Telling

Ben grinned to himself as he made his way out of school, gait quick and excited. In his hands was a piece of paper, held so tight that it was nearly crumpled. He felt a happy little shake run through him, eyes scrunching shut.

He knew that a 79 percent score on a math test wasn't all that super when compared to Gwen- or even Anna for that matter. But to him, it was huge. He almost understood why Gwen liked school so much; when he actually worked his butt off and saw a tangible reward for it, it made a lot of difference. Not that he'd consider a good grade a reward normally; whats a number on a paper good for anyway? But he needed those numbers to be good if he was going to make it into her school.

It felt good to progress towards a goal he'd set. Though he was never, ever telling Gwen that he was starting to like doing well and school, even if it wasn't for the sake of his grades in and of themselves. She'd never let him live it down, nor would she ever let him forget that he was doing it so he could be closer to her. Or she'd offer to tutor him. Which would basically mean they'd never get anything done because-

...maybe that wouldn't be that bad, he considered as his face heated. Having her around a little more often couldn't hurt; he definitely wanted it. They could have fun. Play video games together, perhaps train, or just actually study (if anyone could make that fun, it was Gwen).

And they could perhaps kiss some more. He wouldn't be against that. But his grades would probably not improve as much as he needed them to. And that mattered now.

Tricky.

Part of him wanted to run over to her house to gloat, he was gonna go there anyway, but he stopped with a grimace. Gwen's school had ended earlier than his. She would be in session with her mom right about now.

...yeah, maybe it was a better idea to double back and let Anna and Lizzie catch up to him; he'd just about bolted out of the classroom in his excitement to get to Gwen and show her he did have a brain. That had gotten him an, erm, motivating reward two days ago.

Okay so he just really wanted to kiss her again. She was his girlfriend. That was normal, right? Right.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, snapping him from his musings as he froze for several long seconds before he scrambled to retrieve it, heart racing and mind reeling. Was Gwen in trouble? Had the session gone sour? Was she calling him to warn him that her mother was going to hunt him down? Had it gone right and they had nothing to worry about-?

"Everything alright, babe?" He asked as soon as he picked up. Silence met his question before a snort of laughter echoed over the line. A snort of laughter that definitely did not sound like his dweeb-

Well… shit.

"Alas," grandpa Max remarked, amusement coloring his tone. "I'm not the pretty girl you hoped for." He teased before his tone abruptly shifted to seriousness. "Sorry to cut the pleasantries short, son, but we have a problem." The shifting of tech on the other end of the line was audible. "My scanners are picking up one of Vilgax's drones. I'd go check it out, but I'm a few towns over meeting a coworker..." The man explained.

Ben took a fortifying breath, forcing down a twinge of panic. "You want me to go check it out?" He asked. He had to give himself credit for not stuttering.

He didn't need to see grandpa Max to know that the man had nodded. "Yes. According to all my scans, the machine is idle. I'm not even sure if it's fully functioning, but we still need to be certain. I'll send you the coordinates-" Ben glared into the reciever. "-err, right. Good point. Uhm, it's the park on 32nd street, you know the one…?"

Park on 32nd street… "Oh! Yeah! Cash once tossed me into a basketball hoop there. I was stuck for like half an hour." Memo to self: get revenge on Cash.

Grandpa did not linger on that. The old man knew plenty about all the times Ben had gotten bullied in the past. Contrary to his parents, he at least asked. "Can you go check it out? I'd call Gwen to accompany you but..." Gwen's phone was off, Ben knew. And it wouldn't be a good idea to interrupt her session anyway, and grandpa knew that. Even if he didn't know why that was even more important for this particular session.

"It's fine; I'm stronger than ever, remember? I'll give Vilgax a nice show to remind him why he'd better not show his squidface here again."

Grandpa was silent across the line for a moment. "...alright, but be careful. This is Vilgax we're talking about."

Ben swallowed, silently conceding the point. The last thing you wanted to do was underestimate Vilgax. Hanging up the phone, he exhaled a breath before looking down at the watch, feeling dread pool in his stomach. If the squid was back, that meant the nightmare would start all over again. Part of him had hoped that Vilgax had just given up- that Way Big would scare him off forever.

But it seemed the monster was back. He looked at the dial, and it flashed orange in his mind, heart stopping for a brief second as it did. He closed his eyes, sucking in a shuddering breath.

