Standard Disclaimer : Disney owns Kim Possible, all it's characters, locations and other such stuff.
Kim Possible: In Loving Memory - Of Echoes and Answers
Kim's pair of classes passed without further occurrence, or anything of interest, and she and Ron parted ways as he went on to another class and she to meet Monique. She had been looking forward to the small shopping trip since she had mentioned it to her parents that morning. It was small events like these that allowed her to be ok with the truth that she had far more male influences in her life then female. Per their custom Monique was indeed waiting for Kim at the food court when finally she arrived. Despite the fact that Monique had forgone college in lieu of management training at Club Banana, and thus was herself often quite busy, the pair still did their best to meet at least every few weeks.
Monique offered up a genuine look of happiness as Kim approached and the pair hugged
"Girl I cannot tell you how much I've been looking forward to this. Finally I get to be the one hassling the sales clerks and screwing up all the clothes that were just folded."
"Management training going rough?"
"It's not the training Kim, it's the people. Yeah it was bad when I was just a sales clerk but now I'm going to be responsible for an entire store so I have to be doubly kissing their butts cause every sale lost is on my head."
Kim gave a sympathetic nod
"Makes me kind of glad I quit that job."
Monique gave a small smirk
"Oh is that what your telling people now?"
"Hey, I quit right before she fired me, you were there."
Monique simply laughed
"Job didn't really suit you anyway Kim. You needed something that was more flexible. Speaking of…what are you doing now?"
Kim shrugged
"Honestly? Not much. I take small package delivery jobs sometimes when I'm on missions but other then that it's been mostly school and fighting bad guys."
"At least we're both doing something we love Kim."
Kim nodded somewhat indifferently and the pair began to walk their accustomed path through the mall's various stores. The pair made friendly small talk and generally joked around as each tried on various outfits from various stores, never really buying just enjoying the experience, until inevitably ending up at Club Banana. Thanks to Monique's store discount they were able to pick a large number of outfits that both felt would serve Monique well on any future date, a large number that it turned out came at an equally large price, even with the discount. When neither woman made any indication of moving toward payment the cashier repeated the total, with a more audible tone of impatience
Monique turned to Kim questioningly
"Well, pay the lady Kim."
Kim looked slightly taken back
"Why would I pay?"
"Because that was the deal."
"What are you talking about?"
"Oh no, you are not getting out your end."
"Monique I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Your going to stand there and pretend you don't remember just to get out of paying? That's cold Kim."
Kim shook her head
"I'm not pretending anything. I never promised to pay for today's shopping trip."
Monique's tone took on a hint of slight anger.
"You came to me last week and begged to borrow some money for some big to-do that you didn't want to talk about and agreed to pay me back by covering our next shopping trip."
"Monique I haven't seen you since we had coffee at that new coffee place"
"You came into my store and asked for me."
When Kim stilled showed no sign of either acknowledgement of the event nor indication that she was indeed going to pay Monique let out an annoyed grunt and slammed her card down on to the countertop.
"You know what Kim? If you can't afford it, fine I get that, but lying to get out of it? I thought you had more respect for me then that."
...
The drive back to her house had been done in a mix of confusion and anger. The women had parted on less then friendly terms and it had left Kim in a less then pleasant mood. She passed through her kitchen, providing her questioning parents with the clear statement that she didn't want to talk about it, and made her way to her room, her first action to pull the kimmunicator out of it's drawer and contact Wade who, ever unsurprisingly, answered near instantaneously.
"Hey Kim, I was…"
"Camille Leon"
Wade, having obviously expected something closer to a greeting gave a somewhat confused reply.
"Uhhh, what about her Kim?"
"When did she escape?"
Wade taped a few keys on his keyboard before replying.
"She hasn't Kim. Last security logs say she's still in her cell at the prison."
"Are you sure Wade?"
It was the stress of the statement that caused Wade to tap more keys and furrow his brow slightly, as if searching for something. His posture relaxed shortly after.
"I'm looking at a live feed from the internal security cameras right now Kim. She is definitely sitting in her cell. Wow, that is a lot of mirrors."
Kim groaned.
"How about a Kim clone? Maybe Drakken got his machine working again or we missed one or…"
"Kim calm down. Now what's wrong?"
Kim released a loud sigh.
