The BLTS Archive - Graven Image Second in the Image series by Blue Champagne (rowan-shults@sbcglobal.net) --- Hi. B.C. here. :) This story is a sequel to the brief "Afterimage", which is set shortly after the episode "Hard Time". This piece is set considerably later in the series, just after the ep "Looking for Par'mach In All the Wrong Places". Paramount and Viacom and everybody own Trek and all things Trek. No one's making money off this; and I only own the specifics of the story. I wrote "Afterimage" because I felt that what the Argrathi inflicted on Miles would have made him a different person for the rest of his life; even if he did manage, largely, to recover, there would always be repercussions to deal with, and I didn't think the series attended properly to something that seems so obvious. This story and "Afterimage" are the only stories which are not set in the "Identity Crisis" series universe. Archiving is fine and feedback is welcome. Please include this header whenever printing, posting or archiving. --- Julian had just got off shift and was changing out of his uniform when his door signal sounded. "Just a moment." He pulled a soft dark chestnut-colored shirt over his loose black pants and padded out to the front room in his stocking feet. "Come in." The door slid open, and Keiko entered, in a red silk kimono-style robe with underwrap and loose ankle-length pants over simply brocaded indoor shoes. She looked tense, arms folded around her sides. "Hi, Julian." The doctor glanced behind her for the chief, but he wasn't in evidence. "Good evening, Keiko." He came up and put his arm around her, guiding her to the sofa. "Something's wrong? Is someone ill? I examined Major Kira just this morning, and she was perfectly--" "No, it's not Nerys. And no one's exactly ill, just...it's Miles. He seemed to have made so much progress since...what happened to him, and now I...he--" "Here, just sit down. I'll get you some tea and you can tell me about it, all right?" She smiled a brave but uncertain smile. "All right. Thanks." He returned from the replicator with two cups of jasmine tea in pseudo-bone cups. "Here you are." She accepted the cup as he sat down. "Now, then," he smiled. "What seems to be the trouble, Miss Ishikawa?" She smiled back a moment, but the expression faded as she began to speak. "Miles is...I guess the word is regressing, it seems like. He's short-tempered and he...he snaps at Molly and me for no good reason--he hasn't had the nerve to snap at Nerys, at least not that I've seen; she takes his head right off when they fight. And when I ask him what's wrong, he says it's nothing to worry about, that it'll go away on its own. And he won't talk about you. If I mention your name, he just shuts down. Have you two had a fight?" "No," Julian sighed. "We did have...a sort of confrontation, but it was some time ago. Listen, Keiko; very often someone treated the way he was--even for a far shorter time than twenty years--for every answer the therapists and patient find, for every step of progress they make--they uncover another ring of the onion beneath. I wish it could be like the treating of a physical wound, but the mind doesn't work like that. There are wheels within wheels within *more* wheels. It's not only a matter of finding a 'root cause'; at least, not by that name. It's a matter of dismantling a highly complex framework. Do you know what secondary injury is?" "It's...when you've hurt yourself, and in trying to...to keep working despite the injury, the body damages itself further, in other ways. You're saying...that's what's happening to Miles?" "I'm saying it's what HAS happened to Miles. Now we're working through all the cross-related secondary injury, as well as the 'primary cause', unquote. By this time, we could remove all traces of the original violation to him, and still have our work cut out for us relieving the secondary injury to his identity." "Then...I shouldn't make an issue out of this. It's to be expected." "Well, not exactly. To be expected perhaps, but I'm glad you told me; what we'll need to do now is find out the name, or more likely names, of the curl of onion just below the one we've most recently managed to get through. Can you tell me any more about his behavior with you and Molly? How long it's been going on, for instance?" "Since you transferred the baby into Nerys. Miles is fine usually, during the day...I suppose it might be something only I could see, the difference from the way he was before. Molly can feel it, though, and I hate to think what it might be doing to her. She's fussy, difficult, argumentative--more than is normal for her, I mean." She paused, sipping tea. She considered, then said tentatively "Do you think...could he be angry at ME? Could that be it? He was so adamant about not wanting me to go on that trip; he never let me stir for more than my work and a daily constitutional in the arboretum when I carried Molly on the Enterprise. He was less protective this time, but not because he wanted to be. I've got to tell you that he's got some OLD fashioned ideas when it comes to what pregnant women should do. When he gets in fights with Nerys about it--I'm as concerned about the baby as he is, but I find myself rooting for her, anyway." Julian laid his arm over Keiko's shoulders. "It isn't you, Kei. Oh, the baby might be the catalyst that brought this out, but with what I know about how recalcitrant the chief's been recently with Telnori, and the way he avoids me...it's the twenty years, not you, not at all." "HAS he been avoiding you again?" "Not so I'd...actually, he has been unaccountably busy lately, even with the Major and the baby to consider." "He came into her room once--you remember--and you were showing me the proper technique to massage Nerys's strain spots, and..." "He sort of blundered out again, all red in the face, yes, I remember. In that case, I think the vulnerable condition he's been left in by that barbaric treatment--he knew he had no reason to feel jealous, or that his rights were infringed upon; he knew those things weren't so, but the Argratha left him unable to cope with his own feelings--feelings that might not even have occurred were it not for that prison time. Do you see what I mean?" "Yes...I think so. Will it...will he always be that way?" Keiko's eyes shimmered in the light with the two big tears standing in them. "Not just that way, no," Julian said, pulling her in to lean against his shoulder as he set his teacup down on the table. "Things will change. I can't promise they'll get much better for a while, but eventually, they will. "The hardest part of this sort of thing, Kei, when someone you love is going through something like this, is understanding that that person is in a place where you can't follow, dealing with things that you aren't involved in and that you cannot help with, beyond understanding and support when it's needed or asked for. In a way, it's as if Miles has an entire life that he didn't have before, and it's separate from you." Keiko nodded; she didn't choke, but the tears fell and rolled down her cheeks when she blinked. "You're right. That's the worst. There'll always be this...shadow figure, this...stone face I can't see past. Miles never used to be able to hide anything from me, and he didn't want to. Now I never know when that...shadow man will appear." "For what it's worth, that shadow figure isn't a bad thing in itself--it's a coping mechanism that allows him to continue to function day to day. Those closest to him are the only people it affects--around everyone else, he's the same as he always was, because they never got below a certain level with him anyway. It's only you, and Molly, and...me...not the Major, she hasn't been close enough to him until the baby, so though she knows him far more intimately now, the difference won't strike her." Keiko was quiet a moment, then said "I wondered why I wasn't asked to be there, during his counseling sessions or his work with the Ee'char hologram. But now that I think about it...this is all about him. If there's no way I can be where he is when he's in that place..." "If you've been feeling that he doesn't trust you, or that his therapist--or his prescribing physician," he added, giving her a small squeeze, "don't trust you, get that idea out of your head at once. There'll be family sessions, quite a lot of them, to deal with what I referred to as secondary injuries; but he's not at a place yet where family therapy would be at all productive. It might even be detrimental at this stage." "Yes, he's sometimes...paranoid is the only word for it, really. If I started complaining about how he's shutting me out and upsetting Molly, he'd only get more defensive..." "...because at this stage, there isn't anything he can do about that, quite right." They sat quietly for a few minutes, Keiko tucked up against Julian while he stroked her shining hair. Her head rested on his shoulder a few moments, then she gently disengaged herself, saying "I'm acting like a child. I'm sorry to burst in on you with all this, Julian." "Don't be silly. Even if I weren't your friend and his, I'm his physician. This sort of talk is part of my responsibilities." "Do you always rock your patient's spouses until they stop crying?" She smiled, flicking the tears from her cheeks with her thumbs. "I've been known to. I'm one of those smiling, head-patting, touchy-feely sorts of doctors, you know." She did manage to laugh, and he smiled. "Kei...Miles--as long as I've known him, at least--has never reacted well to roundabout discussions of him; though I will mention what you've said to Telnori--unless you would rather do it--but perhaps, if I can arrange to not let Miles see me before I see him...should I have a chat with him?" "Would you, Julian?" Keiko sighed, as though very tired. "I'd appreciate it." "And I'll keep your name out of it." She made a rueful face. "I appreciate that, too." "If all else fails, I'll break something in the infirmary--or around here, even better--and request him specifically. I'll have Rom wreck my sonic shower or some such. Come to think of it, I could probably do it myself." --- "How the *bloody* hell did you manage *this*?" Miles wanted to know, invisible to the waist as he threw another shower part behind him into the general collection on the bathroom floor. "You've got to go to some trouble to mess up a sonic shower--or anything else--this badly." "I can't imagine," Julian muttered, looking elsewhere. "But thanks for coming so quickly." "'S'been a quiet day over most of the station. Hand me an Elekoi number six tuner from the kit there, would you?" "Um...what does it look like?" Miles muttered something and hauled himself out of the shower wall. "Never mind. The emitter's somehow been set to a frequency entirely outside its usual range and jammed there. I don't know if I can even retune it; I may have to replace the switch, or the whole emitter. I'm amazed you're not deaf." He rummaged a moment in his kit. "I thought I was, there for a while, or I at least wished I were." "I'm not surprised." Miles vanished into the wall again. "You know, another odd thing about this particular malfunction." "What's that?" "Judging by these...come on, y'little...these scrapes on the floor near the corner of the panel and the...blast it...the dust that's been disturbed around the component..." he came back out of the wall, replaced the tool in the kit and procured another. "You *would* have the only shower on the station that takes a number eight for this adjustment. At any rate, as I was saying--" he broke off and crawled into the wall again, continued "--apparently someone decided to sabotage your shower earlier today. Who've you annoyed most recently? I admit there must be quite a list, but think." Julian was quiet a moment, then said "The station Chief of Operations, I think it must be." "Nah, I'd've been annoyed if I were busy. As I said, slow day, for once. So tell me, what'd you need me in your quarters so *very* badly for?" "Actually, to ask you how you've been." "You can ask me that over the comm. Come on, spill it. You're the worst liar I know, so you may as well get it over." "I'm serious. Lately you start like a flushed deer whenever you see me coming." "I can hardly be the first to react that way." "And you claim I haven't annoyed you." "You know me well enough by now to know that if you'd annoyed me, you'd already have heard all about it, with visual aids if I had the time." "Why *do* you run from me, then?" "I do not *run* from you; I've been busy, that's all. 