“How’re they treating you, Princess?” Shego asked as she entered Kim’s room/cell.
The redhead’s room was better than hers, Shego always noted. Not that it really mattered considering the fact that they were both pretty cages. Now, Shego had a nice room because they wanted to make sure she cooperated when they took her to see Kim, but Kim’s room looked like a posh hotel suite. The only thing was that there was no bed. They had actually brought in a coffin for Kim to sleep in. Kim was surprised that she wanted to sleep in the thing, but it felt right every time that she crawled into the spacious box to get some sleep.
“I guess they’re treating me all right. They ran a lot of tests and everything,” Kim answered as she got up from where she was sitting, on the ceiling. She floated down to Shego. As time passed, she was getting accustomed to using and controlling her vampire abilities.
“They figured out a way to cure you, yet?” Shego inquired as she took her usual seat on Kim’s couch. She also turned on the television.
Kim did not typically use her television. She preferred to read when she was wake and not being tested. Seeing the outside world, but not being able to be a part of it in any way, depressed her, which Shego knew. So, the super-powered female usually watched movies or cartoons when she turned on Kim’s television; she had not been privileged with a set in her room.
The redhead did hate to see anything on the outside world. She could not leave to do anything out there. She used to be an adventurer, a hero, just an all-around active person and now she was regulated to a room or a laboratory. It was like a fate worse than death to her in many ways.
“No, they haven’t figured out how to cure me yet. Right now, they’re still trying to figure out how I even work,” Kim answered while sitting on the other end of the sofa.
“That’s crap. I was hoping they’d just fix you,” Shego commented. She had brought Kim to GJ because she thought that they would turn her back to normal. Instead, they were using her for a research monkey.
“Why? You want to go back to how we used to be?” Kim asked. She had finally gotten most of her memory back, but it did not do her any good. She could not go back to her old life. She wished that she could at least let her parents know that she was all right, but it was out of the question with her being a vampire and all. She was not really all right.
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” Shego replied, referring to going back to the way things were.
Shego had gotten used to being Kim’s friend. She was glad that Kim was her friend. She did not have many, if any of those. It was not such a bad thing to have pal and they got along rather well, despite some teasing and taunting that went on. That was their norm, though. It was good for both of them to have a little of their old lives with them and they figured that they would always have that as long as they were together.
They had been locked up together for over a year now. They saw each other almost everyday and talked a lot. They were comfortable around each other. Shego was just about the only person comfortable around Kim since they all knew that when the girl looked at them, she was seeing a meal. Kim was actually one of the few people comfortable around Shego considering the fact that Shego was a cranky malcontent that would not mind hurting as many people necessary if it meant that she could go free. They seemed to understand each other, which they both needed, like any other being on the planet.
“I guess it would be nice, but we’d hate each again,” Kim pointed out.
“I guess. So, they been feeding you all right?” Shego inquired. She had not seen Kim for a few days because the redhead was having lab tests done on her. GJ tried to pull that test crap on her too because of her powers and she told them that she was no white rat, so if they wanted to test her, they had better be prepared for a lot of burns. They had thought she was joking until the first group of agents left her room needing medical attention.
“Lately, they’ve been bringing in some all right stuff,” the girl answered.
GJ had been messing up Kim’s meals from the moment that she was stuck there. At first, they brought her animals to feed on because they figured that she should be able to live off of animal blood. Sure she could live off of the blood, but her body did not seem to function too well off of it. It did not help her memory any and her complexion began to go back to being pasty. She also started to lean on any human that was close to her and she had nearly bitten over two dozen people, but she stopped herself in time. Most people did not even know how close they came to having the equivalent of two thick syringes stuck in their flesh.
After GJ figured out that the animal blood was doing more harm than good, they began bringing Kim packets of fresh blood every few days. She did not know where they got the blood from, but she guessed it was from a hospital or blood bank or something. She just wished that they could be consistent with what they brought. One day they brought something good and sweet and then the next day, they would bring something just all around bad. Some of the blood she drank, she could not believe someone was actually allowed to give it away.
