Standard Disclaimer : Disney owns Kim Possible, all it's characters, locations and other such stuff.

Kim Possible: One Night of Fearful Honesty in a Bar - A Hero's Truth

Calling the bar a dive would actually be considered a compliment and an upgrade from its usual status. The tables were more stained and dingy then clean, its clientele doubly so and it would be considered a slow night if the police only showed up three times. It was, in short, the exact kind of place most people with any level of standards or sense of taste…or sight or sense of smell tended to avoid, which is why Kim, on just this night at just this moment, was slowly nursing yet another drink in one of the darker corners of the room.

She rarely drank, not that she thought of herself as any sort of prude or above it in anyway, it was more that she just never cared for the entirety of it all. Alcohol slowed the body's reactions and tended to dull the mind, two things she tried to avoid given her penchant for heroism. She would, on some holidays or special events, cut loose a little in this regard, but never to excess, there just wasn't any point to it. This one night however, this one long, slow, time crawling, endless night she had come closer to changing that position then ever before. Maybe it would keep her from thinking, maybe losing herself in something , anything, that could help her not focus on what had happened in the proceeding day would quiet her mind, let her mentally keep running from it all. She knew though, as sure as the honest truth itself, that she wouldn't go through with it, no really. A night to think was why she had come in here, to this place where no one would ever expect to find her, so no matter how tempting the bottom of that glass looked through the dark liquid that covered it she continued only to nurse her drinks, slowing and lessening the alcohol's debilitating effects.

How it began was the easiest to think about, it was after all the best place to start, even in a story you were telling to yourself.

. . . . .

Barkin hadn't been happy with the interruption to his lecture on the decline of military ethics and it's subsequent role in the decline of the morals of Kim's generation. The familiar four tone beep however tended to carry loud and clear through any room it happened to be in and Kim, reddened in the face with the embarrassment of suddenly being the center of attention, had been prompt to answer it, though in as whisperish a tone as she could manage while still being audible to the person on the other end.

"What is it Wade? Kind of in the middle of class."

Wade, pleasant and unfazed as ever, only shrugged.

"Sorry Kim but I thought you'd want to know. A call just went out across the police band, it seems Drakken and Shego were just spotted breaking into some high tech military hospital."

Kim sighed and gave the glaring Barkin a sheepish grin before replying.

"Ride?"

"Already on it's way, it'll pick you up behind the gym"

"Still the best Wade."

Kim deactivated the communicator and stood up, already making her way to the door.

"I'm really sorry Mr. Barkin. I know how rude it is to interrupt a teacher in the middle of class but…"

Barkin rolled his eyes and spoke in a resigned tone.

"Just go Possible. Neither of us needs to hear whatever excuse you were about to make up."

Kim felt her cooling face flush again with embarrassment. It had been the fifth time in this week alone but it wasn't as if she was scheduling these things to occur during her classes. Duly chagrined she slipped out of the room and began down the hallway toward the school's gymnasium. She slowed as she neared one particular door, expecting to see Ron likewise coming out of his chemistry class but the quite audible protests from just beyond the door made it clear that wasn't likely to be happening.

"Oh come on Ms. Martinez….I know I already missed….No I don't think I deserve special treatment I just…"

She couldn't quite make out the Teacher's half of the conversation but Ron's final disgruntled groan was a clear enough indicator that this was going to be a solo mission.

The pilot, the father of a child she had once saved, had dropped her off on the building's roof which allowed her easy access to the vent system. Though she was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, it had always amazed her that so many buildings, from super villain layers to standard big box superstores and most things in-between, had vent systems that seemed almost designed to be big enough for someone to sneak through. She could only help but wonder sometimes about how much the lower the crime rate would be if buildings would only come with non people sized vents. Still, it was another thought for another day and she made her way, as silently as she was able, toward what had begun as distant voices but were now becoming clearly indicative of the two super villains in the middle of a rather typical banter.

"…And you think this thing is going to help?"

Drakken gave a dismissive huff.

"It will once I super charge it with the supercharger you stole for me earlier this week."

"Oy, again with the supercharging . Didn't work last time Drakken, not gonna work this time."

"I'll have you know little missy that it will work this time, I've planned it all out down to every last detail. One little zap from this and everyone will be cowering at the name Drakken once again."

"Uh huh. And in all that planning, did you remember to account for all possible…"

Drakken waived her off dismissively

"Yes yes all possible outcomes."

Kim, who had managed to pry lose a ceiling vent and drop down behind a small machine of some sort as Shego had begun to speak, suddenly found the machine melted into nothing more then a heap of slag and an annoyed looking Shego pointing directly at her.

"No Doctor D. Possible as in Kim. As is she is right there."

Drakken, who looked momentarily taken aback by Kim's sudden appearance scrambled to what appeared to be a rather large, if wheeled for easy moving, laser gun.

