My unending love to you all. You have NO IDEA how bearable you make my school year. An angsty trip into Kevin's psyche is in order today, please note that not much plotwise will happen for most, if not all of the chapter. This is my take on his story after Ben 10, I can't say I have any idea about what really happened. But whatever. I hope I get it right.
CHAPTER DEDICATED TO: Linkin Park. When I needed to get inside Kevin, you guys were suddenly there. Like the twisted, most awesome rescuers you are.
4: Full Circle
Kev tells all, after some coaxing from Gwen, and answers everyone's questions about everything
"I've become so numb I can't feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I can't feel the way I did before
Don't turn your back on me
I won't be ignored
I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all
For what I've done
I start again
And whatever pain may come
Today this ends
I'm forgiving what I've done"
-Numb, Faint, In The End, and What I've Done, By Linkin Park (respectively)
—
"Wake up, Gwendolyn," a teasing voice requested, nudging the sleeping girl gently. "Gwe-en…" it singsonged, tapping her shoulder, pulling at her hair, tickling her neck. She stirred.
"Mmmmnthppph…" Gwen replied as if this explained everything, turning onto her side and curling into a ball.
"Please don't make me get a hose," her waker sighed, prodding her firmly between the shoulder blades.
"Ben, go 'way!" the girl snapped sleepily, throwing an arm back blindly in an attempt to slap the one disturbing her.
"If I was Ben, would you wake up for me?"
"If you were Ben, I'd eat you alive," she growled, turning back to face what she thought would be the face of her hours-younger cousin. Imagine her surprise when she found the features of Kevin Levin grinning at her, eyebrows raised in polite interest.
"Would you really; because he's asleep right now, and he probably wouldn't put up much of a fight."
Gwen's face fell, from anger to disbelief to defeat. "You don't joke about anything, do you?" she asked the boy, recalling his parting comment from last night.
"Not really. Your parents love me, by the way."
She groaned, letting her face fall back into the pillow. "You talked to them?"
"Yes! I can take care of myself! How did you think they were gonna take a strange guy sleeping in their living room?"
"I don't know," Gwen admitted. "But they like you?"
"Yeah," Kevin replied, rolling his eyes as through it was the most obvious thing on the planet. "Go take a shower, babe, we're leaving at seven-thirty whether you're ready or not."
"What time is it?" the redhead asked, sitting up and stretching. Kevin forced himself not to watch in fascination.
"Six-thirty," he replied.
"Anything special I need to watch out for?" Gwen crossed her room slowly and opened the door to the closet, stepping in. "Getting tossed in a river, maybe, or fed to lions?"
"Tossed in a river, maybe, lions, I doubt it, but you never know."
"Stainless steel, then," the girl replied with a smile. If he felt like being cheeky, he'd get cheek in return. "Get out."
"Why?"
"Because I need to shower."
"There's a shower in here?" Kevin asked, looking around in confusion for something he may have missed.
A slender hand poked out from around the closet door, pointing to a closed door Kevin could only assume was a private bathroom.
"Alright. I'll be here when you get out, and then we need to leave."
"Kay," Gwen replied, her tone unconcerned. If her father hadn't shot him yet, he wasn't going to any time soon. She hoped.
—
"You're still not going to tell me where we're going, are you?" Gwen asked, sliding into the passenger seat of Kevin's familiar car.
"Actually," he started, pausing to start the car. "I wanted to talk to you about it before we go." Turning to her, the dark haired boy examined his girlfriend a moment. "There's some stuff I should have told you a long time ago," he murmured, swallowing his pride for her sake. "Stuff I know you wonder about. I see it when you look at me," he added, still more quietly, when it looked like Gwen was about to contradict him. "I don't blame you for wanting to know."
"Kevin, you don't have to—" Gwen started, reaching out to put her hand in his in a gesture that had rapidly become familiar, even expected. She, however, stopped speaking when Kevin shook his head forcefully.
