Chapter Text
Walter’s first response to the ding that indicated he got a new text message was irritation. If it was urgent it should’ve come by way of a phone call, and if it wasn’t urgent then it could’ve damn well waited, and everyone who had his phone number knew why.
Then he saw who the message was from, and his blood ran cold. The boy wouldn’t have texted him, wouldn’t have contacted him directly at all unless whatever had happened fit within a very narrow category of utter emergencies. Jim liked Walter, and that was exactly why Toby would never trust him; it followed that if Toby decided that Walter, with his specific personality and skill set, was necessary - then it was to protect either Jim, or someone very much like him.
And right at that time, that most likely meant the Tarron kids.
He wasn’t wrong: the text read, It takes 2 royal cores to power the cannon. Krel and Aja know.
Toby had left out a significant chunk of the story, of course: that part being, just why Walter needed to know that - and just what Toby expected him to do with this information. Then again, Toby had sent him this text, him and no other, exactly because he knew that he wouldn’t need to explain those things to Walter.
Jim or someone very much like him, indeed.
Walter dove down until he found a roof he could land on, landed on said roof, then called Aaron Scott. “I need Stuart’s phone number,” he said by way of hello.
“Is it urgent?” Aaron asked; his voice had the distinct quality that indicated just how overstressed he was.
“Extremely,” Walter replied.
There was a brief pause, then Walter could hear the clicking of a keyboard: Aaron was looking up the information that Walter requested.
“After you’ve given me his number,” he said in the meantime, “it would be best if you contacted Toby. He’ll explain.”
“Am I going to want to kill someone?” Aaron asked, in the voice of someone who already knew what the answer was going to be.
“Yes,” Walter confirmed, “and we are all endeavoring to kill him.”
“I read you. Okay, the number is--"
As soon as he had Stuart’s number, Walter hung up on Aaron and called Stuart.
It took entirely too many rings until the man answered with a “Hello?” that was equal parts confused and really, truly aggravated.
“This is Walter Strickler,” he said. “Aja and Krel know. You need to move. Now.”
“I’m sorry?” Stuart said; he sounded as if he was mostly genuinely confused.
Walter had to slow down his delivery. “They know that you intend to use their parents’ cores to power the cannon,” he said with patience that he did not possess, “and they are coming to stop you. You need to avoid detection.”
This time, when Stuart spoke, it was clear that he got the message. “Hold up just one second.”
Stuart then covered the phone’s mic with his hand, and Walt could hear a mix of indistinct voices until the sound became clear again and a deep female voice said, “Hello, Walter. This is Mother.”
She was, probably, the best person for him to speak to. “Toby texted me the information. I don’t know any more than this. I sent Aaron Scott after him.”
“We are loading the cannon into the van now, and will soon be mobile.”
“Those kids are airborne, and not blind.” Stuart’s van was… distinctive. Walter pinched the bridge of his nose. “Call Aaron, ask for a police van. I’ll text you his number, and Ofelia Nuñez’s as a backup.”
“Thank you.”
“Good luck.”
This time, Walter stared at his phone for a long time after he hung up. He wanted to tell Barbara, but she was at the hospital preparing for what was to come, and it wouldn’t be right to trouble her with this at this time. On the other hand, if he failed to tell her anything now then she would be incredibly angry with him later - and rightly so. He wanted, he needed, to preserve and nourish what trust she had in him.
Eventually, he sent her a voice message. “The kids will need you when this is over. And, in all likelihood, Megan also.”
He could only hope that would be enough.
It wasn’t long after that before he could see what had to be Morando approaching. Once he knew what direction he was arriving from, that narrowed the sector he needed to search for what - he hoped - would be a police van traveling without lights and sirens and adhering to the speed limit. Aja and Krel were both brilliant but they were also young, and the two warriors who’d trained Aja did not think like Walter - their weapons didn’t include deception and subterfuge. Aaron, though, had at least the minimal training of a police detective and Toby had the knowledge that stemmed from having to fight against Walter; either one of them would tell the cannon team how they needed to drive, in order to minimize the risk of being identified by the Tarron kids.
