Someone was banging at her door, and she groaned, rolling over. It was hard enough to sleep with all those birds singing outside! Even harder with the sunlight streaming in from god knows where! All she knew was that her body ached something awful and the best way to heal was to sleep in.
“Mom,” Kim whined, putting a pillow over her head. “I don't feel good…”
“I'm not your mother so I won't cut you a break. Wake up or you don't get breakfast!”
Kim bolted awake at the sound of Shego's voice. The events of the night before crashed into the forefront of her mind and she looked down, feeling herself frantically for… yes. Clothes! She had clothes on! Then was last night a dream? On further inspection, she realized that she was wearing different clothes than the night before. She had on a large ‘Canada’ hockey jersey and… a pair of underwears. Where was her bra?! Where were her clothes from the night before?!
‘She changed my clothes?’ Kim snatched the blankets up around her, feeling that her humiliation was officially complete. If Shego hadn't seen her naked in the baths last night… well, now Kim knew Shego has seen her naked. Her mind reeled at the possibilities. What did Shego do to her? Why had she--the tea. Right after she had drank the tea, she had felt weird. Nice… but weird.
“Hey,” Shego opened the door, a scowl on her face. “The day's not gonna wait for you. Wake your ass--holy!”
Shego dodged a brush that was aimed at her head. “Are you hostile to everyone in the morning or is it just me?”
“You!” Kim jumped out of bed, and though her whole body ached, she did a roundhouse kick, and missing, quickly came back with an elbow aimed at Shego's gut. Automatically, Shego caught it and pushed her away.
“What is wrong with you?” Shego hissed. Kim punched out, and using the same move she had used that night in the village, she wrapped her arm around Kim's. Catching her other arm, her leg snaked around Kim's and forced the redhead to one knee. “Do you want me to beat you into submission? Is that it?!”
“Go ahead!” Kim's anger made Shego do a double-take. The girl was actually really mad about something! “And after you're done beating me, are you going to rape me again?!”
Shego's jaw dropped in shock. Then she closed it quickly and shook Kim, outrage and genuine anger on her face. “What?”
“Last night!” Kim wouldn't let tears show as she thought of being… violated like that by her worse enemy. “You know what you did, don't deny it!”
Shego openly gaped at Kim. “You. Are. An. Idiot. Its so not what you think.”
“Really,” Kim said wryly, still trying to struggle out of Shego's grip. “What about my clothes, huh? I wasn't wearing these last night! What about this Canada jersey, huh?”
“Last night…” Shego's voice was slow and dangerous. “I gave you Grandpa Cho's special tea. Its a relaxant and helps with sore muscles and low energy. It works over-night. All you need is at least eight hours of sleep, and a few minutes after you wake up, the soreness should be gone. Its like a sleeping pill, but far more potent and its all-natural.
“Last night, I overestimated the amount of leaves I should put into your cup so you konked out fast. I explained all of this to you when I carried you to your room.” Shego's face was growing darker by the second and Kim cringed in the face of Shego's righteous fury. “Obviously you didn't hear me, but you woke up again when I carried you outside and starting talking stupidness. You had managed to spill water on your clothes at dinner. I brought you to your room and I tried to change you and you PUSHED MY FACE. I fell off the bed. I had to HOLD YOU DOWN TO CHANGE YOU. You pushed my face! And that Canada jersey is limited edition from the Salt Lake City 2002 games, thank you very much!”
“Um,” Shego's explanation did make sense. And Kim didn't feel *particularly* violated… and her back--
“Hey!” Kim rolled her shoulders, amazed that the soreness she was certain would stay throughout the day was gone. “I'm not aching anymore!”
“You actually thought,” Shego's voice brought Kim's attention back to the villainess kneeling over her. “That I, I, SHEGO, would take advantage of you?”
Kim, to say the least, felt sheepish. In her defense, the redhead managed to squeak, “It was an honest mistake?”
Shego took a deep breath. Then another. And another. And started laughing as loud as she could.
“You… self-centered… egotistical,” Shego could barely get the words out of her mouth, she was laughing so hard. Kim had stopped struggling now and just wanted to die. She could tell her face was beet-red from embarassment. Shego had (surprisingly) done her a favour, and she had thought Shego had… did… thing with her while she was out. “Idiot! You actually think that I would… and you… and me and, and…”
The rest of the sentence was torn away by racuous laughter. Shego's hold on Kim loosened and she fell away, rolling on the floor and howling with laughter.
