Such Deliberate Disguises

by PhoenixFaltered

An unexpected message forces Reg Barclay to examine his tortured childhood. Last edit. I'm done. Stick a fork in me. My first story, please r&r.

Disclaimer: All characters in this story with the exception of Caleb Barclay belong to Paramount.

Warning: This story deals graphically with the psychological effects of child abuse. If that subject makes youuncomfortable I'd think twice about reading this, because it's intense.

I wrote this story for myself, and for anyone else who knows what it means to walk the chaos lands.

I wrote it for the numb and faltering survivors of intimate wars without a name.

Such Deliberate Disguises

By

PhoenixFaltered

The week started out ordinarily enough. The melodic voice of the ship's computer woke Lt. Reginald Barclay at 0600 hrs penetrating a lucid, almost pleasant dream. He was a boy again, wading along the edge of a saltwater lake that he had often visited as a child. In the dream, he walked along the edge of the water holding hands with Bay, his little brother. The two boys were jumping over sea foam that washed in on the back of the lake's miniature waves.

The dream ebbed and flowed smoothly, suffused with muted laughter, camaraderie, and unspoiled wilderness. Even so, beneath the surface appearance of serenity there was an omnipresent sense of danger that never materialized, like a tickle in the back of his throat. The premonition made for restless slumber and Barclay shivered as he pushed his way toward consciousness.

Reg threw back the covers before the computer had a chance to repeat it's litany of "Good Morning, Mr. Barclay" for a second time. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands to clear away the cobwebs, and to shake away the scent and taste of the fecund saltwater marsh that lingered on his tongue. The dream had been so real, encompassing all of his senses.

"Alarm off" he said softly, his groggy voice penetrating the silence and subdued light of his quarters aboard the Enterprise, "and raise lighting by two levels". There. That was bright enough to wake him up, but not bright enough to make him squint. He pushed off of the bed with his knuckles and rocked forward, the rough carpet coming to meet his bare feet as he walked toward the replicator. He requested a mug of dark, sweet coffee, "Black as night and sweet as sin" as his grandmother in Virginia used to say.

After the machine supplied it, he sat down at the round glass standard issue table by his front door to down the cup and let the caffeine rush clear his head. After the first cup, the full light setting didn't sting his eyes. After a second cup he was dressed, groomed, and out the door, headed down to engineering.

He had already worked for almost an hour and a half, unscheduled, when Commander La Forge's senior staff showed up for their mission briefing. Barclay's morning achievements included a routine diagnostic of several secondary systems and a currently running check on impulse engine efficiency. He made sure to walk by the senior engineers gathered around a group console and nod to Commander La Forge while on his way to another Jefferies tube and a clandestine meeting with a relay of plasma conduits.

The group of officers clustered around the console included "Acting" Ensign Crusher, again. Reg didn't have any real beef with the boy, but he did consider him to be a tad immature, and starry eyed to boot. Whatever. It wasn't as if he had any say about including a sixteen year old boy in the running of a galaxy class starship.

Reg was sucking up with this little contrived greeting, he knew, but it wouldn't do him any damn good to come to work almost two hours early if no one noticed. It had only been six weeks since the infamous holodeck incident. La Forge seemed willing to give him a second chance, but he was well aware that the rest of the crew barely tolerated him. He had to work twice as hard as everyone else if he was to have any chance to convince the crew of his abilities and dedication.

All in all, he failed to see how exploring a few social possibilities on the holodeck hurt anyone, but Counselor Troi and other officers in charge of his future clearly felt otherwise. This wasn't an entirely new situation in Barclay's life. It wasn't the first time that he had found himself facing the business end of other people's expectations.

The simple truth was, aside from feeling completely humiliated by the casual entrance of three senior officers into his private fantasies, he didn't understand what everyone was so het up about. Het up, he mused. That's another one of Gram's expressions. I'm just family oriented today.

For a split second the taste of the lake returned to him, mud and oysters and stale seawater. This time he noticed a charged, coppery flavor underneath everything else, more of a scent than a taste. The sensation dissipated almost as soon as it arrived, but it left his mouth dry and his heart pounding with the same distant fear of last night's dream. He shook his head as he climbed up the ladder to the Jefferies tube, and hoped no one had noticed anything.

"Got to keep it together, Reg" he muttered to himself. For a moment he was afraid to enter the confined space of the tube, an unusual occurrence for him. Claustrophobia was just about the only fear he didn't normally lay claim to. He finally took a deep breath and crawled in, focusing his wandering thoughts, and began running checks at an access panel.

Barclay pulled eleven hours that day, total, a rare occurrence for anyone when the ship was not in alert status. Geordi even interrupted him to suggest that he take a lunch break, and Reg patted himself on the back for this minor evidence of his colleagues' improved esteem. He declined for the moment, and La Forge did not mention it again.

Reg moved through the rest of the day focused on his work, and he left engineering at 1800 hours without further incident. He planned to go straight to his quarters, bypassing any temptation to go to the Holodeck. Maybe he could listen to music while he decided what calculated bullshit he'd spew tomorrow afternoon in his weekly appointment with Troi, to make it obvious for her that he was still on the road to "recovery".

His plan worked flawlessly until he entered his quarters and found that the message light on his computer console was blinking. "Computer, display messages" he said, and a single name and source of transmission lit up on the black surface: Caleb Barclay: Myrtle Grove, West Virginia, Earth, Stardate. The message had been sent two days before, in the middle of the night, and had just caught up with the ship. Reg sat down at his table and pulled a small display screen toward him.

"Computer, play message" he muttered, his stomach and fists clenching unwillingly as his little brother's face filled the screen. "Hi Reg" the recording said, and the sandy haired younger man with green eyes and the Barclay jaw tried to smile. "How are you doing? I'm, well, I'm… not doing so great." Bay's friendly expression dissolved, slid off of his face like melting wax, and his eyes suddenly seemed haunted.

"Reg, I know this is going to sound crazy and I know it's probably nothing, I mean it is nothing, but…." Get to the point Bay, Reg thought, leaning toward the viewscreen as if he could somehow reach across the light years and encourage his brother to stop rambling.

"Reg…." Bay began again, "Do you remember when I was a kid and I was so afraid of the Boogieman?" Reg snorted. Like he could forget. He had slept with Bay until his brother was well into his teens because otherwise Bay would just start screaming in the middle of the night and not be able to stop.

"Well, uhm…" Bay's voice trembled, and he blinked away tears, "Reg, I keep thinking about it and I can't sleep and Reg, I know this sounds crazy, but I think the boogieman was real." Bay's words tumbled over each other, and his hands danced nervously in front of the screen like a pair of fumbling, wounded birds.

Jesus, thought Reg, this is serious. He's cracked up. On the message screen, Bay leaned forward and spoke again. "I just keep remembering, Reg, I remember something coming into my room at night, if I was there alone, and he was big, taller than anybody had a right to be, and so strong….He hurt me, Reg." Bay's voice broke completely, and tears ran down his face. "There was this smell in the air, kind of like sweat, but strong and metallic, and he wore a ski mask and….."

At that moment, Reg's mind just… splintered. He knew he was sitting at his table, in his quarters on the enterprise, but at the same time he was somewhere else entirely. The scent of sweat and lightning assaulted him. Inexplicable sensations pounded into his brain.

He was pinned down on a flat, soft surface, he couldn't move his legs, and he felt rough cotton fabric under his hands. There was a view of sky, heavy with rain and flashes of lightning, but it was wrong somehow, slanted. There were no sounds, but that taste was back, salt and sea and something fishy, bitter and rotten…The copper scent was in the air, so strong he felt it at the back of his throat.

When he came to himself he had slid out of the chair and was on his hands and knees beside the table, gagging. Bay's trembling voice was still echoing from the message console"….and I need to know Reg, I need to know if I'm crazy or if there's a chance…a chance it could be real. Oh god Reg…" Bay's voice was muffled. Reg knew that his brother was holding his face in his hands.

Reg couldn't bring himself to get up and look at the screen. He couldn't chance meeting his brother's emerald eyes, so like their mother's. Reg's own chocolate brown eyes came from a father he could not even remember, a ghost whose presence had barely impacted their lives.

"I'm so sorry, Reg." Bay said suddenly. "I know you don't need this. Just, if you get the chance, could you send a message to me? I need to hear your voice. You always took care of me, and…its lonely here, without you. No one understands the Barclay sense of humor." Bay's exhausted voice wound down to a whisper. "I love you, Reg. Goodbye."

For a long while Reg could not move, held suspended between his own fractured emotions and his brother's need. Then he reached up and grabbed the edge of the table to pull himself back into his chair. He addressed a message to Caleb and sat up straight, smoothing his hair back into place.

He took a few deep breaths to center himself before beginning the recording, and wondered what he could possibly say. Bay was loosing it. Hell, he was loosing it, and the last thing that he felt like doing was attempting to compose a coherent message to his little brother reassuring him that everything was okay, telling him that the monsters slipping into his bedroom at night were a figment of his overzealous imagination and that he could go to sleep, now.

Reg had been repeating those selfsame assurances to Bay for as long as he could remember, and for the first time he saw just how empty the words were. He didn't know if everything was okay. In fact, he was pretty sure it wasn't. Besides, who was he to say that there weren't monsters, of one kind or another, waiting in deep, dark spaces behind closed bedroom doors or in rank salt water? Waiting to swallow them both.

The dream was almost the same. The only difference was point of view, and Reg realized that this time he was outside of the scene, watching himself and Bay play along the edge of the water. The lake was choppy and warm, and dark clouds on the horizon gathered rain.

Those clouds were the source of his distant fear, Reg thought, and in the same instant knew that he wasn't quite right. It was something about the clouds, though; about the gathering storm….Bay's shrill laughter penetrated Reg's speculation and drew his attention back to the two figures by the lake.

The two boys were holding hands, and swinging each other around in a circle, growing dizzy with the effort. They weren't swimming because the water was too….Without warning, a flash of imminent danger filled Reg, and he realized that shadows were gathering, the sun was slipping below the horizon. It was getting dark.

He didn't know why that simple fact struck such a chord of horror in him, but he began to run toward the two boys, to warn them. He tried to scream at his younger self, urging the dream-boy to run away, to take Bay out of danger.

The words stuck in his throat, and his feet gained no ground. He could not get closer to the boys, even though his legs were moving. The weed-snagged sand was sliding, he realized, and he was somehow falling upward. No, that wasn't it, they were falling down, and he could not cover enough ground to reach them in time…

Lightning flickered across Reg's field of vision, and the scene suddenly shifted. The lake, the boys, and the ominous sunset disappeared. Reg stood in the house he had grown up in, in either his or Bay's bedroom. They had been almost identical, side by side, and it was too dark to see if Bay's childish watercolor of the ocean or his own misshapen starship sculpture hung on the wall to the right of the bed.

A small figure lay under the covers, but Reg knew the boy wasn't sleeping. He was afraid. Bay, Reg thought, it's got to be Bay. He tried to move toward his brother to comfort him, but he realized that a mist shrouded the floor of the room. It was as thick as quicksand, and he could barely drag his legs through it.

A flash of lightning outside of the window caught his eye, and again to his horror he saw the two boys at the lake, right outside the room, even though Eastern Lake lay several hundred miles away from the house where he and Bay had grown up. It's the same, he thought wildly, the lake and the room…he could not have said why, but the connection was there, visceral and undeniable.

A flash of light appeared near the front wall, and for one stunned moment he thought that lightning had struck inside the room. But this light didn't fade. It stayed, and started to widen. It was a door, the door to the hallway that led to the bathroom and sun room and up the stairs to his parent's bedroom.

For a moment, just a fraction of a second, he saw the room through the eyes of the boy on the bed. He saw himself, an adult, straining through the mist toward him, saw the door widen, and caught a flicker, just the barest glimpse, of a figure in the doorway. That glimpse sent thrills of horror through his body and finally jolted him awake, away from the faceless threat.

Reg woke to the sound of shrill beeping and wounded screams. For a moment he thought that the ship was under attack, that they were being boarded, and then realized that he was screaming. And he obviously had been for quite some time, if his raw throat was any indication. The beeping sound was his alarm, having switched to standard chimes when the spoken alarm hadn't been shut off by voice command.

"Computer, turn off that frigging noise!" he rasped, and the alarm silenced. He was still sitting at his table. He had sat up thinking, well into the night, and had fallen asleep without managing to make it to bed. He glanced over to the display on the wall beside his replicator, and started when he saw that it showed 07:37 in digital numbers. He was scheduled in engineering at 0800. He'd only make it if he rushed.

Instead he sat blinking stupidly at his table, marveling at the contrast between the cool, clean glass and the decaying salt marsh that lingered on his tongue. He remembered the message that he had sent to his brother last night, saying that there was nothing to worry about, there was no such thing as boogiemen, never had been, his big brother loved him, and everything would be okay if Bay just kept it together. It was after he had authorized the computer to send the message that he realized he had told his brother that it "will be alright if we keep it together, Bay." We.

He sat at his table for a full ten minuets before he stumbled up and out the door to Engineering, in the same uniform he had slept in the night before. As he moved numbly through the corridors, his feet dragging and his head down, the fleeting thought occurred to him that as a child he had been just as afraid of the boogieman as his brother.

A few minuets after he started his shift in Engineering (on time, a miracle in itself) Reg had convinced himself that he was overreacting. For god's sakes, afraid of monsters, at his age? He couldn't reconcile the fetid unknown dangers of the salt marsh with the cool clean lines of the Enterprise's diagnostic displays.

His current surroundings took precedence, and the taste in his mouth faded away somewhere in between a level three maintenance check on a malfunctioning work console and an examination of yet another faulty anti-grav unit. It was a running joke for La Forge to assign all of the anti-grav failures to Barclay, because a similar repair had unleashed the events that led to the exposé of Reg's questionable holodeck activities.

He had diagnosed the problem and was re-polarizing the 'grav's power circuits when he remembered that he had an appointment with Counselor Troi in less than three hours, and he had no idea what he was going to talk about. He was so distracted that he grabbed the unit's power circuits to replace them without protecting his hands, and the resulting shock caused him to yelp and drop the equipment.

"Having a problem there, Reg?" La Forge's voice startled Barclay, and he almost cursed aloud when he realized that the man was standing right behind him. N-no, Commander. I'm almost f-fi-finished with this unit."

Barclay donned the protective gloves that were lying on the floor beside him and again picked up the power circuits. A quick scan showed them to still be functioning properly, undamaged from their fall.

Reg breathed a sigh of relief, heard his grandmother's voice in his head saying "Well, thank God for small favors" and almost burst into hysterical laughter. Gram, he begged, you've got to get out of my head. You're gonna get me in trouble.

He replaced the circuits, closed the unit, and rose to his feet to test it. "Computer, activate anti-grav unit" he said. It was funny how he never stuttered when he talked to the computer. The unit rose smoothly and hovered a few feet from the floor, awaiting further instruction.

La Forge moved closer, placing a hand on Barclay's shoulder, and Reg clinched his teeth as he resisted a sudden rush of panic and anger. He had an overwhelming urge to jerk away and tell his commanding officer to get away from him.

Gotta keep it together, Reg, he told himself, and began repeating it like a manta. Keep it together, keep it together…"Good job, Lt. Barclay" La Forge said in a warm, approving tone. He squeezed Reg's shoulder once and released him, moving on to supervise some other technicians clustered around a work station.

Thankfully, La Forge had already turned his back to Barclay when the wave of dizziness hit. Reg grasped onto the anti-grav unit to steady himself and wondered what the hell was wrong this time. He had considered everything from a RuscT-Gen infection to Tellerian fugue when he realized that it was after1300 hours and he had not eaten for at least a day and a half. He had been planning to drink a nutritional supplement last night, but he had been distracted by Bay's message. Come to think of it, had he eaten the day before yesterday, either?

Well, he had to get something down before he talked to Troi, or he'd regret it. It was unthinkable for him to go before the indomitable ship's counselor in a weakened state. He had to be on his toes or he'd be unable to field her leading expressions and pointed questions. He was always on the verge of telling her more than he really wanted to. He had, so far, avoided talking about family at all, and he wanted to keep it that way. With the little head trips he was having and the worry about his brother fresh on his mind, he would have to be especially sharp with her today in order to avoid spilling his guts.

Barclay finished testing the 'grav unit, cleaned up the mess he had made repairing it, and attended to a few more small tasks before he told Geordi that he was going to take a lunch break. The youthful commander smiled at him and told him to take as long as he needed. La Forge knew that Barclay had a session with Troi, and he always tried to give Reg ample time to prepare and recover from counseling sessions before ordering him back to work.

Barclay left Engineering dragging his feet, in part because he didn't want to talk to Troi, and in part because it helped him keep his balance. Waves of vertigo washed over him, and his vision blurred at the edges. I should have just left when I remembered I needed to eat, he realized. He hoped he'd make it to his quarters and the replicator before he passed out. Jesus, I didn't even have any coffee today, Barclay thought. I must have been wired if I could work like that with no food and no caffeine.

He trailed his hand along the corridor wall to keep from falling over. The thought of actually passing out and being taken to sickbay generated enough humiliation to give his head the goad it needed to clear a little bit. He began to get nauseous as well as dizzy, but he reached his quarters without incident.

Reg walked over to the replicator before he realized that his message light was blinking again. He touched the wall, and Caleb's name lit up. He groaned. His own message could not possibly have reached his brother yet, and he really didn't want to know what this new missive of doom contained.

"Computer, give me Barclay's nutritional supplement number 3, at ten degrees Celsius." He had found that he could get the stuff down better if it was really cold. The supplement did not have a definable taste. It was like drinking sweetened water, with the consistency of light syrup. It was perfect for times like now, when his stomach rebelled at the thought of anything solid.

He sat down at the small glass table by his door, and took a sip. He almost gagged, the taste of salt was so strong. "Computer, run a diagnostic on the food unit in my quarters!" Reg said sharply. "The food unit in this room is functioning normally" The computer replied. "Then give me another supplement number 3." Barclay demanded.

The glass appeared, and Reg took another cautious drink. The saltiness remained, and underneath it there was a hint of the acrid salt marsh…"Fuck!" Barclay exploded, and hurled the glass against the replicator. It shattered on impact, and the clear drink oozed down the wall. It didn't make any difference; the taste of the lake was still in Reg's mouth, the charged copper scent filling his nostrils.

He stood lightheaded and trembling in his quarters, his fists clinched, his breath coming in straining gasps. He wanted to scream. He wanted to throw the other glass. He wanted to stamp his feet and break every piece of furniture in his quarters. He wanted, above all, to be somewhere else, anywhere else, someone else. He wanted to shed his own skin.

Instead he walked mechanically over to his table, sat down, and picked up the first drink he had replicated. He brought it hesitantly to his lips and, even though the taste of salted decay lingered, drank half of it in one gulp. He managed to get almost all of the rest of it down without gagging, then sat at his table and watched the remaining liquid slowly slide back down to the bottom of the glass.

