Deleth's face twisted, and he glowered at her from beneath those heavy brow ridges. The set of his jaw and the angry look in his eyes told Efet everything. She inhaled deeply and let her eyelids fall, opening them again as she breathed out, trying to release the tension from her body.

"You're not going to tell me the truth, are you?"

Deleth didn't answer.

Efet looked back at those rock cairns, then met Deleth's gaze again. He glowered, but she could see the slightest twitch around his mouth, and a tremble in his shoulders. She realized he was fighting to stay angry, not to let his expression slip. Around the edges of his face, she could see something that looked an awful lot like grief. He looked young, and exhausted, and desperately vulnerable. She hesitated for a moment, then approached him, touched him gently on the shoulder and said, "All right. Let's walk back."

He fell into step with her, and they walked downhill back toward the jungle. It was still midday, and the heat was now brutal. Even Efet felt overheated as they retreated into the shade of the dense foliage, and she knew Deleth must be miserable. It would take them hours to make it back to the river to drink, so Efet kept an eye out for melons as they went along in the crushing silence Deleth seemed determined to preserve. She no longer thought he was angry with her; she wasn't sure if he'd ever been angry at all, only desperate to protect those parts of himself he was afraid to show.

Spotting some melons growing on a tree that had almost been crushed by more aggressive vegetation, Efet wasted no time in plucking them. "Deleth, have one of these," she said, running to his side and pressing one into his hand.

"I don't want it."

"It is too hot for that sort of pride," Efet insisted. "Please. You need to drink water, and this is all I have to give you."

Deleth took the melon and sat on the twisted roots of a tree, pressing his back to the trunk. He did not crack open his melon right away; instead, he sat and stared ahead, with eyes that seemed to see nothing. At last, he said, "I have kept all my secrets from you, Efet. I think I'll die with them." He looked at her, the spell he was under seemingly broken.

Efet knelt next to him, took his melon in her hands, and broke it open for him. "Who am I going to tell your secrets to?" she asked him, even as she gestured to him to take a bite. "To the river? To the trees and bugs and roots?"

Deleth shook his head, but raised a bite to his lips. He didn't say anything more until after he'd swallowed. "It's not that you could tell them to anyone. It's that - I don't want you to turn from me in disgust if I told you what happened." His head bowed, as though whatever shame he was carrying was too heavy to bear.

"Unless you murdered those people yourself, that won't happen," Efet assured him. She thought for a moment, then said, "Those graves back there... those were the other Romulans, weren't they? I guess there were four of you that were brought to this place?"

Deleth trembled.

"And you're the last survivor, aren't you?" Efet went on.

Deleth's eyes shone.

"Your scar..." Efet remembered her promise and her next words went unsaid. Somehow that's how you got your scar. She knew it was true, but she knew he didn't want to tell her. "Deleth, how long have you been here by yourself?"

"Before you came..." he drew a deep breath. "Ten weeks. Give or take a day." He listlessly took another bite of his melon.

Efet sat quietly for some moments, fighting back tears. "You think I'd be disgusted with your secrets, but I've got some of my own." She viciously wiped at her eyes. "I didn't raise a hand to the Klingons when they captured the outpost where I worked. Sian and Makbar died fighting for me, and I was too cowardly to lift a finger to help them, or avenge them... I hid under my desk until the Klingons dragged me out." She felt tears streaking down her cheeks now. "They took Beltas away and probably killed her, and I did nothing to stop them then, either. And Beltas had been kind to me. Maybe I was just glad it was her and not me." She sobbed openly now. "I could've done something! Initiated a self-destruct sequence... fought back... anything! But I was a coward. So that's my secret."

Hot tears fell from her eyes, a waste of water, but after a long moment, Deleth put an arm around her and tucked her against his side. For some reason, that made Efet cry even harder.

"My comrades died on the wall," Deleth said softly, and Efet struggled to calm down enough to listen to him. "We mounted an escape attempt that failed. That's why I told you there's no way out. I buried them all and I was alone here, until you came."

Sniffling, Efet pulled herself into a sitting position. "That's not -"

"Wait." Deleth held up a hand to tell her to reserve her judgments. "Before you go saying that's not so bad, you need to hear the whole story. We tried climbing out. We fashioned rock climbing equipment out of our belts, clothes, and bits of vines and this and that. We were all tied together - my commander, Tarak, went first, followed by subcommander Zharal, centurion Velatra, and finally, me. My belt was tied to my arm, right here -" and he indicated the angry scar just above his deltoid muscle. "We made it far above the valley. It took us hours. But our strengths started to fail. Tarak's anchor wasn't set deep enough, and he began to fall, pulling Zharal and Velatra with him. Velatra had caught a tiny ledge with her pick, but Zharal and Tarak were deadweight on her, and if they all went, they would drag me with them and we'd all die." Deleth began to tremble again. Efet found herself rubbing his forearm in an effort to console him.

