[ Simon watches her through the transformation of his own expression to something troubled, then drops his head in a kind of mute, melancholy acknowledgment. The first like, half of that is getting put in his mental Watch Later list.
It’s been less than a day, and he already knows how stupid he was in hindsight. The magnitude of the hole in his understanding of Catherine, the disproportion of what ended up being her punishment for even the worst answer — it’s already made the question feel like something wrong, rejected and going septic. Like a souvenir of PATHOS-II’s inside-out rot. But the hole in his understanding, of Catherine, of PATHOS-II and the chain of shattering discoveries he had to drag around without time to truly process, is still there, and the question won’t just disappear. ]
Did you think— I mean, did you know that I [ it’s halting, because this finisher feels overly simplistic, obviously, but he sure just wants to be done with this sentence— ] didn’t?
[ His tone is carefully flat and quiet, mainly because he doesn’t know what to do with it. Except “don’t say it uhh like an asshole”. The anger with which he lashed out at her in Phi isn’t in danger of resurfacing. It’s spent, a tired and redundant void, and, well, the reminder that Catherine knew the whole time and is just mystifyingly unselfish is just an inhospitable environment for it. He lifts his eyes to her face for just a moment, like the person in a horror movie who just can’t resist looking behind them. ]
no subject
It’s been less than a day, and he already knows how stupid he was in hindsight. The magnitude of the hole in his understanding of Catherine, the disproportion of what ended up being her punishment for even the worst answer — it’s already made the question feel like something wrong, rejected and going septic. Like a souvenir of PATHOS-II’s inside-out rot. But the hole in his understanding, of Catherine, of PATHOS-II and the chain of shattering discoveries he had to drag around without time to truly process, is still there, and the question won’t just disappear. ]
Did you think— I mean, did you know that I [ it’s halting, because this finisher feels overly simplistic, obviously, but he sure just wants to be done with this sentence— ] didn’t?
[ His tone is carefully flat and quiet, mainly because he doesn’t know what to do with it. Except “don’t say it uhh like an asshole”. The anger with which he lashed out at her in Phi isn’t in danger of resurfacing. It’s spent, a tired and redundant void, and, well, the reminder that Catherine knew the whole time and is just mystifyingly unselfish is just an inhospitable environment for it. He lifts his eyes to her face for just a moment, like the person in a horror movie who just can’t resist looking behind them. ]