tolaywaste | 22.

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infirmary } wednesday night-thursday morning

[He wakes up quickly but smoothly. This time, he doesn't scream. He knows where he is, he knows more or less what's happened, he knows he died, beyond just the fact that he can feel it in his bones. Royce's face is clear in his mind, although he still doesn't know the man's name. He will, soon enough.]

[Even though he doesn't want to stay in the infirmary, he will, less for his own sake than for the sake of the people who are worried about him. He'll rest, until he can't take being there anymore.]

cabin 6-02 } thursday-saturday

[And then he flees, back to his room, which is more private, more comfortable, less of a hospital. He stays there, wracked with pain but grudgingly allowing visitors. He can be found on the way to and from Zero on Friday, when he goes to visit Royce. Other than that, he sleeps, or tries to figure out why what happened did.]

out & about } sunday

[He should probably still be in bed on Sunday, but he can't take the confined space of his room anymore. Instead of his usual run in the CES, he takes an early-morning walk, slow and a little pained, but mostly steady. He visits the kitchens and takes a slow lunch, his shoulders hunched against an uncomfortable feeling of vulnerability. Other than that, he spends some time on the deck, trying to work off his excess nervous energy.]

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[Maybe a part of him realizes that Ben is there before he even wakes up; maybe that's part of why, when he does wake, he's more secure, calmer, less frantic than before. Their eyes meet, and he nods slightly, and Ben goes - and that's fine. They'll talk later, when things have calmed down.]

[When he hears Ben, he calls out immediately,] It's open, [even though his friend is starting to open the door before he's finished speaking. The look he gives is more concerned than anything, maybe a little guilty. It's weird, but he thinks he should've - known, somehow. Shouldn't he?]

[Ben slips inside the door, and closes it nearly silently behind him.

It's easy for newcomers to look at Ben and identify him as what he is, still: a soldier among civilians, a strange, alien creature amongst the comparatively familiar. He's changed enough that those that know him are capable some days of more or less forgetting he was ever anything but Ben, just Ben, a little awkward and a little ignorant but intelligent, thoughtful, kind. Imaginative and logical.

The way he's holding himself now is a silent reminder that once, he was anything but. Not in a dangerous way, necessarily, there's no hollow behind his eyes or anything like aimlessness to his actions, but this is what has been stamped into his bones. This is how he makes himself safe, and those he cares about safe.

He crosses the room in swift silence before anything in him can recognize the misplaced guilt Alex is flashing across the distance to him; he doesn't need to be closer to scan his friend over for any lingering damage, to reassure himself that he's whole. He does need to be closer, period, though.]

I apologize for not coming sooner. [He holds out the notebook instead of reaching out himself; it's broken into three separate sections, a basic college notebook, but the first section is entirely blank.

If Alex tries to speak, the X5 will shake his head, and indicate the notebook and pen instead.]

It's okay, [Alex says, but then Ben's handing him the notebook and indicating that he shouldn't speak anymore. He looks up at him, brow creased in puzzlement, but takes the notebook and the pen. He's supposed to write? Why?]

[Instead of doing that, he watches Ben, his scrutiny gentle but firm. His friend is upset. He can see that, even though if asked how he knows, he wouldn't be able to say, exactly.]

[After a moment, he picks up the pen and writes in big, messy, letters:]

Do you want to sit?

[Ben is a patient person. It would be easy for him to become annoyed with the people around him that were not specifically designed to learn faster, to analyze every situation, to be efficient and effective if they could be nothing else, but he rarely is. He rarely would be even if his lack of context often requires him to match the abilities of those he is speaking to.

Now Alex speaks to him and Ben pushes the notebook and pen at him, and the line between his eyebrows is pronounced when he clips off at his friend,] You need to rest your throat, or the death toll will continue for longer than is strictly necessary. Use the paper, and if you cannot, I will make this brief.

[Then Alex is writing, and Ben is relieved enough in some intangible, inexplicable way that he's able to nod crisply and alight on a nearby chair. He remains at the front of it, however, angular and tense, eyes dropping to his hands clasped before him. It's another apology, for worrying. For letting that worry make him sharp.]

By now, others have answered your questions. If not, I will do my best, but I know you've already been to speak with the new inmate.

[He doesn't mind Ben's sharpness. It's to be expected after this. A part of Alex still feels as though he's failed his friend, who's tried so hard to teach him to lead, while at the same time he knows he doesn't have the training Ben's had from birth, and that he wouldn't want it. It's just - when you're a leader and something happens to you, people get upset. People get worried. People look like Ben looks right now.]

