I started writing this right after the finale aired, as this is a bit of an alternate story arc for Resistance. I'm not a cruel person, nor do I desire more death - killing Wash off was bad enough, and I cried when I watched it. I am simply a fluff junkie, but for some reason, maybe it's my own sick psyche, I find it harder to write plain fluff without tragedy or terror leading up to it. In no way do I wish Mark had died instead of Wash - as much as I love her, I love him a million times more. The only way this would work was for me to put him in a teeny bit of danger. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

This wasn't supposed to happen; not again, not now, not ever. Lucas was supposed to be dead, Skye shot him! He killed Lieutenant Washington, he shot his own father, Lucas Taylor is supposed to be dead. He's not supposed to be able to double back on the return trip back to the colony and unload two sonic rifles into innocent people. He's not supposed to be able to shoot Mark.

Maddy sat in a chair next to Mark's bio-bed mulling these thoughts over in her head. They had been less than a click away from the gate when Lucas had attacked. It had been completely random and was over as quickly as it began. He swooped in from the trees, running his mouth and the guns at the same time. After emptying the weapons, he was gone. There was no time to go after him, as no one knew whether he was alone or had back-up in the form of Sixers or the Phoenix group, and their return back to the colony was now of even greater importance.

There were a dozen or so wounded from the attack, though none as badly as Mark turned out to be, and only a few others were being kept overnight in the infirmary. Lucas's wild attack was just that: wild. His shots missed the majority of the soldiers that were there. Mark's injury hadn't even been very serious to begin with, just a bullet wound to the side that he had received trying to protect her, but he had made it worse over the course of getting her to safety. Maddy hadn't even noticed he was shot at first, as he didn't complain of the pain. It was only after they got everyone safely inside the gate that she saw the relief and pain spasm across his face. He had been carrying Zoe since the attack, and after he set her down, he fell to his knees clutching his side. She shouted for her mom, rushing to him as he fell back on the ground. He barely managed to whisper her name before blacking out.

After he had been rushed to the infirmary for surgery, her mother had told her that he had been shot. The bullet had miraculously missed hitting anything vital, and with timely surgery it would have been fine, if it had happened to anyone else. But since it was Mark, and not even a bullet would stop him from trying to protect Maddy, he had made quite the mess of his insides. Her mother had stitched him up the best she could, and now they were all waiting on him to wake up, Maddy the most impatient of them all.

Maddy couldn't stop replaying what happened in her head. She wasn't trying to punish herself, she just couldn't get the images out of her mind. The ones she focused on the most were the ones of him after he was shot. She concentrated on remembering if he ever looked in pain, but if he did, he never let her see.

She sighed as she refocused her attention on Mark. His face looked tired and slightly worn. With all that had happened in the past week, he hadn't shaved very recently, and his cheeks and chin were covered in scruff. He was wearing loose sweat pants, and had a blanket pulled up to his hips, above which gauze was covering his wound and a bandage had been wrapped around his torso to hold it in place. He was not wearing a shirt, which Maddy was trying her very best not to enjoy, though she was not upset that she failed at that task.

"Maddy, it's almost time to go home darling," her mother told her as she walked over.

"Can't I stay tonight, please?" Maddy begged.

"I'm afraid not honey. You need your rest. Mark wouldn't want you wearing yourself thin for his sake." Elizabeth ran her hand over her daughter's hair in a comforting manner, before patting her shoulder. "Five more minutes, k?"

Maddy nodded at her mom, before she walked away to tend to other patients. Turning back to the boy in the bed, Maddy sighed quietly. She wished he would wake up soon, though she wanted to be there when he did. She would miss it though, if only he would just wake up. She grasped his hand in both of hers, laid her head down on the side of the bed, and just looked up at him. "I do love you, you know," she told him. She knew from her readings and studies that people in comas can sometimes hear what goes on around them, and had taken to talking to him, much in the same way she would have if he were awake. For some reason she couldn't fathom, he enjoyed just listening to her talk. Whether she was rambling distractedly, much as she had done after meeting him when she found herself unable to control the flow of her thoughts to her mouth, or simply telling him in detail about her day, he loved listening to her. That day ever so long ago when he declared his intentions to court her before offering his arm and listening to her tale of woe about her failed attempt to be her mother's apprentice was only the first of many walks they took where he simply listened to her talk. She had meant to ask him why he likes to listen to her so much, and refused to believe that she might have missed her chance. Mark will wake up; it was only a question of when.