"Yeah I do," he insisted, recalling Ben's words when it came to Julie. She's obligated to know! If she's dating me, she's gonna find out sooner or later, and it's better that it comes from me. "You're…it's something you have the right to know. There's a thousand different ways you could find out, believe it or not. I'd rather you heard it from me." Reminding himself to thank Ben later, he more or less borrowed everything the brunette had said.
"…okay." While it was obvious that Gwen was unsure of his readiness to tell her the story, she would take his word for it.
"I was thinking about someplace we can go before the movie, somewhere quiet where I can tell you and just get it over with." Kevin's tone was rushed. This was such a raw subject, mostly because he'd just never dealt with it this way. "It's not gonna be anywhere fancy, in any case. But the best I came up with is the clearing." Earthy eyes clouded with worry, Kevin glanced over at Gwen for confirmation.
"Well…" she started. "I wasn't expecting you to want to tell me so soon. Anywhere is fine." Indeed, Gwen was flustered and a bit surprised that he was going to tell her now. Sensitive as he was about his old life, she would have expected him to need at least another month, if not more.
Kevin just nodded, visibly relaxing. He drove with ease, eyes on the road but occasionally straying to Gwen. In his mind, he tried to find a way to desensitize himself from the story he was about to tell—it would be so much easier on both of them if he could just speak the words, give her the memories, and be done with it. And he refused to cry. He was Kevin Levin. He didn't cry.
In retrospect, the drive was much too short. Both parties regretted how quickly the simple silence was shattered by slamming car doors and soft instructions. It was just past sunrise, but the dying summer was evident in the climate—it was warm and comfortable already.
Gwen walked beside Kevin now, hand in hand, somewhat confident that she knew where they were going. The familiar, hilled clearing appeared in good time, and the two made themselves comfortable in the grass.
"Tell me what you want to know." Kevin's eyes snagged Gwen's, dragged them to his and held them, their typical intensity holding her spellbound. In light of recent events, Gwen wasn't at all surprised to see darkness prowling in the familiar orbs, a certain note of haunting in them that usually wasn't there.
Her first instinct was to ask the obvious questions: how are you human? Why are you out of the void—not that she minded much—? What's with the new powers? But, being the subtle creature she was, another, stealthy, second wind blew a better question around her ears. It seemed like an odd question to ask, but her own character pushed her to ask it, propelled by a simple but raging need: to understand.
To Gwen, everyone was a puzzle. A series of pieces, clues, complex hints that, when put together, led to a surprising and satisfying end—a completed picture. In her experience, the end was never what she expected. It was usually something better. And it had taken her very little time to realize that Kevin Levin would be the most difficult of them all to understand and solve. The most rewarding.
So her subconscious begged her to ask a subtle, simple question.
"What happened?"
Kevin, thrown off by the minimalism of the question, blinked. "What happened when?"
And now Gwen struggled to put it into words. "When we first met you," she started slowly, fixing him with a stare that showed how hard she was puzzling over him. "You were alive. You were so full of energy; you had more potential than running around on the streets would let you use. And you were trying to get out. You reached out to Ben when you met him. You wanted someone to throw you a rope and pull you out."
Kevin felt his face grow warm at the eerily accurate description of his eleven-year- old self. He vividly remembered thinking that way, acting that way. His opinion of Gwen's evaluating ability rose. She had always been good at reading people, but this was nothing short of amazing.
"Then, when we met you the second time, you were different. You were angry and frustrated and humiliated." Gwen looked off, away from him for the first time since she began to speak. Kevin could practically see the hulking form he'd been saddled with in her line of vision. Her brows furrowed like, even now, she was trying to make sense of the drastic change in the boy, not physically, but mentally. "And I could understand that, you know? But what I didn't get was, when it seemed like you should have been trying to get help the most, you weren't. You were cold and distant, almost afraid to make that connection you wanted to make so badly when you were still human. And I always wondered why.
"So my question is, what happened between the time you got the Omnitrix's powers and the next time we fought you that made you stop wanting to get out?"
