That shook her. Her eyes widened and she took a step backward. Did she seem unhappy about it? With a glance to the side, she quickly sized up her reactions in front of Maleficent. What had she shown? She felt very little, very little at all - but that was a lie. That was a lie she was telling herself. She was terrified, and that was the truth.
Peter wasn't dead. Peter wasn't in New York, unable to reach her. She hadn't lost him. But there, for a few breaths, it felt like she had. She'd been so sure, looking at his flat through his eyes, and knowing his thoughts - that the flat was exactly the same as his own in Manhattan - and knowing that Manhattan was nowhere near the dinosaur-infested island where she now worked... Even now, remembering it, she could feel her heart shrinking away inside her. Evey sucked in a breath and forced it out on words.
"No," she said. "You're wrong; I am very happy that they are safe. That they are sheltered. That they will no longer have to struggle just to live. And this city Peter's shown me - it's..." She paused, wincing when she realized she'd accidentally revealed something of the nature of Peter's connection with her. It couldn't be helped. She moved on. "It's beautiful, really. There seems to be no war, no struggle against oppression, no marching soldiers, no dropping bombs... It's nothing like any world I've seen, and far better than any he's shared with me that he's seen."
Evey raked a hand through her hair. "It would do you well to go see it."
Even now, she was pushing people away. She recognized it for the knee-jerk reaction it was; Maleficent was no one close to her, and she would not cave under the loss of the woman were the worst to happen. Maleficent wasn't even a part of the collective she'd been working to sustain. And yet, her first instinct was to push the woman away - just in case she lost her, like she was sure she'd lost Peter. It was not rational. It was wholly rational. Her mind was cleanly divided on the subject, and she'd stopped trying to rationalize it all. Evey dropped her hand to her side.
"I'm just tired," she said, and it wasn't entirely a lie. Without the daily demands of the collective, she was beginning to realize just how tired she really was. But more than that -- she was used up. She knew she'd been patching cracks for far too long. Evey didn't want to face what was left. But there was always work to do.