Grape Smoothies
By Cybra
Disclaimer: Ben 10 was created by Man of Action and belongs to Cartoon Network.
'The recipe is wrong.'
Ben paused in drinking his smoothie, staring at the cup. The cup's design was also wrong, much more cartoonish than the Mr. Smoothy mascot he was most familiar with, but every flavor up until now had been the same. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend that nothing had changed, that the universe was as it always had been.
But the first sip of that grape smoothie revealed that it wasn't just external appearances that might have been altered.
"Is something wrong, Ben?" Rook asked.
He looked up at his partner. ('He's not really Rook. Not the one I knew. He's just a copy but he's close. I think. Did I get him wrong, too?') "Nothing. Just thinking about something."
"Are you sure?"
Ben stared at Rook before holding out his smoothie to the Revonnahgander. "I think they changed the recipe. What do you think?"
Rook looked confused but obliged, taking a sip. After a moment of thought, the alien shrugged. "It tastes the same to me."
His stomach churned unpleasantly, but Ben forced a smile on his face to cover up his distress. "I'm probably overthinking it. Or maybe breakfast threw off my taste buds. Mom tried to cook egg-free omelets today."
"How does one create an omelet without eggs?"
"No idea, but Mom definitely didn't succeed."
That was a bold-faced lie, but Rook didn't seem to notice it or how his eye twitched.
Ben went back to drinking the smoothie that didn't taste right, hoping it really was just his imagination.
The next time Gwen came home for a visit, she left Kevin behind with her parents when she went to spend time with her cousin. This was largely because she had been concerned that tricking Ben into his engagement to a girl he didn't even know or particularly care for had likely soured her cousin's attitude towards her boyfriend for a while. Under ordinary circumstances, it would've been a relief not to see Kevin while he was still rather miffed at being forced into a betrothal, but it gave Ben one less person to test out his theory on.
At least Gwen was here, and her favorite smoothie flavor was grape. If anyone would be able to tell the difference, it would be her.
He kept the conversation light, asking her what college was like and immediately deciding that he wasn't so sure it was for him. He talked to her about his adventures with Rook along with giving her the full briefing on the Anihilaarg. (She didn't believe that he recreated the universe either. He was starting to get used to that reaction.)
Over the course of the conversation, he started to notice that she'd changed. It was subtle, almost unnoticeable, but she was a little distant. He wanted to believe that college was responsible, not that he'd somehow messed up when he'd copied the original Gwen. At the time he'd recreated the universe, he'd still been upset with her and Kevin for just packing up and leaving without telling him that Kevin wasn't coming back. Even before he'd let his fame go to his head, there had been a slight rift forming between him and his cousin as she'd fallen more and more for the ex-con. They'd nearly patched it up before she'd gone off to college, but it was clearly back. Or had it been back during that disastrous previous visit given how she'd just driven off with a light scolding to her boyfriend about tricking Ben into marriage? Had Ben recreated that rift when he copied the original universe or had it re-opened on its own?
About halfway through her smoothie, he asked as casually as he could, "Y'know, I think Mr. Smoothy changed the grape recipe. What do you think?"
She took a moment to swallow, and he tried not to hold his breath.
'Tell me it's different,' Ben thought desperately. 'Tell me you noticed, too.'
"Nope. Same as it's always been," she said, unaware of how his heart turned to water at her words. "I think you're just imagining it."
He wrapped his lips around the straw of his own grape smoothie, taking a sip of liquid Wrongness that no one else noticed but him.
Grape had never been his favorite flavor. The change in recipe made him like it even less. It was so blatantly artificial that he had to suppress his gag reflex when he drank it.
Had anyone known, they would've found it strange that he kept ordering it. Not that he drank the abominable flavor all the time, but often enough.
What they didn't know was that he drank it so he didn't forget.
He would start to get comfortable in this new universe, start to settle in as if he had always been a part of it. Then he would order a grape smoothie, taste how Wrong it was, and remember that he and his Omnitrix were the last survivors of his birth universe. The one he stood in now was nothing more than a child's desperation to see those who had died alive again.