That wasn't the sort of question he'd been expecting. Gwen had just made this tremendously more personal than he'd been prepared for. She wasn't asking him about his escape, or about his powers, or anything that had to do with that aspect of his past. She was going back further, to the beginning.
Thinking fast, Kevin tried to come up with the words to answer her. But none came. How could he explain what happened to his mind and soul those first few months? How could he explain that, as such a young child, he had truly believed that if he didn't look human, it meant he wasn't?
"I was a kid back then. I thought like a kid. I did what a kid would do." At Gwen's questioning look, he continued. "Did your older brother ever dress up for Halloween?"
"Yes…" she replied, trailing off, entirely uncertain of where this was going.
"Okay, did he ever dress as something that scared you? Like, when you were little?" A nod prompted him on. "How hard was it to convince you that he was still Ken? He scared you because he looked like a monster, and because you were so little, you thought he was.
"It was kind of like that. All of a sudden, I was a freak. People ran from me and called me a monster. And, since I was only a kid, it didn't take much to convince me that what they
saw was real." Kevin breathed in deeply, a single memory sticking out sharply, like a shard from the broken window of what had once been.
"At first, I was just sad. And lonely. For a while, I made some noise, hoping you and your cousin would come again, just because you'd known me before I became a monster. Then, I just did it out of habit. I kinda gave up on you ever coming back, and I decided to do something I'd been thinking about doing since I first got turned.
"I still remember my parents' address, so it wasn't hard to find them then. I wasn't really expecting them to be there…but they were. My mom was in the kitchen, making dinner. I could see her through the picture window in the living room, the one that faced the backyard. I never felt more like an eleven-year-old kid in my life. It was like, seeing her, my mom, made me still human. I had a family, and even if they gave me up, these people gave birth to me and they were still here."
The memory came back full strength now—Kevin's eyes took on a far-off quality as he recalled that evening.
It was dark, and raining. Not a hard rain. It was warm, too, and felt welcome on Kevin's tough skin. There wasn't even wind, and no thunder or lightning yet. Just a gentle summer rain. As he watched his mother's familiar form flit back and forth between pans and plates and countertops, a rare wave of emotion hit him.
Maybe it was because he was weary from traveling so far to get back here—he'd been in Iowa when he decided for sure he was coming back, and it had been a long flight. His wings were sore. Or maybe it was a different kind of weariness, the kind of weary that came from hearing screams and seeing terror when he displayed himself publicly. The weary that came from being a bane of society and looking the part.
Whatever it was, it forced a whimper out of him, his teeth clenched fiercely on his lower lip, as though he were little more than a boy coming home from school with a scraped elbow. It also forced a single tear, and as he shifted his upper left arm to wipe it away, the hard crystal of his fingers knocked on the glass.
Dread filled him—the accidental noise had cause his mother to turn and see him in the window. Kevin froze, an emotion in his pupliless eyes that should have radiated need and sadness. He hoped that this woman, his mother, of all people, the woman who had given him life, would see him in his monstrous disguise.
She didn't. She let out a scream he could hear through the plate glass and said things he couldn't quite catch, but he knew the tune well enough to know that this place held no sanctuary. He bolted, pushing off the window with one hand so hard that he heard distinct cracking noises as he propelled himself into the growing night, the warm spring rain that had felt so nice moments ago coming down harder and harder with each retreating stride.
"It was like, before that, I'd always had a little hope that maybe the people were wrong. But when my own mother was afraid of me, that just blew it all to hell. Kind of a weird way to think about it, but I never said I made sense. After that, I was done with being human. I didn't want to be one of the cowards that looked at me like that and couldn't take what I was. Because my mom wasn't the first one. I tracked down plenty of people who knew me before, and they were all afraid.
"So I stopped trying. I was so disgusted with humanity that I started to believe I was a monster, just to escape it. It let me down, and I figured there was no way I could really be human anymore if I hated it all so much. That's why it seemed like I wasn't trying anymore. I wasn't. I figured out pretty fast that, in this new form, I didn't need anyone to get me anything. I could do it all myself."
