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The lecubra is getting closer, and more of them seem to be appearing whenever she looks.
Gwendolyn continues trying to shield herself- to shield the others. Kevin has absorbed the metal of the walls around them, so he should be fine mind-control speaking, but Ben is clearly tiring, the omnitrix timed out as he bats at lecubra with a metal pipe.
“Not good!” Ben says, voicing her thoughts.
Gwendolyn just throws another blast of energy at the closest demon, palms and forehead sweating with the exertion of so much mana use.
Kevin turns to her- shouting something.
She can’t be hearing him right. It sounds like he’s? Singing?
He opens his mouth again, and he’s saying something else, but the singing is louder. The lecubra must be in her brain, making her hallucinate. Maybe they’ve already lost.
She wakes with a start.
It takes her a second to recognize where she is, but the snoring form beside her reassures her that it had all just been a nightmare.
Her phone finishes ringing, far-too-peppy ringtone blaring into the dark of Kevin’s studio apartment as she catches her breath.
Kevin stirs beside her on the terrible pullout couch mattress. She resists reaching out to touch his shoulder— just to make sure he’s real. That her nightmare is truly over.
Her phone starts to ring again, and Kevin turns onto his back with an annoyed huff.
“Tell your cousin to shut up.” He grumbles.
It’s true: it is probably Ben. Only one person ever calls this late.
Gwendolyn turns and reaches for her phone on the side table. Pulling it to her face, she squints into the light to see Ben’s icon: some stupid photo of him sporting a wildly unflattering face, halfway through saying something.
Only it’s not Ben’s icon. It’s Rook’s.
She picks up immediately.
“I apologize for the early hour, Gwendolyn.”
“Is Ben okay?” are the next, automatic words out of her mouth.
“I am afraid that he is not right now.”
Gwendolyn practically smacks Kevin in the face as she reaches out to touch his shoulder,
“Ow,” he whines, but he’s already up, evidently hearing Rook’s voice through the receiver.
“What happened?” Gwendolyn asks, already swinging her feet off the mattress.
As they get ready to go to the Plumber base in Bellwood, she puts Rook on speaker as he explains that there was an omnitrix malfunction, some sort of space grenade launcher, a period in which Ben had stopped breathing, and broken bones.
“I am very sorry to bother you both so early, but Magister Tennyson is calling Mr. And Mrs. Tennyson, Ben is in surgery, and I-” says Rook, who does not sound well himself. He’s probably just trying to keep himself moving so he doesn’t have to think too hard about things.
“Don’t worry about it, man,” Kevin says before Rook can apologize anymore. “We’ll be there.”
The drive to plumber headquarters takes about an hour.
“He’s gonna be fine, Gwendolyn,” Kevin says firmly as they exit the car.
“Yeah.” Says Gwendolyn, but it sounds hollow.
Kevin offers his hand and she takes it.
The first thing they hear in the Plumber Medical ward is yelling.
“Oh great,” Gwendolyn breathes. It’s her uncle Carl, shouting at the top of his lungs at Max.
“— You people already make him feel like he owes the world everything he has to give, and then the damn thing doesn’t even work properly when he needs it! You tell this Azmuth person I want to speak to him.”
“Azmuth is a very busy—”
“I don’t care if he’s the busiest guy in the galaxy, he has time for a phone call.”
Max looks very weary as Gwendolyn and Kevin walk past, and Carl has fury in his eyes that Gwendolyn hasn’t seen before.
One of the nurses is trying to diffuse the situation, standing between the father and son and rumbling about how “patients need to sleep,” but Carl keeps yelling around the poor guy’s shoulder.
Quietly, the teens enter a dimly lit room.
The first thing Gwendolyn sees is her Aunt Sandra, wide eyed and slightly manic looking.
“Oh hello, sweetie.” She says in a voice far too bright for the occasion, she has both her hands on one of Ben’s braced ones.
And oh, Ben.
The guy is a wreck, looking small and broken in his bed, his chest and arms wrapped in bandages, one wrist braced, and one leg propped up in a cast. What’s not bandaged or covered in some silvery type of pajamas is bruised.
“It looks worse than it is,” he says quickly, his eyes on his cousin, whose expression has just filled with fear, but his voice comes out pinched with pain. He inhales almost hesitantly, like every breath is unbearable for him, a soft wheezing coming from his lungs.
“Yikes, bro,” Kevin says as he takes in his friend’s appearance.
