"Feel like talking to me yet, Valentin?"

I walked back into my bedroom, phone in hand, extremely not in the mood for whatever manipulative banter Ben was going to try on me this time. "Go away, Ben," I muttered, collapsing onto my bed and scrolling through iTunes for some temporary distraction.

"I don't think I will. You see, we haven't—"

Surprisingly, he cut off when I whirled my head around and sat up, reaching my limit. I gave him my deadliest of glares and curled my hands into fists.

"Fuck off, Ben. I'm not talking to you."

Those words seemed to cut through him, and something glittered in his eyes.

"...excuse me?"

"You heard exactly what I said. Now, why don't you take my advice for once? Might make you a little less bored."

I looked back to my phone, which turned out to be a mistake, because suddenly Ben's angry face was blocking my "relaxing songs" playlist.

"I'm sorry, but you seem to have forgotten that I'm your only friend at this point. Would you rather be alone for the rest of your life?"

I laughed in his (kind of) face. "You are hardly my friend, you know. Alone would be so much better than you following me around all the time, trying to fuck with my brain and get me to forgive you for killing people!"

"...wow. That was kind of hot, have I actually never seen you this mad before?"

"Oh, grow up!" I nearly yelled, my face turning red.

"Have a little pity, dear. It's not that often you have this much time to yourself. Why not appreciate what you've got? Why not...try talking this out?"

That caught me off guard. "...what?"

"I'm not stupid, Avery. I know you've been seeing that...whatever his name is. I know you've been talking about me, and what I've done, and how you're so trapped and so lonely in that little pretty head of yours. What if you tried understanding me. Eh?"

I...couldn't refute that. It was my fault I'd been blocking him out all this time instead of trying to come to terms with what had been happening lately. But he didn't have to be an asshole about it. He had a point, and yet something about this felt wrong.

It's not really him, I reminded myself. You can't reason with some malevolent virus who's taken over your best friend. It won't be him you're talking to.

"Oh, to-may-to, to-mah-to. You think I'd insult your IQ like that? I believe I've made it very clear that—"

"Fine."

"Excuse me?"

"I'll talk to you. I'll try to...reason with this version of Ben that, frankly, I like way less than my actual Ben. Happy?"

A good second passed after I said that before my phone went back to normal and your classic, green-tunic-clad, hollow-bleeding-eyes Ben Drowned peered at me over it, something resembling a smirk on his face.

"Very much so."

I nearly shivered. Manipulative, indeed.

"You flatter me."

—

"So, what were you thinking of discussing, babe?"

"Really prefer it if you didn't call me that."

"Why? Aren't we a thing? Or are a couple of corpses dealbreakers for you?"

"I think you know exactly what the answer to that is," I nearly growled, not enjoying where this conversation was headed. I sighed. "Look. I want to try to work things out. I really do. But I can't be as patient as you want when you act like this! Can't you just try to be serious, for one minute?"

Ben groaned and threw his head back. "Ugh. Fine, fine. I'll play your little game. Just make this quick."

"Thank you. I'd like to first ask...why did you kill them? You explained one to me before, but that's not really a reason. From what I can tell, they didn't really do anything to deserve it."

He scoffed. "Easy. Whether you realized it or not, they were hurting you. That Meghan girl...she was just going to keep me for herself, after we'd made all that progress! She was trying to keep me away from you. Had to go."

As fucked-up and completely inaccurate that was, I forced myself to swallow an insult. "...and Charissa?"

"Oh. Oh! That bitch that kept calling you names and talking shit behind your back." Ben giggled and leaned back smugly. "Aw, she was so much fun. It was like teaching a dog how to put itself down and write its own will! I thought she'd try and fight it but I guess she was so scared she just...did it herself, without question. Hilarious."

Ha, ha, you little fucking maniac!

I clenched my fists and took a deep breath. "That...wasn't an answer. I asked you why."

"Oh. Well, that's a no-brainer too. She was just really shitty to you in general from the beginning. I mean...you complained to me yourself about her! I was on a roll. Was also gonna try killing that weird Jason guy, but I couldn't find his house, and when I did, he was off at church or something. Kid's never in a convenient place," he grumbled to himself, and I sent a silent prayer to whatever gods I could think of that he would, indeed, continue to never be in any convenient places.

"Alright. Fine. I'll take that." I closed my eyes and folded my hands. "But I still think you're wrong."

"...what?"

