Title: Finding a Life Unknown
Story summary: The sequel to Slipgate's 'Losses' continues. Ch. 3 – Ron's lost two and a half years of his life to a head injury. He awakens to find himself in a very different relationship. He looks to Kim, because he needs answers. Will Kim's make sense?
Disclaimer: This story uses characters owned by Disney Corporation but does not profit from doing so.
~*~*KP*~*~
Finding a Life Unknown
by Slipgate
Chapter 3: Lost in Love
"When we graduated high school," Kim began, "it was at a time when you were pretty worried you were going to end up separated from me. You'd felt pretty good about graduating until Barkin," and here Kim's face got ugly in a way Ron found interesting, "got you freaked out by making you think about how we don't know what the future holds and we might not be together. That man, I swear, was never very good for your self-esteem."
Ron smiled and said, "Now I know I'm in the Twilight Zone… KP's agreeing with me about Barkin having it out for me."
Kim's face flushed with heat, and while Ron was sure it was partly embarrassment, he wasn't entirely convinced it was just embarrassment. "When we talked later about we graduated, I realized just how many times the man had made you doubt yourself – maybe that hadn't been his intention, but after how he handled the Lowardians and how you handled them, I don't feel very charitable toward Sergeant Barkin."
"The Lowardians? Do you mean like that crazy Warmonga who thought Drakken was the Great Blue?" Ron asked, laughing as he thought of the gullible alien that Kim had told him all about during their yummy diversion of the dating kind.
"A-a… er, I don't really consider the Lowardians a laughing matter any more, Ron." Kim said with a wince, and Ron, wondering what he'd said, looked to Bonnie to see her own face getting used to the fact that Ron had laughed about Warmonga.
"Um?"
"Ask me to tell you another time in more detail, but Warmonga came back, and she brought some friends… an invasion fleet."
"Holy cannoli."
"You ended up saving the world, Ron," Bonnie suddenly cut in, "you grew into and got control of your Mystical Monkey Power –"
"Wait wait wait wait wait…! Bonnie? You know about the Mystical Monkey Power?"
Bonnie opened her mouth, closed it. Looked at Kim. Looked at Ron. Eventually Ron withdrew against his headboard a little, feeling stupid. "Um, I guess being together for a while, stuff like that would come up?"
"Can we focus on what I was about to tell you, Stopp–… Ron?"
"Yes yes… wait, what, did you say I saved the world? I mean, I help Kim save the world sometimes, so that's nothing new, right?"
He looked to Kim. "Right?"
"As I was saying," Bonnie said, as Ron tried to figure out why Kim looked to be struggling for what to say to him, "You saved the world. The Lowardians… when Kim's life was threatened you… defeated Warmonga and Warhok."
Kim took over. "You saved the whole planet from an invasion that had overrun it with mechanical walkers. Me, Shego, you, and Drakken all worked together, Ron. But in the end, it was you who saved the day. Shego and I were knocked out cold, Drakken was off trying to stop the walkers, and you were alone.
"But, um, what I was saying… you'd been worrying, ever since Barkin had deflated your balloon one more time for his sick version of what he thought of as tough love, that we wouldn't be sticking together after college, and you didn't know how to deal with that. That worry was building in your head – and then sort of received an unintentional kick in the pants when you came over and saw me dealing with piles of mail. I was getting lots of college acceptance letter… and you… weren't."
"I guess I can see that. This was six months after the last thing I remember, huh?"
Kim nodded. "Anyway, when you saved the day, you felt more confident that we'd be fine and we'd stick together whatever happened – I mean, you came to the stars to rescue me –"
Ron held a finger up until Kim subsided. "This is where I again say, wait wait wait… Came to the stars?"
"It's a really long story, Ron, but it goes to show you how much you cared and what you were willing to do, and it's not going to answer the questions you have about what happened to us in college."
"Okay, but I definitely want to come back to that."
