[Somewhere beneath the notes of her violin, Vanya hears a whisper. Her name, in an unfamiliar voice. Something about the cadence stirs a feeling in her, a dread in her gut. She opens her eyes and sees someone, a stranger. Something about the shape of his face, though, is all too familiar. Like deja vu, or a patchwork person created by her brain to populate a dream.
But she’s awake. And she has no way to explain this feeling, though she tries.]
...Hi. Were you, uh, in my orchestra... before?
[He certainly isn’t now. It seems like the most likely explanation, but something tells her she’s wrong, something insistent, like a fearful child tugging at her shirt.
A desperate child.
She feels like maybe that’s what she looks like right now.]
[ Ben sucks in a shaky little gasp when Vanya turns around. Her eyes are dark, full of polite confusion. It is just her. Just Vanya, his sister, who he had never thought he would get to chance to speak to again.
Ever since he had shown up here, alive, and gotten the chance to talk to Diego, Ben has been wondering what he would say to the others, if they arrived. Wishing they would, selfishly, so that he could reunite with them, even though it would trapping them in this place. Now that Vanya is here, though, all of it flies out of his head. He just stares at her, arms hanging at his sides. He wants to hug her, but he can't seem to move. ]
It's me.
[ It shouldn't hurt, that she doesn't recognize him. He knows he doesn't look like he did when he died, and why would she think some random living grown-up stranger was her long-dead brother? But logically understanding the reasons doesn't erase the stab of sadness, between his ribs. Ben's face is quietly devastated. His voice cracks as he adds: ]
It's Ben.
[ Now is probably the time when he ought to be making things easier for her by explaining, laying out what had happened, even if he doesn't understand how or why. But instead he just looks at her. His sister, who he had missed so much. Who had taken some of the worst things that happened to him and packaged them up in words and sold them to anyone who would buy. Who had never actually been the person he thought she was - normal, protected, untainted by powers, free from harsh responsibility. Who had all along had so much more in common with him than he realized. ]
[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.]
[ It still feels so strange after all those years as a ghost, to have a heart that can race. Ben's is beating quickly in his chest, with some mix of joy and fear and love and disbelief and relief and grief over all the years lost He takes a few small steps closer, crouching down to pick up her fallen bow. Demonstrating for her that he is solid and real.
Offering it out to her, he says, in a voice almost as shocked and small as hers: ]
I don't understand, either. I've been dead so long. Then I showed up here, and I was just- alive. Somehow.
[ Ben had been worried, at first, that it would only be temporary. And since then, he has learned that in some ways the worry was justified. In the red shifts, there are brief glimpses of other worlds, of people. They don't always stick around. He doesn't think Vanya is about to vanish any second, but there's a small chance of it. He isn't going to throw away this opportunity. ]
Vanya, I'm so sorry I wasn't there all those years. I'm so sorry I didn't help you. You needed someone to help you and- and I'm sorry I wasn't a better brother to you.
[ He'd spent so much time when he was a ghost coming up with lists of things he would tell his siblings if only he could speak to them for thirty seconds, for a minute, for ten. The words come out staccato and full of feeling, with the weight of something left unsaid a long time. Even before he'd found out she had powers, Ben had long since realized that he failed to see Vanya's pain through his own. She might not be like Klaus, and his particularly colorful strain of self-destructiveness, but Ben had read her book. He understands, now, what their home had been, through her eyes. ]
[He knows he's been dead. And it's weird, to know that ghosts do exist, that your own brother is proof of that, but Vanya has certainly never gotten an in-depth explanation out of Klaus. She may have asked, once or twice, long ago, but Klaus would either distract with a joke or not be in the mood (or not, in later years, in the right frame of mind at all).
But most of the time... she had just thought that Ben was gone and that was that. She'd struggled to try to think of him in some kind of afterlife, maybe a place that meant he could be happy and safe, and then just settled into the idea of never knowing. Like Five. But with an image of what a gruesome death would look like. With more finality.
Vanya's fingers reach out and brush against the bow, but impulsively, she goes further and grasps Ben's hand over it. Warm, human flesh.]
Don't— Don't apologize.
[She knows she's a hypocrite to say so, but.]
There wasn't anything you could do.
[Seven all-powerful children, all immediately powerless when met with their father's iron scowl.]
