Karu had lied to me. We weren't eating breakfast together at all. Neither of us left the room until almost noon, and when we finally did, both of us were walking funny.

She was...I had no other way of putting it...simply drop-dead gorgeous. I'd always thought she was beautiful, but now, I just couldn't take my eyes off her. She seemed to glow, almost, not a single imperfection in her skin, not a hair out of place, she was like a goddess. Her eyes were more dazzling than the sun, deeper than the ocean.

"You are all smiley this morning," she said as we sat outside a little cafe, waiting on food. Both of us were starving.

"It's a beautiful morning," I said.

"You haven't seen a single thing about this morning. You are staring only at me."

"Like I said, it's a beautiful morning."

She rolled her eyes and cracked a cloth napkin at me like a whip. But she also smiled and blushed.

"Karu, do you like me?" The words just kind of fell out of my mouth.

"Are you the world's most oblivious man?"

"I meant...like, like me."

She flushed further and avoided my gaze, a small smile still frozen on her. "Do you think I do things such as we did last night with those I do not like?"

"Yeah. I mean, no. I mean...that's not what I'm asking."

"Well, be direct and ask what you intend then."

She was wearing jeans and a tee shirt, and it was the cutest outfit I'd ever seen, no matter how plain it was.

"I meant...like, you know. LIKE. Like."

"If I knew, I wouldn't force you to clarify. I understand you are lacking blood in the brain, and for that I take responsibility and apologize, but do try to focus. I would like it if any man I were with could both converse and...in the same day."

"Like as in...like, um. Like when two people like each other very much. You know what I mean?"

She rolled her eyes and played with the tip of her bangs hanging in front of her eyes. "Relationships are complicated, Ashton, and I, admittedly, have not been in one with any degree of seriousness or success. I will try to express my emotions, but only insofar as you are able to discuss them without sounding like a middle-school ogre."

"Right." I took a deep breath. "Then I wanted to ask…" I trailed off. A smiling waitress came up with our food. Ravenous though I was, I hated her more than anyone right now.

I hated her a little less once I took a bite of my chicken salad and discovered how yummy it was, but only a little less.

I found it hard to even form the question, much less ask it. Aside from the obvious trouble of my brain not being all the way on, what little of it was there kept getting lost in the soft curve in her cheek, the gentle fullness in her lips, the deft motions of the fork in her strong hands.

"Uhm," she said. "I would appreciate it if you could stare...slightly less. It makes eating slightly unnerving."

"Sorry," I said, and forced myself to focus on my food for a bit.

I felt like such a chickenshit. Not Tem levels of ineptitude, but certainly getting up there. Why couldn't I just say what I was feeling?

I mean, I knew why. It was because there was this horrifying, evil word in the English language which should never have existed. The thought of two letters had never before dominated so much of my entire being. Their very being hung over the two of us like a funeral shroud.

Or...over me, I guess. Karu ate her salad with aplomb. I realized I was staring again and tried to eat more. It was hard, my throat kept closing up on me.

"Karu, hypothetically," I said. She looked up at me, and I was paralyzed by those green eyes.

She waited for a moment. "...yes?"

"Ah, sorry. Never mind."

"You are being more odd than usual, Ashton."

"Well...it's been a very unexpected couple of days for me."

"For me as well," she said laughing. "Imagine my surprise, not just in running into you, but also in finding you so entrenched in such success? I had worried, we all had, that you would have trouble reintegrating into society. For all the cruelty of the wilderness, man's jungle is crueler still."

She looked up towards the midday sun, and the light streaming down bathed her in radiance. "So it was such a relief to find you not simply surviving but thriving." She looked back at me. "A woman could really fall for a man such as that, you know?" she winked at me.

"Ah, r-really! I had...no idea."

"I believe I gave you some indication last night?" She pretended to look thoughtful, running a finger over her soft lips, but there was more mischief than contemplation on her face.

She was giving me all the signs. She'd been doing so since we ran into each other in the Raven's Nest. All I needed to do was ask, I knew it. Why was this so hard? I felt like I'd rather square off against a thousand tanks than force this one damn question out.

