"Max?"

I shift around, not wanting to wake up.

"Max?" the soft lilting voice says again. A hand touches my shoulder and gently shakes it.

I open my eyes and see that Carson's standing over me. The past hours replay in my mind and I realize that I must have fallen asleep waiting for Carson to come out of the infirmary to tell me what was going on. I blink and sit up as best I can without waking Maria, who is fast asleep in my arms. "How bad?" I ask.

Carson shakes his head and says, "Too early to tell lass. He's still unconscious. Will be for who knows how long. All I can tell ye is that he's not out of the woods yet."

I sigh. "Thanks Carson." I say, thinking of nothing else to say.

Carson smiles and runs a hand down Maria's hair, smoothing it down. "Anythin' Laura n' I can do for the lass?" He asks.

I shake my head and say, "No. Thanks though. I'll continue to watch her."

" 'Course." Carson says, stuffing his hands in his lab coat pockets. "Well, if there's anythin' you need don't hesitate to ask Laura or me."

I nod my head in understandment. "Thanks." I pause, not sure if I should even ask the question. I decide to despite the rather large chance that he'll say no. "Can we see him?"

Carson hesitates and seems to be thinking. I look at him hoping, no praying, that he'll say yes. After what seems like forever but in reality is a minute or two, Carson says, "Only for a minute."

I smile, "Thanks." I then gently shake Maria's shoulder and say softly, "Maria, wake up."

"Don't wanna." She mumbles, shifting.

"Want to see you dad?"

Maria's eyes flutter open and she sits up, looking at Carson. "Really?" she asks.

"Only for a minute though, lass."

Maria jumps up and I stand as well, stretching. I take her hand and we silently enter through the doors. Carson leads us down the row of beds, towards the windows. He steps behind a curtain partition and we follow him. There Marc is, lying on the bed.

Like Carson said, he's unconscious. There is a bandage covering his forehead, his right arm is wrapped in an ace bandage, there are stitches above his left eye and on his cheek, and there are a lot of bruises. It looks like he took quite a beating. It's silent except for the 'beep beep' of the heart monitor. At least that lets us know that he's still alive.

Maria's silent, staring at Evan. She then turns around and asks Carson, "When's daddy gonna wake up?"

Carson smiles softly and says, "I don't know lass. But don' you worry your little head, I'm gonna take good care of him."

"You promise?"

"I promise." Carson says, glancing at the clock at the wall. "Time for you to leave so we don't bother you dad any more than we have to."

"He knows that we're here?" Maria asks, her eyes sparking with hope.

"Some people think so." I say distractedly.

Half way there Maria falls asleep and I carry her the rest of the way. Entering my place, I make my way to the couch and set her down on it. She slightly stirs but doesn't wake up. I grab a blanket and cover Maria with it. I then walk into my room and lay down on the bed, waiting for sleep to come. But it doesn't.

Instead I stare at the ceiling, my mind reeling.

I don't want Evan to die.

-So many tears I've cried for you A Million tears that I have cried, I wish you where right by my side…-

"Maria, you ready?" I call out, sticking my head into the bedroom. It's been a week since Evan had been brought back and his condition hasn't improved. Carson says that there's nothing to worry about, but if that was true then wouldn't he wake up?

"Not yet."

I sigh and run a hand through my hair, we're gonna be late. Again. I turn around and let my gaze wander around the room and involuntary flinch.

My other wise clean place now looks like a war zone. Clothes draped everywhere, pillows and blankets resting haphazardly on the couch, papers and books are perched in precarious piles that look like they're gonna topple just by someone looking at them.

Ok, so taking care of Maria for an extended period of time is harder than it sounded but I'm dealing. I think.

I hear Maria coming out of the room and turn to see if she's dressed. She is, but her hair is doing a rather good impression of Martin Lloyd's hair from 'Back to the Future'. "Why didn't you brush your hair?" I ask.

"Couldn't find one." She says, shrugging her shoulders.

I sigh and glance at my watch. We have five minutes before we're late. New plan: get going and brush her hair in the classroom. "Ok, where's the last time you remember seeing one?" I ask, starting to look around the room.

"I dunno." Maria replies.

Great help. I rush around the room, trying to quickly find one and run all the way to the room. I'm picking up clothes, but am throwing them back down when I see that there's no brush or comb or hair grooming device to be found under them. After three minutes of not finding it, I frak it and grab our stuff.

I'm pushing Maria out the door when the top to my backpack opens up and stuff spills out. It takes all my restraint not to openly curse in front of her and I bend down to pick up the papers and such. But on the plus side, I found a brush.

How it got into my backpack in the first place I don't know, but I don't dwell. I have too much to think about at the moment. Like if Elizabeth is going to have a "talk" with me for being late almost every day this week.

We take a transporter to the classroom hallway and are walking towards the room when Maria says, "We didn't get anything to eat."

