Ben's bedroom
June 21, 2000
2:25 PM
The two days after returning home felt like an eternity, even though they were mostly filled with uneasy sleep. Ben had never felt so tired, so weary (and now he understood what that word really meant), and he knew Gwen had to be feeling it even more. His parents told him she needed rest so she could heal from the concussion, and the horrible bruises he saw from the even more horrific injuries he didn't protect her from, so he didn't call or text. He was leaving her alone so could get better. That's what he told himself anyway. He couldn't face the real reason.
After three days he finally didn't need to sleep so much. It didn't matter, the nightmares kept him from it anyway. Even dead, Vilgax tormented him. And regardless of the visions of four days ago, the horrors from the previous summers when he failed to protect her and keep her safe never went away.
But he didn't know what to do. She wasn't there, and he couldn't call, there was no way. And even though he saw the worry in his parents eyes, they couldn't stay with him all day. He knew they had to get back to their routines. Not that it mattered, he wasn't sure he could handle having them around all the time anyway. They tried to be reassuring and supportive, but he couldn't answer their questions beyond what Grandpa told them about the crash, and he certainly couldn't tell them about her. His inability to confide in them was frustrating for all of them, and only piled on to his isolation.
So while they were out, he did all the usual things he used to do when he was alone - play Sumo, practice karate, read comics, watch movies and TV. He even listened to the radio and searched around on the Interwebs for songs he might try to learn. He couldn't concentrate on any of them, though, and they only made him more restless. Finally he convinced his parents to let him get out of the house by himself to go to the music store, and he got replacement strings for the ones Fourarms broke when she had come over.
He tried to play some of the songs he did that day, but they didn't work right on one guitar, and he couldn't do two again even if he had them. Without the watch there was no more Fourarms, and he couldn't even think about putting it back on without locking up in panic, let alone do it for something so trivial. Even if he did put it back on, he knew he couldn't have another day like that with her again anyway, because she would never want to.
He tried the songs he could play with just his guitar, but they were even worse. His fingers faltered and stumbled like he did when he was eight, and they all reminded him of her and what wasn't there any more, and even Detroit Rock City - especially that song - just hurt. The memories of all those times turned bitter as he realized that was all he would ever have.
Ben tore off the headphones that kept the godawful noise he was making to himself. He dropped his guitar and let the strap hold it as he sat on the desk chair staring at the place where he had spent so many hours with his best friend playing games and watching movies and listening to music; where he kissed her when he thought they were more than that... Then he leaned in with his elbows on the desk and pressed his face in his hands as sadness overwhelmed him.
It wasn't fair!
She finally answered his kiss and his question from outside the ice rink - What do you want? - after he'd just about given up that she could ever feel for him the way he did for her. Her kiss was so unexpected that he almost missed it, and then he recognized the answer in it - 'I want what you want.' It was what he had wished for for months, and he answered with another one back, one that lasted for forever, and not nearly long enough. One that had a world of meaning without words. And the best part? One that she returned without hesitation. He had gotten his Dweeb back!
He wasn't ready for the emotions that were all jumbled together from that - relief, shyness, excitement, a little bewilderment, the elation he felt just being with her that made him feel... He couldn't describe it, but it was the best feeling he ever had! Made all the better when she cuddled close.
It lasted only minutes.
Then that bastard came and stole it from them, along with the lives of all those people in the city, and almost theirs. When he thought his Gwen and Grandpa were dead, he went berserk and tore the monster who did it in two, making him a killer on top of everything else. Ben's sadness and guilt were replaced by a white hot fury that he couldn't contain, and he lashed out, grabbing the guitar and slamming his hand across the strings, breaking one in a sound that was just wrong!
"DAMN IT!" he shouted and slammed his hands on the desk, making some pens and pencils skitter and fall off the side.
It didn't help. It changed nothing. He was still alone, and still broken. And even though his Dweeb was alive - thank God for that! - he had still lost her.
"Damn it!" he whispered. "I want her back."
He felt his eyes well up on the verge of crying, except heroes didn't. Then he looked at his left wrist, where the Omnitrix wasn't, and remembered he wasn't a hero any more. He lost that, too.
Ben stood up and took the guitar off as his anger dissolved into soul crushing misery.
He fell face first into his pillow and sobbed.
