I do not truly believe your death would have stopped your father. Without knowing him, without having your experience - or any at all with this particular situation - I should think you'd only have been killed, too.

And when that isn't enough - [Something Ben does have experience with, in spades.] - he would have gone on exactly as he did before. With more difficulty, perhaps, but all the same.

[But her eyes are closed and she's shaking her head, and Ben waits. He never had that kind of ambition, but he had wanted more from his life - for himself, for his family - than they had. Without any concept of what else there even might be, he had wanted it.

He's still working on wanting it, still working on finding out what is possible, but here and now he must draw from what he knows. Dreams are a particularly tricky opponent, because they cannot be anticipated, cannot be controlled or combated in any way that makes sense in the waking world.

But.]

No. Not here. But in your own mind, you can be anything you can imagine.

Or, if it is easier to believe, anything I can imagine.