Nuka stared numbly at the food that Gibbs had put in front of him. It smelled really good, way better than anything he'd gotten at Uncle Tony's or at the social worker's. Gibbs had cooked steak tenderloin, with peas, pearl onions, and grilled carrots. Nuka could feel his saliva gathering in his mouth, but he couldn't bring himself to eat. He kept stealing covert glances at Gibbs, trying to figure the man out. Why hadn't he yelled at Nuka, at the very least, for disobeying? And what did he mean when he said "it's over now?" None of it made the least bit of sense to Nuka.

"I thought you said you weren't picky," Gibbs said. He sounded irritated. Nuka swallowed, hard. He hadn't meant to make Gibbs madder tonight.

"I'm not picky," he said quietly. "Dinner looks delicious."

Gibbs grunted. "You're not eating it."

Nuka was tempted to say that he wasn't hungry, but that wasn't really true. He was hungry. He was really hungry. Living with Uncle Tony, he'd eaten so much pizza that he thought he'd be sick. The idea of a real home-cooked meal was inviting, and the meal looked good… But he couldn't eat it, not when he still didn't know what Gibbs mean by him not being in trouble any more. How could he get himself out of trouble that quickly? It wasn't like he'd done anything real good after being bad. He hadn't done anything at all.

It felt like a trick.

That was the problem. It felt like the time that he'd let his father's favorite movie get eaten by the VCR. His father had pretended that it was okay and Nuka wasn't in trouble. That afternoon, a lady in a suit had come by and walked around their house and asked Nuka a bunch of questions about his life with his father. It wasn't until she left that his father punished him for breaking the movie. Nuka swallowed. This felt exactly like that, and he didn't like it. He hated waiting for a punishment, and he really hated the fact that Gibbs lied and told him he wasn't in trouble any more.

Gibbs sighed and leaned forward. "Nuka, you haven't touched a bite of your food. Why's that?"

Because, Nuka thought, getting sent to bed without supper was normal punishment. He'd read about it in books. Sometimes, back home, if he came up with an appropriate punishment for himself, his father would deal with him that way. It was better, because at least Nuka knew what was going to happen.

Gibbs tapped the tabletop with his index finger. "An answer, please."

Nuka ducked his head. He didn't know how to express himself. He didn't know Gibbs well enough to explain it all. He chewed lightly on his lower lip and quietly offered, "I'm sorry."

"Nuka, if you don't like the food, that's fine. Just tell me what you like."

"I like steak," Nuka whispered. It was one of his favorite foods. He could feel tears beginning to well in his eyes.

"So why aren't you eating?" Nuka could tell from Gibbs' tone of voice that he was irritated. Nuka's hands gripped tightly to the edge of his chair as he waited for the inevitable explosion. When it didn't happen, he looked up, quickly, through his bangs. Gibbs' eyes were on him, watching him. Waiting, Nuka realized, for an answer.

Nuka swallowed hard. "I was bad."

Gibbs' eyebrow raised a little higher in the air. "Oh? When was this?"

"Earlier. When I slid down the banister. I should have waited for you."

"We discussed this already."

"I know." Nuka shut his eyes tightly, "but nothing happened, and…"

"Oh, for heaven's sakes!" Gibbs growled. "Are you punishing yourself? Denying yourself dinner because you think it will make me happy, in some sick way."

"You didn't punish me!" Nuka protested. "I didn't know what to do!"

"There was nothing to punish you for."

"I disobeyed you."

"And we talked about it. I told you that the matter was resolved."

"That's stupid! You can't resolve a matter by talking about it!"

Gibbs ran a hand through his hair. He looked like he was really, really mad and was trying to hold it in. Nuka slipped off his chair and stood to the side, ready to bolt if the situation warranted it.

"Sit down, Nuka," Gibbs said quietly, "I'm not about to hurt you."

Nuka eyed Gibbs warily. "Are you mad?"

"We'll discuss it after dinner."

