"What about Graylik, sir? He'll tell them about Enterprise."

Two sentences. Not even long sentences. Nine words in total.

But hell, how much your understanding of a guy can change in the space of nine words. Words I possibly wasn't meant to hear – I don't know if either of the people involved in the conversation realized I was close enough to overhear, even though they kept their voices low.

Right up till that point, I'd had Reed down as a straight-up, by-the-book, honest-and-honorable Starfleet officer. But almost before the first four words were out of his mouth, I knew exactly what he was asking and what he was suggesting and, more than either of those things, what he was volunteering to do.

I'm not soft, and I'd like to think I'm not easily shocked. But I was fairly floored by the calm, soft precision of the way he said it. No hesitation. No shrinking. No 'Hey, he's a nice guy and I wish we didn't have to even think about this'.

He was absolutely right, of course. I'd come to exactly the same conclusion and was prepared to take exactly the same course of action. But I'm a soldier, and I do what's necessary. He's a guy who sits at a console and presses buttons. He may kill people – those cannons and torpedoes pack a hell of a punch, and I'm damn sure he's got more than a few nicks on his tally-stick if he cared to keep count – but that's not the same thing as actually killing someone while you look them in the eye. Someone whose name you know, who you've actually spoken to.

That's different. I'd wondered, occasionally, if he knew just how different.

Those two sentences told me that he does know. More: that he has enough cold-blooded resolve to do it without a second's hesitation if that's what it takes. Even more than that, perhaps: that he's far from the moral innocent I've always thought him.

Down here, at the weapons facility or whatever it is, there seems a sort of … tightly-restrained savagery about him. For all his cool manner, he wants to strike out. He even dared to argue with the captain, which is something I never thought I'd witness; reminding him of the seven million dead. That, I'll guess, is very much on Commander Tucker's behalf.

And then, almost in the same breath, he offered to murder Graylik in cold blood if the captain gave him the word.

Enterprise was undoubtedly the key word out of those nine. 'He'll tell them about Enterprise.' And Malcolm's not allowing that. The flat note of his voice made that crystal clear, to me if not to the captain.

Archer wasn't having it then, though maybe it was the reminder about those seven million casualties that made him give the order for me to lay down blast suppressors – he was keeping his options open about sending down the two spatial charges that would flatten the place. We had explosives with us, but now that I'd checked the place out I thought that two delivered straight from the ship would be the best option; primarily because the instant we'd seen the place blow we could be out of here, and no-one any the wiser.

The captain's still inside, talking to Graylik some more. Trying – if I know him at all – to find some way of making this visit pay off without resorting to arson and murder.

Malcolm and I are back on guard outside, patrolling the area around the house to make sure no-one approaches it unobserved and catches the captain inside it. We try to move soundlessly, and he's good at it, as stealthy as a shadow. I'm still keenly aware of where he is at any given moment, but even though everything seems quiet enough we don't speak. Even the softest murmurs carry further than you might think on such a silent night as this is, as I discovered a few minutes ago.

'What about Graylik, sir?'

It's set me wondering exactly what lies behind that 'Classified' tag on his Starfleet files. For sure he didn't get that tone of voice carrying out computer simulated attacks on hostile ships.

Would he really commit cold-blooded murder if it came to it? If Archer decided there was no other option?

Obviously it's always been a given that if detected we'd have to defend ourselves, and in the heat of the moment you can't always limit the damage you do. If it's a choice between killing or being captured, for me there is no choice. But that's the 'heat of the moment' thing. There had been no heat at all in Reed's voice when he made that … suggestion. Offer. Whatever it should be called. It had been made with chilling deliberation.

He reaches the far end of the area we've established as our patrol, and turns without haste, evidently listening intently. The white light of the moon behind which Enterprise is sheltering washes down his face, making it a mask of sharp planes and black shadows. It dawns on me how much gray is his element; he has a trick of melting out of view, for all the English military air he projects. Back then, too, he'd melted out of view; experience and hindsight revealed to me long ago how cleverly and deliberately he'd ensured I shouldn't know where he lived.

Gray… His eyes are gray. Most times these days when I look into them they're the gray of duranium shutters, locking me out. Now and again they're the gray of castle walls, with murder holes built above the iron portcullis, and at those times I can almost smell the rancid stink of boiling oil waiting to pour down on my head if I take one step closer.

But they could wear another aspect. I'd seen it – seen them, seen him, fiery and flirty and fierce, gripping me as though he wanted to devour me piecemeal. I'd felt that hard mouth fastened on mine, that lean, wiry body pressed against me in desperate hunger. The gray had blazed then, unhooded on famine….

He notices me watching him. He pauses, and across a couple of meters of charged space our eyes meet.

Something happens. I swear, something changes. But next moment a wink of light on the scanner he's holding alerts both of us to danger: biosigns approaching. They won't be anyone from Enterprise, so they're hostiles. Perhaps Reptilians, from that ship that just landed.

