Ben and Emilia were sitting in the guest house. Anna was asleep, it was deep in the night.
The two were playing chess.
"You suck at this," Emilia dryly commented after moving a piece and taking one of Ben's rooks without the father of her child gaining anything on the board.
"I speak four more languages than you," Ben countered, placing his knight down, but Emilia just raised a brow without looking at the board. He noticed and was about to take it back but kept the knight there in the end.
"Mate," Emilia said after immediately moving a bishop.
As Ben was pondering how to best get out of it, the retired MI6 agent taunted, "I know three more martial arts."
"I still have a higher winrate in our spars," Ben calmly replied but still couldn't find a way to solve the conundrum on the chessboard.
"I'm the better shot," Emilia tried, but she wasn't too sure about that. Especially since Ben just mumbled, "Doubtful."
"I'm the better spy," the mother of his child said with a smirk.
"Of course you are, I'm not a spy at all," Ben just answered. "That's like me saying I'm the better Metro SWAT detective."
He moved a pawn to block the mate.
"Mate."
Emilia gave Ben a raised brow, deep in thought.
"I'm a better cook," Emilia proposed eventually as Ben was not finding a decent way out and she didn't find something better to boast about.
"And yet I have not ate your food a single time despite you living in my guest house with my daughter," Ben mumbled thoughtfully. "We always eat Zofia's food or mine… or Annie's."
"What about you try tomorrow?"
"I have a dinner date tomorrow," Ben replied in a low voice.
"Ooooh~ is it with Sara?"
"She hasn't called," the detective answered, his brows creasing just a little more as he remained focused on the chess match.
"So then you call her," Emilia said as if it was the most obvious solution of all.
"I tried, she didn't pick up. Via text she said she was busy and will call back. She hasn't," Ben explained, the look on his face now a full frown.
"I mean, she was involved in that FBI forgery case during the auction. That's a lot for a woman who just survived a hostage situation," Emilia defended.
"I think it's more than that," Ben softly whispered, more to himself than to her.
They had flirted a lot and certainly looked the part of two people in love at the medal ceremony, but they were by no means a couple. They hadn't even kissed. Ben didn't know himself why he was so… jealous. That guy who held her waist in that picture in the news - the detective was sure there was something between them. An old flame at the very least.
"I'm the better driver," Emilia boasted as Ben moved a hand to hover over his king, intending to move him out of the mate.
"I suppose we will never know the answer to that," Ben thoughtfully mused and made his move. "Unless we go go-karting or something…"
"But we do know that I am the better chess player, check mate," Emilia proudly countered and moved her queen.
"Why is it so important to you to be better at something than me at something?" Ben asked, not at all sad about his loss. He knew he sucked at chess and Emilia played like someone who cared enough to get an official rating.
"You started it!"
"I did?"
Emilia sat up straight, lost her accent and pretended to Ben as she grumbled in a deep voice, "I know a hundred languages. They call me 'the Tongue' at work. I'm not stupid, you are stupid."
"I sound like that to you? I'm not Batman," Ben defended with a weirded out half-smile.
"It's good that you know," the brunette praised with a satisfied nod as she slumped back a little and reset the board for another match.
Ben made his first move and fell into a disadvantageous situation pretty quickly.
"You said you had a job for me?" Emilia asked after taking Ben's queen with a cocky grin.
"There is someone who might come after our daughter if I'm not playing my cards right," the detective revealed.
"Explain," Emilia immediately demanded.
And so he did. As he lost a second match and a third. In fact, he never even came close to winning.
His losses were coming quicker, too, he noticed. But he still couldn't figure out how to beat the mother of his child.
He only knew the rules of the game, not any of the strategy.
But Emilia did, and it seemed she was getting… ruthless. Her expression certainly said so. As did her body language and mannerisms.
"I'd prefer a kill over blackmail," she judged in a cold voice once Ben was done.
