[ When Allison is silent for what feels like hours (but isn't more than a minute or two) after he explains his thought processes, Ben isn't imagining her holding her face in her hands, overwhelmed with regret. He imagines her offended - maybe only a little, or possibly, a whole lot. He has ample time to turn on himself and feel like an idiot for bringing it up. What is he doing, making allusions - even if they are such oblique ones - to things that are so many years past? It's all done and over and doesn't matter and never did and he shouldn't have mentioned it and he shouldn't have said anything and why didn't he just lie and say he forgot to tell her about the cameras?
He is still in this tumult when her reply comes through, and Ben blinks at it for several long moments until the words sink in. His pulse is racing, even though he's just sitting silently in a corner of the library, texting. But this is fragile, and so important, and long overdue. ]
I'm sorry, too. Back then I didn't try very hard to understand you, either. I thought that you were happy with the way everything was with the Academy, and that everything was so easy and carefree for you, and at some point I decided it wasn't worth trying. I didn't give you a chance to know me.
[ There are so many things Ben had never told her, or anyone, apart from Klaus. How was she supposed to just know what he'd been going through, if he hadn't told her? Sure, she'd seen parts of it. All the killing, all the blood. The Horror. But it had only dawned on him years later (one of the side benefits of all those rehab group therapy sessions he'd sat through with Klaus) how much of it she'd been unaware of. And only then did Ben start to wonder, how much of what she'd been going through he hadn't been seeing, too.
It hadn't been a very comforting thought. ]
I want to change that. I know it wasn't easy for you. None of us were happy. We just coped in different ways. I get that, now, and I should've got it back then. And I know you're not the same person anymore. I'm not, either. I want to fill in all those gaps.
[ There is no time like the present, and so Ben asks what's more urgently on his mind: ]
Did it upset you, finding out there had been hidden cameras? Cuz that really surprises me. I would've thought out of any of us, you were the most comfortable around cameras...
no subject
He is still in this tumult when her reply comes through, and Ben blinks at it for several long moments until the words sink in. His pulse is racing, even though he's just sitting silently in a corner of the library, texting. But this is fragile, and so important, and long overdue. ]
I'm sorry, too. Back then I didn't try very hard to understand you, either. I thought that you were happy with the way everything was with the Academy, and that everything was so easy and carefree for you, and at some point I decided it wasn't worth trying. I didn't give you a chance to know me.
[ There are so many things Ben had never told her, or anyone, apart from Klaus. How was she supposed to just know what he'd been going through, if he hadn't told her? Sure, she'd seen parts of it. All the killing, all the blood. The Horror. But it had only dawned on him years later (one of the side benefits of all those rehab group therapy sessions he'd sat through with Klaus) how much of it she'd been unaware of. And only then did Ben start to wonder, how much of what she'd been going through he hadn't been seeing, too.
It hadn't been a very comforting thought. ]
I want to change that. I know it wasn't easy for you. None of us were happy. We just coped in different ways. I get that, now, and I should've got it back then. And I know you're not the same person anymore. I'm not, either. I want to fill in all those gaps.
[ There is no time like the present, and so Ben asks what's more urgently on his mind: ]
Did it upset you, finding out there had been hidden cameras? Cuz that really surprises me. I would've thought out of any of us, you were the most comfortable around cameras...