Author's Note: Already started chapter sixteen! This story is still full-speed ahead!

So my attacker was now my protection. Perfect.

I knew it was her as soon as she walked in. it was in her eyes- that gray, with a flicker of something else, but I don't know what.

I think I do now. Remorse.

It was the only thing that made sense. There was no other reason why she would be here, vowing to protect me from herself. Unless Sector Security paid her her weight in $20.00s, which is something I wouldn't doubt Trudge would insist on, after the way he came in here so distraught.

I felt bad for him, actually. Really, really bad.

This girl, Tatiana, Trudge had called her, walked in looking scared, almost. What was she afraid of? Being discovered? I guess I would afraid too.

Then, when I decided not to tell Trudge I realized it was her, her whole demeanor changed. She shone with this brilliance, like she would take the weight of all her past mistakes onto her shoulders, adding a few others for good measure, and take them to Hell and never look back.

She was still bubbling with this energy when it became very late in the night, when it was just me and her.

"You doing okay? Do you need anything?" she asked me with a smile, like it was also her job to be my nurse as well as the person who would shoot someone in the head if they came in here unauthorized.

"I'm alright, thanks." I told her. She noticed me eyeing her strangely. That's when something began to crack. Her light hadn't completely left, but it wasn't the same. She sighed and sat down on the edge of my bed, looking at her hands. Bullets clinked together in her belt with the movement.

I wondered if one of its brothers was the one that found its way inside of me.

I suddenly couldn't take it anymore. Trudge was gracious enough to let the room be unmonitored, besides the EKG I was hooked up to. It picked up slightly, the lines making jagged mountains on the screen, but she never noticed.

"I know it was you."

That's when it really broke in her, the cracks hissing open wider with the poison of truth.

She put her head down and began to cry quietly.

I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Maybe I was supposed to comfort my assassin, my nurse? Maybe I was supposed to forget she was ever my attacker and let her talk out her feelings, telling her she wasn't alone and she still could change her life for the better. The way I always seem to do.

Or should I forget that she was the one who helped nurse me, the one who changed my bandages without complaint when the doctors asked her if she would. She actually replied with a smile, saying that it would be her pleasure to help me out.

I knew that anyone else would have chosen the second option, to let her wallow in her misery until it finally took her sanity, watching all of it happen with a smile beneath their pain.

But the light that makes me a Signer won out, like it always seems to do.

I put my arms around her shoulders and brought her closer to me. She seemed to be surprised by this action. She eventually accepted my forgiveness, the one I think being me I never really had a choice in giving. She sobbed against my chest until she and I eventually fell asleep.

If only she knew what it was like.