Notes: If at first you don't succeed, go into a internalised tantrum, recklessly delete and upload again and again. And hope that this time, the 'updated' date doesn't remain stuck on the 3rd March.

It was like a Disney movie. Rook had been forced to watch those things with Ben during the first few early months of their partnership, and in truth it had been no great hardship; but though the twinkling lights of animated spells being invoked was a pretty thing to watch unfold on screen, it still paled in comparison to what was happening through the window in front of him. The star was beginning to unravel, straining sparks rushing out into the blackness of space to dive away into glittering threads. These were roped through and around the dwindling gold disc, forced flat as though the separate palms of a god had slammed down together onto either side in a clap, before the ice-like rings of the former Anodyne suddenly sprung out into existence. And as though this were a signal, the star enclosed within started to burn down into a dull red, the yellow fading as the flames flickering around its edges coiled down into the ambient glow that Rook remembered seeing in a visual file once.

'Wow.' Shar was leaning forward, her free hand pressing against the window, nose just shy of touching the actual screen. 'It is like watching magic.'

Rook smiled weakly. Any other time, and he would have torn himself away from the wheel in order to join her. 'You are not wrong.'

'Hmm.'

He bristled slightly; Charmcaster's hands were resting on the back of his seat in that casual way humans sometimes had of grasping other's personal space for themselves.

'You say you saw Ben? As an Anodite?'

Rook breathed through his nose; he had been disoriented as time had snapped back into being, the feel of Ben vanishing from his arms and causing him to sway, his shadow rushing back to cover the movements of the two girls beside him as it should. Shar had quickly seized his elbow, shoving him back into the seat while Charmcaster chose to pat him on the head like he was a dog. Either way, the words had tripped out of his tongue and he had perhaps disclosed a little too much information to someone who had every reason not to know.

'I will not repeat myself,' he said firmly.

But Charmcaster cackled. 'Oooh, this is classic! Gwen never gets to embrace her heritage and explore it fully, and yet the first time Ben goes off to the planet she rejected, he turns super-Anodite, ascends to a higher dimension and converts it and all its inhabitants into some nexus of boiling, raging mana! It's just too good!'

Rook narrowed his eyes and took a moment to tear his eyes away from the sight that so enthralled Shar.

'How do you know-'

'That Gwen turned down a one-way ticket to becoming a super-charged Anodite? Honestly you Plumbers and your computers. It's like you think your fancy encryptions actually stand a chance against magic.'

Rook opened his mouth, but Shar had already whirled round, disapproval evident in the way she wrinkled her nose. 'Plumber files are not for the consumption of the public! Especially not for those who hold criminal intent!'

Charmcaster waved a hand dismissively. 'Oh, cry me a river!'

To which Shar's nose wrinkled even further. 'Such a thing is hardly possible,' she said stiffly. 'And even if it were, I do not cry.'

Charmcaster blinked. Then leaned over further into Rook's personal space, her hand pressed over her mouth as though to direct her voice straight into his ears. 'Is she for real?' Sadly however, the volume of her words remained unchanged and Shar bristled.

To which Rook could only sigh.

'Feed-'

'Mana into gas, very straightforward-'

'See the atoms, how they bounce around? Make 'em slow, cool fires down instantly-'

It's hard but Rook's right. By opening up a dialogue and hesitantly pushing out questions into the midst of those voices, Ben got a response. Several.

'Listen,' said one, 'feel as I do. Push-'

And Ben did. He saw light and swirls of energy, energy that was desperate to reform, to be as it was.

'You don't have to try so hard. It will get easier, as we pull ourselves out of the either of your mind, of this invisible space you have carved out for ourselves. You've done well, Ben. Very well.'

The voice was familiar, not warm, but heartbreaking gentle. It quivered in his mind, like a phone that needed to be picked up, a mobile with the vibration function set to its lowest setting. If he could he would have blinked.

'Grandma?'

'Shh,' she said, but her voice wavered, as though she had to swallow before she spoke. 'You're doing just fine. You're very nearly there.'

