A/N: Hi guys! Time for a plot twist! (Well, some of you guessed it, but I still think I'll surprise at least a few of you.)

Dear Diary: Chapter Thirteen
Yellow

For the second time in under a week, Kim regained consciousness in an unfamiliar room hooked up to an IV. On the bright side, the room didn't seem to belong in a hospital. It actually seemed more like someone's bedroom, aside from the bag of saline that was on a drip into Kim's system from the rolling metal frame it hung from.

On the downside, it seemed that nobody was thoughtful enough to spike said saline drip with the good stuff, and Kim was in enough pain that it felt like she'd just been hit by a bus. A bus that then backed up and hit her again, just to be spiteful.

Groaning slightly, Kim forced her shaking, achy limbs to cooperate and slowly sat up, trying her best to think past the pounding in her head and take in her surroundings. Thankfully, there was an excess of pillows on the bed –a full size, with powder blue sheets and a sea green comforter—such that she was able to prop herself up against the headboard quite comfortably. The room itself wasn't really anything spectacular in shape or size. Its walls were painted a particularly pleasant shade of lime green though, which Kim heartily approved of in combination with the sea green curtains drawn over the window, as they matched the bedspread. Though she couldn't see outside, Kim deduced from the light filtering through the gaps in the curtains that the sky was darkening into early evening. Heavy shadows were cast into the room, darkening around the cherry-wood bookshelves lining the walls and dimming her view of what appeared to be hand-drawn engineering blueprints of various flying machines plastered haphazardly onto any available wall space that could be easily viewed if one sat at the desk to her right.

It was a charming space, and from her vantage point of the bed in the center of the room, Kim had an excellent view of all of it. Her attention, however, was more drawn to the woman asleep in the desk chair that had been dragged over to the bedside. Though she didn't have a view of the woman's face, seeing as it was buried into her arms as she leaned into the side of the mattress, Kim would recognize that head of dark hair anywhere.

It was definitely Shego who had fallen asleep sprawled half in the chair and half on the edge of Kim's bed. Though, to be fair, Kim assumed that this was probably Shego's bed in the first place, considering the color scheme and distinctive scent pervading the room.

That mystery solved, Kim now only needed to remember how she got here, why Shego was with her, and the reason that she hurt down to the smallest nerve endings all over her body. Kim's memory was very hazy after she'd blown up Talon's comet-weapon. She'd passed out almost immediately afterwards, she knew, but she had vague impressions of surfacing for brief periods more than once in however long it'd been since then –always in such agony that she'd willingly fled back into unconsciousness.

Kim did remember a few things clearly enough though. She remembered Shego's face hovering above her own, the other woman looking rather frightened and repeating something that Kim either couldn't hear or couldn't understand. She remembered a strange golden light clouding her vision, and a brief glimpse of Monique at her side, writhing on the ground and whimpering piteously. She remembered being dragged bodily into the Go Jet, too, and trying to stand, but failing.

After that… nothing.

Absently, Kim reached out and carded her fingers through Shego's hair. It was as soft as she'd always imagined it to be, and she hummed appreciatively, repeating the motion. From what little she did remember, Kim concluded that Shego—who hadn't seemed affected by the explosion—had brought Monique and herself back to safety. Though she had no way of knowing for sure, Kim strongly suspected that she was currently resting in Shego's room in Go Tower. She and Monique had borrowed Team Go's jet to get to the Nest (which Kim hoped Shego would forgive her for piloting less than expertly) and had planned to return to the Tower once the mission was complete to recuperate. This theory was supported by the fact that Kim was dressed in her own favorite blue pajama shorts and matching tank top, which she had packed in the overnight bag she'd left with Mego when she'd set off that afternoon. With both Monique and Kim indisposed, Kim knew that Shego would have chosen to take them to the nearest source of medical attention equipped to deal with the sort of trouble that Kim typically got herself into, even if that meant dealing with her brothers.

Finally feeling like she had a handle on the situation, Kim chose to ignore her suspicions on what had happened to cause her such pain and instead enjoyed the peace and quiet that surrounded her, affectionately running her hand through a still-sleeping Shego's dark hair. The woman had shifted slightly so that Kim had a view of her friend's sleeping face. She looked troubled and exhausted, even in slumber, and it made Kim's heart clench slightly. She felt guilty for kicking the woman out of her own bed, as well as for getting herself and Monique injured in the first place.

