<> Birthing Pains <>
Shego looked down at Kim’s unconscious form after she finished securing her to the heavy oak frame of the big bed. She’d used thick, padded leather manacles of the same type used in mental institutions to bind Kim’s wrists and ankles, but she’d made sure to replace the restraining straps with ones made of woven synthetic polymer fiber instead of using the original leather ones—it wouldn’t do to have one of them snap while Kim was struggling after all. These she’d attached to sturdy brass retaining rings she’d bolted to the headboard and footboard using half-inch broad-head bolts with wing nuts on the back-plate. Overkill, obviously, since the setup could probably hold someone five times Kim’s size, but better that than an accident.
Kim lay partially spread-eagled in her restraints, with just enough slack that she could move around a little, but not enough to close her legs or bring her arms down from over her head, let alone anywhere near one another. All Kim had on now was her adventuring crop-top and cargo pants, along with a pair of ankle-high white socks with a ruffled frill trimmed in pink piping. Everything else Shego had to remove and leave behind because it either had a tracer or some kind of high-tech gadget built into it. Not that she would have left anything else on Kim anyway…
“Oh yes, this works…” Shego purred with a grin before leaving the room.
After quickly going through the rest of the secluded lake house’s rooms one more time to be sure everything was completely secure, Shego went to the strong room and triple checked the security systems, video monitors, ECM suites, and automated defenses. She’d spent three fortunes on this place, and despite the absolutely paranoid steps she had taken to get here undetected, Shego had no intention of slipping up now that she was so close to her goal.
It had taken weeks of robberies to get both the gear she had needed to pull off kidnapping Kim without leaving a trail to follow and to frustrate the girl to the point where she became rash enough to fall into Shego’s trap. Once she had her, it still took perfect co-ordination to spike the techno-geek’s system through Kim’s Kimmunicator in order to buy enough time to get out of the area unobserved, switching vehicles three separate times, always indoors, never under the watchful eyes of the countless satellites overhead that might be tapped by Wade once he got back on-line. Now here she was, all alone with Kim a thousand miles away from where she started, inside a veritable fortress deep in the woods, at least twenty miles from anything even remotely considered civilization.
Finally satisfied, Shego returned to the bedroom. There she sat down on the bed and waited for Kim to wake up. According to the countdown on her watch, there were still twenty minutes to go before the gas wore off, but Shego could wait. She’d waited so long for this already after all, so what was another twenty minutes? She was content to look at her Princess while she slept, softly stroking her stomach and watching her face as she waited, imagining how, soon, the girl would be moving underneath her touch; how she would look when she was in ecstasy.
Sooner than expected, Kim started stirring, moving fitfully against the restraints, sensing that something was wrong. As she did, Shego’s excitement grew even stronger. She was close now, very very close.
Stretching out, Shego picked up the last accessory from the nightstand—a black leather strap-and-ball gag with a soft pink ball—before moving onto the bed and straddling the girl. Reaching down, Shego gently shook Kim’s shoulder.
“C’mon Kimmie, time to wake up now honey.”
“Awww, c’mon mom, just another five minutes, please?” Kim pleaded in a semi-incoherent mumble before she woke up enough to finally notice all the things that were wrong with the situation. Once she did, her eyes snapped open as she came fully awake with a start.
“Good morning Pumpkin,” Shego said cheerfully. “Did you have a nice sleep?”
Looking around the room, Kim quickly took stock of her situation, including the restraints and the fact that Shego was sitting on top of her apparently completely at ease. Her eyes widened as she struggled against the restraints and quickly realized she wasn’t going to get anywhere with them, fear and anger competing for dominance in their fern-green depths.
“Shego, what did you do with Ron?” Kim asked as she finally realized that she was alone in the room with her enemy.
“Oh, I left your idiot sidekick back at the Tarden facility sleeping like a baby. Don’t worry Kimmie; it’s you I wanted.”
“I don’t know what the hell you think you’re going to do Shego, but it won’t w—”
Kim’s rant was cut off with a sudden muffed squeal as Shego leaned forwards and smoothly slipped the ball-gag into her open mouth while she was talking, taking the opportunity while she had it—after all, trying to get it in when Kim was expecting it would have been far more difficult. Pulling down on the straps, Shego kept the gag in place as Kim tried to push it out of her mouth while she clipped it shut behind her head and drew it tight.