There was something pressing on the corner of his mind, images of crafting mana into solid blocks, of weaving a small ball of light from ice dust collected from Anodyne's rings. Ben tried not to shake as a laugh rang out, young and girlish, hands not his own cradling the distinct glimmer of a tiny star, more lamp than gas, as it floated into his memory.

Yes, like that,' cooed Verdona. 'Read my memory. And then read the energy out there. See where it wants to go. And I will help.'

'Me too.' Another voice, subdued and sulky. 'He's not even a full Anodite, not like me. And I feel more like me, now that Anodyne's back in the sky. I can help.'

'Oh hush, you spoiled brat.' Verdona, Ben noted, sounded very, very huffy. 'This is your fault!'

'Then let me fix it, Grandma!'

'And me!'

'And us!'

'I don't care, I just want my head back again...'

Ben relaxed and let the voices thrum out of him, let them flow away, pushing slightly as he watched arms and legs appear, spiralling out of the gloom. Then there was a jerk and he gasped, all of him suddenly solid and floating and Verdona pushed at him, more mentally than physically, but it was enough to send him rearing out into visibility, against all the Anodites sprouting like starfish into the dark. Dimly, he could see the spacecraft hovering nearby, Rook's face staring out at him from the gloom, open in astonishment.

He felt almost like grinning and winking in return only...only he could think, a lot more clearer than he had been able to before without all that energy swirling round and round holding him back. And... and he remembered.

Fistrick had screamed. At first it might have been a bellow. But it had definitely emerged into a scream as the metal of the space-station melted away, the sudden influx of energy twisting and turning it into free-flowing atoms without any form to bind them together. Ben hadn't cared. He had just felt the pressure lift briefly, a blinding sense of freedom before it had all cloistered in again and he had tried to grab hold of the screaming voices before they faded forever. What was one human scream amongst the multitude? Energy called to energy, and it, he, Fistrick was comprised of flesh, his mana locked away inside a different kind of cage.

Let him die.It had been Sunny, her voice cold and small before Ben had pulled her into him, but she had been fully formed in the way no one else had been, and, as the Amber Ogia was pulled from her thighs, as her fingers were whispered away from the realm of the physical, her hair swirled out and struck Fistrick in the face. And the force sent him flying out through shards of disintegrating metal, out into the cold, out into the black...

Ben broke out of his thoughts, spun round dizzily. But there was no human body caught in the orbit of Anodyne. No Fistrick floating, lifeless and empty.

He spun to Verdona. But her eyes were cold.

'It is just as well that his mana is not to be found here,' she said. 'There would not be a warm reception for him amongst any of us.'

Ben shuddered. He had crossed lines before, left enemies out in places where the odds of survivability was low. But he hadn't even tried to ensure Fistrick's safety this time. He stared down at his hands, at the purple glow of them. He felt cold, alien in a way he had never felt before, not even when he was Alien X, locked inside with what felt to be an entire galaxy separating him from Bellacious and Serena.

Verdona softened, and reached down to take his hands with hers.

'Come,' she said. 'You need the touch of a spark warmer than the one you presently hold.'

And with a flash they were inside the ship.

'Ben!'

Ben felt arms wrap around him, arms that should be familiar and they were. But he felt nothing. No warmth, and the fur that had always tickled his skin now rasped against the surface of his Anodite form with a quality akin to an itch. There was no mana tucked inside its ends, no, all the really interesting stuff lay below the skin, the nerves, the beat of that heart, everything that kept it moving. How could he have never seen it before?

But Verdona's hand tightened on his shoulder like a wrench refusing to let go.

'It must be overwhelming,' she said carefully and Ben frowned, reading a calculating air to her tone. 'Even for one who transforms as freely as you do. There is no DNA to hold you steady, not this time.'

Rook drew back and Ben was surprised to feel a twinge when the other's brow furrowed as he stared straight up into Verdona's watchful gaze.

