Author's Note: Firstly, thanks to everyone who favorited, followed, or reviewed the last chapter, either here or over on "Official Hugger." It means a lot to me, as always!

Second, this is the first chapter that has actually been betad... by none other than the amazing and lovely sailinginthenoondaysun, who took time out of her vacation to read and send me edits! Hugs from both me and Isara to you, friend. :-)

Finally, don't forget to go check out a truly awesome Psych story by another good friend, soccergirlkj.

As always, please R&R, and I'll hopefully be back tomorrow with Chapter 3: A Crisis and a Solution.

Disclaimer: Really? Again? Okay, if I must... Idon'townStarTrekinanyway,shapeorformandifIdidIsar awouldhaveappearedinthemoveies. There, happy?

Chapter 2: I Knew You Were Trouble

Isara's POV

"What?" I could see Bones's hands clench into fists as he spoke, so I placed a hand lightly on his shin from my position beneath the table. He jumped.

"I said it's Jimmy! He's here. Just hide me." I scuttled backwards as well as I could, watching the shiny black boots meander their way towards our table.

"Isara!" The familiar voice sent an icy shot of nervousness through my veins. I winced and slowly stood up, trying to avoid the wide blue eyes now trained on my face. Instead, I turned my gaze to Bones.

"Sorry, I, um, couldn't find your, uh, quarter. It must have rolled away." My mouth was dry and sweat ran down my neck. How could Jimmy be here? He was supposed to be up in Seattle still.

Alanna saved the awkward moment by standing up and holding out her hand. "Jimmy, isn't it?" The man in front of me nodded suspiciously, his eyes still on me. "I'm Isara's friend Alanna. That's her new and much better boyfriend, Bones." I tried to inch backwards, but Jimmy followed my every step. Alanna and Bones both jumped between us. "I don't know what you're doing here, but I want to make one thing very clear: stay away from Isara, or else Bones and I will use our advanced hand-to-hand combat training to kill you." She smiled brightly and Bones glared menacingly.

Then I noticed the Starfleet insignia on Jimmy's ensign's uniform. I shuddered and Bones reached back one hand to clasp my shaking one.

"Isara, you have another boyfriend?" He did the wide-eyed look with the child-like accusation in his voice that had worked on me so many times in the past. "You don't feel even a little remorse for breaking up with me? We were meant to be together, Isara. We're so perfect for each other. I found out that you enlisted and I came here to be with you. I know that you'll eventually come around." His hands wandered slowly towards me as a wicked glint sparked in his eye. "Come on, sweetie, a kiss for your soul mate? Maybe a little more if you're willing to finally apologize?"

There was a sharp CRACK as my fist connected with his face. "Stay away from me, you creep! I'm going to get a restraining order as soon as I possibly can, and then I'm going to complain to the police and Starfleet if you come anywhere near me." Jimmy was still rubbing his face, his expression shifting slowly from pleading to shocked to mind-cloudingly furious when Kirk sidled up with four drinks.

"What'd I miss? Is that Jimmy? Can I help you beat him up?" I snatched my drink, downed it in one breath, slammed the glass back onto the table and stalked out of the club.

I could hear my friends trying to catch up to me as I strode briskly down the sidewalk, but I was determined not to let them. I didn't want them to see the tears leaking out of the corners of my angrily squinted eyes.

I didn't really know why I was crying. I had been so weak when I had let Jimmy take advantage of me before, but I was stronger now... wasn't I?

The sudden doubt stopped me cold in my tracks. I could feel the city swirling around me, honking horns and thumping bass pulsing through the smog-filled summer air, but my world froze for just a second as I contemplated myself. Didn't the fact that I was running away show that I was still weak?

I clenched my fists, tasting the bile rising in the back of my throat. The familiar anxiety that I thought I had conquered so long ago was twisting my stomach, making my palms clammy and my breathing labored, clouding at the corners of my vision. Before my friends could find me paralyzed like this, I ducked into an alleyway and ran for my life. I focused on the pounding of my flats on the weed-cracked cement, on the way light tendrils of my hair seemed to defy gravity and float around my face in the gentle breeze.

