Kim Possible: Another Sitch in Time

By Eoraptor

Kim Possible and all related characters © Walt Disney Corporation 2002-2007. This work is not for profit and solely for the enjoyment of the audience. Rated PG-13 for language and adult content. Reproduction or distribution of this work without the author's consent prohibited.

AN: This fic ignores the events of So the Drama and Season 4. Your might see an occasional 'borrowed' plot point from S4, but in general; assume that Ron and Kim never admitted their feelings, Kim never fought Warmonga, and Shego never became Miss Go.

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Kim woke up with a dry mouth yet again, and it made her curse out loud. A moment later she was glad that she was alone in the room; she didn't normally curse. Her cheeks flushed read and she covered her mouth self-consciously. What would her parents say if they heard her say 'Damn it all' like that?

She took up a plan of action when her foggy mind tried to insist where she was a moment later.

She simply couldn't be there, or then. No, this was still 2007… maybe 2008 at the latest. Her surroundings helped to reinforce her plans quite well. The nurses and CNA's who tended to her wore typical hospital togs. They also wore either casual non-slip shoes or what she took for 'crocs' style sandals. There was nothing that passed for a TV or radio in her room either, so she wasn't accosted by lying news-reporters or prerecorded feeds designed to warp her mind.

No, whoever was trying to mess with her head was not going to succeed.

Her vitals were taken by a small white thing clipped to her index finger. This wasn't so bizarre. They took oxygen readings and heart-rates like that at her mom's hospital, and GJE's stuff was even more advanced than that; she'd been checked out by them enough times to know that much.

The large window that let warm sunlight into her room faced out into a garden space. This meant the only people she saw outside were patients and staff; so hospital gowns, togs scrubs and gowns again. Nothing abnormal there. The breeze allowed in through the window helped clear her head as well.

Breakfast was normal, if slightly tastier than standard hospital fare. There were no protein pills or tube-paste space foods; just bland eggs, toast and jam, a grapefruit, coffee, milk, and water. She refused any more pain killers or sedatives, in pill or injected form, and earned a strenuous argument from the duty nurse.

She had very nearly succeeded in convincing herself of the reality of the situation when 'Wade' and his wife insisted on coming in and shattering her carefully erected delusion.

She pointedly ignored the big black man and his basso-profundo voice. Her Wade's voice was squeaky, and cracked often. He also wasn't built like an NFL lineman and he definitely didn't leave his room, let alone date girls, come to hospitals, or get married. So she ignored the obviously good actor and stared at her now empty breakfast plate.

It was Wade's wife who finally succeeded and shattered her dream world, by simply opening her mouth and removing any doubt whom she was with her voice. Kim had traveled the world, but only one woman spoke with that mixture of southern belle and mountain man, in her experience. One girl, actually.

"I hear ya'll are givin' the nurses a heck of a time there, cousin."

The woman was slender, tall, and elegant. Her voice, with its heavy twang, was fairly contrasting to her fairly expensive looking pants-suit and western-style blouse. But it was her eyes and hair that could, ultimately, not be refuted by Kim's fantasy. Though it was shot through with several strands of silver here and there, the hair was the same deep auburn she remembered the bean-pole having, and her eyes were still the same energetic sea-green that bore a shade more blue than Kim's own.

"J-…. No… not you're not! Who hired you?! This is so ferociously cruel! It has to be Shego and Drakken!" Kim clung to her dreams of normalcy. Well, being kidnapped, drugged, and messed with was normal for her if not the rest of the world. She rubbed her arms and clung to herself as well as her enforced vision of normalcy.

Wade and Joss Loade both frowned concernedly. Joss sat down on the edge of Kim's bed and Wade resumed his chair as he had yesterday. "Kim, look around. Look at Wade. Ya'll really think this is one of that tin-horn's things?"

Kim bit her lower lip. She refused to look at the actress's eyes. She instead turned to the fake Wade. She scoweled when she saw the eyes of a certain prodigy child hacker staring out of a post-middle-aged head. She hated the truth those brown eyes spoke, and she hated making her self look up at the tall woman. "Darn it! No! Ron's not dead! You're not my dorky little cousin! And you're not WADE! You're not… you're just not…"

Even as she tried to force the words out in a scream, she faltered. Joss moved and leaned in, hugging her tightly, rubbing her back with calloused hands and sighing against her. Kim's voice faded to a tremble as the unavoidable truth finally settled in and made itself comfortable in her mind.

