Notes: Doubters led me to this ending. I have to say I doubt anyone saw it coming, since I didn't, either.
Epilogue: Time-Torn
I should be dead.
In some times, I AM dead.
And before you doubt the truth of either of those statements, picture something with me.
Do you have any idea what it's like to watch yourself die? Not once, not twice, but hundreds of times? Different and varied situations, all coming down to basically one horrifying, brutal end?
I do. And let me tell you, it'll keep you up more nights than any stalker or serial killer on the loose ever could.
The ironic thing being that I owe my life...that is, what I have of it...to a woman that saved me only to enslave me.
At the time, I'd only caught glimpses of her on the evening news, and knew her very vaguely as one of the colorful characters in Kim Possible's Rogues Gallery. And because I didn't know her, I assumed she was dangerous, but that our paths would never cross.
I was right on one count, at least.
The first time I actually saw her in person, she was standing in the middle of the street, glowing like a living lighthouse. Had it been raining, foggy, a lot darker, or if Josh just hadn't been paying attention, he might have run her over.
Even now, though, I have my doubts as to whether it would've killed her.
If you've ever seen a snake catch and kill a mouse, you probably assume that no mouse would ever be capable of killing a snake. That's why I don't think being run over would've stopped her.
Because she proceeded, for reasons unknown at the time, to kill Josh's car. I'm just thankful she gave us a few seconds to get out first.
It's very hard to kill something that was never alive in the first place, but she pulled it off easily. At the end, if you hadn't seen what the mess started as, you never would've known it used to be a car.
When she was done, she wiped her hands clean on Josh's tux, grabbed me, and dragged me off without a word. For all I know, Josh is still standing on the side of the road, staring at the remains of his car in shock. Considering what we'd just seen, I forgive him for not reacting faster.
I'm pretty sure I put up a decent fight, which is probably why I can't remember much after that point.
I do know that the next time I opened my eyes, I was lying in the most powerful bed in the world, so to speak. At the time, I had no idea who the Supreme One was, or why she would ever concern herself with me.
I found out quickly, though. She told me that I was important, and that if it wasn't for her, I would be dead. Then she proved it, by showing me again and again how I would've died. She showed me how Bonnie's life almost always spun out of control without me, often clashing directly with Kim's, but not always (and even then, it was usually because one of them had died young, too). I'd never realized how much calming influence I had on Bonnie, or how much she'd miss me if I suddenly wasn't there. For the first time, I knew for certain that someone loved me with all their heart, and I think that only made it hurt worse for me.
The Supreme One refused to send me back to my time. She said there was a better way to use my positive influence. A way that would benefit both Bonnie and Kim at the same time. When she told me her plan, I told her she was out of her mind.
Then she told me I didn't have a choice.
Suddenly, her plan made a lot more sense to me.
The first time I saw them, Kiki and Bee were understandably upset. They'd just been snatched from Pre-K, and didn't care for their new names or their kidnapper. Aside from that, they weren't too fond of each other, but crisis can bring people together in strange ways.
They had obviously seen the Supreme One do something scary and violent, because their eyes stayed on her whenever she was around, and they stayed huddled together when they could. I was instructed to watch them, but considering their fear, it hardly seemed fair to just do that. So I tried my best to be nice to them, for all the good it did.
They knew I was with the Supreme One, so they didn't trust me, either. But they were sure I couldn't summon plasma out of my hands, so I was pretty much a lamb by comparison. I had a hard time convincing them that I was a prisoner, too, though. The Supreme One was actually pretty accommodating with me, up to a point. She gave me anything I needed, and a few things I just wanted, but I wasn't allowed to leave my quarters for any reason. Kiki and Bee were pretty much restricted to doing what the Supreme One said, when and how she said. I felt bad for them, but I'm ashamed to admit that I was hesitant to help them, thinking the Supreme One might not like it.
