Disclaimer: Still don't own Kim Possible!

Chapter Three: Me, Myself, and That Giant Elephant

"I can't tell ya how sorry I am for all this, KP."

That had been Ron Stoppable's mantra for several days as Kim rested in Middleton Hospital. He was, of course, referring to not being able to protect his girlfriend from Shego.

In fact, the extent of Kim's injuries were enough to even make Bonnie come and visit at one point. A broken leg, arm, and a few rips. Not to mention that her lung had been punctured by one of those ribs. In all, it would probably be several more weeks before Kim got out of this hospital bed.

Despite all that, Kim was not mad at Ron not being on the ball. Nor was she mad at the boy for taking off by himself. No, it was the sheer media circus her hospital stay had caused and the fact that Ron was given the credit for taking down Shego. The woman hadn't even broken out of prison yet! The press was saying that Ron must have scared her so much after hurting his girlfriend that the pale woman was afraid to face him.

Imagine; Shego being afraid!

No, Kim was not angry with her boyfriend and thus endured all of his doting and apologizing with grace. It wasn't his fault the media jumped to the wrong conclusion. Not that he had tried to correct it, though...of course, he might not even remember what had happened during the fight. He was only concerned with what happened afterwards. Something changed in him that day, Kim noted.

Ron was always out on missions now, but the hero wasn't worried. So long as Shego stayed in prison for whatever reason Ron could handle himself alone. Hell, with all this live-fire experience, the blond could probably handle everything alone from now on.

'...best not to think about that one for sanity's sake.'

And so, the days passed much like this. Kim's bones were broken and tired, so the rest was welcome. The lack of missions did make the redhead go a little stir-crazy, though. Most of the days were spent leafing through college books or internet courses. The entire semester was a wash, obviously, but she could at least keep up with her studies. It was only when she had hit the end of a particularly arduous applied physics book one day that Kim flipped on the television. She hadn't touched the thing in so long the teen was looking forward to seeing some good, old-fashioned tabloids.

Unfortunately, the current crop of stories wouldn't do much to help her condition.

"...And once again, Team Stoppable pulls through. Monty Fiske, otherwise known as Monkey Fist, was latest in a long line of arrests." The Middleton News was blaring its latest garbage, but for once Kim wasn't in the mood to make her usual snide comments.

Team Stoppable? What the hell was that? The heart monitors rose with Kim's labored breathing as Ron's face popped up in a cheesy powerpoint effect behind the news anchor along with a waving American Flag in the background. Was this actually for real?

Too bad for Kim the montage of horror wasn't finished yet. Soon, Ron's face was replaced by her own with a badly-imposed ice pack sitting on her head. "Ron Stoppable's girlfriend, former hero Kim Possible, is still recuperating from her injuries sustained while trying to protect her boyfriend from the supervillain Shego. Our insider says that the girl is "on the mend" and frequently enjoys the company of her boyfriend in the hospital. Now, on to sports."

Kim pressed the "off" button on her TV remote with a fair bit of disgust. Former hero? Trying to protect?

"What the hell is this shit?!" Normally not one to curse aloud, or at least where others could hear her, Kim was beyond caring. She was furious, livid, and a million other adjectives that in no way could describe what she was feeling at the moment.

How dare they rename the team! It was her team, she had created it! Unable to do anything other tense her fists until they shook, Kim tried to calm down. She tried to remind herself that it was just a name, tried to remind herself that she hadn't been out of this damned bed in over a month. Of course the idiot television people wouldn't report the correct things if she wasn't out there reminding them.

Well, it was time to do something about that, then! Her leg was already in a cast along with her arm, so it'd probably be a few more weeks before the damn casts would come off and the doctors get off her back. Didn't mean she couldn't go back home, though. Finding the little nurse's button, Kim was determined to get that process started ASAP.

But, something made her pause right as her thumb hovered over the button.

She was enjoying the time off. The thought hit the hero like a ton of bricks. So what if she was, though? That didn't make her a bad person! All that work, all those responsibilities; who needed them? As the world had proven, it wouldn't end if Kim Possible took some time off.

