Over the next half-moon, we create a life rhythm that beats out our days like a drum. It is certainly new and strange for me, raised in a jungle. And it is new for you, a man who obviously has lived alone his adult life. But when we put the two together, it fits.

I feel useful when you give me things to do, and it helps me to navigate this new culture by feel rather than blindly stumbling.

I read Four Weapons That Changed The World until I understand it.

Guns fascinate me endlessly. Sheer power, in something so seemingly innocuous. You show me how to clean all of them, and before long I think I can do it by myself. I do not ask, though. I know you are still skittish about letting me hold them for longer than it takes a drop of oil to glide into the mechanism. I do not blame you: I am the tiniest bit skittish abouot it, too.

When you work on the airplane with the American Santa Claus on the nose, I try to focus on repainting the details like you suggested. But in the end, I want to know what it is you're doing inside the beast's belly, so I crawl in with you. I don't take up much space, and I can reach the box of tools easier than you. Really, I like being close to you, in an enclosed and peaceful place. It is hard to think of a plane's internal workings as peaceful, but you make it such. No one can get to me here. No one can see, hear, touch, or hurt me here.

You do not count: you would sooner inflict pain on yourself than hurt me, I know.

Come to think of it, that is an observation to remember.

It might explain why you will not admit to yourself that you are growing beyond affection for me.

I help you exercise, keeping that hard and strong body fit for your work. When you do what you call 'bench press', I will you to lift the weights. Does my wish have any power over what your body is capable of doing? Your muscles working capture my attention, and I find myself smiling at how beautiful they are, covered by skin and sweat, occassionally trembling as you push yourself further. I am too embarassed to tell you that, though, when you ask.

I continue to cry my nights away. The hole in my chest is shutting with agonizing slowness, swelling closed. Will I be able to withstand the hurts as long as it takes? I can only hold on to you and pray to my father's God so.

The car ride to the laundromat, as you call it, introduces me to a new phenomenon: rock and roll music. I love the way I can close my eyes and feel it move around me, vibrating the air, encouraging my body to match its urges. It levitates me in my very seat, makes me soar even though I am seatbelted in place, makes me want to run through the sunshine and maybe, just maybe, find it in myself to laugh again.

But not now. I cannot laugh yet. The hole in my chest sends pangs all over, silencing any small joy. I fight to keep the dying embers of my stolen happiness alive in the face of the spitting rain of my hurts, but it is a constant struggle.

I was raped. I look at the pieces of my shaven down soul, and wonder how I am to put the slivers back together again.

The music helps. In it, I am alive and well and whole if I keep tapping my fingers and listening. Next to you in this fast vehicle, I can pretend to outrun my troubles.

Lou is a kindly man with an easy smile, but I am nervous around men that are not you. I muster my bravery and shake your friend's hand, then retreat to the safety of your shadow. When you tell me he's blind, I am befuddled. Is that how this culture treats cripples: not as outcasts, but as members of the community? It is a foreign notion to me. I was an outcast in my village because of my mixed heritage, but Lou is physically less than a whole human. I find that I like the idea of seeing cripples and outcasts as normal, because it means in this culture, I can have a fresh start. Lou is able to do almost anything he wants to do, and society accepts him. Will society accept me, too?

The laudromat is interesting, but not nearly so much as the drugstore across the street.

The amount of goods inside the walls are staggering. There are more maunfactured goods here than ten of my villages would see in a generation.

I examine several things until I understand what they are: chocolate, Daniel Steel books (which bore me, a strange occurence), dayplanners, solar garden lights, and neck pillows. Some of these things confuse me: what is their purpose? Why are they needed?

The moment I lay eyes on the hairbrush. my tangled locks start to scream at me. I've been fingering them apart when they are wet, but that is nothing compared to what the brush promises.

I stare at prices until I understand them, then I take the least expensive brush to you. You look bemused at my request, but buy it for me. You also buy us protien bars and candy bars.

