From here on, we're going to be switching between Meera's point of view and Barney's. Starting from the very beginning...

I do not quite know what to make of this situation. I've been dead inside for so long, just to survive, that any change in the horrible status quo is met with numb disbelief. One minute, that nameless, faceless asshole is raping me, and the next, you've shot him dead.

It takes me a minute to process that my body is not being intruded upon anymore. Then another to fight my way through the fog of pain from my face, and wrists, and ankles, and my - oh, hell, you're staring at me strangely.

Oh. You have nice eyes. You seems to be studying me, too.

I stare back with as much venom as I can muster: I picture every face of every man that's had a field day on me, in me, and pour that fuel onto the flames of my anger. I think it loses something on you: I am restrained and tired and a woman. You strike me as a man who knows violence, and intimately. So why are you taking off your gun?

Christ, my cunt hurts. And you can see all of me, naked as the day I was born: hideously beaten and ugly and covered in fluids I have tried for days to forget. Why is there no disgust on your face?

Another soldier comes to the entrance of the tent, and I hear my first English words in a couple of years, but he stops talking when he sees me. There's the horror!

"Thanks, Christmas," you say in a gravelly voice that makes my ears prick. "Give me a minute, woul'ya?"

The other soldier - Christmas, I guess, odd name - is reluctant to leave you alone with me. But, because they've got an understanding I am barely glimpsing the depth of, he does what you ask. We're alone.

You are unbuckling your belt. I thought Americans didn't...! Oh, you're dropping the pistols and kneeling at my right ankle.

"Shh, shh," you say. I didn't realize I'd made a noise.

Holy shit, that is a huge knife! I struggle painfully and fultilely against my bonds, but the wire cuts deeper. I am practically rabid with disappointment and fear. Torture me, will you? I would like to see you introduce me to a pain I do not know. Come on, do it! I DARE you, motherfu -

You stick the knife in the ground and take my foot gently, so gently, and give me a look like... well, I do not know how to describe it, exactly, but it touches some part of me I thought had been burned away by hate and brutality. I tamp down on my fear response and hold still.

You cut the wire on that ankle, and carefully untangle it from the gouges it has formed. I grit my teeth and quiver with pain, but I bear it. I've borne worse.

Upon the freeing of my other foot, I close my legs for the first time since...I can't remember. I literally can't even remember! Now, I am stretched out like Christ on the cross, and wondering if you just want to feel me kick as you take up where the soldier you shot left off.

You cut my left arm free, a minor miracle, and the twine embedded in my skin is removed. I rip the gag from my mouth and cover myself, because you're looking at me, and I feel the slipperyness of my own blood leaking from my nipple. Ouch. I'd almost forgotten about that.

What's your game, American soldier? I watch you as you watch me. Yeah, you're staring, but it doesn't make my skin crawl or my stomach clench in fear. It's wierd, if I had to put a name to it. You look sad and a little angry and incredibly tough, but somehow exude the air that you've never done this before. Like you've never cared before, and are surprising yourself. It feels like you are not seeing my skin and bones, my shame.

Something inside me says your intent is not dastardly, and that's why I haven't backed away from you, but I can scarcely trust my own feelings anymore. They're all over the place since you walked in. I had managed to box them away, because it might actually kill me to feel anything about what they've done to me, but you've gone and scattered them like grain.

Another soldier pauses at the door, not looking in. He's telling you, Barney, to hurry it up.

"Barney," I say aloud, and I wince as I croak. Ouch, again.

"You speak English?" he asks.

At another time, I would have laughed at the obvious statement. Now, the heaviness of my heart only allows me to reply, "Yes."

Another staring match, but I swear, I learn one more tiny thing each time our eyes meet.

You seem to jerk yourself awake and, with a shake of your head, start to roughly peel the clothes off the dead soldier.

"What are you doing?" I ask. He's implying a lot of things without saying a word. I want to hear him say it. Say what I hope he means.

"I'm taking you with me," you reply. You sound like you're expecting me to say no.

Taker me away from this hellhole, the place of my hunt, capture, torture, starvation, thirst, rape, and anguish unspeakable? Yes, yes, please. But to where? I glance around at the wall of reeds and rushes. Anywhere is better than here, I decide.