'Yeah,' Kim thought, 'Ron's out there. He can pick up the slack.' Yup, people were still being saved and bad guys punished. Actually, her boyfriend was doing a better job of it than she ever had. He didn't even need rides anymore. Mystical Monkey flying cut down on air time.

So, if that was the case, why did Kim still want to beat the living hell out of him? 'How dare he steal the thunder of Kim Possible!' part of the girl's mind was screaming. It was that little corner of Kim's heart that she had resolved herself long ago to not listen to. Nothing good ever came from it. Now, though, it was starting to ring true.

"It's not Ron's fault," Kim reminded herself. She felt the need to actively debate with this little bad seed on this issue, though the reason why this particular line of thought was defense-worthy defied explanation. "Why should I care how the world gets saved so long as it gets saved?" There, that was a good point.

Kim could almost hear her brain making a disapproving click of the tongue. 'You care. If you didn't, why would you even be thinking about it?'

Touche'.

Her brain had a point: If the thought of being out of the limelight didn't bother Kim very much, why was she thinking about it? "Treasonous brain," the girl mumbled. "Okay, so I care a bit. It was...kinda nice having people recognize me. It made it easier to help them."

'Bullshit. You liked all the favors they would do for you. You liked the designer hairstyles, the free air travel, the exotic locations, being so famous you could act like you honestly didn't care, the gaggles of people asking for your autograph, and all the merchandising money.'

"Fringe benefits!" Kim shot back. "The only reason I got all those things is because those people were nice already, not because I saved them. I didn't even see a cent of that advertising money, either! It all went to charity or the website." At least, most of it had. College tuition wasn't cheap, after all.

Right?

'Yeah, sure. Just the simple fact that you never listen to this part of yourself, and yet, here I am, proves that this is close to the real you.' Kim's mind bickered back. 'You've even let yourself go a few times, enjoyed the freedom of it! Showing up all those little kids at soccer, kicking Shego into that signal tower-'

"That was an accident!"

'Okay, you say it was an accident? What about all the other times you two have actively tried to kill each other? She tried to slice you up with a giant blender, you left her and Drakken to freeze to death under a polar ice cap, she let you drop hundreds of feet up from a blimp, you set said blimp on a collision-course for the ocean...you really have a fascination with drowning Shego, don't you?'

Kim let out some sort of primordial growl as she gripped the steal railing of her hospital bed. She did not have a fascination with anything Shego! She wasn't even trying to kill the other woman! "If I were trying to kill Shego, she'd have been cut in half with laser lipstick or something a long time ago," the bed-ridden girl countered. Finally, the voice didn't have an answer.

It was at that point in the one-sided conversation that the nurse lingering outside finally decided to just come in. The poor woman had been standing outside for a good ten minutes, listening to Kim Possible rant to herself. Of course, she wouldn't say a word about it. Not when the girl had a boyfriend like Ron Stoppable.

The checkup was relatively standard with only a few questions from Kim about how she was healing. Apparently the worst breaks were mending and the minor things were just about ready to be checked off. It would still be a few more weeks on the casts, though.

For the first time in a few weeks, Kim got to put her feet under her. Against the nurse's better judgment, the teen hero had practically leaped out of bed when she heard her ribs were healed. One foot in front of the other, the girl walked a few laps around her room. This was, by far, the longest Kim had gone without some form of exercise so her muscles weren't doing very much for her.

"I can check myself out, right?" With those simple words, the redhead soon found herself on the fast-track to freedom. Kim waited in her room, filling out paperwork, until her mother got off her shift.

They rode him together with Ann asking all kinds of annoying questions about Ron and how he was doing. Apparently, not even the senior Possibles were immune to the starshine coming off of the superhero. Personally, Kim wondered if all the reporters always asking her parents about Ron's early life got to their heads. Not that Kim ever had people wanting to write books about her. Oh no.

"Oh, I called Ron for you." Isn't she helpful? "He'll be at the house when we get home."

The redhead swallowed a snide comment that was threatening to bubble its way up. Taking a deep breath, Kim reminded herself that she hated people who were mean for the sake of being mean. It made her skin crawl. Usually. When it wasn't her doing the snipping.

