Kim shook her head hard, trying to banish away the other. The darker version of herself who had used the distraction of a mission to come out to play. She should have known something was wrong from the start when she snap-kicked a henchman into a wall and didn't stop to check him for cranial trauma. Self-diagnosis was apparently not her strongest personality trait.
But adrenaline and a ticking time bomb had forced her to ignore her lower impulses and drive on to her goal; one blue madman.
That blue madman was subdued right now. She had looped and dashed and chased around him without end, right up until he had knotted himself into a cocoon of his own green plant vines. How long he might stay that way was anyone's guess. Sooner or later he would probably figure out how to will the tendrils to unknot themselves or something.
But for right now he was merely watching the redhead as she watched anything but him. He knew something was up; but exactly what it was he could not say, and his scientific curiosity was piqued by the change in pattern.
Ron was elsewhere in the building, helping Rufus to disarm the giant foam-rubber bomb that was at the heart of the latest scheme. Kim tried everything she could to drive away her darker, bloodthirsty impulses, the feelings she had personified as the dark-kim. Without her blond boyfriend though, there was little to distract her from Drakken's plotting nature.
Therapy had been a major bust for the redhead. The first stop was a traditional twelve step program aimed at people with anger management problems.
Step one was easy. She already knew she had a problem.
It was the steps that came after that where things started to break down… For one thing, she had seen far too many strange things over the past few years to believe there was a power greater than hers to lend her strength or guidance. It wasn't arrogance on her part; so much as a stark realization that if such a being did exist, it wouldn't need people like her around to keep the world spinning since that was kind of the nature of being a higher power. And aside from Bonnie, who had probably gotten what she deserved anyways, she had no one to apologize to: She handed out righteous defeats, not drunken beatings or angry mayhem.
Failing repeatedly at step two of a recovery process only left her wildly frustrated in three weeks of in-patient theraputical treatment. And it led to some explosively heated debates in her group sessions at the court mandated therapy locale. Well for everyone else they were explosively heated… for Kim Possible it barely rated a warm-up routine as she lit the fuse and others took care of the detonation.
A different rehabilitation facility and a different approach netted no better results. Being aimed at soldiers and municipal first responders, her parents and the courts thought it might be a better fit for her than a strictly management-based approach. Once again the therapy failed to take hold. So much of dealing with the PTSD and hyper vigilance was targeted at winding down and learning to deal with distorted thinking.
The problem was that, for the rest of her group-mates, their boyfriend or a stranger on the street being revealed as a gel-filled monster which might explode in their arms, taking everything they held dear with it was a 'cognitive distortion,' even for soldiers who had seen time in the Middle East. For Kim Possible it was quite literally just another day at the office. Just last week Frugal Lucer had turned expired packets of Diablo Sauce into IEDs that burned through tank armor like acid burned through tissue paper.
So it was nigh-impossible for the redhead to accept how to identify distorted thinking when, for her, it was that very acceptance which was the distortion. This time, though, the teen gave in to a different personality flaw… She allowed her OCD to teach her to fake her way convincingly through the therapy. It was no more difficult than learning a new cheer routine to go through the motions of identifying distorted thinking and over-reactions and what might be high-stress environments to avoid; and to smile cheerily while doing so.
She wasn't sure if the folks at the camp actually believed she had come away from therapy a better and healed person; or if they just wanted the explosive redhead out of their groups and not agitating other people they could still help. With her mind-bending scenarios about how lunch at a taco hut was a high threat environment after all and not a cognitive distortion she was certainly not helping others overcome their issues.
The next few weeks of her life were no better. With graduation and an alien invasion come and gone, Kim felt like she was walking a knife edge of tension. Having Ron step up finally and become a somewhat capable world saver helped alleviate some of her tension… but it was only replaced by new stressors. At what point would the aliens return for a third visit? And how many weapons would they bring this time?
Now the very sky itself held threats and tension and she had Wade connect her cellphone to a few NASA apps for monitoring purposes, skirting her legal injunction by only using market apps on a smart phone, though doing so in a way that most sane smart phone users would never dream. Most people used Giggle Skyscape to stargaze; Kim Possible was using it to chart entry vectors for alien warcruisers.
But her one solace was that, through all of it, her darker impulses stayed submerged. Through all the stress of six and a half weeks of in-patient (or perhaps impatient) treatment, and being deprived of even her simplest laser lipstick, Kim had kept a stiff upper lip and a cheerful smile and never once threatened to strangle anyone with their own windpipes. In fact, she only once felt the impulse to even give someone a stern talking to.