He was distracted from his search by his phone’s message tone. This time, his reaction to the sound was dread - what if the message was from Toby - followed by an altogether different fear: that Krel had already hacked the cellular network.
The message was from Barbara, though. It was a text, and all it said was, Do what you have to do.
If Barbara was a different person - if Barbara was, to be honest, like most people - he would’ve been worried about the tone in which that sentence was meant to be read. This was Barbara, though; there were things that she understood, as much as she didn’t like them - as much as she hated them, even. If these were the words that she chose to say, then they were not said sarcastically or dismissively: they were her blessing.
He hadn’t even dared hope for this outcome.
Then the van he was searching for passed right underneath him.
Hopefully the one that he was searching for.
Walter pocketed his phone and sped up, matching speeds with the van. Then he lost altitude, carefully. He couldn’t land on top of the van; if he did that, he might be mistaken for the Tarron kids on Aja’s hoverboard. He didn’t dare contact Stuart again; Krel could be waiting for precisely that. Instead, he flew parallel to the van’s passenger window.
Stuart was driving.
He had found them.
Stuart glanced at him, almost drove into a streetlight, then lowered the passenger window and yelled over the roar of the wind: “Hop in!”
“Slow down!” Walter yelled back - he couldn’t well enter through the passenger door while flying in parallel to the van, and he damn well couldn’t enter through the window.
A voice sounded from the back of the van - Varvatos’s, Walter was pretty sure - then Stuart yelled: “Through the back!”
It was a tricky maneuver, coming up beyond the van as it was driving - and then trickier still to make it inside.
Inside the van were Varvatos and Mother; the latter was still giving instructions over the comm. Walter was unsure as to where they’d stashed Costas; Zadra’s absence was, presumably, because she was waiting to come through with the fleet. The cannon was fastened to the floor; next to it was another device that was connected to two pods fastened to the side of the van. And in them were--
“Are these the parents?” Walter asked.
“Those are King Fialkov and Queen Coranda,” Varvatos agreed. “They are in the final stages of their regeneration, and there are even odds of whether they will - or won’t - wake up before the cannon must be used.”
Walter nodded. “The wormhole?”
It was Mother who replied. “Opening as we speak. If you would move to the front of this vehicle--"
Walter did as she suggested. There was a great big hole in the sky, and through it was pouring what looked like a storm of dark silver needles that left behind them white-blue trails. And when that stream ended, a bulkier ship carefully edged through.
“This one looks different,” Walter commented.
Stuart squinted at it. “It looks like a giant Fu-Fu.”
“It does,” Mother agreed, sticking her head through from the back; Varvatos was the one on the comm now. “I thought that we could use some reinforcements and apparently, General Morando is lax about paying his debts.”
“I assume that they are mercenaries?” Walter asked.
“Indeed,” Mother agreed, while Stuart said: “The mercenaries.”
Walter looked at just how tall Morando now stood, and said: “I think that’s close enough.”
“Varvatos agrees.”
Stuart stopped the van at the side of the road. This close to the nexus of the fight, there were no other cars - and this was a police vehicle, besides; there was no need to worry about orderly parking, only about--
Walter looked up, then pointed. “That roof.”
“Do you have any idea how much this cannon weighs?” Stuart asked exasperatedly.
“In all likelihood, not so much that Varvatos, Mother and I can’t carry it,” Walter replied, undeterred. It would not be easy, but they needed the higher ground.
“Ideally, it should be mounted on one of the ships,” Varvatos said. “We can--"
“No,” Walter said firmly. “That would lose us the element of surprise. Morando would notice another ship, different from the others; he is far less likely to notice us on a roof.”
“And what should we do with the king and quee--" Varvatos began.
“Look up!” Stuart called.