Their lives were very irregular. The Supreme One would take the girls with her and vanish for days at a time, only to suddenly turn up and dump them on me, with instructions to keep them healthy until she was ready for them again. More often than not, the girls came back bloody and/or bruised, and I was expected to patch them up as best as I could. Oddly enough, they were never burned, but I think that was something all three of us were thankful for.
As I spent more time with the girls, I noticed a change in them. Where Kiki had been wary and afraid, she became self-assured, and suspicious...of me, anyway. I guess the Supreme One had really made her paranoid. Bee, where she had been...well, Bonnie-like, became quiet and withdrawn. But apparently all the patch jobs and soft words eventually impressed her, because she almost seemed happy to see me at times. Neither of the girls ever said very much, but Bee at least thanked me for taking care of them occasionally. It wasn't much, but at least they didn't react to me the way they did her.
For a while, things were... well, as good as they could get under the circumstances. I felt like I was slowly but surely making a real connection with Bee, at least. Kiki never really warmed up to me, but truth be told, I was more interested in bonding with Bee, anyway.
Then the Supreme One decided she was going to split the girls up for a month.
I didn't like the idea from the start. Kiki would probably be fine, but if Bee had gotten attached to me from our minimal contact, she had to be even closer to Kiki.
As I said, Bee had been pretty quiet, but the moment I broke the bad news to her (of course I was made to do it), she howled like a wounded animal and threw the worst tantrum I've ever seen. The Supreme One and Kiki had already gone by then, so I couldn't do much but wait for Bee to cry herself out. She did, after about three hours, and was so exhausted when I picked her up that she could only whimper a little.
I felt horrible as I put Bee to bed, and even though she went right to sleep, I curled up beside her and gently draped my arm over her. If I was going to be the only person she saw for a whole month, I at least wanted us to get along, and I hoped she had gotten most of her crying out already. I could count the times I'd seen Bonnie cry on one hand, but each and every time broke my heart, and somehow, seeing Bee cry was twice as bad.
Fortunately, Bee got used to our situation faster than I expected. When she finally got it into her head that it would just be us for a while, and that I was this nice all the time, she started talking and never really stopped unless she was sleeping. She told me how the Supreme One was training them for something, and how much it hurt even when they got it right. She told me how Kiki had promised to protect her, and how Kiki sang to her when she couldn't sleep. She told me my hair smelled nice, and wanted to know if I could sing her to sleep. I promised her the best hummed lullaby in history, and if she had any complaints, she was kind enough to keep them to herself.
It was strange, the way we seemed to click after a while. Bee started off calling me "Ms. Tara," then "Nana Tara," "Auntie Tara," and finally just calling me by name, which I'd been hoping for all along. It was almost like having Bonnie back, yet entirely different at the same time. Of course, I didn't tell her about Bonnie, I thought it might be too big of a shock for her.
Turns out, I didn't have to. At the end of the month, the Supreme One turned up, but instead of Kiki, she had a gift for Bee.
"This," the Supreme One said proudly, gesturing to the android, "is your new best friend, Bee. She's here to play with you and keep you entertained. You can name her and everything. But she's a robot, so don't expect her to get too excited about it."
Bee wasn't really sure what to make of the android at first. Sure enough, the android did just about anything she asked, so long as it didn't involve something she had no business doing. It even obeyed my requests, which confused me for a bit as well. But we both got used to it, me because she looked so much like Bonnie, and Bee because she'd been lonely without Kiki, and that was a role I just couldn't fill.
Before long, I began to hope that the Supreme One would abandon her plan, and just leave Bee in the care of myself and BB1. It was a foolish hope, but I couldn't help it. Bee seemed genuinely happy with us, and I didn't want that to be taken away from her.
The Supreme One didn't take it away, so much as she moved it without warning. She explained that Kiki had been staying with her "daughter" (I knew it was a lie the instant she said that), and that we were going to live with them now. The idea of Kiki being raised by a younger Supreme One gave me little if any comfort, but Bee was thrilled at the thought of a reunion with what she had come to think of as her sister.
