~Author Note: I don't work with romance as a genre often. What happens is I get plot bunnies for romance stories, and I tend to ignore them until they go away. I've sat on this one for over a month before I finally sat down and wrote it. Also, I don't own Genrex, pretty sure no one wishes I did.~

Pain... nothing Master had put me through during training could ever have compared to the pain of thousands of volts of electricity passing through me. Gods, what had possessed me to mindlessly risk my life for this woman's happiness, let alone for something that didn't sound like it would even work? Why in the hells... I don't know why I questioned it, I know why I hadn't even hesitated. The revelation had come when I'd woke to her sobs and the smell of her perfume... the delicate, flowery sakura fragrance reminded me of the garden Master tended on his island, and how I'd never felt more at home than I did in that garden with the air full of those silken pink petals. Nothing had ever been harder for my mind to come to terms with than the fact my heart didn't hurt because it'd been shocked into stopping, but because every tear she shed seemed to rip it out of my chest.

I love her. Every moment we had like this, her head on my chest and my arms around her, managed to make that thought a little easier to manage. She'd fallen asleep if her deep, even breathing was anything to go by, not that I minded her insistence that I made a good pillow. It was times like this that brought a true smile to my face, even if we both knew it wouldn't last. An E.V.O. would attack, someone (even me or the boy occasionally) would get hurt and she would work herself into the ground to make them better, only to find herself in my arms again without any recollection of falling asleep when that all-too-familiar alarm disturbed our peace again.

Her face was always red when she woke up that way, those beautiful green eyes of hers managing to be full of happiness, worry and something I wasn't sure I could identify all at once. I'd just smile at her and let her do her job, then slip out of her office to go do mine to a couple of glances, all from people who thought they knew things they didn't have a clue about. I could feel myself wince when my communicator signaled an incoming, but I raised a hand to press the button to answer it anyways. "Six." I don't know if it was the motion or my voice that disturbed her, but she opened her eyes to look at me.

"The last of them are cleaned up." It was the current commander on the field of an outbreak in Manhattan. "Boss ordered everyone from last shift to twelve down. Tell Holiday, she's not responding. Probably passed out on an examining table." The communicator silenced again after a slight click that signaled a broken connection. She'd already started to get out of my lap, looking ready to get back to work she didn't know there wasn't more of.

"Come on," I said as I stretched, joints cracking in a painful reminder that I was probably a little old to be sleeping in office chairs in between sessions beating down E.V.O.'s. "You need real sleep."

"I have a job to do."

I sighed at her, taking my sunglasses off to rub my eyes. "You don't. It's cleaned up, everyone from last shift has been ordered to take twelve. I'm prepared to carry you out of this medical bay if you refuse to walk." She opened her mouth like she intended to protest, so on my way out of the chair I scooped her over my shoulder with a hand on her lower back to keep her there as my feet moved towards the door. I can't help but smile as she tries her best to elbow me in the back, get her knees into my ribs and even a couple of attempts to put her foot to my groin, all futile in her exhausted state.

"Put me down!" Even her voice has lost its edge, replaced by the sort of hysterical giggle she seemed to have when she didn't sleep well. No one who saw us laughed. Some of the soldiers I passed as I made my way to her room looked dead on their feet - others from the last shift, the one's that'd just come off the last 16 hour rotation - and a few had even found parts of the hallway to call bed. They would be allowed to sleep there until the edge was taken off, then they would be forced to return to their barracks where they'd all collapse into their cots like they were the most comfortable things they'd ever lain on. "You smell like a soldier..."

I managed to fight the urge to smile. Only she would find a way to simplify stale sweat, old blood and the reek of gunpowder, maybe the sharp alcohol of antiseptic from the wound on my back, into something that almost sounded appealing. I didn't bother putting her down outside her door, just kept walking and hoisted her off my shoulder and into her bed. She took hold of my jacket and shirt then, her eyes open enough to see little slits of green. "Stay."

That one word, or maybe the fact that she was quickly falling back to sleep with a deathgrip on my shirt, broke any resolve I'd tried to fool myself into thinking I had to leave for my own room. Instead I slid into bed and felt her hands relax a bit, took my sunglasses off and dropped them on the nearest flat surface, pulling her body close enough to mine that I could feel her heart in her chest.

"Six?" I opened my eyes enough to see a blurry image of her close enough that her breath fanned my face as she breathed. My heart nearly broke when she closed even that small distance, lips brushing mine in the briefest of feather light kisses. "Thanks for not dying." We were both still laughing when sleep overtook us again.