"I don't think that's why you killed them. It might be what you first think to tell me. Hell, it's probably what you keep telling yourself. But it's not true."

Ben stayed silent, only narrowing his eyes at me as if to see whether what I was about to say was worth listening to.

"...that guy, whatever you called him, told me something interesting about what you did. He didn't mention Charissa, probably because I never really talked about her. But he said that you don't have many logical reasons to do things. You have emotions. And that's what you're acting on right now."

"I don't see what that has to do with anything. I literally just gave you the facts of the situation and now you're throwing them away?"

"No. I'm giving you better ones. Ben, you're scared of being reset, and that's why you do most of the things you do, even when you're not like...this. It's why you decided to pour your heart out to me within a week of being here. It's why you tried what I suggested to get you out, even though you thought it wouldn't work. It's why we were able to bond so quickly. And it's why you killed Meghan and Charissa.

"First, you thought you could just go back to me when I gave you away and everything would go back to normal. Then you tried to get me back on your side by killing someone you knew I hated, someone that you could justify dead by saying that she hurt me. And she did. But she didn't deserve to die over it."

There was a pause. Then he laughed.

"No. No, that's not right. You just—"

"It is right, whether you like it or not. Look, I'm just trying to help, and you not even trying to revert back to the real you isn't making anything better."

"No."

"Wh—what do you mean, no? Are you just going to ignore me now?"

"No, Ave, you don't understand, I—ow!"

What?

I lifted a hand, hesitant to actually reach out to him. "What's going on?"

"Christ, are you serious? I haven't—"

He stopped dead, and looked at his index finger like he'd just realized something. I shifted over to see what'd happened, when I noticed that a tiny patch of skin on the tip of the finger looked like...skin. It was only now that I'd noticed that for a while now, Ben's skin had gone more gray than usual. "What...?"

"...no."

He sounded horrified, like he knew something was going to take place that he could do nothing to stop.

His arm started to change, too.

The his shoulder, then up his neck, his entire being was almost fading and being replaced with something else.

"S-stop it!"

His face contorted, like he was fighting with himself, and I couldn't do much but watch as he started to look more and more human.

His face changed last, and his loud, demonic voice faded.

"No, no no no no no no no no no no no no no NO!"

"Ben?"

He was almost in tears, trying desperately to hide his face. But I could still see his vermillion eyes.

"No, no, no, I never meant for this to happen. I-I didn't mean to hurt anyone, I don't want to do this anymore!"

He's...he's coming back.

"Don't look at me. Avery, please don't look at me, I know you're mad, I know it, I'm sorry, I didn't want to—"

Before he could say anything I crushed him in a hug and felt tears welling up in my eyes, too.

"Ben. You're back," was all I could manage. He was silent for a minute, and I felt what I assumed to be blood dripping down my back. If he wasn't crying before, he was now.

"Why...why are you doing this. What did I do?" He whispered, slowly hugging me back and burying his face into my shoulder. "Whatever it was, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to..."

He froze, then lifted his head the tiniest bit.

"Oh...oh, no, did I—"

"You killed Meghan, Ben." I swallowed, not wanting him to know, but painfully aware that I had to tell him at some point. "It doesn't matter now. It's done. Everything's..."

I grabbed his shoulders and pushed him off of me, but still held on. "Everything's not okay, actually. But you're here. That...that thing is gone, and that's what matters."

"I...really?" He hesitated, as if unsure what he was hearing. "What even happened? Why did I...what made me so mad that I just went insane?"

"It's my fault. It's completely my fault. I..." I couldn't bear to look him in the eyes, so I just hugged him again.

"I gave you away, Ben. I just gave you to someone else because I thought I was a shitty person for just keeping you here. I thought she could help, but then you realized what I did and then you killed her and then Charissa too. I thought you'd never come back, I wouldn't blame you if you didn't, what I did to you was so horrible. I'm sorry."

He wrapped his arms around me in reciprocation and fell silent again for a moment.

"...I must have been really shitty to you as...him. Did I hurt you that much?"

"No, no, you didn't. Surprisingly. I think I'm the person you probably hurt the least in all of this. I don't know why, but it was almost like you refused to believe for a long time after that I was the one to blame. You just found a way to pin it all on someone else."

"That...god. That's almost worse. No offense."

"None taken, it was really fucked up." I gave a half-assed chuckle and sniffed, holding him tighter and kissing his neck.

"I just...can't believe you're back."