Warning: This story will eventually be Kigo, and elements of said Kim/Shego goodness are present even in this first chapter. If you don't like that sort of thing, please read no more. Also, me writing Kigo fanfiction doesn't necessarily mean I despise Ron Stoppable or any other characters in the show. This pairing just happens to be my favorite.

Disclaimer: I don't own Kim Possible. Kim, Shego, Ron, Wade, Drakken, and all the rest are copyright to Disney, Bob Schooley, and Mark McCorkle.

Stranded: The Crash

Kim Possible was fighting for her life.

She just wasn't performing up to par today, she thought as she twisted away from Shego, feeling the deadly black-tipped fingers graze the cloth of the uniform at her hip. The battlefield beneath her feet, a mix of slushy snow and mud, gave way slightly, and she was forced to scrabble for purchase as her opponent's laughter rang cruelly, mercilessly in her ears. Reaching up with a quivering hand to push errant strands of crimson hair from her face once she'd steadied herself, the teen superhero panted, curving her other fingers over a stitch in her side.

"What's the matter, Kimmie?" Shego purred. She advanced, keeping Kim pinned with a gaze that was every bit as predatory, Kim thought, feeling a stab of panic somewhere low in her stomach, as one that might belong to a lioness going in for the kill. Shego, unlike Kim, was having no problems with her fighting form today. Her boots, shining black and flawless, found perfect footholds in the mess of snow; her clawlike fingers flexed in readiness at her sides, and her stance, firm and fierce, showed nothing but confidence. Her elegantly carved features—more handsome than pretty, Kim had always thought; it was the sneer. Nothing a bit of blush and a nice smile couldn't cure.—veritably glowed with relish at Kim's evident predicament. "Getting tired?"

"You wish!" Kim snarled in turn. Her voice came out as something like a hoarse sob, and she resisted the urge to clap her hand over her mouth in horror. She'd already had to yell at Ron five times over the past hour to Look out, watch it, run away, she's about to cleave your head in two!—it was no small wonder she was losing her voice. The exhausted agony twisting and writhing behind it, however: that was entirely different. She was having a hard time seeing straight. Before her, Shego's form blurred and wobbled as tears pricked traitorously at the corners of her eyes.

I can do anything, she reminded herself mentally, trying to psyche herself up again. I can do anything. I'm a Possible. I'm Kim Possible. She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper, unable to steer her thoughts away from the downward spiral they took under the influence of exhaustion. I'm also tired, she heard the deepest parts of her soul admit. The words echoed in the chambers of her mind, reverberating so fiercely that she could feel the quivering ache at the small of her back. I've gone three days with only two hours of sleep. I've been fighting or running the rest of the time, or hauling Ron out of the way of trouble. I'm beginning to regret ever leaving Middleton in the first place—Drakken is so not worth this.

"You don't sound so sure, princess," Shego replied smoothly. Kim was almost startled to see that her opponent had stopped moving forward—rather, Shego stood still before her, head tipped to the side, venomous green eyes trained on the superhero. The sneer was melting from her dark lips—was that sympathy, sparking in that heartless gaze? She seemed to be relaxing, Kim thought—she seemed to be, of all things, backing down.

I'm losing it, Kim heard her consciousness giggle disjointedly. Really losing it.

She jerked as the Kimmunicator hummed and buzzed in her pocket. Wade, she knew immediately, likely wanting to ask her about the situation of which she could no longer profess complete control. Brushing her hair out of her eyes again, she attempted to ignore the insistent prods of the instrument in her pocket and squinted at the villain before her, done up in the usual shades of black and green, a walking example of fashion Feng Shui. White moths of fatigue fluttered at the edges of her vision—or snowflakes. Kim had no way of being certain any longer.

She vaguely remembered getting a beep from Wade on a Friday, just after cheer practice and just before the daily trot to Bueno Nacho with Ron. She remembered hauling her faithful sidekick, shirt still spotted with fake foam from his mascot suit, to get changed for battle; she remembered commandeering a jet from one of her many appreciative former rescues to get to the location of Drakken's newest lair in far Russia, following Wade's directions and the trusty tracking blip on the Kimmunicator. She remembered parachuting to and infiltrating the lair without a problem, evading the bumbling guards—Shego was nowhere to be found—and plucking an apparently stolen microchip from right beneath Drakken's nose, Ron snickering in the background and giving her a silent highfive when she returned to his side. Rufus had done a celebratory jig on the boy's thin shoulder, and Kim remembered smiling at him, feeling relieved and somewhat miffed. They were going to be home for Saturday's breakfast, having accomplished the mission in less than thirty minutes.

Wade had interrupted their flight home with another crisis involving a jailbreak in India, and it had taken much pleading on Kim's part to convince the pilot of their borrowed craft to land, refuel, and take off again within the hour, bound for Bangalore. Kim had snagged her two hours of sleep on that flight, dozing off to Ron's snores and Rufus's shrill, half-whistled wheezes, her hands tucked in her lap and her gloves buried in her pocket next to the recovered microchip.

