Fast asleep in Ken’s arms, I feel as if nothing can touch me. I have never been as safe as this. Not ever, in my entire life have I felt so completely secure and utterly protected. He has touched me in ways no man has, he’s made orgasm something damn near transcendent. For the first time in a long time, I don’t feel damaged, or broken, or scarred. I feel complete.

Later on, I’ll learn that it was 02:39 when the alarms went off. In deep sleep, it’s a detail I miss completely. All I know is that it’s loud and the arms which have been cradling me all night suddenly aren’t there anymore.

Are we under attack?

Ken is up and out of the CHU in a second, with only a hasty “STAY” thundered at me. How he managed to get clothes and boots on that fast, I have no idea. It’s as if he magicked them on before I could properly wake up.

I know better than to leave the room, but I get up and get dressed too, a lot slower than he did, but I want to be prepared in case we have to move. Bases like this one are vulnerable. There are jihadi forces spread across the country, some loyal to Isil, others only to their respective warlords. It’s impossible to truly explain how fractured this country is. It’s not just this war which has made things unpleasant. There are hatreds here which go back centuries, long before the empires which ripped this land apart were even dreamt of, let alone founded.

My impression of the efforts to tame this place is that they are futile. Not because peace is impossible, but because the tapestry of this place is more complex than we can handle. There’s nuance and depth. To understand even one village, you would have to spend a good year hearing the stories, learning brothers of brothers, mothers of mothers.

I think about all of this as I sit on the bed and wait to find out what’s happening. There could be a mortar incoming at this very moment. I’d never know it hit, unless it hit just far enough away to rip through the wall of this thing and turn the alloy into shards which burst through the human body like a thousand tiny hot knives. Best not to think about it really, but hard not to.

Sitting and waiting to die, hoping I won’t, I’m at peace. Ken is out there. I don’t know what he’s doing, but the anxiety which would usually be making me a nervous wreck just isn’t there. He’ll take care of me. I mean, as far as he can, even he can’t do anything about an incoming shell.

I walk to the door and open it a fraction, just so I can see what’s going on. The base is in serious motion, armored vehicles are being deployed, but I don’t hear gun fire, which means the base itself isn’t being assaulted. The fighting must be happening somewhere else. Somewhere that matters.

I close the door and go back to my bed. It’s cool and neat because it hasn’t been laid in yet tonight. I abandoned it for Ken’s arms and I don’t regret it for a second.

What if he doesn’t come back?

The question forces itself into my mind. What if he doesn’t? He might not. War takes the good and the brave and the talented. It does not discriminate in its swathes of destruction. Even the most agile fighters can be caught off-balance. Even the stealthiest spies can be exposed.

All I can do is wait and hope. Hope that he comes back safe. Hope that the fighting stays distant. Hope that we survive another day. I lie there looking at the ceiling, not awake, not asleep, just floating in that place insomniacs know all too well.

The sun is up when he returns. He smells. It’s a stench of human misery and burning flesh. It’s the sort of scent you don’t get off your clothes. You throw them the hell away.

I stay still, pretend to be asleep as he tramps to the shower. I hear the water go on, and his clothes hit the ground. If this was anywhere else in the world, any other time, I’d try to go and join him, but the smell he brought with him is pervading the CHU ever more thickly, curling into my nasal passages, making me want to vomit. I can’t stay in here with that smell. I push off the bed and throw open the door, gasping for fresh air as I stand back against the CHU. There are men and women everywhere, going about their business with grim, tired faces.

From here, I can see that some of the vehicles have taken damage. Charred, twisted metal has been towed back to the FOB. Jesus. The place is a hive of activity. I’d love to go and get a closer look, but I’m not really supposed to be out here at all, and I can see enough to get a sense of the atmosphere anyway. It’s tense, but professional. These men and women work with the ferocity and alacrity of fire ants, mending what needs to be mended, tending to those that need it. It’s really impressive to watch, training turning to effective action which makes the worst conditions in the world not just survivable, but winnable.

“What are you doing out here?” Ken’s gruff tones interrupt my thoughts.

“Breathing,” I answer as I turn around to see him standing in the doorway, a white towel around his waist. “Are you okay?”

I don’t know if I’m in trouble, and I don’t care. I just want to know that he’s alright.

“I’m fine. Thought I told you to stay inside,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest and looking down at me with that patchwork stare of his.

“I.. the smell…”

“Yeah, sorry,” he says. “I got rid of most of it.”

You don’t really get rid of it, not right away anyway. It’s pervading the camp, light on the breeze, but present. Indescribably here.

“Did anyone get hurt?” I ask the question maybe more bluntly than I need to. There’s no good way to ask it, and Ken’s never given me the feeling I need to mince words with him.

“Couple wounded on our side. Nothing life ending.”

“And on theirs?”

“They’re still counting. I’ll leave this door open, but come inside.”