"Monique and I had a huge fight because she says I came to her last week and borrowed some money and agreed to pay for our shopping today as payback"
"Sooo…."
"So I haven't seen Monique in probably 2 weeks so either she's crazy or there's another me running around."
"Well no ones made any unusual Kim Possible sightings that I know of but I'll look into it, I promise. In the meanwhile I managed to track down a small power spike in the city grid to one of Drakken's old lairs."
The news at least served to give Kim a new focus.
"They're hiding out in a place we know about?"
Wade simply shrugged
"Hard to say, the power surge wasn't nearly as big as the kind Drakken usually causes, so it might just be a coincidence, but I thought you'd like to go take a look just in case. You want me to have someone pick up Ron?"
Kim shook her head
"No, he's working late at Smarty Mart tonight. I should be able to handle it by myself"
"Even after how you said Shego acted before?"
The briefest of memories flashed across Kim's mind, the image of a raging Shego demanding she fight.
"I'll have to hope she's calmed down…but be ready to call GJ if you don't hear from me after 2 hours."
Wade nodded and the kimmunicator's screen went dark. Even if the mission turned out to be a waste of time it would give her an excuse to focus on something else for a short time, rather then continuing to dwell on a stupid fight she should never have even had.
...
As Kim made her was through the vent system, something that took quite a lot of effort as it was a tight fit, she decided to try and recall just when she had last been to this particular lair. It hadn't been the weather ionizer, the robotic death squirrels has been Montana, and she knew that the talent show trap had been in a much roomier base. She briefly wondered what it said about her that all those times were beginning to so blend together that she couldn't easily identify the last time she had been to a given lair. That was sad and a little scary she decided.
A shaft of light spilling up through a grating let Kim know that the place was at least occupied and as she made her way to it she could already hear the familiar muttering of Drakken. She carefully lifted up the grating cover and peaked her head through the opening, the mutterings confirmed by the presence of Drakken, hunched over a desk with what appeared to be a soldering iron, still mumbling to himself. Kim dropped as silently as she could to the floor and took a small lipstick shaped device from her pocket. Taking careful aim she uncapped the item and pressed the small button on it's surface, a large pink wad not unlike chewed gum flying from the device and wrapping itself easily around Drakken's entire body.
Drakken gave a surprised yell before falling over sidewise off of his chair, the soldering iron he had been holding falling to the floor under the table. He did his best to wriggle around to his attacker and gave a somehow surprised yet familiar utterance.
"Kim Possible!"
Kim smiled pleasantly.
"You can't really be that surprised Drakken."
Drakken grunted and managed to sit up, still heavily bound by the full body covering of pink.
"Shego! Kim Possible is…."
Drakken stopped as if recalling something and groaned, once again muttering to himself.
"Of all the times…"
Kim look at him quizzically.
"Drakken, where's Shego?"
Drakken did his best to look menacing
"Even now she's working her way to you and when you least expect it…"
Kim cut him off with nothing buy a glare and he grumbled.
"Fine. She took off, said she had to get away from here."
"Where did she go?"
"I'll never tell!"
"You don't know do you?"
"What? Of course I know. Shego is my employee she wouldn't leave without telling me where she was going. We're like a family…"
Drakken stopped, seemingly losing interest in keeping up the charade.
"No. But she'll be back. once she hears I'm in jail she'll come back to break me out and then, oh yes then I'll have my revenge Kim Possible."
Kim rolled her eyes and pulled out her Kimmunicator.
"Wade, I caught Drakken but Shego isn't here. It seems like she's already taken off somewhere else."
"I'll have some local authorities at your location soon Kim."
"Thank Wade. I'm going to take a quick look around and see if I can find some sort of clue as to where Shego is heading."
"Be careful Kim, you don't know what sort of traps Drakken might still have set up."
As it turned out none seemed to be the correct answer. She had made her way through several hallways and encountered nothing but a lot of empty rooms. She knew Shego had to have a personal room somewhere and if anywhere would hold a clue to where Shego had fled that would be it. Several doors later she had begun to wonder just how large a lair this was when finally she reached the last door in the last hallway she could find. She opened the door and in true last place you look fashion it was indeed clearly Shego's room. Done in a green motif similar to her signature outfit the room was sparse but littered with enough touches to make it clear that someone had been there recently.
