I saw love, when I looked at her.

It was everywhere, in everything she did. It was in the way she tried to sew the bear's ear back on for nights after it ripped, leaving it dangling sadly from a couple threads, using anything she found looking even remotely string-like. It was in the way she wrote in that notebook religiously each night, no matter what happened to her during the day, as though she might lose her purpose. It was in the way she slept, one arm around her M16 and the other around that damn bear. Even in her eyes, every time she came across a cadaver, especially if it was young.

The first night I saw her she cried, and I couldn't do it. How was I to interrupt someone in such raw pain? Not that night, not after everything they –we had put her through. So I set my gun down and allowed myself to watch her from the shadows, between the leaves and the branches and the hope she let go of every time a fresh tear rolled down her cheek.

I watched her cry for thirty minutes straight, and all the while I wanted to go down there and say something. Of course I had nothing to say. What do you say to the person you're supposed to kill? Never saw a hallmark card for that.

She fell asleep hugging that bear of hers and whispering something over and over again, which I made out to be "I'm sorry, Sammy," after a couple of minutes. I didn't know who Sammy was, but that night, instead of picking up my gun and pointing it between her eyes, I prayed for Sammy and for the girl with the stuffed bear and the gun in the middle of the woods.

The next day I didn't shoot her either. I watched her closely, unconsciously mapping her out. The way she held her gun, like it was a fifth limb. The way she stopped every couple of minutes and listened for something, anything. The way she brushed her teeth as soon as she found water, as though the world were just as it normally was. The way she talked to herself without noticing it, softly, under her breath, and then laughed and rolled her eyes when she caught herself, muttering a clear "I'm going nuts."

The day after that was when she reminded me of Lauren. It was the way she ran, and then broke into a skip before slowing down, as though she was running for fun and not from anything more serious. I only watched her for an hour, but the thought of my dead girlfriend was haunting me, and I could not see her in someone I was supposed to kill. I just couldn't. So I visited her grave instead, and I apologized. That was the worse, knowing all of this was partly my fault, because I had awakened inside Evan Walker and we had become one, and somewhere along the lines, I became exactly what I didn't want to but already was.

I kept watching her after that, day after day, for a whole week before something inside me shifted. I let myself be the hunter I was supposed to be, and I pulled the trigger. I realized as soon as I did it that I might as well have shot myself, Evan Walker, in the head while I was at it, because killing her would be killing him, and all the humanity he –I had left. I could not lose that, because it made me him, and he made me me, and that was more than I ever deserved.

I shot her in the leg. Not immediately fatal, but it would be in the long run, and as she huddled under that car I knew I couldn't do it. I could never finish what I had started, I could only fix it, and so I did. I brought her home and nursed her back to safety, and I did something I probably shouldn't have done.

I read her journal. And by reading her journal, by getting to know her, I fell in love with Cassiopeia.