'He is not in his original human form,' the Revonnahgander said cautiously. 'Mrs...'

He hesitated and Verdona smirked. Ben stared dully at the floor. Grandma and Grandpa had never married. And there had never been any record of her existing under a false name, so the idea of her having a surname...well, perhaps she didn't have one. It was weird. Rook's discomfort was...it wasn't irritating and he had this distant recollection of laughing or smirking other times awkward occasions like this had happened, but now...he wasn't sure what to do.

'Verdona,' Rook said, finally giving up, and frowning even further as she let out a chuckle. 'Explain, if you will, what has happened to my lover.'

Lover. Ben saw Charmcaster mouth the word over incredulously to Rook Shar, who glared back as though the girl had been swearing silently. Now there was a story that oddly enough, he didn't care about. He might have done before, back when he was small and warm. But now?

He looked at them and saw that the sparks inside their bodies were small and dim, weighed down by all that breathing and blood and closeted away behind muscle tone that would wither and die as soon as the mana inside ceased. They could never swirl together with another being the way he and every Anodite on Anodyne had. Never give birth to a star or recreate a planet. Never be anything more than embers from a fire the universe was still stingy about delivering.

And yet, little as they were, they still shone vivaciously. Shar's mana was small and warm and yellow, pulsing fiercely like a fragile heart inside her, while Charmcaster's swirled, fierce and white, like a pale owl beating its wings in preparation for the dive for prey. Jagged streaks of purple burst across the space inside her frame, rendering it slightly bigger than Shar's perhaps due to her aptitude for magic. But it looked uglier too, the mixture of colour putting him in mind of a book page ruined by water.

Rook's though...it was still tiny to everything he had just experienced. But oh, it gleamed, warm and orange and nestled inside his chest and Ben felt the pull of it, wanting to twist the energy out and thread it through his own spark, joining them together like the weave of a basket. Softly glowing like a children's nightlight and far from the burning mass of a star or the vibrant shower of a firework, it made him feel stronger just by looking at it.

'Ben.' Words were so small, so disconnected from pure thought, lacking the imagery to match, and yet the sound of his name made Ben flinch. And then Rook's finger was under his chin, lifting it up so that the orange eyes above would hook him in. 'Look me in the face.'

Ben didn't have to crane his neck. For one thing he was floating slightly off the ground, stabilising the height difference between them. And for another, he had no bones to crack as his head soared back.

'Sorry,' he said, marveling at this need to apologise. Why should he? 'I can see so much more now that I don't have a thousand busybodies chattering in my ear. I finally get all this 'spark' stuff my grandma's always mentioning.' He shoved his hand against Rook's chest teasingly and then felt sad when he felt no real corresponding flutter drifting up along his nerves – or whatever passed for them in this body. 'Yours is tiny by the way.'

But he mourned the lack of energy transfer here. Mana couldn't travel through skin and bone and sweat. If he wanted to experience a sexual spark he would probably need to wear some himself.

'Thank you,' said Rook coldly in a tone that meant he wasn't sure what to make of Ben's words in general. Then he fixed his eyes on Verdona. 'As I said before, an explanation would be appreciated.'

Ben could feel Verdona hovering over his shoulder, but didn't turn round.

'I can only guess,' she said. 'I am not the first Anodite to have produced offspring with another species, you must understand. But it is so rare for the spark to manifest itself properly, that we don't have a sure-fire way to test for it accurately. Gwen showed no sign of it when she was a baby – and look how she turned out.'

'Maybe you should have taken her to Anodyne, back then,' Ben murmured without thinking.

Verdona shot him a sharp look. 'Yes, maybe. Anodites don't have a symbiotic connection to our planet the way some creatures do. But Anodyne is still the place where the energy of our ancestors first formed, the place we gravitate to when we are feeling lost or homesick. And its mysteries are still something many of our mystics fail to understand. I suspect it has an energy of its own that is too great for us to understand, even if we can help to reform it when it is lost. And I daresay something about it tapped into you when we arrived here, woke up something that would have otherwise stayed dormant.' She paused, the expression on her face transforming into something half-hopeful. 'I wonder if Kenneth would react the same as you if we brought him here.'

