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Brains are weird.
They control how we act and react in our everyday lives. They provide guidance on making the right and wrong choices and detail the potential consequences of each. They are the driving force between chaos and order in everything we do.
They also suck.
They make you feel that everything you do is wrong and nothing is right. They make you think that life isn't worth living for and that it would be better if you did nothing for eternity. Above all, they make you feel sad for what may seem like an unexplained reason. No one is exempted from it. Not even the world's foremost crime-fighting hero.
Admittedly, Kim knew life would get much tougher once university life came about. Despite choosing a local college so she and Ron could be close to their families, it wasn't easy. Not that it ever was in high school but Kim at least had a balance she could maintain. She was a smart kid and a hard worker, and how well she'd do on her exams was highlighted as the reason she could even get into such a school in the first place. But it just got a bit harder than she'd have appreciated.
Having defeated Warmonga in the first place, Kim took personal blame for the Possibles' home being destroyed and for the entire invasion. She was determined to be at the forefront of the rebuilding, much to her parents' dismay.
They'd rather she just focus on her studies, which she was also determined to excel in. She wanted to get that degree that could play a bigger role in her life in the future. She didn't intend to outright retire from crime-fighting, but when her body was older and she was slower to get up from the hits and throws, she wanted something to fall back on and to have that second career.
And what of that first career? Well, it slowed in the wake of the Lorwardian invasion. The invasion had the entire planet rebuilding itself, even the villains, in the fallout. So when a new villain, who seemed poised to break this rest period, finally came to Middleton, Kim welcomed it. Even while she and Ron didn't manage to fully catch them for the first crime, she still felt confident it'd only be a matter of time.
What she didn't consider was that they weren't the only trouble she had to deal with.
It all started at home, or rather what would be home, as work had slowed down as the school term progressed. Not that the dorms weren't great, but she did miss home. Enough that as the builders would take breaks, she would implore them to keep going. Sometimes, she would even attempt to do the work herself, much to the frustration of the builders.
One annoying day after she'd missed out on a lecture due to dealing with the new villain of the week, which she'd also not managed to stop, she'd not arrived at the site in such a good mood. It became more apparent as she'd found a shattered photo of her and Ron that had only just been recovered from the destruction caused all those months ago.
"Lady, you gonna stare at that all day?" one of the builders had the temerity to ask.
"Sorry, I just…didn't think I'd see this again." She said, still staring at it.
"Well, I'm glad you found it. Now can you let us do our work?"
Kim normally would simply nod and let them go on with their business, but her bad day had pushed her past the point of understanding. "It's not like you guys do it well enough anyway."
It was barely audible but enough for the builder to hear. "You trying to say we're not doing a good job?"
"I'm just saying that if I could copy myself, I'd get the job done by now."
"Well, you can't so you got us."
"Fat lot of good that's done for me now." Kim shot back.
"Look lady." The builder said, raising his voice. "I don't know whether you think you got special privilege because of who you are, but guess what? Your house wasn't the only one affected. Yours ain't the only one we're working on. There's a lot of others who need us more, so forgive me if we're not working 24/7 for you."
With any other person, it would have stopped there—a good reprimand to an annoying person. However, the one thing the builders did not realize when accepting the job was how close Kim was to the situation. Every word made her blood boil; by the end, she'd had enough.
She dropped the frame on the floor, took the builder by his shirt and pushed him against a wall. "Mine wasn't the only one affected, right? Well how many other people do you know that had the attacks hit their house first?! How many do you know were the reason all this even happened in the first place?! I have had to deal with all that blood on my conscience ever since the invasion happened and the LEAST I expect in return is for some builders to do their damn job better!"
It was only when she saw Ron in front of her with a Bueno Nacho bag and Rufus peeping out of his pocket that she realized what she was doing. The builders worked faster after that, but the fact that it was because she put the fear of God into them never escaped her mind.
It didn't get any easier after that.
That lecture she missed ended up being pivotal, and it made catching up that much more difficult. She had no friends in her class, not yet anyway. She was too busy otherwise to chat, so no one was there to help. Ron and Monique offered, but Kim refused, believing she had to handle it independently and not make their lives busier. It didn't help that her mission life wasn't making things easier either.
This new villain had deemed themselves someone looking to bring back the ways of the Samurai from centuries past and had set their sights on Middleton to begin their reign of dominance. Kim, Ron and Wade had all found no joy in determining who they were, which made learning of when they'd strike even more difficult. But when they finally managed to snag a lead, and Kim and Ron faced them, this felt like the chance to turn around her luck and take down a bad guy.
He escaped once again, and Kim received a nasty slash on her side for her troubles. It wasn't incredibly dangerous, but it required some time in the hospital to get her stitched up and that wound cleaned. Still, she tried to balance her life once again, determined to study for the exam she had coming up and get that high grade she knew everyone was looking to her for. Nursing an injury to your side isn't the best motivator to study.
She failed that exam—the first she'd done in years. No one really cared. She wasn't the only one, and it was a commonly well-known fact that it takes a while to adjust to university-level studies. Her professor reassured her, her parents reassured her, Monique and Ron, and yet it all just didn't matter.
She was Kim Possible. She could do anything. But she couldn't get her home rebuilt, she couldn't stop someone from threatening her home, and she couldn't even pass an exam in school. She was supposed to be this shining example not just to her loved ones and her friends but to everyone around her, a beacon of hope in the midst of a world rebuilding itself after tragedy. But she couldn't even do that.