[ When Vanya tells him, essentially, that it wasn't his fault, Ben gives a tight little shake of his head, solemn-faced. Rejecting her refusal to blame him, the way he thinks he deserves. Ben had always been like this - unwilling to forgive himself for even minor mistakes that his other siblings forgot about or didn't notice in the first place, quick to beat himself up for any slip. It had gotten into his head so long ago that he doesn't even question it, that other people were allowed to make (some) errors, but that he couldn't afford to. The consequences of not being in control at all times were too potentially devastating and bloody to grant himself an ounce of leeway. ]
I could've done better.
[ There is a bench not too far away, that Ben spots and nods to. The two of them move to it, sit together. Ben sets the bow down gently and, movements unpracticed and a little awkward, he reaches over to hug her. Physical affection has never been his strong suit, but he does his best. Because there have been so many times over the last decade and a half when he wanted to hug her. So many times in that last week after their dad died, alone.
Which brings up something else he needs to tell her, to make sure they are on the same page. He needs to make sure she understands. So Ben draws back from the hug, hands lacing tightly together in his lap. ]
I was there. Not all the time, but... a lot of the times when you've seen Klaus, since I died, I was still there. The rest of you just- just couldn't see me.
[ He lets that sink in, because he knows it will probably come as a shock. His invisible presence, when they all thought he was gone. Hearing how they talked about him. Seeing how they behaved to one another. Ben had been a part of these scenes of turmoil from the recent past - returning to their childhood home, the argument over what to do about their mom, the attack from Hazel and Cha-Cha, Vanya showing up with Leonard and scolding their siblings for leaving her out. The chamber in the basement. The concert hall. ]
[Settling down on the bench at least gives her a chance to set down the violin itself as well, a little shaky as she tries to be gentle with it. The hug is unexpected, though.
It's unexpected because Ben was definitely not the hugging type, but also because she's still... in shock over the fact that he's even here to begin with. It takes her a second, but she hesitantly places her hands around him, a very stiff return of the hug. Part of her wants to just... melt into him, and stay like that a while. But she's too afraid of pushing too hard. Too afraid of letting herself fall apart.
Too afraid to be that vulnerable again.
And then he pulls away, and Vanya finds she has to wipe at her nose a bit, which is embarrassing, but at least she's not otherwise feeling like she's about to start crying.]
Wait, you...
[At least until he says all that. The whole time, every time Klaus was there, Ben was... watching? Could Klaus see him all along?]
Klaus never said anything. You... If I knew you were...
[If she knew then... what? She doesn't know but she knows she'd like to. She has to cover her mouth, a reflex after being told she'll "catch flies" a few too many times when she was younger, but to know that someone you thought was gone for good was just... present through so much is, well, a lot to parse.
She's not sure if she's mad at Klaus or just trying to think back to whenever he was there in a panic, trying to make sure she didn't say anything she wouldn't want Ben to hear.
But that's pretty much everything she's ever said since he's been gone, probably.]
Did you ask him not to say anything?
[She doesn't want to consider that he just... lied to them for so long, at least not purposefully. And yet, this is just one more way her life never was what she thought it was for so many years.
[ Vanya's reaction is nothing like Diego's had been, and for good reason. She hadn't been there when Klaus had explained that Ben was the one who saved him from the crumbling mansion. And Ben doubts she had been aware of him at all in the concert hall, even as Klaus conjured him in that strange blue light, and he dealt with the gunmen that were after them. She had been lost, then. In some kind of trance.
But even without any of that... Diego would still have had more warning, than Vanya. ]
No, it wasn't like that.
[ Ben's gaze drops, head bowed as he considers his words carefully. ]
The opposite, in fact. You- probably remember how it was, right after I died. Everything was such a mess. And then you two didn't see each other for years. You... missed all the times he tried to tell the others, and- [ A brief pause, as Ben skirts close to a painful memory ] - and... told Dad, which didn't, um, go great. And then the others just didn't believe him. Allison thought it was a mean joke, or like, trying to get attention. Luther was sure he was hallucinating and legit started talking about a psych ward. Diego just got really sad and did that thing he does where he covers it up by yelling and told Klaus to shut the fuck up. We tried but they never listened so by the time he saw you again we had just... stopped.
