[Ren's apartment.]
Perhaps part of Ren's problem was that he was seeking something ideal or idealized, something that would prove he was a good person to everyone who might question it. And along with that was some idealized version of himself, something that was strangely caught between who he wanted to be, and the deeply ingrained expectations of who he should be from people that he would profess to not particularly give credit to, but who had shaped him deeply regardless. And for all he could 'throw off' expectations, the truth was that they buried deeper than even he probably gave them credit for. They continued to define his reactions to things, and what he tried to control.
How did you go about learning to be open, he wondered. How did you go about learning to be one's self. And despite the fact that he'd so quickly dismissed her suggestion of letting go, it was appealing to let go of all those in-grained ideas about who he should be, but he didn't know what he was going to replace them with. He couldn't deny that showing people the real you being necessary made sense though. He wanted something real, deeply real, something that was a rock he could count on. So few things had ever been that for him. And he loved the idea of passion, something that made his stomach flutter in anticipation, and love that he could feel deeply in his bones - but almost as important was something that he could rest on.
"I'm not scared to use them..." but this wasn't entirely true was it. If he weren't afraid, he'd have done it a hundred times over wouldn't he? It was pretending to be normal, pretending that he wasn't who he was, again. He frowned. "I just don't want people to think of me differently." Maybe the right people wouldn't. Hannah didn't, he didn't think. "I use them sometimes," he finally said. "When they can help." He'd used them that night with the AI's.
He shook his head. "No, not that. I mean, I know I'm those things." He finally pulled his head up and looked at her. "I mean, more, if I were a character in a book, how would you describe me? What characteristics? Who would you say I am? What do you see?"