FORGERY . . . THE BOYS ! [1]

thirteen.

The world, all at once, seems to fall out from underneath Ben's feet. He feels each blank of wood as it slips from his footing, watches it disappear into the blank nothingness. In fact, when he looks around, he's fallen too. He's surrounded by black. His heart must have stopped. Everything must have stopped.

Brooke is with him in the nothingness.

Her eyes are welled in tears.

He knows, then, that his heart did not stop, because its aching against the confines of his skin and his bones. Ben's mouth hangs open with words he can't seem to find and place into this void, with questions he doesn't know how to ask.

"How?" Is all that slips out, through the cracks of his gated teeth.

Ben does not cry. He doesn't. But goddamnit, his voice is shuddering, It wavers on a thin balance that he no longer has any control of. The drugs in his system flushed out the second a daughter was mentioned. He's stone cold sober now, faced with the reality of a fact that he is a father. A father. And a failure of one at that, too, just like his own was.

Brooke's hands won't stop wringing on the small tabletop's surface. Her lip won't stop trembling, either, her entire body shaking like a leaf in the wind. The room is still black around them. Ben can no longer see Hughie, or Butcher, or a semblance of the hotel room. It's just her, and this heavy realization sitting on their shoulders.

"Brooke," he pushes, and revealing her name is the least of his concerns right now because, because she won't tell him about his daughter, forget her privacy, even if the guilt will hit him once the room snaps into focus again, "Brooke, how?"

A tear slips out of her beautiful, gemstone eye. She melts into resignation at it. "I was pregnant when they sold us to the Soviets."

Burning. He feels it start in his chest like he always does. That fiery, uncontrollable rage. "Fuck. Fuck."

"They found out after they injected the radioactive shit in me," she continues, isn't even paying attention to the fact that he's a ticking time bomb. Literally a bomb, his blood made up of that radioactive shit, bursting to explode. Why would she? He pushed her to speak. She's speaking. "When they were testing my blood, seeing if it had any effect. No effect other than it really juiced me up. Later, when I was hurling my guts out, they found the baby."

The illusion of privacy snaps immediately when Hughie interjects. "Jesus." Ben is only momentarily annoyed. A flash of it. Really, he's thankful for the distraction, that reminder that they're not alone, that his feelings, while huge, are shared, cooling that burst in his chest.

Brooke's eyes fall to Ben's chest. She doesn't touch him. She knows, then, that she's the amplifier of the two of them, that it will only hurt when he's trying to level himself. He offers a grim, tight lipped smile, though.

Inside, he's reeling.

Inside, it's like a rod has been cast, and the catch is far too big for him to pull. It's pulling him out to sea. It's drowning him. There are no hands to catch him and break him free from the surface he's just beneath.

The whole time that he was strapped to the table, tortured, bleeding and healing, bleeding and healing, his daughter was growing in the next room. At some point, his daughter was being born. At some point, something happened to her that led to Brooke needing her to now be found.

He had so many questions to ask her. So many blanks in that story that were not yet answered.

Mostly, mostly, Ben had such a revitalized thirst for revenge on the other members of Payback that it filled his mouth with the taste of gunmetal again. Bullets in his mouth and blood staining his teeth. Shrapnel down his throat, threatening to choke him.

"We'll find her," he tuned back in to Hughie saying, his hand softly on Brooke's shoulder. When his eyes drifted over to Ben, to that new and vibrant anger beaming in the greens of them, he promptly lifted it off. "I'll– I'll call Annie. Ask if she'll do this."

Despite the vengeance coursing his veins like fresh pumping blood, he did soften a little at the sound of Brooke laughing. Laughing despite the silver lining her eyes, still. "I want to hear that call. I will stand by the landl– How are you going to do that?"

Hughie's eyebrows furrow. His little rat teeth poking through his gapped mouth as it slowly, slowly fell open. "Do you see?" He gestured widely at them, that fierce gaze directed at Butcher. "Do you see what interrupting my quizzing did?"

"Alright," Butcher sighs heavily, his eyes rolling so far back that Ben saw the whites of them.

The smile on Brooke's face disappears in a blink. In its place is the all-too familiar look of building fury. It's Ben's turn to laugh. She bounces that furious gaze to him for a second before directing it all on Hughie. "I don't understand."

To Hughie's credit, he doesn't balk, just says, "Landlines are practically dead now."

"Phone booth." Ben sits back in his seat. Easy. The little twink makes such a big fuss over nothing.

His burger, while almost forgotten, is still sat on its foil wrapper waiting for him. He takes a very big bite and chews with the force of someone who has a very big hit list in his head.

Butcher snorts a laugh.

Hughie even quirks a smile.

Brooke's pink eyes are flared, glowing and aimed right at them, and neither of them even blink. They're laughing.

"Phone booths are long dead. There's, what?" Hughie glances at Butcher, who shrugs. "Two? In like, fucking England?"

"Of course you bloody ask me that."

"No! It's just–"

Hughie is actually beside himself laughing, meanwhile Brooke's poised to kill him in a blink.

"I. Don't. Understand." She reaches over without looking, open palm. The corner of Ben's mouth quirks, just a little. He peels the pickle off of his burger and places it in her waiting palm. While she's arguing, she plucks the pickle in her mouth. Pouting and chewing like an angry little rabbit.

Butcher is the one to answer, looking far too amused with Ben's wife for Ben's comfort. "Cell phones, darling. Everything's handheld now."

Hughie held up a little rectangle, the glass screen on it flashing the time while he waved it back and forth.

Brooke's head cocks to the side.

The lasers of her eyes retreat, and she reaches out again, palm open. Instead of demanding a pickle from him, she's directed it at Hughie.

"I want to play with it."