To my wonderful readers I thank you for your patience, though I'm sure many of you still wonder if this story will get its HEA now that I'm back home with the twins. I'm back to work on night shift and it is so slow I have plenty of time to write, but it is slow going because I'm so exhausted. For those of you that don't follow my blog www dot 10 miles uphill in the snow dog blogspot dot com, my daughter got a cold that rapidly developed to life threatening pneumonia on the first plane ride home from overseas. The morning after our return I gave her CPR, and we are incredibly fortunate that she survived. She has been about a month in the hospital recovering so splitting my time between the hospital and work and home with a colicky infant son that eats every 3 hours has almost done me in. But as the holiday approaches and her hospital discharge looms I realize now this incredible journey is finally ending and I'm getting my HEA. So it is high time for Stephanie to finally get hers after these six years of writing this story so I'll try to get on with it with one last chapter to come, with this short one to tide you over. Damn skippy! I thank everyone so much for your kind words of support as well as your wonderful reviews over the years. It has meant more to me than you'll ever know. The story has grown with me, and has helped me get through some of my own darkness. I hope that it does the same for someone else.

~Carpe Fic'n Diem (AKA: Tahara)

Chapter 72

"Holy crap this dog is heavy! Feels more like Tank is on the end of the line!" I groaned, digging my feet into the dirt and pulling forward.

Ranger didn't reply because he was putting in substantial effort himself. I could hear Kody barking and yelping, because he was clearly scared. After a few more minutes he was at the top and we tied off the rope and each grabbed one end of his torso and hauled him up and over to the summit with us. I hastily untied the harness and he was all over me licking, squirming, and thrilled to be reunited.

"It's okay boy...settle down. I love you too." I soothed him until he stopped trembling. After we all took a long deserved rest, we started off towards the huts. I wasn't sure if Kody or I was more shaken from our experience, but gnawing on some re-hydrated deer jerky seemed to help us both. It was a 2 hour trek across more even terrain and the closer we got the more excited I became. A very small bearded man herding some species of mountain goat greeted us with an almost completely toothless smile, and a long conversation ensued with Ranger in Portuguese. I tried hard not to cry in relief, but in the end I just had to turn and face the other direction to hide my eyes. He agreed to shelter myself and my little Vince while his wife helped us rest and recover from our trek. Meanwhile his cousin would guide Ranger into the nearby village where a phone call would be possible.

In the end it took two days for Ranger to return, but I enjoyed the time immensely while he was gone. I stuffed my face with fresh goat cheese with herbs along with some very yummy flat bread the herder's wife made for me in heaping piles. She and I became fast friends despite the language barrier, and she helped me care for Vincent so that I could rest some more. She knitted some outfits out of sheep's wool with whittled sticks, which kept my son warm and made him look even cuter than I thought humanly possible. She insisted that I sleep on the cot while she slept on the floor. The cot in the hut was little more than a wood frame layered with thin leather pad filled with straw and wool, but as far as I was concerned it was a luxury mattress in a five star hotel. They were very generous and kind to me, and I felt a sense of peace those two days as I waited to return to my life.

When Ranger finally returned he arrived along with some medical supplies and a physician who was able to give myself and my son a full exam and declare us both healthy. He let us know just how lucky we were that everything had gone without incident on the delivery, and I was grateful that I was ignorant of all the possible complications until now. It had been arranged that early the following day a military jeep would arrive that could handle the rough terrain back to an airplane hanger, where Rangemen would greet us. I could barely contain my excitement at the thought. I spent the rest of the day fantasizing about seeing my family and friends again. And about eating Italian food. It was about fifty-fifty.

That night I fell into a restless sleep. Around 4am I put Vincent down for what I knew would be a several hour snooze. I couldn't sleep after that, and in spite of myself my thoughts kept drifting to Ranger. He had insisted on sleeping outside, keeping watch in the night.

I pushed aside the heavy drape that covered the doorway and stepped out into the darkness. Ranger was sitting shirtless on a pallet beside a crackling fire. Half of him was in shadow while the other was illuminated in the flickering glow of the flames. His face looked haunted in the firelight. I had the sudden feeling that this image of him might be my last, and it was like my insides were being ripped out. I sucked in a breath and Ranger turned to face me.

"Babe….are you alright?" he asked, turning to me.

I didn't answer, but just walked slowly over and sat down beside him.

"This is the way it has to be." he spoke gently.

"I'll never understand why." I answered.

"I'm a mystery you can never solve Babe. It's why you like me so much." he commented.

"That's not true." I told him.

"Isn't it? There are no circumstances under which I can ever disclose to you my past or many parts of my life in the present, and that will only continue into my future. There can be no compromises on that for the safety of myself and others. That and because I have no desire to revisit the pain of many things that came to pass for other's curiosity, when they cannot begin to fathom what it all means. None. Ever. Never." he declared emphatically, staring deep into my eyes. I felt a chill go through me.

"You can imagine the worst or the best about me but there will never be answers to those questions. That will never change. Deep down you know that, and it keeps you interested." he finished, turning away and staring into the fire.

I thought about that for a long time.

"Maybe in the past. But not now." I told him.

He turned back to look at me, his eyes curious.

"I happen to think we have an awful lot in common." He raised an eyebrow at that.

"I'm not talking eating habits or how you dress. You clearly don't have my good taste." I teased. The edge of his mouth tilted ever so slightly for just a split second in a 'blink and you'll miss it' Ranger grin.

"Let me have a guess or two about your mysterious past. And I know of course you won't reply..." I started, taking a deep breath. "You killed people that didn't deserve to die? So have I. That you know what it feels like to hate…not in the sense everyone else knows it, but to truly hate. You know that it is among the worst feelings in the world and eats at you…keeps you up at night? So do I. You've experienced a loss so great that that you live your life like with that knife sticking out of you, but you walk around and no one even knows it's there…or how deep it burns inside you every minute of the day? So do I. You wake up every morning wondering how life would be different if you had made other choices? So do I."

I paused for a moment, gathering my thoughts. Ranger looked into the fire and didn't move a muscle. I felt like I could see right into his soul in the firelight, and I finally understood.

"I know what it's like to walk around with a separate understanding of the world around you, seeing its full dimension. You've seen the worst the world has to offer and the evil within it over and over…so you're acutely aware of the suffering around you and all over the world and what needs to be done to stop it. But meanwhile everyone else seems to walk around in blissful ignorance, and you are alone. But you don't have to be."

With that he turned to look at me. I made my last words to him count.

"Ranger…I know what it's like to have the lights go off in your life, and when they finally start to come back you know that they won't ever shine quite that bright again. You've eaten from the tree of knowledge…and you wish every minute of your life you could give the evil you now know back, but you can't. And I've only taken a bite, and maybe you've eaten the whole fucking fruit. Maybe I can walk away from it and you never can. But that's not the difference between you and me. That's not what's keeping you from me."

"What is it then Stephanie?" he asked me, his voice so quiet I barely heard it.

I looked into the distance at the dawn breaking on the horizon.

"The difference is that I don't hate myself for it. I'm not afraid to let myself be happy."

And with that I left him there. Alone.