[13years]

     guess who remembered the log in to this blog  ...

[13years]

tempportal​:

Five huffed out a laugh, and dropped into the seat on the other side of the table, across from Ben where all the debris from the night–ripped-up paper, several silver pans dotted all over with thick black scorch marks, and some truly massive globs of vanilla and chocolate icing–lay scattered and strewn on the polished wood. He brushed one last piece of bright pink confetti (courtesy of Klaus) off his shoulder with the back of his hand. “Well, I’d say this one’s gone a damn sight better than the last forty-five, so I’ll take it.”

Even when he had finally admitted to himself that he was never going to make it back, that he was never going to get out of here, that he was going to live and die here, and he would never see another human face or hear another human voice or feel another human touch except his own, he had returned, year after year after long and empty year, on October 1, to the ruined Academy, to the shallow and clumsy and obviously inexpert graves he had laid his family down inside. Just to see them. To talk to them. To tell them he was coming home. To promise he wouldn’t let this happen. To swear he wouldn’t let them die like this.

This day–and every day since April 2, 2019–was so much more than he had ever thought he’d get with his family. So much more than he had ever thought he would get with Ben. He had never believed much in miracles, and that still held true, but his little brother’s mere existence on this side of the veil was very much like what he had always thought a miracle must look like.       

“I’m–” he broke off, uncertain and awkward, in the way he always got when he tried to say it out loud, before he inevitably backed down, and walked away, and in the sudden silence, the sound of Diego and Allison and Klaus, still tossing handfuls of confetti at each other in the next room, had never been louder. He cleared his throat, a little too loudly, and looked away, down at his own hands clenched on his knees. “I’m glad you could be here today. With us. I’m glad you’re here.”  

          ben glanced over at his brother, blinking in momentary confusion.  when five can finally get the words out, his heart just about stops completely for a second time:  he has to silently thank their father, an incredible and unbelievable first, for the strain that he put on them, because otherwise, number six was sure that the emotion would slip from his chest all too quickly and easily.  as a hargreeves, however, burial became no more than a simple routine.

          “   i would’ve been here regardless,   ”     ben deflected, flashing five a smile.  dead or alive, i’d still be following you guys around, was what he refrained from saying, because no one needed to be reminded.     “   the feeling’s mutual, though.  they’ve had more birthday’s without you than me, and  —   ”     just like ben doesn’t need to talk about what happened to him, he knew five didn’t like to draw attention to his own elephant in the room.  he has to stop himself from laying it so plainly and casually on the table  —  for five’s comfort, for his.     “   well, you know.  i think you need this more than any of us.  again, even if our family is the worst.   ”

          he can’t help but think to himself:  i hope we all see each other next year, too.  not completely irrational, was something to fear, but god, he didn’t know if he could knock on wood hard enough to un - jinx it if he let that one out.

          he wouldn’t.  he couldn’t.  so instead, ben babbled,     “   speaking of, you’ve got glitter in your hair.  thought i should let you know before anyone tries to get a picture.   ”

[13years]

menageriie​:

“hmm..” klaus hummed a soft note as he thought over ben’s idea. his eyes were glued to the water where his bare feet were submerged below the dark surface, and his head tilted just slightly to the side. amazingly enough, klaus did wear shoes tonight— but they were kicked aside the second they reached the end of the dock.

“you’re not thinking smart enough, benny boy.” he replied before taking a bite of his own slice. he continued even though his mouth was full, gesturing grandly even with the pizza flopping around in his grip. “if you’re dying to see a movie so much, we can just sneak in. and then we’ll find something even more fun to use the rest of the cash on.” at that point he turned to his brother, wiggling his eyebrows and smiling stupidly.

“c’mon benster. don’t you have even one thing you wanna do tonight that you never get to do? dream big!”

          don’t you have one thing you want to do tonight.  it shouldn’t have been as big a question as it was, and ben definitely should have come up with an answer much quicker than he did, but he was stumped.  he stared at his brother, dumb - founded, brows knitting together as he tried to think of something.  and part of him, you know, part of him wanted to come up with something actually interesting to impress klaus  ( or at least make him happy ).  despite internal efforts, nothing immediately came to mind, and he was sure klaus wouldn’t appreciate it very much if he just sat there and didn’t respond.

          “   i don’t know.  it’s like  —  the possibilities are endless.   ”     which was, more or less, true.     “   we can really just...go anywhere right now.  do anything.   ”     he sighed to himself, at his own indecisiveness, and pointed at klaus with his half - eaten slice, piping,     “   you come up with something.  i’m pretty sure everything i’ll say’ll just be boring.   ”

[13years]

something i’m just now noticing. it might be a trick of perspective, but as the academy stands around ben’s coffin, it looks...too small. too small for ben. he was never the tallest, was always of incredibly average (and below, when he was younger) height. with this, i further argue: there was no body in that coffin. it was purely decorative — falsely sentimental.

