Peppy paused outside the door. Do I really want to deal with this right now? he asked himself. Maybe I should have a stiff drink first. Sighing, he shook his head. Might as well get it over with, then have a drink. With that thought, he knocked, then entered the room when there was no answer.

"I wondered when you'd be along," the figure slouched by the window greeted without turning. "Figured it would be either you or Fox."

"You want to explain why you've been in such a miserable mood the last few days?"

"Nope."

"I imagined that would be your answer." Knowing he was going to be here for a while, Peppy pulled out the desk chair and sat before going on. "Fox seems to think you'll work whatever it is out on your own."

"Mm-hmm."

"He says you always pull yourself out of these little funks."

"He's right."

"He says he's seen you in them before."

"Right again."

"He also says he's never seen you in one this bad."

Falco didn't respond to that, instead merely continuing to stare out at the slowly passing stars. After a long and uncomfortable silence, he spoke. "Look, just drop it. I don't want to talk about it. Like Fox said, I'll figure it out on my own. I always do."

"Normally I would believe that," Peppy acceded. "Or I'd bother Fox about it until he came in and dragged the story out of you. But I didn't want to scare him."

"What the hell are you talking about, you didn't want to scare him?"

"I'm talking about the pills, Falco."

Oh, shit. He counted to three in his head before opening his mouth. "What pills?"

"The ones you took out of the infirmary yesterday night."

"I wasn't even here last night. I went down to the surface." It wasn't a lie, technically; he had gone down to the planet, and he had spent a good portion of the night there, walking and thinking, before returning to the ship and making a clandestine visit to the infirmary. He had made every effort to hide the fact that he'd taken anything, though, so how did Peppy know?

"I know you did. I also know that you docked back up here at a little after two this morning, went straight to the infirmary, where you were for about fifteen minutes, and then locked yourself in here, where you've been since." He paused. "So why did you take them?"

"Look, I couldn't sleep, all right? Is that a crime? Give me a fucking break already. It's just a bout of insomnia."

"You know the rules."

The rules. The damned rules. Of course he knew them. There was a reason that the drug cabinet was kept locked, a reason that, according to the rules, you had to have someone else on the team get anything you wanted out of it for you. They had all seen too much death and violence to trust themselves with heavy painkillers and the like, so they relied on one another to keep themselves from doing something stupid. The rules were designed to keep them from doing the very thing Falco had intended to do with the bottle of sleeping pills in the drawer next to his bed. "It was the middle of the night," he tried hopelessly. "I didn't want to wake anyone up for one stupid little thing."

"Normally that wouldn't be such a big deal. Hell, normally I'd be thanking you for your consideration, albeit after I reminded you what the rules about the drug cabinet are. But when I find not one, not two, but an entire bottle of pills missing...well, I have to wonder just how tired you really are."

Damn it. He thought he'd gotten away with it. The only way to get into the cabinet without it being an emergency was for two people to enter their individual pass codes, an event which would be logged in the ship's computer and which would have to be verified by at least one other team member the next day. The same thing happened if someone entered the emergency pass code. If in either case it wasn't verified the next day by someone who hadn't originally been involved in entering the cabinet, the computer would put a check on the vital stats of all four of them until verification occurred. Knowing this, Falco had picked the lock on the cabinet, something which would have been impossible had it not been for a device he'd purchased earlier that evening. After taking what he wanted, he had pulled the rest of the bottles forward, making it look like there was nothing missing, and had then carefully relocked the door behind himself.

Nevertheless, Peppy clearly knew exactly what he'd taken. "They're next to the bed," he sighed, exasperated, then listened as the hare walked to the nightstand and opened the drawers, searching. The pills shifted in the bottle as they were lifted out and their label was examined, and they bounced against the plastic casing as they were carried back across the room and set on the desk. Footsteps came up behind him, and then he could see the other man in his peripheral field.

"Strongest sleeping pills on the market," Peppy commented quietly.

"Yeah."

"Wouldn't have taken more than five or six."

"I know. I didn't want to fuck it up. Botched suicides suck all around."

"Any suicide "sucks" all around. However, at least botched ones don't leave you dead." He paused. "The bottle was unopened."

"Hadn't decided for sure to do it yet."

"Mmm. That what you were thinking about when I came in?"

Falco shrugged. "I dunno. Wasn't really thinking about anything, I guess."

"Next time you decide to steal a bottle of pills, maybe you ought to think about the people you'd be leaving behind if you took them."

