Time Trekkers and Emotional Wreckers
Chapter 11/11 - Everyone Gets a Resolution
The camera showed the pair jumping to the ground outside the cathedral as a mighty boom shook it and a massive roar erupted from the open doors. Older Ben glanced concernedly inside. "Should we help?" he wondered.
"We handled it the first time," Older Mal said. "Let me practise my magic – otherwise I won't get to where I am now." She cracked her knuckles and raised her fingers as if framing the moment in front of the cathedral. "Ready?"
"Time travel is only weird the first time."
"I'll take that as a yes."
He looped his arm through hers and she created a portal that fell on them. The cathedral emptied as if on a time lapse and the sun set. Older Ben hummed to himself. "Why did we need an afterparty?" he asked.
The sun rose and set rapidly. "This is cool," Older Mal said, holding onto him.
"Here comes our wedding," he replied.
In the blink of an eye, it was gone. The decorations popped up, then popped away. A massive crowd grew and diminished. "Oh," Older Ben said then, "It's Zach."
"Oh, he's so little!" Older Mal almost broke away from Older Ben as a younger version of them carried a brand new baby into the cathedral.
Older Ben barely managed to snag her arm and pull her back. He wrapped his arms around her to keep her from wiggling away. "He's not ours!" he said. "Ours is ten years older than him."
"He hasn't been that small in ages!"
"There goes Tyler," Older Ben said, keeping a firm grip on her.
Older Mal continued to pout. "I miss them being that size," she said.
"Belle," Older Ben said as another child's coronation zoomed by. "Almost there."
And at this cue, the sun slowed in the sky and stopped zooming shortly above the horizon in the west. It had been a full day since the time traveling had begun.
The sky was a shimmering array of golds and pinks and yellows as the sun crept by at its normal pace. Older Ben still had his arms around his version of Mal as they watched the sun from the steps of the cathedral. He kissed the top of her head. She smiled brightly. And then he said, "Did you say you wanted to go collect our kids?"
"Yes!" she jolted to life and practically leapt out of his embrace. She paused only to seize his hand, and then pulled him away. He let himself be tugged along out of the frame, smiling as she hurried.
Someone hit a guitar chord in the background. It seemed the video was set to end on a music montage. Ben glanced over at Mal to see how she had gauged the movie. There was an itch inside him to say something, but the screen kept her captivated.
Tyler was wrestling with the two long-haired boys Ben recalled seeing in the car during the first musical number of the movie. They must be Jay's boys. Twins, if he recalled right. As his parents shut the door of a car at the end of a long driveway, he looked up with a big, excited grin, and ran towards them. Older Mal scooped him up and squeezed him, hugging him like a lifeline.
The scene changed. Zachary sat in a bay window, reading, but looked up at the sound of a car door. By the time his parents had made it to the house with the moving walls, Zachary had opened a section of the wall with Carlos's moving wall buttons and met them beside the front door.
They met Hades outside Beast's Castle and Older Ben invited him inside for drinks. Hades passed Belle's carrier over, and Older Mal quickly removed an awake and cooing Belle from her seat.
Older Ben ended up with baby Belle at the table he and Older Mal had sat at before she'd headed into the past. Hades sat adjacent to him, and both of Maleficent's severed horns were laid out, as well as a terrarium Ben supposed the lizard Maleficent was inside of. Hades was examining one of the horns, impressed, as they spoke.
Older Mal was tucking Tyler into bed in his bedroom with Zachary sitting on the floor as she finished recounting what had happened to them. "And then, your dad snapped off Maleficent's second horn-"
"He did?!"
"Yes, shh…"
"Mom, you're not the cool parent anymore."
"Yeah, well, this cool parent can cast sleep spells, so keep it up or you and Aurora will have something in common." She flicked his nose.
By the time Older Mal was done with the boys, the song was ending, and Hades had gone. Older Ben had figured out how to mount Maleficent's severed horns to a board which he was apparently planning to mount somewhere. He held the board up on the wall and thought. The baby wasn't present – Ben supposed she'd been put to sleep.
Ben finally looked over to Mal. "Mal," he said, softly. "What are you thinking?"
Mal shrugged. "This is crazy," she whispered.