She recalled being jolted awake by the sound of ripping metal and the sudden toss of her hair in all directions. She'd opened her eyes to find a gaping hole in the side of small plane, Shego stretching her glowing green hand through the gash to widen it; Ron had been spazzing out in front of her and struggling to remove a tangled seatbelt. The wind had plucked at her clothes, and snow whirled into the cabin as Shego thrust her body forward, boarding the plane with a single graceful wriggle. Kim caught a glimpse of a hovercraft falling out of sight in the atmosphere behind the villainess, piloted by a cackling Drakken, and she'd stirred herself to action as Shego, predictably ignoring Ron's presence altogether, had stepped toward her to engage her in combat, snowflakes melting in her raven hair and in her eyelashes.

They'd been going at it for about ten minutes and had made a general mess of the cabin, scattering seats everywhere and scorching poor Ron at least twice, when one of Shego's plasma bolts went crashing ill-aimedly into the pilot's door, melting it and making it into the cockpit. Kim easily recollected the horrible drop of her stomach at the pilot's agonized shriek; she'd seen Shego's face contort into an expression that had been either pure malice or utter horror, and then the plane had begun to take a serious nosedive, plummeting without precedent into a world of swirling white.

As an experienced superhero that had traveled all over the world in an effort to eradicate global crime, Kim Possible was used to and knew how to handle—or rather, survive—plane crashes. Ron Stoppable, though subject to screaming like a little girl throughout the entire process of the crash, was just as capable. Shego, Kim had thought as the plane crunched into permafrost and spun them all like silver bearings in a pinball machine, had likely brought down plenty of aircraft before.

They'd all come out of the crash alive, though the pilot was suffering from severe burns and Ron, by the look of a rapidly swelling left leg, had managed to sprain or break several somethings on the way down. Kim hadn't been able to tend to him or the pilot, much to her chagrin—Shego attacked her the moment the plane lurched to a halt, and Kim had only precious seconds to drag both her sidekick and the unconscious man to the lee of the downed craft, hoping to protect them from snow and plasma bolts, before she was forced to race away from them again into a rapidly darkening and entirely alien environment, Shego hot on her heels.

They'd been up and down this damned mountain all night and since then, Kim a rabbit guarding a microchip carrot and Shego a fox bent on getting said carrot. Kim assumed that, given their course before Shego's interruption, they'd crashed somewhere in the Himalayas—perhaps Tibet. She'd been given no opportunity to check the Kimmunicator for current coordinates or to ask Wade for a pickup: Shego was tireless, dogging her every step, mocking her every breath, flushing her from her every hiding place. Toying with her. Running her senseless. Playing with her head.

The smell of something burning wafted to Kim's nostrils, jarring her out of her miserable reverie. If there were a Starbucks nearby, she thought desperately, though she wasn't much of one to drink coffee, I'd draw Shego there and snag an expresso in the meantime. Chancing a look away from the villainess, Kim turned her head to look down through a scant treeline at the crumpled silver figure of the crashed jet. She could make out two tiny black figures wobbling away from it, one dragging the other—Ron and the pilot. Flames licked up through the windshield of the cockpit, and Kim cursed mentally, knowing the sudden combustion was probably due to the rising dawn.

A boot crunched in the slush, and Kim jerked her head back to the Shego situation just in time to narrowly avoid a roundhouse kick from her nemesis. The momentum carried her over too far, however, and she slipped, landing with a yelp in the snow before the gleaming boots and the refined, viridian knees. She made as if to rise instantly, adrenaline coursing anew to parts of her body beginning to droop, but gagged when Shego's ankle caught her beneath the chin and sent her sprawling onto her back. Stars exploded behind her eyes; the world quivered dangerously, and her lungs screamed as a slender foot settled comfortably in the hollow of her throat.

Shego's going to kill me, Kim realized, and found herself more startled than afraid. Though she and the pale-skinned woman had fought many times before, often in close quarters and with the stakes leaping high, she'd never feared death by plasma bolt or boot to throat. Shego was malicious, power hungry, and a villain by every and all means—but she wasn't a murderer, and she seemed, on a regular basis, as interested in eradicating Kim Possible as she was in securing herself a white wedding with Ron Stoppable.

Dropping her jaw in an effort to suck in air, Kim writhed beneath the constricting boot, and Shego only pressed harder. Kim found herself staring up into endless emerald eyes, into a face over which a myriad of emotions were flickering—delight, hesitation, boredom. Disgust. Curling a dark lip, Shego tipped her head and muttered flatly, "Hurts, doesn't it?" She surveyed the girl beneath her, watching with feigned disinterest at Kim's lips began to tinge blue. The superhero's struggles were weakening, limbs made leaden by a lack of oxygen and hours upon hours of fatigue.

Kim bared her teeth and curled her hands over Shego's ankle, trying to dig her fingernails into skin through the fabric of the green- and black-patchworked uniform. It did little good; her nails scrabbled over the slick cloth, gaining no purchase, and Shego only smiled, voice dripping contempt when she spoke again.