A gentle knock sounded at the door, and it was opened by one of the Wegos, dressed in a pair of jeans and a red t-shirt. "Shelly, I know you told me to leave you alone, but I brought you some…" He trailed off as he realized that Kim was awake, and that Shego was not. "… cocoa-moo." Indeed, he held a steaming mug in front of him as if it were a peace offering—which, knowing Shego's temper, was probably pretty close to accurate.

Smiling at her fellow redhead, Kim pressed the index finger of her free hand to her lips and gestured to where Shego was slumped forwards in her chair, using the edge of the mattress of a pillow. The book that she'd apparently been reading when she'd fallen asleep –Dune—was open face-down on the floor.

Shego, Kim noted idly, was proving to be a closet nerd. She'd have to tease her about that later.

"I'm so glad you're awake, Kim," the Wego whispered, creeping around to the other side of the bed and placing the mug on the bedside table where an unopened water bottle was waiting by a glass. He cracked the seal on the bottle and poured half of it into the cup before handing it to Kim, who took it gratefully and guzzled down a long drink at a somewhat dangerous speed.

"Thanks," she sighed happily once she'd stopped to breathe. She paused. "Are you Wendell or Wesley?"

The Wego grinned at her. "Wesley," he informed her. "How are you feeling?"

"Terrible," Kim admitted, her voice still kept carefully low for fear of waking her sleeping companion. "Please tell me that what I think happened didn't actually happen?"

Wesley grimaced and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Sorry Kim. I can't do that," he apologized. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Clearly? Blowing up the ray gun that I was pretty sure Talon used to steal Shego's powers," Kim related. "I figured that once it was gone, Shego would be back to normal, just like last time. I just ended up in a whole lot of pain though, and passing in and out of consciousness until I was back in the jet. I was out for the count after that. Is Nique okay?"

"Your friend is just fine," Wesley was quick to reassure her. "She woke up before you actually, just this morning. She's been really worried about you, since it's been three days since Shego brought you both back; but Mego's with her now, and he seems to be doing a pretty good job at keeping her in hand. Want to hear what happened?"

Unspeakably relieved that Monique was unharmed, Kim just nodded. "Please."

With a sigh, Wesley sat lightly on the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle it. "When you blew up Talon's comet weapon, you didn't quite destroy the comet fragment as well as you'd hoped," he finally blurted after a moment of awkward and expectant silence. "There's not really a tactful way to say this… but the people in that room? You've all got glows now."

Though Kim had been halfway expecting him to say something like this, she still nearly choked on her own spit when she heard it out loud. "What?" she squeaked.

Wesley averted his disconcertingly red eyes and clenched his hands in his lap. "I'm… I'm sorry Kim. That we dragged you and your friend into this. But… you're just like us, now. It's… not something that's reversible."

Stunned, Kim let out a breath and slumped back into her pillows and stared vacantly at the hand that had stopped moving, but was still buried in Shego's hair. She didn't know what to think. What to feel.

She had superpowers?

What the actual fuck?

But this was her own fault, she realized. She'd been sloppy: rushing through the mission and blowing things up willy-nilly without considering the consequences. She'd paid for that with her chance to live a normal life.

And Monique had paid too.

"What about Talon?" Kim asked dully, still in some sort of emotional shock.

"He escaped," Wesley admitted. "Shego said that he had just enough time to activate some sort of distress beacon before he passed out, and Gondor –the vulture that Aviarius kept as a sort of sidekick—flew off with him while she was distracted. And since he was also in the room when the weapon exploded…"

"Talon has a glow of his very own now too," Kim finished bitterly. A few tears leaked from her eyes. "I… I'm so sorry, Wesley," she sniffled. "You trusted me to help, and I only made things worse. I… failed."

"Kim, it wasn't your fault," the young man said firmly, taking ahold of her chin and turning her face towards him and delivering a stern glare. "You still brought my sister back, which is all we could really ask of you. You had no way of knowing what would happen, and I would have done the same thing in your place. Because of you, Shelly is safe, Talon was stopped for the moment, and we all live to fight another day. Seems like a victory to me, don't you think?"

Kim smiled weakly, feeling a little better in spite of herself. "Thanks, Wesley," she said sincerely, receiving a blinding smile in return. That smile improved her mood further. Wesley shared that expression with his older sister, and their resemblance in that moment was striking.

"I should go now," he told her gently, "but I'll bring dinner up once it's ready. Do you need anything?"