"Look, Jimmy, I'm sorry. I just feel like I can't go through with this."

He stared at me, half a smile settling ominously on his confident features. "You're nervous. I get it. Everyone is." He stepped forwards and took both of my hands in his, and my doubt began to recede, however unwillingly. Just like it always did.

"We are meant to be together. You may pull away now, but you'll regret it in the future. Because no matter where you go, how far you think you've gotten from me, there will always be that little bit of you that misses me because you'll understand, deep down, that nothing can ever be as perfect as we are together."

The frustrated tears that I had shed earlier were dry on my cheeks, and I truly believed what he said. That somehow, whatever I did, we would always be chained together. I sighed, forcing a smile. I guess I thought true love would be... more.

"Come on, Isara. Kiss and make up? You don't need to apologize, I understand." I wondered vaguely if Jimmy was a little confused as I leaned in to kiss him- he had, after all, been the one to start the conflict.

The distant streetlights and the occasional flickering neon sign were soon the only illumination, and in a fresh burst of panic I realized that I was lost. I didn't recognize the buildings around me, even though I felt like I had been running for only a minute. I glanced at my watch- it had been more like half an hour.

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, fingers nervously rubbing the base of the fourth finger on my left hand, trying to push away the image of Jimmy being the one to find me. My friends had been following me, I reminded myself. Surely they knew where I was.

I listened intently for the sounds of running feet, allowing my Starfleet training to take over my senses. The raucous party in the dilapidated apartment to my left was drowning out all other noise, so slowly, patiently, I began to retrace my steps.

Before I had gone a hundred yards down the dim side street I reached a T-bend. I had to choose- left or right. I chose right because I'm right-handed. I decided that I was probably going to have a long wander ahead of me before I got home, and resigned myself to be on high alert until I found my way again.

It was most of an hour before I found myself on a street that I recognized. I was so tired by that point that it was another two hours before I was trudging up the stairs to the room I shared with Alanna again, too preoccupied to hear the voices inside until I had silently crept into the entryway. I stopped for a moment and listened with a kind of disconnected curiosity, my right hand moving back to feel the same finger on my left hand as before. I hadn't yet noticed the return of my old anxious habit.

"Damn it, Alanna, she has to be somewhere!"

"I don't know where she would have gone! You're the doctor here, how does someone usually respond to a shock like that?"

A long groan. "I don't know enough about Jimmy- and what Isara thinks of him- to know how she would react. She could be going somewhere specific, she could be driving away and back to Seattle, she could be wandering around downtown in a blind panic..." A shaky breath.

"Umm, guys?"

"Not now, Kirk," I heard Alanna snarl. "For the love of God, Bones, she talked more to you about him than she did to me. Did she say anything that might help?"

"I don't... I don't... wait! She mentioned anxiety attacks once, she thought she had them under control but seeing him again might have triggered one..."

"Guys?"

"Damn it Jim, what is it already?"

Kirk silently raised a finger and pointed at me. Bones and Alanna followed the direction of his arm, and each had a completely opposite reaction to seeing me. Alanna jumped up, stared dumbstruck for a second, then simultaneously burst into tears and started shouting abuse. "Where have you been? Why didn't you call? You IDIOT! You could have been DEAD..."

Bones simply strode over and wrapped me in a tight hug. I didn't respond. I was a little bit in shock, but not like earlier. I was just to tired to cope with anything.

Bones pressed his lips to mine, and I could feel the anxiety in his stance. He pulled back quickly, making a face. "Did you get sick?"

I shrugged disinterestedly, swiping a hand over my mouth and observing the slightly orange streak that came away. "I don't remember. Probably. Can I go to bed now?"