“There we go Princess,” Shego said when she was done, sitting back and looking down at the indignant girl under her for a moment before reaching out to brush several locks of disheveled hair away from Kim’s face.
“Now, if you want to know what I’m going to do, well, that should be fairly obvious Kimmie,” Shego said as she moved off both Kim and the bed itself, stepping back to stand a short distance away from it. “We’re in a bedroom, and you’re in a bed. What usually happens in a bedroom with two people and a bed?” Shego finished her statement by licking her lips softly.
Shego’s smile broadened as Kim’s eyes shot as wide-open as they could go with shock once she finally reached the conclusion anyone else would have figured out ages ago, and she laughed as the girl violently shook her head, making mangled, garbled sounds through the ball-gag muffling her.
“Oh yes, yes indeed, that’s it exactly.” Shego said as she slowly began stripping off her clawed gloves. “You see Kimmie, it took me a long, long time to figure this out, but I got there eventually. From nearly the start there was always something about you that I liked. It’s why I always fought you fairly I guess.”
Shego looked up at the indignant shriek that comment elicited before dropping her gloves and reaching down to pull her boots off one by one. Once done, she held up her hand and wreathed it in scintillating emerald energy.
“Kimmie, honey, I can burn through solid steel and blow holes in three feet of rebar-reinforced concrete all day long. Like I really couldn’t have shaped a power-ball and tossed it through your bedroom window while you were asleep one night if I really wanted you dead?”
After waiting for a moment to let her words sink in, Shego went back to her earlier train of thought while taking off her belt and calf-pouch.
“So like I was saying, as much as I couldn’t stand you, there was still some part of me that seemed to tolerate your existence. And then there was the fact that the more we fought; the more I wanted to fight you. And the more we did, the hotter I’d come away from it. But, y’know, I like to fight—a lot—so I figured it was just the adrenalin and endorphin rush from going up against someone who could last more than thirty seconds against me.”
Shego began unbuttoning the top half of her suit.
“But the longer it went on, the more and more I wanted it; craved it. It was like I wasn’t alive unless I was facing you down. I started seeing you in my dreams, thinking about you any time my mind wandered. There was something missing from me whenever you weren’t around, like I wasn’t whole unless you were there.”
Shego slipped out of the bottom half of her suit and stood up, looking at Kim with one hip to the side and wearing nothing more than her smile and a dark green, almost black pair of matching thong underwear and ultra-sheer bra, which did little to hide her hard, erect nipples.
“But it wasn’t until Drakken pulled off his stupid Diablo plan that it finally hit me. It was when you came for what you thought was your boyfriend. You fought me harder that you ever did before, and it was the fierceness in your eyes, the intensity of your concern that walked me through the last steps. Oh, it took a few days sitting in that jail cell to get there, but I did. You see, I saw how hard you fought for someone you loved, and how intensely it pushed you. And I wanted it. For myself, you see Kimmie?”
Shego stepped back beside the bed and slipped her finger under the cuff of Kim’s pant leg. Sliding her finger up the girl’s leg, Shego adjusted her power to a sharp intensity on top and sliced through the heavy fabric like a hot knife through butter. All the while Kim began struggling futilely against the restraints holding her on the bed.
“All I had to do was accept it. It wasn’t the fighting that made me hot, it was you. Somehow, without even trying, you slipped under my skin, deep down inside, until all I can think of now is you. How much I want you. How much I need you. You see Kimmie, however the hell it happened, I’m completely, totally, head-over-heels in love with you.”
Kim shook her head violently in denial and started struggling wildly as Shego reached the top of her pants, her eyes full of outrage, and deeper, hidden behind it, fear. Shego paused for a second, and sent a line of power down Kim’s other pant leg, shredding the top to tatters. Then she slowly pulled the severed fabric out from under and around Kim, exposing the girl’s thrashing legs and hips along with the soft-pink cotton panties with a little red heart in the center of them that covered her.
“And that’s exactly the reaction I expected Pumpkin. So you see, I couldn’t just come out and tell you. No, if I wanted to have you, it was going to take something more. Something special. So I came up with all of this. A way to get you all to myself. A way to show you how it can be between us. A way to make you try it instead of fighting it like I knew you would have otherwise.”
Shego ran her finger up Kim’s torso and hooked it into the high neck of her crop-top. With a whisper of shredding threads, Shego split the fabric down the middle with her power before running her finger across each arm as well. In moments she was pulling the ruined top away from Kim’s chest to expose her small, pert breasts as they lay encased in her matching soft-pink bra speckled with a spray of tiny red hearts.