Kim just shook her head and offered the youngest Govetsky brother a wave as he left. She'd never had much interaction with the male members of Team Go, but she decided that Wesley, at least, she liked. He was sweet, if a little naïve, but Kim didn't really hold that against him. It made him seem young, though she knew quite well that he was actually very close to her own age, if not slightly older.

For a while after that, Kim debated going back to sleep. After all, she could probably use the rest considering how sore she was. But she didn't want to. Instead, she stumbled across a predictably black and green-themed iPod tossed carelessly across the foot of the bed and snatched it up. Shego hadn't set it with a password, thankfully, and Kim quite happily popped in the ear buds and perused the music selection. The green woman seemed to have a taste for classical, surprisingly. Kim simply selected Gustav Holst's The Planets, as 'Jupiter' was one of her favorites to unwind to, and started an intensive game of chess against the computer to occupy her mind.

It was a challenging game (as Kim wasn't actually very good at chess) and she soon was completely enraptured by the little device's bright screen, her tongue poking out of the side of her mouth unconsciously while she concentrated. She wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to her surroundings, so when she suddenly felt a light touch on her arm, she was so startled that she jumped and let out a distressed yelp.

And Shego's iPod exploded in her hand with a flash of yellow light, the screen cracking and a small puff of smoke escaping from its back.

Kim just stared at the ruined device for close upon thirty full seconds, her brain struggling to compute what had just happened, before she gave up and cast an uneasy glance to her left where Shego sat, now fully awake and still focused on the rather useless rectangle of metal and glass that used to be her music player. Her hand was still resting on Kim's forearm, where she'd touched her to get her attention.

"I'll buy you a new one, Michi, I swear!" Kim blurted, cheeks flaming in embarrassment. Of all the things that could have started the conversation after all that had happened, this was what she was reduced to.

No one had ever accused Kim of being normal, though.

Kim's voice seemed to snap Shego out of her own shock, and Kim was soon trapped within the woman's emerald stare. Shego was visibly struggling with what to say, and for once, Kim couldn't quite get an accurate read on her emotions. She seemed to be angry and guilty and sad and joyful all at once, and if Kim was confused by that, she imagined that Shego was doubly so.

So Kim just pulled the ear buds free of her head and carefully placed the iPod on the farthest corner of the bed she could reach, eyeing the device warily, as if it might explode again. Though in her opinion, Kim thought that this was a reasonable phobia. She had no idea what her new apparent comet powers actually did, but so far, they seemed to be somewhat destructive. She figured that it was better safe than sorry.

She'd freak out about it later.

"You look like shit," Shego finally told her.

Kim shot her a dirty look. "Well so do you," she muttered. "You look like you haven't slept in three days!"

The guilt was painfully obvious in Shego's body language as the woman averted her gaze and picked at a stray thread in her black sweat pants with fretful fingers.

Kim just groaned softly at the realization that Shego actually hadn't slept in three days and fell back into her pillows again. "That's not healthy, you know," she scolded her lightly.

"Well excuse the fuck out of me if I wasn't actually concerned about my health!" Shego snapped, lashing out like a cornered animal but still refusing to look at her.

A silence stretched between them.

"Michelle?" Kim said tentatively, wringing her hands slightly. With obvious reluctance, Shego turned back to look at her, and Kim was hard-pressed to hide how affected she was by the shame she saw there. Instead, she just took a steadying breath. "I… I'm really glad you're okay."

Shego just made a choked noise that was halfway between a laugh and a sob and stood abruptly, pacing the room like a caged panther. "Don't say that, Princess," she growled at her. "As much as I hate to deny that I'm perfect, this… this was my fault. All of it. I ruined your life and the life of your friend because I'm incapable of getting a grip, and rushed into a situation without bothering to gather any information about what I was facing and got myself captured. Rookie mistake. I took away your happy life because I'm selfish and corrupt everything I touch."

It was true that having genuine superpowers changed things. A lot of things. But Kim felt strangely resigned to the idea. Why fight it? It wouldn't help.

Kim instead just watched Shego's lean form quietly, eyes tracking her motion back and forth across the room. Shego was barefoot. Her sweat pants hung low about her hips, exposing a thin strip of pale green flesh between the drawstring of her pants and the hem of her plain white t-shirt. With her hair still mussed from a combination of sleep and Kim's earlier ministrations, Shego appeared more human than Kim had ever seen her. Especially in her distress. Kim couldn't recall a time where she'd seen Shego actively take the blame for anything before, and Kim wasn't sure if this was because the woman had simply never expressed such sentiment aloud, or never felt guilty enough to feel the need to express it in the first place.

