[Ben knows about being hidden away from the world, about being fed only the information his captors wanted him to have, about believing himself to be what they told him he was as a matter of survival; the difference is that there had been a sort of kindness to being shaped into a tool. He did not love Manticore or the people there. He knew he wasn't supposed to.

It's easy, looking back from where he is today, to know it's wrong. Some days it's harder, but it's not his own heart turning on him even then. It's merely the very real necessity of feeling safe, feeling secure, feeling as though he belongs that trips him up occasionally. Never love.

Ben waits while she decides what to do with his words, because if he doesn't hold perfectly still, if he doesn't focus on the slow draw and slower release of air into his chest he doesn't know what he'll do. He was a tool, a soldier, first: he was trained to kill, taught to respond with immediate and damning force. He is better than that now, but only when he wants to be, and right now he's not sure he does.

Later it will scare him a little that besides Abigail, the most powerful thing stopping him is the knowledge that on the Barge, it won't be a permanent end.]

Abigail. [He is there when she opens her eyes, bent over the blood on his shirt, still as the deepest parts of shade; his voice is cool and steady, not demanding, not soothing, but firm. He doesn't want her to apologize. He's not sure he can explain why she doesn't have to, not in a way she'll believe, not in a way she can understand. He doesn't know how to reassure her.]

It's okay. We will start again.

What makes you feel safest? No matter what it is, no matter how vague or how illogical, can you tell me?