Disclaimer: I do not own Kim Possible, any of the other characters from that show, or those from any other media I may reference in my stories.
Thanks to Feudor and Screaming Phoenix for reading and reviewing the first chapter.
Ron, texting you because if I talk to you in person, you may start venting about how unfair you think this is. And I'm not sure I'd take it well. At least, I might not be too sympathetic, sorry—K.
…
So, Rufus has to suffer in your stead? j/k. U R right. I know I deserve this, I really do, but when I think of U going alone...if anything happens to you, it's on me—R.
…
Ron, so NOT your fault, whatever happens—K.
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"I'm probably the only person in the world who can be so depressed by such a nice place." Kim thought, then snorted at her own conceit. Plenty of people became depressed in even the most beautiful of paradises. But this paradise, Kim had personal history with.
She sat in the backseat of an open topped cab, the breeze in her hair, the smell of flowers, now that they'd left behind the small capitol city of Port Marie, and the beautiful scenery was doing nothing to cancel the down feelings she was experiencing. They were caused in equal measure by the nature of her mission and the empty seat beside her.
The last time she had ever called Ron stupid was when they were both nine years old. He'd called her stupid back, and the feeling that had caused resolved her never to do it again. She even refused to associate the word with him. When someone else called Ron or something he did stupid, she almost automatically denied it emphatically. But there was only one word for what Ron had done with Yori, as far as she was concerned...stupid!
Standing next to him as his father had laid into him had been one of the most painful things she'd ever experienced because of Ron, more so because she had never seen Dean Stoppable so angry in her life. The fact he kept his voice low to avoid waking Hana had actually made the words hit harder. He may have been angrier due to having what had been a wonderful time that evening spoiled, but Kim wasn't sure.
Yori had stood nearby with her head bowed the whole time, and Kim had seen her eyes widen and her face flush when Mr Stoppable said one thing in particular.
"You showed disrespect for your Mother in her own house!" Those words had seemed to physically strike Ron, and caused the strong reaction in Yori as well.
Jean Stoppable had almost interceded at that point, but was more concerned with Kim, and seeing signs the girl was feeling physically ill, had announced her intent to drive Kim home, which had brought the chastisement to at least a temporary halt. But as they opened the front door to leave, they were confronted by a strange man on the doorstep.
He was Japaneses, or at least had Japanese blood, and upon seeing him, Yori executed a formal bow and remained in it until he acknowledged the Stoppables, then fired off a stream of Japanese that went so fast Kim couldn't make it out. Yori had straightened, save for her head, which she kept bowed, and marched stiffly out the door.
The man had then bowed to the Stoppables, who seemed to know him. "This inappropriate behavior will not go undisciplined, Stoppable-san, please rest assured!" He had bowed yet again, then turned and vanished into the dark.
And that was another mystery that Kim hadn't been offered any answers to, which naturally annoyed her. There were several more relating to the Stoppables and their newly adopted daughter that had cropped up in the last year or so. Not that Kim had to know everything, but it was still annoying.
She forced those thoughts from her mind with an effort, straightened up in her seat and began to take an interest in her surroundings, even as she took a tighter grip on her bag on the seat beside her.
Isle Drakkon still looked like paradise of a sort, but Kim just couldn't forget that in this paradise were two serpents. Drakken and Shego. And her two previous visits, inspired by their presence, had both left a sour feeling in her mind. Okay, so her first visit had resulted in her saving the lives of two now very influential men, the current President and the Chief Magistrate. But that had been an opportunity thrown her way because she'd gotten herself arrested, of all things!
The second visit had gone all topsy-turvy, with Kim once again in jail for something she had been guilty of, and then risking her life to save Drakken and Shego's lives! Okay, there were a bunch of other people at risk, including Kim herself, but still...irony was a mean bitch, to be sure. And Kim in turn had had her own life saved by Jen Paladin, which could be credited as the main reason Kim was here now. "Convenient excuse, if I wanted to ignore my own curiosity, my desire to check up on the two of them, and...common decency."
Kim caught the driver watching her in the rear-view mirror and smiled at him. "So, how have things been since my last memorable visit?" She asked pleasantly.
