Disclaimer – Still own nothing.
AN – Hello. This chapter is a little long, and very, very, VERY emotional but I hope you guys like it! And have some tissues. If you don't like it, I'm sorry but this is where I wanted to go and hope you guys can understand that. I hope you all do like it though. Song is Sacrifice by Zella Day.
To Jubs and scienceficfan24 – Thank you both so much for your reviews! It reviews like that make me want to keep writing and update as soon as I can. I hope you both like this chapter.
Enjoy!
I don't wanna be touched by the fear in your eyes, I don't wanna be left for my demons to find
After checking Hal's pupils and seeing the sluggish response, an obvious sign of a concussion, Anne moved to check his breathing. Hal's chest was not rising and falling steadily, and his breathing was heavy, as though it was a struggle for him to do such a simple action.
"I'm just going to check your ribs, okay?" Anne let Hal know. He nodded weakly, then turned his head slightly to look at Maggie, who was still sitting on his other side, clutching his hand in hers.
Slowly, Anne lifted Hal's shirt carefully, not wanting to cause him any pain, but also not wanting Maggie or Matt to see. As she looked, Anne held in a gasp when she saw the damage.
Hal's entire torso was covered in bruises, but the worst of them were on his ribcage. Anne could plainly see that his ribs were broken. Lowering his shirt a little, Anne looked back over to the young man's face.
"Okay. Hal, you got a few broken ribs. I'm just going to check how badly they're broken, but this might hurt a little bit." Anne explained. When Hal nodded, Anne lifted his shirt once again, and slowly ran her hand over his ribcage.
Hal gasped in pain and Anne whispered, "Sorry."
Anne pulled her hand away and lowered his shirt. She kept her face hidden and started rummaging through the medical bag that she had brought with her, though she knew she wouldn't find anything that could help Hal.
His entire ribcage was broken, completely caved in. She could feel the slight swelling in his torso, a sign of massive internal bleeding. When there's internal bleeding in the torso, it's not noticeable because of how much muscle and fat was in that part of the body. Since Anne could feel the swelling, she knew it was bad. And the blood coming up out of his mouth was an obvious sign of a punctured lung, which can easily collapse. Unless he had emergency surgery in the next 20 minutes at most, he wasn't going to make it.
FSFSFSFSFSFSFSFSFSFSFS
When the leaves are gone and the beating sun, brings the world bang drums
When Tom saw how close they actually were to Lincoln Memorial, he almost smiled at their good fortune. Almost. The thought of Hal getting injured in the explosion, and the sight of more than 20 Overlords, countless skitters and Mechs guarding the building behind the headless statue ruined it.
"Well, those Mechs aren't going to be of any help to them. So that's one thing we don't have to worry about." Weaver pointed out, looking over the ledge they were hiding behind.
"But we still have the skitters to worry about. Just because the power source is down, doesn't mean the Overlords can't still control them through their harnesses." Ben added. Tom looked over at his middle son. He was slightly out of breath, and looked exhausted.
"Are you sure you can do this?" Tom asked. Ben knew that without his spikes, he wouldn't be as strong as he would be with them, but he knew he could help, so he nodded.
"Are the Berserkers in position?" Tom turned to question Weaver. The Colonel grabbed the binoculars from his pocket and looked through them, searching for any sign of Pope and his gang.
"Yup. It's now or never Tom." Weaver replied, putting the binoculars away once he spotted the Berserkers and the Volm. They were with on the other side of the memorial making their way towards them.
"Alright, let's do this." Tom told them. He lifted up his gun and started shooting at the skitters. Ben, Weaver, Cochise and Tector did the same.
The minute the bullets start flying, the skitters started charging. At first, the Overlords watched, waiting for their servants to defeat them, but then they heard more gunfire and bombs going off behind them. Pope and his gang were coming. A few of the Overlords turned and ran, while most of the fish-heads remained behind and moved to attack as well. Fortunately, Tector managed deal with them before they got too close.
While Tom, Ben, Weaver, Cochise, and Tector were holding their own, more skitters kept coming. Odds were the Overlords had called for reinforcements. It wasn't surprising, especially if their Queen was still here.
True to Pope fashion, he and his Berserkers waited until the moment they were about to be overrun before they showed up. With their help, the Overlords and skitters didn't have a chance.
