Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ben has a heartbeat.

When you’ve been dead for fourteen (fifteen?) years, a heartbeat is a very odd thing to have. But suddenly there is blood racing through his veins and his knees hurt where he is kneeling on the floor. Klaus’s shoulder is warm and real beneath his fingers, which are also warm and real.

And holy fuck, something is different.

When the world stops feeling like it’s trying to vomit him out of it, he looks up. It’s like looking through an old picture book. They’re thirteen again. Thirteen and sitting in the hall of the academy, which has not collapsed around them, and will not for another seventeen years.

“Oh god,” Klaus says, breaking the stunned silence. “Oh fucking hell. Fuck no.” It’s very bizarre to hear such profanity come from a small boy whose voice hasn’t even broken yet.

“Dude,” Ben says. “Language!”

Klaus gives him a crooked grin, but he’s the only one.

For the first time in a very very long time, everyone is looking at him. Or, everyone conscious. Vanya is still lying across Luther’s lap, her hair masking most of her face. He’s glad she’s asleep for this bit.

Five people are looking straight at him, and his heart is beating in his chest, and he can feel the floor and the air and Diego’s bony knee against his side, and it is all far too much.

“Ben?” Luther asks, sounding hesitant. “It’s really you?”

He can’t get the words out. Of course it’s him. There are a thousand responses in his brain. He could be snarky and point out that Luther should really recognise his face, or he could be sweet and act glad to see him. Then there’s a whole damn spectrum in between, and hundreds of other emotions. He doesn’t know how to use any of them anymore. He only talks to Klaus.

“Look at you,” Allison says, smiling. Another person to reply to and pay attention to. “Exactly as I remember you.” Her face darkens a little as she presumably remembers the last time she saw him (a gory experience and one he is profoundly sorry for) and he tries to remember how to talk to her.

It’s when Diego yanks him into a slightly too rough hug and he feels actual, real pain in his back as he squeezes that he realises this is going to be a problem. He does his best to hug Diego back, knowing that he’s probably not speaking because he’s worrying about his stutter. His brother pats his back and it’s another sensation that’s feeling a little overwhelming.

He wiggles his way out and smiles at all of them. He was never too touchy as a kid, so he hopes they will write it off as his old awkward behaviour.

Besides, there are far more important things to worry about.

“Is she still okay?” Allison asks, shuffling over to examine Vanya again. Her voice is back, and he can hear the relief every time she speaks. “Travelling unconscious didn’t hurt her?”

“She’s alright,” Luther murmurs, lowering her onto the ground. “We need to figure out what to do from here.”

“Jesus, Luther, can’t we take a ten minute break without you up our asses?” Five speaks for the first time since they’ve arrived here. It’s been so long since his regular presence that Ben had temporarily forgotten he was here. “I feel like I just died. No offence, Ben.”

Being treated normally by someone is a relief, and Five isn’t looking at him because his eyes are closed, so Ben can muster up enough energy to laugh at that. Five’s unchanged appearance is a reassuring constant.

“You okay, Five?” Luther asks.

“I feel like my head’s been kicked in, but other than that? I’m superb.” He puts an arm over his face, but his mouth is still visible and Ben sees it crook into a lazy smirk. “No longer the only thirteen year old around. Welcome to hell. I must show you around.”

“I’ve lost all my tattoos,” Klaus says mournfully.

“Yeah well, if we’d stayed there, you’d be a pile of ashes on the ground and you wouldn’t have tattoos either.” Five points out. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Thank you, Five,” Ben says, which seems a good place to start rebuilding his relationships.

“I always knew Ben was my favourite brother,” Five smiles serenely. “Such a nice young man.”

Diego is absolutely about to say something cocky when their father storms through the door into their hallway.

“What in the hell are you doing out here?” His voice makes Ben go cold, nearly as cold as he’s spent the last fourteen years. “Why is Number Seven unconscious?”

Luther scrambles into a straighter sitting position, adjusting Vanya a little as he does. “She, uh, hit her head. I was going to take her upstairs and-”

“How did she hit her head?” He speaks more sharply than Ben remembers. No wonder they’re all fucked up. “I leave you alone for half an hour…”

“I hi-hit her with a book,” Diego says. “I was practicing- I was practicing my aim.”

Their father gives him a once over. “I thought you’d got over that little impediment.”

Diego presses his lips together and stares back.

He looks at them for a moment longer, and Ben searches for some little flicker of love or fondness in his eyes, some evidence that it wasn’t all a fucked up lie. There is absolutely nothing there but disdain.

“Take her to her room,” he says eventually. “And for god’s sake Number Two, be more careful.”

Diego nods, and Luther picks Vanya up like a rag doll and carries her upstairs.

As they follow him up the winding staircase, Five takes hold of Ben’s sleeve and gently pulls him back. There’s a moment of panic at the feeling of someone else having control over his movement, but he quickly overcomes it to give him a questioning smile.

Five looks a little concerned as the two of them linger in the hallway once everyone else has filed into Vanya’s bedroom.

“I...wasn’t there. When you died.” Five tells him, like this is the buildup to something bigger. “And I’m sorry about that.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Ben says quietly. “And I don’t think you’d have wanted to see that.”

“Vanya said it was bad,” he murmurs. “But I did wonder.”

“Don’t,” Ben says. “That doesn’t help anyone.”

Five chews on his lip. “I think I’m going to be blunt about this,” he muses. “I’m not sure we can save you.”

Quite honestly, the thought of being saved hadn’t even occurred to Ben yet. With the weight of the apocalypse on their pre-pubescent shoulders, his state of being was really the last thing on his mind.

“Oh,” he says eventually. “Okay.”

“Hopefully we can get out of here before then,” Five continues. “So you won’t have to go through it again. Though I did live in that post-apocalyptic hellscape for a damn long time, so maybe it would just make us even.”

“I’m sorry you went through that,” Ben tells him honestly, because he’s not sure if anyone else has bothered.

Five looks a little surprised. “It’s done now,” he says. “And it’s not like your...existence has been a cakewalk either.”

Ben shrugs and leans against a doorframe. Allison’s old door, a distant part of his brain tells him. He likes being able to feel it against his shoulder. A little reminder that for now, he is here and he is real.

“So, why can’t we save me?”

“It’s fixed in the timeline,” Five says, looking at his nails. “It’s like...other events I can push against, and they’ll slide around a bit. In my mind, I mean. You never budge. You always die...in the way that you do.”

“Shit,” he says, very simply, with no particular emotions attached. He expects those will catch up with him later. Right now, the idea of going back to how he was doesn’t seem so bad. Being alive is an awful lot of effort.

“We should go in,” Five says, glancing at Vanya’s door. “She’ll need us all with her when she wakes up.”

Ben follows him back through the door without another word.

They have lain her in her bed like Sleeping Beauty, and are standing around her in an uncomfortable silence waiting for someone to decide what to do next.

Klaus gives him a little curious glance as he re-enters, and he goes to stand next to him because that’s what he’s done for the last fourteen years and it doesn’t seem right to stop now.

His brother pats him on the back, and he feels the creatures that live beneath his skin sing at the touch before they settle in his belly.

Chapter Text

Vanya sleeps for a while. Whatever her exact powers are, they clearly drain her when she uses them in the way that she had. It’s hard to believe that this thirteen year old girl with a neat little haircut and a pristine school uniform will end the world one day. She looks so vulnerable. Like they’re standing around this bed to protect her, not to protect the world from her.

“What do we do when she wakes up?” Klaus asks. “She is not gonna be a happy camper.”

“Allison can Rumour her,” Luther says. “Until we can-”

“We can’t just mess with her head!” Allison snaps. “I’m not lying to her like that.”

Ben’s legs are starting to ache. He thinks there’s probably something he could do to ease it, but he can’t really remember how he used to stand about for so long, so he sits down on the side of Vanya’s bed. “I don’t think we should lie either,” he says. “But maybe Rumour her to stay calm if we need to.”

“I still don’t like it,” Allison murmurs.

“Look at what she’s done!” Luther says incredulously. “What she was going to do!”

“Because you locked her up instead of trying to help ,” Diego hisses. He’s calm enough to be speaking without a stutter again now, but anger is bright in his eyes. “Maybe this is your fuck up, not hers.” Ben suspects at least some of this confidence is coming from the fact that Luther has a normal body again. He may still be strong, but he’s only a little taller than him and the sleeves of his uniform hang around his skinny wrists.

“Fighting isn’t going to get us anywhere,” Allison points out when Luther opens his mouth again. “We need to see what she’s like when she wakes up.”

And so they wait.

Five falls asleep after a little while. He hasn’t really said anything, but it’s clear that taking other people through time has exhausted him. Ben isn’t sure if he counts as a person or as Klaus’s really weird carry-on luggage, but he makes a note to thank him again for the effort when he wakes up. Everyone else’s lives have been saved, but his has been returned to him. It’s a gift he isn’t certain he wanted, but doesn’t know how to repay.

It really is incredible to be alive. He can’t stop holding onto his wrist, feeling the light pulse under his skin. He hadn’t even realised how still and silent his body had been, but his stomach is rumbling and he has pins and needles in his leg. It’s a little bit fascinating and equally terrifying.

Their mom bustles in to check on Vanya, and his heart aches a bit at seeing her. It’s been a long time, and he can’t help but wonder if she really feels love or anything at all towards them. He wonders if she felt anything the day he died.

“Hi, mom,” Diego says, looking at her with the same honest reverence he always has. He doesn’t ask these complicated questions. He just walks straight into loving people with everything he has.

She cups Diego’s face with the same gentle hands that haven’t changed in all the time he’s existed, and she tells him she loves him.

When she walks out, he stares after her like he’s holding a silent vigil.

Vanya starts to stir a few minutes later. She makes a quiet noise, and all of the rest of them jump out of their skins at it, with the exception of Five, who is curled up like a cat in the little chair. Diego goes to wake him, but Klaus quietly catches his wrist, muttering to let him sleep.

Ben can’t quite believe that they’re all scared of Vanya, the girl they thought had no powers at all. He doesn’t want to say ordinary. She was never ordinary. She was sweet and patient and her music made something in him still and calm. But she was safe.

She comes to gradually, blinking and holding a hand up to her face.

Luther takes another step closer to the bed, and Vanya flies back, slamming into the headboard like a frightened animal.

“Oh god,” she says, her voice just barely there. “Oh, what have I done?” Her fingers grip at her bangs in confusion. “Where-”

“It’s okay,” Allison swoops in, placing herself firmly in between Vanya and Luther. “Vanya, it’s okay. Five took us back in time with him.”

“No,” she whispers. “I didn’t- I didn’t mean to do that.” Her eyes flicker around the room as if she’s searching for something to make it all better, then land on Ben. “Ben?”

“Hi,” he says hopelessly, because Vanya is his sister, even if she just tried to end the world.

She stares at him for a second, eyes wild and hair sticking up everywhere, then slowly raises her hand into a little awkward wave at him.

He snorts and wiggles his fingers back at her.

“Right, okay,” Luther says. It’s always fucking Luther. “Conversations need to be had.”

“Fucking hell,” mutters Klaus, and Vanya’s eyes dart to him as he speaks like she’s terrified of what he’s saying.

“Vanya, what you did-” Luther breaks off, as Vanya’s eyes fill with tears. “Vanya…”

Allison takes her shaking hand and squeezes it. They’ve always had a slightly different bond to the rest of them, the only two sisters in a house full of boys.

“You did something bad,” she tells Vanya. It sounds like her rumour voice, but she’s not using her power. “But we’re going to fix it, okay?”

“I don’t know how to control it!” She’s panicking, badly. “I never...I was just so angry, and it all just happened.”

“We’ll teach you, okay?” Klaus says. “We’ve all learnt to control frightening powers.” He looks over at Ben, and Ben knows that he’s exactly who Klaus means. His powers are destructive, volatile, and at the very end, they were uncontrollable. He thinks he may not be the best role model, on account of what happened to him, but he smiles at her again and nods.

He remembers the cold marble floor and looking up at the bright lights. There was a fly buzzing around one of them. His shirt was wet. Someone was screaming. Maybe more than one person. The fly kept hitting the light. He wondered why it couldn’t find a way out.

Stop screaming, he remembers thinking. I just want it to be quieter in here. 

He snaps back to reality, and shoves his shaking hands into his pockets.

“Can’t you just Rumour me again?” Vanya asks, crumpling into Allison’s arms. “I can’t...I can’t live with this. Knowing what I’ve done, what I’m going to do!”

“Uh, again?” Klaus raises an eyebrow. “Did I miss something?”

Across the room, Five opens one eye to watch the conversation unfolding.

Ben has a horrible feeling he knows what’s coming next.

Allison takes a breath. “When we were kids,” she says, “Dad made me Rumour Vanya into believing she was ordinary.”

The room explodes.

“What the fuck, Allison?” Diego exclaims. “And you just never said anything?”

“I tried to explain this week,” she whispers. “I felt awful, but our dad-”

“Oh, fuck dad,” Diego shoots back. “You and Luther are just obsessed with praise, aren’t you? You’ll do fucking anything for that man to tell you he’s proud of you, and you know what? He never fucking will. He isn’t even worth all the effort you go to.”

“That’s not fair,” Ben says, surprising even himself. He wasn’t planning on speaking, but his mouth seemed to remember he could contribute now even before his brain did. “We all wanted him to love us. I went too far to please him as well. Are you gonna yell at me too?”

Diego looks pained. Ben is acutely aware that most of his siblings have always had something of a soft spot for him. He was kind and quiet and never caused any trouble. He is also somewhat banking on the hope that no one wants to shout at the kid who came back from the dead.

“You never hurt anyone trying to get his praise,” Diego says eventually.

“I hurt myself,” Ben replies, and the truth in that statement makes everyone wince. Panic is edging its way up his throat.

“That’s not the point,” Diego says, then blinks hard a few times, his eyes a little glossy. “Allison has been part of our father’s game this whole time.”

“Diego, enough.” Luther snaps.

“And of course you’re defending her!” Diego continues. “Because you’re so damn obsessed with her, and not in a sibling way.”

“Christ,” Klaus says, tipping his head back. “Someone tell me what this has to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” Five snaps, sitting up. “You’re all focusing on the wrong things. You’re pissed off with each other, and if you’re not, you’re in love with each other. We have to get over ourselves if we’re going to do this right. All we have to focus on is Vanya.” Vanya winces at that.

“And Ben,” Klaus interjects, and Ben feels his heart sink as he realises what Klaus means. “We have to stop Ben from dying.”

“Klaus,” he says weakly. “Let’s just focus on saving the world.”

“I want to save you !”  Klaus retorts, suddenly emotional again. “I can’t watch that happen again, Ben. I really fucking can’t.”

Five shifts in his seat, looking like he’s about to say something. Ben gives him the tiniest of gestures, hoping he gets the message. Let me handle this.

He must, because he doesn’t say a word, but looks away like he can’t quite bear this conversation.

“You might not have to,” he says. “We can probably get back to our own time before I-”

“So what, you want to die now?” Klaus seems properly angry at him, and he hates it. “All the time you spent telling me how much it sucked being dead so I wouldn’t fucking follow you, and now you just don’t care anymore?”

“This isn’t easy for me!” Ben almost shouts, his voice wavering. “Do you have any idea what it’s like coming back to life after being dead so long? Of course I care. But it’s just...too much to think about.” He’s not sure why he doesn’t just tell the truth, that Five says it’s impossible. It feels too cruel, too much to reveal in this moment.

Klaus inhales through his teeth, and doesn’t reply. He hopes he hasn’t pissed him off too much, but he can’t find the energy to reach out to him.

Vanya starts to cry. He’s not sure if it’s the shouting match that’s just gone down, and if it is, which topic did it, or if it’s the weight of everything she’s done pressing down on her. Allison rocks her like a baby, whispering reassurances, and Ben remembers she has a daughter she’s left behind in the world they broke. He hopes she gets back to her one day. The fact that he’ll never meet her stings a little, but Allison is a good mother and she loves her siblings, so he’s sure his memory is in good hands.

Things feel just about manageable for a few minutes as Allison reassures Vanya, and Five gives Ben a quiet nod of support. Even Diego seems to have mellowed out as he exchanges a few tense but civil words with Luther.

He’s just about starting to feel better about this whole crazy situation when they’re called for dinner. They may have ended the world, travelled through time, and fought each other tooth and nail without losing each other, but if there’s one thing that can tear their bond to pieces, it’s the man who jeopardised it in the first place.

It’s been a very long time since he saw their father, but this is shaping up to be quite the family reunion.

Chapter Text

Dinner is awful.

They file downstairs in the neat little line Reginald always made them keep, falling easily into their old routine like they really had done it yesterday, and not seventeen years ago. Ben takes his usual seat, hands folded in his lap, trying not to look at his father.

He wonders why they even call him their father. He’s not, really. They don’t have an actual father. He’s more of a teacher than anything else. A father would acknowledge Vanya’s red eyes and damp cheeks and comfort her. He’d notice the tension between Luther and Diego, ask what was wrong. He’d notice that Ben can’t even look at him, and he would try to figure out what he’d done wrong but never push the boundaries. It’s a little tragic, he thinks, that the real 13 year old Ben who lived through this the first time never thought a second of it all that unusual. And now he’s stealing all these ideas about what it could be like from movies he’s seen when Klaus’s rehab facility put them on or he followed his brother into a cinema unseen.

Five is supposed to go missing this evening. He won’t this time, and it’s their first big change to the timeline. It makes him a little anxious to think about. Five’s presence will change every aspect of their home life, and it will be nearly as unpredictable as it was the first time.

He pushes back the flash of frustrated anger with Vanya. True, this is her fault, but they really can’t afford to fight each other anymore. As long as the others behave too, they can do this.

Their mom serves up dinner, and the smell of all the different flavours makes his stomach turn. It’s not his favourite food (which is mac and cheese, even if he almost never gets it) but god, he hasn’t eaten a single bite in so long that he is almost blown away just by the smell of it. It seems like his sense of smell was dulled when he was dead, as if he was experiencing the whole world through a thick layer of wool.

He takes one mouthful and immediately feels like throwing up. Perhaps he should have started with something a little plainer.

“Are you alright, sweetheart?” Grace asks as their father rolls his eyes and lets out an exasperated huff. “Is it burnt?”

“It’s perfect,” he tells her, and feels tears threaten again. Under the table, Klaus takes his hand and squeezes it. It’s a nice gesture, but one that triggers another flash of utter terror at his living, vulnerable body.

Someone held his hand as he died. It might have been Diego, but he couldn’t turn his head to see. Klaus was outside on lookout. He wanted Klaus. He couldn’t remember where Klaus was. Klaus was outside on lookout. His thoughts were chasing each other around in confusing circles. The person squeezed, and he tried to squeeze back but his hands didn’t seem to work.

They eat in the same chilly silence they always used to. This time, Five doesn’t start asking questions the second their plates are set down, just eats his meal in silence. His face is creased with anxiety.

Klaus doesn’t roll a joint under the table this time either. With everything that’s been going on, and his body not yet so reliant on the drugs that it is always screaming out for another hit, he hasn’t remembered to take any of his stash from his room. Small mercies, Ben decides.

“I want to time travel,” Five says eventually, and every single sibling looks up with the same frown on their face. Allison bites her lip, and he can almost see her considering using her power to keep him quiet.

“You’re not ready,” Reginald says. It’s a little later in the evening and he’s finished his meal, he is tired and dismissive instead of goading. The fight isn’t going to occur.

“What if I am?” Five asks, and Ben prays for him not to push it too far and expose their scheme. “What if you could utilise my powers?”

“Your potential for making mistakes could doom us,” he says sharply.

It’ll save us actually, Ben thinks, but keeps his mouth shut. His stomach feels like someone is squeezing it in their fist.

“Maybe I’ll just disappear,” Five says, and Vanya winces. They’re walking a very fine line now. He understands that his brother hasn’t seen their father in a very long time, that he’s desperate for some kind of reaction, but his heart is beating uncomfortably in his chest.

Their father evaluates him for a second with an unreadable expression, then says “No great loss.”

Five’s face turns pink with upset, and Ben sees Diego curl his fist around his fork. Allison looks like she might cry, but gives Diego a little shake of her head. Reginald is so much crueller, in a kind of normal everyday way, than he had remembered.

“We’d miss you,” Ben says, which is true because he had missed Five terribly, and he’s not sure if he ever told him that.

“Quiet, Number Six,” their father says. “You know the rules.”

His disapproval stings as much as it ever did. Behind Reginald, Grace smiles warmly at him. He wants to offer her his seat. Why does she always have to stand?

His attention is pulled away when Diego asks “Why can’t we speak anyway?”

“You interrupt the evening entertainment,” is his response. “Quiet now.”

“But-”

“Be quiet,” Luther cuts Diego off. “You heard Dad.” His face is a little surprised, like he wasn’t expecting that to slip out.

Diego looks utterly furious, but doesn’t say another word. He turns back to his dinner and eats with his cutlery scraping unpleasantly along the plate, refusing to look at Luther. The rest of the meal crawls by painfully slowly until they are dismissed. Ben barely touches his plate, but it seems to go largely unnoticed, which is good because he thinks if he opened his mouth to explain, he would probably be sick.

The second they’re out of earshot, Diego rounds on Luther. “What the fuck was that?” His voice is burning with anger, and his fists are clenched. “Have you completely forgotten the last seventeen years? That man hates us, Luther!”

“I just…” Luther trails off. “When he’s around, I just can’t stop myself.”

“You can’t stop yourself when he’s not around either,” Klaus points out.

“There’s no time for this,” Allison says, looking exasperated.

“I didn’t want him to be disappointed in me,” Luther whispers. “He was never disappointed in me before...everything.”

“Must be nice,” Diego snaps. “He hated the rest of us for no reason at all.”

Vanya puts a hand on Diego’s shoulder, and he seems to deflate.

“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s already done, Diego.”

She goes to say something else to him, but Ben doesn’t hear what it is, because he’s slipping into the bathroom to throw up his dinner.

He figures his siblings haven’t quite got used to having to account for his whereabouts again, because no one follows him immediately. Or maybe they just don’t care, he supposes as he hunches over the toilet and spits out as much of the bad taste as he can. His stomach is still rolling and squeezing uncomfortably, and his elbows are poking uncomfortably out into the walls, but he feels a little less like he’s going to throw his own guts up.

Someone stomps past the bathroom door, and another door slams a little further down the hall. He figures it’s probably Diego, he has a penchant for storming off to sulk.

The tension outside seems a little much to cope with right now, so he stays sitting on the tile a little longer.

After a few minutes, he hears the other doors close. They would always eat dinner late and normally had a little free time before turning in for the night, but they’re all so exhausted and emotional that they need their beds.

He intends to follow their examples, but when he stands the pain in his stomach is so awful that for a second he’s convinced the portal in his stomach is about to open and destroy this bathroom and his small, fragile, living body.

So he knocks on Klaus’s door.

“Come in,” Klaus says, his voice drifting out through the closed door.

He opens the door and slips in, closing it behind him. The room is dark, and he can barely see Klaus’s face, but he can see his outline sitting up in bed and hear the smile in his voice when he speaks.

“You knock now?”

“The rules have changed,” Ben says quietly, taking a seat on the edge of the bed when Klaus pats it. “I can’t just burst in now.”

“You can if you want,” Klaus says. “I don’t mind. Are you okay? I saw you run off.”

“I got sick,” Ben replies miserably. “Food was kind of a shock.”

“Oh shit,” Klaus says. “Feeling okay?”

“My stomach hurts,” he says, and his voice comes out a lot more pathetic than he intended it to. “I don’t remember how to make it feel better.”

“Lie down,” Klaus says, pulling back the covers of his bed so Ben can wriggle in. “Take deep breaths.” He snickers. “Didn’t think I’d be saying that to you, huh? Very new!”

Ben chuckles as sincerely as he can without irritating his stomach and curls up in the bed. Klaus sits cross-legged next to him.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” he says.

“Nah,” Klaus reassures him, pulling the covers gently up to Ben’s shoulders. “I was just...trying out the old powers. Wanted to see if anyone fancied a chat.” His face twists a little in pain, but quickly returns to its usual laidback expression.

Ben knows he means Dave, but doesn’t say anything. If Klaus wants to talk about it, he will.

“Are you okay if I touch you?” Klaus asks. “I know it’s a bit uncomfortable. You’ve gone a damn long time without it. I’d have lost my mind without sex.”

Goddamn, those are not words that should be coming out of a thirteen year old’s mouth.

“Hmm,” Ben says, not really wanting to talk about that. “Yeah. You can.”

A few seconds later, he feels Klaus’s hand stroking his hair. He can deal with that much, he thinks. He was prepared for it, and in the quiet dark, there’s nothing else to juggle.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” Klaus says. “In an alive kind of way. I’ve missed Ben hugs.”

“It’s pretty weird,” he replies. “And I don’t know what’ll happen next.”

“Me neither,” Klaus sighs. “I feel like everyone’s pushing it as far as they can. And Vanya could still go completely off the fucking rails at any moment.”

“She’ll be fine,” Ben says. “We just have to help her.”

Klaus laughs. “How do you always make the impossible sound easy?”

“That’s my other superpower,” Ben says. “My much preferred one.”

“We’ll be okay,” Klaus tells him, presumably sensing his discomfort. “We’ll get through this.”

As Klaus lies down next to him, and they curl up together in the darkness, Ben starts to believe him.

Chapter Text

The next morning, they have a mission.

Ben remembers how this went the first time, being swept out of bed and trying to find his mask, searching the halls for Five as he was hurried along. He had asked if he was back, then protested that they couldn’t do a mission without him. Each time, he had been hushed, told that his own powers would more than make up for Five’s absence. He always hated that.

This time, he’s awoken by the sound of the alarm their father had installed in every room. He’s not actually in his room, he’d fallen asleep in Klaus’s bed, but the feeling of terror as he registers the sound is the same.

Their father will absolutely kill him if he gets caught in here again, especially if he’s still in a bad mood after yesterday, so he untangles himself from Klaus’s long, skinny limbs and scurries into his own bedroom.

A few minutes later, he is hurrying down the stairs with Allison at his side and Klaus right behind. The others are way ahead of them, speeding away as if they really are thirteen and they’re as eager to please as they were all those years ago.

He passes Vanya on the second floor. She’s standing by her door, dressed to go, her face twisted into something unreadable. Ben supposes she’ll be watching from a distance with their father.

As he passes her, he puts a hand on her shoulder. She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. Being cut off from them must be even harder now she knows she has her own power, a right to be among them.

He really hopes this won’t make things any worse.

There’s no time to dwell on it before they’re bundled into the car and driving down streets he recognises a little better than the Academy, because he and Klaus have slept on them many times over the years.

It’s a robbery at the museum, they’re told, as if they don’t already know. Ben remembers this mission. A fairly straightforward job, until one of the robbers had taken out a gun, and without Five there to pull his usual tricks, he’d been forced to let the monsters out with only a few seconds notice. They never liked it when he forced them forward. It always hurt more.

That’s okay. He’ll be ready this time, if he needs to be.

They’re sitting in number order, so he can’t say much to Klaus on the journey and Five isn’t exactly a comforting presence, hunched over and running his thumb over his index finger again and again. This is utterly new territory for him.

It feels like new territory for Ben too as they get out of the car and run for their normal positions. He can feel the stirring in his stomach and he wonders what the portal inside looks like, even though there’s really no time for the kind of existential dread that brings.

“Ben?” Allison says to him, her face creased with worry. “You know you don’t have to do it if you’re not ready.”

They’re hiding in an alcove, along with Klaus. Their father has taken Vanya somewhere at a safe distance, and Luther, Diego, and Five are making initial contact. The rest of them go in when it’s safe to unleash their powers.

Because of this, he’s getting bizarre lowkey therapy from Allison and Klaus.

“Dad won’t like that,” he says. “I have to use my powers if I want to control them.” It’s a little frightening how easily and robotically those words slip out. How often has he heard them over the years?