It was helped along a moment later when the window that had been letting the breeze in closed itself, and suddenly became what must be an eighty inch TV screen. Doctor McCoy was there. Wherever 'there' was at the moment. "Is everything all right Doctor Loade? Kim's vitals are through the roof."

Kim had seen very large display screens before. She'd never, however, seen an average window change into one. She just kept shaking her head, trembling against the now much older woman and reluctantly wrapping her arms around her in return.

"Yes Dr. McCoy, everything is fine… Kim's just… a little strung out coming to terms."

Kim growled, breaking away from the adult Joss and glared at the window/screen. Her head and vision were already swimming with a redheaded fury. Her skin glistened with sweat that seemed to have come from nowhere and her olive green eyes flashed with confusion and anger.

"Why did you freaking wake me up? Why didn't you just let me die?! I'd be with my dad now, and Ron! And everyone else! Damn it why didn't you- hurkt!!!"

Alarms all around the room started sounding out in various tones as Kim clutched at her chest through the thin hospital gown. Wade was on his feet and over to her side, pushing her back to the bed as Joss leapt away.

On the window, Kim's physician was scowling. "Damn it! Code Blue! She's going into cryocide!" He winked out from the window which suddenly changed again, and displayed Kim's vitals, which did not look good.

Once Wade had forced Kim, who was now convulsing in a hideous manner, back down onto her bed, he took a step back. Men and women rushed into her room, but none of them made a move towards her yet. Kim's lips were turning blue now and her olive-hued eyes had rolled back into her head as her mouth lolled open.

Joss bit her lip as Kim's entire body suddenly stiffened, and then went slack. It happened again a moment later. After a moment, the readings on the window/screen began to stabilize, though she knew enough to know they were still ugly. Kim's body gave a smaller convulsion, the bed's systems shocking her one last time to prevent her slipping back into cardiac infarction.

The hospital staff now closed in around the bed, checking her with various instruments and shaking their heads. Not one of them had ever seen someone come back from the edge of cryocide. A younger medical technitian said as much as he watched the window's readings slowly come into a slightly more healthy range. Yet here was the evidence; Kim's vitals began stabilizing, and her lips slowly returned from deathly blue back towards their natural pink.

"That there's Kim Possible for ya… She can do anything…" Joss smiled proudly despite the concern that deepened the lines around her eyes. She wrung craggy work-worn hands and moved next to her husband, sighing heavily with reliefe.

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Sir Ronald David Stoppable

Dame Elizabeth Smyth-Stoppable

SSGT Gerald Rufus Stoppable

Kim recognized the first name on the mausoleum door, and the last was also familiar in its way. Seeing them, etched in brass with dates next to each, didn't make things any more or less real for her personally. Yet it was more evidence that she was where she was, the latter half of the twenty-first century.

It was a little more than two weeks since her wakeup call at the cryo-stasis wing of Upperton Memorial Hospital. Physically, she was fit as a fiddle; so they had released her into the care of 'Doctor and Mrs. Loade.'

'Doctor' Wade, Ph. D., had explained to her that she was a miracle of modern medical technology. She'd awoken from the nanny-cryo thing after being there almost twice as long as the next 'oldest' person. She was also the only person to have come back from the brink of something called cryocide.

"People sometimes can't take all the changes from when they went to sleep to when they wake up… So they just lose the will to live… they kill themselves, and yet they don't. That's why they call it cryocide; cause it's a semi-conscious choice, not a medical condition. Sometimes I expresses as a heart attack, sometimes a stroke, sometimes organ failure, or self-starvation, but ultimately, there's no outward physical cause."

That was how he'd explained the odd term. She still didn't really understand how someone could just will themselves to death, but apparently she nearly had. Well, she felt better now, though her heart still fluttered sometimes when she saw something familiar. It had actually made her chest hurt when she saw the old Middleton Events Center; where she had graduated, along with Ron, Monique, and everyone else from Middleton High class of '07.

"Sir Ronald… When was Ron knighted? And who…?" Kim's slender fingers slowly trailed along the edges of the brass plaque that held the name of her best friend since pre-K. It was the most recent in an incessant line of questions that day, questions which had prompted the visit to the mausoleum.

