“I got nothing.” She answered curtly.
But it was a lie. She got answers at least. Ellie found out just how strung out Mal was and how so few friends she actually had. She spent the day crying and not saying a word. It was worse than being stabbed in the back because she could see it coming and let it happen anyway.
“Why does it matter? Aren’t you busy?” Ellie snapped.
She knew if Hancock found out about Mal, he’d do what everyone else did and just tell her how to feel. He was the only person she wanted to not talk to about that.
“AIN’T busy enough for this.” He said, and he did mean it -- he hoped it would, at the very least, satiate some of her hostility. ( even if he was used to it at this point. ) Hancock took a step into the room, his guilt trailing behind him in the way his shoulders sank. He felt bad. Genuinely bad; even if he hadn’t even known it was her birthday.
Much less what he would have gotten her. Hancock supposed that the best present for Ellie would have been his lack of presence. Such was how she seemed to work -- such was how she might have wanted it.
“Listen -- there anythin’ I can get ya? Think of it as a, uh, belated birthday present. ‘Least I can do after bailin’ out on ya like that.”
He didn’t even want to ask where Mal was; that Ellie didn’t mention her at all raised his suspicions. But he settled those back into himself for later reprisal, for when she wasn’t nearly as angry.