“Yeah, and look how that worked out,” snaps Klaus. “You sure learnt how to control them!” It’s accompanied by a slight hysterical laugh.

Ben feels like he’s had an electric shock. He can’t think of a reply to that.

He had control. He didn’t realise it until later, until he was sitting on the cabinet in the study listening to Pogo and his father’s hushed conversation about exactly what the hell had happened, but he had control. His father called it an unfortunate accident. Pogo said it was no accident.

He didn’t even know what it was except the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

“Klaus,” Allison says, her voice low. “Stop it.”

Klaus looks over at Ben and must see some of his feelings written on his face because he softens his argumentative stance instantly. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice filled with genuine regret. “Ben, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says, swallowing back his anxiety. “Don’t worry.”

“You’re okay, right? You can’t go in there upset, you’ll-” Klaus breaks off and waves an arm vaguely. “Y’know.” He’s anxious suddenly, and a little too close to Ben, like he wants to sweep him off somewhere safe. It’s both comforting and cloying.

“I’ll be fine,” he asserts, and Allison pats his shoulder.

Before he can dwell any further on whether or not he actually is fine, there’s a shout from inside which he recognises as Luther’s signal.

“Stay on lookout,” Allison tells Klaus briefly, then turns on her heel and disappears deeper into the building.

Klaus meets Ben’s eyes for a moment. It strikes Ben that it has been a very long time since he was both away from Klaus and still existing. He’s not usually much of anything when he’s not with Klaus. Maybe it’s purgatory or some other kind of afterlife, but regardless, the idea of suddenly running around on his own is a little exhilarating.

Despite that, he can’t quite think of anything to say that really conveys that without making it sound like he doesn’t want to hang out with Klaus, so he just smiles at him and follows Allison down the hall.

The rest of his siblings, sans Vanya, are in the main hall of the museum. Luther is holding a man in the air, his legs dangling helplessly. He has the same cocky smile as he always did, and as much as it was always annoying, it’s nice to see him smile.

Five looks a little more shaken, standing on the information desk holding what seems to be a dinosaur bone, but he nods casually at Ben and Allison as they arrive like it’s just another day.

“Hey,” Diego says, approaching. “They’re incapacitated. You can, uh…” He nods at Ben.

“Can’t Allison just rumour them?” Ben asks, suddenly wondering why this isn’t a question he’s asked before. “To like, sort their lives out?”

Diego chews on his lip. “The instructions were clear.”

“I don’t know,” Allison says. “I’m not sure.”

“Dad said kill them,” Luther interjects, his voice strained like he doesn’t know what to make of what he’s saying. “He said for you to kill them.”

Allison stares at her hands. Five quietly puts down his makeshift weapon and opens the door to a little side room so Luther can drag the men in. Ben watches as they’re dragged to the room they will die in when he kills them. It’s not like he hasn’t done this before. Jesus Christ, it’s not even like this body hasn’t done it before. But it’s just suddenly striking him that he never asked a single question about the terrible things he did. Maybe when he had only lived thirteen years, and assumed that his father would always know best, this would have been the obvious and only solution. Seventeen years later, and he is realising he is a royally fucked up person and there is a great deal of blood on his hands.

Five holds the door open for him, the weirdest form of a kind gesture he can possibly imagine, and he trails in, locking it behind him.

The world is a better place without these people, his father would always tell him. If he doesn’t listen, he will be locked away and forced to let the monsters out until he’s exhausted, and his personality is buried deep within in his body to make space for the creature that uses it.

Outside, he hears the murmurs of Allison Rumouring the last few witnesses to leave, to look away before he does his part.

Then it is painfully silent and it’s time.

The people are mercifully unconscious this time. No one except him will feel the agony or smell the blood or scream until their lungs give out. That’s a blessing compared to some of the situations he’s been in.

He closes his eyes and presses his mouth shut, focusing on the feeling under his skin. The slightest tremors and movements that he can normally ignore start to intensify, becoming more insistent. There’s a push against his skin. Gentle, then harder, then more of them.

It hurts . God, he forgot how much it hurts.

The tears leak down his cheeks as he tries to call them forth. Come on, you fucking monsters, he begs them, knowing that somehow they understand what he says. Listen to me, get out of my stomach, do our job , aren’t you hungry?

They burst from his abdomen suddenly even for them, ripping a scream from his throat as they lunge into the air. His spine bends horribly at the force, and he feels his ribs crack the way they always do. There must be something healing fused into his DNA, because this should be killing him. And it doesn’t. Not yet.

There’s a wet squishing sound, then the first shock of the hot blood on his face. It makes him jump every time, and he instinctively opens his eyes a little. The first man is dead on the ground, his insides strewn across the floor.

He catches the end the second man meets too as he’s slammed hard into the wall, leaving a dark red smear down the rich wood.

There is blood in his eyes. He can taste it in his mouth as he screams in agony, even if he can barely hear it over the violence around him and the high screeching that comes from mouths he can’t see.

Ben can’t stand when it’s over. He’s sitting on the floor, even though he doesn’t remember moving at all. He can’t get his eyes open without them stinging, and he can’t rub at them because his hands and sleeves are soaked too. The whole room smells metallic and slightly sweet. The tentacles are gone, somewhere back beneath his skin waiting for their next feed.

His head is full of static, and his chest is screaming with pain, even though he knows his ribs have already fused back together as if they never broke.

If he hadn’t already experienced the terrible truth of death, he’d say it felt like dying.

As the ringing in his ears dies down, he hears the voices of his siblings outside the door. They seem to be arguing with each other, worry in their tones.

“Why isn’t he coming out? Pick the lock,” Allison is saying. “Or- Luther, break it down.”

“I can’t ,” Luther is replying. “What if it’s not gone?”

He knows they mean the tentacles. It’s hardly unfair for them to be cautious, but their fear of him stings a part of his numb brain back to life.

He coughs and gasps a little past the bloody taste in his mouth. The words don’t quite come to him.

There’s a small bout of whispering that he can’t quite decipher, and then he hears Five say “Do not get Klaus. Not until we know what’s going on.”

Before he can process why Klaus shouldn’t be there, there’s a flash of light by the door and Five is standing in front of it. His eyes widen as he surveys the bloody room and the bodies on the floor, then Ben sat against the wall.

“Jesus,” he says eventually. “You don’t half do a number on these people.”

Ben spits out a mouthful of blood, then lets the tears flow.

“Oh,” Five looks a bit stricken. “Forget I said that.”

Ben wipes at his face with his sleeve and winces as he feels it smear more blood across his cheek.

“We thought...something might have happened to you when you didn’t open the door,” Five says. He gets the luxury of being careful to keep his clothes clean as he kneels down beside him. “I would have been pissed, actually. I haven’t seen you in forty-five years and then you go and get yourself killed again by the first problem that shows up?”

Ben doesn’t point out that he is the problem. His heart is racing again. He can feel the blood drying on his skin and clumping in his hair.

“I missed you,” Five says quietly. “When I couldn’t find you- your body, I mean, in the apocalypse, I hoped.”

Something catches in Ben’s throat. He can’t tell if it’s leftover gore or heartbreak.

“I should have been with you when you died,” he tells him, like it’s an apology. “And at the funeral. I got busy saving the world.”

Ben almost smiles at the audacity of that before his next words leave him.

“You can be there this time.”

Five looks a little stunned, and Ben supposes he’s not used to the darker, angrier person he’s become since the day he lost everything.

“Guess I can,” he says stiffly, and Ben finally lets the dam break as he starts sobbing. His brother- younger brother, older brother, sort-of twin, whatever the hell he is- crouches by him and rests a hand on his shoulder, not saying another word.

“Five?” That’s Diego’s voice drifting through the door. “Are you o-okay?”

“We’re okay,” Five calls, which is decidedly not true, but will do for now. He disappears in another bright flash from Ben’s side, and reappears by the door, unlocking it for the rest of their siblings.

Surprisingly, Luther is the first at his side. Perhaps, Ben thinks, his worst traits are tied into being trapped in that terrible body. Untethered from it, there is a kindness to him Ben hasn’t seen in a long time.

“Hey,” Luther says. “Can you get up?” He has one hand on Ben’s shoulder, which is stronger than he realises, and is kind of the reason he can’t get up.

He doesn’t quite trust his mouth, so he looks up at Diego, then back down at Luther’s arms. It’s been a while, but they’re experts in non-verbal communication. When Diego’s stutter got so bad that he wouldn’t even say a word and Ben was overcome with his stomach pains when the monster acted up, they would have their conversations through taps and glances that no one else seemed fluent in.

Diego doesn’t speak that language anymore. He doesn’t move a muscle to help Ben, just offers him a small smile. It’s kind, but it feels like another link lost. It’s been fifteen years since they tried it after all.

“I’ll help you, okay?” Luther says, and hooks one arm under Ben’s legs to pick him up. He won’t pretend he’s not a little grateful for this. He probably could walk, if he tried, but his body is trembling and he feels like he might pass out.

“You’ll get blood on your uniform,” Allison says, more of a comment than a protest.

Luther shrugs, and Ben feels his whole body move with it. “We can wash clothes,” he replies, his voice even and reasonable. Dad’s golden boy. He’s nicer than he remembers.

He’s carried out of the bloodied little sideroom, the bodies left on the floor for someone else to deal with. He sort of wishes someone would pick them up, or at least cover the worst of it. His body, or what was left with it anyway, was handled with some respect. He’d hung onto that in the weeks after he died, before he managed to get through to Klaus.

They didn’t have to die. He didn’t have to kill them.

Why did he kill them?

These thoughts muffle the world so severely that he nearly misses it when they reach Klaus’s lookout spot.

“What happened?” Klaus is shouting, his voice cutting through the fog in Ben’s brain. “Luther, stop, let me see him. Ben, fuck, are you okay?”

“He’s okay,” Allison is saying. “He just had a bit of a shock. Klaus, calm down .”

Klaus pushes past Allison and is at his side in moments. “Hi,” he says. “I was so worried.”

Ben manages a smile.

Then suddenly their father is calling, and Luther is scrambling to gently put him down, and he’s being bundled into the car, sitting on towels so he doesn’t stain the upholstery, and Vanya looks furious about something, and Klaus’s anxious face keeps swimming in and out of his vision, and he doesn’t remember the rest of the ride home.

His mom runs a bath for him once they’re back through the doors of the Academy, and he sits in it, watching the water turn a rusty brown and little clots of blood disappear down the plughole. His skin still feels dirty and itchy, but if he stays here too long, someone is going to walk in on him naked and it’s really the last thing he needs today.

Diego finds him later in his room, sitting in his clean bed in clean clothes feeling dirty. He’s pretending to read a book, but not taking in a single world.

“Mom’s making mac and cheese for dinner,” he says as he enters, leaving the door open a crack. “I told her you were sad.”

It’s awfully simple phrasing, but not technically untrue, so he nods gratefully. “Thanks.”

“I think she’s fretting about you not eating much yesterday.”

“You think she frets?” Ben asks, turning his back to the door. It makes him feel vulnerable, but he knows Diego will die before he lets him even get a scratch. His fierce loyalty has never changed over the years.

“She feels things,” Diego says, an edge to his voice. “She clearly feels things.”

“Okay,” he replies, not willing to have the argument. But another question is niggling away at him, and he can’t help but ask. “What was she like when I died?”

Diego winces. “She was...confused,” he starts, like he really hates talking about this. “She was still setting your place at the table every meal, and she would look for you when you didn’t come. She brought books for you sometimes. I don’t think Dad coded her to understand death like that.”

Ben nods, his throat tight.

“That lasted a few days. But it was, uh...upsetting for the rest of us. Seeing all your stuff like-” Diego breaks off and swallows. “Like you were coming back. So he changed her code, and she never mentioned you again. And then we all left.”

“Oh,” he says quietly. He had noticed that his mom had never mentioned him, but assumed it was that she’d had no reason to. The idea that he had simply ceased to ever exist to her is a little bit horrifying.

“Maybe it doesn’t have to happen at all now,” Diego says earnestly. “I know you were freaked out the other day, but there has to be something we can do for you. And Vanya, and Eudora. Things can be different this time.”

“Can I tell you something?” Ben asks, because suddenly he’s desperate to take this weight off his shoulders. Five doesn’t count, because he is carrying it just as much as Ben. “Something you can’t tell anyone?”

There’s a moment of silence, broken only by the groans and creaks of the hall outside.

“Tell me,” Diego says.

“Five says it’s impossible,” Ben confesses, and sees Diego’s face sink in defeat. “It’s fixed in the timelines. I never get to live.”

Diego’s expression shifts into something unreadable. “Oh shit,” he says, and he sounds oddly panicked about something that won’t happen for years yet.

“Diego, it’s fine ,” he tries to say, but another voice cuts in.

“Fine that you’ve been lying to me?”

And Diego’s expression of panic makes sense as he turns and sees Klaus in the doorway, his pale face set in a furious expression.

Chapter Text

“Klaus-” Diego starts, and Klaus holds up a hand to stop him.

“I want to hear this from him ,” he says, pointing a skinny finger at Ben, who shrinks back against the bed. He’s not used to Klaus being properly angry with him. Frustrated, sure. He’s told Ben to shut up when he’s calling him out on his bullshit more times than he can count. But this genuine anger, the betrayal in his voice, this is all new.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Klaus, I was going to tell you.”

“When?!” Klaus hisses, crossing the floor towards him. “Once we’d all gotten used to you being back here alive?”

“When I’d gotten used to it!” Ben explodes, suddenly feeling anger burning in his chest. “Klaus, for fuck’s sake, I don’t have to tell you everything the second it happens! I have to deal with this too!”

“You don’t get to keep this kind of thing secret, Ben!” Klaus shouts back. “I said I wanted to save you, and you didn’t say a word about it! That was your chance to explain!”

“Keep it down!” Diego cuts in, looking uncomfortable. “Ben, why didn’t you say anything?” He doesn’t sound as angry as Klaus, but there’s still a tone of betrayal in his voice.

“I’m sorry ,” he repeats. God, he’s been so fucking stupid. Why didn’t he just tell them? “I just needed time to process.”

“How long? Years?”

“It’s only been a day, Klaus!” Ben points out.

Diego gets up from the bed and heads for the door. “You can talk this out,” he says tightly, and Ben can’t tell if he’s mad or just genuinely giving them space.

Klaus shakes his head. “We’ve shared everything for the last fifteen years, Ben. Everything! How could you not tell me this?”

“We shared everything because I didn’t have a choice ,” he retorts. “I had to go wherever you went, do whatever you did. And you could shut me up anytime, get rid of me by getting high, and I never had a choice!”

“Oh, so you’re free now?” Klaus snarls. “Now you don’t have to be stuck with me anymore! You don’t have to get involved in my mess!”

“Klaus, I don’t belong to you,” he says hopelessly. “I never did.”

“I know that,” Klaus says, his voice lower. The anger seems to have faded a little, replaced with hopelessness. “I just don’t want you to abandon me now you have the option.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Ben whispers. “It’s just hard, okay? I didn’t want to upset you.”

“Too late,” Klaus sniffs. He finally stops pacing, taking a seat on the edge of Ben’s bed. “I can’t believe I had to overhear that.”

“You didn’t have to be listening outside my door,” he points out, still a little bitter. “You could let me have some privacy. For once.”

“I didn’t get much privacy the last fifteen years either,” Klaus snaps. “I didn’t get to keep any of my shameful secrets. You saw everything, always.”

Ben puts his head in his hands. “We’re so fucked up,” he says. “And codependent.”

It’s almost a joke, but Klaus doesn’t laugh. Ben sees the corners of his mouth tug down into a frown as he looks at him.

“Five could be wrong,” he says quietly. “I mean, what does he know? Little guy got stuck in the future for forty-five years, then came back in the wrong body.”

“If he hears you call him little guy, we’re both going to be ghosts in this timeline.”

Klaus finally laughs, then his face sinks. “I don’t want you to die again.”

“So you can keep your shameful secrets?” He’s mostly teasing, but it does hurt a little that Klaus doesn’t want him knowing the things he knows, even if he gets it.

Klaus looks pained. “So you don’t have to be sad , Ben. I know I’m loud and self-centred and I can be a complete asshole to you, but I just didn’t want you to think I was pitying you. I know how hard those years were for you. You hated it. And now you can talk to everyone and eat mac and cheese and hug me, and I don’t want you to lose that. Again.”

Ben shrugs uselessly. The frustration and anger keep rising and falling like tidal waves in his chest and he doesn’t know what to do with all these feelings. Death dampened them, he’s realising. Maybe it’s having no hormones, no chemicals firing in his brain, but he doesn’t remember feeling anything other than a heavy numbness most of the time.

“It’s so hard being here,” he says. “I don’t know how to talk to people anymore, and everything feels so intense. I’m exhausted.”

“But it’s better than being dead,” Klaus argues, and Ben doesn’t point out that he has absolutely no idea what being dead for fifteen years is like.

His silence seems to give Klaus the right idea though, and his face darkens with upset again before he gets up and walks away, closing the door behind him.

Ben sits alone on his bed and wonders how he’s managed to get his life back for a day and fuck it up almost immediately.

-

Their father will be absent at dinner that evening, which provides a little relief for the cold pit of dread in Ben’s stomach when the bell rings an hour later and he heads down to the dining room.

He doesn’t think Klaus or Diego have told anyone else about what happened earlier. If they have, everyone is significantly better at acting than he remembered, because the atmosphere today is much more relaxed. It’s still absolutely horrible of course, given the circumstances, but with their father absent to do whatever the hell it is he does after their missions, at least they can talk freely.

He’s the last to arrive in the kitchen, which isn’t unusual but does mean everyone looks up as he walks through the doors and he briefly panics at the six sets of eyes on him, trying to analyse if they know the secret he has foolishly kept from them, if they’re angry. It seems fine, which is almost worse, because he knows he has to tell them.

“Hi,” he says as he takes a seat next to Five, and Klaus looks over at him with sad eyes. It’s better than anger, at least.

Diego glances up, affords him a small smile. It’s strained, but genuine.

“I have to tell some of you something,” he starts, placing his hands around his bowl of mac and cheese and letting the warmth of it run through his bones.

Vanya gives him a little nod. For someone who has ended the world, she’s surprisingly encouraging. Some things never change, even when you die for fifteen years, then come back as a thirteen year old.

Or maybe she feels too guilty to hold anything against him.

Regardless of her motivations, he appreciates it and returns the gesture before speaking. “Five, Klaus, and Diego already know this, but I should have told you all sooner.”

Allison raises an eyebrow, and Luther looks a little insulted. He hopes they understand when he explains. Though in his defence, he hadn’t really planned on telling Diego or Klaus before anyone else.

“Five and I talked yesterday,” he continues. “About how some things in this timeline can’t be changed.”

There’s a small ripple across the table, and he knows the message has landed. They can put two and two together, they know what’s coming next, but he has to say it. If he wants to be free of it, as free as is possible anyway, he has to say it.

“I’m going to die,” he tells them, and feels the heavy guilt in his chest subside a little, a kind of quiet melancholy slipping in through the cracks and filling up his heart. “Probably in about four years. Probably in the same way.”

“I need to get high,” Klaus mutters, and his heart sinks.

“Oh, Ben,” Allison says gently, her voice sweet and sympathetic and cloying. “Ben, I’m so sorry.” It’s oddly comforting to him that she has accepted it, that she won’t try to fight it. The other stages of grief, the painful ones are skipped, and she will be okay without him.

Vanya sighs deeply, and she looks so old then, like the whole world is on her shoulders. “I don’t understand,” she says softly. “How can we change everything….everything I did, but we can’t save the person who actually deserves it?”

“You deserve it, Vanya,” Allison tells her.

“So does Ben,” Luther finally speaks up, his face set in a troubled expression. “There’s really nothing to be done?”

Five swallows and shifts a little, and everyone turns to look at him for an answer. “No,” he says, and god, why does that sting anyway? “It’s possible it could happen differently. Maybe a few days later, or longer. But it’s fixed. Ben can’t leave the Academy like everyone else.” He pauses, and evaluates Ben for a second. “At least not alive, anyway.”

“I’ll still be here,” Ben says. “And this time, you’ll believe Klaus about it.”

Luther shakes his head. “You really were there the whole time, huh?”

“You have terrible dance moves,” he says by way of answering, and Luther cracks a sad smile.

“You saw that?” His face is a little pink. “Of course you did.”

“Sorry,” Diego says. “To you and Klaus. We...should have believed you that week.”

Ben knows why he only specified that week, but he’d really rather not think about it. Klaus doesn’t like to talk about that anyway, so he just shrugs and says “It’s done now.” In the moment afterwards, he remembers that he can talk about things Klaus doesn’t like now if he wants, without Klaus going on a bender until Ben can’t speak or even hold his ghostly form together without dissipating like smoke.

There is a long silence. The air in the dining room is far too hot and heavy. Ben thinks they’ve left a window open somewhere, because he can hear buzzing in the silence like the flies have gotten in.  He manages a few forkfuls of food this time, and the little itch of discomfort in his chest is lesser than the night before.

“What else can’t change?” Luther asks eventually, his gaze never leaving Ben. It feels almost as heavy as his arms holding him down, and Ben shifts uncomfortably in the weight of it.

“And of course we go straight back to Luther,” Diego drawls. “Want to know about your monkey body, brother mine?”

“He hasn’t even asked about it yet, Diego,” Allison says. “Be fair.”

Diego opens his mouth, and Ben shoots him a pleading look. They never listened to him when he was alive, but he must look suitably pathetic now, because he grunts and backs down.

“Ben’s death is a Key Point in the timeline,” Five says. “It’s vital, for whatever reason, that he’s not here when everyone leaves. Our father can’t die before he does either. We’re working to prevent the apocalypse, but those events are preventing something even worse.”

“What the hell is worse than that?” Klaus asks, and Vanya flushes with upset and dips her chin into her chest.

Five looks a little haunted as he scrapes his fork along the edge of his bowl, the unpleasant noise making him shiver. “There are plenty of worse things,” he says, and Ben wonders what his brother saw in the time he was gone.

“We should just change everything,” Klaus says. “Our whole timeline fucking sucked.”

“No, it didn’t,” Allison says, and she may have maintained a calm, polite demeanour the whole time so far, but now she seems pissed. “Just because you messed up doesn’t mean all our lives were horrible. I had Claire.” Her voice cracks on her daughter’s name. “ I had Claire .”

“I’m sorry,” Five says quietly. “I don’t really know...what to do about Claire. Hopefully we travel back to our time before you meet Patrick and that part of the timeline doesn’t change.”

“Hopefully,” Allison echoes, like she’s just now starting to realise that her daughter’s very existence is in jeopardy. Her eyes are very bright, and she turns her head away and swallows.

Under the table, Ben nudges her foot in what he hopes she understands as a gesture of support. She doesn’t respond.

“There are things we all want to change,” says Luther. “I don’t want that body, and I don’t want to go to the moon.”

“Eudora has to live,” Diego chips in, face set in quiet determination. “And mom shouldn’t be here on her own for so long.”

“Teach me to control my powers,” Vanya says, possibly the most words he’s heard from her since they got here. “If I can control them, maybe I can intervene in these things. God knows I owe you that much.”

“We’ve already changed the timeline,” Five says, sounding tired. “I’m still here. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

“Just don’t let me hurt anyone,” Vanya looks up, her face drawn and exhausted. She can’t have slept a wink last night. “I’m begging you not to let me hurt anyone.”

Luther opens his mouth to reply before Grace enters, taking away their bowls and humming idly to herself. She’s humming Dance Macabre, a piece he recognises from the week Vanya spent playing it almost non-stop. It’s an odd choice, he thinks, for his father to program her to hum.

Then again, his father brought seven children and raised them into fucked up adults who ended the world then tried to save it.

They’re dismissed from the dining room, but they haven’t seen their father yet this evening, and on nights like these they’re expected to wish him goodnight. It seems ridiculous, given that he couldn’t care less about them when they’re being children and not weapons for his wars.

Luther knocks on the door of his study with the same gentleness and care he always does, and he calls to them to enter.

He’s been talking to Pogo, and Ben doesn’t miss how Vanya recoils at the sight of him, squeezing her eyes shut and clearly trying to compose herself. She is remembering what she did to him. Luther notices the change too, and steps in front of her so their father won’t see her face.

“Goodnight, dad,” Allison says, her smile fixed onto her face. It’s no surprise she grew up to be a celebrity really. She’s a phenomenal actress, and if she Rumoured people to believe that, well then she didn’t need to bother.

“Goodnight,” he says, looking up at them and fixing them all with a hard stare. “Performance today was adequate.”

“Thank you,” Luther says, and Ben feels a bit sick to see that he looks genuinely pleased to hear it. That’s not a compliment , he wants to say. Is that really what makes you happy?

“You’re dismissed,” he says sharply, ending their required family bonding time for the night, and they move to shuffle out into the hallway.

There’s a brief nod between Pogo and their father and then Pogo steps forward.

“A moment, Ben?” Pogo asks, his gentle face tight with concern. “If the others could let us speak privately, please.”

Hesitantly, his siblings disappear out into the hall. Vanya’s mournful face is the last he sees, glancing back in at him through the closing gap.

“Concerns have been raised about your anxiety on missions,” Pogo says. “We fear that if it gets out of control, you could do serious damage to yourself and others.”

He can only nod. Oh god, he’s fucked up this timeline. They’ve noticed his behaviour change, and he has no idea what that might lead to.

Pogo presses a small, white pill into his hand. “Take this before you sleep tonight,” he says. “It’s an anti-anxiety medication.”

He closes his fist around it and nods, although he has no intention of taking it. “Thank you,” he says. “I’ll take it with some water upstairs.”

Pogo nods, gives him a smile. Ben wonders if it’s genuine.

He says goodnight to his father again and trails out into the empty corridor. The others must have headed upstairs to bed.

Just as he’s about to head up after them, he hears a door open, and nearly jumps out of his skin before realising it’s his mom. She’s a blessing, the one person who doesn’t treat him an iota differently, the same loveliness as always.

“Hello, dear,” she says as he smiles at her.

“Hi, mom,” he says. “I’m just going to bed.”

“Lovely,” she says, with that same smile, and she steps closer again and wraps him in a warm hug.

As he enjoys the comfort of her arms, she turns her head and whispers in his ear in her perfectly measured and reassuring voice.

“Don’t take that pill, Ben.”

Before he can ask what she means, she releases him from the hug, gives him another bright smile, and sways off down the hallway, the clacking of her heels the only sound in the house as Ben stands frozen by the stairs.

Chapter Text

It’s boiling in his room, but maybe that’s just the panic attack he’s trying to ward off.

Ben tries to work through everything that has just happened in his head. His panic on the mission was noticed. His father and Pogo gave him a pill. His mom told him not to take it. The last part is what’s really throwing him. There is no reasonable explanation for her giving him the opposite instructions to his father. Everything in her code dictates that she should do exactly as their father says. Hell, she should be getting him water to take this terrible pill with.

He rolls it between his fingers idly and stares as if the answer might be written on it in tiny print. What is it supposed to do to him? It’s not damn anti-anxiety medication, he’s sure of that much. His father couldn’t give a shit if he has panic attacks on missions- he’s not in the line of fire, and he knows from the first time round at this life that his death won’t particularly bother him beyond the inconvenience of explaining it to the press outside.

The journalists were still outside the gallery taking photos when Ben followed the plastic bag with what was left of his body in it out into the harsh light of the day. He was still dazed, chest aching and throat raw. It had felt like waking up in the middle of the night and not being quite sure if you’re still in the dream as you search for something you know in the dark.

His siblings had already been taken away from the scene, but his father had stood in front of the crowd then, a grave expression on his face. Ben had sat on the ground a short distance away, thoughts scrambling over each other as he tried to remember what had happened, why he was alone, and why his body seemed to shift and shimmer like a mirage when the light hit it.

“It’s a tragedy to lose a member of the Academy so young,” his father had said, and he wondered why he called him dad when he didn’t even call him his son when acknowledging his death.

