( it's late, and Ben would be sleeping, but...is anyone here in Rapture sleeping, and not out of sheer exhaustion?

Ben is huddled down over the Fluid, a little more than a posh Englishman ought to be when regarding the general public; he's sitting away on the floor of this invaded space, some old quarters that used to be someone else's, some immeasurable time ago. he has other people within these walls, people who are asleep in another room — sheer exhaustion, naturally.

unlike him, though the heaviness around his eyes says something else. he should be sleeping, but he isn't — can't. not with the thoughts looming just behind his tired eyes.

but when Ben finally speaks, it is in a lowered murmur, words enunciated carefully. ) I'm wondering if anyone who has been with Deerington for some extended period of time is...experiencing the same shift as I'm sensing in myself: I thought perhaps it was merely a fault of habit — getting comfortable in this environment, adapting is surviving, after all... And after long enough, it isn't difficult to develop new routines, or make room to enforce the old familiar ones, even if a person has been stolen out of their own life to be dispensed into a foreign place. Eventually, you come to know others, forge connections...survival is in numbers, as well.

( logically speaking, and Ben rolls his eyes briefly with a head tilt that says 'of course.' this is the foundation for the rest of his presentation. )

But we were brought here...selectively, and for a purpose. We've been chosen for a mission, and most of us can say we're committed to see it through, if not out of simple concern for our mysterious benefactor, then in the hopes that returning to our respective homes will be the reward...the latter of which had been my fuel, for a time. ( 'had been,' aka past tense, because even he, for a while, didn't know if anyone could trust Sodder.

that changed some time ago, though...and isn't the internal dilemma Ben is having tonight. )

The more people that I meet, that I survive with and quickly grow to care for — and between the horrors, grow to genuinely know — it feels less to me like some inescapable sense of Stockholm Syndrome. I've made...more meaningful connections with people I've met here than I ever had before this place, and knowing how close, yet so far out of reach Sodder is to us, I think more and more if the choice was finally given to me, I might not— ( go home.

because the mental image of 'home' keeps looking like Deerington in his head, lately.

his sentence hangs empty there, and he sighs, pausing to rub the dull ache out of his brow. ) ...I don't know. If someone is awake to compare notes, or verbally slap me awake and tell me I'm just being sentimental and extremely tired, I'll appreciate either response. Or, hell, perhaps you've recently arrived — I'm not one to discriminate experience.