“All right. Maybe something small like crackers won’t keep you from sleep,” Ben offered, and he was about to turn and go retrieve them, when Jacen started talking about the whole situation with Josie and he stopped instantly.
Ah. Yeah, that made sense. It was no secret that Josie and Annie got along as well as two cats in a cage. Josie tended to err toward the irrational side of things, so when Annie came into the picture, especially when it came to Jacen, he was almost positive that the thin thread of rationality she hung onto probably snapped. And poor Jacen, to have to be the unfortunate benefactor to all of that anger. It was no wonder that he’d left.
Disowned him, though? Ben couldn’t imagine disowning any of his siblings over anything, let alone someone they had feelings for. Love was an odd emotion. You felt it for who you felt it for, and there was nothing you could do about it. Of course, he didn’t think that Annie was a terrible target for affections such as Jacen’s, so Josie’s apparent spiral off the edge of sanity was…well, unwarranted would have been an understatement, if you asked Ben. He sat down next to Jacen and put a friendly arm around his shoulders.
He didn’t know what to say. “I would have done the same thing,” was what he said at first, his arm sliding back to his side as he folded his hands and tried to think of what came next. He could tell him that he’d been there for his sister in times when no one else would have, but that would only serve to bring him down further. “You don’t deserve that, man. You did the right thing.”
There was a sneaking suspicion in Ben’s gut, that Josie had done this both because she wasn’t the center of attention in Jacen’s eyes, and to become the center of attention in someone else’s, but he decided not to voice that for now.