Ben felt something stab at him. 'No,' he said, surprised to feel his voice come out strong and almost unfiltered by the Anodite resonance that had stained it before; it was more like a whisper passing through now, a gentle breeze running underneath. 'He likes to keep his distance from this kinda stuff. He wants a normal life; that's what he told me and Gwen.'

Verdona gave him a sly look, her hair flickering slightly. 'I thought as much.'

'I do not understand.'

Ben blinked and saw Shar step forward, all of her looking very unsure. Her eyes darted over to him, and there was a slight wince on her face, like he was too bright for her to look at; and then her gaze ran down the length of his arm and with a jolt, Ben realised that Rook's fingers were digging into his wrist in a way that should have hurt. But he didn't feel it; no what he really felt was the energy jumping inside Rook, lighting him up like a firecracker. And something in him flared out in response.

'Hey Blonko,' he crooned, cupping the other's chin with his hand. His fingers looked like streaks of oil against that furry jaw and he missed it somehow, that sensation of softness dipping and gliding into every whorl and pore of his skin. 'Why're you so angry?'

But Blonko stared back at him, a muscle ticking in his jaw, as though he was unmoved by the usage of the name he had chosen for himself. Ben frowned.

And Shar coughed lightly. 'Perhaps he feels as I do. For if you feel so strongly about Kenneth not becoming...what you are now' – what an impolite evasion, Ben thought, like 'Anodite' was a dirty word for her - 'then why do you think it would have been better for your other cousin to arrive here when she was younger and not fully-formed and therefore unable to give proper consent?'

Ben tore his fingers away, feeling very much as though it was his turn to light up like a firecracker. 'I...' he gasped, only that was wrong, he didn't need to gasp, but still something was pressing in on his chest and it made him sink to the floor, curling his knees beneath his hands. Rook let go of his wrist as he fell and Ben could feel the energy of him flare out slightly like a beacon or perhaps an alarm, before he crouched down over him, all of him hovering like an impromptu shield. But he didn't touch him.

'Wow,' he heard Charmcaster say in the background, her voice alight with glee. 'I've seen soap operas with less drama than this-OW!'

'My apologies,' said Shar stiffly, and there was a noise then, of material drawing back, or perhaps just an elbow un-creasing itself from the lining of Charmcaster's gut.

In another time, place or date, Ben would have laughed. As it was, with his vision blocked off by the dark slide of Rook's body, all he could do now was wonder, dimly, if Shar had used her good arm, or the heavily bandaged one to inflict the attack.

'I never knew there was girl out there more prim and proper than Gwendolyn, but congratulations, I think you're getting there,' Charmcaster muttered. And Ben was vaguely surprised she didn't follow up her statement with a threat or an attempted spell.

'It's alright.' And there was Verdona, her smooth undulating energy running over him, smoothly settling over his shoulder in the shape of her hands. It felt like coming home. 'There, there. Anodyne gave what was in you a boost, but your spark isn't anywhere near the size of Gwen's. You were only able to do what you did, because every other Anodite was unavailable and you had the fury of a torn apart planet running through your...' she hesitated. 'I want to say veins, to give you a familiar expression to hold onto, but that's not really accurate, is it?'

'Most unfitting for the situation at hand,' Rook agreed, but his voice had a rumble to it, a low warning burr that made Ben twitch and remember the way a near-growl had rolled through that throat on multiple occasions, ones that were usually private and consisted of harsh arguments.

'You are more human than you are Anodite,' Verdona continued on breezily, as though Rook had not spoken. 'Though it is probably hard to remember in your current condition. And if you remain in it much longer, you will forget it entirely. You will be incapable of wanting what Gwen wants; a more balanced existence.'

'Then help him!' Ben hurt at Rook's tone and wasn't that a novel feeling? Familiar, too. 'Help him change back!'

