Fanfic: Thirty Years.
Title: Thirty Years.
Rating: G. Sad, but there's no swearing, and only off-screen violence.
Fandom: Kim Possible.
Synopsis: Thirty years is a long time when you're twelve years old. Written for djonn in the first Valentine's round of Iron Author.
*
Thirty years is a long time when you're twelve years old and your best friend is a superhero and you're never going to grow up and you just want something that will always be with you and will be your friend no matter what happens, no matter what changes, no matter what, forever.
Twenty years is a long time when you're twenty-two years old and you're just getting out of college, and you're trying to figure out how to tell your best friend -- who's still a superhero, even if she was your girlfriend for a little while, and then you didn't speak for a little longer than you actually went out, and now she's your best friend again, and everything is just like it's supposed to be, and you pretend you're not afraid every time she charges out to save the world, and she pretends she doesn't know you love her -- that you're considering law school, because you can't just be a sidekick forever. There has to be something more than tagging along and accidentally saving the day; there's saving the day on purpose, for example, and doing it without having monkey ninjas steal your pants. Again.
The world needs a lot more saving than one woman in a black jumpsuit is ever going to achieve. It would be hard not to know that. For every Monkeyfist and Doctor Drakken, there are ten men beating their girlfriends for daring to buy groceries, there are twenty children going to bed in tears. There are murderers who never attract the attention of anything global, and sure, KP takes care of those right alongside the glorious plots for world domination and total annihilation of the human race...but only if she stumbles over them. Only if they happen to get in her way.
Someone has to go looking. And twenty years is a long time.
Ten years is no time at all when you're in your thirties, and you're the most successful lawyer in Middleton, and your case load keeps growing every time you look away, but that doesn't matter, because someone has to keep on saving the world. Someone has to be there to catch the small things, and hope that the big things will be taken care of by the new generation, the ones who came along after...after...
You can only save the world so many times. It's probably one of the unbreakable laws of the universe; you can only save the world so many times, and after that, it's someone else's turn. But the world can't be destroyed, and so the last time, there's going to be someone else there, ready to catch the ball before it hits the ground. There's going to be another pair of hands, waiting. Maybe it's a little odd that those hands belonged to Shego, but then again, maybe not; love and hate are very close cousins, and in the end, what better monument for a girl who saved the world more times than anybody else -- more times than Muffy the Werewolf Slayer from that stupid TV show, even, and she got it on her tombstone -- than her arch-enemy's right-hand girl being the one who keeps the banner flying.
Shego cried at the funeral. Everyone cried, but hers were the only tears that glowed with their own inner light, like strange jewels that dissolved when they hit the ground. People said it was a shame, she was so young, she had such an amazing future, what a pity, and some said, more quietly, that maybe it was a good thing she'd never married, because no man deserves to be a widower that far before his time. Such a tragedy.
Shego cried.
Just because she never married doesn't mean she didn't widow someone, in all the ways that counted. Shego's lucky; she has work to keep her occupied, and it's work that only ever ends one way, the day you get out of the game the hard way. Everyone has work to keep them occupied, and Monique and the children take the sharpest edges off, just by being there, and even little worlds need saving. Ten years is no time at all. Still. It's what's left.
Thirty years is a long time. Thirty-two years is some sort of world record, according to Wade, who says that Rufus would be proud; he shattered all the scientific estimations on the life expectancy of the naked mole rat, ten years in the wild, up to thirty in captivity if left to live a stress-free life, one free of monkey ninjas and robot doubles and processed cheese food and saving the world. Saving so many worlds, one life at a time, one crisis after another, until there aren't any worlds left to save, until there's just a tiny pine box made by Kimmie -- twelve years old now, and she never met her namesake, and she never will -- and a tiny laser-etched headstone, and Shego's glowing tears, falling down again, like radioactive rain.
Thirty years is a long time when you're twelve years old.
Thirty years is never long enough.
Rating: G. Sad, but there's no swearing, and only off-screen violence.
Fandom: Kim Possible.
Synopsis: Thirty years is a long time when you're twelve years old. Written for djonn in the first Valentine's round of Iron Author.
*
Thirty years is a long time when you're twelve years old and your best friend is a superhero and you're never going to grow up and you just want something that will always be with you and will be your friend no matter what happens, no matter what changes, no matter what, forever.
Twenty years is a long time when you're twenty-two years old and you're just getting out of college, and you're trying to figure out how to tell your best friend -- who's still a superhero, even if she was your girlfriend for a little while, and then you didn't speak for a little longer than you actually went out, and now she's your best friend again, and everything is just like it's supposed to be, and you pretend you're not afraid every time she charges out to save the world, and she pretends she doesn't know you love her -- that you're considering law school, because you can't just be a sidekick forever. There has to be something more than tagging along and accidentally saving the day; there's saving the day on purpose, for example, and doing it without having monkey ninjas steal your pants. Again.
The world needs a lot more saving than one woman in a black jumpsuit is ever going to achieve. It would be hard not to know that. For every Monkeyfist and Doctor Drakken, there are ten men beating their girlfriends for daring to buy groceries, there are twenty children going to bed in tears. There are murderers who never attract the attention of anything global, and sure, KP takes care of those right alongside the glorious plots for world domination and total annihilation of the human race...but only if she stumbles over them. Only if they happen to get in her way.
Someone has to go looking. And twenty years is a long time.
Ten years is no time at all when you're in your thirties, and you're the most successful lawyer in Middleton, and your case load keeps growing every time you look away, but that doesn't matter, because someone has to keep on saving the world. Someone has to be there to catch the small things, and hope that the big things will be taken care of by the new generation, the ones who came along after...after...
You can only save the world so many times. It's probably one of the unbreakable laws of the universe; you can only save the world so many times, and after that, it's someone else's turn. But the world can't be destroyed, and so the last time, there's going to be someone else there, ready to catch the ball before it hits the ground. There's going to be another pair of hands, waiting. Maybe it's a little odd that those hands belonged to Shego, but then again, maybe not; love and hate are very close cousins, and in the end, what better monument for a girl who saved the world more times than anybody else -- more times than Muffy the Werewolf Slayer from that stupid TV show, even, and she got it on her tombstone -- than her arch-enemy's right-hand girl being the one who keeps the banner flying.
Shego cried at the funeral. Everyone cried, but hers were the only tears that glowed with their own inner light, like strange jewels that dissolved when they hit the ground. People said it was a shame, she was so young, she had such an amazing future, what a pity, and some said, more quietly, that maybe it was a good thing she'd never married, because no man deserves to be a widower that far before his time. Such a tragedy.
Shego cried.
Just because she never married doesn't mean she didn't widow someone, in all the ways that counted. Shego's lucky; she has work to keep her occupied, and it's work that only ever ends one way, the day you get out of the game the hard way. Everyone has work to keep them occupied, and Monique and the children take the sharpest edges off, just by being there, and even little worlds need saving. Ten years is no time at all. Still. It's what's left.
Thirty years is a long time. Thirty-two years is some sort of world record, according to Wade, who says that Rufus would be proud; he shattered all the scientific estimations on the life expectancy of the naked mole rat, ten years in the wild, up to thirty in captivity if left to live a stress-free life, one free of monkey ninjas and robot doubles and processed cheese food and saving the world. Saving so many worlds, one life at a time, one crisis after another, until there aren't any worlds left to save, until there's just a tiny pine box made by Kimmie -- twelve years old now, and she never met her namesake, and she never will -- and a tiny laser-etched headstone, and Shego's glowing tears, falling down again, like radioactive rain.
Thirty years is a long time when you're twelve years old.
Thirty years is never long enough.