Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue, though I think they'd all be happier if I did own them *sniffle*

Dedication: For Dani, because...well, because. :) And for Kaelie, who came up with the title. :)

She was almost asleep when she heard the hesitant knock at her window, the sound of the sash creaking open, heard the scrape of his jeans on the wood of the sill as he crawled through. She wondered briefly if it was a male thing, or a Czechoslovakian thing. But then, he was beside her bed her name on his lips.

"You're soaking wet. C'mere."

She took his shaking hand, all his strength fled with the daylight. Took the towel that was flung across her bureau and ran it over his flattened hair. Wiped at the tears in his eyes.

"You're shaking. It was the dream again, wasn't it?"

But she didn't need an answer. She could read it in his eyes--the scrape of metal, the feel of fluid in his lungs, the sharp, peculiar smells of technology and alien fear. And the voices, always the voices. The harsh words of the man. The sounds of screams that were probably his own.

"Here, take off your shirt. You'll catch a cold, standing there..."

His soaked shirt and jeans fell to the floor in a sodden, lonesome pile.

"But your mom? The last time..."

And she smiled at him as she drew him down beside her. Tried to warm the chill of his body with the heat of hers.

"She's at that convention, remember? They all are."

And when he began to shake again, when he finally relaxed enough in her arms to let that wall of Czechoslovakian strength down, she drew his head to her breast as she knew she would to their own children some day--a little girl with her hair, and his alien eyes. And as he wept, as he cried the tears that he hid from the ones he called brother and sister, she wondered why he had been chosen for her. Why this new path had been set for them when he pressed his flesh to hers in a kiss of life, and awakened something in them both. Why she felt that fire that ate her from within only with him, and never with the few that had come before.

Why, in their case, love had been stronger than destiny.

She knew that they'd paid the highest price for it. That they'd always pay the highest price for it. That there were parts of him that would never belong to her because he wasn't human. That he would put the others first sometimes, because that's the way he was.

But she also knew that there would be moments of quiet, moments like this, where she was the only thing that could comfort him. When he came to her to lie in her bed.

She knew those nights meant no sleep, meant holding his thrashing body as he screamed that man's name and cried for him to stop. As that dream faded into an older dream of a crash that changed a whole world.

But she would endure it, because there were no fairy tales, not even for those who had become their own kind of soul-mate.

Because he'd given up everything he'd ever wanted, his whole destiny and heritage and answers to every question, for her. Because somehow, their souls touched each other and drew them together in this fiery abandon, like the birth of a star.

Because she needed him, and he needed her. In no simpler terms than that.

She kissed his forehead, his swollen eyes, his tear-wet cheeks. Ran her fingers through his soft, wet hair. Tasted the salt on his lips. He curled up closer, seeking her warmth like a child, like a lover.

"Sleep, Max."

And his arms tightened around her. "I love you, Liz."

Because she loved him. And that was the greatest reason of all.

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