[ There is something there, in the way Ben says 'we', which gives a hint to how much he and Klaus had been functioning as a unit for some time. He had had Klaus when he had nobody else, and the same was true in reverse. Ben looks up at Vanya once more, his gaze level and unreadable. Very gently, so that it sounds less like an accusation, Ben asks: ]
Would you have really believed him?
[ He knows the reasons for his siblings' disbelief were legitimate. Klaus was a liar, a drug addict; they couldn't trust him. He just wants Vanya to see that this wasn't one more case of her being left out - that none of the rest of them had really known, either. ]
cw: panic attack, also this is extremely Long im Sorry
[Vanya is still sort of trying to make herself breathe properly as Ben explains. It's not as bad as she assumed. She feels guilty, now, for thinking Klaus and Ben had lied to her, for likening them to Leonard or Dad or... anyone else.
If it had been so soon after Ben had died... Klaus had, for a long time towards the end of Vanya staying at the house, been mostly unable to "conjure" any ghosts, not to mention everything else going on with him. He'd gotten even worse after that, she thinks. Even after she left and had no real contact at all with Klaus anymore, she'd sometimes hear second or third-hand, and it always sounded like he was just... continuing the downward spiral.
Her brows knit as Ben recounts how each of them had reacted, further when Ben makes it clear how much of a joint effort it was. "Ben" was a taboo subject for a while. No one knew how to even begin to talk about what had happened. The statue was made so quickly and after the memorial, Vanya never brought it up. Not until the book, really.
Would she have believed him? Vanya was, she's been realizing, a very different person on her meds. She never wanted to think about anything that made her uneasy, so she just... didn't. Or she did, but she didn't let herself react to it.
Ben's right. As usual. Or... used to be usual.]
...Things were a lot different then. I don't know. I can't answer that.
[Not won't. Can't.
Because even if it wasn't some kind of top secret mission thing, Academy's eyes only, even if she's not reading this in her father's journal, this still changes things. It changes everything she built up to cope with missing Ben. It changes how she's supposed to think about her life from now on.
So much is changing, Vanya doesn't think she ever knew a thing about herself. It's overwhelming, how much her thoughts are trying to make these connections, trying to catch herself up on her own memories, trying to figure out who the hell she or any of them are, and it's too much.
She's forgotten to control her breathing. Her lungs remind her, desperate, and she covers her mouth because she's breathing too much now, she can't stop it, can't stop the gasping that makes her tear up, she reaches for her pocket to find it empty, she can't even see what's going on anymore and that just makes her panic more—]
[ Ben knows what Vanya is fumbling for, feeling around her pockets. But it has a new context for him, now. Vanya isn't the only one needing to reframe things retroactively in her mind. He sees her reaching for her medication, an automatic gesture, one he had been used to even when he was alive. She'd been on those pills as far back as he can remember. Only now, he knows what they were, and it makes his stomach turn.
He reaches out for her trembling, restless hands, stilling them between his. It is not a hard grip, but it is a steady one. Ben looks at her, steady, his dark eyes full of quiet hurt. He knows a panic attack when he sees one, but that doesn't make it any easier to watch. ]
You don't have to answer. It's okay. Everything's gonna be okay, Vanya. Just breathe with me, alright, sis? In, then out. I'm here now, and I'm gonna look out for you. You're safe. Whatever happens, we'll face it together. You're not alone anymore, Vanya.
[ He can't know what she's seeing or remembering or thinking or feeling, but he has helped Klaus through enough of these - had a few himself, back when he was still alive - to not be alarmed or caught off guard. Ben keeps rubbing her hands gently between his to ground her, uses touch and the flowing sound of his voice (and sound is important, right? Klaus had said her powers had to do with sounds...), his steady breathing, and he doesn't look away. Ben is nothing if not patient, and he will wait as long as she needs, a steady and undemanding presence. ]
[At first, Vanya tries to pull her hands away. She's too lost in herself, too terrified and desperate, to understand that he's steadying her. He's giving her a sense to focus on. He's grounding her.
As he starts to talk, though, she hears his voice over the distress that overtook her like a ringing siren. Of course she hears his voice. It's a relief, though it's changed; it's deeper, it's calmer, it's more assured. But it's so fully him, and though she didn't have the same hope to cling to for his return the way she did with Five, she just wants to hear him speak.
