Silence (XO/SN/UC/MATURE) COMPLETE

[vaifeal]

Title: Silence

Rating: Mature [for references of a sexual nature, language, and violence]

Category: XO [Supernatural/Roswell, spoilers for all episodes of both]

Pairing: UC [Liz/Dean], minor references to CC [Liz/Max]

Disclaimer: To be safe, I don't claim to own anything

Summary: He went back once to save the world. The second time might just destroy it.

A/N: Because the parts are so short, and there are only seven of them, I'm going to try [try being the key word] to post every night.

“If the silence takes you, then I hope it takes me too” - Soul Meets Body, Death Cab for Cutie

It was deafening.

The lack of noise, sense, sensation. There had been a symphony before. A blessed racked that would occasionally make her head pound and her temper flair but even in its quietest moments it had still been there. A dull roar to remind her that they were there. Always a warmth. A familiar presence pressing into her personal space. Violating her private time. Making it known that she wasn't alone.

She'd never be alone.

Now it was gone. Cold. Alone. All that was left was a ringing to remind her of what had been there. Just a hint. And at night there were the dreams. Sometimes of little arms, nausea, and a presence so strong that it could be frightening but only made her feel safe.

Most nights they were soul shattering nightmares. Chains and blood and cries for help that were never answered. She didn't know what to do. She was called crazy and no one believed her. Not that she was innocent. Not that things had been changed. Not that the world in its entirety violated the rules of their reality.

What did they know of demons? Or the stars? Or quantum physics?

She huddled into herself tighter, the wall pressuring her away from rest. It was wrong. It had all gone wrong. She could see it. The splinters warring against each other. Two sets of memories, neither more real than the other, each desperately trying to supersede the other. Ripping her apart in the process.

Day by day the fine threads of her mind were unraveling as it tried to cope with an impossible phenomenon. Humans weren't meant to deal with things like this.

He needed her. She needed him.

It had to be fixed before it was too late.

The apartment had been a great deal, a steal compared to the rest of the housing market. One bedroom, a giant bathroom with a tub that was pure heaven, fully furnished to look like a spread in Coastal Living, and all with an incredibly affordable rent. She'd immediately moved out of her dilapidated, roach infested, looked-like-it-should've-been-condemned room and into the perfect place.

Of course, that great deal had turned out to be a way for some mutated sociopath to use her as a human sacrifice or some such.

Looking back it probably hadn't been the best idea to tell the seemingly sweet landlords that she'd been alone since the end of her marriage to her high school sweetheart. While it had possibly been the most important piece of information presented to the couple while they were considering which of their applicants to eat; when Liz was faced with being ritualistically disemboweled, she hadn't appreciated the reminder that even the most innocuous slip could be disastrous.

Though the rescue had been memorable.

Slapping an errant hand, one that'd 'slipped' more times than she'd kept track of, she tried not to mess up the ending stitch. It'd be such a shame to scar such a pretty face. An unabashed grin met her quickly failing stern grin, Dean Winchester was just too charming for his own good.

At night he dreamed.

Sometimes about Dean, sometimes about John or Mary, but mostly about things he doesn't understand. Silver hand prints, green glowing, and a dark haired man who looked innocent but who he had a bad feeling about. More often then not they're nightmares that leave him shaking.

There are times, though, that Sam was lucky. His dreams are filled with a prevailing warmth, smiles, and Dean laughing more than he'd ever really done in life.

Those nights are the only times since he'd watched his brother being ripped to shreds, that he sleeps more than a few hours.

[vaifeal]

A/N: I'm teaching Creative Writing for the summer and I've been telling my campers to try to write everyday, this is my bid to get the juices rolling again. I'm glad that you're liking it.


It took exactly five months, three weeks, six days, and eleven hours for Sam to snap and finally drive to Bobby's, in the Impala that still felt like Dean, in the search for someway to make it stop. Things had progressed too far for him to ignore. When night terrors had turned into waking horrors he needed for them to stop.

