A/N: I know I am terrible for making everyone wait for this chapter and I am truly sorry. College has been hectic and I'm taking three English courses at once as well. The papers of an English major never stop being assigned, but I have finally managed to update. Thank you to everyone still following all this insanity. Also feel free to complain(constructively) about my perpetual lateness- I promise to try to be better. On to the story.

Anything is Possible

Possible household, Upperton Apartment

The first thing Kim noticed upon awakening was that she felt like she had been run over by an eighteen wheeler. Her head throbbed and every time she attempted to open her eyes to investigate what seemed to be shuffling around her room, the glaring light of day brought her that much closer to her impending migraine. Rubbing her hands over her eyes, Kim heard the shuffling stop abruptly. Still slightly disoriented, she looked up to blurrily see Monique smiling sheepishly at her. The last thing she remembered was the awful meeting with Ron, stupidly leaving that message and barely functioning well enough to dial Monique. The rest of the night was a blur, except for a vague sense of guilt and cold feet. Kim wiggled her toes, now devoid of socks. She must have taken them off last night, and put on…a Club Banana robe. Since when do I own one of these?

Blinking a few times to gain some focus, Kim sat up and stared at her friend standing at the foot of her bed, a lavender toothbrush hanging out of her mouth. Kim simply raised an eyebrow at her and Monique took the toothbrush out mumbling, "Or om wet me bowwow a toofbush," gesturing to Kim's bedroom door, first to the right and then to the left. Kim shook her head in confusion, and then winced when she felt the migraine rear its ugly head. Monique held up her index finger, and then walked out of Kim's door toward the bathroom. Slightly puzzled, Kim gingerly got up and followed her friend down the short hallway. After allowing Monique to rinse and spit, Kim cocked her eyebrow up in puzzlement.

"Your mom let me borrow a toothbrush," she repeated, holding up the aforementioned brush and flicking it at a defenseless Kim. Wiping water droplets from her face, the teen hero smiled briefly. "I've missed this. I've missed us- being friends, flinging toothpaste; before everything got complicated."

"You mean before you isolated yourself from your friends and dedicated yourself to becoming a depressed hermit," Monique argued back, her tone sassier with every passing word.

"Yeah, before that." Kim admitted softly, gazing down at her bare feet on the cold grey slate of the bathroom floor.

"Nice robe, by the way."

"I actually have no idea how I got it," Kim admitted, puzzled by the silky blue garment tied around her frame.

Monique laughed lightly and then stepped forward to poke Kim's shoulder, clothed in the silky material.

"I bought it for your birthday, but you and Ron ran off so fast, you didn't get the chance to open it. It was still in the downstairs closet from the party."

"Thank you, it's beautiful." Kim looked back to Monique, and then was once again overwhelmed with all of what was still unsaid between them. Ron had been her best friend since pre-k, but Monique was the one she talked to- the person that she confided in. A week suddenly felt far too long to go without speaking.

"I've been thinking and I really need for us to talk- for us to be okay again." Monique fiddled with the borrowed toothbrush, before sliding it into the toothbrush holder resting on the sink.

Kim felt a lump rise up in her throat, the guilt almost choking her. She had never meant to alienate her friends, but she was sure that nobody would understand what she was going through. She was scared, but Monique had shown time and time again that she could handle whatever came with being Kim's friend- including this.

"I'd really like that, but ummm…..do you think that I could shower first?"

Monique laughed, "Of course. I'm just glad you're alright. You kind of scared me last night." She was still smiling lightly, but her eyebrows had also crinkled in concern.

"Yeah, Mo, I'm alright. Thank you -for last night and for being such a good friend."

Monique nodded her head and then shut the door, leaving Kim to her requested shower and thoughts on their upcoming 'talk'.

…

The scalding heat of her shower seemed to wash away any indecision she might have had beforehand. She needed to tell Monique why she had been so distant. She didn't necessarily need to tell her…everything, but Monique deserved to know why her best friend had ignored her for over a week, especially a week most gushed about to their friends.

Upon trekking back into her room, Kim discovered that Monique was no longer there. She got dressed and ran a brush through her hair, then made her way downstairs. The smell of her mom's famous breakfast buffet told her exactly where she could find her friend, and indeed as she entered the kitchen, Monique was crunching on bacon opposite the tweebs. Perhaps it was the fact that she had not ventured outside of her room for over a week, but both Jim and Tim seemed much nicer to her. They hadn't even taken her breakfast.