His arms relaxed by his sides, and his face lost all expression. His body felt heavy and thick. His skin seemed to be stretched too tight over its surface.

His communicator beeped. "Counselor Troi to Lt. Barclay." Shit. A glance at the wall showed him to be five minuets late for his appointment. He tapped his combadge. "Barclay here." He was amazed that his voice sounded normal, slightly fatigued, but nothing else.

"I'm very sorry counselor, I got caught up at work and lost track of time. I'm on my way." He raised his body slowly from the chair and shuffled toward the door. It was like moving through mud, like trying to walk through the mist in his dreams.

There's a dam, he thought disconnectedly, as the bright light of the corridor assaulted him on his way out of his door, a wall in my mind. On one side is the Enterprise, my life, clean rooms, open space and clearly defined procedure. On the other side is Eastern Lake, and its warm, fetid waters. I've held it back until now, but one day the dam's going to break. I'm going to drown.

By the time he reached Counselor Troi's office, the meal replacement had kicked in, raising his blood sugar level and his spirits. He still felt a tad like the walking dead, but he was beginning to think he could survive the appointment. He wished he'd had time to drink a cup of coffee, and then wondered bemusedly what that would have tasted like.

Well, there was no use dithering outside the door. Troi was an empath; she knew he was here already. He placed his hand on the call panel, and the answering chimes echoed from inside her office.

The door opened, and Troi waved him in. "I hope this isn't a return to old habits, Mr. Barclay" the Counselor said, amused. Good, she wasn't annoyed. This would go so much better if the session didn't start with her on guard. "I-I'm sorry, counselor, I was w-working on something in Engineering and I lost track of t-time and…"

Troi's eyebrows raised as his voice trailed off, and Reg wondered what the hell he had been thinking. There were rather notable exceptions to the rule, but in general you could not lie to an empath while in the same room with her. He played it off, smiling wanly. "Okay, I was in my quarters instead of Engineering, but I did loose track of time."

He sat down on the long lavender sofa and glanced around at the lime green walls while he waited for Troi to take her seat in the straight-backed chair in front of him. For what seemed like the millionth time, he wondered what had possessed her to go with all pastels for her office decorations. You simply couldn't trust pastels. They were too…jaded.

"So, what made you loose track of time?" Troi asked. She had settled herself serenely into place, legs perfectly crossed, hands folded into her lap, an open expression on her face and the barest hint of a smile. It was a flawless execution of her role as Benign Listener, and in a fit of pique Reg wanted to applaud.

As for her question, Barclay felt a brief surge of irritation at her scrutiny and an urge to say "Jerking off", but he bit his lip and persevered. Gram, come on, he thought, this isn't funny anymore.

He frequently wished that he had inherited more of his grandmother's puckish sense of humor than his mother's duck-and-cover attitude, but there were times when Gram's ever ready punch lines were just distracting. Like now, when he sat a few feet away from an empath who had no doubt read all of the nuances of his private emotional outburst.

"Oh, I was just..." he paused when he realized that he had no idea what to say. He barely managed to keep himself from panicking again, and furiously tried to come up with something plausible with just enough truth in it to dissuade her empathy.

"Is there something wrong today Reg? You seem particularly tense." Troi leaned forward, in the manner that Barclay had labeled the Compassionate Caregiver, and Reg almost choked on repressed laughter. His thoughts raced. I gotta think up something quick, she's gonna think I'm loosing it. Well, I am loosing it, but…Get it together!

"Uh well, I uh, I got a message from my brother and…" Wait! No! Red Alert! Full Reverse! oh fuck. "So, what did it say, if you don't mind telling me?" Troi asked when his words tumbled to a halt.

Wait a minute, Reg thought, I can work this if I just... "Well, h-he's kind of stressed out, not sleeping well, so I'm a little w-worried about him. I s-sent him a m-m-message back tel-tel-tel telll…." He had to stop talking. The words wouldn't come out. He realized his hands were shaking, fluttering together just like Bay's had on the viewscreen.

This is bad, he realized. I'm coming apart in front of someone who is authorized to assess my mental state and relieve me of duty.

"You are worried about him, aren't you?" Troi's eyes practically oozed sympathy. Reg nodded. He didn't trust himself to speak. "But there is something you're holding back." It was a statement, not a question, and there was a look in her eyes that Reg couldn't fathom. It was solid, and sure, and just a little bit cold. It wasn't predatory, but it showed strength that he had not realized the counselor possessed.

He wanted, in that moment, to confide in her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, while at the same time he wanted to run away from her and hide. He just didn't know if she would use her strength to hold him above water or to crush him. In the past, when faced with a dilemma like this he had always withdrawn from the person in question. He wasn't sure if that was an option here, even if Troi allowed it.

He almost walked away from the moment nonetheless, almost made some equivocation. It would not be difficult to claim that he was holding something minor back, something that embarrassed him, so that she would move on, or at least give up. Reg was beginning to wonder if he had ever really fooled her with anything.

But the moment he opened his mouth, the half-lies ready on his tongue, a boy's face flashed behind his eyes. He was alone, naked and weeping, huddled beneath a bare window in a wooden cabin by a lake, helpless against an enemy that was too strong to fight and too quick to hide from. Reg couldn't leave him there; he couldn't do that to Bay. "Yes. I am holding something back." The words slipped from his throat at normal volume, but they were clipped, cold.

Troi leaned back in her chair and smiled, a measuring look in her eyes. "I believe that one phrase was the most honest thing you've ever told me, Mr. Barclay." If you only knew, bitch, he thought, his mind loose and circling empty spaces. It's the most honest thing I've ever told anybody.

Troi's eyes still weighed him, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that she was trying to decide how far and how hard to push his mental defenses. Once she started, he wasn't sure how long he could hold out before they all crumbled. "Would you like to share what you're keeping from me now?" The Counselor asked.

"No" he said, his voice trembling. He didn't know if he could. He was afraid that if he examined the scenes bubbling up from his subconscious the dam would go and he'd fall prey to all the monsters that reached out for him from shadowed places.

"I can't." he amended. "Why can't you?" Troi asked. In for a penny…, he thought. "Because I'm afraid. I'm afraid that if I do this dam in my head will burst and flood everything out of me. I'll be left empty, like some windblown scarecrow in a field gone to seed."

Well, he thought, you can't tell I'm from Virginia, no ma'ym. And I did not just tell her about the dam. I did not. "I just…I just… Sometimes monsters have familiar faces." His voice dropped to a whisper, and he finally stopped speaking. What the hell was that last part about, he wondered. Monsters with familiar faces? He waited with trepidation to find out how Troi would respond.

He had been looking at his knees, and when he met her gaze that controlled expression of compassion was back. "All right Reg." she said. "Why don't we talk about something different for a little while?" Barclay exhaled, and realized that he had clinched his hands into fists. He slowly released them, but he didn't let down his guard. The diversion didn't fool him. He'd seen the othercounselor beneath this genteel mask.

"L-like what?" he asked. "Well" Troi replied, "Why don't we talk about your problems with the Holodeck? I asked you last week to try to encapsulate your feelings about that experience, and what you believe you've learned from it." She had? He didn't remember, but in between his social fears and busting ass in Engineering and Bay's breakdown that had precipitated his own slide down into the muddy water…Well, it wasn't surprising that he'd forgotten about it.

"Hmm." He stalled for time, and then decided to just go with what popped into his head instead of what he thought she was expecting to hear. She hadn't relieved him of duty yet, so maybe it was safe enough.

"Well, I think it has to do with boundaries" Reg said. Troi leaned back in her listening pose. "I mean, I think that it was sort of like a confusion of boundaries, where I assumed one thing and everyone else assumed another. It's happened to me before, believe me." Reg could feel himself beginning to relax. This was more than he had originally planned to reveal about the Holodeck incident, but at least the conversation had steered away from Bay and monsters and psychic floods.

"What did you assume?" Troi asked. "Well," Reg replied, "I assumed that what I did in the holodeck was private, that it was an extension of my own fantasies. I never thought someone might enter it, and I assumed I could do anything I wanted there without hurting anyone, like I could if the fantasy played out in my head. Other people, well, they assumed something quite different, that any manifestation of their bodies should fall under their control…And I can see their point, and I know I got too involved in there, but…." He stopped, realizing he had not waited for her input.

The calculating expression was back when she responded, but her tone was soft. "So, you must have considered it a grave breach of trust, then, when Commander Riker and Geordi and I entered your Holodeck program without permission." Barclay brushed his thinning hair back while he considered how best to respond. "Well, I, uh…A breach of boundary, maybe, but I don't know if trust has anything to do with it."

Troi frowned slightly. "They're the same thing, don't you think? It seems like the essence of trust, to expect others to respect the psychic lines we draw around us." Reg leaned forward, and the Counselor continued, "If those lines are in different places than other people expect, or if violations have occurred more frequently than usual, then a person might find it difficult to trust people."

Reg swallowed, as the thought occurred to him that he could hurt people, just by not paying attention. "So, do you think I d-do that, Counselor? I mean, do I routinely violate boundaries that I don't even know are there?"

Troi smiled. "No, Mr. Barclay. I think that in general you are more respectful of personal boundaries than other people are. Yours tend to be more stringent than theirs. I was suggesting that other people must violate your boundaries, because they are so stringent, as well as atypical."

Reg sighed. "Oh." "And furthermore," the counselor continued, "I can see how it would be difficult for you, especially since I have violated your boundaries once before, to trust me enough to tell me about what's really bothering you." Uh oh, Barclay thought, we're back here again.

Troi leaned forward, looking into Reg's eyes. "I'm not going to hurt you, Mr. Barclay. And I can wait until you feel comfortable enough with me to let me help you."

"Can you wait till hell freezes over?" Reg snapped. Shit. Gram, you've done it now, you've done it… Troi leaned back in her chair, her eyes sparkling with humor. "Yes. I can. But I don't think I'll have to."

Reg lay his head back into the soft embrace of the sofa, defeated, and with no warning was again in the eye of the storm, pinned down, smell of metal, slanted sky, rhythmic motion, something in his mouthhe was choking and….

The soft lines of Troi's office resurfaced and Reg realized that he had his hands locked in between his knees and he was gagging. Would have probably been vomiting, but there was nothing solid in his stomach to come up. He could taste death again and he wondered if he were actually going to loose his mind, get lost wandering chaos lands and never find his bearings again… "….are you all right? Reg?" There was real concern in Troi's eyes.

It didn't even occur to him to lie, to claim that he was all right. "W-what is wrong with me?" he implored. Troi sighed. "Well, Mr. Barclay, I can't be certain unless you give me more information, but based on your emotional responses I would say that you are suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress, complete with…."

A bright hysteria filled Reg. Post traumatic stress, oh yes, from being tortured by the boogieman as a child...He bit his lip so hard it bled, trying to keep from laughing. It was only then that he realized Troi had stopped speaking. When she saw he had focused on her again, she continued.

"…complete with flashbacks and disassociative tendencies. I don't know how severe it is unless you communicate to me exactly what you're experiencing, but I would say that something has triggered a flare up."

Troi's expression grew speculative again, and slightly hesitant. "I can't accurately judge your mental state if you aren't open with me, Reg, so I'm going to ask you a direct question; Are you fit for duty? Can you keep it together?"

This time Barclay gave in to the hysteria, and burst into high pitched laughter. There was a sharp, fine edge to it, like the shattering of blown glass. "I'm sorry," he gasped. "It's just…" He was going to explain what was so funny, but he couldn't focus on anything coherent.

"Can you keep it together, Mr. Barclay?" Troi asked again. Her tone was deep, soft, and meticulously gentle. It stilled Reg's manic laughter and brought tears to his eyes. He was horrified. For god's sakes, he hadn't cried since…his mind skidded to a halt, refused to process the thought any further, and Reg contemplated another hidden place in his mind as he begin to wonder just how much he had forgotten over the years, how much he refused to see.

He blinked back the tears, and opened and closed his mouth a few times before he got the words out: "I'll l-let you know if I c-can't, all right?" It was all that he could give.

It was enough. Troi nodded, and said "I'll trust your word, Mr. Barclay. And I want to let you know that I'm available, day or night. Just call if you need me." That sounded like a dismissal, and Reg realized that they were over time. He rose to go, and Troi rose with him.

"I'm going to have a talk with Commander La Forge, Reg. Off the record." she said, holding up her hand to forestall any objection, "I'm going to encourage him to take it easy on you for a little while. I know you've been working overtime, and I think it would be best if you reduced your stress levels." Reg nodded, defeated again, and moved toward the door.

Troi followed him. "Counselor" he asked, "What would you have done if I'd told you I could keep it together?" "Relieved you of duty" Troi replied, with a small quirk of the lips. Reg smiled in return, and Troi reached out to place a hand on his arm in farewell. He sidestepped the gesture like a skittish colt, and he could see Troi filing his response away, see the wheels turning behind her eyes, generating conclusions. Reg didn't think he wanted to know just what those conclusions were.

"Goodbye Reg" Troi said. "I'll see you later, and remember what I said: You can call me at any time." "Goodbye Counselor" Barclay replied, and exited her office before he could give anything else away.

Reg walked down the corridor at a steady gait, but his mind was still reeling, and he walked into Engineering before he even realized where he was going. Well, there was no use hiding in his quarters. He might as well go back to work. He went toward the warp core in search of Geordi to see if the Commander had any special tasks for him, and found him deep in conversation with Commander Riker and Lt. Commander Data.

Judging from their relaxed posture and easy grins, with the exception of Data, of course, the three men did not appear to be discussing ship's business, but Reg was loath to interrupt them. He was intimidated by social interaction at the best of times. He didn't even want to contemplate striking up a conversation with a group of command officers after the counseling session he'd just had.

Instead he walked over to the console by the door, where all duties for the shift were listed. Every necessary task for the day had been completed, but there was still minor turbolift maintenance to be done. Good, at least he wouldn't have to go looking for problems just to have something to do. And he wouldn't have to repair another damned anti-grav unit.

In order to perform checks on the turbolift system he'd have to crawl through almost every Jefferies tube on the upper decks of the ship, but that also had its advantages. He might be sore tonight, but with any luck it would keep him occupied for the rest of the day and ensure that he didn't have to talk to anyone.

Reg checked out a standard tool case and some necessary special equipment, then walked to the tube in the aft Engineering section loaded down with three duranium cases and a coil of thick colored wires that wrapped around his neck. It would have been easier to go down the main corridor, but it was considered "unprofessional" to walk around ship covered in equipment.

He could have requested a small anti-grav pad to trail after him, but he wasn't feeling particularly friendly toward anti-grav devices at the moment. His left hand still ached from this morning's shock, for one thing. He really didn't want to go to sickbay about it. He couldn't think of any way of explaining the injury to Dr. Crusher without looking like a dumbass, and he didn't even want to try.

A few hours later, crouched beside an open hatch and immersed in the mundane reality of his work, Reg felt like he had gained some mental equilibrium. There really was no problem, therecouldn'tbe. There were no such things as monsters, for god's sake. His overactive imagination had taken a perfectly innocuous dream and made it into a harbinger of doom. Both he and Bay were jumping at shadows. Of course, there was still Counselor Troi to deal with, but it wouldn't be that hard to convince her that he had been overreacting. After all, he overreacted all the time, so there was precedent.

Reg started slightly when his communicator beeped, interrupting his reverie. "La Forge to Barclay" "Barclay here" Reg replied, in a questioning tone that was so submissive and eager to please that it was just short of whining. Good boy, Reg thought, now roll over…"Reg, I'm on my way in to talk, okay?" "Yes sir," Barclay replied, "I'll be waiting." Like I would be going anywhere, Reg snorted. It hadn't been necessary to warn him, unless…oh shit, Troi didn't waste any time.

Barclay sat up and tried to brush down his hair and uniform. There were lubricant stains on his cuffs, burn marks on his pants, and his hair was literally standing straight up. The overall effect made him seem uncouth, absentminded and particularly harried, which was not good as impressions go if he hoped to convince Geordi that he was fit to continue his full schedule of activities.

He'd never win back the face he had lost with the Holodeck incident if he were relieved of duty, or even restricted in his activities. However, he had given Troi ample reason to do one as well as the other, and there was nothing he could do about it now. He cursed his brother, his grandmother, and his own loose tongue while trying to think of an argument to use with Geordi that might work, and came up empty handed. He sighed as he leaned against the wall of the tube, relaxing taut muscles and waiting for the inevitable.

The tritainium mesh floor clinked as Geordi made his way around the bend into the section where Barclay was sitting. Reg smiled and waved at his commanding officer, the gesture so out of place that even he winced. Jesus, why do I do shit like that? he thought. A simple nod would have sufficed.

Geordi gave his junior officer a small smile in return as he crawled over to the hatch where Reg was sitting. "How are the repairs going, Mr. Barclay?" Geordi asked. He had an affable expression on his face with no signs of trepidation or nervousness, so Reg didn't see any overt cause for alarm. He relaxed a little more, and turned toward his supervisor to report.

"I'mmm about 75 done, sir, I-I'll finish up in a c-couple of hours, and I thought after that I'd do r-rou-routine maintenance checks and…" Geordi held up his hands to stem Barclay's record of productivity, and Reg's voice ground to a halt.

"Whoa, Reg," Geordi said, "If you worked any harder I'd suspect you of being an android. How about just finishing with this hatch, and calling it a day, hmm? We can complete this maintenance cycle tomorrow, it really didn't have to be done right now anyway. It's already 1700 hrs, and I know you worked like a demon yesterday."

The word "demon" caused Reg's stomach to flutter, but no flash of lightning or jilted sky eclipsed his field of vision, and the salt marsh did not erupt upon his senses. He almost sighed with relief. Of course there was no stronger response: he had calmed himself down, and was getting over his paranoia.

"Well, I could do that if y-you like, Commander, but I'm not t-tired, and I'd kind of like to get d-done with this tonight…" Geordi leaned closer, frowning slightly, and Barclay was suddenly struck with the paralyzing notion that La Forge, who was touchy-feely at the best of times, might lay a hand on his shoulder or arm here in the Jefferies tube where they were cramped together by metal and he couldn't get away. Panic raced along his veins, both icy and hot, his chest restricted and his hands clinched into fists.

"Hey, Reg?" There was concern in Geordi's voice. "Are you okay?" La Forge reached out toward the trembling man, and Barclay jolted, his eyes widening. "Don't touch me!" he gasped out, skittering sideways away from La Forge's outstretched hand.

He was crawling rapidly away from his commanding officer before he even realized what he was doing. He stopped, on all fours, and turned back to face the smaller man. Geordi was staring at him in a mixture of concern and horrified confusion. "Sir, I'm so s-sorry, I've just been a l-little on edge lately and, and …well, Jefferies tubes make me nervous."

There. Partial truth, bald faced lie. The story of his life. And there was something wrong with him, after all. He was irrevocably, eternally flawed. Some delicate calibration inside of him was misaligned. It had to be for him to react like that just because someone sat close to him and reached out a hand in simple kindness. Geordi sighed. "You seemed pretty okay until…did I do something to make you uncomfortable, Lieutenant?"