The little girl with skin darker than mine asks her grandmother about my nose cast. I am suddenly ashamed of the thing on my face, despite the purpose it serves. The grandmother calls me a fighter, and I can tell she sees more than my outsides when she meets my eyes.

When you agree with her, my heart does that funny squeeze again. What is that?

I find that I love chocolate.

I love it only slightly less when the candy bar makes my throat start to swell.

You swear angrily on the way to the free clinic, and that scares me more than the struggle to breathe.

After several long and tense minutes, the medicine the nurses injected into me starts to work. That, and the pure tasteless air that comes through the mask on my face. I am glad, because I get a knot in my stomach when I look over and see the surgical knife and thin tube intended for me on the tray.

That doctor Gary touches me again with his cool dry hands, but he is distracted by something, I can tell.

You are incredibly edgy, so when you ask to leave without asking anything, I let you go. The doctor follows you out soon after.

The nurse, who is called Wanda, is an exuberant woman who talks rapidly. When I compliment her hair, she takes it well. She compliments mine, too. For the first time in a long time, I feel comraderie with a woman.

You come back in, Barney, smelling like your cigars, but less anxious than before.

Where is this all coming from? I thought the hole in my chest was closing because it was healng. I was wrong: it was swelling shut due to infection.

Oh God, it feels like dying. Nearly having to be cut open today rattled me more than I thought, and I can't seem to stop spinning from it. I am close to out of my mind with the sensation of falling, sinking, suffocating. Every horrible memory plays over and over in my head like a television I cannot turn off, spiraling me closer and closer to the edge of my sanity...

I shriek, because for a hideously long moment, that is all there is left of me: a ragged, rabid soul with no voice but a scream and no feeling but agony.

For a moment of time, I am completely and utterly lost. I feel like I am dead.

I do not want to be dead.

The simplicity of the emotion blooms inside me like a spark to tinder, and the fire is so bright in the darkness that had fallen inside me, I am momentarily blinded. But the fire speaks to me of better things, of unshakeable will to survive.

I have a choice to make: heed the fire, or the darkness.

"Barney...I don't want to cry anymore."

Barney, present:

"Rule one," starts Yang tersely. "If I hear one, one Mr. Miyagi comment, I will throw the perpetrator. Hard."

You slowly raise your hand. "Who is Mr. Miyagi?"

"The Asian karate savant who teaches a boy how to fight in the Karate Kid trilogy," I supply helpfully.

Yang glares at me.

"What? That was an explaination, not a comment."

"You are an Asian karate savant," you say confusedly. Pop culture will never be your strong suit.

Yang continues to look like he is itching for a katana to stick in my gut.

For the better part of the session, you don't lay a hand on me. Yang has you drilling the punches, kicks, blocks and combos he has shown you into relative perfection. I think he understands instinctively that you are reluctant to strike me; your protector, housemate, and secret lover (he implied Christmas had spilled the beans, so there went my benefit of the doubt). So, Yang takes it upon himself to soften me up like a meat tenderizer, showing you where and how hits affect the body.

"If you punch like this! - he bends double, and from there you can gouge his eyes with your thumbs, break his nose with your palm heel, or loosen some teeth." He demonstrates, and my vision goes silver and purple from his thumbs, even as my solar plexus sings discordantly. "I won a competition with that combo, once upon a time. And then, eighteen years later in the USSR, put three men a head taller than me in the hospital with it. You try, now."

You sock me in the gut, but use only about half your power. I bend over obediently, and you brush your thumbs over my eyes, not digging in, then swipe a palm heel over my nose like you're teasing a baby. You make up for it with a slug to the jaw that impresses me. Well, as impressed as I can be when swallowing my own blood. I'm doing this for you, I remind myself. My pain is negligible compared to what would happen to you if you didn't learn how to defend yourself.

In a few hours, your reluctance has evaporated. That's a good thing, too, otherwise this little training session would accomplish little. You pull your punches just enough to let me know you don't mean it, but you essentially beat me soft by repetition.

