A/N: I just wanted to say to all of you, thank you for sticking with me on this. It was pretty darned difficult writing the entire series after TWDL, when I foolishly (as I thought then) promised two more. But I fulfilled my promise, didn't I?

So this one's for all of you. All the ones who were with me from the beginning.

LET ME LOVE YOU.

We didn't achieve freedom that day. My plan was flawed, and I lost a brother. I will never forgive myself for that.

It was only after countless battles and losses that the aliens retreated back from whence they came. As my late father once said, sometimes the best things in life are worth waiting for. But that is another story, for another time.

I am grateful for the life I have led, with my beautiful wife here beside me. My beautiful Margaret. I lean over and pat her thinning white hair like I used to in the early days of our freedom.

My only regret is that we all missed out on a childhood. We had to fight, and work, and just try to survive. I long for the days when my biggest problem was fighting over what channel to watch with Ben on Saturday mornings.

I fear that if these children know what happened so long ago, that somehow part of their innocence will be gone forever. And childlike innocence is something that should be cherished while one still can.

Someday, far from today, they will know. When they are ready.

We never gave up hope in the struggle.

"Hal, stop!"

"It's no use!"

It was as if someone had put cotton in my ears. Everything was muffled, everything was numb.

"He's gone, Hal."

I saw, if only for a quick, fleeting moment, the mangled body of my younger brother as they dragged his remains away from the site of the battle. We won, I later learned. But if we lost Ben, then that does not count as winning anything.

Somebody helped me back to camp. I do not know who. Captain Weaver stood on the roof of one of our trucks, addressing the survivors.

Survivors.

I should not be one of them.

He said, "Men, I know we lost many today…"

Murmurs of saddened agreement traveled through the too-small crowd, with grievances heavy on everyone's shoulders.

"…But we must have hope." Ha.

"We can win the fight."

No. No, we can't.

"We WILL win the fight."

Said with so much conviction.

"But we have nowhere to go from here!" shouted one of the fighters.

"We do," is Weaver's reply. "We have a place to go." He motions to the fighter that called out. "Look on at the horizon, over there. What do you see?"

The sun was setting just below the trees as we all turned to watch it.

"Now, turn south."

We did so.

"I said we have one last hope."

"And what might that be?" I called.

He faced me, meeting my eyes for a nanosecond before replying.

"Charleston."

I used to think that freedom was a simple concept, like love is for some or fierce, abstract passion is for others. But freedom is not just freedom. It is made up of so many different things that add up to more than can be put to paper.

Take love, for instance. If I had no love for Maggie or Ben or the 2nd Mass, then where would I be? I would have nothing to hold onto, nothing to call my own. Love is a force of nature, just like a hurricane or a tornado, only much stronger. I would not do anything for love, though. It would be unwise to have such thoughts.

And what about hate? If I had not hated the skitters since the minute I watched my mother die before me, then I would not have killed half the aliens I did. But I do not let hate rule me, control my emotions, like Ben. Hate was all he had in the end. And his pure, unadulterated hate was what got him killed.

Freedom means something different to everyone, whether it is freedom from conformity or control, or even freedom from what we call life. But what is freedom, truly? I do not know, even after working so hard for it.

I still work to free Maggie from her demons, to free myself from haunting memories. I suppose you could say that I am obsessed with freedom. And someday, that may be my own death. But we all have a passion, and we all have that one thing that drives us to do unthinkable things.

For me, it is the things we do for freedom.

"It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."
Samuel Adams

Fin.