Chapter Text
There's a rumbling outside and Tom runs outside with everyone else. His heart skips a beat as he sees the vaguely familiar spaceships landing. Could it be?
Tom has thought a lot about the time he spent on the spaceship with Cochise. He had half convinced himself that it had all been an intense dream. It had been the kind of thing that dreams were made of, at least for him back then.
Now that he's married with children and fighting a war for his species’ survival, his dreams are a lot different.
Rebecca is on one side of him, Ben on the other. He wishes that they were back in the infirmary with Matt, watching over Hal.
“What do you think it is?” Rebecca says.
“Some super skitter?” Ben says.
Tom shakes his head. “No. They're allies.”
He can feel Rebecca and Ben staring at his back as he steps forward to greet the figure walking out of the spaceship. There’s another figure beside him, but Tom keeps his eyes glued on the figure in front.
“Tom, what are you doing?” Rebecca hisses.
Tom stares at the approaching figure, praying for him to take his helmet off. Praying for a familiar face.
“Tom,” the blessedly familiar voice says. “It is good to see you alive and well.”
Cochise takes his helmet off and Tom sighs in relief. He had been worried that something had happened to him.
“It's good to see you too. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Tom says. He feels unwell. He feels so relieved.
“Tom,” Rebecca says, coming up next to him. “What is this?”
Tom takes a deep breath. “Rebecca, meet Cochise of the Volm. Cochise, this is Rebecca. My wife.”
Cochise’s eyes widen. “You have taken a mate.”
Tom looks back, pulls Ben forward. “And this is my son, Ben. We have two other kids- Hal and Matt. But Hal has been hurt, so Matt is watching over him.”
Ben waves awkwardly and leans against Tom. “Dad, what's going on?”
“I know it sounds crazy,” Tom says, addressing both Rebecca and Ben, “but after high school, I lived with Cochise for a while, on his spaceship.”
“So the ex boyfriend you told me about? The one who broke your heart right before we met? This is him?” Rebecca says.
“I pretty much bumped into you right after he dropped me back on Earth,” Tom confirms.
Rebecca turns bright red and marches up to Cochise. “If you're here to mess with him again, you can forget about it.”
“I am only here to help,” Cochise says.
Tom can tell he's embarrassed, and when Tom realizes that there's a crowd gathering, he's embarrassed too. “Let's go inside.” His heart is beating painfully hard in his chest.
While he knows that having the Volm help them get rid of the Espheni will most likely be good for humans on the whole (unless they declare them a necessary sacrifice, in which case, they’re all dead) this is nauseating. He had done his best to put all of it behind him- and he has put it behind him, with a wife he adores and three sons he loves.
But part of that had come because he had been secure in the knowledge that he would never see Cochise again. And now here he is, the first person he ever loved and the first person who ever loved him. The person who had really turned his life around and helped him escape from the misery of his childhood.
It’s the weirdest reunion ever. All the ways that Tom imagined seeing Cochise again, way back before he and Rebecca got together, and none of them looked like this.
“We are on your territory, Tom,” Cochise says quietly. “This time, I will follow your lead.”