The Kiki we were reunited with wasn't the one we'd last seen, however. She had changed yet again, though for better or for worse was debatable. Kiki was even more serious than I remembered. She didn't smile, didn't laugh, didn't even greet Bee with a hug when they first saw each other. To my amazement, she just nodded briefly, leaving poor Bee to stand there looking hopelessly lost and hurt.
That night, Bee went to bed early, crying herself to sleep in BB1's arms. I, on the other hand, finally got to meet the woman who had, for all intents and purposes, turned Kiki into a child-shaped chunk of ice.
And I have to say, I still don't know quite how she did it.
I was expecting a monster, someone who made the Supreme One flinch.
Instead, I got Shego, probably the most mercurial person I've ever met. A better of way putting it is that she could go from pleased to pissed in three tenths of a second, but despite that, I couldn't help but admire her. She was easygoing at times, tense and unpredictable at others. For having an even shorter fuse than the Supreme One, she didn't yell half as much as I would've thought. It was a long time before I realized that Kiki, while pretty much having the emotional range of a rock, had a calming influence on Shego. Don't get me wrong, when they fought everyone knew it, but afterwards, it was no surprise to find them quietly playing chess.
For the next few days, Bee did everything she could think of to win her sister back. But she couldn't compete with Shego for Kiki's attention, no matter what she did. Shego, at least, recognized that while Bee had some physical talents, she was not going to keep up with Kiki without encouragement from Kiki, and that clearly wasn't going to happen. But instead of giving up on Bee completely, Shego gave her books.
Not having much else to do, Bee read...and kept reading until that was basically all she did every day, between spending time with BB1 and I. I was honestly a little surprised, because these weren't fairy tales and fantasies. I distinctly remember a rather detailed guide on how to punch a man so that his ribcage would break and puncture his heart. It was the first and only time I tried to read Bee a bedtime story. BB1 had no problem reading such things, and more than once I caught her quoting from "The Art of War" as she put Bee to bed.
In the back of her mind, Bee never really forgot about Kiki. She finally hatched a plan that would force Kiki to spend time with her, and I'm proud to say it worked. Bee asked Shego to explain some of the concepts in her latest book, and only minutes before she knew Shego and Kiki almost always played chess. So when Kiki went looking for her opponent, she found Shego reading to Bee. To say this upset Kiki was a huge understatement, she was absolutely furious, thinking that Bee was trying to steal Shego from her. Oddly enough, it was Shego who bridged the gap between them: she began to hold Kiki responsible for lessons that could only be learned through sitting in on Bee's nightly readings. In the end, Kiki had no choice. She honestly didn't like disappointing Shego, and this way she could make sure that any time Bee spent with Shego, all three of them would be present.
Gradually, Kiki began to accept (or re-accept) that Bee was her sister in every way that still mattered, though they were never as close as they had been before. Kiki still thought it was her duty to protect Bee, but you would never catch them playing together, or even spending time together unless it was at Shego's demand. Bee seemed to be fine with that, since she had me to talk to, BB1 to play with, and Shego reading to her every night.
As Bee grew closer to Shego, she seemed to need me and BB1 even less. It hurt, and I was jealous, but I couldn't really do anything. I wanted Bee to feel loved, and unless I was very much mistaken, Shego genuinely cared for both girls, in her own way. I found myself spending more time with BB1, and while she wasn't much for conversation, just looking at her was a huge comfort. I realized Bee wasn't the only one I wanted to be loved: I missed Bonnie terribly, and even if she'd never said those three little words, I knew in my heart that she would never care for anyone quite the same way she did me. The thought made me happy and very sad at the same time, but there was nothing for it.
Today is the day. I can feel it. It's in the way a sort of protective haze settles over my mind, and I know any major shocks will just be numbed, and that I'll feel at some point in the future, when I can afford a moment to completely break down. Only a moment, though.
I'm just about to sit down to my usual muffin and juice, and that's when it happens.
