[There's a moment when Ben goes very still - Alex knows about Zack? Zack was never the one to blow their cover, it was always Ben, Ben standing out like a hawk among pigeons, Ben making people nervous because he didn't know how not to, how to be harmless. Ben was always a wolf in wolf's clothing; the rest found their wool.

Then he realizes that it's not necessarily that Alex knows about Zack; he could just mean here on the Barge, not here in the room. Something twists in his chest regardless when, instead of answering, instead of opening his mouth and telling Alex that Zack is here and it hasn't helped, he doesn't know why, he looks down.]

I don't know. [It's a placeholder, but then Ben looks up again, eyes ticking up without raising his head. More emphatically, he repeats himself, finding it true.] I don't know.

No one listens, no one... [His exhale is shaky, marred with the childhood terror he can't look at without being consumed by it; he's said this before, but it passes under the radar, like so much else that he says. He's never tried to force anyone to look at it. They knew or they never would - he's known for a long time.

It's only a matter of time.] We don't belong out in the world with other people. The rest of them still found a way.

I didn't. I can't. I'm... [Flawed. Broken. Different somehow.] Being alone in the quiet. Until it's too quiet and too alone.