I never understood the word "lovesick" before I met her.

Love? Yes, I'd believed in it. Thought I'd felt it. And in a way, I had. I'd loved Helen, very much. And I'd desired her. But those two things together, I now knew, weren't the same as being in love. I knew that now, because I hadn't needed Helen, not the way I thought I did. I was devastated when I lost her – devastated at losing one of my dearest friends, and devastated at the loss of every possibility I ever thought I had for happiness – but Barbara anchored me. As long as I had Barbara, I could have gotten – can still and always get – through anything.

Barbara.

It all comes back to Barbara.

When I'm so lost in rage I can't find myself, she grounds me. When I'm off on some high-flown theory, she brings me back to earth. When I'm with her, everything makes sense again. She focuses me, makes me so much better than I ever could be without her.

Every breath I have is hers.

Now she is sleeping in bed beside me, face smoothed of worries in sleep as it so rarely is awake. Now I understand what it means to need someone so much, love someone so much, it physically hurts. What it means to have one person be your world. I know now I didn't, not until she came into my life, turned it upside down and mended cracks I didn't even know were there. And dear God, what she has done – at any time she could have walked away, and she would have had every reason. But she's fought and sacrificed and dug down deep for me, far above and beyond anything I would have dared to dream of asking her.

Her loyalty staggers me.

And there we are. Lovesick. I look at her and I'm dizzy. I touch her and my senses reel. She kisses me and I'm drugged into helplessness. She comes apart in my arms and I wonder if this is what people mean when they speak of a near-death experience, because the union I have with her is heaven on earth.

She's so tiny, from the toes that curl when I kiss her to the pert little nose dotted with freckles. And yet somehow, bound up in one tiny little woman, is my universe. I can no longer imagine a life without her – without her courage and her common sense, her soft heart and her hard head, her grass-green eyes and strawberry-sunlight hair, her girlish laughter and beaming smile, her compassion and her strength.

I never expected to like her. I certainly never expected to fall in love with her. She was stubborn, angry and bitter, always willing to take a shot at me, my background and my lifestyle, always quick with a snappy remark. She was defensive and fearful and reminded me of nothing so much as a cornered animal ready to claw anything she could reach. There is no doubt my relationship with her is the most difficult, demanding, frequently frustrating thing I've ever done in my life.

So why? Why this fiery, feisty, terrified, snappish, scrappy little Sergeant with all the social graces of a snapping turtle?

The answer is so simple. Everything Barbara does, she does with her whole heart. When she disagrees with me, she yells in my face, usually with words that would make a sailor blush. When she fights for me, she goes toe to toe with whoever she has to, and damn rank and authority – I have only ever seen her back down when the consequences would have harmed me. When she gives someone her loyalty, her true, heartfelt loyalty, there is nothing she would not do, nowhere she would not go, nothing she would not risk for that someone. And she would rather die than let someone else be hurt if she could have prevented it.

So how, I ask you, when she has given me her loyalty and her trust, told me exactly what she thinks because she knows I need to hear it even when I lash out at her, fought for me and bled for me – how could I respond with anything less? This feisty little fireball has taught me more about courage and belief in the human race than I ever dreamed anyone could know. If she had her way, she would eradicate pain and suffering in a single stroke. She can't, but that has never stopped her from spending her life attempting to do just that.

She's everything I never knew I needed. Oh, it's so trite, but it's true. I didn't know there was a hole until she filled it, never knew I was capable of this kind of love until she loved me in return.

And now – now, wherever she is, I am home. Wherever she goes, I will follow. And whenever I hold her, I hold the world in my hands.

Unbidden, a half-familiar song drifts through my mind.

Each restless heart beats so imperfectly, but when you come and I am filled with wonder, sometimes I think I glimpse eternity.

Not true, I think simply. I don't glimpse eternity, because I have no need to try. I already have it in my grasp. She is my eternity.

She is my everything.