He could still hear the screams.

Those were things that he wished he could forget.

Not even the good nights were worth that because what use where dreams when the monster were real. The screen door opened and Bobby shuttled him in, the now familiar pity stained across his face. Sam had lost everyone he'd ever had. His mom. His girlfriend. His dad. His brother.

There was nobody left.

“What do you need Sam?”

He ran a rough hand over his features. That was a loaded question. There were a lot of things that he needed, the least pressing of them not being the least important, “I need to know if something could get in to my head.”

“Demon?”

“No, something else.”

“You have your protections up,” the familiar almost parental nag eased some of the tension flowing through his veins. Years ago a comment like that from John would have set him off but now coming from Bobby, it made him tired.

The answer came slow as if just coming to the revelation, “I don't think it's hostile.”

Paint splattered across her face in little droplets tickling her cheek and squishing as mockingly outraged wrinkles formed. Green eyes blinked in her direction, a surprised if amused smile spread along lips that she knew how to bite just so to make their owner putty.

Not that it was trick that she engaged in often, said owner was too good at turning the game in his favor for their to be any real benefit in utilizing such techniques.

“You are so dead,” the flat tangy taste of Crimson Seduction danced along her tongue. A blink and that 'who me?' look that Dean knew how to play to a tee. “Just you wait Mister. It won't be today or tomorrow but I'm gonna get you.”

“It was an accident and you'll forget.”

Pretending to think for a moment, Liz turned back to finish the spot she'd been fixated on, “Nope. Don't believe it. You forget, you're stuck with me. I have forever to plan my revenge.”

“Forever?” the slightly awed tone made the roller skid.

She was always forgetting that for a man with such a command of his person that he believed he deserved so little. A little nibble on her lip and a nonchalant shrug, “Forever.”

There was a chaotic mess of dated papers, drawings, and schedules that she's sure should make sense. That at one point in time she knew everything on that stupid pile by heart but now it was being replaced with the faded gray mess that the institution.

Not that it mattered.

That wall needed to be redone anyway. The plaster was all wrong. Too choppy. Done by an amateur. It went well with the ringing. Off sync. Out of tune. Foreshadowing her complete annihilation by septic sludge. The strings on her sleeve tickled her palm.

Couldn't pull them. Those weren't pullable. Instead they'd wind together into infinitesimal knots for anyones taking. Like the rest of her.

Set adrift.

[vaifeal]

The faint clicking of his dress shoes hitting the tile floor was too loud and made him wish for his boots. Sturdy and familiar they wouldn't slip on over-buffered linoleum. They wouldn't creak with every step he took. They wouldn't make his feet soggy with nervous sweat. And they certainly would make him feel like less of a douche as he followed the nurse with the blatantly superior look.

“She was admitted against her will three years ago with a severe dissociative disorder. The on duty psychologist noted that her husband had several bruises and lacerations on his body though he refuse to say what had happened. Since admittance she's been catatonic with brief periods of lucid violence, if you really must go in the room do not approach her. She's unpredictable especially around people she's not familiar with.”

They stopped in front of a heavily forbidding steal door, a peak through the small smudged window showed just gray walls. The key screeched as it turned in the lock sending shivers down his spine.

As soon as the pair stepped into room an arm shot out of the corner, short nails and stained skin. The nurse dropped her keys, the target of the erring appendage, and let out a short scream as Sam pulled the slight shadowed form against himself.

Bones wrapped in thin skin fought against his grip before dropping lightly against him. Darkened eyes that he'd never seen plagued familiarity on him, confusion blinking its way through on both their faces.

“Sam?” nubby fingers dug tightened their precarious grip on his shaking arm. “Where's Dean?”

“I'm gonna kill him!”

Pain racked through her already exhausted body, laced with the building poison against her common-law husband which was tempered only by the clumsy efforts of his brother. He just had to go on that hunt even with everyone saying it wasn't the brightest idea, he went any way.

