Lee paused in the doorway to the bedroom, taking a moment to enjoy the little skip in his heartbeat that he felt every time he saw Amanda and the little ripple of anticipation that now he could allow himself to openly enjoy it. He'd acknowledged his feelings for her internally a long time since but now… now he didn't have to squelch them down out of sight, always that slight fear that she didn't – couldn't – feel the same way, that her smiles and her hand squeezes were nothing but friendship or a teasing flirtation between co-workers.

Now she was here, comfortably stretched out in his bed as if she belonged there - and she did, oh God, yes she did – with tousled hair hanging down, almost covering her face and that little freckle peeking out, the one he'd found just under her bra strap on her side, the one that had rapidly become the target of his own little treasure hunt when they were intimate. It amused her endlessly that he was so intent on memorizing all her little marks and scars, but really he just loved to hear her explain them, to hear the stories of childhood accidents always told with that self-deprecating laughter rumbling in her chest, squirming with delight as he kissed and licked and nuzzled each one in turn. And if he found himself returning time and time again to the those tiny lines along the sides along her belly, tracing them with his fingertips while resolutely refusing to let himself wonder if maybe she'd want… well, he never voiced it and she never said a word as he studied them.

The object of his study looked up, smile lighting up her face and dainty pink flush coloring her cheeks – and a few other body parts he noted with glee as he grinned back at her.

"Whaaaat?" she drew out the word in a teasing question.

"Nothing. Just enjoying the view," he answered, making his way back to the bed.

Amanda puffed out a quiet chuckle as he leaned down to kiss her. "Ditto," she smiled up at him. She shifted to make room for him, but held onto the framed picture she'd been studying when he'd returned.

"You know, you look so much like your father," she held out the picture. "It's almost eerie."

"Do I?" He took it from her and squinted at it. "I suppose so. I never gave it much thought."

"Well, you have the same smile, the dimples – I bet if this wasn't a black and white photo, you'd have the same eye color."

Lee stared at it a beat longer. "I guess you're right. Huh." He gazed down at the smiling couple on their wedding day – he had no idea who the other people in the photo were and his memories of his parents were so damn foggy. He concentrated, trying to come up with a memory of his childhood and found almost nothing, all of them subsumed by the pain of loss that came later. He realized Amanda was asking him something.

"I'm sorry – what?"

Amanda caressed his cheek with her knuckles, giving him an understanding smile, but saying nothing about the way she could see his attention had wandered. "I asked if this is the only picture you have of them."

"Oh! Yeah," He was still only half-listening to her.

"That's odd, don't you think?"

"I- what?"

"It's odd – that there's only the one photo of your parents," Amanda took it out of his hands and studied it some more.

"Why is that odd?"

Amanda looked up, surprised. "Well, from what you've told me, they were a normal couple with a child they loved. So where are the baby photos, the vacation pictures, the family pictures? That just seems odd to me."

"Well, my uncle and I moved a lot with the Air Force," Lee felt compelled to explain. "We didn't keep a lot of stuff when we had to keep boxing it up and taking it to the next place."

"Oh Lee, I know that, and of course you wouldn't have taken a houseful of stuff with you, but photos don't take up much room, and it's not like your uncle wanted you to forget your mom and dad, is it? He wouldn't have just dumped something like that."

"No, he never wanted that," he agreed slowly. "We didn't talk about them a lot, but he definitely mentioned them." He gave her a wry look. "Usually when he wanted me to do something I didn't want to do."

Amanda put the photo down and leaned into him, pressing a kiss on his bicep before lifting his arm out of the way to snuggle in closer. "He was doing his best, you know." She gave a low laugh. "And you two are so very alike."

"I know," Lee admitted. "Hindsight's 20-20, but it's hard to forget what it felt like back then. The feeling he hated me when I was younger, hated me for what he'd had to give up to raise me, hated me for what he suspected I was…"

"Oh come on, now," Amanda began.

"I know now he didn't," Lee stopped her quickly. "I'm just saying that it's not easy to forget how I felt at the time."

Amanda made a humming noise against his chest, part acknowledgement, part distress. "Have you talked to him lately?"

"Not much," Lee admitted. "He hasn't been back in DC since Christmas and neither of us are much in the habit of checking in."

"Lee-ee," she sing-songed with a sigh. "He's your family."

"A-man-da," he began to sing-song back, mockingly, stopping when she raised herself on one elbow and lifted worried eyes to meet his. "Fine," he conceded. "I'll call him."