Morando had two ethereal, transparent red wings stretching out behind his back. Even as they looked, he gave a mighty roar.
A blast of red energy shot out from him in all directions. It sent them all crashing to the floor and - Walter realized when he finally managed to struggle to his feet - knocked out the streetlights.
The cannon. If that energy wave had damaged the cannon-- then, though, he saw Mother moving through the dust that the shockwave had raised. If she was fine, it stood to reason that the cannon was still fine as well.
He wasn’t the only one worried about the cannon that all their hope depended on. Mother was moving towards it, and when Stuart finally made it to his knees he cried out “The cannon!” and then somehow ran to it.
That was, in fact, mildly impressive.
“Is the cannon damaged?” Varvatos asked.
“We won’t know until we light it up, I’m afraid,” Stuart said.
“It does seem to be intact, but I have no idea what it was that we just experienced,” Mother said. “I’m afraid…”
“Then light it up!” Varvatos ordered. Then he bowed his head, and looked aside.
Walter went over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll do it,” he said quietly. “Tell me how.”
“Varvatos will carry this on his conscience either way.”
“I know,” Walter said, “but I’d rather those children hate me more than they do you, than the other way around.”
“That’s not a choice you get to make,” said a young, angry voice from behind them.
Both of them turned.
Aja and Krel were there.
Varvatos wouldn’t fight the kids, Walter knew, and Mother’s body did not come with the option to stun rather than kill. It was up to Walter to save their lives. The faster he could knock them out--
Rich golden light spilled out from the open doors of the van.
Varvatos and the kids ran towards it, and out the back doors of the vehicle came out the two tall figures of the king and queen, hand in hand.
Varvatos and the kids were all speaking at once; it became an argument almost more quickly than could be grasped.
The king and queen looked around, trying to get their bearings - and saw the cannon.
King Fialkov raised his hand.
The three fell silent.
“So, it has come to that,” the king said. He opened his mouth to speak again--
--and another red wave crashed through them.
This one was stronger than the first one had been: Walter couldn’t hear anything other than the tinnitus in his ears as he struggled to his feet. The dust was lit with an eerie blue glow: Varvatos was standing in front of all of them and the van included, holding a serrator in each hand and having raised a multi-layer shield. It was an impressive sight; but even as Walter watched, the layers began to vanish one by one under the red barrage that Morando was firing at them.
The king and queen were struggling to their feet.
With a few flaps of his wings, Walter was next to them.
“Your Majesties--" he said.
“We know what it takes to power Seklos’s cannon,” Queen Coranda said. “The designs had been held in trust by my family.”
Even having only just met those two, Walter understood how their children had turned out the way that they were.
“Your children are magnificent,” he told the parents. “They are kind, generous and noble. They would’ve…” his voice stuck in his throat.
He didn’t need to finish the sentence, though. The expressions on the faces of the king and queen said quite clearly that they understood exactly.
All King Fialkov said, though, was: “Then that is an additional reason that we hurry.”
Both of them walked over to the cannon, which Mother was tending to.
“My lieges,” she said.
“Mother?” Fialkov said, surprised.
“It’s a long story,” she replied. Then she stepped back from the cannon, from which what seemed like a strangely-shaped blue-glowing handle now rose. “Know that you are greatly loved.”
The king and queen each took one side of the handle in their hands.
Then a voice cut through the air. “Mama! Papa!”
Aja and Krel darted across the distance the way that only the young could, each clinging to one of their parents, attempting to tear their hands off the handle.
“This is our sacrifice to make!” Aja said hotly.
“Be proud, my children,” the queen said. Without letting go of the handle, she bent down to kiss each of her children on their head. “You have grown in love and strength, far beyond what your father and I could have hoped for so short a period.”
“We can’t lose you again!” Krel cried out. “Please, let us--"
This time, it was the king who spoke. “The fact that you are willing to sacrifice yourselves so is proof that you are ready to take the throne. We both leave you not in sorrow, but with joy.” He bent down to hug his son with one arm, and the queen did the same with their daughter.
