Chapter 8: Wrath
"Fine. I'll give him ten seconds to dissuade me. After that, I'm giving him a piece of my mind." With that the call was cut off. Max huffed in amusement before turning around, face falling, leaning against his kitchen counter. For once, the man looked as old as a he was, and then some.
Not that Sandra didn't feel like she'd aged ten years in the last weeks. "What, that's it?" She asked, dubious. Max smiled at her, reassuring despite the obvious strain around his mouth.
"Don't worry, she'll set him straight. She's better at it than either of us." Max eyed her cautiously. "Can I offer you something? I think I've got regular coffee beans in here somewhere- wait, no those are cockroaches-"
"No, thank you. I'd much rather you take a seat." Max sighed at her suggestion. It was the sigh of a man knowing he was trapped. Sandra did not want to think about what that meant.
He lumbered over to the dining area where she sat, taking a seat across from her with ponderous movements, playing up his age. She'd chalk it up to stalling, if she didn't know he was doing it for her sake as much as his, so she would have the time to think of what to say. Not that she needed the time; she already knew exactly what she wanted to say.
"I know we all agreed to bury the axes and work together for the sake of the children." She started. "I may not like it, but you and Natalie had a plan, so we had no better recourse than to trust you." She sighed. "But it's not working, Max." She finished, bluntly. Her father in law didn't even flinch, nor did he have the decency to look shocked. Neither was any indication of him actually agreeing though. He placed a hand on his chin, considering.
"I wouldn't go that far. It hasn't fixed them, that much is true, but they have been improving. Nat tells me Gwen's sleeping full nights most of the time-"
Sandra bared her teeth. "Natalie did not wake up in the middle of the night to find her only child in the garden trying to bash his hand into a pulp with a rock!" She snarled, temper spiking. Max reeled back as if slapped. Good. He should. "Carl slept on a cot next to Ben's bed for the rest of the night." She took a deep breath.
"We tried fixing this the way you and Nat talked us into and all its gotten Ben is- all it's gotten him is-"
Burying her face in her hands, she sucked in air. She could hear Max shift and feel him place a steadying hand on her shoulder, but she couldn't look at him. She knew she'd see understanding in his eyes, and an unconditional willingness to help in whatever way he could. All the Tennysons were like that, always the hero. She wouldn't be able stay mad at him, and she needed her anger right now, needed it to keep going.
Every alternative would paralyze her.
Steeling herself, and silently congratulating herself on not crying, she looked up with a hardened heart, glare firmly in place. "Tell me."
Max shifted in his seat, retrieving his hand. "I don't know anything more about what's wrong than I already told all of you three weeks ago, and during the following phone calls-"
"Tell me" she interrupted. "about that blasted watch. And don't even bother pretending you don't know; Carl might be used to accepting your half-truths but I will not tolerate them anymore."
Max stilled for a long minute, looking at her face searchingly. Then he leaned back into the plush seat and crossed his arm. "What do you want to know?"
Why Ben couldn't get it off, why he wouldn't take it off, why he tried to- "Everything. I need to understand why my son hates it so much."
Max closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was steeling himself; that was never a good sign. "When we started traveling around, I took Ben and Gwen to an old place I used to work. I guess I wanted to show them a little of my life from before they were born." He reminisced. His eyes opened, resolved, but also strangely scared.
"It was an old military base, long abandoned after the Cold War." He stopped speaking after saying that, allowing it to sink in. Sandra could feel cold dread pooling in her stomach.
"Max," she whispered, and this time she made no effort to hold back her fear; her horror was plain for all to see. "what did you attach to my boy?"
"Nothing." Max held up his hands to forestall any outburst. "Ben wandered around and found it on his own. The place had been cleared out, there shouldn't have been anything there except the buildings." His expression turned bitter. "I was wrong."
Again Max took a breath, and Sandra took the opportunity to soften her hold on the table.