Ben exhaled and then decided he'd need to be more direct. "As… energetic and fun as this movie is… and as many coincidences as there are… I'm not comfortable being the person you saw on the screen right now."
She tore her eyes off the movie as well. "Me neither."
"I love you, but I've known you a few days. I want to get to know you without you assuming I'm going to attempt to behead your mom."
In the dim light, Mal looked almost ill-struck. "Ben, I didn't cast that love spell on you because I liked you. And I haven't chosen good."
A dull pain throbbed in his chest, but he'd considered the outcome. "So where are you right now?" he asked.
Mal exhaled and looked back towards the screen, where Older Mal was watching Older Ben with the horns of Maleficent. "I don't know, Ben. This is confusing to me. More confusing, after seeing all of this."
Ben squeezed her hand. "Well, take your time. But I can tell that you're not evil. And I'm not saying that because of-" he gestured at the screen. "-this."
Mal nodded. The scrape of a chair through the speakers drew Ben back to the movie. "Ben," Older Mal said, drawing his attention. He turned, set the horns aside, and sat down. Something about her tone must have meant business, though Ben couldn't find the undertone as he searched.
"What is it?"
"Nothing bad." She reached out and brushed a few hairs off his forehead. "When I was travelling through time, I ran into myself once and you once, and I had to mess with our memories. I also went too far into the future, and I glimpsed some spoilers I probably shouldn't know yet.
"Spoilers?" Older Ben repeated.
Older Mal smiled. "Yeah. But if I told you I'd have to fix you too. But in the past, you specifically helped me to get back and I promised I'd return the memories once I got back to the present. Can I do that now?"
"Go ahead," Older Ben replied, without a hesitation. Older Mal smiled, and then tapped the air in front of his face. That mystical ping sound effect echoed, and various memories appeared in the air, like a gallery. Older Mal swiped hard, skimming, and found a few red X's over different memories after a bit. She flicked her fingers and they all disappeared. Then, she sent the memories away and waited while Older Ben thought.
He stayed focused on a spot in the table, trailing his index fingernail along a groove in the table as he thought. His expression changed. Realisation, tension, acceptance. Then, his face twisted up in confusion.
"Is something wrong?" Older Mal asked, nervously.
Older Ben rapped his knuckles on the table and then looked at her. "Do you remember…" he began slowly, "the movie night at Auradon Prep, right after family day, where we all sat down and watched a movie about this crazy adventure, all the time travel, and then our memories were mass-erased immediately afterwards?"
There were sharp gasps everywhere. Every muscle in Ben's body tensed. His mouth fell open. He stared, dumbfounded, at the screen.
Older Mal was equally confused. "What?" she demanded, and the screen went black.
"What did he mean?" Carlos demanded behind Ben. "What did you mean?"
It was dark and impossible to see anything. Ben released Mal's hand for a moment to feel for the blanket. He rolled onto his knees, trying to make out his parents. "Does anyone have a light?" he asked.
A bright white light filled his vision. He couldn't see anything around it, but could tell by the shouts of the Auradon Prep students that they were engulfed in it similarly. There were cries of surprise. And then he felt the heavy need to sleep falling on him. He swayed, then slumped forward. His eyes closed, and the heaviness of everything left.
The next morning, Ben's eyes seemed drier than normal. He moved with sluggishness. There was odd tension in his spine. Maybe he had slept wrong. He yawned on the way to meet his parents to head to get ready for coronation.
Across the lawn were flattened patches of grass and people hurrying to take the screen down. Ben watched them without much thought.
"Good morning, Ben," someone said sleepily. It was Jane, looking equally as tired. "How'd you sleep?"
"Not well," Ben admitted. "You?"
Jane shrugged. "My leg has a pain in it, but I'll live. I guess I must have hurt it during the movie last night."
"Oh yeah," Ben said, watching as a person lifted a cardboard box with cables in it. "How was the movie? What did you watch?"
Jane's response was delayed by a massive yawn that Ben found himself mirroring. "You know," she said, "I can't even remember. Did you not come?"
Ben watched as a speaker was carried away. "This is already disconnected!" the employee called.
He hummed. "I can't remember," he said. "I guess I must have fallen asleep and missed it."