He seemed humiliated to be admitting this, like it was something unsightly, unbelievable. And indeed, he was humiliated. But it was the truth, and although Gwen seemed somewhat disturbed at the idea, Kevin could tell she knew where he was coming from. That was what drew him to her in the very beginning—no matter how grotesque and wretched he sometimes got—and he couldn't help it—she would always at least try to understand. Kevin had to admit that he really didn't know why she would. Maybe it was a game she hated to loose. Either way, it was his gain.
Attempting to break the dark turn the conversation had taken, Kevin smiled, his subconscious lighting on the first remotely bright memory going chronologically from the one of his mother. New York.
"Remember New York two years ago?" he asked, his smile becoming a smirk at Gwen's expression, some odd cross between embarrassment and shock.
"So it was you," she muttered through a grin, a delicate blush turning her cheeks rosy. She pushed away from him with her palm, suddenly sheepish, rolling onto her other side from the where she had been laying against his chest on her side.
"Yeah," he chuckled, grabbing her shoulder as she rolled away and pulling her back. "It was. At the time, I was lonely. Becoming human again made me realize how much I wanted to be. Seeing you that day made me decide I was gonna try to be something next time we met. I didn't expect it to be so soon."
"I bet if you met Ben you woulda punched a hole in the wall," Gwen grinned, only half teasing.
"Probably," he allowed, letting his outstretched arm come to rest casually around her waist. "Anything else?"
"Are you sure? That was a lot to talk about already…" Gwen trailed off, her uncertainty coupled in her eyes.
"Yeah." And surprisingly, he was. While it did bring back some dark feelings to evoke these recollections, he found that retelling them to Gwen was easiest. Just one smile from her usually had the uncanny ability to lift him from a mood, and the joking moment had put all the angst behind him. It was a strange feeling this recounting gave him, not just one of closure, but one of completeness. Like, telling Gwen, one of the few who had been there at the beginning, what she had missed, was like comming full circle. Like another rotation was about to begin, this time changing everything for the better.
"Okay. How'd you get out of the Null Void?"
"Oh, that one's easy. A two-for-one, actually, 'cause it answers your next one, too. How did you get your human form back?
"I started to realize, the stronger I got, and the better I got at focusing, just clearing everything from my mind, the easier it got to regain my human form and hold it. See, I figured out that the only time I reverted to the amalgam was when I got out of control. If I could get to point blank and get a handle on my emotions, it was easy to go back and forth, and then to hold it. After some practicing, I could even get angry and not go back. I could stay human, and switch at will.
"Then, it was easy to get out of the Void. I went in as an amalgam, so as long as no one saw my human form until I needed them to, no one knew who I was when I was human. I started to get to know this one Plumber guard. My story was that I was there by accident, and it was backed up when they ran my DNA through a database. My DNA signature is different when I'm human. It didn't recognize it, so everyone figured I was just some unlucky soul who got thrown in randomly. I picked up stuff from them—the stuff I know
about the Plumber's badges and alien tech—I learned most of it from them. And about half-aliens. That was when I realized what I was. A half-alien. Not a freak, and not a monster. I just had a little alien blood. Finally, when they arranged a way for me to get out, they just let me go. Set up a reverse wormhole right there and sent me right back to Earth. They even let me pick a return address so I'd know where I was when I got there. Piece of cake."
Disbelief hit Gwen like a ton of bricks. "That's it? No massive war, no full-scale raid, no killing, no violence? You just walked right out?"
Kevin grinned, unable to keep the pride of his slyness out of his voice. "Yup. Soon as you got 'em fooled, you stop needing violence to get it done."
"Wow. Good job. Using your head for once," Gwen joked, clapping him on the shoulder.
His expression, however, went from proud to serious. "Yeah, well, you get tired of smashing heads together every once in a while. I was way overdue for the change of pace, believe me."