"I don't know who he works with or for and how much my name has circulated in his circles," Ben reiterated. "If Brayden dies and they look into it… I don't want Anna to bear any of the fall out. I certainly can't send you, the mother of my child to just gun him down."
Emilia thoughtfully nodded before standing up.
At one of the closets in the room, Emilia pressed a button at the side.
"Your ex's grandfather did a custom job for me," Emilia answered before Ben could ask the question. "He likes those old-timey spy movies. His salespitch was way over the top, but I wanted one of these anyway so I humored him."
A hidden compartment flipped open when she pulled down a hidden lever that was released through her press of the button.
"When did Jay find the time?" Ben asked with furrowed brows.
Emilia just shrugged and answered, "You do realise Haley's family practically stayed here for weeks?"
Pushing the hidden compartment back into the wall, Ben noticed that the space was much larger than he believed at first sight. And he sighed deeply when he noticed two silenced pistols among the miscellaneous items Emilia had so carefully hidden.
"Can't you lock them away even in that hidden space? What if a ten year old Anna explores this room?" Ben asked in exasperation.
"I'll get a lock when she figures out how to operate a button," Emilia said with a scoff and took out a box and a wig.
Opening the box, Ben saw her take out a bunch of face prosthetics and special effects makeup.
"He will never even know it was me. Hell, I could look like his long-dead daddy as I shoot him from a mile away," Emilia taunted with a cocky smirk.
"How about you find out who he works with first and how his death, even if it didn't openly come at your hands, could affect our daily life?"
-----
The day after his run-in with that bald weirdo who placed spy gear into Phil's pocket and his long discussion on how to handle Senator Brayden's threat together with Emilia, Ben arrived at a nice restaurant near the beach. He hadn't really used his bike much the past few months where he had been with Haley or the weeks after their break up and only started again the day before.
He missed the feeling, so despite wearing a nice suit, he drove the motorcycle with a leather jacket on and brought the suit jacket folded in the carry-on box of his bike.
Calmly stuffing the leather jacket into the box as the suit jacket hung over the handlebar, Ben was interrupted by a woman playfully asking, "Do you always bring a pistol to a family dinner?"
Ben turned around and saw the two Hicks siblings walking toward him together. The detective gave JP a familiar nod - they had only just met and obviously knew each other - before looking at his sister and stretching out his hand.
"Hi, Ben Weiss," he introduced himself without answering the question. "But please, call me Ben."
"Molly," the pretty brunette answered with a friendly smile.
"And, uh, for the weapon… I tried going out without it once when I just got back into my original life and immediately had to stop a robbery at a mall without my pistol. I found I have more bad luck when I'm not carrying instead of the opposite being true."
Molly's eyes narrowed in clear interest as she watched Ben don his jacket and hide the leather strap for his concealed carry.
"Fair enough," Molly condeded. "How receptive are you to my father's schemes?"
Ben tilted his head in askance, even looking at JP to learn what his sister meant with that, but the young man dodged his line of sight and instead kept looking at his BMW touring bike.
"You'd have to rephrase that question, sorry," Ben requested.
"You seem like a nice boy. I know he knows you're my type and I know he wants me back in LA," Molly explained, a hand on her waist, her face almost pouting like Anna's when Emilia brought the wrong sliced fruit for breakfast. "Are you aware that my father is trying to set us up?"
"Nice… boy?" Ben asked, confused.
Hicks' daughter huffed and turned to her brother, seemingly asking 'can you believe him' with her eyes.
But JP remained withdrawn, even with his sister's prompting.
Molly lost the playful tinkle in her eyes and put a hand on her brother's head in worry.
"Just don't get your hopes up. I'm saying I've seen through it and while I love him dearly, I don't have the kind of relationship with dad where I'm dating guys he lines up for me," Molly eventually said with a sigh.
Just then, the commander arrived in his own car and all three younger adults watched him walk over.
He gave his daughter a kiss on the cheek, nudged JP who endured his father's touch, and patted Ben's arm before dragging him inside and motioning for his children to follow along.