Nuka's stomach twisted uncomfortably. He chewed his lower lip nervously.

"Sit down," Gibbs repeated. "I'm not mad, but I will be if you don't sit down and eat some dinner."

Nuka took a careful step forward, his eyes on Gibbs the whole time. When the man didn't move, he sat down quickly. He stared at his plate for a moment, and then slowly picked up his fork. He stabbed a carrot and brought it to his mouth. Put it in. Chewed. Gibbs nodded at him but didn't say a word, and Nuka felt himself relax marginally. Gibbs said they'd deal with the situation after dinner, which meant that Nuka was safe as long as he was eating.

He ate slowly.

When he was finished, Gibbs reached out in front of him. Nuka shied away from the touch, but Gibbs merely took his plate from the table and left the room. Nuka wrapped his arms about his middle. He felt abandoned. Gibbs had said they would fix things after dinner. It was after dinner. Why weren't they doing something?

Gibbs came back into the room. He looked tired, Nuka noted. Really tired. Usually that was a good thing when it was time to be punished. Tired people weren't as creative. This first time, though, Nuka would have preferred it if Gibbs was in his prime. He wanted to know what the worst he could expect was.

"Hop onto my back," Gibbs said. "We're going to talk about this upstairs in your room."

"How come?"

"Because you like your room," Gibbs said, "Or at least you seemed to. Hopefully you'll be able to relax a bit more in there."

That seemed like a stupid statement to Nuka. How could he possibly relax when he was about to be punished? He didn't dare question the matter further, though, for fear of further angering his guardian. He climbed obediently onto the man's back and rode piggy-back upstairs to his room, where he was gently deposited onto his bed. He scooted himself to the far end of the bed, wrapping his arms about his knees. Gibbs looked at him for a moment, then carefully stepped away and sat in the chair in front of the desk. They sat for a moment, watching each other. Nuka hated the tenseness of the silence.

"I'm sorry," he offered at last.

Gibbs sighed. "What for?"

Nuka swallowed. "For disobeying you."

Gibbs shook his head. "That's the problem. I'm not even upset about the incident with the stairs. I'm upset about what happened after."

After? Nuka frowned, scanning his mind. When he realized what Gibbs was really upset about, he felt like an idiot. "It was an instinct! I didn't mean to run away, I'm just used to doing that. I'm really, really sorry!"

Gibbs frowned for a moment, then shook his head. "I'm not talking about you hiding. I did tell you that you were allowed to run when you were scared. I was actually quite impressed that you came back when I told you to."

"You were?"

"Yes, I was. You'd never been around me when I was upset before and you were still willing to come out and deal with the situation. That was brave of you."

Nuka swallowed. That hadn't felt very brave. "But, then, I don't get it. If you're not mad about that, and you're not mad about the stairs, why are you mad?"

Gibbs shook his head again. "I'm not mad, Nuka. I promise you, I possess more emotions than 'happy' and 'mad'. I'm upset."

"How come?"

"Do you remember what you said at dinner?" Gibbs asked. "When you said that it was stupid to think that you could resolve a matter by talking."

"Yes." Nuka scratched his arm nervously.

"Well, I'm upset because the way I grew up, talking about things was the only way to resolve a matter. So, you see, when you said that you couldn't resolve a matter that way, it made me upset, because I don't know how else to resolve a matter."

Nuka's eyebrows furrowed. "What, you mean you're only ever going to talk to me when I do something bad."

"That's not what I said," Gibbs replied. "I said that I believed that talking was the only way to fix the problem. I didn't say that was the only thing that I would ever do."

"I don't get it."

