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It turns out that Five can drive that old car faster.
The trees speed by outside so quickly that Ben would get dizzy watching them if he wasn’t so used to moving in and out of existence that he can’t even remember what nausea feels like.
They haven’t seen a single car, but Five’s eyes never once stray from the road ahead, calm but controlled, deliberate and ready.
Ben looks back and sees Luther’s big hand around Allison’s throat like he’s choking her instead of keeping her from bleeding out. He hasn’t stopped looking at her since the cabin, not since he’d stopped and glared at Diego outside the car and said that he was not letting go of her, expecting some sort of challenge which of course came after he’d issued it. Diego had stared him down for the one second it took Five to say that this wasn’t the time before averting his gaze and getting on his side of the car without a fight.
Diego’s gaze is fixed outside the window, apparently also having an immunity to car sickness due to not dead reasons. He’s holding his arms over Allison’s legs, more casually than Ben’s seen the two them since Dad’s funeral, though he figures one of them being unconscious helps a great deal. Diego’s hands are clenched and his jaw is set because if there was anything they can rely on, it is for Diego to be pissed.
Ben leans between the passenger and the driver's seat to look at the empty road ahead, that much further from home and Mom, that much closer to Allison dying.
“Come on Five,” he can’t help saying to alleviate some of the tension he feels. It only helps a fraction. Klaus doesn’t look at him, which is normal. He just fidgets in his seat. It’s rare to see genuine emotion on Klaus these days. Normally his emotions range from “I want drugs” to “happy to be high” while he badly feigns feeling anything for anyone, including himself, but right now he’s worrying his fingers, bringing them to his mouth and back down on his lap. He’s been sober long enough for it not to be withdrawal.
“Stop staring” Klaus mutters, still not looking at Ben. Ben doesn’t respond and instead turns his head and wonders if anyone else noticed Klaus speaking to him. If they do notice they give no indication of hearing him.
The normal feeling of restlessness hits him hard then. Here they are, the entire Umbrella Academy together again for the first time since Five disappeared. Except Ben isn’t really here, is he? His life had ended and his experiences banished to the past. He’s stuck, a watcher as the world changes and his family changes and he can’t be a part of that anymore. He might be in this car with them, but he’d never be with them, a part of them, again.
He doesn’t wish that on Allison.
Ben’s jaw clenches and he tries to will anger to come up and burn the helplessness away like he’s seen Diego do so many times, but he just feels sick.
He barely registers the slow brush across the back of his fingers, but when fingers wrap around his he can’t miss the tight squeeze of them, the warm weight of a palm pressed against the space between his index and middle finger.
Ben freezes in alarm, completely taken out of his worry.
He turns around quickly and familiar brown eyes stare back at him with an unfamiliar, knowing maturity. He’s not mistaken. That sad smile is directed at him.
“Allison?”
Her mouth opens and no words come out, which causes her smile to falter for a second in that same dismayed way she’d done when she’d burned the edges of cookies that one time when they were kids, but still she mouths “Ben” as she squeezes his hand again, her manicured fingernails brushing smoothly against the inside of his thumb.
Her throat is cut and his mind is trying to warn him that her being able to touch him means something tragic, but he can’t look away from her watery eyed, grateful expression.
“Hi,” is all he can think to say to her, the enormous feeling he can’t help holds tight inside him like the monster that used to live in his body. She huffs a silent laugh and lifts her free hand to wave at him in response.
“Luther!” Klaus’ voice says a little too loudly and Ben turns his head away from the sight of his sister’s smile directed at him to see what has him worried. Klaus’ eyes are wide and staring at Allison. Not the Allison in Luther’s lap, but the one holding Ben’s hand.
“No, don’t die,” he says hurriedly to her, holding up both hands as if to tell her to stop there, and turns to their Number 1, “Luther, do something! Wake her up or something.”
Luther still doesn’t hear him, eyes on Allison, hands dutifully stabilizing her neck. Diego definitely does notice.
“What’s going on?” He asks, looking first at Klaus’s panicked face, then Allison’s still form, then back at Klaus.
“I saw her, Allison! She’s slipping- slipped- slipping!”
Diego moves immediately, moving over her legs, and putting a hand on the side of Allison’s face, leaning over her so he would be looking her in the eye if her eyes were open.
“What did I tell you?” Luther growls at Diego but he ignores him.
