I did, actually. They're doing well. [But it wasn't as if he didn't expect them to be. Time doesn't move as he waits for this little pocket of universe to carry him on. Most of the items that Rhade got for Christmas are now gone, though, including the reverse-bear trap left by Amanda. They're all back at the Collection.

He leans back against his desk, almost sitting on it as he crosses his arms.] Did you learn anything interesting while I was gone? [Interesting being the key word, here.]

Good. [Ben is summarily distracted by investigating the pockets, zippers, and snaps of the new coat, but he checks in visually frequently anyway.

And answers not without enthusiasm, but mostly offhandedly.]

Jesse Pinkman allowed me to draw in the art room. And I told a story about Nomlies, and learned that no one is willing to take a solid stance on capital punishment.

[Hoo, boy, Ben. You don't ask easy questions.] Every culture has different ideals on it. [He'll have to go see that story about the Nomlies.]

Some of the people you've identified as Nomlies here aren't. Now they're just afraid of you. They're people who are different. You've attacked people that aren't Nomlies.

The same is true of capital punishment. Only the most serious offenses receive that level of punishment, and you don't want to be the person that judgmentally decides to send someone to their death on what turns out to be presumption. You should read about the Salem witch trials, at some point, as well as the Inquisition. You'll see why people are hesitant to pass that judgement over others. [He turns to pick up the box and paper scattering to throw away later.]

[He's capable of working out most simple answers for himself, as long as it's tangible, accessible, measurable. It's the social that throws him for a loop, the abstract. Maybe it would be different if he'd been allowed to develop as he would have naturally, but now he can't make the two worlds meet.

He's unperturbed by Rhade's words; he's been wrong before, but recently he's been very right, he did the right thing, and that much he understands with crystal clarity. Now he does smile, glancing back up steadily.]

I don't disagree. In fact I would say that killing should only be done when the one doing it is absolutely certain of their conviction. It just seems odd to me that so many seemed to find it acceptable as long as they don't have to do it, as long as they don't have to see it.

[This has become increasingly familiar to him, too, as he becomes aware of the fact that the reason Manticore was able to do what it did was because the public never cared to look. They never knew they needed to, not even with his kind right out living among them.]

Then I should be dead. [He says bluntly.]

The standards of the Commonwealth that I agreed to serve had a death policy attached to mutiny and crimes against the Commonwealth. As a High Guard officer, I was to uphold its ideals. If I were to go to trial, I would be killed for betraying my oaths as an example. Nietzschean or not, at the time I was also a citizen who made a formalized agreement.

[He frowns and rounds the desk.] The executioner wears a mask in most societies and is a party indifferent to the situation. For executions that are not based in military dismissal, the perpetrator is often given chances to prove their innocence, appeals to higher powers for a stay of execution, and their death must be both a safety assurance and seen as true justice and peace of mind to the victim.

There are other forms of punishment. Lobotomies. Mental erasure and personality reconstruction. Isolationist colonies.

Most people don't want to see someone die, Ben. Because most people don't want to die themselves. [But Ben does, he knows. It's his escape.

What a welcome home speech this is. He changes the subject.] In any case, I know Dylan said he would be willing to fill in at the kitchen when I was detained, but I know he wasn't here for the flood.

[Ben seems content to listen through most of it, patiently waiting to explain what Dylan had told him, that he himself had made no comment on the actual rightness or wrongness of a death penalty so much as the distaste with which most who chose to opin at all dealt with it.

But then Rhade gets to the part about other forms of punishment and most of the shine of Ben is wiped off abruptly, jaw tensing and looking sharply down at where he'd been considering zipping up the jacket. His voice is flat.]

Death is preferable.

[He's glad to let Rhade change the subject, taking in a deeper breath, grasping mentally for that calm, happy place he'd found for a time, shaken loose at being reminded forcibly of PsyOps and how he likely would have ended up there, still might.]

Riddick and myself are fully capable of working cooperatively; we had only to request to be let in, and to account for all potential weapons upon leaving.