"Then I wait," I said.
"And work," Vaxon added. "Distraction helps."
"Speaking of which—" Zor'go gestured toward the sparring mats. "Shall we?"
We were divided into pairs. Er'dox partnered with Zor'go this time, leaving me facing Vaxon across the practice mat. The Security Chief stood nearly eight inches taller than me, outweighed me by a considerable margin, and had combat training that made him dangerous even with practice weapons.
This was going to hurt.
"Try to focus," Vaxon said, raising his staff. "Your physician needs you to be functional."
He came at me like a tactical assault. I blocked the first three strikes through reflex, counterattacked on instinct, found myself immediately on the defensive as he pressed forward with relentless precision. Where Er'dox fought with engineering efficiency, Vaxon fought like warfare itself, calculated, overwhelming, impossible to predict.
The crack of practice staffs echoed through the gymnasium. Impact jarred up my arms. I dodged, blocked, attacked, defended, and still Vaxon kept coming. My ribs protested from the earlier beating Er'dox had delivered. My shoulders burned. My breathing came harder.
Good. Pain was clarifying. Pain kept my mind from cycling endlessly through Bea's gray-blue eyes, her controlled voice when she'd told me she didn't want counseling, the tremor in her hands she thought I didn't notice.
Vaxon's staff cracked against mine hard enough to send vibrations through every bone in my body.
"She's scared," Vaxon said, conversational despite the violence between us. "Not of you. Of caring for you."
"You're making assumptions." I spun, swept low, and forced him to jump back.
"I'm making observations. Elena does the same thing, pushes away connection because accepting it means acknowledging vulnerability." He pressed forward again, his next strikes coming faster. "Humans fear vulnerability more than they fear death."
"That's not—" I blocked high, barely avoided a sweep at my legs. "That's not universally true."
"Isn't it? Your physician works herself to exhaustion rather than address her trauma. She maintains emotional control like armor. She pushes away anyone who tries to get close." Vaxon's staff connected with my shoulder. Not hard enough to cause real damage, but hard enough to drive the point home. Literally. "She's terrified of being known."
The assessment was too accurate to dismiss. I'd watched Bea interact with other medical staff, professional, competent, utterly distant. She treated patients with clinical precision but zero personal warmth. The only time I'd seen her defenses crack completely was in my quarters, when exhaustion and desperation had overwhelmed her carefully maintained control.
She'd trusted me with that moment. Then punished herself for the vulnerability by avoiding me entirely.
"So I wait," I repeated.
"You wait. You give her space. You let her come to you when she's ready." Vaxon lowered his staff, ending the sparring session. "And if she never comes, you accept that too."
The thought made my chest constrict in ways that had nothing to do with physical injury.
What if Bea never came? What if her walls stayed up permanently? What if the connection I'd felt between us, the understanding, the recognition of kindred isolation, was one-sided? A projection of my own loneliness onto a woman who simply saw me as her supervisor and nothing more?
I didn't want to consider that possibility.
Across the gymnasium, Er'dox and Zor'go finished their own match. Zor'go moved to the water containers, his markings settling into satisfied patterns.
"Status on the expansion project?" I asked, grateful for a topic change.
"Ahead of schedule." Zor'go's expression brightened—he always did when discussing his work. "Jalina's courtyard designs are revolutionary. She's managing to incorporate psychological comfort into structural efficiency in ways I've never seen. We'll complete the new residential sections within three months instead of five."
"And the communication buoy project?" Er'dox asked.
"Dana thinks she'll have a functional prototype within six months. If it works—if we can establish contact with Earth—" Zor'go trailed off, his markings flickering with something complicated. "The humans will have to choose."
The unspoken reality settled over us like gravity. If Dana's communication buoy worked, if they could contact Earth, every human on Mothership would face an impossible decision. Return to their birth planet and leave behind the lives they'd built here. Or stay on Mothership, knowing they'd never see Earth again.
"Jalina's chosen," Zor'go said quietly. "She told me last night. If rescue comes, she's staying. She's chosen Mothership. Chosen me."
The relief in his voice was palpable.