Kim surveyed the room carefully, trying see Shego through the room itself. A large bed lay in the center of the room, a small beside table with a clearly well beaten alarm clock beside it. Clothes were strewn casually about, far more then Kim had ever imagined Shego owning, though she had to admit that most of them were things see could even see herself wearing, if they weren't so…green. Kim strolled idly over to a nearby dresser that has a single framed photo resting on top of it. As if in confirmation to Shego's narcissistic nature the photo showed only Shego, though she was in more common clothing and surprisingly she seemed happy, displaying a smile that Kim could not recall ever seeing on the woman's face. As she unconsciously picked up the photo and stared at it she again felt it, the something that was not, the echo of the nothing that she couldn't describe. She dropped the photo reflexively but it did not assuage the feeling. Kim gritted her teeth and continued her search, she would not let whatever this was distract her. A further check through the dresser's drawers, though the room's small closet and other small nooks and crannies in the room produced no viable lead, instead it seemed only to strengthen the strangeness until the point that Kim could stand it no longer and bolted from the room, the feeling fading the farther away she got, till she reached the end of the hallway at only stared at the doorway of the room, her hand unconsciously rubbing across the still healing scratch she had gotten from her last encounter with Shego.
...
By the time she returned home, having informed Wade of her lack of any leads but little else, she was worn but looking forward to her date night with Ron. An evening of stability, of normalcy, was just what she needed to set herself straight she decided. It was unfortunate that it was not for another night but if she crawled into bed just right then it would be that much closer she convinced herself. A quick shower and change of clothes was all it took for her to slip beneath her bed's sheets and soon enough she was out.
She awoke the next morning with a mixture of fear and confusion. Her dreams hadn't been a coherent narrative, more a rapid series of images with seemingly little clarity or context to them. She was sneaking through the night, she was slipping through a half open window, driving to a place she couldn't recall and never reached. As every second of the new morning passed she found it harder and harder to recall what the exact dream had been, but the feelings, of being pulled, of sadness, of fear, stayed with her. Part of her realized that something was happening, something that she couldn't really explain but something she should none the less talk to someone about, and yet she couldn't bring herself to say anything to anyone, not without some clearer understanding of just what it was. Better to put it out of her mind for the time being she decided, she had her date tonight she reasoned and nothing should distract from that. It wasn't the smartest of choices and she knew it but she'd worry on it later.
The day passed with little of interest happening, Wade had found neither Shego nor any trace of a duplicate Kim and despite her desire to reconcile with Monique she was still a little pridefully hurt that Monique hadn't believed her. That had left her with a day to fill with simple chores, homework and avoiding the growing oddness she kept feeling. She was rescued from the drudgery by the arrival of Ron who seemed every bit as excited for the simply night together as she had been.
Kim positioned herself on the couch next to him as he queued up the movie he had brought, happy to be just in the moment for once.
"Your going to love this Kim. An American Tail is a Don Bluth classic."
"I think I saw this when I was really little. Doesn't it have talking mice or something?"
"Yeah but it's really an allegory for the type of life immigrants around that time faced. I had to write a paper on it and everything."
Kim smirked playfully.
"Couldn't rap it?"
Ron shushed her as the movie began and Kim leaned into Ron as she followed along. The more she watched of it the more she recalled having seen it when she was much younger, though the fact that she remembered almost nothing about it allowed her to enjoy it as a new experience. It was a nice enough movie she decided as it played on, though some of the voice acting was poorly done in her opinion. Neither she nor Ron spoke much as the movie played, but as Fievel sang his duet about his family somewhere out there Ron elbowed her playfully.
"Softy"
Kim looked momentarily confused before Ron gestured to her eyes and she reached up to touch her face and found her fingers come back wet. Crying…she was crying. Why was she crying? She didn't feel sad. Yeah the song was a little heart tugging but she wasn't that moved by it, or anything in the movie really, and yet…tears…running down her face. Kim tried to force herself to stop but her body, seemingly of it's own accord, ignored her. She wanted to freak out, she wanted to know why it was happening, but she refused to let even this ruin her date night and so despite her common sense insisting otherwise she ignored the problem and just smiled tearfully back at Ron, hiding her newest worry. She'd tell him when she was sure…she would, she promised herself.
