Ben. Ben, Ben, Ben! Milo tried not to bounce or smile too brightly or pretty much do anything to convey how happy he was at this particular moment to be sitting in Ben's car, next to Ben as Ben drove.

It was both exciting and scary at the same time.

Of course, of all the ways he'd ever imagined crossing the barriers between worlds, and of all the ways he'd imagined introducing himself to Ben in person and conversing with Ben in person, he'd never quite pictured it happening on the same day his execution was being held. And he really hadn't pictured the first meeting of their eyes to happen when he was naked as the day he was born. It had all been like one bad find-yourself-naked-and-giving-a-speech-in-school type of nightmare. Only like a thousand times worse.

In all, Milo had to say that reality wasn't half as nice or as sedate as fantasy. Definitely not something he'd recommend to friends. Not that he had any of course, but he was hoping things would change now.

Because he was in the car with Ben! He couldn't help but grin.

He glanced at Ben out of the corner of his eyes. He was hunched over the steering wheel, glaring hard enough to make something spontaneously combust, and looking a lot less than thrilled at whatever it was that he was thinking about. That made Milo pause. Things hadn't exactly been calm since he'd been pulled through to this dimension. Maybe Ben even regretted doing it? Maybe he wished he'd never seen Milo. After all, there was no way Ben could possibly have known of him or known how much Milo had wanted to meet him for a very long time now. And even if Ben did know, there was no reason or guarantee that he'd even care.

Of course he wouldn't care. Milo was a complete stranger. From another dimension. Who had appeared out of nowhere naked. Had been the impetus in a mother stabbing her son. Oh god, it hadn't seemed this bad when it had actually happened, but upon reflection, Milo was beginning to see why Ben was disgruntled over the whole thing.

"So where are we going?" Because it just occurred to him that after Ben had left Tier and Elijah in the apartment, he had merrily just followed Ben right back out and down to the car without Ben having said a word. He frowned. Should he have not come? But it would have been awkward if he'd stayed. Anyone with eyeballs would have been able to see the little dance of lurve those two were awkwardly doing around each other. In fact, pokey finger boy and called attention to it less than subtlety about half a dozen times so it wasn't exactly like it was some huge secret affair. Tier and Elijah needed time alone.

But maybe Ben hadn't wanted him along? Milo frowned. Maybe he was just an unwanted, horrible nuisance. It wouldn't be the first time and stupid him for assuming he might be anything but.

"We're off to Angelo's. Cassie's gonna wanna know about this." Ben sounded dead tired.

It was in the front of his mind to ask Ben if he should have stayed behind, but all that came out was "oh."

"Elijah needs his rest per Jael's orders and Tier looked about ready to drop on his feet. He's in no way up to playing twenty questions with the yahoos." Ben sighed again, turning a corner. Milo briefly pondered the idea that he could be a potted plant and Ben wouldn't notice the difference.

Which was fine really. Normal in fact! Nothing at all to get upset over or be disappointed about. He was blowing it out of proportion and making too much out of it.

He should have stayed at the apartment with Tier and Elijah. His happy elated mood had taken a backseat to something a lot less fun.

Milo bit his lip, stared out the window and watched as the car went down yet another snowy street with trees. Stupid Milo, not knowing his place. Or maybe it was just stupid Milo, who never realized that his place was just far, far away from other breathing living things.

He hated this dimension. There were no pockets to slip into. In his world, it didn't matter where he was, it was a simple thing for him to just slip in between the worlds. He could see Ben's, he could see his, and his could see him. But no one could touch him or pull him back into reality. But now that he was finally here in Ben's world? There was no way to just phase out of this reality slightly and into a locked windowed room that only he had the key to open. He'd always phased in these kinds of situations. Just rubbed his thumb against his nose and he was the ghost that everyone called him. He would have done it when they'd gone to execute him, but with hands bound, he couldn't reach his nose to get away.

And he'd tried more than a couple times, thumb to the side of his nose, to try and phase into a pocket here, and nada.

"This was a dumb idea," Ben announced as the car came to a stop outside of Angelo's apartment building.

Milo tried not to wince as he turned back from the window to see Ben thump his head down on the steering wheel of the car. "How so?

Ben was going to say that he was disgusting. That he wished he'd never met Milo. That everything, from Elijah's parents, to the prophecy to the Gatekeeper business was Milo's fault and he never wanted to see Milo again. He'd explain in great detail how the sight of him made Ben want to retch puppies or gouge out his eyes or cough up blood or—

"We're gonna go in there, where all the crazy people live, and they're going to jump all over us. Then they'll demand that we take them to where Tier and Elijah are, completely ignoring the fact that we all need sleep and that Elijah should probably take it easy for at least a couple of days before we go gallivanting on some half baked crusade. And then, they'll figure out that you can talk and that you can do it telepathically and Angelo will wet himself in the resulting geekfest that comes with that particular revelation."

Or Milo could be wrong about what Ben might say. He'd been wrong before. Not very often, mind, but on occasion.