The driver made a show of looking confused. "And when might dat have been, Miss?" He replied politely.
Kim's smile actually broadened at that. "You know, I originally intended to fly over on the evening flight and spend the night here, which would have allowed you to better prepare." A touch of wariness appeared in the driver's eyes, but he continued to feign confusion, which turned to open chagrin at Kim's next words. "But you had time to change out of your uniform trousers before switching places with the cabdriver, I wasn't in any hurry." She sighed. "In fact, I have been delaying this, for personal reasons, and because I was asked to take my time getting here. But this sort of thing really shouldn't be delayed too long, for decency's sake!"
The driver was shaking his head slowly, exasperated that he'd been found out. Finally he looked in the mirror at his passenger. "Constable Benoit, at your service!" He remarked caustically, "Another 'too clever for his own boots' policeman!"
Kim winced at his bitter tone. "Constable, please remember, I'm not exactly your average teenage girl, I have some experience at certain things, so don't take it so hard, please?"
The man just shook his head and remained silent for a few minutes, before finally speaking. "Back in November, you had that big fight with Miss Black, all recorded and shown on television?" He waited for Kim to nod, "The one where she appeared to break her leg?"
Kim winced. "She did break it, but I wasn't responsible." She replied, just a touch defensively.
"I know that! I saw what she did, it was unbelievably reckless just to gain as edge in her fight with you." The 'undercover' Constable replied, "Anyway, there was a man who opened a business here in August, everything about him checked out, he had three employees who all seemed harmless enough. But he wasn't, obviously, or there's be no point in bringing him up, would there?"
"An assassin?" Kim guessed, now with a note of concern in her voice.
He nodded. "Yes, and he evidently figured Miss Black would be vulnerable after that fight, so he made his move, along with his 'team'. Ended up with three of them badly hurt and in custody. No proof of what happened to the fourth, Mister Lipsky and Miss Black both deny any knowledge of what happened to him."
Kim snorted. "I'll bet they do!" She muttered sarcastically, but the driver heard her clearly.
"Miss, understand this: I am a policeman, and I know they are criminals, which puts me in an awkward position. I for one...well, there are others who feel the same, don't like the idea of them living freely here, even with all they did for us. But, they did do it, and the Island is much better for it. So at the moment, I can live with the Government's policy towards them, even if I don't like it much."
Kim just nodded absently, having partially tuned the constable out after a certain point, concentrating more on her thoughts regarding his observation about Shego. "She has been doing things differently since last summer, maybe even a little before that. Almost seems like she likes to up the 'degree of difficulty' of practically everything she does athletically, even fighting. I've even landed a couple of good ones, merely because she did overdo something. Wonder why she's acting this way?"
Then, having caught the gist of what the constable had said, she nodded and told him, "I guess I can understand that, at least to a point. Whatever their motives, they did do some good here...what happened to the men you did catch?"
"Extradited." He replied bluntly. Then, catching her curious look, he smiled grimly. "We do have the option to voluntarily agree to extradition requests, we're just not obligated to honor them! And yes, we have refused to agree to several extradition requests regarding Mister Lipsky and Miss Black." Suddenly he grinned, shaking his head. "Have you heard what Edouard LeMonde tried to do?"
"He's still around?" Kim asked, genuinely surprised.
"Oh, yes! Still around." he confirmed, "And trying to get Amnesty International interested in his brother's case!"
"In freeing a former dictator..." Kim trailed off, then shook her head. "Somehow, that doesn't seem as crazy to me as it would have, last year." She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, just feeling the sun and the breeze on her face. "How does one tell when one has 'lost' her innocence?" She snorted, then opened her eyes and looked around as she felt the cab slow down. And felt her stomach knot as the cab turned into the familiar entrance to Doctor Drakken's Isle Drakkon home.
There had been a bit of landscaping done since her last visit, the trees on either side of the drive cut back a good thirty feet on each side, and replaced with flowers. Kim wondered if the changes were due to the previous summer's attack or not. "Could be either, but I'd bet on the attack being the reason." she mused.
