Maine's visible surprise cuts through his expression, carefully-stoic as it often is. And she can guess why, well enough. Brigitte has the self-awareness to examine herself from the outside, too, and acknowledge that her reactions are out of the norm: she's been too accustomed to this, too comfortable with his sheer looming physical presence, too content getting right up in his space during the workout despite the fact that he could crush her with a hand.

Despite her usual forthrightness, so far she's avoided telling most people the particular details of her old teammates -- because this part stings, itemising what she's lost -- but chewing it over, she finally decides she owes him something of an explanation.

"My old workout partner," Brigitte says, and there's a delicacy in how she's phrasing this, not her standard bubbliness, "was your size." Her head tipping back again, doing some mental estimates. "Maybe even a couple inches taller, actually. He taught me everything I know about fighting, and we used to work out every morning. He's the one whose armour I maintained."

Another reason she's so accustomed to the prospect of Maine's armouring job, the idea of cutting and welding metal plates to these proportions. A self-conscious shrug of a shoulder. "I know you're not him, but it means I'm used to..." She pats one of the arms she'd just been doing her best to shove around; just the smallest tap, a wordless gesture to indicate: this, you.