"Good," she answered, comfortably, as she let him draw her back down to rest against him. "He needs you."

Lee couldn't hold in the bark of laughter. "Robert Clayton never needed anyone in his life."

Amanda didn't look up this time, just continued to trace circles on his chest with her finger. "There are people who say that about you, you know." Lee didn't answer, but she could feel the shot hit home in the slight intake of his breath and the momentary stiffening of his body.

"I'll call him," came the quiet response.

He couldn't have said what it was about working on the Sinclair files that made him remember that promise a few days later. Realization wouldn't hit him for weeks yet, but for now, he just had an uneasy feeling that he needed to make that call now.

"Hello Colonel, it's Lee."

"Hey Skip, what's the problem?"

Lee stifled an irritated sigh. Of course that was where his uncle went immediately. There was only one person in the world who could get under his skin like this – and only three years of Amanda's good influence kept him from coming back with a snarky one-liner. And then, in the beat where that comment would normally have landed, he realized his uncle had gone on speaking, his voice filled with concern.

"Are you alright? It's nothing with Amanda, is it? She isn't hurt, is she? "

"No, no, she's fine," he rushed to reassure him. "It's nothing to do with her, I mean, it is, but it's nothing bad."

"Are you marrying her?"

"What? No!" Lee spluttered. "Why would you go there? We're barely even… barely anything."

His uncle's deep chuckle came rolling down the line. "Barely anything, he says. Okay, so if it's not bad news and it's not good news, what can I do for you?"

"I can't just be calling to say hello?" asked Lee, snippily.

"Skip." His uncle packed a range of reactions into the single syllable.

"Yeah, okay – Amanda brought something up and suggested I ask you," he admitted.

"Okay then, shoot."

"Well, the thing is… Amanda was looking at Mom and Dad's wedding photo, you know the one?"

"The one you keep in your bedroom?" teased the Colonel. "Yes, I know it."

"Cut that out," said Lee plaintively. "Anyway, she was asking why I only have the one picture so I said I'd call and ask if there are any others."

"Well, of course there are others," exclaimed the Colonel. "Boxes of 'em"

"Boxes of them?" repeated Lee incredulously. "Why haven't I ever seen them?"

"You don't remember?" asked his uncle, sounding equally surprised.

"If I remembered, would I be asking? Where have you been hiding them all this time?"

"Calm down, Skip," his uncle admonished him. "I wasn't hiding anything." Lee could hear him taking a deep breath at the other end of the line. "I guess it shouldn't surprise me you don't remember – you probably blocked it out."

"Blocked it out? What are you talking about?"

"When you came to me after that first year with my mother, you started having nightmares, almost every night. I mean, it was hardly surprising, so much had happened to you in such a short period of time, but it was impossible to get you to go to sleep at night until you just collapsed with exhaustion – and then a few hours later, you'd be awake screaming again. I was just about out of my mind after a few weeks."

"What were the nightmares about? Mom and Dad?" Lee felt like his uncle would expect him to ask, but he already knew what they were about – he'd had them for years and was having them again – but he tried to sound only just interested enough that his uncle wouldn't suspect anything was wrong. Amanda was already giving him worried looks – the last thing he needed was those two comparing notes.

"Well, no, that was the odd thing. They weren't about your parents or your grandmother, they were about monsters and bogeymen that were out to get you. I tried everything, telling you that I'd keep you safe, that your parents were watching from heaven and they'd keep away the monsters – nothing worked. Those first few months, I swear I woke up more often in the armchair in your room than I did in my own bed."

"You did? Why?"

"You didn't want to be alone," answered his uncle gruffly. "Sometimes the only way I could get you to sleep was if I promised to keep you company."

"Really?" asked Lee in disbelief. "You did that?"

"Well if I didn't, you'd just come and climb in my bed and you were all pointy elbows and kicking feet. The armchair was a damn sight more comfortable. Matt would have done the same – you and Jennie were his whole world."

Lee could hear the slight embarrassment in his uncle's voice at admitting to bending to the will of a stubborn child and swallowed against the sudden tightening of his throat. Time to get back on topic, he thought.

"But what does any of this have to do with pictures of my folks?"

"Oh right." His uncle cleared his throat and went on. "So, one night, when I was at my wit's end, I lost my temper and told you that you were being silly and that you were in the middle of an air force base with 5000 armed men on it and not one of them was going to let a monster get by and harm you on their watch."

"And that worked?"

"Well, kind of. You looked at me with these huge eyes and asked if that was true and I said, of course it was true – that was what soldiers did after all, protect people. You went quiet and finally you agreed to get back in bed and go to sleep."

