That first statement she chose to make about the miraculous nature about life prompted him to shake his head in disagreement, obviously he felt this way because the whole point of a miracle was the fact it occurred despite the slimmest probability possible. There was nothing miraculous about a predetermined product like him, maybe except the fact that despite the sheer amount of time and resources invested in trying to dictate who he would be, he became the opposite of it anyway and that fact seemed to startle him enough that he hesitated.
That was the miracle.
By the time his initial series of thoughts resurfaced, she'd decided to touch his cheek and break that focus again since it wasn't something he expected she would do. So rather than disputing anything he had just been told, he just listened and fired off five questions when prompted to do so at the end of her philosophical musing. "What's your angle for doing this?" It was the base and instinctual response, one that said more about him than it attempted to uncover about her, namely the presence of an inherent trust issue that had been there for some time now. Even if the gesture was appreciated, the intention behind it was still being questioned.
"How long will it take before this place is closed despite the best efforts of its owners?" The second was residual and more tangential, something in the back of his mind rather than the forefront and which he had probably unknowingly considered it from the moment they arrived.
"Will we ever have a place for all these people beyond this prison?" The third was a concern mixed with some amount of pragmatic skepticism over the viability of their end goal. Even if a conflict over something like Atka could be won, would they be able to keep it? His eyes had been fixed on the somewhat smoggy cityscape out through the glass windows when asking it
The fourth was more of a personal inflection, casting a brief glance in her direction before just simply questioning the nature of his life. "Why couldn't I just have a life like yours?" It didn't seem like he wanted to be exactly like her, but to have enjoyed the same treatment instead.
And when it came to his fifth and final question, it was hardly surprising as to what it turned out to be. "Will it ever actually feel like I have a home?" Despite the fact that his people welcomed him and treated him like one of theirs, it still felt like he didn't really have one. If anything, it actually felt like he was locked in an eternal struggle of trying to give himself something like the oasis she mentioned earlier. But at no point did it feel like he was making any actual progress, it was just fighting and plenty of it. Even if he thoroughly enjoyed conflict, there was still a threshold before it just became monotony.
