Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

‘Ben, what is this?’

At the tone of Kai’s voice, hard, with a small, light, disbelieving lilt at the end of it, Ben spins. And then laughs nervously at the sight of her and  the way her hand lands on her hip, the other clenched round a torn-off strip of newspaper like a security blanket.

‘I, err, didn’t do it, whatever it is?’

He offers up his own hands, still wet from the dishes like a peace-offering, soap-suds and bubbles attached to the large wrinkles of his palm, but Kai simply scowls at him.

‘How many times do I have to tell you? Use. A. Dishcloth.’

Her hand unwraps from its place on her hip and Ben has just enough time to admire the nice, vase-like curve of her waist, before a thin towel is thrown at him and he has to catch it before it can hit him in the face. Belatedly, he realises the existence of a small puddle forming beneath his fingertips and bends to sweep it up, ignoring the grin of his printed self on the towel as it falls out across the tiles in wrinkled waves – from this angle he can see the dorky leopard-print sunglasses hanging off the perch of his nose from that dreadful Malibu photo shoot they did three weeks back. That wouldn’t have been so bad except Kai, over the course of the last several months, has gleefully ordered ever single scrap of merchandise involving that same wretched photo because ‘that sunburn down your back is just adorable.’ But personally, Ben doesn’t find it cute at all.

Bye, bye, bubbles, he thinks mournfully as each one wavers and pops, suffocated between the squeeze of the towel and the press of the floor. And then he looks up, just in time to see Kai shove the scrap of newspaper in front of his nose.

‘Now, like I said before: what. Is. This?’

Ben frowns. ‘Is this a trick question?’ he asks. ‘Because I stopped changing into Wildmutt in my sleep and ruining whatever papers were lying around years ago. And that was all because of those sessions with that hypnotist from L.A – your idea by the way, I seem to recall.’

Kai makes that little uncute ‘urgh’ sound, the one she always does when she doesn’t want to be dissuaded from whatever tirade she is about to embark on. ‘You were having nightmares and punching the pillow! Besides that has nothing to do with this.’ She points a finger heatedly at the grey-scale photo wedged within the tatters of her fist.

So Ben peers closer, making out the smudged line of a date in the cut-across corners of the by-line. ‘Huh, that was when Jimmy Jones started writing for the ‘International Journal’ wasn’t it? We were twenty-two then, weren’t we?’

It was also, he remembers, back when newspaper still existed in the form of paper. They still get printed for those who can afford them of course, but nowadays the articles are cycled through web-pages, sent signal to signal, rather than door-to-door.

‘Very good,’ says Kai from between clenched teeth. ‘But Ben, what else happened when we were twenty-two? In July?’

Ben frowns, staring at the photograph blankly for clues. The sky in the background, he sees, is an oily black, denoting night which is a rather strange choice for any newspaper photographer to act upon, and the person that fills the frame is some grinning old guy, his beard twisted into fancy braids.

‘Doctor Stepson? Wasn’t he that guy on that expedition to the shadow realm to retrieve some Aztec medallion that had gotten stolen...’ his voice trails off as he suddenly makes out the blurred glint of the thing between the proud fingers of Doctor Stepson, all the ridges and markings rendered carefully into a stormy grey.

He remembers now: that mission had been important to Kai. It had been the first one she had been able to take Excalibur on, the first one she had received international notoriety on, thanks in no small part to the credit Jimmy Jones had given her. Ben had tagged along for the ride, mostly to keep her Grandfather happy; Wes had never quite got out of the habit of forbidding her from doing certain things alone. But nothing could detract Kai from the joy she had experienced afterwards despite the bother, and Ben smiles as he remembers her practically preening as she held the Aztec coin between tight fists, Doctor Stepson touching both their shoulders in a paternal fashion just as the camera went off.

‘Okay,’ he agrees. ‘That is weird. I remember Doctor Stepson being way more handsome the last time I saw this photo. Of course, that was probably because of the charming young woman he was busy fondling at the time...’

Kai bops him on the head with a closed fist like he’s a dog or something – but she’s smiling as she does so. ‘Ha, ha, very funny. But that’s not the only thing that’s weird.’

She grabs his hand, ignoring the wetness he pastes into her palm from the cloth he’s still holding, and pulls him up through the kitchen doorway. And Ben’s eyes widen as he sees books and other newspaper clippings on the cabernet desk nearby, next to a tablet in sleep-mode.

‘I’m missing,’ Kai declares solemnly. ‘Not on every expedition or in every paper I’ve ever written, but enough of them to matter; some of it’s gone or modified, as if I was never there. Or worse, someone else, someone that I’ve worked with, has swooped in and stolen the credit. That Melody Blake girl wrote up how she found the incomplete skeleton of Cerberus – only I was there and I remember finding the whole thing. Sure, I prevented her from using the wrong kind of tool to brush the bones and I had to stop her from taking up a sledge hammer when she got too frustrated by how slow everything was going – she was a lot like how you used to be, now that I think of it. But still, according to all the photographs I’ve found, the entirety of the jawbone is missing, and the rib-cage is shattered despite the fact I never remember it cracking...so, you can see how I’m worried.’

The bottom of Ben’s stomach drops. He can’t imagine how he would feel if his life’s work were ruined, parts of it yanked away by some hacker that can magically erase facts from paper and re-arrange events to make his impact on the world look smaller than it is.

‘Kai...’ he reaches for her shoulder but with a bitter laugh, she spins from his grasp and chucks the tablet at him.

‘Wait for it,’ she tells him.

Ben frowns in confusion but obligingly scrapes his finger across the screen. Only to see...nothing.

‘Kai,’ he says numbly, unsure whether or not this is a trap. ‘This is a blank document.’

She laughs again only now, Ben notices with alarm, there’s a hint of hysteria to it. ‘Yep,’ she says extending her hand dramatically. ‘But a few days ago it was a scan of our son’s birth certificate. The original is missing by the way; it’s disappeared from the safe without a trace.’

And just like that, the start of Ben 10,000’s world begins to collapse.

--------------------------

Hours go by. Anniversary gifts go missing, the hand-drawn Mother’s Day cards Ken painstakingly drew up till he was five, vanish, and Kai shivers in his arms that night as though she’s too cold to cope.

And all the while, Ben really wishes Paradox had a phone.

Kai clutches at his arm, nails pushing the boundary of his skin and he finds himself pressing whispers into her hair, telling her that he’ll put all of Plumber HQ on high alert if he has to, anything to get to the bottom of this. Finally, after minutes of these empty reassurances, she falls asleep, her shudders worn down into uneasy breaths and Ben can’t help but watch her, a pang in his heart as she snuffles and shifts in her sleep. He wonders what dreams she has and where they take her, whether they’re anything like his, and if she has her own personal Vilgax to slay, deep within the contours of her nightmares. He hopes she always wins.

Then he blinks. For just a moment, he thinks he sees green where there should have been orange, the flare of her pyjamas suddenly melting away into the press of the duvet above. He narrows his eyes. And for another moment, nothing else happens. 

Seconds pass, and then all of a sudden, the brown in her skin fades, a deathly pallor present in her face as the orange in her clothes flickers down like a dying fire into a yellow linen blend. Alarmed, Ben reaches for her, throws himself forward just as the black of her outstretched hair slips through his fingers, disintegrating into a liquid spill that hangs between them in an oily brush of colour. And then it’s green, all of her green, morphing like a chameleon into the thread of their sheets beneath, outlines fading like charcoal muted into down pencil strikes as someone, God probably, takes an eraser to her face and all those other fine lines that twist her limbs into reality. And Ben is forced to watch, horrified, as his gropes for her skin shear through her muscles like water.

‘KAI!’ He shouts it, screams it, loud enough to wake her, but she doesn’t roll over to look at him and shout something insulting back the way she should. No, with her eyes still closed, she disappears into the air and the bed, like a Greek nymph melting into her tree.

Ben doesn’t think. His wrists brush together automatically, all of him in action as he’s plunged into inky blackness. And then Bellacious and Serena stare back at him their expressions etched into something beyond alien apathy.

‘Bring her back!’ he demands, ignoring the crack in his voice. He clenches his fists firmly, hating himself for not trying this sooner and in the background, the whisper of other voices surround him, all those other mask-like faces prowling round him like vultures, born from the years where his personality has grown and developed past his teenage ego.

‘Complicated,’ mutters one called Creecian, his frown caught in a twist of pity.

‘Yeeeah,’ drawls another named Joshua, sounding remarkably like his teenage self. ‘We can’t change something if you’re still doing it, because it’s not, like final or anything. Time’s tricky like that. Ask the fucking Time-Walker.’

A shudder runs through the circle at the mention of Paradox, but Ben is still caught on the words of before. ‘I’m doing this?’

‘Not precisely.’ Serena speaks and her voice is gentle, more gentle than Ben can ever recall hearing and oh, that punches him straight in the gut. ‘The ‘you’ of ‘now’ is not doing a thing to rewrite her life. The younger version of yourself however...’

Ben’s blood runs cold. He doesn’t understand.

‘Is he...I’m...changing into Eon?’ he chokes out. It’s the only thing he can think of in the heat of the moment, however stupid it sounds. Because while he barely knows enough to understand how the timelines function and fluctuate, he knows enough to know that Eon is another version of him, born from the same cocky seventeen year old he used to be. It’s a little fucked up, that he and Eon used to be the exact same person, used to walk around and laugh in the exact same body, but then so is time in general.

But Bellacious snorts indignantly at the very thought. ‘No,’ he says and it’s uttered with such scorn that Ben is instantly relieved. ‘Don’t be stupid. The timelines split in a much more dramatic fashion when Eon was created. The whole universe practically screamed as his divided from our own.’ He hesitates and just like that, all the panic rides hard and fast into Ben’s veins again. Because Bellacious is actually looking sorry. ‘The difficulty with the changing in this timeline is that it’s linked to a time loop; Maltruant’s specifically,’ he tells Ben. ‘And the time loop Maltruant’s a part of it is fixed, or it was meant to be, particularly because before it’s end, because before he’s recycled back to its beginning, he plays a role in the start of our universe.’

Ben feels a little loose. ‘Right...’ he says slowly. ‘I would never have touched the Anihilaarg if it hadn’t been for his interference. And that probably had some kind of effect on the way it created everything later on.’ He shakes his head. ‘But that had nothing to do with Kai!’

‘Any deviation, however small, in such a fixed event has consequences,’ murmurs a small mask, her expression arranged into the dreamy smile of a young girl pondering fairytales. ‘Your part, and your wife’s, in fighting Maltruant when he retrieved the Anihilaarg, automatically linked you to the Ben that appeared from the past in order to help, the Ben that finally trapped Maltruant in his time-loop. You came from him; that much is certain. But he has not become you; not yet.’

‘Um, obviously,’ says Ben.

She nods, as much as a mask floating in the black of the ether of their shared mind can, anyway. ‘Yes. But he has also not married Kai yet, either.’

A small sinking feeling develops in Ben’s stomach. He can’t really imagine how his past self has turned away from Kai, how he could continue dating Ester, but the puzzle pieces are unwittingly slotting together all the same.

‘So what?’ he asks. ‘I have to find a way to go back in time and fix my marriage?’

There’s a rustle running through the circle, masks shifting, looking at each other like they know something he doesn’t. ‘Well, that depends on, like, if you can change his mind?’ says Joshua, a crease of confusion running through his brow. ‘But like, people are complex, man. Especially you.’

‘I don’t care,’ Ben says grimly. ‘I want my wife back.’    

--------------------------

He wakes to find Kenny clutching his wrist, frantic questions pouring from his mouth as his eyes rake the side of the bed his mother was on.

‘Dad! You’re back! Where’s Mom? And why were you screaming? Did she get sucked up into a portal again? Jeeze, it’s always freaky when you’re just Alien X and not combined with another alien to make him, seem, I dunno, more normal. Can’t you make him learn to wave or something? Maybe with a wink so I know you’re not brain-dead? Also, you’re not being very talkative with your thousand yard stare.’

Ben struggles to rearrange his face into a smile. ‘It’s alright,’ he says quietly. ‘Everything’s okay.’ He straightens, feeling the knots in his spine unroll and unbend along the muscle of his back. ‘We’ll get her back.’

Because maybe if he projects enough confidence to his son, he’ll wind up believing it for himself.

--------------------------

Kenny watches as his Dad dismantles his Spanner suit, the small stature of a fused Upgrade and Jury Rigg scrabbling through metal and tearing cloth apart in a slap-dash hurry to make a workable belt.

‘Fix, fix, fix!’

Kenny winces and turns as the fabric rips with a loud snap and seizes hold of all the sound in the room. Dimly, from the corner of his eye, he can see half of his familiar green scarf flutter to the floor like a flag in surrender, its knot chopped into threads.

‘You wouldn’t have to do this if you hadn’t dismantled the Chronoporter after Animo tried to use it to change the past,’ he mutters sulkily. But his Dad turns deaf ears to him, hurriedly working and snipping something that was never his to dismantle.

Finally, there’s a bright flash and his Dad springs back into his human shape, carefully inspecting the new harness he’s made. It reminds Kenny of some over-sized baby reins, all white with black veins running along the surface, extensions ripping out of it’s sides like cords for the parents to tug hold of.

‘Wow, majorly uncool, Dad,’ he says dully.

Ben winces and takes a second to stand and look at Kenny. Really look. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says finally. ‘I get that this suit is your thing. But I’m not Paradox and have no way to contact him and this’- he points to the harness, which Kenny notes idly doesn’t make it look any less lame – ‘is the only thing within reach that allows controlled time travel.’

He yanks the harness over his head, the dial-pad of the wrist cuff now flattened and moved towards the left side of his chest, like an armoured plate.

Kenny sighs and kicks the side of his heels into his bed-frame angrily. ‘Mum’s missing and if I ask you if I can come to actually help rescue her, you’re gonna say no, aren’t you?’

Ben hesitates and Kenny’s eyes widen. His Dad actually looks torn.

Ben swallows. ‘I...I’m sorry.’

Kenny’s eyes widen even further. His Dad never apologises for leaving him behind.

But before he can say anything, another protest perhaps, Ben’s large hand falls onto the control panel with a heavy smack, reminiscent of the way Kenny’s seen a younger, slimmer, more impulsive version of him smack the version of the Omnitrix that’s been passed down. And then, with a faint whoop of matter displacing itself, his Dad is gone.