“It was an honest mistake, okay?!” Kim shouted. She really really wanted to disappear at the moment. Then, thinking of something, she pointed out, “Well, what about you and Fong, huh? I don't know if--”
“No.” The laughter died as quickly as it had started, and Shego's face was twisted with undecipherable emotions. “Don't go there, Kimmie.”
Picking herself off the floor, Shego dusted herself off. “Breakfast is getting cold. So I suggest you change and wash quickly. The outhouse is right behind the baths. I hope you remember how to get to the dining room.”
With that said, Shego left in a hurry.
‘What was that?’ Kim stood up, her earlier embarassment almost forgotten in the face of Shego's reaction to Fong's name. Kim had just meant to embarass Shego a bit, tease her on how well she treated the asian woman… Kim pushed that subject aside to disect later, as she concentrated on stripping quickly and changing into the clothes Shego had placed for her on a chair. She spotted a basin and a pitcher of water in the corner of the room, and quickly went to make use of it, noting that there was a toothbrush, toothpaste, a washcloth. Brushing her teeth, she looked around the room, noting the luxurious canopied bed. And the vanity set that had been various beauty products, moisterizers and the like on it. Thoughtful. Kim was seeing a whole new side of Shego. What was the woman trying to do? First she treated her violently, but that was not unexpected. Shego treating her nicely… a painting of carps swimming in the water caught her eyes, giving her something to take her mind off the enigma that was Shego. The brushwork was beautiful. Everything in the room, from artpieces to furnitures were placed in a very pleasing way.
‘Whoever decorated this place,’ Kim rinsed out her mouth. ‘Sure knew what they're doing.’
Kim went through her morning rituals, then hurried to the dining room, congratulating herself on picking the right door in the beautiful household. Shego was already sitting cross-legged at her own table, eating congee and light dishes of pickled vegetables. Kim had a similar setting at her table. Sitting quickly, she dug into her food, and was surprised when Shego asked her a question.
“What do you mean by me and Fong?” The woman asked casually.
Kim swallowed down her food, and smiled a bit nervously. “Well… I didn't mean anything by it. It was just, you know, after Fong and I fought, you were really nice to her. So I was just teasing you… anyways, I'm sorry if you were--”
“Shut up.” Shego growled. Having gotten her answer she wanted to stop Kim's incessant ramblings. She started eating again and Kim, thankful for the silence, went back to her food. Fong was a subject that shouldn't be touched. That much she knew. And if Shego wanted to tell her something, she would tell her.
‘I mean, we're not even *friends*. Why would she tell me anything about her personal--’
“Fong and I were sort of an item.” Shego picked up a pickled radish from a dish, munching on it carefully. What she said floored Kim completely. But she kept her surprise in check startlingly well. All that managed to get past her stranglehold on the shock she felt was a twitch that Shego didn't see.
“You… and… Fong…” Kim said slowly, putting her chopsticks down. Her hands had started shaking.
“Fong and I,” Shego nodded, slurping at the congee. “were an item.”
“Okay…” Kim tried to pick up her chopsticks again, but failed miserably. Finally, she sighed and decided to be truthful. “Okay, what the hell.”
Shego chuckled and glanced at Kim. “What do you mean?”
“I thought you were totally into guys.” said Kim.
“Just cuz I didn't jump your bones when you were out doesn't mean I'm not interested in girls,” Shego laughed at how Kim flushed up immediately. “Don't assume the whole world is a happy hetero place.”
“I don't!”
“Ha,” Shego barked out a short laugh.
Kim sipped some water, refusing to let Shego irritate her, yet failing miserably. Fong was right, Shego did have a talent of getting under someone's skin. Then something occurred to the redhead.
“Were, as in past-tense?”
“Yeah,” Shego drawled, eyes sparkling. “Why are we still on this subject? Are you interested in filling a position?”
It seemed Shego had settled on a subject to tease Kim on. Shego leered at the young woman, who was sputtering in indignation.
“NO!”
“Well, took you long enough. Maybe a bit… TOO long.”
“Okay, I think you're really attractive--”
Shego grinned, pleased. “Oh, so you find me attractive.”
“Shut up!”
“Gonna make me, Possible?”
“Three years with you,” Kim groaned, picked up her chopsticks and started eating again. “I'm going to die.”
“Three years that you chose to spend with me, Kimmie. And I might have taken the choice away from you at the beginning, but you can't say I didn't give you another chance to escape.” Shego had finished her breakfast. “Do you know why you won? Other than the obvious answer that you were better than Fong, do you know why you won?”
Kim was faced with that question that had to be answered. Shego waited expectantly.
It was true.