It is all she hears. Vanya remembers her therapist, the way she'd talked about grounding. She remembers Leonard teaching her how to focus to control herself. As he talks, as she takes in the sound of his voice, the wind picks up quickly around them again. Without the focus, she could explode like that night in the parking lot. But now, though the wind grows stronger and stronger, and the leaves of the trees and the tall grass are crashing like waves, the power doesn't overload. It drains first.
She breathes at his instruction. Each time she takes a breath in, the wind gusts to the west. She takes a breath out, and the wind veers and lashes toward the east.
But Ben stays, and he speaks. He holds her hands, tracing his fingers against them to keep her here. To keep Vanya present. Focus. Focus, Number Seven. She's here, she's here in this park, the grass wilder and more natural than their perfectly manicured courtyard, and Ben is alive, and he cares about her.
And the wind starts to howl distantly, as it slowly wanes. Her breaths are longer and deeper. She can't see through her tears, so she keeps her eyes shut. Her hands fall still, remaining stiff, but they don't shake violently.
The wind reaches its coda and sighs, thinning to nothing. Vanya keeps herself as still as possible.]
I love you.
[It's hoarse. It sounds inadequate, to finally say it. She'd insisted that she loved her family to Leonard at the end, when he'd tried to point her at them like a cannon.
It's not them she's saying it to, or at least not any of the family she'd assumed would hear when she wanted them to hear it. But it's important Ben knows now. She loves him, and she missed him, and she doesn't want him to disappear again like Five did.]
[ Ben had been afraid for Vanya many times. Their father had threatened, once or twice, that if he didn't perform better in his training, that he would bring Vanya in, make her useful finally as a tool to motivate him to learn better control. And there had been other times. Times she had been too close to a mission, or someone had tried to break into the mansion. Later, too, after he was dead, he worried seeing her so depressed, so small. Klaus and Vanya; of all the siblings, they were the two that Ben had worried might really try to kill themselves someday. Lonely as he was, as a ghost, he didn't want that kind of company.
But then, while he is holding her hands, breathing in an even rhythm for her to match, Ben is terrified of Vanya. The rustle of the leaves is frantic and the branches toss this way and that in the wind - the wind that she is making. And it's all so fresh in his mind. Their home crumbling. The theatre, the way the music had leeched all the color out of her. The moon, cracked in two.
Her eyes are closed, though, and even if they weren't, Ben is good at hiding his fear. He swallows it down and stays where he is, tense and numb-fingered but stubborn. He is not going to abandon Vanya. He is not going to repeat Luther's mistakes and let his fear dictate his actions.
And slowly, slowly, the strange whirlwind surrounding them fades. By the time it has settled completely, Ben is feeling calmer, too, though his heart is racing still. ]
I love you, Vanya.
[ He says it without hesitation, or reserve. They are words he had been wishing he could say to her for many years. The fear he had just felt does nothing to diminish the love, either. She is his sister. That means something, to Ben. Always has. ]
I'm not going anywhere. I promise.
[ For a few moments he sits by her in silence, waiting for the his heartbeat to settle, giving Vanya the time she needs to settle her thoughts and adjust to this new reality: Ben, alive. Ben, here with her, having her back. Then, when he thinks it has been silent just about long enough, he says: ]
What do you think of the new me?
[ He gives a tiny gesture to his face, the one she hadn't recognized. Trying to lighten the mood, ever so slightly. Trying to show her, also, that all this is real, he is really alive, really has a body, really is here. ]
At least I didn't make my comeback looking like a tween the way Five did. I am not gonna miss the acne.
[ So Ben tries, in his gentle way, to coax a little laugh or smile from his sister. It had worked so often with Klaus, when things were bleak. Just try to give him one little thing that could hit his funny bone. Humor could get you through a lot of dark shit. ]
[When he says that he loves her, when Ben says that he loves her and he's not going to leave, she nearly starts sobbing again, but she catches herself with a tiny gasp and shuts her eyes tight. No tears. Don't make him regret it. He wants to stay with her, but she could make him change his mind that at this rate.
Vanya doesn't like that she has to wait those thoughts out now that she doesn't have her meds.
But the wind doesn't start again, and she doesn't... explode or whatever it is she does. Everything is fine. She wipes at her face to try to clean it up a little, because she doesn't want to be a mess the entire time she's reuniting with her dead brother. Eventually, she pulls one foot up to rest on the bench in front of her and leans her head against her knee. The benefits of being tiny.
