Elsa saw the shock on his face, before she turned hers away. It surprised her, that he would look like that, as if her words had been hits to his face, instead of merely words. As she waited for him to leave, to walk away and not look back, she tried to understand that stricken look. No answer presented itself as usual, her mind as empty as her past.
When his hand grabbed her by the shoulders, she flinched, before looking up again. There was no anger on his face any more, but the smile sitting on his lips was even more chilling. While she hated the emptiness, the lack or memories of recollections that made her a shell of a human being, she had her own way of dealing with it. She hadn't confessed to him that her memories was gone so he could smile like that and tell her lies in a cheerful tone of voice. It had been a piece of information, traded for another, because she was afraid that he would leave.
Lifting a hand, she let her fingertips dance over his cheek gently, suddenly daring in her anger. Then she lifted her hands and removed his hands from her shoulders. Not because she didn't want him to touch her - she did, the warmth of him made her long for more - but because she instinctively felt it was the wrong sort of comfort, his heart was not in his face, nor in his words.
"Don't tell me lies," she said, voice low, but a fire burning in her eyes. "I can't make a new life until I know what my old one was. I can't begin anew until I know who I was, what my place in the world is. Until I remember, I wander." The last sentence was accented with a shrug.
There, she had bared more of her soul to him than she had ever done to any person she could remember. But the insincere look on his face was so difficult for her to look at, that the only way she knew how to respond, was with the truth. It left her without any further secrets, without anything else to give him. Surely, now he would walk away, now that she had told him off and rejected his words. Bracing herself for what was to come, she launched another desperate question. "What is a mage?" she asked, accented voice timid. If he answered at least she would know that, have this one clue to what he thought she was.