"No sir", Barclay replied, a little too forcefully. "I just don't know w-what got into me". "Mmhmm." Geordi said. His expression was unreadable, and the visor hid anything that his eyes would have given away. "Reg, have you had dinner yet?" Barclay blinked, the gears in his mind jammed by the sudden turn of conversation. "N-no sir." He replied. He didn't know what else to say. "Well, why don't we head down to Ten-Forward for a bite to eat? It's been a while since we got together outside of work. It'd be good to catch up, don't you think?"

Shit. The last thing that Reg wanted to do was to continue conversing with his supervisor. He had a keen feeling that Troi had spoken to La Forge, and he didn't know if he could successfully put the man off if he persisted in wanting to know what was wrong. And why did these people have to be so nosy, anyway? For god's sakes, on his last job no one had cared about his mental state if he had been able to perform his duties.

To top it all off, his emotions were in such a jumble that getting food down was sure to be impossible, and people always thought you were weird if you had dinner with them without eating. He knew this from painful experience. Still, after this last fuck up it would probably be worse if he didn't go. Then La Forge would really think he was loosing it. If he could act normal for forty-five minutes, smile and make conversation, manage to choke down a few bites of something….

"I'd love to sir" Reg replied, trying to ignore the premonition that the words were sealing his doom. La Forge grinned. "Great! Lets stop by the sonic showers to get cleaned up first, then we'll head over there." "L-lets stop by the showers so I can get cleaned up, y-you mean." Barclay said ruefully. La Forge chuckled. "Well, you might want to comb your hair a little."

A scant twenty minuets later, the two men were seated in Ten-forward. The place was packed, Commander Riker's jazz band was playing (what did they call themselves? Smooth Moves, Smooth Tones, smooth something) and Reg felt hemmed in by the restless, jovial sea of humanity that surrounded him. La Forge apparently loved it. "There really getting better, don't you think?" he asked over the din of music and laughter. "You know, I t-think they are." Barclay replied. "They've certainly pick-picked up an audience." It actually wasn't that loud: Ten-forward wasn't a big place, and Riker's band was playing a low-key blues piece at a fairly sedated volume, but it was still too much for Barclay's raw nerves to handle.

Geordi was watching the band, a grin on his face as Riker danced in place with his trombone, cheeks blown out, and eyes practically popping out of their sockets. Reg wondered if Riker knew that you weren't supposed to blow your cheeks out like that when you played brass instruments. He rather doubted it.

Barclay scanned the room and the door obsessively, telling himself that if there were just no surprises, if he could pay attention, he would be able to pull this dinner off without mishap and then return to his quarters to sleep. On the bed this time. Maybe a good night's sleep would clear his head. He was so busy telling himself to pay attention that he didn't notice the waiter coming to the table to take their order. He started when Ben's friendly face appeared out of nowhere, and then realized that La Forge was looking at him with that enigmatic expression again.

"So, how are you gentlemen this fine evening?" the dark skinned man asked, either oblivious to Reg's blunder or too polite to mention it. "We're pretty good. How's it going, Ben?" La Forge said, turning toward the server with an easy smile. "Oh, I can't complain." Ben said jokingly, "I get to hang out in a bar all day, and I'm considered gainfully employed. I have to tote a few drinks now and then, but it's worth it." La Forge laughed. "Well, we won't order anything that will be heavy for you to carry, how about that?" Ben grinned. "I'll believe it when I hear it. So, what can I get you two?" La Forge turned to Barclay. "Know what you want, Reg?"

Reg actually had no idea. He'd been so occupied with his social appearance that he hadn't had time to think of something that he could imagine taking a few bites of with his stomach doing back flips the way that it was. "Um..just g-give me soup." He said. "Chicken soup" he amended, when Ben looked at him quizzically.

"Anything to drink with that, sir?" "Oh..just, water. Ten degrees Celsius." Ben nodded as if the blandness of Barclay's order was not unusual, and turned to La Forge. "Give me grilled salmon, a spinach salad, saffron rice, and roasted potatoes. I'd like red wine to drink, and… umm… cherry pie for desert." "You got it." Ben winked, and walked to the replicator to fill their order.

Geordi sat for a moment, contemplating his dinner companion, and Reg felt his spine stiffen. "You sure that's all you want, Reg? You look a little peaked." Barclay smiled faintly. "I-I'm never hungry after w-work, sir. I'll eat again before I g-go to bed." La Forge sighed. "You look like you haven't eaten in a month, Reg. I mean it. You're pale, there are circles under your eyes, you're so thin you're practically skin and bone."

Reg was beginning to get pissed off, but he hid it with humor. "Well, I just w-want you to be brutally hon-honest with me, sir. I mean, don't spare my f-feelings or anything." Geordi grinned. "Don't worry, I won't. But, Reg, are you feeling well? Physically? Because you don't look good at all."

Reg bit his lip at a rush of sullen anger. Who the hell did Geordi think he was, his

goddamn mother? Even Reg's own mother hadn't told him when and when not to eat. Of course, after he was six years old his mother had been so blissed out with that wire in her fucking head that she hadn't told him much of anything…hadn't noticed much of anything either, including the fact that their stepfather believed that stringing his stepsons up in the oak tree outside of the house and lashing them with a belt was just punishment for waking him up too early, which was anytime before one o'clock in the afternoon.

Reg knew Geordi had a younger sister. He wondered if his commanding officer had any idea what it was like to stand in between his sister and the lash, to try and fail to protect her from the rage of an adult who felt that he owned the children under his care, owned them body and soul. Reg doubted it.

Barclay sighed, and tried to think of a comeback that would assuage Geordi's concern. "Sir, I'm just n-not sleeping well. I k-know I need to eat more. I'll try to start eating snacks."

He had used that excuse before, his second year at the academy, when he couldn't eat anything for almost two months. That was when he'd designed the damned supplement in the first place. He had begun passing out on the way to class and looked like a walking skeleton, and he'd overheard his advisor starting to murmur about suspension due to health concerns…Reg glanced up to see Guinan walk over to their table, a huge tray of food and drinks balanced on her shoulder.

Reg smiled slightly. Saved by the ten-thousand year old woman in a funny hat, he thought. "Well, hello gentlemen. It's a fine night for dinner and good conversation, don't you think?" Geordi turned toward the serene woman in flowing robes and a gargantuan hat that looked as though it was defying the laws of physics by staying on her head, and smiled. An honest smile, not the shallow ones he had been giving Barclay.

"Hello, Guinan. What are you doing, bringing our food? I thought you'd delegated that responsibility to Ben." "Well," Guinan replied, "I gave him a break. Besides, I wanted to come say hello to my two favorite engineers. How are you tonight, Mr. Barclay?"

Terrible, he wanted to say. I'm being forced to eat like I was a five year old, my brother has gone crazy, I'm going crazy, the crew hates me, no one understands me and my stepfather used to beat the hell out of me and my brother with a metal belt. I have scars.

What he actually said was "Fine. I'm just f-fine, Ms. Guinan." The dark skinned woman smiled, an honest, gentle one, and sat their tray down on the table. "It's just Guinan, Mr. Barclay." Reg smiled, a nervous stretching of the lips that made his face feel too tight. "G-Guinan, then. How are yo-you tonight?" "I'm doing quite well, thank you." She laid Geordi's multitude of dishes in front of him, and then she turned to Reg.

"I know you ordered soup, Reg, but I've got something else I think you would like." Oh great, thought Reg, here come the surprises that I can't deal with. I should have stayed in my quarters this morning, hid under the bed. His mind skipped a beat at the thought, as if it were a scratched record, and he suddenly knew that it wouldn't have been thefirst time he had hidden under a bed. Hid there for hours…Reg shook his head and tried to focus on Guinan.

"It's your recipe," she was saying, "but I added a few vitamins and such. It should taste the same." Reg's jaw dropped as the bartender sat a glass of the nutritional supplement he usually drank in front of him. "H-how did you…." Guinan winked, and gave Reg a knowing look. "Now, that would be telling secrets Mr. Barclay." She gathered the tray up under her arm. "Eat up, gentlemen" she said, and disappeared into the crowd on her way back to the bar.

Reg's mind was still racing, trying to figure out how Guinan had discovered his drink, when he noticed Geordi staring at the glass with a disgusted expression on his face. "You're going to drink that? It looks like plasma coil lubricant." Barclay laughed, and took a sip, breathing a sigh of relief when saltiness did not assault his tongue. "Well," he said, happily, "It doesn't taste like anything." Geordi's lips remained curled downward. "Neither does plasma coil lubricant."

Reg's message light was still blinking when he entered his quarters. "Fuck" he sighed. He'd forgotten about the second message his brother had sent him. He walked to the desk on the other side of the replicator to sit down. His table was more comfortable, and he found the clean, smooth glass top soothing, but by sitting at the desk he wouldn't be able to see the damned blinking light. The broken glass was still on the floor, the supplement dried along the wall. He just turned his back on all of it, his brother, his responsibility, the mute evidence of his own loss of control.

The rest of the dinner with Geordi had gone well. He had actually drank the entire glass of supplement Guinan had given him, and he was beginning to wonder what sort of"vitamins" she had put in the damned thing. He felt pleasantly full and calm, which said a lot after the past two days. He had claimed exhaustion as his excuse for ending the dinner before Geordi had finished half of his cherry pie.

He'd looked back toward the table on his way out of Ten-Forward, and found that Riker had sat down in his place. Geordi was laughing, looking much more relaxed with the first officer than he had with Reg. Well, Barclay thought philosophically, it's not like we're buddies or anything. He just wanted to make sure I wouldn't lose it and drop warp core containment one morning instead of aligning the sensor array. Still, it stings sometimes, that no one seems to be comfortable with me. But then, I'm not comfortable with anyone except Bay, so the feeling's mutual.

Back in his quarters and relaxed to the point of nodding off, none of it seemed to matter so much. All of his troubles were just so much vapor, and he was too tired to grasp at them anymore. I'll listen to Bay's message first thing tomorrow, he promised himself, as he pulled his body up and away from the desk, walking toward his bed.

He was almost there when the sensation of being pinned down struck again, and a kaleidoscope of image and memory burst into his brain. Sensations, emotions, circumstances flooded his consciousness and he lost all sense of the present. It was as though he was whirling in a centrifuge. He suddenly understood that the soft surface he was pinned down on was a bed.

He'd been pinned down on it before, it smelled of mold and sweat and he was hiding under it at the same time… no,…it was another bed, the one at his house, but he was pinned down on this one too and he was crawling under it with Bay, blood flowing down his back and legs, as he wiped away the tears streaming down his brother's face.

His hands, his hands held onto something rough like sand, no, not that rough, sliding, grasping, it was clothing, pants, and his hands were up, arms bent at the elbow, rocking, his head was rocking back and forth, his whole body, was…and it was sliding in and out of his mouth, back into his throat, choking him, he hated…he wanted to die and the metal, metal touched his cheek, warm, not cold, it smelled like the jar of old copper pennies his Gram had shown him once, dirty and sharp, filigreed brown fall leaves linked with rings of bright silver, it stung when it struck flesh, leaves imprinted on skin, the scent filled and consumed him, his eyes were looking up, and sideways, underneath the arm of the man on top of him. He could see sky.

"NO! No nonono….." He was moaning. On his hands and knees, in his quarters, a few feet away from his bed. He was gagging; the taste of the salt marsh filled his mouth again, but it wasn't a salt marsh, he realized. It was the sour oyster taste of a man's flesh, mixed with the bitter-salt taste of semen. And then he knew. He saw the monster's face.

"ohhhhhaaaa…" an inhuman wail surfaced from deep inside him, rising and falling like a siren. He wanted to stop it, but his body was out of his control, as if he were a child again, hurt and bleeding and crying out, for no one to hear. That was me under the window, he realized, not Bay. It was me on the bed in my dream, too.

The gagging progressed to dry heaves, finally stilling the cries coming from his throat. Spittle streamed from his lips onto the blue carpet, and disappeared into it, making no impact. Now, that's the story of my life, Reg thought, No impact.

He let his body slip slowly down, and laid flat on the floor, his arms bent at the elbows in a gesture of surrender. He didn't have a clue who he was surrendering to. To Bay? To life? To Counselor Troi and the well heeled, well meaning crew of the Enterprise who could not have imagined the things that he had lived through in their wildest dreams?

Maybe he was just surrendering, once again, to the ratbastard of a stepfather who had raped him, who had insisted that his young stepsons call him Steve, his given name, and not Dad. He didn't want to be seen as a father, it was too mainstream, too responsible. He hadn't deserved the title anyway, and Reg claimed no tie to him.

He and Bay had picked out that damned belt, brown copper leaves with filigreed gold veins, linked with sliver rings. It was a gift, just the kind of thing the man had liked, pretentious and ridiculously out of touch with twenty-third century reality. Steve had given them many reasons, over the years, to rue the gift, and the assumption that they could win his affection. His love had proved as poisonous as his anger.

In the end, Reg surrendered to his own exhaustion, and the realization that he had nothing left to fear: The dam had burst. Memories swirled in his brain, just out of consciousness, and he prayed that they stayed there. Please, no more tonight, he begged. I can't take it. He didn't know if god or his stepfather or his own subconscious defenses heard him, but he drifted into sleep without any further revelations. And he didn't dream.

Reg woke instantly in the early hours of the morning, his eyes fluttering open as he realized that he was still face down on the floor in his quarters, and that there was a steady pain in his right shoulder where his combadge was jabbing into his chest. He noticed a surreal quality to the world as he rolled over. Everything was too sharp, too clear, the crisp lines of the wall and doorway pounding into his vision in the bright light of his quarters.

His heart raced, and his mouth was dry. At least he couldn't taste his stepfather anymore. Memories slipped through the barriers of his subconscious mind and surfaced unbidden, both unwanted intimacies and unjustified punishments. He let the tide wash over him, didn't try to stop it or even hold on to specific images.

He saw his brother, naked and strung up by his arms over the branch of that damned tree, held in place by rope that chaffed his scrawny wrists and arms until they bled. The beating was over: Blood flowed down to the ground, splattering against the tree as the boy's legs flailed in vain. Bay was sobbing incoherently, saying he'd be a good boy if Steve would just…

The scene changed, and it was Reg this time, bent over the breakfast table with his pants down around his ankles, staring into a bowl of cereal he hadn't been able to touch, thinking he'd just be getting the belt and then hearing the unmistakable sound of a zipper opening…Another morning, before school, kneeling down in front of Steve to give him a blow job, his mother only a few feet away in the next room, but oblivious to anything except the false sensations the wire fed her.

The illegal pleasure wire had been a gift from Steve, a few months after they married. Reg wondered if he hadn't already started planning to… Bay wasn't there, either morning. Reg always tried to get Bay out of the house, ship him off to friends or family or anyone who would care for him for a few days when Steve got crazy.

So many events, sensations he had never wanted to remember, some he had been unable to forget. The tree, the lake, the belt, the taste of his stepfather's... This wasn't the first time that taste had surfaced. It had come on him periodically as a child, and it was after Steve began the late night visits to his room that Reg had become unable to eat regularly. He hadn't eaten three meals a day since he was six years old.

Plus the nightmares, when he wasn't suffering from all too frequent insomnia, the inability to trust anyone, the fact that not only had he neverhad sex, he'd been unable to even contemplate the possibility until the holodeck….and for the first time, he connected his holodeck obsession to his mother's wire addiction. They had both been a way to escape a reality that was unlivable.

"Fuck!" He shook his head, trying to banish the images racing through his brain, the connections they generated. "Computer, what time is it?" he asked. "It is 03:22 hours" the smooth, mechanical voice said. Well, since he'd gotten at least six hours of sleep, there was no use trying to escape into it again. Unfortunately, there was nothing else he could do at this godforsaken hour. He thought about going down to engineering, but the idea of actually having to talk to people, even the skeleton watch on duty, stopped him cold. Truth be told, he really didn't want to move.

He rested his head back onto the carpet, and remembered his brother's message. "Computer," he said "play messages, audio only." His brother's mellow tenor entered the silence. "Hello, it's me again. I guess you must be worried about me. I'm sorry, about my last message. I know what you must have said in return: There's no such thing as monsters, I love you, take deep breaths, et cetera. The thing is, Reg, after I calmed down a bit, I realized that there are no such things as monsters. I know that. But I also know…I also know something happened, Reg, something I can't remember clearly, but it happened in my room, at night, and …"

"Oh god" Reg moaned, tossing his head from side to side. It suddenly became crystal clear, the connection he had been denying: Bay's boogieman, Steve, the lake. The reason that he and his brother both feared the dark. Steve had fucked with Bay, too.

Some part of him had always known that Bay's night terrors had a basis in reality, and that Steve would not keep the promise he had made to leave Bay alone if Reg did everything that the bastard wanted him to do. He had failed. That was the meaning of the dreams he had been having. They were reminders of his ineptitude, then and now. He had been too weak to protect his brother, too weak to protect himself.

Bay's voice tugged at his consciousness once more. …"so you don't have to worry anymore, Reg." Worry about what? He wondered. What had he missed? Jesus, he had to pay attention, how could he ever hope to protect his brother if he didn't pay…"I've had a preliminary appointment with a therapist, and he thinks that there's evidence to suggest some repressed memories. Plus, he believes I'm suffering from some form of post traumatic stress."

Reg laughed, a hollow sound in the stillness of his quarters. Well, I'll be. It must run in the family, he thought. "I think I'm finally at the point where I realize I've got to take care of myself. I can't keep expecting you to take care of me all the time. I love you, and I'll let you know what's going on with me. Try not to worry, okay? Bay out."

Well, that's good, Reg thought. You go on and take care of yourself, Bay. Because I love you, baby brother, but I can't keep us above water anymore. I've already gone down. Reg relaxed, closed his eyes. He didn't think he would be able to sleep, and was still debating the possibility when he drifted off. This time, he did dream.

He was at the lake again, with Bay, but they were both adults, not children. He was holding his brother in his arms. Bay's head lay in the crook of Reg's elbow, they were sitting on shore some ways away from the lake, and the sun was high in the sky. It was the dark that he had been so afraid of in his other dreams, the dark that made them leave the lake and go into the cabin with Steve...

"It's all right" he told Bay, "I'll keep the sun from setting. I'll hold it up . And in this dream, in this moment, he knew that he could do just that. He could still the turning of the earth. He could keep them both safe. Bay smiled at him, and Reg kissed his brother's forehead gently, rocking him in time to the smooth rushing of the lake.

Reg woke again with a smile on his face, and tears streaming down his cheeks. He hadn't cried since he was eleven years old, when he had told his nice literature teacher about the man who came into his room at night, maybe he was a monster, and she had told him to stop making up stories. Then she'd told Steve.

