[ Simon watches her, unflinching but sitting up straight as if on the verge of standing but frozen in place. This doesn’t make sense. ]
What are you talking about? You said—
[ He falters. What did she say? There aren’t any specifics that he remembers, but it felt so certain. ] We talked about it like it would be us on the ARK. You knew the whole time?
[ The ARK is no longer his last shot at salvation from an eternity at the bottom of the sea, and so when he looks back on it, he’s simply stymied, recalling a whirlwind of confusion and able to imagine that maybe he made an assumption or two in the process, but no less baffled for it. ]
How were you so calm about it? I couldn’t even think about— what we would do if it didn’t work out. I thought we were saving ourselves.
[ If Catherine is surprised she has to explain how the ARK launch would work, Simon is just as surprised that they could have such different understandings of the blood-freezing, animal fear of the very outcome she’s saying she was prepared for all along, and the helpless astonishment is evident in his voice. It had never occurred to him to even evaluate it, the desperate desire to be saved from that existence, or to imagine that they weren’t on the same page about it.
What he had was an extra chance, too, and the things he missed that the human Simon experienced afforded him extra practice in running from finality. Extra ways to avoid confronting endings he doesn’t like. In one big cosmic joke, it’s the exact kind of break Simon in particular can’t exactly be trusted with. ]
no subject
What are you talking about? You said—
[ He falters. What did she say? There aren’t any specifics that he remembers, but it felt so certain. ] We talked about it like it would be us on the ARK. You knew the whole time?
[ The ARK is no longer his last shot at salvation from an eternity at the bottom of the sea, and so when he looks back on it, he’s simply stymied, recalling a whirlwind of confusion and able to imagine that maybe he made an assumption or two in the process, but no less baffled for it. ]
How were you so calm about it? I couldn’t even think about— what we would do if it didn’t work out. I thought we were saving ourselves.
[ If Catherine is surprised she has to explain how the ARK launch would work, Simon is just as surprised that they could have such different understandings of the blood-freezing, animal fear of the very outcome she’s saying she was prepared for all along, and the helpless astonishment is evident in his voice. It had never occurred to him to even evaluate it, the desperate desire to be saved from that existence, or to imagine that they weren’t on the same page about it.
What he had was an extra chance, too, and the things he missed that the human Simon experienced afforded him extra practice in running from finality. Extra ways to avoid confronting endings he doesn’t like. In one big cosmic joke, it’s the exact kind of break Simon in particular can’t exactly be trusted with. ]