The door flies open, and I'm vaguely aware of Bee shouting and tugging on my arm and crying and screaming all at once.
I can feel my face is still blank as I pick her up and hold her close, murmuring comforting but ultimately useless words in her ear. I force myself not to let her tears get to me as I carry her into the hall.
Aside from Bee's sniffles, it is strangely quiet. Normally, there would at least be the steady droning of security...well, drones, but nothing today. It it fitting and somewhat unsettling.
Shego's door is open for the first time that I can recall. For all the time she devoted to the girls, the woman liked her privacy. Needed it, I suspect. I pause, unsure as to whether I should take Bee inside.
I'm saved the trouble when Kiki emerges a moment later. She gives me a dark look (the same one she always gives me), and quietly offers to look after Bee for a few minutes. The moment I put her down, Bee latches onto Kiki, and for once, she doesn't seemed to mind...much.
As I enter the room, the first impression I get is that Shego is just sleeping. She's resting on her side, and the blanket is drawn up to her waist. But there is no rise and fall of her chest, and I even bother to check for a pulse a few times.
Thankfully, there isn't blood. Well, not much. I finally spot a tiny red smear just below her lips. And, upon entering the private washroom, I find only one towel with blood on it. Kiki's doing, no doubt. I think she might have respected Shego more than she actually loved her, but either way, she couldn't let the woman pass away looking a mess. It occurs to me that Kiki was probably there when it happened, but if so, she was taking it the way she took just about everything: well.
On my way out, I notice a single strand of black hair has fallen into Shego's face. I never considered myself especially close to the woman, but I can't suppress the instinctive notion that I should brush the hair back before I leave. I approach the bed to do so when a voice interrupts me.
"Don't touch her!"
I freeze, turning my head to see the Supreme One entering the room. She doesn't look angry, just...concerned.
"I'm sorry," is all I can think to say.
She blinks and shakes her head, smiling sadly. "I'm not mad at you. It's just...she's mine. My responsibility. You've got your own, now, don't you?"
"Yes," I hear myself say.
"I'll take care of the...the body. Everything here, actually. You just...do what you have to."
"You're sure?"
"I have to," the Supreme One says simply. "I owe her that much. Let the girls say goodbye if they haven't already. Make them understand that they'll never see her again. Any version of her."
I nod, even as I wonder if anyone could pull that off, much less me.
"It's you they need now, Tara. They just have to realize it first."
She's right, of course. She often is, but she's not rubbing my face in it this time. I'm not going to miss that...but I am going to miss her, I realize for the first time. I reach out and lightly touch her arm before I can stop myself.
The Supreme One looks at me, really looks at me in a way that she hasn't since the day she first dropped us here. It's her way of saying, "Okay, you can get away with that this time, but don't push it."
I feel incredibly foolish as I tell her just what I was thinking, and to my amazement, she smiles and places her hand over my own.
"Of course you're going to miss me. I'm addictive that way. Now, go see to the girls, and come find me before you leave. I've got one last thing to give you."
I find the girls in my room. Bee is still a mess, and Kiki's done all the packing for both of them. I have wonder how much the Supreme One really told her, and how much she just figured out on her own. She seems especially mad at me, as if I somehow killed Shego.
I have to wonder if the Supreme One told her who was responsible for that, or if Kiki also figured that out. I hope she doesn't know either way, and if she does, that she won't tell Bee.
There's not a whole lot of time to sugarcoat the situation. I tell them that we'll be leaving today, that we probably won't be back. Bee doesn't cry any less, but she doesn't get any worse, either. Kiki just glares at me in silence. I tell them I'll do my best to take good care of them. Bee manages a watery smile, and Kiki sort of grunts, which is better than I expected.
At first I think it's odd that neither of them asks why the Supreme One isn't taking us in again, but they probably know better. She'd always limited her visits, once the girls had Shego. She made it clear that her interest in them was fading at best. I think even Kiki had to prefer me to the Supreme One, because I would at least give them all my attention.