He exhaled it again, fighting back tears. He couldn't melt down now. He had to make sure this drone was not a prelude to worse, that they were all safe-

That she was safe. He opened his eyes. The dial was green. He was fine. He strode forward in search of a quiet spot to shift into XLR8.

Coming to a halt in the undergrowth on the edge of the large park, Ben paused, looking around. Not a lot of people about at this time of day, just some families with children too young for school and the elderly.

Slapping his tail onto the ground once in agitation, he closed his eyes and shifted from XLR8 to Grey Matter, taking a moment to overcome the sense of vertigo that the sudden shift in perception brought. Doing so with his eyes closed made it less jarring-

His backpack fell on top of him and he squeaked. Right. Backpacks didn't shift along with his transformation. But his clothing did. Pity he never got around to asking Azmuth about that.

In all likelihood, the old Galvan had just programmed it like that out of spite. Squirming out from under the pack, he groaned. For once, he was so glad that Gwen wasn't around. She'd never, ever let him forget that one. He kicked the pack once in revenge, deciding to leave it until later. He estimated that the odds of it being stolen before he returned were less than three percent, and that was accounting for-

He shook his head, pulling his disparate thoughts back in line, and focused his enhanced brain on the task at hand- finding the drone grandpa mentioned, establish how dangerous it was and then defeat it. He hummed. He'd fought enough of the variants to know that he could take just about all of them on- getting in close and then latching on with Upgrade to mess up their systems was usually the cleanest way to do it. But for the smaller ones, brute force worked just as well.

As to finding it…

With a flash of green, he shifted into Wildmutt and sniffed the air, immediately stiffening as he did. There was a pretty distinct metallic smell coming from deep in the park. It was not moving, at least it didn't seem to be, and was pretty densely concentrated, so it was likely only one drone.

But the sharpness of the smell could only mean it was one of those big ones. And those were never easy… well, in his experience, anyway. He didn't think he ever fought one with master control on. Only one way to find out, he decided with a fanged grimace.

Committing the location to memory, he shifted into Ghostfreak and turned invisible, flying deeper into the park. He flinched under the pale winter sunlight, but it was manageable- even if every bit of him was screaming for him to go and hide someplace dark.

He just pretended that the sunlight was Gwen's mana tickling him and soldiered on. It was better than just zipping passed with XLR8 and likely crash straight into the drone, or worse: tip people off that something was up and draw them into the path of destruction. It wasn't a very likely problem, he recognized, but still.

Large drones were hard enough without having to worry about bystanders, and he lost nothing by going slow and stealthy.

Coming up to where he'd smelled the scent coming from, his suspicions were confirmed. A giant drone, its bottom half buried in the ground in its rest mode waited in the clearing. Ben had to wonder when and how Vilgax had snuck the thing in there. If it had dropped here recently, people would have seen it fall. Bellwood wasn't large, but not exactly small either. It wasn't the sticks.

So… he grit his spectral teeth. That probably meant this thing had been here well before grandpa picked it up.

That was not helping his mood. Seeming to notice him, the device started to shift into its attack mode. Ben didn't let it, instead racing up and shifting into Upgrade when he reached it, immediately latching on-

The red metal that comprised the drone's outer shell lit up in bright red and sent a powerful shockwave through him. With a cry of pain, he was thrown back, landing in a dazed puddle on the ground. He was given no time to recover as the drone unfolded to its full height and instantly closed the distance on him and shot its clawed arm out at him, slamming down so hard it caused a cloud of dust to erupt from the ground.

Ghostfreak phased through the claw, lone eye glaring. "So you have some new tricks." Ben hissed. "Well, so do I." Flying up to avoid a blind swipe of the drone, not that it would have harmed him in this form, Ben hovered far above it waiting for it to- there!

The drone bent its three legs, making to leap, and Ben moved to be directly in its path above it- and shifted into Diamondhead. Dropping like an anvil while sharpening as many angles of his body as he could, he met the drone halfway when it jumped, the collision damaging the drone's casing and sending them both down to the ground hard, further damaging its shell.

Knowing that that was likely going to garner some attention, Ben knew he had to act fast. Shifting into XLR8 before he hit the ground, he raced over to the recovering drone as soon as he landed and shifted into Upgrade once more.

