He waits for the resolution of her bitter diatribe, fingers drumming against the surface of a folded arm.

"Nothing," he hisses with an abrupt flare of icy self-possession, one hand unfurling into the savage jabbing of a finger in her direction, "is not fixable. I create workarounds all the fucking time. You haven't evaluated what we have on hand. You haven't even attempted to."

His eyes harden with a cold, faintly mocking edge, digging the bladed edge of his tone behind every ground syllable. "In fact, you've made an alarming number assumptions in the last thirty seconds alone. You seem quite eager to dismiss any and all possibilities, Ms. Asadi; I never categorized you as defeatist."