And what had she said?

'Go ahead Dean. We'll be fine.'

Freakin' idiot.

“Just breathe ok Lizzy. Breathe,” Sam brushed the wet hair away from her forehead ineffectually trying to hide a wince from her hand crushing his.

“You fucking breathe!” she half sobbed as yet another contraction ripped through her.

Through the din of pain the sound of an argument in the hallway reached her before the subject of her ire clamored in. Sweaty, dirty, half asleep, and panicked. He was a sight for sore eyes.

“I hate you, you stupid sonofa-”

Cautious eyes once again peaked out the motel window then back to the resting figure.

The woman hadn't moved since he'd stolen her from the hospitals psychiatric ward except to occasionally lash out in her sleep. Sam had taken the time he had to research how this person who had nothing to do with his family could somehow paste themselves into his head.

So far he'd discovered that her name was not Delila Funtleyder; that she was from Roswell, New Mexico; and that there were still some subtle government searches for her though there was no reasons listed and the hunt was centered more on her husband. Besides being born in the alien capital of the world, there was nothing extraordinary about Elizabeth Evans.

Except, he could tell just by looking at her.

She was anything but ordinary.

[vaifeal]

Anyone else having trouble using this site?

When he pushed the door to the motel room open, Sam had expected to be greeted with the same sight he'd been met with for the last two weeks. Elizabeth tangled in sweat drenched sheets lying perfectly still but with an undercurrent of suspended energy.

Instead, for the first time since she'd looked up at him and he'd had to repeat the words that everytime felt like a punch in the gut, she was doing more than pretending to be a cadaver. Debris was swallowing the room in an eruption of chaos. Pages ripped from every book he'd left and others that had been in the room. Shredded sheets slowly forming a web around her.

Slowly, so as to not startle her, he moved forward groping towards the center to the singular piece of paper that wasn't being touched. It was scribbled on the symbols having overlapped in her desperate need to get get the information down. Most of it looked like nonsense with some mathematical signs thrown in the mix, if he could get a closer look he might be able to make sense of it.

Before his fingers could do more than brush the page her hand grabbed his wrist, the low hum of a static charge made the hair on his arm stick up. Dark eyes bore into him, the message clear.

Don't touch.

Liz snuggled down into the couch, shoving her head as far into the cushions as possible to block out the light streaming through the windows. Too tired to get up and shut the blinds it was all she could do to pretend she was in a little cocoon of darkness to get the rest she so desperately needed.

The door to their apartment opened and closed quietly.

Dean had been out since early that morning after getting a frantic call from Jo Harvelle, a cute girl if a bit naïve, over some haunting that she thought she could handle but turned out she couldn't. Jo hadn't actually called. Ellen had. The job was only a forty minute drive so after he'd gotten the baby asleep, for all of ten minutes because as soon as he'd left she'd gone back to screaming because even at four days she was a daddy's girl, he'd gone to help.

That had been thirteen point five hours ago. Thirteen point five hours of going it alone with a newborn.

She'd come to the decision that he wasn't allowed out of the house for the next twenty years.

He carefully made his way to the bassinet then toward the couch when she heard him pause. Liz tried to hold still as sleep exhausted giggles threatened to overwhelm her.

“What?” papers shuffled. “What? Liz?”

She knew exactly what he had found. Lilo's birth certificate finally filled out. She was no longer Baby Winchester. Her mommy had given her a name. Two names, both with alien connections and both ones that had been on the list that they hadn't been able to choose from.

“Liz?”

She finally rolled over to show him her widening smile though she kept her tone innocent, “Yeah?”

“Elliot Tegan? ET? You named our kid ET?”

“Yep. I told you I'd get my revenge.”

Maybe she shouldn't have named their kid when she hadn't slept in almost a week.

After a few hours of Elizabeth systematically destroying the motel room, Sam called Bobby. By the time the older man showed, the woman had finally frenzied herself to exhaustion and passed out in the midst of the rubble.