Chapter Text

It doesn’t take much time for the antsiness to settle in. Or for the detective skills to kick into high gear. And then Kenny’s racing through the pages of clutter his parents have forgotten to pick up and hide away, fingers leafing through the pages of scholarly journals and history books with a speed that would put Aunt Gwen to shame. He’s vaguely familiar with all of them; though he doesn’t have an entirely accurate memory involving his mother’s achievements and her work has never tugged at him the way his father’s does, he’s always felt a firm surge of pride at the thought of her going out and kicking ass Lara Croft style.

So it’s why, as he flicks through the pages, his puzzlement grows. Isn’t she the one who found Medea’s chalice, the one she offered to her stepson Theseus? And that large, rusted bronze nail, said to lodge the ichor within the body of Talus, didn’t she dig that up from a burial site in Crete? But the names below these discoveries don’t read out her name, no, there’s no mention of Kai Green, or even the amendment of Kai Tennyson later on. Instead the faces, lives of people he’s never really met, jump out at him, proclaim their findings with all the pride of someone who doesn’t really understand the concept of plagiarism.

It’s all wrong, so he turns to the internet, using both of her names to seek her out. And that’s where he finds her, amidst all the lines of codes and jpeg files, pictures of her brushing against lush ferns and cotton-bearing plants, with laughter in her eyes as birds and butterflies flock to her fingers to circle the sword she keeps strapped to her back.

But the details make him squint; her hair is cropped short, swinging low over her ears as though to brush against the curved rims instead of soaring up into a series of familiar ebony curves that fall over her back. And her flesh looks well-baked, deeper and richer than the tones and shifts of earth her boots walk over, much more so than what he remembers. Bruises lie against her neck, scattered with a purple hue that makes him sick and further down, his eye catches on a long lean scar that plays against her un-sleeved arm, one that dips down into a pale blemish that he’s never seen before. And she wears them all with a pride he’s familiar with, a pride that speaks of violence.

‘Awesome!!’ he sees one comment make, under a video where she curves her legs over a rock, free of the armour that has so defined her during these last seven years and listens attentively to a blind man describing the murder of his entire village two years ago. He speaks low and hard of the mass grave he is not allowed to visit and his voice falls to a whispery shudder as he describes the guns that bar his way. The video then cuts away abruptly, part of some documentary clip, and it shows Kai walking into the distance, her fingers reaching over her back to grasp the hilt of Excalibur before she draws it out completely with a faint sheen of noise.

And that's when the world within the video explodes.

With an eruption of green, shoots and stems soar out beneath her feet and Kenny watches, stunned, as the earth breaks and crackles around each ripple of her boot, the soil stirring and rearranging itself into a swirl of stones resembling paving slabs. Birds flock round her face, butterflies circle her wrists, and she smiles, long and hard, before the tanks pull in, the swivel of their guns turning to land on her face. But she grins, cocky as his father, and her sword swings, arcs of light exploding from its tip to race down and rip into the tread-mill that cart them towards her. There are shouts and yells and Kai springs forward, large leafy fronds pushing themselves out eagerly like over grown lily-pads for her feet to spring into, to use as launch-pads as she lands near a gun turret. In one twist, Excalibur cleaves the thin tunnel of its barrel into two, transforming it into two simple guttering pipes that curl and curve into unusable coils. And on and on it goes, Kai using magic plants and swordsmanship to dismantle the military baring an old’s man’s path to his dead loved ones.

Even as she works, the leaves bury beneath the paving stones, raising them up into a bridge over the war-zone before thick twisting thorns arise out of rapidly growing brambles to tangle over and above the air in shields thick enough to cause bullets to ricochet.

‘This path is under Avalon’s protection,’ Kai announces to the video after she is done, panting slightly. ‘The realm of faerie declares it so.’

And, as though in a trance, Kenny’s eyes flicker down to read another message in the comment board: ‘Kai green, flawless queen!’

‘Lameo poet and you know it,’ says another scornfully below. But Kenny’s ears are busy ringing.

Because his mother, transformed as she is, is not using his father’s surname, and her hair is cut short and her sword is expelling powers that he’s never seen...and he knows Excalibur is linked to the fairie realm, they all do, but his mother has always shrugged and said ‘guess it’s Tinkerbell powers are busted’ whenever he asks for more detail. So this...this is weird.

Has she been brainwashed? Have the fairies come to reclaim Excalibur and dragged her and her history into some bizzaro alteration?

Kenny scours facebook, fiddles with the Omnitrix that he’s finally convinced his parents to give back to him and turns into Grey Matter. It takes him less than three seconds to hack into the system and find her home address.

--------------------------

With the Omnitrix it’s easy enough to find her, to seek out the small house located in Northern Arizona. He’s a little surprised; he had thought the south would have suited her more, all those desert-like stretches of sand and heated temperatures reminding her of the foreign climates she has to stumble through for her work. But no; her house is a cosy thing, yellow walls flashing between a huddle of pine trees and sparsely-lined firs, the glint of a stream gleaming through the curves of a garden outside. He notes the wind-chimes and dream-catchers attached to the porch, the way they swing loftily as though in mere decoration for a palace, and wonders why he’s never seen more of them at home.

He takes a breath. Changes back from Astrodactyl and goes up to knock on the door. And when, after half a minute, she answers, her face is pleasant. But there’s no familiar warmth in it.

‘Hey,’ she says, her voice taking on that careful factual tone he recognises from the museum tours she dragged him through when he was six. ‘It’s a little early in the year for scout cookies. Or Christmas Caroling. Or those other one hundred and fifty holiday celebrations that have been present ever since Earth opened its doors to alien immigration.’ She opens the door wider. ‘I should warn you though, I’m not too keen on giving out autographs.’

Kenny looks at her, at the familiar lines that give her face its shape and then stares down at the unfamiliar one taking over her lips. She’s never smiled at him like this, warm and tight and empty, like he’s simply a well-meaning kid and not a familiar pain in the butt. He swallows. And her face softens in concern.

‘Hey, what’s wrong?’

And suddenly he’s not fourteen anymore, he’s six and he’s scraped his knee, running over to the only person who can fix it, to...

‘Mum,’ he says, his voice hoarse, and without thinking about it, he crashes into her, giving her the tightest hug he can manage. She freezes, steps back away from him, but he holds on, desperately aware of the alien way her muscles shudder under his.

And he steps inside the doorway with her, allowing her feet to drift back and carry him through this strange new rabbit-hole, past all the unfamiliar faces glaring at him from unfamiliar photos on the unfamiliar walls. No Grandpa Carl and Grandma Sandra, only Acheii Wes, smiling and holding a fishing line over waters of blue with a Loboan by his side. And in the next photo, the same Loboan again, this time cutting out a slice of wedding cake with his claws instead of a knife, his body tucked inside a tight tuxedo as the furry muscle of his arm thrusts through the ripped seams. And further still, beneath the curve of a shadow, some middle-aged woman with curly hair smirks within an oval frame and stands next to a guy in a long 1940’s style trench coat, his t-shirt saying ‘Never listen to anyone who calls you ‘sweetie.’ The arrow beneath, Kenny notices, points firmly to the woman he hugs into his side.

All fragments of a fake life, he thinks fiercely, and it makes him boil, to see these strangers standing here in place of people who deserve it, trying to step into a place that has no room for them.

Before him, Kai laughs nervously. ‘Okay...whoa there, buddy, you suffering from a concussion or something? I hate to break it to you, but I do have a rather pointy sword I can shove up-’

Kenny steps back, now aware of how this looks, a strange teenage male breaking into a woman’s house. ‘I, no, this is all wrong! You’re not supposed to be...’ he fumbles, then waves a hand in front of him, indicating all of her, from head to toe in one breezy sweep. ‘This!’

She raises an eyebrow.

And Kenny gulps. Because he’s learnt, from that disastrous time in the museum, that playing matchmaker isn’t exactly his strong suite. Not to mention the fact that Paradox had been a little irritable with him afterwards, after he had found out about him dropping the whole ‘married to each other’ spoiler to his teenage parents.

‘You can’t rush love,’ Paradox had told him firmly, sounding entirely like an old English schoolteacher. ‘Nor should you try to force it where there exists only enmity. As well as teenage, ah, should we say, stupidity?’

Kenny had raised his hands in frustration. ‘I know! Dad was being so thick, I mean Mum was standing right there in front of him, asking for his help and-’

Paradox had sighed heavily. ‘Would you like it if I dropped someone in front of you, someone you didn’t get along with, who held different values from your own and told you that you spent the rest of your lives together? And that nothing you felt presently would end up mattering in the long run? You can’t invalid someone’s feelings, even if you believe that you know better.’

And Kenny has taken the time to digest this. He doesn’t like it, isn’t even sure he agrees with it, but then it isn’t really what he feels about it that matters, right? So he takes a deep breath.

‘How much do you know about timelines?’ he asks.

Kai snorts and rolls her eyes. ‘Urgh, time-travel. That sounds more like one of Ben’s mis-haps than my own.’

‘You know Ben?’ he asks excitedly.

She stares at him like he’s being particularly thick. ‘Um, yeah, who doesn’t?’ Then she breaks into a grin at his falling face. ‘Relax. I’m only teasing. If you’re thinking of the same famous Ben Tennyson as I am, then yeah, I’ve known him since we were kids. Before he got famous, even. And I can’t help you with any time shenanigans. The fey don’t like it, complains that it messes up their auras.'

Kenny narrows his eyes. He knows that tone of voice. It's the tone she uses when she's lying through her teeth.

'I tend to stay away from that mess,' she continues, her voice typically no-nonsense. 'One of the burdens of being the keeper of a famous sword that’s tethered to that reality.’ She smiles, small and private. ‘But they do allow me to actually make a difference, so I can’t complain.’

Kenny shakes his head. He’s dealing with a completely different version of his mother, one who has unlocked some aspect of Excalibur that’s hidden from his own.

‘Well, err, this is going to sound really strange but...’ Screw it, he thinks. ‘Until yesterday I was living with my parents, Ben Tennyson and Kai, well, she used to be, Kai Green,’ he continues, more firmly than he feels, especially with his mother’s mouth dropping open to resemble a black hole. ‘Only now, she’s kinda vanished and you’re here, and vast aspects of her life have been changed, and Dad's gone into the past to try and fix it, and I can’t do anything except come to see you and see...’ He pauses, just to take a breath. ‘To see if you remember being her,’ he finishes softly. ‘But you obviously don’t.’

Kai frowns fiercely. ‘I’ve devoted my life to being worthy of Excalibur,’ she says low and hard. ‘Using it to help people who need a little magic in their life. Is it the way I thought my life would go? No. But it’s my life.’

There’s a scuffling and a low grunt. Then, from out of the corridor behind her, comes the thump of claws, etching low scratches across the matted rungs of the carpet. And then a grey, shaggy head peers in, over her shoulder.

‘Who’s this dear?’ the Loboan asks in a low baritone.

Kai laughs and pats the claws on her shoulder. ‘Just...well, not work exactly. But something equally as weird.’

Kenny twitches. Tries not to notice the shimmer of silver round her finger as it cruelly catches the full flare of the hallway light. But then her hand dances up to twist into the finger-like claws of someone else, someone who isn’t his father, whose hands are too big and rough and thick to make wearing a ring easy. And instead he sees it twinkle round the Loboan's neck, draped over on a chain like a tiny gem or collar stud in a little bud of silver that catches on his fur instead of the light, buried as it is beneath the shadow of his mother’s head.

‘You...’ Kenny says emptily, hollowly.

Kai looks him straight in the eye. ‘I don’t think you’re lying.’ She says slowly. ‘But I don’t particularly want to believe that my life with my husband is a lie either.’ She swallows. ‘Please...leave us alone.’

And then she shuts the door in his face, very, very gingerly. But to Kenny it might as well have been a slam.

Chapter Text

‘Rook, what is this?’

Rook grins as he bats away Ben’s finger with the ladle of the spoon. ‘Oleander noodles. But if you try to distract me, they will burn and we will both be sorry for it.’

Ben makes a face. ‘If you say so...’ But he continues to eye the broth doubtfully.

Rook shakes his head and continues to stir, narrowing his eyes and bending his knees slightly to check that the flame below the pan is the right kind of blue. It’s a pain, cooking in something that is big enough to totally eclipse the gas ring beneath, but cooking in something smaller tends to encourage him to add less water than he otherwise would, with the result being a sauce that reeks a little too strongly of all the alien spice Ben finds distasteful.

Ben, meanwhile, continues to stare at the red whirlpool forming beneath Rook’s strokes with an intensity that Rook believes is commonly referred to on Earth as ‘boring a hole’ through something. Though honestly, Rook thinks, that might only be true if Ben were to take on the form of Jetray.

‘Staring will not cause my cooking to curdle,’ he informs his partner dryly, ‘but it is still rather annoying all the same. Not to mention insulting.’

Ben flushes a little guiltily and backs off. ‘Sorry, sorry, it’s just...aren’t Oleanders poisonous?’

Rook cocks an eyebrow the way he always does when Ben unveils some new facet of knowledge he didn’t expect him to have, and he can’t quite keep the quiet chuckle from his voice. ‘I have no intention of murdering you. And the sauce is not actually made from the Earth plant it derives its name from.’ He turns to give Ben a swift, fond look, before his attention reverts back to the sauce and his expression takes on a new frown as he notes the bubbles beginning to pop along its surface. ‘This recipe is from an infamous chef, Belmny Atra, who took a fancy to the sound of the syllables the word Oleander makes, as well the deep red colour it can sometimes grow as in the wild.’ He can’t help but toss Ben another fond look at this explanation, sappiness stealing into his smile as he adds, ‘your Earth names can sound just as odd to us, as ours do to you, sometimes. Like a form of complicated poetry.’

Ben doesn’t seem to be appeased by this. Instead he folds his arms and snorts. ‘Uh-huh. And what exactly is this Belmny guy infamous for?’

