SO...I have no real way to explain away the intensely long wait on this one. I had a lot of stuff going on for a while and then when I finally looked at it again, I had lost my story completely. Now though, I have some stuff planned for you guys. I think you'll like it and I want to thank you all so much for sticking with my stories, this one especially. I'm very pleased with it.
I hope you enjoy and I hope you like the rest to come.
I can see as my eyes blur when his hand turns the page. I can no longer decipher what he's saying. It's a blur of sound, a grey bubble that I can't be bothered to get out of. I feel my mind slow and go static.
Her arms ghost around my waist. Her exhale pricks at the nape of my neck. My breathing slows but my heart races. My toes have gone numb. My fingers follow. I fall back against her, breathing out and trusting her to catch me.
But she doesn't.
And I slam the back of my head into Ron's coffee table.
"KP!" I hear him shout as my senses return. They fade in and out and I can't decipher what he says next. I hear him, but the words do not make sense to me. Only after he lays his hands on me to pull me up do I flinch and plummet fully into the real world.
"Kim! Come on, Kim! Open up your eyes!" He uses his fingers to pry open my left eye and I groan against the light. I screw my eyes closed and inhale deeply before I open them again. Ron looks terrified. My eyes glance downward slightly when I feel the guilt of making Ron worry.
"Maybe you should see a doctor, KP." He says softly, failing to hide the fright in his voice. I reach behind my head to sooth the throb in my skull only to be met with sticky wetness. When I pull my hand forward to reveal blood, Ron is again terrified. He starts muttering so quickly that I can't make out what he's saying and fumbles to sit me against the sofa as he trips to stand up.
"Ron." I call after him. He doesn't stop and probably doesn't hear me. I call his name louder and he turns briefly to me.
"Ron what are you doing?" I say, loud enough for my voice to crack.
"I'm getting the car to bring you to the ER!" And he turns back to the door.
"Ron! Come back here and sit!" I call forcefully to him. He looks pathetic as he turns and obeys. As he sits, he fidgets. I play with the gash in my scalp for a moment.
"I don't need stitches, Ron. Just a clean towel and some aspirin, okay?"
"KP, there are many reasons you should be in a hospital right now and that cut is only one of them."
"I'm sorry, Ron. I just didn't sleep very much last night. I guess it caught up with me."
"Bull!" I am momentarily struck by his response.
"Excuse me?"
"I saw you when we were looking at the file. The file that you brought. The file that you wanted to look at to try to help get your prison girlfriend broken out. That wasn't dosing off. That was that thing that you do these days."
"What thing?" Ron's eyes get angrier and he puts his finger in my face, accusing me.
"You know what thing. I know you know the thing. Don't pretend you don't know about the thing 'cause Rufus is trained as a lie detector." I had tried to brush off the weird things that were happening so that I could seem normal around Ron. I tried to play it off as a fluke or exhaustion but Ron is not as dumb as he seems sometimes.
"Are we going to continue to call it 'the thing'?"
"Don't change the subject." A smug smirk paints his face.
"Fine. There is a thing. However, if I can get Shego out of there, I have a hunch that the thing will get better." He gets up and gets me a wet dishtowel and painkiller.
"Ah so it's one of those kind of things." The greatest thing about Ron is that, at moments such as this, he is completely serious. I am amused but I am growing tired of it, so I snap. Just a bit.
"Ron! Stop it with the thing! Just help me figure out what all of this means so that I can finally get past it!" I slap my hand down on the file and Ron jumps. He nods slowly as he picks up the pages.
"So, I really don't get it. What are we trying to do?"
"I got a copy of Shego's file and I-"
"How'd you get this thing anyway? I thought it was confidential."
"You forget I'm technically law enforcement. All I had to say was that I was looking for some other nobody's file and I was in the stacks. Snapped some shots of the pages and printed them out when I got home."
"Smart. But that doesn't tell me what I'm trying to find."
"Anything that might get her out on a technicality. A moment where she was mistreated by the courts or the cops or anyone. Or something else. I don't know what else exactly."
"That all sounds unlikely."
"It mostly is."
"So then what?" I don't know how to answer that question. It's one that I've been avoiding throughout this whole plan. It frightens me the most because if there is no technical, legal way to get Shego out, the only other options that I can think of are not legal and not safe. Then, the question becomes am I willing to risk both of our lives to get her out of prison? Myself, I would do it without a second thought but I know that Shego would never allow it. Her, on the other hand, I'm just not sure that I could ever risk her. Ron shrugs next to me after a moment of my not answering.
"Well, I guess there's nothing to do but try, right?" I smile at him on instinct.
"You really are the best friend I could ever ask for, Ron." He cocks his head sideways and his grin looks confused, but straightens quickly.
"Duh, KP! Possible and Stoppable can never be broken!" He pats me on the back and I hug him.
"Don't you worry, KP. We can find a way to get Shego out. You are Kim Possible, after all." He holds me at arm's length and I can see his mouth move as he speaks. He even speaks with a smile. Suddenly, I'm struck by some memories. My face falls and I watch Ron's fall in response. As I lean back again onto the sofa, he settles staring at me, worried again.
"You know, I'm sorry we didn't really work out, Ron."
"What d'ya mean?" His worry blends to confusion.
"When we were dating. We could have been good together. We should have been good together." And then he scoffs and snickers.
"Kim, you were soooooo into Shego. That totally would not have worked out."
"You knew!?" I am shocked. I could not possibly have been that obvious, especially if I, myself did not know.
"Well, I mean I didn't really have the whole picture back then, but it always felt like I was the warm body that you pretended was someone else." He looks across the room with a smile, but it almost appears as if he were grieving. I turn and put my arms around him.
This is Ron Stoppable. My BFF since pre-school, my sidekick extraordinaire, one of the greatest people I have ever known. He always does the right thing, he is always the bigger person, and even when it's his own heart broken, he makes sure the right things happen.
"I love you, Ron." I sigh, knowing that despite all of the hassle I put him through, he will always be my best friend. He returns the embrace, Rufus skittering up to join in the love.
"Best friends forever, KP."
A few moments pass and he pats my back and turns to the file with determination.
"Okay! One plasma throwing supervillain dismissal coming right up!" He riffles through the paper so quickly I'm sure he's not actually reading anything. I look over the pages he discards and hold the towel to my head.
"Hey KP?" Ron slides me a folded paper with a sticky note on top and a photo papercliped to the inside. I look it over.
"I think we just found our out." He is smug with excitement and puts up his fist expectantly. I laugh, equally excited and complete his fist bump.