Hicks wasn't exactly living the high life, but he was still the commander of Metro SWAT, so the man had made a few connections. The group was immediately seated and catered to in the rather expensive restaurant. The head chef himself came out to take their order. It seemed Hicks had helped save the man's brother a few years back.
Done ordering, Hicks had already begun singing Ben's praises while they waited for drinks - he wasn't very subtle - and to all but him, it was obvious the resentment in JP's eyes continued to grow. But nobody at the table could have guessed that he didn't resent Ben or his father's relationship with the detective.
It was more personal, something JP loathed about himself, not his father. Not anymore.
"Hey JP, we didn't get a chance to talk at the get-together at my house," Ben picked up the conversation after they remained quiet while two waitresses placed their drinks down with a flourish. "I was wondering, how did you meet Frida?"
JP perked up with confusion in his eyes.
"How do you know Frida?" He asked in return.
Commander Hicks frowned when he heard his son answer a question with a question but immediately lost the frown when he saw the death glare his daughter gave him.
"She's a Crenshaw native," Ben explained. "I arranged for her to get access to a safe, hot shower and a permanent parking spot for her car behind 3C. She got a bank account now, a temporary registered address for mail at the She sometimes helps cook for the children when she's around during dinner time."
"She lives in that car," JP mumbled under his breath distractedly.
Ben nodded, "She still does, sadly. But she got a job with one of the center's donors that isn't too far away. It's just a warehouse thing where she does inventory and signs for deliveries, but it's honest work. She can even do her laundry there. And I heard she's begun saving up the money for a down-payment."
"What's 3C?" Molly asked in a quiet voice as she turned to her father.
"The center where Ben does all his voluntary community service. Crenshaw Community Center," Hicks proudly explained. The approving look for his detective didn't escape Molly's eyes. How could it?
"Frida is good people," JP said in a small voice. "She let me sleep in her car one night when it rained."
Hicks' eyes constricted, but a firm hand from Molly stopped him from asking anything more, pressing for answers and pushing his son away more as the reformed addict turned defensive.
"Yeah, Frida is good people," Ben agreed with a gentle smile. "She had many nice things to say about you. No worries, she clamped up the minute she figured out I might know you and she didn't say anything embarrassing."
"What did she say?" JP asked, his tone a little hopeful, but still very vulnerable.
Molly was starting to wonder. JP never opened up, not even to her, especially not in front of her father. She had no idea how Ben did it. Her brother should have been thoroughly incensed over the fact that their father was falling over backwards to heave more and more praise on Ben. Something Bob Hicks rarely, if maybe never did for his own son.
"Well, when you woke up, you scraped up the last of your money and bought breakfast for the two of you, right? She liked your kind heart," Ben retold and saw JP's eyes mist over.
His interaction with Frida was a big part of what drove JP back into sobriety after the loss of his mother. He had been a drifting addict before, even going as low as stealing from his parents' home to pay for his next fix.
Frida had shown him true human kindness and somehow, maybe because she did it despite what she was living through, the nearly homeless woman sleeping in her old rundown car anchored herself as something larger than life in his mind.
Just before the food arrived, Ben excused himself to go to the restroom.
"Why are you even talking to him?" Molly whispered as she decided to ignore their father who suddenly found his phone very interesting the moment Ben left.
"Ben is different," JP answered and left it at that.
He knew best how much more Bob Hicks liked Ben over him. When he learned that originally, JP was very angry. But after something their father had said, JP decided to really listen first, instead of just blowing his top and shutting down.
The strict, emotionally unavailable police officer who never really acted like a father admitted to his son that he wasn't perfect. That he was just human, and struggled too.
JP had never gotten that impression before. His father had never found those words. And since the father as he knew him didn't think like that, the recovering addict began to read between the lines. He saw that someone had helped Robert Hicks to open up to him. Quietly, JP began to observe what changed from a distance. A singular visit to his father's place of work to get him to help a friend in need had revealed the answer.