She still occasionally drank from Shego. Sometimes, the villainess offered if she thought that Kim looked a bit sickly, which was usually after a few days of bad blood delivered by GJ. Sometimes, Kim requested because to her, no blood was as good as Shego’s. They no longer had trouble with Kim going for more than Shego would allow, which was good because it meant that Shego did not have to punch her in the head anymore.
“You want to do anything?” Shego asked. They did not have much they could do. They could play cards or board games or some other pointless thing. Every now and then they sparred, but it was hard to do because Shego still accidentally flared her hands when fighting Kim, which would automatically send the young vampire running for her coffin and that ended the combat.
“I’m just happy you’re here,” Kim replied with a smile.
There was something about Shego’s presence that calmed her. The feeling of security and reassurance that everything would one day be all right followed Shego like her shadow as far as Kim was concerned. She guessed that it was because Shego was the one that rescued her after others had given up on her and Shego was the first person that she remembered too. Sure, she had not remembered everything about Shego at first, but even when it all started coming back to her, the feelings that Shego brought with her did not change. Kim was glad for that; she could use all of the comfort that she could get.
“You’re just saying that because you want a hug,” Shego teased.
“Well…” Kim smiled again. It was an expression that probably would have bothered a lot of people because her fangs showed when she smiled.
“I’m not hugging you, Possible, so forget it.”
Kim pretended to pout and then she was on Shego within the blink of an eye. She embraced the pale woman and sighed. She liked holding Shego and even though Shego liked to pretend otherwise, she liked holding Kim too. She was not too sure why, but she felt good knowing Kim was with her and not still missing. Kim was relatively all right and that was a good thing, even though things were never going to be the way they used to be it seemed.
Shego supposed the year of being locked up with Kim also made her all right with hugging the kid. She was not sure how that worked because she never was really all right with hugging people until Kim. She had already invested so much energy in saving the kid that she guessed the hugging bit was just her still doing that. Kim needed emotional support and Shego was now the only person that she could get it from.
“Hey, Shego,” Kim said after a long while.
“Hmm?” Shego was close to falling to asleep, not because of boredom or because she was tired, but because she felt peaceful.
“You want to get out of here?” the redhead inquired out of the blue.
“Out of here?”
“At least for a little while.”
“How so? Everything is monitored and the room is designed for you to stay in if that’s what they want from you,” Shego pointed out.
“I know, but do you want to get out? If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you want to be?” Kim asked.
Shego thought on it. She was not sure where she would want to be. It turned out that it did not matter to her where she was as long as Kim was there. Kim made every place, even a nice room that they knew was a cell, feel like an all right place to be. She wondered if she always liked the irksome redhead because of the way being with Kim made her feel now, but she just never acknowledged it because it was not necessary.
“I wouldn’t care where I was. If you’re next me and we can look up at the clear sky, it would be all right,” Shego answered honestly.
“Do you mean that?” Kim inquired.
“I do.”
“Then hold on.”
Shego wondered what the girl was going on about and then before she knew it, she was swallowed up by darkness. Before she could comprehend what was going on, she and Kim were sitting underneath a tree on a hill with a clear view of the wide open midnight sky. Shego looked around without realizing that she was clinging to Kim.
“Princess, what the hell just happened?” Shego inquired in a rather puzzled tone.
“I just figured out how to teleport. I haven’t told anyone yet,” Kim answered.
“How’d you keep this a secret?”
“I practiced in my coffin,” the redhead replied. Her room was hooked up with all kinds of surveillance equipment, so she had to be way careful if she figured out how to do something new that she did not want them to know about.
“Oh,” Shego commented. They had long gotten to the point where Kim doing something in her coffin did not seem weird, which they both knew was strange in and of itself.