Sighing, he stretched out, feeling for the tiny cramped apartment they'd be walking into shortly. He could feel them: Cassie, Angelo, and the pointy finger boy. And they were all completely asleep. So, there was another bright point, right? Now he and Ben could go upstairs and indulge in long awkward silences. Because that would just be something so wildly unique and new to Milo. Snorting soundlessly, he told Ben, "They're asleep."

"Really?" Ben turned to look at him, his slitted hazel eyes focusing on Milo. Fidgeting, Milo nodded in return. "You can tell that from here?"

"Yeah," Milo murmured quietly, more than a little apprehensively.

"Huh." Ben shrugged. "Good. We'll probably just go up and crash for a bit. We have to sleep sometimes or this is going to end up really being a waking nightmare."

Nodding again, Milo reluctantly undid his seatbelt. What he really wanted, in all honesty, was to go back to the away things were in the funny doctor's office. In a moment of unadulterated panic, he could shine. Cause no one cared what he said or how he said it or what he was. They just wanted someone to distract them from the chaos, and for some reason, he could do that in a pinch. Sort of.

But this? How exactly was he supposed to go about this? What was he supposed to say? 'Hey Ben, I've been watching you since I figured out how to slip into dimensional pockets. No really, I'm not a scary, freaky stalker from another world.'

Better not to say anything, Milo decided. Better to let Ben think that they were complete strangers. Hell, they practically were anyway, right?

"Goddamned stupid prophecy thing." Ben growled, undoing his own seatbelt, and Milo felt his heart jump up in his throat slightly.

"Yeah." It wasn't like he loved the prophecy. Hell, the stupid thing was the majority of the reason that he'd been a hair's breath away from being executed. It was taught in every school. In boring, mind numbing detail. Milo could recite the old texts by heart by the time he was five. And he knew before then what people had suspected of him. And low and behold, they were right. He was the Traitor. He was going to destroy their world.

Stupid self-fulfilling bullshit. If they hadn't been so rotten to him, he might have had second thoughts about switching sides.

"Remind me to kill Tier for dragging me into this mess when it's over with," Ben grumbled under his breath as he pulled the key out of the ignition. Milo followed him out of the car and into the building as his heart sank into his toes.

Ben didn't want any part of this. Stupid Milo to think he could change that. Stupid Milo for a lot of reasons. He really should have stayed back with Elijah and Tier. He could have slept under their table or something.

Sighing, he followed as Ben led him up to the apartment and opened the door with a spare key. He knew that Cassie was asleep in one bed and Angelo in the other in the one bedroom. Pokey boy was once again tangled in an afghan on the floor.

"You're being awfully quiet," Ben noted as he shut the door behind them.

"So? Maybe it's my natural state." Milo blurted out flippantly, realizing belatedly that maybe he was a bit tired in that he was no longer thinking before speaking. "Yeah."

Ben, though, favored him with a wry grin. "Doubtful, kid." And Milo reminded himself not to spaz as Ben reached out and gently shoved him in the direction of one of the recliners. "Get some shut eye."

"Okay," he returned almost docilely. Yeah, he was tired and the chair was looking really comfy. And life would be perfect if Ben could sit in it and he could just curl up around him and go to sleep for the next six years. But again, reality was nowhere near as nice as the fantasy. He plopped gracelessly into the recliner, almost falling back out of it as the footrest came flying out.

There was a snicker out of Ben before a blanket fell on his head. "Sleep well."

000000

"Well, of course he can speak telepathically, Ben," Angelo rolled his eyes as he shook his head condescendingly. Ben merely raised an eyebrow.

"And you knew this when we were talking in very loud, very broken English when you tried to coax him out from under that table." Honestly, Angelo should know better than to try and pull a fast one on him. Maybe he had only gotten about five and a half hours of sleep on the dumb ass recliner, but he hadn't been born yesterday and it hadn't knocked the common sense out of his head.

Plus, when he'd woken up to a silent apartment, Angelo's notebooks were the only thing of interest to read because Charlie's sci-fi books about Xerxes the Xerox alien from the planet Photon just didn't appeal. And since Angelo had since had used many exclamation points and smiley faces around a phrase of the prophecy that had been unmarked in his notebook and hadn't made a lick of sense to Ben pre-Milo, it was easy to see that Angelo had put one and one together sometime after they'd left.

"Fine. You take all the fun out of it," Angelo whistled through his teeth, blowing his bangs up off his forehead in the process. Out of the corner of his eye, Ben caught Milo grinning at the whole thing, and he couldn't help but smile a little himself.

"No, I just like reacquainting you all with the concept of reality and semi-logical thinking. Don't think I've forgotten the time you were convinced that retroviruses could take over your body and turn you into a homicidal lizard," Ben returned.

"I read it in a book," Charlie piped in indignantly.

"Yes, and today in class we'll learn the difference between fiction, nonfiction and pure science fiction fantasy," Cassie jumped into to tease, leaving Charlie squawking indignantly.

"Hey, it could happen! There a lot that isn't known about retroviruses."

"There's no virus on the planet that's ever going to give you the ability to shoot laser beams out your eyes, Charlie," Ben had to assert.

