Chilton blinked, taking note of her reaction -- the downcast glance, the adherent stare into the carpet. His eyebrows rose, his mouth edged towards his chin; he observed this expressions of self-berating.

"It's a fine, heartfelt gesture," he said, and quickly. But it was likely that she'd think his words were only meant to comfort her, which indeed they were. His voice offered hollow reassurance, dutiful and nearly immediate.

"Your coping mechanism -- making these monuments, intending to give them to others, that all enables the memory of your lost companions." Now this angle sounded more sincere. He could latch onto the rationality, the explanation. He could convey to his patient what the meaning of her actions were, how they could impact her continual existence. It was, essentially, where a psychiatrist of his own caliber could treat.

Chilton was not, as he would say in his own words, merely a therapist.

"That immortality is meaningful, Kanaya," he offered. His gaze flickered to her forehead, as if wondering how her neurons would seize that opinion. He thought about (with the mild agony that anticipation brought) of her MRIs and her bodily samples. Her behavior, her need to memorialize, was just as fascinating as those what ifs that speckled his treatment of her.