"Ah! Shego! Keep her busy, I need more time."

Shego gave a coy grin and lit both of her hands as she leapt toward Kim.

"My pleasure Doc. Come on Kimmie, lets see if you can do better then last time."

Kim rolled away reflexively as Shego struck the ground she had just been standing on. The pair began their well practiced routine of trading punches and kicks, neither really gaining ground on the other. For every close hit or light graze that Shego would manage to score Kim would counter with a well placed kick to the mid-section or punch of her own to Shego's exposed and reaching arms. It wasn't the physical attacks that tended to win these battles, rather it was the banter between the two, the inevitability of one of them losing focus or getting enraged due to something said that typed the scales of the battle one way or the other.

Kim grunted as Shego managed to connect with a solid shoulder strike but managed to spin the momentum of the hit to her favor by moving with her body into a low sweep as she was turned by the strike's impact.

"So what's the big plan this time Shego? Bouncing a laser off the moon again?"

Shego grinned and flipped over Kim's sweep, turning into a roundhouse kick of her own.

"Nah! Old Doc seems to think his name has become something of a joke, says people don't fear him like they used to."

Kim, who could feel the beginnings of perspiration bead on her forehead, gave a small nod of understanding as she blocked Shego's kick with her arm.

"Gotta say I don't disagree. He just doesn't have the same level of menace he used to. Maybe its all that being caught by me that did it."

Shego quickly dropped her leg and managed to grab Kim's arm, using her free hand to grab Kim's other arm, forcing the two to struggle against each other for the moment,

"Who knows? All I know is this ray thingy is supposed to make people afraid of him again. Said it was being used to help soldiers face their PTSD induced fears but he could put it to a better use."

While the two women struggled for the upper hand, or in Kim's case the leverage to break Shego's grip, across the room Drakken muttered to himself as he soldered in the last connector point. With a victorious grin he hopped up to the control seat and immediately flipped the laser gun on and aimed it right at the two fighting women, a scene which elicited a groan of annoyance from him not only due to fact that Shego had not yet defeated their teenage foe but also the fact that she was now in the way of his clear shot.

"SHEGO!"

Shego grunted but kept her grip on Kim, using her slight height advantage to press Kim's wrists backwards.

"Kinda busy Doc."

"But Shego! Your in the way! I need you to…."

Drakken growled and mumbled to himself.

"Fine. Don't move, you'll be to afraid of me to be angry anyway."

Drakken locked the laser gun's sights directly on the pair of women and gave a devilish grin.

"Be afraid Kim Possible! Be very afraid!"

Drakken fired and a sickly orange beam shot out of the end of the gun and slammed into the two women, enveloping both in glow that seemed to overtake even Shego's standard pale green complexion. Neither woman moved so much as a muscle as they were enveloped, in fact so far as Drakken could tell both seemed to have suddenly become stock still, frozen in their hand held struggle. Yet just as fast as it had enveloped them, it vanished and in the blink of an eye, four eyes to be exact as Kim and Shego both seemed to blink incessantly for a moment, it was over. Both women stared at each other momentarily, as if adjusting to reality for the first time, then simply dropped their arms, breaking their gripping stalemate, and began walking away from each other.

Drakken, very confused by this sudden occurrence, attempted to flex what he felt sure was his new found power in what he considered his scariest tone.

"Be hold Kim Possible, your fears made manifest in your most terrifying enemy, Doctor Drakken! Feel your entire body quake with fear at my merest utterance. Cower and shake as you look upon…."

Drakken found himself suddenly cut off as he was roughly yanked collar first by Shego who still remained silent, choosing instead to forcefully drag the grandstanding villain toward the waiting hovercraft at the rear of the room.

"What? SHEGO! I demand you let me go. Don't make me have to put the fear of Drakken into you."

Despite his protests Shego said nothing as she roughly, and quite easily, through him into the hovercraft and jumped into the driver's seat. As it lifted off and up through an open series of sky light panels, Drakken's whining tone could still heard.

"You're doing it wrong! You're supposed to be afraid of me!"

. . . . .

"A bit off your beaten path aren't you Princess?"

Kim, taken out of her memory trip by the sudden intrusion of the voice, didn't even bother to look up at it's source.

"Please Shego, not right now. I just…I can't. Not right now, not tonight. Just go…just, please go."

Shego, perhaps out of enjoyment of their antagonistic relationship or perhaps for some personal reason she would never admit to or perhaps even in acknowledgement of what had occurred earlier in the day, ignored Kim's words and instead sat down across from the teen hero, the tall mug in her hand already half empty and dropping lower every moment.

"Not looking to start anything Princess. Just came in for a drink and was shocked to see you of all people here. Never took you for the slumming type."

Kim shook her head.