When Ben talks again, she rolls her head over to the side and looks up at him. And... she can't help it, she laughs.]
God, poor Five. He's gonna start getting sweaty and hairy in front of our eyes.
[She feels bad about it, but that actually does make her laugh some more.]
So do ghosts... age? I mean, how does it all work? —You don't have to answer that. Sorry.
[ It lifts his spirits, no matter how tiny the laugh. It's good to see even a fleeting smile on Vanya's face again. She deserves it.
He remembers what Five had said before they all made their desperate leap to the past. They were going to do it better, this time. They weren't going to let Vanya down the way they had before. Ben knows they're in another dimension and outside of time and goodness knows if anything here matters or what all of it means, but he's going to start trying now. And that means talking to Vanya a little more like how he talks to Klaus, lately. Less wary, less boundaries, less distance.
So when Vanya jokes lightly at their brother's expense, Ben dissolves into giggles, his eyes bright and delighted. He joins in the game, leaning in, voice becoming a conspiratorial whisper: ]
Think about it - none of us got to see him going through puberty before. Could be a reaaallll horrorshow. I mean can you imagine his voice cracking while he talked? I bet he would flip a table, or like, jump out of the room immediately!
[ Five had always been proud, their whole lives. That wasn't something that the apocalypse had changed about him. And it feels good, to joke about it like this. It reminds Ben, for just an instant, of how the three of them had been before Five vanished. Not friends, exactly, but... closer. Closer to each other than any of them they were with Luther or Allison or Diego, and Klaus was just... an unpredictable outlier.
Her question about aging isn't unexpected, but all Ben can do is answer with a shrug. ]
I... don't think most of them do, but I did. I don't know why. Or how I'm alive now. I can... tell you what it was like, being a ghost, if you want, but I don't know any of the hows, or the whys.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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But she’s awake. And she has no way to explain this feeling, though she tries.]
...Hi. Were you, uh, in my orchestra... before?
[He certainly isn’t now. It seems like the most likely explanation, but something tells her she’s wrong, something insistent, like a fearful child tugging at her shirt.
A desperate child.
She feels like maybe that’s what she looks like right now.]
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Ever since he had shown up here, alive, and gotten the chance to talk to Diego, Ben has been wondering what he would say to the others, if they arrived. Wishing they would, selfishly, so that he could reunite with them, even though it would trapping them in this place. Now that Vanya is here, though, all of it flies out of his head. He just stares at her, arms hanging at his sides. He wants to hug her, but he can't seem to move. ]
It's me.
[ It shouldn't hurt, that she doesn't recognize him. He knows he doesn't look like he did when he died, and why would she think some random living grown-up stranger was her long-dead brother? But logically understanding the reasons doesn't erase the stab of sadness, between his ribs. Ben's face is quietly devastated. His voice cracks as he adds: ]
It's Ben.
[ Now is probably the time when he ought to be making things easier for her by explaining, laying out what had happened, even if he doesn't understand how or why. But instead he just looks at her. His sister, who he had missed so much. Who had taken some of the worst things that happened to him and packaged them up in words and sold them to anyone who would buy. Who had never actually been the person he thought she was - normal, protected, untainted by powers, free from harsh responsibility. Who had all along had so much more in common with him than he realized. ]
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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?
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Offering it out to her, he says, in a voice almost as shocked and small as hers: ]
I don't understand, either. I've been dead so long. Then I showed up here, and I was just- alive. Somehow.
[ Ben had been worried, at first, that it would only be temporary. And since then, he has learned that in some ways the worry was justified. In the red shifts, there are brief glimpses of other worlds, of people. They don't always stick around. He doesn't think Vanya is about to vanish any second, but there's a small chance of it. He isn't going to throw away this opportunity. ]
Vanya, I'm so sorry I wasn't there all those years. I'm so sorry I didn't help you. You needed someone to help you and- and I'm sorry I wasn't a better brother to you.
[ He'd spent so much time when he was a ghost coming up with lists of things he would tell his siblings if only he could speak to them for thirty seconds, for a minute, for ten. The words come out staccato and full of feeling, with the weight of something left unsaid a long time. Even before he'd found out she had powers, Ben had long since realized that he failed to see Vanya's pain through his own. She might not be like Klaus, and his particularly colorful strain of self-destructiveness, but Ben had read her book. He understands, now, what their home had been, through her eyes. ]
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But most of the time... she had just thought that Ben was gone and that was that. She'd struggled to try to think of him in some kind of afterlife, maybe a place that meant he could be happy and safe, and then just settled into the idea of never knowing. Like Five. But with an image of what a gruesome death would look like. With more finality.
