When Aqua came back with Jack's lunch tray, she was startled to find a gaggle of nurses outside of his room. They were all whispering among themselves and giggling. They were crowded in a way that she couldn't get through, even if she tried. So she loudly cleared her throat, making the ones furthest away from her look at her in alarm. They relaxed once they realized that she wasn't Doctor Yen Sid but looked rather guilty all the same. They had forgotten their professionalism in their distraction.

"Out of here you dumb doras!" she ordered lightly. "Don't let the doctor catch you shirking off!"

A few looked put out, but others smiled. Aqua would be the last person to report them to Yen Sid. She knew that their work was difficult enough. Times were hard. Everyone needed work. Aside from the hospital, very few people could afford to hire a live in nurse. They had to look out for one another in these tough times. Upon walking into the room, she realized why they had been so distracted. Jack had somehow managed to take his shirt off. He was stretching, like he was preparing to get into a boxing ring.

"Get back in bed."

"But I'm bored!" he whined.

"Do you want to heal properly?" she asked.

"Of course but-"

"Then do as I say."

Aqua raised a brow. His boss tasked her with taking care of him. She wasn't about to let him rip open his own stitches. Not when he had bellyached so much just getting them put in. He pouted like the petulant child he was but did as he was told. She set his tray on the cart next to his bed and picked up his shirt. Jack grinned at her like he expected her to be embarrassed like she had been when she was bathing him but she just thrust the shirt under his nose expectantly. He sat there for a moment, waiting for her to play his game, but when she didn't, he pouted. Carefully he put the shirt back on.

"You're no fun."

"I'm a nurse. I'm not supposed to be fun."

She then turned back to the cart and began setting up the food tray for him. Preparing and making sure she had everything. It helped her not focus on the annoying patient. Her bedside manner had been among the best before Jack was in her care. Now she wanted to strangle him with a stethoscope. Jack was bringing out the worst of her. She had never been so forward and so sarcastic before. It was unbecoming of a nurse.

"Aw, come on doll, haven't you heard that laughter is the best medicine?" he teased.

"Not when I dug slugs out of your chest."

"You really are a wallflower."

Aqua pointedly ignored him. Thankfully, he hadn't pulled his stitches. Otherwise those gossiping layabouts would have gotten a real lecture from her. She didn't want anymore stress from this one patient. It hadn't even been one day and she was contemplating skipping town. She never would because of Ven and Elsa, but Jack and Manny didn't need to know that. The more distance between her and those rotten 'Guardians' the better. It would test her sanity regardless.

"I'm doing my job."

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," he intoned.

Clearly he had this conversation before with someone else if the shit eating grin was anything to go by. In response, she raised a brow. Her lack of a response seemed to irk him. Good. She wasn't there for his entertainment. She was there because it was her job and his boss strong-armed her into it. She had to remind herself that criminal or not, a life was still a life. She had made an oath to preserve life. Jack had to live. He had powerful friends who would end her life if his was cut short.

"Then it's a good thing I'm not you," she said dryly.

Jack's eyes went comically wide as he stared at her, with his mouth agape. Then he laughed. Someone like him shouldn't have a nice laugh. He should sound like one of the villians in the picture show or the like. The cruel type of laughter where you knew that he was a bad person just because of how he laughed. No, Jack's laugh was deceiving. He sounded like a young man, delighted by her sharp wit. She clenched her hands at her side. This whole situation was frustrating.

"I knew you had a sense of humor!" he teased.

She glowered at him. Taking a deep breath to calm down, she reminded herself why she was there. Without much further ado, she plopped his tray right in front of him. He wrinkled his nose as he looked at it. If he complained she was going to have to leave the room. No, the food wasn't 5 star gourmet, but it was healthy. The chefs did their best with what they had. She stared at him impassively until he picked up the fork to eat.

"Thank you." he said.

She blinked in surprise, clearly not expecting him to thank her for the meager meal. It wasn't whatever fancy food he was probably used to. He even looked at it with remote distaste. Yet he was eating it like it was any other meal. She expected some tantrum or threats for better conditions. He was taking this all with grace (and extensive levels of sarcasm).

