Chapter Text
Five swings the butter knife but doesn’t actually throw it, to Ben’s complete and utter delight and vindication.
(He knew that Five loved him).
But he also knows that he’s pushed an invisible line, expressing his own love aloud, so he regretfully makes some space between him and his brother anyways.
Five needs a lot of space lately. Ben thinks he gets it.
“You’re really fifty-eight, huh?” Ben muses, when he’s a sufficient few feet from the small assassin. Five rolls his eyes, shooting Ben a look like he’s disappointed in his predictability.
“That’s what I said. Give or take.”
“And you could’ve gutted me with that knife.”
Five shrugs. He seems to appreciate the return to easy banter; he pulls on his typically bored expression, one hand pocketed with the knife, the other grabbing for another book off the shelf. Ben would think it was a random book for the way that Five doesn’t even look at it, if he didn’t know better. “I could’ve. Didn’t, obviously.”
Ben smiles, reading the wouldn’t where Five won’t say it. “I appreciate that.”
Five looks like he might actually crack a smile, or at least a smirk, and that's got to be some sort of record. He flips open the book, reading the first page absently while he speaks. “Keep that in mind though. And my age, for that matter. I’m nobody’s baby anything.”
“Yes, sir,” Ben says. He doesn't think he's ever heard the word 'baby' said with so much vehemence before. Then he flinches as something shifts in his atmosphere. Shit, he’s flickering.“I won’t be corporeal for much longer. Klaus is faltering.”
Five’s eyes flick up from his book. He’s already on the second page, somehow. “Hmm.”
The book is old, the kind of small hardcover that they sell in stacks in Farmer’s Markets, three for ten dollars. It’s a deep burgundy with gold lettering on the side, but as far as Ben can see, no title on the front. It’s exactly the kind of book that he would picture in Five’s hand; it’s exactly the kind of book that he has pictured in Five’s hand, when he’s imagined drawing him all of these years that he’s been dead. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of his bedroom, or standing in the library with the light behind him, book in hand, a crinkle in between his eyebrows, that sure and cocky expression in his face not quite worn in yet.
He’s missed being able to draw. He should ask Klaus for a pen and paper and some time alone, the next time they do this.
“I’m gathering that you can physically manifest, without being in the same room as Klaus, for extended periods of time, but not forever. How long does it typically last?”
“Not very long. Sometimes an hour or two. And I can’t get too far.”
“What about other related considerations? Are there variables that effect the length of time you’re able to appear, for example? I assume there must be conditions that optimize the effects of Klaus’s abilities.”
Ben just shrugs; he’s never really been comfortable with the obsessive sort of way that Five has always talked about their abilities. Especially now. Ben has been away from this house long enough-- away from the living long enough-- that sometimes he’s able to forget that at heart, their very existences were one giant experiment.
Five never did, though. The difference is, Five’s never minded being an experiment, didn’t understand why the others cared so much. And he doesn’t notice Ben’s discomfort now, still talking rapidly, more to himself now than to Ben.
“Why do you want to know?” Ben finally interrupts. Five glances back at him.
“I need to know how long you’ll be able to retain corporeal form over the upcoming months.”
“For what?” Ben’s body itches under his coat; he’d forgotten he could feel too warm in sunlight.
Five actually looks surprised to be asked. “I’m attempting to organize a list of book recommendations for you. I need to know how many should be on it.”
And that--
Well, Ben hadn’t expected that.
“A book list?”
Five drops another book in the wagon and turns to face him again, frowning as if it’s an inconvenience to be interrupted with questions. Or maybe he genuinely doesn’t understand why Ben is confused. “Do you not want one?”
“I just--” Ben blinks. “I hadn’t considered you might want to give me one.”
He realizes that he’s corporeal, visible, and that technically now there’s not much that separates him from any other living person for the hours that Klaus can give him. So sure, he supposes, it’s not that odd for someone to be thinking of something like that, something so human.
It’s just… he’s been around for a pretty long time. Not from Five’s perspective, but generally. Thirteen years trailing Klaus. Over two of those thirteen years have been spent in his family home, around his siblings; a year and a half before Klaus left, six months since the apocalypse that wasn’t. And yet--
Well, he’s just not used to being acknowledged. But if he follows that thought too far, he knows that he might find a well of anger that he’s nowhere near ready to acknowledge. He wants to be happy with his siblings now, not resentful of what they’d-- of what he didn’t get to have.
Five hasn’t acknowledged the half-question. His attention is still on dropping books in his cart, keeping up with his stream of murmurs that Ben is increasingly realizing isn’t meant for him.
So Ben just… answers. “I would like one,” he says. “A book list. Please. But I don’t need to be corporeal to read.”