Rook winces. ‘He, ah...’ he coughs and makes a show of adjusting the control dial on the gas ring, wincing at the heat radiating from the spokes supporting the pan on their curved rungs above. Their shape is reminiscent of the top part of a birdcage, ironic, given how trapped he now similarly feels. ‘He had a tendency to get excitable when inventing new formulas for sauce. Unfortunately some of the alien fruit he used was susceptible to static discharge and since he was a Gimlinopithecus, the results were either explosive or ended up affecting the delicate p.H balance of the plant. So much so, that the recipe it was involved in became slightly toxic.’ He thinks for a moment, keeping his eyes firmly away from the smothered laughter coming from his right. ‘A little like how the clumsy preparation of the fugu fish on this planet can result in death for the consumer.’

Ben giggled. ‘One of Shocksquatch’s species? Figures.’

Rook sighs and buries a large fork into the simmering mixture in front of him, knocking aside a few large walnut-sized peppercorns as he does so, though they’re not called that on their own native homeworld, of course. Feeling his face delve down into a frown, his concentration overtakes him as he rakes through the faintly glowing blue swirl of the Pattersonea dumplings that bob to the surface as a result of the movement, their consistency resembling the faint mush of an Earthen pear, and his mouth waters slightly at the faint aroma they knock out. Honestly, he’s surprised Ben hasn’t sputtered out a single complaint about them yet.

‘Dude, those better not be radioactive,’ Ben mutters at his shoulder. ‘I know what the climate’s like there. And I don’t really want to grow seven feet tall and start glowing in the dark.’

Rook rolls his eyes. It seems that as with many things, he 'spoke too soon.' Or in this case, thought.

‘Your body goes through far more disturbing changes than that on a daily basis,’ he points out firmly. ‘And like I said before, I am not trying to poison you. These have been thoroughly neutralised before being sold at the Undertown market, I assure you; I checked with the scanner on the Proto-Tool myself.’

Ben chuckles and Rook relaxes slightly as he feels the familiar twist of those sleeved arms wrap around his torso. Or the bottom half of his chest at least – Ben is still horrendously small compared to other people, enough for Rook to sometimes worry about crushing him when they make love. It’s a stupid and irrational impulse given that Ben’s arms are a lot more toned than they used to be, especially since he’s actually seen Ben hold his own in a fight with only the body he was born with to use as a suitable defence; but, well. Habits die hard.

Ben pushes his nose into the shirt in front of his face, rubbing hard enough for Rook’s fur to pick up the fine lines of his cheek and forehead, even with the barrier of fabric in the way.

‘It smells good,’ he admits and Rook smiles privately to himself, lifting a thin purple string of noodle up for inspection. ‘I’m sure I’ll be able to choke some of it down. And it makes a change of pace; I can’t be the one to cook up spaghetti bolognaise or pancakes all the time.’

‘Your cooking repartee is somewhat limited, yes,’ Rook agrees.

Ben gives him a warning squeeze, just enough to hurt and Rook wonders how long it will be before he has to actually worry about Ben landing a hit that will make him stagger back in their practise sessions.

‘’Snot my fault if my taste-buds are actually normal.’

‘What a compelling point you make,’ says Rook in a bored tone. ‘But look! The food is finally ready.’

Ben steps away and lifts the plates out of the cupboard, settling them on the table with a heavy clink. And Rook smiles again as he dishes out, watching with a rising sense of hunger as both noodles and broth swirl out into the plates with a jelly-like slop.

Ben makes a face but obligingly shoves a fork into Rook’s waiting hand and sits himself down, eyeing the noodles that rise and swim through the red surface of sauce like he expects them to transform into blue worms and erupt towards his face with a vicious set of teeth. He probably does, reflects Rook with more a sense of wry amusement than actual hurt, and he gives Ben a thumbs up before he shovels his first mouthful between his jaws.

Ben shakes his head in token protest and shrugs before opening his own mouth and diving in. Rook waits eagerly, feeling the grin rise to his lips as Ben lets out a hum of appreciation and gives him a surprised look in return.

‘You see, there are benefits in broadening your horizon, Ben,’ Rook tells him, trying hard not to let the smugness creep into his tone. But judging by the slightly scornful look Ben throws his way, he is not entirely successful.

Just then, Ben’s phone rings. And Ben sighs, making a big show of dragging it out onto the table before his thumb slams down on the screen.

‘Her-llo?’ he asks between mouthfuls.

‘Sorry to disturb you, Ben.’ His grandfather’s voice comes out over the speaker in tired tones and for a moment, Rook wonders whether he should excuse himself, pick up his plate and leave the two of them to their privacy. But then the next words Max says makes this thought rush out of his head entirely. ‘But your...future self has turned up at Headquarters. And he’s demanding to speak to you.’

Ben groaned. ‘Ser-rous-ley? It’s myeh day orf!’

‘Don’t try to talk with your mouth full, Ben,’ says Max, though he doesn’t sound particularly angry, Rook notes. ‘And I’m afraid he’s being rather insistent. It’s all I can do to keep him from charging over to you.’

Ben sighs and makes an effort to swallow. ‘Fine, fine. We’ll be there. Just...give us ten minutes, okay?’

Rook frowns. It won’t take them that long for him to change out of casual clothing, before they can ask Blukic and Driba to fire up the teleporter for them, but Ben is giving him the same sort of quelling look Rayona used to give him, with that classic faintly wrinkled brow and narrow ‘don’t-move-if-you-know-what’s-good-for-you’ glare. So he remains seated, cheeks bulging and mouth full.

Ben sighs and ends the call. ‘Weird,’ he says, cocking an eyebrow at Rook. ‘Especially if Paradox isn’t there. Last time I checked future me couldn’t time-travel at will. Um, I think.’

Ben’s right, Rook notes absently, it is rather strange. ‘Why did you ask for ten minutes?’ he asks, deciding to favour a different sort of curiosity. ‘You know how quick I am at putting on the Proto-Armour.’

‘Yes,’ says Ben grimly. ‘And I also know you fight better on a full stomach than an empty one. So eat up.’ He taps the side of Rook’s plate with his fork, wincing a little at the dull clank that rings out. ‘It might not take you ten minutes to eat, but it will take you five minutes to clear up that plate without getting indigestion from rushing.’ He nods firmly to himself then proceeds to ignore all his own advice, swirling a fork down into his own set of noodles and lifting it to chomp down with ferocious speed. It seems doubly unwise given that the action sends sauce spilling everywhere.

But Rook shakes his head and picks up his fork nonetheless.

--------------------------1 

When Ben first sees Older Him, he bursts out laughing.

‘Dude!’ he manages between gasps. ‘What are you wearing?!’

Older Ben straightens self-consciously. ‘It’s a re-model of something that wouldn’t fit me any other way,’ he says moodily. ‘Don’t judge.’

But to be fair, Rook thinks, under the bright lights and next to the grey-green hue of the consoles in Plumber headquarters, he does look...well, awkward. His biceps look trapped, caught and wound round with tight white straps, like he’s had a nasty run-in with a skipping rope, and the slender colour of them appears almost obscure next to the pink gleam of his skin. The same pattern is repeated with his legs and chest, though over that wide expanse of his t-shirt they tend to form the sort of criss-crossed barrier he’s seen on people wearing a parachute harness.

Ben sucks in a gasp. ‘Hoooo boy...I keep expecting our Mom to show up any minute to grab hold of those baby-reins!’

Older Ben’s face twists into a grimace. ‘I can’t believe I was ever this obnoxious. And these are not baby-reins,’ he adds, seizing hold of the corded extensions that run off the harness, extensions which, Rook is forced to admit, look very much like the Earthlings’ restraints for unruly children. ‘They’re for supporting the bio-feedback! You can’t just send a human body back in time without them! Not unless you want a bunch of weird effects...’ But he does look a little embarrassed as he trails off, so Rook takes pity on him.

‘We are getting off track,’ he tells his Ben, nudging him firmly in the shoulder. ‘Perhaps we should ask what has brought you to this time.’

Older Ben lets out a breath, hand clenching slightly. ‘Yeah, okay.’ He shakes his head, a bitter smile drawing the line of his mouth up. ‘You’re always good at dragging my attention back to the point at hand, no matter what time period we’re in. It’s nice to know some things don’t change.’

His eyebrows draw down on this last word to successfully cut off all the softness the twist in his smile is giving; and it’s as though someone’s shut off Rook’s understanding of his expression. Because sure, this Ben’s face is older, more angular, and hardened by age, but it still shakes Rook to the core to realise that this Ben has grown beyond him and the easy familiarity they've developed. He knew it, knows it intellectually, but to see actual evidence of it before him...it’s scary.

‘Change?’ Clearly his Ben has picked up on the emphasis the older one is giving this word, because he frowns and steps forward. ‘Is this some weird Time-War nonsense again?’

Older Ben shakes his head. ‘I wish.’ Then he glances down, a strange sort of nervousness tugging at his expression with the way his eyes briefly dip down to his boots in an way Rook is still keenly familiar with, before the older man steps forward and clasps his younger self on the shoulder.

‘Where’s K-kai?’

Ben stiffens, not so much at the touch, but at the queer, tremulous tone his other self paints her name with. 

‘I don’t know,’ he says, though suspicion is starting to tinge his voice. ‘Out somewhere collecting artefacts I guess.’

Older Ben runs an eye over his frame thoughtfully. ‘You’re...I can’t be much older than eighteen, right now, judging by your size. So yeah, that makes sense; she was doing a lot of work in Egypt at the time...’

Ben casts a look at Rook for help.

‘Is Miss Green in trouble?’ the Revonnahgander asks, stepping forward and offering out a hand. He’s not exactly sure what to do with it, but Ben is wincing, indicating that his older self is exerting a little too much pressure on the young bones buried beneath his palms, so, as respectfully as he can, Rook carefully closes his fingers round one of the large wrists in front of him, and feels the cool glide of the future Omnitrix, or at least half of it, slipping beneath his fur. Older Ben stares at him for a moment, frowning in confusion as Rook’s fingers tighten, just enough for them both to make out the tense line of a tendon as it tightens into a bulge beneath. And then Rook, with the same sort of care he would give a disturbed criminal, drags the wrist away from his partner.

‘I understand you are in distress, or at least you believe Miss Green to be,’ he says gently. ‘But please do not take it out on my partner.’

But his eyes aren’t on Older Ben as he says this. They’re fixed on his beloved and the way he winces and rolls his shoulder. And before he knows it, Rook's free hand is coming up partway between them, either to stroke or soothe the bruised muscle, he’s not sure which. Only before he can do so, he happens to glance back towards Older Ben and sees the other staring at him in such a peculiar, almost frightened fashion, that his hands instantly drop away from both of them. And he lets out an embarrassed cough.

‘Right,’ says Older Ben, sounding more panicked by the second. ‘Look, just call her, make sure she’s alright!’

Ben makes a face. ‘I dunno. She’s been kinda pissy with me now that I...’ he trails off and blushes, feebly rubbing the back of his neck.

Older Ben narrows his eyes. ‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing!’ Ben bursts out indignantly with. ‘That’s the point! She’s being crazy!’ He spreads his arms out wide as though to indicate the size and scope of said ‘crazy’ and older Ben’s eyebrows slam down like a set of heavy black hammers in response.

‘Ben...’ says Rook appealingly. But he cannot stop the slight happy jitter that runs through his stomach when Ben glares back at Older Ben, completely undeterred by the snarl he’s been given and says defiantly, ‘she’s sulking! All because I wouldn’t cheat on Rook!’

And yet the instant he utters this last word, Ben’s eyes widen as though he’s made a terrible mistake and he looks startled, hand clawing over his mouth as though it can stuff this mention of having a boyfriend back in. But it’s too late; Older Ben is reeling, rearing back as though Rook’s name  has dealt him an invisible slug in the chest.

Rook swallows. It’s strange; he should feel grateful that that particular bomb is out of the way. But he’s never been good with seeing other people in pain. And besides...

‘She didn’t ask you to cheat, Ben,’ he says, letting the full weight of exasperation colour his tone. ‘She just asked for an explanation when you covered your mouth as she leaned in towards you.’

‘She was going to kiss me!’ Ben proclaims in a near squawk, hands flapping about as though he can brush away Rook’s correction. ‘I should know, she’s done it before. She gets this happy little glint in her eye when she’s about to land one on-’ he winces, nose creasing with a crinkle that for some reason Fistina has never found cute. Oh well, her loss and Rook’s gain as one of those numerous Earth sayings would probably say.

‘Well,’ Ben mumbles, ‘you probably don’t want to hear about that.’

‘No,’ croaks out Older Ben, ‘I don’t.’ He looks sick. ‘H-how...’ he trails off and starts indicating the two of them with uncertain hands. Rook has time to make out a tremble affecting one, before Older Ben abruptly catches his eyes and hides it within a clenched fist. But oh, that look on his face, the way it draws sparks into his eyes along with that sizzling surge of mistrust, mistrust that hurts because Rook has never ever seen it directed his way, not from any Ben that knows him.

Rook turns his attention back to his Ben, feeling an odd lump jump up into his throat. And Ben steps closer, his glare still fixed on his face as he moves his body partway between them, almost protectively

‘Ooh, I see what’s going on,’ he says a long sneering hardness in his voice. It stretches out inside each syllable like the quiver of anger that beats there beneath his tone. ‘This is like the time with Spanner, isn’t it? Look I’ll help you with whatever the problem is with Kai, but I’m not going to get her to be my girlfriend, no matter what you say.’

Older Ben closes his eyes as though the fight has fallen out of out him. And he laughs.

‘Is this why you didn’t show up Paradox?’ he mumbles, more to himself than the people in front of him. ‘Because you suck at playing cupid? Or because you knew that there was nothing I could do, no bad guy to beat up?’

‘Rook’s not a bad guy!’ Ben protests and Rook refrains from pointing out that that is far from what his Older Self said. ‘C’mon you said so earlier! What’s the big deal?’

‘The big deal?’ Older Ben looks at him. ‘The big deal is that my wife has disappeared, erased from my life because of this choice you have made.’ He throws the word 'choice' out there like it’s a dirty word and despite himself, Rook feels his hackles rise. ‘And according to all the personalities inside Alien X – oh yeah, more of them are gonna pop over the year and they’re even more annoying than Bellacious and Serena, have fun with that-’ he adds in a nasty, almost viciously thrown out aside to a now startled-looking Ben. –‘according to them all, this sort of choice is affecting my life because you’re the one who came to our time to help trap Maltruant in his repeating time-loop and that’s sort of fixed you to me-’

‘Then won’t you change?’ interrupts Rook, working hard to keep his tone steady and even. This man’s world is falling apart, quite literally after all. ‘If the life Ben makes for himself in the here and now, will one day be your life, then shouldn’t you be changing, adjusting somehow to accommodate this? I find it hard to believe Miss Green, or I suppose Mrs Tennyson, is dead. Surely she has reappeared in your own time living out her life the way it would have unfolded had she not married you.’

