sixthiterationlogs | 01.02: where only your thoughts have been

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01.02: where only your thoughts have been

WHO: Ben Hargreeves
WHERE: Both villages, as marked below
WHEN: Nebulously early to mid May, after the siege is over
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Will be included as relevant

It takes nearly three days for Ben to emerge from the house and start exploring. That's how long
it takes him to get used to things like sensations, eating, sleeping, all the mundane things that make up being alive.

He explores the North Village carefully, going to the converted barn and nosing about the other communal buildings. He's nearly always within line of sight of one of his brothers, both for his comfort and theirs, after he forgot he wasn't intangible and tried to stick his hand in the fire.

When he goes to the South Village, it's with Diego and Klaus (it's with Diego and they make Klaus come because he can't be trusted unsupervised for more than five minutes). Ben's on the quest for hoodies from the storage in the South Inn and then he discovers there's a Library and moving him from there is going to be a task for the ages, because there's books. New books he has never read. And even if it's not fiction, Ben is happiest when he has a space to curl up in and a stack of books next to him.

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The pup races ahead of Bobo bounding up to the barn, pausing outside the door and giving a bark. Bobo lightly chuffs him upside the head, ruffling his ears, and then heading into the barn.

And realizing they're not alone.

"Uhmmm, hey," he says, standing there by the sunlight, dressed in his long fur coat, head freshly shaved on the side, and actually fairly casual and relaxed for a hulking figure in the doorway. "You from the big house? Seen a few new people there."

The barn has animals.

Ben isn't willing to try actually going over to them yet, but he's lurking in a corner watching them, adjusting to the sounds and smells of it all and the animal warmth in here.

He doesn't draw back. He doesn't realise he's being addressed at all, until the question about the big house and it dawns on him. "Oh. Me?" He looks around and realises it must be. "Um... I live with my brothers, Diego and Klaus Hargreeves." He points in the rough direction of their place.

That gets an odd look, because he's not talking to the kirin, after all. Though who knows. He's heard Faraday talking to the animals, so maybe it's a thing people do.

Nodding though at that, moving to shoo the rapidly growing pup back towards the door as he moves to open the pen, letting the also growing up goats out. The dog instantly begins the first bits of herding them, lessons with Bobo's roommates apparently working.

"Knew we had some new people up here. Good. Might just stop having to go all the way down there we get enough people living up there," he says. Which is a far cry from his first thoughts of being cranky anyone was moving into his village.

"You gotta name?"

Ben's first instinct is to scream 'Yes, I have a name, not just a number, I'm a person with a person name' but he knows that's not what he's being asked. "Ben. My name's Ben."

Not Six. Not Horror. He's just Ben. He doesn't even have to be a Hargreeves here.

He looks up at the man's face, feeling smaller than he usually does. He never got to hit his last growth spurts before.

He nods at that, ushering the goats out into the pen and closing the small gate to leave them out there for a bit.

"Name's Bobo, and most of these monsters belong to my roommates but if you like animals, you're welcome to play with them. They're all friendly, even the soon to be behemoth in the back room," he says, where looing is coming from. "This used to be the police station but we converted it."

When one moves towards Ben, he steps back instinctively, hands pressing over his stomach. For some reason, They'd always been quite partial to goats as playthings.

"I've never really... interacted with animals. Back home, when I was alive, they were terrified of me." Even insects tended not to linger when Ben's presence became apparent.

Also, Bobo is maybe a worse name than 'Six', but he doesn't say that, it's rude."

"Yeah, they don't all like me much," he admits. "This bunch has gotten used to it, but that damn dog? He'll suddenly just stare at me and follow me around with his hackles up. Which is about how his master looks at me so whatever," he says, throwing down a handful of grain for the chickens.

He turns to look at Ben though, considering him. "You not human?" He knows it's why they have issues with him, except they seem fine with Bull and he's definitely not human.

The question is innocent, but it still hurts, because of all of them, he's the one who wondered that, who was called those things. "I don't know. I used to be a gateway to somewhere else, where They exist. I could unleash Them, but animals always seemed to know they were just under my skin."

His medicals showed he was human. But then his stomach would distend and ripple and no medical test could pick up why.

"I was born to a human mother? I mean, she wasn't pregnant until the moment she gave birth, but all of us look like our birth mothers racially?" He's distinctly Korean. Diego is very clearly Hispanic. Allison is black.

Bobo isn't sure what answer he is expecting but that is definitely like totally out of left field. He pauses, turning to face Ben fully as he looks him over. Considering this kid who is hesitant and shy, who doesn't look like much of anything in the grand scheme of things. And then he talks about that.

"Animals know a lot," he says, nodding at that. "But they aren't always right about things. Just because you're not what they think smells normal doesn't reflect on you as a person," he says, thinking of some revenants he'd known who didn't deserve what happened to him. Like himself.

"I had to guess by that though? Sounds like a curse," he says, utterly serious. "A mother suddenly pregnant, being a gateway and unleashing things? Definitely sounds like a curse."

Ben shrugs slightly, but he doesn't try and back away when the goat comes closer this time. He doesn't try to touch, but he doesn't move away.

