The silence that falls over South is stark for how it contrasts everything else about her. She stares back at him, mouth just barely ajar, for a long, unnatural moment of what must seem to be calm before an inevitable storm, until, finally:
"...what?"
The word tries to die in her throat, caught by the overwhelming and yet unidentifiable emotion that strangles her, and so it comes out tight and small. She is still frozen in place.
Carolina told her, once, weeks ago, that she thought the way Command had always treated her was targeted. She hadn't known what to do with the feeling that hit her then, when it was just a theory, when it was just about her, when it was easy to write off as just another example of the ways people always saw her as a troublesome element needing punishment. But this—this is more than that, this is so much worse than that, this is—
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The silence that falls over South is stark for how it contrasts everything else about her. She stares back at him, mouth just barely ajar, for a long, unnatural moment of what must seem to be calm before an inevitable storm, until, finally:
"...what?"
The word tries to die in her throat, caught by the overwhelming and yet unidentifiable emotion that strangles her, and so it comes out tight and small. She is still frozen in place.
Carolina told her, once, weeks ago, that she thought the way Command had always treated her was targeted. She hadn't known what to do with the feeling that hit her then, when it was just a theory, when it was just about her, when it was easy to write off as just another example of the ways people always saw her as a troublesome element needing punishment. But this—this is more than that, this is so much worse than that, this is—