And now there was a fountain in front of the garage, creating a turning circle in front of the house. A small fountain, but..."Plenty of space in it for surveillance devices, or something nastier!" Kim thought grimly. Then they stopped at the foot of one of the two flights of steps that led up to the front door of Drakken's home. She actually took a deep breath before reaching for the door handle. Then her driver's voice stopped her.
"Miss Possible." She turned to face him, and saw conflict in his expression before he continued, "Is what you brought through Customs...is it for Mister Lipsky?"
Kim hesitated, then slowly shook her head. The driver nodded. "I see. Well, please try and not cause any trouble this time, though if you're here for the reason we assume, there should be no likelihood of that, should there?"
Kim shook her head, pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder, and exited the vehicle. "I'll call if I need a ride back to Port Marie." She rummaged in her wallet for money to pay the fare, then handed it over with a faint smile. "I assume this will go to the actual driver?" She asked lightly.
"That's between him and me, Miss." The driver replied solemnly, but his lips twitched a bit before he turned his attention to his driving, and pulled away.
Kim turned to face the steps up, somehow seeing them in her mind as a great obstacle. Then she snorted in self-derision, and started up. As she turned at the landing to ascend the second flight, her mind went back to the previous summer, when she ambushed two armed mercenaries on the same steps. She studied the location of the hidden hatch she'd used, and saw no sign of it. Then she broke off her musings and started upwards again.
The front door opened just as she reached it, and to her surprise it was Drakken himself who opened it. Rather then usher her in, he stepped outside. But he seemed at a momentary loss for words, just returning her own steady gaze for a moment as he moistened his lips. Then his eyes shifted to her bag, and he finally spoke. "Wh—what you have in there, a—are you bringing it to me?"
Kim was momentarily startled, it had never occurred to her that Drakken might expect such a thing, with her as the messenger. That he had apparently been informed about what Kim had brought through Customs was no surprise, however. She couldn't help a small stammer herself as she replied, "N—no sir, I—I mean, it's not for you.." she hesitated briefly, and heard Drakken mutter 'oh thank God' before she continued, "I brought this..them, err, it!" She grimaced, shaking her head, then composed herself. "I'm here to see Shego." She stated flatly.
Drakken seemed to take this as a perfectly normal thing. He nodded his head jerkily. "Shego's down at her house...how would you like to proceed? Do you want me...do you think I should be there?" He asked sincerely. He stepped aside and ushered Kim into the house as he spoke.
The question caught Kim off guard, and the sudden shift from sunlight to shadow caused a far stronger shiver through her body then it should have. "I—I'm really not sure how Shego will feel about this...it's up to you, I suppose, you'd know better then me how she takes...unpleasant news." She wandered through the foyer into the living room, eyes drifting to the corner where Shego had cowered, her senses dulled to the point of uselessness. Kim found herself shuddering at the memory, and wasn't sure why.
Apparently not noticing, Drakken's eyebrows rose. "I wouldn't say that was true, every time you intervened in one of our affairs, it was unpleasant news, to her!" Then he expelled his breath in a huff. "I suppose I'll accompany you, she may actually want a...friend, there."
Kim just nodded in acquiescence. The pair exited the rear doors onto the patio, and Kim was again hit by a rush of memories, none of them pleasant. Her eyes darted to the spot in the bordering hedge where Liam, the man who had been about to kill her, had fallen in a gunfight with Jen Paladin instead.
Fighting down any reaction, she walked to a large circular table in the center of the patio and set her bag down on top of it. Opening it up, she explained to Drakken, "Don't want to reach into my bag in front of Shego, who knows what she might think I'm doing!" The faint smile she affected as she said this faded immediately as her fingers encountered the smooth surface of the object she sought, which she pulled out and stared at for nearly a minute, before closing her bag, settling the strap over her shoulder again, and turning to Drakken. "Let's go."
They made their way down from the hill, following the path to Shego's 'cottage'. Memories intruded less on Kim now, her focus being occupied by the unpleasant task she was about to perform. "The reasoning behind me doing this is looking a little thin right now." Kim mused darkly. Then something occurred to her. "You knew I was coming, and you knew what I was bringing, did you tell Shego about either?" she asked Drakken.