“They insisted on bandaging every little scrape like it was a war wound,” Ben strains, forcing a lopsided smile, but keeping his head as still as possible. “It’s really not that bad.”
Rook, who is standing, hardly noticeable at the side of the room, shifts slightly but does not correct the obvious lie for Sandra's sake. Gwendolyn is immediately concerned for him too- it’s hard to see bruises on someone with fur, but Rook’s right eye is swollen shut, right arm in a sling, and his fur is disheveled in a way very unlike him. His proto armor looks visibly scuffed and singed.
The nurse pokes his head in the door.
“Mrs. Tennyson, I’m sorry to bother you, but if your husband does not calm down shortly, I will have to get security to remove him from the premises.”
Sandra rises with a promise to Ben that she’ll be right back and follows the nurse into the hallway.
“How are you really doing?” Kevin asks after the door shuts behind them.
The weak smile stays plastered unnaturally to Ben’s face.
“Oh, terrible.” Ben says brightly, “Absolutely the worst.”
“I did not wish to alarm you over the phone, as they have already stopped the bleeding, but there was extensive internal damage.” Rook says,
“You don’t have to go telling people all my personal medical information, dude,” says Ben.
“I apologi—”
“I’m kidding.” Says Ben, but it comes out sharp. Rook flinches.
Kevin’s hand finds Gwendolyn’s shoulder. She nods without a word. They've gotta do some damage control on these two, stat.
“Rook, how about we get you off your feet,” she says. She wants to stay with Ben, but knows he won’t be susceptible to talking right now in the state he’s in. Rook, however, looks very much like he has something on his mind.
“So, do they give you the good meds for this type of thing?” Kevin asks, pulling the chair from Ben’s side around. He plops down and puts his boots up on the white bed sheets.
“Not really, I’m mostly just tired.” Ben says as Gwendolyn nods to Rook and ushers him out into the hallway.
Carl, Sandra, and Max have evidently left the premises, so the hall is empty now.
Gwendolyn sits in one of the chairs lining the hallway, and Rook eases down, exhausted, into the seat next to her.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” she asks. “For real this time? Now that we’ve seen him and know he’ll be okay?”
“It was my fault,” says Rook, running one weary hand over his face. “I should have foreseen it.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.” Says Gwendolyn firmly.
He tells her about it, voice tired. They’d been tracking a particularly elusive smuggler in the subway tunnels off of Undertown, and realized that he’d been letting them track him only when they ran right into his ambush. His entire crew had been waiting. They’d fought off about two thirds of them, when the omnitrix locked Ben out.
“He has been making more of an effort to learn self defense the last few years.” Rook explains. “So he held his own against his adversary well as a human, but I should have gotten to him faster, moved to escape instead of trying to keep fighting the second there was an omnitrix error— but I was rash, I was invigorated by his assurances. I thought....that we could win.”
The leader had gotten up from where he’d been knocked out before, had grabbed a explosive launcher, and fired it into the fray in the direction of the mighty Ben 10.
Before Rook had even known what was going on, he’d been thrown to the ground. Ben, lighter and not so far away, had been flung against a cavern wall like a wet piece of pasta.
Rook folds over, one hand at the back of his neck, and sighs.
“He stopped breathing. The failsafe did not activate. The omnitrix was still locked.”
“Did you have to resuscitate him?”
“Yes,” He says. They’ve been friends long enough that she knows he has more to say. Gwendolyn waits for him to continue. “The feeling of broken ribs— the feeling of breaking more, is highly unpleasant, but I cannot seem to stop thinking about it.”
Of course he can’t.
Gwendolyn shuts her eyes for a moment, reliving the one time she’d had to do the same for Ben. Except she’d been slamming her fists onto Ben’s metal chestplate as Clockwork, not the more fragile, skin and bones version of her cousin. She’d learned in her Basic Life Saving course that breaking ribs was not uncommon for CPR. “Better to have broken ribs than be dead” her instructor had laughed.
“I am afraid that I have failed.” Rook says.
I am afraid- he said again, just like he did on the phone. I am afraid.
He’s still afraid, Gwendolyn realizes.
“You didn’t fail. You brought Ben back alive even though it was probably terrifying. Thank you.” She says firmly. “Now what happened to you?”
“To me?” asks Rook, sitting up.
“You look pretty beat up yourself.”
“I dislocated my shoulder.” He says as if it of no importance.
“And did CPR with a dislocated shoulder.”
“They say that I must have placed it back into its socket before that, but I do not remember doing so. They fear that I did not do it well. I have strained some ligaments.”