Dark hair fanning across pale skin, hand pressed under her cheek, he was reminded of the little girl in his dreams. The one that looked like Dean and that made his brother a completely different person than the man he'd been his last couple of years.

Bobby came in books and files weighing him down his expression clearly saying that he didn't know what they were doing.

“Why do you think she has something to do with Dean?”

“I have to.”

[vaifeal]

“entropy”

“paradox”

“temporal flux”

“splintering”

“bastard”

Those where just some of the mutterings that Sam had to listen to as he sat over Elizabeth and watched her slowly bring some type of order to the mess. He still didn't know what it meant, if it meant anything but it brought some measure of relief for it to appear as if no matter how out of sorts this woman seemed, that there was a plan.

One he wasn't privy too and one that might well make things worse – though he wasn't sure how that would be possible - but like he'd told Bobby Sam needed to believe that for once in his deceptively short life things would work out for the better without all of the fine print that normally plagued him.

He finds normality just like he wanted to have his girlfriend murdered.

He finally finds a middle ground with his father to have a demon hell bent on destroying them, even more so than normal.

Dean recovers from the car accident for their father to die in his place.

After over twenty years of hunting, Azazel is killed to find out that the cost was higher than he'd ever be willing to pay.

He finally learns how to use his abilities to watch his brother die a death no one deserves. Especially not the man whose whole life had been dedicated to protecting his brother and father.

Right now Sam really needed to be able to ignore Bobby's damning silence and trust the slight woman in front of them that was so much more than she seemed. He needed to believe that the power he saw there wasn't only in his mind and that she wasn't too far gone to save Dean.

She had to be the key. Her slowly building strength had to be meant for that. It was in the way she looked at him, like he was one of the few people that she could trust with her life. Like there had been a time when she'd done just that.

He didn't know much about her, was just learning her mannerisms - the way she'd tuck her hair behind her ear even when it wasn't hanging in her face, how she'd lie her hand flat against her abdomen when she though he wasn't watching, the soft smile that would light her features when she paused lost in thoughts he couldn't fathom – but he could see his brother in everything she did.

“You are my sunshine”

Silken strands of hair smoothed under her fingers where they were gently gliding across the tiny head pressed into her stomach. It had been a tiring day for Lilo, in a way that most days where but more so because it had been their family day.

“my only sunshine”

Up early, a short hike to their hiding place on the opposite side of the lake as the public beach, and a long day of snacking and running around with daddy and mommy. There'd been no time in Lilo's hectic schedule of swimming and playing catch to take a nap. Their little girl had even refused to be carried out when she'd been tiredly tripping over branches at the end of the day.

“you make me happy”

Not that Dean or Liz had expected any less. Born to two extremely independent people it was only fair that their daughter would have a stubborn streak a mile wide. Though she was generally easy to please. Leave her to her own devises or make what they wanted her to do into a game and Lilo would be all smiles.

“when sky's are gray”

Not that the four year old couldn't throw a tantrum with the best of them. She'd just learned when she could get away with it. She was a clever one, their daughter. Certainly when it came to getting what she wanted from her Uncle Sammy.

“you'll never know dear”

Liz smiled gently. Sam was a push over when it came to kids. Both his brothers' and his own. Something that would eventually lead to Sarah being the disciplinarian in the house. As soon as their kid was old enough to cause more trouble than stinking up his diaper.

“how much I love you”

The shaft of light coming into the room from the hall widened slightly before being partially blocked. She met Dean's gaze where he was leaning on the door frame and finished Lilo's favorite bedtime song.

“please don't take my sunshine away.”

For every action their was a reaction.

On the rare occasion that time splintered that was a lesson that needed to be coveted. More often then not the fracture was surgically done by a professional. The change was so small and unimportant that the effects took years to be felt and where almost impossible to pinpoint. Occasionally the change came from multiple spots or was so drastic that it caused a sharp change in events. Those where relatively easy to fix if one had the resources to do it.