Plus, he wasn’t the first they had lost. It had struck him so suddenly, like having ice cold water dropped over his head, that Five might be around somewhere. That he had been dead and alone for four years, lost to them at just thirteen.

The thought brought him enough strength to pull his drifting form and mind into something a little more solid and tear off the steps to look for him.

He decides not to think about that. Five is back with him, with all of them, and in this timeline they never even lost him. They’ll still lose Ben, but he rather hopes that Klaus will be able to properly manifest him like he did in the concert hall, even if it only gives him a few moments with the world each time.

What he needs to be thinking about is what the hell just happened. And if there’s one person who might have the slightest idea what the pill he’s just been given is, it’s the person who landed them all in this situation in the first place.

Vanya’s room it is.

He carefully opens his door and creeps down the hall, grateful that everyone with a room between his and Vanya’s sleeps with their doors shut.

Vanya, bless her, opens her door immediately when he knocks. She doesn’t look like she’s been lying in bed. There are worry lines on her face before she can even have time to process him standing there.

“Ben?” She pushes her bangs out of her eyes, then pushes them again. She must be getting used to having them back still. “Are you okay?”

“Can I come in?” Ben whispers back to her, shuffling his slippered feet on the floorboards and hoping they won’t creak.

Vanya nods, opening her door further to let him in and watching as he slips through and flops down onto her bed like he always used to.

He lies on his back, hanging off the edge of the bed and watching as her upside-down form approaches the bed, and feels the dip in the mattress as she sits down.

“Is something wrong?” Her voice is concerned, and she sounds more alert than he’s heard her in a long time. Whatever their father gave her, she’s not taking it now and she’s better off for it.

He is definitely not taking that fucking thing.

“Your pills,” he says, and sits up in time to see Vanya stiffen a little. “You’re pretending to take them, right?”

She nods. “It’s not a good idea for me to take them again. Why are you asking?”

Ben takes the small pill out of his pyjama pocket and holds it out to her, noting the way her brows knit into a frown. “This isn’t mine,” she says eventually. “Ben, where did you get this?”

“Dad and Pogo gave it to me. Told me to take it before bed.”

Vanya shakes her head. “Do not take this,” she says, sounding a little frantic. “Ben, promise me you won’t take it.”

“I wasn’t going to,” he replies, a little defensively. “These aren’t the same as yours then?”

“Nope, not mine.” Vanya chews on her lip. “This didn’t happen in the original timeline, then?”

“No,” he says glumly. “I’ve already changed my timeline.”

“We need to figure out what these are,” she says. “What if they’ll be expecting side effects from you?”

God, he hadn’t even thought of that. He gives her a slightly helpless look, and she squeezes his knee. They’re in this together, at least. Though Vanya knows exactly how her pills are supposed to make her act, and he’s completely in the dark. What if it’s meant to kill him in the night? He could walk down to breakfast alive and blow their whole act.

“I hate this,” Ben mutters. “I hate this a lot.” He runs a hand through his hair until it sticks up all over the place. “Vanya, I don’t want to be here.”

“I’m sorry,” she says softly, her voice cracking slightly. “I’m sorry I did...what I did and that we had to come back here and you got put in this situation. Do you hate me?

He shakes his head. “This started a long time ago, Vanya. You did a terrible thing, but it all goes back to Dad. Why you exploded, why no one helped, it’s him. He raised us all to break, and then taught us not to help each other.” It’s an epiphany as he says it.

“You would have helped,” she says, looking at him with glossy eyes.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I like to think so. But maybe I’d just cave under pressure from the others.”

Vanya smiles wanly and shrugs. “I’d have liked to have you around anyway.”

“I was there,” he says. “It’s not my fault no one believed it.” He doesn’t mean to sound as bitter as he does, but it’s been a long day.

“Do you know why we didn’t?” Vanya asks, her tone gentle.

He dips his head, taking a moment to think. Klaus isn’t here. He isn’t speaking through Klaus. If he wants to talk about it, he can talk about it.

He doesn't want to talk about it.

“I know why,” he says eventually. “I get it. It just sucks.”

“Yep.”

They sit together on her bed for a moment, not really looking at each other.

“There’s something else,” he says eventually, at least partly to break the suffocating silence. He likes when she talks to him. It’s a reminder that he’s here. “Mom told me not to take it.”

Vanya’s eyebrows disappear into her bangs. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’m aware,” he says dryly. “That should not be in her code. She’s supposed to go along with everything Dad says and does.”

“At least she seems to be on your side?” Vanya suggests. “If she’s rebelling, then I’m glad it’s in our favour.”

Ben cracks a smile. Good old Vanya. They’d always been close when they were kids. He would sit cross-legged on her bed reading a book whilst she played her violin. He remembers the last time they did that, the day before he died. He’d never finished that book. There’s a sudden urge to run back to his room and find it, read the last few chapters before the world takes away the gift or curse it’s just handed him.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says. “Can I ask her?”

“She could report that back to Dad,” Vanya frowns. “But if she’s already disobeying orders…”

“Is there any good answer?” Ben sighs. “Maybe I’m supposed to die much earlier in this timeline.”

He doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t know how that makes him feel. Being back here, able to talk to everyone, is so wonderful. Just talking to Vanya again has calmed something within him. He wants to jump onto Luther’s back when he’s not looking and demand piggybacks, and make cake with Diego and his mom. He wants to belt karaoke with Allison, and play chess with Five and tell him about his book. He wants to wrap Klaus in a hug and not let go until he feels as safe and happy and loved as he deserves.

It’s also terrible. Every time someone touches him, there’s a little jump of terror in his stomach. Food is overwhelming. He can’t sleep. The creatures that use his body to get into this world and feed are so much more disruptive when he’s alive. The respite from them had been one of the few good things about being dead.

Vanya must see the pain on his face, because she shifts to pull out some of her blanket from under her and drape it over his knees.

“Are you okay?” She asks.

“Yeah,” he replies, smiling weakly. “Just thinking.”

“Is your stomach alright?” That’s a nice way of asking if he’s in control, or if there’s any risk that tentacles are about to rip their way out of his stomach and tear her to shreds.

“It’s fine,” he says, placing his hands over it. “Honestly.”

“I used to be so jealous of you,” she says quietly. “All of you. You got to be together and use your powers and become famous. I was always just ordinary.” She laughs, a little bitterly. “Except I wasn’t, was I?”

“I was jealous of you too,” he tells her, and it’s the first time he’s admitted it out loud. “I mean, I know it sucked. But you never saw the things we had to see on our missions, and you never got punished for doing badly. Also, there’s no eldritch horror borrowing your body from time to time, so there’s that.”

She laughs a little weakly. “There’s that. God, I can’t believe I used to wish I had your powers.”

“That’s pretty dumb,” Ben offers. “You don’t want this, trust me. But you didn’t have the easiest time either. Maybe we both should have just wished for a normal life.”

“Maybe.” Vanya tries to suppress a yawn. “Are you gonna ask Mom about your pills?”

“I’ll try,” he says. “I need to figure out how to bring it up.”

“Don’t wait too long,” she says gently. “And don’t just give up, okay?”

He nods, because he can’t think of a reply to that.

“I’m going to go to bed,” he says. “You should get some sleep too.”

Her smile is sad. “I’ll try.”

He squeezes her hand, and slips back down the corridor to his room, leaving the little pill in the tiny inner pocket of his hoodie, the one that even his mom doesn’t know about. Maybe if he keeps it, he can get it analysed somehow.

He doesn’t sleep. Instead, he digs out the book he had been reading the week he died. It had been on his bookshelf for years, but he’d always thought it seemed a little grim. A little before he died, it started to seem more interesting.

The Bell Jar is exactly what he remembered it to be. He starts again from the beginning, because it’s been so long since he read it and he wants to feel that world again. It makes his heart ache a little to read of someone so detached from the world, trapped in an empty, depressing silence.

He hasn’t been sleeping long when the weak morning light filters through his blinds.

It takes a moment to realise why he’s woken up so suddenly. Luther is in his doorway, all nerves and a desperate kind of authority.

“Morning,” he says as Ben blinks at him. “Dad wants you downstairs for individual training.” He bites his lip. “He says don’t dawdle.” Luther has never looked guilty passing on a message before. He’s changing, Ben thinks. Now that they’re actually back here with him, he can’t create their hero father in his head anymore.

At least his father wanting him downstairs means he’s not expecting those pills to have killed him.

“Right,” he replies, dragging himself out of bed and picking a plain t-shirt up off the floor. He knows what training entails, and he doesn’t want to risk ruining any of the clothes he actually likes.

Luther watches him, face sad. “You always slept in,” he says, sounding amused but sad. “Were you up all night reading?”

Ben gives him a guilty grin. “You just wish you could read.”

“Hey!” Luther says, but doesn’t bother hiding his smile. “Knock that off.”

“I speak the truth,” he says lightly.

“There’s my brother,” Luther rolls his eyes. “Some things never change.”

There’s an awkward silence after that as the phrase sinks in. Some things never change. Ben teases his brother. Ben claims to know everything. Ben dies. Some things never change.

“Can you go whilst I get dressed?” Ben asks, and Luther nods and slips away without another word.

Ben finds his father waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs.

“Number Six,” he says, and Ben feels his insides burn under his gaze as he tries to figure out how to act.

He settles for meek and tired, hoping that exhibiting Vanya’s symptoms will be good enough to convince his father he has taken the pill. “Good morning,” he says. “Am I training?”

His father doesn’t bother to reply in actual words, just leads him to the bunker downstairs. He winces as he remembers how just days ago, yet also years in the future, Vanya had been locked in here. He’s never been left alone in there, just locked in for a few minutes to use his powers. Sometimes there would be animals to kill, but there doesn’t seem to be anything today. He’s grateful for that much.

“Today is about control,” he says. “You need to be able to call forth your powers without hesitation, and rein them back in quickly. When I raise my hand, unleash them. When I lower it, control them.”

That sounds impossible. It takes a few minutes to call the creature out into the world, and it won’t go back until it’s fed. Alone in this room, it might feed on him. Is this linked to his pills? The idea that taking them could have saved him is so ironic that he nearly laughs.

Backing out now will only expose his siblings, so he just nods and steps into the room. If he dies, Five better figure out what happened and go back and tell his idiot ass to take the pill. He’s owed a few more years.

The door is locked behind him, and he takes a deep, shaky breath as he turns around to face his father. After a moment’s pause, he raises his hand.

Ben thinks about dying. If he dies, his monster will be trapped in the other world, unable to get back into this one and unable to hurt any more people.

Except it only hurt people when he asked it to. And he only asked them to when his father told him to.

He wonders then, as he feels so forced into this position, if the monster under his skin is a monster at all. Is he forcing it as much as he is being forced?

There is a stirring in his belly, a feeling that can only be the portal. He’s never felt it so quickly before.

Hello, Ben thinks. Do you want to come out?

He’s not sure where this is coming from, but the more he sees his father’s gaslighting, his manipulations, the less he wants to scream and tear at the creature he shares his body with.

The first tentacle bursts out, and it doesn’t hurt at all. Then the others are following, and his father looks almost impressed as they wind around the bunker. There is no target to chase, the creature just seems to be exploring.

What are you looking for? He thinks, and realises it does not sound like English. He understands it perfectly, but it’s like no language he’s ever heard from the other ghosts that follow Klaus around. There’s no one here but me.

One of the tentacles whips back around and gently brushes at his arm like a cat.

Friend.

He understands this, feels the word unfurl in his head like a flower, flooding him with warmth instead of fear.

His father lowers his hand.

You have to go now, he tells them in this new language that seems to come so naturally. You have to go home.

And they retreat, just like that. They creep back across the walls and the floor and slip back under his skin. As they do, he feels the numbness through his body. His bones must have cracked as they always do, but there was absolutely no feeling this time.

Through the door, his father narrows his eyes at him. His expression is equal parts interest and suspicion.

Ben smiles, actually smiles, dizzily back at him.

The game has just changed. Big time.

Chapter Text

Ben stands in the bunker room, his body feeling loose and light, if a little shaky. As his father notes something down in his little book on the other side of the door, he runs a hand over his stomach and feels a slight ripple beneath the skin. There is no pain. Just a slight hollowed-out feeling at his centre, like something has left a hole, except it’s not necessarily bad.

Why was he never kind to them before?

Well, he knows the answer to that. Kindness always got squashed fast at the Academy. They weren’t even encouraged to be kind to each other, let alone to the inhuman creature that ripped apart their enemies. His father would just shout at him until he was shouting at the creature, forcing it out of its own world.

Now he thinks about it, it wasn’t so bad when he had just discovered it. Terrifying, of course, because fucking tentacles were bursting out of his body at inopportune moments and he was so small that he would buckle under their force, but it was only when he started forcing it that it turned painful and violent. It was only when he forced it that using it would have him screaming in agony, that the stirring under his skin would make him sick, that he would spend the night in so much pain that he had to sneak into bed with Klaus and let him whisper reassuring words in the dark.

It’s only been one round, but his father steps forward and unlocks the door. Ben has never been in here such a short time before. He’s suddenly filled with fear that he’s fucked up, done something too unexpected, too advanced. If his father begins to suspect that he hasn’t taken the pill, or worse, that he’s not thirteen in the same sense he was before, the consequences will be disastrous. He waits for his dad to say something, for their scheme to collapse around him because he couldn’t think ahead for five minutes.

His father appraises him for a moment, face neutral, then speaks. “Impressive,” he says. His expression is blank. “Have your strategies changed?”

“I just feel calmer,” Ben replies, which is true now , but certainly wasn’t a few minutes ago. He’s supposed to think he’s taking anti-anxiety medication, so he may as well act like he’s fallen for the trick. “I wasn’t scared today.”

His father pauses a moment, then nods in what seems to be approval. “You’re dismissed,” he tells him, and the little part of Ben that still feels like a real thirteen year old aches for some kind of actual praise or warmth. He knows his father is a terrible man, that he will never show them any kind of real love, but damn if he doesn’t want to make him proud just once.

But he can’t, and he’s dismissed, so he scurries back upstairs to his room.

He’ll have a few free hours now. He’s expected to spend them educating himself to an acceptable standard, but there’s nothing to teach himself now. He learnt it all a long time ago, and he’s always been the smart type. Then he had died, and there was no way to learn anymore. The closest he had was the book that had been in his pocket when he died, which had travelled into the great unknown with him, and even The Book Thief can only be reread so many times when Klaus isn’t up to talking. The irony of Death’s narration never fails him. He’d only had it with him because The Bell Jar was getting harder and harder to read for reasons even he didn’t understand. That made more sense later on, when he had hung in the air like dust and wondered if he’d wanted this.

Maybe it’s time to read a new book. He’s changed the timeline enough already, a new book won’t hurt.

Ben leaves his room again. The house is so big that he doesn’t know where the rest of his siblings are right now. At least one of them will be in training with their dad now, and he hopes he isn’t too harsh to them. Vanya seems to have shut herself in her room.

He heads downstairs to their beautiful library, one of only three rooms in the house he feels safe in. It might slightly overtake Klaus’s room, but he’s not going to tell him that.

It’s not like it’s his fault that his father’s study is on the way there, and he really had assumed his father would be away training one of the others. But no, he’s in there, and through the closed door, Ben can hear him speaking.

He hadn’t been planning to listen in, but something catches his attention.

“If Ben is gaining control like that, there’s no need for those pills,” Pogo is saying. “He isn’t a concern.”

Ben freezes out in the hallway, pressing himself into the alcove between the study door and the wall. For the first time, he really wishes he was still invisible to everyone but Klaus. What does Pogo mean, a concern?

“Or he gains too much control,” his father replies. “He could pose a deliberate threat.”

“I would urge you to give him placebos, Sir,” Pogo sounds worried, but not forceful. “Or actual anxiety medication.”

Bingo. Whatever he’s supposed to be taking, it’s bad. It’s vindication and terror all in one.

“Nonsense,” Reginald says. “We can’t stop the process now.”

“Sir-”

“You’re dismissed,” Reginald says sharply, and something in his body language that Ben can’t see must be threatening, because the door is opening before he can scramble out of sight into the next room.

The moment where Pogo makes eye contact with him out in the hall seems to last forever. Ben stands frozen, shoulder jabbing painfully into the doorframe, just out of sight of his father. Pogo looks back at him, his face a mask.

Please don’t sell me out , Ben thinks. I don’t want it to end this way.

Pogo closes the door to the study behind him, and silently beckons Ben to follow him down the hall. He does so on shaking legs.

He leads him down to the kitchen, then looks at him with an expression that’s closer to fondness than irritation.

“How much of that did you hear?”

“Enough,” he replies, because he’s in the mood to be difficult now, and maybe he can trick something else out of Pogo. “What the hell are those pills?”

Pogo sighs deeply, like it’s of great pain to him, and takes a seat at the table. Ben sits down opposite, folding his hands in his lap.

“Did you take it last night?”

“No,” he snaps, quickly running out of patience. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Did Grace tell you not to?”

Okay, that throws him for a loop. “What?” He manages, not wanting to expose her, but honestly unable to come up with a decent response. “Why would she-”

“I already know she did, Ben,” Pogo says, and gives him a warm smile that soothes his anxiety just a little. “This is all going to stay between us.”

Ben isn’t certain he should believe that, but almost all his secrets seem to be out anyway (bar the most important one: that he is from the future) and it all seems rather futile, so he just nods. “Did you make her say that?”

“She decided to say that on her own,” Pogo says. “Diego’s right about her, you know. She’s not just a robot.”

“Why has this never happened before?” Ben asks. “She’s not supposed to go against dad.”

“Her code was too strict,” Pogo says. “Too well designed. She may never have wanted to do the things she did, but she couldn’t go against it until I...altered her coding.”

“You made her do it?” Ben squeaks, failing to keep the surprise out of his voice.

“No,” Pogo replies. “I hoped she would. I just loosened the codes and allowed her to make her own decisions.”

“She’s conscious,” Ben breathes. “You gave her free will.”

Pogo smiles at him, says nothing.

“You wanted her to tell me not to take that pill,” he whispers. “What is it, Pogo?”

Pogo looks so tired. “It’s poisonous,” he says, and Ben’s heart drops.

“You’re killing me?” Ben whispers, and he sounds so pathetic that he wants to scream.

“No,” Pogo says hastily. “That’s not the plan.”

“What is the plan?” Ben hisses, because even if he’s telling the truth now, he pressed that pill into his hand yesterday without any kind of signal, and he couldn’t have been certain his mom would step in. “What are you doing to me?”

“Hopefully nothing,” Pogo says. “Your father is worried that your power could pose a risk to you and people around you. The pills are minuscule doses of a very specific poison that will build up over time and hopefully kill the monster when it surfaces. Once it was dead, we would save you.”

Even though he’s only just changed his attitude on them, Ben places a protective hand over his stomach. “How can you know what’ll happen? What if it kills me too?” He’s not willing to disclose his thoughts on them at this point.

“It was a risk he was willing to take,” Pogo tells him. “He acknowledged that we could potentially cause you harm, but after your performance at the mission yesterday, he was more concerned about the threat you posed. In a way, Ben, he’s trying to save your life.”

“By poisoning me?” Ben says incredulously. “He couldn’t give a shit about my life.” It’s a confidence he’s never shown before, and it surprises him as much as it surprises Pogo.

“I was against this plan,” he replies. “Especially now you’re showing such control. But if you were to lash out and hurt him-”

“I would never !” Ben says, even though this is making him seriously consider it.

“Ben-”

He doesn’t want to hear this anymore.

“Thank you for changing mom’s code,” he chokes out, then hightails it out of the kitchen.

He finds himself at Klaus’s door, because of course he does. And of course, Klaus opens it the second he calls him, even if he’s still upset with him.

“Hey,” Klaus says. “You look pale as fuck.” His eyes narrow, slight panic creeping onto his features. “You didn’t die again, right?”

“Not yet,” Ben sighs, heading in without asking and sprawling out on the bed. Klaus, for all his faults, seems to forget any bad blood between them immediately and comes to sit at his side, concern in his eyes.

“You gotta stop that, Benny boy,” Klaus says, affection creeping back into his tone. “I’m supposed to be the morbid one around here.”

“Dad’s poisoning me,” he says, morose. It’s as good a way to start the conversation as any.

“What?!” Klaus sits up straighter. “Did I hear that right?”

“He and Pogo gave me a pill last night,” Ben starts to reel off, because he’s thought about it so much that he can hardly stand going into the details. “They said it was anxiety medication. Mom told me not to take it. Pogo just told me it’s poison.”

“Oh my god, I really need to get high,” Klaus groans.

“Absolutely not,” Ben says, hitting him in the knee. “I need you sober right now.”

“Ugh, fine,” Klaus says, then winks at him. “Only for you.”

“They’re not trying to kill me,” Ben says. “And Pogo altered mom’s code so she could tell me not to take it. Dad is trying to kill…” He gestures at his stomach, unsure what to call the creature that resides there. Monster doesn’t seem right anymore.

“Jesus Christ!” Klaus flops down next to him on the bed, so they’re lying face to face. “When is the world gonna give you a break?”

“Never,” Ben sighs. “Not in a million years.”

“You’re not gonna take those pills, right?” Klaus asks suddenly, worry creeping back onto his face, a hand suddenly clasping Ben’s wrist. “I mean, if you’re keeping them, and you took them all at once-”

“Um, no?” Ben says, frowning. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you don’t want to be here,” Klaus says desperately, looking like he might cry as he drops his wrist. “You said it yourself, you hate it!”

“I’m not going to kill myself!” Ben says incredulously.

Klaus turns to look at him properly, his eyes bright with tears as he remembers the terrible thing Ben had confessed all those years ago.

“You did before.”

And he falls back into the memory.

It had been such a normal mission. The weather was hot and his clothes had stuck to him all that day as he had sat with his siblings in the courtyard, sipping lemonade prepared by their mom. They hadn’t been talking much, which was fine by him, because he had been reading his book.

There was no table to put it on and no time to go inside when they were called to the robbery at the art gallery in the city, and he had too much respect for his stories to leave it on the floor, so he had simply shoved it into his hoodie pocket for safekeeping and followed the others down the street. It was too close to drive to, or he would have left it in the car.

It wasn’t even that dangerous. It wasn’t even that gory.

So he’s not sure why it was that one that tore him apart in every sense of the word.

If he’d known he was going to die, his last words to each of his siblings would probably have been more significant. But he hadn’t, so he’d left Klaus at his lookout spot with a fond “Don’t fuck up,” and left everyone else on the mission that day with a “Yeah, okay”. However hard he tried, he could never remember what he’d said to Vanya.

He had followed the usual routine. No one had fucked up, or put so much as a foot wrong. He hadn’t even protested when they had left the criminals in a sideroom with a door with a lock for him to deal with.

There had been so many beautiful paintings in there. Paintings that he had ruined with his blood, which society mourned far more than they did him.

The criminals hadn’t been unconscious that time, which always made him feel sick to his stomach. He would never forget the faces or the screams of the people he killed when they were awake. God, he had felt so hopeless that day. The darkness had been dragging him down for weeks, collecting like a pit in his belly, And now he didn’t want to kill those men, or ruin those paintings, or hurt anymore.

The emergence of the tentacles almost stunned him. He hadn’t been thinking properly about releasing them, but here they were anyway, and he was suddenly terrified of losing control.

He’d forgotten to take the damn book out of his pocket. Pages drifted to the ground like feathers as the monstrous thing he shared his body with hung in the air, and the sight of his shredded book had been the final shove.

He hated this, he had thought. He hated himself. He didn’t want to do this anymore. He was a violent, broken thing, and he was done with it all.

He despised it all so much that it made him shake.

The men were dead. Their blood had ruined the paintings already, the only beautiful things in this room. He couldn’t see the sky in the landscapes past the red.

He destroyed everything beautiful. His book, the paintings, the lives of these poor men around him. They didn’t have to be here. Neither did he, anymore.

He hadn’t decided it consciously.

The monster had, in a way that monsters rarely do, taken pity on him.

There had only been the briefest flash of panic as they changed directions, lunged towards him instead, and there was a strange poetry, he thought, in the fact that he was feeling everything he had inflicted on all those people over the years.

It had hurt so much. He couldn’t believe he had done this over and over. So he didn’t try to stop them, even though he was terrified.

They didn’t tear him to pieces, or let him die instantly. Maybe they needed time to get back to their own world before he died and took the portal within him away.

When they finally retreated, he had lain on his back on the slick floor as the pool of blood grew around him. His torso, he had seen out of the corner of his eye, was barely there. His throat had been mangled.

Someone else’s words had appeared in his mind then. “The floor seemed wonderfully solid,” the words had said. “It was comforting to know I had fallen, and could fall no farther.” Strange last thoughts to have, the words of a book he would never finish.

Then the door had burst open, and Allison had screamed like she was the one being torn to pieces, and Diego had slipped in the blood but scrambled over to him anyway, smearing it across his knees, and Luther had his head in his hands and was saying something over and over.

“You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay…”

He had not been okay. He couldn’t move, couldn’t keep up with the words flying around the room, and the fly on the light and the blood on the paintings.

Diego had tried and tried to force a sentence out, but he couldn’t make a single word make sense. Ben had watched him through fading vision, resting in the crook of Luther’s elbow, wanting to lend him all the thousands of words he had taken from books over the years, even though that didn’t make any sense, you couldn’t give someone words, but he would never get a chance to use them, and they were all in his head in a jumble, and what a waste, what a waste.

Allison had called for help, the only one of them remotely useful in a crisis, even if she knew there was nothing to be done.

He had felt so small then, staring up at his wonderful siblings, bright and brilliant and alive as he felt himself fade away.

And then someone had hold of his hand, and was holding it so tightly that it would have hurt if his whole body hadn’t been screaming in agony already. He wanted Klaus, but Klaus was outside on lookout. Out in the sunshine, with no idea of the awful thing happening inside.

“No no no no nonononono,” the person had said, and he had tried to turn his head to see them, but Luther had gently held him in place, shushing him.

“Ben, it’s okay, just stay still,” Luther had said, and a tear dropped off his chin and hit his face. Behind him, Diego sat mute, his eyes glazed and his mouth slightly open in an expression of utter horror.

Allison must have been the one holding his hand, except she couldn’t have been, because she was stroking his hair and whispering things he didn’t understand, and he couldn’t figure out why it didn’t make any sense.

“It’ll be over soon,” Luther had whispered, his voice as agonised as Ben. “Just be brave, it’s nearly over.”

“Don’t say that!” The other voice had cried, the one belonging to the person holding his hand, and he still couldn’t place it. “He’ll be fine!”

“Klaus…” Allison had sobbed then, and finally, finally he had put a name and a face to the voice. Klaus was there. Klaus had come in from lookout. It was so selfish to want someone to watch you die, but he had needed Klaus there more than anything. “Klaus, look at him!”

They had started arguing, and Luther had tried to distract him from the shouting with more talking. Klaus had never once let go of his hand.

“Ben, I’m here,” Klaus had said when he turned his attention back to him. “You just focus on my voice, alright? Don’t you go anywhere.”

Allison had leaned in then, her hair tickling his cheek as she whispered into his ear, “I heard a rumour you weren’t in any more pain”.

And he had looked up at Klaus’s face at last, so glad to see him, so glad he could say goodbye, and he had smiled, and he had died.

Chapter Text

It’s been a long time since Ben remembered that afternoon in such vivid detail. He can almost taste the blood in his mouth as he speaks.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice faint. “That’s not what’s happening here.”

Klaus wipes at his eyes. “It better not be,” he says. “I don’t think I can stand losing you again.”

“You have to stop pretending this isn’t happening,” Ben tells him, feeling sadness and frustration stir in his gut. “It’s...just the way it is.”

“So you’re going to let that monster rip you to pieces again, just because Five says you have to?” Klaus shakes his head.

“It won’t be the same,” Ben says. “And, uh, it might not be a monster. In that sense, anyway.”

Klaus holds up a hand. “Okay, stop for a second. Do you have any more bombshells to drop after this one or can we have a break after you explain what that means?”

