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Dad has had more than enough time to set off the device, Ben is sure of it. They’ve been pinned down since the explosion, surrounded by hornet creatures. But they’re starting to get the upper hand.
“I’m gonna go help Dad!” Ben yells to Weaver.
“Go! He’s our best shot!” Weaver yells back.
Ben nods and runs towards the Lincoln Memorial as fast as he can. He feels a weird prickling at the back of his neck as his dad’s screams echo around them.
When Ben arrives in the clearing, he sees his dad, alone. There’s a new heaviness to him, but Ben can tell that he finished the job.
He pauses, about to say something, when the prickling at the back of his neck gets more painful.
“Dad!” Ben cries out, half in pain, half in delight. He blacks out for a minute, and suddenly, he’s looking up into his Dad’s terrified face. “You did it.”
“Hold on!” Dad says, squeezing his hand painfully tight. “Ben, you have to hold on. Cochise will be coming, and he’ll have something.”
Ben shakes his head. He doesn’t know how to explain to his dad, but he knows he’s dying and that there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. The prickling in his neck has started coursing through his veins and he can feel that his body is shutting down. Dying doesn’t hurt as much as he always thought it would.
“It’s okay,” Ben assures him, trying to smile up at his dad. It’s kind of hard to control his facial muscles. “You saved the planet.”
“I did it for you,” Dad says, voice cracking. “Everything I did, I did it to save the planet for you and Hal and Matt. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
“You did what you had to,” Ben says. “And now you and Matt and Hal are safe. It’s worth it. Tell them I love them. I love you, too.”
“Ben, you have to hold on,” Dad says, cupping his face. “It’s not worth it if you’re not here to see what the world’s gonna become. You have to be here to help shape it.”
“Are you proud?” Ben asks as the feeling starts to leave his legs. He knows somehow that when that lack of feeling reaches his chest, he’ll be gone, so he can ask the questions he’s always wanted the answers to. “Of me?”
A couple teardrops land on Ben’s face before Dad smiles down at him, sniffing hard.
“I’ve always been so proud that you’re my son, Ben. Before the war, during it,” Dad assures him. “There’s never been a moment I haven’t been proud to be your dad.”
It’s all Ben’s ever wanted- to make his dad proud. He can’t feel anything below his waist anymore, but it’s okay, because Ben knows that he’s made Dad proud.
“Ben! Ben!” Matt’s voice comes from so far away.
There are suddenly two new sets of hands on him and his brothers’ faces appear at the edge of his rapidly clouding vision.
“It’s okay. Love you,” Ben manages to say.
“Stop! Don’t!” Matt yells.
“You have to do something!” Hal’s voice is so loud, but Ben can’t see him anymore. “You have to save him!”
“This is a new situation,” Cochise’s voice is quiet. “The Volm have nothing to help him. I am sorry.”
“Ben! Ben!” Matt shakes his shoulder as Ben feels himself getting farther and farther away.
He tries to tell everyone that it’s okay. His family is safe. Ben will die happily.
Tom can feel Ben’s cheek moving as he tries to form words, but nothing coherent comes out. He did this to his son. It’s his fault his son is laying here, dying just as humanity finally achieved victory.
Suddenly, Ben stops moving altogether and he goes limp. That’s it. Ben is gone. The Espheni are gone, but they took one of his sons with him, too.
But then Tom remembers.
Heedless of the people around him, Tom stands up and lifts Ben up.
“You’re gonna be okay,” Tom promises Ben. “You’re going to be okay. I promise.”
“What are you doing?” Hal asks.
“They’ll save him, like they saved me,” Tom says, walking towards the shore where he last encountered the Dornia. “They have to.”
“Dad…” Matt says.
“Ben’ll be okay,” Tom says.
Somehow Tom ends up in the back of a truck, arms wrapped tight around his temporarily dead son. It’s hard for him to remember what’s happening, but Hal and Matt are eventually there to help them out of the back of the truck.
Tom walks to the shore, alone.
“You have to save him!” Tom screams into the water. “I did everything you told me to! I destroyed your enemy. Now you’re going to save my son!”
The water is bitterly cold, but it’s nothing compared to the cold settling in his soul. He pushed his son to put himself in severe danger because of what the Dornia said. They told him to find his warrior, and god, Tom did.
