He was back again. And he didn't want to be, he really didn't, he tried to convince himself. During his waking hours he had enough awareness to question whether or not this burning curiosity to uncover the meaning behind it all was actually prolonging the entire wretched experience.

Each "visit" bore its own set of emotions—an intricate dance between ecstasy and despair, light and shadow. The line between self-soothing and sufferance, he knew, had already been crossed. If he could just practice the same discipline on his unconscious mind as-

Suddenly the landscape shifted. As it always did. And yet it caught him off guard every time. As he watched, the midday sun rose high in the sky. Today it was the worn and washed out blue of old denim. Streams of tattered clouds floated as he raised his head to absorb the sun's weak spring rays.

Sometimes when he visited, the sky was overcast, dotted with swollen clouds threatening rain. Not today, although the breeze carried the vestiges of a recent shower... Perhaps last night or earlier today, he mused.

He waited for it, then. Back ramrod straight, chest tight with anxiety or anticipation…. He wanted, needed this and yet he knew that the aftermath would leave him pathetically vulnerable, full of yearning and remorse. He breathed in deeply, allowing the sounds of the surrounding park to fully penetrate.

He had learned over these past weeks and months, to expect the oddities of this place: the way time bent and twisted, how moments stretched into infinity and shrank at a whim. Part of him wondered whether the unreal sensations he experienced were merely a trick of his mind. But there was something undeniably true about it all, a tangible thread connecting him to her here, even in the abstract nature of this existence.

When he'd first begun having these…. visits…. He hadn't known exactly where he was, but he was confident now. Confident that this was a community park in London. He'd been plagued enough by the recurring visits that he'd actually spent three entire days scouring through an interactive city map until he'd stumbled across the correct location. It was the school building in the background which had provided absolute certainty.

He'd stilled then, sitting at his desk and hitting the communicator pin he still wore, and requested a beam-out. He'd never before been to the park. Not that he could remember anyway. Other than the feeling of rightness, that this was indeed their park, there had been no niggle of recognition, no hint of déjà vu washing over him. Nothing.

But this was their park and if he remained here she would come. Since he'd been visiting, she had always come. Bringing with her release and despair, relief and devastation. He calmed himself and drew another deep breath, as if he could force her to appear if he willed it.

The grass whispered beneath his weight as he shifted his posture, his entire body still and alert. The air thrummed with anticipation, each rustle of branches and distant sound amplifying his tension. He sensed the weight of the past pressing against him. Perhaps they had been here before.

His chest expanded on another deep cleansing breath - she would come, she had to, for the alternative - and felt the tension slip from his shoulders as long slender fingers slid between his own, bridging the chasm of regret that lay between them.

His eyes remained closed as he allowed his other senses to verify her presence. She was a ghost haunting him in vivid, unforgettable detail. He could feel her essence easily wrapping itself around his senses, encountering only open encouragement as it threatened to undo him completely.

Colours exploded behind his lids, sounds sharpened, the scent of her tumbling him through the hallways of memory as he tried in vain to will time to bend, loop back onto itself until-

A third breath and the torturous, longed for invasion was complete. Her scent had not changed. It was the first thing he'd noticed in the weeks that he'd been visiting. Vaguely floral and underneath it and perhaps existing only in his own mind, something anesthetic, a hospital smell that he'd always associated with her. Existing in his own mind, he huffed. Who was he kidding? All of this existed only in his mind….

He squeezed her hand and felt an answering pressure and still he did not open his eyes as he steeled himself to greet her. Each visit unearthed buried memories, dredging up feelings he was not certain he was ready to confront. Still, he was content to soak up her presence. They'd only ever needed but a few words. Just knowing that she was close had always been enough. Well, almost enough.

"Jean-Luc?" she queried softly as if she sensed that his mind had wandered. His breath shuddered out and he turned towards her, slowly opening his eyes. Her soft smile warmed him from the inside. Upturned slightly mocking pink lips and a scrunch to her nose. "There you are…." she chastised him, the words curling gently around him.

"You came," he sighed, trapped between elation and despair.

"I always do. Hello, Jean-Luc."