Of course for most people this was all just conjecture but not for Liz.

Definitely not for the woman who'd lived through it twice. She was the converging point for three different timelines, two of which she remembered with perfect clarity.

Except for the odd discrepancy, people didn't remember the change. Not even those directly effected by them. For those cursed with the ability to remember, what happened as a result depended on how close they where to the change. If at the epicenter more often then not they went mad. If at the fringes they could pass it off as unusual daydreams.

They'd need to do that.

Because unlike most theories said, alternate dimensions were not created. Time folded back in on itself. Leaving psychics to get stronger and ripples to become more devastating.

[vaifeal]

I think I'm going crazy. Certifiably, completely, insane. I could have sworn that I had put this up, that I had even gotten reviews on it but when I check now it's not there. Please tell me that I'm right and that the site is screwy? I'll put the last part up later today or tomorrow.

This is seriously messing with my head...

There had been days where Liz's life had spread out before her so open with possibility and promise that she had been truly afraid of what may come. Not because anything was particularly wrong with it but just because in all the years of her life nothing had ever gone smoothly. Even before Max, there had been plenty of years where her parents had fought so viciously with each other that she'd thought they were going to get a divorce.

It had been so bad one summer that her mother had taken Liz and had gone to stay at her sisters. And the Crashdown hadn't always been a thriving small business. A couple of times there had been the very real chance that they'd have to sell. Grandma Claudia had been the only thing that saved them.

At first when Dean had come along, she'd let her tight reign on all of her expectations and beliefs slip enough to enjoy him. That was Dean. His whole person swallowed the fear and regret. He made her feel safe, like a security blanket. It'd let her worry about the bills and Lilo's incredible talent of finding the stickiest kinds of dirt to get stuck in her hair and taking the classes that she'd wanted to since she'd first picked up a collage brochure.

The FBI, the demons, the aliens, none of that mattered. For once in her life since sixteen there were people to take care of that and they didn't need her. They were covered with bills, their worse fights usually centered around his habit of leaving the empty milk container in the fridge, and their apartment was the Fort Nox of supernatural hideaways.

But it had only taken one stupid decision by one stupid man who didn't have a major roll in her life anymore to turn everything topsy-turny. Liz was left with a dead common law husband, an estranged husband that she wanted to kill, and a brother-in-law who carried himself like a kicked lost puppy.

She owed Sam a lot. He'd gotten her out of the institution, let her destroy his motel room so that she could let the chaos in her head out, and when the plan was finally together he was going to follow it.

“Why do I trust you?” the question was addressed to himself not her, she still hadn't said a word to him. She avoided turning to him. She couldn't look at him, didn't want to have the memory of this haunted man in the place of goofy Uncle Sammy.

“Because you're psychic,” her voice was hoarse with disuse and he jumped at the sound, “like me and everytime we've changed things people like you and me have gotten stronger so now you're using your abilities without thinking about it.”

And you might be remembering the echoes of what once was.

She hoped that wasn't the case. If it was he might remember when she set things right. There were too many memories he didn't need.

“Who are you?”

“Your sister-in-law, the mother of your niece, the reason everything went to hell, take your pick.”

“You're the cause? Is that why you remember?”

“Yes,” she took a deep breath shaking away the fog that was always threatening to encroach. “There have been three timelines. The original where everyone died. I sent Max, my husband then, back to keep the young me and him apart -”

“How'd he travel back?”

“The Granolith, it's one of the most powerful artifacts in the universe. The Antarians, Max's people, created it centuries ago. Wars were fought over it. Future Max said that Serena and I engineered it to allow a temporary tear in time,” Liz blinked away a memory, her voice wavering, “ but there wasn't a Serena. I was Serena. It was a name I used.”

“You know what happened in the first timeline?”

“Huh? Yes, no, partially. I used to dream about it. At first I just thought it was my imagination on the loose. I know better now.”

“So Future Max succeeded. If you were married to Dean, he must have.”