[13years]

          normally, ben spent their weekly thirty minutes of nonsense pestering the others in typical sibling fashion;  playing keep - away with allison and diego, concocting a dangerous made - up game with klaus, swapping vanya’s sheet music with far less classic alternatives.  even the obedient needed to let loose here and there, and god, did it weigh on ben sometimes, following the academy rules and the monocle’s orders to a T.  today, though, only three minutes past noon  ( giving them twenty - seven minutes left, which ben knew could pass in the blink of an eye ), number six had taken to dragging luther up, up to the roof, for a hardly mischevious purpose.  the moment the clock struck twelve and they were all left to their own devices, it was luther that he had sought.

          trademark timidness accented every single hurried step.  he had no real reason to be nervous, he knew that, but it was inevitable with his brother  —  luther only and specifically  —  and it certainly didn’t help that his plot was, quite literally, hand - crafted and for him.  ben was no master of presents, and especially during all of their birthday, hardly a celebration as it was for many in his opinion, he wasn’t trained in the art.  by the time they have reached the ladder up and he has started to pull himself up, he has thought of a million ways that this will go wrong, and most notably about how luther will be much more enthused than he was hoping.  with a small grunt, he hauled himself onto the hard, flat surface of the roof, getting to his feet with a slight bounce on his heels.  

          “   i got pogo to bring this up here before lunch  —  wanted to try and give you as much time as possible  —   ”     he started to ramble, hands moving, motioning toward nothing.  he bent down and picked up the box that was just sitting there  ( un - wrapped, unfortunately;  he’d been too focused on the process of production to think about the presentation of the gift, making it simply, uninterestingly, a box )  and began to bring it over to luther, explaining, eyes never quite meeting his,     “   i was gonna give it to you on, you know, on our actual birthday, but i was missing some stuff and, uh...wasn’t able to finish it on time.  sorry i couldn’t get it to you sooner.   ”

@moonexile​.

[13years]

          the night was warm and quiet, or as quiet as a night in the city could be.  ben kicked his feet idly as he sat at the edge of the dock  ( soles of black boots just barely touching the surface of the water, the occasional ripple disrupting the otherwise peace ).  he maybe could have suggested a better place, one that didn’t smell of wet stone and algae, but he trusted the process:  things rarely remained as bored as they seemed when klaus had anything to say about it.

          “   we still have...what, twenty dollars left?   ”     ben piped around a mouthful of pizza, swallowing hard.  moving his slice to one hand, he pretended to check a watch that he most definitely did not have on his wrist.     “   it’s still technically  —  five dollar tuesday at the movie theater.  if we walk fast, might be able to catch something halfway decent.   ”

@menageriie.

[13years]

          ben had forgotten how cold snow could be.

          to be fair, everything was a little chilly nowadays  —  symptoms of an early and brutal winter before it had even arrived.  normally, it wouldn’t have been much of a concern or point of interest for ben, who had only ever enjoyed the season for its staying in weather.  as he absentmindedly stared out the main room’s tall windows, though, stuck in his own head, he just happened to catch that first flurry.  there was no reason to be as jolted as he was, nor was there much excuse for how quickly he made his way to the courtyard, but it was borderline instinctual.  impulsive, more likely.

          it was the perfect snowfall to build, if he had to guess.  even as his hands rapidly grew more numb by the second and his cheeks felt like they were burning, ben couldn’t help the sudden wave of child - like glee;  it was just a spark, a flare of nostalgia and longing, and if not to soothe the itch in the back of his head, then he moved to at least satiate curiosity.  and so, in the early hours of mourning, filled with this energy that he knew exactly what to do with, he got to work on making a snowman.

          the only time he would pause for a moment would be when he noticed vanya, standing in the doorway to the courtyard and still in the comfortable warmth of the academy.  barely finished with the first snowball, still figuring it out.  maybe, at some other point, he would have felt the barest shred of embarrassment at being caught making snowmen, or playing in the snow at all, but he couldn’t find it in him to think twice about it.

          with an enthusiasm that had been lost on him the past few days, he waved, and shouted above the echoing quiet of the yard,     “   vanya!  do you wanna help?   ”

@violnc.

[13years]

tempportal​:

Ben made a good point. It would be more practical to stick together right now–if the rest of the family really wasn’t dead, if the rest of the family really had survived the trip out of the theater with him (and he knew so much better than to let himself believe it, he knew so much better than to even let himself hope for it, but damn if he didn’t hope for it, harder than he had ever hoped for anything in his life, harder even than he had ever hoped to claw his way out of the apocalypse) he needed to get everybody together, as quick as he could, and get the hell back home, before this new apocalypse could crash over them. And all the better if it meant he could get his little brother away from all the unknowns here until he had gotten a bit of a better read on James and Maryann, right? 