Extending into the now exposed inner workings of the robot, he was relieved to find that its Upgrade shielding didn't protect those parts. As he started tearing it apart from the inside out, a flash of light overtook his consciousness and he stilled, finding himself in a dark, seemingly endless space as just Ben, a lone light hovering in front of him being the only way he could see himself at all. It reminded him of a campfire in a forest.

"What the heck…?" He mused aloud, feeling an eerie sense of familiarity- a sense that was justified when the darkness on the other side of the light shifted and Vilgax emerged, menacing as ever. Ben glared, gritting his teeth, fighting down dread. Right. He remembered now. Vilgax was connected to his drones, and linking with them could lead to an encounter like this. Ben grinned, all teeth. "We have got to stop meeting like this."

The gigantic monster lumbered lazily around the light, and Ben moved along with him, circling the luminous orb between them, never taking his eyes of Vilgax. The squidface scoffed under his mask, seeming amused. "You will meet me properly soon enough, Tennyson." He hissed. "And when you do, I will take-"

"Blah blah blah." Ben cut him off. "Yeah yeah, steal the Omnitrix, mass produce it, make an army, win." He gave the large creature a bemused look. "Never could figure out how that was a good idea. You get your ass handed to you by just one of me. If even two of your 'super soldiers' go rogue, you're out of luck."

Ben had expected the monster to grow enraged or boastful at the suggestion that he could be defeated so easily or was that stupid. Instead, he laughed. That was far, far more disturbing. "You know nothing of the power of that machine, boy. It is far more than a mere tool for transformation."

Ben was about to ask what he meant when he froze, the halls and doors of the Omnitrix flashing through his mind's eye until it finally settled on a lingering, painful to recall image of the core, pulsing with an utter emptiness that wasn't empty, rimmed by a brightness that could be anything-

Vilgax halted with a hum, cocking his large head. "Maybe you do know..." He mused, sounding intruiged.

Ben wanted to ask what the squid knew about the core, why he really wanted the Omnitrix at all- but instead bared his teeth. "Tough luck, Villy." The boy teased, holding up the watch and letting its power race up his veins, illuminating them as well as his eyes. "Unless you suddenly have a way to get through Way Big, you're never getting this."

Vilgax laughed, and Ben could feel the world around them start to crumble. Seemed the drone was dying; Ben was pretty sure he was still subconsciously ripping it to shreds. "Who said I'd be getting there through you, Tennyson?" He returned, radiating malicious amusement. "You have so many little weak spots after all." He purred, and Ben felt his blood run cold. The monster chuckled. "Better take good care of them, thief, for when I return, I will come for all of you." The monster stepped over to close the distance and leaned down to hiss at him. "Including your firefly."

The world fell away and he found himself on his hands and knees in the clearing, surrounded by the remains of the drone, panting, sweating, panicking-

No! He had to get up- if Vilgax could smuggle one drone in, he could smuggle more in and he needed to get to Gwen he couldn't fail her again-

A flash of green turned him back into XLR8 and he raced away.

Natalie had been prepared for just about everything at this point. Everything, from Gwen coming out of the closet to her admitting to suffering from suicidal depression. She was expecting the unexpected, be it mundane or terrible. And she was prepared to face that and help Gwen through it.

"There's a boy." Gwen said, taking a breath. "That I like."

She hadn't been prepared for this.

She slowly retrieved her hand from Gwen's arm and sat back, mind running at a million miles an hour, two sides of her waging war. On the one hand there was the mother in her, that wanted to run with her instinctual reactions.

Because while she had clearly been blind, she was not stupid. There was only one boy on this planet that Gwen gave half a toss about, and it was the same one that Frank already suspected had a crush on Gwen. Natalie had been willing to entertain that much, but hadn't assumed the feeling was mutual, or deep.

Gwen had hated the boy for an even decade, after all, and could do better, even if Natalie's opinion of the boy was much improved lately. It made no sense for them to move from abject hatred, to friendship to love like this, even if it was puppy love. But clearly, she'd underestimated the odds. She worried what else she'd misjudged.

The mother in her wanted to put a stop to it. Right now. Tell Gwen that it was out off the question, call up Sandra and Carl to explain what was going on and take measures to put an end to this. There were hosts of reasons why falling in love with her cousin was a bad idea and as a parent it was her job to ensure that her child didn't make those sorts of mistakes.

