He flips through the pages of precious paper, reading Ness’ writing (shaky, but nowhere near as shaky as his own). Each meticulously-numbered point is precisely the rationale he would have used with her to argue against this. Despite himself and his alarm and worry, the smallest smile flickers at the corner of his mouth before he’s able to bite it back.

This is exactly why she’s his mentee, and would be his favourite even if he had several —

“It sounds like you’ve been through the whole debate with me already,” Stephen says, and there’s a touch of dry humour as he turns back one of the pages, and then straightens them into neat lines and puts the pile back into order. Meeting her eye, then:

“You already know what I’m going to say, it seems. So play it out for me.”

She’s done all the work; he wants to hear each rebuttal and counterpoint.