A/N: Just wanted to take a sec to say thank you very much! to everyone who has reviewed/read my fic thus far.

Chapter 8

Reaching out and grasping Ben's hand with her own, Gwen tugged at him as she turned, leading him away from the sands of the beach, the both of them walking away, past the hut, and keeping onward until they reached the lagoon. The moon above giving them light, Ben gave his cousin's hand a squeeze as he felt her stop, pausing and hesitating as she looked down at the blue sparkling water below.

"This is the spot where I've kept it hidden for quite a long time now. It's here, buried beneath the shallow part of the lagoon," Gwen said, before releasing Ben's hand and moving to kneel down next to said shallow part. "You should know, I'm sorry for not telling you about it, sort of, but, in a way, I'm also not sorry. Both at the same time."

Growing a bit impatient and ancy, Ben, too, knelt down alongside the lagoon. Moving his hands beneath the dark water's surface, he began using his bare hands to dig away at the mushy mud below. "You don't have to be sorry. Or not sorry. Just, please, tell me what it is we're digging up exactly?"

"The Omnitrix," answered Gwen quietly, her eyes purposely avoiding Ben's as he now looked over to her, clearly stunned at this revelation.

"Don't you remember the upgrades that we were working on?" he replied frantically, looking back to the lagoon as he began to dig faster in the mud. "Remember how we'd just gotten it to be able to send brief messages to Grandpa's Plumber badge? We could've sent something ages ago, Gwen! Why didn't you tell me about this? This probably is what the Forever Knights are after. Oh, for more than one reason, you really could have told me about this."

Sighing, Gwen shook her head, before answering him. "I said I was sorry already. Besides, that message communicator upgrade wasn't really perfected or anything. It was just experimental."

"It's not like at least trying to send a message would kill us or anything, though. I seriously can't believe you right now," came Ben's reply, before he fell silent, digging away a bit more before finally reaching something. "Is this it?"

Straining to see in the dim moonlight, Gwen soon gave a nod of her head, watching as her cousin lifted the mud-covered Omnitrix up, from beneath the waters. "Yes, of course that's it."

"It's… blinking," Ben announced, before placing it back in the water, to rinse the mud off of it completely. "Why is it blinking?"

Pushing herself up to stand, Gwen crossed her arms over her bosom, before turning her head, to look back out over the horizon of the moonlit beach. "I didn't find it right away. The Omnitrix, that is. I was happening along one day, a few days after we got washed ashore here. There it was. You were on the other side of the island, trying to find different fruit. I was excited, at first. I did try to send a message to Grandpa."

"You what?" Ben replied, standing up slowly, the Omnitrix held tightly in his grasp as he took a step forward, closer to Gwen. "You mean you did try to- but then why don't you want us to get off the island if- what did Grandpa say? What else are you keeping from me?"

"Don't shout at me!" Gwen exclaimed, reacting to the rise in Ben's tone of voice. "I'm sorry! I guess I wanted to at least let Grandpa know we were okay so he and our family wouldn't worry about us. But it didn't matter anyway. Grandpa didn't get the signal I sent out. As I said before, the technology for it is experimental."

When Ben said nothing, Gwen continued on. "So anyway, like I said, Grandpa didn't pick up on it. But someone else did. More than one person. And as I listened in, I realized that they were talking about finding the signal coming from the Omnitrix, and knowing where to find it now, and I knew they weren't familiar voices, and I knew that whoever was speaking, they couldn't be up to any good."

"So why didn't you tell me about all this?" Ben said, staring back at his cousin in disbelief.

"Well, I meant to!" she answered defensively. "But all the talk of finding the signal scared me, since I didn't know who was saying it exactly. So, so I buried the Omnitrix, right here where you found it, meaning to tell you about it when you came back from the other side of the island, but I just never did."

"You just… never… did?" Ben repeated back slowly, looking and feeling dumbfounded. "Do you at least have any reasons for just never telling me something so important, Gwen?"

Not answering right away, the redhead instead turned and stepped into the lagoon. She had soon waded out a good way into it, the water coming up to her stomach as she stood there, looking back at Ben. "The water," she said to him. "It makes me remember how I felt, and how I felt is why I never told you. I mean, when you kissed me - albeit, to save our lives - something in me changed. And, I'm sure I'm really, really wrong for not telling you about the Watch. But whenever I would come over here, to this water… I don't know. Something about the lagoon made me feel that I didn't need to tell you. It made me feel like maybe we were supposed to be here. Maybe it had all happened for a reason."

"Gwen… I know you're afraid that we can't be together if we go back to Bellwood, but we can be. We will be. And who knows? Maybe you are halfway right. Maybe we did get washed up here, just so we can realize something we both already knew for a long time. But, that doesn't have to mean that we're meant to stay here, now that we've figured it out. Right?"

Closing her eyes, Gwen turned and waded out further into the water, until it was up to her neck. Breathing in and out deeply, she eventually answered with, "When I'm right here, like this, with you, I'll be honest; I feel like I'd almost be okay with never going back."

"Gwen…"

"Now, I'm not saying that we won't ever go back. If we can find a way to, I'm sure we will, some time, some day. I just wonder if it isn't too soon, Ben."

Glancing down at the Omnitrix in his hand as it began to blink again, this time more rapidly, the shaggy haired young man was soon looking away, toward the direction of the trees as the sound of distant helicopter blades whirring could be heard.

"Gwen, I get the feeling that we might not have a say in the matter either way," he said. "The Forever Knights are coming back."