Wildwing was not suprised when he heard the door of the kitchen slide open behind him. He sighed and held a cup out to the newcomer with a sardonic smile. The smile that answered him was considerably more mellow. He didn't know what got on his nerves more, the fact that he couldn't sleep or that she always knew about it.

"Lila," he said, turning back to the sandwich he was preparing, "I am going to suspect you of spying on me soon." She ignored his annoyed tone as she seated herself at the table and sipped at the herbal tea he'd had waiting for her.

"I'm not deaf, Wildwing," she told him mildly. "I got so used to hearing your snoring that when it's quiet in your room, I wake up." He looked at her incredulously. "I'm completely serious," Lila told him, quirking an eyebrow. "We both put our beds against the wall between our rooms. I doubt anyone else would notice but I'm usually a pretty light sleeper. But it worries me to have you up all the time like this. I'm going to have to prescribe something if it doesn't stop."

"No way," he grunted. "The last thing we need is for Dragaunus to plan a midnight strike while I'm doped up on sedatives."

"Wrong," Lila answered in that 'no argument's going to change my mind' voice he hated. "The last thing we need is for our leader to make a bad decision because he's too tired to think." Wildwing winced. There it was again. That *word!* Lila studied his stiffened shoulders thoughtfully. "Still that, is it?" she said softly. Anger built in him and he set his jaw. He'd been telling this girl way too much about himself lately. Half the trouble was, she could read him so well that it usually wasn't worth the trouble to try and keep it from her. *How* she did it, he had no idea, but he hated that. Finally deciding he'd had enough, he grabbed the plate, spun around, sat down across from her and focused his gaze on her eyes. Mistake. As usual, the calm indigo orbs made him check his toungue. To his further annoyance, the words came out much softer than he'd intended.

"We've been talking an awful lot about *me,* lately, Lila, and I don't know anything about you." What he'd meant was, 'I don't know you, I don't know anything about you, there's no way you can understand how I feel and I'm not in the habit of discussing my feelings with strange women in the middle of the night!' He bit into the sandwich viciously. He hated it when she gave him that look. That measuring, calculating look that she got when she was trying to figure him out. He knew she could see the anger in his eyes. He hoped she'd get the message. Instead she leaned back and reached into her robe pocket. She pulled something out and held it out to him. Curiousity getting the better of him, he took it. It was a smooth, oval shaped gold locket about the size of her palm (a little more than half the size of his). He opened it and was faced with the gracious, dignified smile of a man in his early forties, with light brown feathers and kind indigo eyes. In the other side was a beautiful woman with a laughing smile, amber feathers and startling green eyes, about the same age as the man.

"My parents," Lila told him. "Deke LaGlace, Ambassador to the Empire of Nine Worlds, and Lanna LaGlace, champion figure skater. They met in college and married right after they graduated. I was born on Puckworld, but we moved around a lot. I spent a lot of my really early life on Sendar, the captial of the Empire, at the Imperial Court. Their education system is more rigorous and much more strict, which was how I got my doctorate and liscense so young. I won't say I had a normal life, but Mom and Dad did the best they could to keep me where I had a lot of children my own age. We spent as much time on Puckworld as we could. The Emperial Court did everything by seasons, and we had a lot of free time in the Sendarian summer, so we would go back home and Dad would hop a spaceplane back when something came up. I had friends, I had boyfriends, I made friends, lost friends, had broken hearts, got hurt, did some hurting, went through phases, had a few part time jobs, and all the normal junk like that. We were on Puckworld when it got hit. We were split up for the work plants and I haven't seen them since." There was more than a little quiet pain in her voice and when she stopped for another sip of tea, Wildwing could see her hand was trembling slightly. He felt guilty.

That made him angry again.

"Anyway," she sighed, tracing a pattern idly on the table with the tip of her finger, "The resistance needed a doctor, they did there homework, and since a little thing like me," one side of her mouth quirked up slightly, "Isn't likely to do much damage, I was in a low security camp. They came in, got me out, and I spent the rest of the war taking care of its victims." She closed her eyes. "I saw some horrible things in there, Wildwing. And do you know what the hardest thing was?" She raised her eyes to his, and for once they were completely unveiled. She couldn't hide this pain and she knew it, so she didn't bother to try. "Seeing someone come in, patching them up and everything," her voice broke but she didn't stop, "And then sending them back out there knowing what they're going into. It got to the point where I was relieved when someone came in because I knew that they were safe with me. And they knew it too," she looked away, searching for something in the depths of her teacup. "They knew that the infirmiry was safe and well protected. They knew I wasn't in danger. So I was safe to talk to. Safe to get close to. Because I couldn't be taken from them the way their friends and comrades on the front lines were. At first, I didn't want to listen." Wildwing watched her knuckles whiten as she gripped the cup. He wanted her to stop, but he was afraid to even breathe. It was almost like she'd forgotten he was there. She forced herself to release the cup, and when she spoke again her voice was calmer. "But, I finally decided, that these people needed someone to listen. I couldn't fight with them, and I wasn't being asked to give everything the way they were. The least I could do was be a friendly ear for the men and women who were putting their lives on the line for me and mine. For all of us. So I listened. And I counselled. And I learned to see the ones who were hiding their pain, and draw them out, for the good of the people around him. There's nothing more dangerous, in a war where everyone is depending on everyone else, than having a teammate who is emotionally unstable. So I did what everyone else in that fight did." She brought her eyes back to him and locked his gaze. The shields were back, and she looked as she always did when they had these midnight talks. "I did all I could. That's all anyone can really ask, isn't it?"

'So that's how she does it,' he thought. Somehow, now that he knew that it wasn't some kind of wierd telepathy (as absurd as that would have been), he felt better. She was just trying to help him come to terms with the responsibility that had been thrust, unwanted, on his shoulders. "I-I'm sorry, Lila," he heard himself saying, his mouth dry. Lila gave him a smile that didn't reach her haunted eyes.

"No one has to suffer alone, Wildwing." She laughed humorlessly. "I think I forget that sometimes, too." He reached out and squeezed her hand. She raised her gaze to his face and squeezed back. "Go to sleep, Wildwing." She let go and stood. She left her glass in the sink and went back to her room. After a silent moment alone, Wildwing put the sandwich in the fridge and went back to his own bunk.