Ben listens as she talks about talking too much, how people used to get mad at her for talking, and now that's gone she doesn't know when to stop. Even if he is feeling hurt by what she said, he doesn't love hearing that she'd been raised to be silent like that. Reginald hadn't wanted any of the children he was raising to make noise, but only in that he had wanted them to be tools, not children. Most of his siblings had grown up to talk a perfectly average amount. It was only Ben and Vanya, who had settled into habitual silence as a defense. The worse Ben feels, the harder it is for him to manage even a single word, even a nod. Retreat is his preferred method of coping.
But Cho is promising that she can be good at being quiet, and Ben doesn't want to let his own issues make it seem like he endorses that. So he manages, the words awkward and ungainly:
"Please don't do that. Act like I asked you to be quiet. I didn't, so don't put the words in my mouth."
It's all such a tangle, and Ben wonders if saying more, giving more information, will untangle things, or drive the knife deeper. In the end, he chooses to reveal a little more. Because Cho comes from a messed-up background, too, and she's trying, and he doesn't want her to try less in the future because of him. So he sighs a little unevenly and braces to catch her as she gets down from the tree, in case she slips.
"I'm not mad at you for wondering. I just - thinking about my mom makes me sad. She'd never done anything to me, and the first thing I ever did in the world was kill her."
There's no irony or softness in the way he puts it; Ben really does think of it that way. That the very first act of his on the earth had been to end an innocent person's life. It had set the tone for so much else that would follow. He crosses his arms tightly, the body language self-soothing, betraying more hurt than his careful voice as he goes on:
"I'm just the opposite of you. I'm out of practice at talking. It's - a struggle, for me."
That had been what caused their earlier miscommunication, too: Ben not saying enough to frame his question, to explain why he was asking and his stance on the issue. Saying the bare minimum keeps landing him in trouble, and yet it's all he can manage sometimes.
no subject
But Cho is promising that she can be good at being quiet, and Ben doesn't want to let his own issues make it seem like he endorses that. So he manages, the words awkward and ungainly:
"Please don't do that. Act like I asked you to be quiet. I didn't, so don't put the words in my mouth."
It's all such a tangle, and Ben wonders if saying more, giving more information, will untangle things, or drive the knife deeper. In the end, he chooses to reveal a little more. Because Cho comes from a messed-up background, too, and she's trying, and he doesn't want her to try less in the future because of him. So he sighs a little unevenly and braces to catch her as she gets down from the tree, in case she slips.
"I'm not mad at you for wondering. I just - thinking about my mom makes me sad. She'd never done anything to me, and the first thing I ever did in the world was kill her."
There's no irony or softness in the way he puts it; Ben really does think of it that way. That the very first act of his on the earth had been to end an innocent person's life. It had set the tone for so much else that would follow. He crosses his arms tightly, the body language self-soothing, betraying more hurt than his careful voice as he goes on:
"I'm just the opposite of you. I'm out of practice at talking. It's - a struggle, for me."
That had been what caused their earlier miscommunication, too: Ben not saying enough to frame his question, to explain why he was asking and his stance on the issue. Saying the bare minimum keeps landing him in trouble, and yet it's all he can manage sometimes.