Older Ben pauses, rocking back onto his heels as though he’s desperate for air. ‘I didn’t even stop to think,’ he whispers. ‘Maybe I should have done, but she was gone, I saw her disappear right in front of me and I couldn’t-’ he stops, his gaze watery before he bends over, just far enough to let his hand come up to cover his brow.

And Rook hurts for him, he does. He can’t imagine watching Ben fade away in front of him and actually stopping to think about what to do next.

Even his Ben, he notes, now has his frown washed away, replaced by a soft line of sympathy that creases his face into a small almost-smile. ‘Kai’s tough,’ he says. ‘There’s no way she’s dead. In fact, without me, err, you around she’s probably living it up in some tomb somewhere.’

‘She may not be dead,’ says Older Ben, an odd coldness in his voice as he starts to straighten, ‘but what about my son?’

Rook freezes and to his side see the implications of Older Ben’s statement dance across his Ben’s face, drawing his mouth and his eyes out into one wide and horrified glance.

Chapter Text

Kenny tries a lot of things. Okay, just a few things. He isn’t a total creep after all.

But first, he waits, and though it's a total drag, just resting in the dirt like this, with his hairline perched safely out of sight below the window-sill, there's something exciting about it too, about lying in wait for the moment everything changes. And changes it does, coming in the sound of the door lock clicking open after a few minutes.

And then Kai's suddenly whisking her head out of the window above him in a motion so smooth and abrupt that Kenny almost yelps at the trap she's set. But there's no time to marvel at the fact that her husband's claws are agile enough to twist human keys into their locks, even as part of a deception, and his hand finishes closing into a fist over the watch moments before her eyes rake over his form. With a flash of green light and a whoosh of noise as he displaces the air around him, he starts to shiver as his mother's eyes settle in on the shape ChamAlien presents. Or at least they would, if the purple scales beneath didn't blend into the yellow of the house instinctively.

A few ponderous seconds pass.

And then she tuts. 'Alright kiddo, have it your way.'

Just as abruptly as before, she pulls back and slams down the window with a decisive thud, the force catching on her hair and making it flare out into stray lines rather than the rolling waves it used to glide out into. And Kenny feels a pang at the sight. But there's nothing he can do about it. Yet.

He takes the chance to sigh. And then the front door falls open with a slight squeak.

Kenny blinks. He had been planning on creeping in, past the ankles of whoever pushed it open, but there's no sense of a presence here, just of one creeping away. And if he focuses, he can hear the heavy footsteps containing claws pushing it away from the carpet and shuffling a furred body further inside the house - but the door still continues to hang open in front of him, like an invitation.

Cautiously, he checks the wavering blur of his outlines and bristles at the way they shimmer under the new-found intensity of the hallway light, before he ducks inside. Without waiting, he creeps up, over the stairs, away from the direction those footsteps stomp away into, and peers into the first room he comes across. Unfortunately, it also happens to be the room that she shares with her...with that...fake husband, and even more unfortunately, he cannot find anything out of the ordinary. Their dresser, though a little large for a human and looking as though it should belong to some gloomy gothic castle, does nothing more incriminating than dwarf the window that lets daylight in, cracks of subtle gold escaping through the glass and pouring round the wooden outskirts like a necklace. Their bed on the other hand, is a different story. Large and spacious, the water-bed coasts just above the carpet with odd jugs of motion, the outer edges flicking up to resemble the rim of a dog basket, all in a ghastly crimson.

‘She likes red,’ comes a low growl of a voice from behind him and Kenny whirls, claws outstretched and ready to fight. But the Loboan simply stares straight through him, no visual recognition on his face. But then he smirks softly, or at least Kenny thinks he does; so much of his mouth is arranged along the shape of his muzzle that it’s hard to tell. ‘I can smell you, you know. That’s how I can tell.’

Kenny suddenly feels very, very stupid.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Loboan says suddenly. ‘You’re just a kid; this must be hard for you. But I know my wife and deep down she’s a softie, though she doesn’t like to show it. She’ll come round eventually, but only in her own time. If you force it, she’ll just close up like a clam.’ He pauses. ‘Please. Wait outside, I’ll leave some sandwiches...’ he pauses again and then amends his statement sheepishly. ‘I mean some roughly chopped-up baguettes. Why use knives when you got claws, right? I hope you like ham. But please, for her sake, not mine, be patient.’

Then he leaves.

Kenny is gobsmacked.

But he doesn’t give up entirely. The next alien he turns into is Nanomech. And he ends up hovering through the crack of the living room window, just watching as Kai digs out an old photo of Blitzwolver from her phone. She stares down at the static green eyes he inherited from his father, an oddly blank look on her face and Kenny finds himself holding his breath.

‘We were so bad and teenage for each other,’ she whispers, ‘just like Twilight was for my school friends. But if there’s a kid that’s going to be without his mum...what should I do?’

She reaches up to fiddle with the hilt of Excalibur, a nervous habit that she’s tried hard over the years to hide from Kenny and it's that, more than anything else, that makes a lump seize in his tiny throat. And all of a sudden, he can’t stand to watch anymore. With a 'whoosh' that barely disturbs the dust hanging from the drapes, he flies out, through the crack and over to the moss that speckles the steps outside the door. And there, on a carefully weathered plate, a roughly fixed baguette is lying in wait.

Kenny stares at the ripped chunks of ham spilling out over its edges and feels like crying.

--------------------------

But Kenneth Tennyson is a determined boy, even when he nearly feels like crying, and hours later, he ends up crouched down in the middle of a forest, begging into a ramshackle radio that sparks and hisses in his hands. ‘Uncle Argit, pleeease....!’

Uncle Argit doesn't reply, and Kenny grimaces as static flares out from the old orange speaker he has in his hands. Further down, electricity spits and frays from the broken spillage of copper wires at his feet, the quick crackle of light twisting free from the still prone Techadon robot that lays across the clearing, frying a few pine cones in the process. It’s a cheap and nasty setup, without even a visual screen to help him gauge the set of Argit’s expression, but it’s the best he can manage with only Grey Matter and Frankenstrike at his disposal. Oh, as well as  the dehydrated Techadon cube he’d confiscated from the past long ago, something that he’d had the foresight to slip into his pocket before leaving on his find-Mum mission.

Because quick fun fact; as long as you don’t swallow it, you can harvest as little or as many soldiers as you need based upon on the number of water droplets you sprinkle on it’s surface. In this case: one.

Besides, even if he could see Argit’s face, it’ll probably just be rearranged into something stubborn.

‘Kenny, you know I love ya, right? But what you’re asking me to do is...well, I kinda like my quills where they are, thanks. And your mum, she looks like she’d be real good at shearing things off without any sort of pain medication.’

Kenny swallows. ‘Please,’ he says. ‘I’ll never ask you for anything ever again.’

There’s a pause then. And then Argit’s voice falls out of the phone, uncharacteristically soft and heavy. ‘Hey, what’s wrong boyo? Do you need Uncle Argit to throw out some Techadon flunkies for you?’

Kenny laughs. ‘Nah, I can fight my own battles.’ He glances down, tracing a finger through the earth beside him as he sighs and thuds his back against a pine tree. He can feel the grooves pressing into his t-shirt in a harsh reminder that’s he’s far from the comfort of home. ‘But if anyone can get the Orb of Pooma Poonkoo-’

Argit bursts out laughing the way his Dad always does whenever his Mum stresses it’s full name.

‘Don’t laugh! It means a lot to Mum! Anyway if anyone can get it from storage, it’s you. You’re the President of Earth. If anyone can find someone who can hack into Dad’s security system and teleport it outta there, it’s you.’

‘Why can’t you just transform into-’

‘I’ve tried,’ grouses Kenny, feeling a sulk come on just by thinking about it. ‘But Dad tried harder. And he can fuse his aliens together in a way I can’t. He’s made it Grey Matter-proof, Brainstorm-proof, even Frankenstrike-proof. Or as he likes to say ‘Kenny-proof.’ Like I’m five or something.’

He hunches down, now in fully-lowered-shoulders sulk-mode until Argit delicately clears his throat, the same way he’s heard him do in live negotiations whenever an Appolexian president gets a little too excited.  Kenny sighs.

‘I was kinda in a hurry and forgot to take it with me, ‘ he hastens to explain sheepishly. ‘And I swear this old Omnitrix of Dad’s is as buggy as that camera coverage of you during the mass stampede last week.’ He ignores Argit’s nervous laughter at that. ‘You’re the only one I can think of who could manage such a feat! Seriously! No one else would be brave enough or bold enough to-’

‘Alright, alright,’ snaps out Argit, who, despite his harsh tone, is actually sounding very, very flattered. ‘I guess I could give it a go, stretch out the old criminal-brain muscles...but you’d better not tell anyone!’

Kenny smiles. ‘You have my word.’

There’s a slight buzz, an odd clank on the line, and he can hear the worry stirring Argit’s voice when he asks: ‘Hey what kind of crappy- I mean, boring technology are you using to call me anyway?’

‘I’m fourteen Argit, it’s okay to swear in front of me now,’ Kenny remarks dryly. Before he hesitates. ‘As long as Mum and Dad aren’t there that is...’

‘Kenneth.’

Kenny yelps a little, his hand rushing up to cover his mouth as he does so. He forgets sometimes, that Argit is the man who babysat him that time he was going through a ‘my parents can’t tell me what to do phrase’ and never, ever, has he quite forgotten the near-whispering brush of icing-covered spikes quivering inches from his mouth after Argit had cheerfully offered him a cupcake and bopped the underside of the sponge only seconds before Kenny stuffed it into his mouth.

‘That’s for being a brat, Kenneth,’ Argit had told him happily at the time, like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. ‘Now eat your goddamn vegetables.’

And ‘Kenneth’ had.

‘Heh, sorry,' the Kenny of now scrambles to say. 'Just caught up in thought, you know how it is.’

‘Mmm-hmm.’ Argit doesn’t sound convinced. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Then he hangs up.

Kenny sighs as a speck of water falls down to press itself against the line of his arm. Another falls on his face. And then another and another.

Above him, the sky stretches out from branch to branch in thick, wavy lines of grey, these breaking into blurred wisps like candyfloss. Rain-clouds, a lot of them. But before they can fully open up to drench him, an umbrella, it’s colour as round and flesh-toned as a peach, whips out above his head. And Kenny leans back to see his mum staring down at him.

‘Hey,’ she says, ‘so I was a little abrupt with you before...’

For the first time in a long time, Kenny feels himself give her a glare. He’s always sort of put her up on a pedestal it’s true, but that doesn’t give her the right to throw him down away from her door like a rag-doll. And perhaps reading his thoughts, she shuffles a little.

‘And err, I remembered putting up a few leylines with Excalibur, tracing out a few minor ones to disrupt certain communication devices...’

Her eyes flicker along the Omnitrix wrapped around his wrist and Kenny feels his interest stir in spite of himself.

Then she sighs. ‘Come on, I’ll make you some fry-bread.’ She sticks her tongue out. ‘Or as your Father likes to call it, the bastardised taco.’

Kenny looks at her, hope in her eyes. She’s referring to Dad in the present tense. That has to mean something, right?

--------------------------

‘So,’ says Kai, watching with a quirk in her smile, as Kenny dumps yet another dollop of peach-flavoured marmalade onto the doughy sweetness of his fry-bread. ‘You want the Orb of Pooma Poonkoo?’

Kenny nods enthusiastically, then forces himself to swallow. ‘Yeah, see it once contained the key to time and I figured it’s got to have some trace or residue of chrono energy or whatever in there. Like...the way you scratch over a notepad with a pencil to see what someone’s written on the piece of paper that used to be above it? I thought I could have one of my smart aliens use it somehow.’

Kai rolls her eyes. ‘Yeah, I know the theory to the ‘key of time.’ I spent years researching it after your father helped lose it.’

Kenny hesitates, spoon halfway to his mouth. That’s not the way he remembers it.

‘I thought Subdora stole it. Her and her lug-head of a boyfriend.’

Kai sniffs. ‘Sure. And Ben said he would get it back for me one day. Never did.’ She smiles slyly. ‘So, after years of practise I decided to see if I could visit it somehow. I don’t want to disrupt the time-stream or anything, but the orb was important to me. Still is. But Excalibur can slice through anything almost, so I figured why not time?’ She glances over her shoulder fondly. ‘And sure enough, after many, many consultations with someone who claimed to be the Lady of the Lake, I sort of learned to...fence with time.’ She blushes and ducks her head under Kenny’s disbelieving stare. ‘It’s true! Watch!’

She gets up and slides her sword out. But she doesn’t brandish it in front of her face the way his mother would. No, in a movement more reminiscent of ballet, she stretches it out, her toes tipped elegantly upwards beneath the shadow of its length, before she slides it down. Then up, spinning with the movement to loop it back over her shoulders, arms and elbows twisting to hold it steady. Then down again, thrusting in a way that isn’t brash, or bold, but sly, at a sideways angle, curving it round as though to flick a page over with just its tip before it hits the floor.

The kitchen blurs. The tiles vanish. The kettle flickers in and out of existence with a shine that shimmers and darts away like the play of light on water. And Kenny’s head spins with it. He sees grass beneath their feet, then sand and pebbles, the heavy rubble of ash clouds as they fall over the world in a blanket so thick, that it's like the sky has become an ocean instead. And then they clear, and something else falls in the distance, a leg, the muscle strong and thick, before others fall into place alongside them, revealing joints that sweep up into the body of a dinosaur. And then it shrinks, bones rolling back and away from its slumped-over carcass into a tiny egg that swirls back the sweep of the sea, the waves bubbling instead of breaking open, all of it so red and choked full of steam that it resembles the heavy spill of lava from a volcano.

Is this really...can this really be the Earth? Or perhaps it might be better to ask...'was'?

Kai spins to a halt, her sword raised like a rapier rather than the broadsword it is, and the walls around them solidify.

‘Sorry,’ she says, hardly sounding sorry at all. ‘I just wanted to show off.’

Kenny swallows. ‘When you...when you do that, can you stay in the time you go back to?’