He turned to face him. "What makes you think I hadn't already done that?" he asked.

Peppy watched him for a moment. "You were still considering taking them. Seems pretty obvious to me that if you had, in fact, already thought about us, you hadn't thought about just how much losing you would hurt."

"Maybe what you haven't realized is that my staying may just cause more pain than my going."

"I have very serious doubts that such a thing is possible. You could turn out to be a serial ax murderer and I don't think it would be as painful for the rest of us as you killing yourself without giving us a chance to help."

Falco snorted derisively. "An ax murderer, huh? How about a schizophrenic? How about a drug addict? How about an abusive, alcoholic asshole? Think those things would be less painful for you than if I just offed myself?"

"Yes. I'm not saying they wouldn't be difficult to deal with, but at least we'd still have you. Fortunately you aren't any of those things, though."

"Maybe not yet I'm not," he muttered under his breath. "Give it time."

"My hearing isn't that bad yet, Falco." Sensing his distress, he gripped his shoulder tightly. "Why the pills?" he asked, almost pleading with him.

There was another long moment of silence. "It's on the desk," Falco said, staring at his feet.

"What is?"

"The reason I took the pills from the infirmary."

Frowning, Peppy returned to the desk and picked up the only thing on it besides the pills. Unfolding the crisp professional letter stock, he read the note quickly, his frown deepening as his eyes traveled down the page. When he finished, he read it once more, then put it back down and returned to the window. "How long has your father been in prison?"

"Ten years."

"So you were...fifteen when he was convicted?"

"Twelve, actually."

"...That doesn't match up with your Academy profile."

"I lied about my age to get in. I was only fifteen when I was accepted."

Holy shit. Knowing that, Peppy's respect for the other man's already high Academy scores rose. "Weren't you worried they'd find out?"

"I didn't have a choice. I knew if I didn't get off of the streets then I probably never would. The start of the war and the desperate need for soldiers it created was my only chance, so I took it."

"Christ, Falco...do you have any idea how incredible that is? Especially with your scores." He shook his head slowly. "And you were going to kill yourself? After getting away with a stunt like that?"

"You don't understand," he whispered.

Peppy suddenly realized just how miserably tortured the young man slumped in front of him was. "What the hell's going on?" he asked gently. "That letter on the desk...why would your father being released from prison make you want to kill yourself?" Seeing that he was about to shake his head in negation, he touched his arm, drawing his attention. "Tell me. Neither one of us is leaving until you do."

Defeated, knowing that he wasn't going to be able to escape the memory any longer, Falco sighed. "We might as well sit down," he said. "It's kind of a long story, and if you haven't kicked me out of here by the time it's done, you'll have questions."

"All right." Peppy resumed his seat at the desk, turning to face Falco, who dropped onto the bed and clasped his hands tightly between his knees. "Why was your father in prison to begin with?"

"Several reasons." He paused. "He wasn't a bad guy to start with. He really wasn't. I can remember, when I was really little, that he was actually a pretty decent father. Until I was five or six, he'd take me and my little sister to parks in the good neighborhoods on his day off every week. He worked for the city, doing landscaping and stuff like that, so he knew where we could go to play without finding used needles in the grass or having dope pushed at us. The Parks Department had given him a transit card so he could get on the subway, and kids under twelve ride free, so we went all over, visiting whatever kid-friendly treasure he'd found that week; playgrounds, museums, a carnival once. I think he really loved my mum, too, at least at first, but...well, he lost his job when I was six. He'd started doing drugs the winter before, and they caught him in one of their random testings. He couldn't find anything else, let alone something that paid as well as the city, but we still had to eat. My mom tried to get a job, but she hadn't even made it to high school, so that was pretty much out of the question."

"She had one thing going for her, though, my mom did. She'd kept her figure after having us kids, and she'd had us young enough that she was still pretty attractive. When dad couldn't get a job and was starting to use what little money we had to buy drugs and booze, she...well, she did what she had to." Glancing up to find that he had Peppy's rapt attention, he averted his gaze back to the carpet. "She started prostituting herself, just trying to get money to feed us and pay the rent. My father was useless at that point. He hated that she was whoring herself out, as he put it, but instead of getting up and doing something about it he started taking her earnings and buying more drugs, stronger and stronger stuff. He was into heroin, I think, the night she died...well, whatever he was on, he tried to stop her from going out. She was all dressed up to go to work, and he wouldn't let her leave. They screamed at each other, back and forth, until he hit her. I had never seen him so much as raise a fist to any of us before that-he just snapped. He just wouldn't stop once he got started, and...he killed her. Right there in the damn kitchen." He stopped for a moment, shaking, to gather himself.

