Greetings! I'm back from Lent, and more stories shall follow (hopefully better ones, this was just to get back into the swing of writing.) This is just a strange little piece I knocked up while playing around, experimenting with writing in second person. I hope I've pulled it off. Five mornings in Up and Taz's lives. Each segment takes place three years after the last.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling now. Enjoy.

Sometimes you wonder what the hell you're doing. You're the internationally, no, intergalactically renowned Commander Up, righter of wrongs, avenger of the human race, tough sonovabitch. And yet somehow you find yourself completely under the thumb of a smart-mouthed fifteen-year-old girl.

A smart-mouthed girl you're not even sure you like. You're used to respect and awed yessirs from every direction, and her refusal to do the simplest thing you ask drives you crazy. You've never met such an arrogant little thing- she shouts at you, kicks you, ignores your warnings when she feels like it, pushes and pulls you until you just want to hit her. But you don't. You have more self-control than that. You keep yelling, it keeps making no difference and you keep on fuming about having her in your care.

But come morning, you still find yourself holding her in your arms. Even smart-mouthed fifteen-year-olds have hurts and fears.
It's pitch dark when she shakes you awake, voice small and hands trembling.

'Up?' She never calls you 'Commander'. It's no good telling her to, because you know she won't.

'What the hell do you want, Taz? It's three a.m.!'

A long pause. 'Can I sleep in jour bed?'

You can't have heard right. She repeats. You still don't believe your ears.

'You have got to be kidding me.'

'Por favor, Up… I'm afraid.'

One of the stupidest things you've heard. 'Taz, go back to bed.'

She doesn't move. Your eyes adjust to the lack of light and you're able to see the silhouette of her shoulders going up and down. She's actually shaking.

'I can't. I had a dream, and it…made me remember…'

You stop her there. You know it can't be easy for her, all of this, so much to adjust to, so many emotional wounds that might never heal- that's why you have a momentary lapse and change your tune.

'Taz,' you growl- because, kind gesture or not, you've still got a reputation to maintain and she ain't gonna bring it down- 'just shut up and get in here.'

Now, looking down at her still-sleeping form, you wonder just exactly what's coming over you. You're not like this. You've got the entire space corps afraid of you- snap your fingers and you'd have a willing but terrified army at your disposal- everyone, everyone is afraid of you except her.

And your best efforts to remain steely and aloof have failed miserably.

Because for some inexplicable reason, when you felt her shivering during the night you opened your arms and pulled her into them.

And now she's here, her tiny body generating more warmth than you thought possible, curled up against you. What made her come to you when she needed comfort? You're not exactly a comforting person, are you?

Maybe, you think, she doesn't really despise you as much as her accusing eyes make out. And just maybe, you think, lightly brushing a strand of hair off her face, you don't despise her as much as you make out.

In fact, like this, she's bearable- you might even go so far as to say likeable, but you don't.

It's the simple things- the quiet breathing, the way her eyes flutter, the way her head snuzzles into your shoulder. No shouting, no fighting, no mouthing off. It's even nice, you might say.

Maybe something will change now. Maybe some of the aggression between you will dissipate, although you doubt it.

But just at this moment, still woozy from sleep in the early morning, you're almost fond of Taz.

Sometimes you wonder how one person can have such an effect on you. You've known her three years, and somehow she's crawled into the heavily vaulted safe of your heart and set up camp there. Being forced to teach and take care of her has meant you've become accustomed to her behaviour, and she to yours. You've changed a little, and so has she.

You're still tough and aloof, and she's still aggressive and sarcastic, but there's a respect between the two of you, and a trust neither of you have with many others.

You talk about deep, heartfelt matters under the proviso neither of you will mention them again. You spar- you're both equally good and it always makes for an interesting fight- and get so involved and caught up in it that without noticing it, you start to tease each other and laugh together. Sometimes, just sometimes you let that impenetrable tough barrier down just a fraction. She's the first person in fifteen years you feel an affinity with.

Maybe having her forced into your life has been a good thing after all. She's like the sister you never had. And you still argue constantly- but the venom from the early days is gone.

You hang out, you teach her all your brilliant fighting tactics, you've already put forward a gruff request to have her put on your ship when she graduates. You watch the odd martial arts movie, both of you making attempts to seem stern and reserved throughout, even during the good bits.

Come morning, you find yourself holding her in your arms. It happens often these days. She doesn't even bother to ask any more, knows by now the best way to get to stay is to shut up and pretend to be asleep. And despite the fact you know she's faking, and your mental refrain of Taz, you gotta stop doing this, you always play along with it. It's moments like these, when she breathes softly against your shoulder, her arm across you like she owns you – and let's face it, she does- that you treasure the most. Moments when you can lie in the early morning sunlight and not have to think.