“Mom has free will,” Ben says weakly.

Klaus gives him an incredulous look, then sighs. “Okay, yeah. That’ll make Diego happy, at least. He could do with some cheering up.”

Ben feels a little guilty that he hasn’t noticed whatever’s going on with Diego, but in his defence, his life is flying off the rails more every second.

“Back to the, uh, tentacles?” Klaus says. “Do explain.”

He hops onto his feet, a little lighter. The terrible secrets had really been starting to weigh him down, and it’s refreshing to have something nice to share for a change. Even if it is batshit insane.

“Let’s get the others,” he says. “I’m done repeating myself.”

Klaus grins, seemingly cheered up a little after recalling the thing they never talk about. “Where is this confidence coming from?”

Ben smiles back at him as he heads into the hall to round up the others.

-

“What exactly is all this?” Luther asks, leaning back in his chair. “Ben, it’s freezing up here.”

They’re sitting in the courtyard on the roof, everyone dotted around on chairs or the ground, except for Ben, who is pacing back and forth in front of them like he’s their leader.

He’s not sure what’s gotten into him, but he rather likes it.

“I have a lot to fill you in on,” he says. “Vanya and Klaus know some of it.”

“Does stuff just happen to you every time I look away?” Luther asks. “I swear I’m gonna stop letting you out of my sight.”

“It’s coincidence!” Ben protests.

He tells it chronologically, starting with being given the little pill last night, with their mom telling him not to take it. Diego’s smile of triumph as he confirms what he’s always thought makes him a little happier, despite everything terrible surrounding it.

Five seems largely unsurprised by the story, his reactions far more controlled than everyone else’s expressions of horror.

“So he’s poisoning you, huh?” Five says, raising an eyebrow. “Every time I think there’s a line he won’t cross…”

“He’s poisoning the monster.” Luther says quietly. He looks horrified, but he seemingly can’t help but make the correction.

“The monster is a part of Ben,” Allison says. “Kill it, kill him.”

“It’s not a monster,” Ben blurts out, which is absolutely not how he meant to broach this particular topic.

He’s immediately met with six pairs of wide eyes.

“Um,” Diego says. “Did you hit your head?”

“Let him speak,” Vanya says, though she’s clearly doing it out of sympathy rather than genuine belief in him.

“Earlier in training, I tried a different strategy. And I talked to them! They called me their friend.” Now he’s saying it, it sounds insane, but he stands his ground.

Diego shakes his head. “That’s bullshit!”

“It’s not bullshit,” Ben replies, letting a little irritation slip into his voice. “It didn’t hurt and I had control. Complete control.”

Luther shakes his head. “It’s one experience, Ben,” he says. “You don’t really know what they’re like.”

“I know better than you do!” Ben snaps. “You’ve never experienced it!”

“I don’t need to,” Luther says. “I saw you die. In my arms .”

“Luther, let Ben-” Five starts.

“You weren’t there, Five!” Luther shouts. “You didn’t see what those things did to him! They killed him!”

“I killed myself!” Ben shouts back.

Luther reels back like he’s been hit, and Ben puts his hands over his mouth like he’s trying to push the words back in. Klaus has told them before what he had done, but they’d never once believed he was even there, let alone the awful truth of what he had brought onto himself.

“It was an accident,” he says weakly. “I was upset and they thought they were helping.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Ben sees Five’s face crumple just before he disappears in a flash of blue light.

“You meant to do that?” Diego whispers. “Klaus wasn’t lying?” He looks devastated.

Klaus scoffs and rolls his eyes. His hands are curled into fists.

“I didn’t think that would happen,” Ben says honestly, eyes fixed on the spot Five has just disappeared from. “I let them out, and I was thinking...pretty dark stuff, and I guess they thought they were helping.”

Diego closes his eyes.

“God, Ben,” Luther says, looking at him like he’s searching for the person Ben had been when he took matters into his own hands.

Allison keeps opening her mouth to say something, then closing it again. There are comforting words lost in the air between them.

They’re all looking at him like they don’t know what to say.

Behind Luther, Vanya looks up and gives him a sad, but encouraging smile. There’s something knowing behind it. He’s always suspected she had either believed Klaus or guessed the truth on her own.

Ben suddenly desperately wants Five. His mad, brittle, arrogant brother is the one person he’d like to be talking to right now, and he’s disappeared.

“I should go and check on Five,” Ben says quietly. “He seemed upset.”

“Ben…” Allison says, but he can’t listen to their sympathetic voices and feel all their eyes on him for a moment longer, so he slips past her and back into the house to look for Five. As the door closes, he sees Klaus lean into Diego’s shoulder with a hopeless look on his face.

Ben had been anticipating having to search the house, but as soon as he’s climbed back onto the top floor of their house, he hears movement inside his own room. The little shit is trespassing.

He opens his door gently, and catches Five standing by his bookshelf, holding one of his books tightly in both hands. He can’t see the cover, but he can see that Five is upset.

“What are you doing in here?” Ben asks, and Five jumps a little, then covers it up.

“You have so many books,” he says, which isn’t an answer. “How did you find time to read all of these?”

“I didn’t,” he replies, closing his door behind him as he comes in. “I just kept stuff I thought I’d read one day. I’ve read maybe half of them.”

Five smiles a little, looking at the stacks of books on every surface and filling the shelves. “Still more than I’ve even read the backs of,” he says eventually.

“I had an extra few years with my books,” Ben offers, and Five stiffens a little.

“Before you killed yourself.”

Ben sighs. “Yeah.” He sits down on the bed, and Five hesitates for a moment before sitting down next to him.

“Vanya never said any of that stuff in her book,” Five sighs. “I had no idea Klaus told people that.”

“They agreed not to talk about it,” he tells him. “I was there. It sucked.”

Five shakes his head. “I feel like all I say to you is that I’m sorry these days,” he muses. “I’m sure that’s getting dull for both of us.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben says, part teasing and part genuine. He knows this revelation has hurt his siblings, like it had hurt Klaus when he’d told him.

Five smirks. “Shut up,” he says, then sobers a little. “You don’t have to apologise, Ben. Not to me, anyway.”

“Thanks,” he says, picking at the thread of one of his cushions. He likes the feel of it between his fingers, a little reminder that he is still a part of this world. “I think I might have to say sorry to the others. They never believed Klaus.”

“That’s their problem,” Five points out. He pauses for a second, like he’s trying to decide if something is worth saying. “I would have believed him, I think.”

“Yeah?”

Five looks a little uncomfortable. “I found your statue before I found Vanya’s book,” he says. “When I realised you had died before the apocalypse, my first guess was suicide.”

“You called it before I did,” Ben says, with a small grin. “I didn’t even guess I was going to do it.”

Five shrugs. “You were always quiet and a bit sad. I knew how much you hated what Dad made you do. And you were always reading really grim books.”

“They’re not all grim!” Ben protests.

“The morning I disappeared you were reading a book about the death penalty and life imprisonment instead of eating dinner,” Five shoots back. “I listened when you talked about it. We were thirteen!”

“It was a good book!” he says, trying not to laugh.

Five flips over the book he’s holding. “Okay, this one sounds even worse. The Metamorphosis ? Were you projecting?”

“Oh, knock it off,” Ben says affectionately. “You don’t get to tease me. I’m a dead man walking.”

Five smiles a little tightly, like it’s not very funny.

“Sorry,” Ben says quietly.

“I said stop apologising,” Five says, and it’s probably supposed to be jokey, but it comes out a little snappy. “I don’t blame you for what you did. And I won’t blame you if you do it again.”

“It’s impossible to avoid anyway,” Ben replies, suddenly feeling unsure. Does he want to do it again, when he could step away from that pain? What if he just didn’t?

“I don’t understand that,” Five says, pushing his hair back. “If you killed yourself, it should have been an independent decision. It shouldn’t be fixed in the timeline.”

“Maybe I’m just meant to kick the bucket,” Ben smiles crookedly and nudges him. “The world can only tolerate so much of me.”

“It’s the pretentious books,” Five says lightly, then sniffs. “You had to be stopped before you started talking in quotes.”

Ben snorts. Five smiles and wipes at his eyes a little. Neither of them comment on his damp cheeks or sleeves.

They don’t say anything for a while. Eventually, Five hands over the book he’s been holding and disappears again, leaving Ben sat on his bed surrounded by his books, which it seems are just as morbid and tragic as he is.

He meets Klaus in the hallway as they walk downstairs to dinner. They fall into step next to each other the same way they always have, before Ben died and after it, the only difference being the grip he keeps on the bannister that reminds him he’s here and serves as an extra safety net if he falls.

“Are you angry with me?” Ben asks as they reach the first floor.

Klaus frowns. “Nah,” he says. “I’m tired of angry. I can’t keep being mad at you when everything is so horrible. I’m just worried. And I don’t get it, really.” His eyes are flickering around the house, and Ben wishes he could still see the spirits that Klaus does, could still play interference if they crossed a line. “How can you trust them, after everything they did to you?”

“They’re a part of me,” he replies. “And if I’m right, then I’ve been too cruel to them for too long. I’ve done exactly what Dad did!”

“You’re not like Dad,” Klaus tells him as they walk down the next set of stairs. “Ben, you’re nothing like him.”

“I thought you didn’t believe me.”

“I don’t think this is a safe idea,” he says. “But I do trust you. And I know that if anything happens to you, I’m making Five go back and fix it.”

There’s no time to reply before they reach the dining room and have to be silent.

Eating still isn’t easy. Their dinner this evening comes with a lemony sauce that he really has to try not to gag on. The tension doesn’t help. He’s glad he’s cleared the air with Five and Klaus, who treat him as they always do, and selfishly glad that Vanya is Vanya and some part of her understands that numb desperation that used to sit in his chest like a stone. The others just keep stealing looks at him, like if they don’t keep an eye on him he’s going to do it all over again.

Ben doesn’t look at his father. He can’t, now that he knows the truth. It still feels strange and foreign, that his father is poisoning him, even if it is supposedly to kill the creature and spare his life. Why does his father suddenly want to sacrifice his powers? They’ve always been so useful, even when he hated them.

His food is going cold, but no one comments. He’s always been prone to fits of getting lost in his own head. It drove them mad when he was alive. Death made him a better listener if nothing else.

He’s stuck in his head just far enough that when Vanya drops her fork on the floor, the sound makes him jump out of his skin.

“Number Seven!” Their dad says sharply.

“Sorry,” Vanya mutters, and goes to pick it up.

“Useless,” he says under his breath.

And their father’s glass shatters.

It’s like watching in slow motion as the shards fly out from the centre of the wine glass. A little fragment slices Luther across the hand, another landing in Diego’s food. Most of the rest is scattered across the table.

There is a long moment where all Ben can hear is a faint ringing sound and someone letting out a long held breath.

All of a sudden, his whole body is humming like the strings of Vanya’s violin. Something deep within calls out to something just out of reach.

He looks over at Vanya, who looks like a deer caught in the headlights. Her eyes are still brown, but there’s a little flicker of silver in them that’s not normally there.

They’ve really blown it now.

At the other end of the table, their father stares with an expression that is the closest thing Ben has ever seen on his face to fear.

Chapter Text

The drinking glasses are still ringing when their father carefully gets out of his chair and stands at the end of the table. He doesn’t look imposing. He looks old.

 Behind him, Ben sees the tremble at the edge of their mother’s perfect, neutral smile. Don’t blow your cover, he silently begs her. You’re our secret weapon.

 Her face stays pleasantly blank. As nice as it would be for their mother to step in and defend them, it’s too big a risk.

 “Number Seven,” their father says eventually. “Have you been taking your medication?”

 There’s no reply. Vanya has closed her eyes, and she’s breathing heavily.

 Across the table, Allison looks terrified. She’s frozen in place in her seat, eyes huge, and she’s holding one hand protectively over her throat, in what he thinks is an unconscious action. Ben’s heart aches for her. He knows how vulnerable she feels, like her skin is too fragile and she could be ripped up like paper. She might have survived her injury, but it’s a trauma that doesn’t let you forget it. He feels the same vulnerability, and Vanya wasn’t even responsible for what happened to him.

 Ben gives her a little nod, mouths It’s okay.

 “Vanya,” Klaus says gently. He’s about to say something else, but before any words can come out, there’s a little thud that must be Diego kicking him under the table. Quick thinking. They’re not supposed to know about Vanya’s powers.

 The glasses stop rattling, and everyone lets out sighs of relief. Vanya opens her eyes, and the silver is gone. She’s controlling it, thank god.

 “Number Seven, answer me!” Their father starts to walk towards her, and every single one of their siblings is drawn towards her like a magnet. Ben finds himself right at her side, and he interlinks their fingers and squeezes. They’re standing shoulder to shoulder at the head of the table, the others clustered around them.

 “I haven’t been taking it,” Vanya says, her voice just about steady. “It makes me feel ill.”

 Good excuse. He’s so tense he can hardly breathe.

 Their father steps forward again, and Ben instinctively steps in front of Vanya. He doesn’t say a word, just holds eye contact with his father. His whole body is still humming. I could kill him, he thinks, a little electric thrill at the idea of freeing them all. He can’t do it, he knows he can’t. Their father has to live to keep the last threads of the timeline intact. Even if that wasn’t the case, he’s not sure he could do it. Killing a familiar face, however much he hates him, is a step too far.

But their father is not privy to this internal battle. All he sees is a girl with terrible, destructive powers who is angry at him, and the little, powerful group that has formed around her. A girl who can bend reality to her will on her left, a boy who has tamed the eldritch horrors inside him on her right. They are a little army, and he is just one man.

 This can only go so far, Ben knows. They may win this battle, but they still have to live with him and go on missions. The war rages on.

 Luther takes Vanya’s other hand. His palm is still bleeding a little where the glass sliced it, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

 It’s a fucking revolution.

 “Did you tell her, Number Three?” He turns his attention to Allison.

 “No,” she says, and her voice is still trembling with fear. “I didn’t say anything.”

 “I figured it out on my own,” Vanya says. “I can control it.”

 “You broke a glass.”

 “That was deliberate,” Vanya replies. It’s a lie, and either the smartest or dumbest thing she could have said in this moment. “I’m sorry.”

 He evaluates them all for a moment. It must be clear that anything he does to Vanya will come back at him sixfold. There’s no turning the tables back now.

 “That was irresponsible,” he says. “Idiotic. You could be dangerous.”

 “Leave her alone,” Luther says in a choked whisper like he isn’t certain he wants to be saying it. He looks like he wants to say more but their father casts him such a dreadful look that he goes silent again immediately.

 Ben sees their mother smile slightly whilst their father has his back turned.

 “Very well,” their father says, like it physically pains him to be anything other than outright cruel. “Downstairs, please.”

 Ben looks over at Vanya, and he’s sure that the expression of fear on her face is a perfect mirror of his. They both know what that bunker is like, but as far as he knows, none of the others have been in there.

 “I heard a rumour-” Allison starts, but their father holds a hand up to silence her, looking unimpressed.

 “It won’t work on people prepared against it,” he says. “You can’t trick someone who is waiting to be tricked. Downstairs now.”

 There’s nothing else they can do. They can’t let this escalate further. Vanya could lose control or their father could get angrier and punish them worse. The repercussions are infinite and unpredictable. Taming the situation is the only way to keep the damned tieline intact, he realises. These fantasies of an all-out rebellion, of fixing everything that had gone wrong, they’re impossible.

 So they follow him silently down the steps to the bunker. Ben sees his siblings’ eyes widen as they’re ushered in. This is entirely new for them.

 “You are to wait here,” their father says, his eyes burning holes in all of them. “Until I’ve made a decision.”

 There’s no time for anyone to say anything before he has locked them in and left.

 So here they are, standing in the little bunker below their house, almost all of their secret advantages gone. They’ve only been in this time a few days. Ben wants to cry.

 He doesn’t, because there are bigger fish to fry. The tension in this room is so thick that he almost wonders if Vanya is bringing the walls in around them with her power.

 “We need to start working on control,” Luther says eventually. “Urgently.”

 “I’m so sorry,” Vanya whispers. “He called me useless and I just…”

 “We’ve all been there,” Klaus drawls. “Most of us can’t break stuff with our minds though.”

 “For f-fuck’s sake,” Diego says, and stalks to a corner of the little room. “He could leave us down here to st- to starve, you realise?”

 “We could get out,” Ben says. “Vanya’s done it before.”

 Vanya winces.

 “He must know we could destroy each other,” he continues. “So why lock us all up together?”

 “There’s not a grand scheme behind everything, Ben,” Five sounds irritable. “This isn’t one of your books.”

“It’s just weird,” Ben replies, but drops the topic. He really doesn’t want to wind anyone up anymore. He puts his hand on the cool glass of the window, and starts feeling a strange sense of claustrophobia creep up his spine.

 “Are you okay?” Klaus asks, clearly noticing how on edge he is.

 “Yeah,” he replies distractedly. Three days ago, he could have walked through that wall. He hasn’t felt this trapped in a long time. “Yeah, fine. What do we do now?” Despite all his newfound confidence, he’s still not a leader.

 “We wait,” Luther says. “We’ve done enough wrong now.”

 “We haven’t done anything wrong, Luther!” Diego snaps. “When are you going to figure that out?”

 Luther looks on the verge of tears.

 “Stop it,” Allison says, speaking up at last. She still looks badly shaken, and she’s keeping a wary distance from Vanya, but her tone is still calm. “Luther never got punished before.”

 Allison’s opinions tend to settle things, and Ben is grateful that this is no exception. There’s a heavy quiet, and Klaus sighs and sits down on the floor.

 “Are you controlling it now?” Five asks Vanya. “We’re not gonna blow up in here?”

 “No one’s blowing up,” Ben says. “We’re fine, she’s calming down.”

 Vanya frowns. “Yeah...how did you know that?”

 “I didn’t,” he replies, and the answer is coming to him as he says it. “I think our powers are interacting.”

 “What?!” Luther looks alarmed. “We’re locked in a tiny room and you’re just now mentioning that the tentacles are awake?”

 “What do you mean interacting ?” Diego asks, a little too loudly for comfort. Ben shivers. God, this room is so small . The walls are so solid.

 “They’re reaching out,” he says, and everyone else takes a nervous step back. “Vanya’s powers attract them or something.”

 “Oh for god’s sake,” Diego says. “Maybe you should both be taking those suppressants after all.”

“Hey!” Klaus says, surprising all of them. “Ben says it’s fine. So it’s fine.”

 Ben smiles at him, and he gives him a shaky smile in return. Klaus may be brash and loud and sometimes borderline unbearable, but he knows he has his back. Even when he doesn’t know he’s there.

 Two hours and nineteen minutes after he had died (the clock just seemed to keep running in his head) Ben had returned to the house. Five was nowhere nearby. He had hoped that meant he was alive somewhere. Or somewhen, a little voice had piped up in the back of his head, and his own startled laugh was such a strange and unfamiliar sound that he had jumped out of his strange, translucent skin.

 There was a hole clean through the middle of him. As he had drifted down the street, he’d stuck his hand through it, watched his fingers wiggle. His throat didn’t look much better.

 Ben didn’t know where his siblings had been before getting home, but when he blew in with the wind, they were only just arriving in the foyer. Luther had been practically carrying Klaus, who had collapsed into him like he couldn’t stand on his own. There was more blood on Klaus than there should have been, Ben had thought at the time. He must have tried to lift his body. Luther had held onto him tightly, tears streaming down his cheeks.

 “It’s my fault,” Luther had whispered, rubbing at the dry flakes of blood on his hands. “It’s my fault.”

 Diego hadn’t responded to that, already stalking off up the stairs, shrugging his bloodied blazer off like it was on fire. He had passed Vanya on the way. Vanya always came downstairs as they got back from missions. They had made fun of her for worrying. After Ben died, they never joked about it again.

 “What is?” Vanya had asked, watching Diego disappear. Her face had changed almost as soon as the words left her mouth. “Where’s Ben?”

 “I’m here,” Ben had said, his voice trembling. “Klaus, tell her I’m here!”

 Klaus hadn’t even looked at him. He had wondered if it was shock.

 “Number Six is no longer with us,” their father had said, his voice calm.

 “I’m still with you!” Ben had protested. He had known his father was cold, but he had expected some kind of reaction to his death. “Klaus!”

 The shower had turned on upstairs. Klaus still hadn’t looked at him.

 “Ben died, Vanya,” Allison had said, her voice gentle, and he had broken down. He had wanted to hug her so badly, to thank her for letting him have his name in death, for calling it a death instead of their father’s phrasing. They had all grieved, but Allison had kept his humanity, looked after it, so everyone remembered a boy had died, not a weapon been lost.

 “No,” Vanya had whispered. “That’s not funny, Allison!” Her eyes had searched all of them, looking for some sign that they were joking, and found only bloodstains and haunted expressions. “No! No!”

 “Klaus, please!” Ben had resorted to begging then. “Klaus, look at me!”

 Klaus had just stared straight ahead, eyes wild.

 “What happened?” Vanya had sobbed.

 “He couldn’t control his powers,” their father had said. “Number One had nothing to do with it.”

 Luther had looked at their father then with such reverence in his eyes. He had been absolved of the guilt.

 Diego had reappeared on the landing at the sound of the screams, hair damp and eyes red. His face was carefully blank, but Ben could see the cracks.

 There was nothing left to say after that. Nothing but the lie.

 Allison and Vanya had disappeared upstairs together. Diego had gone looking for their mom. Only his father, Klaus, and Luther were still in the foyer.

 “Clean yourselves up,” their father had decreed. “This kind of upset is what killed Number Six. You need to stay focused.” He didn’t have even a shred of sympathy or grief to share.

 “Bullshit!” Klaus had blurted out. “You got him killed! You forced him to go on these missions, and you never helped him control it!”

 “And how would you know that?” Their father hadn’t even looked upset.

 “I know,” Klaus had said, breathing heavily. “Because Ben just told me so.”

 “What?” Luther whispered.

 “What?” Ben echoed. “Klaus!”

 “Is Ben here?” Luther had looked around wildly. “Klaus, is he here?”

Even their father looked interested then.

 “Yes!” Ben had yelled, trying to direct his attention back. “Yes, I’m here!” Klaus could see him after all, thank god. He wasn’t alone. The relief that had flooded through him then was one of the greatest feelings, even though Klaus was lying for whatever reason. Unless he could hear Ben’s thoughts as well?

 “He’s over there,” Klaus had said, and he had pointed across the room to where Ben definitely wasn’t.

 “Klaus, no!” He had shouted. “I’m over here, what are you doing?”

 There had been a funny look in Klaus’s eyes. Anger, vengeance, grief, whatever it was, Ben had seen it and realised he was lying.

 “You don’t need to lie,” he had choked out, panic building up inside him. “You don’t need to lie, I’m here!”

 “He hates you,” Klaus had snapped. “He hates you because you killed him.” With that, he had stormed off, leaving Ben alone with Luther and his father and the words Klaus had put in his mouth.

 Their father had turned and walked into his study, and Luther had paused for a moment in the hall.

 “I’m sorry, Ben,” he had said to the empty spot that Klaus had pointed to, and Ben had dropped to the ground and screamed.

 By the time he got through for real, the damage was done.

Klaus has his back. Always. But Ben wishes he wouldn’t speak for him.

 The memory is pushing down on his back, and the walls are closing in. He wishes he could walk straight through them, but the idea of losing his voice, his place in the group all over again, is so terrifying that it pushes him deeper into the spiral.

 He feels a little nudge near his ribcage, something gentle and slow against his racing heart. It makes him laugh, despite everything.

 “What is it?” Klaus asks, and there aren’t really words to explain, so he doesn’t say anything, just lets the tentacle push out and wind its way out from under his shirt.

 “Shit!” Luther jumps back. “Ben!”

“It’s fine,” Ben says softly, and the tentacle winds up and pushes his hair off his forehead. He hadn’t realised he was sweating, but his face feels cooler and lighter. “See?”

 “Well, damn,” Five says. “Maybe you’re not completely delusional. Maybe.”

 As if Five’s trust has given them permission, the other tentacles start to wind out. They’re large, and damn heavy, but they hold themselves up pretty well. One curls itself around Klaus’s shoulders, allowing him to lean into it like a cushion against the wall. Klaus moves cautiously at first, then grins as he settles against it.

 They lurk around Vanya most of all. Winding around everyone’s feet like cats, they seem drawn to her.

 Powerful, they tell Ben. Protector. Or Protect her ? He isn’t certain.

 “This is insane,” Allison says, but she’s smiling. “Nicely done, Ben!”

 He feels a surge of affection for her, and it must translate somehow, because the tentacle she’s looking at wraps gently around her shoulders in what is almost a hug. Allison laughs, pats it. The feeling is a little strange, but not bad.

 Ben watches his siblings, feeling pride slowly start to replace the fear. Five has one wrapped around his torso, and he’s swatting at it a little, but smiling. Another seems to be gently wrestling with Diego. It’s playing, he thinks, because he’s seen the full strength of this creature and it could tear him to shreds if it wanted to.

 “This doesn’t hurt you?” Luther asks, laughing at the one that fluffs his hair. “Right?”

 “No,” Ben says. “Only when it fights back.”

 “Huh,” Luther says. “Neat.”

 “This is the weirdest damn group hug I’ve ever been in,” Klaus says. He adopts a mock, high-pitched voice. “Aww, you guys!”

 “Knock it off, Klaus,” Diego says, and Vanya snorts with laughter.

 In the end, it doesn’t even matter that their father leaves them in there all night. It’s the most they’ve laughed in years. Especially all together.

 He had probably expected them to look a little more traumatised when he comes down in the morning to find them sitting patiently in the bunker, tentacles reigned in and hidden once more.

 It hurts a little to see the smiles fade as he unlocks the door. Judgement day has arrived. They can laugh at their father all they want, but he still holds their fates in his hands.

 “Get up,” he says. “You have a mission.”

 Ben frowns. Sees six other identical frowns. He doesn’t remember this one.

 They start to trail out of the little room, Vanya hanging back.

 “You too, Number Seven,” he says. “You may be useful on this one.”

 Vanya’s eyes widen, but she steps forward with the rest of them.

 “Get fresh uniforms,” he says sharply. “You can’t go out in those crumpled ones. And don’t disappoint me today.”

 He’s gone as suddenly as he had arrived.

 They stare at each other for a moment, trying to discern if this is a victory.

 “Well,” Klaus says eventually. “Suit up, Vanya. Let’s get to work.”

Chapter Text

Situation: Four hostages at a cafe on the other side of town. Four hostage-takers. All are armed.

Objective: Rescue all hostages. Neutralise criminals. Do not hold back.

It’s not the kind of mission they usually get sent on. It’s what their father would call a small-scale situation, and it’s a decent distance away. Beneath them. It’s pretty screwed up in retrospect that any human lives are too mediocre for them to save. Ben supposes that they’re being sent on this mission now less out of any genuine care for the hostages and more to test them. With Vanya aware of her powers and Ben learning to tame his own, this mission is, above anything else, an experiment to their father.

It’s a little disquieting to think of their father’s complete disregard for the actual lives at stake, not to mention the danger he puts his own children in. It would be more upsetting if it wasn’t completely in character for him.

If there’s one thing he’s glad for, it’s that he is Number Six and Vanya is Number Seven. They’re in the car en route to their mission, and Vanya is clearly spiralling. She’s sitting in the window seat, holding onto his hand. He’s not the best comforter in the world, but she’s in the window seat and he’s the only person sitting next to her, so he supposes he’ll have to do. Just like he had to do for Klaus, because no one else would bother. A reassuring presence by sheer geographical convenience. Is there a better description of most of his existence?

Don’t spiral.

Ben squeezes her hand. They can’t talk, not whilst their father is listening, but he makes a mental note to talk to her later.

Five is on his other side and seems to be deep in his own thoughts. He’s not as haughty with them as he normally is. He’s still a little aloof, a little distant, but all that time away means Ben can’t really blame him for it. He knows his brother cares. His face when he found out Ben had killed himself had cracked the act wide open.