“So, you okay?” Kim asked. She wanted to be useful to Shego in someway considering all the pale woman had done for her.
“This is great, but you know, they’re going to come looking for us.”
“I know. But, let’s have this moment.”
Shego nodded and she curled up next to Kim. They looked up at the night time sky together. It had been a long time since they both could just enjoy something that most people took for granted. Maybe, one day, they would be able to watch the sunrise or sunset together too.
“This is brilliant, Kimmie,” Shego commented after a few minutes.
Kim nodded in agreement and she turned to look at Shego. Shego looked at her and they started leaning toward each other. It was not the first time, but they usually stopped because they knew all of GJ was watching. No reason to stop now, especially since it was such a beautiful setting.
And then there were suddenly helicopters and GJ agents all over the place. The two escapees pulled away from each other and looked around to see dozens of guns trained on them. Doctor Director then stepped forward.
“So…do you have one or both of us chipped?” Shego inquired, speaking to the leader of Global Justice. She was being serious too because of how quickly the agency found them.
“What did you think you were doing?” Doctor Director countered.
“We just wanted to get out for a little while,” Kim explained.
“Shego’s a prisoner serving out a sentence. She can’t just get out for a while,” Doctor Director pointed out.
“Right, and so am I,” Kim sighed.
“Miss Possible, you know that you are a special case,” the one-eyed woman said. It sounded bad that Kim thought of herself as a prisoner like Shego was. They were not trying to make Kim seem like a captive, even though she was pretty much that.
“Maybe I’m sick of being a special case,” Kim snorted in anger. And then all of the guns around them were cocked.
“I hope you guys don’t plan to put Kimmie down,” Shego said while holding up a flaming hand. Like hell she was going to let them just kill Kim after all the trouble she had gone through saving the girl and allowing herself to be arrested to get Kim help that they were not even providing.
“Relax, ladies,” Doctor Director said. She hated to think how many agents she would lose starting a battle with vampire Kim and an angry Shego. “Now, how about we all go back to headquarters and talk things out like civilized beings?” she proposed.
Kim and Shego glanced at each other. At the moment, they were free. They could run right through all of the GJ agents and never have to look back. But then, what? Shego would have to steal a coffin for Kim to sleep in immediately because come sunrise, Kim either had to be out of sight or die. And then she would have to find a secure location for the casket. Besides, there was the matter of probably having to kill some people if they wanted to escape cleanly and neither of them was very comfortable with that idea.
“Fine,” the prisoners sighed and they voluntarily returned to their gilded cage.
“What’s the problem, ladies? Don’t you have it good here?” Doctor Director asked Kim and Shego. The three of them were gathered in her office. Shego was sitting in a chair while Kim was floating at about the height she would have been if she had sat in a chair. Out of all of her powers, Kim got the hang of flight the fastest because it was her favorite one.
“Good in comparison to other prisons, yeah,” Shego concurred.
“You don’t even have a right to complain,” the one-eyed woman pointed out to Shego.
“Never said I did, doesn’t stop me from doing it, though. Besides, I was only along for the ride,” the super-powered woman replied.
“Regardless—” Doctor Director started to say, but Shego cut her off.
“You know, you might have a right to treat me any damn way that you please, but first of all, you wouldn’t even be holding me if I didn’t go out and do your job of finding Kimmie. Second of all, I brought her here because I thought you jackasses would help her. Instead, you’re studying her like she’s a dead carcass of an animal you’ve never seen before. Third of all, she’s only here voluntarily despite what the hell you all want to tell yourselves. And the only reason she’s staying is because she wants you to fucking help her so she can go back to her family, who I am sure, miss her and would love to know she’s not dead,” Shego declared.
Doctor Director was speechless for the moment. Shego had made quite a few good points in her mini-speech. She glanced over at Kim, who was just sitting quietly. The redhead did not feel like she had to say anything now that Shego had pretty much hit the nail on the head.