I ask them if they need to do anything before we go. Bee asks to see her Grammy Supreme one more time, and Kiki opts to go with her, more or less out of obligation. I suspect she'll be doing that a lot more often from now on.
The Supreme One is still with Shego, almost absently stroking her hair as we enter. I'm not sure what to make of that, or of the fact that she doesn't stop upon noticing us. It doesn't seem to bother the girls, at least, so I don't say anything.
"Tara is going to look after you girls now," she says quietly. "Me, I'm going to look after your mother. So no need to worry about her."
"Will you still come visit?" Bee asks in a rather hollow voice. She already knows the answer, I can tell.
"Don't think so, Bee. I can't go where you're going. At least, I shouldn't. You're Tara's girls now. Not mine, not your mother's."
"My name is Bonnie. Not Bee."
The Supreme One blinks, and slowly smiles. "Yes. Yes, it is. My mistake."
As the Flanhole opens up before I us, I have to wonder why.
Why put the girls through all this trouble, only to give them to me?
The Supreme One wouldn't tell me, she only said it was her plan.
I asked her if there wasn't an easier way to bring Kim and Bonnie together as sisters.
"Of course there were easier ways," she said. "But this was the only way I could do it, and survive to make sure they were taken care of. And you know as well as I do that those girls needed you from the start."
There shouldn't be any real trouble. I have documents, signed by Shego and the Supreme One, naming me the legal guardian of the girls. This is assuming no one realizes that they were kidnapped in the first place. But at this point, I'm not even sure the girls themselves recall that little fact. At least, I don't think they'd bring it up.
I admit I don't know where we're going. The Supreme One only said that we'd be safe and happy there.
I step through first, and the girls know to wait one minute before they follow.
When I open my eyes, I know I'm in Middleton. There's a huge sign that says the large building I'm standing in front of is the Middleton Space and Time Research Center. I'm pretty sure it used to just be the Space Center, but that's not really important.
Well, it is, but not as important as the person I spot (and hear) cursing when she drops her car keys.
She picks them up, stands, and finally notices me.
It's Bonnie. MY Bonnie. I don't know how I know, but I do. I just do. She's older...much older than she should be. She's even wearing glasses, but they make her look distinguished and intelligent.
For a moment, she does nothing, and I'm afraid she doesn't know me, or worse, that she's forgotten me.
"You're late, T," she says softly, her voice cracking. "I thought you were just going to the dance."
"Sorry, but some crazy lady killed Josh's car."
Bonnie slowly comes over and wraps her arms around me, burying her face in my hair. "Figures. I spend my whole life looking for you, and you just show up like nothing even happened."
Just then, the girls appear behind me.
Bonnie lets go and smiles. "You three had better come inside. You need to be disinfected."
"What does that mean?" I ask.
"You've been in the time stream, T. Just because you left us behind doesn't mean we don't know anything now. Once Wade gives you all a good looking over, we'll go from there. If everything checks out okay, you can all come home with me tonight."
The girls look hesitant.
Bonnie smiles at them again. "I bet you two have some really cool names, don't you?"
Bee nods. "My name is Bonnie."
"Wow. That's my name, too. Maybe we're related."
Bee smiles. "I hope so."
"And you must be Kim, right?" Bonnie asks Kiki.
"Yes," Kiki says after a slight pause.
"Are you sure you've got room for us?" I ask as Bonnie leads us inside.
She looks at me like I'm crazy and grips my arm. "Don't be stupid, Tara. I'm never letting you out of my sight again. I'll make room."
"I missed you, too."
Bonnie chuckles. "Then you can show it by limiting your kidnappings to this point in time."
"I'll do my best," I promise, and it seems to be enough for her.
I briefly wonder if this was in the Supreme One's plan all along, and decide it doesn't matter. I'm home, I have my best friend back, and the girls are safe. I have everything I need, everything I'll ever need. I finally feel truly alive, because I belong here, and I'll do my best to make sure the girls feel the same way.
The End.