The room is humid and foggy, and the sunlight catches on the water droplets hanging in the air. Strands of my hair swirl in the water around us, weaving gently back and forth with the minute movements of our bodies. I sigh, expelling the tension of the day along with my breath, and I feel him do the same. Another deep breath, another release.

Another stolen moment. Another sanctuary of our own creation. It's the only way we get any peace--to seize it violently and not let go. A bit of a paradox, perhaps? Welcome to life in Section. No matter how many of these interludes we steal, I know he never really believes we're safe. And neither do I--not really. So we wait for disaster to hit, and we prepare to fight it fiercely.

It's sad that you have to be willing to fight for those things that mean so much, things that should never be associated with violence, like peace, and freedom, and love. But that's not only the way of Section, it's the way of the world. It's a lesson Michael learned long before he was recruited, and a lesson it took me a long time to accept.

But it's hard to remember sad truths, lying here in a bathtub together. The world outside fades away, and our reality narrows to a few square feet of porcelain and water. He relaxes back against me and my dripping arms come up to encircle him. Having him here, in my arms like this, fills me with the deepest sense of contentment and belonging I have ever known. When was the last time I truly belonged to someone?

I feel so protective of him, as he sits here, cradled by my body. It's an odd feeling--Michael is probably the last person on this earth that needs protecting, at least in a physical sense. And as an emotional protector, I'm a little late. He's already been hurt, in thousands of little ways and a few big ones. But the urge to shelter him remains.

I shift my weight slightly, rubbing my breasts against his back, and he tightens his grip around my hands to let me know the seductive gesture hasn't gone unnoticed. There's not a lot of room in here, but we don't share baths to be comfortable. It's a way of teasing ourselves. There's not enough room in here to do much of anything, so we simply lie here, wrapped up in each other, letting the perfumed water lap gently against our sensitized skin. Any moves we make have to be done on a small scale; with two of us packed in here, there isn't much room for error.

It's a situation that applies to most of our life, actually.

I look down at him, one hand still grasping my clasped hands, the other now toying lazily with my kneecap, tracing designs on it as if he could paint me with a visible symbol of his love. He's admitted to me that he used to sketch, although he hasn't in years. One more thing that Section stole from him. It's a piece of his life, one of the many that he used to keep guarded. I'm gradually being given those pieces, and I treasure them for the gifts they are.

I know how hard it is for him to let me in, even though he's a far cry from the Michael I met several years ago. The habits beaten into him during his first years in Section are not easily discarded. Those are some of the pieces he's given me--sketchy details of what was done to him, whispered to me in the pitch-black safety of night.

We don't discuss these things in the light of day.

The water's growing tepid, and I maneuver my left foot up to the hot water tap, nudging it on for a few seconds. The friction of our slick skin together triggers an erotic thrill that I know he feels too. His heads lolls back against my shoulder, and there's a hint of a breathy moan in the sigh that escapes him. His hands agitate the water near our feet, spreading the hot water throughout the tub. The delicate brushes of his hands against my legs and thighs are a little too arousing to be accidental.

I think maybe that the greatest change in Michael is that he occasionally feels safe enough to be playful. When I think back on all the time we spent training, running missions, even the time we spent together as friends, I don't think I ever saw him light-hearted. It simply wasn't a mood that he was ever allowed to indulge in.

But now he trusts me enough to let it happen. Believe it or not, he's got a gently playful side and a wicked sense of humor. Sometimes it translates into affectionate tugs on my hair, or quiet witty quips. On a few occasions, it's crept into our love-making, as I gasped from both joyous laughter and incredible pleasure.

I know that it would only take one wrong move from me to shatter the safety he feels. I'm not saying he'd stop loving me. I'm not even saying that he'd stop trusting me. He'd just hide that part of himself away again, as an instinctive and immediate defense mechanism, and it would be a long time before I could coax it out again. So I'm very careful to encourage his lighter moments.

In return, he's teaching me about love. I was very young when I came to the Section, and I knew almost nothing about love. I knew fear, and manipulation, and the need for comfort, but not love. Certainly not the kind of love we share. It was slow to develop, I'll admit. We certainly had our share of obstacles. But what I know now about love, I've learned from Michael.

I honestly had no idea how he felt about me until he let me go. Like most of the women in Section, I had a thing for Michael almost from the beginning--a combination of an adolescent crush and hero worship. His appeal is hard to resist, even though it's completely unintentional on his part. And it's not just the physical. It's the sense that there's a tender and wounded man inside that shell of his, waiting for the right woman to come along and free him, heal him. It's the stuff that schoolgirl fantasies are made of.

But I never suspected that it was true, never imagined that I would be that "right woman."

I truly was prepared to kill myself that day after the Shays mission, getting a sick kind of satisfaction from the thought that it might be Michael who discovered my shattered body. The despair that filled me had been steadily growing over the previous months. I couldn't imagine spending decades of my life working for Section. And that was if I managed to avoid getting captured or killed outright. If Michael hadn't shown up when he did, I'd be dead. I wasn't prepared to thank him for that, but I soon had plenty more to be grateful for.

He let me go. He loved me, needed me, craved me, and he let me go, fully expecting that I would never return. Yes, he saved my life, but he could have found another way that didn't involve setting me free. There's always another way. But he made that sacrifice for me, to keep me alive, in more ways than one.

The enormity of it didn't really strike me until a few months after I'd escaped. I was in one of a series of crummy apartments. The place was the size of a shoebox, but it had one advantage--a western view. So I was sitting there one day, watching a beautiful sunset, and out of nowhere, I thought about Michael. He was the reason I was seeing this sunset. But he wasn't there, and suddenly the sunset just wasn't as beautiful any more.

Then I wondered about the last time he had been free to enjoy a sunset, to sit and watch and feel the wind on his face. And it just hit me, like I'd been punched in the stomach. What he had done for me--it was incredible. And it was because he loved me. There was no other explanation possible.

It was the reason I ultimately went back with him to Section. Not because I loved him, but because he loved me. And I figured that maybe it was time someone made a sacrifice for him.

He's getting restless now, eager to move on to the next portion of the evening. He never pushes me or demands intimacy, and I'm grateful for that. But I can still tell what he's thinking. I maneuver with my toes again and open the drain. The water begins rushing out, and the loss of heat makes me shiver.

He has told me that I'm both his greatest joy and his greatest sorrow, and I understand that perfectly. We've failed each other so many times, and we will again in the future. It's unavoidable. But it's also inconsequential. Because any real type of happiness is impossible. We've learned that lesson countless times. So we take our happiness in small delights. Bath salts and scented candles. Slow, languorous love-making and passionate kisses. Secret glances and stolen moments.

He stands up and steps carefully out of the bathtub, wrapping himself in a towel. I expect him to hold out a towel for me, like he usually does, but instead he bends over and picks me up. I smile at him and start to ask what's gotten into him, but he stops my question with a kiss.

Very well. No talking, for now. No need to remember. Just the pleasure, and the warmth, and the love.

It shouldn't be enough, but it is.