"Anyway, you felt more sure of yourself and more confident whatever the future might hold. However, I think it was Shego who made an idle comment later, something like, 'Hey, you're a decent cook. Why not go to culinary school?'"
"Somehow you'd never thought of it, and I'd never thought of it to suggest it. You'd been applying to schools for general stuff, and we quickly did up an application for you where I helped you out to Penn State after finding out it had a great HRIM program…"
"H–" Ron began to ask, only to be interrupted…
"Oh shit!" Bonnie suddenly cursed.
"What, what is it?" Ron said, alarmed and broken out of his thoughts on what Kim was telling him for the moment.
"Kim, we've totally spazzed on calling Ron's folks!"
"Oh sh–"
"Kim!" Ron cried, surprised at what was coming from Kim's mouth.
"Okay, yeah, we haven't called them yet," Ron said, looking uncertainly at both women's expressions, "and I get that this memory loss would be doozy news… but my parents and I don't talk that often…"
"No, Ron…" Bonnie said, alarmed, "You and your folks came to an understanding. You talk to them a lot more now about the things you do ever since they finally talked to you about never knowing whether or when you were in danger with Kim and you had it out with them for seeming not to care when to them it seemed you didn't care to tell them what was going on with you."
Bonnie strode to her bag and was furiously pawing through it, looking for something. "I guarantee you 100% that they knew you were proposing last night and would be wondering why they've gone nearly 24 hours without hearing any news."
Finally Bonnie pulled out her phone, and her face crumpled at seeing several voicemails reported by the screen along with the little icon cheerfully reporting that the phone had been on silent. She now recalled it had been put on silent during the movie they took in before last night's dinner. Her head snapped up and reminded her that the windows outside were dark with the pitch of night again.
Ron had recovered from her statement of a moment ago enough to yelp, "We got engaged just last night? And then I lose my memory? God, Bonnie, that tanks!"
"Yeah, well, I guess it really is the story of my life… for a while there I thought maybe I'd closed that book. Listen, um, Kim, you keep talking to Ron since I won't have too much to add on this story for a while yet. Let me call Ron's folks back here – in the cell phone waiting area, I guess… can't believe I left it on silent…" Bonnie grumbled as she strode out of the room before Ron could stop her to ask what she'd meant by that last comment.
~*~*KP*~*~
Ron and Kim looked at each other.
"My parents… we started talking more?"
"Yeah."
"And they probably knew I was proposing last night?" Ron asked, his voice tentative.
"You probably were asking their opinions as you thought about different rings."
Ron's eyes sharpened their focus on Kim. "You say probably there. You didn't know Bonnie and I got engaged last night?"
"This happened right after the dinner where you popped the question, so I gather."
"And how come you didn't know I'd been admitted into an MBA?" Ron asked, his tone of voice that of someone who is trying to make sense of what he's hearing.
"I think last night was you celebrating that too. You were probably going to call me to dish about both major bits of news last night after you were home." Kim said, and a smile reached her lips that he didn't find reflected in her eyes.
"So I tell Bonnie things before I tell you?" Ron asked as he leaned against his headboard.
"Well, significant other, you know," Kim said, biting her lip. It had just naturally become that way and only now, with this 'past' Ron, did it sound unusual.
"Um… so, you were saying… H–what'sit?"
"HRIM program. Penn State had a great HRIM program. Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Management."
"And they took me when no other colleges were?"
"When I was helping you try to write your goals statement, you talked about coming up with Seven Layers of Heaven in our home ec disaster and actually included the recipe as sort of an informational thing if they were curious. You also mentioned creating the naco. At the time I was desperate to be able to see you go to school so I was recommending anything you'd done food-related could be brought up. I'm not sure they were that impressed that you'd invented the naco, but your advisor did later tell you that he'd been among the reviewers of your application and one of the deciding factors had been the variety of experiences you had – you'd done this fine dining cake but also come up with a fast food thing and done some management, and it helped that some applicants were coming to learn to cook instead of to learn to be better cooks. He afterwards got real panicky that he'd said he was one of your application reviewers and told you to pretend you hadn't heard that, though," Kim added with the first grin she'd been able to crack in a while.