Vanya's fingers reach out and brush against the bow, but impulsively, she goes further and grasps Ben's hand over it. Warm, human flesh.]
Don't— Don't apologize.
[She knows she's a hypocrite to say so, but.]
There wasn't anything you could do.
[Seven all-powerful children, all immediately powerless when met with their father's iron scowl.]
Do you want... Is there a place to, um... sit?
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I could've done better.
[ There is a bench not too far away, that Ben spots and nods to. The two of them move to it, sit together. Ben sets the bow down gently and, movements unpracticed and a little awkward, he reaches over to hug her. Physical affection has never been his strong suit, but he does his best. Because there have been so many times over the last decade and a half when he wanted to hug her. So many times in that last week after their dad died, alone.
Which brings up something else he needs to tell her, to make sure they are on the same page. He needs to make sure she understands. So Ben draws back from the hug, hands lacing tightly together in his lap. ]
I was there. Not all the time, but... a lot of the times when you've seen Klaus, since I died, I was still there. The rest of you just- just couldn't see me.
[ He lets that sink in, because he knows it will probably come as a shock. His invisible presence, when they all thought he was gone. Hearing how they talked about him. Seeing how they behaved to one another. Ben had been a part of these scenes of turmoil from the recent past - returning to their childhood home, the argument over what to do about their mom, the attack from Hazel and Cha-Cha, Vanya showing up with Leonard and scolding their siblings for leaving her out. The chamber in the basement. The concert hall. ]
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It's unexpected because Ben was definitely not the hugging type, but also because she's still... in shock over the fact that he's even here to begin with. It takes her a second, but she hesitantly places her hands around him, a very stiff return of the hug. Part of her wants to just... melt into him, and stay like that a while. But she's too afraid of pushing too hard. Too afraid of letting herself fall apart.
Too afraid to be that vulnerable again.
And then he pulls away, and Vanya finds she has to wipe at her nose a bit, which is embarrassing, but at least she's not otherwise feeling like she's about to start crying.]
Wait, you...
[At least until he says all that. The whole time, every time Klaus was there, Ben was... watching? Could Klaus see him all along?]
Klaus never said anything. You... If I knew you were...
[If she knew then... what? She doesn't know but she knows she'd like to. She has to cover her mouth, a reflex after being told she'll "catch flies" a few too many times when she was younger, but to know that someone you thought was gone for good was just... present through so much is, well, a lot to parse.
She's not sure if she's mad at Klaus or just trying to think back to whenever he was there in a panic, trying to make sure she didn't say anything she wouldn't want Ben to hear.
But that's pretty much everything she's ever said since he's been gone, probably.]
Did you ask him not to say anything?
[She doesn't want to consider that he just... lied to them for so long, at least not purposefully. And yet, this is just one more way her life never was what she thought it was for so many years.
She has to take a minute to remember to breathe.]
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But even without any of that... Diego would still have had more warning, than Vanya. ]
No, it wasn't like that.
[ Ben's gaze drops, head bowed as he considers his words carefully. ]
The opposite, in fact. You- probably remember how it was, right after I died. Everything was such a mess. And then you two didn't see each other for years. You... missed all the times he tried to tell the others, and- [ A brief pause, as Ben skirts close to a painful memory ] - and... told Dad, which didn't, um, go great. And then the others just didn't believe him. Allison thought it was a mean joke, or like, trying to get attention. Luther was sure he was hallucinating and legit started talking about a psych ward. Diego just got really sad and did that thing he does where he covers it up by yelling and told Klaus to shut the fuck up. We tried but they never listened so by the time he saw you again we had just... stopped.
[ There is something there, in the way Ben says 'we', which gives a hint to how much he and Klaus had been functioning as a unit for some time. He had had Klaus when he had nobody else, and the same was true in reverse. Ben looks up at Vanya once more, his gaze level and unreadable. Very gently, so that it sounds less like an accusation, Ben asks: ]
Would you have really believed him?