The man had tied a ball gag around his head, made him wear it for almost three months, he had to put it in when he came home and he couldn't take it out until he left for school the next day, unless Steve wanted…the only food he had eaten was lunch at school, and he had almost stopped talking entirely.

In the end, Bay had gotten so upset, waking up every night screaming and shivering, that Steve had relented on the grounds that Reg "keep his brother in line." He had, holding Bay and telling him that it was alright, he could go to sleep, his big brother would be there to protect him. He had also started stuttering, and Steve had made fun of him, screwing his face up at the dinner table just like Reg did when the words couldn't come out...

"You fucking son of a bitch!" Reg swore, and pounded the carpeted floor with his fists. "Who gave you the goddamn right to…" his voice tapered off as he realized how ludicrous he sounded. No one had given Steve anything, he had taken the right to torture and rape his stepsons while drugging their mother into oblivion because he was strong enough to get away with it, because no one had stood up to him and stopped him.

I should have stopped him, Reg thought. I should have told someone, this is the goddamn Federation, I should have kept talking until someone listened, I should have taken care of my brother…Oh god, and who the fuck ever took care of me? Maybe I deserved it; I know I'm a whimpering, craven coward, but not Bay, not Bay…

He sobbed quietly for almost an hour, and then rose up on his elbows. "Computer, what time is it." "It is 06:32 hours." The computer replied. Reg sighed as he lay back down. He really had to get up soon. He had to take a leak. And there was no way in hell he was going to be able to work today.

He tapped his combadge. "Lt. Barclay to Commander La Forge." A few moments passed before a groggy La Forge answered. "La Forge here. What's up, Reg?" "I'm s-sorry to wake you, Commander. I just, um, I'm n-not feeling well, and…" "Reg, are you okay?" La Forge interrupted. "You seem kind of upset." I sound like I've been crying for the past hour, you mean. Reg thought. I have. And if you only knew what I had to cry about…

"I'm okay, sir. I was just thinking that I should take the day off, if you can spare me." Reg replied. La Forge was silent. "Because I'm not feeling well." Reg added. "Reg…are you not feeling well, or are you not feeling well?" Geordi sounded as though he were afraid of the answer to his question. Barclay pondered for a moment, and then said pleasantly, "Well, sir, I'm just not feeling well."

"I'm…not sure what you mean by that, Reg. That's not exactly a specific answer" La Forge said. "Well, I'm not sure what you meant either, sir, so if you want a specific answer, ask a specific goddamn question." Barclay countered. He hadn't meant to curse at Geordi, but he seemed to have lost the tight reign he normally kept on his tongue.

"Uhhun" Geordi's voice broke the silence. "Reg, are you having some kind of breakdown? I know you've been really jumpy, lately, I mean, I know you tend tobe jumpy, but…That whole Jefferies tube thing last night, that really wasn't like you, and Counselor Troi said you were under some mental strain and…."

"Sir" Barclay interrupted, "With all due respect, that's a little too specific. Yes, I have been on edge lately, and I've had a bit of a breakdown, gone for a swim, you might say. I'll be fine. I'll just take a phaser set to kill, point it at my head, and call you in the morning. You're really gonna need somebody to cover my shift today, though, if you don't mind my saying." Well, that did it. He'd better start looking for another job, hell, another career.

There was silence for a moment, the Geordi spoke again. "Okay Reg, I'm going to come down to your quarters to visit a bit, okay? You just keep talking, huh? Why don't you tell me what's bothering you." Fuck. Reg sighed, "Sir, the phaser thing was just a joke. You know that junior officers aren't allowed to have phasers in their quarters, and I'm actually all right and….Shit, you didn't call Troi, did you?"

"Well," Geordi replied, "Not yet, but I think I had better. This is really her area of expertise, and she'll know how to help you." Reg ground his teeth for a moment. "Sir, I really wish you wouldn't call Troi. I'll call her myself, after 0:700. And I believe I'm already beyond help, but I appreciate the thought."

There was another moment of silence. "Reg?" Geordi asked . "Sir?" Reg replied. "Did you realize that you weren't stuttering?" "Huh" Reg said. "I didn't realize that. It'll come back, don't worry. Now, about Troi…" Geordi sighed. "All right, Reg, but I'm giving you a direct order to call her at 0700, no later, and have her notify me after you do. Go ahead and take the day off. You've been working every day for at least a month, so you're due a break. Do you want me to come over? I don't mind at all."

"No sir," Barclay replied, "the place is a mess." He almost ruined it by bursting into laughter again, but he bit his tongue. Good, he was regaining some control. "All right, Reg. Make sure you call Troi, or I will. And, Reg?" "Yes sir?" Barclay replied. "I hope you feel better soon." Geordi said. Reg didn't know what to say, had no way of responding to his supervisor's kindness. "Barclay out." He said, and tapped his combadge, ending the conversation.

By the time 0:700 hours rolled around Reg had gotten up off of the floor, used the facilities, and washed his face and hands. He debated changing uniforms, and then decided that the two day old one was clean enough. There were still burn marks, but he had cleaned it in the sonic shower the night before, so at least it didn't smell musky.

Food was out of the question. He had already downed a glass of water. He drank water frequently, because it enabled him to ignore the fact that his stomach was empty most of the time. He hadn't had any caffeine for over twenty-four hours now, and he was beginning to notice a headache, but his throat tightened at the thought of anything going down it except water and air. He'd just have to face Troi on an empty stomach, sans caffeine. At this point, after spending the night on the floor and….everything else, he didn't think that it would have made any difference.

He was sitting at his small glass table, staring at the digital numbers on the display by the replicator, watching the minuets count down. His back ached from lying so long on a hard surface and his body felt weak, dense and…expanded, somehow. It seemed that he took up more space than he actually did. He blinked, refocused on the clock, and realized that fifteen minuets had passed. It was 07:02.

He tapped his combadge before he could think about what he was about to do and lose his nerve. "Lt. Barclay to counselor Troi." He expected a moment of silence to gather himself in, but Troi answered immediately. "Counselor Troi here. What can I do for you, Mr. Barclay?"

He had no clue what to say. There were countless polite, controlled requests for her assistance that he could make, or he could just lose it and start blabbering if he liked. But, in the end, anything he said would have the same meaning, and he choked on the two words that he had promised himself he would never, ever say again, after the teacher and her betrayal and the long months of silence: "Help me. Help me."

He must have gotten the words out, because Troi spoke again. "Where are you now, Reg?" "I…I'm in my q-quarters. And Com-commander La F-forge…" "I've already spoken to Commander La Forge this morning, Reg. Just stay where you are, all right? I'm on my way." He could see how she might have spoken to La Forge, since Reg had specifically asked Geordi not to call her, and he had said he wouldn't. Some people…"Barclay out." He said, and tapped his combadge.

His door chimed in less than twenty seconds. She must have been on her way before he had called her. "Come in" he said. The door slid open, and Troi entered. She was wearing her lavender pants suit, and carrying a small shoulder bag. Reg wondered what was in it, but asking required too much effort. The mist from his dream was swirling around his brain, inhibiting both thought and motion.

Troi entered the room with a confident stride, and there was a determined look on her face as her gaze swept over his quarters, taking in the broken glass, the supplement still crusted on the wall, and the fact that the bed had not been slept in. Her gaze finally rested on Barclay, and he felt his stomach turn over as her face took on an expression of impenetrable resolve.

"May I sit down, Reg? she asked. "Oh..uh, yes, please, Counselor." He said. Troi sat down in the other chair, placing the bag on the glass tabletop. She linked her hands together and placed them on the table also, then looked intently into Reg's face. He floundered for a moment, wondering what he could possibly say, how he could communicate the memories and the need within him, but Troi broke the tension by speaking first.

"So, did the glass do something wrong?" He blinked. "What?" "The glass, Mr. Barclay. The one you threw against the wall some hours ago. What did it do to you?" Her face was calm and amused, her eyes bottomless. The strength that he had glimpsed earlier was evident in her face and posture. She'd stopped bullshiting him with carefully contrived personas, and Reg was suddenly terrified.

He looked down at the floor visible through the glass, and drew patterns on the table with his restless hands. "It tasted wrong." He muttered. "The glass, or the drink?" She asked. "The drink, of course. The glass didn't taste like anything. The drink wasn't supposed to taste like anything, but…" He tapered off, not sure of what to say next. "What did it taste like?" she asked. He looked up at her. "It tasted like….It tasted salty," He amended.

Troi didn't accept the equivocation. "That is a lie, Mr. Barclay, and I cannot help you if you continue to lie to me." She said, unrelentingly. A sluggish fury filled Reg, and he rose from his chair and begin to pace in front of the replicator. "You can't help me, anyway. It's far too late for anyone to help me; you would have to go back to the time when I was six years old if you wanted to do that. And, for the record, it did fucking taste salty, it's just…that's not all it tasted like."

That calculating expression was back on her face, and Reg exploded. "Don't fucking look at me like that! I'll thank you not to make assumptions about the working's of my subconscious, you manipulative…" He stopped himself just in time, before he began an attack on her that was both unjustified and cruel. He let his hands fall to his sides, and took a few deep breaths. He didn't open his eyes when he spoke. "Counselor, I'm very sorry. I'm not angry at you, and you didn't deserve that."

When he opened his eyes, Deanna's face was unreadable. "I know you're sorry, Reg, but I also know that you are angry with me, at least a little. You're angrier at something or someone else, though, and that is why you lost control. And you're wrong, by the way: It's by no means too late to help you. I know that you honestly feel that way, but believe me, I've met people I couldn't help, and you're not one of them. In order for me to do so, though, you're going to have trust me, just a little bit."

A sense of fatigue filled Reg, so deep that it seemed to emanate from his very bones. He walked slowly over to the table and sat down again, clasping his hands and staring at them intently in order to avoid meeting Troi's face. "I don't trust anyone, except my brother." He said softly. "I don't even trust myself. God knows I've fucked up too often to do that, no matter how hard I tried. That's the story of my life: Unrelenting failure."

He looked up, and her eyes were soft. "What have you failed at?" She asked. "Everything." He answered "Everything I ever tried to do, from childhood on. Especially…" He paused. "Especially what, Reg? " Troi asked. "Especially with Bay." He said. "I couldn't protect him. I tried, but I couldn't."

"Who is Bay?" He started. He'd been so deep into the contemplation of his brother's pain that he had almost forgotten she was there. "He's my brother. My little brother." There. That was safe enough. "And what were you trying to protect him from?" That wasn't safe at all, and he rose again, staggering a little, to pace back and forth in front of her once more.

"Reg?" Troi said. He turned to face her. "Would you rather go back to the glass, talk about that for a little while?" He stared at her for a moment, then licked his lips and responded. "It's the same thing." He said. "The taste, the lake, the belt, the tree, they're all what I tried to protect Bay from…It's all the same." Troi nodded, but looked slightly perplexed. "I'm not sure that I know what you mean, Reg. Could you explain it a little more, to help me understand better?"

He had a decision to make, he realized. Tell her, or walk away. There was no way he could pussyfoot around the subject, only letting certain things out. He had gone too far for that already. He thought about ending the session, claiming stress, and transferring off of the Enterprise. Maybe not even to another ship, he could go to Earth, be near Bay.

After a few moments of deliberation, he knew it really wasn't an option. He could get away from Troi, but he couldn't get away from himself and the memories that had resurfaced. He had gotten away from his stepfather's belt and hands, but he could not get away from the scars that they had left on him, body and soul. And that taste was back again.

"Reg?" He had been silent for a few moments. He looked at Troi, and tried to smile, but all that came out was a grimace. He sat down at the table once again, hands flat on the surface, and for a moment it seemed to him that his flesh was as transparent as the glass, that he could see beneath his skin into muscle and bone. He opened his mouth.

"When I was a little boy, about three years old, my grandmother showed me a jar of copper pennies." That wasn't what he had been planning to say, but it was as good a place to start as any. "They're an old earth coin, from the United States. The two things I remember most about them are how they smelled, really sharp and musty, like the air after a lightning storm, and how the edges were shiny, even though the coins had gone dull with age. "

"Two years later, I was looking for a present for my stepfather and I noticed a belt in an open market that had the same look and smell. It was made of copper leaves, with filigreed gold veins, and linked with rings of silver." He paused. Troi was watching him patiently. "It sounds pretty." She said. He almost smiled, but he couldn't find enough strength to produce the facade.

"It was" he said. "It also stung like hell when it struck my skin. I remember leaves imprinted on my brother's back and ass, outlined in blood. We actually thought that was kind of cool. Maybe it was just the bravado of the damned, but we made plans to get leaf tattoos on our ass when we got old enough. We never got them, though."

He couldn't look at her face anymore. He stared steadfastly at his hands. "Who hit you with the belt, Reg?" Her voice was soft and sure, confident. He was glad, because he thought if her voice started to shake he wouldn't be able to do this. "Steve. My stepfather." "How often would this happen?" Troi asked. "Often enough" he replied. "Sometimes he would go a month in between, sometimes a week, a couple of times he strung us up twice in the same day."

"Strung you up," Troi said. "What do you mean by that?" "On the tree," He replied. "There was an oak tree outside of our house, with a thick, low hanging branch. He would make us take off our clothes, tie our wrists over the branch, and then….He'd fold the belt in half, hold onto the loose ends, and start lashing us."

Reg rested his head on his knuckles, and then continued. "Our nearest neighbor was two miles away, so he didn't worry about anyone hearing us. He didn't tie us in the tree every time, sometimes he was too intoxicated on one drug or another to tie the knots right or he just wasn't in the mood, and those times I tried to get in between Bay and the belt, but he wouldn't let me."

Reg realized that his voice was trembling, and a tear struck the back of his hand. Jesus, over twenty years of not crying and now he couldn't stop. Troi pressed something soft into his hand, and he realized that it was a tissue. Well, that explained the shoulder bag mystery. He wiped his eyes and blew his nose, then looked at Troi again.

"It wasn't your fault, Reg." She said. "Any of it. And you were a little boy, too. You did the best you could to protect your brother, more than most people could or would have." The words floated above him, the absolution they offered didn't touch him. In his heart, he knew he had failed his brother, and it would take more than Troi's good intentions to convince him otherwise.

He could stop now, he knew. There was no need to tell her any more. Even as the thought occurred to him, though, he knew that he wouldn't stop; that one way or another he was outing the bastard for what he had done to Bay, no matter the cost to himself. "That's…That's not the only thing that…The belt's not all of it."

He stopped talking, not sure how to proceed. Troi leaned back. "Just take it slow, Reg. The words will come out in their own time. You've told me about the tree and the belt, so you could start with the lake, or the taste that the drink reminded you of, or something else entirely. You're the one in control here."

It helped, hearing her say that, but he knew he had to get this out today or he would lose his nerve. Maybe after he had told her all of this, he could bury his stepfather again and leave him buried. He closed his eyes, and tried to think of where to start. "The house by the lake had belonged to my Grandmother, my father's mother. We called her Gram, and she died when I was five. She told me, she told me that I had her strength, that it would be enough to get me through, but she died before….before Steve…. He, um…."

Reg's throat closed up, and he had to stop for a moment. A hot wave of shame rolled over him, and he wanted to run out of the room and hide where no one could see him. Instead, he opened his mouth and tried again. "I think that I forgot it, repressed it, whatever, but it's been coming back these past few days, after Bay's message, he said he remembered the boogieman coming into his room at night. He was always afraid of the boogieman. I, um, I always slept with him because he would wake up screaming if I didn't, but when he sent that message I started seeing these flashes, feeling…"

He couldn't continue. He laid his head in his hands. "It's all right, Reg." Deanna said, soothingly. "Oh, no it isn't." Reg replied. "Because I remember now, I remember all of it. It started when I was six, he'd come into my room at night. He'd given my mom that damned pleasure wire a few months back, just after they married, and after using it she'd sleep like the dead and not wake up for anything."

"He said…He said that if I did what he wanted, he'd leave Bay alone, but otherwise he was going to….to do the same things he was doing to me, and then adopt him off to colonists who would work him to death and I'd never see him again. He did those things to Bay anyway, though, and Bay thought he was the boogieman because he wore a ski mask…"

"He hurt me, he…he made me…he made me go down on him, sometimes he would, he would go all the way, you know, and it hurt me so… He liked to get on top of me and stick it in my mouth, and I hated it because it choked me and my legs were pinned down and I couldn't move, I could smell the damned belt, he didn't take it off, and my whole body was rocking and I felt so out of control…."

He stopped talking, realized that he was rocking back and forth in the chair with his face in his hands. "I can't…I can't talk about it anymore, I can't….He began to sob again, and Troi murmured soothingly, telling him that it was alright, that he was in control now, that those things had happened a long time ago and he had already lived through them, that he was very brave to be facing them like this, and that she would help him to stop feeling so badly about them and about himself.

His frantic rocking slowed, and the movement began to soothe him. Troi pressed more tissues in his hand, and he held them against his eyes. When his sobbing gave way to shuddering sighs, she rose from the table and walked to the replicator. "Computer, give me a glass of cold water." The machine whirred, and she brought the glass over to the table and sat it in front of him.

"Try to drink some of this, Reg." she said, and sat down again. He took a cautious sip, afraid that his stomach would rebel at even water, but the cool liquid went down easily enough. He emptied the glass in a few seconds. He hadn't realized he was so thirsty.

He didn't want to look into Troi's face, couldn't stand to meet those dark fathomless eyes of hers. He got up and placed the glass in the replicator instead, and set the machine for reclamation. Afterward, he stumbled back over to the table, his body still wracked with sudden sighs.

Underneath the shame and anger that remained after finally exposing his stepfather's transgressions he felt empty, broken, and bitterly disappointed. Nothing had changed, that he could tell. He didn't know what he had expected, anyway. Like he had tried to tell Troi earlier, the damage had been done long ago. There was no undoing it now.

"Reg, look at me, please." Troi's gentle voice broke the silence. He slowly raised his head. I must look a sight, he thought, I haven't changed my uniform in days, my hair hasn't been combed today, my hands are shaking because I need food, my eyes are red from crying...

He felt like the most pathetic form of life imaginable. The shame that he now realized had been a part of him his entire life had erupted, burst from within, and it clung to him like a shroud. It stained his very skin. He wanted to die, wanted to crawl under his bed and never come out again.

Troi's face was open and compassionate. "Reg, I know that you feel ashamed right now, and I also know," she continued, before he could interrupt, "that nothing I could say in this moment will make that feeling go away. It comes from being degraded and used to satisfy the will of another, and it is a normal reaction to sexual abuse and incest, particularly if the abuse occurred in childhood. If you truly believed that you weren't culpable, that you had not failed your brother, you would probably still feel ashamed."

"But you need to understand, Reg, at least intellectually, that you have done nothing to be ashamed of. You're a very strong person, to have lived through what that man did to you, and very brave to be willing to face it by telling me." The words "sexual abuse" shocked him. For the first time he considered the fact that this must have happened to someone besides himself, that it was a quantifiable phenomenon.

