She frowns at her reflection in scrutiny as Clarke acknowledges her mistakes, has a lingering impression of the young woman that she must always criticize. Always poke her fingers right into raw wounds. But she's too exhausted to fully commit to that conclusion, wants to think better of Clarke's intentions. That she's genuinely trying to intervene for the sake of help, rather than make Ava feel worse than she already does.

Ava never spends much time fussing about her appearance, has never placed all that much value upon it. She's used to hiding away, behind a mask or invisible entirely. She's used to her glitches and blurs being what people focus on when they look at her anyway. Yet here, people have called her pretty. Beautiful. Hot. And no matter how much she stares she never quite sees more than a sad somebody that really needs more sleep.

A blurred impression of her face turns to glance back over her shoulder at Clarke to finally acknowledge her in return, while the other frowns even harder at the mess she's made of her hair.

There's a stubborn streak that runs quite deep, that makes it difficult to voice when she needs help no matter how badly she needs it. Those feelings of self reliance have only hardened over the last few weeks. And she holds up her hand, scissors clasped tightly as if she might drop them, and part of the problem becomes clear. Her hand seems unable to stop twitching, some sorry combination of exhaustion sabotaging her ability to control her phasing. And the general anxiety she's been experiencing in Malcolm's absence.

"It's fine," she lies so badly that she immediately winces after. "God, maybe if I just..." she pulls out one of her pigtails and aims even higher.