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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Tears rolled down Kim's cheeks as she rocked back and forth on her bed in the hotel suite. She was inconsolable, and felt like a grade-A bitch as she sat on the bed, sobbing and rocking. Joss and Wade were sitting with her, gently holding her and doing all those soothing things you do for a person who can't be made to feel better easily.

It had all started when she'd come back to the hotel with Joss, intent on asking Wade all about Ron's wife and son and all the things they had done. She'd sat down and decided to actually work out a little list of the things she wanted to know, in a relatively reasonable order to ask them since some questions depended heavily on the answers to others.

Then she came to the question about Ron's mysterious reappearance at the Possible Family Thanksgiving one year and it had all hit her. "Grandma" Joss had mentioned Ron had disappeared for a few years starting in 2009, and had shown up, Elizabeth in tow, at Thanksgiving at her family's house a couple years later.

Kim wanted to ask more about that specific event and why Ron had gone "off grid" for a few years when her brain, as it was wont to do, went off on a tangent. In a painful moment in which she suddenly felt like the worst human being since Adolf Hitler, Kim realized that not once in three weeks had she asked or even thought about her mother, her brothers, or any member of her family at all; only about Ron and his family, and occasionally about Wade and Joss's relationship.

"I suck!" she sobbed, leaning against Wade's chest and whimpering softly, not bothering to do the breathing exercises the hospital had given her to combat Croycidical symptoms. "I'm such a horrible person! I never should have been brought back!"

The elderly, iron-haired black man signed softly and rubbed her back as Joss got up to fetch something from her hand-held that might help with all of this. He'd known this was coming for a while now, and he also knew that the things that they had to tell Kim might break her heart, if not kill her out-right. He wondered if he should perhaps lie about some of them.

"And what about daddy's grave!? Where is it even at?!" She wailed and buried her tear-stained face into Wade's lapel further.

He sighed, not able to really understand what she was going through, but sympathizing with her horrendous pain. He continued rubbing her back and letting her occasionally pounder her fists on him in frustration, trying to keep her at least a little comforted, for her own protection.

Joss returned with her handheld, and showed it to Wade over Kim's shoulder.

The handheld was a ubiquitous device in 2061, so far as Kim could tell. It was descended from items like cell phones, and her Kimmunicator, and it was largely how Wade had made his fortune. Part communications device, part hand-held computer, part debit card; it was a small device that did it all and did it seamlessly.

At the moment the flexible transparent screen of Joss's was displaying a list of facts Kim was to be told at certain times during her recovery. It was a list Joss had not been sticking very close to at all, much to Wade's dismay. Ironically, and sadly, the next items displayed on the list were the disposition of Kim's mother and brothers, although they were dated for a week or so in the future yet.

"Should we share this with her?" were the words Joss mouthed to Wade as she settled her long frame on the edge of the bed.

Wade took the device from her and ran his thumb along the flexible film screen, causing it to scroll. He frowned at the items there, especially Kim's mother. He didn't want to tell her about Anne yet, or in fact, at all. He wasn't sure how Kim would react to knowing her mother was still around, after a fashion.

The old man especially didn't want her going to see the woman and being really crushed. If anything could kill Kim Possible via heartache, it would be that.

Other things on the list were just as bad. So much of it was tied up in Cuba II that he wondered if Maybe Kim should just be given her own hand-held access and allowed to study up on the Second Cuban War herself.

After a long moment, Wade shook his head and patted Kim atop hers. Then as he strolled down the list, he came to one thing that he thought might cheer the girl up. She wasn't supposed to meet that person for two months yet, but Kim was obviously in need of input from people other than just Joss and Wade.

He turned the list to face his wife of fifty-one years, and pointed to a name as he mouthed back to her, "Call her…"

As Joss Loade stepped into the other room of Kim's suite, Wade softly sat her up and looked her in her fern-colored eyes, giving her shoulders a small shake. "Now you listen to me Kimberly Anne Possible,"

After a moment of sniffling she nodded, tears still running down her cheeks. She bit her lower lip and tried to calm herself enough to pay attention. Finally she nodded again, the look of shock and deep shame still on her face though.

"You are NOT a horrible person. You're in a very awkwierd 'sitch that no one has ever been in before; if you don't count biblical anecdotes, okay?" He eyed her with a firm, but kind expression and waited for her to agree.

"…b-but…"

"No buts. No one could blame you for being a little addle-headed considering what you went through. I told you already, you're the first person to wake up after more than half a century. The next person before you was only frozen for about seventeen years. Most people can't survive longer than that without going all cryo…" He sighed and wiped a few of her tears away from her chin before the could drip off. "Don't you remember being told about your head injuries? And just who do you imagine could think clearly after waking up over a half-century in the future with a massive head wound?"

Kim tried to object, but in the face of his determined but loving expression she couldn't. An elk had kicked her in the head sixty one years ago, and then she'd been in a deep freeze. She touched her left temple self-consciously, as though she could feel the hoof-print there. He was right, much as she didn't want to admit it. It wasn't her fault if she didn't think of things in their proper order all of the time.

Finally, salty drops still staining her reddened cheeks, she nodded and leaned in again against the big old man's chest. She listened to his steady breathing and the echo if his deep baritone as he spoke again.

"Good girl. Now, in a few minutes Joss is going to have a very nice surprise for you… but you have to promise your 'Grandpa Wade' that you won't over-react… okay? Maybe in the morning we can talk about your family some… but right now you're too worked up. So you can have ten minutes on the hand-held, then it's off to bed young lady."

Kim giggled softly through her sniffles at being treated like some little girl, despite the fact that she was, at least physically, college aged. The coddling, at least at this moment, made her feel a little better. "Okay… Grandpa."