There is nothing I would not do for this man. Nowhere I would not follow this man.

The thought terrifies me beyond reason. I've spent my life surviving on my own. Long, long ago I vowed to myself I would never and could never need someone so much losing them would destroy me. And yet, from the first moment I met him, as much as I loathed him I adored him. I thought him arrogant, playing at being a Detective, making a mockery of something I had fought my entire career to earn. And yet, the more I saw of his passion, his dedication and his loyalty, the more I ever so reluctantly began to admire him, respect him, care about him... need him.

And God, I was scared. So scared. I wanted so badly to hate him. If I could have hated him, things would have been so much easier. I did my level best to push him away every chance I got, because the one thing I couldn't handle was someone believing in me and then disappointing them. I had already been there, done that, too many times. So I snapped and snarled, and he merely responded with either neatly putting me in my place or completely disarming me with a kind word, a gentle phrase, that, ironically, terrified me even more – how could he know me so well?

And oh, for so many years it hurt. When he started seeing Helen I told myself that it was natural for me to be jealous – I had been the only woman truly in his life since we were partnered, and now there she was, calling him home, giving him something I never could. And yet – oh god, and yet – I was so bloody pleased to see him happy.

It very nearly tore me in two.

When he told me the truth of my demotion – that he had fought with everything he was for me to stay, that he would be devastated if I resigned, that he wanted me as his partner – I could only stare at him in disbelief. I had been so angry - I could have faced betrayal and disgust, it wouldn't have been the first time, but I couldn't grasp the idea that, for the first time, someone had stood up and said, "Yes. I want her here. I believe she can do the job. I know she can do the job."

But he never walked away.

Through everything – my demotion and reinstatement, the shooting, the aftermath, the hostage situation when I utterly fell apart – and you'd better believe I felt the kiss he pressed to my hair, and treasured it for years – Helen's auto crash, her subsequent leaving him, coming back, his suspension and investigation, her death and his alcoholism – nothing could break us apart for long. And through it all I fell deeper and deeper, became more and more helpless as I fell in love with his charisma and passion and charm, his dark brooding moods and fierce, vibrant, blinding intelligence.

I won't say it! I kept telling myself. I won't! But the next line of the song mocked me.

Who d'you think you're kidding? He's the earth and heaven to you! Try to keep it hidden? Honey, we can see right through you!

And then came the day. The Day. It is, always will be, in capital letters to me.

We'd been pacing around his living room, trying to solve the case of a murdered fifteen-year-old ballerina. And I'd said something – god only knows what – and he'd erupted, gone Eureka! and spun me around and off my feet. I'd been laughing, giddy, not having a clue what was going on but dead certain he did and that was enough for me, as it always had been.

And he'd put me down and stared at me like he was seeing me for the first time and blurted, "Marry me."

I can't describe that night, not really. All I remember is somewhere in the rush of his declaring that he loved me, all of me, and couldn't live without me ("Don't make me live without you!" he'd pleaded, as if I ever could) – and the subsequent mind-blowing sex, you didn't really think I was going to let him get away without finally making love with me when I'd been pining after him for years, did you? – what little of my world that wasn't already centered around him suddenly snapped into place, and that was it.

I had my forever.

I still sometimes have trouble believing it, that he could need me as badly as I need him. He's been everything – listened to me bitch and rant, cradled me as I fell apart, been steadfast and stood by me as no one else ever had, fought for me and believed in me and gone to the wire for me, taught me more about life and passion and culture than I ever thought I could know – how could a working-class girl from the East End compare to that?

But then he'll crowd me up against the wall and whisper, "Kiss me, Barbara, I need you right now!" and once again I believe in miracles.

He makes me believe in miracles, in forever, in happily ever after.

And when I sink into the warmth of his cradling arms, I just laugh at everyone who says romance novels never come true in reality.

After all, I'm living one.

More information about my Lynley fic can be found in my profile. Thanks for reading!