"Counselor…Have you ever met any… ever treated anyone who this happened to? I mean…." "I've treated people who have been raped, and I have treated people who were abused as children. I have never heard a case as extreme as yours from someone who was raised in the Federation, though, and I have never treated anyone from the Federation who was sexually abused by a close authority figure repeatedly throughout childhood."

His spirits faltered. He and Bay were really alone, then. "But, Reg," Troi continued, "Just because I haven't treated anyone who experienced what you did doesn't mean that it never happened to anyone else. In the past, on earth, incest and sexual abuse were common. They are thankfully rare, now, but they do happen. It would be good perhaps if we both researched the subject, learned how other people have dealt with it. That way we might be able to help you gain a more objective approach to your own experiences."

His temper flared, and he spoke without thinking. "I don't know that I'll be able to gain an objective approach, Counselor, considering that right now I can taste the bastard's cum and I can remember exactly what it feels like to have his dick up my ass." Troi regarded him calmly. "So, that's what the drink tasted like." He hung his head.

"Reg, I'm not saying that you should be objective about what happened to you and your brother. I'm sure as hell not: Right now I'd like to string your stepfather up on the same tree he put you in. I'm suggesting that if you understood more about sexual abuse in general, your own responses would be placed into a broader context, and this experience might lose some of its hold over you. At the present, I can tell that it's overwhelming."

He lifted his head slowly. When she had spoken about his stepfather there had been real anger in her voice. Her show of emotion validated his own anger and he felt that smothered rage rising hot above his feelings of helplessness and shame, exposing the raw pain that had caused it.

"How could he?" he asked, in a rasping whisper. "How could he do that to us? We were just kids…maybe I was a little shit, but Bay was such a happy little boy. I remember how he would splash the soapy water, when mom gave him a bath. He laughed all of the time, sometimes for no reason, just to hear himself laugh. He almost never laughs, now." He remembered his brother as that carefree boy, wondered where he had fucked up, what he could have done to keep Steve from stealing Bay's laughter along with his innocence.

"You weren't a little shit, Reg." Troi's voice broke into his bitter contemplation. He looked into her face again. "You didn't know me back then, Counselor." "But I know you now, Reg," She said "and I can tell you definitively that you were not a little shit. No child is. You were a sweet, trusting boy just like your brother, and if I have anything to do with it, one day soon you will be able to express that anger you're feeling on your own behalf."

Reg couldn't reply. The bitter ashes of his impotent rage, then and now, clenched his throat, and he suddenly felt drained, almost to the point of passing out. He laid his head on the table. "Okay, Reg, I think we've done all we can for now." Troi said softly. He couldn't even look up at her, he was that tired. "Do you want some help getting into bed?" "No, I don't want to get into bed," he replied, his voice slurred.

"All right," she said. "Try to rest: I'll come by this evening, to see how you're doing." She walked further into his quarters instead of leaving, and he wondered what she was doing. Probably looking for the phaser Geordi told her about, he thought, and would have laughed if he'd had any energy left.

"Reg?" She said softly. She was right beside him. "Hmmm?" He replied. "I'm going to put this pillow on the table, all right? Do you want to lift your head?" He did, and the amount of effort that it took surprised him. She laid the pillow over his arms, careful not to touch him.

"Thanks," he said, more touched by her sensitivity to his personal boundaries than the act of getting the pillow. "You're welcome." She said. "I'll see you later." He heard the door sigh as she left, and was asleep before his head dropped down onto the pillow.

He woke sometime in the late afternoon, his head aching from neck strain and lack of caffeine, his right eye sealed shut, crusted with dried tears. He rose slowly, because his head was spinning again, and stumbled into his small bathing cubicle. He washed his face, managing to get both eyes open in the process, and then dried off without looking into the mirror. He didn't think he could stand to see his gaunt face, the dark brown eyes surrounded by rings of bruised flesh.

He had to eat. It had been three weeks, at least, since he'd had solid food, not counting the soup he'd managed to choke down sometime last week. He tried to remember when he'd last had hunger pangs, but they would have gone away in the second week. Self-starvation was a routine that he knew very well. He always managed to coast to the brink of serious trouble and then pull himself up again, but he wasn't sure that he could do that this time.

For one thing, he had a physical coming up next week, and there was no way he could hide the fact that he'd been subsisting on a fairly low calorie meal replacement and black coffee for almost a month. There were other meal replacements that had more calories and nutrients, but they were at best translucent and it was important that the liquid be clear.

When he was nervous, or under any sort of stress he couldn't put anything in his mouth unless he could see that it was uncontaminated. It was his most illogical paranoia, but it was also his longest standing one. Now, he had a general idea of where that particular neurosis had come from…and he had a sudden desire to beat his stepfather to a bloody pulp. Too bad the bastard had died five years ago.

Reg didn't know what to do. He tried to think of something he had a chance of getting down, and he finally just replicated another supplement. It was better than only drinking water, he figured, and a few minuets after drinking it the dizziness cleared and his hands stopped shaking. His head still pounded, though, and he replicated a cup of coffee.

He shouldn't be drinking caffeine this late in the day, especially after sleeping so long, but he had to be a little more in control when Troi came back. At this point, if he were a Counselor, he'd relieve himself of duty.

He felt restless and out of sorts after drinking the coffee and he walked around his quarters looking for an outlet that would expend some of his manic energy. He picked the shattered glass up off of the floor and cleaned the wall, then got a fresh uniform and underclothes from his closet and went to his bath cubicle to change.

The tiny room was barely large enough to stand in, with a small shower stall and a toilet and sink hidden in the wall. He always dressed in there, because he felt too vulnerable taking his clothes off in his quarters, even though there was no one to see. He striped his dirty clothes off quickly, and then pulled on his underclothes and uniform trousers.

He was pulling the shirt down over his head when another flashback hit him. This time he was maybe thirteen years old, walking down the hall to the bathroom naked, a towel draped over his arm. Steve was standing in the door to the sunroom watching him, and he knew he wouldn't be allowed to use the towel to shield his body from the bastard's predatory gaze…

Reg pulled the shirt down over his head and vomited, spewing coffee onto the clear white floor. Steve had given Reg and his brother strict bathing schedules while growing up, and the rule was that at the allotted time they had to take off all of their clothes before they left their rooms, because Steve claimed that it made the process more efficient. In reality, he had wanted to watch them, sometimes stroking himself while they paraded their vulnerable bodies for his amusement.

Reg reached back and hit the control panel, triggering the toilet. It slid out of the wall and he sat down, coffee and bile pooling around his bare feet. He didn't know if he could do this. How many memories were there, waiting to be unleashed by the slightest contact with such mundane, everyday things as the feel of a sofa, lying down on a bed, the simple act of changing clothes? Steve had begun abusing him when he was six years old. He had left for the Academy at age seventeen. There were eleven years of terror and pain, stored away in the depths of his subconscious, waiting to be brought up by the slightest trigger.

He thought about actually getting his hands on a phaser, and just ending it, but then he remembered that you couldn't shoot yourself with the damned things. Their programming didn't allow it. He could override the programming, or think of another way to kill himself if he put his mind to it, but he shied away from the possibility. He didn't want to give up just yet.

He stood up, and the toilet slid back into the wall. He stepped over his own vomit, and stood in front of the small mirror above the sink. His hair was completely mussed, and his skin stretched so tightly over his cheekbones that he was surprised it didn't just snap. His eyes were ringed with deep, dark circles and he was so pale that his face almost matched the color of his bathroom floor. The deep brown, almost black eyes that peered out of his face had a hollow look, as if they had seen the void of chaos unmasked and been drained of all hope and joy. He looked like shit. No wonder Geordi had been worried.

There was two days worth of stubble on his face. He retrieved his razor from the cabinet above the mirror and began gliding it over his cheeks. Within moments, his face was smooth. He cleaned the razor and put it away, noticing that the simple act of shaving made things seem clearer, made his problems less overwhelming. He had done something, engaged in a purposeful activity instead of lying helpless on the floor or sitting dumbfounded in his own vomit. Well, that decided it. Within minuets every trace of vomit had been cleaned, and the floor shone from the scrubbing he had given it.

Reg walked into the main room of his quarters, in search of something else to do. The bed was already made, considering it hadn't been slept in for two days, and the carpet cleaned itself. He walked around aimlessly for a few minuets, and then remembered Troi suggesting that he research other cases of sexual abuse.

He balked for a moment, not wanting to face any more memories, and then realized that whether he researched the subject or not, he had little choice where the memories were concerned. He had no control over the flashbacks; they were triggered by common experiences and descended without warning. Besides, it would look good to Troi; make it seem that he was taking control of his recovery, so to speak.

He laughed at the idea that he was capable of taking control of anything, and then sat at his table with a data padd, set for visual output only. He didn't think he could stand to hear the computer's emotionless voice describing a kind of suffering that he knew all too well. He directed the computer to research documented cases of sexual abuse and incest in the Federation, limiting the search to the past one hundred years.

After a half hour, he was thoroughly discouraged. Of all the events he had read so far, only one involved anything beyond simple voyeurism or fondling, and that was a one time occurrence that was interrupted halfway through. It wasn't as though Reg begrudged these people for not suffering as he had, but he realized that he was desperately searching for someone like himself. Troi was right; he needed to put his experience in context. Otherwise, it would continue to be a monolithic event controlling the whole of his existence, arranging the rest of his life around itself in an inconsistent orbit. It would end up consuming him.

An idea struck him, and he restricted his search to people who had grown up outside of the federation and became citizens later in life. He struck paydirt, and the stories became similar to what he and Bay had gone through. These peoples' experiences still tended to be milder, though, and not as repetitive. He was beginning to realize that his experience was extreme no matter what it was compared to.

Reg began to feel like his research wasn't such a complete waste of time nonetheless, and started looking through psychological records, trying to gauge how these people had been affected by their abuse. After reading for a few minuets, he began to shake, and had to get up and pace again.

Everything, everything he had experienced, from flashbacks to eating disorders to unexplained gagging and an avoidance of sex, were listed as possible results of sexual abuse. The records even mentioned that people who had been abused in this manner tended to be uncomfortable with all forms of physical contact, which explained his reluctance to be touched.

He felt a profound sense of relief, coupled with another emotion that he couldn't identify at first. He hadn't felt a sense of hope for his future, or allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that he could change his life for the better in a very long time. That newfound hope generated a sense of stability that he hadn't felt in years. It also filled him with a brittle excitement, and he couldn't sit still to read any more. He continued to pace back and forth until his door chimed twenty minuets later.

He rushed to his closet and retrieved his boots, put them on and ran a quick comb through his hair before he answered. He'd be damned if this started off with him at a disadvantage again. The door chimed again, and he walked back into the main room of his quarters.

"C-come in, please," He said, noticing that the stutter had come back. Oh well. The doors swished open, and Troi entered, sans shoulder bag. He decided to take that as a complement. Maybe she felt like he had gotten a better hold on himself, so she no longer had to be prepared for emotional outbursts.

The expression on her face was serene and compassionate, and she smiled gently at him. "Hello, Reg. How are you feeling?" "I'm f-feeling much b-better now, Counselor. Thank you f-for asking." Troi walked over to his table, and her eyebrows rose questioningly. "Y-yes, please sit down." He said. She did, placing her hands on the table, and then calmly regarded Barclay.

"So, how are you feeling?" she asked again, in the same tone, as if she had not heard his first response. "I'm f-fine." He said again, and walked over to the table to sit down beside her. She regarded him for a few moments, and then asked the question again. "How are you feeling, Reg?" He was beginning to get irritated. "Why d-don't you just tell m-me how I'm supposed to be f-feeling, Counselor, and then I'll b-be able to give you the right answer."

"I'm not trying to tell you how to feel, Reg." She said, her eyes capturing and holding his, "I'm telling you that I know for damn certain that you're not feeling fine, and that I'm not going to accept any answer from you that isn't the complete truth. I did you a disservice by accepting equivocations in the first place, and if I'd had any idea what you had been through, I would never have done it. I dropped the ball with you, and I don't intend to do so again. There's too much at stake. So, why don't we start over, and you can tell me how you're feeling, or not, if you prefer, but do not under any circumstances lie to me."

Reg gaped incredulously at her, and then grasped on to the only part of her soliloquy that seemed to give him any advantage. "So I don't have to talk to you if I don't want to?" The minute the words left his mouth, he wished he hadn't said them. He realized that he wanted to talk to her, had to talk to her, he didn't know of anything else to do and he had to have some help with this.

Troi smiled sadly. "No, Reg, you don't have to talk to me if you don't want to. I'm not going to coerce you. You've been coerced enough already, and you don't react to it well. I won't relieve you of duty until you show definitive signs of being unable to complete it. The problem with that scenario, though, is that we both know it won't be long before you start showing those signs if you choose not to deal with this. These things can't be swept back under the rug after they come up."

Reg rubbed his cheeks with the palms of his hands, and sighed. "What if I just don't want to talk about how I'm feeling?" "If that's what you want, then you don't have to," Troi replied, "I'm not going to force you to do anything, but I do hope that eventually you will trust my judgment on certain things. I believe that it would be a good place to start our work together, to discuss how you feel about the physical and sexual abuse you endured at the hands of your stepfather."

He winced when she mentioned the abuse and glanced at her sharply. He almost made a quick retort, but realized that it would be futile. Sidestepping the subject would not make it any less real, nor assuage any of the pain that it had caused him. And he felt better, now that he knew she wasn't going to force him to discuss things if he wasn't ready to.

"I don't know how I feel, Counselor." He said, trying to be frank with her. "I woke up this afternoon and remembered…I remembered how he used to watch us on the way to the bathroom. See, he made us strip in our rooms and walk naked, and…Jesus, anyway, this afternoon I was changing clothes and remembering that, how he used touch himself while he watched us, and I remembered feeling so helpless, like I just wanted to die…"

Reg's breath came in straining gasps, and his face reddened. "I'm thinking I can't do this. There's eleven years of this shit. He never stopped, once he started, he…I left at seventeen, for the Academy, and he fucked me the night before I left!" He was hyperventilating, and had to put his head between his knees. Troi spoke soothingly again, her words washing over him, telling him how brave and strong he was, how he wasn't helpless anymore, how he coulddeal with this, how she would help him.

Eventually, his breathing slowed, and his heart stopped pounding as though it was going to turn over in his chest. He dropped his hands from his face and looked at her again. "I don't know what to do. I feel…You tell me I'm not helpless, but I feel helpless. This shit just comes on me, I'm not doing anything, maybe thinking of Bay or changing clothes or lying on the bed….Shit, I can't even get near the bed. I slept on the floor last night."

Well, he thought, no need to hold anything back. Just spill it all. "I can't just change clothes in my quarters. I have to change in the bathroom, because I'm afraid someone's going to watch me even though no one's here… I can't let anyone touch me, at all, I freaked on Geordi in a Jefferies tube last night because I thought he might touch me. He's so damned touchy- feely anyway, and every time he lays a hand on me I just want to cold-cock him. I can't eat, I haven't eaten for almost a month, the only things I can get down are clear supplements and coffee, but they don't have enough calories. I have a physical coming up and I know I have to eat, but I just choke when I put anything in my mouth."

His verbal deluge came to an abrupt halt. "Fuck." He sighed. "Reg," Troi said, "Is your stepfather still alive?" "Why?" he asked. "You want me to kill him?" "No," she said, "even though we might find that emotionally satisfying, I don't think that it would be comfortable to conduct sessions in the brig."

He blinked, his mind slow enough on the uptake to take her comment seriously for a few seconds, and then he burst into laughter. There was a desperate edge to it, but it wasn't the high-pitched hysteria he had experienced before. He laughed until his eyes were streaming tears, and she laughed with him.

Finally he got hold of himself, and straightened in the chair, running his hands over the tabletop again. "He died five years ago. Why?" "I thought that if he was alive, we could have eventually initiated criminal charges, when you were ready." He sat up straight, surprised. "How could we have done that, anyway?" he asked. "There's no evidence. It would have been my word against his. He…He was a nurse, so he took care of most of our medical needs himself. He didn't…he didn't leave scars."

Troi leaned toward him with an expectant expression on her face. "The truth, Mr. Barclay." Reg sighed. "All right, he left a f-few. To remind us. They wouldn't…they wouldn't prove anything, though. They're pretty nondescript." He sat his mouth in a terse line. That was all he planned to divulge about that particular horror.

Troi seemed to respect his reluctance. "I think that we could have made a case," she continued, "considering that I would have testified to the fact that you are experiencing problems related to the abuse. We would have at least ensured that your stepfather underwent a complete psychological evaluation, and I have a feeling that it would have turned up some interesting things."

"Well, he's dead, and so is my mother. It's just me and Bay." His heart plummeted after he mentioned his brother. "Jesus, I've got to do something for him. He's remembering this stuff too."

Troi frowned. "I understand that you want to help him, Reg, but I think that it would be best if you focused on yourself, right now. You're going through a period of extreme stress, and you're not going to be doing anyone any favors if you don't take care of yourself first. Not to mention the fact that your brother shouldn't be forced to deal with this before he's ready. He should come to the realization on his own."

He didn't say anything. He supposed that silence was better than arguing with her, but he knew that somehow he had to help Bay. He couldn't even imagine what he was going to say to his brother, though. He changed the subject.

"I did what you suggested, by the way. I researched cases of…" He paused, not wanting to say the word, forcing it around a sudden tightening of his throat, "abuse inside the Federation." She smiled and leaned forward, interested. "What did you find out, and did it help?"

"Well," he said, "I found out that it's pretty useless to look inside the Federation for the kind of things that happened to me and Bay. The experiences of people born outside of the Federation are a lot closer to our experiences." She nodded, and he continued. "I looked at their problems, though, the symptoms of their disorders, or whatever, and…everything that I've experienced is there." He became more animated, gesturing with his hands. "I mean, everything from eating disorders to gagging…. Who would have thought gagging would be a symptom of…of this."

"How does it make you feel, to find evidence that other people have experienced the same problems that you are dealing with now?" Troi asked. "It makes me feel…relieved." He answered. "It makes me feel like I'm not so alone. It's…like I have an explanation, you know? It makes me think that there's a reason to all of this, that it's not completely chaotic. I feel like…" He tapered off. "You feel like what?" She asked. "I feel like…I'm not completely out of control."

He shivered, and his stomach clenched. Just admitting that he had some control over this situation- any situation- felt threatening, like he was pressing his luck. It was the same feeling he got when he was sure someone was displeased with him, and he began to realize just how much of his interactions with other people were based on the assumption that they had absolute power over him. That meant that the only way that he could keep himself safe was to please them through submission…which left him open, again, to victimization. No wonder he was so afraid of people.

"Why is it so difficult for you, to say you feel more in control now?" Troi asked. Her face was receptive, but absolutely neutral. It was almost as if she sensed the fault line in his psyche and realized that any show of emotion or judgment, positive or not, would send him scurrying back to the shadows.