"But a two year degree? I thought college was four years!"
Kim's expression grew wistful. "You know, that was a new idea to us at the time too. We didn't know what an associate's degree was and had to ask my dad. Then you were trying to decide if you wanted a 2 year or 4 year degree, and I was making sure I'd applied to Penn State since I decided I had to be close to you after all."
"Okay…" Ron said, trying to not think about all the ways they seemed to have stuck together and how they'd broken up anyway… school, school, think of questions about the school thing he chanted to himself. "So why did I decide a two year degree then?"
"You decided on a two year degree because you wanted to give yourself some experience in another subject after that, at the time that was your reason anyway. You were leery of four years of college with just cooking to show at the end of it, even though they kept talking about how HRIM majors covered more than just the cooking."
"I wanted different experiences?"
"You were more confident and started trying to do stuff to be successful. You wanted to take more of Martin Smarty's book about getting yourself up there to heart and you wanted to not just be known for being good at one thing. I think by a year in you were pretty sure you wanted an MBA to better manage if you end up with a job other than cooking or if you tried to go the route of owning or managing a restaurant."
"That explains school, I guess. But what about us, KP?"
"Yeah, I needed that context I guess, plus you and me dating can't have been your only question about the last couple years. I'll try to speed up a little, though."
~*~*KP*~*~
Kim stopped and turned her head. She looked out the window at the darkened sky and seemed lost in thought. As Ron viewed her profile from the side, he took her in. His – to his mind, recently his girlfriend. She was wringing her hands and biting her lip, and her eyes seemed far away.
"Okay." she said. "Okay. So… umm, remember how I said I helped you with your goals statement when you were applying to Penn State? So, you got into Berks College at Penn State, into their two year Associate's Degree program. I decided to stick with you and so I went to Penn State too."
"What was your major?" Ron asked.
"International diplomacy."
"Hey, awesome. I remember how much you wish you'd gotten to that mentor instead of what happened with Janitor Joe."
"Hah. Yeah… awesome…" Kim said, and somehow, Ron got the impression…
"Or not?" he asked.
"So, you know Ron, it's funny telling you this, since just yesterday this would be something you and I would both be saying amen to if someone in high school asked us our opinions… Anyway, we both came to Penn State. How do you think I did at it?"
"You kicked, Kim. I know it. You maintained awesome gradeage in school."
"I took it for granted just how hard college would be."
"That bad, huh?"
"Well, you know how I always said I was a basic average girl, and that things were no big?"
"Sure."
"The first part of that was definitely right. I really didn't anticipate what college would bring. I'm not sure if I believed my own hype after all or what, but in all that time I was helping you prepare for Penn State I kind of took for granted that I'd come, do what my teachers told me, and pass my classes. I kind of came to college expecting I knew the answers in a way that I, well, didn't.
"The truth is, I was just a high school girl myself. I was coming to college figuring as if I'd just do it, assuming I knew how to do it. It's funny, though, but I don't think I was the only person who assumed I'd know how to make smart choices in life. Somehow I figured that if you were struggling in school or trying to figure out what career you wanted that I'd be able to help advise you. I think even my folks somehow had bought into how prepared I thought I was for everything.
"But the truth is I had no more experience with college or any of those things than any other high schooler like us. And just like any of them, I wasn't already experienced in this stuff to be assuming I'd know exactly how to deal."
"Are you saying you were suddenly tanking at your classes, Kim?"
"I worked my ass off… sorry, it's been a couple years since I've watched my language down to high school PC levels. But everything was just overwhelming and hard to figure out.
"It was stupid to take 18 credits my first semester and not realize what a challenge that would be or how little time to myself I'd have for anything social or anything to de-stress.
"It was a struggle not to be long-winded in my papers. One time I was asked for 15 pages and I kept talking for 27, and then was doing all-nighters to squeeze out half-baked papers for the other classes.