"Didn't they notice they were one inmate short?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow. It seemed odd that they would just let it go.
"I'm sure they probably did," Kevin replied in an offhand way. "By the time they figured it out, though, I was way too lost in the crowd for them to find me again. Next question."
"Your new powers."
"Hmm. That one's a little harder. See, I'm still not sure myself, because when I was a mutant, I couldn't use my powers. When I finally regained human form, I just had these new ones. I have a couple of ideas, but neither of them are concrete."
"But your new powers are so similar to your old ones. And you got them from your alien bloodline, so they can't just change. I mean, they're not superpowers—" Gwne was cut off by a raised hand.
"I said I had ideas," Kevin smiled, amused by the girl's eagerness to solve the mystery. "Do you wanna hear 'em or not?"
Gwen nodded silently and he continued.
"The first one is that the species I get my powers from was still evolving when they entered my family's line. That would make the abilities more flexible and susceptible to change. I figure that, since there was no energy to absorb where I was, but plenty of raw material like steel and concrete, my powers changed slowly to suit my needs. But since I was mutated, I couldn't use them, so I didn't notice the difference until they had changed completely."
"Viable," Gwen allowed, a calculating look in her eye. "Assuming your powers were active when you were in amalgam form. A good idea, in any case. What's the other one?"
"The other one is that the species was fully established and what I had when I was a kid was an immature form of the mature powers. As I got older, they shifted and matured, and again, I didn't notice the change until I was human. That would explain why they're basically the same power, it's just the display and things I can absorb that have changed."
Again, Gwen nodded. "They're both good ideas, and I guess we'll never know until we find out more about the species you have the blood of. They seem concrete, and a lot more possible than some of the things that have happened to us." Indeed, in light of what she was used to facing, the idea that her boyfriend had alien powers that were either unstable and susceptible to change, or had several stages of maturity was really quite run-of-the-mill, even dull, to Gwen.
"I like how being who you are has made you so open-minded," Kevin replied sarcastically, rising slowly from the ground and stretching before extending a hand to help her up. "It really makes explaining things easier."
"So. Is this where the date gets normal?" asked Gwen, accepting the hand.
"I sure hope so," he replied, a sneaky grin stealing his features. "Race you back to the car."
And then he darted off, Gwen a few seconds behind him, screaming at the top of her lungs that she had no idea where she was going, that he was a jerk, that his legs were longer than hers, and that she was varying degrees of angry, from ticked off at the beginning to really mad at the end.
Needless to say, Kevin beat Gwen to the car. He stood, bent double, one hand resting on the driver's side mirror, and breathing heavily when Gwen finally came panting up.
"What…took you…so long?" he smiled. "I been standing…here for ages."
Gwen simply stalked up to him, fished his keys out of his front pocket, and pushed him backwards in reply. "I'm driving," she growled, giving her suddenly grounded boyfriend a 'just try to stop me' expression. He held up his hands and smiled.
"It's all yours, babe."
"Good."
No more words were exchanged as the couple got in the car, Gwen in the driver's seat and Kevin respectfully taking his place in the passenger side. He let the redhead start the car and negotiate it with ease onto the highway, at which point she froze. It had dawned on her that seven-thirty was much too early to see a matinee, indeed, the theatre probably wasn't even open yet.
"Okay," she relented, hating every minute of asking for help after the show she had put on. "Where are we going?"
Kevin simply burst out laughing.
—
"The Dark Knight, X Files, or Hancock. Take your pick." Kevin offered the choice of the movie to Gwen, digging into his back pocket to procure his wallet. Life had slowly inched toward three o'clock, and the two teens had been content to fill the extra time with a trip to the pier and lunch at Gwen's favorite restaurant—a family-run Chinese joint that had items Kevin couldn't even pronounce. There, they had reached the impasse of paying, which was sorted out only one way: Kevin could pay if Gwen could order him any dish on the menu, and he had to eat it. Needless to say, it was an interesting lunch indeed.