"Took you long enough." Tom commented as Pope and his gang came over to them once the Espheni attackers were dead.
"Excuse me, we were in position before you all got here. We just got distracted by all the new skitters that showed up." Pope defended himself, then turned back to his own group of fighters, ordering them to guard the perimeter so no skitters or fish-heads could surprise them.
Once they left, Pope turned to back to the President to say something, when a loud skittering noise attracted everyone's attention. They all turned their heads, and saw something crawling onto the top of the building behind Lincoln's headless statue. Weaver opened his mouth in shock.
"Holy -"
FSFSFSFSFSFSFSFSFSFSFS
Be a dose of protection through the blood and the tears
Hal tried to breathe normally, but he couldn't. He felt as though there was no oxygen getting into his lungs, so he tried to take deep breaths. But whenever he did that, he would start coughing again. And the coughing hurt way more.
When Anne had started checking him over, and pressed down against his ribcage, Hal almost blacked out. He squeezed Maggie's hand as tight as he could as the pain threatened to overwhelm him.
"Shh, it's okay Hal. It's okay." Maggie tried to comfort him, continuing to run her fingers through his black hair.
"Skitters incoming!" Anthony yelled as the aliens came into view. Maggie and Matt looked over their shoulders to see the incoming attack, both knowing they should go help, but were hesitant to leave Hal.
"You two go help. I'll watch Hal." Anne told them. Maggie gave Hal a quick kiss on his forehead and got up to go help Anthony and Deni. Matt quickly followed.
"It's bad, isn't it?" Hal asked the woman who was practically his stepmother once they were alone. It only took one look at Anne's heartbroken and painful expression to answer his question. Tears were welling up in her eyes.
"Hal, I-" Anne started to explain, but Hal cut her off.
"It's okay. It's okay. I knew the risks." Anne grimaced when Hal started to cough again, more blood coming out of his mouth. She quickly grabbed a gauze pad from her medical bag and started wiping the blood away, both of them ignoring the sound of gunfire. He looked to be in so much pain and Anne wished she had something to give him, when the syringe with a sedative came to mind.
"I don't have any painkillers Hal. But I do have some sedatives." Anne said, hoping he understood what she was getting at. He did, and shook his head.
"No, no drugs." Hal replied. If he really was about to die, he didn't want to go under the fog of a drug. Anne nodded, agreeing to his request, and moved to wipe the blood away from the cut on his forehead.
As the gunfire got louder, Anne looked up to see the skitters were still coming. They hadn't stopped since Anthony had announced their presence. Maggie, Matt, Deni and Anthony were fighting hard, but they were going to be overwhelmed if they didn't get help soon.
Anne picked up the gun from her belt that she kept in case of an attack. She was hoping that she might be able to help from her spot beside Hal, but at that moment, another group of skitters appeared behind her. She was about to yell for help, when she saw the skitter leading them had face paint on the side of his head. It was the rebel skitters. They ran passed her and Hal towards the other skitters that the four fighters were struggling to keep back.
It was the sound of pain-filled coughs that grabbed the doctor's attention again. Turning her back to the young man in her charge, Anne saw a trickle of the red liquid starting to make its way down Hal's chin again. Slipping her arm under Hal's shoulders, she lifted him up, and moved him closer to the boulder that he was lying against so he was sitting more upright which would help his breathing.
Once that was done, Anne grabbed his hand, squeezing it gently while she placed her free hand on his head, running her fingers through his hair to comfort him. Besides giving him drugs, which he already said no to, this was the most she could do for Tom's eldest son. She had no medication that could fix him and it appeared that with the power source destroyed, his body couldn't heal himself anymore. Even if they got him on a Volm ship this second, and headed back to Charleston at top speed, they wouldn't get there in time to save him.
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I will find you in a burning sky, where the ashes rain in your mind, ohh, ohh, sacrifice
Hal sure wasn't kidding about the appearance of the Espheni Queen, Ben thought, looking at the alien. While his brother's description had seemed almost humorous, it sure wasn't when you could see it for yourself. She truly did look like a gigantic spider, even bigger than the one in that Lord of the Rings movie. Her legs were longer, and her entire body looked to be cover in some sort of hard scales. They even covered her head, which looked more like a skitter's than a spider's, though smoother and sharper. It would be difficult to get a bullet through those scales.
