Sky Captain was in the room instantly, observing his obvious injuries with a raised eyebrow. "Well? Who do I need to kill?"

"It was an accident. Nobody's responsible."

"Oh, all right then," he agreed sarcastically, staring at him for a few seconds before continuing. "Don't lie to me, Dex. I can tell."

"I'm not lying," he said, trying to sound somewhere between calm and annoyed. "I was working on the phones. I put my finger in the wrong place, caught a little electricity, and fell off of the ladder. I had the glass in my hand, you know, because I was working on it, and it broke when I hit the floor. No big deal. Really, it's nothing to worry about."

Joe shifted from foot to foot. Every ounce of him wanted his best friend to be telling him the truth, but he knew better. Something was very wrong here. The other man's voice, the rigid way he sat in his chair like he couldn't wait for him to leave, the flitting gaze that wouldn't meet his…none of that was Dex. He shook his head slowly. "I really wish I could believe you, you know. I really do."

"It's the truth, Cap."

He looked him up and down again, and this time caught something he hadn't before. "All right. So say it is the truth. You were working on the phones, got shocked, fell down with some glass in your hand. Then you came up here to dress it, right?" Dex nodded a little too eagerly. "Then where did that burn on your arm come from?"

"What?" Buy time, buy time, think, stupid, think! "What burn do you mean?"

"This burn, Dex," he growled, grabbing his arm and twisting it as he pulled so that they could both clearly see the three-inch-long section where there was virtually no skin left. "This god-awful thing that looks like you've been fighting a dragon without a shield. Did you light the telephone room on fire as well?"

"Oh! Uh, no. I did that earlier today." He hated this, abhorred lying to this man, loathed telling untruths to his Sky Captain, to Joe, to the only real friend - with the possible exceptions of Frankie and a puppy he'd had for three days before his father kicked it down the stairs and killed it – he had ever had. It was necessary, though. He would lose everything if anyone knew about the darkness his worst tormentors lurked in.

"Ah. I see." He sat down on the edge of the mattress and leaned forward interrogatively, Dex's arm still caught in his grasp. "Tell me…is there a special reason that you decided to go work on the telephone system with an open lesion? You might have at least gotten it bandaged first."

"I, uh…I don't know," he attempted. "It didn't seem that bad at the time. The phones were down, though, and I thought you might try to call for a ride if Polly got annoying and you'd been drinking. I didn't want you to drive home drunk, so I figured I'd fix the phones first."

It was a good try, Joe had to admit. If he hadn't known him so well, he might have believed it. He could still smell a hint of burned flesh, however, and a fleeting glance over the desktop gave him a good idea of where it was coming from. "Well, I guess that's believable enough," he conceded, releasing the wrist he'd been holding. "I'll let you get back to bed. Sorry I bothered you, Dex." He swung his hand purposefully towards the hot plate as he spoke, acting as if he were only going to push himself up from the bed.

"Careful! That's hot!" Dex warned him without thinking, knowing only that the pilot was about to fry his palm. He pushed him away from the offending heater an instant before he realized that he'd given himself away. "Ah, crud," he whispered as Joe's eyes drilled into his knowingly.

"Do you always leave that on, then? Seems like a good way to torch the building, especially with as much paper as you've got lying around." He spoke quietly, gently, attempting to fill the silence as the man across from him tried to collect himself. "Why, Dex?"

"It doesn't matter, Joe. It's past."

"Which is why you're still beating yourself up over it."

"Sure. Whatever."

"You hide it very well, whatever it is," he complimented him. "Better than I do."

Dex's head shot up. "Huh? If you mean the nightmares-"

"Yes, the nightmares. I can't hide them, at least not from you. From the others, yes, because I don't trust them with that knowledge. You, though…well." He shrugged. "It's different. At least I thought it was."

"It is different…Joe…I didn't mean to…I mean, I never told…please…"

"Please what? I'm not mad at you, Dex."

"Please don't make me tell," he begged, his eyes brimming over.

He reached out with his thumb and wiped the single tear that fell onto his cheek. "Tell what?"

"You know what."

"No, I don't. Only you do." He paused. "I think you should tell me."

"It's not really any of your business, you know," he tried to retort, hoping that anger would push Joe off the topic.

"You've made it my business."

"How so?"

"By letting me be your friend."

"That's lame, Cap. It's lame and you know it."

