Forgotten Family

[Trillian]

Ben noticed the tiny frown and realised his faux pas but not the magnitude of it.  He correctly guessed Mick hadn't liked the 'barely remember' comment, but it was just Ben's way of saying things were so different it was uncomparable.  If he'd known Mick's thinking went along the grounds of superiority, he would've been frustrated and disappointed with himself.  Because Mick then moved on to talking about it, Ben didn't think there was a hiccup of perception.

"You're right, I don't have to worry about getting sick, or dying in normal ways," he said, allowing for a pause so Mick would understand there was still death - as Ben had admitted when they'd first got the conversation going.  "But I can't do a lot of things the older ones do, even if trained all night, every night.  I'm too young.  There's also a lot more rules and politics, if you mis-step, you can be executed.  None of this 'fair trial' stuff.  Things out of the pages of medieval lore, do medieval things."  He chuckled softly, at his own joke.  It wasn't anything he expected Mick to laugh at.

[Existentially Odd]

Mick squinted thoughtfully at Ben, weighing his words carefully.  He did this mainly because he didn't want to speak hastily or too harshly and throw his brother offside, he'd snapped a response at people without thinking before and it had never ended well; this needed to be done right, with uncharacteristic finesse, if he wanted to keep hope of receiving the reward he sought alive.  Resentment burned in him that Ben was trying to make his situation sound so bad, but a minute or so ago he'd told Mick that being a vampire was everything he'd ever dreamed and more, so he couldn't be too badly off, even if the politics of his kind saw him facing death rather than legal ramifications.  He was sure his uptight brother never set a foot wrong to run any risks in the first place, so what problems could he have?

"Is that what really happened to your boyfriend?" he guessed, having been suspicious about the whole 'travelling accident' story from the beginning.  That was before he'd figured out the guy was a vampire and had no doubt made Ben one too.  'Travelling accident' sounded like a cotton candy cover story for 'got his head cut off medieval style because he did shit wrong' to Mick; he was okay with being told the truth, though.  He was marginally interested in what a vampire had to do in order to get punished and it seemed his clean-cut, pretty-boy brother had a thing for bad boys who ran afoul of the law.  He'd been there himself, though putting Ben in place of the girls who'd found his juvie record titillating was weird on too many levels to give it much brain power.

[Trillian]

He was shocked that Mick had ventured down this path.  There was no reason to lie about Kerr's death, though in hindsight - at the suspicious way Mick asked about it - made him realise that he could've been covering something up.  It could've been an assassination - because that happened to all manner of political leaders, it could've been an execution - because Mick didn't know Ben's partner had been the leader (and back then, they'd got into trouble so it had been possible).

"No, no," Ben said softly, and pressed his lips together for a moment as he dealt with the odd surge of emotion in his chest and then continued once it washed away.  His voice reflected none of that pain, he was grateful to find.  "He was travelling to Europe, and something happened on the way, or soon after he arrived.  I... I don't know what it was.  I was asleep, but he was gone when I woke up."  He said it quietly, not thinking about what his words implied and not caring.  Telling Mick about it didn't seem as bad as telling other people.

Surprising.