It doesn't take more than a few days of continual gestures of kindness to get Nine won over, and he's fulfilled that. Especially with everyone else she's exposed to so unrelentingly cruel, Miles is like that first drink of water after three days without; it returns her to sanity, it takes her from feeble to strong.

"That would be nice," she sighs wistfully. But Nine isn't so easily distracted, no matter how important food is to her. She meets his eyes, holds them, piercing gold. "I don't know about emperors, but someone always tries something." People lie. They lie a lot. And Nine better than anyone knows how greedy stupid men can be. They'd designed her, after all.

She doesn't care if he's emperor or anything else, her eyes say. It's him, the definable physical presence, his own character, that she wants to hold onto.