There is no lash of indignation at Ripley's words. No justification, no rebuttal, only the silent acceptance of a woman who has long since wrestled with her conscience to prove the damn thing existed again. It's all true. All of it just using other people for a devastating, selfish end. A fool hoping that somehow she could sate a hunger for approval with the blood of others. Empty, hollow, and hateful - and doomed, always, to some kind of oblivion. She nods, slow, and does not look away. It's the only way to prove she is telling the truth - that she is not shrinking from the enormity of everything.

(And it's true, perhaps, that the Elder Brain has its own ends. They had needed to control it, cage it - and it was a thing of such evil that it could not be allowed to exist in this plane.)

A movement, but it's nothing more than Fever gathering up Jude into her arms, settling the boneless creature into her lap. An innocent life that until recently she would have been too scared to touch. Something warm and soft and gentle, who seems to not mind how much death her hands have dealt.

"...people say but that's not you now as if that somehow makes up for the fact that everything still happened. It did. Even if I don't remember it. Even if I was struck down."

A brief pause -

"Sorry. You asked for answers, not my whining."

Brush it off, like dust, like feathers. Stop talking, or it's like you're trying to get out of it.