You'll Always Find Me By Your Side
A/N: Hey! First of all, thanks a lot to everyone who reviewed my previous story, and gave me some useful writing tips too! It was really very encouraging and I will try to keep them in mind while writing! :D :D
Now, my this story deals with my version of the aftermath of the events of 'The Enemy of My Frenemy. For those who haven't watched the this episode, the episode shows the untimely death of Ben, Gwen and Kevin at the hands of Charmcaster as an offering to Death in return for the life of her father along with every other life on Ledger Domain. However, the trio are revived at the end of the episode, as Charmcaster's objective fails as her father refuses to live a life bought at the cost of so many others.
Also, this story is written in Kevin's POV, so I hope I've given him justice... :)
Lastly, I've given special references to the Cruciatus Curse, the Killing Curse and the symbol of the Deathly Hallows from the Harry Potter series. In case of any doubt for those who have not read the HP series, please feel free to PM me about it.
And the most important thing, once again, thank you MugetsuPipefox for correcting the faults in my story! :D :D
Disclaimer: I don't have a problem saying it that I DO NOT own Ben 10! It is clearly the property of MOA and Cartoon Network! Also, the spells and symbol used from the HP series belongs solely to J.K. Rowling.
Happy reading! :D :D
I found myself once again back at Ledger Domain, battling Charmcaster, alongside Gwen and Ben. We seemed to have been outnumbered by Charmcaster's rock monsters, and we barely could manage to keep the monsters from ripping our heads off. Then, it was with a sudden outburst of mana, that I saw Gwen had managed to crumble all the monsters attacking her. But her attack had been so strong that Charmcaster also seemed to have been thrown back several feet. I and Ben were still battling the monsters, while Gwen had once more been surrounded by a new team of rock monsters. Even though she seemed to have been destroying each rock monster with a powerful blast of mana, I could see that her strength was getting depleted as each blast of mana left her.
She had barely finished destroying the new set of monsters, when Ben, as Fourarms, suddenly freed himself from the rock monsters, and exclaimed a "Gwen, look out!", before pushing her out of the way, and took in the blast that Charmcaster had aimed for her, hoping to catch her unawares.
Ben, now reverted to his original self, lay on the ground with his eyes staring into oblivion, while a terrified scream left Gwen, who looked in shock at what had taken place. I too, stood stock still staring at Ben, who had a very strange expression on his now dead face. It was the most horrendous sight, and yet I could not take my eyes off him.
The battle remained forgotten to me, until I heard a shriek of anger that pulled me out of my daze. On turning my head, I saw that Gwen had begun a duel with Charmcaster. Both of them were throwing furious blasts of mana at each other. The rock monsters had now got control over me, and two of them caught me by my arm forcefully, so that I was a spectator of the ongoing duel.
Gwen could never fight properly when she was angry. She tended to become rash and careless, and often it led to many close-hand situations. Ever since Paradox alerted me of the fact that Gwen had tried to alter the timeline in her desperation to stop me from getting mutated back when I and Ben had hacked the Omnitrix together, I'd kept a close watch on her. The topic had popped out all of a sudden, when Paradox had once come to visit me with free advice after a month of recovery from my third mutation. The fact had shocked me and, ever since then, I'd been keeping Gwen under my eyes, in case she tried to repeat such a feat, even though she knew the consequences.
I feared truly that Gwen might lose control over herself and it could lead to a similar situation that had taken place in the alternate timeline Paradox told me about. These thoughts had just crossed my mind, when my worst fears were pronounced true. Charmcaster had chanted a spell and had the Alpha Rune directed straight towards Gwen. She had been too slow to move out of the way in time and the spell caught her right in the middle. She too fell down, with an exact look matching Ben's, but only more gruesome and frightening. My breath was caught in my chest as the realization of reality dawned over me. I'd lost my best friend and my girlfriend. I was at a complete loss of emotions and was not even aware when the rock monsters had left me, but I was aware of the sinister look that Charmcaster had been giving me.
"It's your turn now, Levin!", was all she spat out coldly before she murmured the same spell as with Gwen, and directed her Alpha Rune at me.