"I'm not slumming, I came to think…."

She took a small sip of her glass and continued to stare down into it.

"…Maybe just to get away."

Shego shrugged in indifference. Neither spoke for quite a long time, Kim just continued to just stare down into her glasses while Shego seemed intent on replacing her blood with alcohol given the rate she was ordering new drinks and yet to even the untrained eye she never appeared the least bit intoxicated.

Despite the noise of the bar around them, the silence at the table, what silence there was between Shego's burps and Kim's audible sips, was threatening to become deafening and it was only by the sudden and unprovoked utterance of Kim that it failed to be so.

"What did you see?"

Shego seemed to regard the question with something akin to a far off look, as if considering a secret only she knew before given the barest of perceptible shivers and focusing fully on her drink.

"A good reason for a drink or ten."

Kim didn't, or perhaps simply couldn't bring herself to, press Shego further so both women returned to the silence of their drinking. Too see the pair in that moment one would never know of the history they had, of their vibrancy and strong wills, instead all that an observer would ever see was two people obviously avoiding something in favor of a far easier silence.

It was another 10 minutes before the silence was broken again and again it was Kim who spoke, perhaps out of a need to talk to someone, anyone, if only to get out of her own mind.

"I saved the day."

Shego gave a small chuckle

"A rather generous interpretation of how it ended."

Kim shook her head slightly.

"No…I mean…"

She trailed off momentarily, as if attempting to brace herself for her next words.

"That's what I saw."

Shego set down her glasses and exhaled.

"Sounds rough Princess. Big hero saves the day, adoring fans, cheers, oh yeah I can see why that would drive anyone to drink."

"NO."

Kim, though momentarily taken aback by her own tone and volume, shook her head again.

"You don't get it Shego. That's not what I meant. It wasn't just about saving the day."

Intrigued, Shego focused her gaze on Kim.

"Enlighten me then."

. . . . .

Reality had fallen away somewhere, replaced by nothing more then a smoky white emptiness that seemed to stretch on infinitely in every direction. Kim was experienced enough to realize almost instantly what must have occurred. A momentarily slip in focus, a bit to much concentration on her battle with Shego must have allowed Drakken time to use the laser gun, but….if he had then this didn't make sense. It wasn't supposed to take her away someplace it was meant to…well she didn't really know how it was supposed to work but given what Shego had said she had expected something scarier then this. Being stuck in some sort of void was weird sure, but given her life it didn't even rank in the top 100 of her scariest moments.

"That's just like you Kim. Ever the brave hero."

A voice that seemed to come from everywhere and yet nowhere suddenly spoke out in a mocking tone.

"Gotta keep it together Possible, keep cool, calm, keep that edge."

The voice was lacked any sort of warmth or…humanity to it, no instead it was cold, almost condescending, as if it knew something everyone else didn't. The worst of it however was that the voice, the cold and cruel voice that was speaking to her was her own, a fact that rather confused Kim.

"So my biggest fear is myself? Gotta admit, kind of don't buy it."

The disembodied voice gave a cold chuckle.

"Let's talk about what you really fear Kim. Is it being normal?"

Suddenly the emptiness too fell away and Kim found herself in her high school stadium admits some sort of rally. All around her students cheered as the cheerleaders flipped and turned through a well practiced routine in the center of the gym but Kim herself wasn't in those cheerleaders, no instead she was packed into one of the many bleachers, just one student in an endless row, nothing more then a face in the crowd.

"You push yourself so hard to stand out. Genius daughter, head of school committees, cheerleader, hero, world saver…and all while you claim to be just a basic average girl."

Kim grunted as she felt, truly felt as if this were reality itself, the students on either side of her press tighter against her and the roar of a crowd, who seemed to not even acknowledge her presence, just continued to rise. Kim's protests and calls for people to pay attention to what they were doing were easily drowned out no matter how loud she tried to yell, her pushes back to the students around her seemed to have no effect. She was going to drown in a sea of people and no one was going to notice when suddenly it was all gone and she found herself back in the smoky emptiness.

As fast as it all came back though, it left again as the voice, her voice, spoke again.

"Is it being too late?"

She had barely a second to register the vastness of the room she was in, and the fact that she was now dressed in her mission wear, when Ron's voice rang out.

"KIM!"

Instantly her vision focused in on Ron who was pointing across the room at a ski masked individual whose gun was trained on a mother and child that cowered only a few feet away. With not even a moment's thought Kim's shot off like a proverbial bullet, every stride of her leg and pump of her arm focused solely on closing the distance to the gunman. Sadly the actual bullet moved far faster and the two suddenly stopped cowering, just as she came within reach of the weapon. She could only given an involuntary scream of shock as the mother and child dropped lifelessly to the floor. A torrent of emotions overtook Kim in that instant but all of it only served focus into her hand as she latched down onto the gunman's arm and dug, causing his hand to spasm and drop the weapon, even as he screamed in pain. As she pulled back her fist ready to shove all of the anger and rage and shock that was swimming in her mind into one punch she was suddenly holding nothing, back again in the emptiness.