There was supposed to be more than enough time to make everything up to Ben, afterwards. Up to everyone that he had been careless to, but to Ben the most. Ben, who he treated like an object instead of like his son. Ben, who he knew had felt so alone. But Tom’s warrior didn’t care about his son.
“I know you can do it! I know I was dead when you found me! If you can save me, you can save him!” Tom screams. “I believed in you when no one else did! So you’re going to live up to that! You can take my life if you have to, but you are going to save Ben’s life.”
Ben’s body slips from his tight grip. Tom takes it as a sign the Dornia have heard him, that they’ll do what he asked.
He hears a click from behind him.
“I thought seeing you like this,” the unpleasantly familiar voice comes from behind him, accompanied by the click of a gun, “feeling the same pain as I did, would bring me some measure of satisfaction.”
Tom turns around to see John Pope’s ugly face glaring at him down the barrel of a gun. It’s not that Tom is afraid to die or is even adverse to the idea, but he can’t die for John Pope’s misplaced anger. The Dornia might want to take his life for Ben’s.
To Tom’s dull surprise, Pope sets the gun down, barrel facing himself probably about to make some hypocritical and unaware speech.
Feeling something akin to rage, but colder and duller than what Tom has become accustomed to, Tom pulls himself out of the water to take the gun in hand.
This disgusting shell of a man still lives and breathes, dares to call their pain the same, while Ben has to be reborn because of Tom’s foolishness.
“You think our pain is the same?” Tom says, voice low. “You think losing a son is the same as losing a woman you barely knew, a woman you tricked into caring for you? Sara would have discovered your true nature eventually, and you would have lost her no matter what. You just blamed me because you were too cowardly to take responsibility for yourself. You sonofabitch.”
Before Pope can react, Tom has pulled the trigger and put a bullet through his skull. If Pope had had his way, Tom would be mourning Hal right now, but without the knowledge that Hal would be back, like Ben will be.
Such a thing would be impossible to bear.
Tom carefully sets the gun beside Pope’s body and returns to sit in front of the water. He will wait for as long as it takes.
Anne comes first, standing awkwardly next to him. She reaches down to touch his shoulder, but Tom shrugs away.
“I don’t think-“Anne starts.
“Leave!” Tom says, before she can finish. He knows what she’ll say. She always doubted the Dornia. “For good.”
“Tom, you’re grieving,” Anne says. “That’s okay, but you-“
“I mean it,” Tom says harshly. He had planned to beg forgiveness for how he had acted towards the end of the war, their relationship could have a clean slate, but now everything had changed. Now the true nature of their relationship is laid bare. “We never really loved each other. Cared for each other, sure, but we both were in mourning when we got together. We never stopped mourning our dead spouses. We both love them more than we love each other. So go. You’re free.”
“I hope you’re right about the Dornia,” Anne says, voice rough.
Tom hears her footsteps leave. Good. If she had truly loved Ben as a son, the way Ben deserves to be loved by his stepmother, then she would have fought harder to stay and wait.
The next two pairs of footsteps are those that he has longed to hear- and those that he has feared.
Tom knows that he cannot allow Hal and Matt near him, not yet. He has to prove himself worthy, prove that he’s not a danger to his kids. So they can’t be near him until Ben returns. It’s the only way to be sure.
“Dad,” Matt’s voice is timid.
“You should return to whatever celebration they’re having,” Tom says. “I’ll wait here for Ben, and then we’ll come join you.”
“Dad, Ben’s not coming back,” Hal says. “He died.”
Tom shakes his head, hard. “He died, but he’ll come back. The Dornia will save him, like they saved me. They owe me, and they’ll put things right again.”
“They needed you, Dad,” Hal says. “I loved Ben, but I don’t think he’s coming back.”
Tom gets up and smiles into Hal’s sad, scared face, careful not to touch him so he can’t hurt him. “He’ll be back. Until then, go.”
“Dad, please come with us,” Matt says, reaching towards him.
Tom pulls away. No contact. “Go, celebrate. I’ll be along with Ben soon. And then we can be a family again.”
“Matt, I think we should go,” Hal says, taking him by the hand.
“We can’t leave Dad!” Matt protests.
“It’s okay,” Tom assures him, looking behind him into the ocean where Ben is being reborn. “I’m not alone.”
“Tom, you must eat,” Cochise’s voice comes from behind him.