There was a shift in the shadows above him, light pouring in through the gap Rook's outstretched arms left open and an even more familiar whirl of noise, before Verdona's voice cut in, low and quick. 'Really, young man, do you think that weapon will do any good against something like me?'

'Blonko...' Shar voice's floated out, whispered and unsure, like it could shatter into a million pieces and...

'Oooh!' Okay, that was definitely Charmcaster. And she wasn't whispering at all.

Ben looked up, the slant of the Proto-Tool cutting a line against the light above. It seemed to hover there indecisively, a grey blur in his vision that refused to fall.

'I have no real wish to harm you,' Rook spoke quietly, 'but I will confess that I have the urge to hurt something. More importantly, you have the skill and experience to help Ben retain his human form, something which I have now learnt seems to be dependent on time. And you have been wasting it...on exposition!' The last two words came out in a near shout, and the Proto-Tool damn near shuddered in those blue hands stretched above.

Ben carefully raised himself to his feet, taking care not them detach from the floor, no matter how easy it would be.

'You WILL help him become as he was and you WILL do it now, without wasting any more of our...'

Ben tuned him out. The urge to float was overpowering, compelling, but Ben fought against it, almost stumbling forward on legs that suddenly felt as shaky as a newborn colt's.

'Roook,' he whined, before he threw himself forward, fingers tugging on clumps of fur as his arms soared up and attempted to hook their way round Rook's neck. It took a small jump to reach the necessary height and an almost inhuman amount of willpower to squash down the urge to remain in the air there, but he let the artificial gravity pull at him, yanking him down. He hung there, like a puppy or kitten hanging from its mother's mouth and for a moment, the air was filled not with his floating Anodite form, but the sound of Charmcaster's laughter.

'Ben?' The Proto-Tool didn't clatter to the ground and Rook's arms didn't fall round him the way they would have done if they were living through a scene in one of Gwen's favourite movies, but the Revonnahgander didn't try to shake him off either.

'Hey,' Ben managed, 'tell me what's it like to play soccer? And eat chilli-fires? 'Cos Grandma's right. I'm having trouble remembering.'

'This really isn't the time...'

'No!' A new voice cut in, sounding extraordinarily stroppy. 'Now's exactly the time!'

Ben felt his mouth quirk into a tired smile. 'Hey stranger.'

Sunny's energy seemed to spill into the spacecraft in a heat-wave; nobody else could feel it but him and Verdona, Ben was sure, but he still felt Rook tense slightly beneath his grip. It near-on sizzled, angry and red and determined in a way he recognised from feeling the stifling air in Gwen's room as she slaved over multiple papers.

'Hiya,' said Sunny, now sounding uncharacteristically shyer. Then her voice perked up. 'Oooh, so this is him, huh? The boyfriend?'

The boyfriend. Not your boyfriend. Like it was an honorary title.

'Ben, what exactly have you been saying to her?' Rook whispered urgently, and Ben hid his face against his chest. One good thing about Anodite form was that there was no physical muscle strain to contend with – no, wait, that was bad right? He shouldn't be thinking like that, right? Not if he wanted to get better.

'Rule one that you learn on Anodyne when you're, like, a baby is to trust your intuition,' Sunny chattered on. 'You can't shape mana without it. So stop playing the lame-o part of a space cop, quit threatening my Grandma and listen to your boyfriend! Honestly, if you're in love this should be easy! He wants to remember being human so he can shape his mana to match it, so tell him, do it.'

Ben could picture Rook's eyes widening in realisation, but with his face still hidden, all he could feel was a flicker in the mana of the body he was attached to. Then one of Rook's arms folded round him, the other slid the Proto-Tool away, and then both arms were suddenly holding him, and Ben felt his feet slide back against the ground as Rook lowered them both down. And then they were on the floor, his legs sliding out over and away from Rook's lap as the long legs curled and crossed beneath him.

