Meera:

I wake up the next morning groggy. Sitting up and rubbing my eyes, I listen to the near-perfect silence and streaming sunshine. It took me half a night of tossing fitfully to realize what I was missing. Fishing around under the covers, I pull out one of you plaid flannel shirts. Bringing it to my face, I bury my nose in it and inhale deeply, my chest panging as I detect the scent of motor oil, cigars, deodorant, and you. "Good morning," I say aloud. It makes me miss you all over again.

There's an empty bed next to me. It takes me a moment to realize that it is my own. I do not remember switching beds last night, but curling up in the indention of your mattress must have made a difference in how I slept.

My God. Two weeks, six days to go. I will never make it.

But you would want me to try, just like you coaxed me into trying those first hard weeks under your care.

I stumble to the kitchen, make coffee, and comfort myself with an MRE brownie. Leaning against the counter, I study the large room. With a hot mug in hand, I wander around, looking at each thing in turn, trying to find something to...what? Fill the void? Capture my attention?

I have read all the books. I could read them again, but it seems superfluous. I could go outside, but the empty hangar where the hulking plane used to sit would mess with me. I could watch TV, but that feels unproductive and ineffectual.

Restless and fidgety, I pace with my mug all around the place, picking up and putting down things blindly. A mason jar of bolts klinks in my hand. A piece of riveted metal, sheared at one end. A stick of spot weld. An ash tray of grenade pins.

Not even an hour into my day, and I am already spiraling into despondency. I miss you. If I do not correct this soon, these weeks will progress with me curled in a corner. I am anxious enough that my heart is beating faster and my palms are sweating. I try to blame it on the coffee, but my gut knows better.

A thought occurs to me, and the implication of possible comfort tempts me. Walking out into the hangar, I pointedly avoid looking at the empty space the plane should have been. I approach the small herd of cloth-covered forms in the corner, and whip the cover off the most familiar one. Your gleaming metal skull ornament grins at me, and I have to smile in return. Balancing precariously, I swing one leg over the seat, avoid sloshing my coffee, and settle with the motorcycle between my legs. Closing my eyes and kneading the leather seat with one hand, try to bring back memories of flying down the road, of being pressed against your leather-clad back, of having your firm stomach under my fingers and the comforting rumble of the bike under us.

I understand in a moment of stunning introspective clarity why I love riding the bike so much. On the bike, I am the most beautiful thing in the world. I am on a lovely, moving, powerful throne where no one can touch me, or harm me. I am exhibited in a most innocuous way by my chauffeur, for all to see and admire. By putting me on the bike behind you, you constantly tell the world, "This is mine. She is beautiful enough to ride with me. Worship her power (even as the bike gives it), marvel at her loveliness."

Leaning over, I put my mug on the ground. Shifting laterally, I wrap my arms around the bike, laid over on the seat. I stay that way until my heart aches less and beats slower.

Barney:

Cold.

The cold never goes away.

It spears through lesser clothes, seeps into spaces between garments like fingers, arrives suddenly in odd places like knees and ears. The snow melts and encourages a pathway for more of the cold. The wind blasts it at us like artillery barrage.

I push these little nagging thoughts out of my head with a hearty shake. Frankly, I prefer cold to intolerable heat. Although places like Vietnam appeal right now, I can easily remember the constant, suffocating humidity, the bloodsucking insects that conspired to carry me off, the disgust and slight horror of seeing my toenails peel away, layer by layer, under the trench foot rot.

Yeah, I'll take cold over heat any day.

We travel in a formation well known to us: a phalanx. Christmas takes lead, in front of Miss Kresh, while Toll and I flank her and Gunnar and Ceasar bring up the vulnerable rear. I kind of miss Yang already, because having someone to even out my degraded line of sight would have made me a lot more comfortable. We all carry our slung guns with fingers on the triggers, but that might be a byproduct of having them frozen in place. We are pros, so our heads are constantly swiveling, our eyes (or, for me, eye) pierce the fluttering veil of snow for enemies and landmarks and cover. One good thing about cold: it keeps the mind on edge.

Stopping for a coordinates check allows us time to remember the chill. Moving keeps it from settling, but being motionless gives the mind room to realize the discomfort. I suppress a shiver as a particularly icy blast rattles up my spine.

Gunnar is a brave soul, for all his past shortcomings. He is the first to speak to Miss Kresh, over the bullying wind. "May I ask your name?" he says.

Miss Kresh, who has pulled down her cowl and snow goggles, looks up from a laminated topographical map, pinning him with sharp blue eyes. "It eez Nadia." And she goes back to her map.

Gunnar angles himself so that she could see him more easily, if she cared to. "I'm Gunnar."

"Well met, Gunnar," she replies with scathing sarcasm, folding the map and double checking the coordinates on a waterproof GPS. The goggles go back on, and Nadia goes back to being a client. She returns the map to a small pocket on the strap of her pack and starts forward, and we follow.

I glance at Gunnar, but he is not seemingly deterred. I get the feeling he's not going to give up so easily, the idiot ladykiller. When I catch his eye, I make sure my one uncovered eye glares hard enough to remind him we're on mission, not playing.

"Sunset eez at four-oh-seven tonight," Nadia speaks up, crunching on. "We will stop before then, to make camp before the snowstorm picks up."

"It can pick up?" queries Toll quietly. "And here I thought we'd bottomed out."

Nadia turns to regard him with a smile that matches the ice shot through the sheer cliff faces in the distance. "Eet can always get worse, out here."

I sidle closer until we're trudging side but side. "What is the name of your first contact?"

"The village known as Crios is the home of a well-known rebel leader and his group," replies Nadia. "That eez a day's walk, at least. More if the snow keeps falling."