"When she was dead, he realized that I'd seen the whole thing. He grabbed a hold of me, and I remember being certain that he was going to kill me next. He didn't, though. He just made me swear to never, ever tell anyone what had happened. What was I going to do? I was a fucking six year old kid, I wasn't going to turn my own father in. I wouldn't even have known who to go to if I wanted to say something, it wasn't like the cops came to our neighborhood unless there was a riot or something else so big that they couldn't ignore it. So I just nodded, and he sent me off to bed. I don't know what he did with her body; it just disappeared, and I never mentioned it, probably out of fear of how he would react. I'll probably never know what happened after I left the kitchen that night...where she ended up.

"Things just got worse after that. He wasn't mean to us kids, at least not at first, but he was drunk a lot of the time. Luckily my sister started school that year, so I didn't have to miss many classes to take care of her, but there wasn't much food in the house, and when there was it was usually something I couldn't figure out, like beef tripe. What the hell is a six year old going to do with tripe? The only thing we had consistently was carrots-I guess that was my dad's thing, he loved carrots. If we hadn't had school breakfast and lunch, we probably would have starved. I managed to do well in school, at least until he started beating up on us, but my sister needed a lot of help, help I couldn't really give her. I think now that maybe she had dyslexia-she always had the worse time with reading-and about six months after mom died dad started wanting to spend a lot of time with her, pulling her away from homework to be with her, keeping her nearby.

"I didn't understand at first...I was just upset that he didn't seem to want to spend any time with me, just with her. I threw myself into my books, studying constantly, reading anything I could get my hands on. My teachers were amazed, and they skipped me a grade when I was eight. All that time I'd been avoiding my sister and my father, angry that I was the family outcast. I didn't know until it was too late that my sister didn't want to spend so much time alone with him."

He paused and took a deep breath. "He was raping her. I don't know when he started that shit, but she was only seven when I found out what was going on. I finally noticed that she was too skinny-even more so than I was-and that she had a lot of stomach aches, and seemed to be limping sometimes. I suppose all that's expected when a grown man is raping a little girl on a regular basis. Once I realized what was happening, I waited until I knew they were in the middle, and then I 'accidentally' walked in on them. I was stupid, and too naïve to realize that I was making a mistake when I challenged what he was doing. I remember he stopped, and he stared at me for a long moment. My sister was crying, I could see the tears running down her face...she screamed when he pulled away from her and came after me. I must have finally figured out that I had gone too far, because I ran, but it didn't matter.

"He'd never hit me before that night, but once he started, it was like with my mother. He just wouldn't stop. I'm sure the neighbors heard it, because I know I was screaming, and he was yelling the whole time, but I can't say I blame them for not getting involved. I think he probably would have killed me that night, except my little sister stopped him. She grabbed his leg and refused to let go, trying to make him let up, but all it did was piss him off. He kicked out at me with her on his leg, and sent us both across the room. I guess I was the lucky one, since I just broke my arm besides the damage from him hitting me. My sister, though...she slammed into the wall really hard. I tried to wake her up, but..." A single tear escaped him. "Her neck was broken. I don't think he meant to do it, but he killed her, too."

He was silent for a few seconds, and then he felt the mattress shift as another sat beside him and gently pulled him close. He let himself be comforted, sniffing occasionally, eyes closed tight against the memory of helping to drag his sister's naked body outside to the dumpster, every step making his entire body ache. He could tell that Peppy, too, was shaking at what he'd just told him, and that realization snapped him partway out of his reverie. "Sorry," he whispered. "I can stop if you want. I know this isn't fun to hear."

"You obviously need to get it out."

"Doesn't mean you should have to be the one to-"

"Falco," Peppy interrupted him. "Two things. First, I get the feeling that what you just told me isn't the main reason your father's release from prison pushed you towards suicide. Since there must be more to the story, and your mother and sister are dead, it means he had to have done something to you. I want to know what it was that he did that made you want to kill yourself."

"...You forgot point two," Falco pointed out after a minute, not raising his head from Peppy's shoulder.

"I didn't forget it. You wouldn't be worried about him unless you thought he would come here. He killed your first family, and you couldn't do anything. That wasn't your fault; you were a child, and you couldn't possibly have stopped him. I think that part of you is afraid that if he comes here, he won't just possibly hurt you again; he may also hurt one of us, and you're worried that you wouldn't be able to stop him. Your logic, it seems to me, is that if you're dead, he won't have a reason to come after us. Is that right?"

