"What?" Liz looked up, snapped out of her daydreaming.

"Look how different things are."

"What`s different? Oh, the menu changes? I like the new design, I-"

"Liz," Maria sighed, "I`m talking about us. The six of us. Remember? US."

"Oh."

"When was the last time Max or Michael came into the Crashdown? Hm? They don`t come in anymore, and that`s the plain truth. And I don`t even understand it. Tess left. she`s gone, she gave up, she`s out of our lives for good. How can you know that and not see it as a tremendous weight off your shoulders? You and Max need to get it together again, and then-"

"Maria, no," Liz insisted. "I`ve told you before, it isn`t happening. It can`t be that way again. It seems every time we get back together something stand in our way, it causes something really bad to happen, or someone is suddenly in danger. It`s plain and simple, Maria-Max and I are not to be. It can`t happen."

"Tess and Max were not to be," Maria corrected. "Tess went through all that pain, all that anger, gave it up, gave everything up, and left-all for you. And you are just gonna throw it all away like it isn`t worth squat."

"Tess gave up because what she was fighting for was gone. The three other aliens that were supposed to be like her family now despised her because of her...mistakes. But what I`ve been fighting for this whole time is gone too. I wanted Max and I to be together. No problems. But it`s pretty clear now that me and Max in a relationship with no problems is simply impossible."

"So you`re giving him up because you can`t be perfect?" Maria said testingly.

"I`m giving him up because he deserves to have a perfect life," Liz said sternly. "Don`t you see? His life can never be at peace while I`m in it."

Maria just stared and shook her head. "He wants you in his life. Don`t you know that`s all he wants."

"Fine, fine," Liz sighed. "If that`s the way it is, he can make the move. If he comes, if he does in fact come to me and tell me that he needs me after all, then I will in fact go back to him. But I will not be the one to go. I repeat, I won`t go to him." It seemed like she was saying it more to herself than to Maria. "Only if he is the one to come."

Maria nodded. "Fair enough. Only if he comes."

"But he won`t come," Liz added. "He`s the one who wants me to be safe. He was always the one to make the brake in the first place. Mr.Play-it-safe. There`s no chance in hell he`ll come. No chance."

"Right," Maria agreed. "But if he does..."

"Yeah, if he does," Liz repeated. "...But he won`t come."

Liz stared at herself in the mirror as she ran the comb through her hair for about the millionth time. She didn`t feel like she could get to bed. She just wasn`t tired at all. That was okay. She`d just curl up with a book until she got tired and then get to sleep. That always worked.

The book she was currently in to was a collection of Edgar Allan Poe stories, all of which had some sort of special touch and taste to them that never failed to make Liz exhaustedly sleepy after one story. Maybe it was the concentration it took to figure what things meant and what certain words were that wore her out, Liz had no idea.

Tonight was a special night because she made it through thiry-six pages before her eyes got too heavy to make out the words any more, and it was fifteen past midnight by the time she finally turned out her lamp and settled back into bed. Liz liked the way her room looked at night. She found it hard to sleep in any dim light, and it was good that her room was pretty pitch black at night. For some reason not much light came in from the windows of the balcony. There were, after all, no street lights right outside there or anything, which was only convenient. Liz would never be able to rest if there was a bright light right outside her balcony.

Liz had been so sleepy when she was reading, but it seemed the more she lay there ready to sleep the less tired she got. Refusing to give up and flip her book back out again, she passed the time by thinking of ways her room could look better. It would help if she could actually see the room around her, but it was too dark. She was planning everything out with her memory of what her room looked like. None of these ideas she thought of did she really intend to do.

Liz started to hum after a while, random things that were stuck in her head that had been stuck in her head all day. She was in the middle of "Satalite" when she happened to turn her head to the direction of her balcony and see him standing there at her window.

It was Max, his features hidden in the dark of the outside night. Liz could barely see him, but of course she knew it was him. It had to be.

Liz sat up in bed and met his eyes. How long had he been there? Ten minutes? Twenty minutes? The entire time she`d been in bed?

Liz slowly slid her legs over the side of her bed and stood up. As she walked over to the window she thought she saw a slight smile on his face. When she opened up the window and let him step in, his face was expressionless. But somehow, Liz knew everything he was feeling.

"I..." Max started out in a soft whisper. "I can`t seem to get to sleep at all."

Liz shook her head slowly. "Me neither. Usually reading works, but..."

His smile told her that he had been around to see her reading too. He`d been there a very long while. "Do you know what day it is, Liz?" Max asked, still keeping his voice in a whisper.

Liz nodded. "It`s the day...I was shot."

Max smiled again and said, "Has it really been a year since that day? It seems like only yesterday."

"No one even said anything," Liz said. "It`s kind of odd. I saw Maria and Alex today, and neither of them mentioned it. I somehow doubt they`ve forgotten. This day changed our lives...maybe they just didn`t want to talk about it. I guess I can see why."

There was a pause before Max asked Liz a surprising question. "Did it hurt, Liz?"

Liz was confused. "Did what hurt?"

"When he shot you." There was a hint of deep sympathy in his voice.

Liz thought about that. "I don`t even remember...I guess it did. But it`s like...that wasn`t what was so bad, the pain. It was the realization. I remember all I could this was this is it, this is it, I`m dying..."

Max frowned. "What was worse, Liz? That moment, when you were in pain and you knew you were going to die, or everything horrible that you`ve been through because you got involved with me?"

Liz sunk her head. "You know the answer...Max, Tess hurt me."

"I know."

"But Max, I don`t want you to think...I mean, I`d go through that moment for a hundred hours to experience everything I experienced with you. I look at my life before all this happened, before I knew about you three, and it seems like I had such an empty, unimportant life."

Max said nothing except, "I know. Me too."

Liz waited a while and then said, "I wish I could do something to thank you for saving me, but I don`t think I could ever work up to that."

"You`ve given me enough," Max whispered.

"But I`ll never feel like I have. Max, what you did was so amazing. There I was dying, and in a second you gave everything just to fix everything, jut to make everything okay again. And that`s what it seems like you did. Things weren`t right before you told me your secret. Something was missing. And you let me in. You fixed it."

Max was getting close to her now. That didn`t surprise Liz. She wanted to be close to him too; it was hard to resist when they were alone like this.

"I remember when you told me you weren`t God," Liz recalled. "And you`re right. You aren`t. But I wish...I just wish you could always step in and heal people, make things better, make everything good. But there are times, like now...there are times when there`s nothing healing powers can do."

"What`s the matter?" Max asked, and his whisper was especially quiet and gently this time.

"My heart is broken," Liz said sadly.