[ He knows the reasons for his siblings' disbelief were legitimate. Klaus was a liar, a drug addict; they couldn't trust him. He just wants Vanya to see that this wasn't one more case of her being left out - that none of the rest of them had really known, either. ]
cw: panic attack, also this is extremely Long im Sorry
If it had been so soon after Ben had died... Klaus had, for a long time towards the end of Vanya staying at the house, been mostly unable to "conjure" any ghosts, not to mention everything else going on with him. He'd gotten even worse after that, she thinks. Even after she left and had no real contact at all with Klaus anymore, she'd sometimes hear second or third-hand, and it always sounded like he was just... continuing the downward spiral.
Her brows knit as Ben recounts how each of them had reacted, further when Ben makes it clear how much of a joint effort it was. "Ben" was a taboo subject for a while. No one knew how to even begin to talk about what had happened. The statue was made so quickly and after the memorial, Vanya never brought it up. Not until the book, really.
Would she have believed him? Vanya was, she's been realizing, a very different person on her meds. She never wanted to think about anything that made her uneasy, so she just... didn't. Or she did, but she didn't let herself react to it.
Ben's right. As usual. Or... used to be usual.]
...Things were a lot different then. I don't know. I can't answer that.
[Not won't. Can't.
Because even if it wasn't some kind of top secret mission thing, Academy's eyes only, even if she's not reading this in her father's journal, this still changes things. It changes everything she built up to cope with missing Ben. It changes how she's supposed to think about her life from now on.
So much is changing, Vanya doesn't think she ever knew a thing about herself. It's overwhelming, how much her thoughts are trying to make these connections, trying to catch herself up on her own memories, trying to figure out who the hell she or any of them are, and it's too much.
She's forgotten to control her breathing. Her lungs remind her, desperate, and she covers her mouth because she's breathing too much now, she can't stop it, can't stop the gasping that makes her tear up, she reaches for her pocket to find it empty, she can't even see what's going on anymore and that just makes her panic more—]
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He reaches out for her trembling, restless hands, stilling them between his. It is not a hard grip, but it is a steady one. Ben looks at her, steady, his dark eyes full of quiet hurt. He knows a panic attack when he sees one, but that doesn't make it any easier to watch. ]
You don't have to answer. It's okay. Everything's gonna be okay, Vanya. Just breathe with me, alright, sis? In, then out. I'm here now, and I'm gonna look out for you. You're safe. Whatever happens, we'll face it together. You're not alone anymore, Vanya.
[ He can't know what she's seeing or remembering or thinking or feeling, but he has helped Klaus through enough of these - had a few himself, back when he was still alive - to not be alarmed or caught off guard. Ben keeps rubbing her hands gently between his to ground her, uses touch and the flowing sound of his voice (and sound is important, right? Klaus had said her powers had to do with sounds...), his steady breathing, and he doesn't look away. Ben is nothing if not patient, and he will wait as long as she needs, a steady and undemanding presence. ]
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As he starts to talk, though, she hears his voice over the distress that overtook her like a ringing siren. Of course she hears his voice. It's a relief, though it's changed; it's deeper, it's calmer, it's more assured. But it's so fully him, and though she didn't have the same hope to cling to for his return the way she did with Five, she just wants to hear him speak.
It is all she hears. Vanya remembers her therapist, the way she'd talked about grounding. She remembers Leonard teaching her how to focus to control herself. As he talks, as she takes in the sound of his voice, the wind picks up quickly around them again. Without the focus, she could explode like that night in the parking lot. But now, though the wind grows stronger and stronger, and the leaves of the trees and the tall grass are crashing like waves, the power doesn't overload. It drains first.
She breathes at his instruction. Each time she takes a breath in, the wind gusts to the west. She takes a breath out, and the wind veers and lashes toward the east.
But Ben stays, and he speaks. He holds her hands, tracing his fingers against them to keep her here. To keep Vanya present. Focus. Focus, Number Seven. She's here, she's here in this park, the grass wilder and more natural than their perfectly manicured courtyard, and Ben is alive, and he cares about her.
And the wind starts to howl distantly, as it slowly wanes. Her breaths are longer and deeper. She can't see through her tears, so she keeps her eyes shut. Her hands fall still, remaining stiff, but they don't shake violently.
The wind reaches its coda and sighs, thinning to nothing. Vanya keeps herself as still as possible.]