It was the moment's instinct that I threw myself to one side; the spell missing me by inches. And before I knew it, I'd crawled over to Ben's sprawled form, dodging several attacks, and managed to absorb the power of the Ultimatrix. At once I was enveloped by a green light, which, when left me, revealed myself as the mutated amalgamation of all the forms unlocked in the Ultimatrix at present. From there, things began to go faster than I could keep track of. Even though I was just as badly mutated as the last time, I no longer felt out of control. With a sense of purpose, I aimed different blasts from each transformation at Charmcaster and spell after spell were thrown in my direction. I knew I could not go on for much longer, for strangely, I could feel myself lose the energy to fight, as if, in Gwen's technical terms, someone was absorbing my mana, but yet I decided that I would not die without a proper fight. I would die like a hero!
Just then I saw Charmcaster draw a triangle with a line and a sort of eye inside it and aim it towards me. It was similar to the spell Gwen had used on Darkstar to deprive him of his excess stolen mana. The spell caught me straight on my chest before I collapsed on the ground in a bout of pain that usually came whenever my mutation was being healed and the excess power got extracted. The moment the pain lifted, I could only wonder how Charmcaster had managed to heal me so quickly, when Gwen, being even more powerful than her, could never find a solution for my problem.
But my thoughts were cut short when I felt a foreign spell hit me and then I felt the most excruciating pain hit my body. It was pain beyond pain I knew, as if someone had pierced hot and cold knives simultaneously within every inch of my body. The moment I felt the pain dissipate, another jolt of pain hit. It was much more intense than the previous one, and I could now feel myself shouting over my lungs for release. I could hear laughter somewhere nearby, but I could no longer focus on anything. Every time the spell hit me, I could only feel the pain increasing, until I felt death would be better...
"Stop stop stop!" I gasped. I just wanted to die, for the pain was unbearable now. "Kill me! Free me of this godforsaken body!" I burst out angrily, but my voice could barely be heard above a whisper.
"Sure! But I'm not done with you... yet." I barely managed to make eye contact with her for a moment, before I felt the most violent pain hit my body with such an intensity that I could only shout... shout until my lungs were tired... shout until I could no longer feel the pain... shout until Death came forward and took me for his own...
I woke up with a shout so loud that I could have woken up my entire neighborhood! What a nightmare! I felt for my body, only to realize that I was safely tucked up in my bed and away from that wretched place. Gwen and Ben were alright too... they were alive. Silly of me, to have death haunt me in my dreams. Yet, the dream felt so real... as if... death had indeed been desperately waiting for me.. death, who always accompanied me to every battle, only to be thwarted by my luck...
Death! Again it revolved back to the same thing; death! I felt simply outraged at that moment! But what for, I'd no idea. It was not that this was my first time experience with death. I'd accepted insanity several times to save the Earth and the universe from harm, even though in turn, I became "the bad guy" and I had to sign my own death warrant. My death back then could have released many people who cared for me from the burden of trying to protect me but here it only brought back a person from oblivion, and that too was for purely selfish reasons.
Somewhere, deep down, I felt extremely sorry for Charmcaster, and I did agree with Gwen to a certain extent that for a person to had lived her entire life chasing a goal that had ultimately failed, it would not be easy to fill the emptiness back so quickly. But I failed to see reason in her actions, for even though she had only wanted her father back, she thought nothing about other people's lives and willingly sacrificed them for the purpose. No indeed, at that moment, my emotions were all a mess. Firstly, the death I revived from today had perfectly scared me. I'd never been afraid of death, because, in the field that I'm, death is just but another companion... A mission gone wrong and Death could claim me... But the way death had been there all of a sudden... when I actually felt that it was only Charmcaster we were battling, even though we knew what she had been up to... it was... unexpected... and my nightmare had only frightened me more... the way Gwen and Ben lay... their vacant eyes... their expression devoid of any emotion...
I'd barely finished figuring out my thoughts about the whole thing when my cell phone began to vibrate near my bed stand. I quickly took the phone and wasn't in the least surprised when I saw that the caller ID was Gwen.