"Ben found the watch in an R&D ward of the base. We used to work closely with the CIA in that one." He looked her dead in the eye. "We made devices to assist in espionage and deep cover missions."Sandra grit her teeth.
"So he's got some idiot spy gadget from the seventies strapped to him?" She groused, hoping for it to be true. It was odd, but nothing to be truly worried about. Her heart leaped into her throat when Max shook his head.
"No." The word rang with the finality of a coffin slamming shut. "This was a prototype alternative to the cyanide capsule undercover agents had in their teeth. It was ultimately rejected as too costly and cumbersome." He averted his gaze. "It was a wristband that was supposed to take the user out upon discovery… as well as any surrounding would be discoverers. And half the block they were in."
Sandra raised a hand to her mouth, horrified, the ramifications of that statement sinking in. He couldn't be saying- "Are you saying Ben has a bomb attached to him?!" She all but screamed, standing up and slamming both hands on the table. The anger was a thin veneer over her fear though, and she could feel the tears finally spring free past her glare.
It made too much sense. The fear of the thing, the unwillingness to tinker with it or remove it… but that meant- She collapsed back into her seat.
"Ben knows." It wasn't a question, but a realization. It was obvious, else he wouldn't have such a strong reaction to it, but it was only now truly sinking in what it meant. Her little boy…
Max leaned forward onto the table, resting his face in his palms, shielding his eyes. "He found out what it was the same time I did; when he accidentally set of the timer. We dismantled it!" He added quickly, for her benefit. "The charge was removed, its just a cumbersome gadget now. But for a while…"
For a while, Sandra thought, Ben had thought, had known, that he was going to die. It made her want to scream and cry. And pummel whoever invented the accursed thing.
Sandra swallowed, wiping away her tears. It was a token effort, they kept coming in sluggish waves and there was little point in acting strong now. "How long?" She asked, though her voice was so small and weak that she might as well not have spoken at all. Max heard her anyway.
"Two days." Max confessed, voice… shaky. Taking a closer look, she could indeed see the faint outline of a tear rolling down his cheek, glistening in the afternoon sun that basked the RV in a soft light, large shoulders shaking ever so slightly. If she hadn't been looking for either, she would've missed it. Even though she could clobber the man right about now for his carelessness and his lies, her heart went out to him. Max wasn't like her; he didn't cry easy for joy or for sadness. The last time she'd seen him do so was at his wife's funeral.
The last time she'd seen him cry tears of joy was when Ben and Gwen sang 'happy birthday' together for him when they were four.
"I'm so sorry." He started, sounding as broken as she felt. "I'm sorry I allowed that to happen, and I'm sorry that I didn't tell you. I have no excuse."
Sandra bit her lip again, trying to hang on to her anger. No way was he getting off that easy. "Why didn't you?" She asked, lost. "Tell us, I mean."
He sighed, his large frame slumping in on itself. He sounded tired, so very tired. "Selfish reasons." He finally confessed, leaning back in his seat again, staring at the table top with a saddened gaze for a moment before looking her in the eye again. "Like I told you before, the kids were doing much better while still on the road. I could help them there, give them a familiar space. And, most importantly, they had each other, constantly."
He grit his teeth before soldiering on. "I'd hoped it would pass. I'd hoped that they would be strong enough by the time we arrived in Bellwood to carry on. I'd hoped..." he looked away, eyes scrunching shut, bracing himself. "I'd hoped that I'd never have to tell you, because then I'd never see them again."
Silence met his confession, and Sandra cursed up a flurry in her head. This- this bastard had not only failed to keep her son safe, but had the gall to not tell them all about that little piece of information until the fact that his grandchildren were broken made the issue impossible to ignore… and now she even felt sorry for him. She should take Ben away as far from this man as she could, and tell Nat to do the same with Gwen. She should do exactly as a he feared. Much as she loved him, he deserved it. And yet… she snarled angrily, startling Max.
"We couldn't if we tried, damn it." She hissed, feeling resigned. At his surprised and, darn it, hopeful look she elaborated.