"That doesn't answer-"

"God, Skip, do you never let Amanda finish a story either? I don't know why she puts up with you."

"It's the age-old question," Lee admitted. "I'm sorry, Sir. What happened next?"

"The next morning, I woke up and it took me a while to figure out what was wrong and then I realized, all the photos were gone."

"What do you mean gone?"

"Skip." Lee could hear the eye roll down the phone line.

"Sorry, Sir."

"Well, not gone – but every picture of your parents in the whole damn place was in a box in the hall closet – all except that wedding picture and the one I kept in my bedroom. You'd gotten up in the night and gone through the place like a burglar."

"But… why? Why would I do that?"

"Well, that's what I asked you, of course and you said it was to keep the monsters away from them and that you needed to keep them safe – but since Matt was a soldier in that picture, you knew he could take care of himself and your mother, so that's the one you kept."

"That's crazy," Lee protested.

"Well, you were six and a half years old, stubborn as hell and you were finally sleeping, so I wasn't about to argue with you. Mind you, it turned out I'd just traded one problem for another. It was after that that you started getting into fights at school all the time." The Colonel couldn't keep in his chuckle. "It was like you'd appointed yourself the playground sheriff - if there was a bully, you took them on and damn the torpedoes. Hardly a day went by without a call from the school, but at least I knew how to deal with that – although as I recall, you didn't respond to discipline quite as well as my recruits," he added dryly.

"I'm afraid I haven't changed much in that area," Lee responded, equally dryly.

"Somehow I suspect Amanda's figured out how to manage you better than I did," his uncle teased him. "But I had the drawback of having to be the authority figure. And of course, I had to pretend I wasn't proud of you," he went on, "so I used to have to say things like 'you can't even punch properly! Even a raw recruit knows to keep his thumb on the outside of his fist!' so that you didn't end up hurting yourself more than the other guy."

Lee was silent for a moment, absorbing the alien concept that his uncle had ever been proud of him, before dragging his thoughts back the reason for his call. "So, uh… what did you do with the all pictures? After I hid them?"

"Well, they moved with us a couple of times, and every time we moved, I'd put one or two out and every time, they'd disappear again – into a closet or a drawer or somewhere. One time, about a year later, I asked you why again and you just said it was off-limits. It was such an odd thing for a seven-year-old to say, but I figured it was a phrase you'd picked up from Matt, somehow. So after that, I stopped asking – just had it shipped to the storage unit with the rest of your parents' things…"

"WHAT?" Lee shouted down the line before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. "What do you mean, the rest of their things?"

"The storage unit, Skip," his uncle sounded completely perplexed. "The one in Bethesda – I gave you the key years ago, when you moved to D.C. fulltime to work for the Agency."

"A key?" Lee was having problems catching his breath. "To a storage unit?"

"Yes," said the Colonel patiently. "I gave you a box with all your personal stuff – school transcripts, old passports and whatnot – and there was an envelope on the top with a key and all the information for the safety deposit box with all your parents' paperwork, their marriage certificate and birth certificates, that kind of thing, and Jennie's jewelry, and another key for the storage unit. I set up the rental fees to be paid automatically out of the estate. Have you seriously never looked at any of that?"

"Well, I-I-I guess not," Lee admitted. "I mean, I was 23 and just out of 'Nam when I joined the Agency – you probably told me and I brushed it off as not important. What's in there?"

"Not a lot – all your personal things came with you, obviously. And things like clothes were donated to charity, but there's some small things Matt and Jennie had gotten as wedding presents, personal items, things like that – and of course, all those photos. I can't believe you've never noticed the monthly fees coming off."

"Well I haven't really touched any of the estate money – I just kept it in a savings account as a rainy day fund and I've never needed it…" Lee was getting choked up at the idea of getting back things that had belonged to his parents.

"Well, it isn't a huge sum," admitted the Colonel. "I mean, there was the money from selling the house and most of the contents, and Jennie had inherited a bit of money from her parents, but it was a nice little nest egg. I mean, there was never going to be a fortune, if that's what you're expecting. Not enough money in spy work to get rich, even back then."

The room around Lee tilted on its axis for a moment and he had to grip the edge of his desk to stay upright. "What are you talking about?" he managed to find his voice again. "Dad wasn't a spy – he was a…" his voice trailed off as he realized he didn't actually have any idea what his father did, except for vague memories of leaving the house and coming home again in a suit that smelled of pipe smoke.