"Yeah. I guess it is. I mean, when you say it like that, it sounds right. It feels right. But..."

"There's something else, too?"

"Yeah."

"...Maybe what he did to you after your sister was dead?"

He nodded, pushing himself up and away. "You're not going to like it," he whispered.

"What is it?" Peppy prodded.

"Maybe I should just leave now," Falco said, preparing to stand. A hand materialized on his arm, pulling him back down.

"You aren't going anywhere, and you know it. Tell me." Silence. "Why are you afraid of telling me what he did?"

"Because you'll make me leave," he said tearfully. "And I can't stand the thought of that."

"I'm not going to make you leave. Hey." He reached over and turned Falco's head so that they were facing one another. "Whatever he did, it doesn't reflect on you. I'm not going to hold your father's crimes against you. You know that."

He'll still kick me out. He wouldn't say that if he knew what happened. Still, though, he knew he had to tell, that he had no choice in the matter. Peppy wouldn't let him leave until he finished the story. He faced the carpet again, slowly, unable to meet the other man's eyes as he revealed the awful secret he'd kept for so many years. "He raped me," he said finally. "After she died, he didn't have anyone else...so he used me. Constantly. The only time I was safe was when I was at school, or for a few hours after school when I told him I was doing homework. I don't know why he let me keep doing school stuff-I guess maybe he was keeping up appearances-but that was my only escape. Every other moment of the day he kept me within reach, made me sleep next to him, everything. I hated him. I still hate him, and I always will. I just...I just can't see him again, Peppy. I get near him, and I'm completely helpless. Even now, when I know I could hypothetically kick his ass with no problem, just the thought of seeing him or hearing his voice makes me weak. I know he'll come looking for me, and when he finds me...it'll be those four years of hell all over again. I can't go through that again. I won't. And I know he'll find me. That's...that's why I had the pills. Because I know I'm not strong enough to deal with him, and I just don't want to think about it any more."

Pulling him close again, Peppy rocked back and forth slightly, feeling a mixture of rage and compassion rising within himself. That son of a bitch, he repeated silently, over and over. That son of a bitch.

After some time, he gently released him and gave him a second to gather himself before speaking. "If you had just told us, Falco...you know we wouldn't let him anywhere near you. We can easily set Rob to screen calls, and to block anyone sharing anything close to half of your DNA from coming into the ship. He won't get to you."

"And what am I supposed to do with the rest of my life? Just stay in the damned ship and twiddle my thumbs? He'll still find me, Peppy, in a mall, or on the street, or in a bar. I can't avoid him forever."

"Okay, so maybe you will run into him someday. Do you honestly think that we'll just let him have his way with you? If he ever does approach you, he'd better hope like hell that I'm not standing nearby, because I'll tear his fucking head off."

Falco had to smile at Peppy's rare use of foul language, but his slight grin was only temporary. "That's the thing, though. You guys shouldn't have to deal with this. It's my problem, not yours. I...I didn't even want to tell you. Fox doesn't know any of this-no one does, except you, now-and I don't want them to know. I only told you because I knew you wouldn't let up, and that I had to. I can't stand the thought of them knowing this. It's just too awful."

"All right. I can understand that. But listen to me; they won't hold it against you either. Whether you want to admit it or not, you already know that. You have to realize that the four of us stopped being entirely individual people a long time ago. We're a family, and consequently we're not going to let some complete creep fuck around with one of our own. You know that, Falco. And eventually it will come out, you know. You'll have to tell them this at some point, whether you want to or not. It may be because your father does find you, and you have to explain; it may be because he never finds you but you finally realize that they deserve to know, and that you deserve to have help carrying the horrible load that this is. As for me, I won't tell them a word of it unless it becomes absolutely necessary."

Falco met his eyes. "Is that a promise?" he asked.

"Yes, it is. On one condition."

"What's the condition?"

Reaching over to the desk, Peppy picked up the bottle of sleeping pills and shook them. "Next time you want a sleeping pill, you get someone else to get it for you. Deal?"

"Deal."

"Good." He smiled, and received a rare shy grin in return. "What do you say we go put these back where they belong?"

"Okay," Falco agreed. "On one condition."

"What's the condition?"

"You let me buy you a drink when we're done."

His smile widened. "Deal."