"Well, well, well. You have finally come. The foolhardy, self-proclaimed leader of the human race. Tom Mason." The Queen spoke. That took all the fighters a little by surprise. Tom didn't think of the possibility of the Queen being able to communicate with them normally, as none of the skitters or Overlords could. Her voice, while melodic, was also taunting and condescending.
"I've heard a lot about you through my Overlords Tom. The human scholar who actually believes you can beat me, beat us." The alien revealed. She kept moving around on the roof of the building, hiding so that nobody could get a clear shot of her.
"That's funny. They didn't say anything about you." Tom replied, silently instructing the fighters still with him to spread out and see if they could get a clear line of sight on the spider.
"No, they wouldn't have. It must have been that offspring of yours, the one my human Overlord Karen tried to turn, wasn't it? What was his name again? Hal, right? Karen sure cared about him. She had to do a lot persuading in order to try experimenting on him. Even though she had your daughter, and Alexis had our DNA melded into hers, Karen felt that trying on an adult would help quicken our plan." Tom and Ben both paused at the mention of Hal and Lexi. They didn't expect the Queen to say anything about them. They didn't really think about why Karen did what she did and if she was taking orders from someone.
Pope tried to take advantage of the sudden silence, and the fact that the Queen was now looking over the edge, exposing her head. He lifted his gun and fired three headshots. The scales on her head however, protected her and the bullets actually ricocheted off. Pope barely had time to move before he got hit with his own ammo, while the Queen ducked out of view again.
"Well, that didn't work now did it?" Tom spoke once everything went silent again. He looked over and saw Pope getting back into position.
"No, no it didn't. I knew that he would fight against us no matter what we did. He was older, stubborn, corrupted by you humans ignorant beliefs. But she insisted. Even when he tried to escape, she stopped my one of my Overlords from killing him. Her human connection to him made her weak. It made her tell him about me, instead of staying loyal to the side she chose to fight for." The Queen told them, and Ben remembered what Hal had told him, how the Overlord that hurt him was about to kill him, yet suddenly stopped. How Karen had told him about the Queen.
"'Chose'? She didn't have a choice. You harnessed her, controlled her. If you never did that, she would never have sided with you." Ben chimed in bitterly.
He didn't know why, but he felt a need to defend the girl who had caused his family so much pain as she did actually side with Espheni. Despite that though, it still all started with her being harnessed.
Maybe he defended her because he was also harnessed. He could've been sucked into the Espheni's beliefs just like Karen was. It might've even been easier for him because he didn't actually fight against them when he was taken like Karen did. His hate against them hadn't fully grown when he was taken. Maybe it was that despite everything she did, she still cared for and protected his brother from the what the Queen and Overlord wanted. And in the end, she helped them by showing Hal the Queen and where she'd be.
"If our harness was not given to her, she never would've discovered the truth. And I admired her desire to show all you other humans what she had learned. It was why I allowed her to try and complete our original plan." The spider-like alien defended herself.
"What plan?" Tom asked, moving to try and get a lock on the alien, though was actually curious about what the Espheni Queen would say. Like every survivor, he couldn't help but wonder why the aliens attacked. This might actually be their only chance at getting an answer.
"A plan made long ago. I knew it would fail, the plan to show your disgusting race of how ignorant and inferior you truly are to us. Yet I let Karen try anyways, thinking that maybe, you all might have learned better over the last thousands of years, learned how to accept us as your superiors, and let us fix your world. But no, you and your kind stubbornly resisted. You would rather die, and have all of your race die, then admit that you are not capable of ruling yourselves." The Queen explained angrily.
"Our problems aren't yours. You had no right to come to OUR planet, and try to take over!" Tom yelled at her.
"I had every right to launch an attack your kind. It was you attacked us when we came to your planet!" The Queen screeched as she leapt from the building's rooftop to the statue, landing right on Abraham Lincoln's neck as his head was gone. When she did that, Cochise saw her soft underbelly, a perfect target.
"What are you talking about? We could've bombed you when you first came here, yet we didn't. Your Overlords bombed us first!"
"This time around, yes. The first time we came to this planet, no, your kind attacked us first."
"What do you mean?" Tom inquired, his voice quieter this time.
