"Gods!" he cried out as she slammed him onto the floor, knocking the wind out of him. He lay under her, struggling to breathe again as a stray piece of shrapnel cut into his scalp.

Jesa shot up, standing with seemingly no consideration for the possible danger and stood looking over the balcony down to where she thought the thing had whizzed up from. She cursed under her breath as there was nothing but the usual crowd of gawkers standing about and pointing. Jesa looked down at him, looking over him to see if she could determine if he was injured or not. "You okay?"

He laid there on the floor, his chest convulsing in a most undignified manner as he tried desperately to draw air. Finally he leaned up and slammed himself back against the floor, sucking in a deep breath as the sudden jolt shocked his lungs back to life. He shook his head, looking up at Jesa and putting a hand on his cheek.

"Wha...." She gently touched his forehead, examining the wound. "You'll live. I need to check the others." She said, standing and working her way among the other people, grabbing the med-kit nearby that someone had retrieved.

He stood up slowly. "Riiight..." He blinked at her and started to follow, then looked at the wall where that thing had exploded, picking stray pieces from it and the surrounding floor, trying to figure out what ever it was that attacked them. Jesa continued working, directing people and basically passing out pain-killers, until the medics arrived.

Then she surrendered to their control and returned to Tyne with a dermal regenerator and a hypo. "You alright?" she asked again, touching his arm to get this attention.

He whirled around, putting a hand over his chest. "Yes, I'm fine." Victor took a deep breath and composed himself, running through his mental list of enemies. None of them could have gotten to him here, not without running the risk of exposing themselves. It occurred to him suddenly that he might not have been the target. Certainly the commander was concealing something, but was it something that would drive anyone else to kill her?

Beginning to rethink his decision to postpone investigating her, he smiled charmingly, easily resuming his adopted manner. "So, about that little stunt back there... were you trying to save my life or was that an attempt at conveying deeper feeling for me?" He quirked an eyebrow at her. "I'm sure there are more dignified ways of going about it. Ways involving less property damage."

Jesa rolled her eyes and smirked, only dignifying that question with a mental retort, and reached up and touch his head, fingering his wound slightly less gently than she needed to.

He yelped slightly "Hey!" Her face didn't waver from seriousness.

"Nothing embedded," she announced, then ran the dermal regenerator over his sliced scalp.

He frowned playfully. "Well I suppose I deserved that." He touched his cheek with a little smile. "Thank you Commander... so anyway what was that thing?" He held up the collection of metal bits he's collected. "And why was it coming after us?"

She turned and looked at it. "Ferengi locator bomb, I'd guess, or something else based on the design... and as for why? Your guess is as good as mine." She crossed her arms across her abdomen and looked around at the destruction, with a frown on her face. Her eyes fixed on two of the injured people and her frown deepened.

He touched her arm. "Don't worry, I'm sure the medics will fix them up. Doesn't look like anyone was injured too badly." He looked at the hole and frowned. "I can't stand those little trolls... but I can't think of any that would come this far to get at me... I don't suppose you've made any enemies, Commander..."

"They'd sell their own mother's soul if they thought it would gain them latinum... they certainly aren't above selling those bombs. I suppose the first question is..." she looked around and realized the publicness of where they were speaking. "We shouldn't stand around here." she said, heading for the door without waiting for him to respond.

He frowned as she walked off and raced after her, catching up to her just as she reached the door and offered her his arm, again adopting the image of roguish gentleman while worrying inside. Again she had evaded his inquires, which made him think that perhaps she was hiding something worth killing over.

"At least let me play the proper escort, Commander." He caught her gaze for a moment, his eyes intense as his voice dropped low for her ear alone, then returned to looking straight ahead. "Whoever sent that bomb is probably still watching. Best for you---for us---if they don't see either of us affected by it."

For an instant, it looked like she might laugh it off and make a retort. Then she just shook her head for a moment, a sad expression crossing her face, as a soft sigh escaped her lips. "If you so wish." She said, taking his arm lightly.

He frowned slightly, then quickly replaced it with a smile, staring straight ahead. "Look if I'm making you uncomfortable," he said quietly, "just say so. I'm sure Johnson could find me something to do with my spare time."

She shook her head. "No, it's not you..."

"Well okay then." As they rounded a corner, he let his arm drop to his side and looked around to see if anyone had followed them out. "So where shall we go now, Commander? I know of this great place with ten gigawatt forcefields to keep us safe..." He smirked down at her.

The humor seemed lost on her, she looked up at him and frowned slightly. "I'm going to sound quite idiotic here, but I think there's something I need to set straight."

