Gravity Rises (S3)

CW: Part Eight

Lee sat on Ford's bed, deep in thought. Ford had welcomed him in here last night — the bed was big enough for both of them — and Lee was a lot more comfortable sleeping in here by his brother than in the Hall of Mysteries by a woman who wasn't his wife. Janice seemed to prefer this arrangement, too.

Ford wasn't here at the moment, but Lee didn't mind. It gave him time to think about things Ford wouldn't want him thinking about. As leader of the Order, Lee had learned to guess what people were thinking, but Ford seemed to do it naturally. Lee didn't want him to see his thoughts and then start another fight.

The door opened a few minutes later. Ford entered silently and started getting ready for bed. "Where were you?" asked Lee, though there were few places Ford could've been.

"Talking to Ivy," Ford said. He finished buttoning his nightshirt.

"Asking her more about Mabel?"

Ford paused. Despair was clear in his expression. "Mabel just needs rest," he said, which Lee knew. So what was going on?

Ford sat beside Lee on the bed. Though he felt impatient, Lee forced himself to wait until Ford was ready to explain.

"I asked her. . ." Ford swallowed. "I asked her if hamadryads could bring someone back from the dead."

Lee's eyes widened. "Ford—"

"I knew what the answer would be. Of course they can't. But I have to get all the information. And now we know for sure." He wouldn't meet Lee's eyes. "Ivy doesn't know of anyone who can raise the dead, at least not completely. People still exist after they die, I know, but according to Ivy there's no way to put them back in their bodies. There are creatures out there who could turn the body into a type of zombie, but—"

"Ford," said Lee. "It's okay."

"No, it's not," Ford snapped.

"Okay, you're right, it's not. But. . ." He sighed. "Well, thanks for finding out more."

"You can't die, Lee. There has to be something else that will work. The ancients couldn't have wanted any deaths."

"The ancients set this up so that we would have to die in order for Bill to win," Lee pointed out. "They also made it possible for me to join the Wheel in someone else's body. If they foresaw this situation, I don't think they would hesitate to kill one person if it meant stopping Cipher. That's what mattered to them, and. . . they were right."

From the look of Ford's face, there seemed to be a war between the man who understood the necessity of sacrificing one life to save many others, and the man who desperately clung to his brother. "We didn't get to try using everyone's power to help," he said. "Not really. Cipher corrupted our power before we really knew."

"No, we knew," Lee said. "We were already giving it as much as we had when he took over. We're not going to risk everyone by trying that again."

"We still have to try everything else, then," Ford said. "We all have to go to the Manor, capture Bill, and then trying knocking him unconscious and exorcising him with different types of magic and all of that."

Lee almost disagreed, but thought better of it. He shouldn't say out loud what he was thinking: that it would be too dangerous to go to the Manor, and they should just go in, assassinate Bill, get out, and then try the Cipher Wheel. That would be the most effective thing to do at this point. But Ford definitely didn't want to hear that right now.

"We can make those plans tomorrow," Lee said instead. "But Mabel isn't the only one who's exhausted. We all lost some energy out there."

Ford nodded. "You're right. We should sleep." He seemed like he'd rather stay up making plans, though.