"The first time Ben harmed himself, it was… not bad compared to this time. We did call you about it." She glared at him, viciously, and was pleased to see him squirm under it. "You told us you 'didn't know anything', so up and until you clued us all in on picture day on how to handle this, Carl and I tried for a week to get Ben to talk. And to get him to… stop." She blew a frustrated, and sad, breath past her teeth.
"Ben wouldn't listen. He wouldn't talk. And why should he? We always tried being his friends more than being his parents. But now we need to be his parents..." She laughed. It sounded hollow to her own ears. "Now, we're trying to figure it out, when Ben is least capable of waiting for us to do so." Her eyes settled firmly on Max, a smile tugging at her lips. It was a mockery of joy.
"I hate you right now. I don't like it, anymore than you, and Iknow that you're as broken up about the kids as we are, but I do." Her voice shifted to a whisper, pained. "I don't know how long it will take for that to change." Max closed his eyes and bowed his head. She was sure his heart broke as much as hers over this; they'd always been close, ever since Max introduced her to Carl at a cooking class he gave her.
"But," she continued. "I- We- can't help Ben." She had to swallow at the bitter taste that statement left in her mouth. "He needs someone he trusts and who he'll listen to. He needs you." Her expression turned from bitter to fierce, fixing the shocked man across from her with a deadly stare.
"But if we're going to do this together, we need a better plan. Like Natalie said, we're fighting symptoms. It worked for Gwen. It doesn't for Ben."
Max blew out a breath, contemplating. "I may have an idea for that, but you're not going to like it."
Sandra swallowed. She already knew where this was going, and it would probably involve trusting this moron with her son again. Max didn't wait for her response though, instead reaching over to place a hand over her smaller one, squeezing gently and meeting her sad and angry gaze with his own determined one. There was a promise in that gaze, so similar to Carl's and Ben's that it hurt to look.
"I promise you; I won't let you, or Ben, down again." He swallowed. "I promise." He whispered.
Sandra bowed her head and nodded, hoping beyond hope that she wasn't making the biggest mistake of her life.
Ben leaned back on his hands, the grass tickling his palms, soaking up the late morning sunlight. A breeze caused goosebumps on his exposed shoulders, but not even that could break the spell. His parents had arranged for him to have a sick day, as had Gwen's mom for her. It was nice to have a longer weekend and to sleep in. He felt a smile quirk his lips.
It was even better to wake up from a dreamless slumber to the soft feeling of the dweeb's breath on his neck and her warmth against his back. Part of him wondered when he'd started actually liking that, rather than just tolerating it.
The house was quiet, his parents having gone off to work, trusting Gwen with his 'care.' His mom had woken him briefly when they left, and to shower him with kisses. Yesterday, when she'd come home just after he and Gwen returned from the mall, she'd looked distraught and had immediately swooped him into a hug, much to his embarrassment. He'd already known why though: grandpa Max had phoned Gwen about the cover story he'd spun before she arrived. It was close enough to the truth, even if they'd have to flesh it out later.
How close it was to the truth still disturbed him.
Hearing footsteps halt before him, he opened his eyes to see Gwen materialize when the blurriness left his vision. She looked small in the baggy jeans she'd stolen from him, and in the white embroidered shirt his mom had loaned her. It was oversized, the collar too wide. That her hair was a tousled mess didn't help either.
But, judging by the stone cold glare she was giving him, teasing her about it would not go down well. He opened his mouth, but a slash of her hand through the air cut him off. Not good. When Gwen resorted to gestures, it meant you were done for. She was going to make good on her promise.
"I've been sitting on this for a day now, and I want to get it out in one go." She spoke softly before taking a deep breath. Ben nodded in understanding and braced himself.
