Trance wiped a stray strand of hair off of her face and sighed happily. "That was so fun! I had no idea you guys were so crazy!"

"It was a good idea, Trance," said Dylan. Everyone else heartily agreed; even, reluctantly, Tyr.

"Can we take it further?" she wanted to know.

"What do you have in mind?"

"Now we share one more thing about ourselves that no one knows. Something more serious. You only have to get personal if you feel comfortable with it. No joking with this," she added with a warning glare at Harper. He put up his hands in surrender. "Fine by me."

The idea was met with an uneasy silence. But there was a tacit agreement in the air and again it was for the captain to begin. Dylan leaned forward and clasped his hands in front of him.

"I've always been afraid of change," he said slowly. "I know that's strange and unexpected; I mean, I'm the one who's trying to restructure the known universe with only six people backing me up. But...if I'm honest, I'm restoring the Commonwealth half for the greater good and half for my own comfort.

"The Systems Commonwealth was always my home, all I'd ever known. The thought of the Fall, of suddenly being without my familiar home, terrified me. I'm trying to bring back the Commonwealth because...because I want to bring back what I knew and I don't want things to change."

Hunt fell silent and after a moment Beka picked up on her turn.

"I grew up on the Eureka Maru, you all know that. My mother and uncle both left us when I was young. My father was all I had for most of my childhood. He was good to me for the most part. Unless he'd been... unless he was..."

She trailed off and pressed her lips together. Trance almost started her turn before Valentine continued.

"He would chase me all over the ship and when he caught me..." Beka drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "He beat me badly. But the worst part was, he never remembered the next day. Every morning after he'd look at me and ask, 'Who did you like this, Bek?' I told him once that he did it. He got so angry at the idea that he would hurt his daughter that I never told him the truth again. But he did hurt me. Over and over until I was strong enough to fight him off.

"He was my father. But I couldn't be happier that he's dead."

Quiet reigned again, longer this time.

Finally Trance spoke up. "This seems a little silly beside Dylan and Beka's, but it's all I've got to say.

"I have a terrible fear of the Abyss. Of- of darkness, evil, and falling into nothing forever. I have awful nightmares where I'm trapped in darkness so deep you can feel it all around you and no light can ever exist." She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself tightly. "I'm so afraid that one day it'll finally get me. And I won't be able to escape."

Silence. Everyone looked to Harper, the next in line. The engineer sat looking at his hands, the fingers twisting in and out of each other. "Mr. Harper?" Dylan finally prompted gently.

"Yeah, okay," Harper muttered. "Um, you know by now that I'm kind of...well, easy, I guess. Somebody once told me that I'd probably flirt with a rock if it looked like a babe and it's not that far off. But...truth is...when it comes to actually...y'know, doing it...I'm scared."

"You're scared of sex?" Beka asked to clarify. She found that a little hard to believe.

"Yeah, no, that's not..." He sighed and looked up at the ceiling as if the answer was written up there. "I'm a guy, Bek. I want it just as much as the next guy. But I'm scared that when it comes right down to it, I'll...hurt her. I never want to hurt anybody that way," he added softly before going totally silent.

Most of the group were a little lost after that. But they respected Harper's desire to keep his secrets and didn't ask. Beka was the only one who could hazard a guess as to what the young man was alluding to. She'd heard stories of rape gangs on Earth that made her sick to her stomach. Seeking to distract attention from speculating over Seamus, she pulled off one of her wristbands and threw it at Tyr's head. "You're next," she reminded him.

The Nietzschean rubbed his head and scowled at her. "The next person to throw something at me will spend the night in the med bay," he threatened darkly. He thought about his answer for a long moment before speaking.

"The first time I ever killed a man was in the mines, when I was young. A guard was tormenting one of the young ones. Somehow, it made me so angry that I just..." Tyr made a slashing motion with his bone blades and everyone gave a collective wince.

"After it was done, I remember looking up at one of the older boys who looked after me and asking, 'Aguila, what happened? What did I do?'

"He looked down at me and told me, 'Justice, Tyr. That's called justice.'

"Aguila took the blame for the murder. I never saw him again. It was a long time before I realized what he'd done. And what I'd done." Anasazi shifted uncomfortably and reached over to nudge Rev Bem with his foot. "Go," he said quietly.

The Magog Reverend looked down, deep in thought, for a long while before he said in a low voice, "I am a father." He didn't add anything else, but no more was needed. Magog were a race whose reproductive habits were repulsive to say the least. They laid eggs within sentient hosts and when the time came, the larvae would eat their way out of the host. The confession turned everyone's stomach. But the look of Bem's face was so haunted that even Tyr Anasazi could not comment.

Once again, Rommie took up the final turn. "My single greatest fear is losing you, Dylan," she said, turning to face her captain. "You've been my captain for a long time. I've grown accustomed to your face. Your voice. Your presence. Your routine. Your quirks. The way you care about things in a way no one else can. You treat me like a person when another man might have treated me simply as a smart computer. I know you so well that I can predict your actions 95% of the time, but it's the other five percent that scares me. You're my heart, Dylan. If I ever lost you... I would lose my mind."

Abruptly she stood and stalked off the Command deck. Dylan and Beka exchanged a look. Both of them saw the tears in the avatar's eyes. Rommie left a still quiet in her wake and everyone sat as if frozen.

At last Dylan rose. "It's been fun, people, but I say we call it a night." He walked out and the rest followed slowly, trickling back to their quarters for the night. They had been given a lot of food for thought tonight. They had also, whether they knew it or not, become closer together. The seven were well on their way to becoming more than a crew. More like a family.