Kai snorts. ‘What, weren’t you listening earlier? I said I go to check out the orb, just to remember what it looked like properly. It doesn’t last for long, but yeah, I time-travel.’

Kenny breaths. ‘Awesome,’ he whispers.

Finally, for once today, something is going right.

Chapter Text

Ben Ten is having a really fucked-up day. It’s not fair, he thinks, because everything started out fine. Foiling two jewellery store heists this morning, stomping out some Ghostfreak-style possessed lorries later that afternoon...everything had been fine, usual even, and as a bonus, he actually got Rook to cook a dish that didn’t make him want to barf. But now, now, he has to deal with an full-on existential-style level crises. Oh yeah, and he might have also be killing an innocent kid, wiping him from existence just because he’s turned gay for his partner. Fun.

He clutches at his hair. ‘I...this is stupid!’

‘Yes, it is.’

Ben turns to see his Grandpa in the doorway, stance firm and arms crossed, an incredibly grim look in his eyes. There’s a forced stiffness to his posture, his spine ram-rod straight as though any second now he’ll go leaping into a battlefield.

‘Son, I sympathise, I do.’ Max talks firmly, marching across the room to stand as close to Older Ben as he can. ‘If I were in your position, I’d be doing exactly the same thing. But I have to look out for my Grandson – and you’re not him. Not yet. So back off.’

Ben stares at the burst of orange flower petals that stain the back of his Grandfather’s ridiculous hippie Hawaiian shirt; he can make out every crease, every single one that surrounds and divides them, and yet, right now, the shirt before him had never looked so big, so wide, and all encompassing. He blinks, feeling his eyes water slightly. He’s always suspected that his Grandpa’s been a little uncomfortable with him and Rook being together, but he’s never said anything bad and Ben’s always been a little hesitant to poke and prod and find out for sure. But knowing that regardless of his feelings about it, his Grandpa’s gonna stick up for him no matter what...

He breathes, straightens, and takes Rook’s hand. And the guy immediately jumps, his head spinning round to look at him with wide, lost eyes, so much so that Ben can't help but grin, forcing his watery gaze to slide away with a single wink.

‘Aw, ready to give up on us entirely?’ He swivels round on one foot, positioning himself more firmly in front of Rook as though he’s swinging round into a dance move. ‘You gonna break up with me over a hypothetical kid?’

‘He’s not hypothetical to me!’

Older Ben’s voice rings out like a shot and he steps forward, the muscles in his arm locked up in a way that makes Ben feel a little jealous. Those are some mighty fine guns he’s got there...annnd they’re all tensed up and ready to fire at whoever’s in punching range.

He gives a nervous glance over to his Grandpa who is refusing to bulge and feels Rook’s hand tense below his own, the fingers slipping away and drifting up to catch his shoulder. Probably to yank him away protectively, if worse comes to worse and Ben’s face twitches at the thought.  He doesn’t need to be rescued, but Rook has always been protective of him and it’s only gotten worse since they started the whole dating thing.

‘Really?’ Older Ben’s voice continues. ‘You’re okay with this, Max?’

Ben flinches at the unusual dropping of the ‘Grandpa’ title; but then again, he supposes that’s the point.

‘Kenny’s your family too. Your great-grandchild. One day you’re gonna take him out camping and teach him all the things you taught me. Except you won’t. Not if you stand by and let this’ –he gestures over to Ben and Rook, one of his fists flourishing outwards into a pointed finger, just like an accusation – ‘happen!’

Despite himself, Max flinches. And Ben winces. Because he’s not stupid. He’s pretty sure his Grandpa wants great-grandchildren at some point, biological ones at least, and he’s probably not gonna get them from Ben if he and Rook are in for the long-haul. And well, the fact that Older Ben’s turned up with this problem, it definitely seems to indicate that it’s a possibility.

‘What’s gonna happen?’

As one, everyone turns, and Ben gives Rook an annoyed glance as he hears the familiar whirl of the Proto-Tool fire up. Because, wedged near a bright camera screen set into the walls, is not a threat, but a darkly-skinned teenage boy, his eyes a contender for the Tennyson family green. Last time Ben had seen him, he was waving at his Dad from a screen, just before they all trotted off to get themselves temporarily killed by a Chronosapian bomb.

But the person who really catches his attention is the woman at his side. She’s taller and hotter, Mrs Saturday style, and her hair’s cut short which yeah, is definitely weird, but then again, it kinda suits the badass swordswoman vibe she’s got going on. God knows, Gwen’s complaints  about the unrealistic depictions of female warriors in his video games have resounded enough times for him to get the point; close-combat female fighters with long, wavering strands of hair are just asking for it to get caught or shorn off in the thick of it.

He swallows. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘at least we can say with a hundred percent accuracy that she isn’t dead.’

But Older Ben isn't listening, stepping forward with something in his eyes that instantly makes Ben feel sorry he ever spoke and he whips his head away, uncomfortable.

‘Kai! You’re alive.’

Kai frowns at the tone and looking away, holds up her hand to brandish the silver wedding ring there like a weapon. It’s more effective than any magical sword, for just the sight of it alone makes Older Ben halt in his tracks.

‘Whoa there, hero,' she says roughly, 'I’ve been through this before with the kid claiming to be walking around with both of our genes inside him.’ She jerks a thumb roughly over towards Kenny whose face twists at the description. ‘I’m a married woman, and don’t you forget it! I don’t care what anyone says, I know my husband and it isn’t you.’

Older Ben stares at her like she's a mirage, his arms still outstretched as though he suddenly believes she's going to change her mind - or just her words - and go leaping back into them.

Rook shakes his head. ‘Well, this is certainly a fine mess,’ he says softly and Ben stares at him, alarmed by the dangerous quietness of his tone. His boyfriend’s brows are drawn down firmly, wedging his eyes into the thin slits they always become when Kundo is around and the Proto-Tool, he notices uneasily, has yet to be dropped down into a totally un-threatening position.

‘Urgh,’ he says, ‘you’re right, this sucks, and I hate it.’

Kai raises her head, her eyes firmly directly into his, each pupil refusing to so much as flicker towards his older self. ‘Well there’s no use complaining about it. Let’s get 'Past Me' on the phone and we can all have a very awkward chat about how to stop Kenny from fading from existence.’

Though truly, if they find a way to solve this whole mess without Professor Paradox getting involved, Ben’ll eat his hat.

--------------------------

‘So,’ says eighteen year old Kai on loudspeaker, sounding very, very annoyed. ‘Let me get this straight. Future You is having a tantrum because you and I –surprise!- don’t get married in the future. But because he’s from a timeline where we do, one that’s connected to us because of some giant creepy clock guy, we’re somehow responsible for his son dying?’

‘Hey!’ Kenny squawks, looking very indignant, ‘not dead here!’

‘And never will be,’ Future Ben vows firmly. There’s steel in his voice, but a certain amount of tired grief spills through and it’s more than enough for the bite in Younger Kai’s voice to fade, because when she next speaks, all the way from Egypt, her words come out far more softly.

‘Look, isn’t there some village Paradox made in the Null Void for people from lost timelines to come and live in? Your Grandpa told my Grandpa about it. Why not send Kenny there? You can’t tell me Paradox hasn’t got that place protected somehow, otherwise all the people there would probably face the same issue we’re dealing with now.’

Future Ben now has a face like thunder.

‘We are not sending my son to live in the Null Void.’

‘And I am not about to become some incubator for your genes!’ Kai throws back. ‘Damn it, I haven’t even thought about having children yet!’

‘Have you?’ But it's not a Ben or a Kai that's thrown this retort out there, and so everyone directs their attention over to Rook, who's steadily fixed his gaze at Future Kai. ‘We know nothing of the life you have made for yourself in this new...timeline, for lack of a better term. But it occurs to me that you have gone and built one with a different husband. Do you not have children who will be affected by whatever we attempt to do now?’

Future Kai smiles, or tries to, but her mouth barely manages the sad, small crawl of a line as it tilts up over her jaw.

‘No. My husband and I aren’t biologically compatible. Not in that way at least.' She ignores the small 'ew' drifting out from Ben's mouth and the harsh coughing fit that suddenly explodes out of the phone. 'We talked about adopting, but he’s a sweetheart and was always worried about what the people around us would say. There’s a certain leeway regarding interspecies marriage, but people still get a little tetchy on Earth if they see anyone with claws around a child who doesn’t have them. CPS and even the Plumbers get called down a lot on the couples who are brave enough to make that step. And I was always so busy with my work, that I guess I just let the issue slip me by.’

She pauses, and then looks at the younger, skinner version of the boy she was once close to. ‘You’re gonna think this is funny, but I guess, in the end, I left it up to fate.’

Ben swallows. Even Rook looks a little sad.

And Kenny fidgets, glancing between his Dad and this person who is...not his mother. Not anymore. He can’t ram them together, doesn’t have a clue how to even get them talking to each other, not properly. But she still cares, enough to try and save him. So perhaps he can 'be' the hero, be brave enough, strong enough to step back and save this new life she’s now made sound so important to her.

Chapter Text

Time shifts. History, already played out a certain way, rewinds. Or does it?

For there are thuds, clatters, familiar footfalls falling in an unfamiliar place. And Doctor Animo charges down a corridor that shifts under his shadow, one that plays out into a dark orange hue instead of the green of a timeline before. This whole corridor sparks with dull amber light, all of it descending from stripes that bulge from the corners like the luminous glow that infuses the darkened cabin of an aeroplane. They’re not quite flat and not quite carved out of glass either; Dr Animo has never seen the like. But then Dr Animo has never been to Revonnah and seen all their wares and crafts either.

‘Get away from that door, Animo!’

Animo lets out a tired sigh beneath his breath. Sometimes he feels as though he’s getting too old for this. Which is why if he can just change a few things, back before his life became what it is now...

‘That’s Doctor Animo,’ he corrects, before he leaps up and with a growl, proceeds to tear off a sheet of metal from the ceiling above. With a rough thrust, he chucks it towards the fusion of Goop and Humungosaur standing before him, but doesn’t bother to watch the hit land. If he does, he will only waste precious time on seeing the metal sheer through the lining of Ben’s stomach before it inevitably slows and then rolls to a slight halt, cradled by the green slide of material around it.

Ben, for his part, sighs, obviously unimpressed, before he seizes the metal inside his stomach and uses it to flatten the two giant flopping tadpoles Animo has sprouted in his wake.

‘I’m still not calling you a Doctor,’ he says wryly. ‘I’m pretty sure what you do violates all kinds of Hippocratic oaths, as well as the Galvan code of scientific conduct.’

But Animo is long gone, all his possible verbal counters vanishing with the slam of the metal door.

Ben screws his face up. ‘Oh no, Ben,’ he mutters with a pronounced roll of gruffness in his voice, before he charges forward and begins to hammer out punches against the buckling metal. ‘I have –ofmph! - updated the security measures with the latest algorithms- damn! - and the cryptographic primitives I use, if I do say so myself, -humph!- are elegant enough to fool even Gwen.’ He lets out a tired sigh, glad this alien can’t sweat. ‘Not elegant enough for Animo’s bugs though, apparently, Blonko.’

With another five punches, he’s made the door jut out of its frame enough for him to knock one half of it away with a single kick, and then he’s stomping through, just in time to see Animo vanish within the Chronoporter.

‘Oh, great.’

And yet, two seconds later, there is a flare of light and Chrono Spanner appears, his feet casually resting on the slumped-over back of a tired Animo.

‘Did ya miss me?’

--------------------------

Spanner refuses to answer Ben’s stumbling demands of ‘where?’ and ‘how?’ telling him in a rather clipped tone of voice that he’s gonna be late for Grandpa Max’s retirement party. And then he vanishes.

Ben shakes his head and hoists Animo to his feet, frowning at the glow of green that connects the cuffs Spanner’s slammed out around Animo’s wrists. Where did Spanner get those from anyway?

Still, if he’s late to this shindig, Gwen will pout at him, so it’ll have to be a mystery for another time.

--------------------------

Ben glances round at all the people gathered in the base, at the medals decorating chests and all the fancy ribbons that fly from overdone costumes, tucks and spills of scales and claws bundled under ruffles and pleats and long lines of grandiose black. He recognises all of them in that same blank, blurry way you pass over a school photograph sometimes, faces of senators and high-ruling judges becoming no more memorable than some kid who stuck bubblegum under his desk and graffitied his name on the wood above. Because what does any of it matter? He’s saved all of them at some time or another.

He pauses to note Sheelane propping Mr Baumann up against her side and averts his face as though unconcerned. Even so, the sight makes him feel a little lonely.

‘Great,’ he sighs, ‘my unintended ‘plus-one’ for the occasion is a madman who screwed his own head onto a gorilla.’

‘And not just any gorilla,’ Animo says snidely, a faint trace of pride in his voice, ‘an albino one. The last one to be bred in captivity.’

Ben scowls to himself and gives Animo a small shake. ‘That’s not really something you should be proud of, you know.’

Animo settles down into a disgruntled mutter, his stare fixed firmly on the floor, and Ben almost finds himself copying his behaviour for at least half a step before his mood is promptly lifted by a familiar voice.

‘Ben! You made it! And on time too.’

‘You don’t have to be so surprised,’ Ben tells the man in front of him, deciding not to follow up with a ‘well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?’

Because while Rook’s wily enough to catch the figure of speech and the sentiment behind it, it’s not his fault that his job as head of the Routers requires damn near months at a time spent in the Null Void. It's all 'necessary' as he tells Ben and 'unavoidable', even though he refuses to so much as 'snitch' to him about missions - that last word always delivered with the wide-eyed air of delight Rook gets whenever he has cause to expand his vocabulary with something a little more colloquial than his Father would approve of.

Ben gets it, he does. He's not a proper Plumber, not the same way his husband is. And though he doesn’t think the darker aspects of the Plumber’s incognito work will ever be enough to wear Rook down in quite the same way such things have left their mark on Kevin, he still secretly frets about all the cards Blonko feels compelled to 'play close to his chest'; another expression that he sometimes wishes the Revonnahgander had never picked up on, mostly because it becomes his go-to phrase whenever they start to argue over such matters.

So Ben straightens, places his hand on his hip, and pushes everything he’s wondering about out of his mind, all to ask Rook if he's ‘ready to fill Grandpa Max’s shoes?’