'Til today, at least." "Then I suppose it's fortunate I chose today to break my shower." "And a fine bloody job ye've made of it, too. I was right, I'll have to replace the switch. Fortunately I've brought one with me; 's'a standard model." He emerged from the shower again to procure the switch. Julian slid his back down the frame of the open door and folded his arms across his knees, saying "You've been a busy man since we met. What's happened? Beyond your son's transfer into our first officer, I mean." "Gor, that's not enough? And Nerys, of all women." "I distinctly remember you thanking the major for consenting to pilot Keiko and me on that trip. Said you were glad Keiko was in such capable hands." "Never hurts to butter the boss up." "So unless you wanted me to improvise something on myself--and I actually considered it, since I'm human and Kira's not--" "YOU?" A loud clang came from inside the wall and Miles cursed, then continued "How in the name of Brian Boru would you have gone about THAT?" "Well, it *can* be done, of course, was first done a few centuries ago, but I couldn't think of a way to do it in the runabout. I could conceivably have coached Kira through it, but not there; we didn't have several essential components, and Keiko didn't have that kind of time anyway. The baby could have been comfortable enough in my abdominal cavity with only a few adjustments and additions to me; I'd've needed some nutrient supplementation, but--" "*Crikey,* what an awful thought. I can just hear Keiko telling him in six or seven years that uncle Julian is his birth mother. I appreciate Nerys even more now. Forget I slighted her." "Already have. I'm still waiting to hear why you keep slighting *me*, though." "Persistent today, aren't you?" "Like a nit. You'll never hear the end of it if you don't start talking. Another man might have taken serious offense at this sort of treatment." "Ah, Julian." Miles chuckled. "One thing about you that I've had demonstrated to my satisfaction is that there *isn't* any way to offend you if you don't choose to be offended. Gods know I've tried." "Some of my fondest memories." "Yeah, mine too." "Miles..." "All right, all right. Let a man work, will you? We'll chat when I'm done here. Stop hovering if you're not going to be of any use." Julian chuckled. "Good enough." At his terminal console, Julian eventually heard the sounds of a mechanic's tool kit being reorganized and packed. Miles emerged from the bathroom, the door sliding shut behind him. "Next time you want to lure me to your quarters, remember that I like a nice, light single malt, preferably something from the highlands." Julian smiled as Miles sat down. "I'll remember," the doctor said, then got up and came to sit in a chair across from Miles's position on the sofa. "Thanks for humoring me." "We wouldn't be friends if I didn't humor you." Julian grinned. "Now what did I do to deserve that?" "Nothing. Just the truth. Now what was so flaming bloody important...oh, yes. How am I. I'm fine. If that's all..." "No it is *not* all. I'd like a little more detail. You've missed a couple of meetings with Telnori lately--" "You're not going to try and get me relieved of duty again, are you?" "Of course not, there's certainly no reason for that that I know of. I've just been feeling a bit shut out and ignored. Why are you avoiding both Telnori and me?" "I forgot about the appointment before last and scheduled a meeting for the maintenance teams. I told Telnori about it. He didn't pursue it, so why are you?" "Miles, I'm going to ask you a question, and I don't want you to get angry and stalk out. Promise me you won't." Miles stared at him guardedly. "This isn't going to be an easy one, is it?" Julian shook his head, and Miles sighed. "I promise. But remember I only just fixed a shower you deliberately broke, and I didn't chew you apart." Julian smiled a little, then looked back up at Miles and said "A while back, you and I had a conversation in a holosuite." Miles rolled his eyes. "We've had a million conversations in--" He stopped, and glanced downward and away from Julian. "Oh. That one." "That one." Miles sighed. "What about it?" "You said that I could get into your space from across the room, simply by looking at you. Something about my eyes being...what was it..." "A couple of high-intensity scanner beams. I know where you're going with this." "Well, then. Perhaps you could meet me there and save us some time." But after a few moments, Miles still hadn't spoken, gazing intently at his left boot where it rested on his right knee. Julian said softly "Are you still afraid you might hurt me?" "You must know I wouldn't hurt you." "I do. I'm asking if you know it so surely." Miles was quiet, and this time Julian let him take his time. "The nightmares," he finally said. Julian, still speaking softly, said "I thought they'd mostly gone, some time ago." "They had, some time ago. Lately they're back." "Are they the same ones? All the same ones?" "Most of them. But the ones...I'm...doing what I did to Ee'char, and I...find that he...that I killed him, and for no--not even any reason--and when I turn around it's..." "It's not him on the sand. It's me." "You who just lies there and won't answer. And it's my doing." Miles continued to stare expressionlessly at his boot. "Have you been having any other recurrences? Anything else at all?" "About you?" "Any of it. The violent impulses? Problems being around other people?" "I...crikey, Julian." He leaned forward, shifting his foot back onto the floor and resting his elbows on his knees. He rubbed his face with both hands and raised his head slowly, staring into space. "Take your time." "Going to have to. I don't really know the answer." Julian stayed quiet, and eventually Miles continued "I don't know if you could say anything was coming *back*...any of that lot you mentioned, I mean. But the nightmares are enough." "Do they wake you up?" "When the fates are merciful. When they're not, I spend the rest of the night dreaming that I've killed you." "And that's why you've been avoiding me." "Tell you a secret. I haven't been avoiding you as much as you think." "How do you mean?" Julian wondered. "Lately it's become *very* important to me to verify with my own eyes, or at least ears, that you're still breathing. If I have one of those dreams, first thing I do next morning, before I start work, is stop by the infirmary. Not too close, don't want to be seen." There was a long pause, which Julian waited out. Finally Miles continued, in the flat, joylessly casual tone in which the chief discussed things that were almost to much for him to think about. "Sometimes it's enough to hear you talking in the next room. Sometimes I can't leave until I've seen you up walking around. That depends a lot on whether I woke up or not. Days ye're off, and we don't see each other, I have to settle for coming up with a reason to call you or having the main computer locate you, and your comm signal's not all that much help." Julian said "And it's been getting worse. To the point that seeing me at all brings that fear and tension to mind." Miles didn't bother nodding, but he didn't deny it, either. Julian was quiet a moment, reflecting that Miles must be having a hell of a time getting this out; the chief was very slightly pinker than usual, and had developed an intense fascination with the stars outside the port. Julian said "I see. Does Telnori know about this?" "Not yet." Julian paused, then said carefully "What I said to you, that day in the storage bay...it was only for the briefest fraction of your life that the people who did this to you succeeded in robbing you of your humanity. You must try to remember that. Don't let that one instant define the rest of your life--living in fear of what you may or may not do at any given moment constitutes that as much as would *having* murderous impulses you acted on. You're an inherently non-violent--" "Julian, I was a *soldier*! I've *killed* people, don't you understand? I am capable. I've *done* it." "If that's so, and if it were the same thing--which it's not--then if any part of you were really intent on killing me, I'd be dead, wouldn't I? And you wouldn't be having nightmares." Miles was silent, staring at the floor. Then he said in a still, cold voice "It's as I said. I loved him, and I killed him. I don't dream that I've killed Keiko, or anyone else. Only you. When I see you, I remember that 'brief fraction of my life', as you put it." Julian said "I'm sorry you're afraid, Miles; even sorrier that it's yourself you're afraid of. But I have to tell you that I'm not afraid. I never could be. You were ready to kill yourself rather than risk harm coming to anyone else through you." "But this isn't conscious--it comes out at night, when I've no defense against it. It happens before I realize it. In the dream, I become that man again, I'm in that time--and that man didn't go to kill himself. He killed...him. You." Julian got up and sat down as close to Miles as he dared. "Give me your hand." "Why?" "Why do you always argue?" Miles sighed and held his hand out toward Julian without looking at him. Julian took it and laid it palm-flat on the side of his own neck. "Feel that? It's called a pulse. Despite your worries about your capabilities and control, I remain very much alive. And," he continued, hoping he wasn't about to make a grave error, "if you were to try--" he took the chief's other hand, holding it to the other side of his throat, "--to snap my neck right now, I doubt I could stop you." Miles finally looked up at him, and Julian knew he'd been right to worry; Miles was terrified. Julian let his hands fall, holding Miles's gaze a moment. Then he said "I would seem to still be breathing. And I'm not afraid. You *aren't* capable, Miles, not in the way you fear." The chief was frozen a moment, gaze locked on his own hands. Then he let out a shuddering breath and let them fall. Julian caught them in his own. "There's more, isn't there." A long silence, then Miles graveled "There is." "What we discussed in the holosuite?" Another silence. "Do you dream of that as well?" Miles closed his eyes in patent discomfort. "Is it Ee'char," Julian asked finally, quietly, "or me?" Miles sharply pulled his hands free and got up to pace quickly away, toward the viewport, and lean against it. "It's not even the cell, always," Miles almost whispered. "Where?" Julian asked softly. "Sometimes there. Sometimes the holosuite, of all bloody places. Sometimes... you're just there with me." "These two sorts of dreams concerning me--do they ever overlap one another?" "Oh," Miles chuckled mirthlessly, "they do. Indeed they do." "That must be extremely disturbing for you." With sudden ferocity, Miles demanded "And it isn't for you? That in my head, we can be...doing what we talked about in the holosuite one minute and in the next I've snapped your neck in some insane murderous struggle? That doesn't strike you as outright sick? It does me, God knows." "I can see that it does. Miles, don't hold yourself responsible for violent dreams. They're difficult enough on you in themselves, without the added burden of believing you have to hate yourself for them. You'll still be a decent person if you don't." "Easy for you to say." "It's true I can't pretend to know just how the dreams make you feel. But I do know that you would never be having them, living in fear of your own impulses, if you had any choice at all. Isn't that true?" "Of course it is." "Then why blame yourself?" Julian's tone was in painful earnest. "Who does the things I do in them? Who *should* I blame?" "Your captors. Nothing is happening to you now that is unusual for someone who's been through what you have. And none of it is in any way your fault." "But...something in me, some part of me, must want it, or at least not--not be repelled by it. I *did* do it, in the Argrathi prison. And when you look at me I sometimes--" he broke off. Julian stood up and took a step or two closer to Miles, but stopped more than arm's length away. Miles didn't turn to look at him. "Are you saying," Julian said, again hoping he wasn't making a massive mistake, "that at any level, any part of you...wants to take me to bed and break my neck in the middle of it?" "God." Miles took a breath. "No. I don't know. How can I possibly answer that? If I knew...what have they done to me? Exactly *what*? How will I ever know anything for certain again? If they can make me do that--" "They can't make you do that. Not again." "They can make me dream about it. And for all I know, in some way, they can make me want to. Isn't that every bit as bad?" "No, it isn't. It's nothing like. Listen. You're obsessed by having killed the implanted memory of Ee'char because it's only through him that what your captors tried to do to you visibly succeeded. That obsession has become transferred to me, probably because I'm here and he's not, unless you've been hallucinating him again." Miles shook his head. Julian continued "I've become the stand-in. I'm the one through which the part of you that's afraid believes your torturers may succeed again. It isn't sick, Miles--or, if it is, only in the sense that an organism becomes ill when infected by an outside source. What is happening to you is not your fault." "But even so--it's still me. Is it not my fault even if somehow, some part of me wants it to happen?" "That was visited on you as well. You never had such desires or impulses before the twenty years." Miles was quiet. Julian took a step closer. "Miles. Are you listening?" "Aye." "There's more, isn't there." Miles laughed again, just as humorlessly as before. "What is it? What's so hard to tell me, after what you've already said?" "Sometimes," Miles began after a long interval through which Julian remained motionless, "sometimes I...when you look at me..." "Sometimes, when I look at you...?" Julian prompted after a moment. Another long silence, palpable, like a liquid filling the room. Julian finally tried "Does Telnori know about it, whatever it is?" "If he does, he pulled it out of the air like you do." Miles shook his head, letting his forehead fall against the transparent pane. "Why aren't you hearing it? God knows you hear