"What happened to Anything's possible for a Possible, Kimmie?" she demanded. Her voice was like crushed velvet, caressing Kim's ears, suffocating her with its false sweetness and concern. The exploding lights behind Kim's eyes became fireworks; she felt tears of pain and fury streaming down her cheeks, crystallizing before they rolled away to hit the snow. She felt the softening slush working its way into the space between her shirt and pants; she felt mud squelch against her shoulderblades, and she opened her mouth to sob when Shego pressed the slightest bit more and snarled down at her, "FIGHT, POSSIBLE! Do you want to live or not?"

The fireworks, a million colors and so bright so bright so blindingly bright, began to roar with sound in her head, an angry buzzing not unlike the one that had come from the beehive in Ron's clubhouse one bygone summer. She could see the blood pounding in the veins behind her eyes, desperate, furious; she could hear the wardrums beating to the rhythm of her fierce heart, and she decided that yes, she did want to live. A scream tore itself free from Kim's harassed throat, and she fastened her hands around Shego's ankle all the more tightly, knuckles quivering and white, and jerked her arms so hard that her elbows crackled warningly. The motion was enough—she felt the villainess above her totter, balance lost, and sucked in sweet, sweet air as the boot slid from her collar, freeing her.

Taking advantage of regained oxygen, Kim rolled to the side and took to her feet again, whirling to face Shego with the wardrums still roaring in her ears. They circled one another in their ring of bruised snow, catlike, Shego's face shining in wicked delight and Kim's livid with rage, her eyes cracked and bleeding green and her slender fists clenching and unclenching in the open air on her either side.

"That's good, princess," Shego thrummed coaxingly, and Kim thought she detected a note of pride in the woman's voice. Summoning the telltale green glow to her fingertips, the villainess continued, "That's very good. Round two."

She made to lunge for Kim when, on the mountainside below them, the plane exploded.

Kim and Shego turned in tandem to watch the silver craft disappear in a roaring inferno of black smoke and billowing flames. Kim sobbed, "RON!" as her heart leapt in horror, hoping against all hope that her friend was out of range, that he and Rufus and the pilot weren't roasting alive in the blaze below, a whirling mass of red, orange, and umber against the bleak backdrop of white. She was tensing her calf muscles to run toward the remnants of the plane when Shego seized her wrist and spun her about, and the entire mountain shuddered beneath them.

Kim, eyes wide, gazed up toward the top of the mountain at the descending wall of white, a horrible rumbling monster that was coming for them with teeth made of splintered trees and eyes that were rays of sunlight bursting through the tumultuous mass. An avalanche intent on devouring them, on wiping the site of the plane crash from existence with a single sweep of a rumbling, starving belly. There was nowhere to run, and Kim knew it—and felt her spine stiffen as her entire body rebelled at the idea of dying beneath an ocean of seething snow.

Shego's hand tightened on her wrist, and quite abruptly the taller, paler woman jerked Kim to her side, wrapping one arm around the superhero's waist and holding the other up before the both of them at the advancing wall of snow like a shield. Kim felt the muscled curve of the other woman's side against her own through the suit, lean and harsh and just as unforgiving as Shego's marbled green eyes.

"If you want to live, Kimmie," Shego murmured, her purr audible over the progressing threat, "don't let go of me." And she lowered her hand for a quick moment to guide Kim's arms around her, giving the younger girl's fingers a squeeze to twine them together over her hip. Shego's glove, Kim thought with the faintest of shivers as the woman lifted the shielding limb again, was colder than the snow surrounding them.

Shego's glove flared with plasma as the crest of the avalanche hit them. Kim cried out, listening in a mix of terror and misplaced awe as the trees around them were torn from the soil and crushed under the weight of the waves of snow, watching as matter disintegrated the very instant it touched the plasma shield that flickered and blossomed and burned from Shego's hand. She clamped her arms reflexively about the other woman, so tightly that she could feel Shego's heartbeat hammering in desperation against the crook of her elbow. The pale-skinned villainess began to pant, gritting her teeth, struggling to keep the shield in place—and when she could do it no longer, the glove having burned itself into nothingness and her power stretched to its limit, Shego turned in to snow and crushed Kim Possible against her chest, hissing in the superhero's ear in the instant they had together before the avalanche engulfed them in a suffocating embrace of white,

"See you on the other side, princess. I'll hold you until we get there."

Kim Possible saw the tree over Shego's shoulder before it hit them. It was a giant dark shape that erupted from the snow, an omen of death, an umber orca in the sea of slush and mud and its splintered fellows, and it hit Shego with a crushing roar that was almost human. Kim heard Shego scream, and felt the older woman curve against and over her before the ground gave way beneath her feet. Something clipped her temple, and Kim Possible swung her head back dazedly to look up into Shego's face, holding the emerald gaze, holding her nemesis and letting her nemesis hold her in turn, until the world swallowed them in a swirl of depth and darkness.

—To Be Continued…

Notes: I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Any helpful critiques, comments, and fluffy hats are very much appreciated.

This story is dedicated first and foremost to my friend Lizzie, who pestered me about writing Kigo until I finally gave in and did so. Thank you, Lizzie. I hope you like it.