Joss smiled and squeezed Kim's shoulder lightly. Kim's previous question had been about why Ron was in a largely Christian cemetery when he was Jewish. She'd been shocked to learn that the boy who had nearly died of shock at his bar-mitzvah certificate not being signed had converted to the Anglican Church when he got married in 2013.

"Awe hun, let's sit down. I know its lots to take in." Joss led them to a small bench across from the small but ornate granite structure. After they sipped their bottled waters, (yes there was still bottle water in the future) Joss pointed to the structure that presumably held the mortal remains of Ron and his immediate family.

"Ronny was knighted by tha' there William in… Oh I think it was thirty-two. Tha's twenty thirty-two of course, cuz." Joss chuckled again.

It had been a little strange, seeing themselves reflected in a store window earlier that morning. Kim was still an eighteen year old girl physically, even though her legal age was… well, substantial. Joss, her 'little' cousin, was seventy three, and had already been mistaken twice for a grand-mother. Well, to Kim, not that she actually also wasn't one in reality as well.

"He an' Elizabeth an' Wade saved one of the princesses' lives when that Abbey thing burned down. Wade's a Knight too, but he hates it. He wouldn't even let me put 'Defender o' tha Crown' on his business cards." Joss chuckled and Kim just shook her head.

After the middle of the first week, Kim had found herself completely cried out. Tears no longer came so easily at being caught by news that someone she knew was dead. And sadly, there was a lot of that kind of news. Still, Wade and Joss seemed to keep as much from her as they told her and it was starting to ware her nerves down.

"They stayed on in the world-saving stuff huh?" Kim smiled proudly. She had wondered if things like that would continue for Wade and Ron while she was 'gone.' This was the first confirmation of it.

"Oh, it got slower over the years, but yeah, up till he turned fifty Ron was still goin' out once in a blue moon. Els' put a stop to that though when the big five'oh came around."

"Els'?" Kim parroted confusedly. Then she remembered the second name on the list, and a tear did form and cloud her vision. "That was Elizabeth, his wife?"

A part of her had always thought she and Ron were going to end up together, even though neither of them ever talked about it. It was… well there wasn't a word in the English language for what it felt like, so she went with disconcerting. It was disconcerting to learn that Ron had moved on with his life after her, gotten married and…

"Who was Staff Sergeant Gerald Rufus Stoppable?" Kim knew she didn't want to know the answer. And yet at the same time she had to know what her best friend's life had been like after she'd left.

Yes, it was easiest to say she left… She hadn't died, and she hadn't slept. If she'd died it would all be so much easier, but Wade had actually smacked her the first time she said that after her aborted cryocide. So she didn't think or say that any more. Also, people didn't just sleep for fifty-nine years. So she hadn't been asleep either. She'd just 'left.'

Joss's face darkened and the lines around her eyes deepened. Kim was still shocked that she was in her seventies, and so was Wade. She tried not to think that she herself was legally turning eighty in a few months. Joss, though, certainly didn't look like she was creeping up on three quarters of a century. She could easily pass for fifty. Then again, Wade had said to her a few days ago that fifty was the new thirty.

"Gerry was killed in the Second Cuban War… Just like… Awwe darn it, I'm not s'posed to tell ya bout all this stuff yet." Joss cussed in her own special way and gave Kim a reluctant look. "Promise you won't go all cryo'y on me if'n I tell ya a lil more than I'm s'posed to?"

"Pixie Scouts honor! Oh wait, do they still have those?" Kim blinked a bit embarrassedly at her eagerness to learn more and her display of being so out of date.

"All right… but if'n Wade asks, ya'll tortured this outta me and left me beaten and bloodied, got it?" Joss's sea-green eyes were still sad as she nodded, but they held a hint of the old playful spark in them that Kim remembered so well. "I'll hold ya to that ya'know. I might need ya to punch yer old granny if'n he asks. Need a right good shiner to convince him."

Kim laughed a little bit, despite the somber nature of the info she'd asked about. Believing her boney little cousin was a grandmother was hard enough. Believing that she'd been married to Wade for over half a century still made Kim dizzy. She held up a fist, promising the mother of all blacked eyes if it came to that. "Scouts honor!"

