T'Vara found Zedd on the bridge in the early evening going over something on the console that he set aside when she came in, which she noted as a small courtesy that told her something about how he ran things.

"I wanted to talk to you about the suit," she said.

He looked at her. "You changed your mind."

"Partially," she said. She stood with her hands loose at her sides in the way she stood when she was saying something she had thought through carefully and did not want the delivery to undercut the content. "I will take the suit. The armor and the EVA configuration both. I have been thinking about it since the meeting and the argument I made then was honest but it was also incomplete."

"Incomplete how?" Zedd said.

"I said I was not ready to move closer to a line I had not finished deciding about," she said. "That is still true. But I have been thinking about what the line actually is and I think I was drawing it in the wrong place." She paused. "The suit is not the line. Going into situations that require it is not the line. I grew up on a colony that had no institutional protection and no one coming to help and I learned early that being present and capable in dangerous situations is not the same thing as being violent. The suit makes me more capable. That I can work with."

Zedd was quiet for a moment. "And the weapons."

"No," she said, without any particular heat in it. "That is the line. I will not carry a weapon. Not because I am naive about what this ship does or where we go but because I know what I am and what I am is a medic and the moment I pick up a weapon I am something else and I do not want to be something else." She held his gaze. "I want to be on the boarding parties. I want to be present when the crew needs medical support in the field and not waiting on the ship hoping nobody comes back too damaged to fix. That is where I am useful and that is where I want to be."

Zedd looked at her for a moment with the expression he used when he was taking something in properly rather than just hearing it. "You are asking to go into combat situations without a weapon."

"I am asking to go into combat situations as a medic," she said. "There is a difference. I am not asking you to pretend the danger is not there. I know what it is. I am asking you to let me decide what I am willing to do about it and what I am not."

"And if someone comes directly at you," he said. "What then."

"The Tal-Ren forms are not decorative," she said. "I can redirect and neutralize without a weapon well enough to buy time and create space. I am not asking anyone to protect me specifically. I am asking to be there and to do the job I am actually good at in the places where it is most needed." She paused. "If that is not something you can work with I understand. But I wanted to make the case properly rather than just say no at the meeting and leave it there."

Zedd was quiet for a long moment and she let him be quiet and did not fill it.

"The suit with full armor configuration," he said finally. "And I want you close to whoever is running the medical support line during any boarding. You do not go into spaces that are not cleared and you do not get left without at least one other crew member in range."

"Agreed," she said.

"And T'Vara." He looked at her directly. "The fact that you came to me with this rather than just showing up in armor and no phaser says something. I appreciate it."

She nodded once. "I figured the conversation was worth having properly."

"It was," he said, and went back to his console and she headed for the door and the matter was settled in the way things got settled on the Dutchman, without ceremony and without anyone needing to make more of it than it was.