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but he wanted me to be perfect,” he said.
    "Nobody is perfect.” Rieko kept her words soft, almost afraid he would stop talking to her.
    "He is.” Stuart's words held conviction. Rieko knew it wasn't true, and she knew Stuart believed with all his heart it was.
    "I tried.” His voice cracked. “I've tried so hard.” His eyes filled with tears, but they didn't, or wouldn't, fall. “MacEwan's don't cry,” after all. Suddenly Rieko saw it. What she had taken as perfectionism and a hatred of failure was really a son still trying to please his father.
    He looked at the model ship again. “It's perfect, isn't it?” he asked her. Rieko silently nodded in reply afraid that any words might end his monologue.
    "I usually blow them up,” he stated. Blow up his models? Why would he do that ?
    "It took me years to figure out how to make them right,” he continued, and Rieko settled in to just listen to his quiet voice as it echoed back to her from some far away place. “I'd always mess up, have to throw them into the rubbish. Then I finally got one right.” His eyes lit up at the memory. “Must've been about eight. And I showed it to Dad. I was so proud."
    His face of joy crumbled. “He said it was a rather simple model.” Rieko could see a proud young Stuart showing off the project of all his hard work. His father's words of failure that had burned deep enough to still cause such pain today.
    His blue eyes met hers. “So, I blew it up. It felt so good.” His voice held enough pleasure that his statement scared her slightly.
    "You could've gotten hurt.” Rieko still felt concern for the little boy who now sat as a grown man across from her.
    "I did. The first time I got hurt,” Stuart continued, “he was away, so I showed Mum. She took me to the doctor to fix it. I thought she wouldn't tell.” A frown grew on his face.
    "She told him.” The pain of that long ago betrayal still rang in Stuart's voice. She silently wondered what his punishment had been.
    "I tended myself whenever I got hurt after that,” he told her. “You can barely see the scars now.” He turned his hands to look at his palms, and childhood wounds mostly wiped from his body, even if the reasons behind those wounds were still fresh in his memory.
    "I'd buy the models in secret and hide them while I built them. There was a place out in the woods where I'd do it. Made sure it was all cleaned up when done."
    Rieko realized he was likely telling her secrets he might not have shared with anyone before. How does a person keep so much of who he is from the world? Why would he want to ?
    "I tried so hard to measure up,” he told her. “I wasn't smart enough or big enough or strong enough or brave enough...or good enough. “Those words were repeated to him so often they had been etched into his being.
    "I'd put it all into those models, all I couldn't be in real life,” Stuart said. Everything he was told he should be, everything he had been told he wasn't. “Then I'd blow it all up.” His voice filled with anger and hatred. “With a loud boom and shrapnel everywhere.” She saw now where his love of explosions came.
    "Rieko, it felt so good.” He lifted his blue eyes to meet hers, and still a small part of her shivered at his enjoyment of destruction.
    "He was a boxer.” Stuart lightheartedly changed the subject. “Won some Royal Navy championships when he was younger. He'd go into that ring and pummel the other guy. He used it as a release, like me blowing up models."
    "Have you blown them all up?” Rieko wondered how many that was.
    "I've never given one away,” he said in response, not answering her question. “It'll feel nice.” He smiled over at her. “Like giving someone a piece of me. Maybe that's what I should do from now on.” His voice held resolve as if he had turned over a new leaf.
    Since Rieko had gotten him talking, she asked, “How did he feel about you joining Earth Space Fleet?” She made sure not to use the word