The new detective at Metro SWAT.
He might have left early without talking to anyone. He might have given his father the impression that he only came to be able to say that he put in effort, too.
But when JP met Ben for the first time, he knew just how genuine the detective's care for his fellow humans was. Ben had succeeded where even their mother had failed. Ben had made his father open up… and he didn't do it with an angle. He didn't do it to fish for a promotion or to manipulate his boss.
Yet at the same time, JP had trouble letting anyone in, just like his father. Ben knowing about Frida was like a life-line to help him out of his drowning misery. Finally something that he could talk about.
And Molly? Her shock only grew. She had no idea what was going on inside her brother's head.
A weirdly comfortable silence hung over the table without Ben leading the conversation or Molly talking about something superficial to keep the conversation alive. Since their mother's death, Molly hadn't experience a dinner like this where her father wasn't being bullheaded or her brother wanted to confront, deflect, and withdraw.
Hicks eventually looked up from his phone.
"Tell me about Frida. I know Ben just said he already helped… but is there something I can do?"
JP looked at his father for the first time since they entered the restaurant. His eyes were searching his father's face for a short moment before he softly shook his head in denial.
Hicks frowned for a short second but instead of a cutting remark, he managed to ask, "Anybody in a similar position that needs help?"
JP looked at the glass in his hands.
"There's thousands of people in a similar position, dad," JP mumbled.
Hicks was stunned. It was the first time his son had called him 'dad' since his wife's bitter diagnosis.
The commander leaned back in his chair with a lost expression.
"Ben made Sterling Bosch donate a chunk of money to tackle the homeless problem in LA," Hicks commented in a small voice.
Molly snorted a short laugh and whispered, "Of course he did."
"I help by handing out food and fresh clothes, you know," JP revealed. "Twice a week. It's something my self-help group does."
"How about I join you some time?" Hicks asked his son, surprising even himself.
JP perked up immediately and nodded in acceptance before his father could change his mind.
There was a lot of built up resentment within him, but JP genuinely wanted to have a better relationship with his father. Molly and his father were the last connection the son had to his mother… and he reckoned a genuine parental figure in his life could be a decent anchor before he slips back into bad habits.
With Ben in the picture, JP had hope that things had changed for the better. That his father wouldn't disappoint him with some perceived slight.
As the dinner wound down, Ben left a great impression on all the three Hicks family members - but the commander's plan of leaving his daughter alone with his detective fell through. Hicks wanted to take his son to look at where their help was needed most and leave his daughter in Ben's hand.
But Molly shut him down and decided to tag along. At that point Hicks had already argued that Ben should use that time to relax - inviting him along then would have been weird.
Just as the young Medal of Valor Gold Star recipient walked through the door of his home, his phone rang.
"*Ben, I know you're technically sidelined, but I was wondering if you want to come to the station tomorrow? Remember Jessica Russo? The FBI hostage rescue specialist? She's gone private and doing me a favor doing a lecture tomorrow. Seeing as you went through such a situation only this week, I thought you might want to pick up how to do better next time or share some experiences,*" Grey said through the phone after he picked up.
His TO had talked about the woman a bunch of times, but Ben had thankfully only met her once. Back then, he hadn't had anything meaningful to contribute, he was doing perimeter control by keeping the public away from the active hostage situation in a park.
The suspects had eventually been apprehended on the complete opposite side of that park, Ben had only ever seen their mugshots.
"Sure thing," Ben agreed immediately. His only other plan tomorrow had been sulking while staring at his phone, waiting for Sara to call back.
Anna and Emilia already had a mother-daughter thing planned, and Zofia would sit on one of her first exams to get her highschool diploma.
"*8am, don't be late,*" Grey quipped with a happy tone of voice. "*And expect a call from Luna. I think she might finally be ready to really forgive you for that car crash back then.*"
Ben had been invited back a bunch of times on the insistence of Grey before the detective went undercover and dropped off the face of the earth for five years. But for putting her husband in danger so recklessly, Luna had rarely ever even greeted him again when he was at their house.