As much fun as the two found themselves having, the matinee was a much-welcomed chance to sit down and relax before round four—dinner at the restaurant of Kevin's choosing.
"X Files is way to close to real life, and I heard Hancock was a bust, so Dark Knight it is. Have you seen it yet?"
"Sadly," Kevin replied, moving over to the ticket booth. "I have way too many things to do before I can hit the movies whenever I want, so no."
"It is pretty sad when a sixteen-year-old boy can't find a good excuse to go to the Dark Knight," Gwen agreed, slipping her arm through his free one and trailing it down to grab his hand.
"Two for the Dark Knight," Kevin requested of a boy not much older than himself. "Good thing I had a date tonight, this is the last night they're showing it and people woulda killed me if I missed seeing it in theatres." He took the tickets offered to him, thanked the boy briefly, and swiftly paid from them out of his own pocket and steering her off to the concession stand before Gwen had a chance to argue.
"Chivalry is dead, Kev," Gwen rolled her eyes, placing her order and elbowing him out of the way long enough to pay for the popcorn and pop herself.
"It's not dead till I kill it," Kevin argued, pushing her gently to the side to make his own order.
Gwen cocked an eyebrow, but let the argument lay as they walked into theatre seven, where the lights were already dimmed and previews were playing.
"Oh whoa," she smiled when she got inside.
"What?" Kevin asked, pushing her along to see around the partition into the showing room. "Oh. Whoa."
Because the whole theatre, designed for a hundred and twenty people, was completely empty. The two shared a grin before making their way to the best seats in the house.
For two and a half hours, they had the place to themselves, leaving them free to laugh aloud at the funnier scenes, talk about how stupid that little stunt was, and, in Gwen's case, yell in startled surprise a few times, which, in Kevin's opinion, warranted him free license to hold her as tight as he pleased. She didn't seem to mind.
"Heath Ledger…definitely the best choice for Joker," Gwen affirmed when the lights came up and they walked out of the theatre.
"I dunno about Twoface…" Kevin contradicted, balling up their trash and sinking it into a passing garbage can. "I didn't like him."
Gwen simply shrugged—the movie, in general, had been good, and seeing it without Ben or Ken to constantly make commentary on it was a relief.
"To dinner, then," she smiled, retaking her usual place in the passenger's seat.
"To dinner it is. And before you even start, I am paying."
Gwen let the subject lie again—indeed, she wasn't really too adamant about paying for herself. She was much happier to sit and mull over what Kevin had told her about this morning—the idea of scorning humanity so completely added a whole new level she needed to explore before she was ready to declare a complete knowledge of the boy to her left.
In fact, she stayed peaceful until they pulled up to a very expensive-looking restaurant—the Alley Rose, one of the top restaurants in the city.
"How are you gonna afford this?" Gwen asked, gaping at the beautiful burnished bronze doors and elegantly frosted plate glass windows.
"I know a guy," Kevin replied. "Your fancy food awaits, m'lady."
It drew a faint smile across Gwen's lips to think of Kevin, brash, loud Kevin, inside the dining splendor of the Alley Rose. This would be the king of interesting dinners.
Well, when all was said and done, it wasn't that angsty. I thought it might be, so…there you have it. I hope you'll take my explanations, and I also hope you'll excuse it's beastly length, lol. Kevin's recounting took a little longer than I expected. glares at Kevin, who flips Angelz off For anyone who cares to know, a side fic will eventually be born that explains their escapades at the pier and lunch to be titled "Carnival Prize". It's obviously a play on their first trip to the pier in chapter 1, entitled "Carnival Games", and will essentially be a supplement chapter of stuff that wasn't central to the plot. REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW!! I'll shut up now.
Coming up next: Chapter 5 of "Lock and Key":
5: Meet the Parents
Gwen coaxes Kevin into meeting her parents for the first time as a boyfriend and not just a teammate, but luckily (or not), the meeting is broken up by an unannounced guest
