He was pretty good before at putting the initial shock aside--by denying it, of course. And then everything with Wash, and the Meta, and the Director, and Epsilon, and the EMP... Sure, he's had time to process it now, but obviously he's been trying hard not to do that. Who wants to remember something like that, much less understand it? He was fine how he was before knowing, or before Tex died, or before he got fucking teamkilled.
So to talk about it now, with another person, about himself and not about some mythical Alpha that isn't him, is kiiiind of...terrible. He feels Christine's hand, feels her squeezing and feels her eyes on him, but he feels very small, very conflicted, and he doesn't see the ground he stares at, but Epsilon's flashes in his head, Wash's stupid helmeted face, all the AI surrounding the Meta like a halo of everything he could have been.
That moment when, briefly, he was with Tex again.
"Sorry," he says, suddenly, when she lays her cheek on him. "Sorry, I was--uh, this is hard. Harder than I thought it'd be. Okay, um, generally speaking, no, we don't do that to each other. It is, in fact, super illegal to do anything remotely like he did? Like there are laws on how to treat--" AI "--people like me and that sure as hell isn't something you do. But he was desperate and determined I guess. And what he was doing with them was, um, pairing them up with some of the badass super soldiers he was training. Kind of like an extra piece of a mind to help run complex shit. Made them faster, stronger. They were like little people all on their own."
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So to talk about it now, with another person, about himself and not about some mythical Alpha that isn't him, is kiiiind of...terrible. He feels Christine's hand, feels her squeezing and feels her eyes on him, but he feels very small, very conflicted, and he doesn't see the ground he stares at, but Epsilon's flashes in his head, Wash's stupid helmeted face, all the AI surrounding the Meta like a halo of everything he could have been.
That moment when, briefly, he was with Tex again.
"Sorry," he says, suddenly, when she lays her cheek on him. "Sorry, I was--uh, this is hard. Harder than I thought it'd be. Okay, um, generally speaking, no, we don't do that to each other. It is, in fact, super illegal to do anything remotely like he did? Like there are laws on how to treat--" AI "--people like me and that sure as hell isn't something you do. But he was desperate and determined I guess. And what he was doing with them was, um, pairing them up with some of the badass super soldiers he was training. Kind of like an extra piece of a mind to help run complex shit. Made them faster, stronger. They were like little people all on their own."