"What were you thinking?!" She yelled and Ben was quite sure his ears were ringing from the force. "You promised me, in the very pigsty that we slept in tonight," she continued, waving a hand in the general direction of the first floor, "that you wouldn't hurt yourself like that anymore. You promised me!" Ben shrunk in on himself, but said nothing. There really wasn't a whole lot that he could say that wouldn't make her even madder. Already he could feel her magic crackling in the air.
"You refused to tell me that you were hurting for over a week, and don't think I didn't notice every time you lied to me!" She snarled, glare hardening even as her voice shook. The hurt in her voice got to him far more than her rage did.
"This is not how we do things, doofus!" She took a threatening step forward and he instinctively started to scramble back. "You do not break promises to me!" Another step, another scoot back. "You do not lie to me when you're struggling; you tell me so I can help you!" His back hit the backyard tree and he swore inwardly, shade falling over Gwen as well when she stepped up to him under the branches. Nowhere left to run, and Gwen knew it. She squatted down right in front of him and leveled a threatening finger at his face. "And you do not break down without calling me so I can come put you back together!"
Ben opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off without mercy. "And don't tell me that you 'didn't want to burden me with it' or any of that crap, do you have any idea how much worse it is to sit on the sidelines? You, more than anyone, should know how terrible it is to be that powerless! If you pull a stunt like this on me again, I'll tear the Omnitrix off your arm myself and shove it-"
"Yeah Yeah, I know where." He interrupted, angrily, if only to put up the illusion of a fight. "Is that before or after the permanent markers?" At Gwen's heated glare he raised his hands exasperation. "I just wanna know what I'm in for."
She glared at him for a moment longer, before she made a sound of frustration. Ben figured she was either going to smack him or storm away to sulk. Instead, she sat down cross-legged in front of him, arms crossed and eyeing him with a look that was partway between anger, sadness and confusion. He responded by pulling his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and hiding his face in them. He couldn't stand the lost, hurt look in her eyes. Not when he put it there.
Long seconds ticked by before Gwen spoke again. "Help me understand this." She started, hesitant. "You used to love this thing." She reached out and traced her fingers over the watch before slowly sliding them to his hand, prying open his own fingers so she could clasp them, if awkwardly. He squeezed back, out of instinct if nothing else. "You used to play with it, go on and on about how amazing it was. You used to enjoy being a hero." And you don't anymore. Why?
Ben laughed into his arms. Even muffled, it sounded like rock scraping over rock, even to his own ears. "I still do." He insisted. Half the time. Gwen heard the unspoken as well as she always did. For once, Ben hated that. He raised his head to meet her gaze.
Gwen's eyes were sad, but fierce. He could see the fire simmer just below the surface. He was going to have to do better than that.
Ben grit his teeth, pulling his hand from hers and cradling his wrist to his chest, looking down at it. The dial was just green. Not yellow. Not red. Just green. He was fine. He was fine.
Part of him wanted to come out the gate and say it. That he was terrified of it turning into a bomb again; that it still was a bomb, just one where the timer had stopped. That he'd put on a brave face in space, not because he didn't care, but because it made his powerless situation easier to bear. That he hated how it drew monsters to him like flies to honey. That he feared that there would come another day where he would not be strong enough to save them -her- from them.
That he wanted it gone because he was afraid of what it meant; that they would always be in danger. The thought made him want to laugh bitterly. Where was that bravery that Gwen had praised him for so often? It had evaporated the second he actually used his brain to think about it all. Little wonder he always tried to not do that, if this was what it got him. He preferred being a lame brain.
But the words stuck in his throat. He… wasn't ready yet. Saying the words now would make them real, and he feared that, more than almost anything. But if she asked him to, he would. He had no defense against her, hadn't for a while. The only option left to him was to ask. "You know why, Gwen. Please," he whispered, averting his eyes and burying his face in his knees. "Don't make me say it. Not yet."
Gwen closed her eyes and let the words sink in. She'd never tell Ben, but him being afraid, genuinely afraid, of anything, felt wrong to her. He was by far the bravest person she knew, watch or no watch. And he was right, she knew all the fears he refused to utter. She'd held him when he dreamed of her dying. She saw him check the watch with desperate frequency. She knew what he feared, even when he couldn't say it.