So I struggle to my knees and take the shirt from your hand, where it had been wrinkling in your grasp, and say, "Okay."

Being pick up by you makes my vision blacken around the edges, but I stay awake. We walk oout of the hut I thought would be my grave, and towards the river, where I can hear a boat.

You have to hand me off to a big, black man when we get to a boat, and it scares me how strong he is. When you take me back, I have to sigh. You feel safer, somehow.

I do not remember much of the plane ride: just the sensation of movement and the murmur of voices. I drain the water given to me, overcome by thirst, and fade in and out of consciousness. You hold me the whole time.

When we start to fall out of the sky, you ask me what my name is.

I try to speak, but my unused throat and my mild surprise cut off the sound. I swallow, and reply, "Meera."

Your eyes soften, and a very faint smile curls your lips. "Hang on, Meera."

I want so badly to get clean I can taste it, so I bear the pain of standing and moving when you put me in the shower. At any other time, I would have laughed at your expression: you clearly want to stay, but your morals won't let you. Silly American: morals do not have a place around me anymore. Every moral known has been compromised on me. Morals do not recognize me. I am an alien to them.

I manage to peel off the shirt, biting my tongue around the pain as the dried blood is loosened by the shower of water. I can't bear to look at my torso, but what little bit I catch is mottled in ugly, violent bruises.

I get the pants off much more slowly. They involve bending and moving my legs, and that is torturous. Finally, though, I get them off.

Oh, bliss! The water is getting hotter, and sting my wounds though it may, the grime of days and weeks melt off me. This is so different from a river bath.

I can't remember what I do next, but somehow my feet slip on the slick floor, and I bump my head. It isn't even a hard bump, I recall, but my weakened state multiplies the effects.

When I come to, I am wrapped in a scratchy but warm blanket and we're moving again.

"You'll be okay," you are saying, absently angry and worried.

I know I will be okay. Somehow, I know that as long as you're with me, I will.

Present, Barney:

"Hullo?" I answer the cell phone. I give you a 'keep going' motion, and you continue to fire your clip dry at the pace of a three-Mississippi count into the target against the back of the hangar. The radio is going on batteries, rolling through one of my old cassette tapes.

"Hello, Barney," greets Yin Yang.

I walk a little ways off so I can hear him better. "Hey, man. What's up?" We're men. We need no pleasantries: we stand on the bond of our friendship, not southern hospitality.

"Meera said she wanted to learn how to fight. I can teach her better than you can." No preamble, but that's as much men in general as it is Yin Yang. I'm refreshed by the change of pace, that 'get-it-done' attitude of me and my men, and also heartily pissed at what he's saying.

"I'm sorry?"

"I can teach her better, Barney. You know this."

"Who says?"

"The three black belts hanging on my wall, the dozens of trophies and medals from my competition days in the basement, and countless broken bones and faces across the world."

I want to strangle the Asian through the phone, but I can't. He'd probably email me a roundhouse kick or some shit. Is he right? I glance your way, and your serious expression is amusing. It's like you're trying to imagine faces on the target.

Actually, that would fit with the current stage you're in: methodically, steadily, and murderously working through each rapist's face in your sleep, through nightmares that cause you to wake up sweating and shaking. The last few nights, you've had to fall back to sleep in my arms, or you wouldn't sleep at all.

I should be worried that you're focusing so hard on the target, but I know that it's cathartic. Shooting things and imagining them to be what bugs you is great therapy.

"Barney?" says Yin Yang over the line.

"Yeah, man, I'm here." I rub my face tiredly. He's right, but I don't have to like it. "What if she gets hurt?"

Yin Yang laughs at that. "You should hope she gets hurt in training. It is one less hurt she will get in reality."

I hate Asian thought processes. I think Yin Yang can sense the foreboding look on my face, because he continues, "I'm not going to body slam her, Barney. That's your style of fighting, not mine. I will teach her to use weaknesses and her quickness to take down men many times her size."

I glance at you again, as you've stopped firing. I nod at you, and you reload the clip. You're barely 5'2" and maybe 105 pounds soaking wet. Your muscles are there, but you're more whippish than stacked. You'd be easy prey.

I sigh. "Alright. Fine. But we're doing this my way."