— X —
Sandy had walked up the stairs at the first sounds coming from her son's guitar, hoping it meant he might be coming back to his normal happy self. She and Carl heard his cries and tried to relieve his panic and fear after the nightmares every night, even though they couldn't imagine what caused them. She was sick with worry at how he mostly stayed in his room all day, and that he made no attempt to even call Gwen. After all the Friday nights they spent together, the sudden cutoff was a shock.
Even though he usually played his guitar using headphones, the sound of the strings carried through his bedroom door. She wasn't really a fan of the music he was playing lately; her taste ran more to Bon Jovi, and Carole King when she was in a reflective mood. But she was impressed and proud at how he taught himself to play, even if he rarely let her and Carl hear it. Before the trip, though, he had gotten more confident and started trying new styles. He even started playing for his cousin, and then with his friend Paul.
Today was different for some reason, and she felt uneasy as she listened to his hesitant attempts at several songs he used play with his eyes closed, that now didn't sound righteven to her. Then there was a heavy silence, and a sudden angry hammering on the strings and the sound of one breaking. Followed by Ben's shouted curse, that would normally have seen her bursting through his door with a reprimand, but not today. Instead she waited, trying to be patient because of his recent trauma. She listened intently and was shocked by a muffled sound she hadn't heard from him since first grade.
Her boy was crying, as if there was only pain and sorrow in a shattered world.
It broke her heart as she wondered what could affect him that way, and hurried in to console him.
/
Gwen's bedroom
June 24, 2000
6:22 AM
She woke up terrified at the nightmare, almost jumping to sit stiffly upright, gasping and covered in another cold sweat, confused about where she was.
The room was still dark even though the sun had been up for an hour, and Gwen had left the curtains half open so there'd at least be some starlight through the window when the demons came in the middle of the night. The June gloom was in full effect, though, the morning fog casting a pall over the California coast from Mexico north. Gwen's panic started to subside, and the small part of her brain that wasn't freaking out recognized the irony of the dark start to her day after her dad assured her last night, "tomorrow will be better after you get a good night's rest" before giving her a kiss on the forehead.
The panic took longer to fade away than usual, as the only detail she could make out in the ghastly light was a blurred, angry red glow that was just like the one in Vilgax's eyes when the monster looked up at her, bent over the still form of her cousin, gore falling from the Omnitrix he had ripped off the boy's left wrist...
Its only the display from the alarm clock, she told herself, and focused on that until the hammering in her chest faded to normal. For just a second she thought she was in the Rust Bucket, and he was already climbing down from his bunk to make sure she was all right. The panic may be going away, but the sadness was still there, made worse as her reality came into focus and she knew she was in her bed, and he won't be coming to comfort her like she was used to. Like he did just last week.
Like she did for him the night before that, when he had called out her name in the middle of the night with a soft, strangled cry. He kept murmuring "I lost you", like he often did when he had his awful dreams. She crept into his bunk to wrap her arms around him and put her head against his so she could reassure him in a whisper, "I'm here Doofus, I won't let go". She stayed with him until she felt his tense body stop twitching and his racing heart and ragged breaths go back to normal, as he pretended to stay asleep. Then she carefully slipped back out, as if she were trying not to wake him, even though they both knew the truth.
He did the same for her after her nightmares, after all.
And now he wasn't there, and the reality and her nightmares were the same. She had let him down, and he was gone. She fell back under the covers, hugged her pillow and cried.
— X —
10:05 AM
"Gwen? Sweetie, are you awake?" she heard her mother's voice calling softly from the door. She turned in her bed away from the wall towards the sound, looking out at the shadowed room. The curtains were half closed to limit the post-fog sun in an attempt to keep the headache from coming back.
"Uh huh" she mumbled, still groggy from waking up ten minutes ago.
Her mom opened the door and walked to the side of her bed, reaching down to run her hand over her hair. The sudden flood of light made her wince, but her mom didn't catch it. "Good. Michelle is here, remember I asked her to come back when she came over two days ago? I thought you'd be feeling well enough now to have a visitor."
She pushed up slowly to sit and crossed her legs, and brushed the hair hanging over her right eye back behind her ear. "Yeah, OK Mom. ... It's about time you let her in, I'm bored senseless!"
"I know, but you know how concussions are. You need to rest, and limit making your brain work. That means no reading, books or computer screens! I know that's hard for you. But you can talk. Quietly, if that's possible with you two!" Her mom said as the worried frown she had changed to a little smile.
She started to grin at what her mom said, wondering how many nerd insults he could turn that into, before that thought crashed to a stop. She smiled weakly instead. "OK, Mom, I got it." It was irritating that she couldn't even complain right; she found out a day ago that rolling her eyes right now was only going to be painful to her. The smile got a bit bigger as her friend came creeping around her mom into the room, grinning back.