"That's not true," she murmured just loud enough for Shego to hear.

The woman spun towards her as if Kim had fired a gunshot and stared at her with sharp eyes.

"You went after Talon because you care about me," Kim said, voice growing stronger with every word as she suddenly was filled with a fire that only Shego was capable of bringing out in her. "I went after him because I care about you. You didn't make me do anything. I did it because I wanted to, and you have no right to cheapen that! If you want to play the blame game, blame me. Blame Wade. Hell, blame Talon, who's actually at fault! But don't lose yourself in self-pity. You're better than that."

For what seemed like an eternity after Kim's outburst, but was probably only a few moments, the pair just stared at each other in a silent clash of wills. This was a battle that Shego eventually lost. Her shoulders slumped in a defeated sort of way, and she slowly moved back to the bed. She sat down on its edge and simply stared at the nearest wall, looking for all the world like the universe had just come crashing down around her ears.

Kim had never seen the woman this open, or vulnerable, ever. It filled her with a strange sense of pride that she of all people got to see the real Shego this way, even if it also made her sad.

Gingerly –hiding a pained grimace—Kim kicked away the bedcovers, crawled over the few feet that separated her from Shego, and pulled the woman into a tight embrace. This was one of those times, she thought, during which words really wouldn't serve well. At first, Shego didn't respond, but before Kim could start feeling awkward and pull away, she suddenly twisted in the redhead's hold and returned the gesture with a fierceness that was quite welcome, if slightly painful.

"I'm so sorry, Kim," the woman sighed into Kim's neck, where she'd buried her face. The growing dampness of the skin there and the trembling of Shego's body in her arms told Kim that, for the first time that she'd witness since she'd known her, Shego was crying.

Kim would have liked to say that she wasn't surprised, but in truth, she'd had no idea that Shego cared enough about her to lose her composure like this, and was appropriately shocked. She didn't even know when such a thing could have happened, having thought until quite recently that Shego most likely hated her.

In her last diary entry, Shego had said that she was guilty of not seeing Kim for everything that she was. At this point, Kim could honestly say that she was guilty of the same thing, but in reverse. She hadn't given the woman enough credit, she realized. Maybe she'd been deceived by the callous, angry exterior that Shego presented just as much as everyone else until this point, but now, Kim could see that contrary what the world assumed about her, Shego held a greater emotional depth than almost anyone Kim knew. She just didn't show it very often, for fear of getting hurt. Just like she was hurting now. Kim was sure that her friend hadn't intended for it to happen, but somehow, Kim had wormed her way into Shego's heart and stuck there, just as Shego had done to Kim just over two years ago on that fateful day that she'd absently pocketed a lost book that had turned out to be the diary of Michelle Mae Govetsky.

It was strangely poetic.

So Kim didn't accept or deny Shego's apology. She just let it be and instead held her tighter, closing her eyes and relaxing into the embrace of someone she suddenly realized that she trusted unconditionally. The less-than-ideal circumstances they'd found themselves in didn't matter anymore, Kim decided, because when Kim Possible and Shego fought on the same side, they were unstoppable. And that meant that everything was going to be all right in the end.

They actually fell asleep like that—Shego because she was exhausted, and Kim because she was still recovering from her own ordeal. It was a good sleep, though. Deep and dreamless—at least on Kim's side of things. Though considering Shego's mood come morning, Kim was willing to bet serious money that Shego had slept well too. Not even morning people were that cheerful in the morning, Kim was entirely convinced.

"Kimmie, it's time to wake up!" a voice purred into Kim's ear, causing her to shift in her sleep. Stuck somewhere between the waking and sleeping worlds, Kim didn't appreciate the noise, nor the brightness of the world around her. She wanted to fall back into blissful oblivion.

Unfortunately for Kim, the owner of the voice disagreed with her, and she felt a pair of hands gently squeeze her sides, startling her into further wakefulness. "C'mon, Princess. Up! Get your lazy ass out of bed."

