lay down your arms now

and put us beyond doubt

so reach out it's not too far away

don't mess around now, don't delay . . .

"Everything I did made him angry."

Dana paused for a moment to strengthen her resolve. The man in the chair held his gaze steady on her, his eyes wide and anxious. He was afraid, she could see it in the way he tested his bonds, how his throat moved as he swallowed. But he waited, ready for whatever she would do next.

He can't see how far he's come . . . how much progress he's made. She remembered their first meeting, how he'd resisted her every step of the way. And yet he'd stayed then too, and the times after as well. She would honor that raw courage in the best way she knew, with her own skill at helping others find healing within themselves. "I think you've been holding out on me." She put a chill menace in her tone. Greg flinched and dropped his gaze. "Little boys aren't allowed to keep secrets. Sit up!" She snapped out the last two words. He obeyed without hesitation, his breath unsteady. "Tell me what you've been hiding. You may speak."

"Nothing." It came out as a rough, defiant growl. Dana advanced on him and held his chin, forced him to look at her.

"You know what happens to liars, Gregory." A tremor shook him, but he remained silent. His vivid gaze blazed up at her, both furious and pleading. "You'd better talk."

"He said—" Greg broke away from her grasp.

"What did John say?" Silence. She leaned down and glared at him. "Tell."

"He—he told me not to."

"And I'm ordering you to do so. You'd better be truthful."

"Fuck you." Greg glared back. She would have to tread with care now; John House hadn't been averse to the use of force, but she wouldn't employ it. To do so would break the bond of trust they'd forged with so much difficulty and patience over their months together.

"Gregory . . ." Dana softened her voice, raised the pitch just a bit. She'd never heard Blythe House speak, but she'd probably been soft-spoken, almost girlish in her speech patterns; from what Greg had mentioned in various sessions, she was passive and meek in her husband's presence. "Please, Greg. Tell me what happened. I want to know what you did."

He lowered his head, but not before Dana saw him shiver. "I didn't . . ." His hands twisted against the silk ties. "Didn't do anything."

"You must have done something. You know your father only wants what's best for you." She was careful to put both doubt and a hint of condescension in her words. It had the desired effect.

"Fuck that. He wanted what was convenient for him. Mom always agreed with anything he did."

"How did he punish you this time?" Dana made her inquiry neutral, gentle, but still with that hint of impatience.

"Of course she didn't know about it, she was out of town to visit Oma . . ."

"Gregory, look at me." With reluctance he straightened and let his gaze rest on a point just above her right shoulder. "I want to know what happened." Dana put a bit of steel in her voice now. "Tell me this instant."

He closed his eyes, looked down again. She watched him struggle, and forced herself to wait. He needed this, needed to break the wall of memory and fear on his own terms, not hers.

"He . . . he said I spent too much time at the piano and it was turning me into a queer." The words came out in a rough, angry mutter. "He wanted to toughen me up . . . I wasn't soft, dammit, I liked sports—any time we stayed longer than a couple of months in one place I joined teams, baseball, soccer . . . but it wasn't enough." He fell silent for a few moments. "He . . . he never understood. It's possible to like both making music and kicking a stupid fucking ball around a court, they're not mutually exclusive."

"Gregory House, stop stalling and tell me what happened!" Dana put a sharp edge in the command. Greg flinched and hunched his shoulders.

"He dumped me. Out in the country. Told me I was on my own and he'd be back for me at the same place in five days. Then he drove off. I could hear—" He stopped, swallowed. "I could hear him laughing."

Absolute shock flooded her, tightened her throat, made it hard to speak. "How old were you?"

"Eight. Old enough for a manhood test, apparently." His toes dug into the soft earth.

"Go on."

"By . . . by the second night I climbed a tree and stayed there most of the next day, until I got too thirsty." Greg squinted at the ground. "If you pay attention, you can find what you need. There was a little spring a mile or so from the dropoff point. I followed some animal tracks to where it was green. Didn't know what was edible there and had no desire to kill anything, even if I'd had the tools."

"You had no food for a week." She kept her words neutral.

"There was a homestead near the water, a dirt farm with a bunch of goats and a few children running around. One of the women gave me a bowl of some starchy stuff that tasted like wallpaper paste. I ate the whole thing and ended up sick as a dog for two days."

"You couldn't ask for help from them."

Greg made a noise that could have been a laugh. "That would only prove his point."

"What did you do for the rest of the time?"

"Hung out. Drank from the spring, slept in the shade during the day, watched the stars at night. Counted the sunrises."

"And when you showed up at the dropoff point?"