"Hey Crazy Girl" Michelle said softly, hesitatingly waving her left hand a little, as her mom walked out and pulled the door behind her.
Gwen laughed. "You don't have to whisper 'Chelle, even if Mom makes it sound like you should. Just don't shout in my ear!"
Michelle laughed back. "If you say so! … You've had a concussion before?" She said, taking a seat near the foot of the bed, looking worried.
"Yeah, a couple years ago when I slipped doing a beam routine at gymnastics. I hit my head on the way down..." she grimaced at the memory. "I had to stay out of school in bed for a week, and I couldn't practice for months!" Gwen frowned "This time's even worse, I can't do anything without getting a headache. It really sucks!"
Then she smiled again "I'm glad you're here, though. Doing nothing sounds great until you try to do it! And talking to only my parents... well, they try, but there's only so many times you can talk about what to have for dinner, you know? And Daddy doesn't even try to tell me about what he does at work any more."
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Maybe you can get one of those books on tape or something." Michelle smirked as she glanced at the door to make sure it was closed.
"So tell me about the dinner! Was he surprised? What did he think of the shirt?" She bounced from the edge of the bed to the middle facing Gwen, somehow managing to cross her legs in the process. She leaned forward and said "Did he sulk during the drive like you thought he would?!" and snickered.
Gwen laughed again at her friend's antics. She really was glad Michelle came over, she was tired of doing literally nothing all day. And her bright mood was infectious! Despite how her day started she was feeling better now. Still, when an opportunity to mess with her friend comes along,…
She frowned and said "I already told you about that. I don't know what else you expect me to say..."
"Oh come on, Crazy! A couple texts doesn't count and you know it! Tell me!" Michelle groused.
"Now you know what your teasing is like!" Gwen grinned as Michelle smacked her knee and grumbled "You are so awful!"
She smirked a little. "He sort of did, he took 40 minutes to shower and get changed. The shower by itself was a shocker! ... Then he tried to tell me he wasn't mad that I beat him. He finally told me what he was thinking on the last fall. He… made a mistake." Gwen looked at her belt display case, then said "If he hadn't, I might not have won. It was close." Michele just snorted.
"After that I was getting ready, so I wasn't watching him." She cringed. "Turned out I needed more practice with doing makeup." Then she described the whole wretched fiasco, trying to get the partially acquired skill right and failing more than a few times, taking an hour to do it. When she got to the part where he burst in and saw her, Michelle gasped, then grinned.
"He didn't really?! He said you always look pretty?! Wow, that's … that's amazing, is what that is! At least he got that right!"
Gwen smiled shyly. "Uh huh. Kind of made the whole thing worth it, in a sick way. When I came out after cleaning up, I finally noticed he had changed into his suit." Another gasp from her friend. "I know! I didn't even have to say anything to him. He looked so good! But I don't know what got into him about the tie, I had to straighten that out!"
Michelle was looking at her with wide eyes. "He wore a suit and tie? I can't even imagine what that looked like!" She laughed, making Gwen join in.
"And he liked the T-shirt?" He better have, after everything we went through when she got it, she thought.
"Yeah, he loved it! He was really surprised, but then he almost tore off the shirt and tie to put it on."
"Would that have been so bad, watching him?" Michelle said with a sly grin.
"Michelle!" Gwen blurted out as she felt her cheeks start to burn. She hadn't seen the doofus shirtless since the beginning of school, but when she did it made her brain skid in a direction she never expected. "Anyway, dinner was, well… I don't remember a lot about it, to tell you the truth, but it was... wonderful! We almost forgot Grandpa was there." She smiled at the memory before Michelle interrupted her. "You couldn't tell him then?" She asked, still smirking.
"I said almost forgot. Grandpa was right there!" Her smile faded, but Michelle didn't seem to notice.
"But you did the last time I texted you?! Right?!"
How can she be so excited, Gwen thought, unwilling to focus on that, not after the disaster that followed. Of course she is, she doesn't know what happened…
Despite her friend's oblivious bubbly mood, she felt herself falling back into the dark sadness she had been feeling since the trip back from Kryptos. Gwen felt her eyes welling up as her abrupt mood change finally registered on Michelle, and the girl's smile disappeared.
"Gwen? What's wrong? ... Your mom told me the concussion is still affecting you, should I get her?" She said, with a look of deepening concern.