“And now, I’m going to get what I want,” Shego said as she crawled onto the bed next to Kim. “I’m going to make you scream and beg and plead with me—not to stop, but to keep going; to make you feel what I can make you feel over and over again forever.”
Shego gently brushed Kim’s disheveled hair back from her face and leaned in to nuzzle her neck just under the base of her jaw, softly kissing and licking at her. Kim stiffened and, for a moment, tried to struggle, moving her head away, but then she just went still—tense, stiff, and unmoving.
Pulling back, Shego saw that Kim was holding herself just shy of rigid against her restraints, and her eyes flashed with a hard mix of indignation, fixed resolve, and apprehension.
“So that’s the way you’re going to play it Princess? You think you can hold out, eh? Resist my charms? Resist your own body?” Shego stroked her fingers across Kim’s stomach as light as silk, causing the girl to shiver under the touch, and then shudder in distaste. “Maybe you can for a while Pumpkin, but not forever. And I’ve got all the time in the world…”
Moving down a little, Shego raised herself up on her hands and knees and shifted till she was hovering over Kim, with her left side supporting her and her right arm and leg free to move over the girl. Slowly Shego stroked her shin over the top of Kim’s leg and brushed her knee against the start of her inner thigh before lowering it down, dragging her big toe up the inside of Kim’s calf as she pressed her leg tight to the inside of hers. At the same time she continued to stroke Kim’s stomach with spidery, circular motions of her fingertips.
There was no reaction other than a twitch here or a shiver there, and all through it the hot gaze of trepidation, resolve, and fury, bright and shimmering with welling tears.
Time to turn up the juice…
Moving her hand higher, Shego drew her glowing finger down the line of Kim’s jaw, fluctuating a feather-light emanation of her power in order to enhance the sensation. Her other fingers trailed across the girl’s neck softly, and once she reached her chin, Shego trailed them down further, stroking the hollow of her throat. After that she moved her hand even lower, between Kim’s breasts and across her stomach, before reversing direction and circling around to stroke her left flank, rising to gently cup her firm, nubile breast, reveling in the way the hard nipple stood out under the light fabric of the bra.
“I’m gonna make you feel sooooo good Princess that you won’t ever want me to stop, you just wait and see…” Shego purred as she moved her hand across Kim’s body.
Beneath her though, the girl remained stiff and unmoving except for an involuntary shiver, and a slight flinch when she reached her breast. Looking up, Shego saw the same mix of fear, outrage, and determination in her fern-green eyes that had been there before, with no change whatsoever.
Damnit!
Shego leaned in a little closer, stroking her knee and calf against Kim’s inner thigh while she fondled her breast with a soft insistence.
“C’mon Kimmie, I’ve won and you’ve lost, just admit it. There’s no reason to hold back; give in to it. I don’t want to kill you or even hurt you; I just want this, I just want you.” Shego almost pleaded with Kim.
The eyes stayed sharp, accusatory and defiant, angry and afraid, while the body shifted not a bit underneath her, wooden and unresponsive in all ways save those involuntary.
“Fine then, have it your way. It’s only a matter of time…”
Shego trembled—it was passion!—her hand moving between Kim’s breasts again, this time to grip the center of the bra so she could sever it with her power and take the second last step to fully exposing the girl she longed for. She tried to focus, but she couldn’t. Her fingers were shaking so badly she couldn’t even grip the strap she was fumbling with—passion!
The eyes stared up at her…
I want this so much!
The body was stiff, still…
All I ever wanted!
Those eyes! That gaze! Shego trembled again, almost violently…
Want her so much I can taste it! All I want… all I want… her…
Something broke deep inside of Shego, like cold ice, sharp and jagged, releasing a wave of pain and torment that welled up through her like a tidal wave, drowning her in misery. Her eyes closed, screwing tightly shut as she shuddered again, trying to shut out the pain, trying to shut out that accusatory gaze beneath her.
“I… I can’t… goddamn it I can’t… I can’t do it!” Kim jerked back against the bed underneath her and closed her eyes as Shego cried out in agony and lashed out with her glowing hand, slamming it against the headboard violently.
“Why? Why? Why goddamnit! Why does everything in my life have to turn to shit? Why can’t I ever have anything I want? I couldn’t be normal! Couldn’t have a mom or a dad! Couldn’t be a kid! Couldn’t be a hero! I couldn’t even be a goddamn bitch that didn’t care about anything other than herself!”