She could press him, she knew. He'd cave. But it would only be for the sake of making him face it, and that… she couldn't force that. No matter how mad she was. Exhaling, she let her anger fade. She'd said her piece, now she had to help him.
"If it bothers you, we get rid of it. You don't need it." His head snapped up, startled at her blunt suggestion. She shrugged. "We can get grandpa to contact Tetrax after he picks us up tomorrow." That had been a pleasant bit of news that aunt Sandra had told them when she came home yesterday: a long weekend to the nearby national park with their grandpa. That was going to be sweet, and they even got monday off for it. "Either Tetrax has the tech to remove it, or he can help us find Azmuth. You get rid of the Omnitrix either way."
Ben swallowed, tilting his head, eyeing the watch strangely. "What if… things come for us anyway? Won't I need the watch to fight them? I can't go hero without it." I can't protect you without it.
Gwen shook her head emphatically. "I don't need the watch fight." Yes you can, idiot. She raised a hand and let lightning trail up her fingers. "Neither do you." She leaned her head on one palm before reaching over with the other to flick his nose. It twitched with annoyance.
"I've told you before and I'll keep saying it till it sticks: you are a hero." She placed her extended hand on his shoulder till he looked her in the eye. "You're a hero because you're brave. Because you do the right thing even if it's hard. Because you will throw yourself in the line of fire to help someone you don't even like. And you don't need the watch for any of that." She smirked at his sullen silence.
"If I was in trouble," She started, taking silent pleasure in the way he immediately tensed to fight at the suggestion. "would it matter if you had the watch or not?" His response was instantaneous, and gratifying. Ben's expression tightened and his hand shot up to cover the one she had on his shoulder. He shook his head. She smiled.
"You're a hero because you're you, not because of some stupid alien gimmick; certainly to me. I can even teach you some magic and karate, if you want." She winked at him, but meant every word. "So, let's get rid of the stupid thing. It's more trouble than its worth." Ben was silent for a moment before he stood and held up the Omnitrix to his face, staring at it ponderously. Probably considering for the first time that he really could have his nightmare removed from him.
"Brave huh..." He muttered, silent for long seconds, before he nodded to himself, the frightened hope on his face giving way to angry determination. His eyes snapped to her, expression fierce like she hadn't seen it in ages. It was an expression that always made her feel safe, that promised her he'd take care of whatever mess they were in. This time, it also made her heart skip a beat.
"I'm not getting rid of it." He declared, no fear or hesitation left in him at all, startling her. Wait… what?"You say I'm a hero." He continued. "Well, A hero doesn't run away from a fight. A hero doesn't cower in his bed. A hero doesn't take the easy way out." He grit his teeth, eyes going back to the Omnitrix, glaring at it.
"I am the master of the Omnitrix, not the other way around. I'm going to show this thing who's boss, and everyone who comes for it. I owe that to myself." He leveled his gaze at her again. She was quite sure her jaw had dropped at this point. "And you deserve a hero that lives up to the title, so that's what I'm going to be."
A moment of silence passed between them and Gwen could feel the heat rising from her chest to her face. Okay, that was just… wow. When she failed to say anything, Ben's face became a bit apprehensive. "Sooo, am I forgiven?"
She shook herself and stood as well, flicking his nose again, struggling to find her voice. "F-Fine. You are. But no more shutting me out if it gets rough, you hear?" She looked him the eye, finding for the first time in weeks that the intensity of his gaze matched the one she felt in her own. Good. "We do this together, or not at all. Agreed?"
Ben nodded before he smiled at her, slightly shy, but mostly grateful. "Thanks, dweeb."
She smirked at him, confidence returning. He was still her little doofus. "What would you do without me?" She quipped, echoing her words from Xenon. This time, she did catch his response.
"Glad I don't have to find out."
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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