(Ben could think what he liked about the whole thing, but the fact remained, a random elderly couple found me, and welcomed me, a complete stranger, into their home and family, on a whim was a a story Five simply couldn’t swallow.)

But Five still wanted to say no.

He didn’t–it simply wouldn’t be practical to say no, it wouldn’t be practical to drag this out, it wouldn’t be practical to waste what little time he still had, and it certainly wouldn’t be practical to pick a pointless fight with his little brother (like it or not, he was the adult here, and he had to act like it)–but he worked faster on his own, and he worked better on his own (on his own was the only thing he had ever known how to be) so he very much wanted to.  

“Fine,” Five said, instead of the flat, blunt no on the tip of his tongue, and he stuffed his hands deep in his pockets. “Fine. Come on.” He turned for the door, and headed back down the narrow stairway to the bookstore down below (and wasn’t it just so Ben, to wind up in a bookstore?). “Like I said, we shouldn’t–” he swallowed, “–we shouldn’t expect too much. Our powers make us better candidates for time travel than most people, so…” he stopped, at the bottom of the stairs, to look up at his brother, “…so, we can’t… we can’t make any assumptions. About the others.”

          oh, five doesn’t have to say anything more than     “   fine   ”     for ben to get to his feet and get ready.  as brother continued, he made haste of grabbing the apartment  ( and store )  keys off the rack on the wall next to the door.  he didn’t expect for five to change his mind, because ben knew it would have been seen as a waste.  regardless, he acted like that specific order was still on the table, at least for now.  

          as he locked the top door, listening to five’s words echo in his head, there was a moment of stiffness, and he held his hand there a second, thinking about it.  the whole of their predicament, and all that it entailed.  their family had a talent of avoiding each other and being unknown to one another;  they could cross each other in the street, and ben wouldn’t be surprised if neither so much as noticed.  and there was this urgency, you know, this sense to know, in spite of just what that meant.  if they were alive, dead.  ben had spent two years in uncertainty, and five, pinnacle that he was, only paved the way out in his mind.  it would be great, fantastic, the best possible outcome if all seven of them were on this side of the veil.  if not, at least he would know, and he wouldn’t spend the rest of forever wondering, or he wouldn’t have to be told like some nervous kid in the hospital waiting room.

          key was removed, and he turned on his heel and started down the stairs, pausing only when he met the other, one step behind.

          “   we can’t get our hopes up.  i can’t get my hopes up.  i understand that.   ”     something in his voice gave way to the fact that he genuinely did get it;  a morose twinge, somber but not defeated.     “   if we find something, though  —  and it’s not good and you’re right  —  i’d rather see it for myself.   ”     curiosity.     “   if anyone survived, and let’s just humor the best case scenario here, do you think...i mean, there was a gap between you and me getting here.  don’t know how far back or how short of a stretch that implies.  guess we’ll just have to find out.   ”

[13years]

tempportal​:

“So–not counting the fire, and the brief power outage, and the incident behind the sofa, and Klaus’ general existence,” Five could have counted on his hands all the things that had gone horribly wrong in the last twenty-four hours, but he figured he would run out of fingers, “how was it?” 

Your first one back with us, he wanted to say (it was really the only thing that had mattered about this day, at least to him) but he didn’t. “Underwhelming as always?” he asked instead.  

          “   i don’t know what i expected when we put a gaggle of emotionally estranged ex - child stars in a room together, but i can’t say i’m that surprised.   ”     it wasn’t really an answer to five’s question, he knew that.  it was good, he wanted to say;  better than i hoped, despite being on extinguisher duty.  the words, though, they got caught in the tight knot of his throat with a plethora of other unspoken thoughts, and he didn’t know if he wanted to go digging for them.  he turned towards five and crossed his arms and queried, a forced note of humor in his tone,     “   you?  everything go as well as you remember it?   ”

[13years]

tempportal​:

Five could hardly hear the world around him now–it was like he went numb, almost, like his brain and his body had pulled apart, and he stood with the pieces clutched in his shaky hands, and his mind had filled up with white noise, with static, with the apocalypse, with ash and smoke and fire and heat and death and corpses and maggots and thirst and starvation and ruin and rubble and he knew if he only looked up, he would be all alone again, he was all alone, and there was nothing, nothing but the flat and endless wasteland, nothing but the empty wreck of a once-beautiful world, and he would never see the sky again and he would never breathe real air again and he would never hear the sound of another human voice again and he would never feel the touch of another human hand again and he would never see his family again–

There was a hand on his shoulder.