Five’s hand pauses in midair. “I won’t ask how that works.”
Yeah, Ben doesn’t know either. Books just seem to exist wherever he is; once he’d asked Klaus about it when he’d been tripping on acid, hazy and panicked in this absolutely disgusting drug den, more as a distraction than anything. Klaus had suggested that maybe the culmination of every person who’d ever died clutching a book in their arms had stocked the supernatural plane with enough to fill a library. It’s the winning theory, for now.
Maybe one day Ben will ask Five what he thinks.
Something is alight inside of Ben’s chest, another feeling that he’d forgotten. Five had always respected him, before-- maybe he still could. Maybe this wouldn’t be their last conversation.
Five stops walking suddenly, almost derailing Ben’s footing again. This time he shoots a terse, “careful, she’ll kill me if one of these books gets knocked out,” over his shoulder before he shoves the wagon under the nearest table. He plunks into one of the chairs with a sigh.
“I don’t suppose that you have coffee in the ether?”
Ben smiles. “Unfortunately, no,” he says. “Wouldn’t have much use for it.” He gestures down at himself, hoping to convey the sense that his body is empty.
Not that he’s ever had the chance to try to eat-- and hey, he could do that now too, couldn’t he? The thought is more terrifying than exciting. What if food tastes differently than he’d remembered? What if it’s only a reminder of how he’s not really real?
He’s about to suggest that maybe he should get back to Klaus, because the flickering feeling is only increasing, when Five gestures to the chair opposite him.
Oh, right. Ben sits.
“How much did you see?” Five asks. His gaze is scrutinizing, curious, yet he still manages to look uninterested, hands folded in his lap and posture loose. “Everything, I presume?”
They’re cutting right to the point, then. Another firsts when it comes to sibling reunions-- no one’s ever thought about how long he was alone with Klaus, watching.
Although perhaps they’re better for it. The violation of privacy, though Ben tries to respect codes, has always made him feel a little guilty. He looks down.
“Not everything.” And then, because Five hadn’t hit him over the head with the butter knife earlier, “Delores seems nice.”
Five actually smiles this time. It’s not huge, no teeth, but it’s real, none of the cockiness or dangerous edge he seems unable to shed these days. “She was.”
“Do you think she would have liked me?” Ben finds himself asking. It’s a ridiculous question, and Five squints at him, rightly so, as if trying to decipher whether or not he’s being mocked. Whatever it is that he finds in Ben’s face must satisfy him, though, because he nods sharply.
“I think she would have found you admirable. She did, in fact. From what I told her at least.”
“You talked about me?”
Too far, apparently; Five’s expression shutters and goes glassy. He stares over Ben's shoulder. “We had a lot of time alone.”
And it’s funny, Ben thinks. Because this is the moment where most of his siblings-- he’s seen it play out over and over again, from corners of rooms and empty couch spots—would get flustered. Wouldn’t know what to say. It was the ultimate paradox of their family, really. This scenario, this question, this smallest of statements.
We had a lot of time alone.
And even though Ben has watched it over and over again, would think that he’s watched it enough to have it figured out, he still watches it now once again as it plays out within his own mind, too; a spectator to his own dissonance.
One part of him, the part that looks at Five and still sees a stranger, tells Ben that this is too much. This is too private, it’s too painful, it’s too alienating. He can’t possibly relate to the radical, ridiculous experience of living through decades of an apocalypse alone, can he? No, he can’t talk about this with Five. None of them can.
But a second, smaller, more hopeful part of him, who sees his brother beneath the calculating, bored stare of this fifty year old teenager, reminds him that he also spent thirteen years alone. Reminds him that Luther spent four years alone on the moon, that Klaus spent over a decade with his drugs as a shroud. Reminds him of Allison, with her fame and rumours that were never enough. Of Vanya with her isolation, that she never wanted but never left, either, and of Diego with his angry idealism and the boiler room that he calls home.
Five’s pain is his own, but he isn’t alone in it.
But Ben, for all that he wasn’t a poet before he died, has very little way with words anymore. So he doesn’t say that.
Instead, he just says, “Yeah,” quietly enough to be heard, and hopes that it’s enough.
And then he flickers out.
---
(Later, when Klaus is able to bring him back again, Ben sneaks down to the library and relishes the feeling of the books passing through his hands as he collects his own pile in return, for Five. He leaves it on his bed one day when Five’s not home-- a mishmash of books with a tiny little list taped to the top, weathered and worn and in children’s careful, looped handwriting.
The bottom book in the pile is aptly titled “The Body Keeps the Score.” It’s a book on trauma; one of Ben’s most cherished, and he knows that it’s not subtle, but he hopes that it okay. He’s not sure if Five will read it.
But he thinks that Five will understand).