Max smiled in relief as Liz automatically took the toothpick, and used her own sample for the project. Things were…perfect now. Liz knew about him, and loved him anyway. And now she was helping protect him too.

“Have you ever studied your own cells, Max?” Liz asked him softly as he focused in on her cells. “To see, you know, just how different they are?”

“No…I never really thought about it, I guess.”

“Well why don’t we.” Liz suggested. “I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of curious.”

Max nodded slowly. “Okay.”

He grabbed a new toothpick and created a new slide, sticking it under the microscope for Liz, and wiping the toothpick clean with his powers.

“Whoa…” Liz muttered softly as she studied the large cells, which were infused with some sort of soft green glow.

“What?”

“Take a look.” Liz told him as she slid out of the way. “They’re definitely different.”

Max nodded in agreement as he stared at the building blocks that made him who he was. He looked up at Liz, marveling at how they could look so much the same, but be so different at the same time.

“But how different are we really?” Liz commented, echoing the very thoughts plaguing Max’s head. He took her hand and laced his fingers through hers, before pulling it up and pressing a feather light kiss across their joined knuckles.

“Not very…” Max whispered to her gently.

The bell rang, and they turned to clean up their lab table before heading to lunch. Max startled Liz by grabbing the slide of his cells, and sliding it under the table. She watched in amazement as he held his hand over it, and gasped aloud when his hand started to glow.

“What are you doing?” She hissed softly.

“Destroying the evidence. I’m making sure the slide is totally clean. I don’t want anyone to ever find any remnants of our experiment.”

“I didn’t think about that.” Liz realized.

“You haven’t been trying to hide your identity all your life.” Max pointed out, and his words hit home for Liz. Finally she understood why Max came off as so mysterious. He created that image for himself in an attempt to be avoidable, so that people wouldn’t notice him. It didn’t really work though. Liz noticed him, and had managed to break through his defensive walls, to know the real Max Evans. How was it possible?

The two of them headed to lunch. Instead of joining their friends in the middle of the quad, they retired to a back corner of the school field, where they could talk in peace.

“I know you probably have questions.” Max started. “And I want you to know that you can ask me anything. I don’t want there to be any more secrets between us.”

Liz nodded. “Yeah…I do.”

“Go ahead.” Max pushed gently.

“Okay…um…what powers do you have?”

“Well…you’ve seen a lot of it already. There’s the whole connection thing…you’ve experienced that. And we can manipulate molecular structures…that was how I healed you and removed the cells. And there’s other stuff too…we’re not really sure of everything that we’re capable of, and we don’t really like to experiment. Who knows what could happen?”

“You keep saying we…there’s others?”

“Um…yeah. Only two others that I know of.”

Realization dawned over Liz. “Michael and Isabel…”

“Yeah…and they can’t know that you know, Liz. They’ll kill me.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“Thank you.”

“So…um…is this your natural form?”

Max chuckled softly as the question. “As far as I know, yes. I’ve never looked any different.”

Liz blushed softly. “Sorry…that was a random question…I think Maria’s starting to rub off on me.”

“I told you, Liz. You can ask me anything. It’s no big deal.”

“I know…sorry. Hey, what happened in the cave last spring?”

Max’s face stiffened slightly at the memory. “God, I’m so sorry about that. I have no idea what came over me. I was so sure I was going to loose you after that.”

“You don’t need to worry about that, Max.”

“I know that now…but I didn’t then. Those cave paintings…I think they were put there by…someone like me. They seemed familiar to me, but I know I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

“So you think that maybe it was a message from your home or something?”

“Yeah… It’s the first time anything like that has ever happened to me.”

“That must have been very…startling for you.”

“Yeah, you could say that. For a moment, while we were in the cave, I had forgotten that I was trying to keep it a secret…I would have done anything to find out what it meant. It was really frightening when I realized it later.”

“I wish I could have helped.”

“You did…just being there with you was really comforting for me. You have an amazing effect over me, Liz.”

“Well, the feeling’s mutual.” Liz laughed.

“Thank you…for accepting me Liz.”