There was a hand on his shoulder. A real hand. A human hand. And it was too firm, too warm, to write it off as a delusion. There was a hand on his shoulder, and it was real, and he was at the table, and everything was fine, except if he tried to stay with his family, he would kill them, and also, end the world, but the world was significantly less important than his family, so he didn’t think he cared too much about that part.

But. 

But Ben was a hand on his shoulder, and a voice in his ear, and so Five slowed down, and Five listened. 

“Well, of course we have to go back,” he said, when he had let the silence stretch long enough to know Ben wasn’t going to pick back up again. “If we don’t, the apocalypse is going to happen here. Remember? Nuclear doomsday? Pretty sure you were there when I caught everybody up on that.” He dropped his pencil down on the table before he snapped it in half instead, and pushed himself up out of his seat.

(Ben’s hand fell off his shoulder when he got up, and he felt the sudden loss all the way down to his bones.)

(But. That was irrelevant.)

“No, you’re not–” he walked from one end of the tiny kitchen to the other–wall to window to wall, and back again, like an animal in its cage, and he didn’t even care if that was what he looked like right now, “–you’re not going to be a temporal anomaly in our timeline. None of you are. Your living self will just…” he had to stop, and turn a hundred thousand words over in his mind, before he finally settled on the right term, “…take the place of your ghost self, in a sense. The same thing will happen for the others, too. Provided I’ve got the numbers right, they should calmly supplant their past selves with no disruption to the space-time continuum, but I have no past self to replace. My existence in that timeline isn’t consistent enough to usurp. I was only there for eight days, it wasn’t long enough to leave the necessary imprint. If I tried to go back, I would be the disruption.”

He didn’t stop walking–he couldn’t stop walking, the repetitive motion was literally the only fucking thing keeping him sane right now–but he raked a hand through his hair so hard, he felt his own blunt nails break the soft skin of his scalp. “And even if I stay here, and the rest of you go back, it still wouldn’t make a difference, because the apocalypse would go ahead, just fifty-six years too soon, so you guys would just land in a–” his voice caught, on the last word, and he couldn’t get it out, and wasn’t that so fucking stupid, but he couldn’t–he knew the answer to this question, he knew the solution to this equation, as sure as if the Handler herself had come and whispered it into his ear, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. 

“Even if you go back to 2019, and I jump to a completely different point in the timeline, my existence will still end the world there, and you guys will get the fallout. I have to–” his hands were shaking so bad, he could barely run his fingers through his hair now, “–I have to go back to the one point in the timeline where the world’s already ended, I have to–I have to–” he was shaking all over, even on the inside, and he just couldn’t stop, “–I have to go back into the apocalypse.”

          ben couldn’t say that he liked what five was saying.  for all intents and purposes, he refused to pick up what he was putting down:  it would be willful abandonment if he went with the flow, here, and of the things found on the long, long list of consequences he was fine with accepting if it was for the betterment of his family, such a notion was better left carved off the goddamn paper.

          he knew what fear looked like  —  to go back to a place that harbored too much hurt and suffering in the mind  ( in the body ).  too many times had he seen it in his own eyes when he looked at himself in the mirror.  too many times had he seen it in klaus’.  he could recognize it at the drop of a dime, and how was he expected to be okay with it?  ultimately, he supposed that it wasn’t his decision to make, and it wouldn’t be anyway  ( five was stubborn, wasn’t he?  they all were, honestly, and it had to get tiring at some point ), but he couldn’t nod along and tell him,   fine, alright.  because it wasn’t fine, and it wasn’t alright.

          but it was the problem, the stubborness.  the martyrdom.  they could sit here all day and argue, and how far would they get?  ben was familiar enough with squabbles and heated debates on this and that, and they rarely ever solved anything and proved never to be satisfactory in the end.  they didn’t need this.  they needed to brainstorm.  to talk, not hash it out.  use what time they had, take advantage of what they were given.

          “   just breathe,   ”     ben eventually said, outstretching a palm;  a silent invitation to sit back down.  five could keep pacing, he wouldn’t stop him, though it didn’t settle well.     “   i’m going to ask you something, okay?  and it might sound weird, but you have to bear with me.  how well do you know time?  i know, i know, you’re smart, we all know that.  you never really had the same training as the rest of us, though.  do you know everything you can do?  you can time - travel, but is that it?   ”

[13years]

          he stared at himself in the mirror for perhaps a little bit long.  long enough to make his face seem distorted, like someone elses, and there arose a great discomfort in the depths of his aching chest as he considered this stranger before him.  ben ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it, trying to see if anything would change;  he tilted his head, lifted up his chin, dragged down the bags of his eyes to make sure they were the same.  all of it was, but there was no helping that sense of displacement, as if he weren’t really here, and this wasn’t really him.