There wasn't much small talk over breakfast, and so Kim was left to her thoughts as well as her food. She just wasn't sure where to begin. If I tell Monique my soulmate isn't Ron, she'll want to know who it is instead. If I tell her we broke up, she'll obviously want to know why. Maybe…maybe-

"Kim, girl are you done?" Monique was placing her plate and cup in the dishwasher. The kitchen was empty except for the two of them and she could distantly hear her dad tinkering with something in his lab, just to the left of the kitchen, in the basement.

"Yeah, I just zoned out, I guess. We should talk... about last week- this week."

"I'm all ears. Last night you really worried me and I know we might have been fighting or whatever…but I don't know. I'm glad you called me," Monique stated solemnly.

"I was never mad at you, Mo. I was trying to figure some stuff out and I guess I couldn't deal with everybody asking questions that I didn't have answers to."

"I get that you might have been busy with missions and stuff, but you're my best friend. I'm here if you need help, so you don't have to ignore me. Just tell me that you need some space, or that you want me to give you time to figure stuff out. I might not know what you've been going through, but did you even think that I might be dealing with something too?" Monique stared at the granite countertop, her hands fidgeting with the edges.

"I…I'm sorry. You didn't deserve to be treated the way I've treated you. I haven't been a very good friend," Kim admitted guiltily. Monique raised her gaze from the counter to rest on Kim, whose pout was unintentionally pitiful.

"Monique shook her head, "It's okay. I know what it's like to want to figure something out before people start questioning you about it."

What does she mean? Monique always talks to me about everything. It doesn't matter if it's school, clothes, parents, boys…

"Was the thing you were going through- the thing you were dealing with too, was it your soulmark?" Kim questioned her lightly.

"Was yours?" Monique asked in turn, avoiding Kim's line of inquiry.

Kim merely stared at her empty plate, waiting for the uncomfortable silence that had come between them to dissipate. Finally tiring of their standoff, Monique took Kim's plate and loaded it, too, into the dishwasher.

"It's not Ron," Kim admitted with a sigh of defeat.

Monique turned back to face Kim, her face crinkling in confusion.

"My mark- it's not Ron's name," she explained.

"I…I thought maybe the two of you were fighting about college or missions or something, but…I never realized…" Monique let the word hang, suspended in her own puzzlement and at the same time not knowing how to respond to her friend's admission. She was surprised, but then again, was she really?

"I kept telling myself that something must have gone wrong- that we were absolutely meant to be together, but after last night…I just don't know anymore," Kim admitted, her shoulders shrugging uselessly.

"Nobody is forcing you into anything, Kim. You're allowed to be unsure." Monique played with the dishrag and turned back to start the washer, missing the dead look in Kim's eyes as she did.

"I'm sick of it. I don't want to be the girl that stands out- not like this. I just wanted to have somebody- and Ron was always there. Not because he needed help with homework, or because I was cheer captain. He liked me. So I just thought…"

"That he would be your soulmate. Even if you both deserved different."

"Was it that obvious?" Kim asked, her throat tightening as if to keep the question at bay.

"I get the best friends since pre-k thing, but you and Ron have always been on different pages. I could see it, the same way could have- if you wanted to. Everyone did. I mean, come on Kim, the hero doesn't settle down with the sidekick."

"That's not all we were. He's my best friend- or at least he was until last night."

"It might seem unfair, but would it have been better if you figured out things weren't right a year from now, ten years from now?" Monique asked her quietly.

The question planted itself firmly in Kim's mind. Had she been deluding herself about Ron? She knew that sometimes they seemed to be at opposite sides of the spectrum, but they had a sort of balance right? He made her feel normal, but no…that wasn't right either. Saving the world made her feel right, like she was doing something good. Ron made her feel…better.

Every time he screwed up and she was able to fix things at the last minute, she felt good about herself. Had she been using him all along? The more she thought about it, the more she realized that they had probably been using each other. He has more potential than he lets people see, even me. Those mystical monkey powers didn't choose him for no reason. So why hide behind the figure of my sidekick? Or was I holding him back all along?

She continued the back and forth musing in her head until she was broken out of it by a damp dishcloth hitting her left ear. Monique was staring at her expectantly.

