The sun was relentless and white and I was lying on the river bank with my eyes closed, the green jacket, the one everyone recognized me by, the one that had become almost a uniform, spread out beneath me like a blanket, and "It Can't Come Quickly Enough" was blaring through my headphones so loud that I could feel the bass rattling against my skull, vibrating through my teeth, and I wanted it louder, I wanted it to drown out everything, to obliterate the thoughts that kept circling back to her, always back to her.
The heat was oppressive. It pressed down on my chest and my face and my bare arms, and I imagined, stupidly, desperately, that it could burn away what I was feeling, that the sun could act as some kind of purifying force, scorching out the wrongness that had taken root inside me. But it didn't work that way. The sun just made me sweat. It made my skin prickle and redden. It made everything worse.
The river moved beside me with a sound like whispers, like secrets being told and retold to the rocks that lined its bed. I could hear it if I let the music fade into background noise for just a moment, that constant rushing, that perpetual forward motion that seemed to mock my own stagnation. The water was brown and green and sometimes, when the light hit it right, almost gold, moving in currents and eddies that I couldn't predict or control. There were smooth stones visible beneath the surface near the bank, worn down by years of this same motion, this same relentless flow, and I wondered what it would be like to be a stone, to be shaped by something external rather than destroyed by something internal.
The river smelled like earth and vegetation and something vaguely metallic, and occasionally a leaf or a branch would float past, carried along without resistance, without choice, just moving because that's what the water made it do. I watched these things sometimes, these bits of debris, and envied their lack of agency. They didn't have to decide anything. They didn't have to want anything. They just went where they were taken.
I kept my eyes shut because opening them meant seeing the sky, and the sky today was that particular shade of red, not quite sunset, not quite natural, more like something out of a fever dream or a warning, and that red reminded me of her hair. Always her hair. That impossible red, like fire, like blood, like something you weren't supposed to touch but couldn't stop yourself from reaching toward. I had memorized every shade of it: the way it looked in sunlight versus shadow, the way it fell across her shoulders, the way a single strand would sometimes catch on her lip when she turned her head.
But it wasn't just her hair. It was the way she wore it, sometimes pulled back in a ponytail that exposed the pale column of her neck, sometimes loose and falling around her face in waves that I wanted to touch, to run my fingers through, to bury my face in even though the thought made me sick with shame. I had watched that hair move when she laughed, when she argued, when she leaned over a book or a map or the dashboard of the Rust Bucket. I had seen it wet from swimming, darkened to almost burgundy, clinging to her shoulders and back. I had seen it catch fire in the sunset, literally glowing like it was lit from within.
The Omnitrix sat heavy on my left wrist, a weight I'd grown so accustomed to that I barely noticed it anymore except in moments like this, when I was hyperaware of every part of my body, every point of contact with the world. It was warm from the sun, the green and black surface almost hot to the touch, and I could feel its slight bulk pressing against the jacket beneath me. The device hummed with potential, with power, with the ability to transform me into any one of dozens of alien forms, each with their own strengths, their own ways of solving problems, their own methods of escape.
I had used it to save the world. Multiple times. I had used it to fight monsters and aliens and interdimensional threats. I had used it to become a hero, to become something more than just Ben Tennyson, just some kid from Bellwood with average grades and an attitude problem. The Omnitrix had given me purpose, had given me power, had given me the ability to be anything, anyone, anything but myself when myself wasn't enough.
But it couldn't fix this.
I had tried, in my weaker moments, in my most desperate moments. I had thought about it. About transforming into something that didn't feel this way, something that didn't have these thoughts, these desires, these sick and twisted wants that made me hate myself more with each passing day. XLR8 didn't have time to think about anything but speed. Heatblast was all fire and energy and destruction. Wildmutt didn't even have eyes, couldn't see her, couldn't watch the way she moved or the way light played across her skin.
But I always changed back. I always became Ben again. And Ben always felt this way.
The song crescendoed and I turned the volume up even though it was already too loud, even though I could feel it doing damage, because I needed the noise, I needed something to compete with the images that kept flooding my mind unbidden and unwanted but also desperately craved. Her eyes. Those green eyes, not emerald or jade or any of the stupid poetic words people used, they were harder than that, more unforgiving, like sea glass or old bottles, beautiful and sharp and capable of cutting you if you looked too long. Which I did. Which I always did.
I had catalogued every expression those eyes could make. The way they narrowed when she was annoyed, which was often, usually at me. The way they widened slightly when she was surprised or scared, though she tried to hide it. The way they softened, just barely, when she was reading something that moved her or when she thought no one was watching. The way they caught the light and seemed to glow from within, like there was something luminous behind them, something pure and good that I was contaminating just by looking at it the way I did.
And her mouth. God, her mouth. Those thin pink lips that barely smiled, that seemed to exist in a permanent state of almost-amusement, almost-cruelty. I had spent hours, days, probably, if you added it all up, watching those lips form words, watching them press together when she was thinking, watching them part slightly when she was about to say something cutting or true or both.