I'm surprised you caught on so quickly to something so physical. In the time I've known you, you presented as being more intellectual and bookish than hands-on. But it's the same premise as the guns, in your eyes. You seek empowerment, because you haven't had it in all your 23 years of being the village outcast. Guns, fists, knowledge...it doesn't matter: all of it builds you up, makes you into what you want to be. I can only hope that you like the end result of learning the ins and outs of violence as much as you think.

If I'm honest, I've never seen you this focused, not even with the guns. Are you imagining your rapists' faces when your knuckles meet my body? Are you hearing their grunts of pain superimposed on mine? That would fit the current stage you are in. Nightmares plague you, making you wake up sweating and shaking for the last several nights. Each time, you declined my embrace with a thin smile and a "No, no, I'm fine. Go back to sleep, Barney." But last night, after waking up with a cry that had me reaching under my pillow for a pistol, you finally broke down and asked me to hold you again. If you had not fallen asleep in my arms, I doubt you would have at all.

"Good. Now, let me show you the kicks again," says Yang, stepping in front of me. "The first one, a front push kick."

I am reminded of the "THIS IS SPARTA!" scene in 300 when my breath leaves my body in one gush. I grunt, and maintain my feet, and eventually straighten.

"And the second, the hop kick. And if I hear one, one Mr. Miyagi comment, I will throw you. Hard."

That one actually leaves me on the gritty hangar floor, tweety bird halo intact. I dazedly wonder when he took off his shoes. Shit, that Asian has a cannon for a leg.

"Are you okay, Barney?" you ask, rising worriedly from your stance and mindset.

"Fine," I grunt, getting back up. "Never better."

You bite your lip like you do, and that's the last I see of Caring Meera for the rest of the afternoon.

"You're getting it, Meera," says Yang approvingly. You're moving through the combo drills like they're a dance of danger, and you confidence has increased with the power of your punches. Yang's taught you to channel your energy into the strikes, how to use different muscle groups to give them more strength, and how to hit a handful of pressure points in the torso to inflict pain without much effort.

"Thank you, Yang," you say, pausing to brush a sweaty strand of hair from your face and smile at him.

Wait for it...yep, he flushes at your grin.

I have to smile to myself. If I could strap you to the bomb rack of a B-52 with a joke book in hand, I could conceivably end world conflict.

"Now, I want you to spar Barney," says Yang.

You stiffen with surprise, swinging around to look at him. "You do?"

"I do," confirms the Asian. "I want to see you in combat mode, so that I can show you what to improve on."

Damn, I was hoping you both had forgotten I was there. I'm laid flat on the gritty floor of the hangar, trying to move as little as possible.

You look over at me. "Are you up for it, Barney?"

"Yup," I reply, mustering my strength and rolling to my knees, then my feet. "Let's do this."

Yang arranges us in our fighting stances, the distance of our outstretched arms apart. "Full speed," he says, sounding like a karate instructor. "Half power. Acknowledge hits with a bow. Ready? Shi-jok!"

You look nervous as we start to pace in a circle. You should be: you know all the stories I've told you are true, and you've heard more from the other guys. Even if the pain motivation is less in this fight, you still want to win. I can see the thirst for victory in your eyes, under the nervousness.

I almost sidle forward to throw the first punch: a jab to the chin. You block it hesitantly, but in real life, I would have grounded you. I bow.

"Watch him, Meera," says Yang helpfully. "Look for his moves before he shows them."

We rejoin. The tension between us drowns out everything: the sounds of night falling outside, the sounds of breathing and footsteps, even Yang's presence. We are locked on each other, connected, being affected by each other's movements.

Your eyes sharpen in recognition as I make the decision to move. When I come at you again with a punch coiled and aimed for your gut, you smoothly step out of the way and aim an elbow at my face. It grazes my forehead, and I step back and bow. "Nice," I say, and mean it.

This time, you let your confidence out and step in, past the effective range of my fists, and aim an uppercut to my jaw. I move my head just in time. Shit, you're fast! In responce, I bear hug you to my chest.

