This second pause draws her attention from her nails and back to Stephen. Ness tilts her head at his expression, quizzical, baffled by his bafflement.
It's not the first time that she's realized she and Stephen are not as similar as they sometimes seem. For all their shared curiosity, their enthusiasm for discovery, their dogged dedication to being of serviceβeven in these commonalities, their motives, their expressions, differ. Which is hardly a surprise, of course; she's a half-elf at the beginning of her life, while he's a middle-aged human with a wealth of experience and ambition behind him, to say nothing of the fact that they're not even from the same plane of existence.
This may be their biggest difference, though.
"Yes," slowly, "I think because he was a slave. He lacked all three, and so they became the driving motivators of his life. Knowledge, too, he loved books. I think it was the only form of power he truly believed in, he had such contempt forβ"
She cuts herself off, taking a breath. She's said so much about Vazeiros, but that's not really what Stephen's asking about. It's just the prism he's looking at himself through now, how Ness could take that refracted light and in a time of fevered weakness see him in it.
"You are not like him," she says gently. "You are kinder and warmer than he could ever even think to be. If I called you osu it's because..." It's her turn to be mortified, but it's an equivalent exchange, so she won't look away, even as her cheeks flame with embarrassment and she can feel her whole body going hot. "Because you're what I wish he would have been, to me, not because you're what he was."
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It's not the first time that she's realized she and Stephen are not as similar as they sometimes seem. For all their shared curiosity, their enthusiasm for discovery, their dogged dedication to being of serviceβeven in these commonalities, their motives, their expressions, differ. Which is hardly a surprise, of course; she's a half-elf at the beginning of her life, while he's a middle-aged human with a wealth of experience and ambition behind him, to say nothing of the fact that they're not even from the same plane of existence.
This may be their biggest difference, though.
"Yes," slowly, "I think because he was a slave. He lacked all three, and so they became the driving motivators of his life. Knowledge, too, he loved books. I think it was the only form of power he truly believed in, he had such contempt forβ"
She cuts herself off, taking a breath. She's said so much about Vazeiros, but that's not really what Stephen's asking about. It's just the prism he's looking at himself through now, how Ness could take that refracted light and in a time of fevered weakness see him in it.
"You are not like him," she says gently. "You are kinder and warmer than he could ever even think to be. If I called you osu it's because..." It's her turn to be mortified, but it's an equivalent exchange, so she won't look away, even as her cheeks flame with embarrassment and she can feel her whole body going hot. "Because you're what I wish he would have been, to me, not because you're what he was."