When the movie finally ended, happily as those types tended to do, Ron and Kim spent the remainder of their evening just enjoying each other's company, lightly chatting about their past several days. When finally Ron left, having been sent off with a light kiss on the cheek from Kim who had begged off his idea of doing to late night snack run, Kim sped up to her room as fast as her feet would carry her and dialed up Wade on her kimmunicator.
Though it was late Wade still greeted her with no trace of tiredness in his voice.
"Hi Kim. Date night with Ron go well?"
Kim wasn't surprised he knew by this point, there seemed to be little he didn't know.
"Fine Wade except…I think there is something wrong with me…"
Concern immediately snapped across his face and only intensified as she related the oddness of what she had been experiencing, the feelings she couldn't name, the dreams she couldn't understand and the tears she hadn't even known she was crying.
"Do you remember when it all started?"
Kim thought momentarily, her hand again involuntarily trailing to the now fading scar on her neck. This time however she noticed and pulled her hand away in surprise.
"Shego! It all started happening after I encountered Shego in the museum. She scratched my on the neck during the fight, she must have poisoned me or…or…something."
Wade nodded.
"Hold the kimmunicator in front of you so I can get a full body scan."
Kim held it unsteadily in front of her, a familiar green beam scanning over her entire body, She waited expectantly as Wade tapped through a series of keys.
"I'm not reading any kind of poison in your bloodstream, all your vitals are within normal range, your…hmmm…"
That he trailed off threw Kim into a minor panic
"What did you find Wade."
"Everything is showing up normal except there is a very faint energy remnant I don't recognize coming from your head. Hold on…"
Wade furiously typed and the a slightly darker beam shot out from the kimmunicator, focused this time solely on Kim's head. Wade frowned at this screens as the results displayed on them.
"You have…I don't really know how to describe it Kim. You have an absence in your hippocampus."
Wade flashed the imaging of Kim's brain on the screen as he continued to speak.
"Everything comes back normal except for only tiny little spot on your hippocampus where there's just nothing."
The image zoomed in on the area as Wade spoke, a small almost imperceptible spot of darkness growing larger amidst the sweeping red and green of the scanned image.
"What does it mean Wade?"
"I honestly don't know Kim. I don't think it's something dangerous, your brain activity is normal, your memories about…something are just being skipped over."
That was not comforting news in Kim's opinion.
"How did Shego do it?"
Wade shook his head
"I don't know that she did but since you said it started with her she's at least your best lead right now."
"Have you found her yet?"
"No. I've…."
A small red light started flashing just behind Wade who suddenly began typing madly and glancing across several monitors.
"Ok that was weirdly lucky. Someone in Munich just uploaded a photo from the local airport and the facial recognition software I've been running just picked Shego's face out of the crowd walking by in the background. The picture is only a few minutes old according to the time stamp so if it's her she won't be there long. I'm sending you the fastest ride I can find and I'll try and stall any outgoing flights for as long as I can."
Kim simply nodded. If it was Shego she was going to have some serious questions for the thief and if it wasn't…she didn't want to consider what she'd have to do if it wasn't.
...
As it turned out Wade's "ride" had been a jet pilot who had been only to happy to help the girl who had saved his son's class from an avalanche. It was thanks to that gratitude, and some questionable flight maneuvers as he had put it, that Kim managed to parachute into the outside grounds of the airport, her arrival covered thanks to a few key hacking from Wade, in only a short amount of time. True to his word Wade seemed to have also found a way to ground all the outgoing flights, as the voice over the airport's loudspeakers and the grumblings of most of the people present informed her. Trying to find a single person in such a huge airport would be something of a pain in normal circumstances, but it was made doubly so in this instance thanks to the money she had had to spend on a ticket that would allow her past security. At least thanks to the image Wade had provided she had a general idea of what gate area to look in. It did not lessen the frantic nature of her search however, and each time she scanned the crowed searching for the familiar face and found nothing it only drove her worry that much higher. She could perhaps then be called uncommonly lucky then for as she reached the last in her current series of gates she spotted just the familiar face she was searching for, calling out her target even as she knew she shouldn't.
"SHEGO!"