"Thousands of years ago, our planet started to die and we were forced to relocate. My strongest warrior, my daughter, told me of this planet, of this race that was violent and destroyed each other. She persuaded me that we could live in harmony with your race, that you needed us to fix your terrible societies. I sent her ahead, and your kind destroyed her, and her army."
"And you didn't learn anything from that? You still thought we would bow down to an alien race who killed millions of people, kidnapped and enslaved our children? You risked your entire people and race for revenge, instead of trying to find another unoccupied planet to live on?" Tom questioned, his voice slightly hoarse from the yelling he had done earlier.
"Finding an unoccupied planet that would be suitable for us is a statistical impossibility. And my daughter was loved by all of our people. They all agreed to not only avenge her, but to honor her memory by taking the planet she had chosen. We had hoped with our entire army, and our show of power, you humans would see sense, but no. You still fight though you know you will die in the end." The Queen taunted, and started moving back and forth on the statue, as though she was getting ready to pounce.
"I'm not so sure about that. Your kind lost before, thousands of years ago, back when we ourselves considered humans uncivilized. But we have grown stronger, smarter, in that time. And one thing we learned and never forgot, is that those who refuse to learn from their history, are doomed to repeat it." That comment seemed to be the final stray not only for the Queen, but for Tom as well. The gigantic alien leaped from her perch on the statue as Tom, Ben, Weaver, Cochise, Tector, and Pope all raised their guns and fired.
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Tell me you, will hold me in the golden afterlife, yeah, you, you don't have to die alone tonight
Anne and Hal waited patiently as the rebel skitters continued to help Matt, Maggie, Deni, and Anthony defeat the Overlord controlled skitters. She kept her hand wrapped around her boyfriend's son, allowing him to squeeze it whenever the pain she knew he was feeling became too much. She wished she could give him the sedative, to allow him to go peacefully. But if he didn't want it, Anne wouldn't force him.
"Anne?" Hal's force was weak and hoarse.
"I'm right here Hal. Right here." Anne let him know.
"I need you to, promise me something." Hal told her, weakly turning his head to get a better look at her.
"What?" Anne asked, keeping her voice gentle.
"Promise you'll, take care of my Dad, and Ben, and Matt, and Maggie? And make sure they know I love them, and that it's not their fault, okay?" Hal pleaded.
"Of course I will. I promise." Anne didn't hesitate to agree to the request. Hal didn't need to even ask. Even though she and Tom weren't married, and they hadn't really talked about her position in the Mason family, she had come to see them as her family. She knew she could never replace the boys' mother, but she loved them as if they were their own. And she knew that he was out of time to tell his family his last words, especially Tom and Ben.
"I'm happy, Dad found you." Hal revealed, then started coughing again, though not as badly as earlier.
"I am too. Don't try to talk Hal, save your strength, okay?" Anne instructed him. He nodded, and closed his eyes, but she could tell from his breathing that he was still awake.
Suddenly, Maggie and Matt were back. Matt came over to kneel by Anne, while Maggie got down on Hal's other side.
"Maggie?" Hal weakly called out.
"Hey, I'm right here." Maggie told him, grabbing his hand.
"Matt?" Hal wondered if his youngest brother also came over.
"Right here too Hal." Matt put his hand on his oldest brother's leg to let him know he was there as Anne was still holding his other hand. Slowly, Hal lifted his head and looked at Matt.
"Hey buddy. You okay?" Hal asked, and Matt nodded.
"You did good buddy. I'm so proud of you, and I love you. Remember that." Hal told his youngest brother. Before Matt could respond, or even understand why he was telling him that, Hal turned to look at Maggie.
"Mags, I love you so much. You're so strong, so beautiful, so brave. Meeting you, is the only good thing that came out of this war for me." Hal stopped to try and catch his breath. Breathing was becoming harder and harder.
"Don't say that Hal. You're going to be okay, you're going to be okay." Maggie cut him off when he opened his mouth to speak again. She knew what he was doing. He was trying to say goodbye, and Maggie didn't want to hear it. He was going to be okay, she wasn't going to lose him. She couldn't lose him, not again, not like this.
"Anne do something." Matt turned to beg the doctor, also realizing what his oldest brother was doing. Anne turned to look at the boy and with tears in her eyes, she whispered, "I can't."
