Following the steps was easy for Gamora, even if the forms were, for lack of a better word, alien to her. What about her life hadn't been? Plucked from the world she knew and adopted into a world where learning fast had been mandatory for survival, Gamora was nothing if not a quick study. It was how she had come to possess the skills in combat she did, though the rigorous and endless training had certainly played a hand as well. It didn't hurt that the blade, at least by Gamora's standards, was surprisingly easy to wield either.
What did seem to throw her off however, was Meetra's next words.
"The blade requires more finesse than I would have expected." Because, certainly she was just going to try and gloss right over it. That hint of an apology had only made it worse, driving a deep spike into her that Gamora just...didn't know what to do with. She understood sympathy and, to a lesser extent, compassion. She knew how to express them to other people. To have it turned on her, to have her own feelings acknowledged and brought to the surface? Suffice to say there were reasons Gamora still never let Mantis touch her.
Yet, here she was, admittedly caught in a position where Meetra was absolutely correct and, for once, she was dealing with someone who largely knew nothing about her. Would it be safe to say something here? Nebula certainly seemed to be having some success with it, at least if her observations about the way her Sister and The Doctor interacted were rooted in any kind of fact. Maybe that was what she'd been missing or doing wrong? Whatever the case, Gamora continued the struggle to try and avoid it.
"I am not guided by my emotions." The words were firm, clipped, and one hundred percent dishonest. Gamora just thought...maybe she could convince herself it was true. She thought that, maybe if she said it enough, it would become reality. The truth though, that she was all but lost in where her life had currently landed and that she didn't know what to do? It was hitting her at least as hard as any of the punches Nebula had ever landed on her.
"Do you make a habit of listening to people?" She asked. It was a genuine nibble of the carrot Meetra had offered her, not too unlike a child trying a new vegetable for the first time. She approached the whole thing with caution, because it was all she knew to do. Guarded was her default state...but that didn't change the fact she was clueless as to how to reach her goal...