Was Thraen trying to scold her into having better self-esteem?
What did he understand about it, or her, anyway? At his age, he worked at a university, while she had Beefaroni dinners heated on a hot plate and had wallpapered the stained walls of her apartment with Christmas wrapping paper she'd bought at the dollar store. Did he think he knew better than her parents did, what kind of person she was? Had he raised her, given her every opportunity, then been there to watch as she'd squandered them all? How could he possibly presume to know --
No. STOP, Laney, stop. That was being defensive. That was being unfair. Suppose he's trying to be helpful, instead of hurtful. Suppose he's trying to be kind.
Think better of people who ask you to think better of yourself. Carmine would have asked you why you thought that was so hard to do.
She looked away. It took a moment, even now, to find an answer.
"That's not why I said it," she said. "Not this time. I can't say that humility isn't an important component of the work that I do -- it serves a valuable purpose in helping people not to see me as a threat -- in convincing them I'm not so certain of myself as to be close-minded. If they don't trust that I'm a person who's genuinely willing to listen to them, they won't talk to me. I believe listening to someone else isn't something that works best if you're only willing to do it on your own terms.
"But this was just . . . " She ran a hand through her hair, fingers tangling in the loose curls of her bangs. "I liked high school. I liked going. I wanted to go to college, too. I believe in the value of a formal education system. I believe a self-directed education can often turn into a self-reinforcing one, and that can lead to stunting your own growth without realizing it. I think writing off the potential merits of a formal education smacks of anti-intellectualism. You work at a university. I answered you the way I did because I wanted you to understand that I respect what you do. I respect the hard work of the people who went before you in laying the groundwork for all the things that get taught in a university."
"I think all good communication involves calculation, whether consciously or not. I think honesty, without context or personalized conception, isn't actually the clearest form of communication. But whatever the case -- the notion that a calculated presentation of oneself is necessarily ungenuine, is necessarily intended to trick the other person into letting their guard down and engendering underestimation -- that's a very oppositional way to think about a conversation. That's a very guarded point of view. It's not one I share."
She looked up, finally. Even among all the many people she spoke to, he'd always seemed to be a very different communicator. His style was hard for her to understand: its purpose, its assumptions about the world and about people.
Was that what he was? Guarded?
Was that why someone who'd expressed such an ardent desire to do good works for others, who'd taken the time to tell Hvergelmir she was worthwhile, nonetheless had so few connections?
Perhaps it wasn't just his extreme of approach to the war. Maybe he really did see conversations as some sort of traps to be fallen into.
But then, if he didn't know her personal life, neither did she know his. Everything about him was so much uncertainty and conjecture.
Surprisingly mercenary. What was spycraft, after all, if not surprisingly mercenary? It was the best word she had for what she did. It was what she'd tried to convey to Castor about her work.
But mercenary, after all, had a different connotation than calculated. To be mercenary was not just to be calculated, but to be self-serving. Perhaps, then, even though they were both at extremes of method, he didn't understand her after all, as she'd hoped he might. Perhaps he believed she acted to serve herself.
She acted to serve a cause. She tried to.
"You don't have to leave," Hvergelmir told him, conscious that he'd already made the choice to cast off her cloak. "But you can, if you want to. I would have liked to talk to you longer."
Ivynian