"Let me explain… When you were downstairs and you wouldn't eat your dinner, I was upset. Now, I could have punished you for not eating dinner, but what would that have accomplished? You would very likely have been angry because in your mind, not eating dinner was a punishment, and I would have been angry because I wouldn't know why you weren't eating in the first place. When we talked about it, however, and I realized that you weren't eating because you thought you needed to be punished, I understood your reasoning, and no longer felt angry with you. I could also tell you that I required you to eat, and that you were not allowed to punish yourself in such a manner. So, you ate your dinner, which is what I wanted, and quite probably what you wanted as well, and you told me that I needed to explain my reasons for not punishing you better than I had."

Nuka cocked his head to the side. That made sense, sort of, in a weird way. It was different than how his Daddy dealt with things. He understood how talking helped make things clearer for both of them, but he still didn't understand why he didn't get punished, too. "But I still disobeyed. Even if I had good reasons, I disobeyed you. I should get punished for that."

"That's not how that works," Gibbs said. "At least not in this house."

"How come?"

"Well, think about it this way. What if I left you home alone one day, and I told you not to leave the house. What would you do?"

"I wouldn't leave the house."

"What about if there was a fire. What would you do then?"

"A big fire?"

Gibbs inclined his head.

"I'd leave the house. I'd get burned down if I didn't!"

"Exactly. Your reason outweighed my instructions. I'm not perfect, Nuka. Sometimes I'm going to tell you to do things without understanding the situation all the way, and sometimes you're going to have to decide that it's okay to do things differently than I told you. Now, that's not to say that I want you to be disobedient. I don't. But if there's a reason you think what I'm telling you to do doesn't make logical sense and you wind up acting in a way that makes more sense to you, I'm not going to punish you."

"Okay."

"But," Gibbs continued. "That only works once. If you disobey me and when we talk about it we decide that what I had told you to do works better, then when that situation comes up again you should act the way I told you to. Understand?"

"No."

"What did I tell you when you hurt yourself before dinner?"

Nuka scrunched up his face in concentration. "Um… You said fear was how your body tells you that something could be dangerous, so when you feel scared you need to think real hard about what you're gonna do and make sure you're not gonna get hurt doing it."

"Correct. Now, since we hadn't had that talk before, you didn't get punished. But what if tomorrow, I told you that you could slide down that banister if you could do it without hurting yourself, but otherwise you needed to wait for me, and you slid down the banister and hurt yourself."

Nuka frowned at him. "That would be silly. I'd already know I couldn't do it."

"Exactly!" Gibbs replied. "In that case, you would be disobeying me, not because you didn't understand my instructions or didn't know better, but because you wanted to. In that case, I would punish you. Now, do you understand the difference?"

Nuka frowned a little, gently rolling his lower lip beneath his upper lip. Finally he looked up, a strangely triumphant look on his face. "You want me to think. You want me to think by myself how to do things right, and if I mess up in my thinking you won't punish me because if you do then I'd only ever think about how you would make me do things, not about how things should be done. But if I already know how a situation works and I do something that's against the rules just to do it, then I'm not thinking. Then I'm just being naughty."

"Precisely."

Nuka grinned.

"Now," Gibbs said. "Let's talk about what happened at dinner."

Nuka swallowed. He thought they just had talked about what happened at dinner.

"I don't want you punishing yourself again, understand?" Gibbs said. "If you think you've done something that warrants punishment, you come tell me about it, but you don't deal with the matter yourself. That's not your job, that's my job. If you punish yourself, that's like telling me that I'm no good at taking care of you."

"I didn't mean it like that!" Nuka said worriedly. "I like it here!"

Gibbs nodded once in acknowledgement but continued to speak. "Furthermore, you will not skip meals. Eating good, healthy meals is how you grow up big and strong. It's how you have energy to do things. Not eating when you're supposed to hurts your body, and I do not approve of you hurting yourself on purpose. Understand?"

Nuka nodded. "I won't do it again."

"Good." Gibbs stood up. "Now, how about you take a shower, change into some pajamas, and come downstairs. I'll find a book for us to read together before bedtime."

Nuka stood up. "You're not…upset…any more?"

"No," Gibbs said, smiling. "I'm not upset anymore."