"I don't know," he answered. "It makes me feel threatened, somehow, like I've drawn attention to myself. If I admit that I feel in control, or feel confident about something, it just invites people to take me down a peg, put me in my place."

"And what is your place, Reg?" she asked. Bitterness welled up within him, and he clenched his hands into fists. "On my knees," He replied, "with a cock in my mouth."

He couldn't believe that he had actually said the words. The truth of them resonated within him, though, and he felt that he had discovered the source of his shame. He had learned, early and deep, that he was completely helpless, and that his only value came in pleasing another, most often sexually. His sense of self had formed in a crucible of pain and inadequacy, a place where both his suffering and his rage had gone unheard.

The punishment for questioning the assumption that his own needs were unimportant was so severe he often feared he would not survive it, and so he had come to feel that safety resided in acquiescence and isolation. To remain safe, he had willingly entered a prison made of other people's expectations, and these days he spent all of his energy attempting to placate everyone he came into contact with, just as he had placated his stepfather. He was still there, biding his time in that prison, even though the bastard was no longer guarding the door.

He felt a surge of rage and stood up quickly, almost knocking over the chair. He began to pace furiously, rubbing his hands together. "Reg?" Troi asked softly. "What?" he snapped, not turning to face her. "How does that make you feel, to say that you belong on you knees, subject to the will of another?" "I didn't say that," he replied, "I said…." "I know what you said, Reg. I'm asking you how you feel about what you said." Troi countered.

"I feel…" he stopped, his emotions swirling inside a sickening miasma of confusion. He picked the one that shone out the clearest. "I'm angry!" "And what else?" Troi asked. "I..I'm sick, and hurt, and disgusted, and I hate myself" he said. "I let him do those things to me."

His voice became tight and grim. "I'm such a fucking coward that I'll spread for eleven years just to avoid the confrontation of exposing the bastard, and the worst thing is, I made a deal with him to keep Bay safe, and he didn't keep it. I'm such an idiot, a fucking whore. What the fuck was I thinking? I should have…"

"That's enough, Reg." Troi's voice still retained the characteristic element of compassion that defined it, but underneath there was a tone of pure steel. It never occurred to him to defy it. He stopped pacing and turned to face her, and she continued.

"I recognize that this is the way that you feel, and you have a right to your own self image. But I'm not going to let you engage in any activity that might harm you while you're with me. I hope that, over time, our work will help you see yourself in a different way, but in any case it's not productive to verbally flagellate yourself."

Her tone became gentler, "You say that you let him abuse you, Reg, but I don't see how that's possible. A six year old child is incapable of consent, and incapable of protecting themselves from an adult. The abuse wasn't your fault, Reg. At all. Your stepfather is the one who should be made to answer for his actions, not you."

Reg slowly exhaled, and rubbed his face with his hands. His hair was standing straight up again, he noted wryly. "Yeah, but…I wasn't six years old forever. He wasn't that big of a guy. He always seemed so big, but when I saw him after I came back from the academy… Hell, by the time I was thirteen I probably could have fought him off. And I didn't do it, even to protect Bay. I grew up on Earth, for god's sakes. I could have told anyone, and it would have stopped. I think the jury's out on this one, Counselor."

"Your jury, maybe" Troi said, leaning forward and gazing intently into his eyes, "but mine is definitely swinging in the other direction." She sighed in frustration.
"How could you be expected to fight your stepfather off at thirteen when he'd been torturing and raping you for almost seven years by then? You said it yourself: he always seemed so bigYou were conditioned to helplessness in the most brutal way possible. You could have been twice as tall and three times as strong and still have been unable to defend yourself from him."

Reg began to draw patterns on the glass tabletop again. "Okay, I'll buy that." He didn't, actually, but further discussion seemed pointless. "But I still didn't tell anyone. Why didn't I do that?" "I don't know, Reg." Troi replied. "Do you have any idea why you never told anyone?" "Well, I did tell…I mean, there was this one time…"

Shit. He did not want to go into that. He held his breath and hoped she would let it slip, like she had let the comment about his scars slip, but he'd run out of luck. Troi spoke softly after his voice tapered off. "So you did tell someone about the abuse. When was this?"

Reg walked over to the table and carefully sat down, took a deep breath, and tried to answer. "It was…I was eleven. In the fifth grade. She was my literature teacher. Mrs. Wayne." He hadn't remembered her name, until that moment, but it came bursting into his inconsistent memory along with other seemingly inconsequential details.

He smelled oil and wood, and remembered the long wooden tables in her classroom, with computer consoles built into the surface. There was a miniature of a Roman theater that stood proudly in one corner, and medieval tapestries decorated the walls. The smell of honeysuckle in summer stung his nose and his memory, because she always left the window open if the weather was nice and the mild summer winds blew the fragrant scent into the room from the vines that crawled up the outside walls of the classroom.

He tasted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, because he never had any trouble eating lunch at school, and heard Mrs. Wayne's deep, smoky voice reciting Shakespeare. The uneven cadence of a T.S. Eliot poem he had once memorized for an assignment, The Hollow Men, slipped back into his mind. The dead man's words still spoke to him, expressing an almost tactile longing for something he could not name.

Mrs. Wayne was so different from the other adults in his little backwards corner of Earth. She seemed to actually care about what he thought, and had encouraged him in science and mathematics as well as in writing, until the moment she betrayed him. That was another tenet of her education, he supposed. She'd taught him, again, how painful misplaced trust could be.

"I trusted her." He continued. "I thought she wasn't like everyone else. She was so pretty and nice, it seemed like she actually cared about what I thought. I didn't talk much at first, but she drew me out. My grades really improved, not just in literature, but in every other subject. She told me I was too smart to be barely passing all of the time…I didn't get a lot of encouragement from anyone else, in school or otherwise."

"The teachers all thought I was lazy, sullen." Reg continued, "They thought I didn't care. I guess I didn't, at that. When you're trying so hard to survive, everything else just takes a back seat."

"So, anyway, I told her… See, Bay had just started his boogieman thing, and…I didn't even go there to tell her, we were just sitting in her classroom after class. It was summertime, and I could smell the honeysuckle blooming, and I felt so calm and safe. Then, all of a sudden, I just started crying. I begged…I begged her to help me. I told her I didn't want to go home, that monsters lived there, that they came into my room at night and hurt me."

Reg slumped in his chair, his face stripped of all emotion. Troi sat straight in hers, her arms aligned perfectly on the table, as though she were afraid to move. Finally, she broke the sudden silence. "How did Mrs. Wayne respond to what you told her, Reg?" Reg sighed and propped his head up with his hands.

"She grilled me on it…What kind of monsters, when did they come, what did they do, et cetera. I shut down on her, told her I was probably wrong, that I didn't know what I was talking about. That's when she told me that it wasn't very nice to make up stories like that. She left the room while I was still crying, and….when she came back, he was with her." "Who came back with her, Reg?" Troi asked. "Him" Reg replied. "Steve."

"I just…froze up, stopped crying. I felt like somebody'd kicked me in the stomach. I couldn't believe…that she'd done that to me. Steve was on his best behavior, I mean, he was an angel. He told her that I didn't mean it, that I was just excitable, and that I had too much of an imagination. Then he took me home."

Reg's forehead wrinkled, and he rubbed his eyes. "He locked me in the cellar overnight. I was always so afraid of that place." His stomach lurched. He hadn't even remembered the cellar before this conversation, but he knew now that he'd spent more than one sleepless night in that damp, filthy room with only his fear for company. "That time, though, I think I was more afraid of what was coming after he let me out. The next day, he called the school and told them he was keeping me home."

"When he let me out of the cellar that morning, he had a ball gag in his hand. Don't ask me where he got it…the Security Net on Earth keeps records of things like that, so I know he didn't replicate it. There would have been an inquiry. Anyway, he put the gag in my mouth, told me he was going to teach me how to keep my mouth shut. Then….well, it was just the usual stuff. The belt, and then….

"The weird thing was, after he…did stuff like that, he would be so," Reg paused, looking for the right word. "Gentle" wasn't it, exactly. "Calm while he cleaned me up, used the medkit he kept to heal any wounds or bruises. Once in a while, it was a broken bone."

"I know it sounds strange, but it was almost worse than the abuse. To have everything that had happened to me erased like that, it was as if he was claiming that I didn't even exist…Bay was gone that day, I don't know where, Mom was wired out of her fucking head. That's when I realized that no one would help me, that I was alone with it. All of it. I lay there in the cellar again, afterwards, still wearing the ball gag like I would every night for three fucking months, and swore I'd never ask anyone for help again. And I didn't, until…until this morning."

Troi reached out as though she were going to take his hand, then remembered Reg's aversion to being touched and stopped in mid gesture. She let her hands fall onto her lap as she studied him for a long moment, so long that he began to feel self-conscious.

"I'm glad that you found the courage to ask for help, Reg. And I'm honored that you chose to ask me for it," she said, finally. Reg was briefly irritated. What choice had he had? She was the only Counselor on board. He recovered quickly, though, and realized that he'd had a choice, of sorts. He could have not told her, could have transferred. For that matter, he could have resigned and gone to Earth, where no one kept a constant tab on his vital signs, and ended this.

"I…," Reg paused. He didn't know what to say. He pressed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and fell silent, dismissing her compassion just as he had dismissed Geordi's that morning. A sudden headache ambushed him, the dull pain circling around his temples before coming to rest behind his eyes. The thought of suicide was becoming ever so appealing, all of his pain and sense of failure forming a grim edge that he would have no trouble walking off of.

Troi sighed, and when he looked up she seemed frustrated. "Reg, I think this is about all we can do tonight. You need to sleep, and this work can't be done in one day. We need to talk, though, about your work schedule." Barclay closed his eyes, rested his forehead in the palm of his hand. "I can't go back to work for a while, can I," he asked softly. Coming like that, one more failure on top of everything else, being relieved of duty didn't matter as much as he thought it would. It barely mattered at all, and there was an almost physical sensation of falling that accompanied it. He was slipping closer to the edge.

"No, Reg," Troi replied gently, "you can't. You're at a point of crisis right now, and we need to get you stable. You can't give your full attention to your work, and we both know how dangerous that can be on a starship. You also need to start eating again. I think that goal can be better accomplished if you're under minimal stress. What do you think?" Reg glanced up at her, surprised at the question. "Why should what I think even matter? You're the Counselor."

"What you think and what you believe is far more important than what I think, Mr. Barclay," Troi said, her posture straightening and the expression on her face gaining intensity. "What you believe is going to guide your recovery, and it's going to make sure that you survive."

"But," he said bitterly, "no matter what I think, I don't have the power to send myself back to work tomorrow." "Do you want to go back to work tomorrow?" Troi asked. The question seemed sincere, and Reg floundered for a moment. "I…I think….I mean…"

A tide of exhaustion rolled over him, and he struggled to find his bearing in its depths. Somehow, in that moment, answering her question was the most important thing in the world. "I…" he almost said yes, but then he thought about the people he would have to see and be polite to. He couldn't even imagine how he'd even say hello to Geordi, let alone deal with the engineering team on duty. And what if he ran into someone he knew out in the corridors?

"No," he said softly, "I don't think I can." That admission defeated him utterly, and silent tears rolled down his cheeks.

"Reg," Troi said gently, "It's going to get better soon. You'll be back to work before you know it. In the meantime, I'll let Geordi know that you won't be in for a while." Troi paused, and seemed suddenly hesitant. "I also want to let Geordi, the Captain, and Commander Riker know something about what's going on with you, but I'll only do so with your permission. I don't need to go into specifics with them. I'll just tell them that you are suffering from PTSD, due to violent abuse that occurred in childhood."

"You're going to what!" Barclay sputtered. He grasped the tabletop with both hands, as if trying to anchor himself. The room was spinning. "You can't. I..I.." He paled, and tried to think of a way to explain how disastrous that would be. "They'll transfer me. Fuck, they might boot me out of Starfleet altogether."

Troi gazed at him bemusedly. "No, they won't, and you know that, Reg. What are you really afraid of?" He relaxed his hands with conscious effort, felt his breath slowly caress his lips as he exhaled. His stomach tied itself into a heavy knot of dread. "After you tell them I'll have to see them. I'll have to talk to them. And I'll be ashamed."

"Reg," Troi said gently, "you have no reason to be ashamed, and your commanding officers know that. They won't think badly of you for needing some time off to deal with this. They won't make you uncomfortable by pressing for information you're unwilling to give.

"I can't imagine that they would bring the subject up at all, although if you wanted to discuss it with them I'm sure they would be willing. They're not going to embarrass you, and they won't talk about the subject behind your back. They will gain a better understanding of you, and your career will not suffer because of it. It might suffer if you are relieved of duty, and do not allow me to give the command staff a reasonable explanation for it."

Something in her speech triggered his rage, and red heat pulsed up through his despair and exhaustion. "So, really, you're just doing what's best for me, right? I've heard that one before." His voice was calm, but the compressed violence in his tone surprised even him. He sounded dangerous. He sounded like his stepfather. And he didn't like it one bit.

He immediately dropped his eyes and apologized. "I'm sorry, Counselor." "Reg," Troi murmured, ignoring his burst of anger, "may I please tell them? It is, in my opinion, for the best, but I do recognize your right to decide what's best for yourself." She sounded tired too, and Barclay suddenly wondered what he was arguing about. They would find out eventually, anyway. And who's to say that Bay wouldn't tell someone? The secret was out, there was no taking it back now. "Fine. Go ahead, tell them. But no specifics."

He sounded churlish, childlike, and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep his life away. He wished she would just leave. "Thank you for trusting me," Troi replied. "I'll tell them first thing in the morning. And I'll be coming by at 08:30 to see you, Reg. Try to drink one of your supplements tonight, but tomorrow we have to work on eating."

Barclay snorted. "We might as well work on turning me into a pink elephant with wings. It's not going to happen." Pink elephant? Reg thought. Jesus, I do need to get some sleep. "You think so?" Troi asked, amused. "Never underestimate a determined woman, Mr. Barclay. Sleep well, and I'll see you in the morning." She rose with uncommon grace and exited his quarters. Barclay said goodbye to her back as the doors closed behind her.

When Reg opened his eyes the next day, the ceiling was spinning. He tried to sit up, bracing himself against the mattress on his elbows, but his arms slipped out from under him. He panicked, wondering if he'd had a stroke or been suddenly afflicted with a rare neurological disorder.

Then he noted the blurred spots and swimming bright lights that decorated his sight, and knew that his blood glucose level had dropped dangerously low overnight. He rolled carefully off of the bed, the weakness in his limbs terrifying him. The floor seemed to tilt up to meet him, but he managed to stay on his hands and knees.

Reg crawled, slowly, toward the replicator. Being on his hands and knees made everything seem larger, more imposing, and reminded him disconcertingly of being a child. A steady pain pulsed up his spine, came to rest in the back of his skull, and then circled around his temples.

The floor seemed to stretch out for miles, an endless expanse of garish blue carpet. Somewhere above his fear and pain Barclay made a mental note to request that the color be changed, to sage green or perhaps light beige. Cobalt blue really clashed with the rest of the room.

He bumped his head into the wall underneath the replicator before he realized that he had made it across the floor. Looking up at the Comm panel, he requested a supplement, and the machine deposited the drink into the food recess a good two meters above his head. This is a problem,He thought, trying to gain a hold on the slick wall to pull his body up only to slide down again. He shifted sideways, and sat with his back against the wall.

His vision began to fade around the edges, and the room shimmered in slow waves of vertigo that broke over his senses. With a sudden burst of energy born out of pure desperation he managed to push up with his heels and reach for the glass behind his head. He grabbed hold of it and then tumbled down, hitting the floor and rolling, desperately trying to keep the glass from spilling. He continued to balance the glass for a few moments after landing on his back, because his muscles were quivering and it seemed to him that he was still moving.

When he realized that his body was still, he raised himself up on one elbow and brought the trembling glass to his lips. He downed the supplement in two gulps and collapsed back onto the floor, the empty glass rolling out of his nerveless fingers. He must have passed out, then, because the next time he came to his senses his door was chiming incessantly.

He rolled slowly over on to one side and tried to rise. He wasn't dizzy anymore, but he felt sluggish and weak. He barely had the strength to pull himself to his feet. He stumbled over to his desk, and sat down, because the table was further away and he didn't have enough stamina to reach it.

"Come in," he said, and then realized he hadn't spoken loud enough to be heard. "Come in," he repeated, marginally louder, his voice sounding as though it were coming up from the bottom of a well. The doors opened, and Deanna Troi entered with an expression of near panic on her face. "Reg? Are you all right?" "Well…no," he replied, petulantly, as though it was really her fault that he wasn't all right.

Troi came over to his desk and leaned her hands on it as she looked intently into his face. "What's wrong?" she asked. A burst of manic rage welled within him, and he didn't know whether to hit her or to laugh. "What the hell do you think is wrong, Counselor? In case you haven't noticed, I'm having a bad week."

Troi's face remained calm. "I thought maybe something specific was wrong." Her lack of reaction to his outburst shamed him, and he dropped his eyes. "I'm not…I'm just not feeling well," he said, half expecting her to ask if he wasn't feeling well, as Geordi had.

"Would you like me to call Dr. Crusher, and have her come and see if she can help?" Troi asked, as though it were a perfectly normal thing, as if he'd merely pulled a muscle or caught the Andorian flu that was going around, not spent the better part of a month starving himself. Reg shook his head. "That won't help," he said. "I just….I sort of passed out, for a minute. Low Blood sugar, probably. I drank a supplement; I'll be fine in a little while."

Troi fell silent for a moment, and when she spoke up her voice was determinably cheerful. "Okay, then. I would still like for you to see Dr. Crusher later, but why don't we try some breakfast first?" Reg raised his head slowly. "We can try," he said. Troi gave him a brilliant smile but her eyes held the fierce determination of a field commander, and Reg wondered how she managed to look friendly and militant at the same time.

She walked over to the replicator, and Reg laid his head in his arms. He almost drifted off again, but woke up when Troi began ordering the machine to produce a series of bizarre items: Vanilla yogurt, on a plate. A rich white bread, crust off, cut into small squares. Wheat cereal, also on a plate, and finally- after asking how he liked his- a cup of dark coffee, extra sweet.

Troi arranged the food for a few minutes, and then brought it over to his table on a tray. Reg stared at it, bemusedly. The plates and silverware were made of light blue glass. The food was uniformly white, and spread over the surface of the plates. The only thing that looked ingestible was the cup of coffee. This was how she planned to help him eat?

"That doesn't look like food, Counselor," he said, and stumbled slightly as he made his way over to sit down at the table. "It looks more like modern art."

Troi smiled but refused to rise to the bait. "It is pretty, isn't it?" she said, in a deceptively mild tone of voice. She arranged the food in a half ring around him, bread on the left, yogurt, then cereal, and placed the coffee outside of the ring in a small warmer, closer to her.

Reg kept silent, watching her with a stiff spine and clenched fists. He had no way to interpret the situation, no idea what she wanted from him, and being placed in an undefined social situation was his worst fear.

