[ all of the good-humored warmth drains from her. she knows that look well enough by now to associate it with his judgment. the lines of her shoulders tense, braced; undoubtedly, some calculations she isn't privy to — and won't be fond of, if past experience is informative — passing through that mind of his. some new analysis of her she won't like, all based on a poorly received joke.
vaguely, she gets the stomach-churning feeling that she's a mouse being batted around by a cat, just to see what she might do.
she dips her gaze to the edges of a book, smoothing her finger over its sharp corner to rub away a grain of dirt. the vulgarity of it, at least, doesn't cause her to so much as flinch. once you've lived among soldiers — most of them immature boys, youthful and cruel — crudeness for crudeness' sake becomes less jarring. ]
That's not what I said.
[ beneath the overhang of dark eyelashes, she gives him an inscrutable look. nearly impossible to decipher, for all that she's been so easily emotive just seconds ago. perhaps it says more of him that his immediate thoughts turn to abuse, to neglect — but alina has the grace not to comment on it. whatever he thinks of her, it strikes her as callous to try to drag whatever demons he's harboring into the light.
perhaps it's an undeserved mercy, she thinks to herself, but she won't poke and prod curious fingers at his sore spots they way he'd pressed on her bruises. ]
I'm not speaking on something so fragile and easily shattered as hope, or trust, or faith in the world. They're still kind in ways that the rest of us aren't, or have forgotten how to be.
Wounded children don't lose that ability. They just learn to become wary of who they share it with. Very few of the children here have had to learn that lesson yet.
[ she won't be the one to teach them. time, she supposes, will. heartbreak. failure. betrayal. watching those around you suffer. all the ways to lose your innocence and unfiltered compassion. maybe it says something about her, too, that she resists the compulsion to tell him he could stand to earn a tip or two about kindness from someone like finn. ]
no subject
vaguely, she gets the stomach-churning feeling that she's a mouse being batted around by a cat, just to see what she might do.
she dips her gaze to the edges of a book, smoothing her finger over its sharp corner to rub away a grain of dirt. the vulgarity of it, at least, doesn't cause her to so much as flinch. once you've lived among soldiers — most of them immature boys, youthful and cruel — crudeness for crudeness' sake becomes less jarring. ]
That's not what I said.
[ beneath the overhang of dark eyelashes, she gives him an inscrutable look. nearly impossible to decipher, for all that she's been so easily emotive just seconds ago. perhaps it says more of him that his immediate thoughts turn to abuse, to neglect — but alina has the grace not to comment on it. whatever he thinks of her, it strikes her as callous to try to drag whatever demons he's harboring into the light.
perhaps it's an undeserved mercy, she thinks to herself, but she won't poke and prod curious fingers at his sore spots they way he'd pressed on her bruises. ]
I'm not speaking on something so fragile and easily shattered as hope, or trust, or faith in the world. They're still kind in ways that the rest of us aren't, or have forgotten how to be.
Wounded children don't lose that ability. They just learn to become wary of who they share it with. Very few of the children here have had to learn that lesson yet.
[ she won't be the one to teach them. time, she supposes, will. heartbreak. failure. betrayal. watching those around you suffer. all the ways to lose your innocence and unfiltered compassion. maybe it says something about her, too, that she resists the compulsion to tell him he could stand to earn a tip or two about kindness from someone like finn. ]