But the therapist in her reeled that in hard. Because while Gwen could only be talking about Ben, Natalie didn't know how deep their affection went. If it would last. If it would matter. The fact that Natalie and Frank had been together since they were thirteen was not the norm, and projecting her oddities on Gwen was unwise. She didn't know how big of a problem this was.

But even if she did, Natalie realized with a strange mix of bitterness and pride, she likely couldn't do anything about it. Gwen had brought this up under patient confidentiality, and while there were loopholes around that, exploiting them would destroy the trust Gwen had in her, both as a therapist and as a mother.

And breaking that trust would take Ben's right along with it, leaving them right back where they started: with two hurt children who needed help. Only this time, they wouldn't let them help. That was an unacceptable risk. Natalie grit her teeth.

She exhaled, giving her daughter a dry look. "Well played, little carrot."

The girl actually smiled back, shy, cheeky, but also… hopeful. "I learned from the best."

"Flatterer." Natalie accused, picking up her cup of tea and taking a sip. Gwen mimicked her, never breaking the eye contact. On a surface level, it seemed like Gwen was being challenging. Natalie felt it was more about keeping an eye on her in case the little girl needed to bolt.

Natalie sighed, putting the cup down. "Why tell me this?" Well, obviously, because she wanted Natalie to know, but be incapable of mentioning it outside of this room. But there had to be a reason for doing it like that. Gwen had clearly thought this through.

The girl swallowed, putting her cup down as well. This time she didn't meet Natalie's eyes, instead picking at a loose thread on the cushion next to her, a nervous habit that Gwen never quite seemed to shake. "Because I was hoping you'd accept it."

She was pretty sure that there were precious few parents in the States that jumped for joy at confessions such as these, much less accept it out of hand. Gwen knew that much, for sure. Still. She was a therapist right now. She had to navigate both her roles, as while Gwen had dropped this on her while in a session, she had also pretty explicitly said that she wanted her mother to know.

All while not letting one role influence the other. The girl didn't do easy requests. Natalie was already looking forward to the teen years at this rate. "I don't know what I'd be accepting, exactly, pumpkin." She remarked pointedly. Because Gwen hadn't said it yet, or given her any idea that this was deeper than a one-sided or mutual crush. Was this just that? Had Gwen merely realized her feelings? Had she acted on them? To what degree? She needed more information and more time to collect herself.

Gwen bit her lip before slowly lifting her eyes to meet Nat's. Moment of truth, it seemed, and the look on her face shifted to determination.

"That I'm together with Ben." She said, voice ringing like a bell, and a thousand things fell into place. The touches Natalie couldn't place, the lingering looks- the way they always seemed just shy of something else…

The way Gwen had looked at Ben a few days ago, after he'd comforted her, like he was the only thing in the room that mattered.

Natalie swallowed. Well, that answered some of those questions. Ben and Gwen were together; for any given value of that word. She could go ahead and test the validity of it, ask questions, try to persuade her that this was a bad idea. But there was every chance that Gwen had already thought of most of them and she honestly had different questions that needed answering first.

"Why tell me?" She asked again. "You want me to know, but not to do anything with it. I can appreciate that, from a strategic standpoint," even if it was a dirty move. That was a little of her grandfather rearing its head, that was for sure. "but why now? And why tell me if you want it to, effectively, make no difference?"

Gwen's sheepish grin was broad and her eyes twinkled with mirth and apprehension in equal measures. "Well, we figured that it was better you found out like this than to have uncle Carl and aunt Sandra tell you that we were eye-flirting."

Natalie quirked a brow, confused on multiple levels. "'Eye flirting'…?"

Gwen rubbed her cheek, thinking. "Uhm, you know what you and dad do over breakfast every Sunday? Sorta like that. What's that all about anyway?"

They were a few years too early to be having that conversation, Natalie considered with no small amount of mortification. "I'll tell you when you're older." She deadpanned, taking a delicate sip of her tea, hoping her head was not flushing as red as her hair. She cleared her throat.

So, the kids were flirting. Given what she knew of herself, she'd likely have written off any story from either Sandra or Carl on this as hysteria, so Gwen may have jumped the gun on this one, but it was a fair enough concern-

"Wait," she put her cup down. "why were you flirting in front of your aunt and uncle?" Because she was pretty sure that Gwen was trying to stop the family from finding out, hence why she'd tied Natalie's hands. This went against that grain entirely.

