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elara doesn’t say anything at first, which is how clarissa knows she has already understood everything. it’s in the stillness, in the way her gaze lingers half a second too long before returning to the data, in the absence of questions where there should be at least one. clarissa notices it immediately, the sudden pause in her hands over the console, the way the data continues to scroll but elara’s attention shifts, sharpens, recalibrates. she has always been good at reading patterns. it is, after all, what she was hired for. and this— this is a pattern. clarissa remains where she is, just inside the doorway, posture composed, as if she has walked into nothing more than another late-night debrief. the garage is quieter at this hour, stripped down to its essentials, and the overhead lights cast everything in something almost clinical. ❝ long enough, ❞ she answers, her voice even, almost detached, as though the words belong to someone else. ❝ longer than you think. . . it doesn’t change anything, ❞ she says, more firmly now, though her tone remains controlled, careful, as if she is holding the words in place rather than letting them fall naturally. ❝ the car is still yours. the performance is still mine. ❞ her gaze holds elara’s, steady, unyielding. ❝ and the results haven’t changed. ❞ @aerooracle

Elara pauses with calculation. The kind that happens so quickly it looks like stillness, the kind that reorganizes everything she thought she knew without allowing it to show on her face. The numbers continue to stream across the monitors in front of her, wind tunnel simulations looping in quiet precision, but she is no longer reading them. Not really. Her fingers rest against the console, unmoving now, as if any motion would betray the shift that has just taken place. When she finally turns to Clarissa, she does so slowly. ❝ Don’t, ❞ Elara says quietly, her voice even but edged with something sharper than anger. ❝ Don’t try to present this to me like it’s a variable that doesn’t affect the system. ❞ Her gaze fixes on Clarissa fully now, and for a moment, just a moment, there is something like disbelief there. As if she is looking at a set of data that refuses to align with itself. ❝ I heard a rumor. From your mother of all people. . .❞ Elara exhales slowly, once, as if stabilizing herself, and then she steps away from the console. Not toward Clarissa, never that impulsive, but just enough to create space between her and the work, as though she cannot occupy both at once. ❝ While the entire paddock thinks you’re still playing house with Jordan. ❞ There it is, that sudden recalibration, spoken aloud. Her head tilts slightly, studying Clarissa with that same quiet, unnerving focus she brings to every flaw in a design, every inefficiency in airflow. ❝ Do you understand what that does? Not morally, I’m not interested in that. Structurally. ❞ Her voice tightens, just barely. ❝ Sponsorship optics. Media narratives. Internal trust. You don’t get to separate performance from perception, not at this level. Not in this team. ❞