The Search for the Eoz Potion

29. Hope

Aileen walked over to Hailey and put her arm on her shoulder. As she led her through the crowd, they all seemed to notice what was happening and the murmur of conversations around them died out. Aileen walked her to a small bed made of leaves behind some trees a few feet away from the crowd. When they got there, however, there was no one in it. Hailey looked over at Aileen who ran to the bed confused. When she turned around to look back at Hailey, she saw him walking up behind her and sighed in frustration. She pushed past Hailey and put her arm on Josef's shoulder to hold him up. He was walking unsteadily, using two small but strong tree branches as crutches.

"You need to stop this," Aileen scolded him. "You've got to rest."

Josef looked weak, not at all like Hailey remembered seeing him only a few short days ago. His face was yellow and his eyes were sunken. He had lost a lot of weight, so much that his clothes seemed to hang loosely off of him. She did not understand how all of this could have happened in such a small amount of time. The quiet confidence he had once projected from his stern eyes and chiseled facial expressions was gone.

When Zack saw him, he ran up to his other side to help Aileen support his weight. He did not seem thrown at that moment that his friend and mentor was in the state that he was. Zack went about helping Josef over to his bed like it was his job and he was happy to do it. Hailey walked slowly closer to get a better look and sat down on the ground beside Josef. Claire, Zack, and Aileen stood behind her.

"What happened?" she asked.

"The poison rain," Josef said weakly. "Were you two okay?"

But Hailey didn't want to talk about what she had been through. She wanted to know about Josef. She shrugged the questions off and quickly refocused the conversation.

"We're fine. How are you?"

"I made my peace," Josef said. "Where's Tellis?"

It wasn't until then that Hailey realized she hadn't seen her since they landed. She didn't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it though, she was too concerned about Josef. As she looked at him, as she took in the fullness of his weakened condition, she thought of all he had done for her and Claire. She thought of how he had rescued them in the forest, fought impossible odds to get them back to the SG headquarters and then out into the garden. She thought about how much of her own doubt and skepticism he had put up with and how gracefully he had done it. She thought about his family, how they had been separated, his Searcher mother exiled and his native father imprisoned, and how in the face of all of that he had decided to try to help other Searchers rather than let life defeat him. She thought of all this as she looked at him, and she began to cry.

"Don't" he said when he realized it. "Don't feel bad for me. The restoration of the Garden of Yllop is coming. We'll get you to the potion."

Josef again asked that she tell him about all that had happened to her and Tellis on their journey, and Hailey finally explained to him how Tellis had taken them to a cabin to get out of the rain. She told him all about what had happened in No Man's Land. Josef and Zack were horrified when she told them how close they had come to being attacked by the devils. As she spoke, however, she was not fully present in her words. The whole time, she was distracted by worry.

"Are you going to be okay?" Hailey asked Josef when she had finished her quick summary.

Zack, Josef, and Aileen were tragically silent in response to her question. Zack looked down at the ground and searched for a way to explain that no one came back from the poison rain. There was no antidote that had ever been found. It was only a matter of time before Josef passed.

Josef tried to find a way to explain all of this when he noticed someone walking toward them in the distance. He stopped in the middle of a sentence when he realized it was Tellis approaching the gathering. He tried feebly to prop himself up, and everyone turned to see what had captured Josef's attention. After a moment, they realized there was someone else walking along with Tellis. They were all confused, but as she brought the mystery person closer, Josef asked Zack and Aileen to help him up. At first they refused, but he insisted. When he had his balance, he began moving slowly on his crutches toward Tellis and the man. Soon enough, he was standing face to face with someone he had not seen in years, not since he was a child. And Tellis Olliver, the one who had torn them apart all that time ago, was standing between them off to the side.

"You made it," Josef said. Had he been healthier, he would have been able to more successfully fight back the tears that now formed in the corners of his eyes.

"I was starting to think I might not," the man said.

"How did you get across the river?"

"I met up with the others, but I wanted General Oliver to be the one to bring me to you."

They stood across from one another, both wanting to hug the other but not knowing how to break the wall that time had built between them. It had been fifteen years since the man had been arrested by the Human Robot Army, his wife exiled from the Garden of Yllop, and his eight year old son left to fend for himself in the forest. It had been fifteen long and lonely years since he had kicked and punched the soldiers away from him as he tried to reach out to grab his son. The soldiers were able to get hold of him again and they dragged him off to General Tellis Olliver. Tellis herself took the baton from the holster on her waist and shocked the man so severely he fell lifelessly to the ground. She then barked orders at her soldiers who picked the man up and carried him off.

As they stood in silence, the scene played itself out in flashes of memories inside all three of their minds. Finally, Josef dropped his crutches and collapsed into his father's arms. Tellis stood by them, eyes relieved but still heavy. The devastation she had caused this family had now been put right as much as it could be, but she still worried it was not enough. How many others were there just like Josef? Would she ever be able to make things up to all of them? Did what she had done for Josef really make all the rest of it go away?

As she was running through all of this in her head, Hailey walked over to her. She realized what all of this had been about for Tellis. She realized she had been right all along to be suspicious of her, that she and Josef had been up to something more than just guiding them to the potion. For Josef, he had not been honest with Hailey when he told her before she went off on her own that he didn't think his father was alive. He knew he was, or at least he hoped enough that it made little difference if he knew or not. And for Tellis, this had all been about reuniting the family she had torn apart. Though she didn't know all the details, though the specifics were not hers to understand completely, she realized that collapsing the prison and traveling to the river was about setting the past right. And now, with the entire SG assembled once again, they were getting ready to finish the work once and for all by overthrowing the Prince.

She stood next to Tellis and put her hand on her shoulder as if to tell her that she knew all this and that it was okay. Tellis stood there quietly and accepted the show of affection and forgiveness from the girl who had not long ago told her she could not trust her due to what she had done to Josef. She watched the boy and his father embrace each other. Claire and Zack, watching with somber expressions behind them, felt the beauty of the moment as they all stood under the quiet night sky. Aileen watched Josef and was moved to tears by his uncharacteristic show of vulnerability. She wanted to hug him, to comfort him, but she didn't want to rob him of the moment. Instead, she stood with the rest of the SG under the stars that, though no one noticed, not even Tellis, seemed to form the shape of a woman, a queen.