Asher Foster lived with a bounty hunter. Yes, he was also himself a bounty hunter, but Hela was so much more important. She was the expert in weapons and tracking, often assisting him when she completed her target list quickly. She excelled everywhere he failed, and excelled everywhere he succeeded. She was a creature bred for bloodshed, the whistle of an arrow and the song of a blade as familiar to her as her own hand.

But the strangest part of it was, as deadly and pronounced as his girlfriend was, Hela did not spend her spare time pouring over maps or obsessing over weapons. She did not so much as even glance at Asher while he was doing homework, trying to stay five steps ahead of anyone who might try and face them or steal a kill. No, Hela read. Fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian, all genres were scattered around their living room, piles and shelves building up over the missions. And even if she sometimes acted like he was a refrigerator, Asher was content. Content with their life, their relationship. With the way everything had worked out, as long as he had Hela Mistlyre by his side.

Until he remembered. Remembered that safety was not something he or Hela lived in. No, not at all. And it was a harsh reality check when he found himself by her bedside, praying for her to make it, make it, make it.

The mission was going smoothly. Everything running according to plan, Execution perfect, tactics unfailable. They'd practiced this hundreds of times over and both of them could do it in their sleep. She'd done the research, he'd dome the scouting. There wasn't supposed to be a third party. There wasn't supposed to be interference. In retrospect, they should've planned for something like this to happen. For an ambush, or at least for someone to try to stop them from killing one of the most important leaders of District 1. But, of course, they hadn't. They had gotten too cocky. Grown too complacent and fallen into too much of a self-assured routine that they didn't do the little things that one of them really should have remembered. Hela had taken the brunt of the attack. Thrown herself in front of him to take the arrow, in fact. Right out of the tree she'd been hiding in. Her dagger had also flown true, and the man with the crossbow had fallen dead at Asher's feet, mouth still opened on a scream. And Hela had fallen a moment after him, body curled around the knife in her side. Everything blurred together after that. He remembers screaming, remembers cradling her limp body in his arms. He remembers carrying her back to their small house, hidden among trees and vines, and laying her in bed. He recalls the long ride back to District 5, the crack in his voice as he explained what happened and the tremor in his hands as he threw the severed head of their target onto the table. Everytime his eyes close, he sees the blood on the white of their sheets as a doctor continually reassures him that she's going to be alright, alright, alright.

When her eyes opened, two days later, he thought he would never look at the color green the same way again.

"It's not even that bad!" Hela protested, trying to sit up.

Asher gently pushed her down, worry and pain eating at his chest. "Hela, your left arm, right femur, and three of your ribs are broken. Four are cracked, the rest are badly bruised,not to mention the knife wound you have in your side, and you have such a bad concussion that I don't believe a word that comes out of your mouth."

"See?" Hela managed a tired smile, arching an eyebrow. "It's a good day for me."

And even though he laughed with her, he still couldn't shake the knowledge that one of them could be gone in an instant. Death was final. How could he survive knowing she would never walk in the door again, vibrant and smiling, her laugh lighting up the room? That he would never hear her voice again? He didn't know if he could.

His mind was made up.

Hela's delighted smile as she opened her newest book to find a sticky note, reading, 'You're beautiful' takes his breath away. So does her smile when she finds the next note: 'You looked gorgeous last night'. A smile, a note, a small compliment that Asher whispers every night to her, into her hair before the fall asleep. After every chapter. Just little things. 'You light up my whole world', or 'I love when you smile at me' or even the simple phrase in the second-to-last chapter: "I love you."

And the four, beautiful words in Asher's untidy scrawl at the end: "Will you marry me?"

She looked up and found him on one knee before him, hair messy like a fiery halo around his head, ring in his hand and hope in his eyes.

"Yes!"

A/N: Hello, everyone. Long time, right? Yeah, I know. *half-heartedly ducks all the things you're throwing at me* I'm sorry for not updating for about a month, and I promise that District 8 will be out sometime before the end of February. Shit went down and everybody lost their crap, and I've been swamped with some things that just have been really draining, and the only thing I want to do at the end of the day is fall into bed and sleep for a year.

The title is derived from the song Truly Madly Deeply by Savage Garden.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games universe. That belongs to the wonderful Suzanne Collins.

Anyways. For those of you who are wondering why I'm publishing this and not updating Locked and Loaded, I've been through some rough shit. One of my closest friends just tried to commit suicide. He's still in the world of the living, and we're praying for him. This story is dedicated to him, and I want to remind him that he has people in this world who still love him.

XOXO

~Vixen