“I might have taken the wrong tack,” Stephen admits after a beat, and the press of her fingers and his shows that he is still thinking very hard about this. (And that admission in and of itself means quite a bit; he hates to be wrong.) But his own older rancid panic was so clear-cut: here was a traumatising experience. His trauma is specifically around the things which directly remind him of that experience. Gwenaëlle’s is more nebulous.

“It doesn’t have to be that direct through-thread from a specific experience. And it doesn’t have to be because of the war. It can also just, y’know, be that way. It sounds like you had your share of stressful experiences at home, with your parents, your heritage, your secret. And even if you hadn’t, even if everything had been picture-perfect— honestly, sometimes our heads are just fucked. An imbalance in brain chemistry. The way we’re wired. We learn to cope.”

Speaking of, he takes another breath (in, out, Gwenaëlle still mirroring him), somewhere between his own tightened jaw and the struggle to delicately pick his way through these delicate concepts.