          the whispers began to make themselves prominent in the back of his mind, scratching at the inside of his skull gently, and he shuddered.  without any initial intention, fingers brushed against his stomach, too lightly to really feel, though his heart still lurched all the same.  he had avoided, rather incessantly, looking at himself too closely  —  he could observe the whites of his eyes and the strange paleness of his skin  ( that of a body not yet accustomed to anything other than death ), could focus heavily on the obvious veins which almost acted as visible, painless representations of the cracks of his self, but acknowledging the elephant in the room, which existed for him and him only, was a great terror.

          you could only go so long without allowing curiosity to get the best of you, though.

          reluctantly, in the privacy of the academy bathroom, ben lifted the front of his shirt.  flesh was warped and mangled, a brilliantly deep mixture of purple and blue, like some horrible ever-lasting bruise.  unnatural did it appear, unnatural was he, and he froze, staring blankly at the scar that was left behind, evidence of ripping himself apart.  deepest in the stomach, as if he had been gouged, trickling up his chest in darker, fainter yellow.  he took a single trembling breath before dropping the hem and stepping away from the mirror.

          he didn’t want to think about it.  he didn’t want to remember it.  

[13years]

tempportal​:

To tell the truth, it didn’t much matter even if Ben hadn’t had worse than this– even if it did hurt, even if it hurt more than the sharp, sudden pinch Five had always (in all his vast, thoroughly firsthand experience) thought it to be–because it was the only thing that would keep Ben alive. This was the only way to stop the slow but steady seep of blood from the half-healed wound. So Five only nodded, jabbed in the needle, and got to work. 

At least it didn’t take him very long–the hole was smaller than it looked, beneath all the sticky scarlet caked on the edges in dark crimson stains, and the time travel had mostly closed it all up, the time travel had taken Ben through the worst of it–but when he pulled back, his little brother still looked pale as death in the tiny, rickety hospital bed. Five wiped the dried blood off Ben’s skin as best he could, and plastered a thick, clean white bandage over the neat, narrow line of stitches, before he finally finished. 

“All right,” Five backed off a bit (he would want a little room to breathe right now, if he were Ben) but he didn’t take his eyes off his brother, “I’m going to go get you some water.” With all the blood loss, Ben would need the fluids in his system. Well, to tell the truth, he probably needed a trip to an actual hospital, but that obviously wasn’t an option in the Umbrella Academy. Ordinary people didn’t know much about how to heal superhumans. Oh, and, of course, Ben was very much still legally dead right now. So. There was that, too.  

“I’ll be right back,” he said, with a flicker of blue already flaring at his fingertips. “Sit tight.” 

          it was one of those things that felt like it was taking hours, until the moment it was over.  you’re left wondering,  when are they going to finally take the needle out, when is this going to be over, i’m already tired of it,  and before you can even finish that line of thoughts, you’ve got fresh gauze and you’re being told  get the hell out.  comparatively, he knew that it wasn’t all that bad, and that things could be considerably worse right now for both of them, but it’s still annoying, how much he felt like a kid again  —  vulnerable and repeating over and over to himself that it was all alright while mom tried her damndest to be gentle.  ben could hear dad, the monocle, in the back of his head, impatient and exhausted with him:     “   hold, number six.   ”     comparatively, much less comforting than five.

          when all was said and done, even though limbs felt heavier than a bag of bricks, he still shifted, fingertips coming to impulsively and absentmindedly graze the bandage five had given him.  it was a wonder, really, wasn’t it?  a strange thing which left many a question on the tip of his tongue, none of which could be answered  —  by either of them.  ben had never been very thankful for the creatures on the other side of the rift that was essentially him, but right now, he had to be the slightest indebted, even if he didn’t understand.  just as that train of thought was getting ready to depart, five was talking again, and ben squinted over at him, trying to understand.

          “   if you keep jumping,   ”     he piped, trying to speak quick, catch five before he hopped elsewhere,     “   you’re gonna hurt yourself.  the water can wait.   ”     he couldn’t even tell if his throat was dry or he was imagining it, and he honestly couldn’t bring himself to care too much about it.  

          he had to think, though.

          he looked at the ceiling.     “   the water can wait.  we have to be on borrowed time.   ”

[13years]

timeheld  said,       “     you know, at this point, i’ve run out of words.     ”

          ben tried his best to make it seem like he wasn’t paying attention:  ignoring the squabbling around him when he unfortunately happened to become witness to it was a talent of his when it needed to be, and remaining uninvolved was, typically, the safest route to go.  let the fire burn on its own, you know?  speak only when necessary, and recognize that in a group, you will only be interrupted anyway.  

          when the rest departed, storming off in their own special ways, and five raised his voice, ben could only assume he was, off - handedly or directly, talking to him  —  number six, lounging with crossed legs on the sofa and notably away from everything, who had remained silent over the past few minutes.  he smiled lightly to himself, not that five could see, and sighed through his nose.

