Meera:

You do not argue with me when I ask to drop long guns for a while, and I am grateful. We continue to work through different calibers.

I call you a blessing, and my heart echoes the words. You reply with the same, and I know you mean it.

The Desert Eagle nearly breaks my nose, again.

The pain is sudden and shocking, but easily overcome. When I figure out where I am, you're blocking the sun on my face and cradling my head, urgently trying to get me to answer you.

The panic in your eyes warms me, though I cannot show it for the stinging pain. You are acting like I've been shot, not bonked on the nose. You really shouldn't worry so much, Barney. I am far, far stronger than you give me credit for.

Well, at least when it comes to physical pain. When it comes to you, and our mutually growing feelings, I get a little shakier.

You tend my injury with ice and sympathy, and close down the range for the day.

We're relaxing in the afternoon hours when I realize i have been reading the same page of The Complete Guide To Edible Plants for the past half-hour.

"Barney?" I sigh with defeat.

"Hm?"

"I have unfinished business with that gun."

You are wound around me, supplementing my stance and strength, and I am trying very hard to ignore the sweet heat that builds inside me as you murmur in my ear, "Ready?"

"Ready."

"Then aim...and fire."

The gun bucks much less this time, and I can feel the energy travel through my body into yours. I am pushed back by it, and my body contacts yours from shoulder to hip. My skin sings.

I worm out of your grasp quickly, before i do something rash, and inspect my target joyfully. I am victorious over the Desert Eagle, but am being beaten into submission by my own body and heart's response to you.

I turn around, and you're standing there proudly, watching me with tender and affectionate brown eyes. My insides melt.

I had told Tool that I would get a tattoo when you and I found each other.

That might happen sooner than I thought.

When we run out of MREs, we hop in the truck for a long ride to replenish them.

You turn off the radio and ask me what my last name is.

The question does not disturb me. I know who I am not, and who I am. I am not the victim of a heinous crime, so much as I am a victor over it. I am not stuck wondering how to put the pieces of my soul back together: I am ignoring all but the basic structure, and arranging the rest as I please. I am your companion, friend, confidant, and maybe, one day, your lover.

"Ross," I answer you easily.

You flounder a bit, but eventually hop on board. I can tell my answer pleases you, deep down. But I am not telling you to please you: I am showing you how close I am, and how close I still want to be. Changing my last name means I am changing me. I am not the village foot magnet, or a shame to my grandmother, or a sad parody of a good, coffee-skinned Nepali young woman who gets married early and childbears her life away.

I am Meera. And I am entirely new.

January, or Airy, as you call her, is a woman that shares a bond with you going back further than mine. I struggle to tamp down my jealousy and still sate my curiousity at the same time.

The warehouse astounds me, but so far since taking up residency in America, I am getting used to it.

Memories surface strongly of my grandmother's cooking when I read the packages of food. When I find one that is Thai, I am sold. You acquiesce with little fight.

I try to maintain some degree of aloofness towards January, but I find it more trouble than it is worth. She is charismatic, charming, and lesbian. I am fascinated by the difference in the culture here and the one I grew up in. In Nepal, a lesbian would probably have been killed if found out, and if not, forced to marry a man. Here, a woman who would have been ostracized in my culture holds a position of power over men her senior and/or her physical better, and they bow to her will. I am intrigued by the idea. By the end of the visit, she and I are well on our way to being friends.

As we walk back to the office, answering January's summons, I thread my arm in yours as an experiement. It is the first time I have initiated longterm contact, without the premise of needing your aid, comfort, or steadying.

You stiffen ever so slightly, but then start to glow like you're the biggest man in the warehouse. In fact, your posture and walk change to more of a swagger.

I grin secretly. My experiment was a success.

I feel so incredibly happy hanging on your arm. I feel safe, pretty for some reason, wanted, needed. I feel proud to be attached to such a man as you.

It comes to my attention, as slowly and unobtrusively as smoke on the breeze, that I would not mind feeling this way for the rest of my life. I would not mind being attached to you, at all.

The rest of the day, I slowly consolidate all of my little revelations into one place. One, I care for you deeply, Barney. You are kind, and protective, and generous, and much more affectionate than your gruff exterior would suggest.

Two, my body is drawn to yours. It is hard, these days, not to react to even the brush of your hand, or a smile, or the unintentional seductions of your embrace of me, or my hugging of you as we ride. You, covered in sweat from exertion or exercise, or in water from the shower as you amble past me to the closet, makes me heat up most pleasantly. Yes, my ache is fierce and poingnant for you.

Three, I want you to be mine. Here is where it gets tricky. Is forever too much to want, or to even hope for? You are a mercenary, a trained killer. You do not make bonds so deep that they will destroy you at their breaking. Even your men, truth be told, are separated from you and each other just enough to survive it when one of them dies. Because die you all will, one day.

And three-point-one, do I want to ally myself with that? Would I be able to be as close as humanly possible to you, and still live on if you came back from a job in a coffin? Or knowing that you walk into danger every time you take a mission?

These questions, and endless more, circle my skull in the dead of the night. I turn over in bed, and regard the form of you under the covers. Your tattooed shoulders are bare to the lantern's tiny light, and the muscles under them remain prominent even in slumber. It is the same back that bore my weight when I was unable to walk. Those arms carried me without tire. Those hands changed my bandages, and held me close when I cried for hours, and coaxed me back to life with activity and purpose. That chest wash my pillow the night I broke and began to heal. Those legs rushed to my side over and over when I needed you. Those eyes watched me, even when you thought I did not notice, and warmed when you laughed, spoke, and smiled with me. And that beautiful heart let me, a veritable time bomb, take up residence with no fight whatsoever. The easiest and only surrender you have ever allowed yourself.

I love you, Barney Ross.

I love you.

Okay, here ends the retrospective POV for Meera. From now on, she will be telling her story as it happens, same as Barney. Ya'll had better hold on tight, because things heat up in a lot of ways in the next chapters...