"Maybe it's just being simply overpowered"

Suddenly she found herself surrounded by every villain she had ever faced. Drakken, Monkey Fist, Bebes, Duff Killigan, Warmonga and more, all bearing the evilest of grins, swarmed.

"You've amassed quite the rouge's gallery"

Kim managed to duck a strike by Monkey First only to be caught in the side from a Bebe's steel arm.

"You have to wonder..."

Kim tried to recover as Dementor and several nameless henchman all grabbed for her.

"When will it get to be too much?"

Kim rolled away from the reaching men but ended up face to face with Senior Senior, who used his can to knock Kim's feet out from under her, landing her on her ass.

"When will it all end?"

Kim scrambled quickly to her feet, in time enough to avoid another strike from Senior Senior's cane but not enough to avoid being pulled backward into the circle of villains, who suddenly parted as a smirking and plasma ready Shego step forward.

"Who will it be?"

But like the other times all the villains were suddenly just gone, as if they had never been there, despite Kim's sudden pain to the contrary.

"But none of that's it is it?"

Kim, by this point, was struggling to keep up. Though she knew none of this should be real everything she had experienced so far seemed just that and despite herself this was beginning to scare her.

"We know what really scares us, the fear that hides in the back of our mind everyday…"

As suddenly as ever Kim was in some sort of parlor, not that dissimilar from the one in her own house. The sun was shining brightly through a large nearby window which meant wherever she was it was still the same time, if not earlier, then when she had been in the military hospital. Her train of thought never moved beyond that thought however as the sniffles and half hearted tears of a small child, knees pulled close and a teddy bear in one hand, sitting in a large chair nearby caught her attention. The little girl looked almost every bit like Kim at that age, but lacked the red hair Kim had had. Instead this little girl's hair, a darker blond, was pulled into pigtails and her eyes, though red and puffy from obvious crying, were closer to blue then Kim's green.

The creek of a door opening behind her caused Kim to spin around as two people walked into the room,. two very familiar and adult looking people.

"Honey, don't cry."

A well beyond teen years Kim crouched down in front of the small girl and gave a saddened ooh before speaking..

"Mommy loves you but I have to go to Africa to stop a bad man from hurting a lot of people."

The little girl only sniffled in response. Kim found herself taken aback

"I hate to go, 'specially on your birthday but auntie Hana will read you a story if I'm not back by bedtime."

The little girl gave a small but still sad smile as the elder Kim kissed her on the forehead and walked out of the room.

Before Kim could react the scene shifted again and she saw the older version of herself, clad in what appeared to be a bridesmaid outfit cut down the middle to allow for more movement, dodging and flipping as a group of well build henchmen fired rapidly at her. Her kimmunicator was held to one side of her face and she did her best to maintain her tone and breathe as she kept moving.

"If I don't make it back before it's over, tell Tim and Jim I'm sorry for running out but someone had to stop him."

The elder Kim swore as she turned to avoid a blast only to have another graze her arm, drawing obvious blood.

"No…No Ron was there, he'll look after her….I know they only gave me the day off for the wedding but I still have to rescue that kidnapped heiress from Camille Léon after I stop Drakken. No…tell them I'm sick….I don't care, this is more important!"

Kim, who had felt her blood begin to run cold at first site of her elder self and the child, now found herself much the worse, lost in a realization as the her own disembodied and cold voice echoed in her ears.

"That we'll never be able to stop"

. . . . .

Shego didn't say anything at first, she simply remained motionless, as if absorbing the full effect of what Kim had said, even as Kim continued.

"And that's the worst part….that worst fear that we all have, scarier then any other because its based on a truth we don't want to ever admit or say, that really is mine."

"Princess…"

Kim continued without pause.

"I've never wanted to admit it but I've always been afraid I'll never be able to have a life, a real two kids and a home life, because I know, deep down I'm not a basic average girl."

She took a small sip of her drink and continued.

"It has nothing to do with ego and everything to do with the truth that I can do things other people can't…I stand up to the type of people others could never face…and I can't just sit back and let things happen, its not who I am, never who I am or could ever be. If I don't try and save them…don't at least try to stop those who hurt other, who will?"

As if it were pouring out of her and she was unable to stop it, Kim continued.

"What gives me the right to stay home when I know I could try, could make a difference? Isn't it the worst kind of selfish to think my life is more important then anyone else's? If they come to me and I say no…If I don't go…."

Her final words came softly, more a curse upon herself then a statement.

"When good men do nothing, evil triumphs"