PSL: Ben

[killedwithlove]

When it happens, when it takes them, they're together.

After, Cole doesn't know if Ben will remember. People didn't often remember the Fleet (though he did). He might not remember and if that was the case, Cole would have to accept that and go with whatever Ben wanted then. If he wanted to get to know Cole again, or just ask him to leave.

Sitting outside the Umbrella Academy, Cole watches them all for a while. He thinks Klaus will be able to see him, even if he doesn't want to be seen. He's fairly sure that One, Two and Three won't. Five seems more interested in his lifetime companion than anything else (paradox, time folded and knotted and compacted and confused) and Seven is... not there? Maybe?

He slips from the grotesque to the balcony and asks the window to open for him. He walks in, ignoring the screaming of emotions and impressions and the weight of history and instead takes hold of that thin, spider silk thread of affection and follows it.

Ben is alive.

Ben might not know he's alive. Ben might think he's dead. But They are alive, and while They live, so does Ben. And They're easy to find, so Cole follows that as well, whispering to the house to forget him for now until he finds Ben.

Comments

[benhargreeves]

Life in the Anchor had been full of disruptions, inexplicable events, and sudden incomprehensible changes. These had seemed, to Ben, to be on the rise in recent weeks, but that upheaval hadn't bothered him all that much - he had his brother, his sister, he had Cole, he had all his friends around him. In lieu of real stability, that network of good people had kept him from too much anxiety about the future.

When Ben wakes up, in his childhood home, alive once again, he is still the same Ben who spent all those months on that other world, learning and growing and changing. He just... got a little scrambled, in the transfer.

It doesn't surprise him, being alive, the way it had when he had first been tumbled back into a body upon arriving at the Anchor. He wakes up curled on the bare floor of an attic room and sits up, blinking at the darkness. It isn't being alive that is confusing, but being alive here. He knows this place, but he shouldn't be in it. Why is he here? Why is he home? And what is it - making him feel like something is missing?

Ben's head is a jumble, but his gut knows to worry. To ache with the dread that he has been separated from... someone. Someone whose face he can't quite remember.

He feels that kind of disorientation that comes after a long sleep, or a particularly vivid dream. But that preoccupation he feels over the person whose face and name are on the tip of his mind is something different. It's just as that concern is starting to tip over the edge into outright panic when the door opens, and Ben sees...

"Cole."

Of course, his name is Cole. Of course, that pale, worried face is the one he had been trying to think of. More than anything, seeing Cole standing there, Ben feels a rush of full-body relief. Cole is here. Cole is right there, and so everything will be fine.

[killedwithlove]

And where there's Them, there's Ben.

Cole breaks into a wide smile, stepping across the space with a single step and a flicker of smoke and then he's there, in Ben's space, looking at him intently. "You remember me."

So few people do once Cole leaves. It might be Them. It might be Ben. It might be the connection between them. But Ben's looking at him with recognition and relief. "You remember me."