“Not exactly. He kept us apart for a while but we did end up getting married after high school. It didn't last though, we had changed too much for blissful matrimony. I left him and a couple of years later I met you two. John had just died and the two of you saved me from two demi-gods.”

“What went wrong?”

“Hmm, nothing. We were happy. You were married with a newborn, Lilo had just turned four, both of you were hunting less.”

Sam was half skeptic half wistful when he spoke again, “Then why are we here. What changed?”

“Max. Max directly interfered with my life to keep us together. But no one is meant to have three lifetimes of information in their head and I knew what he did and I tried to kill him.”

“And he had you committed.”

“It's kind of hard to stay on the run when your wife's a murderess raging lunatic,” a small shrug. “Now we're here.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We're going to set things right.”

The glasses on the tip of her nose slipped forward a fraction of an inch but she kept her eyes on the page before her. Liz had to memorize all of it before the following night and with Lilo spending the day at Sam's, right now was probably her best chance at it.

Arms wrapped around her waist, a stubbled chin coming to rest on top of her head. The smell of sweat and sawdust filled her nostrils the tangy sweetness setting off a war between happiness and nausea.

“Back for lunch?” Dean had been gone since early that morning doing one of the many side jobs he scraped together while the garage was still getting on its feet. Her domesticated hunter.

“Hmm,” he nuzzled her neck before heading into the kitchen. “Still studying? Don't you know that stuff already?”

“No,” he gave her a look. “Not all of it.”

“Relax, you're going to pass.”

She shrugged and changed the subject, “The doctor called.”

“Yeah? Everything okay?”

“Something came up in my blood work,” she saw his shoulders tense as he turned to her. He had known she'd gone to the doctors but like all men had assumed that it was for 'female problems'.

Which to be fair to him, it was.

“Is it serious.”

“That depends,” Liz moved to stand in front of him, her hand gently guiding his over her abdomen, “on how serious you think this it.”

For a minute he stood dumb founded before a smile broke across his face. It was one of his rare pure joy grins usually reserved for Lilo or surprise sex, “A baby?”

“Unless you want to call it something else.”

“A baby!”

Max had moved the Granolith. Which wasn't all that surprising and not very difficult to locate again.

After about forty years knowing/being with him, it wasn't all that hard for Liz to track down Michael – with a bit of help from Sam – and get the information out of him. He always had liked her better. Not that she couldn't have figured it out on her own.

Her ex-husband was if anything, predictable.

Usually a warm, isolated, cave structure, with in a hundred mile radius of where he was living.

Liz peaked over at the green tinted amazement on Sam's face as the cone pulsed with palpable power. The key to changing the world and it was all theirs.

[vaifeal]

Liz knew the day that Max had gone back to but she didn't know when it would be. The younger Liz and Max hadn't spent much time together that day because of an argument they'd had almost immediately after waking. He'd been in the wrong, had known he'd been in the wrong and hadn't apologized.

She'd taken it as an invitation to follow through on the idea that had been building in her head for months. Leave.

At least that's what had happened initially.

Between the point in the morning when he'd stormed off in a rage and that night when she'd packed her bags and had Maria drive her to the bus, the older Max had gotten the younger Max to go back to the hotel room and make a heart felt apology.

That he would contact his younger self by any means and as such risk tearing the universe apart, told her more about what type of man he was than she'd like to know. He'd always been reckless, she wouldn't be alive if he wasn't, but he'd finally gone to far.

When things where put right she'd have to talk to Michael and Isabelle. There was no way that she could be held responsible for his happiness. It'd been almost ten years since they'd separated. That was ridiculous.

Not that her ex was ever particularly fond of reasoning.

Loud shouts erupted from inside the paper thin walls of roadside motel, the words clear to everyone with in a quarter mile radius. A delayed embarrassed blush spread across her cheeks. Liz hadn't realized how loud they had been. It certainly explained the pitying looks some of the staff had always given her.

