truth_is_cold

[Private to Ben | Audio]

Ben, I need to know what happened today.

[Private to Zack | Audio]*

I need to know if you two have spoken. He's going to be held accountable for someone's murder [and Rhade is very perplexed by this, because Ben doesn't lie], and he's been concerned with how you were going to react when you spoke to him. Did he seem in control of himself?

[Private to Charles | Audio]

Would it be possible for you to examine and speak with Ben? Review him for outside influences? Fugue states? I don't believe he is lying to me when he says he was in his room, but considering this ship...

[Private to Dylan | Audio]

[All that awkward from before? Have to forget it.] I need your help.

[Warden Filter | Audio]

Who here is a competent detective or is experience with forensics, or alternately has an inmate you would trust to assist in an investigation? [He wants to be careful and not get Ben into more trouble.]

OOC: And I'll be adding a bunch more to this, and there will be a plotting post for detective types to investigate.
*Timed to after his conversation with Ben.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[The oddest, longest pause.

He didn't deny what he had done with Ladd, he had just been quiet about it. Once he was cornered, Ben admitted to it. But here he is bluntly saying that he hasn't even spoken with Robert.]

And where were you? Were you with anyone that could account for your whereabouts?

[And just like that, whatever comfort Ben had found is gone, voice going wary.]

After the meal period I came directly here to my cabin. I am attempting to read some of the books given to me for the holidays. I am alone and have been since I left the dining hall.

I believe you [and somehow it makes him even more uneasy], but I need to come look around. They believe you are responsible for Dr. Kozak's death.

[And he's already on the move.]

[That gives Ben pause, several long moments.

His voice is vehement when he comes back.]

I haven't done anything!

Ben, there are people on board that can get into your head and make you do things, that can make you not remember. It's happened to me twice. [And he's a little worried about what his mindset might have been.] But I need to prove them wrong. I'm tired of them calling you names and treating you like you're a walking threat.

And if someone did use you as a weapon- [though why at Robert?] -I want to know.

[Ben had had more protests, ready-formed on the tip of his tongue, but being told that shuts him down pretty quickly. He doesn't care about being called names, and he's accustomed to being rejected for reasons he can neither understand nor help. But he absolutely cares that Rhade is talking to him about Kozak being killed, and that he's talking about mind control.]

I will wait here.

[Of course, by the time Rhade gets there Ben will have opened his cabin door for his warden and he's standing there, staring intently down at a very small, very bloody object on the floor just to the right of his doorway. He knows what it is. Of course he does.

Both literally and metaphorically.]

[He slows when he approaches, looking down at that tiny object on the floor. And he stoops to look at it, not touching it at first.

Then up- he's intending to look at Ben, but his gaze falls on the doorknob.]

[Ben is still staring at the tooth, not with blank horror like others might, but zooming in on it from where he's standing and taking slow, deep breaths. The sharp, copper tint of blood is heady and distracting, and he would know whose it is even without the abrupt line of questioning from Rhade.

His eyes flick sideways to the door, and then quickly down at his own hands, just in case. But they're clean, marked only with a smudge of blue from a colored pencil he'd been working with before he started reading, and the interior of his new cabin is pristine.

Ben wants to protest again. He wants to say he wouldn't do this, that Kozak is neither a Nomlie or marked or a threat; that he has been obediently avoiding the man with the tail since even before the conversation he had with Rhade about it. But the fact of the matter is that none of that, really, does matter.

And he's angry. He didn't do anything but someone wants others, possibly Rhade, possibly Kozak himself, to think he did. He can't, immediately, think who would - that, too, barely matters right now.

His voice is resigned and toneless when he speaks quietly.] Will you need me to go to Zero now?

[He stands and steps into the cabin, walking around it. His own senses are being used in force, but he sees and smells nothing.]

No.

[He says after the examination, and then he takes Ben's hands in his own to look at his palms, to turn them. Then brings one up to press his nose against.]

I'm going to assign people to stay with you until the matter is resolved, though. Account for your location and make sure that one one is using you. [He lets go of his hand. He knows that it feels like a punishment, but he has to.]

You've never lied to me. I don't know why you would start now, so I don't believe you are.

[Ben does nothing whatsoever to hinder Rhade's entrance, lingering a moment in the doorway and glancing both ways up and down the corridor, but ultimately following. He's wary now, shut down and closed up except the light behind his eyes. He doesn't pull his hands back, lifts them in fact to his own nose after Rhade has done with them, just in case.

No. Nothing. He glances up at Rhade's continued decrees, obscurely grateful that he doesn't have to go to Zero, but neither does he understand, not completely. His best guess... dismays him. Much more than the rest of it.

He also knows what to do with it much more easily than he does the show of faith.]

Thank you. I... will comply with whatever you deem best.

Ben... who else would have known what you do? [He gestures down, because he regrets now that when Ben murdered Ladd he mentioned some of Ben's traits. That seems that he might have made it possible to utilize Ben for this.

In any case, he rubs his hands down his face. Robert is dead. His friend is dead. And whoever did this placed the blame on his inmate.]

[Ben is watching, cautious; he trusts Rhade, but he's never comfortable under siege. He's never quite able to believe he's safe, and he's never done well with anything remotely as precarious as this.

He knows how bad it will be when people find out about this. If he were home now, he would be moving a minimum of three territories out of the area.

Zack, he thinks distantly, is going to be so angry.]

I don't... [It's very specific information Rhade is asking for, and Ben's thoughts are running in the complete wrong direction for it, but he knows where to look. He's already reaching into his pocket for his communicator.] You, Zack, Wade Wilson, Iris Wildthyme...

[Which is where he stalls out, but he's got the entry he wants now anyway, holding out his own communicator with it on the screen.]

Edited (derp wrong entry) 2013-05-13 06:59 (UTC)

[He takes the comm carefully and looks at it, carefully listening to conversations.]

Would you mind if I showed this to anyone? It could be important. [But he doesn't want to violate Ben's privacy, so he does ask first.]

[Normally Ben is quick to agree to violation of his own privacy, only recently beginning to realize he has the right to defend it outside of his own head. Now, though, he hesitates with eyes still on the communicator.]

I would rather the information stay with only you unless it becomes important. Alex, Anya, Beatrix... [He's accustomed to not having secrets of his own. But he has been keeping secrets for others for a long time, and he is good at it because he wants to be.]

I will provide it only as a list of people that will know, then. [So Rhade starts taking notes from it.] I'm going to make a report. I'll stay right outside of your room while I do it, I should notice if they come back.

Yessir. [Ben doesn't try to take his communicator back until Rhade has finished with it, though he retreats deeper into his cabin, putting the bed between himself and the door. He's trying to decide what happens next, but this is not a situation he'd ever been expecting to find himself in the center of - he has no precedent to compare it to.

Abruptly:] I didn't hear anything at all. No one has been here to my knowledge, and I haven't gone anywhere. I swear.

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