Gwen's expression was less sheepish this time. Her face was slightly apprehensive, and she again took a fortifying breath- something that worried Natalie. Not just because Gwen being this tightly wound was usually a prelude to breakdown down the line, but because Gwen had just told her that there was something going on between her and her cousin. What did she have left to be apprehensive about-?

"Because we're going to win them over." The girl blurted in a rush and Natalie froze.

...Gwen wasn't trying to stop her aunt and uncle from finding out. She was stopping Natalie from hindering them while they let them find out. Which meant-

"...this isn't just a small crush, is it?" She asked, voice smaller than she'd heard it in years.

"...no. No, it's not." Gwen admitted, a faint smile on her face and… okay, Natalie had to admit, that was a very happy, smitten smile. Just about the only good thing about this. Gwen's expression sharpened, fire lighting in her eyes. "We're going to win you over." She repeated. "All of you. We'll show you that we work."

Natalie closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. She didn't want to be shown that they could work. This was wrong, on so many levels. They were children. They were cousins. Even if the family was willing to accept it, they'd be facing that stigma all their lives if they pursued this. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Her little girl had struggled enough. As her mother, she wanted to stop Gwen from inviting more misery upon herself. This could not stand, and if the kids did show Natalie that they could work, it would only make it more heartbreaking when they broke under the weight of it.

Natalie opened her eyes to pin her daughter with a hard stare. The girl did not flinch, nor did she drop her determined glare. But the woman could see the incremental shaking of the girl's hand as it worried at the edge of the cushion, could see the twitch of her lip as she struggled not to bite it.

She could see the tears shining in those huge green eyes.

Right now, both the therapist in her and the mother in her recognized that Gwen needed something else first. So she nodded. "Your secret's safe with me."

The way the girl sagged, some tension draining out of her, and her cool determination melted into tearful relief. Natalie gave the girl a moment to revel in it; she seemed to need it. She hadn't expected they'd be needing tissues in their first session, but she still passed the box to the little girl, who used it to wipe a stray tear.

Not one of sadness, but of relief, if the girl's grateful grin was anything to go by. "Thanks, mom."

Natalie flinched, hating herself right now. "Don't thank me yet." She returned, because as much as she wanted to meet the girl halfway here, she needed to be fair too. "I will do as you ask and not bring this up outside this room, or treat your and your cousin," she stressed the word, both to get her own head around the idea and to remind Gwen of the fact. Going by the foul look she got, she quite succeeded there. "differently. That doesn't mean I'm convinced."

She'd expected protests, but she got a determined glare, even if the hurt still showed. "We'll convince you. You'll see."

Natalie wasn't sure whether that confident stubbornness was heartening or worrying. She also wasn't sure if Gwen was trying to convince her, or herself. She didn't get a chance to linger on the thought, as Gwen's expression finally started to crumble, her lips working soundlessly while she tried to find words. "I know this isn't what you wanted for me. But I hope that," she hiccuped and averted her gaze, and all the alarm bells in Natalie's head started blaring-

"I hope that even if you can't accept us, that you can still accept me." The girl whispered and Natalie was on her feet and on the other couch before she'd even finished, for once in her life knowing exactly when her daughter needed her mother.

Gwen looked at her in surprise and hope and so many thing that Natalie could barely name. Now it was Natalie's turn to struggle to find words that always came to Frank and Max so easily. She wished they were here. They were the ones that were supposed to help Gwen through this, they'd know what to do, what to say. Natalie rarely felt out of her depth, but this had always been one of the things she was hopeless at; so she'd never tried.

But right now, she was the only one who could do this. She leaned down and placed a kiss on the crown of Gwen's head and the girl immediately burrowed into her hold, clinging on so tight that Natalie was sure she'd have sore ribs afterwards. The woman sighed, sadly.

"I know I don't say it enough." She whispered, feeling Gwen still in her arms. "Your father has been mad at me about that often enough. I never quite understood why, I thought it was obvious." She smiled at her daughter, and the little girl looked back up at her. "But if you have to even worry about such a thing, clearly I was mistaken. Again." She was on quite the roll there. She raised a hand to caress Gwen's cheek.

"Now listen here, and I will tell you this every day of your life until it sticks: you are my daughter. I am proud of you beyond measure and I will always accept you. It doesn't matter what you do, or who you love, because I will always love you." She kissed the crown of Gwen's head again. "Are we clear, princess?"