“Ow.” Says Gwendolyn sympathetically. She wonders briefly if Revonnahganders have adrenaline or some similar hormone for times of extreme stress. Sounds like it, if he could do such a thing and proceed with using enough force to break Ben’s ribs.
“I do not want to leave, but he does not seem to want me around.”
Gwendolyn sighs, sitting back in her chair and stuffing her hands into her pockets. Oh, Ben. He loves Rook, that much Gwendolyn knows. How he loves him, she's not quite sure anymore. There are times she can't tell if it's still platonic between them, but she's too polite to ask.
“It’s not you. You know how he gets.”
“Yes, I do, and it is—” Rook smooths the rumpled fur on his right cheek gingerly, trying not to touch his swollen eye. “Incredibly stupid.”
“It is.” Gwendolyn agrees, cracking a smile at his candid statement. “But he’ll come around.”
“They are going to make him rest for weeks.” Rook says offhandedly. “He is not going to like that.”
“Neither are you,” Gwendolyn says. “You’ll have to rest too.”
Rook makes a disgruntled noise, letting his hand fall to his lap.
“You are correct. I will not like that either.”
They don’t speak for a long few minutes, and are only interrupted by Kevin poking his head out of the room.
“His royal highness of neediness has requested a Mr. Smoothy Smoothie— and I feel kinda bad denying him. Rook, you up for a snack run?”
“What time is it?” Rook asks, sounding very tired. For a second he looks older than 20.
“Asscrack of dawn, probably when you get up anyways.” Kevin says, “C’mon, let’s go.”
Rook and Gwendolyn rise.
“I’ll stay with Ben,” she says, though Kevin already knows.
Ben frowns at her when she enters.
“Hello to you too,” she says.
“You’ve got that look on your face,” he wheezes.
“What look?” she asks innocently as she takes a seat.
“The worried, but also like you want to kick my butt look.”
“You’re hurting Rook by being so self deprecating and moody.” Gwendolyn explains.
Ben blinks, like this thought had not occurred to him.
“I am?” he asks.
“Yes. And because I like the both of you, I have to tell you to knock it off.” Gwendolyn smiles.
Ben ponders this, looking uncomfortable.
“Is the pain bad?” his cousin asks.
“The IV auto-drip-thingie just put some more medicine in me a minute ago,” he lifts his finger in the IVs direction without moving his arm. “So I’m feeling pretty good right now. Hungry. Tired. The usual.”
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” Gwendolyn asks.
“Not really much to talk about.” Ben half shrugs, then grimaces. He has to take a moment to recover. “I was trying my best to kick some ass-- and doing pretty well, I'm told-- and all the sudden I was getting tossed around. I woke up here feeling like garbage.”
“Did they tell you that you stopped breathing?” Gwendolyn asks.
“They did. I already thanked Rook for bringing me back with ye olde kiss of life, by the way, so don’t ask. He seems pretty shaken, but what can I do about that?”
“Ben you’re an idiot.” Gwendolyn sighs. “Just be nice to the guy.”
“I am.” Ben scowls. “I’m trying to be normal.”
“Maybe it’s the meds then, but your ‘partner banter’ earlier came across as angry.”
“Oh,” His auto-drip machine makes some noise, and he sinks further back into his pillow.“Jeeze, they’re trying to put me to sleep.” He mumbles.
“Well, resting isn’t a bad idea.”
“Smoothie first.”
“You’re so weird.”
His parents return before their friends do, but they drag more chairs into the room in preparation, as Ben seems to be refusing to sleep.
Kevin and Rook return with smoothies to go around a while later, as they’d had to go all the way across town to a 24 hr location.
Ben finally admits he’s in pain in front of his parents when he can’t raise his arm to his face to take a sip.
A doctor responds to the call button and gives him more meds. And soon the smoothie is forgotten, because Ben is in a medicated stupor.
“Gwen, dear, you can stay at our house if you’d like to get some rest before heading home or coming back— whichever you decide.” Says Sandra quietly, like she’s in any danger of waking Ben. “Mr. Levin is always welcome in our home.”
That’s more than Gwendolyn can say for her parents’ house, which she had been planning to go by, to get some pillows and blankets so that she can stay in a storage unit Kevin still has in Bellwood, so she accepts the offer graciously.
Carl somehow manages to convince Rook to go back to the barracks to rest, with the assurance that he and Sandra will stay with Ben and call him if they need him.
It’s a quiet drive to Ben’s house.
