Nicki settled into her chair and with a grateful nod to her captain wrapped her fingers around her Mug. Her nostril’s still flared as she waited for the captain to speak. Gobo was in the air and she wanted answers, answers and distraction from her foolishness. She herself used Gobo often in healing balms. The traditional Asian medicines she’d learned from Yàn were quite woven into her own healing though she was aware that most western Doctors lacked not only the understanding but the interest in such ancient traditions. She had seen enough to be certain of their effectiveness, but to smell it on the captain and not of her own hand brought up a lot of questions for her. Who had he seen? How had he been hurt, chief among them. She studied his face, her eyes narrowed, looking for signs of pain, trying to see past the friendly smile that made her as nervous in its own way as Jax’s broad grin. She found no answers in the lines of his face, she simply didn’t know him well enough for that. 

Fortunately she was not long in the wondering though the captain took a meandering way to answer her with words slowly given and action. She couldn’t help the way her fingers tightened around the mug, the soreness that lingered from the night before, coupled with the burning of the hot liquid kept her from losing herself in her tension again as the captain lifted his shirt. 

[i]Idiot[/i], she told herself. It wasn’t like he’d gone for his breaches. It was his shirt, she saw men shirtless all the time, she was simply stirred up from the events of the last half day. She relaxed her grip forcefully and narrowed her eyes at the canvas of his skin before her. She looked not just as a doctor inspecting her patient but as an artist. She’d seen such work before, touched it, caressed it, kissed it even, but never so fresh as what she saw before her now. It was exquisitely executed and she could see the gleam of balm on his skin. Though it was irritated and damaged from the application of the ink it looked clear, ready to heal. She would have nodded approval, would have spoken her thoughts on the matter of care when he continued speaking. So she shut her mouth, held her honeyed tongue and listened. 

She wished immediately that she had spoken up, that she had interrupted him or even run her fingers lightly over the broad back of the captain, touching the ink and damaged flesh with fingers the bolder of her patients had claimed could heal upon touch. But she hadn’t and he spoke on. He spoke of one thing that was absent in her life. One of the things that had been ripped from her years ago while she was held down with a filthy shirt wad of cloth jammed into her mouth to stop her screams. Trust which had been further ripped away when she’d fought her way home, through fever and infection which had ripped through her and likely stolen from her the unique ability of her gender to be turned away as a disgrace. She’d been a humiliation to the people who should have loved her no matter what, to the people she had counted on to be there for her until the end. 

Trust, it was a lie as she’d been so painfully taught.

She stated at him, her eyes widening as the cold in them melted into panic that she could not hide. The maelstrom of emotions that were clearly bubbling inside her were far, far closer to the truth than the cold control she wore daily. That Pain was chief among them told just a sliver of her tale. She fought to hold onto her false control, undone by a simple unanswerable question. In the wake of which she shook and her grip tightened again on her mug, the sting of the burning coffee helpful this time as she used pain to pull her back into herself, to help focus her. 

She was not going to lose control. Hadn’t she done that enough of late? She fought off the memories and looked at the moment, reflecting on what had been said. The Captain trusted her, for all that it was a foolish risk on his part for which she was grateful even if she could not reciprocate. She knew she had no ill designs, she knew what her intentions were, but he did not and still he risked it. What could she say to that? What could she tell him on the matter? That she could not, would not trust? That she had trusted before and nearly been destroyed by it? 

Focus, she told herself. Be true but do not tell more than is needed. 

“Thank you Captain.” She said, her voice thick with confused emotion. “I appreciate the trust. I will endeavor to be worthy of it.”

She looked to the mug, seeing her reflection in the black near-mirrored surface. She saw no further than the scar that marred her visage, the ugly at the heart of her. 

“You need gain nothing from me, Captain.” She said after a moment, her knuckles white still. She licked her dry lips and then lifted the bitter liquid to her lips and took a searing mouthful, savoring the pain of it as it slid down her throat, far too hot to be comfortably swallowed. “I will do my duty and serve you to the best of my ability. I love the Skate.” The words rang with truth, not art simply the truth of her heart. She looked up then, her gaze just above his eyes, avoiding his gaze without appearing too, as controlled in her avoidance as she had been in her losses the night before. A careful pattern of truth interspersed among avoidance but never ever a lie. Nicolette did not lie.

“I love the Skate and the freedom and life that it gives me. You have my loyalty, my service and if need be you have my life.” 

[i]Let it be enough[/i], her eyes pleaded with him, [i]I cannot give you more.[/i]