          “   gotta love family, right?   ”     he hummed, shifting, only to get more comfortable.     “   they’ll come around.  eventually.  maybe.  chess?   ”

[13years]

          another town, another dead end;  it was beginning to become the vaguest bit overwhelming, a dreary failure in the already - dimness of hope.

          ex - poltergeist hopped down from the sun - bleached wooden porch of the saloon, dark boots kicking up dust as he landed.  the few people that hover in the sun’s light pay him no mind, disregarding him in the same fashion that he did for them  —  and if they were to acknowledge him, it would most definitely be in pity, something that ben could not stand and did not want.  at first, he was appreciative of the fact that they cared, but now, being ignored was better than any of their beg - pardons.

          down to the hitching rail he wandered, where his period appropriate ride awaited patiently in the shade of a stubborn tree.  he had never been great with animals  —  they were never entirely fond of him, for reasons that he had no control over.  farrah, on the other hand, gentle horse that she was, seemed to be the one thing in this world that didn’t mind him all that much, which understandably had startled him in the beginning  ( when he had, with only a brief twinge of regret, stolen her off of some asshole that wouldn’t miss her anyway ).  he had to be thankful for that, all things considered.

          ben came up to her and started to undo the rope keeping her to the hitching rail, tipping his head in shame.     “   no one’s seen a thing.  better luck next time, though, huh?   ”     he whispered to farrah, running his hand along her shoulder.  she huffed in what he could only assume was response, and while he knew that she couldn’t understand a word he was saying, nor grasp the desperation of this specific mission he was on, he liked to imagine that she did, and she was, in fact, giving him her sincerest condolences.  

          perhaps it was just the summer heat talking, though.

          when ben first heard his voice, it did not immediately click.  between lost time, other background noise, and a general disinterest for most private conversation, ben easily thought nothing of it, readying farrah’s saddle idly as he wondered  ( with no real ambition )  what to do next.  it wasn’t until something in him made him freeze and listen that realization began to dawn on him, and after a heartbeat, he turned toward where the interaction was coming from and lifted his head, squinting past the harsh sunlight to try and see.

          his grip on the rope tightened, and, oh, he really hoped he wasn’t seeing things.

          quick, muttered apology is sent farrah’s way as he, fumbling, rehitched her to the rail, and ben wasn’t sure if he had ever turned on his heel as fast as he did then.

          “   diego?   ”     

          tentative was he, and although he had enough gall to approach the other, his reluctance was palpable  —  in the shaky, half - broken tone of his voice, as well as in his quiet walk, as if he were headed towards some great, unfamiliar thing.  to be entirely fair, he was, in a manner of speaking.

@fightknife.

[13years]

thenightmareofyourdrems​:

  The  demerit of  an  unworthy alliance,  the  uncertainty of  a  seemingly unsolvable  problem,  all  giving  away nothing  but  an  insufferable  sense of  despair.  An  unbearable  helplessness – dangerous  // the  key  to opening  very  forbidden doors  –.  Endangering his  siblings  had been  far  from aspirations  –  his own  choices  catching attention  that  shouldn’t have  aimed  at them  –.  Another reason  why  he hated  his  very  own  question –  forcing  Ben  into  this kind  of  trouble was  NOT  what he’d  wanted  –.

  ❝ You  can  see ghosts,  right?  Klaus might  have  the power,  yet  you  are  practically one  of  them.  ❞  Science, complicated  problems  and  impossible  equations –  he  could comprehend  every  single one  of  them  –.  Ghosts, though,  was  a topic  that  he’d always  ignored  – for  the  acceptance of  it  would amount  to  various and  very  unpleasant of  things  –.  It’d  mean that  his  siblings’ ghosts  had  been real  every  single time  he’d  watched them  dying.  It’d mean  that  the Apocalypse  World  had been  abounded  with spirits  watching  him, pitying  him.  It’d mean  that  his family  could  have tried  to  talk to  him,  approach him.  And  he  couldn’t afford such  a  truth.

  ❝ Or  if  Klaus  conjures  them, you  can  talk to  them. ❞  He was  heading  to  a  very tricky  path  – one  full  of stones  and  traps, full  of  holes and  pitfalls  –. For  if  Klaus was  to  be  involved,  many factors  were  to be  taken  into consideration.  Another  reason why  he’d  have preferred  a  plan that’d  involve none  but Ben  –  he remembered  him  as a  child  // he’d  possessed  quite some  braincells  –.