I love you.
[It's hoarse. It sounds inadequate, to finally say it. She'd insisted that she loved her family to Leonard at the end, when he'd tried to point her at them like a cannon.
It's not them she's saying it to, or at least not any of the family she'd assumed would hear when she wanted them to hear it. But it's important Ben knows now. She loves him, and she missed him, and she doesn't want him to disappear again like Five did.]
Please stay here. For... For now.
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But then, while he is holding her hands, breathing in an even rhythm for her to match, Ben is terrified of Vanya. The rustle of the leaves is frantic and the branches toss this way and that in the wind - the wind that she is making. And it's all so fresh in his mind. Their home crumbling. The theatre, the way the music had leeched all the color out of her. The moon, cracked in two.
Her eyes are closed, though, and even if they weren't, Ben is good at hiding his fear. He swallows it down and stays where he is, tense and numb-fingered but stubborn. He is not going to abandon Vanya. He is not going to repeat Luther's mistakes and let his fear dictate his actions.
And slowly, slowly, the strange whirlwind surrounding them fades. By the time it has settled completely, Ben is feeling calmer, too, though his heart is racing still. ]
I love you, Vanya.
[ He says it without hesitation, or reserve. They are words he had been wishing he could say to her for many years. The fear he had just felt does nothing to diminish the love, either. She is his sister. That means something, to Ben. Always has. ]
I'm not going anywhere. I promise.
[ For a few moments he sits by her in silence, waiting for the his heartbeat to settle, giving Vanya the time she needs to settle her thoughts and adjust to this new reality: Ben, alive. Ben, here with her, having her back. Then, when he thinks it has been silent just about long enough, he says: ]
What do you think of the new me?
[ He gives a tiny gesture to his face, the one she hadn't recognized. Trying to lighten the mood, ever so slightly. Trying to show her, also, that all this is real, he is really alive, really has a body, really is here. ]
At least I didn't make my comeback looking like a tween the way Five did. I am not gonna miss the acne.
[ So Ben tries, in his gentle way, to coax a little laugh or smile from his sister. It had worked so often with Klaus, when things were bleak. Just try to give him one little thing that could hit his funny bone. Humor could get you through a lot of dark shit. ]
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Vanya doesn't like that she has to wait those thoughts out now that she doesn't have her meds.
But the wind doesn't start again, and she doesn't... explode or whatever it is she does. Everything is fine. She wipes at her face to try to clean it up a little, because she doesn't want to be a mess the entire time she's reuniting with her dead brother. Eventually, she pulls one foot up to rest on the bench in front of her and leans her head against her knee. The benefits of being tiny.
When Ben talks again, she rolls her head over to the side and looks up at him. And... she can't help it, she laughs.]
God, poor Five. He's gonna start getting sweaty and hairy in front of our eyes.
[She feels bad about it, but that actually does make her laugh some more.]
So do ghosts... age? I mean, how does it all work? —You don't have to answer that. Sorry.
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He remembers what Five had said before they all made their desperate leap to the past. They were going to do it better, this time. They weren't going to let Vanya down the way they had before. Ben knows they're in another dimension and outside of time and goodness knows if anything here matters or what all of it means, but he's going to start trying now. And that means talking to Vanya a little more like how he talks to Klaus, lately. Less wary, less boundaries, less distance.
So when Vanya jokes lightly at their brother's expense, Ben dissolves into giggles, his eyes bright and delighted. He joins in the game, leaning in, voice becoming a conspiratorial whisper: ]
Think about it - none of us got to see him going through puberty before. Could be a reaaallll horrorshow. I mean can you imagine his voice cracking while he talked? I bet he would flip a table, or like, jump out of the room immediately!
[ Five had always been proud, their whole lives. That wasn't something that the apocalypse had changed about him. And it feels good, to joke about it like this. It reminds Ben, for just an instant, of how the three of them had been before Five vanished. Not friends, exactly, but... closer. Closer to each other than any of them they were with Luther or Allison or Diego, and Klaus was just... an unpredictable outlier.
Her question about aging isn't unexpected, but all Ben can do is answer with a shrug. ]
I... don't think most of them do, but I did. I don't know why. Or how I'm alive now. I can... tell you what it was like, being a ghost, if you want, but I don't know any of the hows, or the whys.