Then, the parents’ bodies began to disintegrate into blue sparks that swirled inwards.
“Be brave,” the queen said, “be true.”
“And be kind to each other,” the king added. “We will always--"
“--love you.”
And with these final words, the king and queen were gone, only their cores left, from which Mother and the children had regrown them over 10 weeks. Walter had had to half-lip read, half-guess their final words, though: at the same time as their goodbye, Morando had yelled “This ends now!” and thrown a concentrated blast at the shield that Varvatos was holding; the last layer of it had just collapsed and Varvatos himself had been thrown back and landed hard on his back. Walter could see a large red area seething in his chest, and that couldn’t be good in a being whose natural colouration was shades of blue.
That was Walter’s clue - and not just his: he and Mother both rushed forward to help the children tilt the cannon up, up - until they could be sure that it would hit Morando’s center mass. Their aim was good: the bright white-blue beam that shot out of the cannon met the red that Morando aimed at them from the center of his chest. For a moment, the two beams seemed balanced in strength; Walter had only ever been this afraid when he saw Jim lying under the Decimar blade. Then, though, the white-blue began to push back the red, until there was a great flash of light.
When Walter could see again, Morando was gone.
The kids let go of the cannon and ran forward, towards where Varvatos lay. Walter and Mother put the massive machine down securely, then Mother activated her comm and said, great sorrow in her voice: “Commander Zadra, we require a medical team urgently.”
Walter left her to handle that and went to see to the children. On his way there, though, he detoured through where Stuart was sitting on the ground in apparent shock and pulled the man to his feet, saying, “They know you and care for you.”
Stuart shook his head, then seemed to realize just what Walter was saying and why, and hurried alongside Walter.
“So,” whispered Varvatos’s broken voice, “this is a glorious…”
“No!” Aja cried out defiantly. She took Varvatos’s hand and held it to her cheek; his massive hand was almost as big as her entire face.
“Not like this,” Krel added. “Hold on, Varvatos!”
But Varvatos shook his head slowly, then turned it to look at Aja. “My glorious warrior, I’m-- I’m sorry--"
“I’m not losing you!” she said hotly. “Forget a hero’s death, you deserve a long and glorious life!”
Varvatos’s eyes slid shut, but Aja did not let go. “I am your queen, and I command you to not die!”
Walter and Stuart looked at each other. Then Walter nudged Stuart towards Krel, while he knelt by Aja.
“Your Majesty,” he told her, as kindly as he was able, “he will fight death as best as anyone can. No-one can fight harder than him. But not even you can command death.”
“I don’t care!”
Then Mother was there. Walter and Stuart stepped back and let her hug both children - and gently but firmly pull them up. “Professor Strickler is right, my lieges. If anyone can survive this injury it is certainly the Commander, but we can have no certainty. At least, other than this one,” and she held them even harder. “You are loved, and forever will be.”
Then there were lights, and a rush of air, and voices shouting: the craft carrying the medical team had arrived. Varvatos was rushed in, and then the craft vanished through the wormhole. The other crafts, though, Walter noticed, were landing on the road next to them, one after the other. Zadra - who had arrived together with the medical team but stayed behind - steered the children in that direction, gently but firmly.
“Come meet the resistance,” she said. “They’ve done this for you.”
Mother went with them.
Walter and Stuart, those left behind, looked at each other.
The Akiridian ships weren’t the only ones coming in, though. An entire line of cars was approaching from the direction of the town center, many - but not all - of them police cars; one was a command truck. The first car that reached them was an ordinary cruiser: Aaron, in uniform, was driving it and Barbara was in the passenger seat. She and Toby - who was riding in the back - all but burst out of the car; Barbara threw herself at Walter.
“I’m fine, they’re fine,” Walter said, once he got his breath back.
“Their parents?” Barbara asked. “Toby filled us in.”