Ben lets him pretend. It’s easier that way.

The cafe is a little, slightly run-down place by the side of a quiet road, which makes it easy to park if nothing else. Two entrances. Both locked, but Luther rips the padlock straight off as soon as they reach the first door.

The hostages are apparently in the back room and the police aren’t here yet, so the main area is still and quiet. There are two unfinished plates of food at a table by the window. Two plates, two hostages. The others must be employees.

It frightens him. The idea that they had just been eating lunch before what is probably the most terrifying event of their lives had begun hits a little too close to home. A half finished meal, a half finished book. Death is a cruel fact.

“Ben? Vanya?” Allison turns to look at them. “Are you two okay?”

Ben tears his eyes away from the plates and nods. “I’m okay,” he says. “Who’s making first contact?”

Vanya hangs back, her face white. This is a heavy first mission.

“Allison and Five will go in first,” Luther says. “And Vanya, you don’t have to use your powers unless it’s absolutely necessary and you’re sure you can.”

“Dad won’t like that,” Diego sighs.

Luther swallows. “I know,” he says. “But he doesn’t know what’s best.”

Diego smiles at that. Even Vanya’s expression clears a little.

“Are we done talking?” Five says dryly. “We should really be getting to those hostages.”

“We’re done,” Allison says, and she and Five approach one of the two doors to the back, then slip in.

The others dart to the side, out of view of the door, and Ben finds himself next to Luther.

“You’ve gotten rebellious,” Ben observes as they stand side by side, pressing their backs into the peeling wallpaper. “It’s a good look on you.”

Luther shrugs. “I want to keep you all safe,” he says. “Doing what Dad wanted didn’t help you the first time around.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Ben replies, starting to edge towards the door as they wait for their signal.

“Now!” Allison calls, and their heart to heart is abandoned for their terrible job.

The rest of them run in to see the problem. Five is leaning against the wall, face pale, holding onto his arm. Blood is seeping between his fingers.

“I heard- I heard a rumour…” Allison is talking to one of the hostage takers, but her voice is shaking.

It works well enough anyway, because whilst he is distracted by her, Diego sends a knife straight through his chest. He squeezes the trigger as he falls, and there’s a hail of gunfire. Luther pulls Vanya down behind a counter, and Ben and Klaus duck, cringing at the sound.

The other three criminals take off, disappearing up a flight of stairs because there’s no way out of the front door without passing all seven of them. For the first time, Ben takes stock of the room, notices the four hostages by the counter. One of them is slumped over, blood seeping into the tiles from an injury to his stomach. He is pale, freckles standing out on his white cheek, and his breathing is very shallow. He’s quite young, Ben thinks. Maybe nineteen.

“Ben!” Allison calls to him, and he tears his eyes away from the wound and tries to forget how much he knows it hurts to bleed like that. How easy it would be for that to happen within moments. “We need to follow them!”

He nods, and turns to Five. “Are you okay?”

“It’s just a graze,” Five says. “I can’t teleport like this. I’ll look after the kid, go upstairs.”

He nods at him, and races up the stairs after the others.

They drive the criminals up to the roof. It’s what they’ve been taught to do- leave them nowhere to run, and sometimes the press will catch an epic fight on camera. Do not be too violent, they’ve been told. Not in front of the public. It’s irrelevant anyway. Ben is always covered in blood when the cameras start flashing. No wonder the kids never hold up drawings of him when they rally outside.

His focus is really awful lately.

“You’re those fucking superhero kids,” says the man furthest from him. “Aren’t there usually fewer of you?”

He angles his gun towards them.

“We can’t kill 13 year olds,” hisses another. “They’re just fucking kids, man.”

Klaus turns and smirks at Ben. If only they knew.

“They’re fucking freaks,” says the third. “The little one rips people to shreds!”

He’s the little one.

He does his best to set his face into a stubborn, tough expression without letting on how much those words sting.

“I heard a rumour you threw your guns off the roof,” Allison says, calm enough to contribute her voice again. Like clockwork, the men drop their weapons. They listen to the dull clank of them landing on the concrete below. There’s a little swell of voices after the fact. They have an audience, likely police and press.

It looks like it’s over until one of the men starts to run at them.

He’s going straight for Klaus, and Ben is obviously not letting that happen. He jumps forward, grabs the man’s arm, sees Luther grab the other. His feet are lifted straight off the ground, though Luther manages to stay planted on the ground.

“Vanya!” Diego shouts as Luther bends the man’s arm back at an awkward angle and Ben kicks a little pathetically at him. The other criminals are closing in, and Luther can’t take all of them at once, especially not if he’s protecting Ben. There’s too much shouting for Allison to rumour them easily.

Vanya cries out and flings her skinny arms forward. There’s a blast of sheer energy that ripples through the air across the roof. Luther lets go of the man as he flies backwards, towards the edge.

Ben is still caught in his grip as he is thrown over the side.

The man lets go of him, but it’s too late, he’s falling towards the concrete below so slowly but so quickly too. The sky swings upwards and he thinks I’m not ready, please not yet but braces for the end anyway.

And then he’s not falling anymore.

He is dangling halfway between the roof and the ground, arms and legs hanging limply out at the side. When he cautiously opens one eye, he sees a tentacle protruding from his torso. It stretches up above him, curls over the lip of the roof like an abseiling rope.

Just beyond it, five stunned faces look over the edge. He can’t really see the little details in their expressions, but Vanya has a hand over her mouth and Klaus is gripping his hair in both fists. Around him, he hears cameras flashing and people shouting. When he twists his head, he sees that the hostage takers are all on the ground. Poor Vanya. No one should have to kill, let alone on their first mission.

“Are you okay?” Diego shouts down.

“I’m fine,” Ben calls back, because there are cameras watching and he knows there will be trouble if he cracks in front of them. “Thank you,” he whispers to the tentacle that saved his life. There’s a pleasant hum through his veins, like a little You’re welcome though he doesn’t hear any words.

The faces disappear back beyond the edge of the roof as the police and paramedics rush into the building. Moments later, Five steps out, wiping bloody hands on his shorts. There’s a tea towel wrapped tightly around his arm. He raises an eyebrow when he sees Ben hanging.

“Hello,” he says, moving a little to the right where Ben can’t see him. “Are you doing this for a reason?”

“Hi,” Ben replies. “Vanya threw me off the roof.”

“Accidentally?” Five sounds a little concerned.

“Yeah,” Ben says quickly, and tries to turn slightly so he can see Five properly.

“Stop wriggling,” Five says. “I’m not gonna Spiderman kiss you. Wait for Luther to come catch you.”

“Is the guy okay?” Ben asks. “The one who was shot.”

“He’s alive,” Five replies shortly. That doesn’t sound good. “The first responders are handling it.”

“Handling him ,” Ben insists.

Five pauses, then concurs. “Handling him.”

“Boys!” A disembodied voice somewhere behind them approaches. “Hello, guys. Was that a successful mission?”

“The hostages are safe, the criminals are dead.” Five reels off, and Ben can practically hear the trademark cocky smile. “I call that a success.”

“What happened to your arm? Were you injured?”

“Just grazed. It’s not a concern.”

Five was always one of the best in their interviews. Ben and Diego would clam up, Klaus would embarrass himself, Luther’s answers were painfully boring. Vanya’s never even been in front of the cameras.

“Ben!” A woman is shouting up to him now. “Are you training new ways to use your powers?”

“Uh, yep,” he calls back. Nice going.

He’s saved from any further shouted interviews by the rest of his siblings bursting out through the door.

Luther ducks under him and holds out his arms. “Can you drop?”

“Can you catch him?” Diego shoots back, but it’s more sarcasm than a genuine concern.

“Not in front of the press, guys,” Allison sighs.

It’s not like he has any safer way down. The tentacle holding onto the wall is completely extended and it’s much too far to jump.

Trust Luther it is.

Ben takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and silently wills the creature back inside. As soon as the end comes away from the roof, he’s falling again, straight into Luther’s arms.

The last of the creature disappears back under his ribs just as he lands, and he takes a moment to lie in slight shock in Luther’s grip.

Klaus is at his side in an instant, fussing over his neck. “Holy shit, Ben!” His voice is a whisper. “You have to stop doing this!”

“Sorry,” Ben says awkwardly.

“Whatever,” Klaus says, and Ben worries for a moment that Klaus is angry again before he buries his face into his shoulder in a quick but fierce hug. “Love you,” Klaus whispers. “Please don’t die.”

For the first time since he got here, Ben thinks he doesn’t want to. The thought is like plunging into ice cold water, and he decides to deal with it later.

The second he’s put down, Vanya throws her arms around him.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers into his shoulder. “Ben, I’m so sorry.”

“It was an accident,” he whispers back, squeezing her shaking frame. “I just meant to push them all away from you!”

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

It’s not enough, and she’s clearly still upset, but the press are swarming around them and they have to focus.

“Who are you?” Someone shoves a microphone into Vanya’s face. “Are you a new recruit?”

“No, I-” Vanya blinks. “I couldn’t, uh-”

She’s flagging, badly.

“Vanya just recently discovered the extent of her powers,” Allison says smoothly. “This is her first mission!” There’s a bright smile fixed on her face that doesn’t reach her eyes.

Another flurry of questions surrounds them. This is the biggest Umbrella Academy gossip in quite some time.

Ben’s neck hurts. He supposes he might have whiplash from the tentacles breaking the fall, and tries to rub subtly at it.

“We have to go now,” Luther says, clearly noticing Vanya’s discomfort and Ben’s fidgeting. “Our dad is waiting for us.”

“Do you have anything else you’d like to say?” A large, smiling woman with short reddish hair and bold glasses asks. “Any messages for your fans?”

Everyone politely shakes their head except Diego. Ben can practically see cogs turning in his head as he takes the microphone.

“Ah, Diego!” The woman beams. She’s probably not used to people taking up her offer. “What do you want to say?”

Diego turns to look at the cameras and Ben suddenly feels dread build in his chest.

“If Eudora Patch is listening,” Diego begins, and Ben’s heart sinks. “Don’t go to the motel. You’ll know what I mean when it happens. Do not go to the-”

“That’s enough!” Five says, stepping forward and grabbing Diego’s arm tightly enough that his knuckles are white. “Our dad will be impatient.”

Five’s face is thunderous. Klaus turns to Ben with an expression of both entertainment and horror. Even Vanya has been distracted from her own demons for a moment.

“Don’t ignore this, Eudora!” Diego blurts out.

Luther puts a hand on his shoulder and sweeps him away through the crowds, waving away the cameras. The rest follow like ducklings, utterly at a loss.

Their father’s car is waiting by the road and they pile in one by one. No one mentions what Diego has just done. Selling him out to their father will only endanger the whole thing. Even though no one is speaking, Ben can tell they’re all thinking the same thing.

Diego may have just blown the whole thing to pieces.

Chapter Text

“What were you thinking?” Five shouts, the second their father has slammed the door to his study and left them to their own devices. He’s not exactly thrilled by their performance, but technically it was a successful mission, so he’s left them alone. Five’s arm doesn’t need stitches, just a neat bandage and a handful of painkillers. The drugs have in no way dampened his fury at Diego.

“I’m sorry, okay?!” Diego snaps. “I fr- I freaked.”

“We’re all freaked out! Most of us are smart enough to keep it to ourselves!” Five shoots back.

They’re standing on the roof, which seems to be their new meeting spot when they don’t want their father to hear them. It’s kind of sad they never needed one the first time around, but this kind of conflict makes Ben’s skin crawl.

“What do we do?” Allison says, running a hand through her hair. “What if she saw that? The poor girl is probably being hounded by press.”

“There’s nothing we can do now,” Five sits down heavily on a rusty old chair. “If it’s over, it’s over.”

“She must be freaking out,” Klaus sighs. “All this motel talk. She probably thinks she’s doomed to die.”

“Been there,” Ben quips. “Maybe we should be friends. Is there a support group for the dying?”

“Stop that,” Klaus says. “Neither of you are dying.”

“Y-you think we can save her?” Diego asks, his eyes full of hope and regret.

“I never met the girl, Diego,” Five groans. “I have no idea."

He looks exhausted. Ben suddenly feels very bad. He knows the toll the journey back to this age had taken on Five. It must be incredibly frustrating watching them fuck up his efforts. The guilt about his own changes, the ones he’s made and the ones he hopes to make, sits like a heavy stone in his gut.

“The papers will be all over this,” Luther says. “There’s going to be all sorts of speculation over who Eudora is. Dad will see it.”

“Shit,”  Vanya moans, putting her head in her hands. “What do we tell him?” She’s standing opposite Ben, but he can feel that she wants to be by him. He wishes she didn’t feel so guilty. They’ve all hurt each other on missions more times than they can count. He locks himself behind whatever doors he can find to avoid an accident.

Allison, always the practical one, bless her, leans forward into what Klaus would call a power pose. “We tell him we know her,” she says. “She was a fan outside one of our missions. One of the ones where we mingled with the crowd. She and Diego got talking.”

“And the motel?” Vanya asks.

“We heard criminals whispering about something going down at a motel,” Klaus supplies. “One she’s been to before.”

It’s not an airtight story. It’s not even close. But it’s more believable than the reality, so they might just get away with it.

“I can’t believe you said that,” Klaus breathes, running a hand through his hair. “I really can’t.”

“Oh, like you’re perfect!” Diego’s face is flushed, either with anger or embarrassment, he can’t be sure.

“We’ve all made mistakes since we got here,” Ben says evenly. “Vanya broke the glass, I got put on those pills, we all rebelled. There’s no point being this angry, okay?”

“I’m sick of how much we fight,” Allison admits. “We’re supposed to have each other’s backs!”

“We don’t fight that much,” Five protests. “Only when it’s serious.”

“We did after Ben died,” Luther says gently. “All the time.”

Luther is telling the truth. Their fights after he had died were dreadful, frightening things. He hadn’t realised before he was gone from it that he had been walking a tightrope, fulfilling the dangerous balancing act that kept his family together every day. He held the knot in place, and it all fell apart in front of him.

Some of the fights had been petty little things. A misplaced knife, a stained shirt. Just normal sibling fights with trauma bubbling under the surface. Ben remembers a lot of those in jumbled bits and pieces, but he remembers the worst one of all in shocking clarity.

Klaus had only been able to keep the lie up for two weeks.

Ben wasn’t present the whole time. Sometimes when they would talk about him it was too unbearable, so he would go looking for Five again, finding new little paths in the city or abandoned houses the dead would frequent, but never finding his brother.

He had wondered if maybe this was Hell. Unable to speak to anyone at all, even his brother who specifically had the power to see the dead, watching the terrible lie unfold, his other brother still missing somewhere or somewhen that was not there with him.

Searching had become too depressing after a while. The day of the worst fight, he had been sitting in his room watching his siblings sort through his stuff. There had been whispers about selling some of his things in auctions. All the little meaningless objects he had collected, now the precious artefacts of a dead boy.

“He was so small,” Allison had said sadly, holding up one of his hoodies. “Do you want this, Vanya? I don’t think it would fit any of the rest of us.”

Vanya took it silently, bunching the fabric up in her fingers and holding it in her lap like it’s made of some precious fabric. She had worn it a lot after that.

“No one reads as much as Ben does- as Ben did,” Luther had said, wincing at his own mistake. “Does anyone want his books? Or should we just put them in the library?”

“Leave them,” Diego said, taking Slaughterhouse Five from Luther’s hands and placing it gently back on a shelf. “They’re fine where they are.”

Klaus had been almost as silent as Ben as this went on. The lie had been weighing on him, Ben could tell. It had only been meant to spit cruelty at their father, but Luther had ruined that when he told everyone Ben was still there at dinner. Between the jabbering of everyone begging to talk to him and the presence of their father at the table, Klaus had obviously had no room to back out without punishment.

So he had dug himself deeper. It was going to end badly, Klaus must have known that right from the start, like Ben had. Meanwhile, Ben had watched it unfold and simmered in anger and grief and sadness.

He had wanted to hate Klaus for it. For putting words in his mouth, using him as a weapon, ready to detonate at any moment. Most of all, he wanted to hate him for not seeing him. For leaving him alone in this terrible in-between.

It didn’t matter. He could never hate Klaus.

“What’s this?” Allison had asked, digging something out from under the bed. It was a shoebox, little doodles of flowers and stars and stick people decorating the lid in silver gel pen. Ben had recognised it immediately, and when he had sat up from his slumped position on his perfectly made bed, he had seen that Vanya did too.

Vanya hadn’t spoken up then, just smiled sadly and played with the drawstrings of the hoodie in her lap. If she had, maybe everything would have been different.

Allison had opened the box so gently and reverently, like she was handling Ben’s own body. He had never stopped being thankful for her compassion. When he had faded in everyone but Klaus’s memories, become little more than a horror story to the public and another strike against their father to his siblings, she had always remembered his love for mac and cheese, his favourite donut at Griddy’s, how he would fall asleep sprawled out like a starfish.

Inside the box were a few records and a handful of tapes. The others had crowded around the box, reaching for a new trace of their brother, one they hadn’t exhausted yet. Ben had dropped back onto his pillow, unable to deal with the ache in his heart at the sight of them.

“Is Ben still here?” Luther asked. “Klaus, ask him what these are.”

Klaus had paled. “He, uh, says he made them,” he managed eventually. “They’re mixtapes.”

For a brief moment, it must have looked as if he had gotten away with it. Allison had nodded, turning one over in her hand, and Diego had smiled.

The moment had passed the second Vanya had spoken.

“That’s not true,” she frowned. “Ben didn’t make any of those!”

“Huh?” Luther had said. “Why would he say he did?”

“I made him these,” Vanya had explained. “Five had a few as well. There are more under his bed. It’s violin.”

“Klaus?” Diego had said, and distrust was creeping into his voice.

It was like watching puzzle pieces fall together. Klaus had slipped up a few times before, and everyone was slowly coming to the same conclusion.

“He’s not here, is he?” Allison had asked, her voice trembling.

“I am,” Ben had whispered, the first thing he had said aloud in nearly two weeks.

“No,” Klaus had choked out.

“Was he ever?” Vanya, gripping the hoodie so tight that her knuckles were white.

“No,” Klaus had looked so pathetic that Ben’s anger had momentarily melted away, replaced with pity.

Vanya picked up the box and walked out, Allison immediately behind her.

“You fucking prick,” Diego growled. “How could you use him like that?”

“I’m sorry,” Klaus had said, tears gathering in his eyes.

“You’re pathetic,” Luther had said, and he and Diego followed their sisters out through the door, slamming it so hard that the doorframe shook.

Klaus had sat on the floor of Ben’s room, wiped his eyes, then turned to see Ben sitting on the bed and nearly screamed the house down.

That had been where their worst fight begun. It was never an explosion, more like poison released across their family. Diego had packed his bags and left the next week, and that was the end of that.

This particular argument about Diego’s dumbassery is a fucking cakewalk.

It’s fizzled out with the mention of the arguments after his death. Pretty much the one thing they had discussed and agreed on together after that fight was that they would never talk about it again. Even Vanya had honoured that, leaving it out of her book. Ben likes to think that she still loved him and Klaus enough to avoid tarnishing their names any further.

“We have an explanation agreed then,” Luther says. “That’s good.”

Diego nods tightly and swallows. There’s guilt and embarrassment painted across his face.

“I think I’m going to lie down,” Vanya says softly, and trails away. Ben is a little concerned about her. Her first mission, and it wasn’t exactly a roaring success. He decides to let her sleep it off. It’s not ideal, but he’s not in the best mood for comforting right now, and he thinks he might need to take a breather before making things any worse.

The group disband after that. Ben sees Luther knock on Vanya’s door, and is glad someone is checking on her. Klaus trails downstairs after Diego. Five slinks off on his own.

He doesn’t particularly feel like locking himself away with a book right now, so that leaves Allison.

“Benny!” She says brightly when he pokes his head around the door. “My favourite little brother.”

“We’re the same age,” he points out, padding into her room and letting her wrap him in a hug like she’s his mother.

She tilts her head at him. “Thirteen or twenty nine?”

“We’re both both.”

“I’ll accept it,” she says. “What’s up?”

“Just glad I’m your favourite sibling,” he says, smiling. She always makes him feel better.

“I said favourite brother ,” Allison corrects. “Don’t think you have Vanya beat. I’m legally obliged to say ‘yay, sisters!’ at every opportunity.”

“I didn’t blow up the moon though,” he says.

Allison shrugs. “That was an accident,” she says. “And it’s worked out nicely for you!”

“Sure,” he says. “We’ll see in the long term.”

Allison sighs. “In the long term.”

“I’m sorry for you though,” he continues. “You’re about the only one of us who left anything behind.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I miss Claire.”

He takes her hand and gives it a little squeeze. “You’ll see her again.”

“Maybe not,” Allison whispers. “We’ve changed this timeline so much already.”

“You can still-”

“I Rumoured Patrick,” she says. “Into loving me. God, I can’t believe how fucked up that was! Claire exists because I Rumoured him.”

“Oh,” Ben says quietly.

“I keep thinking about it,” Allison whispers. “If it means our whole marriage is fake. If Claire shouldn’t exist. If...if technically I raped him because what if we wouldn’t have had sex if he didn’t love me?”

“Damn,” Ben says, because he can’t think of anything else to say. He’s a little horrified. “I know you meant well, but…”

“I can’t do that to him again,” she says. “If we’re still here when I’m supposed to meet him, I can’t do that to him. But it means losing my daughter !”

Ben keeps a hold of her hand. “You’ll never know for sure if it would have happened anyway,” he says. “Plenty of people have sex without love.”

“You’ve been stuck with Klaus too long,” she says, voice watery. “I suppose you’d be the expert.”

“I am definitely not qualified to have any understanding of healthy romances,” he says, smiling a little. “Never had one, never seen one.”

“It’s just you and your books, little man,” she says, smiling back, even though the topic is absolutely miserable.

“Quit calling me that,” he ducks his head. “I’m gonna have a growth spurt in like, a year.”

“I await it eagerly.”

“Are you okay?” Ben asks, suddenly aware that she’s disclosing some pretty heavy burdens.

“I’ll be fine,” she says gently. “Someone has to keep you idiots in check.”

“Back to jokes?”

“One day we’ll get through a serious conversation,” she says. “Do either of us want that to be today?”

“Nah,” he admits, but rests his head on her shoulder. She pats his hair gently. “Let’s stick with the jokes.”

They sit like that for a while, occasionally trading gentle barbs but mostly enjoying the silence. It’s broken eventually by the sound of a knock at the door, which makes them both jump because no one ever knocks at their door. If they do, they’re ignored.

“Dad’s not gonna get that,” Allison says. “Probably a journalist. Or a cold caller.”

“If it’s a journalist, maybe we can set the story straight,” Ben suggests, sitting up and trying to ease a crick out of his neck. “Clear things up before they get too bad for Patch.”

“You want to answer the door?” Allison asks, and her surprise is a bit sad really, because thirteen year olds should probably be used to the concept of answering the door.

“Yeah,” Ben says. “Also I’m just sick of Dad.”

She laughs. “Okay, I can get behind that.”

They head downstairs, hurrying a little when the person knocks again, louder this time. The few who knock are usually persistent, so this isn’t that surprising really.

When Ben opens the door, he sees a girl about his age standing on the step. She is small, even shorter than him, but her face, which he can just about see behind masses of dark curls, is set in a determined expression. It’s not quite a scowl, but she doesn’t exactly look thrilled to see him.

“Hello,” he says slowly, turning to give Allison a slightly baffled look.

“Hi,” she says. “I need to come in.”

“Are you with the Commission?” Allison asks, moving slightly to stand by Ben to block her from entering.

“The who now?”

“You can’t just come in,” he says. She kind of looks familiar. He can’t quite place her. “This is the Umbrella Academy. It’s top secret.”

“But everyone knows it’s here,” she points out.

A little lost for words, Ben shrugs. “Touché,” he says. “Who are you?”

“Dora,” she replies, like this should mean something. Next to him, Allison gasps.

He blinks at her.

“Dora Patch? Eudora, I guess.”

Oh. Damn it, Diego.

“Ah,” he manages.

“I think,” she says slowly. “That your brother and I need to talk.”

Chapter Text

Conversations with dead people are not easy conversations.

This is especially true when it is the first conversation since the person has died, Ben had supposed as Klaus burst into tears at the sight of him.

“Ben..oh fuck, Ben, I-”

“I know,” Ben had replied. Klaus might have been about to mention the lie, or say sorry, or just say that he had missed him. It didn’t matter. Whatever it was, he knew. He knew Klaus inside out.

Klaus had reached for his hand, watched as his fingers fell through the space that Ben both did and didn’t occupy. More tears gathered in his eyes, and Ben felt more dead than before, terrified by the lightness and looseness of his form, as if he could drift away at any moment like when a child loses a balloon.

“You told me not to go anywhere,” Ben had mumbled at last. “I didn’t. I stayed with you the whole time.”

“I’ve been trying to talk to you!” Klaus had sobbed.

“You’ve been saying you did.”

“I’m sorry,” Klaus had said, and he had looked utterly horrified at himself. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, we can call them now and you can set the record straight!”

“You think they’ll believe you?” There had been that anger again, bubbling up inside his chest and throat, threatening to spill from his lips. He had known he couldn’t be cruel to Klaus then, that it would push him over the edge.

Klaus’s face had fallen as he had searched for something to say.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Ben had told him, even though there wasn’t much heart in that statement. It wasn’t Klaus’s fault, but he was dead and he had wanted to be comforted, not to do the comforting.

“I’ve missed you so much,” Klaus had whispered, and the angry waves within him had settled. However broken he had been, however betrayed, he had loved, and did love, and would love Klaus forever. There was no need to be so angry anymore.

“I know,” he had said. “I’m here now. I’m here.”

And he hadn’t walked away again.

Ben, of course, only knows about reuniting with the dead from the point of view of the dearly departed, and Eudora doesn’t even know she’s been dead. He tries to figure out what she must be thinking as he and Allison sneak her up the stairs. There hadn’t been any question about inviting her in. God knows what she would have done if they’d turned her away with all her questions still unanswered.

“I’ll take her up to the roof,” Allison says.

“I can hear you,” Eudora points out.

Allison turns her head to face the other girl, her face apologetic. “I’ll take you up to the roof,” she repeats. “Sorry. We don’t talk to many other people.”

“I always thought that was weird,” Eudora says, pushing her hair away from her face. Ben catches a flash of a pink friendship bracelet on her wrist. She has a whole life outside these walls, one they’ve doubtlessly sent into a spin.

“It is weird,” Ben agrees. “I’m going to get Diego and the others. You can get Five on the way.”

Eudora’s face briefly twists into something anxious, but then clears. She doesn’t say anything as Allison gently guides her upstairs. It strikes Ben as he heads for Diego’s door that she is unwittingly spending her day with a group of twenty-nine year olds, one thirty year old, and a fifty-eight year old. It’s probably a bit weird, but it’s not like it’s their fault.

Diego answers his door straight away. He’s been studying, Ben can tell from the books on his bed, so he’s probably glad for the intrusion.

“Hey,” he says. “You alright?”

“Mhm,” Ben replies vaguely. “You need to come up to the roof.”

“Again? Ben, it’s freezing up there!”

Ben grimaces at him.

“What is it?” Diego asks, softening quickly. Ben is starting to worry a little about the sway he has over his siblings. Dying does that to your relationships.

“Um,” he says. Master of words. “Eudora is here.”

Diego’s mouth drops open. “She...what?”

“On the roof with Allison,” Ben says gently.

Diego drops his head against the doorframe with an alarming clunk. “Because of what I said?”

“Yep.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Yep.”

Most of the others have been drawn out into the hallway by the commotion. Luther and Vanya must have been talking, because they exit her room together looking baffled. He only has to knock for Klaus, who must have turned music on or gotten distracted by the ghosts in his room. Klaus’s eyebrows raise up a mile when Ben gives him a brief explanation of the events of the last few minutes.

Klaus takes Diego’s hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze. Ben feels a little pang in his chest. He knows it’s Diego’s moment, and god knows Diego needs the comfort. He just aches for the contact himself.