Her back was turned as Kim shouted, but her body visibly flinched at the name and her shoulders slumped in noticeable resignation. Kim strode intently through the crowd who muttered in various languages at the strange girl who had just loudly yelled passed by, till she stood directly in front of the sitting Shego.
Shego's first words were something of a personal indictment, surprising Kim.
"I can't even get away. You really have made me soft."
Kim chose to ignore the comment.
"What did you do Shego?"
Shego glanced up at Kim with same resigned look that she wore on her body.
"You'll have to be more specific Kimmie, I've done a lot in my life."
"You know what I mean Shego. To me. What did you do to me? Why is there a nothing in my head? What did you make me do?"
"I don't know what your talking about Princess."
"No Shego, no lies, no avoiding and no running. Why do I feel…wrong when I look at you? Like something isn't the way it's supposed to be? What did you use on me? Mind Control? More of Drakken's shampoo? Tell me what you did!"
Shego seemed to briefly consider the questions but instead of a reply she simply began to laugh, harder and longer then Kim had ever seen her do before. Kim considered slapping the woman but given the surrounding crowd and the ever presence of security she decided against it almost instantly, allowing instead Shego to laugh herself out.
Shego took several calming breathes before she finally spoke.
"You think I did something terrible to you, don't you? Maybe made you hurt someone or commit some crime and then found a way to cover it up so you wouldn't remember."
Kim nodded. That was in fact what she feared had happened. It would explain the images she had seen in her dreams at least.
Shego simply smirked.
"Maybe that's just what I did. Maybe I made you hurt someone so badly that they'll never recover…Or maybe I made you steal something more valuable then you can ever imagine…"
Shego dropped her smirk
"And you'll never know if I don't tell you. I can win, for now and forever, because I'll know and you won't and all you'll have is your worst imaginings of what the truth could be, so tell me Princess, why should I tell you?"
The anger Kim felt in that moment was rare for her, and her every impulse was to force the thief to revel the truth by whatever action she must…and yet even in that moment the echo of the nothing she could feel inside still rang and Kim knew that such actions might work but she wouldn't like the cost. And so she tried the only other tactic she could muster.
"Please."
Though only a single word it carried the full fear and desperation Kim felt.
Shego appeared unmoved by the word, choosing to remain silent as Kim, herself unable to muster any more resolve to even remain standing, slumped into empty chair beside her.
That could have been the end of it, Shego could have left in victory, her foe defeated without ever lifting a finger…but instead she started talking.
"We'd been secretly dating for over a month. I don't really know who made the first move but we've always sort of just been good together, even when we were fighting. We were happy together, you were happier then I'd ever seen you and you used to say the same thing about me. Even though we still had to fight, and sometimes you won and sometimes I escaped, we always knew that somewhere out there we were loving each other, even if we weren't together."
Kim looked over at Shego, disbelieving but listening at the disjointed narrative..
"But you didn't want to tell anyone. You were afraid, afraid of what your family would think, afraid of what the world would think. We fought about it sometimes but…not often. Sometimes you'd tell me of the lies you had to tell them, that you had a mission, that you were seeing a friend, that you were sick….That's what you had told them the last week we saw each other…our anniversary."
The memory of Wade somehow knowing Kim had been ill flashed momentarily in Kim's mind.
"You wouldn't tell me where you got the money but you bought us dinner from a rather exclusive restaurant that night and we ate it in my room at one of Drakken's old lairs. It was…a special night. But even then I could see it in your eyes, behind the happiness. You were sad, sad that you had to lie, sad that you were too scared to tell the truth, sad that you had to run and hide and sneak just to see me. You never told me any of that but I could see it every time I looked in your eyes."
Kim's words came softly, fearful of what she knew the answer was going to be.
"What did you do?"
"I did what a thief does Kim…I stole."
...
Shego grunted softly as she shimmied up the tree just outside Kim's window. It wasn't hard to make it to a branch near the window but the fact that the window was closed meant Shego had to carefully balance herself and her package on a very thin window ledge as she carefully worked the window's lock until she managed slide the window open and make her way inside. She stumbled briefly when her footing slid off a piece of clothing on the floor and her weight, still balanced on that foot as she was still passing through the window frame itself, caused her to tumble somewhat noisily to the ground. She remained frozen on the ground for a moment, sure that the noise would have awakened the sleeping figure in the bed but it only turned over before becoming still again.