everything else." "You've already told me?" Julian paused, thinking that his conversations with Garak were going to come in very handy before this was over. "Tell me what you're feeling right now." "You." Julian waited, but that was all Miles said. The doctor essayed "You mean, you're very aware of me. Of my presence." Miles nodded. "That's natural enough, considering. Can you tell me how that awareness is affecting you? Are you afraid?" Miles nodded again. "Try to pin that down. What, exactly, are you afraid of? That you'll hurt me, still?" "Partly that." "What else?" A long pause. Julian could almost hear the wheels turning in Miles's head. Finally the chief said disjointedly, "Your eyes on me. So close...I can feel just where you are. Just how far from me. Afraid...that you'll touch me again." "Why did that frighten you? I might try to hurt you back, defend myself from you?" Miles shook his head. "I'm more...more afraid that you won't." "Won't defend myself, or won't touch you again?" "I--don't understand it, Julian. Why do I feel like this? Why am I so damned panicked not to lose you?" "Lose me..." Julian paused, then took another step toward Miles and laid his hands on the other man's shoulders. "How?" A faint tremor ran through Miles at the contact. He took a deep breath and became very still. Puzzled, Julian whispered "Where would I go?" Miles turned suddenly, breaking Julian's grip, apparently headed for the door; but Julian seized his shoulders again, from the front this time. "I can't let you leave here in this state, Miles, it'd be completely irresponsible. Soon, all right? Not just yet." "So bloody *close*--don't you see? Can't you understand?" "I'm trying to. I think you're disturbed by how you react to me. Part of you's afraid of me, wants to get away from me. Part of you can't stop thinking about me and becomes fixated on me when I'm nearby. My being the physical focal point of your obsession, both those things would be completely normal." "Doesn't damn all *feel* normal." "No, I imagine it doesn't. But losing me...you don't mean through killing me, do you." Miles shook his head, gaze focused in the middle distance somewhere. "Then, as I said, where would I go?" No response. "Listen...it might help to remember that although I'm the object of this obsession, you, your reactions, feelings, and the reasons for them--you're the subject. You're worried about you, about what you might do, as I've said before, even if you're no longer afraid of what I might see. You needn't fear me, because it's not really me." "Oh, it's you." The chief's gaze lifted and focused. He met Julian's look a moment, then let his eyes drop. "In a way, it always has been." "Always...?" About one step short of actually tossing his head from side to side--to one who would know what to look for--Miles rasped "Please let go. I...it's burning me." "You won't go yet?" "No. I won't." Julian let his hands fall. Miles rubbed his forehead tiredly and returned to the sofa, sitting down. Julian had a seat on the low table before the couch, was quiet a moment, then asked "Won't you let me help?" "How? I don't know my own rotting *mind*, I can't be sure of anything now. How can you help that?" "How can I not try?" "I appreciate that you mean well. But I don't see what you can do." "For one thing, I can tell you that no matter what you say to me, I'm not going anywhere. If what you say could pry me loose, I'd've been gone long since. *That's* logical, isn't it?" "Maybe I haven't said the right thing yet. Or the wrong thing." "There is *nothing*. You have dreams about killing me and I'm still here." "Maybe you're just an idiot. Maybe you *should* be frightened." "Maybe I should, but I doubt it rather powerfully. And even if you said something that I didn't care for listening to, that isn't the point. It would take more than--" "*Bloody* hell, you're impossible, you do *know* tha--" "Damn it, I'm your friend and I'm not going to leave you alone with this! I love you and you don't frighten me. Get--" Miles had frozen. Julian broke off and finished much more quietly, "...get used to it." Miles was actually turning color, his hands and face suffused with purple-tinged red. But he didn't seem angry now. In fact, he seemed quite calm to all other outward appearances. "Oh, boy. I wish," Miles said quietly, "you hadn't've said that." He got up and moved away again, coming to rest against the port. He folded his arms and closed his eyes, head bowing. "Julian..." he shook his head. "You've no idea what it's like in here. What's in my mind. The...violence, the storms--and you at the center of it all, God spare us. I can't describe what you are to me, now. What you've become." "I can guess." "Guess, I suppose, but not know; *I* don't even know." "You know more than you'll say." "I've bloody said everything there is to say! If you want to know more you'll have to dig up a Vulcan healer and arrange a mind meld." "That's not the worst idea you've ever had." "Don't be insane. As if there's any way I'd ever allow this out on general view." "No, I know you wouldn't." Julian sighed, thinking. "Miles...can you tell me this? What it is you want to do?" "What do you mean?" "Is there anything...any thought or feeling, any idea or fear or desire, anything at all, that seems to be a common thread, from your perspective? From mine, you're suffering a completely normal post-traumatic condition. From yours...what is it all the pressures you're feeling seem to want you to do? Besides hide all this from me, which goes without saying. I understand that you don't know *exactly* what all these tensions would culminate in if you let them sway you. Just tell me what you do know." Another brief wait. "I've talked about this with Telnori, before you ask," Miles muttered. Julian waited again. "With Nerys in with us like this...she and I had a...bit of a problem for a while." Julian kept waiting. "We developed sort of a thing. For each other." Julian smiled just slightly. "How much of a thing?" "We never laid a--well, we touch each other, of course, but you know what I mean." "Yes, I do. Are you and she still feeling that tension?" "No, I managed to snap out of it and she took some time away to see Shakaar. I was supposed to be going with her on a visit to the country, but not being completely stupid we decided just before we left that I'd tell Keiko we'd had a missed communication--though Keiko would probably accuse us of fighting again, and she did--and Nerys went alone." He paused. "We're not, not really, still having a problem..." "Are you, yourself?" "Not with her. The whole business...just made me doubt myself, in a way." There was a perceptible pause. "Doubt yourself how?" Julian finally prompted. "It made me doubt *everything*, as much as myself. It's all too odd. I kiss her at breakfast in our pajamas. The laundry smells like her. Keiko sometimes gets anxious and I take Nerys's bed and she sleeps in with my wife. Since Keiko got over the worst of the depression at losing the carrying of her child, she's been pleased as punch to have Nerys around. Dotes on her, really." "So do you." "That's right, so do I. And I think it's all getting to be a bit much." "Think that, or feel it?" "There you go with your psychoblather again. What difference does it make?" "All the difference, and you know it. A bit much in what way? Or ways." "She's...almost a part of Keiko and I. And I was willing...I might have..." "...have become even more intimate with Nerys." Miles nodded. "Might have, if not for what?" "Like I said, we aren't completely stupid. As soon as we realized what was happening, we both mobilized to head it off before anything could come of it." "You both did." "Mm." Julian paused, then said "This relates to your impulses, and your worry about whether they might not control you, doesn't it." "I suppose. You asked what you asked, and this is...all I could come up with to say." "It wasn't only Nerys who took action to stop what was happening between you, though. You did control that impulse." "You talk like there was only one. It happened a hundred times a day. For both of us, near as I can tell." "Even better." "Julian, I don't know if I'd have done what I did if she hadn't...done the same thing. What if she'd launched herself right at me? How can I know I wouldn't have taken her up? How can I know, now, what I would have done?" "I realize this is insufficient as reassurance, but *I* know what you would have done. And knowing Nerys even as well as I do, it's not something she would have done, either." "That's a hellova long way from being the point." "I know, but...the stress of Keiko's accident and her baby being gestated by a host mother out of necessity was enough to unsettle you, trigger a recurrence of some of the symptoms you'd successfully brought under control. That was when Telnori suggested you resume visiting at least weekly." "I went." "I know. Did you feel that you needed the visits?" "They bore me to tears. Counselors ask the most inane questions. So do best friends." "Did any of his inane questions make you uncomfortable?" "Hell, most of them do." "Let me put this another way..." Julian thought. "This is a little simplistic, but we'll try it. Did the nightmares start again very soon after the accident?" Miles turned to rest his back against the port sill, arms still folded, and let his head fall back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. "I'm not sure when they started again. Not exactly. I'm not sure--completely--that they ever left. I would wake tired. I didn't want to see anyone. Not even Keiko or Molly." "Could be a more general depression...I assume you didn't want to see me, either?" "*Especially* not you, ye bollocksy irritant." "Nerys, lately?" "Or her, but how can I go showing temper at her for *no* reason? What she's doing for my family is beyond price." "Let me backtrack for a moment. Some of the symptoms you were having, re-triggered by the baby's transferal to a host mother...irritability, difficulty being around others too closely, and nightmares that might only have been aggravated to the point of conscious noticibility, rather than being a remised symptom that was re-triggered." "V'you been talking to Telnori?" "Not beyond the usual. So then you had thoughts, impulses, about Nerys and being more intimate with her than you already are. You'd been dreading something that might demonstrate impulses still existed in you which, *if* acted on, would lead to unacceptable behavior. Your crush on your assistant Neela a while back didn't upset you, or Keiko, because the Argrathi hadn't yet done what they did to you and you didn't see it as representing anything other than itself; you had no doubts about your ability to control your own behaviors. "Now you're not sure of that, and unacceptable feelings and impulses are far more worrisome; you think you may act on them, and you fret that if you're capable of having one unacceptable impulse, you're capable of others. Stressful or alien situations are another aggravating factor--and you don't feel perfectly comfortable living with a woman whose belly is full of your child when that woman isn't Keiko, and I daresay that's putting it mildly." "I 'daresay' you're right." "And then I--" "And then you. Why not. Let's get it all out on the floor." "--was involved in that situation with Kira through my being the physician in question." "Oh. So?" "So all that is likely the support structure of the feelings you're having about me now, adding in what I said earlier, about my being your subconscious's elected stand-in for Ee'char. Miles--how can you blame yourself for this? It's all so obviously not any of your doing." "I can blame myself because being an honorable, sane, reasonable person shouldn't depend on whether or not I've been through some kind of rough time! If I think I only have to be decent when everything in my life is fine, or at least close to, and always has been, what kind of man does that make me? No one's a killer, or a thief or a terrorist or an adulterer, if everything in their life has been blue skies and calm seas. Unless they've got a genuine screw loose or they're a complete bastard." "And, saying that were all true...?" "So does that mean no one can be held responsible for the things they do if life has let them down somewhere? And what's the anguish limit for what sorts of horror you're allowed? Five years in prison and you can renounce your friends and colleagues when they try to help you? Five fighting the Cardies and it's all right to have prurient thoughts about someone other than your wife? Fifteen and you can bite people's heads off for no reason and knock your child across the room? Twenty and you can kill your best friend? It's not supposed to work like that!" "I'm not intimating that it should. If you took most of the actions you just--" "I did take three of them. Three and a half. I never hit Molly--but only thanks to Keiko stepping in. You're about to tell me that having the impulses and acting on them aren't the same. Well, the only reason I stopped was that something intervened to stop me. Oh, and I'd have killed myself and caused my wife and daughter grief and left two children fatherless if *you* hadn't intervened to stop it. Are you following me here?" "Yes, but I don't care for where you're going. Everyone has done things they're ashamed of, and no amount of self-flagellation, worry, anguish, is