"You know, you two are awfully uppity for a couple of people who've just found themselves to be part of a huge prophecy about alternate dimensions. You especially Ben. You pulled Milo out of thin air. Explain that away," Angelo grumbled, flopping over so that his head was resting on Cassie's thigh and his feet were in Charlie's lap. Ben figured Angelo was out of sorts mostly because both he and Charlie had been worked up into a right panic over retroviruses before he'd shot them both down in assuring them that the whole idea was based on bad, if not completely nonexistent, science.

In the meantime, Milo seemed to take it as a kind of 'coast is clear' sign and crawled out of the recliner he'd been sleeping in to quietly slip down onto the floor beside Ben. "Just because it's another dimension doesn't mean that it doesn't follow its own rules or its own laws of physics."

"Wow," Angelo breathed and Ben scowled at him.

"No drooling. I mean it, Fang Face."

"Oh come on, Ben, you have to admit it's cool!" Charlie piped in. "He's telepathic. I mean, how often do you meet someone who's telepathic?"

Given Milo's look of extreme discomfort at the attention, Ben figured that it wasn't the first time Milo had heard this sort of thing before. "Knock it off. It's how he talks. He's not some side show in a circus." He felt incredibly stupid trying to give Milo's knee a comforting pat, but since Milo flashed him a bright and happy smile, it probably was worth the effort.

"Look, the thing I don't get," Cassie interrupted, obviously getting fed up with all of them, "is all this business about us going to another dimension. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, Milo, but this isn't some place you want to go back to or that we would be too happy to be stuck in, right? Is the world as we know it really going to fall apart if we don't follow this cheesy thing?"

"Uh, well, I was on death row, so if we never go back, that's okay by me." Milo shrugged. "This dimension seems pretty cool."

Wow. Ben tried not to gape like an idiot the way everyone else was. If it weren't for the stiffness in Milo's posture or the way he was cutting off the circulation in Ben's upper arm with his death grip, he might have assumed that Milo was pulling their legs. But the kid was entirely too nervous and entirely too tense for that explanation to work.

"Okay, so everyone's with me when I say other dimension: bad. This dimension: good." Charlie laughed too loudly. There was a scraping at the front door, and they were saved from having to discuss that particular train of thought when the lock flipped open and both Tier and Elijah hobbled in. Tier, of course, looked none the less for wear. He had his canes and a new change of clothes and Cassie's neon pink flamingo keychain which explained how they'd gotten here. Although, Ben was sure that Tier would at some point get a lecture from Cassie about borrowing her car without asking first before the day was up.

Elijah, on the other hand, looked a bit on the downtrodden side. His arm was in a sling, and he was managing less than successfully to walk with one of Tier's spare canes. The ankle had to be paining him because there was definitely a more accentuated limp there today then there had been yesterday. Lovely. Well, Elijah was just going to have to live with it, because if Ben took him to see Jael one more time, Jael was going to bite his head off. Or tell their parents, which was pretty much led to the same thing anyway.

"Hey guys, what'd we miss?" Tier asked, plopping down on the couch. Elijah, who had obviously borrowed some clothes, plopped down beside him. Just close enough to touch but not close enough to blatantly hint that there was something more involved there. Although, Ben had to hide a grin. Honestly. Who did they think they were fooling?

"We were just deciding that this whole dimension hopping thing isn't for us." Charlie grinned.

"Well, Elijah's the Key anyway, it's not like we can get into another dimension without him," Cassie added.

"Don't forget Ben's the Gatekeeper. Elijah can only read the seal, he can't open it himself," Angelo butted his big fat face in, and Ben scowled at him. Key, Gatekeeper, prophecy. He couldn't possibly be the only one who thought this was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard. Hell, it sounded like he should be running around in a toga with a sword while Elijah recited poncy poems in iambic pentameter.

"What's this stupid thing suppose to look like anyway?" Ben tugged idly on the end of Milo's braid, pulling the kid out of whatever trance he'd been in. Blinking, Milo looked up at him and started before frowning slight.

"The Seal?"

"Well, there's a description of it in the book," Elijah piped in, reaching to the coffee table, and flipping open the old musty book that had started all this bizarre nonsense and turning it around so Ben could get a glimpse. Leaning across the table, Ben put his hand on Elijah's wrist so he could read the words.

"Open Sesame? They're kidding, right," He deadpanned, less than impressed.

"What?" Elijah blinked and then leaned closer to get a better look. "Oh, no it says Open Sesame won't work, see." And Ben did see, although it was getting increasingly hard as the lights kept flickering. It must be another hell of a snowstorm outside to be rattling the power lines.

"I don't think you should be-" Milo started to say before Elijah cut him off.

"It says that the Key only has to say, 'The Seal shall be broken' and," Elijah paused, but Ben wasn't really listening to him, curious as to the huge freaking glowy thing Elijah's words had conjured. "Um, I'm guessing that's the seal."

"It's big," Ben commented distantly, examining the shiny door that had just appeared in the center of the living room. It wasn't exactly solid seeing as how he could see Cassie on the other side through it.

"I don't see a damned thing," Angelo frowned and announced loudly.

"It's right here." Ben reached out to touch it.

"Don't!"

And then there was a blinding flash of light followed by the sensation of falling.