[Klaus barely remembers those early days - when he'd first seen Ben after he died, it was while he was sobering up from a weeks-long bender following his death. Desperate to not see Ben the way the other ghosts had looked, so angry and hurt and injured and screaming and shouting, he'd just tried to block the world out as much as possible. Losing Five and Ben had been too much, he hadn't been able to hold it together, had just kept throwing himself deeper and deeper into oblivion until there were no pills or pot or powders or needles left to lose himself in.

And then he'd tried to get clean, when Ben hadn't shown up looking like a horrorshow. That hadn't lasted long.

So now, he's feeling more than a little numb, more than a little overwhelmed, and the feeling of it is so unexpected, unprecedented (the Hargreeves kids don't usually get nice things, people just don't come back from the dead, and yet here he is with two lost siblings that both returned) that he can't quite tell if it's a good feeling or a bad one. He just knows his heart is pounding and he keeps forgetting to breathe as he feels that pulse under his thumb and then Ben's hand coming to his shoulder, hanging onto him for balance while he talks in a raspy emotional voice.]

I don't think so. There...there was a weird simulated reality thing earlier...I was there, but it wasn't like this, I'm out of it, so...

[He only realizes when he hears how choppy and broken up his voice is that he has tears running down his face, and then he's lifting both hands, wrapping them firmly around Ben and pulling him in close, pressing his face into Ben's shoulder.]

Ben...Ben Ben Ben, I missed you, man.