DISCLAIMER: I do not own Falling Skies or the characters... if I did, then I'd be rich. :D Anyway. No slash or other romance, just pure angst and possible violence. Actually, make that probable, because I write violence a lot. Season 2 ish I'd suppose. Anyway. Read & Review... Sorry for the cliff hanger... here's another! :p Gonna get some pre-furious-attacking here for the next chapter.
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BEN POV
We were losing. Two of our fighters went down – dead – from an explosive mech blast. Several others were injured and were being dragged out of the mess. I fired at will, aiming for skitters that continued to appear. An eerie whirring warned me of another mech arrival. Looking back I saw most of us were retreating, trying to help along our wounded and dead. I tried to search for my brother in the crowd but he was nowhere to be found. That's when Weaver began screaming for an official retreat. Civilian crowds were pushed back. Normally, I would have let my hate take over and stand there, killing as many of them as possible. But my heart was racing and my mind was on other things. I couldn't see my brother anywhere. He had been right near me when we had been ambushed, but now he was gone. He could have gotten dissolved in the crowd, but I couldn't be sure. I began to retreat too, firing to hold back to the skitters.
That's when I saw the prone shape lying in the dirt. "Hal!" I screamed, but my voice was drowned in the noise of gunfire, shouts and explosions. I shot towards him, almost getting myself killed in the process by a mech firing, and dropped down beside him. I could tell by his shallow breathing and the way he wasn't moving that he was unconscious. Gently I rolled him over and saw several trails of blood dripping down his face. He was alive... so he hadn't been shot.
I knew immediately that it wasn't the work of a skitter or mech... they would have killed him.
No time. The next explosion was pretty close. I soon found we were completely cut off from the rest of the group. Grimacing, I turned and found myself face to face with a skitter. It hissed at at me, its protective fangs withdrawing from its mouth. In an instant, I was up, slamming a knife down its throat. It gave a screeching gurgle of pain, blood streaking from its mouth before it sagged and fell. I twisted the knife, just to be sure, and it hissed, its twitching ceasing.
Before more were alerted to our position, I tossed Hal's gun around my neck and picked him up, running out of the firefight. More explosions followed, but they began to grow distant. Out of sight, I brought him into the remains of a deserted building and lay him on the ground, waiting for the battle to end so we could make our way back to the group.
TOM POV
I paced, waiting as the rest of the fighters managed to get their way back to me. I scanned all of them for sight of either of my sons, but when neither of them returned, I started to panic. Moving through them, I was ready to head back into the ambush when someone stopped me. Weaver.
"I know you're worried about your sons right now, Tom, but you can't go back in there. There are too many of them and you'll get yourself killed. I promise you when everything calms down we'll go back in there and find them," he said, his voice strong and steady. My heart was racing. If we waited there was a greater chance that they would be killed or captured. I couldn't lose Ben again. I couldn't lose either of them. I closed my eyes, wiping my hand through my hair, breathing rather heavily in an effort to calm own. Damn it!
"First time I can... I'll find them," I said harshly, beginning to pace back and forth in the fast-moving crowd. Anne and Lourdes were moving from person-to-person, treating the most serious injuries and then the minor ones. Maggie suddenly appeared at my elbow.
"I'll go with you," she said as steadily as possible. Jimmy came over too.
And we waited as the sun went down.
HAL POV
I woke with a blinding headache and the suspicion that I was going to be punched. My eyes shot open and I sat up so quickly that I smashed into something which gave a loud grunt and fell back.
"Urgh..." I groaned, holding onto my head and wondering why there was a faint ringing in both ears. All I remembered was being shot at by mechs, and then... everything was fuzzy. Literally. I was seeing double. Eventually I recognized Ben's face. When I pulled my hand away from my head I saw blood smeared across my glove. Great. What happened?
"You okay?" Ben asked, as I stared at him blankly, trying not to feel sick as his form wavered in and out of outlines.
"Yep," I replied warily, blinking hard. I still had to squint to see at least a little bit clearly. Why couldn't I remember what happened? I must have gotten hit on the head by something. Maybe a missile exploded overhead and I got decked with some bricks or debris.
"What happened?" Ben asked, reaching out to lay his hand against my head, where it was sluggishly oozing blood.
"I don't remember," I replied honestly, trying to think hard about the last few moments of my consciousness. We were running. From the skitters and mechs because they ambushed us. I dove behind a pile. Shooting. Skitters going down. We were doing good, weren't we? But people were backing up and some were falling unmoving. Then nothing. Something was nagging at my consciousness but I couldn't be sure what. Apparently my brain new something that I couldn't figure out.
"Okay... we got separated from everyone else so I'm waiting out here until the skitters go away. Then we'll find our way back," Ben said calmly, handing me my gun which felt surprisingly heavy in my arms. Maybe my brain was more screwed up than I thought. My ears were still ringing, after all.
We waited in silence for a bit longer, and by then I was starting to get really tired. All my limbs were heavy. The ringing was increasing and my eyes were drifting shut. I leaned against the wall, resting my throbbing head against the cool stone. My head must be boiling. How could it be so hot? The stone felt a bit relieving to me, turning the fire down a little bit. The nagging thought that I was missing something came back. What was it?
I kept thinking about churches and religions. I wasn't sure why. I had never been particularly religious. I mean, sure, when I was a kid I was like everyone else, believing in a god – I wouldn't call it theGod. But it was more of a "be like everyone else" idea than a "I actually care and believe" idea. Why think about churches?
There used to be a very Catholic couple down the road from our house. Very, meaning they would look at me, being the demon child I was, that I was going to go to Hell if I didn't start listening better. Like every other kid, I just laughed. They always talked about the bible and quoted things I really didn't care about... and they were so focused on their church that they believed and hung onto every thing the Pope said. The Pope?
My eyes shot open. I was suddenly wide awake, cold. Ben quickly tried to wipe the worry from his face.
"Pope!" I said, finally realizing what my mind was trying to tell me. I remembered now, the other person dropping beside me. And the words – the voice. "It was Pope."