Bones raised an eyebrow, but led me over to sit on one of the beds. Alanna and Kirk eyed me cautiously. I hadn't noticed when the former had gone silent, but the only sound in the room was my slightly ragged breathing.

Bones put a comforting arm around my shoulder. "I just need to make sure that you're okay." It was only later that I realized how much effort was going into his calm façade, how hard it was for him to simply question me as any good doctor would do. "What do you remember?"

I made a quick decision: my friends didn't need to know how badly I had been affected by seeing Jimmy. The rational part of my brain was telling me that I could deal with him, so this crazy side of me could just go slinking back to the dark corner of my mind from whence it came.

"I was kinda shaken up from seeing Jimmy, and I didn't really want to talk about it, so I went off by myself. I found a little bar..." I screwed up my face in pretend concentration. "I guess I got more drunk than I thought I did, because I don't remember the next couple of hours after that. That must be when I got sick. Then I walked until I found a place I recognized and got a cab back here."

I felt like my story was pretty convincing, but leave it to Bones to call my bluff. "Why are you still so winded if you got a taxi back here?"

"There are a lot of stairs, and I'm drunk and tired." I shrugged sheepishly.

"Are you sure you didn't have an anxiety attack? You seem pretty lucid, considering you got drunk enough to throw up."

I shrugged. "I'm fine. It was a one-time freak out. I can take care of myself pretty well, thanks." I faked what must have been a pretty convincing smile- or maybe he could just see how exhausted I was- because Bones dropped the subject.

"Okay. I'll leave Alanna to get you cleaned up. I'll see you tomorrow." He slowly stood up, obviously reluctant to leave me alone again.

"'Night," I yawned, falling backwards onto the bed as soon as his arm left my shoulders.

Through my exhausted haze, I could hear Kirk and Bones exchanging a few words with Alanna. They seemed to be along the lines of "That guy's mentally unstable." and "You should lock the door extra well tonight, I'm not sure what he's willing to do." Even the ominous implications of these words failed to shake me from my quick descent into unconsciousness.

That night, I dreamed that I was in a room. There were no doors and no windows, and the light came from an unidentifiable source. The only object in the room was a mirror on the wall opposite me.

I felt an extreme sense of security. Looking into the mirror, I could see that my friends were standing behind me. I knew that, with them, I was safe. Nothing could break into my little room.

That is, until a single crack rent the mirror with the sound of a gunshot. My friends still stood there, smiling protectively at me, but it didn't make any difference. A dark substance began pouring into the room through the crack as other fissures spiderwebbed outward, and I realized that their peaceful faces were only an illusion of security. They could do nothing to stop this onslaught of darkness.

The black smoky material coiled around my legs. It was cold and painful to the touch, but there was no way to get away from it. I cursed that first crack, wondering what could have caused it, because I knew that it was responsible for all the subsequent damage to the mirror.

With no other option left to me, I started screaming. I screamed until my lungs ached and the cold and pain were less from the dark substance and more from the terror that was spiking through me, tearing me to bits and paralyzing me in place in the vey act of flying apart into a million screaming pieces-

"Isara! Isara, it's okay!" My eyes snapped open to see a concerned and sleepy Alanna, hands briskly shaking my shoulders. "You're fine, nothing's wrong. You can stop screaming now."

I realized that I was still screaming, and the wail died off abruptly. I blinked more out of confusion than sleepiness and stared back at her. I could still feel the terror spiking through me, but Alanna's face was combatting it with a steady wave of warm comfort. I grabbed her roughly by the shoulders.

"The crack. We have to stop the crack, it's breaking into pieces and then the darkness will get through."

Alanna looked, if possible, more concerned than before. She gently detached my hands from her and pushed me back down onto the pillows, turning on the lamp. She gave me a reassuring pat and reached for her communicator. I heard her tune to a specific signal, and, after a moment, said, "Bones? It's Alanna. We're having a slight crisis here. Yeah, she's okay now... but how are you on dream analysis?"