"Karuwithwillyougooutme?" I almost shouted. People around us looked at me in alarm.

"What?"

"Sorry." I chugged half a glass of water, and then choked. She watched with concern while I coughed, trying to avoid the food.

"Are you unwell? You are...very peculiar."

Worry was creeping onto her face. I was scaring her off, I knew it.

"Perhaps we should go back to the hotel and you can rest?"

No, Karu. Don't suggest that. If I don't get these words out, I'll never be able to. I won't be able to look you in the eye like a man.

"No. Sorry. I need to go to the bathroom," I said, after I'd already stood. Having no idea what I was doing, I headed indoors.

I banged my head against the wall next to the mirror. Why. Was. I. Being. So. Stupid.

"Come on!" I shouted at my reflection. That guy in there looked suave and dapper, wearing a suit, a sharply cut Exhuman. Cool, confident.

The guy in here, however, was a train wreck. What the heck could Karu be thinking now? She'd been watching me fall all over myself all morning, even commented a few times I was acting weird, and now she just wanted the meal to be over and for me to go lay down so she could get away from it all.

After last night had gone so well, too. I couldn't believe I was fumbling at the end zone. I took a deep breath and noticed I had a red spot on my forehead from the wall.

Argh, you goddamn idiot! She's gonna think I fell in or something. Why couldn't I just get the words out.

I had an idea. A foolproof idea, which was very necessary, because right now, I was a huge fool. I would write down what I was thinking, having all the time I needed to get my thoughts out, clearly, exactly perfectly, and then give it to her. It was unbeatable. Then I'd stop looking like such an idiot, and she'd say yes, like she was clearly hinting that she would.

I checked my pockets. No pen nor paper anywhere. A doomed plan, just like all of my plans. I couldn't believe I'd overlooked such a critical detail.

What else was I overlooking? I hyperventilated as I looked at myself in the mirror again. Did I really look okay? Not compared to her, I didn't. She was basically a supermodel, and I was...a high schooler in a suit. And the hints I thought she'd been dropping? She was always friendly and flirty with me...but what if, I realized with a horrified thought...what if she was just always friendly and flirty?

I tried to piece together moments from yesterday. Her hand brushing on Tower's as they both reached for the pitcher. Flashing smiles at Jack. Even holding Tem and telling her she was adorable after a few drinks. Was I just deluding myself?

There was a knock on the door. I almost jumped out of my suit.

"Ashton? Are you alright? You have been in there for a while now. There are...several impatient gentlemen out here, from the looks of it."

"I'm...Karu? I'm fine, Karu, I'm sorry."

"Was there something amiss with the food?"

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I opened the door. Karu was standing there looking awkward and embarrassed, and a couple guys looking annoyed. Great, now I'd just put her through that as well. One of them men pushed past her and me, shutting the door into me and forcing me into Karu and the tiny hallway.

I was basically pinning Karu against the wall now, and she was blushing and blinking a lot, her eyes darting between my hands on her and the men around.

"S-sorry, Karu," I said, falling off of her.

"It is understandable. You...didn't wash your hands?"

"I didn't...I mean...I did, earlier." Now I was lying to her too.

We walked back to the table in silence. She was fretting now, and the good mood of the morning was long expired, killing the one good thing I had going for me. We finished in silence, avoiding eye contact and conversation. She had to pay, as usual, because I still had no money for anything.

"Thanks," I mumbled, as we got up.

"Have...you ever been around D.C.?" she asked. "Would you enjoy a walk? Or are you still feeling unwell?"

"I've never been," I said.

"I have only visited as a tourist briefly, I confess, though business takes me here more often than I would like. If you have nothing else to do, would you act as my escort for the day?"

"Sure...I mean, I'd love to."

She attached herself to my arm, which was both much more comfortable, and much squishier without her in armor, and we made our way towards the national mall.

It felt like there were things to see everywhere, and moving from one to the next and discussing what we saw kept the mood from spiraling back into awkward territory. We walked past the Korean War memorial and said hi to Lincoln. Karu was silent as we slowly glided past the rows of names on the Vietnam War memorial, and spoke quietly at the foot of the abstract statue, etched with faces in twisted torment, memorializing the victims of the Sino war. No names were listed, there were too many to count.