And then out comes that befuddled look he’s always found so cute, even back when he was seventeen and already exasperated by the ensuring questions that he knew would be sure to follow it.

‘I do not believe an exchange of footwear would be required.’

‘No, Rook, that’s a figure of...’

It hits him and Rook crosses his arms, a small smile tugging on his lips.

‘Urgh, you got me again.’

‘That comedic ruse never gets old. But-’

‘But,’ Ben interjects, his voice riding hard and strong over the sound of whatever gleeful tangent Rook’s about to embark on. ‘Just for that, you can make the sauce tonight. And yes, before you ask, there are plenty of tomatoes in the fridge.’

You know what else also never gets old, Rook? he can’t help but think smugly, the way your face falls a thousand miles per second whenever I ask you to cook according to the guidelines of a normal  Earth recipe.

Indeed Rook’s hands seem to lose their confident air, all their firmness vanishing as his fingers fumble outwards, almost as though they want to take Ben by the arm and shake him. They fall short however, choosing to hover in mid-air indecisively.

‘No, I - Ben, please, I always put too much salt in and then you always start to sulk, and no matter what I do, the ends of the spaghetti burn and turn black, and then the whole dish becomes thoroughly unpleasant, fit only for a Gourmand.’

By the end of this, Rook has firmly worked himself up into a rant, his hands now outstretched in front of him and palms slanted up together in offering as though to indicate the invisible wretched dish in front of him. From behind him, Grandpa Max’s hand falls away silently from where it was about to rest on the Revonnahgander’s shoulder and he creeps away quietly. And from even further away, Ben picks out the forms of Gwen and Kevin, Gwen looking quite indulgent as the sparkle in her eyes practically begs him to entertain her some more, while Kevin frowns, mouths ‘not even gonna ask’ and pulls her away firmly.

Ben frowns. He doesn’t care what Kevin has always declared. He and Rook are far from the weirdest couple in this room.

‘C’mon,’ he says, nodding his head towards Animo, ‘help me get this joker back in the can. And then maybe I’ll consider making the sauce.’

--------------------------

Kai’s eyes flicker around the room. She’s barely been here for two minutes and already she’s bored.

‘Urgh,’ she tells her husband, her hand already itching for the welcome weight of Excalibur to fill it. ‘I just heard someone ask why they’re not serving goldfish on the menu. They’re throwing a strop because they think that cod's a 'lesser fish', with no hint of a 'precious metal to it's name' and so we’re demeaning them somehow.’

He stifles a laugh by pressing his claws against his muzzle. ‘Why don’t you go and correct them, then?’

‘Because I’d end up slicing them in half,’ she murmurs jokingly, before frowning and craning her neck over towards one of the monitors where a very familiar shadow has began to rise into the air behind the back of the unwitting Plumber.

With a slow, lethargic, spider-like crawl, the kind that would in the movies be announced by a chilling chord of piano notes, strips and ribbons fall to the floor and press the shadow up into a hovering spectre. Even the dark green pinafore it wears spreads out like a sheet to accommodate the extra limbs, as though to help hold up this imitation of a ghost. And a rustle of crinkling paper is all the warning the luckless Hobble gets before the little Thep Khufan girl responsible widens her purple eyes and presses out a faint ‘boo’ directly into the skin of his antennae.

Hobble screams, throws up his arms, and goes bouncing off his chair, mucus cascading off his skin and causing him to slip, and curl onto his side like a cat. He shivers there for a minute in a kidney-shaped puddle as his tormentor lets the wide bandages pressing her up into the air collapse back into her arms, which quickly cross against her chest as she falls to the floor and laughs and laughs and laughs.

Kai scowls and marches up to whack her on the head lightly; it feels strange as always, a thin leathery warmth brushing up across her fingertips like parchment instead of the furnace the other menace releases from his head. Speaking of which...Kai glances round and sighs in relief to see him accosting Argit. Not the best use of anyone’s time but still, compared to some of the people she’s seen travailing the floor here, Argit is certainly the lesser of all possible evils that could be hiding behind all the other 'respectable' faces here.

‘You’re too much like your Dad,’ she informs the girl in front of her, the girl who scowls up at her and passes a few paper tendrils over her forehead as though to probe for imaginary bruises. She doesn’t have hair, so to speak of, and the traditional headdress of her people is missing on account of the fact that she isn’t being brought up in a traditional Thep Khufan family, but that hasn’t prevented her from draping long sheets of paper around and over her scalp like a collection of curtains. It’s a strangely effective imitation of human hair and Kai is never sure to think of the resulting effect as touching or creepy; it doesn’t help that this Thep Khufan is inexperienced enough for the various ‘strands’ to lie against her back in uneven choppy lengths. Then again, she claims the effect of these bangs tearing away from her face like a jagged staircase, is intentional, moulded after some anime character called 'Alluka Zoldyck.' So really, what does Kai know?

‘Which Father?’ the girl finally asks, and even the breezy resonance of a Thep Khufan’s voice isn't enough to disguise the sardonic lilt inside her tone. ‘Which one am I like?’

Kai makes a face. ‘The annoying one,’ she says shortly, as though that’s answer enough.

The girl sniffs. ‘They’re both pretty annoying,’ she tells Kai tartly. ‘One of them has a twitchy eye when I stuff as many sentences of my homework with as many contractions as possible – but that’s only because he likes to lecture me about how important grammar is in a workplace enviroment.’ Her eyes curve happily in a way that tells Kai she knows exactly who she means by the ‘annoying one’ but wants to make her work for it.

Kai grits her teeth. This is the last time she baby-sits for Ben and Rook. Except that she can't because this one is sort of a package deal with her kid and it's impossible to untangle bonds like that. ‘The one who decided it was a good idea to call you Coraline. That’s the annoying one. Why Rook went along with it, I will never know. But then he might have had to shoot down a suggestion like Helena Bonham Carter, so perhaps it was the lesser of two evils.’

Coraline hums.  Then she tilts her head to the side. ‘Hey,’ she asks curiously, ‘what’s that weird pink graph flaring up on the monitor mean?’

Kai is about to lean over and take a look, except that’s when everybody starts screaming as the room falls dark.

--------------------------

They’re almost back in the lift when the lights cut out. Rook and Ben promptly throw each other a glance and break into a run. Which is of course, the moment when their feet quite literally float off the floor and both their heads collide into the ceiling.

‘Ow!’

‘All electronic functions have been disabled,’ Rook notes, his eyes lighting up queerly within the gloom, just a flicker short of a small camping torch. His hands find some pipes and without pausing to rub his own head the way Ben is doing, he uses them like a collection of small monkey bars, swinging himself down into the empty lift shaft. ‘Fortunately, without the artificial gravity kicking in, we will not have to use the stairs,’ he adds with a grin, especially when Ben grumbles and copies his movements not two seconds later. They start to drift up the empty shaft together and Ben idly reflects that it’s a good thing that’s there’s not an actual ceiling above the small disc that serves as the lift platform.

Rook sighs, a look of irritation on his face.

‘What’s up?’ Ben asks.

‘Oh, nothing,’ Rook grumbles. ‘It is just that on the day I am to take up the official title of Magistratus, I am not there in person, when an actual crisis is happening.’

Ben narrows his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he says slowly, ‘right where everybody’s gathered in one place, where, thanks to the sudden blackout, nobody can tell what’s going on in the rest of the base.’

They glance at each other again and then, as one dive back down. Ben immediately crosses his arms and summons up an image of Wildmutt, the perfect tracker for intruders, within his mind. But nothing happens.

‘What!’

Rook looks vaguely apologetic. ‘Without access to any working computer terminals, I cannot diagnose the problem. But it is safe to say that-’

‘Whatever is causing the blackout malfunction is causing the Omnitrix to wig out?’ Ben continues the thought for him out loud and then snorts. ‘Perfect.’

Rook cocks a brow. ‘Far from it, in fact,’ he says dryly and Ben scowls back, before his expression trails off thoughtfully. He could swear he hears...but with a glance at the cautious frown spreading over Rook’s face, he can tell that his partner senses it too. He raises a finger, flicks it between the two of them, and Rook nods and takes refugee in the shadow of an overhanging cubic arch, the pillars jutting out from the wall in a way that makes no decorative sense to Ben. But then, Galvans have always had some really weird design aesthetics in mind when they design places for other species to roam around inside.

‘Creepy, crazy bossman...thinks he knows how to be oh so-o sneaky.’

Ben raises an eyebrow at Subdora’s voice and suddenly feels very thankful for Galvans and their weird design aesthetics, rolling his arms up as quietly as possible as he pulls off his shirt. He waves at Rook slightly, ignoring the slightly appalled look the other gives him as he motions for him to stay back.

‘...decent pay-out though.’

Now! He whisks the shirt out and throws it out into the centre of the arch like a flag, grinning as Subdora sputters in surprise, her invisible shape now outlined by a hundred percent cotton. Or so the label claims.  

‘Ah, human sweat! It is oh so ghastly!’

Rook grunts and gives her sharp chop in the back of the neck, wrapping his arms loosely round her as she falls toward the floor a moment later. This is made somewhat easier by the way her scales and the purple twist of her tail suddenly poke out from under the lining of Ben’s shirt as she falls unconscious.

‘It is truly an acquired taste,’ the Revonnahgander agrees musingly as he hands Ben back his shirt and pulls Subdora’s lank wrists together. He clips on a small set of handcuffs before casting a worried frown towards the ceiling. ‘Where is her significant other though?’

--------------------------

Exo-Skull roars and Kai Green rolls her eyes up to the ceiling. It’s going to be one of those days, is it? First she arrives here with two kids and now she can’t find either of their other two parents to take them home for the weekend. They know she’s busy inspecting a site in West Germany soon and her husband, bless his shaggy heart, has to check out some mineral desposits back on Luna Lobo.  Honestly, she’s the only real responsible one of the four of them.

She sighs, turns to the two kids standing by her side and bites out a terse ‘stay here,’ which she doesn’t really expect them to obey but hey, that’s gotta give her Mum points for trying at least, right?

She rolls her eyes again, this time at how much like Ben her inner monologue is beginning to sound like, and charges forward, sword extended. It’s gonna be tricky; the fey realm throws a bitch-fest when she asks them to perform in any place comprised of iron and while this place is comprised of plenty of other materials, there’s still enough to seriously stifle some of Excalibur more ‘nature-aligned’ abilities. No more magic trees sprouting out of the ground today, thank you.

She grits her teeth and swings, just as Kevin is sent to the floor with a groan, Grandpa Max joining him a moment later. Exo-Skull laughs at her, all of him haloed by the yellow energy of the Dwarf Star he’d ripped from Argit’s neck and Kai rather grumpily reflects that she should have gone with Gwen the moment the mage’s eyes had flickered pink.

She concentrates, and Exo-Skull promptly stops laughing as her sword comes into contact with the yellow energy surrounding him, letting out a hum that makes the space around it ripple out into a cold blue flame. It flickers and like a sly brushstroke, begins to murky the yellow of his halo with an oily green, which makes him angry enough to bellow and swipe at her. This does nothing however, to prevent the armour beneath Excalibur's touch from turning an angry violet as it starts to peel away like flakes of rust.

Kai nimbly steps away from the oncoming blow, and twirls to launch another dab of oily green under the line of his arm, Excalibur sliding but not quite touching against the bolts that hold his armour in place. A piece of which promptly falls off with a clatter.

‘Yeah, go Mum!’

She tries not to smile but laughs out loud as a rolling pin suddenly, well, rolls across the floor at the same second Exo-Skull half raises his foot in a rage. It slips under the tuck of his toes, into the shadow leaning over it like the dark slant of a tent, and the guy stumbles, almost tripping in his surprise, which is when a bandage slyly hooks round his foot and yanks it back with barely enough force for him to fall onto his back.

Kai tuts, but takes advantage, leaping up and swinging the flat of her sword down across his face, humming out the beginning few notes of the soft, sonorous magic of the fey’s lullaby spell, just enough for Excalibur to flicker again and channel the magic into Exo-Skull’s thick head. She feels a great relief as it works; two weeks she’s spent in Avalon trying to learn that trick, with Puck and Cobweb and a few other Shakespeare-named tormentors trilling the melody into her ears over and over and launching dewdrops in her eyes when she succumbed to its magic. And then, on awakening, letting her fall in love with trees and rivers and foxes, and laughing when they lift the spell and tell her, ‘what’s the harm, they’re just a few vital genus away from your husband on the family tree.’ All to goad her into getting it right. And well, Kai’s always been a perfectionist.

She turns to her see her husband rather foolishly scratching the back of her head, as though he hasn't used those same claws to let go of the rolling pin and to his side, Coraline slides back the bandage that moments ago had been tucked round the fold of Exo-skull's toes, before letting it shiver back into the knotted club of her foot.

‘See?’ says Kenny beaming. ‘Told ya it’d work.’

Kai shakes her head. Kenny, she suspects, has been the brains behind many an operation ‘make-yourself-as-thin-as-paper-and-slide-under-doors-and-into-cookie-jaws-to-spy-on-our-parents!’ for years. Still. At least nobody has done anything that would prompt immediate grounding.

She rips the Dwarf Star from Exo-Skull and winces. It’s not Corrodium, but the way it burns against her fingers puts her in mind of other radioactive substances, the yellow in its shine catching on her eyes like a molten mini sun.

‘Coraline!’ she barks, ‘you have an immunity to radioactive stuff, right? Wrap this up inside you.’

Actually looking a little daunted for once, Coraline steps forward and almost hesitantly undoes the straps of her pinafore. It's not like with a human or other mammals; there are no nipples for Jimmy Jones to censor if he were here but no, Kai risks a glance and sees he's instructing Will Harangue to get a close-up of Argit.

Coraline breathes and the bandages around the slight bulge in her chest area open up, unfurling like the petals of a newly-budding flower. Kai gingerly places the glowing Dwarf Star within the unveiled blackness before her, strangely reminded of a cupboard as the bandages snap back beneath her fingers with the ferocity of a door on a timed hinge. She’s just glad that she couldn’t see any organs within the tiny dark space her fingers sank into seconds before, that they couldn’t brush against rib bones and make a shelf out of them.

‘Good girl,’ she says shakily. Then she gets up and runs, casting one final ‘STAY PUT!’ behind her as she does so. She has more hope than faith they’ll listen though.