"By sunset I was sure he wouldn't come back. But he showed up right before last light. Told me to get in, drove back to the base. Took my report before he stuck me in the tub and scrubbed me raw." He paused. "I got hamburgers for dinner. Puked up everything about fifteen minutes later. He thought that was hilarious. He said he'd have to feed me grasshoppers from now on." The bitter fury latent in the flat voice made Dana's heart ache. "I ended up in the infirmary the next day. He told them I'd been out exploring and gotten lost, and it had taken him a couple of days to find me. That explained the dehydration and bug bites and sunburn, and diarrhea. It helped that I was a skinny kid anyway."

"Someone must have asked questions." She saw him in her mind's eye, a scrawny boy with bright blue eyes in a sunburned face, silent and withdrawn.

"Times were different back then. Anyway, Dad . . . Dad was the big man on campus. No one would have said anything. He . . . he would have handed their asses to them." He drew in an unsteady breath. "B-baker. Dana . . . baker. Please." She could barely hear him. She moved forward, untied his wrists, his ankles. When she put her arms around him he gave a sort of shudder, and buried his face in her hair. They stayed that way for some time.

"How are you?" She rubbed his back.

"Don't know." He sighed. "Never . . . never talked to anyone about this before."

Eventually they went to the house. Greg moved with caution, but Dana sensed it wasn't pain as much as exhaustion. When they went inside, she guided him to the bedroom and found a clean tee shirt and briefs; she helped him set up the TENS unit and turned on the floor fan and the lamp as he eased onto the bed. When she sat next to him he looked up at her but said nothing. Dana took his hand in hers, and waited.

"Mom didn't say anything." He sounded weary now. "Dad hadn't washed my clothes, so she must have figured something out of the ordinary happened . . . but she never brought it up."

"And so you felt abandoned for a second time." Greg turned his head away. It was clear he could go no further, at least for the rest of the evening.

She brought him some dinner, made sure he took his meds. When she climbed onto the bed next to him, he glared at her. "Smother mother."

"I'm concerned, sue me." She took her book from the night stand. "I read, you eat."

"Huh." But he made no further objections, and fell asleep after a second beer and a visit to the bathroom. Dana read for a while, too wound up to relax at first, but she drifted off at last.

She woke on a sudden awareness of a muffled groan or gasp. She rolled over to find Greg seated on the edge of the bed. Even in the soft light she could see he trembled. Without a word she got up and came to him. He gestured at his overnight bag.

"Ativan," he muttered. She dug in the bag, found the bottle. He dry-swallowed the pill and coughed, lay back. Dana sat down next to him. She said nothing, only waited. "Dad was right," he said after a long silence.

There were several ways to approach this statement. Dana obeyed her intuition and turned her face to his. "Tell me."

"So you can say I'm full of shit." Anger and exhaustion gave his words a harsh edge.

"No. I'm listening."

He said nothing for a time. "This place . . . it's nothing like where Dad dumped me."

"But it makes you anxious all the same." Dana took his hand in hers. His fingers curled around her palm. "Do you want to go back to Princeton?"

"Pointless. We're here, we'll stay here." Greg hesitated. "He said I was weak."

"Your father said a number of things about you that were and are still untrue." She stroked his wrist with her thumb, a slow, gentle circle. "Fear is not an indication of weakness. It's a natural behavior for mammals, and primates are prey animals as well as predators. You had legitimate reasons to be fearful, then and now. What you do with that fear is what counts. You've come out here with me several times when you've had the option to refuse."

"Maybe I'm just trying to keep you from leaving." Greg's hold tightened a bit.

"You believe if you tell me that spending time in a rural area makes you anxious, I'll walk away. I won't."

After a while she returned to her side of the bed and curled up next to Greg. He didn't object, but he also didn't touch her. She knew he was overwhelmed at this point; any further stimulus would only cause his anxiety levels to rise. They lay together for a while in the darkness. After a time Greg's breathing rate slowed and deepened. Dana moved closer and leaned her head against his arm. He made a little noise but didn't pull away.

How could his father have done that? Left a child alone and helpless? She knew the answer before she'd finished the second question. John House had wanted to toughen up the boy left in his care. But it was also probable he wanted to punish the child for not being his legitimate son. It didn't matter that such a feeling made no sense; human beings were capable of good-sized helpings of contrary behavior and lack of critical thinking for the flimsiest of reasons, or even none at all. At any rate, Greg's putative father had done what he considered his duty, and never understood he'd made a poor situation even worse.

Even if he had known, he wouldn't have cared. Dana felt a surge of anger. She did her best to set it aside; it wouldn't help with the current problem, in fact it would get in her way. It was also all too easy to feel fury at two parents who'd been given a child they'd never have understood, even if they'd been inclined to try. Sometimes it just happened that way.

Enough now. We'll work on this in the morning, if he's ready. She closed her eyes, breathed in Greg's scent, and settled into sleep.