          “   it’s a little...complicated.   ”     

          what ben meant when he said it was complicated was not that five couldn’t begin to understand how his body worked and functioned  —  which remained a fact despite it not being the context behind his words  —  rather, just that it was a messy ordeal of tangles and knots, none of which he could imagine would be useful to five.  the dead were not his friends, they did not come to him, did not reveal themselves to him;  regardless, ben couldn’t deny that on occasion, the anguish of the deceased became known to him, only for glimpses at a time.  he did not dabble in the matters of spectres and poltergeists like number four did, and he wasn’t going to lie about that, either.  

          he shifted in place.     “   when it comes to the dead, there’s only so much i can do.  it’s definitely klaus’ thing, there’s no doubt about that,   ”     ben started, waving his hand as if dismissing something.     “   i deal more with the eldritch end of stuff.  i’ll get interrupted by a tortured soul here and there, but seeing and summoning to ghosts isn’t something i can do like him.   ”

          ben thought for a moment  —  just a moment.  he thought back to the horrors, the constant and incessant murmurings of lost beasts well - ignored background noise at this point for him:  they were a topic he found best to push to the side, because it wasn’t like anyone would ever really get it, and it wasn’t like anyone really needed to know.  contemplation is short, and after a second he added, in no particularly hopeful tone,     “   there’s always them, but i’m guessing this is a ghost - specific issue if you’re asking, huh?   ”

[13years]

tempportal​:

Everything was exactly the same when they landed in the year 2002.  

The Umbrella Academy still towered over all the other houses on the street–a silent, red-brick monster, and its spindly, black iron gate jutted up out of the grass like the sharp and merciless teeth of an enormous beast, the open door a gaping, ravenous mouth ready to devour him, to swallow him whole, to drag him inside and never let him back out–and Reginald Hargreeves still lived inside. 

Reginald Hargreeves still worked in the office on the third floor, and he still had his meals at the grand oak table in the dining room, and he still slept in the enormous, ornate bedroom only one room off the office, and his cold, proud eyes still glinted past the pristine glass of his monocle, and his wrinkled, strong hands still clutched his thick black cane (and it was never so easy for Five to pretend he was a kid all over again than when Reginald Hargreeves raised his cane). And Grace still cleaned up all the messes and cooked all the meals, and Pogo still wandered the long, dark halls, hunched and quiet (and sad, in a way Five had never seen when he was really thirteen) and the house was full again with seven little kids in black blazers and knee socks. 

Seven little kids. 

Five had never thought they would ever be seven again.

He had never thought Ben could come back. He had never thought he would ever get to see Ben again–and he had thought he wanted to see Ben again, he had thought he wanted his little brother back, and he had thought there was almost nothing he wouldn’t give up to get his little brother back, but now that Ben was finally here, the last seventeen and forty-five and fifty-eight and thirteen years loomed up like a wall between them, and it was so much easier to just swallow back all the words he had thought he wanted to say.

Hell, he almost turned around and left, when he slipped inside Vanya’s room and found Ben at her side–she hadn’t moved so much as an inch in the last three days since her concert at the theater, flat on her back on the tiny bed, still and silent, but her breath had gotten deeper and stronger in the last twenty-four hours, and her heartbeat had picked up its pace, and the color had come back in her cheeks. 

“No change?” He already knew the answer–it was laid out on the bed in front of him in a pleated plaid skirt and Mary Janes–but Ben and Allison were the only ones who had stayed with her as much as he had, the only ones who would notice even the subtlest stirs, a twitch of a finger, a flutter of the eyes. He pressed his fingers lightly to the pale inside of her limp wrist, and her pulse thudded, strong and steady, under his fingers, same as it had ten hours earlier. “Well,” he drew back, “it’s only a matter of time.” 

          it was as much a surprise to ben as it was to five  —  to all of them.

          while ben sat beside his sister, young and stiff as stone, he remained unpresent.  whatever version of himself that he had built up over the years with klaus, stuck balancing on the thin line that was between here and there, had long since crumbled;  whether it had occurred when his siblings all looked at him rather than through him like they had so many times before, or when their father’s voice struck him and the memories came flooding back  ( overflowing, a thousand bettas in a too-small tank ), he couldn’t be sure, but something, something justifiable and great caused a rift of unintelligible horror in him.

          stockpiled and discombobulated were the fears that plagued him.  muttering voices had returned, feeding him jargon and making his skin crawl and his mind buzz  —  before, it had been effortless to define what was real and what wasn’t, but uncertainty clung to him in such a way that he couldn’t tell whether or not this was all some fever dream, or even panicked, stuttering synapses before he died, really died this time.  aware and unaware of everything was a new curse, and he found himself existing without realizing.  taking up space without consideration.

          with all of that, vanya was a boulder keeping his feet on the ground.  as surreal as it was to be at her side, attempting to keep careful watch over her  ( and it was weird;  ben had seen her even in his death, and he had witnessed her after they had all parted ways, but her face in this moment was the one he was most familair with, the one he felt most comfortable pointing out in a crowd ), it was something genuine to do.  within these walls, sharing a home once more with the man who made all of their lives hell, she was a light worth disregarding all else for.  

          if this was all real, which he knew on some level that it was, then he couldn’t just...ignore her.  she had five, and she had allison, but ben couldn’t leave her.  not when she was like this.