Kim just muttered something unintelligible and curled further into the warmth surrounding her, which she judged from its shape to belong to a person. A distinctly female person, who for some reason wanted Kim to wake up, causing her to amend the description to distinctly sadistic female person. Kim nuzzled her face into said person's neck in an effort to avoid the encroaching sunlight, but it didn't seem to work.

"Woah there, Pumpkin. Normally I'd make a girl buy me dinner first, but I guess for you I'll make an exception," came the commentary.

"Less talking. More sleeping," Kim murmured breathily as her only reaction, doing her best to fall back asleep.

"I'll throw you off the bed."

No response.

"If you get up and take a shower, I'll bring you coffee."

Now that caught Kim's attention. Waking up was inevitable, she grudgingly admitted to herself, but coffee would make her day infinitely better. "Mocha?" she requested hesitantly.

"With whip," Kim's tormentor confirmed tantalizingly.

Kim pondered her options. "Fine," she groaned quite reluctantly, prying her eyes open and rolling herself off of Shego, who'd she'd apparently been using as her own personal body pillow. "I'm up."

She'd feel embarrassed over her sleep-cuddling later.

Shego grinned at her and leaped to her feet, stretching languidly in place. "There. That wasn't so hard now, was it?" she cooed.

"You have no idea," Kim moaned before following suit and stumbling to her feet. She still ached, but felt much better than she had the night before. Now, it merely felt as if she had a serious case of pins and needles as opposed to a body-wide infestation of mutant flesh-eating bacteria. (Kim chose not to dwell on the sad fact that she actually knew what having mutant flesh-eating bacteria felt like. Missions with DNAmy always had been…interesting.)

Instead, she stumbled towards the nearest door that she saw that she knew didn't lead into the hall. It was the closet. Ignoring Shego's laughter behind her, Kim slammed the door shut again and moved on to the only remaining door. She blearily made her way inside once she'd confirmed that it was indeed a bathroom and it did indeed contain a shower.

Of course, being a bathroom belonging to a woman who always looked nothing less than pristine if she could help it, it also contained a rather large mirror.

And a stranger stared back out at her the moment Kim looked into it.

But… Kim was awake enough to know that the woman in the mirror wasn't a stranger. It was her. She should have expected it, really. Kim knew very well that Shego and Mego hadn't been born green and purple. Still, the new 'her' took Kim completely off guard, and she did a rather spectacular double-take as she passed the mirror, stopping mid-step, turning, and then simply staring with a mixture of sadness and fascination.

Honestly, it wasn't as radical a change as it could have been, Kim noted. It wasn't even a bad look. Just… different.

Sensing the change in atmosphere, Shego followed her into the bathroom. Kim tracked her progress in the mirror with an impassive expression, which didn't change even as the woman gently placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed softly in a gesture that might have surprised Kim under different circumstances. Now though, she knew that this was Shego's way of telling her that she understood what she was going through, even if she didn't have the right words to say right now.

And… it made her feel a little better. She leaned back into Shego's hold with internal gratitude, which Kim knew the woman would sense and appreciate, even if it would not be acknowledged by either of them out loud.

Together, the pair of them silently catalogued Kim's physical changes in the mirror.

Unlike Mego and Shego, Kim's skin tone had remained in its natural state for the most part, aside from a fair bit of bronzing and a complete loss of freckles. Her eyes had shifted color nearly completely though, just like all of the members of Team Go aside from Hego, who had kept his natural blue. Once a bright olive green, Kim's eyes had lightened into an almost golden color that shone dramatically in the light. They were disconcerting, and Kim wasn't entirely sure she liked them, having been rather fond of her previous coloring. Her hair, at least, had retained its beautiful copper red tone except for the areas that had been dyed blue. The blue had been supplanted by streaks of blonde in a shade that reminded Kim of Ron.

"I guess my color's yellow then," was all Kim could think of to say, recalling the burst of color that had been produced when she'd accidentally destroyed Shego's iPod the night before.

Shego smirked at her in the mirror. "Trust you to pick the most obnoxiously cheerful color of the spectrum," she complained lightly.

Kim couldn't help but smile at that. She wasn't going to mope, she decided. Wolf eyes weren't the end of the world, and she never had liked the freckles she'd been cursed with as a natural redhead. "Guess it's just my sunny disposition," she quipped cheekily before turning and giving Shego a playful shove. "Now get out, Michelle. I have a shower to take, and you have a mocha to retrieve. With whip."

"As the Princess commands," Shego said in a very put-upon manner.

But they both knew that she didn't really mind.