going to make those things not have happened. You've got to accept that you broke under pressure--and accept the knowledge that pressure may affect your resolve again. It's a fact we *all* live with. Getting it held up to us always rattles us--how badly depends on how far we've fallen beneath our expectations for ourselves in a given situation--but eventually we forgive ourselves for being human and we live with the knowledge. The people you've affronted have forgiven you, Miles, every last one." "Except Ee'char." Julian sighed heavily. "Which brings us back to me, doesn't it." "Hell. It's always coming back to you, one way or another. I wish my best friend weren't my family physician." Julian steepled his fingers and stared into the distance. "So what you're saying, all in all...is that you have antisocial impulses of varying degrees and types, as a result of what happened to you on Argratha. The same experience which has changed you enough to have the impulses in the first place also provided you with what you see as proof that you *are* capable of following through on those impulses, in the form of Ee'char's death." "You keep forgetting the other thing I learnt I was capable of with Ee'char." "Haven't forgotten it; but I don't rank it equivalent in severity, in terms of damage to your self-image, with murder. Although the experience you just avoided with Major Kira spoke directly to that activity and aggravated your fears about the potential you may retain to be unfaithful to Keiko. "But of all the impulses any of us can act on, murder, on whatever scale, would have to be the worst. And you believe that for all practical purposes, you had a genuine desire to kill, and did kill." "That's it. If I was capable of that...there isn't anything I'm not capable of. If I get angry enough, might I murder someone else? No telling. And the one I keep dreaming about is you." "Miles..." Julian let his face fall into his hands a moment. Then he sighed and looked up. "I'd like to see you for a few counseling sessions. Are you willing to try that, and to allow Telnori and I to compare notes on your symptoms and progress?" Miles shook his head, laughing ironically. "Seeing as last time I started avoiding you you ambushed me under false pretenses in a holosuite...but bring a phaser set to heavy stun in case I wind up boiling, which is all too likely, with you." "Then let's make it the holosuite again. We'll set the safeties to defend me, should it come to that." --- "I think the first time I saw her was in Ten Forward. I was...how can I put this. I was enthralled. Literally." "Is that why you didn't speak to her then?" Julian tossed a stalk of seed-bearing holograss off toward the water. It didn't quite make it to the stream. "She was on Commander Data's arm. They were alone, and I didn't want to intrude; they looked pretty fascinated with each other, not that Data isn't fascinated with everything. Turned out they were discussing a paper she intended to submit for publication, and where she should submit it, but I didn't know that at the time." "The Commander *is* an excellent consultant in many areas." "That's right, you did a paper with him too, didn't you?" "In my case, he was one of only of two or three consultants there are. It was about his ability to dream that we'd discovered, together with Commander LaForge. But we were talking about your meeting Keiko." "Right. Anyway, after that, I saw her a few times round about ship, but I didn't actually meet her until the Commander introduced us. I was under a console in engineering at the time; Commander LaForge'd asked me to do some work on the core blast shields, maintain their circuitry. I'll never forget the look on her face. I crawled out when the Commander said my name, and there she was, arm-in-arm with him snug as you please, and she saw me and her eyes got huge." Julian chuckled. "Why? You were that great a mess?" "Actually I hadn't soaked up anything with my uniform yet that day. She'd seen me staring at her, the first time I saw her, and she'd asked Data who I was, and he told her, and added something like, 'the Chief would appear to find you very interesting' or some such, you know how he talks." Julian nodded, smiling. "Go on." "She covered almost at once, smiled at me, but not before he'd asked us if anything was wrong. 'You both appear to be discomfited. Have I made an error in interrupting your work, Chief?' That line I remember." "And you both apologized, most likely." "Aye, we did, but first we both told him 'No' in our various states of alarm, and he said "Very well--Chief Miles O'Brien, this is Keiko Ishikawa; she requires the assistance of an engineer in adjusting the light spectra in the arboretum'--or however, exactly, he said it. That was what she needed with me, anyway." "And the rest is history." "I deliberately ruined a lighting panel so I'd have an excuse to come back." They both laughed, and Julian stretched out under what had become "their" tree in Miles's Scottish countryside program. "Ever tell her?" "Oh, sure. As soon as I came back, almost. I was so nervous I just blurted it--she began by apologizing about the panel, thought she'd done something to it adjusting it, and I jumped right in and told her it wasn't her fault, and she said 'You don't know me, I'm lousy with anything that has more than two settings,' and I had to tell her why I knew it wasn't her doing." "Oops." "Tell me about it." "What did she say?" "Sort of stood there dumbstruck, then laughed and asked me to dinner." Julian pulled loose another grass stalk. "Thanks for that story, it's quite entertaining. Now could you answer my original question?" Miles paused, looking askance at Julian. "That *was* your original question, wasn't it?" "No," Julian chuckled. "Then what was?" Julian rolled over on his front, leaning on his elbows, to face Miles where the latter sat against the trunk of the tree. "I asked what you thought the first time you met me. Or saw me, start with that. We need to make me a little more mundane." Miles acquired a bemused expression. "I wonder why I heard Keiko's name." "My guess is that you'd rather hear Keiko's name." "Probably right. The first time I saw you..." Miles sighed. "Please. It can't have been *that* bad. I know I was a bit green..." "You were a bloody potted plant. You put all of Ireland to shame. And whether it was bad depends on how you look at it. I've actually told you this, in a roundabout way." "You said once I was the only one whom you'd ever thought could compare to Keiko. I assumed you meant physically." Miles grimaced. "Then you remember more of it than I do. If you can assume *that*--what word did I use?" "Beautiful." "Seamus on toast." The Chief's head thumped backward into the tree as he squinched his eyes closed in horror. "What was I drinking, for God's sake?" "You were quite sober, if rather flustered. It was shortly after you threw a splash of the stream there into your own face, when I was impersonating a hologram. Though you'd figured me out by that time." "Aye, remember now. Well, that covers it, I suppose. You were stalking Commander Dax in a corridor, off toward the habitat ring, and I was just coming up the lift, and I nearly swallowed my tongue. You were the most ungodly beautiful thing I'd seen since Keiko." "Only taller," Julian smiled, allowing himself to enjoy things just a tad. "Next time I saw you, I was with Keiko and Molly. Keiko stopped in her tracks and tugged on my arm and pointed you out, and asked who the living daylights you were. At the time, I didn't know. But I told her I concurred with her about your looks." "I can't stand it. I've got to ask." "Her word was gorgeous. 'Who is that gorgeous man talking to the Commander?' Said I didn't know, but you reminded me of Bronte's Heathcliff, but with fawn eyes." "And then you actually met me." "And you were such an unbelievable idiot I nearly heaved. I told Keiko it was no accident you looked like a teenager, because you acted like a child, and it wasn't particularly attractive on you." "That's about what Kira told me, right to my face." Julian laughed and sprawled out on the grass. "I think for a year or so my only friend in the senior staff was Jadzia, and she had less reason than anyone to think well of me. Though everyone was a bit gentler with me after that brain-hopping parasitic glia-based murderer took me over. In any case, *I* was quite partial to *you*." "I know. Nauseated me to the roots of my teeth." Julian continued laughing, facedown in meadow. Finally he lifted his head, and Miles, staring into the artificial distance, was smiling. Julian asked "So when did you decide there was hope for me after all?" "When Keiko brought Molly to you with a cold, and Molly came home not only cured but bubbling over about the friendly doctor, of whom she hadn't been at *all* scared, with eyes like her teddy bear Entwhistle." "That was well before you started speaking civilly to me." "You asked when I decided there was hope for you, not when did I decide you were worth spending my off time with. If I was planning to do anything other than take in the view, at least." "True enough." Julian rolled over to stare up through the greenery toward the light. Miles was still in the posture he'd adopted when they arrived at the suite. "Why'd you want to know, anyway?" "Which question?" "Any of it. Back to how I met Keiko." "Actually..." he grinned. "As I said, we need to bring your subconscious perception of me away from 'nightmare personification' and more toward 'Shut-up-Julian'. But I chose that particular line because Major Kira came by my office today..." "Yes, today was her weekly--" he stopped, petrified. Then he slapped one hand miserably to his face. "God deliver me. Keiko's told Nerys." "Apparently. But before you hang the Major, I should point out that the only reason I heard of it was that she was talking to Keiko over the comm. I was still in the lab. And all she said was in passing, something about how quickly you'd come to change your opinion of me once you met me, and how it'd apparently changed back. I don't think anyone else heard, and wouldn't've known what she meant, really, if they had." Miles sighed. They honestly weren't doing too badly, Julian thought. Telnori had suggested the idea of, rather than dragging Miles's unwilling posterior to two different therapists, Julian just taking over for the time being; they would concentrate on reinstating Miles's ease with Julian, which couldn't help but improve the overall situation. If they could shake his fear of the sight of the doctor and general discomfort in his presence, the nightmares would be dealt a potentially fatal blow, or at least a debilitating one. Of course, it wouldn't solve the problem; his fear at the possibility of losing control would simply emerge elsewhere, if they couldn't send it back into remission. But Miles's life, and the lives of his family, would be a hell of a lot easier without the nightmares, and with his best friend back. "Your daughter really has a teddy bear named Entwhistle?" "In a way. He's imaginary. Once Molly demanded a seat on the Bajor-station transport for Entwhistle, and Keiko had to instigate the rule that Entwhistle rides in Molly's lap. Actually, I think your eyes probably provided the template for his." "Mm. My first patient was a teddy bear." "Short on cadavers at Starfleet Medical?" "Lord, Miles, that's disgusting. He was just a toy with his stuffing falling out. My mother said he was ruined, but I said I'd fix him and I did. And again, when his other leg started coming off, and his ear got torn...I've still got him--or Leeta does--but he's not very furry any longer." "How old were you, first time you fixed him?" "Five." "Stab yourself with the needle?" "Three or four times as I recall, and you *are* morbid today, aren't you?" "And you're inappropriately curious." "I'm always inappropriately curious. It's one of the things people find so disarming about me." "The only thing disarming about you is that body you're wearing. Your messing about in people's business...when will you understand you weren't cut out for a spy?" Julian reached over and whacked Miles with the seedy end of his current stalk of grass. "Don't be so dour. He's being dour, isn't he, Entwhistle." Julian glanced significantly to Miles's left, then back at Miles, leaned in and whispered "Entwhistle says you're being dour." Miles was forced to smile again. --- "So what was your teddy bear's name?" "Kukalaka." Julian leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his drink. Replicated Tomarian frost; Quark would charge extra, but there weren't a lot of places on this station to toss one's credit around, anyway, if one gambled only for entertainment. The rain continued pattering on the awning of the Cafe Milan. "What kind of a name is that?" "Hawaiian, actually." "I didn't know there was anyone left who spoke Hawaiian." "Well of course there is, Miles. But don't look at me. I got it off a candy wrapper. Drink your drink; this isn't the warmest program in Quark's inventory." Obediently Miles took a swallow of his coffee and whiskey, then asked "If it weren't for me, what would you be doing right now, do you think?" "I'd probably be with you, right here. Or maybe we'd be in one of the other suites." "I'll admit the likelihood, but we haven't exactly been targeting the Gerries in here lately. You must