He holds onto his own wrist as they traipse upstairs, a little comforted by the gentle thrum of his pulse under his thumb.

On the roof, Allison and Eudora are sitting next to each other, a little far apart. They’re chatting a bit. It sounds friendly enough, if a little forced.

Poor Diego looks like he’s seen a ghost. His face is very pale, and he’s staring at Eudora like he never wants to look at anything else. He can’t seem to tear his eyes away. Ben wonders if he’s going to cry.

Eudora, for her part, is completely oblivious to the wider context and just frowns. “Why are you staring at me?”

“Sorry,” Diego says hoarsely. “Hi, Eudora."

“You can call me Dora if you want,” she says. “Everyone else does.”

Diego blinks a bit. This is clearly not what he calls her in seventeen years. “Okay,” he says eventually. “I...guess you saw the news?”

“My dad is going nuts,” she says. “He’s convinced there’s a mob after me. Which is ridiculous, obviously.”

She pauses. She’s clearly waiting for one of them to reassure her that there is not a mob after her.

“That’s not the case,” says Five, standing against the wall with his arms folded. He looks irritated, but less angry. “No one is after you.”

Dora quirks an eyebrow at him. “You were trying to shut him up,” she says, pointing a finger at Diego. “You didn’t want him to tell me that.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Five sounds a little hostile, so Ben quickly jumps in.

“We’re trying to avoid our dad finding out,” he explains. “We do all want to help you.”

“Help me with what ?!” She looks increasingly frustrated. “I risked a lot to sneak out here. My dad thinks I’m studying. And I should be, because I have a test tomorrow. So you need to explain what’s going on right now! You owe me that.”

“We do,” Klaus says, giving the rest of them slightly desperate looks. “We’ll explain.”

“Fine.” Five rolls his eyes.

“Are you sure?” Allison asks. “This is dangerous to tell. If she tells anyone else-”

“I can still hear you!” Dora reminds her. “And I won’t tell anyone. I don’t want any more journalists following me home than I already have.”

“Sorry,” Diego mutters, looking guilty.

She just shrugs.

“Of course we tell her,” Vanya says. “We know her. We can trust her.”

“You don’t know me at all!” Dora says. “We’ve never met!”

“You don’t know us,” Five says. “But we sort of know you.”

She folds her arms. “Explain.”

“It’s complicated,” Luther starts.

“Does it involve time travel?” Dora asks.

Five starts to look interested. “Yes,” he says eventually. “How did you guess that?”

She smiles properly for the first time since Ben has met her. It’s a very pretty smile. He can see why Diego likes her so much. Not to mention her sheer tenacity in coming all the way here.

“It’s kinda obvious,” she says. “You can teleport around, so time travel isn’t a far leap from that. Same ballpark.”

“It’s very different,” Five grumbles, but keeps paying attention.

“You can time travel, and you’re the one who tried to make him be quiet. So I guess you went to the future, and I was dead at a motel, and for some reason it was important enough to tell the others. Or I put one of you in danger somehow.”

“Smart,” Five says, smiling a little. “Not quite right.”

“You didn’t put anyone in danger,” Klaus says gently. “You were saving me.”

“So...you want me to not do that?” Her brow furrows in confusion. “When does this happen? Why am I trying to save a superhero who has six superhero siblings? How is that my job?”

“You’re a detective,” Diego says. “And you’re twenty-nine, and you’re very brave.”

“I get to be a detective?” Her smile widens again. “Cool.”

“We’re in the police academy together,” Diego tells her, and his face is going all soft.

“Wait,” she says, presumably not noticing his sappy face. “How do you know all of this?”

“Crunch time,” Klaus says helpfully. “Out with it.”

“We’ve all travelled,” Allison says, trying to sound gentle. “From 2019. We’re actually....we’re actually all twenty-nine.”

“Except I’m fifty-eight,” Five adds.

“And I’m thirty,” Klaus chips in. “I spent ten months in the Vietnam War. You know how it is.”

“I don’t know how it is,” Dora says. “I definitely do not know how it is.”

“Magic briefcase,” Klaus tells her.

“Ah,” she says, like this explains anything.

“In the original timeline, I went missing last month,” Five explains. “I jumped into 2019, to just after the world ended. I spent forty-five years there, then jumped back to eight days before the apocalypse. People were hunting me to stop me changing the timeline, and they kidnapped Klaus. You were killed rescuing him.”

He reels this off like he’s telling them about a book he’s read.

“Oh,” Dora blinks. “That...sucks. The world ends in 2019?”

“That’s why we came back here,” Luther says. “To stop it.”

“You’re going to stop...a bomb being dropped or a war or whatever? How?”

Vanya winces. “Actually…”

Dora luckily seems to be smart enough that she doesn’t need any more than the one word and everyone’s expressions. She nods, and looks down at her shoes, which have little flowers on them. She really is only thirteen.

“So I’m going to die?”

“No,” Diego says firmly. “Absolutely not. Klaus won’t get taken, and you won’t go and rescue him.”

“Are we close?” Her question seems to surprise all of them. It certainly startles Ben. This girl has more social skills than all of them put together. “You keep...looking at me.”

Diego looks very embarrassed. Ben can hear Klaus holding in a laugh.

“Uh, yeah,” he says eventually. “We actually dated for a while. On and off.”

“Oh!” Dora looks more stunned by that than she had at any of what she’s just heard. “Really?!”

“Why are you so surprised?” Luther asks.

She shrugs. “I dunno. Allison was always my favourite of you guys.”

Allison’s eyes widen, and she covers her mouth behind her hand. Vanya is pressing her lips together like she’s trying very hard not to laugh, but her eyes betray her.

“Oh my god,” Klaus whispers, leaning over to Ben. “What is she implying?”

Ben elbows him lightly, trying not to laugh at the look on Diego’s face. If an error bar had a face, it would look like Diego right now.

“Sorry,” Dora says eventually. “That was weird.”

“You’re fine,” Allison says, her voice wavering slightly with the effort to keep it steady. “Don’t worry.”

“It’s kinda weird knowing when I’m supposed to die,” she muses, clearly trying to change the topic. “I wonder how many people know that.”

“Join the club,” Ben says before he can stop himself. “In a few years, I tear myself apart on a mission and spend the rest of my days following Klaus around.”

He offers her a high five. She gives him a bit of a weird look, but slaps his hand with at least some enthusiasm and a smile that’s genuine.

“Sounds painful,” she says.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Worse than mine?”

“Much,” he agrees. “You wanna start a club?”

“I have a badge maker!” Dora says, laughing. “Ghost buddies?”

“Are you two done?” Diego asks. “Neither of you are dying.”

“It’s just gallows humour,” Ben says, then mouths ghost buddies back at Dora.

Luther shakes his head, an expression of fond exasperation on his face.

“I should probably be going home,” Dora says. “My dad will only believe I’m studying for so long. I’m not that much of a nerd. If he finds out I’m hanging out with thirty-year old superheroes, I’ll never make it to that motel because I’ll still be grounded.”

“Ouch,” Vanya says. “How far away are you? Can you get home safe?”

“I live two streets away and I have pepper spray,” she replies. “I also know self-defence. But I suppose you have, like, superhero training so that’s not very impressive.”

“It’s plenty impressive,” Luther reassures her. “You might have to leave via the fire escape in Five’s room. I’m not sure we can sneak you past our dad twice.”

“I hope this isn’t rude to say, but your dad seems like a piece of work,” Dora says, swinging her backpack on and raising an eyebrow. “Who the hell sends kids into hostage situations?”

There’s a pause.

“Yeah,” Luther says eventually. “Yeah, you’re right.”

She shakes her head. “Well, I guess you know better than I do how that works out.”

“Are you just...going to leave?” Klaus asks, looking a bit surprised.

She shrugs. “I got my answers. They’re weird, but I got them. And I don’t exactly want to be hanging out with a bunch of grown adults. It’s kinda creepy.”

She hops back through the little door into the attic space.

“True, true,” Klaus concedes. “I guess we’ll see you around?”

“You’ll probably see me in the papers,” she says dully. “Some girl at school told a journalist where I live. They’re gonna get pictures, I know it.”

“I’m sorry,” Diego says.

She shrugs. “You’re trying to save my life,” she says. “I guess I can’t really be mad. And I’ll see you in a few years anyway, probably.”

He smiles. “Police academy, here we come.”

“Am I good at the tests?”

“Top of the class.”

She grins. “Knew it.”

Five rolls his eyes again, and guides them into his room and to the fire escape.

As she steps out, she looks back at them. “I’ll keep this a secret,” she says. “Thanks for telling me. It was cool to meet all of you.”

“Nice to meet you too!” Allison replies.

“I’ll probably see you again,” she says. “Ben, don’t go dying before we get those badges made.”

“I’ll be waiting!” Ben says cheerfully. It’s nice to have a bit of a laugh about it, even if it’s terrible. Klaus jabs him in the side.

Then she’s off, disappearing down the fire escape, and then the street. They stand together, a little gobsmacked.

“Cool girl,” Klaus comments eventually.

“I like her,” Allison says, grinning again.

“She better not blab,” Five says sulkily. “The Commission won’t like that.”

“She won’t blab,” Diego says. “She’s not a blabber.”

Klaus turns his attention to Ben. “You are not starting any ghost clubs with her,” he says. “That includes badges.”

“Aww,” he says, mock sadly, although something tightens painfully in his chest.

“She’s not dying anyway,” Diego says. He doesn’t comment on Ben. The knot between his ribs is pulled tighter again.

“I wish we could sneak out,” Vanya says. “Like we used to. We could get donuts.”

“We’ll never manage that today,” Klaus sighs. “We’ve had too much free time. Dad’s gonna be after us soon.”

Ben feels an irrational amount of frustration rise in his chest. He wants to get out of here. Of course he does, but why is he so angry ?

He doesn’t want this life. But he doesn’t want to die either.

He doesn’t want to die.

Tears start to prickle at the corners of his eyes. His whole body is itching like he needs to run.

“Ben?” Klaus puts a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t want to die,” he whispers, and finally the knot in his chest unravels and the cracks through his heart widen and everything comes flying out. “It’s not fair! It’s not fair that you all get to change your lives and get better chances and find good things and I just have to count down the days!”

“Oh, Ben,” Klaus says, his voice the softest Ben has ever heard it. “Ben, it’s okay, we’ll figure it out.”

“We’re here for you, okay?” Vanya says, putting a hand on his back. At the same time, he feels Klaus’s hand stroking his hair. “Whatever you need.” She doesn’t make any promises, but she strokes small circles on his back.

The others surround him, comforting hands on his back and shoulders. Someone is humming gently. He is guided into his bedroom and onto his bed.

He can see Five leaning on the doorframe, his jaw tight and eyes not quite focused on Ben.

“We can figure out what the problem is,” Klaus says. “We’ll work out why you’re supposed to die and...change it.”

Ben stares at the drawer where he’s been stashing the pills his father gives him each night. There are a decent handful of them now. Enough to do damage. It sure would be nice to have a father who cared.

“It’s fixable,” Diego says. “It has to be, somehow. Right, Five?”

Five has a look on his face that could freeze hell.

“Only the Commission knows,” he says. “They won’t approve of you messing time around.”

“Fuck the Commission,” Klaus says. “We’re already saving the fucking world, what’s one more change?”

Five doesn’t reply. He clearly thinks it’s a lost cause.

Ben puts his head between his knees and lets Luther pull him against him.

“It’s going to be okay,” Luther says. “Whatever happens. It’s going to be okay.”

They stay there in his room for a long while, all hands and soft voices and concern, until the pain starts to melt away, replaced with something heavy and cold in his chest.

Chapter Text

They finally manage to sneak out for donuts a week after they turn fourteen for the second time.

Ben uses the tentacles, now dubbed the “Bentacles” by Klaus, to get everyone out through his window at 11pm right under their father’s nose. He knows their mother wouldn’t tell on them, but Pogo is still a roll of the dice. Ben hasn’t spoken to him properly since the day he found out the truth about the pills. He can’t quite forgive him for his role in that, even though he knows Pogo’s hand is just as forced as anyone’s.

Moral ambiguities aside, he avoids him where he can.

Now he’s sat in a sticky booth at Griddy’s donut store. They had always liked coming here as kids, and it turns out the charm of the place is ageless. It’s comforting to be back, squished between the wall and the booth, shoulder to shoulder with Klaus like always.

“These are so good,” Klaus says around a mouthful of donut. “Oh my god, I missed these.”

“I missed these in the apocalypse,” Five comments. “Old twinkies just aren’t the same.”

Five seems to have loosened up considerably over the months. He’s still tense and aloof and admittedly, a little bit of an asshole, but there’s something lighter about him. He’s a little more willing to engage in the shenanigans that he would normally have declared beneath him.

He still won’t talk to Ben about his death but that’s okay, because Ben has taken to avoiding the deeper talks like the plague.

 Ben isn’t completely oblivious. He knows his siblings are worried about him. Klaus will regularly poke his head into his room at random moments during the day (and night) as if to be completely sure he’s still breathing and hasn’t decided to end it all early. It’s not a completely unfounded concern. God knows, he’s considered it. The brief flash of pain he would experience from shooting himself with a gun stolen from the weapons room, or jumping from the roof, or even just taking all the damn pills rattling around in his pockets is probably less dreadful than the pain of waiting to rip himself apart, all under the watchful gaze of the people who will grieve.

 He’s not going to kill himself, so he just sits in his room and reads. He’s finally finished The Bell Jar which is basically what passes for a victory now. He can’t escape their father, he can’t survive, so he may as well finish his books.

“Ben,” someone says, and he quickly snaps out of his reverie to place the voice as Luther’s. “You okay?”

“I’m good,” he says, waving sugar-sticky fingers at Luther. “Just enjoying the moment.”

Luther gives him a slightly suspicious look, but smiles back at him anyway.

Across the table, Diego’s fingers creep towards the leftover corner of Five’s donut still resting on his plate. Five slaps his hand away. It’s lighthearted and fun, and it makes his heart hurt a bit. He gets two more years of this, nearly three. It’s not enough.

There’s no point upsetting them any further, so he leans into Klaus’s shoulder and laughs at the story Allison is telling. Every now and again, he knocks the toe of his shoe against Vanya’s leg, pretending to duck away as she makes a face at him.

“We should be going,” Five says suddenly. He’s looking just past Ben, over at something behind their table.

“We don’t have to go yet,” Diego says, seeming to miss Five’s focus. “No one will check our rooms at this time of night.”

“We have training tomorrow,” Five mutters. “We should go back.”

“Five, are you okay?” Vanya, bless her, has clearly picked up on the weirdness as well.

“Look over there,” Five says. “Subtly.”

At the insistence in his voice, Ben turns to look at the counter.

Agnes, who has worked there as long as he remembers, is mopping up the counter. As she cleans, the other man behind the counter turns his head to say something to her and Ben recognises him as Hazel.

“Holy crap,” Diego whispers.

“He looks older,” Five comments. “They must have landed a few years before we did.”

“And they still chose to work at Griddy’s ?” The incredulity in Klaus’s voice makes Ben smile. “Wait, is he still with the Commission?”

“That’s why we have to go ,” snaps Five. “If he is, he could catch onto us at any moment. We haven’t exactly been subtle here.”

“Ben can pay,” Allison says. “He never met him anyway.”

She slides the cash they’ve scrounged up across the table, and Ben scurries up to give it to Agnes.

He tries to avoid making eye contact, suddenly anxious about the presence of someone from the Commission. Nevertheless, she smiles warmly at him as she always did and gives his hand a little pat as she takes the money.

As he turns to go back to his siblings, Hazel catches his eye. They look at each other for a moment, and Ben swears his heart is beating so fast that it could burst out of his chest. He tries to read his expression, search for something that will give him all the answers in his face, but there’s nothing. He just looks like a normal man. There are little smile lines at the corners of his mouth.

He gives Ben a small nod, and then turns back to his work.

-

It’s freezing cold outside, and Ben finds himself walking alongside Luther. They haven’t spent much time together lately, their training has been entirely separate and Luther doesn’t often make trips up to the attic, so it’s nice to just talk to him.

“Are you cold?” Luther asks, presumably noticing that Ben is huddling his arms around his torso. “You can have my jacket.”

“I’m fine,” Ben replies, grinning at him. He has to tilt his chin a bit to do so, because Luther has hit a growth spurt that Ben never will. “Five looks way colder than me.”

“If I try to offer him a coat, he’ll bite my head off,” Luther says grimly. “What’s up with him anyway?”

“Commission stuff,” Ben says, hopping onto a low wall and walking a few paces along it before dropping back down. “He gets stressy about time travel. I don’t think he had the best time with the Commission. Especially The Handler.”

“Well. Yeah,” Luther replies, looking thoughtful. “But it’s also about you. You know he hates that you’re...that we can’t, y’know. And that he wasn’t there for it before and now he will be. It’s hard for him.”

“Hmm,” Ben manages past the lump in his throat. “I wish you’d all just say it.”

“I’m sorry, Ben,” Luther looks a little broken, and Ben immediately feels bad. “I can’t.”

Ben doesn’t reply, just bumps his shoulder gently into Luther’s.

“You know I wish we could change things,” Luther says softly. “Not just for you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“It’s not like I’m keen on waking up with a different body again,” he says. “I never felt like that was me.”

“I get that,” Ben says quietly. “My body felt wrong when I died too. And then coming back was almost worse.”

“I suppose I can’t complain.”

“No, you should,” Ben urges him. “You can talk about stuff. It’s not a competition.”

Luther gives him a bit of a funny look. “I’m not supposed to complain,” he says.

“Because you’re Number One?”

“I guess.”

“Just complain, man,” Ben says. “The rest of us do.”

“I just don’t want to go to the moon again,” Luther admits, and Ben feels a little pang in his chest. “Or be left alone in the house, or nearly die, or end up like I did.”

“So leave,” Ben tells him. “You don’t have to stay there.”

Luther doesn’t reply to that, just drops a hand onto his shoulder and squeezes.

When they get back to the house and climb back up the fire escape, Luther gives him a sad smile and goes back downstairs.

Klaus doesn’t go back to his room with the rest, instead choosing to come back to Ben’s room. He does this from time to time, but always leaves before the morning call for breakfast.

“You staying?” Ben asks, curling up on the bed and grabbing a book from the nightstand.

“Yeah,” Klaus says, sitting down on the opposite end of the bed so just their legs are touching. “That good?”

Ben hums his agreement and turns back to his book. They have the kind of relationship where they don’t really need to talk. Or the kind where they’ve spent years talking non-stop, so they have nothing left to say to each other.

Of course, this doesn’t stop Klaus from talking. Never has, never will.

Ben doesn’t mind that. Klaus’s voice is the backing track to his existence.

“Whatcha reading?” Klaus asks, nudging his leg with his own.

Ben holds up his copy of Mrs. Dalloway.

“Virginia Woolf,” Klaus comments. “Suicide committer extraordinaire.”

“I have more style,” Ben deadpans.

“That you do, Benny,” Klaus says, with a crooked smile. “That you do.”

He doesn’t feel much like reading after that, so he lies back and closes his eyes, feeling the shifts in the mattress as Klaus does the same.

-

Their sleep is something close to peaceful before the blaring alarms wake them up in the morning.

Klaus sits up hard, nearly tipping the bed frame.

“Careful,” Ben says sleepily.

“Ugh, I need to get my mission clothes,” he says, then bolts out of the room so their dad won’t catch him in there.

Ben sighs resignedly and pads to his closet to find his own clothes.

When he arrives downstairs, the others are already there.

“Listen closely to your instructions,” their father says. “The local art gallery is being robbed.”

No.

“Six men are raiding the main building. They may have hostages.”

This isn’t supposed to happen yet.

There’s raw panic building up in his chest. This doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way it’s a whole different robbery that just didn’t happen the first time around. Someone has changed something.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Five’s expression of utter horror and Diego’s fingers opening and closing around the handle of a knife.

The Commission have done this, he’s sure of it. They’re cutting his life short for some twisted reason. Is he too controlled? Too much of a wild card? Perhaps he’ll never know.

“No,” Klaus says, finally. “No, we’re not going on this one.” His voice is shaking, but he stands firm. “Not this one.”

“Number Four,” their father says, like he’s sick of him. “You will do exactly as I tell you.”

“No,” Klaus repeats. His hands are trembling. “No, just don’t send us on this one.”

“We have to go,” Ben says quietly, because he knows it’s the truth. “Or they could kill the hostages.”

“ Ben ,” Diego says, sounding hopeless.

Klaus just shakes his head.

“We have to,” he repeats.

“Ben is right,” says Five. His face is very white, but it’s set in an expression of resignation. “The consequences will be severe if we don’t.”

He sounds like he’s reading off a script.

“Exactly,” says their father. “Out to the car now, children.”

He makes them take the car everywhere now. Ben suspects he’s worried they’ll run.

They start to trail out of the door, slower than ever. Luther looks agonised. Vanya’s fists are clenched at her sides.

You can’t change fate.

Or he can’t change his own fate. But maybe he can make things better for the rest of them.

As he passes their father, he stops in front of him and looks at him. They’re the only two left in the hall.

“Don’t hurt them,” he says, and feels the stir of something more powerful than all of them in his gut. “Don’t hurt any of them. That includes Mom and Pogo.”

“Number Six!” He looks appalled.

“If you hurt them,” Ben says slowly. “I will kill you.”

Their father shakes his head. His face is pale.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m dead,” Ben continues. “I have a way to get back here. And if you put Klaus in that mausoleum again, if you brainwash Luther, if you ever tell Vanya she’s ordinary, or hurt any of them, I will rip you apart.”

“How dare-”

“Do you think I’m joking?” Ben asks, his voice eerily calm even though his body is on fire. “Do not push me again. I will push back.”

Before he can reply, Ben walks out of the door and gets into the car. He gets the last word now. That’s one thing they can’t take from him.

The ride to the gallery is silent. Ben holds Klaus’s shaking hand in his own, a silent reassurance that he will be okay. And it will be okay. He can come back to Klaus again, and Klaus will never lie, and he will learn to manifest him again. It’s not the ending he had hoped for, but it’s an ending he can make peace with. It’s better than waiting, or not knowing.

They have to run when the car stops because of the people watching, but the second they reach the quiet foyer, they all stop.

“Are you sure this is it?” Allison asks. “I don’t understand.”

“The Commission must have moved it forward,” Five says miserably. “They could trigger certain events early, I suppose.”

“Because we changed too much?” Vanya asks. “Why can’t he just not do it? Can’t we just leave?”

“I told you we shouldn’t have changed things,” Five sighs. “Presumably, they’ve noticed Ben is in complete control. That makes him a risk.”

“What do you mean a risk?” Diego asks. “Ben’s not a risk.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Five says, suddenly cagey.

“Of course it matters!” Klaus bursts out.

Before Five can reply, there’s a round of gunfire.

“We have to go,” Luther says hopelessly. “Klaus-”

“Like hell I’m staying on lookout,” Klaus says immediately.

And so in they go. Seven little soldiers, soon to be six.

It plays out like clockwork, even when they’re clearly trying to change things. Diego aims to kill one of the men Ben disposed of, but the knife doesn’t lodge deep.

Luther throws someone across the room, but their fall is broken by the desk.

Allison’s Rumours are lost in the sounds of the fight.

Vanya hangs back. In this kind of situation, she doesn’t have enough control to be sure she won’t hit one of them.

It’s a lost cause.

When they’re subdued, they drag them into the sideroom. Ben stops to look at the paintings on the wall. He hadn’t appreciated how beautiful they were the first time around. They are so lovely.

The hostages are cowering in the side of the room. He’s glad they came to save them. They didn’t deserve to die here today.

Diego puts a hand on his shoulder, and he turns back and crumples into him in a tight hug.

“I love you,” Diego says gently. “We’ll talk soon, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ben says. “Soon. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“What took you so damn long the first time?”

Ben laughs wetly. “I was looking for Five.”

Five swallows hard. “I looked for you too,” he says. “Hurry back.”

“Obviously,” Ben says, and gives him a hug. For once, Five doesn’t wriggle out of it.

Klaus is crying when he hugs him.

“You don’t get to cry,” Ben says. “I’ll be back with you before you notice I’m gone.”

“I don’t want you to suffer like that!” Klaus says. “Ben, I don’t want you to go through this again.”

He shrugs. “We can’t always get what we want.”

Luther doesn’t say anything, just squeezes his shoulder and gives him a shaky smile.

Vanya laughs when he hugs her, and he is reminded that she has never seen the brutality about to occur. Either from him or to him.

“You don’t go crazy this time, yeah?” He tells her. “No moon destroying.”

She smiles and squeezes his hand.

Next to her, Allison steps in for her goodbye. Ben feels a bit weird making the rounds like this, but he figures he deserves a proper goodbye.

“You look after everyone,” he whispers to her as she hugs him. “Especially Klaus. And yourself.”

She pats his back, a reassurance that she will step in where he can’t.

And then he steps into the room, locking the door, and doesn’t look back at any of them.

He doesn’t have a book this time. He seriously hopes Klaus can manifest him properly, or he’s going to get really bored. All he has to his name are the pills rattling in his pockets and it's not like he'll need those in the afterlife.

Hello, he thinks. I need you.

There’s movement in his abdomen, a gentle push.

I have to die, he tells them.

Hurt you?

Yeah, he thinks. It’s okay.

Why? 

I have to die.

Do you want it?

No, he tells it.

Then no.

It doesn’t come any further. Ben waits for the tentacles to burst forth, but they never do. They’re refusing him.

He can’t do anything about that. They have made this terrible choice for him. The creature that ruined his life then ended it, is saving it.

He opens the door, sees his sibling’s expressions of confusion.

“They wouldn’t let me,” he says faintly, letting a smile slip. “The Horror wouldn’t even come out.”

Klaus smiles too, and Five opens his mouth to speak. Ben is so focused on them that he doesn’t even notice the strange feeling across his back and then his stomach, a warm, wet sensation that spreads across his body.

“Ben!” Vanya gasps, her voice horrified, and Ben turns to see a figure behind him.

They are tall, holding a rifle, and wearing the unmistakable mask of The Commission.

When he looks down, he sees blood seeping across his clothes, a dark red stain blooming from his centre.

“He’s shot!” Luther yells as Ben collapses forward, legs giving out. Diego lunges forward to catch him under the arms and gently lowers him to the ground.

The man doesn’t fire again. He is gone before any of them can react.

There’s blood in his mouth. He tries to breathe past it, but it keeps welling up.

“Oh fuck. Ben, come on, breathe.” Klaus is holding his hand again, just like the first time, only this is worse because he’s not too far gone to feel every second of it.

“What the fuck?!” Diego shouts. “Who was that?”

“They must have anticipated this,” Five hisses.

“H-how bad?” Ben manages. It hurts so much to talk.

Luther looks like he’s about to say something, but Five cuts in first.

“Not that bad,” he says. “Don’t be dramatic. You’re fine.” His voice is odd, and he’s looking at Ben in a way he can’t decipher.

The words are comforting, but Ben can tell from Luther’s expression that they’re untrue. It’s nice that they’re trying to lie to him, but he’s far too well-versed in the art of dying.

He drops his head against the hardwood floor and keeps struggling for breath. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see his blood spreading across the ground.

Vanya takes his other hand. Her face is pale and tear-streaked.

“It’ll be okay,” she says, and he knows she means something different to Five.

It will be okay. Perhaps dying is not so terrible after all. It is certainly better than living in the terrible state of waiting he has been in for months. He’s free from that now.

He turns his head to see how Five will react to those words, and only sees him raise his fists together in front of him, a look of great effort on his face, before blue light snatches time and space away.

“Alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know.”

 - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Chapter Text

The most important rule of The Commission is to know what can’t be changed.

Five has known right since he started working there that Ben’s death is one of those all important events, and regretfully, he knows why. He may pride himself on his knowledge, but fuck, some things are just better left unsaid.