Gwen looked at her, completely stunned, fingers tangled in her shirt- and laughed. Not derisively, not because of any joke. It was a happy, pure thing springing from what seemed to be sheer joy. It warmed Natalie's heart. The girl buried her red face in her mother's shirt.

"Yes! Yes, yes we are clear." Gwen agreed, small frame shaking with mirth and, judging by the wetness Natalie could feel on her shirt, tears. Natalie ran a hand over the girl's hair and back reaching for something, anything else to say, if only to wrap up the session because Gwen was clearly through.

But there seemed to be no rush for either of them, so they just remained like that for a few minutes, Gwen soaking up the affection like a cat in the sun while Natalie enjoyed the warm presence of her daughter so close. It ended when the garden door slammed open and both redheads looked up to see one panting, panicked Ben standing in the doorway.

As Gwen tore herself free from her mother's embrace, she noted, wryly, that it seemed an inversion of her session with Ben. The girl met the boy just as he passed the threshold, catching him in a tight embrace that he returned with vigor. "I-I'm s-sorry," he stuttered. "I'm just being a-" he inhaled sharply, "a worrywart. Sorry to interrupt-"

Gwen silenced him with a kiss. It was a rather jarring demonstration of the reality they all found themselves in right now, Natalie noted with no small amount of bewilderment. It was one thing for Gwen to say it; quite another to see it.

The boy seemed momentarily stunned before he melted into the gesture, tension draining out of him as he kissed back. Before things got even remotely steamy though, her daughter pulled back, if only an inch.

"You okay?" She asked, eyeing the boy meaningfully, seeming to ask far more than Natalie could hope to comprehend. There was that undertone between them again, that little world they shared that no one else seemed to have access to. She wondered how much they'd all missed because of it. It was in moments like these, when the kids showed how deep their bond went, that Natalie felt she was not dealing with children anymore. She wondered if that was why she was willing to take their relationship so seriously; it seemed a natural extension of this remarkably deep and mature bond.

Ben was a little dazed, but nodded, raising his hands to trace his fingers over Gwen's face- seemingly for no other reason than because he wanted to, appearing completely mesmerized with her; something that caused Gwen to develop the most endearing blush. The moment was broken when he glanced passed Gwen and noticed Natalie rising to her feet as well. The girl took heed as well, turning and moving to stand beside Ben, looking back at the woman as well. They didn't say anything, only waited.

Waiting for the ax to fall, she realized. This was, Natalie considered, the moment where she put her money where her mouth was. So she walked over, standing in front of the two children and crossed her arms. She gave them an appraising look, quirking a brow. To their credit, despite their obvious nerves, they met her stare head on, standing shoulder to shoulder. Natalie wasn't sure if Ben was leaning on Gwen, or the other way around.

Perhaps it didn't matter. Perhaps that was the point.

She knelt down to their level and looked at them, really looked at them, and tried to see them for what they saw each other as: not as cousins, not as friends, but as someone to love, as someone you share your burdens with, as someone you share your joys with…

It was hard. All of her was screaming that there would be hell to pay down the line, that this was setting them up for so much hurt and she needed to stop them for their own sake- but another part of her wanted her daughter, and her nephew, to be happy, and to be able to be happy for them. She closed her eyes, sighing, trying to sort through the tangled mess that was her emotions, but when she opened her eyes again-

She didn't see Ben and Gwen. She saw herself and Frank, roguish, mischievous Frank, staring down her mother as she rejected they boy and her in the same breath. It was what she needed to remember. She'd been treating Ben and Gwen being together only as a problem, rather than seeing it for what it was: something they were as powerless against as she had been falling for a boy that her mother had dismissed as a 'low class ruffian'. They hadn't done it because they wanted to cause trouble, or spite anyone, anymore than she had.

They'd just fallen in love. Just as she once had.

And she didn't want to punish them for that, she didn't want to be her mother. But she did know what she would have wanted to hear when she was young and in love and felt so very alone.

She pulled them both in close, cradling their small frames close, leaning in. "It's alright." She told them. "You don't have to do this alone." She assured them, feeling two children relax in her hold, twin sighs of relief ghosting over her. She was still convinced that this was a stupid, terrible idea that was going to leave them all wrecks in its wake.

But she knew from experience that even that was better than swimming against the tide. So, even sidelined as she was, Natalie decided that if this was happening, she was going to do everything she could to pull them through it in one piece.