"Magic," she responds, raising her eyebrows and nodding with some level well-rehearsed mock-incredulity. A small smile works at the corner of her mouth, less rehearsed and more honest.
There's a very tangible pause on her end, thick with a swirling mix of doubt and half-hearted acceptance, and Claire knows that he's being an asshole on purpose, but that doesn't stop her from taking it seriously. After all, why not magic? Two years ago - hell, two months ago - she might have reacted like any normal person would have: with a mocking laugh and an eye roll for all his sarcastic troubles. Magic. Right. How much of that would have been an act and how much of it would have been a genuine expression of ridiculous disbelief is neither here nor there. What is both here and there is the lurching of this facility all around them. What is both here and there is the fact that suspending disbelief in the face of what she is and what this is, this hulking chill and frantic, pulsing energy of faces and figures around them, trying to make sense. Magic hardly seems unlikely, and it's not like he lifted a hand to offer her a towel, either.
What rubs her the wrong way is that he is deliberately being a dick, and she can accept and even respect that, but she's less interested in extending her hand in some kind of unifying solidarity resulting from their circumstances than she was before. He probably appreciates it, given the exceptionally warm vibes he's given off at every turn. Reel it in, Bennet. Not everyone is as interested in making conversation directly after the insanity that has just happened to all of them.
"Wouldn't be the craziest thing I've heard all day." That's a genuine truth.
no subject
There's a very tangible pause on her end, thick with a swirling mix of doubt and half-hearted acceptance, and Claire knows that he's being an asshole on purpose, but that doesn't stop her from taking it seriously. After all, why not magic? Two years ago - hell, two months ago - she might have reacted like any normal person would have: with a mocking laugh and an eye roll for all his sarcastic troubles. Magic. Right. How much of that would have been an act and how much of it would have been a genuine expression of ridiculous disbelief is neither here nor there. What is both here and there is the lurching of this facility all around them. What is both here and there is the fact that suspending disbelief in the face of what she is and what this is, this hulking chill and frantic, pulsing energy of faces and figures around them, trying to make sense. Magic hardly seems unlikely, and it's not like he lifted a hand to offer her a towel, either.
What rubs her the wrong way is that he is deliberately being a dick, and she can accept and even respect that, but she's less interested in extending her hand in some kind of unifying solidarity resulting from their circumstances than she was before. He probably appreciates it, given the exceptionally warm vibes he's given off at every turn. Reel it in, Bennet. Not everyone is as interested in making conversation directly after the insanity that has just happened to all of them.
"Wouldn't be the craziest thing I've heard all day." That's a genuine truth.