He understands these rules, and he understands he has to follow them, but Ben is bleeding out on the floor, so it’s not like they particularly matter to him right now.

It’s an effort to disguise the horror running through his veins, but he does it for Ben. He’s lied to him enough that he may as well lie one more time to be kind.

It’s only ever been to be kind.

So he tells Ben it’s not that bad, that he’ll be fine. It’s hard to tell if Ben believes him or not- he’s clearly too out of it to properly process anything he’s saying, and he can’t sit up enough to see the injury- but he drops his head back onto the floor and looks up at Vanya instead.  

Five steps back from them, folds his arms to disguise the shaking.

The others have converged on Ben, Klaus crying and begging him to stay with him, Allison trying to stay calm, Luther speaking too quietly for Five to hear.

He wonders if this is what it looked like the first time. If they reacted the same, if Ben was as deathly pale, if the blood made their uniforms stick to them. There are so many things he doesn’t know about Ben’s life and his death. Once upon a time, he had been almost jealous. Of course, he had mostly just wanted the chance to say goodbye, but a small part of him wished he had been privy to the terrible thing that changed all his siblings.

Now that it’s happening in front of him, he really doesn’t want to see it at all. It’s horrible and undignified and painful, and it’s Ben .

Fuck the rules. He’d hazard a guess he knows far more about the intricacies of time travel than any of these assholes.

So he holds his hands up in front of him, looks away from the carnage on the floor, and prays for control. He only needs a few minutes. If the universe can just give him back five minutes, he can stop this. Somehow, he can stop this. There is no acceptable alternative.

The world around him changes in a way he doesn’t even notice at first. He is still standing in the same spot, looking at the same paintings, with the same siblings at his side.

The blood is gone from the floor, and so is Ben. The door to the sideroom is still locked. Ben must still be in there, talking to his monsters.

He has to act fast.

The man from the Commission, the one who had shot his brother must already be here. He wasn’t wearing a mask when he shot Ben, but Five knew the rest of his clothes, has worn them himself.

He turns his attention away from his siblings. They’re too distracting- Diego holding onto Klaus’s wrist to stop him from bursting in there himself, Vanya crying, Luther staring at the door with tears in his eyes, Allison wringing her hands.

So where is the piece of shit that killed his brother?

Five figures that he must have entered the room after them. Klaus didn’t stay on lookout this time, too desperate to protect Ben until the end. Ironic really, that he could have stopped it if he’d only accepted it to start with.

It’s only logical that the man slipped in whilst they fought. So he has to be in the room.

Five spots him standing among the hostages, his expression of fear now obviously fake. It makes hatred run through his veins, cold as ice. He understands why it needs to be done, that in the grand scheme of things, when Ben’s life is weighed up against what it will bring, his poor brother is never going to win.

The door creaks.

Five lunges, jumping straight through a portal to reach the man.

The next few things happen so fast, it takes him a moment to process them.

The man moves to take his rifle from his bag, and Five grabs the barrel, pushing it away from Ben and his other siblings. As he does so, the man pulls the trigger and shots echo across the room.

The hostages, the real ones, scatter across the floor and Five loses Ben in the crowd for a moment.

As he looks for him, the man swings his rifle back around and presses it against his chest. Five feels the cool metal of the barrel against his shirt and realises he’s royally fucked up.

Ben has his back, because of course he does. Unfortunately, having his back seems to mean making everything a million fucking times worse, because his siblings may have good hearts but not one of them can get their act together in a crisis.

The tentacles push forward between him and the man before he can even tell Ben to be careful. For a brief moment, it even looks like the plan is working. The gun is knocked to the ground, slides across the floor, and Five kicks the man from the Commission hard in the shin.

Somewhere in the background, Diego shouts “What the fuck?!”

Five turns, and for a brief second he meets Ben’s eyes across the room and sees the tears in his eyes.

“It has to happen, right?” Ben says. “You said so.”

Before he can reply, the tentacles whip away from Five and even he can see their confusion as they lunge towards Ben.

Five sees them rip out his throat before deciding not to stay for the carnage.

He lands back five minutes ago again, and wonders why Ben couldn’t just get with the fucking program.

The door creaks again, and he gives Ben a moment to come out. Maybe the gunshots had freaked him out, made him too prepared to jump into battle, then end his own.

As the door opens, Five shouts “Run!” to his siblings and leaps again, landing on his feet right in front of the man.

They disperse, sprinting across the room, and Five watches Klaus grab Ben’s hand and pull him along with them. In the chaos, his sisters and Luther make it through the door and as the gun is raised again, the others duck behind the reception desk.

He jerks the gun in the other direction now that his siblings are sheltering, hears the shots go off again, sends the gun flying. The man is on the floor before he can even get a hit in.

Five snaps his neck. Ben is going to hate that, but he can’t risk leaving him alive.

He leaves the body on the floor and hurries over to where Ben, Klaus, and Diego are hiding under the desk. As he approaches, he hears someone crying and realises something is very wrong.

When he ducks down next to the desk they had taken shelter under, he sees Ben sat between Klaus and Diego. His chin is resting on his chest, and there’s a steady stream of blood trickling from his forehead onto his lap.

“He got hit,” Diego chokes out. “It went straight through his head.” He’s holding onto Ben’s hand, but it’s clear that it’s already over. Again.

Five tries not to look at the hole in the back of his brother’s head, and throws himself back through time again.

His head is pounding as he lands, still crouched by the table, but he feels he probably can’t complain given that a bullet just went straight through Ben’s. Still, his power really isn’t built for repeated short journeys like this.

“What the fuck are you doing over there?” Klaus asks as Five rejoins the rest of his siblings by the door again.

“Did you time travel?” Vanya asks, and Five nearly smiles at her. She’s always been so damn smart, that one.

“Tell you later,” he says dismissively, trying to figure out how to approach the situation this time.

She gives him a funny look, but doesn’t say anything else. She’ll figure it out on her own, he supposes.

Five doesn’t approach the man this time. He doesn’t need any more stray bullets going off. Instead, he waits for Ben to open the door and approach them.

Before Ben can speak or the man can raise his gun, Five steps forward and wraps him in a hug. Ben stiffens in surprise for a moment, because Five never hugs any of them, but then hugs him back.

Five ignores the pang in his chest and tries to be objective. “You need to kill the man in the Commission suit,” he whispers. “Before he kills you.”

Ben draws back, a grave expression on his face, and Five knows he’s already put the pieces together.

Seconds later, The Horror bursts free and straight for the man with the gun. He is slammed against the wall in a second, dead in two. Ben’s control is markedly better, the target is clear, but even he can’t quite stop them once they’ve got a taste for blood. Some of the hostages run in time, but others aren’t so lucky. Their screams as they’re torn apart are only slightly more horrifying than Ben’s own as he forces the creatures back through the portal in his stomach.

There is a long silence.

“Oh my god,” Luther says eventually.

“I didn’t mean to kill them,” Ben whispers. “They didn’t do anything wrong!”

“It’s okay,” Klaus says quickly, hurrying over to Ben and taking his arm, though even he looks stunned. “Ben, it’s fine, we know you didn’t mean to.”

Ben scrambles away from Klaus’s touch like a wild animal caught in a trap. There’s something in his eyes that Five has never seen before. He doesn’t look quite right.

He reaches for the gun on the floor before anyone has time to stop him. Five doesn’t wait to see what he does with it before he rewinds again.

His head is really hurting now. He’s not even sure why he’s doing this. Before today, he had been firmly on the side of letting what had to happen happen, especially when he knows the awful truth of why, but every single time he sees Ben in that gallery dying or waiting to die, he loses all that momentum.

“Vanya,” he says, wiping his sweaty forehead. “Do not let that man get a gun out.” He nods subtly towards the Commission man.

“He’s a hostage!” Vanya hisses back. “What are you talking about?”

“He’s from the Commission,” Five tells her. “He’s here to kill Ben.”

Yet again, Ben opens the door and Five holds his breath. Vanya’s pretty good at controlling her powers now, but the last few rewinds have taught him that they’re really up against it now. The universe is throwing out everything it’s got.

And of course, it goes to shit again.

Vanya sends the gun flying across the room, lifts the man into the air. Ben is watching the whole thing with his face creased in confusion. Her power must attract Ben’s again, because Five can see the shapes of the tentacles pushing out of his skin, but they don’t burst out.

Unfortunately, her powers seem attracted to his just as much. A beam of light swings out, strikes Ben in the chest.

He drops to the floor, and Vanya looks over at him with the same look in her eyes she had had right before the world ended. It scares him.

So back he goes.

This time, he teleports Ben away from the shooter, but Ben slams his head too hard into the floor and his eyes go blank and unseeing as blood starts to seep from his head.

Again, and Vanya throws him across the room and he breaks his neck in the fall.

Again, and he tries to distract the shooter but he just shoots Ben in the head instead.

Again, and he goes into the room with Ben, accidentally wakes a criminal up, and Ben gets in between them somehow and gets a knife to the gut for his troubles.

And again, and again, and again.

As he lands back five minutes ago again, Five takes a moment to breathe. It’s taken too much out of him for sure. He doesn’t know if he can do it again. So, he tells himself, he has to make it work this time.

He teleports into the room with Ben before he can unlock the door. The scenario generally seems to work out for longer when Ben is locked away still.

“Five?” Ben looks at him, a little shocked. “I was just about to come out.” His smile is very small, but definitely there.

“Yeah, I know,” Five huffs. “I’ve been trying to save your ass for hours. There’s a Commission guy out there who’s going to shoot you.”

To his credit, Ben just frowns a bit.

“I don’t think I can rewind again,” Five tells him. “So you need to not die this time.”

“I can get with that plan,” Ben says. “But you’ve changed your tune.”

“You’re supposed to,” Five admits. “And I don’t really know what to do about that. But it turns out I’m having trouble letting it happen.”

“I thought you’d be cool with it,” Ben says softly, eyes fixed on the painting in front of him. “You were ready to kill Vanya if we had to. And you were so insistent.”

“Easier said than done,” he sighs. “That’s a beautiful painting.”

“Isn’t it?” Ben says. Then, “Are you going to tell me the truth?”

“What?”

Ben turns to look at him and raises an eyebrow. “I know there’s something you’re not telling me,” he says. “I’d like to know what it is.”

“You’re too smart for your own good,” Five tells him.

“Pot called the kettle black,” Ben says miserably. “Now spill, man.”

Five sits down on the hardwood floor, looks up at the paintings around them, and Ben sits down opposite him.

“The plan was always for you to die,” he says softly. “Right when I started working for the Commission, I knew that.”

“You knew all along?” Ben asks. He looks upset, but too tired to be angry.

“Yeah,” Five says. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought it would hurt too much, and you could at least die thinking it was just tragic circumstance.They would have made it happen in our original timeline too, if you hadn’t got there first.”

Ben motions for him to continue.

“There was another timeline,” Five tells him gently. “Where you ended the world instead of Vanya, and someone else went back in time to fix it and we all forgot.”

“Oh,” Ben says, very quietly. “Oh.”

“I don’t think you meant to. I think it was another accident. You just completely lost control. Let too many things into our world. And now you’re back, and you’re getting too strong, so they have to account for you.”

“Right,” Ben says softly. “What about Vanya? Do they want her dead?”

“We sorted that one out for them,” Five says. “It was a direct result of the medication and circumstance. A freak accident in one timeline. But you were...more volatile. I think it happened more than once, even when they changed other things.”

“More volatile,” Ben whispers. “Right.”

“But that wasn’t this you,” he says. “Don’t blame yourself for something that didn’t happen in this timeline.”

“But I’m capable of it,” he says faintly, and Five feels a pang of fear that he’s already lost him again. “I could do it if I wanted.”

“You don’t want to though,” Five points out. “You spent years following Klaus around as a ghost. You’ve seen the very worst of humanity in the places he’s been, and you still insist on saving everyone! You were the one who cared about the injured hostage on Vanya’s first mission, and I just rewound to save your ass from a suicide because you accidentally killed some hostages. So don’t give me that bullshit, because I know you care way too much to ever do that.”

Ben looks at him for a moment, and Five watches a tear trickle down his cheek. Then, all of a sudden, his face changes like he’s realised something.

“I’ve got it,” Ben says. “I know what to do.” It’s a complicated expression, he looks hopeful and proud, but there’s something darker underneath, a resignation to something he doesn’t want.

“What?”

“They want me dead because I could end the world,” Ben says. “So I have to remove that possibility. I have to remove myself from this grand superhero equation.”

“What are you talking about?” Five snaps. “Ben, I’ve just wasted a lot of power saving you, I am going to be so fucked off if you kill yourself.”

“Hopefully not,” Ben says, then rifles through his pockets for a moment before withdrawing a handful of pills. “Remember when Dad tried to poison me? I’ve been stashing these in my pockets so he won’t know I wasn’t taking them. I have enough to kickstart an immediate reaction.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yep,” Ben says grimly. “Pogo said they were supposed to kill The Horror.”

“They could kill you too!” Five says. “This is ridiculous.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Ben snaps. “Look, if this...kills my creature, I can’t possibly end the world. They’ll have no reason to target me.”

“So we have to save you,” Five realises. “Mom can do it.”

“Let it run its course,” Ben tells him, looking miserable. “Maybe it won’t kill the creature, but it should retreat. I think Pogo was expecting the portal to close. Hopefully it lives. Hopefully.”

“I’m sorry,” Five says. “I know it’s your friend.”

“Yeah,” Ben says. “I’m doing everything I can to save it.”

He looks away from Five then, turning his attention to his own body, speaking too lowly for Five to hear.

As he strains to listen, he realises Ben isn’t speaking English. It’s certainly not a language Five has ever heard before, and he’s certain it’s one that humans don’t usually speak. Something eldritch, he thinks. Something only beasts understand. It’s slightly frightening coming from the mouth of his brother.

Eventually, Ben looks back up at him.

“I told them to stay away,” he says. “I’m hoping the poison won’t affect them if they don’t surface. They’ll just be...trapped in their world.” A few tears trickle down his cheeks, and Five looks away uncomfortably.

“Okay,” Five says quietly. “I’m sorry, Ben.”

“Not your fault,” Ben says, looking at the pills in his hand. “Who would’ve thought dear old Dad was going to indirectly save the day?”

Five snorts. “Plot twist.”

“Absolutely. If I don’t...make it, you tell the others I love them. And I love you. So much. You should probably get out of that hellhole of a house too.”

“Right,” Five says weakly.

Ben gives him another hug, and he lets himself hug him properly this time. It might be the last time, after all.

“Okay,” Ben says when he draws back. “Let’s do this thing. Open the door once I start looking like I’m gonna die, I guess.”

He puts one hand over his abdomen, like he’s trying to protect the creature within, then chokes down a mouthful of pills.

Five watches, heart beating hard in his chest as Ben repeats the action a few times.

They don’t have to wait long before he starts to cough, his hands trembling.

“Don’t throw them up,” Five says quietly. “You need to keep them down.”

“Oh Jesus,” Ben whispers. “Five, my stomach .”

“I know,” he says. “I know, I’m sorry.”

“Take me home,” he whispers. “I just want to go home.”

When Ben’s legs finally give out, and his responses are sluggish, Five unlocks the door.

“What the hell happened?” Allison cries, running forward.

The man from the Commission looks through the door, his face interested. Five hates him so much he has to look away.

“He took an overdose,” Five explains. “Those pills Dad gave him.”

“Oh my god,” Klaus whispers.

“I don’t understand,” Diego says, hands hovering over Ben as if he can do something to save him right here.

“I’ll explain,” Five says. “But we need to get him home right now.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Vanya asks.

It hurts to lie, even if only for a moment, but the man is still listening.

“No,” Five says. “But he should die at home.”

He sees their faces crumple, and sees that the man moves his hand away from where the gun is hidden. He’s not going to draw it.

However it ends now, it’s over.

Luther scoops Ben up into his arms, apologises gently as Ben cries out in pain, and runs for the exit.

The second they’re in the car and Pogo is speeding through the streets, Five tells them he might have a chance. The pain in their eyes is replaced with a cold determination, and he knows they’ll do everything they can.

Two minutes from home, Ben has a seizure.

It’s nigh on impossible to help in the back of a car, but Five shrugs off his blazer and puts it under Ben’s head whilst Vanya times it.

Seeing his brother like this, small body wracked with convulsions, foaming at the mouth, makes him want to cry. He is so weak and helpless, and he has no idea what to do.

Ben is still seizing when they arrive home, Luther pulling him carefully into his arms and hurrying into the house as his head bangs uncomfortably into his chest. Five is fairly sure this isn’t how to handle a seizure, but they have no time to waste on transporting him differently.

“What on Earth happened?” Their father booms as he sees them run past. “What’s wrong with Number Six?”

“You are what’s wrong,” Five snaps. “You fucking psychopath , those are your pills.”

Pogo doesn’t say a word, but has the decency to look ashamed.

Their father makes a move to step into the medical bay, but their mother appears out of seemingly nowhere.

“Out,” she says. “I need to work on the patient alone.”

“Grace-”

“Out,” she repeats, and Five sees something very human in the turn of her lips. Good old Mom.

She doesn’t say anything else to them because she’s too busy with Ben, who has gone terrifyingly limp on the table.

“What are we going to do?” Klaus moans as they sit waiting outside after Five explains the full, awful story. “What the hell are we going to do?”

“There’s nothing else we can do,” Five says softly. “We just have to wait. It’s up to Ben now.”

He looks over at the door to the medical bay and prays that Ben will fight for all he is worth to come back to them.

Chapter Text

Ben does not have a heartbeat.

He recognises the absence of it immediately when he wakes up, a sickening feeling of familiarity deep within his chest as he tries to open his eyes. It terrifies him, the idea of being dead again, even if he had wished for it in a strange kind of way in the months leading up to it.

Something is nudging at him, poking his arm gently but forcefully. He wonders briefly if it’s Klaus, already mastering physical contact again, but it doesn’t make any sense that he should be asleep in the first place. He never slept when he was dead.

It feels like lifting off a heavy cloak of exhaustion as Ben finally opens his eyes.

He is lying on his back in the soil of a woodland, little clumps of dirt sticking to his limbs and caught in his hair. Above him, two moons hang in the sky, casting the only light he can see by. It’s still too dark to really see anything other than the jagged outlines of the trees and the shape of what had been nudging him, unimaginably huge.

And yet, oh so familiar.

Ben may be terrified, sick, alone in this unfamiliar place, but the presence of the creature he has shared his body with forever is so comforting it nearly brings him to tears.

“Hello,” he croaks, and for the first time, recognises his words in a language he must have known all along. It doesn’t sound English anymore, but the meaning is so deep in his bones that it doesn’t matter.

The creature is so much more than just the tentacles he recognised. It towers above him and even the tallest trees, nearly blocking out the light of the moon. Long, spiny wings rest at its sides. For the first time, he sees a head, or a silhouette of one, with a long dragon-like snout and eyes glowing in the darkness.

It makes him smile, still lying in the dirt of a world he doesn’t recognise, but knows well. This world belongs to his creature. Somehow, he, or some crucial part of him, has gone through the portal at his center. His soul, he supposes, and it sounds corny, but if he’s spent fifteen years as a ghost then he supposes he has no room for scepticism.

He scoops up a handful of soil, lets it fall through his fingers as he sits up, then stands. His creature absolutely dwarfs him in the landscape, but he doesn’t feel afraid. If anything, the creature seems more cautious of him than he is of it, and he realises with a sinking feeling of guilt exactly why that is.

“I’m sorry for hurting you,” he tells it, the new language coming as easily as English.

It’s too big to hide or take cover, but it draws back slightly into the treeline as Ben speaks. His creature is male, he thinks, and he wonders how he’s never thought about that before. His creature is just as much a being as he is.

“It’s okay,” Ben says. “Are you okay?”

Safe, says the creature’s voice in his head. For now.

“For now?” Ben asks, and his question is immediately answered as the land shakes and thunder rolls in. The air smells like smoke. “What’s going on?”

Poison, the creature tells him. You’re dying.

“Is it too late?” Ben asks, blinking as rain starts to bucket down.

His creature just looks up at the sky, unbearable sadness in his eyes, then starts to slink through the trees.

He follows him because there is nowhere to go but onwards.

They walk further into the trees until there is almost no discernible path. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, he quips to himself in his head as he clambers over the roots. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. He should probably stop quoting classics to himself in life or death situations. Actually, he should definitely stop, but it’s happened a few times too many for him to particularly care about etiquette.

It’s appropriate, anyway. Ben has every intention of returning to his family to keep his promises. As soon as he figures out how.

He feels like he’s been walking forever when they reach a break in the trees. The ground has stopped shaking, but the air is freezing and everything feels strange and dreamlike, as if it’s not quite tangible.

The creature exits the woods and Ben follows, walking out onto smooth rocky ground that juts out over the edge of a cliff.

There are flowers in the valley below, he notes, so the sun must come out here sometimes. He thinks he can see the movement of other creatures in the undergrowth, but he’s straining past the rain in his eyes and the flashes of lightning.

“This is the world through the portal?” Ben asks. “It’s beautiful.”

It’s yours, the voice says, and Ben could swear he feels the eyes of all the creatures on him. It all belongs to you.

He kneels on the smooth rock beside his creature, runs a hand across the ground.

“You said my sister was my protector,” he says eventually. “Weeks ago, you said it. Or did you tell me to protect her?”

Dozens of sets of glowing eyes look up in the darkness, and he feels a shiver of power through him.

“Protecting her was the key to staying in that timeline, wasn’t it?” Ben says eventually. He doesn’t need to be told the answer. “Protect her and the world doesn’t end and we can stay in the timeline where I live. She protects me.”

Correct.

“But I overdosed anyway,” he says. “So does it even matter? Any of it?”

The world is silent, other than the whistling of the wind through the trees.

He stands on shaky legs, surveys the kingdom that belongs to him, the world he has only just seen for the first time.

The world he knows he has to let go.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You can only live if I close the portal. I wish I had another choice.”

You could stay.

It’s true, he supposes. He could give up on this impossible, terrifying life he’s never lived before. The life he knows he’ll have to live without his powers now. He could give up the vulnerability and fear of not knowing, give it all up for a life on the other side of the portal with the only living thing that has always been there for him.

He could be a goddamn king.

It’s not a choice though. It was never really a choice. As if he was ever going to leave his siblings behind. The portal has to close one way or another, and he knows which side of it he wants to be on.

He doesn’t even know how to close it. There’s no guarantee he can survive the poison on his own. It’s all a wild guessing game, and it’s all he has left to hold on to.

“Thank you,” he says, unsure if the dampness on his cheeks is water or tears. “For being my friend. Sorry I didn’t realise it sooner.”

A tentacle curls out and gently squeezes his arm, another pushing his dripping hair from his face. There are no more words left to say. He hopes he’s said the right ones, done them justice. He’s built a whole life on other people’s words in other people’s books.

Ben takes a deep breath and turns to face the forest, but the forest isn’t there anymore.

When he twists back, the valley he had been looking over is gone too. He’s somewhere else completely. A whole world inside him gone just like that.

There’s no time to cry, so he pushes back the tears and examines his surroundings.

He’s standing outside a familiar little building. It’s more run-down than he remembers, filthy and falling apart, and there are no cars parked outside, but he recognises it as the motel where the Commission had taken Klaus almost immediately.

It’s still dark, and the rain isn’t pouring, but spattering down, uncomfortably cold on his skin, so he pushes open the door and walks in. The place is completely deserted, which he was expecting, because this may look like the same motel he nearly lost his brother, but he’s not in that world anymore.

He finds a plaque just inside the entrance. It’s like one of those memorial benches or commemorations, black with embossed gold edges and lettering.

“Here is a small fact,” it reads. “ You are going to die.”

It’s a fucking quote from The Book Thief. The levels of irony of that one doesn’t escape him. He’s not even sure that book is out yet in this timeline.

There’s another book sitting on the abandoned reception desk. One of those check-in type things. When he checks it, he sees only his own name printed in neat block letters at the top of the page. There’s no checkout date listed.

This whole thing feels like a fucking dream. Or a nightmare. Either way, his grip on reality is slipping. Nothing seems to quite abide by the same rules as his world, but it makes a strange kind of sense in his head. Like there’s a part of him that knows to accept what he sees.

It’s hard to see how any of this is going to help him, but the only way is onwards.

Ben proceeds up the stairs, listening to them creak below his feet. His footsteps are the only sound until he reaches the first floor of rooms.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” says a voice behind one of the doors as Ben wanders down the hall. “I know you weren’t ready to die violently at a young age.”

It’s Klaus’s voice. He recognises it instantly, remembers Klaus saying it to him in the alleyway a little before the world ended.

He wants to see his brother so badly.

When he races back down the corridor to the door the voice had drifted from, he finds it locked. No one moves to open it. There’s not another word from behind it.

As he backs away from it, he hears other voices from behind the doors.

“You mean like what happened to Ben?” Five.

“Oh, Ben and I! I miss him so much.” Allison.

“What about Ben?” Luther.

The voices are a cold comfort when he can’t find the people they’re attached to, can’t open a single door. For a moment, giving up seems like such a sweet option, like he could just lie down here and let death sweep him away from this horrible place.

If he was ever going to do that, Klaus’s voice made it impossible. Klaus needs him. His other siblings, as much as he loves them, could cope without him. He’s not certain Klaus could, so he pushes on to the door at the end of the hallway.

This one is ajar, so he pushes it open and finds that it doesn’t lead to a room, but straight onto the little balcony that overhangs it. He’s about to turn around so he can sit down inside and try to wrap his mind around this dreamscape when he sees someone sitting on the ground, legs dangling over the edge between the railings.

“You’d be Ben then,” the man says. “I thought we’d never meet.”

“Uh,” Ben says. “Yeah, I’m Ben. Are you God or some shit?”

The guy laughs. “Is that how you’re going to talk to God when you do meet her? No, I’m just helping out.”

“God is a her,” Ben muses. “Cool. So who are you?”

“Dave,” he says, and sticks his hand out. “I’d hope Klaus mentioned me.”

“ Dave ,” Ben whispers, then, “Holy fuck, we’re both dead.”

“More or less,” Dave replies. “But you have a chance.”

“Klaus loved you,” Ben says faintly, trying to wrap his head around how this could be possible. “Still does.”

Dave smiles. “I’m not in the business of dating fifteen year olds,” he says. “But I suppose not much time has passed for him.”

“He got sober to see you,” Ben tells him, taking a seat next to him. The concrete is cold and wet, and as he swings his legs through the railings to dangle them over the edge, he feels the rain hitting them.

“I’m proud of him.”

“Me too,” Ben says. “But I worry.”

“He said you did,” Dave muses. “Always a worrier, my brother Ben, that’s what he’d tell me. Said you were always hovering around. I never understood what he meant until I died.”

“I hovered ‘cause I had to,” he says, a little defensively. “You never saw him at his worst.”

“I knew about it,” Dave says. “And sometimes I thought I caught little glimpses of that Klaus. But I never saw what you did. I don’t know if I could have coped.”

“It was a different time.”

“Completely. They expected me to have a wife and kids, if I survived. It was lie about who I was, or be ostracised. Klaus could marry a man now, if he wanted to.”

“He likes everyone,” Ben tells him. “But mostly you.”

“That was not a thing back in the ‘70s,” Dave muses.

“It was,” Ben says. “You just didn’t know.”

“Hmm,” Dave says. “It’s been a while.”

“Not for Klaus.”

“Not for Klaus,” Dave sighs. “I hope he’s doing better.”

“Whatever he saw out there, it was bad,” he says. “PTSD clear as day, but you can’t get a diagnosis for something like that. How would you even begin explaining it?”

Dave laughs, and Ben can see what made Klaus love him, just for a fleeting moment. He rests his forehead on the railings, feeling the cold seep into his skull.

“It was terrible,” Dave says. “Obviously. But he can move on. I’ve seen how strong he is.”

“He is strong,” Ben replies, swinging his feet. “But I think he needs me still.”

“So you go be strong,” Dave nudges his shoulder. “You find your way back to him, because I think he needs you too.”