Walter shook his head, and watched Toby’s face fall. “Varvatos is badly injured, too,” he had to say. “He’d been evacuated to their home planet. Everyone else who was here is fine.” He took a deep breath and asked: “How bad…?”
Barbara shook her head. “There’s less damage than the last time,” she said. “I’m not entirely sure how.”
“I think I may have the answer to that,” Aaron said, joining them. “Or at least part of it. Turns out Area 49b is real, and its commander is - get this - requesting permission to enter town. There is a ‘Tronos’ with her. Any idea who’s running things on our… guests’ side of things? Or, for that matter, what is a Tronos?”
“He’s a friend,” Barbara said. “Aja in particular will be glad to know he survived - as much as she can be glad for anything, right now.”
“As for who is the Akiridian in charge, your best bet is Commander Zadra,” Walter told him. “She’s the one over there, in the red boots.”
“Well, that’s helpful,” Aaron muttered, and strode over there.
“Um,” Stuart said, “there’s entirely too much police here for my comfort. Do you think they’ll let me leave?”
“Toby, can you introduce Stuart to Officer Brennan?” Barbara asked.
The look Toby gave her said he was perfectly aware of what she was doing and just might have words about it later, but he still told Stuart “Come on,” and started in Brennan’s direction.
“How bad is it?” Barbara asked Walter quietly.
“Aja commanded Varvatos to not die,” he replied with a sigh.
“From everything I heard about him, it just might work,” she replied.
Walter smiled, almost in spite of himself.
“And what did you have to do?” she asked gently.
It was an obscure way to ask that question but then again, Barbara knew him more than well enough to know that he would understand what she meant to ask. “Nothing. The parents made the choice.”
It was her turn to sigh. “I know that’s a kindness, but it’s difficult to feel that way.”
There were many things he might’ve said to another person - any different person - who voiced this difficulty. This was Barbara, though; there were reasons that he loved her, and those made her someone who didn’t need to be told anything that ultimately amounted to It’s okay to be sad or Sorrow does necessary work. She knew that. She didn’t need wisdom, she needed-- kindness, he supposed; compassion. He hesitated, then told her simply: “Then don’t.”
She inhaled deeply, so he’d probably said the right thing. Right on time, too: Toby was returning in their direction, and in the floodlights that the police set up he could see the boy’s determined expression.
Barbara glanced behind her back, motioned at Toby to indicate that it was okay to join them, then told Walter: “Let’s go find the Tarron kids.”
The kids will need you and Megan, he’d told Barbara before the fight had begun. He’d been right, too - it took both of them to make Zadra stop parading the Tarron siblings and allow the relevant medics to look at them - but not right enough. Lucky for all of them, Tammi Scott had called both Anna Palchuk and Javier Nuñez, and Javier had called his wife - who’d made sure that Tammi, Anna, their children and Eli Pepperjack were allowed past the police tape. Aja had thrown herself at Steve unhesitatingly, and the boy - miraculously - had the sense to let her keep him touch-close the entire night. Eli had similarly attached himself to Krel: the Tarrons’ fresh grief turned out to be more helplessness than Toby could handle - a problem that Aaron solved by assigning Toby to wrangling the Area 49b colonel, who, for her part, managed the situation with what looked like ill temper but was, considering who and what she was, remarkable grace.
When Darci dragged Toby away for a while, Walter opted to go and sit beside said colonel.
She gave him an interested glance. “You’re from the Underneath, aren’t you.”
“As a matter of fact, no,” he replied blandly; he’d take his entertainment where he could and particularly if it was educational for the other person. “I’m a high school history teacher.” He paused, then added: “And a troll changeling.”
“I am going to need to learn a whole new world, aren’t I,” she replied after a moment.
“In all likelihood, yes,” he agreed. “Mostly, though, you’ll need to live without a predefined enemy. That’s a difficult adjustment to make.”
