The eeriest sense of deja vu settles over her, and not the kind she might have expected: she's rocketed back not to when they were kids, but when she stabbed away at the keys of her typewriter, sketching out the story of their family. In the end, when Ben died, we were just strangers.

He comes toward her and Vanya feels like she's having an out of body experience, watching this reunion from above. Outside herself, she can see that he's worried, for her. Reality snaps back into place and she's looking up at him again, lifting a hand to her mouth first, then out toward him. She stops just short of touching his shoulder: what if it's a dream? What if he isn't there at all?

Then she'd rather wake up, than let her subconscious torture her like this. But when her fingers poke at his shoulder, they come up against solid flesh, and she doesn't wake.

"You're alive." It's a statement, but the question is how, and does she really care? Her face starts to crumple, and for at least a moment she fully forgets everything about this place that makes her feel like a ghost: she throws her arms around him and buries her face against his shoulder, all the while hoping this isn't just some new symptom or proof that she's really losing her mind.