Wade looked up as Joss motioned to him that she had made the connection. If Wade's implantable hearing aide didn't have smart-sound technology in it; the squeal from Kim a moment later would have permanently deafened him.

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At first, Kim didn't understand who she was supposed to be talking to. When Joss gave her the hand-held, she was confronted with a person who could, conservatively, be called the stereotypical African-american grandmother. Plump, friendly seeming, and with a warm twinkle in her dark watery eyes, the elderly woman smiled to Kim from a location identified on the hand-held as Coopersmith Springs, NSW, AU.

Well, she certainly didn't know anyone from rural Australia, old, young, black, white or by any description actually. Australia was one place she'd actually not spent a lot of time during her heroing days. The weathered, slightly shaky voice that came across the handheld also didn't ring any bells, so to speak. The sounds of non-descript street traffic, and a few children playing in the background filtered through the call to Kim, and totally failed to help her to place the caller's identity, since she was still operating under the assumption that everyone she knew was in their late teens, and not their late seventies.

So it took more than a moment or two of polite, yet confused smiling for the words the grandmother spoke to penetrate Kim's stressed red head.

"Hey there girlfriend… long time no see!"

Kim was busy looking at the background of the caller's location, a porch looking out on a sunny early afternoon, and still smiling with mild befuddlement when something deep in her mind clicked in place. Then the squeals of sheer joy and overwhelming emotion came.

"Monique!!! Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod!!! Your still alive!!! Ahhhhh! And you have Grandkids!!! Aieeee!!!"

Wade, on whose lap Kim was still sitting, grunted softly and coughed as Kim bounced up and down on him and almost dropped the hand-held. Despite the way she was acting at the moment, Kim was almost 19 years old and weighed every bit of it as she practically vibrated in her elderly friend's lap.

Mo's eyes sparkled softly and she chuckled, watching from her end as Wade grimaced and tried to get Kim to either calm down or get off of him; and Kim acted like she'd just experienced five Christmas mornings plus Halloween all at once.

"G/F… you better get off your grandpa Wade before you break him." She gently admonished the bouncing ball of energy that Kim had become, smiling broadly and shaking her head on the thin screen.

"Yes, please Kim, you're going to ruin my chance at having children if you don't stop bouncing." Wade and Monique laughed openly and Kim turned three shades of crimson as she rolled off of Wade and the bed and started half-jogging around the room in her excitement.

"Where are you? What are you doing? What have you been up to? Whose grandchildren are those? DO you still work at CB? What ever happened to-,"

"Whoa… slow down there Cinnamon! One at a time…" Monique laughed softly at the barrage of excited questions and appeared to be rocking slowly in an old wooden rocking chair as she listened to Kim. "Look at the display of the hand-held. That will tell you where I am… duh."

"Oh yea… duh me…" Kim managed to turn a shade darker red yet in energetic embarrassment and took a few forced deep breaths, trying to relax herself a bit. "Um… okay, so why are you down under?"

Monique's snow-white topped head gave her a look she was used to getting these days. It was a look that asked where she had been, and/or why she had dropped out of the eighth grade and didn't know basic geo-politics. After a moment though, the elderly woman caught herself making the face and shook her head a bit. "Sorry KP… I forget that you've been asleep and living in a hospital setting."

A groan of ascent rolled through Kim's throat and she nodded exasperatedly. "Yeah, tell me about it Mo.. Grandma and Grandpa here won't even let me watch TV."

That earned a chuckle from Monique and she shook her head softly once more. She looked over Kim's shouder, at Joss, who was hovering in the background, before continuing. "Well Kim, I guess you haven't had your history refreshers yet. But I guess I can tell you about that when you fly me out there this weekend huh?"

"Oh, okay! Huh what? Mo… How can I afford to fly you trans-oceanic…?" Kim was suddenly looking befuddled, confused, and faintly panicky.

"Oh ho… they haven't told you how much you're actually worth, have they girlfriend? Or should I call you 'Money'?" She winked at the thoroughly turned-around Kim and chuckled gently.

"How much I'm…" Kim turned to Wade and Joss, who were still following her energetic self around, and slowly narrowed her emerald eyes suspiciously, "No… they haven't."

"Miss Monique! I told ya'll not to be tellin' her about that!" Joss huffed, more of her cowgirl accent coming out in her pained distress as she shook a finger at the phone.

"Monique… is it okay if I call you back? I think Grandma, Gramps, and I need to have a little talk." Kim narrowed her still teary, blood-shot eyes accusatorily at her old friends and sniffed away the last vestiges of her earlier breakdown. She turned and advanced on them with a dangerous and irritated sneer curling her lips. "So… just how much am I worth?"

If Joss and Wade had ever been afraid of someone not a quarter their age, it was now.

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Meanwhile… In another part of America, a raven-haired young woman was a little bit confused. She'd just gotten a printed letter from someone she barely knew. She vaguely remembered having met Dr. Loade several years before, when her mom had taken her to visit her grandfather. Still, why was he sending old fashioned paper mail to her?

Icey blue eyes carefully studied the expensive looking envelope as she rolled it from one hand to the other, hefting and testing its weight. She momentarily compared the soft white of the envelope to her alabaster skim, pondering the two tones before snapping out of her distraction.

A better question to ask was perhaps why it seemed to follow her only other piece of paper postage that week; an anonymous note that was asking for a meeting and promising information of Grandpa Harold and his early days as well. Not that she wasn't curious about why people claiming to know both of her grandfathers were sending her communications, it just seemed very very convenient.

Now she wasn't sure just which one to attend to first.

Linnea Stoppable carefully peeled open the envelope and unfolded the thick multi-part letter, curiosity getting the better of her. It seemed like things were getting much more interesting for the young reporter.