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He knew about the molar in theory. He knew she was at Dajuu - only a few months before he was, as luck would have it - and he'd seen the small, black square of the chip in her wrist, the small, dispassionate demarcation tattoo beside it. Six camps, six injections of ink, like a tiny constellation of stars along her pulsepoint. They sent a digital blueprint of the tooth with her case file; Skrain imagines it's likely they have a physical cast of it, too.
But knowing about Naprem in theory, he knows now, was not knowing her at all. It was understanding her as a concept, as a number, as an object. Now, when he thinks back to those early days, he can hardly believe how much he missed - signs and symptoms and opportunities - how much his blissful confidence cost him. He knew her, but only so much as she showed him. He was content with that, then. He knew about the nightmares, but they didn't wake him. He knew about her suffering, but rarely investigated it. That was her business, he'd thought then. Now, he has a thousand questions he can never ask, a thousand answers he needs and cannot have.
He remembers waking up in the middle of the night to find her laying on top of him, tracing the tips of her fingers over his orbital ridges. He remembers the day that came before that - cold, colder than normal, with Naprem wincing with pain any time she bit down, holding her cheek when she thought he couldn't see. She'd hissed a little when he'd kissed her too hard, fallen asleep quickly, tossed fitfully through the night. He'd opened his eyes to find her meditating on the shape of his face, painting his skin with her fingers.
"Hello," he'd murmured.
"Hello," she'd said.
For a while they'd lain like that, him resting his hands in the small of her back, her exploring the ridges of his face, eyes hazy with something he recognizes now because Ziyal has the same look when she wakes up, sometimes; the strange, sated daze that comes after a nightmare, where nothing seems real, and the adrenaline's made you tipsy.
Naprem had drawn her fingers over his lips and said, "They took one of your teeth, right?"
"Yes," he'd replied, wondering what this was all about.
She'd traced her fingers over his mouth. "Will you show me?" she'd asked, and he'd opened his mouth to see what she'd do.
She'd reached in, slow and careful, running her finger along his bottom row of teeth. He'd felt it along the edge of his tongue, almost painfully warm and ticklish, so gentle when she'd found the gap in his molars.
"Does it hurt?" she'd asked, drawing her fingers to the outside so he could answer.
"No."
She drew her fingers back and he'd caught her hand and kissed them.
"Good," she'd whispered.
"Good?" he'd asked.
"I don't want you to have to feel pain like that," she'd said, and it had broken his heart the way she'd said it, because he knew she was telling the truth.
It had never occurred to him to try to understand her theoretical trauma in the context of her real self. He'd known, theoretically, for instance, that the molar removal at Dajuu had been administered without pain killers, against the will of most of the workers. He'd known, theoretically, that Naprem had been one of these workers, that, by her very nature, she would have had objections. He had never thought about how this may have effected her - to have been strapped down, mouth forced open, tooth taken from her mouth when she could still feel it, with no effort to calm or sedate her, no effort to dull the pain.
He didn't know how to tell her, in that moment, about the pain that came with being Cardassian. He's glad, now, that he didn't - it wouldn't have been appropriate to try and make her understand that of course he had known pain like that. That was Cardassia. That was life.
Instead, he'd gathered her close to him, pressing their foreheads together, chest full to bursting.
"You mean that," he'd said.
"Of course I do," she'd said, frowning a little, misunderstanding. He'd kissed her to smooth her brow, to dispel her unease.
"You are the most precious thing in my life," he'd whispered, and she'd wrapped her arms around his neck and held tight, and he can still remember the quiet ecstasy of her heartbeat thrumming against his chest. In the dark, that feeling is one that he misses more than almost anything else.