[He nods - yes, he went to see Royce - and furrows his brow, then picks up the pen again.]

Did you follow me? I wasn't going to do anything stupid.

[Which is completely ignoring the fact that going to see Royce at all was stupid, that doing it then instead of waiting a few days was even stupider, that not calling anyone once he collapsed in Zero was positively asinine. But he still thinks he got what he wanted out of the interaction. He thinks that he did the right thing, for both of them.]

[He doesn't want to be afraid of Royce, and he doesn't want Royce to forget that he killed a person, not just somebody walking by. He doesn't want Royce to be alone, either.]

[Ben is worried and Ben is upset because his friend was murdered for no reason Ben is aware of, and thus no reason he could have anticipated. He doesn't blame himself, exactly, but it bothers him, like someone is digging their fingers into the back of his neck.

When he loses sight of the reasons, when things appear out of the dark and tear the people he loves apart with no logic, the next thing Ben loses is time. That's not what this is, but it has its roots in the same part of his mind, he processes the emotions the same.

He doesn't like it.]

Yes. It wasn't you I was concerned about doing something stupid. [Once, Ben told Aeryn that in the event of a crisis, it is useless to try to stop Alex from placing himself on the front lines if that's what he's going to do; it is who Alex is. Similarly, this, too is who Alex is, and Ben loves him for all of it.

That doesn't mean he thinks it's any more tactically sound than it actually is.] Did you get what you needed?

[He writes again, slowly and carefully, before looking up at Ben again.]

I got most of what I needed. I don't think he knows what he wants other than his friend. He's scared and angry.

[His gaze drifts sideways a little, a touch guilty, and he writes quickly:] I think I stayed down there longer than I should have. [He knows that, actually.] But I've been resting since then.

[Sorry, Ben.]

[For several moments, Ben doesn't react at all. He reads the lines quickly, eyes flicking left to right with exact precision, and then clearly weighs it all.

It's not his place to tell Alex what to do, and he has to agree that he's resting now, clearly has been. And he is Alex: he is going to do what he is going to do.

Ben is not surprised that among those is befriend the stranger that killed him, but only because he remembers who they were, once, so very clearly still. At last:]

He killed you because he was looking for his friend. [It's not a question except for how it is; that this is an extreme course of action is obvious. That Alex would be one of few to actually listen to the motivation behind it is as obvious.</i.]

[Alex nods, and then adds,] Yes. [Scratching out the words on the pad with deliberation. That seems like enough for the moment, but he sits in silence and stillness for another minute yet, trying to figure out how to express the rest of it. Harder even on paper than in words, which is difficult enough for him.]

[Finally he lifts the pen again.]

He's lonely and scared, and he doesn't understand what this place wants from him. He doesn't understand any of it. He's not crazy, he's just desperate and afraid. He wants someone to trust.

[And Alex desperately wants to be someone Royce can trust, but he recognizes that that may not be possible. Royce will do what he'll do, just as Alex will do what Alex will do. Just as Ben will be Ben.]

[And Ben is Ben. He remembers waiting, terrified and alone and in excruciating pain from a shattered knee, in a room that would become his own, waiting for acknowledgement and instruction that never came. He remembers walking these halls waiting for a sentence of death or worse simply for being alive, for being who he is.

A sentence that never came, but he would not have believed that his first months here. Did not. He glances from the paper up at Alex.]

Does he? Truly?

Can he?

[Alex looks at him, his eyes narrowed and sad. Then he picks up the pen and the paper and writes, and then writes over it, and underlines it over and over.]

YES.

[Trust him. He knows. He sees.]

[Ben withstands the look, and does not bother showing his own uncertainty in return; it isn't a judgment on the stranger. Not, anyway, from Ben.

He is absolutely unsurprised by the answer, seen the moment Alex begins writing it, impressed by each repetition thereafter. Ben nods.

He trusts Alex more than he trusts himself.]

I will go and speak with him. I injured him, after... after he showed us that he had killed you.

I was not intending to do so specifically, but I was not lacking intention to do so either.

{And he was not, still is not, sorry. He never will be.]

[Alex isn't surprised. Nor, really, is he sorry. A potential danger must be subdued in one way or another; there are no real moral objections he can raise, though he wishes, as he always wishes, that Royce were not in Zero now.]

[Injuries happen, though. Men heal - more easily from physical wounds than psychological ones, not that he'd ever think about it in those terms.]

[The strokes of his pen are smoother now. Gentler.]

I understand. I'm sorry you had to see that.

[A moment's pause. Then:]

No matter what you say next or how much worse you've seen won't make me any less sorry.