"God, Skip – we really needed to talk more when you were younger," his uncle was apologizing now. "I thought you knew that – I thought that's why you followed in his footsteps."

"No, I… I mean, I knew he was in Army Intelligence during the war but I assumed that afterwards… that he'd gone into some kind of civil servant job, something to do with NATO or whatever it was that put him at the signing in '49 when he met Mom." Even as he said it, Lee realized that made no sense if his father was in uniform for their wedding photo.

"No, he worked with OSS right through the war and then stayed with Army Intelligence afterward. By the time you came along, he'd pretty much settled into the less active side of it – domestic stuff, you know, that kept him closer to home. The territory between intelligence agencies was a lot more fluid in those days what with all the fallout from the war. FBI, CIA, the military – everyone was looking for the same Russkies under the bed back then." There was a pause and then his uncle added, "You know what? The next time I'm in Washington, we should spend some time together and I'll try to answer all your questions."

"That'd be good," Lee answered, only half listening. "I…I-I gotta go. Goodbye Sir." He hung up before his uncle could even answer, dropping his head almost between his knees as he tried to control the wave of panic that had overtaken him in the last few minutes.

It was almost instinct to pick the phone back up to call Amanda but before he could even move, the panic enveloped him again, that voice in his head that shrieked "Don't tell, it's a secret! Don't tell, it's a secret!"

Lee let out a noise that in a child would have been a whimper of fear, before curling his body around the phone.

There is no such thing as monsters, he told himself. No monsters, no monsters.

Amanda could feel Lee pulling away, but couldn't find a reason why. He wasn't angry with her – she'd been on the receiving end of his irritation often enough to know that whatever it was, it wasn't aimed at her, but she couldn't help feeling bereft. They were such in the habit of sharing everything and now there was something he was keeping inside.

It wasn't work – or at least she didn't think so. His bits and pieces to do with the upcoming Rene Sinclair visit weren't particularly difficult – simple background checks, location surveys – nothing out of the ordinary there, and she hadn't heard of any roadblocks coming up on any of it that would be causing him grief and usually if it was stupid little things like that, he'd come to her for help.

Or maybe it was work, she thought, maybe he was getting claustrophobic with the busy work they'd been on all summer since Paris, maybe it was just boredom with the monotony of those checks.

Or with you.

Amanda pushed back firmly against the little voice in her head. No, it was too abrupt – he'd been his normal self for weeks as they'd explored this new side of themselves, more like himself if that was possible – a kind of carefree silly Lee that she'd only seen a few times until the past few months, a Lee she now realized had been kept carefully toned down for fear of… well, frightening her was her best guess. Even after she'd told him about the rape, he'd still been careful in a way she hadn't recognized until it had all come out in Paris – that he'd known about Leslie for months and said nothing, not knowing the whole truth.

But this wasn't that kind of carefulness either, and in the encyclopedia of fronts Lee Stetson used to hide behind, she was running out of guesses. Not anger, not work, not solicitude – not, not, not - and not any idea what was behind this.

Okay, so maybe it was her and work, she mused. Maybe having a desk in his office had been a bad idea, too much time together – he was still punctiliously polite, holding doors open, guiding her through crowds with that hand on her back but maybe he was feeling hemmed in.

No, she shook her head as she walked in the Agency door and greeted Mrs. Marston. No, he's not irritated, it's something else. Something is worrying him.

She took the courier parcel from the receptionist with a smile, juggling it along with her purse and the bouquet of garden flowers she'd brought for her desk as she climbed the stairs. She could hear Lee on the phone as she came down the hall, but when she opened the door, he'd already hung up and was leaning back in his chair with a warm smile. She was a little taken aback by the depth of the relief she felt at the sight of that grin and the way he'd flirtatiously suggested they ditch work - under the guise of training, of course – but it was a short-lived relief, nipped in the bud by the way his face had shuttered closed the moment he'd opened that cover letter from the CIA package. And then she'd found herself on the far side of a locked door with no idea why.

Lee had been waking up with those nightmares for days now. What had seemed like a simple question to his uncle had opened up something that was now haunting him at night and left him fretting and teetering on the edge during the day. Finding out his dad had been a spy had at least given him some avenues to pursue for answers on why his parents had even been out on that lonely road that night, but his backdoor requests for information had been blocked again and again. There didn't even seem to be a coroner's report for the accident which just increased his uneasiness – what had his father been doing that even his name was obliterated across every line of inquiry? Had he been doing something to do with his work with his wife with him and why would he do that? And why had none of this come up with his own security checks? He remembered Amanda teasing him in the early days about the Agency needing to know who her maternal great-great-grandmother was and surely that meant that someone somewhere had access to his father's records when they'd done his background check too? He considered asking Harry Thornton and just as quickly abandoned the idea. Retired or not, if Harry helped him and found out anything, Lee knew he'd be honor-bound to report it and without knowing what might be uncovered, he couldn't drag anyone else into it.