Shego desperately pleaded with the universe for answers she knew would never come, her glowing fingers gouging huge rents in the wood beneath them, splintering the oak and clawing the shards tight inside her clenching fist. The pain slithered and coiled inside her like a thousand icy constrictors, tightening around her heart and lungs with the weight of their despair. Beneath her Kim’s eyes opened wide with surprise as hot tears fell onto her face from above.
“Everything I ever wanted… and now even this… even you…” Shego moaned mournfully.
Shego pulled her arm back from the headboard and shifted over from above Kim to beside her, gazing down at the girl bound to the bed through tear-filled eyes—though anywhere but her face, and the terrible gaze she knew was there; she couldn’t take seeing that look again. Raising her fist, Shego looked at the splintered wood she held as if she were trying to figure out what it was. A moment later her power flared bright, flashing the hardwood to ash that disintegrated before it could fall away.
Shego reached out towards Kim’s wrist with her hand, murmuring, “I’m sorry…” so softly she doubted the girl could hear her. Digging a finger under the heavy manacle, Shego altered the focus of her power and pulled up, splitting apart the padding & leather as if it were tissue paper. After that, she turned and stood up from the bed, let her power dissipate to nothing, took one step, and then staggered as the room swam around her, waves of weakness flowing through her.
Stumbling back, Shego made it as far as the end of the bed before she had to sit down or collapse under her own weight. She sat at the edge of the bed, hunched over with her hair spilling down in waves in front of her, the dark curtain hiding her tear-streaked face, with her elbows on her knees and her splayed hands gripping the sides of her head, fingers digging hard into her scalp.
Shego’s shoulders shuddered and heaved with suppressed sobs—if she could have used her power on herself Shego knew that she would have driven her fingers deep into her skull to end the pain with the blackness of oblivion. Behind her, Shego could feel the mattress shift back and forth as Kim freed herself from the remaining restraints, but she tried to ignore it. Her skin tightened as she anticipated the punch, the kick, or any of a dozen other things she knew were coming, but she didn’t care; she just wanted it to be over; just wanted an end.
There was more movement behind her, and then a clatter as the ball-gag fell from the bed onto the floor. When it came, it wasn’t a strike or a grapple, wasn’t a sharp shard of splintered wood or the night table, it was just a word.
“Shego?”
Shego trembled with another sob at the pain there, the stark emotion.
“Just—” Shego croaked out before her throat constricted, choking off anything further. Drawing a deep, shuddering breath through her clogged sinuses, the pale woman squeezed her head tighter and forced the words out of her one by one through the crying.
“Just— just g-go Possible. Y-you’ll— you’ll never ha— have to w-worry about— about me again… I p-promise.”
Shego knew it was true. She would never bother Kim Possible or anyone else in the world again. All she wanted to do was find some dark, cold hole to crawl into and pull shut behind her. Even if she couldn’t find the strength to kill herself, she knew she was done. She’d live out what was left of her miserable little life somewhere far, far away until they finally put her in the ground.
“Shego.”
There was more movement behind her, and Shego couldn’t help but flinch involuntarily as she felt Kim move up behind her, touching her shoulder with a warm hand. A moment later that warmth increased tenfold as Kim slid in to sit right behind her, her legs pressing tight to either side of Shego’s while her arms slipped down and around her waist, pulling Kim tight against her back. A moment later Shego felt Kim rest her head against her shoulder as she held her while she continued to cry.
Shego didn’t know how long it went on, with the warmth of the girl behind her competing with the cold pain welling up inside her, how long Kim held her while she cried in her anguish. Eventually though, whether it was minutes or hours, that warm comfort slowly pushed the pain back enough that her wracking sobs slowed and then stopped, till Shego just sat quietly in her bleak despair.
“Shego,” Kim’s voice was soft and low, breaking the silence with something other than crying. “Shego, I… all the things you said, about me… about how you feel around me, how you feel alive, how you feel whole. I don’t…”
Kim paused for a long time, and Shego was sure she was done, but then she continued.
“I hated you when you and Drakken did what you did to me with that Synthodrone.” Splinters of ice tore at Shego’s heart with those words. “I… I wanted to keep hating you as time passed. I wanted to blame you for what happened between me and Ron. If you hadn’t done what you did it might have worked out between us. But… I couldn’t. I don’t know why, but even though I should hate you more than anything else in the world, I just… don’t.”