"Salut, chérie," he responded as she leaned forward pressing her forehead against his. The familiar gesture settled his nerves even further. "Did you have a good day?"

"Mmm," she hummed against his cheek now. "Busy, you know how it is." He knew how it was. This was how it was. How it had been for weeks now, ever since he'd resigned his commission and retreated to the château to lick his wounds in private. This… small talk. This sharing of their lives' minutiae. He could almost imagine them back on the Enterprise, in his quarters, on his sofa, decompressing over supper or a late night glass of wine. Before…. Always before.

Today he told her of the new grape variety they'd settled on to experiment with, now that he was taking a more active role in the vineyard. She provided an update on the outbreak of flu that was keeping her so busy that she was perpetually exhausted. It was all so mundane, so inconsequential…. So surreal.

He knew that his mind had absorbed and twisted real life details of an outbreak of flu, using the news reports to provide her a talking point and blending reality and unreality. That was the point, he supposed when he was clear enough to suppose anything. There was enough truth, enough real life woven into these nocturnal visits, that they had taken on a realism that he couldn't explain.

Suddenly her head jerked back from his. Her eyes shifted to the side, looking beyond him before finally, "I have to go."

"So soon?" He hated that greedy, needy tone but couldn't help it.

"Jack needs me," she said as if that made anything clearer. That small intrusion of unreality brought him back down with a bump. She had mentioned Wesley before, in passing, once in depth, but never Jack. He now found this jarring bit of discontinuity disrupt the false reality, the illusion he was attempting to create here, but…. Of course, of course this was-

She placed a soft kiss on his cheek and…. The landscape shifted again, like cards shuffled through expert hands, and suddenly he was indoors. Gone was the blue sky and the small park with the soft background city sounds. Gone too was her softly reassuring presence.

He looked around himself in an attempt to place the setting. He didn't recognize the room, he decided, but he immediately recognized the boy. He'd seen him before, interspersed throughout his visits, interrupting time which should have been reserv-

"Hello." He looked closely at the boy. This was the first time the boy had actually spoken to him, but he was unsurprised to hear his own accent projected across the space between them in a youthful tone. The two other occasions that he'd visited with the boy, they'd been in public settings.

The first time had been in one of his childhood classrooms in LaBarre. His first grade teacher had been circulating around the room and the boy had been sat, alone and unmoving, at a computer terminal while the other children chatted easily over shared tasks and assigned work.

The second time had been in a busy field on the southern end of the family vineyard. It was harvest time and his father and a young Robert along with half a dozen other workers had been busy snipping and sorting. The boy had been standing off to one side and had startled when Maurice had snapped at him, lightly cuffing him on the nape and redirecting him into the vines.

This time, he was startled to see, his younger self was not pictured in a comfortingly familiar yet disturbing moment from his childhood. He didn't think he'd ever had a good dream about his younger years. Not too many about his adult years either come to think of it.

"Hello," he answered cautiously, surprised to find that his voice sounded normal. "Where are we?"

"My room. This is my room."

"My room didn't look like this at all," he mumbled more to himself than anything else as his eyes darted around the room.

He was somewhat startled at the menagerie on display, evidence of half remembered or wholly disremembered parts of his life. Parts that he was desperately trying to hold on to or attempting to forget. His mind had obviously chosen to decorate the boy's bedroom with a mishmash of psychological dandruff that had indiscriminately overlaid several points of importance spanning his lifetime.

On the shelf were model starships, lovingly displayed - the Stargazer, the Enterprise D and he thought he could just make out the more powerful outline of the E tucked back further on a higher shelf.

On the floor in one corner he caught a glimpse of implements set on a large mat, all sized appropriately for small hands; a dental pick, and small brushes along with a measuring tape, all in a jumble beside an archaeological toolbox.

He shifted his eyes towards the bed and noted a variety of books on the nightstand. He was amused to see a copy of The Big Goodbye starring Dixon Hill, his favourite private detective.

Finally his eyes settled once more on the boy who continued to hover several metres away, his hip leaning slightly against the bed and clad in a two piece pyjama set, watching him curiously. His little head was tilted to the side as if he was taking his measure and hadn't yet reached a verdict.