Her older companion sighed and chuckled, and then sat back. "Ya'll know there was two Cuban Wars, right? Well, Gerry was drafted by the time of the second one, despite Ron's whatchamacallit status."

"Conscientious Objecter?"

"Yah, that's the one. Anyways… He was on General Barkin's command staff at Havanna when…" She trailed off as though this was something every school child knew. It was, if they'd graduated after 2043, which Kim had not.

"…when?" Kim motioned for her elderly cousin to continue, trying to remind her that she had slept though major global events. Then her mind grasped something in what Joss had said. "Wait, General Barkin? General STEVE Barkin?"

"Ya. That big old galloot. Ronny said ya'll knew him, and tha' that was the only reason he let Gerry go instead o' callin in every favor he had. Well, Havana was where we dropped the Hydrogen Bomb. It was in response to the massacre of Barkin's entire compound, some fourteen-hundred soldiers and civilians, by a chemical attack. It was horrible cuz… it was some nasty skin eatin gas!"

Joss trailed off as something that was news to Kim was a renewed, very painful and personal memory to her. Kim rested a supporting palm on her shoulder and sighed. She'd have to find out more about this Cuba thing; especially if it killed so many people and caused a nuclear war.

She hated to ask more, because of the tears in Joss's eyes, but she wanted to hear this, not read it or get it from some news report. "Ron's son was killed? In that attack thing? Or in the bomb?"

"He died in the chemical attack. Ron went insane. Who could blame him. If Yori hadn't been there with us at the funeral, he would have… Well Cuz, I never did understand what it was all about, but he got 'hold of somethin' called the Lotus Blade. Yori told me an Wade that Ron had almost 'Defiled himself an' tha' blade.' Whatever that meant."

Kim swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. She knew exactly what Yori's words meant. She didn't want to think about what Ron "Monkey Master" Stoppable could and probably would have done in such a state. He was dangerous when his powers came out. Yori had probably saved more lives than she knew. She and Joss sat for a few minutes in the daytime sun under the tree and watched the mausoleum in silence.

"So that's why his name is there huh? Did Ron and Elizabeth have any other children?" Kim wasn't sure she wanted to know. Ron was Kim's age, older than Joss; and Kim didn't think she could handle actually meeting her BFF's children… and grandchildren.

"Naw… Gerry was all they could have. Elizabeth didn't do so hot in child birthin'. She didn't have tha hips for it." Joss shook her head softly. Then she turned to Kim and chuckled. "Ya'll woulda liked her. She was an English girl, but everyone thinks she was a lot like you. Now I never did see why, cept'n maybe cause she had green eyes… and lordy only knows she wasn't a Possible like'n us. But she did go on missions with him till Gerry came 'long. She always was sayin something bout 'ah Smythe was on tha Victory at Trafalgar' or something like that."

Kim laughed openly despite the heaviness of learning about Ron's family history over the last sixty years. First she laughed at her heavily accented cousin trying to sound like the proper/improper English lady that Elizabeth was being presented as. Joss still had that proud streak in her that Kim denied having in herself, and Kim could tell that Joss doubted anyone held a torch to the Possible's in her opinion.

After a moment chuckling at shared familial pride, Kim wiped her eyes and smiled. She had happier topics, at least, to ask about now. "How did they meet Joss? I mean, Ron and some girl from 'across the pond?'"

Joss, wiping her own eyes and sharing Kim's chuckles, pursed her lips for a moment. Finally she shook her head. "Naw… I dun told ya way too much today, more 'an I was supposed to. Wade can tell ya more bout them anyways. He knew 'er a few years before he an' I hitched up."

Kim tried to work her infamous Puppy-dog Pout on Joss the rest of the afternoon, but it just didn't work out so well on a woman like Joss, a Possible with a familial immunity. So she was forced to wait until Doctor Wade Loade came back to the hotel they were staying at to find out about Dame Elizabeth Anne Smythe-Stoppable.

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Author's notes additional: Sorry it took so long, but here you go, some Chapter Two, a lil bit about the world of the late 21st century…. It's more dystopian than you think, and many surprises are in store for Kim as she adjusts to life without most of her family, without Ron and Rufus, and with a married Joss and Wade.