Forget about the full day's worth of giving orders, fighting and watching rangers die with an impassive mask, that lies before you. Watch the little strand of hair flutter across her face as she breathes, smile discreetly as the corners of her own mouth turn upwards.

Forget that in a matter of minutes she will be up and about and at your throat again- whether in jest or in annoyance. She will be, without a doubt, but you know now that under all that she cares.

Know you've got a friend in Taz.

Sometimes you wonder how a terrible situation can be made better by the presence of one person.

There are times when your missions are a great success, when you bring down large battalions of robots, save whole colonies and bring glory to the G.L.E.E. And then, of course, there are times when one or both of you put your foot in it and you end up incarcerated on an alien planet, while the rest of your crew are back on the starship wondering why their Commander and Lieutenant are taking so long to make a simple negotiation.

You have to admit maybe you could have been a bit more tactful. You offended the aliens one too many times, and that didn't exactly do you any favours. But if Taz hadn't been so stupid, you think, you could have gotten away with a fine at most. If she hadn't grabbed the King by the throat and threatened him in one of those irrational fits of anger she's so famous for, which have gotten worse over the years, you wouldn't have been divested of your weapons and shoved in a dungeon.

'Jou hijos de puta better let us out now!' she's bellowing through the bars, 'or I will cut open jour bellies and fill dem with jellies! Then I will shoot jou all in de head, and…'

You suspect the guards have stopped listening to her rage, but her continual violent threats aren't doing anything to your chances of being let go, not seen as killing machines who need to be executed as soon as possible.

'Taz, will you just SHUT UP!'

There's a moment of silence. Taz does indeed shut up, but the look she gives you could de-flower a cemetery.

'You ain't helpin', maybe if you could just keep your thoughts to yourself for once…'

'My t'oughts? What about jou?' She clearly has no volume control at all. 'If jou hadn't opened jour fat mout' in de first place…'

And the two of you are at it for hours, bickering and shouting at each other about whose fault it is, until the cell grows dark, the guards get frustrated and rap on the bars and both your throats are hoarse. She storms over to the opposite corner, childishly trying to sit as far away from you as possible and that thought comes back to you, the one you have at least six times a day but never really mean.

Damn, I hate her.

And everything about her right now irritates you beyond compare.

But come morning, you still find yourself holding her in your arms. It may be the fact that there's only one narrow bed, it may be that the stone room is cold at night, or maybe you've done this so often you're just used to each other's presence. But you do. Even when she's angry with you, and you with her, she still curls up beside you, and even when she drives you insane you still look at her sleeping face and feel content.

What made the two of you so inseparable? In some ways you're too alike for your own good, neither of you backing down when you're convinced you're right, always getting irritated with each other's ideas, even when it turns out you were thinking the same thing anyway. But then again, your like-mindedness means you make quite a pair- brilliant soldiers, talented military tacticians, you've blasted your crew through a dozen armies of hi-tech, killer robots and saved more nations together than you can count.

And then there are still things like your 'Karate Kid' evenings to add on top of all that. So many different sides to one relationship. So many different sides of one tiny little person.

And it's moments like these, when she's still and quiet, her rage locked inside her for the moment and the sound of her soft breathing filling the room, that you can forget your situation. You can forget that somehow, in a matter of minutes, the two of you will have to be putting together the escape plan to end all escape plans. You can forget that, while doing this, your unfinished quarrel from last night will rage on.

Because, waking up to her in the early hours of the morning, no matter what the situation, you know there's no-one you'd rather be stuck here with than Taz.

Sometimes you wonder how everything seems to change so quickly. You look in the mirror and don't see the same person who stared back three years ago. Where did he go? Is he not you any more, or are you not him any more? You still haven't decided which. All you know is that something's not the same.

Hurts go deep. Trauma lasts forever. In your former-glory days you scoffed at the soldiers who came back from battle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

'They're just too damn soft,' you'd growl, convinced they couldn't handle it when the going got a bit too rough. But you see how it happens now. After all, it happened to you.

You guess being cut in half changes your perspective on things. It takes two years for you to be able to go on a mission again, wield a gun again, look a fellow ranger in the eye.

And you have to nearly lose Taz before you realise you're in love with her.

You've seen her skid dangerously close to the edge of death so many times- seventy-seven by your count, though it's probably more- but this time seems like the real thing. And somehow you find the courage to slaughter the damn bugs that try to take her from you.

The only way you can think to describe it is that the old you came to help in your hour of need, giving you his strength one last time.