We both slide into cover. Even as he settles soundlessly among the shadows beside me, Malcolm's whispering into his communicator, warning the captain.

Two Xindi, probably workers from the facility, walk up to Graylik's house. There's no tension in their voices or the way they walk; they don't even look around, though the brisk knock on the door suggests they're not just on a social call.

We know Graylik's in there, and the captain too. But though one of the visitors shouts out, and knocks a second time, there's no answer, and after a moment the two of them look at each other like they're a bit puzzled and walk away again.

I want to think that if there wasn't an element of puzzlement to us too in that silence from inside, we'd crouch for a little longer side by side, so close that I can feel the warmth of his body along my arm. Up on the ridge the captain was between us. Now it's just him and me; but duty is a merciless taskmaster. The instant we judge it safe, we're both up and darting across the cleared space to the door. The strain on Malcolm's face dies a little as the captain answers his soft knock almost immediately.

Throughout the rest of the mission I'm convinced that something's still different between us. For the first time there's a sense of us rather than him and me. It even feels natural to speak up in support of his murmured protest to the captain when Graylik's allowed to leave, unharmed and unsupervised. He and I are united in our suspicion if nothing else; but then, we're in the business of seeing the worst-case scenario and taking steps to make sure it doesn't turn into reality. I don't think the captain is impressed by our cynicism, and he sure doesn't care for me arguing in support of Malcolm's case without asking permission, but I don't care. I'm not here to buy into his naïveté, and I'm certainly not going to do anything to disturb this first, tenuous tendril of connection between me and the man who's haunted my dreams for the past ten years.

There's a fragile peace in the shuttle as we return to the ship, with the captain at the helm. Malcolm's at the secondary console, and doesn't look around, but I want to feel that there's no longer that sense of freezing withdrawal. On the few occasions he speaks, he seems relaxed; he even ventures a little smile in response to one of Archer's comments. As for me, I'm glad we got that tracking device into the kemocite consignment and even gladder that we got off the planet without incident, and I can't help but feel a small trickle of hope that he feels pretty much the same. We co-operated, we talked the same language and saw things the same way; surely he can't go on holding that wall up forever?

Enterprise comes around to pick us up – evidently the Reptilian ship has taken its goods and gone its way. When Ensign Sato informs us, just as the shuttle bay door opens, that the risk we took at the end was for nothing after all, and that the tracking device evidently can't follow the enemy through one of those portals of theirs, I'm not the only one to look surprised and dismayed. Seems like we both felt that Fate had finally decided to cut us a break.

The captain, however, seems remarkably unperturbed, even shooting a crinkled smile in Malcolm's direction. "I'd have liked it to have worked, of course I would," he says gently. "But I found that the Xindi aren't all the monsters we'd made them out to be. There are good and bad, just like there are on Earth. And we've still got that faulty kemocite on board that ship. If we did nothing else, we bought ourselves some time."

"Sir." Malcolm smoothes out the look of consternation as best he can, but there are still twin furrows of concern between his eyebrows. He'd had the smell of the prey in his nostrils at last, and my little dark predator hates to lose his quarry.

I was his quarry, once.

Still, I'm a pretty decent stalker myself, when I put my mind to it. I have all the patience in the world, and for all that he's the ship's Tactical Officer I haven't gotten where I am without getting a pretty thorough grasp of strategy and tactics on my own account. I made a mistake then and I'm not making another.

The shuttle settles on to the floor of the bay and Malcolm rises, saying something about needing to get back to the Armoury.

"Sure." The captain used to be a test pilot. It shows in the deft, almost absent-minded ease with which he starts going through the post-flight procedure.

"I'll get back to my unit, sir." I'm already on my feet.

The look Reed shoots at me is hard to decipher. He's wary, but what else?

We leave the shuttle side by side. Probably it's deliberate that he chooses to use the side door rather than the roof exit, because that would mean one of us had to precede the other and as the junior officer I'd have ceded that to him. I haven't yet had the opportunity to follow him up a ladder, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that the view would be just glorious.

As we reach the corridor outside, he pauses, almost as if hesitating over whether to speak. Instead I beat him to it.

"Seems like we make a great team when we try, sir." My tone's light enough for him to read it as a jokey sort of compliment for the fact that we took the captain down there and brought him back up in one piece, but I hold his gaze for just a second, trying to reach past the duranium shields I know are ready to slam down.

I'm sure he changes what he was going to say. He blinks twice, and I get the feeling that he's thinking furiously. Finally he speaks, slowly as if he's building a bridge of straws across an ice crevasse.

"It's always been my aim for my team to co-operate with each other at maximum efficiency," he says carefully. For once, his eyes are meeting mine without evasion, but though he's trying to keep his face impassive, there's the faintest crease between his brows; he knows, just as I know, that each of us has lethal capability over the other.