"I see you like starships…" he said for want of something more interesting to say. In truth he felt somewhat ridiculous, carrying on a conversation with what looked to be a 5 or 6 year old Jean-Luc Picard.

"Yes."

"And which is your favourite?"

The boy paused for a moment, seeming to seriously contemplate his question. There was something about him, the solemn seriousness, the way he tilted his head that- The boy pinched his bottom lip, twisting it slightly and the illusion shattered, the illusive thought slipping back under the surface.

"The Enterprise D. I know the most stories about her," he finally answered.

"Have you-"

Suddenly the boy's eyes shifted to the closet. His eyes followed their trajectory towards the far side of the room and once again skimmed the paraphernalia of the life of a small boy. His gaze slowed, narrowing. There was something different now, something so obviously incongruous with his first sweep of the room that he couldn't-

"The door," he muttered. The closet door was now red, a deep, almost blood red. And not only the colour, the entire facade was menacing somehow, whispering danger.

"Shhhh." The boy's voice was so soft as to be almost inaudible. "She'll hear you," he breathed, his lips barely moving. The flesh on his arms and neck pimpled, the small hairs there coming to attention.

"Who?" Instinctively he lowered his voice to match the boy's, the growing knot of anxiety in his stomach gaining in weight and size.

"Sometimes she can hear anyway," the boy's hushed voice carried to him across the silence of the room. Looking away from the door he saw the boy's hand drift up to touch his temple. His eyes looked wary and slightly shell shocked. Locking gazes with this tow-headed younger version of himself, his mind seized on something. Something important. Something- He opened his mouth but the boy got there first.

"You have to go," he said urgently, his voice now startlingly loud in the hushed atmosphere. "She knows," the boy whispered, his voice trembling with fear. "She knows you're here. She can feel it."

For a moment, they stood there, the air thick with unspoken dread. The room felt like a living entity, pressing down on him, urging him to disappear before whatever was inside that closet came forth.

"What do you mean? Who knows?" His mind struggled to process the implications, the boy's panic igniting a primal instinct to flee. But he couldn't abandon this child-version of himself.

"Please!" The boy interrupted, desperation lacing his words. "Now!" Louder, not quite a shout but panic sparked his eyes and trembled in his voice. Without thinking, he stepped forward, instinctively wanting to comfort the boy, but he retreated, pressing against the wall, small body tense with anticipation.

"She's searching and I-" Eyes wide with panic igniting an involuntary primal instinct to flee. "Now! You must leave n-"

—

"-ow!" he screamed, the boy's terrified panic finally finding its voice. He sat bolt upright in bed, his breathing erratic, a film of sweat drying on his brow, limbs trembling slightly with an unexpected excess of adrenaline. It took him more than a few moments to reorient himself. His bedroom.

"My bedroom…." he muttered, instinctively using a technique taught to him many years previously. "My bed…. My bed in my bedroom…. My home…. My bed in my bedroom in my home…" As he continued taking stock, he felt his heart rate calm, a shiver finally chasing itself down his spine as he purposefully cast off the nightmare aspects of his dream. Deanna would be so very proud, he thought sarcastically, finally able to breathe more freely.

His mind feeling like his own once again, he scrubbed a palm over his eyes and then over his pate before asking "Computer, time?"

"The current time is 04h11." He sat still for a moment, trying in spite of himself, to recapture the fragments of the night's visit but he found the details infuriatingly vague. Frustrated, he threw off the duvet and grabbed his robe from the chair where he'd draped it before going to bed. Before leaving the room he fished his slippers out from the closet. As he exited the closet he paused. The closet. The closet with the red door. That was what had frightened the boy…. No me, it frightened me. The boy is me.

Despite the unsettling turn that tonight's visit had taken, and it had terrified him he realized, he wasn't willing to take any of the necessary steps to stop them. That wasn't even an option. Before he opened his bedroom door, he shored up his mental shields knowing that only formidable mental discipline would succeed in fooling the woman who doubtless already knew what had awoken him….