You squak indignantly, and bounce your forehead off my nose hard enough to make me smell oranges. I drop you, and we both bow warily.

"Watch your power," warns Yang.

"Sorry," you reply, not taking your eyes off me.

"Slow poke," I tease. I liked having you pressed against me, but I'm trying to keep my mind above the belt.

Your eyes narrow. I have just enough time to think, 'Oh, hell'.

You surge forward again, this time with a hop kick aimed at my shoulder. It connects solidly, and sends me reeling, off balance. Upon landing, you land a series of rapid and feather-light punches to my kidneys and floating ribs while I try to get my feet under me again. Just before I get centered, you stomp the back of my knee, a move Yang never taught you, and push-kick me to my back on the ground.

I stare up at you, flush with victory and looking surprised at yourself. Ah, those eyes. From our first meeting, they drew me in. Now, I can't see a hint of the woman from that hut. She's nowhere to be found. In her place is you: bravely staring down a career killer, refusing to be a victim, making your way in this world. It occurs to me that, for the first time, really, I am seeing you as an equal. If I was in love with you before, I'm hopelessly in love with you now.

"Damn, Meera," remarks Yang. "You are faster than I thought." He clearly wasn't expecting it.

"Are you alright, Barney?" you ask concernedly. It's the Meera I know talking. "I'm sorry I hurt you!"

"It's okay," I assure, sitting up and rubbing my shoulder from your kick. "It's not that bad."

You frown at me strangely. "Aren't yuu going to get up?"

I smile blythely. "Shoulder's fine. Knee's not."

You look properly chagrinned. "Yang, are you leaving already?"

"Yeah, I have to beat traffic," says Yang, walking towards his bike. "I think we've done all we can for today, team."

"Thanks for coming, man," I say gratefully from the floor.

"How does a week from now sound for our next session?" asks the Asian, donning his helmet.

"Works for me."

"And me," you reply excitedly.

"Good. Meera, I want you to drill all the combos at least an hour a day. Build muscle memory, and it will be like second nature."

"I will," you promise.

"Barney, you make an excellent dummy."

"I will find a way to pay you back," I give my word darkly.

Yang laughs. "Barney, Meera." With that he puts down his visor, throttles the bike to life, and roars out of the hangar, leaving a half-circle of tire marks on the ground.

"Dramatic exit, much?" you ask, in a rare display of Western wit.

"Yeah," I sigh as his tail ligjt disappears. "He's got SMS."

"What's SMS?"

"Short Man Syndrome. It's terminal."

You snicker, and hold out your hand for me.

I take it, and our eyes meet like magnets. As you help pull me up, electricity shoots through me. I can tell you're affected too, even though you drop my hand, suddenly shy. Your lips part slightly. I wonder what it would be like to kiss those lips...

"I really like the kicks," you say enthusiastically from the kitchen sink later.

I grunt from the sofa, because that's all I can muster. Stopping moving let all the day's aches hit at once. I have one arm thrown over my eyes to ward off the light, and the other is resting shield over my traumatized solar plexus. Shit yeah, you like kicks. Too much, if you ask me.

You run some water, then open the freezer door. "That hop kick is my favorite."

I grunt again in response, not out of disinterest. My diaphram is hating its existence, so getting air for words is kind of low on my priorities.

Your boots walk closer, and you say softly, "Don't move." Somthing cold and wet touches the bruise on my jaw, and I stiffen until I realize what it is. You gently wash the dirt off my sore face, everything not covered by my arm over my eyes. It feels so good to be cared for. I sigh to let you know how much, and I can feel your pleasure radiating. "Ice, now," you say in the same quiet voice. There's a washcloth filled with ice placed gingerly on the bruise. I feel it shift on my skin as you sit down on the floor next to me, keeping the ice in place. Your arm is draped over my chest, and the warmth from it seeps into my shirt.

You stay there until the ice melts away. After you move the sodden cloth, though, you lean your head against my ribs with an almost inaudible sigh of contentment.

I can't believe my luck.