“And you’re an expert?” she asked. The tone of her voice and the lines of her face and body challenged him to claim that he was - and to show her the evidence. The question wasn’t casual or impulsive: it was an interrogation move.
The colonel was in her forties, though, whereas Walter was closer to his 840s. He didn’t have to rise to her bait if he didn’t want to. So he told her: “More like a fellow pilgrim.”
She gave him a piercing look. It was several minutes before she said, in the tone of voice of someone who just had a revelation: “Your people had a civil war.”
It was more complicated than that, but he didn’t bother to correct her. “You’ll find those children to be unreasonably forgiving,” he said instead.
Dryly, she asked: “And if I abuse that, I’ll find a knife poking out from between my ribs?”
He smiled at her, one of his well-practiced pitch-perfect benevolent smiles, then got up and walked away.
She was just about clever enough - just about the right kind of clever - that he didn’t need to tell her, in words, that she wasn’t wrong.
“I didn’t catch your name!” she called out behind him.
He half turned around, raised his hand in goodbye, then kept on walking.
That was Thursday morning. Friday night found all of them at the drive-in: in all the commotion, they had completely missed that Toby and his friends’ movie won the tournament. Things being what they were, there was a little more fanfare than was originally planned, such as the mayor showing up to give a public address, and Toby - and Krel - being expected to do the same. Toby was ecstatic; Krel, not so much.
Are we okay about that? Barbara had asked him that morning in the kitchen, while the boys were arguing things out.
It’s everything he wanted, Walter had replied, then amended: That’s the problem, isn’t it.
The problem is that he’s still 16, Barbara had said.
Walter considered that carefully, then told her: Ofelia Nuñez has her shortcomings as a parent, but if she thinks for even one moment that the mayor intends to do anything that will harm these children in any way, she will slit his throat before he knows it.
Barbara had laughed, and that was the end of that conversation.
Eventually it was decided that Aja would speak for the siblings. While she wrote her speech - aided by Walter, as Varvatos was still in critical condition and Zadra had had to return to their home planet - Krel had been doing something in the living room.
In retrospect, Walter should’ve absolutely realized what that was. What actually happened, though, was that a familiar voice said: “You just can’t quit, can you?” and Walter had gotten up and turned around so quickly that he’d almost knocked Aja back from the dining room table.
And there was Jim smiling at him, with Claire right behind his back and Zelda behind her.
Now, though, they were all sitting on top of Stuart’s van as on-stage, the mayor stepped down and Toby got up to thunderous applause.
“I don’t think he needs his warhammer to float right now,” Claire laughed.
“He deserves it,” Jim said, his love for his best friend obvious in his voice.
On the improvised stage, Toby was speaking into the mic. “Thank you, thank you.”
The applause died down.
“This movie--" Toby began, then stopped, and tried again: “This movie--"
He was holding the page with his speech in his hand - and so, there was no mistaking that he was shaking.
Quietly, Barbara said: “Oh, no.”
It was, perhaps, unsurprising.
Then Jim jumped down from on top of the van, crossed the entire drive-in to get to the stage, jumped up on it and took the mic.
“This movie is about friendship,” he told the audience. “It’s incredibly hard to go through life without it, and it’s even harder to--" he swallowed “--go through a war without it. Let alone two wars. That might even be impossible. If there’s one thing I learned in the past year, it’s that. I already knew that Toby is the best friend anyone could have.”
Someone stuck their head out of their car to yell at the stage: “What’s your name?”
“What did he say?” Stuart asked.
Walter, whose hearing was sharper than human, repeated the words even as on the stage, Toby snatched the mic and said, loud and clear: “Ladies and gentlemen - the one and only, Jim Lake Jr.!” He took a deep breath, and continued: “Arcadia Oaks has had a lot of heroes this summer. I suppose it would’ve been better if this wasn’t needed, but that’s life for you. As Jim here said, none of us could’ve done this on our own; this was a team effort.”