"Velatra called to me. She told me to cut them loose. Let them fall. I can still hear the commander and subcommander screaming in fear. Velatra's pick was slipping. My belt was tightening on my arm, so tight it bit into my flesh, and I knew in a few moments - I don't know how I did it. But my left hand held onto my anchor and I took my knife with my right hand and I cut the belt." He drew a shaky breath. "I let them fall. Tarak and Zharal went first. Then, a second or two after, Velatra, when her pick finally slipped."

Efet sat in stunned silence, her tears and her own grief forgotten.

"I climbed back down. It seemed to take a lifetime. Then I found their bodies, broken by the fall, and I buried them. I was in a kind of daze, maybe even a madness. A thousand times, I wished I had died with them. At least we would've been together. I would not have killed my commanding officers."

His shoulders slumped, as though finally relieved of his burden, and Deleth let his head rest against the tree trunk. Efet reached for him, lightly resting her hand on the back of his hand. Deleth startled a little, looking down at their hands, and then back to her.

"Your officer gave you an order, didn't she? So you were following orders. She must've known there was no way for them to save themselves. That's why she made you cut them loose, so you'd have a chance to live."

Deleth huffed a little, lowering his eyes. "Velatra wasn't my commander. She was my superior officer, yes, but Tarak was the commander and she-"

"You said he was screaming. He couldn't give you an order," Efet insisted. "So Velatra took it on herself. And you've been hating yourself for weeks, because you did what you had to do!"

"You don't understand, you weren't there-"

"No, I wasn't. But I'd be dead a half dozen times over if it weren't for you, and if you'd died that day on that wall, a totally preventable and meaningless death, I'd be dead right now. You followed orders. You saved your own life. That's what I understand."

Deleth thought on this for several long moments. Efet could see him fighting back the urge to tell her she was wrong, but when he spoke, he said, "I don't think you're a coward."

"...What?" Efet was thrown for a loop.

"You called yourself a coward, for not fighting back against the Klingons when they captured you," Deleth said. His fingers were softly caressing hers. "But I don't think you're a coward. You're not a soldier, Efet. You weren't trained to fight to the death, and there was no sense in you throwing away your own life to make some last stand. You've got something waiting for you back home, something to live for. You're afraid, sometimes. But not a coward."

"Oh," whispered Efet. She didn't know what to say. She'd assumed it was such a foregone conclusion that she was the biggest coward in the whole Quadrant, that she was truly staggered that Deleth had thought to challenge her on this.

Deleth very deliberately pulled his hand from hers and stood up. "We should get going," he told her.

He led them back into the interior of the jungle, and as they journeyed, Deleth couldn't help but to steal glances at her from the corner of his eye. He still couldn't believe he'd broken down and told her of what happened to Tarak, Zharal, and Velatra. Their memories had haunted him many nights since he'd been here, and he'd mourned for them, believing he should've died in their steads, or at least joined them in death. But Efet had a point. Their mission had not been to come here and die. His mission, the same as any Romulan in a prison camp, was to survive and return to his duty post. He had a personal mission as well, which was to keep Efet alive and hopefully, someday and somehow, get her out of here as well.

It had felt good to unburden himself of his secret, and it seemed to do her good, too. Efet was back to trying to vault her way from one tree's root system to another, and getting better and better at it. She was nearly able to keep pace with him now, and every time she went to vault, her little braid flew out behind her. Deleth could almost feel her phantom touch on the back of his hand. He'd gotten intense emotional sensation from her - mostly concern, and sympathy for his situation, but also a soft, fluttering, excited kind of feeling, that said she'd liked it when he'd held her close and comforted her when she'd wept. Perhaps she had merely enjoyed the physical closeness - he wasn't sure, but Deleth thought Cardassians were more affectionate than Romulans. But part of him liked to think she was excited that he had reached out to her and pulled her close. If he concentrated, he could almost feel how her fingers had felt...

They reached the river shortly after nightfall. They'd made good time, far better than Deleth had anticipated, and they knelt to quench their thirsts gratefully. This time, Efet made camp, finding a little clearing a ways from the river, building a fire, and cooking their food. She had somehow found ways to combine the edible plants he'd shown her to make much tastier meals than Deleth had ever made for himself - she'd cut open the tubers and mixed them with a little of the aromatic herb, resulting in something he wolfed down two portions of. They'd banked the fire and were settling down for sleep when the loud buzzing and whirring of the sub-impulse thrusters used in Klingon starships. The foliage rippled above them as the ship passed by.

"What was that?" whispered Efet, picking her head up from where she'd bedded down for the night.

"The Klingons," Deleth told her, leaping to his feet. "That's a shuttle, just like the one that brought you here."

"You think they're bringing more prisoners?"

"Must be," Deleth said, as he began to gather items from their little camp. "Come on! We're going to find a more secure place to stay."