Honestly, Kim didn't want to see her boyfriend today. First day out of the hospital and she would probably be swamped by reporters camped-out in her yard. Sure enough, there were a few reporters on the scene that swamped the car the moment Kim stepped outside.

"Come on, let me get my wheelchair," Kim groaned as a camera was thrust into her face. When the device didn't immediately get retracted, Kim ripped it out of the reporter's hand.

More flashes went off and people started to crowd the small vehicle even more. The small hero's foot was almost caught between the door and the car, but Kim yanked it up at the last second. With her good foot, she kicked the door back open, knocking down a reporter and setting off another flurry of photography.

The camera that had started everything was tossed up into the air as Kim pulled herself up with her only free hand. Even though it hurt like hell to stand on her broken leg, the redhead powered through the pain and hobbled up the walkway to her house with a mob of people surrounding her. The paparazzi knew better than to try and push their way into someone's house so they stayed put on the lawn when the girl retreated inside. After all, they had all the news they needed and Ann Possible was still trying to politely deal with their peers. She'd be good for an interview.

"Argh!" Such was the universal grunt of frustration and anger Kim Possible uttered once she was relatively safe from the storm outside. Predictably, Ron was sitting in the living room watching television, but he jumped up when he heard his girlfriend.

"KP! You're finally back!" He was fairly happy despite the look of utter annoyance on his friend's face. "What's up? Did you let the guys outside bug you?"

Amazed at the very question, it took Kim a few moments to recover. When she did, her entire face transformed into a visage of near rage. "Ron! Did you know those...people were out there?!"

Now, if there were a smart man in this very situation, he would have probably ran to the window, looked out, and seemed surprised. Probably say something along the lines of how they hadn't been out there when he came over and then lead Kim over to the sofa to ask how she was. This would end the entire situation and he'd probably get some makeout time that they had missed over the weeks.

Ron Stoppable was never a smart man.

"Oh, the journalists? Yeah, they followed me over." Said just as if Ron were spouting out a random answer in class, the boy had no idea how much he just fucked himself over.

They just followed him over...just... "Do you have any idea how annoying it is to be followed around by people like that?!" Kim's bad side was in rare form today and she was backing up Ron with every step forward she took. "I almost had my leg smashed in the car door! You don't even notice them, do you!? You don't even care!"

At this point, Ann had finally made her way back inside. Unfortunately, Kim's yelling had caught the paparazzi interest and they were crowding around the door, snapping away.

The flashes didn't even bother Kim as the girl was on a roll. All of the anger and frustration that had been building for months seemingly erupted on a worldwide stage. "You don't get it, do you? The world revolves around Ron Stoppable! Everyone else is just an accessory! Just some little babble that you've picked up in your life. You're loving it, aren't you?"

"W-what?" Ron was completely blindsided by the hostility and he looked helplessly from Kim to the cameras outside who were now filming the train wreck in real time. "Can't we do this inside?" the boy whimpered. Ann, ever the trooper, moved to close the door but Kim defiantly held it open.

"No, Ron, we can't. You're Mr. Global now so we can't keep your public waiting," she hissed. "What's wrong? Don't want them to know there's trouble in paradise? Would that hurt your merchandise sales? Would it jade your little fans?" The teen was on a roll. "Oh, wait! That's right, you don't even notice them. Completely oblivious."

Needless to say, the people outside went nuts. All kinds of questions were being shouted while cameras rolled and flashed into the house. Ron, stunned into silence, could only look like a deer caught in the headlights.

Kim took that window to sneer at the reporters and stomp up to her room. It was a bit hard to get up to her loft, but the teen managed and she loudly pulled up the stairs and left the fallout to her boyfriend and mother.

The girl took a deep breath and flopped onto her bed. She listened to the mayhem outside and was happy to be out of that storm. Even though Kim realized she was being harsh the teen couldn't find enough care in her entire body. It was Ron's fault that she was mad. He just never thought about anything! Was that too much to ask?

"He can sit down there and simmer," Kim told herself. She was back at home and on the fast track to recovery. Nothing could possibly go wrong. This entire thing would probably blow over in a few days and they'd both apologize and things would be right in the world. As she closed her eyes for a nap, only one thing filtered through her mind before sleep overtook her.

'Poor naive me. This is just beginning...'