Past that...the memorial to the victims of Exhuman attacks. No names here either, or else more would be added every month. It was an another abstract piece, more a building than a statue, glossy pieces of jagged stone which evoked memories of the terrapath, for me, dozens of feet tall. It resembled a shrine you could walk in and under. Underneath the skyward-reaching arms of the monument, in the center, an abstract statue of a person, slightly larger than life-sized. He, or she, was a very famous statue, named 'The Human', and supposedly looked different to every person who saw it, reflecting the faces of every man, woman, and child taken by Exhumanity.

When I looked at it, I saw only a man-shaped husk of rock. Something about the shadows where its eyes should have been reminded me of death, though. The soldiers I'd killed, the battered face of the terrapath.

I shivered despite the warmth of the day. Maybe the statue did remind me of people taken by Exhumans. Karu was kneeling next to it, whispering words silently. I waited several minutes in its uncomfortable presence while she finished. When she rose again, I saw tears in her eyes, but she pretended to smile and quickly led us onward.

The White House, Washington Monument, we were skipping most of the museums, but after perusing a map briefly, Karu had us cut across the mall for one specific attraction to which she was drawn.

Of course, the air and space museum. You could take Karu out of the heavens, but couldn't take heaven out of Karu.

She talked excitedly as we moved from exhibit to exhibit, full of trivia about almost every plane, rocket, and display we saw. I'd never seen this side of Karu before, but I loved it.

As we wandered the halls and discussed the displays, I began to wonder if I even needed to ask her, if it was worth it to as a stupid question and maybe ruin everything, when we already had all of this.

"Of course, early prototypes of the airborne jetpacks were attempted with stealth technology, but when it became obvious that evasion more than elusion was a more capable defense, they sacrificed that to improve performance and reduce weight instead. Which is something I appreciate. My model is a lot newer than these, of course," she said.

We stood in front of a case showing the entire history of the personal jetpack, reaching all the way back to sci-fi cartoons of the 1960s and the earliest functioning models from the early twenty-first century. How 'jumptroopers' had gradually replaced paratroopers, and eventually stole not just their role on the battlefield as backline infiltrators and saboteurs, but also eventually their nomenclature as well.

"I had no idea you were such a nerd, Karu," I laughed.

"I am no such thing," she pouted. "I merely find human flight fascinating."

"We've been doing it for hundreds of years. Most people don't think it's that spectacular anymore."

"Well, I do." She pouted even harder. "I recall the first time I flew, I was so terrified," she laughed. "My synaptic uplink...that is to say, the part of the suit controlled by my mind...I was so scared, I was overcompensating for everything so badly. I was jerking and stopping so hard, I made myself black out, and the pack had to disembark me on autopilot."

"It's hard to think of you as anything but perfect at flying," I said.

"I have had a lot of practice since then, but I would never call myself perfect. Perfectly capable, perhaps. But there is ever room to improve. Especially when faced with foes such as Exhumans, complacency equals death."

She looked at me sideways. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No, sorry," I said. Her words had hit me in a strange place. Complacency equals death. I did need to ask her after all.

"Karu?" I asked.

"Hmm?"

"I need to ask you something."

"This again?" she said, her expression going dark, but she didn't leave or stop me.

"Yes. I um. I wanted to know...if...me...if we, I mean...after last night, I just assumed."

She waited patiently while I stumbled. The more I talked, the more unsure I was of what I was saying.

"I was...I wondered...what exactly, um, am I. To you."

"You are asking about the exact nature of our relationship?" she asked, her ears slightly red as people stared at us as they walked past.

"Yes. That."

"Well." She ran a hand through her hair and pushed her mane behind her ear. "I don't know."

"What?"

"I said I don't know!" she shouted, before hushing herself. "I told you just recently, I do not have experience in these kinds of things either, Ashton. Just because I am older and more...more experienced in some ways, does not mean I know everything about how to put together a relationship."

"But I don't know what I'm doing at all!"

"And you assume that I do?"