“You’re my greatest enemy Shego, the only person on this planet that I’m actually afraid of, and, apparently, the only one on earth that can beat me too. Which is probably why I was afraid of you. Somewhere, deep down, I always knew that if you really wanted to, you could stop me and there wouldn’t be anything I could do about it, other than maybe slow you down.”
“And even after all of that… what you said… it’s… I don’t know. Despite you being evil, despite you being the most dangerous threat I’ve ever dealt with, despite all the insults and fights and deathtraps and everything else you’ve ever done to me… even… even with this… I can’t… I can’t seem to hate you Shego. I don’t know why. I respect you. I… I like you. I want to like you. And even though I’ve hated you and fought you and thrown you in jail more times than we can count… I’ve still kept on liking and respecting you at the same time.”
“I don’t… I don’t know if what I feel with you is the same as you feel for me Shego. It might not be. It probably isn’t. I don’t know if I can, or ever will be able to give you what you want. But… I’d like to… find out. I’d like to at least try Shego. With everything we’ve done to one another, with everything we’ve been to one another… I need to know…”
Shego sat in dumbfounded silence. She could barely process what she had heard. It took her a long while to puzzle it out. And when she did, she could still hardly believe it. She figured she was just going insane in her depression. That was it; this was all just some delusion her mind had conjured up to torture her further. Then she twitched once with a laugh as the realization hit her.
No, it wasn’t that. It wasn’t insanity after all. It was so obvious, so simple. Her beautiful Princess was a Hero to the end, even in this, and she had saved her. She was the girl that could do anything—even try and see if she could come to love her greatest enemy.
Shego sat up straighter, feeling Kim shift behind her to accommodate her movement, and slowly brought her arms down, resting them against the smaller ones encircling her waist. She shook her head to get the hair out of her tear-streaked face—despite her smile she was crying again.
The pain was still there, but it was less now, and deep in the depths of Shego’s teary dark green eyes was a gleam of something that hadn’t been there for a very, very long time—maybe hadn’t ever been there before.
Hope.
<> Shards of Agony <>
Lightning streaked across the roiling black clouds that covered the sky completely with their thick masses. Sharp, earsplitting thunder cracked out a moment after it passed, leaving rolling waves of rumbling bass in its wake. Rain lashed down in heavy sheets that fell so hard it sounded like a waterfall, while the wind screamed like a banshee wailing out its lament in the dark night. The storm was growing—and not just the one in the sky.
Angry voices shouted inside the warm, dry, two-story house that sat in the center of a large green yard surrounded by a white picket fence. The soft, cozy light coming from its windows pushed the darkness back from it and belied the storm brewing within as the storm raged without.
Louder shouts came from within the inviting house, sitting all alone on the street, isolated from the rest of the development around it by hundreds of yards in any direction and standing as if a sentinel in front of the thick forest behind it. They were almost screams now, and the sounds of crashing glass and breaking furniture interspaced them like sharp punctuation.
Lightning flashed again, this time brilliant green, and from the storm inside the house. A second later, its warm lights went dead, and darkness reigned within as well as without, while only silence competed with the sounds of lashing rain and windy howl. A minute later, lightning flared again, bright white across the sky, and in the rumbling of thunder green flared from the house’s windows again and again, answering its sharper sister in the sky, while a lance of emerald fire burst through the once solid roof, rising high into the night in a spray of splintering wood and shingles.
Lines of emerald light slashed and danced like wildly erratic fireflies behind the once happy home’s cold windows, moving frantically from room to room, before another lance of lightning flared, ripping through the back wall in a fiery blast before traveling further along to level dozens of trees in its path. Well lit by flaming wreckage and burning forest, the sliding patio window exploded outwards in a spray of shattering glass, sharp shards tearing at the two figures propelling through it, clenched together and struggling for dominance as they fell heavily to the ground and rolled far out into the backyard.
Breaking apart, the figures rolled away from one another and to their bare feet, taking up crouched, martial stances of readiness. All of their clothes were shredded and torn, mud and blood mixing brown and pink with the original colors as the driving rain saturated them almost instantly. Both were female, and both were beautiful in their own way. One was tall and pale, with long dark hair, and her hands blazed with a corona of pulsing green energy that hissed and crackled as the heavy rain fell on it. The other was nearly of a height with the first, more slender of frame and with dark red hair. She lacked energy surrounding any part of her, but her sharp green eyes blazed with an intensity equal to that which faced her. The rain washed away the evidence of tears streaming down both their faces equally.