He ushers me back indoors and I go. This is the reality of life out here. At any minute of the day or night, you can be ripped from your life and sent to end someone else’s. I feel guilty for being relieved that he is okay, and that all “our side” are okay, while out there, not so far away, there are a lot of people who are very much not okay at all.

Before my stint in the hospital, I would never have been able to handle this. It took away so many things, but it gave me one or two things too - like an understanding of what it truly means to have an enemy, a deep knowing that there are people in the world who will do unspeakable harm. Not in aid of a goal, necessarily, but just because they can.

It’s a fine line between necessary violence and outright sadism, and in the end it is simply a matter of character. Weak men take pleasure in hurting others, they give in to the beast inside which bays for blood, and the demon which laughs at cruelty. Strong men can do necessary violence without glee. They do it because it is necessary, and they are even more frightening in some ways than the sadists, because their actions are calculated, clear, and devastatingly effective.

“I’m sorry you had to go do that.”

He gives me a curious little smile. “It’s my job,” he says. “Someone had to do it, and seeing as I’m more or less on loan out here, I’m happy to do what I can to increase safety.”

“You’re not with your unit?”

Stupid question really. I would have noticed a special forces unit here for sure. They carry themselves differently, for better and for worse. Ken is something of a sore thumb in some ways.

“No,” he says. “I’m out here doing some solo reconnaissance, with backup from these guys. Once I achieve that goal, I’m due leave.”

Leave. So he’ll be gone. I’ll miss him. The thought of him not being around is already like a knife to the guts, but I try not to dwell on that. We have however long we have together and that will just have to be enough. If there’s one thing life has taught me, it’s that nothing is forever.

“When you came for me in the hospital, you weren’t special forces then, were you?”

“I was between enlistments.”

That makes sense. Men like him are rare and valuable to the military. It’s not uncommon for them to take breaks between enlistments, or even to think that they’re done, only to return. It’s a calling.

“I’m really lucky you were,” I say softly. If not for him… that doesn’t bear thinking about either. My thoughts are like a minefield of things better not confronted. Sometimes it’s hard to think at all with all the things I can’t think about.

“We never talked about what happened there,” he says, gently probing. “How you came to be there…”

I guess I owe him some answers. It’s literally the least I can give him.

“I was poking my nose in where I wasn’t wanted,” I say with a rueful ghost of what might be a smile. “I’d heard that there were remnants of certain groups continuing the work of their forefathers in South America. I thought maybe I should investigate. I got some funding from an indie news network and I went out there.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah, they only paid me enough to go alone. Said if I found anything, they’d up the budget for the story. But that never happened obviously, because I got caught the first week I was down there. I had managed to sneak up through the hospital, find the wings that obviously weren’t treatment wings.” I talk quickly and blankly, trying desperately not to recall the emotion associated with the incident. “I thought they would maybe beat me up and throw me out, or worst case scenario, kill me. But they managed to find a worse option.”

“A lot of strings were pulled to get you out of there,” he says. “You must be connected in some pretty high places.”

“I have no connections,” I say, shaking my head. “I guess I just got lucky.”

“You never found out who got you out? I thought…”

Shit. He’s asking a lot of specific questions now. I force myself to stay as calm as possible, though it’s fucking hard.

“What?”

“I thought it was your family who had tracked you down,” he says with a slight frown.

“I was an only child to a single mother, and my mother died while I was in there,” I say, trying not to let the sadness overwhelm me. “When I got back ‘home’ I didn’t have anyone, or anything. I was missing, presumed dead. So they cleared out my apartment and sold my stuff. My friends had moved on. Scared a shit out of a couple of them though.”

“Oh yeah?” The corner of his lip twists with amusement.

“Turns out, my being dead was real convenient for my boyfriend and best friend. They were so heartbroken about it all that by the time I saw them again, they were together.”

“Ouch,” Ken grimaces.

“And they had a one month old baby.”

“Oh god.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

“Yeah, the guy was so sad about me he knocked her up a couple months after I was gone. So, no. There wasn’t anyone in my personal life looking for me, that’s for sure. Actually, after a few weeks of being back, I realized…” I hesitate for a second. “I realized that life had gone on without me. So I got my press credentials, and I headed out here.”

“Shit,” he says, reaching for me and pulling me into a hug against his bare upper body. He’s rippling with hard won muscles as I curl into his protective embrace.

This man has been up all night fighting. He came home wearing the scent of the dead. And yet he’s comforting me right now. I don’t know whether to be touched by that, or to feel like an asshole for making this all about me. Both, really.

“It’s okay,” I mumble into his chest. “I’m safe now.”

“Goddamn right you are,” he says, squeezing me tight. “Did you get any sleep when I was gone?”

“A bit.”

“So none,” he says. “Come on.”

He lays back on the bed, clad in nothing but the towel and I curl up into him. The door stands slightly ajar, kept open with a boot to allow the dusty breeze to pass into the CHU. It’s already warm and it’s going to get hotter, but I close my eyes and I press my face against his body, and I take what I can get for this moment, right now.