Troi sat down and unconsciously brushed a stray lock of hair behind one ear. The commonplace gesture surprised Barclay. In his experience, the Counselor was always groomed to perfection, her face reminding him more of an alabaster sculpture than a human visage.

This morning her hair escaped the jeweled band that held it, and she had not even bothered to apply makeup. There were deep circles under her eyes that mirrored his own, and for the first time Reg wondered how much strain his problems had placed on her. He almost mentioned it, asked if she was okay, but before he could open his mouth she began to speak.

"All right, Reg," she said, "I've been doing some research into the treatment of eating disorders, and I have some good news. I don't think you have one." Before he could protest, she continued.

"I'm not saying that you don't have serious issues concerning food and the act of eating, but I believe they stem primarily from your anxiety. Your routine psych tests don't show any evidence of a delusory self image, such as a belief that you're overweight when in actually you're too thin. That is the most common element in individuals suffering from eating disorders that result in self-starvation. You, on the contrary, seem aware of the fact that you look unhealthy, and you want to eat. It seems to be your anxiety and mistrust of your social environment that prevent you from doing so."

Reg leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. "You seem to know quite a lot about my problems with food, Counselor, considering that I only mentioned them once." Troi frowned, her controlled expression faltering for a moment, rapidly changing from frustration to chagrin. "I'm sorry, Reg," she said, "I didn't mean to sound like I knew everything about you, or your problems. Do you think I'm off the mark with anything that I've said?"

Reg rocked his chair back with a restless foot as he thought about her question, but he stopped when the motion caused him to become dizzy again. He wondered at this new compulsion he felt to answer Troi as honestly as possible. For someone who had spent an entire lifetime dissembling in order to protect himself, it was an unnerving situation to be in.

"I don't know," he answered, blinking. His eyes wouldn't focus, and Troi wavered in front of his sight in an odd pinning effect. "I…what you said sounds sort of right. I mean, I don't know exactly what causes it, but it does happen when I'm tense. It seems to gather a life of its own, though… kind of like riding a tide. I get really tense, and I stop eating because I want to, because..." He stopped talking and shivered, chill bumps springing up on his bare arms.

"Why do you stop eating?" Troi asked softly. Her eyes were focused on him, her expression open and intense in spite of her obvious fatigue, and yet Reg inexplicably experienced a sudden feeling of disassociation. The room shimmered, as if it were reflected in water. Everything was surreal, too present, as if this moment in this place were all that had ever existed. He hadn't seen anyone else for an entire day, and his chest tightened as he wondered irrationally if they were the only ones left on the ship.

"Reg? You still with me?" Troi's eyes narrowed, filled with concern. Barclay rubbed his neck and tried to get a grip on reality. Maybe it was low blood sugar again, but Jesus…"No, not really, Counselor, but…" He tapered off, not sure what to say. "I stop eating because the food is something…Is the one thing I can control, and when I get…upset, I feel like everything is slipping out of control. I even feel like I can't control myself."

He hadn't even realized what he was going to say until he opened his mouth. He tried to clamp his mouth shut, stop talking, but the words plunged over his reluctant barriers as if they possessed a life of their own.

"When I'm tense I feel like I'm being corroded. It's like I've been taken over, by everyone. I feel like I don't have any substance as if my life and my experiences are just leaves blown in the wind. I'm afraid that if the wind blows too strongly, it's going to blow through me, disintegrate me. Maybe... I'm afraid that nothing was there to begin with… that I'm just empty. I don't know if I'll ever be real." He stopped talking, finally, and wondered if she knew that he had just handed over the keys to his soul. He hoped not.

He looked up, slowly, and found her staring at him with meticulous compassion. "You're very real, Reg. You may not feel it, but I certainly do." Reg cast his eyes down, the sudden reminder of her empathy making him self conscious. He licked his lips with a dry tongue and said softly, "When I don't eat anything I feel like I'm safe. Like I'm not letting anything in that can take me over. It's symbolic, sort of; a way to close all boundaries."

"If I just shut everything out, everyone out, no one can control me or force me to give in to their needs, their expectations. I don't know how not giving in to people got connected to food…I know Steve made a big deal about how we owed him for the food and shelter he gave us. He was always threatening to give us away to colonists if we misbehaved, or we didn't act grateful for everything he did for us." Reg let out a dry chuckle at the irony of the memory.

"He always described colonists as these inhuman, sadistic monsters who would torture us for spite and then work us to death, so the threat terrified us. I don't know how I ended up believing what he said. I mean, I went to school, so it's not like I was ignorant of life in the Alpha quadrant. I knew what colonists were, we learned all about them."

Somehow, though, the colonists Steve told us about seemed more real than the ones everyone else described. I don't know why, exactly. It's just that when you're a kid, you have this tendency to believe everything you're told by a parent, no matter if the message contradicts what everyone else is saying. You're just not very discriminating…or at least I wasn't." Reg parted his hair and flattened it to the sides of his head in a rush of rueful anxiety. He wanted to run his hands over the table, but the food was in the way.

"It sounds like he was describing himself," Troi said softly. "Excuse me?" Reg asked. He didn't know what she meant. "Your stepfather's description of these "colonists" he was going to give you and your brother to. It sounds as if he was describing himself-someone who was both sadistic and abusive. He was the one who worked and used both you and your brother to satisfy his own interests."

Reg sighed. "He never worked us that hard…we never had many chores to do. The main thing he expected of us was to be quiet. Very quiet. Somehow, though, we were never quiet enough." He shook his head, to banish the memories, and returned to their previous conversation.

"But I don't know why I do this with food. It really is like riding a tide. I get tense, I stop eating, I go on until I'm at the point when people would start to notice I'm not eating and then, for some reason, I start again. Except this time, I just can't… I mean it doesn't seem like Steve holding the act of feeding me over my head should be enough to cause this…and how did I make the connection between food and contamination? It doesn't make any sense."

Troi leaned forward. "The path left by psychological damage is almost never a straight or consistent line, Reg. In most cases, we're not going to be able to pinpoint a root cause in your past trauma for the symptoms you're experiencing now. The important thing is to address them as they are. Then we can see which behaviors or thoughts trigger them, and work together to help you learn to react to those triggers in a different way, one that doesn't compromise your health or happiness."

"This isn't to say," Troi continued, as he frowned and prepared to protest that his past trauma was very important, thank you, "that you shouldn't address what happened to you, or that you should try to minimize it in any way. But the past is the past: we can't change it."

"You were right when you said that the damage had already been done. We cannot go back and give you a proper childhood, and that would be the only thing that would completely erase what Steve did to you. For better or worse, you are what your past experiences and choices have made you. We cannot make you a completely different person, nor would we want to. What we can do is help you to see your past differently, and to understand how it has affected you. That way you have more options. You can plan your life for the better; you no longer have to react blindly."

Troi finished, and looked at Barclay expectantly. Barclay, for his part, had no idea how to respond except to say that he was getting tired of her monologues. That didn't seem to be a productive, "healthy" response. He tried to put his arms on the table, and almost got an elbow full of vanilla yogurt. With a snort of frustration he stood and turned his chair around, sat in it backwards and crossed his arms over the back.

"I would love to make me a completely different person." He said, and her eyes widened for a moment. "I don't believe that is possible, and I, for one, would miss you." Troi replied. Barclay smiled bitterly. "If that's true, you'd be the only one. I think even Bay would like someone besides a total fuck up for a brother."

"I don't believe that, Reg. Based on what you've told me, your brother loves and trusts you. And as for other people, if they wouldn't miss you it's only because they don't know you like I do," Troi said. Barclay let his head sag down into his arms. It was too heavy to hold up anymore.

"Reg, I think we may need to talk some more about this later, but why don't we focus on breakfast right now?" Barclay tilted his head, and looked sideways at her. "I don't know if that's such a good idea." Well," Troi replied, "Before you make a decision, listen to some ideas I have about making it a little easier for you." Reg nodded, and wondered when she would give up and let him go back to sleep.

Troi began," First of all, I'd like you to do some relaxation exercises." "Oh for fuck's sake," Barclay interrupted, "Do I have to spend ten minutes breathing again?" "No, Mr. Barclay," Troi replied primly, "Although if it would make you more comfortable, by all means practice your breathing exercises. It's three minuets, though, not ten, or you'll start hyperventilating."

Barclay blinked, and schooled his expression to impassivity. "No thank you, Counselor." He muttered. Troi flashed him a brilliant smile, and he clamped down on his tongue to prevent an expletive from coming out. "In that case, I'd like for you to try a visualization exercise. Let's start by closing our eyes."

She demonstrated by closing hers, leaving Reg feeling like a voyeur. He quickly shut his own. "I want you to imagine a light blue sky full of white clouds." Troi said, her voice soft and hypnotic. "The sky is endless. There's no one around. No one even exists. We don't exist. There is no space above or earth below. There is just the sky, and bright white clouds."

Her words painted a tranquil scene that grasped the whole of his attention, and inexplicably he felt himself relaxing, breathing deeper. "Can you see it, Reg?" Troi asked softly. "Yeah," he replied. "Good."

She let a few moments pass, and spoke again. "Now, I'd like you to take a few deep breaths, and as you do, I want you to imagine that you're breathing in vapor from the clouds, letting it fill your mouth and throat, swallowing it down. It's clean, and cold. It chills your nose and mouth. Can you do that?" Reg imagined icy air caressing his lungs. He could almost feel the frost on his tongue. He nodded, and then remembered that she couldn't see him. "Yes."

"All right," She said, "I'm going to have you open your eyes in a moment, and when you do I want you to see the plates on the table as a sky filled with clouds. Do you think you can?" He saw where she was going, and almost threw himself out of the fantasy. He didn't like the sense of manipulation suggested by this little scenario, but he was tired, and sick, and literally starving. He wanted to eat.

He took a few more breaths, imagined the vapor flowing through his lungs and his body, leaving no trace behind. Then he slowly opened his eyes, reached for the blue spoon and filled it with vanilla yogurt. He brought it carefully to his lips, let the smooth, chilled yogurt fill his mouth, and swallowed.

He continued to eat, focusing on the clouds. He could not taste the food at all, only feel the cool textures. He wondered at this ability to shut down one of his senses. It should have been more difficult, and he felt a momentary unease as he realized that he'd had a lot of practice at it, especially in childhood.

When he had eaten a little more than half of the food Troi had laid out for him, the insistent pressure in his stomach became too much to ignore, and he laid the spoon down. "I can't eat anymore. I'm full," He said, his eyes cast down.

"Feel free to stop eating, if you'd like." Troi replied. "You did a great job. I'm very proud of you." He gazed incredulously at her. "For what, eating breakfast?"

"Yes," She replied, "For eating breakfast, and for taking control of your recovery." She cleared the plates away and pushed the cup of coffee toward him. "Now, your just reward: a perfect cup of coffee."

As he sipped, she placed the dishes back in the replicator. "Reg, would you like me to call Dr. Crusher so that she can come here, or do you want to walk to sickbay?" Troi asked nonchalantly. Barclay almost choked on the last of his coffee. "What?" he sputtered. Troi was quiet for a moment as she finished with the dishes, then strode purposefully toward him and paused in front of his chair.

"You need medical attention, Mr. Barclay. At the very least, you're malnourished. Dr. Crusher can give you some vitamin and mineral supplements, and address any other problems you might have developed because of your inability to eat. You need to see her every day, until you start eating regularly again."

"What is this, aversive therapy? You want to torture me into eating again?" Reg asked. Troi almost laughed, but caught herself in time. "I hardly think that a trip to sickbay qualifies as torture, Mr. Barclay." Reg could have argued the point. Dr. Crusher didn't like him. Neither did her son.

"I'll walk," he said abruptly. There was no use arguing with her. She'd order him to go eventually. Troi smiled. "All right Reg. I'll walk you down."

As she headed for the door, he rose and followed her. She turned toward him with a controlled expression and said tactfully, "I'll wait outside the door until you get dressed, Reg." Then she exited, and Barclay blushed furiously as he realized that he had almost walked out into the corridor barefoot, in his pajamas.

The trip to sickbay was relatively uneventful. He came out of his quarters dressed and impeccably groomed, wearing shoes. On the whole, it was a major accomplishment. He was afraid that they would run into someone that he knew out in the corridors, but they didn't. Troi nodded to several people, but the trip concluded without any messy social entanglements.

The physical exam went about like Reg had expected. Dr. Crusher was, in her own words, appalled and shocked by the state he had allowed himself to deteriorate to, and proceeded to lecture him stridently about the need to take care of one's health until Troi sharply asked to speak to her alone for a moment.

When they returned, Crusher proceeded with her examination and treatment without speaking to him again, but her hands shook and she didn't turn her back on him the entire time. When her son came in to visit her, she waved him sharply away. Barclay had obviously been raised in her estimation from a nuisance to a madman who probably ate small children. Troi looked faintly disgusted.

The entire bumbling process exhausted Reg, and he was relieved to be walking out of sickbay with mind and body relatively intact. "No, counselor, that wasn't torture, not at all" he said numbly as they walked back toward his quarters. He'd been going for sarcasm, but the phrase came out flat and resigned.

"I'm sorry Reg," Troi replied sincerely. "I'll have another talk with Beverly. I had no idea she would react like that." "Oh, don't worry about it," Reg sighed.

They finally reached his quarters. "What are you going to do today, Reg?" Troi asked. "Sleep," He replied shortly. Troi's expression showed slight disapproval, but she nodded. "All right. But set an alarm for 1300 hours so that you can get up and drink a supplement. I'll come by at 1700 and we'll try eating again," Troi said.

Reg's eyes fell to his immaculate boots. "You…You don't have to come by if you have something else to do, Counselor. I mean, you look tired."

When Reg glanced back up, Troi's eyes sparkled with amusement. "I'm not that tired, Mr. Barclay. I'll be here at 1700. Have a nice nap." She turned and walked away. "Goodbye," he called out to her, and stepped into his quarters.

He didn't feel like getting undressed or laying on the bed and possibly triggering another flashback. He sat at his table instead, and dozed on and off.

When his alarm sounded at 1300 he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and quickly replicated a supplement. He drank the contents and carelessly tossed the glass back into the food recess when he finished. He would set the machine for reclamation later.

He felt better, afterwards, more stable. He made his bed meticulously and then lay down on top of the covers on his back, fully clothed. He laced his hands over his stomach, let his chin rest on his chest and fell hesitantly into slumber.

Reg murmured restlessly in his unsettled dreams. He was running through an underground maze, trying to find Bay, but the tunnels kept shifting. He caught glimpses of another human figure out of the corner of his eye as he raced along the endless corridors, one that disappeared whenever he turned toward it.

It wasn't Steve. This person was smaller, wearing a robe or a dress filled with butterflies. He finally stopped looking for Bay and began to pursue the mysterious figure as it floated out of sight around corners and disappeared into the shadows. He called out, becoming frantic, and caught a glimpse of emerald green eyes as the person slowly turned at the sound of his voice.

He awoke, crying out, and the empty room swallowed the sound of his pain like some insatiable beast. His mother filled his senses, her auburn hair and green eyes, her slim, rough hands and straight back, her scent, her touch, her absence.

She was standing in front of him. His room, along with the rest of the external world, had faded into the background and the only scene visible to him was the one playing out behind his eyes.

He was about twelve years old, in his bedroom, on his knees, an altogether too familiar sensation. He could see around Steve as the man unbuttoned his pants and pushed them down to fall around his ankles. He could see his bedroom door, opening, and his mother framed in it. He could see the dead expression slowly close over her face, and he could see her turn around and walk away.

The scene slowly faded, and Reg clinched his hands into fists around his blanket. His breath came in shaking gasps through his clinched teeth, and his lungs burned. The blackest pain that he had ever felt closed over him, and he wondered how his heart kept beating through it. Emotional agony filled him up, swallowed him as he lay paralyzed, unable even to cry out.

He had known his mother had been present for some of Steve's abuse, but he had not realized that she understood what was going on. He'd seen that knowledge in her eyes, though, just before she shut herself off and walked away from his suffering. She knew. And she had left him to deal with it alone. She had abandoned him, long before she'd walked away that day.

He tried to summon anger to chase away the pain, but all of the rage had burned out of him. He could not even weep. The pain went too deep. It pulsed through his body and his mind, sweeping everything else away, taking him away from himself. He could not endure it.

He launched himself up off of the bed, and stood trembling beside it. How could he have ever thought that he deserved protection, anyway? His own mother hadn't seen fit to provide it. She had known how worthless he was. He was nothing but a waste of space. He didn't even deserve to draw breath and take in oxygen that could be used by someone else.

He walked over to his table, and looked down through the smooth glass. The table had always symbolized order to him, represented the myriad walls that he obsessively maintained in the hopes that they would keep out anything harmful

It's all a sham;he realized now, an exercise in futility. There are no walls that can keep out monsters. The monsters live inside of me. He brought both fists down onto the tabletop with the full force of his strength and shattered the glass top into a hundred glittering pieces.

He looked down, stunned, thrown outside of his emotional pain by the sudden violence of the act. He watched pieces of glass fall to the floor in slow motion, the shards reflecting the dimmed light of the room, shimmering with it. They were beautiful. He brought his hands up, still clenched into fists, and was surprised to see bright red blood welling through his rent flesh. He felt no pain.

"I broke a table like that once." Barclay's heart skipped a beat, and he whirled around toward the sound of the still, sudden voice. Guinan stood beside his door, hands laced calmly in front of her. Her stance and expression gave every indication that she considered standing in his quarters uninvited while he bled and stared down at the shards of his self control a perfectly normal occurrence.

His mind tripped, unable to process the situation. It seemed to be doing that a lot lately. He shook his head, trying to stimulate coherent thought as he incredulously wondered how the woman had entered his quarters without permission. Bartenders were not issued override codes.

Guinan smiled enigmatically as she walked toward him and tilted the chair nearest to her to shake the glass off of it. "Mind if I sit down?" she asked. She didn't wait for an answer, simply lowered herself into the chair, arranged her robes and gazed pleasantly up at him. "Won't you join me, Reg?"

Barclay, for his part, was not having any luck in his attempts to understand the situation. The entire scene was too bizarre for words, and he burst into high pitched laughter that swelled, filling the room with the harsh sound of his hysteria. His eyes widened and darted back and forth, like a horse right before it spooks and rushes headlong into a corral wall.

Guinan simply continued to regard him calmly until his hysteria faltered under the unbearable weight of her serenity. His face fell slack, and he shivered. Guinan rose from her chair to walk over to the bed and pull the covers off of it. She held his blanket out to him, and he pulled it around his shoulders. I'm going to have to replicate a new blanket, he thought idly. I'm never going to get the blood out of this one.

Guinan shook the glass out of the other chair. "Have a seat, Reg." She said. Not knowing what else to do, Reg sat. Guinan walked back over and sat down again. They met each other's gaze across the jagged expanse of the ruined table. "W-what…" Reg cleared his throat, tried again. "What are you doing here?"