In the end, he'd decided to take the plunge and contact a friend at the CIA directly, unsure what having any more details on his father's work would help with, but it was driving him crazy, the feeling of missing a puzzle piece that would unlock these nightmares. They were coming every night now, and with them, the memories of how they'd tortured his childhood and again later – until he'd learned mental techniques with the Agency to stop them in their tracks. Those techniques weren't working now though – no matter what he did, they still crowded into his brain, sometimes twice a night as he jerked awake, sweating and calling out for parents that never answered to fight a monster he couldn't identify.

There'd been something in the impulse of asking for that file that had tamed them briefly, had let him believe that he had taken action and they'd stop, and up to a point that had been true. He'd seen the thoughtful looks across the room from Amanda, the concern when his attention drifted in briefings, or worse when they were together, and he could tell she hadn't believed it when he'd put it down to just a temporary bout of insomnia.

He'd regretted that excuse the moment it had passed his lips, and that expression had gone across her face, but he'd doubled down, pretending not to have seen it, joking that he just couldn't sleep as well now when she wasn't with him as often with the boys home again from their vacation trip with Joe, turning aside her questions with a pat on the hand, a quick smile and a change in subject.

Last night he'd slept particularly badly and today the Q Bureau had seemed too small, too stuffy, too everything – mostly because he knew his excuses were wearing thin and Amanda had shown every sign of heading for a showdown over it. It was almost too easy to kill two birds with one stone – get out of the office and distract her with false bonhomie – until it had come crashing down with the arrival of that file.

"Dear Mr. Stetson, in response to your request, please find enclosed the files of all agents connected with the death of Stetson, Matthew Davis…"

The voices were shrieking again and he had to get Amanda out – out to where it was safe, away from the monsters. He'd spent months worrying about her monsters and there was no way in hell he was going to let whatever this was get her. It was reflex to push her out, to physically force her away. "Secretsecretsecret" the voices chanted. "Don't tell anyone, keep out, keep out, keep out."

He'd opened that second file and felt the ground disappear beneath his feet. Stetson, Jennifer Hamilton, MI6… His eyes skimmed the file, his brain helplessly attempting to fill in the redacted black marks with anything that would make sense, but in the end the only thing that leapt clearly off the page were those two words: double agent.

Without another thought, he was on his feet and headed out the door. Time to see what was in that storage unit, once and for all.

He didn't know what had kept him from checking it before – it had been over a week since his uncle had told him about it and another two days after that before he'd gone looking for the box where the key was hidden. He didn't know what had kept him from it except some lingering feeling of not being allowed. That made no sense – it was his stuff, things his parents had owned and would have wanted him to have, he assumed. He didn't even know why he expected that he'd find any kind of answer there – it wasn't like there was going to be some Big Book of Double Agents that would tell him once and for all that the CIA file was right.

It can't be right, he told himself fiercely as he drove to Bethesda but he couldn't shake that feeling of unease that had come over him every time he'd considered going to look.

The storage unit wasn't big and his uncle had been pretty accurate in describing the contents. The boxes of photos and albums were near the front, hardly surprising since they were the last items added. To his amazement, there was another box, filled with school pictures, snapshots of him as a child, a teenager, at sports awards banquets, his graduation – his uncle had documented his childhood as thoroughly as any parent could have and Lee had to sit down heavily on the floor and collect himself. Months ago, he'd been envying Amanda her collection of memories and here was proof he had the same – tucked away carefully by a man who had taken his seven-year-old self seriously about not wanting photos around.

As Lee poked around further, he found a tarnished silver tea service and a box of delicate china tea cups, a few boxes of books with his parents' names written in the flyleaf, knick-knacks including quite a few that he remembered now that he saw them again. All personal items, but nothing that would help him figure out anything.

Everything says normal family, he sighed. And not one damn thing that says double agent. And why would I even think it would?

He carried the boxes of photos out to the Vette, carefully placing them on the passenger seat, then locked the unit up again and drove directly to the bank. The safety deposit box yielded nothing useful either – all the paperwork his uncle had described plus some jewelry. He dangled a locket between his fingers, transported suddenly to a memory of lying in bed, listening to his mother read him a bedtime story and watching the light glance off the gold around her neck. It felt… safe.