          ( him leaving her was what had helped in the initial mess.  god knew there were things he wanted to say to her, things he wanted to apologize for. )

          when five spoke, it caught him off guard.  hairs on the back of his neck rose and he actually jumped, head swiveling to look at him:  there was no excuse for it, really, to be so ill at ease, especially when things, as of the moment, were otherwise calm as far as he was aware.  immediately, he regretted it, and ben was quick to try and shrug off perhaps unnecessary uneasiness by putting his attention back on vanya.  it was then that he felt his skin grow hot, which was easily, uncomfortably, recognized as embarrassment.

          he didn’t want to speak.  he did anyway.     “   i thought i heard her say something, a little bit ago,   ”     he told five, not looking up as he did so.     “   just mumbling.  only for a second.   ”

[13years]

thenightmareofyourdrems​:

    Nights never  changing,  days never  endearing:  that feeling  resonating  within his  chest  only growing  in  intensity. The  essence  of company,  of  a human  voice,  of  words  that  didn’t source from  hallucinations.  He’d turned  to  Dolores –  the  only real  person  in  that  world –, their  conversations  keeping him  sane,  strong and  alive.  She would  remind  him of  the  purpose, of  the  safety of  his  siblings, of  the  duty he  shouldered:  the  salvation  of the  world.  A world  that  he ought  to  protect: for  the  outcomes of  the  havoc  that’d  been wreaked  had  been terrifying,  sickening.  The destruction,  the  emptiness,  the nothingness:  how  could have  everything  ended so  abruptly?  Had  it  been abruptly,  though?  Or had  it  been  an  occasional  disaster? Few  places  a time.  Or  wars. Or  nature  finally rebelling?  He’d  been  writing down theories  upon  theories: only  for  the  pen  to finally  stop  writing.

   Ben’s  remark was  enough  to snap  him  out of  his  daze – he  couldn’t  allow himself  to  go back –.  Instead,  a small  smile  formed onto  his  lips – a  little  bit more  forced  than initially  intended  –.  ❝ Well,  at least  now,  you  can  finally punch  him.  Bet  it’d  be quite  a  satisfactory move.  ❞  How  many  times had  he  wished to  punch  them – murder  them  – was  something  that  he’d  totally lost  count  of, after  all.  Perhaps they  had  a special  way  of being  mean  indeed, nothing  could   outpower their  ability  of being  impressively  infuriating, though.

   ❝ I am  aware  that you  have  a lot  of  catching-up to  do  but  – ❞  One  small  pause –  a  reconsideration –.   With  most  of his  siblings,  favors came  as  demands –  orders   translated into  threats –.  Ben was  not  most of  his  siblings, though.  How  many decades  had  it been  since  the last  time  he’d seen  him?  How many  times  had he  wondered  whether his  stay  would’ve prevented  his  death? And  how  many  times had  he  wished he  was  there? The  only  sane person  in  this family:  the  one he  didn’t  want to  stab  right in  the  face.   ❝ I think  you  could help  me  with something. ❞  

          laugh was quick and honest, a short sound of disbelief  —  as if to say,   god, you have no idea.  truth be told, though, as much as klaus had nipped at his heels over the years, he knew very well that it was all mutual;  and although ben would let that topic in particular die, cut off by a soft,     “   ha, yeah,   ”     and he wouldn’t say it aloud...let the record show, if there was only one thing left that he could do before the big man came knocking on his door a second time  ( because wouldn’t that be his luck? ), it would be to hug him.  don’t get him wrong, the urge to strangle his brother was strong and immortal, but that wasn’t what he needed.  it wasn’t what he wanted.

          call him sappy all you want, but that was what being dead and intangible did to you.

          the same applied to them all, really.  hopefully, they had time to burn that bridge.  to heal.

          ben hummed in acknowledgement, question immediately forming on his lips:     “   help?  with what?   ”     there remained a slight smile on his face, but his curiosity was evident.  he wasn’t used to anyone asking for help, and especially coming from five, there had to be caution in the decision;  ben did not think that five would ever ditch him with the pale horse, nor did he assume that he necessarily needed to prepare for anything big, but from what he knew and from what he had been allowed to observe in five’s short time back, favors and aid were not things he easily brought forth.