At first, Max had respected the locked bathroom door, even though I knew that he easily could unlock it with his powers. He had pleaded with me to open the door, trying to get me to talk to him. But after ten minutes of that, it had grown silent.
I knew he was just outside though. I didn't need a connection to know that.
But when the day turned into evening and I was still seated on the cold tiled floor, Max ignored the lock and came inside.
I didn't fight him when he wordlessly reached down and picked me up, cradling me in his arms. I was too tired, too numb. I tried to enjoy the smell of his skin as I rested the side of my head on his shoulder, but I was empty. Apathetic.
I don't know if there was anyone else outside the bathroom. If we met anyone on the way to our bedroom. I didn't register anything except the rocking of my body in his arms with every step he took.
As he placed me on our bed, I automatically curled up on my side, moving back in time to when I had been a fetus, protected in my mother's uterus. Safe and blissfully ignorant about the evils of the world.
I was aware of Max walking away from the bed and closing the door. Locking it. The human way. Probably so that I could get out if I needed to.
I was aware of him pulling his shirt over his head as he walked back towards the bed, of him unbuttoning his jeans and kicking off his shoes even before he reached me.
Wearing only his boxers, he leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on my right eyelid and one on my left. His fingers brushed down my cheek. Slowly. Then he carefully started undressing me.
I was jointless. Like a rag doll. My arms and legs moved in whatever direction he wanted them to go. My pajama bottoms slid slowly down my legs. My sweatshirt was pulled over my head, followed by the white tank top.
When I was in nothing but white cotton panties, I curled back up. Knees to my chest, head against my knees, and closed my eyes. I felt his eyes on my body, on my head, and felt the heaviness of the silence around us, before I heard him move around the bed and start pulling the duvet back.
The bed dipped as he climbed on top of it, crawling towards me. His hands felt big, stronger than usual, as they circled my upper arms.
Maybe it wasn't his hands that were bigger. Maybe it was my arms that were smaller.
Effortlessly, he pulled me up against his seated body. It must be difficult to move me, considering that I had turned limp, but he barely jostled me. He was moving me around as if I was half the size I was. My thighs draped across his, my inner thighs reacting to the sensations of the hair on his legs, but the reaction never reaching my brain. My breasts pressed into his chest, the contact intimate and warm, but I only felt cold.
My arms were hanging lifelessly over his upper arms, as he wrapped his arms around my back and brought me closer. Tightly.
His breath was alive and warm against my neck, his tears real and wet as they dripped on my shoulder and rolled down over my collarbone, over my breast.
"Let me in," he whispered, lifting me slightly when my lifeless body wanted to slide heavily downwards in his grip. "Liz, please."
My eyes were closed, my forehead was resting against the top of his chest, and I knew that I should feel something when I heard the break in his voice, when I felt his heart vibrate in the air around me.
But I was tired. So tired.
"Don't give them the satisfaction," Max breathed. "Don't give them the power to torture you even after they're dead."
Their dead bodies sprung into my mind. Of Sean grabbing my wrist and whispering his final word of hatred to me before life left him. Of the Sergeant already turning back into an alien in his death; an awful-looking alien, not at all like the little cute green man the human society had laughed at.
Mr. Evans had told me, at that first meeting after our rescue, that there had been nothing left of the Carter men. Alien bodies turned to ashes within minutes of their deaths.
A shiver raced through me and Max squeezed me harder.
"They did horrible things to you. But you survived. You fought back. You didn't let them win."
Oh sweet sweet Max, I thought. It doesn't matter. That doesn't make any difference.
"Can we sleep now?" I asked quietly. My voice flat.
He froze at my voice and either he was considering my request or he was thinking about if he should say something else, because he hesitated before pulling back, keeping my body upright with the support of his hands against my shoulder blades.
He gave me a soft smile as I looked into his eyes. "Sure. Of course."
I was all cried out. I wanted to sleep. My body just wanted to sleep. And sleep. And sleep. But I knew what was waiting for me as soon as my eyes closed. And it scared me into shocked indifference.
He leaned me backwards, while he leaned forward and pulled the duvet more out of the way, to free up a duvet-free space for me to lay down.
I closed my eyes (tightly tightly), pulled my legs up to my stomach, my fisted hands to my chin, with my back towards Max. He moved around me for a second, pulling the comforter over our bodies, before he snuggled close, spooning around my back, nestling his chin into the crook of my neck and putting his hand over my waist.
Cautiously, as if asking for permission, he searched out one of my hands. I let him take it, let him interlace our fingers, and then press them up against my protruding breast bone. His underarm automatically pressed up against the underside of my breast and I distractedly noted how the heat from his intimate touch failed to reach through the armor around my heart.
We laid there for awhile, most likely listening to each other's breathing, knowing that we were both awake. I don't know which of us fell asleep first, but sleep didn't come quickly.
*****
When I awoke, I was outside the bed, on the floor, curled up in a corner, screaming my head off as Max crouched in front of my trying to catch my flailing arms.
"Wake up! Wake up, Liz," he repeated. Over and over again.
When I recognized where I was, my screams grew quiet and the tears I thought I had no more of, rolled down my cheeks.
The door opened at the other end of the room, making me jump, and I watched Max push his hand out towards the door defensively, as if haunted by both my own and his shadows. I didn't look to see who it was. I was focusing on trying to get my heart back under control.
"She's fine. She's fine," Max told whoever was at the door. "We're fine."
"Maybe I should sedate her," the voice of Mr. Evans said and my blood ran cold.
Max's eyes flickered to my face and his response was clear, forcibly vehement, "No."
"Max, this can't go on."