"No I didn't." He replied, "Because I really thought you might be coming to see me, and if so, I didn't want any friction occurring between the two of you."
Kim nodded. That certainly made sense, all things considered. She kept her eyes sweeping ahead, remembering the sights of her previous visit. Then a sight she should have expected, but hadn't. Sophie Callard, who had been in the adjacent cell during Kim's overnight incarceration during her last visit, was standing outside Shego's door, in the shade of the covered porch. She had her hands on her hips and was staring at Kim with an expression of great curiosity.
Kim smiled in greeting. "Hi, Sophie. I'm impressed! That you managed to stay Shego's housekeeper all this time, that is."
"Yeah, well, some people need someone to throw their own crap back in their faces, she be one a'dem!" Seeing Kim blush, and at the same time look shocked, Sophie smiled widely and stepped forwards to give the girl a hug, careful of her burden. "How you been, girl? Hear about you on the news all the time, when the 'lady' of the house ain't here! You be fighting the good fight, but I don't believe you ain't getting hurt some times in the doing of it."
Kim smiled and shrugged as Sophie released her. "A few bumps and bruises here and there, No Big!"
Sophie gave her a searching look. "And here I thought you were a bad liar!" Smirking in response to Kim's blush, she then cast her gaze down to the object Kim was holding, and a frown creased her face. But before she could speak, they all heard a familiar voice coming from around the far corner of the house.
"My ears are burning as if there's a match held to them, so someone must be..." Shego's voice abruptly cut off as she turned the corner and spotted Kim. She had her hand on the shoulder of a little girl about seven, who Kim guessed was one of Sophie's children. They both wore swimsuits and shorts, Shego's a ratty denim pair.
Now the thief's eyes widened in surprise. "Do your ears really burn?" The girl asked, momentarily defusing whatever was boiling up in Shego. She looked down at the child and clamped down on whatever she was about to say.
"You should know, child, since I've been calling you, and calling you!" Sophie scolded her daughter. "So, Amana Lynn, do your ears feel hot?"
The little girl shook her head. "No." She replied sulkily. "We were picking flowers..." She looked down at her empty hands, "Supposed to be picking flowers, but we kinda forgot!"
Shego, still trying to decide how to handle the situation, caught Kim's quick smile as she listened to the little girl and Sophie's exchange. She turned to Sophie herself. "Yeah, it's sort of my fault we forgot the flowers, Sop..." She broke off as she finally noticed what Kim was carrying.
Noticing this, Sophie held her hand out to her daughter. "You come on, now! Wash your hands, then you be helping me fix dinner, girl!" The little girl nodded and took her mother's hand, but gave Kim a long look as she passed her, smiling back in response to Kim's friendly smile.
When the girl and her mother were inside, Shego gestured for the three of them to move away from the house. When they had moved about thirty feet towards the surf line, she stopped them. "What the hell are you doing..." Shego began angrily, then her eyes dropped to the square wooden box with a round ceramic lid in the center of it's top. "Did—did you bring those here...is that...dammit, Princess! Who's ashes are those?"
Kim wet her lips, then met Shego's anxious gaze. "Her name was Millicent Whitlock." Then Kim took an involuntary step backwards as the woman suddenly dropped to her knees, a devastated expression on her face. Drakken stepped hesitantly forward, but held back for some reason.
Kim was stunned, she'd never seen, nor expected to see, Shego in such a state. She was on the verge of hyperventilating, and looked as if she was about to be sick, though Kim couldn't clearly see her face due to it's being obscured by her hair as she looked down at the sand between her knees. Kim was at a total loss as to what she should do.
"Why you?" Shego asked hoarsely, "Why me? Why isn't her fucking family taking care of her?" She kept her head down as she spoke, an edge of anger seeping into her last words.
Kim took a deep breath. "Shego, she doesn't have any family." She hesitated a moment, then added, "She never had a family, from what I understand."
"Bullshit!" Shego shouted, then cast a quick glance towards her house before giving Kim an angry glare. "She was adopted by a family in St. Louis when we were 14, a few months before...before the damn comet!" She spat out the last two words.