"No, it isn't. You and I are both painfully careful about who we let into our lives, who we let really see us. I know you've told me things before that you have told no other living soul, and that you probably never will. I've shared in the same way with you. In that way, we've made ourselves responsible for each other, by choice. So when I walk down a hallway and hear you beating yourself to a pulp, I think I have a right to know why. Even if I didn't have, you would still need to tell me, for your own good." His voice dropped. "You can't keep doing this to yourself, Dex," he pleaded. "I imagine you've been doing it for a very long time now, but you have to stop. What if you really hurt yourself next time? What if you kill yourself next time? Well?"

"The world would move on, and probably be better for it."

"Fuck the world."

"Exactly. They wouldn't care. I'd be a sidebar at best." He smirked wryly. "The guy you hired to replace me would probably get more press."

"Fine. So let's say they turn a blind eye. Forget the rest of the world for a moment. What do you think happens to me?"

He looked up at him from beneath his eyebrows. "You're Sky Captain, for Christ sake, Joe. You'd move on, because it's what the world would expect you to do, would tell you to do. And you'd do it, for reasons of sheer survival. You've lost plenty of friends before now, and you're fine. You would be fine if you lost another."

"None of them were you," Joe said simply. "And if it ever is you that I lose, I will be far from fine." He grabbed the hand that didn't have pieces of glass sticking out of it and applied pressure. "Just imagining the torture that living in a world without you in it somewhere would be is worse than anything that haunts my actual memories, Dex."

He watched him for a long time, neither one speaking. "I'm sorry," he whispered finally, closing his eyes. "I don't want to do this, you know. I just…can't control it sometimes."

"You've never shown it in front of anyone that I'm aware of."

"It's different in front of people. I have this…this goody two-shoes, perfect little sidekick image that everyone expects me to keep up all the time, and I don't dare damage that. It would be bad for everyone involved, and I don't want anyone to get hurt by it. Least of all you."

"So you hurt yourself instead, when no one's around to see or hear."

"I guess. Yeah. Better me than someone else. No one ever questions my excuses, and I can usually stop before it gets too bad."

"And tonight? Is this 'not too bad'?"

"…No," he admitted. "But it hadn't popped up in a long time, either, so I'm not surprised."

"Is this the worst it's been?"

He almost laughed. "No. No, I got away with the worst one. Do you remember when I got run off the road coming back from that conference in Boston?"

"Yes. You were in surgery for three hours and in the hospital for weeks afterwards." He shuddered as he recalled how pale, how fragile Dex had seemed lying on that impersonal gurney, eyes closed in a coma the doctors refused to guarantee he would come out of. "It was awful."

"Yeah, well…There wasn't another car."

A pained expression crossed Joe's face. "You drove into that tree on purpose," he murmured. "Why, Dex? For God's sake, why?"

"Part of me meant to do it. Another part was screaming like crazy to hit the brakes."

"You could have been killed. You nearly were killed."

"That was the point, I'm pretty sure." He shrugged and smiled wanly. "It didn't work, though."

"…Why?"

"Simple physics. I wasn't going fast enough, and I forgot to unbuckle my seatbelt."

He cringed. "You know I meant why did you do it."

"Look…" Dex shifted in his chair, biting at his already punctured lip. "Did…did your parents ever hit you?"

"If I deserved it, yes, my parents believed in corporal punishment."

"But only if you really deserved it."

"Yes."

"Must have been nice." Their eyes met, but after a second Dex tore away and concentrated on turning off the hot plate. Sky Captain watched to make sure he didn't 'accidently' brush against it in the process before speaking.

"Mother or father?" he asked finally.

"Both. Dad was the really bad one. Mom was silent when she hit me, and it wasn't so bad that way for some reason, but he'd call me every name in the book. It was like the more he talked the angrier he got, too. Mom would shove me around some and get bored, but Dad…he was different."

"How did you get away?"

"I didn't. They left me alone in the apartment one night when I was thirteen. Told me they were going to a movie. They did that sometimes, so I didn't think anything of it. That night it just so happened that they never came back. They vanished. They pawned everything with any real value, then…poof. Gone."

"Surely you were too young to be left to your own devices. Didn't anyone intervene?"

"I'd been given early admission at M.I.T. right before they left. I had a scholarship for once school started, and there were only a few weeks of summer left, so they let me move into the dorms early. It was easier for everyone to just not ask why my parents left in the first place."

