospital until they reached a glass-walled room. Glancing inside, Kim saw Brody lying in the bed, a bandage around his head along with one of those thick foam collar things around his neck, tubes coming out of his nose and casts around his arms and legs, clearly battered but still alive as far as Kim could tell based on the beeping machine beside him.

"Hi, Brody," Claire said, Kim standing back to silently watch her friend face her latest demon. "I know you probably don't wanna see me right now or hear what I have to say. But I have to say it. What you did to me ... what you tried to do, was wrong. But what I did to you was wrong too, and I'm sorry. I think that everyone deserves a do-over at least once in their lives…"

It was clearly a hard speech for Claire to make, but Kim appreciated the strength it must have taken to make that kind of admission after the difficult couple of days she'd spent since that dark day when Kim pulled that branch out of her head.

It's always harder to face our demons-

"I-I don't know you," Brody said, interrupting Kim's train of thought. "Who are you?"

"Brody?" Claire said uncertainly. "It's me, Claire."

"Why do you call me Brody?" the boy said, before his gaze shifted to Kim. "And who are you?"

Claire and Kim's uncertain glances at each other confirmed that neither girl had any idea how to react to this latest twist, but the mood was suddenly broken when the two girls heard familiar voices spelling out Brody's name. Turning around to look out of the room's glass window, they watched in silence as the rest of the cheer squad entered Brody's room, the other girls grinning enthusiastically before Jackie entered the room and fixed her gaze on Claire and Kim.

"I was just leaving," Claire said.

"And I was here to visit Claire," Kim added, hoping that nobody would question why she'd missed whatever meeting had prompted this impromptu routine when she'd been more concerned with establishing why Claire and Brody were absent then planning what to do about it.

"I'd ask you to stay, but this is for Brody," Jackie said, looking coolly at Claire. "And since you're the reason he's in the hospital, it wouldn't be appropriate."

"You don't know what happened."

"I know you were driving," Jackie said. "Were you drinking too? Was she drinking, Brody?"

"I… I… I don't know any of you," Brody said, looking uncertainly at the rest of the squad, his body turned as much as possible in its battered condition. "What's happening here? Who are all of you?"

Looking back at Brody one last time, Claire stared back at Jackie for a moment before she and Kim slipped out of the room, leaving the squad to stare uncertainly at the battered boy in the hospital bed while the two new friends exchanged anxious glances at each other.

"I don't suppose he could have just lost his memory in the accident?" Claire asked.

"And be awake this soon?" Kim shook her head. "My mom may work with the dead, but I read enough of her files to have picked up some ideas about how cranial trauma affects people, and that includes when it might cause this kind of amnesia; if Brody was injured enough to cause memory loss to the extent that he doesn't even remember his name, I don't think he'd be awake this soon."

"And I'm pretty sure I heard him say something when we were being brought in," Claire added. "I mean, I was trying to make everyone think I'd taken a more serious hit in the crash than I did, so I couldn't really pay attention, but he was definitely talking when we got here."

"Which makes it unlikely he sustained amnesia-inducing head trauma," Kim nodded. "So, no way to be sure if I'm right, but enough details to make it at least really strange that Brody's suddenly lost his memory of his identity but can still talk and understand everything else?"

"But what could do that?"

"That's where I'm stuck," Kim nodded, shrugging apologetically at her friend before she turned her attention to the corridor ahead of them. "But I have a feeling we'll figure it out soon enough…"