If it had been prior to the Western Approach, Araceli doesn't want to think what her reaction would have been because she knows what it would have been. That there would have been a lump in her throat tight enough to make speaking nearly impossible, that her smile would have been frozen and brittle. That she would have tried nearly every trick in her arsenal to have Sina reconsidering.

(That she would have been very drunk at some point. The sort of mess where you can't even articulate what's wrong because there's too much, and she would've been up on the roof in some corner no one would've been able to reach.)

So she owes Martel her thanks, again.

Still, she flexes her hand in the only sign that might give away what she's thinking when Sina tells her, breathes slow and deep after she swallows carefully but the mask stays on. The mask has cracked too often and that...she does not wish to be hard, there is nothing terrible about being soft but there is much to do be done, this is yet another reminder of that. A hand is not a chest, did she not say as much to Korrin months ago when she cried in a tent, when her tears froze to her cheeks?

"You and Madame LeBlanc, you will examine as many possibilities as you can, yes? A thief that does not wish to be caught takes her time to watch the guard patrols - she knows when the watches change, if they at their lightest or at their heaviest then - and how many ways she might get in and out, all the ways she might get home, how many friends they might have who would help them chase the thief." That is to say, you will be careful without saying it, because she doesn't know if she can say that right now, when it's easier somehow to treat this as a mission, as a job, as an assignment. A thing to be broken down into parts and pieces.