While Kim might enjoy sleeping in cramped spaces now, she was going a bit stir crazy from having to be in the same secured room day in and day out. She was being treated more like a monkey than anything else by GJ because they had never seen a vampire before and they wanted to understand how she worked, especially if they had to face a vampire one day. They did figure that if there was one vampire, there was probably more and they would like to be prepared by knowing what they were up against. They did not seem to be trying to figure out a way to make her normal again and she was growing sick of it. She did want to go back to her family one day, especially since they still believed that she was missing.
“We’re trying our best,” Doctor Director tried to assure Kim.
“At what? Making me feel even more like a monster? I really thought you would help me. Instead, you act like you’re doing me a favor by keeping me locked in that room,” Kim replied.
“We take care of you. If you want books, we bring them. If you want blood, we bring it. Hell, we bring you Shego every damn day because you want her—”
“What about giving me back my humanity? What happened to that? Am I such a fascinating creature like this that you guys don’t even give a damn that I was once a human kid with dreams and a life ahead of me? Now, I’ve got to live in the shadows and feed on what I once was. I was fucking seventeen for crying out loud! I wanted to go to college! I wanted to build a career! Maybe even one day get married, but do you care about that? No! All you care about is how the vampire works. I just…” Kim sniffled. “I just want to go home…” She put her head down.
“Great, now you made her cry,” Shego said to Doctor Director to hopefully make the one-eyed woman feel worse than she already should and did. She put her arm around Kim and rubbed the teen’s shoulder to comfort her.
Doctor Director sighed. She supposed that they had been treating Kim more like an experiment than Kim Possible, but they were trying to help her and they were trying to protect the rest of humanity. Who knew what might happen if they let a vampire out to wander the streets. But, she had to admit that there had not been an incident in the year that Kim had been among them. Sure, she had a habit of looking at everyone as if they were prime rib, but she had yet to attack anyone like they were choice steaks.
“What do you want me to do, Kim? You do realize that I can’t just let a vampire wander the streets, especially since you want Shego with you all the time. You have to understand my situation,” the one-eyed woman sighed.
“I know, but I won’t hurt anybody. I just want out…at least for a little while. I’ll keep coming back for experiments and I won’t attack anyone. Shego would make sure of it. After all, I don’t think she wants me killing anyone anymore than you do or anymore than I do,” Kim pointed out.
“You want me to trust Shego to watch you?” Doctor Director asked incredulously.
“Why not? I found her while you were all sitting around with your thumbs up your asses swearing to whoever that she was probably dead anyway. I think at this point if anyone’s trust should be called into question it should be yours. I should be saying I trusted you with Kimmie and you just screwed her over if anything,” Shego argued.
“Look, I can understand and appreciate your positions—”
“No, you can’t,” Kim interjected. “I don’t want to stay here anymore and I’m not going to stay here anymore,” she declared.
“What are you saying, Miss Possible?” Doctor Director inquired.
“Why should I stay some place I don’t want to, especially if you’re not helping me? I don’t want to be your prisoner anymore and I don’t have to be,” Kim stated as she put her feet down on the floor. “Now, this can go two ways, you can actually understand and appreciate our positions or I can take Shego and cut through your whole organization until we’re out. And I know you think you’re all high tech with your sun lamps and fire and whatever the hell else you got, but I will get out. I promise you that. No point in staying here if you’re not going to help me.”
“Kim, we’re trying,” Doctor Director tried to assure the girl, but not having seen any results for a year was not making that believable.
“So, you can keep trying, but you could let me out. I want to do something, anything. How would you like to be locked in a room for a year after already being locked in a basement for just as long? I haven’t done anything wrong. I was just trying to help people and I want to at least get a chance to go back to doing something normal. I want to get out and be myself in some way,” Kim said.
“Kim—”
“Doctor,” Kim growled. She was getting frustrated and the more frustrated she got, the harder it was to remember that the woman before her was Betty Director, someone that she respected. Instead, the woman was looking more like a frail piece of human meat that needed to shut up and listen.