With a screaming shout, the pale woman charged forwards, her blazing hands weaving in an intricate pattern as she struck out at the other woman, slashing through the rain with a furious pace. The second woman weathered the storm of blows as she weathered the storm of rain, turning them aside with a smooth, flowing grace. Once she fell into rhythm with her attacker the redhead launched her own furious counterassault, her rigid hands striking back and forcing the other woman to defend as well as attack.
Lightning slashed through the sky as the women’s rigid, open hands slashed towards one another. Sensing an opening, the smaller woman lashed out with a clenched fist, striking the taller solidly in the jaw, but paid a heavy price as the other woman simultaneously buried a hard foot in her stomach, the thrusting leg launching her back several feet. Fortunately the redhead had caught the blow coming an instant before it had landed and tightened her strong abs to take the brunt of the impact.
Glaring at her attacker, the smaller woman screamed out; “I can’t believe you’re doing this Shego! I can’t believe you’re saying this! After all the pain you’ve caused me and my family, after losing my father because of you! How could you?”
Spitting out a gob of blood, the taller woman closed the distance between her and the smaller woman accusing her, once more going on the attack while shouting back; “Fuck you Possible! I didn’t make you Gay and I didn’t goddamn well do one god damn thing to make you lose your father! At least you still have a father instead of a fucking headstone, and a family that cares about you, you fucking hypocritical bitch!”
Both women began hammering blows from hand and foot towards one another, the lashing storm driving around them in fury equal to the crushing strikes they each barely turned aside time and time again. Even then a blow slipped through here and there, but neither woman gave the other the satisfaction of any reaction besides an occasional grunt over the damage adding up.
“How many nights over the years did I hold you while you cried and sobbed; ‘oh Shego, why won’t he just accept me for who I am?’ while all the while you were slowly whittling away at me piece by piece? Now there’s barely anything left inside of me of who I was; all I am now is what I pretend to be for you! I’m just a pale shadow all because you couldn’t do the same fucking thing for me that you wanted him to do for you!”
“I just wanted you to do what’s right Shego! You have so much power, so much skill; you can’t just waste it the way you do!”
“No Possible, that’s what you think is right! That’s who you are! Not! Me!”
The redhead broke through the taller woman’s guard and lashed out with a backfist across her face, following up with a thrust kick to her jaw that snapped her head back and sent her staggering. By the time the taller woman recovered, the redhead had landed nearly a dozen more blows to her arms and body, breaking a collarbone, several ribs, and the outside left forearm.
“Don’t tell me what’s right! Like you ever really supported me either with all your snide little remarks about being a hero! The way you’d sneer behind my back or look at me it was plain how you thought!”
“Yeah but that’s all it was; the way I thought! I never tried to make you stop! Never tried to talk you out of it! I didn’t hound you about taking the reward money you always passed up or how you could take some of the more lucrative jobs you never did! I kept my fucking mouth shut because I knew that was just the way you were! And I was right there by your side each and every time you went out, no matter how fucking stupid or inane I thought the job was! Because you were there!”
“Don’t you fucking get it? I don’t give a fuck about anyone else in this world but me and you! But you, you had to fucking rebuild me in your image; a good little soldier to follow you along as we saved the world for right and truth and justice and all the crap I don’t give a fuck about!”
The brunette slipped her hands in between the redhead’s defense and green lightning flashed once more, a concussive blast sending the smaller woman flying back nearly a hundred feet. She spun in the air cat-quick though, and landed crouched on hands & feet—but hitting so hard on the wet grass sent her limbs shooting out from under her, and she crashed into the sodden earth heavily.
A second blast of green lightning ripped through the dark night, and the smaller woman barely rolled aside as the ground where she had been sprawled erupted in a fountain of exploding dirt and stone. The flying debris stung her exposed skin and a rock slashed across her cheek, opening a deep cut there.
“I’m losing myself because of you Possible! I can’t sleep, I can’t breathe, I can’t even think because I barely know who I am anymore!” the voice shouted out from the darkness, over the storm. “And I will not go quietly into the night anymore! Sex isn’t enough! Love isn’t enough! Even you aren’t enough if it means I have to stop being me! The price is too high Possible! It’s too high, and I won’t pay it—I won’t!”
“And if that means I have to lose you… then that’s just the price I’ll have to pay instead.”