Kim had decided her own fate. She had fought against Fong, knowing the stakes. Knowing what would happen if she lost, what would happen if she won. But she had always been a perfectionist, had always been a bit too competitive. Losing was not in her nature, and even at the beginning, she had been willing to risk everything to be better. She had always been determined, but calm in almost every sitch. That was because she always knew that she was good at what she did, and all her opponents, though challenging, would fall before her. The only one who kept her on her toes was Shego. And to have the person she considered her opposite, the yin to her yang if you would, win, it was to say the least, disconcerting. They had always had a balance there. To have that balance tip, it had thrown her off completely.
“I want to win.” Kim answered grimly. Kim, to her credit, looked the part. Decked out in the gi Shego had lain out for her, she stared at the other woman.
Shego laughed. “You always wanted to win, Kimmie. But you want the reason I think you came with me?”
Shego took Kim's silence as an affirmative, and the dark-haired woman leaned back, using her elbows to prop herself up and stretched her legs out under the table. “You could have thrown the fight. Let Fong go with me. Losing to Fong might have been something you could take, if the stakes had been different. If it had been your family or anything else besides me, you would have given up everything to be with them. But here, you didn't. It was because of the stakes.”
“Who's conceited now?”
“Listen, would you have wanted someone to get better than you, and be my equal?” Shego explained slowly, as if she was explaining to a particularly stupid child. “I am the factor in the fight that made you want to win. Say what you want, Kimmie. Maybe its because the hero in you wanted to make sure that an obvious friend of mine didn't have the same skills I do. But really, you're jealous of anyone that catches my eye as an opponent. I'm your responsibility. To not rise to the challenge… you couldn't abandon me like that.”
Kim sat in silence, contemplating the words and wanting to reject the truth in them. But she couldn't. Responsibility… was Shego really her responsibility?
“When I first met Fong, you know, she reminded me a lot of you.” Shego smiled wistfully at the memory. “She fought like you, was at the same level you were when I had last seen you. But unlike you, she improved too slowly. But you catch on fast. I can't teach her what I'm going to teach you in three years.”
Kim was trying to bend her mind around everything Shego was telling her. It was… strange. And it felt like Shego was leaving out quite a bit of information…
“So Fong,” Kim crunched on a pickled vegetable, picking her words cautiously. “reminded you of… me?”
“Yeah,” Shego tilted her head to one side pensively. “Both of you have that fire, I guess. And maybe look a bit alike?”
Kim laughed. “How?”
“I don't know. You just do.”
Kim paused then spoke up again, the question she had been rolling around in her mind needed to be asked. “Why did you bring me here? Besides the fact that I lost a bet. I feel like you planned this. I don't understand. Even if Fong isn't as good as I am, wouldn't it have been better to bring someone you like instead of someone you don't like?”
“Its not about whether ‘I like’ or ‘I don't like', now. Sometimes, its not about what people want. Its about what's best for you and for them.” Shego said carefully. But her words gave her away. Shego had chosen Kim for something, something that was ‘best for you and for them', that much the younger woman was certain. Kim had never heard Shego sound so full of purpose, and she studied the older woman. A couple days ago, Shego had been missing for a long time. Shego smirked at Kim, misinterpreting why the other woman was ogling her so intently. “Aw Kimmie… who said I didn't like you?”
Kim blushed at that question, felt her heart do a nervous flip-flop. ‘What did Shego mean by ‘like’?’
Shego, either not aware or not caring about Kim's inner conflict, blithely continued on talking.
“You think I have some ulterior motive? Hm.” Shego looked up at the rafters. A light breeze came in from the open doors, making the coloured silken sheets above her rippled in response, giving the illusion of a multi-coloured sea on the roof. “What do you think?”
“Why would I ask you if I had the answer?”
“Well… three years alone training someone who wasn't as skilled as I was would kill me.” Shego's tone was brusque. “I couldn't have Fong here. I need someone to focus me. So you were the first choice.”
“Wow… Do you tell Fong about ‘us’?” Kim joked. In her head, she thought the excuse Shego was giving her was full of holes. What was Shego really up to?
“Please don't flatter yourself.” Shego rolled her eyes. Pushing herself off the floor, she gathered the dishes together, and motioned for Kim to follow her. “Dishes, Kim. Your first duty of the day.”
Something suddenly occurred to the redhead. “Wasn't I supposed to be cooking?”
“Yeah, I'll be doing that for a while. Fong told me she only taught you bare basics before she ran off to yell at me.” Shego shook her head. “She's more trouble than she's worth.”
