"I never doubted it was learned," he says. "That's why I trust you. There's thought behind your actions. You're not gentle because you're inherently harmless. You're gentle because you have to be."

It's something Watson understands, or thinks he does in his own way: the eternal and entirely necessary agony of pretending to be harmless, because civilian life has sometimes struck him the same way. He rubs Cerrit's fingers, gently.

"Honestly, that was one of the first things I noticed about you."