--------------------------

Ben and Rook almost crash into Kai as she sprints along the nearest corridor leading to the upper air deck. She frowns at them, notes the sleek shape of Subdora curled over the line of Rook’s shoulder, and sighs.

‘Urgh. Why is it that whenever I go to a party that you guys also get invited to, that I end up getting attacked?’

But Ben isn’t in the mood for a verbal sparring session. Instead he steps forward, hands wedging themselves into the slim set of her shoulders. ‘The kids! Are they alright!?’

Kai narrows her eyes, pinching the loose skin at the centre of the back of his hand with a finger and thumb. ‘They’re fine,’ she reassures him. ‘Your daughter helped trip up Exo-Skull.’

Ben straightens with surprise. ‘She WHAT!’

‘Helped take down a vicious criminal!’ Rook sort of repeats to himself with a delighted air of pride, his chest practically swelling beneath all that armour. Then he frowns. ‘We should probably still reprimand her for getting involved in such a dangerous undertaking though.’

‘Yeah, later guys,’ Kai says. ‘We should really be heading on up. Something tells me Gwen is having trouble with an uninvited party guest.’

--------------------------

Gwen has been ducking and weaving and damn near dying, when Ben, Rook and Kai finally clamber into the wide net of her pink air bubble.

‘Oh good,’ she pants, ‘what took you so long?’ She scowls as she’s suddenly teleported to the other side of the roof.

Sorry - not teleported, simply frozen in time and moved there by Maltruant. Because that’s so much better.

‘And where’s Kevin!’ she thinks to yell back at their now tiny stick figures, before she launches another shining disc of pink towards Maltruant's bulky back. Which misses, of course. And she watches with narrowed eyes as he reappears, centimetres away from where her shot flies out into space, as though mocking her. Damn, she wishes she could zap herself out of time like that.

‘Knocked out!’ Kai yells back. ‘Sorry, he was useless!’

‘Figures,’ Gwen mutters. Still, she’ll have fun teasing him about it later.

She dives back into the fray, metres of the metal Space-station beneath being eaten up by her speed. But even with the additional help of three highly trained fighters, rising up to cover her back, they’re left scratching their heads seconds later as Maltruant suddenly disappears....and refuses to come back.

‘Huh,’ says Ben, after a while. ‘You know, I was expecting a lot more general taunting and ‘you are all too miserable to live.’

But Rook’s eyes are widening and he is hastily patting down his pockets. Then he bites out a swift curse that sounds like no Earth word Kai’s ever heard.  

‘We did not have time to return the Anihilaarg to it’s proper place after we searched Subdora, so I placed it in upon my person for safekeeping!! And now it is gone.’ He lets out a slight growl as he shoves a hand into a pouch placed on his right hip, his fingers stubbornly poking through to the obvious tear there as though they could will the material into being whole again. ‘I am a fool. Maltruant may not be a subtle pick-pocket, but his manipulation of time itself makes him an incredibly adept thief.’ He fixes his eyes on Kai. ‘You said Exo-Skull had the Dwarf Star.’

Kai nods, unnerved. ‘Yeah, I gave it to Coraline because she can wrap stuff that radiates heat and energy inside herself and keep it from affecting anybody else.’

‘You don’t think-’

‘Well, obviously.’

‘We’re all idiots,’ Ben says flatly.

Everyone else is forced to agree.

Chapter Text

Kenny is having a bad day. Really he’s been having a bad twenty-eight years. Well, okay it doesn’t work like that, because time as humans remember it isn’t rigid and concise and the memories easily blur, the days lost to stand-out moments and jumping out at the odd triggers of sight and smell or the occasional word. And he doesn’t feel as though he’s lived twenty-eight years, not really. He’s just been allowed to live fourteen different years, twice-over. Or he’s had fourteen years of a different life downloaded into his brain. It’s difficult to say, really.

Maybe the Kenny in this timeline has a single set of memories and then, this afternoon, he woke up with two. Or maybe he has lived a life with two less-than-normal human parents, and as soon as Paradox dropped him into this timeline, new memories and feelings sprung into his mind like they had rumbled through from an invisible IV drip, re-gifting him with four par-...no, it's too soon. Kenny can't think about that, about how 'family' has re-formed from three people into something wider and a little more broken.

Flat on his back, he glances over at Coraline and flinches at the way Maltruant digs his clawed hand into her chest. With a sick feeling, he watches as the bandages flutter up round it like the rising exhalation of a last gasp, curving to form a ballooning rib-cage of paper, so much less bloody than any cavity a mammal could produce. The fraying ends flap out like broken bird wings, jerky and sporadic, wittling down into stray snaps of ribbons as they darken in their distress to resemble dirty toilet paper.

It’s strange, but before this, before everything, the only eyes he recalled as family were brown and green in colour. But now, staring into Coraline’s wide and frightened purple ones, he feels anger pound into his veins. And he feels a little like Exo-Skull himself as he remembers her sneaking him cookies through the gaps in the banisters at Grandma Sandra’s and the way she let him play Tarzan on her, springing out a very wobbly jungle of grey streamers and paper ferns from her outstretched limbs.

And perhaps it doesn’t matter if he actually lived through those memories or not. Or if he can think of her as a sister and not a stranger. Because she needs someone now to be the hero for her.

The doubts fly from his mind and he whirls round, fighting the pain of the bruises lining his arm as he yanks out the new Spanner suit Paradox has given him, and tugs it free from the crates he’d stuffed it behind when they first arrived.

He can do this. He’s learnt how to make sacrifices.

--------------------------

 ‘Do you know when I was...urgh, conceived?’

He feels grossed out just asking it, but even so...

‘If you truly mean it about wanting me to live,’ he tells his Dad, ‘remember it. No, don’t; because you won’t. Remember the week, calculate back from my birthday and tell them’ – he nods toward Rook and Ben with his head and spreads his finger to point to Ben’s phone, the one where the voice of a younger version of his mother has been drifting out. ‘-Tell them. So they can tell Azmuth. And if they really, really, can’t let me die – let them use IVF or whatever the best mind in five galaxies can come up with to bring me into theirs.’

There’s confusion then. And reality is warped away from it, everything flickers and rips, like paper torn by uncaring fingers, shavings of his life falling away into the emptiness. And then Paradox grabs his hand.

‘There was very brave,’ he tells Kenny as they bask in their own very white pocket universe. ‘Very brave indeed.’ But his expression, when he meets Kenny's eyes, is grave. ‘But now that you’ve made this decision, you’re going to have to be even braver. What you’re going to carry around inside you will make you lonely. Lonelier perhaps than your father has ever been. If you slip and tell them of what their lives once were –‘

‘They’ll think I’m crazy,’ Kenny mumbles, trying to blink away the tears. ‘Or else they’ll believe me automatically and feel really bad about it.’ He sniffs, then sputters. ‘Don’t mind me, just got something in my eye.’ He rubs at his face with one hand, trying not to watch his fingers shake before him.

‘We’re on the cusp of something,’ Paradox tells him quietly, ‘Things are rearranging themselves and Maltruant’s endless time-loop must be reset. And yet in the future he must still succeed in stealing both the Dwarf Star and the Anihilaarg – and the younger version of your father must still stop him in a certain way.’ He looks down at the head of his cane and smiles secretly to himself. But it’s a smile Kenny won’t soon forget, because the ends of it, each wry crinkle of the surrounding cheek muscles, fail to reach his downcast eyes and change the emotion there.‘It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that one of the reasons this universe is so diverse is become Ben smeared as much of his alternating DNA over the Anihilaarg as it was imploding. Without it...who knows how certain evolutionary paths would have stayed?’

He sighs. ‘Ideally I should still ask you to be Chrono Spanner one last time for the sake of the universe. And perhaps it isn’t fair of me to ask it of you. But only you can decide.' He gives Kenny a searching look. 'But as for afterwards...I can let you forget, you know. Time can be cruel in its firmness but sometimes it can unbend enough to be kind. And if I try, I think I can let you forget and allow you to reawaken in your new life, the same fearless Ken Tennyson – but with a different sort of family.’

‘No.’ Ken’s voice is small and strong and when he  raises his face he chooses to make his next words louder. ‘No. I want to remember the Ken Tennyson I was before. It’s not right that no-one remembers. And you feel the same way too, otherwise you would never have created Vacuity Village and allowed those other lost people to live.’

Paradox pauses. And then his face breaks into a wide and very genuine smile. ‘Well done, Kenny. You’ve finally learnt. All the different people we are in our lives, all the people we’ve been and could be; they’re important, no matter how many of them time seeks to erase.’ He sobers. ‘I only wish I could have let you keep the ones closest to you.’

He brings his hands out, palms up, and a new suit appears within them, elegant and lean.

‘Dude,’ says Kenny unimpressed, ‘take it to the silver screen. No one’s impressed with your stage magician tricks anymore.’

Paradox throws back his head and laughs.

--------------------------

Kenny whirls, lands a boot in Maltruant’s face and jumps away, letting the momentum carry him back to the floor even if in the inside he’s crying at just how hard Maltruant’s face feels beneath his boot. But still, no time to let bruises heal when you’re trying to be a hero.

Maltruant obviously believes so too, because the next moment he’s casting shadows over Kenny’s form in the way oh-so many creepy villains have tried to do over the years, but when he inevitably flings the teenager away from his chest, Kenny lands impossibly on a spare space cruiser behind Maltruant’s hulking back. Which...is not something that usually happens. There's usually some basic gravity at work, or a general adherence to the rules of simple physics, no matter how much crazy stuff is going down.

Kenny lets a breath escape his teeth. Because, oh great. Maltruant’s obviously using his time manipulation powers to play with him the way a cat does with a lively mouse. Good thing then that unlike a cat, Maltruant doesn’t possess teeth sharp enough to pierce any of the nerves inside Kenny’s suit. Huh. On second thought, does Maltruant even have any teeth?

Kenny grits his teeth and peers through his visor. His head is spinning and Maltruant is doing...something. Fiddling with both the Dwarf Star and the Anihilaarg. He sees something flash, a portal opening, black spinning out into a star-shape against a grey wall, and then Eon and a Time Beast are charging through. It’s all Kenny can do to push himself forwards at a run, to stretch one leg out in front of the other and grab Coraline before the Time Beast skewers her with its horn.

And...he’s an idiot. Because this isn’t the kind of sacrifice he needs to pull. He stares down at Coraline, feels more than sees her whimper, and then, without pausing to think, he unwraps his green scarf from around his neck and drapes it over the large hole in her chest that her bandages are still struggling to cover. The edges are crisp, blackened, as though Maltruant’s  fingers were sizzling pokers, searing against all which serves her as skin, and Kenny wants to hurt him badly for that.

‘I’ll be back,’ he whispers. ‘I promise.’

And then he vanishes.

--------------------------

 He crashes into a table, upsets a few smoothies and hears Ben exclaim something. He shakes his head, sees the blue of a sky freed from a parasol overhead, and hears ringing in his ears. And then his Dad’s younger, leaner fingers are on his shoulders, hoisting him up as Rook’s large hand wraps around his arm.

‘Spanner! What happened? You look – I mean I can’t see your face, but if I could, you’d probably look terrible.’

Kenny takes a moment to breathe. Things have both happened and not happened; a lot of his excursions as Spanner remain the same, with the only visible discrepancy being the way he took Animo back to the future to see his Dad standing there alone, his Mum nowhere in sight. Which makes sense in a way; all of those occurred before Maltrutrant started trying to rebuild the universe, before Ben made the decision to pursue Rook instead of Kai, though he’s making assumptions here and there’s no guarantee he’ll ever get Paradox to fess up as to what really started this whole stupid chain reaction in the first place. 

‘Hey,’ he chokes out, ‘the future calls. Oh, and the entire existence of the universe as we know it.’

Well not ‘we’ anymore, he thinks. Just ‘you.’

But it's as though Ben can hear the pathos in Kenny’s thoughts, because he lets out a crooked smile. ‘Hey man,’ he says, cockiness firmly in place, ‘You know I’m always game.’

--------------------------

Kenny arrives back in time to see Malrurant grab hold of the reins and charge off back to what is presumably the beginning of the universe.

‘Go!’ he urges, thumping the side of the time-cycle. ‘Go, go, go!’

He’s a little annoyed to then see Paradox suddenly appear and give him a quelling look before stepping over to rap at Ben’s window and tell him something that’s probably terribly important.

For once, Kenny doesn’t quite care. He’s left something terribly important on the floor. He flops to his knees beside Coraline, stupidly certain for a minute that’s he’s going to find blood on his scarf. Of course he doesn’t; but he is relieved to see that her bandages have woven together into some semblance of a chest once again beneath his scarf. And then Coraline’s eyes flutter open.

‘Boo,’ she says weakly.

Kenny takes her hands and holds it, feeling the rough linen of her fingers thread between his own with the smooth dexterity of something with no bones. And it occurs to him frighteningly that if she were to weaken, he wouldn’t be able to register any kind of pulse point. Because how do you give CPR to a living mummy?  

He sits that way for a long time, waiting for their parents to find them, long after the Ben and Rook of the past have gone.

--------------------------

'My poor little zombie,' the Ben of now, of the present, coos. He wraps Coraline up in his arms like she's a doll, his fingers mindful of each wrinkle in her papery folds and the sound of his nails, when they meet her skin, makes a soft scratch as though doubling up for the nib of a pen.

Gwen stands over his shoulder as he kneels and looks as though she wants to hit him. 'Ben! You can't call your daughter a derogatory name like tha-'

But Coraline, her eyes glowing up at the man holding her, reaches out with weak paper fists and arranges them into struggling fingers to form the long straggling droop that takes over many an actor's during a zombie movie. And then, almost as a throwaway action, she growls out a mindless 'arragh,' as though eating a brain is very much the only thing she wishes to do right now.

Gwen rolls her eyes up to the ceiling.

'You are fighting a losing battle,' Rook informs her semi-gravely, though his lips are twitching slightly. His hand comes up to lightly grasp Coraline's arms before they have time to drop and he folds them gently within his long fingers. He makes for a strange picture, Kenny thinks, splashed out against Ben's side like this, his long legs curving and arcing round to from a sprawling puddle beneath Coraline's weight. Messy, and very different from the neat, tight hugs he's seen his Mum and Dad share. 'Coraline has as much of a mind for respecting her culture as Ben does for watching the history channel.'