Maybe that's why, one day, she just stopped. Didn't bother getting up and going to classes. Didn't check on the building back home. Didn't bother to see where the villain was hitting next. What would be the point? Failing once again? It would hurt too much, in one case, literally. She just decided to sleep the day away and not bother with the rest of the world and what it had to offer.
And that's how Ron found her.
"KP. You okay in there?" Ron said, knocking on the door. "Wade said he'd been calling you on the Kimmunicator but you weren't responding. Didn't respond to my texts either….or go to class today."
Truthfully, he'd been worried sick once he'd heard she'd ghosted everyone and hadn't seemingly even left her room the entire day. It wasn't like her, and he knew well enough that she wasn't hit with a moodulator or anything like that. There was no external force involved this time around. Which is why it was the most crucial mission he'd ever had.
He opened the door gently to reveal Kim on her bed, the one concession made for her efforts to save humanity. She was simply staring at the wall, unmoving, only taking time to blink, occasionally yawning once or twice. To put it mildly, she was not exactly being herself.
Ron crossed the space between them and sat on the bed beside her, rubbing her head and her hair, a tried and true method of getting her to relax he'd learned since they started dating. And it seemed to pay dividends here. She took a deep breath and hummed pleasurably, the first sign of her returning somewhat to normal. Though it'd take a while for her to talk to him, what she said wasn't a good start.
"I fucked up, Ron."
It took him aback slightly, knowing Kim wasn't one to swear and would only do so in the most frustrating circumstances. But swear or not, she still made a point that he had to get into. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, I've just messed it all up. I'm not who I made people believe I was. I'm just a failure."
He'd not heard her use language like that since they were tied up after Eric betrayed her, so he didn't hesitate to use the exact verbiage now. "Hey, that's quitter talk! That's not you."
"Maybe it is now. We've all changed after the invasion."
"No, you haven't. You're still the same Kim Possible who can do anything." He reassured.
"Am I?" she asked, not sitting up. "Well, how come I can't stop a simple bad guy without failing over and over? Or why am I failing exams now? Ron, I can't even get my home fixed."
"Hey, we're gonna catch that guy, okay? We always do. We can get help from GJ if need be. God knows they owe us a lot of favours. And so what if you failed one test? You've got a bunch more to come that you can and will easily ace. I know Wade has asked me about helping you too. And you and the family will get your place back. Just gotta let the guys do their jobs."
It seemed a noble retort, but Kim simply shook her head, disbelieving. "I don't need help. I shouldn't need help. I need to do it on my own or else…I'm just not who people thought I was…I'm not who I thought I was…"
As heartbreaking as hearing her voice shaking as she said it and the admission itself, it offered an opening that seemed unlikely a few minutes ago. All that Ron needed now was to find a way to bring it up. He briefly thought about dressing it up nicely, but frankly, it wasn't what she needed right now.
"You can really be stubborn, you know?"
"Huh?"
Ron got up from the bed and faced her, hands on his hips. "God, I love you so much but you do not know when to stop sometimes."
"Meaning?" Kim said, a terse tone to her voice.
"Kim…no one asked or told you to do all this on your own. We'd never do that. We've always been here to help."
"But I have to do it on my own."
"Says who?!"
"Says….I dunno. I just have to."
"Is there someone you're trying to prove something to? Is it me? You know I love you no matter what you do."
"No, of course it's not you! I just….you know…with everything changing and all this going on, I thought I had to mature. Get better, do more. Handle more responsibility….I didn't realize it'd be so hard." Kim finally admitted.
Ron returned to the bed, sitting next to her, placing her head on his shoulder as she leaned in. "Life gets tougher as we get older and we move on from big things in our lives. There were days when I thought football wasn't for me and that I should have given up. But do you remember what you told me?"
"….If you believe in yourself, there's no way you can fail….bit cheesy though."
"It was a bit, yeah." He chuckled, feeling his heart warm when she did, too. "But you never let me forget it. And you made sure I got over those fears by helping me practice. Sometimes late into the night."
"You did need the help." She chuckled again.
"And look what happened. Got myself a scholarship. You CAN accept help from people. It won't make us think lesser of you. Just because you're older doesn't mean you need to become some impossible ideal. People don't want that from you. They don't expect that from you. What they see and what I see, is a woman trying her best to juggle all these different things in her life, something they relate to. And if you show them that accepting help is good, then they'll do the same."
Kim stayed quiet for a few more seconds before sighing deeply. "….Maybe a bit of help won't be too bad."
"I thought you'd say that." He said, smirking as she playfully pushed him. "Now, you can explain to the professors that you were ill, that's easy. I can get Wade to potentially figure out a deal with a certain green-skinned former foe."
Kim's eyes widened. "I didn't know she-"
"Wade told me she was doing jobs for hire again and some of them, for the right price, happen to be good. But you don't worry about that. Because today is your day off and we're not spending it in bed. Whatever you wanna do, we're doing. As long as it gets you out of here."
"Well…….I could always be persuaded to do some…browsing at Club Banana." She said with a smile.
"Why did I know that was coming?" he said, smiling and shaking his head before Kim pulled him into a quick kiss.
"You've always known me so well."