Snippet #2255420

Anna was quite surprised at his response. Hadn't he...? What? She squinted her eyes (seeing as she no longer could furrow her brows,) Suddenly she wasn't quite sure what to do with herself, was he messing with her or something. She quickly looked over her shoulder, wondering if the robot hadn't been talking to her after all.

"I thought that you'd asked for me. A robot said so. I guess I heard him wrong..." She didn't know if she should apologise for having disturbed him, but decided against it. Instead she straightened her back, and rested her hands on her hips, this time more relaxed than before. "I don't read much. Not a strong side with me. The letters have a habit of not looking like what they are."

---

Callen cried no more, instead she was just looking at him, her expression showing signs of mild annoyance. She drew a hand down over her face, and sighed, sounding more tired than angry or sad. "You're not listening to me. I've chosen, and if that means that I'll die defenceless in some mud or whatever, then that's fine with me. That's cool. That's the consequence I chose. We're different people, you and I, and we're not headin' the same place. That's life."

She flashed a smile at him, a glimmer of the usual Callen back, just for a second. "But I ain't gonna try and force my morals and ways onto you, and you ain't gonna try and force yours onto me. And now I'm going to go get a warm drink, before we begin arguing and make things more difficult than they already are. You can come along, but only if we change the topic."

She hid the photo away in her pocket again, taking in a breath of fresh air as she did so. There was some measure of cleansing in the act she had just committed, she felt. She had shared her secret, and it didn't feel half bad.

"Oh and," she said, as she remembered it, "I mean actual ghost. Not a metaphor. It makes family reunions very strange."