"She's not a machine," Max snapped angrily, looking over at the door. "We can't just make everything go away by the switch of a button."
"I know that, son. Don't be ridi-"
"Leave us alone," Max mumbled, looking at me again.
"Max, just-"
Raising his voice, Max repeated, "Leave us alone, Dad."
There was no reply. Only the closing of the door.
Max looked at me quietly, a stormy ocean in his eyes, before he crawled closer to me, taking a seat right in front of me, and demanded darkly, "Tell me."
I worried my bottom lip and shook my head.
"Tell me," he repeated, his command forceful, but his touch gentle as he reached out and pulled the bottom lip out between my teeth with the pad of his thumb.
"I'm too late," I whispered, my voice unsteady and breakable from the screaming.
"For what?" he asked gently.
"When Sean shot you."
Max frowned. "The knife?"
I shook my head. "No. At the meeting. The energy blast."
"You were shot," Max corrected me.
I dropped my eyes and whispered, "Not this time. Not in my dreams."
"What happens?" he asked, his voice distant while at the same time present.
"The blast makes you fly through the air and you hit the wall behind us. I run up to you and you're-" the sob ripped through me.
He leaned in and brushed his thumb down my cheek, collecting my tears. "Shh. I'm right here."
"You have a big hole in your chest," I whispered. "I can see straight through you. I can see the white wall through your chest. Your heart...is gone. Your lungs are hanging in fleshy strips around the hole, and your eyes are dead." I whimpered. "Dead."
He put his arms around me and gently rocked our bodies, kissing my face, my neck. Brushing his hands through my hair.
"That's not possible, you know," he whispered after awhile, when my eyes started to dry and my sobs were infrequent and empty. "The blasts can't do that."
"I guess I should blame my overactive imagination for that one," I mumbled and let him kiss my closed eyes.
"Damn your imagination," he said lightly, touching his lips to mine in a brief kiss. The kiss, albeit fleeting, shot straight into the center of my shocked heart.
As he pulled back, his eyes searching my face, I gathered my courage to ask, "Do you really think that the connection might help us? Heal us?"
"It's worth a shot, don't you think?" I didn't reply and his eyes turned even more worried. "You don't think so?"
"What if it does the opposite? What if it breaks us?"
He searched my eyes. "That's what you're afraid of? That's why you're hiding?"
"I already know how overwhelming it can be," I said quietly. "What if I were to feel your experiences too? I can't even deal with my own. And you would have to deal with mine."
"Don't worry about me," Max said strongly. "I can handle it."
I thought of his heartbreaking sobs in the middle of the night. Just the night before. Could he really? Could he handle it?
"Let me ask you something," Max implored softly. "When I woke up yesterday, the connection was still there between us. You held it open until the meeting. In that time, did you feel overwhelmed?"
"You were holding back," I protested weakly.
Max shook his head. "Not necessarily. I wasn't even filtering. I was just focused on other things. Focused on having you back in my arms. Of being able to see that you were alive and safe."
"But ruined," I added quietly, averting my eyes in shame.
He put his finger under my chin and had me look up at him again, shaking his head. "No. Not ruined." He smiled gently at me. "You were always - easily - the most beautiful girl in the room. You still are."
His statement made me irritated. "Beautiful, how could-?"
His smile widened. "There she is."
I squeezed my lips together, feeling like he was making fun of me, even though I knew - deep down - that he really wasn't.
"You're beautiful," he said when I fell into my (sulky) role of rejection. He shrugged lightly, "A bit skinny, but gorgeous."
"I thought aliens had perfect vision," I mumbled grumpily and Max laughed softly.
Laughed. He actually laughed.
I couldn't help but curiously look up at him through my eyelashes, just to catch the amusement on his lips.
"Any other girl would be dead by now, but you aren't," Max mused, making a chill run down my spine. Making me realize that I was seated on a cold floor, wearing only my underwear.
"Not you." He shook his head in amazement. "You didn't survive, you conquered. Your only weakness seems to be your inability to see your own strength. To see how much you shocked them. How in the end, you had made them fear you. You, a human girl. A teenager. They were so afraid of you that they had Command deliver you to me. Neither Sarge nor Sean would touch you. Command, with his almighty powers, decided to give you a neurotransmitter blocker, afraid that you might use any powers on him."
"Only because of you," I grumbled, not ready to accept what he was telling me, not ready to admit that his words were spreading like a fire through my body, weakening my insecurities, strengthening my assets. "Because of the bond."
"Don't sell yourself short," he whispered and stole a kiss, letting his lips linger. Causing my body to tremble with feelings I was trying to ignore. "The bond can only support you and collect our combined energy. It can't direct it. It can't decide what you make of it. You're even blocking it right now, just because you decided that you could. Something you were doing even before we had bonded that second time."
I held his eyes, letting our breaths dance around each other in the inch of space between our mouths, as I considered his words, as I felt alive for the first time in three weeks. As I felt hope at the tips of my fingers, inching to crawl further up my body, into my heart.
Maybe I would never get rid of the monsters in my head.
But maybe I could learn to stand up to them. Take back my power. Reclaim the right to my own life.
My arms moved with their own force, sliding up his bare arms, over his shoulders, up his neck and stopped at the sharpness of his jaw.
He never once let go of my eyes. He didn't even blink. Instead I watched his eyes grow darker and darker with heated flames, waiting for me.
Then I was pulling his face towards mine, closing that annoying distance between our mouths, and clashing our lips together.
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A/N: I hope you all had a beautiful and, predominately, stress-free Christmas :-) And since I won't be "seeing" you again until 2016; Happy New Year!!
Please vote (and maybe even comment) to let me know what you think. I can't tell you in words how much it means to me.
- Jo <3