"I love you all." Hal told them, and his eyes turned to look at the sky before they became still. The sound of his breathing, of his heart beating stopped. His chest no longer moved.
"Hal?" Matt cried, but there was no response. Hal's eyes remained opened, unblinking, unmoving, unseeing.
"Hal?" Maggie called, shaking his arm to try and get him to respond, but he didn't.
"Maggie, stop. He's gone." Anne told her, her voice filled with pain. Slowly, the doctor placed Hal's hand the she was still holding on his stomach, then lifted her hand and closed Hal's eyes. Once she had done that. Maggie fell forward, her head landing on her boyfriend's shoulder and started crying.
While Maggie continued to cry, Matt started to shake his brother's leg, trying to get him to wake up.
"Come on Hal. Wake up." Matt begged, his voice so quiet Anne barely caught it. She turned to Tom's youngest son, and tried to pull him away from Hal's body.
"Matt, I'm so sorry, but he's gone." Matt tried to fight her, still refusing to believe the truth, but ultimately fell into his surrogate mother's arms when Hal still didn't open his eyes.
Deni and Anthony watched the family break down from a distance, tears stinging both of their eyes. Both of their hearts broke at the loss of their comrade and friend. Even the rebel skitters looked sad at the sight before them. Deni wanted to go and comfort them, but she wasn't as close to them or to Hal as Anthony was, yet he didn't go to them either. Instead, he started walking towards the path that Tom, Ben, and the others took only a few minutes earlier.
"Where are you going?" Deni asked in a whisper, not wanting to disturb the grieving family. Anthony turned to look at her over his shoulder, his silent tears making their way down his cheeks.
"Someone's got to warn Tom and Ben what they're about to find out." Anthony responded. Then he turned and kept walking while Deni and the rebel skitters stood guard, making sure that Anne, Matt, Maggie, and Hal were not disturbed.
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If you start running away, then there'll be nowhere to hide
As soon as they all fired, the Queen screeched and tried to finish her charge at them, but fell down on the ground. Nobody stopped firing their guns until the huge alien stopped moving, until she stopped breathing. Once she was dead, everything went quiet.
"Is that it?" Ben asked, looking at the dead Queen, wondering if this war was finally over.
"We have won the war, but there are still some battles left to complete. There are still Overlords out there, and we must deal with them. However, that can be done another day. I shall stay here until my comrades come to take care of the body. You should head back to your family." Cochise informed them. Tom didn't have any disagreements about that. Without another word, he started running back down the path that would take him to the other members of his family.
Cochise watched as the humans started running back to their own comrades. Once they were out of sight, he moved to get a closer look at the Espheni Queen. She laid limp, her eyes wide open, though completely unseeing. He looked away from her face, towards her neck, where he saw a small bluish glow.
He moved closer to the Queen, pushing away one of her legs so he could get a closer look. Around her neck, was a chain link with a crystal on it. It was blue, very small, and rigged on one end. Like it was part of a bigger stone, but had been broken off.
The other part of the power source, and it was still working.
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If we're closer to the other side, and the heavens all start to cry, ohh, ohh, sacrifice
Ben followed closely behind his Dad, though was quickly hit with sore and heavy muscles. Now that his spikes were dead, his endurance and strength were pretty much back to where they had been before the invasion. Still, the desperation to see his brothers made him push himself forward. He was barely aware of Weaver, Tector, Pope and the rest of the Berserkers who were just behind him.
They weren't that far away when Anthony appeared on the path, all alone. Tom slowed his pace to a walk, smiling at the soldier, when he caught the look on the man's face.
"Anthony? What's wrong?" Tom asked worriedly.
"Hal." That was all the former cop needed to say before Tom took off running again. He ran right past the Anthony, all his focus on getting to his injured son as fast as he could. Ben was right behind his father, both leaving the rest of the fighters behind them.
Tom felt his heart stop at the sight before him. Hal was lying limp where he had placed him, Maggie was crying on Hal's shoulder, while Anne held a sobbing Matt in his arms. Even from the distance between them, Tom could see Hal's chest wasn't moving, could see Hal's skin becoming paler and paler. Ben, Weaver, Tector, Anthony, Pope and the rest of the Berserkers stopped behind them, but all of Tom's focus was on the sight before him. Slowly, the President started walking towards his son.