I nod. We'll get there sooner or later. It makes no difference to a mercenary paid for time.

The methodical choosing of footsteps and cover points occupies my mind like meditation. This is the job, in its simplest form. This is relatively easy, compared to infiltration. The hard part will come when we have to tag along for the Q&A with the rebel leader. I can only imagine how he'll take five armed mercs attached at the hip to his interviewer.

Cold, heat, gunfire, torture... all these things are basically alike between missions. People, though; not so much. They are the ultimate wildcards, the unknown factors, the epitome of Murphy's Law. If something can go wrong where people are concerned, it will.

I glance around at my men, tough as hell in their snowsuits, gear, guns, and guts. Fuck Murphy. He didn't count on us.

We crunch on through the sideswiping storm, keen and keeping warm with glib conversation. Sentences pettered on and off as the wind and our searching eyes took priority, but it keeps us in good spirits. We stop at a minor clearing, loosely protected by a forest of fallen and wind- and ice-carved stone. When Nadia climbs to the top of a two-story rock to get a feel for the land, we stay below. The brief break in the storm allows us to get a clear look around, for the first time. What all of us realize is that it also opens us up to anyone with a scope and a will to kill. The rock face is steep, and not large enough to hold more than one person, so I reluctantly let Nadia go on her own. Not like she gives me any choice...

"Wonder how Yang is, right about now," muses Ceasar.

Gunnar snorts. "Warmer, no doubt." He looks up at the dark form on top of the rock, then glares our surrouondings more vigorously, as though they are purposefully hiding sharpshooters. We're all pretty tight, despite our lighthearted chatter. Nadia is painfully exposed up there.

"Maybe enjoying a cuppa with Mr. Kresh," Christmas continues the conversation.

"Or Mrs. Kresh," snickers Toll. We all laugh.

If she can hear us, Nadia is unaffected. When I look up this time, she is crouched to hold the camera in her hand steady.

"Would you hurry up?" I holler. "We have a schedule to keep."

"I want a photo of this sunset," she replies loudly, undeterred. "We won't find a better place to set up camp before nightfall. We will do it here."

I grind my teeth at her entitled tone, but I tacitly agree. Decisively, I slide an arm out of my pack and let it drop to the tundra. Some of the men start to follow suit, while Toll and Ceasar stand guard with their backs to the rock.

The rock is, I have to admit, is pretty ideal for a basecamp. It shelters us on one massive side, and cuts down the amount of area we need to watch as well as the amount of wind that can reach us. Like the well-oiled machines we are, we delegate tasks without words. Christmas sets up the tent, I start a campstove, and Gunnar spots Nadia as she climbs down the sheer rock.

There comes a sound of a boot heel on ice and Nadia crying out, then a grunt from Gunnar as he catches the falling woman. Without turning around, I smirk in Christmas' direction and wait for it...

"I can handle myself, sir!" comes Nadia's hot protest. I listen as she scrambles out of the Swede's arms with indignant noises, and then pops Gunnar on the cheek. None of us dare turn around, for fear of infuriating our client with our laughter.

She stomps past me and into the newly pitched tent. If the thing had a door, she would have slammed it.

Gunnar walks over to relieve Ceasar, so he can cook for the team. As he passes me, he mutters dreamily, "I think I'm in love."

I can't help chuckling.

As Ceasar begins to work his magic with the campstove, I walk around the entire rock, checking things out, securing the entire perimeter. It gives me time to think, and I pause to regard the setting sun. It fascinates me that even the sunset is brought to less by this cruel land, reduced from its glorious orange and red splendor to pale, anemic yellow.

I stand there with my slung gun and watch it disappear behind the mountains, into another timezone. The shadow of the craigs moves as though alive across the snow. Finally allowed a measure of peace, I cast my mind to you.

What are you doing now? Are you eating and drinking and sleeping well? Do you miss me as much as I miss you?

The darkness and the cold wind chase me back to the tent eventually, and I try to leave my heartache out in the chill. The guys and I enter the fairly spacious tent and sit around, leaned against our packs, sharing a common pan of some kind of gumbo knockoff that Ceasar cooked up. There is a divider sheet erected between Nadia's sleeping spot and ours, and if we are disturbing the princess' sleep, she doesn't deign to complain.

One day down, twenty to go. Gunnar volunteers to take the first and coldest watch, biding us a sarcastic, "Sweet dreams, ladies," as he zips the tent closed behind him. I snuggle into my thermal sleeping bag and immediately fall asleep, beat from the strenuous day of travel.

It seems like only seconds before I am dreaming of you.

We're just outside the tent, and the storm is completely gone. There is bright sunlight everywhere, amplified by the snow's shine. You glide across its surface like a ghost. You are nude, which takes me aback for a moment, but it does not feel sexual. It was how I saw you for the first time, after all.

"Hi," I say, my voice surprisingly clear.

You smile beautifically, your dark skin contrasting the white snow. "Hello," you reply. Your voice is like bells.

I smile back, but with less happiness. "I miss you."

"I miss you, too." You close the gap between us, and put a hand on my arm. "Soon." The word holds so much potential, so much promise. That word contains the rest of my life in its single syllable.

"Soon," I echo. The hand on me is the barest pressure, no more than a breeze.

When I wake up to Christmas shaking me to take shift, I am smiling. When he asks why, I just shake my head mutely.

My four hours standing on the tundra in the middle of the whipping storm flies by, as I am kept warm by the thought of you standing next to me. As the sun rises on a new day, I greet it fondly, and bid the apparition of you goodbye. I know that the next time I close my eyes, you'll be there.