milliways_bar | (no subject)

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There are several large books stacked around Helen. Three in a language known in some worlds as Russian, one in a language known on some worlds as Greek, one that died out on most Earths long enough ago to not be known by anthropologists (but one significant slice of Earths became very prominent and important), and five in English. They all have titles about cross-dimensional travel.

She decided to stop researching in her room. So the young girl is researching at a table down here--that's totally the same thing as socializing, right?

Right.

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Surprisingly, Helen hasn't looked much in his direction either.

She hasn't, actually, much looked away from the notebook in front of her at all, but she hisses in annoyance as the next textbook she grabs from a stack falls from her fingers halfway through and thuds.

He does look over at that.

Though he doesn't react otherwise.

Helen's senses to who's watching her aren't as finetuned as many people's, but she just did something potentially embarassing.

Which heightens any thirteen year old girl's sense of eyes-on-their-back.

She turns her head, and glares at him from behind her hair. "Yes?"

Trowa returns the look blankly, from behind his own hair.

After a moment, he turns his gaze away again.

...

Helen is struck speechless for a moment at the nerve of him, to look away instead of answering a perfectly reasonable question.

"Haven't you got any manners?" she demands, once she recovers her voice.

Trowa glances back at her.

"Sorry."

Helen looks slightly disconcerted at this, as if unsure whether or not to be mollified.

"That's not an answer," she says, finally, though less certain of her annoyance than earlier.

Trowa's okay with that.

However: "Everybody has manners."

"Mine might not be the same."

This would be a) more conciliatory, or b) more snarky, if he had any expression in face or voice beyond 'calm and unreadable.'

"Not everybody," Helen counters. "I've not met anyone who thought it polite to leave questions unanswered."

Because everyone is raised by scholars! Um.

"I have."

He totally has manners, though. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been generous enough to use words there!

"Why?"

Trowa shrugs.

"Maybe they didn't have a good answer."

Helen frowns. "Saying you don't works just as well."

Trowa doesn't shrug. But he might manage to give that impression anyway.

Some people are laconic. Go figure.

"Otherwise," Helen continues, "people might think you were just withholding information. And most information should be shared otherwise no society will progress."

She nods sideways, to show she agrees with her own statement.

Trowa never withholds information from anyone!

Um.

He listens politely, with a faint head tilt indicating she should feel free to go on.

"Because," Helen points out, "if you don't share information it is difficult to tell where parallel lines of reasoning correlate in different fields or experiences. But some people are stupid and just take the plans for weapons and try to explode the world, so!"

Helen's segues are a little weird.

(But her analysis is pretty close to Trowa's experience, all the same.)

"Sharing information doesn't stop them from being stupid," he points out. Mildly.

HI, ZECHS.

"No," she agrees, rolling her eyes as he clearly didn't follow her train of thought.

Her segues are weird. But everyone should be psychic and able to follow them!

"That's why we don't let them steal information on the more destructive material. Because they're stupid."

That'd be Quatre's territory.

"We?"

"The House of Uquar," Helen says, and leaves it at that.

Ah.

This answer doesn't clarify much at all, yet Trowa accepts it.

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