“No!” the word was out of her mouth before she could stop it, the sound startling her enough that she clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide with horror at her boldness as she looked at the Captain. He’d opened himself to her, he was offering her something, she wasn’t certain what, but he was giving her a gift and all she could do was shit on it. Or so it seemed. She felt like the ground was falling out from under her. In a panic she stood, the chair clattering to the floor behind her, the noise barely audible through the roaring of blood in her ears. 
How could she tell him any of it? How could she tell him that it wasn’t him, it was her. She was the broken one, she was the one with no trust to give. It wasn’t that he wasn’t worthy of trust, he was. If she could trust anyone, it would be him. He was her captain, he had given her this chance, this berth. But she had no trust to give. Not a drop. It had cost her before, the image of her lover’s dark slanted eyes twinkling with dark humor, or the ink that seemed to dance across his skin, flitted across her memory, chased as always by the wave of sadness that filled her when thinking of how things ended for them. 

“Please.” She said, the word muffled by her fingers which she only reluctantly lifted from her mouth. The flesh around her mouth was mottled, blood slowly returning to the flesh she’d pressed so hard that the marks of her fingers were visible. 

“Close the door.” 

She had to turn away, she could not look at him while he bore that disappointment so clearly in his eyes. She’d seen that look before, when her Papa had tossed that purse of coin to her feet and sent her on her way. She shivered, her body shaking as if it would rip itself asunder from the storm that resided inside her. She wrapped her arms around herself, holding it all in.

“I am sorry to be a disappointment to you, Sir.” She began, and she was honestly, truly sorry to be lacking for him. He was her captain, he had been good to her but part of her was angry too. He asked the impossible of her and made her feel bad for her lack. 

“It isn’t you, Captain, it is me. I am broken you see. The parts of me that could trust were ripped from me years ago. I once had that trust you spoke of with your Captain.” Her honeyed voice cracked, sweet shards of sugar that could cut just as well as glass. 

“I had someone who made me feel that anything I dreamed was possible. He made me think the world was mine for the taking. I believed him and I went to do just that. Except he had misled me, the world was not mine. And when I came crawling back to him, ruined and disillusioned he cast me aside. That trust you spoke of, it was ripped from me when I needed it most. Imagine that? Imagine if your Mentor had betrayed you when you were down and broken. Then imagine trusting anyone after that?”

She risked a look at him, her heavy lidded eyes flicking at him over her shoulder, slumped now in defeat and no longer rigid with control. She looked broken just then, like a statue smashed by vandals. 

“I am sorry, but you ask more than I can give. At least now, maybe someday I won’t be so broken.” She shrugged, doubt in her every line. 

“But I will go, I will not hold a position you might fill with someone who could give you what you need.”