And You And I

Chapter 31: If you let me, I will catch fire

It had been two weeks. Three-hundred-and-thirty-six hours. Twenty-thousand-one-hundred-and-sixty minutes... Kim had broken it down into seconds too and it came in at well over one million. The point was, she had been cooped up inside her parents' house for two weeks. Except when she had been taken out for a walk. Yes, taken out for a walk. Once her infection had cleared up, her mom had decided that some fresh air would do her good and so invited her to come out on a walk with her. Naturally, after having been stuck indoors for five days straight, Kim had leapt at the chance. Of course, once outside and away from the house, she had bolted, only for the Tweebs Alcatraz2000 to send a crippling electric shock through her. Cheeks burning bright red at the indignity of it all, she had been forced to endure her mom chuckling at her and then acquiesce to the light suggestion that they walk together and then go back to the house. The woman had then proceeded to walk her every day like she was the new family pet. She might as well have put a collar and leash on her with a little tag that read, 'Kimmie'. Needless to say, this had only been akin to adding petrol atop the fires of anger that had been raging inside her since her defeat at the hands of Shego.

Shego. Every single day the green-skinned woman had filled Kim's thoughts, the last fight between them playing out over and over again, until the point that she had started punching at her old bedroom wall in anger at the woman. Her dad had thus, against her mom's wishes, been forced to hang up an old punching bag he'd found in the garage, in order to safeguard the structural integrity of the room. Day after day her rage had intensified and the poor bag taken increasingly harsher poundings. But worse still had been the constant replay of the moments before her rival had set Matt's jumper on fire. The lack of spark, of magic, had played constantly on her mind and brought about a reminder of the feelings of awkwardness... of wrongness, with regards to how it had all felt. She had blamed this on Shego too. This had all been the villainess' doing. The raven-haired woman having latched onto Kim's desire to fight her more frequently and then used that knowledge to mess with her head and to get her to question her sexuality. She was straight goddammit! Only there had persisted that little voice that constantly asked, "but what if you're not?"

Her anger had quickly started to spill beyond the confines of her mind. She had yelled at her father when he had simply mentioned that one of his colleague's daughters had been accepted into Harvard; having taken it as yet another attempt on his part to get her to quit her hero work and go to college like a normal 'daddy's girl'. She'd argued with her mother every time the woman had tried to check her over and point-blank refused to talk to her about anything, including the holes in her bedroom walls, that did not involve her getting to go home; which had been everything. And as for the Tweebs, virtually every time she had seen them, she had shouted at them for whatever they had been doing because it had irked her in some way. In the end, she had spent the bulk of her time holed up in her old bedroom, her mind tormented by memories of her humiliation at the hands of her rival and of repeated fights between Shego and the Barkin-dragon; each ending with the green-skinned woman's battered and bloodied body getting shoved back into the chest. It may have meant everything or absolutely nothing, but Kim would swear that the Barkin-dragon's box looked far more beat up with each subsequent encounter. All in all, she had never felt angrier or more vengeful in her life come Sunday night; two weeks after her defeat. Her mom, or should that be jailor, had finally, after having scrutinised every last pixel of her latest x-rays, said the words she had started to think would never come; she could go home tomorrow.

Kim had awoken at five-thirty am and fuelled by anger and a lust for vengeance, been raring to go. Still wearing the Alcatraz2000, she had been forced to work out indoors, but nevertheless put in a solid two-hours before anyone else had even woken up. Virtually barging past her father and both Tweebs, she had not so much claimed as forcibly taken first dibs on the shower. Now fully washed and dressed, Kim entered the kitchen and was surprised to see her mom already there; plating up breakfast for two.