"I had a foreign language requirement, and I thought I'd be so smart to take a new language instead of taking more Latin and building off something I'd already learned some of. There I figured I knew well enough that I had to be right to decide not to continue with Latin.
"Granted, I wouldn't necessarily have been happy with Latin either, but trying to learn a brand new language at college age when I was just so swamped with other stuff that I couldn't focus on it other than cramming the vocabulary one week and losing it the next… wasn't exactly adding a trivial amount of head-scratching to my day.
"Basically, it wasn't just 'Oh, Kim knows what she's doing.' I acted like I'd be coming to college to do, not learn, as if I'd already learned. That was painful."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa… okay, take a breather, Kim." Ron looked at Kim, whose face had scrunched up as old tears seemed to have come to her eyes and her voice had been going more and more shrill. He'd only finally gotten a chance to try to dispel the Kimness. Or was this Kimness? For the first time about something other than who he was dating, Ron Stoppable was at sea. He didn't remember Kim ever looking this put-upon. "Um, so you were having a tough time… okay, noted… but just forgive the questions for a moment since I totally don't know, you know? Okay, so, was nobody else taking 18 credits?"
"Oh yeah, there were like two I knew in one of my classes. But they were smarter than me, or better than me, or weren't doing it at the same time they were shooting themselves in the foot with other things like trying to learn Chinese and all the thousands of characters in the writing system when they had no experience with that level of workload yet."
"And… the rest?"
"Oh, I could keep going, Ron. I kept trying to get everything I wanted to say down in a smaller length but my papers were as much a chore for the teachers as they were for me. And basically, I worked my butt off for that semester and managed to pull two As, three Cs, and fail Chinese 101."
"Wow. Um, wow. Seriously Kim, forget that I'm hearing this all for the first time and need to know more and come here. You seriously need a Best Friend hug if nothing else."
~*~*KP*~*~
"So, college was tough, huh?" Ron tried to console as he patted Kim's back. He thought he felt tear trails join his cheek from where Kim's face was pressed into his shoulder. "But hey, hey now… you got through it, didn't you? Why the tears now?"
"I guess," Kim snatched a tissue from Ron's tray and swiped it at her eyes, "I guess remembering a time that sucked… also sucks."
"Okay, so, first semester, um, if this all was going on I had to have been helping you out, right? Anything like a little pick me up waiting for you in your dorm after a long hard day at the stone quarry? I mean… I don't know if I dropped the ball, but I hope I was there to help."
"Early on, it's not like you didn't try. But you weren't having it easy either, Ron. Can I finish describing my thing before I go to yours?"
"There's more? But sure, KP, I'm here for you."
"Before I forget… international diplomacy was kind of a bust. While I'd been interested in the topic… I wasn't the best fit."
"That's quitter talk, KP."
"No listen to me. I was interested. And you know, I wasn't like aggressive or something. I only fought the bad guys physically when it had been called for, like duking it out with Drakken's goons to get back something he stole, stuff like that.
"But… that had been a part of my life for so long that the snark came to me so naturally in conversations… and it's completely counter to diplomacy. I remember one of the girls in my dorm hall was hoping to go into education and she was watching her mouth and didn't let herself say words like 'ass' like you've, um, noticed I do. She told me it was because if she got used to saying those words without thinking about it, it would be hard to not let 'er rip in front of a classroom of kids one day. She avoided it so that it wouldn't be a habit for her later."
"Makes sense," Ron said, trying not to think about hugging his former girlfriend.
"Anyway, so the snark wasn't really helping me win any diplomatic points. I didn't change my major right away, though… I'm talking about something that I kept trying to insist would be okay."
"Don't other martial artists also have aggression like that, though?" Ron asked.