"Tom, I'm pregnant." Rebecca told him once he sat down on the couch beside her, "You're going to be a father."
Tom remembered as he walked closer. So far neither, Matt, Maggie or Anne noticed him.
"Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Mason. You have a perfectly healthy baby boy." The doctor revealed to the new parents. Only seconds later, he placed the baby in Rebecca's arms. Tom couldn't stop smiling at the sight of his firstborn, his son. He watched as his wife held the baby tightly, giving him a kiss on the top of his head, before offering the baby to him. Tom instantly held out his arms as Rebecca placed their son in his arms. The baby opened his chocolate brown eyes, and smiled at him.
"Hi there. I'm your Daddy." Tom whispered, somehow unable to comprehend that he was now a parent, that he and Rebecca had created this life.
Tom got Anne's attention when he stepped on a small stick, which easily cracked underneath his boot. He could see the pain and regret in her eyes, but gave it no thought. All of his focus was on the young man that laid limp on the ground, a rock being the only pillow he had.
"Tom come here." Tom got up from the chair at the table where he was grading papers and came into the living when he heard his wife call for him. She was sitting on the ground beside Hal who was only 9 months old. When Rebecca saw that he had come, she lifted Hal to his feet and turned him to face his Dad.
"There's Daddy. Go see Daddy." She told their son, and slowly, Hal started walking towards Tom, who instantly got to his knees and held out his hands, ready to catch him. Once he was close enough, Hal reached forward and wrapped his tiny hand around two of Tom's fingers. Tom laughed with joy and pride as his son successfully made his way across the room.
"Tom, there was nothing I could do-" Anne started to explain, but the man ignored her. Anne pulled Matt further away from Hal's body to allow Tom room to sit beside his oldest son. It was then Maggie finally looked up and saw her boyfriend's father, and though hesitantly, she too backed away, tears still streaming down her face. Tom fell to his knees, and got a clear look at his boy's face.
The blood had been wiped away. Probably Anne's doing. His skin was already turning gray, but he looked peaceful, almost like he was just asleep. Almost. Hal's one hand rested on his chest. Tom laid his own hand on top of it. They were almost the same size. When did that happen? When did the little hand that could barely wrap around Tom's finger become just as big as his? Since when did his son stop being his little boy and become a man? A man who died to give his father a chance to save their planet, and Tom wasn't even there to comfort him as he took his last breath.
Suddenly overwhelmed by the reality in front of him, Tom cried out and grabbed Hal's body, lifting it into his arms. Hal's head started to fall back, but Tom quickly place a hand under his boy's head, moving it to rest on his shoulder.
"You were really brave tonight. And I'm so proud of you."
"You don't know what it's like to be a father, and to see your son grow into a man."
"There's going to be consequences, and there's going to be casualties."
"I'm not going to let them take you from me."
Tears fell freely down the father's face and he held his son as tightly as he could, never wanting to let go. In his arms, he could keep his boy safe, even though he knew that Hal was already gone. He didn't keep his promise, he let the aliens take his son from him.
He was so lost in his grief, that Tom didn't feel Anne's hand on his shoulder. Didn't hear her voice, didn't even realize she was trying to get his attention. It wasn't until he felt someone trying to pull Hal's body out of his arms did Tom look up and tightened his hold on his son's body.
Cochise was kneeling on the other side of Hal's body. It was him who tried to separate the son from his father. Before Tom could protest, before he could tell the alien to leave him alone, Cochise brought up his hand, which was clenched tightly. Slowly, he opened his fist to reveal a small crystal in his hand. It looked to have been broken off from a larger crystal, and was glowing a light blue.
Tom looked back up at the alien, realizing what the Volm was getting at. If the main power crystal, the one which this small piece had broken off of, had actually saved Hal from the explosion three months ago, was it possible that it could…?
Slowly, and a little reluctantly, Tom loosened his grip, lowering Hal's body to allow Cochise access to him. Cochise moved closer and pressed the crystal against Hal's chest, right where his heart was.
At first nothing happened. Then the stone started glowing brighter and brighter. When it got to the point where Tom was tempted to look away, his eyes starting to burn at the brightness, he heard a loud gasp as Hal heaved in his arms.
AN – I warned you all this was going to be an emotional chapter. Another warning, Hal's not out of the woods yet. Again, I hope you all like this chapter. Until next chapter.