The grape flavor reminded him that he might have gotten some of the people he cared about wrong.
His father was around less often. He'd gotten a promotion, but Ben wondered if he had changed something in the man to make him more focused on his job and less so on his family.
His mother was getting more and more wrapped up in her hippie-esque hobbies and jumping from health food fad to health food fad. Ben wondered if he'd somehow overblown those parts of her personality when he recreated her or if this was what she would've done anyway.
Gwen and Kevin's distance. Rook's more direct attempts at friendship. Max starting to treat him less like his grandson and more like a weapon. The Plumbers starting to fear him. Hundreds of thousands of little details that made him wonder if, in his desperation to see them all again, he'd subconsciously changed them.
If Professor Paradox had shown up during those first few weeks, Ben would've begged him to show him if those precious to him would have changed in similar ways over time. Yet when the opportunity finally presented itself, he didn't ask for he'd accepted the truth:
There was no way to compare futures when the originals had no futures to begin with.
Instead he'd had another grape smoothie to complement the bitter taste of reality.
"How many of those have you had tonight?"
Ben glanced over at Azmuth who had taken to appearing quite regularly when Ben flew to Los Solidad for some privacy and to gaze uninterrupted at the clear night sky. Usually neither said anything as they looked at the stars, the only sounds being Ben sucking on a straw and swallowing the vile flavor that made him sick to his stomach.
Ever since the trial and the public confirmation that Ben had recreated the whole universe, the young man had been trying to avoid others as much as possible. Some were friends and family who were trying to express their concern for him, worried about how being the lone survivor of the death of an entire universe was affecting his psyche. The overwhelming majority were total strangers who regarded him with some awe but plenty of fear: They had always known on some level that he had godlike power but until the trial had never fully allowed themselves to think too deeply on it. His classes at Bellwood High were emptying out more quickly as parents (already terrified of him) worked overtime to keep their children away from him…not that his fellow teens were actively seeking him out anymore. (He was already looking at getting his GED and dropping out. It would be easier on everyone if he just left the school. It wasn't like he had any real reason to stay. He wasn't even allowed to play on the soccer team anymore.)
Azmuth, however, never said anything when he appeared. He simply stood there, gazing up at Earth's view of the Milky Way, in utter silence. Ben suspected that he had some way of ensuring that the Omnitrix's signal was being blocked so no one could track him down given that no one bothered him during these visits. It was a relief to not have to put on a smile that he didn't want to wear. Some nights Ben even fell asleep out here perched on one of the abandoned buildings' roofs, waking up in the morning stiff but warm beneath the foil-like blanket Azmuth had likely teleported in.
The Galvan asking a question was a diversion from what had become the new normal, but Ben couldn't find any reason to be upset with the change.
"Three. Counting this one," Ben answered, giving the smoothie cup in his hand a little shake for emphasis before moving to take another sip.
"Grape flavor, correct?"
Ben paused, the straw halfway to his mouth.
"It's the flavor that was used as evidence against you at the trial if I remember correctly."
The young human put the smoothie down, fingers still wrapped loosely around it to keep it from rolling down the rooftop.
Azmuth's eyes were locked onto him, but the Galvan said nothing more. Instead, those alien eyes reflected the same haunted look that Ben caught glimpses of in his own reflection: constantly worrying over the roads not taken, if he'd somehow changed things in ways he could never fix. For the first time in weeks, Ben didn't wonder if he had gotten someone wrong because clearly this Azmuth remembered Ascalon, something Ben would've been more than happy to erase from history to ease one friend's pain no matter what the consequences. Azmuth was the same as he'd always been for better or for worse, and he knew the sort of questions and concerns constantly running through Ben's head nowadays.
In a way, it was comforting that someone understood what he was going through.
The Galvan hopped up so that he could take a sip of the smoothie before standing close enough to Ben's hand that his robes brushed against it in the breeze. "It tastes awful."
"Yeah. It really does."