"Some people might be sparring and using battle as stress relief, Ron, but I had fights with opponents who meant harm to me and I would get into trash talks with them. Anyway, I've kept sitting there, working at getting better at the diplomacy instead of wanting to make my 'hip teen quips' as one teacher said. I'm wondering if I should go into administration of justice instead, though. Be something like a cop. I never got so aggressive… well other than once… to not apprehend the crooks even if I did trash talk. But I really have wanted to do international diplomacy for so long that here I am four semesters in still dealing with people who are rolling their eyes at me in my classes."
"Have I been any help with you about this?"
"You've tried to, but you think I'm giving myself a mental block over this and that after this many semesters I'm starting to try to rationalize backing out. You have told me recently that I was doing quitter talk. Anyway, I haven't changed major yet."
~*~*KP*~*~
"Anyway, so, now what was happening with you…" Kim began.
"Knock knock," Bonnie said as she stepped in. "I called them. That… was hard."
"Are they coming?" Ron asked, and his voice almost sounded wondering in its tone.
"Oh yeah, they're coming. They were going to run over right away but I managed to tell them a little of the situation before they hung up on me – they barely heard me through the abandoned phone receiver and came back asking what I'd said that was so important." Bonnie replied, smiling slightly at what their speed of response suggested about how much his parents cared.
"So, how did they take it?" Kim asked. She started to pull away from Ron's arms but Bonnie's hand on her shoulder stayed her.
"Well, Kim, how well do you expect a phone conversation to go when it starts, 'Bonnie? Oh, Bonnie! So, are congratulations in order?' And you can tell she has this huge grin while she's saying it. I submit that as the definition for your little awk-weird neologism."
What Ron was thinking, even as he winced at what his mother had brought up, was that Bonnie did a scarily good impression of his mother. What he said was, "Uh, neologism?"
Shoulders sagged again and Bonnie muttered, "Newly invented word."
"That's rough, Bonnie," Kim said, shocked silent a moment. "Was that the worst of it, though? The unfortunate beginning?"
"The rest of it was pretty much 'Oh my God!', 'Dean, get our coats!', and a click."
Kim looked between Bonnie and Ron. "So, as much as I hate to admit it, maybe we should pick up this story after they see you, Ron."
Ron was about to sigh in disappointment when Bonnie saved him. "They're two cities away, Kim. Though they might be burning rubber."
"Actuarial dinner?" Kim asked.
"Yup."
~*~*KP*~*~
"Yeah, what was I doing Kim?"
"Feel free to chime in here, Bonnie."
"I will, but I want to let you finish explaining before I add to what you've said. Ron's not going to be the most patient of people."
"Hey!" Ron cried. Then he grumbled. "I kind of hoped I got better about that."
"You did, a lot. But you are who you are, Ron." Bonnie replied.
"So," Kim said, "I spent so long completely submerged in dealing with everything that you and I were really not seeing each other that often. By the time I got some breathing room, get my head above water, at the end of the first semester, with my two A's and one F and tons of C's, is when I started grasping that you were struggling too. You'd been working so much to figure out your stuff too that both of us had kind of been pushing off or disregarding much in the way of personal time together.
"It turned out that Bonnie had also chosen to go to Penn State, and you both had a class together, ENGL 15. Because I wasn't really there to talk to you but you were still trying to cope with what you were doing, you ended up talking to Bonnie where you got to vent about your classes and she got to vent about hers."
"What is ENGL 15?"
"Um, 'Rhetoric and Composition' I think it was."
"O-okay? Anyway, um… I thought you said there wasn't any cheating here."
"You weren't cheating. You asked about an event before, Ron. Basically you started talking to Bonnie for some ears to vent to one night when you tried calling me and I was just super-busy… how did I describe this before?"
"You said you snapped at me when I needed some support?" Ron said, showing he still had his marvelous ability to recall Kim's words.
"Yeah, there was one time when you needed to vent, and I was so busy that I was basically like 'I need to talk to you later Ron' – I don't think it really occurred to either of us how we'd not talked that much recently at the time. It was just considered a no big, like if I called you while you were asleep and ended up apologizing and saying good night or something."
"And I was talking with Bonnie and being friendly with Bonnie and she helped because I got to vent to her?"
