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Ben looks at them all. Takes them in like his eyes have been starving for the sight. They look different. Diego’s hair is a little too long, and Luther looks beat-up alright but Vanya and Allison seem almost happy, like they’ve found a place that accepts them as they are despite everything. Like they’ve found a home.
And Five is. Well. Five.
“I saw you all die,” he says, and there’s a hint of something in his voice, a bone-deep ache that’s a little too familiar to Ben. “And I wanna forget it, but I can’t”
Yeah. He’s had to watch Klaus hitch a ride on his own metaphorical wrecking ball enough times to understand the feeling.
The fact that Five even admits something so emotional speaks volumes, though. He wants these guys to stow their crap and work together like a real family, and good luck with that, Ben thinks.
He thinks back to their reunion down in the hall, this time not on the occasion of a wedding or a funeral. How Klaus had jumped into the hug with Vanya and Allison while Ben stood at the sidelines, watching. Always just watching.
He lets out a sigh. A drawn out, long-suffering one deep from his non-functioning lungs.
“Aw quit it,” Klaus says to the thin air that is Ben to no one but Klaus, and used to his antics, the others don’t even spare him more than a cursory glance.
Ben, though, turns his full glare at him. “Quit it?”
“Yeah, you’re being a big whiny baby right now, and it really doesn’t suit you. Makes you all,” Klaus puffs his cheeks as if in demonstration. “You know. Uglier than usual.”
Something about his tone makes the frustration well up in Ben again. "You know what?” he snaps. “I'm done. I'm sick of you only manifesting me when you need me to haul your ass out of trouble. I'm not the dumpsite for your baggage or whatever, okay? I have a life too."
“Actually-” Klaus holds up a finger, but Ben doesn’t give him a chance to bring up that argument.
"Oh, don't start. Point is, i'm a real person, okay? You try being invisible for — hmm, let’s see — ever? It’s not fun, I can tell you. I exist in some way, right?” He shuffles over to the couch, sits down right in the empty space between Allison and Diego. “I mean, can you see me sitting right here?” he asks Allison who looks right back at him and for a moment he wonders…
But then he turns his head, and it’s Diego who’s looking back at Allison. Because Ben, to them, is invisible.
Throwing his head back to share his woes with the ceiling, he sighs again. “No, of course you don’t."
It’s silent in the room, like a question’s been raised and waiting for an answer. Ben hasn’t kept up with the conversation so he doesn’t know what it’s about.
It’s silent, until Klaus interrupts. "You know, if you'd stopped moping for a second-"
"Moping? Who's the one always moping-" Ben tries to counter, incredulous, but then the weirdest thing happens (and that’s saying something, what with their lives): A finger pokes at his cheek. A finger pokes at him, and it doesn’t go through him at all, he can actually feel the pointed touch and when he turns, he sees Allison stare at him like he’s, well, a ghost, her fingertip still extended to his cheek.
"If you’d stop moping,” Klaus repeats, the smug bastard. “You'd have already realized what an amazing brother I truly am."
“Ben?” Allison says, and blessedly, she extends her touch so her palm is cupping his entire cheek and he hasn’t felt this alive in—
“Wait, you can see me?”
She nods slowly, and if Ben didn’t know better he’d say those are tears making her eyes shine and when he turns around, he sees that same look echoed in Luther and Five and Diego’s faces.
Vanya, for her part, is staring at him with wide eyes, and no recognition but that’s okay because Ben’s launching himself into his first real hug with someone corporeal in a long time — it’s not like Klaus and him are big huggers, normally.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” Klaus says, like it’s such a big service he’s offering him and not something he can just do with a dramatic wave of his hands by now.
“Oh, shut up,” Ben mumbles into Allison’s hair, and before he knows it, he feels Diego’s added weight on his back, and Luther joining the hug and Vanya following, a little more hesitantly and it’s almost too much at once, after all these years of semi-isolation.
“Ghosts can’t time travel, huh,” Five says, judgy and seemingly unfazed as ever, but even he can’t fool a dead man.
“Yeah, apparently only the real ugly ones make it through,” Klaus comments, and amazingly, Ben’s still got his body even after the pillow he throws at Klaus’ head.