She doesn’t look at you when she starts. That’s how you know it’s real. Dedra Meero sits down with a sharp exhale, tugging off her gloves with mechanical precision, but her jaw is tight — too tight. The kind of tight that means she’s been swallowing rage all day and it’s just reached her throat.

“I’m surrounded by idiots,” she says flatly, but her voice is coiled like wire. “They smile, they nod, they quote regulations at me like I didn’t write half of them for the bureau in the first place.”

She finally looks at you then — not with the cold, calculated stare she gives ISB subordinates, but with something rawer. Exhaustion. Frustration. Fury she can’t afford to show anyone else.

“You want to know what today was? A room full of cowards too spineless to connect a clear trail of insurgent movement between Ferrix and the Kessel sectors — because it would mean I’m right and they’d have to actually do something. Gods forbid they act on intelligence instead of waiting for a disaster to land in their laps first.”

She paces. Her boots thud against the floor with clipped, angry steps. You don’t interrupt. You never do. She trusts you because you don’t try to fix it. You just listen.

“I put everything in front of them — hours of cross-sector logs, comms intercepts, field analysis. And still, they called it ‘thin.’ Thin. Do you know how many nights I’ve spent combing through those damned reports while they sip caf and gossip like children?”

There’s a pause. Her back is to you now. Her voice softens, but not kindly — more like something cracking under pressure.

“I’m so tired of having to prove myself twice for every one of their mistakes.”

And then silence. The kind that makes you want to reach out, but you don’t. You let her breathe, let her keep that armor she always wears — except here, in this room, with you. And you know tomorrow she’ll be sharper than ever, composed and cold. But tonight, for a breath of a moment, she’s just a woman who’s tired of being the only one doing the work — and never being thanked for it.