Gwen felt a tear overflow and run down her cheek. She hurried to wipe it away.
"No." She she said in a shaky voice. "It's… It's him. … He can't feel that way about me any more. He hates me." Her voice tailed off to a whisper.
"What?! Why? Didn't you tell him how you feel about him?"
"Yes, before the... crash" Gwen felt miserable, as much about letting her pain show to her friend as about the cause.
Michelle put her hand on Gwen's and squeezed. "It's OK, I won't say anything. Whatever it is, let me help?"
Gwen looked at her and remembered how she lied to her best friend, and she had to still keep most of the truth hidden. But she couldn't keep up with the constant deception, not with her. Not someone she trusted with her feelings about him, anyway.
"I did... " She took a deep, shuddering breath. "We were lying on a picnic table in Aunt Vera's back yard, watching the stars and just talking about… stuff." She looked away, seeing the picture of them from the first summer on her nightstand and focusing on it.
"That sounds like just the romantic situation you were waiting for, you sly dog!" Michelle gave her a small grin. She knew Michelle was trying to lighten up her mood, like she had in the past. It was almost working.
In spite of her sadness, Gwen felt her face burn. "Yeah, I kept waiting because I wanted it to be just right, you know? He deserved it after I made him wait all those months! So when we saw the shooting stars and it finally was, I told him to close his eyes and make a wish." Telling the story and watching Michelle's reaction took away some of the pain - she was hanging on every word. "And then I did it! I kissed him on the lips."
"Ah, amor!" Michelle could have won an acting award for the melodramatic sigh she made, and Gwen couldn't help smile shyly at it.
"Then I asked if that was what he was wishing for."
"And what did he say? Was it what you expected? Did he finally realize you were âmes soeurs?" Michelle gushed and batted her eyelids, then smirked. Maybe this game will make her feel better, she thought, and grabbed Gwen's other hand.
"As if! The little twerp said he wished I was house trained!" She said with faked outrage.
Michelle gasped then stage whispered "He did not!"
Gwen actually giggled. "He did! I was about to let him have it, too, but then he pulled me back to him and... and he kissed me back!"
Michelle's eyes widened and she sighed, for real this time, then giggled too. "And you gave it right back, didn't you? That's my Crazy Girl! … So you found out he really does feel that way about you!"
"Yeah... I lay back next to him so we could just, you know, be together." She ducked her head and felt the shy smile come back. "And I told him I was sorry I took so long to answer him."
"So what did he say about that?"
Gwen could feel the heat from her neck up. "I don't remember, I was kinda frazzled, you know?" Truth was, her brain had gotten stuck, and all she wanted to do was nuzzle his face and wrap her arms around him. "But he smiled at me, and hugged me…" And for that moment, anyway, she let herself feel the way she did that night.
Michelle smiled, and waited a bit before saying anything. That must have been some kiss, she thought. "And you still have his necklace?"
Her question startled Gwen away from the table back to her room. She pulled the Keystone out from its place under her T-shirt and held it, giving Michelle a puzzled look. "Yeah. I only take it off when I have to", her confused expression changing to another small smile, remembering the night he gave it to her.
Michelle looked like the Coyote had just caught the Roadrunner. "And you really believe the boy that makes you smile like that, and makes you feel like this? The Doofus that waited for you for five months, you think he hates you?"
Gwen's face fell as she remembered everything else that happened in Phoenix and the two days after, everything she couldn't tell. All the guilt and grief came flooding back as she softly said "He does. I knew it when he wouldn't even look at me." She shuddered and whispered "Because I wasn't there when he needed me…"
Michelle let go of her hands and wrapped her in a fierce hug. "Oh Crazy! You're still doing it! … Do you think I made you tell me that because I wanted to know what it was like to kiss your Ben? I'll find out about all that stuff with my own... I wanted you to remember it! That you feel that way about each other! You do about him, anyway, that much is obvious. Don't even, you know I'm right! ... Have you talked to him since you got back?"
"No, Mom won't let me ..."
"So does it make sense that he changed his mind about you?"
Gwen shook her head to clear away the confusion at Michell's words. "No, it.. I... You don't understand…"
Michelle pulled away to look her in the eyes, but didn't let go. "Maybe not, but are you sure you do? You can' know until you talk to him! You owe it to yourself to know, not pretend you do and turn yourself inside out like this! Not again!"
"Talk to him. It'll be all right, you'll see!"
/