“You okay?” asks Kevin.
“It never feels real.” Gwendolyn says. “When we’re not there, I mean. We come to see the aftermath, but I can’t really understand what they went through— I feel bad for not being there.”
“What, you want to get traumatized more?”
“No— I mean— there used to be a closeness. When we were kids I mean, the shared experience. I see Ben in a hospital bed now and it’s almost normal. He’s always beat up somehow- but this time I really can’t picture him as hurt as he was before Rook got him back to the land of the living. Ugh, I don’t know.” Her words aren’t coming out right. She presses her hands over her face. “It kind of scares me that I’m desensitized to it, is what I think I’m saying.”
“I bet he was glad you weren’t there, Gwendolyn.” Says Kevin softly. “And you don’t have to feel guilty about being away.”
“I know. But I still think about how hurt he was when we left the first time— “
Kevin hums, and before Gwendolyn knows it, his hand has found hers, warm and steady.
“You can let that guilt go.” He says. “Ben’s an adult. If he needs us, he can communicate what he wants.”
“True, but when have you known him to do that?” Gwendolyn says.
“He’s getting a little better at it— I credit Rook for that, by the way.” Kevin says.
“True.” Gwnedolyn agrees.
They set up in her aunt and uncles’ living room, Kevin on the floor (because he insists) and Gwen on the couch, because, despite Sandra and Carl being pretty chill, they don’t know if they would be scandalized if they came home to find the teens sharing the couch.
Gwen stares into the dark, thinking about how easy it would’ve been to lose Ben completely that night. How easy it could be to lose any of them. Their little friend group is so precious and so precarious. They all have enemies throughout the galax, throughout the omniverse, could all be snuffed out in an instant.
She doesn’t want to lose them.
She turns over, looking at Kevin as he lays with his arm thrown over the top half of his face. His mouth is slightly open as he breathes softly, and Gwendolyn feels a swell of affection for him in her chest.
She doesn’t want to lose Kevin.
He’s such a pillar of strength in her life, his stalwart presence palpable even when they are apart during the day. He texts her whenever he can even when he takes shifts at the garage, and she still finds herself laughing at his stupid jokes. His humor, his devotion— even the ways he can be selfish, are endearing in a way that no one else could be. They’ve been through so much together, him and her.
Her eyes fill with tears, and she considers waking him up to kiss him silly, but resists, letting him rest.
Still, she can’t sleep, her head spinning with scenarios. What her life would be like without him? Could she ever recover from something like that? She doesn't think she could.
“You’re thinking too loud,” says Kevin after around an hour of silence, his arm still thrown over his face.
“Sorry,”
“It’s okay, what’s up?” He pulls his arm down and peers at her through the dim light.
“I was just thinking.” She says.
Kevin yawns loudly and turns onto his side to face her, waiting for her to continue.
“What if we got married.” She says.
Kevin is silent for a long second: A very long second in which Gwen’s heart does an unexpected flip in her chest.
“Yeah, alright.” He says.
“‘Yeah, alright’?” she echoes.
“Sure. I mean, I’d planned to ask you sometime in the next couple years.”
“You’re saying you’ll marry me?”
Kevin sits up.
“Uh. yeah. When were you thinking?”
“Like now.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
Kevin buys her a ring in Undertown, a pretty, silver colored thing with a small blue stone on it from a shop owner who is very unhappy at being awoken at 5 am.
Gwendolyn tries not to notice that he hadn’t needed to find it— that he’d known exactly where to go and which ring to buy— but she notices anyways, and it makes her almost giddy. She buys him a ring from the same store, plain silver, and she politely pretends to not see how misty it seems to make him.
For once, Kevin doesn’t try to haggle. They pay for their rings and head out into the still-sleeping city.
It’s not hard to find an intergalactically ordained individual in Undertown, especially with Kevin’s connections. It is hard to find one up this early.
But soon Gwendolyn and Kevin are saying pre-written vows in a shabby storefront, being witnessed by the Piscciss Volann fish delivery lady and a few other nightshift employees heading home from work.
Gwendolyn finds herself slightly surprised that Kevin gets emotional as he says his vows, his voice shaking, and though she thought she might be nervous herself, her fingers are steady as they wipe away his tears.
They grab breakfast at dawn and return to the Tennyson’s for a few hours to snag a couple hours of sleep. And it feels so normal. Just another morning.
“Oh,” says Rook, brightening slightly when he sees them back at the plumber medical ward that afternoon. “Good Afternoon.”