"Mine too, Lieutenant. Sometimes it doesn't work out the way you want it to the first time, but – that doesn't mean it's not worth trying again."

He understands. I know he understands. For just a moment he stares at the deck plating as though he's trying to read the future in it.

There's a terrible little silence. It feels as though the whole ship is holding its breath.

Then he exhales. Even before he speaks, I know the verdict has gone against me; when his eyes come up again, they're as sad as they are implacable. "In the circumstances, Major, you should understand one thing.

"It's probably just as well that the 'first time' didn't work out – the way either of us wanted it to."

I catch my breath. For all the words of denial, he's finally admitted he remembers – and cares.

"I won't accept that." I take a rapid step closer to him, which he watches with the measured gaze of a swordsman.

His smile is as soft and bitter as the core of a rotten lemon. "You're not the first person to say so. They all learned the hard way."

Of course he's had lovers, before and since. So have I. Why the hell does he think that matters? "Wait," I demand, though he hasn't moved. "At least give me an explanation. What do you mean 'in the circumstances'?

"And don't even think about giving me some crap about the regulations," I add, seeing his eyes narrow. "If you don't know that at least twelve couples on board this ship are sharing bunks on a regular basis, presumably with no loss to their efficiency because otherwise, Lieutenant, you'd have had any or all of them up on a disciplinary, then you're not doing your job as Head of Security."

"Fourteen, actually," he says with a fleeting, hollow smirk. "Though that's including the visit of one of your corporals to Crewman de la Haye's cabin last night, which may or may not be the first of many."

"One of my–?" I shut my mouth with a snap. Not because it's none of my business, but because if he knows more about where one of my MACOs spent last night than I do, he's too damn good at his job.

It's worth the embarrassment to see him smile. Just for a split second, he's loving it, almost laughing aloud at the fact that he's got me and we both know it. And for that second I catch a glimpse of the man I walked away from in the apartment that day, and the sheer joy of seeing him again drives me forward even before I know I'm moving.

The shutters come down like emergency bulkheads sealing off a decompressing compartment. He actually retreats, and though he doesn't put up a hand to stop me touching him, I know that if I even try it he'll attack me.

The disappointment is so bitter I want to punch something. Instead I just stare at him, trying to figure out what the heck he's afraid of. Because he's as scared as a cornered animal, whether he knows it or not, whether he'll admit it or not. Trouble is, he's so scared he can't think of any other reaction than fighting his way out, and time was when I'd have taken my chances on that, but that was before What about Graylik, sir? Now, with him in this mood, the parameters have shifted. He's… incalculable. I can't think of how to reach him without putting an end for good and all to any hope I might ever have that he might trust me enough to give me that second chance.

I wait for the few seconds it takes me to be sure that when I speak my voice will be even. "That's your take on it, Lieutenant," I say at last, "but in fairness I'd ask you to at least explain your decision. Surely I have a right to that."

I watch the bitter little smile that says So had I, but you just ran anyway, and I know he knows both of us are remembering the time I ran roughshod over his rights.

The irony is that I could pull rank on him and demand an explanation, but of all the mistakes I could make that would be the worst. Maybe it's some kind of atonement to him that I'm simply asking, giving him the dignity of being able to refuse. I can only hope so.

There's a long silence.

Finally, he breaks it. His voice is low and steady. "It would have been a mistake then and it would be a worse one now, Major. We both need to keep our minds on the mission."

"Is that what they teach you in Starfleet, Lieutenant? That having nothing to care about makes you a better officer? That not being human makes you better at your job?"

He smiles again at that, but this time it's a secretive, almost cruel smile that makes the hair prickle on the back of my neck. I think he's going to say something, but he clearly thinks better of it and just shrugs – an action that in itself is so unlike his usual rigidly disciplined stiffness on board ship that for a moment he looks like someone else altogether.

Well. If that's the shield he's going to hide behind, there's not a lot I can do about it. But he'd better not think it's a hiding place that will give him all the protection he might hope for. Because I care about the mission too, and I happen to believe that even officers function all the better for having a little joy in their lives. And he still hasn't said why it would have been a mistake back then, and until he comes up with a valid explanation for that then I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it at all.

No need to let him know that, though. I shrug in my turn. "If you're sure that's the way you want it… Well, I'll see you tomorrow, sir."

My tone is as indifferent as I can make it, my face the same, but I'm actually watching him carefully. He can't quite hide the tiny flicker of – disappointment? He expected me to put up more resistance than this, though he schools his face fast enough into the appropriate neutrality as he turns away, saying he's got some work to do in the Armory, even though shift has finished for both of us.

But every mission requires some degree of patience. And now that I know he's not indifferent to me, that he does remember and he does care, I'm going to be as patient as I need to be. And as astute as I need to be. His best refuge is to forget I exist, but I'm not going to allow him that.

From here on in, I'm going to be Malcolm Reed's personal pain in the ass.