"Mom says I'll have to go soon," she told him. "Said you wouldn't want me wearing myself out. I didn't bother telling her that I would anyways, even if I did go home to sleep, which I will be doing so you don't need to worry." It might have been wishful thinking on her part, but she thought she saw the corner of his mouth twitch upwards at her comment. She squeezed his hand in her grasp, before kissing his knuckles. "You be good for me and I'll be back in the morning," she promised him.

Looking around, she spotted a nurse, and quietly asked her for a pen. When it was brought to her, Maddy rolled Mark's arm on the bed, until his palm and the inside of his forearm were facing up. She wrote a simple message there, before leaning down to press her lips upon the words she wrote. She stood up, set the pen on the table next to him, and kissed him on the lips. Backing slowly away from him, Maddy let her eyes roam over his still form one more time, before she turned to go find her mother, so they could go home.

When Mark awoke, he was surrounded by nurses holding him down. They had been alerted to his waking form by his bed beeping out his stats, letting them know his brain was sending adrenaline out to his extremities. They had quickly hurried over to prepare the necessary meds for when he would become conscious, in an effort to keep him from pulling an explosive fight move on them akin to that of the old comic book hero Hulk.

It was very early in the morning and still dark, which is one of the first things Mark noticed after waking and realizing he was no longer in danger. The last thing he fully remembered was rushing the group from the forest back into the colony, and that had happened in late afternoon and it had been light.

The doctor on duty explained to him that he had been shot, and that by rushing the half-click back to the gate, carrying a child no less, he had made it much worse. He was lucky he was in such great shape; his body was able to handle the trauma fairly well, and it was only his mind working to reboot his body that had required the mental shutdown. As Mark gained understanding of his surroundings, he found himself remembering more and more of what happened. Leaning forward, he caught the attention of the next nurse that walked by, beckoning her over to him. "Maddy-" he croaked out.

The nurse understood what he meant; everyone knew who Maddy was and how much in love the two teens were. "Maddy's fine," she told him, and he visibly relaxed at the news. "She wasn't injured at all."

Mark nodded, processing the information. He cleared his throat before asking "What time is it? What day? How long have I been out?"

"It's just after four in the morning. You've been out for about a day and a half, since you got back to the colony."

Mark murmured his thanks, lying back in the bed. The nurse walked off and he was left alone with his thoughts. He thought over how strange it was that the first thing he would notice after waking would be the light difference, and chalked it up to being a soldier. He found that his training was responsible for most of his idiosyncrasies.

Mark found, as he continued to run over what happened in his head, that he was able to remember more. He could hear and feel what was going on around him while he had been laying in the bio-bed the last day and a half, and remembered it. Dr. Shannon was the one who took the bullet out of him and stitched him up, Commander Taylor had asked after him while getting his own wound re-stitched, Zoe had visited the day before, and Maddy- Maddy had been there a lot. He knew she had been sitting to his left, on the chair conveniently positioned next to his bed, and holding his hand. She had come in after he had been declared stable enough to have visitors, gone home that night, and spent all of yesterday at his bedside.

And she talked to him; he remembered that now. He smiled as he thought over all that she said. She told him about his condition: that he was stable and could wake up any time he chose. She told him about the colony: how everyone was working to clean things up and put it all back that way it was supposed to be. She told him about the Commander: how he was grieving Wash's death and absence, and how her father was stepping up to help him. He didn't remember all she had said, but then, she used so many big words and spoke too quickly for him to understand more than the general gist of what she was saying, even when he was conscious. What he remembered most strongly though, was when she left last night. She told him her mother was making her go home so she could rest. He appreciated that, and she knew as much. Then she did something to his arm, kissed him, and left.

When he remembered about his arm, he lifted it so he could see if what she had done had left anything on it, and discovered a handwritten message there. In Maddy's unmistakable loopy handwriting it read:

"I love you,
Maddy"

He smiled at that, his grin splitting across his face as he traced his finger over her words.

Mark was tracing her message to him again when Maddy came with her mother to work that morning. "Mark!" she exclaimed, excited to see him awake. She ran across the room to him, grasping his outstretched hand in one of hers, and throwing her other arm around his neck in a hug.

He wrapped his arm around her back, holding her to him, murmuring "Maddy," into her hair. They were happy and at peace for the moment, content to just hold each other. Maddy pulled away after another moment to look into his eyes. She had missed just staring at him and having him stare back at her, as he was doing now.