have other ways to spend your time." Julian half-smiled. "Trying to get rid of me? Still? Fine, I'll tell you in so many words; it won't work." "Isn't Leeta feeling ignored?" "Not really. Leeta and I..." Julian stared into the rainy evening half-light. "...how shall I put this. We aren't..." "You didn't tell me you'd broke up!" "We haven't, exactly. I suppose it's enough to say that we aren't, currently, exclusive." "Oh. Um. Whose idea was that?" "Hers. She's still got my teddy, though. She's very fond of things that are cute. If it's *very* cute, she thinks it's 'adorable' and she has to have it." "Explains what she sees in you." Julian chuckled. "Come on, Miles. You're dodging the inevitable." Miles grumbled something. "Look, Chief, I know you hate getting treated by me, but chatting with a friend is not the most onerous duty I can remember having to perform, so that excuse is right out. Forget why we're here. Just talk to me. You *did* used to talk to me, you know." "When I could get a word in." Julian smiled. Setting his drink on the woodgrain tabletop, he folded his arms on the table, then leaned forward to rest his chin in one hand. "Well, here's your chance. My ears are ready, willing and able. Fire away." Miles stared at him, then knocked back a healthy swig of his drink. "You don't have any idea what you're getting into." "So tell me then." "Keep this up and I *may* do just that." "You don't like that idea, do you?" "It scares the bleedin' hell out of me." --- "How are Keiko and Molly?" "Molly's terrific. Loves her aunt Nerys. And having conversations with her aunt Nerys's stomach." "Talking before he's out of the womb. Impressive." "He's an O'Brien." Miles crossed his arms comfortably behind his head, on the blanket which they were sharing to avoid communing too excessively with the fine-grained sand, the texture of which Miles had thoroughly and permanently lost his taste for. The sun was just going down across the Pacific. "And how's Keiko?" "She seems a little distracted, but I suppose that's to be expected. I don't think she'd leave Nerys's side if the Major's duty didn't require it. She's...been quiet lately." "How so?" "She used to ask me how my therapy sessions had been; said she wanted to be there if I needed her and leave me alone if I needed that. But since I told her you'd taken it over, she hasn't breathed a word about it. But then, she's always been careful not to interfere too much in my sessions with Telnori; she probably assumes that if I want her to know what's happened, I'll tell her." "She must know that your nightmares are back." "She only knows about the ones where I get out of bed and lie down on the floor." "Ouch. Doing that again?" "Only two or three times. Not as much as I'd been fearing." "Do you ever wake up there, or does she usually manage to get you back to bed?" "I always wake up there when I lay down there. I'm a bit large for Keiko to move, and Keiko would never ask Nerys to help her lift anything. I suppose the only other person Keiko *would* ask is you." "Which she wouldn't do, knowing what you'd say about it." "You've got *that* right, laddo." --- "And how are we feeling this evening, chief?" "Where the *hell* are we?" "Chandor five. The natives call it Lestilli." "Why are the stars out?" Julian felt a giant smirk looming on the horizon of his face. "Because it's night? You *are* familiar with the phenome--" "Oh for--if it's night, what's that?" "The system primary. Chandor's the third star, orbiting it." "Still, isn't there any air?" "We're breathing, aren't we? Lestilli's a created world. The atmosphere's just enough to keep a human comfortable; it's only about four kilometers deep, and the neutral gases don't scatter the light to any great degree." "Oh." Miles leaned just a bit over the precipice, holding on to a protrusion of rock. "Is that moving dirt down there?" "Miles?" "Yeah?" "Remind me to stick to less exotic programs from now on." "Ye're nothing but a tourist at heart, are you? All that blather about 'frontier medicine' is just a smoke screen to hide behind while you shop for souvenirs." "Miles." "Now *bloody* what?" "We're through for the day." --- "Sorry I'm late; held up with a complication in surgery." "What happened?" "Oh, Commander Danwyn's heart stopped on the table and none of us could get it going again. Turned out it was all clogged anyway; had to give him another. He'll be fine." "That's good to hear. Um...is that the program?" Julian slid the isolinear rod into the slot. "Loaded and ready." "Well," Miles sighed, "let's get to it, then." The doors of the holosuite parted and they stepped inside. The spring sun shone bright. Miles gazed around as the doors closed. The clifftop they stood on was brilliant with emerald vegetation; the beach sand below was a fine, pristine white, the Atlantic cerulean-sapphire blue. Out across the water, Julian would have sworn he could just make out the Isle of Man. "Now *this* is thoughtful of you," Miles grinned, folding his arms and looking around in appreciation. "Not at all. I always loved this spot." "Didn't know you'd spent much time in Ireland." "Only now and again. There's a path down to the beach; shall we find some shade?" Down they went, carefully, even though the safety fields would catch them if they slipped. Whoever slipped and landed on the air would take a merciless ribbing from the other. They situated themselves on a convenient water-stripped log--there weren't actually any here, Julian had embellished reality far enough to have someplace to sit besides the sun-drenched clifftop--where they had a view down the bright beach and across the water, out of the direct sun in the southwest. "Haven't seen you at all the last few days." "S'been a rash of system glitches 'round the station. Commander Dax finally had to help me trace the problem to a central program monitor in the main computer." Miles chuckled. "She had to do it with one hand. Said the nurse who fixed her clavicle back up told her to rest the arm on that side for a couple of days." "Nice things are going well for her." "Mm." Miles sighed. "You look--and sound--like a man with something on his mind. Maybe something to say." "I do have, but I doubt it's what you're hoping. Julian...if you think it's advisable that we continue this--my seeing you, instead of Telnori--I'll continue it, but I have to tell you I don't think there's much real point." "Why do you think that?" Miles chuckled. "Do you know a woman called Deanna Troi? She's the Enterprise's counselor. I think she's a commander now." "Only by reputation. Why?" "She used to get just that note in her voice when she was hiding the way she felt for diplomatic reasons." "And you think I'm hiding displeasure with you, or with what you've said." "That would be what I think, right enough." "I'm not happy that you feel this effort is futile; but no one at all can tell you how to feel, and I certainly wouldn't try. I am glad you're at least willing to continue. Why do you think this is pointless?" "I can't..." Miles got up, paced around, and sat back down. Julian waited. Finally: "I can't tell you what I'm pretty sure it is you want to know." "Because you don't know what it is?" "Yes." Miles stared at the sand a minute, then shook his head. "No. I know what it is. At least, I'm fairly certain." "Of what it is, or of what I want to hear?" "Either, both, whatever, I don't know--you're a slavedriver, y'know that?" Julian laughed lightly. "Sorry. Shall I back off a bit?" "It doesn't matter." Miles got up, looked for a rock, found one and strolled toward the water, tossing it in one hand. Julian got up and followed him. As the rock arced out over the Atlantic, Julian smiled slightly, eyes squinched against the wind. "Imagining that's my head?" Miles smirked a moment. "For once, Julian, I'm actually not angry with you. Can't seem to manage it, in the face of how patient you've been with *me*." Miles found another rock and threw it. "And it's hardly *your* fault." "What's hardly my fault?" Miles didn't respond, and Julian tried "What you think I want to know. That you can't tell me?" "Yeah. I guess that's what I mean." He paused. "What you asked me at the very beginning, and what you've been asking me ever since. About what it is I want, what I feel would...ease the pressures." "That's right. Your first instinct in this area. You don't have to know already what would ultimately come of it, whether you think it's dangerous, or sounds silly or irrelevant, or doesn't seem connected to anything at all. Even if it makes no sense to you, and neither Telnori nor I ever make head or tail of it, it's a place to start." "It makes sense. Some, anyway. And like I said...I can't tell you. Or Telnori, or anyone; I wish I could." "So do I. Miles...at least tell me--" he took Miles by the shoulders and turned him slightly, to meet his eyes. "You aren't still afraid you'll harm me if you're not prevented? I know the nightmares haven't stopped completely, but you're not still afraid you...afraid of that, are you?" Miles stared at him a few breaths, then touched Julian's cheek lightly, stroking the backs of his fingers down it once. Julian was so startled he froze in place, wide-eyed. "I could never hurt you," Miles told him, then looked sharply away. "I know that much now. And the dreams...really aren't so bad, nor so many of them, any more." Julian released him automatically, and the chief started back toward the doors. "Miles." Miles stopped but didn't turn, letting the wind buffet him. "I just wanted you to know...I'm not disappointed in you. And I do want to keep seeing you." After a moment Miles nodded, still not turning, and continued up the beach toward the cliff pathway. --- "I'm surprised you're willing to continue with me." "I'm surprised you still want to see me, as morose a bastard as I've been lately." "That's rather the point, isn't it?" Julian rubbed his arms against the Martian night chill on the tremendous plain of the Olympus Mons tableland. The stars were preternaturally vivid, with neither of the moons out; the landscape was a vast indistinct darkness, visible only where it blocked the stars, and there wasn't much that could, up here. It was like a good old-fashioned planetarium show, Julian mused. Complete with lecturer. "Look," Miles said, pointing. Julian could just see him in the starlight. "Earth." "Sure enough." A pause. "I spoke with Keiko yesterday, Miles." "She wasn't sick, was she?" "No. She wanted to know how we were getting on. I told her you seemed willing and cooperative enough, but you lacked hope for a resolution. She said you'd been in much calmer temper, and seemed better rested, but you were even more withdrawn than you'd been before I broke my shower. Quiet, unsmiling, distracted--I suppose morose covers it." "I hate when you two do that." "We know it, or we'd have been doing it all this time, as concerned as we are for you." "I'm not trying to upset anybody." "We know." "I'm just...going through sort of an..." "Epiphany?" "A stage. Things are complex at the moment." "Tell me about that." "You *know* everything." "I know the facts, or most of them. I want to hear how you feel, and what you think, about them." "Then we'd better sit down." "Computer, give us a bench." The ground illuminated slightly in a spot about five feet in front of them, then morphed upward into a low stone bench. The glow died and they sat down. "So what's been on your mind lately?" "My mind, mostly. I've been thinking about what constitutes reality. Consciousness. That sort of thing." "As related to twenty years that never passed and yet which are as solidly real as..." "What? This?" Miles slapped the bench. "Real and not real. Real right now, but turn off the field that stabilizes holomatter and it evaporates. How do I know for a fact that *you're* real? You could be a hologram. I could be asleep and dreaming. Or this could all be some kind of illusion, planted in my head some wise or other. Nobody ever lived through the events that I remember from prison. But remember back a ways, say the day you broke your shower. My kit was scattered all over your bathroom, right?" "It certainly was." "But it's not there now. The only record of my kit in your floor, beyond some pretty damned heroic measures, is our memory of it. We try to describe it to someone, they have no way of knowing if we're telling the truth." "And the implanted memory of the Argrathi prison..." "Is as real as the memory of the kit. I'm the only one who remembers it, just as we two are the only ones who remember the kit in the floor. So is that memory 'real'? My memories of prison are just as vivid." "That's an excellent question...people have been trying to figure out if a tree makes a sound when it hits the forest floor out of earshot since the dawn of humanity. And before that, with older species." "Aye. And beyond what I said...is it relevant, in this moment, if the kit was *ever* in the floor? That moment is past and literally no longer exists anywhere in this universe." "I can see why you've been withdrawn lately. Please continue." "And are we truly aware of the kit having been in the floor? If it's all just a lot of neurons becoming dedicated, a binary language in a mass of grey matter, an electrochemical record that physically exists, what is awareness? What's personality? Who in hell are we all--and do we deserve the word 'who'? Maybe it should be 