He can avoid her gaze as much as he likes, she still knows she's won and it makes her unbearably smug.
She takes her time with combing out her hair, working through every tangle her fingers encounter, drawing them through the long golden strands and carefully collecting any loose ones that fall free so she doesn't leave a mess.
"A few years after I got the serum," she starts to explain, not really knowing why she feels compelled to share this but knowing Eskel probably won't find it that weird, "I crashed a plane into the Arctic. A plane is, um, a large aircraft that can fly but needs to be piloted by a human being. It was full of bombs, giant explosives that were set to destroy my hometown, one of the largest cities in the country. It would have killed millions of people, devastated our economy, ensured our country's defeat in the war. So I took hold of the controls and I put the whole craft down in the open ocean. We crashed, but the water was so cold that the bombs never exploded. So cold, actually, that the whole plane simply froze over, me and the bombs and all.
"I spent seventy-odd years in that ice, frozen, the serum keeping me from dying. Once they found me, once they chipped me free and thawed me out, I couldn't sleep on a bed for months. They got real fancy mattresses where I'm from, soft like you're sleeping on a cloud."
She shakes her head, a small smile twisting her lips that isn't that cheerful at all. "I preferred the floor."
no subject
She takes her time with combing out her hair, working through every tangle her fingers encounter, drawing them through the long golden strands and carefully collecting any loose ones that fall free so she doesn't leave a mess.
"A few years after I got the serum," she starts to explain, not really knowing why she feels compelled to share this but knowing Eskel probably won't find it that weird, "I crashed a plane into the Arctic. A plane is, um, a large aircraft that can fly but needs to be piloted by a human being. It was full of bombs, giant explosives that were set to destroy my hometown, one of the largest cities in the country. It would have killed millions of people, devastated our economy, ensured our country's defeat in the war. So I took hold of the controls and I put the whole craft down in the open ocean. We crashed, but the water was so cold that the bombs never exploded. So cold, actually, that the whole plane simply froze over, me and the bombs and all.
"I spent seventy-odd years in that ice, frozen, the serum keeping me from dying. Once they found me, once they chipped me free and thawed me out, I couldn't sleep on a bed for months. They got real fancy mattresses where I'm from, soft like you're sleeping on a cloud."
She shakes her head, a small smile twisting her lips that isn't that cheerful at all. "I preferred the floor."