"I will, thank you, sir," Ben immediately answered, mentally brought back to a simpler time.
"*Not your 'sir' anymore, hotshot,*" Grey laughed and hung up.
Ben smiled and went into the kitchen to get a glass to drink. From there, he went into his study and began to covertly investigate Senator Brayden's recent moves.
-----
[The Rookie S1E15]
Ben was early the next morning, watched roll call from the outside instead of sitting in, and joined Grey to study Russo's first activity. A bomber with a deadman's switch that the present officers were tasked with talking down.
They all failed, except for his good friend Nolan… but to Ben this scenario left a bad taste in his mouth.
Jeffrey Baptiste had rigged his explosives with a deadman's switch. If Reacher hadn't been there, he might have lost Zofia.
As the lesson for the patrolmen of Mid-Wilshire was winding down, Russo pointed at Ben in the far back for one last lesson.
"Sadly, a lot of these situations are erratic. Yes, basic human instincts and behavior can be observed in almost all cases, but sometimes we simply don't know what the suspect is going through. As such, take everything I've taught you today with a grain of salt. Take Detective Weiss' heroic actions, for example," Russo said and several heads in the room turned back to Ben.
"Risking your own life can never be the answer. Your highest priority must always be to save yourself first and then help others. That is basic human behavior. Your self-preservation is your highest priority, and only if you answer that call will your actions be rational," Russo continued, giving Ben a deep look. "And yet, Detective Weiss' actions were not wrong. Without his help, we don't know how many of the hostages could have died or if the suspects could have gotten away. Those three hostages he freed first and the woman he carried through a dark subway tunnel would certainly say that Ben was their savior. And he survived to live to tell the tale."
Russo waited until the scattered applause died down.
"And I would still never ever recommend doing the hostage exchange again. On paper, even with Detective Weiss' insights according to the report, that they wouldn't shoot him since they needed him alive, that they didn't want to risk a state-wide manhunt after the premeditated murder of a police officer… risking your own life is always a bad choice. Again, I applaud him for his courage and it worked out in the end. But that's what I mean when I say take what I say with a grain of salt."
And with that, the lesson was over and Ben and Jessica Russo were led to Grey's Watch Commander Office as the officers were starting to get ready for a day out in the streets.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult you or anything," Russo said with a genuinely embarrassed smile, patting Ben's arm in reassurance.
"I didn't take it as an insult," Ben easily waved away. "I know how stupid it was, don't worry. My bosses can't stop chewing me out."
"They should," Jessica immediately cut in with a tinkling laugh. "Honestly, I don't know how you could ever do that. To walk into a situation where you are at the mercy of several criminals with automatic weapons without a way out, you either have to be a superhero or deeply broken."
Ben just wryly smiled and scratched the back of his head. He already had an inkling that it was the second option. And the department agreed. He would immediately start going to Doctor Wendy Hughes, the on-call psychologist at SWAT once he was back.
They already had a long call the day after.
"He's obviously a hero, he was trained by one," Grey joked to get Ben out of the awkwardness of the situation.
The three exchanged a few more pleasantries and Ben was about to excuse himself to drive home and maybe try to call Sara again - but then Sergeant Grey got a call.
The moment he hung up, Grey immediately grabbed his radio with a solemn expression.
"Control, please be advised. A prison transfer going from LA County Superior Criminal Court back to Lancaster, California State Prison crashed. Mobilize all nearby units to find the crash site and assist. Best estimate is somewhere near Cherry Canyon Park. They would have taken off-roads away from Glendale Freeway. I'll contact the Department of Corrections for the exact route on the way," Grey instructed and got himself ready. Pointing at Ben, he ordered, "You come with me, I don't care that you're on leave. We might need you."
"Okay," Ben immediately agreed and walked ahead after catching the keys thrown by his former TO.