"Hey Gwen, what's up..." I began casually, camouflaging all the feelings that were running along me at the moment.
"Uh, nothing... I just thought I'd make sure that you were... you know... okay." I could hear the hesitancy and strain in her voice. After all it must have been a real nightmare that she lived through. She saw me and Ben die... of course it was bad enough to shake her up.
"I'm fine Gwen... how are you getting on?"
"I'm fine... I just need some time." Even though Gwen tried to reassure me, I could see that she did not mean it in anyway.
"Are you sure?"
"Really Kev, I'm absolutely fine... I mean, what's gonna be wrong after all..."
"You're lying." I stated it simply.
"No, I'm not! I just phoned to check on you!" Gwen's voice was now loud enough to hear her keeping the phone a few inches away from the ear. A common habit, when she tried to defend herself in a losing verbal battle.
"You're lying." This time I said it with a firmness that had been missing in the previous one, that surprised myself.
Silence... that was all there was on the other side of the line. But yet I kept the phone on, for I knew what was coming. And sure enough, I could hear little sobs on the phone, which only grew in intensity by time. But yet I remained silent, for I knew that Gwen needed to relieve herself of these feelings. I waited patiently on the phone until Gwen's voice echoed through once more, but this time, it held too many emotions and she hiccupped as she spoke.
"It... it was ho...rrible... you... Ben... laying like that... as if... you stared into oblivion... the way Ben fell... I... I... couldn't save him... and... then you... you took that... attack... for me... you saved me... and the look you had... on your face... horrible... just... horrible..."
"Shhhhh... Gwen, it's alright... see... I'm fine, Ben's fine... you're fine... And look at Ben... dying didn't even bother him... We were barely out, and he wanted a smoothie..." I tried to calm her down in every way and it seemed that she just indeed want reassuring. For once, it seemed that she was even more dependent upon me, as I was upon her. She now spoke with fewer hiccups, and tried to attempt a feeble joke.
"Ben's always like that... losing a Sumo Slammer collectable would be a greater shock to him than dying..."
"Did you speak to him?"
"No... I just thought that he should have his share of rest too... after all, even though he pretends to be all strong, he's the most sensitive member of the team when it comes to emotions... though he's a master at hiding them... " Now Gwen's tone had become suggestive. Strangely enough, at that moment, a particular part of my nightmare came in front of my eyes... the part where Ben lay on the floor, with the most empty and vacant expression... A chill passed through my spine at the thought of it...
"Alright, I'll give him a call and check up on him," I tried to say it quite normally, to avoid any sign of distress in my voice.
"Thanks Kev... goodnight..."
"Goodnight Gwen... if you need anything..."
"I'll give you a call right away... and... thanks for listening to me... I feel loads better now."
"You do know I love you right? Well, this is what lovers do..." I tried to add my ever famous 'roguish charm' in the sentence.
"Well, you can do all the flirting later... but first, go and give Ben a call!" Gwen started off on romantic note but ended her sentence in a shout.
"Fine... I just hope the bogey man isn't visiting him today!" I added with a friendly malice.
"Kevin!"
"Fine! Just kidding."
"Boys!"
I'd barely finished my conversation with Gwen when my phone began ringing once again. To my surprise, it was Ben this time.
"Hey Kev, what's up?" Ben spoke in a complete conversational way.
"Uh... the ceiling?" I tried a comic stunt in return.
"Funny you should mention that! Just woke up from a dream with Charmcaster throwing ceiling walls at me!" Ben innocently replied.
"You really do have the knack of inviting the bogey man, don't you?"
"Kevin!" Ben whined reproachfully.
"You sound exactly like Gwen from a few moments back!"
"No, I don't! Wait... did she call you up just now?"
"Ye...es" I tried to make it sound as casual as I could.
"How is she? I mean, I could see that she was shaken up pretty bad by the whole 'soul sucking' thing after all."
"She was pretty shaken up... but I managed to calm her for the time. She did seem to have the chills about it."
"Honestly, that place is creepy enough to give anyone the chills! I will never ever return to that wretched place again as long as I can avoid it!"