I sigh and cast my eyes upward. I knew I had forgotten something. Oh, well we were running late anyways so even if I hadn't wasted time looking for a brush we wouldn't have had time to grab something anyways. We pause in front of the classroom door and I rummage through my backpack hoping that there was a breakfast bar in there. I hit pay dirt and pull one out. I hand it to her and she makes a face but takes it anyways.

"What?" I ask. "I thought that you liked 'em."

"It's not strawberry. I like the strawberry ones."

"Oh, well. Take it or wait until lunch." I say, my patience wearing thin. Maria makes a face but opens the wrapper. I thought so.

I push Maria forward so the door opens and we walk inside to see that we're the first ones there. Sweet, we're not the only ones running late today. My mood slightly improves at that fact and I drop my backpack down by my desk and I plop down into the chair. I sit for a few seconds and then sit up and grab my pack, rummaging through it until I find the hairbrush. Pulling it out I say, "Maria let me brush your hair."

"Ok."

Once she's by me I turn her around so that her back is towards me. I then start to brush her hair.

"Ow." Maria says when I hit a rather nasty tangle and she pulls away from me. "That hurts."

"I know, so stay still." I say, pulling her back. The door swishes open and I glance over to see who's arrived. It's the Sheppard's, Beckett's, and McKay's.

"Sorry," Laura says as the door closes. "we all got a late start this morning."

"That's ok, so did we." I say, continuing to brush Maria's a hair. She squirms away from me and I pull her back towards me.

Fortunately I don't have much hair left and I finish in a few seconds. Maria scampers off towards the rest of the kids and I lean back in the chair. Not even five minutes with the kids and I'm already worn out.

"Max, could we talk to you about something?" Elizabeth asks. John and Laura have left leaving just Elizabeth and Carson.

"Sure." I say, standing. I have an inkling about what it's going to be. I make my way over to them and before they can talk say, "Listen I'm sorry about being late most of this week, I'm trying really hard to make it on time but-"

Elizabeth holds up a hand cutting me off. "It's not about that, it's something else."

"Um, ok. What is it then?" I ask.

"We're worried about you, lass." Carson says. "From what we've seen this week it's lookin' like you're workin' yourself to exhaustion. This must be hard for you; we know how close you were ta Major Lorne-"

"We're friends, that's all." I protest.

"No one's saying otherwise." Elizabeth says in that diplomatic way of hers. "We're just concerned that you might be stretching yourself too thin. We want to let you know that Maria can stay with both of our families while you take some time for yourself."

"I'm fine really I am." I say. I knew all of that, they had said so in the first few days of this but I insisted that she stay with me. I guess that Maria helps me deal with it.

"You say that you are, yet you've been late most of this week." Elizabeth says. "That's why Carson and Laura are taking Maria tonight, Rodney and I will take her tomorrow night, and John and Teyla will take her for the weekend. You're to rest and get things under control."

"Is that an order?" I ask. I'm not trying to be difficult or anything, just trying to clarify the issue.

"Aye, from me and Elizabeth." Carson says. "I don' want you in my infirmary from lack of sleep."

I sigh, and say, "Alright if it's an order."

"We just want to help." Elizabeth says, giving me a comforting smile.

I weakly return it and say, "I know."

"Then let us take her."

I sigh, knowing that it's a hopeless to fight it. Come to think of it, I have been feeling a bit run down lately. I guess that having some time to myself will be good. After I grudgingly agree, Elizabeth and Carson then leave.

The day passes fairly quickly and it seems that in no time everyone's gone and it's just me in the classroom. I fiddle around the room for a bit; straightening this, picking up that. After realizing that I was just killing time, I head on out determined to take Elizabeth's and Carson's advice and relax, having some "me time". But I'm at a loss as to what to do; I'm used to taking care of Maria. I guess that I never realized how much apart of my day was spent with her.

I exit into the hallway and head over to my room. When I enter, I notice how quiet it feels without having Maria around. There's almost a tomb-like silence to it and it's creeping me out. So to get rid of the graveyard feeling, I get some music playing. In keeping with the emo-feeling of the past week, I put on some Dashboard Confessional.

Softly humming along to 'Vindicated' I change into comfortable clothes and feeling infinitely more relaxed than I have been, flop down onto my bed and grab the book on my nightstand. My hand brushes over my alarm clock and it beeps at me, letting me know that I've set it for the next morning. Score, one less thing for me to do tonight.

I get comfortable and open the book, starting to read. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know my alarm's going off and I'm still in the clothes I had changed into. I slap it shut and get up to get ready for the day.

A/N: I could type something witty and funny about how much ship/angst there was originally in this chapter...but I'm not. All hail TPTB who were genius enough to come up with SGA, and Maria belongs to Reefgirl. Review please.