The lashing rains of the storm slowed and then, almost abruptly, came to a stop, leaving quiet in their wake. Heat lightning flashed across the clouds in a silent blue-white display, and the snap and crackle of charred, hissing wood from the drenched fires was the only sound besides the wind in the night. The chill breeze blew across the redhead as she lay on the grass, shivering and alone, covered in dirt and blood and the tattered remnants of her clothes, leaving her with only one thing remaining.
Pain.
<> Final Fate <>
Kim Possible turned out the last light in the penthouse suite before heading out the sliding door to stand in the moonlight on the rooftop patio. The silvery luminescence enshrouded her pale blue summer dress with an ethereal glow as she stretched languidly in the warm night air. Walking around the pool, Kim moved to stand on the far edge of the rooftop, leaning her crossed arms against the solid stone railing and looking out on the sparkling city spread out below her.
It had been a long, hard decade Kim reflected, but this year she had finally gotten her Doctorate in medicine, only one year behind schedule. All things considered, given everything else that had been going on in her life during that time, it was a miracle she was still so on-track. The pressures and demands of being the world’s hero were bad enough, but with all the trouble that had come up between her and her family it had almost been too much. And it had all been because of one woman, the seeming source of all complication in her life.
Shego.
After Shego had kidnapped her that day so long ago it had been one car wreck after another. First there was the unbelievable, heretofore impossible revelation of her feelings towards Kim, and her intentions to act upon them. Then there was the breakdown that had shown Kim it wasn’t just some sick obsession she had had with her—that as bad as Shego was, at least in this she was pure. That had sparked deep feelings of sympathy and caring within Kim, so strong they prompted her to reach out and give the other woman a chance, however slim it may have been.
For a while it had been nice, having Shego as a friend. Then, as things progressed, that friendship grew into something more, and Kim found out that she had been wrong. She was capable of giving Shego everything she had wanted from her.
The morning after, the full impact of what she had done had hit her, and it was the beginning of a long, difficult time for Kimberly Anne Possible, coming to terms with this particular application of “anything’s possible for a Possible.” Until that night she had been secure in who she thought she was, but that identity had been shattered, leaving her to try and pick up the pieces and put them back together again.
Shego had tried to support her as much as she could, but she really hadn’t understood what Kim was going through. She had always lived life by her own rules and didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought about her, so the best she could come up with was; “so you’re Bi or maybe Gay; big whoop. Who cares what anyone else thinks?” She just couldn’t get it.
Then there had been the next hit, nearly a year later when she had “come out” to her family. Her brothers hadn’t blinked; to them it was no big, just like it was to Shego—and they thought Shego was “cool” too. Her mom had been disappointed, but understanding & supportive of the way Kim was. However, she had also been dead set against Kim having anything to do with Shego, no matter how much it had seemed the woman was trying to reform. It had taken her quite a while to finally come around and accept that Shego really did care for her and really was trying.
It had been different with her father. They had always been so close, and even to this day Kim still felt a sharp stab of pain over the way he had closed off to her when she finally managed to summon the courage to tell him the way she was.
“You’re no daughter of mine.”
Cold, like ice, those were the last words he had spoken to her that hadn’t been in anger or disgust, turning his back on her completely and disowning her from the family, cutting her off totally from them. And no matter how much her mom and brothers had tried to smooth things over with him, to try and get him to talk to her, to try and understand, he remained intractable.
The years afterwards had been trying ones; with tensions running so thick you could have cut them with a knife. Kim had been torn up by guilt the more and more it seemed her revelation was going to splinter her family apart. Her mom had seriously considered divorcing her father and taking Kim’s brothers away from him over his stance, and it had been a close thing that she hadn’t—mostly due to Kim’s constant pleading with her that she could live with his reaction, but she couldn’t live with that happening.
Eventually things had uneasily settled down to a point of “truce,” where Kim’s mother and brothers didn’t talk about her in front of her dad, and in turn, he didn’t make any waves when he knew they went out to see her on their own. It was hard, but better than the alternative, and eventually their lives had returned to as close to normal as they were going to get.
Ron had been almost as bad. It was like the revelation was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He had stood by her after they had broken up, months after they had gotten together the night of the Diablo Incident, and they had even managed to work back to something that was very nearly the same as they had had before trying to be together. Kim had even been happy for him when he had started dating Monique. He had stood by her when he thought that she had just been trying to reform Shego. He had even accepted a “third place” position on Team Possible as Shego began taking an active role in their missions. But he just couldn’t accept Kim and Shego being together as more than that. It wasn’t that he had a problem with Kim being Gay—or at least, so he said—it was that he had a problem with it being Shego. He just couldn’t accept that.
