I looked from one to the other, surprised that I wasn't more surprised that a woman who was dying moments ago could be more than holding her own against a strong and apparently healthy man.

After all, the woman in question was Ice.

"Ok!" I said brightly. "It seems we're in a bit of a standoff here." And I was the resident expert on standoffs, having endured several during my time in prison. Of course, expertise didn't help when I felt my head nearly being seared off by two sets of scorching glances sent my way.

I smiled. Broadly. Then chose the pair of eyes to look into that didn't stand the best chance of incinerating me where I knelt.

"She doesn't want a tube shoved down her nose. You don't want your arm broken. I think we've got a little common ground to work with here, don't you?"

After a long, tense moment, he nodded. I think he was in too much pain to speak. I know I would have been.

"Good. Then here's my idea. You go into the kitchen and ask Ruby to change the water she's warming into a weak tea. Then we'll see if she can drink it. But if she chokes, or even sputters just once," and here I took a chance and looked down at Ice, "the tube goes back in. Deal?"

When Ice closed her eyes in resignation, I knew the war was won. Almost as an afterthought, I turned my attention back to the doctor, who was looking at me with a mixture of pain and amazement in his eyes. "Deal?"

When he finally nodded, I reached down and gently grasped my lover's hand, carefully prying her fingers loose from the doctor's wrist. "C'mon, Ice," I murmured, my lips close to the frozen shell of her ear. "You need to let go so he can get your tea, ok?"

After several long seconds, I had her grip loosened enough so that Steve could remove his arm, which he promptly did, rubbing it and looking at both of us as if he'd never seen us before. Smiling up at him, I gestured with my eyes his path to the kitchen, and when he got the hint and left us alone, I lowered my head the rest of the way and pressed a kiss to my lover's lips, hoping to warm them with my own. "Thank you," I whispered, smiling into her eyes.

She blinked once, in acknowledgement I thought, then rolled away from me and toward the fire, curled up into a fetal ball of shivering misery.

Unable to stand seeing her that way, I lifted up the covers and joined her beneath them, pressing my front against her back and slipping one arm around her waist, melding, as best I could, our bodies together.

The chill of her bare flesh was intense against the inadequate shielding of my T-shirt, and the violence of her shivering caused my own teeth to chatter.

It was like trying to hold onto an avalanche.

But hold on I did, as the voice of an old science teacher I'd had once filtered through my mind, telling me that skin on skin contact was one way to combat the ravages of hypothermia. Pulling away slightly, I yanked my T-shirt up and over my head then cuddled back down, wincing as my warm flesh came into contact with her icy skin. I resisted the urge to pull away, instead forcing myself to move closer, wrapping my arm once again around her waist and hanging on for dear life as the tremors of her body went through both of us.

Placing my head against the back of her neck, I hummed something nonsensical and off-key, doing my best to let her know that I was there and wasn't going anywhere any time soon. At least not without her.

It seemed to work, or maybe my mind was just telling me something my heart needed to hear, truth or not, but her spastic tremors seemed to calm somewhat the longer she lay in my arms. Was her flesh just the slightest bit warmer, or was it my body that was so numb that it only felt that way to me?

Either way, I held on, prepared to do so for an eternity if that's what it took.

Ruby came out into the den, followed by the doctor. Both were holding two mugs in their hands and bearing identical, concerned expressions on their faces. Ruby's eyes narrowed as she took in my position beneath the blankets with Ice, and I swore I could see the little computer in her mind clacking away and filing this new bit of information for further use.

At any other time, I might have felt some concern over this, but as things were then, I just couldn't give a rat's hindquarters what she thought, as long as she helped Ice recover. There'd be time enough for tap dancing around the issue later.

Much later.

"How's she doing?" Steve asked, coming to stand beside us.

"I don't know. I think she might be a little warmer, but I'm not sure."

e squatted down. "Well, I kept my part of the bargain, for all the good it'll do. Here's the tea. How do you suggest we get her to drink it?"

To be perfectly honest, I hadn't thought that far ahead, but I sure as hell wasn't going to tell him that. Especially not with the slight sheen of condescension I could see shining in his eyes.

Well, Mister small town, know it all, got my license to practice medicine from K-Mart, I've stood up against a whole ocean of fish bigger than you.

Biting the inside of my lip for a second, I hit upon an idea that I hoped would work and rolled up to a sitting position, keeping a firm grip on Ice's waist as I did so. For being a woman without an ounce of fat on her, Ice was very heavy, especially now, trembling and dead weight as she was in my arms. Still, wanting to rub someone's face in their own mess makes for good motivation, and with a strength I didn't know I possessed, I managed to bring her up to a semi-reclining position against my chest.