"Okay... now... honestly tell me why you called me," I came straight to the point. For how much I knew Ben, he wouldn't just call me up casually to talk about such kind of things in the night.
"Is it bad if I called you in the middle of the night?"
"Depends upon why..."
"Alright, fine! I wanted to talk about what happened today..." He admitted with resignation.
"Well, what about it?"
"Would it be alright if I spoke to you about what I felt about today's event? I've been feeling really weird, and really think I have to talk about it to someone, or I might just explode! I didn't want to bother Gwen with it, and Julie is out on a tournament abroad... So, I thought maybe if you could... you know... bear me on the line for a few minutes... " Funny, how Ben happened to want the same type of reassurance as Gwen.
"Uhhhh... alright... I suppose you'll feel better if you talk about it... But fast, alright?" To be honest, I was curious to know exactly what Ben felt about the whole thing, and it was the only reason why I gave in to Ben's request.
I could sense a speech ready to leave Ben's lips that he so ached for someone to listen to, who would anyway always be me. I waited for Ben to begin, which he did after a moment or two...
"Uhhh well, first of all, it was extremely surprising how death came by for us today. It was only the moment before, when I was so sure that I'd thwarted Charmcaster's evil plans, and that with her "soul sucking machine" gone, we could easily defeat her and at long last, we could get out of that creepy place and once again return back to our safe atmosphere. But then all of a suddenly I don't know, I just... felt my body drain. Not draining of energy, but as if my life was draining away from me. I was aware that I was falling and had hit the ground, but after that I wasn't quite... connected with my surrounding anymore. I thought I heard myself utter a weak groan of protest, before I felt my life leave my body completely."
"Yeah... It caught me by surprise as well... only, I just took the spell for Gwen back then."
"Back then? What do you mean back then? Did you have a nightmare or something?" Ben had caught on my line of thoughts which made me quite uneasy.
"Uhhh, well, why don't you continue your point of view?" I tried to distract him before he educated himself more on my nightmare.
"Yeah... well, what was I saying? Oh yes, the life leaving my body completely. But well, the strangest part was that my eyes opened after what felt like only a moment had passed. I'd expected, for a moment, that I'd be surrounded by white and someone would come and greet me and tell me what my ultimate place was in the life after death. But what I hadn't expected was the fact that I was in the exact same position in which I'd fallen. But it didn't feel like it. I tried to think back if I could remember anything, but the more I tried, the more it seemed to get away from me."
"It was quite disturbing actually." I helped by adding in a little of my own input... and somehow I could feel, that by mutually discussing our feelings at that point, a kind of relief was spreading over me.
"Dude, that's why I was feeling so weird... it didn't seem real... it was just like all those other nightmares I have... but then, I realized, that our situation had been worse than a nightmare. We had been greedily accepted by Death, only to be returned back. But why? Charmcaster was so sure that she would succeed, that her father could be brought back from the world of the dead. Then what could have gone wrong? Not that I wasn't happy to be alive, but still, there was a little curiosity nagging at me. I got up from the ground, only to see Gwen at Charmcaster's side, asking her 'What are you going to do?'"
"Honestly, I couldn't even understand how we reached Ledger Domain in the first place, I felt so bewildered..." I added a little more once again.
"I felt dumb... the only thing I could grasp was the fact that we were revived after being killed by Charmcaster".
"And what did you think about Charmcaster at that moment? I mean, you seemed pretty much biased from your point of view." This was a question to which I knew I would get an honest answer now, even though back then Ben had made quite a fuss about it.
"Well, even though I will never admit it to Gwen, but I've never felt so bad about anyone than I had for Charmcaster at that moment. There she was kneeling on the ground, her face vacant of any expression except grief. She resembled a person who had lost her will for living and yet I couldn't help hating her more than ever. What did she expect, that her father would be glad that his life had been bought at the cost of so many others?! After what Gwen had told me about Charmcaster's past after her conversation with Hex, I believed that maybe Charmcaster never had anyone to put her on the right path and, needless to say, Hex wasn't exactly the greatest uncle that she could have had. I always knew that Charmcaster had the habit of involving herself in things that were way above her level, but somehow, I'd never imagined that she would ever have the guts to do this!"
