For a moment, Kerr was rooted to the spot, watching the scene play out like a melodrama on stage; the happy, bellowing madman, the surly, cowering imposter at loggerheads with one another and adding a little more spice to an already entangled plotline - but enlightening him, the audience, too. For he\'d only hypothesised that Ben would hear him, had not had it confirmed until that uplifting moment when mortal women would gasp and average men might raise their eyebrows, understanding how this had progressed the plot once more.
Then he snapped out of his surreal little reverie and bounded forward, seeing the tension on Jack\'s face, feeling his coiled antagonism and wanting to save Digital that retaliation. He wrapped firm arms about the youngling\'s shoulders and attempted to steer him around, away, anywhere but facing Not-Ben. He opened his mouth to speak as he guided the other a few steps in another direction, but was at a loss as to what to say. The statement that Ben could hear them... it had renewed the flame of hope burning deep within Kerr.
He didn\'t want to question that; he didn\'t want Digital to correct himself and say it wasn\'t true. He needed to believe that Ben was still inside his own body, his own mind, even if he was muffled and partitioned from reality.
The problem with renewing his faith was that Kerr was suddenly experiencing surges of affection all over the place, unspent love that he was bottling up in order to lavish his love with it, but it still had nowhere to go. For the time being, he was focussed on Digital, loving him for reassuring him that Ben was still able to hear them. Logically, Ben should also still be able to feel him, and he would bank on exactly that when he bedded Jack in a few nights\' time; this gift that the Malkavian had inadvertently given him was the most potent one so far and he smiled, despite his odd silence.
Apparently, that expression was enough to finally kick his brain out of the rut of thinking about Ben hearing and feeling him, to finally saying something. "Don\'t yell at Jack," he chastised gently, sounding like the most ineffectual parent disciplinarian in the world, "he doesn\'t like it. Tell me more about what else I should do at the ritual," he entreated, attempting to divert Digital\'s voices onto a more useful course - not that such a thing had ever worked before, of course, but it was something to say.