"What?" Kim questioned, completely missing what Monique had said.

"I said my parents are having a cookout next week and you should come. Unless you're too busy moping or giving puppy-dog pouts to your mirror, or something." Monique's face quirked up into a half smile.

"I'll have you know that the puppy-dog pout is an art form. It takes years of dedicated practice to master," Kim admonished.

Monique smirked at her friend then sighed as she checked the time on the digital clock readout above the stove.

"As much fun as this has all been, I have to go to work. The employee discount is too good to give up."

The two girls hugged and said their goodbyes before parting. Kim watched Monique speed down the street in her little red car, then went back inside. She might have made up with Monique, but she also understood that there were a lot of questions still unanswered. Not only did she and Monique need to fix the friendship that had apparently been slipping for quite some time, but she also needed to figure things out for herself.

What do I want? Not this mess with Ron- not anymore. It's wasn't fair to either of them and she much preferred having him as her friend to not having any part of him.

Kim needed to fix things, she just wasn't sure how, or even where, to begin.

…

It was a testament to Wade's computer skills that he managed to track the call to an Upperton address. He had called her several times in the two weeks or so that had passed between her impromptu visit to the small post office, only to lament that the call was "untraceable." Each time she had encouraged him to keep working, to do anything he had to do in order to find whoever the postal box belonged to, and today he had finally managed the seemingly impossible feat.

She was sleeping, quite peacefully all things considered, when the familiar sound of her Kimmunicator woke her around 3 A.M.

"I found it."

Kim's body froze, and the only sound able to permeate her sleep and disbelief addled brain was the unnaturally loud thumping of her heart. Surely she was dreaming?

"I traced the phone number you gave me to an address in Upperton. It's actually within the zip code boundaries of the post office and I was only barely able to find the bits of deleted code that led me to more deleted and hidden code that sent me to an offshore account located in the Bahamas to pay for the P.O. Box. That led me to—

"Wade! Slow down!" Kim got out of bed and threw on some clothes while Wade slowed down his rant.

"It led me to a small rental home that was owned there as well as several other properties, which led me to a name used for an address in Upperton," he continued breathlessly.

"What's the name?" Kim's hand shook slightly and she swallowed the fear and excitement creeping up and constricting her throat.

"S. Gomez. It's actually pretty weird because there are a lot of people named S. Gomez, but only one in Upperton and only maybe a few in the world that could afford those kind of houses," he explained, his voice too fast for this time of night.

"How long have you been working on this, Wade?"

"Pretty much nonstop since you told me to. I mean I've had breaks and energy drinks and coffee, but I knew that if I just traced the—

"Wade!"

"Sorry Kim."

"Thank you Wade. Now send me the address and get some sleep," she ordered him gently.

"Gotcha Kim," he responded complacently. She felt her Kimmunicator buzz with a new message and coordinates. Kim also opened up a small message from Wade displaying a layout of the building which she saved and quickly committed to memory. Shoving a couple items into a bag, for just in case, Kim stared at the address and prepared herself for what was to come. She quietly opened her bedroom window, and then shimmied out onto the tree situated just outside of the window ledge.

…

Getting into the upscale apartment building at three in the morning had been less of a challenge than she would have imagined. The doorman was there, but he seriously posed no match for her combined level of stealth and determination. Once inside the main lobby, which for the time of night was fairly well lit, she quietly made her way over to the discreet elevator resting by the elegant marble staircase. Reaching into her mission bag, Kim pulled out a small black device resembling a radio and pressed the small red button on its side—pointing the device at the card reader in front of her. After a few moments, the elevator dinged open and she quietly stepped inside.

Kim kept her head down but surreptitiously pressed the elevator button to her left, the thirteenth floor lighting up vibrantly against the ambient glow of the lighted ceiling. The ride up was silent and as the doors slid open she lifted her head to see plush burgundy carpeted hallways and chic light fixtures in varying shades of silver hanging from the ceiling. It's beyond lavish.

She softly plodded down the carpeted hallway, stopping when she reached the door marked with an elegantly rendered "7." Kim stared it for a moment, holding her breath in anticipation. This is it; this could mean nothing or everything. Kim let out a shaky exhale, then rapped her knuckles against the door. There were a few seconds of silence, then she heard footsteps move closer. Finally, the door swung open to reveal—

"Shego?"