"You act like you do."

"The way I act is merely the way I feel like acting, Ashton. I spend time with you because I want to. I seek out your company because I find it comfortable and enjoyable, and I...and I…" she looked around at the large number of curious onlookers. "...I seek out your company because I find it comfortable and enjoyable."

She was bright red, but showed no signs of backing down on that account.

"Well...yeah, me too! But I don't think it's that hard of a question for you to tell me where I sit, you know?"

"Not that hard of a question? Ashton, you have choked on the asking of this question all day. What makes you think it is so simple to answer?"

"I know my answer!"

"Then pray tell, what is it?" she said, holding her chest slightly.

"I--"

Shit.

"I...like you, of course!"

"Well if that is all, I like you too then."

We stared at each other, both of us beet red. Why was I getting the same rush, the same excited dread I carried with me when she and I locked in battle.

"That's not a real answer!" I burst out.

"It was the answer you delivered! If there is a problem with it, re-examine your own statements first."

"Um, excuse me. Could you two please keep your voices down? You are disrupting the other patrons." A woman in a dress and a blazer wearing a museum badge was standing there, looking half apologetic, half annoyed.

"Let us just peruse the museum," Karu said with a sigh.

I agreed. I didn't want to take this from her, not when she'd been having such a nice time just a few minutes ago.

"I just think," I said, unable to keep it in for more than one room, as Karu sighed in defeat "I would like it if...if I could ask you out."

"Look around, you fool," she said without even a glance at me. "Where do you suppose we are?"

"Sorry. I'll...I'll save it for later."

She looked at me sideways, and then to my surprise, touched my chin and gave me a gentle kiss.

"This is a date, you imbecile. We've been going out whether you asked formally or not."

"Oh." My heart pounded. I felt like my smile might grow so large it fell off my face.

"Please show some restraint," she said, smiling despite herself, and beginning to blush again.

"You have no idea the amount of restraint I'm showing," I said. "I want to run outside and scream at the top of my lungs."

"In...a good way?" she asked concerned.

"In the best possible way."

"Well, hurry up and do that if you must," she said stroking my hand with hers. "But do come back so I can spend the rest of the museum with you. I am having a wonderful time. A wonderful date."

Her words were like an arrow straight through my heart. I couldn't stop smiling. I wanted to dance. I didn't even know how to dance. I didn't care. They should take down all these exhibits of airplanes and I would teach them how man could really fly.

Abruptly, my pocket vibrated. Unsure of what it could possibly be, I reached inside and pulled out the comms I'd put there yesterday. My stomach did a nosedive as it flipped from elation to dread.

"Yes? This is Chariot?"

"Chariot, please report back to the Raven's Nest as soon as possible. There has been an event. You will be expected. We are leaving in forty minutes."

Cosette's voice cut off abruptly, leaving me holding a dead black circle again. I looked at Karu.

"Let's go," she said. "It's time to work."

"The date," I said, stupidly.

"It can wait." She began doing arm stretches across her chest as she walked briskly towards the exit. "People need our help."

I felt a surge of emotions pass through me as I sprinted to catch up. My feelings about Karu and those about the date, and those about it ending, and those about an Exhuman event all tumbled around inside me. I hoped Karu would come with us. I hope she stayed and remained safe. Would she be watching? Did I want her watching? What if something happened to both of us? Or worse, one of us? How was that worse? What if I didn't hold my own out there, would she still be interested in me?

Suddenly she stopped and grabbed me by the shoulders, staring me in the eyes as serious as I had ever seen her.

"Ashton, you're panicking. Gain control of your breathing and your mind. You and I cannot date if you are incapable of functioning normally while in a relationship with me, is that clear?"

I nodded mutely.

"There will be a bad guy. We will go, and together, kick his ass, as we have ever done. I will protect you and you will protect me, and when it is over, I will make love to you until neither of us can move. Is that clear?"

I nodded mutely, and also red.

"Then keep your concerns for once you have taken the field. Pretend it is a football game. We will be fine. Now let's go."

I nodded one more time and we ran off, full-speed towards the black tower and whatever Exhuman awaited us.