[It's soft, when the answer comes, quiet because any louder and her voice would shake.] I wanted to try. He is so kind.

[Now she moves, slow and stiff as if all her joints ache, each swing of her booted feet taking her closer to the window until she can put a hand on it and stare out, the other still wrapped around her stomach to hold herself in. She can put her back to him. It doesn't hurt to do that, it doesn't make her skin crawl to be exposed like that.

What she wants to say next...there are a few things. She could be angry, tell him that locking her up for her own good had been what he'd done when he'd appointed Vision as her glorified babysitter, or that it hadn't mattered what he'd wanted, that he hadn't known it would go bad the way it had. None of that will help now, and saying it might not matter.]

What happened in Lagos. What I did. Trying to help, doing what I thought needed to be done and watching it go...so wrong... [She tucks her hair behind her ear, not looking at him, not even at the faint reflection in the window, and her voice is even lower now.]

I didn't understand before. How much it. Sits. Inside you. Like a stone.