[It's true that Alex's second pause to write interrupts what Ben had intended to be a dismissal; what does seeing matter against experiencing? What does Alex have to be sorry for?

But Ben does not override him as he easily could; he does not interrupt and speak anyway. He waits, he reads, and abruptly he is angry again. Nothing Ben does, apparently, will make Alex stop feeling this thing he should not be feeling.

The X5 looks sharply away and shoves the anger back down where it goes, cuts it off at the quick, his expression carefully neutral. Alex has nothing to be sorry for except dying; Manticore might have expected an apology from him for this offense.

Not Ben.

His jaw tightens, but, uncharacteristically, it takes several long moments for him to trust himself speaking. His voice is as toneless as his face is blank: Alex died, and Alex is the one that is sorry. It's pointless. If anyone... if anyone...]

I am sorry I was not there.

[The less Ben expresses, the more he's feeling. Alex is pretty sure about this, in a way that he's sure about things like when you drop something, it falls; the sky on Earth is usually blue.]

[He could say you can't be everywhere; he could say you're here now. Neither of those would help. Maybe nothing will help.]

[Alex puts the pad and pen to the side, folds his hands in the space between his knees, and looks up at Ben with sorrow, but with love, too; with pride in someone grown and still growing, with tender affection for a friend. And this time he speaks, because it's too true to just be written down. His voice is hoarse, but that just makes it feel more precise, more real.]

You are always there.

[Always. Every minute of every day, Alex feels protected. He doesn't have to pray; he doesn't have to sacrifice a thing. He just has to be what he is and keep Ben safe in return.]

[This is the difference between men and gods: men don't renege on their promises nearly so easily.]

[Logically, Ben knows he could not have known, he could not have been there. Royce will have given no warning. It was his intention all along. Ben knows because Ben has occupied that space, Ben has felt that resignation. He has rejected Alex's apologies for not somehow, impossibly, doing more than he did to save Ben from something or someone.

He wonders how he had dismissed it so easily before. When he looks up at the harsh, earnest sound of Alex's voice, disapproval extinguished alongside everything else he refuses to advertise, he meets everything Alex has laid out for him to see and almost startles.

Ben would kill for Alex. He would trade someone else's life for Alex's. He would trade his own and not hesitate, even in a place where death is permanent. It is not bravery, it is not heroism, it is love - pure and simple, loyal and unshakeable. He did not get the opportunity to do so, this time. There is no fault in that, if only because he knows that if he had, he would have changed this outcome.

But more importantly, Alex knows it too. He can see that. Ben is silent for several moments more, listening to the angry sound of his pulse in his ears.

He swallows, and his voice is quiet.] You should rest.

[Should. Alex smiles, just a little. There are plenty of things he should do. He should be bigger, stronger, cleverer, a better man, a better friend. But he is reaching out for those things. Some days, he even feels like he's making progress.]

[He should rest, sure. But instead, he'll probably just worry.]

Ben.

[His fingers twitch as though he's about to reach out, but he never quite does.]

It's . . . okay. If you're angry. It really is.

[He isn't afraid of Ben, or what Ben feels, or why Ben feels it, or even if there isn't a reason at all. Sometimes things don't make sense, or don't make enough.]

You should rest too. Is what I mean.

[He half-grimaces, unsure if he's being clear, if what's coming out of his mouth even approaches what he's trying to say.]

Okay?

I am angry. Nothing will come of it.

[It isn't an admission he would make to just anyone, or most anyone; Alex is safe, though, and he's already seen besides. He should know anyway.

Ben's anger is not like Alex's; if Alex is a broadsword, Ben is a scalpel. He would narrow his focus to Royce and Royce alone, he would take out the threat and let it end there. It would be swift and merciless.

But he already removed his own target, and his temper circulates back where he can extinguish it, where eventually he will. He nods once, crisp and understated, because he does understand.]

I will. Do you require anything before I go?

[He nods, understanding. At least mostly. He will never quite grasp the damage Ben is capable of doing, but he does try to. He tries in order to help his friend, while at the same time always expecting the best of him. It's a strange balance, but he's done all right. So far.]

No. I'm - this is good. This was the right thing.

[Alex is, frequently, the reason Ben can manage the same balancing act; he follows by example, and bolsters his own courage with that of his friend.

But he neither agrees nor disagrees with Alex's assertion, at least not at first. It is more difficult than he would have imagined, agreeing with Alex instead of following his own inclination; this doesn't feel right. But for Alex, it is.

Ben can agree with that. He nods.]

Text, if that changes. Rest.

Please.

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