He turned and faced her, folding his arms. "Well, after what I've been through in the past week I think I can handle idiotic."

She straightened her posture and spoke "I wasn't intending anything by hugging you last night... something else happened that was affecting my emotional state to an extreme, and you became a convenient target," she said, smiling ever-so-slightly, finding the apology more suitable for having yelled at him, not for giving him a wrong impression with a hug.

He kept his expression neutral. "Hmmm yes. Well anyway I believe we were just off to find someplace where we wouldn't be assaulted." His voice was calm and completely emotionless.

Now it seemed Jesa's turn to be emotional, something was brewing below the mask of expressions she wore on her face. "My quarters." She said, simply, equally emotionless. "We can finish talking there."

He nodded and made a little bow. "Then lead the way Commander. I'm sure you're more than eager to pick at my personal life."

Her head snapped towards him quickly, her eyes holding carefully controlled anger. "Actually, no, I'm not... no more than I'd relish someone picking apart my life." She spoke with emotion, but obviously caused not only by what he said, but something she was thinking, "And I actually resent the assertion that I would be eager to put someone through that." She said, not giving him time to respond and stepping quickly off. The walk to her quarters was a silent one.

:: Callen's Quarters

Jesa tapped the keypad, still not speaking, as she had done while walking with him there. The door opened and she stepped inside a large main room, quite ample to hold the eating table with four chairs and the seating area that lay within. Two doors led off from the one side, the whole thing seemed rather large for one person, and another person with remarkably similar red hair was sitting in the couch, her back to the door. She seemed to be muttering to herself as she sat there.

Victor looked around her quarters, his eyes finally resting on the woman sitting on the couch and he reached out with his mind, probing her for her identity and anything else he might find useful.

"Terah." Jesa's voice said, with a gentleness that told Victor the seated woman was somehow close to Jesa. Terah turned around and smiled at Jesa, even as she searched up and down this man with her eyes. She was clearly a telepath by her gentle block of his probe, but not a very strong one, she stopped any movement to probe, leaving it just as blocking his. Another face popped up from the other side of the couch, a face of a child, guessing not more than nine years.

"Yes, Jesa?" she returned. Jesa's eyes went from glancing towards Victor back to Terah. Somehow words weren't needed. Terah nodded and spoke to Stephi briefly, and they both went off to Terah's room. Jesa walked over and took a seat in one of the chairs.

He chewed his lip, not moving from where he stood. "You never told me you had a family..."

Jesa looked puzzled for a moment and then figured out a few rather odd things that he might be thinking. "You didn't ask... does this make a difference in something?" Jesa said, wanting to see what he was thinking before she explained to him.

He hadn't prepared himself for this. In fighting his own private war with the Federation and his own people, he had never stopped to consider the people who would be affected by his manipulating. Such was the way of war; you knew it would affect people and the ones those people loved, but that knowledge was so often set aside. His own family was carefully tucked away; the inevitable conflict wouldn't reach to them. But if the Federation got involved, as Victor was sure they would, then people like Jesa would be put in danger and people like Terah and the little girl would have to spend their days worrying.

This was what he'd been trying to avoid, using a carefully-spun image that would help him to keep these thoughts at bay. Something snapped in Victor's mind, and leaned back against the door, working in vain to regain his composure as the realization of what had happened slowly sunk in. Jesa stood, crossing the room and standing beside him. She touched his arm gently. "I'm sorry," she said, softly, seeing the turmoil in his face, though she wasn't sure what she was really apologizing for.

He leaned away from her touch, humiliated and furious with himself for letting this get to him to such a degree. Whispers of thought started floating through his mind, the collective thoughts of an entire crew slowly filtering into his head. He knew that soon the rest of the crew would begin to experience the same thing; he had to get out and fix it before it got that far. "Don't." He backed away from her a little, his back stiff.

She dropped her gaze, not knowing what to do. Compassion stirred within her, but she knew that to him, it must be like having one's heart served up on a platter for one's worse enemy. That's still what she was, Jesa thought... even though somehow she had stopped thinking of the relative sides they were on. He had no reason to fear judgment from her, but he also had no way to know that. Jesa tried to think of anything that she could do to give him... something. She slowly moved away from him and sat in the far corner of the room, with her back turned to him, trying to give him what privacy she could.

He backed out of the room, starting blindly down a corridor, his vision starting to cloud with tears, bumping into people as he stumbled down the hallway searching for a turbolift. Anger and frustration, mostly directed at himself, started to well up inside him, but he forced them back down. Now was not the time to give himself completely over to emotion. He needed to find someplace, someplace private where he could regain enough control of himself to do what must be done.

Loaded: 05.17.2004