Kim shook her head. "Shego, there was no family..." she hesitated as she sought the right words, "It was...it was a white slavery sort of thing, she.." She broke of as Shego came to her feet, rage on her face, causing Kim to back up into Drakken, who actually steadied her.
"'A white slavery sort of thing'? What the fuck, Princess! What are you talking about? She was sold, is that what you're saying? By who? To who? Start making sense, or so help me..."
Kim was so off balance that she was immediately grateful when Drakken intervened. "Shego! That's enough! At this moment, Kim Possible is not your enemy! In fact, she's doing you a favor, and it can't be easy for her to have come down..."
"I don't care!" After initially recoiling from Drakken's chastisement, Shego quickly went back on the attack, "I want to know what happened to my best friend, I want to know who did such a thing to her, and I want to know how she died!" The glare in her eyes was near maniacal, and Kim didn't know what to say to defuse her, but Drakken did.
"If she was your best friend, Shego, why didn't you already know there wasn't a family in St. Louis?" He asked in a reasonable tone, "Didn't you keep in touch with her?"
Shego almost looked as if she'd been gut-punched. Her knees seemed to grow unsteady again, but she pulled herself together, then turned and walked unsteadily towards her house. Kim and Drakken exchanged glances, Kim's with a touch of grudging gratitude in it, then followed Shego.
The thief peered in the front door of her home, then moved away from it, to drop in to a wicker-seated chair. She then regarded Kim dourly. "Now, Princess, tell me who did this, tell me everything!" Her scowl deepened as Kim fidgeted nervously. "Just tell me!" She snapped.
"I can't tell you everything, Shego, because I wasn't told everything." Kim answered with a defiant look. "For a very good reason. Your friend specifically asked that you...she didn't want you avenging her, she was afraid you'd lose control..."
"Well, she's right!" Shego shouted, shooting out of the chair and getting right in Kim's face. A flinch was unavoidable, but Kim stood her ground. Shego seethed with suppressed anger, more then Kim had ever seen before. "So, don't give me some song-and-dance about not knowing! How the hell did you get involved? Why are you here, Possible?!"
"She said she was sorry if you worried when she disappeared, and she hoped you didn't endanger yourself hunting for her." Kim's words again knocked the anger out of the older woman, who recoiled with a look of anguished guilt. And Kim was pretty sure why.
Shego tried to speak, then swallowed, and finally stammered out "W-who? Who d—did she say these things to?" She again dropped into her chair.
"A nun, a nursing sister in a hospice." Kim broke eye contact, looking down at her feet. "I don't know where, honestly! I wasn't told, so I couldn't tell you. All I know is that the sisters found her left for dead, and did their best to make her comfortable. And someone tried to keep them from carrying out your friend's last wishes, but the sisters got some help..." Kim trailed off indecisively, trying to decide whether she'd said too much.
"Help from who?" Drakken asked the question, Shego just sat listening with a stricken look on her face.
"Jen Paladin and her partner." Kim replied. Shego looked up at the girl and her eyes narrowed slightly. "And they're going to make sure Milly's other request comes true, that it never happens to another child from the orphanage." Then Kim tried to suppress a grimace, she had said something she shouldn't have. "Still, not sure the revelation matters, if Shego takes action, she'd probably start in the same place anyway! But, now I've given her a better reason to dig deep!"
Shego sat drumming her fingers on the armrests and nodding for a moment. Then she asked a question, not the one Kim had been expecting, though. "So, who's paying for them to do this, someone has to be, those two work for cash!"
"Compensation." Kim said, then elaborated, "They say they always have to work for compensation. The way they said it, I got the feeling it isn't always money, but they didn't explain."
"I don't care if they get paid in bran muffins!" Shego shot back, "I want know how they're going to 'stop it from happening again'!"
Kim shook her head. "They really didn't tell me how they were going to do it, or where, Shego! My job was just to bring these to you!" She held out the ashes. Shego stared at them as if she'd forgotten them, or expected the box to explode. Then she tentatively reached out and took them. She placed the box in her lap and just stared at it for a long while before speaking.