'what'. You aren't thinking of everything you've ever seen, been, felt and done in your entire life, are you?" "No." "Jolly well not. But y'can call it up, from your memory, like pulling a file from the computer. Heat. Sour. Runabout. Wedding. Summer. Something different came into your head for each of the words I just said, and in a moment you won't be thinking about them anymore and those memories will be down off active status." "I'm following you." "But what I'm saying is too frightening a thought for most people, me included. Even the Vulcans believe in the concept of a, what is it, 'katra'. But we have no empirical reason to believe anything exists beyond the evidence of our own senses. That includes when we use instruments or Holmesian logic to detect what we can't naturally; we're still observing those instruments and et cetera through our senses. And the brain can be fooled with astonishing ease, as many of us have damn good reason to know. It can be fuddled up with drugs, illness, trauma, surgical techniques, it just isn't difficult to blight the evidence of our senses. It's physical. It's quantifiable." "To a degree, yes, it is." "So why do we think there's this thing called 'consciousness' and that we have it and 'non-sentient' species don't? Or that there's a supreme being? Or in the idea of sacredness, *if* the universe, including us, is nothing but a bunch of subatomic particles in various combinations? "But even people dedicated to science are susceptible. If you can't bring yourself to believe there is a God or whatever such, you can always leap into the search for knowledge and tell yourself that the reason you immediately set new goals once you discover the truth about your most recent one is because of an insatiable curiousity and a need to know. That's not it at all. What it is, is that people can't bear for there to be no mystery, for everything to be explainable. The 'there's still so much we don't know' factor, y'could call it. Oh, yes, got to keep *those* fires burning at *all* costs. We need to believe...that there's a chance we have souls." "And I take it you've been unable to believe that since...when, exactly?" "I don't know how long. Definitely since prison. And I might've been having the first stirrings of it all farther back, during the war. Death'll do that to you." "Indeed it can." "There's no bloody meaning to any of it, is there?" "Miles..." The chief's breath was ragged, and Julian, with a healer's instinct, leaned over and hugged Miles close. Miles squeezed back so hard Julian thought he might wind up with Kukalaka syndrome. "I think we've just had some kind of breakthrough," Julian murmured. "How long have you been keeping all that in? Never mind. Just cry." Miles apparently had no intention of doing anything else anyway. After a while, Julian said "Computer, replicate a warm damp towel." "Specify temperature." "Twenty-five degrees." With a sparkle, the towel materialized, folded and steaming, behind Miles. Julian could just reach it with his left hand; he picked it up and sat Miles up a little, holding the towel to his face for him. "Here. Blow." Miles choked on a laugh and took the towel from him, and proceeded to clean himself up a bit while Julian rubbed the hand still on Miles soothingly back and forth over his shoulders. "Oh, lordy," Miles sighed eventually, elbows on his knees, head hanging. "What the devil is wrong with me, Julian? I'm not like this. I never have been. Where did that almighty load of rubbish come from?" "It wasn't rubbish, chief. You were asking some very legitimate questions, which you have more right than many to ask after all you've been through. If what had been done to you was done to me, I'd be questioning the nature of reality, consciousness, time, and just what exactly it is the I in me consists of if someone can just come along and do what the Argrathi did to you. I wish I could answer those questions for you, that anyone could...that no one can is very unfair and very frustrating." "It's that all right." "Had you ever put those questions into words before now?" Miles absently twisted the towel in his hands. "Sorry I got your uniform wet." "I'm a doctor. My uniform's been cried on almost as often as a father's is. Have you?" "I didn't--I never even put it all together in a single question, or statement, or whatever it rotting well was." "So you felt helpless against it." "Mm." "You must have been achingly lonely with all that in there and no one to share it with. No one to understand what you felt." "Aye. S'pose I was. I won't lob it at Keiko, the poor thing's got enough worries without me going all Hamlet on her. It's not the kind of thing I could tell Nerys, and right now I wouldn't even if it was." "Telnori?" "I don't know. Maybe what you said. I wanted someone to understand, not analyze it and tell me why I shouldn't be feeling like I do. Or maybe I just didn't understand enough myself at the time I saw him last." "Is what you just said the thing you couldn't tell anyone?" Miles sighed. "I should say yes and get you off my back, but you let me use your shoulder for a hanky and I'm sort of indebted. No, it's not that. But the whole nine yards I just dumped on you is...the biggest reason I've been so quiet." "Are you going to tell Keiko?" "D'you think I should? It's all so...well...morose again." "I'll talk to her if you'd rather. If you don't want all the messy details out. But I think she deserves some reassurance. She's been very patient, and I know she's worried--more by your silence than anything else." "I'd appreciate it if you'd just give her your medical opinion or something. Like I said, I don't want to loose all this on her in a flood." "Consider it done." --- "Mmmph..." Julian felt himself swimming up from sleep. The comm. "Bashir--" he managed, with a guttural noise, to get himself upright. "Bashir here." He waited for one of the sickbay gamma--or delta?--shift to tell him there was an emergency requiring his attention. "It's me, Julian." "Miles? What's the matter?" He felt a stab of alarm. "Is everyone all--?" "Everyone's fine. It's just...I think I'm...a couple of weeks ago, what I said I couldn't tell you..." Julian was quiet for a dead, brain-sifting moment, then said "I'm still here. I'm listening." "Not over the comm." "Shall I meet you?" "Just stay there. I'll be over in a few minutes." "Looking forward to it." "You think so now. O'Brien out." Julian sighed and hauled himself up, threw some cold water across his person and got into some dark, loose off-duty clothes. He got himself a raktajino to be certain he was fully alert, but he didn't think he'd need it. He was about as wide awake now as it got, after that call. Miles showed as promised, still in uniform, and Julian wordlessly handed him a double-sweet black coffee and waved him to a seat. He sat down nearby--not too close--and said in his most reassuring doctor voice "Whenever you're ready." "*That* isn't damn well going to happen, so I might as well get to it." He took a drink of his coffee and stared at the surface of the dark liquid a moment. "What I said I couldn't tell anyone...it turns out I could. I told Keiko." "An excellent choice of confidante. Does she know everything now?" "Everything that I do, which isn't a lot. I mean, it's a lot, but I could tell you in a few words." "How did she take your description of the dreams?" "She was fairly well stunned, but she knew about what had hap--about what I'd done, in the cell, in the memory, with Ee'char. *Your* answer, though...about what is it I want to do..." "Miles, however outlandish you think it might--" "It's not what you could call outlandish. But it's tremendously personal." He fixed his gaze on Julian. "All of this...oh. Do you mean personal to me?" "I mean personal to you." "I see. Is that why you couldn't tell me? Should we have avoided the whole exercise of your seeing me instead of Telnori?" "No, I needed that. I needed to know whether I was...whether I would do what I was afraid I'd do to you. The sessions with you have made me a lot less of a--well, according to Keiko, I've been more livable." "I'm glad to hear it." There was a pause, and Miles muttered "And now you're thinking 'that's not why the blighter called me up in the dead of night and I wish he'd get to it.'" Julian set his mug down and leaned against the sofa back again, throwing an arm over it. "Think of me as expectant, not impatient. Because I'm not impatient." "All right, you 'expect' that I'll stop dithering." Miles took another swallow of coffee. "You're going to be shocked. I can guarantee that." "Then I'll be shocked. But you'd be amazed what my delicate ears can withstand." "There's nothing delicate about--blast it, I'm just going to have to spit it out, aren't I?" "Whatever works." Miles nodded. "You...remember what I said about...the dreams, being nightmares. The...killing Ee'char, and then you, that was nightmare. The abuse, the general rottenness--that's bad. The rest of it..." he let out a breath in resignation. "...really *isn't* so bad, up 'til it goes violent." Julian considered, then blinked in comprehension. "Oh, you mean the sex." "Yeah, that." Miles set his cup down with a thump and rested his forehead in his hands. "Sorry. Didn't mean to 'discomfit' you." Miles smiled briefly and then lifted his head. "Nothing to the way you've been making me feel for...hell. I don't know how long now. Julian...what I want..." he took another large breath and let it out. "...is something to remember. To fight the way those dreams end. I want you, to be with you and fall to sleep and wake up and see you open your eyes and answer me when I touch you. Bloody." He let his head fall to his palms again. "So that I'll know I have a soul. So I'll know I am still that honorable decent person you keep telling me I am, I won't have to take anyone's word for it. There are so many things I can't know, that no one can know for certain--but if there was that..." He paused for another breath. "I'll never be able to make it right with Ee'char, but I can't stand to lose you as well, to...whatever's..." he trailed off. He's right, Julian thought dazedly. I'm shocked. "I...can see why you weren't comfortable talking about it. You must be nervous about the idea of being unfaithful to Keiko, and upset if these feelings are undermining a...a good friendship, and you're probably...worried about what I think." "Speaking of that last. I don't suppose you *do* have an opinion, since you've gone all counselor on me again?" "I...well, I do in a--if you're worried, don't be, but...I haven't had a lot of time to...Keiko knows about this, you said?" "Now she does, yes." "...how is she now?" "Asleep." "Oh." For something to do, Julian leaned over and picked his cup back up. Nice jolt of klingon coffee would go down well about now, he thought. God. What do I say? I specifically requested this conversation and I'm purely not holding my end of it up. "What you say makes sense. I don't have to stretch my imagination to see how important it might be to you to...exorcise this demon. But you've worried aloud about losing me before. Since I've no reason to go anywhere of my own volition, no matter what you might say, I assume you mean *you'd* be forced to discontinue our friendship." "Worse. I might have to leave the station. And there's no way I can until the baby's born." "Leave the station? Wouldn't that be a little beyond the...be rather excessive?" Miles's voice choked into hoarseness; he made a sound of frustration, then got out "So damn-all GUILTY every time I see you, every time I *think* of you--do I really want to snap your neck like an animal--? And all with you being so bloody *good* to me, so *concerned* for me--when I'm awake, I know I'd never kill you, I wouldn't follow through, but Julian--you were wrong. Wondering if you're capable and wanting to do it and doing it and all of it are part of the same thing--and it's all as bad...I only want to be myself again. Look in the mirror and recognize the man Keiko married. If I've offended you, I apologize...but you said you wanted to know." "No, not...not at all, Miles, I'm not offended. I wasn't taking...I didn't realize the effect I was...I'd never have suggested my becoming your therapist if I'd been able to hear what you were saying. You were right, I didn't. I feel quite foolish. I suppose...that possibility simply never occurred to me. You must have wanted to knock my head in a few dozen times over the last weeks." "Bloody well did. But that's not unusual. I swear, after all we've gone through...you know me well enough to read me like a book and manipulate the hell out of me for your own amusement, but *this* went right past you. It figures. It really does. You're a study in deliberate contrariness." Julian grinned and dropped his eyes to the floor. "I suppose I deserve that." Then he sobered again, knowing he was going to have to ask. "Keiko...did she know you were going to tell me?" "Julian, my heart nearly broke. She just sat there on the bed for nearly half an hour, holding her middle and rocking. Then she said 'Miles--or if you're not Miles, please tell him--I want my husband back. Go see Julian. Find out what he has to say.'" "God. I'm sorry." "I told Nerys I was going to be up late, and that it might be a good idea if she slept with Keiko. They were both out when I left, and Molly." "What time is it, anyway?" "It should be getting close to midnight." "Do you think Keiko will tell Major Kira?" "Mother of Danaans. Nerys'd pound me through the floor. I swear to ye she sometimes acts like a jealous boyfriend. No, Keiko and I are keeping this to ourselves. The rest of the family only knows I've been brooding, and none of them really wonder at it, what with the way things are." Julian smiled slightly. "The Major's only acting like a mother. She feels for Keiko, missing her baby." "Aye. I suppose." Julian thought a moment. "Chief, you have to be very certain, very sure of what you want to do. You need to think about the ramifications for you and Keiko, and you and me, and purely for yourself. What if it doesn't help? Or Keiko, at the last, can't abide it? I don't want to make things worse for you, not in any way." "I've been thinking about this since you broke your shower. Actually, I'd been thinking of it before, but...I didn't know why, until the day I said I couldn't tell you what you wanted to hear. You said I was obsessed, and you're right. If you hadn't been here, I'd simply've dreamed of someone else; but as things are--there were times...you'd look at me, and it seemed that if I could just..." he sighed and broke off. After a breath he continued "Or on Mars, when you...when I cried. For all that you happen be the name a lot of the problem is wearing, not Telnori nor anybody else could have got all that together and out of me. And I was having these...these thoughts, even as you...let's just say I did *not* feel great about myself." "I wish I'd understood a long time ago. Really." "I believe you. Aine preserve us. All those brains and not a clue." He imitated Julian's accent and added 'Haven't forgotten it, Miles'. 