“We never should have gotten married. This was all a huge fucking mistake.”

“Well, it wasn't the only one.”

“What? What mistakes is perfect Max willing to own up to? Certainly not this farce, right Max? How about thinking that all of a sudden you could handle your drink, couldn't be that. You know I don't think it's your belief that no once can handle their own affairs, that's not even a possibility. So what Max? What is this mistake that you're willing to admit.”

“I SHOULD HAVE LET YOU DIE”

She remembered reeling back like she'd been struck once those words had finally been solidified. Liz had accepted later that it was just one of those things that people say to purposefully hurt someone else. That of all the things that Max would regret that that would never be one of them. But the words still rung in her head. The bitter matter-of-fact way he'd screamed it in her face, his hands squeezing her shoulders hard enough to leave ten little bruises.

The words had struck him a second after they'd hit her and he'd taken a step back, breathing heavy. He'd made to apologize, not for whatever had started the argument or the topics that were festering between them but for allowing himself to become so impassioned that he'd voiced the thought that had been lingering in his head since Pierce.

Liz hadn't given him the chance, “Maybe but I'm not the one that poisons everyones lives than pretends that they had nothing to do with it,” then she'd muttered the words that had made his expression shift from wounded to murderous. She couldn't hear them from where she was but knew what came next, “How is Tess these days?”

A heartbeat later an enraged younger Max stormed out of the motel, past the van, past her hiding spot, never pausing. Tess hadn't even been the worst name she could have used. Brody. Kyle. Courtney. Isabel. Maria. Michael. Jim. Ava (though that had been more his clone).

Zan.

But letting go of Zan had been the smartest decision he'd ever made.

Beside her the shadows moved and she fought down the urge to laugh. Of course even with the advise of an older him, young Max had still needed all day to mope. Stepping out of her hiding spot she moved in front of the man she'd come to confront.

“We always did know how to hurt each other,” Max's features were frozen in surprise. “Did you really think I'd let you get away with it?”

“You? How? Why? You're not- I thought...”

“I don't care what you thought but you're going to go back to the Granolith and forget that you ever had this harebrained scheme.”

“This is the only way to fix it.”

She shook her head letting him see the self afflicted scars along her face and neck, “This is the only way to ruin everything,” he made to go around her. “I'll hate you forever Max. You do this and I'll hate you till the day the world ends. Because that's what happens. The world ends.”

His steps stilled, his shoulders hunching, “All I ever wanted was you.”

“I was never yours to have.”

Sweaty and exhausted, Liz pushed open the door to their apartment. One of the other nurses had called in sick and she'd had to work a double. Wondering why it was so quiet, she carefully dropped her bag next to the door. It didn't take long for her to find her husband or daughter.

They where laying on the couch, Lilo across Dean's chest. Their lunch plates on the coffee table, grease across both their hands and faces, matching flannel shirts bunched around them, and matching boots staining her couch. With a shake of her head she pulled the boots off their feet and placed a soft kiss on both their brows.

Her mechanics.

Knowing that soon enough Lilo would be up, her energy renewed by the nap and looking to play with her mommy who'd been absent for the last day, Liz hoped in the shower before collapsing in her bed.

Her heart was pounding when she woke up. Heart pounding, skin flushed with fear, and whole body quaking. It'd just been a nightmare. A terribly vivid nightmare. Thats all it was. The memories in her head meant nothing, they where merely echoes of a dream gone bad. Catching her reflection in the television, Liz never thought she'd be relieved to be over thirty.

Low noises from the kitchen had her vaulting from her... their bed to the door. Her heart jumping into her throat as she took in her family. Lilo on the kitchen counter legs kicking. Dean at the stove stirring what looked like soup.

It took eight steps for her to have her daughter in her arm and to bury her face in her husbands chest.

“Hey, you alright?” calloused fingers brushed away tears she hadn't been aware of.

Offering a watery smile, Liz couldn't articulate how alright she was, “Yeah, I'm great.”


END