It is in this way that Thomas has learned the true nature of immortality. Of reincarnation. Life has ended for him over and over; he is the same man somewhere inside but fundamentally carved into something else. He thinks he is on his fourth life now. He is someone who the others come to when they're shaking apart for a calm word, he is someone that has an uncanny sense for which overseer is near - so many time's he's stopped speaking, shushed another, hidden a book, pushed someone back to work. It isn't fearful, it's observant-- the insight that made him so formidable in debate makes him a deft mediator here, slipping others around like pawns avoiding bishops. Benjamin thinks he's a prat.

"What?" This is his fourth life, because James resurrected him into a new realm. So he's relieved, just a little, that his love isn't looking at him when he asks, because blurting out What? is so unlike him. He hates looking at anyone askance. He knows what it is to be stared at as if insane. He'll never look at James that way when he can see it.

For a while, he's quiet.

"I am happy to have left Bethlem," he says after a while. "I am happy when I am with you." Wooden boxes creak as he puts them back to rights, full of stiff-bristle horse brushes and picks for shoes, old iron nails. He moves to stand at James' elbow, footsteps silent in a measured way that tells a story of a man who has reason to fear making noise. "Sometimes," he begins again, his voice muted, "I'm even happy when I get to read newspaper articles, or when it rains in the morning."

(What? he'd said, so quickly.)