[It's hard to believe. It is, of course it is, but it was also hard to believe Five was back, standing there looking just as thirteen as he ever did, but speaking like he'd lived lifetimes in the interim.
Maybe it's partly Five's return. Maybe it's more the fact that, for one moment, older-Ben's voice sounded so small, so much like he did every time he came back exhausted from an Academy mission, and Vanya had been there, peeking through the railing of the staircase. Trying to get a glimpse of what she may have missed. An injury, her fears would worry. Other parts of her were less kind, even as she saw how exhausted Ben always was.
His voice cracks, and he looks so unlike his statue, a cold likeness only Reginald could have imagined. Ben was so much more than that statue.
Vanya's bow drops to the ground.]
I don't understand.
[She can feel tears starting to well up in her eyes. If he'd caught her before everything started to fall apart, maybe she'd be able to hold it together. But not now, not off her medication, not after remembering those awful things, not after learning she was not so ordinary, not after experiencing firsthand just how scary it can be to have power.]
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Maybe it's partly Five's return. Maybe it's more the fact that, for one moment, older-Ben's voice sounded so small, so much like he did every time he came back exhausted from an Academy mission, and Vanya had been there, peeking through the railing of the staircase. Trying to get a glimpse of what she may have missed. An injury, her fears would worry. Other parts of her were less kind, even as she saw how exhausted Ben always was.
His voice cracks, and he looks so unlike his statue, a cold likeness only Reginald could have imagined. Ben was so much more than that statue.
Vanya's bow drops to the ground.]
I don't understand.
[She can feel tears starting to well up in her eyes. If he'd caught her before everything started to fall apart, maybe she'd be able to hold it together. But not now, not off her medication, not after remembering those awful things, not after learning she was not so ordinary, not after experiencing firsthand just how scary it can be to have power.]
You're alive... right?