Even if someone had offered me, right then, a million dollars, I couldn't have kept the smirk off my face at the expression on the doctor's.

Take that, you little two-bit know it all.

Of course, the hard part was still ahead. Ice was still shivering so violently that the clacking of her teeth was easily heard over the roaring of the fire. Just how she was supposed to drink tea with a jaw that was vibrating like an overused car engine I hadn't the first clue.

So I smiled, effectively putting the ball back into the doctor's court once again.

He caught my look and scowled, but to his credit, did the best he could. Which, unfortunately, wasn't very good at all.

With tentative hands, he lifted one of the mugs after setting the other down near the hearth. I wasn't sure who was shaking more, doctor or patient, but the end result was that Ice was receiving a very impromptu, and by her expression very unwelcome, tea bath. After a few more fumbling attempts, he pulled the mug away, his eyes beseeching me to give in just this once.

Ruby chose that moment to step in, moving him out of the way and kneeling in his place. "Let me take care of this," she said in a voice just a hair short of disgusted. "Make yourself useful and go get some more blankets to warm by the fire. They're in the closet right down the hallway there."

I was sure I could detect his sigh of relief as he rose to his feet and hurried off to do Ruby's bidding.

"Men," she muttered to herself while wiping the tea off of Ice's skin. "Worse than a pack of half-blind sled dogs, they are."

Right then, she sounded so much like Corinne I couldn't help but laugh, even given the gravity of the situation I was in. She looked at me and winked before applying herself back to the task at hand.

Finished with her mopping job, Ruby lay down the towel and used her left hand to firmly grasp Ice's quaking jaw. She raised the mug to my lover's lips with a steady hand. Tilting the mug just slightly, she poured the liquid in in tiny bits so that, before I knew it, Ice had finished half a mug without choking or sputtering even once. The second half went even quicker as the tepid tea began to work its magic on her insides, warming them slightly and allowing blood to spread to the rest of her body.

A quarter of the way through the second mug, Ice had had enough and turned her head away from the offering. "No more," she whispered.

To my surprise, Ruby didn't push, just wiped Ice's lips and handed the mugs back to Steve, who'd come in sometime between the first cup and the second, and was staring at us dumbly, hands on hips. "I think she's earned a bit of a rest, don't you?" she asked no one in particular.

I looked up at Steve, who half-smiled, half-shrugged, the way a pet dog might who's trying hard to get back into your good graces, yet not knowing quite what to do to get there. "I ...um ...should check her temperature again."

"Ok," I replied, drawing the word out as I wondered why he was looking so hesitant.

He winced. "She's ...um ...still shivering too hard to take it by mouth."

I winced in empathy as his little problem became clear as crystal. The man had suffered a black eye from sticking a tube down Ice's nose. Where he needed to place the thermometer would probably rate emasculation. "Oh. I ...see your point." I smiled weakly. "She feels a lot warmer. Does that count?"

"Not really, no."

"Just get on with it already," Ice's rough voice chimed in.

Spurred into action as if struck by a whip, the doctor literally jumped to his bag, removed his thermometer and most likely took the fastest temperature in the history of humankind.

Silently closing the door to Ice's room, I padded back down the hallway and descended the stairs, a curious mixture of relief and dread coursing through me.

As evening claimed the day, Ice began to recover, slowly becoming warmer as my arms continued to enfold her, pressing her close to my body. Steve and Ruby had talked quietly, their words unheard over the fireplace's cheery crackles, and I felt my lover slowly begin to relax in my arms, finally falling into a deep, and I hoped restful, sleep.

The stresses of the day caught up to me, and I gave in to the insidious craving for sleep that seemed to envelope me like the blankets laying over both of us, only to be awakened what seemed to be a second later by a gentle touch to my shoulder.

After taking another temperature and proclaiming her safely in the land of the living once again, Steve helped me take Ice up the stairs and into her bedroom, escorting her to the bed and piling her high with blankets to ward off whatever residual chill that might have been lingering unseen by the two of us, waiting to take hold of her body once our backs were turned.

After handing me a bottle of antibiotic pills for the pneumonia he was sure would follow Ice's icy swim, he smiled, still slightly embarrassed, and took his leave, gently shutting the door behind him, bathing the room in a gentle darkness.

I sat on the side of the bed for long moments, stroking Ice's hair and trying desperately not to allow my mind to replay the events of the day. I needed to shut down, to tune out, to forget, even for a moment, how close I came to losing her.

Again.

Will it always be like this for us? Are we destined to forever stand at the precipice, gazing down into its gaping maw and praying for a gentle wind?