'How does being so aware of me make you feel, chief?' Have you always been so blissfully ignorant of the effect you have on people?" "I *have* occasionally wondered about Garak." "Only occasionally?" "Miles, if you've already thought it well over..." Julian got up, came over to Miles's chair and took his near hand, sinking down to rest his other arm on the chair's. "My only other question would be--do you really think you can? Are you sure? Because if there's...nervousness, or shame, or, even, much embarrassment--things aren't likely to turn out how we hope they will." "Can you promise me never to mention it? Not to Telnori, not Keiko--let me do the talking with them about it--not to anyone at all, ever?" "I can definitely promise you that. And not only because it'd be a form of betraying doctor-patient confidentiality. I care too much for you." "And next time we get into a flaming verbal sparring match?" Julian smiled. "Wouldn't be cricket to stoop that low. Besides, I always win anyway." "Bloody arrogant." "So I've been told. Listen...a number of times you've started to tell me of something that comes across you when I look at you. Can you tell me what it is?" "It's silly." "I'd gathered you thought so, but I can assure you I won't share that opinion." "It's just..." Julian kept his face carefully still, gazing up at Miles. He squeezed the hand he was holding and waited. "It seemed--whatever it was that was missing--what they took from me--I could find out what, even get it back--the answer was in you, one way or another. With your eyes on me, I felt so close to it. But I knew I couldn't look back long enough to find it. It seemed like the end of hope." "Well," Julian replied, quietly, "you can look now." Miles hesitated a moment, then shifted his weight and lifted his other hand to Julian's neck, fingers sliding into dark hair gently, exerting no real steadying pressure, but Julian held still anyway. Their gazes met. Julian listened to the soft thrum of the station systems; usually they were, if one noticed them at all, something of an annoyance. Now, they seemed part of the natural background, a calmative to keep their gazes from locking in a panicked uselessness--the setting that made such examination not only tolerable, but natural. He felt no stress in meeting Miles's eyes, letting his regard wander about the other man's face and body a bit, returning soon to the green-hazel focused into his own golden brown gaze. He looked back as openly as he knew how--which, hard as that sometimes was, proved little problem now, since he was not the issue--except so far as he pertained to Miles as an issue. After a minute, Julian reached up to touch Miles's face. "Any help?" He made the words as soft, as gentle, as he thought he could get away with. Miles tried to speak, inhaling and even forming the first word, but, eyes still deep in Julian's, he couldn't get it out. "Do you think it *is* here--what you're looking for--even if you can't narrow it down yet?" "I know it," Miles graveled out, trembling on the edge of movement, finally leaning down to pull Julian up close to him, their faces briefly touching and pressing before Julian's forehead rested secure in the curve of Miles's neck. "It's as I said. It's in you, the right question, the answer...I can almost see it...Julian, you haven't said you want this, and I can't do another thing until I know." "Oh, Miles...of course. And I would never make love with anyone out of pity, so forget that idea at once. I'm not frightened--but if you are, we needn't go too quickly. We should take some time in any case. Do you want to tell Keiko my answer?" "I think...just the once, that it might be better if you had that discussion with her. You know how she trusts you, knows you wouldn't lie to her. I'll tell her, but I'd like you to talk with her about the circumstances. Give this...some verisimilitude. She'll need it." "You're quite right, I'm sure. Here." He leaned up and kissed Miles gently on the mouth. The other man started, but then--albeit a bit frozenly--held the soft kiss and let it fall away naturally. Not meeting Julian's eyes, he barely whispered "Outside the twenty years, I've...never kissed another man. Well, my father and uncles, brothers--but that wasn't on the mouth." His voice dropped to near inaudibility. "And never the same as that felt." "Not even in the dreams?" "In the dreams...I can't explain. The dreams feel like dreams. That felt real." "Better? Worse? Different?" "...different." Their position of the moment was actually fairly comfortable--Julian set back on one heel, the other knee up, as they both rested their weight on the chair arm, folded close. Julian felt an odd content. Finally he essayed "I like this." Miles nodded, barely. "It's...a good place to rest." "Then you feel safe, right now?" "For now. I couldn't hurt a fly the way I feel now. Whatever it is I need...it's close enough, here. But I still don't know what *it* is, exactly--I can only call it a soul, or part of one--but I know what the lack of it does to me, and when you go from me--" "I won't, tonight. You'll stay here, and I'll leave a note with Keiko that you are very specifically *sleeping* here--and you, and then I, will be talking to her tomorrow. I think...that she'll be happy to know that for once--since all this came about--you felt completely safe." "Maybe. But with you, and not her?" "Don't forget what else we'll be talking about. It may sit heavy for a while, but I know Keiko, too. She'll understand that you'll feel safe with her as well; it's not her. She knows that. Keiko grieves for your pain, Miles. She doesn't blame you." "I hope to God. Julian..." he was quiet so long that Julian nearly prompted him again, but just before he could, Miles spoke. "I wonder....could you could give me an, I don't know, a sedative or something?" "Trouble sleeping?" "Trouble sleeping with you. I lie down next to you and on the tick I'm afraid...that when I wake up..." "And the sedative would reassure you that there's no chance of your doing me harm in the night." "Yes. It *is* the night, or whenever I sleep, that I still can't be sure..." "I'll give you something that'll make you relaxed, keep some of the worry at bay. I don't think you'll have any trouble resting then." He found himself reluctant to get up, but finally did and went to the replicator, used his clearance and procured a hypo with a filled canister. When he returned to Miles, the other man was sitting with his head in his hands. "Miles. Here." Miles obediently turned his head to receive the pressure injection into the carotid, and then blinked suddenly. "Julian?" "Yes?" Julian couldn't help a sympathetic smile. "What was that?" "Something called sutroxin. In higher doses it can mask pain and other discomforts at the central nervous system level. In low doses, it just calms you down and makes you feel the way you do now. It's often given to patients before surgery if there's anxiety sufficient to trouble the working of the alpha inducer. Now then--come with me?" He set the hypo down on the low table and held out his hands coaxingly. Miles seemed to try, but his utter confusion at the alienness of the situation was so apparent Julian let his hands fall and perched on the chair arm, laying an arm across the chief's shoulders. "We're only going to sleep, Miles. Remember that. You're feeling a pleasant lassitude from the sutroxin; don't try to think; just follow the feeling. You're safe; so am I. There's nothing for anyone to be uncomfortable with...or anxious about..." he had let his voice drop, lilting, to its lower registers, keeping it smooth. "Just sleep. No one to worry. Nothing dangerous; nothing to fear...nothing at all. You'll be near me--and whatever it is that I have which you need--and we'll worry about naming it later." As in the Martian holoprogram, he let his hand run slowly, almost caressingly, across Miles's shoulders. Finally Miles raised his head. "I feel like a bloody idiot." "Please try not to." "This isn't the sort of thing I...that we do." "It's not the sort of thing you do with anyone but Keiko, and limited even then, out of an overzealous desire to protect her. I'm not only your best friend, I'm a doctor. A therapist. It just happens that I also love my patient, in this case. Don't *worry* so, Miles. I've told you I'd never use any of this against you. Don't you believe me?" "A'course I do, or I wouldn't be here, you know that." "Then get up and come with me. Here." He held his hands out again. Miles took them, held them a moment while he looked at the floor between his feet; then he slowly stood up. Julian murmured "There. Wasn't so hard. Come on; let's get some sleep." --- Keiko's eyes were dark stars, burning at him over the rim of her mug. As she set the cup down, she asked "And you're sure this will help him?" "Keiko...as much as I'd like to be able to guarantee that to you, I can't. He's like any other abuse victim; he needs some experience of gentleness in the areas he was brutalized, to help reorder his thinking and expectations to a healthier pattern. He never dreams of harming you, or Nerys or the children or anyone else--never fears he'll hurt anyone but me. All he needs is to know that it won't happen, that the Argrathi can't make him surrender his honor, his humanity, again. He's afraid of me because of what I represent--at the same time that he's drawn to me, since I seem to contain the answer to that fear as well." "And...you think...you're all right with it?" "I'm fine with it. Miles is your husband, not mine; but he is my best friend, and I do love him. I would never do anything to hurt him, and that includes interfering with his family life." "And you think it would only be once." "Is that what he told you?" "He said he *hoped* it would only be once." "Well enough; that's what I hope, too. Since I represent so much...there is the possibility this could do him more good than any of us can imagine right now." "Or less." "Or less, that's true. But I honestly think it will help him, maybe enormously." Keiko got up from the chair she was in, in Julian's quarters, and took a few aimless steps. "How was he when he woke up this morning?" "I made sure to be awake before he was; the first thing he saw was me, ready for shift, alive and well. He did hyperventilate a bit and his pupils contracted slightly--I believe he was afraid it might be a dream, or some sort of illusion." "So that wasn't enough to reassure him." "No. I honestly wish it had been, Keiko." "Then I don't suppose we have a choice," Keiko said, her voice steady; but Julian knew, even though she was facing away from him, staring out the port, that there were tears leaking down her cheeks. He got up and came to lay his hands on her shoulders. "Please don't think of it like that. Miles will never love anyone else the way he loves you. We won't let this make any difference--except a positive one--to your family. We three--and Telnori, if Miles decides to discuss it with him--are the only ones who need know." "Do you think that makes it any easier?" Keiko hissed, motionless under his hands. "Nothing about this is easy. It's a tragedy all the way around. But we're lucky enough to have found an avenue that should lead to some level of peace for everyone--Miles especially, but all of us, at the last. And with the Major and the baby, your family sorely needs all the peace it can get." Keiko gave a shuddering sigh, wiped her eyes briefly and turned to face him, chin high. "I trust you, Julian." She pronounced the words almost as a formula, looking him square in the eyes. "I accept your trust," Julian replied softly. "And you may be sure that it's safe with me." --- "Mother