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"TWELVE."

For Hero Barrett, who had had one (1) singular, she stared at Jude in open-mouthed bwuh?. She was more stuck on twelve (TWELVE) at the moment than -- twelve. Twelve. "Twelve." She didn't sound as though she were being entirely derogatory, simply -- a little. Baffled. "Twelve." Her head dropped back to the couch, and she stared up at the ceiling of the shipping container. Twelve wasn't an achievement; twelve was an investment.

One, Hero, only you.

Her brother: her blood.

There was a little bit of awkward silence between them as she said, "It's difficult. Wait." Her arms were behind her head, she was staring at the ceiling, and obviously he had pushed her beyond her usual powers of speech to being completely bereft -- "Yes, it bothers me. Yes, it's a loss of control. I ask God for forgiveness, but it's a little -- presumptuous when we keep on. Sinning."

'Sinning' was a word for it.

And yet.

Hero swung her legs up, walked to him, bent her head close to his. They had come a long way from those morning runs. "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?" She was stroking his hip. She sounded serious, terse, probably because she was embarrassed. "I feel God when I'm with you. Don't you?"

This was the set-up for any kind of dirty joke.

Hero Barrett, at this point, did not mind spending every day outside Jude Lawson's corner in the pouring rain. She rested her hand on his hip. Both of them were pretty certifiable. "I am yours," she said. "And if I separated you down to your bones, muscle and fascia, you would be mine; if I rendered you down. If you had no mouth to assure me, no words to say. You would. Be mine."

Her cheek was against his. "So how are we an abomination unto God?" she said. "When you and I are one? No. These things I command you, that ye love one another." She moved away, she sat on the arm of the couch, perched there and watched him with her scarlet-coloured eyes. Jude Lawson had a problem. His problem was that, probably, in the end, he and Hero Barrett would have injunctions against each other and end up strangling each other in a murder-suicide.

"Let's face it," she said. "We may not live to see twenty-one -- all that matters is that the Princess does."

That was another thing they had in common: they both loathed their fathers, though Hero was so alike with her own that they spoke with the same voice -- she loathed him and loved him in equal amounts, was passionate for his attention, died at his lack of it for her. Her father owned her mother like Jude owned Hero, but also how Hero owned Jude. And she wiii~iiill be loved.

An old lamp. A bear? Why was he keeping a bear?

"I never try to start a fight with you, Mr. Lawson. You simply open your mouth and it suddenly occurs."

So they were back to Mr. Lawson.

"Life goals." She was stretching up her other leg. "I want to be President." She was deadly serious. "I doubt I'll achieve this in my lifetime -- a Senator, at worst. I'm a Right-leaning female; I'm in a much better position to accomplish my goals than, say, Olympia Snowe -- " She was talking pure what the ********> now. "I will go to law school."

She tucked her legs underneath her. "What about you, Mr. Lawson."

He had the feeling that, rather than disapprove, she was probably going to love him if his answer was "a number of years in prison."

Except then Hero said, arms locked behind her and stretching out her shoulders:

"You'll have to get a steady job if I'm to get into office, you know -- you'll help if I want to get a position in the South, but nobody who married a pizza delivery boy ever got voted in. You could be a homemaker. Just avoid prison, getting into pornography, or drugs -- or illicit firearms, for God's sake."

It was a pipe dream, but it was Hero Barrett's pipe dream, and apparently he was part of it. This was a future. This was a bizarre future. It didn't really sound like his future. "We could get married when I turn eighteen, I don't mind going through college being married -- there's a surprising amount of people married in their early twenties, though eighteen's a bit notable. I'm waiting until I graduate."

When in reality their future would probably be:

Dead in a ditch.

"Assuming you'll let me make an honest man out of you."

"One," she said, doing a controlled fall down to the couch and resting back on it, significantly, "who leaves his gun out on his side table, and tells me that it was for a past purpose. I forgive you. I believe you. I know."

And then she said: "'Hero Lawson' isn't appalling, I know you'd never go for 'Jude Barrett.'" Jude Barrett did again sound like some kind of off-kilter cowboy, however. "I can live with 'Hero Lawson'. Are you going to keep looking for your henshin pen when I can see it in that last box on top of what looks to be a toaster, or are you going to sentimentally look at pictures; or, in a third option, perhaps."

She stopped at 'perhaps', delicately.

"If you'd."