Yin Yang laughs again, and the tone of it concerns me. "I should hope so. You are going to be her practice dummy."

"You're a cruel, sick man."

"And you love it. I'll come over tomorrow after noon." And he hangs up.

I replace the phone and signal you as I walk closer. You flip the safety on and remove an earplug. "Who was that?" you ask concernedly. I know it's on your mind lately that I might be taking a job soon.

"Yin Yang," I reply. "He wants to teach you to fight."

"He does?" you ask excitedly, lighting up. "That's great!"

"He's coming over tomorrow. Think you're ready?"

You consider your answer. "I'm nervous," you confide. "I'm just getting pistols figured out. Now, I have to figure out hands, feet, and so many other things."

Leave it to you to see every limb as a weapon. Your way of thinking is so different, but intriguing. "That may be so," I say. "But Yin Yang is one of the best. He'll do right by you."

Your eyes soften with trust. "Alright."

"Plus, you get to beat me around."

Your face shows shock, reluctance, and hilarity in quick succession. "That sounds like...dangerous fun!"

"Yeah, yeah, don't look so thrilled," I say sarcastically. "Dangerous fun is kind of the name of the game around here, in case you haven't noticed.'

You laugh. "True." You replace the earplug and adjust your stance.

I reach down and rewind the tape. When it stops, I press play, and 'Fat Bottomed Girls' pours grainily out of the speakers.

"Remember: to the beat."

You nod. "Safety off. Firing." And Queen orchaestrates you through your rounds at an even pace.

With your attention occupied, I have to snicker at the song in relation to you. You have no ass, so it kind of tickles me that you'd choose this album out of my collection.

Almost unbidden, my gaze goes to your ass. Nope, still barely there, but perfectly round and...

Dammit. I am a sicker man than I thought.

But my mind won't quit. I catch myself wondering if you would ever let me pinch your butt, if we could ever get to the point in the hazy future of my crystal ball mind's eye when I could let my hands linger on you. I like the idea of that far more than I should. Ass, legs, face, lips, breasts...

Dammit, again. I try to beat the thoughts down, but they continue to play in the back of my mind like a movie theater I'm standing outside of. During the rest of the day, when I find myself watching you, that theater screen looms bigger.

I've always thought you pretty, and your body lovely. Even in those early days when you were one big bruise, your skin over your bones, muscles, and tendons drew my eye like a flare's plume.

It's not right to feel like this. You were raped. Sex is not on the horizon for you any time soon, and therefore, I'm SOL.

But now, my body wants as much as my heart wants. I'm in trouble. I'm in so much damn trouble.

It's one thing to love you. It's another thing entirely to couple that love for you with lust.

I develop a headache behind my eyes that persists until long after the lights are out. Something, anything, has got to give, or I'm going to lose my mind. Staring up at the ceiling, I hope to God I can keep from letting any of this show to you.

You'd never forgive me, would you?

Or maybe...like, monkeys on typewriters making words, maybe...you feel the same.

My mind immediately consolidates all the tiny things that support that hypothesis: you grin and won't tell me why when you watch me work out. When I wander by in a towel, or my sleep pants, I can feel your eyes moving over me. When we ride the bike, you don't have to wrap your arms around me. You don't have to sleep next to me. You don't have to slip your arm into the crook of mine, or sit next to me on the couch, or ask for my hugs without tears to justify it.

And instance of that last flickers through my mind. "Barney?" you had said.

Your tone had caught my attention, and I put down the coffee pot. "Yeah?"

You had bitten your lip and looked at me from under those long lashes. "Can I...have a hug?"

You don't have to...

but you do all these things. And the more I think about it, the more it comes into focus.

Holy shit, you've been sending me miniscule signals for over a month.

In the dark and breezy room that begs me to sleep, I scrub my face. I'm a moron. I've been so caught up in agonizing over if you were receptive, if you were ready, if you felt the same.

You've been further along than me in this process almost since day one.

I am astounded by my own idiocy, my blindness.

You want me, too.

Okay, so I start a new job tomorrow. I may start spacing my updates to a day off in between. Sorry ya'll, but with school and two jobs, I'm gonna do good to remember underwear...

Keep reviewing, please! It will inspire me to greatness!