“Okay, there’s nothing I can do for you so listen up. Don’t go dying Allison. Monkey boy is already losing his mind without you here to set his head straight. You’re stronger than this. I don’t-, I lost-, we don’t want to see you d-die. So d-don’t. die.”
Diego’s eyes move all over her face as if he’s looking for something.
“Diego!” Luther says sternly enough for Diego to take his eyes off their sister and look up and meet Luther’s angry eyes.
Ben doesn’t feel the hand gripping his anymore.
“Klaus was seeing her,” he explains, Luther’s gaze softening slightly with curiosity, even with the nod for him to keep going.
“Like seeing” He points two finger at his eyes and moves them away to gesture to Ben’s chest, but what he thinks is the small amount of empty space in the car, “seeing. So talk to her. Keep her here,” he demands gently and looks away. It takes Luther a few seconds for that to sink in. He looks at Klaus who just nods his head in the affirmative.
“She’s not here anymore, well she’s here obviously,” he gestures to her unconscious body, “but not, you know, going bump in the night which means that worked, yay! So keep doing that talking thing.”
Klaus shoos the issue away with his hands to Luthor and immediately moves his hands to his mouth, biting at his cuticles, and stares back at Luthor like he used to when they were kids and they all relied on Luthor’s lead. Ben wonders if they all notice that they still do that, follow the chain of command.
Luthor looks down at Allison. He runs a hand through his hair and squeezes his eyes shut. He takes a deep breath and opens his eyes to determinedly gaze at Allison, holding that focus for a few seconds before it softens and he just looks helpless.
“Hey Allison…” He starts and keeps going.
Ben turns away. The memory of the slight touch, of being seen by someone who wanted to be there for him, still lingers like a phantom weight, and God he misses Allison.
“And that time you tried cutting my hair. I don’t think I ever recovered,” Luther’s voice murmured in the background.
He misses her bossy attitude and the reassurance that her bossy-ness could be more than an attitude if she so chose but never would, not with him. He misses her laughing at the jokes he’d read in books and her curious gaze when he’d tell her about the Anton Chekhov plays he’d read, how she’d brag about playing the parts if they put on a very unlikely one woman show. Mostly he misses the things she became, the Allison he didn’t live long enough to know.
“Diego looked terrible with the ‘Mohawk’ you’d tried to give him. I think I still have a picture somewhere.”
He misses what leads up to the one indulgent drink at Dad’s funeral. He misses the softening maturity that makes the patience she now holds so graceful. He misses the sad smile and the soft eyes and the strength to hold someone’s hand because they’re hurting even while she is hurting herself. He misses being part of someone’s life.
“Dad just said we looked ridiculous but he was mad you’d involved Vanya and you got your hour for fun and games taken away for a month.”
He misses the way Luther lingers awkwardly, never quite sure what to do when it’s not something he’s told but still wanting to be involved. He misses Diego’s enduring willingness to help, strong enough to get over himself and his shitty attitude. It’s hard to miss Klaus since he keeps on summoning him back, the prick, but still he misses his openness, the way he can’t hide that he likes the people he likes and he loves the people he loves. He misses Five (God he misses Five) and their conversations about the universe and the great unknown and all of his rants about nonlinear math that Ben could never keep up with. He misses quiet Vanya who would eagerly smile at him even from her place always off to the side, whose violin playing is the background music of his childhood. Vanya who was still missing with the man who cut Allison’s throat.
But finding Vanya, keeping Allison alive, driving the damn car, that was for the living. And that wasn’t Ben’s place anymore.
Slipping out of existence to that place he goes when Klaus’ codependency doesn’t kick in is mostly unnoticeable until he’s summoned back to a place different than where he was before so he doesn’t notice when he’s no longer in the car..
“I remember you and Ben,” Luther’s voice hitches, “you and Ben wouldn’t stop giggling when Dad was out of the room during your extended quiet reading for that one month. Do you remember that? I never did find out what you two found so amusing. I guess I might never...”
“It was probably Candide,” Five pipes up from the front, bringing everyone’s eyes to the driver’s seat. Five’s expression doesn’t change, but the arrogance still radiated off of him.
“Ben wouldn’t shut up about the damn thing. I refused to read something as unsubstantial as Voltaire so he’d quote it at me. Sometimes he’d break out laughing before he finished. I found a copy in the future. Utter nonsense.”
“We can ask her when she wakes up,” Diego speaks up with forced certainty, glaring at Five.
“Yeah,” Luther agrees, not looking away from Allison, “When you wake up you have to tell us about Ben.