He jerked the chain up, grabbing the locket out of midair in his fist with a grunt. Why were his memories becoming so twisted in his head? How can some be so safe when others closed up his throat and sent him careening?

Amanda paused and took a deep breath. Now that she had the lock pick in her hand, it all seemed a little like she was overreacting. So, he wasn't returning her calls - maybe he wanted some time alone – that wasn't so odd was it? He was probably just having a loner moment; he was entitled to those, right? As quickly as she thought that, she dismissed it. The look on his face when he'd walked in and seen that file in her hands – it hadn't been worry that she'd seen something classified or annoyance that she'd been looking at it – it had been full-blown panic.

"I told you to go home!"

"That was yesterday!"

"He always sends me home when he thinks he's protecting me from something and he knows I'll interfere," she muttered to herself and began to pick the lock. "So if he knows I'm going to do that anyway, why should I stop now?"

Despite being able to practically hear Leatherneck's voice in her head telling her what to do, she was still surprised at how easily the lock tumblers fell into place. She pushed the door open, half expecting a trap, but it was deadly quiet inside.

"You need better security," she grumbled mildly, and stepped inside. His jacket was hanging on its usual spot – that had to be a good sign, right? Lee was untidy with most things, but never his car and never his suits, so if he was still hanging that up, he couldn't be too distracted by whatever was going on, she comforted herself.

And then she walked into the living room and saw the bomb zone and her heart sank. There was hardly a square inch of surface that didn't have some kind of paperwork on it, including the files she'd seen on his desk, plus a few boxes and so many pictures...

"Oh my gosh, what have I done?" she asked herself, recognizing Lee's parents in every one of them.

It had seemed like such a harmless question at the time "Don't you have any other pictures?" but faced with the piles of evidence that screamed that Lee's terrier qualities were in overdrive, she wondered if it hadn't been a step too far. He'd opened up to her about so many things over the years and yet somehow she'd never noticed his parents had remained strangely out of frame. Endless stories about his peripatetic childhood, early Agency adventures, even Andy – over the years he'd relaxed enough to tell her those stories but now… It dawned on her that outside of that one time, tired, frustrated and concussed during the search for the Barnstorm list, he'd never mentioned his parents at all – and even that night, she'd been the one to bring them up. She'd never noticed – or perhaps she'd always just assumed he'd been too young to remember anything, but her feeling of dread intensified as she began to wonder what monsters she'd released with a simple question.

She paused and picked one up – obviously from the files she'd seen on his desk since they had the unmistakeable look of a surveillance photo – and then looked up at the slight sound from down the hall. Hair rising on the back of her neck, she crept down the hall to the bedroom. It had been a noise of distress, and for the first time she wished she had some kind of weapon.

She moved noiselessly down the hall to the bedroom, feeling a wave of relief when she saw Lee was simply sleeping, until she realized how odd it was that he hadn't woken. Normally his reactions were instantaneous – the only times she'd ever seen him so unresponsive was when he was unconscious, a realization that sent her heart racing with fear. Even so, she knew better than to approach him suddenly, so she tiptoed forward and spoke softly from the end of the bed. "Lee?"

The dream was different this time. There was the same feeling of dread, but it wasn't the monster, it was something more… emotional. Not fear exactly, something more like shame, but he couldn't place his finger on why. He was somewhere he wasn't supposed to be, somewhere secret… classified… off-limits. His heart was in his throat and he knew he was going to be in trouble… something had him squirming. There was a click somewhere, a door opening or closing, he couldn't be sure and then the dread intensified – it was the monster, he knew it but somewhere close by there was also safety… the problem was, he didn't know which direction was which. He backed slowly into a corner, heart pounding as he tried helplessly to see through the darkness, to see what was coming for him.

And then he felt the warm breath on his cheek. "Lee". Whatever it was, he had to fight back now. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't move and then it came again. "Lee"

The scream he thought he was giving off as he leapt to attack was echoed as his hands hit warm flesh, and he flung himself into the attack, fighting its weight to get the upper hand.

And found himself looking down into terrified eyes.

"Amanda?"

"Yes." Her voice was squeaky and breathy and she had gone very still as if she was afraid he didn't know her. His heart which had been racing in terror, stopped dead and then began to thump painfully as he saw how badly he'd frightened her.

"What the hell are you doing here?"