"Don't you think I know that?" Setsuna says, a bit more harshly than she probably should, snapping, eyes narrowing with a sharp, distancing chill. She glares at Catra for a long, angry moment, expression dark, shoulders straight with disgust - only half at the condescension in the other girl's voice, the other half ... remembering something and someone else, somewhere far away.

Then she sucks in a sharp breath, relaxing the tension in her body as much as she can. "I'm not trying to be hopeful because I'm stupid," she says, the words braced against her teeth. "Like I don't think I know this is the careless kindness we only get as long as we know our place." Her words are bitter and hot in her throat. She takes another long breath, though, closing her eyes as her mouth contorts in a painful grimace, then ... lets it all go, as smoothly as she can. Which isn't all that smoothly, but she manages to settle for a calm frown. "But I can only think that. I don't know that for sure. And even doing all the wrong things for the wrong reasons doesn't mean I can't be helped."

She's lost enough in the raw scrape of her own remembered pain this brought to the surface, she doesn't even notice the demonstrative slip of her own tongue it's provoked.