After that he had grown more and more distant, until he stopped going on missions and eventually, stopped seeing her altogether, save for when they met through other friends or at social gatherings.
It wasn’t until a few years later that other things had come to a head with her and Shego, the night of that terrible storm that so mirrored the turmoil Kim hadn’t even suspected was brewing in the other woman until it erupted in anger, argument, and finally, full-blown violence between the two of them.
Shego’s accusations had cut her to the quick, and she had reacted with anger of her own, lashing out against Shego with her own sacrifices, her own deep pain over what her relationship with the other woman had cost her. They had raged and fought and almost killed one another that night, each wrapped in armor forged of pain and suffering and righteous anger. After it was all done, every emotional barrier between the two of them had been stripped away, completely exposing their deepest resentments and hurts to one another, and things could never be the same between them again.
Kim drew a deep breath and vented a long sigh, focusing on the city once more instead of gazing into the past of her troubled memories.
Shego was out there somewhere right now Kim knew, creeping through a dark airshaft penetrating a fortress-complex in order to steal some device or precious data housed in its protective fastness. Or maybe she was battling hordes of elite guards as she fought her way towards her goal. Or carefully stalking someone unfortunate enough to have drawn the attention of forces powerful enough to be able to pay her to bring the target to them.
Even after so much time had passed it was hard for Kim, knowing that that was who Shego was, who she’d always be; a mercenary to the core and unconcerned with whatever rules she was breaking. And as much as Kim disapproved of her methods, as much as she wished she would do the right thing just because it was right, it was never going to happen. Shego was Shego and Kim was Kim, two different people with two inherently different views on the way the world worked.
As she stood lost in thought, a section of shadow detached itself from the penthouse roof behind Kim and tumbled to the patio floor below, landing in a crouch with the barest whisper of impact. Uncoiling, the shadow straightened and glided out into the moonlight, moving towards her with flowing strides of long feminine legs, each pace sliding like water into the next, weight balanced on the balls of feet placed perfectly one after the other—silent, soundless, deadly. Sections of dark black material and a waterfall of raven hair drank in the light even as emerald panels and pale skin reflected its luminescence.
The figure moved in complete and utter concentration, stalking its prey with supreme confidence until it had moved up to within mere feet of her. A strong arm rose up behind Kim without a hint of sound, the hand extending forwards toward her like a ghost. Moonlight gleamed off the razor-keen edges of five wickedly curving plas-steel talons as the fingers moved closer to their target.
At the last moment, Kim spun around and slapped the offending hand away with a forearm block before sliding out to the side through the opening and dropping into a grounded defensive stance. Her eyes widened in surprise and she drew breath in a gasp as she beheld the striking ebony-and-green-ivory features of the woman who had almost crept up on her unawares.
“Shego!” Kim shouted, surging forwards, her arms sweeping up to slide around the taller woman and pull her in close. “You made it!”
Damnit. One of these days Possible; one of these days I’ll finally manage to sneak up on you… Shego thought as she returned the embrace warmly.
“Of course I did Pumpkin. You didn’t think I’d let some crappy little CIA contract keep me busy tonight, did you? It is our ‘wood’ anniversary after all…” Shego said with a snicker, her tone half amusement, half innuendo.
“I’m just glad you’re back safe Shego,” Kim said, looking up at Shego for a long moment before gently taking her face between her hands and drawing her down into a deep, extended kiss.
“I love you Kimberly Anne Possible, my beautiful valiant little Princess…” Shego murmured with a throaty burr when the kiss finally broke, hugging Kim tighter to her as she gazed into the depths of her loving fern-green eyes.
“And I love you too Shego Possible, my beautiful wicked little Bad Grrrl…” Kim responded with a playful, affectionate smile.
Oh yes, admitting that Shego had been right, that Kim hadn’t treated her fairly at all, had been one of the hardest things she had ever done. Learning to love Shego for what she was, for who she was instead of who Kim had wanted her to be, had tried to make her be; that had been even harder still. But the most important things in life were always the ones that you had to work the hardest at; that took the most effort to achieve. And Kim and Shego had the most important thing of all.
Love.
The End