"Basically. Anyway, so we were both so busy that I was using the people around me like my fellow students or people in the dorm hall as emotional support for the moment and you were using Bonnie and the people around you…"
"So how did we get here, though? We didn't start considering ourselves to not be a couple, did we?"
"No, we considered each other boyfriend and girlfriend, but it wasn't often we were spending time. We both kind of realized that when we managed to tread water for a minute after our first semester."
"No doubt." Ron nodded.
"Anyway, Bonnie'd had a tough time too, and had really mellowed by the time she was talking to you. The Queen Bee had a meltdown something like the one you and I did. For my second semester, I promised myself not to take so many credits again, and to be better prepared for what I was getting myself into. You had some more emotional support from me too and you were feeling more ready for your second semester knowing how tough this was. Right around this time is when you signed up for the understudy at Chez Couteaux.
"During our second semester, we were still pretty overwhelmed. Bonnie and both of us had all become friends and we tried to decompress and have meals together, the three of us, sometimes. But we didn't see each other that often, and there are a few times some project deadline had me bailing on a lunch or dinner so that it ended up being just you two… that as we were nearing the end of the second semester we honestly both just kind of considered each other as friends."
"Just like that? Ron said in amazement.
"To give you an idea, near the end of the second semester there was one lunch meeting I thought I might make but you asked me if it was okay if the next one you and Bonnie had was actually a date-type thing. And it's weird. I wasn't even jealing. Right after you asked me you were surprised to realize you could ask that not viewing it as a big deal, and that I didn't think it was a big deal either. We realized that the college taskmaster had kind of toned us down into friends. It was sort of like what would've happened to us over time if the Diablo thing and Eric hadn't happened – you just grew closer and then fell into it."
"By the time the second semester was over and I had some breathing room again, we were friends, you were in a new relationship with Bonnie, and I started looking for someone to spend time with. It was weird, suddenly I was accepting guys expressing interest in me instead of saying I was taken to put guys off. And you were supportive… you told me yourself how it was interesting that after Graduation you were feeling like you wanted to support me more than you felt jealousy. One day we were talking recently and you said that us not being a couple any more isn't something you 'noticed' happen like you thought you would when we were graduating high school. It happened when you didn't notice it happening."
~*~*KP*~*~
"RON!" Dana Stoppable cried, rushing into the room, Dean huffing but hot on her tail.
continuerai
~*~*KP*~*~
Author's Notes: Although I may or may not have done well storytelling my idea of something that could realistically tear apart Kim and Ron's relationship while keeping them friends, I am really pleased at the idea itself I came up with for how they might change relationship back to being just friends. I'd be interested in feedback, though – did this seem credible enough that it bothered you as being all too possible if you were a big Kim and Ron fan? Or did it fall flat? Let me know in a review!
This chapter got a little on the denser side, because I did want to have this be Kim's chapter to explain what happened, but I wanted little details to indicate the relationships and interactions other than walls of dialogue. I actually was feeling it was getting long enough that I almost split it about three-fourths of the way through with the rest saved to start the next chapter, but it would invalidate the chapter's title since she wasn't done with exactly what had happened, and it would've taken away valuable space from the story material intended for next chapter.
Anyway, more than one reviewer noted that Kim didn't seem to say much to explain the breakup in the previous chapter and felt it was 'too quick.' The intention had been for Kim to try to say a really quick version of the overall events before she wades in deeper – I had no intention of her leaving it at that piddly paragraph.
A big thank you to all the people who are liking this story. If you're not liking it, I definitely want to hear what you don't like from you so I can continue to work on making myself a better writer. I reply to all reviews, and I learn from any constructive commentary. Thanks.
Thanks: Pinky Jo Curlytail helped me locate some viable culinary school information that helped me work out the plot machinations I'd been hoping for, while remaining ignorant of my grand evil plans. waveform long ago told me he didn't mind me appropriating the names 'Dean' and 'Dana' for the parents Stoppable.