My eyes wonder around the inside of the tank aimlessly. Parker is on his radio, talking to Ryder about something I care nothing about. My heart speeds up when he glances at me and smiles briefly. It's a smile of reassurance meant to comfort me. There's a thin line of sweat lining his forehead and I study him. Why do I feel like I'm not the one who needs reassurance?

    Before he had me load up into the tank, I did, in fact, go back to the asylum. The orange girl was nowhere to be seen and I didn't even try really looking for her. I had an epiphany in the padded room when I saw it again for the last time. I realized that she was still in one of those things, still trapped like I was.

I wondered what the point of me showing my success was. Why would I find her and show off my pretty uniform when she was just going to go get tortured like I used to right after I saw her? It would be horrible and belittling, and the fact that I even wanted to do such a thing makes me sick.

What type of person have I become?

    So I sat in the middle of that padded cell with Parker watching me silently from the door, and I looked at the white walls around me. Those walls had held so many of my secrets, so much of my misery. I guess I wanted to see if they would recognize the person I am now. Would the walls notice the way there's a bounce in my step? Would they be proud of the way Parker lights up my face with a bright smile? And then I remind myself that they're walls. They wouldn't be able to tell me apart for a dog.

    "What are you thinking about?" Parker asks me softly now. I blink back to reality and offer him a smile.

    "Walls."

    "Shall I ask why or just leave you to think about them?" He questions with amusement lacing his voice. I never fail to amuse him, do I? I slide on the metal bench of the tank so that I'm closer to him. His small smile turns into a grin and my hip presses to his. I marvel at his muscles as he reaches his arm back and rests it behind my shoulders.

    "Well I was just thinking about how they've seen so much of me and yet they don't even know who I am." I explain and he raises a curious eyebrow.

    "They're inanimate objects, love." He says tenderly like I'm crazy yet he loves me anyway. I laugh and he exhales at the sound. I've come to realize that he has an extreme fondness for my laughter.

    "I know that, Parker." I roll my eyes and he spontaneously presses a kiss to my temple. "I'm just thinking about how sad it is that we become so familiar with things that don't even have the heart to reciprocate the feeling. We can go through our wholes lives loving a blanket or a stuffed animal or even a piece of clothing, yet that thing will never love us back. Maybe it's not sad. Maybe it's just ironic." He looks at me for a second as if he has to process my words and then he shakes his head at me.

    "You are astonishing – Did you know that – absolutely astonishing." He muses, I look up at him.

I feel like a big, mushy pile of emotions at this point.

    "And you're insane," I smile, leaning into him with my head on his chest, "absolutely insane." He reaches down and interlocks our fingers, causing my eyes to look at our conjoined hands.

We fit perfectly. On the outside, we may seem completely different. I mean, he's the general of Division 64, a general of the Prominence. And then there's me, a Prominence outcast, a freak meant not to live outside of a government asylum. Anyone with a brain would think we'd be sworn enemies, yet here we are holding hands and heading off to a battle against the Flesh Feeders.

"If anything happens out there today, Parker-"

"We are going to acquire a house on the beach." He interrupts and I blink. Um...what? "I figure that since we are evidently going to live together after this battle, we should live by an area that you have an apparent fondness of."

"What about your parents? Don't you want to live with your family?" I choke out.

"We can visit them. I reckon you are as close to family as they are." He gives me a soft smile and my heart swells bigger than my ribs can handle. My ribs are breaking, and my insides are being pushed aside by the enormity of my throbbing organ. If I thought I was incomplete in any way, Parker just gave me the last piece to my unsolved puzzle. I could die right now and be happy.

"Parker." I say with the tears back in my eyes.

He seems alarmed for a second, but when he realizes that they're happy tears and not sad tears, he smiles proudly. I lean forward and gently brush my lips to his, unable to express my feelings through words. He kisses me back, earning a content sigh from me, before he pulls back and tucks a stand of my long hair behind my ear. I go back to resting my head against his chest and listen to the loud noises the tank makes.

"I'm serious though, Parker, if anything happens out there, I want you to know that I-I..." I trail off, suddenly losing my nerve. It's taken me this long to realize the depth of what I feel for him. I try to think of a world without him and come up blank because there is no world without Parker. At least not for me there isn't.

"I love you, too." He whispers against my hair.

And my whole world stops.

It completely stops spinning and stands in place. Everything is still. My heartbeat is so loud that it sounds like the constant screaming I used to endure every day in the asylum. My pulse is so fast it feels like the pitter-patter of the rain against the compound roof on a stormy night. The tears in my eyes are so thick that they remind me of the walls of my padded cell I was forced to sleep in. And his voice was so raw, so heartbreakingly raw when he said those three monumental words to me, that I sniff the tears away before I all-out sob.

"You do?" I ask, my voice cracking into millions of tiny pieces.

He laughs. "Of course I do. How that manages to surprise you, love, puzzles me. It really does. I love you. I always have and I will never stop. Not even after I'm long gone from this world." I wipe the tears from my eyes swiftly and smile at him.

"Oh, Parker, I love you, too." I smile and he blinks at me like he didn't think I was actually going to say it. "I love you so much that it hurts. I can feel this bodily ache when I think of how much I love you because you don't just have my heart, you have my everything. You are my everything."

I swallow down the sob that threatens to drown me. I can feel the tears rising in my throat but I won't let them out. This is a happy moment. The timing of it sucks, but it's a happy moment. I wouldn't want to ruin it with me blubbering like a baby. He tugs at my hand, pulling my body closer to him, and he kisses me again. I can feel everything within this single kiss. I can feel his desperation for this moment to never end, his dread for what's to come, and his unfathomable love for me. Or maybe that's my own emotions reflecting back from him.

Maybe I taste my own emotions on his lips.

"Alright enough of whatever lovey-dovey shit you guys are doing." Josh's voice interrupts us from the radio and Parker pulls away with a sigh.

"What, Corporal?" Parker snaps into the speaker, rubbing small circles on the back of my palm with his thumb. I giggle at his tone. He is not happy that someone is interfering with his alone time with me.

"We're nearing our destination." Josh explains unapologetically. "I'm assuming you'll want lightning chick out of that tank so she can blow some shit up, and I'm betting you're going to want to be out of the tank as well. In precisely four minutes, we'll all be close enough to get out. After that, it's game time, bitches."

I laugh aloud to that.

"Copy that. We shall be out in four." Parker says before setting the radio back down and grabbing my face with both hands. I laugh again as he wastes no time to kiss me. "There is no purpose in speaking when I enjoy the company of your lips so much more." He murmurs against my mouth.

"Are you telling me that you like kissing me more than you like listening to me talk?" I scoff and break away from the kiss, but he doesn't let me get very far.

He presses his lips back to mine and I melt. It's not a chaste kiss or a sweet kiss. It's a do-or-die kiss. We're about to get into some serious battle action that's unpredictable, so it's now or never. I kiss him back, barely able to counter his fierce passion. It's consuming, almost overwhelming.

The radio beeps.

I practically whine when Parker pulls away. This is it. We're going to go out there, rush into a Flesh Feeder camp, and attempt to win a battle that we start. Why not? We've got Hawkins on our side, so what's there to be afraid of? I supposed death could answer that question, but death has never scared me before. Why is this battle different? I've faced certain death my whole life. I turn to Parker with a sad smile and press my lips lightly to his.

The difference is that this time I have something to lose.