You're not really the same Up. Chances are you never will be. You've improved some- but you'll always be a slightly better version of the cowardly Up, a slightly faded copy of the tough Up, and that's about as good as it's gonna get.

But it could have been worse. You could have stayed trapped in your own self-pity for the rest of your life, but you haven't. You've emerged from it, back into the real world to learn to cope again.

And you couldn't have gotten through it if it weren't for Taz.

Come morning you find yourself in her arms. You remember the days, once upon a time, when she came to you scared. Now it's the other way round. You suddenly seize up in the middle of the night, fiery visions playing in front of your open eyes and she's there, alternating between soothing you and shouting at you until you shut up and go back to sleep.

And when you open your eyes again she's still there, her arm draped protectively over you. It's she who looks after you now, her unwaveringly ferocious temperament making up for whatever you now lack. They're all still afraid of you, because they're afraid of her. The two of you still stand there, the very picture of tough soldiers, but she's the one carrying that image on her shoulders now. She's more like you than you are.

And you love her for it.

She's grown on you until you have no other option but to love her, forcing her way into your life and your friendship and your heart, pushing and pulling you until you just want to kiss her. But you don't. You have more self-control than that.

Just right now, early in the morning, you can lie here and be held by her and forget everything. It's these simple moments you treasure the most, when the haunting thoughts and the black of the night are gone and all that's left are you, Taz and the morning sun. You shift a little closer, so her face is inches from yours and allow yourself to shut your eyes again, feeling nothing but her breathing and the sunlight on your face, thinking of nothing but the fact that she's here with you.

And just for a little while, you can pretend she loves you back.

Because the one thing you would never, ever do is ask her. You'd never tell her she's all you think about. You've become dependent on her over the last nine years and the thought of making things awkward between the two of you is more than you can bear. If she doesn't care for you in that way, you don't know what you'd do.

And what if she does? What happens then? It's this prospect that scares you even more than her rejection would.

You've been through so many rough times, faced death, suffered such a traumatic experience that you will probably never fully recover. But the scariest thing of all is knowing you love Taz.

Sometimes you think in wonder about how lucky you are. When you were thirty-two, a girl was deposited into your life, and over twelve years she's completely taken it down and rebuilt it. It takes another three years from Bug World before you work up the nerve to do anything about your feelings, and even then it's not strictly your fault.

It's a relatively easy mission you're on, picking through the debris of some long-deserted cliff-edge village on the off-chance you may find some valuable transistor, and as always you and she have automatically wandered off together when you gave the order for everyone to split up. It could be the fact that seeing her constantly venture within millimetres of the edge of the cliff sends a plummeting feeling right to your stomach, or maybe just the fact that you are both very much alone, but you happen to look down and notice you're holding hands. Funny, you don't remember when that happened. You can't pinpoint a precise moment when you consciously reached out your arm and took hold of hers, but it must have happened. You don't say anything about it, though. And neither does she.

You keep on picking through the rubble.

You both simultaneously decide to stoop down to search more thoroughly. Your hands are still joined, so you flick through the bits of rock one-handedly, trying to come up with something to say.

It'll get dark soon, you come up with.

'We're holding hands,' you say.

'I know,' she says.

Neither of you lets go.

It's Taz who finds what you're looking for eventually. Using two fingers and a thumb to heave a large stone away, she digs into the mound of rubble and comes out triumphant, the transistor bleeping in her hand.

Good work, Taz, you think.

'I love you,' you say.

'I know,' she says.

You both stand up, still holding hands.

'You knew and you never told me?' you ask, wounded.

'I was waiting for jou to say it first,' she says, the most wickedly brilliant smile you've ever seen on her face. 'And boy do jou drag jour feet, idiota.'

You kiss.

Come morning, you're both in each other's arms. It's moments like these, when you wake up to see her eyes watching you, that you realise everything has been worthwhile. All the peaceful moments you've experienced pale in comparison. Because now when you wake up, the early morning sun touching your face, you don't have only until she wakes up to forget all your troubles. It's every time she reaches up, puts her arms round your neck and kisses you. It's every time you say 'I love you' and she grins and says 'I know.' Which in her way of speaking amounts to I love you too. Only, as you know all too well, Taz is the stubbornest little thing you've ever met- although many things have changed over the years, that has not. And I know is the closest thing you're going to get. But you're grateful for it anyway.

And it doesn't matter what has happened to you, to her, to you both. And it doesn't matter what will happen. Because come tomorrow morning, and the morning after, and the morning after that, you will wake up to her.

And there's no-one you'd rather wake up to than Taz.

Well, I hope that worked. Ciao.