"You're welcome," came her slow response.

The end of her shift could not come soon enough. Jack had been driving her up a wall. He wouldn't shut up. He kept asking questions, trying to get to know her, trying to tell her about himself. She wasn't interested. She only wanted distance from him. It was sheer willpower that kept her from burying her head in her hands and pulling out her hair. That and years of practice. She had to have some sort of patience in her field of work.

"Why don't you ask your little spies that?" she spat. "You and yours seem to know enough about me."

"Because spies make me sound bad."

"And kidnapping someone in the middle of the night isn't bad?"

"You were the only nurse in our area that actually cares about her patients regardless of which side of the law they're on," he reasoned.

She took a deep, pained breath. She didn't know why she was arguing this with him. He would never see things her way. In a way, he was right. There were nurse like Drizella and Anastasia who cringed away from helping anyone homeless or bloody. They liked the 'easy' patients. The ones that barely needed attention. There were other nurses who took on more than they could manage but by overburdening themselves they lessened the quality of their work. Aqua had always tried to do what she could to keep balance. Jack was testing her normal calm. Never before had her life been so turned upside down so effectively.

"That doesn't make it any better. Do you have any idea what I thought was happening?" she demanded.

Her mask was cracking, showing the fear that she had felt that night though she desperately tried to stifle it. She struggled to reign in the raw emotion. She hated Jack for making things so hard for her to be calm and rational. It was normally something she prided herself on. However, being pestered to death, every time she had been sent to check on him was infuriating. There was only so much that she could put off the care of the man. She couldn't ignore him either and that was equal parts frustrating.

"What I thought you were going to do to me after I did what you asked?"

"We're not a whorehouse."

"Not everything is about sex!" she gasped as a horrified blush crossed her features. "I thought you were going to kill me!"

"We don't kill innocents." Jack deadpanned.

He seemed offended that she would even suggest such a thing, but she couldn't trust a criminal, no matter what he said. She shook her head. There were awful horrible things in the papers. Even worse things in the emergency room a few levels below Jack's room. People who were caught in the middle of the fighting of the gangs. Or caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, seeing something they 'ought not' or making the wrong person angry for something as meager as sneezing in the same room as them.

"What proof do I have of that?"

"I'll let you in on a secret, now that Manny isn't here. We kill people who deserve it."

Aqua knew that her expression twisted because Jack looked off put by her clear disdain. No one could have deserved to be killed no matter how cruel they were. Killing one person didn't rid the world of murderers. It just made a new one. Violence was never the solution. Though, she didn't want to know how that they had justified what was a good person to kill or what was a bad person to kill. She didn't think ordinary citizens should have the right to take justice into their own hands.

"That's not what the papers say," she pointed out.

"The tabloids like turning truths into stories that what will sell."

She knew that the news papers loved to write a tragedy. People loved reading about how horrible people had it and going 'at least I'm better off than them' before going off on their day. They would read the horrors of violence and crime before going on as if nothing were different. It was only when things impacted them directly did they care. It was why anyone with any form of influence or power were normally bribe by the gangs. Anyone who could had made a difference was 'taken care of' so that they wouldn't be a problem.

"And why should I believe you?"

"Because you deserve the truth. A good woman shouldn't spend her life in fear."

She couldn't stop her dark and sarcastic laugh. Of course someone at the top of the 'food chain' would say something like that. He has probably never been afraid of anything a day of his life in that gang. He wasn't the one paying protection money. He wasn't the one scared to walk the streets at night. He wasn't the one who had been injured but couldn't afford medical assistance. They just snatched her from the streets and was done with it.

"Fear is always going to be a part of my life so long as I live in this wretched town."

"Have you thought of leaving?" he asked.

"How? I can barely afford to put food on the table let alone rent and med-" Immediately she stopped herself. She had almost let too much slip. "I can't."