"They scared animals. They scared me." They killed him and to this day he isn't sure exactly why. "There's forty three of us. At the exact same moment, our not pregnant mothers gave birth to us and we all have powers. Sir bought seven of us, me and my brothers and sisters. My power is, was, gateway to and control of eldritch horrors residing in another dimension. I don't know why or how. If Sir knew, he never explained."

It sniffs at him, wanders a bit and then heads out towards the other.

Holy shit, and he thought his story was fucked sideways and upside down. For a long moment he just stares at the kid, wide eyed and stunned. "You know, I know it's not the part I'm supposed to catch this but bought you? I thought that went out of style around the end of slavery. Well, no, there was a brisk trade in Indian babies for a long while after that, but history books don't like teaching that, do they?"

And still one in Indian women, but again, that gets ignored more often than not.

"And all the powers are different then? Eldritch? Like those books by that fellow, what was his name? I read them back when they came out. Not exactly the delightful bedtime stories the ladies of the spiritual movement wanted to believe spirits to be," he says with a chuckle. "Guessin' you know that though, doncha?"

"He bought us," Ben confirms. "Our mothers were 'well compensated' for our adoptions." It was the phrase used in public, well compensated. None of them knew anything else about the women who birthed them.

"All different," is all he confirms, because he isn't sure that Diego or Klaus would appreciate their normal abilities being outed. "Lovecraft. He wasn't a very nice man, he was very racist, but he might have been in contact with them. They're not spirits, they're... Them. The Horrors."

"Jesus," he says, shaking his head. "And he just talked about this? Glad to see the world ain't really ever changed."

And he sees it more and more the way things go.

"Yeah well, most people then were racist fuckers," he says, shrugging because he's see it too much to think about it unless they're in front of him. "And you know it's still sounding like a curse. Something like it. Which is rough. Sorry you've had to go through that." They were born to it. It means there's nothing they did to have this done to him, and given what he's been through for the same, it bothers him.

Ben shrugs. Frankly, purchasing them was one of the least monstrous things Sir did to them.

"I don't know what it is. Was. Dying didn't stop them, though since I couldn't affect the living world, they couldn't." Until the concert. Until Klaus. "But they're not with me here. It's been really strange. Maybe good? I think good. But I've never been without them before."

"You died too, huh? It's disconcerting as fuck coming back from the dead," he says, thinking about those days when he first returned from Hell after Wyatt died. And realizing how much he needed to do to keep the revenants under control.

"Yeah, this place is good for that if you don't want it," he says, nodding. He still misses his, even if he's coming more to terms with being a revenant than he's been anywhere else. "If it was me? I'd be partying the hell up," he says with a laugh. "This place let me free of where I've been for over a century. Best day of my life was coming here."

Ben nods, hugging himself tighter. "They... It went bad. Sir always told me They could. Being alive again here has been really weird. I've been dead like, nearly half my existence."

He's been alive for three days now. He's nearly nailed the rhythms of life again. "I missed sleeping. It sounds strange, but I really missed sleeping. Being able to curl up and go to sleep and not... just stop existing and lingering in the in between..." He looks up and smiles slightly. "I've met a lot of ghosts, but not anyone else who came back. Except Klaus. But Klaus is different."

"You could try and control them but you can't master something like that,' he says, nodding. That makes sense. Horrifying, awful sense.

"Yeah, I missed sleep," he agrees, thinking about that time in Hell. "Well, not sure it helps or not but I was never a ghost. I guess maybe I would've been if I died regular. I've known a ghost or two in the Ghost River Triangle," he admits. "But me, I was cursed when I was shot and just went straight to Hell," he says, having talked about it enough he doesn't mind going into details. "I came back when the cursed man died and never went back like some."

Ben wonders, sometimes, if trying to control them and master them, fearing them and being forced to force them is why it all went so wrong.

There's no way to know. It's not relevant anymore.

"There's a lot of ghosts everywhere," Ben say simply. "I usually don't interact with them, they're... not ghosts like me." Angry, mindless, caught in their death. Not anchored by a living medium.

"I didn't want to move on. not because I was scared of what was after. Klaus needed me. Though he says God hates him and keeps sending him back because she doesn't want to deal with him."

"Not in the triangle. It keeps things out and keeps others in. Someone once set it was like a preserve. It protected what was inside, but it did that at the cost of tight borders," he says, thinking back on it. "But I know how that is. Dealt with that."

Angry violent men became angry violent demon like creatures with abilities. Some just realized the line they walked. Most died and went back to Hell.

"So what? Do all of your family die and come back?"

"No. Just Klaus. I didn't come back. I just... came here? Eventually. After like, fourteen years." Luther died and came back, but that was due to medical intervention. Likewise with Allison.

Five... would probably kick Death in the nuts and teleport off.

"And I thought the lot I got stuck with was interesting. What about the others outside of your family? They all the same way? Abilities and powers and such? Or this something your crazy keeper caused?"

"The others born at the same time? Don't know. I presume they've all got powers as well, just they didn't become child superheroes."

There's no way of knowing how many survived to adulthood. Sir was a monster, but he kept them alive.

"So basically he bought you guys to turn you into what I can only imagine was a spectacle if it's anything like what you see in movies," he says, just trying to imagine that and shaking his head.

"Weird you never heard about them. I guess if they're all over the world, maybe it's different. With teevee and all, you'd figure everyone would know."

North Village, at the barn

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South village library

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