Someone in the crowd began to clap. More joined whoever that was, then even more, and then it turned into a cacophony of clapping, yelling, car honks and at least one vuvuzela.
Jim and Toby glanced at each other; they didn’t seem to need words.
When the noise died down, Toby said into the mic: “Aja, if you would please join us.”
An enterprising tech used that chance to rush onto the stage and offer them two more mics.
“Hi,” Aja said into her mic. She, too, was visibly nervous. “My name is Aja Tarron of House Tarron, and I--" she took a deep breath “--want to thank all of you. My brother and I were forced to leave our home; we literally crash-landed into your midst. You welcomed us, and your world became our world. We are not like you - but we are like you. We made many friends, many of whom you’ll see in this movie. It’s very lively, with many humours and excitement.” She paused, hesitated, then pulled out her serrator and - in a flash of light - transformed into her natural form. “Perhaps we are, as Toby said, heroes of Arcadia. But all of you are our heroes. You gave us a second home. Thank you.”
The cacophony of applause returned. When it died down, Aja said: “And now, without further ado, we present--"
“--Kleb or Alive, the adventures of Captain DJ Kleb, intergalactic man of mystery and weekend DJ!” Toby announced.
Aja and Toby didn’t return to where they were sitting before. Instead, they went with Jim and joined the party on top of the van. On their way there, though, they were intercepted by both Darci and Steve, who’d come running out from where they were watching with their family; Darci was even followed by her father. And she, unlike Steve and Aaron, came over with Toby and Aja; Jim hauled her up.
“So, that was embarrassing,” Toby said, settling down next to Krel - who, for his part, told him: “Are you kidding? That was amazing!”
“It was? I mean--"
Claire hugged Toby hard - then Jim hugged the both of them even harder. Then he caught Darci’s look and opened up one arm; Claire noticed him doing that and did the same. She squeezed her eyes shut hard after Darci joined them, and Walter was fairly sure that he saw tears gathering at her lashes and sliding down her cheeks.
Zelda must’ve noticed the same thing, because she took Walter’s hand.
Barbara looked at them warmly but let them be, much like Krel and Aja looked at the group hug.
It occurred to him that this was, perhaps, what he’d always wanted throughout his long life and never let himself realize. He’d told Jim once that humanity - that kindness and compassion - were not enough to win a war. He hadn’t been wrong, exactly, but he also hadn’t quite been right: kindness and humanity didn’t win wars but without them, there was no meaning to the day after.
He wondered if these children knew - how they would react if he told them - that they were his heroes, too.
Aja returned to Akiridion-5; Krel didn’t. Steve didn’t go either - but Eli did. That wasn’t the greatest surprise: that was Nancy coming over for tea and a very long conversation. That conversation continued in a lawyer’s office and resulted in - the day that Aja officially left - Nancy standing with Varvatos, Aja and Eli, rather than with Walter, Toby, Krel and Steve.
The smaller wormhole generator was still standing in Barbara’s living room, though, and they had more than two teenagers for dinner that night; in fact, Walter wasn’t alone in the kitchen - Jim was with him. They’d worked side by side, before, but there was something profoundly different about cooking together - nourishing others - than fighting and killing.
Walter expressed that notion, carefully, as they were loading the dishwasher, after the meal.
For a moment, he wondered if Jim had even heard him - it was a long moment before Jim turned to face him. When he did meet Walter’s eyes, though, it was to say: “I guess everyone got to go home today.”
It was the tone of his voice that made Walter stop in place, his vision blurry.
“I’ve got more--" Barbara said, coming in from the dining room, then stopped in place with the used plates in her hands, and asked carefully: “Is everything okay?”
They both smiled at the same time.
“It is,” Jim told his mom, and Walter added: “For what just might be the first time.”
Barbara’s eyes turned bright.
“Are you guys going to group-hug without us?” Toby called over from the living room.
Krel said something so quietly that even Walter couldn’t make it out, and Toby laughed in reply; then, all of them joined in.