Shego righted herself to her feet and grabbed the package off the outside windowsill, the weight in her hands equal to the weight that hung on her heart. She starred unmoving for a few moments, simply watching Kim as she slept, hesitant to take this final step. It had seemed like a good idea earlier in the evening, when she had been a bit more drunk, but now…but now she still had to go through with it. That was what love had done to her, it made her have to go through with it even when she didn't want too. She hadn't planned on saying anything before she acted but now couldn't see doing it without saying something, without explaining, even if Kim wouldn't hear her.
"I'm sorry for what I'm about to do Princess, but it's your fault really. You've made me want to better than I was and that means….and that means what I want doesn't matter when compared to what will make you happy."
She looked down at the small device in her hands.
"I stole this from some geek working on memory recovery and had Drakken rework it for me so it removes them instead. Only specific ones though, only ones related to me…to us. I don't think he ever even asked me what I wanted it for, he just did it. I'll owe him one bigger then he'll ever know…"
She was rambling and she knew it.
"I've seen how much it hurts you to have to lie to your parents about us, to lie to your sidekick and even nerd linger about why you can't go on a mission or where you have to go at night…I know even though you won't tell me. I know I told you already but I loved the party, even though it was just the two of us. It may have only been a month but I mean it when I say you are the best thing to ever happen to me ….and that I'm the worst thing to ever happen to you. I don't want you to have to live a life that forces you to choose being happy with me sometimes and being happy with them all the time….so this is my anniversary gift to you. I love you."
Shego fired and Kim was bathed in a soft light. Shego didn't know exactly how the thing was going to work but as she held it, and as the light pulsed softly, she wished with everything she had that Kim would forget their time together and just be happy, unconditionally and eternally, for once in her life. As the beam stopped and Shego made her way back to through the open window, she took one last look at Kim, whose sweat soaked hair now clung clearly to her face, and sighed in a way no one else would ever understand before dropping down to the ground below.
...
"When you showed up at the museum three days later I was spooked. I had told Drakken I didn't want to do anything that would attract your attention, I wasn't sure if it had worked and I didn't want to risk finding out it hadn't….but you didn't recognize me, at least not in that way. And then I was angry, stupidly angry. At you because you didn't remember and at myself because that's what I had wanted and it was what I got. I tried to use that anger to force you to fight me, to make me forget about you as anything other then that goody goody teen hero who always beat me, but you didn't, you just kept defending. In the end you weren't even worth all that anger, all that rage because it wasn't your fault, it was mine. So I decided to get away, from you and from the world that always brought us back together…because staying was too hard, too much work to pretend I still hated you….and here we are now."
Kim said nothing for a moment, gave no reaction what so ever to the story Shego had shared, she simply remained silent and motionless. Only after several uncomfortably silent moments had passes did she finally speak.
"You're lying."
Shego laughed, but it was one of resignation.
"That never happened. I would never lie to my family, to my friends like that and I would never, never, love you. Whatever you did, whatever you made me do, loving each other wasn't it. So what sick game was this Shego? Why are you making up this story?"
Shego's reply came softer then Kim could hear, her words unable to be made out.
"What?"
Shego turned to face Kim, choosing this time to clearly enunciate herself.
"I said I guess the stories are right…there is only one way to wake up a sleeping Princess."
Before Kim could react, before she could even ponder Shego's words, Shego grabbed her and kissed her, a kiss more passionate and heartfelt than she had ever received.
And the memories came flooding back. Of the time she had skipped class just to spend the afternoon shopping with Shego…Of the nights she spent in Shego's bed instead of her own, only to be rudely woken the next morning by Shego's alarm clock…and of the time she had begged Monique for the money to pay for a meal from an exclusive restaurant as part of her anniversary gift to Shego. All those memories came back, and yet a long with them also came every lie she had told to her family, to Ron and to Wade, the memory of every night she had slipped out at 1am just to go see Shego and the mad rush to make it home before her parents discovered her absence…it came back with one kiss.
Shego released Kim from the kiss and simply looked at her, the weight of what she had done now lifted from her own heart replaced once more with the weight of what it meant, and waited. And Kim…who had faced down towering aliens from the stars, robot devastation and even death itself, did only one thing as response. She ran, a look of disgust on her face as she fled.
.