"Alright alright, I get it! You're frustrated about the fact that a person like Charmcaster could achieve a feat like that!" I cut Ben straight through his speech; I could sense him beginning his usual rambling.
"Well yeah! I mean... it's not that... but well... you've got the point!" Typical of Ben, to make an excuse after having admitted the truth!
"So, is that it then? Can I hit my pillow now?" I tried to sound rude, to retain my undisturbed attitude, but somehow, I think I terribly failed.
"Not quite Kevin... actually..." Ben hesitated.
"Come on, out with it Tennyson!"
"I'm sorry, Kevin." Ben ended in a low voice that could barely be above a whisper.
"Sorry?!Sorry about what?" It was so sudden and unexpected that it felt as though I might not have heard him properly. But as my shock abated, I could sense that something was bothering Ben.
"Sorry about the fact that I could not protect you or Gwen. I mean, I could have tactfully handled that machine in a different way, maybe then I wouldn't have died and from what you told me on the Rust Bucket III, Gwen wouldn't have lost concentration and then... you needn't have died... saving her..."
"Has Death given you a shock in your brain or something?"
Silence once again on the other side of the line. But this time, this silence was to urge me to make a speech once again.
"Tennyson, there was nothing you could do about it. We didn't know the power of the machine and your death came in as such a surprise, it was natural that both I and Gwen would lose our concentration. Or, to say it simply, we underestimated Charmcaster's talent way too much."
"But..." Ben tried to interject, but I counter interjected it again.
"No buts, Ben! It's the fact... and it's not only because you died that things got screwed up. To play safe, I'd say that luck had gone on a vacation. I mean, after all, you can't always be lucky, can you?"
"I suppose it's true... I just felt, that you didn't deserve to die because of my wrong judgement." Suddenly, something struck me odd in Ben's tone. And then it hit me.
"Dude, are you still sore about the whole killing me thing back Aggregor's time?" I knew I'd hit the nail on the head, for I heard Ben give a sharp intake of breath. But this time, I didn't wait for Ben to continue. "Look Ben, I've told you this before and this is the last time I'm telling you. What happened back then was not your fault! You can't take the blame for my actions all the time... and I've even made this point clear, that had I been in your place I would have been quicker in doing what's right than you were. So just bury the hatchet and come live in the present, will you?"
"Right..." Ben stated awkwardly "Well then, I... guess I'll get some sleep now... it's nearly 4 in the morning."
"Alright... I think I'll try catching some sleep myself."
"Kevin?"
"Now what is it, Tennyson?" I spoke irritably.
"Thanks for listening to what I had to say... it made me feel much better." Funny, how both the cousins, like twins, spoke exactly the same way.
"Anytime dude... and from now on, no more mention about that incident, or I swear, I'll..."
"No problem, no problem," Ben cut me off quickly, before I could make a proper threat, and cut the phone off.
As I now lay in bed, thinking about today's incidents, only one thing struck me the most... that, even though Ben was the strongest member of the team in spirit, and Gwen was the strongest member of the team in powers, but he, Kevin, was the strongest member of the team in emotions. The way that Gwen and Ben both took reassurances from me today made me feel special. It made me realize, though not for the first time, how very dependent the two of them were upon me. I felt immensely peaceful, that finally, after having had lived with distrust and hatred for everyone for so many years, I'd finally found two people to whom I could trust my life with... two people who cared the world about me other than my mother... two people who had complete faith in me despite circumstances... And suddenly, I remembered a quote I'd come across today on the way to my house when I'd seen two high school girls bidding farewell.
"Don't walk behind me, I may not lead,
Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow,
Walk by my side, and be my friend always."
And as I drifted off to sleep with this quote running in my mind, my thoughts were once again directed towards death. I could only think how weird death was... death could do so many things... death could snatch loved ones... but I never knew death could even strengthen the bond of friendship...
There! I hope I've done justice to all the characters in the story! But how will I know it, unless you guys review! :D :D Please R&R and all all rveiews will be appreciated warmly! :D