I thought about those lips more than I should. More than was healthy. More than was right. I thought about them forming my name, the way they shaped the single syllable, the way her tongue touched her teeth on the 'n' sound. I thought about them curved in that rare, genuine smile that she saved for moments when she forgot to be guarded. I thought about them in ways that made me feel like I needed to scrub my brain clean, like I needed to transform into Grey Matter and perform surgery on my own neural pathways, cut out the parts that thought these things, felt these things, wanted these things.
The disgust rose in my throat like bile. Not disgust at her, never at her, but at myself, at the way I couldn't stop this, couldn't control it, couldn't make it go away no matter how much I wanted to. The lust was there too, tangled up with everything else, making it impossible to separate what I felt from what I wanted from what I hated about wanting it. It was all mixed together into something toxic and consuming, something that made me feel like I was rotting from the inside out.
Because this was wrong. I knew it was wrong. On every level, in every way that mattered, this was wrong. We were family. We had grown up together. We had fought side by side, had saved each other's lives more times than I could count. She trusted me. She relied on me. And here I was, lying by a river, thinking about her in ways that would destroy that trust, that would destroy everything between us if she ever knew.
The guilt was physical. It sat in my stomach like a stone, heavy and cold and immovable. It wrapped around my chest and made it hard to breathe. It crawled across my skin like insects, making me want to tear at myself, to punish myself for being this person, for having these thoughts, for wanting what I could never, should never have.
I had tried to stop. God, I had tried. I had tried not looking at her, which lasted maybe an hour before I found my eyes drawn back like magnets to metal. I had tried staying away from her, making excuses, picking fights so she'd be angry and I could use that anger as a shield against my own feelings. But we lived in the same house during summers, traveled in the same RV, fought the same battles. There was no escape. There was no distance great enough.
And the worst part, the part that made me hate myself most of all, was that I didn't really want to stop. Somewhere beneath the guilt and the shame and the self-loathing, there was a part of me that treasured these feelings, that held onto them like precious things, that replayed every moment with her like a favorite movie. The way she had grabbed my arm once when she was scared, her fingers digging into my skin. The way she had fallen asleep on my shoulder during a long drive, her breath warm against my neck. The way she looked at me sometimes, really looked at me, like she was trying to figure something out, and I wondered, I hoped, I feared that maybe she saw something in me that I didn't want her to see.
I opened my eyes and immediately regretted it. The red sky loomed above me, vast and wrong, and I closed them again quickly, pressing my palms against my eyelids until I saw spots. The pain was almost welcome. The Scissor Sisters were singing about urgency, about need, about time running out, and I thought: yes, exactly, that's exactly it, except there was no "it" coming, there was no resolution, there was just this endless wanting and hating and wanting again.
The Omnitrix pulsed against my wrist, a gentle throb that might have been my imagination or might have been real. I turned my arm slightly, feeling the device shift, feeling its weight redistribute. With this thing, I could be Diamondhead, impervious and crystalline and hard. I could be Upgrade, able to merge with technology, to become something other than flesh and blood and desire. I could be Ghostfreak, able to phase through walls, through reality itself, to escape anything physical.
But I couldn't escape myself. I couldn't escape the fact that underneath every transformation, underneath every alien form, I was still Ben. Still the same person with the same thoughts and the same wants and the same fundamental wrongness that no amount of power could fix. The Omnitrix had made me a hero, but it couldn't make me good. It couldn't make me pure. It couldn't burn away the sin that had taken root in my chest and spread like poison through my veins.
The river beside me made soft sounds, gentle and indifferent. I could hear it beneath the music if I concentrated. Water moving over rocks, moving away, moving on, doing what water does. The current was stronger in the middle, I knew, where the water ran deep and fast and cold. Near the banks it was slower, almost lazy, pooling in small eddies where insects skated across the surface tension. There were plants growing along the edge, their roots submerged, their leaves reaching toward the sun that was currently trying to burn me alive.
I envied the river. I envied anything that could just move forward without this weight, without this constant pull backward toward her face, her hair, her eyes, her lips, her voice, her presence, her absence, her everything.
I thought about her hands. Long fingers, usually with a pen or a book or a spell component held in them. I had watched those hands gesture when she explained something, had watched them move in precise patterns when she cast a spell, had watched them brush hair from her face in a gesture so unconscious and so graceful that it made my chest ache. I had imagined those hands touching me, had imagined them in ways that made me feel sick, made me feel like I was betraying something sacred.
I thought about the way she moved, all efficiency and purpose, no wasted motion. She walked like she knew exactly where she was going and why, even when she didn't. She had a way of tilting her head when she was listening, really listening, that made you feel like you were the only person in the world. She had a way of crossing her arms that was both defensive and challenging, daring you to argue with her, knowing you'd probably lose.
