A/N: Sorry this chapter took a while. Been super busy with work lately. Thanks for the follows, favorites, and comments!
At her brother's request, Michaela went to meet Ben at a park beside the police station after her shift ended. He said he just wanted to talk, but his voice was laced with anxiety. She figured he must know about Saanvi's pregnancy, and sure enough- Saanvi confirmed that via text message.
"Hey you," Michaela greeted Ben with a hug, before pulling back and taking in her brother's distracted demeanor. "You look like you could use a drink," she noted.
"I probably could," Ben conceded as they sat down on a bench. "You know I really thought things would go back to normal once we came back. I mean, I knew it would take some adjusting, but now..." He trailed off and looked at his sister. "Mick, something happened before the Death Date. And it's gonna make things complicated for our family. You might be the only person who could understand."
"About how you knocked up Saanvi?" Michaela surmised, to which Ben responded with a look of surprise.
"How did you-"
"She told me what happened," Michaela admitted. "I think she just needed some advice about how to handle the situation. Seeing that her baby's father is married with a family. She didn't want to cause any problems for you and Grace."
Ben sighed. "I'm not sure there's a way to avoid that. Even if Grace believes everything about 828, even if she knows I didn't cheat on her...it's asking a lot for her to accept this situation."
Michaela shrugged. "It'll be hard, but it's what you do when you love someone. Grace moved on while you were gone, and you didn't hold it against her. Because you understood that years had passed in her time. I went through the same thing with Jared. So, I really do think Grace will be okay once she has some time to process all this. As long as she trusts that you and Saanvi aren't anything more than friends." Michaela raised a brow, waiting for Ben's confirmation on that- which caught him off guard.
"Me and Saanvi were never in a relationship," he pointed out. "We're close friends who turned to each other once."
"That doesn't mean there's no attraction there," Michaela countered. "And if there is...Ben, you have to deal with it. You and Saanvi are having a baby. You'll be spending more time together, and those lines will start to get blurred. You may not even notice at first, but I promise you that Grace will."
"We're just friends, Mick," Ben reiterated. "This situation is already complicated enough without you trying to turn it into some love triangle."
"Okay," his sister relented, throwing her hands up. "Look, I just don't want any of you to get hurt. You, Grace, Saanvi, the kids...I want you all to be happy. You deserve that."
Ben nodded. "I want that too. More than anything. I want to believe we can make this work. I want to look forward to being a dad again. This pregnancy...it came as a shock. But I already know how much I'll love my son or daughter. It'll be an amazing kid."
Michaela gave him a small smile. "It already is. I mean, how many babies can say they traveled through time after their parents helped save humanity from the apocalypse? With a backstory like that, this kid's practically destined for greatness."
Ben returned a slight smile, and Michaela pulled him into a hug. "Come here. This will all work out," she promised. "All things work together for good, right?"
"All things for good," he confirmed.
Ben felt better after talking to his sister and taking some time to think further on the situation. He was starting to believe that things really would be okay once Grace and the rest of the family had a chance to process the news. But that didn't make him less anxious about telling her. He was currently just putting on a smile for Cal and Olive's sakes as he told them goodnight.
"Sleep tight, guys. Love you," he said, hugging them both. Grace did the same, and the two kids then disappeared up the staircase- leaving the married couple alone in the living room.
"Ready to talk now?" Grace asked.
"Yeah," Ben answered, sitting down on the couch with her. "Look, you were right. What you said about me being distracted, having a disconnect with the family...it's all true. I wish it wasn't. I thought I could just fall back into our old life, like nothing ever happened. Like I hadn't spent the past five years living in another world-"
"Another world?" Grace raised a brow at him. "What are you talking about?"
Ben took a shaky breath. "I realize how crazy this is going to sound, but I need you to hear me out. When we left Jamaica, the plane that I was on with Cal and Mick- flight 828- it landed five years into the future. To you, to the rest of the world, we were all presumed dead for those five years until the plane reappeared. But to us...it was like no time had passed at all."
Grace blinked, like she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Ben...honey," she started, slowly. "That plane didn't disappear. It landed exactly when it was supposed to."
"It seems that way now because we were finally transported back to 2013," he explained. "No one outside of the 828 passengers has any memory of everything that happened. But we lived in this other timeline for another five years. When we first got back, we started getting callings- kind of like premonitions- voices in our heads, or visions, that usually led us to help people-"
"Ben, you're talking about things that are literally impossible," Grace protested. "Time traveling, supernatural powers-"
"I know," he said, taking her hand in his. "If I hadn't lived this, I wouldn't believe it myself. But look at the things that have happened since we came back. You said I've been acting strange. It's because I just came from a world where 828 passengers were persecuted, we were detained, we were experimented on. A world where I'd lost you. You died, Grace. Our kids were grown. Those older versions of Cal and Olive...I'm still trying to adjust to life without them. Life without Eden, our little girl. One day this life will seem normal again, but I'm just not there yet."
Grace could only shake her head in disbelief. "I want to get you checked out," she told him. "At the hospital. Right now. Let me just get a neighbor to watch the kids."
"Honey, there's nothing wrong with me," Ben insisted.
"Nothing wrong? You are talking crazy, Ben. You could have a concussion or something. We're going to get you checked out."
"The doctors are not going to understand this," he told her. "Look, let's just go to Mick's. She can back up everything I'm telling you. So can Saanvi. They lived this too."
"Saanvi...you mean Dr. Bahl? The one treating Cal?"
Ben nodded. "She's a good friend of mine. Her research saved Cal's life before. That's why I know she can do it again. And with Mick...don't you think it's strange that she jumped out of a long-term relationship with Jared and straight into another one with someone new? It's because Zeke wasn't new to her. They'd already fallen in love before."
Grace let his words sink in for a moment. It did actually explain a lot.
"What about Cal?" she questioned. "He was on the plane. Why isn't he acting odd?"
"His memory was wiped too," Ben answered. "I guess because he wasn't tested with the rest of us, or maybe that was his reward for passing his test...to get to be a normal kid. I really don't know."
"Wait, what test do you mean?" Grace was beyond confusion at this point.
Ben sighed. "At the end of the five years, we had a Death Date. That's the day we'd figured out that we'd have some kind of test to see if we live or die. Those eleven passengers that went missing? They failed their tests. The rest of us passed, so we got to travel back in time. We got a second chance."
Grace stared at him briefly, before taking a deep breath and standing to pace the room. Ben could see that she was struggling to process everything.
"Okay. No doctors for now," she finally decided. "But I want to talk to Michaela about all this. And I want the two of you to answer every question I have. I mean it, Ben. No more secrets."
"No more secrets," he agreed, even as he contemplated how in the world he would tell her the one that could damage their marriage the most...