Shaking my head at my sudden attack of the blues, I placed a kiss on Ice's forehead, then stood and smoothed clothes, taking in a deep breath and mentally preparing myself to face the music, which this time came in the form of a diminutive woman named Ruby.

What is it with me and my penchant for attracting, and having to answer to, elderly matrons, anyway?

Too deeply asleep to hear my silent question, Ice had no answers to give on this particular subject, though no doubt her advice would have been wryly humorous, had she deigned to give any at all.

I snorted softly. "Probably the same as yours for attracting blondes, psychotic or otherwise."

I, of course, did not count myself among that particular genus, blonde though I am, though I'm sure some, maybe even some of you reading this right now, would beg to differ with my rather glowing self-assessment.

Alright, Angel. Enough stalling.

If there was one thing I'd learned during my time behind bars, it was to do today what otherwise would get you killed tomorrow. Bravery had taken its sweet time in coming, but it had finally arrived and changed my way of thinking, and doing, for good.

"Wish me luck," I whispered to the silent figure on the bed before letting myself out of the room and into the line of fire, such that it was.

I came to the foot of the stairs like a condemned inmate-and given my experiences, that analogy isn't exactly foreign to me, let me remind you-and walked into the den, which was lit only by the still blazing fire. Ruby was sitting on one of the couches, a cup of coffee in her hand. Her eyes met mine immediately as I stepped into the room, as if she'd been expecting my entrance all along, which, in truth, she probably had.

I summoned up a smile from somewhere and continued my advance, detouring over to the fire and holding my hands out to warm them, though they were already quite warm. Sweating, in fact.

"Everything's quiet, I trust?"

Her voice was flat, uninflected, and therefore difficult to read.

I stood, still turned away from her, and nodded, staring into the flames, my muscles almost as tense as they'd ever been during my time in the Bog, when my life, and not just my pride, was at stake.

"Would you like some coffee? I just made a fresh pot." Her voice was warmer this time.

Damning my cowardice, I continued to stare into the flames, shaking my head slowly in the negative.

"What's wrong, Angel?"

I stiffened further, then turned, sure my face was an open-mouthed mask of shock. "How did you ... ?"

"She called you that. When you were both sleeping." Ruby's smile deepened, her eyes bright with understanding. "It fits you, somehow."

"Ruby, I ... ."

She held up one hand. "No need to explain, Tyler. I might be old and gray, but I know love when it's staring me in the face." Her smile warmed the craggy plains of her face. "And you love her very much, don't you." It wasn't a question.

Beyond stunned, I could only let my heart answer. "Yes."

Nodding sagely, she took another sip of her coffee, her eyes never leaving mine. "She's a very lucky woman."

Somehow, I knew she wasn't talking about Ice's escape from what seemed to be certain death.

"You're wrong," I countered, feeling the sting of fresh tears as they pricked at my eyes. "I'm the lucky one."

"Perhaps you both are."

And, just like that, I managed to find acceptance, and even love, in the one place I most needed for it to be, in the eyes of my childhood confidant. Noticing my tears, she held open her arms and I rushed into them, burying my face and body in the abundant and fragrant warmth of her, allowing myself the emotional catharsis I so desperately needed.

My tears fell in a cleansing rain, dampening the front of her housecoat. She just held me and rocked me, humming like she used to do when I was young and had been put off by my parents.

And so, a day that had started off wonderfully and gone steadily, horribly downhill from there, ended on a note much sweeter than I had any right to request.

And for that, I was very thankful.

The events of the next two weeks would have tried the patience of a Saint, and since I'm not about to be canonized anytime in the foreseeable future, let's just say that every day brought to me new and inventive definitions for the word 'frustration' and leave it at that.

True to the good doctor's word, pneumonia did indeed decide to pay a little visit to my beleaguered partner. To say that Ice was a poor patient would be somewhat akin to observing that Mother Theresa is a nice woman; technically true, but an understatement of extreme proportions.

That's not that she was the whiney type, because she wasn't. Whiney I could have dealt with easily, having had more than my share of exposure to it while still a young girl living under the roof of two parents who elevated that particular sickbed response to somewhat of an art form.

No, Ice was more the "don't tell me I'm sick, because I'm not" type. The "you're the one who needs to see a doctor, because I feel just fine" type. The ...well, you get the picture.

It took all my not inconsiderable powers of persuasion to convince her that fevers rising above one hundred three degrees, coughing until blue in the face after such strenuous activities as sitting up or yawning, and vomiting up one's toenails at the mere mention of food was not normal in the course of human events.

Of course, my lover also suffered from selective hearing loss, and there were times where I was sure my voice was the perfect decibel level to activate that particular condition, much to my extreme vexation.