He was kissing her back immediately, desperately. His lips moving against hers with near-frantic intensity, asking her to open to him, let him in, deepen the kiss still further.

She did. And they were lost in the physicality of the moment, in the sensation of that kiss, not stopping until they were forced to break apart, gasping for air.

Their foreheads were touching; their noses too. Red hair mingled with black on the pillow. Her lips were nearly moving against his as she asked brokenly, "Gunther, why? I thought… that night, I thought that we… Why in the morning did… why were you…"

"Sorry," he gasped, sounding almost as if he were in physical pain. "I am so so sorry Jane, oh my God, I am so sorry. I thought… you would be distracted by what I… by what we had d… I only wanted to protect you but I… it was the worst mistake of my life. If I had only… if things had been different… then maybe it would have been me. It should have been me, it was meant to be me! Jane, I –"

But he was cut off again as Jane, having sufficiently regained her breath, sealed his lips with her own once more.

OOOOO

"Promise me," he said raggedly, some moments later, when they had finally, reluctantly, parted again. "Promise me that you will never do anything like that, for me, again. Jane, you have to, because I could not… it would break me. I cannot go through this again, I..."

"All right," she whispered, and he had just time to think, too easy, that was much too easy, when she added, "if you will make the same vow."

"Not in a hundred years! Over my dead body will you ever be hurt this way again! Ever, Jane!"

"Gunther, what you are asking is not fair –"

"I do not care about fair! I care about you! About keeping you safe! Oh my God, Jane, if I lost – if I lost you –"

"But you might," she said relentlessly. "Gunther, you might. And I might lose you. Because of who we are and what we do, it will always be a possibility. We will be in danger again. And you will always try to protect me and you had better believe that I will always try to protect you. As long as it does not directly conflict with the knight's code or my oath to the king, protecting you will be my highest priority in absolutely any situation, because I love you so much, you stupid man, so so so m-mmmph!"

This time it was Gunther who crashed his lips down on hers, cutting off speech for quite some time.

OOOOO

"Can you accept it, then?" She asked.

"NO." Gunther's response was immediate and emphatic. "No, I cannot accept it. That something like this could happen again and you could actually be taken away from me!? That is completely unacceptable. But I suppose I will learn to live with it. What choice do I have?"

"None," Jane said calmly. "You cannot tuck me away somewhere for safekeeping, Gunther, and if you ever tried –"

"That would be the surest way to lose you," he interrupted. "I know. Damn it, I know." His voice was gravelly with emotion.

"Gunther." She pressed her hand gently to the side of his face. "If I were not the person you grew up with, the person you trained with, if I were not a knight, if I were not who I am, would you even love me in the first place?"

"No," he whispered wretchedly. "No, I love everything you are. I cannot imagine loving anyone who was not everything you are. But Jane, how can I accept… if this happened again – or something worse – it would kill me, Jane, I could not survive it, I –"

"Yes you could," she said, suddenly fierce. "You could, and you would, and you would go on and do your duty to the king, because that is the oath you took, and if I… if I had to lose you… I would do the same thing. That is who we are, Gunther. That is who we are."

"Stop," he gasped.

"Gunther –"

"True, all true, I know. I know. I just… can we… for now… stop talking about it and… and just…"

"Yes?" she whispered, anticipating another earth-shattering kiss… and he did kiss her, but on the forehead this time. Then he wrapped his arms around her and just held her again, one hand splayed at the small of her back, the other at the back of her head, fingers buried in her mass of curls, pressing her face into the crook of his neck, nestled just under his chin.

She held him back as tightly as she could… for a little while, at least. But her body was still far from recovered – her ordeal still terribly fresh.

It was just a few moments later that all the tension ebbed out of her, and Gunther realized that she had drifted quietly back to sleep.