Ben's point was well made and Kerr rubbed his forehead as it furrowed under the weight of his thoughts. He didn't speak, in favour of thinking, watching the doors open when they got to the penthouse level and strolling through them with both hands back in his pockets. He wandered back to the lounge, smelling the recently-departed mortals and the aroma of blood they'd left in their wake almost wistfully. Things had certainly become more complicated since then. He sat at the right end of a couch, his elbow on the arm and his fingers rubbing across his lips as he stared out at the city lights ruminatively. He was aware that Ben was with him but he didn't want to complicate his emotions by interacting with him until he'd got it all sorted out in his head. The implication that he was being foolish in any way scared him and he needed to figure out his perspective.
There was no getting around the fact that Jake McCloud was a son of a bitch and Kerr was pretty sure even Jake knew that. Unlike Ben, Kerr had seen Jake suffer through bravado, the threat of death and stark fear on the battlefield. He'd exulted in the terror of going up against the Sabbat in much the same way as all beings did after living a very long time; an end should've come to them centuries before and there was always a sense of their time on the planet being borrowed from fate. They did their best to fend it off, even while something old and natural in them hungered for it all to be over. Death was a void yet it was also the last unknown for creatures such as they and Jake had faced it with understandable lust and hatred.
Inherent in that philosophy, however, was the nature of change to affect beings of longevity. He had gone through many phases in life himself and he knew it to be the same for Jake. Ben was so young in comparison to them, though that didn't mean he was seeing the same person Kerr was and just tarring him with the brush of his choice. What Ben said and saw were true - for him - and he likely had seen a new evolution in the life of Jake, one that Kerr hadn't been privy to. But did that mean he was being a fool for trusting what he knew? No, because Ben's logic was flawed.
Neither Kerr nor Jake believed either of them were good people, not after such long lives. Too many mistakes had accumulated for that to be true for either of them and he was confident in that knowledge. Did it mean Jake would straight-up lie to his face, though? He didn't think so but Ben did. Ben believed he'd scheme against and betray them at the first opportunity and that Kerr had made the fatal mistake of giving him the tools with which to do it tonight. Frankly, he didn't think Jake could be bothered but Kerr also thought he was true to his word. No, he wasn't a good person but his word was his bond.
"You're wrong, in a way," he told Ben softly, finally turning to look at him. "I don't think Jake's a good person and I don't trust him on a personal level - how could I, after he locked you in with a monster and didn't have the sense or forethought to see how that could all go wrong? But you're right in that I trust he has a code and thet he'll honour what he says. It's... maybe it's because we're about the same age but I think it's more than that. It's about everything changing, everything twisting this way and that for fucking centuries and having to cling to something to make sense of it. Something to be true north.
For me and Jake, I think that's a sense of honour - oh, not in the gimmicky comic-book sense, but in the real sense of only ever saying what you mean and meaning what you say. Because if you don't have that, you'll swing wildly in any direction as the wind blows. Life and the people you interact with will sway you anyway, there's got to be something to right your course in amongst it. You're right about you and I having different knowledge of him but I can tell you I've never caught him playing nice. Because he's not nice. I think he's an absolute asshole but so am I, so is everybody when the pressure's on. I'm not foolish. I'm just old and he's old and... I understand what is at his core, even if you understand the surface better than I do," he finished wearily.
