He hadn't meant it as a literal question, but the fact that Cole takes it that way and tells him so earnestly that he can't see the future has Ben grinning again, broad and bright. There is so much more that Cole can perceive than he can, and Ben's come to really like that, but it's also nice that there are some things Cole doesn't know. He can't see what is going to happen in a year or tomorrow or even in an hour.

The words come easier, because of that sap he had drunk.

"You're right. Even if... I snapped my fingers and that connection was gone right this second, I don't know how much that would change. It wouldn't undo all those years we were connected or the fact that I was born with the powers I was. It wouldn't really fix anything at all."

The thing that will is the thing Cole keeps suggesting; learning to live with himself. Unlearning all the ways, big and small, that he has been taught to see himself, and Them, as monstrous. It's... a work in progress. He really has been trying, but it's sometimes two steps forward, one step back.

With his hand on his stomach, Ben feels the slim little paperback that he has tucked into the pouch of his hoodie. It's been a habit of his for a long time, to have some book or other on him at all times. That way, if he's stuck somewhere or locked in or bored, he can have something to occupy his mind. He'd been planning on returning this one to the library, since he'd finished with it, but he never got that far. Now, though, he pulls it out idly, ruffling the yellowed pages. They are rippled from old water damage, but it's still legible. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He'd been combing it for passages he could use in his reading lessons with Kieran.

"Have you heard of this book?"

He figures probably there wasn't a Robert Louis Stevenson in Thedas but Cole was in Drift Fleet a while and who knows, maybe it came up?