Danu. I knew I was gonna hate this part." "This *is* rather awkward." He was with Miles in his quarters again, both of them on the sofa, both of them in uniform, and both of them feeling terrifically self-conscious. "Well, you're the therapist. What do you suggest?" Julian smiled. "How about a game of racquetball?" Miles blinked. "You jest." "Sir, I do not. We need relaxing, familiarity, and to stop bloody *thinking* so powerfully about what we plan on doing." Miles considered. "Makes sense. Let me stop by home and change; I'll meet you at the court." "See you there." --- "You're a blathering blind--" "The computer said that shot was in!" "Technicalities. You're winning on computer error now?" "Don't be such a sore loser." Julian pulled the sweatband off his head and started to peel out of his white-and-silver tennis outfit as the door to his quarters closed behind them. "You and your fancy dancing. In my day--" "I know, I know--you played five hours a day every day and you could have wiped the court with me, computer referee or no." He stuffed everything he'd taken off into the laundry chute, then turned and headed for the bathroom in his sweaty underclothes. "You're making such a do over a two-point win." "That's the point! It shouldn't have been your damn win. Any human ref would have said so." "Well, we didn't have a human ref." The door closed behind Julian and he stripped off his undergarments and got into the shower. Somewhat trepidatiously, he turned it on, but the screaming whine he'd half-feared would deafen him did not occur and he relaxed into the gentle vibrations. When the chief fixed something, he fixed it right. He finished with a purely unsonic blast of cool water and shook his hair out, then stepped out and wrapped a towel on before leaving the bathroom, picking up his jettisoned underthings on the way. "Your turn. You did bring your robe?" "Of course I brought my blasted robe. The sonics working all right?" "They did for me." Miles muttered something as he disappeared into the bathroom. Julian started for the closet, stopped, and altered course to the dresser. He got into a pair of black drawstring pajama pants and went to the replicator for two glasses of ale, one of which he left there with instructions to keep it cool and undead and one of which he took an immediate pull off of. He then entered the bedroom with it, sat down on the bed and said "Computer. Playback of racquetball game, Bashir-O'Brien, this date, commencing from first serve." When Miles came out, in his robe and surrounded by a corona of steam, Julian was lying on the bed, propped up with his arms folded, ale in one hand, watching the playback on the bedroom comm screen. "There's an ale keeping cold in the replicator for you. I'm going to restart this. We'll see who won on a technicality." Miles snorted. "By all means." He went out to get the ale, came back in to the bedroom, and sort of stood there a moment; Julian sensed it and said "Now just look! Computer, take playback five seconds previous. There. You were out of the serve zone. Plain as--" "I had--MAYbe the edge of my shoe on the line, and that's *in*!" "Technicalities, chief. Sit down and we'll settle this." Miles plopped down next to him and they commenced an involved and heated rehashing of the entire game. --- Two glasses of ale each later, they had come to an uneasy truce about the game. "If it'd been a human ref," Miles muttered, lying on his back with his eyes closed and his hands folded behind his head while computer-voiced game narration nattered in the background. "But it wasn't," Julian responded, in a similar pose, but with his eyes open. He chuckled low in his throat. "Rematch?" "Not now, Danu forbid. I'm too comfortable." "So am I." Julian rolled over and landed on his elbows, one on either side of Miles's chest. In startlement, Miles's arms automatically came down from propping his head, but they had nowhere to go but around Julian, so they hovered a few heartbeats while Miles got large-eyed. Julian dove and planted a smacking kiss on the chief's mouth. "Next time, we can get a ref and not rely on the computer." Miles's arms came to rest distractedly around Julian as the chief puzzled "There's nowhere in the court for a real ref. We'd have to build a box." "You built the court, you can build a box. I'll help." Julian kissed his forehead. "*You* help? You're hopeless at--" "Hardly. I did fix the transmitter during that bit with the Harvesters." "Only because I talked you through it." "And half dead at that." Julian shifted over to rest part of his weight on Miles, concerned Miles would bolt, but the chief seemed more interested in the banter than their physical proximity. Julian wasn't sure if that was good or bad, but at least Miles didn't seem to be going anywhere. "Didn't think we'd get out of that one," Miles murmured. "Neither did I." "And when you started blathering on in the infirmary about what an honor it was serving with me I almost wished we hadn't." "No, I blathered on about how you'd told *me* it was an honor serving with me." "You *would* remember that." "Yes. I would." He kissed Miles again, expecting about as much response as before-- --and found himself on his back with a bearlike chief of operations on top of him, kissing him penetratingly. Miles broke the kiss only a second to say "Computer. Lights down." As they were plunged into the dimness of the cool-colored lights of the comm screen, Miles efficiently tugged at the tied drawstring of Julian's pajama pants and, without further ado, slid them off and dropped them on the floor. His own bathrobe followed them. By this time, Julian wasn't surprised to find he wasn't wearing anything under it. He'd wondered just what this would be like. It turned out that Miles was a gentle, experienced, and considerate lover. Julian had to remind himself that the chief had, for all practical purposes, had years of practice making love with a man, though that man wasn't Julian, and the doctor occasionally had to indicate his differing preferences. But he only had to indicate them once. Miles seemed to have a deep fascination with Julian's skin; he kept running his hands all along Julian's body, enthralled, as though handling something delicate and precious. They lay wrapped closely for a long time, caressing each other like that, kissing each other's faces and shoulders and anything else within easy reach. Julian had expected to feel at least a little strange, but Miles was so obviously oblivious to everything but the man he held that Julian couldn't maintain any feeling of awkwardness. He started to slide down Miles's body, but the other man stopped him, holding his shoulders gently. "No. Let me." Julian, adrift in a sea of warmth, affection and arousal, rolled easily onto his back, running his hands over Miles's shoulders and through his sandy curls, until Miles took him in his mouth; he gasped once, then commenced a steady panting that swiftly built into soft moans. Miles reached up and took his hand, and Julian squeezed for all he was worth, trying to subdue his rocking motions as much as he could, but Miles was good at what he was doing; the effort at control wasn't easy. Finally, it became impossible. He arched up to Miles's mouth, giving himself up with a sharp cry. Miles kept at him, and Julian was carried through wave after wave of rolling pleasure. He collapsed, exhausted; Miles moved back up to him and slid an arm under him, pulling him close; Julian embraced him back ardently, the shudders that kept blossoming from somewhere inside him slowly quieting. He opened his eyes when he felt Miles stroking his cheek. The other man was gazing raptly at him. "You are beautiful," he whispered. "You *are*." "Oh, Miles..." Julian pulled himself close, burying his face in Miles's neck. "I love you." Miles's arms went even tighter around him. "I love you, Julian." Julian raised his head to meet Miles's gaze again. "Will you let me, now?" The older man nodded slowly, but then pulled him in for a long kiss; soft, and deep. Julian began moving down, running his lips and tongue and fingers freely along the contours of the other man's body, lightly caressing Miles's erection with his mouth before taking the warm shaft in, supporting it with one hand to get the best angles and access he could, reaching up as Miles had done to hold the other man's hand, feeling the shuddering response, the fingers running softly, easily through his hair. When he sensed Miles was close, he slid his arms under the older man's body and held him firmly until it was over. He stayed there a few moments, his head resting on Miles's stomach, arms still around his waist; then he drew a shaking breath and raised himself up, coming back up to feel Miles's arms closing around his shoulders, pulling him in. He didn't know how long they continued like that, caressing, exploring, pleasuring each other one at a time and both at once, but he figured later that it must have been hours. Through it all, Miles would occasionally pause and meet Julian's eyes, stroking his face and throat, gazing at him searchingly. Julian met the gaze without the faintest trace of self-consciousness. He wondered if he'd ever been so comfortable in bed with someone in his life. But he did make sure Miles fell asleep first; he got them both comfortable, close, so that if Miles should wake at any point he would feel Julian's warmth, breath, heartbeat... --- "Julian." Julian stirred, warm and easy, loathe to open his eyes--but then he remembered, and felt Miles's hands closing on his shoulders as the other man repeated, urgency creeping into his tone, "*Julian*." "Miles." He opened his eyes and smiled. "Good morning." Miles enveloped him in a hug that didn't even come close to ending for a good half hour. Julian just stroked Miles's hair and shoulders, whispering reassurances, letting the other man's warm tears drip, salty, down his shoulder and arm and onto the mattress. --- "Oh no, you sadist," Major Kira was saying as Miles got up from his chair at the table and started to approach her. She held her hands over the nape of her neck protectively. "As long as Julian's here, let him make himself useful." Keiko set the last dish back into the replicator and laughed. "I think Miles likes hearing us scream, Nerys. I wish we'd had Julian around when I was pregnant with Molly." Julian had obligingly risen and come around the table to where Kira sat in a pale pink tunic. "Here." He lent her his arm to help her out of the chair and conducted her to the sofa. "Feet up, that's right...now just relax." He started in on her knotted trapezius. "Ow!" "I'm sorry, but there'll be a little tenderness. I promise I won't torture you the way Miles does." "Hey," Miles complained, taking a seat nearby with his ale glass from dinner while Keiko took Molly in to bathe. "Keiko loved my massages. Just ask her." Passing through the room to get a nightgown for Molly, Keiko said "Usually, yes. But I didn't have to sit on that awful Cardassian stool in Ops all day, bending over a computer board, when I was pregnant. Nerys needs a lighter touch." "Yeah," Nerys agreed righteously, wincing just slightly as Julian found another trouble spot. "You're still taking the supplement shots I gave you?" "Yes, I'm taking the supplements. What am I, a child?" "Certainly not by the looks of things. Don't swat your masseur, it's poor etiquette." "Keiko, swat him for me, would you?" Nerys grinned at the sound of a sharp report off some portion of Julian's anatomy, and grinned even more broadly at Julian's vocalization of complaint. Finally Keiko came back, having put Molly to bed with a padd of her favorite stories to read for an hour before time to sleep. "Have you had enough yet, Nerys?" "I think so. He's right, he's not as vicious as Miles is, but he gets the job done. Thanks." Keiko had come to help Nerys lever herself up from the sofa. "I wish I had you around every morning to help me out of bed." "Well, you can tomorrow; you'll sleep with me and Miles can take your bed." A brief cross look passed over Miles's features, but vanished as both women stared him down. "Come on," Keiko said sympathetically to her elephantine friend, "you've been yawning all through dinner. Let's get you to bed." The two ascended the level to the master bedroom and vanished therein. Miles and Julian looked at each other, trying to keep their faces straight, but as soon as smiles started looming they both broke into soft chuckling. "How are things going with Telnori?" Julian asked as they quieted. "I told him last session." "And how was his response?" "About what we'd expected. He wanted to know if, and how much, it'd helped. I told him I'm not afraid of myself, I'm not afraid of you, and I've been a hell of a lot less a bastard to my family and staff. Still moody, some dreams that aren't such fun, but..." he shrugged. "Well, we could hardly have hoped for better, could we?" "Suppose not." Miles sipped his ale, looking at Julian contemplatively. "There is one thing I might've wished." Julian said softly "What's that?" "It could have gone on longer. Almost a pity it helped so fast." Julian reached for Miles's hand. "Yes," he agreed in a near-whisper. "In another life. It *would* have been nice." Miles gripped Julian's hand in return; then, as one, they let their hands fall. "So, think we can dig up a live ref?" Miles wondered. Julian smiled. --- The End