“Are you an all-knowing god now?” Ben asks.

“Your mind is making this place, Ben,” Dave says. “I know enough.”

“Freaky,” Ben comments, then swings his legs out of the railings and gets to his feet. “I think I’m going to go now.”

“You ought to,” Dave says. “But, Ben?”

Ben pauses by the door back into the motel corridor. “What?”

“Put yourself first,” he says. “If you need time alone, take it. Or you’ll hurt both of you.”

He feels a lump in his throat, knows that he’s already trapped himself in that role as Klaus’s guardian angel. The damage that’s done to both of them has been increasingly clear over the last few months. Everything is always so damn difficult.

“Thanks,” he says eventually, because there’s nothing else to say to Dave of all people, and he opens the door.

When he steps back through, it’s not the motel anymore. He’s standing in the middle of the main foyer of the gallery he’s died in more times than he remembers. The sun is shining through the high windows, casting patches of light down onto the hardwood floor he remembers bleeding out on.

As he looks around the room, he realises the gallery is not filled with the famous paintings he knows. He does, however, recognise the art. In each frame, frozen in brush strokes and vivid colour, is a moment from his life. He sees a beautiful, almost abstract painting of himself walking down the street late at night with Luther after Griddy’s. In the frame next to it is him hanging upside down from the roof, Five standing by his head. Some of them he’s so young he doesn’t remember, others haven’t even happened yet in this timeline. Overwhelmingly, Klaus is in them. There are paintings of them reading together as pre-teens, standing side by side at a mission, Ben watching Klaus as he drifts into a drug-induced haze in an alleyway years after he had died the first time.

The one real painting in the room is the one that had hung in their house, the six of them in their uniforms with blank faces and shiny shoes, their father next to them. It hangs in the far side of the wall, away from all the real moments. Ben wonders if his father had already commissioned a new one as he lies dying somewhere back in the real world.

He turns his back on that one, finds the one he knows he has been looking for since he stepped in. The painting of his death is the most hyper-realistic in the room, and he examines it with growing horror. He had never seen his body the first time, waking up as a ghost disoriented and sick outside on the steps. At the time, he had assumed that the expressions of the crime scene cleaners and the shape of the body bag told him everything he needed to know. Now, looking at this, Ben realises how traumatic it must have been for his siblings.There is blood everywhere, his insides are exposed, and the blank look on his face sends shivers down his spine.

Tentatively, he touches his index finger against the little painted Ben.

“No!”

“Don’t you go anywhere…”

“I heard a rumour…”

The words echo around his head, and for a second he can feel the agony all over again. It’s all over in a flash.

“Exploring your past?”

Ben whips around to find the source of the voice and sees a girl who can’t be older than thirteen crossing the gallery. She has long black hair, and she’s wearing a sunhat even though they’re indoors.

“It’s rude to stare by the way,” she says. “Are you done here?”

“I’m trying to be,” he says. “I’d like to go home now. Alive.”

She rolls her eyes as she joins him at the painting. “How many chances do you and your damn siblings need?”

“You’ve met them?”

“I’ve met Klaus,” she replies. “I didn’t care for him.”

“Hey!” Ben snaps, immediately defensive of his brother.

“Oh please, like he’s never wound you up,” she says, then nods at the painting. “What a way to go.”

“I’m trying not to,” he replies. “Are you in charge of that? Like...God?”

“If that’s the name you like,” she replies. “But I’m not really in charge of anything. I set it all up, then you all say fuck the plan, and go crazy. Take pills, change the timeline, do crazy things for people you care about. If you’re looking for some all-powerful being, you won’t find one.”

“Fucking hell,” Ben says. “Humanity went off plan?”

“At least I’ll admit you’re all insane,” she says dryly. “You still think you’re being logical. That world makes you crazy.”

“We’re not insane,” he says softly.

“You want to go back?” Her voice is dripping with disdain.

“Yes.”

“You’re insane then,” she says. “That’s a miserable place, Ben. And you’ll be going back there without your powers. You could have had a world without any of that pain and madness. With unimaginable power.”

“But I wouldn’t have my family,” he tells her. “I need them. They need me.”

“I’ll never understand that,” she says. “But you’ve made it this far. Resisted some major temptation. Strong convictions. Plus, if I don’t send you back, I have a feeling I’ll end up dealing with more of your siblings. And you really are the only tolerable one.”

“Thanks?” Ben says, frowning a little. “So how do I wake up?”

“I’ll send you,” she says. “It’ll close the portal and save you and your tentacled friends. You just won’t have access anymore.”

Ben feels tears threaten again, but doesn’t say a word. He’s lucky to be able to go back, he knows that. There’s no point pushing his luck any further. He had taken all those pills in the first place after all.

“Don’t cry,” she tells him, though she looks more bored than sympathetic. “You’re getting a much better deal than most people who go around killing themselves.”

“True that,” he muses, and turns around. As he looks across the gallery, he notices that the pictures of him and Klaus from the future, the ones where he is dead and Klaus is a broken man, are gone. The frames are empty, leaving absolutely no clue for what’s to come.

That’s how most people live, he supposes. He got lucky.

“Hurry up then,” says the girl who is god if he wants her to be, eyeing him with a look of disdain. “Are you going or not?”

“I’m going,” he says insistently, then asks, “How?”

“Through the door,” she says. “And don’t come back here for a long time, alright?”

“Deal,” Ben replies, then walks to the door. He has opened this little door to that sideroom so many times before. Every time, it has ended in his death. This time, it will stop it. The gold handle is warm beneath his fingers, humming a little against his skin.

He turns it and steps through, and the whole world falls away.

The light of the gallery behind him disappears as his vision blinks out and his body seems to dissolve into nothing in the air.

When he can feel his body again, it’s lying down. There’s soft fabric brushing against his hand, and something cold on his face.

The unfortunate side effect of returning to his real body is that he had supremely fucked it up before leaving it. His head and stomach are in agony, and there’s an exhaustion deep in his muscles. He feels like he’s run a damn marathon, even though he can only assume he’s just been lying here the whole time.

Ben’s throat feels raw and fragile, but he manages to make a little wheezing noise just loud enough to alert someone. His eyes are still closed, but he hears the squeak of a chair and someone gasping, then a warm hand in his.

“Ben?” Klaus’s voice registers immediately, loud and frantic and right by his ear. “Ben, hey, you with us?”

He cracks his eyes open and sees a blurry image of Klaus, leaning over him with wide, concerned eyes. Behind him he sees the dull concrete ceiling of the med bay in their basement. He’s home.

“Hi,” Klaus says, laughing a little hoarsely as he sees Ben looking at him. “There you are. We were worried.”

There’s some shuffling behind him, and Vanya appears at his shoulder, Diego right behind her.

“You don’t half know how to keep things fresh,” Diego says, worming his way past his siblings to clasp Ben’s shoulder and help him sit up.

Ben tries to respond, but breaks into a painful coughing fit.

In an instant, Allison is by his side, rubbing his back gently. “That’s normal,” she says. “You’ve had your stomach pumped, and you had a few seizures. Your throat’s gonna be sore for a bit.”

“Thanks,” he croaks, sounding like he smokes fifty cigarettes a day. “Ouch.”

“What hurts?” Luther asks, hurrying over from his corner of the room. “God, you’ve been out for ages.”

“Eight days, to be precise,” Vanya says. “Mom said you were stirring.”

“That was eight days?” Ben rasps, disbelieving. “Holy shit. And pretty much everything, Luther.”

“Were you somewhere else?” Klaus asks. He’s perched on the edge of the bed, and now the initial shock has worn off, Ben can see he looks exhausted. He has dark circles under his eyes and his hair is lank and unwashed. Though he supposes he can’t talk, as he presumably looks a thousand times worse.

“You might have hallucinated it,” someone says, and Ben twists around to see Five lurking in the doorway. He looks ill and washed out, and doesn’t quite meet Ben’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”

“It was just weird,” Ben says weakly, leaning into his pillows. “What did I miss over here?”

“We’re all over the news,” Luther says. “Tabloids running features about the danger of child superheroes, and how Dad’s been treating us. Everywhere is reporting this as a suicide attempt.”

“They’re selling it as an overdose on sleeping pills you stole,” Allison says. “We’re still figuring out our angle, and we didn’t want to say anything without you agreeing.”

“Right,” he mumbles. “Can I see Mom?”

“Is something wrong?” Diego asks, face twisting in concern.

“No,” he replies. “I just want to see her.”

Vanya nods and disappears out of the door to find their mom. As she exits, she passes Five in the doorway. His face is set in a stubborn expression that Ben can’t quite read.

“Are you okay?” Klaus asks, squeezing his hand.

Ben places his trembling hands over his stomach. Now that the pain has worn off, he can feel a still, quiet emptiness in his stomach that was never there before. His body is small and frail, and now it’s the only thing he has.

“I’m fine,” he says, but the crack in his voice gives him away.

“I’m really sorry, Ben,” Klaus says gently. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t,” Ben says quietly. “Some other time.”

Klaus, bless him, doesn’t push the issue, just rubs his back and sits with him in silence until their mom arrives, and all his siblings leave them alone to talk.

“Hello, love,” she says, smoothing back his hair as she checks his vitals. “It’s good to see you awake.”

“Thank you,” Ben says. “I really did mean to take your advice when you said not to take the pills.”

She turns and looks at him, and her smile is completely real and authentic, different from her poised and bright beam for their father.

“Obviously that was different,” she says smoothly. “You don’t go blaming yourself for that. Ever.”

Ben nods so he won’t have to speak.

“You can protect us now?” He asks eventually. “Properly, I mean.”

She nods. “Your father knows he can’t do anything now. The whole world is watching. And I’m not letting any harm come to my children.”

She leaves after that, and he misses her like he misses all the real, living people he knows.

“Hey,” Five says, when he appears back in the doorway. “Feeling okay?”

“A little better,” he says. “Thank you, Five. For going back for me.”

“Of course I did,” Five replies, looking supremely irritated. “As if I’d leave you to die like that.”

“It was difficult work,” Ben says gently.

“Yep,” Five says, popping the ‘p’ at the end. Then, “I can’t time travel anymore.”

“What?!” Ben struggles to sit up.

“I exhausted myself,” he says grimly. “My power wasn’t built for tricks like that. So now I can’t use it. I can still teleport, but I can’t do anything else.”

“I’m so sorry,” Ben whispers. “Five, I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, stop,” Five says. “It was them or you. I don’t regret my choice. Maybe it’ll come back, maybe it won’t. But we can’t look back.”

“So we have to look forward,” Ben says. “What now?”

Five grins, a crooked little thing that makes him look so much less tired and unwell. “What do you want?”

“We need to deal with Dad,” Ben murmurs, pulling himself into a sitting position.

“That’s your call, Ben,” Five says. “Whatever we say about what happened to you, that’ll shape how we go forward. So what do you want?”

Ben smiles, pushes the sheets off his body and swings his legs out of bed.

“Let’s tear that fucker down.”

Chapter Text

“Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next. ”

- Virginia Woolf, The Waves

They can’t go back to their own time. Five’s time travelling powers never seem to return, and even if they could, they would be returning to a different world that they knew nothing about. As bitter as Five may be, Ben thinks he might be secretly pleased to be growing up again properly with the rest of them. He knows he considers it a gift anyway, and the idea of growing into a living, breathing adult is more thrilling than he cares to admit to his siblings.

And so they take their second chance at growing up right.

Once Ben is well enough to stand, to speak, to make his statement, everything happens very quickly.

“My father attempted to poison me,” he tells a man from the local newspaper. “He told me they were sleeping pills. I didn’t know the truth until I attempted to take an overdose in the gallery.”

This is the story they have officially settled on. They decided not to put any extra attention on their mother and her consciousness. It’s easier for everyone if she remains out of the spotlight, away from anyone who might want to experiment further. 

Even Pogo is left out of it. They had argued about that a lot, Five and Diego are still angry, insistent that he face the consequences. Vanya, presumably still haunted by what she did to him before ending the world, stayed silent through every discussion.

Ben doesn’t blame her, ever. He had seen her in the concert hall that day, completely out of it. They both have destructive powers. The only difference is that no one remembers the timeline that Ben ended the world in, and you can’t hate someone for something you don’t remember.

The public outcry is immediate and intense. People are calling for them to be taken away from their father, for the Umbrella Academy to be disbanded, for the missions to be over. 

The day they turn fifteen, their father doesn’t even leave his study. Their mom makes them a cake, and she and Pogo sing Happy Birthday for them, then send them off to celebrate at Griddy’s. 

Eudora visits, brings them articles and printouts of think pieces on abuse. Some of them are specific to the Hargreeves, reactions to the news. Others are just general. 

Luther peruses them quietly, spending all day flicking through different articles, sometimes underlining or going back to the same passage over and over.

Diego throws a few in the bin, says he doesn’t need stuffy old psychologists to tell him their father is a piece of shit. That said, he always thanks Eudora when she visits.

She also tells Ben that the injured man from Vanya’s first mission has died in the hospital. He feels a bit crushed by that. It doesn’t seem fair that he should have chance after chance whilst that man is just gone from the world forever. The man’s boyfriend sobs on the news in a press conference, but thanks the Academy anyway and Ben turns the TV off and hides in his room all day.

Amidst all the changes, his relationship with Klaus is not as shifted as he had expected when he chose to return alive. They’re joined at the hip, and he can’t even tell which of them is following the other. When he was dead, he had no choice but to go everywhere with Klaus, rising and falling on his vices. Sometimes he still thinks he has no choice, that the pull to keep an eye on his brother is still there inside him somewhere. Klaus hasn’t turned to drugs, yet at least, but there’s still a slightly self-destructive glint in his eyes sometimes. He can’t help but follow him sometimes, to be sure everything is okay. It’s been his responsibility for so long that he can’t seem to stop.

If he’s overbearing with Klaus, then Klaus is suffocating him. He checks on him a lot, creeps into his room at night to lie with him in the dark, hands entangled. It’s not that he doesn’t like the comfort. There are times he is desperate for it, and Klaus is always there. But there are other times when the slightest touch makes his body lock up like it’s been plunged into icy water, and Klaus can never tell the two apart.

The two of them drink together on the roof the day their father is taken away. Mom won’t give them alcohol, but they sip at the same lemonade Ben had sipped the day he died the first time, because it’s the same warm day in August, 2006. Nothing happens at the gallery, they don’t even do missions anymore, but everyone drifts around the house in a slight limbo, and Ben takes moments to feel his heart beating in his chest and the warmth of his hands as he wrings them.

They get to stay in the house, which he’s grateful for. The world are convinced that their mom is a normal woman, just as much a victim of their father as they are. For all intents and purposes, other than her inner workings, she is. Ben considers her as much a mother as anyone could be, and when she strokes his hair in the morning or laughs at Vanya’s jokes (she makes jokes now, and he never would have guessed) then he knows she considers him a son.

Vanya’s not going to end the world, he’s sure of that. 

He leaves when he turns eighteen. It's not an impulse decision as much as it's something that's been building up inside for years, ready to burst out of his chest with his heart. He doesn't know who he is, he realises. He has been whatever people tell him to be for years, whatever he needs to be to survive. Everyone else is looking to return to who they were before Vanya ended the world. That's not an option for him, and so he leaves.

Italy is first, because it’s pretty and because he likes Divine Comedy. 

Ben checks into the hotel he had booked the night before just after sunset and sits on the little balcony that overlooks the cobbled street below, watching people pass. The drinking age there is sixteen, so he pours himself a glass of wine from the bottle in the mini fridge in the corner of his room and drinks it as he looks for the stars. It’s so very quiet there, but not the heavy silence of the Academy where there were hundreds of words hanging in the air between them at any given moment. More the kind of quiet where there is nothing to be said, and he’s alone anyway, so he can just let his thoughts lead. It’s tranquil.

He eats food nicer than anything he’s ever eaten before and drinks too much wine and kisses a beautiful man to forget the emptiness in his stomach where a beast should be. It doesn’t go any further- he has a panic attack by the canal at such intimate contact, and the man is very kind but he never calls him after that. When he thinks of it later, he remembers how sweet the air had smelled and the sound of the water at night when he had gone wandering around the city.

He only stays in Italy for three weeks. When they’re up, he packs his bags and heads to the station. Not home, not yet. 

The night train takes him to Switzerland, where he blinks sleep from his eyes and buys a crappy sandwich and a bus ticket to start looking for something that makes him feel real.

He shacks up in a motel when the sensible part of his brain says that he shouldn’t waste money on unnecessary luxuries. On the first night, he lies in bed and runs his hands over his quiet stomach, wills it to feel less hollowed out with the absence of the creature he shared it with. He misses his friend. In many ways, that absence hurts more than being away from his family. A piece of him is quite literally missing.

The Umbrella Academy never received the same kind of attention in Switzerland as they did in America. For this reason, he can pretty much do what he likes.

Ben reads To the Lighthouse in Amsterdam.

In Berlin, he buys East of Eden in a little bookstore, and nearly misses his stop on the train because of it.

The battered copy of The Sound and The Fury that someone leaves on a bus to the airport becomes his closest companion in his room in Belgium, where he shoves towels under the door to keep the smell of his neighbour smoking weed out. 

He spends some of the money he gets from being a waiter in France on The Old Man and The Sea , and he is proud that he knows enough to read some of it in French.

When he moves on from Europe, he decides to stop defining his life in the books he’s read and to start actually living in the world.

He meets another group of people travelling in Buenos Aires, which he mostly travelled to so he could spend days in El Ateneo Grand Splendid, which the papers call the most beautiful bookstore in the world. He finds people who think the same amongst the stacks, from all over the world, and they’re nowhere near as lost in life as he is, so he joins them when they ask him to. Goes on some crazy protests and nearly gets arrested, helps to build a playground at a school, ends up working behind a bar.

One of the girls in the group, Beatrice, takes a particular interest in him. First he wonders if she recognises him from the days of the Academy, even though he has longer hair and an older, more tired face now that’s completely different even to the weird, sterilised appearance of a ghost. Later, he wonders if she might have a crush on him.

It’s neither of those things, and he finds that out when they celebrate their joint birthday on a road trip, and she makes little flames appear on the tips of her fingers to light the candles. It seems the other 43 children are doing just fine for themselves.

(Maybe he sleeps with her, just once. It doesn’t matter. He spends most of it wondering what Klaus had made such a big deal out of.)

Ben splits with them about a year after he had walked out on the Academy, on his family. They go on to Istanbul, and he stays in Uganda a little longer. He writes letters for all his siblings and posts them, but they have no return address to reply. He doesn’t want them to, anyway. It’s easier to carry on doing this, figuring out who he is, without their words in his head. Maybe that’s selfish, but sometimes he sees his reflection and wants to cry, so it’s probably for the best.

Finding yourself is not beautiful.

Ben first puts what he’s been thinking for a while into words a year and a half after Uganda, two and a half years after he left his family at the doorstep. He is sitting on a bus in Seoul in a seat by the window. No one has sat next to him, so he leaves his bags on the neighbouring seat and writes these words in his notebook. It’s nearly full. He’ll have to buy a new one soon.

It’s July, and the air is hot and heavy. Curling tendrils of his hair stick to the back of his neck, because he doesn’t bother fixing it into a neat style like he used to.

He adds fancy little flicks to some of the letters for no other reason than that it makes him happy, then flips to a blank page to start his letter.

Dear everyone,

Hello from Seoul! I’m writing this letter on the bus- traffic is a nightmare in the summer and we’ve been at a standstill for a damn long time. I won’t be back at my apartment for at least an hour. Do you ever check the weather in Korea? I think we’re having a heatwave. I still check the weather where you are. It looks nice. I hope you’ve all been going out, some of you could do with some sunlight. That means you Klaus, you pale bastard.  Are you still pale? Obviously it’s been two and a half years. Maybe you should email me a group photo. 

I hope you’re all well at home, and I miss you all lots. 

His pen hovers over the word home for a moment. Is that home? Or has he made a new home here, in his tiny little fourth floor apartment by the park? He closes the notebook, leans his head against the dusty window, and feels the vibrations of the bus engine in his skull.

He’s only been living in Seoul for a year. It’s surprising it took him this long to get here, really. In a book, with a clear narrative and lessons to be learned, he’d have come straight back to the place where he was born to find himself. Real life is really not like a book at all. It’s twisty-turny, and he’s not really sure what he’s learnt from it all, other than that he’s not great at walking long distances and that bunk beds in youth hostels are not to be trusted under any circumstances.

At least he has some stories to tell that Klaus wasn’t there for. Stories of his own, where he plays an actual part.

Ben makes it off the bus eventually, shuffling off the bus and down the narrow street to his building. He fiddles with the stiff lock for a minute, then opens his door to see Five sitting on his couch.

“Hey, Ben,” he says. “Long time, no see.”

Ben just stares.

“Dad died,” Five tells him very simply. “You should come home.”

“Because Dad died?” Ben can’t pretend he’s devastated, but it’s still a shock that’s left him shaking, and Five sitting here in front of him looking 21 and as sharp faced and bored as ever. He’s missed him. “Also, how the hell are you here?”

“Some creepy Academy fan in a really dire forum tracked you down. You really could have told us you had a permanent address now.” He says it in a casual way, but there’s a little flicker of hurt in his eyes.

“I needed some time,” he says, dropping into his armchair opposite Five. “How is everyone?”

“Seven for seven on being alive,” Five tells him, a crooked smile on his lips. “Klaus is good. Still living at home, not doing any drugs. Diego’s at the Police Academy again, but he comes home a lot and brings Eudora. She says hi, by the way.”

“That’s nice.” Ben swings his legs back and forth and looks at his scuffed carpet instead of his brother. 

“She keeps things interesting,” Five says. “Vanya’s writing a book.”

Ben’s chest tightens.

“Not the same one,” Five tells him quickly. “It’s about Dad and how he treated us. Pity the fucker died before he could see it. But it’s gonna make a fortune. Which is good, because Allison’s not a big celebrity these days.”

“I noticed I hadn’t heard her name,” Ben muses. “Do you want any coffee?”

Five agrees, and Ben makes his coffee the way he remembers him liking it as Five continues to talk. 

He learns that Allison is well, and not really using her power. She should have gotten pregnant with Claire two months ago, but she didn’t. They’re kind of tiptoeing around it, Five tells him.

Luther is Luther. He’s not on the moon, obviously. Five thinks he might be a little bit of a writer, but he’s never read anything he’s written. Klaus says it’s poems, but he might be joking. Ben has been away too long to be sure. As long as Luther is happy, he supposes.

“Klaus wanted to come get you too,” Five tells him, teleporting across the room to shove some of Ben’s stuff into a bag. “Said he wanted to see where you were living. Unbelievably, he had to work. I landed two days ago.”

“Klaus works?”

Five laughs. “I know. Fucking hell. He does something with war veterans? They all love him over there.”

“I can imagine,” Ben says vaguely. “Five, I can’t just leave .”

“A week,” Five says evenly, turning to look at him. “Come home for the funeral so you can see everyone. I’m only asking you for a week.”

A week he can do. The question is if he’ll have the guts to come back here.

“I booked you a plane ticket already,” Five explains. “A return one, even. Also, you need to hurry up.”

“Screw you,” Ben shoots back with the same ease as ever. 

They grin at each other.

They’re on a plane before the sun sets that evening. Flying first class because apparently Pogo and Mom now have access to all their dad’s funds and are pretty willing to spend it on their lovely children, especially to their absent Ben, out there on the oceans deep.

Five doesn’t speak for much of the trip, except to explain that their father died in prison, and Mom’s old coding has her a bit upset about it, so Ben is being drafted in as a victory. For the rest of the flight, he buries his nose in a book and Ben writes little stories in his notebook. Maybe he’ll show Luther, he thinks. He was never quite sure how to bond with him.

“Do you drive now?” Ben asks when they land.

“I always drove,” Five points out. “I just don’t get pulled over for looking thirteen anymore.”

Ben raises an eyebrow.

“Yes, I have a licence,” Five sighs.

He’s a better driver now, that much is true. Ben worries sometimes that after everything he went through, he’s going to die uneventfully in a road accident far from home with only a roadside shrine to mark it until the flowers wilt. He’s fairly confident that Five wouldn’t let that happen, but he still tries to keep himself distracted sitting in his passenger seat. 

When they pull up at the Academy, it’s a strange feeling. The house is so very familiar, but it feels smaller than it used to. Maybe because he feels bigger than himself now, like all his travelling has made him into more of a person and this house isn’t the very centre of his identity. 

He only has a moment to linger before he’s distracted.

“Ben!” A voice shrieks, and Klaus is cascading out of the house like a hurricane and pulling him into a tight hug before he can even process what’s going on. “You crazy fucker, you actually came back?”

“Not without a great deal of work on my part,” Five says, slamming his own door shut as he gets out of the car. “I didn’t even get to see Ben’s whole place.”

“You can teleport,” Ben says bluntly, face still squished into Klaus’s collarbone. He doesn’t smell like smoke or drugs, and he’s not as thin. When he finally wriggles out of the hug, he notices that he’s clean-shaven as well, with shorter hair.

“It’s been dire without you,” Klaus tells him. “You’re the only one who gets me .”

Ben knows that this is exactly why he fled, but he can’t help but laugh and squeeze his arm. 

Inside, Allison wraps her arms around him in a much quieter, but still intensely sweet hug. He missed her so much. Her eyes are a little sad, and he knows it’s over Claire, but there’s a stubborn little tilt to her head that tells him she’s going to be just fine.

“Hey, Benny!” Diego bellows from upstairs, and there’s a faint cheer from a girl who must be Eudora. They both beam when they appear on the staircase, and a few seconds later Vanya follows them, her laugh loud and bright and real as she jumps on him for a hug and he swings her around. She’s still tiny.

Luther is helping Mom in the kitchen, and when they bring out a cake to welcome Ben home, he nearly doesn’t recognise his brother without the hulking ape physique. He’s wearing a short sleeved t-shirt instead of dozens of layers, and he’s actually pretty slim, but still nearly crushes Ben with his hug.

Mom gets a bit teary when Ben awkwardly mentions Dad, and Pogo sweeps in to take over her duties whilst they sit with her. The dining hall feels very different with chatter and casual, tasty food, he thinks.

She cheers up fast and thanks Ben for coming sincerely, tells him how much she loves him and has missed him whilst he’s been away. He returns the sentiment, realises how true it is as he says it. He’s missed his family like hell. 

“You must have so many stories,” Allison says, passing him a bottle of ketchup. “You’ve been to so many places!”

“Not the moon, right?” Luther asks, and it takes Ben a moment to realise he’s joking. “That’s my thing, Ben.”

“Not the moon,” Ben concurs, and Luther cheers.

“I want to hear about anything illegal or slutty,” Klaus says.

“Not in front of the police!” Diego teases, covering his ears. Eudora follows suit, smiling. Apparently she’s only really come back into their lives recently, figuring it would be weird before she was a bit older.

“As if you’d ever charge any of us with anything,” Vanya says. “You love us too much.”

“Only you and Ben, Vanya,” he says lightly. “Everyone else is fair game.”

“Oi!” At least three different people say.

It’s a completely different atmosphere. It’s still home, in a completely different way to how his apartment back in Korea is his home.

Ben heads back up to his room early, as does Five, because jetlag is a cruel master. It’s exactly as he left it. He walks around for a moment, running his finger across the spines of all his books, pushing his way through the uniforms hanging in his closet to find his old pyjamas, even though he has some in his suitcase.

After a few minutes, he logs into the hefty computer at his desk, playing with the mouse whilst he waits for the flight website to load. 

When it does, he cancels his return flight without a second thought.

Whilst he’s staring at the computer screen, processing the decision he’s just made, however small a delay it may turn out to be, Klaus’s voice bellows from downstairs.

“Ben! Five! We have cake left over!”

“Coming!” Ben calls back immediately, hearing a bark of laughter from Five’s room, and as he races down the stairs to join his siblings in the kitchen, he feels his heart thumping in his chest faster and stronger than ever.