Kim hurried to gather her dishes, and as she exited and turned to close the door behind her, she noticed the screen that had been behind the raised dias. There was a cloth thrown over it, covering the snake motif and the unfinished portion of the screen. But a small corner peeked out from under the sheet. It looked like… something had been added to the unfinished work--
“Hey, move it! We start as soon as you're done the dishes!”
Kim closed the twin doors quickly, forgetting about the hidden screen and hurried after Shego.
Kim watched Shego walking steadily beside her. Blinking the sweat out of her eyes, she wondered again why she hadn't thrown the match. She now knew for certain the reason why Shego wanted her here. Shego was bent on killing her. She knew it. Bent on killing her as slowly and painfully as possible.
“Watch that step.” Shego pointed out the step a bit too late, and Kim fell to one knee, stifling her cries of pain as her bruised knees and shin hit the stones again. She had only fallen five times, but it was still a long way up to the top. Tied around her waist and body were weights. The threaded stones(small boulders) she had noticed at the bottom of the steps were actually make-shift weights she was struggling to lug up.
“With all of your hero thing, you're quite a gymnast.” Shego had admitted grudgingly at the beginning. “But you don't have the strength training.”
“Isn't this…” Kim wheezed, “bad… for your… body?”
“It could be,” Shego nodded. “That's only if you keep falling and you don't adjust yourself to the weight. Also, you might wanna fix the way you hold your back, or else it could seriously warp your posture.”
Kim grumbled at Shego's cavalier attitude. “Do you even know what you're doing?”
“Gee whiz, ‘KP',” Shego mocked Ron's voice. “You heal pretty fast anyways. Just keep going.”
It was true. Years of doing damage to each other had surprisingly sped up both women's healing factor.
“We'll only move on to the next stage when I see that you can get up those stairs without struggling too much.” Shego sat down on a step, fanning herself. “Don't you think its hot today?”
“Yes, it is.” Kim spat out. She was barely a quarter of the way up the steep climb.
“You're thinking I'm probably doing this to make you suffer.” Shego sighed, clutching at her heart like the very thought of Kim even thinking those thoughts hurt her thoroughly. “But if I had really wanted to make you suffer, I would have made you climb to the TOP of this mountain.”
Kim's stunned look made Shego laugh.
“Gee, Kimmie.” Shego took out a bottle of water and took a sip. “You thought our house was at the top of the mountain? We still got a ways to go. And don't worry, by the end of this week, we're going to try to get all the way up there.”
The weights on Kim suddenly seemed so much heavier.
Kim lay in bed, feeling like someone had tried to tear her body apart. That someone being Shego. Shego had forced her to climb until they reached the house, then go back down to drop off the stones, then comes back up again. That had been the whole day, gone. Sure, they breaked for lunch. Shego had made sandwiches, which the heroine had wolfed down hungrily. Then Shego had urged her on, allowing only a short time to digest. She wanted to make it down the mountain with the weights, then up the mountain without the weights before the sun set. The time up the mountain without weights, Shego had said she would time her, and the next day, she expected the time to be cut down.
‘She wouldn't even give me the special tea,’ Kim thought sulkily. But Shego had pointed out that to rely on a substance to get through her training was just cheating herself. So Kim had gritted her teeth and bore it. Rolling onto her back with a groan, she let her head fall to one side so she could look outside at the dark sky. Tonight it was cloudy. Maybe it would rain tomorrow and Shego would give her a break. The teen imagined that those stone steps up the mountain got pretty slippery if it rained.
Kim wondered if it was raining back in Middleton…
‘Mommy.’ Kim, who rarely used that childish way of addressing her mom, threw an arm over her eyes, too exhausted to cry, but feeling that horrible pang of homesickness. What was she doing here? She should be home. Her family and friends were probably worried sick about her! Why hadn't they found her yet? Where was she? And what did Shego have planned for her?
Questions. She had a lot of those. Among them was one that disturbed her slightly. Why hadn't she tried to escape? Why was she still here when obviously Shego had some grand scheme that probably included Kim in it? The answers that she was given were vague or evasive. Turning over again, she was drifting off to sleep fast, and wasn't sure if she what she was seeing outside her window was real or just a figment of her sleep-deprived brain… a beautiful shimmering bird seemed to be circling the house, as if looking for a place to alight. Finding none, it gave out a mournful cry before turning away and heading down the mountain.
With that haunting sound reverberating in her ears, Kim fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
endnote: So sue me, I don't know how to write training scenes at all. Woah. and someone mentioned me in KP slash haven! Too cool! :D