"Can you at least tell me what killed her? You said 'white slavery', and that conjures up a certain image." She didn't look up as she asked, just sat running her fingers gingerly over the box and staring at it as if it would provide answers.
Kim briefly wondered if it could. "Is there any chance she can tell the country it was made in, just by looking at it? I was tempted to have Wade scan it for the same reason, but I decided not to." Aloud, she answered Shego, "They just said she was used up, Shego, just..used up. In...in a brothel." Kim felt a sharp pang of sympathy at the expression that appeared on Shego's face, one of devastation.
The woman's features contorted, and Kim saw tears forming. "N—nine years in a brothel? Oh, God, Milly, I'm so sorry!" she cried in anguish.
"Six." Kim muttered aloud without meaning to. Then she quickly tried to cover up. "You couldn't have known, Shego." She said in a sympathetic tone. But Shego's face turned suspicious, and anger flickered in her eyes.
"Six?" She queried in a dangerous voice, "Six in the brothel? Then where the hell was she for the first three years?"
Trying to keep her voice steady, Kim replied, "I really don't know, Shego! I mean, I don't think I was supposed to hear that. The nun said it, and Jen looked unhappy. But she didn't say anything about it. I really don't know how much of her story Milly told the nuns before she died, and that's the truth!"
Shego kept her fixed in an angry glare as she sarcastically spat out, "Well, you're not much help, are you? Well, you've done your duty, why don't you get the hell out of my face!"
But Kim's judgment failed her. "Shego, if you didn't look for Milly because you felt resentment that she was adopted instead of you, that's perfectly understandable..."
And Shego was right back up in her face again, knuckles white as she gripped the box. "I...don't...want...your...UNDERSTANDING, Princess!" Kim recoiled, blinking. She'd never expected to hear so much venom delivered in Shego's pet name for her. Her mouth worked as she tried to say something, but nothing came out.
Drakken took her arm, steadying her. "I think you should go, Kimberly, if only in the interest of peace. Thank you for doing this for Shego.." The thief shot an angry look at him, which softened as she looked down at what she held. "I know it can't have been easy, and I admit to being mystified at why you were asked." He turned Kim and lead her away as he spoke.
"It's...it...I..." Kim abruptly lapsed into silence. She resisted looking back as Drakken took her as far as the junction of two paths, the one they'd come up, and one running from the patio around to the front of the house. They stopped there, as Drakken looked back towards Shego's house. The thief was out of sight from where they stood.
"I'm going back and talk to her, Kimberly. Go on up to the house. Eva...that's the younger housekeeper, will be leaving soon to pick her children up at school, she can give you a ride to Port Marie. Oh, and I meant what I said, Thank You for doing this, it had to be painful."
"NO Big, Doctor Drakken." Kim replied quietly. She looked back. "She's feeling a lot of guilt, that's something I never thought she could feel!" She looked down at the ground, "Which was totally unfair of me!"
"But understandable." Drakken replied neutrally. "Shego hates having her mistakes pointed out to her, and this counts as one, a very big one! Now, you run along, I've got to get back to her." Then he added as an afterthought, "And no bug planting, it's very annoying!" He said it with a half-hearted smile, which vanished when not a glimmer of one appeared on Kim's face. He ended the awkward silence by turning and heading back down the path.
Kim watched him go, then sighed deeply and started up the path to the patio. She was half tempted to walk back to town, just to give herself some time, but the temptation faded quickly. Instead she marched up to the patio, then turning away from the house, walked to the far railing and pulled out her Kimmunicator.
"Hey Kim." Wade greeted her when his image had resolved on the screen. "What's up?"
Kim hesitated slightly before replying. "Wade, do you have a means of tracking Shego's plane? I mean, I know you can track Drakken's hovercraft, but what about Shego's jet?"
"Well, um...yeah, I can track it, Kim. But why?"
Kim didn't answer the question directly when she replied. "Set me up for a trip to Go City, Wade. Shego's heading there too, I'd like to know whether I get there first or not." As Wade acknowledged, she looked back in the direction of Shego's house. "This may not have been what they asked me to do, but I wonder if the expected it?" A moment of doubt passed through her mind, but she ignored it. "Go City, here I come!"
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