Coraline whimpers then and the joking tone which had helped lift the lines of Rook's face into something light and almost happy, abruptly drops and he ends up staring down into the unhappy glimmer of her eyes with dismay.

'Ben,' he says urgently. 'I believe-'

'Already way ahead of you,' Ben mutters. 'Hold tight, darling.' And he shifts the weak shape of her head into Rook's waiting palm, the ends of her hair peeling from his fingers like wet fruit skin, almost shearing off a piece of her face alongside it. Ben's face becomes even more grim at the sight of this and his arms cross to form the familiar flash of light that has remained unchanged throughout every timeline, his shape and shadow becoming thin and flexible without the human bones to shape their contours. The next second, waving tendrils of paper, thicker and stronger than the weakly waggling lines arching up from his daughter, race round to tighten over her shaking form.

Snare-oh doesn't frown as she quivers at his touch, but the paper spills from his arms a little faster, falling like folds to wrap round and through  the gaps in Coraline's body like the thread suspended in the movements of a sewing needle does. When he's done, she looks a little clunky, her chest swollen and the thin, graceful lines of her bandages swallowed up by the thicker ones he's given her. Then there's a slight tearing sound as Ben's bandages pull off and divide, small pieces of himself still wrapped around Coraline.

'The best medic for a Thep Khufan is another Thep Khufan. In a few days, what I've given her will help meld with her system and fall off-'

'Exactly like a scab!' Rook breaks in excitedly, all of him lighting up in what Ben dubs as 'geekish glee.'

'Yes, dear,' says Snare-oh in a slightly mocking voice. 'Exactly like one.'

'Heh,' Kevin limps up to them, wincing slightly as his mouth tries to break out into a grin. 'So now that that's done and dusted; how's it feel to be a proper mummy to your little girl, Ben?'

Now Gwen looks as though she wants to whack Kevin instead of Ben. But she still obligingly whisks up a platform of mana for him to claw his way onto before he manages to lose his balance and falls.

Ben sighs then as, with a flare of light, he escapes his 'mummy' shape and turns back into his human one. 'He's never going to get tried of that joke, is he?'

Rook shakes his head. 'I believe not, dear.' He bears his teeth in a shaky grin as Ben glares at him half-heartedly in response.

And Kenny's not used to what happens next; or at least part of him that remembers isn't. For Ben runs his hand over Coraline's scalp and Rook's hand repeats the motion on the other side, their fingers smoothly gliding up to join in the middle, before they let out a slow, soft set of smiles at each other. Kenny promptly turns away, and sees his mother in the corner, her husband's claws hooked over her shoulder in such a gentle way that he can barely see the creases they push out of her sleeves beneath.

He...Paradox is right. He is in a lonely place.

'Kenny?'

He turns, pulled by his Dad's voice. And is surprised to see the tentative smile being offered to him.

'Want to go get a pizza on the way home? Or a Chinese? It's been a long day.'

Kenny tries to smile. 'How about some chilli-fries?' he asks brightly.

And it's worth it, just to see the long, slow slide of long-suffering disgust pass over Rook's face.

Chapter Text

It’s quiet in their home. Ben and Rook stare at each other, before Ben swallows and lets a tentative question stir the air. ‘Do you remember?’

Rook does.

An explosion of light, a swirl of stars being born, tendrils, hundreds of them, reaching out to stir galaxies through purple, like milk curling through coffee...

Rook reaches out to touch his husband's face, so weathered these last few hours by fear and that hollow emptiness on seeing their son, more biologically Ben and Kai’s than his, but still their son, staring out at them with the eyes of a soldier.

'Yes,' he breathes, and remembers their daughter, more properly theirs than perhaps Kenny is sometimes, before trying to brush the guilt of that thought away. She's in her room now, choosing to lie in a tumbled-over bookcase, the shelves and comics long since tugged out of their dark slots so its tipped-over sprawl resembles a sarcophagus. The dark hollow accommodates her solid form soundly, spare bandages nestling inside the corners like the makeshift bed of a dog rather than a girl, but even now Rook knows better than to complain. It took them weeks after all, when they first got her, to encourage her to even so much as try a bed with actual duvets and sheets and not just crawl away to settle down inside some closet somewhere.

Still. It hurts tonight, that both she and Kenny have refused to let themselves be tucked in.

Ben breathes out against his hand and Rook lets the air bristle against the back of his fur, the rustle and scrap of that familiar beard falling against the waiting curve of his palm like a wistful echo.

‘I think I’d like to see it again,’ he hears his husband admit, seconds later. ‘The universe being born. It made me feel so alive. And excited. Made me want to go and do so much...’

‘We did,’ Rook assures him. ‘I remember it all. That impulsive road-trip and the, ah, Mr Smoothie withdrawal you went on soon afterwards.’

Ben laughs and lifts his head away from Rook’s hand, letting it drop onto the sofa cushions. ‘I wanted that feeling to last for Kenny a little longer though. I didn’t want him to lose it so soon.’ He lets out a bitter laugh. ‘Remind me to punch Paradox the next time I see him.’

Rook keeps quiet. He gets the feeling it’s far more complicated than that. Boys Kenny’s age don’t grow that tired from a few simple time-traveling adventures. 

Ben is silent for a moment. Then he shifts and turns. ‘Do you ever regret it?’ he asks. ‘Not having a kid that’s biologically yours?’

Rook blinks. ‘That is a hard question to answer,’ he says slowly. ‘How do you miss something you never had? But it would not have been possible either way. The Elders would never have allowed a young one to be adopted by an outsider, much less raised beneath a sky that was not that of Revonnah. And I would not have been heartless enough to ask Rayona to be a surrogate.’

He glances over at Ben and then spreads himself open, long arms clambering outside the invisible lines of his personal space in invitation. ‘The situation with you and Kai was different. You were both aware of a life that would have been stomped out had you acted differently. I do not begrudge your decision regarding that.'

He drags his mind back, to the memory of a Ben so like his own now that their faces have finally caught up and aligned with the age of this time. He can slot them side by side in his mind's eye and trace out the exact contour of grey as it strikes against the hair, seeing the scars the wrinkles below have pressed against those brows. And yet one will still look at him more familiarly than the other.

'Please,' the Ben of before, the Ben his Ben was perhaps supposed to have grown up into, had whispered.'Please, I'm begging you. We were so busy that year but we so badly wanted a family...December is the only time I can think of when it could have happened, we were barely together for Christmas, but in November I was settling a war in another galaxy and January? I got myself stuck in some weird spirit quest, and was in a coma for a lot of it. But please...'

And the younger, skinnier Ben had turned away from him, as though his words hurt to hear, peering up at Rook with an firm expression that others had been taught to fear. 'It's not just my decision,' he had said. But his voice had sounded close to trembling all the same.

'We have twelve years to think about it, right?' Kai Green's voice spoke up stoutly from the phone, the sudden utterance of it making both Ben's jump. 'And in twelve years maybe they'll be artificial wombs and stuff lying around. Hell, l might never have to get pregnant. Won't that be something?'

But she sounded nervous. And Rook couldn't have blamed her. Because not half a minute ago Kenny had disappeared, the lines of the Plumber's base curling through him like he was smoke. As though he never was.

Older Ben breathed. He was looking a bit...transparent himself. 'I guess that's the best I can ask for,' he said, sounding dreadfully tired. And the next second, the grey of his hair flickered before turning into a white stripe, the surrounding brown becoming as muted as a watercolour. Green floor tiles gleamed through the invisible gaps in him that were leaking away, no differentiation made between clothes or skin, and then in one, heady rush, all of him was brushed back into the colour of the walls.

'Huh,' said Future Kai. 'Guess it's my turn.' She tensed, grabbed Excalibur and started some weird, weaving dance that Rook privately thought bore no practical value whatsoever. But she seemed to get fainter as she moved, faster and faster, her shadow blurring away into disjointed specks, streaming away like dust motes with the rest of her, until she too, was completely gone.

'They are not dead,' Rook found himself saying. 'They are simply being altered. They are you - both of you. They cannot die unless you two do as well.'

He was no Paradox. Had no way to verify what he was saying. But he let the confidence seep into his voice none the less, his hand settling on Ben's shoulder alongside a quick prayer to whoever was listening, that he was right. And Ben's small, slightly tentative smile back, was more than enough to mollify him.

Is this Ben with him now, the same as the one he had seen vanish? No, not quite. But he is the one he had grown alongside, the one he has chosen to share his life with. That makes him the priority in Rook's eyes.

He leans back and sighs. 'Do not forget,' he adds wryly, 'my father has five children. Three of which have been quite successful in perpetrating the family line.’

Ben laughs and starts to slide his way into Rook’s lap. ‘That sounds really creepy.’ But at least he's finally accepting the invitation of Rook's still spread arms.

So Rook smiles and leans over to stroke his hair. ‘It is a biological imperative. One reflected in many cultural values. Revonnah is not immune and neither is your culture.’

Ben wrinkles his nose. ‘What culture? I’m American.’

‘Whatever you say, Fanboy of George Washington.’

‘I’m far from a boy,’ Ben growls. But it’s far from convincing, not when his voice comes out half-muffled by Rook’s thigh and Rook shivers as he senses the vibration rolling through to stir his fur because of it, pasting a firm buzz against the skin beneath. He considers swatting Ben on the head for it, except Ben absurdly enough, always manages to turn into a mind-reader in these situations, and rolls over to escape the coil of blue fingers as they shift over his scalp, half-yawning as he does so. Brown and grey hair instantly bury this blue colour and no matter the years, it's always a joy for Rook to then shift through these strands, falling far longer than the chipped strands of his own fur and hanging loose and lank around the cunning blend of his fingers and thumb.

‘Bed,’ he says firmly, choking down the urge to say 'I love you'. It's far from the right time. ‘Kenny and Coraline have the correct idea.’

Ben groans, but heaves himself up. ‘Urgh. How long will you stay this time, buddy?’

Rook doesn’t need to ask for clarification. ‘I have a week to catch up on my paperwork,’ he says softly, ‘before I will be expected to arrange some political meetings. But no more Null Void missions; that is the job of Kevin now.’

Ben sighs sleepily. ‘Good,’ he mumbles, before staggering to his feet.

Even without a command, Rook follows him into the bedroom, hand reaching out to snap off the light when Ben fumbles for it in the wrong direction.

‘I did not witness you drinking earlier,’ he remarks pointedly as he wrinkles his nose.

Ben laughs. ‘I’m not drunk, except maybe on sadness.’ He crashes down onto the covers, fully clothed and Rook holds back a sigh. Their children may not require them to tuck them in, at least not anymore, but Ben sometimes will. Tonight is just one of those rare times.

‘Shall I sing you a lullaby?’ he find himself asking snarkily.

‘No,’ Ben mumbles, ‘but cuddling’s always good.’

Rook gives up as he always does.

‘Alright,’ he sighs, crawling across the pillow to check Ben’s not about to drool or choke on them, but only half-heartedly. After all, he’s feeling a little sad too. But at least, with Ben breathing beside him, he might feel a little better.

So he half-pushes, half-shoves Ben under the duvet, frowning when Ben whines out a softly-drawn out 'noooo' after he asks him where his pyjamas are. Giving up, he at least tries to make Ben comfortable, running his hands over all the pockets and belts and knee-pads attached to the man beside him, squarish things that escape the contours of his clothes and press into the mattress at odd angles. With methodical patience, he unties them carefully from the large, floppy body, passing them into his hands before he shoves them onto one of the bedside drawers.

'Make it up to you,' murmurs Ben and Rook narrows his eyes. 'Really, Blonko, whatever you want.'

Rook gives him a level stare and stands upright for a few moments to tug off his armour. 'Then you can wake up extra early tomorrow and run me a bath.'

Eyes closed, Ben's lips twitch, the left end of his smile trailing up from the crumpled fluff of the pillow. 'Let me guess: Orange Blossom Sunrise?'

Rook sniffs. 'I like citrus scents.'

Ben gives a fond chuckle. 'Hey, no judgement, here. This is a safe place.'

'Yes,' says Rook softly after a moment, 'yes it is.'

And with his eyes shut, Ben can feel his nerves soar, all of them sparking to life and flaring up a little harder at the soft scrape of fur that pushes out against his back, all as Rook flops bonelessly against him. And then then the feeling travels, shoving and coiling its way beneath the sparse hairs of his arm and chest, each one prickling as Rook's arms coming round to reach, to touch, to hug.

'I'll be the big spoon tomorrow,' Ben says determinedly, even as he allows himself to be caught.

But Rook snorts, the closest he'll ever get to an outright 'no.' Which is stupid, because he sucks at meaning it whenever it comes down to something Ben decides is definitely going to happen. Ben can't help but beam at the thought, knowing that Rook can't see the gleam of his teeth in the dark, not when his nose is currently locked in human hair.

'Love you,' he says, as cheerfully as he can manage, just to shove the other guy off-guard.

But Rook simply pushes out a long, slow, content breath in reply, against the parting of hair that falls away from Ben's neck, the air stirring to land with a tingle against the free area of skin.

'Love you more,' he says after a moment. 'To the moon and back, in fact. With whatever measurements you wish to indicate the distance.'

Ben groans as Rook laughs slightly. Five years, and even though Coraline doesn't demand to be read bed-time stories anymore, Rook still can't quite forget the simple poetry enclosed inside the pages of that one book he'd offered up to her time and again with just his voice. Not that he hadn't done the same for Kenny, just...they were even busier then and most of the workload, as unfair as it had been, had fallen to Kai.

 'Fine,' says Ben daringly. 'In centimeters, then.'

There's a pause and Ben gloats silently to himself. But then...

'Three,' says Rook, pronouncing it with an clipped efficiency. 'Point, six, three, one...' he continues, a smug sense of amusement colouring his tone and enriching it as he continues, arms tightening gleefully round Ben as the human mutters grumpily and attempts to shake him off.

'Worse than counting sheep,' his husband declares with a low growl, and Rook laughs, the stress of the day finally fading away.

--------------------------

The world turns. The galaxy outside it, spins. And the universe stretches over and through them both, with fate, all those golden lines of it, wiggling through atoms and stringing themselves out through the stars, the hands of invisible gods tangling them into a multitude of knots. And they shudder, twitch, played only by a few. Paradox watches now as one of them turns and snap. And then he walks away.

What else can he do after all, but watch?