It seemed like good old Kim was back in control, and her brief stay in the criminal justice system was no more than happenstance. The farther removed from it she became, the better she became at forgetting that the dark-kim even existed. She was back on top of saving the world with a thank you and a big smile.
Kim didn't realize it, until right this very moment, but she hadn't gotten better at all. All she'd gotten was the knowledge on how to be a convincing liar, to herself and to the court appointed observer.
Because right now, her vision was red, and her blood was pounding like a bass drum in her ears, and a seductive voice was whispering to her about what she ought to do with that wriggling third tendril on the left and the broken light fixture above her head. And how if she did that; it would solve a lot of people a lot of problems down the line.
And it was worse because she also knew it wasn't distorted or dysfunctional thinking. Doing away with Drakken would make the lives of hundreds of people directly easier, she knew from experience. Thousands, millions, maybe even billions more indirectly for simply not having to be imperiled by him on a monthly basis.
She tried to stop thinking about that. It didn't help her any to know whether she was lucid or psychotic, or something in between. It sure didn't quiet the impulse to grab the wet, salty, and electrically conductive vine and jam it into the live lamp socket.
And nothing else she'd heard at the two therapy camps was remotely quieting the voice or the impulses either. Rational thought was not dissuading or even holding at bay the irrational desires… deep breathing and meditation, and even rubbing the pulse point on the inside of her wrist was doing nothing to slow her heart or ease the reactions of her flesh to snap at and crush any moving thing near her… Obviously there was no higher power to call on for her strength or solace, or she wouldn't have had to be here in the first place.
Hell, if anything, she WAS the higher power and people ought to be praying to her for their salvation and strength. She was the one here dealing with this crap like a benevolent God should.
"No, that is DEFINITELY distorted." Kim muttered at herself, pushing a finger along the inside of her eyebrow, trying to ease her pulse with more biofeedback and acupressure and sighing raggedly.
"What?" Drakken keened, trying to understand what he was listening to through the half-muttered conversation as he watched the teen pace.
"Shut up!" She snapped at him verbally and physically, pointing a damning finger at the bundle of green vines and blue skin with a faint quaver.
He dutifully complied and resumed watching her in silence.
The redhead scowled, shaking her head hard, as though to dislodge the red mist that was filling her vision. She had every right to be angry like this. Drakken was worse that Bonnie. Once put in her place, Bonnie had not acted up again in the three months leading to graduation… well save whining about not having enough time with her new boyfriend; but that was more a cry for help than an irritant.
Drakken, well he had been at this for years… longer than Kim herself had even! He had been a twisted mad genius for at least a decade, and maybe longer. He still held a grudge against her dad going back to the eighties for cripes sake! What did she have to do to get him to stop; stop before she did something that he would regret her doing?
Glaring again at the blue imbecile, she pressed her index finger along her brow in an almost panicky gesture; as though rubbing the little bundle of blood vessels and nerves there was the only thing keeping her from hoisting him on a spit for Shego to roast up like so much kabob.
Speaking of, where was Shego? Kim hadn't seen her since she had manhandled the second Henchman through the door… it wasn't like the emerald malcontent to duck out on a fight without so much as throwing a punch.
Shaking her head, the teen refocused as best as she could. She could deal with the mercenary muscle later.
Growling with frustration, Kim threw her massaging hand away from her body in disgust and glared daggers at the scientist, noticing his self-bindings were beginning to writhe and try to unknot.
"Enough of this!" she spat, fed up in equal amounts with her own dysfunction and with Drakken's machinations.
If she couldn't lie away or will away the dark-self inside her, she would just have to expend it somehow.
Stalking slowly to the blue and green madman, she seized the wiggling tendril which had been vexing her for the past five minutes. Squeezing it hard she held it aloft, but not making her intensions with it clear yet, the heroine hissed, "Do I scare you, Drakken?"
Normally his response would have been an instantaneous and emphatic NO!, but there was a dangerous glint in the redhead's green eyes that reminded him entirely too much of the one his own enforcer got from time to time. So he merely forced himself to shake his head rather than issuing his normal vehement denials in the face of the teen.
"Well you should be scared." She sneered, glaring at the maniac. "I'm Sure Shego told you about my little run in with the law?"
When Drakken shook his head and showed some sort of confusion and curiosity, Kim deigned to educate him, "Really? She didn't tell you about it? I'm surprised… Shocked even."
