The streetlights had long since come on, but still he couldn't sleep. Michael tossed and turned on his unkempt bed, trying to find that perfect position that would let the darkness take over. The night was quiet, almost silent, despite the rain.

The stillness was broken by a knock on the door, so light at first he thought he had imagined it.

Maria stood in the hallway, looking like an alley cat caught out in a hurricane. Watching her drip, Michael shivered even though the apartment was warm. It was like deja vu, only the roles were reversed.

"No. No no no no no," she had adamantly shook her head at his blurred figure, but she had let him in anyway. That willingness to open up, to let someone in, was what he loved most about her; it was something he hadn't thought he would ever know, not from someone else and especially not from himself.

It had always been Max who played the knight in shining armor, saving Isabelle, saving Liz, saving Michael himself, but now it could be his own turn. He opened the door wider.

As their lips touched, Maria's mind burst with color. A wholly alien planet, so real she felt she could reach out and touch it, came rushing towards her. Her mind reeled -- it was as if she were flying, floating, with lakes filled with thick, red water in view below, rock formations like she had never seen before looming in the distance. Suddenly a skyline, a cityscape, a beach with sand of a color she couldn't name, so many images crowding for attention. Space, stars, then familiar Earth, desert, highways. A streak through the sky, a shimmering silver shape falling too quickly towards the ground; she knew how this voyage ended. She watched as Michael watched Max and Isabelle being taken away, too distrustful and wary even at that age to go with them, and now he was running through the desert, alone. Always alone.

"I had no idea," Maria said, her voice as small and soft as a sigh, "I'm so sorry..."

A single tear ran down Michael's cheek; this was the first time she had actually seen him cry; even on that night when it had been him standing soaked through at her door, he had kept his back to her as he wept, but now he didn't hide.

Michael slowly wiped his face. "This wasn't supposed to be about me."

"It's not about you, it's about us," Maria whispered.

**

Maria's voice was like silk as she sang the lullaby. This was what he had been looking for, what other people referred to as home. "You're amazing," escaped Michael's lips as his eyes closed, letting Maria's song fill the dark places. Maria knew he would deny that he had ever let her sing to him like this, not because he was embarrassed or felt a need to uphold his tough demeanor like she would have thought before, but because he kept what was special to him close. She didn't know exactly what she had hoped to get out of coming here, but this, this experience, this sharing, was above and beyond anything she could have expected. Her face felt hot, flushed: this was an intimacy she had never imagined existed. Maria felt her heart might break at the sheer beauty of it all. Wrapping her arms around him, her eyes closed to a vision of rainbows like shooting stars.

Curled under the light blanket, Michael and Maria fell asleep. Outside the window, the rain that had fallen on Maria continued to fall on the empty streets.