She looked away from his curious arched brow expression. She almost said something about Ven's medicine and her roommate. There was no power on earth that would let her get them involved in this nightmarish mess. Jack didn't need to know there were people out there that he could hold against her for leverage. She would do everything she could do to protect them from this wicked man.

"I can't." she said firmer. "Not yet."

"When will you know?"

She was unable to meet his gaze. She took a deep breath. There was only so much she could say but she was being surprisingly open with him. It was a bad idea to tell him anything personal. But she was tired and worn out. If she answered just a few of his questions then perhaps he would leave her be for just a little while. She longed for peace without his questionings. She sighed deeply and her gaze flicked down.

"When I'm ready."

"You have the dream and the drive, which is good at least," he said.

She glowered at him with as much hatred as she could muster. She shouldn't have said a single word. Letting him get a rise out of her was the biggest mistake she could have made. She felt herself angrily at herself for letting him bait her into a response. It wasn't exactly a game she wanted to play. She should have realized that she was only digging a bigger hole for herself by giving him precisely what he wanted.

"Don't placate me," she hissed.

"Aqua..."

She sighed in exasperation. Not for the first time today, she wondered what she had done to allow herself to get pulled into this mess. It took all that she had not to reach up and clutch her head in her hands. She was flooded with weariness that she hadn't been able to shake off entirely. The rest she had gotten the night before hadn't been enough for her to feel like things were back to normal.

"What am I doing? This is so unprofessional." she uttered to herself and not to Jack. "I have other patients…"

"I'm sorry… I'm being annoying." Jack said. "I'm mad about my situation. The wound part at least. What matters is a kid is okay."

"You... got shot for a kid?"

"She was too close to our... extraction. And well..."

Jack gestured to the wounds on his chest. Aqua twitched with her discomfort. Jack is supposed to be a bad guy in her mind. Not the savior of little kids. She shifted a little uncomfortably under his gaze. There were rumors that the Guardians had special soft spots for children. They protected children before. At least that's what kids who had come through the hospital said. They would say the Guardians came in and saved them. When their home situations or the situations they had been brought in had been investigated it was proven that even the bad guys could look like they were good if they were less scary than certain situations like drunk fathers or gunfire.

"I... don't know what to say."

"Let it mull over. don't say anything if you have nothing to say."

Aqua gave an uncertain nod and wrapped her arms around herself. She didn't know what to think. She had no way of proving Jack was telling the truth, but no way to deny it either. Why would he tell her he got shot because a kid got in the way if it wasn't true? 'To make you feel pity for him,' a vindictive voice in the back of her mind whisper, 'To earn your sympathy and trust before yanking the ground beneath your feet because he can.' She took a deep breath.

"Don't you have your break soon?" Jack asked gruffly.

"Of course..."

She numbly got to her feet. It wasn't until she was standing that she realized she had obeyed him without question. But she wasn't about to let this opportunity to flee go. She stepped to go to the door but stopped. He had only been badgering her for questions because he had been bored. He was alone whenever she was away with other patients. She knew others who struggled with that sort of thing. They normally partnered the social patients together with other social patients, but Manny had made sure Jack had a room all of his own. Probably so no one would try to cause Jack further harm.

"I... could bring you a newspaper. Or check the lounge for a book. You said you were bored..."

She hesitated and looked over her shoulder. There had been other patients who all but begged for her to stay just a few minutes more just to talk. Jack was probably the same. He wanted to talk to the only one who had come into his room and not oogled him like he was a sideshow attraction for their amusement. She recalled the giggling gaggle of nurses who had been watching him like he was circus act. That seemed to strike her as such a lonely experience. They wouldn't come near him, but they would mock him.

"I'd prefer a book. Newspapers these days are filled with doom and gloom."

"I'll see what I can't find..."

She left the room but once she was outside and the door was closed, she leaned against the wall with her hands over her face. She was much more exhausted and far more emotionally drained than she had been before. Jack was a temporary distraction. He would be gone sooner or later. As soon as he was healed, he would be back out on the street and out of her life. Thus taking any of her confused feelings with him.