She let that word hang in the air, but the blue man seemed to miss its intent entirely. She continued, "You see, I had a little incident. Someone pushed me a little too far. It was just after you tried to steal the pyramids actually. Someone just found a button in me… and they kept pressing… and pressing… and pressing it… until I…"
"SNAPPED." Her thumb snapped the crisp green tip of the tendril she had ahold of.
Drakken didn't feel it. The plant was symbiotic to him, not an actual part of his body. But clearly he was disturbed by the display if the little jerk he gave was any indication.
"…and do you know what happened to this person? This civilian who pushed me a little too far?" Kim looked at the green ooze slowly forming around the broken plant stem with mild apathy, "I beat the ever-loving hell out of her. I dislocated both her wrists and her left shoulder and told her that if she ever did it again, I would do things to her that… well… You're a supervillain, I'm sure you can use your imagination."
Kim slowly raised her hand, the one with the broken vine, upwards, making her intention clear, "Now, she was just a civilian. And for that I was given probation and anger management counseling. A year or more. Now you, on the other hand… You are a dangerous arch criminal. One whom I was contracted by a major law enforcement agency to come and stop. So I think you can see where I am going with this."
"That, erm, ah… it would be a horrendous breach of justice to abuse my civil rights?" Drakken tried to point out as he realized that the teen may indeed be unhinged and he had let her bind him completely up with his own tendrils.
"Oh… oh no," Kim gave a dark, morose giggle, "Quite the opposite. In fact, in some circles there has even been a push to have you and Shego declared not-human owing to your mutations. Meaning at least a few wouldn't even blink if I ended your miserable life here and now; because you technically have to be human to have human rights. And even those who did blink would inevitably come to the conclusion that I was justified."
Kim raised the now twitching plant tentacle even closer to the broken light socket, her dark smirk turning into a deadly glare and she squeezed the vine hard, wishing the madman could feel any pain from it, "So you can imagine I am righteously put off at having to deal with you for the seventy-third time in five years when others would have ended you long ago!"
After a long and electric moment, the heroine slowly lowered the slick, wet vine away from the light fixture. She did not yet release it entirely, however, "But… I'm going to let you go."
"That's very… very righteous of you," Drakken demurred disgustedly, his pride offended at the magnanimous display which proved how superior his mercilessness was to even her unhinged heroic nature.
His sneer disappeared when Kim's hand jerked skyward with the tentacle once more, "On One Condition!"
Once she was assured of his undivided attention again, she resumed, "If you ever… and I mean EVER… pick up so much as a test tube again with the intention of making anything more fiendish than a chocolate malt I will find you."
She slowly lowered the vine again as she reigned herself in, feeling as much as seeing her vision go from a red mist to the same sort of unbroken crimson field it had been when she had snapped Bonnie's thumb off the joint; fighting back against the darkest impulses to maintain some control.
"And when I find you," she continued in a deadly whisper, walking a knife edge between foul word and dark deed, "I will skin you alive, just to see how deep the blue goes, and how far the roots grow under your flesh. And once I have satisfied that curiosity, I will sew up your bloody, half-dead carcass inside of a synthodrone. And I will leave you there, in that wretched crippled state, to languish until you either die, or someone finally comes looking, curious what ever happened to the fiendish Doctor Drakken."
She let the vine in her grasp drop in dark portent with that declaration, fixing the madman with her glare. "Do I make myself clear?"
A swallow and a nod were all the man-child could muster as his hear hammered in his ears and sweat ran down his cerulean forehead.
"Good, because as you can see, Shego already knows all this and had the good sense to cut fence and run when she saw me coming." She indicated the suspiciously empty laboratory. "Why she never told you is beyond me, but now you know. And you know I will make good on it because frankly, at this point, I have documented anger issues and nothing left to lose by executing a subhuman beast who threatens the world on a regular basis. Now get out of my sight before I forget my righteous and heroic nature completely."
Drakken somehow magically untangled himself from his self-inflicted bindings and ran from the laboratory as fast as his legs could carry him.
On hearing the pitter patter of his slick-soled shoes fade fin the distance, Kim let go a long, hard breath from her lungs. With it went much of the red mist filling her vision, and the pounding inside her ears and in her fists slowly eased.
She didn't know if exercising the demon had exorcised it, or if she simply was coming down off the adrenaline high, but at this point she would take either one. It was more effective than either the twelve steps of cognitive realignment had been in making her feel in control of herself; and for that she was grateful.