“Maybe you want to listen just a bit, doc,” Shego said. Hey, they were in an enclosed area with Kim and the girl could move faster than their eyes could track. Kim could be on Doctor Director and ripping her arms off before they even knew it.
Doctor Director did consider her position and she had come up with the same thing that Shego did. She supposed that she needed to work something out with Kim before the girl did lose it. She just was not sure what to work out considering Kim was a vampire.
(New day)
“Yeah, mission accomplished. We got back everything,” Shego reported in a dull voice into her comm. unit.
She was standing in dark hallway, dressed in a horrible dark blue uniform. She was working off her debt to society in two ways. One would be working for GJ and the other would be babysitting a world-saving vampire. She turned around to see what her partner was up to. She groaned because Kim was about to bite into their unconscious foe’s hand.
“Kimmie, put that down. You don’t know where he’s been,” Shego said.
Kim groaned and dropped the hand. “But, I’m hungry,” she complained.
“You just ate before we left,” Shego pointed out.
“It was like a thimble full of blood before we had to run out and get this guy.”
“All right, all right. Stop whining. I’ll feed you when we get back to the apartment. Geez,” Shego sighed. She had to watch Kim almost all of the time because there was no telling what that girl might put in her mouth.
Once GJ came to pick up the bad guy and his loot, Shego and Kim were free to go home. They had an apartment very close to GJ HQ. It was not a big or fancy apartment at all. It was just a regular two bedroom place and Kim’s room had the windows blocked off to prevent any sunlight from entering the space.
The pair had not been a problem for GJ yet, except sometimes they got a little rough with their quarry. But, they had not killed anyone and thanks to Shego’s sharp eye, they had yet to find any bite marks on anyone either. So, it would seem that everything was going fine and GJ was still working on a way to turn Kim back to normal. The pair settled into their home and they were ready to go to sleep as the sun began to rise.
“Hey, Kimmie, I was wondering something,” Shego said, standing in the doorway of Kim’s room. They were both in pajamas, even though some might have thought it weird that a vampire was dressed in pajamas to go sleep in a casket.
“Yeah?” Kim asked.
“What’s it like sleeping in that?” the green-skinned female inquired, nodding toward the box.
“You want to see?”
Shego shrugged. She really was curious as to what it was like sleeping in that coffin considering the fact that Kim did it every night. It seemed like it should be uncomfortable.
“Come on, get in,” Kim said as she held open the lid of her casket.
Shego was a little reluctant to get into a small, death box, but her curiosity won out. She crawled into the space, which was cushioned with velvet; it would seem that GJ was not kidding around when they sprung for the coffin. Kim then climbed in and eased the lid down. They lay on their sides, facing each other.
“Can we get locked in?” Shego asked curiously.
“No, the top’s got hinges like a kitchen cabinet. It doesn’t lock,” Kim answered.
Shego nodded. It was not so bad in there, especially since she got to be close to Kim. It was not as cramped as she thought it would be either. She supposed that things were not so bad now, even though she did want GJ to return Kim to being human.
“Hey, Shego,” Kim said.
“Yeah?” Shego replied.
“Thank you for everything.”
“Don’t mention it, kid. My life was boring without you around,” the super-powered woman replied.
“Still you went out one a limb for me and I really appreciate it.”
“Can you appreciate it while going to sleep? You know Doctor Director is going to work us like dogs come sunset,” Shego remarked.
Kim chuckled a little and then she did something that she wanted to do for a while now, she leaned over and kissed Shego. It was nothing overly romantic, just a sweet, tender kiss. It was almost like a “thank you” kiss, but Shego accepted it all the same. They did not talk about the gentle embrace when it was done. They just fell asleep; there was plenty of time to talk about things considering how long they would be together thanks to GJ.
Next time: the conclusion.