“I’m not leaving!” Tom protests.
“I have brought you sustenance,” Cochise says, sitting beside him and handing him something.
Tom doesn’t feel like eating it. “I miss Ben so much already. But it’s ridiculous because I know that he’ll be back. I still miss him, though.”
Cochise wraps an arm around Tom. “Then I will wait with you, so you will not be alone.”
Tom’s lips twitch into the hint of a smile. “So you believe me?”
“I will stay with you,” Cochise says.
That’s enough for Tom.
When the sun starts to set, Tom yawns.
“You must rest,” Cochise says.
“I can’t! I’ve got to be here when Ben comes back. I won’t let him down again,” Tom says.
“I will keep watch. I am certain Ben will understand,” Cochise says.
“Ben was always too understanding of me,” Tom says with a deep sorrow.
“Yes, but he loved and admired you deeply,” Cochise reminds him.
“I’ll be worthy of it- and worthy of the love of all three of my boys- from now on. Once Ben is back, I’ll show them,” Tom says.
Tom eventually droops and falls into the sand, evidently exhausted from the day he has had. Cochise rearranges him gently so his head is in Cochise’s lap.
Of course, Cochise knows that Ben is dead and is not returning to them. It is tragic, but true.
He will keep watch as he promised Tom anyway.
Tom watches during the day; Cochise watches at night.
Tom is unwavering in his belief; Cochise is unwavering in his devotion.
Tom could be a hero among humans. The savior of his people. But he can’t take up the mantle until he can take it up with all three of his sons beside him. The mantle is too heavy with the weight of Ben’s dead body pulling downwards. So he watches and waits for the day when the Dornia will return his son to him.
Cochise is perpetually disgraced among the Volm. Disobedient, disrupted the order of life, defective. It is his fault his father, the great general, died dishonorably. Even in the new society the Volm are building, there could be no place for someone like him. Perhaps if Tom could take up his mantle, the Volm would accept Cochise back, reluctantly.
But that will not happen. Ben’s body washes ashore a few weeks later. Tom refuses to see it. Cochise wraps him up in cloth before returning him to Hal, who comes to check on them every couple days when Matt is in school.
“I am sorry,” Cochise says as he hands over the body.
“We all knew,” Hal says, clearly unable to look down at the body. He looks over at where Tom is sitting on the bench Cochise constructed. “We had a memorial already. Did you show him the body?”
“He refuses to believe it,” Cochise says.
“I don’t know if I can keep coming down here,” Hal says. “I want to keep checking on Dad, but I have to watch out for Matt, too. Dad’s obsession isn’t good for him. Matt needs to grieve and move on, not cling to false hope that we’ll get Ben back.”
“I will watch over your father. I will keep him warm and fed,” Cochise says. “You and your brother should both attempt to form lives.”
“What about you?” Hal says. “Are you going to decide you want to go to your Volm homeworld?”
“I do not have a place among my people. Your father taught me about humanity during the war and I owe him much. I will repay this debt,” Cochise says. “I will not abandon your father.”
“Dad is lucky to have you,” Hal says.
“I will take care of him with my life,” Cochise says.
Hal takes a long look at his dad, slumped on his bench. “Sometimes I don’t know if it’d be nicer to just let him wither away. I don’t think he wants to be alive, Cochise. I really don’t.”
“Perhaps one day he will heal,” Cochise says.
“I can’t wait for that,” Hal says. “Not when he doesn’t seem to be getting any better at all.”
“I understand. Your father has expressed a desire for you and Matt to live your lives, and I believe that if he were in his right mind, he would understand as well,” Cochise says.
“If you ever need anything, we won’t go too far. If we do move away, I’ll come back and let you know,” Hal says.
“Thank you, Hal. I am sorry for your loss,” Cochise says.
“I’m sorry for yours, too,” Hal says, turning away and carrying his brother’s body.
Tom’s vaguely aware of the things that happen. Cochise builds a shelter, forces him inside when it rains. He feeds him food. It starts to get cold, and Cochise brings him blankets and warms him with his body heat.
Sometimes they talk, but mostly they sit in silence. It comforts Tom, to know that Cochise is waiting for Ben every night. Tom sleeps in Cochise’s lap so he’s right there if Ben comes at night.
One day, Ben will come home and they will be a family again. Until then, Tom will wait.