He traced her motion from the moment she was in his line of sight again, but her words. Her words made him freeze. On the one hand, he could comprehend the familiarity of what she was describing. On the other hand, it was infuriating, how she could even think to call her life controlled by others. She was eating food she was choosing, drinking wine she probably knew about and had selected herself. She probably hadn't spent decades being fed intravenously, leaving her incapable of selecting her own nutrition for weeks...
She knew nothing of people taking her choices away, compared to him.
But he had learned already that he was not a fair comparison. For anyone.
She knew about people taking her choices away, was what he was left with once he stifled that anger away. And he had done it to her, too. That... was an explanation that he understood, and he gave her a slow, thoughtful nod, his own eyes gradually clearing even if his left hand was still locked tightly enough that if he were made to move, it would screech with the howl of metal forced too hard. Slowly, he tilted his head to one side.
"Why would protecting you equate to looking down on you?" A moment, and he clarified his question, "usually, if a person was assigned protection - against me - they were people that were looked up to, whether they were actual employers or not."
They used to be the people who were his targets. There was always a reason for that.
As to her actual point... he'd thought they'd addressed that last night. She wasn't going to rely on him to protect her, and he had agreed to it. For him, that had settled that. So he said out loud the answer that he had. "I was protecting myself, not you."
He'd told her so already, hadn't he? She could have died, if the person she opened the door to had a gun on him and shot her from close range. But it would have still left him with cover and a great point to take on the attackers. Yes, if the attack was of a different kind, he would have protected her, as well. But those were more complicated hits. People rarely went for complicated.
no subject
She knew nothing of people taking her choices away, compared to him.
But he had learned already that he was not a fair comparison. For anyone.
She knew about people taking her choices away, was what he was left with once he stifled that anger away. And he had done it to her, too. That... was an explanation that he understood, and he gave her a slow, thoughtful nod, his own eyes gradually clearing even if his left hand was still locked tightly enough that if he were made to move, it would screech with the howl of metal forced too hard. Slowly, he tilted his head to one side.
"Why would protecting you equate to looking down on you?" A moment, and he clarified his question, "usually, if a person was assigned protection - against me - they were people that were looked up to, whether they were actual employers or not."
They used to be the people who were his targets. There was always a reason for that.
As to her actual point... he'd thought they'd addressed that last night. She wasn't going to rely on him to protect her, and he had agreed to it. For him, that had settled that. So he said out loud the answer that he had. "I was protecting myself, not you."
He'd told her so already, hadn't he? She could have died, if the person she opened the door to had a gun on him and shot her from close range. But it would have still left him with cover and a great point to take on the attackers. Yes, if the attack was of a different kind, he would have protected her, as well. But those were more complicated hits. People rarely went for complicated.
Though he certainly often did.