'Wouldn't a chair be more comfortable?' Ben asked sardonically. And oh good, he remembered chairs, what it was like to sink into a sofa, soft with plumped up cushions but...air was so much better, it coiled round limbs and parted to let them slip through whatever sky you wished for and...and...

'I am most comfortable where you are presently,' Rook said steadily, and Ben wanted to snort because of course Rook would sound all romantic without meaning to. 'But I will be more comfortable when I can feel your warmth again and hear you actually breathe.' He hesitated.

'That's right,' Ben encouraged. 'Less fact, more feeling. Don't get hung up the science.'

'Alright,' said Rook carefully, 'I may not know what it is like to be human and to not have fur, but our bodies have similar shapes and so have similar properties' – he took a breath and then began to warm to his subject. '-So I can tell you that drinking a smoothie too fast will result in brain-freeze. And it will feel like all of you has stopped, hurt by the snowball that suddenly fills the entirety of your skull...and that a soccer ball, when it hits your foot or your hand, leaves a stinging pain across the flesh it touches. It feels sharp like a sting, bounces right across with the same force that you feel hitting the water after a mistimed dive. It shakes your bones, makes them thud, even though they have probably not moved.'

Ben let Rook's voice pour over him, let the memories come rolling in with the words, that sharp twist of an ankle when he was eight and kicked the ball the wrong way, that time he first tasted a smoothie and found it gross, not because of the taste, but because it made his brain feel like an ice-cold rock...and slowly, slowly, he peeled the energy from his muscles, forced them to squeeze around and into the coils of blood that pumped round his system, that flushed into as deep and steady a pulse as Rook's voice was describing.

'...but when you are excited, when I see you enthralled by the blinking lights and loud noises of your video games, it flitters like a small bird. It is almost like rain, how fast the beat falls.'

'Mmm,' Ben sighed, letting him sink deeper into Rook's arms, to feel heavier, too heavy to float, the bones and muscles weighing him down. He could remember the slide and feel of them, knocking down his centre, pouring into him as dark as water. 'You should be a poet.'

Rook chuckled and then his hand was scraping through the wavy tendrils of white adorning Ben's head. 'No. I am a Plumber. And you are a superhero. A famous one, who gets equal parts adored and criticised. Remember that? The crowds? The autograph signings?'

Ben could. And the thrum of energy that went with it, all those smiles, as bright and gleaming as the accompanying camera flashes.

'No!' Sunny broke in sounding panicky, 'keep it all nice and romantic, like you were before! It flowed. And don't bring other people into it! You'll ruin it!'

'Oh my actual God,' Charmcaster muttered.

'Or Brallada,' Shar added from beside her, sounding equally as disturbed.

Rook sighed. 'Fine. Remember your hair? If it is anything like mine, not my fur, it feels pleasant when others shape it with their hands. Like a hug, only more intimate. And I remember yours being a lot softer than this.'

Ben remembered too, he did. He closed his eyes.

'It didn't swim around my hands like it does now. I could make it rise as I wish, but it was rebellious too; it is not quite right to talk as though it possessed a sentience of its own but it sometimes felt like that, with the way it bounced beneath my palm and how it would disobey any effort to make it lie flat for an extended period of time.'

Ben breathed, just listening. And no sooner than he had exhaled, Rook gasped, though the sound came out more relieved than shocked.

So it was, with a little alarm and now feeling abruptly warm, that Ben opened his eyes. Only to see wavy lines of brown drip down over his eyes, parted haphazardly by Rook's fingers that combed through and fell down to settle at his cheek. And Ben winced as lightning sparked at the touch, electricity shivering down into his skin to make his heart shudder out a discordant stutter in the rhythm that had barely started to beat.

'There you are,' Rook said softly, reading the astonishment in Ben's eyes correctly. And then he smiled, wild and bright, and the only orange Ben could now manage to see in him was the eager glaze of his eyes above.

Notes: Stupid, sappy romance. For stupid, sappy characters.

But did I have fun writing this chapter? Oh boy, did I have fun. Why can't all chapters be this fun?