Maybe she just needed to accept that part of her, rather than viewing it as a problem to be managed. Perhaps it was simply a part of her personality to be integrated instead.
Then she heard the soft tap-tap of a set of boots landing on the floor in front of her. Looking up from her internal estimations, she saw she had been wrong on one count at least.
Shego had not run away after all.
"You were going to electrocute him, weren't you." It wasn't a question.
"…No, but believe me, the thought crossed my mind." Kim sighed deeply, looking in a considering manner at the translucent green slime that clung to her gloved hand.
The confession seemed to lighten her heart a bit as she looked up. Admitting that she wouldn't actually have killed him at this moment helped to ease her mind, if ever so slightly.
"And the rest of it? Will you hunt him down and finish it if he decides to test your good will?"
Kim watched the villainess, noting that she was carefully staying clear of grappling distance as they spoke. "He best not try me. I'm done with being pushed by people who think they know my better nature."
Shego watched the angry girl before her and shook her head, "I take it court mandated rehab didn't help. Shady Acers and Whispering Pines completely failed you."
The heroine shook her head, "No… I think they did everything they could. But it's like those war hospitals in 1915… you know, the ones that executed people for fleeing from the trenches instead of realizing that they had crippling PTSD? They just don't know how to handle my… my issues."
"And how did you know where I was, anyway? We went to a lot of trouble to keep that a secret… I even dyed my hair and used bronzer to disguise myself so supervillains like you wouldn't try to hunt me down and endanger a hospital full of sick people." Kim's fists tightened as she glared at the evil lieutenant, her suit glowing to life again in response to her emotions.
Shego had the good sense to hold up her hands and demonstrate she was not a threat, "I told you before, Princess of Darkness… self-preservation instincts. If I know where you are, then I know you haven't gone walkabout and decided to make me your next target."
"And will I need to come after you?" the redhead took a step at the taller woman irritably.
"Yeah… if you don't mind, I think I'll take the deal you offered Drakken." She shook her head quickly, "Between my evil earnings, and the license fees I earn off my image, I don't need to steal any more to make a living. Corporate evil will do just fine."
"Who says I would offer you the same deal?" Kim glared eyes and suit pulsing in sympathy with her rising fury, "you're the dangerous one. Without you, he never would have got half as far."
Shego paled. She had always assumed Possible had failed to recognize that little aspect of the Drakken-Shego alliance. Knowing she needed to do something, anything to make herself more human and less of a threat, she quickly redirected, "…so it's true? I'm not even human? Not worthy of a trial and sentencing?"
It had the desired effect, Kim held herself at bay, if only just. Others might be willing to write living breathing people off as little better than animals to be put down on sight, but she was not one of those people. Not even in her darkest moments.
She took a breath and let it go very slowly, trying to visualize the angry red cloud of emotions flowing out of her with the exhalation, "From me? No, it's not true. But I'm not the one in charge, Shego. And it's not something I made up. I think the only reason no one has acted on it yet is that it would have to extend to your brothers and my boyfriend as well. So you might think of them before you decide just how evil you'll be in… retirement."
"And would you stand on their side?" Shego took a calculated risk, betting that challenging Kim's better instincts was better than her usual tact of antagonizing her.
"I… don't know Shego…" the heroine shook her head, trying to process the question without inviting in the dark visions of a few moments earlier. "All I know is, if I had dealt with you absolutely earlier. Drakken never would have launched the Diablobots."
"Nor would he have been on the alien space ship to help concoct our daring human rebellion," she pointed out, a hint of snark sneaking into her voice.
"Which is the only reason he ran out of here for someone else to capture," Kim pointedly indicated, "His lone redeeming act. We're done here. If you poke the bear any more I won't be responsible for myself. And the courts won't hold me responsible either."
"Yeah, I know… I got the justifiable homicide point while you were putting the fear of Kim into Drakken." Whether she meant it in jest or seriousness was unclear, as Shego turned walked to a hoverpod, never quite turning her back on the heroine standing in the ruined lair.
The redhead watched her go and sighed. She had a lot to think about now, and she needed to do it somewhere where dark visions of being someone worthy of being feared didn't enter into the matter.
-KP-
AN: So I wrote this almost two years ago, Jan 2014. At the time I was not happy with the tone of the last few paragraphs, so I did not post it publically beyond the Slash Haven. However, after reading a few other things this week, I desiced to give it another going-over and got it to be a bit more satisfying. So enjoy, and remember: REVIEWS = LOVE