He looks significantly more put together now than he had in the morning.
“Good afternoon,” Kevin says brightly, beating Gwendolyn to the punch. Rook looks surprised at his cheery greeting.
“Mr. And Mrs. Tennyson left when I got here, you just missed them.” Rook says, glancing at Gwendolyn and Kevin’s clasped hands, as if searching for the cause of Kevin’s great mood.
Rook’s curious eyes land on Gwendolyn, his pupils gone all circular and attentive.
“I have noticed something.” He says.
“Yes, Rook?” asks Gwendolyn, trying to be casual.
“You have a ring on your left hand fourth finger.”
“I do.”
“Are you engaged? I remember this earth custom.” Rook, ever proper, looks like he’s about to burst out of his skin.
“We got married.” Kevin says, holding up his own left hand to show off his own ring.
Rook stares for a long moment between them.
“Oh my,” he says, rocking back and forth on his feet like he cannot contain himself. “Oh my, congratulations.” He looks genuinely pleased. “I will have to get you a toaster.”
“A toaster?” Gwendolyn laughs.
“Ben told me that when humans get married, they get gifts ‘like toasters and stuff,’ since I do not know what ‘stuff’ entails, I will have to get you a toaster.”
“No, man, it’s cool.” Says Kevin. “Cash is fine.”
Gwendolyn elbows him gently.
“Okay, no cash necessary, check will wo—” Gwendolyn elbows him a little harder, but can’t keep herself from smiling.
“How’s Ben?” Gwen asks.
“His mood has deteriorated, as I think he has realized how long his recovery will be.” Rook says, “But I think your news might brighten him.”
It does not.
“You what now?” Ben asks.
“We got married,” Kevin repeats.
Ben ogles the two of them like they’ve grown second heads, which it honestly kind of looks like. They’re slightly doubled in his vision.
“I’m- I’m sorry, I—” Ben slurs. “The meds they gave me to help me sleep this morning still haven’t completely worn off.”
“Are you okay?” Gwendolyn asks, concerned. He does look a little more strung out this afternoon.
“I’m fine—” Ben does not sound fine as he blinks at them, trying to get their images to focus.“So why did you decide to do this again?”
“I’m 19 years old.” Gwendolyn explains as if it’s obvious.
“Oh, so I didn’t miss anything, you just decided to randomly get married, okay.” Ben’s voice is pinched with cynicism, surprising Gwendolyn.
“Be nice.”
“Sorry-” Ben apologizes again, but this time the word sounds hollow. His head rolls back on his pillow as he stops trying to fight his meds, and his eyes drift over to Kevin.
“Be. Nice.” Gwendolyn warns again, an edge in her own voice this time.
“You be nice,” Ben grumbles.
Gwendolyn throws her hands up.
“Okay, clearly we’re not getting anywhere with you, we’ll come back after you’ve had a nap.”
“I’m tired of napping.” Says Ben sourly.
“Then stop acting like a toddler.” She snaps back. You wanna dish out attitude, nerd? Prepare to get it back en force.
Ben lays, staring at the ceiling for a while, then makes a surprisingly vulnerable statement:
“You both just feel so far away right now.”
Gwendolyn sighs internally, watching him as he blinks long, out-of-it blinks.
“We’re the same as we’ve been, Ben. I just. I started thinking about things and I got scared— scared of losing all of the people I care about. Scared of losing Kevin. Marrying him made me feel a little less like I was going to float off the planet. Makes me feel like he’s a permanent fixture in my life.”
“So I get thrown into a wall and you get married. That tracks.” Ben says, but it doesn’t come out mean this time, just tired. “I’m glad you guys have each other, really. I just still miss you is all. I blame the meds.”
“Blame all the meds you want, man,” says Kevin.
“Congrats,” Ben says, his eyes falling shut. “Really. I’ll get over myself in a second.”
Rook, who has been pretending to do paperwork on his tablet, looks to Gwendolyn and Kevin and gives a small smile, clearly proud of his partner for actually saying how he felt.
They have lunch together, seated around Ben’s bed as he naps on and off. Kevin doesn’t seem to want to let go of Gwendolyn’s hand, and she doesn’t make him as he and Rook talk shop about cars in quiet tones.
Every once in a while though, Gwendolyn catch Kevin’s eye, and he’ll give her a bright, chip toothed smile.
There’ll be hell to pay when her mother finds out. But that doesn’t matter. None of it does.
She has him.
She can’t help but smile back.