"My bloody little genius," Joe whispered affectionately. "Literally and metaphorically, as it were."

Dex just shrugged. "I didn't ask for it, you know."

"I know."

"I think that might be why they did what they did. My parents, I mean. I think I was scary to them, always tearing things apart so I could put them back together differently. When I was eight, all mom could talk about was getting a radio. That's all we heard all summer long, was how great it would be if we could afford one. Dad said we couldn't, but I wanted to make her happy. So I built one for her for Christmas. It wasn't pretty to look at, but it worked."

Sky Captain gaped at him. "You…how?"

"There was this alley a few blocks away that was always full of old junk. I found a couple of broken ones there, and took them apart so I could see how they worked. I looked at a few books down at the library, too, and just kind of faked it from there. Like I said, it wasn't very nice looking, but it did what it was supposed to do. I thought she'd like it."

"Didn't she?"

"She wouldn't touch it. Her and dad gave each other this weird look and mom kind of choked out a thank you. She wouldn't go into the living room so long as it was there. That night after I went to bed and I heard dad say he was going to take care of it. It was gone the next morning."

"Didn't you ask what he'd done with it?"

"I was afraid he'd hit me."

"My God. Dex, that's a terrible story."

He smiled sadly. "It got better after I started college. At least there no one beat me up. I learned how to read who would appreciate the stuff I came up with. Most of the other students were jealous of the attention I got from the professors, so I didn't really have any friends, but it wasn't so bad. Having no social life gave me a lot of time to study."

"What about that Robbie fellow you introduced me to once? Didn't you say you two were friends at school?"

"Yeah, Robbie was okay. I always got the idea that he hung out with me because I made a good study partner. That, and I let him copy my homework sometimes."

"Oh. So…not really a friend."

"I didn't tell him anything, if that's what you're wondering. I did a year or so of freelance work – that's how I met Frankie - and then she introduced me to you." He smiled. "Someone who actually understood me."

"I don't understand this, though, Dex. I don't understand why you hurt yourself. You're free of him. It's over."

"We're never free of our past, Joe. You of all people ought to know that."

Sky Captain's shoulders slumped. "I hate hearing you say that with such conviction."

"Sorry."

"It's not your fault, I just…" Standing, he paced the small room in agitation. "I'm going to tell you something I swore I never would," he announced finally.

"All right."

He knelt before him and gently took both of his hands up. "The whole time I was in that hell of a prison camp, do you know what I kept thinking?"

"What?" Dex whispered back. He hated the haunted look the other man always wore when he talked about those months, but he didn't dare stop him, not when he seemed so determined to speak.

"I kept thinking, thank God you got held up by that visiting General and didn't make it to the flight line in time to leave. I've never forgotten that you were supposed to go with me that day, and I have never been more grateful for anything in my life than for the fact that you didn't end up there with me. I thought…I thought I had been spared the pain of watching you be hurt like that. But I was wrong." He laid his head against the seated man's knees. "The damage was already done, long before, and I never knew. You've been punishing yourself for someone else's crimes all this time. I can't stand it, Dex. I really can't."

"I'm sorry. I can't help it. It just takes over, and I…I can't stop it."

"You stopped it tonight."

"Only because you came in. It hides when other people are around, especially if it's people who might actually give a damn."

"I want you to make me a promise, Dex," Sky Captain requested, meeting his eyes after a moment's thought.

"What is it, Cap?"

"From now on, when you feel it starting, you find me. If I'm not here, you find someone, anyone, and you stay near people until it gives up. Please, please don't do this to yourself anymore. Don't let it control you."

"I can't promise that, Joe. I'm sorry, but I can't always stop it. I wish I could."

"Will you try, at least?"

"Sometimes it's better to just let it out," he explained. "If I let it build up, if I force it back into its box, it's worse when it finally does take over. That's how I ended up crashing the car."

"But you never had anyone to talk to about it, right?"

"Well, no."

"Now you do. Maybe that will take away its power. Will you try that for me? Talk it out with me when it tries to overwhelm you?"

He nodded slowly. "Okay. I don't think it will work, but…"

"Yes?"

"You know I'd do anything you asked, Cap. I'll try."

"Good boy, Dex," he murmured, cupping the side of his face briefly. "Now," he went on, straightening as his attitude switched back to business. "Do you have any bandages in here?"