I thought about her voice, the way it could cut through chaos, the way it could be soft when she was worried, sharp when she was angry, warm when she was happy. I had heard that voice say my name in every possible tone: annoyed, amused, afraid, angry, affectionate. I had memorized the cadence of her speech, the way she paused before saying something important, the way she sometimes stumbled over words when she was flustered, which was rare but devastating when it happened.
My phone was in my pocket and I knew, I knew, that I shouldn't look at it, shouldn't check if she'd messaged, shouldn't scroll through her photos again, shouldn't do any of the things I'd done a hundred times before. But I also knew I would. Eventually. When the song ended. Or maybe before. Probably before.
Because there were photos. So many photos. Group shots where I could zoom in on her face, on the way she smiled or didn't smile, on what she was wearing, on how close she was standing to me. Action shots from battles where her hair was wild and her eyes were fierce and she looked like some kind of warrior goddess. Candid shots that Grandpa Max had taken, catching her off guard, catching her being just herself, unguarded and real and so beautiful it hurt to look at.
I had studied those photos like religious texts, like they contained some secret knowledge, some answer to the question of why I felt this way and how I could stop. But there were no answers. There was just her face, her body, her existence, and my own shameful obsession with all of it.
The sun beat down and I lay there and let it, hoping for purification, for burning, for anything that might make me feel different than this. But the sun was just the sun. It didn't care. It didn't judge. It just burned everything equally, the guilty and the innocent, the obsessed and the free, and I was definitely not free, had never been free, not since the first time I saw that red hair catching the light and felt something inside me shift and break and rearrange itself into this new, terrible shape.
The heat made my skin feel tight, made sweat pool in the hollow of my throat and run down my temples. My t-shirt was sticking to my back, to my chest, and I could feel every point where fabric touched skin, every place where my body existed in space. I was hyperaware of my own physicality, of being trapped in this flesh, in this form that wanted things it shouldn't want, that responded to her presence in ways I couldn't control.
I had tried cold showers. I had tried exercise until exhaustion. I had tried meditation, though I was terrible at it, my mind always wandering back to her within seconds. I had tried dating other girls, which had been a disaster because all I could think about was how they weren't her, how their hair was the wrong color, their eyes the wrong shade, their voices lacking that particular quality that made my stomach flip.
The Omnitrix could give me the strength of Four Arms, the speed of XLR8, the intelligence of Grey Matter. But it couldn't give me the strength to stop feeling this way. It couldn't give me the speed to outrun my own thoughts. It couldn't give me the intelligence to logic my way out of wanting her.
I was powerless. For all the power I had, for all the times I had saved the world, I was completely and utterly powerless against this. Against her. Against myself.
The song played on. My thoughts played on. The red sky watched. And I lay there on my green jacket by the river, the Omnitrix heavy on my wrist, a symbol of everything I could do and everything I couldn't, wishing for it to come quickly enough, whatever "it" was, an ending, a beginning, a forgetting, anything but this.
The river kept moving. The sun kept burning. And I kept lying there, trapped in my own skin, trapped in my own mind, trapped in this terrible wanting that I knew, I knew, would destroy me if I let it, but that I couldn't seem to let go of no matter how hard I tried.
Because somewhere, probably back at the house or at the library or wherever she was today, she existed. She was breathing and thinking and living her life completely unaware of what she did to me, of how she had become the center of my universe without asking for it, without wanting it, without having any idea that her cousin, her partner, her family, was lying by a river thinking about her in ways that would horrify her if she knew.
And that was the worst sin of all. Not just the wanting, but the secrecy. The fact that I was carrying this around inside me, this poisonous thing, and she had no idea. She trusted me. She fought beside me. She lived with me. And I was betraying that trust every single day just by existing, just by feeling what I felt, just by being unable to stop.
The guilt was crushing. The shame was suffocating. The desire was relentless.
And the Omnitrix, for all its power, for all its potential, could do nothing but sit on my wrist and remind me that some problems couldn't be solved by transforming into something else. Some problems were just you, just who you were, just what you wanted, and no amount of alien DNA could change that.
I thought about her freckles, the ones that dusted across her nose and cheeks, barely visible most of the time but standing out when she'd been in the sun. I thought about the way she bit her lower lip when she was concentrating. I thought about the small scar on her left hand from a battle two summers ago. I thought about the way she smelled, like books and vanilla and something uniquely her.
I thought about all of it, hated myself for thinking about it, and kept thinking about it anyway.
Because this was who I was now. This was what I had become. Ben Tennyson, hero, wielder of the Omnitrix, savior of the universe, and completely, pathetically, shamefully in love with the one person he could never, ever have.
The river flowed on, indifferent to my suffering, and I lay there in the heat and the noise and the red light of the wrong-colored sky, wishing for transformation, for salvation, for anything but this endless cycle of wanting and guilt and wanting again.
But wishing changed nothing. The Omnitrix changed nothing. And I remained exactly who I was, exactly where I was, exactly as trapped as I had always been.