"I came by to talk, Reg. I thought you could use some company." Reg laughed again. "I think I've done enough talking these past few days." He said ruefully. Guinan smiled. "I know you've been seeing a lot of counselor Troi lately." Reg nodded, then considered the implication of her words and steeled himself to face another betrayal.

"Has-has she told you anything about me?" he asked suspiciously. "No, Reg." Guinan replied. "You told me. You also told me that you're having a very rough time right now, that you're looking for someone to help you through it. I have some insight that might be useful, so I thought I'd try." Barclay blinked rapidly. "I didn't...are you nuts? I haven't said more than ten words to you since I came on board." Guinan smiled again, gently. "I listen to more than words, Mr. Barclay."

It was on the tip of Reg's tongue to ask if she was telepathic, but somehow he didn't think that was what she meant. "So," he asked instead, his voice thick with defensive sarcasm, "What else have I told you without words?"

"You've told me that you're lost." Guinan answered sincerely, "You've told me that someone used you, hurt you for a very long time. Living through that made you loose your sense of self. It made you feel empty, as though you were a vessel made to be filled up by others. It made you hate yourself, and that insidious damage is worse than any other that it caused."

Guinan's words left Reg trembling with reaction. She couldn't have shocked him more if she had known his stepfather's name. He was as open and vulnerable to her in this moment as he would have been if he were tied to the bed, naked. And he should know. Steve had put him in that position more than once.

Guinan rose, and took off her hat. She simply lifted it off of her head. Reg was mildly shocked. He had expected the action to require more of an effort, perhaps a system of levers and pulleys. She then turned around and began to remove her top.

"What the hell are you doing?" Reg demanded, thoroughly unnerved. This wasn't supposed to happen. The ship's bartender wasn't supposed to break into his quarters while he was in the midst of a mental breakdown. She certainly wasn't supposed to read his soul and then proceed to remove her clothing. It just wasn't normal.

"It's all right, Reg. I have something that I want to show you." I'll bet you do, Reg thought wildly, on the verge of sheer panic. He was mildly relieved to find that she was wearing a skin-tight undershirt, but was by no means comforted. His sense of offended propriety prevented him from taking in any other details for a while, but when he did he gasped in shock. Her arms were covered with thick, crisscrossing lines of scar tissue.

"I'd lift the undershirt, but I think you get the picture." Guinan said wryly. Now that he was paying attention, Reg could see through the thin material of her shirt to the chaotic lines of raised flesh that covered her back. Paths of damage, Reg thought disconnectedly, and shook his head as he tried to think of something to say.

Guinan pulled her robes back over her arms, covering her scars. She calmly turned around and sat again. She regarded the broken table. "Mine wasn't made of glass, though." She said.

"What?" Reg asked. Guinan glanced up at him. "The table that I broke." She replied. "It wasn't made of glass. It was wood, and very solid. I hacked at it with an ax for the better part of an hour. Damn near cut off my leg." She said, lifting her robe to show him another large, jagged scar.

"I keep the scars because I need to," She said quietly, as if he had asked that she explain herself, "because the history of my people is written on my body, and there are some things the body needs to remember."

Reg didn't know what to say. He remembered the scars that Steve had left him, how on some level he had been relived that there was some evidence left of the abuse. Sometimes it seemed like his entire childhood had been erased with a dermal regenerator.

Guinan continued her story, as if they were discussing the weather or one of Beverly Crusher's endless plays. "I am a member of the last generation of my species to be born into slavery." She said. "The Desati Empire fell when I was thirty-six years old, and we used the political chaos that ensued to obtain our freedom. We lived in abject poverty for at least two centuries after that, but we were free."

She tilted her head as she mussed over her thoughts. "I learned as a child that freedom doesn't mean very much when the only possessions you have are your life and the clothes on your back, you haven't eaten today and you don't know if you'll eat tomorrow."

Guinan shook herself out of her reverie. "At any rate, I was thirty six, which for my species is part of that transient stage just before puberty when you are more than a child but less than an adolescent. I spent my formative years under the lash, and I spent the rest of my childhood in the hands of loving but deeply wounded relatives. I was more often the one to comfort them at night when they woke up screaming than the other way 'round."

Guinan met Reg's eyes again. "So I know intimately what it means to be at the mercy of someone who believes that you exist only to serve and please them, whether they intend to put you in that position or not."

The bartender fell silent, and Reg took a deep sighing breath. "It wasn't you're fault, though." He said. He wanted to say something else, say he was sorry that this horrible thing had happened to her, but he could not think of a way to confess his empathy without demeaning her suffering. And he had to let her know that his situation couldn't be compared with hers.

"With me, it was different. I wasn't a slave. I could have done something. I could have told someone. I could have stopped everything. I didn't, even to protect my brother. I was less than nothing, worthless." Tears fell down his cheeks.

Guinan seemed unmoved by his admission. "What about your brother?" She asked. Reg blinked, startled. "W-what about him?" He asked. "Why didn't he tell someone?" Guinan continued, "Why didn't he stop everything?" Barclay frowned. "You don't understand. He was just a little boy. He depended on me to protect him."

Guinan nodded. "How young were you, when this all started?" Reg frowned again, not sure where this was going. "I was six years old." "So," Guinan said, "You were a little boy too." "Yeah, but…" Reg tapered off. He couldn't think of an argument that would convince her.

Guinan leaned back in her chair. "Unless you want to admit that being a little boy doesn't absolve your brother, it must absolve you as well." Reg got up and tried to pace, tripping over the blanket in the process. He bundled it up and threw it on the bed, and then turned back to face her. "Y-you just don't understand. I'm his older brother. I shouldn't have let him go through that, not when I could have stopped it."

"Bullshit." The expletive startled him. "What?" He asked. "I said bullshit." Guinan replied. "You're obviously an intelligent man, Reg. You know that what you're saying has no logic. If it were anyone else telling you this story, you'd be appalled that they were blaming themselves for being victimized. You'd reassure them that it wasn't their fault. It's all bullshit, and you know it."

Barclay gapped incredulously at her. "You know," he said, when he could find his voice, "Troi hasn't said that my ideas are bullshit, and she's a therapist."

Guinan nodded. "Yes, and she's a very good therapist. She's undoubtedly letting you make your own decisions about what happened to you. It wouldn't be appropriate for her to do otherwise. I'm not a therapist, though, and I have no aversion to admitting the truth. Besides, I know you're strong enough to take it."

Her expression softened slightly. "The hardest thing for any of us to do is to admit that sometimes there is nothing we can do. It's hard for anyone to give up control under normal circumstances. When control is wrested from you it's more difficult to accept. You weren't worthless, Reg. You were helpless. And that's what you can't admit to yourself. That's what you can't take."

Reg felt a surge of defensive rage, but it faded away almost immediately. He couldn't bring himself to accept it, but on some level he knew that she was right. He allowed his head to fall onto his chest. "I can't take this." He said. The calm finality of that admission disturbed him, but he plunged on. "How can I resurrect some kind of life out of this? How can I even begin to work through it.?"

"One step at a time, Reg." Guinan replied. "You work through it one step at a time. You learn to see beauty in the world and in yourself. You even begin to see beauty in your own suffering. All you have to do is open your eyes wide enough. And you can do it. I know. You're strong enough to survive."

Reg 's eyes darted sharply up at her. Her words mirrored his grandmother's, spoken so long ago. His defensiveness slipped away, leaving him tired and sad. "I don't know how strong I am. I feel like a casualty of war." Guinan smiled gently. "Maybe so," she said, "But it's a war that you haven't lost yet."

Barclay raised his head. "What do you mean?" Guinan stood up and walked over to him. She stood so close they were almost touching, catching and holding him with her eyes. Her robes brushed his knees. "You're alive, Reg, and every day you stay alive, you're fighting that war. They can only win if you stop fighting."

She reached out her hand, palm up, and left it in the space between them. "What are you doing?" His words echoed softly in the stillness of the moment. "Waiting for you to take my hand." Guinan replied.

He reached out, slowly, and placed his wounded hand in hers. Her skin was warm and dry, with rough calluses around her thumb. He could feel the pulse drumming through the veins in her hand. She closed her fingers around his loosely, and action didn't make him feel confined.

Without realizing what he was doing, he let his head fall forward and rested it on her shoulder. She placed her other arm around his shoulders and loosely held him, rubbing slow comforting circles between his shoulder blades. Her scent reminded him of woodlands, spiced apples, and open fires. She was solid, and strong enough to lean on. Her robes were cool against his flushed cheek, and he felt tension slipping out of his body.

After a few moments he sat back up. She let her arm fall off of his shoulders, but kept her hand wrapped around his. "Why don't we go to sickbay and get this looked at, Reg?" She asked. "Shit," He said, looking at their clasped hands. "I got blood on you." Guinan laughed. "It's not the first time someone's gotten blood on me, Reg. Besides, what are friends for?"

Reg looked at her, his expression open and vulnerable. "So…We're friends now?" She chucked warmly. "We've always been friends, Reg. You just haven't had the opportunity to realize it until now. Let's go fix your hands." Reg sighed. This was his second trip to sickbay in one day. He was on a roll. "Sure." He said. Guinan pulled him to his feet, and reached for her hat. His hands were beginning to sting.

"One day, you're going to have to tell me more about that table you smashed." He said conversationally. She gave him a perfect Guinan smile, the one that claimed intimate knowledge of worlds that he could never even imagine. "Maybe I will someday." They kicked broken glass out of their way as they walked hand in hand through his door into the corridor beyond.

Guinan stayed with him while his hands were treated, but she left him with a parting pat on the shoulder when Troi arrived. If Deanna noticed the small gesture she did not mention it, and she didn't try to touch him. She did ask if he had hurt himself deliberately, and seemed relieved when he replied that he had simply lost control. She suggested that he not make another attempt at solid food until the next day, and encouraged him to stay in sickbay overnight.

He ended up in the least visible biobed, in the far left corner of the room. His condition didn't warrant one of the isolation chambers, but at least Troi had ensured that he had reasonable privacy.

It was only 1900 hours, but the lights were dimmed, and sickbay seemed to be shutting down for the night. Dr. Crusher had retired for the evening, leaving a Vulcan physician in charge. Reg was relieved by the change in caretakers. A Vulcan wasn't likely to touch him while he slept.

He settled in, and pulled the thin blue blanket around his shoulders. The past few days settled into a distant fog, the events too surreal to be processed. The wildest part of it all had been Guinan's visit. He still didn't know what to make of all that she'd said, but some of it had penetrated his barriers of confusion and pain. He wanted to believe that there was beauty in the world. He wanted to think that he was strong enough to survive this.

He closed his eyes. The persistent exhaustion that had hounded him all day lapped at his mind and his flesh, but he didn't think he would be able to sleep here. The bed was uncomfortable, the blanket was thin, and the constant low murmur of humanity mixed with the hum of machinery conspired to keep him awake. He tried counting sheep, but gave up after he lost count for the third time.

In desperation he tried slipping into a fantasy that he had used as a child, when suffering from one of his grueling bouts of insomnia. He imagined that he was in a cave, lying on a sheet of ice. The frigid wind that blew through the cave began to freeze his body starting with his toes and working its way up. His lower limbs, his chest, and finally his face succumbed to the gentle assault. The chill numbed his body to all sound and sensation. Somewhere in the midst of the process he fell asleep.

The cave shimmered and contracted as he lay on the comforting slab of ice. The rough stone walls slowly changed color, shifted shape, and he realized with a thrill of anxiety that he was back in his childhood room. The night was overcast. There were no stars to shine through the open window. His eyes could barely penetrate the gloom enough to see the outlines of the room.

Reg lay on the bed, his back rigid. He was a child again. His small, boney fists clenched the green blanket that loosely covered him. He was awake, listening.

His heart began to drum faster as he made out the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. There was a stumble, and then a muffled curse. Then the steps resumed their steady course as they walked down the hall toward his room.

He forced himself to breathe slowly, trying to remain calm. Maybe Steve was just going to the bathroom. He lay paralyzed, unable to breathe as the footsteps stopped outside of his room and the doorknob slowly turned.

"No." The word rasped out of his clenched throat, and he was surprised to hear his adult voice coming out of a boy's mouth. The door slowly opened, allowing a widening beam of light to penetrate the room. "NO." He said, stronger this time, and again the incongruity between voice and body startled him.

A brown shoed foot stepped into the room. He wanted it to leave more than anything in the world, but he wasn't strong enough to make that happen. He was just a little boy. He wasn't even ten years old yet.

But he was, wasn't he? He was a lot older than ten. He remembered his tenth birthday, the green cake he had insisted that his mother replicate because it was his favorite color. He remembered later birthdays, some celebrated, some passing unmarked. He was a lot older than ten.

The door opened wider, the foot was followed by a leg clothed in dark material, and finally the silhouette of a slight- framed, balding man stood in the doorway. Steve's remaining hair was black, but his eyes were blue. The odd combination had attracted Reg's mother, but the rest of his physical features were unremarkable.

His jaw was too square. His lips were full, but they didn't fit the rest of his face. He was perpetually slender with very little muscle mass and an incongruous hint of a potbelly. Reg stared at his stepfather incredulously. This pathetic man couldn't possibly be the monster of his childhood.

Steve stood silently in the middle of the room. Reg threw back the blanket and swung his feet to the floor, gaining his adult size as he strode furiously toward his stepfather. He stopped a few feet in front of him, arms crossed. He didn't want to touch the man if he didn't have to.

"Get out of here," Reg said in a barely controlled rage, "Leave me the hell alone." Steve didn't answer. He simply stood dumbly, making no attempts to either retreat or enter further.

Reg slowly walked around his stepfather, looking him over, trying to assess the situation. For some reason he felt no fear. Reg came to face to face with the man again, and smiled. He finally saw it. There was no life in Steve's eyes. He was dead. He'd been dead for a lot longer than five years.

"You tried to make me think it was me," Reg whispered. "You tried to make me think I was empty, that I didn't have any right to exist. You came in here and used my body and destroyed my childhood so you could feel alive again, but it was all a lie. You're the one who's empty. You're the hollow man."

Reg reached out and ripped into his stepfather, hands easily penetrating clothing and skin. There was no blood. Steve came apart like an empty paper bag, leaving wind to rustle through brown fall leaves in his wake.

Reg turned, his stepfather already forgotten. There was a small form shivering in the dim light from the hallway that illuminated the bed. Reg walked over to it, and knelt on the floor beside his damaged childhood.

The boy was trembling, dark eyes wide in too pale a face, short blond hair disheveled from tossing on the pillow. He was too thin, almost gaunt. Reg reached out and wrapped his hand around the warm, paper thin skin of the boy's slender wrist. He could feel a fluttering, fragile pulse beating through the boy's veins.

There was almost no muscle anywhere on the child's body. His pajamas hung loosely around his waist. He was so small, so scared, and so helpless. Reg instinctively rose up and sat on the edge of the bed. He gathered the boy in his arms and rocked him gently, caressing his smooth cheek.

The child was beautiful.

Why hadn't anyone ever told him that?

"It's okay," Reg said, soothingly. "He's gone now. You can go to sleep." The boy sighed and shuddered, closing his eyes. Reg rocked him for a few moments longer and then laid him on the mattress, on his stomach, pulling the blanket up to cover him. He laid his hand on the boy's small back between jutting shoulder blades and began to rub in smooth, light circles, the way that Guinan had comforted him earlier. Reg remained there until the Vulcan physician's voice called his name the next morning.

Dr. Selar released Reg from sickbay as soon as he was dressed. Troi had left word that she would meet with him in two hours, but until then he was free to do as he pleased. He walked aimlessly around the ship, until by chance or subconscious intention he ended up outside of holodeck five.

The unit wasn't in use. Reg entered, and stood at the edge of the hologrid while he tried to think of a program to run. "Computer," he said into the mechanical silence, "Run program Barclay nine."

The walls shimmered, and an idyllic scene filled the room. There was a house directly in front of Reg, a white-painted wooden two story with a porch in the front. The porch was large but had no roof, and a swing set stood to the right side of the house. The yard was green and overgrown, filled with rolling hills and yellow butterflies that fluttered across the expanse, pollinating dozens of species of wildflowers.

An ancient oak tree stood a few feet away from the house, with large twisted branches that curved upward toward a bright blue sky. It could have been a marvelous place to grow up. Instead, Reg saw the house and yard as a place of suffering, filled with rage and furtive pain.

He had wanted this program to be as accurate as possible, and had carefully sifted through his wounded memory for each detail. The pieces he had remembered most clearly were the oak and the places that he and his brother used to hide, silently hoping to escape another assault.

He'd created the program in a burst of unfocused anxiety and anger. He had wanted to recreate the place, and then destroy it. He had imagined razing the house, uprooting the tree, taking a bulldozer to the entire yard. He'd never done it. Just starting the program had made him feel as though he was suffocating, and he'd closed it immediately.

Now, he gazed calmly at the scene of so much terror and pain, and thought that it didn't seem right that the place was so beautiful. He walked over to the oak and laid his hand on rough bark of the tree's massive trunk.

He'd seen this tree as his nemesis while he was growing up. He had avoided even glancing toward it while he and his brother had played quietly in the yard. He understood, now, that this tree was no one's nemesis. It was just one more mute witness to the madness that had polluted this place.

He walked up to the house and stood beside the porch, gazing at a hole in the siding that had allowed himself and Bay to crawl under the house. It was a good place to hide.

The harsh glint of sunlight on metal caught his eye, and he noticed the copper belt draped over the railing. He walked up cracked concrete steps to the porch for a closer look.

The belt was poorly made. The filigree on the leaves meandered inconsistently. The silver metal rings that linked the belt together clashed with warm color of the copper leaves. The belt was supposed to remind you of fall, of turning leaves and lengthening shadows, but the metal was too cold and thin to represent life. There was nothing real here.

Reg walked down the steps, back toward the holodeck door. He finally knew what to tell Bay, when he wrote him again. He would explain that neither one of them could change the past, that some of the pain of it would always stay with them. Maybe, though, if they both worked hard enough, if they opened their eyes wide enough, they could begin to see it in a different light.

I can illuminate my own truth, Reg thought, I don't have to stand in the shadow of someone else's. And I'm not a coward. How could he be? In the end, it was impossible to measure courage absolutely. The only thing that mattered was that he had been strong enough to make it through.

Reg gave the oak tree a passing caress as he walked by, acknowledging the history he shared with it. Steve had no hold on either of them anymore. The dead had no voice in this world. Only the living bear witness. It was his story now.

He stood in the open door, peering into the corridor, and then turned back toward the house. "Computer, end and delete program." The walls shimmered and the scene slowly dissipated like a thick fog, leaving behind a cold and empty room. That's all that's ever really here he realized, an empty room. Reg felt a subtle shift in his psyche as the holodeck lost some of its hold over him. He turned around and walked through the open door, back into his life.

Completed 10/7/04, 12:40pm