Sometimes Denise and I would sleep in the car.

We weren’t supposed to, of course, but we were working twelve-hour shifts. I was not a morning person, and Denise did not always sleep well at home.

The first time she came in dragging she said, “Mom had one of her bad nights.”

I didn’t push her on it, but she eventually told me what that meant. “I’ve been staying with Mom for a few years now, saving on rent, but it helps her out, too. She says I keep her from ‘sliding back into bad habits.’

“Mom used to brew potions for herself. Potions to make herself younger and thinner, so she could fit into her old hero costume. She used to put on that costume and pose in front of the mirror for hours, totally lost in memories.

“I started making her set a timer, after the first few times it went bad. All potions are temporary, and if you suddenly grow four sizes too big while you’re wearing your indestructible hero costume… You do not want to hear a woman go through that.

“Once I realized what was happening, I used to sneak up behind her and loosen the zipper, so she wouldn’t hurt herself when the potions ran out.

“She doesn’t do stuff like that anymore, since she got back from rehab. She says she doesn’t need to, because when she sees me, I ‘remind her what she gave up the costume for.’

“But sleeping in that shop means I’m sleeping in my old childhood bedroom, a room that is literally too small for an adult, and it’s full of baby pictures and childhood knickknacks and portraits taken when I was ten years old.

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“I’m right here, a grown woman with a degree and a day job, but it looks like a shrine to a dead kid. Like I was dead to her the day I turned eleven.

“At ten years old, I loved her like she was my whole world, and I obeyed her like she was God. At eleven, I started talking back, asking questions like, ‘Why can’t I go in the mirror room,’ and ‘Why can’t I meet any of your faerie friends?’

“Grandma started introducing Mom to faeries at about that age, and she still has nightmares about things they showed her. She screams in her sleep when the nightmares get bad. And sometimes I have to crawl in bed with her to get her back to sleep.”

So, Denise and I took turns sleeping in the car. We were flying around in night and twilight, and abandoned parts of the city get so quiet, of course we fell asleep.

Denise would turn the back seats into a bed, and I would watch over her, literally watch over her while dispatch murmured in the background.

All those nights watching her sleep. Seeing the kindness in her face, the kindness she put in action, tending to children and sick people and accident victims all day long.

I was already attracted to her, but that’s when I really started to admire her, not just as this abstract idea of a superhero, but as a real woman in the real world who got shit done.

And then some nights, she would watch over me. I should not have been able to relax, but there I was, flying a hundred feet up in a hydrogen bomb, sleeping like a baby, while a thousand little emergencies murmured in the background.

Sometimes I would wake up and find her sleeping next to me. And on one of those nights, watching her snore and turn over, I realized I was falling in love. No big heroic pronouncement, just a realization that I would do whatever it took to protect her and stand in front of anything that tried to hurt her.

I never explicitly told her this, but I got to show her once or twice.