Mark ran his fingers down the side of Maddy's cheek, holding his palm against her face and running his thumb over her lips, before finally pulling her face down to kiss her.

Maddy reveled in the feel of his lips against hers. Somewhere in her brain she knew it had only been since last night when she kissed him, and two days since he had kissed her back, but her body was trying to tell her it had been much longer. She pulled away after a moment, needing to look at him again. The whole ordeal felt too much like a bad dream for her to be able to discern whether this was real, if he was really awake. But it was, he was here with her, and she felt like she might never stop smiling.

"I missed seeing your smile," Mark murmured to her, still holding her close. Though he knew she was fine, he couldn't help checking her over once, or four times, for himself - another learned habit of his. If possible, Maddy's smile grew even bigger at his comment. Before she could say anything to him though, he spoke again, telling her "I got your message."

Mark lifted his arm off her back where it was pinning her to his chest, letting her shift so she was sitting next to his hip, before laying his arm across her lap, writing facing up. She started tracing the lettering as he had been before she came in, saying "I wanted you to know, if you woke up and I wasn't here. You were looking so good last night, that's why I didn't want to go home. I knew you would wake up soon, and I wanted you to know I loved you."

Mark flipped his arm over, grabbing her hip and startling her by pulling her a few inches up the bed, so she was now nestled against his waist. "I love you too," he told her seriously, once she looked him in the eyes again. He was rewarded with another bright smile from her, and a look so full of love he doubted any two people in the history of forever had ever loved each other more. "I heard you, too," he told her, smiling. "You talked to me."

Maddy nodded her head at him, still smiling. "I hoped you would hear me. I wasn't completely sure you would, of course, as it's not a proven scientific fact that coma patients can hear what is going on around them, or will even remember what they did or didn't hear. And of course there were some people who told me it was useless, you couldn't hear me and I was wasting my time, but I kept talking to you anyways. I discovered that I really missed talking to you and you just listening. So many other people only want a passing comment and not an actual conversation that I've learned to keep my comments short, though for some reason, especially around you, I find myself babbling all the time, and oh my gosh I'm doing it again." Maddy bit her lip and ducked her head down, while Mark chuckled at her sorrowful expression. "I didn't know how much I cherished our conversations and having you generally interested in what I say, until I had to spend a day and a half at your bedside hoping you would wake up and talk to me again." Mark lifted his hand back up to caress her cheek in response. She leaned into his touch, holding his hand to her face with her own. "I really missed you."

"I wasn't awake to miss you, but if I had been, I would have," Mark murmured while running his thumb across her cheekbone. "I love talking to you. I love listening to you. You always have such interesting things to say." Maddy smiled again at that, and brought her gaze up from her feet so it rested on him.

Impulsively, she slid off the bed, spun around half way so she was facing Mark's feet, and then nudged her hip back up on the bed before lying down next to him. He wrapped his arm around her back and grabbed hold of her hip so she wouldn't fall off, all the while staring at her amusedly with an eyebrow raised. Maddy smiled sheepishly at Mark before ducking her head down on his shoulder, and saying shyly, "I like this way better."

Mark brought his other arm up to cradle her against him. "Mmm, much better," he said in response, as he pressed his lips down on the top of her head in a kiss. Maddy sighed contentedly and closed her eyes, totally relaxed and at peace in Mark's embrace. "I love you," he murmured as he closed his own eyes, comfortable enough to consider sleep for the first time since he woke up.

"I love you too," Maddy said smiling, feeling her own grip on consciousness start to slip away in favor of sleeping well for the first time since Mark kissed her goodbye and left to bring in the eleventh pilgrimage.

That was how Elizabeth found them when she made her way over to check on Mark: curled in the other's embrace, and sound asleep. She simply smiled, grabbed another blanket from the closet, and draped it over the two.

I hope you liked the story! I toyed with it and sweated over it intermittently for a year. Stories are somehow always easier to write when there's something else I'm supposed to be doing. Anyways, please review and share your thoughts. I love to hear what people think, it helps me grow as a writer.

Also, I'm ignoring the fact that there probably aren't the normal pens we use today in Terra Nova, which is what Maddy used to write on Mark's arm. Everything they use is electronic, and nothing I thought up to try to be a futuristic digital+ink pen made sense, and it would have interrupted the flow of the story if I tried to invent and explain something. So if they still use regular bullets, they can still have regular pens.